St Boniface, OSB. 5 June 2025.

Or, How an Englishman became the patron saint of Germany, and how a Benedictine monk set in motion what would lead to the Lutheran Reformation. An essay for his festival day.

What a guy! For starters, the patron saint of Germany is an Englishman. Now how did that happen? Here's the story, starting with what an Englishman is anyway.  Then, how the Boniface story lead, and had to lead, to a reformation.

What's an Englishman?

Well, Winfred -- that's his real name -- was born to a wealthy family (funny how that happens a lot in what become "great" saints) in Wessex around 672 or so. What's Wessex? We English love contractions for stuff; Wessex is a contraction for West Saxons. Great geographic Judas, isn't Saxony in Germany? Yeah, it is. We English are basically a German people, with lots of Roman stuff mixed in from before, and a bunch of stuff mixed in from later, largely French. Although the main kind of French, Normans, are basically German too.
                                                                       
So are the Vikings, who were always raiding and conquering stuff.  Those Vikings were probably looking for some decent food, understandable if you've ever had lutefisk, torsk or other Scandinavian food. Unfortunately our food isn't that great either, which is probably why the coastal raids were so fierce -- they were ticked, came all this way and the food is still crap, so they trashed the place.

Anyway, a bunch of us German types came in about the time the Romans were losing their grip and the original peoples were losing what was left of their grip too. So, you had Wessex, the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the western modern United Kingdom, Sussex, the Kingdom of the South Saxons, and Essex, the Kingdom of the East Saxons. Essex is just South of East Anglia, which is where my people came to from Anglia, in modern Schleswig-Holstein, a state in modern Germany.  Hey, we were invited, the locals were having trouble holding off the Scots after the Romans left, so they asked us to move in.

Just for the record, there's seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and eventually they became a united Kingdom of England.  "England" comes from us, it's a contraction of Angle-land.  Told you we love contracting stuff.  The seven kingdoms are: Wessex; Sussex; Essex; East Anglia; Mercia (they were some bad dudes, but I ain't getting into that now); Northumbria (that's where the Venerable Bede is from); Kent. Collectively, they are traditionally called the Heptarchy.  

Wessex as a political entity ceased to exist with the Norman Conquest in 1066, but it and the other names continue to be used as general terms of reference and in noble titles.  Southwest modern England.  One of the most active and visible members of the current royal family is Sophie, Countess of Wessex, now since 2023 Duchess of Edinburgh.  She is the wife of Queen Elizabeth II's youngest son Prince Edward, and a champion of care for the disabled, preventing disease and equal treatment of women.

The Missionaries Are Coming!

Anyway, here's Winfrid in Wessex. Against his father's wishes, he takes off to a Benedictine monkatorium -- one extreme to another. In 716 he sets out to convert the Frisians, since his language, which we now call Old English, wasn't all that different than theirs. OK, what's Frisia? Well, it's die deutsche Bucht.  Oh for the cat's sake, what is THAT?  Well, it means the German Bay, or cove or bight; it's the German coastal area on the southeast corner of the North Sea.

Trouble is, there was a war on between Charles Martel and the King of Frisia, so Winfrid and his company went back home. They came back though. This time he had the support and protection of Charles Martel. Whozat, came up twice now? Well, Charles Martel, Latin name Carolus Martellus or Charles the Hammer, Karl Martell in German, was King of the Franks.  Well, in effect he was king; he himself never assumed the title "king" and turned down the Roman title "consul" from the Pope too, sticking with the Latin title dux (duke, leader, a military role) et (and) princeps (prince, a ruling role) of the Franks.

The war with Frisia was part of his larger effect of pretty much setting the course for all later European history.  Amid his conquests in Europe (Bavarians, Saxons, Frisians etc) itself, he also held off the Islamic invasion of Europe (you didn't think that sort of stuff was anything new did you?) after 21 years of nobody else being able to do it, at the Battle of Tours in 732.  There, with no cavalry against arguably the finest military in the world at the time, the Umayyad Caliphate (Sunnis, hq Damascus), he defeated them with such decisiveness that he got the nickname "Hammer".

This all consolidated with his son Pippin and grandson Charlemagne, aka Carolus Magnus, aka Karl der Grosse, whose Carolingian Empire would become the Holy Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum Sacrum, or das heiliges römisches Reich) with the blessings of the bishops of Rome, some of them in turn put there by the empire, call it a symbiotic relationship, which lasted from 962 until 1806 (we'll get to that in a bit here). Wanna spice it up at your next let's-impress-each-other cocktail party? Call France West Francia and Germany East Francia, which is pretty much what they are to this day.

Anyway, the object of the game involving Winfrid (in case you thought we forgot about the subject of the post!) was for the Christian Carolingians to conquer the non-Christian Saxons, which of course meant making them Christian too. Now just a bleeding minute, didn't we just go over Saxons being in England? Yes we did, but, two things. For one, some of them stayed home, and for another, it's often hard telling in accounts from those times whether "Saxon" means literally people from Sachsen or is a reference to Germans generally.

Winfrid Takes On Thor.

So, in 723, under royal and military protection, a famous thing happened. Winfrid -- who was not yet known by his Benedictine (everybody who's anybody is a Benedictine, you know that) name Boniface, from the Latin Bonifacius, meaning well-made -- thinking of Elijah in the Bible story, goes up to a sacred tree, near Fritzlar in the modern German state of Hesse, that was a major religious site to Thor in the native German religion, and chops the bleeder down, saying if Thor were real he could strike him dead.

Which didn't happen, and the story is that on seeing that, all these Germans, from outside the former Roman Imperial boundaries, became Christian. Then the next year (724) he builds a chapel from wood from the oak. Then he set up a bishop -- guess you didn't need a papal appointment -- and established a Benedictine monastery in Fritzlar, and its first abbot, Wigbert, built a cathedral on the site of Boniface's chapel on the site of Thor's Oak. The bishop died and it became part of the bishopric of Mainz, which is the current name of the old Roman Imperial provincial capital called Moguntiaticum.

Thor Loses Big Time, Boniface Becomes First Of Germans Via The "Pope".

There had been bishops in Moguntiaticum since Crescens around 80AD, although the first one with any verifiable record is Marinus in 343. But when Boniface, by now an "archbishop" becomes bishop in 745, the place really took off. Boniface made several (three, I think) trips to Rome and was granted the pallium (we'll get to what that is in the next paragraph). The archbishops of Mainz became the Primas Germaniae, First of the Germans, the Pope's legatus natus (representative by virtue of his office) north of the Alps.

Holy crap what's a pallium then? It's a wool scarf worn by the pope as a symbol of his supposed authority, which the popes later also gave to some regional bishops to show their support of, and support from, papal authority. Silly enough, but these things were sold and the right to wear them brought in millions to the papal fortune, and that's serious business! So Pope Gregory II in 732 gives Boniface the pallium and also authority over what is now Germany, whereupon Charles Martel started setting up bishoprics all over with Boniface over them. Pope, king, what the hell, all "apostolic succession", right?  Boniface himself said he couldn't have done it without the military and political power of Charles Martel. He said it to Daniel of Winchester, but Godfrey was there by institutional memory and told me about the whole thing, plus it's in all the history books if that isn't good enough for you.

But there was still these frigging Frisians, who still weren't converted. Bloody coastal areas anyway. So in 754 he sets out to get them after all, but they weren't so hot to be gotten, and he ended up getting killed. His remains were taken to Utrecht, and then to Fulda, where Boniface's disciple Sturm -- hey, didn't he have a brother named Drang (if you're laughing, a special welcome to this blog) -- started a Benedictine monastery on 12 March 744, which lasted until Napoleon shut it down in 1802, in what we call in German -- are you ready for this -- Reichsdeputationshauptschluss.

What Is THAT?

Relax, that's just the nickname! Its real name is Hauptschluss der ausserordentlichen Reichsdeputation, howzat, which means the Main Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation, which was the last thing the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire really did, on 25 February 1803, before the HRE ended in 1806. Basically, caved to Napoleon and secularised religious stuff.

If you're thinking continuity, or hermeneutics thereof, forget it. Fulda started up again as an episcopal see, meaning a bishopric, in 1829. The German Catholic bishops still have their conferences there, but this is not the old Fulda. Likewise, the current Catholic Diocese of Mainz is not the old Archbishopric of Mainz; the latter ended and the new one began in 1802 too and they ain't the Kurfuerstentum Mainz no more either. Who the hell were they? One of the seven guys who elected Holy Roman Emperors, that's who.

For the record, the other six electors besides the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz were 1) the Prince-Archbishop of Trier (man I love Trier, Judas Priest even Constantine was there, that's where he ditched his wife and married another, whom he later had killed along with their son, in a power deal as part of becoming "the Great" and "Equal of the Apostles", the whole bleeding Empire was run from there at times, I haven't been able to get that utterly captivating city out of my mind since I was there in 1969, man I love Trier), 2) the Prince-Archbishop of Köln (Cologne, couldn't understand bupkis of the local dialect there), 3) the King of Bohemia (a Habsburg since 1526, think Austria), 4) the Count Palatine of the Rhine (always a Wittlesbach, the royal family of Bavaria, yay!, whose money started the Benedictine place in Minnesota where I, well, I don't know exactly what the hell I did there), 5) the Duke of Saxony (a Wettin since 1423) and 6) the Margrave of Brandenburg (a Hohenzollern since 1415, think Prussia).

Thor Continues!

Old Boniface didn't totally get rid of the Thor, or in German, Donner, thing. The sacred oak may be gone, but we still have his day, Thor's Day, or Thursday -- we English love contractions. In German it's Donnerstag, same thing. And, the 2011 movie "Thor" was a box office smash hit as was the sequel "Thor: The Dark World" in 2013, and a third one, "Thor: Ragnarok", was released in the US on 3 November 2017, to the highest critical acclaim and biggest box office receipts of all three!

Holy crap, what's a Ragnarok?  BIG stuff, eschatology, which is the big English word derived from the Greek words meaning "study of the last stuff".  In both the Poetic and the Prose Eddas (we'll get to Holy crap what's an Edda later) the end of the present age is described as a huge war resulting in the deaths of major gods, Odin and Thor among them, all sorts of natural disasters resulting in a worldwide flood, after which the surviving gods get to-gether and the earth is repopulated by the surviving human couple, whose names in English are Lift, from the Norse word for "life" so that's the female, and Lifthrasir, which means "lover of life".  Twilight of the Gods!  Yep, the Old Norse source along with the somewhat parallel Middle High German Nibelungenlied of Wagner's great work.

The movies are not a movie version of the Eddas, and "Thor" while based on the character in Germanic mythology is a character created by Stan Lee and his younger brother Larry (who still uses the original family name Lieber) as a superhero for Marvel Comics.  No worries, Wagner took a lot of liberties with the story too.  Thor became a character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and appears in other movies and media based on Marvel characters, such as the Avengers series.

A fourth Thor movie, and the 29th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor: Love and Thunder, was released in the US on 23 June 2022.  It is uncertain if there will be a fifth film.

OK now, Holy Crap What's an Edda?

The Eddas are two works written in Iceland in the 1200s (13th Century) though its material is much older, from the Viking Age (793 - 1066 AD), and is our main source of Norse mythology.  One is the Prose Edda, which was written by Snorri Sturluson about 1220, and for some time was just Edda, the only known Edda though scholars speculated there must be an older, or at least another, Edda with the stuff old Snorri quoted.

There is, and it was discovered in 1643, by Brynjolfur Sveinsson, Bishop of Skalholt, as he was collecting manuscripts for the King of Denmark and Norway, who ruled Iceland and to whom it was given, hence its name Codex Regius, Latin for "King's Book".  It was kept in Copenhagen and just relatively recently returned to Iceland, on 21 April 1971.  Iceland had become Lutheran in 1540 by order of the King of Denmark, so these guys were Lutheran.

Well sort of.  Just like old Winfrid and the Germans above, there's nothing apostolic about Iceland becoming Lutheran, just yet another example of the sort of thing that has as much if not more to do with the triumph of the state via its established church than anything else, and the modern Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland like all the Nordic and Germanic state churches depart significantly from historic Lutheran teaching and practice.

At least we got Norse sources out of the deal.  It's really quite ironic that the Boniface bringing the faith to the Germans thing with its Thor episode and the Lutheran Iceland being the source for us knowing about Thor both are examples of the same thing, the faith as a tool of the state.

Why the word "edda" for these sources?  Nobody knows.  There's at least five credible theories for the origin of the word.  These days, the later-discovered Edda is often called the Elder or the Poetic Edda, since it's in alliterative verse and supposedly older, and Snorri's Edda is often called the Younger or the Prose Edda.  Its prologue says the Nordic gods were actually Trojans who escaped after the fall of Troy and were taken as gods by the locals in the Germanic lands to which they fled because of their superior technology, and then by a process called euhemerism, stories about actual remarkable people grow, get developed and exaggerated as they are retold, and there's your myths.

Euhemerism, How Many More Words You Got I Never Heard Of?

It's from Euhemerus, who was active at the court of the King of Macedon (or Macedonia if you like) about 300 BC.  He did not originate this theory but was its main articulator.  His magnum opus Sacred History (Hiera Anagraphe) is itself lost, however many ancient authors quoted him, sometimes at great length, and from these surviving works we have a pretty good picture of his work.  Euhemerism is distinct from apotheosis in that it happens culturally over a period of time rather than by decree of an institutional authority about a particular person, like the Senate declaring Julius Caesar divine on 1 January 42 BC.

Why even bring that up, isn't this about Boniface?  One:  These days "nobody" can be bothered about such stuff and because of this we think ideas like religion being a human invention to explain stuff we can't yet explain represent some sort of enlightened modern view, when in fact such ideas are as old as the ones they seek to replace and have been around since the ancient Greeks themselves, if you happen to hear of Euhemerus or Protagoras from some non-PC non-academic source like this blog or an academic who hasn't been yet run out of contemporary academia.

Two:  Euhemerism does not of itself invalidate all religion.  Early Christian apologists like the convert Clement of Alexandria, the convert Cyprian, Eusebius, Tertullian, and Augustine all used it, well expressed in the statement of Isidore, Quos pagani deos asserunt homines olim fuisse produntur (Those whom the pagans assert as gods were produced as humans, Etymologiae, De diis gentium) to distinguish Christianity as a revelation from the existing mythologies.

In fact, the Bible itself uses it!  St Peter in his second letter (epistle, chapter one verse 16, in the combined chapter and versification first used in 1560 by the Geneva Bible and pretty much universal since then), says the Apostles were not following nor concocting stories but reporting what they had personally seen.  Yet what they had seen becomes functionally just such a story for the state, as we saw above in Boniface and the Thor stories.

Conclusion.

Oh yeah, Boniface. His body is still there in the Fulda cathedral. Before we get all misty about the "Apostle to the Germans" and all, we should remember that the spread of Christianity through the Apostles took no such course as the one described above. Demonstrating that was the whole point in describing the above.  The Apostles' course was anything but the increase of the state church right along with the increase of the state to which it belonged. The above is not a story of the triumph of the Gospel, because as Boniface himself said, it would hardly have been possible without the triumph of the state. To get misty about some triumph of the Gospel one must also get misty about the triumph of the, specifically that, state. And its prince-bishops. And the "pope" of Rome, who still bears the title of the chief priest of the pagan Roman Imperial religion, pontifex maximus, a title held by the Roman Emperor until Emperor Gratian renounced it in favour of the "bishop" of Rome in 382.

The head of state no longer carries that title, the church of Christ knows neither such a title nor regional versions. The spread of Christianity brought with it the same things that would later make the Reformation necessary. As the church had become deformed, so it would need to be reformed. And so it was. While we might, and should, admire the zeal, Christianity should never be spread in this way, and the Christianity that is spread in this way is a deformed Christianity that will eventually need to be reformed.

Thanks be to God that it was. This deformed Christianity came about where, 800 some years later, it would be reformed, bringing the good Boniface brought that we celebrate to-day back to its true nature. Or rather, IS being so reformed. The Lutheran Reformation is a process, not a past historical fact. It's now 500 years and counting since the Lutheran Reformation began.  The authentic Gospel of Christ and his Church is for all people, not just us Germanic types. And ironically to-day it's as needed by some church bodies with "Lutheran" in their names as it is by those state churches now without their state, the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

PS

Hey, after you wow 'em with the East/West Francia thing, hit 'em with why you must see "Thor" movies on a Thursday!

Memorial Day Is Not All Saints Day Or Veterans Day, 2025.

Nor is it Armed Forces Day, which we just had.  It isn't even Memorial Day any more, really. And, it wasn't to start with, either!  Huh??

So where did it come from? Unlike many holidays, there is no centuries-old background here. The background there is will help not only understanding Memorial Day for what it is and isn't, but understanding our secular holidays as a whole, and provide some real eye-openers on the political scene.

The Original Memorial Day.

On 5 May 1868 General John A Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, designated 30 May 1868 "for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion". Not only for that, but also to "renew our pledge to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon the Nation's gratitude—the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan". The designation was for 1868 only, but it expressed "the hope that it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades".

That's how "Memorial Day" came to be.  For Civil War veterans as long as one still lives, for all to remember those who died in that war.  What does this mean?

The above words, from the proclamation itself, General Orders No.11 from G.A.R. headquarters, make it clear that the reference is to the Civil War. So who is Logan and what is the G.A.R.?

The G.A.R. was not a unit in the Civil War. It was a group founded 6 April 1866 by Benjamin F Stephenson MD in Decatur IL for veterans of the U.S. Army who had served in the Civil War. He himself had served as surgeon of the 14th Illinois Infantry with the rank of Major. The unit was a regiment with the Union Army of the Tennessee, not to be confused with the Confederate Army of Tennessee, and the former was named for the river, the latter for the state.  He served for a three year term ending 24 June 1864, after which he returned to Springfield IL, the state capital, to resume medical practice.

Among the notable commanding officers of the Army of the Tennessee are its first, Ulysses S Grant, and its second, William T Sherman, who arranged for John A Logan to be its fifth and last after the war was actually over. There's a story there. The third commander, James B McPherson, was killed in action 22 July 1864 during the Battle of Atlanta, and Logan temporarily replaced him, but command went to another, Oliver O Howard from the Army of the Cumberland. Howard, like Sherman, was West Point; Logan wasn't. However, Sherman arranged for Logan to become commander so he could lead the army in the Grand Review to kind of make up for being passed over. It disbanded 1 August 1865.

And what was the Grand Review? An event on 23 and 24 May 1865, whose full name is Grand Review of the Armies, in Washington DC to celebrate the end of the war. On 23 May, Major General George Meade of the Army of the Potomac, who had won over General Lee at Gettysburg, led about 80,000 of its men in a six hour parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, and the following day Sherman led about 65,000 men combined from the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Georgia in another six hour parade, Howard riding with Sherman and Logan leading the Army of the Tennessee.

Logan and Post Civil War Presidential Politics.

General Logan served as a 2nd Lieutenant with the 1st Illinois Infantry during the Mexican-American War -- during which he learned to speak Spanish -- graduated in law from the University of Louisville in 1851, practiced law and rose in a political career from county clerk to the Illinois state house of representatives and was serving as a member of the US House of Representatives, Democrat from Illinois, at the outset of the war. He was a volunteer at Bull Run, or Manassas, after which he resigned his congressional seat and organised the 31st Illinois Volunteers, with the rank of Colonel. After the war he switched parties, was a Representative and then Senator from Illinois, and ran as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Republican ticket with James G Blaine in the election of 1884, which lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland.

There's another story. Cleveland, whose Civil War service was paying a Polish immigrant to serve in his place when he was drafted -- legal under the Conscription Act of 1863 -- was a classic liberal, "liberal" being quite unrelated to what the term means now as "Democrat". He opposed taxes, supported the gold standard and lowering the tariffs imposed on imports meant to protect domestic products, worked for reduction and limitation of government, and opposed government intervention in the welfare of individuals.

Here's something that is quite telling in view of recent events.  In vetoing a measure to provide a "bail out" for Texas farmers ruined by drought, Cleveland said the veto was " to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood".

Not a lot of that kind of talk from Democrats lately.

The election was hard fought. The Democrats accused Blaine of influencing legislation to benefit railroads whose bonds he owned, which was long denied until letters were discovered making it a little harder to deny, some of them ending "Burn this letter", which in turn gave rise to the campaign slogan "Blaine, Blaine, James G Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine". The Republicans in turn tried to sully Cleveland's image when a woman named him the father of her illegitimate child, and Cleveland admitted he did pay her child support. She however was known to have, so to speak, played the field, including with Cleveland's law partner, for whom the child was named, and while Cleveland himself actually did not know who the father was, being the only bachelor among the possibilities, took responsibility, leading to the campaign slogan "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"

And you thought politics only got rough and dirty lately! It gets worse. Blaine, whose mother was Irish Catholic, was hoping for support from that community, not typically known for supporting Republicans, but then one of Blaine's supporters denounced the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" (the party of Lincoln not being popular in the South) which lost him a ton of votes in swing states to Cleveland, who won the popular vote by less than 1%, though being swing states the electoral college vote was decisive. After Cleveland won, the slogan was turned around to "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa, gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!".

It gets worse yet. In 1888 he was renominated and ran again, and the Republicans ran Benjamin Harrison, Republican Senator from Indiana, against him instead of Logan -- oh yeah, Logan, we'll get back to him -- for high tariffs and big government -- yes, you read it right, that was the Republican position, big government -- and while Cleveland did not win all the swing states as before, what did him in was, guess what, vote fraud by the Republicans in, guess where, Indiana, where Cleveland narrowly lost, however, it gave Harrison the electoral votes to win although he lost the national popular vote. And you thought politics only got rough and dirty lately!

Cleveland came back though. Harrison's high tariffs, his big budgets (he was the first President to have a billion dollar budget, yes Republicans for a big budget), his support for backing currency with silver as well as gold -- which was a problem because silver wasn't worth as much as its legal gold equivalent, so taxpayers paid in silver, cheap money to "help the poor", but the government's creditors required payment in gold -- all of this sent the economy right straight to hell. With the Republicans losing supporters of free silver to the new Populist Party, Cleveland was elected President again in 1892. He thus became the first President to serve non-continuous terms.

BTW, he therefore is the only president to have two coins in the Presidential Dollar series.  But you likely will never see the second one.  The series stopped production for circulation in 2011 since they were little used in circulation, and beginning with Chester Alan Arthur, the president just before Cleveland, were issued in limited numbers for collectors, not general circulation.  The series then ended in 2016 after the Ronald Reagan dollar, the last president eligible ("eligible" means the president has been dead for at least two years when the coin would be issued) under the series.  Since then, in 2018, the first President Bush died.  It would take an Act of Congress, literally, to resume the series, which is not likely.

Oh yeah, Logan. Had the Blaine/Logan ticket won, he would have died in office. He died 26 December 1886. Staunchly Republican, he became Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1868 and continued in that position until 1871 when he became a US Senator. He was always active in veteran's affairs, and public education -- the non West Pointer. A GAR endorsement was essential to winning a Republican nomination for President for decades. The GAR also was influential in the establishment of Old Soldiers' Homes, which became the basis for the present US Department of Veterans Affairs. At its peak in 1890, the GAR had 490,000 members, but, realising numbers must eventually decline, in 1881 the GAR founded the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) to eventually carry on.

And so they did: the last encampment, as national meetings were called, was in 1949, and the last surviving member, named Albert Woolson, died 2 August 1956 at age 109, it was thought, though census records now indicate 106. There's a story there too. He was from New York state. His father was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and taken to a military hospital in Windom, Minnesota, where he and his mother moved, though his father later died of his wounds. Whereupon Albert enlisted in Company C of the 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment as a drummer, which is not just for parades and stuff like now. Then, as for centuries before, there was no motorised transport, and drummers were key in both setting marching pace and boosting morale during combat. Albert enlisted 10 October 1864 just months before the war's end and the unit did not see action. He returned to Minnesota, lived out his life as a carpenter, and died in Duluth.

General Eisenhower, President at the time, said of his passing "The American people have lost the last personal link with the Union Army ... His passing brings sorrow to the hearts of all of us who cherished the memory of the brave men on both sides of the War Between the States". The recognition of both sides was not new; at the first Memorial Day graves from both sides were decorated.

Modern Memorial Day Evolves.

With his death, the GAR ceased to exist. Memorial Day did not. More or less. The original name was Decoration Day, from the original proclamation for the decorating of veterans' graves of the Civil War, which also, in 1868, envisioned its existence until the last survivor was gone, which was 1956, 88 years later. It's expanded a bit. After World War One, it had become a Federal holiday observed on the original date, 30 May, and was expanded to included the decoration of the graves of all who died in any US military engagement. The alternate name for Decoration Day, Memorial Day, was first used in 1882, 14 years after the first one.  After World War Two, which gave many more to be remembered and whose graves to be decorated, the unofficial name became the more commonly used name, and was made the official name in 1967, 99 years after the first one.

The following year, the Uniform Holidays Bill changed its observance along with Veterans' Day (11 November, on which this blog also posts annually) and Washington's Birthday (22 February) to create three three-day-long weekends to take effect in 1971. Thing is, none of these observances had been instituted to give people a three-day week-end, with an extra day off and cook-outs and sports and big sales at the stores, but to remember as a nation particular people and things.

Washington's Birthday was established in 1879 to commemorate the commander of the Continental Army in the war for independence and the unanimous choice of the Electoral College to be the first President, a unifying figure for the new nation and model for its future Presidents, often called "the father of his country", on his, well, birthday, 22 February in 1732. Well, sort of; that's how we date it now.  When he was born records give the date as 11 February 1731.  The Julian Calendar and Annunciation style numbering of years, which began on 25 March, was in use in the British Empire when he was born.  The British Calendar Act of 1750 made the change to the Gregorian calendar and beginning years with 1 January effective in 1752.  So, day dates were moved forward 11 days, and those between 1 January and 25 March moved forward one year.  11 February 1731 thus becomes 22 February 1732.  Exactly the same day, just two different calendar numbering systems, unless you're an April Fool (you can read more about that on this blog's post for New Years and the Annunciation). 

Veterans Day is now called that to commemorate all veterans, and was originally to commemorate the armistice which ended World War One starting on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 11 November (you can read more about that on this blog's Veterans Day post). Decoration Day was chosen to commemorate Civil War dead on 30 May precisely because that date is not connected with any particular battle or other event of the Civil War, not because the flowers are in full bloom as some (a past President for example) have said (you can read more about that on this blog's Memorial Day post, oh wait, you already are).

The dates mean something, closing up shop for a particular commemoration of a particular something on a particular date, not an opportunity to take the 3rd Monday in February, the 4th Monday of October, and the last Monday in May off from work to do other things, or stay at work to boost business from big sales attracting those off work. The outcry over this loss of the meaning of the day, and acquiring meanings unrelated to it, was enough that Veterans Day was moved back to its original date in 1978, but with the provision that if that date fell on a Sunday it could be observed the following Monday, or if on a Saturday either on that Saturday or the Friday before.

In the 1980s advertisers began the push to boost sales on the new day for Washington's Birthday as "Presidents Day" including Lincoln whose birthday is 12 February. So now we have Washington's Birthday, which is still the official name of the holiday, not on Washington's birthday, not altogether about Washington, not generally known under its actual name but an advertising nickname, and not really about presidents either but time off work and buying stuff.

As to Memorial Day, it is for no other purpose than to take time from our normal pursuits to commemorate those who gave their lives in the armed forces of this country that we might have the freedom to go about those pursuits. It's not for the dead per se -- the church provides that with All Saints Day on 1 November, and other religions have similar observances for the dead -- and not for living veterans and current service members, both of which groups have their own commemorations, which have posts on this blog, and certainly not to provide a three day kick off for Summer.

Memorial Day is for those who died in uniform.  Armed Forces Day is for those who are in uniform.  Veterans Day is for those who were in uniform.  Memorials for the dead follow one's personal religious or individual choices, not Memorial Day.

Conclusion.

For us Lutherans, and for all others, their sacrifice has given us a country where we need not wrestle with local, regional and national  governments to hold our beliefs, or to have our services in the only place where services are going to be, the state church, or at least be tolerated by it. We are free to form our churches according to our understanding of God, as are others according to their understandings, as are others who choose not to participate in any understanding. Nor do we need to re-create here church structure that emerged in the old countries where that was not the case and church officials were state officials too. What an incredibly precious gift.

The VFW noted in its Memorial Day statement of 2002: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day." Efforts continue to return Memorial Day to its original date of observance.

But we can return the observance itself to what it is, as General Logan said, to commemorate those who have died defending their country, AND to renew our pledge to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon the Nation's gratitude—the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan. 

May Day, May Day! 1 May 2025

If you know why I just said "May Day" twice instead of thrice, good on you! I'll explain it shortly for the others, but perhaps you will find the rest of the post entertaining nonetheless.

So it's May first, or 1 May, to put it correctly. Did you make someone a May Basket and leave it to-day? Huh? Judas H Priest in the archives, more musty stuff posted here? Whatever am I talking about?  The first of May has a long history of varying significance.  Here's the deal on that.

Distress signal.

OK, maybe you've heard "May Day" as a distress signal in the movies. So why "May Day" for a distress signal, did something really bad happen on 1 May once?  No. The expression originated from the legendary Croydon Airport in London, which closed 30 September 1959. It was the first airport to begin what is now called air traffic control, in 1921. A senior radio officer named Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to come up with something understood by all concerned to indicate distress, a grave or immanent danger needing immediate help.

It was to be a spoken radio equivalent to the radiotelegraphic SOS in effect since 1 July 1908; the telephonic 9-1-1 was decades away. Since at that time most of the traffic was between Croydon and the also legendary Le Bourget airport in Paris (that's where Charles Lindbergh would land in 1927, and is still open, business jets only), Mockford chose the French phrase "Venez m'aider", Come to my aid. "May Day" is an English corruption of the French phrase.

Now, when given as a distress call it is said three times, to avoid confusion, since the conditions under which it is given are likely fairly confused already. Therefore, to honour the practice, I said it only twice since this is not a distress call.

Floralia.

The original May Day was a Roman (as in Republic, not Empire or Church, though it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between those two) festival of Flora, goddess of flowers. The word flora is still the botanical term for plants, and is the basis of the word for flower in Latin derived languages, such as the Spanish flor. Floralia, the feast, happened on IV Kalends of May, which is between what we call 27 April to 3 May, and was associated with springtime, new life, fertility, end of Winter, all that good stuff.

It was a pretty big blow-out, and an official one too, paid for by the government and supervised by elected government officials called aediles.  Cicero had a hand in the 69 BC event.  There were two kinds of aediles, patrician (from the descendants of the patres, the fathers) and plebian (from the plebs, the regular folks).  The plebian aediles (aediles plebis) were the original ones, and were in charge of the Floralia.  It started with theatrical events (ludi scaenici) and ended with competitions and spectacles.  Suetonius says the Floralia in 68 AD had an elephant walking a tightrope.  Of course this was under Emperor Galba, the first emperor in the notorious Year of the Four Emperors, so hey.  Juvenal says prostitutes would dance naked and put on mock gladiator fights.  Romans were good at blow-outs.  

It's important to notice that this was primarily a plebian festival, for regular folks, free citizens but not patricians.

Others also had Spring-is-here-hooray goings-on.  Now on to them. 

Walpurga Day (and Night).

Our good friends the Germans had Walpurgisnacht, Walpurgis Night. What in all flying Judas is that? Well the custom was pretty common among Germanic types, like the Vikings, and included bonfires to keep away pesky spirits and celebrate the return of light etc. Ain't got nuttin to do with the name though.  Here's the story on that.

Walpurga was an English girl from Devon, the southwestern tip of Mother England named for the Dumnonii, the Briton tribe living in the area when the Romans showed up in 43 AD, including present-day Devon and Cornwall.  Around 741 AD she went with her uncle Boniface and some other English guys from Devon to evangelise the German people, who were not Christian then.  English as spoken in Devon at the time was Germanic (this is well before the Norman Conquest changed everything) so they would be understood. She was Benedictine (of course).  Her dad had stuck her in the Benedictine convent at Wimborne Abbey at age 11 so he and her two brothers could go off on one of those blasted pilgrimages to the "Holy Land", for which dad is known as St Richard the Pilgrim.

Wimborne Abbey is still there, sort of, the original women's nunnery was trashed by the Danes in 1013, rebuilt by the Normans in C12, the rest was appropriated by the "Church of England" when that was invented and it's now a tourist attraction and local parish church.  Church of England, of course. 

Due to her education, Walpurga was able to write an account of their travels, making her the first known female author, English or German.  Her brothers had founded a Benedictine monkery for men and women both in Heidenheim, in Bavaria, of which she eventually became abbess.  She died there on 25 February 777, or 779 depending on who's counting, which following the usual practice was and still is in some places her feast day.  

However, on 1 May, she was canonised a saint by Pope Adrian II in 870, and also on 1 May 870 her remains were dug up and moved -- this is known by the more elegant phrase "translation of the relics" -- from Heidenheim to Eichstätt, which gave rise to a Benedictine abbey which is still there.  As the Christianisation of Europe proceeded, 1 May became her feast day in many places, and the coming of longer sunlight days became associated with her feast day, so that the bonfires and the clergy of the indigenous religion -- aka witches, pejoratively -- had to scatter with the coming of St Walpurga's Day, May Day. Hence Walpurgis Night, the eve of her feast, the night before as their last big blow out. No word on special flights to Blocksberg (the Brocken) for those whose brooms are in the shop.

Beltane.

Another related celebration is the Celtic Beltane. That's one of the four big Celtic feasts, and with Samhain, around 1 November at Winter comes on, the two most important.  1 May is about midway between the Spring equinox and Summer solstice, when the herds are led back to the fields, bonfires are built to protect against the faeries, thought to be particularly active at this time, feasts prepared, often with people jumping over the bonfires.  So, build a bonfire, dance around the May pole -- now there's a phallic fertility symbol for you.  

BTW, related to the sacred tree thing of pre-Christian Germanic types, Boniface (Walpurga's uncle, remember, and btw whose baptismal name was Winifred) supposedly cut down Thor's Sacred Oak in 723 but we still have Thor's Day, Thursday, or Donnerstag, his German name being Donner. Or, make a May basket of sweets, but instead of for Flora or the faeries leave it on somebody's doorstep anonymously, maybe for your own choice to be Queen of the May.

Maia and Mary crowning.

Who's Maia?  "May" comes from Maius in Latin, and is actually named from the Greek fertility goddess Maia, or Maia Maiestas in Latin, and in Roman traditional religion the first and fifteenth of the month were her holy days. 1 May was the date of her festival as the Bona Dea (the good goddess), the goddess of fertility and growth, which likely gave rise to the word maiores, elders ie those who have grown.  Some of which practices survives in some Catholic circles as May crowing, where a crown is put on a statue of Mary, who has the whole month of May dedicated to her.  Not sure what Miriam (Mary) the mother of Jesus would think of being a reconstituted Maia, but it probably ain't good. Do whatever he tells you, she said (John2:5), and he didn't say bupkis about nuttin like this.

International Worker's Day.

Alternatively, May Day is also International Worker's Day. This celebrates the victories of the labour movement, especially the recognition of the eight-hour workday. The date was chosen by the Second International, an association of socialist and labour movements, in 1889. Why 1 May? To commemorate the executions of some of the participants in a strike for the eight hour day on 4 May 1886 at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Hey, didn't I say 4 May, not 1 May? Yes I did. However this particular strike was one of many throughout the land, as the eight-hour workday was supposed to become standard 1 May 1886 and that is when strikes in support of it began. On 4 May at the Chicago one, someone tossed a bomb at the police line -- this is the origin of the phrase "bomb throwing anarchist" -- and it is unknown how many actually died. Among the four eventually executed by hanging for the incident, none was the "bomb throwing anarchist".

In Communist countries May Day was celebrated with parades of workers and military.  In post-Communist countries, as well as many others, the day functions much as Labor Day does in the US.

Feast of St Joseph the Worker.

The Roman Catholic Church reconstituted that too (they do that a lot with stuff).  To counter International Worker's Day, in 1955 along with his (in)famous revisions of the Holy Week liturgy, Pope Pius XII abolished the feast of St Joseph as patron of the universal church, established in 1870 by Pope Pius IX for the Wednesday of the second week after Easter, and created a feast of St Joseph the Worker to be celebrated on 1 May, also thereby boofing the feast of Saints Philip and James from that date.

Conclusion.

All that said, why not make a little basket of sweets for your sweetheart and give it to her as a surprise.   If you go jumping over any bonfires, watch your butt.  And, if you go to an eight-hour workday, remember that the eight-hour workday didn't happen because the forces of the market efficiently and beneficiently produced it, but because some people worked damned hard to bring it about in the marketplace despite its forces.

21 April. The Founding of the City. 2778/2025.

Huh?  What city?

Well, when you use the definite article ("the") with "city" you know it can only mean one thing, Rome.  Rome evolved a character that is the background of what we know to-day, yet then traded it for an un-Roman empire and its later church.  There's something we can learn from that so we don't do the same.  Here's the story.

First Rome.  Kingdom, Republic, Empire.

Marcus Terentius Varro (no relation, though Roman naming practice would indicate there is), who lived from 116 to 27 BC, right at the time the Roman Republic was transitioning to the Roman Empire, calculated what in the modern calendar we now date as 21 April 753 BC as the date of the founding of Rome.  Varro was an incredible scholar, one of the most remarkable anytime anywhere, and wrote extensively on pretty much everything, though only one work survives complete and only a few survive in fragments.

His one surviving complete work is Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, meaning On Things Agricultural in Three Books.  (See "rustic" in there?)  Among many other duties, he owned a large farm near Reate (modern Rieti, in central Italy), which was a central point in the Roman road linking Rome to the Adriatic Sea on the other side of what is now Italy.  That road was called the Via Salaria, meaning Salt Road, a major trade route beginning with the pre-Roman Sabines gathering salt from the River Tiber, which was a huge factor in the founding of Rome, hence Varro's connexion to it.

Roman improvements to the Via Salaria survive to this day in rural areas where the destruction after the Fall of Rome by the Germanic barbarians wasn't so severe.  The Via Salaria had a role in the introduction of Christianity to Rome, which is covered in the "22 February. The Confession of St Peter.  On Chairs Too" post on this blog, so you can read about that there.

But I can't let Varro go without mentioning that this incredible genius, for example, with no technology to detail it, by sheer observation and deduction therefrom, anticipated modern epidemiology and microbiology by noticing the disease coming from hanging around swamps and marches, warning against it and positing the existence of organisms not visible to the eye that enter the body and cause the disease. His Disciplinarum libri IX (Disciplines in Nine Books), though itself now lost, we know from other ancient sources was the model for the encyclopaedia as we know it, and, the basis from which that pillar of education, the Seven Liberal Arts, derives, which is also treated elsewhere on this blog, on the post "Readin', Writin' and Absolute Multitude" for 25 February each year, the founding date of my alma mater The University of Iowa.  Helluva guy.  We use stuff that comes from him every day and hardly know of him.  Rome, always Rome.

We use stuff every day that comes from Rome and hardly know of that either.  Rome itself went through three distinct stages, namely kingdom, republic and empire, from 753 BC to 476 AD.  That's 1,229 years!  And though the western part of the Empire containing Rome itself fell in 476, the eastern part of the Empire continued until 1453.  That's another 997 years for a total of 2226 years!  And, what took itself as a reconstitution of the Roman Empire lasted until 1806.  That's another 353 years, for a total of 2579 years!  Over two and one half millennia!!

At its founding Rome was a kingdom.  This was from 753 to 509 BC, 244 years; there were seven kings.  Kingship was elected by a senate, not hereditary, but, the king was absolute in all areas; he was chief lawgiver, chief executive, chief judge, chief priest.  Then the kingdom was abolished for a system of elected executive officials, laws made not by direct popular vote but by elected representatives, a separation of powers, and a constitution.  Sound familiar?  This was from 509 to 27 BC, 482 years.

Eventually though, the success of the Republic was also its downfall.  This is where we have something to learn.  Conflict between the Patricians, descendants of the founding fathers ("patres", hence "patrician") and their families from the Kingdom, and the Plebeians, everyone outside that class ("plebs", Latin for "common people") grew worse. The "Conflict of the Orders", though it saw the Plebeians attain the political rights originally held by the Patricians only, also saw the emergence of an unofficial aristocracy of plebeians who did well financially with the successes of the Republic, so the general situation of most people did not change, and increasingly though they had political rights they were not inclined to use them, but rather looked to a strong executive who would give them stuff as the answer.  Maybe that sounds familiar too, now.

Thus did a provision for a dictator, originally meant as a provision for a limited time to get through a period of a specific crisis, become a dictator for life in Julius Caesar and eventually a reversion to a supreme ruler, an emperor, in his adopted son, Octavian, in 27 BC, though the institutions of the Republic, most notably the Senate, still existed.  Outwardly a republic, but really a dictatorial empire.  All too familiar.  How this outwardly one thing inwardly another changed the church is covered elsewhere on this blog, on the post for 16 January "Eastern Church/Empire, Western Church/Empire".  Here, it's about what we can learn from the true essence of Rome, which figures so heavily in our own founding, and from how Rome discarded it for something quite different, to help us not do the same thing in increasingly similar circumstances in our own time socially.

The Roman Empire lasted from 27 BC to 476 AD, 503 years.  Sort of.  By 476, there was one Roman Empire, but it was divided into two parts, eastern and western, with twelve administrative units called dioceses.  This was done by Diocletian, the son of a slave who became emperor, in 285 to solve the crisis of the enormous instability in the huge empire that arose in the third century (which historians call, oddly enough, the Crisis of the Third Century).  The western part, which includes the city itself, collapsed in 476.  The eastern part did not.  That's the "sort of".

Second Rome.

The eastern part was later called the Byzantine Empire since it was Greek speaking, but they themselves used no such term, and saw themselves as the Roman Empire, period; they continued Roman traditions and considered themselves Romans.  They tried to maintain order in the fallen West by exarchs (Latin vicarius, vicar in English), one in Ravenna from 584 until the Lombards (north Germanic types who took over most of what is now Italy) killed the last one in 751, and one in Carthage, from 590 until destroyed by the Umayyad Caliphate in 698.  The loss of the riches of Carthage and of Egypt in the Exarchate of Africa was a severe blow, and a much greater threat in the rise of Islam emerged, which having already conquered most of what we now call the Middle East, now had their sights on Constantinople, the capital.  Islamic conquest was stopped in the eighth century, but later this reversed with the Battle of Manzikert in modern Turkey in 1071, resulting in steady decline to the point where the Roman Empire called upon the Roman Empire for help in 1095.

Huh?  Howzat, were there two Roman Empires?  Well yeah, sort of.  Oh great, another sort of.  Well, history is full of them, and they have a lot to do with how our present is.  Here's what happened.  Rome's problems weren't only the internal social ones mentioned above.  Externally, there was the threat from the Germanic barbarians beyond Roman borders, which resulted in two sacks of Rome, one in 410 by the Visigoths commanded by Alaric, the other in 455 by the Vandals under Genseric.  Finally, Odoacer, the Scirian (the Scirii were East Germanic types) leader, deposed the last western Roman emperor, Romulus (what an irony, same name as Rome's legendary founder after whom the city was named) on 4 September 476.  And the Senate went along with it!  Even so he professed to be under the eastern emperor, Zeno, but he wasn't impressed and sent the Ostrogoth king Theodoric to conquer him, which he did.  Theodoric invited Odoacer to a reconciliation banquet, at which he killed him on 15 March 493, then set about restoring the lost glory of Rome.  And that's the real story of Dietrich von Bern.  (Lutherans, if you're not laughing, check your Large Catechism for God's sake.)

What's not to be missed here is this: though Rome as a political reality was gone, and though none of these guys were Romans, and, though these non-Romans were the destroyers of Rome as a political entity, and, though they were Arians, a version of Christianity opposed to the one the empire had defined, they nonetheless appealed to either or both the surviving eastern part of the Roman Empire and/or the cultural legacy of the western part and the Empire as a whole for legitimacy!

The reconstituting of western Rome proceeded further with Charles Martel (Karl Martell, Carolus Martellus), King of the Franks.  Franks?  More Germanic types, known to the Romans before things fell apart, the only Germanic group that was not Arian, many had served in the Roman army all the way back to Julius Caesar.  Legends with written documents from as early as the seventh century attribute their origin to the losing forces of King Priam at Troy, the same origin as Virgil, on commission from Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, in the Aeneid attributed to, guess who, the Romans!

External to the south was the rise of Islam; the Umayyad Caliphate had conquered its way across northern Africa and up the Iberian peninsula into what is now the middle of France.  This was halted and its reversal begun on 10 October 732 at the Battle of Tours (aka Poitiers), when Charles, leading united forces against a vastly superior force, in one of the most stunning military achievements ever, so soundly defeated the forces of the Caliphate that he got his nickname The Hammer (martellus in Latin) and set the stage for the reconstruction of some sort of unified order in Europe.

This came to fruition in Charles' grandson, also named Charles, who further consolidated his rule in the lands of the old western Empire, and on 25 December (yes, Christmas Day) 800 AD was crowned Emperor of the Romans, Imperator Augustus, by the last surviving authority of imperial Rome, the bishop of Rome, at the time Leo III, at St Peter's Basilica (not the one there now, the one built by Constantine that was there before) in Rome.  For such accomplishments, the first unified ruler in Europe in over three hundred years, he is called Pater Europae, the Father of Europe, and also Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne.

Oh OK, you're talking about the Holy Roman Empire, right?  Well, sort of.  Great, another sort of.  Well, history is ... like we said above.  The "Holy Roman Empire" didn't see itself as the Holy Roman Empire.  That term didn't even arise until the thirteenth century, by which time the "Holy Roman Empire" had been around some four hundred years.

From the start, in 800, it was simply the Roman Empire, period, reconstituted, a translatio imperii, transfer of rule in Latin, from ancient Rome with the same legitimacy.  But the eastern part of the Roman Empire thought it was still the Roman Empire, and didn't think much of these former "barbarians" thinking they had reinstituted the Roman Empire, not just the western half but the whole thing.  At the time the eastern claimant to being the Roman Empire was ruled by Irene, as regent for her son who was too young to assume rule.  For a time she thought of marrying Charlemagne, who was eligible at the time, but the idea never came to anything.

So there's the "sort of", two entities each considering itself the Roman Empire.  The Roman Empire (the eastern half that survived) called upon the Roman Empire (the western half revived) in 1095 for help against Islamic conquest.  Thus began what are called the Crusades (though they weren't called that until well after the last one).

Interesting to note that the appeal was not from one Roman Emperor to the other.  It was from Alexios I, Roman Emperor as in the one in the east, but not to the "other" Roman emperor Henry IV, the "holy" Roman emperor at the time; rather, the appeal was to the bishop of Rome, that last surviving authority of the Rome that fell, which at the time was Pope Urban II.

The Roman Empire as in the so-called Byzantine Empire, fell to Islamic conquest on 29 May 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, who claimed both the sultanate (secular) and caliphate (religious).  The Roman Empire as in the so-called Holy Roman Empire would last from 25 December 800 to 6 August 1806, following defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz.  That's just over a millennium!

So there's your total of over two and one-half millennia, i.e. (which stands for id est, that is, in Latin, more Roman stuff we use) over 2,500 years, of political entities derived from and based on Rome.  OK that's impressive but it's over, right?  Wrong.  Enter the "Third Rome".

Third Rome?  Three of Them.

First candidate.

There's a third Rome?  Yeah, sort of.  Great, another sort of.  Actually, there's several of them.  Well, history is ... getting the idea?  When Sultan of Islam Mehmed II successfully led the conquest of Constantinople (he was only 21 at the time btw!), he proclaimed himself Caesar of Rome, Qayser-i Rum, since the western empire was long gone and he had possession of the capital of the eastern, Constantinople the new Rome (as in city).  And, it was supported by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the state church in the eastern empire, with Mehmed installing the Christian Patriarch and the Patriarch crowning the Islamic emperor. Even what would have been the heirs of the last "Byzantine" Emperor, Constantine XI (his deceased brother's sons, since he left no heir), served Mehmed and attained high office in that service.  Mehmed was intent on there being a third Rome, the first being pagan, the second Christian and the third Islamic.

He had his sights set on conquering the west including the city of Rome but died before carrying it out, and though the title wasn't used much after him the concept was.  The Ottoman Empire lasted until 1 November 1922, just a century ago as of the year of this writing, when, having been on the losing side of World War I and having lost much Middle Eastern territory to the winning side, a revolution led by Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk) abolished the sultanate and threw out the ruling Osmans as traitors, literally, the last sultan, Mehmed VI, leaving the country on 17 November that year.

The man who would be Sultan of Islam if it still existed is Harun Osman.  He became the 46th head of the House of Osman on 18 January 2021, on the death of his brother, Dundar Ali Osman, who had become head of the House of Osman on the death of his predecessor 6 January 2017.  Though male Osman family members were allowed to return to Turkey in 1974, he remained in Damascus, Syria, his birthplace, then in 2017 he was evacuated by order of President Erdogan of Turkey and lived in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople.  President Erdogan also telephoned Harun Osman, who lives in Istanbul, to offer condolences to the Osman family on the death of Dundar Ali Osman.  

All of which is part of a noticeable shift for Turkey under Erdogan, which seeks to re-establish the influence of Turkey in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire.  This has caused some discomfort in the West as a shift away from it.  Dundar's predecessor, Bayezid Osman, was the first to be born outside of Turkey and after the end of the Empire, lived in the United States and even served in the US Army.  After some hesitation, the caliphate was abolished by Turkey on 3 March 1924.  Turkey as we just noted remains much in the news these days, as do efforts to re-establish a caliphate.  BTW "Islam" in all this is Sunni Islam, not to be confused with Shiite Islam, which has entirely different ideas about succession of authority in Islam.

Second candidate.

Also following the fall of Constantinople and the end of the surviving eastern part of the Roman Empire, some Eastern Orthodox, the state church of that empire, took refuge in Russia, which was also Orthodox since St Vladimir, aka Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, in 988, and the idea spread that Moscow, itself and as the main city of the land, was the new, third Rome.  This took a big uptick when Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow (no Tsars yet), married the niece of Constantine XI, the last eastern Roman emperor.  Thing is, succession by line of descent is a later idea, and was not the established norm for Rome.  The claim rests more really on the continuance of the Orthodox Christian faith of the "Byzantine" Empire.  Ivan began to use the title Tsar, which is the expression in Russian of, guess what, Caesar.  Sometimes it's written Czar, in which the derivation is even clearer.

This became the formal title of Russian emperors, lasting until 1917 with Nicholas II, overthrown and executed by the Communists.  Though it's not the only case of it, it's significant in this case that the double eagle symbol of the "Byzantine" Roman Empire (Rome itself used a single eagle) was adopted in the coat of arms of the Russian Empire, was continued in the coat of arms of the short-lived Russian Republic, and only discontinued with the aberration of Russian history that was the Soviet Union.

Hey wait a minute, ain't Kiev in Ukraine?  Yes, but sort of.  This "sort of" is all over the news as of 2022 and generally is ignored to serve whichever of various narratives one wants to support.  Here's the deal, which is not to support any of those narratives or actions taken based on them.  The facts don't serve any of them.  Europe has been inhabited for a long time, but the current countries of Europe are quite recently fashioned after either the aftermath of World War Two or the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

"Ukraine" is actually The Ukraine. Why the definite article "the"?  Because the word "Ukraine" means "borderland".  Borderland of what?  The Russias, that's what.  Wait, why the plural, ain't it just Russia?  Sort of.  The word "Russia" comes from Rus', and describes a people and the broad area in which they lived, not a country per se.  Hence, the Kievan Rus'.  Hence Belarus, which means "White Rus'"  That's why the czars were called Czar of all the Russias -- all the present lands of the Rus'.  The Ukraine is The Borderland of that.  The Kievan Rus' lasted from 879 until destroyed by the Mongols in C13.  For the next 600 years it was controlled by various outside powers, Poland-Lithuania, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union.  Western European countries have been trying to bring the borderland under their sphere of influence for centuries, this did not start with NATO and the EU.  Ukraine as it is now is simply the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic having declared independence from the USSR in 1991.  The definite article has been dropped and cities renamed from their Russian-based historic spellings (eg Kiev to Kyiv) to enforce the idea of sovereignity.   

Speaking of which, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was formed in 1991.  Another seemingly historic, been-there-forever entity that is actually quite new  Take a look at the coat of arms adopted by the Russian Federation in 1993 with its current constitution.  Know what's at the top?  The double-headed eagle, the basics going right back to Ivan III.  Moscow, the Third Rome.

Not to mention, Moscow is built on seven hills, just like Constantinople before it and Rome before it.  Wild, huh?

Third candidate.

The concept of a third Rome was also prominent in the formation of modern Italy as a unified state from the many historic small states on the peninsula.  This was to be a third Rome, as in, the first one of emperors, the second one of popes, and a third one of the people, as the name of the movement expresses, Resorgimento, cognate with our resurgence, a rebirth or revival, which also included dominance of the Mediterranean area.  The first big step was the establishment of a unified kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861 when Victor Emmanuel, of the House of Savoy and King of Sardinia, became King of Italy, as the Kingdom of Sardinia, which controlled much of the Italian peninsula, became the Kingdom of Italy and the capital ended up in Rome.  This movement changed, not in essentials but in intensity, with the king's appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister in 1922.  With this, a new political movement emerged called fascism and the stage was set for the cataclysm we now call World War II.

Fascism.  What It Is, What It Isn't, Why It's Un-Roman.

Fascism.  Now, the word is mostly used as a pejorative, to put down anyone advocating government action with which you don't agree.  But it arises right here.  Fascism is a modern term; it originates with Mussolini's 1932 essay "The Doctrine of Fascism".  (He actually only wrote part of it but it all appeared under his name.)  What we now call World War I was in its time called The War To End All Wars.  It didn't, but it did end a social order that had evolved over millennia, on a scale unprecedented in human history.  Fascism addresses that situation.  The term has been associated with the right wing of the political spectrum since World War II, but actually Fascism opposes all wings of the political spectrum, right and left, as relics of the past inadequate to the new modern situation.  It views the right as backward and the left as destructive, and cares nothing for how it is classified since it sees all those classifications as variable.  The future it believes belongs to authority, which alone can manage human life, therefore, no human value exists or develops outside of or apart from the state since the state alone can comprehensively nurture all aspects of human life.

This would indeed be the Resurgence, a strong unified nation out of a broken set of pieces after the war, with the strength and unity coming from strong government, a re-surgence of the Roman Empire.  The Fascists gained control in several localities and eventually did the famous March on Rome, so powerful that in 1922 the king thought it better to appoint the Fascist leader prime minister than risk the bloodshed that would follow if he didn't.

This in turn inspired a young man, also a WWI veteran, north of the Alps in his desire to effect a strong united Germany following the defeat and loss of the German Empire.  Adolf Hitler directly modelled his first attempt to take power in Germany after Benito Mussolini, the next year, 1923.  That attempt failed, but eventually he succeeded.  Since for a strong unified nation there can be only one political party and since there is only one movement that is right, the leader of that party once in office is the official leader of the state.  Mussolini's designation in 1922 as The Leader, Il Duce in Italian, from the Latin dux, meaning leader, was the direct model for Hitler's designation in 1934 of himself as The Leader, der Führer in German.  The model being Julius Caesar, who precipitated the evolution of Rome from a republic to an empire, and Octavian, aka Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

The term "fascism" comes from, guess what, a Roman thing, the fasces lictoriae.  OK OK I'll translate.  Fasces means bundles.  Lictoriae means of the lictors.  Great, what's that?  Fasces is plural, the singular is fascis, bundle.  Bundle of what?  Rods, usually birch, bound by a red leather strip, with an axe in the middle with its blade sticking out, a symbol of the authority of any level of Roman magistrate; lictors are the guys who carry them before the magistrate.  These were used throughout the entire history of Rome, from the Kingdom on.

Oh wow so WWII is the legacy of Rome in modern times?  That's a hell of a thing to ascribe to something you seem to think is good!  Yeah it would be, if that were what I am doing.  I'm not.  The convulsions of mid C20 happened because these guys forgot something about the fasces, and the fasces expresses what the movement named after them forgot, or more accurately overlooked, about Rome.  Which is, within the Pomerium, the axe is removed from the fasces.  What does this mean?  (Lutherans should ask this of everything.)   Pomerium is a Latin contraction of post moerium, meaning, behind the wall; it's the original area of Rome as ploughed out and demarcated by Romulus on, guess when, 21 April.

It means that in the heart of the city, the axe, a sign of ultimate power even over life and death, therefore a sign of absolute authority, was not allowed.  The idea being, power has its limits, and at the core of things, power rests with the people through their elected representatives, not a Leader.  That's what a republic is, literally, res publica, "a public thing" in Latin.  This principle is what is the essence of Rome.  It was well served by its sixth king, Servius Tullius, who besides preserving the nation militarily also extended power to all classes, which had as its outcome his assassination in 535 BC by his own daughter, Tullia, and son-in-law Lucius Tarquinius Superbus.  When the latter became the seventh king, outrage at this tragic crime (that's what it was called, tragicum scelus) led to not only his ouster as king but ouster of the kingdom itself as unRoman.  The Republic was established and the office of king abolished and split between two officials, called consules, singular consul, so power never was totally held by any one man.  No Leader.

It didn't last.  So what happened?  The Republic did allow for a dictator -- from the Latin for "to speak", one whose word becomes law -- to be appointed, for a limited time to address a specific crisis.  Oh well there's the problem, then, huh?  Well, sort of, again.  This actually worked quite well for some time, and when the guy who changed it, Julius Caesar, came along, it hadn't been used for 120 years.  He gave it a new form, with no time limit.  Sulla, the guy who last had it, kept it for about a year, then retired.  Which set the stage for Gaius Julius Caesar to bring back the regular dictatorship, then have it extended to one year, then renewed annually, and finally being named dictator perpetuo, dictator in perpetuity.

Which shortly morphed into an emperor, the first being Julius Caesar's adopted son, known as Caesar Augustus, and of course with that, though many of the institutions of the Republic continued, the Republic was no more, an empire took its place, with an absolute leader at the head.  So Rome devolved into an essentially unRoman entity, and it is that entity which generally comes to mind when one says "Rome", the Roman Empire.

The legacy, that which influenced and was incorporated into later times, of the Roman Empire is immense.  Our language, both its vocabulary and how it is written, our calendar, units of measure, basics of law, technology spanning many fields, such as medicine, architecture, civic planning, agriculture, weaponry and engineering, to name a few.  And of course, science and philosophy, as Rome absorbed ancient Greece and other cultures, bearing new fruit and passing them on to us.  Most of that, however, happened before the Empire.  And that's the key.  Rome itself, or more accurately, many within Rome itself, knew this transition was happening even as it happened.

Nero (15 December 37 - 9 June 68), became the 5th emperor at age 17 on 13 October 54.  He was militarily successful for the new empire, and public spending, as well as on himself, was massively increased.  He was The Leader.  He was quite popular with the lower classes but not so much with the upper classes whose taxes paid for all this.  This led to his overthrow and reported suicide in 68, which led to massive political instability, four emperors in one year, and to disbelief among commoners that he was really dead but would at some point return, and return to power and start giving away stuff again (Nero Redivivus).

Around 100 AD, about 30 years after Nero's death, which is about 125 years after the Roman Republic ended on 16 January 27 BC when the Senate proclaimed Octavian with the new title Caesar Augustus, Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) decried this change in the Roman nature in his Satire X, in the famous phrase "panem et circenses", bread and circuses.  The Romans had traded the dignity and freedoms of the Roman Republic for the Empire, based on who would give them stuff ("food and entertainment") for free, i.e., paid for with someone else's money via the government.

Bread and circuses, meaning food and entertainment.  It's from this that the country in The Hunger Games is called Panem; circuses comes from the circles within which public entertainment was staged.  No surprise that later in the same Satire Juvenal says rather than the wrong, or wrongly exaggerated, desires expected from one's own efforts or appropriated from the efforts of others, such as power and wealth, one should desire mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body.  And no surprise he warns in another Satire (VI, to be exact) of the dangers of a government so powerful.  Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?  -- who guards the guards themselves, or, who watches the watchers?

And that's the great question.  Power.  Power by whom over whom and for what purpose.  In a word, society, Latin again, societas, how do we form and organise our associations, literally, with each other.

Plato thought the guardians will be their own guardians against abuse and corruption by what is called the "noble lie" in politics and the "pious fiction" in religion.  That is, a myth of a religious or political (or both) nature told by an elite that doesn't actually believe it but uses it for the purpose of establishing or maintaining the greater good.  Yeah well, sounds good but doesn't work out that way.  So what is the greater good, and how is that established or maintained?  The only constant among Man's various answers to that is an elite in power, so we're right back to power by whom over whom and for what purpose.  Societas, how, why, and for what purpose do we associate ourselves?

Another Third Rome?

After the constitutional convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government had been worked out in the closed proceedings.  He replied: A republic -- if you can keep it.  Franklin knew where this comes from, and he knew how it was lost.  All the essential features of a republic come from Rome, as in the Roman Republic.  A constitution (Rome's was not written like ours, it used precedent, and that is still a feature in our legal system), regular elections, term limits, quorums to do business, veto, impeachment, filibuster, the "power of the purse", separation of powers so that power does not concentrate in one office or office holder -- all of this comes to us from Rome.

The Roman Republic, that is.  Rome blew it.  It traded the Republic for an Empire.  While that Empire contributed much to life as we know it now, most of that comes from the Republic, and some of it, particularly when it comes to authority, does not, but both the good and the bad influences everything.  Another third Rome is not a country, but a culture.  Again:  Our languages, both its vocabulary and how it is written, our calendar, units of measure, basics of law, technology spanning many fields, such as medicine, architecture, civic planning, agriculture, weaponry and engineering, to name a few, and of course, science and philosophy.

Will we keep it?  Will it be mens sana in corpore sano or panem et circenses, a sound mind in a sound body or bread (food) and circuses (entertainment)?  Will we get carried away by exaggerated desires for the fruits of our labours and/or fruits appropriated from the labour of others, and turn to a guardian who will deliver them to us?  What has been passed to us from and through Rome is an astounding heritage that has yielded an even more astounding harvest of knowledge, with more to come.

Senatus populusque romanus.  SPQR.  Sums it all up.  Well, if you know what it means it does, so in case you don't, here it is -- it's Latin for The Roman Senate and People.  It's the classic inscription put on coins, and public documents and buildings.  "People" in this usage means government as a whole; the people, as represented in their assemblies.  A free and sovereign people, the root of authority.  This came into use, as one might expect, after the Kingdom with the Republic.  And it continued after the Republic into the Empire, but no longer meant what it said, and was discontinued after Constantine.  The outer form was there but the inner content was not, the assemblies really being a rubber stamp for the will of the emperor, as the embodiment of the people and therefore of their will.  Which could happen as an unofficial aristocracy based on wealth, acquired or inherited, emerged and the people in general began to look to it for the solution to their problems rather than to themselves.  

That's the trade.  Sound minds and bodies of free and sovereign people traded for food and entertainment provided by an authoritarian guardian.

Outwardly a republic but really a dictatorial empire.  Let's not make the trade of being a free and sovereign people of sound minds and bodies for an authoritarian guardian who is our provider.  Learn from Rome, the eternal city.

21 April 2778 ab urbe condita, from the city having been founded.