Blogs by Christendom students, I mean. I finally gave them their own subsection in the links. If you want to get a slice of Christendom life, these are the blogs (and one message board) to visit. Destination: Order was one of the first Christendom blogs... the first? Only Therese knows. After Fiddleback Fever came on the scene, though, the number of Christendom blogs appeared to mushroom. My list isn't exhaustive, and I'll probably add to it from time to time, but I think I caught most of them.

What drove me to do this? The opening of a Christendom Rome blog: Vestal Morons, by the inimitable John and Julian. This will no doubt be a very cool and weird blog, seeing as it is run by Hamlet and the Kaphoozle King. Watch this blog... if you dare.

"So... Aeneas was really just Trojan trailer trash?" - S.F.

Another contribution to the art.

Snail Vapors
Squeaky Zucchini
Shao-Lin Jesuit Assassins
Mostly Donkey
Chocolate Novena
Chronocide - What Mark Twain wanted to commit in A Connecticut Yankee.
Super Duper Counter Reformation Cup - Buy it now at Fr. Sibley's!
Drunken Hobbits Are People Too
Ambrose and the Cannibal Groundhogs - Ask my logic class about that one.
Goatface Killer
Deutscher Hardcore Katholizismus - Pope Benedict starts a German metal band?
Gnarly Flamethrower Brunettes
Bagpipe Dynasty
Marshmellow Death March
Papercup Mixmaster
Superlative Carwash
Injection Molded Carrots
Sindarin Rosary
Zombie Corn
Double Prestidigitation
Lunar Angst
Elizabethan Shoe Bomber - Don't try this at home: sneaking into England with papal bulls in your boots.

"I just wish the Holy See had a nuclear arsenal... we could get so much territory back." - Dr. M.

If Turkey has to join the EU, we should at least get Hagia Sophia out of it.

Okay okay, so it would be the Greek Orthodox Church that would get Hagia Sophia out of it. But heap coals on their head and sign this petition anyway.

The Last Mass in Hagia Sophia

Anonymous Song of Lamentation
for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Translated by Richard Stoneman


God rings the bells, earth rings the bells, the sky itself is ringing,
The Holy Wisdom, the great church, is ringing out the message,
Four hundred sounding boards sound out, and two and sixty bells,
For every bell there is a priest, for every priest a deacon.
To the left the emperor is singing, to the right the patriarch,
And all the columns tremble with the thunder of the chant.
And as the emperor began the hymns to the Cherubim,
A voice came down to them from the sky, from the archangel’s mouth:
Cease the Cherubic hymn, and let the sacred objects bow;
Priests, take the holy things away, extinguish all the candles:
God’s Will has made our city now into a Turkish city.
But send a message to the West, and let them send three ships:
The first to take the cross, the second to remove the Gospel,
The third, the finest shall rescue for us our holy altar.
Lest it all to those dogs, and they defile it and dishonour it.
The Holy Virgin was distressed, the very icons wept.
Be calm, beloved lady, be calm and do not weep for them.
Though years, though centuries shall pass, they shall be yours again.

Let it be so!

* * *

I've just discovered an excellent Polish artist who makes beautiful Tolkien art. Most of the pictures involve either Silmarilion characters or those two dashing sons of Denethor... as kids! She has also made a series of parody comic strips where little Boromir creates havoc instead of Calvin. Very funny.

* * *

Last week, Christendom College celebrated its annual Italian night. Some 15 students stayed all Friday night in the kitchen, baking bread and throwing flour at each other, and on Saturday Fr. Heisler blessed the bread and we broke out the burgundy. By ten o'clock the dancing under the moon had begun, and I watched the Papist debauch from a distance with two of my friends, who were wanting company in their antisocialness. (Don't ask me about the logic of that!) From what I heard the next day, it was much like last year's Italian night, except without the soapsuds. The Irish Mafioso made his second appearance. In case this year's Italian Night doesn't get a write-up, I am linking to Sheila's droll article on Italian Night Past. Enjoy!

And pray for your country.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish!" My friend Sheila had just finished her essay on the notorious Piers Plowman, and she was glad to see it end. When Medieval Fest comes around she plans to throw her copy of William Langland's magnum opus onto the bonfire - and I doubt she'll be the only one to do so. That poem is the most rambling, confusing thing I've ever been made to read. If all of the characters in the Canterbury Tales had sat down together and tried to write the Divine Comedy, they might have come up with something like Piers Plowman. It's an immense screed about politics, economics, and ecclesial corruption in the form of a mass of dream-visions and rotating casts of allegorical characters like "Lady Mede" and "Repentaunce" and "Suffre-thi-Sovereyns-to-haven-hir-wille:Deme-hem-noght-for-if-thow-doost-thow-shalt-it-deere-abugge;Lat-God-yworthe-with-al-for-so-His-word-techeth." And so on. I found the original Middle English to be predictably more euphonious - but I just can't cotton to this wannabe-Wycliffian medieval moonbat. I'm more of a Beowulf person: hero should kill monsters, get treasure, drink beer, go home. Now that's a satisfying storyline.