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Entry: All Soul's Day Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/all_souls_day#8385 Post contents: Charles, Let me add my thanks to you for resurrecting this little essay and offering it on this site. I also deeply appreciate, once again, the good comments and queries of abellio. As I have written previously, Maurras' works were known (in translation and in the original) outside of France. I acquired copies of Mes Idees Politiques and Enquete sur la Monarchie (in translation) in Spain when finishing my doctorate. Of course, that was a number of years ago, and I wonder if the same would be true today. Apparently, the period 1890 to 1914 was one of great cross-polination among European writers and thinkers on the Catholic Right. The subject of my disseration, Juan Vazquez de Mella, knew Maurras, Barres, Toniolo, Antonio Sardinha (founder of Portuguese Integralismo), Karl von Vogelsang, and others, at least via correspondence. The impetus given to Catholic social theory and economics (by Leo XIII) and the rebirth of scholarly Thomism produced a re-reflowering of the faith, intellectually, capable of competing with and answering the most sophisticated attacks of contemporary socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Like Maurras in France, Mella was, during the the first half of the twentieth century, considered a supreme Spanish literary stylist. Even more so, he was known far and wide as an orator of incredible talent and ability. Maurras was aware of this, and the two corresponded. Mella, like Maurras, was a defender of the historic faith of his native country. He was also a devout believer in Spain's historic mission as the "buckler of Christendom" against the Infidels: he celebrated Lepanto, Charles V, and Philip II; and not only them, but the Contra-Reforma of St. Ignacio Loyola, St. Francisco Javier, and countless others. He found strength regularly in the metaphysical poetry of Jorge Manrique, in the painting of Zuburan and El Greco, in the spirituality of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and in the historic civilizing role of "the people of St. James." In this he resembled Maurras and the sincere devotion he had to Ste. Jeanne d'Arc, and later to Ste. Therese of the Infant Jesus. That today much of Europe has turned its back on this inheritance and this rich tradition is both a cause for sadness and for great alarm. As the great Spanish turn of the 20th century polyglot, Menendez y Pelayo, once wrote: "This is your tradition, you have no other." And once it is extinguished, the historic mission of Christian Europe will be over.... Sent at: 2008 11 20