The Real Tinsel under the Fake Tinsel

In Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light (Henry Holt, 2020), p. 218, the cleric Robert Barnes, perhaps suspected of Protestant leanings, is summoned to the presence of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who up till now in Mantel's trilogy has appeared as a sympathetic character.

Outside, a bell pierces frozen air.  A man comes in with a tray of spiced wine.  The cardinal pours it himself, from a jug gaudily enamelled with a Tudor rose.  "So what do you want me to do, Barnes?  You want me to leave off the state and ceremony which honours God, and to go in homespun?  You want me to keep a miser's table, and serve pease pudding to ambassadors?  You want me to melt down my silver crosses, and give the money to the poor?  The poor, which will piss it against the wall?"

There is a pause.  After a time, faintly, Barnes says, "Yes."

You might argue that this exchange takes place in ancient, primitive times, when no one knew any better.  No, I'm afraid the attitude, and practice, is still with us, and not only among Papists.  I've written before about present-day Roman Catholics who get indignant at anyone who's put off by the state and ceremony of the Church's presentation: What?! You want the Holy Father to live in the gutter and starve to death?  Like Doctor Barnes, though more boldly since I can't be hanged for saying so, I say Yes.  But not really: I just want the Cardinal and the other princes of the Church to leave off the state and ceremony, go in homespun, and serve pease pudding to ambassadors.  A cardinal (remember that a Pope is just a juiced-up cardinal) doesn't piss money against the wall - he'll have a bejewelled chamber pot to piss in.  (The Church's taste in interior design, which is intended to be an earthly shadow of the Heavenly mansions, is roughly that of Donald Trump, as well as of pimps and drug dealers.  That may not be a coincidence.  As the story proceeds, we learn that at his death Cardinal Wolsey left behind as many unpaid debts as Donald Trump doubtless will.)

But I'm a well-known moderate: I don't ask Popes, cardinals, pimps, or Donald Trump to live in the gutter or starve at one extreme, or live in grotesque ostentation and gluttony on the other.  Doctor Barnes, like me, takes the middle path: homespun robes, a table that would be miserly only by Vatican standards, and keeping the vow of poverty that priests have always taken.  In twenty-first century terms, the cardinal can have a modest house with central heat and a flush toilet, a healthy diet, wardrobe by Walmart, -- hell, I won't begrudge him a flat-screen TV with cable if he wants it.  Prada shoes, though, are out, and I can't see how the church can justify such luxury while humble folk sleep in the gutter, starve in the streets, die for lack of basic medical care, or are massacred by death squads.

As for ambassadors ... if senior Catholic management must consort with such persons, why shouldn't they be served modest but healthy provender, in a comfortable but not palatial dining room?  Just from a Christian point of view, I can't see how obscene ostentation "honors God"; very much the opposite.  How would wearing homespun dishonor God?  If I look at the New Testament, I would think a Christian leader would honor his lord better by reminding secular guests how little worldly rank matters, if only by example.  I once read a Zen or Ch'an Buddhist anecdote of a master who, visited by princes or generals, made them sit on the ground, but put peasants and housewives in comfortable chairs.  Needless to say, as an atheist I feel the same way.  If pease pudding is good enough for the Poors, why not for cardinals and ambassadors?  Why would a rational being feel any need to conform to neo-feudal standards of hierarchical display, or dick-waving in plainer language?

The Left has often been guilty of puritanism, a drab aesthetic often honored more in the breach than the observance when leftists get control of the treasury, and I hope to make it clear that I'm taking a different position.  I want a socialism (or whatever you want to call it) of pleasure, comfort, and joy.  I don't think that people should be limited to bare subsistence: I want us to enjoy material as well as psychological comfort.  And come to think of it, "socialist" regimes from the USSR to Sweden have spent a lot of money on the arts and public space, while free-market capitalists have denounced such spending as communism, declaring that access to parks should be reserved for those who can pay for admission.

I also know that it's not easy to decide at which point comfort turns to gluttony, or decorating one's home or personal appearance becomes ostentation.  Nor is it easy to determine when someone is more interested in being cooler than one's neighbors, with an eye toward feeling superior to them, than in the pleasure of enjoying good things.  But I think that when the hierarchy of the church enjoys coziness with secular aristocrats while despising the porridge-eating rabble, the line has clearly been crossed.  The same holds for our nominally democratic rulers, who see themselves (and are seen) as a kind of royalty, entitled to the perks of monarchs, and for their sycophants who elevate them.

Something About Mary

At my back I hear Procrastination's Leaden Wagon drawing near, but really I need to finish reading this book.  I'm in the latter half of Hilary Mantel's award-winning historical novel Wolf Hall, about the 16th century lawyer and courtier Thomas Cromwell.  I decided to read it because so many people were raving about it, and while it's a compelling read and a masterful piece of writing, I don't get the excitement.  Mantel reminds me of Cecelia Holland in her manner; Holland is usually bloodier, though Mantel doesn't hide the violence of Tudor England -- she just isn't quite as explicit about it.  I like Holland and have read quite a few of her novels, but I don't rank her among my favorite writers either.

As I get older I find myself stumbling over historical fiction, though I continue to enjoy reading it, because I keep wondering Is this part authentic, or did the author invent it?  Here's an example from Wolf Hall, which could be historical but might not be.

There is a young woman walking the roads of the kingdom, saying she is the princess Mary, and that her father has turned her out to beg. She has been seen as far north as York and as far East as Lincoln, and simple people in these shires are lodging and feeding her and giving her money to see her on her way. He has people keeping an eye out for her, but they haven’t caught her yet. He doesn’t know what he would do with her if he did catch her. It is punishment enough, to take on the burden of prophecy, and to be out unprotected on the winter roads. He pictures her, a dun-colored, dwindling figure, tramping away toward the horizon over the muddy fields.

"He" who has people watching for the girl is Thomas Cromwell.  The context for the story  is the aftermath of Henry VIII's suspension of his marriage to Katherine, the mother of his daughter Mary (later "Bloody" Mary I), and the difficulty of deciding what to do about Mary.  At this point in the novel it hasn't even been settled where she'll live, a problem given her potential value as a figurehead for rebellion against Henry.

This anecdote caught my attention because it reminded me of the popular complaint that with the Internet you can't know who's telling the truth.  It would have been far harder in those days, if you met a young woman walking around, claiming to be Princess Mary: no photographs, no TV, no People magazine, let alone Internet.  England was apparently abuzz with the news of Henry's divorce of Katherine and his immediate marriage to Anne Boleyn, but few people can have known what any of them looked like.  Henry had cruelly put his first wife aside, so why wouldn't he have turned out his daughter to beg for charity?  For that matter, Cromwell must rely on rumor: there are stories of this young woman burdened by prophecy, but they might be no more than rumor: she might not even exist, but in his position he must follow up.  Even the persistence of the rumor is a datum, a faultline in the King's base of support, which can't be ignored.  And to all this I add the question of whether this story is Mantel's, or one she found while researching the novel.

If something like this happened today, there'd be cellphone videos on Youtube in no time, and the media would have interviewed the young woman before Cromwell could start doing damage control.  But the real Princess, if this were an impostor, would be interviewed too.  I speculate that the poor people who aided her weren't necessarily convinced she was Mary; they could just as easily have taken pity on a young woman alone on those winter roads, perhaps visibly not playing with a full deck, and helped her anyway, as they might have helped any other destitute person.

The truth is out there, but it's not always or even usually accessible.

[I've fixed a minor factual error.  Thanks to reader JC for the correction.]