Loading ...
Over the past few days I have been leisurely perusing the writings of Pope Leo XIII. I do this partly out of general interest; I seem to hear his name thrown around quite often by liberal Catholics wishing to enlist his support for various liberal causes, and I would like to be able to respond intelligently to those claims. Also, I intend to write a post, perhaps later this week, responding to Vicki’s claim (which I still think erroneous) that Ron Paul is the rightful intellectual successor of Pope Leo. I always hesitate to charge into thorny questions of economics and political theory, mainly because they are so devilishly complicated, and my education (which has primarily been philosophical) hasn’t equipped me to discuss such things with much sophistication. Nonetheless, discuss them I shall, in a forthcoming post which shall also reopen the question of Dr. Paul and his fitness for our nation’s highest political office. For today, however, I wish to address an easier topic: dueling.
Pope Leo XIII roundly condemns dueling in his 1891 encyclical Pastoralis Officii. While I must (somewhat regretfully) agree that his ruling on the question is probably correct, I was somewhat aggrieved to find that the good pontiff seems not to grasp the issue fully in his analysis of the logic of dueling.
Addressed to the Archbishops of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, he begins by acknowledging the magnitude of the problem:
Mindful of your pastoral duty and moved by your love of neighbor, you wrote to me last year concerning the frequent practice among your people of a private, individual contest called dueling. You indicate, not without grief, that even Catholics customarily engage in this type of combat. At the same time your request that We, too, attempt to dissuade men from this manner of error. It is indeed a deadly error and not restricted to your country, but has spread so far that practically no people can be found free from the contagion of the evil.
Dear, oh dear. Apparently dueling was quite universally popular in 1891. Does anyone know of any discussions between nineteenth-century Catholic theologians concerning the morality of this kind of contest? I would be extremely interested to know what was said. I would be most especially interested, because Pope Leo’s discussion in this missive seems to somewhat miss the point.
He begins well enough by observing that Scripture forbids violence towards anyone, except “in the public cause” or in self-defense. He goes on to observe that, according to divine law, men are permitted to endanger their lives only when this is required either by duty or by “generous charity.” Finally, he notes that dueling is disruptive to civil society, and issues a reminder that dueling incurs the penalty of latae sententiae censures, not only for the duelers, but also for “those who are called patrinos, seconds, and likewise witnesses and accomplices.”
But now comes the disappointing section. In a section on the “absurdity of dueling”, Pope Leo offers his own assessment of the justification for dueling. The passage is as follows:
“The generally held argument that this sort of struggle washes away, as it were, the stains that calumny or insult has brought upon the honor of citizens surely can deceive no one but a madman. Even if the challenger of a duel is the victor, all reasonable persons will admit that the outcome simply proves he is the better man in strength or in handling a weapon, not the better man in honor. But if he falls in the combat, does he not prove by the same token how absurd is this way of protecting his honor?”
Having concluded that this cannot be the real justification for personal combat, he stipulates another possible motive: revenge.
“Few there are, we believe, who commit this crime deceived by erroneous opinion. It is, to be sure, the desire of revenge that impels passionate and arrogant men to seek satisfaction.”
Now, Pope Leo may well be right that many, or even a majority, of duelers were largely motivated by revenge. Still, I believe he is guilty of a straw man fallacy here, because the justification he offers is surely not the right one. Properly understood, a duel is indeed about honor, not revenge. Pope Leo seems to assume that the duel is supposed to produce a definitive answer to a disputed question. If that were indeed the object, he would be right about the obvious absurdity of the affair. Suppose, for example, that two men were to quarrel over the question of whether or not a particular young woman was chaste. There would be, presumably, a definitive answer to that question, and it is possible that an investigation of the matter might discover it. But we would not learn anything relevant by seeing whether, say, her father could kill her next-door neighbor or vice-versa. What is the point, then, of dueling?
The point is to show how deeply the individual is invested in the question. Even in our culture it is not totally strange to hear someone say, “I give you my word of honor” or “I would stake my reputation on it.” How much more impressive is it if a person is willing to stake his life on it? And how much more of an impact does that declaration make if it is demonstrated through the fighting of a duel? Fighting a duel is a way of saying, “I am so committed to X that I am willing both to kill and to die for it.” Note, too, that unlike much of the revenge-killing of today (gang violence, say, or the sorts of freak massacres that we’ve seen at Columbine High or Virginia Tech), dueling had a carefully drafted code, designed to ensure that the fights were fair and not merely predatory. There are rules to ensure that dueling cannot be merely a bloody free-for-all.
It is indeed honorable to be willing to stand by one’s family, one’s friends, and one’s faith. And to enjoy the protection of an honorable person is itself a fine thing. Why didn’t Pope Leo grasp this point? Or if he did, why did he say nothing about it? Though I can understand why the Church would be eager to dissuade people from dueling in general, there are certain cases in which we could at least be sympathetic to the motives. One can only imagine St. Louis de Montfort being eager to defend the honor of Our Lady in any way permissible (isn’t that the purpose of the dagger?)
Of course, we get a literary portrayal of such a circumstance in one of GK Chesterton’s best novels, The Ball and the Cross. This novel follows two men, one a Catholic and the other a committed atheist, as they run all over England looking for a place to fight a duel, while virtually the whole nation endeavors to stop them. The Catholic is the challenger, and the thing at issue is, of course, injurious words printed about Our Lady. I won’t reveal the ending, except to say that Chesterton does not exactly justify the Catholic’s zealous wish to fight the duel in the first place. Nonetheless, to modern eyes, there is something very refreshing about the scene. Living as they do in relativist and novelty-crazed world, modern people are easy to sway but very hard to shock. It is charming to watch the progress of two characters who are genuinely committed to their beliefs, and willing to fight for them.
In all seriousness, I don’t mean to be too much of a romantic about dueling; I’m sure the reality was in most cases quite ugly. But if there were debates about the subject a century or more ago, it might be interesting to revisit some of them, if only to see how the debate unfolded. Fighting for honor (even in non-physical ways) is a dangerous thing; it can come perilously close to pride. Even so, in a society like ours, where the concept seems all but lost, it might be good to have something to help bring it back again.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
This is geared towards the German equivalent of fraternities, the Burschenschaften or Verbindungen. Many of these organizations required their members to participate in duels in which they were not permitted to flinch or move their heads. This could result in quite nasty facial scars, which were worn as a badge of pride. It’s equivalent to the hazing in American fraternities in that its sole intent is to inflict pain and thereby prove that the recipient of the wounds is “man enough” to bear them unflinchingly. It’s morally repugnant, and still occurs to some extent in Verbindungen in Germany today, especially among the more right-wing ones. It’s also not something with which many English speakers are familiar. Had I not been accosted by a drunken Verbindung member in Berlin and had my German friends warn me of the goings-on, I wouldn’t have known about it either. Here’s a pretty gruesome description of what goes on: http://www.jonathan-green.com/articles/report_a03/report_a03.htm
I’m sinfully romantic about The Field of Honour, so I’ve read up on this before.
It’s unlikely that Catholic theologians would have argued much over the morality of dueling in the 19th century, since Benedict XIV condemned it (or more precisely a fairly exhaustive little list of propositions in support of it) in a bull of 1752 (Detestabilem).
The issue had already been addressed, in strongly disapproving terms, by the Council of Trent. Trent’s condemnation evidently didn’t take, and we can get the flavour of the arguments in defense of the practice from the propositions condemned by Benedict. They argue that the natural condition of man is such that men must be allowed to defend their families’ fortunes, that dueling might be an appropriate way to settle disputes in a state where the government is failing to administer proper justice, or that a soldier may respond to a challenge where not doing so might call his honour or courage into question. Presumably those arguments aimed to show that any homicide resulting from the duel was not murder, and hence the alleged goods resulting were not won through an instrumental evil.
Rome’s penalties for dueling are (or were) severe, at least in theory — excommunication for principals and seconds and denial of burial to those killed.
There were earlier theological criticisms of settling issues through one-on-one combat going way back towards late antiquity, but they tend to focus not so much on the murderous aspect as on the arbitrary (and thus vaguely divinatory) nature of the result. The sorts of fight in question were rather different from the modern duel, of course.
Fascinating! Thank you both! I will have to look for more on Benedict XIV’s bull. As I said in my post, what really bothered me about Leo XIII’s treatment was not so much that he condemned dueling (though that does bring a small sigh of regret) as that he seems to offer a kind of straw man argument concerning its wrongness. It was most unsatisfying. If dueling must be outright condemned, it would be nice to see a better justification.
It is in any case fascinating to consider the appropriate place for concepts of honor within a Christian framework. We obviously can’t do without it entirely, but it is more ambiguously good than in the ancient view, since it bears such a close relationship to pride (which Christians understand to be sinful, and perhaps even the root of sin.) Pope Leo has a section at the end of his encyclical on dueling that explains, in effect, that the true Christian won’t care what other people think. And yet, it does matter what other people think, at least in some cases. That’s why we’re so concerned with giving public witness to the truth, with avoiding scandal, etc. One can certainly imagine cases when refusing to duel would seem to cause scandal, so the subject of dueling brings many of these moral questions to light.
Anyway. Good name choice, MacIan.
I am actually a member of a German student Verbindung, but a Catholic one, which does not practise duelling. (It’s worth noting that the first Catholic Verbindungen were founded in Germany in the 1840’s, well before Pope Leo’s time, but they rejected duelling from the very first, which set them apart from the other Verbindngen described in Pomofo’s link above.) At the house of our Verbindung we occasionally used to get visits from the local Corps, who DID practise duelling, and you should have seen the smugness which they strutted round with whenever any one of them had received a wound and had to wear a bandage. Clara’s fears of duelling’s stoking pride are thoroughly justified.
But there are other issues at stake, like the innocent - or almost innocent - victims of duelling. Consider the student who wakes up one morning with a hangover, only to be roused by a knock on his door. Two stern colleagues come in, and inform him that X is deeply offended by what he said to him the previous evening, and challanges him to a duel. Our student cannot remember the offending remark in question, which he uttered when he was intoxicated, but he does not want to lose face and so takes up the challange. That kind of thing was not unusual in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and often resulted in fatalities. Can the church really be expected to condone such a practise?
No, no, of course not. I expect many or most duels really were motivated by some combination of pride or desire for revenge, which obviously are not condoned by Christianity. The possible exception case would be more like this: in a culture where honor is highly valued, someone begins blaspheming Our Lady and challenges you to defend her. If you refuse, she will be (in the eyes of the people of that land) genuinely degraded and you will show yourself a disloyal son. By fighting you might help inspire respect for her and for the Church in general. Would it really be right to condemn and excommunicate the person who accepts the challenge?
Anyway, the Church seems to have ruled pretty definitely on the question, but that’s what I would take to be a “sympathetic” case.
Also, duels may have had strict rules, but the things that brought them about were often pathetically insignificant. They could arise over misunderstandings, or out of personal spite; you somehow involuntarily offend me and then apologise, but I refuse to accept your apology and insist on meeting you with pistols at dawn. And if I am a much better shot or swordsman than you, it is not exactly going to be a fair contest. I suppose if you had reason to fight a duel to defend the honour of Our Lady, not many readers of this page would have a problem with it - nor, probably, would Pope Leo - but I think it’s safe to say most duels were not fought for such high ideals!
Still, I see the attraction of the idea of duelling as something that belonged to a more romantic and - much maligned word nowadays!- manlier age. I also take the point that honour is a neglected virtue in our time, and a lack of awareness of his own dignity is one of western man’s biggest problems. But it is not easy to put a price on honour; is it really worth killing someone who offended you in a drunken quarrel, and leaving a grieving family, resentful friends and maybe even a vengeful son or brother in the wake of the act? A cynic might say that you, Clara, can talk easily enough about the virtues of duelling, because you do not belong to the half of the human race that would be expected to fight them were they still around; but surely you can see that they might do more harm than good?
Supposing we accept that there are some people who will only fight duels for good, high reasons. I propose that we might legislate for such duelling in this way. Those who wished to fight one would have to apply for permission from a court, and this would only be granted if four conditions were fulfilled:
1. The Court is satisfied that both parties were sober and in their right mind when the challange was issued and when it was accepted.
2. The Court is satisfied that neither party was under any kind of duress from an outside source. For this a sworn statement from each party will be necessary.
3. The Court is satisfied that the reason for which the challange was issued constitutes a grave slight on the honour of some person or Person.
4. The Court is satisfied that there is no possibility of reconciliation by peaceful means.
Those conditions are only fair, but I think if they were in place the number of duels fought would be extremely small.
yeah I came across this in Denzinger once, and I was pretty shocked. Not that I really care that much, since they church obviously deems it unacceptable, which is good, but that it was in Denzinger.
“I think it’s safe to say most duels were not fought for such high ideals!”
No doubt, and I can certainly see how, all things considered, it would be best for Catholics to be told not to fight duels. But attaching a latae sententiae excommunication penalty to dueling is pretty… unambiguous. I think we have to conclude that even Evan MacIan (Chesterton’s character who wanted to duel for Our Lady’s honor) was in the wrong here. You can see how this would seem a bit sad to me.
The Gospels do not condemn soldiering, and even offer recommedations for a Christian soldier (be content with your wages, etc.). And I do think, after Joseph de Maistre, that violence is an important part of God’s Providence.
That said, I dare say that Our Lady would never wish to see her children ‘defend her honour’ by participating in a custom that has been condemned forcefully by the Church from the beginning. To ‘romanticize’ duelling in any way whatsoever is, I think, to fall prey to the great temptation of the traditionalist to love, to admire or to justify the past simply because it was, and, in doing so, to overlook what it truly was for people that lived in it. Chesterton was not innocent of this - his criticisms of ‘modernity’ were usually interesting, but his descriptions of the mediaeval, for instance, were often silly at best.
To give the children of the world their much-deserved due, Romantic poets and writers surely had little good to say about duels. Take for instance, Pushkin, in Eugene Onegin VI, 33-34(Nabokov’s translation):
‘Tis pleasant with an insolent epigram
to madden a bungling foe;
pleasant to see how, stubbornly
bending his buttsome horns,
he can’t help looking in the mirror
and is ashamed to recognize himself;
more pleasant, friends, if he
like a fool howls out: It is I!
Still pleasanter - in silence
for him an honourable grave to prepare
and quietly to aim at his pale forehead
at a gentlemanly distance;
but to dispatch him to his fathers
will hardly be pleasant for you.
What, then, if by your pistol
be smitten a young pal
who with a saucy glance or repartee
or any other bagatelle
insulted you over the bottle,
or even himself, in fiery vexation,
to combat proudly challenged you?
Say: your soul
with what feeling would be possessed
when, stirless on the ground,
in front of you, with death upon his brow,
he by degrees would stiffen,
when he’d be deaf and silent
to your desperate appeal?
I suggest reading all of book six of Eugene Onegin for a good view of the duel. The writer himself, of course, died in a duel.
Anyhow, let it be enough to say that the Church has shown its great wisdom in condemning duelling so consistently and for so long (from Leo XIII back to Richelieu and further back to Italian city states), and let us thank heaven that it is gone for the time being. One can debate certain points to death (e.g. was it more ‘courageous’ to accept a challenge to a duel or to face the ‘disgrace’ of declining one), but it is pointless violence. ‘The Ordeal of Richard Feverel’ is another book that shows this pretty well, I think.
I’ve read Eugene Onegin. It’s lovely. In fact, as an undergraduate I was so enchanted by it that I tried my own hand at composing some verses in imitation of Pushkin. (They weren’t really very good, but my Russian Lit professor did seem to like them, or maybe he just thought it was cute that I wanted to try.)
But I would still take that more as evidence of how bad duels can be. A dueling-happy culture (such as 19th century Russia’s) does seem bad, but it’s another matter entirely to say that each and every person who agrees to fight a duel is making a grave error. It’s a bit like suicide: I can easily see how it’s gravely wrong in the vast majority of cases, but there are still a small number of exceptional cases in which the absolute prohibition against it does seem like a hard teaching.
dueling is hilarious because it was so stupid. apparently, only gentlemen were allowed to duel. lower class people were beaten with a cane or something instead, as they have no honor. the stupidest thing is, who wouldn’t shoot the guy in the back? i would, if it saved my life i could care less. what’s wrong with settling arguments with a fist fight. that seems reasonable. but setting up this whole complicated fiasco with guns and paces seems more for show than anything. punch the guy out if you’re that upset.
the whole thing was incredibly silly and was based upon the idea that a gentlemen’s honor was worth killing or dying for–give me a break. there is nothing manly about being overly sensitive and egotistic.
“cases in which the absolute prohibition against it does seem like a hard teaching”
A sure sign then that it is a true teaching: “Durus est hic sermo! Quis potest eum audire?” A duel is ultimately self-administered justice, and therefore arrogance. The condemnation of duels has been a hallmark of Catholic teaching for centuries, since the feud was finally entirely outlawed in the late middle ages. How grave the church judges this can be seen about from the guidelines for Catholic burial. While it was possible to give Christian burial to people who committed suicide, if they expressed a sign of contrition before dying, it was to be denied “morientibus in duello etsi signum contritionis dederint”. To be frank, from all that I have read in historical and belletristic books about duels, I have no understanding whatsoever for any romantic ideas about it. It was, as Leo XIII rightly called it, a madness that destroyed thousands of lives in their first bloom. It is one thing we can truly be glad of being rid of.
The Church also tried to ban, or limit, tournaments and jousting since so many died in them. So too trials by fire.
I don’t see anything wrong about giving someone a good thrashing for honor. Killing them, though? Consider this: at least one member of the duel is standing up for wrong, if not both. That person is risking death in the pursuit of evil. If that person dies, he will go to Hell.
As for Our Lady’s honor, St. Louis the King said that one should ram his sword through the blasphemer’s gut. Okay, but that’s not duelling. Duelling means that you “even the playing field.” Why do that? The blasphemer deserves to die, according to this analysis. So why make it “honorable” by giving him a chance to escape with his miserable life? In just warfare and in self-defense, you purposely maximize your advantages. If a man insults Our Lady, you might say, “Take that back!” If he doesn’t, knock him out with one punch. Or have your buddy, standing behind him, hit him over the head with a beer bottle. No reason to give an evil man an occasion of sin in which he might do damage to a better man. “Duelling” is as tactically ridiculous (and hence evil) as the gunfights in westerns — in real life, the deputy should shoot the bad guy on sight.
“That person is risking death in the pursuit of evil. If that person dies, he will go to Hell.”
So of course the Church would not approve of this way of dealing with offenses. As for St. Louis, the idea there is not that you give the blasphemer the opportunity to defend his view (as a dueller is given the chance to defend his evil), but rather that you punish him immediately, as one would a murderer in the process of murder.
When you consider duelling, keep in mind what Gen. Patton said about war: “The purpose of war isn’t to die for your country — it’s to give the other SOB a chance to die for *his* country.” Duelling gives the other SOB more than he deserves under any analysis and is objectionable for this reason alone.
“Properly understood, a duel is indeed about honor, not revenge.”
The Church also condemned honor-killing against women. Several mythical heroines were praised for killing themselves (or submitting to death at a father’s hand) after being raped. Better death than dishonor, right? St. Augustine said, “No, it’s better to live on in dishonor. Take up thy cross.”
How does this relate to duelling? The offended man seeks to avenge the dishonor or die trying. If he dies, then the lesson is the same as above: “Better death than dishonor (here, not dishonor stemming from one’s own misconduct, but from another’s).” That’s just suicide. If the offended man wins the duel, then apparently the lesson is: “People who offend me personally, or my wife, etc., deserve death.” If that’s the case, then there should be a death penalty and a law court. If you are invoking the death penalty for personal grievances, I won’t say that capital punishment itself is bad, but in a case like this?
So insults from another man do not make life worth forfeiting (which is the risk in a duel), and if they are worth avenging with death, it is a matter for the courts. So I agree with Elmwood, if you’re going to defend your honor violently, a fistfight seems good enough, particularly one in which you don’t concede any ground to the offending party. If you see a guy in a bar attempting to maltreat your lady, far better to smack him with a pool cue from behind than call for some duel and risk hurting yourself in the process. I don’t think that Pope Leo (or Catholic teaching) would object to the pool cue smack.