https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_5Yi95ok0Xo
So, hello everybody, we are back with Richard Roland and everybody is excited to see what is it that we’re going to talk about today. And so after our trek through Ethiopia, we are now moving back to Western Europe. What we’re going to do is we’re going to, we’ve been talking a lot about sacred history and about how these religious patterns kind of manifested themselves in the way that people understood themselves and their identities and but now we’re going to look a little more at the secular tradition called the Nine Worthies, where even in secular spaces or in kind of more common spaces, there was this desire to connect their own society through memory through celebration with different characters in the past, both from the pagan world and the Christian religious world, you know, trying to kind of continue on this vision of universal history that we’ve been proposing since the beginning. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So Richard, I know there were a few things you wanted to say before we start there are a few things you wanted to kind of come back on. First of all, congratulations on the conference on the token conference that you went to I hear some people were in my symbolic world people were there. Yeah, we had a great turnout of symbolic world or so shout out to all of you guys, just a bunch of really delightful people. We had a bunch of people for whom this was their first time ever stepping into an Orthodox Church, which was really awesome. And I think was made a really big impression on people. We had a cool time. The talks, which I think will be very resonant for your audience will be up on the Amit Soor podcast whenever they get uploaded by our audio producer. The we did some other really cool stuff. We got to read the dream of the rude, which is an Anglo-Saxon devotional poem to the Lord’s Cross, actually in front of a relic of the Lord’s Cross and and and venerate that relic, which was basically, I mean, it was just sort of like peak. My life like like it was just sort of like one of the best ever happened. Yeah, well, everything coming together token. It was it was. Yeah, it was it was very much and it was nice because we sort of like went from talking about the stuff to being able to participate in it in a way. And it was it was really cool. So anyway, it was a great time. It was a great time. Huge thanks to Father Andrew, the community there at St. Paul’s and the St. Basil’s Society for hosting me, feeding me, putting me up and just treating me so well. And it was a great time. That’s great. That’s great. And so as you saw, I also discussed with Deacon Enoch, you know, an Ethiopian deacon who’s also American, who kind of expounded a little more of Ethiopian tradition from the inside. And since our whole kind of exploration of Ethiopian Orthodox, you’ve had some amazing reactions from Ethiopian Christians, people from all over and, you know, people helping us understand more, giving us some few precision that Richard wants to is going to look over some few few precisions we need to make. Yeah. So this came from Tadios. So Tadios, thanks for thanks for reaching out. And I have to say one of my favorite things in life is actually being graciously corrected. I say graciously. Okay, but but I really do try to keep a sort of beginner’s mind about these things. And there’s definitely stuff that I was picking up by, you know, from reading different books and different academic papers and things like that. But I don’t have that same insider perspective. And so Tadios reached out to correct a few things that we said that I said in our last Ethiopia video about Ethiopian saints and hagiography. And I just wanted to go over them real quick, because they’re actually super cool. And they actually make the overall point that we were trying to make better than the things that we said. So his first thing that he wanted to mention was the I said something about one of one of the saints who whose leg sort of fell off and my impression, and this was based on an academic paper that I’d read on on the subject. My impression was that the leg was not actually a big deal. And it wasn’t really venerated. And I mentioned this mostly because it seemed weird, and very like a not what Christians do, but also be like very kind of non Ethiopian right Ethiopia is all about like taking the the remnant of the thing and like preserving it right. And so it turns out this was just a totally mistaken thing about which, you know, my source was completely wrong. And so what he’s what he says is he talks about Saint Teckli Haimanot, I think. He’s known to have prayed for 22 years while standing still. So, very much his legs would be important, actually. Yes, yeah, so his legs would kind of come up. And seven years he prayed only standing on a seven of those years he prayed only standing on one foot. And so what he had done, of course, we have like stylized some people like this. So to stop him from seating or leaning to the side. It says that he put six like arrows or spears on either side of them so that if he got tired and lean to one side he’d be pierced by them. And tradition describes that whenever his body got weaker and he leaned to the side, the arrows would pierce him and keep him straining standing straight for years praying in in this cave. And so this led to one of his legs below the knee getting broken off from his body like you imagine might happen. And he said, apparently, that particular bone, not only was it kept, but it actually has its own feast day on the Ethiopian calendar just for that leg, which is pretty awesome. I love stuff like this like we have we have like the like two different feast around the head of Saint John the Baptist and things like the chains of St. Peter and whatnot, but this is really, this is really fun. Yeah, but they all do us with the head of Saint John the Baptist too. I saw some icons in Ethiopia of the head of Saint John the Baptist, like with wings like flying around to haunt the people that decapitated him. That is my gosh, that’s so great. And actually one of the cool things he did include a picture of an icon of this particular saint. And, of course, the thing the first thing that I noticed in the icon was just the fact that the saint has six wings, you know he’s a seraphim. Yeah. And so something about like his burning intensity, his love for God. So anyway, that was really cool. There was. There were some other corrections in here. I mean some of these stories were are just like crazy I’ll read what he says about this. He said there are some traditions within the tradition of, you know, the veneration of a saints relics so for instance there’s a famous monastery called St. Melchizedek, who is a saint named after the Old Testament priest, God gave him this covenant which makes everyone who is buried near the monastery, not just the saints makes their relics be preserved as in corrupt so that they don’t decay. And he says, and I’m just going to go off of what he says here I haven’t looked this up at all. This is last I’ve heard some university professors tried to test the hypothesis on the high geography and bury someone half like their body like half in half outside the borders of a monastery in the portion of the body that was inside the monastery premise didn’t decay in the other portion did like every other burial, and he doesn’t actually include some pictures here. And there’s some other really crazy stuff of like ossuaries where like the bones of saints to sort of like show up and people like yeah we don’t actually know who these guys are or how they got here. They got to be saints. So yeah we and he corrected us and a few things like because we said some some of the people we mentioned were part of the original. Yeah, yeah I think specifically the same with the wings that you’ve mentioned, yeah, that he wasn’t he was an Ethiopian saint yeah so a few things like that so thanks everybody for correcting us when we get our details wrong. And so, so these nine saints will lead us in a way in a very strange surprising way into the nine worthies today. So Richard take it. Take it away. So that’s it. That was a nice transition. So, actually, you could probably just do an entire video and I know there’s a whole section and I think Matthew’s book about the symbolism of the number nine, which is very important in the ancient world in the Middle Ages. It’s very important Dante like Dante’s whole metrical scheme is around the symbolism of the number nine. I mean it’s not hard to understand it’s a triad of triads right. And so it’s a sort of a heavenly fullness. Right. And so there are, of course, very famously there are nine ranks of angels mentioned in the scriptures described by Saint Dionysus the Areopagite. And then also in the Orthodox Church, there are nine ranks of saints. And so, I don’t know how many people know this, but if there’s there’s actually like if you think liturgy is long, the priest actually has his own liturgy that he has to do to prepare for everyone’s liturgy right so it’s sometimes called like the liturgy of preparation. And essentially what the priest does is he ends up, you know, this is when he prepares the bread and the wine for the liturgy and on the discos or the patterns, the little metal plate on which the bread is placed. There’s the lamb, which is the piece for Christ, but then there are also smaller pieces. And I know that I know that this gets really specific. And yes, you know who you are. I know that some people are going to message me and say, well, actually, it’s a it’s a slightly different commemoration in the Byzantine tradition versus the Slavic tradition. I know that but just for simplicity sake, there is a particle for the Mother of God. And then there are these nine smaller particles for essentially nine ranks of saints. And so, and, and, and most of the saints in the Orthodox Church fall into like one of those categories. And that yeah that there’s a little bit of fluidity about like which which rank is exactly what between various traditions but there there just seems to be the idea that if you’re going to have a group of holy people like this, there needs to be nine of them. So, what I thought we would do is is take, take the our universal history series in a direction which nobody has asked for. Right, everybody’s like, what are you going to do, Ireland, what are you going to do, America, what are you going to do, etc. And I thought we would just do something that nobody’s asked for at all, which is to talk about the nine worthies. And the reason that I wanted to do this is because one of the questions. Or another way to put this would be like one of the realizations that I’ve had while doing this series with you, and also discussing it with other people is is just the way that these patterns manifest themselves, even outside of the, the, the spaces that we have kind of kind of delineated as sacred, and we didn’t start specifically in sacred places like we started with just like sort of like secular medieval history, when we started the series, but it very quickly moved into talking, especially when we get into Ethiopia, and you have to really talk about all this stuff. So in our in our previous episode, an idea that I think really resonated with a lot of people is we talked about this idea that the saints uphold the world, and that this is both something that we believe to be sort of literally true, but also that it is a pattern which manifests itself in the lower regions of the mountain, right, that, that even the, even the, the, the people that you venerate maybe not necessarily as as holy, but definitely a sacred in some way like a set apart in some way or you say iconic of a people group or of a city, those people that you set aside for veneration in some way, do really become the connective tissue. You could say like love or veneration is the connective tissue by which things go here. Yeah, you could just use the word commemorate is yes, commemorate is good, are weirded out by the idea of sacred, the people that you remember through, through statues, through naming things you know, obviously there’s a hierarchy of that but those are the people, these kind of they’re analogous to the idea of the saints or the just that uphold the fabric of society through memory through common connection through common identification. Yeah, in his book the Ethics of Beauty, Dr. Petitza says, talking about the, the sort of American love for veneration of the American soldier, which is something you can actually do without necessarily approving of, you know, the various wars the soldiers fought in, right. But that that if you go to like Arlington National Seminary, cemetery, for instance, I almost said Arlington National Seminary. If you go to Arlington National Cemetery or there’s also a national cemetery here for veterans in the place where I live, not a single one of those soldiers was killed for their country. They all give their life for their country. Right. And so this is a kind of a different distinction. So, so that’s a good example of commemoration right in the United States, I don’t know if you guys have something like this up in Canadian land. I mean, but but like in the United States, we have something like it but nothing like it at the same time. Yeah, yeah, we’re not as a, as a nationalistic here. Yeah, yeah. In the United States when a soul when a veteran dies, even if you know they just, you know, were in the army when they were young, and then they, they got out of the army, they had a normal life and they died in old age. They’re at the burial there will be like members of the military will show up, and it will be like a flag folding ceremony and everything for that person. These are all like kind of like lower levels of commemoration. So, when we talk about the nine were these, the nine were these are this group of men, and later on, because in the Middle Ages, they’re always like seeking symmetry and things later on there becomes also a group of nine were the women to kind of parallel the nine were the men. But this is, this is a list of people and their their historical scriptural legendary men, not necessarily saints, although you know some of them like Joshua in the Bible is obviously, you know, a saint. In basically everybody’s church, but, but they, but they were selected for this list, because they were seen to personify the ideals of chivalry, which, which people really wanted to inculcate and this starts in. Maybe you could say the 12 and 1300s, which is when she, which is when the idea of chivalry is really starting to come into its own. We often think of chivalry and the chivalric romance as being like a medieval thing. But it’s actually, it’s actually kind of a Renaissance thing that was projected back into the Middle Ages, and it’s not to say there were not chivalrous people in the Middle Ages, but it’s, but it’s It doesn’t sound funny to some people but like go look it up that the Renaissance was a much more violent period than the Middle Ages was. And, and, and so there was this need to sort of figure out what to do with that. And that’s the problem of, you know, in some, in some sense like societal problem number one you’re always trying to solve is what I do with all my violent young men. Right. And that’s that’s like, that’s really the main problem that most societies are trying to deal with in some way or other. And, and so what, and so this is where the, this is where the ideal of chivalry. So I think the first, the first list was compiled in like 1312. So this is really where the idea of chivalry starts to, to be brought forward based on older literature of course things like the Song of Roland and Sir Gowan and the Green Knight and all the stuff which are much older than. And just the Arthur, the Arthurian cycle, the different Arthurian cycle the French cycles are already there and so there are different, different cycles of, and just Aquitaine and that whole kind of that whole world of, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, and the great thing about like Aquitaine is that you have, you have basically these these troubadour kings who are like both wandering minstrels but also, you know, knights but also kings. Like Eleanor whose father was one of these troubadour kings and Eleanor of Aquitaine is, you know, Richard the Lionheart’s father and also but also her mother rather, but also the mother of literally every other king in Europe at that, at that time. And, and she was really into this stuff and so it’s like it’s her daughters that become the patrons for like Christian de Troyes and all these other like the big Arthurian writers and so it’s, it was a very colorful time and very colorful kind of court there in Aquitaine. So the nine worthies are three pagans. So these are Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar. Three Hebrews, so Joshua the son of none, or Jesus in the Greek. David, the king, and then Judah Maccabee, and then three Christians, and the three Christian kings are King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. Am I saying, am I saying that right? Yeah, you’re saying it pretty well. Hey, I’m pretty, I’m really pleased. Because I’m so bad at French. Yeah, so Godfrey of Bouillon who most people maybe have not heard of. I think, I think that’s the surprise on the list. People are like, well, I’ve heard of those other guys but like who’s this Godfrey guy. So, the reason that we’re talking about this in, in universal history is to kind of tie two things together, which is one, how does the, how do these patterns manifest themselves and what we would now call secular spaces though perhaps they would not have recognized our, that use of the word secular in the 1300s but like, how do these things manifest in secular spaces. Because we have these kinds of manifestations and we have these kinds of, of heroes even now, we’ve talked a lot about Lincoln and, you know, things like this but also that, that. I mean, I know that you’re, you’re sometimes a little down on superheroes, Jonathan. I don’t know if you mean to come across that way or not. But, but, obviously, obviously, the whole world of like superhero storytelling is a super mixed bag. Yeah, it’s a super mixed bag. But also I think there is and I think we’re going to have an essay about this in, in fighting the golden key. And it’s definitely a, let’s say a longing for this kind of commemoration, which is, which is definitely manifesting itself in that space right now. And so, when we find images of the nine worthies, there’s a very early 13th century carving which I think is the earliest visual representation of them all together. And it’s in Cologne, in Germany. But it’s not, it’s not in a church or in a sacred place. It’s in a city hall. So, the idea is that you could say that these nine men together represent the ideal of chivalry of kingship of lordship, but also they show the way in which a secular order. In the third, in the 14th century, that that that really did mean like the civil powers aside outside of like the church powers right. The way that a secular order could also participate in kind of this master narrative, the story of Western civilization that everybody was very consciously trying to write themselves into. Yeah. So, there, there are also statues there’s a, there’s a fountain in Nuremberg, Germany called the beautiful fountain. And you can go out and look at some pictures of these things online and I’m sure we’ll have them in the video for people to see. Which also shows the nine worthies and but but it’s at that same fountain there are like these different groups of people, right and some of the groups are like apostles, saints, martyrs, etc. And then over here in this group you have the nine worthies. Yeah. And so it’s a general commemoration of different aspects of reality, let’s say and the political or the kind of civil sphere is part of this. Yes. Yes. And so basically what this lets them do is they, they’re able to bring in all of the three strains, which basically constitute Western civilization, which are paganism, and specifically Greco-Roman paganism. And then we have the great, our Jewish inheritance that we have as Christians. And then, and then the, the great, the great sort of icons of Christian, of the Christian ruler, which for this particular list, our King Arthur Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon, which for reasons we’ll talk about in a second. You know, it’s funny that there’s no Constantine. Yeah, there’s no Constantine, there’s no Justinian, it’s like it’s definitely Western Europe. Yeah. So for those of you who are who have been hankering for like some more Western Europe stuff, this is, this is your day. So I thought what we could do is very quickly talk about each one of the worthies. Yeah. And why they’re included. And I think there’s a lot, there are a lot of people out there who will be interested in going out and reading more of these people. And I think that’s definitely a, something that I’ve heard over and over again, recently has been, it’s really a cry or a hunger, especially from like a lot of young men who are into the symbolic world and other things like that for, you know, trying to, trying to like navigate like what does it look like to be a man? What’s it look like to be masculine? That’s a really difficult thing to do right now. It seems like we’re constantly like falling into one error or the other. But this is a question that they’re really concerned with in the Middle Ages too. It was like one of the dominant questions of, let’s say, medieval legends and fiction. Yeah. And I’m curious about some of the choices myself, like rather than others. And so are there sources that kind of explain why or there are? Okay. Yeah. So I’m going to be reading from just a text. It doesn’t have a helpful name. In English, it’s the history of the nine word these of the world, three were of were Gentiles. And then it lists all the Gentiles three Jews, three Christians, being an account of their glorious lives were the actions, renowned victories and deaths. That’s actually a super helpful name. It’s just very long. Put that on a book jacket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Put that. I mean, people did back then. And this particular book was made as an it’s an it’s an older book, but it was made as kind of like an English translation in like the 1600s, like the 1630s. So that’s, that’s actually, I mean, it kind of shows how long and how late even into the modern period, this idea of the nine word these were. And I would just say, do you do you guys have a phrase, dressed to the nines? Yeah, I never understood that. Yeah. So that’s a reference to that’s a reference to this comes from a Shakespeare play, but it’s a it’s a reference to it’s a reference to the nine word these. In other words, and there was actually a king of France, Francis, the first of France, who would dress up like one of the nine word these. And so he was literally like on different occasions. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And like, like in the in the, and this is during the Renaissance, he would dress in what was called the antique mode. In other words, like, like, what they like with the Roman toga and everything. Yeah, or like, or like, you know, in armor. Yeah, in armor and things like this. And he would like walk around like this to like kind of consciously associate himself with the nine word these. Actually, most of our most of our illustrations of the nine word these come from a kind of book called an armorial, which is a book of heraldry. And it’s a it’s a book intended to like teach you heraldry and like, keep track of, of who in the kingdom has these different signs. So if you see this heraldic device, you’ll be able to recognize that this is an important part of your education as a nobleman. And but the first several pages, usually the first 10 pages of an armorial, these are custom made books for very wealthy people. So the first 10 pages of an armorial would be the nine word these. And then the 10th page would be whoever commissioned the book. Okay, you know, and and and and dressed up also like the nine word these. And so so the yeah, so the connecting it all together. Yeah, you’re you’re and it became this very personal way for people, obviously, people of a certain social status, but it became a very personal way for people to connect themselves into the larger story. You could say a Western chivalry of, of, let’s say the proper use of secular power. Yeah, yeah. So it’s interesting, but it’s important also to mention, it’s something that I keep repeating probably at every podcast, which is that even though the tradition kind of appears later than the Middle Ages, in order for people to have recognized these, these people as the nine word these, it means that this was something which was already kind of, let’s say bubbling up in culture, there was something that people when they saw it, they said, Yes, of course, these are the nine word these if it hadn’t been, if it hadn’t been something that people could recognize, they would have been recognized as the nine word these. And so that’s the first thing that people would recognize. If it hadn’t been something that people could recognize, you know, then it wouldn’t have lasted and it wouldn’t have been perpetuated. Right. Well, and so so to that, I want to say two things. One is it’s one of the most irritating things in the world to me when somebody says something like, oh, well, the title Theotokos was not approved until the Council of Ephesus, and therefore the veneration of the Mother of God began like on that date. Like, that’s how things work. That is not how anything. How anything works like, so just a good rule of thumb. If you come across something, and it says like the first mention in a text that we have of this particular thing is this date, what you need to do is back up, one to 200 years, at a minimum, before that date, and say, like, and just like assume this has been in the air long enough for somebody to write this down. So like the most recent, so if this list was first coined in the early 1300s, the most recent person on the list is Godfrey Bouillon, who died in 1100. So he’s not quite a contemporary, but he’s really close. So obviously there couldn’t have been a list like this before he died. But this concept, let’s, we could just say like this is the ultimate, like the crystallization of this concept, which had been part of a part of Western Europe for a long, long time. So you can, you know that, for example, Charlemagne consciously modeled himself after Joshua and King David. So you can understand how. And Constantine. Right. So, so you can understand how this is something like you, like we said, that’s already in the culture, and now is bubbling up and manifesting itself concretely. So let’s go, let’s, let’s start. I have some questions myself about some of these. Okay, so first guy on the list, Hector of Troy, which I think most people who are listening to this podcast will be familiar with the Iliad and the story of Hector, which means that everything you think you know about Hector is sort of wrong. In the, in the West until a very late date, they did not have access to the Homeric poems in their originals. And so what they had to go off of was mostly things like Virgil and other authors who were basically retelling the story in Latin or in some other Western language. And telling it, especially from the Trojan perspective, which is important to understand, the Romans saw themselves as Trojans. And so their vision of the Trojans were they were the noble ones, you know, more noble, let’s say, than the Greeks and the Trojan War. Yeah, so this is a really, this is a really big point. And this goes all the way back to video number one that we did in the series, right, is that the Romans saw themselves as Trojans. Right. And therefore the portrayal that we get of the Trojans in the Aeneid is extremely more like, so the thing about the Iliad is that it’s actually so balanced. There are no, there’s no good guys or bad guys in the Iliad. I mean, they’re individual people, but the two sides, they’re not, you know, it’s, it’s, it is a truly great work of art in that it is written with just deep sympathy for the human beings on both sides of this conflict. It’s very complex work. But Hector, even in the Iliad, Hector is shown as extremely synthetic. Yeah, he’s the best dude in the Iliad as well. So in, in the, in the legend that they had received and that gets told, retold in the stories of the Nine Worthies and all the way up to the time of Shakespeare. Okay. When Shakespeare writes about the, his poem, his, his play about the fall of Troy and Troy, Lys and Chrysida. Hector is, he, he’s so great, Achilles can’t kill him in a fair fight. And so there are different variations of this, but for instance, in this, this particular work on the Nine Worthies, of course, they’re all, they’re all knights, they’re all jousting, right? So like take that image that you have of like, you know, hoplites and armor or like Brad Pitt or whatever and put that out of your head and imagine just like full on heraldic devices, guys on horses jousting in front of the gates of Troy. That’s how, that’s how they, they portrayed it, you know, and, and so, so there are several times during the conflict that Hector unseats Achilles, but is not willing to kill him because it’s not fair. He’s not going to, he’s not going to kill a downed opponent. And so then finally, in this particular telling, when, when Achilles finally decides, like the Greek leaders tell Achilles, okay, you have to kill Hector, you have to go out and kill him. Achilles comes out and, and at a particular time, we’re told that Hector is actually bearing up the body of one of the Greek princes who had died to bury him in honor. So Hector is just like, here’s a worthy opponent. I’m going to carry his body and have it buried in state. And at that point, Achilles runs up and kills him when his back is turned. So it’s, it’s a really despicable kind of treasonous way. And actually a lot of the, all three of the pagan worthies in, in this, in this telling die due to treason. Right. Julie Caesar is stabbed. Alexander is poisoned by his generals. And so, so Hector, the thing that makes Hector a worthy is, is his great valor in combat, which is this is going to, some people are going to be like, yeah, great valor in combat and some other people listening this are going to be like, oh, I don’t know about, you know, and, you know, and there is death, definitely one could say a strong pacifist combination within traditional Christianity. Things that Christ says the example that we have of many saints. There is also, however, a strong And so that’s, yeah. And it basically becomes a, it basically becomes what the piece of God in the Middle Ages was on a national level, chivalry becomes on a personal level. So the idea of the piece of God is that there would be rules governing warfare. You could only do things in certain ways. You could only fight on certain days, you know, certain holy days and things like that were not days that was appropriate to campaign on. And, and for the most part during the Middle Ages, people kept to this, you know, and this is in Western Europe. And for the most part, people, people really stuck to this. And so you, you have a lot of wars in the Middle Ages, but the wars by modern standards would just be like very small border skirmishes. You know, it’s not until until the rise of secularism that we’re able to just really kill each other in efficient ways and just like in mass. But so, so there’s, there’s definitely a, there’s definitely a, let’s say on a personal level chivalry is, is, you know, a certain thing. So part of the code of chivalry, this comes up in Christian’s Percival. Part of the code of chivalry is there’s certain days on which one does not bear arms, for instance, on Holy Friday is a day it just would not be appropriate to wear armor to carry a sword, etc. and things like this. So, so there’s so yeah, it’s so the things that make Hector one of the worthies and really the first worthy, because everything kind of begins at Troy, that’s where that’s definitely the Trojan War. The Trojan War is definitely where the West was born. Yeah. And, and Hector is sort of the great hero of that war from a medieval perspective. And Hector, and so Hector is is he’s really good at fighting, but he also shows mercy and love towards his, his opponents, and he’s not willing to kind of take advantage of somebody in an unfair way. Yeah, and you can see that in the story in the original story, the idea of Achilles, you know, misusing the body of Hector after he died is kind of a counter example to the way in which the medieval would perceive the nightly way of fighting and of treating your enemy. Right. Right. And so I think I think that actually that there’s like an exact twist there right from the way that Hector dies in the story, which is he dies because he’s honoring the body of his foe. Yeah, exactly. Versus the way that Achilles treats his body and the Iliad. So that’s kind of nice. So yeah, so Hector is great. And by the way, Hector is, I mean, like, I’m just a massive Hector fanboy. Like, I should just like put that out now. He’s one of my favorite, I don’t know what you could say, legendary figures, historical figures, whatever. People go back and forth on whether the Trojan War was actually historical. And I think actually the current thing is that actually it is historical, but people have been going back and forth on whether it was historical since like the Middle Ages. Yeah. But what everybody has agreed on is that whether or not it was like a historical thing, it was it’s super important. And it’s kind of it’s kind of the first the first story in the West. Yeah. So the second worthy, which will be no surprise to you is Alexander the Great. Of course, Alexander the Great is I think nowadays he would definitely be hashtag canceled. He’s got a lot of, shall we say, problematic things about his life, the way that he were told. I mean, there’s there’s a ton of wild stuff in this particular retelling of Alexander. And definitely his his sexual mores are are not Christian, not even the way like Hector’s words are. Hector, despite not being a Christian, is faithful to his to his wife and man, cares for his children. There’s and there’s definitely a very long tradition that that at some point, Helen kind of like threw herself at Hector. And he was like, no, thanks. Yeah, I don’t I don’t need this crazy in my life. But he’s also the only person in Troy in the in the Iliad. He’s basically the only person in Troy who actually treats her decently. And so she weeps for him at his death. Anyway, I just really love Hector a lot. That’s not right. So Alexander, but this is the retelling in the nine worthies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is the retelling. And so this is the thing. Like when there are faults in these guys lives, they’re not going to be the same. Yeah, this is the retelling. And so this is the thing. Like when there are faults in these guys lives, they don’t shy away from from telling those things. Right. And this is I mean, this is a thing like we’re so. We’re just such babies now, Jonathan, like we’re I mean, we really are, though, like we’re just giant babies. Like if there is if there’s a person whose life is worthy and and worthy of emulation in a lot of different ways, but then they have like one thing wrong with them. Yeah, we’re like, well, sorry, that person’s problematic. And like, I don’t care if it’s the right or the left. Like, yeah, this is just in the air right now. We’re just we’re we’re so fragile. Yeah. And and so they’re setting up Alexander as kind of the the in the medieval perspective, you could say he he’s the you know, if Hector is the first night, Alexander is the first emperor. Right. And of course, everyone agrees that you should have an emperor. And everyone agrees that whoever the emperor is should be kind of the best and most worthy person. And so even though even though Alexander has a lot of he has a lot of faults, he’s portrayed in this retelling as being, you know, he loses his temper and kills somebody who’s really close to him. But then after that, he he shows so much remorse that he like starves himself and they eventually have to like force him to start eating again. So it’s kind of like it’s not saying it’s OK that he did that thing, but also like he did demonstrate repentance and love afterwards. And the way that it’s sort of portrayed is that is that Alexander is this I mean, he’s like this really dynamic young genius, which he was. And that but that he had he had sort of the wrong people around him, which is not saying it like wasn’t his fault, but we’re told, you know, he’s he has, you know. He had this influence from this particular Greek philosopher, not Aristotle in this case, but one of the people who is one of Aristotle students who who basically told him, well, you should be, you know, look at all your achievements. Right. Alexander being very young, you know, having this mentor tell him you should be worshiped as a god said, oh, I guess I should be worshiped as a god. But then we’re told. But the Macedonian soldiers would have none of it and just continued to salute him as their general. And he was also fine with that. Yeah. And so. There’s some fun stuff in here. One thing that’s in here is when he conquers India, he’s seduced by the Indian queen whose name was Cleophis, not Cleopatra, Cleophis. And but but she does a very Cleopatra thing, which is she she basically buys her kingdom back with, you know, by seducing Alexander and then has a son from him whom she named Alexander. And of course, eventually, you know, Cleopatra seduces Julius Caesar, and then they have a son that they name Julius Caesar. Yeah. And but the the the I mean, this is a real symbolism happens moment because Cleophis is a I mean, she’s a real historical figure. Like there’s no ambiguity about about it. The ambiguity would be around like who her son who her son’s father actually was. Yeah. And the way that like the Greco-Roman chroniclers would write about it is they would say they would say that, oh, she had a son named Alexander, whoever her father, whoever his father might have been, might have been. Yeah. Wink, wink, wink, wink. But of course, you know, it’s it’s significant. She’s the she’s the queen of India in this particular telling, which is we’ve talked about the overlap between India and Ethiopia and as the stealer of the heart and all that. So you have all those things going on in the story. What makes Alexander great? Lots and lots of things. I mean, he he defeats his enemies, but he’s really fair to everyone he conquers that that comes over and over again. And he. So he has he has a bunch of faults, but also he’s at the end of the day, like he’s he’s great because of because of his accomplishments and because because of his the the let’s say the just way that he treated the people that whom he defeated. Right. So that in so you have this idea that you should be in victory. You should be you should be moderate and subdued in the way that you again, unlike us, like we’re such like we’re like just little toddlers, even like on the Internet, as soon as somebody scores a point against somebody else, you know, they just like they’re ready to dance on the grave, you know, and and and the the medieval idea of chivalry is that is that you bring the people together. You should you should be able to win your fights. But also when you win, you’ve got to be gracious. And I will just say one last thing, which is they were not inattentive to the fact that Alexander died at the age of thirty three, which is which is, of course, also the age that Christ died at. And they a lot of people seem to have noticed this and commented on it in various ways. There there’s a lot of stuff in this particular retelling that is missing. There’s no gates of Alexander. There’s no Griffin chariot. Anything’s like and for the most part, all of these tellings are very grounded, you could say. There is not a whole lot of what we consider to be like mythical material that’s actually in them. They’re they’re they’re pretty grounded. All right. So third guy on the list is, of course, Julius Caesar. I don’t think I need to introduce Caesar to anyone. And basically everything you know or heard about Caesar is in is in this retelling. Why is Caesar included? He’s included because he is he becomes this sort of this model of of kingship. And nowadays, like we’re used we’re conditioned to think of Caesar as kind of a bad guy. Yeah, I was going to say like, yeah, Caesar and not Augustus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so we’re conditioned to kind of see Caesar as as kind of a bad guy because of his because because like he he sort of like brought about the end of the republic. Right. Yeah. And also because he he was such a ruthless conqueror like, yes, you know, this idea that he killed a million. Yeah. But the answer the answer is is Dante sees and Dante is not the reason. But Dante just like as part of his whole world, they saw Julius Caesar as being the as being sort of the the the first manifestation, you could say, of the ideal Roman man or the ideal Roman emperor. Yeah. Right. And so well, like Scipio Africanus is the first ideal Roman man. But then Caesar’s the first ideal Roman emperor. And and so the idea was that that Caesar was setting up a he was setting up like a perfect reign. And basically he had subdued the world. He was going to bring peace to the world. And again, Caesar shows great clemency to his enemies who aren’t Gauls. And I’m from France. I’m allowed to lie down. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. No, but but like when he defeats like Pompey’s army and people like this, like he’s he shows he shows great clemency to them. But also but also like he doesn’t put up with traitors. He doesn’t put up with, you know, people trying to go behind him and things like this, ironically, I guess, because that’s how he dies. But but in the in the end, in the end, so in in the lowest region of hell in the inferno, right, one of the three people who’s imprisoned there, you know, you have three famous traders and one of them is Brutus. Right. You know, and so and so for Dante, the worst possible sin that you could commit would be not just treachery. But treachery against your lord. Yeah. And so in the structure of hell, you have like hell is all these sort of nested descending circles. But then the final the final tier in hell of circles is a city. Right. And so the point is that these are the crimes that cause like these other things are like animal passions. But these are the crimes that cause human civilization to cease to cohere. Dante saw happening in Florence and he saw happening in Italy around him at that particular time. And so what’s the thing at the end of the day that most does that? Well, it’s assassinating your what they would have considered to be like your lawful ruler. Right. That that’s the thing that’s going to cause society to cease to go here. Yeah. Yeah. So so Julius Caesar is is on here and I’ll just say each one of these begins with like a little poem. And so we’re told great Julius Caesar next attained the name of the third worthy whose immortal fame remains still fresh in records of time. He to the empire of the world did climb and what he conquered by his sword and fight he with his pen did elegantly right. This is not great poetry, but at length through many wounds, his soul hence fled and he who ne’er before was conquered in war. He who was slaughtered, strewed so many lands with his own blood and brewed the seat of wronged justice and fell down a sacrifice to appease the incensed gown. So there’s this there’s definitely this idea of of Caesar being a let’s say a precursor of Christ and that he was a sacrifice that was necessary for the public peace. Right. And so in like the Gospel of St. John, it says, you know, they say it is necessary that one man should die for his nation. Right. And that’s that’s how they sort of saw what happened to Caesar is it’s sort of like it’s regrettable that Caesar had to be killed. It’s regrettable that he regrettable that he kind of grasped for power too quickly. But at the end of the day, he becomes sort of a martyr to the peace of the Roman Empire. And it’s because of that. I mean, it makes a note in here to say not a single one of the people who assassinated Caesar lived outlived him by more than two years. Yeah. You know, like all of those people. And it’s really the death of Caesar, at least in this in this particular telling. It’s the death of Caesar that galvanizes the Roman people and makes the rise of Augustus a thing that’s actually possible. Yeah. Basically, from that point forward, the people at large can’t conceive of of of going back to the older way of doing things. OK, so that’s Caesar. We’ll move on to Joshua. Everything in the in the story about Joshua is just exactly what’s in the Bible. So I’m going to assume people either have a familiarity with that if they don’t. There are lots of Bibles out there. So go buy one. Just go buy one. I don’t know what to say. Like the Book of Joshua is super, super awesome. But I will say this. This is how his story begins. It says, Who can see the sun and not remember Joshua and the great commerce that this valorous captain had with the king of stars, which is just I mean, that’s the king of stars is God in this case, right? You know, making the sun stand still. Yeah. And the host, you know, the starry host, the host of heavens kind of like fighting on the side of Joshua. All the world lift their eyes up to it. That is the sun. But none have but none he hath lifted up his voice so far as it to make himself be heard and obeyed. The stars knew Joshua or Jesus because he bore the name of him that formed them. It is he that gave us the foretaste of the name Jesus, at which the heaven, the earth and hell do bend the knee. So and I and it goes on to talk. There’s a really lengthy and actually quite beautiful digression at the beginning of this talking about. So I think sometimes like, especially if you came from like an evangelical background, we read Joshua as sort of like the kind of lesser sequel to Moses, like Moses is really great. And then Josh was kind of and then after Joshua dies, everything just goes to hell. Yeah. Right. But literally. But Joshua was not seen that way in the early Christian communities, even even now in the Orthodox Church or in these medieval stories. So you have this you have this sort of play on words in the gospel according to St. John and Chapter one says the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So and so so that’s a play on words because, of course, Jesus in Greek is is Joshua. Right. That’s the name of Moses successor. Right. And so and so so Joshua was the one who’s actually able to enter the promised land. He’s the one that’s able to perform everything that God said before him. Yeah. And and conquer the enemies of God, et cetera. Right. And so and so he fulfills the promise. Right. It’s not Moses who fulfills the promise. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so John Chapter one is like riffing on that a little bit and sort of saying, you know, Jesus, right, he’s the fulfillment of the promise. So you’ve got Joshua, who is who is great, we’re told, because he’s so much worthier than the three before him because they worship false gods, but he worshiped the true God by whose power he caused the sun and moon to stand still. So pretty cool stuff. Number five on the list and the exact middle point in the list is David. And again, there’s nothing surprising in in the David thing. Like it’s just all the stuff that’s in the Bible. People should read the life of David like a lot, I think, because because he frightened if they do. It’s just got everything in it, though. Yeah, I know. But it’s it’s hard to see for a lot of people like how how much of these these these approximations of Jesus’s story are in the story of David because they often they often are twisted like they’re they don’t look exactly the same or they kind of failed. You could say almost like right. It’s kind of failed versions of Jesus almost right. Right. So you’ve got David number and then the third Hebrew in the list is Judas Maccabeus. Now, people are probably a little less familiar with him than they are with Joshua and David, but he’s the he’s the sort of the big the big leader of the Maccabean revolt. This is actually also in the Bible. If you have the director’s cut version of the Bible. Yeah. I’m not going to go too much into the whole story of Judas Maccabeus just for the sake of time, but it’s good. You can say that he’s the last glorious moment of of kind of Jewish kingship before and also but also like the the the accidental opening of the door to Rome. And so later when Pompey the Great shows up with an army at Jerusalem, he’s like, well, we have a legal document. You guys said we could do this kind of a thing. And that’s that’s I mean, that’s that’s a historical fact. But it’s also in it’s also in this legend. OK, again, again, the Christians who put this list together still had Maccabees in their Bible. So everything that’s in the legend, like again, there’s nothing surprising if you read first and second Maccabees, you already know all this all this stuff. Why is he in the list? OK, Joshua, that’s easy. David super easy to figure out why David is in the list. David is also a great example of somebody who would be just totally hashtag canceled. You know, like he’s he’s just I mean, David is just like he’s he’s he’s literally all over the place. Yeah, he’s just he’s so crazy. But and there’s like very frank discussion in his legend here about the whole Bathsheba thing and what goes on there and the way that the way that all of the bad stuff that eventually happens to David family, David’s family kind of goes back to that. And in spite of all of that. OK, I will say one thing. So this is cool. Do you know, I’m sure you remember when David gets the idea that he he wants to build the temple and he says it’s it’s it’s shameful that the Ark of God should dwell in tents while I live in a palace. Right. So something that his legend kind of points out, which I never noticed before, but it’s totally just in the Bible. OK. Is that that is an exact almost word for word parallel to what Uriah says when David tells him to come home, when David orders him home to like cover up the fact that Bathsheba is pregnant. Yeah. Uriah says it would be shameful for me to dwell in a house while Joab and the Ark of God are dwelling in tents. It’s the same thing. Huh? Like, and I don’t know what to do with that. It’s like an opposite. It’s like it’s like, yeah, it’s. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I didn’t even like I just discovered that, like, literally this week. I was today years old when when I read that and I was like, yeah, I mean, we have to think about it before. Yeah. What it can mean. But for sure, it’s it’s clearly a reference. They’re referencing each other. Yeah. And I mean, again, like that’s that’s just in the Bible. But the the guy that was putting these legends together, notice kind of knows the parallels there. So that’s OK. That’s cool. So Judah Maccabees, why is he included? He’s included mainly because he was a very successful military commander. He was never his his big thing. The big thing that the Maccabees are kind of known for is that they were they were willing to die to defend God’s truth and the law of the law of God. Yeah. And of course, the the the whole story of the Maccabees is very important to us. He was an early exemplar of the idea of the veneration of the saints in Second Temple Judaism and all this different stuff. And so Judah and of course, Judah dies the way that a knight should die, which is in battle. Right. So he goes he kind of goes out fighting and we’re told what are the things that make him great. The people wept and made great lamentation for the death of a commander so valiant for whatsoever virtue, half of great whatsoever valor, half of generous, met in the person of Judah Maccabees to make a marvel of his life and give a mortal memory to his name. In the space of six years, he sustained the great and prodigious forces of three kings of Asia, as you have heard, opposing himself with a little flying camp, in other words, like a little guerrilla force against armies of 40, 60 and 100000 men, which he put into disorder and confusion. He defeated nine generals of the infidels in ranged battles and combats, killing some with his own hands, carrying away their spoils so that all of his great qualities valor always held the upper rank and worthily entitled him to the name of worthy. So in the list, he’s actually the one who’s most known for valor. Right. So he’s the third Jew in the list. And then we get to the three Christians. The first one is Arthur. Everyone has heard of King Arthur, I think. I’m interested to say why they think Arthur, because there’s something about Arthur. There’s an ambiguity about Arthur. Right. Right. So in this particular retelling, a lot of the later stuff, like, you know, having an incestuous son with his sister and things like this is not there. It will say like it exists in certain like tellings, but they’re but but they hadn’t come to dominate at this particular point in history. It’s not really in the English language. It’s really when when Mallory does his retelling based on the French book. Yeah. That that we sort of like accept all of these pieces as sort of like being set in stone, one could say. I did a little Arthurian pun there, like set in stone anyway. And so in this legend, it’s mostly about him. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s uniting Britain, Britain fighting off the pagan Saxons, and then also bullying the the Roman legates who came to collect tribute from him. So I’ll just say this at the beginning, because this is like this is just like, you know, when when people listen to when people listen to the series and they they ask questions like, well, did X really happen or whatever? He’s introduced with saying. The British writers have related such strange and miraculous actions and adventures of this worthy prince that many intelligent men have been apt to think that all which have been written of his heroic deeds is mere fiction and invention. Yay. Some are of the opinion that there never was any such person. But though historians disagree about times and places, some writing carelessly and others superstitiously, all those superstitious historians out there. Yet they all agree upon the predecessors and successors of this noble king. But as it is mostly but as it is most awful infidelity to doubt that there was a Joshua, it is a wicked atheism to question if there were a David and totally unreasonable to deny the being of Judah Maccabees. And maybe judge Folly to affirm that there was never any Alexander Julius Caesar Caesar Caesar Godfrey Julius Caesar. That’s a that’s a bad Julius. Or Charlemagne. So we may be thought guilty of incredulity and in gratitude to deny or doubt the honorable acts of our victorious Arthur. And this is the premise. This is premise and vindication of our hero and his immortal name and fame, whereby he justly gained the title of the seventh worthy of the world. And now on to his history. So it gets into his history. But there is like a little kind of an argument at the beginning for like whether he exists or not. Yeah. Yeah. He’s inclusion in the list because he is this he is this like you could say like a lodestone that attracts all these different legends and things like this. And actually most of the Arthurian legends aren’t about Arthur. They’re about the people in his court. And it actually talks about that. And it says there are 12, you know, like, like, yes, he has as nice of the roundtable. And if Arthur wasn’t so great, then surely one of those guys would be in this list. But Arthur eclipses all of them for his acts of chivalry, which is actually also I mean, that’s that’s in the other like the more popular Arthur in material as well. The thing that makes Arthur great, I think, is is the fact that he is he is just like the perfect embodiment of all the chivalric legends. Right. And all of the other nights have these different fatal flaws in to some degree or other. But it’s not until much later that Arthur is also given one of those. Yeah. And basically once once Arthur isn’t the perfect night anymore, that’s when they have to bring on along like Gala had. So, Arthur, then we have Charlemagne. Yes, we’ve Arthur, then we have Charlemagne. Charlemagne is the great Christian king. Right. He’s he’s in this list mainly because he defeated Saracen armies and forced lots and lots of people to convert to Christianity. And of course, maybe the circumstances. They say that in the thing that he couldn’t that he forced. Well, what it says, what it says is that he overcame all of his enemies. He was crowned emperor of Rome and the Christian faith. He always defended against Saracens. He contended against the Huns and the pagans. He he he too conquered. And yet all of his fury he laid by if they would idols leave and the true God obey. OK, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. And of course, in for somebody is like it’s like if you convert, then my sword will fall lightly. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. So that tricky, tricky. Yeah. Charlemagne is is the the the guy in here that in in once is like makes the most sense to me. Like he’s he’s but he’s the origin of Western Europe. Right. Right. The understanding of Western Europe, the way we understand it is right. Bound in the story of Charlemagne and the Frankish, the Frankish kingship. Yes. But also, like there are a lot of, you know, from an orthodox perspective, like we’re a little. Yeah. Little frosty on Charlemagne. Yeah, because he’s also he’s also the beginning of the schism, even though it’s way before the schism. Well, there’s also like a hint at what’s coming in his court and his theologians and the way he sees himself as emperor, you know, in in competition with the Byzantines. When Charlemagne was coronated, he actually set off to Constantinople to have a sock. A sock made like the like the tunic, the thing our bishops wear now. He sent off to have one of those made for him to wear at his coronation. And it was a very deliberate attempt to identify himself as sort of like the the legitimate. Yeah, this is something people need to understand from Charlemagne. We’ll get it when we talk about it more. But he didn’t see himself as emperor of the West, the way a lot of people try to portray it. He saw himself as the Roman emperor, as the emperor, as the one that succeeded Irene’s husband. It’s like Irene is crazy. And now we need a new emperor. So he’s the emperor. So he saw himself as just the emperor. Stop. Just stop there. Like there you didn’t write with it. Right. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So, yeah, but there’s there’s I mean, there is a whole thing. I’ll just read this bit. The false synod of the Greeks, untruly called the seventh. This is talking about the seventh ecumenical council. Whoa. Was condemned and rejected by all of the bishops who who subscribe to the condemnation. And this is but this is like this is a historical fact. This is like a court theologians rejected the seventh ecumenical council. And then later the pope had to basically tell him to back down, steamroll through and try to get it accepted. But they mentioned this in the story. Yeah, this is in the story. The seventh ecumenical council is the false synod of the false synod of the Greeks. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, this is why Pope Benedict says that the West never fully accepted the seventh ecumenical council, because it’s just you see it much later. You know, you see it in these texts where it comes up again that it’s like this council. We don’t like it. Even though. Right. And there’s there’s, you know, especially talking now. And, you know, everybody’s, you know, much friendlier and chummy these days, which I guess is good. It’s nice that nobody’s trying to burn me at a stake. But but also like, you know, people will say, well, you know, the Roman Catholic theology around the icon and the Orthodox, the exact same thing. Historically, that has not been true. It might be might be true now. Sure. You know, but but historically that that’s not been the case, even in the West, even as they had they obviously did have images, but they would have looked at the the ways that we use the we use icons liturgically. Yeah. Because because we don’t just like hang up some nice pictures or what, you know, but there’s there are particular times in the liturgy. The priest kisses this icon, the priest kisses, you know, this other icon and things like this. And they they did look at those things, especially at the time of Charlemagne. They did look at those things as as idolatrous as problematic. Yeah. And they and the West never took up the incarnational argument for icons. And like the final proof of that is that when Calvin criticizes images, he doesn’t even use he doesn’t even address that argument. Right. He doesn’t even he doesn’t even address the main argument of the seven document of because he doesn’t know it doesn’t know. Yeah, doesn’t know it. Yeah. So why is he in this list? You know, from a Western Christian perspective, it’s pretty obvious ways in the West. I will say he he was seen he was seen as like this defender of the faith, both against the false synod of the Greeks, as well as against the Saracens or, you know, the Muslim armies invading Europe. And also for the West, he was seen as a restorer of knowledge or restore of education, you know, bringing the monks in transcriptions. There was a sense in which he was like an an enlightener of Western Europe. So all that stuff is in here. We’re told that at the when he was 68 years old that he spent three years, you know, the last few years of his life cloistered away reading the Bible and the books of St. Augustine, it says, whom he admired above all the doctors of the church. So ortho bros just go wild with that. And and he resided at Paris had frequent conference with the learned and he there he erected a famous university. Of course, Paris is where the university is kind of like, you know, at least one particular university model is kind of birthed. Yeah. Right. And so this legend consciously tries to connect Charlemagne back to that. And yeah, Western scholarship is right basically in Charlie. Right. Yeah. So and then the final person on this list, who people probably most mysterious familiar with is Godfrey of Bouillon, who, who were said, who were told was called the king of Jerusalem. Now, we don’t say he is the king of Jerusalem. We say he was called the king of Jerusalem. Interesting. So Godfrey Bouillon, just like the high level version of the story, is that he was one of the leaders of the first crusade, which was kind of the most successful of the crusades. He he retook Jerusalem. And then died a year or two after retaking Jerusalem. And he he was he was the ruler of Jerusalem after it was retaken. But he refused the title of the king of Jerusalem. And I think this is this is he’s on this list for a few reasons. One is like within 10 or 20 years of his death, there are already legends about him, you know, like fighting bears and decapitating camels with a single stroke of a sword. And actually a bunch of the same kind of legends that get attributed to Richard Lionheart is another famous crusader. Obviously, I was a big Richard Lionheart fan as a kid for obvious reasons. Yeah, you know, but they’re almost immediately after his death. Like he became you could say that he became people considered him to be the apex of the Christian night. Like like all of these things have been setting up to that. And then he was like the perfect example of what it looked like in practice. Right. So he was somebody that was within like kind of living memory when these lists started being put together as somebody that you could look at like and very consciously say he’s he’s one of the like he was the greatest night of his day. When he was when he conquered Jerusalem, and he was set up to rule it. He was presented with a crown that’s like really richly adorned with pearls and all these different things. And he refused it. And he said, Why would I bear the name of a king in a place where my savior was crowned with reproaches? Why would I take a scepter in my hand where he took the cross upon his shoulders? Why would I suffer a crown of gold upon my head where he received a crown of thorns? So he refused the title of king. And I think this is a thing at the end of the day that makes him worthy of inclusion on this list was not just his valor in battle, but but at the end of the day, his his his unwillingness to seize power. Yeah, there’s an interesting parallel also even in this image of the last Roman Emperor. I mean, obviously, there’s no relation. Yes. No. What do you think there is? Well, I don’t know that there’s a relation, but but it’s but it’s the same pattern. Yeah, the idea of like the last emperor or the ultimate emperor basically giving his crown up to Christ in Jerusalem. Yeah, in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. Yeah. Where else would this happen? So he, he only rules Jerusalem for a couple of years and he dies in the year 1100 and a couple of years later, and then his brother Baldwin takes but Baldwin takes the title King of Jerusalem, like he he accepts the crown. But but Godfrey didn’t. And Godfrey is on this list and Baldwin isn’t. So there you go. So there you go. Yeah, but it’s interesting to see, like you said that the last worthy has this this kind of rendering up of civil power up to a higher state or up to God, you know, so it’s like we celebrate all this civil power, but we end with something which recognizes that it’s obviously in a certain manner, there’s a vanity to it. And when we we recognize the most of the one that kind of gave it up to God. And so I think I think, yeah, he’s sort of the plenitude of the whole list right at the at the end of the at the end of the day. This list is not to say, you know, hey, you secular rule ruler, you should be Charlemagne. You know, you should be like Charlemagne in certain respects, you should defend the church and you should this and the other thing. It’s not saying you should be, you know, Judah Maccabees, though you should be like him certain respects, but the very last person in the list is Godfrey. And Godfrey does all of these things, but then he refuses the crown. He says Christ is the only real king of Jerusalem. And, and the wordies are, I mean, they’re all over monuments, civic buildings, fountains, things like that in these public secular spaces. They’re also a major genre of, let’s say, of drama in the Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance. Like this is there. There are, you know, plays within plays and Shakespeare’s plays that are masks, you know, M.A.S.Q.E. Q.U.E. There are masks or plays about the lives of the various nine worthies. So these guys were in some sense like sort of superheroes. Right. That they were like historical, kind of a little contemporary, you know, Hector’s on a horse with a lance, you know. So they’re historical, they’re kind of contemporary, but they’re also a little bit legendary. And but but they sort of they sort of like caught up the whole ideal of into themselves of what did it look like in Western Europe to be to be a noble, to be to be chivalrous, to be to be worthy. In other words, still have to have what does it look like when the virtues manifest themselves in a person who is maybe not exactly a saint, but is but is still like worthy. It’s worthy. And it’s interesting because in different from hagiography, you were in hagiography, there would just be this kind of celebration of the saint almost without reserve. In these texts and in these celebrations, you find the reserve as part of the way that they’re remembered. Exactly. Here they are remembered for these virtues, but we also acknowledge these these problems that they had and these faults. So it’s a it’s a balanced tradition. So and of course, by by having these three triads, like going back to the beginning of the video, it had to be nine. Why did it have to be nine? Because you need like for this this this picture of chivalry to be something that can that that really has legs and is really part of this coherent picture in this vision of the world that they possess in the Middle Ages. You had to you’ve got to you’ve got to have all three pieces. You’ve got to have your Greeks, Romans, you’ve got to have your the Jewish inheritance and you’ve got to have the Christians culminating in this example of this of this Christian who actually kind of goes all the way back to the start. Right. He goes east. Actually, it mentions that I don’t know if this is something that happened historically or not, but it mentions that he was like at one point on his way to Constantinople. So like so he goes east, he goes and he goes back to Jerusalem and he kind of like, you know, the the the circle sort of brings it kind of brings it together. Yeah, brings it together. So so it’s a cool way to see how something like something like popular literature, drama, veneration, all these things in the Middle Ages were able to tie into and down to just like ornamentation on architecture, we’re able to tie into the universal history in this way. Yeah. All right. So this is this has just been great. Just one more example and a very, a very kind of thoughtful example of universal history and also an understanding of how we have this. We have a sad version of the Middle Ages or that period of time where it was all propaganda, it was all just, you know, that there wasn’t the subtlety of understanding that we moderns have. But in this tradition, we do actually find a kind of powerful subtlety in recognizing the strength and the weaknesses of our ancestors and celebrating them nonetheless, nonetheless and not wanting to cancel and destroy their memory because they’re not perfect and they’re not Christ incarnate, you know, all of them. Right. Yeah. It these takes are wonderfully complex in lots of ways. And, and yeah, there’s definitely a. You could you can think about the situation that somebody might have found themselves in in the 1300s, looking at this list and being like, Oh, yeah, these are great. Right. This is, you know, and this is, I mean, this is popular literature, right? This is this is like common people were really into these stories and really into these figures. And for that person to find themselves under the rule of a local lord or a king who was maybe not like perfect in every respect. And then also, you know, but also, you know, a night a night is still a night like, you know, I, I once read this medieval account, I can’t remember where it is now about this man who walked like 100 miles in a week to go because because he heard that a certain princess was going to be passing through the city. And he just wanted to have the experience of seeing a princess. And it was just like a common man. And this is the this is a sort of. We can’t we can’t conceive now of something like that. I mean, I guess people will go to see celebrities, things like that. But we also we also sort of like. They would have thought of like a princess as being like in some ways, like, like, like ontologically different like seeing a princess is really different from seeing a woman. Right. They’re not totally the same thing. And so so if you’re if you find yourself like under one of these these guys who’s not not the best. But then you can still see that he participates in these certain aspects of the chivalrous king the chivalrous man, the perfect night and participates in them and just to some greater or lesser degree, you can kind of celebrate and give your attention to those parts of his life. Yeah, not these other parts. I’ll just close with this talking about Godfrey. It says and this is the end of the book. Says he was a prince in whom all virtues, Christian, civil and military. So those are the three kinds of virtues that each of these guys represent to some degree. Christian virtues, civil virtues, military virtues met in the highest point of humane perfection without mixture of any default so that it will remain difficult to find another like to him, whom without flattery, the same praises may be given. And which induced future ages to bestow upon him the honorable title of one of the worthies of the world. That’s great. Great way to end. And so Richard, thanks for thanks for your time as usual and everybody else stay tuned. We’ve got got an indefinite amount of these you know who knows how long we’re going to go but we’re as long as we enjoy it and you enjoy it we’re going to keep going. So, so everybody thanks for your time and we’ll talk to you very soon. Thanks everyone.