Tolkien, Newman, and the elder race
Sep. 28th, 2010 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So for various reasons I found myself reading John Henry Newman's Dream of Gerontius yesterday, and I was interested to discover these bits sung by the Angelicals (if you know the tune, hum along: it's "Praise to the Holiest in the Heights"):
PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!
To us His elder race He gave
To battle and to win,
Without the chastisement of pain,
Without the soil of sin.
[snip loads]
The Angels, as beseemingly
To spirit-kind was given,
At once were tried and perfected,
And took their seats in heaven.
For them no twilight or eclipse;
No growth and no decay:
‘Twas hopeless, all-ingulfing night,
Or beatific day.
But to the younger race there rose
A hope upon its fall;
And slowly, surely, gracefully,
The morning dawned on all.
And ages, opening out, divide
The precious and the base,
And from the hard and sullen mass,
Mature the heirs of grace.
Tolkien worshipped at the Birmingham Oratory for several years in his youth, so it's perhaps not that surprising. But where did Newman get this idea of an "elder race" from? Aquinas? Dante? Wikipedia, alas, gives no clue. So over to you, my friends, your THORTS and NOLIJEZ welcome.
(Not so much the idea of the angelic hierarchy in itself, but that phrase, "elder race".)
PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!
To us His elder race He gave
To battle and to win,
Without the chastisement of pain,
Without the soil of sin.
[snip loads]
The Angels, as beseemingly
To spirit-kind was given,
At once were tried and perfected,
And took their seats in heaven.
For them no twilight or eclipse;
No growth and no decay:
‘Twas hopeless, all-ingulfing night,
Or beatific day.
But to the younger race there rose
A hope upon its fall;
And slowly, surely, gracefully,
The morning dawned on all.
And ages, opening out, divide
The precious and the base,
And from the hard and sullen mass,
Mature the heirs of grace.
Tolkien worshipped at the Birmingham Oratory for several years in his youth, so it's perhaps not that surprising. But where did Newman get this idea of an "elder race" from? Aquinas? Dante? Wikipedia, alas, gives no clue. So over to you, my friends, your THORTS and NOLIJEZ welcome.
(Not so much the idea of the angelic hierarchy in itself, but that phrase, "elder race".)
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Date: 2010-09-28 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-09-28 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 02:34 pm (UTC)The notion of the angels having been created before humanity was pretty common. I'd recommend that you have a look at Silano's translation of the Sentences for a more detailed "scholastic" angelology. Also, you might want to check the Glo...ssa Ordinaria on Genesis and the days of creation. IIRC it's going to be in Book 2.
So there you go. Looks like I was maybe wrong about the angels coming into existence at the same time as God, though - God is the 'first mover' and before everything.
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Date: 2010-09-28 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 02:42 pm (UTC)I've always known of a tradition that there were "sons of God" created before mankind was created - and associated it with the nineteenth century, although it was presumably originally Jewish - e.g. the angels that ascendned and descended jacob's ladder
Wasn't it Aquinas who speculated about angels and pinheads
(I presume that this was about relationship to physical objects rather thna size?)
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Date: 2010-09-28 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-09-29 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 05:27 pm (UTC)(I was also going to suggest that the "elder race" were the angels, but I see that about half a dozen other people have beaten me to it. :)
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Date: 2010-09-29 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 08:25 am (UTC)I think there are several settings of the words (see here for one, and perhaps with more familiar words). The most famous setting of the whole poem is by Edward Elgar (see here).
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Date: 2010-09-29 08:28 am (UTC)