“The Mystery of Romania: By its history faithful to Rome, by religion faithful to Byzantium; by its language tied to the West and by its customs to the East.”
‘Future war’ novels are enjoyable if approached in the proper spirit and read as escapist literature.
Verne’s success in the English-speaking world is remarkable considering the vagaries his work suffered after his death.
The Syriac World introduces Western readers to the ancient riches of the Syriac Christian heritage.
Rather than being opposed to the establishment, these activist foot soldiers provide the street muscle, fierce passion, and raised voices that bureaucrats dare not show.
Both the novel and the memoir touch on themes that are sadly out of fashion today: the brotherhood of arms crossing ethnic and cultural divides, individual bravery in battle, and the manly quest to build empires.
One only hopes that the current wave of political masochism in America will crest and that elites will understand that you cannot build a stable future by destroying the past or demonizing your heritage.
For today’s conservatives enduring the assaults of the constant neo-Jacobin revolution of today, the adventures of Manfred Arcane are seductively reactionary.
Although the book is properly a mosaic of voices— two personalities dominate, both on the battlefield and in the documentation. The first is the heroic Christian military commander Hunyadi. The second figure is far less remembered today, the Franciscan friar Saint John of Capistrano, sometimes called the Soldier Saint although the only “weapons” he carried were a crucifix and a banner.
Beneath the tales of Almanzor’s campaigns is an intriguing subtext which seems to subvert preconceived modern Muslim and Christian notions of what medieval warfare between the two great religions was actually like in Al-Andalus.
One figure worthy of rediscovery, especially for those of a conservative or religious inclination, is the French soldier and writer Ernest Psichari who converted during his time as a soldier between 1909 and 1912, in what is today Mauritania.
