In “Sintesi di dottrina della razza”, Evola listed
three great Aryan civilisations:
(1) The Vedic civilisation
(2) The Roman civilisation
(3) The Nordic-Roman Middle Ages
The reasons for the inclusion of items (1)
and (2) are obvious. (3) may or may not be obvious, depending on the nature of
the relationship of Christianity, and in particular the Catholic Church, with
the feudal society of the Middle Ages. Evola addresses this relationship in the
1934 issues of Vita Nova. The only on-line reference is a French translation
at:
http://askesis.hautetfort.com/archive/2006/07/19/chevalerie.html
I will provide a brief summary of its main
points:
The title in English is: "Phratry
of the Sentinels of the Future".
Now many Catholics
look back at the Middle Ages and see it as the high point in the history of the
Church. However, Evola, in this article, claims that, on the contrary, the
Middle Ages at its core were pagan.
First, he points to Feudalism as an hierarchical social
arrangement which he opposes to Christian sociality or collectivity. Feudalism
is based on two principles: (1) the free individual and (2) the loyalty of the
warrior. He goes in to characterise this system as masculine, while
Christianity is feminine.
Evola then claims that the system recalls the secret
tradition of the Empire, where the spiritual and secular natures are united. The
Church separated these domains, claiming spiritual authority to itself and the
secular to the Empire. Evola points out that there cannot be two suns --
feudalism brings back the idea of divine-royalty of the pagan Nordic-Romans.
The next section deals with the meaning of Chivalry which
has the same relation to the Empire and the priesthood to the Church. From a
metaphysical point of view, Chivalry is an initiation into a type of ascesis --
of the warrior, the aristocrat, the hero. Evola then discusses the Templars and
answers objections that the Knighthood was actually Christian.
The final section deals with the Graal, which Evola
claims is merely the Christian adaptation of a pre-Christian, pagan theme.
Evola has dealt with this legend more fully elsewhere.
Evola concludes again by denying the Middle Ages were the
Golden Age of the Church but, quite to the contrary, they brought back the most
radiant mark of ancient civilisations. He quotes the Ghibelline Dante with
approval: "Christ himself was a Roman."
However, this is not the end of the story
and a few more thoughts can be added to Evola’s telling.
We can start with Charles Maurras whose
thesis is that the “classical edifice of Latin civilisation and Catholic
hierarchical structure” is “attacked and upset by a new
mentality”. (Molnar, “The Decline of the Intellectual”) So,
although Evola ultimately rejects the Catholic Church because it is too
Christian and Semitic, Maurras -- despite his status as an unbeliever –
promotes the Catholic Church because of it opposition to Semitic influence and
closeness to Roman values. This is not necessarily a contradiction, as Evola
asserts: “The thesis of Charles Maurras is also ours: pagan Rome had created
[emphasis in original] Catholicism as a system of order in opposition to
Christian anarchy (“Imperialismo Pagano”, Italian edition).
In other words, the Nordic-Roman leaders
created Catholicism out of the raw materials of primitive Christianity. This,
in effect, is identical to the Church’s claim to infallibility, which is
no more and no less than the right to define Christianity. In the Sorelian
sense, this is the power-idea that unifies a civilisation.
So the feudal system and values may be
inconsistent with primitive Christianity, but it is not so clear that they are
inconsistent with Catholicism. The Catholic Brazilian philosopher, Plinio
Correa de Oliveira, is very sensitive to the masculine nature of the Church.
For example, look at this essay in praise of “pagan manliness” to
see that the medieval Church did not seek to eliminate pagan virtues but rather
to perfect them and make them her own.
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/PCO/pagan_manliness.htm
This may be because de Oliveira is a
layman, not a priest, but he decries the feminising element that came into the
Church with the Renaissance. Also, chapter V of his “Revolution and
Counter-Revolution” may be of interest to some on this topic: http://www.tfp.org/what_we_think/rcr_book_online/rcr_intro.html
We must also keep in mind that, despite
Evola’s emphasis on solar spirituality, there is also a legitimate place
for a lunar spirituality. First of all, the priesthood is a valid caste in a
Traditional society and will embody lunar characteristics. Therefore, there is
room both for the hero and for the saint, since – as Evola has consistently
asserted – there is no one law valid for all castes. Furthermore, by the
very nature of a hierarchy, the lower classes will necessarily be lunar –
those who believe, rather than those who know. Evola himself asserts that if
you want to know what pagan spirituality was like among the masses during the
Roman civilisation, you need look no further than the Catholic Church, which is
a close approximation (“Imperialismo Pagano”, German edition). It
should not be surprising that the spiritual beliefs and practices vary among
the castes.
So, the real issue is not whether the
Middle Ages were pagan or Catholic, but rather what is the proper relationship
between the spiritual authority and temporal power. It seems to me that Evola
doesn’t take into account two assumptions; these are more a matter of
definition than of substance, and do not affect his ultimate conclusions.
1)
The Church reserves right to
define Christianity – recall that “pagan Rome had created
Catholicism”. Therefore, there is no higher standpoint from which to
judge the Church, either to call it too semitic or too pagan.
2)
The knightly class decides
whether they are Catholic or not. Indeed, they regarded themselves as Christian
and not pagan. If it appears otherwise from our vantage point today, that is
because we are seeing them in the light of the Renaissance and Reformation, not
as they saw themselves at the time.
In the contest for control of the
power-idea, the priestly caste was ultimately victorious with the destruction
of the Templars. The rest is history.