ON January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued the bull Sicut Duhum, which forbade the enslavement of Africans in the Canary Islands, then held by Portugal. The pope was the most significant moral voice against the burgeoning slave trade, well before it was introduced to the New World.

“Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope states that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their home and enslaved:

“They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery (subdiderunt perpetuae servituti), sold then to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them . . . Therefore We … exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons, soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them, and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands … who have been made subject to slavery (servituri subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money.” [4]

[Source]

Sicut Duhum was the first of numerous papal bulls and encyclicals attempting to end slavery and the slave trade in Africa and the Americas. Much misery —  including perhaps the misery of modern racial egalitarianism which has helped bring us to the verge of civilizational collapse — would have been prevented if these teachings had been heeded.

TRUMP is the likely winner in November. He’s already elected, barring injury or death.

Here’s a comment I found on Gab, edited, that predicts what is in store with Trump:

“My guess is the cabal will reinstall Trump in their November ritual. They need the Pied Piper of the goyim on the American (((right))) to maneuver them into whatever ops are planned. The goyim would be less pliable under a Democrat and 2025-29 is too important for the cabal to deal with resistance. With the (((left))) agitated they’ll be able to get big disruptions and chaos … in urban areas. Meanwhile Trump can be used for all the massive ops coming: Freedom cities, Disease X, draft for Middle East war for Greater Israel, negotiated (((peace))) to settle Ukraine war hoax and establish heavenly Jerusalem (Khazaria), market crash, grid down, perhaps martial law, food chain take over, shift back from border flood to “legal” immigration flood, and even the more outlandish possibilities like alien invasion. They can ramp up the mass shooting hoaxes under Trump to put the right in a bad spot and Trump will be made to cave quickly. I think Trump will sell out the goyim so fast and across the board it will be a thing to behold. There will be no restraint to it. He will complete most of agenda 2030 with total obedience to his masters.”

The Snake
Donald Trump’s favorite poem

On her way to work one morning
Down the path alongside the lake
A tender-hearted woman saw a poor half-frozen snake. Read More »

Read More »

GEERTGEN tot Sint Jans John the Baptist in the Wilderness 1490-95

“ST. JOHN in the desert is a true picture of a penitential life; in fact his life was a long martyrdom, and he persevered in it until he was called forth to preach, and to prepare the way of the Lord. His food was locusts and wild honey, he slept on the bare earth, he did not, as St. Jerome says, even build for himself a hut to protect him from the severity of the weather. His occupation during these many years of solitude was uninterrupted prayer, and communion with God. Reflect a moment, my dear young people. St. John the Baptist, a saint you might say by birth, wished to do such severe penance, and we, who have committed terrible sins, are afraid of the least penance and mortification.”

— Fr. Raphael Frassinetti, 1900

Antra deserti

Thou, in thy childhood, to the desert caverns
Fleddest for refuge from the cities’ turmoil,
Where the world’s slander might not dim thy luster,
Lonely abiding.

Camel’s hair raiment clothed thy saintly members;
Leathern the girdle which thy loins encircled;
Locusts and honey, with the fountain-water,
Daily sustained thee.

Oft in past ages, seers with hearts expectant
Sang the far-distant advent of the Daystar;
Thine was the glory, as the world’s Redeemer
First to proclaim him.

Far as the wide world reacheth, born of woman,
Holier was there none than John the Baptist;
Meetly in water laving him who cleanseth
Man from pollution.

Praise to the Father, to the Sole-begotten,
And to the Spirit, equal power possessing,
One God whose glory, through the lapse of ages,
Ever resoundeth. Amen.

Alonso Cano, St John the Baptist; 1634

Hieronymus Bosch, St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
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Read More »

ALAN writes:

I read a funny article last week.  “Fentanyl Arrives in Poland, Shocking Video Captures Its Devastating Effects” was the headline.

The article asserted that Fentanyl is “a drug that has ravaged the United States and taken hundreds of thousands of lives.” It is “a drug that is increasingly infiltrating Europe.”

So I wondered: On which flight did it arrive? And what a remarkable fellow Mr. Fentanyl must be: He “ravages”, he ‘takes lives”, and he “infiltrates”.  My, he is a busy fellow.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!! Read More »

THIS 1937 interview with ex-slave Molly Ammonds near Eufaula, Alabama was conducted by Gertha Couric and John Morgan Smith, as part of the Federal Works Progress Administration’s compilation of slave interviews:

I walked along a dusty road under the blazing sun. In the shade of a willow tree a Negro man was seated with his legs drawn up and his arms crossed upon his knees. His head rested face downward upon his arms, as he had the aspect of one in deep slumber. Beside him munching on a few straggly weeds, a cantankerous mule took little notice of his surroundings.

“Can you tell me where Aunt Molly Ammonds lives?” I asked in a loud voice.

The Negro stirred slowly, finally raising his head, and displaying three rabbit teeth, he accompanied his answer with a slight gesture of his hand.

“Yassuh, dar her house raght across de road; de house wid de climbin’ roses on hit.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Yassuh,” was the drawled response, and the Negro quickly resumed his former posture.

Aunt Molly Ammonds is as gentle as a little child. Her voice is soft and each phrase measured to the slow functionings of her aged mind. Read More »

“PRAY, even if you feel nothing, see nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer.”

—- Julian of Norwich

“MARRIAGE is an institution for the perpetuation of the spiritual life of the species. Unlike the more durable elements of nature, the everlasting hills, the solid rocks, organisms are frail and short-lived. They bloom and they wither. It is curious to reflect how soft or brittle is the material of which they consist — flesh and bones that crumble at death into a little heap of dust. Organisms, therefore, need constantly to be renewed or reproduced if the species is to continue; and this is as true of the human species as of any other. But in the case of human beings, spiritual factors enter in and constitute an enormous difference between them and the inferior creatures.

“In the lower ranks of life the individual exists for the sake of the species. Nature has implanted the strong attraction of sex, as a lure, to accomplish her ulterior purpose, that of the continuance of the species to which the mating individuals belong. Unconsciously they serve her ends. Among human beings precisely the opposite becomes true in proportion as the sex relation is ennobled. The more it is ennobled, the more is the continuance of the life of the species made the occasion of furthering the spiritual interests of the individual, of conducing to the highest and subtlest development of individuality.”

— Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce; 1915

FROM The Negro in Africa and America (1902) by Joseph Alexander Tillinghast:

In 1899, at the town of Fayetteville, N. C, a silk mill was established by an able mulatto, Mr. T. W. Thurston, acting as agent for the silk manufacturing interests at Patterson, N. J. Within a short time there were 400 operatives at work with 10,000 spindles. It was avowedly an experiment with negro labor, and it ” has proved a signal success.” Let us note carefully the conditions upon which success has depended. A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, writing under date of October 27, 1900, says: ” Mr. Thurston, who is evidently a man of ability and strong character and well educated, has a theory of his own in regard to the way in which a negro mill should be managed, and it is of a somewhat startling character.” He then quotes Thurston, who, after stating that his operatives have proved quite satisfactory, adds:

“But no one can make a success of a mill by applying white methods to colored people. With the latter there is but one rule to follow, that of the strictest discipline. Call it military despotism, if you will. There are no indulgences in this mill. Kindness would be construed as weakness and advantage taken of it to the detriment of our work. Faults and irregularities are severely punished.”

The correspondent then drew out the fact that this discipline takes the form of whipping. Read More »

FROM Ernest Sevier Cox’s 1937 book, White America:

“During the centuries of contact, the white man has looked upon the Negro either as a case of hardened degeneracy or he has gone wild in the other extreme of expecting the Negro to assume equal rank with the Caucasian. Both theories are wrong. Possibly equally so. To deny the Negro the right to develop according to natural laws is unjust; to expect him to develop as a Caucasian is a species of sentimental insanity. The one overlooks that he is human, the other ignores that he is a race. He is human and should not be denied the right to work out his own salvation. He is a fully constituted race and like other races, is possessed of ineradicable race instincts and tendencies, and may work out his salvation along race lines only. This understanding of the Negro and the Negro problem will be at the bottom of any rational dealing with the Negro and the problem he constitutes to civilization.

“In the Ideal Negro State the Negro will develop as a Negro, in accord with his race instincts and capacities; but he may need white guidance in the first stages of his independence. Heretofore the white man has made the Negro work for the white man’s advantage. In the ideal Negro State, the white man, if there be need, may direct the Negro’s work for the Negro’s welfare. Heretofore the white man has received chief profit from the Negro’s labor; under a rational system of developing the Negro the latter alone will profit from his toil. Read More »

THE CATARACT OF LODORE
by Robert Southey

“How does the water
Come down at Lodore?”
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And ’twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King. Read More »

Bionca Ellis smiled when in court recently on charges of stabbing a three-year-old to death.

“WE are prepared to believe that the African has almost no sensibility to suffering in others, nor compassion for them. Such refinements of the social spirit have never been developed among these peoples. [Alfred Burdon] Ellis thinks that their constant familiarity with bloody scenes of torture and death in connection with religious ceremonies or witchcraft executions, has rendered them exceptionally callous and pitiless in the presence of human agony and pain. The exhibition of sentiments of pity by white persons is a standing puzzle to them. After a description of some of the frightful cruelties practised upon war prisoners, Ellis tells that

‘the Ashantis were much surprised that the missionaries should exhibit any emotion at such spectacles; and, on one occasion when they went to give food to some starving children, the guards angrily drove them back.’ He adds further: ‘Nor is it to prisoners and aliens alone that such barbarity is exhibited by the northern tribes, for an equal indifference is shown to the sufferings of their own people. Servants or slaves, who may fall sick, are driven out into the bush to die or recover as best they may; and the infirm or helpless are invariably neglected, if not ill-treated. In the village of Abankoro the missionaries saw an orphan boy about five years old, who went about unnoticed and reduced to a skeleton. He was thus neglected because he could not speak, and was regarded as an idiot. He cried for joy when some food was given him, and the kindness of the missionaries to him astonished the people.’

“Such incidents might be cited almost without end from the various accounts of West Africa.

“The lowest level of unsocialized feeling and practice is seen in cannibalism, which once prevailed almost universally, but is now confined within certain tribes…”

—  Joseph Alexander Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America (1902)

FROM William Thomson’s 1842 memoir, A Tradesman’s Travels in the United States and Canada, in the Years 1840, 1841, and 1842:

I took particular notice how masters treated the old slaves after they were unable to work in the fields. Their laws provide that they shall be fed and clothed; but I found that a better feeling than necessity prompted the planters to minister to the wants of their aged servants. They have their houses, blankets, shoes, clothing, and their allowance of corn, the same as prime hands. I knew some of them that had been toddling about for twenty years after they were unable to work. Many of these old hands keep themselves in tobacco, molasses, etc., by feeding a pig, or raising a few chickens. To feed them, they will cultivate a little patch of ground, but as frequently steal corn from “Massa” for this purpose; and, after all, if the planter’s family want to buy any of their eggs or chickens, they will not sell them to them one cent cheaper than the regular market price. These old hands are a sort of privileged persons, and are never abused or neglected.

BILL G. writes:

Your recent post on white guilt from 6/5 had me remember a neighbor we had in a mixed neighborhood in St. Louis county (near Ferguson).  During the late 70’s my parents had an economic set back and we moved into my great grandmother’s house which had recently been vacated when she moved into a nursing home. The neighborhood was comprised of mostly empty-nester whites and younger black families. It is now all black.

The black family who lived behind us had a mother who was quite friendly and had a huge presence in the neighborhood. I would hang out with her kids with whom I attended school as I was a free range latchkey kid with parents who were not home until evening.  She would make us fried bologna sandwiches and occasionally bring us along to her church in north St. Louis city where she would work on some weekday activity while we ran around the building. I remember her as a very tall, warm-hearted lady who had a voice that carried far.

One day I heard her yelling for my mother over the fence. Read More »

PATRICK O. writes in response to the entry “Golden Boy:”

Lutheran science teacher with a chart depicting the evolution of a Neanderthal man into a human? Well, it certainly wasn’t a Missouri Synod Lutheran, at least not the Lutherans I know. They think, they know that evolution is nonsense. Betcha that Fr. Shudda believed it, though. Perhaps a long-range cause and effect as to why his school was closing. Read More »

MEESHA writes:

I just re-discovered your blog and I am really enjoying your writings. I thought it was interesting that we are reading about the same things at the same time. I was just reading about prolonged slavery and slave memories. I am a black woman myself and I’m re-educating myself on these topics. What I’m finding is that what I learned in public school…of course…is all wrong. I’m finding so many consistent writings of positive stories from slaves and plantation owners that I’m convinced that so much negativity was mainly to destroy the South, its people and the relationships most whites had with blacks. I can go on and on, but I’ll stop there. I just wanted to let you know that I’m really enjoying your blog.