Reading in Exile

Over the last few months, I've begun praying from the Divine Office (in the form promulgated in 1911 by St. Pius X), trying to pray a few hours each day. There are many things to recommend this practice, but one little joy is the praying of the Martyrology at the hour of Prime. (I know one can pray the Martyrology in the context of the new Liturgy of the Hours , but it was wonderful to find it directly incorporated into the liturgy in the Office ; I appreciate being made to do good things.) After the hymn, psalms, Scripture passage, responsory, and some prayers, one reads the Martyrology for the next day, thereby getting ready for those saints that one will honor on the morrow. The Martyrology lists all of the saints honored by the Church for a given day--not only those on the universal calendar whose feasts are celebrated at Mass, but all of them, which is quite a few! To pray the Martyrology is to feel oneself surrounded by that "great cloud of witnesses", and to hon...

The Western Catholic intellectual tradition is built as it were in layers of texts, with one writer commenting upon another, and then further writers commenting upon that one. Consider, for example, the following chain of commentaries: the Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry wrote his Isagoge , which was a commentary on and introduction to parts of Aristotle's logical texts (his Organon ); St. Boethius, in turn, wrote a commentary on the Isagoge , as well as on parts of Aristotle's Organon e.g. the Categories and the De interpretatione . Peter Abelard also wrote a commentary on the Isagoge as well as on various parts of the Organon , but his Isagoge commentary is in large part a commentary on Boethius' commentary on the Isagoge . Abelard in turn influenced later commentators on these logical works. To "comment" is to engage in a paradigmatically traditionary actitivty. It is not merely to merely explain the meaning of the text on which one is commenting. Rather, i...