The Bull Against the Enemy of the Anglican Race

by Frederick Rolfe

We, in the name of God, Hadrian the Seventh, the Paparch, the Apostle of the Apostolic See and the of Roman city, by divine clemency reigning, wish to make known to all to whomsoever these presents shall come that a certain Anglican, by name Nicholas Crabbe, a student of human and divine affairs, a lover of his Motherland, excellent in reverence toward his King and toward the Roman Office of Blessed Peter Prince of Apostles, has exposed to Us the iniquity of an individual, by name Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro,^[1] a baron of the United Kingdom and proprietor and editor of a journal called Katheemerangareion, denouncing the said baron as an hysteriamonger and enemy of the Anglican Race in that he (swayed by a proper devil) insidiously disseminates exciting things, on six mornings of each week in the United Kingdom and Anglia Overseas, and on seven mornings of each week among Anglicans and others on the Continent of Europe, secretly sapping the virility and triturating the solidity and upsetting the gravity of the race of Anglicans. For, as is well known, the said Anglican Race has been distinguished for prominence in the sterling qualities of virility and solidity and gravity during the last four centuries at least. But, now, this denounced baron, presumptuous cultivator of hysteria, diabolically engages in weakening and emasculating and harassing and embarrassing and distracting and impeding the moral fibre and the intellectual operation and the physical fortitude and the psychical equipoise of individual Anglicans old and young and male and female, in Anglia and in all Anglican dominions on this orb of earth beside elsewhere.

Wherefore, the said Nicholas Crabbe, desirous of restringing the unutterable iniquity of the said Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sanctro Petro before the time when the said admirable Anglican character shall have been by him ruined irretrievably, has deprecated Us that We should most grievously molest the said baronial hysteriamonger by damning him with the javelins of Our apostolic maledictions.

Whose petition benevolently receiving, We, Hadrian the Paparch, a plebeian lifted from the stercorary and placed above princes, being as prompt and eager to reward and dignify all plebeians and patricians possessing aristocratic affections as We are swift and fierce to abuse and abase all patricians and plebeians possessing ochlocratic affections, have done the said maledictions in manner following, with other matters thereto pertinent, all written by the proper hand of Lord Ermenegildo, Our archbishop and cardinal-deacon of Saint Vitus the Dancer and his Companions Martyrs.

And We have done the said maledictions cordially because Our Sacred Congregation of Timeetephimeridoon, having studied certain files of the said journal Katheemerangareion and the denunciation of the same written by Our well-beloved and trusty son Nicholas Crabbe, has reported to Us these particulars:

• i. The denounced journal is on sale everywhere (continent of Europe and overseas included) for the insignficant sum of one halfpenny, whereby a very vast (indeed in pride it is alleged the largest) circulation is secured:

• ii. Concerning the content of the said journal, The Fathers of Our said Sacred Congregation have judged it to be comparable with the content of a sink or a gutter or a sewer, where everything which is atrocious and shameful and ridiculous and vain and inane and useless and exasperating and inflammatory and defiling and noxious and so forth collects and is celebrated, infecting the vicinity — for the said baronial proprietor and editor, pursuing his diabolical machinations against Anglican Virtue (namely, against the Sum of the Psychical, Intellectual, and Physical Excellences of Anglicans,) yelled about Massacres in Pekin when no massacres were there, and, moreover, he (forsooth) temerariously attempted to teach the grandmother of Anglican universities (widow of polite letters) to suck eggs, sending a naive credulous representative to be hideously inebriated and commodiously deluded (on matters connected with Ragging) by earnest ingenuous members of Our College of Saint Mary Magdalen:

• iii. And, the said Fathers of Our Sacred Congregation have laid at Our feet a categorical analysis of the content of the said journal for the last ten years, wherein is demonstrated nothing conducive to the soul's salvation or the body's sanity or the fine culture and equipoise of the mind, but solely histories of horrors, catalogues of crimes, administrations to vanity, promulgations of agitating notions, fulsome flatteries of certain smart persons (generally meretricious and particularly vulgar,) extremely unintelligent anticipations under the name of news with their subsequent shameless refutations, deliberate lies done diurnally for dirty dross.

Since the three-times and four-times accursed invention of the art of printing, and its application by the turpilucricupidous (baronial or otherwise) primarily for gain of gold and secondarily for gain of power, both by means of the concupiscence of human nature ever (as Saint Paul says) avid of some novelty, it has been the custom of Our apostolic predecessors (from Alexander the Sixth, Paparch, of magnificent invincible memory) to muzzle these devils of powers by censures, maledictions, excommunications, interdicts, and all commodious anathemas, whose example We are not slow to follow; and We will make a mild beginning, while reserving far more awful fulminations for the reduction of incorrigibility.

It is not essential, either to temporal politeness or to spiritual progress, that Christians should know or note the gests of mummers, buffoons, misers, innkeeprs, gladiators, snobs, bounders, the criminal classes, or the Set fatuously dubbed Smart, all self-damned. Still less is it desirable that Our well-beloved children should upset their own equanimity by the perusal of gasped and snipped and hiccoughed canards, or torpidify their divinely-donated faculties by reading feuilletons of great dramatic power, vilely and cheaply printed. None of these things, nor indeed aught of like kind, ought to concern Christian men and women by one jot or tittle. For such matters are of the earth, very earthy in fact, inevitably tending to dull dirtiness. And ye, well-beloved wearers of white robes, ye are but metoikoi, resident aliens on this orb of earth for a very little while and having nothing whatever to do with it, excepting to keep yourselves unspotted from its filthy contaminations.

Perpend, then, it is Our will that ye perpend well, these, Our hard sayings, that your free intellects may willingly assent to and sanction and gladly confirm Our commandments.

Far be it from Us to deny (for We are not yet quite blind, nor entirely stupid, nor more tedious than Our apostolature involves,) that there are journals which do purvey news of the kind which is fit for printing, conveniently ordered, and embellished with such expositions of salient events (in the shape of leading articles) as may assist in the formation of correct opinions. Such journals are produced by persons of liberal leaning and good manners and special knowledge, who merit (and receive) Our approbation for that they are diligent (according to their lights) in honourable business, and do not abuse their powerful position for the sake of personal advantage, but are content to toil late and early and arduously and very nobly at paltry pittances never exceeding three thousand pounds sterling a year. And such journals are, Times, Weekly Edition of Times, Morning Post, Pall Mall Gazette, Globe, Punch, Academy, Saturday Review, New York Times, Boston Transcript, Popolo Romano, Gazzettino di Venezia, Sioz Tonin de Bona Grazia and Figaro de Paris. And it is Our will, well-beloved children, that ye shall select these, and these only, as commodious for your safety, when concupiscence of reading journals shall molest you.

Moreover, by way of giving a concrete expression to Our apostolic detestation of the iniquity of the said Domnus Aluredos de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro, a baron of the United Kingdom and proprietor and editor of the said journal called Katheemerangareion, We will erect a rampart for defence from and for offence against his infernal onslaught.

Wherefore, We, by these presents, do create and constitute and confirm a new Order of Chivalry, under the Candid Protection of Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer, and having the following Fundamental Constitutions:

i The Candid Order of Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer shall consist of a Grandmaster, and a company of Knights and Ladies, and a company of Esquires and Women:

ii. The Grandmaster of the said Candid Order is the Roman Pontiff, in Whom is vested the absolute sovereignty and sole government of the said Order:

iii. The Grandmaster may select six Knights and six Ladies of sympathy and discretion for His counsel and comfort, and such Knights and Ladies are to be called Knights-Magnates and Ladies-Magnates respectively having precedence in the Order next after the Grandmaster:

iiii. Knights and Ladies of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel are all such baptized Christians who shall have sworn the Greater Oath of the said Order, confirming the same with their names and sigils, and who shall have been inscribed in the Golden Book of the said Order with a record of Accolade:

v. Esquires and Women of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel are all such baptized Christians who shall have sworn the Lesser Oath of the said Order, confirming the same with their names and sigils, and who shall have been inscribed in the Silver Book of the said Order:

vi. Here follows the Greater Oath of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel:

I (name) now swear to Almighty God and to Saint Mary the Virgin and to Saint Peter Prince of Apostles and to Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer and to you Lord (name) Grandmaster of this Candid Order, promising obedience, that I will never knowingly read or touch or see or hear the journal called Katheemerangareion, owned and edited by Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro, and that I will never knowingly permit it to be brought into or to remain in any place from which I can reject it, and that I will never knowingly remain a moment of time in any place where it may be: so help me God and Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint Peter Prince of Apostles and Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer:

vii. Here follows the Lesser Oath of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel:

I (name) now swear to Almighty God and to Saint Mary the Virgin and to Saint Peter Prince of Apostles and to Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer and to you Lord (name) Grandmaster of this Candid Order, promising obedience, that I will never knowingly permit the journal called Katheemerangareion, owned and edited by Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro, to be brought into or to remain in any place from which I can reject it, and that when (swayed by the devil) I am constrained to read the said journal I will read it in a secret place, with shame dispersing it immediately after such reading in an efficacious and suitable manner: so help me God and Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint Peter Prince of Apostles and Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer:

viii. The Cross of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel is a Cross Ansata in burnished silver having its outer angles intagliate with four flaming lilies: the Cross of Esquires and Women shall have a length and breadth of two centimetres: the Cross of Knights and Ladies shall have a length and breadth of four centimetres: the Cross of Knights-Magnates and Ladies-Magnates shall have a length and breadth of six centimetres: the Cross of the Grandmaster shall have a length and breadth of eight centimetres: and all Crosses may be worn on a gold riband of tissue four centimetres in width or on a gold chain one centimetre in width:

viiii. The Vexillum of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel is an oblong of two squares of gold tissue, one square insigned with the Cross of the Order within a bordure of flaming lilies, the other cut into six streamers powdered with flaming lilies, cross and bordure and powderings being of silver tissue:

x. Our well-beloved and trusty son Nicholas Crabbe and all Our bishops and all Our heads of religious communities throughout the world are required to swear and to transmit to Us as Grandmaster the Greater Oath of the Candid Order duly signed and sealed within ninety days and ninety nights from the date of this present constitution: failure will produce a summons to the Apostolic threshold to hear a word:

xi. Our well-beloved and trusty son Nicholas Crabbe and all Our bishops and all our heads of religious communities throughout the world, having qualified as aforesaid for inscription in the Golden Book of the Order, are to be taken as duly accoladed, and are named Knights-Founders and Ladies-Founders respectively of the said Order, and they will instantly enrol and accolade Knights and Ladies and enrol Esquires and Women in accordance with these present constitutions:

xii. And We name our trusty and well-beloved son Nicholas Crabbe as Our Locumtenens and Signifer of the Candid Order to hold and to exercise the said offices without let or hindrance as long as he shall behave himself well.

The foregoing are the Twelve Immutable Fundamental Constitutions of the Candid Order of Saint Gabriel Archangel and News-Bringer, ordained and promulgated by Us Hadrian the Seventh, the Paparch, the Apostle of the Apostolic See and of the Roman City, the Founder and First Grandmaster of the said Candid Order by Divine Clemency reigning.

Finally, a spirit of pastoral love, even for an errant and obstreporous ram, and a certain sense of neatness and decency, constrain Us to clear away rubbish from the bulwark herein erected against diabolical invasions, and to afflict preliminarily with a few dire things the said Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro, baron of the United Kingdom, proprietor and editor of the journal called Katheemerangareion, arch-hysteriamonger and Enemy of the Anglican Race, as follows:

By the Authority of Almighty God, and by the Potency of Blessed Peter Our Senior, to Whom were given the power of binding and of loosing, and by Our Own ministry also, let the said Domnus Aluredus de Ulmeto de Sancto Petro be excommunicate and anathema and alienate from the thresholds of the Holy Church of God, unless he comes converted to satisfaction. And let all the maledictions written in the Old and New Testaments come upon him, unless he comes converted to emendation. And let him be accursed in his editorial and printing and publishing offices, and in his barony, and in counties, cities, castles, fields, forests, roads, and let the earth be unnavigable by him, and the air unvolitable by him, and let him be deleted from the book of the living, and let him not be inscribed among the just, unless he repents and comes to satisfaction and emendation. Let it all be done. So We ordain: so We command: let Our will be a sufficient reason.

Given at Rome at Saint Peter's on the Vatican Hill, and sealed with the Ring of the Fisherman, this sixty-ninth day of our Supreme Pontificature.

L.S. (Signed) HADRIAN P.M. vii.

(Countersigned)

MARIO CARD. Sec. L.S.

GEORGE CARD. Vicecanc. L.S.

GERALD CARD. Dat. L.S.

ROBERT CARD. Poenit. L.S.

Footnote

1. Untranslateable.