5 THE NORTHmAN

BY JOHN HENRY, CARDINAL NEWMAN

John Henry, Cardinal Newman (1801–1890): An eminent English theologian and author. He left the Church of England for the Roman Catholic Church, and one of his chief works is the “Apologia pro Vita Sua” (“Apology for His Life”), in which he defends his religious course. He wrote many sermons, theological works, poems, and some volumes of “Historical Sketches,” from one of which this extract is made.

Though of the same stock as the Saxons, the Northmen were gifted with a more heroic cast of soul. Perhaps it was the peculiar scenery and climate of their native homes which suggested to them such lofty aspirations and such enthusiastic love of dangers and hardship. The stillness of the desert may fill the fierce Arawith a rapturous enjoyment, and the interminable forests of Britain or Germany might breathe profound mystery; but the icy mountains and the hoarse resounding waves of the North nurtured warriors of a princely stature, both in mind and body, befitting the future occupants of European thrones

Cradled in the surge and storm, they were spared the temptation of indolence and luxury; they neither worshiped the vivifying powers of nature with the Greek, nor with the Sabian did they kiss the hand to the bright stars of heaven; but while they gave a personal presence and volition to the fearful or the beautiful spirits which haunted the mountains or lay in ambush in the mists, they understood by daily experience that good could not be had by the mere wishing, and they made it a first article in their creed that their reward was future and that their present must be toil.

The most obvious and prominent point of character common to the Northman and Norman is the peculiarity of their warlike heroism. War was their life; it was almost their chief good; good in itself, though nothing came of it.

The impetuosity of the Norman relieved itself in extravagances and raises a smile from its very intensity, at one time becoming a religious fanaticism, at another a fantastic knight-errantry. His very worship was to do battle; his rite of sacrifice was a passage of arms. He couched his lance to prove the matter of fact that his lady was the beautifullest of all conceivable women; he drew his sword on the blasphemer to convince him of the sanctity of the Gospel; and he passed abruptly from demolishing churches and burning towns to the rescue of the holy sepulcher from the unclean infidel

In the Northmen, too, this pride of demolition had been their life revel. They destroyed for destroying’s sake, because it was good to destroy; it was a display of power, and power made them gods. They seemed as though they were possessed by some inward torment which needed outlet, and which degraded them to the madness of their own Berserkers in the absence of some nobler satisfaction. Their fearful activity was their mode of searching out something great, they knew not what, the idea of which haunted them. It impelled them to those sudden descents and rapid careerings about a country, which, even in modern times, has broken out in the characteristic energy ofGustavus andCharles Ⅻ of Sweden.

Hence, too, when they had advanced some steps in the path of civilization, from this nature or habit of restlessness, they could not bear neutrality; they interfered actively in the cause of right in proportion as they gave up the practice of wrong. When they began to find out that piracy was criminal, insteadof having recourse to peaceful occupations, they found an occupationcognate to piracy itself in putting piracy down.

Kings, indeed, would naturally undertake such a mission, for piracy interfered with their sovereign power and would not die of itself. It was not wonderful thatHarold ,Haco the Good, andSt. Olaf should hang the pirates and destroy their vessels, but the point of our remark is this, that they pursued the transgressors with the same furious zeal with which they had heretofore committed the same transgressions themselves. It is sometimes said that a reformed profligate is the sternestof moralists; and these Northern rovers, on their conversion, did penance for their own piracy by a relentless persecution of pirates.

They became knight-errants on water, devoting themselves to hardship and peril in the protection of the peaceful merchant. Under Canute of Denmark, a confraternity was formed with this object. Its members characteristically began by seizing on vessels not their own for its prosecution, and imposing compulsory loans on the wealthy trader for their outfit, though they professedto indemnify their owners out of the booty ultimately secured. Before they went on board, theycommunicated ; they lived soberly and severely, restricting themselves to as few followers as was possible. When they found Christians in the captured ships, they set them at liberty, clothed them, and sent them home. In this way as many as eight hundred pirate vessels were destroyed.

Sometimes, in spite of their reformation, they still pursued a pirate’s trade; but it was a modified piracy. They put themselves under laws in the exercise of it, and waged war against those who did not observe them. These objects of their hostility were whatTurner calls “indiscriminate” pirates. “Their peculiar and self-chosen task,” he says, “was to protect the defenceless navigator, and to seek and assail the indiscriminate plunderer. The pirate gradually became hunted down as the general enemy of the human race.”

He goes on to mention some of the laws imposed by Hjalmar upon himself and some other discriminating pirates, to the effect that they would protect trade and agriculture, and that they would not eat raw flesh

Now, in what we have been drawing out, there is enough to show both the elementary resemblance of character, and yet the vast actualdissimilitude , between the Scandinavian and the Norman.