The medieval synthesis of power and poetry depended on men willing to use force in service of order.
Yet force alone was never sufficient.
The sword required the Cross, but the Cross did not make the sword unnecessary.
This is the essential tension embodied by the baptised barbarian.
Christianity does not perfect the warrior by rendering him incapable of violence, but by making him master of that capacity through the cultivation of natural and supernatural virtue.
The savage is violent because his passions command him, the coward is peaceful because he fears danger, but the Western man is capable of force while remaining governed by something higher than force. His strength is disciplined by justice, his violence restrained by reason, and his furor subordinated to caritas.
Both principles are necessary.
Force without Christian charity degenerates into brutality, but charity severed from force becomes weakness, and while one destroys civilisation from without, the other destroys civilisation from within.
The baptised barbarian stands between these extremes and built the civilisation we have inherited.
Modern man, however, having rejected both the vitality and the faith that built and sustained his civilisation becomes a barbarian stripped of grandeur: appetite without asceticism, aggression without honour, compassion without courage, and desire without destiny.
In losing his faith and his capacity for violence, he has forfeited the world their synthesis created.
To recover the West, recover the baptised barbarian, and it begins with you.
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