The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-28
THE MEANING OF POE's RAVEN
By ". E.5vAssAR

calamitous. defeats the monarchs were obliged to visit Jerusalem as pilgrims in-
 stead of conquerors. and returned to Eu- rope without honors- and almostAWithout followers"
 But the period of the second. crusade
 marks the ushering in of the ecclesiasti-
 cal power with precedence over the tenn poral, the subjugation of state to church. authority, the hope. as the superior of all
 earthly monarohs. the ruler of all the states of Christendom. The churchman, and the theology he taught in the middle of the 18th century is symboized by the
 raven. And what were the personal traits or the clergy, and the. dogmas taught,
 which justify such a symbol? The raven was the companion of the Scandinavian god Odin. The leaders of the church III the 12th century were descendants of Odin, who had been worshipped by the Saxons, Teutons, Danes and Norsemen. As Christianity marched northward 1t em- braced those peoples and inevitably ab- sorbed many of their beliefs, and the Christian character of the converts re- tained the ingrained peculiarities of the Norsemen. Christianity had opposed the religion of the Scandinavians for oentu- riesAb missionaries and with the sword, but had not yet extirpated it, and it's gloom, cruelty, devil-worship, superstition, fatalism and love of carnage tainted and darkened the religion of Christ. That rude, brave and sincere Norseman. Olaf the Saint, put an end by preaching and the sword, to organism in Norway about the close of the 11th century, and the 18th and 18th centuries were devoted to the upbuilding of the +scross. The pantheon of Morse gods, the great temple at Up- sala, in Sweden, was destroyed by fire in the 18th century, and about the timefof the second crusade against the Saracens in Palestine the king of Sweden organ ized a crusade against the pagans of Fin land. So the shadow of that gloomy re- ligion of the north still darkened the be- liefs of the Norsemen's descendants. To die natural death had been a disgrace to the Norseman. TO die braveiy fighting in battle was to gain admission to the Morse heaven, ValhaIla, where the nights were spent in joyous battle and the days in drinking beer and cursing the wounds for battle the succeeding nights, until the last great battle at the end of the world when the fires of Muspel would overflow and destroy the world, Valhalla, hell, the gods, the demons, everything.
 While Olaf was spreading Christianity In Norway the vikings were pushing their prows up the Seine, and conquering
 Normandy. With the raven, their sable emblem, on their crests;they pillaged and
 fought, plying the sword and torch. From Normandy they conquered England and ruled 1t with despotio sway from their European castles and from them they spread thei rarms southward, conquered
 Italy, imprisoned the pope, treated with
 him and became the standard-bearers Of
 the church. Thus the raven, emblem of IrapacitY and death, cast the shadow of it's black plumes over church and state in Christendom. When the Normans oon- quered a country they divided the land among their nobles, and made their broth CTS bishops. The leaders of the first cru sade were conspicuously Norman princes Godfrey, Tancred, Raymond, Bohemond and many others.
 In the 12th century the power of the
 church was the greatest in its history.
 The popes deposed kings and excommu- nicated them, dooming them to eternal torment. Early In that century the 'in-
 vsstiture" quarrel between the popes and the kings was decided in favor of the former. who thereby obtained the right to appoint bishops who sat in parliaments
 and otherwise used great power. The power of the church was enforced by
 arms. but chiefly by terror of hell fire.
 The popes gained their power, says John
 Lord, "by an appeal to the fears of men
 the dread of accommodation and conse-
 quent torments in hell, which was the great governing Idea of the middle ages.
 the means by which the clergy controlled
 the laity." And by the dissolution of sins
 the church, gained immense wealth, which
 was considered to belong to the monas- teries, many of which were palatial, but was used by the abbots in riotous or at
 least luxurious tving. while the monks endured lasts and penances. All, how ever, professed VOWS of poverty, obe- dienoe mad chastity. Again to quote Lord: My VOW of poverty, said one of those lordly abbots who generally rode on mules with gilded brides and with hawks on their wrists-'has given me ten thousand crowns year, and my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of sovereign prince" ]" At the beginning of The
 Raven the tendency to honor with world ly titles officers of the church is indi- cated by the terms in which the spirit ad- dresses the unseen visitor-n the 12th century were the priest and abbess first called "sir' and madam" and then too. was the Virgin Mary first called Ma donna," Our Lady.
 Open here I flung the shutter
 When, with many flirt and futter, III 'hoio etePpeu d Stdteiy Raven Of the saintly days of yore."
 The "bust of pallas'' In the poem sym-
 bolizes the classical method of argumen- tation upon which the orthodox theoIo-
 gians of medieval times sustained their
 narrow minded, hide-bound dogmas-the
 Aristotelian principles of logic,
 ''ft for naught
 But perches for the black and fatal ravens"
 The quaint and unreasonable appear-
 ance of that awkward effort of the medic val disputants to initiate Aristotle. "tv-
 rant of souls that think; and the ludi-
 crous inconsistency between the profess
 sions and practices of the Iordly church.
 men at first excited the mirth of critics
 within the clergy, for all thinkers then
 were believers. the Dark Ages were called
 the Ages of Faith.
 Then this ebony bird beguiling
 My sad fancy into smiling,
 By the grave and stern decorum or the countenance 1t wore
 Though thy crest be shorn and shaven Thou, l said, art sure no craven. dhastly grim and ancient Raven .-~
 wandering from the nightly shore Tell me what thy lordly name Is on the Nights Plutonian shorep" The "Plutonian shorer belonped to tbe Homeric age and the Dark Ages The learned Greeks, whether like Pvtberora Q they believed that tba oor4L