What hath Cimmeria to do with Jerusalem?
This is a weird one, I’m going to have to ask you to just go along with this…meditation?
I say meditation because I’m not sure it’s a complete thought. I’m certainly not going to stake anything on it, or consider it some great piece of theology. It’s just a meditation. A splinter in the mind, something I want to wiggle out.
I keep a Florilegium, or a commonplace book. I started keeping it in May of 2022. Among the petals are various quotes, sayings, snatches of poetry—anything and everything—that sticks out to me. I’ve got scripture, jokes, historical facts, bits of advice, bits and bobs of fiction I enjoy.
Part of the exercise of keeping a Florilegium is memorization. Its far easier to memorize something that’s been deliberately hand written than it is simply try to recall it.
It also gives some form to my life, like a journal. I know that during the years of 2022 – 2024, I was deeply engrossed in studying the Bible leading up to my Baptism in 2023. So my first volume is mostly scriptural passages intermixed with quotes from GK Chesterton, Bishop Robert Barron, Dorothy Sayers, and the Spiritual Combat.
Towards the end of the book, as 2024 begins, you see more Frank Herbert, Frank Sneed, C.S Lewis, and Robert Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria.
Robert Howard was a poet—a deeply passionate, visceral poet. He was a master of alliteration, especially in his Conan stories.
“The dead are dead, and what has passed is done!”
“…savored too strongly of sorcery for comfort.”
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
When Conan speaks, he has the cadence of rolling thunder or a beating drum, while Howard’s narrative sometimes has the soft silky ‘s’ that cry out to be read aloud. My appreciation for Howard’s character is one of poetry. Conan is resoundingly full of life—pagan life, to be sure, but he springs forth like the poetry of the Iliad or the Odyssey.
There is an eternal, although I suspect, perfectly settled question about the place of Pagan literature in the life of the Christian. Should we indulge in the flights and fancies of the Pagans? The Iliad is akin to a sort of Greek Scriptures, does it have anything of value for the Christ-Follower?
Tertullian, although speaking of Greek Philosophy, said “what hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
“Let me live deep while I can; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultations of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.” – Robert Howard, the Queen of the Black Coast
“… let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate…” for the past several months, when I receive Eucharist, and cross myself and kneel in absolute thanksgiving for this body, given for me, that I may have eternal life, and have it abundantly, this quote keeps coming unbidden to my mind.
Stinging wine on my palate, I muse, as the Blood of Christ, under the species of wine, lingers on my tongue.
The entirety of the quote is pure pagan speculation. Conan is in a discourse about the afterlife with his lover, the Pirate Queen, Bêlit. Conan’s people, the Cimmerians, do not believe in a comforting afterlife. Bêlit does, especially in the various afterlifes offered by the Gods of the Shemites.
Mostly, Bêlit believes:
“There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this too, Conan of Cimmeria…my love is stronger than death! I have lain in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part of your soul! Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you—aye, whether my soul floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the molten flames of hell! I am yours, and all the gods and all their eternities shall never sever us!” – Robert Howard, the Queen of the Black Coast
Bêlit speaks with the eroticism of the Song of Solomon: “set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death,” Song 8: 6RVS2CE.
If the Song of Solomon is about the Eternal Bridegroom and His Bride, longing for each other, then perhaps, Bêlit is no so far off the mark as she may seem. C.S Lewis spoke of the pagan’s “good dreams.”
Perhaps Conan dwells in the same “good dreams” as those of Odysseus and Hector?
Maybe even the Christian is meant to dwell in a world of high adventure in the time before the oceans drank Atlantis.
Perhaps Conan puts before me, as Tolkien says: “the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament…There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth.”
I receive Christ in the Eucharist, and while I am on earth, I am extolled to live deep, to know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, to one day embrace a husband and dwell together as an icon of the Trinity; to fight in the mad exultations of the spiritual battle where the blades flash blue and crimson, until the earthly pilgrimage is done, and be content.
That’s the romance, that’s the adventure! The glory of God, Saint Irenaeus says, is a human being, fully alive. And who is not fully alive, but a man who declares: “I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.”
Final Thoughts
I am not saying Conan is a Christian hero-type, nor am I sneaking any incoherent “universalism” into my religious thought, (I am resolutely orthodox). I am, however, making use of Justin Martyr’s conviction that all well said things rightly belong to us Christians.
Robert Howard, by all accounts, was not particularly religious, and even if he were I can only doubt that he would be Catholic. He was much in love with his native Texas and the Southwest in general, and I suspect that would incline him towards the Protestant viewpoint of his native land.
But there’s something about Howard’s writing, especially in his Conan stories, that marks me as incarnational. His work is visceral, it feels fleshy, substantive. I first wrote down the “Let me live deep” quote because I was enchanted by the image of red beef and wine, so much so I thought I could almost taste it.
It was the Eucharist which drew me into Roman Catholicism. Once I had read the Bread of Life Discourse, I could not imagine myself in any other Church but the one that took Jesus literally. So it only makes sense that these two figures, Christ, and Conan, must confront each other in the corner of my thoughts.
I think I’ll keep taking Conan with me to the Eucharist.
Are you as interested in tales of high adventure as I am? I write my own, you can find them here.
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I’ve discussed Conan before, check it out here.
ABOVE: the cover of “Conan the Conqueror” (AKA: The Hour of the Dragon), by Robert E Howard. Art by Norman Saunders from 1953 for an ACE Double Novel.
The Salon at Elfland 