Hilaire Belloc was an Anglo-French Catholic writer and historian. In the early 20th century, he wrote works of many different natures including poetry, satire, and politics. It was his Catholic faith that formed his views and were reflected in his works. Recently, Ignatius Press has been re-printing some of his works including Characters of the Reformation and The Great Heresies. Today, I would like to tell you about the latter.

The Great Heresies was published in 1938. In the introduction, Belloc discusses what heresy is and how most people equate it with something from ancient Christian times. He goes on to explain that it is of high importance for anyone looking to understand European history and Christian orthodoxy. He then gives us a formal definition of the term to be a denial of an accepted Christian doctrine and something which affects not only the individual but all of society. It is heresy which shaped Europe and would have made Europe a completely different world had it succeeded. The book is divided into the following chapters:

1. The Arian Heresy
2. The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed
3. The Albigensian Attack
4. What Was the Reformation?
5. The Modern Phase

"The Arian heresy proposed to go to the very root of the Church's authority by attacking the full Divinity of her Founder." In layman's terms, it questioned the divinity of Jesus. "The Mohammedan attack threatened to kill the Christian Church by invasion rather than to undermine it from within." Belloc saw this as a heresy and not just a new religion attacking an old one. Belloc viewed the Albigensian heresy as the one that was nearly successful. This was a precursor to Protestantism and dealt with a duality of the universe, good and evil in an equal and constant battle with each other. The Protestant attacked authority and unity within the Church. Lastly, the modern phase has seen attacks of rationalism and positivism. Belloc chose these specific five, because they showed all the different directions from which the Church can be attacked. What I love best about reading Belloc's words are the truth they still hold today. It is nearly 80 years after this was first published, and his words still ring true.

This book was provided to me for free by Ignatius Press in exchange for an honest review.

A prophet of the world. Belloc is simply assertive in his claims. He traces back to the origin of the ideas that cause struggles in our modern world, mainly the heresies and the social consequences of their efforts to extend error throughout the world.

A Prophetic Read For Today

I enjoyed this book for it presented the thinking of the time yet sadly could just have been written about the years of 2000, only the fruits of the Modernism are more ripe, human's defined as property of the woman, the contradictions are more apparent...the LGBTQ political movement threatens most of the advances for women, the rule of law is becoming neglible, people are being mandated to become lab rats, the priviledged wealthy-whites continue to abuse the black race with the help of their black carpet baggers, our children are ignorant of civics, reason is put the window soon to become a crime to practice, God's Church has been infected with unholy men, and on and on. The book is prophetic in so many ways it's frightening.

Hilaire Belloc isn't a well-known name these days, but he was an influential writer back in the early 20th century. I only encountered him because of his friendship with G. K. Chesterton mentioned in Wisdom and Innocence, a biography of GKC I read last year. Belloc, like Chesterton, was a Catholic, but I feel that Belloc was a bit more, hm, confrontational than Chesterton? Don't get me wrong, Chesterton spoke his mind, but Belloc didn't has the sense of humor that made Chesterton seem more good-natured.

I picked The Great Heresies as the first book to read by Belloc because it was mentioned several times in Chesterton's biography. He was a very prolific writer, and I don't plan on obsessively reading him like I did Chesterton, but it was still a good read. Heresies is a sweeping history of the two- century history interpreted through a Catholic lens centering on the what Belloc considers the five greatest heresies to Catholicism. They are as follows:

The Arian heresy of the 3rd and 4th centuries that taught that Christ was not co-eternal with the Father, but was begotten of the Father. Belloc's interpretation is that Arianism "was willing to grant Our Lord every kind of honor and majesty short of the full nature of the Godhead. He was granted one might say paradoxically all the divine attributes-- except divinity." He explains it arose out of a desire to explain everything, not content with the unresolved mystery of the Trinity.

Islam according to Belloc was not a separate religion, but a Christian heresy that was started from outside the bounds of the Church. Mohammed repackaged the key components of Catholicism (the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the soul, punishment and reward after death), but denied the Incarnation of Christ. It was Christianity lite.

Albigenianism was Manicheeism resurface, the dividing of the world into good and evil with an evil power that was just as eternal as the good: a dualism that creates a hatred of all things physical. This is just a misunderstanding of the Problem of Evil, according to Belloc, that set itself up in opposition to the Church. I wasn't even aware of the Albigenians until I read this book.

Protestantism is unlike the three previous heresies, in that it didn't resolve around one key doctrine misunderstood, and the fight is still ongoing. Granted, he believes Protestantism is really dead in the face of modernity, and all the former heretics have become atheists. I really liked the historical understanding Belloc adds here. He breaks the Reformation into two different periods: the first initiated by Martin Luther in which no talk of a separate Church was considered: the Reformation was about reforming the existing Church, not creating a new one in opposition. A century later, when the two groups couldn't resolve their differences, only then did they set up two competing world views in opposition to each other. Calvin gets a lot of blame from Belloc for initiating the first church set in opposition to the Church. He also blames Protestantism in general for the rise skepticism present today: we moved on to "more important questions" than religious truth, and religion became a sideshow.

Modernity is the greatest threat to Catholicism, according to Belloc, and is defined by materialism, and an accompanying skepticism. It feels a little dated now that "modernity" has come a long ways since Belloc's day, but a lot of his points remain the same. I don't know if a lot of people would agree with him that moderns reject reason: they usually consider themselves the reasonable ones. There are plenty of political arguments though that don't resolve around reason, and I think Belloc's assertion here still holds:

The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation; and almost all the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an atmosphere of contempt.

The sweeping history of it all in a single interpretive frame is powerful, and I admire it very much. I again feel cheated in my education for not having an appreciation of what was accomplished during the Middle Ages. All of this is new to me. I remember when AP European history, even back when I was in high school, was considered controversial because it was too "Eurocentric." I had plenty of US History, and you'd still think we were the center of the world after that.

I'm glad to have found Belloc, and I continue to feel drawn to these great Catholic authors. They feel grounded in a solid view of the world that isn't rooted in the skepticism inherent if science if your only interpretive tool. As a Latter-Day Saint, I feel a kinship with them. We may agree to disagree on many fundamental points (I have also been simultaneously listening to Sam Harris's podcast Waking Up, with similar sentiments), but more Bellocs in the world would make it a better place.

I wanted to like this book, but sadly Belloch climbs his high horse in the introduction, and never quite makes up for it throughout the book. It is also a weird book, I’m not exactly sure who it’s for. It reads like apologetics, with simplified arguments, relying heavily on cheap rhetoric like repeating the same point over and over again in different forms to emphasize an idea, but the method of apologetic writing is presenting a religious worldview, using secular arguments, thereby approaching and solving any objections the reader might have. Belloch just regurgitates laughably biased views, without any regard nor discipline for the line of reasoning he is presenting.(although, I must admit that his insistent bashing of Calvin is hilarious). It feels more like a book that Catholics are supposed to read for a brief moment of self-indulgence and -righteousness. Let’s look into them shall we?

The first heresy tackled is Arianism. Instead of arguing *why* rejecting the Divinity of Christ collapses the Christian religion, the process through which early doctrine was established and the turbulence and the difficulties that the early Church had to overcome to reject this heresy we learn that followers of Arianism all maintained their theological position out of selfish, social reasons, out of a desire to separate themselves from the newly converted masses and to cling to some exclusionary pagan mindset. It almost reads like a meme posting: a brave, smart, pious, humble Catholic was sitting in a class taught by a selfish, arrogant and crazy follower of Arius, etc etc. Causes of heresy are laughably overgeneralized. In fact, the situation he is presenting is completely reversed when dealing with modernism, something he acknowledges in passing too little, too late, in the final pages of the book. How many Catholics today follow the faith because of some contrarian/conservative tendency or to compensate for some social shortcomings? The arguments always cut both ways, but this is never addressed and never justified.

Ok, moving on, Islam. Er, the Mohammedan heresy. So treating Islam as a heretical movement which sprang out of Christianity brings its own questions, which again never get an answer. Can’t we also say then that Christianity is a Judaic heresy? Are we right then to distance ourselves from Judaism, the way the Church veered under Paulinian influence? These questions need to be answered for Bellochs arguments to work. A similar issue arises out of calling Islam an inherently violent religion. Critics may very well point out towards all the violence that was waged in the name of Catholicism? This needs to be addressed. Also, his criticism toward Mohammed could very well be applied to Jesus by an atheist critics, especially considering C.S Lewis lemma that He was either who He said He was, or a complete madman. Now Belloch is praised for being quite prescient in predicting the current rise of Islam which will seek to dominate the Christian world. I have three problems with this: 1. The religious reemergence in the Middle East was not as predicted a movement against the dominating colonial powers, but against the weak secular governments established after european countries decided to mingle in affairs by proxy rather than directly. Therefore strife was channelled towards these failed states rather than against Christianity. 2. The demographic changes in Europe are a by-product of the Muslim minority being stuck in an immigrant condition, sharing a lifestyle and culture with the working class, which generally has a higher birthrate than the middle class majority. 3. Violent, fundamentalist Islamic movements are characterised by being seen as heretical by all Muslim outsiders. I think Belloch would agree that it is strange to judge a faith based on its heresies.

Albigensian chapter was ok, but went downhill fast at the end when he began once more to withhold information and manipulate how the narrative is presented to drive his point home. The failures of the Catholic Church in Languedoc had important contributions to the resulting spread of the heresy(the all familiar material abuses, conflated with improper wielding of power). There is also a very important discussion to be had about the human life loss that resulted from the Albigensian Crusade. Without these things his arguments are very weak if not outright meaningless.

Reformation is better still. Belloch even shows that he understands the problems of the Church that need to be addressed, if unity and relevance should be maintained: resisting material abuses, avoiding dogmatic “ossification” as he calls it, and so on. It is rather sad that though they are enumerated, they are never contextualized within each heretical movement and its response. Some issues are ignored such as the necessity of reformers to involve secular powers, lest they are completely destroyed by a Church unwilling to change and adapt. Belloch also spends a few paragraphs judging the world in terms of a Protestant part, which fell to usury, thereby gaining power, and a Catholic part which suffered more because of its stronger dependence on a now weakened Church as an explanation of the contemporary state of the world. This approach is as ridiculous as Weber’s idea of Protestant work ethic explaining northern european countries success. The same view of a materialistic money obsessed and usury filled countries that he applies to Protestant countries, could very well have been applied to Catholic countries a few centuries earlier.

The last chapter deals with the Modern Heresy, the overall secularization of Europe and the increasing adoption of an atheist worldview by western citizens. The reason why this is happening is never really addressed, Belloch resumes to just naming the Reformation, the loss of authority by the Church as the main factors in driving this change. He ends the chapter by presenting two future scenarios, which basically reduce to “either the Church will continue to shrink, or at some point it will stop shrinking and start growing again”, but an examination of the factors which could lead to one outcome over the other is noticeably missing.

There are certain arguments or methods which are general to all chapters: that the European culture is fundamentally Catholic, the heretics are judged in terms of secular motives and the Church in terms of spiritual ones (less so in the Reformation chapter, where he surprisingly adopts a conciliatory tone) which do little to persuade. In a way Belloch seems to be driven by a desire to exalt the Church with no regard about the danger of sacrificing the very values the Church upholds in the process. This approach is damning however, it will never facilitate the institution to overcome its temporary shortcomings and adjust (as a living organism should). It is clear that God, the Holy Spirit, guides the Church, it wouldn’t have recovered so well through all its crises, nor would it have survived for so long after all the missteps it made throughout history. But the Church is not God. Too bad, for Belloc she is.

⅖ - good intention, fundamentally flawed

This is amust read for anyone that wants a very readable and understandable look at the link in the history of the Western Civilization and the Catholic Church. Belloc is prescient in his considerations on Mohamedism and on his look at modernism.

I found this book fascinating, especially as I am a person who had previously read mainly secular or anti-Catholic history books. Belloc has many strong opinions about history, which is refreshing. There is a lot of food for thought.

He comes across as prophetic in the final section on the "modern phase," an attack on the "indissoluble trinity" of truth, beauty, and goodness.

I have trouble evaluating some of Belloc's claims, which he apparently thinks are so obvious that he does little to support them. I suspect that his other more focused books (his book on the Reformation, for example, or the Servile State) do offer more arguments.

This book leaves me wanting to continue the conversation!

Vague thoughts upon reading Belloc's "The Great Heresies"

It’s interesting what he got right and what he got wrong. It was written in 1930, just before the revelation of the true nature of the Third Reich. Belloc didn’t buy into the hype.

He predicted the continued rise of Modernism against the Church, a return to pagan slavery (wage slavery). He wrongly predicts the death of Protestantism, however. He also predicted the continuing rise of Islam.

A most needed tool for contemporary christians...

Hilaire Belloc writes on what he considers the five important heresies that the Catholic Church has faced. To me, the most interesting one was the classification of Islam as a heresy of Christianity. It does fit his definition to an extent, and Belloc does acknowledge it is a different case from all other heresies, as it arose and exists completely outside the Church. I had always considered Islam to be a false religion growing on the basis on Judaism, but Mr. Belloc does make some compelling points, especially regarding Mary. If Islam was derived from Judaism, its veneration of the Virgin is unexplained. While it does seem simpler to assume that the single-person God, absence of Christian sacraments, and man-only Jesus religion of Islam came from Judaism, I don't know how much influence the Jews had in the area at the time. I do know there was a substantial Christian presence, and any Arian heretics still lingering would pass on a Christianity that could easily morph into Islam.

The other point of interest for me was the connection between the rise of Islam, the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of modernist errors. The connection is not perfect, however. Modernism arose by the completion of Protestant questioning and rejection of central authority, and the Protestant Reformation survived in nations with weakened central governments - where power was split between nobles and kings, and the nobles could use enriching (Protestantism allowed them to cease ecclesial property) heresy to fight the kings. Northern Germany went Protestant because the Ottoman-weakened Holy Roman Empire could not put down the nobles from Vienna. However, Protestantism, such as it was, would have still arisen in England in all likelihood, since England had a weakened central government unconnected with Muslim invasions. Additionally, there was the small matter of Henry VIII's marital redefinitions...

A final note of annoyance was Hilaire Belloc's ignorance of economics. I will allow him his opposition to capitalism, but to assume that communism only fails at eradicating poverty due to the tyranny of it's administrators is to be completely ignorant of that great information aggregating and distributing network known as the price system.

A edição brasileira é de 2009, e é da Editora Permanência. A revisão é porca, mal de que Chesterton também anda padecendo (ler-lhe o "Hereges" chega a irritar), mas não compromete. Belloc era lúcido, sabia do que estava falando e não fugia da raia. Diz, memoravelmente, que não existe "cristianismo": existem a Igreja e as heresias. E diz que o mundo moderno oscila entre duas formas de escravidão: a ao Estado e a aos patrões. Explica que o mundo moderno, esse dos black flops, dos molotovs do amor e dos crucifixos no cu é fruto da pasmaceira protestante. Tem carradas de razão em tudo. Leiam, leiam.

A complete journey across the main attacks suffered by the Catholic Church, including an interesting analysis of causes, development and consequences