Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories

by Vox Day

  Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office, ‘Go ye and teach all nations.’ He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith.

  The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to assert that the elves of the west, the orcs, goblins and trolls of the east, the dwarves, jotun and ulfin of the north and the diverse creatures of south that bear the shapes of both man and beast, and other people of whom should be treated as dumb brutes whose creation was inspired by that enemy and are therefore incapable, by virtue of their intrinsic nature, of receiving the true and immaculate faith.

  We have certain knowledge that in some cases, these various races have entered into this world through the wickedness of man and other beings. We acknowledge that the existence of these demonic races, spawned from the lusts of spirits and the evil will of fallen men, a willful and malevolent perversion of God’s creation, and we deny and rebuke the unseemly notion that these beings are a form of man or can be deemed to possess an immortal soul.

  We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of the Purified and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the elves are a people truly possessed of souls which are naturally united to them through the act of creation by the Most High God and that they are not only capable of understanding the true and holy faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, we define and declare by these our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said elves and all other people who may later be determined to be similarly ensouled by us, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of the Most Holy Lord Immanuel; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

  By virtue of our apostolic authority we define and declare by these present letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, which shall thus command the same obedience as the originals, that the said elves should be converted to the faith of Our Lord Immanuel by preaching the Immaculate Word of God and by the example of good, holy, and peaceable living.

  SUMMA ELVETICA

  By Marcus Valerius

  Article 1, Question VII.

  Whether the elves have souls naturally united to them.

  Objection 1. It would seem that elves do not have souls naturally united to them. For it is written: “God formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man was made a living soul.” But he who breathes sends forth something of himself. Therefore the soul is of the divine substance. Elves, created subsistent and distinct from man, did not receive the divine substance from God. Therefore the elves do not have souls naturally united to them.

  Objection 2. Further, man is created in the image of God, after the likeness of God. The elves are not created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore the elves do not have souls naturally united to them.

  Objection 3. Further, the psalmist asks of God: “What is man that you are mindful of him?” In answer to which question he writes: “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet”: whereby we discern that man is foremost among all creation that is materially subsistent. Therefore the elves do not have souls naturally united to them.

  Objection 4. Further, man was created on the sixth day. The more perfect has precedence in the order of nature as given in the account of Creation, therefore man is more perfect than the elves. Now the most perfect state of the soul is to be separated from the body, since in that state it is more similar to God and the angels, and is more pure, as being separated from any extraneous nature. Inasmuch as they are less perfect than man, the elves are still further removed from the most perfect state of the soul. Therefore the elves do not have souls naturally united to them.

  On the contrary, Oxonus said: “In rational animals the sensitive appetite obeys reason.” Therefore, in so far as they are led by a kind of estimative power, which is subject to a higher reason, that is to say the Divine, there is a certain likeness of moral good in them, in regard to the soul.

  I answer that: On this question there have been various opinions. First, if the soul by its nature were a complete species, so that it might be created as to itself, this would prove that the soul was neither man nor elf. But as the soul is naturally a partaker of the form of the body, it was necessarily created, not separately, but in the body. For if the soul had a species of itself it would have something still more in common with the angels. But, as the form of the body, the question of the soul belongs to the animal genus, as a formal principle, and therefore it may not be settled on that basis but must be answered with regards to the particular nature of the elven species.

  Second, the condition of man in the state of innocence was not more exalted than the condition of the angels. But among the angels some rule over others; and so one order is called that of “Dominations.” Therefore it was not beneath the dignity of the state of innocence that one man should be subject to another. Forasmuch as one man can be subject to another without imputing significance to his soul, the elves can be subject to the mastership of man without significance to theirs.

  Third, while in all creatures there is some kind of likeness to God, in the rational creature alone we find a likeness of “image”; whereas in other creatures we find a likeness by way of a “trace.” Now the intellect or mind is that whereby the rational creature excels other creatures; wherefore this image of God is not found even in the rational creature except in the mind. Gregory (Hom. x in Ev.) calls an elf a rational animal, therefore the elves are more properly likened to men and angels instead of the irrational creatures.

  Reply to objection 1. The body is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul by the nature of its essence can be united to the body, so that, properly speaking, not the soul alone, but the “composite,” is the species. To say that the soul is of the divine substance involves a manifest improbability. For the human soul is sometimes in a state of potentiality to the act of intelligence—acquires its knowledge somehow from things—and thus has various powers; all of which are incompatible with the Divine Nature, wherefore it is evidently false that the soul is of the substance of God. Therefore the elves have souls which are naturally united to them.

  Reply to objection 2. Although creatures do not attain to a natural likeness to God according to similitude of species, as a man begotten is like to the man begetting, still they do attain to likeness to Him, forasmuch as they represent the divine idea, as a material house is like to the house in the architect’s mind. Likeness of creatures to God is not affirmed on account of agreement in form according to the formality of the same genus or species, but solely according to analogy, inasmuch as God is essential being, whereas other things are beings by participation. Therefore the elves have souls which are naturally united to them.

  Reply to objection 3. Certain elves in this state of life are greater than certain men, not actually, but virtually; forasmuch as they have such great charity that they can merit a higher degree of beatitude than that possessed by certain men. I
n the same way we might say that the seed of a great tree is virtually greater than a small tree, though actually it is much smaller. Therefore the elves have souls naturally united to them.

  Reply to objection 4. To give life effectively is a perfection simply speaking; hence it belongs to God, as is said (1 Samuel 2:6): “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive.” The order in which the production of the animals is given has reference to the order of those bodies which they are set to adorn, rather than to the superiority of the animals themselves. Further, it is said that life is more perfect in the elves than in man inasmuch as it is the soul that gives life to the body. Whereas the span of man is but threescore and seven, the span of the elves is in excess of five centuries. Therefore the elves have souls naturally united to them.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This novel did not proceed according to plan. It was originally conceived as an epic philosophical trilogy, in which the reader would be immersed in medieval scholastic thought and explore various facets of some of the great philosophical debates that took place both within and without the Catholic Church.

  Misunderstood by most modern intellectuals and ignored by the irreligious authors of modern fantasy fiction, the great scholars of the church were no close-minded ideologues, but rather brilliant men who conceived and refined many of the rational mechanisms that we today take for granted. It is not a coincidence that William of Ockham, author of the Summa Logicaeand known for the logical principle that bears his name, was a Franciscan monk.

  While the logic of churchmen such as William of Ockham, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, and Thomas Aquinas most certainly has its flaws, the fair-minded reader must admit that their philosophical methods, however alien they may appear to modern eyes, are rather more reasonable and straightforward than the shamelessly manipulative Socratic method made famous by Plato. Unfortunately, my initial goal of assigning roles for the diverse schools of philosophical thought to each of the conventional fantasy races foundered on my inability to meaningfully connect it to the story of the prospective young priest traveling to the elflands.

  Fortunately, I had long been fascinated with the problem of a medieval Church-dominated society forced to come to terms with the existence of traditional fantasy concepts such as elves, orcs, dragons, and dwarves.

  It has long been my contention that the superficial medievalism of fantasy fiction has crippled the genre, rendering its settings incoherent and its characters shallow and unconvincing even in the hands of writers much more talented than I can ever hope to be. It is absurd, for instance, to base a plot that turns on a nominal Divine Right of Kings where there is no Divine from which the right is derived, and modern fantasy is littered with nonsensical priests without gods, who might as well be white wizards.

  So, the part of the original story that concerned the conflict between medieval Church and medievalesque fantasy not only survived intact, it became the central point of the plot. Needless to say, this notion of centering a story around primarily philosophical action would have rendered the book all but unpublishable, were it not for the fortuitous emergence of Marcher Lord Press.

  I had originally planned to title the book Sublimus Dei, which is the name of the papal bull issued in 1537 by Pope Paul III that declared the primitive people of the Americas to be rational beings with souls. Its text, somewhat altered, appears in the final chapter. The original translation of the Latin encyclical can be found at Papal Encyclicals Online as well as the Catholic Encylopedia at New Advent.

  One day it struck me, however, that while the book could be presented as a metaphorical argument for the ensoulment of the elves, the structure of most philosophical arguments tend to be inordinately one-sided. There was, however, an exception.

  Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica makes use of a particular method that provides, or at least appears to provide, the opposing side with a fair hearing.

  Happily, this provided me not only with an obvious title for the book, but also a useful means of structuring the story in a manner that was at least tangentially connected to the argument. In the unlikely event one has not noticed, each chapter in this book has a Latin header. Each header is a part of the single article presented in its entirety—and in English—at the end of the story.

  Here I must once again express my gratitude to Meredith Dixon, whose Latin expertise filled in the gaps where I could not simply lift the relevant text from Saint Thomas himself. For the reader who happens to be curious about where various concepts were derived, note that Questions 51, 71 and 90–96 of the Prima Pars were particularly useful.

  The argument presented is nonsensical, of course, but it is nonsensical in very much the same manner that so many of the philosophical and theological arguments presented by the great minds of the medieval ages were. But we should not scoff; it is deeply ironic that the leading atheists of our day happen to subscribe to this same method of argument, wherein empirical facts are ignored in favor of specious rationalizations that appear to be convincing so long as the logic is never weighed against the observable evidence.

  Hence the description of the book as a “casuistry”, which can mean either “oversubtle and fallacious reasoning” or “the application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience.” One could reasonably argue for either definition, and I gladly leave it to the reader to decide which is the more fitting.

  Luckily for the elves, man is in little possession of any evidence against which to balance the reasoned argument of the Summa Elvetica made on their eternal behalf. Therefore, we have no choice but to conclude with Marcus Valerius that aelvi habent animae naturaliter unita.

  The rest of this volume consists of eight more tales from the land of Selenoth, which are considerably less ambitious than Summa Elvetica, but on the whole, rather more successful. And for those who are interested in following the progress of Marcus Valerius, his story continues in Book I of ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT, A Throne of Bones.

  MASTER OF CATS

  BESSARIAS CAREFULLY HELD the calengalad balanced a half-hand above his palm, studying it closely as the delicate structure rotated slowly widdershins, its blue-green lattice of light sparkling like a precious jewel. The tiny giloi were flowing rapidly in, around, and through the dark center of the structure, and occasionally he could see a glowing red streak as the sequence he’d marked happened to flash past his eyes.

  He whispered a word, and the rotation slowed, almost imperceptibly. He frowned, still unable to properly track the tiny ruby-red lights that whirled about inside the luminescent spider’s web. Then he found them, but, infuriatingly, not where they should be. In fact, if his eyes did not lie, they were precisely somewhere they could not possibly be. It was hopeless!

  The temptation to hurl the damnable construction from his high window overlooking the river was almost overwhelming, but he resisted the urge despite his great frustration. A mere physical smashing couldn’t harm the calengalad itself, but any force inadvertantly released from it could endanger anyone passing by. Furthermore, such an incident would attract far too much unwanted attention.

  “Darro, be gone!”

  The calengalad disappeared, safely banished into the aether from whence it had been summoned. Arilon, his legendary master, dead these past two hundred years, taught that everything in the material plane was constructed of miniature grains, far too small for the eye to see, and yet large enough to contain all the secrets of the universe just as the seed of an animal carries within itself the secret of life. Grains upon grains, bound together by a magic beyond magic, everything was made of it: the stone walls surrounding the great keep, the dancing flames ensconced in the stairwells, even the flesh that had long ago rotted from the bones of an elven archmage.

  “They are like the dots of the Ponschule,” Arilon explained to him once, referring to an artistic style that had reached the height of its brief popularity when Bessarias was still a young apprentice. “One dot, in itself, is nothing. But thousands upon thousands o
f dots, placed in a particular order by the hand of a creative adept, can be a truly meaningful construction indeed.”

  “And who is the creative adept, in this case?”

  The archmage had frowned at his impertinence, properly recognizing it as such.

  “This silliness does not become you, Bessarias. If you would amuse yourself with debates of gods and origins and forms, there are masters who will be delighted to indulge you. I am not one of them.”

  So chastened, the great one’s student had ducked his head in apologetic submission. And now, centuries later, Bessarias found himself smiling at the thought that his question, however silly at the time, had perhaps not been so far adrift.

  In twelve hundred years, the Collegium Occludum had never known a mind so great as Arilon’s. Less accomplished masters of magic had left behind legacies of greater fame in the outside world, but although demon lords, masters of the Deep, and vauderistes cast terrible magics that annihilated armies, sank mighty fleets, and otherwise decided the fate of nations, there was not one that did more than make skilled use of the Who, the What and the Where. Arilon had been the first to plumb the secret depths of the Why and the How.