Christopher Dawson (October 12, 1889 – May 25, 1970) was author of numerous books, articles, and scholarly monographs. He was lecturer in the History of Culture, University College, Exeter; Gifford lecturer and first Charles Chauncey Stillman Chair of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard University from 1958 to 1962; and editor of the Dublin Review.

Christopher Dawson’s “Beyond Politics”

By |2024-03-10T18:20:24-05:00March 9th, 2024|Categories: Books, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History|

“Old books” speak to the times, often in more profound ways than “new books.” Christopher Dawson's "Beyond Politics" is just such a book. It diagnosed in 1939 the cultural situation in which the book appeared, and its diagnosis is apropos to the cultural situation today. Here’s the front story followed by the more important back [...]

The Power of Ideology: Christopher Dawson on the Modern Age

By |2023-11-28T19:58:56-06:00November 28th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Since the Renaissance, Christopher Dawson feared, Western culture and society had embraced an arrogant form of humanism, one that places too much emphasis on the goodness of the human person. With the loss of the Medieval beliefs in the Economy of Grace and the Great Chain of Being, culture had adopted two radically dangerous institutions: [...]

The Great His­to­rian of Cul­ture: Christo­pher Daw­son

By |2023-10-25T19:05:58-05:00October 25th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christian Humanism, Christopher Dawson, Timeless Essays|

"Christopher Dawson viewed the disintegration of Western culture as a far worse disaster than that of the fall of Rome," biographer Christina Scott writes. "For the one was material; the other would be a spiritual disaster which would strike directly at the moral foundations of our society and destroy not the outward form of civilization [...]

How Would Christopher Dawson Redeem the West?

By |2023-10-12T05:16:04-05:00October 11th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, St. John Henry Newman, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Christopher Dawson held that the Christian religion created a distinctive culture that not only preceded, but has continued long after, the thirteenth century. It is only by examining this cultural dynamism that one can appreciate why modern society is a mutilated, or a “secularized,” version of Christendom. Soren Kierkegaard observed that a distinguishing mark of [...]

Discovering the Truth Through Holiness and Beauty

By |2023-10-04T17:26:14-05:00October 4th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christopher Dawson, David Deavel, Education, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors|

If we want to win souls for Christ, we must touch their imaginations. Christopher Dawson’s idea of teaching Christian culture was certainly consistent with that idea of facts, events, history, and description. The adventure, the romance, and the beauty of the story of the Body of Christ after Pentecost shows the splendor of the truth [...]

“Besieged”: The Saints—the Aristocrats of the Soul

By |2023-09-02T15:34:04-05:00September 2nd, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization|

The saints have served as the heroes in Western culture, and have been the impetus for renewal in the Western Tradition. God has called them, and they, by responding to His call, have become the aristocrats of the soul. Christopher Dawson, the brilliant Anglo-Welsh Roman Catholic historian of the twentieth century, argued that understanding the [...]

Christopher Dawson & the History We Are Not Told

By |2023-05-25T12:19:06-05:00May 24th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Catholicism, Christendom, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Culture, Featured, History, Timeless Essays|Tags: , |

Christopher Dawson radically revises our sense of the continuity of Western culture. For the ordinary educated consciousness, what happened in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman order tends to be a blank page labelled “the dark ages.” But as Dawson makes clear, there were heroic continuities, an enormous effort on the part of [...]

A Quick & Dirty Guide to the Middle Ages

By |2023-04-23T17:38:55-05:00April 23rd, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christopher Dawson, Culture, Featured, History, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

The Medieval Church culturally unified Christendom through a common language, Latin, and a common liturgy, tying men together with other men of their own time, but also with the whole communion of saints. Petrarch, ca. 1350, first employed the term “Medieval” to argue that his time (ca. 1350) had advanced beyond the so-called “dark ages.” [...]

Lost Temples, Giant Spiders, & the Death of Western Civilization

By |2023-02-01T12:10:37-06:00January 31st, 2023|Categories: Christopher Dawson, Modernity, Morality, Russell Kirk, Stephen Masty, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

All civilizations wither and die. But maybe the inevitable death of civilizations is partly a lesson in the Vanity of Human Wishes and partly God’s jest, rescued from cruelty because He also designed a Heavenly Reward to be seen in the next movie. You will need to wear your Indiana Jones fedora and stick with [...]

“Vital Tension” as the Creative Spiritual Energy of History

By |2023-08-30T18:35:33-05:00November 20th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Culture, Featured, Timeless Essays|

In spite of modern man’s spiritual failure, historian Christopher Dawson believed it possible to return to that vitality which for many centuries built Western culture: Christianity. Jesus Christ came to reveal to men that they have no enemies but themselves. –Pascal It is this vital tension between two worlds and two planes of reality which [...]

Christopher Dawson: Wielding the Sword of the Spirit

By |2023-10-12T05:17:46-05:00October 11th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christendom, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Culture, Essential, Featured, Timeless Essays|

Christopher Dawson set himself the task of surveying the history of Western Civilization in the light of a master-idea: that religion is the dynamic force, the basic constituent and the inspiration of all higher human activity, and that therefore the culture of an era depends upon its religion. Looking back over the vast ruins and [...]

Revisiting Christopher Dawson on Culture

By |2022-08-04T18:39:19-05:00August 4th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Christopher Morrissey, Culture, Islam, Rome, Timeless Essays|

The essence of Rome, by being conscious of one’s cultural debts, is the refusal to make a definitive synthesis or mediation. Only in Rome are there Athens and Jerusalem. Only because of Rome are there “two cities because one remains silently present.” Remi Brague’s observation about the historical essence of Rome shows that “Romanity” is [...]

Conservatism: A Lecture

By |2022-06-28T17:39:07-05:00June 28th, 2022|Categories: Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Conservatism, Featured, Political Science Reviewer, Timeless Essays|

The modern political conflict goes much deeper than the old party struggle. It has become a battle of ideas and beliefs. Practical politics are not enough. We need a Conservative sociology to set against the Socialist theory of society, and a spiritual ideal of Conservative order to meet the idealism of revolution. Introduction and Notes by [...]

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