Essays in Idleness

The last time I presented a sheep’s head recipe for St Andrew’s Day was towards the end of a previous century (the XXth). I generally don’t like to eat anyone’s head, so gentle reader may consider me a cissy; but if, like me, you had once mistakenly ordered monkey brains, in Erzurum, through artlessness in Turkish (which I wasn’t even trying to speak), you would appreciate the need not to order food by pointing garrulously at a menu. Another dining tip would be to avoid Erzurum, where I was chased by a knife-wielding Musulman. Too, an English girl I met was raped there, in full daylight in the middle of the town. It was probably more agreeable there before the several Musulman massacres annihilated the previous Armenian population. (The survivors were sent on death marches into e.g. the Syrian desert.)

As patron saint of Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, fishmongers, and gouty old men (and also of Scotland — Latha fèill Anndrais sona dhuibh!) he stands today at our entrance into a new liturgical year. It is the Feast of Saint Andrew, don’t you know, and he is the apostle who counsels us to be good disciples, and in all behaviour, tame.

Christians, including Armenians, are allowed to defend themselves, however, and one might read a new book, The Two Swords of Christ, by that brilliant American Copt, Raymond Ibrahim. It is a remarkably lively, and scholarly account, of the warrior monks who shielded Christians from the warriors of the Islamic Jihad, over the many centuries before we became sucks; and specifically the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, to whom we owe the survival of Christendom through centuries of relentless, violent attacks. It concludes a marvellous historical trilogy.

Mr Ibrahim’s point is that of Christ, recorded in St Luke 22:38. He acknowledged two swords — a spiritual and a physical — and both must be unsheathed. For Christ did not tell us to become doormats.

As William Blake added, “Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand / Till we have built Jerusalem.” For Blake, too, was a muscular Christian.