CoL49 group reading ch6 part 1 (5) Scurvhamites

[Joseph Tracy]

Recall that the historical war that first deposes Thurn and Taxis’s  postmaster is between extreme Calvinists and the declining Holy Roman Empire. I think Calvinism begins, and inevitably ends up with warlike and colonialist political results. There is a desire to mechanize divinity  toward a kind of predestined sorting along doctrinal lines in which Christianity is the army of the Lord of Hosts. The Scurvhamites take the dividing line to the point of dimininishing returns.  The Tristero can perhaps see the seeming  inevitability of that trend and hope perhaps to divide and conquer both Catholics and Calvinists in a more straightforward machiavellian approach.  

Most of the players are still around: Calvinist religions, machiavellian coups  and money games by secretive agencies, and the royal remnants of the Holy Roman Empire….

"Rainer Maria Rilke <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke> wrote his Duino Elegies <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duino_Elegies> while visiting Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis (néePrincess of Hohenlohe <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenlohe>, wife of Prince Alexander) at her family's Duino Castle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duino_Castle>. Rilke later dedicated his only novel (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Notebooks_of_Malte_Laurids_Brigge>) to the princess, who was his patroness <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patron>. Her son Prince Alexander (1881–1937) became an Italian citizen named Principe della Torre e Tasso and was raised in 1923 by the Italian king to Duke of Castel Duino. Today Duino Castle belongs to his grandson, Prince Carlo della Torre e Tasso, Duca di Castel Duino (b. 1952). The Duino branch is part of the family's Czech branch <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Branch_of_the_House_of_Thurn_und_Taxis> that in the early 19th century settled in Bohemia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemia> (now the Czech Republic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic>). 
Several members of the family have been Knights of Malta <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta>.

Until 1919, the titles of the head of the princely house were His Serene Highness <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serene_Highness> the Fürst <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BCrst> von Thurn und Taxis, Prince of Buchau and Prince of Krotoszyn, Duke of Wörth and Donaustauf, Princely Count of Friedberg-Scheer, Count of Valle-Sássina, Marchtal, Neresheim etc., Hereditary Postmaster General.[13] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurn_und_Taxis#cite_note-13>
The current head of the house of Thurn and Taxis is Albert II, 12th Prince of Thurn and Taxis <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_II,_Prince_of_Thurn_and_Taxis>, son of Johannes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes,_11th_Prince_of_Thurn_and_Taxis> and his wife, Gloria <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria,_Princess_of_Thurn_and_Taxis>. The family is one of the wealthiest in Germany. The family's brewery was sold to the Paulaner Group <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulaner_Brewery> of Munich <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich> in 1996, but it still produces beer under the brand of Thurn und Taxis. “  wikipedia



> On Jul 26, 2024, at 3:13 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Nice breakdown of the Scurvhamites
> 
> Bortz really explains things well - he’s not for sure the Vatican
> “Courier’s Tragedy” was a Scurvhamite project, but he makes a good case -
> or, rather, he states the reason his colleague D’Amico (Italian for
> “friend”) sees the Scurvhamites’ hand in it.
> 
> If it is, that’s an interesting example of a religious system judging an
> artistic work by their own inflexible terms of good and evil, mistaking the
> map for the territory (it’s only a play; all the actors - even in roles
> where they “died” - when it’s over get up and go about their business) and
> overemphasizing the evil so as to “damn it eternally.”
> 
> The Scurvhamites’ dwindling-to-extinction was due to each individual’s
> inability to cling to the concept of salvation in which they’d placed their
> hopes:
> 
> “…those few saved Scurvhamites found themselves looking out into the gaudy
> clockwork of the doomed with a certain sick and fascinated horror, and this
> was to prove fatal. One by one the glamorous prospect of annihilation
> coaxed them over, until there was no one left in the sect, not even Robert
> Scurvham, who, like a ship’s master, had been last to go.”
> 
> That’s another instance of Goedel’s Theorem, isn’t it: a philosophical
> system failing under stress? Also Original Sin, “you’ll be fine, just don’t
> do thus-and-such”
> 
> It bears some resemblance to aspects of some of the less reasonable
> interpretations of Protestantism as well.
> 
> Specifically, on the pornographic “Courier’s Tragedy” project, they
> themselves exaggerated things they abhorred in the name of abolishing them.
> 
> Which is ironic, since holding up great evil for people to deplore
> presumably would have also been Wharfinger’s intention in writing the
> damned thing!
> --
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