Caput Mundi — A Manifesto
In the footsteps of Henry Adams
A Roman Initiative
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
This maxim means more to us here at Caput Mundi than “obey the cultural customs of the local.” Indeed, this old phrase tells us more about how to walk forward with vision towards the future, than to walk backward — blind — according to the past. We read it as both an action plan and a mission statement on how to develop authentic formation amidst modern confusion. To do as the Romans do, we must know, well, what the Romans did.
Rome was not built in a day. In fact, it was built upon the best aspects of every civilization that it came into contact with. The famous Roman historian of the Republic, Polybius, concludes in his essay on what distinguishes the Roman ingenuity: “Roman culture was not innovative like the Greek. It was not blessed with great philosophers, artists, or writers. Rome was always better at adapting things from other cultures than at inventing them.”
To develop their civilization, they took the best from those they met. Rome’s genius was to conquer the genius of those they conquered. Thus, Caput Mundi is a medium by which we seek to harvest the best of what we learn in Rome and bring it back to our community. We write to develop our own thought in order to deliver that thought to our families, friends, and their friends.
A Founding like Rome
Just as the culture of Rome was founded upon many other cultures, its constitution was founded by many citizens. The Roman philosopher-statesman Cicero writes that:
“Our constitution was superior to those of other States on account of the fact that almost every one of these other commonwealths had been established by one man, the author of their laws and institutions….On the other hand our own commonwealth was based upon the genius, not of one man, but of many, it was founded, not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men.” (De Re Publica 2.2)
Throughout her history, Roman citizens contributed to Rome’s continual founding; you could say that Rome organized the people to organize Rome herself. She is the work of many hands. Here at Caput Mundi, we hope to embark on a similar communal project.
A Truly Roman Education
As Americans studying in Rome and reflecting upon our nation from afar, we find ourselves in a similar position to Henry Adams, the great-grandson of John Adams. A scion of wealthy, elite W.A.S.P.s, Adams graduated top of his class at Harvard in 1858 dissatisfied with life and disillusioned with American higher education. The only thing he left Harvard convinced of was that “as of yet he knew nothing. His education had not begun” (The Education of Henry Adams).
Even a trip to Germany — where he engrossed himself in German idealism and its subsequent Nietzschean critiques — left him with the same disquiet as his Ivy League education. Still in pursuit of authentic formation, he went south to Rome, albeit initially prejudiced to the potential it offered. But although Adam’s religious ignorance lowered his expectations, the city had its designed effect on the American truth-seeker:
“Rome was not a beetle to be dissected and dropped; not a bad French novel to be read in a railway train and thrown out of the window after other bad French novels, the morals of which could never approach the immorality of Roman history. Rome was actual; it was England; it was going to be America. Rome could not be fitted into an orderly, middle-class, Bostonian, systematic scheme of evolution. No law of progress applied to it. Not even time-sequences — the last refuge of helpless historians — had value for it. The Forum no more led to the Vatican than the Vatican to the Forum. Rienzi, Garibaldi, Tiberius Gracchus, Aurelian might be mixed up in any relation of time, along with a thousand more, and never lead to a sequence. The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrine for a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.”
Overwhelming emotions with affections, thoughts with beliefs, reason with faith, Rome mystified Adams and broke his Americanism.
A Cultural and Religious Bellum Romanum
Before Rome, Adams thought — along with Edward Gibbon — that Christianity had destroyed its prestige. But after experiencing the eternal stability of Roman Catholicism, he found the thesis wanting.
“Murray's Handbook had the grace to quote this passage from Gibbon's ‘Autobiography,’ which led Adams more than once to sit at sunset on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria in Aracœli, curiously wondering that not an inch had been gained by Gibbon — or all the historians since — towards explaining the Fall. The mystery remained unsolved; the charm remained intact.
Learning from this experience, Adams turned to the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: “This education startled even a man who had dabbled in fifty educations all over the world; for, if he were obliged to insist on a Universe, he seemed driven to the Church.”
In the cosmic view of the Church as he experienced it in Rome reading Aquinas, Adams found that “The direction of mind, as a single force of nature, had been constant since history began. Its own unity had created a universe the essence of which was abstract Truth; the Absolute; God! To Thomas Aquinas, the universe was still a person.”
While America educated Adams to be lost in the multiplicity of the universe, Rome educated him to find a unity of the cosmos.
Caput Mundi’s Mission
From the hills of Rome, studying theology at the feet of Peter, Caput Mundi feels both privileged to receive formation in the true heart of Church and culture, but also to see America from a theological distance.
This platform offers a place to grapple with ideas that span a wide range of topics, and to share them with an English-speaking audience — a “front porch,” of sorts, to speak and to listen. Our weekly posts, written by a variety of authors, consider culture, philosophy, theology, and the arts. In this endeavor, we take inspiration from the late Joseph Ratzinger, who wrote:
“A Christian is someone who knows that in any case he lives first and foremost as the beneficiary of a bounty and that, consequently, all righteousness can only consist in being himself a donor, like the beggar who is grateful for what he receives and generously passes part of it on to others”
(Introduction to Christianity).
We are beggars, seeking after Christ in the Eternal City, and we are humbled and obliged to share with you some of what we have received. In short, St. Mark identifies the mission of our efforts: “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature’” (16:15).