The most beautiful Christmas carol you've never heard

Many years ago, I bought a CD of Christmas music by Canadian artist Bruce Cockburn. I'm a big fan of his music, and this release was especially appealing because it contains Cockburn’s rendition of The Huron Carol. 

As Canada’s oldest Christmas hymn, The Huron Carol may well be the oldest song of its type in all of North America. It was written in the 1640s by Jean de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit missionary who lived and worked among the Hurons, also known as the Wendat or Wyandot.

Brébeuf, who was killed by the Iroquois in 1649 and is now considered a saint by the Catholic Church, spoke Huron and wrote the lyrics of The Huron Carol in that language. He set the lyrics to a French melody, and used the carol to help explain the Christian nativity story to the Huron people.

Cockburn sings the carol in Huron. He lists the title on the liner notes as Jesus Ahatonnia, which translates as "Jesus is born." An Anglicized version of the carol appeared in the early 20th century.

I became fond of this carol in part because my wife Liz has a Huron branch in her family tree. (Liz is a direct descendant of Martin Prévost and Marie Olivier Sylvestre Manitouabéouich, whose 1644 wedding in Québec was the first recorded marriage in Canada of a Frenchman and an Indigenous woman.) I find the carol to be simultaneously haunting, uplifting and melancholy, even though I don't understand the words in Cockburn's Huron rendition.

It seems fitting that Canada's oldest Christmas carol was written in the language of one of the First Nations, as Indian tribes are known in Canada. Unlike so many classic carols, which are European in origin, The Huron Carol commemorates the holiday in a truly North American fashion.

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Here's a link to an English performance of The Huron Carol. To hear Cockburn's version in Huron, click here. A beautiful children's book entitled "The Huron Carol," illustrated by Frances Tyrrell, was published, in English, in 2003 by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. The illustration at the top of this post is from that book. 

Joan of Arc: The road to rehabilitation for a teenage "heretic"

Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII in Reims Cathedral
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

How to explain the visions and the voices? Was Joan of Arc, France's 15th century gender-bending heroine, mentally ill? A charismatic charlatan? A divinely inspired leader? Or something else for which we have no precise descriptive terminology?

There is no definitive answer to these questions, although scholars seem to agree that Joan’s religious beliefs were sincere, even if the source of her visions remains in dispute. In purely secular terms, the peasant girl from Lorraine was the ultimate symbol of “girl power.” As a mere teenager, she led a French army during the Hundred Years War, bested the English invaders of her homeland and paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII as king.

Not a bad showing for a kid.

Joan was burned at the stake in 1431 after a corrupt and misguided ecclesiastical court convicted her of heresy. Only 25 years after her death, Pope Callixtus III proclaimed her innocence. The Catholic Church, which had been responsible for her death, beatified her in 1909 and canonized her (recognized her as a saint) on May 16, 1920.

My fascination with the Maid of Orléans dates from my youth. The now long-gone Catholic grade school I attended in Massachusetts was named after Joan, and there was a life-size statue of her in our parish church. As I remember it, the warrior depicted in that statue wore a suit of armor and stood ramrod straight. La Pucelle (The Maid) carried a banner in her right hand. She gazed resolutely into the distance, as if surveying a field of battle.

A powerful image. A lasting impression.

You do not have to conjure up memories of a Catholic, Franco-American childhood to appreciate Jeanne d’Arc, as a string of authors and biographers can attest. Even an atheist should be able to see what this preternaturally astute and gifted young woman teaches us about the importance of the individual, the empowerment of women, and (sometimes, at least) the wisdom and courage of the young.

When pariahs become heroes: the case of Anne Hutchinson

Cover of a 2004 biography

The history books are full of people who were scorned in life but are now idolized in death, because time has shown that they were visionaries, geniuses or gifted artists.

Anne Hutchinson was one such. Born in England in 1591 as Anne Marbury, she and her husband, Will Hutchinson, were Puritans in the 17th-century Massachusetts Bay Colony when she ran afoul of the authorities there.

A headstrong woman in a male-dominated society (strike one), Hutchinson took to preaching at her home, initially for women, but later for men as well (strike two). When she broke with Puritan leaders on theological points (strike three) she was put on trial. A civil court voted to banish her. Then, on this date in 1638, a religious court excommunicated Hutchinson from the Puritan Church.

"You have stepped out of your place," one minister told her. "You have rather been a husband than a wife, a preacher than a hearer, and a magistrate than a subject."

A pariah in Massachusetts Bay, Hutchinson moved on, first to the much more tolerant colony of Rhode Island, where she is admired to this day as a co-founder of the town of Portsmouth, and then to New York, where she was killed by Indians in 1643.

Over time, the tide turned - even in Massachusetts.

In 1922, the state erected a statue of Hutchinson and her daughter Susanna in front of the State House in Boston. The inscription describes her as a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." Sixty-five years later, Gov. Michael Dukakis pardoned Hutchinson and lifted the banishment order that Gov. John Winthrop had imposed in 1637.

Anne Hutchinson statue, Boston, Massachusetts

Touro Synagogue: "To bigotry no sanction . . . ."

I thought I'd post a tribute today to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, for no other reason than that it is a beautiful building with an inspiring history.

Touro Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in America. That alone would make it worthy of recognition, but its history is far richer than mere longevity would suggest.

The claim by some evangelicals that America is a Christian nation is, of course, preposterous, especially in the case of Rhode Island. It was founded by Roger Williams and other dissidents from Massachusetts as “a lively experiment” in tolerance and diversity that called for the separation of church and state when that was still a radical idea.

As the Touro Synagogue explains on its web site, 15 Jewish families arrived in Newport in 1658. They founded a congregation there and established a Jewish cemetery in 1677. In 1759 the congregation purchased land for a synagogue, which was completed and dedicated in 1763.

Newport suffered greatly when the British captured the town in 1776, during the Revolutionary War. Most of the Jews left because they supported the American cause. But even in their absence, Touro Synagogue survived; the British used it as a hospital  for their troops until French forces allied with the rebels liberated the town.

The synagogue played a vital role in civic affairs during the years that followed. A town meeting was held there in 1781, when George Washington visited Newport to plan the final phase of the war with Gens. Rochambeau and Lafayette.

After the war, the Touro Synagogue served as a meeting place for the Rhode Island General Assembly, the Rhode Island Supreme Court and the town of Newport.

As if all that isn't enough to assure the synagogue's place in history, Touro Synagogue became a symbol of America’s commitment to diversity when President George Washington, responding to a letter from the warden of the synagogue, wrote “to the Hebrew congregation in Newport” pledging the nation’s support for pluralism and religious freedom.

In his letter, Washington wrote that the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Think how much stronger we would be as a nation if all of us committed ourselves to that ideal.

You don’t have to be religious to appreciate Touro Synagogue’s storied past and its contemporary standing as a symbol of freedom. When I first visited, many years ago, I was struck by the contrast between the elegant simplicity of the synagogue’s exterior and the breathtaking beauty within.

Newport is justly famous for its Gilded Age mansions, but to me, the Touro Synagogue is a far more impressive monument to American greatness than the ostentatious homes of yesteryear.