00:11:17.380And if you are in Michigan or close to the border in Ohio or Indiana and want to do something fun this spring and get outdoors and hang out with your folk for a bit,
00:11:29.420I am hosting a moot this Sunday at noon.
00:11:32.840if you are interested email me at csavage at runestone.org nick can throw that up so
00:11:41.240yeah things are going good here spring has sprung although the thermometer hasn't figured
00:11:48.720that out quite yet but yeah i don't think i have anything to preface or start with before going
00:11:57.280right into brad bot do you want to set the floor with anything sir before i just
00:12:04.000go sure all right guys let me tell you a story so
00:12:10.080when i first when i first came home at alsatru i
00:12:19.840i was very inspired by the afa but i wasn't an afa member just yet and i was because again i
00:12:26.320was in alaska and i had this oh i'm so far away i can't be involved with them and that was silly
00:12:33.360thinking but i didn't know how silly it was at the time so i was trying to figure out what to do and
00:12:41.920you know when i finally got the i don't got the inspiration or the courage up or the whatever0.69
00:12:49.920motivation to get off my butt and start trying to do something like all right what can i do
00:12:55.040nobody else is doing something all right well i can invite people over to my house0.94
00:12:59.760we can do something together and so you know i found the ragtag random assortment of folks
00:13:07.280off of meetup.com and i forget whatever other sources there were at the time the first thing
00:13:15.200that i celebrated because it really stood out to me at the time was the day of remembrance for
00:13:24.080ratbot and in my own experience i didn't leave christianity for something um so
00:13:37.280uh i was and you guys have heard the story before i'll keep this part brief but
00:13:44.240i was you know nominally christian but with no real religious education in my family or
00:13:50.320religious practice in my family coming up and when i was a teenager and i was spending time with my
00:13:55.680cousins and my aunt she was very about jehovah's witness and so not realizing my options i wanted
00:14:02.480to do religion i wanted to do it right so i started i read my bible through several times and
00:14:08.080started being very active with the jehovah's witnesses and really gave it my best
00:14:13.920but it relatively quickly became very apparent that it wasn't the right thing to do
00:14:24.260and it was scary because at that point i didn't know i had options
00:14:28.680and i thought this is god this is the god of the universe and he's a terrible person
00:14:37.880and this religion is terrible and everything that i love about history about life about
00:14:47.220i don't know that time in my life is you know i'm probably just mapping in my head 1920
00:14:54.920ish at the time you know everything in my mind and my body at that at that age and that time
00:15:03.240told me that this weak you know flaccid pacifistic christianity was not the way to go and that the
00:15:12.680god of their bible was a terrible person and it was really scary because i made the decision like
00:15:20.600if this is what there is and this is the god then i still i can't be on the team this is wrong and
00:15:27.640i can't stand with that and so i was really scared because i didn't know i didn't know there was
00:15:32.520something else and what else was there but i knew if this was the option was jehovah or not
00:15:40.760i'm choosing not and that's what made radbod's story really stand out to me and be meaningful
00:15:49.000to me and that's why it was the first i think that's why i was motivated for that to be the
00:15:53.400first thing i wanted to celebrate in house and true and uh you know doing that and in a way the
00:16:00.520inspiration of king radbot is why i'm here talking to you guys tonight so
00:19:37.740Just a brief rundown of where things are for this tale.
00:19:43.040So, in 308, Constantine the Apostate kills the chieftains Ascaric and Merogeisus.
00:19:52.040In 486, the Franks win the Franco-Roman War of 486, conquering Gaul, just as a kind of demonstration of just about two centuries go by,
00:20:06.000And the Franks go from these peripheral bandit tribesmen on the edge of the Roman world to taking one of the major provinces of the Roman Empire.
00:20:15.140We're just going to kind of gloss over how that happens, but in short, the Roman Empire bled gall dry of men, food, metal, money, just everything.
00:20:25.400so the germanics could come in and got a lot of on the ground support for doing so because
00:20:31.900the romans had like a 98 tax rate basically so like these barbarian chieftains are like you know
00:20:40.780pay us 10 percent of your income we'll call it good and this was just amazing by the standards
00:20:45.220of the gaulish peasantry so in 486 the franks win this war with the romans and conquer gaul
00:20:51.480And it's during this time that the famous vase of soissons shows up, or vase of soissons.
00:21:00.360So the king of the Franks at this time is a man by the name of Ludwig, better known as Clovis I.
00:21:07.720So the Franks loot a settlement and take this vase, which may have come out of a church, but this is before 1000 AD.
00:21:17.980So a lot of what we hear and think about when we hear Christian religious structural terms is just not what it actually is, which kind of shows up later in this tale.
00:21:29.520And the Franks loot this settlement, and they take this vase, and they put all of the booty, the war plunder, in this big pile.
00:21:37.600And Clovis walks up to the pile and says, I'm the king. I'm going to take this.
00:21:43.100He picks the vase out and one of his warriors is incensed and smashes it while it's in Clovis's
00:21:48.700hands and says, the king must be fair to his men and follow the law. You're not allowed to take
00:21:54.140things just because you're the king. A year later, a year later to the day, Clovis howls out, remember
00:22:01.500the vase of Soissons and hacks the man to death with a battle axe. This basically sums up the
00:22:10.140Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties from this period until the mid-700s.
00:22:17.220This story is a bit anachronistically embellished by its teller, Gregory of Tours, in the late
00:22:24.180500s. Clovis Hedwig was the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, but the real power in Gaul
00:22:33.020amongst the Franks, was the so-called mayor of the palace, mayor from Latin mayoris, literally
00:22:39.920meaning big, the big of the palace, which comes to be occupied by the dynasty that is anachronistically
00:22:47.820referred to as the Carolingians, a.k.a. the Carlings. This is Charlemagne's dynasty.
00:22:53.700They end up taking de jure power within a generation or two of Clovis.
00:22:58.300Now, in the 1800s, during the Third French Republic,
00:23:04.620this, it's honestly just an anecdote, really.
00:23:09.100This anecdote gets completely recontextualized to instead be about the birth of the French
00:23:14.300Republic as a distinct republican entity. It's about the importance of the rule of law and the
00:23:20.780eventual prevailing of justice and the necessity of subordinating oneself to the republican
00:23:25.500institutions of government and it becomes a cultural touchstone of french public school
00:23:36.620to this day kind of like how everyone in america knows about washington and the cherry tree
00:23:40.560so in 493 clovis marries his sister aldo fleda to theodoric the great theodoric is a king a
00:23:50.520little east of Gaul. Throughout 498 to 508, somewhere in here, it's not entirely clear,
00:23:58.840Clovis apostasizes to Nicene Christianity. In 493, Clovis married his sister of Ophleda to
00:24:07.620Theodoric, who was an Arian Christian. That is another important thing in Frankish history.
00:24:15.020The Franks are one of the rare few peoples that take up Trinitarian Christianity.
00:24:21.520It's not immediately clear when Clovis actually formally apostatizes, like when does he get dunked in the water.
00:24:30.280It's not really well recorded, which is sort of interesting because of how important this event is.
00:24:37.420However, he immediately begins a centralization campaign, murdering his relatives and stealing their stuff.
00:24:43.600Murder your family to steal their stuff is a really common theme when it comes to the first generation of apostates to Christianity.
00:24:49.980This is also, for what it's worth, exactly what Constantine was doing.0.96
00:24:54.280Murdering his family, stealing their stuff, centralizing his government.
00:24:58.380So one of Clovis' sons, well we're just talking about anecdotes about Clovis,
00:25:03.080one of his sons died shortly after his wife Clotilde secretly baptized said son.
00:25:09.340And then she tried it again, baptizing a son secretly, and he became deathly ill afterwards.
00:25:18.460So she almost, she, anyways, so in 507, Clovis begins the Franco-Gothic War.
00:25:28.780In short, Spain at this time is ruled by a Gothic-Germanic-religiously Aryan minority who dominate the Iberian Peninsula.
00:25:46.500Again, they were nominally Aryans. Religion, other than Islam, before the Reconquista is complete, is extremely murky in Spain.
00:25:58.500A lot of it gets anachronistically backfilled after the Reconquista due to an attempt at creating a glorious Christian lineage of rebellion against Islamic incursion.
00:26:12.500But nominally, Spain is a Christian region at this point. Right. And Clovis is waging war on them and on the Basques who inhabit the area in between France and Spain.
00:26:27.660and at this time there's a lot more of them than there are basques today so um uh the trinitarians
00:26:36.780in southern gaul end up backing um end up backing clovis due to uh who at this time is still are
00:26:45.340uh still sorry when clovis begins his invasion of spain he's actually still nominally asatru at least
00:26:54.620We aren't told that he is converted yet.
00:26:57.660He's not referred to as a Christian king when he does this,
00:27:00.080but he receives the backing of Trinitarian power in southern France for doing this.
00:27:07.420Again, I apologize, we're not talking about Radbaud,
00:27:10.040but it's necessary to set up this a little bit more than in prior episodes.
00:27:15.000So Clovis's army was still majority Asitru in this war, as we're told by letters.
00:27:21.180There's a lot of effort, both at the time and later, to emphasize the lack of raping and pillaging.
00:27:28.960Alongside attempts to craft what is obviously a clearly political act, the apostasy, into some kind of personal piety.0.77
00:27:37.920So there probably was a lot of raping and pillaging when Clovis was invading Spain.
00:27:42.420This starts another trend that goes on for a few centuries.
00:27:46.620This ends up setting the stage for the Islamic invasion of Iberia about 200 years later.
00:27:52.460In short, Clovis' bad behavior drives a wedge between Iberia and Gaul,
00:27:57.020and the Iberians can never really unify to fight against the Islamic invasion,
00:28:02.860because any time they try, the French invade.
00:28:07.260This actually culminates in Charlemagne allying and helping Muslims fight against the Visigoths and the Basques.
00:28:12.220Another thing is this starts the Merovingians enacting large-scale military conflict against their neighbors, using Trinitarianism as a pretense for attacking said neighbors and taking their stuff.
00:28:30.200So there's about a 200-year summation of French history that you can just get by describing Clovis.
00:28:39.500508, Gregory of Tours tells us that Clovis apostatizes here to seal the deal after the Franco-Gothic War.
00:28:47.500Again, whether he actually got dunked here, if he did at all, is unknown and really irrelevant,
00:28:53.500because by 508 he is now a Trinitarian tyrant.
00:28:57.5005.11, Clovis calls the First Council of Orleans, creating a miniature version of what Constantine had wanted to do with the Catholic Church, which is use it as his bureaucracy.
00:29:09.160Because it's important to remember, when Clovis and the Franks show up, Gaul is a Roman province, so this is kind of like a Mexican drug cartel just taking Texas, and the DMV just keeps going, right?
00:29:26.440Okay, so his realm ends up getting split between his four sons, who, in a shocking bit of here, they immediately begin in brutal civil war that lasts until 751, about 200 years later, when the Merovingian dynasty is extinguished and Charlemagne takes power.
00:29:49.140Charlemagne ends up dying, and then his sons immediately start killing each other.
00:29:52.440now our episode on the anglo-saxons takes place if you haven't watched that
00:29:58.840you should probably finish this one and then go watch that one but you know so jumping ahead about
00:30:05.560150 years do you want to say something before we jump ahead 150 years all right 677 i was asking my
00:30:14.400wife to give me a beverage 677 wilfred there's a lot of men who are christian clerics with names
00:30:23.800that start with w's in this tale i'm sorry wilfred the powerful bishop of york in england
00:30:29.600gets expelled from his seat of power by edgfrith king of northumbria
00:30:37.700so wilfrid journeys to the pope to get him involved so i will use the catholic church
00:30:47.620to abuse the populace and steal their wealth is a common thing you see christian kings do realize
00:30:54.520doing realizing they can do at this time but what happens is shortly after the christian
00:31:00.340kings realize they can do that the christian clerics say well wait a minute why do we need
00:31:05.020this king guy i could just abuse the populace and steal their wealth so again remember the catholic
00:31:14.240church at this time is not like a separate a separate of society it is a parallel government
00:31:21.700that still nominally runs europe at least in its own mind and then there's just these germanic gang
00:31:28.620leaders that show up and start taxing peasants so theoretically there's two parallel governments
00:31:34.760And in any given place that isn't inhabited by Celts in Europe right now, where there's the Catholic Church and then there's the Germanic warlord.
00:31:44.540And they are not necessarily the same thing, even though they do interface.
00:31:48.780So this leads to the so-called turbulent priests.
00:31:54.120In Francia, Gaul, France, the Frankish king is the top dog.
00:31:59.820So the clerics have to do what he says.
00:32:02.940In England, the Frankish king is the top dog, so the clerics don't have to do what the Anglo-Saxon
00:32:09.340king says. Again, remember, the Christian church is a government agency slash department
00:32:16.300and is the only one left from this government, the Roman government.
00:32:20.540It's just playing ball with the Roman kings or with the Germanic kings.
00:32:23.980Edgfrith journeys to the Pope and is opposed by the Franks, despite them both being Trinitarian Christians, as Edgfrith's entire effort was essentially about trying to centralize power in his own hands at the behest of both, as opposed to royal power.
00:32:44.380When he goes to Rome, he plans on making his case that power had to be ceded to him because the other people involved were heretics,
00:32:53.020due to a complex controversy surrounding the dating of Passover that no one really cares about.
00:32:57.600So what Edgeforth really wants is he wants to be independent of Northumbria, and thus, by proxy, independent of Frankish rule,
00:33:07.640because the Northumbrians are nominally the subjects of the Franks.
00:33:12.080And Edgeforth wants to just go around that.
00:33:16.060And thus, he seeks out an opponent of the Franks.
00:34:00.380So Aldgissel is going to back the Popish independence party against the Frankish royal party
00:34:06.380because his enemies are the Franks, and he wants to undermine their client states in England to prevent them from looking at Frigia for too long.
00:34:15.380Frigia is a very thin strip of land with very poor agricultural capacity up against the sea, while having basically no...
00:34:28.380The Dutch end up having to invent complex waterworks to pump water out of the land because it's just so low to the ground that whenever the tide goes up, like a mile of land, it just goes away.
00:34:41.820So, Aldgissel desperately wants to keep the Franks busy because the Franks are looking to Frisia and thinking, wow, there's a lot of stuff to steal and a lot of people to enslave up there.
00:34:53.620Frankish sources call the Frisian kings duki, or dux, which means military leader in Latin.
00:35:03.040That is because the Frankish crown had declared itself to be the owner of Frisia, and all the things in it, and all the people in it.
00:35:10.180Independent of what the Frisians, or their kings, or their tribal political institutions, had to say about the matter.
00:35:18.340The city of Utrecht had been originally a Germanic settlement, and then a Roman fort city was made there, but then abandoned, so the Germanics just came back and kept living in it.
00:35:30.840A church was built there at one point, supposedly during Old Gissel's reign, but ends up getting destroyed.
00:35:37.060Academics have largely focused on Ald Gissel as a possible Christian convert due to the later St. Widukin phenomena, which we'll cover much later in this episode.
00:35:49.560Ald Gissel ends up dying at some point. He only shows up in history due to this part in the tale of Willifred.
00:35:57.700He ends up getting replaced by a man by the name of Radbot, our hero of the day.
00:36:03.140Okay, so Frisia today is the Netherlands. It's the far-flung edge of the continental Germanic world.
00:36:09.260It was pincered between the extremely hostile Franks to the south and the sea to the north.
00:36:13.340The people weren't very wealthy, but there were trade cities that had cropped up that engaged with Scandinavia,
00:36:18.800with interior Germany, with the Anglo-Saxons, because it's very close to the sea.
00:36:23.840It's a very thin strip of land, but there's also a lot of big and deep rivers going through it,
00:36:29.000so it's easy to get to anywhere by boat.
00:36:33.140So this is before the hydroengineering that characterizes the Netherlands today has occurred.
00:36:38.120So the area was very swampy, very wet, there's lots of rivers, lots of lowlands.
00:36:42.680In the literature of the time, even foreigners are commenting about the tide and the sea as if these were like, you know, people living there almost.
00:36:55.520These are problems to be dealt with, and the modern Netherlands is the result of the Dutch eventually figuring out how to deal with those problems.
00:37:03.140So the Frankish kings coveted the area due to their wanton greed, but also because while the area was agriculturally quite poor, it had several surprisingly wealthy urban centers that acted as hubs of mercantile activity.
00:37:18.520These hubs weren't under Frankish control, and they're also populated by Asatruz.
00:37:24.580They are Asatruz cities at this point.
00:37:26.720As said, the city of Utrecht was one of these. It was originally a Germanic village, it became a Roman fort, then it became a German city.
00:37:33.720There's an attempt at retroactively reading Christianity into Frisia because the early attempts at introducing Christianity actually failed.
00:37:44.720And supposedly all of the Frisians, in one single day, converted willingly, but then returned to Asaturu the next day.
00:37:55.720Um, this is probably an attempt at baptizing some kind of initial friendliness between the Frisians and Rome, um, against the Franks, due to stuff that ends up happening later.
00:38:07.720Alright, 689, about two decades after Ald Gissel, Radbod shows up in history.
00:38:17.720You want to throw up the third image, Nick? The first Radbod portrait?
00:38:21.720portrait. So this is a portrait of Radbod in the castle that belonged to his
00:38:28.140descendants. He actually became an important feudal and an important
00:38:32.920ancestor in the feudal period much, much later. He probably did not wear a crown
00:38:39.720that ostentatious. Aldgissel had taken in Willibord in 678, so somewhere in the
00:38:46.920decade or so between, Radbod assumes power. Radbod leads an army against the
00:38:54.060Frankish leader Pepin of Herstal. Pepin was the Frankish mayor of the palace, so
00:38:59.680he's the PM, not the king. Pepin ends up winning the battle and actually takes the
00:39:06.760city of Utrecht. Radbod then retreats to either the island of Heligoland or to
00:39:13.520friesland either way he moves north away from frisia for a time to gather his uh his vril
00:39:21.360heligoland is the island that is supposed to be holy to for seti by the way there's a bit
00:39:27.840there's a number of for seti related things in frisia that we're told about do you have anything
00:39:34.320to say while i take a sip from my tea sir um other than just fun fun factoid like cool stuff
00:39:42.560about forsetti and the freesians um in this island i believe it's this island um there's
00:39:56.080there's a couple of different stories but basically forsetti is like the law giver
00:40:01.440of the freesians he provides them an accurate you know code of of their laws and governance
00:49:25.460Of course he wasn't, he was the second son.
00:49:27.120That was a guy by the name of Drogo, but nonetheless, in 708, Grimoald was actually given the Duchy of Burgundy as his personal property.
00:49:36.260Burgundy ends up becoming this sort of little France that could, that gets completely demolished much later in French history.
00:49:45.480If you've ever played Europa Universalis, you know what I'm talking about.
00:49:49.780So Grimewald is important, and he's married to the daughter of a pretty important Frankish enemy
00:49:57.160who appears to be positioning this child to be a key player in Frankish politics.
00:50:06.260So some people look at this as a denigration of Radbod, that he's marrying his daughter to a Christian's.
00:50:18.260I will posit, and we can talk about this later because this story keeps going,
00:50:25.260I will posit that this marriage is actually a pretty offensive action,
00:50:29.260because he's positioning his lineage to have a pretty big say in the Frankish
00:50:35.800court, and the Franks and the Pope are trying to put a fifth column in his
00:50:41.380country. He's trying to put a fifth column in the Frankish palace, right? So in 714,
00:50:49.080three years later, Pepin of Herstel dies, and Radbod immediately takes to the
00:50:55.480offensive. First, we're told he has Grimmewald, his son-in-law, assassinated by a man named Ragnar.
00:51:05.280Ragnar supposedly slew Grimmewald while Grimmewald was returning from a pilgrimage to worship the
00:51:11.800bones of Saint Lambert in Maastricht. Lambert had actually been murdered in 708 or 709, about five
00:51:19.060or six years earlier, in a feud that erupted when Lambert publicly denounced Pepin of Herstal
00:51:26.100for cheating on his wife with a woman named Alpida. Alpida would give birth to a son named
00:51:31.780Carl, who would become Charles Martell. So Grimewald was actually making maneuvers by aligning himself
00:51:40.500with his father's enemies by going to worship at the bones of one of his father's enemies,
00:51:45.780which is a little interesting tidbit towards that um marriage is an offensive act that i
00:51:53.360mentioned earlier because grimwald gets assassinated right but grimwald was also
00:51:59.680ostensibly palling around with a faction that didn't like pepin of herstal right um also
00:52:08.340cheating on your wife and if not just outright being a polygamist is a
00:52:13.320Pretty common thing for the Merovingians and Carlings to have done.
00:52:17.320So, the second thing that Radbaud did is he had Willebrod and his monks expelled from Frisia.
00:52:24.320Christian texts tell us that the populace, just like overnight, returned to the worship of the Aesir, building many temples as they did so.
00:52:34.320Third, he immediately acted to retake his lost lands.
00:52:38.320While the Franks were embroiled in a large succession crisis due to Pepin's death, he struck, took back Utrecht, and tore down the cathedral in it, which may have been the second time that this first Christian church gets torn down, we're not entirely sure.
00:52:53.200He cast Willebrod and his antifas out, causing them to scatter to the winds.
00:52:58.080Fourth, he rallied allies against the Franks and a massive army.
00:53:02.060he actually managed to take cologne from its frankish holders like he besieged a fortified
00:53:08.040frankish city fifth and importantly he allied himself with the neustrians long story short
00:53:16.240there were marital relationships between the merovingians and the neustrians so this is both
00:53:22.200an alliance against an enemy of his enemy and a dangerous second barb of securing power with
00:53:26.340Francia, because, so you can see here, there's two kind of marital pincers going on. There's the
00:53:32.520Radbod dynasty entrance into the Frankish court, and then there's the Neustrian
00:53:37.140pincer, right? So these other factions are moving into the Frankish court to do exactly what the
00:53:44.800Christian clerics are doing, but in a different manner. A lot of this stuff is a single line
00:53:53.400in someone else's story radbot is very much unfortunately a character we really have to do
00:53:59.760a lot of reconstruction about because uh the people who are writing these anecdotes about him
00:54:05.440really don't want people thinking about this guy because as we'll talk about a little later
00:54:10.380this isn't supposed to be happening right this level of political deftness this level of intrigue
00:54:18.660this level full of military competency, this isn't supposed to happen from a pagan.
00:54:48.660all right unfortunately all of these victories in the historical record or at least really cool
00:54:59.180maneuvers sort of come to a blunt end because the franks just pull back and start fortifying their
00:55:08.440positions radbod then dies in 17 719 from illness we're not given much specifics what happens next
00:55:18.640is uncertain a successor named bubo shows up in 734 and is described as a rebel but again the
00:55:26.320frisian propaganda machine had just outright claimed that frisia was property of the frankish
00:55:32.880king so it's not clear what it's obviously clear what rebel in this instance means it means he's
00:55:39.920an independent king right um the franks had actually referred to both the frisians and
00:55:47.840and Saxons as rebellious slaves squatting on land rightfully, there for the stealing by the
00:55:53.260Frankish king. However, Radbod's presence apparently frightened the Frankish court,
00:55:58.180who chose to simply wait him out. So the Franks were mostly, were more concerned with the Saxons,
00:56:05.320and although literature acts as if the Frankish clergy just had access to Frigia, we don't really
00:56:09.340see them doing anything with it until the 730s. So again, notice that like Radbod shows up
00:56:16.140680 or so or yeah 689 it's not until about 40 years later that we really start hearing about
00:56:25.580christians doing things after you know like like making accomplishments converting the populace
00:56:33.720building churches etc except in these tacit kind of like no no really guys there was a church here
00:56:39.640there used to be a church here, kind of maneuvers.
00:56:44.640Furthermore, we are told that the Franks were actually quite scared of Frisia and its military power,
00:56:49.640and probably more so the alliances that he had cultivated.
00:56:53.640I don't know how good the Frisian military honestly would have been at this time.
00:56:58.640Frisia is quite small compared to Francia.
00:57:01.640So, apparently, Radbod was planning on going on a military campaign in 719 deeper into Frankish territory, what would be referred to as Austrasia, that ends up falling apart because he dies of illness.
00:57:21.640There's a gap in the history of what happens here.
00:57:26.640719, there's an aborted military campaign.
00:57:30.640733, the province of Westergo, which is part of Friesland, rebels against Frankish rule.
00:57:37.640Charles Martel, the bastard son of Pepin, reacts harshly.
00:57:44.640Apparently some apostatized when they were defeated by Martel, when he sends an army to go deal with this rebellion,0.81
00:57:50.640rebellion which is probably more like a large-scale bandit raid but when the franks left the apostates
00:57:56.560were actually punished by their neighbors i'm gonna throw it in here because i can't find a
00:58:02.640fun transition they also really mentioned about a frisian law code we actually do have one it's
00:58:08.000called the lex frisionum it's a very interesting little text that talks about the frisian laws to
00:58:15.840It's a, you know, Frisian law code, right?
00:58:19.720And, you know, these people are punished by their neighbors for apostasy.
00:58:23.520This isn't, like, barbarism. This is a legal procedure.
00:58:27.760Like, no, it's illegal to betray the Aesir, right?
00:58:33.540So in 734, Bubo, or perhaps Popo, of Frisia patronizes a rebellion in Westergo.
00:58:42.260Bubo slash Popo then dies, killed in one of Charles Martel's wars of aggression, killed on the field of battle.
00:58:50.200Martel's armies moved much quicker, as this time around they weren't concerned with attacking civilians,
00:58:56.320which is a pretty constant thread throughout Carolingian and Nerovingian warfare,
00:59:01.740is that when these armies are going around putting down rebels, what they're basically doing is raping and pillaging civilians, right?
00:59:10.620because again they're authorized to do so because christianity so later writers try to downplay the
00:59:19.500violence against civilians that are done in these raids um they that's part of why they're trying
00:59:27.260to portray the franks or the frisians it's not helpful that there's so many people and groups
00:59:35.020that have the same starting Franks, Frisians, Willebroer, Winfrith, Wigneth, yeah.
00:59:46.220So let's get to the baptism story, because that's the fun one.
00:59:51.180You want to throw in the the fifth image, Nick?
00:59:54.060all right this is a tapestry actually showing radbod you know getting into the baptismal font
01:00:05.380so we're told that radbod actually was ready to apostatize and accept baptism who the officiant
01:00:14.640was is debated some sources say it was will abroad others say it was wolfram and others
01:00:20.580still say it was Bonifacius, whose birth name was Winfrith, thankfully referred to him by his
01:00:26.580not by his dead name. Radbod placed his foot into the font. Presumably he was naked or in some sort
01:00:34.200of simple garb, like a white garb, as at this time baptisms were done via full-body immersion.
01:00:42.320He was prepared to be immersed when he turns to Wolfram and asks of his ancestor's fate.
01:00:47.540Whoever the officiant was tells us the canonical answer.
01:00:53.080They were suffering eternally in hell.
01:00:55.400And so Radbaud declares that he would rather be in hell with his kin than in heaven with a pack of beggars.
01:01:02.320And so he climbs out of the baptismal font.
01:01:05.320We are told that during the time of the second journey of Boniface to Rome, this event had occurred.
01:01:12.040The problem with that is that Boniface went to Rome the second time in 722.
01:01:17.540three years after radbot had died uh boniface as i said was actually born wunfareth he was given the
01:01:24.740name bonifacius in 717 by the pope named so after the fictional character bonifacius of tarsus uh
01:01:32.820bonifacius of tarsus is one of these saints that's just outright made up this is this was never a
01:01:37.860person right um bonifacius was named bonifacius on his first journey to rome bonifacius is the guy
01:01:46.420the the airbending carpenter who gets stabbed to death um this tale about radbod getting baptized
01:01:55.060is late written somewhere around 800 to 900 remember radbod dies 719 so late like a century
01:02:03.220after at most two centuries after at most right it's part of a general ideological slant in
01:02:12.740Christianity against loyalty to one's ancestors. This is something that comes up a few other times
01:02:19.060with the Germanic peoples. They're very concerned about, but what happens, what about my ancestors?
01:02:25.540And there's some Scandinavian, his name starts with Grimkel, I think, who he only actually
01:02:34.260apostatizes if they dig up his ancestors, baptize them too, and put them back in the mound.
01:02:42.740So, this is being told to us as part of a moral narrative. What Radbaud does is bad. You are not supposed to mimic him. You are supposed to spurn your ancestors for Christianity. I have to stress this. In the narrative, you, the reader, are supposed to be shocked and appalled that Radbaud chooses his ancestors over baptism.
01:03:03.160do you want to say anything about the the tale here sir before i do because the
01:04:51.480i guess unique to this in it being portrayed in such clear contrast and interesting
01:04:58.680throughout and you may notice this throughout a number of chris's episodes where we talk about
01:05:02.600the conversion of our folk a lot of the time um the casual viewer or people in modern western
01:05:11.960society look at religion as like a choice of things we live in religiously mixed and diverse
01:05:23.400places or we live in places that are almost you know that are largely secular with kind of an
01:05:30.040afterthought nod culturally to some religious ideas and that wasn't the case one of the things
01:05:35.560that's really interesting it's not just like oh so what if they want to worship jesus whatever
01:05:40.040It's the severing of ties of kinship and the very intentional mission within Christianity to destroy the relationship between kin and between family.
01:05:55.980to destabilize those bonds that were the religious and cultural basis of European institution
01:06:07.440was tribe, clan, family, those loyalties. Christianity explicitly was meant to turn
01:06:17.280children against parents, to turn brother against sister, to turn, you know, brother
01:06:24.540against brother to turn you know people against their in-laws to basically sever all those social
01:06:31.100bonds that were the key to our ancestor society in favor of there are no other bonds the only bond
01:06:39.500is you submitting to jesus who redeemed you of your sins so you guys can
01:06:45.820get crowns and sing at the feet of jehovah about how awesome he is for eternity um
01:06:54.540it was an intentional assault on not only the gods but on the ancestors of our folk
01:07:03.420and on a complete severing of the ties of kinship and it is interesting that even when he's
01:07:13.180you know in awe of the power of this christ he isn't you know the legend that comes down to us
01:07:21.100isn't that it was a big theological thing it was kind of an acceptance of i mean i guess this is
01:07:27.660how it is if this is how it is then you know well where are my ancestors and for him to be making
01:07:38.700that choice choice i have to assume in his mind there was you know at least the possibility you
01:07:45.980you know, what if these guys are right? And this is how it is.
01:07:49.120They've got their Jewish God and he gets to choose where people go when they die.
01:07:55.700And if hell's real and that's where my ancestors are burning.
01:08:01.000If my choice is to be severed from my kinship and go to heaven with heavenly glory,
01:08:06.400or if it's to go to torment, but be with my father and his father and my grandparents
01:08:14.380in the line of my people, I'll choose that.
01:08:19.200And that is a very sober choice that is in.
01:08:27.500It's not like, it's not even at that point
01:08:36.660I would still rather suffer eternal punishment
01:08:40.060and damnation and maintain my trough to my kin then go to your heaven and that's a powerful
01:08:50.140powerful statement and that's why it stands out and it is kind of unique i think it is unique in
01:08:59.420our current you know current list of heroes and i think it's a situation that a lot of people
01:09:08.440listening this broadcast may find themselves in there's i know and it's not exactly the same
01:09:13.720the principles are there there's the first thing to i guess connect to oftentimes for people who
01:09:23.400come to house of truth come home to house true is connection with their ancestors i don't know
01:09:28.680about these gods i don't know about this different mythos that i'm not used to but i know that my
01:09:34.680grandparents existed and i knew them and i can connect to that and i know that my ancestors were
01:09:41.960real if they weren't real i wouldn't be here okay i can start there oftentimes when we get asked
01:09:47.720when spawner i get asked you know what should we do what's the first thing we should do the entry
01:09:53.880level thing for somebody who is not a religious person by nature is to build that bond with your
01:10:01.240ancestors beyond the veil and then from there to build that relationship with the gods it's one of
01:10:07.720those kind of first steps that i think people relate to i think a lot of times when people
01:10:12.880get you know they realize they should come home to the gods and they want to believe in the gods
01:10:18.640and they're trying to be also true there is a lingering fear from christianity about what if
01:10:26.960get this wrong and maybe jesus was the way to go the whole time you know what if they're right what
01:10:32.480if i mess up this is a person who you know his his ideology on it was wavering but his commitment
01:10:43.440and his loyalty to his ancestors wasn't and that pulled him through and maintained his trough for
01:10:49.680the ic here and that's i think that's something that certainly knew people to come over people
01:10:55.760perhaps who come to Ausitru from Christianity can really take heart from or, you know, be
01:11:02.180strengthened and encouraged by. And it's a really strong example to all of us. So that's one of the
01:11:08.860reasons that he is such a standout favorite of mine. It's worth repeat, actually, before I say
01:11:20.020that it's also worth remembering here that again i'm not gonna say that like asatru kings didn't
01:11:27.120rape and pillage when they went on the warpath but the franks were particularly vicious to
01:11:34.260civilian populations right so when radbod is putting his foot into the baptismal font
01:11:44.420it's not just a matter of the person like him it's also involving his ancestors but also his
01:11:53.520people right so there is an element here of do this and your people will be spared because
01:12:01.720ostensibly the the lack of christianity in frisia is the motivating the casus the literal casus
01:12:10.220belly for this conflict and if he apostatizes it spares his people right
01:12:16.320it's worth repeating what the alter ego they said there about radbod not having a glorious
01:12:23.520a glorious conversion story because that actually does happen with someone that we see later in this
01:12:29.740tale and i do believe that this later one was indeed a conscious ideological narrative written
01:12:36.420to serve a purpose, a narrative that was constructed, if you will. And academics
01:12:42.640are very good at deconstructing things, but can we deconstruct the
01:12:46.660deconstruction? Yes. The problem that academics have with this story is that
01:12:55.260the Vita Wolframni tells us that the event took place shortly
01:13:00.540before 718 AD, but Wolfram was dead by 704. I already told you about the
01:13:06.260problem with the second journey of Boniface to Rome. We know that Wolfram was
01:13:14.000dead by 7-0-4 because that's when another text tells us that his body was
01:13:18.200moved to a different site to be worshipped at. The Vita Wolframni tells
01:13:22.400us that Wolfram died in 7-20 but it has to be wrong. There's a lot of
01:13:28.040chronological problems in all of the texts regarding this region at this time.
01:13:34.940So some academics are skeptical of this entire tale. It just has to be made up.
01:13:40.700Personally, in my scholarly opinion, I don't think it's right to do so because we do actually see
01:13:46.700the crux of the matter here. Radbod almost kneels to the Merovingians. He even marries
01:13:53.580his daughter to the Carling Prince. To the prince. And then he turns around and spurns it.
01:14:00.940he could have just left grimoald and not killed him he could have just married into
01:14:10.540the frankish nobility and just let things come what may presumably his grandchildren would be
01:14:17.320christians right he could have but he doesn't that he could have but he doesn't is important here
01:14:28.400So, if the story is fake or is not literal, why is it there?
01:14:32.480In short, the followers of Wolfram and Wilbrord were actually enemies.
01:14:38.960The Vita Wolframni emphasizes the divine favor given to Wolfram and his followers,
01:14:46.640and their great sorcerous power that they used to vex the people of Frisia.
01:14:51.200Meanwhile, the Vita Willebroordi emphasizes the preaching power of Willebroord
01:14:57.040and the political successes of Willebroord. Critics of the story thus argue that the Vita
01:15:03.480Willebroordi was written first and that the Vita Wolframni was written second. Thus, the story
01:15:09.440references a genuine concern of the time but downplays the political successes of the missions
01:15:14.380in Frisia so as to downplay the legitimacy of the Willebroordian faction and emphasize the necessity
01:15:20.780of violence and direct state action by a foreign power in the face of stubborn opposition,
01:15:28.460which the sorcery of the Christian monks is a stand-in for, and thus giving legitimacy
01:15:33.560to the Wolframonite anti-political faction.
01:15:38.200So basically there's two factions of Christian antifas at this point.
01:15:42.940One of them wants to go in, make friends with Radbod and people like him, work with them,
01:15:50.620And get them to come to Christianity on their own terms.
01:15:55.380And the other faction just says, no, we have the Franks.1.00
01:15:57.840Let's just smash these people and force them to do what we want and kill them if they don't.0.99
01:16:03.200So these two factions are fighting and they're doing so in these Vitas.0.99
01:16:09.960A Vita, V-I-T-A, Vita, sometimes it's called.
01:16:14.000A Wita is a life of a saint, but every single one of them is a consciously constructed ideological propaganda narrative meant to convey some faction or position or whatever.
01:16:30.360So, they are essentially dueling through these stories of their glorious founder gurus, right?
01:16:40.240The Vita-Wulframni itself is pretty obviously a hodgepodge of various narratives stitched together, explaining many of the wild inaccuracies and chronological errors in it.
01:16:52.240There's obvious layers in the story, right?0.97
01:16:56.240the alternative is that it was composed by an idiotic madman and you can generally that's a0.98
01:17:05.100general kind of occam's razor you can do with a lot of these criticisms of texts it's where it's1.00
01:17:11.780like are you essentially proposing that the story was composed by an idiotic madman because if you0.95
01:17:17.860are that involves problems right the texts attempt to stitch or the text the text singular sorry0.98
01:17:25.660attempts to stitch legitimate Frisian matters together with Judeo-Christian tropes,
01:17:30.880such as equating the drowning and hanging of criminals with human sacrifice of children.
01:17:36.160Interestingly, the Lex Frisionum actually tells us that
01:17:39.440the punishment for defacing temples to the Iser was drowning.
01:17:46.040I'll keep going about the drowning in a minute.
01:17:48.860One such victim of this, we are told, was Ovo,
01:17:52.560who was actually a monk in the monastery that produced the Uita Wolframmi.
01:17:58.100The truth of this is ultimately irrelevant because what matters is that Ovo died sometime in the mid-700s,
01:18:04.060which puts a cap on the people who would have been alive for Radbod's reign.
01:18:09.660So Ovo was a child during the reign of Radbod and dies 50-ish years later, right?
01:18:15.940so the story is not a later fabrication as is sometimes alleged it can only be at most 200
01:18:24.660years old and again remember later fabrication this guy lived this guy died 719 that's 1300
01:18:33.060years ago there's a lot of room for later fabrications right the wolf the we thought
01:18:39.020Oulframni is thought to have been written, you know, within the lifetime of people who could have known Radbaud, right?
01:18:49.620Or more so, this narrative is, if the actual physical text wasn't right.
01:18:57.820One possibility is that this story is a peasant's view of what was happening at the time in the Frisian court.
01:19:05.200Because, like, if you are a Christian peasant in Frisia, what are you actually supposed to think about seeing this conflict between Francia and Frisia and the Frisian king kind of backing off, but also trying to do these, like, diplomatic barbs and marrying his daughter in, and how do you perceive that, right?
01:19:25.960Attached to this period, there's a lot of literature surrounding Wolfram and Willobroard, the Frankish clerics who had been some of the men sent to Frigia to build the Fifth Column there.
01:19:36.520Much of this is stock Christian fiction.
01:19:39.740Supposedly, Wolfram converted Radbod's son, a fact that shows up once and we're never told about again, even in places where honestly it would make a lot of sense to talk about something like that.
01:19:50.860At one point, Wolfram saves a man from hanging by casting greater strength in neck plus three.
01:19:57.000He saves children that are set to be sacrificed to Baal by drowning and so on.
01:20:02.600These same texts talk about how evil Radbot is and also talk about him permitting Wolfram and Willowbrod to preach peacefully.
01:20:10.760so this guy is like drowning kids to ball but he's letting these Christian
01:20:15.580priests just bump around his country spread spreading the good word like huh
01:20:22.000this is a careful active narrative construction on the one hand on the one
01:20:30.300hand um Radbot is a bad guy doing a bad religion but he's also being victimized
01:20:35.560by both christian church and the franks but they can't be perceived as aggressors
01:20:43.200and they can't be perceived as personally opposed to the king because remember we're talking about
01:20:49.740germanics here if these people are enemies of the king they are your enemy you don't get a say in
01:20:56.560oh but that wolfram guy he was so nice he can't he he cast you know greater heal disease on my kid
01:21:02.960It doesn't matter. He's the king's enemy. He's your enemy, right?
01:21:05.980So in these stories being written in Frisia and Saxony, actually, in the generation after Wolframs, in the generation after Radbaths,
01:21:19.840they are consciously trying to craft a narrative of the fight of Christianity against paganism,
01:21:26.600But they also don't want to explicitly affirm a conflict between Christianity and an Asatru king, because these people still have hangups about their kings.
01:21:39.780We'll see where that goes in a little bit here.
01:21:43.960So, interestingly, however, in one of the human sacrifice narratives, the children that Wolfram saves are scheduled to be drowned by the tide.
01:21:53.220um apparently radbot has them chained up chained up at low tide and uh wolfram wades out into the
01:21:59.860waters of high tide to save them that's what happens in the story and uh ovo is supposed
01:22:04.360to be one of these children right drowning is a particularly osatru method of execution
01:22:12.100and it only shows up in christian hagiographies from the germanic world that are very chronologically
01:22:19.260early and it shows up oddly widespread we talked about abbas the goth in our episode on the gothic
01:22:27.680heroes how did abbas die or sorry abbas sabbas there's so many people in some of these tales
01:22:36.140um sabbas the goth was killed by drowning how do people who deface temples of the eisir
01:22:45.700get put to death in the Lex Frisionum. They get drowned. How does Tacitus tell
01:22:56.440us that the Germanic peoples get rid of something that they don't want, or
01:23:03.160someone? They drown them in a bog. We are given a very interesting Old Norse word,
01:23:11.340I believe it is for which refers there's there's this thing that shows up in Norse literature a few times about people or things that are unwanted getting cast into the sea or left out at low tide.
01:23:28.740so high tide takes them um in our episode on uh anyways anyways um this this motif actually shows
01:23:40.060up interestingly in uh one story about a wizard who gets chained up to uh chained to a rock to
01:23:47.140drown to drown um this motif of drowning is uniquely germanic and it only shows up in christian
01:24:01.500hagiographic literature with the germanics we don't get stories about like and then the emperor
01:24:08.020nero cruelly drowned saint yabba dabbadoopolis that doesn't happen burning odd they shot him
01:24:17.220with arrows and he didn't die so they cut his head off kind of stuff but we don't see drowning right
01:24:23.940um sorry i'm looking at something there
01:24:30.660uh but i'm trying to find where my notes i'm at because i just freestyle it there
01:24:35.700um we thus see an obvious uneasiness that christians who are at this time literally
01:24:44.420trying to destroy us at your temples would have with this and hence why they would associate
01:24:50.080with the murder of children to defame it because they kill babies is a really common christian
01:24:56.120slander that they actually christians throw this at each other in this day right
01:25:01.680um what's interesting about this punishment about drowning people though is that it's actually a
01:25:09.520sort of give them unto the gods type thing because if you change someone like if if
01:25:17.760what happens if they get out well they can just go right this type of punishment or just method
01:25:26.640of execution shows up as a type of ordeal in indo-european religions a few times as like uh
01:25:34.720we're going to do something to you and if you die it's because you were guilty if you survive it's
01:25:41.240because the gods are telling us you weren't guilty right um the uh also interesting fun fact about
01:25:50.180the wita wolframni completely not really related but it actually tells us the description of one
01:25:55.240of these Hoffs, one of these Asatruh Hoffs that Radbod had constructed as a house of shining gold
01:26:02.620and unbelievable beauty. So it's worth remembering here, I said that a lot of these terms don't
01:26:10.580really... monk, monastery, nun. These terms don't really start meaning what we think they mean until
01:26:20.180around 1000 AD, and monk at this time basically means soldier for the pope, like a religious
01:26:28.420ideological activist. They don't do a whole lot of, like, asceticism. Today in the West,
01:26:39.600we very often read a sort of Buddhism into Christian monasticism, emphasizing the great
01:26:47.200deprivation that christian monks subjected themselves to but that's not really the case
01:26:54.140what actually happens is that this actually goes back to rome the origins of christian monasticism
01:27:00.620are these ideological soldiers basically ideological gang fighters that are stashed
01:27:08.860in church-owned communal bunk houses so we hear monastery what you're what we're really hearing
01:27:13.920is basically a mead hall for christian warriors right and they then go out and spread the jesus
01:27:22.880and all that and then they return retreat to these monasteries which are these semi-fortified
01:27:28.080dwellings right so when we talk about this we need to keep in mind that this is all in a germanic
01:27:38.320context, right? Which is why the drowning portion is important here, right? It is a genuine
01:27:45.160Germanic-ness peeking through Christian ideological narratives, right? We don't see like the murder
01:27:53.940of children show up in any Germanic literature, but we do see an interesting splicing together
01:28:00.120of this uniquely Germanic form of execution with the stock Judeo-Christian trope of the
01:28:05.740mass murder of children right the frisians are bad not because they're chucking babies into a
01:28:11.960big statue of ball they're bad because they're doing this germanic thing that is being interwoven
01:28:18.700into a judeo-christian narrative you look like you were thinking about something sir you want
01:28:24.040to say something here no it's just contemplating okay um so bonifacius was ultimately executed for
01:28:35.360violent crimes possibly for the desecration of temples again that's actually punishable
01:28:40.400by death in the lex frisionum um and it is something he's said to have done like
01:28:49.040spoiler boniface gets stabbed to death and he actually tries to protect himself with his bible
01:28:54.080and one of his ex his assassins law bringers stabs him through the bible and impales him right
01:29:00.560So, the Christian hagiographies are getting at an actual Germanic history of some kind, possibly something like Wolfram having saved criminals from execution, or Christians from execution, or something like that.
01:29:15.560And it's important to remember at this time that Christians openly believe that they are allowed to make things up in order to advance the cause of Christianity.
01:29:23.560This includes entire people. St. George is a fictional character. St. Boniface of Tarsus is a fictional character.
01:29:32.560So in any of these narratives, we do actually have cause to be skeptical, and we do have to sort of deconstruct them because they are being constructed sometimes out of the ether.
01:29:44.560But Wolfram's attachment to Radbod seems to be a later invention. Wolfram as opposed to Willaproard, right?
01:29:52.560It was actually Willebroard that would have known Radbaud, at least from how close the texts from his faction seemed to put him.
01:29:59.920Because again, Willebroard is the guy who's going to go to Radbaud's court and be like,
01:30:04.020hey, let me make this Christianity thing worth your while.0.98
01:30:07.600Wolfram is the guy saying, I'm going to cast magic missile on you, and if you don't die,0.99
01:30:12.060I'm going to go get my friends to invade your country with an army.
01:30:14.740So, the Willebroardian faction is trying to emphasize political successes, so there is a degree of haziness about the accuracy there.
01:30:28.740Wolfram does seem to have hung out at the periphery of Frisia, meanwhile, as opposed to Willebroard, who seems to have gone right for the heart of the matter.
01:30:38.740And as an aside, remember, at this time, there's a big emphasis on both sides with loyalty, because we're talking about Germanics here.
01:30:46.260Ossetru is about loyalty to the Aesir. Christianity is about loyalty to the Pope at this time.
01:30:51.940A lot of concerns with heresy, which especially crop up here as there's a three-way fight between Ossetru, Trinitarian, and Arianism.
01:31:00.200These are really about loyalty to the Pope.
01:31:03.440We haven't really been talking about Arianism.
01:31:05.240There's Aryan Christians in this story.
01:31:07.820They just don't get written about all that much.
01:31:10.820There's also a massive dispute with intranetarian Christianity about heresy.
01:54:42.000And of those, it would depend on who you want to reach out to and what your purpose is.
01:54:48.040We can certainly talk more about that if you'd like.
01:54:50.260But I think that's an important message to everyone listening to the program and something, you know, a lot of people I know have questions about.
01:55:00.260And while I've got the floor here, while back, Nicholas in North Carolina donated $25 of Thorshoff and $10 of Thorshoff.
01:55:12.000And Angela in New Hampshire donated $50 each towards the Baldershof steeple, towards the Thorshof heat, and towards Freyshof.
01:55:20.920So thank you for that. We appreciate you, Angela.
01:55:25.960All right, you can have the floor back.
01:55:29.640So there was a question that was asked, can you go back to Wolfram and explain who they are?
01:55:35.320So, to be clear, our hero is Radbod of Frigia, but just due to the nature of how this stuff comes down to us, we're mostly hearing about this hero through stories about the villains in the tale, right?
01:55:53.460so there's three totally unconfusingly three christian monks in this story whose names all
01:56:03.500start with w all knocking around frisia so they are in chronological order will abroad who entered
01:56:13.020frisia around 700 a.d his evangelical strategy was to cozy up with political elites and try to
01:56:20.380slide Christianity in from the top down, but also with minimal upset. He is the one that probably
01:56:26.240knew Radbaud. He's also the one that would be able to do the baptism in the baptism story.
01:56:32.180He was an Anglo-Saxon. Then there was Wolfram, who entered Frisia probably around 71680.
01:56:39.320His evangelical strategy was to assault the populace with magic in order to convince them
01:56:44.340of the power of Christianity. He probably died too early to really know Radbaud, and even then,
01:56:49.860he only hung around the periphery of Frisian society anyways. He was a Frank. Then there was
01:56:55.960Wundfraith aka Bonifacius who entered Frisia around 750 AD after Radbad died despite some
01:57:04.960stories making them contemporaries. His evangelical strategy was to actually like physically assault
01:57:11.200people, destroy temples, profane holy sites, and get in fights. He ended up getting stabbed to death
01:57:16.840for it he was an anglo-saxon i hope that answers the uh that question sufficiently um do you want
01:57:25.000me to get into the part about why we care sir chris tell us why we care why do we care the
01:57:33.160stories of arminius and athanaric are those of two priest kings who sought to refine their people
01:57:39.800into something greater and the tragedy that unfolded when they were ignored radbod is a
01:57:45.720welcome reprieved from that, because Radbod seems to have been listened to. We care about Radbod
01:57:51.720because of his personal struggle. Arminius and Athanric had spiritual struggles, but nothing to
01:57:57.240the degree that Radbod did. In Asatru, we often speak about how Asatru doesn't mean belief in the
01:58:04.120Aesir, it means loyalty to the Aesir. This is a particular form of a more general maxim,
01:58:10.520Maxim, that any virtue that you wish to see more of in the world, you must embody.
01:58:16.760If you wish for other men to be courageous, you must be courageous.
01:58:20.240If you wish for other men to be truthful, you must be truthful.
01:58:22.740If you wish for other men to be honorable, you must be honorable.
01:58:26.480And so on, for all of the nine noble virtues.
01:58:29.700If you want other people to persevere, you have to persevere.
01:58:33.960If you want other people to be victorious, you have to be victorious.
01:58:38.020And if you want other people to strive for victory, you have to strive for victory.
01:58:43.900Radbod, as the king, was the man whose virtue mattered the most.
01:58:48.940Sometimes in the AFA, we run into people who say something like,
01:58:52.540I like what you guys are doing, but I'm not going to help.
01:58:55.040I'm not going to join. I'm not going to tell other people about you.
01:58:58.740I'm not going to do any time or money, but hey, I totally support you guys.
01:59:03.020I don't mean to be mean, but if you are one of these people,
01:59:05.520then you do not, in fact, like what you're doing.
01:59:08.020In fact, you are, if just via stagnation, working against what we are doing.
01:59:12.100If you say that you like loyalty, or courage, or honor, or any other virtue,
01:59:15.940but then not only actively refuse to perform them, but work against those who do,
01:59:20.820then you are saying that you do not, in fact, like loyalty, courage, honor, or any other virtue.
01:59:25.780If you say that you want Asa Truba to be a thing, but then do nothing to make it a thing,
01:59:30.500get in the way of making it a thing, or worse, actively work against people who are making it a thing,
01:59:35.620then you are not, in fact, someone who wants Asatru to be a thing.
01:59:40.500In Asatru, we are our deeds. In Asatru, words are wind, deeds are iron. In Asatru, we put our
01:59:48.260money where our mouths are. In Asatru, we are loyal to the Aesir. We also believe that the Aesir
01:59:54.340want men and women to put their money where their mouths are. That means being courageous enough to
01:59:59.780to wear your hammer outside of your shirt so that others will do the same. That means coming home to
02:00:10.300the Church of the Ice here in Midgard. It means participating. That means not throwing a temper
02:00:15.080tantrum and quitting when something doesn't go your way or when you hear something that you don't
02:00:19.280like. Whenever you are disloyal, whenever you are a coward, whenever you betray your principles,
02:00:25.700you are spitting in the face of Radbod. Radbod stepped out of the baptismal font so that no man0.62
02:00:32.220ever has to again. Radbod chose virtue so that no man ever has to bow to vice again. But if you do
02:00:39.340not join him, then your sin is twice as grievous. When Radbod stepped out of that font, his body
02:00:45.260was naked, but so was his soul. Everyone saw exactly who and what he was. If you are stripped
02:00:52.040of all pretenses all of the things that hide who you are do your folk find you worthy do your
02:00:58.540ancestors do your gods and that's all i got masterfully done as always um
02:01:09.760i think everyone loves these shows that you do i think that most people that find their way
02:01:19.800I, to us, already have kind of a built-in love and excitement about history, and I think that you are shedding light on episodes and periods of history and places in history that are often ignored or that the average man on the street is not aware of.
02:01:40.980I think these are really valuable shows, and I appreciate all the effort that you put into them.
02:12:05.220that that is typically what our ancestors would put in the safe craft area
02:12:18.260i think that in that particular situation i don't know that that was a firm doctrine that
02:12:24.980any guy that does save stuff is necessarily a homosexual but that is the thing that they're
02:12:33.300referring to when they're making that insult because you are a man who is allowing yourself to
02:12:38.180be and for any of the younger audience whatever else i'm not trying to be vulgar but you are
02:12:43.940allowing yourself to be both penetrated and you are now the the receiver and not the giver of
02:12:58.020the active portion of of that kind of very intimate interaction
02:13:03.300i'm gonna step aside real quick if you want to answer another question but the
02:13:08.340caucasian one i have some stuff to say on okay i will leave that one for a little bit later on
02:13:16.580all right what you should drew what you should
02:13:21.460what you should do is address what i just sit you in teams that'll be funny
02:13:33.300no i appreciate that and i appreciate getting uh you know any people who come and join us in the
02:13:43.760chat and uh are watching the show i'm glad to have new people here and i'm always glad to take
02:13:48.500whatever the question is i think a lot of people are hesitant to ask questions because they think
02:13:54.100maybe they've been asked before or they think you know something might sound silly or whatever
02:13:58.440Now, questions fuel the show, and there's always new people that haven't listened to prior episodes or that, chances are, are thinking what you might be thinking.
02:14:07.480And they're benefited by being able to hear the answer to the question they were thinking but didn't take the initiative to ask.