Content provided in partnership with

Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Renascence, Spring 1997 by David E Goldweber

MANY literary critics continue to cast Lord Byron as a deviant and a miscreant who was contemptuous, or at least suspicious, of all that Western culture and Western religion revere.1 Indeed, as a young man who denied nothing but doubted everything, Byron explored superstition, deism, and skepticism on the mental side of things; drinking, gambling, whoring, homosexuality, and incest on the physical side.2 The early cantos of Byron's first masterpiece, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, are pessimistic and nihilistic, depicting the poet's hopeless journey through the ruined and war-torn remnants of once proud European nations. As he journeys, the young poet declares that even when "A thousand years scarce serve to form a state" still "An hour may lay it in the dust" (II.84).3 Surely, this disillusioned and impetuous rascal would be vigorously averse to Christianity, and even more so to its strictest and most traditional branch, Catholicism?

More Articles of Interest: Byron's Don Juan as a global allegory.(Lord Byron); "PEOPLE'S ANCESTORS ARE HISTORY'S GAME": BYRON'S DON JUAN AND...; Don Juan, "a problem, like all things"; Political seductions: the show of war in Byron's Sardanapalus - Lord Byron; All the rage: Wordsworth's attack on Byron in Lines Addressed to a Noble Lord

But, in fact, Byron wrote dozens of poems and plays based upon Biblical subject matter including Hebrew Melodies (1815), Cain (1821), and Heaven and Earth (1823), all of which appropriate and reinterpret scripture, but, as Wolf Z. Hirst demonstrates, never attempt to revise or subvert it. Byron's most affirming verses on religion appear in his greatest poem, Don Juan. Like Bernard Beatty (see esp. 70-84), I see Don Juan progressing not toward despairing skepticism but toward optimistic, albeit cautionary, faithfulness. And while Byron is not explicit, he does hint in the final cantos of the poem that this faithfulness is a Catholic Christian one. The protagonist, true to his namesake, misses out on the goodness that he encounters. But the narrator, through references to Catholicism and through deployment of a prominent Catholic character named Aurora, makes clear the manifest presence in our world of genuine miracles and redemptive ideals that are available for those who trust them. In Byron's own words:

Some people would impose now with authority,

Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle;

Men whose historical superiority

Is always greatest at a miracle.

But Saint Augustine has the great priority,

Who bids all men believe the impossible,

Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he

Quiets at once with `quia impossibile'.

And therefore, mortals, cavil not at all;

Believe:-if `tis improbable, you must;

And if it is impossible, you shall:

`Tis always best to take things upon trust.

(DJ XVI.5-6)4

I suggest that in his mature shift away from doubting and towards trusting, Byron not only used Don Juan to depict Catholicism as the highest and best faith, but was himself very close to converting.

Always happy to meet a true believer, Byron even called himself a Christian numerous times (see below, Kennedy 201, or HVSV 210), and occasionally wondered if he might one day "turn devout" (BLJ 5:208). And while Byron acted respectfully to Christianity as a whole, he acted even more so to Catholicism in particular. During his tenure in the House of Lords, Byron consistently voted in favor of Catholic relief (see BLJ 6:172 for his pride in doing so), and devoted one of his three parliamentary speeches to supporting the 1812 Catholic Claims Bill. Byron's favorite poet was the Catholic Alexander Pope, whose works to Byron were "what I firmly believe in as the Christianity of English Poetry" (Prose 106). In fact, late in life Byron not only stated that he inclined "very much to the Catholic doctrines" (BLJ 9:119) and that he has "often wished I had been born a Catholic" (Medwin 80)-but even that he believed Catholicism to be nothing less than "the best religion" (BLJ 8:98).

Also worth mentioning is a facetious letter to John Cam Hobhouse, Byron's best friend, in which Byron pretends to be his own valet, William Fletcher. In this letter, writing from Italy, Byron has 'Fletcher' tell Hobhouse not only that Byron has died, but that before he passed away he converted to Catholicism (in Fletcher's imperfect verbiage Byron "died a Papish" [BLJ 6:44]). While this letter is a joke, it is a well-crafted and convincing one. Byron would not have portrayed himself as a convert unless he thought Hobhouse might believe it. Indeed, considering the copious attention that Byron throughout his life paid to Christianity and to Catholicism, we may perceive Byron as a man who himself could neither completely nor consistently adhere to Christian tenets, but who increasingly came to recognize the strength and value of these tenets, praising them and those who followed them in his conversations, his letters, and his poetry.

There are, certainly, moments of jest and moments of doubt.5 Critics and biographers do have reason to be suspicious about Byron's Christian musings, including his Catholic ones. Some see Byron's religious side only as an anomalous aberration, with Catholicism appealing to him because of the physical elegance and "sensuality" of its "tangible" worshipping rituals (Calvert 7, McGann 253). The evidence, writes one critic, "is such as to remain fairly open ended," but Byron most probably had only a limited and "secular Catholicism" (Donnelly 49). Another critic maintains that the chapter on Byron's respect for religion in the biography written by Countess Teresa Guiccioli (the poet's Italian lover) is to be considered unreliable, lopsided, and biased by "her own convictions" (Lovell's note, HVSV 633). A major critic suggests that Byron praised Catholicism only to "bait" his English Protestant friends (Marchand's introduction, BLJ 1:14).

Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Renascence, Spring 1997 by David E Goldweber

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts