The Pillars PillarsOfTheWest Start Reading
Thesis
Not nostalgia. Not ideology. Inheritance. Jerusalem gives revelation. Athens gives reason. Rome gives order. Christendom gives synthesis. Not nostalgia. Not ideology. Inheritance. Jerusalem gives revelation. Athens gives reason. Rome gives order. Christendom gives synthesis.

Library

The Sources

Foundational figures and texts for each pillar.

Faith

Jerusalem

Representative Figures

Moses, David, Isaiah, The Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, The Church Fathers, St. Augustine

Core Texts

Genesis, Exodus, The Psalms, Isaiah, The Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Romans, Confessions, City of God

Reason

Athens

Representative Figures

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Homer, Thucydides, Euclid, Plotinus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Thomas Aquinas

Core Texts

The Iliad, The Odyssey, Apology, Republic, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics, Elements

Law

Rome

Representative Figures

Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Seneca, Justinian, St. Augustine, Charlemagne, St. Thomas More, Edmund Burke

Core Texts

The Aeneid, On Duties, The Twelve Tables, Institutes of Justinian, City of God, Magna Carta, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Virtue

Classical and Christian moral tradition

Representative Figures

Aristotle, Cicero, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas More, St. John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton

Core Texts

Nicomachean Ethics, On Duties, Rule of St. Benedict, Summa Theologiae, The Imitation of Christ, Orthodoxy

Beauty

Cathedral, icon, poem, chant, and city

Representative Figures

King David, Homer, Dante, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Palestrina, J.S. Bach, Christopher Wren, Antoni Gaudi

Core Texts

The Psalms, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, The Four Quartets, The Spirit of the Liturgy, The Gothic Cathedral

Learning

Monastery, school, university, and library

Representative Figures

St. Benedict, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Alcuin, St. Anselm, Peter Lombard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Erasmus, St. John Henry Newman

Core Texts

The Consolation of Philosophy, Rule of St. Benedict, Sentences, Summa Theologiae, The Divine Comedy, The Idea of a University

Memory

Tradition and inheritance

Representative Figures

Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, St. Bede, Dante, Christopher Dawson, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien

Core Texts

Histories, History of the Peloponnesian War, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Divine Comedy, The Everlasting Man, The Abolition of Man, The Formation of Christendom