(avg. read time: 14–28 mins.)
Some of my newer readers may not know this, but I have written a lengthy series of commentaries on biblical and theological elements in Tolkien’s letters. Late last year, an expanded edition was released, and more letters that were relevant to my interests in these commentaries were among the 150 added. Some letters were even expanded from what appeared in the original collection, as editor cutoffs have been removed and the full letter has been presented, although this is not the case for all letters with editor cutoffs. However, the published collection is still not a complete catalog of all extant letters from Tolkien, nor is it likely that there will ever be such a collection in my lifetime, whether due to the private nature of some correspondence (as in letters to Edith), the cost of acquiring the letters or at least the rights to publish them, or other reasons still. As one example, a letter that is central to the point made here about why Tolkien disliked C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does not appear in the expanded collection. But the text of some of these letters is partially or fully publicly available by other means, such as at Tolkien Gateway. In view of these other letters, I have decided to supplement my commentary series in two parts. Part 1 today will address letters added in the expanded edition released last year. Part 2 will address the letters that are still unpublished that are relevant to my interests in this series.
Letter #18a (22 November 1937 to E. V. Gordon)
This letter is addressed to Tolkien’s mentor in philology. He offers his help on the production of Gordon’s edition of the poem Pearl (on which, see here more extensively). He even offers to tackle the theological parts of this poem first, and it is quite a theologically weighty text. This speaks to his involvement with the Church that he could, in his words, “fairly easily get advice, Dominican, Benedictine and Jesuit.” He does not consider himself learned enough to criticize anything Gordon has already written on this front, but he clearly has enough connections and knowledge to know whom to consult. He even goes on in the letter to allude to theological controversies for the parties involved in critiquing Gordon.
He also involves himself in some disputation regarding comments from Kenneth Sisam, who had previously read the manuscript Gordon sent to Tolkien. Sisam promotes consulting Dom Wilmart, calling him “the most learned of the Benedictines.” But Tolkien notes that none of the learned in the Benedictine Order have given him such a title, nor does Wilmart himself claim to be a (professional) theologian. Of course, Tolkien does not express a high opinion of either Wilmart or Sisam regarding their insight. He notes that C. S. Lewis did not take kindly to Wilmart’s comments on his own work, saying, “Who is this learned Wilmart, whose learning has not taught him to attend to the meaning of what he criticizes?” As for Sisam himself, Tolkien considers him learned, but not particularly penetrative in insight. He never got over hearing Sisam’s lecture on Cynewulf, which he found “deplorable.” We have noted at multiple junctures throughout this larger series of commentaries how important Cynewulf was to Tolkien, such as his Crist A poem referring to John the Baptist and Christ being an inspiration for Tolkien’s story of Eärendil, or, in his Beowulf commentary, finding a link between that poem and Cynewulf.
Much of the rest of the letter concerns frustrations with academic writing and publishing, which are still applicable today. Although it is not pertinent to the subjects we tend to address in this commentary series, I simply want to share a quote in which I see Tolkien as a kindred spirit showing how he would have responded to the promotion of “lucid brevity” I heard about in my days at Baylor:
300 pages [of notes] to 50 [of text] seems to me a very fair allowance: and in any case mere mathematics are quite useless. Some 10 lines might be worth 1000 pages of comment in certain cases; some 1000 lines not worth 10. And it depends who you are talking to. I am sick of people who want brevity and lucidity (especially brevity): because they are not interested, and can’t follow an argument, and have their right eye on a degree exam. [sic.] all the while (and the other shut).
He insists that while Clarendon Press may want a cheap book that would also be useful to scholars that can be bought by everyone when scholars like himself really want an editio major, “The proper thing really is to make an editio major, and do a cheap university manual out of it.” In my own work as a biblical scholar, I think it is crucial to boil up before you try to boil down whatever is at issue.
Letter #38a (12 July 1940 to Michael Tolkien)
In the main series on the letters, several letters to Michael were pertinent to my focus. The expanded edition adds another such pertinent letter. And as with Letter #43, Tolkien addresses matters of romantic love here. He assures his son that he never found his love for a woman whose name is abbreviated as “A.” to be ridiculous. He does not think that such feelings are ever ridiculous as such, even if they do not “ripen into final love or end in marriage.” He simply advises not to make permanent pledges or invoke his honorable word too hastily at this time. Also similar to his remarks in Letter #43 on marriages being due to “mistakes” in one sense, he advises him, “Except for very rare events in love, a good man is capable of loving more than one woman: I mean that the chances of life (or God) determine largely whom he shall fall in love with, and whom it will prove in the end possible for him to marry.” Compare with Letter #43:
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances).
Tolkien even mentions how Edith was not the first woman with whom he felt “in love.” And this also proved to be the case for Michael, as he went on to marry Joan Griffiths.
The next part of the letter addresses the friction that Michael’s current romantic relationship has caused with his mother. Tolkien notes that this is quite natural because of the dynamics involved with the mothers’ fondness for their sons, which can manifest as subconscious jealousy when a lover comes on the scene. While Tolkien also attributes her apparent harshness in what she wrote to Michael to other factors—including “change of life” (a.k.a. menopause) and neuritis that have left her nerves on edge—he first of all cites that she was “not practising her religion which in her heart of hearts (now rather hidden under the sad years) sets up a discord which makes her not really happy, and so irritable.” This was written after some years of tension in the Tolkien household over her declining participation in the Mass.
Edith knew long ago that there would be challenges ahead when she agreed to become Catholic. England in general was not particularly favorable towards Catholics, and her particular move in this direction would require her not only breaking off her engagement with her current fiancé when Tolkien came back into her life; it would also mean leaving her current social circle of the Anglican church she was a member of at the time. Tolkien deeply admired her for her dedication to becoming Catholic despite the obstacles, and this was amplified by his reverent memories of his mother, whom he described (including in this letter) as a martyr for her faith. But the various stressors she experienced also soured her affections for Catholicism. One wonders if her disposition might have been different if Tolkien had not pressured her to make the move before she felt that it was the right time or if he had interacted with her objections more like he did with C. S. Lewis’s objections. For the latter, he better explained his reasoning and rationale for his beliefs, but for the former he was more prone to emotional reactions and expressing his emotional attachment, not least because of his mother’s legacy and the parallels he saw with Edith’s struggles. It would still be some time before Edith would more actively and willingly “practise her religion,” in Tolkien’s terms. In the meantime, Tolkien calls on his son to be forgiving towards his mother and to pray for her.
The next portion of the letter is then concerned with Michael’s comments related to him. He appreciates his son’s gratitude to him, and he acknowledges that he owes him much. In terms of “repayment,” all he could he ask from his son is that he would do so by “adhering to your faith, and keeping yourself pure and sober, and by giving me your confidence.” Of course, he says that the debts we feel we owe to those like our family cannot ever really be repaid; one simply must go forward with what one has been given (as he says, in working for and supporting his son, he is merely repaying the debt he owes to God and to his parents and benefactors). Michael doing his duty functions as him doing penance.
One can thus see here how Tolkien’s Catholic faith has shaped his view of life and relationships. A dutiful life is described in penitential terms. It is also described in terms of addressing—though not satisfying as such—debts owed to God and to those to whom God has made us related. This faith that he has sought to inculcate in his son and his other children is the most valuable inheritance he passed on to him, as his mother passed on to him through her perseverance in suffering faithfulness. And indeed, he will return to matters of faith in letters to his son for years to come.
As he approaches the end of his letter, he comments on what Michael owes to his parents. He notes how all of his sons have “a decent share of courage and guts. You owe that to your mother” (emphasis original). This is consistent with his denial of attributing courage to himself when speaking of how his characters might reflect him (Letter #180). The characteristics he does acknowledge are his kind heart, “and my faith (bought by the martyrdom of my mother), otherwise I should not be much of a pater.” As in other letters we have seen, he thus declares this faith to be a central characteristic for him.
He then closes the letter by wishing God’s blessing on Michael and saying, “I will offer my communion for you tomorrow. Say what prayers you can, and I hope God will give you the chance soon of going to communion again. In the meanwhile offer even that deprivation to him.” These two aspects of this closing lead us to the next two sections.
Mass in Tolkien’s Letters
References to the Mass and prayer are quite frequent in Tolkien’s letters, so that I had two separate sections in my series collating these references. There were occasions where he addressed the subjects at more length, but most of the references were of the more casual variety. This is also true in the expanded edition. Beyond what I have noted previously, he references the Mass in his correspondence in Letters #15b (October 1937; wherein he is checking on Christopher going to Mass), #38a (July 1940), #42a (January 1941; wherein he hopes that Michael has been able to go to Communion fairly often), #42c (February 1941; where the reference is part of a story), #49a (July 1943), #49b (September 1943), #59a (April 1944), #277a (September 1965), and #289d (October 1966). He also makes indirect reference in French in Letter #91b. He even asked his son, John, who became a priest, to say two masses for him at Christmas time when he was not able to visit him (Letter #179a).
As with Letters #43 and #250 addressed to Michael, he also focused on the Mass in the opening of Letter #194a to Michael (much else of the letter is taken up with politics, including issues that are still present in terms that readers today will recognize). He indicates the centrality of the Mass by saying that the Church is ultimately only “a tabernacle (or monstrance) for the Blessed Sacrament, and it has been through the ages, each age in a different way, an extremely imperfect one, not to say deplorably ugly and ill-kept.” Letter #250 in particular shows how Tolkien is not unaware of the Church having problems, since it is made up of people. But there is nowhere else to go for the Eucharist, and he insists that “only concentration on the immutable, indelible, and unsulliable sanctity of the Real Presence keeps one in hope and charity.” This, again, demonstrates Tolkien’s dedication to the teaching of ex opere operato, that the power of the sacraments derived from the work of Christ, rather than from character of the human administrator. While one can understandably grow indignant in how irreverently the Sacrament is treated, that in itself does not diminish its sanctity, and he insists such matters are ultimately “in Our Lord’s hands: all we can do is to exhibit our own devotion and reverence and teach, if we can, our children to feel and do the same” (emphasis original). In any case, it was precisely because of the Catholic tradition of making the Eucharist central to worship that he could not imagine leaving it for a Protestant tradition.
Of course, there was another problem that Tolkien would find in how the Church would come to observe the Mass. The Second Vatican Council declared that the Mass would be conducted in the vernacular, rather than in the traditional Latin. Though Tolkien obviously knew a thing or two about English, he did not approve of this change. It was one reason why he said, “I find these days extremely trying: a severe test of loyalty; and attendance at Mass has become an exhausting exercise in patience and humility (in which I am deficient)” (Letter #289d). He likewise affirmed in Letter #294a (5 March 1967 to Michael Tolkien), “For all of us ‘conservatives’ I think the trouble in our Church is at present more trying than all our personal and physical woes. But it has to be endured. Only loyalty and silence (in public) will provide the ballast for the rocking bark! As the disciples said to Our Lord: we have nowhere else to go.”
Tolkien and Prayer
As for prayer, Tolkien makes reference to prayer in his correspondence in Letters #38a (July 1940), #53b (January 1944), #55a (January 1944), #94a (January 1945), #94c (January 1945), #98a (April 1945), #179a (December 1955), #214a (February 1959), #214b (March 1959), #242a (December 1962), and #307a (December 1968).1 We have already noted that the first letter involves a call for Tolkien’s son to pray for Edith. He calls for Christopher to pray for him in Letter #53b, as he also calls for John, after he had become a priest, to pray for him in Letter #179a. In Letter #214a he solicits prayers from Fr. Alex Jones. He says in Letter #94a that he will pray to St. Bernadette for Christopher (cf. Letters #55a and #98a). Likewise, he speaks of his constant prayers for Michael (Letter #214b). He refers to multiple prayers in Letter #94c in reference to St. Bernadette: “At any rate I must now say the Rosary often … My heart is filled with the thought of that little girl saying the Rosary with Our Lady, and noting with that clear simplicity of hers, though she did not seem to perceive it at the time except as a curious fact, that Our Lady only said the Glorias…. All the other prayers, except perhaps ‘Hallowed by Thy name’, are for people on this earth” (emphases original). He references Austin Farrer’s booklet on the Rosary that he was grateful for, which led him to write Letter #242a to him and his wife Katharine to express that gratitude.
Letter #55a (25 January 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
This was one of many letters Tolkien sent to Christopher during WW2. In fact, all the letters from #49a to #80 were addressed to Christopher during this time (the same applies to almost all of those numbered after this to the end of WW2). This particular letter is notable for our purposes both for its references to prayer (already noted) and for a brief narration of an event involving an open-air preacher. Tolkien mentions how he witnessed the preacher being heckled, especially by one fellow who kept shouting every time the preacher paused to breathe. Tolkien quotes one part of the interaction where the heckler said, “Gah! Christianity’s been in the world 2000 years, and what good’s it done?” The preacher finally lost his temper and shouted, “Water’s been in the world more than 2000 years, and look at your neck!” The preacher was commenting on how dirty the man was, and it is a way of making the point of regardless of how long something has been around, of course it is not going to do you any good if you do not use it.
Tolkien and Scripture
The expanded edition also adds a few more Scripture references to Tolkien’s collection of letters. I have neglected to mention in other contexts a reference in Letter #58 (3 April 1944 to Christopher Tolkien) to his reading of Matthew’s Passion story in preparation for the upcoming Easter. Another letter written that same week (Letter #59a; 8 April 1944 to Christopher Tolkien) conveys Tolkien’s Easter greetings to Christopher, and he mentions that he read the Passion again. Letter #289d (18 October 1966 to Father Alex Jones) actually features a reflection on a translation issue. He was criticizing the translation Ronald Knox made of the Vulgate that was used in English Catholic services at the time. Knox had rendered John 4:50 as “thy son is to live.” But after noting the Greek—and mentioning that his knowledge of the language is fading, likely due to the dozens of others he had some facility in reading—he says that this translation does not make sense. The RSV and JB that he examined also rendered the verb as “will live.” But he notes that the Greek is a present, and he does not see how either a jussive or a future sense works here. For comparison, he notes Matt 9:18, which does use the future tense, though he notes that the Jerusalem Bible is also defective in its translation there, as it makes the text more like Mark 5:23 than it is in the Greek. These were points he addressed to Fr. Alex Jones, who was the general editor of the Jerusalem Bible, after he had received a copy from him for his contribution.
The expanded edition also adds correspondence related to Tolkien’s intention to work on the translation of Jonah for the Jerusalem Bible. What appears in the original Jerusalem Bible translation now has been edited from his final draft.2 Letters #214a (4 February 1959) and #228a (13 February 1961) to Fr. Alex Jones illustrate Tolkien’s willingness to be part of the project, but his participation inevitably became frustrated by other obligations. He had previously mentioned in Letter #196a (24 April 1957) to his grandson Michael George Tolkien that he was presently immersed in Hebrew. This was to update his translation of Jonah, which had previously been done from the French predecessor to the Jerusalem Bible. Besides his impressions of Hebrew, this letter is noteworthy for the reflections he provides on Jonah itself: “Incidentally, if you ever look at the Old Testament, and look at Jonah, you’ll find that the ‘whale’ – it is not really said to be a whale, but a big fish – is quite unimportant. The real point is that God is much more merciful than ‘prophets’, is easily moved by penitence, and won’t be dictated to even by high ecclesiastics whom he has himself appointed” (italics original).
Indeed, for as much as the great fish, often described as a “whale” today, is a pervasive aspect of iconography associated with Jonah, it is really more of a plot device, an instrument of God’s will in bringing Jonah where he needs to be from where he had been. It is briefly referenced in chs. 1 and 2, but it plays no role once it has vomited Jonah onshore to make his way to Nineveh. It is not there for the climax or resolution, and its importance in ch. 2—beyond its role in conveyance—is more about being a “setting” for Jonah’s prayer that gives meaning to how Jonah is in Sheol (also see here).
Letter #89a (13 November 1944 to Christopher Tolkien)
There is not a lot to say about this letter because it is one of the shortest in the collection. What is interesting about this is that Tolkien says that he conversed with C. S. Lewis that day about morals and theology. One matter he was particularly interested in concerned the subject of angels that Tolkien had addressed in Letter #89.
Letters #94a–c (7–15 January 1945 to Christopher Tolkien)
These letters can be treated together because of their common subject matter. They show that one of the signs that Tolkien’s participation in the Church was not a casual aspect of his life is the fact that he familiarized himself with stories of the saints. In this case, he shows his knowledge of the story of Bernadette Soubiros (or Bernadette of Lourdes), who was canonized in 1933. He and Edith went to watch the movie based on her life—Song of Bernadette—in the early days of 1945. Edith was the one who was truly eager to see it, but the experience of the film moved Tolkien to reflect on Bernadette’s story and write about it and the movie in these letters to Christopher. She is the one Tolkien invoked in praying for Christopher, as he remembers “How wrapped up in her family she was, till she was torn from them by the sudden fire of Heaven. How wonderful are the works of God.” By analogy with Bernadette, he also reflects on “Our Lady.”
He remarks in the second letter how the story of Bernadette has every quality of a fairy story, “plus both truth and sanctity, an overwhelming mixture.” He also references the source material of a pamphlet with which the movie and the book it was based on took great liberties. We need not get into all the details of this story, though I encourage the reader to look it up. The specific aspect of it that he will allude to in Letter #148a is how she denied herself to go to Lourdes again for her healing of her tuberculosis after she was associated with the miracle of healing through water at Lourdes, in order that she may more effectively and sacrificially serve as a witness conforming herself to Christ. In ways like this, her story had a gospel shape to it, and so it pointed to the fulfillment of fairy stories in the gospel, and like the gospel it was true on the plane of the Primary World and not only a Secondary World (see here for more).
Interestingly, in the last letter in this group, he speaks of how he is still under the influence of the film and how deeply the story it moved him. And yet this is in spite of the fact that, as he sees it, “reflection and reading shows the film in itself to have been a travesty, and not even frightfully good in its own false way.” Even so, he says of it what could be said of various fairy stories when compared to the gospel that fulfills them: “But the reflection even at many intermediate stages of something so strange and beautiful and true has a power quite beyond the cracked and murky mirrors.” And so he says that the film would only have such effects as he experienced on anyone “if it was God’s will.” God has used such instruments throughout the ages to do wondrous works, and so it is with this movie, as it is with the fairy stories Tolkien has been taken up with, including his own. The rest of the letter on prayers has already been noted.
Letter #148a (18 August 1954 to Katharine Farrer)
Tolkien was friends with the renowned Anglican theologian and biblical scholar Austin Farrer and his wife Katharine. He was grateful for her review of The Fellowship of the Ring when it was first published. He tells her that he was delighted that she focused on the morality of the story. As far as he is concerned, “I think actually it is that which gives the story its ‘realness’ and coherence – which my critics seem to feel – rather than any pictorial vividness. It was not ‘planned’, of course, but arose naturally in the attempt to treat the matter seriously; but it is now the foundation.” This is something many have noted since then, and I have sought to convey the theological-ethical character of The Lord of the Rings as a whole in my own commentary, including here where I address this particular letter more directly. What he identifies as the kernel of this morality that he articulated in the story appears near the very end in Frodo’s last words to Sam: “I have been too deeply hurt. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them … all that I had or might have had, I leave to you” (VI/9). It is in this context that he references the story of Bernadette and how she refused to go to Lourdes for her own healing. There is a cruciform gospel shape to the theological-ethical character of Tolkien’s mythos, precisely because he himself was so shaped by that story.
Letter #254a (8 February/3 March 1964 to Christopher Tolkien [unsent])
The part of this unsent letter to Christopher that Tolkien wrote in March is most pertinent to our interests here, but the opening of the letter should not be missed either. Tolkien writes in too roundabout a fashion to really delve into it, but his perspective conveyed therein is nevertheless noteworthy. In reference to turns of fortune called “evil winds,” he simply says that despite how hard they may be, there are no “evil winds” as such. It depends, rather, on how one meets the winds and the measure one uses for their damage. This fits with what he has said elsewhere with better articulation about divine punishments and divine gifts in Letter #212.
The main portion of the letter concerns sex and marriage. The effects of fallenness are perhaps here more pronounced than anywhere else in the world of creation. No human gifts have been abused as badly. In his words, “all thought and emotion that touches upon sex [have been] deranged and confused; so that its natural force is difficult to control – indeed for many overwhelmingly strong. Nearly all the known heresies and apostasies, and personal defections have been due to this force, [sic.] (or to an equally ‘insane’ reaction against it).” This is certainly an exaggeration, as it is not clear how the matter applies in prominent cases like Arianism, Apollinarianism, and so on. It would be interesting, for example, to test how many of the early heresies listed in Epiphanius’s Panarion are prominently linked with sex, but that is beyond our scope here. In any case, the basic thrust of what he is saying remains valid. Anyone who doubts such is either not old enough, has been utterly secluded from their cultural context for their entire lives, or is clueless about human tendencies. Various apostasies, including high-profile ones, or at the least people “drifting away” has happened due in some way to sex. And while problems related to sex are quite obviously prominent in our own time, our time is not unique in that respect. They were clearly problems from the earliest days of the Church, which is shown most vividly in 1 Cor 5–6, although they appear elsewhere as well. And as Tolkien indicates, a problem seen in older eras was too strong of a censorious reaction to sex. In his words, “Humanity hovers perpetually between disgust and lust.”
He says outright that disgust, or at least disapproval, has been a prominent reaction from Christians. More extreme versions of disgust have led to Catharist heresies like Tolkien mentions and to other groups that have enforced absolute celibacy (like the Shakers who once had a village near where I went to school in Wilmore, KY, although they had their loopholes when you left the village for a time). He paraphrases Chesterton’s comments (somewhere) that the Church cannot escape where they are in history (although he will go on to correctly critique Chesterton’s understanding of history by showing his own knowledge of the ancient world). If people were more aware of the context of sexual practices and abominations in the ancient Mediterranean world, the reactionary tendencies of early Christians would be more comprehensible to those who think to look down their noses at them for it. He even has an extensive footnote here on Jewish reactions given their Semitic context and how they have come to be seen as “prudish” because of our own shaping by the ancient Greeks who were “for all their talents, a very nasty people of degraded habits and revolting attitude to women, and profoundly disliked by those among them whom we are supposed to take as representative – such as Plato.”
But in any case, it has been more individual Christians than the official teaching of the Church as such that has upheld the sense of disgust, even to the point of “body-hating.” He is quite aware of such tendencies because he wrote an essay on the Middle English works Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (Holy Maidenhood), the latter of which he describes as containing “degraded feministic arguments.” I would like to do a commentary on this matter another time. In any case, he says such was not the only voice in the Middle Ages, as he refers to Purity 697–708, a Middle English poem wherein God himself declares that the “play of paramours” is the greatest of all delight he arranged, approaching pure paradise. Tolkien says he does not know what Aquinas would have written in response, given how Aquinas well summarized traditional teaching in his Summa works.
Letter #294a (5 March 1967 to Michael Tolkien)
We have already noted some material from this letter concerning the Mass. But this letter is also noteworthy for our purposes for Tolkien’s comments on Charles Davis. Davis was a theologian who left the Roman Catholic Church, citing an “intellectual rejection of the Papacy.” (His daughter would eventually claim that Davis left the priesthood to marry her mother.) He would eventually return to the Catholic fold in the 90s, long after Tolkien had died.
But at this time, Tolkien is relieved that he has departed. He sees him as one example of an all-too-common phenomenon in which bishops and theologians—although they are necessary elements of the Institution—can prove to be “the chief authors of disruption: the most open to pride and conceit.” One can, of course, add biblical scholars to this list (if they are not assumed under the umbrella of “theologian”). This comports with some points I have noted in my post on credentialism and associated follies. He also mentions in his conversation with his Catholic doctor (who he describes as an average doctor and a very good Catholic) that he compared Davis’s situation to that of John Wycliffe, of whom he naturally did not have a high view either. In his case, he said that Wycliffe was musically deaf and attacked singing in chapel, and that he developed views on the Eucharist that the official theologians could not accept. The former charge is obviously polemical in its framing, as is his quoting of the authorities calling him “Son of the Old Serpent,” but he clearly knew something of the history of Wycliffe to know of his criticism of singing, and his statement about his views on the Eucharist is accurate, as Wycliffe rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation. Of course, this knowledge is unsurprising for a man who had planned to write a history of the Catholic Church in England.3 Obviously, Protestants who know of John Wycliffe would not tend to share his perspective on the man, but that just shows the degree to which Tolkien was a traditionalist Catholic.
Letter #324a (Corpus Christi 1971 to Phyllis Robertson)
As the dating of this letter shows, this letter is among the pieces of evidence of Tolkien’s observance of the Church calendar. He writes of how the weather has been pleasant until the “Noachic” rain began early in the morning of the day on which he was writing. This causes him to reflect on the part of the festivities that used to be part of Corpus Christi: the great play-cycles of biblical episodes that were performed in the open. He remarks how he does not recall reading of them being washed out in such occasions, though he thinks they were. As he says, “It [rain] may have made the play of Noah more realistic, but must have damped the roaring rant of King Herod!” In case it has not been made clear before, Tolkien was anything but a nominal Catholic.
Cf. the unpublished letter to Rosfirth Murray, which contains Christmas greetings and an acknowledgment that he remembers her in his prayers. Available online at: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_to_Rosfrith_Murray.
The unedited translation can be found in J. R. R. Tolkien (translator), “Tolkien’s Translation of Jonah,” Journal of Inklings Studies 4.2 (October 2014): 5–10. Letters #214a (February 1959) and #228a (February 1961) to Fr. Alex Jones illustrate Tolkien’s willingness to be part of the project, but his participation inevitably became frustrated by other obligations.
The incomplete manuscript of the work titled Church in Ancient England is in the special collections of the Bodleian Library.