Not long ago, as I was attempting to order some books laying around my desk (that monthly labor of futility), I came across a copy of Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, which I had attempted to start earlier this year, but quickly lost interest. I was working on a few other things at the time, and probably did not give the work the kind of focused and sympathetic attention it deserves, so it has now been placed back on my “Books I Intend to Read But Probably Won’t Get Around to Reading” list (right after Les Miserables, The Enneads, and everything by Gogol).
In the meantime, it occurred to me that the form Landor hit on for his book would serve as an excellent format for assessment in a classical classroom. Landor imagines various notable historical personages coming together to ruminate over the events in which they were embroiled, in a manner that allowed the author to explore the abiding human dilemmas bound up with those events. The possibilities this offers a classical educator to invite his or her students to delve into both the details and the principles bound up in the material they are studying. By representing figures they have learned about, the students are not only required to display a significant grasp of the details relevant to that figure, but they can also exercise some creative flair in the way they bring him or her to life. I have written elsewhere of the benefits that accrue to students’ writing when we invite them to exercise their imaginative and analytic abilities in tandem.
A history teacher, for instance, might design an assignment requiring students to construct an imaginary dialogue between two figures they have learned about during the year. Landor typically brings together contemporaries, but there is no reason the students might not be asked to conceive of a dialogue unfolding between figures spanning different eras. They might be required to include reference to at least five pertinent historical facts concerning that figure, in a way that demonstrates some grasp of the significance of those details. The teacher could either provide the students with a list of themes that might make up the content of the conversation, or ask the students to develop that theme from their own interpretation of the history. So for instance, a dialogue between Constantine the Great and Henry IV might explore the fraught relationship between temporal and spiritual authority. One between Cincinnatus and Washington might examine the nature of civic virtue.
Though the application of this exercise to the study of history seems particularly apt, I think it could work in other disciplines as well. In English class, for instance, a conversation between Roland and Gawain on the nature of chivalry, or between Francesca and Juliet on the nature of love, would allow students to absorb themselves in the thematic content of the work while demonstrating a grasp with basic plot and characterization. Perhaps it would even have application in a science class, where a conversation between Aristotle and Newton might provide an opportunity for students to reflect on the paradigm shift involved in the advent of modern science.
I have provided a small example of what such an assignment might look like below. There are many variations one could make upon this basic approach. But in our ongoing effort to discover modes of assessment that evaluate students on their deep grasp of content, at the same time that they summon the intellectual energies that enable such a grasp, perhaps the imaginary conversation might prove to be a valuable instrument in the tool-kit of classical educators.
A small winter encampment outside castle. A man dressed in royal robes, attended by a small retinue, hunches by the fire. Another figure, similarly dressed in the garments of an emperor, approaches.
Constantine: What is this – a king who stoops in the snow?
Henry IV: No king, but an emperor.
Constantine: Of what empire?
Henry IV: Your own.
Constantine: Are you a Roman then?
Henry IV: Not by lineage, but by title. My ancestors warred with yours on the banks of the Rhine. But since then, they have amassed a territory as fertile and powerful as the one you ruled over, and so they call me Holy Roman Emperor to demonstrate my power.
Constantine: No Roman ruler would ever stoop in the snow. What is the cause of this?
Henry IV: You are.
Constantine: I am? What can you possibly mean by that?
Henry IV: You remember your victory at the Milvian Bridge?
Constantine: Of course I do. That victory opened the door to the throne for me.
Henry IV: And do you recall the sign by which you were promised that victory?
Constantine: It was on the eve of the battle, as I lay sleeping restlessly in my tent, preparing to meet Maxentius’ forces the next day. A voice spoke to me in a dream, declaring that “under this sign I would conquer,” and when I looked, I saw the Chi-Rho, the symbol of the risen Galilean. Immediately, I woke, and gave orders to all my officers to have that symbol painted on our soldiers’ shields. They did this, and on the following day we prevailed.
Henry IV: And what did you do in gratitude for this victory?
Constantine: I ordered all persecution of the Christians to stop forever by the passage of the Edict of Milan.
Henry IV: And afterwards, at Nicaea?
Constantine: I saw to it that our religion was purified of heretical doctrines, and established a unity of belief throughout the church. It was through my intervention that the faith took the form in which it has been passed to your generation.
Henry IV: And this is why I kneel here.
Constantine: I do not understand.
Henry IV: By asserting your power over the doctrines of the Church, you asserted the primacy of the temporal over the spiritual sphere. Over time, your descendants upon the thrones of Europe would extend that primacy further and further by appointing the bishops and abbots who would rule in their kingdoms. My father even selected the next pope at Sutri. In this way, the Church became subject to the power of kings and emperors.
Constantine: Yet you hardly seem to lord it over anyone.
Henry IV: That is because this pope is different. Gregory is his name – some have even started labeling him “the Great.” He is the one in the castle here at Canossa I have come to pay homage to.
Constantine: Why? I do not understand.
Henry IV: Because he finally decided that the time had come for the Church to assert its own independence, and to declare the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal realm. He is filled with a conviction that the Roman pontiff is sole universal ruler, that all princes ought to kiss his feet, and that he possesses the power to depose whom he will. Obstinate in this belief, he refused to allow me to appoint bishops in my own realm.
Constantine: And how did you react?
Henry IV: By rejecting his authority. “Come down, come down,” I cried. But he was stronger than me, and the treacherous lords of the empire took his side. When he excommunicated me, forbidding all Christians to serve me, the German princes all rose in revolt, and the people sided with them because they perceived me cursed. So I have had to travel here, to beseech his pardon, and the rescinding of the excommunication.
Constantine: What sort of cleric can wield such power over an emperor?
Henry IV: No ordinary one, that is for sure. But from his earliest days, this man has distinguished himself by the fire of his piety, so much so, that the people of Rome all cried out, “let Hildebrand be pope,” and would have no other.
Constantine: I still do not see what role I have played in these affairs.
Henry IV: By intervening in the affairs of the Church at Nicaea, you compromised its spiritual independence. It was only a matter of time before the Popes sought to reassert that independence. Now, a millennium later, in the person of Gregory, they have.
Constantine: Yet surely you have read about the condition of the church on the eve of my victory. For centuries, she had suffered persecution at the hands of the Roman emperors. Her priests were proscribed, her property was confiscated, and the very faith was made criminal. Who knows how long this might have continued had I not defeated Maximian? Surely, you do not wish that I allowed this to continue?
Henry IV: Of course not.
Constantine: And even after I defeated her external enemies, there remained those enemies within the bosom of the Church itself – the Arians. For decades they had divided the faith, brother against brother, with their false doctrines. Nothing the bishops did could quell the antagonism they raised. I wished to end that antagonism once and for all, so I convened the council at Nicaea, where the bishops – and not I – determined the true contents of the faith. Thanks to me, the rents in the garments of the Church were bound up, and the faith was passed on with integrity, even to your age.
Henry IV: Along with the seeds of enmity between our state and theirs.
Constantine: But this could neither be foreseen, nor helped.
Henry IV: Perhaps.
Constantine: What will you do now?
Henry IV: I must wait for Gregory to admit me to the castle. It has been two days already. I hear he is preparing to open the gates.
Constantine: And then?
Henry IV: I will prostrate myself before him, beg absolution, and pray for the removal of my sentence. Then I will rise from here, return home, and put down the wicked princes who have revolted against me, in order to reclaim my throne in security. Who knows? I may reestablish my authority so well, that I find myself in position to revenge myself on this presumptuous cleric for the humiliation he inflicts on me here. For as I see it, there will be no end to the rivalry between king and cleric, this side of Heaven.
Wonderful work and inspiring. But I see poor Constantine at a disadvantage. Constantine can offer no similar criticism of Henry. How would such a dialogue go if both subjects had full knowledge of each other's history? What would Cardinal Richelieu say to Bismarck or Henry Kissinger? Fun! I will assign my home schooled teens this task.
As usual, excellent writing and certainly juicy for the students.