By Thomas J. McIntyre
John Ronald Ruel (hereafter referred to as J.R.R.) Tolkien, author of the epic Lord of the Rings saga, was a devout Catholic. He passed to his eternal reward in 1973, almost four years after the implementation of Mass of Pope Paul VI, more commonly referred to as the Novus Ordo Missae (Latin: “New Order of the Mass”). Being the linguist that he was, Tolkien strongly preferred the Traditional Latin Mass, more commonly referred to as the Tridentine Rite. His grandson, Simon, reported that Tolkien continued to make the responses at Mass, loudly, in Latin, apparently oblivious to the rest of the congregation doing so in English.
With his apparently strong attraction to the Latin Mass, one might consider Tolkien to have been a “Traditionalist,” a term often used to describe Catholics who are suspicious or even outright opposed to the changes that occurred in the Church, particularly in regards to liturgy, following the Second Vatican Council. However, most Traditionalists are monarchists, opposed to the new democratic forms of government that sprung up from the late eighteenth century until the twentieth. Tolkien was very much not a monarchist. In fact, he stated the following regarding not just monarchy but government in general: “The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
One might see evidence of this negative view of monarchy in Tolkien’s work. After all, the line of kings becomes corrupt and broken, with the failures of kings leading to catastrophe for Middle-Earth multiple times. Yet, the final redemption, and indeed salvation, of Middle-Earth is accomplished not by the rejection of monarchial government but in its restoration—the eponymous Return of the King in the person of Aragon, son of Arathorn, who rules the reunified kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor as High King Elessar. One might question how this major theme in Tolkien’s epic connects with his stated belief in the impropriety of men “bossing other men.” The key point is Tolkien’s specification that such a job is improper to man. The implication of course is that it is improper to a mere man. If that man is a god, it might be a different story. Thus, the reader can understand that Aragorn is a Christ-figure, one of three in the Lord of the Rings.
Unlike the fantasy writings of his close friend and fellow Inkling, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien did not intend for his epic to be a direct allegory. Thus, one character can be a type of multiple Biblical figures. Frodo’s steadfastly loyal companion Samwise Gamgee, for example, serves as an image both of St. John the Beloved Disciple and Simon of Cyrene. Conversely, one figure from salvation history can be represented by multiple characters. Different aspects of Our Lady are represented by Galadriel, Eowyn, and Arwen, while the threefold mission of Christ as Priest, Prophet, and King is represented by Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn respectively. Specifically, Aragorn is a type of Christ the King.
Christ the King
The Catholic Feast of Our Lord, Jesus Christ the King was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 with his encyclical Qua Primas. At that time, communist and fascist ideologies were running rampant and regimes built on such ideologies were steadily gaining power even in Catholic countries like Spain, Mexico, and Italy. The pontiff explained his reasons for establishing the feast, writing:
When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony… That these blessings may be abundant and lasting in Christian society, it is necessary that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to the end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast in honor of the Kingship of Christ. (19, 21)
The feast was originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October. This was meant to emphasize that Christ is Lord over both Heaven and Earth. Honoring Christ as King before the celebration of the Church Triumphant on All Saints’ Day and beginning the period of praying for the souls of all the faithful departed, starting on All Souls’ Day, in November, demonstrates that even before the end when Christ returns in glory, He reigns as King, not just over hearts and minds but over the nations of the earth.
The aforementioned liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council moved the feast (now a Solemnity) of Christ the King to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, meaning it falls on one of the last two Sundays of November, with the next Sunday being the first of the season of Advent. In this way, the Second Coming of Christ is linked to His first. The liturgical readings from All Saints Day onward are eschatological in nature, focusing on being prepared for the return of Christ in glory and the judgment He will mete out. The readings of the first two Sundays of Advent continue this eschatological theme, although the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday begins the shift to preparation for our celebration of the first coming of Christ at Christmas.
Although the Solemnity of Christ the King is a movable feast (it occurs on a different date every year, unlike Christmas which is always on the same date), at the time when Tolkien was writing The Fellowship of Ring, it would have always fallen around the date of October 25. Therefore, it is quite interesting that it is at the Council that Strider’s true identity as Aragorn, son of Arathorn, right king of Gondor is revealed. It is even more interesting that although it is decided at the Council that the Ring will be taken into Mordor to be cast into the fires of Mount Doom, the Fellowship waits two months before undertaking their quest.
The Fellowship departs from Rivendell on December 25 which is, of course, Christmas. Their mission is accomplished precisely three months later on March 25, which is the date of the Annunciation and therefore the Incarnation of Our Lord. However, March 25 was also the traditional date of Our Lord’s Passion and Death (although Good Friday falls on a different date every year because Easter, like Christ the King, is a movable feast). Thus, the mission of the salvation of Middle Earth, carried out by three Christ-figures who each represent one of the threefold aspects of Our Lord’s ministry as priest, prophet, and king, begins on Christmas and ends on the traditional date of Our Lord’s Passion.
This makes the time spent in Rivendell preparing to embark on the journey to Mordor a sort of Advent. Most interestingly, Tolkien’s linkage of the feast of Christ the King with the beginning of Advent by his dating of the Council of Elrond, shows that his thinking was more in line with the new liturgical calendar than the old, despite his documented preference for the Traditional Latin Mass.
The Paths of the Dead: Aragorn and the Harrowing of Hell
An interesting moment occurs towards the midpoint of The Return of the King. Having received Gondor’s call for aid against the approaching armies of Sauron, the host of Rohirrim are riding to relieve the siege. With them is Aragorn, who is returning to claim his throne. On the eve of battle, however, Aragorn leaves the camp of Rohan in order to “walk the Paths of the Dead” and recruit an army of souls to fight against Sauron.
While at first glance, it might appear that Aragorn is engaging in some kind of necromancy by summoning an army of the dead to fight Sauron; this scene actually deepens the Catholic theme of Tolkien’s masterpiece, rather than overturning it. Aragorn’s eponymous return has obvious apocalyptic overtones, with the king who has been away from his throne so long, and appointed stewards to rule in his stead, finally returning to save his people from the overwhelming force of the Enemy that threatens to destroy them. However, especially paired with Frodo’s journey into Mordor and the destruction of the Ring on March 25 (traditional date of Our Lord’s Passion and Death), there are aspects to the first coming of Our Lord that are typified in Aragorn’s arrival as well.
For example, in the book, Aragorn does not enter the city of Minas Tirith immediately after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields but instead sends heralds throughout the surrounding areas announcing his coming and gathering forces for the last stand at the Black Gate. There is a certain triumphal entry quality to this. Aragorn’s journey on the Paths of the Dead and summoning the dead to fight for him against Sauron fits into this context as well.
The Apostles’ Creed states that “He descended into Hell.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” —Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek—because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him (CCC 633)
In his first epistle, St. Peter writes that Our Lord, “went and preached to the spirits in prison” (3:19). Generally, at least biblically speaking, prisons are temporary and a person is released once they have paid the just sentence for their infractions. Another name for the place to which Our Lord descended is Limbo, which has come to mean a “state of waiting.”
Despite this, medieval thought (by which Tolkien was heavily influenced) still saw Limbo or Sheol as part of the realm of Satan. Limbo is the first circle of Hell in Dante’s famous Inferno. Medieval legends developed and apocryphal stories were written to expound on the brief description of this event in Scripture, which came to be called the Harrowing of Hell. The name of the location of Rohan’s camp, from which Aragorn and his companions begin their journey on the Paths of the Dead, is Dunharrow.
In the book, Aragorn’s waking of the dead to fight is part of the prophecy of the return of the heir of Isildur, the king who cut the Ring from the hand of Sauron in the Second Age. When Eowyn tries to dissuade Aragorn from taking the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn tells her “I go on a path appointed” (Return of the King, Chapter 2: “The Passing of the Grey Company,” p. 46).
In the book, Aragorn also explains to Gimli the identity of the dead whom he will summon to fight against Sauron.
But the oath they broke was to fight against Sauron, and they must fight therefore, if they are to fulfill it. For at Erech there stands yet a black stone that was brought, it was said, from Númenor by Isildur, and it was set upon a hill, and upon it the King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him in the beginning of the realm of Gondor. But when Sauron returned and grew in might again, Isildur summoned the Men of the Mountains to fulfill their oath, and they would not: for they had worshipped Sauron in the Dark Years. (Return of the King, Chapter 2: “The Passing of the Grey Company,” pg. 44)
Aragorn is not engaging in necromancy in order to raise an army of the dead to fight Sauron. As king of Gondor, he has the authority to lift the curse imposed by his ancestor Isildur. This would be similar to the difference between a priest asking questions of a demon in the course of an exorcism and a random civilian attempting to inquire of the same demon. Moreover, this lifting of the curse is actually part of his messianic mission of saving Gondor, as it has been prophesied.
Aragorn’s power comes from being the prophesied “Heir of Isildur,” a great though flawed king who is his ancestor. In the Gospels, Christ is referred to as the “Son of David,” who was also a flawed though nevertheless great king, of whom Christ is a descendant. In Christian theology, all the human beings who had ever lived until the death of Our Lord had been held in the realm of the dead due to the curse imposed as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve, and were thus not at rest. The important difference, of course, is that Aragorn announces to the dead that they have a chance to redeem themselves and gain their rest, while Christ announces to the “spirits in the prison” that He had redeemed them and they could now be at rest. This fits with Tolkien’s theme of not having perfect figures of Christ, in order to emphasize that these Christ figures are not actually Christ.
The Hands of the King Bring Healing
Being an Englishman, Tolkien would have been quite familiar with the legends surrounding St. Edward the Confessor, the last king of England before the Norman conquest (1042-1066). He is referred to as the Confessor to differentiate him from an earlier King Edward, called the Martyr, who was assassinated in 978. Even before his death, Edward was considered saintly, and it was said that he had the power to heal the disease scrofula, a form of tuberculosis called “the king’s evil.” This healing is immortalized by William Shakespeare (himself a Catholic, albeit a secret one) in his tragedy Macbeth. After the eponymous Scottish lord commits regicide by assassinating Duncan and usurps the throne, Malcom, the rightful heir, flees to the English court of King Edward. When the tyrant Macbeth murders MacDuff’s wife and children, the latter joins his rightful king in exile. It is there that Duncan tells MacDuff of Edward’s famed power to heal.
Tolkien incorporated this idea into his portrayal of Aragorn in The Return of the King. When Faramir and Éowyn are brought to the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith after their respective encounters with the Nazgûl, the wizard Gandalf overhears the words of Ioreth, an elderly woman:
“Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: hands of the king are the hands of the healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.” (Return of the King, Chapter 7: “The Houses of Healing,” pg. 138)
After coming to Gondor’s aid and bringing victory in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Aragorn is hiding his true identity as the rightful king of Gondor and has his troops camp outside of Minas Tirith. At Gandalf’s request, he enters the city by night, disguised as a Ranger, and tends to all the wounded, especially Faramir, Éowyn and Merry. He alone is able to heal them by mixing an herb called athelas but nicknamed “king’s foil” in water and washing the wounds with it. (The film The Fellowship of the Ring hints at this by having Aragorn send Samwise to find king’s foil to try to heal Frodo’s poisoned wound.)
In addition to being a reference to the legends concerning St. Edward the Confessor, which would have been familiar to Tolkien, these healings further establish Aragorn as a figure of the kingly aspect of Christ. Like Christ, who kept His “messianic secret,” Aragorn is trying to hide his true identity until the appointed time of the final battle with Sauron, the Dark Lord. Also like Christ, when Aragorn does heal the wounded, the rumor of it spreads, causing the populace to claim that the king has returned. Indeed, the words of Aragorn to Faramir after he heals him “Walk no more in the shadows, but awake!” sound very similar to those Jesus said to the daughter of Jairus: “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41), the son of the widow of Nain, “Young man, I say to you, arise” (Luke 7:14) and Lazarus, “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43).
Note: Quotations from Return of the King are taken from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. New York: Del Rey 2003.
This piece and other reflections on kingship appeared in Happy & Glorious: A Royal Celebration.