Going Back to Byzantium

January 11, 2026

I recently came into possession of a book called España Mistica by José Ortiz-Echagüe as a Christmas gift from my good buddy Harley. Thanks man!

José was a Spanish photographer born around the end of the 19th century, who saw the oncoming industrialization of his country as a young man. He understood this change to be unavoidable, and his desire was to capture different aspects of Spanish life before these changes happened as a means to preserve his culture.

José has several different works capturing different facets of Spanish life, but this particular work focuses on the religious life of Spain, and includes photographs of monasteries, cathedrals, monastic life, processions, and more. Shot in large format, the majority of the photographs were processed by José himself using charcoal method. Some of the images appear as if they were painted with a brush, and are absolutely stunning. I highly encourage everyone to take a look for themselves to see what I mean (photographs begin on pg. 40 of the PDF).

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In flipping through the pages of this book and witnessing the beauty of days gone by, it got me thinking.

Even briefly skimming through the photos in España Mistica, it’s very easy to acquire a sense of hopelessness. To see the beauty of what once was, contrasted with the ugliness of modernity, can quickly lead one to blackpill. I regularly see people on Twitter, or on Telegram, pining for the old days of Byzantium, or of Rome, or of the 1950’s – urging for us to collectively “retvrn” to these times as a society.

The fact is that we can’t return to these times. These places, these moments in time, were products of their environments that can’t simply be revived as they were in their own day – even by stacks of executive orders, or protests, or activism, or of hard will, or whatever else.

Almost nothing lasts forever, even if God may let us have these things for a short while for our own benefit – but we can always build something new with His help.

“Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.” + St. Augustine of Hippo.

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