More on the matter of Britain

                                             More Scottish elements in Arthurian legends...

An extended comment on my previous post from Aelianus deserves more than a combox reply:

I don't understand the statement "in Arthurian legend, Scotland is rather marginal". A great swathe of the major characters in the legend are from the part of Britain that would later become Scotland: Sir Gawain of Orkney and Lothian, his father King Lot (after whom Lothian is supposed to be named), his brothers Sir Agravain, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gareth and Sir Mordredhis their sister St Teneu and her son St Mungo founder of Glasgow. King Urien of Rheged and his son Sir Ywain. These are hardly marginal figures in the story. The earliest reference to Arthur is in Y Gododdin the oldest literary work deriving from the area of modern Scotland. What the Arthurian tales point to is that this territory is more fundamentally and originally British than it is Scottish just as they draw attention to the antecedent Britishness of Lloegyr. The evidence in that film that there was no Anglo-Saxon invasion proves no such thing. It simply points to the fact that Saxons had been raiding the province of Britannia for many centuries, that much of the territory was unprepared to resist and that they never (even after the conquest) made up more than a minority of the population (like any military aristocracy).

First, thanks for the response. One of the ways in which myths and deep stories about nations and landscapes work is by provoking discussion and disagreement: what we are doing here is in part a tribute to that depth and abding importance.

Turning to the specific points raised, I'll begin by repeating my (incomplete) reply in the combox:

You'll note that, in context, the 'statement' is not left unchallenged.

In addition to the points in the blog post, I'd add: 1) whatever the potential for developing the 'Scottish' elements within the Matter, my impression (and I accept that discerning the cultural force of narratives is a tricky business) is that generally this has not been done. The Arthurian cycle is predominantly felt as a Southern English narrative, probably centred in Winchester or Glastonbury. (The only quick evidence I can provide for this is that I've put into the blog: that reworkings that emphasise Scottish elements are presented as self consciously revisionist.)

In short, I don't think the Arthurian legends are as central to the Scottish mythos as they are to the English one. (I put aside the Welsh case simply because it has complexities which I'm simply not able to do justice to.) My main basis for that is simply a factual claim: when one thinks of the legends and stories that have been told and retold over the years, Scottish writers have tended not to concentrate on Arthur in the same way that English ones have. (As a factual claim, it is of course open to challenge and I'd be particularly interested if anyone could point me in the direction of scholarly literature on the use of the Matter of Britain in pre-modern Scotland.) Certainly, taking Professor Roberts' film as itself a reperformance of the Matter of Britain, that  didn't have much to say about Scotland. (And of the others I mentioned in the original blogpost, all have Scotland literally on the margins, as the stories are located in the Borders.)

Now if that empirical observation is true, then the next question is why that might be true? What might cause that lack of attention? That's quite a big discussion, but some elements spring to mind immediately. First, the struggle between Saxon and Briton is not even plausibly as central to Scottish narrative identity as it is to English. Moreover, that sense of two peoples' clashing is repeated again and again in English history in a way that it isn't in Scottish. (One thinks here especially of the clash between Norman and Saxon for which, I'd speculate, the Arthurian clash between Briton and Saxon often functions as a (safer) imaginative replacement.) For Scotland, the clash is between (at least) Irish, British, Pictish and Saxon identities, with nothing like the complete replacement of Brittonic by English until the relatively modern domination of English over Gaelic (and note then it is Goidelic Gaelic, not the Brittonic of Arthur). Secondly, the political centrality of the various tensions between the identities of British/French, Welsh/British and Romanitas/barbarian which are central to much of the Arthurian cycle are arguably less central to Scotland. For example, there is the absence of the Edward I's and the Tudor need to find a location for Welshness within the English vision of royal power. Finally, there is the availability of alternative, more powerful mythoi: that of the struggle of Scotland against England (The Brus/Braveheart); that of the struggle of Gael against Lowlander (Scott).

Now I don't know how much of that (speculation) would ultimately be defensible. But perhaps the biggest absence in the Arthurian cycle is of the tension between Gael and Saxon: as Aelianus points out, the 'Scottish' element in the cycle is confined mostly to Southern Scotland and the Kingdom of Strathclyde: as noted above, Scotland literally is marginal to the imaginary of the cycle as being predominantly confined to the Southern Borders. Moreover, as medieval Scotland viewed itself as Scottish (ie Goidelic), a narrative that marginalised that identity would be unlikely to have much purchase:

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown.

They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous.

Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today.

The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since.

 

(From the Declaration of Arbroath 1320 here. Emphases mine.)

 

The key point of the original blogpost was this: Scotland (like all nations) needs an imaginative (mythic) engagement with its past. Certainly as performed in Roberts' programme, there was nothing that seemed able to contribute to that imaginative engagement except by way of absence. To point that our, as Angus MacNeil did, is simply fair comment.

 

So my main plea is that both Unionists and Nationalists think more deeply about the stories they want to tell and the myths they would use. Perhaps the Matter of Britain can provide such basis: if so, please get on with it. (The general importance of good myth like the Matter of Britain is that it allows the interpenetration of many competing values and experiences: Arthur, for example, deals with personal tragedy (adultery), political tragedy (civil war) and the supernatural end of man (the Quest for the Grail). Braveheart on the whole just deals with thumping invaders over the head.) My suspicions remain that, for the various reasons adumbrated, the Matter of Britain is not up to that task of deepening the imaginative construction of Scotland.

 

But that leaves open the question of what is up to that task. And really, we have to do better than  'the UK is lovely and Nicola Sturgeon is a tosser' or 'The Tories eat babies and everything was awful in the past and will be great in the future'...

[On the issue of whether the Saxons invaded or came bringing trinkets and culture -I have no view.]

Scotland: Group feeling and the Matter of Britain

                                                                 A blogger stirs...

The howffs and wynds of Scotland are full of talk about Ibn-Khaldun's concept of asabiyyah or group feeling...

My particular thoughts on this were prompted by Alice Roberts' documentary on King Arthur and a consequent discussion on Twitter, as well as an earlier tweet by (Britain's leading theologian) John Milbank suggesting that 'The Matter of Britain' was central to British identity. (Having just wasted an hour or so trying to find that tweet, I may have to consign it to an existence just as mythical as King Arthur's own. However, if Milbank did not tweet it, he really ought to have. I offer this article as evidence that the existence of the tweet is true, even if not real. (Or perhaps vice versa.))

Anyway, let's take this claim that the Matter of Britain is central to 'our' identity. (We'll come back to that 'our'.) It had me mulling over the thought that, in Arthurian legend, Scotland is rather marginal. Now my second thought is to question whether or not that first thought is true. Certainly, there are Scottish elements: at random, I can think of Alistair Moffat's identification of Roxburgh as Camelot, Nikolai Tolstoy's search for Merlin in the Lowlands, and Clive Owen's knocking around north of Hadrian's Wall in the 2004 King Arthur. But much of this (and I note that the first three things that spring to my mind are modern contributions to the Matter) are self-consciously revisionist -which suggests that the more traditional working of the Matter plays them down.

So I'm not sure, but my impression is that Scotland generally is marginal to the Matter, with the possible exception of the Lowlands (which by definition can only be part of any Scottish national narrative). If we take the (perhaps mythical) Milbank tweet as true, then that is a problem for British identity. And even if it is not true, it is at least the starting point for considering how narratives contribute to asabiyyah and how the central stories of the British Isles (among which the Arthurian legends are an important strand) contribute to our senses of British or Scottish identity.

And into this mulling plunged Professor Roberts. Now there is a clearly existent tweet here which is relevant:

It's because the word 'Celts' was never applied in antiquity to the inhabitants of Britain. People first started doing so in the 18th century. https://t.co/uUKyxFd23K

— Tom Holland (@holland_tom) 17 September 2018

Holland is of course correct, but it is perhaps a rather uncharitable take on what Angus MacNeil was trying to say. In Roberts' programme, much was made of how the 'conflict' between Anglo-Saxons and native Britons was important to understanding the history of the 'nation' (the singular was clearly used at the beginning of the programme). More generally, the programme was focused on arguing that an important part of our history was being misrepresented if it were believed that the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain rather than drifted in peacefully and exerted a cultural influence over the existing population. But although the programme was ostensibly about an important piece of our national history, very little was said about Scotland and (very oddly for a piece about Arthur) Welsh history. Indeed, the only mention of Scotland that I caught was right at the end when (rather quickly I thought) an understanding of early mediaeval Britain as divided into a south-eastern bit oriented culturally to the continent and a north-western bit oriented towards the Atlantic seaboard was presented. (As an aside, this was rather a pregnant view given the traditional North-South divide and Brexit. It was perhaps odd that one narrative aspect of British history -the nature of the Anglo-Saxon influence- was subject to a sort of revisionist interpretation, while perhaps a much more currently potent narrative -on the split between two sorts of Britain- was not only reinforced but actually extended into deeper cultural time but without much comment.)

So I take it that MacNeil's point was that, in what was ostensibly a programme about an important part of our national story, very little attention was paid to the (what we now call) Celtic parts of the British Isles (with the exception of Cornwall). And although allowing for the inherent subjectivity of a reaction to a medium like television, where there is an inability (or at least general lack in practice) of going back to test one's impressions, I think that take on the programme is fair. Now of course, there are perhaps good answers to this. Not every programme has to be about Scotland. Not even every 'Matter of Britain' programme has to be about Scotland. But IF the programme is claimed to be about 'our' history, and if there is rather a tendency to slide within the programme between the use of Britons/British/Britain as applying to the pre-Saxon peoples/land and applying to the modern peoples/land (I think there was, although again, I am open to different views on this), it's not unreasonable, certainly from a Nationalist MP, to expect some querying.

My own view is that it's perfectly reasonable for Roberts to make a programme which elides Scotland and Scottish identity. (Why on earth would one expect everyone to worry about this as a subject?) But equally, it's perfectly reasonable for others who are more concerned about this area to point out some of the problems in the treatment. And specifically, in a programme that seemed to be claiming to make points relevant to a modern British identity, to note that almost nothing was said about Scotland. At one level, this is just a well-worn point about the modern UK: by default, a lot of what is claimed to be British is in fact just about England. (And this will raise again familiar questions about those generators of modern narrative, the modern media.)

But there is a deeper level at which narratives about British national identity which just leave out Scotland no longer work. Were I convinced Unionist, I would simply note that, if I want to hold the various nations of the UK together, the asabiyyah of those nations, particularly Scotland, has moved on and that, consequently, the narratives that construct that imagined community of the UK also have to move on if you want them to work as a unifying force. Crudely, a Scottish viewer watching Roberts' programme is not going to see it as his or her Our Island Story. That wouldn't matter if the programme were simply framed as an investigation into the fairly niche question of whether the Saxons came armed or in peace. But it wasn't. And the failure to notice that (let alone acknowledge it as a problem) is what bedevils a lot of modern Unionism. The old narratives based on a common quest for Empire and a common heritage of Protestantism no longer work. If a new set of Unionist narratives is going to be constructed, I'd suggest, they need to take account of the changes in Scottish asabiyyah and work with them.

Putting aside those immediate questions of Unionism/Nationalism, more importantly, asabiyyah in Scotland generally has to wrestle with the narrative element of that identity. And the difficulty in applying one important British Isles narrative, 'The Matter of Britain', simply emphasises the difficulty of applying any narrative to Scotland which has some historical and mythical depth: this is compounded by a modern Nationalism that prides itself on being progressive and thus anti-past and anti-myth; and the thinness of any historical narratives that are knocking around. (Think Braveheart.) For a Catholic conservative, imaginative engagement with space and time is essential: oikophilia is essentially an imaginative act and without it, we inhabit a wasteland. Neither Unionism nor Nationalism is really developing those sorts of imaginative depths at the moment. I'm not sure whether this is just a temporary accident, or whether it says something deeper about Scottish culture: a disassociation from enchantment caused by the Reformation or perhaps the abandonment of acquired essentially English narratives such as Roberts' that worked for a time but no longer. In any case, the modern disenchantment of the world seems particularly acute up here in North Britain.

Old fashioned values: Richmal Crompton as the surburban Burke

Whilst trying to wind up Twitter by praising the wisdom of the suffragists rather than the violence of the  suffragettes, I came across an interesting essay on Richmal Crompton (a suffragist):

This repetition [in her books] not only reveals the way in which a busy writer recycles her material. It also suggests that we should see Crompton's work as the expression of a consistent set of values. But what, in the end, are those values? For Owen Dudley Edwards, the Just William stories show Crompton as a Tory radical: a scourge of the establishment, an anti-snob. This is, however, only partially true. Crompton was certainly a Tory. A member of the Conservative Party from 1920 onwards, she described herself as 'true-blue'. She was also a shrewd critic of social convention and of the petty snobbery of English life. Her wiser characters are always those who come to realise 'that there is no vulgarity in an aspidistra, but there is a world of vulgarity in the conventional sneer at it'. Many of her stories likewise conclude with the recognition that 'There's only one vulgarity...and that's pretending to be something you aren't.' Nonetheless, Crompton's books as a whole reveal a rather more pessimistic sort of Conservatism than Dudley Edwards has discerned. It is not just that she had a very limited belief in the possibility of human progress -although she did, describing the passage of time as rather like a roundabout, with people going up and down but never really moving forward. Nor is it simply that she had a bleak view of the capacity of people to understand one another -although again, her description of humans as 'A set of children playing blind man's buff', unable truly to comprehend themselves or each other, suggests that this was a central aspect of her worldview. More importantly, Crompton's views on class and on human nature bear little resemblance to the crusade for 'fairness, and the consequent destruction of privilege' that Dudley Edwards sees in the wartime fiction.

[...]

This analysis, combining confidence in social stability with pessimism about the fundamental nature of humanity, is, of course, a classically High Tory one. It is also a High Anglican -indeed Augustinian- notion, and it comes as little surprise to learn that Crompton was an Anglo-Catholic...No one is entirely pure, no one is entirely good; indeed, 'unselfish people are sometimes much more selfish than selfish people'...True wisdom and real change, in Crompton's books, come from...an acceptance of God and his providence: his capacity to rectify the worst effects of human sin. Human efforts on their own will always fail...

[Her work] reveals a Conservative who was unthreatened by modernity. But this optimism was always tempered: first, by a rejection of social and political reform, and secondly by a highly pessimistic view of human nature.

[From here: Whyte, William (2011) 'Richmal Crompton and Conservative Fiction' in Griffiths, C. V. J, Nott, J.J & Whyte. W. (eds)  (2011) Classes, Cultures, and Politics, Oxford, OUP.]

This passage sent a lot of hares running in my mind: both personal (how much have I personally been affected by a childhood immersed in her books?) and political.  Sticking with the political, why is this humane, conservative view almost entirely unavailable to modern youth? I don't mean by that just the unfashionableness of her work (and I find it hard to judge how much such a claim would be true: certainly less fashionable than when I was young, but forgotten? I hope not) but rather the unavailability of such ideas as a current, half articulated worldview. Even when I was reading them, we were beginning that long, futile trek through the sixties into the modern progressive era, where humour, resignation, God and a realistic sense of possibility have been lost in favour of strident self assertion in the service of consumerism. And thus I don't think I noticed these conservative ideas: not until much later in my life when reading first Scruton, then Burke and finally Kirk, did I recognise the outline of a philosophically coherent, but culturally very, very unfashionable worldview. That's a pity, because at the least, such an Augustinian conservatism is at the very least a useful corrective to modern progressivism, and possible even just simply true.

I can hear my internal -and doubtless external- critic muttering at this point that such a politics is all very well if your position in life is quite comfortable, rather less so if you're at the bottom of the self-satisfied heap. Possibly. But (at least) three things in response. First, a personal response. My father grew up at the very bottom of the heap that Crompton describes in the sort of grinding industrial poverty that wouldn't be seen now outside the developing world (and the effects -and stories- of that world filled my childhood). Of course, that's not a philosophical answer, but is is an admission that I find assertions that only those who have never experienced wretchedness would find such a worldview plausible rather irritating when they come from those whose bloodlines trickle back to the Norman Conquest. Secondly, a realistic sense of what might be possible is essential when trying to doing something about genuine harms: tilting at a thousand and one imagined or minor harms is a good way of avoiding concentrating on what might really and imperfectly be done to remedy serious wretchedness in our society. Finally, Augustinian pessimism is primarily about valuing what really matters: there is no final solution to the problems of the earthly city, and the key thing is that such problems as there are do not get in the way of the pursuit of the heavenly city, either by distracting us by their constant noise, or by simply replacing that supernatural goal. And it is because of that final possibility that secularism destroys the possibility of a good political order: by ignoring the reality of a transcendent, supernatural order, it replaces the real possibility of achieving happiness with a constant, churning, unfulfillable desire for earthly perfection. (Which is why, demonstrably, as proved by SCIENCE, all secularists are in strict medical terms and by dint of ignoring realities nuts.)

Coercing Jews: the Mortara Case

                                               Seeing everywhere with complete clarity

A recent book review in First Things has prompted turbulence on Twitter. The review concerned the Mortara Case in which a Jewish child, secretly baptised against the wishes of his parents, was taken away from his Jewish family and brought up a Catholic. (The Wikipedia article gives an extended and, so far as I can see, fair account of the case.)

Although I'm not sure that it's quite fair to say that the author of the review (a Dominican priest) endorsed the Church's actions, he is certainly sympathetic to them. This unsurprisingly provoked some angry responses including one by Rod Dreher.

The Catholic philosopher Joseph Shaw gives a good analysis of why he thinks Pius IX acted wrongly; however,  his main point (that the Church acted inconsistently (and anti-Semitically) in taking away Edgardo whilst ignoring the plight of Catholic children who were not being brought up in the Faith by nominally Catholic parents) is vulnerable to arguments that a) the jeopardy of a child's eternal felicity in a household not even nominally Catholic is factually greater than of a child in a nominally Catholic family; and b) that the Church should have intervened more elsewhere is not an argument that it was wrong to intervene here.

The philosophical problem here is that all (most?) societies acknowledge that, at some point, the welfare of children might require a child to be protected or removed from its parents. More generally, all societies acknowledge that force is sometimes required to prevent wrongs. If (as here) the welfare is a matter of eternal felicity, the reasons for exercising coercion seem pretty strong. Now clearly, secularists will regard this belief of Catholics that baptism and bringing up in the faith are matters of the highest importance to the welfare of children as absurd; but they too will countenance removal of children in the face of abuse (which, at least according to some, will include worshipping sky fairies and circumcision).

So I don't think that the general problem of coercion and removal is a specifically Catholic one, and, given this, it is inevitable that there will be hard cases and, as in all hard cases, the probability that sometimes the wrong decision will be made. (And even where the right decision is made, considerable suffering may result.) But there is undoubtedly something utterly terrible about this case, whatever may need to be said about other cases.

Let's try a slightly different tack. Wisdom literature is full of injunctions to silence and reticence in judgment. For example, 

Proverbs 17:28 Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.

Proverbs 10:19 Transgression is at work where people talk too much, but anyone who holds his tongue is prudent.

Moreover, I'd suggest that more generally, the contrast between the folk image of a wise person and that of a merely rational person rests primarily in gravitas: the wise person is reluctant to speak and give judgment unnecessarily; the rationalist has a tendency to (in Russell Kirk's words) to be a chirping sectary (think Richard Dawkins). (As an aside, part of the comic value of Polonius may be that he tries to be both grave and chatty.) So wisdom involves a greater tendency to silence and reticence than the normal run of humanity will display. (And perhaps it is not irrelevant that the wisest of the wise, Solomon, displayed his wisdom most obviously in a child custody case by refusing to make his own judgment.)

Moreover, in the face of the past, we should often feel a particular perplexity in offering moral judgment. It is quite obvious that both the Roman practice of fighting in the arena and the Western practice of the Atlantic slave trade were foul: a society without these things is a better society ceteris paribus. But what really is one to say about those virtuous figures who lived in those societies and lived and prospered sometimes because of those practices? Are they wicked men? (And yet, if one refuses to condemn them because times were different, are we falling into a cultural relativism?) The wise person will, I'd suggest, simply admit the perplexity: there is no need to pretend to a certainty of speech we do not possess and of which we have no need.)

This thought is relevant to a lot of the 'decolonising' activities that seem to be sweeping much of the West. We should find, for example, it perplexing to know precisely what to say about figures such as General Lee with his support of the slave owning South or Washington with his slaves. We can examine and describe their actions and their failings, but to try to come to some sort of final moral decision about their characters or their place in history is both rash and unnecessary. Unlike a judge who does have to come to some sort of decison in the midst of moral complexity, unlike any agent who has to decide what to do in the face of a real moral dilemma, we have absolutely no reason to come to a decision on whether Pius IX acted rightly or wrongly: indeed, it would be wise not to.

(I leave this point resting on the simple observation that wisdom, as commonly understood, involves reticence and the avoidance of unnecessary judgment. As to why this is so, I might offer two strategies. The first is a strong strategy: this might be a justification based a) on the Wittgensteinian thought that language is rooted in a form of life beyond which it 'goes on holiday' and b) the Aristotelian thought that the aim of moral philosophy is ethical improvement, leading to the conclusion that, while reflecting on the ethics of the past is a good thing, it is rash to go from that reflection to a judgment that is, by nature of its being directed at the past, useless. If such a strategy works, there is, in principle, an impossibility of reassessing completely the actions of (especially) the long or very foreign past. The second is a weak strategy: this would be what I take to the commonsense observation that judgments about the past tend, in practice, to be quite difficult to recreate in complete detail, coupled with the thought that they tend to be rather pointless. Such a strategy would not entirely rule out making judgments on the past, but it would strongly discourage it in practice.)

One of the reasons that current discussion of the case involves high emotion is that it seems to have consequences for something that is a live issue: anti-Semitism in Catholicism. I think Joseph Shaw is right that there is indeed more than a whiff of anti-Semitism in the decisions of the Mortara case; I think it is clear that there is still a problem with anti-Semitism in the West, quite apart from specifically in some parts of the Church. Even assuming some form of Catholic Integralism max, where all the decision making powers of the State were thoroughly Catholic, it would still be to the point to reflect on whether those decisions were informed by anti-Semitism, or by wisdom and by virtuous application of Catholic principles. That is of course no guarantee that such a state wouldn't perform something like the Mortara case again. But equally, there is no guarantee that a liberal state wouldn't abduct Jewish children to prevent circumcision or to enforce one-or-other of the modern shibboleths of sexual liberation contrary to Orthodox Jewish belief. A key point here is that, following both Plato and Aristotle, the role of practical wisdom in politics tends to be emphasised in Catholic thought over that of principles: at the very least, practical wisdom is required to apply principles well. That practical wisdom (prudentia) cannot be replaced simply by articulated rules, and thus it is difficult to step back into a long past, very foreign situation and come to judgment: as Aristotle notes, it depends on the perception of the wise person, and, moreover, (as I will add) that perception is essentially embodied and present and not distanced from the situation of judgment by time, space and culture.

I don't particularly want to turn this into another screed on the virtues of conservatism, but it does strike me that a refusal to avoid perplexity, a refusal to express unnecessary judgment whether about the past or fantastic futures is indeed a very wise and thoroughly conservative thing. And it's a habit that social media with its constant demand for verbal responses and constant temptation to imitate the role of the public judge that most of us actually are not will of course regard as cowardice. There is no particular reason to think that we can say anything very sensible about whether a decision made in very different circumstances from ours was the right one, even if we can, carefully, reflectively, tease out some of the ethical background from which those decisions emerge. The real task for Catholics from this case is to learn lessons about the sneaking pervasiveness of anti-Semitism, the sacredness of the family and the impossibility of ever getting any institution that always works properly.

And that will of course sound to many like a cop out. But that's because they are children of modernity (or perhaps more exactly here Kant), who believe that there exists an entirely rational ethics of principle, smoothly applicable at least in theory by human beings across all times and cultures without the need for the virtue of prudentia, while I believe the only panopticon exists in the mind of God, whose vision we glimpse only sporadically and partially. And moreover I believe both that we should refrain from judgment where we can and also that, where we cannot, we should exercise it with fear and trembling and in the knowledge that we are scurrying creatures on sacred ground.

                             Judges properly attired for entering the sacred space of judgment

I am conscious in arguing this that it might sound, particularly to a Jewish audience, that this is a typical attempt to avoid the admission of guilt, a tendency typical of Western anti-Semitism in general and a general Catholic inclination to preserve an illusion of infallibility. Perhaps. But the constant demand to revisit the past and to exact precise judgment on it seems to be a very modern, very western habit, one fuelled in large part by recent changes in technology. Moreover the de-sacralization of judgment, the viewing of it as an everyday activity to which all of us are called all the time, is again of fairly recent and geographically limited occurrence. So while there is a constant temptation, particularly if one has a shared identity with a victim group in a particular case, to feel the urgency of just this event, of the exceptional call to judgment here, I would simply ask someone feeling this whether you are sure that the general practice, of which this is merely just one example, is so obviously a good or possible thing that you will set aside more general worries about it in the face of the urgency of just this one case?

Mass readings in Scots: Twentieth Sunday of the Year (Year A)

First reading
Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7

Syne sae quo' the Lord: Haud ay by the straught, an' do ay what's right; for my ain heal-haddin's nar till win on, an' my right-recht till win intil sight.

An' the sons o' the frem wha tak up wi' the Lord, till ser' him; an' wha like the Lord's name, till be loons o' his ain; a' siclike's min' the sabbath weel, an' tak haud o' my tryst sae leal: I sal e'en fesh them hame till my halie hill, an' fu' blythe they sal be in my houss o' prayer; their burnt-offrans a', an' the beiss they fell, sal be a' taen weel on my autar thar: for that houss o' my ain, for the ilk ane, sal be ca'd the Houss o' Prayer.

[From Isaiah frae Hebrew intil Scottis, by P. Hately Waddell 1879 (Amazon US here; Amazon UK here)]



Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 66, 2-3, 5-6, 8.

GOD be gude till us; aye, an' be kind till us;
glint his face on us: Selah.
That yer gate may be kent on the yirth;
an' yer health amang a' the hethen.

Lat nieborly kins be blythe an' lilt:
for the folk ye sal right
i' the gate that 's straught;
an' the kins i' the lan', ye sal niebor them: Selah.

Lat the folk gie ye laud, O God;
lat the folk gie ye laud, the hail o' them.
God, he sal blythe-bid oursels ;
an' a' ends o' the yirth sal be fley'd o' him!


[From Psalm 67 in The Psalms: frae Hebrew intil Scottis by P. Hately Waddell (1891) here]


Second reading
Letter of St Paul to the Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32.

Bot I say to yow, hethinmen. For als lang as I am apostile of hethinmen, I sail honour my mynisterie, gif in ony maner I stere my flesch for to follow, and that I mak sum of thame saaf. For gif the lose of thame is the reconceling of the warld, quhat is the taking vp, bot lijf of deidmen?

And the giftis and the calling of God ar without forthinking.

And as sum tyme alsa ye beleuet nocht to God, bot now ye haue gettin mercy for the vnbeleue of thame; Sa and thir now beleue nocht into your mercy, that alsa thai get mercy. For God closit togiddir althingis in vnbeleue, that he haue mercy on alle.


[From The New Testament in Scots Murdoch Nisbet [c.1520] (1903) vol 2 here.]

Gospel reading
Matthew 15: 21-28

Then Jesus upt an left that place, an he went awa tae tha dïstrict roon Tyre an Sidon. An thïs Canaanite wumman frae thaim pairts cum tae hïm, cryin oot, "Loard, Sinn o Davit, hae peetie on me! Ma dochtèr ïs sufferin sumthin tarrible wi an ïll spïrit." Jesus niver saed a wurd. Sae hïs follaers cum tae hïm an plaidit wi hïm, "Senn hir awa, fer she's follaein iz an she'll no stap hir yellin oot." He saed bak, "A wus onlie sent tae tha loast sheep o tha Hoose o Israel." Tha wumman cum an got doon on hir knees afore hïm an she saed, "Loard, halp me!" "It ïsnae richt," saed he, "tae tak tha weans' breid an clod ït tae tha wee dugs." "Ay, Loard, that's richt," she saed, "but still wi aa, e'en tha wee dugs gits aitin tha crumbs that faa frae thair maïstèrs' boord!" Then Jesus saed bak tae hir, "Wumman, sitch an a faith ye hae! Ye'll het whut ye axt fer." An hir dochtèr got bettèr that verie oor.

(From Tha Fower Gospels  (2016) (Ulster-Scots), Ullans Press, ISBN: 978-1-905281-25-1, Amazon UK here,  Amazon US here.)

Mass readings in Scots: Corpus Christi (Sunday after Trinity Sunday) (Year A)

First reading
Deuteronomy 8: 2-3, 14-16

[Moses said tae the people:] 'An mynd the wey that the Laird yer God haes taen ye throu the wilderness thir fowerty year, sae that he coud lay law yer pride an sey ye tae see whit wis in yer hert an gin ye wad haud his orders or no. An he laid law yer pride an lat ye be 'ithoot meat an gien ye manna for yer meat, a thing new tae ye, that yer faithers niver seen; sae that he coud mak it clear tae ye that breid isna man's ae want, but his life is in ilka wird that comes oot the mou o the Laird.

'Mynd that yer herts isna liftit up in pride, giein nae thocht tae the Laird yer God that taen ye oot the laund o Egypt, oot the preeson hoose; that wis yer guide throu that muckle an ill-kyndit waste, whaur the war pushion snakes an scorpions an a drouthy laund 'ithoot watter; that gart watter come oot the haurd stane for ye; that gien ye manna for yer meat in the wilderness, a meat that yer faithers haed niver seen.'

[From The Old Testament in Scots, vol. 1, The Pentateuch, [Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Nummers, Deuteronomy] trans. Gavin Falconer and Ross G. Arthur (2014) (translation into Plain Scots under the auspices of the Ullans Academy) ISBN 978-1-78324-005-0. Amazon US here. Amazon UK here.]


Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 147: 12-15, 19-20 (resp: v.12)

R: Prayse the Lord, O Jerusalem!

Prayse the Lord, O Jerusalem;
prayse thy God, O Zion:
For he heth strencthenet the bars o' thy yettes;
he heth blisset thy childer wuthin thee.

R: Prayse the Lord, O Jerusalem!

He mak's peece in thy boordirs,
an' fills thee wi' the fyneist o' the wheet.
He sen's furth his commandement apon yirth;
his wurd rins verra swuftlie.

R: Prayse the Lord, O Jerusalem!

He shaws his wurd untill Jacob,
his staatutes an' his juudgemints til Israel.
He hæsna deelt sae wi' onie ither natione;
an' as for his juudgemints, thaye haena kennet thame.

 R: Prayse the Lord, O Jerusalem!


[From Psalm 147, The Book of Psalms in Lowland Scots Henry Scott Riddell (1857) here]


Second reading
1 Corinthians 10: 16-17

Is wir communion caup, nae e communion o e bleed o Christ? Is e loaf we brakk nae e communion o e body o Christ? Tho we be mony, we're the ae loaf, an the ae body, cause we aa share e same loaf.

[From The Doric New Testament (2012), rendered in Doric by Gordon M. Hay, published by G. M. Hay, Longside, ISBN 978-0-9573515-0-9, author's website http://www.doricbible.com/, Amazon UK here, Amazon US here.]



Gospel reading:
John 6:51-58

"The Leevin Breid that cam
doon frae Heeven is mysel;
gin ony man eat this Breid, he leeves for Aye:
and the breid I sal gie
is my flesh, that I wull gie for the warld’s life.”

But the Jews had an unco bruilzie anent it, amang theirsels, and cry’t oot, "Hoo can this man gie us his flesh to eat?” Than quo’ Jesus to them,

"Truly, truly say I t’ye,
Gin ye eatna the flesh o’ the Son o’ Man,
and drink his blude,
thar is nae Life in ye!
Wha eats my flesh, and drinks my blude,
wins Life Eternal;
and him wull I raise again at the Last Day.
For my flesh is vera meat,
and my blude is vera drink.
And wha eats my flesh and drinks my blude,
bides in me,
and I in him.
E’en as the Evir-leevin Faither sends me,
and I leeve by him,
sae he wha eats o’ me, sal e’en leeve by me!
This is e’en the Breid that cam doon frae Heeven;
no like as yere forebears wha did eat manna,
and dee’t:
wha eats o’ this Breid leeves for aye!”


(From The New Testament in Braid Scots (1904) by William Wye Smith here)

Weekly posting of Sunday Mass readings in Scots

 



 

For a while now, I've been posting complete readings in Scots for Sunday Mass derived from a variety of sources on a monthly basis. (You'll find an apologia for this undertaking in the blogpost linked to in that sentence.)

 

From this Sunday (Corpus Christi in Scotland) I shall also be posting on a weekly basis the Sunday Gospel reading in Scots whilst continuing to post, at least once in the month, the complete readings for a Sunday Mass (ie (normally) the Old Testament reading, the Responsorial Psalm, the Epistle and the Gospel reading). I'm doing this mostly because I think there's something to be said for the regularity of such an approach. It will also allow the Catholic Church in Scotland to make the (no doubt unworthy!) boast of being the only Church to be providing such regular weekly resources in Scots. (I'm happy to be corrected on this. Resources on a less than weekly basis may be found on the Centre for the Scots Leid here (especially monthly audio readings of Lorimer's New Testament translation) and on the Church of Scotland Worship in Scots webpage here.) As the lectionaries for other Christian communities often coincide with the Catholic lectionary in the Sunday Gospel reading, this will also provide an ecumenical resource.

 

 

 

 

 

 



The Benedict Option: that review at last

 

Scottish nominalist philosopher John Major (1467-1550) denying responsibility for the sins of modernity

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus...

Which, I should add, is a comment on my labours, not Rod Dreher's.

As I noted in my previous post, I've been putting off reading The Benedict Option. And then, having written that post and having released a flurry of tweets on the first few chapters,

Let's see how this goes. I'll tweet off top of my head reactions while reading. (I'll blog more reflectively later.) Inevitably this means> https://t.co/4CbtJxoFXj

— Lazarus Redivivus (@cumlazaro) May 6, 2017

I put off finishing it. I think that's a confession that I didn't really enthuse over it. But putting all that aside, I'm going to start off by suggesting two ways in which other readers -and indeed myself in part- have done the book a disservice by expecting it to be a different book.

1) It can't provide a detailed answer to everything. It's too short. It's written by a journalist not St Benedict. It has to appeal to a popular audience. Secularization is a phenomenon which has generated a vast academic literature and evangelism to the secularised: this book can't replace that depth of discussion and it's no use blaming it for not doing so.

2) It has to attract attention. This is a book written for the trade press and intended to reach a big audience.These are perfectly reasonable purposes, but it does mean that it has to be exciting and to grab its audience. Again, it's no use blaming the book for not coughing in ink.

Given those parameters, could the book be done any better? Possibly, but it's hard to imagine how. Moreover, I think Dreher's main purpose is simply a wake up call: unless Christians do something now, secularisation of some sort will continue to destroy church attendance and commitment. And I think he's absolutely right about that and I do think that most of us need to face this with greater alarm than we do. The perfect reader for this book is someone who is suspicious that things are going wrong in Christian practice, but who hasn't really thought much about the nature of that going wrong, and who has little idea what to do about it. If this were the first book you were reading about the subject, then it would be hard to better it. The worst reader? Probably someone like me...

Another needful prefatory remark is that this book is primarily (and explicitly) intended to deal with the US situation. Moreover (and this is less explicit) it's a book that works best if regarded at directed at a peculiarly American illusion: that with one big push, we can get a Republican government which will restore a Christian commonwealth. That this is an illusion is made clear by Dreher throughout: big business and big politics have signed up to an agenda that, while it may differ in detail between the two parties, in general offers no prospect of a general drift back to a Christian state. Neither of these two emphases prevents the book from having value for a non-American western audience, but they do mean that some of its focus needs to be critically reflected on in our different conditions. (For example, it is one thing to tell American Protestant Christians not to expect to be in the sort of control of society that they were, say, in the first half of the twentieth century; it is quite another to tell British Catholics to abandon a share in the public space that was crafted not in dominance but already as a despised minority.)

What's good about the book

It gets the broad nature of the challenge right: there are fewer and fewer Christians and they are failing to pass on their religion to their children. It gets the desperateness of the challenge right: we need to wake up and do something.

It presents a smorgasbord of interesting case studies, snapshots of imaginative and promising solutions and communities.

 It provides a proper and central place for cultivation of the self by ascesis in the way that the Orthodox and traditional Catholic would understand it: fasting, prayer, reading scripture, chastity etc.

What I didn't like

This is a personal bugbear. Dreher puts forward a 'it woz the nominalists wot dun it' view of cultural history. In rough terms, modernity is the result of a disenchantment of the universe caused by the rejection of realism of universals, particularly natural kinds, by thinkers such as William of Occam in favour of such universals existing solely in the mind. This is a commonplace of a lot of (semi and serious) scholarship, being popularised by eg Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. I think it's broadly rubbish (eg: Occam died in 1347 and sexual intercouse began in 1963) but I'm possibly the only one to think this. (Tough. I'm still right.)

A more commonly shared worry might be that this diagnosis of the problem seems to serve no purpose. Unlike, say, Ed Feser's The Last Superstition, which shares a similar point of view, Dreher gives no hint that, if this is the main cause of present difficulties, the key treatment ought to be the restoration of realist metaphysics. Being a cynical soul, I'm afraid that this leads me to wonder if it is just intellectual shimmer, the need to give a sort of intellectual glamour to a brand much in the same way that former polytechnics import dark wood and Latin. (That's over sharp: the book does need to attract attention and part of the way of establishing that needful authority is by giving it an intellectual pedigree.)

Another problem is that, inevitably, Dreher doesn't have the space to develop and defend his solutions in detail. For example, at one point, he suggests that young Christians should think of moving to rust belt industrial areas which are struggling to find skilled workers rather than pursuing the sort of university education that is increasingly anti-religious and also ineffective at generating sufficient income to raise a family. Fine. But if I were a young Christian, I would be asking how long any such skills and industries will survive globalization and new technology. Members of high prestige professions are certainly not immune to such fears. But they do have the advantage of being well-placed to enforce their own self-interest. No doubt Dreher would have responses to worries of this kind. Inevitably, however, unless we attribute omniscience to him, all this book can do is to start a conversation in these areas. And equally inevitably, although some solutions may suit some people, they won't suit everyone, however committed a Christian you might be. A standing niggle I've found in common with a lot of modern Church life is that they seem to require a clubbability of a degree that I and suspect many are quite incapable of. It would be ironical if, in a scheme devoted to bringing Christians back to the depths of their traditions, no room could be found for the eremetical and solitary.

Staying with this inevitable lack of space for detail, the question of 'withdrawal' has figured in a lot of criticism of Dreher. In essence, he has been accused of a pre-emptive exit from the public sphere, instead of struggling to turn back some of the secularising forces. In fairness to Dreher, he is quite specific that this is only a refocusing of attention to building up the Church (rather than attempting to impose it through the Republican Party -see above) and not a complete withdrawal. But because he can't deal with detail, he can't quite flesh out what this withdrawal-but-not-a-withdrawal might look like. For example, in setting up Christian 'classical' schools, my betting would be there would be quite a lot of day to day struggling over the details: my own experience of Catholic groups is that they inevitably pull in people who do not share what I would regard as orthodox belief or practice. It's all very well to suggest 'set up your own school' as a Benedict Option; my guess would be that, in many cases, it will be very difficult to do so without reproducing some of the same difficulties that already plague existing Catholic schools. It's not that it can't (on occasions) be done: it's rather that, because it is so difficult to do, it will succeed in very few cases.

Putting aside the general tendency of a reviewer to recommend the writing of the sort of book the reviewer himself would write, my chief worry about The Benedict Option is that it doesn't provide a new solution. Already there exist small initiatives to 'rescue' gathered communities from the secular world. And that's excellent. We need more monks and nuns, more priests, more lay communities. But what works for the saints is not really the problem: some people in every generation will have both the grace and the virtues to grow to holiness. The problem of secularisation is the rest of us who struggle to survive and need the help of others to carry us. And here The Benedict Option is a bit like the underpants gnomes. Instead of, 'Steal underpants, become rich,' we have, 'Stop being secularised, become holy.'




In sum, Dreher has done a good job in starting a phenomenon of which the physical book, The Benedict Option, is only part. He has presented a forceful wake up call in a way that some who previously have been complacent or overly trusting in Republican politics might well heed to their benefit. But the start of a conversation is just that, a start. And my worry in particular is that the focus should not be on creating small faithful oases in a secular desert -there are many, many examples of organisations like Opus Dei etc etc doing that- but of irrigating the desert. I don't think The Benedict Option takes us very far in that: its recipes, in any case inevitably incomplete, will only work for a few.

The Benedict Option is an option. Fine. But it can't be the only one. Let's think of some more options to go with it.

Mass readings in Scots: Third Sunday of Easter (Year A)

First reading Acts 2:14,22-33

Bot Petir stude with the elleuen, and raasit vp his voce, and spak to thame. Ye men of Israel, here ye thir wordis. Jesus of Nazareth, a man previt of God before you be virtues, and wonndris, and taknis, quhilkis God did be him in the myddis of you, as ye wate, Ye tormentit, and slew him be the handis of wickit men, be counsale determinit and betakin be the forknawing of God. Quham God raasit, quhen sorowis of hell war vnbundin, be that that it was impossibile that he war haldin of it. For Dauid sais of him,

 

I saw on ferre the Lord before me euirmare,

for he is on my richthalf, that I be nocht mouet.

For this thing my hart ioyit,

and my tonng made full out ioy,

and mare ouir my flesch sal rest in hope.

For thou sal nocht leeue my saul in hell,

nouthir thou sal geue thin hali to se corruptloin.

Thou has made knawne to me the wayis of lijf,

thou sal fill me in mirth with thi face.

 

Brether, be it leefull hardilie to say to you of the patriarch Dauid, for he is dede and berysit, and his sepulture is amang vs in to this day. Tharfor quhen he was a prophet, and wist that with a gret athe God had suorn to him, that of the fruit of his leynd suld aan sit on his sete, He seand on ferre spak of the resurrectioun of Crist, for nowthir he was left in hell, nouthir his flesch saw corruptioun. God raasit this Jesu, to quham we all ar witnessis. Tharfor he was vpheit be the richthand of God, and throuch the behecht of the Haligaast that he tuke of the fader, he sched out this spirit, that ye se and here.

(From Murdoch Nisbet's translation into Scots (1520) here.)




Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 15(16):1-2,5,7-11


Waird me weel, O God,
I lippen till yerlane.

Ye hae said until the Lord,
My Lord, ye 're a' my ain; I hae nought that 's gude, abune yersel.

The Lord himsel's the fow o' my ha'din an' my caup;
my luck yerlane hae lucken'd.

I maun blythe-bid the Lord, wha gies me wyss rede;
an' my lisk, night by night, hauds me ay learnin.

The Lord evirmair hae I set fornenst mysel:
for he's at my right han', I sal ne'er be sair steerit.

Wharthro' my heart 's fu' fain, an' my gudeliheid fu' blythe is:
na, my vera bouk itsel bides in tryst.

For my saul ye winna lea' i' the lang hame o' dead;
ye winna gie yer dearest ane till see the sheugh o' dule.

Yersel sal gar me ken the vera gate o' life:
routh o' joies afore thy face is;
pleasurs thrang at thy right han' evir mair.

(From P. Hately Waddell's translation of Psalm 16 (1891) here)

 

Second reading 1 Peter 1:17-21

And gif ye inwartly call him fader, quhilk deemys without acceptioun of persounns be the werk of ilkman, leeue ye in drede in the tyme of your pilgrimage; Witting that nocht be corruptabile gold, or siluir, ye ar boucht agane of your vane leving of fadris traditioun, Bot be the precious blude as of the lambe vndefoulit and vnspottit, Crist Jesu, That was knawne befoir the making of the warld, bot he is schawit in the last tymes, for you That be him ar faithfull in God; that raasit him fra dede, and gaue to him euirlasting glorie, that your faith and hope war in God.


 (From Murdoch Nisbet's translation into Scots (1520) here.)

Gospel

Luke 24:13-35

And mark! twa frae ’mang them war gaun on their journey, that vera day, till a village seeven or aucht mile frae Jerusalem, ca’d Emmaus. And they spak thegither o’ a’ thae things that had happened. And it cam aboot, as they war speakin and reasonin thegither, Jesus his sel cam nar, and gaed wi’ them. But their sicht was hauden, that they soudna ken him. And he says to them, “Whatna words are thae that ye hae ane to anither, as ye gang on?” And they stude still, wi’ a sorrowfu' look.

But ane, by name Cleopas, answer’t, “Div ye bide by yere lane in Jerusalem, and hae-na kent a’ the things that hae cam aboot i’ thir days?” And he said, “Whatna things?” And they said to him, “Anent Jesus o’ Nazareth, that was a prophet, a man michty in deed and word, in God’s sicht, and o’ a’ the folk. “And in whatna way oor Heid-prieets and Rulers deliver’t him up to deid, and hae crucify’t him. But we lippened it wad hae been he that was to deliver Isra’l; and forby a’ this, the day is the third day sin’ thae things war dune. Aye! and a wheen weemen o’ oor ain gar’t us be astonish’t — gaun ear' to the tomb, and no findin his corp, they cam sayin they had seen a vision o’ angels, that said he was leevin ! And some that war o’ us gaed to the tomb ; and faund it e’en as the weemen had said ; but they sawna him.”

And he says to them, “Oh, glaikit anes ! and dour in yere hearts to lippen to the things the Prophets hae said. Was’t no for the Christ to suffer thae vera things? and to enter intil his glorie?” And, beginnin frae Moses, and frae a’ the Prophets, he made plain to them in a’ the Scripture the things anent himsel.

And they cam nar to the village they war gaun till; and he lookit as gin he was gaun on. But they pressed him, sayin, “Bide ye wi’ us! the day is far gane, and the nicht is comin!” And he gaed in to stop wi’ them. And it cam aboot, whan he was sutten doon wi’ them to meat, he took the laif, and bless’d; and breikin it, gied till them. And their e’en war unsteekit; and they kent him! and he dis- appear frae them. And they said ane to the ither, “Did oor heart no lowe within us, while he was speakin to us on the way, and exponin to us the word!”

And they raise up that vera oor, and gaed back till Jerusalem, and faund foregather’t the Eleeven, and thae wi’ them, sayin, “The Lord did rise! and appear’t to Simon !” And they war tell in the things by the road; and hoo he was made kent to them i’ the breikin o’ breid.

(From William Wye Smith's translation (1904) here.)

New venture: Mass readings in Scots language

                                                       Lazarus dressed for blogging

Ninian Winzet's savaging of John Knox in 1563 for forgetting "our auld plane Scottis quhilk zour mother lerit you." Winzet, McClure explains, was merely ladling on yet more irony in questioning why Knox had not answered the doctrinal questions Winzet had earlier posed: perhaps you are unable to read my handwriting; perhaps you have forgotten your mother tongue. For the purpose of his argument, Winzet could allege a difference in language between his own "plane Scottis" and the variety of English Knox had adopted as part of an excessive "curiositie of nouatiounis."

From: 
Bailey, Richard W. (1991) "Scots and Scotticisms: Language and Ideology," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 26: Iss. 1. (Available at: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol26/iss1/7 )


David Leask has been banging on a while now about the way Unionists have amongst other things) developed a neuralgic reaction to the Scots language (eg Herald article here). I wouldn't put it quite the way he does, but I do think there's a general problem of political debate in Scotland becoming simplified into the one issue of 'Independence -for or against?' and of other important questions becoming weaponized by both sides in the attempt to win this one battle.

From the 'progressive' Nationalist side, I don't suppose I need to make a case for Scots. (Although in principle, the justification for an emphasis on Scots ought to be problematic in such circles, even if in fact it isn't.)

Turning to the Right, to the extent that the Right is now synonymous with Unionism in Scotland, there is no particular reason why Scots as a language should be a target. There can be different views on its importance, but there is no obvious reason in principle why hostility to Scots is entailed by hostility to Scottish Independence: one of the great pleasures in reading Walter Scott's canon recently was the discovery of just how well he uses Scots in a variety of different registers. (And no obvious SNP-er he.) I sympathise with a kneejerk reaction to the nonsense that graces the pages of The National and to  political Nationalist attempts to coopt the language, but what is kneejerk needs to be resisted. Conservatives need to be much smarter than this: culture is much, much more important than politics.

But, digging a little more deeply, what of a conservatism that is not simply identical with Unionism? Difficult though it may be to peer through the fog of war and see the underlying principles at stake here, it's essential that those of us who (at least in broad terms) think of ourselves as cultural conservatives don't fall into the trap of a simple identification with the Conservative Party and thus Unionism (because the Scottish Conservative Party is self declared as progressive and because, in any case, social conservatives do not have to be supporters of the Conservative Party) or of a simple identification of Unionism and conservatism. I think the former point is relatively straightforward, so it's to the latter I turn.

Imagine for a moment that I am a Kirkian or Scrutonian conservative. Let's adopt the (somewhat ill-fitting) title of 'palaeo-conservative' as shorthand. Why would I be hostile to Scots (quite apart from necessarily hostile to Nationalism or Independence)? I put aside as utterly irrelevant the question of whether or not it is a proper language: it is at the least a proper dialect, and one with a rich, longstanding literature. With an emphasis on the local and the imaginative, and quite simply the preservation of what has been, why would I be resistant to at least preserving (quite apart from promoting) Scots? I struggle to think of an answer except for the assertion that there are more important things to think about. Possibly. But one of the key elements at least of Russell Kirk's conservatism is its element of fancy and eccentric individuality: if people see fit (as many whom I admire do) to spend their time promoting and thinking about Tolkien, then why should not those of us whom Tolkien leaves rather cold, spend time thinking about and preserving Scots?

Beyond this, I think there is a special duty on Scots Catholics to re-imagine and re-enchant Scotland. There has been a strong current in English Catholicism, seen both in Walsingham and the sense of England as Our Lady's Dowry, to remember and wish to recreate at least in imagination, an England in which the Reformation never happened or at least has been healed. For whatever reasons, this sense is rather diminished in Scotland. (The main exception to this in recent years has been George Mackay Brown, but, even here, his emphasis on Orkney reduces his impact on non-Scandinavian Scotland.) So what would a Scotland freed from the poison of the Reformation look like? What would it be for it to live as a daily reality its status as Specialis Filia Romanae Ecclesiae? Well, for one thing, at the very least a greater awareness of the mediaeval literary heritage in Scots. (Back to Dunbar, indeed.)

Anyway, let him wha will be a traitor knave. I don't know what other shenanigans I'll get up to on this, but, from this Sunday (and at least monthly thereafter until -as per usual- I get bored) I'll be posting selected Mass readings in Scots. These will be pilfered from a variety of sources rather than my own workings and this will doubtless result in a number of absurdities. (On present estimates, I'll need to make use of at least some readings in modern Ulster Scots as well as in Scotticised Middle English. (I don't totally dismiss the possibility of resorting to machine translation either.) The resulting linguisic tensions can either be ignored or celebrated as a re-enactment of the linguistic tensions necessarily involved in the original language texts of a 'book' which has been assembled by the Church from a variety of texts produced over centuries.) As with so many other ventures, I am happy to do it badly with a view to others eventually doing it better.

A couple of final points. First, everything I say above in favour of Scots could be said of Gaelic but with even greater force. That I say nothing here of Gaelic is a result entirely of my very, very limited acquaintance with that language. Secondly, none of this is to be taken as suggesting that actual Masses should be said in Scots. I suppose there is an argument in favour of such a view, but it's not one that I'm engaged in. (For what it's worth, I would ban all experiments in the language of the Mass for 1000 years and, if there is a lust for linguistic variety, urge a greater use of Scotland's other great historic language, Latin. But that's for another day.) My purpose here (quite apart from its being a simple jeu d'esprit) is simply to allow that imaginative reception of the liturgy into a wider culture that can be seen (eg) in mediaeval mystery plays and church decoration, and the transformation of that wider culture by a Catholic presence. (Pie in the Sky in practice, no doubt, but at least (ignored) there will be in principle a Catlick presence in a field too often dominated by Proddy, Secularist (and Ginger) Dugs.)

Gilead and Marilynne Robinson

I'm a bit of a sucker for that sort of high end American intellectual life (think Frasier without the jokes) where everyone appears terribly mature and balanced and to have been brought up surrounded by old oak and nourished on good bourbon.

I'm currently about half way through Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's much praised novel about this wise old small town pastor reminiscing about his life. Everyone seems to like it, I like it, and I haven't finished it (so there is always the possibility of an alien abduction enlivening things a bit later on) but...

Robinson has been much praised for restoring a vision of how religion can survive (indeed, should survive) in modernity. I think it's probably fair to describe that vision as one of providing a space for critical reflection on the everyday. (The narration in Gilead is retrospective, changing nothing in the life, but adding depth and complexity as the everyday is reflected on and retold.) From reading Robinson's interviews and critical reviews of her work, that impression seems not far from her intention:

Psalm 122 is, you could say, the theme song of this vision, and it is a vision that prompts Robinson to a ferocious critique of the abstractions of ideology - including "austerity" as an imperative to save the world for capitalism. She offers a striking diagnosis of the corrupting effect of rationalism: rationalism as she defines it is the attempt to get the world to fit the theory; and because the world is never going to fit the theory, the end-product of rationalist strategies is always panic.
"Rationalism is the omnium-gatherum of resentment and foreboding", whereas reasonableness is interested in "things as they come". The economic crisis is, in this sense, the nemesis of one kind of rationalism, oblivious of the actual complexity of people's motivation.
Where do we find the reasonable rather than the rationalistic? Above all, in the various ways in which we are educated in "imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly"; in a broadly conceived, long-term commitment to building this kind of loving understanding - in fact, in what has often been called a "liberal education". [Rowan Williams here.]

Robinson: I do. That’s what I do. But it rationalizes my lecturing, too. But fear was very much—is on my mind, because I think that the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.
You have to assume that basically people want to do the right thing. I think that you can look around society and see that basically people do the right thing. But when people begin to make these conspiracy theories and so on, that make it seem as if what is apparently good is in fact sinister, they never accept the argument that is made for a position that they don’t agree with—you know?

[Robinson in conversation with President Obama here]

Quite apart from my 'Frasier' fetish, I find this all very attractive on one level: reasonable people, thinking the best of each other, and trying to find and promote the good in small communities. Unfortunately, it just strikes me as profoundly unCatholic and only superficially human.

My reaction to this is perhaps not being helped by my currently reading Russell Kirk's Ancestral Shadows. Whilst sharing an affection for small town American life with Robinson, Kirk's vision is rather more likely to end up with an axe wielding revenant than with mature contentment. (And you could add Flannery O'Connor to that as well. Or Walker Percy's physically satisfied moderns who decide to chew their own limbs off rather than suffer the boredom of their secularised lives.) I suppose, unsurprisingly, that Robinson's vision of serious reasonableness is very hard to reconcile with the medieval and Catholic universe of demons and gnashing of teeth. Indeed, it is a reminder of just how much Robinson's Calvinism is essentially an anti-Catholicism, a reasonableness defined as being an escape from medieval superstition and hysteria.

Robinson's Calvinism covers up much of what it is to be human. Although I despise most of what has happened to popular culture since the 1950s, the search for ecstasy through sex n drugs n rock and roll is utterly human and a shadowy tribute to the human desire for a supernatural end. Gilead has little place for the burning ecstasy of the saints or of Jimi Hendrix.

It also has little place for the demonic or the ancestral shadow of original sin. Most serious Catholics I know tend to be very clear about their own unworthiness. They are usually very conscious about their need for the mercy of grace and how little they deserve it. Oddly, in view of Calvinism's debt to Augustine, there is much more of a sense in Catholicism of the essential imperfection of the Earthly City and our final home being with God, rather than with a good bourbon in front of PBS, natural goods though these undoubtedly are.

Perhaps the Robinsonian vision is the correct one. Perhaps we are all reasonable people, striving with good hearts towards a progressive future. I'm afraid I tend to see as well as goodness, the irruption of the lust for domination into all of human life, the dumb certainty that this small creature has it right, and that if only everyone else were as reasonable, everything would be fine. (And with a little, forceful encouragement, it will be.) At the centre of Robinson's Calvinism is the sermon and the self-reflective community:

What do you personally get out of going to church?
I have gone to the same church for more than 20 years. It is my village, so to speak. I see children come into the world and elders pass out of it, and I see lives unfold around me. That is a little part of it. Then I have occasion, rare in the world, to hear a good and learned man say something he takes to be true, to a congregation listening in good faith for whatever truth he has to offer. Finally, I think differently, otherwise, in that place than I do anywhere else. It is as if I can put the world and myself aside for an hour and hear and think more purely. [Here]

These are not bad things. But a Catholic goes to Church essentially to have something burst into a community from outside it  through the Mass. Hopkins' lines

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

whilst certainly celebrating the immanence of the divine also acknowledges its transcendence, its imposing externality (the martial echoes of 'charged'/'foil'; the violence of 'crushed' (emphasised by enjambment)/ 'rod'), its essential surprisingness.

Although much has been made of the way in which Robinson's vision of the importance of religion offers a contrast to secularising narratives, I'm not so sure. Everyone loves her. She wins prizes and Presidents woo her. The idea of religion as adding depth and shade to an already existing (secular) design is one we all already love. And a world tweaked thus would be less overtly hostile to some forms of religion. (We would all be in Church to hear a good and learned man say something.) But we would be deaf to grandeur and squalor, deaf to the way that religion roars of something else terrible.

Could Robinson's Congregationalism produce this?

The legitimacy of rebellion -another bite

One of the promises I've made and not yet fulfilled is to respond to Cathy Barry's combox response to my previous post on the issue of rebellion. Partly this is just procrastination, but partly it's because I wanted to get some objectivity on the nature of the debate by letting the ideas bed down  a little more. (And I should point out that I'm not expecting any response to all this! It's too long and just the effluvia of an overexcited mind.)

Once again, this is merely some jottings in this area and is more to keep a note of progress I've made in case I or anyone else wishes to return to the subject. It consists of three parts: the first dealing with the background issues and the reason why I think the issue is particularly interesting; the second dealing directly with Cathy's responses; and the third dealing with some further (partial) explorations which may be worth recording to take further.

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Part I: Context

There is of course a reason to find the legitimacy of rebellion interesting in itself, particularly in the context of celebrations of 1916. And given the overwhelming influence of Catholicism on the Easter Rising, a specific interest in the Catholic theology and philosophy behind the Rising is again natural.

Whilst not dismissing those aspects, my main personal interest in this issue is, on reflection, concerned with the issue of subsidiarity. I've long held the view that one of the prime neuralgic points between secular modernity and Catholicism is the issue of the existence of forms of communal life between the individual and the State. This is especially a matter of the family, but also those communities of civil society, which possess a legitimacy which is not derived either from the voluntary accession of individuals nor from the delegation of authority by the State. So I'm interested in rebellion primarily as an occasion when (perhaps) those sources of authority which tend to become invisible when the State is working well, suddenly have to act independently of the State or indeed to oppose the State. (There's the added interest here in times of Brexit of being reminded of supra-national authorities (traditionally the Papacy and the Empire but with the EU and UN as possible successors) and the recourse to their legitimacy against the authority of the State.) In sum, rebellion highlights the multi-layered sources of authority in Catholicism as opposed to the tendency of modernity to concentrate all authority in the hands of the individual and the State.

In particular, one of the lacks of (some) modern Catholic social teaching is the lack of much developed thinking on the nature of these little platoons. Crudely, subsidiarity is often treated as an injunction simply to delegate authority to local or regional government without much thought about what the legitimacy (or even reality) of those lower authorities might be. This is (for example) at odds with Aristotle's treatment of entities below the State particularly in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics where he examines how human social life has a variety of forms all based on the drive of philia (friendship). I won't try to explore this issue in any depth now, but I'm interested in the way varieties of communal life in little platoons arise naturally (and this of course involves the way modernity might undermine such communities as described eg in Putnam's Bowling Alone). A specific case in this area which I noticed recently has been the emphasis in some Dark Enlightenment discussions on the 'tribal' nature of human beings (and in that context, Ross Douthat's article on the tribal nature of cosmopolitan elites makes interesting reading). One doesn't have to be a fully paid up member of the gene machine/evolutionary psychology brigade to wonder what effect a naturally selected tendency to live together in chimpanzee like bands might have had on our current psychology and on our politics.

Anyway, much for another time. But if anything like this line of thought is right, the crisis of the State in rebellion ought to throw into relief these other communities and sources of authority.

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Part II: Replies to Cathy's points in combox.


Her comments were as follows:

1. The great issue with seeking to establish legitimate authority in advance is that you are signalling your intention to revolt. Imagine North Korea rebels sought legitimacy from the Pope (or the UN) in advance, or sought to get signatures from a large number of officials - what action would the regime take as the news inevitably seeped out? The effect is to make revolt against tyranny extremely difficult, and the more effective the tyranny, the more difficult it is.

Any moral restriction on violence is going to make it more difficult to use and, in particular, is going to make it less likely to succeed. (So the conditions on a just war 'chafe' most precisely in the most desperate situations such as the allied bombing of Germany or the use of the atomic bomb in Japan.) The mere fact of some additional difficulty in rebellion is thus not in principle an objection to the applicability of a moral requirement. Moreover, that difficulty may be so great as to rule out a particular rebellion (or war): a war or rebellion might be highly desirable on many grounds, but might still be ruled out on the moral tests (certainly in the case of the just war and (I'd argue analogically) in the case of a rebellion).

A stronger objection might be if the tests ruled out *any* case in which war (or a rebellion) could be justly waged. But even if the requirement for just authority were more burdensome for rebellions (and I'm not sure in general it is), that doesn't seem to make them impossible. For example, in the case of the 1916 rising and the Scottish Wars of Independence, authority was actually sought from the papacy. Moreover, any rebellion involving more than a single agent requires some sort of communication between individuals and thus the risk of discovery. All that seeking legitimate authority would add to that unavoidable difficulty would be that certain individuals as authorities would have to be sought out (and given the dispersal of authority in (say) mediaeval societies, a general move in that direction does not seem overly burdensome in most cases, even if it might be in some).

2. This would make sense if the Church in general thought revolt always a bad thing. Aquinas says sedition (revolt by part of the state against another part) is always wrong, and in reply to the objection that "it is praiseworthy to deliver a multitude from a tyrannical rule...Therefore there can be sedition without mortal sin." Aquinas answers that there is "no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant's rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant's government." Thus the thing called by some "sedition" is not really sedition when it is (a) aimed at restoring the common good and (b) will not have worse effects than the existing government. There are two tests here to determine whether a revolt is sedition or not. 

I agree. The only question is whether, given that a disturbance [perturbatio] is not a sedition, then the only test of legitimacy is the pragmatic one of whether it advances the common good or not. Aquinas frankly in the Summa is silent on this, but, quite apart from anything else, there is the question of plausibility: why should questions of just war require considerations beyond effectiveness while questions of rebellion require solely considerations of effectiveness? (In the absence of any explicit test beyond effectiveness, is it (eg) legimitate in a rebellion to target non-combatants?)

3. Aquinas does say that sedition is like war (and by analogy, revolt that is just must also be). It is indeed reasonable to look at his other writing to determine the approach to sedition. But it cannot be simply supposed without argument that Just War Theory applies in all parts to sedition or rebellion. Without being an expert on this in any way, earlier medieval writers have certainly supposed that deposing tyrants is rather different from attacking another state.

Again I'd agree. Rebellion is in principle (but see below on Aristotle's acceptance of vagueness in political and moral resoning) not the same as a just war (although it is noticeable that both the 1916 and Arbroath declarations seem to try to frame the perturbatio as war against an external enemy which suggests a certain reluctance to identify the action simply as rebellion). And again, I'd accept that the test of legitimate authority couldn't be simply lifted from the conditions of the just war to that of rebellion without some reasoning to back it up. Assuming both our interests here are primarily in the substance of the issue (ie more in ascertaining the correct conditions for a just rebellion rather than in ascertaining Aquinas' own position) I suppose my argument here would be simply that, if the question of authority is a good test of a just war, why wouldn't analogous questions arise for a rebellion, especially given that, in the Thomist (and I'd argue correct) view of a country, there would be possible sources of authority both above and below the ruler which could be resorted to?


4. If we look at your example, the Declaration of Arbroath was in 1320. In 1306 Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots, after Edward had been recognised as king of Scotland the previous year by the Pope. There was ongoing war until Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Based on that timeline, Robert was only attempting to establish his legitimate authority via the Declaration of Arbroath *after* he'd been in revolt for an extended period of time against the king the Pope had acknowledged. So was that prior revolt illegitimate, despite the long list of grievances the Declaration makes against the English monarchs? Is it really possible to declare an authority as legitimate retroactively?  

The Declaration (here) states

And now, the divine Will, our just laws and customs, which we will defend to the death, the right of succession and the due consent and assent of all of us have made him [ie Robert] our leader and our king.

So Robert is King legitimately in 1306 (by authority of 'Barons, Freeholders and all the common people of the kingdom of Scotland') and to the extent that the Pope failed to acknowledge that, he is wrong.

I suppose I'd go back here to Aristotle (both as a matter of exegesis of the Thomist view but primarily because I think he's right!) on the general lack of definiteness of practical affairs. (Eg) Aquinas in his commentary on the Ethics (Book II, 259 here):

The teaching on matters of morals even in their general aspects is uncertain and variable. But still more uncertainty is found when we come down to the solution of particular cases. This study does not fall under either art or tradition because the causes of individual actions are infinitely diversified. Hence judgment of particular cases is left to the prudence of each one. He who acts prudently must attentively consider the things to be done at the present time after all the particular circumstances have been taken into consideration. In this way a doctor must act in bringing about a cure and a captain in steering a ship. Although this doctrine is such as to be uncertain in its general aspects and incapable of precision in particular cases, we ought to study it so that in these matters we may be of some assistance to men in directing their actions.

Practically, someone engaged in the sort of 'perturbation' involved in 1916 or 1320 cannot be certain whether they are engaged in a war or a rebellion. (I think it's pretty clear though in both cases that they would prefer to be seen as being clearly involved in a war against an external aggressor.) Practically (given the dispute about legitimacy of the rulers) they cannot be sure they are acting with legitimate authority. Hence seeking whatever legitimacy falls to hand at the time it falls to hand is what a wise person would do -and that appears to what is happening in both cases: appeals upward to the Pope and appeals downwards to the people/barons etc. It's very hard to imagine a rebellion which was not concerned to show itself as having some reliance on legitimate authority, particularly a rebellion founded on Catholic principles.

It's of course possible to imagine extreme examples where no such authority existed or could be ascertained. But there are also such extreme examples for wars (what happens if all the government are nuked in a first strike?) and in practice there are usually some sort of answers. (I am reminded that in Battlestar Galactica it is the rather lowly Secretary of Education who is the highest surviving official left to take over the presidency.) Moreover, I'm only arguing for the moment that (as I said in my previous post) 'might we agree that mediaeval political theory at least reluctant to concede right of rebellion/revolution to groups/individuals without legitimate authority?'  If that possibility of legitimate authority is not there at all, then that reluctance might be put aside. (See eg on this Aquinas below in his Commentary on the Sentences.) But in practice, I think it unlikely that this situation would often arise.


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Part III: Sketchy explorations of other materials.

Some additional points:

1) There is (I discovered!) such as thing as the 'Lesser Magistrate doctrine' in Calvinism which holds the view that lesser magistrates have the duty to rebel against the tyranny of higher ones. (Wikipedia here.) This seems to have produced some rather sparky modern day followers in the American militia movement (here).

Calvin, Institutes, IV, ch 20 (here):

Although the Lord takes vengeance on unbridled domination, let us not therefore suppose that that vengeance is committed to us, to whom no command has been given but to obey and suffer. I speak only of private men. For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings (as the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among the Spartans, or Tribunes of the people to consuls among the Romans, or Demarchs to the senate among the Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to this in the power exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when they hold their primary diets). So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannise and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy, because they fradulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians.

(I owe this insight to:

The American Revolution: Not a Just War
Gregg Frazer
Journal of Military Ethics
Vol. 14, Iss. 1, 2015 )

2) Johnson, J.T. 2013, "Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force", Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 371-378. This baldly says:

"Stab, smite, slay!" These are not the words of Bashar al-Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524-1525. ¹His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion:
He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume. ²
Nor was this way of thinking about how to deal with rebellion limited to the sixteenth century. Consider these passages from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae--the first from "On Strife":
Strife seems to be a kind of private war. [As such,] strife is always sinful. . . . For if an officer of a prince or judge, in virtue of their public authority, should attack certain men and these defend themselves, it is not the former who is said to be guilty of strife, but those who resist the public power. ³
And this from "On Sedition":
Sedition is contrary to the unity of the multitude, viz., the people of a city or kingdom. . . . It is evident that the unity to which sedition is opposed is the unity of law and common good, whence it follows manifestly that sedition is opposed to justice and the common good. . . . It is a mortal sin. ⁴
The only exception Aquinas made was for the case of tyrannical rule, where he argued that subjects are not bound to obey tyrannical orders from the ruler.⁵Still, Aquinas argued that subjects should simply withhold obedience to wrongful orders, not rise in armed rebellion. While in extreme cases it is not a sin to overthrow a tyrant, it is subordinate rulers who should take the lead in this task (here Aquinas anticipated Calvin on the overthrow of an unjust ruler by "lesser magistrates"), not the people at large. The underlying reason is the responsibility the subordinate rulers have to use their ordering power in the service of justice and peace; other people may have the individual right of self-defense, but they do not have this larger responsibility for the common good, given that the overthrow of a tyrannical government by popular uprising may lead to social and political chaos and even worse injustice than that under the tyrant. Thus, Aquinas argues, the situation must be extreme to justify the overthrowing of a tyrant: "If there be not an excess of tyranny it is more expedient to tolerate for a while the milder tyranny than, by acting against the tyrant, to be involved in many perils which are more grievous than the tyranny itself." ⁶The reasoning here is not simply a defense of political order as such, but an acknowledgment of the centrifugal forces always present in communal life and the danger they may pose to justice and peace

[My emphasis]

Unfortunately, Johnson gives only a secondary reference to back up this claim: Gregory Reichberg , Henrik Syse , and Endre Begby , eds., The Ethics of War (Malden, Mass. : Blackwell Publishing , 2006 ), p.195

3)  I mentioned before the article

Thomas aquinas on the justification of revolution

Thomas A. Fay
History of European Ideas
Vol. 16, Iss. 4-6, 1993

I still haven't accessed this, but the four sources from Aquinas mentioned on the preview are:

Commentary on the Sentences II, dst 44, q.2, a.2 (1254-56) (English online version here.)

The most relevant portion here seems to be ad. 5:

To the fifth argument the answer is that Cicero speaks of domination obtained by violence and ruse, the subjects being unwilling or even forced to accept it and there being no recourse open to a superior who might pronounce judgment upon the usurper. In this case he that kills the tyrant for the liberation of the country, is praised and rewarded.

[Note a) preference for recourse to superior authority; b) only in the absence of that is the tyrannicide honoured.]

De Regno (1266) (relevant piece not specified but seems to be Book I, ch.7, ss.47 and 48 (here) ) (Latin and English) This gives a reasonably clear answer:

[47] Should private persons attempt on their own private presumption to kill the rulers, even though tyrants, this would be dangerous for the multitude as well as for their rulers. This is because the wicked usually expose themselves to dangers of this kind more than the good, for the rule of a king, no less than that of a tyrant, is burdensome to them since, according to the words of Solomon [Prov 20:26]: “A wise king scatters the wicked.” Consequently, by presumption of this kind, danger to the people from the loss of a good king would be more probable than relief through the removal of a tyrant. [48] Furthermore, it seems that to proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to be undertaken, not through the private presumption of a few, but rather by public authority.

Summa Theologiae (1271-72) (again, place not specified but seems to refer to STh IIa IIae q.42 a. 1 and 2). (This was the question on sedition discussed in the previous post.) (here.) (English and Latin)

Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1272-73) (presumably on ch13 here) (Only in Latin)

(The dating is relevant because Fay argues that Aquinas seems to move from a greater acceptance of rebellion in his early writings to a 'much bleaker view of rebellion' in his later. I would stress 'seems' here: there appears to be a strong hint that this is a matter of 'seems' but not ''tis'.)

                       
[NB: I haven't worked through the above in detail but they're there for further research by me or anyone else interested.]