Histoire de la culture faussée

Que sais-je? Paul Claval, Histoire de la Géographie, p. 18

Il est difficile de concilier sur certains points l'héritage de la cartographie grecque ... et le mythe biblique de la terre plate, relayé par des Pères de l'Église comme Lactance (v. 250 - v. 325) et saint Augustin (354 - 430).

Trois erreurs:

1. la terre plate n'est pas une mythe biblique, aucun recit (sauf peut-être dans les livres de Hénoch, divers versions du même livre, qui pour ça même n'est pas canonique) de la Bible ne présuppose pour sa cohérence que la terre soit plate;
   
2. Lactance n'est pas un Père de l'Église, mais un auteur ecclésiastique;
   
3. et saint Augustin ne relaye pas que la terre soit plate, il précise très au contraire, dans de Genesi ad litteram, comment le recit de la Genèse quarre avec une terre ronde.

Découvertes Gallimard, Bruno Blasselle, À pleines pages, Histoire du livre, volume I, p. 76 légende à l'image:

... Ci-contre une liste d'auteurs, classés par ordre alphabétique des prénoms, dont la lecture est interdite, sous peine de mort, aux chrétiens (1558). ...

Sous peine de mort? On voit effectivement au-dessus des autres parties de l'image-texte la phrase tronquée italienne: [-]no in pericolo di morte. Ensuite vient une autre phrase tronqué, en latin comme il convient à l'Index, puisque c'est un document en latin: Modus solemnis,et aute~ticus ad inquirendu~, etc. Si la seule lecture d'un livre sur l'Index avait suffit pour la peine de mort, alors pourquoi ne cite-t-il pas ou ne montre-t-il pas un quelconque texte latin qui le dise? Le document en soi est en latin! Mais la wikipédie nous suffit, si on parle allemand, de donner la vraie punition édictée pour lecture de ces livres, excommunication:

Der Index Librorum Prohibitorum („Verzeichnis der verbotenen Bücher“, kurz auch Index Romanus „Römischer Index“ genannt) war ein Verzeichnis der römischen Inquisition der für jeden Katholiken bei Strafe der Exkommunikation verbindlich verbotenen Bücher.

Non seulement la peine de mort pour lecture ou possession d'un livre sur index n'est pas le fait, ce n'est même pas probable.

a) L'église en elle-même ne condamne pas à mort;
b) elle ne voulait pas du tout que les états condamne les orthodoxes (ou photiens) à mort, comme elle voulait que l'état condamne les albigeois à mort, et pourtant un des auteurs cités était justement un biritualiste "catho-doxe" comme on dirait aujourd'hui: Nicolaus Cabasila (l'image donne la lettre N);
c) comment alors pourrait-elle condamner des gens à mort pour lire un auteur qui combinait la tradition grecque, jugée schismatique, avec la tradition latine?

Par contre, elle pouvait très bien juger que son advocature de la liturgie latine devant une accusation grecque alors commune et encore non rare, empérillait les âmes des catholiques, et les faisait glisser vers le schisme, vers la mort spirituelle, et elle pouvait excommunier les catholiques qui lisaient ça sans une autorisation spéciale. Ce qu'elle faisait en plaçant Nicolas Kabasilas (Nicolaus Cabasila en latin) sur l'Index.

Les catholiques de l'époque n'étaient pas des Taliban, et même ceux-là n'ont pas tué les dix humanitaires pour la seule possession des Bibles comme étant pour leur usage personnel, mais sous prétexte qu'ils prêchaient le christianisme. En certains pays catholiques, répandre des livres sur index - ou les pires de ces livres, probablement pas Cabasilas - était effectivement puni par la mort. Dolet, en France, était un imprimeur. Là, pas de doute qu'il intentionnait les livres incriminés pour les autres.

Le professeur de latin de la faculté des lettres à Aix-en-Provence (en 2008, probablement) venait de m'assurer que le système de peciae n'était jamais utilisé dans les scriptoriae monastiques avant les universités du XI^e ou XII^e s. Il a probablement lu les passus aux pages 26, 27 du même livre. Le paragraphe en texte normale donne juste:

Le système dit de la pecia se met en place dans les grandes villes universitaires européennes afin de répondre à cet accroissement de demande.

Mais la légende à l'image donne:

À partir du XII^e siècle, certains livres sont découpés en cahiers ... et répartis entre des copistes à domicile ...

Aucun monastère aurait fait la même chose avant, même pas pour donner vite des livres pour des missionnaires? Ou on en a pas la preuve, puisque dans le monastère les peciae n'avaient pas besoin d'être numérotées? On aurait donc la preuve que chaque livre produit dans les monastères avait été produit par un seul copiste devant toute son exemplar plutôt que devant pecia après pecia? Mais justément, dès qu'on a une copie on a le résultat de transcription, pas l'exemplar d'où elle remonte.

Aurait-ce été difficile sans numéroter les peciae? Mais une Bible ou un Évangéliaire pouvait être reconstitué à partir de la suite connue de ses parties, sans les numéroter. Item pour un autre livre liturgique. J'avais eu l'impression que R. R. Bolgar fait remonter le système des peciae un peu plus loin que les universités du XII^e siècle. Mais, je ne suis pas sur. Le fait que Balleselle l'exclut par implication des phrases "se mettre en place" ou "à partir de" dans ces pages, ne me paraît d'aucune autorité décisive. Surtout pas après sa bavure p. 76 sur la peine pour lecture ou possession personnelle d'un livre sur l'Index.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Les Halles, Paris
11 - VII - 2011

Je connais les hiérarchies ...

Celles des fidèles catholiques est Pape, Cardinal, Patriarche, Archévêque ou Métropolite, Évêque, et pour les simples prêtres il y a les Curés et après les Aumôniers. Les diacres, sousdiacres sont dans le rite latin traditionnel depuis au moins Trente, comme les ordres mineurs étapes vers la prêtrise. Et les simples fidèles sont soumis aux prêtres et aux moines et moniales mais différemment, car les moines et moniales sont supérieurs par perfection, les prêtres le sont dans la direction des fidèles.

La féodalité compte Pape et Empéreur, les Rois, les Archiducs et les Ducs, les Margraves ou Marquis, les Comtes, les Barons, puis les Chevaliers et les Écuyers. Par contre, on pouvait bien être soumis au roi sans être soumis au baron le plus proche, par exemple en vivant dans une ville.

Les étapes vers chevalier étaient page et écuyer. Les étapes dans les jurandes - mais tous dans les villes ne vivaient pas non plus dans les jurandes - étaient apprentis et compagnons, dont certains ne devenaient jamais maîtres. Un compagnon était un employé spécialiste, un maître normalement à la fois encore plus spécialiste et un propriétaire de l'entreprise. Mais il y avait des métiers qui n'entraient pas dans cette hierarchie, même dans les villes.

L'armée a des grades d'officiers différents selon les pays. Il y a les générals, les colonels, les capitaines, les lieutenant partout. Après le lieutenant en dessus des sous-officiers on s'appelle Aspirant en France, Fähnrich en Allemagne, et Fänrik en Suède. Les générals ont ses divers grades en commande des armées, des divisions, des brigades. Les colonels en commande des régiments, dont le dernier grade est Commendant en France, mais en Suède on l'appelle Major, ce qu'ici veut dire autre chose. Capitaines, lietenants, aspirants sont les officiers des compagnies. Les sous-officiers, dont le grade caporal est assez repandu en commande des troupes moindre qu'une compagnie. Et les civilistes n'entrent pas dans cette hiérarchie.

Il y a des hiérarchies qui sont même plus sacrés que ces hiérarchies là (et dont la première est la plus sacrée), comme les neuf chœurs des anges sous Dieu et la Sainte Vierge, Mêre de Dieu, c'est la hiérarchie céleste. Il y a aussi la différence infinie entre Dieu le Père, le Fils et le Saint-Esprit et les créatures de Dieu. Et il y a aussi la hiérarchie dans la famille.

Il y a, malheureusement, des hiérarchies qui n'en sont pas sauf dans une estimation erronnée. Un père n'est dans sa paternité soumis qu'à Dieu, à la limite, en tant que baptisé et père d'un baptisé à l'église. Il n'est soumis à son patron ou son assistant social qu'en ce qui concerne les méthodes qu'il a ou doit chercher pour nourrir sa famille. Il est erronnée à l'extrème de prétendre que le patron puisse être son chef dans sa paternité même et déjà criminel quand les assistants sociaux des DDASS commencent à dire qu'il doive éduquer ses enfants comme ci ou les nourrir comme ça. Ou encore menacer de les enlever s'il fait pas comme ci et encore les enlever réellement s'il fait comme ça.

Les pères sont égaux entre eux, tous supérieurs de leurs propres enfants, tant qu'il s'agit de leur propres, mais pas des enfants des autres, sauf en tant qu'il font une forme volontaire et dissoluble (au moins par déménagement d'un couple des parents du village ou de la chiourme.) Il sont soumis à Dieu et à l'Église.

Les adultes sont aussi en principe égaux quand à l'usage de leur raison et de leurs émotions. Si tel psychiatre recommende de chercher un psychiatre parce qu'on ressent des émotions "à excès" il s'agit d'un surchérie. S'il observe les émotions d'autrui pour le soumettre éventuellement à des soins forcés, ou à une observation prolongée visant à priver la personne "provisoirement" (ou encore pire) de l'usage de ses libertés civiles, il s'agit du crime. Et une fois sous la psychiatrie, on est garantie de ressentir certains émotions "à excès", puisque la situation provoque cet excès. La situation, pas l'état de base de la personne. Entre psychiatre et patients involontaires, il n'y a pas de vraie hiérarchie, il y a souvent le crime de séquestration ou encore d'instigation à l'abus de pouvoir par calomnies.

Un industriel qui rencontre un mendiant lâché de la psychiatrie n'est normalement pas en position de se plaindre de désinvolture. D'une côté il n'était pas de jure soumis aux psychiatres, de l'autre l'industriel n'est pas de jure son supérieur par l'emploi dans l'entreprise. Il n'y a pas d'hiérarchie sauf peut-être celle de bienfaisance. Et celui qui choisit de donner ne se plaint pas de désinvolture dans la demande, sauf si tel il y ait eu. Trouver un mendiant n'est pas dans le sens d'avoir un droit immédiat à hostilités pour "insoumission" ou de "désinvolture". Sinon, ça serait cette hiérarchie mammonique que certains hautains et riches essaient d'établir ou tiennent pour établis entre riche et pauvre par la seule différence de leurs fortunes. En mépris des vraies hiérarchies.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou
Fête de S^te Jeanne d'Arc ou le
30-V-2011

Ancient Democracy under Alexander and Caesar and ... et c

From a comments section:

Speaking of myths:

Gaith spake:

“The Greeks invented a form, albeit limited, of self-government; a Roman invented the steam engine. It would a millennium of Christianity-dominated European history to resurrect those two ideas.”

These two sentences are quite a muddle. Yes, the Greeks did manage to get a form of democracy going for a while (though bad luck if you were an Athenian woman or a slave). But it was not killed off by Christianity – it died long before Jesus was even born and its ashes were stamped on by successive generations of Macedonian, Ptolomaic [sic], Sele[u]cid and Roman despots and monarchs. And we actually didn’t have to wait “a millennium” before similar forms of (limited) democracy arose again – we see it again in Icelandic society and in the city states of Italy and in the Parliaments of England – all of which flourished *during* that supposedly benighted millennium of the Middle Ages.

Now, actually Tim O'Neill is a bit off the hook. When Demosthenes (was it he who wrote the Philippics?) spoke up against Philip of Macedon, indeed he was not heeded. But what happened afterwards was not Athenians loosing all rights to govern Athens. What happened was Athens loosing the right to an independent foreign policy. If you know how Suzdal and Moscow related to the Khan, you get a bit of the picture.

Just as a bit further West, when Pompei came under Rome, likewise it did not loose its interior self-governement. There was, up to eruption of Vesuvius, a Senatus PopulusQue Pompeiorum. And so on for about any Italian city. France was a bit different, seeing that pre-Roman society was tribal and Aristocratic: so French city-states were more like Sparta than Athens and even more like Crete in constitution after Rome took over. And Rome taking over meant basically that a Citizen of X automatically was a Roman Citizen and had a right to vote in Rome in the comitia and so on if he was in Rome. Which, from Caesar on, meant little politically. It did not mean that whatever democracy or Aristocracy there was was lost to Roman bureaucrats. There were even some Kings under Rome. Herod is a known one, the grandfather of Constantine, King Cole of Colchester is at least a previously presumedly known one. But Athens never had Kings under Rome and presumably Colchester and Holy Land never were exactly democracies under Rome.

In France this was further modified by the Roman villa, by retreat from the Cities (due to Imperial taxation or insecurity during wars: I mean in New York State the Twin Towers were more likely to get hit than Potsdam) and by - in some, not all cases - new landlords being Franks. It was also modified by new freemen retaining unfreedoms in relation to old masters. But all this was local modification, not centralised constitution.

When City States began to flourish again, they had, if founded early, Ancient tradition behind their constitutions. Venice obviously was not founded in Antiquity, but Vienna was. It is not an accident and probably not even "interpretatio antiqua" when mayors in city councils call the other ones Consules.

Wheather Steam engine was a blessing is quite another matter. Heron's Ball was not meant for productivity and labour saving devices for grinding wheat actually start during Middle Ages: the Water Mills and later Wind Mills. They owe nothing to Antiquity as far as commonly used devices are concerned. But that you got quite right on your own.

Thank you for citing Thomas Bradwardine again, he is responsible for inventing the idea of a logarithmic relation (an artificial parallelism between geometric and arithmetic progressions) and I think he applied it to exact sciences, though logarithmic tables are later. When it comes to those tables, I think they owe more to Antique than to Modern Mathematic definitions, or can at least be conceived while retaining Ancient definitions (that remained prevalent during Middle Ages) but that is another story. The idea of representative democracy - Parliaments - is from Middle Ages, and maybe helped inspire the idea of "symbolic mathematics" or "synecdoché" that he used there.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre
16-II-2011

Answering TFP citing Allègre

Quote:

Allègre concludes with a meaningful phrase from Marcel Gauchet “Love of nature is a poor disguise for hatred of mankind.” And he asks: “By stifling industry and agriculture, nuclear energy, oil, ethanol, coal, hydroelectric dams, GM crops, growth, etc., how will the world live? Will it go back to tribal life?” (pp. 60 ss.)

From TFP article The Green Cult.

One ecologist is not another. I can answer for myself.

What would I want to stifle, why, and would one need "tribal life" to replace it? By the way, is tribal life the primitive condition of mankind?

As a creationist, I am perfectly convinced Adam was a farmer. Saying "Eve span" is maybe an anachronism, unless she learned it from Ada and Silla before she died, but "Adam ploughed" is literally true.

Would I want to stifle industry?

In a sense, yes: I believe mass production is sometimes mass destruction of smaller producers. I think the Luddites were perfectly reasonable in wanting spinning and weaving to remain small yield per spinner/spinster and weaver, because that leaves more room for people to spin and weave and earn their living from that than if a few companies produce cheaply for the masses. I believe those masses could in part be better employed, richer, if more of them were involved in production, each and every branch.

Would I want to stifle agriculture?

Growth per acre - no, or not much. An ecologist in India has found that a given piece of land ran biodynamically produces 50 - 80% of a modern conventional piece of land.

Acres involved - on the contrary, I am sad when good farming land or vineyards become parking places and industrial zones. If part is lost in growth per acre, that should be compensated by a similar gain on part of acres involved.

Growth per farming personnel - yes, I think a man who can run his farm alone with a tractor could also run it along with two or three family members, or four or five, with an ox instead of a tractor. Same farm, same crop, just more people involved in production.

If I want jeans to be sewn by more people, I also want sowing and gathering done by more people on a farm. Not a tribe, like in Red Indians, necessarily, but a family.

If more people are there on the farms to produce food, more is of course eaten on farm and less is involved in commerce, but if more people are on farms producing food, less people are outside farms needing food to be transported from farms.

Would I want to stifle GM crops?

Yes. If genetic modification takes traditional ways, such as grafting, such as crossbreeding, such as selective breeding, I have no issue with that. Obviously I am a fan of Mendel's crossbreeding of peas.

I do have concern about modern ways of Genetical Modification. Crops is not the worst use of it, and I do not think such a crop needs to be taken out of all production. BUT if part of modification is sterility after yield, i e an obligation to buy next years sowing from Monsanto, yes, then I would very much like to stop that genetic modification. Otherwise Monsanto will be in a position to stifle crops simply by rooting out non-modified crops "for commercial reasons" and then limiting its own yield or getting out of business.

Would I like to stifle modern energies?

Uranium - Yes. I would like to stifle uranium mining, because it is a dangerous use energy, if not for post-Harrisburg reactors correctly used, at least for post-Harrisburg reactors incorrectly used. Having a Moslem population in US and aircraft and the Twin Towers so high their fall made 5000 dead was to put it mildly, less than prudent. Not necessarily because they are Moslems as such, but because Moslems are not at all the majority nor very like the majority of US population and also even more because US policies in Mid-East upset quite a few of them. Mining is also dangerous.

Hydroelectric dams - Yes. They drown good farmland, and agriculture is far more important to man than electricity.

Coal, oil - yes and no. I would like them to be less used, in such uses as can be replaced by not transporting but producing close to consumers. I also would like them to be less used when replaceable by more men and animals on a farm, more men in an urban kind of production. But burning these three is not very different from burning other things, like cut down (branches of) trees (or cut down old ones, that might have killed someone if left to fall by themselves) or ethanol. Obviously I think ethanol has very good uses other than for burning, like drinking.

BUT I find the Carbon Dioxide Scare along with Near Future Scarcity Scare mutually exclusive scares for Combustible Fossile Material. If they are about to run out soon, they are nowhere near ever getting our atmosphere to carbon dioxide levels like Venus atmosphere. And some global warming I think can be taken. Not making it occasions for draught is a matter for dams of sea water, strategically placed for making rains in challanged places.

Solar energy - No.

If there are legitimate uses of electricity that cannot be replaced by involving more people (such as military and medical uses, and internet), I think solar energy may be a good replacement for them.*

Does this, does what I want, amount to a "return to tribal life"?

No. Claude Allègre, of French Academy of Sciences uses that figure of speech with some success, because he is an Evolutionist. What goes on between men like Rahan and the Queen of Opar or Pal-Ul-Don and men like Darwin, Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Neil Armstrong, is just "history", and history, to a lot of science people and technocrats, as indeed to Henry Ford, "is bunk".

I do not agree history is bunk. If Claude Allègre had studied it, he would know that the men who built cathedrals, the men who invented polyphony and exact watches, the men who wrote Æneid and Beowulf or Summa Theologica or Pensées, the latter of whom invented also the Wheelbarrow, never had access to Uranium produced electricity, nor were they transported in cars driven by Otto Daimler's motor for combusting petrol:

Jonathan Swift
Never went up in a lift.
Nor did the author of Robinson Crusoe
Do so.**

Their work was no worse for that. Their civilisation might even have been superior.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Médiathèque Musicale
Les Halles, Paris I
12/VIII/2010
St Claire of Assisi

*So, in a future with less electricity some uses of it would be illegitimate, which ones? The top on my list is electro-choc "therapy" in psychiatry and electronic amplifying and distorsion in music. Also internet might make radio and TV as less interactive and non-textual media superfluous. But using internet or other recordings - even CD's - to learn the tune of a song, seems to me a perfectly valid use. Even after closing down Nuclear plants and so on.

**I cannot remember if this clerihew is by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (inventor of genre) himself or by some Distributist admirer of his, like Gilbert Keith Chesterton or Hilaire Belloc.

Medhåll - noll

Citat:

20-åringarna har inte mognad nog att reflektera över sitt föräldraskap, utan kopierar oftat de egna föräldrarnas mönster och så sker ingen utveckling. Så fortsätter de medeltida värderingarna att råda. Med högskoleutbildning, jordenruntresor och olika jobb får man en större utblick över världen och fattar att det finns många vägar att gå.

Kommentarer:

• 1 ett nyfödt barn behöfver intet en reflektion öfver föräldraskapet från föräldrarnes sida, utan mjölk, gerna från moderns bröst, samt bytta blöjor, kläder och sängkläder:
• 2 författaren till de hemska raderna erkänner att hans mål är att "utveckling" skall ske och "de medeltida värderingarna" bort: detta har barnet intet ett dugg behof af, minst af allt som nyfödd,
• 3 författaren erkänner sig jobba på Rosengård, om det är som lärare eller socialarbetare vet jag intet, men uppenbarligen är det hans jobb att afråda från, evt "i extrema fall" sabotera, ungt moderskap.
• 4 Ute i verlden är ungt moderskap ett ganska naturligt val. Ungt faderskap också, der 14-åringar ha rätt och möjlighet att försörja sig.

Mom & Pop Stores ...

In further response to http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/tradition/page46.phtml

And what happened to the medieval Mom and Pop merchants who could not produce goods in larger quantities or deliver them to distant ports? They could not compete with the politically dominant “cloth barons”, and many found themselves extremely disadvantaged. (footnote already cited in my first response)

That was cloth. What about cobbling? If we take Sweden, I know my grandfather (born 1900), as a young, very poor man was cobbler's apprentice for a short while. He showed me an awl he had used. It is used for shoemaking. I e shoes, unlike the era of ecco (founded in 1963), Scholl (over 100 years), and their the Goodyear Welt shoe toe laster - gramp used a pincer (see picture to left, where right is that machine, both near bottom) - were long a local product. Gentlemen usually had them sewn individually. A Swedish television series shows a shoemaker's nephew in a curious friendship with a girl living in the house of the "häradshöfding" (judge/notarian of a hundred). The point here about this series is that the shoemaker was poor and had many children to feed- living, mainly, from his shoemaking. Shoe repairing, as in modern malls, would not have sufficed. In that village, shoes were obviously produced and sold in a mom & pop shop.

Later my grandfather became a qualified worker in a very big business indeed: he was a distiller of our then state monopoly of Swedish distilling, V&S. But when I was born in Vienna (1968), he found a friend there: a vinyard owner, wine producer and taverner in a combination seen in Austria since Maria Theresia. He and even more his wife were part of my childhood. That is a mom & pop shop (with agrarian roots) for you, and less poor than cobbling!

In Austria as in Germany and France ... God knows how many other countries ... it is still usual to buy your bread fresh from a local bakery. Some of them buy half-baked from a central factory and only add the last five minutes, but this is not universal. Even those who do that for one bread or two (la baguette/la banette, le pain au chocolat/la chocolatine) may be baking other products from scratch.

Arabs (with other Orientals) are a model for mom & pop shops! The family works, pays part of their earnings to a family hoarding, from which family members may then make rent free loans to - for instance - open shops. Usually they are either restoration or oriental merchandise in Europe. In Lund, studying in the early nineties, I was neighbours with a Persian double business - restaurant and food store. Brother and sister were the two owners. And how many cyber cafés are owned by Arabs? The technology as such is very big business, but the local access is very distributist.

Distributist ideals are not dead as realities. As Dr Carol Byrne said herself, mom & pop shops may well co-exist with big business. A capitalist reform going in since Reagan and Thatcher has been reusing distributist themes. Including small companies. G. K. Chesterton himself had no quibbles about the post office being a big business (and indeed, in those days, recently changed by privatisations, a state monopoly). And how many small companies (including some family business) depend on sale by mail order? But she will not concede that the distributist ideal was once the main reality and big business the exception. However, I think she will concede:

• distributism has diminished, lost market shares (up to whole sectors)


• big business has taken over market shares (up to whole sectors)


• this process has been going on in the West since the Crusades introduced capitalism to the West

The conclusion will be that when the process started, mom & pop shops/farms were greater and big business smaller than now.

If in 13th C England cloth trade was exceptional (among some 80 different kinds of guilds) by being big business, and in early 20th C Sweden cobbling was exceptional by being still a mom & pop shop, the conclusion would be that most shops in 13th C were mom & pop shops, as most shops now are owned by bigger businesses. G K Chesterton maintained that this could again be the case.

It seems that Dr Carol Byrne is making a real straw man of Belloc's Mediaevalism - for Chesterton's, it is obviously the case, if it is thought to correspond to "Belloc's":

The facts of history, however, are at variance with this utopian dream. To begin with, it presupposes that the whole of the medieval economy was sustained by subsistence farming and local, small-scale production of goods. According to this view, whatever commerce existed in those days was confined to the small tradesman solely preoccupied with earning a living for himself and his family. So it is simply assumed that there was no commercial activity of any magnitude to justify belief in a class of capitalist merchants in Europe prior to the Reformation.

She is conflating two categories which, though not always neatly separate, were held apart in theory and much of the practise. In Cicero, full honesty applies to autarchy, to own production for own consumption, next step is someone buying what he will consume or selling what he has produced. Buying one thing only to sell it - which is what a merchant does - would be only third level honest, and edging on dishonesty. Though Aquinas contrasts merchants to mainly civil and domestic servants, he makes a minor distinction between selling something as one bought it for a greater price (what is usually called being a merchant) and selling something at a higher price than bought, after improving it (i e being an artisan buying one's raw or proximate materials). Merchants, who sold luxuries from abroad and raw materials not found everywhere (salt, iron, wool - since sheeps don't grass on wheat fields) were obviously Capitalist. But farmers began an existence less feudal and artisans making local products had not ended it and did not end it until the industrial revolution.

Hans Lundahl
14/27 August 2008,
St Cesarius of Arles (NC)
Arles

series: 1 Defending Distributism 2 Mom & Pop Stores ... 3 What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared

Defending Distributism

In response to http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/tradition/page46.phtml by Dr Carol Byrne

The following quote shows Belloc's misplaced criticism of modern bankers who provide financial services to the world's corporations and institutions:

The bankers can decide, of two competitors, which shall survive. As the great majority of enterprises lie in debt to the banks-any one of two competing industries can be killed by the bankers saying: "I will no longer lend you this money"....This power makes the banks the masters of the greater part of modern industry. (Hilaire Belloc, Economics for Helen, p. 96)

But if banks did not exercise such discrimination, they would be guilty of irresponsibility to their customers; credit lines available to the bank would be cancelled and its share price would plunge, to the detriment of many. It was Belloc's view, expressed in The Servile State, that the mass of small owners would have provided the accumulation of wealth for material prosperity "without the leave of the bankers."

My dear Carol: such powers and responsibilities existed in Mediaeval/Renaissance Venice too. As you say, and as is also witnessed by The Merchant of Venice. Difference: the Jew who exercised them was seen as a villain. At least by the Englishmen who watched Shakespear. The ideal back then, as the ideal for distribustists now, is an artsman or merchant not endebted and therefore not subjected to that kind of power used for the ends of such responsibility. You have made pretty heavy weather out of the fact that large scale banking existed in "the Middle Ages" (around 14-15th C) whereas Distributists hanker back to "the Middle Ages" (around 11-12th C). But the salient fact now as compared to those times is not the presence of banking, but the near absence of business (farming or otherwise) not subjected to its powers by endebtment. Also, back then greed and avarice was seen as guilty, now it is irresponsibility (a wide spectrum, most of which includes either non-greed or non-avarice) which is seen so.

We can also cite the Knights Templar Bankers who established financial networks across the whole of Christendom, making them the world's first multinational corporation! They invested their immense wealth not only in land (e.g. they bought and owned the whole island of Cyprus), farms and industrial pursuits (e.g. financing the building of Gothic cathedrals), the shipping industry (they owned their own fleets) but also in the Pilgrimage industry which brought huge revenues to the Church and created jobs for workers like innkeepers and ferrymen. The Knights also arranged safe transfer of funds for international and local trade, and loaned money to kings, emperors and princes, bishops and entrepreneurs alike. In fact, Templar wealth was so great that it helped shift the balance of power in medieval Europe from the feudal lords to the "merchant class".

Remember what Pope and French King did to them? Chesterton or Belloc (I forget which) admitted that the process with torture was a judicial murder. But their claim was that these powers were fighting for their life against - Capitalism. The kind of economy, not in which private property or even entrepreneurs exist, but in which they control ultimately public power.

One only has to think of the merchant-banking organizations bearing the name of single families – Medici, Lombard, Frescobaldi, Bardi, Peruzzi for example – that were in control of commercial companies and enjoyed great political power and wealth. (See Edwin S. Hunt, The Medieval Super-Companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company of Florence, Cambridge University Press, 2002)

I have not read that particular reference, but I seem to recall that was something like 15th C (North of Alps; maybe earlier south of them). The Fuggers started their great carreer back then. The Medici bank was founded after 1400 by Averardo. And so on, and so forth. The Peruzzis were, indeed, earlier off, starting their Capitalist company in 1300. They are also less known, therefore probably smaller than the Medicis. "Throughout the Middle Ages" means that your "Middle Ages" start around 1300. Others would say that is when the Renaissance starts - on the south side of the Alps, add a hundred years before it crosses that border.

Distributists criticize the capitalist system for being based on credit (banking, mortgages, loans, credit cards etc) without realizing that these aspects of modern banking are the development of traditional methods dating from medieval times.

A - A Distributist may answer that even in Mediaeval times these things were not ideal.

B - He may especially answer that in Mediaeval times these things were not even regarded as ideal or as a normal basis for business.
C - Which means that he may very well be arguing against the development of them.

It is also of interest to note that the usury laws did not forbid lending capital for business purposes and receiving profits on the investments. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, London, 1923, p. 70: "The usury code never forbade any transaction analogous to what we now call investing money in business. So long as the person advancing the money was prepared to share in the risks of the enterprise on which it was employed, he was perfectly entitled to share in any of the profits in which the enterprise might result.")

It would seem that that was a kind of shareholding rather than a kind of interest taking. And as for shareholding, the novelty is "limited liability" share holding. Maybe what are now called directed loans were back then precursors of these limited liability companies.

It is one of those ironies of history that Capitalism has been instrumental in procuring many of the things Distributism originally hoped to foster but failed to do so: wider ownership of private property, greater economic participation, co-operative enterprise, etc.

Has that maybe happened after distributism?

And what happened to the medieval Mom and Pop merchants who could not produce goods in larger quantities or deliver them to distant ports? They could not compete with the politically dominant "cloth barons", and many found themselves extremely disadvantaged. (For further details see E M Carus-Wilson, who states in Medieval Merchant Ventures: Collected Studies: "This industry, moreover, was already "capitalist", the weavers and fullers being in effect employees of entrepreneurs, amongst whom the dyers were prominent." Professor Carus-Wilson elaborates on this situation in 'The English Cloth Industry in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries', Economic History Review, 1944. As workers in the textile industry, the weavers and fullers lost their independence when the entrepreneurial dyers, using their political influence as members of the Merchants Guild, abrogated their monopoly rights which they had held by royal charter. This meant that they were subordinated to the authority of the dyers who set earnings and established quality control standards. In London and Oxford, for example, the dyers also exercised pre-emptive rights over their weavers' and fullers' production by restricting their business dealings, and preventing them from taking their cloth (the products of their own labour) to the fairs and regional markets.)

The example tells that this is once again about the English Mediaeval Cloth market, which admittedly led to the growth of Capitalism, as known today.



Late phenomena for Middle Ages, early ones for Capitalism/Renaissance - used to smudge a main picture, in which most artisans, though not most Merchants, were independent of banking.

If Distributism can be seen as ahistorical, it is in this: in towns' trades they go for 11th-12th C, before banking arose in the West. In agriculture they go for the 13th-14th C, when slavery was in practise abolished, when feudalism was decaying and peasantry was there. But maybe there was a golden Moment corresponding to the coincidence of both these stories.

For example, with the discovery of new agricultural technologies, food production has increased much more rapidly than population, enabling millions to stay alive who would otherwise have died of starvation.

Ah, well? Now that is a moot point. How much of the agricultural produce by acre is due to new technologies? How much of the agricultural produce per farmer/farm worker is due to them? A tractor is producing food - for unemployed people who might, some of them, have produced the same food by going behind an ox-drawn plough, having employment as well as food.

Similarly with improvements in technology – the Wright brothers' project would not have taken off the ground without Boeing, Lockheed and other airline companies to develop it for public transport;

Indeed. With consequences like air borne ww epidemics and terrorism. Old technology was not behind september 11, old social morality not behind the indignation for it. And the Airport tyranny (and "plans vigipirates" - ma présence en France, vous savez). And responding to needs of people who live not where their food is produced, because it is produced in new ways that need less men.

In short, it is only the big firms that can turn innovations into products which ordinary consumers (not just the wealthy) can afford to buy or use, surely a benefit to mankind.

You presume that the ordinary consumer must be the one either disemployed or employed by large companies, in whose profits their wage is a small share. If you say that modern Bauhaus architecture ("houses without eyebrows") is the only one affordable for industrial workers and social cases to live in, I may moderately and hesitatingly agree. If you add that a working distributist system is one in which most people have only that class of relative prosperity, I disagree. Also, artisanal products concentrate more than usual on the expensive since the market for the cheap is taken over by ... big business run industries using new technologies. That - along with rising land prices, adapted to an industrial rather than modestly artisanal exploitation - falsifies the prices of artisanal production. At least as far as relative social price is concerned.

A small Wealth Pie brings fewer goods and services, long queues in the shops, stagnation in development, with resultant deprivation of essential commodities (food, hygiene, health care etc.) – not a good idea if you want a long and healthy life above the barest minimum of subsistence.

I take the long queues first, with relief. If fewer live in towns and more on the country - replacing tractors - there are fewer to queue in the shops. Because more eat from what they pick or harvest in fields or gardens. This is where distributism differs most from Communism of the East bloc variety.

Less health care. True. Belloc dreaded a society in which preserving the sick takes priority over giving birth to healthy. Not because he wanted to kill the sick - he was a Christian, and Pol Pot would have nauseated him - but because he foresaw a society in which the balance of generations and otherwise of the working and the depending would verge to a great discomfort. I think this is happening. Death is not a friend, but an enemy. But the fight against death goes by babies more than by preserving invalids. Nowadays doctors are getting closer to dictators, and young mothers ask themselves - or are brutally asked by others, including close relatives - if giving birth is really "responsible". In Germany the old are already so many that old voters outnumber voters raising families. Double working parents with few children; young workers too ill at ease to make fertile couples; all that to maintain a system of old age insurance based on a very big business: the State. It is now supplemented by another big business: insurance companies. But the problem is not who keeps the nominal money between when you earn it and when you get old or sick enough to spend it, but how many work when how many spend. The old age insurance based on bigger things than your own children and your own neighbours ... I do not think it will survive for masses, even if it will for misers.

A little question of definition:

Another advantage of big business is that ownership of such enterprises (and profits from them) is widely dispersed among many shareholders, often including some large institutional investors (insurance companies, pension funds, universities, religious bodies, charitable foundations, and the like.) Their benefits accrue to individuals and to society as a whole. Therefore terms like 'oligarchy' and 'robber barons' are misplaced as a description of the few who become mega-rich in the process. Their wealth is always a source of benefit to communities whether in the form of taxation, job creation, investment, philanthropy or their personal expenditure.

I used the same argument to defend monarchy. If Versailles danced, while peasants starved, Versailles at least employed servants who did not starve. The French King enjoyed not all the food there was in France leaving all other eaters to starve to death. But that does not change the fact that he was King and had powers which neither commons or Aristocrats had. And Capitalism does not means that a small class eats all the ice cream, far from it - but it means that a small class decide who produces most of the ice cream eaten. Because they have shares in Ben & Jerry's or the different avatars of Unilever, but not in the next "Italian" who uses a recipy for more than his own family's private consumption. Unless there is a tourist resort, where people ask for home made ice cream.

Concretely it is in Europe impossible to get Root Beer because A&W has sold its international rights to Coca Cola Company, unless I misremember, who are producing A&W for Asia, but not for Europe.

Difference between a monarchy like Louis XVI and an oligarchy like that of ... well, I had a family connection working for the one which came unsought to my mind, so I pass ... and other big pharmaceutic companies? The job of the monarch is to maintain justice. The job of pharmaceutic companies is not to maintain health, but a consumption of "health related" products. Some of them produce condoms and abortion pills.

Hans Lundahl
9/22 August 2008
Arles

Written the day before in the space of SFR Jeunes Talents Photo Exposition (Thanx for their unwilling participation).

series: 1 Defending Distributism 2 Mom & Pop Stores ... 3 What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared

C. S. Lewis and rock 'n' roll

Clive Staples Lewis est mort le jour de Ste Cécile (cal. grég.) de 1963, même jour que le président JFK assassiné. A l'époque le rock était à peu près Bill Haley et Elvis Presley. Pas vraiment le style de l'auteur du Monde de Narnia, surnommé Jack par ses amis.

Un peu plus tard, le rock s'est développé. Doit-il quelque chose à Jack?

Je pense que oui.

D'abord, la versification du rock sofistiqué - poësie vraiment rhytmée (pour "ménestrels", pas pour "déclamateurs" selon une dichotomie que fait Jack entre deux façons de prononcer les vers) et beaucoup de rimes internes. Comme celle de Jack.

Puis, le désir de décomplexer. Jack pensait que la pensée moderne, athée ou théologique libéral, était complexée et manichéenne. En la trilogie de Pérélandra il fait beaucoup pour présenter un christianisme et surnaturalisme décomplexée mais quand même "rigide" dans les principes morales et émotionnels.

Peut-être aussi le goût de la danse. C. S. Lewis aimait beaucoup la danse, dans le monde de Narnia il donne exemples des dances (des faunes et satyrs avec les nymphes, entre autres) plus mouvementées et moins sensuelles que les danses à la mode bourgeoise.

Je crois que Lord of the Dance serait très à son goût (pourvu qu'il n'aurait pas du la regretter), mais je crois qu'il se reconnaîtrait en, par exemple, Jethro Tull ou - quand il s'agit de Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin. D'ailleurs, cette chanson est plus style moyen âge (chose qu'aimerait Jack) que rock ou blues. Est-ce que Led Zeppelin aurait été aussi connus sans cette pastiche ou revival de la musique médiévale? Je ne crois pas.

Biensur, CSL faisait partie d'un contre-courant intellectuel contre la modernité, et il y a d'autres qui ont fait autant, avec un goût pareil de versification rhytmée. Je pense à son ami plus connu J. R. R. Tolkien.

Hans Lundahl
Avignon,
24 mai/6 juin,
St Syméon le Stylite
et St Vincent de Lérins
A. Gr. 2008

Temps des pervers ... ce n'était pas le moyen âge

Pour rappeler: Caligula et Néron étaient avant St Constantin le Grand. Avant le moyen âge, alors. Marquis de Sade, c'était les Lumières - après ce qu'on appelle communément le moyen âge. Dutroux, Fourniret, le meurtrier de la suédoise Susanna, le meurtrier de l'enfant de cinq, de Madison donc, Priklopil et l'autre séquestrateur, c'est aujourd'hui. Il faut admettre, Gilles de Rais et les Templiers avec leur initiation blasphème (admis même dehors de la France, même sans tortures) c'était le moyen âge - mais les Templiers n'ont pas admis sodomie sauf sous torture, et ils se sont repentis de leur admission après les tortures. Le moyen âge était comparativement sain en matière morale.

Julien Carillo se trouve devant le tribunal en "camisole chimique". Le psychiatre assure que ça lui n'enlève en rien ses capacités intellectuelles. Comme si elles étaient tout ce qui comptait dans un procès! Un peu plus tard le journaliste note avec - je le soupçonne - un frisson d'horreur et de dégout que l'accusé ne montre pas d'émotion. Comment montrer d'émotion, même humaine, même normale quand on se trouve "en camisole chimique" ce qu'enlève notamment les émotions? Un homme ou une femme en camisole chimique excite normalement l'une ou l'autre des deux émotions de dégout et de pitié - ou les deux à la fois. Il se trouve déhumanisé. Le journaliste ne dit pas - a-t-il même demandé? - depuis combien de temps Julien Carillo se trouve en camisole chimique. Je vous assure que l'expérience est suffisamment dégoutant pour que le concerné soit capable de s'adonner aux émotions normales. Vous pouvez demander à un bourré qui vomit d'être désolé pour avoir bu, mais comment faites vous pour le reprocher et lui demander les regrèts, si c'est vous qui provoquez les vomissements?

On se demande si Julien Carillo avait été le victime de la psychiatrie avant de commettre son crime. Pour Fourniret c'est un fait connu.

Il y a des voix qui denoncent les individus comme source des perversités. Soit, mais la société humaine est faite précisement d'individus qui sont autant des sources potentielles de perversité. Les juges, les journalistes, les psychiatres n'en font pas exception. Le psychiatre qui se vante d'avoir laissé à un homme accusé ses capacités intellectuelles tout en mettant les capacités émotionnelles en "camisole chimique" semble pas en faire exception.

Aux moyen âge il y avait deux autres options pour les violateurs que de rester en vie et captivité sous surveillance étroite: le pardon et la peine capitale. En fait les peines pour viol étaient très variables, probablement en fonction de la possibilité ou pas que dans la société se trouve des femmes moches et prudes pour qui un viol était un plaisir sans culpabilité. L'église occidentale prévoyait l'excommunication, la déchéance à vie de tout honneur, le devoir de payer un dot convenable, le devoir de marier la victime si elle pardonnait et voulait avoir le perpétreur. Le violateur avait en quelques endroits l'espoir d'un petit bonheur familial. Il avait dans quelques endroits aussi la peur de la peine capitale. Il n'avait pas l'assurance d'une camisole chimique pour très longtemps ou à vie, et des histoires comme on vient de voire ... ben, lisez les chroniques, les cruautés étaient un peu plus purs que ça. Parce qu'on se rappelait que les médecins sont des hommes comme les autres, et qu'ils ne sont pas les experts en morale et que les princes ou justiciers peuvent être criminels. Et qu'il y a un Dieu au dessus de la société comme des individus, un Dieu que s'est fait homme, qui a souffert la croix sous Ponce Pilate, comme un criminel, et qu'un criminel était un des peu d'en admettre l'innocence; et qu'il est ressuscité le troisième jour selon les écritures.

Hans Lundahl

Mardi Radieux

16/29 avril 2008

Aix en Provence

PS: pour éviter des malentendus, la psychiatrie héberge beaucoup d'avantage des ados extrèmes ou des ados permanents ou des traumatisés que des criminels extrèmes. Ni les uns, ni les autres devraient y être.

série: 1 Si vous avez des problèmes avec la psychiatrie ... 2 Interêts financiers dans les faux diagnoses 3 Temps des pervers ... ce n'était pas le moyen âge 4 Procruste et le vieux, son fils et leur âne ...

REFLEKTION OM SKOLPLIGT

OM SKOLPLIGT SOM NÖDLÖSNING FRAMBRINGAD AF INDUSTRIALISMENS AVIGSIDOR - OCH DESS USELHET

Reflexion: 1 Skolpligt är en frukt af industrialismen. Denna inför dels arbetsförhållanden, der alla arbetsuppgifter äro lika tunga, för tunga för barn, dels der desålunda icke sysselsatta barnen skulle ha tråkigt, vara i vägen och riskera skada sig. Detta innebär att många barn icke kunna vara hos sina föräldrar då dessa arbeta (i början af industrialismen voro mäns löner så låga att hemmafruar blefvo ekonomiskt ohållbara för många familler), att de alltså måste vara antingen ensamma eller med andra barn och detta sednare antingen utan vuxna eller med främmande vuxna. Att de välja ensamhet är sällsynt, att de tillses af en främmande vuxen med föräldrarnes förtroende är kanske bättre än att de leka tillsammans helt utan tillsyn och utan tillfälle att mottaga traditioner från de vuxna.

2 Men hvilka traditioner skola de mottaga? Arbetets traditioner i jordbruk och handtverk ha ju med industrialismen försvunnit ur föräldrarnes lif, och hvilken nytta kunna barnen hoppas ha af att lära dem, då de troligen ärfva föräldrarnes ställning, alltså heller icke bli jordbrukare eller handtverkare? Och militära traditioner önska väl knappast fabrikanterna tillåta arbetarebarn att tillägna sig - skolpligten har nemligen införts der fabrikanterna ha magten att förbjuda detta. Hvad för traditioner funnos då qvar att meddela barnen? Jo, intellektuel. Genom att före skolpligtens införande taga bort arbetets traditioner och genom att samtidigt vilja förebygga att de efter dess införande skulle konfronteras med militärt bevandrade arbetarebarn, ha fabrikanterna kommit att välja att gifva arbetarebarn del af intellektuel tradition. Alltså måste arbetarebarn läsa Aristoteles!

3 Men det vilja icke fabrikanterna: de ha icke läst Aristoteles, ty om de gjort det skulle de vetat att girighet är en onaturlig synd som i onödan förökade antalet saker i förhållande till menniskans behof, och om de ändå valt girigheten, skulle de i hvart fall icke önska att arbetarebarnen finge tillfälle att så enkelt och sjelfklart fördöma fabrikanterna - och då de icke läst och lärt af Aristoteles, antingen veta de hvem Stagyriten är, och vilja ej unna arbetarebarn intellektuel öfverlägsenhet öfver sig sjelfva, ellerveta de det icke och kunna dermed heller icke sätta Platons både skarpaste och sjelfständigaste lärjunge på arbetarebarns skolschema. Således kommo fabrikanterna, med skolpligtens införande, att stympa den intellektuella traditionen för sina ologiska, motsägande syften.

4 Nu invänder någon, att de i hvart fall kunde få lära sig religionen, denna är ju en fullödig intellektuel tradition! Ack, det beror på hvilken religion! Visst få skolbarn sig till lifs Lifvets Ord, icke blott för sjelens eviga frelsning utan äfven förförnuftets perfektaste verksamhet i tiden, om de nemligen gå i skolan hos benediktiner, franciskaner, dominikaner eller jesuiter (sådana dessa ordnar varit århundraden igenom), men i fabrikanternas och skolpligtens hemland (näst efter norra grannlandet) funnos icke dessa ordnar: katholska prester hade i det demokratiska England mycket strengt (än strängare i norra grannlandet) förbjudits att frelsa sjelar, medan samma myndigheter hade tillåtit eller rentaf uppmuntrat fabrikanter att ruinera handtverkare.

5 Men tänk om skolpligten nu hade kommit från de katholska länderna och icke från England (och dess norra granland)? Skolpligt kan icke vara en katholsk uppfinning, ty katholiker veta att barnens fostran ärföräldrarnes ansvar och hindra ej - om de icke drifvas dertill af konkurrens eller intriger från England (och Skottland) - föräldrarne att taga detta ansvar, som Englands (och Skottlands) fabrikanter, enligt det i början sagda, göra.

6 Således stå mot hvarandra två skolformer: i den äldre, katholska skolan fingo frivilliga elever lära både den sanna religionen, med en kathekes de ej behöfva skämmas för, och, om de fortsätta tillräckligt länge, Aristoteles; i fabriaknternas skola fingo tvångskommenderade elever lära litet och förfalskadt af religion, icke dugligt att frelsa sjelen med, och ingen filosofi.

7 Fabrikanterna hade alltså förderfvat skolan som de tvingade barnen till och de förderfvade den än mer genom detta tvång. Barn, som icke blott möjligen voro olämpliga mottagare af intellektuel tradition utan framför allt helt säkert ovilliga sådana, kunde helt naturligt föga lockas ändra uppfattning af den stympade kunskap som bjöds: och derföre antingen så måste de hållas i schack, så att de ej störde lektionerna, hvilket ej skedde utan våld; eller så måste till deras ointresse anpassas undervisningen hvilken derigenom ytterligare stympas, såsom sker nu - och om detta icke räcker plockas störiga elever numera ut till att observeras och behandlas, läs: missförstås och misshandlas, af barn- och ungdomspsykiatriker!

8 Sammanfattningsvis kan sägas: vi ha nu sett att ochhvarföre skolpligten är en frukt af fabrikanternas ambitioner och huru den är: den är en bitter frukt och industrialismen som burit den är ett bittert träd. Kan något rent praktiskt göras åt detta elände?

I DER NÖDEN ICKE FÖRELIGGER...

I:1 För det första är skolpligten en nödlösning, och der nöden upphör, om än ersatt af en annan slags nöd, upphör den moraliska giltigheten af nödfallsåtgerden. Der således faderns lön räcker och modern är hemma och kan passa barnen, råder icke den nöd som framtvingat skolpligten och är denna således onödig.

I:2 Der vidare äldre slägtingar kunna passa de minderåriga, råder icke denna nöd som framtvingat skolpligten och är denna således onödig.

I:3 Der vidare vissa barn föredraga att ensamma vandra i skogen, läsa hemma eller på bibliothek, promenera fridsamt bland stadens vackra monument, begifva sig på pilgrimsfärd eller äfventyr eller tiggarevadring med eller utan föräldrarnes tillåtelse, der råder icke den nöd som framtvingat skolpligt och der borde icke heller skolpligt råda. Detsamma kan sägas om två eller tre barn i sällskap göra så.

I:4 Äro barnen fyra eller fler i en syskonskara brukar något barn vara tolf eller äldre och kunnataga auktoritet öfver de andra: och icke heller der råder den nös om framtvingat skolpligt, icke heller der borde skolpligt råda.

I:5 Är förälder hemma genom ledighet, arbetslöshet, pension eller sjukledighet, också falsk sådan på grund af bakfylla, äro barnen icke utan tillsyn och kunna de dessutom glädja, hedra och hjelpa sina föräldrar genom att stanna hemma från skolan, hvarigenom icke blott ej den nöd råder, som motiverat skolpligten, utan denna dessutom blir till förtryck mot hållandet af IV Budet, hvarföre i detta fall skolpligt absolut icke har rätt att råda!

I:6 Men studerar förälder på universitet och önskar taga med sitt barn för att detta skall få mera avancerad undervisning än i pligtskolan, vare sig detta är för enstaka dagar, eller för hela terminer eller för en hel afslutad utbildning, då råder icke blott ej den nöd hvarigenom skolpligt motiveras, utan det fins dessutom chans att öfvetreffa pligtskolans andra företräde, kunskapen, och skolpligt blefve i den situationen en isnkränkning af den intellektuella kunskapen, hvarföre i sådana fall skolpligt absolut ej bör råda.

I:7 Och har förälder möjlighet att medtaga barn till annan arbetsplats, äfven då upphäfs den nöd som varit vållande till skolpligt och äfven då ges chans till en bättre kunskap utan skolpligt, alltså upphäfs äfven då skolpligten de jure.

II DER NÖDLÖSNING VÅLLAR VÄRRE NÖD ÄN DEN AFHJELPER

II: För det andra upprepar jag att skolpligten är en nödfallsåtgerd, och der sjelfva nödfallsåtgerden ersätter den ursprungliga nöden med en likvärdig eller värre nöd, blifver nödfallsåtgerden omoralisk.

II:1 Den ursprungliga nöden bestod ju till en del i nöden att barn (sednare äfven arbetslös ungdom, men det är en annan sak) skulle drälla omkring i stora flockar utan vuxen herde och då vore det kanske bättre att de tillsågos af en främling för hvilken föräldrarne hyste förtroende. Men skolpligt kan vålla värre nöd än den ursprungliga helt enkelt genom attsätta många barn i händerna på vuxna främlingar för hvilka föräldrarne icke ha förtroende: detta är värre än om de drällde omkring utan tillsyn, ty det för dem längre bort från den tillsyn de borde ha: föräldrarnes. Derföre blir i sådant fall af skolpligt nöden värre af nödlösningen och dermed blir skolpligten omoralisk och dermed också juridiskt ogiltig.

II:2 Men föräldrarne äro enligt IV Budet representanter för Gud, det är Gud som först och främst äger tillsynen öfver barnen och Gud har blifvit menniska och denna gudamenniska, Jesus Kristus Vår Herre har uppenbarat för Apostlarne de gudomliga intressena och krafven angående barnen: LÅTEN BARNEN KOMMA TILL MIG OCH FÖRMENEN DEM ICKE; TY SÅDANA HÖRER GUDS RIKE TILL. SANNERLIGEN SÄGER JAG EDER: HWILKEN SOM ICKE MOTTAGER GUDS RIKE SÅSOM ETT BARN, HAN KOMMER ICKE IN. Och: OCH HWILKEN SOM FÖRFÖR EN AF DESSA SMÅ, FÖR HONOM VORE DET BÄTTRE, ATT EN QWARNSTEN LÄGGES OM HANS HALS OCH HAN KASTAS I HAFWET. Barnet tror på auktoritet och är generöst. Den som missbrukar denna auktoritetstro för att motverka tron på de auktoriteter - famillens och Kyrkans - som företräda och föra till Gud, eller frambringa tro på falska auktoriteter - falska vetenskapares, tyranniska myndigheters, förvridna ideella föreningars - som föra bort från Gud, eller för att afhålla från kristen dygd, eller för att förleda till synd eller till accepterande af synd, eller som gör något annat liknande, förgriper sig på Guds rättigheter öfver barnet. Der lärarne äro sådana, medför skolpligten definitivt en större nöd än den eventuelt afhjelper, och der är skolan ingen pligt.

II:3 I ett tredje fall föreligger också större nöd än skolpligten afser afhjelpa: om skolpligtig elev stör lektioner eller rent af mobbar lärare, likaså om han mobbar sina kamrater. Den menisnglöshet han då utsätter undervisningen för, den vantrifsel, djupa obehag eller renta förtviflan han utsätter sina medmenniskor för, den provokation, som i USA blifvit anledning - icke rättfärdig eller proportionnel anledning, men dock anledning - till massakrer på oskyldiga, den frestelse till feghet och medskuld sådana elever ge sina kamrater eller rent af lärare, allt detta är värre nöd för skolans öfriga deltagare, än den nöd dessa vanartiga eventuelt skulle lida om skolpligten icke gällde dem. Alltså äro de icke skolpligtiga utan böra afstängas från hvarje skola, der de uppföra sig så illa, först lektion för lektion, sedan dag för dag, sedan vecka för vecka eller två veckor i taget, och om det icke hjelper, permanent. Sedan få de söka sig till annan skola, om de vilja, från hvilken de likledes kunna fstängas om de icke bättra sig. Har någon afstängts från tre skolor, må ingen skola tvingas släppa in honom, ej heller må serskilda skolor öppnas för sådana elever, då sådana disciplinskolr skulle bli omenskliga. En sådan elev har, skamligen men oåterkalleligen, graduerat till lifvets skola. Om han icke kan lefva sjelfständigt och hederligt, bör han söka lefva hederligt i beroende af en tjenst, der han omges af tillräckligt många vuxna för att hålla honom i schack större delen af tiden, så att han så småningom kan vexa in i en vuxen gemenskap, både för lif och för arbete.

II:4 Äfven i ett fjerde fall är den nöd skolpligten vållar större än den, som den afhjelper: om ett barn plågas af sina kamrater genom mobbning eller rent af misshandel, om ett barn skanar sina kamraters tillgifvenhet och plågas af att skiljas från dem hvars tillgifvehet han har eller om ett barn icke begriper sig på skolemnena och plågas af att fråntas de sysslor han begroiper sig på - huru värdelösda de än må vara i pedagogers och likasinnades ögon - i alla dessa fall lider sådan skolpligtig större nöd än skolpligten afser att afhjelpa, i alla dessa fall är skolpligten skadlig, omoralisk och dermed juridiskt värdelös ur hvarje rättferdigt samhälles, regims, domarecorps', ordningsmagts och allmänhets synpunkt. Om skolemnena vållat honom svårighet, må skolan vädja till arbetsplatser att mottaga honom som en lärling, om gymnastiken vållar honom svårigheter, må han skickas på stärkande promenader, om han alltid bränner vid maten i skolköket, må han sättas att hugga ved till spisarne! Om religion, stånd och klass, intressen och seder skilja honom från kamraterna, må man tillse att han får studera med kamrater hvars religion, stånd och klass, intressen och seder öfverensstämma med hans egna! Eller må den mindre representerade religionen, ståndet, klassen, intressena och sederna energiskt och effektivt tagas i försvar af lärarne, såvida icke sådant försvar skulle vara skandalöst, d v s förföra till synd eller rent af affall från tron, eller till respekt för framgångsrik ohederlighet! Eller om dessa elever ej ha lust till nya försök med skolgång, låt dem slippa: jag höll på att säga "för Kristi barmhertighets skull" men jag kan lika gerna säga "af fruktan för Hans rättfärdiga vrede" - ty att plåga dessa barn med skolpligt är icke blott en synd mot kärleken utan en synd mot IV Budet!

II:4b Ett undantag vore om föräldern hade en ärbar ställning som sonen hade laglig pligt att ärfva och behöfde viss undervisning för att duga till, men äfven i detta fall vore man tvungen att ge upp försöken till denna undervisning, när och om det väl stode klart attman kämpade mot sjelfva naturen. Dessutom: i fall sonen hade utsigt att ärfva enärbar ställning af sin fader, torde denne ha råd till privatundervisning åt sin son och tillsynen torde definitivt icke vara något problem: alltså skulle icke heller då skolpligten gälla.

II: (allm) Observera att i de fall, då skolpligten medför värre nöd än den afhjelper, den icke ens kan motiveras med hänvisning till att den nöd skolpligt afhjelper, vare sig brist på tillsyn eller kunskap, icke afhjelpts på annat sätt. Det vore att - för ursäktandet af ett tyranniskt system - kalla den värre nöden för den mindre, den lindrigare nöden för den värre. Men dessutom låter sig den nöd skolpligten afser att afhjelpa ofta afhjelpa eller lindra på andra sätt, såsom framgår af de förut nämnda fall, då skolpligt icke obligerar just på grund af andra lösningar.

III NÖDFALLET ÄNDRAR EJ HVAD EN SKOLA BÖR VARA

III: För det tredje, äfven om skolpligten är en nödfallsåtgerd, bör skolan icke reduceras till att motsvara denna nöds kraf utan behålla sin ursprungliga qvalitet, den som den hade före pligtskolornas och skolreformeranas tid: den bör meddela kunskap: i den sanna religionen, den katholska, hvarhelst lärarne ha och eleverna vilja mottaga denna kunskap, i de fria konsterna grammatik, rhetorik, logik, arithmetik, musik, geometri och planär astronomi, i dessa konsters annex, såsom historia med öfrig allmänbildning, såsom litteratur, såsom poetik, poesie, filosofi, musikalisk komposition, perspektivteckning, planritning, menniskokroppens (och de vanligaste och ädlaste djurens) proportionslära; må omvexling beredas genom olika öfningsemnen, ej blott gymnastik och slöjd utan först och fremst sång, serskildt körsång, äfven musikinstrument, kunskap om militära ceremonier, såsom honneur och rätt bruk för fanan, för dess vördnadsfulla och korrekta handhafvande.

IV NÖDFALLET BEHÖFVER EJ VARA PERMANENT

IV: För det fjerde: när allt detta gjorts, visar det sig troligast att pligtskolan icke behöfs, utan att skolpligten utan någon saknad kan förpassas från den civiliserade verlden. En god skola lockar dem, som behöfva den - och de andre borde hellre utbildas till sina framtida yrken. Hos hvem, i vissa fall till och med i hvilket yrke, det torde vara fadernssak att afgöra. Och flickor borde utbildas hemma för att som fruar lefva hemma. Af hemmavarande mödrar.

V HVAD SOM BEHÖFS

V: Men, för det femte: för att uppnå alt detta fordras ihärdig kamp på många fronter af föräldrar, af barn i skolåldern (7.-12., hos män ev 14. födelsedagen), ungdom qvarhållen i skolor efter skolåldern och dem som visa dem trohet, mot dem som önska bibehålla pligtskolan:

V:1 Mot arbetsgifvare, som för egentligen oqvalificerade yrken fordra icke blott grundskoleutbildning - redan det en provokation - utan gymnasieutbildning, folkhögskoleutbildning, högskoleutbildning eller universitetsutbildning.

V:2 Mot fackföreningar som, lemnande sin egentliga uppgift att tillvarataga arbetarnes legitima intressen, kräfva viss (egentligen irrelevant) utbildning för att låta arbetsgifvare anställa.

V:3 Mot den offentliga sektorn.(se fotnot) Ty när män inom den privata sektorn betala skatt, hvad betala de då till?

• Jo: A) Att deras fruar icke skola ha råd att stanna hemma och B) att de skola aflönas för att sjelfva hålla sig borta från sina hem och hålla andra borta från deras, att de som anställlda inom den offentliga sektorn skola taga hand om ett klientel inomoffentliga sektorn - i stället för att taga hand om sina egna barn och låta andra taga hand om sina.
  
• Eller de betala för att A) deras fruar icke skola gifva af deras pengar hemma till tiggaren och luffaren som knackar på deras egna dörr, och B) de skola aflönas för att gifva samma pengar ur kommunens kassa efter kommunens regler, till dem som hänvisats till socialförvaltningen.
• Eller de betala till att A) deras fruar icke skola ha råd och tid att lära känna och hjelpa en egen stor barnaskara, B) de skola lära sig förstå sig på en vexande hop främlingar och hjelpa dem, men icke efter hjertats röst och sympati, utan efter en pseudo-vetsnkap, som kallas modern, experimentel eller vetenskaplig psykologi.

Hela den offentliga sektorn bygger på skolpligten, ty hvar utom i skolan lär man sig så effektivt att låta sig behandlas som klient eller att behandla sina medmenniskor så?

V:4 Mot feminismen, hvars karriärqvinnor behöfva den offentliga sektorn för att icke behöfva stå vid spisen och föda barn - liksom omvändt den offentliga sektorn utbreder feminismen för att derigenom finna recruter till sin corps.

V:5 Mot alla attacker mot moderskap och barnafödande: malthusianer, som anse att barnen äro fler än som kunna födas, RFSU och RFSL som hylla hvar sin synd mot naturen, abortläkare och preventivmedelsrådgifvare och

V:6 - sist men icke minst: mot de partier, hvilka upprätthålla sådana galenskaper och det politiska system som ger dem magt.

Fotnot: med offentliga sektorn afses här den nyare och större delen af denna i egentlig mening. Att man betalar skatt till militär, förvaltning, domstolar och annan egentlig öfverhet (med för denna och alla nyttig infrastruktur, inklusive frivilliga skolor, inklusive bibliothek) är helt i linje med Romarebrefvets 13 kapitel. Det är skilnad mellan den öfverhet som är af Gud och ofvan definierade "offentliga sektor" (se det bibelkapitlet för att kolla om denna täcks af St Pauli inledningsord: mig synes icke så).

Septem artes et leurs annexes

1 Septem artes et leurs annexes
2 Septem Artes et leurs vertus ...

Trivium:
Grammaire: Poësie, Métrique, Lyrique
Rhétorique: Histoire, Epopé, Drame
Logique: Métaphysique, Physique

Quadrivium:
Arithmétique: Mésures, Proportions, Equations (premier degré)
Géométrie: Miniature, Peinture, Architecture, Géographie, Chartographie, Dessin
Musique: Chant, Sonates (oui, juste annexes: musique elle-même est la science des rhytmes métriques et des intervalles tonales)
Astronomie: Computus du Calendrier de Pâques

Dubium: Comment est-ce que les rhytmes métriques

relèvent de la musique et à la fois de la grammaire?

Solutio: En tant que les rhytmes proportionnent mathématicalement les durés, ils appartiennent aux quadrivium, à la musique; mais en tant qu'ils s'expriment par des syllabes qui ont leurs duré soit de soi-mêmes, soit de la position avant consonne (ce qu'augmente le décalage avant la prochaine attaque vocalique) ils appartiennent également à la grammaire.

Usury, definition of

Quoting a blog, The Red Herring of Usury*: Originally printed in This Rock, September 1997:

"In the face of this change, the Church defined what is meant by usury. Session X of the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) gave its exact meaning: 'For that is the real meaning of usury: when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk.'


"So too, Pope Benedict XIV in his encyclical Vix Pervenit, says: 'The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin in a loan contract [mutuum]. This financial contract between consenting parties demands, by its very nature, that one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious.'


"Note again that a mutuum is 'a loan of a fungible, i.e., perishable, nonspecific good, whose use consisted of its consumption' (New Catholic Encyclopedia). But at present the choice for one's money in our world-economy is never simply between spending and hoarding, for money can always been invested in any number of genuinely profitable ('fruitful') enterprises."

Whoaa!

One of the enterprises is lending at interest. Which has always existed, but not been considered licit.

The second is investing in a limited responsability company or similar joint venture: which is indeed often profitable, but means exchanging money for a moral kind of ownership. Even if the share held by a share-holder is marked or named as a share for so and so many dollars, the share differs from the dollars in nature, and therefore the money has been exchanged for something which is not initself money. Nor is it exchanged without risk. Limited responsability means you have paid your fair share of the company's debts in buying the share, you do not need to spend more on the company's debts if it gets broke. The company's material belongings are different from yours. This is as distinct from the usual kind of company in which the company is a person or a family which responds to debts without limits either than those imposed by law for private debts, like not confiscating one's clothes. Even so, limited responsability runs a risk, which the lender for interest does not: he depends juridically on the good luck and business sense of those running the company. A lender may sue the borrower for not paying, even interest, but a shareholder may not sue the company for going broke, at the most the directors for making it go broke by incompetence.

The third is buying material and starting a company which you run yourself and take all the risks. That possibility has always been there. That has always been one of the alternatives for a rich man as against hoarding or borrowing.

Is the second option fair? Doubtful, since it makes the real decision takers mere stewards with the one goal of giving value in money for investments. If it is fair, does this possibility change the nature of the first possibility? I think not.

The second group of texts is illustrated by Deuteronomy 23:19-21: "You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to yourcountryman you shall not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess." Here the principle of interest-free loans is extended to embrace all of Israel (and would include those non-Jews who are living under Israel's protection). But notice that the Scripture also says, "You may charge interest to a foreigner," indicating that interest-taking is not presented as inherently evil or sinful.

Except that King James Version - and Douay Rheims - says "brother", where you say "countryman". And except that the relations between Israelites in Old Testament hold good for Christians in New Covenant as well. If through Christ every man is my brother - from whom shall I take usury (sorry, "interest", but you see the Greek would have tokos for either English word) without sinning?

And if there is something one may not do to countrymen, but to strangers only, does it not strike you as that thing being at least unpatriotic to do with your countrymen? If you decide in a city to impose a toll on visiting strangers, is it not possible that this may be because one has less solidarity with them and wants to spare the citizens a consumption tax at the same time as wanting to limit the competition for indigenous traders, but harden it for foreign traders?

Aquinas explains** that the Jews could licitly take usury from Canaaneans, because they were like public enemies to God as well as to Israel, they were people who had publicly worshipped gods who demanded human sacrifice as well as kinky rites in honour of fertility gods. St Ambrose, on the question of taking interest on loans given to Goths says: "whoever you may licitly kill, from him you may licitly take usury". There he spoke about enemies of the Roman Empire and future persecutors of the Orthodox Faith, in Spain as well as in Italy.

Money itself was considered primarily a medium of private and not commercial exchange. As Joseph Rickaby says of the Middle Ages (and his comments apply to much of antiquity as well): "In those days land was hard to buy, agriculture backward, roads bad, seas unnavigable, carrying-trade precarious, messages slow, raids and marauders frequent, population sparse, commerce confined to a few centers, mines unworked, manufactures mostly domestic, capital as yet unformed. Men kept their money in their cellars or deposited it for safety in religious houses. . .-They took out coin as they wanted it to spend on housekeeping, or on war, or on feasting. It was very hard, next to impossible, to lay out money so as to make more money by it. Money was in those days really barren" (Moral Philosophy, 261).

His comments do not even apply to all of the Middle Ages, not even the period of the scholastics. Or rather: especially not. When they called money barren, it is because the investor, not the lender is the one who makes, not the money, but the money's worth yield fruit.

Hans Lundahl
Aix en Provence
20 March/2 April 2008

PS: I quote:

Money is no longer a barren thing in itself, and thus the loan of money at interest is not usurious.

and:

Rickaby sums up the correct view of usury nicely: "[I]t is usury to take any interest at all upon the loan of a piece of property, which (a) is of no use except to be used up, spent, consumed; (b) is not wanted for the lender's own consumption within the period of the load; (c) is lent upon security that obviates risk; (d) is so lent that the lender forgoes no occasion of lawful gain by lending it"

I do not see how money is of other use than being spent, nor that a lender would lend money he needed for own consumption, nor that he usually foregoes securities, as for condition d, that would make every loan in history a licit source for usury. How can a man loan without foregoing any occasions for licit gain? Even in the parable, the one asked "why did you not give it to a money-lender so as to take usury" was the same who had foregone willfully the lawful gains, like the trade made by the other servants.

PS2: I notified the author, he and I have exchanged arguments on comments part here.

PS3: Distributism blog has a take on this.

*by David J. Palm
** click here and scroll down to Answer to Objection 2.