#SaveOurInternet 5: Other (ie Continental) Reformations

This Christmas may be the last one that a free Internet exists within the EU, to the detriment of many people in the creative professions. When I first went into blogging and publishing fanfiction online over five years ago, I thought this day would never come. There would be a requiem and a ban on parodies, on sharing images and stories that move us for free, on filk lyrics and fanfiction, and pirate translations of works outside the public domain... The Members of Parliament turn a deaf ear to all of us in the creative and the electronic world, and thus, next year... if we all don't come together and do something against this Article 13, everything we know and love will fall apart.
Now I know how Odin must have felt with the forebodings of Ragnarök. But who am I to be then... Odin or Enjolras? Feeling powerless against the rising tide, or not? Not only is my career as a currently unemployed translator at stake; many other creative professionals will be facing the same dire consequences - if we don't do something ourselves.
Most surely, this year's Advent Calendar will be about Save Our Internet and have to do with the history of copyright and resistance to it - maybe this very introductory article will be barred because the name of Enjolras (or any other Les Mis character) would be as encouragingly mentioned as Macbeth, if we just sit there idly instead of coming together for the cause.


Other Reformations - Luther, Gustavus Vasa, and inflammable Spanish heretics
Due to the advent of the printing press, Protestants' and freethinkers' writings became as available to the public as let's say the Vulgate (the only version of the Good Book authorised by the Catholic Church, ie St. Jerome's Latinisation), poisoning the hearts and souls of a rapidly growing literate bourgeoisie. Neither the Crown nor any Church, Catholic nor Protestant, was going to have it this way. Thus, heretics and freethinkers across the Continent (not only in its Catholic southern half, but it was more virulent there) were highly inflammable. In France, Étienne Dolet among others was executed for translating sacred texts into French - of course the penalty of death made bootleg distribution channels bigger because people were starving for more things to read.
Long story short, as long as there are umbrages in the path of free intellectual property (especially if it's free as in gratis), there will always be bootleg or piracy distribution - all the way since right from the start.

MENSCHEN, DIE NICHT ZWISCHEN RECHTS UND LINKS UNTERSCHEIDEN KÖNNEN

MENSCHEN, DIE NICHT WISSEN, WAS RECHTS UND LINKS IST
This is the Luther version of the Jonah reference to children and/or infidels as "persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left."
people who cannot tell their right hand from their left
Their ignorance is so great they “cannot tell their right hand from their left.” 
Luther says "rechts und links" in a more abstract sense.
Another German translation says "Menschen, die rechts und links nicht unterscheiden können."
Or "Menschen, die nicht einmal rechts und links unterscheiden können."
Or "Menschen, die nicht zwischen rechts und links unterscheiden können."

people who do not know

the difference between their right hand and their left,

ORDINARY GLOSS:

We can understand this with

regard to the age of infancy, which is innocent and simple, and

 the number of little ones is so great,

who, before doing penance, did not know the diference between good and evil. 

Again, in my Othello essay "The Rightful Left-tenant" (which can be found on this blog), I discuss this biblical reference and correlate it to the Japanese idiom "migi mo hidari mo wakaranai (右も左もわからない)." As well as to Cassio's left-right confusion (and it tells a lot about left-right symbolism in Othello, btw).
Luckily for me, I wore conveniently colour-coded Kickers as a child...

Kickers: green for right and red for left.

Wherein are more than six score thousand {persons), 

that are so young, and voide are of all {reason), 

that by no means they able are to learne, 

the right hand from the left, for to discerne ? 

Should I subvert so many infants too?

Earbuds are usually marked with the letters L and R. So you know which one goes where.

Knowledge of the left-right distinction is considered a sign of maturity: I myself learned the difference upon hitting puberty, i.e. that my left faces the right of what I see through my eyes and vice versa. Before that, I thought that the left was always the side of my writing hand and the two/three birthmarks on my forearm. One of the ways I learned real left-right distinction was through the clever use of colour-coded Kickers shoes: red for left and green for right. Thus, I learned that my left side faces the right side of others and vice versa. The gunshot on Lord Nelson's left shoulder at Trafalgar and my handedness and birthmarks, however, proved more influential in this aspect than the Kickers; from looking at depictions of the dying admiral, I realized that my right faced Horatio's (and everyone else's) left.

30YW VIDEO GAME

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PASSIONS EXPLAINED

I recently read a fairytale by yet another obscure Victorian writer, about a princess whose parents had given her no tutors or education to control her and make her completely subservient.
Then, one of her suitors dethroned her father and liege (had him locked away, after the coup, in a lunatic asylum) to subsequently summon the intelligentsia of the land to court, to instruct her:

History acted its deeds before her on their lips. Strange nations lived and spoke

 to her; and as she spoke to them she learned their language.

My interest in the past is far newer than my philological vein. 

I was once told that learning about the past would help 

me comprehend the present and even the future, as demonstrated in the many

 historical allusions scattered throughout this very blog.

As a child, I was interested in languages being a third-culture child from a multicultural background. I was told stories and sung to in English, in Swedish, Spanish, Catalan, even in German and French. The prospect of strange nations and fantasy worlds was tempting for a hinterland outsider like me... but the first thought I had was of changing this world (present-day Earth) for better, stopping all crimes, wars, and religious conflicts. I was also curious about learning where words come from, why there are cognates and false friends across languages (that discipline is called onomasiology)... With the pass of years, those wishes gave way to sheer passion: philology for the sake of philology. So it is to the present day and the come-of-age university student.
And yes, royal children, like cadets and wannabe diplomats, had to be multilingual in the olden days.
Still into our days, that is a skill that shapes history, raising bridges across nations/cultures and revealing hidden secrets. I think of Luther, having learned Latin and Greek at Erfurt, being able to understand the original Bible and kickstart the Protestant Reformation... and of the diplomats behind Westphalia and many other relevant peace treaties.
Needless to say that Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter Christina were both multilingual, and so were Charles V, Luther, and many others.

WHY WAS JESUS LIKE KARL MARX?

Because the doctrines of both work only on paper, since they conflict with the natural self-centeredness of the human individual.
For instance, Jesus said "Give the Caesar (or the Kaiser, or the worldly authority du jour) what belongs to worldly authorities, and give God what belongs to God".
It would be wonderful if ambitious and/or hypocritical clerical authorities had not started to covet, then to get, then to abuse worldly power.
Which brought the end of the tolerant, individualistic, and epicurean Hellenistic worldview. Medieval universities became male-exclusive, unlike their Age-of-Empire counterparts. Clever women and open-minded thinkers (Hypatia was both!) were persecuted, prosecuted, and subsequently executed.
Then the world changed. The lieges of nobles (kings, kaisers, czars, electors) ironically also helped the process of putting an end to the Dark Ages when they claimed the power and lands of the feudal gentry.
In those unpredictable days, somewhere in the Thuringian Forests, in the Electorate of Saxony, a dapper young student of Law at Erfurt was struck by lightning.
This incident was, for Martin L., like leaping down the rabbit hole. He was merely returning from a visit to his own hinterland birthplace when a thunderstorm surprised him in the middle of the woods.
He made it to Erfurt. He left university for a religious order. Then, Friar L. was sent to the Curia (the Pope's court) in representation of the Saxon Augustines.
It (the Curia) was Sodom and Gomorrah. No joke.
Upon returning home, Martin L., having discovered the darkest side of Catholicism (which still exists to this very day), left the cloister with some crystal clear ideas. For instance, that popes, cardinals, and their cronies do not live up to what the Bible says, for instance to the precept "Give the Caesar (or the Kaiser, or the worldly authority du jour) what belongs to worldly authorities, and give God what belongs to God".
He wanted the Bible translated and services to be given in Germanic languages.
Both the Pope and the Kaiser wanted his head on a platinum platter.
The Elector, however, saved his life and conveyed him to the safety of the fortified Wartburg. Some years later, Martin L.'s translation of the Bible was printed in Leipzig. The translator had obviously made use of a nom de plume not to be recognized by imperial authorities.
He encouraged Europeans to read and to sing, and to see Earth as a glen of smiles rather than a vale of tears. A revolution had just broken out, and it spread through Northern Europe like wildfire.
You know the rest: the Catholics counterattacked through the Society of Jesus and the Inquisition, a war broke out because the Kaiser wanted to convert or massacre his Protestant subjects, said war lasted for three decades and left it all in ruins, then the ideals of the Hellenistic period reappeared in the Northern nations with a name that had to do with light...
Minorities like women, children, foreigners, disabled people and non-human animals were empowered and given equal rights. The Church loosened its grip on both the State and the common people. And the long-forgotten words "rara temporum felicitate" (i.e. "due to the strange happiness of these times [when one can say whatever s/he pleases without risking penalty]") were resurrected, to live on to this very day.
Today, Northern Germans are celebrating the moment when Martin L. nailed his famous and notorious rant to a certain church door.
In his spiritual retirement, an elderly former Kaiser Charles V, reduced to kaiser of clockwork making and beer drinking, is said to have said: "Why didn't I kill Luther?"
It was already too late.
And, should he have had the reformer executed, I bet His Imperial Majesty would have fallen in battle against the electors and their vassals, seeking revenge for the death of their spiritual leader.

NO LIGHT WITHOUT DARKNESS

They need each other to exist. The light casts shadows, generating dark spots; and the light shines brightest in the dark.
And as it happens literally, so metaphorically.
Last year, during a Swedish holiday, I found in a public library I can't remember A Little World History for Young Readers ("En liten världshistoria för unga läsare"/"Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser"), the masterpiece of Austrian writer Ernst Gombrich.
Its thirty-third chapter, "A Truly New Age", is dedicated to the Enlightenment. At the end of the first page, the author explains the causes of the paradigm shift in Europe (with colonies) from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. And so, I learned the answer to a question that had been haunting me throughout the last years: "Why this shift into questioning authority, defying religion, even shaving one's face and dressing in bright colours?"
Well, I'll reproduce Gombrich's explanation (I DO NOT OWN IT!):

"Only after 1700 did things gradually change. The widespread and terrible suffering that Europeans endured during the wretched wars of religion had made some people wonder if it was really right to judge someone by his or her religious belief. Was it not more important to be a good and honest human being? Would it not be better if people got on with one another regardless of any differences of opinion or belief that they might have? Better if they respected one another and tolerated each other’s convictions? This was the first and most important idea that the people who thought about such things now voiced: the principle of tolerance. Only in matters of religion could there be differences of opinion. No rational person disputes the fact that two plus two makes four. Therefore reason – or sound common sense, as they also termed it – is what can and should unite all humans. In the realm of reason you can use arguments to convince others of the rightness of your opinions, whereas another’s religious beliefs, being beyond rational argument, should be respected and tolerated."

Betrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy (which I do not own either), agrees with Gombrich: 
"In the Middle Ages, while mystics kept alive the original individualistic trends in Christian ethics, the outlook of most people, including the majority of philosophers, was dominated by a firm synthesis of dogma, law, and custom, which caused theoretical beliefs and practical morality to be controlled by a social institution, namely the Catholic Church: what was true and what was good was to be ascertained, not by solitary thought, but by the collective wisdom of Councils.
The first important breach in this system was made by Protestantism, which asserted that General Councils may err. To determine the truth thus became no longer a social but an individual enterprise.
Since different individuals reached different conclusions, the result was strife, and theological
decisions were sought, no longer in assemblies of bishops, but on the battlefield. Since neither
party was able to extirpate the other, it became evident, in the end, that a method must be found of reconciling intellectual and ethical individualism with ordered social life. This was one of the main problems which early liberalism attempted to solve.
Meanwhile individualism had penetrated into philosophy. Descartes's fundamental certainty, "I think, therefore I am," made the basis of knowledge different for each person, since for each the starting-point was the self's own existence, not that of other individuals or of the community. Descartes's emphasis upon the reliability of clear and distinct ideas tended in the same direction, since it is by introspection that we think we discover whether our ideas are clear and distinct. Most philosophy since Descartes has had this intellectually individualistic aspect in a greater or lesser degree.
The results of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in the intellectual sphere, were at first wholly bad, but ultimately beneficial. The Thirty Years' War persuaded everybody that neither Protestants nor Catholics could be completely victorious; it became necessary to abandon the medieval hope of doctrinal unity, and this increased people's freedom to think for themselves, even about fundamentals. The diversity of creeds in different countries made it possible to escape persecution by living abroad. Disgust with theological warfare turned the attention of able ones increasingly to secular learning, especially mathematics and science. These are among the reasons for the fact that, while the sixteenth century, after the rise of Luther, is philosophically barren, the seventeenth contains the greatest names and marks the most notable advance since Greek times (read: "Hellenism"). This advance began in science."

There you have it. It takes thirty years of widespread religious war, plus the consequent casualties, famines, epidemics, and witch-hunts, for those in power to decide to start anew, feeling guilty over the international clusterf*ck they have caused, and exclaim: "Let there be light!" 
And those in power after the war, the Great War of its day, were the Protestant Northern countries plus France: the nations where the Enlightenment came to be. If the Habsburgs and their cronies had won, there would not be such an idea of freedom and tolerance not confronted with violent repression. 

Thanks to Gustavus Adolphus, the Catholics were vanquished for good and the idea of separating church and state, already pronounced by Jesus, forgotten with the third-century crisis and rescued by Luther, to be adopted by the Protestant North, was reborn: its worldly rulers (royals, electors) seceded from the Church and cashed in its wealth for the State Treasury. Furthermore, translations of sacred texts and the fact that every person was free to interpret them contributed to lay the foundations of Catholic decline. Without the prowess and intelligence of Gustavus Adolphus, the grandson of Sweden's national father and Protestant reformer, the Catholic ranks would have been unstoppable and victorious, perpetuating the unholy matrimony of church and state with iron coils.

I would like to end this post with some verses from Mikael Wiehe, a renowned Swedish poet (I do not own this poem either!):

"When else in this world 

could the light be seen,

if not at midnight,

when the darkness is thickest?

Tell me, when will the warmth

seek out more warmth,

if not in midwinter,

when the cold is harshest?

Where should a voice be raised,

become a roar of wrath,

if not in that silence

where no word can be spoken?

Where can courage be born

and spread its wings,

if not in that fear

where life confronts death?

Struggling...

Desiring...

Expecting...

Gasping for breath like true love...

Living...

Faltering...

Persuading...

Again, and again, and again..."

Voltaire once boastingly said: "I am weary of hearing people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it." 

He was not the first, nor the last, nor the only one to undermine the power of organised religion (in general).

POST SCRIPTUM. On clean-shaven faces:

Even the eighteenth-century vogue for clean-shavenness, in particular the smoothly shaven upper lip, replacing the moustache and "handlebar" of the seventeenth century, has a partial historical and cultural justification. Snuff-taking demanded a direct access to the nostrils unimpeded by facial hair. 
"Tastes of Paradise," Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

HUNGARIAN MILITARY RANKS IN KAROLI

We're still discussing the translation of ranks and offices in Bibles.
And thus, we have come to the Magyar region of cyberspace, where I came across a peculiarity of Az apostolok cselekedetei. Id est, the Acts of the Apostles.
It translates Roman military ranks by Magyar ones that still are used in the Hungarian Army, ever since the Dark Ages.
Important facts here: Hungary is landlocked, it has been under Habsburg sway during the Early Modern period, lowlanders=Catholic and highlanders=Protestant (historically).
The rank "chiliarchos", commander of a thousand, rendered in English as "chief captain" and as "commander", is translated into Hungarian as "ezredes", "colonel" (literally "commander of a thousand" or "commander of a regiment", "ezredes" coming from "ezred"="regiment" coming from "ezer"="one thousand"). The Swedish translation uses "överste", while the German one uses "Oberst". Interestingly, all three are used as the rank of colonel in the respective present-day militaries.
Back with the Hungarian bible, The Second Book of Kings introduces the military rank of "sarchamishim", literally "leader of fifty (men)". It is Englished as "captain of fifty". And Károli gives "hadnagy", meaning "lieutenant" (literally "great military man"), another rank that has been left unchanged into our days. A lieutenant, traditionally, would lead a detachment of about fifty men (The Swedish and German versions say literally "sub-captain": "underhövitsman" and "Unterhauptmann").
This Károli Gáspár (read "Casper Charles", last name first, since Hungarians also use Eastern name order) studied at the University of Wittenberg, being a pupil of Luther himself.
An interesting fact is that military ranks, in the Bible, are said to be an invention of Jethro's. Remember Jethro, the High Priest of Midian? Well, like the Midianites, pre-Christian Hungarians were stateless and nomadic rider-archers who scoured the land without a fixed home. It makes sense that such societies would give rise to a fighting culture with glorification of battle and a military organization to rival any kingdom's or empire's. Perhaps this is why the names of Hungarian officers' ranks have been left unchanged for centuries, in spite of foreign influences.

PILATE THE WHAT?

The Holy Bible takes place in an age of vast empires. Persians. Hellenism. Romans. Such states need a lot of organization: the royal or imperial court, the army, administration must be in the hands of many competent men, and this creates a vast assortment of ranks and offices.
The Catholic Church and the gentry took possession of vast tracts of land, each with its laws and regulations, during the Dark Ages.
Then, the Early Modern period saw a revival of the territorial state as the Crown took power from the feudal lords to give that power to itself.
And a useful instrument for the Crown was something called Protestant Reformation.
In the Dark Ages, religious services were Catholic and given in Latin. Which was really incomprehensible if you were born and raised in a Germanic-speaking country (or Finland, or Hungary, for that matter). The priest's words sounded like something out of this world, and they were even used in magical incantations.
Therefore, the Protestant Reformation supported the translation of the Bible into Germanic languages (and Finnish and Hungarian, for that matter). Hence the Luther Version, the King James Version, and the Gustavus Vasa Version, among many others (In Catholic Europe, by the way, translating the Bible was forbidden).
The fact that Protestant Reformers translate ranks and offices from Bible-era empires as ranks and offices from early modern territorial states is an interesting discovery I made in Sweden two years ago, and a perfect example of how hard a nut to crack an extinct rank/office may be.
Let's take a few examples, starting with Pontius Pilate. An irresponsible coward, who has become notorious for washing Christ's blood of his "innocent" hands, eh? What does this chap do? He's a procurator: he represents the Caesar's authority within the reach of a province (in his case, Judaea). And, how do early modern Bibles translate the office of "procurator"?
Luther has "Landpfleger", which translates to "land-carer" and refers to an administrator/bureaucrat.
King James has "governor", as in "province governor". It was used mainly of colonial magistrates (English colonies in the New World).
Dutch versions have "stadhouder", "placeholder". It was a fairly known office, referring to the representative of the Castilian Crown in the Netherlands, then a province of the Spanish Empire. The most famous man to hold this office was William of Orange, called "the Silent", who became a Protestant (Calvinist) and fought a violent war of independence against the Spanish Habsburgs. He is the ancestor of the current Dutch royals, and considered "father of the nation".
Hungarian versions have "helytartó", also meaning "placeholder". It was not so important an office in the Hungarian state. The governor of a province or of a fortress was called "kormányzó", literally "governor".
Scandinavian languages opt for "landshövding", literally "land-chieftain". It has always referred to regional representatives of the state, and it lives on to the present day to designate the ruler of a län (the Swedish equivalent of a French region or a German Bundesland).
Finnish has "maaherra", meaning "land-lord": the Swedish form of "landshövding" (Sweden was Finnish during the Early Modern Era).
I would opt for "Pontius Pilate the Placeholder (i.e. the Caesar's man)". It's even alliterative in English!
The next posts will give more examples of rank and office in early modern Bibles.