read the riot act

17 September 2021

The Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry cavalry regiment violently disperses a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and attempts to arrest its leaders at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England. Eighteen people were killed and hundreds injured. The Riot Act of 1715 was not read on this occasion, although it had been for previous demonstrations at that location where the crowd had dispersed peacefully. Saber-wielding cavalrymen charge into a crowd of demonstrators, while six men and one woman, bearing banners with Phrygian caps atop them, look on in horror from the speakers’ platform.

To read the riot act is to issue a reprimand and warning—cease what you’re doing or else—but it once meant to issue an official, and much more serious, legal notice. The British Riot Act of 1715, or giving its official title An Act for Preventing Tumults and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectual Punishing the Rioters (Anno primo Georgii I. Stat. 2. C. 5.), was passed in the first year of the reign of George I. At its heart, the act said that when a government official told a crowd of twelve or more to disperse, they must do so within an hour or face the death penalty. The key portion of the act reads:

That if any persons to the number of twelve or more, being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace, at any time after the last day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, and being required or commanded by any one or more justice or justices of the peace, or by the sheriff of the county, or his under-sheriff, or by the mayor, bailiff or bailiffs, or other head-officer, or justice of the peace of any city or town corporate, where such assembly shall be, by proclamation to be made in the King's name, in the form herin after directed, to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, shall, to the number of twelve or more (notwithstanding such proclamation made) unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously remain or continue together by the space of one hour after such command or request made by proclamation, that then such continuing together to the number of twelve or more, after such command or request made by proclamation, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the order and form of the proclamation that shall be made by the authority of this act, shall be as hereafter followeth (that is to say) the justice of the peace, or other person authorized by this act to make the said proclamation shall, among the said rioters, or as near to them as he can safely come, with a loud voice command, or cause to be commanded silence to be, while proclamation is making, and after that, shall openly and with loud voice make or cause to be made proclamation in these words, or like in effect:

Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

The law went into force in 1715, but the phrase read the riot act did not appear for some decades. The first recorded instance that I’m aware of is in a pamphlet, An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Manager, published in 1763. The pamphlet was produced in response to riots that occurred in January of that year at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and the Drury Lane Theatre. Such public disruptions at theatrical appearances were hardly unusual, occurring around once every couple of years during this period. But this pair of riots was occasioned by the raising of ticket prices. It had been customary to charge late arrivals to a performance half price for their tickets. But in January 1763, the managements of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, the only fully licensed theaters in London, altered the practice and began charging full price regardless of when the person entered the theater. David Garrick ran the Drury Lane Theatre, and John Beard was manager of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden:

The passages here meant, are those which suppose Mr. Garrick would not appear the first night of the disturbance, to speak to the audience, though he was in the house.—That a message was sent to Mr. B—d, to persuade him to join with the manager of Drury-lane, in opposing force to force, and compel the audience to a submission;—which suppose a Justice of peace was proposed being sent for to read the Riot-act;—which make some of the performers insult and threaten the audience in the Green-room;——And which suppose Mr. G——k never intended to keep his word with the public, though he promised them an acquiescence with their terms.

This instance, of course, is a literal use of the phrase, calling upon a magistrate to read the proclamation and order the rioters to disperse.

The sense of a severe reprimand or warning, not the official legal proclamation, appears a couple of decades later. From M.P. Andrews’s 1784 play The Reparation, a scene in which two men are getting up the gumption to fight a duel before a third man tells them to cut it out:

Sir Gregory.    I could not break through forms for the universe.—Single combat, to be sure, may be maintained, but always with proper decorum. You state your grievances—I reply—preliminaries are broken—and then war is declared in due course.

Swagger.         Devil burn me, but we’ll do as the French do—declare war without saying a syllable of the matter. So come on, Sir Gregory—by St. Patrick, I’ll bother bother both sides of your ears with nothing but war! war! (bellowing).

Enter COLONEL QUORUM.

Col. Quorum.  Peace, I say, or I’ll read the riot act—Gentlemen, your most obedient.—and now, what is the matter.

A jocular, but literal use, of the phrase can be found in satirist John Wolcot’s 1795 poem The Convention Bill, an Ode. Wolcot wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar:

And, when our KING to Weymouth shall repair,
Forget not thou an order to the MAY’R,
When in the tub the ROYAL LIFE embarks,
To read the Riot-Act to shrimps and sharks!

A distinctly figurative sense of read the riot act appears in a letter from Martha Wilmot Bradford to her sister Alicia from Vienna on 17 December 1819, in which her husband the Rev. William Bradford added the following paragraph after Martha described the dress she had been wearing:

Matty with that delicate reserve so natural and so becoming  would have omitted to say what was most to the point on this subject, and as she has just run out to read the riot act in the Nursery, I beg to add the essential paragraph to the above, viz that at a little family supper at the Ambassador’s after the first reception, there was as is usual a good deal of discussion of the Ladies dresses, and would you believe it Ma’am that it was unanimously voted that the Chaplain’s Lady was the best dressed in the room.

The modern equivalent would be a husband picking up his wife’s smartphone as she left the room to send a text complimenting her to a friend. In any case, reading the riot act to naughty children in a nursery is a far cry from the legal sense.

The Riot Act remained on the books until 1967, when its primary provisions were repealed, and the remainder of act was repealed in 1973. But the phrase lives on.

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Sources:

Andrews, Miles Peter. The Reparation, a Comedy. London: T. and W. Lowndes, 1784, 48–49. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Manager. London: Wilson and Fell, 1763, 22–23. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Bradford, William. Letter, 19 December 1819. In Martha Wilmot. More Letters from Martha Wilmot: Impressions of Vienna, 1819–1829. Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart and Harford Montgomery Hyde, eds. London: Macmillan, 1935, 39.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. read, v.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2010, modified December 2019, s.v. Riot Act, n.

Pickering, Danby, ed. The Statutes at Large, vol. 13. Cambridge: Joseph Bentham, 1764, 142–43. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Pindar, Peter (pseudonym of John Wolcot). “The Convention Bill, an Ode.” Works of Peter Pindar. London: J. Cundee for J. Walker, 1802, 500. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Today in London’s Theatrical History: Riot at Covent Garden Theatre Against Ticket Price Rises, 1763.” Pasttenseblog, 24 February 2017.

Image credit: Richard Carlisle, 1819. Manchester Libraries. Public domain image

buccaneer

1906 engraving of buccaneers under the command of Henry Morgan sacking the town of Puerto del Principe (Camagüey, Cuba) in 1668. Image of men with cannon, muskets, and pikes attacking a defended town, defended by a small, but similarly armed force.

16 September 2021

A buccaneer is a pirate, but the word’s origin is rooted in a method of barbeque (cf. barbecue) used by the Indigenous people of the Caribbean region. A boucan was a grill used for roasting meat and vegetables, and the term buccaneer was first applied to hunters in Hispaniola who killed and smoked wild cattle on boucans. That was a rough lifestyle, and when the term was borrowed into English, the sense became that of a pirate, either because the hunters of Hispaniola had turned to piracy, or that piracy was a similarly rough profession.

Both buccaneer and boucan are borrowings from French: boucanier (a hunter of wild cattle) and boucan (grill for barbequing). The French words, in turn, derive from the Tupi, or another Indigenous Brazilian language, buka (grill for barbequing).

We first see a reference to boucaned meat in an English translation of René Goulaine de Laudonnière’s 1587 history of European exploration of Florida:

They eate all their meate broyled on the coales, and dressed in the smoake, which in their language they call Boucaned. They eate willingly the flesh of ye Crocodil: & in deed it is faire and white: and were it not that it sauoureth too much like muske we would oftentimes haue eaten thereof.

And in 1598 a translation of John Huygen van Linschoten’s account of his voyage to the Americas refers to a boucano as a grill for cooking:

The Brasilians haue twoo sorts of rootes, called Aypi and Maniot, which béeing planted, in three or foure Moneths become a foote and a halfe long, and as bigge as a mans thigh, which beeing taken out of the earth, are by the women dryed by the fire vppon a Boucano.

Linschoten goes on to give a rather grisly description of cannibalism among the Tupi people in which he describes a boucan. The veracity of this, and similar, accounts of Native American cannibalism are a matter of debate among anthropologists, and to the extent the accounts of cannibalism like this one are true, they are probably exaggerated. I have omitted the more disturbing portions of the passage:

In this sort one, two, or thrée prisners, or more, as it falleth out, being slaine and rosted, all the company that are present, assemble about their boucans or girdirons of wood, for that the Indians rost no meate vppon spittes, as some men paynt them to do.

Some sixty years later, we see buccaneer used for one who hunts wild cattle. The description is that of Hispaniola in Edmund Heckeringill’s 1661 Jamaica Viewed:

He can empannell an Army, instead of a Iury to make good the Claime; the which he can hardly levie upon Hispaniola; it being so thinly peopled, that he can scarcely muster five hundred fighting men, (in the whole Island) though he should put forth a general Presse (enforc’d with the strictest Commission of Aray;) except only in the Town of St. Domingo; which is distant above one hundred and fifty miles from the forementioned Mine; and are not able with all their skill and strength to root out a few Buckaneers or Hunting French-men, that follow their Game, in despight of them, though they cannot number three hundred at a general Rendezvouse: and those dispersed at three hundred miles distance from one another, on the North and West sides of the Island.

And a bit later on in Heckeringill’s book:

A thousand English Souldiers being now an over-match to all the power, that the Spaniards in Hispaniola, can bring into the field; unable at this day to ferrit out a new French Buckaneers, or Hunting Marownaes, formerly mentioned; who live by killing the wild Beeves for their Hides; and might grow rich by the Trade, did not their lavish Riotings in expence (at the neighbour—Tortudoes) exceed the hardship of their Incomes. Their comfort is, they can never be broke whilest they have a Dog and a Gun; both which, are more industriously tended then themselves.

The use of buccaneer to refer to pirates comes by 1676, in this account by James Heath of events that took place in 1666, during the second Anglo-Dutch War:

The War continuing between the English and the Dutch, the beginning of this Year brought Intelligence from America, where the Governour of Jamaica resolves to Attaque their American Plantations; and accordingly, by the Assistance of the Buccaneers or Hunters upon Hispaniola, made themselves Masters of Sancta Eastachia, Salia, St. Martins, and Bonaira; and took the Island Tabago by Storm.

And Elisha Coles, in his 1677 dictionary, defines buccaneer thusly:

Buckaneers, the rude rabble in Jamaica.

But the work that cemented the sense of buccaneer as pirate and cemented the word in the English language was the 1684 English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin’s The History of the Bucaniers, originally published in Dutch in 1678 with the title De Americaensche Zee-Rovers:

The American Pirates or Bucaneers, are the Subject of this History; a sort of People who cannot be said to deserve any other Title, as not being maintain'd or upheld in their Actions by any Soveraign Prince. For certain it is, that when the Kings of Spain have complain'd by their Embassadors to the Kings of England and France, of the Molestations and Robberies done upon the Spaniards, both at Land and at Sea, by those Pirates upon the Coasts of I, even in the Calm of Peace, it has been always answer'd, that such persons did not commit those Acts of Hostility and Piracy, as Subjects to their Majesties, and therefore his Catholick Majesty might proceed against them as he should think fit.

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Sources:

Coles, Elisha. An English Dictionary. London: Peter Parker, 1677. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Exquemelin, Alexandre. The History of the Bucaniers. London: Thomas Malthus, 1684, 1. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Heath, James. A Chronicle of the Late Intestine War in the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, second edition, London, J.C. for Thomas Basset, 1676, 548. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Heckeringill, Edmund. Jamaica Viewed: With All the Ports, Harbours, and Their Several Soundings, Towns, and Settlements Thereunto Belonging, second edition. London: John Williams, 1661, 33–34, 51–52. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Laudonnière, René Goulaine de. A Notable Historie Containing Foure Voyages Made by Certayne French Captaynes into Florida. London: Thomas Dawson, 1587, 4r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Linschoten, John Huygen van. His Discourse of Voyages into ye Easte and West Indies. London: John Wolfe, 1598, 246, 255. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. buccaneer, n., buccaneer, v., buccan, v., buccan | bucan | boucan, n.

Image credit: Unknown artist, 1906. From John Masefield. On the Spanish Main. New York: Macmillan, 1906, 142. Public domain image.

Yosemite

The Yosemite Valley, California. Cathedral rocks are on the right and El Capitan is on the left. A valley filled with trees, a body of water in the foreground, and two massive rock outcroppings to either side.

15 September 2021

While Yosemite is not the first National Park, it is the first land the U.S. federal government set aside for preservation and public use. The Yosemite Grant of 1864, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, designated the land as a park and turned it over to the state of California for administration. When the National Park Service was created in 1916, Yosemite was transferred to its jurisdiction.

The name Yosemite is from the Southern Sierra Miwak yoşşe’meti (they are killers), a name given to the people of the valley, a group made up of renegades from various Paiute tribes, by outside groups. 

English use of the Indigenous tribal name dates to at least 3 September 1852, when it appears in the Pacific newspaper:

If Lieut. Moore and his company have failed from circumstances over which they had no control, in chastising the Yosemites and inducing them to preserve a peaceable bearing towards the white population, the expedition has been eminently useful in the exploration of a region of the country which has never before been trodden by white men.

The toponym is recorded a year later in the 24 December 1853 issue of the Daily California Chronicle:

The Yosemite Valley and region contiguous are possessed by a tribe of Indians bearing the name. They are savage and mischievous, as many resident in and near the Mariposa, Agua Fria, Bear Valley, and Shirlock’s settlements, can bear testimony, by irritating experience of recent systematic loss and destruction of property, and sometimes of life by the incautious and venturous.

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Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

“Interesting Discoveries.” The Pacific (San Francisco), 3 September 1852, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Yosemite Falls—1800 Feet High.” Daily California Chronicle, 24 December 1853, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Rainier Marks, 1999. Public domain image.

hypocrisy / hypocrite

A fox, a much-maligned animal, but which is true to its nature and not a hypocrite, as some medieval sources would have it. A red fox standing in the snow.

14 September 2021

Hypocrisy is the assumption of a false appearance, of pretending to be one thing while actually being another, and a hypocrite is one who does so. Both words come into English from Greek via Latin, but their most common usage in those languages was quite different than the English meaning. English adopted a rarer, metaphorical sense of the Greek words that was used in early Biblical translations instead of the more commonly used sense.

The Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypocrisy) is literally a reply or answer, but it was generally used to mean playing a part on stage or an orator’s delivery. It was also used metaphorically by second century BCE historian Polybius and by the second and third century BCE translators of the Septuagint—a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—and by the author of the gospel of Matthew, which was originally written in Greek, to mean playing a part, pretense, or hypocrisy in the sense we know it today in English. And ὑποκριτής (hypocrite) meant an interpreter or expounder, an actor or orator, and the translators of the Septuagint used it in the sense of a flatterer.

The Septuagint uses the Greek words in several places. For instance, in Job 34:30 ὑποκριτής (hypocrite) is used to translate the Hebrew אָדָ֥םחָנֵ֗ף (literally flatterer, but which in many present-day translations is rendered as godless). And in its translation of 2 Maccabees, the Septuagint uses ὑπόκρισις (hypocrisy) to translate a Hebrew word that today is often translated as pretense.

In Latin, hypocrita was commonly used to refer to a mime who accompanied an actor’s speech with gestures, but it was also used by Jerome in his Vulgate translation of the Bible.

Hypocrite and hypocrisy are first recorded in English in the text known as either Ancrene Wisse or Ancrene Riwle. The book is a handbook for anchoresses, a type of eremitic (solitary) nun. Anchoresses typically lived in walled enclosures built into church walls, with only a window through which communicate with the outside world. Julian of Norwich (1343–c.1416) is, perhaps, the most famous anchoress. The manuscript is from c.1230, but the text may have been composed a few decades earlier in the late twelfth century. In one passage, hypocrites are likened to foxes, animals commonly depicted as guileful and treacherous:

Vulpes foveas habent et volucres celi nidos. That is, “foxes habbeth hare holen ant briddes of heovene habbeth hare nestes.” The foxes beoth false ancres, ase fox is beast falsest. Theose habbeth, he seith, holen the holieth in-ward eorthe with eorthliche untheawes ant draheth into hare hole al thet ha mahen reopen ant rinnen. Thus beoth gederinde ancres of Godd i the Godspel to voxes i-evenet. Fox ec is a frech beast ant freote-wil mid alle, ant te false ancre draheth into hire hole ant fret, ase fox deth, bathe ges ant hennen. Habbeth efter the vox a simple semblant sum-chearre, ant beoth thah ful of gile. Makieth ham othre then ha beoth, ase vox, the is ypocrite.

(Vulpes foveas habent et volucres celi nidos. That is, “foxes have their holes and birds of heaven have their nests” [Luke 9:58, Matthew 8:20]. The foxes are false anchoresses, as the fox is the falsest beast. These have, he says, holes who burrow into the earth with earthly vices and drag into their hole all that they may steal and seize. Thus, are gathering anchoresses compared to foxes in the Gospel. Also, the fox is an impudent beast and voracious besides, and the false anchoress drags into her hole and devours, as the fox does, both geese and hens. [They] sometimes have, like the fox, an innocent appearance, but are nevertheless full of guile. [They] make themselves other than they are, like the fox, who is a hypocrite.)

And later on in the text, hypocrisy is included in a list of common sins:

Of alle cuthe sunnen, as of prude, of great other of heh heorte, of onde, of wreaththe, of slawthe, of yemeles, of idel word, of untohene thohtes, of sum idel herunge, of sum fals gleadunge, other of hevi murnunge, of ypocresie, of mete, of drunch to muchel other to lutel, of gruchunge, of grim chere, of silences i-brokene, of sitten longe ed thurl, of ures mis i-seide withute yeme of heorte, other in untime, of sum fals word, of sware, of plohe, of i-schake lahtre, of schede cromen other ale, of leote thinges muhelin, rustin other rotien, clathes unseowet, bireinet, unwesschen, breoke nep other disch, other biseo yemelesliche ei thing thet me with feareth other ahte to yemen, of keorfunge, of hurtunge, thurh unbisehenesse—of alle the thinges the beoth i this riwle the beoth misnumene, of alle thulliche thing schrive hire euche wike eanes ed te leaste, for nan se lutel nis of theos thet te deovel naveth enbrevet on his rolle.

(Of all common sins, such as pride, of a haughty or high heart; of envy; of wrath; of sloth; of carelessness; of idle words; of undisciplined thoughts; of some idle listening; of some false gladness, or of heavy mourning, of hypocrisy; of too much or too little meat and drink; of grumbling; of grim looks; of broken silences; of sitting too long at the window; of misspeaking the canonical hours without attention of heart or at the wrong time; of some false words; of swearing; of playing; of shaking laughter; of spilling crumbs or ale; of letting things spoil, rust or rot; clothes unsewn, rained on, unwashed; breaking a cup or dish, or attending carelessly to anything one handles or ought to pay attention to; of cutting, of hurting through inattention—all the things in this rule which are done wrong, of all such things let her confess at least once each week, for none of these is so small that the devil has not recorded in his roll.)

But it is their use in translations of the gospel of Matthew, chapter 23 that cemented the words’ use in English. A Wycliffite translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible, written sometime before 1382, reads:

13 Sothely woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ypocritis, for ȝe closen the kingdom of heavens before men; sothely ȝe entren nat, ne suffre men entrynge for to entre.
14 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ypocritis, that eten the housis of widues, in longe preier preyinge; for this thing ȝe shulen take the more dom.
15 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ypocritis, that cumpasen the se and the lond, that ȝee maken o proselite, that is, a conuertid to ȝoure ordre; and whanne he shal be maad, ȝe maken hym a sone of helle, double more than ȝou.
[...]
23 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ypocritis, that tithen mente, anete, and comyn, and han lefte tho thingis that ben greuouser, or of more charge, of the law, dom, and mercy, and feith. And these thingis it behofte, or nedide, for to do, and not to leeue hem.
24 Blynde leders, clensynge a gnatte, but swolowynge a camel.
25 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ipocritis, that maken clene that thing of the cuppe and plater, that is the outforth; forsothe with ynne ȝe ben ful of raueyne and vnclennesse.
26 Thou blynd Pharisee, clense first that thing of the cuppe and platter that is with ynneforth, that and that thing that is outenforth be maad clene.
27 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ipocritis, that be lic to sepulcris maad whijt, the whiche with outen forth semen faire to men; sothely with ynne thei ben ful of boonys of dead men, and al filthe.
28 So and ȝee forsothe with outen forth aperen iuste to men; but with ynne ȝee ben ful of ypocrisie and wickidnesse.
29 Woo to ȝou, scribis and Pharisees, ipocritis, that belden sepulcris of prophetis, and maken faire the birielis of iuste men, and seien,
30 Ȝif we hadden ben in the dayes of or fadris, we shulden nat han be here felowes in the blood of prophetis.

(13 Truly, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you close the kingdom of heaven to men, truly you enter not, nor suffer entry to men who are entering.
14 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who eat the houses of widows, praying in long prayers, for this thing you should receive the greater judgment.
15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that compass the see and the land, so that you make one proselyte, that is, one converted to your order, and he shall be made, you make him a son of hell, twice as much as you.
[...]
23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left those things that are more grievous, that is of more importance to the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith. And these things it is beneficial, or needful, to do, and not leave them.
24 Blind leaders, purifying a gnat, but swallowing a camel.
25 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that make clean that part of the cup and platter that is outside, truly within you are full of greed and uncleanliness.
26 You blind Pharisee, clean first that part of the cup and platter that is within, then make clean that part that is outside.
27 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside seem fair to men; truly within they are full of bones of dead men and all kinds of filth.
28 So, and truly you appear righteous to men on the outside, but within you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
29 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that build the tombs of the prophets, and make fair the burials of righteous, and say
30 If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been fellows in [shedding] the blood of the prophets.)

Note: the verse numbers are later editorial interventions, which I include for ease of reference. Also, verse fourteen is omitted from many present-day Bibles as it is not found in the oldest manuscripts and is widely believed to be a later addition.

So, the English words hypocrite and hypocrisy are based on a rarely used, metaphorical sense of the classical Greek and Roman words because that’s how biblical translators used them.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Hasenfratz, Robert, ed. Ancrene Wisse. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000, lines 3:110–17, 5:488–99. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402.

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, vol. 4 of 4. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1850, Matthew 23:13–15 and 23–30, 63–64. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 369, Part 2.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. hypocrites.

Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and augmented by. Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940, s.v. ὑπό-κρι^σις.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. ipocrite, n., ipocris(e, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hypocrite, n., hypocrisy, n.

Image credit: John Akbari, 2021.

California

13 September 2021

Detail of a c.1595 map showing what is now Baja California labeled as California and the territory to its north labeled Nova Albion, the name bestowed upon the region by Francis Drake in 1579.

California is a creation of Spanish, Mexican, and American settler-colonists, and therefore, despite having a significant Indigenous population, there is no Indigenous name that corresponds to the region as we know it today. But the name California does come out of two very different colonial contexts, the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century and the literary genre of medieval romance, which looked to the east as a place to be conquered and idolized during the Crusades and through Orientalist fantasies.

The origin of the name California was a mystery for some time until the 1870s, when Edward Everett Hale rediscovered where it came from. The origin is in a literary work, famous in its day, but long since forgotten by most, the Spanish Las Sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. It was written sometime before 1505, the year of Montalvo’s death, and published posthumously. It is the fifth book in a series of medieval romances. In the first three volumes Montalvo assembled, organized, and translated a number of traditional Portuguese romances about a knight named Amadis of Gaul. The fourth volume was also about Amadis but was an original work by Montalvo. The fifth book is also original to Montalvo, but features Esplandián, Amadis’s eldest son as the main character.

In this fifth book, California is an island off the coast of Asia populated by Black Amazons and ruled by a queen named Califre:

Sabed que ala diestra mano delas Yndias ouo vna Ysla llamada California mucho llegada ala parte del parayso terrenal la qual sue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun varon entre ellas ouiesse: qui casi como las amazonas era su estilo de biuir.

Hale translated this passage as:

Know that, on the right hand of the Indies, there is an island called California, very near to the Terrestrial Paradise, which was peopled with black women, without any men among them, because they were accustomed to live after the fashion of Amazons.

Where Montalvo got the name is a matter of speculation, but he likely took it from the Spanish califa (caliph), which is from the Arabic خليفة or khalîf (literally, successor, i.e., to Muhammad). Hence the connection to the Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and the subject of the book being rife with Orientalist themes.

While popular in its day, the book faded from memory. It is perhaps best remembered as the first book to be burned when Don Quixote’s household destroys his library of medieval romances, believing those to be the cause of his delusions. From Cervantes’s novel:

“No,” said the niece, “there’s no reason to pardon any of them, because they all have been harmful; we ought to toss them out the windows into the courtyard, and make a pile of them and set them on fire; or better yet, take them to the corral and light the fire there, where the smoke won’t bother anybody.”

The housekeeper agreed, so great was the desire of the two women to see the death of those innocents; but the priest was not in favor of doing that without even reading the titles first. And the first one that Master Nicolás handed him was The Four Books of Amadís of Gaul, and the priest said:

“This one seems to be a mystery, because I have heard that this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and all the rest found their origin and inspiration here, so it seems to me that as the proponent of the doctrine of so harmful a sect, we should, without any excuses, condemn it to the flames.”

“No, Señor,” said the barber, “for I’ve also heard that it is the best of all the of this kind ever written, and as a unique example of the art, it should be pardoned.”

“That’s true,” said the priest, “and so we’ll spare its life for now. Let’s see the one next to it.”

“It is,” said the barber, “the Exploits of Esplandián, who was the legitimate son of Amadís of Gaul.”

“In truth,” said the priest, “the mercy shown the father will not help the son. Take it, Señora Housekeeper, open the window, throw it into the corral, and let it be the beginning of the pile that will fuel the fire we shall set.”

The housekeeper was very happy to do as he asked, and the good Esplandián went flying into the corral, waiting with all the patience in the world for the fire that threatened him.

As to the non-fictional California, the name was allegedly bestowed on the “island” we know call Baja California (actually a peninsula) by Hernán Cortés, although Cortés never visited the territory and documentation for his naming it is lacking. The first European to actually visit what is now Baja California was Francisco de Ulloa in 1539, who also determined it was a peninsula and not an island. A few years later in 1542, Juan Cabrillo mapped the coast of Alto California, the present-day U.S. state. Francis Drake explored the coastline further in 1579, naming it Nova Albion (New England); that name did not stick.

The name California starts appearing in English writing by 1587. From a translation of René Goulaine de Laudonnière’s A Notable Historie Containing Foure Voyages:

Now if the greatnes of the maine of Virginea, and the large extension thereof, especially to the West, should make you thinke that the subduing of it, were a matter of more difficultie then the conquest of Irelande, first I answere, that, as the fresh experience of that happie and singuler skilfull pilotte and Captaine M. Iohn Dauis to the northwest (towarde which his discouerie your selfe haue thrise contributed with the forwardest) hath shewed a great part to bee maine Sea, where before was thought to bee mayne lande, so for my part I am fully perswaded by Orielius late reformation of Culuacan and the gulfe of California that the land on the backe part of Virginea extendeth nothing so farre westward as is put downe in the mappes of those partes.

Both Alto and Baja California passed from Spain to Mexico in 1821, and the United States acquired Alto California (i.e., the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as parts of Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico) in 1848 as a result of the Mexican-American War. What is now the state of California was admitted to the Union in 1850 following the discovery of gold there in 1848.

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Sources:

Cervantes, Miguel, de. Don Quixote. Edith Grossman, trans. New York: HarperCollins, 2003, First Part, Chapter 6, 46.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Hale, Edward Everett. “The Queen of California.” His Level Best, and Other Stories. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872, 238. Google Books.

Laudonnière, René Goulaine de. A Notable Historie Containing Foure Voyages Made by Certayne French Captaynes vnto Florida. London: Thomas Dawson, 1587, 7. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Montalvo, Garci Rodriguez de. Las Sergas de Esplandian. 1526. Chapter 157, fol. 108v. Google Books.

Image credit: Hondius, Jodocus. Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae: Descriptio D. Franc. Draci, c.1595. Library of Congress. Public domain image.