Pisteology

Pisteology (pronounced pi-stol-uh-jee)

(1) In theology, the branch dealing with the place and authority of faith.

(2) In philosophy, a theory or science of faith.

Circa 1870s: From the German Pisteologie, the construct being the Ancient Greek πίστις (píst(is)) (faith) + -eo- (faith) (akin to peíthein to persuade) + -logie.  The English form is thus understood as píst(is) +-e-‎ + -ology.  The Ancient Greek noun πίστις (pístis) (faith) was from the Primitive Indo-European bheydhtis, the construct being πείθω (peíthō) (I persuade) +‎ -τις (-tis); πεῖσῐς (peîsis) was the later formation.  Although in English constructions it’s used as “faith” (in the theological sense), in the original Greek it could impart (1) trust in others, (2) a belief in a higher power, (3) the state of being persuaded of something: belief, confidence, assurance, (4) trust in a commercial sense (credit worthiness), (5) faithfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, fidelity, (6) that which gives assurance: treaty, oath, guarantee, (7) means of persuasion: argument, proof and (8) that which is entrusted.  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).  The alternative spellings are pistology & pistiology.  Pisteology is a noun and pisteological is an adjective; the noun plural is pisteologies.

The early use of pisteology was in the context of theology and it appears in an 1880 essay on the matter of faith by the Congregational minister Alfred Cave (1847–1900).  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) refers to the word as exclusively theological but in later editions noted it was also used to mean “a theory or science of faith”, reflecting its adoption in academic philosophy although the embrace must have been tentative because pisteology was (and remains) “rare”, listed as such by those lexicographers who give it a mention though what is clear is that it seems never to have been cross-cultural, remaining implicitly a thing of Christendom.  In a sense, it’s surprising it hasn’t appeared more, especially in the troubled twentieth century when matters of “faith and doubt” were questioned and explored in a flurry of published works.  Perhaps it was a division of academic responsibility, the devoted studying belief and the scholars the institution, the pragmatic settling for the Vatican’s (unofficial) fudge: “You don’t have to believe it but you must accept it.”

Pondering cross-cultural pisteology: Lindsay Lohan carrying the Holy Qur'an (Koran), Brooklyn, New York, May 2015.

While clearly the universities got involved and the intersection between pisteology epistemology (the study of knowledge and belief) does seem obvious to the point when the former might be thought a fork of the latter, its roots and concerns remained theological and Christian, exploring how faith functions in religious traditions, doctrines, and human understanding of the divine and many famous thinkers have written works which may be thought pisteological landmarks.  Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote so widely it’s probably possible to find something which tracks the path of some direction in Christianity but underling it all was his famous admission: “I believe in order to understand”, more than a subtle hint that faith is a prerequisite for true comprehension of divine truth.  Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) lived 800-odd year later and was better acquainted with the philosophers of the Classical age.  Aquinas is sometimes said to have “integrated” Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology and while this is misleading, he understood the spirit of reasoning from Antiquity was compelling and in a way that’s influential still, he argued faith and reason complement each other, defined faith as a virtue by which the intellect assents to divine truth under the influence of the will.  A central figure in Reformed theology, John Calvin (1509-1564) explored faith extensively in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. He described faith as a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded on the promise of the gospel and revealed by the Holy Spirit.  Martin Luther (1483–1546) probably thought this not so much a fudge as a needless layer, arguing that it was faith alone (rather than a virtuous life of good works) by which one would on judgement day be judged.  Faith then was the cornerstone of salvation in his doctrine of sola fide (faith alone), a rigor which would have pleased John Calvin (1509–1564).  The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was not a theologian but his writings had an influence on theological thought and in a nod to Aquinas highlighted the paradox of faith and what he called “leap of faith” as essential to authentic religious life and although he never explicitly discussed the “You don’t have to believe it but you must accept it” school of thought, it does seem implicit in his paradox.

For the bedside table: Karl Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) is often styled “the father of modern liberal theology” and to him faith was an experiential relationship with the divine, rooted in a “feeling of absolute dependence.”  More conservative theologians didn’t much object to that notion but they probably thought of him something in the vein William Shakespeare (1564–1616) in Julius Caesar (1599) had Caesar say of Cassius: “He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”  John Henry Newman (1801–1890) was one of those conservatives (albeit something of a convert to the cause who had a strange path to Rome) and he wrote much about the development of doctrine and the role of faith in understanding divine truth but it was the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1882-1968) whose Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics (in English translation a fourteen-volume work of some six-million words and published between 1932 and 1967) that appeared the modern world’s most ambitious attempt to recover the proclamation of the word of God as the place where God's message of salvation meets sinful man: faith as an act of trust and obedience to God's self-revelation.  Barth’s contribution to pisteology was a rejection of natural theology, emphasizing faith as a response to God's revelation in Jesus Christ; it wasn’t exactly Martin Luther without the anti-Semitism but the little monk’s ghost does loom over those fourteen volumes.  Pius XII (1879-1958; pope 1939-1958), a fair judge of such things, thought Barth the most important theologian since Aquinas.

Barth though was a formalist, writing for other theologians who breathed rarefied intellectual air and he didn’t make pisteology easy or accessible and although Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) claimed to have read all fourteen volumes while serving the twenty year sentence (he was lucky to receive) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, (he had more time than most to devote to the task), he did acknowledge the conceptual and textual difficulties.  Barth seems not to have done much for Speer’s faith in God but, being Speer, he took from the six million works what suited him and decided he was atoning for his sins: “There is much that I still cannot comprehend, chiefly because of the terminology and the subject.  But I have had a curious experience.  The uncomprehended passages exert a tranquilizing effect.  With Barth's help I feel in balance and actually, in spite of all that's oppressive, as if liberated.”  Speer continued: “I owe to Barth the insight that man’s responsibility is not relieved just because evil is part of his nature. Man is by nature evil and nevertheless responsible.  It seems to me there is a kind of complement to that idea in Plato’s statement that for a man who has committed a wrong ‘there is only one salvation: punishment.’  Plato continues: ‘Therefore it is better for him to suffer this punishment than to escape it; for it sustains man’s inward being.’”

For those who want to explore Christocentric pisteology, Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik really isn’t a good place to start because his texts are difficult and that’s not a consequence of the English translation; those who have read the original in German make the same point.  Nor will those tempted by his reputation to try one of his shorter works be likely to find an easier path because his style was always one of dense prose littered with words obscure in meaning to all but those who had spent time in divinity departments.  When writing of German Lutheran theologian Isaak August Dorner (1809–1884) in Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (1946) he wrote: “The assertion of a receptivity in man, the Catholic-type conception of the gratia preveniens which runs alongside this receptivity, the mystical culmination of this pisteology, are all elements of a speculative basic approach which can even be seen here, in Dorner.”  Is it any wonder some might confuse pisteology with piscatology (the study of fishing)?

Cockatrice

Cockatrice (pronounced kok-uh-tris)

(1) A mythological monster, hatched supposedly by a serpent from the egg of a rooster and thus represented usually with the head, legs, and wings of a rooster, atop the body and tail of a serpent; the alternative name was basilisk.  Depicted usually as being the size and shape of a dragon or wyvern but with some lizard-like characteristics, if so minded it could kill with just a glance and could be slain only by tricking it into seeing its own reflection.  A young cockatrice was a chickatrice.

(2) In the Bible, a venomous serpent.

(3) Figuratively, a mistress; a harlot (obsolete).

(4) Figuratively, a mistress; (obsolete).

(5) Figuratively, any venomous or deadly thing (obsolete).

(6) The cobra (the common name of a number of venomous snakes, most of which belong to the genus Naja) (contested).

1382: From the Middle English cocatrice, from the Middle French cocatris, from the Old French cocatriz, from the Medieval Latin plural form caucātrīces & the unattested Latin calcātrīx (she who treads upon something), the feminine of the unattested calcātor (tracker), the construct built from calcō (tread) or calcā(re) (to tread) (a verbal derivative of calx (heel)) + -tor (the agent suffix).  The Latin was a direct translation of the Greek word ichneúmōn or ikhneúmōn which carried the same meaning.  Cockatrice is a noun; the noun plural is cockatrices.

The origin of the cockatrice certainly in ancient and frightening & fantastic beasts are common in the fables of many cultures but the one closest in appearance is thought to be one from the legends of Ancient Egypt, the mortal enemy of the crocodile, which it tracks down and kills.  In the way stories became mangled & tangled as they travelled between languages and across borders, in the Christian West, the cockatrice became conflated with the basilisk (a fire-breathing, snake-like dragon also with a murderous glance).  In the medieval era, such morphing was not uncommon and the popular association with a cock led to the legend the creature was born of a serpent, hatched from a cock's egg although there’s little to suggest there was much of a link with crocodile.  The connection with serpents persisted and it appears several times in the King James Version (KJV, 1611)) of the Bible, used to translate a Hebrew word meaning “serpent”.  In heraldry, it was used as a rampant, a beast half cock, half serpent and in slang it was used from the late sixteenth century to mean “a woman of loose virtue; a harlot”, an indication men are never short of sources when searching for ways to disparage women.  Etymologists note frequent references to “cockatrice” being a words used to describe the cobra, presumably because of the snake’s unusual hooded head and its habit of rearing up and “staring” but there appears to be scant evidence of actual use.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

The cockatrice appears in the Christian Bible’s Old Testament (Isaiah 11:5-11; King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

5. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.

9. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

10. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

11. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

Isaiah was the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament.  In Isaiah 11, the prophet is describing to his listeners the nature of the world during the rule of a mysterious future king of Israel.  This king’s rule will be global, over the earth, men & animals and all beasts, prey & predator, will lie down together and eat together, all without bloodshed or death; in peace, together shall they live.  To illustrate how different will be this paradise, Isaiah says both the baby and the young child safely ill play surrounded by deadly, venomous snakes and be safe even from a cockatrice.  Readers were free to interpret the verse literally as an imagining the very nature of animals will change under this rule or, metaphorically, that the new regime of the Messiah's kingdom will usher in what would now be called a “new world order”, one in which all nations and peoples peacefully co-exist.  Isaiah needs to be read in conjunction with the Book of Revelation which says at the very end of history, in the new heaven and new earth, there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain and all wickedness will be banished from the Earth.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) lived in the England of the Elizabethan age, a time when the cockatrice was a fixture in popular culture and he used references to the mythological beast and its ability to kill with just a glance or as Shakespeare would put it, its “death-darting eye”, having the duchess in Richard III (1594) say in Act 4, Scene 1:

O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursèd womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

Crooked Hillary Clinton: How Shakespeare would have imagined “death-darting eyes”.

He returned to the allusion in Act 3, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (1597) in the words of the doomed Juliet:

What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?
This torture should be roared in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'Ay,'
And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
I am not I if there be such an 'I,'
Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'Ay.'
If he be slain, say 'Ay,' or if not, 'No.'
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

From before Antiquity to the horror films of the twenty-first century, fantastical beasts have often appeared and while most have been created to frighten, some have been more whimsical, such as the Jabberwock which first appeared in the nonsense poem Jabberwocky, written by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) and included in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).  The poem was about the killing of the fearsome Jabberwock and is part of what makes the two books among the most enjoyable in English literature but in literary theory “jabberwocky” has also been co-opted to mean “a form of nonsense; unintelligible speech or writing”, the connection illustrated by one fragment from the poem:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The author helpfully had Humpty Dumpty say that brillig means “four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you start broiling things for dinner” but generally allowed his readers to make of the words what they will which probably was the best approach.  Alice in Wonderland was fun but those who followed would make linguistic gymnastics something else and James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Finnegans Wake (1939) was no fun for most although Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) claimed to find “a laugh on just about every page” and for A Clockwork Orange (1962) created his own slang argot, derived from a number of linguistic traditions.  As far as is known, Joyce never discussed jabberwocky but Burgess acknowledged the debt.  Other famous beasts include the leviathan & behemoth.  The leviathan was a truly massive sea creature rooted in ancient Middle Eastern and biblical texts, portrayed typically as a monstrous sea serpent or dragon, representing the primal forces of chaos and the ocean.  The behemoth was also of biblical origin and described generally as a massive, earth-bound beast, often symbolizing power and strength, thus the frequent use of the ox as an image, the creature dominating the land as the leviathan does the oceans.

Behemoth: 2020 Freightliner M2-106 in silver over black leather upholstery with alligator-hide inserts and timber trim, modified by Western Hauler, Fort Worth, Texas.

The big (and in recent decades they have got very big) US pick-up trucks appals some sensitive souls who sometimes damn the things as “behemoths” but for those for whom even they weren’t big enough, there were companies which would add enough bling to the first generation (2003-2023) of the Freightliner M2 medium-duty truck to some actually bought the things for private use.

The very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) used leviathan and behemoth as metaphors to explore concepts of social and political power in his works, especially in his famous book Leviathan (1651) and the lesser-known Behemoth (published posthumously in 1682), each creature deployed as a literary device to symbolize different forms of political structures and conflicts.  In Leviathan, the sea creature represented strong, centralized government or sovereign power, the state which Hobbes regarded as not merely desirable but essential.  He envisioned society as a “body politic” in which all individuals come together under a single, absolute authority to escape the chaos of the natural state, which Hobbes described in his most memorable phrase: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  The Leviathan represented the overarching power of the sovereign, something necessary to maintain order and peace, a vision of a government which could (and should) act decisively to suppress internal conflicts and keep external threats at bay, making it at once a protector and potentially an oppressor; little wonder then Leviathan has been found on the bookshelf of more than one overthrown tyrant.  In Behemoth, Hobbes used the monster of the land when describing the chaotic and destructive nature of civil war, focusing specifically focusing the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century and the theme of the book was the way parties and political factions and ideologies can tear a society apart.  Unlike the stabilizing leviathan, behemoth represents the forces of disorder and division that arise when people reject central authority and plunge into conflict.  It’s a cautionary tale, a warning that when men live in a society lacking a unifying authority, things will devolve into factionalism, chaos and political instability, the final result something like the “state of nature” in which life descended to something “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”.

Biscione

Biscione (pronounced bisch-sho-nee)

Pre 1100: An Italian word, the construct being bisci(a) (snake) +‎ -one (the augmentative suffix).  Biscione is a masculine augmentative of the Italian feminine noun biscia (grass snake, a corrupted form of the Late Latin & Vulgar Latin bīstia), from bēstia (beast) of unknown origin.  Biscione is a noun; the noun plural biscioni (used in English also as bisciones).

(1) In heraldry, a heraldic device consisting of a large snake “giving birth” to a child through its mouth (not devouring the infant as it may appear).

(2) A surname of Italian origin.

The Biscione is known also as the vipera (viper) and in the Milanese dialect as the bissa.  In heraldry, the symbol is used as a charge (any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon (shield)), over Argent (a tincture of silver which appears usually as a shade of white) and often in Azure (a range of blue).  The snake is depicted in the act of “giving birth” to a human through its mouth and while anatomically improbable, it was doubtless always understood and something symbolic.  Historically, what emerged was depicted as a child but in the more sensitive twentieth century this tended to be blurred into something recognizable merely as “human of no distinct age or gender”.  It has been the emblem of the Italian Visconti family for almost a millennium.

A biscione used by the Visconti family on their crest and coat of arms.

The origins of the symbol are obscure but there are the inevitable (and of the fanciful) medieval tales including that it was (1) taken as a prize of war from a standard or shield of a Saracen killed by Ottone Visconti (1207–1295; Archbishop of Milan 1262-1295 and the founder of the Visconti dynasty) during the Barons' Crusade (1239-1241) or (2) to honor Ottone Visconti for having killed the drake Tarantasio, an enormous snake which dwelled in Milan’s now vanished Lake Gerundo and ate the local children; the serpent feared also because its venomous breath polluted the water and made men ill.  Less bloodthirsty (and thus less popular) is the story it all began with a bronze souvenir in the shape of a serpent, brought to the city from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul in the Republic of Türkiye) by Arnolf II of Arsago (circa 950-1018; Archbishop of Milan 998-1018).  It’s said the archbishop used the symbol wisely during the episcopate and it became so associated with Milan the city and its citizens embraced its use.  Most prefer the tale from the thirteenth century Crusade and it would explain why the child was often said to be “a moor”.

Although it’s not thought related, serpents have much occupied the minds of those in Christendom, notably the one coiled around the lush foliage in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve with forbidden fruit, her weakness leading to the downfall of mankind and our eternal sin, thus establishing one of the central tenants of the Church: Women are to blame for everything bad.  There’s also a reference to beasts and a new-born child about to be devoured in the vivid imagery of chapter 12:1-4 in the New Testament’s Book of Revelation (King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Not wholly improbable as an Eve for the third millennium, while on holiday in Thailand, just after Christmas 2017, Lindsay Lohan was bitten by a snake and while said to have made a full recovery, there was never any word on fate of serpent.  The syndicated story on the internet attracted comment from the grammar Nazis who demanded it be verified the snake really was taking a Thai  holiday.

Alfa Romeo and the biscione

Alfa Romeo Automobiles SpA is based in the northern Italian city of Turin and for much of the twentieth it wrote an illustrious history on road and track before losing its way in the 1980s; it’s now one of the fourteen brands under the corporate umbrella of the multinational Stellantis (headquartered (for various reasons) in the Netherlands).  Alfa Romeo was founded in 1910 as A.L.F.A. (Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (which translates literally as “the Anonymous car company of Lombardy”).  It was in 1915 A.L.F.A. was acquired by Italian Engineer Nicola Romeo (1876–1938) who in 1920 added his name and turned the company into an industrial conglomerate encompassing not only passenger & racing cars but also a product range as diverse as heavy machinery, aero engines and a bus & truck division.

Biscione bas relief, Piazza Duomo Oggiaro, Milan.

The Anonima (anonymous) was a reference to the legal structure of a “Società anonima” (S.A) which designated a class of limited liability company, a common device still in countries which have maintained the traditions of the Code Napoléon (the codified Napoleonic civil law (1804)).  Originally, it provided for shareholders remaining anonymous and able to collect dividends by surrendering coupons attached to their share certificates in an “over-the-counter” transaction, paid to whoever held the paper.  The attraction was the certificates could be transferred in secret and thus nobody (not the company management nor the regulatory authorities) necessarily knew who owned the shares.  That system was obviously open to abuse and abuse there was, tax evasion, money laundering, related party transactions and bribery soon rife, prompting governments to legislate and while SAs and the later SpAs (Società per azioni, most accurately translated as “joint-stock company”) no longer offer shareholders the same degree of anonymity, devices such as intricate structures made up of trusts, and holding companies can be used to at least obscure the identities of ultimate beneficiaries.  The tradition of concealment continues in many places, including common law jurisdictions in which the Code Napoléon was never part of the legal system.  Some are more helpful than others and although, despite the urban myth, it’s apparently never been possible to turn up at the counter of the famously “flexible” Delaware Division of Corporations and register an entity as being owned by "M. Mouse, D. Duck & E. Bunny", the US state is said still to be “most accommodating”.

Whether true or not, the industry legend is the Alfa Romeo logo was adopted because high on the wall of the Filarete Tower in Milan’s Piazza Castello were mounted several heraldic interpretations of the Biscione Visconteo, the coat of arms of the city of Milan and of the Visconti family which first ruled it in 1277 when Ottone Visconti assumed the Dominium Mediolanense (Lordship of Milan).  Late in 1910, waiting for the No. 14 tram to arrive for his journey home, was a draftsman from the A.L.F.A. design office and he was so taken with the symbol he sketched the first take of the corporate logo which remains in use to this day.  The biscione and a representation of Milan's official flag (a red cross on a white background) are the two elements which have remained constant in all nine version of the logos used in the last 115 years-odd.

The Alfa Romeo logo since 1910.

The original (1910-1915) version featured a biscione (either devouring or producing a child, Moor or Ottoman Turk (depending on which legend one prefers)) while the crown on the snake's head functioned to distinguish the official Milanese symbol from that used by the Visconti family for various escutcheons while the words ALFA at the top and MILANO at the bottom were separated by two figure-eight "Savoy Knots," a symbol of the royal House of Savoy, a branch of which reigned in Italy between unification in 1861 and the abolition of the monarchy in 1946.  The “Romeo” name was appended in 1920, reflecting the change in the corporate identity and in 1925, a gold laurel leaf surround was added to commemorate the Alfa Romeo P2’s victories in the European Grand Prix at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Alfa Romeo Typo 158s (Alfetta), 1950 British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit, England, May 1950.  The Alfettas finished 1-2-3.

When by referendum, the Italian people voted to establish a republic (the monarchy tainted by its support for the fascist regime (1922-1943) of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943)), the knots from royal regalia were replaced by some nondescript waves but more obvious was the switch from the multi-color design to a simple gold-on-black, a change necessitated by the damage the country’s industrial capacity had suffered during the war, one victim of which was the factory producing the badges.  The simplified version was short-lived but suited the times because it was easier to mass-produce with the available machine tools and the heterochromatic look would return in 1950, the year the pre war Alfa Romeo tipo 158 (Alfetta) would prevail in the in inaugural Formula One World Championship, the tipo 159 retaining the driver’s title the following year.

Umberto II while Prince of Piedmont, a 1928 portrait by Anglo-Hungarian painter Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László).  Note the ruffled collar and bubble pantaloons.

Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia (1904–1983) was the last king of Italy, his reign as Umberto II lasting but thirty-four days during May-June 1946; Italians nicknamed him the Re di Maggio (May king) although some better-informed Romans preferred regina di maggio (May queen).  At the instigation of the US and British political representatives of the allied military authorities, in April 1944 he was appointed regent because it was clear popular support for Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947; king of Italy 1900-1946) had collapsed.  Despite Victor Emmanuel’s reputation suffering by association, his relationship with the fascists had often been uneasy and, seeking means to blackmail the royal house, Mussolini’s spies compiled a dossier (reputably several inches thick), detailing the ways of his son’s private life.  Then styled Prince of Piedmont, the secret police discovered Umberto was a sincere and committed Roman Catholic but one unable to resist his "satanic homosexual urges” and his biographer agreed, noting the prince was "forever rushing between chapel and brothel, confessional and steam bath" often spending hours “praying for divine forgiveness.”  After a referendum abolished the monarchy, Umberto II lived his remaining 37 years in exile, never again setting foot on Italian soil.  His turbulent marriage to Princess Marie-José of Belgium (1906-2001) produced four children but historians consider it quite possible none of them were his.

Benito Mussolini in 1930 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 SS, Rome, April 1931.  With periodically updated coachwork, the 6C was in almost continuous production between 1927-1954, a few hundred made even during World War II (1939-1945).

In 1960 only detail changes to the logo were introduced but in 1972, not only did the wavy line vanish but so did “Milano”, a recognition the company had opened a new production plant at Pomigliano d'Arco near the southern city of Naples, built to construct the new Alfasud (the construct being Alfa + sud (south)), something encouraged (and subsidized) by the national government, anxious to reduce crime and unemployment in the south.  The Alfasud was an outstanding design but, for a variety of reasons including troubled industrial relations and political instability, the Neapolitan plant was beset by problems which were visited upon the unfortunate Alfasud, many of which rusted away with some haste.  As if to exorcise the memory of the Alfasud, in 1982 the design was again revised, producing what has to date proved the longest-lasting iteration, remaining in use until 2014.  It was essentially a modernization exercise, the graphics simplified and the font switched to the starker Futura, the revision in 2015 more subtly austere still.

Alfa Romeo Giulia Super Biscione: A 1969 model in Bianco Farina (Pininfarina White, left) and the C-Pillar Biscione on a 1970 model in Rosso Alfa (Alfa Red, right).  Farina is reference to the Italian design and coach-building house with which Alfa Romeo had a long association, the factory at times also offering Rosso Pininfarina (Pininfarina Red) and Blu Pininfarina (Pininfarina Blue).

The “Biscione” version (1969-1973) of the Alfa Romeo Giulia (type 105, 1962-1978) was mechanically identical to other Giulias built at the same time, the package exclusively a trim level, the same concept Ford used in their “Ghia” ranges (the badge added to various blinged-up models between 1973-2008).  The trim features which appeared on the Biscione Giulias weren’t always exclusive, some appearing at various times on other Giulias but there seems to have been a standard specification for the Bisciones (that plural form preferable in this context) and all included:

A sunken Alfa Romeo badge on the trunk (boot) lid.
A chrome centre strip on the hood (bonnet).
Chrome strips on A pillar & roof.
Chrome spears on the rockers (used also on the Berlina models and different from those on other Gulias).
Serpent badges (ie biscioni, in green or black) on the C-pillars (external).
A partially black headliner.
Chrome surroundings on the B pillar interior light switches.
Velour & moquette used for floor coverings rather than rubber mats.

Silvio Berlusconi, Fininvest and the biscione.

M2 corporate logo (left) and Fininvest corporate logo (right).

Finanziaria di Investimento-Fininvest SpA (Fininvest) is a holding company which holds the equity division of the Berlusconi family.  It was founded in 1975 by the estimable Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023; prime minister of Italy 1994-1995, 2001-2006 & 2008-2011) who has thus far proved irreplaceable in the part he played on the European political stage.  Like many things associated with Mr Berlusconi, Fininvest has not been without controversy including intriguing accounts of the way its initial capital was provided in physical cash (unfortunately whether the bundles of lira notes were emptied from suitcases, paper bags or potato sacks has never been disclosed) and the curious phenomena of the way in which laws under which the company or its founder were facing charges mysteriously were repealed prior to the cases going to trial.  Fininvest is now chaired by Mr Berlusconi’s oldest daughter, Maria "Marina" Berlusconi (b 1966).

Monolith

Monolith (pronounced mon-uh-lith)

(1) A column, large statue etc, formed originally from a single block of stone but latter day use applies the term to structures formed from any material and not of necessity a single piece (although technically such a thing should be described using the antonym: “polylith”.

(2) Used loosely, a synonym of “obelisk”.

(3) A single block or piece of stone, especially when used in architecture or sculpture and applied most frequently to large structures.

(4) Something (or an idea or concept) having a uniform, massive, redoubtable, or inflexible quality or character.

(5) In architecture, a large hollow foundation piece sunk as a caisson and having a number of compartments that are filled with concrete when it has reached its correct position

(6) An unincorporated community in Kern County, California, United States (initial capital).

(7) In chemistry, a substrate having many tiny channels that is cast as a single piece, which is used as a stationary phase for chromatography, as a catalytic surface etc.

(8) In arboreal use, a dead tree whose height and size have been reduced by breaking off or cutting its branches (use rare except in UK horticultural use).

1829: The construct was mono- + lith.  Mono was from the Ancient Greek, a combining form of μόνος (monos) (alone, only, sole, single), from the Proto-Hellenic mónwos, from the primitive Indo-European mey- (little; small).  It was related to the Armenian մանր (manr) (slender, small), the Ancient Greek μανός (manós) (sparse, rare), the Middle Low German mone & möne, the West Frisian meun, the Dutch meun, the Old High German muniwa, munuwa & munewa (from which German gained Münne (minnow).  As a prefix, mono- is often found in chemical names to indicate a substance containing just one of a specified atom or group (eg a monohydrate such as carbon monoxide; carbon attached to a single atom of oxygen). 

In English, the noun monolith was from the French monolithe (object made from a single block of stone), from Middle French monolythe (made from a single block of stone) and their etymon the Latin monolithus (made from a single block of stone), from the Ancient Greek μονόλιθος (monólithos) (made from a single block of stone), the construct being μονο- (mono-) (the prefix appended to convey the meaning “alone; single”), from μόνος (monos) + λίθος (líthos) (a stone; stone as a substance).  The English form was cognate with the German monolith (made from a single block of stone).  The verb was derived from the noun.  Monolith is a noun & verb, monolithism, monolithicness & monolithicity are nouns, monolithic is an adjective and monolithically is an adverb; the noun plural is monoliths.  The adjective monolithal is listed as "an archaic form of monolithic".

Monolith also begat two back-formations in the technical jargon of archaeology: A “microlith” is (1) a small stone tool (sometimes called a “microlite”) and (2) the microscopic acicular components of rocks.  A “megalith” is (1) a large stone slab making up a prehistoric monument, or part of such a monument, (2) A prehistoric monument made up of one or more large stones and (3) by, extension, a large stone or block of stone used in the construction of a modern structure.  The terms seem not to be in use outside of the technical literature of the profession.  The transferred and figurative use in reference to a thing or person noted for indivisible unity is from 1934 and is now widely used in IT, political science and opinion polling.  The adjective monolithic (formed of a single block of stone) was in use by the early nineteenth century and within decades was used to mean “of or pertaining to a monolith”, the figurative sense noted since the 1920s.  The adjective prevailed over monolithal which seems first to have appeared in a scientific paper in 1813.  The antonym in the context of structures rendered for a single substance is “polylith” but use is rare and multi-component constructions are often described as “monoliths”.  The antonym in the context of “anything massive, uniform, and unmovable, especially a towering and impersonal cultural, political, or social organization or structure” is listed by many sources as “chimera” but terms like “diverse”, “fragmented” etc are usually more illustrative for most purposes.  In general use, there certainly has been something of a meaning-shift.  While "monolith" began as meaning "made of a single substance", it's now probably most used to covey the idea of "something big & tall" regardless of the materials used.

One of the Monoliths as depicted in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 

The mysterious black structures in Sir Arthur C Clarke's (1917–2008) Space Odyssey series (1968-1997) became well known after the release in 1968 of Stanley Kubrick's (1928–1999) film of the first novel in the series, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Although sometimes described as “obelisk”, the author noted they were really “monoliths”.  In recent years, enthusiasts, mischief makers and click-bait hunters have been erecting similar monoliths in remote parts of planet Earth, leaving them to be discovered and publicized.  With typical alacrity, modern commerce noted the interest  and soon, replicas were being offered for sale, a gap in the market for Christmas gifts between US$10,000-45,000 apparently identified.

The terms “obelisk” and “monolith” are sometimes used interchangeably and while in the case of many large stone structures this can be appropriate, the two terms have distinct meanings.  Classically, an obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow pillar that tapers to a pyramid-like point at the top.  Obelisks often are carved from a single piece of stone (and are thus monolithic) but can also be constructed in sections and archaeologists have discovered some of the multi-part structures exists by virtue of necessity; intended originally to be a single piece of stone, the design was changed after cracks were detected.  A monolith is a large single block stone which can be naturally occurring (such as a large rock formation) or artificially shaped; monoliths take many forms, including obelisks, statues and even buildings.  Thus, while an obelisk can be a monolith, not all monoliths are obelisks.

Highly qualified German content provider Chloe Vevrier (b 1968) standing in front of the Luxor Obelisk, Paris 2010.

The Luxor Obelisk sits in the centre of the Place de la Concorde, one of the world’s most photographed public squares.  Of red granite, 22.5 metres (74 feet) in height and weighing an estimated 227 tonnes (250 short (US) tons), it is one of a pair, the other still standing front of the first pylon of the Luxor Temple on the east bank of the Nile River, Egypt.  The obelisk arrived in France in May 1833 and less than six month later was raised in the presence of Louis Philippe I (1773–1850; King of the French 1830-1848).  The square hadn’t always been a happy place for kings to stand; in 1789 (then known as the Place de Louis XV) it was one of the gathering points for the mobs staging what became the French Revolution and after the storming of the Bastille (of of history’s less dramatic events despite the legends), the square was renamed Place de la Revolution, living up to the name by being the place where Louis XVI (1754–1793; King of France 1774-1792), Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) and a goodly number of others were guillotined.  Things were calmer by 1833 when the obelisk was erected.

The structure was a gift to France by Pasha Mehmet Ali (1769–1849, Ottoman Albanian viceroy and governor of Egypt 1805-1848) and in return Paris sent a large mechanical clock which to this day remains in place in the clock tower of the mosque at the summit of the Citadel of Cairo and of the 28 obelisks, six remain in Egypt with the rest in various displays around the world.  Some 3000 years old, in its original location the Obelisk contributed to scientific history wine in circa 250 BC Greek geographer & astronomer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (circa 276 BC–circa 195 BC) used the shadow it cast to calculate the circumference of the Earth.  By comparing the shadow at a certain time with one in Alexandria, he concluded that the difference in distance between Alexandria and Aswan was seven degrees and 14 minutes and from this he could work out the Earth’s circumference.

Monolithic drivers

In IT, the term “monolithic driver” was used to refer to a software driver designed to handle multiple hardware components or functionalities within a single, large, and cohesive codebase.  In this it differed from earlier (and later) approaches which were modular or layered, the functionality is split into separate, smaller drivers or modules, each of which handled specific tasks or addressed only certain hardware components.  Monolithic drivers became generally available in the late 1980s, a period when both computer architecture and operating systems were becoming more sophisticated in an attempt to overcome the structural limitations imposed by the earlier designs.  It was in the era many of the fundamental concepts which continue to underpin modern systems were conceived although the general adoption of some lay a decade or more away.

During the 1970s & 1980s, many systems were built with a tight integration between software and hardware and some operating systems (OS) were really little more than “file loaders” with a few “add-ons”, and the limitations imposed were “worked-around” by some programmers who more-or-less ignored the operating system an address the hardware directly using “assemblers” (a flavor of “machine-code”).  That approach made for fast software but at the cost of interoperability and compatibility, such creations hardware specific rather using an OS as what came to be known as the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) but at the time, few OSs were like UNIX with its monolithic kernel in which the core OS services (file system management, device drivers etc.) were all integrated into a single large codebase.  As the market expanded, it was obvious the multi-fork approach was commercially unattractive except for the odd niche.

After its release in 1981, use of the IBM personal computers (PC) proliferated and because of its open (licence-free) architecture, an ecosystem of third party suppliers arose, producing a remarkable array of devices which either “hung-off” or “plugged-in” a PC; the need for hardware drivers grew.  Most drivers at the time came from the hardware manufacturers themselves and typically were monolithic (though not yet usually described as such) and written usually for specific hardware and issues were rife, a change to an OS or even other (apparently unrelated) hardware or software sometimes inducing instability or worse.  As operating systems evolved to support more modularity, the term “monolithic driver” came into use to distinguish these large, single-block drivers from the more modular or layered approaches that were beginning to emerge.

It was the dominance of Novell’s Netware (1983-2009) on PC networks which compelled Microsoft to develop Windows NT (“New Technology”, 1993) and it featured a modular kernel architecture, something which made the distinction between monolithic and modular drivers better understood and as developers increasingly embraced the modular, layered approach which better handled maintainability and scalability.  Once neutral, the term “monolithic driver” became something of a slur in IT circles, notably among system administrators (“sysadmins” or “syscons”, the latter based on the “system console”, the terminal on a mainframe hard-wired to the central processor) who accepted ongoing failures of this and that as inherent to the business but wanted to avoid a SPoFs (Single Point of Failure).

In political science, the term “monolithic” is used to describe a system, organization, or entity perceived as being unified, indivisible, and operating with a high degree of internal uniformity, often with centralized control. When something is labeled as monolithic, it implies that it lacks diversity or internal differentiation and presents a singular, rigid structure or ideology.  Tellingly, the most common use of the term is probably when analyzing electoral behavior and demonstrating how groups, societies or sub-sets of either. Although often depicted in the media as “monolithic” in their views, voting patterns or political behavior are anything but and there’s usually some diversity.  In political science, such divergences within defined groups are known as “cross-cutting cleavages”.

It’s used also of political systems in which a regime is structured (or run) with power is highly concentrated, typically in a single dictator or ruling party.  In such systems, usually there is little effective opposition and dissent is suppressed (although some of the more subtle informally tolerate a number of “approved dissenters” who operated within understood limits of self-censorship.  The old Soviet Union (the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) 1922-1991), the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979-), the Republic of China (run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (1949-) and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) 1948-) are classic examples of monolithic systems; while the differences between them were innumerable, structurally all were (or are) politically monolithic.  The word is used also as a critique in the social sciences, Time magazine in April 2014 writing of the treatment of “Africa” as a construct in Mean Girls (2004):  “Like the original Ulysses, Cady is recently returned from her own series of adventures in Africa, where her parents worked as research zoologists. It is this prior “region of supernatural wonder” that offers the basis for the mythological reading of the film. While the notion of the African continent as a place of magic is a dated, rather offensive trope, the film firmly establishes this impression among the students at North Shore High School. To them, Africa is a monolithic place about which they know almost nothing. In their first encounter, Karen inquires of Cady: “So, if you’re from Africa, why are you white?” Shortly thereafter, Regina warns Aaron that Cady plans to “do some kind of African voodoo” on a used Kleenex of his to make him like her—in fact, the very boon that Cady will come to bestow under the monomyth mode.”  It remains a sensitive issue and one of the consequences of European colonial practices on the African continent (something which included what would now be regarded as "crimes against humanity) so the casual use of "Africa" as a monolithic construct is proscribed in a way a similar of "Europe" would not attract criticism.    

The limitations of the utility of the term mean it should be treated with caution and while there are “monolithic” aspects or features to constructs such as “the Third World”, “the West” or “the Global South”, the label does over-simplify the diversity of cultures, political systems, and ideologies within these broad categories.  Even something which is to some degree “structurally monolithic” like the United States (US) or the European Union (EU) can be highly diverse in terms of actual behavior.  In the West (and the modern-day US is the most discussed example), the recent trend towards polarization of views has become a popular topic of study and the coalesced factions are sometimes treated as “monolithic” despite in many cases being themselves intrinsically factionalized.