Pontiff

Pontiff (pronounced pon-tif)

(1) In historic pagan use, any pontifex, high or chief priest.

(2) In historic ecclesiastical use, a bishop.

(3) In modern use, the Roman Catholic Pope, the Bishop of Rome.

1600–1610: From the Middle French pontife, from the Latin pontifex.  The form "pontiff" which emerged in the early 1600s preserved the earlier (pagan) meaning "high priest", from the French pontif, also ultimately from the Latin pontifex (a title used by a Roman high priest).  It was used to refer to the office of bishop in Church Latin but appears not to have been recorded in that sense in English until the 1670s and then, only specifically to "the Bishop of Rome" (ie the Roman Catholic Pope), the Roman Catholic Pope. Pontifical was however used in that sense from the mid fifteenth century but it's now exclusively an alternative name for a pope.  Not any pope however; it’s never used with reference to the Coptic Pope.  The Latin pontifex meant literally “bridge builder”, the construct being pōns (bridge) +‎ fex (suffix representing a maker or producer).  It was used as a title for some of the more senior pagan priests of Ancient Rome, the consensus being it was adopted as a metaphorical device to suggest “one who negotiates between gods and men” although at least one scholar of antiquity suggested the relationship was close to literal in that the social class which supplied the priests was more or less identical with engineers responsible for building bridges.  That may seem more a sociological than theological point but for structural functionalists and other realists, such distinctions seem a bit naff.

Pontifical promotion: Lindsay Lohan in 2019 flirted with an eternity in Hell by purloining a picture of Pope Francis to promote her song Xanax.  The image was taken in 2013, during a visit to the National Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida in Brazil while he was conducting communion.  Captioned “Blessed be the Fruit”, the meme has a digitally altered image of Francis holding up a copy of her debut album Speak (2005) and in the language of the MBAs would probably be classified as a kind of “ambush marketing”.  The prospect of damnation must have been considered but when one has a dropped tune to promote, risks must be taken.

Theodosius I (347–395) was the last Roman Emperor (379-395) to rule both the eastern and western "halves" of the Roman Empire.  Once, on his travels he fell so ill that death seemed inevitable but, upon being baptised, he staged an astonishing recovery and reached Constantinople a devout Christian.  Immediately he set about removing the last vestiges of paganism from the Empire.  It wasn’t the first imperial intervention against paganism.  Earlier, the Emperor Gratian (359–383) had refused the traditional title Pontifex Maximus (chief priest of the state religion) because his bishop thought it unworthy for a Christian emperor to accept a pagan honour, even though it had been worn by emperors since Constantine (circa 272–337).  However, although the Church may have disapproved of pagan baubles for others, by 590, Pope Gregory I (circa 540–604) decided it was fine for him and granted it to himself, explaining a pope was the “…chief priest of Christianity” and that Constantine had claimed to be the “bishop of bishops”, a role long since assumed by popes.  It’s from here the word pontiff evolved into its modern form.

Pope Pius VIII (1761-1830) being carried in Saint Peter's on the Sedia Gestatoria (circa 1825), wearing the papal triple tiara (triple crown) by Emile Jean Horace Vernet (1789-1863).

The sedia gestatoria (gestatorial chair, literally translated from the Italian as "chair for carrying") was the ceremonial throne on which the Pope, pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, was carried on shoulders of courtiers.  An enlarged and elaborate version of the sedan chair, it was constructed with a silk-covered armchair attached to a suppedaneum, on each side of which were two gilded rings; through these passed the long rods with which twelve palafrenieri (footmen) carried the chair on their shoulders.  With origins in antiquity, the sedia gestatoria was for almost a millennium used to convey popes during the grandest of ceremonial occasions in the Basilica of St John Lateran & St Peter's Basilica and, beyond the Holy See, somewhat less grand sedia gestatoria were used by cardinals and others, given sometimes with the blessing of the pope as an expression of especial favor.  Used also by Byzantine emperors, the concept and much of the design was borrowed from the sedias of the Roman Empire although there, use was a little less exclusive, high officials as well as emperors enjoying the distinction and some fun was made of rich individuals (who held no public office) arranging their own.

Pope Benedict XVI in Popemobile passing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (the White House), Washington DC, April 2008.  This Popemobile was based on a Mercedes-Benz ML 430 (W163), powered by a 4.3 litre (260 cubic inch) V8 (M113).

For their public appearances, popes have been driven a variety of vehicles ranging from a Leyland truck to a Ferrari Mondial Cabriolet (1982-1993), the latter believed to be the fastest of the Popemobiles.  Although most associated with the need to provide protection against assassination, the Popemobiles replaced the sedia gestatoria because, although trips such as Benedict's to White House would have been possible with the traditional chair carried by a dozen, attractive young palafrenieri, it would have been time-consuming.  Pope John Paul I (1912–1978; pope August-September 1978) was the last to use the sedia gestatoria and even he had resisted, preferring to walk, acceding only because without the elevated platform, his visibility to the crowd and the television cameras would be so limited.  Pope John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005), the first non-Italian pontiff in over four-hundred years, vetoed the idea of being carried on shoulders and alternatives were created, evolving into the increasingly armored Popemobiles.  The sedia gestatoria thus joined the papal tiara (triple crown) on the shelf of the retired symbols of the church of a grander age.

The Triple Tiara

Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (circa 1545), woodcut by an unknown Venetian artist.  Historians suspect the depiction of the splendid jewel-studded helmet was substantially accurate but the object may simply have been too heavy safely to wear for all but static, set-piece events, the risk of injury to the neck too great.

The papal triple tiara is a crown which has been worn by popes of the Roman Catholic Church since the eighth century.  Traditionally it was worn for their coronation but no pontiff has been so crowned since Saint Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) in 1963 and he abandoned its use after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965).  The name tiara refers to the entire headgear and it has used a three-tiered form since a third crown was added during the Avignon Papacy (1309–1378).  It's also referred to as the triregnum, triregno or Triple Crown.  In a piece of one- (or perhaps four-) upmanship, Suleiman I (Süleyman the Magnificent, 1494-1566, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire 1520-1566) commissioned from Venice a four tier helmet to show, in addition to the authority claimed by popes, he could add the symbol of his imperial power.  Often put on display as the centrepiece of Ottoman regalia to impress visitors, there's no documentary evidence the sultan ever wore the four layer tiara, crowns not part of the tradition and, fashioned from gold and gemstones, it would anyway have been extraordinarily heavy.

A representation of the triregnum combined with two crossed keys of Saint Peter continues to be used as a symbol of the papacy and appears on papal documents, buildings and insignia.  Remarkably, there’s no certainty about what the three crowns symbolize.  Some modern historians link it to the threefold authority of the pope, (1) universal pastor, (2) universal ecclesiastical jurisdiction and (3) temporal power.  Others, including many biblical scholars, interpret the three tiers as meaning (1) father of princes and kings, (2) ruler of the world and (3) vicar of Christ on Earth, a theory lent credence by the words once used when popes were crowned:  Accipe tiaram tribus coronis ornatam, et scias te esse patrem principum et regum, rectorem orbis in terra vicarium Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi, cui est honor et gloria in saecula saeculorum (Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns and know that thou art father of princes and kings, ruler of the world, vicar on earth of our Savior Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever).

Documents in the Vatican Archive suggest by 1130 the papal tiara had been modified to become a conventional (and temporal) symbol of sovereignty over the Papal States.  In 1301 during a dispute with Philip IV (Philip the Fair, 1268–1314, King of France 1285-1314), Pope Boniface VIII (circa 1230–1303; pope 1294-1303) added a second layer to represent a pope’s spiritual authority being superior to an earthly king’s civil domain.  It was Benedict XII (1285–1342; pope 1334-1342 (as the third Avignon pope)) who in 1342 who added the third, said to symbolize the pope’s moral authority over all civil monarchs, and to reaffirm Avignon’s possession.  A changing world and the loss of the Papal States deprived the triple crown of temporal meaning but the silver tiara with the three golden crowns remained to represent the three powers of the Supreme Pontiff: Sacred Order, Jurisdiction and Magisterium.

Pope Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958) in the papal triple tiara, at his coronation, 1939.

Not since 1963 has a pope worn the triple crown.  Then, the newly-elected Pope Saint Paul VI, at the end of his coronation, took the tiara from his head and, in what was said to be a display of humility, placed it on the altar.  In a practical expression of that humility, the tiara was auctioned; the money raised used for missionary work in Africa although, keeping things in house, the winning bidder was the Archdiocese of New York.  Popes Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) and Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) received tiaras as gifts but neither wore them.  Benedict’s, in a nice ecumenical touch, was made by Bulgarian craftsmen from the Orthodox Church in Sofia, a gesture in the name of Christian unity.  Benedict would have appreciated that, having always kept a candle burning in the window to tempt home the wandering daughter who ran off to Constantinople.

Lindsay Lohan, the wandering daughter who ran off to Dubai in Lynn Kiracofe tiara, W Magazine photo- shoot, April 2005.

Gestapo

Gestapo (pronounced guh-stah-poh or guh-shtah-poh (German))

(1) A branch of German police under the Nazi regime (1933-1945) comprising various sections.

(2) A critical descriptor of any organ (usually) of a state which to some degree resembles Nazi Gestapo, especially in the brutal suppression of opposition (often initial lower-case).

(3) By extension, any oppressive force, group or tactic.

1933: An abbreviated form of the German Geheime Staatspolizei (the construct being Ge(heime) Sta(ats)po(lizei)); literally “secret state police”.  Gestapo is a proper noun.

A typically German abbreviation

It’s an urban myth that Hugo Boss designed the uniforms of the Gestapo.  The field officers of force didn't wear uniforms and in that sense operated in the manner of police detectives while some administrative (district) staff wore much the same garb as their SS equivalents.  When operating in occupied territories under wartime conditions, Gestapo wore the same field grey as the SS with a few detail differences in the insignia.  Hugo Boss was one of a number of companies contracted to produce the uniforms of the SS (Schutzstaffel (literally "protection squadron" but translated variously as "protection squad", "security section" etc)).  The SS began (under different names) in 1923 as a party organization with fewer than a dozen members and was the Führer's personal bodyguard.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than two million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of "state within a state".  Of the SS, that's a more accurate description than of many of the apparatuses of the party and state but it was a feature of the Nazi period (not well-understood until after the war) that the internal dynamic was one of a permanent state of institutional struggle for dominance, reflecting Hitler's world view.  Post-war analysis by economists revealed the extent to which this system created structural inefficiencies.

The meme-makers found Hugo Boss's corporate history hard to resist.

The investigative & operational arms of Gestapo comprised the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; Security Police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; Criminal Police), the final structural shape achieved in 1936 when Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) was granted control of all police forces in Germany, this having the general effect of formalizing the all forces branches of the Himmler’ apparatus.  It was a reward for Himmler’s role in the Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives), also called Unternehmen Kolbri (Operation Hummingbird), the bloody purge between 30 June-2 July 1934, when the regime carried out a number of extrajudicial executions, ostensibly to crush what was referred to as "the Röhm Putsch".  The administrative change was notable for marking the point at which control and enforcement of internal security passed from the state to the party, something reinforced in 1943 when Himmler was appointed Interior Minister.

The Gestapo was in 1946 declared a “criminal organization” by the international Military Tribunal (IMT) conducting the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) and although the idea of an organization being criminal seemed novel to many, there were precedents.  Under the Raj, the British India Act (1836) provided that if a man was proved to be a member of the Thuggee (the Thugs, a group of professional robbers and murderers who strangled their victims), regardless of whether his conduct disclosed any actual offence, he might receive a life sentence with hard labor and in laws were passed in the US declaring the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) criminal, a model used in 1919 by the state of California to outlaw “criminal syndication”.  Under Soviet law, someone could even be deemed a member of some organization, even if they didn’t actually belong to it, something of a Stalinist companion the crime of “unspecified offences”.  Germany too had “a bit of previous” in the approach, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) making it a crime to belong to any “anti-government secret organization”, in 1923 gazetting the Communist Party, the National Socialist Party (the Nazis) and the German People’s Freedom Party among the proscribed.

Remarkably (commented upon even at the time), the Orpo (Ordnungspolizei (Order Police, the “policemen” in the usual sense of the word)) and the Kripo weren’t included in the indictment on the basis they remain “civilian organizations”.  In the trial, the defense raised a number of technical points about the state of German law operative at the time the events being judged transpired and the court accepted some of these but anyway on 30 September 1946 ruled the Gestapo a criminal organization, thus implicating all members (excluding only some clerical & ancillary staff and those who had ceased to be employed prior to 1 December 1939.  In legal theory, this meant all operational SiPo staff active after 1 December 1939 could individually have been indicted in accordance with the available evidence and the expectation was that at least those most senior or accused of the more serious crimes would have faced trial.  However, there was no follow-up “Gestapo” trial, “punishment” limited to those Gestapo staff held in Allied internment camps, almost all of who were released after three years.  Although the Allied Control Commission (ACC) which administered occupied Germany allowed local courts to conduct trials, the number of Gestapo officers tried was comparatively low and even when convicted, the period spent in detention prior to trial was deducted from their sentence, a convention not extended to the seven sent to Spandau Prison after the main trial.  Only in first the Russian Zone (and later as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)) were many Gestapo officers charged and sentenced, almost all released after 1957.

For the majority, like many Germans they were subject to the “denazification” process, the prize of which was to gain a “Certificate of Exoneration”, a piece of paper which appealed to the famously sardonic Berlin sense of humor, soon dubbed the Persilschein (Percil Certificate), an allusion to the popular washing detergent which promised to make clothes “whiter than white”.  Most Gestapo staff received a Persilschein and many either resumed their employment in the new German state and ultimately were credited for pension purposes with their service during the Nazi years.

Politicians often reference the Nazis when attaching their opponents and "Gestapo" is a popular slur. 

Even before World War II (1939-1945) began, the word "Gestapo" had entered the English language as a synecdoche for “police state tactics” and it was in this sense Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on 4 June 1945 used the word in a broadcast for the UK general election, warning a Labour government (“the socialists” as he called them) would inevitably create such an apparatus to enforce the myriad of regulations and controls they were proposing:

“….there can be no doubt that socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state. …liberty, in all its forms is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism. …there is to be one state to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This state is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the arch-caucus boss.

A socialist state once thoroughly completed in all its details and aspects… could not afford opposition.  Socialism is, in its essence, an attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils.

But I will go farther.  I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart that no socialist system can be established without a political police.  Many of those who are advocating socialism or voting socialist today will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them.

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent.  They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.  And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.  And where would the ordinary simple folk — the common people, as they like to call them in America — where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?”

Essex man: Clement Attlee at home, mowing the lawn, Stanmore, Essex 19 April 1945.

It was a controversial statement and even many of Churchill’s Conservative Party colleagues distanced themselves from the sentiments.  The man being accused of planning this police state was Clement Attlee (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) who had served as Churchill’s deputy in the National Government (1940-1945) and was one of history’s more improbable figures to be painted an incipient totalitarian.  The electorate wasn’t persuaded and in the 1945 election Labour won a huge majority of seats in what is described as a “landslide” although the numbers are distorted by the UK’s “first-past-the-post” system; Labour gathered well under half the votes cast but that pattern has subsequently been typical of UK elections and in 1951 the Conservatives actually returned to office despite Labour out-polling them.  Attlee had responded to Churchill’s speech the next day:

“The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials.  I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others.  There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day.  I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair.  There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases.  For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual.  It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor.  Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the state, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners. The Conservative Party remains as always a class party.  In twenty-three years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the ranks of the wage earners.  It represents today, as in the past, the forces of property and privilege.  The Labour Party is, in fact, the one party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national life.”

Dunce

Dunce (pronounced duhns)

(1) A dull-witted, stupid, or ignorant person; a dolt.

(2) In educational systems, a person slow to learn (obsolete).

(3) As dunce’s cap, a conical hat once used as a form of shaming and punishment in some educational systems.

1520–1530: Named after the Dunses, Dunites or Dunsmen, term of ridicule applied to the devotees of Scottish Franciscan friar, John Duns Scotus (circa 1265-1308).  The use of SCotUS as the initialism of Supreme Court of the United States is wholly coincidental; cool people anyway prefer “the supremes”.  The many synonyms of dunce include clodpoll, ass, birdbrain, blockhead, bonehead, buffoon, dimwit, dolt, donkey, dope, dork, dullard, dunderhead, fool, goof, half-wit, idiot, ignoramus, imbecile, jerk, numbskull, ignoramus, simpleton, nincompoop & ninny but dunce has a special place because of the historic association with schoolrooms and the utility of the dunce’s cap for cartoonists and, latterly meme-makers.   Dunce is a noun, duncical, duncelike & duncish are adjectives and duncishly is an adverb; the noun plural is dunces.

The first dunces

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1648), oil on canvas by Antoine Nicolas (circa 1606-1661).

The shock of the Reformation, the sixteenth century movement within Western Christianity that mounted a theological and political challenge to the Roman Catholic Church and especially papal authority seems to have colored the popular view of the era and it’s often not appreciated that early in the century, both Church and papacy were in good shape and enjoyed popular support.  Far from being a rigid, unchanging institution, the Medieval Church was inventive and energetic and while it couldn’t be said to be tolerant of dissent, it certainly welcomed regional diversity and after the end of the papal schism (between 1378-1417 popes in France and Italy both asserted their authority over the Church) and the centralization of the institution in Rome, things really were looking good.  It was in this atmosphere that the Church played a part in the great cultural movement which began in Europe in the fifteenth century: The Renaissance (rebirth).

Print by Valentine Green following Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and reputedly inspired by William of Ockham.

The Renaissance re-energized fields as diverse as literature, history, linguistics, mathematics, art, political theory and architecture.  One far-reaching effect (which would take centuries to unfold) was the re-discovery of the works and histories of the Greco-Roman world of antiquity, pursued with a method which resonates still in the modern academic method: Ad fontes (back to the sources).  Those sources, Galen, Cicero, Seneca, Plato et al, transformed study in western Europe, something made possible largely because of the wealth of documents arrived from the libraries, monasteries and palaces of the Byzantine Empire after Constantinople fell to Islamic conquest in 1453.  The scholars and scribes who immersed themselves in these texts came to be known as “the humanists” (from studia humanitatis (the classic curriculum of the academy and related not at all to the modern use of humanist to describe the particularly chauvinistic sect within secular, western intellectual life)).  What the Renaissance humanists did however was uncover the Greek texts of the original Bible and detected in them words a phrases which imparted meanings with theological implications at variance with what had come to be regarded as orthodoxy, based on the Vulgate, translation in Latin of the Bible dating from the late fourth century.

John Duns Scotus (circa 1475), oil on panel by Justus van Gent (1460-1480) & Pedro Berruguete (1450-1504).

The differences imparted by those variations were essentially about whether an individual’s relationships with Christ and God required only that they followed what was written in scripture or whether it depended on the institution of the Church, its ritual, its rules, its priests and of course its taxes and its pope.  In that debate lies the root of so many of the disputes which exist in Christianity still and, interestingly, are not dissimilar to the core of the theological dispute between the Sunni and Shi'a in Islam.  What the humanists did was lay siege to the old dominance in theology of the “scholastics”, themselves divided by an intellectual schism between the via antiqua (the old way) school and the via moderna (the new way), something which must seem familiar to anyone who has cast a glance at the squabbles which have disfigured the Lambeth Conferences since 1968.  Those who thought the old ways were still the best traced their lineage from Italian Dominican friar Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) & Scottish Franciscan friar John Duns Scotus (1265-1308) while the modernists were inspired by English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (circa 1287-1347; he of "Ockham's razor").  It was the still influential Aquinas who in Summa Theologica (1265–1274) created what came to called the “medieval synthesis of faith and reason”, a reconciliation of the teachings of Aristotle (384-322 BC) with scripture and for that he was canonized.  Ockham dismantled the great synthesis and the Church condemned him as a heretic, excommunicating and exiling him although, in an example of having two theological bob each way, never declared his work a heresy.

Those of the via moderna faction however wanted more than ever for the synthesis to be realized but wanted it based on the understanding of scripture (and thus the word of Christ) that their study of the documents from Constantinople had revealed.  Those tied to the old ways of Aquinis and John Duns Scotus (who had for some time been derisively dismissed as the “Dunses”, “Dunites” or “Dunsmen”) they decided deserved the collective “dunce”, those well-schooled and expert in orthodox philosophy but wholly ignorant of the authentic message of Christianity.

Intelligence is famously difficult to measure and even standardized intelligence tests, while they can provide a comparative index of performance of the sub-set taking the test, ultimately measure only a proficiency in answering certain question at a certain time, in a certain place and even then need to be understood in terms of the bias selection in both content and participation.  Based on conventional measures however, the consensus probably is that George W Bush (b 1946; US president 2001-2009) was (1) of somewhere above average intelligence and (2) one of the less intelligent US presidents.  However, his halting delivery (except in informal settings), deliciously mangled syntax and frequent malapropisms certainly made him appear a bit of a dunce and he was a gift to the meme-makers in the early days of the form.  The one from 2002 showing him in an elementary school, holding a book upside down circulated widely but was a fake as analysis of some of the detail revealed; book and dunce’s cap both photoshopped.  The book was America: A Patriotic Primer, by Dr Lynne Cheney (b 1941), wife of Dick Cheney (b 1941; US vice-president 2001-2009).  The first evidence of the dunce’s cap seems to date from the early eighteenth century although the earliest known use of the term appears to be 1791 and by the middle of the next century it was used in English literature and appeared in the work of cartoonists.  Actually used in many educational systems as a device both to assist pedagogy and inflict punishment, they had substantially been abandoned by the 1960s but in some of the more remote regions of the British Isles, dunce’s caps were said still to be in use early in the twenty-first century.

Baroque

Baroque (pronounced buh-rohk or ba-rawk (French)).

(1) Of or relating to a style of architecture and art originating in Italy in the early seventeenth century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, by forms in elevation and plan suggesting movement, and by dramatic effect in which architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts often worked to combined effect (often used with an initial capital letter).

(2) In music, of or relating to the period following the Renaissance, extending (circa 1600-1750) which tended to be characterized by extensive use of the thorough bass and of ornamentation to create dramatic effects. Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, and Antonio Vivaldi were great composers of the baroque era.

(3) In literature, a style of prose thought extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted in character or style.

(4) An irregularly shaped pearl (rare except in technical use).

(5) In pre-modern twentieth century design or engineering, objects intricately or ornately detailed in a way no longer financially viable.

(6) Descriptively (of any object where the technical definitions don’t apply), variously (1) ornate, intricate, decorated, laden with detail & (2) complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.

(7) In stonemasonry & woodworking, chiselled from stone, or shaped from wood, in a garish, crooked, twisted, or slanted sort of way, grotesque or embellished with figures and forms such that every level of relief gives way to more details and contrasts.

(8) Figuratively, something overly or needlessly complicated, applied especially to bureaucracy or instances like accounting systems which either are or appear to be designed to conceal or confuse.

1765: From the French baroque (originally “pearl of irregular shape”), from the Portuguese barroco or barroca (irregularly shaped pearl) which was in some way influenced by either or both the Spanish berrueco or barrueco (granitic crag, irregular pearl, spherical nodule) and the Italian barocco, of uncertain ultimate origin but which may be from the Latin verrūca (wart).  The etymology is however murky and some suggest the Portuguese words may directly have come from the Spanish berruca (a wart) also from the Latin verrūca (a steep place, a height (and thus “a wart” or “an excrescence on a precious stone”).  Most scholars think at some point it probably conflated with Medieval Latin baroco, an invented word for a kind of obfuscating syllogism although one speculative alternative is the word was derived from the work of the Italian painter Federigo Barocci (1528-1612), a founder of the style, but most think this mere coincidence.  The comparative is baroque and the superlative baroquest, both thankfully rare.  Baroque is a noun & adjective, baroqueness is a noun and baroquely is an adverb, the noun plural is baroques.

Marble Court, Palace of Versailles.  Commissioned in the 1660s by Louis XIV (1638–1715; le Roi Soleil (the Sun King), King of France 1643-1715), the Palace of Versailles is thought one of the the finest example of secular Baroque architecture.

Baroque is one of those strange words in English which has evolved to have several layers of meaning including (1) a term which defines epochs in music & architecture, (2) a term referencing the characteristics in the music & architecture most associated with those periods, (3) a term which is a negative criticism of those characteristics, (4) a term which is (by extension) a negative criticism of the excessively ornate in any field (especially in literature) and (5) a term applied admiringly to things intricately or elaborately detailed.  In English, baroque began as an expression of contempt for the style of architecture which most historians believe began in early seventeenth century Rome and which shocked many with its audacious departure from the traditions of the Renaissance which paid such homage to (what was at least imagined to be) the Classical lines from Antiquity.  In architecture, baroque has never been exactly defined, something some explain by analogy with Clement Attlee’s (1883–1967; UK prime-minister 1945-1951) observation that it was as pointless to define socialism as it was an elephant for “...if an elephant ever walked into the room, all would know what it was”.

Karlskirche, Vienna.The Vatican's Saint Peter’s Square is often used to illustrate Baroque architecture and all those colonnades do make quite a statement but Vienna's Karlskirche better represents the way church architects took to the form.  It was commissioned in 1713 by Charles VI (1685–1740; Holy Roman Emperor 1711-1740) after the end of the last great epidemic of Plague as an act of memorial to Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584; Archbishop of Milan 1564-1584), revered as a healer of those suffering from Plague.

Actually, although etymologists would say that's true, that’s not how the word is actually often applied because the terms baroque and rococo are often used interchangeably by non-specialists when speaking of just about any building adorned with the elaborate details not seen since modernism, functionalism & brutalism prevailed.  What distinguishes things is less the actual shapes than the feeling imparted, baroque and rococo both noted for asymmetry, luxuriant detailing, extravagant, unexpected curves & lines and a polychromatic richness but where baroque’s language is of grandeur, weight & monumentalism, rococo’s implementations summon thoughts of lightness, playfulness and frivolity.  Tellingly, rococo, when used as a critique is applied almost always in the negative, suggesting something fussy, pointlessly elaborate and overstated whereas baroque is often used admiringly, literature about the only field in which use is universally negative.  The other common use of baroque in the negative applies to bureaucracy or tangled administrative systems when it’s used as a synonym of byzantine.  For those seeking a rule of thumb, except in literature, baroque tends not to be used negatively and when describing objects which contain ornate or intricate detailing, it’s adopted usually to suggest something complex and beautiful, despite an outward irregularity.  Baroque suggests restraint and good taste (there are many other words with which to describe the garish, crooked, twisted or grotesque) and to damn something as silly, over detailed and laden with decorations with no functional or aesthetic purpose, there’s rococo.

Winter Palace, Saint Petersberg.  Some do find the Winter Palace a bit rococo and there are elements of that in the interior but architecturally, it's an example of early baroque, albeit much modified by later renovations.  It was built as a residence of Peter the Great (Peter I, 1672-1725; Tsar of Russia 1682-1725) and remain an official palace of the Romanov Tsars between 1732 and the 1917 revolutions.  The present appearance reflects both the restorative work of the late 1830s when it was rebuilt after a severe fire and the restoration after the damage suffered during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944).

The use in the language of literary criticism is, like any application of “baroque” in the non-visual arts, inherently imprecise.  Even in music, it’s understood as a period and many of the compositions which emerged from the era do have a style which is recognisably “baroque” but there was also much which was anything but.  The same can of course be said of the European buildings of the same period, the overwhelming majority of which were neither “baroque”, nor memorable, the adjective in what is now called the “built environment” making sense only when used of representational architecture.  That’s a well-understood distinction in architecture and even painting but more contentious in music, something made murkier still by musicologists having divided the baroque into the “early”, “middle” and late”, mapped onto a range of styles which were sometimes particular to one country and sometimes popular in many.  Interestingly, although as a generalized descriptor it needs still to be thought of as something which began as a term of derision in architecture (and it is from there it gained its parameters), there is an earlier, anonymous piece of (not especially serious) opera criticism which labelled a work as du barocque (in the sense of the original meaning “pearl or irregular shape”), damning the music as un-melodic, discordant and a roll-call of just about every known compositional device; something more like a student’s assignment than a opera.  It’s a critique not greatly different from that made some three centuries later by comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953) who’d been displeased by one of comrade Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) operas, calling it формализм (formalism), "chaos instead of music", a self-indulgence of technique by a composer interested only in the admiration of other composers.

L'Estasi di Santa Teresa (The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) is a sculptural group rendered in white marble, set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.  It’s thought one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque and depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, in a state of religious ecstasy, a spear-holding angel watching over her.  The installation in 2007 (briefly one supposes) gained baroque sculpture a new audience when it was used in a popular meme which noted some similarity with an early morning photograph of Lindsay Lohan resting in a Cadillac.

The last days of baroque: 1967 Mercedes–Benz 600 Pullman Laudaulet (left & rght) and 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet (centre).  There was intricate detailing on the W111 and W100s, the last truly coach-built Mercedes-Benz.  Most were produced between 1963-1971 although the W100s continued in a trickle, substantially hand-built, until 1981.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), remembered as the philosopher who loomed over the French revolution, was also a composer and in his Dictionnaire de la musique (Dictionary of Music, 1767) declared baroque music to be that “...in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited...”, noting the term was a re-purposing of baroco (an alternative spelling of baroko (from a mediaeval mnemonic chant and a mode of syllogism used whenever some point seemed to be exist only pointlessly to obfuscate), used since the thirteenth century by philosophers discussing the tendency by some of their peers (usually those in the Church or university) needlessly to complicate simple concepts and arguments, just for the sake of grandiose academic gloss; formalism as it were.  Etymologists however remain unconvinced by Rousseau’s speculation and cite earlier evidence which suggests it was from architecture that the use in painting and music was derived, pondering that had Rousseau’s musicology been influenced by him being an architect rather than a philosopher, he too may have identified the source in brick and stone.  Anyway, baroque music as it’s now understood is a surprisingly recent construct, discussed as a thing only in the twentieth century, the term widely used only after the 1950s when the advent of long-playing (LP) records made the packaging and distribution of long-form composition practical and the industry became interested in categorizations, the Baroque something different from the Renaissance and the Classical despite the popular association of them all as one.

HODLing

Hodling (pronounced hodd-ling or hold-ing)

The continuing to hold one’s position in a market regardless of movements in that market.  Rationale is that value of that which one is holding will again rise again and selling will result only in actual or nominal (opportunity cost) losses.

2013: Word created on 18 December 2013 when a contributor to a Bitcoin forum, bitcointalk.org, apparently after enjoying most of a bottle of whisky, misspelled hold, a transposition probably not uncommon after too much drink given where the “o” and “l” keys sit on the qwerty keyboard.  Meme-makers soon decided hodl a backronym for hold on for dear life, a sentiment probably familiar to many who once held Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers paper.  Most frequently used related form is hoddle and use appears restricted to the cryptocurrency community; preferred spelling is HODler.  Which of the pronunciations hodd-ling or hold-ing will emerge as a standard is unclear, as is whether hodl will even survive as a word.

Dictionaries cite dozens of definitions for hold so hodl is potentially a handy addition to English because its meaning is so specific, either in the context of cryptocurrencies or markets generally.  Whether use moves beyond its niche or even survives won’t for some time be clear.  The markets have managed with hold for some centuries and it may be that the trade in cryptocurrencies, however it evolves, may find hold adequate.  HODler manifestos have been published:

Rule 1: A True HODLer Does Not Sell Their Coin

HODler The first and most important rule of the HODLer Manifesto is to never sell your coin. A HODLer may spend their coin (see rule 5), but a HODLer does not sell. Only the weak sell, and they soon regret doing so.

Rule 2: A True HODLer Buys the Dip

If the fiat price of their coin drops, a HODLer will buy more, provided they have the means to do so. Under no circumstances would a HODLer panic sell because they see the price going down. The only case where a HODLer is not regularly buying the dips is when all their fiat is already invested.

Rule 3: A True HODLer Remains Steadfast In Spite of FUD

Whether there’s news that China is banning your coin again, or your favourite exchanged got hacked, you as a HODLer will continue to HODL. A HODLer stays the course regardless of who is sowing seeds of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Disregard the news. Remember that the naysayers are usually those who have a lot to lose from your coin’s success, or those who resent HODLers for going to the moon.

Rule 4: A True HODLer Keeps Their Coins Off Exchanges and Online Wallets

Wallet No exchange or online wallet is immune from rogue employees, security mistakes, or simple negligence. A HODLer will keep their coins secure by using a paper or hardware wallet, instead of relying on any third parties for custody or safe keeping. A HODLer always controls their own private keys.

Rule 5: A True HODLer Buys Goods and Services With Their Coin

Should you decide to spend your coins, find vendors who accept your coins directly rather than selling or using fiat-based bridges (such as prepaid Visa cards). By spending your coins, you fuel the ecosystem of fellow HODLers. Do not become a spendthrift either, or you will soon find yourself without coin.

Rule 6: A True HODLer Spreads the Good Word

Sharing is Caring Do tell your friends and family about the goodness of your coin, but do not be pushy, or pressure others into buying your coin. They may not share the same values as you. Try to educate them without being patronizing, and stick to the facts rather than appealing to emotions (like FOMO). Refer them to good resources, and let them make up their own mind.

Rule 7: A True HODLer Does Not Get FOMO When Another Coin Rises

When you see other coins quickly rising in market cap rankings, you will not be distracted. They too will fall back from whence they came. Resist the temptation to dump your coin and pump another. This is usually a futile exercise, and is a quick way to make a big fortune into a small fortune. If you do, in spite of better sense, decide to purchase a new coin, weight your holdings by market cap to manage your risk.

Rule 8: A True HODLer Will Run Their Own Full Node

To ensure their coin remains healthy, and to participate in consensus, a HODLer runs their own full node if possible. There is truth in numbers, and a HODLer will always remain true to their coin. By participating in consensus a HODLer is in complete control of their own destiny, free from tyranny, censorship, and oppression.

It bounces round a bit: The trendline for HODLers.  Bitcoin against US$: Q4 2010-Q1 2022.