Viceroy

Viceroy (pronounced vahys-roi)

(1) A person appointed to rule a country or province as the deputy of the sovereign and exercising the powers of the sovereign.

(2) A brightly marked American butterfly (Limenitis archippus), closely mimicking the monarch butterfly in coloration but slightly smaller, hence the analogy with a sovereign and their representative.

1515–1525: From the Middle French, the construct being vice- + roy.  Vice was from the Old French vice (deputy), from the Latin vice (in place of), an ablative form of vicis.  In English (and other languages) the vice prefix was used to indicate an office in a subordinate position including air vice-marshal, vice-admiral, vice-captain, vice-chair, vice-chairman, vice-chancellor, vice-consul, vice-director, vice president, vice-president, vice-regent & vice-principal.  Roy was from the Middle English roy & roye, from the Old French roi (king), from the Latin rēgem, accusative of rēx (king) and related to regere (to keep straight, guide, lead, rule), from the primitive Indo-European root reg- (move in a straight line) with derivatives meaning “to direct in a straight line" thus the notion of "to lead, rule".  It was a doublet of loa, rajah, Rex, rex and rich.  The noun plurals was roys.  The wife of a viceroy was a vicereine, the word also used for female viceroys of whom there have been a few.  The American butterfly was named in 1881.  Viceroy and viceroy are nouns and viceregal is a noun and adjective; the noun plural is viceroys.

The noun viceregent (the official administrative deputy of a regent) attracted the attention of critics because it was so frequently confused with vicegerent (the official administrative deputy of a ruler, head of state, or church official).  Despite the perceived grandiosity of vicegerent, gained from association with offices such as the Pope as Vicar of Christ on Earth or the regent of a sovereign state, it’s merely generally descriptive of one person substituting for another and can be as well-applied to the shop assistant minding the store while the grocer has lunch.  The area of regency can be a linguistic tangle because a regent is a particular kind of viceregent and there was a time when viceregent was used instead of the correct vicegerent and was sometimes used pleonastically for regent.  The grammar Nazis never liked this and attributed the frequency of occurrence to the preference of viceregal rather than vicereoyal as the adjective of viceroy.

Under the Raj, under the pith helmets: King George V, Emperor of India with Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, Government House, Calcutta 1911.

In the rather haphazard way British rule in India evolved, the office of Governor-General of India was created by the Charter Act of 1833 and in an early example of the public-private partnership (PPP), the post was essentially administrative and was both appointed by and reported to the directors of the East India Company, functioning also as an informal conduit between the company and government.  The system lasted until 1858 when, in reaction to the Indian Mutiny (1857), the parliament passed the Government of India Act, creating the role of Viceroy (wholly assuming the office of Governor General), the new office having both executive and diplomatic authority and reporting (through the newly-established India Office) to the British Crown.  The viceroy was appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the parliament (ie the prime-minister) and it is this structure which is remembered as the British Raj (from the Hindi rāj (state, nation, empire, realm etc), the rule of the British Crown on the subcontinent although the maps of empire which covered the whole region as pink to indicate control were at least a bit misleading.

Viceroy butterfly.

The best-known viceroys were probably those who headed the executive government of India under the Raj although other less conspicuous appointments were also made including to Ireland when the whole island was a constituent part of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801-1922).  As a general principle (and there were exceptions), in British constitutional law, the Dominions and colonies that were held in the name of the parliament of Great Britain were administered by Governors-General while colonies held in the name of the British Crown were governed by viceroys.  Between 1858-1947, there were twenty viceroys of India including some notable names in British politics such as Lord Lansdowne (1888–1894) who introduced the Indian Councils Act and raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve, Lord Curzon (1899–1905) who introduced the Indian Universities Act and presided over the partition of Bengal, Lord Hardinge (1910-1916) who was in office during the Mesopotamian Campaign, Lord Irwin (1926–1931) (better known as Lord Halifax) who summoned the first round table conference and Lord Mountbatten (1947), the last Viceroy of India who, reflecting the change in constitutional status upon independence, was between 1947-1948 briefly the new nation's first Governor-General.  He was also the second-last, the office abolished in 1950 when the Republic of India was proclaimed.

Lindsay Lohan’s NFT for Lullaby with viceroy butterflies.

In 2021, it was announced Lindsay Lohan's non-fungible token (NFT) electronic music single Lullaby had sold for 1,000,001 in Tron (TRX) cryptocurrency (US$85,484.09).   Lullaby featured a vocal track over a beat produced by Manuel Riva and was the first NFT by a woman to be sold on #fansForever, a marketplace created for dealing in celebrity NFTs.  The graphics of the NFT Tron had a viceroy butterfly flapping its wings in unison with Ms Lohan’s eyelids to the beat of Lullaby.  Because of the underlying robustness, the blockchain and the NFT concept has an assured future for many purposes but to date the performance of celebrity items as stores of value has been patchy.

1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III (7.7 litre (447 cubic inch) V12; chassis 3AZ47, engine Z24B, body 8594 in style 6419) by Hooper, built for the Marquess of Linlithgow (1887-1952) who served as Viceroy of India (1936-1944), seen in its original configuration with a chauffeur (left) and as re-bodied during 1952-1953 (right).  In the centre is a British plumed helmet, circa 1920, this one with a skull in gilt metal, mounted with unusually elaborate gilt ornamentation including helmet-plate (itself mounted with a white metal hobnail star bearing gilt Royal Arms), ornate gilt chins-scales with claw ends and an untypically extravagant white swan's feather plume, notably longer than regulation length.  It was used by the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at Arms, a body formed in 1539 and staffed by former army officers as the “nearest guard” to the sovereign. The helmet is based on the “Albert” pattern for Household Cavalry, a style in use for some 150 years.

Viceroys of India were always rather exalted creatures, their status reflecting India’s allure as the glittering prize of the empire and upon recall to London, were usually raised to (or in) the peerage as marquesses while a retiring prime-minister might expect at most an earldom, one notch down.  Their special needs (and some were quite needy) in office also had to be accommodated, an example of which is Lord Linlithgow’s 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, built with a capacity for seven passengers (although no luggage which was always carried separately).  The coachwork by Hooper was most unusual, the engine’s side-panels being 1½ inches taller than standard, a variation required to somewhat balance the very tall passenger compartment, the dimensions of which were dictated by the viceroy’s height of 6’ 7” (2.0 m), the plumed hats of his role elongating things further.  Such high-roof-lines were not uncommon on state limousines and have been seen on Mercedes-Benz built for the Holy See and the Daimlers & Rolls-Royces in the British Royal Mews.  Delivered in dark blue with orange picking out lines and coronets on the rear doors, the interior was trimmed in dark blue leather with two sets of loose beige covers, the woodwork in solid figured walnut rather than veneer.  Signed-off 21 July 1936 and shipped to Bombay (now Mubai) on the SS Bhutan on 24 July, Hooper’s invoice to the India Office listed the price of the chassis at Stg£1405, the coachwork at Stg£725 and a total cost of Stg£2130.

After the Raj, the car passed into private hands and in 1952 was returned to the Hooper works in Westminster for re-modeling, the most obvious aspects of which were the lowering of the roof-line and a re-finishing in grey.  The high cowl (scuttle) and hood (bonnet) line were however retained so the re-configuration actually replaced one discontinuity with another but the changes certainly made it an interesting period piece and its now one of three Phantom IIIs in the collection assembled by Pranlal Bhogilal (1937-2011), displayed in his Auto World Vintage Car Museum in Kathwada, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Vernacular

Vernacular (pronounced vuh-nak- yuh-ler (U) or ver-nak-yuh-ler (Non-U))

(1) In linguistics, the dialect of the native or indigenous people as opposed to that of those (in Western terms) the literary or learned; the native speech or language of a place; the language of a people or a national language.

(2) In literature, expressed or written in the native language of a place, as literary works.

(3) Using, of or related to such language.

(4) Plain, everyday speech or dialect, including colloquialisms, as opposed to standard, literary, liturgical, or scientific idiom.

(5) In architecture, a style of architecture exemplifying the commonest techniques, decorative features, and materials of a particular historical period, region, or group of people.

(6) Noting or pertaining to the common name for a plant or animal, as distinguished from its Latin scientific name.

(7) The language or vocabulary peculiar to a class or profession.

(8) Any medium or mode of expression that reflects popular taste or indigenous styles.

(9) In linguistic anthropology, language lacking standardization or a written form.

1599: From the Latin vernāculus (household, domestic, indigenous, of or pertaining to home-born slaves), a diminutive of verna (a native; a home-born slave (slave born in the master's household)) although etymologists note the lack of evidence to support this derivation, verna of Etruscan origin. Now used in English almost always in the sense of Latin vernacula vocabula, in reference to language, the noun sense “native speech or language of a place” dating from 1706.  In technical use, linguistic anthropologists use neo-vernacular and unvernacular while in medicine, epidemiologists distinguish vernacular diseases (restricted to a defined group) from those induced by external influences.  There are also variations within the vernacular, concepts like “street vernacular” or “mountain vernacular” used to differentiate sub-sets of native languages, based on geography or some demographic; in this the idea is similar to expressions like jargon, argot, dialect or slang.  Vernacular is a noun & adjective, vernacularism & vernacularist are nouns and vernacularly is an adverb; the noun plural is vernaculars.

Cannabis (known also as marijuana) is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant (Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, Cannabis ruderalis).  In the vernacular it's "weed" or any one of literally hundreds of other terms.

Vernacular and other Latin

In the intricate world of linguistics, there are many types of Latin, many of them technical differentiations between the historic later variations (Medieval Latin; New Latin, Enlightenment Latin) from what is (a little misleadingly) called Classical Latin (or just “Latin”) but there was also a Latin vernacular referred to as vulgar Latin, one of many forks:

Vulgar Latin (also as popular Latin or colloquial Latin) was the spectrum of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward and the what over centuries evolved into a number of Romance languages.  It was the common speech of the ancient Romans, which is distinguished from standard literary Latin and is the ancestor of the Romance languages.

Dog Latin (also as bog Latin (ie “toilet humor”)): Bad, erroneous pseudo-Latin, often amusing constructions designed to resemble the appearance and especially the sound of Latin, many of which were coined by students in English schools & universities.  The “joke names” used in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) (Sillius Soddus, Biggus Dickus & Nortius Maximus) are examples of dog Latin.

Pig Latin: A type of wordplay in which (English) words are altered by moving the leading phonetic of a word to the end and appending -ay, except when the word begins with a vowel, in which case "-way" is suffixed with no leading phonetic change.

Apothecary's Latin: Latin as it was supposed spoken by a barbarian, reflecting the (probably not wholly unjustified) prejudices of the educated at the pretentions of tradesmen and shopkeepers.

Legal Latin: Latin phrases or terms used as a shorthand encapsulation of legal doctrines, rules, precepts and concepts).

Medical Latin: This evolved into a (more or less) standardized list of medical abbreviations, based on the Latin originals and used as a specific technical shorthand.

Barracks Latin: (pseudo Latin on the lines of dog Latin but usually with some military flavor, often noted for a tendency to vulgarity).

Ecclesiastical Latin: (also as Church Latin or Liturgical Latin), a fork of Latin developed in late Antiquity to suit the particular discussions of Christianity and still used in Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration (events in 2013 confirming that papal resignations are written and delivered in ecclesiastical Latin).  Technically, it’s a fork of Classical Latin but includes words from Vulgar & Medieval Latin as well as from Greek and Hebrew, sometimes re-purposed with meanings specific to Christianity (and sometimes just the Church of Rome).

The idea of the difference is best remembered in the example of the Vulgate Bible, the Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek made by Saint Jerome (circa 345-420), the details of his interpretations (which tended to favor the role of the institutional church rather than the personal relationship between Christ and individual Christian) for centuries the source of squabble schism.  Vulgate was from the Latin vulgāta, feminine singular of vulgātus (broadcast, published, having been made known among the people; made common; prostituted, having been made common), perfect passive participle of vulgō (broadcast, make known).  When after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962-1965), it was decided to permit the celebration of the mass in local languages rather than ecclesiastical Latin, such use was said to be “in the vernacular”.

Under the Raj: three marquises, three viceroys; Lords Lytton (left), Rippon (centre) and Lansdowne (right).  Upon leaving office, UK prime-ministers were usually granted an earldom but viceroys of India were created Marquises, a notch higher in the peerage.

Under the Raj, there were many vernacular languages; indeed, never did the colonial administrators determine just how many existed, all the fascinated dons giving up after counting hundreds and finding yet more existed.  One difficulty this did present was that it was hard to monitor (and if need be censor) all the criticism which might appear in non-English language publications and, because at the core of the British Empire was racism, violence and rapacious theft of other peoples’ lands and wealth, criticism was not uncommon.  In an attempt to suppress these undercurrents of dissatisfaction, the viceroy (Lord Lytton, 1831–1891; Viceroy of India 1876-1880) imposed the Vernacular Press Act (1878), modelled on earlier Irish legislation, the origins of the word in the Latin verna (a slave born in the master's household) not lost on Western-educated Indians.  Not content with mere suppression, Lord Lytton also created an operation to feed to the press what he wanted printed, using bribery where required.  Fake news was soon a part of these feeds and some historians have suggested the act probably stimulated more resentment than it contained.  In 1881, Lytton’s successor (Lord Rippon, 1827–1909; Viceroy of India 1880-1884) withdrew the act but the damage was done.  The legislative reforms of the viceroys of India varied in intent and consequence.  Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927; Viceroy of India 1888-1894) enacted the Age of Consent Act (1891), raising the age of consent for sexual intercourse for girls (married or unmarried), from ten to twelve, any violation an offence of statutory rape.  Those who like to defend what they claim was the civilizing mission of empire sometimes like to cite this but seem never to dwell on the marriage age for girls in England being twelve as late as 1929.

Consecutive

Consecutive (pronounced kuhn-sek-yuh-tiv)

(1) Following one another in uninterrupted succession or order; successive without interruption.

(2) Marked or characterized by logical sequence (such as chronological, alphabetical or numerical sequence).

(3) In grammar & linguistics, as “consecutive clause”, a linguistic form that implies or describes an event that follows temporally from another (expressing consequence or result).

(4) In musical composition, a sequence of notes or chords which results from repeated shifts in pitch of the same interval (an alternative term for “parallel”).

1605-1615: From the sixteenth century French consécutif, from the Medieval Latin cōnsecūtīvus, from the Latin cōnsecūtus (follow up; having followed), from consequī (to pursue) & cōnsequor (to travel).  The construct was consecut(ion) + -ive.  Consecution dates from the early fifteenth century and by the 1530s was used in the sense of “proceeding in argument from one proposition to another in logical sequence”.  It was from the Middle English consecucioun (attainment), from the Latin consecutionem (nominative consecution), noun of action from the past-participle stem of consequi (to follow after), from an assimilated form of com (in the sense of “with, together”) + sequi (to follow (from the primitive Indo-European root sekw- (to follow).  The meaning “any succession or sequence” emerged by the 1650s.  The Latin cōnsecūtiō (to follow after) was from the past participle of cōnsequor (to follow, result, reach).  The –ive suffix was from the Anglo-Norman -if (feminine -ive), from the Latin -ivus.  Until the fourteenth century, all Middle English loanwords from the Anglo-Norman ended in -if (actif, natif, sensitif, pensif et al) and, under the influence of literary Neolatin, both languages introduced the form -ive.  Those forms that have not been replaced were subsequently changed to end in -y (hasty, from hastif, jolly, from jolif etc).  The antonyms are inconsecutive & unconsecutive but (except in some specialized fields of mathematics) “non-sequential” usually conveys the same meaning.  Like the Latin suffix -io (genitive -ionis), the Latin suffix -ivus is appended to the perfect passive participle to form an adjective of action.  Consecutive is a noun & adjective, consecutiveness is a noun and consecutively is an adverb; the noun plural is consecutives.

In sport, the most celebrated consecutive sequence seems to be things in three and that appears to first to have been institutionalized in cricket where for a bowler to take three wickets with three consecutive deliveries in the same match was first described in 1879 as a “hat trick”.  Because of the rules of cricket, there could be even days between these deliveries because a bowler might take a wicket with the last ball he delivered in the first innings and the first two he sent down in the second.  A hat trick however can happen only within a match; two in one match and one in another, even if consecutive, doesn’t count.  Why the rare feat came to be called “hat trick” isn’t certain, the alternative explanations being (1) an allusion to the magician’s popular stage trick of “pulling three rabbits out of the hat” (there had earlier also been a different trick involving three actions and a hat) or (2) the practice of awarding the successful bowler a hat as a prize; hats in the nineteenth century were an almost essential part of the male wardrobe and thus a welcome gift.  The “hat trick” terminology extended to other sports including rugby (a player scoring three tries in a match), football (soccer) & ice hockey (a player scoring three goals in a match) and motor racing (a driver securing pole position, setting the fastest lap time and winning a race).  It has become common in sport (and even politics (a kind of sport)) to use “hat trick” of anything in an uninterrupted sequence of three (winning championships, winning against the same opponent over three seasons etc) although “threepeat” (the construct being three + (re)peat) has become popular and to mark winning three long-established premium events (not always in the same season) there are “triple crowns).  Rugby’s triple crown is awarded to whichever of the “home countries” (England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales) wins all three matches that season; US Horse racing’s triple crown events are the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

Graham Hill (1929–1975) in BRM P57 with the famous (but fragile) open-stack exhausts, Monaco Grand Prix, 3 June 1962.  Hill is the only driver to have claimed motor-racing's classic Triple Crown.

The term is widely used in motorsport but the classic version is the earliest and consists of the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Formula One (F1) World Drivers' Championship (only one driver ever winning all three) and there’s never been any requirement of “consecutiveness”; indeed, now that F1 drivers now rarely appear in other series while contracted, it’s less to happen.

Donald Trump, a third term and the 22^nd Amendment

Steve Bannon (left) and Donald Trump (right).

Although the MAGA (Make America Great Again) team studiously avoided raising the matter during the 2024 presidential election campaign, now Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) is President elect awaiting inauguration, Steve Bannon (b 1957 and a one the most prominent MAGAs) suggested there’s a legal theory (that term may be generous) which could be relevant in allowing him to run again in 2028, by-passing the “two-term limit” in the US Constitution.  Speaking on December 15 at the annual gala dinner of New York’s Young Republican Club’s (the breeding ground of the state’s right-wing fanatics), Mr Bannon tantalized the guests by saying “…maybe we do it again in 28?”, his notion of the possibility a third Trump term based on advice received from Mike Davis (1978, a lawyer who describes himself as Mr Trump’s “viceroy” and was spoken of in some circles as a potential contender for attorney general in a Trump administration).  Although the 22^nd Amendment to the constitution states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”, Mr Davis had noted it was at least arguable this applied only to “consecutive” terms so as Mr Bannon confirmed, there was hope.  Warming to the topic, Mr Bannon went on to say :“Donald John Trump is going to raise his hand on the King James Bible and take the oath of office, his third victory and his second term.” (the MAGA orthodoxy being he really “won” the 2020 election which was “stolen” from him by the corrupt “deep state”.

Legal scholars in the US have dismissed the idea the simple, unambiguous phrase in the 22^nd amendment could be interpreted in the way Mr Bannon & Mr Davis have suggested.  In the common law world, the classic case in the matter of how words in acts or statutes should be understood by courts is Bank of England v Vagliano Brothers (1891) AC 107, a bills of exchange case, decided by the House of Lords, then the UK’s final court of appeal.  Bank of England v Vagliano Brothers was a landmark case in the laws relating to negotiable instruments but of interest here is the way the Law Lords addressed significant principles regarding the interpretation of words in statutes, the conclusion being the primary goal of statutory interpretation is to ascertain the intention of Parliament as expressed in the statute and that intention must be derived from the language of the statute, interpreted in its natural and ordinary sense, unless the context or subject matter indicates otherwise.  What the judgment did was clarify that a statute may deliberately depart from or modify the common law and courts should not assume a statute is merely a restatement of common law principles unless the statute's language makes this clear.  The leading opinion was written by Lord Herschell (Farrer Herschell, 1837–1899; Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain 1886 & 1892-1895) who held that if the language of the statute is clear and unambiguous, it should be interpreted as it stands, without assuming it is subject to implicit common law principles; only if the language is ambiguous may courts look elsewhere for context and guidance.

So the guiding principle for courts is the words of a statute should be understood with what might be called their “plain, simple meaning” unless they’re not clear and unambiguous.  While the US Supreme Court recently has demonstrated it does not regard itself as bound even its own precedents and certainly not those of a now extinct UK court, few believe even the five most imaginative of the nine judges could somehow construe a constitutional amendment created for the explicit purpose of limiting presidents to two terms could be read down to the extent of “…more than twice…” being devalued to “…more than twice in a row…”.  Still, it was a juicy chunk of bleeding raw meat for Mr Bannon to throw to his hungry audience.

The ratification numbers: Ultimately, the legislatures of 41 of the then 48 states ratified the amendment with only Massachusetts and Oklahoma choosing to reject.  

What the 22^nd amendment did was limit the number of times someone could be elected president.  Proposed on 21 March 1947, the ratification process wasn’t completed until 27 February 1951, a time span of time span: 3 years, 343 days which is longer than all but one of the other 26, only the 27^th (delaying laws affecting Congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives) took longer, a remarkable 202 years, 223 days elapsing between the proposal on 25 September 1789 and the conclusion on 7 May 1992; by contrast, the speediest was the 26^th which lowered the voting age to 18, its journey absorbed only 100 days between 23 March-1 July 1971.  While not too much should be read into it, it’s of interest the 18^th Amendment (prohibiting the manufacturing or sale of alcohol within the US) required 1 year, 29 days (18 December 1917-16 January 1919) whereas the 21^st (repealing the 18^th) was done in 288 days; proposed on 20 February 1933, the process was completed on 5 December the same year.

The path to the 22^nd amendment began when George Washington (1732–1799; first president of the United States, 1789-1797) choose not to seek a third term, his reasons including (1) a commitment to republican principles which required the presidency not be perceived as a life-long or vaguely monarchical position, (2) the importance of a peaceful transition of power to demonstrate the presidency was a temporary public service, not a permanent entitlement and (3) a desire not to see any excessive concentration of power in one individual or office.  Historians have noted Washington’s decision not to seek a third term was a deliberate effort to establish a tradition of limited presidential tenure, reflecting his belief this would safeguard the republic from tyranny and ensure no individual indefinitely could dominate government.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated images by Stable Diffusion of Lindsay Lohan and Donald Trump having coffee in the Mar-a-Largo Coffee Shop. 

For more than a century, what Washington did (or declined to do) was regarded as a constitutional convention and no president sought more than two terms.  Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909), celebrating his re-election in 1904 appeared to be moved by the moment when, unprompted, he announced: “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination” and he stuck to the pledge, arranging for William Howard Taft (1857–1930; president of the United States 1909-1913 & chief justice of the United States 1921-1930) to be his successor, confident he’d continue to pursue a progressive programme.  Taft however proved disappointingly conservative and Roosevelt decided in 1912 to seek a third term.  To critics who quoted at him his earlier pledge, he explained that “…when a man at breakfast declines the third cup of coffee his wife has offered, it doesn’t mean he’ll never in his life have another cup.”  Throughout the 1912 campaign, comedians could get an easy laugh out of the line: “Have another cup of coffee”? and to those who objected to his violating Washington’s convention, he replied that what he was doing was “constitutional” which of course it was.

Puck magazine in 1908 (left) and 1912 (right) wasn't about to let Theodore Roosevelt forget what he'd promised in 1904.  The cartoon on the left was an example of accismus (an expression of feigned uninterest in something one actually desires).  Accismus was from the Latin accismus, from Ancient Greek ακκισμός (akkismós) (prudery).  Puck Magazine (1876-1918) was a weekly publication which combined humor with news & political satire; in its use of cartoons and caricatures it was something in the style of today's New Yorker but without quite the same tone of seriousness.

Roosevelt didn’t win the Republican nomination because the party bosses stitched thing up for Taft so he ran instead as a third-party candidate, splitting the GOP vote and thereby delivering the White House to the Democrats but he gained more than a quarter of the vote, out-polling Taft and remains the most successful third-party candidate ever so there was that.  His distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) was the one to prove the convention could be ignored and he gained not only a third term in 1940 but also a fourth in 1944.  FDR was not only a Democrat but also a most subversive one and when Lord Halifax (Edward Wood, 1881–1959; British Ambassador to the United States 1940-1946) arrived in Washington DC to serve as ambassador, he was surprised when one of a group of Republican senators with whom he was having dinner opened proceedings with: “Before you speak, Mr Ambassador, I want you to know that everyone in this room regards Mr Roosevelt as a bigger dictator than Hitler or Mussolini.  We believe he is taking this country to hell as quickly as he can.”  As a sentiment, it sounds very much like the discourse of the 2024 campaign.

"The Trump Dynasty has begun" four term coffee mugs (currently unavailable) created for the 2020 presidential campaign. 

The Republicans truly were appalled by Roosevelt’s third and fourth terms and as soon as they gained control of both houses of Congress began the process of adding an amendment to the constitution which would codify in that document the two-term limit Washington had made a convention.  It took longer than usual but the process was completed in 1951 when the 22^nd Amendment became part of the constitution and were Mr Trump to want to run again in 2028, it would have to be repealed, no easy task because such a thing requires not only the concurrence of two thirds of both the House of Representatives & Senate but also three quarters of the legislatures of the fifty states.  In other countries where presidential term limits have appeared tiresome to those who have no intention of leaving office the “work-arounds” are usually easier and Mr Trump may cast the odd envious eye overseas.  In Moscow, Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) solved the problem by deciding he and his prime-minister temporarily should swap jobs (though not authority) while he arranged a referendum to effect the necessary changes to the Russian Constitution.  The point about referendums in Russia was explained by Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who observed: “it matters not who votes, what matters is who gets to count the votes.”  Barring accidents or the visitation of the angel of death, Mr Putin is now set to remain as president until at least the mid-2030s.  

Some mutual matters of interest: Donald Trump (left) and Vladimir Putin (right).

There have been many African presidents who have "arranged" for constitutional term limits to be "revised" but the most elegant in the handling of this was Pierre Nkurunziza (1964–2020; president of Burundi 2005-2020) who simply ignored the tiresome clause and announced he would be standing for a third term, tidying up loose ends by having Burundi's Constitutional Court declare the president was acting in accordance with the law.  It would seem the principle of statutory interpretation in Bank of England v Vagliano Brothers wasn't brought before the court (formerly part of the empire of Imperial Germany and later a Belgian-administered territory under a League of Nations mandate, Burundi follows the civil law tradition rather than the common law inheritance from the old British Empire) and shortly before the verdict was handed down, one judge fled into exile, claiming the government had applied "pressure" on the court to deliver a ruling favorable to the president. 

Vulpine

Vulpine (pronounced vuhl-pahyn or vuhl-pin)

(1) Of or resembling a fox.

(2) Possessing or being thought to posses the characteristics often attributed to foxes; crafty, clever, cunning etc.

1620-1630: From the Latin vulpīnus (foxy, fox-like, of or pertaining to a fox), the construct being vulp(ēs) (fox) + -īnus.  Vulpēs was from the earlier volpes (genitive vulpis, volpis) of unknown origin, though though probably from the  primitive Indo-European wl(o)p and cognate with the Welsh llywarn (fox), the Classical Greek ἀλώπηξ (alṓpēx) (fox), the Armenian աղուէս (ałuēs), the Albanian dhelpër, the Lithuanian vilpišỹs (wildcat) and the Sanskrit लोपाश (lopāśa) (jackal, fox).  The Latin suffix -inus was from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European -iHnos and cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  It was used to indicate "of or pertaining to, usually a relationship of position, possession, or origin.

The Holy Fox: Lord Halifax

The Rt Hon Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, First Earl of Halifax, KG, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, TD, PC, was a leading Tory politician of the inter-war and wartime years.  Among other appointments, he was Viceroy of India, Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the United States.  He was known as the Holy Fox because of his devotion to church, the hunt and Tory politics.  More holy than foxy and perhaps too punctilious ever to be truly vulpine, he was born too late.  Had he lived a century earlier, he’d likely be remembered as a leading statesman of the Victorian era but even before 1945, he seemed a relic of the past.

A fox and other beasts.  Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian Foreign Minister 1936-1943), Edward Wood, Lord Halifax (1881–1959; UK Foreign Secretary 1938-1940), Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK Prime Minister 1937-1940) and Benito Mussolini (1883–1945; Duce & Prime Minister of Italy 1922-1943), Rome, January 1939.

Some three months after signing the infamous Munich Agreement that permitted Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, the UK's  prime minister Neville Chamberlain and foreign secretary Lord Halifax visited Rome to confer with the Italian Duce & prime-minister premier Benito Mussolini.  Although it had long been obvious the Duce had been drawn into the German orbit, British foreign policy was still based on the hope war could be avoided and, having seen appeasement prevent immediate conflict over Berlin's demands about Czechoslovakia, the hope was to find a way to appease Rome, a goal no more ambitious than the maintenance of the status quo in the Mediterranean.  Pointless in retrospect, the meeting, held between 11-14 January 1939, was the last attempt through official channels to tempt the Duce away from the entanglement with Hitler to which, in reality, he was already committed although, he certainly didn't expect war to be declared quite so soon.

The spirit of the meeting was well captured in Count Ciano's diary.  Ciano's entries are not wholly reliable but he was one of the century's great diarists, an astute observer and too clever to be much bothered by principles, he painted vivid pictures of some of the great events of those troubled years.  Mussolini, already seeing himself as a Roman emperor, after his meetings with Hitler, must have thought he was being visited by the ghosts of the past, Chamberlain looking like the provincial lord-mayor he'd once been and Halifax the archbishop he probably wished he'd become.  “In substance, the visit was kept on a minor tone, since both the Duce and myself are scarcely convinced of its utility. . . . How far apart we are from these people!" Ciano noted in his diary.  "It is another world."

Foxy Eyes by Skinklink.

After dinner with Mussolini he recorded the Duce's feelings: "These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the British Empire.  These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire,... The British do not want to fight. They try to draw back as slowly as possible, but they do not want to fight."  Whatever other mistakes he may have made, on that night in Rome, Mussolini made no error in his summary of the state of thought in Downing Street and the Foreign Office.  "Our conversations with the British have ended" Ciano concluded and "Nothing was accomplished."  He closed the diary that evening with the note "I have telephoned Ribbentrop (Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi Foreign Minister 1938-1945) that the visit was a big lemonade [ie a farce].”

Bedint

Bedint (pronounced buh-dent (U) or bed-ent (non-U))

(1) Something which suggests a bourgeois aspiration to the tastes or habits of the upper classes.

(2) A generalized expression of disapproval of anyone or anything not in accord with the social standards or expectation of the upper classes.

(3) Any behavior thought inappropriate (ie something of which one for whatever reason disapproves).

1920s:  A coining attributed to variously to (1) English writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), (2) his wife, the writer Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) or (3) speculatively, Vita Sackville-West’s family.  The word is of Germanic origin and although there are variants, a common source is the Middle Dutch bedienen, the construct being be- +‎ dienen.  The Middle Dutch be- was from the Old Dutch bi- & be-, from the Middle High German be-, from the Old High German bi-, from the Proto-Germanic bi-, from the primitive Indo-European hepi and was used to indicate a verb is acting on a direct object.  Dienen was from the Middle Dutch dienen, from the Old Dutch thienon, from the Proto-Germanic þewanōną and meant “to be of assistance to, to serve; to serve (at a tavern or restaurant); to operate (a device).  In the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, it has the specific technical meaning of “to administer the last sacraments (the last rites).  A bedient (the second third-person singular present indicative of bedienen) was thus a servant, a waiter etc.  The acceptable pronunciation is buh-dent, bed-int, be-dit or anything is the depth of bedintism. 

The idea thus is exemplified by a maître d'hôtel (the head waiter in a good restaurant) who, well dressed and well mannered, appears superficially not dissimilar to someone from the upper classes but of course is someone from a lower class, adopting for professional reasons, some of their characteristics (dress, manner, speech (and sometimes snobbery) etc).  Whoever coined the word, it was certainly popularized by Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West.  It seems initially to have been their shared code for discussing such things but soon became common currency amongst the smart set in which they moved and from there, eventually entered the language although not all dictionaries acknowledge its existence.  It one of those words which need not be taken too seriously and is most fun to use if played with a bit (bedintish, bedintesque, bedintingly bedinded, bedintism, bedintology et al).  As a word, although from day one weaponized, bedint was subject to some mission-creep to the point where, as Lewis Carol’s Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice: "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."  Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898).

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, London, 1913.

As originally used by Nicolson & Sackville-West, bedint, one the many linguistic tools of exclusion and snobbery (and these devices exist among all social classes, some of which are classified as “inverted snobbery” when part of “working-class consciousness” or similar constructs) was used to refer to anyone not from the upper class (royalty, the aristocracy, the gentry) in some way aping the behavior or manners of “their betters”; the behavior need not be gauche or inappropriate, just that of someone “not one of us”.  Nicolson didn’t exclude himself from his own critique and, as one who “married up” into the socially superior Sackville family, was his whole life acutely aware of what behaviors of his might be thought bedint, self-labelling as he thought he deserved.  His marriage he never thought at all bedint although many of those he condemned as bedint would have found it scandalously odd, however happy the diaries of both parties suggest that for almost fifty years it was.

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent, 1932.

Bedint as a word proved so useful however that it came to be applied to members of the upper classes (even royalty) were they thought guilty of some transgression (like dullness) or hobbies thought insufficiently aristocratic.  The idea of some behavior not befitting one’s social status was thus still a thread but by the post-war years, when bedint had entered vocabulary of the middle-class (a bedint thing in itself one presumes Nicolson and Sackville-West would have thought), it was sometimes little more than a synonym for bad behavior (poor form as they might have said), just an expression of disapproval.

Harold Nicolson & Vita-Sackville West, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent, 1960.

The biographical work on Nicolson reveals a not especially likable snob but, in common with many fine and sharp-eyed diarists, he seems to have been good company though perhaps best enjoyed in small doses.  One of those figures (with which English political life is studded) remembered principally for having been almost a successful politician, almost a great writer or almost a viceroy, he even managed to be almost a lord but despite switching party allegiances to curry favor with the Labour government (1945-1951), the longed-for peerage was never offered and he was compelled to accept a knighthood.  His KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, an honor in the personal gift of the sovereign) was granted in 1953 in thanks for his generous (though well-reviewed and received) biography of King George V (1865-1936, King of England 1910-1936), although those who could read between the lines found it not hard to work out which of the rather dull monarch’s activities the author thought bedint.  As it was, Nicolson took his KCVO, several steps down the ladder of the Order of Precedence, accepting it only "faute de mieux" (in the absence of anything better) and describing it “a bedint knighthood”, wondering if, given the shame, he should resign from his clubs.

Wedding day: Duff Cooper & Lady Diana Manners, St Margaret's Church, London, 2 June 1919.

So a knighthood, a thing which many have craved, can be bedint if it's not the right knighthood.  When the Tory politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) ended his term (1944-1948) as the UK's ambassador to France, the Labor government (which had kept him on) granted him a GCMG (Knight Grand Commander of the order of St Michael & St George) and although he thought his years as a cabinet minister might have warranted a peerage, he accepted while wryly noting in his diary it was hardly something for which he should  be congratulated because: "No ambassador in Paris has ever failed to acquire the it since the order was invented and the Foreign Office has shown how much importance they attach to it by conferring it simultaneously on my successor Oliver Harvey (1893-1968), who is, I suppose, the least distinguished man who has ever been appointed to the post".  Still, Cooper took his "bedint" GCMG and when a Tory government returned to office, he was raised to the peerage, shortly before his death, choosing to be styled Viscount Norwich of Aldwick.  His wife (Lady Diana Cooper (1892–1986) didn't fancy becoming "Lady Norwich" because she though it "sounded like porridge" and took the precaution of placing notices in The Times and Daily Telegraph telling all who mattered she would continue to be styled "Lady Diana Cooper".  They had a "modern marriage" so differences between them were not unusual.

Pardon

Pardon (pronounced pahr-dn)

(1) A kind indulgence, as in forgiveness of an offense or discourtesy or in tolerance of a distraction or inconvenience.

(2) In law, release from the penalty of an offense; a remission of penalty, as by a governor, monarch or viceroy.

(3) Forgiveness of a serious offense or offender.

(4) In Roman Catholic canon law, a technical term for a papal indulgence (obsolete).

(5) To make a courteous allowance for or to excuse.

(6) When used with rising inflection, as an elliptical form, as when asking a speaker to repeat something not clearly heard or understood (non-U).

1250-1300: From the Middle English pardonen or pardoun (papal indulgence, forgiveness of sins or wrongdoing), from Old French pardon from pardoner (to grant; to forgive; remission, indulgence (which entered Modern French in the eleventh century as pardonner), from the Medieval Latin perdonum, from the Vulgar Latin perdōnāre (to remit, overlook (literally “to forgive”)), the construct being per- (for; through, thoroughly) + dōnāre (to give, donate) which emerged in Medieval Latin, though a translation from a Germanic source possibly a calque (if not vice-versa) of a Germanic word represented by the Frankish firgeban (to forgive, give up completely) which was akin to the Old High German fargeban & firgeban (to forgive) and the Old English forġiefan (to forgive).  The Latin per was from the primitive Indo-European root per- (forward (hence “through”)) and donare was from donum (gift), from the primitive Indo-European root donum (gift), from the root do- (to give).  The verb pardon was from pardounen, (to forgive for offense or sin).  The noun pardoner (a man licensed to sell papal pardons or indulgences) was a late fourteenth century form (it was noted earlier in the 1300s as a surname), the agent noun from the verb.  The adjective pardonable (forgivable, capable of being pardoned) was a mid-fifteenth century form from the twelfth century Old French pardonable, from pardoner.  Some sources insist pardonable was a back-formation from pardonable which is interesting.  The meaning “a passing over of an offense without punishment” was first noted around the turn of the fourteenth century (also in the strictly ecclesiastical sense) while as a “pardon for a civil or criminal offense; release from penalty or obligation”, use emerged in the late 1300s (mirroring the earlier Anglo-French).  The use in polite society to “request one be excused for some minor fault” was in use by at least the 1540s.

Pardon is one of those “cross-over words”, migrating from the technical use (an act by an official or a superior, remitting all or the remainder of the punishment that belongs to an offense (eg a sovereign or governor pardoning a convict before expiration of the sentence)) to become a synonym for “forgive” in the sense of feelings or social mores.  By convention, asking for another’s pardon re-establishes amicable relations between transgressor and the offended.  In idiomatic use, dating from the mid seventeenth century, the phrase “I beg your pardon” (the variations including “beg pardon”, “begging your pardon”, “pardon me” etc) is used (1) to apologise for something (typically a social faux pas), (2) to request clarification of something said if it is unexpected, odd or seen as rude without context and (3) to request something be repeated.  In the last case, Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) in Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) insisted “pardon” was a non-U (lower & middle class) word and the “U” (upper class) form was “what?”.  The phrase “pardon my French” was an exclamation of apology for obscene language, noted since the late nineteenth century.  Pardon is a noun, verb & interjection, pardoning is a verb & noun, pardoned is a verb & adjective, pardonableness & pardoner are nouns, pardonable & pardonless are adjectives and pardonably is an adverb; the noun plural is pardons.

Pardons from the president: Without check or balance

Article Two of the United States Constitution describes the office of the President.  One of the powers granted is that he or she may grant reprieves and pardons except regarding congressional impeachment of himself or other federal officers.  A president cannot issue a pardon for future actions; he can't pardon someone in advance for something someone does next week.  The pardon power is reserved for past actions and the president can pardon an individual even if he or she has not yet been convicted or even charged.

An executive pardon can be invoked to help victims of injustice.

It's an interesting power and the only one in the US constitution not subject to "checks and balances", an inheritance of one of the entitlements enjoyed by absolute and later monarchs.  The power, in the form exercised by a US president, doesn't exist in the UK or elsewhere in the Commonwealth where, when a pardon is granted, it’s a decision of the executive (the prime-minister (or premier) & cabinet) which is done in the name of the sovereign or their representative; in other words, by the state.  It’s different from vesting the power as a personal prerogative of an individual; US presidents have granted pardons which would have no chance of success were they subject to confirmation by the Senate.

The most interesting recent speculation about the presidential pardon is whether as president can pardon themselves.  This was something Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) probably pondered with especial interest during the diggings of special counsel Robert Mueller's (b 1944; Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 2001-2013) into certain matters relating to the 2016 presidential election.  Mr Trump did tweet suggesting he could pardon himself even though there's no precedent, no president has ever done so (though at least one was surely tempted) and all that is certain is that the chief magistrate has the power to grant pardons "for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."  That means he couldn't have pardoned himself from impeachment, nor anyone facing charges under state laws, and when asked, most constitutional law experts suggested he couldn't have pardoned himself for anything else either.  However, even if a presidential self-pardon were to be held to be constitutional, politically, it would be a challenge to manage so an extra-constitutional check on the power is political; the court of public opinion as it were.

When there was mush speculation about a possible prosecution of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) for matters associated with the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department did issue an opinion saying a president could not pardon himself because, under long-established legal principle, no person can be the judge in their own case.  So, the legal status of a self-pardon has never been tested because, at the federal level, it’s never been done and nothing is definitive until ruled upon by the US Supreme Court.  There are records of state governors self-pardoning but one instance appears to have been technical, one a clerical error and one so murky it not clear what happened.  The state of US politics is now both so poisonous and so fluid that a second term for Mr Trump is no longer unthinkable if the Democrat Party insists on nominating Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) it become more likely still.  Mr Biden may or may not be senile but he certainly seems senile.  In his first term, Mr Trump proved remarkably uninterested in pursuing any of the vendettas he'd mentioned during the 2016 campaign; when asked if he would be pursuing the threatened legal action against the Clintons, he brushed off the question with a quick "...they're good people" and moved on.  In a second term, given the events of the last few years, he may not be so indulgent towards those who have slighted or pursued him so there's the intriguing prospect of an elected president attempting to pardon himself so he can move into the Oval Office and begin his revenge.  Interestingly, constitutional experts have all said that even if a self-pardon is declared unconstitutional, there is nothing to prevent a convicted felon being elected president from his jail cell, a place which would certainly focus one's mind on revenge.           

Pardons from God (via the pope)

In late medieval Christianity, the noun pardonmonger was a derogatory term directed at those who sold papal indulgences; the noun plural pardonmongers should also be noted because there were a lot of them about.  The indulgences had become big business in the medieval church and their abuse was one of the emblematic issues which triggered the Protestant Reformation.  The system worked by permitting a (sinful) individual to purchase from the church an indulgence which would reduce the length and severity of punishment that heaven would require as payment for their transgressions.  Indulgences were in a sense transferable because one could buy one for another and according to legend, those on their death bed would implore relations to buy them one so they would avoid an eternal damnation in Hell.

Historically, the indulgence system was able to evolve because the doctrine of the medieval western Christian church (the Eastern Orthodox would follow a different path) was: (1) Folk knew that after they died they were going to be punished for the sins they accumulated in life, something ameliorated only partially by good works (pilgrimage, prayers, charitable work etc) and earthly absolution; the more sin, the greater the punishment and (2) There was the concept of purgatory, a product of the theological imagination which meant that rather than being damned to hell, the sinful soul would be sent to purgatory where they would endure whatever punishment deemed appropriate, the suffering continuing until the stain was washed from them and they could be set free.  This was obviously not an attractive prospect and seeing a way to cement in society the world-view that church, God & sin were central, popes granted bishops the authority to reduce punishments while they were still alive.  It proved a highly useful tool in making unshakable the worldview in which the church, God and sin were central.

Quite when papal indulgences were first introduced isn’t known but the system was formalized by Pope Urban II (circa 1035–1099; pope 1088-1099) during the Council of Clermont in 1095.  The protocols reflected the diligent order which characterized church bureaucracy: Were one to perform sufficient good deeds to earn a full (Plenary) indulgence from the pope or a bishop, all sins would be expunged (and thus no punishment).  Partial indulgences would erase fewer evil deeds and an intricate system of layers came to be used; essentially an algorithm with which a cleric could calculate (to the day!) how much sin a person had wiped from their record.  Indulgences rapidly developed into a significant structural aspect of church administration and during the Crusades (Urban II’s other great contribution to history), many participated on the basis that in exchange for fighting to regain the Holy Land, they would be granted an indulgence, cancelling all sin.

This system of reducing sin and punishment worked well and having people perform good deeds (whatever the motivation) presumably made for a more harmonious society.  However, in something with a modern echo, rich people began to wonder why, instead of the time consuming, boring or sometimes distasteful business of actually doing good deeds, might it not be easier just to purchase an indulgence, the church thereby able to use the funds for good deeds.  The early example of outsourcing began in the thirteenth century and proved so popular (and profitable) for both governments and the church that it became an important revenue source, the catchment soon extended to allow the rich to buy indulgences for their ancestors, relatives, and friends already dead. 

The nature of this business soon became scandalous, notably during the reign of the Medici Pope Leo X (1475–1521; pope 1513-1521) and indulgences were among the issues the monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) listed in his 95 Theses (1517), a j’accuse directed at what he believed to be an institutionalized corruption and in saying that, Luther had a point, the pope having commissioned a Dominican friar to sell indulgences for the sole purpose of the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  Luther’s attack led to fragmentation within the church, many new sects abandoning the idea of indulgences and while the papacy banned the sale of indulgences in 1567, they didn’t entirely vanish and this wasn’t enough to prevent the subsequent schism within Western Christianity.  So, in the modern Roman Catholic Church, indulgences still exist but they no longer work in the medieval way when they could be something like a presidential pardon.  According to the Vatican: “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain defined conditions through the Church’s help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints”.  The salient points of the system are:

(1) A person cannot buy their way out of hell with indulgences.  Because indulgences remit only temporal penalties, they cannot remit the eternal penalty of hell. Once a person is in hell, no amount of indulgences will ever change that and the only way to avoid hell is by appealing to God’s eternal mercy while still alive; after death, one’s eternal fate is set.

(2) One cannot buy indulgences for sins not yet committed.  Historically, the church has always taught that indulgences do not apply to sins not yet committed although it’s clear some were sold on that basis prior to the Protestant Reformation.  The position now is that: “An indulgence is not a permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin; neither could be granted by any power.”  Theologically that may sound dubious because presumably God could grant exactly that but, as any pope will tell you, God never would.

(3) An indulgence does not “buy forgiveness” because, by definition, the issue of an indulgence presupposes forgiveness has already taken place: “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.”  Indulgences therefore do not forgive sins and deal only with the punishments left after sins have been forgiven.

(4) It is not true an indulgence will shorten one’s time in purgatory by a fixed number of days.  While it’s true that prior to the Reformation such calculations did appear in documents, the church maintains these were references to the period of penance one might undergo during life on earth and the Catholic Church does not claim to know anything about how long or short purgatory is in general, much less any specific.

(5) Indulgences may not be purchased.  The Council of Trent (1545-1563) instituted many reforms in the practice of granting indulgences and, because of prior abuses, “...in 1567 Pope Pius V (1504–1572; pope 1566-1572) cancelled all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions.”  To this day the Roman Catholic Church maintains indulgences were “never sold”, an interpretation of history still used by politicians and political parties when explain why donations (sometimes in the millions) are really “not buying anything”.