Category Archives: General

divine presence and absence

The writers of the exodus story imagine a god who dwells on Mount Sinai and transforms its terrifying divine thundering into the time-worn, tamed linearity of writing. The rumblings in the desert stun the people as a formidable presence, if only a distant, untranslatable echo, while writing affords another kind of being, a shift to a more easily reachable text, however irremediable in it the memory of an absent voice.

We are at the foot of the mountain in the desert, freshly liberated. We depend on manna. We are landless. Yet we manage to think of ourselves as proud, limned autochthones. What text engages us to speak of land as an uninhabited Ur-possession? Aren’t we all allochthones and heirs to the conditional promise of the land?

donkeys

These are a couple notes on trade in the ancient economy after reading Howe in his 2015 edited book (Traders in the ancient Mediterranean). According to Monroe in the first paper of this collection, donkeys were a “rather inefficient means of long-distance transportation” (p. 13 of “Tangled up in blue: Material and other relations of exchange in the Late Bronze age world”). He mentions their carrying capacity as being a third of their weight. Wasn’t it a fifth rather, i.e. 20 to 30% of their weight, that is about 50 kgs (36 to 82kgs)? How is one to measure their efficiency? Monroe doesn’t detail the low consumption of feed, the longevity, resistance to disease, etc. He does note that they are cheap. So, in ground transportation, the “point of diminishing returns” was rapidly reached, but what if the goods were luxury goods rather than grain? I think of the example of the Samaritan in Luke 10. Fortunately, we now have the 2018 book on The donkey in human history. An archaeological perspective, by Peter Mitchell. Here is a quote from chapter 8, the donkey’s tale, about the nature of the association of donkeys and people.

… donkeys (and mules) extended the geographical reach of human societies. They ate away, in other words, at what James Scott has termed ‘the friction of distance’, bringing people into closer contact with each other and making desired resources more accessible (page 225).

Concerning “importations” of grain, the figure of 80,000 kors of grain is reported by Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 15.314, and accepted by APPLEBAUM, “Economic life in Palestine,” 2:669. The figure seems impossible at first sight. The overland transport of such a quantity of grain would require in the neighborhood of 100,000 camel-trips or donkey-trips, and a great deal of time to organize the continuous train of caravans. It represents ca. 16,000 tons, which about one hundred heavier boats of the time could carry. One may however accept that very large quantities of grain were brought in. Josephus insists on the magnitude of the effort and on the deep impression it made on Herod’s subjects as well as neighbors. For comparison, it may be noted that thousands of camels and donkeys could be mobilized for long periods of time in the 1920s to transport cereals from the Hauran to the coast of Lebanon: WEULERSSE, Paysans de Syrie et du Proche-Orient, 137.

As for entrepreneurship and “incipient capitalism” in the ancient Mediterranean, Monroe gives a simplistic definition of capitalism. It would be a “rational, continual pursuit of profit”. His approach is to give a catalogue of examples or what he calls “indications”: rationally used weights with known ratios, the use of symbols (seals), etc. No structural reasoning that I can see.

Why not add military conquest to this “incipient capitalism?” Use of force was a much more efficient way of getting at stored silver, bronze, gold and luxury cloth in palaces and temples, as well as at specialized labor—including soldiers—that would be useful for more conquests or revenue. In two ways: a) by helping the military machine; b) by suppressing the local capacity to rebel and therefore appropriating directly the mostly agrarian goods and local metal trade that were absolutely vital for carrying on more wars. This use of force required that the local political systems had reached a certain level of development that made them attractive targets for military powers of similar or superior strength. Not too surprisingly, ancient Israelite prophets—or the exilic and post-exilic leadership that had to make do without kings and prophets and edited the prophetic books we have—saw the accumulation that kings and elites went after for what it would become: an unmitigated disaster, no matter the religiously-framed excuses they had in their competition for security and risk abatement.

Hamas

For antisemites and fundamentalist thinkers, the hatred of Israel has many causes whose edge cannot be easily taken off and that are not amenable to reason. In this short page, I’ll try nonetheless to follow a partially historical view and see where it may lead. Muslim fundamentalists have their own special theological and political reasons to resent and reject a democratic style of life that Israel has managed to keep so far by choosing to separate religion from politics and civil life. Many Muslims in the Middle East, however, live in countries that are not democracies, far from it. They want to see new democratic regimes come to power as they made so overwhelmingly clear in large revolutionary movements for freedom in Tunisia, Egypt, and many other countries in 2011 and after. But poverty, religion, and the deep trust granted to a party like the Muslim brothers of Egypt, unfortunately help dictatorships and aristocratic regimes inherit power and hold to it. There are nations whose history reaches far beyond Islam, as in Egypt and Iran, who both claim a glorious and imperial past. For many people however, even today, the only avenue is to turn to God and Islam in the hope that justice and peace can be secured that way. Their nations and states are recent creations bound to histories of colonization and exploitation. The only unity and trust that seem workable in these nations, therefore, is within the ummah of Islam, the great community of believers, rather than in national governments.

Regardless of their having a similar political history, however, a number of nations have succeeded in separating religion from politics since the sixteenth century, at least for some ostensibly “enlightened” European kingdoms. It took decades of violence and cruelty in a terrible civil and religious war before practical, hard negotiated solutions could find a way to peaceful relations. But it is also true that those conflicts lost their pathos when the economies of these nations improved dramatically from the sixteenth century on and especially in the nineteenth century when an industrialization that was fueled by enormous oil and gas deposits made it easier for freedom and democracy to spread further (Gaël Giraud, Composer un monde en commun. Une théologie politique de l’anthropocène. Paris: Seuil, 2022). This new freedom and rejection of institutions like the immensely powerful Church couldn’t prevent the new economic forms in Europe or the USA from competing and using military violence to colonize and often bring ruin to local peoples. So-called modern nations did this while presenting this new form of greed under the guise of access to civilizational values and unabated progress.

Israel came into modern existence as a home for dispersed, delegitimized, and surviving victims of a most murderous totalitarianism. It was and still is a Zionist home, a refuge and a return to an ancient story that is irremediably attached to Christianity and Islam. In the thirties and forties, many Jewish immigrants were leery of being associated with colonizing forces. But in spite of this reluctance, Israel was/is also following in the wake of modern nations for whom the process of industrialization and use of power cannot be separated from violence. So, the perceptions that Palestinians have of the nakba are more justified than I could ever estimate. The barbarous murders by hamas are not. And neither is the extreme response by the Israeli government.

My page above is an attempt to understand a few features of the situation of local peoples and states. It doesn’t justify believers to be willing and ready to do what they do. It unerstands the principle of self-defense. But only compassion and a willingness to hear the opponent’s story can hope to close some wounds in time.

neighbor and originalism

The Supreme Court is looking at the possibility of regulating gun ownership. Some of the judges believe in originalism. This is the notion that the interpretation of constitutional law has been drifting too far and that one should go back to the origins of those laws. We should adopt stricter interpretations that reflect more accurately what the writers of the constitution and its amendments were envisioning at the time of their writing.

So, let’s see how this intellectual frame of mind would play out if confronted to a similar problem, namely the interpretation of the Bible. There are at least six Catholics or ex-Catholics among the nine judges of the Supreme Court. They are not professional exegetes but surely appreciate the essential role still played by the Bible in our secular times. Would they be willing to apply the legal principle in question–––originalism–-–to the Bible? The interpretation of the Bible, whether Jewish, Catholic, or Reformed, has long hesitated about that matter and still does, at least in certain congregations. Must it keep to conservative readings, or can it develop meanings that take into account new events, formulations, or needs. Even the most traditional Jews would frame their Torah study obligations as a duty to reveal the multiplicity of meanings meant by the divinity to be discovered over time.

Let us look at one famous story, that of the Samaritan in Luke 10:25–37. It cannot be properly explained without having an inkling of the Greco-Roman surroundings and more importantly of the long development of the notion of neighbor in Israelite and Jewish society after the earlier catastrophic collapse of their small kingdoms and the temple. In other words, I am suggesting that the value of the story of the Samaritan cannot be appreciated without having a sense of the development of the concept of neighbor. In fact, the expansion of the notion of neighbor to the whole of humanity has its roots in that story. That notion and its expansion, if one adopted the principle of strict originalism, would become impossible to understand. It would require belief in a Jesus entirely bereft of his Jewish and Israelite background. It would make it impossible to appreciate the profound value that the story and its biblical background have had and continue to have on the development of compassion and care in a complex, unfolding world. So, this is not a purely intellectual matter. One may actually ponder how much slower the development of hospices and hospitals would have been in past centuries if the notion of originalism had been the main guiding principle and had killed the expanding notion of neighbor.

a second kippur

Two days ago, Hamas launched a complex military action against many towns and villages in the South of Israel. We do not know what the numbers of victims are. The latest news today indicated that there might be hundreds of people killed on both sides, and Hamas also kidnapped a number of Israeli soldiers and civilians, even children. A cursory reading of Haaretz shows that top officers and intelligence people were aware that the tensions were growing in both Palestinian territories and Gaza. But the new government of Israel had other plans. Their ideas regarding economic development with India, the Arab emirates, and Saudi Arabia now look very distant. But much more importantly, the government’s project of taking control of the Supreme Court and the democratic structures of Israel are all going to be pushed aside for a while. A unity government is taking over, which is not simply to satisfy the psychological need for unity but may allow Netanyahu to detach himself from the hard right. It looks pretty clear or at least it is a distinct possibility that Hamas could do what they did, not only for their own reasons, economic and religious, but also because there was a massive failure of trust in Israel, which the present government, beginning with Netanyahu, is to be blamed for. Many people are criticizing intelligence agencies. We don’t know what the reality was since intelligence is by nature secretive, but it is clear that the months-long struggle about the nature of Israel, the division of minds in the country, the social divisions, and the complete lack of concern for Palestinians and how they can endure an-ever tightening Israeli rule, all of this is partly to blame for this war.

There are other reasons such as the long arc of injustice and violence that spans over the people of the area since around the 1900s, long before many Jews began to flee to Palestine from their countries. And a powerful religious message of justice and peace that often gets derailed.

The military response will be harsh as usual even though the taking of hostages by Hamas will complicate the situation. It has always been Israel’s policy to make sure that they are the clear winners of any engagement. Still, precisely because of that policy, it becomes dubious whether Israel can continue to win, especially if the government becomes more authoritarian, the social differences continue to increase, and the cultural and religious dimensions of the conflict become a justification for the first two aspects.

An ex ambassador of Israel to France, Elie Barnavi is fairly representative of Israeli thinking. He is of the opinion that this second Kippur, like the other 50 years ago, may ruin the fragile equilibriums of the region and even lead to a third Intifada, given the terrible situation that Palestinians are living under.

imago dei

When I visit our grandchildren, I appreciate both how closely related they are and yet how different they can be from each other. Their life path will not replicate what they perceive, wrongly or rightly, to be an image of life that parents and others hold for them. More broadly, neither will they, I hope, succumb to the tyranny of images and become imitators or copyists. To help me think about the marvelous difference that exists between all human beings and the danger of reducing it to genetic chains, I bring up two short texts that come to us across nearly two millennia.

The first one is a passage from the Mishnah Sanhedrin, written by the end of the second century of our era, where the basic oneness of human nature, symbolized by the minting of coins, is contrasted with the extraordinary variety of people. I quote:

Human beings were created as individuals, to teach that whoever destroys one soul, it is as if a complete world was destroyed, and whoever sustains one soul, it is as if a whole world was sustained. [….] For coins are made by being struck with a die, and yet they all resemble each other. But the Divine One struck each human being with the die of the first person, yet none resembles the other. (Danby, The Mishnah).

The die or seal used for the “first person” produces a different image each and every time, yet there is but one “die”, used an infinite number of times. In contrast, mints had to replace metallic dies because these wore out after a few thousand of strikes. And yet the coins retained the same imagery throughout the series. The expected uniformity of the coins, in turn, made the task of governing, taxing, and controlling people that much easier. In sharp contrast to this use of uniformity for consolidating power, the divine agent, we are told, is willing to relinquish control and have images of self that can be very different from each other, with value in and of themselves.

In a second text that portrays Jesus, the same elements are at play: a divinity, earthly kings, a coin, and the business of images (Mark 12:13–17; Matthew 22:15–22; Luke 20:20–26). Jesus is at the temple in Jerusalem, confronted by Pharisees and Herodians, i.e. the government’s critics and representatives of the time, who colluded to ask him a trick question: “Is it lawful to pay the census to Caesar or not?” In response, he requests a silver coin, which he lacks, because of poverty or religious piety, and then asks whose image and inscription the coin bears. Does he even look at it? When he is told that they belong to Caesar, he answers: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” a famous answer often used to support various degrees of separation of church and state, as if the two spheres were different actors in the political drama that repeatedly plays itself out. The immediate point of the answer, however, is about the nature and limits of power. There were boundaries even to the powers of a Caesar, most especially in regard to the sameness of the images and their capacity to make people believe that they were a full extension of his presence everywhere rather than an ersatz of it. He could have statues and coins copy his picture and be distributed at the limits of his military power, but those images could never replace him, whereas the divine imageless presence could be detected everywhere, past and beyond the great variety of nature and human beings.

These two ancient texts have something to say regarding the modern situation. We live in a world where the power to print or coin images on matter and claim the product for oneself as a private good has exploded. This capacity is more extensive than ever before and goes beyond the so-called tragedy of the commons. It reaches into the plant, animal and human domains. Copyright law, so extensive now since 1998 (death + 70 years); Patent law on genetic engineering in 1982… Since 1980, a law passed by Congress allows universities and other non-profit organizations to patent discoveries made with financial assistance from public sources. It has encouraged the profit motive among scientists, and led them to work with private sector entrepreneurs, both developments that are troublesome. Modern institutions and corporations are putting their own image and brand even on the stuff of life, which one would have thought could never be owned again.

Our world is not so different from that of antiquity in that the wondrous power of image-making is being abused, just as it was in ancient times. It is not intellectual curiosity itself that is at fault, but how it is controlled and used. We are buying these images, while working as hard as ever to pay for health, for genetically engineered and patented foods, for software, for energy, for education….

Une vie…

Je viens de lire l’émouvant recueil de lettres envoyées de 1955 à 1978 par Jean-Claude Mahé à ses parents. Ce recueil a èté numérisé par Dominique Mahé. J’ai voulu écrire un message en réponse à ce beau livre mais ai dépassé les 1500 caractères réglementaires et l’ai donc mis ici.

Un grand merci à Dominique Mahé pour avoir publié ces lettres de son frère Jean-Claude. On y reconnaît bien sûr au début les lettres hebdomadaires toutes simples que nous écrivions tous à nos parents le dimanche et qui étaient sinon lues par le préfet de discipline, du moins en mal d’imprimatur ou de visa préfectoral. Vers la fin de ses études, puis à l’armée, et surtout dans les années soixante, par exemple de 1966 à 68, les lettres deviennent remarquables. Elles sont beaucoup plus longues et réfléchies—ses lectures impressionantes y sont probablement pour beaucoup—mais le ton de respect, de reconnaissance et d’affection envers ses parents ne change jamais, sauf peut-être dans une seule lettre vers la fin, toujours aussi respectueuse et affectueuse mais au ton décidé, où il réagit à une situation probablement très difficile. Au fil des ans, il continue à partager avec ses parents ses efforts pour construire une société plus juste (syndicats, communautés de vie, profondes amitiés), ses hésitations morales, ses jugements sur la société et la religion, ses visites, les beaux paysages qu’il découvre au fil de ses nombreux voyages, et surtout ses emplois et travaux de menuiserie très variés qu’il décrit souvent pour son père, sans oublier de mentionner ici ou là sa précieuse boîte à outils… Il était émouvant de lire toutes ces lettres aujourd’hui et de se voir secoué par cet effort impressionnant pour vivre une vie en accord avec son idéal d’amour, de justice, de vérité, et de paix.

chatbot

I’m trying ChatGPT on a sample of historical and theological questions (one is below, in italics). The answers are well phrased and nearly immediate. They tend to be prudent and reflect common wisdom, for instance the insistance on Jesus as a spiritual and ethical leader and the eschewing of a political side. The machine uses simple devices to keep options available: multiplicity of interpretations, for one, symbolic approach, for another, and reformulations of questions, for instance. Even the costs of human life are not shirked if one pursues the question of suffering. The engine is structured to learn, for instance regarding the epithet of “good” that Christianity has long affixed to the Samaritan of Luke 10 as a summary of the good neighbor. The machine or chatbot accepted my correction that the word “good” does not appear in Luke 10. It apologized for the oversight and thanked me for bringing it up. It then rephrased my own formulations. Another surprise was to realize that my own style changed rapidly—for instance my use of qualifiers—as I thought, perhaps wrongly, that there was no moral intention behind the answers.

What will happen to knowing when this paid farming of information and creativity overpowers all other tools of knowledge, say extensive and thoroughly edited tools like wikipedia and standard encyclopedias? What will the ever so acceptable lack of evidence and sources lead to? An ever smaller common denominator?

I tried a very general historical question:
Is monotheism a historical event? When did it happen?
This is what the machine answered as of today and without any feedback on my part (there would be much to say!):

Monotheism is a belief in a single, all-powerful deity or God. It is not a specific historical event, but rather a concept that has been present in various forms in various cultures throughout history. The origins of monotheism are not fully understood, but it is thought to have emerged in different parts of the world at different times.

One of the earliest examples of monotheism is believed to be the ancient Egyptian religion, which featured a single, supreme deity named Amun. Other ancient cultures that practiced monotheism include the ancient Hebrews, who worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the ancient Persians, who worshipped the supreme deity Ahura Mazda.

Monotheism has also played a significant role in the development of modern world religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These religions all believe in a single, all-powerful God and have had a major influence on the development of Western culture and thought.

Pigs and cows

On our farm in the sixties and seventies, we still killed a pig every year or so (Large White, really big hogs) and would clean up intestines for instance to make andouille. I remember that job not too fondly… Before refrigeration, much of the meat was shared with neighbors, priest, family. The lard (long strips from the long back of the animal) was cured on a bed of rock salt and straw under the staircase. Over the months, a large strip of that lard/bacon was cut and cooked over the potatoes (same time). It gave taste to the potatoes. Men would eat it as replacement for butter, children were not allowed to touch it. Andouilles (all intestine skins) were cured in a chimney where there was a frequent fire… It would take books to walk back this alley of souvenirs!

It was rare to kill a cow: I remember this happening once after an accident where the cow broke a leg. We were dismayed to lose a milk cow but satisfied that a lot of meat could be shared.

Refrigeration was a cooperative building at the beginniing, no refrigerators at homes. It was a little house that all surrounding farmers had a share in and a key. It was at about 3 km from our farm. We would go there once a week or so…

No hunting in our family.

Breton

I hope that the following paper of June 1982 is still of interest.


I was born on a farm in Pommerit-Jaudy, a Breton village on the Northern coast of Brittany. Much of my formal education took place in Catholic schools, in French of course. At home, I learned to understand and even speak Breton but French had become the mamaloshen in post-WW II farming communities. Reading and writing my mother tongue came only later, in my twenties.

Until the French Revolution, Breton had an unthreatened life. It is still very much alive now, as any visitor to Brittany is bound to realize, but its existence is in immediate and great danger. A language that once counted the most speakers of all Celtic languages may nearly disappear in a few years. In a general sense, what is now happening to the Breton language and to Breton people is the result of a clash between two cultures that were not ready for each other. The major historical forces that have led to such a situation can be traced to some of the policies of the Church and especially to those of the French government in the past two or three centuries. I do not propose here to blame those institutions but simply to throw light on some of the trends.

It is not altogether certain that Breton will disappear and the Breton identity, whatever it may be, vanish into a bigger whole. Not only are many Bretons still speaking the language, but a few thousands are now consciously returning to it and trying to encourage others to do the same. But it will take a major effort on the part of all its speakers for Breton to remain their primary language.

Breton until the French Revolution

It is not within the scope of this paper to reconstitute in detail the history of the Breton language. Furthermore, the investigation of the origins of Breton and its dialects presents great difficulties, mainly because very few writings remain from the period preceding the sixteenth century. One reason for this was that most writing, i.e. official writing—Church and state documents regarding property matters—was done primarily in Latin and later on in French. There are a few inscriptions from the pre-medieval and medieval periods, rare lists of names of places or people (cartularies), glosses in Latin manuscripts, and copies of medieval texts made at a later date, in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries in the best of cases. Even with the help of toponymy, dialectology, and archaeology, which are beginning to yield good results, it is difficult to obtain a clear view of the origins of Breton.

One may begin in the fifth to sixth centuries, when Christian Britons who came from Celtic Cornwall, Devon and Wales—especially South Wales—, emigrated to what was then known as Armorica. Several things indicate that such an emigration took place. First of all, a linguistic comparison shows that Breton is extremely close to Cornish and relatively similar to Welsh. Furthermore, the toponymy preserves an abundance of place-names that reflect the tribal organization of the “invaders.” These recently christianized Brythonic tribes imposed their own social structure, in which abbots and knights were a prominent feature. This fact is independently preserved in the Lives of the Saints, although this late collection of lives of Celtic saints is otherwise very unreliable. One can also read in this widely-used book that the Britons found Armorica to be unpopulated. This may well have been the case in the western and northernmost parts of the country, where according to the evidence from dialectology and toponymy. the Britons settled without meeting any resistance. One may suppose that the population of these areas had kept strong ties with the insular Celts and perhaps welcomed them. In eastern and southeastern Brittany, on the contrary, the invaders found it much more difficult to conquer more populated areas which had been thoroughly romanized in culture and type of Christianity.

Moreover, here they were in direct confrontation with the Franks. who controlled the country. From the sixth to the ninth century. a series of battles was waged against the Franks in which the Bretons were successful enough to reach Rennes and Nantes. In this area called Upper Brittany, Breizh-Uhel in Breton, the Breton language either never took hold, became very influenced by Gaulish/Gallic, or quickly disappeared. It seems that Breton had its greatest extension in the tenth century, reaching Mount Saint-Michel and the areas east of Rennes and Nantes, but leaving these two cities outside of its influence. They both remained Roman cities, in spite of their political subjection to the Bretons.

The ninth to tenth century Norman invasions were a blow to the recently constituted kingdom of Brittany. Breton vanished from several areas in Upper Brittany. The Breton aristocracy sought refuge with the Franks and became their vassals. Add to this that they were often physically far from their own people. What was to become the fairly independent Duchy of Brittany was in effect a Frankish governorate, with a majority of Breton subjects. This trend continued in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries when Brittany was ruled by the kings of England, the French-speaking Plantagenets. Breton was the language of the people in Lower Brittany, while French and Latin were the state languages. When Brittany officially became a part of the French kingdom (1532), these relationships did not change. In the absence of clear documents, it is difficult to trace the movements of the linguistic border between French and Breton during the Middle Ages or at the beginning of the Ancien Regime. During the latter period, the royal policy was essentially indifferent to Breton. This was still true in the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, but the bourgeoisie and even the lower classes living in cities were already adopting French. The people living in the countryside, i. e. the great majority, were the only ones to keep to Breton as monolinguals. A major reason for this was that they were isolated in so many ways. Better roads came only at the end of the eighteenth century, although schools were rare and for privileged people. Breton must have been the predominant language in those schools, French and Latin being little taught. At the college or seminary level, however, one had to pass directly to Latin.

A notable fact is that Breton books were the first to be printed in any Celtic language. Manuscripts in Breton become more numerous from the fifteenth century on. A careful study of these documents reveals that Breton hasn’t changed much since. These books were for the most part devotional materials of various kinds, but there were also plays such as mystery-plays and tragedies (e.g. Ar pevar mab Aymon). People who could read would tell the stories to groups gathered around the fire, as was still done in many villages at the beginning of our century. Geographically speaking, after the initial losses during the High Middle Ages, consecutive to territorial losses, the linguistic border probably underwent few changes. At the end of the ancien régime period, it appears to be similar to the nineteenth century border, which will be described below.

Breton in modern times

Breton is spoken—around 1980—by anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 people. This estimate represents those people who use the language in their daily interactions, i.e. at least 15\% of the whole population.^[For a more recent evaluation, see Broudic 2013:441.] All or almost all of these Breton speakers are rurals, i.e. farmers, and people who keep a close connection with farmers through their trades: small shopkeepers, bakers, smiths, priests, etc. … It must be kept in mind, however, that as soon as a village takes on the trappings of a city, i.e. doctors, veterinarians, post-offices, tax offices and the like, this town or city will tend not to speak Breton, in spite of the fact that it may number fewer inhabitants than many a rural village. It was possible only a few years ago to decide what was a village and what was a city and fairly confidently add up the numbers to obtain the total population of Breton speakers. But the linguistic situation has drastically changed, even in small villages and hamlets, and more refined criteria must be applied.

I have just spoken of the social border separating Breton and French speakers as of a well-defined limit. An even clearer limit is the geographic one: Breton is spoken west of a line that runs from Plouha a few kilometers west of St-Brieuc, southward to the west of Vannes, a city on the Morbihan coast. The border runs at times through small villages and is very well defined, at least in the speaker’s minds. I remember from my high school days in Quintin that a neighboring village was so divided and that some of its hamlets were still Breton-speaking. For a little boy who felt foreign in this French-speaking area of Brittany, it was a measure of consolation to be a stone’s throw from the mother tongue. Of course, this French-speaking Brittany was not the France generally spoken of in books. It was pays gallo, i.e. Gallic country, and spoke its own rich dialect of French which we children loved to hear and imitate. Nowadays, the Gallo dialect is also studied in its own right and enjoys a rebirth in several quarters. This French-speaking Brittany is called Breizh-Uhel (“Haute-Bretagne” in French) whereas the Breton-speaking west is called Breizh-Izel (“Basse-Bretagne” in French).

Breton is conventionally divided in four dialects called in Breton: tregerieg, leoneg, yezh Kernev, and gwenedeg. To these four, one must add standard or “literary” Breton, a modern adaptation striving to assimilate what is best in each dialect, other Celtic languages, speech of neighboring villages or of relatives living only a few miles away. I remember, for instance, being struck by the fact that my father’s family, located in Penvenan, about ten miles from our village, used different words for certain objects and had a different accent. One must keep in mind that Breton was essentially a spoken language without access to literature or schooling that could serve the purposes of standardization and unification as in many other languages. It is remarkable that Breton has kept its unity for so long and that its dialects do not prevent communication. Of course, the fact that Breton speakers were economically isolated does explain in part why the language survived. But it does not explain why it did not split into smaller languages. The cultural unity must be a strong factor.

Outsiders’ views

The Breton language was often considered to be a rough, unsophisticated dialect without any redeeming qualities. A language among thousands that the lack of an army and a navy reduces to the status of a dialect or a patois. The worse is found among nineteenth century authors but even modern scholarship doesn’t avoid the basic reflexes.^[For instance, Gaulish and Latin are thought to be enriching each other, at least: see Duval in Histoire de la France rurale, tome 1, page 271 : “La langue latine se propagea…, en empruntant au gaulois des mots qu’elle habillait de ses désinences tandis que le gaulois s’enrichissait de mots latins qu’il déformait.”]

Another recent story: an 18-year-old French girl learning English in Santa Cruz in the summer of 1976 told me that Breton is a patois. She thinks, after I have presented her with a different point of view, that it is not worth studying a language like Breton, that it is a waste of time, that we are heading towards use of an international language. Another time, I meet this self-confident, arrogant young Frenchman whom I welcome to Crown College where I am an instructor and who is surprised to learn that I speak Breton, “because my use of the French language is perfect!”

Contempt for Breton and the need to eradicate it often has a political version. The “Breton-French” nobility would have used it against the population. Then the WW II “nationalists” of Breiz Atao would have created the myth of a different culture. French, on the contrary, would have presented a liberation from the social and religious oppression of Brittany.

For me, in response to this kind of view, Breton was the language that everyone spoke around me when I was a child. Breton was the world, as was French. French was freedom and slavery at the same time. As was Breton. This is true of all languages: they are used to communicate as well as to separate and shape new units. One needs to have seen parents or neighbors who are put to shame (it can be just a small gesture here or there, an intonation), to understand. The Breton nobility didn’t care about Breton, apart from the few enthusiasts who could not have any real contact with the population. We knew that they were involved in romanticism, a kind of game. Likewise the ecclesiastical authorities who occasionally served a word of Breton in their speeches—Breton which they might know perfectly besides—. Their empathy and recognition was in fact a condemnation of the tongue, a wink over the dying language. The minuscule movement of Breiz Atao and the coterie of bourgeois who were interested in Breton with the passion of converts made us weary.

So, the political dressing up of contempt for the Breton language seems to be just another nail in the coffin. My position is to appreciate the work done on and for the language by the Vallées, Mordierns, Hémons, and separate from it what they have done in politics as much as possible. I do it because I still hope that the language can be reborn and maintain itself. Of course, doing language is doing politics. But to attack what has been done linguistically by Hémon and others is in effect telling the Bretons to be content with a diminished language and accept to be steamrolled by French culture.

Chances of survival, a personal account

What is the strength of the language at the present time? The overwhelming impression is that it is dying, and yet not quite, for there are some signs of hope. It is dying because the generation that does know Breton and speaks it most of the time is now disappearing and because the next generation does not conduct its life in Breton. I could give numerous examples from my own experience in an area where everyone spoke Breton at all times, except in their dealings with outside agencies. This was true until very recently, but even in the fifties a number of children of my generation learned French only at school. For instance, a year ago, as I was sitting on a bench near the bank of the Jaudy river, near Tréguier, I heard two old ladies coming down the path, chatting in Breton. One was pushing a stroller and as they passed in front of me, the baby cried. In unison, they leaned forward and spoke in French to the baby who was not yet of speaking age. Indeed, old people now have accepted as a fact of life that one speaks French to the younger generation. It is a sort of miracle if young people speak both French and Breton correctly.

This acceptance has become general since WW II. For example, my elder brother, born before the war in 1938, was still addressed in Breton by everyone around him. But all the children born after the war were addressed in French by my parents, especially my mother, and by other members of the family. This actually made for some puzzling situations, such as my father asking my mother in Breton to have us do something for him. I always thought that his indirectness was due to his timidity and his uneasiness with marks of authority, but I realize now that it can also be explained in terms of linguistic ability. My father was not at ease in French. Yet, he himself had become more fluent in this foreign tongue because he had spent five years as a war prisoner in Germany, and therefore had to use French—not German—to get along with the other prisoners. Of course, we heard more Breton than French. At the table for instance, adults always spoke Breton to each other. Children were expected to keep quiet. When a French-speaking visitor would come to the house, my mother would ask my father in Breton to switch to French: “Come now, Jean, don’t speak Breton before foreigners,” whereby children drew the conclusion that French was good but foreign. We knew that we didn’t have to speak Breton, but in fact learned it, although it was a form of rebellion adopted by some to refuse to speak Breton. Our parents and neighbors were proud of the fact that we could speak their common language with them. My first act when I am back in my village is still to speak Breton to older friends, and this always draws the satisfied remarks “Ah! You haven’t forgotten your Breton!” But I do not speak Breton with people my age with whom I was in primary school. Even the younger people who have remained in farms use the language less and less with each other, especially at home, although they are the best speakers of the present generation.

I find it much more difficult to speak Breton with people who have learned the language at school (it is derisively known as “chemical Breton”) and often have an accent that I find difficult to associate with Breton. One of the reasons for the blockage is that I cannot detach a certain view of the world from its medium. Breton in this view was rural and I still do not know how to pass to another cultural set of rules in Breton. Neither do I dare write in Breton to my father although I can write the language, and he himself not only can read very well but in fact enjoys anything written in Breton, provided that it is brought to him. I mean by this that he will not go out of his way to borrow—or God forbid—to buy a Breton or French book, because to read books often connotes wealth, a change of social class, and perhaps some laziness. The problem is that I fear appearing too lettered, since, when one writes, one has to use words or spellings that sound odd and might smack of condescension. One must understand in this respect that the majority of the population does not read or write Breton, and that literacy is automatically associated with French. Only some segments of the population, in very Catholic areas, have learned to read and write Breton thanks to the Church. It is thanks to Breton catechism in 1912–1914 that my father could read Breton.

Another sad thing is that Bretons have learned to be ashamed of their language. They have come to believe that it is not worth anything, especially in cities, administrations, schools, or in conversations with anyone who is not rural. They even have been made to be ashamed of their accent in French. My father told me how he once was put to shame. When he arrived to accomplish his military service in 1926, he received a questionnaire which, among other things, asked which languages he spoke. Naïvely enough, he wrote Breton and French. But the officer checking the answers said that Breton was not a language and crossed it out. Not long ago, I myself was asked by a neighbor how many languages I spoke. When I included Breton, he dismissed it immediately, commenting that Breton did not count because it was not really a language. Now, it didn’t matter that this neighbor spoke much better Breton than French! Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that one should not make too much of this shame. We have also seen how proud Bretons are of their mother tongue, although it is a hidden pride that demands to be awakened. This ambivalent attitude, both of shame and of pride, has its main source in the policies of the Church and of the French government, themselves often relaying a much deeper movement having to do with industrialization and the apparition of modern values.

The role of the Catholic Church

To speak of Christianity in Brittany is to speak of the Catholic Church. The first fact to be given the proper importance is that there has not been a standard version of the Bible in Breton as there has been in several other languages. Not that the Bible has not been translated into Breton, but the Bible in Latin Catholic countries was the Vulgate, and it is still the Latin text that has a profound impact for many because it was the basis of all liturgy until 1964. This is even true for people who lack formal schooling. Most Catholic Bretons know by heart several Latin texts, e.g. the De profundis (Psalm 130), which they recite at night for their dead. The absence of a standard Breton Bible was compensated in part by hymns and other liturgical translations, but one may dream what it would have meant for the language, had a Breton Bible been allowed to exist by the Church, especially when one compares the situation with that of Wales, where the Welsh Bible and Prayer Book had a great role in shaping the language. An excellent translation of the whole Bible has been undertaken under the direction of Maodez Glanndour, who is a priest, scholar, and poet. Unfortunately, this almost completed work is not yet fully appreciated by those who could do much to encourage its circulation. One reason for this situation is the disaffection in which the Church is presently held, both in France and in Brittany. In the minds of many, the fight for Breton goes together with diverse brands of socialism which have in common their anti-clericalism, a confusion that is a reflection of the French political heritage.

We already have noted that Catholic Bretons learned to read and write in their catechism. This was still true in several communities until the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, the Church had to use Breton in order to make its mysteries accessible to little boys and girls who otherwise did not go to school. Catechisms and other devotional works were unfortunately often written in a strange Breton that borrowed heavily from French and Latin, even syntactically. Another influential book was the already mentioned collection of lives of saints called Buhez ar Sent. This book was to be found in most homes and was read at night to the household by one person who could read. Remnants of this intensely religious life conducted in Breton are the parish hymns which are still sung in Breton as before. In most places, they are the only scrap of Breton liturgy left standing.

It may come as a surprise that certain areas of Brittany are not, and may never have been, Catholic. Though visited by missionaries at different times in the past, they have remained fairly impervious to the Church and often have translated their former paganism into one form or another of modern political radicalism. This is especially true of Cornouaille (Bro-Gernev) in central Brittany. Consequently, these areas did not receive the benefit of formal Breton education via catechisms and the like. But they also happened to be the more economically isolated and were often more faithful to Breton traditions. The fact that such areas did not become strongholds of Christianity is certainly not due to the missionaries themselves. To this day, priests who misbehave were punished by being sent in quasi-exile in this area. It is noteworthy that the great missionary efforts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were conducted in Breton, most often by priests or monks who learned Breton in order to be able to approach the people. Some of these early missionaries have given us the first grammars, dictionaries, and handbooks of Breton.

The Church also had a role in preserving the language in less spectacular ways, especially through the daily interaction of priests with their parishioners. Until recently, priests sent to Breton-speaking areas normally were Breton speakers themselves, if sometimes speaking another dialect, and they carried out much of their daily business in Breton. This is especially true of those priests who showed concern for the more modest of their parishioners, since these knew only Breton. People of means, on the contrary, tended to switch to French as a mark of status, as feudal aristocrats and city bourgeois had done in previous centuries. Sermons and homilies were also in Breton. In the case of priests who knew the language very well and cared for it, their speeches must have had a good influence. My parents’ generation, for instance, remembered and still talked about a priest who “sermoned” in Breton until the end of the Second World War. He was considered an “orator” and some of his sayings were still quoted as maxims. His reputation led me to ask a neighbor if she had ever heard about his Breton sermons and whether they had been kept somewhere. She went immediately to the sideboard drawer and pulled out an old school notebook written cover to cover in purple ink. She passed it to me. “But it’s in French!” She then told me that Father Dorléac asked the children in catechism to translate on the fly in French the sermons he gave in Breton. Two or three kinds of handwriting had been used, but the first was the beautiful and regular handwriting of my neighbor, when she was ten or eleven. When she was tired, she said, she would pass the notebook to a friend or even to her mother, who had a less elegant handwriting. The spelling was impeccable. The level of education she had reached after four or five years of elementary education was simply outstanding.

On the whole, the Church has had a positive influence on Breton, protecting it, keeping it alive, and even developing some of its aspects. This happened, however, because there were enough priests of rural background who kept to Breton not only because it was a pastoral necessity but because they loved their language and culture. One must keep in mind that through those priests the Church was the only institution bestowing some dignity and respect on Breton language and culture from the world outside.

The Church iself, however, discouraged the use of Breton as a liturgical language, even when Rome finally authorized the free use of vernaculars in the second Vatican council. Breton ecclesiastics in positions of authority have always tended to avoid the use of Breton, at least in their official capacities. They turn to it in a superficial manner. For instance, I have heard bishops drop a few Breton sentences in their speeches on special occasions. Through such behavior, Bretons with power were pretending to remain at one with the people, and this was usually gratefully acknowledged. Unfortunately, they also helped to deeply engrain in the listeners’ minds the idea that not only is it an excellent idea to master the French culture, but that in order to do so, Breton has to take a back seat. In this respect, Church authorities have followed the same principles as the French government and French political parties.

One may therefore conclude that if Breton survived, it is due in part to the work of those who courageously decided that Breton was a good thing in itself, and tried to give it a wider scope from within the ecclesiastical institution. But one must add that it was not due to any favors coming from the hierarchy, far from.it. It happened to be a fact of life that Breton was for several centuries the only way to reach souls.

Breton under the French government

Unfortunately in this case, governments do not concern themselves with souls. For a variety of reasons, France embarked since the Revolution on a course of action hostile to minority languages and cultures. The first blows against Breton came with the French Revolution. At first, from 1789 to 1792, the revolution’s attitude was generally sympathetic, so much so that official documents were translated into Breton. But problems arose when the idea of establishing schools everywhere in the nation began to be implemented. What would be the content of the teaching done in these schools? Unfortunately, Égalité became equated in the minds of many with unification and systematic standardization. Worse, French became so well identified with freedom that the use of any other language in the nation and in the colonies was perceived as an attack against the new principles. Government viewed Breton as an obstacle to enlightenment. Of course, the first measures against Breton, such as the attempt to impose French in the recently created public schools or the prohibition of Breton even in churches, could hardly be applied with any success. The idea, however, was there to stay. Moreover, other destructive forces were at work. French for instance replaced Latin in higher education. Although lower education was still conducted in other languages, it became essential to learn the national tongue.

The Napoleonic administration proved to be much more lenient and even allowed a Breton translation of the “Imperial catechism” (l806). Centralization, though, was beginning to have devastating effects. Official papers were now only in French. For the first time, Breton soldiers were sent in great numbers to other countries where they spent extended periods of times. Even more important, all commercial and technical advances were synonymous with French culture and were the greatest force behind the progress of the national language, though in a moderate way at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The rest of the nineteenth century saw the language subjected to more destructive trends. It was a time of great technological breakthroughs and vastly increased communication networks. Breton was probably still taught in many schools, which would explain why so many books of piety, almanacs, and songs were printed. But French definitely came first. The universal conscription of men for three years, decreed in 1872, was to become a major enemy of Breton culture. Furthermore, the idea that a major task of the schools was to destroy provincial languages and make a place for French could finally be put in practice. Education was made compulsory in 1882 and Breton was forbidden in schools. Children were punished if caught speaking Breton, even in the playground. They were supposed to inform on each other. A wooden shoe or other wood “symbol” was given to the last child heard speaking Breton in the school yard. Much has been made of this “symbol,” called ar vuoc’h (the cow) by my parents, but I do not think that it did much in itself to instill contempt for their language in the children’s minds. It ended up often enough in a field or the bushes outside the playground. It was symbolic, however, of a pernicious philosophy that equated the use of Breton with boorishness, utter lack of intelligence and proper manners, and even with blind opposition to rationalism and progress.

The impact of French policies was crushing for Breton as soon as major ways of communication were opened up in the nineteenth century and the appeal of an easier and more interesting urban life, made itself insistently felt. Modern life appeared to be a liberation from the old circles of village relationships, since salaries allowed workers to slip into the exciting anonymity of large cities. French began to be accepted not only in cities but also in villages and even in individual farms. Adults, especially mothers, learned to speak a little French and wanted to teach it to their children in order to improve their chances in the world outside. A new feeling came about according to which Breton was ur yezh mat da vann, i.e. a useless language.

The appeal of French was rapidly internalized at the village level. Breton-speaking young men, for instance, stood little chance of obtaining a dance from a young woman, because Breton was associated with backwardness. On the contrary, the better young people spoke French, the more chance they had to meet a person of his or her choice. It also meant that one tried to imitate urban French pronunciation and drop the heavy Breton accent. Curiously enough, there has been a complete turnaround in recent years and it is now fashionable to have a slight Breton accent in French!

The twentieth century has kept the old evils and brought new ones. The ever growing industrialization and mechanization have continued to be perceived as French. The effects of long wars and large movements of population towards urban centers have been catastrophic in many respects, not only from a linguistic point of view. In this respect, one must mention the disproportionate sacrifices imposed on Breton youth by the Franco-German wars, and the deleterious effect of French nationalism on Breton identity. Most importantly, the various modern mass media have appeared in every home, first the large provincial newspapers in French, then the radio, and soon the television—each of them in turn more fascinating and less demanding intellectually.

In order to attempt to redress such a catastrophic situation, at least in a small measure, a number of organizations and individuals have repeatedly asked the French government for a minimum of rights, such as the possibility of teaching Breton as a foreign tongue, accrediting teachers, having a number of programs on the state radio and television, and so forth. These demands have always been rejected. In 1941, the right-wing Vichy government, for its own reasons, allowed the teaching of Breton as an “extra-curricular” activity and let a small part of the baccalauréat examination be in Breton, on a par with physical education. These permissions were granted again in 1951. But later they were rescinded.

The two so-called “Breton” newspapers publish small articles, in Breton, once in a while, usually on unimportant subjects. Radio and television broadcast very few Breton programs. Until two years ago, there was half an hour per week of Breton programming on the television, at impossible hours, and having to do with matters of dubious interest. In fact, both paper and electronic media constantly reinforce the impression that Breton is not a language capable of expressing all aspects of modern life. Stories carried in Breton are most often about folkloric matters, when they are not about weddings or other official functions performed at one of several Navy and Army bases scattered throughout Brittany. Yet, I have seen my father listen with great attention to these programs simply because it is Breton coming out of a radio set. One can dream how different the situation could be if serious broadcasts, especially of national and international news, were allowed on the regional network.

This is not to say that folkloric matters are not important. Indeed, they are, but taken alone, they give a distorted image of Brittany and cannot be a culture all by themselves. This is why Per-Jakez Helias’s book, The Horse Of Pride, has been so well received by non-Breton people and reviled by many of his country people. I personally read it with great pleasure and emotion. I found in it a faithful picture of a Breton culture gone by, inasmuch as it described things that were astonishingly similar to what I heard told by my parents and neighbors. But many Bretons involved in a struggle for a modern Breton culture have felt betrayed by the success given to yet another story of Brittany that has the beauty of a death mask and therefore attacked the author, mistakenly thinking that polemics could correct the picture.

The present French government is fortunately inclined to listen to cultural demands, and even to demands of a political nature (“régionalisation”). It has finally habilitated the Université de Haute-Bretagne (Rennes) to deliver university diplomas in Breton. It is not certain that it will accede to other demands concerning the teaching at the primary and secondary levels and the use of electronic media. This again is an uphill fight, especially since many strands within the French Socialist Party, and even more so the Communist Party, are frankly hostile to regional, especially linguistic, demands. The attitude towards Breton culture and language does not follow the traditional left-right division found in French political life, a fact that many Bretons haven’t yet fully realized. The best that can be asked from any French government is to stop interfering with attempts at more freedom in cultural matters, and to grant Breton the basic facilities given foreign languages in France.

Signs of hope

We have seen how the policies of the Church and especially the French government have had a negative effect on the development of the language. Its future rests solely in the hands of Breton people. This was certainly true of those recent generations who created Breton literature and various movements devoted to political and educational issues. It is even truer now. Fortunately, there are several signs of hope. First, there is presently an increasing number of young people enrolled in Breton language programs, so much so that teachers (all volunteers so far) find it difficult to meet the demand. Those programs go from “crash courses” frequently organized by the universities of Rennes and Brest to more formal courses given in primary or secondary schools and by correspondence. It is remarkable that not to speak Breton now occasions feelings of regret or even shame, at least among young people of Breton origin who live in cities and are not satisfied with present canons of French culture.

Recently, thanks to a loophole in French law, several pre-schools have come into being. There are about twenty such schools, called Diwan (“germinate”), organized on a semi-voluntary basis, and where small children speak only Breton, while also learning French and foreign languages. It is essential to develop such a network, and even more to obtain the right to continue the same work in primary and secondary schools. All in all, several thousand young people are now learning Breton in all sorts of ways.

Another sign of hope has been the great interest generated by Breton music. Numerous music groups have appeared, collecting and arranging songs and musical themes, and performing in a great variety of styles. This new phenomenon is encouraging because the listener’s interest in Breton music is often a first step towards a better understanding of the rest of the culture, especially the language. Certainly, the wide appeal of music has helped bring about a needed respect for the language and foster a feeling of self-worth among Breton people.

Another important development, with a much longer history, has been the expansion or Breton literature. The twentieth century has seen a great proliferation of novels, short stories, poetry, historical tools of all kinds, technical newspapers and periodicals, on cassettes. Breton literature comes to see the light of day through great sacrifices since editions can only be run at a few hundred or thousand copies each, even in the best of cases. This excellent and abundant literature is still awaiting a public. One reason for this is the prohibitive cost of books. Another aspect of the problem is that buying a book has been for so long a luxury associated with the upper classes, a handicap that also affects French publishing. Local lending libraries would be a step in the right direction to break such resistance.

Will the enthusiasm of many, the feelings of regret or shame of others, and the perseverance, courage, and abnegation of a few carry the day? One may at least say that if Breton becomes again a primary language of Breizh-Izel (Lower Brittany), it will be the fruit of conscious decisions on the part of the speakers. Of course, the work to be done is not only linguistic or cultural, but also political.

Quite a few Bretons think that nothing short of the existence of a Breton state will restore Breton culture to its proper place, and they diligently work towards that goal. But to give due consideration to the political issue would require yet another article. For the moment, I shall be content to note that any person who decides to learn and speak Breton wins a complete victory over cheap standardization, indifference, and him or herself. It would be a very sad day if Breton were to end its life in universities as the object of scientific autopsy. Too many languages disappear from this world without having had a chance to sing their own melody to the fullest.

June, 1982