Another Reply to August.

August and I had a good chunk of our chat wiped out of the Fray - which was a shame. I've had trouble getting back my rhythm ever since. His latest reply can be found on August Phillipic. Below is my response to that entry:

I'm going to structure this reply, by breaking my responses into the same subsections as you have used. I'll try and limit myself to issues you've raised, and save new discussion for my post on Bracton. I may include some errata, however.

Theology

I'm not sure what to make of your opening query. You ask a lot of questions, and yet my response seems to be "exactly." Kantorowicz is suggesting that the King'd Two Bodies is a problem, and as such he links it to the same problem which plagued the Church - how is the mind to conceive such ideas of doubled essences instantiated in a material singularity?

You ask whether the English Civil Wars were closely related to a questioning of this edifice - and again, the answer seems to be "exactly." If Calvin's Geneva was the "French Revolution" of the Reformation, then Tudor England seems to be its "American Revolution." Radicalism and conservatism walk together as fellow travellers, and the radicalism of the era is tempered by a fidelity to tradition. I may be mistaken, but I'm fairly sure the Anglican Church rejected the doctrine of eucharistic transubstantiation - that the physical body of Jesus Christ was mysteriously present in the eucharistic host. That's a huge source of the dispute between Protestants and Catholics and seems to exactly mirror the debate about the King's residence within the king. In Protestant theology, the mysterious infusion of mundane substance with a palpable metaphysical force is roundly rejected. It seems to me that the Cromwellian Parliament's declaration of Charles' treason against itself is likewise reluctant to acknowledge that physical substance is transformed by its association with a divine kingship.

With regards to your question about fiction, I think E.K. has a pretty good discussion of that point on page 306. To the jurist, a "fiction" isn't a bad thing and lacks the same pejorative connotations that it has in other fields of thought. The law is often quite frank about the practical use of "fictions" to explain juridical reasoning. Corporations are explicit fictions. The doctrine of Ex Parte Young is equally so. Private property is described as a "bundle of sticks" - a group of definable rights which are severable and transferrable. The quote from Baldus on pg. 306 gets to what I think he means:

"Fiction imitates nature. Therefore, fiction has a place only where truth can have a place.

Legal fictions are pragmatic tools for making sense of abstractions. Every analogy is, in some sense, a fiction (look at the word's etymology: "not logical" - the equivalence of manifestly unlike things can only be understood abstractly).

Anyhow, some thoughts. Worry that my tone is too dismissive or declarative. Good questions, all...

Ritual

I know it's jumping the gun quite a bit. However, I think his discussion of effigies and burial practices on pp. 419-436 will really interest you. If you haven't already goten there, take a look at the doubled tombs in Figures 28, 30, and 31 at the back of the book. Each features wo representations of the deceased - a body lying in state on the upper tier, while an image of the man's dead and decaying corpse in winding sheets is below. A doubled representation of a single man, sleeping in a bunk bed of eternity. Cool stuff.

I can take a stab at laying out the distinction between "liturgical" and "juridical." I think I understand it. I'd argue that liturgy is a praxis-based approach with strong subjective implications: doing transforms being. On the other hand, law is a theory-based approach with strong objective implications: individual circumstances are governed by metaphysical principles which apply across all variations. A liturgical sinner can be transformed through the doing of atonement. A juridical sinner will be judged on the Last Days - the only question is whether his conduct has merited a pr-defined punishment. A liturgical king is infused with, and transformed by, the Divinity of his office. A legal king is a product of happenstance whose power is amplified at the same time his humanity is debased. Is that a sensible distinction? If so, reasonably consistent with E.K.'s terminology?

Language

I hope I'm not being obvious when I say, gemina persona means "twin person." It's definitely a paradox, born of Christology. Compare to the Roman model of kingship - divine apotheosis. The mortal man literally transforms into Godhood and climbs to the heavens. The Christian king molders in the grave until his bodily resurrection on the last day - whilst his soul goes whither its bound.

I think the terminology debate about "demise" against "death" is an interesting one. Is that an example of 16th-century spin? Or is it just an aspect of the venerable tradition of legal hair-splitting? Are they the same thing?

I think E.K.'s description of the persona mixta is suggesting that the Christ-centered kingship is one of mixture - a person with two statuses, rather than two personalities. As I've understood, the central and subtle distinction between the Christ-Centered King and the Twinned King is precisely the interplay of essences. I need to review the passages a few more times, but I'd be interested to hear if you think that's a fair shot at it. Or have I lapsed into an overly reductionistic understanding of E.K.'s argument?

Art

I think your comment about the law's impossibilty is both profound and true. Since the Judaeo-Christian tradition is rooted in a conflation of God and Law, the inhumanity of Law's position above the human's subject strikes me as tightly interwoven with the most basic essential questions of the Western mind. Isn't the greatest problem of theodicy how can a merciful God have created a miserable world? Isn't that identical to the greatest problem of law? Why doesn't adherence to a just law lead to a just society? Both questions pose a temptation of rejectionism - if the world is not always good, then God is either non-existent or malicious. If society is not always just, then our laws must be either ineffective or monstrous. It seems to me that both rejectons are seductive, but leave us floating on the surface of our human existence.

Errata

E.K. has a fascinating discussion on the problem of Continuity. When we get to that, remind me to interject my recent forays into learning how to pray the Rosary. One of the prayers is of particular interest in that case - the "Glory to God" goes as follows:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

That line strikes me as particularly interesting in light of E.K.'s discussion of the historical debates over Time's finitude and linearity.