Avuncular and Nepotistic Uncles

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews - sons mine... ah God, I know not! Well -

The word nepotism is, literally, nephew-ism; because the Latin for nephew was nepot. However, nepotism gained its current currency from the overactive and sinful loins of the medieval popes. An Italian history of the papacy written in 1667 was titled Il Nipotismo di Roma and it opens thusly:

I begin the History of the Nipotismo, from the time of Sixtus the fourth, since he was the first that delivered up Rome and the Popedom in prey to his Nephews.

Sixtus the Fourth created 34 cardinals, of which six were his nephews; except that they probably weren't. You see a Pope wasn't officially allowed to have any sons, so, when he did, he would pass them off as his nephews and then show them enormous favouritism, or nepotism. So the primary definition of nepotism in the OED is:

The showing of special favour or unfair preference to a relative in conferring a position, job, privilege, etc.; spec. such favour or preference shown to an illegitimate son by a pope or other high-ranking ecclesiastic.

They in turn would have illegitimate sons whom they would pass off as their nephews and so on and so forth until the Roman Church had become thoroughly avuncular.

That's because avuncular just means like an uncle. So if you treat somebody in an avuncular manner, you behave as though you were a friendly and indulgent uncle. That's why nepotistic (being nice to your nephews) is exactly the same thing as avuncular (being nice to your nephews*).

In fact... hmmm... that's a very neat point, but it may be wrong. You see, I just checked, and avuncular, etymologically speaking, means like an avuncul and in Latin an avuncul is a maternal uncle. So perhaps a maternal uncle is kinder because his sister's children are not competing for his own children's inheritance. I don't know anything about Roman inheritance law, but that would make sense. Therefore, both words would have to do with the twisted relationship between uncles and wills.

This brings us inevitably to the nineteenth century and the wonderful dramatic monologues of Robert Browning. One of the best of these, and for some reason one of the least known, is The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church, Rome. It's basically the deathbed speech of a thoroughly corrupt medieval priest who, among other things, can't remember which are his sons and which are his nephews.

Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews - sons mine... ah God, I know not! Well -
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.

It's an absolutely bloody fantastic poem and you can read the whole thing by clicking on this link. There's a great bit in it where he's describing an ornament that he wants on top of his sarcophagus:

Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast...

Such lascivious blasphemy! Read the whole thing here. It's much better than anything I write.



*Nieces are innumerate and don't count.

Less Is More, Up Is Out

R. Buckminster Fuller is often said to be the inventor of the geodesic dome and the motto Less is More. Neither are his. The geodesic dome was invented by Walther Bauersfield (Fuller obtained the patent) and the phrase less is more by Robert Browning in the poem Andrea Del Sarto: called "The Faultless Painter".

Del Sarto was a renaissance painter who acquired the title Senza Errori because he was considered the most technically accomplished painter in Italy, but without inspiration, without a spark, without anything to say. He had wings and nowhere to fly to. Browning depicts him talking to his wife, Lucrezia, about his failure as she waits for her lover to arrive:

I do what many dream of, all their lives,
- Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive - you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, -
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says
(I know his name, no matter) - so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. 
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me...

Del Sarto's tragedy is that "a man's reach should exceed his grasp", although I don't know how original that line was to Browning. Anyway, it's a fantastic poem and you can read the whole thing here. There's also a lovely, and I'm sure deliberate, etymological joke about "Such frank French eyes".

Buckminster Fuller never wrote a poem that good, but he did have a funny idea about banning the words up and down. You see the earth is (so modern science claims) round. So my up, would be an Australian's down*. Buckminster Fuller proposed using in and out, downstead. When you go up you go outward from the centre of the earth and when you go down you go inward. So he proposed going outstairs and instairs.

This idea has a frivolity that I could find myself supporting, were it not that I fear it would cause unnecessary distress and confusion to those who are down and out.

The Inky Fool wonders where he left his shirt

*This will be significant during the Ashes.

Immerd

Immerd is a terribly useful word that the OED demurely defines as To bury or cover in ordure (1635). It therefore functions as a polite way of saying "in the shit", as in "If my parole officer catches me I'll be immerded" or "I can't talk now, I'm immerded in work."

The OED cites two only usages. The first is from a sermon by William Ames entitled The Saint's Security against Seducing Spirits, which runs "Do we... see some eminent professor... immerd himself in the dung of worldly wisdom", to which the answer is yes.

The second comes from Robert Browning, whom I had always considered strangely prudish. It's in an obscure poem of his called Aristophanes' Apology (1875). Aristophanes says of those whom he satirises

The only drawback to which huge delight [...]
Why, 'tis that, make a muckheap of a man,
There, pillared by your prowess, he remains,
Immortally immerded.

The word comes straight from the French merde, meaning ordure. And the French have an antonym, démerder, which due to their lax morals they are prepared to use in  political speeches. During the Nazi occupation of France Charles De Gaulle addressed the French nation by radio in a rousing speech that ended thus:

Françaises, Français, vous avez de la merde jusqu'au cou. Mais moi, qui suis plus grand que vous, je n'en ai que jusqu'aux genoux. Alors, Françaises, Français, démerdez-vous!

Which translates loosely as: Frenchwomen, Frenchmen, you are up to your necks in shit. But I, who am bigger than you, am only up to my knees in it. So, Frenchwomen, Frenchmen, unshit yourselves!
 
 

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