Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Anselm of Canterbury, on Justice and Angels)

“The angels are separated between those who adhering to justice enjoy all the goods they wish and those who having abandoned justice lack any good they desire.”—“Doctor of the Church” and “Father of Scholasticism” St. Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109), Three Philosophical Dialogues: On Truth/On Freedom of Choice/On the Fall of the Devil, translated by Thomas Williams (2002)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Augustine of Hippo, on Injustice and Empire)

“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?  What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention.

“If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.

“For it was a witty and truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great.  The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’  And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate; because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’”—Catholic theologian and philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), City of God, translated by Henry Bettenson (1972)

Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on Non-Violence and Oppressors)

“The non-violent way does not bring about miracles in a few hours, in a few days, in a few years, for that matter. I think the first reaction of the oppressor when oppressed people rise up against the system of injustice is an attitude of bitterness. But I do believe that if the non-violent resisters continue to follow the way of non-violence, they eventually get over to the hearts and souls of the oppressors, and I think it eventually brings about that redemption that we dream of. Of course, I can’t estimate how many people we’ve touched so far; this is impossible because it’s an inner process. But I’m sure something is stirring in the minds and souls of people and I’m sure people are thinking anew on this basic problem of human relations.”—American minister, civil-rights advocate, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), “Meet the Press” appearance transcript, Apr. 17, 1960, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Reinhold Niebuhr, on Injustice and Loving Our Enemies)

“To love our enemies cannot mean that we must connive with their injustice. It does mean that beyond all moral distinctions of history we must know ourselves one with our enemies not only in the bonds of common humanity but also in the bonds of common guilt by which that humanity has become corrupted.” — American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), “Our Responsibilities in 1942,” Christianity and Crisis, Jan. 12, 1942

This Day in Literary History (Zola Sparks Firestorm With Defense of Wrongly Accused Dreyfus)

Jan. 13, 1898—French novelist and journalist Émile Zola had raised the hackles of censors before with his often sexually frank novels. 

But nothing matched the intensity of the storm that swept over him when, in a ringing front-page open letter to the President of the French republic published in the socialist the Socialist newspaper L'Aurore, he charged that army Capt. Alfred Dreyfus had been falsely charged with espionage—and that embarrassed military and political leaders had continued to cover up the miscarriage of justice after learning of their mistake.

Largely apolitical until this time, Zola learned a couple of months before the details of the case from a friend of Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, the head of French intelligence—who, for his efforts to reopen the investigation and expose the real spy who had handed a military document to Germany, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, had found himself reassigned to Tunisia.

Zola not only brought to wide public attention the grave injustice done to Dreyfus, who had been stripped of his command and imprisoned in a penal colony on Devil’s Island, but issued a prescient warning about the factor that had made the captain a scapegoat: the “odious anti-Semitism, of which the great liberal France of human rights will die, if she is not cured of it.”

By naming the culprits in the affair—not only Esterhazy but top generals and three handwriting experts who had perpetuated the coverup—Zola took a calculated risk, daring the authorities to prosecute him under defamation laws so that the full details of the case could be exposed at trial.

It would be hard to overestimate the impact of the Dreyfus Affair on French political, military, media, cultural, and religious institutions. For a dozen years, the nation was consumed by each twist in this controversy, dividing into roughly two factions: the anti-Dreyfusards, who tended to be monarchist and Roman Catholics; and the Dreyfusards, with a more republican and secular orientation.

Even among the unusual figures in this controversy, Zola stood out. In 20 novels over a four-decade career, he proposed a school of writing that came to be called naturalism, in which characters are observed as if under a microscope, less obedient to free will than to instincts such as greed and lust. His frankness on the latter score, whether through a prostitute in Nana or a pair of adulterous lovers who murder a husband in Therese Raquin, caused sensations.

Zola could be unappreciative or dismissive of people who influenced or aided him. Writing about Gustave Flaubert, he criticized him as “a shameless joker, a paradoxical thinker, an impertinent romantic who made my head spin for hours with a deluge of astonishing theories,” while contrasting Flaubert’s painstaking writing process with his own, which was “forged on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines."

When a British book publisher was prosecuted for obscenity for translating novels by Zola, the writer not only didn’t support his friend but told a reporter that a successful prosecution might be better for him, as readers could hunt them down in the original French rather than endure cheap translations into English.

Assessing Zola in a retrospective history of the first decade of Masterpiece Theatre (which featured an adaptation of Therese Raquin), host Alistair Cooke assailed the author’s “exhibitionism” and flair for self-dramatization. Although there was some truth in the characterization, Zola also truly did expose himself to real legal and physical danger with “J’Accuse.”

He not only was indicted for defamation, as he expected, but also was exposed to death threats provoked by the vitriolic anti-Dreyfusard press. After being condemned to fines and a year-long sentence of imprisonment, he fled to England, where he stayed until the charges against him were dismissed.

Captain Dreyfus would not be reinstated until four years after Zola’s death in 1902. Nevertheless, the novelist died still firmly believing in perhaps the most famous quote from his expose of this shameful chapter in the life of France: “Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it."

The dozen years of the Dreyfus Affair were a mad swirl of events in France’s Third Republic: “intrigues, fraud, resignation and overthrow of ministers and the parliament, riots, assassinations, suicides, the attempt of a coup d’état and an alarmingly widespread anti-Semitism,” in the words of a 2015 post from the Europeana Newspapers blog.

It was a mark of the tumult of the time that even Zola’s death in his home became swallowed up in the dizzying news cycle. Rumors circulated that he had been murdered by anti-Dreyfusard fanatics.

The results of the inquest indicated carbon-monoxide poisoning, but the public was told simply that he had died of natural causes. It would not be until 1927 that an anti-Dreyfusard stove-fitting contractor allegedly confessed on his deathbed to have blocked up the chimney while mending the roof, and not until 1953—a full half-century after Zola’s death—that a French newspaper published this account. After so much time, it may not be possible to fully establish the truth of the account.

(For more on Zola’s still-contested death, see this 2015 blog post from Dr. Gabe Mirkin and Richard Cavendish’s September 2002 account in History Today.)

“J’Accuse” marked the turning point in the larger uproar of the Dreyfus affair, which itself represented a hinge moment in Western history. Its repercussions were long-lasting, even global, as it:

*contributed to the formal separation of church and state in 1905, to prevent any repetition of the virulent anti-Semitism displayed by many French Catholics in the controversy;

*convinced Theodor Herzl that, even after consistent, enduring attempts at assimilation in relatively liberal France, European Jews were not safe, and spurred him to advocate for Jewish immigration to Palestine in an attempt to create their own homeland;

*foreshadowed, through the interaction of government, mass media, and ephemera, the modern news cycle of nonstop ideological firestorms;

*paralleled the 21^st-century divide between secular, urban liberals and more religiously orthodox, rural conservatives;

*inspired intellectual crusades against judicial verdicts perceived as blighted by ideology or prejudice—including, in the United States, the Sacco and Vanzetti, Alger Hiss, and Rosenberg trials.

Even at the turn of the 20^th century, film directors recognized the dramatic impact of the Dreyfus Affair, with French filmmaker Georges Méliès staging and shooting 11 one-minute silent reenactments of the trial. In one of the first cases of government censorship of motion pictures, the French government banned further exhibition of Melies’ pioneering film effort. (Indeed, that ban on cinematic treatments of the affair would remain in effect until 1950.) 

That did not stop other nations’ filmmakers from depicting the scandal, including Richard Oswald’s Dreyfus (Germany, 1930); William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (U.S., 1937); José Ferrer’s I Accuse! (U.K.–U.S., 1958); and Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse) (France, 2019).

(For a useful summary of many of these films, see Thomas Doherty's Fall 2020 overview in Cineaste Magazine.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Harvey Mansfield, on ‘The Contest Between Religion and Atheism’)

“In the contest between religion and atheism, the strength of religion is to recognize two apparently contrary forces in the human soul: the power of injustice and the power, nonetheless, of our desire for justice. The stubborn existence of injustice reminds us that man is not God, while the demand for justice reminds us that we wish for the divine. Religion tries to join these two forces together.”—American political philosopher Harvey Mansfield, “Atheist Tracts,” The Weekly Standard, Aug. 13, 2007

(Photo of Harvey Mansfield speaking at the Art Museum at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, Mar. 3, 2017, taken by Gage Skidmore.)

Quote of the Day (Rev. Irene Monroe, on the Proper Direction of ‘Righteous Anger’)

“Righteous anger is holy discontent. Where injustice to people exists, the anger is directed at the injustice and not the people.”— Rev. Irene Monroe quoted in Mary Lee Talbot, “Use Righteous Anger to Change Society, Monroe Says,” The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 18-19, 2018

Quote of the Day (Reinhold Niebuhr, on Why Democracy Is Possible and Necessary)

“Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”—American theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,” in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (1986)

Quote of the Day (Desmond Tutu, on ‘Apartheid's Final Solution’)

“I come from a beautiful land, richly endowed by God with wonderful natural resources, wide expanses, rolling mountains, singing birds, bright shining stars out of blue skies, with radiant sunshine, golden sunshine. There is enough of the good things that come from God's bounty, there is enough for everyone, but apartheid has confirmed some in their selfishness, causing them to grasp greedily a disproportionate share, the lion's share, because of their power. They have taken 87 of the land, though being only about 20 of our population. The rest have had to make do with the remaining 13. Apartheid has decreed the politics of exclusion. 73 of the population is excluded from any meaningful participation in the political decision-making processes of the land of their birth. The new constitution, making provision of three chambers, for whites, coloreds, and Indians, mentions blacks only once, and thereafter ignores them completely. Thus this new constitution, lauded in parts of the West as a step in the right direction, entrenches racism and ethnicity. The constitutional committees are composed in the ratio of 4 whites to 2 coloreds and 1 Indian. 0 black. 2 + 1 can never equal, let alone be more than, 4. Hence this constitution perpetuates by law and entrenches white minority rule. Blacks are expected to exercise their political ambitions in unviable, poverty-stricken, arid, bantustan homelands, ghettoes of misery, inexhaustible reservoirs of cheap black labor, bantustans into which South Africa is being balkanized. Blacks are systematically being stripped of their South African citizenship and being turned into aliens in the land of their birth. This is apartheid's final solution, just as Nazism had its final solution for the Jews in Hitler's Aryan madness. The South African Government is smart. Aliens can claim but very few rights, least of all political rights.”—Desmond Tutu, Nobel Lecture, delivered December 11, 1984

On this date in 1985—less than two months after his searing indictment of the apartheid regime of South Africa that I quoted above—Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu was appointed the first black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg. A year later, he was chosen Archbishop of Cape Town. It would not be until almost a decade later that the system of apartheid that he had opposed, with all his moral fervor and eloquence, finally came to an end.

In May 1982, at my commencement exercises at Columbia University, an empty chair was left to signify the South African white government’s refusal to allow Tutu to accept an honorary degree from the school. The regime’s fear of granting a passport to one of its most prominent critics became a huge cause celebre, until he was finally allowed a temporary passport later in the year.

(Photo of Archbishop Tutu taken by Elke Wetzig at the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag in Cologne 2007.)

Quote of the Day (W.S. Gilbert, on the Problem With an ‘Unjust World’)

“I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.” —W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885)