La Serenissima

The Queen is the most successful British politician in living memory. By a country mile. No sniggering at the back. Those of you who smuttily misheard Vivat Regina Camilla may blame it on the use of a very old-fashioned British way of pronouncing Latin. There would have been no such trouble if the singers had been Roman-trained, and thus accustomed to Salve Regina. There is a lot of this sort of thing. Some German speakers pronounce Latin as if it were German, kvid pro kvo and what have you. And so on.

Americans whose families left Ireland in the century beginning with the Potato Famine are bewildered and shocked at the enthusiastically red, white and blue Coronation tea parties held by parishes dedicated to Saint Patrick, at the blessing of the King by a Cardinal, and at the singing of God Save the King at the end of Mass on Sunday. They are never going to understand that, how or why such things were no more incongruous than the fact that the uncompromisingly Protestant Coronation Oath was followed immediately by the Gloria in Latin.

Byrd's setting was of course by a Catholic, but Latin as a Protestant liturgical language is as old as Protestantism itself, with Latin translations of the Book of Common Prayer given occasional use at certain educational institutions from the start. The Coronation of the first Hanoverian monarch, George I, was conducted almost entirely in Latin, since he spoke no English, nor his prelates any German. Although the Royal Family continued to speak German at home until the First World War, things had moved on a bit by the Coronation of George II, for which Handel composed Zadok the Priest.

Like everyone else, I adore Zadok the Priest, and not only because the late Bishop Kevin Dunn once suggested in all seriousness that it should be performed while he anointed me at the start of my candidacy for the parliamentary seat that contained both Ushaw College and the old 32 County Republic of Consett. I am not sure who would have been Nathan the prophet. The obvious name is also now dead, although he did end up seconding me on my nomination papers in 2019. But at around the time of that exchange with Bishop Dunn, then he was becoming the Labour Deputy Leader of Durham County Council.

Zadok has quite the afterlife. Certain of his descendants objected so strongly to the Hasmonean usurpation of their ancestral control of the Temple at Jerusalem, that they led their followers to the remoteness of Qumran, there to compose the Dead Sea Scrolls. Another section of his partisans became the Sadducees, who took their name from him, and who stand as a warning to metropolitan elites that when their citadels are overthrown, then all knowledge of them is lost except from the accounts of their enemies who held sway in the towns and villages and among the productive classes, in this case the Christians and the Pharisees, the intellectual ancestors of almost all surviving Judaism.

Almost. There are still Karaites. The history of their European branch, at least, historically based in topical Crimea, offers another cautionary tale, this time of the price to be paid for a community's having saved itself by concocting or accepting a bogus version of its own history. Still, the Egyptian branch, though also much reduced, maintains the oldest active synagogue in Jerusalem. Solomon may not have lived forever after all, but Zadok the priest shows every sign of doing so.

When he was not waxing lyrical about Hebrew's "masculine nouns with feminine plural endings", or saying of a hostelry called the Cock o' the North that "It sounds like a competition", then the man who taught me everything that I once knew about these matters had himself been identified as the Teacher of Righteousness against a Wicked Priest whom I have still never met, but who is now my friend on Facebook. I myself was later so identified against another such. A university can be as insular as any Essene colony. But I digress.

To see the condition of Karaism today is to recall Wordsworth's On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, "Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade/Of that which once was great is passed away." The Most Serene Republic of Venice lasted exactly 1100 years, from the proclamation of Paolo Lucio Anafesto in 697, to the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797. There were 120 Doges until Napoleon forced the abdication of Ludovico Manin. One hundred and twenty. Eleven hundred years. That is pretty good going.

The people who called Elizabeth II "Elizabeth the Last" are calling Charles III "Charles the Last". Being older than William the Last, I am unlikely to see the reign of George the Last. But assuming that this King lasted 15 to 20 years, and in the unlikely event that they got their way, then that would place me between 60 and 65 at my Cincinnatus moment, when I would be called from my plough, not to be Consul of Rome, but to be the founding Doge of the Most Serene Republic of Great Britain. I am not joking. I have known far too many politicians to want one as Head of State, but if someone had to do it, then I would seek to contest that election. I know of no one else who says that.

I would be more than willing and able to find myself a corno ducale, and a Benedictine nunnery to present me with a new camauro every Easter Monday. As well as a plot on which the Order of Preachers might erect a basilica for my interment and for that of my successors, if I were to be granted a dream of a flock of white doves flying over the auspicious site. The school where I slogged for eight years on the Buildings Committee stands in a swamp, so perhaps it will be there?

Being held at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, were the Doges' Requiem Masses celebrated according to the Dominican Rite? Or were the Doges only buried there, after the Patriarch had done the business in San Marco? But the business according to the Roman Rite, or according to the Aquileian Rite? Ah, yes, the Patriarchate. I could hardly be a Doge without a Patriarch, an office that was for centuries filled in a manner quite singular. I should have so much to consider.

But the main point is this. For all the weakness of the arguments for the monarchy, the case for change has not been made, and there is no chance or risk of it while Charles III is alive. But if, when the inevitable came, it were the view of enough people that that case had been made, then I would be a candidate for President. I am not aware of anyone else who is saying that, and I am absolutely serious about it.