Remember, Remember the 5th of November

Image by Ahmed Zayan (Wix Media)

Natalie wanted a cheesy film binge on Hallowe’en and opted for Hocus Pocus. Unfortunately, she was stymied by the fact that the internet film providers had recognised the demand there would be for this film at that time of year, and upped the price beyond what she was willing to pay for such self-indulgence. (My secret cheesy film choice is The Song of Bernadette, based on the story of Lourdes, but I have wisely got hold of the DVD for regular home viewing!)

But why do the words ‘hocus pocus’ suggest magic tricks or silly superstition? The best and most convincing theory, based on parallels in other countries, is that the words are parodies of the central words of the Latin Mass, ‘hoc est corpus meum’, ‘this is my body’. This arose in Protestant countries where the Latin Mass was regarded, not as a holy memorial of the Last Supper, but a false belief that the priest had the power to turn the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, a kind of magic trick to fool the faithful.

The historical evidence for this theory is better than the similar claim that the ‘hokey cokey’ is likewise based on the same phrase in the Mass. This is based on the ridiculous nature of the movements, ‘left arm in, left arm out’, etc., which could have been a parody of the ritual movements of priest and people at the Mass. While there is not much evidence for the dance before the 19th century, nevertheless it still seems a pretty good guess at how the words and movements originated.

The fact that people no longer recognise the original meanings of these phrases is a good thing, because it indicates that the prejudice and antipathy that gave rise to them no longer exist in Britain (on the whole, except amongst some Scottish football supporters!).

Now for a very clever vanishing trick. How to take something well known to us all and make it disappear? Let’s take that well known landmark of British history, the Gunpowder Plot. This occurred, apparently, in 1605, during a period when anti-Catholic sentiment was at its height in Britain. The story will be familiar: a leading member of the Catholic band of conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was found with the gunpowder underneath the houses of parliament, intending to blow them up; he confessed after torture and was executed by hanging. His effigy is placed on bonfires on the 5th November each year.

An article this week in the Catholic journal, The Tablet, by Penelope Middleboe and Jon Rosebank, argues that, although there was a rather weak Catholic plot in Warwickshire at the time, there is absolutely no strong historical backing for the gunpowder plot. All the evidence was provided by the government. It would have suited them to show the Catholic insurgents as people prepared to undertake the worst terrorist incident in British history. By means of its effect on the horrified parliamentarians, King James I managed to get them onside and in agreement with his tax policies, which previously they had not been.

Well, is this just a conspiracy theory? I think it is much more likely a theory than some of the conspiracies that have been flouted in recent years, such as no Americans on the moon, and others. Governments and kings telling lies to suit their vested interest is about as plausible as it gets, especially when there is little independent evidence. (I admit that I would feel more secure in accepting the theory were I able to read a scholarly counter-argument, and could weigh up both arguments in relation to one another.)

I was brought up a Protestant, so I don’t have the baggage that those born Catholic might once have had in Britain; older people remember being attacked for being Catholic and regarded as a troublesome minority. Fortunately, that has mainly passed; unfortunately, however, other religious groups now bear the brunt of British prejudice.

What I do remember is that the guy was much more the centre of the 5th November bonfires in my childhood than it is now. The emphasis today is more on the fireworks; decades ago, it was both guy and fireworks. Everybody wanted a ‘penny for the guy’.

So there are three traditions which expressed anti-Catholic sentiment in Britain but do so no longer: fireworks night, the phrase ‘hocus pocus’, and (possibly) the hokey-cokey.

Anti-Catholicism, in England and Wales at least (Scotland was more definitely Protestant), wasn’t so much to do with the rituals and beliefs of the Catholic Church; the Church of England retained many vestiges of those beliefs and regarded itself as a middle place between Catholicism and strict Protestantism. What was much more important in British anti-Catholicism was to guard the right of the monarch over the Church of England and to deny authority to the Pope. Therefore, anything that directly derived from Rome itself – such as the priesthood loyal to the Pope, and their use of the Latin Mass – was to be rejected.

The denying of the monarchy to any Roman Catholic is still in force and has remained so since King James II (Britain’s monarch between 1685 to 1688) threatened to return the nation to Catholicism. In addition, the monarch was not allowed to marry a Catholic, but this rule was lifted in 2013. The non-Catholic rule affected the only royal I ever met, albeit very briefly, (Lord) Nicholas Windsor. Nicholas was at a Marian Studies meeting because his girlfriend and later wife, Princess Paola Frankopan of Croatia (educated in England) was giving a paper about the Marian shrine at Walsingham. Like his mother, the Duchess of Kent, Nicholas converted to Catholicism and forfeited his outside place in the line of succession to the throne. He married according to the Catholic rite in Vatican City, the first British royal ever to do so.

Some people have commented that the one-time British dislike of Catholicism and British rivalry with the great Catholic nations, France and Spain, is a kind of forerunner to the sentiments that lay behind the British decision to leave the EU. Just like the rejection of the Roman Pope’s authority by British Protestants, so modern British people talk about refusing to bow down to Brussels. The original EU (the EEC founded in 1957) was in many ways a project of Catholic countries; even in Germany, where Catholics only made up about a third of the population, Catholicism was nevertheless influential in the ruling Christian Democratic Party, with the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, being a Catholic. Those interested in the Virgin Mary cannot fail to see the parallel between the traditional Catholic Mary in blue, crowned with twelve stars, and the EU flag!

One aspect of my becoming a Catholic in 1983 was an enthusiastic embracing of other European cultures, including that of Ireland. Perhaps this had been encouraged by my father being stationed in Germany in 1969 when I was sixteen. It was very exciting living in Germany, just a few miles from the border with the Netherlands, and not far from Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Needless to say, I was very disappointed when Britain voted to leave the EU. I was very happy to be an EU member with an EU passport, and I’m very glad that Natalie has claimed her Irish citizenship, meaning that we as a family have not lost the link, and our children will also inherit that right.

So much for November 5th. I never liked fireworks very much (we also lived in Singapore when I was a child, and the Chinese there loved noisy jumping jacks). I am one of those killjoys who did once write an e-mail of complaint about loud firework displays in my locality! But I’m glad that Firework Night is celebrated today with very little remaining of that old determination to keep Catholics out!

Photo by Andy Holmes (Unsplash)