The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Chris W:

candle:

I was writing in English, so the serenissima issue wasn't a problem. The "Dei Gratia..." formulation was actually from a letter from my author to the doge at the time, so I figured it was the best authority, though it is possible that it was slightly less formal than what would have been appended to a longer work in letter form, like I was forging. In fact, as I look back at my source, another letter addressed to the Doge uses the same greeting but inserts an "etc." which suggests a more formal letter would have had a half dozen more titles. Ah, well, that particular horse has left that particular barn, as the paper has left my hands for its day of judgement in the Ivory Tower.

(no, really, my prof's office really is in a tower, though it's more of a midwestern brownstone than ivory. It is very Gothic looking, though.)

And, in response to your limerick, I can't help but share a medieval double-dactyl I wrote while procrastinating for this class:

Waraday Snoraday
Louis the Corpulent
Battled the barons and
Normans all day

Suger then wrote ‘bout him
Enthusiastic’ly
Not even mentioning
What he did weigh

For more information on double dactyls and a few examples (including an obscene poem about Anton von Leevenhoek, father of microbiology) go here:

http://www.stinky.com/dactyl/dactyl.html

Hmm, an intersting twist, I just found a letter addressed to the Doge in question which opens with a Latin salutation referring to him as "By the Grace of God, Duke of Venetia" (Dei Gratia dux Venetiarum, dux being the common root of Duke and Doge) Not nearly as exciting as I'd hoped. I'm still trying to puzzle out the rest of the Latin, but I think the rest refers to the writer and some unknown Thomas ("nobilibus et sapientibus Thome(?)", question mark in my source) Now I just wish I could read Italian so that I could actually, y'know, read some of the things written by the person who I'm supposed to be impersonating.

Thanks for the quote, John, though it's not entirely clear whether Martines is referring to the proper form of address or simply the fact that everyone recognized who held the reigns of power in the Venetian republic. I think I'm just going to go for "Most Serene Prince" since it sounds specific and impressive, even though I don't have any evidence that "serenissima" was ever used to refer to anything other than the Republic itself. If anyone calls me on it I'll just say Sanmicheli was engaging in a little word-play. (Ah, the joys of writing in someone else's voice, if something's wrong you can always blame it on them.)

I'm trying to track down a bit of historical trivia and google has completely failed me, but it seemed the sort of thing that people around here might know. I'm trying to figure out what the appropriate form of address would have been for the Venetian Doge (c. 1527, if that matters)

I figure if there's anywhere I'm likely to find someone who knows this sort of thing, it's here.

From all the reading I've done (I took a course on American Grand Strategy 1890-Present last year, and we discussed the pacific war in detail) the Japanese never really thought it was likely that they could win a sustained war with America. However, they were dependent upon American and British sources (and the Dutch East Indies, propped up by American and British naval power) for almost all of their rubber and oil. In addition most Japanese industry was dependent on American manufacturers for things like machine tools. Throughout 1941 America, alarmed at the prospect of facing German ascendancy in Europe and an aggressive Japan had been threatening to cut Japan off from these vital supplies, unless Japan abandoned almost all of its conquests on the Asian continent. (This is not to somehow blame the U.S. for the attack; the Japanese campaigns in Korea and China were brutal, nakedly aggressive affairs which occasionally bordered on the genocidal. F.D.R. was right to refuse to support them on moral, as well as realpolitik, grounds)

The Japanese calculation was that a U.S. faced with the iminent danger of a Nazi Germany without rivals on the continent (keep in mind that the Soviets are engaged in a desperate, last-ditch defense of Moscow right now, which recent history suggests will be unsuccessful) and a Japanese empire which can only be rolled back with great difficulty will take back a few islands, win a few sea battles, then negotiate a peace which strips Japan of some of its island holdings, but leaves Japan still in posession of all or most of its continental conquests, and declare victory. Of course F.D.R. caling for unconditional surrender throws a bit of a monkey-wrench into those plans, but the argument seems pretty reasonable if you're running war games in mid 1941.

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