A curious reader asked me what Civitatensis means, and why I chose it as a name for the list. Well, there is a story to it and a few related things, which I am happy to share here.
Back in the day when blogs had just appeared, some 20+ years ago, I had one on Blogspot and named it Civitatensis. At the time, I wrote the blog anonymously. Only a few of my close friends and a couple of acquaintances knew who was behind the writing.
At the time, I was teaching at a couple of different Alberta universities. In neither of the two places I worked, there existed (and there still does not exist) a sufficient climate of liberty in which a youngish untenured faculty member could write in an open forum from a conservative-libertarian perspective. Not without some career repercussions. Come to think of it, it is probably worse today with the fuller bloom of cancel culture. Ironically, I was only able to write freely and without apprehensions when I left my full-time job at one of those universities.
As it was then, I was trying very hard, and not always succeeding, to fly below the radar regarding my political opinions in places openly hostile to them. Not that I was trying to pass as a liberal, however. People knew I was right of centre, as it were, but I mostly kept my political opinions to myself among my colleagues.
My blog was a “member” of the Blogging Tories, a feed that featured many of the conservative blogs around the country. Some were more successful than others. Mine wasn’t. I wrote as often as I could but as a young professor still going to school for my “terminal” degree, holding two jobs, and supporting a budding young family for which I was the only earner, it was a big challenge. Eventually, I gave up at around 2005. I often wish I hadn’t.
As part of the Blogging Tories, I got access to a few more readers than I would have normally had. Made a few friends in the process. Somewhere there is a full backup drive of the content. There may be a few odd pieces that might merit resurrecting. I’ll have to see if I can track them down.
So what does Civitatensis mean? Civitatensis is Latin for “of the city.” It may refer to the affairs of the city. When I chose the name I meant it as a reference to civil and civilized politics. Politics is after all also the affairs of the polis, the city. Civitatensis may also mean someone in the city, a citizen, so I also meant it as a celebration of citizenship.
I have hung on to the name all these years —and purchased the .ca domain.
Sometime after I started the blog with that name, I discovered that “Civitatensis” was also the name of a Roman Catholic diocese in Valladolid, Spain, the Diocese of Ciudad Rodrigo.
The Diocese was founded in 1126 AD. The land for it was purchased by Salamancan citizens nearby, a few years before the University of Salamanca was founded in 1134. Salamanca is one of the oldest universities in Europe (and therefore the world), home for some time to the great 17th-century Jesuit Theologian Francisco Suárez —I thought those are cool historical links to the name. 1
In Spain, the lands of Ciudad Rodrigo were on the fluid border of the hostilities with the Moors when it was founded. The Moors first attacked the new city in 1174.
It is a bit of a coincidence that my middle child is named Rodrigo. A lift of the helmet’s visor in honour of El Cid Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1043 – 10 July 1099), the knight who fought and helped defeat invading Moors in the eastern parts of the Iberian Peninsula, around Valencia. My son Rodrigo, also coincidentally, embodies some of El Cid's qualities.
There is a final curious thing related to the name that I also discovered after choosing it. In the southern French town of La Ciotat on the Mediterranean, the town's Coat of Arms displays to this day the word “Civitatensis” above a depiction of a fortress (see below). La Ciotat is Provençal for “the city” (La Ciutat in Occitans and la Ciudad in modern Spanish). I first looked into Provençal and Occitans in grad school, when I was researching the origins of the word metis, but that’s a whole other story that brings us to my dissertation. You don’t want me to start talking about my dissertation. It might go on forever.
La Ciotat is a small community with less than 40,000 people, located about 25 km east of Marseille.
So, that’s the story with the name and the things that I associate with it. I wish for Civitatensis to remain a place for the affairs of the proverbial city, a place for a confluence of ideas and traditions, and a place for citizens of various cultures to have conversations about Latin America and related things.
The leap to the Jesuits made me think of New France. Suárez’s lifespan (5 January 1548 – 25 September 1617) corresponds closely to the time between Cartier’s last voyage of “discovery” to New France in 1542 and Champlain’s arrival to get the definitive settlements started in Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608. It was the Jesuits, let’s recall, who pushed inland into New France alongside and sometimes ahead of the King’s explorers. Jean de Brebeuf arrived in 1625 while Champlain was Governor.