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Law State and Religion in the New Europe Debates and
Dilemmas 1st Edition Lorenzo Zucca Digital Instant
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Author(s): Lorenzo Zucca, Camil Ungureanu
ISBN(s): 9780521198103, 0521198100
Edition: 1
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Year: 2012
Language: english
 L aw, Stat e a n d R e l igion
i n t h e N ew Eu rope

The return of religion to the public sphere raises various dilemmas.

Rights and values, pluralism and identity, justice and efficacy, autonomy
and tradition, and integration and toleration cannot always be balanced
without the loss of something valuable. This volume of essays tackles such
dilemmas from two perspectives. To begin, major contemporary theorists
rethink the place of religion in the public sphere from republican, liberal
and critical–theoretical viewpoints. Contributors then bring theory and
practice together to better conceptualize and assess the latest develop-
ments in European jurisprudence with respect to religion.

l o r e n z o z u c c a is Reader in Jurisprudence at King’s College

London.

c a m i l u n gu r e a n u is Lecturer in Political Theory at the Universitat

Pompeu Fabra, Spain.
L AW, STATE AND R EL IGION
IN THE NEW EU ROPE:
DEBATE S AND DI L E M M A S

Edited by
Lor e nz o Z ucc a
and
C a m i l U ngu r e a n u
 C A M BR I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Cambridge University Press 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Law, state and religion in the new Europe : debates and dilemmas /
[edited by] Lorenzo Zucca, Camil Ungureanu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-19810-3 (hardback)
1. Freedom of religion–Europe. 2. Religion and law–Europe.
3. Church and state–Europe. I. Zucca, Lorenzo. II. Ungureanu, Camil.
KJC5156.L39 2012
342.408′53–dc23
2011042608

ISBN 978-0-521-19810-3 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 a Francesca (L. Z.)
To my mother (C. U.)
 C ONTENT S

Introduction   1
C a m i l U ngu r e a n u

pa rt i   19
1 Religion and political liberty in Italian republics
(in the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries)   21
M au r i z io V i rol i
2 Two stories about toleration   49
R a i n e r For st
3 Natural reason, religious conviction, and the justification
of coercion in democratic societies   65
Robe rt Au di
4 The ‘other’ citizens: religion in a multicultural Europe   93
Maleiha Malik
5 Islam and the public sphere: public reason or public
imagination?   115
Ch i a r a Bo t t ici a n d Be noi t Ch a l l a n d
pa rt i i   135
6 Law v. religion   137
L or e nz o Z uc c a
7 Unveiling the limits of tolerance: comparing the
treatment of majority and minority religious symbols
in the public sphere   160
Susa n na M a nci n i a n d M ich e l Ro se n fe l d

vii
viii Contents
8 Objective, critical and pluralistic? Religious education and
human rights in the European public sphere   192
I a n L e igh
9 Religion and (in)equality in the European framework   215
A i l e e n Mc C ol ga n
10 Is there a right not to be offended in one’s religious
beliefs?   239
Ge orge L et sa s
11 Religious pluralism and national constitutional traditions
in Europe   261
Da n i e l Auge nst e i n
pa rt i i i    281
12 Rights, religion and the public sphere: the European Court
of Human Rights in search of a theory?   283
J u l i e R i nge l h e i m
13 Europe and religion: an ambivalent nexus   307
C a m i l U ngu r e a n u

Index   334
 u

Introduction
camil ungureanu

The present book is based on a workshop that brought together legal and
political theorists to discuss tensions and dilemmas raised by religion with
respect to secular law and political authority. The interdisciplinary work-
shop was organized in Florence, at the European University Institute in
2008. Florence is an ideal locus symbolicus for such an intellectual enter-
prise. At the height of its cultural and political power, Florence was torn by
the political–religious conflict between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, a
conflict whose early stages were immortalized by Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The Ghibellines strongly believed that the Emperor should represent the
ultimate political authority, while the Guelfs wanted a central political
role for the Catholic Church, and viewed the Pope as having both spiritual
and temporal authority. This political–theological conflict, which forced
Dante into exile away from his beloved Florence, was acrimonious and
violent. Nonetheless, the conflict also nourished a range of novel polit-
ical ideas concerning the relation between state and church. Machiavelli,
together with other outstanding fellow Florentines, stands for one begin-
ning of modernity and modern political thought in Europe. He proposed
novel views on the nature of authority before Europe’s wars of religion
and the influential work of Hobbes, Locke (see Chapter 1) and Bayle (see
Chapter 2).1
The relation between religion and secular state as a central question for
modernity has, however, been at points obscured and masked by other
problems. During the Cold War, the question was, by and large, eclipsed
by the gigantomachia between capitalism and communism, and its per-
ception was shaped by the conviction that modernization would cause the
ineluctable decline of religion.2 This teleological image of modernization
1
M. Viroli, Machiavelli’s God (Princeton University Press, 2010).
2
For a locus classicus of this belief in contemporary sociology, see P. L. Berger, The Sacred
Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1967).

1
2 Camil Ungureanu
as secularization has recently been discarded by influential sociologists.
Scholars such as P. Berger or J. Casanova have replaced the theory of secu-
larization with that of desecularization or deprivatization of religion.3
From this perspective, the fact that religion has returned to the public
sphere brings into question the notion of the incompatibility between
modernity and religion, and leads to the image of “multiple modernities.”4
Nonetheless, the now-popular idea of the “return of religion” is in part
an academic myth. Religion is not like a volcano that, dormant for
some time, is erupting over again. During the Cold War, religiosity did
not shrink in a decisive way. Moreover, its hostility to religion notwith-
standing, communism represented, with its myths, rituals and messianic
“structure,” a continuation of religious experience, and a substitute for
and a distortion of it. It is not surprising that the communist experience
was analyzed, by J. Benda and E. Voegelin to M. Eliade and R. Aron, as a
“secular religion.”
In the vacuum left by the collapse of communism in 1989, the issue
of religion in the public sphere has reassumed a central place in current
debates, and compelled scholars into rethinking their empirical and the-
oretical tools. As Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingelhart argue, religiosity is
globally on the rise.5 There appears to be, however, a notable exception:
the European continent. In Europe, churchgoing has been in decline and
the number of non-believers or those who are indifferent is on the rise.6
The empirical hypothesis of secularization remains open, yet not even the
recent history of Europe has, in fact, confirmed the teleological saga of the
linear decline of religion. Europe has become increasingly secularized,
in the sense that “society has gradually emancipated itself from religion
without necessarily denying it.”7 In many European countries the power
of institutional religion has declined, while the interest in individualized

3
Berger has turned upside down his earlier theory of secularization in Berger (ed.), The
Desecularization of the World (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999).
See also P. Berger, G. Davie and E. Fokas, Religious America, Secular Europe?: A Theme
and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) and J. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern
World (University of Chicago Press, 1994).
4
See P. J. Katzenstein, “Multiple Modernities as limits to secular Europeanization?” in
P. J. Katzenstein and T. A. Byrnes (eds.), Religion in an Expanding Europe (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), pp. 1–42.
5
P. Norris and R. Ingelhart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
6
G. Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (London:
Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2002).
7
O. Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 15.
 Introduction 3
religious and spiritual searches has increased. Immigration and globaliza-
tion have also contributed to the growth of a more diverse religious envir-
onment. For example, Islamic and Pentecostal beliefs have become more
commonplace in several nations. As Charles Taylor points out, the secu-
larization of Europe is accompanied “by a new placement of the sacred
or spiritual in relation to individual and social life. This new placement is
now the occasion for ­re-compositions of spiritual life in new forms, and
for new ways of existing both in and out of relation to God.”8
At the political–legal level, religious claims have become ever more vis-
ible in the public sphere. Initially private and social matters have been
gradually turned into European contentious issues benefiting from the
generous coverage of the mass media. This is not only because religious
organizations and movements have found new “windows of opportun-
ity” of lobbying for their interests and values in Brussels or Strasbourg. In
effect, a variety of sub-state, state, international and supranational actors
have, in spite of their often divergent interests, contributed to defining
religious issues in terms of political and legal rights. The resulting process
of politicization and juridification of religion has generated an ambivalent
“culture of litigation.” This “culture” can undermine the art of political
compromise and reasonable legal accommodation of pluralism. Consider
how the veil, initially a non-issue in the primary school Châtelaine in
the canton of Geneva (Switzerland), was turned into a hard-fought pol-
itical problem in the Swiss public space, and what’s more, into the first
“veil case” at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).9 After her
conversion to Islam, a Swiss citizen and teacher (Ms. Dahlab) started to
wear the veil at the end of the scholastic year 1990–91. It was understood
that Dahlab was fulfilling her professional responsibilities without ever
attempting to persuade her students towards her religious convictions.
Nor did her wearing of the veil provoke complaints from colleagues or
parents. However, in 1995, the local teaching inspector brought the fact
that Ms. Dahlab was wearing the veil to the attention of the General
Department of the Primary School Teaching of the canton of Geneva.
This apparently insignificant event snowballed into a bitter public debate
and a legal case that culminated in the case being brought to the ECtHR.
In the end, the decision of the Court in the case Dahlab v. Switzerland
(2001) supported the stance of the Swiss authorities: in line with the State
Council of Geneva, the ECtHR argued, inter alia, that Mrs. Dahlab’s

8
C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 437.
9
Eur. Ct. H. R., Dahlab v. Switzerland, 15 February 2001.
4 Camil Ungureanu
wearing of the veil amounted to nothing less than a threat to “public order
and public safety.”10
In the Dahlab affair, the “security state” and its imagination created the
conflict and prescribed a disciplinary antidote for it. Nonetheless, this is
not to suggest that conflicts involving religion are merely fabricated by
imagination. The fact remains that the inherited compromises and agree-
ments about the place of religion in the secular state have been challenged
in virtually all corners of the European continent. In particular, Europe is
being confronted with the crisis of its two opposite models of integration:
assimilationist (France, Turkey) and multicultural (UK, Holland).11 On
the one hand, France’s laic model aims at creating a single overarching
community where everyone assimilates into the republican and national
values. The state plays a central role in creating the public sphere as a locus
of militancy for public virtues and republican values. The state, public
sphere and citizenship are largely ­“co-­substantial”: the public sphere is
not primarily an independent and external check on a state contemplated
with the distrustful eyes of the liberal citizen. To the contrary, the pub-
lic sphere is part of the statehood, that is, it constitutes a space where the
state and its republican citizens pursue their “mission” of safeguarding
the public virtues and goods. The laic state does not grant recognition to
ethnic and cultural–religious minorities: in order to become a citoyen,
individuals are required to strip themselves of their attachments to any
ethnic or cultural–religious group. By keeping their cultural–­religious
differences in the private sphere, individuals are regarded as being able to
reach reconciliation in virtue of the consensus over the republican values.
However, the French republican model attempts to define away conflicts
by imposing a non-negotiable primacy of republican–national values
over any other values. Therefore, it is a paternalistic model in so far as it
imposes top-down solutions without room for genuine dissent and rea-
sonable exceptions. Furthermore, the laic model works, in practice, more
like a partial disestablishment regime in which the Catholic Church has
been privileged by the state.12

10
Ibid.
11
C. Joppke, “The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy,” British
Journal of Sociology 55(2) (2004), 237–57.
12
See C. Laborde, “Virginity and Burqa: Unreasonable Accommodations? Considerations
on the Stasi and Bouchard-Taylor Reports” (2008), available at [Link]/
[Link]?lang=fr (last accessed September 5, 2011)
and C. Laborde, Français, encore un effort pour être républicains! (Paris: Seuil, 2010);
J. Baubérot, Laïcité 1905–2005: entre passion et raison (Paris: Seuil, 2004).
 Introduction 5
The multicultural model attempts to keep conflicts at bay and bring
about reconciliation by supporting the development of “public spaces”
of cultural–religious difference within which everyone can practice her
own values. This model has the merit of emphasizing the salience of the
recognition of the plurality of communities in the age of “galloping plur-
alism” (Charles Taylor).13 But this model has, especially in its radical
version, turned out to be over-optimistic as to the possibility of avoid-
ing segregation, integrating the newcomers with their differences, and
reconciliation.
The current conflicts have shaken the trust in the immediate feasibil-
ity of solutions based on reconciliation through multicultural recognition
and assimilation in the public sphere.14 Following D. Grimm, the con-
flicts involving religion can be broadly divided into freedom-centered
and equality-centered: a believer or a religious group may claim a liberty
that is not granted by the general laws, or they may claim equality rights
that are not prescribed by the general laws. In the first case, the demand is
either to extend or to restrict the generally guaranteed freedom in accord-
ance with a religious commandment, duty or tradition. Think of conflicts
over the ritual killing of animals, polygamy, consumption of drugs in a
ritual, interruption of work for purposes of prayer, wearing a turban while
driving, blood transfusions, and so on.15 In the second case, the issue is
either the equal treatment of various religious groups or the application of
the equality principle within a religious group. Consider the debates and
conflicts over whether all religious communities enjoy the same rights or
whether indigenous religious beliefs may be privileged, namely the con-
struction of mosques in non-Islamic countries, the call of the muezzin
(just as the Christian churches ring their bells), public display of religious
symbols, state subsidies for religious activities, the recognition of the reli-
gious holidays of the newcomers, and the equal treatment of various reli-
gious heritages in education.16
There are no transparent solutions at hand for solving such conflicts,
which are often marked by dilemmatic situations, that is different if not
13
Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 401. See also B. Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural
Diversity and Political Theory (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
14
See also M. Rosenfeld, “Equality and the Dialectic between Identity and Difference,’’
in O. A. Payrow Shabani (ed.), Multiculturalism and Law – A Critical Debate (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2007), pp. 157–81.
15
For more details, see Dieter Grimm’s categorization of conflicts involving religion and
law, in Grimm, “Conflicts between general laws and religious norms,” Cardozo Law
Review 30 (2008–2009), 2369–82.
16
Ibid.
6 Camil Ungureanu
divergent imperatives. Such dilemmatic situations question and undercut
the goodwill confidence in the mainstream philosophies of reconciliation
through public reason (Habermas’ dialogical postsecularism; Rawls’ pol-
itical liberalism) – philosophies that regard aporias as a marginal excep-
tion and dissensus as subordinate to disagreement.17 Rights and values,
pluralism and identity, justice and efficacy, autonomy and tradition, inte-
gration and toleration cannot always be balanced without the loss and
sacrifice of something valuable. Consider again the headscarf. When the
headscarf is converted into a contentious legal issue, a court needs to bal-
ance between gender equality and freedom of religion, non-domination
and pluralism. Nonetheless, the headscarf has a plural meaning: it can
signify subordination, but it can also be a means of expressing one’s free-
dom of religion.18 This entails that legal decisions which often follow an
either/or logic cannot be taken without risk, sacrifice and loss, as they can
either leave certain women unprotected or, to the contrary, curtail the
free exercise of religion on the part of autonomous women.
The lack of consensus over such conflicts raises a vital concern: how it
is possible to design anew stable and fairer agreements within the space
of a complex center wherein there is no “single ideal solution” (Habermas)
between the extremes of assimilationism and radical multiculturalism?
In contrast to the public reason approaches (Habermas, Rawls), this con-
cern involves a rethinking of the heritage of the Enlightenment in a more
pluralistic and situational way (see Chapter 7) and taking history more
seriously (see Chapter 1 and Chapter 4). It also gives a central salience to
persistent disagreements (see Chapter 3) and also takes into account the
importance of emotions and imagination (see Chapter 1 and Chapter 5).
This search for a theoretical renewal encounters specific layer difficul-
ties when we move beyond the nation state and focus on the European
institutions. Europe is marked by the debate and confrontation between
different models of democracy, law and religion – from the model of a
Christian Europe (Weiler)19 to that of a postsecular (Habermas)20 or
laic one (see Chapter 13). This is unsurprising given the practical and
17
J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); J. Habermas,
“Reconciliation through the public use of reason: remarks on John Rawls’ Political
Liberalism,” Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995), 109–31.
18
See, for instance, G. Jonker and V. Amiraux (eds.), Politics of Visibility: Young Muslims in
European Public Spaces, (London: Transaction Publishers, 2006).
19
See J. Weiler, Un´Europa Cristiana. Un saggio esplorativo (Milan: Rizzoli, 2003); Weiler,
“State and Nation; Church, Mosque and Synagogue—the trailer,” I-CON 8 (2010),
157–66.
20
J. Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
 Introduction 7
normative questions and dilemmas that mark the current European
predicament: how to square the development of a consistent European
approach to religion beyond the nation state, with the recognition of the
often conflictive diversity of the continent’s models? Where is the appro-
priate border between judicial interventionism and judicial restraint,
excessive interference and moderation, the esprit géometrique and the
esprit de finesse?
The present book brings together contributions that deal with this clus-
ter of questions and dilemmas in three parts. Part I includes political–
theoretical reflections which stand for different schools of thought, i.e.
republicanism (see Chapter 1), liberalism (see Chapter 3), Critical Theory
(see Chapter 2 and Chapter 5), post-colonial thought and multicultur-
alism (see Chapter 4). Part II analyzes concrete legal conflicts from dif-
ferent theoretical perspectives. It starts from a typology of conflicts (see
Chapter 6), and centers on representative issues such as religious symbols
(see Chapter 7), free speech and religious offense (see Chapter 10), educa-
tion (see Chapter 8), equality and discrimination (see Chapter 9) or social
cohesion (see Chapter 11). Part III focuses on the merits and ambivalences
of the emergent European legal and political discourses on religion (see
Chapter 12 and Chapter 13).
The present book adopts a pluralistic and interdisciplinary perspective,
including contributions from different schools of thought (e.g. analytical,
historical) and fields of research (e.g. political theory, legal analysis). In
Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls points out that, when consensus is frac-
tured and conflict emerges, we need to climb up the ladder of abstraction
so as to gain more clarity in the principles that orientate us in grappling
with concrete dilemmas. Rawls writes: “(i)n political philosophy the work
of abstraction is set in motion by deep political conflicts … We turn to
political philosophy when our shared political understandings, as Walzer
might say, break down, and equally when we are torn within ourselves.”21
In Rawls’ post-Hegelian understanding, philosophizing is meant to
reinstate the consensus by a process of reconciliation with the “reason”
embedded in our political tradition.22 However, going up the ladder of

21
Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 49.
22
Rawls draws on M. Hardimon’s interpretation of Hegel’s view as a philosophy of recon-
ciliation. See esp. Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. S. Freeman
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). For a critique of the reduction of
Hegel’s view as a “philosophy of reconciliation,” see Ch. Menke, Tragödie im Sittlichen:
Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit nach Hegel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 1996.
8 Camil Ungureanu
abstraction in search of reconciliation is one limited way of conceiving
legal–political theorizing. Probing afresh into the history of our current
predicament and revitalizing “lost” traditions, bringing to light persistent
dilemmas hidden behind the smokescreen of a reconciling reason, imagin-
ing innovative legal–political arrangements, deepening a sense of protest
against some of well-entrenched traditions of our situation, correspond
to alternative styles of reflection pursued in this book. Even if the repre-
sentatives of these styles and their followers have often treated each other
in a dismissive way, to conceive the relation between their approaches as
one of incommunicability or mutual exclusion is artificial. Consider the
seemingly opposed approaches of J. Rawls and Q. Skinner. In Political
Liberalism, Rawls pursues his analytical approach under the form of “pol-
itical constructivism.” Political constructivism neither is able nor does it
wish to bracket the question of history, as it is aimed to make explicit and
to systematize what is implicit and unsystematic in a historical tradition.
It is significant that Rawls opposes his “political constructivism” as based
on a specific historical tradition, to Kant’s ahistorical “moral constructiv-
ism.” In turn, Skinner’s historicist approach cannot avoid making general
theoretical assumptions. In fact, Skinner’s “revolution” in studying polit-
ical ideas as “performances” in specific historical contexts was inspired by
philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Austin or Davidson.23 What’s more,
as Skinner makes the case that the concept of freedom initially formed in
the context of the Roman republican period answers better the contem-
porary predicament than the liberal or socialist ones, he cannot avoid a
degree of trans-contextual generalization and theoretical constructivism.
The point is not that there is or should be a harmony between these differ-
ent approaches. To the contrary, it is most likely that a relation of tension
will remain between them, and so it should be. However, my suggestion is
that these authors emphasize one of the different dimensions – history or
structure, context or theoretical generalization and construction, factual
research or imagination and so on – that constitute the inner and open
dialectic of any legal–political and historical research. It is therefore more
useful to see these methods and styles of investigation from a pluralist per-
spective, namely in a relation of mutual check and learning, rather than in
one of incommunicability and reciprocal exclusion.
The pluralist perspective that informs the present enterprise is all
the more salient given the need for more interaction and collaborative

23
See especially the essays in Q. Skinner’s Visions of Politics: Regarding Method, vol. I.
(Cambridge University Press, 2002).
 Introduction 9
projects between legal and political theorists working on religion – above
all in Europe. The relative absence of such enterprises is due, in general, to
the protocols of overspecialization, homologation and promotion in the
current university system.24 The relative lack of interdisciplinary projects
applies much more to Europe’s academic space than to the American one,
as the European “cultural wars” and the resulting jurisprudential religion
are more recent phenomena.25 At the same time, in Europe an asymmetry
between legal and political theorists is notable: there are probably more
legal theorists who are well versed in the normative issues of political
justice than there are political theorists who are experts in legal issues.
Somehow understandably, there are not so many political theorists who
choose to acquaint themselves with the intricate technicalities and mean-
ders of the jurisprudential traditions.
In a letter written in 1929, the US Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes famously states: “I have said to my brethren many
times that I hate justice, which means that I know if a man begins to
talk about that, for one reason or another he is shirking thinking in legal
terms.”26 Nonetheless, while justice and law, political and legal theory
are relatively autonomous, building a “wall of separation” between them
is unsustainable, not least because the border between law and politics
has become ever more complex. In Europe particularly, there are at least
two interrelated reasons for this complexity. The first is the European
passage from government to multi-layered governance. Religious organ-
izations and movements have been contributing to this shift by “going”
European, and thus by rendering more complicated the traditionally
binary relation between state and church. Likewise, various European
institutions (the European Parliament, the European Commission, the
Council of Europe, etc.), have become increasingly involved with reli-
gion. This trend, which includes the recent institutionalizing of the dia-
logue with religious organizations by the Lisbon Treaty (article 17-C),
will probably gain more importance in the future. Second, in the past
decades there has been a global trend of judicialization of politics at
24
See T. D. Campbell, “Legal studies” in R. Goodin and P. Pettit (eds.), A Companion to
Contemporary Political Philosophy (Basic Blackwell, 1995), pp. 183–211; K. E. Whittington,
R. D. Kelemen and G. A. Cadeira (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (Oxford
University Press, 2008).
25
The first case decided under Article 9, European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) –
which protects freedom of religion – was Kokkinakis v. Greece, in 1993 (Eur. Ct. H. R.,
Kokkinakis v. Greece, 25 May 1993).
26
Letter to John C. H. Wu, 1 July 1929, in Justice Holmes to Dr. Wu: An Intimate
Correspondence 1921–32 (New York: Central Books, 1947).
10 Camil Ungureanu
the international and supranational level that has affected Europe as
well. “Judicialization” is a particular dimension of the broader process
of juridification: it refers to the increasing reliance on courts and judi-
cial means for addressing public policy questions and political contro-
versies.27 This raises the normative question of democratic legitimation,
given the transfer of power from representative institutions to courts and
judiciaries whose members are not always elected in transparent ways.
With respect to religion, the process of judicialization enforces, espe-
cially after 9/11, the political or “militant dimension” of the Convention
system.28 This can be seen from the ECtHR’s concern with fundamen-
talist and other “threats” to public order posed by certain religious sym-
bols, forms of speech or behaviour. Naturally, grasping such questions
regarding the dynamic interaction and unstable borderline between
politics and law requires the collaborative effort between political and
legal theory and case study.

Part I, dedicated mostly to contributions focused on political ideas, begins

with Maurizio Viroli’s reflections on the history of the idea of a repub-
lican or civil religion. Viroli’s contribution is part of his broader agenda
of unearthing forgotten treasures of European thought, his most recent
interest being in placing the notion of republican religion at the heart of
a republican revival. Methodologically, Viroli develops the historical and
linguistic turn of the Cambridge School, and examines political ideas not
only on the basis of major political texts but also of cultural artefacts such
as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s representative painting in the Sala dei Nove of
Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. In recent years Viroli has interpreted Machiavelli
as a key figure for the Western history of the relationship between polit-
ics and religion, an aspect that has escaped the recent historiography on
republicanism. In contrast to Q. Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, Viroli devel-
ops S. Wolin’s observation that American Christianity can be considered
“a Machiavellian civil religion.”29 For Viroli, the Founding Fathers and

27
Tom Ginsburg, “The Global Spread of Constitutional Review” in K. E. Whittington,
R. D. Kelemen and G. A. Cadeira (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (Oxford
University Press, 2008), pp. 81–99. See also B. Iancu (ed.), The Law/Politics Distinction
in Contemporary Public Law Adjudication (Utrecht: Eleven International Publishing,
2009).
28
For the idea of militant democracy and ECtHR’s approach to religion, see P. Macklem,
“Guarding the Perimeter: Militant Democracy and Religious Freedom in Europe,”
Working Paper Series, University of Toronto, 2010.
29
Viroli, Machiavelli’s God, p. 25. S. Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of
a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 297–8.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
 292 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES "Who said I was afraid?" said a
little voice, as the Rabbit popped out of a hole in the middle and
jumped up on a rock. There he sat on his haunches, with his ears
flapping over to one side in the most don't-care-ish way, and his
front paws on his knees. The other fairies looked foolish and said
nothing, and the Eagle pretended to hunt for something under his
wing. "My cousin the Beaver," the Rabbit went on, "has brought us a
distinguished visitor, and " "And what we'd like to know," said the
Wolf, "is — what is \\.V " It is called a Johnnie MacNab," said the
eldest of the beavers. " Nonsense ! " said the Rabbit. " I know what
it is — it's a man-thing." The chief of the gophers bobbed his head
as if he was going to dive into a hole, — as any gopher naturally
would when he saw a man-thing, — but remembering that he was
no ordinary gopher he held his nose up very high again. " I am
surprised at you," said the Buffalo to the father beaver. "Don't you
know that the man-things are the worst enemies our tribes have got
^. " "Ah," said the chief of the beavers, "but this is a new kind of
man-thing, with a pink face and blue eyes." " They are the most
dangerous sort of all," said the Buffalo. "The black-haired sort have
killed enough of my people with their bows and arrows, but this sort
of man-thing can stand a mile off and kill just by
 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES 293 making a pop and a flash. They
might stay down on the plains, I should think, without coming after
our people into the woods." "I propose that we eat him up," said the
Wolf, swelling and swelling and swelling till he was as big as an
elephant, with jaws like a crocodile's. "You will do no such thing,"
said the Rabbit, swelling and swelling and swelling till he was as tall
as a pine-tree, and waving his ears fiercely like a pair of branches in
the wind. " I know the duties of hospitality, and this man-thing is a
guest in my castle." All the other fairies felt bound to swell in their
turn, — ^just for dignity's sake, not to frighten anybody. Johnnie
was a Httle surprised, when he thought of it afterwards, that he was
not frightened at all, sitting there surrounded by a ring of monstrous
creatures like that. "Besides," said the chief of the gophers, "it's no
use. When the pink man-things come, they come to stay, and we
had better make the best of it." "Those are sensible words," said the
Eagle. "Let us make friends." "It's all very well for you to talk," said
the Buffalo, " because your people can fly up to Snow Peak like a lot
of cowards and get out of the way, while our people have to stay
down here and do the fighting." The Eagle ruffled up his great
feathers. "Don't you call my people cowards! " said he. "I'll show you
who can fight I " "My dear friends," said the Rabbit, who was a bit
 294 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES of a diplomatist, "what is the use
of quarrelling? I think we have had quite quarrelling enough, and it's
time to stop. We all think we are the bravest or the strongest or the
cleverest, and so we shall to the end. Now I've got an idea. It's clear
enough to my mind that the man-thing must be cleverer and braver
and stronger than all of us put together. Let us make him our Grand
Chief, and live together in peace." So there and then they elected
Johnnie MacNab to be their Grand Chief. Johnnie had often thought
he would like to be a chief, so he said, " All right ! I will ! " "Then
swell," said the Wolf. Johnnie was just going to say "I can't," but
then he thought that of course a chief could do anything, so it
wouldn't do to tell them that. " No," he said, " 1 won't swell, but you
must shrink." In the twinkling of an eye, all the great fairies shrank
down till the biggest of them was no bigger than a terrier, and they
all had to perch on the tops of rocks before they could see each
other. " Now we must get our people to build him a castle," said the
Rabbit. Then the Eagle gave a shriek, and the Wolf howled, and the
Moose clashed his horns on a tree, and the Bear roared, and the
Buffalo bellowed, and the Gopher whistled, and the Beaver slapped
his tail on a flat rock, and the Rabbit drummed with his hind legs on
the stone where he sat. You never did hear such an
 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES 295 orchestra ! And in an instant the
bears and the moose and the beavers and the rabbits and the
wolves and the gophers and the buffaloes came galloping and
prancing along from nobody knows where, and a cloud of eagles
floated overhead. "Build a castle for the man-thing, the new Grand
Chief of all the animal clans," said the eight great-little fairies. "But
not here!" said the Rabbit. "This is my castle, you know ! " ""Where
shall we build it.'*" said the Bear to Johnnie. "Oh," said Johnnie, "I
think you had better build it down by the creek." So all the animals
rushed down to the side of the creek ; and the gophers dug up the
turf to lay a foundation, and the beavers cut down the trees to build
the walls, and the eagles brought grass for the thatch ; and the
bears grubbed up berry-bushes and planted them all round the
house, after the moose had ploughed holes in the ground with their
horns. "But your people are not doing anything," said the Beaver to
the Buffalo. "We don't know what to do," said the Buffalo. "Well,"
said the Rabbit, "you're not much good — except to eat." " Happy
thought ! " said the Wolf, smacking his lips. " The man-things are
very fond of buffalo meat, — and it is good, I must say."
 296 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES The buffaloes looked rather
mournfully at each other. " Well, I suppose it can't be helped," said
the Buffalo to his people ; " you can't live for ever, you know." So a
dozen of the fattest buffaloes obediently took off their skins, and
their fairy by his magic turned the rest of their bodies into smoked
sides and hams and hung them up from the rafters of the house,
and piled the skins in a corner to make a nice soft bed. " I am very
sorry for the poor buffaloes ■'" Johnnie began. "Oh, never mind
that," said the Buffalo. "They are much happier where they are.
These are only their clothes, you know. But your people have done
nothing," he went on, turning quickly to the Wolf. " I don't think
there is anything left to do," said the Wolf, " except to clear away
the bones." At that word, the horde of wolves sprang upon the
bones and rushed away snarhng to devour them in the woods. " I
am rather glad they have gone," said Johnnie to himself. "And now,
Grand Chief," said the Beaver, " if you will make yourself at home,
we shall always be ready to do anything you want, and we trust you
to treat our people kindly." "I will," said Johnnie; "but how shall I let
you know when I want you ^ " " Oh, we'll attend to that," said the
Eagle, and he
 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES 297 made his people build nests for
themselves in the tops of the biggest trees on the edge of the wood
so that they should always be ready to fly messages. " There is one
thing I should like you to do, Grand Chief," said the Beaver, "and that
is to keep that rascal Puck-puck in order." "All right," said Johnnie.
"When I see him I'll tell him to go off to the North Pole and never
come back again." The animals were so delighted to hear this that
they struck up a grand chorus of roaring and screeching and
drumming and whistling. It was a terrible noise, but, curiously
enough, in the very middle of it Johnnie MacNab, rolling on the great
soft heap of furry buffalo skins in his log castle, fell fast asleep.
"Where can Johnnie have got to.'*" cried his mother when she saw
John MacNab coming up to the tent for his supper. "I thought you
had got him up here with you," said his father. Then they both
started off to search. Johnnie was nowhere to be seen ; but
presently they saw the track of httle feet in the long grass, and they
followed the trail down to the stream and up along the water's edge
for about half a mile — till at last they stood still and cried out in
amazement, spying a big log house on the other side of the creek.
"Why," said Janet, "I thought you said we were the first settlers on
Pipestone River."
 298 THE ANIMAL FAIRIES "I thought we were," said John.
"Let us go and see who it is that has come before us." "It's a much
better place than we chose ourselves," said Janet. " And he has
made a good beginning with his farm, whoever he is," said John, as
they scrambled from rock to rock across the stream. You can think
how astonished they were on looking in at the door to spy curled up
on a heap of buffalo rugs their own lost Johnnie and nobody else. It
was a wonderful story that Johnnie told when he awoke. His father
said it was a dream, and though the family were glad enough to
take up their quarters in the new house without the trouble of
building one for themselves, John and Janet have never stopped
wondering when the owner is going to turn up.
 The Rabbit and the Wild-cat. There was dead silence for
quite five minutes. I suppose the Indians round the wall were
wondering whether the farmer's wife's story was true or whether she
had just made it up, and they were too polite to ask. "Isn't there
another Indian story about ready, Ossawippi ? " said Rennie's father
at last. "Perhaps," said Ossawippi, "but I don't know where it is." "
Oh," said Rennie, looking up reproachfully into the Chief's face, — "
you do know, Ossawippi ; it's in your own head." The Chief did not
box the small boy's ears for contradicting. He just said, — "There are
two Chiefs here, and they have both got heads. If there is another
Indian story ready, I think it is in Mustabec's head." Old Mustabec
had never told a story before in company, — that is, in grown-up
white folk's company, — but he was a Chief and he had a reputation
to keep up, so he began at once : — The story is about the Rabbit.
It must have been 199
 300 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT before that white
man came to Pipestone River, because the Rabbit had got no castle ;
he just lived in the woods. The Wild-cat lived in the woods too, and
he went to fight the Rabbit because he lived in the woods and the
Wild-cat wanted the woods all to himself. When the Rabbit heard
that the Wild-cat was coming, he took an armful of chips and threw
one as far as he could, and jumped on to it. Then he threw another
and jumped on to it, and then he threw another and jumped on to it
; and he kept on throwing the chips and jumping from one to
another, till they were all gone. By the time he had jumped on to the
last of the chips he had gone a whole mile without making one foot-
print in the snow. But the Wild-cat was very clever too. When he
came to the place where the Rabbit's foot-prints ended, he sat down
and thought, licking his paws all the time except when they were
scratching his ears. When he had finished thinking and licking and
scratching, he started out to catch the Rabbit. He didn't go straight
after the Rabbit, because he didn't know which way the Rabbit had
gone ; but he knew how to find out. He began to run round and
round, like a tame cat trying to catch its own tail ; only he went
round wider and wider every time, like the spring of the white man's
clock. He made a bigger circle every time, and he kept saying to
himself, in case he should forget, — "If only I make the circle big
enough I'm bound to come across the fellow's trail
 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT 301 some time or other."
And so he did. When he was making a very big circle indeed, he
came across the trail that the Rabbit had made when he ran away
after all the chips had been used up. Then the Wild-cat shot away
along the trail as straight as an arrow. When night was coming on,
and the Rabbit was tired of being hunted, he bit oif a few pine twigs
and piled them up in a heap and sat down on top of them. Very
soon the Wild-cat came up ; but all he saw where the Rabbit's trail
ended was a shabby old wigwam. The Wild-cat turned himself into
the shape of a man, and looked into the wigwam ; but all he saw
there was an old man, with very tall ears, sitting beside a fire. "Have
you seen the Rabbit?" said the Wild-cat. "Yes," said the old man, "he
just went by." "I can't see his trail in the snow," said the Wild-cat.
"No," said the old man, "of course you can't, because he climbed up
on to the top of the wigwam and jumped so far that I couldn't see
where he came down again. But if you come in and go to sleep, in
the morning I'll show you which way he jumped. Then you can go
after him, and I hope you will catch him, — the impudent fellow,
climbing on to the top of my wigwam ! " The Wild-cat was very
tired, so he lay down by the lire and went to sleep. In the morning
he got very cold, and woke up, and when he opened his eyes he
found he was lying on
 302 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT the bare snow, with
no fire, and no wigwam, and no old man, — nothing but a little heap
of pine twigs ; and there in the snow were the tracks of a rabbit's
feet, trailing away to the north. The Wild-cat jumped up, and turned
himself into what he was, and flew away over the snow on the
Rabbit's trail. He ran all day, never stopping to catch his dinner,
because he kept saying to himself, — "I'll catch the Rabbit to-night,
and I'll have such a supper as I never ate in all my life before."
When night came again, and the Rabbit pricked up his long clever
ears and listened, he heard the Wild-cat's soft paws pattering over
the snow, not half a mile away. So the Rabbit bit oif an armful of
pine twigs, and heaped them up and sat on top of them. When the
Wild-cat came up he found a whole Indian village ; and in the
middle of the village was a log church, and all the people were
hurrying into the church. The Wild-cat made himself look like the
other people, and went into the church too. There he saw an old
white missionary in a black cap with flaps hanging down over his
ears. The missionary preached a terrible sermon about the
wickedness of wicked people, and when he came to the end he said
that wicked people were as bad as rabbits, and he couldn't say any
worse than that. The Wild-cat thought it was a very good sermon.
When the sermon was over, and the people went back home, the
Chief of the tribe came up and spoke to
 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT 303 the Wild-cat, — and
the Chief had a long plait of hair sticking out on each side of his
head. " Where do you come from, stranger ? " said the Chief to the
Wild-cat. ''I've come from Pipestone River," said the Wildcat; ''and
I'm hunting the vi^icked Rabbit that the missionary was talking
about." "That's right," said the Chief; "I hope you will catch him. He
cam.e up just as we were going into church, and he climbed up on
to the church and jumped off the roof. Come home and stay with
me, and in the morning I will show you which way he went." So the
Wild-cat went home to the Chief's wigwam and went to sleep ; but
in the morning when he woke up there was no wigwam, and no
chief, and no church, and no missionary, and no village, and no
people, — nothing but a heap of pine-twigs, and a rabbit's trail
running away to the north. The Wild-cat jumped up very angry, and
raced away on the Rabbit's trail. He ran all day ; and in the evening,
when he was getting very tired, he came to an Indian town with a
wall all round it and two high towers sticking up, one on each side of
the gate. An old man with long ear-rings was standing outside the
gate, and he asked the Wild-cat where he came from and where he
was going. The Wild-cat told him, and the old man with ear-rings
said, — "You are just the man we want to honour; because the
Rabbit is our great enemy, and he's always eating our corn."
 304 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT So the old iTiiin took
the Wild-cat into the town and brought him to the Grand Chief. The
Grand Chief was sitting in front of his birch-bark lodge ; and the
lodge was beautifully painted with wild-cats eating rabbits ; and the
Grand Chief had two long feathers sticking out of his hair. "You are
hungry and tired," said the Grand Chief to the Wild-cat. " Come in
and eat and rest." Then the Grand Chief beat the big cat-skin drum,
— he said it was rabbit-skin, — and all the people came together
and made a great feast. " What is that in the pot .'' " said the Wild-
cat, sniffing. "Rabbits' meat," said the Grand Chief. The Wild-cat
didn't like the smell of the meat, but he was very hungry and he ate
his share. Then all the people sang a great war-song against the
Rabbit. "Honour to the brave who is going to catch the Rabbit ! "
they sang. " Death to the miserable corn-thief! May his ears hang to-
night from the belt of the stranger ! " Then they asked the stranger
to sing ; and he too sang a war-song against the Rabbit. When he
had done, he asked the Grand Chief to sing. "Yes," said the Grand
Chief, "I will sing; but you must all shut your eyes when the Grand
Chief sings. So they all shut their eyes ; and when the Wild-cat's
eyes were shut tight the Grand Chief leapt over to him and gave him
a terrible blow with a tomahawk. The Wild-cat lay a long time as if
he was dead ; but
 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT 305 at last he came to
himself, and when he opened his eyes there was no Grand Chief,
and no town, and no people, — nothing but a lot of bones lying all
over the snow where the feast had been : and the bones were the
bones of wild-cats. The Wild-cat was dreadfully sore, and he couldn't
run very fast, but he saw the Rabbit's trail in the snow, and he
followed it as fast as he could, snarling all the time. That night he
came to another Indian town. There was no one at the gate, so he
walked in, and in front of a big lodge he saw a young man making
arrows ; and two of the arrows he had stuck over his ears, one over
each ear, like the white man with his pens when he stops writing.
"You are wounded," said the young man. "What has happened to
you .'' " " I am hunting the Rabbit," said the Wild-cat. " I came last
night to a town that was full of conjurors ; and when I was asleep
they all came against me with their tomahawks ; and I woke up and
killed them all, but one of them gave me a little cut first." " I will
send for the doctor," said the young man, " and he will put ointment
on the wound to heal it quickly, so that you can hurry up and catch
the wicked Rabbit." So the young man sent for the doctor. The
doctor was a very old man, and his grey hair was tied up in a pair of
tufts, one at each side. He smeared sweet-smelling ointment on the
Wild-cat's wounded head ; and the Wild-cat dropped off to sleep
beside the fire.
 3o6 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT Early in the morning
the Wild-cat felt very cold and sore ; and when he woke up his
wound was full of prickly thorns, and it smarted dreadfully ; and his
head was swollen up as big as a bear's. And the young man had
gone, and the doctor had gone, and the town had gone, — there
was nothing on the snow but a heap of pine-branches and a rabbit's
trail running away to the north. The Wild-cat was dreadfully angry,
and he swore he would kill the first man he met ; and he dashed
away on the Rabbit's trail. Now the Rabbit had used up nearly all his
magic, and he had no time to stop and make more, the Wildcat
chased him so fast. When the evening came and the Rabbit got to
the shore of a great lake, he bit and broke oif a great armful of pine-
branches and threw them out into the middle of the lake. Then he
jumped with all his might and came down on the heap of floating
branches ; and he flapped his ears and made them sound like a
night-hawk's wings, and when the night-hawks woke up and flew
out to see what the matter was, the Rabbit said, — " Your enemy
the Wild-cat is coming to catch you with all his magic ; but if you
perch on these branches I will save you, because my magic is
stronger than his." The night-hawks had just settled down on the
heap of floating pine-branches when the Wild-cat came racing out of
the woods and stood on the shore of the lake. And there, in the
middle of the lake, he saw a great war canoe, with a lot of Indians in
it holding guns
 THE RABBIT AND THE WILD-CAT 307 in their hands, and
the captain standing up in the middle of them with a big hat that
turned up high on both sides. " I've caught you at last ! " the Wild-
cat shouted. " You can't deceive me any more ! " And he plunged
into the water and began to swim out to the canoe. Then the night-
hawks all went bang — bang — bang with their mouths, the way the
night-hawks do ; and the Wild-cat thought he was shot, and turned
round and scrambled ashore and ran away and hid in the woods
without stopping to shake himself. " I'll catch him when he comes
through the woods to go home," said the Wild-cat. And he waited,
and waited, and waited ; and I dare say he's waiting yet, because
the Rabbit never came through the woods to go home. He just
jumped ashore on the other side of the lake and went home another
way.
 Tintelle's Mother. Monsieur Thibault was all ready -when his
turn came, and the story he told was about Tintelle's mother. He
said : — In a little village beside the broad St Lawrence river, there
lived a mother with only one child. All the other mothers in the
village had more than one, and some had ten or twelve ; but
Tintelle's mother did not mind, " for Tintelle is more beautiful than
all the other little ones," she said. Tintelle really was very beautiful,
with skin like a snowdrift at sunrise, and eyes like bits of blue sky
reflected in the river ; but the rosy sunlight died away, and the blue
sky was hidden by a cloud, and the cold white body of little Tintelle
was buried under a spreading maple tree. The poor mother spent a
great deal of her time in the churchyard, kissing the little wooden
tombstone and crying, crying, crying all the while. "The grass ought
to be very green," said old Bateest the farmer as he looked over the
fence, "for she cries so much on it ; but it is really getting yellow and
withered, because her tears are so bitter." Sometimes the mother sat
on the river bank, crying, and crying, and crying. 308
 TINTELLE'S MOTHER 309 "The river would rise and flood
the land," said Pierre the ferryman as he rowed across, "only her
"The mother sat on the river bank, crying." tears are so hot that
they go up in steam as soon as they have frightened the fishes
away." Sometimes the mother used to spend hours and hours in the
church, crying, crying, crying. One day she
 3IO TINTELLE'S MOTHER prayed and wept till she fell
asleep. When she awoke it was night, and the sexton had locked the
door and gone home to bed. She was not afraid. " Now I can spend
the night praying and weeping alone," she said ; " perhaps the good
God will hear me better when there is nobody to interrupt us." So
she prayed aloud, begging God to give Tintelle back to her. Suddenly
she heard a door open, and looking up she saw an old man come
out of the vestry with a candle in his hand. "Dear me," she said to
herself, "it is the old sexton, who died twenty years ago ! " But she
was not afraid. The old man lit the lamps and went back into the
vestry. When he came out again he was followed by an old
clergyman, with a face as white as his hair and his eyes almost shut.
"Ah," said Tintelle's mother, "it was he that took me in his arms
when I was a baby, and baptised me. It is more than twenty years
since he died." The bell in the tower began to toll. At the twelfth
stroke the vestry door again opened, and out came a procession of
little children, walking two by two. The biggest of them could not be
more than six years old, and the smallest could hardly toddle. They
all wore wreaths of immortelles, and in their hands they carried
baskets full of flowers, or vases of delicious scent, or little gold and
silver cups containing a liquid clear as crystal. Their steps were light
and airy, and their faces radiant with smiles. All were full of joy —
 TINTELLE'S MOTHER 311 except one. This little girl could
only just keep up with the rest, and her face was sad, for she had to
drag along with her two great buckets, so full that some of the
transparent liquid splashed over on to the floor at every step. "
Tintelle ! " cried the mother. " Come back to me, Tintelle ! " Tintelle
gave her one look. It was a loving look, but there was so much pain
in it, and distress, that the mother fell fainting on the floor. When
she opened her eyes once more, the grey of the morning was
creeping in at the windows. She ran to the vestry door : it was
locked. The lamps were out ; but on the floor, right across the
church, was a row of dark damp stains, as if water had been
splashed there a little while before. The sexton was startled when he
opened the church after breakfast and found his neighbour inside.
He began to say how sorry he was that he had locked her in ; but
she did not seem to hear him. She walked quickly out and through
the street, and up the stony hill behind the village till she came to
the place where a wise old man lived by himself in a hut leaning
against a rock. The poor mother threw herself at his feet, and
begged him to tell her the meaning of what she had seen. " My
daughter," he said, " those children have passed from earth to
heaven. The gold and silver cups contain their mother's tears. Those
who carried vases of perfume or baskets of sweet-smelling flowers
 312 TINTELLE'S MOTHER are the children of mothers who
have said, in the midst of their grief, ' God knows what is best, and
He is taking good care of them.' " The wise man paused. " Oh, my
father," she sobbed, " if you had been near, my httle girl would not
have died ; but I know that, even now, God will do anything you ask
Him." The good old man took the poor woman's hands in his own,
and asked, very gently, — " Did you love the child very much ? "
"Did I love her? Oh, what a question!" And then, seizing the old
man's hand, she implored him, — " You are a saint, my father ; give
me back my child, my little Tintelle ! " " Yes," said the old man,
paying no attention to her prayer, — " you loved your child very
much ; so you would have done a great deal to save her from the
slightest trouble ? " "Anything, anything!" the mother cried. "I would
have lain upon red-hot coals to spare her a scorched finger." "I
believe it. And you love her still, no doubt .^" " Do I love her ? "
screamed the poor woman, leaping up as if bitten to the heart by a
viper. " Do I love her ? It is plain that you know nothing of a
mother's love, if you think that death can kill it ! " She was trembling
in every limb, and the tears began to flow in torrents. " Go, woman !
" said the old man, making his voice as stern as he could. " You do
not speak the truth. You have seen your little daughter bending
under the
 TINTELLE'S MOTHER 3^3 weight of your tears, and you tell
me that you love her. At this very moment she is here beside you,
p^s^^ " In the middle of the hut, anemones had sprung up."
Struggling with her painful task — and you say you love her I Away
with you!"
 314 TINTELLE'S MOTHER The hut grew dark ; the old man
disappeared, hidden by a thick, grey mist. As the air cleared, the
mother saw once more her precious child coming towards her with
slow and heavy tread. She was bending under her burden of tears,
and once she stumbled, and some of the liquid splashed on to her
foot. The little spirit screamed as if she had been burnt. The mother
rushed forward. " Forgive me, Tintelle ! " she cried. "I will never hurt
you again. I will not grudge you to the good God any more ; I will
not, Tintelle ! I will not, I promise you." The spirit child looked up
with a pleased smile, and the heavy buckets fell from her hands,
spilling every drop on the earthen floor. The mist vanished. There
was the wise man where he had stood before. "My eyes are open,"
the mother said. "I have been mad in my grief. I will complain no
longer. If I am a childless mother, I will go and seek the motherless
children and care for them, and we shall comfort one another." "You
have got wisdom," said the old man, "and you will have peace." A
few days afterwards she was kneeling in the church after everyone
else had gone — everyone except an orphan child, whom she had
taken into her home and her heart. The mother was thanking God
for the joy she had obtained by giving joy to this little child.
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