Vox populi vox Dei

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The Latin phrase Vox populi vox Dei (literally: 'People's voice [is] God's voice') translates as “ public opinion has great weight”.

use

The idea of ​​the power of public opinion as something divine can be found in Hesiod in Werke und Tage : “A rumor that many people often talk about will never quite get lost; for a god is also the rumor itself ", and in the Odyssey :" Say whether [...] the people in the country hate you, obeying the voice of God. " Seneca the elder formulated in Latin: ... crede mihi, sacra populi lingua est “… believe me, the language of the people is sacred”.

The sentence appears in a letter from Alkuin to Charlemagne (around 798) with political advice as the ninth piece of advice: Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit , in English: “You have to go to those not hear the care to say, voice of the people, voice of God ', as the noise addiction of the mob always the madness comes very close. " The sentence was quoted more frequently in the Middle Ages , including in a letter ( Epistle 15 ) by the theologian Petrus von Blois (1135–1204), in which he reminded the clergy of the importance of the community's judgment on them: Scriptum est: quia vox populi, vox dei. In English: 'It is written: Because it is the voice of the people, it is the voice of God.'

In England in 1719 an apprentice printer was hanged because he did not want to divulge the author of a Jacobite pamphlet with the title Ex ore tuo te judico, vox populi vox dei “From your mouth I judge you, the voice of the people is God's voice”.

Satirical modifications of the sentence, which describe the voice of the people as absolutely changeable, without its own quality and value, exist in German as Vox populi, vox Rindvieh and in English as Vox populi - vox halfpenny . The phrase Vox populi, vox beef cattle was made popular in 1918 by Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau , a member of the Reichstag . In his autobiography in 1936, however, he claimed that it was not he who made the derogatory remark, but Friedrich von Wrangel .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ vox populi vox Dei , duden.de, accessed on November 13, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b c Georg Büchmann : Winged words , 19th edition, Berlin 1898, p. 324f. On-line
  3. ↑ a b c Jan CL König: On the power of speech: Strategies of political eloquence in literature and everyday life , V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-862-1 , p. 148 f. , with note on p. 149.
  4. ^ Alcuin : Epist. 132, 9. In: Epistolae (in quart) 4: Epistolae Karolini aevi (II). Published by Ernst Dümmler u. a. Berlin 1895, pp. 198–199 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  5. ↑ Karl Tilman Winkle: Words War: Political culture of debate in Walpole's England , Steiner Franz Verlag, 1998. S. 326. Online
  6. ^ ES TAYLOR: Voce Populi Halfpenny, in: American Notes and Queries 4 (1851), pp. 138-139; EF SUTCLIFFE: Vox populi, vox dei, in: American Notes and Queries 161 (1931), p. 297; SA GALLACHER: Vox Populi, Vox Dei, in: Philological Quarterly 24 (1945), pp. 12-19; G. BOAS: Vox Populi; Essays in the History of an Idea (Baltimore [Md.] 1969)
  7. ↑ Negotiations of the Reichstag 1918, v. Oldenburg-Januschau