Percival Ignatius

[iris_ft]

No: HPFGUIDX 83932

Hi all,

What is following is rather messy, I'm afraid. I couldn't find time 
to read the messages during the last weeks (too much work in the 
muggle world
) , but finally I found my way back to HPfGU. So if 
there's nothing new in what I write, don't put the blame on me.

Mary Jo wrote:

"I was surprised to find out that Percy's middle name is Ignatius. 
This is
disclosed during the hearing conducted by Umbridge concerning 
Harry's fighting
off the dementors. I have puzzled over the significance of his 
middle name, and
have a few ideas, but am unsure if any of them are correct. I would 
love to
hear what everyone else thinks.

1, My hobby is genealogy, and when I find someone named Ignatius in 
my research,
the name always means that the family was Roman Catholic at the time 
the name
was given. However, in the WW we don't have any religions, so I 
don't think is
really relevant.

2. Could St. Ignatius of Loyola be somehow a model for Percy? I know 
that St.
Ignatius of Loyola was originally a soldier, and when he was an 
invalid from
wounds received during battle, he read a book about the life of a 
saint, and
decided to try to be a saint himself. Does this part of his life 
represent
ambitious Percy? St. Ignatius later said that the biggest and most 
important
thing he had to learn was humility. Are we going to see Percy 
humbled? Or is
he in reality already an undercover spy? The order St. Ignatius did 
institute
became famous for its excellent education and teaching of logic. 
Perhaps this
is an indication that Percy will end up as the teacher at Hogwarts.

I am not fully satisfied with any of these ideas. Does anyone else 
think that
his middle name is somehow a clue?"

Now me : After your post, a discussion about religious belonging in 
the Wizarding World started ; I'd like to come back to your original 
purpose.

I like the idea of a similitude between Percy and the Jesuits. 
I don't know much ado about the order in the current time. But I had 
to study the part they played in political life during the 18th 
century.
To summarise, they were a preoccupation for kings and their 
governments.
They used to be the teachers of aristocracy; they were also 
confessors of several kings. They were close to power. The problem 
was that the constitutions of their order stipulated that they had 
to be loyal to the Pope. For that reason, some governments suspected 
them to be spies in the pay of Vatican, and it was a problem, 
because in the 18th century, European states, like France, or Spain, 
were trying to escape from the Curia's political influence. Well
 
this is REALLY a summary, but I'm not here to analyse political life 
in the 18th century, I'm here because of Percy.
In OotP, we can clearly see that the Wizarding World is in a 
difficult political situation, because of its own inertia. From one 
part, there's the Ministry and the Wizengamot; they are defending 
ideas that can lead to a disaster, they don't want things to change 
and pretend to interfere in Hogwarts. They act right the way Curia 
did in the states of 18th century, for instance France.
At the time, there was an intellectual movement called `les 
Lumières' (the Lights); philosophers like Diderot, Rousseau, 
Voltaire, D'Alembert were working in order to make society progress. 
It was a time of debate, of calling into question the institutions. 
The Philosophers used to denounce the Curia's influence in the 
political life of their state, and they were rather anticlerical. 
There were also Masons, who were following the same purpose. They  
all were of course the target of Roma, and Curia did not accept all 
the books they published, like the Encyclopédie. Masons were 
excommunicated. 
Do you see where I'm going to? No? 
Well, from the other part, there are Dumbledore and his followers, 
and they are exactly like Diderot and his friends. The way they act, 
the way they think, or teach, or belong to a same group is calling 
into question the WW and its institutions. The WW is very like a 
society of the Ancient Regime, with slavery (the elves), segregation 
(Pure Bloods and Muggles, Wizards and other magical creatures). This 
world is about to split if nothing is done. Voldemort is not only a 
menace, he's also revealing how rotten from inside the Wizarding 
World is.
But nor the Ministry, nor the Wizengamot seem to realise. On the 
very contrary, they are afraid of looking clearly what is happening. 
They pretend to ignore that Giants, Centaurs, Goblins, Elves are not 
treated in the right way. They don't want to see that repeating the 
same errors is the open door to auto-destruction. And when Fudge 
thinks he is in danger of loosing his power because of Hogwarts and 
Dumbledore, he acts exactly the same Curia did in the France of 
Diderot and Voltaire: he tries to neutralise them. And he sends them 
a High Inquisitor, Dolores Umbridge. A High Inquisitor
 Think about 
Bernardo Gui and Fra Jorge in "Il nome della Rosa", by Umberto Eco. 
Umbridge acts exactly the same: she tortures, she pretends to come 
back to a purely scholastic teaching of DADA

Well, I think that I'm going too far from the "Percival Ignatius" 
purpose.
So, back to young Mr Weasley, and to Jesuits.
I wrote that Jesuits were loyal to the Pope. Percy acts the same 
when he chooses to support Fudge against Dumbledore and his own 
family. It's quite normal if we consider how the character behaves 
since the beginning of the series: he's always loyal to the most 
important authority he has to deal with. He's a "perfect prefect" 
and a "perfect Head Boy" while he has to obey Dumbledore's rules. 
When he starts working for the Ministry, he's ready to everything in 
order to serve his boss. What happens in OotP is logical. How could 
Mr Weasley or Dumbledore have more importance than Fudge, the "Big 
Boss" of the Wizarding World?
And there we have to come back to Jesuits in the 18th century: 
though they claimed they were loyal to the Pope, Vatican suspected 
them of trying to gain power in their own interest. To gain power: 
do you remember the title Percy is reading in a bookshop of Diagon 
Alley at the beginning of Cos?
As an evidence of suspicion Vatican had towards Jesuits, remember 
that it did nothing to protect the order when France and Spain 
expulsed it (1761 and 1767), and that in 1773, Pope Clemente XIV 
decided to suppress the Company.
Gaining power, serving their own ambition through an apparent 
loyalty to both the King and the Pope: that's the cliché literature 
developed about Jesuits, in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Think 
about "Candide" by Voltaire (the episodes in Paraguay)or 
about "Vingt ans après" by Alexandre Dumas (the Man in the Iron Mask 
affair; if you don't know the novel, you certainly saw the movie 
with Di Caprio, and with Jeremy Irons as Aramis, the artful 
musketeer who is also
 a Jesuit and the leader of the plot).
Maybe JKR had the same cliché on her mind when she decided that 
Percy's second name would be Ignatius.
It opens the door to many options: Percy being a double agent 
(serving both the Ministry and Dumbledore), or Percy joining 
Voldemort's side if he considers that the Dark Lord is able to take 
the power

Percival Ignatius, a metaphor of the thirst for power and its 
disastrous consequences?
Just one more word before ending this looong post: "Ignatius" sounds 
like a Latin word, "Ignarus". This word means "who doesn't know; who 
is ignorant".
Is Percy really conscious of the consequences of his acts and 
decisions?
Isn't he also a metaphor of blindness?

Amicalement,

Iris