{"id":4684,"date":"2019-11-30T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T18:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2019-11-30T18:19:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T18:19:53","slug":"word-of-the-day-vicissitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/30\/word-of-the-day-vicissitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Vicissitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The WordGenius.com word of the day for today is vicissitude<\/em> [\/ v\u026a\u02c8s\u026as\u2009\u026a\u02cctud, -\u02cctyud \/:\nthe \/\u026a\/ in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is what we learned to call\nthe \u201cshort i sound,\u201d as in \u201cpit\u201d or \u201cwill\u201d]. The noun means \u201ca change or\nvariation occurring in the course of something,\u201d \u201cinterchange or alternation,\nas of states or things,\u201d \u201csuccessive, alternating, or changing phases or\nconditions, as of life or fortune; ups and downs,\u201d \u201cregular change or\nsuccession of one state or thing to another,\u201d or \u201cchange; mutation;\nmutability.\u201d One usually hears the word in the plural form, in the phrase \u201cthe\nvicissitudes of life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>,\nit entered the language in the \u201c1560s, from Middle French vicissitude<\/em> (14c.),\nfrom Latin vicissitudinem<\/em> (nominative vicissitudo<\/em>)\n\u2018change, interchange, alternation,\u2019 from vicissim<\/em> (adv.) \u2018changeably,\non the other hand, by turns, in turn,\u2019 from vicis<\/em> \u2018a turn,\nchange\u2019 (from PIE root *weik-<\/strong> (2) \u2018to bend, to wind\u2019). The\nperiod from the mid-16th<\/sup> to mid-17th<\/sup> century was known\nfor the importation of \u201cinkhorn\u201d terms, words borrowed from Greek, Latin, and\nFrench to compete with simpler English words (like \u201cchange\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we\u2019re going to look at someone who had to deal with\nthe vicissitudes of life. Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard was\nborn in May of 1747, the son of Francis I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria\nTheresa, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia\u2014not exactly a rough start in life. But he\nwas the third son of Francis and Maria Theresa, not the first, so he was not in\nline for succession. So his parents decided to train him up for the priesthood.\nBut when he was 14, his older brother Charles died. Francis and Maria Theresa\ndecided that Leopold should become heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and when\nhis father died the next year, that his what he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the deal was that Leopold marry the Infanta Maria\nLuisa of Spain. To us, that sounds kind of bad, but Infanta<\/em> is just a title like princess<\/em>\nin the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Maria Luisa was actually born in 1745, a\nyear and a half before Leopold. Her father was Charles III of Spain and her\nmother Maria Amalia of Saxony. She was originally supposed to marry Leopold\u2019s\nolder brother, Joseph (Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790), but the King of\nFrance objected to that marriage because he wanted Joseph to marry his\ngranddaughter, Isabella of Parma. Apparently the marriage wasn\u2019t all that happy\nas Leopold was a bit infamous for his extra-marital affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leopold was just the Grand Duke of Tuscany until the death\nof his older brother in 1790, when Leopold inherited the lands of the Hapsburgs\nand was elected the new Holy Roman Emperor (yes, the Emperor was elected,\nthough not in a general election of the people). The first few years of his\nreign as Grand Duke he was controlled by his counselors, but eventually, in\n1770, he took control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some things that he did to reform Tuscany:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. He removed restrictions on personal freedom\nimposed by the Medicis.<\/li>
  2. He removed restrictions on industry, also\nimposed by the Medicis
    1. The results of these first two reforms led to\nincreased prosperity for the people of Tuscany.<\/li><\/ol><\/li>
    2. He suppressed the small navy that had been\ncreated by the Medicis, and since he had no standing army, he had money for\nimproving the duchy. <\/li>
    3. He worked on a constitution, which would have\ndivided power between the executive and the legislative, though this reform was\nforestalled in 1790 by his becoming Holy Roman Emperor.  His constitution had many similarities to the\nVirginia Bill of Rights of 1778. <\/li>
    4. He promulgated a law to improve the care of the\nmentally ill.<\/li>
    5. He made the smallpox vaccine available.<\/li>
    6. And on this date in 1786, Leopold instituted a\npenal reform which ended torture and capital punishment. This day is celebrated\nas the Cities of Life Day around the world. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Tuscany was the first civil state in the world to do away\nwith torture and capital punishment, which is kind of amazing when you think\nabout the fact that England was still putting people to death for stealing. The\nUnited States continues to use capital punishment 233 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Like all monarchs, Leopold was authoritarian at times,\nespecially after he became the Holy Roman Emperor. And his affairs make it\nclear that he was not as morally upright as he should have been. But his doing\naway with torture and capital punishment\u2014just those two actions\u2014make it clear\nthat he was as good a ruler as ever existed in the period of human history when\nkings and dukes had inherited power. He hadn\u2019t begun life in line to inherit\npolitical power, but he adjusted to the vicissitudes of his life to do good\nthings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The image is of Leopold with his family, a painting by\nJohann Zoffany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The WordGenius.com word of the day for today is vicissitude [\/ v\u026a\u02c8s\u026as\u2009\u026a\u02cctud, -\u02cctyud \/: the \/\u026a\/ in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is what we learned to call the \u201cshort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}