Editing Saunders Lewis (section)

==Political and cultural legacy==
Lewis's legacy remains a controversial one and his simultaneously [[anti-Marxist]] and [[anti-colonialist]] interpretation of [[Welsh history]] and [[distributist]] vision for the nation's future have often been the target of attacks from both the [[Far Left]] and the [[Far Right]].

Particularly controversial was his belief, as expressed in ''Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg'', a 1932 outline of the history of [[Welsh-language literature]], that the [[Edwardian conquest of Wales]] was less damaging to [[Welsh culture]] and [[Welsh-language literature|literature]] in the long run than the [[Protestant Reformation]], which began under King [[Henry VIII]] with the destruction of the independence of the [[Catholic Church in Wales]] from [[Caesaropapism|control by the State]]. This was because, according to Lewis, King Henry's legacy ensured that subsequent Welsh literature was cut off by [[religious persecution]] and government [[censorship]] of the [[bard]]ic profession from their own religious past and from their previously close links to the rest of Europe.<ref>Jelle Krol (2020), ''Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors'', Palgrave. Pages 102-103.</ref> 

This was why Lewis urged Welsh-language writers as early as 1919 to read, translate, and draw influence from literature in many other European languages, rather than, as he and many others before him had once done, only reading and emulating literature in English. This is also why he particularly recommended translating into the Welsh-language and arranging regular performances in the theatres of the best French poets and [[playwright]]s of the [[Counter-Reformation]] and the [[Baroque]] era. Despite his own [[Francophilia]], Lewis had also mentioned the importance of combatting the [[Black Legend (Spain)|Black Legend]] by exposing the [[Welsh people]] to the literary canon of [[Spanish Golden Age theatre]], whose greatest playwrights included [[Miguel de Cervantes]], [[Lope de Vega]], and [[Pedro Calderón de la Barca]]. 

Without mentioning [[Pope Gregory XI]] or his 1373 "[[règle d'idiom]]", command for the Catholic clergy to both learn and communicate with their flocks in the local [[vernacular]],<ref>Jelle Krol (2020), ''Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors'', Palgrave. Page 219.</ref> Lewis believed that the coercive Anglicisation of the [[Welsh people]] began with the [[Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542|Acts of Union]] passed under King Henry VIII following his break with the Holy See and commented, "it was this materialistic and pagan triumph that destroyed our Wales."<ref>Jelle Krol (2020), ''Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors'', Palgrave. Page 103.</ref> 

Explaining his preference for the era before King Henry VIII, Lewis wrote, "There was one law and one civilisation throughout Europe, but that law, that civilisation took on many forms and many colours. It did not occur to the rulers of a country to destroy another land's civilisation, even when they conquered that land... Despite being conquered, being oppressed, too, and quite cruelly, it (Welsh civilisation) grew upright and without losing the innate qualities of its culture. No doubt Wales often yearned for freedom, but did not fear losing its heritage, nor did it. Because there was one law and one authority throughout Europe, Welsh civilisation was safe, and the Welsh language and the special Welsh way of life and society."<ref>Jelle Krol (2020), ''Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors'', Palgrave. Pages 102-103.</ref> 

For example, historian John Davies writes that, "in a notable article", Saunders Lewis argued that the Welsh bards of the Medieval era, "were expressing in their poetry a love for a stable, deep-rooted civilization." Lewis added that the bards "were the leading upholders of the belief that a hierarchical social structure, 'the heritage and tradition of an ancient aristocracy', were the necessary precondition of civilized life and that there were deep philosophical roots to this belief."<ref name="John Davies 1993 Pages 210-211">John Davies (1993), ''A History of Wales'', Penguin Books. Pages 210–211.</ref>

Unlike Marxist historians and politicians, Lewis' intense hostility to the [[Welsh peers and baronets|Welsh nobility]] was not for existing at all, but for abandoning ''[[noblesse oblige]]'' and their traditional duties between the 16th and 18th centuries. Instead of acting, as their ancestors had done, as the [[Welsh people]]'s natural leaders and patrons of [[Welsh-language literature]] and the arts, the gentry completely assimilating into the [[British upper class]] between the 16th and 18th centuries. Even worse, in Lewis's eyes, and was the Welsh gentry of the era's widespread practices of [[rackrenting]] and [[political boss]]ism enforced by evicting the families of tenants who voted independently of how they were ordered. A disgusted Lewis wrote about the era, "The gentry betrayed their [[birthright]], behaved like rich [[bourgeois]] and denied... the civilisation which they boasted they were cherishing."<ref> Jan Morris (1984), ''The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country'', [[Oxford University Press]]. Pages 233-234.</ref> 

Despite his many statements to the contrary, Lewis' allegedly "condescending attitude towards some aspects of the [[Nonconformity in Wales|Nonconformist]], radical and pacifist traditions of Wales", also drew extremely harsh criticism from fellow Welsh nationalists such as [[David James Davies|D.&nbsp;J. Davies]], a [[Marxist]] Plaid Cymru member.<ref name="Davies_591"/> 

Lewis, however, always insisted that his conversion to Catholicism did not keep him from understanding the sensibilities or appreciating the role played in Welsh culture by the Nonconformists. For example, he praised [[Methodism]] and [[Calvinism]] for preserving the uniqueness of [[Welsh-language literature]] and culture against the [[Anglophilia]] and [[linguistic imperialism]] favoured by the [[Victorian era]] Welsh gentry, the Government in Westminster, and the [[Church in Wales|Established Church]].<ref>Jelle Krol (2020), ''Minority Language Writers in the Wake of World War One: A Case Study of Four European Authors'', Palgrave. Pages 100-102.</ref> 

Along with his careful study of what had worked and what had failed in [[Irish nationalism]], these were the real roots of Lewis' beliefs that Welsh cultural and [[language revival]], [[Christian democracy]], rural landscape conservation, and an Irish-style [[Land War]] -- meaning [[direct action]] tactics intended to reduce rents and coerce an [[Land Acts (Ireland)|Irish-style breakup and sale]] of the gentry's estates to their tenants -- were preferable causes for the [[Welsh nationalism|Welsh nationalist]] movement to embrace than [[Socialism]] and which have attracted such extreme criticism, both during Lewis' lifetime and since his death.

In particular, Marxist D.J. Davies denounced Lewis' calls for Welsh [[language revival]] and [[cultural nationalism]]. Davies called instead for engaging the English-speaking [[South Wales valleys]]. Davies also pointed towards Left Wing political parties in [[Scandinavia]] as a model for Plaid Cymru to emulate, and was accordingly far more interested in the "economic implications" of Welsh [[self-determination]].<ref>{{harvp|Davies|1994a|pp=591–592}}</ref>

Left wing historian Geraint H. Jenkins has written, "Lewis was a cold fish. His reedy voice, bow tie, cerebral style and aristocratic contempt for the proletariat were hardly endearing qualities in a political leader, and his conversion to Catholicism lost him the sympathy of fervent Nonconformists. Heavily influenced by the discourse of right-wing French theorists, this profoundly authoritarian figure developed a grand strategy, such as it was, based on the deindustrialization of Wales. Such a scheme was both impractical and unpopular. It caused grave embarrassment to his socialist colleague D.&nbsp;J. Davies, a progressive economist who, writing with force and passion, showed a much better grasp of the economic realities of the time and greater sensitivity towards the plight of working people.<ref>{{harvp|Jenkins|2007}}</ref>

A further source of continuing Left Wing nationalist opposition to Lewis was rooted his expressions of support during the 1930s for [[Engelbert Dollfuss]] in the [[Federal State of Austria]], [[António de Oliveira Salazar]] in [[Portugal]], and for the [[Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War)|Nationalist faction]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]]. Even though Lewis' support for the latter was rooted in his horror over both the [[religious persecution]] of the [[Catholic Church in Spain]] and the [[Red Terror (Spain)|Red Terror]] by the [[Second Spanish Republic]], the Far Left political leadership of Plaid Cymru, reportedly, "have never forgiven him."<ref> [[Charles A. Coulombe]], ''A Monarchist and a Catholic: John Saunders Lewis(1893-1985)'', ''[[Mass of the Ages Magazine]]'', Summer 2024. Published by the [[Latin Mass Society of England and Wales]], pp. 44-45.</ref> 

For these reasons, while it was Lewis's "brilliance and charismatic appeal" which was firmly associated with ''{{lang|cy|Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru}}'' in the 1930s, it was D.&nbsp;J. Davies's Leftist ideology which was adopted by Plaid Cymru after the [[Second World War]].<ref name="Davies_592"/> For the remainder of his life, however, Saunders Lewis continued to fight for the causes he cared most deeply about and remained an ideological thorn in the side of the Far Left leadership of the very [[political party]] he had helped to found. 

During the post-[[World War II]] battles between [[Plaid Cymru]] and the [[Welsh Labour|Labour Party]] over political control of [[South Wales]], a hostile 1946 portrait mocked Saunders Lewis for thinking himself to be the "[[Jan Masaryk|Masaryk]] of Wales" and that both the [[United Kingdom]] and the very concept of [[Britishness]] would one day to collapse similarly to the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]] in 1918. The same writer then sarcastically feigned sympathy for Plaid Cymru, a [[political party]] which was allegedly burdened by, "bitterness and hate and the (possibly unintentional) air of physical superiority with which only too many of its members have regarded the bulk of their countrymen."<ref name="Marcus Tanner 2004 Page 212"/>

During the 1990s, in the midst of a debate over the ''[[Government of Wales Act 1998]]'', Saunders Lewis was also accused in the [[House of Commons]] of having praised [[Adolf Hitler]] in 1936 with the words, "At once he fulfilled his promise — a promise which was greatly mocked by the London papers months before that — to completely abolish the financial strength of the [[German Jew|Jew]]s in the economic life of Germany."<ref>[https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo011205/halltext/11205h02.htm United Kingdom Parliament]: Debate on ''[[Government of Wales Act 1998]]''. Retrieved 31 August 2006.</ref>

In 2001, former Plaid Cymru President [[Dafydd Elis-Thomas]] accused Saunders Lewis during a television documentary of being, "lousy as a politician, lousy as a writer, but a good Catholic".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2001/08/05/plaid-founder-blasted-91466-11220176/ |title=Plaid founder blasted |date=26 March 2013 |access-date=16 March 2016 |publisher=[[WalesOnline]]}}</ref>

In contrast, however, Marcus Tanner, while researching in his 2004 book ''The Last of the Celts'' visited the decaying English-speaking industrial towns, which D.J. Davies once saw as Plaid Cymru's future. Pointing out that they were both dominated for decades by [[Far Left]] [[political machine]]s, leading to Soviet-inspired concrete architecture, [[political corruption]], and skyrocketing unemployment, Tanner compared South Wales to the many similarly decaying and disillusioned industrial towns behind the former [[Iron Curtain]] after the [[collapse of the Soviet Union]] in 1991.<ref>Marcus Tanner (2004), ''The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press. Pages 186-218.</ref>

In the same book, Tanner credited the famous 1962 radio lecture by Saunders Lewis with being the primary reason why the [[Welsh language]] was, as of 2004, the only one of the [[Celtic language]]s that was neither [[dead language|dead]] or [[critically endangered]].<ref>Marcus Tanner (2004), ''The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press. Pages 212-217.</ref>

According to Tanner, "Welsh is more visible than ever before. The moment I drove across the Severn Bridge, signs written in a different language proclaimed that I had entered a different land. It was not like [[Scotland]], where [[Scottish Gaelic language|Gaelic]] bilingual signs were limited to a few Highland areas. As for the [[Bretons]] in [[Fourth French Republic|France]], they can only dream of such symbols of recognition. You can live your life in Welsh now, at least in theory. The officials of the [[London and North Western Railway|North Western Railway]], who fired workers on the line from [[Holyhead]] to [[Chester]] for their inability or unwillingness to speak English in the 1890s, would have a tough time of it now. It is the English-speaking [[monoglot]] who faces a problem in trying to work in the public sector, and the language sections of universities do a booming trade in teaching basic Welsh to English professionals who have taken up such posts. Saunders Lewis saved more than most people though possible by his stirring radio address back in 1962."<ref>Marcus Tanner (2004), ''The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press. Page 214.</ref>

Lewis' legacy is further reflected by the fact that, even in decaying and traditionally English-speaking Welsh colliery and industrial towns and cities, [[Welsh-medium education]] is increasingly used as a means of both [[heritage language learning]] and reasserting national identity.

For this and many other reasons, Saunders Lewis was overwhelmingly voted by the [[Welsh people]] as their 10th greatest [[national hero]] in the '[[100 Welsh Heroes]]' poll, the results of which was released on [[St. David's Day]], 2004.<ref name="auto"/>