12 January 2021
Sedition has a rather straightforward etymology; it’s from the Latin seditio, via the Anglo-Norman sediciun. The Latin word literally means a going apart; the se- prefix, denoting separation, can also be seen in secession and separate. And the -it- is a form of the verb ire, meaning to go. That’s the literal meaning Latin, but the word was used to refer to insurrection or civil discord, or in poetic works to strife or quarrel.
The Latin word appears in Anglo-Latin texts by the eighth century. In one glossary it is defined as:
Seditio . perturbata . simulatio.
(Sedition: pretenses/deceits that cause discord)
And it appears as a definition in another entry:
Tumultus . seditio.
(rebellion: sedition.)
But the word is not used in English until the 1380s, when it was borrowed or influenced by the Anglo-Norman sediciun, meaning treachery. It appears in a Wycliffite translation of the biblical book Deeds 24 (Acts 24) in a passage about Paul’s trial before Felix. Here sedition is being used in the sense of violent civil strife or dissension:
We han founden this man beringe venym, or pestilence, and stiringe sedicioun, or dissencioun, to alle Jewis in al the world, and auctour of seducioun of the secte of Nazarens; the which also enforside for to defoule the temple; whom and takun to, we wolden deme, aftir oure lawe.
(We have found this man bearing venom, or pestilence, and stirring sedition, or dissention, to all Jews in the all the world, and author of the sedition of the sect of the Nazarenes, which also undertook to defile the temple, whom we have taken and would judge under our law.)
The Vulgate Bible uses seditio in this passage.
By c.1450 sedition was being used to mean insurrection when it appears in a translation of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (Of Famous Women) in a passage about Medea:
And, whan she saw hym, forthwith, anon-right
Hir feith and trouth to hym she dydde plyght:
Cupydo ys bronde so sore had hir inflamed,
That hym to folow she was no-thynge ashamed,But stale out priuely of hir faders lond
And— ȝit wele wersse—made a sedicyon
Ageyns hir fader with powere and stronge honde,
The comunalte to make an insurreccion,
That she and and hir dereward luf Jason
Myght eskape, vnknowynge the kynge,
Whyle he was occupyed in werfarynge .(And when she was him, forthwith and instantly, she pledged her faith and troth to him: Cupid’s torch had inflamed her so fervently that she was in no way ashamed to follow him but stole out of her father’s land secretly. And—yet more sinfully—She made a sedition against her father with a powerful and strong hand. The nation to make an insurrection, so that she and her then-dear love Jason might escape without the king knowing, while he was occupied in warfare.)
The general sense of violent strife or dissension dropped out of use in the seventeenth century, leaving the sense of insurrection, and particular inciting an insurrection, as the sense in use today.
In the United States today, there is no crime of sedition, per se, but there is a crime of seditious conspiracy. 18 U.S. Code § 2384 — Seditious Conspiracy reads:
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
Sources:
“18 U.S. Code § 2384 — Seditious Conspiracy.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed 11 January 2021.
Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND1), 1992, s.v. sedicun.
Deeds 24. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions, vol. 4 of 4. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1850, 579. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 369. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. seditio. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Hessels, Jan Hendrik. An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1890, 107, 117. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 144. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. seditio. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. sedicioun, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sedition, n., se-, prefix.
Schleich, Gustav. "Die Mittelenglische Umdichtung von Boccaccios De claris mulieribus," Palaestra, 144, 1924, lines 1320–30, 65. London, British Library, Additional 10304. HathiTrust Digital Archive.