13 October 2006
Treason has been much in the news of late.
This past Wednesday the United States charged Adam Yehiye Gadahn with treason, the first time since 1952 that such a charge has been brought against an American citizen. Gadahn has allegedly appeared in al-Qaeda training videos and is suspected of working in the terrorist group’s training camps. The Californian is believed to be in Pakistan.
In other treason news, Iva Toguri, one of several female radio broadcasters known as "Tokyo Rose," died last month at her home in Chicago . She was convicted of treason in 1948, the only one of the Japanese-American broadcasters so convicted, and pardoned by President Ford in 1977.
Treason is a very rare crime. In the history of the United States, there have been less than 40 prosecutions for treason, and even fewer convictions. The most famous treason case, that of Vice President Aaron Burr in 1807, resulted in an acquittal. The last person charged with treason by the United States was Tomoya Kawakita, a Southern Californian who was found guilty in 1952 of torturing American prisoners or war during WWII. Kawakita was sentenced to death, although the sentence was commuted and he was eventually deported. None of the famous Cold War spy cases involved charges of treason.
When I heard the news of Gadahn’s indictment on television, I was struck by the word treason. While hardly an unfamilar term, it sounded odd to my ears and I immediately wondered what its etymology was.
The word treason makes its appearance in the manuscript The Ancren Riwle (The Nun’s (Anchoress’s) Rule), a manual of monastic rules published sometime before 1225, in a reference to King David’s killing of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband:
Dauid�dude�treison and monsleiht on his treowe kniht Vrie, hire louerd. (David�did�treason and manslaughter on his true servant Uriah, her husband.)
This early sense of treason means simply betrayal and does not have the specific meaning of betrayal of the state. The word comes from the Anglo-French treysoun and ultimately from the Latin verb tradere, meaning to betray. So treason has the same root as betray.
The word had acquired its modern legal meaning of an offense against the state by 1303, when it appears in Robert Manning of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne:
Yn no thyng wote y more tresun, than brynge thy lorde to hys felun.
English law originally divided the crime into high treason, or crimes against the sovereign or the state, and petit treason, crimes against a subject (e.g., murder). The phrase high treason is still used today, although it no longer has a counterpart in petty treason.
The Treason Act of 1351, which although amended many times in the intervening centuries is still in force in England, defines treason as:
when a man does compass or imagine the death of our lord the King, or of our lady his Queen or of their eldest son and heir; or if a man violates the King’s companion, or the King’s eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King’s eldest son and heir; or if a man does levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere, and thereof be properly attainted of open deed by people of their condition�and if a man slays the chancellor, treasurer, or the King’s justices�being in their places, doing their offices: and it is to be understood, that in the cases above rehearsed, that ought to be judged treason.
This 1351 statute, in modified form, is also the source for American law on the subject of treason. Article III of the US Constitution says:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
In the American version gone are the crimes against the person of the head of state or his ministers. And having abandoned the monarchy, the crime of sleeping with the Queen, a crime because it could place one’s offspring illegitimately on the throne, is also gone. But what remains contains two interesting terms, adhere and aid and comfort.
Adhere is definitely an odd word here to the modern ear. It is used here in the old sense of to be a follower, a partisan of a person or group. In the original Anglo-French version of the 1351 statute the term appears as adherdant. In modern slang, an adherent might be rendered as fellow traveler. But we no longer use this sense of adhere in non-treasonous contexts and the only reason that it is still used in the legal documents is because of the specific wording in the Constitution requires it.
Like adhere, aid and comfort, is familiar; in fact, giving aid and comfort to the enemy is something of a cliché. In the original Anglo French of the 1351 statute, it is eid ou confort. What is odd, though, is the use of comfort. Again, this is an old, obsolete sense of the word meaning encouragement, strength, or incitement. This sense also first appears in Ancren Riwle:
Of fleschliche vondunges and of gostliche both and kunfort ageines ham. (Of fleshly, and also of spiritual temptations, and of comfort against them.)
Ponder for a moment that the specific wording of indictment of treason against an alleged 21st century terrorist is rooted in the legal language of the mid-14th century and that some of the words used to define it are first found in an even older manuscript about monastic life. A marvelous thing this English language of ours.
