The rival, the first of the Tudors, won the battle and created propaganda that vilified the dead king in order to deflect criticism from his own usurpation. Shakespeare embedded the crude verdict in one his best-known plays, Richard III, and Richard has come down in history as a cruel scheming murderer, a dark stain in the chronicles of the monarchy.
But in the last ten years, that is, five and a quarter centuries after the man’s death, a different verdict has been aired. A British archaeologist, Philippa Langley, set out to find the unknown grave of Richard III. Her account reads like a detective novel. She identified the city and the car park where his body was most likely to be found. She organised a dig and a team painstakingly edged their way forward until they found the bones.
Carbon 14, DNA and all sorts of scientific tests were applied and the day came when everyone was satisfied that, indeed, these were the remains of the king who had been hurriedly buried without honour in a church in Leicester City. Close examination revealed the wounds to the head that had been fatal to him and even the ‘insult injury’ inflicted by the vindictive victors.
It did not stop there. Huge interest was aroused in the media about the man himself. Was he really as bad as the Tudor propaganda made him out to be? The revised verdict is: he was no saint but he was certainly no cruel tyrant. It is said, ‘History is written by the winners’, and that was the case with Richard. Now, he is viewed as ‘a man of his time’, no better and no worse than his contemporaries.
The labourers in the vineyard, in Matthew 20, who had ‘borne the heat and burden of the day’, jumped to the conclusion it was unfair of their employer to pay the latecomers the same wage as they received. Maybe they were good Trade Unionists but their thoughts were not God’s thoughts! Jesus explains God’s thoughts by saying, in effect, the latecomers too needed the money to sustain their families. ‘Why be envious because I am generous?’
The gospel prompts us to be critical thinkers and not passive devourers of propaganda, dressed up as popular opinion.
24 Sept 2023 Sunday 25A Is 55:6-9 Ph 1:20-27 Mt 20:1-16
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