Collective Guilt International Perspectives Nyla R Branscombe

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Collective Guilt International Perspectives Nyla R Branscombe
Collective Guilt International Perspectives Nyla R Branscombe
Collective Guilt International Perspectives Nyla R Branscombe


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Collective Guilt
When the self is categorized as a member of a group, emotions can
be experienced for actions committed by one’s group. Collective guilt
reflects the remorse that is felt when one’s group has illegitimately
harmed another group and not repaired the damage done. This vol-
ume examines the antecedent conditions necessary for collective guilt
to be experienced, methods for measuring this group-based emotion,
and how collective guilt differs from other emotions. The political
implications of collective guilt and forgiveness for the past are con-
sidered, as well as how those might depend on aspects of the na-
tional context. Researchers from Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel,
the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, and the United States address the
critical questions of who, when, and why collective guilt is experi-
enced. How collective guilt may be harnessed to create a more peaceful
future for groups with a history of intergroup violence is highlighted.
Nyla R. Branscombe is a Professor of Psychology at the University of
Kansas and is well known in the field of intergroup relations, having
published more than80articles and chapters. She has served as Asso-
ciate Editor of thePersonality and Social Psychology BulletinandGroup
Processes and Intergroup Relations, and she is on the editorial boards of
most major social psychology journals. She has received several re-
search awards from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology
and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues reflecting
the impact of her work on understanding the psychology of privileged
and disadvantaged groups.
Bertjan Doosje is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.
His research has focused on group identification and its consequences
for social judgments. He currently serves on two social psychology
journal editorial boards. With Branscombe, he received the1999Otto
Kleinberg Award for their Intercultural and International Relations
research on collective guilt.

Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
Second Series
Series Editors
Keith Oatley
University of Toronto
Antony S. R. Manstead
Cardiff University
This series is jointly published by Cambridge University Press and the Editions de la Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme, as part of the joint publishing agreement established in1977be-
tween the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Syndics of Cambridge
University Press.
Cette publication est publi´ee en co-´edition par Cambridge University Press et les Editions
de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Elle s’int`egre dans le programme de co-´edition ´etabli
en1977par la Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et les Syndics de Cambridge
University Press.
Titles published in the Second Series:
The Psychology of Facial Expression
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Emotion, the Social Bond, and Human Reality: Part / Whole Analysis
Thomas J. Scheff
Intersubjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny
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The Social Context of Nonverbal Behavior
Pierre Philippot, Robert S. Feldman, and Erik J. Coats
Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes
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Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals
Anna Wierzbicka
Gender and Emotion: Social Psychological Perspectives
Agneta H. Fischer
Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling
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Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition
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The Causes and Consequences of Feelings
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Emotions and Beliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts
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Identity and Emotion: Development Through Self-Organization
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Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion
Stephanie A. Shields
The Hidden Genius of Emotion: Lifespan Development of Personality
Carol Magai and Jeannette Haviland-Jones
The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion
Patrick Colm Hogan
Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium
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The Social Life of Emotions
Larissa Z. Tiedens and Colin Wayne Leach

Collective Guilt
International Perspectives
Edited by
NYLA R. BRANSCOMBE
University of Kansas
BERTJAN DOOSJE
University of Amsterdam

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Cambridge University Press 2004
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and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2004
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Collective guilt : international perspectives / edited by Nyla R. Branscombe,
Bertjan Doosje.
p. cm. – (Studies in emotion and social interaction)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-81760-9 (cloth) – ISBN 0-521-52083-5 (pbk.)
1. Group identity. 2. Intergroup relations. 3. Guilt. I. Branscombe, Nyla B.
II. Doosje, Bertjan. III. Series.
HM753.C65 2004
305 – dc22 2003069738
ISBN 978-0-521-81760-8 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-52083-6 Paperback
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accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
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or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel
timetables, and other factual information given in this work are correct at
the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee
the accuracy of such information thereafter.

Contents
Preface
pageix
List of Contributors xi
section 1: defining the nature of collective guilt
1International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective
Guilt 3
Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
2The Measurement of Collective Guilt: What It Is and What It
Is Not 16
Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
3The Evocation of Moral Emotions in Intergroup Contexts:
The Distinction Between Collective Guilt and Collective
Shame 35
Brian Lickel, Toni Schmader, and Marchelle Barquissau
4Collective Guilt in the United States: Predicting Support for
Social Policies that Alleviate Social Injustice 56
Robyn K. Mallett and Janet K. Swim
5Gender Inequality and the Intensity of Men’s Collective Guilt75
Michael T. Schmitt, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Jack W. Brehm
section 2: the relationship between group identification
and collective guilt
6Consequences of National Ingroup Identification for
Responses to Immoral Historical Events 95
Bertjan Doosje, Nyla R. Branscombe, Russell Spears, and Antony
S. R. Manstead
vii

viii Contents
7Refining the Meaning of the “Collective” in Collective Guilt:
Harm, Guilt, and Apology in Australia 112
Craig McGarty and Ana-Maria Bliuc
8Exonerating Cognitions, Group Identification, and Personal
Values as Predictors of Collective Guilt among Jewish-Israelis130
Sonia Roccas, Yechiel Klar, and Ido Liviatan
9It Depends on Your Point of View: Implications of
Perspective-Taking and National Identification for Dutch
Collective Guilt 148
Sven Zebel, Bertjan Doosje, and Russell Spears
10Collective Guilt, National Identity, and Political Processes in
Contemporary Germany 169
Lars Rensmann
section 3: consequences for intergroup relations
11Intergroup Forgiveness and Guilt in Northern Ireland: Social
Psychological Dimensions of “The Troubles” 193
Miles Hewstone, Ed Cairns, Alberto Voci, Frances McLernon,
Ulrike Niens, and Masi Noor
12Intergroup Reconciliation Processes in Israel: Theoretical
Analysis and Empirical Findings 216
Arie Nadler and Ido Liviatan
13On Whether to Apologize to Indigenous Australians:
The Denial of White Guilt 236
Martha Augoustinos and Amanda LeCouteur
14Racial Wrongs and Restitutions: The Role of Guilt and Other
Group-Based Emotions 262
Aarti Iyer, Colin Wayne Leach, and Anne Pedersen
15Importance of Social Categorization for Forgiveness and
Collective Guilt Assignment for the Holocaust 284
Michael J. A. Wohl and Nyla R. Branscombe
section 4: commentary on the volume
16Individual versus Group Rights in Western Philosophy and
the Law 309
Elazar Barkan
17A Social Psychological Process Perspective on Collective
Guilt 320
Nyla R. Branscombe
Index 335

Preface
History is replete with instances of great harm being committed by one
group against another. Regrettably, while engaged in such harm doing,
group members tend to perceive their own group’s harmful actions as
morally justifiable. Such legitimization protects people from the distress
and guilt that they might otherwise experience when confronted with the
harm done by their ingroup. Indeed, choosing not to legitimize the in-
group’s actions and questioning its morality can be seen as traitorous acts.
Thus, there are ample reasons to suppose that people will be strongly in-
clined to protect their social identity by perceiving their group’s actions
from the vantage point of the “moral high ground.”
Collective guilt, then, might seem to be an unlikely emotion to experi-
ence, given that its occurrence requires the self to be seen as a member of
a group thathasacted immorally. Despite the many impediments to doing
so, around the world there have been instances where people have both
publicly and privately debated whether their group’s treatment of another
group was justified or not. Such a reassessment of the legitimacy of the in-
group’s actions can focus on historical injustices from long ago, as well as
more recent and ongoing forms of intergroup harm doing. Feelings of col-
lective guilt that are widely shared have resulted in formal apologies and
other forms of reparations being issued to the harmed group as a means
of making amends for the past and its continuing effects in the present.
The social psychological conditions that lead people to experience collec-
tive guilt for either past or present forms of group-based harm doing and
the consequences of experiencing collective guilt for the future relations
between the groups are central questions that we examine in this book.
The image of the “torn world” on the cover suggests that there is no
one nation that is the repository of negative group actions that have the
potential of evoking collective guilt. National groups can feel guilt be-
cause of how a subgroup within a nation has been harmed by another sub-
group (e.g., the treatment of indigenous peoples), or collective guilt can be
ix

x Preface
experienced for one national group’s harmful treatment of members of
another nation (e.g., colonial occupational of other nations). Although dis-
tinguishable from the legal criteria required for “being guilty,” which ne-
cessitates personal responsibility for the harmful actions, collective guilt
can result when a shared identity with the harm doers is salient. As the
research in this book attests, reverberations that stem from feelings of col-
lective guilt have been observed from North America to the Middle East
and from Europe to Australia. In fact, there seems to be no shortage of
events for which collective guiltmightbe felt.
The research presented in this book addresses the antecedents and con-
sequences of collective guilt in seven national contexts. In each chapter, the
authors admirably situate their work in terms of the historical and current
relations existing between the groups studied. The research the authors
report on concerns crucial justice issues and collectively their empirical
work represents an important new direction in the social psychology of in-
tergroup relations. This book presents original research that was primarily
guided by a social identity theoretical perspective, but crucial connections
to historical, philosophical, and political processes are developed within
each chapter.
The acceptance of collective guilt by those categorically associated with
the perpetration of unjustified harm to others is not a trivial emotional
matter. In fact, it can be a rather costly emotion, although it may present
new identity opportunities. While questioning the morality of both past
and present forms of intergroup harm could, on the surface, appear to
be inconsistent with ingroup interests, the experience of collective guilt
may be an important impetus for the construction of a revitalized social
identity. Indeed, perceiving a different future identity as possible may be
an important incentive for confronting the past. Seeking forgiveness for
past wrongs may be a prelude to developing an inclusive social identity
where all subgroups are treated according to the same standard of justice.
A group identity where this goal has actually been attained is likely to
provide people with a basis for experiencing their group astrulymoral.
March2004
Nyla Branscombe – Lawrence, Kansas USA
Bertjan Doosje – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Contributors
Martha Augoustinos
University of Adelaide
Elazar Barkan
Claremont Graduate University
Marchelle Barquissau
University of Arizona
Ana-Maria Bliuc
Australian National University
Nyla R. Branscombe
University of Kansas
Jack W. Brehm
University of Kansas
Ed Cairns
University of Ulster
Bertjan Doosje
University of Amsterdam
Miles Hewstone
University of Oxford
Aarti Iyer
University of California, Santa Cruz
Diane M. Kappen
University of Kansas
Yechiel Klar
Tel Aviv University
xi

xii Contributors
Colin Wayne Leach
University of California, Santa Cruz
Amanda LeCouteur
University of Adelaide
Brian Lickel
University of Southern California
Ido Liviatan
Tel Aviv University
Robyn K. Mallett
University of Virginia
Antony S. R. Manstead
University of Cambridge
Craig McGarty
Australian National University
Frances McLernon
University of Ulster
Arie Nadler
Tel Aviv University
Ulrike Niens
University of Ulster
Masi Noor
University of Ulster
Anne Pedersen
Murdoch University
Lars Rensmann
Free University of Berlin
Sonia Roccas
Open University of Israel
Toni Schmader
University of Arizona
Michael T. Schmitt
Purdue University
Ben Slugoski
James Cook University

Contributors xiii
Russell Spears
Cardiff University
Janet K. Swim
Pennsylvania State University
Alberto Voci
University of Padua
Michael J. A. Wohl
Carleton University
Sven Zebel
University of Amsterdam

Collective Guilt

section 1
DEFINING THE NATURE OF COLLECTIVE GUILT

1
International Perspectives on the Experience
of Collective Guilt
Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
National and other important social groups have histories. Reminders of
group history can have important consequences for present-day emotional
experience. When people consider some aspects of their group’s history,
they may feel collective pride and celebrate their group membership, while
other aspects of their group’s history may evoke collective guilt and a desire
to correct the wrongs committed by the ingroup. Such emotional responses
need not stem from personal participation in the events but can result when
the self is categorized in terms of a shared group membership. Indeed, peo-
ple’s reactions tointergroup eventsare not usually based on having had a
direct role in those events; rather such reactions will be dependent on the
social identity that is contextually salient when people are reminded of
their ingroup’s past actions. Investigation of such group-based emotional
experience is a relatively recent development within social psychology, but
one that reflects a rapidly expanding interest in the interface between emo-
tions and intergroup relations (see Cairns & Roe,2003; Tiedens & Leach,
2004; Mackie & Smith,2002; Pennebaker, Paez, & Rime,1997).
In this volume, we focus on people’s experience of one particular group-
based emotional response – collective guilt. Collective guilt stems from
the distress that group members experience when they accept that their
ingroup is responsible for immoral actions that harmed another group
(Branscombe, Doosje, & McGarty,2002). It is a self-conscious emotion
(Tangney & Fischer,1995) that can occur when the individual’s collec-
tive identity or association with a group whose actions are perceived as
immoral is salient. We are certainly not suggesting that those who feel
collective guilt necessarily bear any legal responsibility for their group’s
actions. Because collective guilt is a psychological experience, it need not
involveactually being guiltyin any sense of the word. This is an important
3

4 Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
distinction. Indeed, one of the most striking features of collective guilt is
that it can be experienced by group members who were not in any way
involved in the harm doing (Doosje et al.,1998). The essential ingredient
of personal responsibility for the harm done can be absent when collective
guilt is experienced, although this is an important prerequisite for “being
guilty” in the legal sense (Barkan, this volume, 16;
Stillwell, & Heatherton,1994).
Feeling guilt for events that an individual is not personally responsible
for is possible because people can and do categorize themselves as mem-
bers of a group. Most of the chapters in this volume were explicitly guided
by a social identity and self-categorization theoretical perspective (Tajfel &
Turner,1986; Turner et al.,1987). These theories explain how group mem-
bership shapes the cognitions, emotions, and behavior of individuals. From
a social identity perspective, the actions taken by the ingroup can elicit an
emotional response to the extent that the self is linked with the ingroup.
Immoral actions and outcomes caused by other ingroup members link the
self to the wrongdoing via shared group identity. People “bask in the re-
flected glory” of their group when other ingroup members are responsible
for successes, and they can attempt to “cut off reflected failure” when other
group members’ actions harm the ingroup’s image (Cialdini et al.,1976;
Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford,1986; Wann & Branscombe, 1990). Because part
of people’s identity is based on their group membership, the desire to feel
positive about their group will frequently result in group-serving explana-
tions for ingroup actions. However, when those justifications fail or become
impossible to sustain, people may feel collective guilt to the extent that the
ingroup’s past actions are perceived as violating the current moral stan-
dards of the ingroup. When people are confronted with their ingroup’s
immoral treatment of another group, it may not be feasible for them to
distance from their group by either avoiding that self-categorization or
denying collective responsibility. People can, though, attempt to minimize
the severity of the harm done or the degree to which the ingroup’s ac-
tions are perceived as unjust; however, if both of these strategies fail, the
door is open for the experience of collective guilt (Branscombe & Miron,
2004).
types of events that can evoke collective guilt
Given that collective guilt is based on perceiving the ingroup as responsible
for group-based harm doing, there is no shortage of events – within the
past century alone – that could potentially evoke such feelings. Although all
members of social groups that have committed substantial harm to another
group do not experience collective guilt, it does appear to be a relatively
widespread phenomenon at this historical juncture (Barkan,2000; Brooks,
1999). Given that people want to see their group as moral, some forms of

International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective Guilt5
intergroup harm, especially genocide, may be particularly likely to evoke
collective guilt.
Consider the experience of Germany, whose Holocaust history is the pro-
totype of severe group-based harm doing. Germans who were born after
World War II can experience feelings of guilt because of their nation’s role
in perpetrating genocide against the Jews (Goldhagen,1996; Rensmann,
this volume, 10). Yet, for other horrific instances of genocide, the
events remain unacknowledged by contemporary members of the perpe-
trator group (see Churchill,1997; Staub,1989). More recent instances of in-
tergroup violence (e.g., Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Sierra
Leone, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East) all have the capacity to, but
do not necessarily, evoke collective guilt among their citizens. Likewise,
the potential exists for collective guilt to be experienced by contemporary
members of various European nations who have a history of colonialism,
such as Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and
Spain. The issue of whether collective guilt is an appropriate or inappro-
priate response is currently a contested issue in many of these nations,
with considerable ongoing debate on the part of the general public and
at the highest levels of government. The immoral nature of the treatment
received by the Native populations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand,
the United States, and much of Latin America has likewise undergone re-
assessment during the past decade. The harm endured by Africans as a
result of slavery continues to have emotional and political ramifications in
the United States and elsewhere.
Opinion concerning the value of reassessing the ingroup’s past actions
toward another group is highly divided, however, both between and within
national groups. In some nations, methods of reconciling with the past have
been actively pursued and form a focal issue for the governments of those
nations. In Australia, the issue of whether the Prime Minister, as the offi-
cial representative of the federal government, should or should not issue
a formal apology has been center stage, and a national “Sorry Day” has
been instituted as a means of addressing the past treatment of Indigenous
Australians (see Augoustinos & LeCouteur, this volume, 13;
McGarty & Bliuc, this volume, 7). The Canadian federal parlia-
ment has likewise publicly addressed the historical treatment of its Native
peoples. The new territory ofNunavutwas created in1999, which entailed
the return of more than a million square miles of Arctic lands to be self-
governed by its Native peoples. Widespread feelings of collective guilt
stemming from the perceived injustice of these nations’ historical treat-
ment of their Native peoples appear to have played an important role in
creating such social change. Yet, within the United States, the treatment
received by its Native peoples remains a relatively nonsalient issue. Al-
though the U.S. Congress in the Civil Liberties Act of1988apologized
and made financial reparations to Japanese-Americans who survived their

6 Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
placement in internment camps during World War II, at the present time
there is relatively little public debate in the United States concerning the
viability of making such reparations to African-Americans for the slavery
experience. Indeed, among White Americans, there is very little support
for doing so (Barkan,2000; Mallett & Swim, this volume, 4).
Collective guilt can be experienced for different types of harmful events.
It is not limited to harm doing that ceased in the distant past. People can
potentially feel collective guilt for ongoing group-based inequality that
they had no personal role in creating, but that they do continue to ben-
efit from. As Schmitt, Branscombe, and Brehm (this volume, 5)
discuss, men can experience collective guilt for the privileges they experi-
ence because of ongoing gender inequality. Collective guilt can stem from
a particular ingroup member’s harmful actions toward members of an-
other group (Lickel, Schmader, & Barquissau, this volume, 3), a
series of specific incidents that the ingroup is responsible for (Augousti-
nos & LeCouteur, this volume, 13; Hewstone et al., this volume,
Chapter11; McGarty & Bliuc, this volume, 7;
this volume, 12; 8),
or it can be based on reminders of an entire historical period and whole
systems of inequality (see Branscombe, Slugoski, & Kappen, this volume,
Chapter2; 6;
this volume, 14; Mallett & Swim, this volume, 4; Zebel,
Doosje, & Spears, this volume, 9).
In this volume, the contributors examine the strategies that people can
use to avoid feeling collective guilt, the conditions under which people
do experience collective guilt, and how such guilt is translated into ac-
tions aimed at reducing an existing intergroup conflict or improving the
situation of the victimized group. We collectively consider the central is-
sue of how groups respond when confronted with their harm doing and
the implications for how groups forge a new way forward in a variety of
international contexts.
The research described in this volume is truly international in content.
The contributors present research that speaks to how major forms of on-
going intergroup conflict and past injustice can be addressed. Specifically,
the research described in this volume examines collective guilt processes
in Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland,
and the United States. Such national context diversity permits an exami-
nation of the role of social and political contextual factors for the collective
guilt experience and its consequences for intergroup relations.
implications of the collective guilt experience
for intergroup relations
Barkan (2000) describes an important international trend in many national
contexts – that of acknowledging that one’s group has wronged another

International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective Guilt7
group. This recognition of past harm doing is often accompanied by a
willingness to make reparations in terms of either an apology or financial
restitution. Although Germany is again prototypical in this regard, having
paid massive reparations for the Holocaust to its victims and the state of
Israel, it is not alone in seeking methods of reconciling with the past. In
South Africa, for a number of practical reasons, the Truth and Reconcilia-
tion Commission chose an alternative method of dealing with its past. As
Tutu (1999) discusses, in order to find a new way forward, the past had to
be confronted, but punishment of the perpetrators who acted on behalf of
an unjust social system –retributive justice– had to be foregone. This does
not mean that the conflict-ridden past could be buried or ignored. The
road to a new future could not be found without an examination of what
exactly did happen: “unless we look the beast in the eye we find it has an
uncanny habit of returning to hold us hostage” (Tutu,1999,p.28). Accord-
ingly, therestorative justiceroute was followed in South Africa. In exchange
for the full truth from perpetrators, amnesty from prosecution was offered
and victims were given an opportunity to tell their stories in a supportive
atmosphere. This symbolic strategy to victim reparations, via public ac-
knowledgment of their suffering, was also used in Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile following their “dirty wars.” Neither the seeking nor the granting
of forgiveness for the past is an easy psychological matter. Nonetheless,
for national groups who have sought such cleansing through an examina-
tion of past injustices, a new way forward appears to have been attained
(Brooks,1999; Minow, 1998; Tutu,1999).
The feeling of distress from which collective guilt stems is often asso-
ciated with pro-social behavioral intentions, for example, a motivation to
improve the situation of the harmed outgroup as a means of making up
for past wrongs. A variety of theorists have suggested that personal guilt
is a functional emotion – it helps people learn what not to do again or what
does not result in the attainment of desired goals (Eisenberg,2000; Fergu-
son & Stegge,1998; Tangney,1995). At the collective level, historians such
as Barkan (2000) have argued that an examination of past national wrongs
may be key for avoiding repetition of the same forms of intergroup conflict.
As the chapters in the third section of this volume indicate, collective guilt
has an important role to play in the creation of improved social conditions
following a violent past. For this reason alone, collective guilt is an impor-
tant social psychological issue – it is not simply about the past, but it has
serious implications for present and future intergroup relations.
Although guilt can be an aversive emotion (Iyer et al., this volume,
Chapter14), there may well be important social benefits to be derived
from people widely sharing feelings of guilt. There are instances where an
apology has been offered and forgiveness sought by the group’s leader on
behalf of the group as a whole. For example, Pope John Paul II apologized
to Jews for the Catholic Church’s historical treatment of them, and former
United States President Bill Clinton apologized in Africa for the role that

8 Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
White Americans played in slavery. As Parkinson (1995) notes, apologies
are most likely to be offered when people are attempting to communicate
a heartfelt desire to repent for their wrongdoing. It may be that doing so
helps to alleviate collective guilt among some group members, but it may
also increase feelings of guilt among others (see Doosje et al., this volume,
Chapter6). Thus, under the right social psychological conditions, collec-
tive guilt may be a motivating force for changing the state of intergroup
relations, but it will not inevitably do so.
chapter content and structure of the volume
This volume is divided into four sections. The chapters in the first three
sections present new empirical data addressing a central aspect of the col-
lective guilt experience and, in the final section, the significance of the
research as a whole is considered from different theoretical perspectives.
Each empirical chapter begins by outlining the historical and political cir-
cumstances operating in the context where the research took place. The
chapters in the first section of the volume consider the prerequisite psycho-
logical conditions that are necessary for collective guilt. Various proposals
for the essential or critical underlying bases of the collective guilt experi-
ence are given particular attention. There are healthy conflicts across these
chapters concerning the fundamental nature of collective guilt. In the sub-
sequent sections of the volume, there are debates concerning how potential
moderators of the collective guilt experience should be both conceptual-
ized and measured, and the consequences of collective guilt for existing
intergroup relations, particularly the political processes that may be set in
motion when collective guilt is widely experienced.
The chapters in 1,
marily address the question “What is the crucial element driving the expe-
rience of collective guilt?” The chapters in this section generally agree that
collective guilt is about morality and justice. In 2,
et al., a measure that has been widely used in collective guilt research is
presented. Different subscales of this measure assess the extent to which
collective guilt is accepted on behalf of the ingroup and the extent to which
collective guilt is prescriptively expected or assigned to members of other
social groups for their harmful actions against the ingroup. Validation stud-
ies reveal what collective guilt acceptance and assignment are, as well as
what they are not. Collective guilt acceptance is seen as depending on
self-categorization as a group member and the perceived illegitimacy of
the ingroup’s treatment of another group. Collective guilt assignment is
seen as stemming from categorizing others as members of a group that has
harmed the ingroup in the past. Data from dominant and subordinate so-
cial groups in both Canada and the United States illustrate that acceptance
and assignment of collective guilt reflects the historical status position of
the ingroup.

International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective Guilt9
InChapter3,Lickel et al. suggest that collective guilt can be expe-
rienced when a person witnesses another ingroup member committing
harmful acts against members of an outgroup. Such guilt is most likely
to occur when the perceiver shares some form of interdependence with
the harm doer and might, therefore, have been able to prevent the harm
doing. In contrast, collective shame is thought to occur when the harmful
outcome implies something stable and unchangeable about the ingroup.
For these investigators, guilt depends on the perceiver having some de-
gree of personal responsibility for the outcome, whereas shame depends
on there being implications for the nature of the ingroup as a whole. How
actions stemming from guilt or shame might be strategically used to affect
how others view the ingroup are considered.
Mallett and Swim, inChapter4,
tress is a crucial determinant of collective guilt. They examine factors that
influence the extent to which inequity is perceived, how such inequity
perceptions might be altered in an ingroup-serving manner, and the con-
sequences of psychological changes in perceived inequity for collective
guilt. They examine factors that influence the extent to which inequity is
perceived and how such perceptions might be altered to alleviate feelings of
collective guilt. White Americans’ feelings of collective guilt are seen as an
important precursor of political attitudes and support for social policies
aimed at improving the position of African-Americans (e.g., affirmative
action).
In 5,
for their group-based privileges. In all societies gender is a socially mean-
ingful categorization that covaries with material and social outcomes. By
examining emotional responses to gender inequality, the applicability of
the collective guilt experience is expanded beyond the types of intergroup
relationships considered by the other contributors. These authors attempt
to predict how intensely collective guilt will be experienced, depending
on the perceived difficulty of making reparations and creating a more just
intergroup relationship. Because emotions are seen as reflecting motiva-
tions, the intensity of the experienced emotion is a function of factors that
affect the difficulty of achieving the goal of the emotion. Since the goal of
guilt is generally thought to be reparative, the guilt that men experience
should depend on whether the harm can be atoned for and perceptions of
whether the goal is worth the costs of doing so. The implications of differ-
ent ideological beliefs for social change that might occur as a function of
collective guilt are considered.
In 2, an important moderator of collective guilt – national group
identification – is investigated in different international contexts. All of the
chapters in this section consider events that participants’ national groups
committed against another group in the relatively distant past. The au-
thors of each chapter delineate their conception of national group identifi-
cation and how it may interact with aspects of the social context to predict

10 Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
collective guilt. Doosje et al., in 6,
identification as a long-term emotional attachment that encourages defense
of the ingroup whenever that is possible. They investigate collective guilt
among the Dutch for their colonial ancestors’ treatment of Indonesians and
find it depends on the source of the historical information. When the in-
group is the source of the information, it makes the negative information
about the group’s historical actions more difficult to dismiss. As a result,
those who are more highly identified with their national group report more
guilt in this condition than those who are lower in identification. This re-
lationship was not present when an outgroup was seen as the source of
the negative information; in that case, high identifiers could more easily
question the credibility of the source and thereby experience less collec-
tive guilt. Degree of national group identification was also differentially
related to feelings of collective guilt depending on what kind of reparative
action Dutch participants believed their ingroup had undertaken to repair
the harm they had committed in the past.
In 7,
tive guilt could reflect the operation of intragroup processes rather than
identification at the level of the nation. Specifically, they argue that more
specific subgroups within Australia are critical for predicting the degree
to which collective guilt is experienced. They suggest that national iden-
tification can have different meanings that are not necessarily relevant for
responses toward a minority group within a nation. National identifica-
tion in Australia, they suggest, may not be strongly related to responses
toward a subset of the national group. For this reason, it may be necessary
to assess identification with the subgroup categories that are most rele-
vant for feelings of collective guilt concerning the treatment of Indigenous
people. Such intragroup distinctions might be especially powerful when
there is little consensus within the nation as a whole, and there are visible
political groups that subscribe to vastly different views on how a particular
disadvantaged group should be treated.
In 8,
meanings that national identification can have, particularly in a nation
in the midst of a violent intergroup conflict. They suggest that different
aspects of group identification can either promote or inhibit collective guilt
among Jewish-Israelis. They show that affective identification with the
ingroup can elevate moral concerns about the ingroup’s actions toward the
Palestinians, whereas a more defensive form of identification, glorification,
can have opposite predictive consequences for collective guilt. Specifically,
glorification of the ingroup can encourage justification of Israeli treatment
of the Palestinians, and this can result in less collective guilt. They suggest
that general values can have different implications for the treatment of
outgroup members, and as a result more or less collective guilt may be
experienced. Those who value universalism and are concerned with the

International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective Guilt11
treatment of others are more likely to experience collective guilt, but those
who subscribe to conservatism values and are concerned with conforming
to the interests of the ingroup are less likely to feel collective guilt.
Chapter9,
its implications for the perspective taken on harmful ingroup historical ac-
tions. Taking the ingroup’s perspective by high identifiers resulted in less
collective guilt, but taking the outgroup’s perspective resulted in more
guilt among low identifiers. They suggest that perspective-taking is im-
portant for predicting collective guilt for past harm doing because it influ-
ences whether the victimized group is empathized with or not. By leading
members of perpetrator groups to take the perspective of the disadvan-
taged group, empathy may be induced, especially among lower identi-
fiers, which could induce collective guilt and increase support for making
reparations.
Chapter10by Rensmann suggests that national identification in Ger-
many can encourage various defensive responses that allow people to
avoid or reduce the experience of collective guilt. The emotional pro-
cesses operating among Germans over time are particularly emphasized.
Specifically, data are presented showing that among generations of Ger-
mans born after the Holocaust, identification with the nation is less likely
than among those who were adults during that period. Consistent with
the decline in national identification, feelings of collective guilt appear to
have increased among subsequent generations of Germans. Implications
of this increase in collective guilt for post-unification political processes are
explored.
In 3,
have for forgiveness of the past and future intergroup relations are consid-
ered in depth. Each chapter examines the crucial role of social categoriza-
tion processes for understanding the degree to which guilt is experienced
and people’s willingness to address their group’s past harmful actions.
In 11,
their ingroup’s treatment of the other religious group in Northern Ireland
and who is willing to have contact with the outgroup in the present are
seen as important for intergroup reconciliation. Identification with one’s
religious ingroup is a particularly powerful predictor of willingness to for-
give the other group and accept collective guilt for the ingroup’s harmful
actions. Indeed, forgiving the outgroup is most likely when collective guilt
is accepted for the ingroup’s similarly harmful actions.
In 12, Nadler and Liviatan discuss similar intergroup recon-
ciliation processes among Israelis and Palestinians while emphasizing the
role of trust and empathy in the process. They show that among power-
ful groups in a conflict, in this case Jewish-Israelis, having a Palestinian
acknowledge and empathize with the losses incurred by the ingroup is
critical for reducing negative attitudes toward the outgroup. In contrast,

12 Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje
among members of a low power group, Palestinians, hearing the outgroup
accept responsibility for the harm done to the ingroup is vital for improving
intergroup attitudes. Building trust and the granting of forgiveness among
parties currently embroiled in a violent conflict appears to rest on the
formation of a shared superordinate social identity (see also Wohl &
Branscombe, this volume, 15).
In 13, Augoustinos and LeCouteur consider how different
meanings of apology are constructed and the impact that public officials
can have on the forms of the arguments in wide circulation among mem-
bers of the general public. They illustrate use of common legitimizing ar-
guments that allow people to deny responsibility for the past and how
doing so leads to negative opinions about the value and necessity of apol-
ogizing to the Indigenous population in Australia. Indeed, in the speech of
Prime Minister Howard to the Reconciliation Convention that the authors
analyze, the concept of collective guilt itself is repudiated by Howard’s
suggestion that it is both maladaptive and inconsistent with the majority
of Australians’ view of their history. Different constructions of the role that
an apology can play in reconciling with the past are illustrated. Among
those against a formal apology, apologizing is portrayed as an impedi-
ment to reconciliation, whereas apologizing is presented as a precursor to
reconciliation among those in favor of doing so.
In 14, Iyer et al. consider an important prerequisite for collective
guilt, perceiving the ingroup as systematically advantaged. To the extent
that White Americans do perceive their group as advantaged, they will
be more likely to oppose racial inequality and be more willing to make
restitution to African-Americans for the enslavement that was endured.
The research indicates that depending on which group is focused on, it
can result in rather different emotional experiences and behavioral ten-
dencies. Focusing on the ingroup’s role in producing the inequality can
induce collective guilt, whereas a focus on the harm experienced by the
disadvantaged group results in sympathy. The authors suggest that the
impact of collective guilt depends on the form of the social policy being
considered – that collective guilt encourages making up for the harmful
past but that it may not be the primary emotional basis for supporting full
equality among racial groups. Both sympathy and moral outrage are seen
as better emotions for bringing about widespread social change.
In the last empirical chapter, 15,
ine the psychological factors that determine the extent to which historically
victimized group members assign or prescriptively desire contemporary
members of a perpetrator group to feel collective guilt. How perceivers cat-
egorize the groups is critical. When Jewish–North Americans think of the
victim and perpetrator groups as part of a single superordinate category –
humans – less collective guilt is assigned to Germans and there is a greater

International Perspectives on the Experience of Collective Guilt13
willingness to forgive them for their past treatment of Jews compared to
when the groups are categorized as distinct groups. The more inclusive
the categorization, the more pervasive the moral violation appears to be,
which means less responsibility can be uniquely assigned to that particular
harm doer. How the groups are categorized similarly influences collective
guilt assignment to a group with whom the ingroup is currently in conflict.
Ingroup victimization history reminders (e.g., the Holocaust) can lead to
group-level categorization (Palestinians versus Jews), and this in turn can
reduce Jewish perceivers’ willingness to forgive the Palestinians for their
harmful actions toward the ingroup.
In the final commentary section, Barkan considers the psychological
processes described in the various chapters from a philosophical and le-
gal vantage point. He notes that there is an important dilemma in West-
ern societies where “human rights” are frequently constructed as indi-
vidual rights, while they might be better conceived of as group-based
rights. He brings the social identity basis of both rights and responsibil-
ity to the fore, and distinguishes them from rhetoric that suggests both
are derived from the individual’s personal identity. The applied implica-
tions of using collective guilt, rather than shame, as a method of encour-
aging nations to address their past and present human rights violations is
considered in light of the experimental results presented in the empirical
chapters.
In the final chapter, Branscombe provides a social psychological pro-
cess model as a means of organizing the various antecedents of collective
guilt. The sequence in which these antecedents are most likely to operate
when negative aspects of the ingroup’s history are salient is considered.
Distal and proximal antecedents of collective guilt are distinguished, with
the proximal antecedents of responsibility, legitimacy, and costs of achiev-
ing justice mediating the effects of more distal social identity variables on
collective guilt. The extent to which the processes identified are likely to
operate in different intergroup contexts is assessed. Important questions
that future social psychological research will need to address are raised.
Avenues of future research that might prove to be most profitable concern-
ing the consequences of collective guilt for ongoing intergroup relations
are outlined.
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2
The Measurement of Collective Guilt
What It Is and What It Is Not
Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and
Diane M. Kappen
Emotions can be ephemeral. How events are appraised and the subjec-
tive experience they generate can rapidly shift with changes in the social
context. In order to capture people’s emotional responses to events, psy-
chologists have employed a variety of methods including the assessment
of facial expressions (Ekman,1984), physiological reactivity (Pennebaker,
1982) and, most commonly, self-report methods (Shaver et al.,1987). Par-
ticularly for the self-conscious emotions of pride, shame, and guilt, for
which differential physiological symptoms are not expected, researchers
have primarily relied on various participant self-assessments (Tangney &
Fischer,1995). Individual differences in the tendency to experience these
emotions are generally assessed via self-ratings of the frequency, duration,
or intensity with which they are felt. Indices that capture agreement or dis-
agreement with Likert-type statements concerning how much the emotion
is experienced with respect to a particular referent are also often employed.
In this chapter, we report on the construction and validation of a self-report
scale to assess various aspects of the collective guilt experience.
theoretical bases of guilt
There is considerable agreement concerning the antecedent conditions that
are necessary for personal guilt to be experienced. Weiner (1995) argues that
guilt is most likely to be experienced when the self is seen as responsible for
a negative outcome. From an attribution perspective, guilt occurs when an
internal attribution is made for a controllable negative outcome that results
in harm to another. Discrepancy approaches to emotion also suggest that
guilt stems from perceiving the self as responsible for an event that violates
16

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 17
internalized moral standards or expectations (Baumeister, Stillwell, &
Heatherton,1994; Bizman, Yinon, & Krotman,2001; Devine & Monteith,
1993; Fazio & Hilden,2001; Higgins,1987; Kugler & Jones,1992). Both the
attribution and discrepancy perspectives agree that because guilt reflects
an acceptance of responsibility for a moral violation that results in harm
to another, it should create a willingness to take corrective action to make
up for the self’s wrongdoing (Ferguson & Stegge,1998; Frijda, Kuipers, &
Ter Schure,1989). Those who feel the most guilt do attempt to communi-
cate their repentance and desire to be forgiven for their harmful actions
(Parkinson,1995).
The guilt experience and its associated action tendencies may not be
limited, however, to conditions where the personal self is the agent re-
sponsible for the harm to others. Durkheim (1915) argued that emotions
can reflect the individual’s link to larger social entities. Consequently, guilt
may be experienced when the moral violations of a social group that one
is associated with are made salient. When a unit relation exists that links
the self and the ingroup, guilt by association can be experienced when the
ingroup is perceived as responsible for an unjustified violation of accepted
moral standards (see Heider,1958; Hoffman,1991).
Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner,1986) suggests that because the
self can be construed at either the personal or collective identity level,
self-conscious emotional responses might stem from either personal or
group-based responsibility perceptions. Indeed, collective guilt can be ex-
perienced even when the personal self played no role in causing the harm
to others, but one’s ingroup is perceived to be responsible for the harm do-
ing (Doosje et al.,1998). When the individual self-categorizes as a member
of a group and the harm done to the other group is contextually salient,
collective guilt will be most likely to the extent that the ingroup’s actions
are appraised as illegitimate (see Branscombe & Miron,2004). In contrast,
if the self is not categorized in terms of the group responsible for the harm
doing, or the ingroup’s harmful actions are perceived as justified, then little
collective guilt is likely to be experienced.
In this chapter, we present studies that were conducted in1995as a
means of validating a newly created measure of collective guilt. Indeed,
the collective guilt acceptance items have been employed as a reliable de-
pendent measure in a variety of subsequent experimental studies demon-
strating that collective guilt acceptance mediates the effects of saliency
of past and present inequality on attitudes toward the harmed group and
willingness to make reparations to that group (e.g., Doosje et al.,1998; Pow-
ell, Branscombe, & Schmitt,2003). Collective guilt acceptance depends on
accepting responsibility for the harm done and perceiving the inequal-
ity between the groups as unjustified (Branscombe & Miron,2004). The
experience of collective guilt has been confirmed as depending on the

18 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
theoretically expected factors of self-categorization at the group level, per-
ceived illegitimacy of the intergroup relations among some members of
the perpetrator group, and acceptance of the ingroup’s responsibility for
the harm doing (Branscombe, Doosje, & McGarty,2002).
According to self-categorization theory (Turner et al.,1987), when the
self or others are categorized at the group level, emotional experiences and
expectations for others’ emotional responses should also occur at the col-
lective level. In addition to the acceptance of collective guilt based on a
shared category membership with those who committed the harm doing,
people can also assign collective guilt to another group based on the past
actions of members of that social category. Even though present-day mem-
bers of a group may not have played any personal role in the historical harm
doing, based on their categorical association with a historical perpetrator
group, they may be prescriptively expected by others to feel remorse and
assigned collective guilt for their group’s past immoral actions (see Wohl &
Branscombe, this volume, 15).
In addition to developing the collective guilt acceptance measure, the
present studies were also undertaken in order to validate a measure of
willingness to assign collective guilt to another group for its past harm to
the ingroup. We suggest that the primary conceptual distinction between
the acceptance and assignment of collective guilt based on group member-
ship is focal. When the ingroup’s harmful actions toward another group
are the focus, acceptance should be more likely, and when the outgroup’s
harmful actions toward the ingroup are the focus, assignment should be
more likely. We expected that the tendency to accept or assign collective
guilt would depend greatly on the historical status of the groups – whether
the group focused on was the perpetrator or victim of the moral violation.
Members of victim groups should be more inclined to assign collective
guilt to the perpetrator group, whereas members of perpetrator groups
should be more willing to accept collective guilt when the injustice of the
historical relationship is salient.
Whether the ingroup or the outgroup is focused on as the cause of the
negative intergroup past has been found to be a critical variable for collec-
tive guilt acceptance (see Iyer, Leach, & Pedersen, this volume, 14;
Powell, Branscombe, & Schmitt,2003). Acceptance of collective guilt is
greatest when the focus is on the ingroup’s role in perpetrating the harm
done compared to when the focus is on the suffering experienced by the
outgroup. With assignment of collective guilt, the focus is shifted to the
outgroup, and the emphasis is on how members of that group should feel
about their group’s harmful actions toward the ingroup. When the ingroup
is perceived as having been wronged by the other group, the expectation is
thattheyshould feel guilty about what they have done to us. Collective guilt
acceptance involves a belief that one’s ingroup has done wrong to another

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 19
group with the guilt reflecting whatwehave done. Collective guilt ac-
ceptance and assignment both differ from moral outrage because the in-
group’s involvement, either as perpetrator or victim respectively, need not
be present for moral outrage. Uninvolved third parties can feel moral out-
rage concerning injustice, even though the ingroup was neither the victim
nor the harm doer. Moral outrage also differs from collective guilt accep-
tance in terms of its explicit focus on the plight of the disadvantaged,
whereas collective guilt involves a focus on the ingroup’s role in creating
or maintaining the inequality (see Leach, Snider, & Iyer,2002).
Although there are important ongoing political debates concerning the
desirability of people accepting or assigning collective guilt for the ac-
tions of others with whom a category membership is shared (Barkan,2000;
Brooks,1999; Goldhagen,1996; Ignatieff,1997; Minow, 1998), we were in-
terested in assessing the extent to which peopledo actuallyaccept and
assign collective guilt for the actions of a group, and the contextual factors
that can affect both of these processes. Our data reflect collective guilt re-
sponses among Americans and Canadians who are members of either the
dominant or minority racial or linguistic groups in each of those national
contexts. Specifically, we present research comparing White and racial mi-
nority Americans, as well as English and French speaking Canadians. We
examine both willingness to accept collective guilt for the ingroup’s past
treatment of the other group, as well as the extent to which collective guilt
is assigned to the other group for their past treatment of the ingroup.
Because collective guilt is an aversive emotion, people are likely to be
motivated to avoid it if possible, and appraise the situation in ways that
protect their own group’s identity (Baumeister & Hastings,1997). A variety
of strategies have been suggested as means by which people avoid collec-
tive guilt when they are confronted with the harm done by their ingroup
(see Branscombe & Miron,2004). Many of the specific options that have
been theorized concern justification of the harm done. To the extent that
the ingroup’s actions are perceived as justified, then little collective guilt
should result, no matter how extreme the harm done. For example, during
World War II, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the civilian
population of Japan that killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki alone. Americans, we suspect, have so heavily justified these ac-
tions in terms of their necessity for successfully bringing the war to a close
that reminders of the harm done to the Japanese by the ingroup would
be unlikely to induce any collective guilt. Such justification processes ap-
pear to be a way of preventing the distress that would otherwise occur if
the ingroup’s harmful actions were perceived as unjustified and, therefore,
immoral. As a result, justification processes, particularly those that invoke
noble ingroup purposes, are an effective deterrent to collective guilt even
when the harmful outcome is salient and severe.

20 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
In addition to justifying the harmful actions, we believe that there is
another way by which people can avoid the experience of collective guilt.
Indeed, we thought it could be such an important mechanism for avoiding
collective guilt that we developed a separate subscale of theCollective Guilt
Scaleto assess it. The “Whole Group Accountability” subscale assesses
the extent to which a group should be accountable for the actions of its
members. The wording we used in these items allows for an assessment
of whether any group should be held responsible for its member’s actions
and can be therefore applied in a variety of group contexts. To the extent
that people deny any form of collective responsibility and claim that only
the personal self can be assigned responsibility, then the experience of
collective guilt is likely to be minimal. When the social world is seen as
being composed of only individuals and the unit of responsibility is the
individual, as is especially likely to be the case in individualistic societies,
then even when harmful group actions are made salient, relatively little
collective guilt may be experienced on behalf of a salient ingroup.
the collective guilt scale
We began this research by first administering the collective guilt scale to
334White Americans.Table1displays three of the subscales that emerged
for the collective guilt scale, based on a principal components analysis
using varimax rotation. The five items comprising the collective guilt ac-
ceptance measure all loaded on a single factor, and formed an internally
consistent subscale (α =.79). Likewise, all five of the items intended to as-
sess collective guilt assignment loaded highly on a single factor (α =.77).
A third five-item subscale assessing willingness to hold a group as a whole
accountable for its members’ actions formed a separate factor (α =.81).
This subscale conceptually captures the notion of group responsibility and
could be considered the converse of individualism because the importance
of group membership is de-emphasized. In order to assess the reliability
of responses across time, we re-contacted a random subset of the original
participants (N =53) two months later and had them complete each of the
collective guilt subscales once again. The same factor structure emerged
and the test-retest reliability coefficients for each of the subscales were all
substantial.
Both the acceptance of collective guilt subscale (r =.44,p<.01) and
the assignment of collective guilt subscale (r =.45,p<.01) were signif-
icantly correlated with the whole group accountability subscale. To the
extent that the idea of collective responsibility is accepted, then both assign-
ment to another group or acceptance of guilt on the part of ingroup mem-
bers are psychologically feasible. The acceptance and assignment subscales
were also reliably correlated with each other (r =.30,p<.05). These sub-
scale correlations, despite the focal difference in the group referent for the

table 1.Factor Loadings, Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, and Alpha Coefficients for the Acceptance of Collective Guilt,
Assignment of Collective Guilt, and Willingness to Hold the Whole Group Accountable for its Actions Subscales
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3
Collective Guilt Acceptance (M=4.39,SD=1.49,α=.79)
I feel regret for my group’s harmful past actions toward other groups. – . 70–
I feel guilty about the negative things my ancestors did to other groups.–.80–
I feel regret for some of the things my group did to other groups in the past.–.84–
I believe that I should repair the damage caused to others by my group.–.42–
I can easily feel guilty for the bad outcomes brought about by members of my group. –.62–
Collective Guilt Assignment(M=3.54,SD=1.41,α=.77)
Other groups have benefited at the expense of my group for generations..66––
It makes me upset that my group has been used to benefit other groups.74––
throughout history.
I feel entitled to concessions for past wrongs that other groups have done to my group. . 68––
Other groups that have benefited at the expense of my group owe us now..62––
It distresses me that my group suffers today because of the wrongs of former
generations of another group..68––
Whole Group Accountability(M=4.18,SD=1.63,α=.81)
If a group harms members of another group, then the whole group should feel guilty. ––.74
A group ought to be held responsible for the actions of its members.––.80
I can see holding people responsible for the harmful things their group has done. ––.67
Whole groups, like individuals, ought to be held accountable for their actions.––.73
I think that members of a group are accountable for what others in their group do. ––.62
Note:Only factor loadings above . 40are shown. Scale ranges from1to8, with higher numbers indicating greater agreement with those items.
N=334.
21

22 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
acceptance and assignment items (e.g., ingroup versus outgroup), imply
that there is a general underlying construct concerning willingness to “go
beyond the individual,” either by holding members of one’s own group, or
another group, responsible for the actions of other members of their group.
We suspect that, to some extent, collective responsibility can be strategi-
cally used to allow for ingroup avoidance of collective guilt or magnify the
deservingness of collective guilt assignment to an outgroup. Additional
research will be needed to assess the extent to which the notion of col-
lective responsibility is strategically agreed with when there are positive
identity consequences to be gained in a given context (e.g., pride in war
success), but denied when negative identity consequences are possible (as
they were in our studies). We see such ingroup identity protection moti-
vation as one important reason why the idea of collective responsibility
is frequently portrayed as inappropriate and is actively discouraged by
historical perpetrator group leaders (see Augoustinos & LeCouteur, this
volume, 13).
As considerable research has demonstrated, people’s self-conceptions
are not limited to the personal identity level; important group member-
ships are a significant component of the self (Smith & Henry,1996; Turner
et al.,1994). When people categorize either themselves or other people at
the group level, they appear to be ready to experience, and expect others to
experience, emotion on behalf of their group. Because in the instructions
for our scale, participants were told that we were interested in their feel-
ings about either their racial, linguistic, or gender group, depending on the
focal group membership of the study, we believe that categorization at the
group level occurred in each instance when participants were responding
to the scale items. Nonetheless, the ancestor wording of the items in these
initial studies might suggest some potential ambiguity in participants’ in-
terpretation of what social identity or referent was being assessed with
the collective guilt items. However, subsequent research that has contex-
tualized the items more specifically in terms of the particular identity that
was made salient in that context, (e.g., “I feel guilty about the negative
things inductive thinkers have done to deductive thinkers” (Doosje et al.,
1998); “I feel guilty about the negative things White Americans have done
to Black Americans” (Powell et al.,2003); and “I feel guilty about the neg-
ative things that men have done to women” (Schmitt et al., this volume,
Chapter5), has found similar relationships between collective guilt and
willingness to make reparations as we observed here when a general ances-
tor wording was employed (e.g., “I feel guilty about the negative things my
ancestors did to other groups”). In 5,
acceptance of collective guilt measure was significantly correlated with the
participants’ responses to a single “how guilty do you feel right now” item;
The two types of indicators showed the same pattern across experimental
conditions. Thus, we believe that use of a specific group referent within the

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 23
items themselves versus the more general ancestor wording is not critical
as long as a particular group membership is salient to all participants in a
given study.
Discriminant Validity: What Collective Guilt Is Not
Once participants completed the collective guilt measure, they were asked
to respond to a number of potentially relevant individual difference mea-
sures. The first set of measures was collected in order to ensure that the col-
lective guilt subscales were empirically distinguishable from other existing
personal constructs. Specifically, we wanted to ensure that the collective
guilt measure was not synonymous with existing measures of personal
identity-based guilt. Participants were, therefore, asked to complete the
three subscales of Kugler and Jones’ (1992) Personal Guilt Inventory. The
ten-itemState Guiltmeasure assesses current feelings of guilt based on
recent transgressions committed by the self (e.g., “Recently, I have done
something that I deeply regret”). The twenty-itemTrait Guiltmeasure taps
feelings of personal guilt that go beyond any particular transgression (e.g.,
“Guilt and remorse have been a part of my life for as long as I can recall”).
The third fifteen-item subscale,Moral Standards, concerns concurrence with
moral principles without reference to specific behaviors (e.g., “I believe in
a strict interpretation of right and wrong”).
As can be seen in 2,
based on their category membership was not significantly correlated with
either the state or trait personal guilt subscales; it was also not related to the
table 2.Correlations between Acceptance of Collective Guilt, Assignment of
Collective Guilt, Accountability of Whole Group Subscale Scores, and Individual
Difference Measures
Collective Guilt Subscales
Measures Acceptance Assignment Group Accountability
Personal Trait Guiltr=.26

r=.07 r=.23

Personal State Guiltr=.22

r=.08 r=.18

Moral Standards r=.06 r=−.03 r=.15
Social Desirability r=−.09 r=−.02 r=.04
Personal Self-Esteemr=−.13 r=−.08 r=−.01
Temporal Attributionsr=.19

r=−.04 r=−.02
Social Dominance r=−.21

r=.18

r=−.01
White Identification r=−.11 r=−.06 r=−.07
Equal Opportunity r=−.21

r=.09 r=.10
Political Orientationr=.22

r=.07 r=.03
Affirmative Action r=.31

r=.08 r=.16

Note: N=334;

p<.05

24 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
subscription to high moral standards. As expected, both the personal state
and trait guilt subscales were significantly correlated with the acceptance
of collective guilt. Both personal state and trait guilt were also reliably
correlated with the group accountability subscale, whereas adherence to
high moral standards was not. Thus, even though both the personal and
collective measures were concerned with feelings of guilt, we found that
the degree to which personal and collective guilt are reported are clearly
distinguishable.
Two additional personal constructs were measured to ensure that they
were not redundant with the collective guilt subscales. First, the thirty-
three-itemSocial Desirability Scale(Crowne & Marlowe,1964) was collected
in order to ensure that collective guilt was not simply a reflection of social
approval motivation (e.g., “I have never deliberately said something that
hurt someone’s feelings”). Second, the ten-itemPersonal Self-Esteemmea-
sure (Rosenberg,1979) was completed to ensure that collective guilt could
be discriminated from the level of personal self-esteem (e.g., “At times, I
think I am no good at all”). As can be seen in 2, none of the collective
guilt subscales were significantly correlated with either social desirability
or personal self-esteem. Therefore, reporting feelings of collective guilt is
not simply a function of the perceivers’ general concerns about projecting
a socially desirable self or their private feelings of self-worth.
Convergent Validity: What Collective Guilt Is
In order to accept or assign collective guilt based on the actions of others
during a prior historical period, people may need to be willing to consider
causality within a larger time frame. Therefore, participants’ willingness
to assign causality for social outcomes to factors across time was assessed
with the four-itemTemporal Attributional Complexitymeasure (Fletcher
et al.,1986) (e.g., “When I analyze a person’s behavior I often find the
causes form a chain that goes back in time, sometimes for years”). This
measure was significantly correlated with willingness to accept collective
guilt for the ingroup’s past actions, although it was not reliably associated
with the other two collective guilt subscales.
As expected, because collective guilt is a group-level emotional re-
sponse, the collective guilt subscales were primarily associated with the
group-relevant measures that we assessed. Based on the assumption that
when race is salient, those Whites with more negative racial attitudes
would accept less guilt for their group’s past and assign more to the other
racial group, we included the sixteen-itemSocial Dominance Orientation
measure (Pratto et al.,1994) (e.g., “Some groups of people are simply
inferior to other groups”). As predicted, those high in social dominance
(which is primarily a measure of racism in American samples; see Schmitt,
Branscombe, & Kappen,2003) were significantly lower in acceptance of

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 25
collective guilt for their ingroup’s harm to other racial groups and higher
in assignment of collective guilt to other racial groups. Clearly,what group
is to be held accountable for past and present inequality matters for those
White Americans who score relatively high in racism; it is not simply a re-
jection of the notion of collective responsibility per se. There was no signif-
icant relationship between the social dominance measure and the general
willingness to hold groups accountable for the actions of their members
subscale.
We also assessed the degree to which our White participants identified
with their racial group using a five-item scale (e.g., “I believe that White
people have a lot to be proud of”; “I am not embarrassed to admit that I
am White”; see Branscombe et al.,2003). Because those who identify more
strongly with their own racial group might be more inclined to justify their
ingroup’s position vis a vis the disadvantaged group, high identifiers could
be expected to report less collective guilt than those who are low in White
identification. Doosje et al. (1998) found that ingroup identification and
collective guilt were significantly negatively correlated only when there
was ambiguity in the group history information that was presented, which
presumably allowed for group-justifying processes to operate. Although
the relationship between collective guilt acceptance and White identifica-
tion was negative in our sample, it only approached significance, and the
correlations with the other two subscales did not differ from zero.
We measured participants’ beliefs about the extent to which there is
equal opportunity for all with Kluegel and Smith’s (1986) six-item instru-
ment (e.g., “In America, every person has an equal chance to rise up and
prosper”). Consistent with the relations obtained with the social domi-
nance measure, beliefs about equal opportunity were negatively correlated
with acceptance of collective guilt. To the extent that opportunity and re-
sulting outcomes are perceived as being not contingent on group member-
ship, then collective guilt for one’s ingroup’s higher status position can be
avoided; in that case, the status inequality can be seen as justified. Neither
the assignment subscale nor the whole group accountability subscale was
significantly correlated with equal opportunity beliefs.
Likewise, as self-identified general political orientation increased from
a conservative to a more liberal position, so too did acceptance of collective
guilt for the ingroup’s past harm to other groups. Political orientation was
not significantly correlated with assignment of collective guilt. The group
accountability subscale was also uncorrelated with political orientation,
which suggests that political conservatives’ reluctance to accept collective
guilt is not simply due to their belief that individuals alone are responsible
for their outcomes.
Participants’ attitudes toward affirmative action were assessed with
Kravitz and Platania’s (1993) six-item scale (e.g., “Affirmative action is
a good policy”). As expected, the strongest correlation that we observed

26 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
was between positive attitudes toward affirmative action and acceptance
of collective guilt (see also Swim & Miller,1999). Willingness to hold groups
accountable was also reliably associated with using group membership to
correct for the past, as affirmative action policies do. Assignment of collec-
tive guilt to other groups for their actions toward the ingroup was unrelated
to support for affirmative action policies among White Americans.
With this first study, we illustrated how personal identity level variables
were not strongly correlated with, if at all, the collective guilt subscales.
Even though the measures refer to the same emotion – guilt – high corre-
lations between personal trait or state guilt and collective guilt acceptance
were not obtained. The reliable relationships that were observed between
collective guilt acceptance and the other measures involved the group-
related constructs. Specifically, those who are low in racism were more
willing to accept collective guilt and they were less likely to assign collec-
tive guilt to other groups for wrongs against the ingroup. Further, those
who perceive causes as stretching back in time do not believe that there is
equal opportunity for all, are politically liberal, and in favor of affirmative
action to reduce the effects of past discrimination were reliably more likely
to accept collective guilt for their ingroup’s past.
Construct Validity: Group Differences
Because willingness to accept and assign collective guilt is likely to depend
on the actual historical position of one’s salient ingroup – as perpetrator
or victim – we conducted an additional study to examine collective guilt
in groups whose histories differ in this regard. Specifically, we measured
collective guilt acceptance and assignment in two national contexts; the
participants’ group was historically either high or low in status. In the
American sample (N =193), participants first indicated their racial group
membership and then completed the acceptance and assignment subscales.
As can be seen in 1, White Americans reported greater collective
guilt acceptance for their ancestors’ treatment of other groups than they
assigned to other groups for harm done to their ingroup. Minority Amer-
icans showed the reverse with greater assignment of collective guilt to
other groups for the harm done to their ingroup and less acceptance of col-
lective guilt for their ingroup’s past actions toward the dominant group.
White participants tended to report greater acceptance of collective guilt
compared to minority Americans, and Whites showed considerably less
assignment of collective guilt than did minorities.
In the Canadian sample (N =62), where linguistic group member-
ship is the most prominent historical group status distinction, participants
were first asked to indicate their linguistic group origins (e.g., English or
French speaking) and then to complete the collective guilt acceptance and
assignment subscales. By having English-Canadians and French-Acadians
from the Atlantic region of Canada first indicate their group membership,

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 27
figure 1.Mean acceptance and assignment of collective guilt among Canadians
and Americans who are members of the majority or minority linguistic and racial
groups in each national context.
this should act as a cue to the historically oppressive relations that exist
between those groups. As can be seen in 1, English-Canadians ac-
cepted more collective guilt than they assigned to other groups for their an-
cestors’ actions, whereas French-Canadians showed the reverse – greater
assignment to other groups than acceptance of collective guilt. English-
Canadians clearly were more willing to accept collective guilt for their
group’s past than were French-Canadians, and English speakers assigned
reliably less guilt to the other group compared to French speakers.
Thus, in two different national contexts, when group membership was
salient, dominant group members accepted more guilt for the past harm
done by their ingroup than they assigned to the harmed group. In contrast,
among minority group members, assignment of guilt to others for the past
harm done to the ingroup was greater than was acceptance of collective
guilt.
In order to ensure that such group history differences were not specific
to linguistic or racial group memberships, we employed gender as a high
versus low status categorization in a final known-groups validation study.
Canadian participants (N =80) were asked to indicate first their gender
group membership and then to complete the acceptance and assignment of
collective guilt subscales. By first making salient participants’ own gender
group membership, we expected that men and women would differen-
tially respond to the collective guilt measures. As expected, women (M =
4.48) were reliably more likely to assign collective guilt compared to men
(M=3.25) when gender was salient. Although in the expected direction,
with men (M =4.77) more likely to accept collective guilt than women
(M=4.35), their acceptance scores did not significantly differ. Women did
not differentially assign versus accept collective guilt, although men were

28 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
significantly more likely to accept collective guilt than assign guilt when
their gender was salient.
differentiating collective guilt from collective shame
Collective guilt is not the only emotion that people can experience when
negative aspects of a historical intergroup relationship are salient. When
people self-categorize at the group level, various collective emotions in-
cluding fear, anger, and empathy may be experienced (Glick,2002; Mackie,
Devos, & Smith,2000; Yzerbyt et al.,2002). The most relevant comparison
for guilt, however, is the self-conscious emotion of shame. Guilt and shame
share a very important feature – both are aversive, although shame may
be even more so than guilt (Tangney et al.,1992). These two emotions have
been theoretically distinguished from each other in terms of a few critical
variables. The variables that have been used to differentiate between guilt
and shame include: stability of the cause, controllability of the outcome,
public loss of respect versus private pangs of conscience, moral responsibil-
ity for harm doing versus incompetence or weakness, and the behavioral
tendencies that stem from each emotion. In addition to considering the
applicability of these potential differences to guilt and shame at the collec-
tive level, we address why power of the group might have considerable
relevance for the experience of these emotions when the collective self is
salient.
Building on Weiner’s (1995) distinction between internal causes that are
seen as controllable versus uncontrollable, Niedenthal, Tangney, and Ga-
vanski (1994) suggested that attributions to one’s behavior versus one’s
character differ primarily in terms of controllability. For this reason, they
argued that guilt reflects remorse for behavioral transgressions (a control-
lable cause), whereas shame is felt for negative outcomes that reflect one’s
disposition (a less controllable cause). We believe, however, that the behav-
ioral versus characterological dimension may not capture the most crucial
distinction between guilt and shame. First of all, this distinction may be
difficult to sustain for the kinds of events we examine because when the
harmful actions are severe enough, a characterological inference almost
certainly will be made (see Uleman et al.,1996). Indeed, at the group level,
little difference may be perceived between group behavior and group char-
acter. Groups tend to be perceived in terms of underlying essences that are,
in turn, used as explanations of group-based behavior (Yzerbyt, Rocher,
& Schadron,1997). Second, the behavioral versus characterological dis-
tinction primarily reflects perceived stability of an internal cause – is the
outcome due to an unstable cause, a specific behavior, or a more stable
cause, a consistent trait – rather than its controllability.
We do seecontrollability of the outcomeas one of the most critical factors
that differentiates between guilt and shame. People feel guilty primarily

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 29
for actions or inactions that they controlled and accept responsibility for
(McGraw,1987). In contrast, people primarily feel shame for outcomes that
they could not, or were not in control of, but that when publicly revealed
portrays them as weak or inferior (see Smith et al.,2002). Furthermore,
shame-inducing events do not necessarily involve any harm doing to oth-
ers at all; people primarily feel shame for events that involve harm to the
self’s reputation or perceived competence. In contrast, the more that people
feel that they personally could have actually exerted some control in pre-
venting the perpetrators’ harmful actions, the more likely they are to feel
guilt, and such perceived control should be greater the more the perceiver
is interdependently linked with the perpetrators (see 3,
ume, by Lickel, Schmader, & Barquissau). Harm doers would not assume
responsibility if they did not perceive that their group had control over the
events or outcome that did occur.
Shame has been consistently associated with violations of social con-
ventions rather than harm to others. Shame is especially likely following
events that result in a lowering of one’s position within the social hierarchy,
including instances of failure to meet expectations that cause others to see
the self as weak (see Lewis,1993; Lindsay-Hartz, De Rivera, & Mascolo,
1995; Piers & Singer,1971; Wallbott & Scherer,1995). More generally, the
literature has consistently linked shame with feeling incompetent and de-
pendent (Smith et al.,2002). The actual operationalization of the shame and
guilt events in the Niedenthal et al. (1994) studies reflects the broader the-
oretical distinction between loss of stature in the case of shame and moral
responsibility for harm doing in the case of guilt. An academic failure
situation was employed in their shame-inducing condition, but an event
involving harm doing to another person was used in their guilt-inducing
condition.
The important role that control of the outcome plays in guilt, and the im-
portance that lack of ability to control the outcome has for shame, helps to
explain why shame rather than guilt is particularly likely to be experienced
by both individuals and groups who have been, or who perceive them-
selves as having been, victimized by others. Among recipients of harm
doing, the lack of control over and responsibility for the outcome is ac-
knowledged (Branscombe et al.,2003), which is consistent with the high
levels of shame such victims often report. This important difference in
terms of who controlled the outcome also explains why feeling shame at
being victimized and anger toward the harm doer are frequently corre-
lated, whereas anger is absent when guilt is experienced (Tangney et al.,
1992).
At the group level, collective shame involves being publically exposed as
incompetent, not being in control, weak, and potentially even disgustingin
the eyes of others. In contrast, groups who have victimized others are more
likely to feel moral responsibility and collective guilt for the harm they

30 Nyla R. Branscombe, Ben Slugoski, and Diane M. Kappen
inflicted. This strongly implies a difference in the emotional response to
group history, which depends on the status position of the salient ingroup:
perpetrator versus victim group. Members of perpetrator groups will feel
collective guilt because they have moral responsibility and control over
what occurred. Unless the perpetrator group that committed the harm
doing has legitimized it, and therefore does not see the actions as a violation
of justice principles, they will be most likely to experience collective guilt.
Victim groups will, however, tend to feel shame because they could not
and did not control the event that revealed their helpless state. Given an
ingroup focus, shame is more likely to be a victimized group emotion
because it is fundamentally about weakness, whereas guilt is more likely
among perpetrator groups for it implies strength.
It is not necessarily the case that a given negative group history will
evoke the same emotion in its members across time. It is conceivable that
group members could tend to experience shame upon initial public ex-
posure of “dirty deeds,” but then in a later historical period the primary
emotional response might change to guilt when moral responsibility for
permitting those acts to occur are accepted. For example, among Germans,
initially following their defeat and surrender to the Allied Forces at the
end of World War II when the Nazi’s actions were revealed to all dur-
ing the Nuremberg trials, shame may have been the primary emotional
response among the citizenry. At that time, the emphasis may have been
on how members of their own government had placed them in this pub-
licly weakened and helpless position. Accordingly, collective shame might
be most strongly felt among those alive during the “unmasking period,”
but collective guilt might be more likely among subsequent generations
who have accepted moral responsibility for their nation’s harm doing (see
Rensmann, this volume, 10).
While we did not measure collective shame – the obvious emotional al-
ternative for our studies – we do believe that our research among historical
perpetrator groups is primarily capturing collective guilt. In addition to the
perceived controllability or agency that causes perpetrator groups to accept
moral responsibility for the harmful outcome, guilt predicts different be-
haviors than shame. Guilt and shame have been theoretically differentiated
in terms of their associated action tendencies (Frijda et al.,1989; Lindsay-
Hartz et al.,1995). Scores on our collective guilt acceptance measure have
been linked with the willingness to make reparations for the harm done
in the form of support for affirmative action in our North American sam-
ples, as well as in other groups (Doosje et al.,1998; Iyer et al., this volume,
Chapter14; 7; Swim & Miller,1999).
Shame, on the other hand, has been linked with avoidance behaviors in-
cluding hiding or withdrawing (Tangney et al.,1992). At the group level,
when racial inequality is salient, shame might be reflected in distancing
or disidentification from other ingroup members. In our studies, if peo-
ple were primarily experiencing collective shame, then we would expect

The Measurement of Collective Guilt 31
reliable relationships with measures assessing the desire to hide the event,
not wanting others to know, and wishing to avoid or not confront the past
rather than with variables that reflect a desire to try to make up for the past
wrongdoing.
conclusions
Being reminded of our group’s history can affect emotional responses in
the present. Unjustified harmful actions committed by the ingroup against
an outgroup, or those committed against the ingroup by an outgroup, can
have consequences for collective emotions, regardless of whether those
events occurred in the distant past or they were more recent. Collective
guilt is fundamentally about being associated with a group that has perpe-
trated injustice against another group. Collective guilt was distinguishable
from both trait and state guilt at the personal level. Collective guilt was
also reliably correlated with group level individual difference variables as
expected. We found that groups who have exploited or harmed another
group are more likely to accept collective guilt when that history is salient
compared to members of groups who were victimized. In contrast, groups
with a history of victimization were more likely to assign collective guilt
than were members of perpetrator groups.
We see collective shame, but not guilt, as most likely when an event
involves a loss of stature in the eyes of others. This should be especially
likely for uncontrollable events that reveal the ingroup’s incompetence or
weakness. Shame then should evoke a desire to hide or distance oneself
from the event, or even the ingroup itself if it is seen as the source of the
shameful outcome. We see collective guilt, but not shame, as provoking a
desire to correct the ingroup’s past unjust actions. Indeed, attempting to
make reparations for the wrongdoing of one’s group may be an important
means of achieving a revitalized moral social identity. In that sense, a little
collective guilt may be rather functional. As Martin Luther King Jr. sug-
gested, “remorse can raise the moral threshold of a society.” We believe
it may do so primarily by promoting corrections for the wrongs of unjust
intergroup relationships.
Acknowledgment
We thank Mark Ferguson, Anca Miron, and Adam Powell for their helpful com-
ments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Title: Bernardino Luini
Author: James Mason
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BERNARDINO
LUINI ***

MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
EDITED BY . .
T. LEMAN HARE
BERNARDINO LUINI
In thÉ SamÉ SÉriÉs
    Artist.    Author.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BÉnsusan.
REYNOLDS. S. L. BÉnsusan.
TURNER. C. LÉwis Hind.
ROMNEY. C. LÉwis Hind.
GREUZE. Alys EyrÉ Macklin.
BOTTICELLI. HÉnry B. Binns.
ROSSETTI. LuciÉn Pissarro.
BELLINI. GÉorgÉ Hay.
FRA ANGELICO. JamÉs Mason.
REMBRANDT. JosÉf IsraÉls .
LEIGHTON. A. Lys Baldry.
RAPHAEL. Paul G. Konody.
HOLMAN HUNT. Mary E. ColÉridgÉ .
TITIAN. S. L. BÉnsusan.
MILLAIS. A. Lys Baldry.
CARLO DOLCI. GÉorgÉ Hay.
GAINSBOROUGH.       Max Rothschild .
TINTORETTO. S. L. BÉnsusan.
LUINI. JamÉs Mason.
FRANZ HALS. EdgcumbÉ StalÉy.

 
In Preparation
VAN DYCK. PÉrcy M. TurnÉr.
WHISTLER. T. Martin Wood.
LEONARDO DA VINCI.       M. W. BrockwÉll .
RUBENS. S. L. BÉnsusan.
BURNE-JONES. A. Lys Baldry.
J. F. MILLET. PÉrcy M. TurnÉr.
CHARDIN. Paul G. Konody.
FRAGONARD. C. HaldanÉ MacFall.
HOLBEIN. S. L. BÉnsusan.
BOUCHER. C. HaldanÉ MacFall.
VIGÉE LE BRUN.       C. HaldanÉ MacFall.
WATTEAU. C. LÉwis Hind.
MURILLO. S. L. BÉnsusan.
And OthÉrs.
PLATE I.—MADONNA AND CHILD.  
Frontispiece
(In the Wallace Collection)
This is another admirably painted
study of the artist’s favourite subject.
The attitude of the child is most
engaging, the painting of the limbs is full
of skill, and the background adds
considerably to the picture’s attractions.
It will be noted that Luini appears to
have employed the same model for most
of his studies of the Madonna.

Bernardino
LUINI
BY JAMES MASON
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I.Madonna and Child Frontispiece
    In the Wallace Collection
Page
II.Il Salvatore 14
    In the Ambrosiana, Milan
III.Salomé and the Head of St. John the Baptist 24
    In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
IV.The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine 34
    In the Brera, Milan
V.The Madonna of the Rose 40
    In the Brera, Milan
VI.Detail of Fresco 50
    In the Brera, Milan
VII.Head of Virgin 60
    In the Ambrosiana, Milan
VIII.Burial of St. Catherine 70
    In the Brera, Milan

I
A RETROSPECT
In the beginning of the long and fascinating history of Italian Art
we see that the spirit of the Renaissance first fluttered over the
minds of men much as the spirit of life is said have moved over the
face of the waters before the first chapter of creation’s marvellous
story was written. Beginnings were small, progress was slow, and
the lives of the great artists moved very unevenly to their appointed
end.
There were some who rose to fame and fortune during their life,
and then died so completely that no biography can hope to rouse
any interest in their work among succeeding generations.
There were others who worked in silence and without réclame of
any sort, content with the respect and esteem of those with whom
they came into immediate contact, indifferent to the plaudits of the
crowd or the noisy praises of those who are not qualified to judge.
True servants of the western world’s religion, they translated work
into terms of moral life, and moral life into terms of work. Merit like
truth will out, and when time has sifted good work from bad and
spurious reputations from genuine ones, many men who fluttered
the dovecotes of their own generation disappear from sight
altogether; some others who wrought unseen, never striving to gain
the popular ear or eye, rise on a sudden to heights that might have
made them giddy had they lived to be conscious of their own
elevation. They were lowly, but their fame inherits the earth.
Bernardino Luini, the subject of this little study, calls us away
from the great art centres—from Venice and Florence and Rome; his
record was made and is to be found to-day amid the plains of
Lombardy. Milan is not always regarded as one of the great art

centres of Italy in spite of the Brera, the Ambrosiana, and the Poldi
Pezzoli Palace collections, but no lover of pictures ever went for the
first time to the galleries of Milan in a reverent spirit and with a
patient eye without feeling that he had discovered a painter of
genius. He may not even have heard his name before, but he will
come away quite determined to learn all he may about the man who
painted the wonderful frescoes that seem destined to retain their
spiritual beauty till the last faint trace of the design passes beyond
the reach of the eye, the man who painted the panel picture of the
“Virgin of the Rose Trees,” reproduced with other of his master-
works in these pages.
PLATE II.—IL SALVATORE
(In the Ambrosiana, Milan)
This picture, one of the treasures of
the beautiful collection in the Pinacoteca
of Ambrosiana in the Piazza della Rosa,
hangs by the same artist’s picture of
“John the Baptist as a Child.” The right
hand of Christ is raised in the attitude of
benediction, and the head has a
curiously genuine beauty. The
preservation of this picture is wonderful,
the colouring retains much of its early
glow. The head is almost feminine in its
tenderness and bears a likeness to Luini’s
favourite model.

To go to the Brera is to feel something akin to hunger for the
history of Bernardino Luini or Luino or Luvino as he is called by the
few who have found occasion to mention him, although perhaps
Luini is the generally accepted and best known spelling of the name.
Unfortunately the hungry feeling cannot be fully satisfied.
Catalogues or guide books date the year of Luini’s birth at or about
1470, and tell us that he died in 1533, and as this is a period that
Giorgio Vasari covers, we turn eagerly to the well-remembered
volumes of the old gossip hoping to find some stories of the
Lombard painter’s life and work. We are eager to know what manner
of man Luini was, what forces influenced him, how he appeared to
his contemporaries, whether he had a fair measure of the large
success that attended the leading artists of his day. Were his patrons
great men who rewarded him as he deserved—how did he fare
when the evening came wherein no man may work? Surely there is
ample scope for the score of quaint comments and amusing if
unreliable anecdotes with which Vasari livens his pages. We are

confident that there will be much to reward the search, because
Bernardino Luini and Giorgio Vasari were contemporaries after a
fashion. Vasari would have been twenty-one years old when Luini
died, the writer of the “Lives” would have seen frescoes and panel
pictures in all the glory of their first creation. He could not have
failed to be impressed by the extraordinary beauty of the artist’s
conceptions, the skill of his treatment of single figures, the wealth of
the curious and elusive charm that we call atmosphere—a charm to
which all the world’s masterpieces are indebted in varying degrees—
the all-pervading sense of a delightful and refined personality, leaves
us eager for the facts that must have been well within the grasp of
the painter’s contemporaries.
Alas for these expectations! Vasari dismisses Bernardino del
Lupino, as he calls him, in six or eight sentences, and what he says
has no biographical value at all. The reference reads suspiciously like
what is known in the world of journalism as padding. Indeed, as
Vasari was a fair judge, and Bernardino Luini was not one of those
Venetians whom Vasari held more or less in contempt, there seems
to be some reason for the silence. Perhaps it was an intimate and
personal one, some unrecorded bitterness between the painter and
one of Vasari’s friends, or between Vasari himself and Luini or one of
his brothers or children. Whatever the cause there is no mistake
about the result. We grumble at Vasari, we ridicule his inaccuracies,
we regret his limitations, we scoff at his prejudices, but when he
withholds the light of his investigation from contemporary painters
who did not enjoy the favour of popes and emperors, we wander in
a desert land without a guide, and search with little or no success
for the details that would serve to set the painter before us.
Many men have taken up the work of investigation, for Luini
grows steadily in favour and esteem, but what Vasari might have
done in a week nobody has achieved in a decade.
A few unimportant church documents relating to commissions
given to the painter are still extant. He wrote a few words on his
frescoes; here and there a stray reference appears in the works of

Italian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but our
knowledge when it has been sifted and arranged is remarkably small
and deplorably incomplete. Dr. J. C. Williamson, a painstaking critic
and a competent scholar, has written an interesting volume dealing
with the painter, and in the making of it he has consulted nearly fifty
authorities—Italian, French, English, and German—only to find it is
impossible to gather a short chapter of reliable and consecutive
biography from them all. Our only hope lies in the discovery of some
rich store of information in the public or private libraries of Milan
among the manuscripts that are the delight of the scholars.
Countless documents lie unread, many famous libraries are
uncatalogued, the archives of several noble Italian houses that
played an important part in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy
have still to be given to the world. It is not unreasonable to suppose
that records of Luini’s life exist, and in these days when scholarship
is ever extending its boundaries there is hope that some scholar will
lay the ever growing circle of the painter’s admirers under lasting
obligations. Until that time comes we must be content to know the
man through the work that he has left behind him, through the
medium of fading frescoes, stray altarpieces, and a few panel
pictures. Happily they have a definite and pleasant story to tell.
We must go to Milan for Luini just as we must go to Rome for
Raphael and to Madrid for Velazquez and Titian and to Venice for
Jacopo Robusti whom men still call the Little Dyer (Tintoretto). In
London we have one painting on wood, “Christ and the Pharisees,”
brought from the Borghese Palace in Rome. The head of Christ is
strangely feminine, the four Pharisees round him are finely painted,
and the picture has probably been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci at
some period of its career. There are three frescoes in South
Kensington and a few panel pictures in private collections. The
Louvre is more fortunate than our National Gallery, it has several
frescoes and two or three panels. In Switzerland, in the Church of
St. Mary and the Angels in Lugano, is a wonderful screen picture of
the “Passion of Christ” with some hundreds of figures in it, and the
rest of Luini’s work seems to be in Italy. The greater part is to be

found in Milan, some important frescoes having been brought to the
Brera from the house of the Pelucca family in Monza, while there are
some important works in Florence in the Pitti and Uffizi Galleries. In
the Church of St. Peter at Luino on the shores of Lake Maggiore, the
little town where Benardino was born and from which he took his
name, there are some frescoes but they are in a very faded
condition. The people of the lake side town have much to say about
the master who has made Luino a place of pilgrimage but their
stories are quite unreliable.
PLATE III.—SALOMÉ AND THE HEAD OF
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
In this striking and finely preserved picture
Bernardino Luini has contrived to avoid all sense
of horror. The head of the dead John the Baptist
is full of beauty, and even Herodias is handled
without any attempt to make her repulsive.
Sufficient contrast is supplied by the
executioner on the right.

It might be held, seeing that the artist’s work is scanty, and often
in the last stages of decay, while his life story has faded quite from
the recovered records of his contemporaries, that Luini is hardly fit
subject for discussion here. In a series of little books that seeks to
introduce great artists to new friends through the medium of
reproductions that show the work as it is, and a brief concise
description that aims at helping those who are interested to study
the master for themselves, there is a temptation to deal only with
popular men. These give no trouble to their biographer or his
readers, but after all it is not the number of pictures that an artist
paints or the wealth of detail that his admirers have collected that
establishes his claim to be placed among the immortals. His claim
rests upon the quality of the work done, its relation to the times in
which it was painted, the mood or spirit it reveals, the light it throws
upon the mind that conceived and the hand that executed it.
We know enough and to spare of the more flamboyant
personalities of the Venetian and Florentine schools. Long periods of
study will not exhaust all there is to learn about men like Titian,
Michelangelo, Raphael of Urbino, and the rest, but Luini, though he

left no written record, will not be denied. We dare not pass him by,
seeing that we may introduce him to some admirers who will, in
days to come, seek and find what remains beyond our reach at
present. His appeal is so irresistible, the beauty of his work is so rare
and so enduring that we must endeavour to the best of our ability,
however small it be, to declare his praise, to stimulate inquiry,
enlarge his circle, and give him the place that belongs to him of
right. There are painters in plenty whose work is admired and
praised, whose claims we acknowledge instantly while admitting to
ourselves that we should not care to live with their pictures hanging
on round us. The qualities of cleverness and brilliance pall after a
little time, the mere conquest of technical difficulties of the kind that
have been self-inflicted rouses admiration for a while and then
leaves us cold. But the man who is the happy possessor of a fresco
or a panel picture by Luini is to be envied. Even he who lives in the
neighbourhood of some gallery or church and only sees the rare
master’s works where, “blackening in the daily candle smoke, they
moulder on the damp wall’s travertine,” will never tire of Luini’s
company. He will always find inspiration, encouragement, or
consolation in the reflection of the serene and beautiful outlook upon
life that gave the work so much of its enduring merit. Luini,
whatever manner of man he may have been, was so clearly
enamoured of beauty, so clearly intolerant of what is ugly and
unrefined, that he shrank from all that was coarse and revolting
either in the life around him or in certain aspects of the Bible stories
that gave him subjects for his brush. Beauty and simplicity were the
objects of his unceasing search, his most exquisite expression.
Like all other great painters he had his marked periods of
development, his best work was done in the last years of his life, but
there is nothing mean or trivial in any picture that he painted and
this is the more to his credit because we know from the documents
existing to-day that he lived in the world and not in the cloister. We
admire the perennial serenity of Beato Angelico, we rejoice with him
in his exquisite religious visions. The peaceful quality of his painting
and the happy certainty of his faith move us to the deepest

admiration, but we may not forget that Angelico lived from the time
when he was little more than a boy to the years when he was an old
man in the untroubled atmosphere of the monastery of San Marco in
Florence, that whether he was at home in that most favoured city or
working in the Vatican at Rome, he had no worldly troubles. Honour,
peace, and a mind at peace with the world were with him always.
Bernardino Luini on the other hand travelled from one town in
Italy to another, employed by religious houses from time to time, but
always as an artist who could be relied upon to do good work
cheaply. He could not have been rich, he could hardly have been
famous, it is even reasonable to suppose that his circumstances
were straitened, and on this account the unbroken serenity of his
work and his faithful devotion to beauty are the more worthy of our
praise. What was beautiful in his life and work came from within, not
from without, and perhaps because he was a stranger to the
cloistered seclusion that made Fra Angelico’s life so pleasantly
uneventful his work shows certain elements of strength that are
lacking from the frescoes that adorn the walls of San Marco to this
day. To his contemporaries he was no more than a little planet
wandering at will round those fixed stars of the first magnitude that
lighted all the world of art. Now some of those great stars have lost
their light and the little planet shines as clear as Hesperus.

II
As we have said already nothing is known of Luini’s early life,
although the fact that he was born at Luino on the Lago Maggiore
seems to be beyond dispute. The people of that little lake side town
have no doubt at all about the matter, and they say that the family
was one of some distinction, that Giacomo of Luino who founded a
monastery in his native place was the painter’s uncle. Perhaps the
wish was father to the thought, and because every man who sets
out to study the life and work of an artist is as anxious to know as
was Miss Rosa Dartle herself, there are always facts of a sort at his
service. He who seeks the truth can always be supplied with
something as much like it as paste is to diamonds, and can
supplement the written word with the aid of tradition. The early life
of the artist is a blank, and the authorities are by no means in
agreement about the year of his birth. 1470 would seem to be a
reasonable date, with a little latitude on either side. Many men
writing long years after the painter’s death, have held that he was a
pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, indeed several pictures that were
attributed to da Vinci by the authorities of different European
galleries are now recognised as Luini’s work, but the mistake is not
at all difficult to explain. If we turn to “La Joconda,” a portrait by da
Vinci that hangs in the Louvre to-day, and is apparently beyond
dispute in the eyes of the present generation of critics, and then go
through the Brera in Milan with a photograph of “La Joconda’s”
portrait in our hand, it will be impossible to overlook the striking
resemblance between Luini’s types and da Vinci’s smiling model.
Leonardo had an academy in Milan, and it is reasonable to suppose
that Luini worked in it, although at the time when he is supposed to
have come for the first time to the capital of Lombardy, Leonardo da
Vinci had left, apparently because Louis XII. of France, cousin and
successor of that Charles VIII. who had troubled the peace of Italy

for so long, was thundering at the city gates, and at such a time
great artists were apt to remember that they had good patrons
elsewhere. The school may, however, have remained open because
no great rulers made war on artists, and Luini would have learned
something of the spirit that animated Leonardo’s pictures. For other
masters and influence he seems to have gone to Bramantino and
Foppa. Bramantino was a painter of Milan and Ambrosio Foppa
known as Caradosso was a native of Pavia and should not be
reckoned among Milanese artists as he has so often been. He was
renowned for the beauty of his medals and his goldsmith’s work;
and he was one of the men employed by the great family of
Bentivoglio.
PLATE IV.—THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE
OF ST. CATHERINE
(In the Brera, Milan)
This is a singularly attractive picture
in which the child Christ may be seen
placing the ring upon the finger of St.
Catherine. The little open background,
although free from the slightest
suggestion of Palestine, is very charming,
and the head of the Virgin and St.
Catherine help to prove that Luini used
few models.

It may be mentioned in this place that many Italian artists,
particularly those of the Florentine schools, suffered very greatly
from their unceasing devotion to the art of the miniaturist. They
sought to achieve his detail, his fine but cramped handling, and this
endeavour was fatal to them when they came to paint large pictures
that demanded skilled composition, and the subordination of detail
to a large general effect. The influence of the miniature painter and
the maker of medals kept many a fifteenth-century painter in the
second grade and Luini never quite survived his early devotion to
their methods, often making the fatal mistake of covering a large
canvas with many figures of varying size but equal value. It may be
remarked that Tintoretto was the first great painter of the
Renaissance who learned to subordinate parts to the whole, and he
had to face a great deal of unpopularity because he saw with his
own eyes instead of using those of his predecessors.
PLATE V.—THE MADONNA OF THE
ROSE

(In the Brera, Milan)
Modern criticism proclaims this
picture of the Virgin in a Bower of Roses
to be the finest of the master’s paintings.
Not only is it delightfully composed and
thought out but the background is
painted with rare skill, and the colour is
rich and pleasing to this day.
It may be suggested, with all possible respect to those who hold
different opinions, that Luini, though he responded to certain
influences, had no master in the generally accepted sense of the
term. One cannot trace the definite relation between him and any
older painter that we find between Titian and Gian Bellini, for
example. He took a certain type from Leonardo, his handling from
time to time recalls the other masters—we have already referred to
the most important of these—but had he studied in the school of
one man, had he served an apprenticeship after the fashion of his

contemporaries, his pictures would surely have been free from those
faults of composition and perspective that detract so much from the
value of the big works. He seems to have been self-taught rather
than to have been a schoolman. While his single figures are wholly
admirable whether on fresco or on panel, his grouping is nearly
always ineffective, one might say childish, and his sense of
perspective is by no means equal to that of his greatest
contemporaries. As a draughtsman and a colourist Luini had little to
learn from anybody, and the poetry of his conceptions is best
understood when it is remembered that he was a poet as well as a
painter. He is said to have written poems and essays, though we are
not in a position to say where they are to be found, and it is clear
that he had a singularly detached spirit and that the hand of a skilled
painter was associated with the mind of a little child. In some
aspects he is as simple as those primitive painters of Umbria whose
backgrounds are all of gold. Like so many other painters of the
Renaissance Luini’s saints and angels are peasant folk, the people he
saw around him. He may have idealised them, but they remain as
they were made.
A few records of the prices paid for Luini’s work exist among the
documents belonging to churches and religious houses, and while
they justify a belief that at the time he came to Milan Luini had
achieved some measure of distinction in his calling, they seem to
prove that he was hardly regarded as a great painter. The prices
paid to him are ridiculously small, no more than a living wage, but
he had the reputation of being a reliable and painstaking artist and
he would seem to have been content with a small reward for work
that appealed to him. His early commissions executed in and around
Milan when he first came from Luini were numerous and consisted
very largely of frescoes which are the work of a young man who has
not yet freed his own individuality from the influence of his elders.
One of the most charming works associated with this period is the
“Burial of St. Catherine,” which is reproduced in these pages. The
composition is simple enough, the handling does not touch the
summit of the painter’s later achievements, but the sentiment of the

picture is quite delightful. St. Catherine is conceived in a spirit of
deepest reverence and devotion, but the angels are just Lombardy
peasant girls born to labour in the fields and now decorated with
wings in honour of a great occasion. And yet the man who could
paint this fresco and could show so unmistakably his own simple
faith in the story it sets out, was a poet as well as a painter even
though he had never written a line, while the treatment of his other
contemporary frescoes and the fine feeling for appropriate colour
suggest a great future for the artist who had not yet reached middle
age. We see that Luini devoted his brush to mythological and sacred
subjects, touching sacred history with a reverent hand, shutting his
eyes to all that was painful, expressing all that was pitiful or
calculated to strengthen the hold of religion upon the mass in
fashion destined to appeal though in changing fashion for at least
four centuries. Where the works have failed to triumph as
expressions of a living faith they have charmed agnostics as an
expression of enduring beauty.
From Milan Luini seems to have gone to Monza, a city a few
miles away from the capital of Lombardy where the rulers of united
Italy come after their coronation to receive the iron crown that has
been worn by the kings of Lombardy for nearly a thousand years.
This is the city in which the late King Umberto, that brave and good
man, was foully murdered by an anarchist. To-day one reaches
Monza by the help of a steam-tram that blunders heavily enough
over the wide flat Lombardy plain. The Milanese go to Monza for the
sake of an outing, but most of the tourists who throng the city stay
away, and it is possible to spend a few pleasant hours in the
cathedral and churches with never a flutter of red-covered guide
book to distract one’s attention from the matters to which the hasty
tourist is blind. Here Luini painted frescoes, and it is known that he
stayed for a long time at the house of one of the strong men of
Monza and painted a large number of frescoes there. To-day the
fortress, if it was one, has become a farmhouse, and the frescoes,
more than a dozen in all, have been taken away to the Royal Palace
in Milan. Dr. Williamson in his interesting volume to which the

student of Luini must be deeply indebted, says that there is one left
at the Casa Pelucca. The writer in the course of two days spent in
Monza was unfortunate enough to overlook it.
It has been stated that the facts relating to Luini’s life are few
and far between. Fiction on the other hand is plentiful, and there is a
story that Luini, shortly after his arrival in Milan, was held
responsible by the populace for the death of a priest who fell from a
hastily erected scaffolding in the church of San Giorgio where the
artist was working. The rest of the legend follows familiar lines that
would serve the life story of any leading artist of the time, seeing
that they all painted altar-pieces and used scaffolding. He is said to
have fled to Monza, to have been received by the chief of the
Pelucca family, to have paid for his protection with the frescoes that
have now been brought from Monza to the Brera, to have fallen
violently in love with the beautiful daughter of the house, to have
engaged in heroic contests against great odds on her behalf, and so
on, ad absurdum. If we look at the portraits the painter is said to
have made of himself and to have placed in pictures at Saronna and
elsewhere we shall see that Luini was hardly the type of man to
have engaged in the idle pursuits of chivalry in the intervals of the
work to which his life was given. We have the head of a man of
thought not that of a man of action, and all the character of the face
gives the lie to the suggestions of the storytellers. It is clear,
however, that the painter made a long stay in Monza and when he
came back to Milan he worked for the churches of St. Maurizio,
Santa Maria della Pace, Santa Maria di Brera, and St. Ambrosia.
PLATE VI.—DETAIL OF FRESCO
(In the Brera, Milan)
This prettily posed figure is at the
base of a fresco of the Virgin with Saints
in the Brera. Part of the artist’s signature
(Bernardinus Louinus) may be seen
below. It will be remembered that

Carpaccio painted a very similar subject.
The fresco is not too well preserved.
In Milan he found a great patron, no less a man than Giovanni
Bentivoglio who had been driven from his rule over Bologna by the
“Terrible Pontiff” Julius II., that life-long opponent and bitter enemy
of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Alessandro Bentivoglio, the son of
the ruined Giovanni, married Ippolita Sforza, daughter of one of the
house that had done so much to rule Rome until Pope Alexander VI.
broke its power. Alessandro Bentivoglio commissioned Luini to paint
altar-pieces in St. Maurizio where his father was buried, and the
painter included in his work a portrait of Ippolita Sforza with three
female saints. He did much other work in this church; some of it has
faded almost beyond recognition.
At the same time there is no need to think that we have
recovered the last work of Luini or indeed of the great masters even

in the churches of Italy. Only a few months ago the writer was in a
small Italian church that had suffered a few years ago from
disastrous floods. The water unable to find no outlet had risen for a
time almost to the top of the supporting columns. The smooth wall
above was plastered, and when the waters had subsided it was
found that the plaster had become so damaged that it was
necessary to remove it. Happily the work was done carefully, for
under the whitewash some excellent frescoes were discovered. They
would seem to have profited by their covering for as much as has
been uncovered is rich and well preserved. It may be that in days
when the State of Italy was seriously disturbed, and Napoleon,
greatest of highwaymen and conquerors, after being crowned in
Milan with the famous Monza crown, was laying his hand on all that
seemed worth carrying away, some one in authority thought of this
simple method of concealment, and obtained expert advice that
enabled the frescoes to be covered without serious damage. Under
similar conditions we may yet discover some of the earlier work of
Luini, because it is clear that the years in which his reputation was in
the making must have been full of achievement of which the greater
part has now been lost. He could hardly have been less than thirty
years of age when he came to Milan with a reputation sufficient to
gain commissions for work in churches; that reputation must have
taken years to acquire, and must have been associated with very
definite accomplishment. The lack of all record was essentially the
misfortune that beset men who were not very high in the esteem of
their contemporaries. A painter like Luini would have executed a
great many pictures for people who could not pay very well, and had
no great gallery or well-built church to harbour the work, and in the
course of time the work would tend inevitably to disappear before
the devouring candle-smoke, or to be carried away by unscrupulous
purchasers who chanced to be better equipped with taste than
conscience. On the other hand, painters who led the various
movements of their time would be honoured by successive
generations and their work would be stored in the best and safest
places. To be sure, fire was never a respecter of palaces or persons,
and the flames have consumed more work than a collection of the

finest Renaissance pictures in existence could show, but even then
the odds seem to be in favour of the bigger men because special
efforts would be made to save their paintings while those of lesser
men would be left with few regrets to take their chance.
When Luini was engaged to work in the Church of St. Maurizio
there was a fair chance that his altar-pieces and frescoes would be
well looked after, but when he worked for a small provincial family
like the Pelucca the house sank with the family fortunes till at last it
became a farm, and in the early years of the nineteenth century the
frescoes were taken from the walls with as much care as was
deemed advisable. Doubtless Luini worked for many men whose
worldly position was not as considerable as that of the Pelucca
family, and that work may have disappeared altogether. The painter,
as we have seen, did not enjoy the patronage of many great men
before Alessandro Bentivoglio, and large institutions were not
numbered among his early clients. But he was not altogether
without valuable patronage in the latter days, and in the early
’twenties of the sixteenth century the influential Brotherhood of the
Holy Crown, one of the leading charitable institutions of Milan, would
seem to have given him some official connection with their
institution; a recognised position without fixed salary. For them he
painted the magnificent frescoes now in the Ambrosian Library. The
great work there was divided by the artist into three parts separated
by pillars. In the centre Luini has depicted the crowning with thorns,
Christ being seated upon a throne while thorns are being put upon
His head; His arms are crossed; His expression one of supreme
resignation. Above Him little angels look down or point to a
cartouche on which is written “Caput Regis Gloriæ Spinis Coranatur.”
In the left hand division of the fresco and on the right, the fore-
ground is filled with kneeling figures whose heads are supposed to
be portraits of the most prominent members of the Society. Clearly
they are all men who have achieved some measure of honour and
distinction. Above the kneeling figures on the left hand side St. John
is pointing out the tragedy of the central picture to the Virgin Mary,
while on the right hand side a man in armour and another who is

seen faintly behind him call the attention of a third to what is
happening. A crown of thorns hangs above the right and the left
hand compartment and there is a landscape for background. It is
recorded that this work took about six months, and was finished in
March 1522 at a cost to the Society of 115 soldi. So Luini’s work
looks down to-day upon a part of the great Ambrosian Library, and it
may well be that the library itself will yield to patient investigation
some record, however simple, of the painter’s life, sufficient perhaps
to enable us to readjust our mental focus and see his lovable figure
more clearly.
PLATE VII.—HEAD OF VIRGIN
(In the Ambrosiana, Milan)
Here we have another well painted
and finely preserved head painted from
one of Luini’s favourite models. The artist
must have known most of the secrets of
colour preparation, for his work has
survived much that was painted
centuries later. Unfortunately his frescoes
were exposed to the elements and have
suffered accordingly.

It may be urged that for those of us who are content to see with
the spiritual eye Luini is expressed more eloquently by his work, and
particularly by this great picture in the Ambrosian Library, than he
could hope to be by the combined efforts of half-a-dozen critics,
each with his own special point of view and his properly profound
contempt for the views of others. The painter’s low tones and subtle
harmonies, his pure but limited vision, speak to us of a gentle,
refined, and delicate nature, of an achievement that stopped short
of cleverness and consequently limited him to the quieter byways of
artistic life, while those whose inspiration was less, and whose gifts
were more, moved with much pomp and circumstance before
admiring contemporaries. The refined mind, the sensitive soul,
shrank from depicting the tragedy of the Crown of Thorns in the
realistic fashion that would have proved acceptable to so many other
artists. Luini forgets the blood and the spikes, he almost forgets the

physical pain, and gives us the Man of Sorrows who has forgiven His
tormentors because “they know not what they do.”
Continental galleries show us many treatments of the same
familiar theme, they have none to show that can vie with this in a
combination of strength and delicacy that sets out an immortal story
while avoiding the brutal realism to which so many other artists have
succumbed. We may suppose that the objects of the Society roused
Luini’s sympathy to an extent that made it easy for him to accept the
somewhat paltry remuneration with which the Brotherhood of the
Holy Crown rewarded him, and so the picture makes its own appeal
on the painter’s behalf, and tells a story of his claims upon our
regard. A man may lie, in fact it may be suggested on the strength
of the Psalmist’s statement that most men do, but an artist’s life
work tells his story in spite of himself, and if he labour with pen or
brush his truest biography will be seen in what he leaves behind
him. It is not possible to play a part throughout all the vicissitudes of
a long career, and no man could have given us the pictures that
Luini has left unless he chanced to be a choice and rare spirit. We
may remember here and now that the time was richer in violent
contrasts than any of its successors, the most deplorable excesses
on the one hand, the most rigid virtues on the other, seem to have
been the special product of the Renaissance. While there were men
who practised every vice under the sun there were others who
sought to arrest Divine Retribution by the pursuit of all the virtues,
and while the progress of the years has to a certain extent made
men neutral tinted in character, the season of the Renaissance was
one of violent contrasts. On behalf of the section that went in
pursuit of righteousness let it be remembered that heaven and the
saints were not matters for speculation, they were certainties. Every
man knew that God was in heaven, and that if the workers of
iniquity flourished, it was that they might be destroyed for ever.
Every man knew that the saints still exerted their supernatural
powers and would come down to earth if need be to protect a
devotee. Satan, on the other hand, went armed about the earth
seeking whom he might devour, and hell was as firmly fixed as

heaven. In order to understand Luini, his life and times, these facts
must be borne in mind. The greater the unrest in the cities the more
the public attention would be turned to statesmen and warriors, and
when the personalities of artists began to be considered, those who
lived and thrived in the entourage of popes and rulers monopolised
the attention. Hundreds of men were at work earning a fair living
and some local repute, it was left to foreign favour to set a seal
upon success. Had Luini chanced to be invited to Venice or to Rome
he would have been honoured throughout Lombardy; but a painter
like a prophet is often without honour in his own country. Luini’s gifts
were of a more quiet and domestic order than those of his great
contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, for example,
were more than painters, and perhaps it was only in Venice that
painting stood by itself and managed to thrive alone. Luini would
have come into his kingdom while he lived had Venice been his
birthplace. The genius of the Florentine school sought to express
itself in half-a-dozen different ways, no triumph in one department
of work could satisfy men whose longing for self-expression was
insatiable. In those days it was possible for a man to make himself
master of all knowledge, literally he could discourse de omnibus
rebus et quibusdam aliis. And this diffusion of interests was fatal to
many a genius that might have moved to amazing triumph along
one road.
It is clear that Bernardino Luini never travelled very far from his
native country either physically or mentally. In the eyes of his
contemporaries he was not a man of sufficient importance to receive
commissions from the great art centres of Italy. This, of course, may
be because he did not have the good fortune to attract the attention
of the connoisseurs of his day, for we find that outside Milan, and
the little town of Luino where he was born and whence he took his
name, his work was done in comparatively small towns like Como,
Legnano, Lugano, Ponte, and Saronno. Milan and Monza may be
disregarded because we have already dealt with the work there.
Saronno, which lies some fourteen miles north-west of Milan, is little
more than a village to-day, and its chief claim upon the attention of

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