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Notre Dame reliquary

Does that reliquary contain the Crown? It looks empty, but the caption says the crown is in there. --76.102.243.117 (talk) 04:09, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The request to rename this article to Crown of thorns has been carried out. If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag.

Crown of Thorns → Crown of thorns –Relisted Lynch7 06:25, 10 March 2012 (UTC) Per WP:CAPS and as per modern WP:RS usage. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Later edit: Perhaps some explanation is required. When I did the RM I had a look at Google Books and found even in old sources such as the John McClintock, James Strong Cyclopaedia of biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature: 1868 "From the death of Christ the crown of thorns is inseparable. So from the crown of thorns the crown of kingly dignity and power is inseparable. When, in the days of his humiliation, he was recognised and proclaimed as the promised " etc. And in modern academic sources Michael P. Carroll The cult of the Virgin Mary: psychological origins - Page 87 - 1992 " the fourth century that we begin to see any interest in the Passion in Christian art, and even then the emphasis is muted. ... is the crowning with thorns, and here again the crown of thorns is usually depicted as a laurel wreath " etc. Even if there's only one of something or a specific something capitalisation doesn't automatically follow, - for example, the cross, the robe, the chalice, etc. these are all specific associations, with the crucifixion or Last Supper (which is admittedly always capitalized). I don't know, I proposed this in view of the initial look at sources indicating non-caps. It still looks that way. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Essentially a proper noun phrase, as there is only one, on which the article concentrates. Lower case usage may be appropriate discussing representations of it, especially where various examples are compared, or in metaphorical use (not really mentioned here), but those are different issues. No evidence produced re RS usage, which I think is very varied, with the usual tendency for US/UK divergence. The policy just throws you back on RS. Johnbod (talk) 13:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, most RS usages in sentences are lowercase and are about the same crown of thorns that this article is about. Consider this book search of mentions without it being in the title has these 8 lowercase in the first page of 10: , , , , , , , , and the other two are about the crown-of-thorns starfish. That leaves 0 of 10 that use it only capitalized sentences (a couple have it both ways, so I counted those as against consistent capitalization in sources). Dicklyon (talk) 03:57, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• Support – typically lowercase in sources; no evidence for it being a proper name. Follow MOS:CAPS#Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents. Dicklyon (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

No evidence produced for anything at all so far in this discussion! Note that the policy you cite deals with abstract concepts not individual physical artefacts. Johnbod (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You did claim it's "essentially a proper noun phrase", which seems like something that would need evidence. It's easy to see that usage is very mixed in sources, with lowercase dominating. As for the policy, I took this sentence to be close, if not right on: "Doctrinal topics or canonical religious ideas that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith are given in lower case in Misplaced Pages, such as virgin birth (as a common noun), original sin, transubstantiation." As for the crown being a physical artefact, I'm not aware of that. Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You're not aware it is/was a physical artefact!!! You think it is a "Doctrinal topic or canonical religious idea"??? Read the article. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, it first appears in the gospels, not in any authoritative history. Most likely it's essentially fictional, but as good Catholics we can treat it as real, like virgin birth, original sin, and transubstantiation. That doesn't make it a proper noun. Dicklyon (talk) 17:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Dick, I'm coming to see you don't know very far. Whether fictional or not, it is a thing, not an idea, and the purported relics are also things. Johnbod (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You're failing to understand what Dick said. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. Johnbod (talk) 12:19, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is not an article about crowns of thorns, but rather a specific crown of thorns mentioned in the Bible (whether any such crown ever actually existed is irrelevant, as we follow the same rule with articles like Golden Fleece). Sources used in the article (like this one) tend to treat it as a proper noun as well. Powers 00:53, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

At least with the Golden Fleece the vast majority of sources do it as you say. That's certainly not the case for the crown of thorns. Your source capitalizes religious things for emphasis, like the Passion and the Cross. See sources , , , , , , . It doesn't seem to be capitalized in the Bible, or in a lot of commentaries on it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:16, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Be that as it may, if we leave it uncapitalized we'd have to rename it to Jesus' crown of thorns or something in order to show that we're talking about this specific crown and not a generic concept of crowns of thorns. Treating it as a proper noun improves clarity and recognizability; using the lowercase in no way improves the encyclopedia. Powers 16:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's proper noun, since there isn't supposed to be more than one. See Britannica, Catholic Encyclopedia, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and Columbia Encyclopedia. Kauffner (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Kauffner, I'm not sure that Dictionary headings follow the same usage as intext in the dictionary. For example Concise Oxford. Is the bolded heading more prone to caps because it's a heading? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:29, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, those are mostly in headings. Here are some encyclopedias with it lower case in sentences: Britannica 1911 (also in some other volumes), OSV Encyclopedia of Catholic History, Popular Encyclopedia of Bible Prophecy, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of Catholic Devotions and Practices, Encyclopedia of religious knowledge, Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature, Continuum encyclopedia of symbols, HarperCollins encyclopedia of Catholicism, Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia, and even The tattoo encyclopedia. About 80% of the encyclopedias use lower case, it appears. How's that for evidence? Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The decision not to capitalise in prose is not quite the same as the one we face here. Note also that none of these are secondary sources. Andrewa (talk) 06:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

How is it not quite the same? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:28, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Running text has a context, and unless I'm mistaken at least some of these will include the marker the, as in the crown of thorns. So for both these reasons the capitalisation isn't necessary to contrast it to a crown of thorns. It's less common to say a Crown of Thorns, and has a particular meaning. We've chosen not to include the the in article titles except in very restricted circumstances, which is a stylistic choice common to most if not all encyclopedias, but we do use capitals where it's helpful. Incidentally, I was about to update my earlier comment to point out that both sides are quoting tertiary sources, not just you. They are not what WP:AT suggests we use, and for good reasons. Andrewa (talk) 06:39, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: Oxford capitalizes the first letter of every entry title. Other words are capitalized only in the case of proper nouns, just like Wiki. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions does this phrase the other way, so I wouldn't make too much of which way Oxford does it.

@Dicklyon: Most your links don't lead to actual information. Where are you getting this from? Kauffner (talk) 06:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Google book search; if the pages aren't visible to you, it may be due to what country you're in. If you see the page, but want to see the highlight, use the "search in this book" field, enter "crown of thorns", and it will show you all the occurrences; or read the pages I linked, which in each case has it lower-cased in a sentence. Dicklyon (talk) 06:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

And can you see the n-grams link? Dicklyon (talk) 06:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. We really need to tweak the guidelines to clarify this and stop wasting time on it. This article is about the Crown of Thorns. Crown of Thorns is the name of a specific object, and capitalisation is used in English to mark such, and so capitalisation here will help readers to correctly associate the article title and the topic of the article, which is the bottom line. And this is exactly what the various policies and guidelines say, but obviously not clearly enough. Andrewa (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
  • — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support—"The crown of thorns" is fine, even if there is only one of them. Sources don't seem to have a problem with this. It's not like it's a city named Crown of Thorns. It's just a crown of thorns. I'm sure it is capitalized in some sources to give it special status, but in the end it is a crown of thorns. No disrespect to Him who wore it, but there is no need to capitalize it. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 22:05, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support—The sources abound in lower-case examples, such as "Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe ...", and In the Bible thorns often represent sin, and therefore, the crown of thorns is fitting ...". Who wants to get twisted up in caps/non-caps for "a crown" and "the crown" distinction? That appears to be why these sources have binned the upcasing. Tony (talk) 06:54, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
• Support: Sources prefer lower case, and this includes both generalist and specialist sources (an important distinction; see WP:SPECIALSTYLE for why). The relevant section of WP:MOS (namely Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents), which has been stable on this point for years, was written specifically to stop this sort of over-capitalization (I know, being that wording's principal author). A large number of adherents to any random religion, creed, political philosophy, and cause want to capitalize everything connected with "their" topic To Show Off How Important And Special It Is. It's really annoying, and we simply don't do that in normal English. PS: The decision to use or not use capitals in running prose is exactly the same as whether or not to use it for titles and headings. I see this nonsense argument made all the time, but there is zero support for the idea they're different discussions in any policies or guidelines. WP:AT and its naming convention sub-pages explicitly follow the Manual of Style on style matters like capitalization. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually that policy causes endless trouble, being cited by idiots who want to de-capitalize Last Supper etc, which, like this, it does not cover. There is a fairly evident disregard of different ENGVAR standards and anti-religious POV in most of this too. Johnbod (talk) 12:33, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

The difference between these cases is evident. Books almost always capitalize Last Supper, providing the evidence that we need for treating it as a proper noun. The evidence goes the other way on crown of thorns. Dicklyon (talk) 00:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – The four opposers say "Essentially a proper noun phrase, as there is only one", "a specific crown of thorns", " there isn't supposed to be more than one", "the name of a specific object, and capitalisation is used in English to mark such". Yet we have no policy or guideline to capitalize things of which there is "only one", and evidence in sources doesn't support the idea that it's typically capitalized in English, for that reason or any other. The five supporters (counting the nominator, who was motivated by books) talk about sources as evidence, with lots of links including n-gram counts in books, and the WP guideline MOS:CAPS, which says we capitalize if it's "consistently capitalized in sources". Evidence shows it's not even capitalized close to half the time, even though it's almost always referring to the same one and only crown of thorns. I hate to be dismissive of arguments of others, but it looks like that needs to be done here, due to their lack of evidence or connection to guidelines or policy. Dicklyon (talk) 01:33, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. It looks like the usual practice is to use capital letters for the relic, but lower case in other contexts. Britannica certainly makes this distinction, compare here and here. (For the 1911 edition, see here and here.) All the major Bible translations use lower case. The Daily Mail capitalizes this reference to the relic, even while lower casing in these stories. New York Times also capitalizes the relic. Kauffner (talk) 06:30, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

So you'll be withdrawing your "oppose"? It seems OK to capitalize it in the relic section, given that sourcing. Dicklyon (talk) 09:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

• Comment by nominator Mike Lynch has relisted - a look at Google Scholar would seem to show no support for caps except (1) the name of the starfish, (2) the name of the poem, (3) the name of the painting. None of which is the subject of this article which is the/a generic crown of thorns. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

• Atheistic support based on given external sources, and normal language. The definite article does the job of making people know it is The crown. Callmederek (talk) 16:46, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

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