Born Bad — a wicked index

The latest book I've indexed is Born Bad, by James Boyce (Black Inc. Publishing). This is a fascinating book, tracing the history and impact of the idea of original sin, from its origin from St Augustine in the late 4th century, to the modern day. I highly recommend it!

There were several points to make decisions about in this index (well, every index is a constant process of decision making, to be honest).

Firstly were a bunch of medieval names, how are these treated? And the names of saints and popes?

With names such as Friedrich the Wise, I used direct order for the entry (ie written as is, 'Friedrich the Wise'), not inverted (Wise, Friedrich the), as 'Wise' isn't a surname. The same goes for names such as Julian of Norwich ... 'Norwich' isn't a surname, so he appears in the index under J for Julian.

With popes and saints, the way I treated these names (as there were a lot of them mentioned) was under their 'holy' names, with a gloss after the name. For example, Pope John XXII becomes John XXII (pope), in the index. And St. Francis of Assisi is indexed as Francis of Assisi (saint).

There is a lot of discussion in the book about the spiritual nature of babies, whether they are born sinful, or good. My favourite index entry, which highlights the absurdity of assuming that babies are evil, is vipers: less hateful than babies, 123 (I always try to include at least one or two cheeky entries in my indexes, if I can get away with it!)

(This points to a quote from Jonathan Edwards, the influential American Congregationalist cleric)

With entries from evil, sex and sexual desire, 'eaves children', and runaway nuns, to social media, guilt, free market and de Botton, Alain, I think many people will enjoy reading this book, and learning how the idea that we were 'born bad' has influenced the development of Western civilisation over the millennia. It makes me wonder what society would be like today if Western Christianity had decided, way back in the 5th century, that we were all born good?

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