The Centory — the Wisdom Instrument of Peace
The emeriti council of a city: completed leadership and recognised eminence gathered into one lifelong civic dignity, and bound to a single vocation — the greatest for the least. Centorians are elected in confidence, installed once, and hold the dignity for life.
Completed leadership is not spent. It is the civic reserve.
Givingtide advances peace for future generations through three enduring Instruments of Peace: GIVA, Preemptology and the Centory. GIVA orders what we have; Preemptology protects how we live; the Centory places what we have become at the service of those who follow. All three are established within the Decade of Establishment, 2027–2036.
The Centory is the emeriti council of a city and the apex civic council of that city’s Givingtide Chapter. Its members are Centorians: holders of a lifelong civic dignity, chosen by election, who have held with distinction the highest formal office of an apex institution, profession, discipline, vocation or public calling through which a city recognises mature authority. It is founded on the principle of the greatest for the least — those who have reached the summit joined in disciplined service to those at the bottom.
The Three Instruments of Peace engender three complementary unities: GIVA brings together those who give wealth; Preemptology brings together those who advance wellness; and the Centory brings together those who give wisdom. The Centory joins accomplished leaders across the world, brings them into common purpose within their Chapters, and connects their experience with the generations that follow — the working GIVAs of the city, and the Philanthroteens and Philanthrokids who come after them.
What every Centorian is bound to
Each Instrument has three commitments, and each commitment is a proposition about peace: GIVA’s three channels of wealth, Preemptology’s three levels of wellness and the Centory’s three pillars of wisdom. The Centory’s vocation rests on these three pillars, and all nine commitments resolve into one aim: peace for future generations.
Intergenerational Continuity
Peace through counsel. Completed leadership is preserved and placed at the service of succeeding generations: experience is passed forward, new understanding travels back, and no generation is asked to build the future without the others.
Honoured Longevity
Peace through reverence for the full human life. By giving the long, completed human life visible civic honour and continuing purpose, the Centory helps cultivate a social ethic in which the needless truncation of life is regarded as incompatible with human dignity and the common weal.
The Greatest for the Least
Peace through responsible power. Completed leadership is gathered around a continuing vocation: accumulated judgement, influence and social capital placed in the service of those with the least power and protection. It ranks power against need, and never person against person.
A Centorian is a GIVA, the Centory being the supreme council of a GIVA Chapter, and acceptance of the Centorian dignity is itself registration as a GIVA: no separate Semidon of Admission is required, and a natural person so admitted signs the Book of the Tide at the first convenient Chapter occasion. Among its duties the Centory advances the 1-1-1 Framework, which none can promote who does not practise it; beyond it a Centory may take up such other causes of peace and of the zeroward ideals as its city requires.
One grade. One dignity. Indelible.
The City Centory is the supreme civic and ceremonial council of its Chapter — and, as every office is, subordinate to the Office of the Citizen.
- Its powers are advisory, convening and ceremonial. It preserves continuity, lends mature judgement, upholds the principle of the greatest for the least, and gives public dignity to the Chapter’s work. It does not administer and it does not execute.
- There is one grade of Centorian dignity. No rank, tier, grade or other differential status exists among Centorians; the three classes of the composition govern composition only and confer no standing. Membership is held at city level; the dignity is global. The Legionary and the Global Centory are councils at wider levels, composed wholly of City Centorians seated in them: no Centorian is created above the City, and the dignity is the same at every level. It is neither an honour nor an office.
- A Centorian is a GIVA. Each Centorian is admitted to one Centory only, and no Centorian serves simultaneously on a Board of Trustees or an Executive Committee.
- The dignity is indelible, and perpetual. Once accepted it cannot be renounced by the Centorian nor withdrawn or diminished by any organ of Givingtide: its permanence is a founding principle of the Centory, and not a favour held at anyone’s pleasure. No age, incapacity, disqualification, suspension or withdrawal from participation affects it or vacates the Stall. Participation may be suspended and an office of the Centory may be resigned; the dignity cannot be forfeited. Death ends the membership but not the dignity: there is no former Centorian, and no name is ever struck from the Album.
- The dignity is personal. It confers no title, style or standing on any spouse or relative. A spouse of the required distinction may be admitted as a Centorian in their own right. At every ceremonial occasion the spouse of a Centorian is received and placed with the Centorian; the Centory’s deliberations are for Centorians alone.
One hundred is a ceiling, and not a target
There is no size to which a Centory must grow. No minimum beyond nine is prescribed: a Centory of nine is as valid and as permanent as a Centory of a hundred.
Three separate tenths temper the composition of every Centory. Each Centory aims to have not fewer than one in ten of its Centorians in council drawn from each of three classes:
- Emeriti Professores — Professorial emeriti. Professors whose own universities have already conferred emeritus status and who are resident in or native to the City.
- Emeriti Insignes — Signal emeriti. Centorians elected for recognised distinction rather than by virtue of a qualifying office.
- Emeriti Concives — Concivic emeriti. Centorians who were not, at birth, nationals of the country in which their City is situated, or neither of whose parents was, at that parent’s birth, a national of that country.
The aspirations. Alongside these three tenths, each Centory aspires to equal numbers of women and men, and to not fewer than three women in every ten Centorians.
These proportions are aspirations, not quotas. No election is invalid merely because a class falls below its intended proportion, and no class is limited to its intended proportion. A Centorian may belong to more than one class simultaneously. The proportions are calculated using Centorians in council.
Every power, from the ninth
A Centory comes into being when its ninth Centorian accepts the dignity, and from that moment exercises every power belonging to it. There is no further threshold, and no higher body’s concurrence is required for a Centory to act. The Legionary and the Global Centory come into being on the same terms, each when its ninth Centorian is seated.
Ordinary powers
Advisory, convening and ceremonial: advising and advocacy, convening, receiving reports, speaking for the city, and every ceremonial function. The Centory counsels the Chapter rather than administering it: it has no executive function.
Reserved powers
Its electoral and reserved powers: the election of Centorians; the election and removal of the Centarch, the Deputy Centarch and the Clerk; the election of Legionary Centorians; and the other acts reserved to it.
Three offices, and a permanent record
The Centory has three offices, all elected on the same terms and all from the constitution of a Centory.
Each Centory keeps its own Album as its part of the Album Centorium, which Givingtide International consolidates and publishes from the Centorys’ returns. It is permanent. Accepting the dignity means accepting the public entry: every Centorian appears by name, by the category under which the seat is held, by institution, City and year of election, with the Seal of the Centorian and motto and the Citation — one sentence of not more than fifty words, adopted by the electors when they elect, which the person elected may correct or amend but does not prepare.
The Books of the Centory. Each City Centory keeps three continuing records in bound volumes in the Clerk’s custody, in constitutional order: the Book of Wealth, bound in GIVA gold, recording each Centorian’s adherence as a GIVA to the 1-1-1 Framework; the Book of Wellness, bound in green, recording each Centorian’s charge as a Citizen as it bears on Preemptology; and the Book of Wisdom, bound in blue, recording each Centorian’s place in the Centory and the Centory’s vocation. The signature is the name alone, ordinarily in the Centorian’s own hand.
The entry is never expunged. The Album is cumulative: names are not removed upon death, and it records all who have ever sat while distinguishing the current membership from the whole. No name is struck from it or altered in it on any ground, by any organ, save to correct the record of a fact or as the law requires. Each entry carries the Centorian’s stall plate.
The dignity runs from election; the rite recognises it
A Centorian holds the dignity from written acceptance of the Secretary General’s confidential offer, and the dignity is dated from the moment of election. The offer states that the dignity, once accepted, is indelible and perpetual. Installation is its ceremonial recognition, and it is observed once in a Centorian’s lifetime.
- The Stall — the Centorian being installed is the installand — is the individual and permanent place of a Centorian within the Centory, expressed by the stall plate entered in the Album and displayed at the Centory’s own website, and by a seat where the Centory has a chamber. The Stalls are unranked: their order is the order of election, and among Centorians elected on one date the order of age; a translated Centorian keeps the date of first election; and the Centarch presides by function and not by rank.
- The stall plate bears the Centorian’s name; the category under which the seat is held, the institution in full and never by acronym; the three commonweal rings; the Seal of the Centorian; and the Centorian’s motto.
- The Seal of the Centorian is a personal emblem in the tradition of the Centorian’s own culture — lawfully granted arms, a mon, a calligraphic name, or any other form — recorded with the motto in the Register of Centorian Seals kept by the Secretariat. It is personal to the living Centorian, is not hereditary, and is retired to the archive on death.
- Translation. A Centorian who changes city is translated from one Centory to another. The translation is approved by the Secretariat, which satisfies itself of a seat in the receiving Centory, and is marked by the affixing of the Centorian’s plate to a new Stall there. Elevation to a wider level and translation are recorded on the plate and marked at the Centory’s next occasion; neither is repeated, and neither confers the dignity again.
Three movements, three silences
A Give 100 semidon of no more than one hundred minutes; the reception that follows stands outside them. The Centory is the Semidon Host, represented by its Centorians. The ceremonial roll is one hundred: the installand as Host Semidonian, and ninety-nine Semidon Guests drawn from beyond the estate of the installand’s own category, among whom is the Orator of the Installation where one serves. Each Centorian of the Host may be accompanied by one witness, and witnesses stand outside the roll. Others may attend without joining it: the roll of one hundred is the ceremonial roll, and not a limit on attendance. The installand’s spouse or companion is placed with the installand, off the plate and off the hundredth light.
The Installation
The installand is installed in the Stall, the stall plate being read aloud by the Orator of the Installation or, where there is no Orator, by the Clerk. The installand then signs the Books of the Centory. The one-minute Silence of Vocation follows, in which the installand makes an inward commitment to the Centorian vocation and the Centory an inward commitment to support the installand in it.
The Enkindling
The Semidon Guests who are present enkindle their commonweal lights; the lights of absent Guests are enkindled in the Commonweal Candelabrum. The Orator bears the Host’s hundredth light to the installand, who enkindles it on behalf of the Centory; where there is no Orator, the installand takes it up without a bearer. The hosting Centorians other than the installand hold their own Commonweal Candles unlit.
All one hundred lights are displayed together for one hundred seconds, those in hand held aloft. The installand leads the assembly in the Commonweal Acclamation — Common weal; common health; common peace. The lights are then placed in the Candelabrum, forming the Commonweal Flame, before which the one-minute Silence of Inward Commitment is kept.
The Enthronement of the World
The installand places, or causes to be placed, the globe upon the pedestal above the Commonweal Flame, so that the lights illuminate the world and the world stands above the Centorian’s dignity. The Centarch then speaks the charge, which the installand receives in silence. The third silence is kept for one minute, after which the reception follows.
The charge, spoken at every installation: “This dignity is not given that the world may serve the Centorian, but that the Centorian may serve the world.”
The Centorian dignity alone is installed and enthroned. Every other office is assumed at a Semidon of Assumption, by the presentation of the insignia of office and the plighting of the Troth of Office after the Enkindling: a dignity is received in silence, and an office is assumed on troth. Where a whole founding cohort enters together, the three movements are observed once for all of them at the City Founding Semidon, and no Centorian of a founding cohort waits for a private birthday observance.
How a Centorian is styled
Curators, the Global Council, and the Exemplars
The City Centory Curators. The Curators are at once the founding core of a city’s Centory and the architects of its founding. Their work is to gather the city’s completed leadership and prepare the foundation of its Centory: they map where that leadership is to be found, receive and consider names, prepare the Album, and elect the remaining founding Centorians. Curators are drawn from the city’s completed leadership, its emeriti professors first, and the invitation to serve is itself election as a Centorian. Curatorial service is bounded, civic and honorary. See how a Chapter is founded →
The Global Centory. The Global Advisory Council is the Global Centory acting in its governance capacity, and is the highest Centory in the order: no more than one hundred Global Centorians, drawn from the Legionary Centorians. It exercises the highest advisory and supervisory function of the order, and holds the reserve powers that go with it. Among them, the Global Advisory Council designates a succeeding Universal Project once the current Universal Project has fulfilled its defined completion condition, against nine published criteria. In all else it preserves the dignity of the Centorian order worldwide and guards the principle of the greatest for the least at global level. Read the governance architecture →
The Exemplars. The Instruments of Peace learn from completed lives. A living person of equivalent stature is a possible Centorian; an Exemplar is a life already complete. In each Decade the Global Centory names nine Paragons and one Archetype: three Paragons to each Instrument, and an Archetype, where a life qualifies that models all three Instruments at once. The Archetype is the defining prototype; the Paragons are its embodiments in each Instrument. Designation and announcement are distinct: the first cohort, the Global Exemplars of 2027–2036, is designated by the founding trustees following the relevant consultation, and is announced in 2037. Every City Centory names one City Exemplar a year, nominated by the GIVAs of the Chapter on the Days of Account and announced on Givingtide Day following. The Exemplars, global and city, together with the Album of living and deceased Centorians by city, are published at the Centory’s own website. How the Exemplars are chosen →
The wisdom of a city, kept in service.
The Centory is constituted city by city, when its ninth Centorian accepts the dignity. Wherever a Givingtide Chapter takes root, the work of gathering completed leadership can begin. Every city possesses experience worth preserving, wisdom worth sharing and lives capable of serving generations yet to come.