AtDTDA [38] p. 1084/1085: Bending Light, Creating Invisibility

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          MK: Why does TRP capitalize Word?.........

I suppose that "The Word", as in the revealed word from "On high", would apply [in an ironic fashion] to "The Word" describing Italy's new direction.

But as usual, it probably boils down to the Biblical sense of the Word:


From: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Logos

          The Logos

          The word Logos is the term by which Christian theology in 
          the Greek language designates the Word of God, or Second 
          Person of the Blessed Trinity. Before St. John had 
          consecrated this term by adopting it, the Greeks and the 
          Jews had used it to express religious conceptions which, 
          under various titles, have exercised a certain influence on 
          Christian theology, and of which it is necessary to say 
          something.

          The logos in Hellenism

          It is in Heraclitus that the theory of the Logos appears for the 
          first time, and it is doubtless for this reason that, first among 
          the Greek philosophers, Heraclitus was regarded by St. Justin 
          (Apol. I, 46) as a Christian before Christ. For him the Logos, 
          which he seems to identify with fire, is that universal principle 
          which animates and rules the world. This conception could 
          only find place in a materialistic monism. The philosophers 
          of the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ were dualists, 
          and conceived of God as transcendent, so that neither in 
          Plato (whatever may have been said on the subject) nor in
           Aristotle do we find the theory of the Logos.

          It reappears in the writings of the Stoics, and it is especially 
          by them that this theory is developed. God, according to 
          them, "did not make the world as an artisan does his work, 
          but it is by wholly penetrating all matter that He is the demiurge 
          of the universe" (Galen, "De qual. incorp." in "Fr. Stoic.", ed. 
          von Arnim, II, 6); He penetrates the world "as honey does 
          the honeycomb" (Tertullian, "Adv. Hermogenem", 44), this 
          God so intimately mingled with the world is fire or ignited air; 
          inasmuch as He is the principle controlling the universe, He 
          is called Logos; and inasmuch as He IS the germ from which 
          all else develops, He is called the seminal Logos (logos 
          spermatikos). This Logos is at the same time a force and 
          a law, an irresistible force which bears along the entire world 
          and all creatures to a common end, an inevitable and holy 
          law from which nothing can withdraw itself, and which every 
          reasonable man should follow willingly (Cleanthus, "Hymn 
          to Zeus" in "Fr. Stoic." I, 527-cf. 537). Conformably to their 
          exegetical habits, the Stoics made of the different gods 
          personifications of the Logos, e.g. of Zeus and above all 
          of Hermes.

          At Alexandria, Hermes was identified with Thoth, the god of 
          Hermopolis, known later as the great Hermes, "Hermes 
          Trismegistus", and represented as the revealer of all 
          letters and all religion. Simultaneously, the Logos theory 
          conformed to the current Neoplatonistic dualism in Alexandria: 
          the Logos is not conceived of as nature or immanent necessity, 
          but as an intermediary agent by which the transcendent God 
          governs the world. This conception appears in Plutarch, 
          especially in his "Isis and Osiris"; from an early date in the 
          first century of the Christian era, it influenced profoundly the 
          Jewish philosopher Philo.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09328a.htm