Gratuitous: uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted; unjustified, uncalled for. unprovoked, undue; indefensible, unjustifiable; needless, unnecessary, inessential, unmerited, groundless, senseless, wanton, indiscriminate; excessive, immoderate, inordinate, inappropriate — and it only get worse from there.

From the perspective of Christian ideology, gratuitous grace is redundant. Grace, by its very nature, comes as a gift — it is granted without condition — from the Creator of the Universe. But I wonder what it might mean in a humanist context; of, by, and for the relationships we have with one another, rather than those with the Supreme Being. Are we configured to bestow grace on our fellow creatures unconditionally? Surely there’s been an instance or two in more than one hundred and sixty years of Agincourt as a place of presumed civility for the question to have arisen.