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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
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Welcome to everyone here! Welcome to those of us who are "old timers" and have spent years participating in The Story of Civilization. And a special welcome to those newcomers who are wondering if they would like to be part of our family here. We feel sure that you will be comfortable in a short period of time.
Remember how the old radio serials went? The announcer says: "When we left the Jones family, Martha was talking to the children about their school work and her husband, John, was ready to leave for work. As we listen in today, we hear Martha saying . . . . . " You get the idea.
Well, the Senior Net fell down about our ears just as we were ready to start reading Chapter XII (Emilia and the Marches) on Page 327 in Volume Five, The Renaissance. Rest easy, newcomers. We are not about to throw you into the center of a story which you had not been following. Ever so gradually we will help you get your feet wet. In the meantime, we ask your help. Very simply, "sign in" so to speak, so we know you are here. Tell us something briefly about yourself, why you are here, and how we can make your life easier. Bit by bit, as you do that, I, as the Discussion Leader, will give you a picture of what we have been discussing since the start of the volume.
We are a very informal group here. None of us pretend to be experts. If you read carefully the Heading above, you will see the goal of this discussion group. We just want to know the flow of civilization and see how we are a part of it. You will get the hang of it as we go along. For the moment ignore the comments in the color green above.
I am waiting for your posts. Tell us who you are.
Robby
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Hi Robby - It looks as though I'm first in and in that context I can't resist the old cliche 'first time for everything' -
I don't think you know me but I 'know' you as I was an occasional 'lurker' at the old site and enjoyed the discussion whenever I found time to linger and savour the posts. I'm not sure that I will be able to participate fully even now but at least you will know that I may be here sometimes.
I can't think what to say about myself that's pertinent except that I'm a bookaholic - I love classic literature of many kinds: the Greeks, Medieval texts, Renaissance (I know more of the English than Italian - though Petrarch and Boccaccio are on my shelves). 19th century novel is a particular interest of mine - English and European though I only really read in English. I like a little history and you could say I was a little 'into art' but I'm not much into politics. I read. and among other things, I paint as a 'serious amateur' read, garden and read....I'm an Aussie and live in beautiful Perth on the west coast. I came to SNet about three years ago and have enjoyed the books folders enormously and am grateful to Ginny et al for their work in providing us with this new site. So now you know!
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Well, Australia beat everyone to the punch. Welcome, Gumtree! Just make a comment every so often so we know that you are with us. I have a hunch you will be more active than you think. And BTW, what is a Gumtree outside of being your screen name?
Robby
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HOORAY again, Brian's here and as soon as I read the latest episode I will be in with both feet.
Welcome Gumtree. One for Australia - - - one for Canada.
I feel sure that safely launched in our new home, thanks again to all who made it possible, we will sail with the wind behind us all the way to the end.
Brian.
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Hi Robby and Everyone else,
Like Gumtree, I was a lurker off and on in the the previous SOC discussion. I started out in Latin a few years ago and just dropped out recently. But while in Latin I learned a lot about Ancient Rome and that time in History. I have always had an interest in History.
I have the first nine volumes of the Story of Civilization and hope to take a more active part now.
My husband and I retired to Hot Springs, Arkansas fifteen years ago from Chicago, Illinois. He is the Coordinator of the Hot Springs SeniorNet Learning Center here in Hot Springs. And we met you on the elevator in Washington, D.C. at the SN 20th Anniversary bash in Oct. 2006.
Thank you for leading this discussion, and as I have indicated before, I'll be happy to type any portion of the discussion that's needed.
Evelyn
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Hi Robby - glad to see you here and hope you are feeling better than the last time i checked in in the Fall.
I'm a Northeastener - Pennsylvania and New Jersey - and first found SofC a few years ago when searching for some resources for a Western Civ course i was teaching. In my google search up popped SN and SofC. That was the beginning of my having days and days (actually YEARS now) of enjoyment "chatting" w/ all the folks in the book discussions of SN, and lurking often, enjoying the posts and the amazing knowledge of the posters here and in other discussions.
How wonderful to see some of the book discussions, including Sof C back on board. And i have to thank Robby again for spending so much of his time leading us for sev'l years in this wonderful discussion of WEstern Civilization.
WHOPPEE! ............jean
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Brian: I know you've been waiting for so long for us to get back into action - but here we are and glad you waited.
Mabel: I remember your active participation as we moved thru SofC in SN. Thank you for re-joining us.
Evelyn: I'm trying to remember that elevator event. Was it two years ago that the SN had its anniversary? Tempis fugit! And thank you for your typing offer. There will be times when my arthritic right arm complains and then I will turn to you.
Robby
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To give newcomers a taste of what we have been discussing and to refresh the memories of long-timers here, we started this volume by discusssing the Age of Petrarch and Boccaccio. We read about Francesco Petrarca being the "Father of the Renaissance" and talked some about the city of Naples. We also discussed Siena, Milan, Venice and Genoa.
If those names spark a thought in any of you, please comment on them, even if it is not related in any way to what Durant told us. Have you read about those cities? Have you visited any of them? Please share your memories.
Robby
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HOORAH! We're back, with our fearless leader, Robby. I discovered SOC some years ago (just at the beginning of the Romans -- 4 years) and have been an avid Seniornetter ever since. (I guess I should say Seniorlearner. That has a nice ring). I lurk more than I post, but I'm always here.
I was born and lived most of my life in Washington D.C. I met you two years ago at our twenty year celebration. Two years ago I moved to sunny Southern California. I read just about everything that's printed from mysteries to "great books" to history to poetry to ... And here, I always find people who are reading the same things.
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So glad you're back with us, Joan, as one of our "old" timers. I guess I can afford to make comments like that because I believe I am the oldest one here -- maybe the oldest in SeniorLearn for all I know.
Robby
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Hey, I like being an "oldtimer".
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I'm delighted to see that SOC will continue at this new site. A blessing for the participants familiar with the intriguing posts of the past and a new way of developing future friendships among more recent posters. Washington DC was a wonderful place to meet some of the SN folks. As a former long-time resident of the metropolitan Washington DC area, I can certainly attest to that from personal experience.
ROBBY - Welcome! it's delightful that you will continue to guide posters, help to entice questions and interests in the SOC and add your own brand of humor and genuine interest in learning to the discussion. You may be interested to know that both my son (now stationed in Germany with his family) and my husband (teaching in Egypt until February) printed occasional comments from former SOC discussions and shared them with friends, colleagues and students.
Mahlia
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hi Robby et al.
'glad to see this is a continuation and noticed in the heading that there are many thinkers, writers, artists, etc. that I don't know and will be glad to meet.
I drop in and out of here in a disorganized way, but do enjoy the virtues of this place and all of you...
Claire/winsum
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Mahlia: You have told us so often about your husband who teaches in Egypt and who is interested in our discussions here. He is living in an area which is regularly on the news these days. We all hope he is OK.
Claire: I had been wondering if you knew about our new SL. I keep wanting to say SN. Welcome back.
To newcomers here, Claire is an "oldtimer" who has for years shared her wisdom with us and I just know will continue to be active in this discussion.
Robby
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A few postings back, I mentioned some cities which were part of the Renaissance. I did this to show newcomers how Volume 5 (The Renaissance) began and to tickle the memory of those who had been here before.
I mentioned Naples, Siena, Milan, Venice and Genoa. If anyone here has been to any of these cities, have read a bit about any of them, or just dream about them, share your memories and thoughts with us. In a fairly rapid fashion I will move us through the chapter sections we have already covered and will bring us up to where we were when SN crashed.
The remarks of a Discussion Leader do not make a discussion successful. The lively comments of participants do. Come - let us rejuvenate Story of Civilization.
Robby
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To give newcomers a taste of what we have been discussing and to refresh the memories of long-timers here, we started this volume by discusssing the Age of Petrarch and Boccaccio. We read about Francesco Petrarca being the "Father of the Renaissance" and talked some about the city of Naples. We also discussed Siena, Milan, Venice and Genoa.
If those names spark a thought in any of you, please comment on them, even if it is not related in any way to what Durant told us. Have you read about those cities? Have you visited any of them? Please share your memories.
Robby
For many years I have been interested in literary history so I've been trying to recall whatever it is that I once knew about Petrarch and Boccaccio. I gather they have already been discussed on the old site but if you can bear with me here are a few snippets which come to mind...
So far as Petrarch goes I remember that he had a passion for the ancient Greek & Latin literature and was one of the first to realise the significance of Greek literature and to read the classical texts with any real insight. He learned Greek specifically to read Homer in the original and searched all over Europe for Greek and Latin manuscripts to build up his personal library.
It is in his poetry that we see his greatest literary achievement and the greatest of these is the series written in Italian and dedicated to 'Laura' whom he loved from a distance in the manner of the courtly love tradition. Laura is pure and chaste and there are many references in commentaries as to what might have happened if one day she had decided to yield - I daresay Petrarch would have run for dear life! It would have ruined the poetry had she given in to his blandishments so it's just as well that she behaved herself.
Here's one of his pieces:
A Complaint by Night of the Lover not Beloved (Francesco Petrarca)
Alas, so all things now do hold their peace!
Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing;
The beasts, the air, the birds their song do cease,
The nightes car the stars about doth bring;
Calm is the sea; the waves work less and less:
So am not I, whom love, alas! doth wring,
Bringing before my face the great increase
Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing,
In joy and woe, as in a doubtful case.
For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring;
But by and by, the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.
[/b]
Trans. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Petrarch's sonnets have had a strong influence on the lyric poetry of Europe including that of English verse. In the 15th and 16th centuries it was common among young Englishmen who were travelling in Italy as part of their education to become so enthralled by Petrarch's sonnets that they tried their hand at the same thing only in English. As a result we have the poems of men like Sir Thomas Wyatt (who, in fact brought the sonnet form into English literature), Sir Phillip Sidney and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey who was responsible for translating Petrarch into English (I've used his translation above). And there's no doubt too, that especially in the sonnets Shakespeare shows the Petrarchian influence.
Robby, Tell me if this isn't the sort of thing you want.
You asked me what a Gumtree is other than my screen name- Gum tree is the common name for the numerous varieties of Eucaltypt trees which dominate the Australian landscape. There are 1500 (and still counting) different ones from small scrubby bushes to giant, elegant trees soaring into the sky. My favourites are the Eucalyptus Marginata - the Jarrah which produces a glorious reddish hardwood which is much prized and becoming rarer to acquire in quantity, and the Eucalyptus Diversifolia - the Karri also a good wood but which in season puts on a superb colouration in its bark that ranges from pale pink through apricots to salmon, into pale pale blues, soft greys and silver. - all at once - it's simply stunning to see. The Gum trees are intrinsically Australian - as am I.
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Yes, Gumtree, that is exactly the type of sharing to which I was referring. Sometimes we speak directly to comments by Durant but at other times Durant brings to mind items which relate to our overall topic. I had no idea that Petrarch's sonnets had an influence on English verse. Thank you for this.
Robby
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Thank you, Gumtree. That's lovely. I've heard the first line quoted, but didn't know where it came from.
Random thought: I guess Pasternak got the idea of Dr. Zhivago writing poems to Lara whom he had lost from Plutarch.
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Hi, Winsom. Good to see you back!
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Thank you, Gumtree. That's lovely. I've heard the first line quoted, but didn't know where it came from.
Random thought: I guess Pasternak got the idea of Dr. Zhivago writing poems to Lara whom he had lost from Plutarch.
JoanKGood to be with you again.
Your random thought is in fact, absolutely pertinent and is a multi-faceted example of how Petrarch's influence has become part and parcel of western literature and culture.
Firstly, Pasternak, a great 20th Century writer, (Nobel Prize and all that) in his own country is more renown for his poetry rather than his novels. In the 'Lara poems' we have examples of his skill and whilst they don't take the same form as Petrarch's they are poems to the unattainable lady.
The second thing is that Pasternak makes his character, the young Zhivago, write the poems to Lara just as the young Englishmen, I mentioned wrote to their fair damsels in 15th and 16th centuries - remember all those pieces with titles like "To my Fair Mistress' or 'Lines written to a Lady-in-waiting' 'To the Fair Maiden' etc etc
And thirdly all this takes place in a Russian context and in a 19th Century time frame. A far cry from Petrarch's 14th century Italy.
What I guess I'm saying is that over the centuries the Petrachian influence has become so entwined in western culture that we don't even know that it's there.
It's a very long time since we all read Zhivago but I have sometimes wondered whether Pasternak deliberately chose the name Lara as a nod to the Italian master - it is very close to Laura.
For me, Shakespeare was the one who really perfected the sonnet form and again there is the nod to Petrarch in his series dedicated to his 'Dark Lady' - but that's too far ahead...
Poor Laura was a real person. Sadly she died during the plague. Thereafter Petrarch himself divided his literary output into two sections - that written before she died and that composed after her death.
After Petrarch died the Italian literary mantle was handed on to Boccaccio - but that's another story... for another day perhaps.
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It's so easy for most of us (not necessarily in our discussion here) to forget - or even be unaware of -- earlier influences on our lives - previous years, previous centuries, previous millennia. Thank you, Gumtree, for giving examples where the flow of Civilization is a Story.
Robby
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It is nice to be back in the Renaissance discussion and to see so many old friends reporting in. My thanks to those who made it possible for us to continue at this new site. The "crash" gave us a little longer holiday than we would normally take at this time of year but it was not unwelcome. We needed a break after many years of steady conversation. Now we are refreshed and ready to begin again.
It is pleasing to see so many lurkers and new hands coming in to add to the conversation. I am sure we will be our old lively selves again quite soon.
I live in central California very close to a Pacific beach. Inland mountains of the Pacific coast range come down very close to the ocean at this point and while Redwoods and Sierra Semper Virens predominate in these wooded areas Eucalytus trees (gumtrees) appear in groves. They were planted about 100 years ago and their odor at certain times of the year is quite strong. We are prone to fires in this neighborhood and when the Eucalytus trunk gets hot fire shoots from the top of the tree like a roman candle aiding in the spread of fire. Redwoods on the other hand use fire to open its cones for new growth. The trunks turn black but the tree continues.
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Justin - isn't nature amazing? Thanks for that info............jean
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Welcome back to our old friend, Justin, who has been a steady participant in SofC for years. We look forward to your usual pertinent comments.
As you may have noticed in prior postings, Justin, I am giving some brief memory ticklers of places and people we visited before the "crash." Any comments from you about Petrarch and Boccaccio or the cities of Naples, Siena, Milan, Venice, or Genoa?
Robby
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I have in the past spent many happy hours in Italy. It is a country with a rich history well expressed in painting, sculpture,mosaics, music and literature. Boccacio wrote to divert the mind from the plague as did Chaucer. The tales are with us today and can be read today with pertinence in our current lives.
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After discussing the cities mentioned above, we moved onto the Florentine Renaissance and the rise of the Medici. We read Durant's remarks about the Humanists; Architecture and the Age of Bruncellesco; Sculpture of Ghiberri, Donatello and Luca della Robbia, and Painting of Masaccio, Fra Angelico, and Fra Filippo Lippi.
Do these names strike a chord in anyone here?
Robby
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Luca della Robbia
Initially worked with marble and bronze, but found that coating terra cotta with a special glaze of his own invention, to make it weatherproof, was much less effort.
"But then Luca, after finishing these works, made a reckoning of how much he had earned, and how much time he had spent on them, and then realised that he had gained hardly anything despite his great efforts. So he resolved to abandon marble and bronze, [and], having considered that clay could be worked easily and that all that was wanting was a way by which the works made in clay could be preserved, he let his imagination loose so successfully that he found a way to protect it against the ravages of time.
And for this method of working...all ages to come will be under an obligation to him."
Brian.
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The glazed terra cottas of Lucca Della Robbia and especially, those of his nephew Andrea are exquisite achievements in the sculptor's art. The works of Donatello and Ghiberti were available at the time to have an influence in the work of Lucca. Lucca's glazes using an ancient tin based technique resulting in a smooth white surface over the brown or red terra cotta, is still used today. He was able to achieve long lasting surface's. His work today, having weathered centuries of climate variation, looks as fresh and pure as I'm sure it was in the Renaissance. His Madonna's exhibit a softness rarely found in other media.
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Masaccio
(http://members.shaw.ca/bduheaume/Madonna_Masaccio.jpg)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Madonna_and_Child_(Masaccio)
Brian.
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Brian: The masaccio Madonna failed to appear.
Brian: I am not aware of a Madonna done by Masaccio but it's possible he did one. Goodness knows, almost everyone did a Madonna. He introduced major changes in the art of fresco painting, particularly through an application of mathematics to perspective. His light as I recall came from a source that allowed him to define characters. He died at age 27, hardly an age, that allowed for a large body of work. He did one called " the expulsion", another for the Brancacci Chapel call la Trinitas, and a third called the "Tribute money." There is in his work a great awareness of Giotto.
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JUSTIN: how great to see you again! I'm a Californian too, but Southern California. I wish we were closer. Winsom and I are alone down here among bookies, and not that close to each other.
Now Florence is a city I will always love, even though I only spent a week there, 45 years ago. What I remember most vividly is not the great art but the light on the stones of which the city is made.
Do the terra cotta sculptures reflect at all that wonderful color?
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Justin - - - try the refresh button. Anyway, the link will take you to the relevant page, and there is the picture in the rest of the information.
Brian.
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Thank you JUstin and Brian............I know very few specifics about Renaissance art except for the bios i've read of Michaelangelo, so i'm enjoying your additional information about the art and the artists............jean
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While we are waiting for the resumption of the text, I thought I might inject a little levity into the discussion by posting a copy of the email I have just received.
History 101
For those that don't know about history ... Here is a condensed version:
Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They
lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on
fish and lobster in the winter.
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the
invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the
foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of
humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1. Liberals, and 2. Conservatives.
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture.
Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans
were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery.
That's how villages were formed.
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were
drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the
conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and
hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as
girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the
invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide
how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.
Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land
animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or
imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and
French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of
their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers,
personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are
liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the
pitcher also bat.
Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women.
Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers,
firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, airline
pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies
hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to
do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened. That is why
most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were emigrating to other
parts of the world. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of
trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today's lesson in world history:
Being a Canadian, I don't have to support either party!
Brian.
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Funny Brian - appalling, but funny - the danger is some folks taking it seriously :o. I'll forward it to my Republican friend who's freezing in Montana at the moment.......... :P ........jean
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Well, I'll be darned. There is a Masaccio Madonna and an unusual one at that. The Madonna is a plain Jane with double chin who appears to be feeding grapes to the child. The juice has dripped and stained her garment as well as the chilld's leg. The haloes appear to be hammered in gold in the Byzantine style. A large archtectural throne is provided to indicate majesty but in my judgement the heavy monumental throne is incongruous with the very human activity of the mother and child. A third dimension with projection is achieved by positioning angel putti just behind the arms of the throne. The pyramidal form of the composition is typical of the period.
The symbolism of the grapes is interesting. It derives from the wine produced at the Marriage of Cana as well as the use of wine at the Last Supper in the transubstantiation process. The young Masaccio must have thought it was all a good joke as the child pushes the grapes into his mouth.
Masaccio's other works while much more serious also have a whimsical side. He may have had fun with Adam and Eve's nakedness and the interplay of hands in the Expulsion. Also in pulling the coin from the fish's mouth for the tax collector in the "Tribute," there is humor. The scene with the tax collector is the one supporting the "render unto Caesar etc." phrase. I have never really seen the whimsy in Masaccio's work before this. I will look more carefully at his other pieces.
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Brian indicated where we came from and where we are now but not where we are headed.
Robby
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Is there no conservative faction in Canada? How about the French only crowd in Quebec? Conservatives usually defend the status quo. Liberals often want to change things.
In the US we achieve deadlock by electing a President of one persuasion and a Congress of the opposite persuasion. When all branches of government are of one persuasion as was the case with the Bush administration, the bulk of the electorate usually loses if the power is conservative and wins if liberal.
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Justin - - - of course Canada has a "conservative faction" - - - in fact, at present it has a Conservative Government, albeit a minority government.
We have Conservatives and Liberals having some similarities to your Republicans and Democrats. We also have the NDP (National Democratic Party) supposedly representing labour (read - labor), and we have the PQ (Partie Quebecois) whose sole aim is eventually to enable Quebec to separate from Canada, and become an entirely self-governing country. We also have a smattering of other parties, including the Green Party.
The email I quoted, obviously originated in the U.S., and was meant to generate a smile from half of our members and maybe a growl from the other half. It seems to have acheived its target.
Brian
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
JUSTIN January 9, 2009
Brian: I was smiling when I wrote my reply to your con/lib message.
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Brian: I was smiling when I wrote the reply.
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Justin - - - Does that smile make you a Republican?
Brian.
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I was smiling when I wrote the reply.
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BRIAN = yesterday I forwarded a copy of your History 101 to a couple of friends/colleagues and am still laughing at their replies. The first one went to a fellow who is a Catholic priest, born and lives in Africa, went to school in Ireland and still speaks with a Dublin accent. The second one was sent to a man in Azerbaijan, who is the director of an institute focused on world peace. Their replies basically stated they (like you) felt lucky not to have to choose which political party to support.
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As we continued in the early chapters of this fifth volume on The Renaissance, Durant called our attention to what he called "The Golden Age." He spoke of Piero il Gottoso and Lorenzo the Magnificent. Under the heading of Literature he told us about Politian. Regarding Architecture and Sculpture, he discussed the Age of Verrocchio. He told us about the painters Ghirlandaio and Botticelli.
What thoughts and comments do any of you have as you read the names above?
Robby
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I see myself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Very often that leaves me partyless much like you and the Irishman in Azerbajian.
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Hi Robby and all. Good to see the 'Story' is back online. I don't have anything to contribute today, perhaps later.
Emily
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WELCOME, WELCOME Emily!
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Emily; It is nice to hear your voice again.
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Any comments regarding Post 45?
Robby
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Justin - social liberal/fiscal conservative - you sound like many of the Quakers who live around me here in NJ. I think they pick their party depending on what is going on in the world. When we first moved here many of them were members of SANE (anti-nuclear assn) and were anti-war (Viet Nam), so they could continue being Rpublicans after 1968, but i know some have meandered back and forth between parties as the decades have passed. We sometimes need another- or two - political parties as the two major parties become more idealogue, maybe w/ our new administration there is some hope for less extremes and more inclusion of different policies..................jean
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Jean: It is difficult wearing a party label. I think for example that fiscal responsibility is the right course for government and that the Republicans make that condition a part of their platform but they in actuality have been more irresponsible fiscally than the Democrats not just in this current administration but over the long haul. It is the Democrats who have lowered the cost of government and reduced the overall debt as well as minimized the annual deficit. It was Clinton who found himself with a surplus and a lower debt.
Back to the Renaissance before Robby gets after us for breaking the rules.
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As to Post 45, the onlyname I know from there is Botticelli. Should we look at "Venus on the half-shell" as we go by?
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Here it is:
http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/geschichten/venus.html (http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/geschichten/venus.html)
Not a great print: the best i found with a quick search.
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And here is Primavera (didn't we already do this once?)
http://home.comcast.net/~mmarmor/Primavera.htm (http://home.comcast.net/~mmarmor/Primavera.htm)
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It's nice that you mention Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in the same post for the two worked on projects together but were very different in their approach to iconography and composition. Ghirlandaio was more like our illustrator, Norman Rockwell in that he did the popular thing. The mathematical realism of Masaccio was on the way out when Ghirlandaio adopted his manner. Ghirlandaio used portraits of well known people from his local community as models to illustrate works with religious content and he set the scenes in what was then modern times. One, today, may find it strange, to see a nativity, for example, placed in a 15th century setting with 15th century garments.
Michelangelo Buonorotti apprenticed to Ghirlandaio and certainly some of the naturalism we see in Michelangelo is due to that apprenticeship. Of Course, Flemish painters like Van der Goes gave them both a taste of naturalism which they readilly absorbed. One can see this very clearly in Ghirlandaio's portrait of "The Old man and his Grandson." It is a magnificent example of what one can do in egg tempera.
Botticelli, on the other hand, introduced people of the 15th century to secular topics, to mythological scenes. The Platonic school was active under Medici influence and the works of Roman sculptors and Roman painters were being unearthed quite frequently so there was a classical awareness extant that impressed patrons of Art and the artists responded as did Botticelli. He was part of the reaction against Masaccio's mathematical painting but he went beyond compositional change to secular iconography. "The Birth of Venus" is a good example of a Botticelli topic. So too is "Primavera."
It is worth noting that Botticelli depicted elongated forms in his paintings which later influenced Michelangelo and the Mannerist's who followed him. Mannerism was characterized by idealized forms which tended to be elongated rather than natural.
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Joan: Regarding "having already done something," I am quickly and succinctly going over the early part of Volume Five, partly to refresh our regulars so we can ease into where we were and partly to help newcomers here.
Robby
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While reading Byron tonight I came across some lines that brought our earlier work with Petrarch back into focus.
There's doubtless something in domestic doings
Which forms, infact, true love's antithesis;
Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages:
For no one cares for matrimonial cooings,
There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss:
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?
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Justin Thanks for the lines from Byron - very apropos. They have been running through my mind during the past week or so but I couldn't recall Byron as the author. I guess I will never forget that now.
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As we moved through The Renaissance, we examined Milan. We talked about Piedmont and Liguria, Pavia, The Visconti, The Sforzas, and the letters and arts of that geographical area.
We spent some time discussing Leonardo da Vinci and his development in Milan, Florence, and Rome.
Any comments about Leonardo or the cities named above?
Robby
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JUSTIN: that's great.
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Robby has asked those of you who have been to these places to comment - i really appreciate those comments and pictures since i have never been to Europe, so please, continue...............jean
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This link is called Photoart. It is a rather new medium much removed from the time period we are currently reading. Perhaps it will take Mabel on a tour, as I felt as though I was inside this beautifully decorated church.
Use the buttons at the bottom to move around the room which will give a panaramic view. Be sure to use the + sign to zoom in on any interesting object. There is some art, perhaps Justin can identify some of it for us.
http://photoartkalmar.com/Photoart%20Kalmar%20high%20res/Gigapixel/Piaristenkircheflash.html
Emily
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Emily: Thank you. Identification of churches from the interior is always a challenge. One must play detective. It is a beautiful interior. The Church is German. Most probably some where in Southern Germany or Austria. it was built, I think, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The style of architecture is late Baroque, perhaps even Rococo. I think the architect was Balthazzor Neuman who was active until 1775. The church is Roman Catholic. You can tell that by the lights hanging from the crucifix which tell one the Blessed Sacrament is present at the altar. The interior is essentially naveless. The gallery and triforium windows let in large amounts of white light. There are no stained glass windows to color the light. The interior form is very similar to the pilgrimage church called Vierzehnheilgen at Franconia. The ceiling paintings are probably by Tiepolo and depict the Resurection of Christ and the Ascension of Mary.
On the right side wall near the entrance is an image of St. Agatha who may have been martyred nearby. Saint Sebastien is opposite however I can not see the image clearly, so it may be some other iconography. The acolyte and deacon's chairs to the left and right may have come from the attellier of Reimanschneider who was wood carver par excellence. The image over the main altar is a Nativity with the Virgin Mother enthroned as the Madonna. The Franciscan above the Crucifix may well be Saint John Napomuk, a local saint.
I choose South Germany because the north was heavily Protestant and ornamentation of the type we see in this church is not typical of the north and the protestant counter reformation. I choose late eighteenth century because of the Barogue-Rococo characteristics of the church and because I know that it was not until after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1650 or so and the expulsion of the Islamic turks from Vienna in1685 that building in great quantity began in the South German provinces. Hundreds of churches were built in the period between 1725 and 1825.
If you know the name of the church and it's location I would like to know it but it has been fun to speculate on it's identity.
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Thank you, Emily and Justin. This is exactly why this discussion site exists.
Robby
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Wow ! Thanks Emily for that link - it's superb
Thanks Justin for identifying the church - I'll take your possible (probable?) location and craftsmen as gospel.
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http://www.panoguide.com/gallery/503/
It's Piaristen Church in Vienna Justin.
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Justin - - - I am reading Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles with others on SeniorLearn, and wonder if you have been taking lessons from Sherlock Holmes.
That was an exemplary deduction on the whereabouts of the church.
More details of the Panorama can be found here http://www.panoguide.com/gallery/503/
Thank you, Eloise, for that little bit of fun.
Brian.
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Thank you Emily and Eloise - the pictures were wonderful. The carvings of the wood and marble are beautiful and exquisite.
O.K. Justin, you have officially amazed me.............thanks for all the information. I didn't know the meaning of the lights on the crucifix. As Robby says, learning those tidbits of information is one of the things i love about Senrior/net/learn................thanks to you all.............jean
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Eloise: It is nice to see you back in here. I have missed your comments very much. Thank you for identification of Piaresten. It is a church with a beautiful interior and it makes me want to return to Vienna. There are so many wonderful places to visit in the world it is hard to remain inactive. Your own Ste.Anne de Baupre is also quite lovely.
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JUSTIN: I can see you had a ball identifying the church and artwork. BRAVO! I recognize the process: it's similiar to fanatic birdwatchers trying to identify a strange bird.
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Thank you Justin for the informative reply. How lucky we are to have you as our tour guide through the Renaissance.
Thanks also to Eloise for pinpointing the exact location of the church, and the information on the photography.
Emily
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Emily, pinpointing the exact location of the church, and the information on the photography. No, I am not that smart. I just looked in your URL
I have seen many churches in my travels but not that one unfortunately. I guess I was just boasting when I posted that.
I am watching another historic even, American pre Inauguration and I am as mooved as everybody in the US. Congratulations Americans, yes you can.
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Reading Eloise's remarks about "Yes we can" caused me to look back up at the illustration in the Heading to this discussion indicating civilization's move from the cave man to the mother reading to her children. Is not what we are seeing in the news these days part of the "Story of Civilization?"
Robby
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Yes, Robbie: I was beginning to lose faith in the ability of the American people to pick a worthy candidate for the office of President but I am much encouraged by the Obama selection. WE did the right thing, I think, this time. Tomorrow, at the swearing-in, we can justifiably, be very proud. It is the way to go.
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I was thinking even broader than that. The Israel-Gaza conflict, the genocide in Darfur, the Russia-Ukraine dispute about the ownership of natural gas, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, capitalism in China, the success of the Harry Potter books, YouTube, Britney Spears, use of Viagra, Hurricane in New Orleans, Roger Clemens difficulty, OJ Simpson, safe sex, the BlackBerry, Tiger Woods, American Idol, MySpace, Starbucks, Miracle on the Hudson, life on Mars, Mugabe, match.com, red and blue states. Isn't this all part of the Story of Civilization?
Does the info that Durant gives us make us think of present day events? Do present day events make us think of the various cultures we have been examining?
Robby
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Every time period has it's own inimitable characteristics, some of which are veneer while others are significant in that they are later seen as a new thread leading to change in the way a society functions. Try to find among the ingredients you listed, Robby, those that are significant and therefore, worthy of an historian's pen. Will viagra lead to an increase in the birth rate among older persons? Will we learn enough from Darfur to prevent genocide in the years to come? Which of all these characteristics are veneer and which are significant? It is difficult to choose, is it not?
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We continue to remind ourselves of the path we took as we read the volume on The Renaissance. Under what Durant called the "Italian Pageant," he told us about Tuscany and Umbria, Mantua and Ferrara. bringing to our attention Piero della Francesca, Sognorelli, Perugino, Vittorino, the House of Este and the Arts in Ferrara.
Do any of the above strike chords in your thoughts?
Robby
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Yes, Isabella D'Este was one of the first major non eclesiastical patrons of the arts in the world. She spent the old Count's money like a woman bent on breaking the bank but the D"Este collection, still intact as the world approached the twentieth century, gave us the works of Pierro, Masaccio, Leonardo, Perugino, and many other outstanding Renaissance artists to see in our modern museums.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
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Jean, you were asking for our experience travelling to Italy and I had a few memories to share with you. I went there with a friend in the 1970s and our first stop after leaving Germany was Milan where we had to change trains on our way to Venice. Near the train station we came up by chance in the square where the Milan Cathedral is located. The monument made me stop dead on my tracks. You can’t imagine the emotion you feel looking at this beautiful cathedral. The delicateness of the architecture reminds you of an intricate lace pattern reaching up to the sky but its size doesn’t overpower you as it is in perfect balance sitting among the lower buildings in the square. My friend had to pull my sleeve so we wouldn’t miss our transfer.
The Milan Cathedral: http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t065/T065307A.jpg
After Venice we headed for Florence where I absolutely had to go to see Michelangelo’s David at the Academia. We went right in without delays and when you reach the round room you have to prepare yourself for a shock because it is a sculpture that you have seen a picture of many times in your life and wanted to see one day and there it stands in all its glory, alone high on a pedestal with a skylight over it that lets you see it in daylight. Another unforgettable memory.
I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to see beautiful Italian works of art in Milan, Venice, Naples and Rome. Just walking on the streets in these old cities takes you back a few centuries while you walk on narrow streets and look at ancient houses still occupied by the same family for generations. I am only sorry that I didn’t spend more time there because now I know I will never go back again.
I still have the journal of the places we stayed at and what we saw. Oh! yes and the price we paid, that is a shocker.
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Eloise: Thank you so much for sharing your emotions with us as you viewed the Milan Cathedral and Michelangelo's sculpture in Venice. And special thanks for linking us to a photo which helped us to see with our own eyes how spectacular it is.
Any comments from others here on Eloise's remarks?
Robby
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Thank you Eloise - I have seen the pictures of the Milan Cathedral often, but the picture you linked us to was glorious, thanks for sharing you feelings, i could see how you would stop dead in your tracks. .....................jean
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Thank You Eloise. The image of Milan is one to knock your socks off. The style of the facade is eclectic. The facade at Milan is different from every other facade in Renaissance Italy. The Italian style emphasizes horizontality while in Milan one sees a mix of styles. The city is so far north that Flemish influence is evident. There is a mix of Gothic, Italian Renaissance, (sometimes called "Italianate") and Romanesque styles in the make-up of the facade. It is a blend.
The first floor called piano is in Romanesque style although in the central portal the style is truncated. The arches are well rounded and very heavy in appearance. One can almost feel the weight bearing upon them. The next floor has a similar characteristic, however, the windows of the third level are pointed and adorned with stone tracery in style of English Gothic.
Two pilaster towers guarding the main portal rise toward heaven in the Gothic manner. Similarly, towers guard the aisle portals and their reaching fingers point the way to heaven. The overall thrust of the facade is upward or heavenward. The eyes of an observer are forced to rise and one must stand well back to recognize the significance of the verticality as well as the triangular shape of the facade.
Holy Family iconography has developed in the Renaissance as a triangular compoisition. Thus one can see the symbolism of the Holy Family as well as their residence in the facade.
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Robby I'm still here :)
Eloise thanks for the Milan image, your impressions are so vivid - and Justin your comments on the architectural features help to open my eyes - thanks
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Hi, Gumtree!! Even if you just say "hello," that's great.
Robby
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Gumtree's comments of "open our eyes" is just right - that's just what it is that makes it nice on the seniorlearn (etc.) sites where we have teachers/experts on so many subjects. As i said before, i have seen many of the places that you've talked about, but those of you who add your experiences and insight focus the rest of us on the details that explain and enhance our learning............I thoroughly enjoy the experience.................thank you...................jean
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Thank you, Jean. Isn't it wonderful to have a site where we banter back and forth, enjoy each other's company in an informal way, and yet simultaneously find our eyes opened and our brains stimulated?
Please tell your friends about Story of Civilization.
Robby
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I agree, Robby. It is nice to be able to enjoy one another's company in an informal way. I wonder if Trevor is doing well. We have not heard from him since the opening of the new site.
It's also nice to find old conversant's returning to our group. I have missed the broad based religious knowledge of Mahlia, the friendly comments of Eloise and the punchy, sensitive, responses of Mal.
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Eloise and Mahlia are with us in this discussion but we all miss Mal.
Robby
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Yes indeed, Robby, I too, miss Mal - we connected in so many ways.
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Robby - - - are we going to resume actually reading the book soon ?
Brian.
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I am in the process of tickling the memory buds of folks here so that we can have a foundation upon which to examine the concept of The Renaissance. We are almost there.
Some here will remember that we talked about Venice and her Realm - Venetian art, Venetian life, The Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Venetian letters, and Verona. All this was under the subtopic of the Italian Pageant and brings us to Page 327, Emilia and the Marches where we ended and where we will begin to examine text tomorrow if life is good to me.
Robby
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Thanks Robby - - - That is the answer I was looking for.
Now, if we could only get Trevor back here, life would be perfect.
anyone know his email address?
Brian.
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EMILIA AND THE MARCHES
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CORREGGIO
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Fifty miles south of Verona one comes to the old Via Emilia, or Emilian Way, which ran 175 miles from Piacenza through Parma, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, Imola, Forli, and Cesena to Rimini.
We pass over Piacenza and (for the moment) Parma, to note a little commune eight miles northeast of Reggio, and sharing its name. Correggio is one of several towns in Italy that are remembered only through some genius to whom they gave a cognomen. Its ruling family also was called Correggio. One member was the Niccolo da Correggio who wrote genteel verses for Beatrice and Isabella d'Este. It was a place where you might expect genius to be born and to die, but not to stay, for it had no significant art, or clear tradition, to give to ability instruction and form.
But in the first decades of the sixteenth century the house of Correggio was headed by Count Gilbert X, and his wife, Veronica Gambara, was one of the great ladies of the Renaissance. She could speak Latin, knew Scholastic philosophy, wrote a commentary on patristic theology, composed delicate Petrachian verses, was called 'the tenth Muse.' She made her little court a salon for artists and poets, and helped to spread tht romantic worship of woman which was now replacing, among the upper classes of Italy, the medieval worship of Mary, and was molding Italian art toward the representation of feminine charms.
On Sept. 3, 1528 she wrote to Isabella d'Este that 'our Messer Antonio Allegri has just finished a masterpiece picturing Magdalen in the desert and expressing in full the sublime art of which he is a great master.'
It was this Antonio Allegri who unwittingly stole the name and made the fame of his town though his family name might have well expressed the joyous nature of his art. His father was a small landed proprietor, prosperous enough to win for his son a bride with a dowry of 257 ducats ($6425). When Antonio showed a flair for drawing and paintintg he was apprenticed to his uncle Lorenzo Allegri. Who taught him further we do not klnow. Some say that he went to Ferrara to study with Francesco de' Bianchi-Ferrari, then to the studios of Francia and Costa at Bologna, then with Costa to Mantua, where he felt the influence of the massive frescoes of Mantegna. In any case, he spent most of his life in Correggio in comparative obscurity and presumably he was the only one in the town who suspected that he would be ranked among the 'immortals.' He seems to have studied the engravings that Marcantonio Raimondi had made from Raphael and probably saw, if only in copy, the chief works of Leonardo.
All these influences entered into his completely individual style.
Your comments, please!
Robby
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Correggio-Stemma.gif)
Some pictures of Correggio. and a few more facts : -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correggio,_Italy
Brian.
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One of the papers i did for my Master's studies was on important medieval women, which at the time many, even in academia, tho't there was not much to talk about. That was the first i had heard about Isabella d'Este. Since it was decades ago i now remember only the gen'l concept of her life.
This is the first i have heard of Veronica Gambaro and Isotta Nogarola, even tho i have read quite a lot of women's history. I guess we are seeing Ariel's hand in this section. .......the divide between "everyday" women and some of the aristocratic women during these times is extreme. I think when most of us studied western civ and this period of time we had no real sense of women having any education let alone any contribution to society. Thank goodness for Ariel's influence in the SOC.
Of course, there was an explosion of study of women in history during the first half of the 20th century. Then, during and after WWII women were shoved out of academia in many places and much of the pre-war studies were lost until the contemporary women's movement began to research them again in the 1970's and beyond. Many books that had gone out of print have been re-printed in the last sev'l decades, and we find out that women were smart and productive and contributors in ways that those of us going thru school and college in the post-war years never knew.
I haven't read thru all the links on Wikipedia, but am anxious to do so. PBS in our area broadcast a show about Wikipedia and whether it is useful, or "amateurish" and whether it is necessary to be an "expert" in order to provide "truth" and how much of Wiki is "truth" and whether there really IS "truth." VERY interesting. and a topic that could generate a very interesting discussion................as it did on the program. .............. i happen to love Wiki and find it helpful in most cases....................guess that shows my "liberal" leanings................LOL..............
thanks, Brian, for that link.................jean
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JEAN: how interesting! Do you remember the name of the Wiki show, or whether it was part of a series?
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"The Truth According to Wikipedia" was the title of the show. I don't think it was one of the series - frontline, etc. It seemed to be an independent show.........jean
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Nice going, folks: Story of Civilization is back and moving ahead. Tell all your friends.
Robby
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I will get the green section in the Heading above up to date as soon as I can and will change it intermittenly as I used to do so everyone would know where we are. Be patient with me.
Robby
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When chaos diminishes, insecurity diminishes, then, civilization begins to appear. The chaos of the Oriental mind has begun (in the Renaissance) to leave the Italian peninsula and the pleasures of civilization are ahead. What Ho!
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"The Truth According to Wikipedia" was the title of the show. I don't think it was one of the series - frontline, etc. It seemed to be an independent show.........jean
You can see a UTube presentation of the show here : -
http://www.viralvideochart.com/youtube/the_truth_according_to_wikipedia?id=WMSinyx_Ab0
Brian
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Robby, while looking up the publication date of the Renaissance, which was 1953, I found that Amazon has 'The Renaissance' on line. Don't know if the entire book is there or not, but the section we are currently discussing is there.
Do you still type all the sections as you once did? If so, perhaps you would check out this 'url' and simply copy what you need, and paste here.
The Renaissance (http://books.google.com/books?id=sjzi56FhIeIC&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=When+did+Durant+write+'the+renassaince'&source=bl&ots=qhv93YGJzv&sig=zOz3VpD5m9vZDQA7yVpRBEgMohE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result)
Emily
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Mabel, in a review on The Renaissance, a writer wrote of the book, "A human touch was missing, but considering all the genius displayed by so many, they overwhelmed their contemporaries."
Durant wrote about women with the available evidence (which was scarce) in his previous books. Sadly there were few women admitted into the exploits of armies and Kings.
Emily
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Thank you, Emily. I checked out your link and best I cold see, it was only a certain section that Amazon was presenting and then with some pages omitted. When I was the discussion leader for Darwin's "Origin of Specie," I found a place which had the entire book, chapter by chapter and I copied them rather than writing them out. If anyone can find that for me for Volume Five SofC, I would be most grateful.
Robby
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I just checked the Gutenberg Project, not there, which surprises me. Are the books still in print? ................jean
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Any comments on Durant's last remarks?
Robby
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Here are some Allegri images if you want to see some of his work
http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en&q=Antonio+Allegri&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_g
Sorry for long link! Don't know how to do the one or two word links.
When my daughter did Art History the Renaissance was her favorite period. It is still the same today.
Carolyn
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Well, by gosh and by golly, here is Robby in full force once again to walk us through the Renaissance period. I am delighted to see you up and running, Robby with all of these nice folks.
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HI ALF! WELCOME BACK!
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HI, ALF! It's been a long time! Carolyn, I was hoping you'd return to us. Welcome!
Robby
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Now if we could just get Trevor back, we would be up and running.
Brian.
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Hello Robby,
Its good to have this site and Pats social site. Now have we our complete community back.
Carolyn
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Kiwilady Yes almost all - I still miss the Aust-NZ sites though
Thanks for the Allegri images - have spent a quiet time admiring some of them and will come back and consider a few more later.
Perhaps Justin will talk us through one or two - yes ?
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In some respects, Correggio is an enigma. He traveled very little so he was unable to see many of the works by his contemporaries and his predecessors yet he was able to adopt many of the gestures of Leonardo and to apply the technique called sfumato. He is best remembered for his invention called illusionism. However, paintings depicting mythological eroticism are most often admired today. Let's look at two of these so you can get a sense
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I don't understand this system. I am typing along when suddenly i look up and the screen is full of foreign material. What I was typing has been sent or disappeared completely. It's frustrating.
I think I was talking about soft porn when the last interruption occurred. Secular patrons in this period wanted things for their guests to be amused by and perhaps to adorn their bedrooms. Correggio responded with nudes in the throes of passion.
You will recall that Jupitor or Zeus was a god with the itch for pretty women. However he was married and he did not want his wife to know that he was out visiting. So he came to one lady as a golden shower, to another he appeared as a swan, and to a third he appeared as a dark cloud. These interesting visits were depicted by Correggio for the Duke of Mantua. You will find Jupitor and Io in the list depicted above. Jupy came to her as a dark cloud. She is wrapped in the arms of the cloud and clearly full of ecstacy. Leda and the swan is also available and truthfully I have never been able to figure out how it all worked.
Correggio was a precursor. He did things with paintings that were not fully exploited till later. He turned the dome of a church into a sky and depicted the virgin ascending to heaven with her skirts awry like Marilyn's in the "Seven Year itch" and surrounded by putti all with bare legs.
In some of his illuministic dome paintings the figures reach out into our space. That technique was fully employed 75 years later and called the Baroque. He even reached out to the techniques of the Rococo which flowered over 150 years later. This guy was seminal but it was not till the current century that we have come to appreciate his creativity and early discoveries. I am almost certain that painters and sculptors of the Baroque never saw the works of Correggio and if they did they probably paid it little attention. He was afterall, a hick with straw in his ears from another century.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
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I've been reading for the past few minutes to catch up with the posts here. It's certainly a pleasure to be able to return to a much appreciated site!
JEAN - when I read your earlier post about writing a paper on medieval women, I recalled one of my former students at the University of Maryland. She was a young woman from an Iranian diplomatic family, who was fascinated with women of that period. We often talked about the various cultural norms in Iran, the USA (and its various regions), as well as the earlier periods and how women were accepted/or not, and their contributions to the societies of their times.
ROBBY - so glad to see the SOC up and running well again. MAL would certainly be proud to know how well the former posters have rebounded and sped ahead at this new site with your continued leadership. Whenever I travel up the highway from NC to Washington, DC, I recall MAL as I pass through the Eastern part of NC (her former home area), and recall her funny stories about many years ago when she, too, was at the University of Maryland.
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Justin Thank you so much for the run-down on Correggio. It surely is a truism that 'the hick with straw between his ears' is the one who leads the way. Leda and the swan has always puzzled me too - but I guess it was a matter of deus ex machina.
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The sequence of Antonio's subjects corresponds to the decline ofreligion among the literate classes of Italy in the first quarter of the sixtenth century, and the rise of secular patronage and themes.
His early works, even when painted for private purchasers, told again, and mostly for churches, the Christian story. The Adoration of the Magi, where the Virgin has the pretty, girlish face that Correggio later confined to subordinate characters - The Holy Family; The Madonna of St. Francis, still traditional in all its features - The repose on the Return from Egypt, freshly original in composition, coloring, and characterization - La Zingarella, where the Virgin learning fondly over her babe, is drawn with full Correggian grace, and The Madonna Adoring Her Child, which makes the infant the radiant source of the scene's illumination.
His pagan turn came through an odd commission.
In 1518 Giovanna da Piacenza, abbess of the convent of San Paolo in Parma, engaged him to decorate her apartment. She was a lady of more pedigree than piety. She chose a theme of the frescoes chaste Diana, goddess of the hunt. Over the fireplace Correggio portrayed Diana in a splendid chariot. Above her, in sixteen radial sections converging in the cupola, he painted scenes from classical mythology. In one a dog, too passionately hugged by a child, expresses with a remarkably pictured eye his fear of being choked with love, and shames by his alert beauty all the human and divine figures scattered about. From this time forward the human body, mostly nude, became for Correggio the chief element in pictorial decoration, and pagan motives entered into even his Christian themes.
The abbess had converted him from Christianity.
Your comments, please?
Robby
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Is "pagan" used in the same context as "secular" in that last statement? I heard someone on tv use the word pagan yesterday and wondered whether it was used in place of secular/non-religious, or does it have a more negative meaning. For me, who was raised in the a protestant church, pagan meant non-christian, but w/ a witchy/deviltry/uncivilized connotation. I'll have to take a look at what the dictionaries have to say, i have a feeling I might have a "stereotypical" negative meaning in my head that doesn't always fit the statement.................jean
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WOW! These are the 3 definitions from Encarta -
1. an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody who does not acknowledge the God of the Bible, Torah, or Koran
2. an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody's nonbelief in religion, way of life, or degree of knowledge
3. polytheist or pantheist: a follower of an ancient polytheistic or pantheistic religion
"Deliberately insults"! I was thinking that from the Christian pulpit it was a statement of "it's not the correct religion" or "it's less sophisticated than Christianity," but i didn't think of it as mean-spirited...............but i guess it is denigrating and therefore insulting....................gives me a new concept to think about..................and you must be polytheistic to be a pagan?.............................I think i kind of had that in my tape in my brain, (the golden calf and all that) but it wasn't right up there in the conscious, of course, i haven't given it a tho't in the last 4/5 decades...................jean
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The Oxford says "pagan" means "heathen." Nothing else. So what is a heathen? The Oxford says "heathen" is not Christian, Jewish, Moslem, or Buddhist- An unenlightened person.
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While Wikipedia is not normally my first port of call, I was impressed by the article defining the word "pagan" - - - see what you think!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism
Brian.
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Correggio was a seminal artist. He was a precursor for many who came well after him. If you will use Kiwi's Reply # 111 to find the images, I will make some comparisons that you will find startling. Keep in mind that Correggio lived between 1489 and 1534.
Look first for the Adoration-Nativity scene by C. The painting is like no other you have seen up till now. Peasants are lined up in the snow. The stable is a stable. It is a town scene. And the painting is done in precisely the style of Pieter Brueghel who lived and painted in Holland 1529-69. Look at the work of Brueghel. If some one will find The Wedding and Banquet or any of the winter scenes by B the similarities will jump out at you.
Last week we talked about Artemisia. The woman artist of the Renaissance. There is a painting by her called Judith and Holofernes in which she and her servant cut off the head of a tyrant conqueror ater spending a night in his bed. The source for the work is clearly that of Correggio's Judith and Servant. The painting by C was also used as a model by De La Tour in the 1630"s.
There is a painting by C called the three graces. The body modeling is clearly that of Rubens. And more recently the manner of Maillol.
C's illusionistic ceilings are copied to great advantage by Tiepolo who lived and worked between 1690 and 1770.
I hope you can find some of these paintings. Comparison is quite startling. Normally one looks at Rubens and thinks his body compositions are his own and original. Not so. If one looks at the female back studies of Maillol, they are found in C's "Three Graces." The use of light and form in C. appears later in De la Tour and so we can see that art and art forms grow out of what we know and not out of happenstance or one night's wild dreams.
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If you wish to be totally confused on the meaning of "pagan" and "paganism" - - - go to the previous link on "pagan" in Wikipedia and then click on the "Discussion" button at the top of the page.
Lots of fun but little enlightenment.
Brian.
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The Wedding and Banquet.
(http://www.humanitiesweb.org/gallery/182/4.jpg)
This the one, Justin?.
Brian.
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Well, i guess i had every right to be confused, even the ethnologists are confused.................
ethnologists avoid the term "paganism," with its uncertain and varied meanings
thanks Brian, i hadn't yet read the wikipedia definition
so, Justin, does "pagan" in Durant's description of Corregio's "pagan motives" mean he went to reprentations of secular events? to representations of "country/ordinary" people? nudes? sexuality? or all of the above? Is he a major figure in the transition from religious themes?..............."and an abbess shall lead him"? :P
I love The Wedding and the Banquet, the splashes of red and white just catch the eye..................jean
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Aristide Maillol - - -
(http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/assets/aa_image/320/d/4/c/c/d4cc196a2c1cced95f87fd23309e2c90d5283c77.jpg)
Here's one of Maillol's nudes referred to by Justin.
Brian.
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Corregio's "Three Graces" - - -
http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2008/07/24/arts/conway26.php?index=3
Brian.
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Wasn't Correggio one of those depicted in the series on artists done by PBS last year by our old friend Simon Schama?
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Joan - - - I think that was Caravaggio, not Corregio ;D
Brian.
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You're right!
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The peasants of the Brueghel wedding are those following the kings in Correggio's Adoration. The correlation is more evident in Brueghel's outdoor winter scenes.
Jean. It cannot be denied. Correggio is a significant figure in the transition from clerical to secular. His "pagan motifs" are wonderfully pagan are they not. Artists, like other craftsmen,design for the market. The Duke of Mantua must have been some cookie. He may have been the model for Verdi's Rigoletto.
Correggio's Graces are substantial women as are Rubens' and Maillol's. Henri Matisse did six female backs in bronze, each one more abstract than it's predecessor. I think they are at the Tate. Correggio gave inspiration to these fellows. The female backside has always been a favorite topic for artists largely because of the character of the curve. Velasquez did the Rokeby Venus from a model similar to Marilyn Monroe but so many others copied Correggo and provided substance.
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Maillol's nude is a good depiction of a woman of child bearing age or one who has already had a child. The hips are wider than the shoulders. She looks healthy with enough body fat to carry a baby to term. Any man interested in having off spring would look upon this form favorably at least until the Twentieth Century.
Somewhere in the middle of that century with the help of science everything changed. Today women with the bodies of young males are considered the beauties. They are taller with the long legs of young males, broader shoulders, narrow hips, small breasts, with pretty faces. A young woman with the body shape of a teenage male can be changed with implants and plastic surgery to man's version of the ideal woman.
Most models have this look. They were selected by clothes designers who are for the most part gay, and the young male body is much more desirable to them than the shorter, fuller figure Maillol model. That look has become the norm in presentation to the public through advertising and film. These 'boy' girls can be made to look like women with breast implants and plastic surgery, and some can bear children with all the advances of science.
Bearing children carries its own hazards though for any one wanting to be filmed in lingerie or a bikini. The hips become broader and the body changes. Of course there is always the option of plastic surgery for those wanting to work the artificial beauty circuit. Most choose not to have a child until their career is ended or never.
With the advances in photography, anyone can be made to look young and vibrant. After the death of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, a photographer showed the picture released by his studio of them in their later years with unlined faces and the look of maturity without the aging process. On the opposite page he had the original photograph untouched, which showed the lined, drooping faces ravaged with age.
We live in an artificial world today, not the real world of Maillol and Reubens.
Emily
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Makes one to think, Emily. Isn't the world in which one lives always the "real" world?
Robby
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You make an interesting observation, Emily. Certainly, the ideal shape for women has changed over the centuries and the shift to long limbed-skinny women may have been more recent than we realize. As late as 1900, Renoir was painting women of substance. His Gabriel, a young woman with wide hips and apple breasts, is clearly of the old school.
When custom dress makers were in vogue dresses were made to take advantage of whatever assets were at hand but when ready-mades became the mode the number of variations in dresses had to be limited in order to produce dresses for the lowest cost. Eventually, sizes were introduced and hems went up and down. Dresses were bought and sold like automobiles with color and style changes inducing sales.
Women who are short,well rounded in the hips, with small breasts find clothes that fit difficult to find. So too do women who are of middle height, wide hips and large breasts. These are gals who represent more than fifty percent of the female market, yet designers seem to ignore them. The Lane Bryant concept has never been fully exploited, it seems to me.
When gals are brides clothes are easy to find but after a few pregnancies dressing becomes more and more difficult.
Men have similar problems with shirts. The short guy who wears belly fat and an enlarged neck with pride has a terrible time with ready-mades. Yet, to return to the age of custom dress making seems absurd except for the very rich.
I don't know about a connection between homosexuality and skinny models. It's certainly possible.
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Emily: I don't want to add years to your life but you must remember in the thirties when women wore gingham and print dresses that looked like flour sacks. That was really the beginning of one size fits all. In the late thirties bobby sox, saddle shoes and short skirts were popular. Beer jackets were custom made. It was not until post war that Paris designers brought in the "new look". Skirts lengthened and 7th Avenue in Manhattan began to boom.
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OK then it's about time women are discussed. What else does a woman do except talk about fashion, cosmetics and children? BTW Justin dresses looked anything but flour sacks in the thirties, they wore tight fitting bright colored dresses with crinolines, high heels and hair piled high to go out dancing depending on where she lived, in the country or in the city. But women then looked like women instead of broom handles and didn't try to look like a sack of bones.
Do you think women had an influence on politics, economy, art? According to Durant, not to mention Ariel who was most likely his secretary and researcher women didn't have anything to do with those, they just decorate. He certainly didn't think that "Women hold up half the sky" as Jean said.
Looking at what women do today I can only think of French President Nicolas Sarkozy who married ex top model/singer Carla Bruni. She mightl have an influence in how the country is run, didn't Napoleon confide in Josephine? NS is thoroughly smitten by Carla and if we judge by past history, she might very well influence his decisions in regard to different areas of government and who is to say the whole European picture but historians will only remember how HE performed during his presidency, not whose influence he was under at the time of his decisions.
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Huzzah, Emily! ............ when Reuben was mentioned, i was going to say '3 cheers for artists who create substantial women, ' but decided i'd let it go.......................
But since you brought us the subject...............my perception is that women lost some of the curves and natural shapes for the first time during the 20's - the flapper look - flat chests and straight dresses w/ out waists or hips. But then, the movies of the 30's, 40's and 50's and the designers of those decades brought us curvy women and - remember - the pointed bras, wide belts and larger hips..............it is a hoot to look at some of the pointed bras in those 50's movies, you could get hurt hugging those women............of course, the bra really only came to fashion during the 30's or 40's. We can remember the busts and cleavage of Monroe, Doris Day, Jayne Mansfield, etc. Then along came Twiggy in the late 60's and rebellion against foundation garments, and layers of clothes, many costume-like fashions showing the curves of the body not at all. From that time until the 90's models got thinner and thinner. Thank goodness for the influence of the ethnics, Browns and Blacks in our muisc and fashion world - Hooray for Jennifer Lopez and now Beyonce, etc ...............altho poor Jessica Simpson still gets lambasted for putting on 5 lbs. I think we have a conflict between the fashion designers, what men REALLY like to see and desire, and what is reality. ......................... ain't popular culture grand?
It's great to look back onto the artists of this time - the popular culture then - and be grateful that the more things change, the more they stay the same - i think someone said that one time ;D :D ......................jean
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In case there is anyone who does not know Twiggy
(http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Underground/6240/skinnytwiggy.jpg)
here she is - - - not by any means Reubenesque ;D
Brian.
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Robby
Isn't the world in which one lives always the "real" world?
Of course it is Robby. What I meant to convey was that we are just more advanced at creating the 'artificial' and promoting it, than in the time of Maillol.
Emily
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In recent years women have become more than just the power behind the throne. They stand tall on their own. Women like Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary, Meg Whitman, are power houses who show the capacity to stand strong in a crises,to make decisions of significance when required, and at the same time to love a husband and be soft and feminine.
I have been reading a bio of Agnes de Mille. She,as you know, was a leading choreographer in our time. She compares her work style with that of Jerome Robbins and Georges Balanchine. She said that Balanchine and Robbins designed out side the music but she could not take a step without musical support. She concludes that men can function independently and women need a lead. Is that a reasonable generalization?
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"that men can function independently and women need a lead. Is that a reasonable generalization?" BLECHHHH! Get out of the middle ages, Justin!
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Really?!? Agnes De Mille said that? I am often amazed at the enigma that some "strong, " seemingly independent, women can be. I remember reading about Dr Josephine Baker - no not that one, the DOCTOR, .............in fact the first woman to earn a medical degree in the U.S. She had gotten herself into and thru a small medical college in upstate N.Y. Having put up w/ jokes by the male students and being turned away from being able to rent a room in the town where people thought it was unbecoming that a woman would want to be a physician. Having accomplished and survived all of the indignities, at graduation she thought it was "inappropriate" for her to walk across the stage to accept her diploma, so she sat in the front row while her brother accepted her diploma for her!?! I guess even the most "rebellious/independent" of us have our boundaries that we just can't push ourselves across. Have you seen that in your reading of SoC?
But that, coming from Agnes DM, surprises me..........................and Justin's question must be TIC or i have misread him for a year....... ??? ;D ............jean
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[and Justin's question must be TIC or i have misread him for a year....... ] Jean
Tongue in cheek, or FIM (Foot in Mouth)
Let's get back to discussing the Story of Civilization and get away from gender bashing.
Incidentally, my mother's great aunt was the first female surgeon out of Edinburgh medical school, and went out to India to practice. I passed her amputation saw on to the local museum.
Brian
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The DeMille article is in Atlantic monthly, 1956 titled "Rhythm in my Blood. "It appears in the 100 year Jubilee selection of worthy Atlantic Articles.
There is no question in the dance world that Agnes De Mille is one of the most successful and original choreographers of the twentieth Century. Yet, in comparing her methods to those of Robbins and Balanchine she says, "the men work free and on their own. The woman must wait for the lead." Let me give you a bigger bite. She says," B's rhythmic sense is spacial, Robbins is independent. I, on the other hand, am totally derivative. I can not move without melody. May there not here be revealed a subtle sexual distinction? The men work free and on their own. The woman must wait for the lead."
She seems to be recognizing a real and natural condition rather than one imposed by social custom. I recall a comment about the dance team of Astaire and Rogers. Ginger had to do everything Fred did plus do it in a long skirt and backwards but Fred gets top billing. Clearly that's custom driven. I think Agnes was beyond that.
I don't think it's a good generalization. Agnes was extrapolating from the particular to the general using a very limited sample of three. Today, one sees it as gender bashing because we have come so far.
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OK, folks, if we are ready to get back to Durant, here it is.
In 1520 Correggio accepted an arduous commission from Parma - to paint frescoes in the cupola and over the tribune and side chapels of a new Benedictine abbey church, San Giovanni Evangelista.
He toiled on this task for four years and in 1523 he moved with his wife and children to Parma to be nearer his work. In the dome he represented the Apoltles, seated comfortably in a circle on soft clouds, and fixing their gaze upon a Christ whose foreshortened figure, seen from below, gives an astonishing illusion of distance.
The splendor of this dome is in the superbly modeled figures of the Apostle, some of them quite nude, rivaling the gods of Pheidias, and perhaps echoing in their muscular splendor the figures that Michelangelo had painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling twelve years before. In a spandrel between two arches a powerful St. Ambrose discusses theology with an Apostle John who is as handsome as any Parthenon ephebus. Luscious youthful forms, theoretically angels, fill the interstices with angelic faces, buttocks, legs, and thighs.
The Greek revival, already old in Humanism and Manutius, is here in full swing in Christian art.
Your comments, please?
Robby
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This is the period in which classical things began to pop up out of the soil in Rome and Herculaneum. It is the time when classical manuscripts began to enter Italy from Spain. These long buried elements of Classical antiquity influenced the artists of the day significantly. Correggio is no exception. He along with Michelangelo and others put the new ideas to work in expressing the Christian concepts. The Medici, Lorenzo the Magnifico, founded a school in Rome based upon a Platonistic foundation. Michelangelo along with others studied the classical vision there. Raphael painted an image of the school of Athens for the Vatican on a wall in the Pope's living quarters.
Correggio while isolated in the boonies must also have been exposed to these elements and incorporated them in his religious works. The classical secular and the clerical merge in this period and a religion that was born in Hellenic antiquity is forced to adopt the forms of Greek mythology to represent Christian events. Today, we say what goes around comes around and shrug our shoulders. However,in the days of Correggio, when the artist was in control of the iconography, the client got what he gave them. no one wanted to paint over a masterpiece?
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Did the artists focus on religious figures and stories because the classical literature had been suppressed for so long, because the church was so often the financial source, or because religion was so inbedded in their lives? I know it probably was a bit of all three, but which was the most influencial?
It is interesting that their transition was first a visual change to "classical-like" figures, but still figures from the Bible. Of course, when they were working in church facilities, that makes sense. But did the Medicis or any other individuals commission any purely secular projects? I've seen a lot of artwork from the Renaissance, but at the moment my brain isn't putting it in a time line that helps me understand the tranistion. ........................... jean
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Jean: Suppressed is not the right word. Classical material was "lost" forgotten , in the Dark Ages. Hiidden by time and the soil of centuries. Latin gave way to venaculars like Middle French, and Italian. Greek lasted through the Hellenic period but i doubt a Greek speaker in Tenth century Byzantium could understand Athenian Greeks. The translators in Spain in this period and later were very specialized people. The languages just disappeared for lack of use. Dust and dirt covered over the artifacts of the classical period. I have no doubt the "Church" threw on a few shovels full but what was was gone when the quatrocento dawned.
In art the ideal forms of Greek Byzantium prevailed until Giotto in 1300 changed the way people looked at human figures displayed on a two dimensional surface. His work was seminal. It was the beginning, a foreshadowing of a return to the figures of classical Greece. Whether there was any classical influence for Giotto at that time is a question worthy of a dissertation. But he did start us on the road back. The road that came to be called the " re- birth", the Renaissance.
The Church was the only game in town for artists for several centurys. They were the builders and the decorators. People were illiterate but could read the story of Catholic Christendom in pictures and in sculpture.. Narrative painting was also one of Giotto's skills and the Church appreciated that talent and made good use of it.
During this same period the Papacy was driven out of Rome and rival popes appeared in France at Avignon. There was constant War between Genoa and Venice which limited safe trade.The truce of Lepanto opened the way for trading with the east and on the Med. and traders were enriched. It was their wealth, traders wealth, that financed the High Renaissance and brought secular patrons to artists.
Secular patrons were only mildly interested in religious imagery and their requests for things to amuse their guests as well as bedroom decoration encouraged the artists to find acceptable means for displaying human attributes in interesting poses. The game started with inconography like St. Sebastien and Bartholemew. It advanced to Dianna the Huntress and the loves of Zeus. After a while even Cardinals began to express an interest in mythological figures. These are the antecedents of modern day pornography.
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In 1512 the great cathedral of Parma opened its doors to the young artist Correggio and contracted to pay him a thousand ducats ($12,500) to paint the chapels, apse, choir, and dome.
On this assignment he worked at intervals through eight years, from 1526 until his death. For the dome he chose the Assumption of the Virgin and shocked many of the cathedral canons by making this culminating picture a whirling panorama of human flesh. In the center the Virgin, reclinng on the chair, floats up to heaven with arms outstretched to meet her Son. Around and beneath her a heavenly host of Apostles, disciples, and saints -- magnificent figures worthy of Raphael at his best -- seems to puff her upward and with the breath of adoration. And supporting her is a choir of angels looking remarkably like healthy boys and girls in all the splendor of youthful nudity. These are the loveliest adolescent nudes in Italian art.
One of the canons, confused by so many arms and legs, denounced the painting as 'a fricassee of frogs.' Apparently other members of the chapter were dubious abot this melee of human flesh celebrating a virgin and Correggio's work on the cathedral seems to have been interrupted for a time.
A melee of human flesh?
Robby
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You're right Justin, "suppressed" was not the right word.............thanks for the info................jean
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Any comments regarding Post 155?
Robby
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Re 155: If I must go to heaven let it not be as a frickasee frog.
The Dome painting at Parma may have struck the Canon as amusing but the work was seminal. Two Hundred years later Tiepolo repeated the work all over Europe with more clouds to ride and more legs to view.
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Didn't Reubens paint it, as well?
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Andy: I don't recall any dome work by Rubens. He did do a ceiling at Whitehall but no dome. There also was much ceiling work done in the Jesuit Church in Antwerp but that all burned down. I don't think anything was left of it. Rubens was a guy who tried many topics in many places in Europe so you may find something somewhere that he did on a ceiling dome. I just can't recall any. If you find something I'd be happy to hear of it.
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My knowledge of art and artists is slim to none, Justin. I thought that Reubens painted the Assumption. Thanks, I should have googled it first before displaying my ignorance.
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Ah! Yes,, Andy. He did do an Assumption. Now, the question is, where is it? It's probably in Antwerp, maybe in Venice. Perhaps, some one can find it on the internet somewhere. It is significant for us because Rubens was influenced by the work of Correggio as well as that of Titian and Tintoretto. They all liked substantial women as models but more importantly they derived from Correggio a sense of scale.
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Raphael's Assumption was an altar piece and not a dome.
It is here : http://www.artist-biography.info/gallery/raphael/241/
Brian.
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Brian: It was wonderful of you to bring up Raphael's Assumption. It too is interesting to talk about. However, Andy has Rubens of Antwerp in mind. At least, I think that's the case. It is a jump ahead for us but Rubens was one the many who were influenced by the work of Correggio.
Andy, is it possible you were thinking of Raphael and not Rubens (Reubens)?
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Now we are talking about an oil painting ?
(http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/content/images/2008_3873.jpg)
Is this the one you are referring to? Or as Winston Churchill would have said, "the one to which you are referring". He was famously quoted as saying, "A preposition is a poor word with which to end a sentence" - - - (or something like that).
Brian.
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Thank you gentlemen. Yes, that is the one i was referring
TO.
uh! I mean that was the correct reference.
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Some one sent Churchill a note chiding him for ending a sentence with a preposition and he answered: "That is the nonsence up with which I shall not put."
Robby
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Yes, that is the one I thought you had in mind, Andy- lots of putti, plenty of bewildered bystanders and the Mother of God going home. She rises out of the sarcophagus in a burst of glory so quickly there are some onlookers who seem to say "where did she go". Others look up and see the Ascension. The painting is an altar decoration. It rises behind an altar to a height of about ten feet giving one a sense of monumental and majestic power.
...and yes, Andy. The Putti come from the dome work of Correggio. You were right on the money.
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About 1523 a series of commissions from Federigo II Gonzaga invited the full expression of the pagan element in his art.
Wishing to court the favor of Charles V, the Marquis ordered picture after picture, sent them as gifts to the Emperor and received his coveted bauble, the title of duke. For him, schooled in the paganism of Rome, Correggio painted a succession of mythological subjects, commemorating Olympian triumphs of love or desire.
In The Education of Eros Venus blindfolds Cupid (lest the human race should die.)
In Jupiter and Antiope the god, disguised as a satyr, advances upon the lady as she lies in naked slumber on the grass.
In Danae a winged herald prepares for Jupiter's coming by undraping the fair maid while beside her bed two putti play in happy indifferences to the morality of the gods.
In Io Jupiter descends from his boredom in a concealing cloud and clasps with omnipotent hand a plump lady who hesitates gracefully and ends by yielding to the compliment of desire.
In the Rape of Ganymede a pretty boy is flown to heaven by an eagle in haste to meet the needs of the ambidextrous god of gods.
In Leda and the Swan the lover is a swan but the motive is the same.
Even in The Virgin and St. George two naked Cupids romp before the Virgin and St. George, in his flashing mail, is the physical ideal of Renaissance youth. {/i]
So this is what Renaissance means?
Robby
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Yes, it means a return to the ideas and concepts of the classical world- a world that was buried in the dust of the dark centuries and all but forgotten. We tend to assume, today, that all that is available to us now of ancient Greece and Rome was available to the world of the 13th and 14th centuries.That is not the case.
The Renaissance is a turning away from the constricting forms of Byzantine culture, from the limits of a suppressive religion that dominated the mind of man, and the effects of invading hordes from the north. The Renaissance represents a new awakening of the old ways, ways that had disappeared and were now coming to light again.
The Renaissance advanced over time to reach another high point we came to call the Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution pushed us further along a growth curve that led to the advanced state we think we have today.
War is still with us and the restrictions of suppressive religions continue to guide us. But we are looking forward today, not backward because there is no prior period in the world's history that gives man greater control over his own destiny.
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A new awakening of the old ways? Who dared to be so bold? Was this a huge movement en masse?
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Andy; Yes, it was a significant movement. In fact the title of the book we are working on is the "Renaissance". It's center was in Italy where the city states were the most important trading centers in Europe, the wool trade being most prominent. However, a Renaissance also occurred in the North particularly in Flanders, the Netherlands, France, and parts of Germany. The Northern Renaissance is not part of our current study and were we to enter that sphere it would be a diversion that were we patient we would come upon in the normal course of passing from one volume to another.
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Thank you Justin. I will pursue my studies.
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We must not conclude that Correggio was merely a sensualist with a flair for painting flesh.
He loved beauty perhaps immoderately, and in these mythologies he stressed the surface of it too esclusively, but in his Madonnas he had done justice to a profounder beauty. He himself, while his brush romped through Olympus, lived like an orderly bourgeois, devoted to his family, and seldom leaving home except to work.
Basari tells us: 'He was content with little and lived as a good Christian should.' He is reported to have been timid and melancholy. Who would not be melancholy coming every day into a world of deformed adults from a haunting dream of loveliness?
A world of deformed adults?
Robby
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my question exactly, Robby??.................jean
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Most artists have that problem. They see beauty in an esthetic ideal while they themselves are bent and broken by the task of puting paint on plaster in a meaningful way. The job is taxing physically. Many like Michelangelo and Caravaggio suffer not only from job related injuries but also from outside activity ( a punch in the nose for example).
Painters tend to see other people not in terms of their universals but rather in terms of their oddities. A beautiful model is an oddity as is all who live. We are unique oddities. Modern portrait painters like Andy Warhal see the oddities in a person and paint those in faces common to us all. Subjects never like Warhal's work but a subject's friends love it because it is what they see in the subject not what the subject sees in him or her self.
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Any further comments about Post 174?
Robby
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Masaccio Madonna hmm that should be a link. wikipedia has it anyhow
maybe this will work.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/be/Madonna_Masaccio.jpg
yep
claire
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I'm lost in here and completely out of date so forgive the old thread. The child looks to me to be almost pasted on the painting maybe just overworked.
It's hard to know this late in the game. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some of us find it in the unusual or different. I'm inclined to do that.
claire
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It makes for good contrast winsumm, but look at the eyes--- creepy!
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The pagan element in art and the renessance. We had another one in the nineteen sixtiees when sensuality, nice word for sex, became acceptable in all the arts, and youth held sway. It's disappeared again, religion and now politics take us backwards and even words are suspect. As for art, I haven't seen any growth. In fact it looks like it is becoming more representative, abstract is old stuff now. I see it in architecture, but even that is waining. sad isn't it.
My own art is doubtful due to aging and eye problems which make me wonder if I can still do it. I wonder if this has been the case throughout history.
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The thing that caught my eye immediately was the cockamainey way the 'halos' were positioned. The baby's sits on its head like a plate. One of those at the feet has his on the side of his head. I agree with Claire, it looks like it was pasted on the wall.
Emily
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Claire: I'm not much on beauty. I rarely use the term because I don't clearly understand it. I am more concerned with mechanics and achievement than with aesthetics. I'm not sure but i don't recall ever saying that a painting or a sculpture or any work of art for that matter is beautiful. A painting ,for example, may have all parts working well ( whatever that means ) and the total image convincing, but that does not necessarily make the work beautiful.
Ruskin seemed to have a familiarity with beauty, at least he was able to talk glibly about it. But i have never been able to finish anything Ruskin has written. I get lost in the middle usually. However, he was very popular in art circles in the early twentieth century as a critic. The Venetians raised a monument to him and put plaques on buildings he thought had the quality of beauty.
By the way, how are your eyes these days?
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Halos were made with hammered gold on wood panels. At the time of Masaccio, painters were just beginning to experiment with three dimensional illusion. Holy Family iconography was in many cases triangular and the depth technique was called "up the page". The pasted on appearance which you describe is quite common. Even as late as Michelangelo things appear pasted on. The sculpture of the tomb of Pope Julius for example, includes male forms with women's breasts pasted on. They look like inverted grape fruit halves. It was Correggio whom we just left who developed some sense of reality in female body parts.
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the pasted on effect . . .so it is something common Did they actually form the image separatel on some other material and PASTE it on?
the interesting thing about your approach Justin is that I don't see it elsewhere. I don't know how they resolved some of their effects. It surprised me that there was so little oil painting until much later.
At UCLA where I went they taught a materials class. We made gesso and layered it on wood. Then separated eggs and painted with the yolk which does contain oil. The effects in layers were lumin;us and transparent. I did one, a small one. It must have taken a lot of eggs to do those alter pieces.
Mine has more to do with internal aesthetics, the way I feel and the way I feel the artist may feel. lol
btw back a bit was the churchill remark. I do believe it is catching, at least the play on words may be. It's fun in here isn't it.
and OH YES my eyes hurt after only a few minutes of THIS because it is on a screen. that happens with the tv too, but not with reading on paper or a painting. It's just that I have trouble with the vision under those circumstances. can't see the detail without reading glasses.
I may give it up. I've been at it for seventy three years now since I was four. nuff said.
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insert here ---- the book I am reading THE ART THIEF because it centers around a college art history professor who also specializes in tracking down art thieves It is like a course in art history. . . like our justin's posts it sets the scene that way. It really it is a mystery but specialized in this area which we are discussing now in the search for a Carrevaccio alter piece and also a modern white on white painting with discussions on both periods and products. fascinating.
claire.
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Relating to absolutely nothing:
We're proposing a discussion for May of "Three Cups of Tea". I've started the book, and had a hard time putting it down. It's the story of a "climbing bum", who got lost coming down from a failed attempt to climb K2, and wound up in a Pakistani village so small, it wasn't on the map. When he left, he promised he would come back and build a school. He wound up building over 100 schools for girls, in the area controlled by the Taliban.
If you're interested, come let us know in "Proposed discussions" or here:
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=57.0 (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=57.0)
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I loved The Art Theif, too. I found it a weakness that most of the art experts in the book treated the art as if it were just a commodity, like pork bellys. They have to know all the technical details to do their job, but they don't seem to care about the art, except in terms of how much it's worth. I found this depressing.
This is balanced by one professor who talks about the beauty and emotional effect of the paintings, and by some of the other characters.
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Joan: I think you've made an astute observation. There are many "experts" in the marketing end of the business, particularly, who have little appreciation for the aesthetic values of art work other than what is necessary to make a sale.
Aesthetics is a concept that is virtually impossible to define and yet it entails a quality that is often applied loosely. I personally, draw pleasure from the mechanics, from the iconography, from the history, and from the setting of an art work and I tend to ignore aesthetics but I have to admit that if pressed, beauty can be found in pure line, in conception, in expression, and in the blend of art work and setting.
John Ruskin talked at great length about the nature of beauty in art. His books are full of it. Plato discussed the concept. Rather than talking about the beauty of a piece I prefer to discuss the elements that give me pleasure. Once you say a thing is beautiful or has beauty, you've said it all and there is nothing more to be said. That's the trouble with abstract superlatives.
I suppose, in every profession, there are mechanics and technicians, who look at their product as so much pork belly, without understanding the joys of roast pig. They should read Charles Lamb's essay on the topic.
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And here it is:
http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/dissertation_upon_roast_pig/ (http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/dissertation_upon_roast_pig/)
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Joan: If you folks are doing "Three Cups of Tea", I will join you. Please send me details so I can find my way to the site.
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Justin- HOORAY! We would love to have you join us in Three Cups of Tea. It is an amazing story on one man's humanitarian battle against the odds.
Do join us here. We would be delighted to have you and your illustrious thoughts.
Three Cups of Tea discussion (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=369.msg15085#msg15085)
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BOLOGNA
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Robby-
BOLOGNA that I would like to hav you join us in Three Cups of Tea OR BOLOGNA is our next stop in this discussion??? ::)
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If we pass over Reggio and Modena in unseemly haste, it is not because they had no cherished heroes of sword or brush or pen.
In Reggio an Augustinian monk, Ambrogio Calepino, compiled a dictionary of Latin and Italian, which in successive editions grew into a polyglot lexicon of eleven languages.
Little Carpi had a handsome cathedral designed by Baldassare Peruzzi.
Modena had a sculptor, Guido Mazzoni, who shocked townsmen by the realism of a terra-cotta Cristo morto.
And the fifteenth century choir stalls of the eleventh century cathedral matched the beauty of the facade and campanile. Pellegrino de Modena, who worked with Raphael in Rome and then returned to his native city, might have become a painter of note had he not been murdered by ruffians bent uon killing his son.
Doubtless Renaissance violence snuffed out in their growth a regiment of potential geniuses.
Bologna, standing at a main crossing of Italy's trade routes, continued to prosper, though her intellectual leadership was passing to Florence as humanism dethroned Scholasticism.
Her university was now only one of many in Italy and could no longer read the law to pontiffs and emperors but its medical school was still supreme. The popes claimed Bologna as one of the Papal States and Cardinal Albornoz had passingly enforced the claim but the schism of the Church between rival popes reduced papal control to a technicality.
A rich family, the Bentivogli, rose to political mastery and maintaind throughout the fifteenth century a mild dictatorship which observed republican forms and acknowledged but ignored the overlordship of the popes. As capo or had of the Senate, Giovanni Bentivoglio governed Bologna for thirty seven years with sufficient wisdom and justice to win the admiration of princes and the affection of the people. He paved streets, improved roads, and built canals. He helped the poor with gifts and organized public works to mitigate unemployment. He actively supported the arts.
It was he who brought Lorenzo Cosa to Bologna. For him and his sons Franbcia painted. Filelfo, Guarino, Aurispa, and other humanists were welcomed to his court. During the later years of his rule, embittered by a consp;iracy to depose him, he used harsh methods to maintain his ascendancy and forfeited the good will of the people.
In 1506 Pope Julius II advanced upon Bolognna with a papal army and demanded his abdication. He yielded peaceably, was allowed to depart intact and died in Milan two years later. Julius agreed that Bologna should thenceforth be ruled by its Senate, subjectd to veto, by a papal legate, of legisalation opposed by the church. The rule of the popes proved more oirderly and liberal than that of the BEntivogli. Local self government was unhindered. And the university enjoyed remarkable academic freedom.
Bologna remained a papal state, in fact as well as name, until the advent of Napoleon in 1796.
No good act should remain unpunished.
Robby
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Robby is this from your book or did YOU write this?
How interesting! It sounds as if Mr. Bentovogli was an early "capo." The God father of all who intended good things for his populace with all of the improvements that were made under his rule.
Mr. Caso, on the other hand seemed a bit autocratic, if not paranoid. Is this early Mafia shenanigans?
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That is from the book, Andy. I have no thoughts of my own.
Robby
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hahaha, yeah right Robby. That would be the day that you didn't have a grand thought of your own to share.
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Wkipedia tells us:
During the Renaissance, Bologna was the only Italian city that allowed women to excel in any profession. Women there had much more freedom than in other Italian cities; some even had the opportunity to earn a degree at the university.
Considering the time here, that is amazing.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
Brian.
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Men like Pompanazzi, who questioned the existence of the soul as well as it's immortality,were active in the University of Bologna during this period. They were tolerated as was Abelard and the Scholastic skeptics a few centuries earlier.
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Where have all the Renaissance corespondents gone? We appear to be stagnant.
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I'm here, looking, but don't have much to say.
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I've been wondering the same - I don't post much but I am here....Is Robby OK ?
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Robby is OK.
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- thanks Justin -that's good news and I'm glad to hear it.
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I got lost in the shuffle, were exactly are we at here, Robby? Justin?
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Andy: we were observing the workings of the University of Bologna in the Renaissance.
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Thanks Justin. I will check it out again.
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Where have all the Renaissance corespondents gone? We appear to be stagnant.
Well, what goes on ?
Brian.
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Brian-
I fear that we need to be "goosed" by one of Robby's resourceful posts to get us into high gear. :D
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Robby phoned this morning. He waited till 11am Virginia time and then called to awaken me at 8am from a sound sleep. I rumbled and grumbled in response but his message is " When I returned from a week long psycho convention I found my computer out of sorts." As soon as he can get it in operation again so soon will he join us. The gooser will be back. Patience is needed. He sounded healthy and full of his usual vim and vigor. I suppose he had been up since 5am when he rises to jog in the Shenandoah.
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Thank youJustin for the report o Robby. I've been wrried about him. We shall be patient and await our mentor.
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It could be worse - Robby could be jogging in the Himalayas, giving the villagers what-for, instead of nearby Shenandoah!
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When he returns, tell him to click on this link to see what they are saying about him over in the S&F's site. Very nice stuff, Robby! ::) Do go and read and maybe leave a message.
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=76.new#new (http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=76.new#new)
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After coming back from my psychological conference, I found that my computer had picked up its equivalent of the swine flu. It has been having terrible problems including email problems and whatever and I have been cut off from all you people. It's not a pleasant feeling let me tell you.
I am doing well physically, so to speak. A few months ago it turns out that I have a herniated muscle in my right arm and therefore can not lift it as high as my right arm. But I have no pain at all and it does not affect my typing or my writing when I am with my patients. I still go to the office and see patients five days a week. Two weeks ago I banged my right hand and dislocated my middle finger but they put that back and it is now slowly healing. Again, no pain. I still walk most mornings around the hospital grounds four times which equals two miles. The hospital employees talk about that "that doctor" who walks around the hospital grounds. They talk but don't do it themselves. They will be sorry when they get to be my age.
This weekend I will open up Durant's Renaissance volume and we will continue. But we do need more participants as we did in Senior Net. I will make it a point to put out info in Book Bytes but all of you can help spread the word.
The Gooser
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Hi Robby,
So nice to see you back in the land of the living! We miss you when you aren't around. Are you recommending that we all start walking again??? Boy, do I need to do that.
Ralph is exercising everyday(arms, legs, hands) plus walking on his treadmill. He's already in better shape than me and he's the one who had the heart pump implanted. yesterday, he replaced a freeze proof faucet which was leaking. Guess that means I can get out the old job jar. ;D
Did you say "Renaissance"? Our middle school 7th grade grandson is studying the Renaissance this quarter and really enjoying it. You just never know what will grab your interest. I may be looking in later.
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Well such good news this morning. I am delighted that all is well with you robby, we have worried about your absence. I agree we MUST encourage our memembership in some manner. Do you think we could brainstorm here?
Ann, it is wonderful to read of Ralph's progress. Tell him to keep up the good work.
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Yes, we need to brainstorm. In the stacks!
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ROBBY - I, too, am glad to see that you have returned from your adventures. I wondered if all of the participants in this discussion from the former SN site were contacted and invited to join the current group here?
During the past month, I've been active in the discussion about Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. That will close at the end of the month, so I've been scouting other sites.
I recall when this discussion opened. It's been lively and enjoyable ever since!
Mahlia
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Robby So good to see you in good health and spirits and back with us again.
I'm looking forward to the continuation of this marathon undertaking though as ever I will be more of a 'lurker' than a poster. Nonetheless, I always appreciate the contributions and the way everyone here shares their knowledge so generously.
thank you all...
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I believe that my computer is healthy again so let us move on to a fascinating era of the Renaissance.
Robby
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The Kingdom of Naples -- 1378-1534
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Alphonso the Magnanimous
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Southeast of the Marches and the Papal States all mainland Italy constituted the Kingdom of Naples. On the Adriatic side it included the ports of Pescara, Bari, Brindisi and Otranno. A bit inland the city of Foggia, once the lively capital of the wondrous Frederick II. On the instep the ancient port of Taranto. On the toe another Reggio. And on the southwestern coast one scenic splendor after another, rising to the glory of Salerno, Amalfi, Sorrento, and Capri, and culminating in busy, noisy;, loquacious, passionate, joyous Naples.
It was the only great city in the realm. Outside of it and the ports the country was agricultureral, medieval, feudal. The land was tilled by serfs or slaves or by peasants free to starve or to work for bread and a shirt, under barons whose ruthless rule of their great estates defied the authority of the throne. The king had little revenue from those lands but had to finance his government and court from the returns of his own feudal domains, or by exploiting to the point oi diminishing returns the rotal control of commerce.
This is the land of my ancestors.
I regret that I don't know in this new Senior Learn how to bring up links.
Robby
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Robby- email coming to you with lesson on linking URLs. do you remember when Jane taught us how to do these links for that other site? :D
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Thank you for your "refresher" email, Andy. Yes, I remember Jane teaching us all that and there was a time when I could zip through that "link equation" in no time flat without thinking. But then time passed and, as the old expression goes, "lack of practice makes less than perfect." When I get a chance, I'll get back to posting links and it will be like old times. Not to say that I won't appreciate links posted by others here.
Now our goal is to bring back all the "old time" participants and to find new ones.
Robby
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MAP OF KINGDOM OF NAPLES] (http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/italy/haxnaples.html)
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Robby, so nice to have you back. The link you gave did not work.
Here is one map from 1494 of Naples and the territory it controlled.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Italy_(1494)-ca.svg
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ROBBY - RE your comment about finding new participants: I mentioned this new site in one of my recent lectures and several in the audience were interested enough to write down the access address. Hopefully, they will be checking in.
Mahlia
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Outside of it (Naples) and the ports the country was agricultureral, medieval, feudal. The land was tilled by serfs or slaves or by peasants free to starve or to work for bread and a shirt, under barons whose ruthless rule of their great estates defied the authority of the throne
As Durant tells us, the Renaissance did not touch everyone. Nor did the all the elements that are the foundation of civilization. When one must scramble daily for bread with the threat of starvation hanging over their head, the other elements don't have much of a chance to become part of the equation.
People were born and died on these great estates, without ever knowing a renaissance was happening within their area. Regardless, the Renaissance was the bridge for all that came afterward.
Emily
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You make an important point, Emily. The story of the past often seems to be that of kings, queens, popes, emperors, artists, academics, adventurers, etc. etc. But we all know subconsciously as we read about these exploits that for every one of them there were thousands, if not millions, of people who were born, who struggled, and then died.
Is this not also true today as we make "history?"
Robby
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With government, banks, doctors, phone companies, computers etc. demanding so much information from the citizens, an unknown person can be identified and within hours their life history put on television. We are tracked from the cradle to the grave.
Personal history is different from 'data history'. I have video taped my mother for her descendants to have a record of her life. She is 96, and has lived almost a century, but is still very active.
It is becoming a lot harder to live and die anonymously.
Emily
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The house of Anjou had begun a rapid decline with the escapades of Queen Joanna I, which ended when Charles of Durazzo had her strangled with a silken cord.
Joanna II, though forty at her accession was as excitable as the first. She married thrice, banished her second husband, and had the third murdered. Faced by revolt, she called to her aid King Alfonso of Aragon and Sicily and adopted him as her son and heir . Rightly suspecting him of planning to replace her, she discowned him and left her state to Rene of Anjou at her death.
A long war of succession followed in which Alfonso, having sampled Naples, fought to seize its throne. While he was besieging Gaeta he was captured by the Genoese and was brought before Filippo Maria Visconti at Milan. With consummate logic surely never learned in schools, he persuaded the Duke that French power reestablished in Naples, added to French power already pressing upon Milan from the north and Genoa from the west, would hold half of Italy in a vise, which the Visconti would be the first to feel. Filippo understood, freed ihis prisoner, and bade him Godspeed to Naples.
After many battles and intrigues Alfonso won. The rule of the house of Anjou at Naples ended, that of the house of Aragon began. This usurpation provided the legal basis for the French invasion of Italy in 1494 which was the first act in the tragedy of Italy.
Alfonso was so pleased with his nw royal seat that he left the rule of Aragon and Sicily to his brother John II. He was not an easy ruler. He taxed with a hard hand, allowed financiers to squeeze the people, then squeezed them in turn, and extorted money from Jews by threatening to baptize them.
But most of his taxation fell up;on the merchant class. Alfonso reduced the taxes levied from the poor and helped the destitute. The Neapolitans thought him a good king. He walked among them unarmed, unattended, and unafraid. Having no children by his wife, he begot some on the ladies of his court. His wife killed one of these rivals and Alfonso never admitted the Queen to his presence therafter.
He was a zealous churchgoer and listened to sermons faithfully.
What is the definition of "good?"
Robby
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Sounds like Alphonso was a "good man" or a "straight arrow" as we in the Midwest refer to our good men. Someone who has standards and treats his fellow man fairly.
I felt that I became more aware of the common man, the worker, the merchant and the buyers of goods in "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. Those families who made their homes against the outside of the castle walls as they spent 100 yrs building a cathedral, made quite an impression on me.
It is also in "Sarum" by Edward Rutherford which is about the building of the Salisbury Cathedral and the remodeling of it over the years.
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But he taxed with a hard hand, allowed financiers to squeeze the people, squeezed them in turn, and extorted money from Jews by threatening to baptize them.
A good man?
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Not in my book.
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Did I misread that part??? I must have! Well, we only know what the print says, that he went about his territory unafraid and that the people liked him. Aren't we talking about John II being the hard ruler here??:
"Alfonso was so pleased with his nw royal seat that he left the rule of Aragon and Sicily to his brother John II. He was not an easy ruler. He taxed with a hard hand, allowed financiers to squeeze the people, then squeezed them in turn, and extorted money from Jews by threatening to baptize them.
But most of his taxation fell up;on the merchant class."
And aren't we talking about Alphonso here??:
"Alfonso reduced the taxes levied from the poor and helped the destitute. The Neapolitans thought him a good king. He walked among them unarmed, unattended, and unafraid. Having no children by his wife, he begot some on the ladies of his court. His wife killed one of these rivals and Alfonso never admitted the Queen to his presence therafter."
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ROBBY: great to have you and this discussion back. I'm always here, but sometimes lurking.
As a sociologist, to me history is always about how the ordinary folks like us lived their lives, as much as about kings and battles. Were these heavy taxes necessary to support the flourishing of art that we see at that time? If so, was it a good trade-off? For us, the inheritors of that art, clearly yes. For the people of the time, clearly no.
I'll never forget being in a small town in Italy (I've forgotten its name). Walking down narrow streets past small, worn houses ans simply dressed people toward the church of the town, which was covered from top to bottom with gold. If I lived in that town, how would I feel? Would the church uplift my spirits? Or would I feel that this was not what Christ intended?
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
There being scant interest here, I will move on rapidly to Ferrante.
Alfonso left his kingdom to his putative son Ferdinand.
Ferrante, as his people called him, was of dubious parentage. His mother was Margaret of Hijar, who had other lovers besides the King. Pontano, Ferrante's secretary, affirmed that the father was a Valencian marrano - i.e. a Christianized Spanish Jew. Valla was his tutor.
Ferrante was not known for sexual profligacy but he had most of the vices that can come from a passionate nature untamed by a firm moral code and aroused by apparently unreasonable hostility. Pope Calixtus III legitimated his birth but refused to recognize him as king. He declared the Aragonese line in Naples extinct and claimed the Kingdom as a fief of the Church. Rene of Anjou made another attempt to regain the throne bequeathed him by Joanna II.
While he landed forces on the Neapolitan coast, the feudal barons rose in revolt against the house of Aragon and allied themselves with the foreign foes of the King. Ferrante confronted these simultaneous challenges with angry courage, overcame them, and revenged himself with somber ferocity. One by one he lured his enemies with pretended reconcilization, gave them excellent dinners, killed some of them after dessert, imprisoned others, let several starve to death in his dungeons, kept some of them in cages for his occasional delectation and, when they died, had them embalmed and dressed in their favorite costimes and preserved them as mummies in his museum.
These stories, however, may be 'war atrocities' manufactured by historians in a hostile camp. It was this king who dealt so fairly with Lorenzo de Medici in 1479. Revolution nearly upset him in 1485 but he recovered his footing, completed a long reign of thirty six years and died amid general rejoicing. The rest of the stor4y of Naples belongs to the collapse of Italy.
Do you folks believe these atrocious tales?
Robby
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Do you folks believe these atrocious tales
Well. I doubt I've ever heard of Ferrante before and with only the quotation cited above to go on it's impossible to draw any sensible conclusion. At best, all I can say is that where there's smoke there's fire - so I assume that some of the tale is true if only in minor aspects as stories such as this usually have some of their substance based in fact even though they may be embellished beyond recognition.
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According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition, one historian described his recreational activities as follows: "Besides hunting, which he practiced regardless of all rights of property, his pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents near him, either alive in well-guarded prisons, or dead and embalmed, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime." Fearing no one, he would take great pleasure in conducting his guests on a tour of his prized "museum of mummies".
Perhaps it was his macabre 'museum of mummies' that gave the impression of cruelty. Getting invited to dinner and having to tour an exhibit of the hosts dead enemies all dressed up with no where to go would hardly be conducive to friendly dinner banter.
He died on January 25, 1494, worn out with anxiety; he was succeeded by his son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who was soon deposed by the invasion of King Charles which his father had so feared. The cause of his death was determined, in 2006, to have been colorectal cancer, by examination of his mummy.
The above quote from Wikipedia. For a man who liked to show off his dead enemies to his guests, the final insult is to have your own mummy yanked out and examined to announce to the world that you were a 'bad ass' in more ways than one.
Emily
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More about Lorenzo de' Medici from the History of Florence - - -
In 1479, in the midst of unbearable tension, Sixtus and King Ferrante (Ferdinand) of
Naples declared war on Florence. Lorenzo, knowing that the safety of his city and his
dynasty were at stake, undertook the most hazardous adventure of his colorful career. He
went by sea to Naples, virtually placing his life in the hands of the King. Ferrante was
won over by Lorenzo's charm and his persuasive argument that it would not do for Italy to
be divided or Florence destroyed. Lorenzo returned to Florence with the gift of peace and
was received with great joy.
(Quoted from an article in Answers.com.)
Brian
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Happy Birthday America
July 4, 2009
As the renaissance winds down in Italy, ships are sailing west to discover America. A brave new world is born as the old one contracts and moans.
Emily
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Are the Durants to be believed here? or am I misunderstanding. The two quoted sites are not always correct either. Oh, well, onward and upward as we come closer and closer to the discovery of America which we celebrated yesterday. A belated
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY--AMERICA'S INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!
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I did not post for a while because very few people seemed interested. Shall we continue Renaissance?
Robby
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I would like to continue, Robby.
This discussion group has been around for a VERY LONG TIME,
and I would hate to see it fizzle out ignominiously.
Brian.
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I'm here, reading. Just not doing much talking. I would hate to see the site end, although it's up to you if you have the time and desire to continue.
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I am here as well and have always leaned towards this site Robby.
I love the way that you have taken the time to break the periods (eras) down for discussion.
You lead and we shall follow.l
Andy
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Years ago I likened my job as DL as the steering wheel and the participants as the motor. If there is no motor moving the vehicle forward, I have no direction in which to steer. Of course I will continue but we need to be a team.
Robby
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From time to time throughout these years we have gained knowledge by comparing what we are reading in Durant to the present times. Speaking for myself, I have been struck by the fact that class war or strife seems to have occurred in every single civilization or culture - without exception. I am interested in your reaction to the subject approached in the following NY Times article. Do you see a similarity between attitudes toward specific classes now and what was so hundreds and thousands of years ago? Does this affect only women? What about wealth vs poverty? What about those people in this current Recession who used to help out at soup lines and now are in the lines receiving food? A change, if you will, from one class to another?
Will strife between classes always be with us?
Robby
Dangerous Resentment
A couple of weeks ago, Bridget Kevane, a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State University, drove her three kids and two of their friends — two 12-year-old girls, and three younger kids, age 8, 7 and 3 — to a mall near their home in Bozeman. She put the 12-year-olds in charge, and told them not to leave the younger kids alone. She ordered that the 3-year-old remain in her stroller. She told them to call her on their cell phone if they needed her.
And then she drove home for some rest.
About an hour later, she was summoned back to the mall by the police, who charged her with endangering the welfare of her children.
“Be quiet,” she was told, as she scrambled to explain herself, and a policeman threatened, as Kevane describes it in the current issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, “that if I ‘went crazy’ on him, he would handcuff me right in front of the children and take me away to jail for the night.”
The children were fine — “smiling, eating candy” — or were, at least, until the police decided to make an example of their mom.
The city attorney who took on Kevane’s case decided to do the same thing. She refused to hear of slapping Kevane on the wrist or accepting a guilty plea for anything less than “violating a duty of care,” a child endangerment charge punishable by jail time.
Now, we can debate until we’re blue in the face whether or not Kevane should have left those three young children alone with the 12-year-olds. The pre-teens in question, it seems pretty clear, didn’t have the maturity to be entrusted with the care of younger kids; despite what Kevane calls their solid “experience” babysitting, they ditched their charges in the purse section by the cosmetics counter in Macy’s while they went off to try on some shirts, setting off the whole sorry adventure with law enforcement.
That still doesn’t mean that Kevane’s error in judgment adds up to anything like child endangerment.
The issue I want to take up today, however, is not that of tricky choices, or over- or under-involved parenting, questions that have already been discussed with much gusto elsewhere. What really sent my head spinning after reading Kevane’s story was the degree to which it drove home the fact that our country’s resentment, and even hatred, of well-educated, apparently affluent women, is spiraling out of control.
The prosecutor pursued her child endangerment case ultra-zealously because she “said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their ‘heads are always in a book,’” Kevane writes. “I just think that even individuals with major educations can commit this offense, and they should not be treated differently because they have more money or education,” the prosecutor wrote to Kevane’s lawyer.
Kevane reflects, “I now realize that her pressure — her near obsession with having me plead guilty — had less to do with what I had done and more to do with her perception of me as an outsider who thought she was above the law, who had money to pay her way out of a mistake, who thought she was smarter than the Bozeman attorney because of her ‘major education.’ This perception took hold even though I had never spoken one word to her directly. Nor did I ever speak in court; only my lawyer did. I was visible but silent, and thus unable to shake the image that the prosecutor had created of me: a rich, reckless, highly educated outsider mother who probably left her children all the time in order to read her books.”
This simmering resentment is common and pervasive in our culture right now. The idea that women with a “major education” think they’re better than everyone else, have a great sense of entitlement, feel they deserve special treatment, and are too out of touch with the lives of “normal” women to have a legitimate point of view, is a 21st-century version of the long-held belief that education makes women uppity and leads them to forget their rightful place. It’s precisely the kind of thinking that has fueled Sarah Palin’s unlikely — and continued — ability to pass herself off as the consummately “real” American woman. (And it is what has made it possible for her supporters to discredit other women’s criticism of her as elitist cat fighting.)
The idea that these women really should “be quiet” comes through loud and clear every time. Men, you may or may not have noticed, are virtually never accused of “whining” when they talk or speak out about their lives. When well-educated, affluent men write about other well-educated, affluent men — and isn’t that what most political reporting and commentary is? — they are never said to be limited by the “narrowness” of their scope and experience. Well-educated fathers are not perceived as less real, authentic or decent than less-educated fathers. Even professor-dads, as far as I can tell, don’t have to labor to prove that they’re human.
The idea that women with “major educations” are somehow suspect, the desire to smack them down and tell them “to be quiet” is hardly new. At the end of the 19th century, as increasing numbers of women began for the first time to pursue higher education, a campaign began, waged by prominent doctors, among others, against these new unnatural monsters, whose vital energies were being diverted from their wombs to their brains. In the last quarter of the 20th century, feminists were routinely delegitimized as brainy elitists ignorant of and unconcerned with the plight of ordinary women.
It made no difference how much work groups like the National Organization for Women did on behalf of battered or economically powerless women. It made no difference how much advocacy was done for legislation promoting pay equity (a particularly acute problem for women at the lower end of the economic spectrum) or for affordable child care. The media — then as now — was interested only in more educated, more affluent women, and so it was these women who came to define the women’s movement in the popular imagination. And it was these women, too, who came to be identified with social change, and who came to be despised when that change proved frightening and difficult.
This is why Palin — in her down-home aw-shucks posturing — is the 21st-century face of the backlash against women’s progress. This is why Kevane could be threatened and humiliated in front of her kids, menaced with jail time and ultimately railroaded into cutting a deal with the prosecution, once she realized she’d never be popular enough with local jurors to have a shot at making a successful not-guilty plea in court. (Paradox of paradoxes, as part of her deferred prosecution agreement, she was sentenced to even more education: in the form of a parenting class.)
The hatred of women — in all its archaic, phantasmagoric forms — is still alive and well in our society, and when directed at well-educated women, it’s socially acceptable, too. Think of this for a second the next time you’re inexplicably moved to put an “elite” woman in her place.
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Robby, do you have a link to the article? I need to know who wrote the article before I would comment further than the following sentence. I have read what you posted and it seems to have been written by the defendant or her attorney. I have never heard of this unique defense, 'they hate educated women'.
Emily
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Emily - - -This link will help to elucidate the question - - -
http://lyingeyes.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-judith-warner-insane.html (http://lyingeyes.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-judith-warner-insane.html)
I am not sure that I can get too excited about it, and I don't think it proves or disproves the fact that males can get away with inappropriate behaviour anyway - - -
Brian.
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Thank you for the link, Brian. Yes, it was a blog (we can call it a column) in the NY Times. All of us must keep in mind that columns, editorials, whatever are opinions and what is stated there may or not be fact. My point in posting it was due to my noticing over the years with SofC that there was always some sort of class war and asking all of you if you saw constant "wars" between the classes even in our enlightened culture.
Robby
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Thanks Robby - - - I am not too enamoured of Judith Warner's blogs - - - can you tell?
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/12/04/judith_warner/ (http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/12/04/judith_warner/)
Brian.
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My take: the US is a country that is proud of not having "class" differences. Yet, they are there: just more subtle and less overt. Money and power always tend to get concentrated in a few hands: from what I've read, the difference between the richest few and the rest of us is getting greater, not less.
There are some real differences in power involved, but this shows up mainly in life style. The "upper, upper crust" lives motly behind walls: we occasionally see them coming and going from somewhere, but don't really know much about them. The "new rich" splash their money all over the place: we see them a lot in the media: many of them don't have power, but a LOT of money and THE LIFE STYLE!
I doubt that there will ever be class war in this country: most people are working or middle class andare sort of making it. We do have more access to both government and material goods than most countries. When things get too bad, we do protest, (e.g. the Civil Rights Movement) and there is some change without overthrowing our government. In a dictatorship, the only way to bring about change is a coup.
One pattern we've seen over and over again is that when get bad, a strong, and often benificant leader takes over. He straightens things out, improves the lot of the people, and they happily cede their rights to him. This leads to peace and prosperity for awhile, but sooner or later the following generations of leaders misuse that power for their own ends. So far, that hasn't happened here. We have had strong leaders misuse power (Lincoln suspending the use of habias corpus, John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Act) but there has always been a reaction that restored the rights
I doubt if there will be a class was here in the US. We have all kinds of mdia telling us t
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Robby-
My point in posting it was due to my noticing over the years with SofC that there was always some sort of class war and asking all of you if you saw constant "wars" between the classes even in our enlightened culture.
Joan- I certainly hope that you are right but I fear that the attitudes of intolerance continues to exist.
Some people, for what ever reason, have this state of mind that certain people's behavior, beliefs or "isms" aren't in conjunction with their own. This is bigotry and will forever exist. I, myself, have this bigotry toward one particular group of people and truly in my heart pray about it. I am intolerant of their behavior and what they are allowed to get away with in our country.
I believe in diversity BUT- I can not tolerate some things.
I want to be proven wrong about them and have looked for ways to open my heart.
This has not happened.
Sometimes (and I am not excusing myself by any means) -SOMETIMES- the opposing faction needs to step up to the plate and prove their own worth to others. Convince others, if you will, that they are akin to the rest of the world, living at their doorstep.
It's a vicious cycle because they believe that their attitudes and opinions are correct and "others' are wrong.
How do you change that in society? We open our hearts and discuss these things with our youth in hopes that their prefudices are less than our own.
We open dialogue in an attempt to lessen the harsh opinions.
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Very interesting article. I agree w/ all of it and yes, Robby, i do believe that classes have always had prejudices and stereotypes about each other and a competition w/ each other, often inflamed by idealogues and the media.
I relate very strongly to the comment about the stereotype of the contemporary women's movement as an example of the mythology that is continually generated. I have been a frequent participant of the movement since the 70's in a variety of ways. 99% of the women that i have come in contact w/ have been middle or lower-class women working to support each other, to change law and society's rigid gender rules, especially those that disadvantaged women. The writer is correct that the media focused on celebrity women, not the 10's of thousands of women who were in consciouness-raising groups or working in battered women's shelters. Many of those notable women were also working on making changes that would provide better lives for all women, as the writer statesd, but were/are portrayed as self-centered, "elitest," arrogant women. (Perhaps the reality shows of "housewives of........." perpetuates that image, altho they are largely only wealthy women, not feminists and we have to question who put those shows on the air?)
The backlash against educated women is highly interesting. What is the fear? It is the same in all group clashes - lose of power, or having to share prestiege, the need of some to control others, and the fear of being manipulated by "lesser" beings, the need to feel superior to someone. It's true when we look at male/female relationships, at employer/labor relationships, at the mythology of the demon unions, at the European and other cultures' persistence of class traditions/behaviors, at ethnic group conflict, at national/tribal conflict. The inate fear of "the other."
It can be distressing to study history and know that altho individual circumstances sometimes get "better" over the course of history, the concept of "the evil other" appears to not be able to be overcome.
Of course, as always, it is most distressing when women join the bandwagon of disparaging women who are different from "me" - in whatever way. But we are still talking about the concept of those, even of my larger group, as being a sub-group that becomes "the other."...................i'm beginning to ramble, i'll stop here........jean
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JEAN: I'm also a long-time participant in the women's movement, and very aware of the negative stereotypes that have always followed te movement, and, indeed, all women. Part of it was simple economics: women for a long time provided a cheap, educated labor force. Other groups that have been kept in the position of being a "cheap labor force" have been "kept in their place" by lack of access to education. But with the mountains of clerical work that arose when we moved into the information age, there was also a need for masses of educated workers who would work "cheap".
Please excuse my ranting on the subject: my dissertation was on gender segregation in the labor force. That was 20 years ago: at that time, there were not more than a handful of occupations that contained men and women in proportionate numbers. When women entered a male-dominated occupation, the pay, working conditions, and prestige of the occupation tended to fall: men would resist that, not only to protect their jobs, but their working conditions. How much of that has changed?
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joan go ahead and rant. it is up to women to do that now and then to keep this issue alive and well. It is alive and well I think. Palin palinpalin all over the tube still which is she were a he would pobably not be.She is a pretty woman and that is probably why they keep showing her there. The moderators haven't much else to talk about. jackson is still there. he tried to be a pretty woman too. the discussion of the people of the book is really interesting now and relates to the fifteenth centurry art world. have a look.
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THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH
[/b]
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The Papal Schism 1378-1447
[/i][/b]
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Gregory XI had brought the papacy back to Rome but would it stay there?
The conclave that met to name his successor was composed of sixteen cardinals, only four of whom were Italians. The municipal authorities petitioned them to choose a Roman, or at least an Italian, and to support the suggestion a crowd of Romans gathered outside the Vatican, threatening to kill all non Italian cardinals unless a Roman were made pope. The frightened conclave, by a vote of fifteen to one, hastily elected Bartolommeo Prignano, Archibishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI. They then fled in fear of their lives. But Rome accepted the comnpromise.
Urban VI ruled the city and the Church with impetuous and despotic energy. He appointed senators and minicipal magistrates and reducd the turbulent capital to obedience and order. He shocked the cardinals by announcing that he proposed to reform the Church and to begin at the top.
Two weeks later, preaching publicily in their presence, he condemned the morals of the cardinal s and the higher clergy in unmeasured terms. He forbade them to accept pensions and ordered that all business brought to the Curia shold be dispatched without fees or girfts of any kind. When the cardinals murmured he commanded them to 'cease your foolish chattering.' When Cardinal Orsini protested the Pope called him a 'blockhead.' When the Cardinal of Limoges objected Urban rushed at him to strike him.
Hearing of all this, St. Catherine sent the fiery Pontiff a warning: 'Do what you have to do with moderation with good will and a peacefl heartr for excess destroys rather than uilds up. For the sake of the cricified Lord keep these hasty movements of your nature a little in check.'
Urban, heedless, announced his intention to appoint enough Italian cardinals to give Italy a mamority in the College.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
Robby
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Urban VI ruled the city and the Church with impetuous and despotic energy. He appointed senators and minicipal magistrates and reducd the turbulent capital to obedience and order
The senators and magistrates sent the rabble to threaten the cardinals if they did not appoint a Roman to be Pope.
Combining the power of both the state and church in the hands of the pope would naturally cause conflict.
A good example of why there should be separation of church and state.
But first more blood must flow........
Emily
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"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This arose as a quotation by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton
(1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord
Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:
- - - and the rest of the quote reads - - -
Great men are almost always bad men."
Brian.
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I've read more about this story somewhere, I can't remember where. This is the pope I've heard called "insane". I'm going to reserve judgement. Was he insane, or just infuriated at the corruption he found? Or both?
We'll see what happens when they try to get rid of him!
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EMILY: I agree completely about the importance of the separation of church and state. We Americans have never experienced the sort of things that can happen when they are joined, and readily agree to weakenings of that separation. This is one of many reasons for reading history.
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Translated from the Italian.......
As a consequence of the tumultuous pressure placed upon them by the Romans, the college submitted to nominating an Italian Pope, Urban VI.
The following year the cardinals recanted the election of Urban V1 and elected the anti-Pope Clement VII. The great western schism thus exploded and for 40 years it was impossible to know who was the legitimate Pope. Religious antagonism between Pope and anti-Pope rapidly degenerated into civil war.
The schism became worse when the Italian cardinals elected a third Pope. Christianity faced the spectacle of three Popes who excommunicated each other.
I wonder over this forty year period how many people died in the quest for 'absolute power'.
http://www.montecalvo.net/cenni_di_storia_inglese.htm
Emily
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"The Cardinals recanted the election of Urban VI" Some accounts claim that Urban VI had gone insane. In any case, as recounted above, he tried to clean up the corruption in the Church.
This must have been an interesting time, with one Pope in Rome, the other had moved to France. I wonder how Cathwlics not in those two countries decided who to follow.
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The election of Urban Vl was an example of Roman mob rule. The election of Clement Vll was a French led response by the full college of cardinals including the Italians who were unhappy with Urban's heavy handed reforms. The French feared a loss of papal revenue at the very moment France was engaged in war with England. The college declared Urban's election invalid. Clearly, they did not wish for a schism but when the new Pope set up shop in Avignon rather than in Rome a rivalry was inevitable. The European states lined up on both sides. Naples, Spain and Scotland supported Clement and England, Germany,Poland, Hungary and Portugal supported Urban.
The Rival Popes flung excomunicado Bulls at each other and at the allied countries as well. The people of those countries became heretics and blasphemers. The people were doomed. The dead went to hell, baptisms were invalid, and penance was shriven of it's power. Each side declared the sacraments of the other invalid. The people remained in mortal sin. They didn't know it was all a put-on. They thought it real and they were truly doomed. Can you imagine how painful it must have been for the elderly who came to rely so heavily upon this scheme of after- life. Death brought only fear of hell and damnation. Humans invented this evil stuff and when it comes to fighting over the spoils they tend to forget that the victims are the simple people who are the heart and soul of the enterprise. It is the same today. We have not advanced much beyond the Fourteenth Century. The rituals of religious adherence still control our way of living.
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This might be the time to inject a little irreverent levity into the catastrophic seriousness of the present discussion.
The PowerPoint presentation that follows is my contribution
www.onetruelarry.org/Creation.pps (http://www.onetruelarry.org/Creation.pps)
I fully agree that State and Church should be separated - - - all over the world.
Brian.
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Sorry, my computer made a big fuss about opening your file.
But I couldn't agree with you more.
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A fascinating (though not easy to read) novel covering this period is "The Dream of Scipio" by Ian Pears. The theme is whether it's possible to live a moral life in an immoral time: it's placed in Avignon in three historical periods of chaos: the Roman empire as the Huns were overcoming it, the period of the schism, when the Black Death was rampant in France, and there was pressure on the French Pope to make the Jews the scapegoats, and the Occupation of the area by the Nazis, when again the Jews were being targetted.
In each period there was a man (linked to each other by an imaginary philosophical treatise that passes from one to the other) struggling with similiar issues of how to be a moral and good person in their time.
Not an easy read, but I recommend it highly. Many of the characters we have (or will) read about in the first two periods appear.
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Joan: I'm reminded of Dickens' character "Sidney Carton" who tried to do a moral thing in an immoral period. Similarly, Cicero, also qualifies as a moral man acting in an immoral period. Christ may also qualify for the role. Abe Lincoln also fits the role quite nicely.
As I look back on what I have said thus far, I see that all these moral men died as a result of their expression of morality.
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Educated women have traditionally taken a hit because they are exposed more than ordinary women. They are less dependent on men than other women and therefore feel more free to participate with men on a more equal basis. That works ok if they don't intrude or exceed the men in conversation for then they are seen as uppity women. The other gals who don't possess the power of education can't wait to slice her up with jealousy. So the educated gal gets it from both sides. In years past, educated gals have found acceptance in nondisclosure. That's as bad as "Don't ask, don't tell" in the military.
I think all that is changing and for the better. I had three daughters whom I educated for as long as they would continue in school. Early on I encouraged them, again and again, to contribute in conversations involving men. Take up baseball if necessary but contribute. They thank me for it today but the going was tough in the beginning. They are all doing significant work in their own fields and happy and proud of what they are achieving. Some of their opportunities were due to the woman's movement but the advantage they took of those opportunities was due to their own expression of power.
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Not that I'm happy about this but women entering combat is an example of doing what used to be a male "occupation."
Robby
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Continuing "The Papal Schism."
The French cardinals gathered in Anagni and planned revolt.
On August 9, 1378 they issued a manifesto declaring Urban's election invalid as having been made under duress of the Roman mob. All the Italian cardinals joined them and at Fondi on September 20 the entire College proclaimed Robert of Geneva to be the true pope. Robert, as Clement VII, took up his residence at Avignon while Urban clung to his pontifical office in Eome. The Papal Schism so inaugurated was one more result of the rising national state. In effect it was an attempt by France to retain the vital aid of the papacy in her war with England and in any future contest with Germany or Italy.
The lead of France was followsed by Naples, Spain, and Scotland but England, Flanders, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and Portugal accepted Urban and the Church became the political plaything of the rival camps. The confusion reached a pitch that aroused the scornful laughter of expanding Islam. Half the Christian world held the other half to be heretical blasphemous and excommunicate.
St. Catherine denounced Clement VII as a Judas. St. Vincent Ferrer applied the same term to Urban VI. Each side claimed that sacraments administered by priests of the opposite obedience were invalid and that the children so baptized, the penitents so shriven, the dying so anointed, remained in a state of mortal sin, doomed to hell or limbo if death should supervene. Mutual hatred rose to a fervor equaled only in the bitterest wars.
When many of Urban's newly appointed cardinals plotted to place him in confinement as a dangerous incompetent, he had seven of them arested, tortured, and put to dath.
Robby
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"Confusion over the split aroused the scornful laughter of expanding Islam. Half the Christian world held the other half to be heretical, blasphemous, and excommunicate."
It is a little surprising that Durant would give credence to this Islamic response. The period is 1370 or seven centuries after the formation of Islam by Mohammad. During those centuries the deep rift between Shi'a and Sunni came about resulting in the death of adherents on both sides. The rift and the deaths continue to this modern day and are perhaps the only major road block to peace in Irag. Long after the radical fundamentalists are gone, the Shi'a and Sunni rift will continue. It may from time to time persist without significant violence but it will continue. At the moment these antagonists are sending suicide bombers against each other all the while a new government is forming by election.
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Justin, it's good to see you posting again.
If Islam takes a page from Christianity, they will have 600 more years to fight each other. After 2,000 years Christians seem to have finally buried the hatchet among the different sects.
But according to Kin Hubbard "No one ever forgets where he buried the hatchet".
Emily
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
Emily: I think Hubbard is right (who ever he is. By the way who is he?) I think it's only a question of time till one Christian sect or another finds enough deviation in their respective beliefs to start killing one another again. Christ asked his father to forgive those who tormented him but the followers never seemed to fully grasp the idea. They seem to be more concerned with ritual than with understanding the message. Does one stand up or sit down during the reading of the creed? Does one drink wine and eat bread or swallow a symbolic wafer in a communion experience? It would all be worth while if religious people were to select the two or three good ideas resident in religions in general and forget all the trappings that have caused so much concern over the centuries. The "Golden Rule" was developed during the Sumerian civilization and various religions have picked it up as their own. It is a worthwhile idea that promotes peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
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Justin here is a short excerpt from Wiki on Kin Hubbard.
Frank McKinney Hubbard (born 1 September 1868 in Bellefontaine, Ohio - died: 26 December 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana) was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist better known by his pen name "Kin" Hubbard.
He was creator of the cartoon "Abe Martin of Brown County" which ran in U.S. newspapers from 1904 until his death in 1930, and was the originator of many political quips that remain in use. North American humorist Will Rogers reportedly declared Kin to be "America's greatest humorist.
Emily
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Thank you, Emily. Kin Hubbard is a new name to me. But if Will Rogers vouched for him, he comes with fine credentials. I wonder what else he had to say that is memorable. !904 to 1930 was an exciting time period in US history. It began with the closing of the frontier, the end of Indian warfare, WW1, the rejection of US collaboration in the European peace movement, and the collapse of the financial markets in the face of wild speculation.
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And don't forget industrialization, the movement from the farms to the city, the largest flood of immigrants this country had ever seen, and the surging birthrate that movement to an industrial economy brings. The population of the US doubled in ten years, leading to racist and anti-immegrant scars we're still stuck with. Also leading to all sorts of social movements and upheavals.
I love reading about that time.
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Even the Saints were at war with other saints during the Schism. If we think the saints were saintly we are mistaken. St. Catherine of Sienna supported Urban although she warned him to bring his behavior into line with Godly expectations or she would see to it that God wrapped his knuckles. She called Clement a heretic and a Judas. St Vincent on the other hand was a supporter of Clement and an advocate for reform in the Church. This kind of squabbling was hardest on the poor parishioners who wanted nothing more than to obey so they would not suffer for eternity in hell. But they were denied the right to salvation and thus were doomed to spend eternity in hell. Of course, they believed that and fear must have been one's constant companion. When the guys at the top sneeze the folks on the bottom rung pay for that excess by serving in hell for eternity. I know it's ridiculous, but the poor illiterate were mentally enslaved by the hierarchy of the church.
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Let us continue with "The Councils and the Popes" - 1409-18
Rebellious philosophers, almost a century before, had laid the foundations of the conciliar movement. William of Occam protested against identifying the Church with the clergy. The Church, he said, is the congregation of all the faithful. That whole has authority superior to any part. It may delegate its authority to a general council, which should have the power to elect, reprove, punish, or depose the pope.
A general council, said Marsilius of Padua, is the gathered intelligence of Christendom. How shall any one man dare set up his own intelligence above it? Such a council should be composed not only of clergy but also of laymen elected by the people. And its deliberations should be free from domination by the pope.
Isn't this exactly how the United States of America is set up?
Robby
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Yes, I think there are elements of the American political system in Occam's proposal but only very elementary elements. Certainly, the idea that a leader is subordinate to the whole body politic is clearly a Greek as well as an American element. So too is the concept of a representative subset of the body politic with power to elect and dismiss a leader for malfeasance. That's really the American contribution to the concept.
However, the significance of Occam's proposal lies in it's daring suggestion that the successor of Peter did not have the power that Christ gave him when he said" Peter, you are the rock upon which my church will be built."
That dictum had lasted for 1500 years as the basis of Papal power. Then along comes Occam with the very radical notion that the Papacy is subservient to the Christian congregation as a whole. That's Heresy with a capital H. It is in fact the first sign of reformation. The idea smolders and grows until it bursts forth in a great flame during a period of exceptional Papal decadence in the form of 39 theses pinned to the doors of a church in Wittenburg by Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk. We are looking at the spark that provided ignition for the conflagration we call Protestantism today.
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Laymen elected by the people!?!That's an idea I have never heard connected to the Catholic Church! What a change of perspective!.................jean
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Protestants are exactly what their name implies. They will protest against the office of the pope. They will separate and divide into so many factions eventually that their power will be muted. It will also lessen the power of the pope. Both of those facts are a good thing in my opinion. Both of these groups also drain money from people who can least afford it, as does every other so called 'faith' in the world.
It would have been the perfect time to have thrown out the dishes with the dishwater and labeled these so called gods what they were, myths. We label the Greek gods, the Roman gods, the Norse gods, the Aztec gods etc. all myths, so why not the Arab gods. I have never believed in myths of any description, but have read them all, as myths, never reality.
The myth carriers and controllers used intimidation and fear to keep their myths alive and the money rolling in. The death penalty was put on those who defied their teaching. Especially the non believers had to be very careful of what they said or wrote, so as to avoid the axe or stake.
I am struggling to finish a book written by an ancient ancestor who lived around this time in France. He wrote about economic theory of all things. I found his name on a list of books to be banned in Spain during the Inquisition. He was Catholic, superstitious, and professed to be a believer, but was a suspect to the church. I felt he lacked courage, but my daughter thinks he was only trying to stay alive in a time of inquisition.
Emily
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Papal Councils have been used since the 3rd century to solve complex issues of dogma and to form the essential character of the Church. The results of a council must be blessed by a reigning Pope and if not the issue remains as knotty as before the Council. During the Schism the Council of Pisa formed without papal endorsement and called the two rival Popes before it. They declined to appear so the council fired both Popes and elected a third to replace them. The work of the council was blessed by neither of the two original principals and thus the third Pope became just another contender for the throne.
Jean: There were several lay persons on the Council but none of them had been elected for the job. Abbots are often elected by the monks they serve but they were not elected as delegates to the Council.
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Emily: What is the name of this gutless ancestor of yours who thought more of his precious life than he did about defending his honor against the power of the inquisition. He is a man after my own heart. Life is more important than to waste it defending oneself against trivial concepts made large by advocates of a giant hoax.
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Justin, he wrote under the name Jean Bodin, but as with most things French his full name was more descriptive. The name of the book is "Method for the easy comprehension of history" (Methodus ad facilem historiarum).
It was one of his early works, he wrote in Latin, later translated into English. His most important work was "The six books of the commonwealth" (Les six livres de la Republique")
My cousin who has a home in France and spends his summers there sent me the book. It is a smaller book and may be a collection of early essays done before the main translation later. It is not what I wanted for summer reading, but continue on anyway.
Here is a link to Stanford that is too detailed for me right now, but I gave it a look.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodin/
Emily
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Emily: This ancient relative of yours was a giant of a man. All his books are on the Index of forbidden books. The things he had to say were and are forbidden Catholics to read. He attacked witchcraft and conversation with the devil and is then suspected of being on friendly terms with the dark fellow because he seemed to know so much about the activities of witches and the devil. He was in his youth a Carmelite monk who having been arrested for heresy is released from his vows. He married in 1552 and again in 1576. He praises Humanism and recommends it to the people of Geneva as worth teaching in their schools.
He serves as council to the French King in 1560 and at the beginning of the French Wars of Religion blames the "true Church" for the war with the Huguenots.
His book the Methodus comes at a time when The Counter Reformation is in full sway. He challenges the Papal Curia in the work and it is not welcome. He declares that the religion of Christ is and has been accessible to all men even those who came before Christ. He argues for a return of Catholicism to the message of Gospels.He argues for Freedom of Conscience and a strong measure of Religious Tolerance. In his view, belief should be voluntary rather than imposed.
The man is a giant and we know so little about him largely because his works, forbidden as they were, were not translated until the twentieth century. This is just one more example (among many) of the reason a rational society should reject the notion that any one group has a working relationship with a deity.
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Justin, wow, you know much more about this distant relative than I do. He was born almost 500 years ago, and that is beyond my reach. Without the work of my cousin I would not have been aware of him other than his name, which I did know from a family history book. That book did state he was a writer, but when they mentioned he wrote on economic theory among other things, that ended my interest in reading any of his works.
My cousin has been doing research for the last few years and planned to do a biography, but the search is slow and tedious and he is particular about what he accepts, original records only. I did e-mail him about finding the ban on the work of our ancestor in Spain with the name of the author of the article. He has contacted him and set up an appointment to look at the original documents.
Sorry Robbie for getting off track. Perhaps when we get to the French renaissance, I can add something positive.
Emily
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Emily: You weren't off track. Jean Bodin was held to account by the Inquisition for his objections to the work of the Papal Curia- a Rome based activity. The Inquisition was a late Italian Renaissance invention that proved useful during the Counter Reformation. The practice was adopted by Spanish royalty for political control of the Netherlands and Flanders. It reached into France a little later and even reared its ugly head in Louisiana. The Jews were one of the primary targets of the Inquisition and the good fathers just loved those involved in witchcraft- especially the old women who looked like hell.
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Emily, throughout the time we have been discussing our five volumes (so far), we have always paused to bring the past and the present together. And most certainly, a personal touch is not out of line. A year of so ago we were discussing the possible origin of the name "Iadeluca." Thanks for adding this human touch.
Robby
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Yes, and Iadeluca turned out to be Roman and Renaissance as well.
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Thank you, Robby.
It is September again, and soon this discussion will have been ongoing for eight years. We are now in the fifth book of this series by Durant. Congratulations to you, Robby! We could not have had a better discussion leader, and we owe you our thanks.
A special thanks to Justin, especially in this book, since his discussion on art opened my eyes to the art world as I had never seen it. I was one of those who 'knew it when I saw it' types who never questioned the complexity of how art changed over the centuries. Justin is our own encyclopedia, not just in art.
Since the ladies were more or less left out of this history, we have all at one time or another complained about this slight. Regardless, I have enjoyed it all. Here's to the ladies of this discussion who kept it interesting over these eight years.
Thanks to Brian for his contributions and links. He keeps us moving. To all the gentlemen who have posted in this discussion, they were all exceptional.
Emily
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It's hard to believe we have been engaged in this discussion for eight years. The time has just flown by. There have been so many interesting personalities to share our thoughts with over the years that I feel enriched.
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I was surprised, too. Does anyone here have an approximate date?
Robby
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An acquaintance of mine says that when thinking of Ted Kennedy, she thinks of Chappaquidick and that no matter what else he may have done, that event outweights it and he was not a great man. I pointed out that throughout history many men we consider "great" for one reason or another, raped, murdered, abandoned their families, lied, cheated -- yet were considered "great" because they furthered the cause of civilization.
What are your thoughts?
Robby
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As we continue to read these historical events which seemed to be so important, even world shaking, at the time, looking at them through the lens of passing centuries -- do they really make a difference? Do they matter? I have not suddenly become despondent or cynical. I am just asking. Read the article below.
While Europe Sleeps, Bosnia Seethes
By NICHOLAS KULISH
BERLIN
NEARLY 14 years after peace for Bosnia was hammered out in Ohio, the hills rising up around Sarajevo can still lead a visitor to uncomfortable thoughts about sightlines for snipers.
As I stood there in person on a visit back in May with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the violence of the ’90s didn’t feel so far away. Mr. Biden barnstormed through the Balkans on Air Force 2, also stopping in Serbia and Kosovo, with the goal of trying to draw flagging attention back to the region, delivering his sternest lecture to the Bosnian Parliament, warning against falling back onto “old patterns and ancient animosities.”
Mr. Biden is not alone in his warnings. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, under the headline “The Death of Dayton,” Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western write that because of ethnic divisions that refuse to heal, widespread corruption and political deadlock, “the country now stands on the brink of collapse” and “unless checked, the current trends toward fragmentation will almost certainly lead to a resumption of violence.”
Whether or not that happens, the peacekeeping force meant to crack down on any outbreaks now has fewer than 2,000 troops. And the American contingent, a promise and a deterrent to those who justifiably doubt the European Union’s resolve if force is needed, has left entirely.
These circumstances might be cause for widespread alarm, if anyone had noticed them in the first place. It didn’t used to be that way. It used to be that you didn’t have to shout to get heard on the subject of Bosnia. The name alone was enough to evoke the rape, torture, burned-out homes and mass graves that marked a three-and-a-half-year war in which roughly 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims.
But that was a long time ago. For much of the Western world Bosnia is an all-but-forgotten problem, far down the list of priorities after countries like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. As if to drive the point home, the chief architect of the Dayton peace accords in the Clinton administration, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy in the Obama administration, has his hands full with the war in Afghanistan and the even more complex situation in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. Mr. Holbrooke has complained in recent years of a “distracted international community.”
If the drift of public attention away from Bosnia is a result of more pressing issues in an age of terrorism and rogue nuclear states, it is also a function of the simple fact that this ethnically divided country finds itself in the middle of a far more united, stable and at times downright boring Europe than in the days of the civil war.
Bosnia could well return to violence, but it has lost a large measure of what might be called its Franz Ferdinand threat. For all of the moral and humanitarian arguments for getting involved in the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, there was also the severe lesson from Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914, which provided the spark for World War I. That lesson was simple: conflicts start in the Balkans, but they do not necessarily stay there.
The end of the cold war brought elation but also trepidation. In hindsight, the march of countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania from the Warsaw Pact into NATO and the European Union may appear steady and all but predestined, but the paths of those newly freed countries were anything but certain at the time. Bosnia was a starkly destabilizing factor in a far more unstable continent. The fighting that began in the spring of 1992 was not quite three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and less than a year after the attempted coup of August 1991 in Russia, and came hard on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, the picture has changed again. Now that Europe is no longer the fault line of a divided world, it looks ever more like a retirement community with good food and an excellent cultural calendar. Spies cut from the George Smiley cloth could really come in from the cold, retiring with legions of their countrymen to the Spanish coast, with no more to worry about than the decline of the pound against the euro and the sinking value of their condos.
The European Union has its share of problems, including a rapidly graying population projected to shrink by 50 million people by 2050 and deep troubles in integrating the immigrants — particularly from Muslim countries — it so drastically needs to reverse the demographic slide. And the union’s energy security depends on its often capricious and at times menacing neighbor to the east, Russia.
Russia’s invasion of Georgia last summer served as a stern reminder that things can still get rough outside of the gated community, and certainly made newer members like Poland and Estonia nervous about the sturdiness of the fence.
Renewed fighting in Bosnia may not launch World War III, but it could well spread to other parts of the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence last year, and the United States Embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, burned at the hands of angry rioters. I walked the streets in the aftermath, interviewing Serbs, and found rage, sadness and desperation even among the most pro-Western elements of society.
It was something of a pleasant surprise, then, to return with Mr. Biden this year and find average Serbs on the same streets sounding deeply pragmatic about the visit by an American politician who not only represented the superpower that had bombed them but was personally an early and staunch supporter of Muslims in both Bosnia and Kosovo. While there were holdouts, most said that jobs and freedom to travel trumped old enmities.
With any luck the sentiment will find more traction in neighboring Bosnia too, drowning out the extreme voices and their loose talk of war. Given how far the world’s attention has wandered, supporters of peace in the Balkans will have to hope they find their own path to moderation. Otherwise the crack of snipers’ bullets and the whistle of mortar shells could herald the terrible spectacle of a preventable return to bloodshed.
Robby
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We ARE humans, not saints. When i taught history i made that point often with my students. We should acknowledge the good judgements and the good actions, especially if the actions improved society. I think we can evaluate the person based on what they do AFTER they have made the bad judgements - how bad was that judgement? What was the "bad" action? Did they revise their behavior and judgements once they have been "outed," and often people need to be outed before they will change, especially in emotional or addictive behaviors.
I believe someone said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I don't believe in "sin," but i agree w/ the principle. .......................jean
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I agree with Jean. There are no saints in this world. We have all screwed up at one time or another in our lives and have paid for the behavior in one way or another. One can not live a perfect life. We pray, as in the Lord's Prayer to have our trespasses forgiven as we forgive those who trespass against us. Those of us who do that either mean it or fail to recognize the intent of the prayer. I suspect the latter is true in many cases for many prayers tend to become rote and meaningless babble.
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Unfortunately, the issue in Bosnia is a religious issue. These issues are deep seated and long standing. In the Middle East it is Sunni vrs. Shi'ite. In Israel it is Muslim vrs. Jew. In Ireland it is Catholic vrs. Protestant. In the Balkans it is Christian vrs. Muslim. In the US these religious sects preach, each and everyone, that their sect is the right way and that all the others are wrong. Little did Abraham realize the trouble he brewed when he agreed to let Superstition direct his hand.
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The Council of Pisa met as scheduled. In the majestic cathedral gathered twenty six cardinals, four patriarchs, twelve archbishops, eighty bishops, eighty seven abbots, the generals of all the great monastic orders, delegates from all major universities, three hundred doctors of canon law, ambassadors from all the governments of Europe except those of Hungary, Naples, Spain, Scandinavia, and Scotland.
The Council declared itself canonical (valid in Church law) and ecumenical (representing the whole Christian world) - a claim which ignored the Greek and Russian Orthodox Councils. It summoned Benedict and Gregory to appear before it. Neither appearing, it declared them deposed and named the Cardinal of Milan as Pope Alexander V (1409). It instructed the new Pope to call another general council before May, 1412, and adjourned.
It had hoped to end the Schism but as both Benedict and Gregory refused to recognize its authority, the result was that there were now three popes instead of two. Alexander V did not help matters by dying (1410). His cardinals chose as his successor John XXIII, the most unmanageable man to occupy the papal throne since his predecessor of that name. Baldassare Cossa had been made papal vicar of Bologna by Boniface IX. He had governed the city like a condottiere, with absolute and unscrupulous powers. He had taxed everything, including prostitution, gambling, and usury. According to his secretary he had seduced two hundred virgins, matrons, widows, and nuns. But he was a man of precious ability in politics and war. He had accumulaed great wealth and commanded a force of troops personnaly loyal to him. Perhaps he could conquer the Papal States from Gregory and reduce Gregory to impecunious submission.
What is that old maxim which says Two (three) heads are better than one?
Robby
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Any Pope who can seduce 200 virgins including nuns successfully probably produced his own army of sons and grand sons. No matter what else he did he had the qualities of a Beowulf, a Gilgamesh, a Paul Bunyan, and a Casanova. Something else must be the cause of his insanity.
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http://www.lifeinitaly.com/art/renaissance.asp
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Hi, BLUEBIRD. Interesting article.
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Hi Bluebird. Nice to have you in here. The article placing Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael at the peak of the Renaissance was very interesting. It is a nice summary of the end of a very long period of Renaissance growth that began with Giotto in painting and with Donatello in sculpture. Actually, signs of the end of the Renaissance are already beginning to appear in the work of Michelangelo. His sculptured figures have many Mannerist qualities.
We are at the moment struggling through the early conflict in the Church that will lead to the great debate and the counter reformation. We tend to bounce around a little in art by moving in a political chronology and so have not yet talked about Michelangelo nor the Borgias. All that is ahead of us. You come at a good time. Welcome.
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Robby, you asked when the discussion began, and I looked it up.
In reading the early posts, it seems the decision to have the discussion was put forth in Sept. 2001. The discussion was to start after the holidays late in that year.
The discussion actually began on November 1, 2001. I don't know if there was a 'pre discussion' before that date, but the archives begin on November 1, 2001.
Emily
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So, we'll celebrate our eighth anniversity next month.
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Eight years is a long time for old folks with an interest in a single subject to be chatting like this. What can we do to celebrate the event? Any suggestions?
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How about a "virtual party"? Remember, MAL used to give them in her writers group. We can all comew dressed as a character from our reading.
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OK. I will come as the Borgia Pope. Chose your characters, please.
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I will come as Will Durant himself, though the only characteristics we share are a white moustache and glasses.
I greatly respect his dedication of 50 years to the writing of the book we are reading, and I love his many quotable sayings - It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. - which help us to understand from whence he is coming.
Brian
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Well, maybe I'll come as cleopatra.
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Joan: If you still have the tush for Cleopatra and my wife lets me I will come as Mark Antony.
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I will come as Mohammed who is aghast at the impure things I am hearing.
Robby
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Four at the party is not a party - - - it's barely a game of bridge.
Let's get off our tushes and see if we can get a crowd.
Interesting word that, do you use it a lot, Justin?
If we can get some support for the party I will bring some virtual food and drink.
Brian.
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JUSTIN: you're on!!
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Oh! Goody. Now that I am Mark Antony, I must tell you that I am a little jealous of you. You have your snakes to keep you company when you are alone but I must sit and dwell, friendless, on the time I have left. My sword is my only remaining friend. I polished off Cicero when I could have let him escape. He was my friend. I was one of the conspirators who managed to stab Caesar. He was my friend too. Now I have you as a friend up here in this pyramid with nothing to do but play with your snakes. I love you, baby.
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Do I detect a little dementia creeping in here?
Robby
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Watch it, Justin. My snakes are very protective of me. I don't want you asped!!
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Oh Fie!! I've been snaked.
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Let's not let our "folie à deux" become "folie à plusieurs".
How would it be if we returned to our virtual celebration? - - -
or even, to the reading of my book?
Will Durant.
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Sorry, Will.
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Now where were we - - -
"The Councils and the Popes" - 1409-18 and discussing the Schism I think - - -
Where do we go from here - - - the virtual party or back to work ?
Either way, I am bringing a celebratory feast for us all to share. If we don't get some more
contributers, we are going to be somewhat virtually overdistended.
Will.
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But we can work it off with virtual exercise, which is a lot easier than the other kind.
ROBBY: has our silliness driven you away? I forgot that you're a stoic!!
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I agree, Brian and Robby has been advertising in various Senior places in the parent organization. We have not attracted any contributors yet but one can have hope. Do you have any suggestions? I have tried by saying challengeable things hoping to attract new voices with a yen to rebut. No takers yet. There is one thing we can do which we have not yet tried. We have archives that show all people who have been with us in the past as well as their email addresses. We can make a pitch to those folks to come back and to share the load of conversation.
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Nothing wrong with a virtual party -- but, in the meantime, here is a Renaissance dilemma to solve.
No Fair! Leonardo Got the Good Side of the Room!
By John Tierney
Kalpa Group Project
Leonardo Da Vinci began painting “The Battle on Anghiari” in 1505 on the eastern wall of the Hall of 500, near the spot where Maurizio Seracini is standing on the scaffolding. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint another battle mural to the left of Leonardo’s. The wall today is covered with later murals of battles painted by Vasari.
What stopped Michelangelo from even starting the battle mural he was commissioned to do on the same wall as Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Battle of Anghiari”? Before we get to some imaginary dialogue between the two painters (in response to my previous post about the murals), let me give you an answer from Maurizio Seracini, who has been leading the search for the lost Leonardo painting.
He believes the answer may be found in the layout of the hall, which Dr. Seracini has constructed with the help of colleagues at the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology at the University of California, San Diego, like Falko Kuester, who used lasers to map the current hall to a precision of one millimeter. By studying the current hall and probing beneath the surface with radar and other techniques, they’ve discovered what the hall looked like before its 1563 remodeling.
Dr. Seracini’s work has won praise from scholars like Marco Leona, who leads the science group at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “In the quest for the lost Leonardo,” Dr. Leona said of Dr. Seracini, “he has been methodical and persistent, and I think he has built his case carefully. The combination of the archival research with the 3D reconstruction of the original architecture is in itself a great result.”
The reconstruction showed that there had been large windows at the end of the room closest to Leonardo’s painting. As he faced the east wall, there would have been light coming from the south wall to his right, which would have been fine for an artist who painted with his left hand, as Leonardo did.
But the arrangement wouldn’t have been so good for Michelangelo, who was supposed to paint a mural on that wall farther from the windows, to the left of Leonardo’s. Like Leonardo, Michelangelo was naturally left-handed, but he had trained himself to use mainly his right hand. So as he worked, his right hand would have cast a shadow on the light coming from the windows to the right. And because his assigned location was farther from the windows, there would have been less overall light for him to work in — and for his painting to be displayed to the public.
Would the great Michelangelo have tolerated getting the crummy side of the wall? “No way,” Dr. Seracini said. “It was an incredible mistake by the Signoria [the Florentine government] to put two of the greatest minds in the same room. Michelangelo would not have wanted the dark side of the room. I can see a lot of problems and a lot of clashing egos.”
One Lab reader, James F Traynor, concisely imagined the dialogue between the two painters:
Mike: You got the light.
Leo: I got here first.
Mike: Jeez, I can’t work under these conditions. See ya.
Another commenter, Ken White, provided a link to his full-length screenplay, “Lions of Florence,” that imagines Leonardo and Michelangelo dueling in the Hall of 500 — initially just with brushes as each works on his mural, but then the competition takes a nastier turn. (Without giving away too much of the plot, I can tell you that they throw plaster and paint at each other.)
Dr. Seracini believes that Vasari, the architect who remodeled the hall and painted his own battle scenes on the wall, preserved Leonardo’s painting by leaving an air gap in front of it. Now Dr. Seracini is trying to establish what’s underneath by using neutrons to probe for the chemicals in Leonardo’s painting (as I describe in my Findings column. If the painting is still there, Dr. Seracini says, Vasari’s fresco could be temporarily removed so that Leonardo’s oil painting could be retrieved.
“There are well-established techniques for removing a fresco without damaging it,” Dr. Seracini said. “Frescos have been moved quite successfully in other situations. It could certainly be done if even a smart portion of Leonardo’s painting is still there. Remember, eyewitnesses said it was the highest achievement of the Renaissance.”
The mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, said that if the Leonardo painting is there, he would like to see it displayed to the world as part of a quincentennial celebration planned in 2012 to honor the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who died in 1512).
“I hope that we do discover ‘The Battle of Anghiari,’” Mr. Renzi said. “All the signs point to it being under there. And even if it isn’t, at least we can put a full stop on the whole story.”
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That's fascinating!
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Although we cannot see the actual work by Da Vinci (yet) - - -
we can get a good idea of what it might look like, in a copy of the
original made by Rubens : -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Anghiari_(painting) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Anghiari_(painting))
Brian.
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Speculation has been raging for many years about the Anghiari in the Palazzo Del Vecchio. I hope Seracini is right but I fear that what they find will not be a fresco at all but a cartoon. Leonardo worked for a year on the piece and never painted a hand of it. A cartoon is similar to what we a stencil. A drawing is made on paper by puncturing the paper with holes. The paper or cartoon is held up to the wall and pumelled with hand held bags of black charcoal to transfer an outline of the image to the wall. The painting is done on wet plaster a handful at a time.
Leonardo was called away by the Duke of Milan to build war machines which was more important than finishing some old fresco.
Michelangelo did the work on the opposite wall. He chose the battle of Cascina for a subject. The moment depicted shows the Florentine troops bathing nude in the Arno when the enemy appeared on horseback. The nude troops are scrambling into their sox and armor while the battle rages around them on horseback. The Fresco was destroyed and painted over, however Sangallo gave us a grisaille image of the central theme but left off the battle of the horsemen on either side of the men scrambling into their gear. The painting and the cartoon as well served for a few years at least as the basis for a school of Art. That's we came to have the Sangallo. He was a student at that school.
There are other Cartoons by Leonardo extant. There is one in England, I think, at the National Gallery, maybe. The subject is St. Anne and the two children pointing fingers. It's about ten feet high and about six feet wide. It has a corner wall all to itself and little sitting area in front of it. People come to contemplate the images. It has better appointments than the Mona Lisa.
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Don't you just HATE being caught without your sox in a battle?
Ruebens' painting makes more sense artistically than it does militarily -- everyone in a pile with all the blank space around.
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Justin - - - are you saying that Rubens sat down and made a copy
of a cartoon and not of a finished fresco?
Brian.
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Yes, Brian, that is exactly what I am saying. Rubens had one other option. There is an engraving of the center section of the work done by Zacchio. Both images would leave him without color to work from and as a result the Rubens piece is in grisaille. There is a good chance that Rubens never saw the work by Leonardo because his depiction is as it appears in Zacchio's work and not in the Leonardo. Leonardo's fresco contains more than just the three horsemen. There are men on the ground as well armed with shields and swords slugging it out.
The news today brought a new contender for the Leonardo catalogue. It is some work previously thought to be 19th century. We'll see.
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There are other Cartoons by Leonardo extant. There is one in England, I think, at
the National Gallery, maybe. The subject is St. Anne and the two children pointing
fingers. It's about ten feet high and about six feet wide. It has a corner wall all to itself and
little sitting area in front of it. People come to contemplate the images. It has better
appointments than the Mona Lisa. [
In the early 1960s when we were still in Britain, the National Gallery was short of money
and wanted to sell this cartoon to a buyer in America for £800,000 .
The government of the day stepped in and offered £350,000, and asked the public to buy
copies of the cartoon (beautifully rendered on museum quality paper) to come up with the
rest of the money and keep the priceless piece in Britain.
We have one such copy hanging in our house in Canada.
Brian.
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So it is at the National gallery. There have been many galleries in my life and at times they all run into one. The works stand out in my mind but the galleries blend. You are very fortunate to have a copy of the Leonardo cartoon. It is a
worthwhile work.
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Justin - - - do you know Trevor's email address?
We need to get him back to wake us all up.
Brian.
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Trevor's address is on his last posting. The archives will have it. He did not come over from Senior net.
I wonder who among the lurkers was previously an active poster. Will all lurkers please check-in for roll call, please?
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I'm here!
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You're not a lurker Joan - - - you are a history stalwart - - -
what we need is some readers and posters.
Emma, you are the archivist - - - can you rescue some email addresses
from past posters to this discussion group?
It's time we got on the move again.
Brian.
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Brian, I have just sent you an e-mail with the last known e-mail address for Trevor. Good luck.
I saw his name on Seniors and Friends and sent him an email with this new address for SOC and asked him to rejoin us some time ago, perhaps you will have more luck. Robby came to S&F and recruited early this year, and gave links to Seniorlearn, as did others.
I have been away on a trip, but will try to rejoin our small group treking through Italy at the moment.
Emily
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Thanks Emily, I have sent an email to Trevor's last known address.
Any other ideas?
Brian.
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In the run up to the big day on Sunday which will complete eight years of discussion of the Story of Civilization, I went looking in the archive for former posters. Many seemed to drop out after Seniornet dissolved, and others had only lasted a short while before moving on.
The archives are hard to read because of the small print, I suppose they compressed the file because there are so many. Robby's heading is easy to read and he began to put it all online on Nov. 1, 2001. He posted guidelines for posters and many questions to start off the discussion. He seems to have finished up on Nov. 2 because the first poster came in on Nov.3rd. Some posted once or twice but a group formed that put up a thousand posts in little over a month.
Here they are as they appeared in sequence.
Nov.3rd....
Jaywalker
Happy Phyllis
Mary W
Nov.4th
Mary de Boer
Jinty
Eileen Tyrrell
Scottybowler
Anne Kerr
Mal
Alf
Patrick Bruyere
Eloise
Snowycurve
Phyll
Tucson Pat
Mary Page
Janette
Kiwi lady
babs NH
Ella Gibbons
StephanieHochuli
gladys
Ila Matter
gaj
wht (Beth)
Ardie
citruscat
dig girl
Barbara St. Aubrey
Bill H
Harold Arnold
tonilee
Nov.5th
3kings (Trevor)
betty gregory
Persian
doy
Annafair
Nov.6th
Hairy
Tigerliley
Lady 6
Tiger Tom
lies
Nov.7th
Carolyn Anderson
Ginny
Louise Evans
Hubert Paul
Bubble
Nelle Vrolyk
Vera Hunter
Ann Alden
Patwest
Jeanne P
Nov.9th
Lady C
Ray Franz
Nov. 10th
Sheilak
Nov. 12th
Jan B
Nov. 14th
Peter Brown
Dawn Tucek
Faith P
Nov. 15th
Agnes
ImCarl
Nov.20th
Justin
I will end here, this is just a list of new posters each day, and they continued to the end of this section. A thousand posts in thirty-five days.
Emily
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Joan K, you have a personal message.
Emily
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That's terrific Emily - - - I recognise many of the names of people who were with Seniornet, and who have moved over with us, and - - - have posted in discussion groups with Seniors and Friends, and also with SeniorLearn.
If they see their names listed here they may be persuaded to join our continuing discussion.
Brian.
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Hello to all here!
Here's a link to one of our proposed discussions which is scheduled for February.
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=75.0
Entitled "America's Prophet-Moses and the American Story," our author, Bruce Feiler, takes us on a tour of quotes and historical events referring to Moses who seems to be very important in the history of our country.
Do let us know if you will be joining us by posting at this site.
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Hello ADOANNIE --- thank you for posting about the February book - - - would you be
kind enough to remind those who post on your site, that we are still open for old posters - - -
(and new ones !) to rejoin (or to join) our ongoing discussion of the History of Civilization?
Brian.
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Emily: If you will send me Trevor's last known address I too will write to him.
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Justin, I have sent you an e-mail with Trevor's address.
JoanK, Thank you for the reply, all systems are go.
Emily
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Justin and I have been emailing each other. We agree that the problem of not enough participants began when the conversion occurred. We DEFINITELY need more participants to bring life back to SofC.
Robby
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Robby and Brian,
What you might want to do is make up a little pep talk about your discussion, copy and paste it, into any other discussion, like, the Non Fiction folder, Read Around the World, The Library, Introduce Yourself,
wherever you want. If you don't know how to do this, You can go into the Help/Questions folder and ask for them to help with this project.
Make it short and tempting to other posters and leave a link to your site.
The other suggestion I have, is for you to do all this in Senior&Friends. There are lots of old friends on that site, still talking away. I have a discussion going on over there, Organic Living, so I see many of our old friends there.
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Thanks ADOANNIE for your advice, I'll be in touch with Robbie and see what can be done.
Brian
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More good news - - - Trevor has been contacted, and has replied to emails from Justin and I - - - he is anxious to rejoin us and is on his way.
Brian
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It would seem that the simplest way to learn how to get onto the SeniorLearn site is to click on this URL - - -
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?action=help (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?action=help)
it is a very user-friendly area, and if the URL is copied and pasted into an email sent to any who have had difficulties getting to the "new" site of our discussion, it should be of great help to those wishing to rejoin their former SeniorNet friends.
Registering is explained on the first line of HELP.
Brian.
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I have e-mailed some posters from the discussion who no longer post, and have posted on Seniors and Friends with a link to the discussion.
JoanK will do the same here on Seniorlearn. We agreed to this a couple of days ago via message. We hope to have some former posters return, and attract some new ones. Since Sunday Nov. 1, 2009 will mark eight years and there was talk of a party, I used that theme in my plea. Everybody loves a party.
If no one comes then Mohammed can pontificate, Cleo and Mark can float down the Nile, and Brian (sorry I have forgotten your choice) but carry on. Since so few women were profiled in history up to this time in SOC, no choices came to mind. I thought about coming as Cecilia Gallerani the teenage mistress of Locovico Sforza. She sat for Leonardo de Vinci for 'Lady with an Ermine'. I would no more hold an Ermine than an Asp, so that was that. Besides Sforza impregnated her and then married Isabella d'Este, so I may have ended up beheaded with that choice before the party got started. So I will choose to be an anonymous 16 year old girl who comments on the situation at hand.
I hope to be here Sunday, but circumstances may intervene. I will do my best to get here.
Emily
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Brian: If you have not already done so I suggest you put # 356 in an email to Trevor.
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Brian: Let's put that instruction out with every pr piece we put out.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
I suggest we post the following material along with Brian's instructions in # 356 on as many foreign site as possible.
The Story of Civilization has been active as a discussion group for eight years. We are now talking and reading about Italy during the Renaissance years.
That period in history was launched by reports of the travels of Marco polo and the reappearance of classical objects from antiquity. Early archeologists unearthed what once was Rome and the Arabs of Spain brought Greek and Roman documents to 13th century Italy. Genovese and Pisan trade with others around the Mediterranean basin brought new Hellenic influences to the Italian peninsula. Artists were ready to break out of the idealistic constrictions of the past and to push into more realistic areas of art expression.
Trade brought new wealth to Italian merchants and gave rise to a moneyed merchant class. The new wealth found it's way to the Papacy and it encouraged dissipation among the Popes of the period. This led to abuses and to conflict with European royalty and dissension from within the Church.
Things happen in this period of history that change the way of the world forever. We can never go back and it all happened here.
Come share with us this discussion of one of the most significant periods in the history of the world.
You'll be glad you came and you will gain in understanding why we are where we are today.
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I appreciate the spirit I am seeing among everyone here to revitalize our discussion. I am perfectly willling to continue guiding the discussion as I have always done but do not have the time to spread myself around to rouse up the populace. I have a busy clinical psychology practice, seeing patients hourlyfrom 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. five days a week. I am extremely active in the local Chamber of Commerce. I am on the Board of Directors of the Virginia Psychological Association and I have just been appointed to the Board of Directors of the local Hospice. These are not honorary appointments. I don't attach my name to anything unless I become an active participant.
If all of you as a group can unite your efforts to bring back some of our "old" friends and to recruite new ones, you have my word that I will be an active DL as I always was.
Thank you so much for what all of you have done over these many years.
Robby
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OK, I'm ready to change from my witch costume of today to my Cleopatra costume for tomorrow. I've had a long discussion with my asps, and they promise not to bite. So, who is bringing the food?
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ROBBY- you are the rock of this discussion. You have always been the greatest of leaders and I salute you, my frined.
Andy
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I'm an occasional 'lurker; reporting in as requested. I read the discussion from time to time and sometimes venture a word or two.
Congratulations on your epic journey through history - I'll come to the party as Cleo's handmaiden carrying the basket of asps. I'd better organise some virtual food and drink too!
I do hope some of your active participants from the past rejoin the discussion so I can lurk around for a few more years. 8)
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(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Balloons.jpg)
Congratulations, Robby on your incredible achievement with The Story of Civilization, 8 years!
I've come with balloons to celebrate and more exciting news: that our own Robby has another achievement, too, he's being honored by an entire chapter in the forthcoming book "WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE? True Stories of Finding Success, Passion, and New Meaning in the Second Half of Life." by Bruce Frankel. Published by Penguin Press.
Our own celebrity!! Rejoice, let's partay!
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Congratulations Robby!
-
Congratulations to all of us - - - and especially to Robbie who puts more into a single day than I put into a week.
As promised, I have brought some food - - - I will leave the drink for others to bring.
Celebratory Feast
Butlered Hors D'ouevres
Crab and Avocado Tostadas
Sweet Potato Pancakes with Crème Fraiche and Apple Cracklings
Red Onion and Gruyere Tartlets
Lobster Quesadillas
Filet Mignon Crostini with Herb Butter and Watercress
First Course
Smoked Trout Napoleon on Sweet Potato Crisps
Entrees
Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb with Roasted Shallots and Rosemary Oil
Pan Seared Scallops in Herb Butter with Shitake Mushrooms, Grape Tomatoes and Snow
Peas
Eggplant Rolletini with Ricotta Lightly Topped with Béchamel
Vegetable
Herb infused Fingerling Potatoes and French Green Beans with Lemon Zest
Salad
Field Greens with Carmelized Pears, Gorgonzola and Glazed Pecans in White Balsamic
Vinaigrette
Dessert
Fudge Brownie Cake with Hazelnut Cream Served with Vanilla Gelato and Chocolate
Sauce
May we all be around to finish the mammoth task set us by Robbie.
Brian (posing as Will Durant - - - just for the day!).
-
http://www.entertonement.com/collections/40686/Infantry-Cheers
Yaaaaaaaay, Robby! 8 yrs!! My goodness! Barbara St Aubrey and I seem to remember suggesting that you start this discussion in Chicago in 1999 and what a SUPERB discussion it has become. You are a great DL!!
-
YEAH ROBBY!! Our fearless leader has done it again! When/where can we get this book? You mean there are enough other people like you to make a book? I thought they were all in Seniorlearn.
GUM: thank you for holding my asps. I'll hold your food. But you don't need to bring any. Look at Brian.
BRIAN: I mean WILL. Who knew you were such a gourmand. And I'm still full of hershey bars from Holloween.
Now, where is Mark Anthony?
-
Robby wow:) 8 years that is great!
Brian what are apple cracklings?
Battle of Anghiari
http://www.wga.hu
look at alphabet on bottom
click l
find Leonardo Davinci
-
Welcome bluebird - - -
Apple Crackling is made from just-picked apples drenched in naturally sweet apple cider, sprinkled with sunflower seeds, and baked until crispy, and it is delicious.
Enjoy! Will (Brian).
-
yay Robby!
Brian thank you
-
Wow, Brian. Do you want us to sample all the food. We can't -- we have to choose. Let me see---.
-
Mark
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I have posted an invitation - - - beautifully crafted by Justin - - - in three of the other sites on SeniorLearn, and hope we can attract some more posters to our discussion. Robbie is the hub, but we still need wheels.
JoanK - - - I hope you used the term "gourmand" in its newer meaning - - - it used to have the connotation of antithesis to "gourmet", and described a person whose love of food was greater than his ability to stop eating and drinking.
By the way - - - who's bringing the booze? - - - I'm getting thirsty.
Will (Brian).
-
Good question. I 've soft drinks, but that's probably not what you want. I'll get a good wine to go with the meal. What do you recommend.
I thought "gourmand" was just someone who appreciated good food. I should have said gourmet. Your menu is one for the ages!
-
I am bringing the wine. My teenage boyfriend hid me in a barrel when they were loading the wine from the vineyard, where we both are slaves, to be shipped back to Gaul. He was allowed to assist the cart driver to help onload the barrels on to the ship when we reached port. We never reached the port, the driver had too much to drink and fell asleep. We slipped off into the night with horse, cart, and wine. We came upon your party, and will offer wine for food.
From Wikipedia....
Large-scale, slave-run plantations sprang up in many coastal areas and spread to such an extent that, in AD92, emperor Domitian was forced to destroy a great number of vineyards in order to free up fertile land for food production.
During this time, viticulture outside of Italy was prohibited under Roman law. Exports to the provinces were reciprocated in exchange for more slaves, especially from Gaul where trade was intense, according to Pliny, due to the inhabitants being besotted with Italian wine, drinking it unmixed and without restraint.[6] Roman wines contained more alcohol and were generally more powerful than modern fine wines. It was customary to mix wine with a good proportion of water which may otherwise have been unpalatable, making wine drinking a fundamental part of early Italian life.
Emily (Sixteen year old slavegirl)
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This is excellent wine we are offering, I stomped the grapes myself. A barrel of water will be needed to temper the wine, or it will be a short party. Everyone will be under the table, including me.
Emily (sixteen year old slavegirl)
-
That's great Emily - - - I shall certainly help in demolishing an amphora or two.
It will be a pleasure to give food to a couple of escaped slaves.
You will remember that the Romans considered wine to be a necessity and not a luxury.
In vino veritas (that's a wee morsel in honour of Ginny's Latin classes).
Will (Brian).
-
Hic!
(That's not Latin).
Where is our honoree?
-
Joan (Cleopatra) I too am wondering if Robby (Mohammed) lost his invitation, or is he busy dictating sura's against this entire enterprise. I would be distressed to lose my head over a barrel of wine, when I've only been free for a few hours. Maybe I can do my 'grapa stomping dance' for him, while you work your wiles as Cleopatra. You might become wife #15, but you would still have your head.
What about Justin (Mark Anthony), probably watching those bread and circus games again.
Emily
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Justin (Mark Anthony) stood me up. Just because he's scared of my snakes!! Humph.
-
Hear this, Cleo, If you will put your snakes in a basket I will bring the claret and the mixing water to our party. The trick is to eat, drink and be merry for as long a time as possible and then to do as Cicero did- learn new things no matter one's age. Now is the moment to booze it up so lets have at it. Bottoms-up.
-
AHHH! Mark Anthony is coming. My snakes are safely tucked in the basket. I have to leave for awhile, but I'll be back.
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Dear Robby,
Congratulations on this most significant occasion!
Jubilation !!!
Thank you for your extraordinary dedication to the work of Durant and your continuing discussion.
As you know, I was a some-time participant in the past and greatly enjoyed the discussion. But on some occasions I found myself at variance with Durant and his approach.
Bravo, bravissimo!
Traude
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The reason we drink wine is the water isn't safe. Bottoms up!
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Eight years! I hadn't quite realized. What an accomplishment. I've been in this discussion from time to time with great pleasure, guess it's time to come in again. The last time, I ended up being sunk by trying to keep the Guelphs and Ghibbelines straight--something I've been failing at my whole life. But here goes again.
I can't improve on Brian's menu, though I suspect sweet potatoes weren't prominent in Renaissance menus, and someone else is bringing the wine, so I'll just add a picture of the preparation.
http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Kitchen/541ECAB594B80AB6 (http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Kitchen/541ECAB594B80AB6)
And I'll be willing to help handle the asps. I have as many fears as everyone else, but they're different, and snakes are definitely not among them.
-
Who are you coming as, Pat?
-
Welcome Mrs. Sherlock and PatH, and to all the posters who have joined the party today.
Brian (as Will Durant) has laid a feast that is tempting just to read, much less eat. As a starving slave girl, I will eat and then fill my scarf, tied at all four corners, for later. I wear the scarf on the rope around my waist that contains my only worldly possessions, bits of food for days when there isn't any.
PatH, in the kitchen scene by Campi, is that a stag hanging in the upper left part of the painting?
Justin (Mark Anthony) so glad you made it to the party. With all this food and wine, the party may go on all night.
Emily (teen slave)
-
This has the looks of being a long day - - - the food is lasting like the Widow's Cruse --- I have had so much to drink that I almost typed Widow's Cruise - - - and on last count, there have been 26 posters - - - Oh no! I'm seeing double again.
I nearly forgot - - - where's Robbie? Surely he could do with a drink.
Will (hic! Brian)
-
Well, I was going to come as Lucretia Borgia, but I think instead I'll be Artemesia Gentileschi. She was a painter, a tad farther on then we have gotten to (1593-1656), but very appealing to me. Her "Judith and Holofernes" is unbelievable.
http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/judith1.html (http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/judith1.html)
This link doesn't do it justice (warning--it's pretty bloody) and nothing I've ever seen in print does it justice, but I was lucky enough to see the original at an exhibit in DC at the Museum of Women in the Arts, and it was unforgettable. Judith's expression is a remarkable fusion of cold justice and judicial impartiality, distaste at the actual process, and personal vindication.
The focus of the exhibit was women painters of the time, and how, as a portrait painter, you got commissions by pushing your own personal image--in the case of a woman, being a non-threatening member of the class of your female subjects. "Judith" wiped the floor with all the other paintings, including some others by Gentileschi, but it was still well worth seeing.
You can assume that Judith is Gentileschi, but don't worry, I'll leave my knives and swords at home.
-
Pat - - - what you didn't tell us was that Artemesia Gentileschi painted that picture shortly after she had been raped by one of her father's friends. No wonder she put so much feeling into it.
And, on that happy note, I am off to bed - - - it's been along day - - - but I hasten to add - - - it has been a FUN day.
Back to work tomorrow and damn the hangovers.
Brian (Will has already gone home).
-
hmm Brian's Apple Crackings have me drooling a little. I wonder if I can make some. Iff so I'll bring some for all of you.
claire
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What a celebration, food and costumes, yet! And what food!
Cannot stop thinking about this one:
Red Onion and Gruyere Tartlets. Yes, please, is there a recipe?
And oh...
Crab and Avocado Tostadas
Yes yes! What an exciting alive group this is, congratulations to you all! Makes one want to be part of it, does the party go on 8 days, one for every year?
-
exciting and alive about food. what happens when we return to durant? food is more relevant to our lives I think. crab and avocado tostados need a little moistening and a sqeese of lemon I think. possibly a little cilantro as well. yummmmm
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Back to the future.
My slave boyfriend and I slipped away during the night and made our way to the Port. We are aboard ship, heading back to Gaul (France) our home. We will face danger when we land in port, as it is controlled by the Roman Legion. With luck we will escape the port and travel at night by the Northstar into the far reaches of Provence, and home.
Now, back to today and the renaissance with the three Popes. One has died and the two left standing are scheming and vying for advantage in a power struggle for control.
Nothing lasts forever.
An aside.....On my daily desk calendar of 'Lost in translation' quotes the following....
"Here, you shall be well fed up and agreeably drunk. In the close village you can buy jolly memorials for when you pass away."
in the brochure of an Italian hotel in the Dolomites
Emily
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I thought Durant had covered everything! But now I see what's been missing all these years -- food! He doesn't tell us what people ate in these epochs we're passing through.
That's important -- we could develop a whole alternative history based on food. It's clear, if the Emporor has a stomach ache, he's going to want to go out and conquer everything in sight. But if he's pleasantly sated, like us, he's going to want his subjects to be happy too.
Before I get started on this magnum opus, can I have some leftovers?
-
Oh my poor head! I should never had so much from that last amphora - - -
Well, Robbie how did we do? JoanK, go ahead - - - help yourself.
I for one never want to see any more Roman wine, and am ready to sign the pledge.
The only thing that might clear the hangover is a good stiff dose of history.
Are we ready to continue?
Brian.
-
It looks like the party is winding down. We started with a panegyric. We have all drunk too much and now it's time to go back to the main pleasure. I hope all our old friends who have come to the party stay and joust with Durant once again. Traude and Pat H. and all the others, we have missed you. Come, please, we can not continue very well without your participation.
-
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
so who is reading to us here, those who don't have the books. robby? brian?
ready, set, goooooo.
-
I am beginning to see some names here that I haven't seen for quite a while. This is great!! I hope you all hang around and in a day or so I will orient us all as to where we are in the book and we can get back to old times.
In the meantime, contact everyone you know to get lots of folks here - old timers and new people.
Robby
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An excerpt from 'Food timeline history' on Renaissance foods and presentation.
COMMON FOODS
These foods were commonly prepared in Renaissance Italy
Bread, hard biscuits, wine, rice (rissoto), pasta: lasagne, ravioli & pizza WITHOUT TOMATO SAUCE, cheese: mozzarella (from buffalo milk), Pecorino, omelettes, meatballs, pork, small birds & game, and sausages. Fresh fruits and vegetables were eaten in season; dried items consumed in other seasons. Soups and stews were eaten by rich and poor alike. Fish was also popular, especially in Lent. It was served fresh, dried, and salted. Cheesecake and flan were often served for dessert. Olive oil was used for flavor and as a cooking medium.
Genoa's foods at the time of Columbus (slightly earlier period, but useful information).
WHAT FOODS WERE SERVED AT BANQUETS
"To illustrate the pomp and cicumstance of the banquet tradition, let us turn to the Renaissance Chronicler Bernadino Corio (1459-1519?), who in his Historia di Milano described in great detail a fabulous feast hed in Rome in 1473..."The banquet... took place in a great hall ...where there was a sideboard with twelve shelves on which the gem-studded trays so silver and gold were featured. Two tables covered by four tablecloths were prepared in the middle of the hall: the first was for the seven nobles of the highest station while the other table was for the lesser among them. In accordance with the custom in uage since the beginning of the century, the guests were still standing when they were served a meal that included trays of candied fruit covered with gold leaves and accompanied by painted glasses of malvasia. Once the guests were seated, musicians with horns and pipes announced the next dishes, which were divided into four serves in correspondence with the four tablecloths that covered the tables. The first service combined pork livers, blancmange, meats with relish, tortes and pies, salt-cured pork loin and sausage, roast veal, kid, squab, chicken, rabbit...whole roasted large game, and fowl dressed in their skin or feathers. Next came golden tortes and muscat pears in cups."...And this was just the first service!...list of foods brought forth in the remaining there services (at the end of each the tablecloth would be removed, and the guests washed their hands because they served themselves from comunal trays and forks were not in use): fried dough shaped like pine cones, smothered with honey and rose water, silver-wrapped lemons in sugary syrup; relishes; lies; sturgeon and lamprey; aspics, more tortes; junket drowning in white wine; Catalan-style chicken; green blancmange; stewed veal; mutton and roebuck; suckling pig; capon; and duck and black and sour cherries mascreated in Tyrian wine. And dulcis in fundo: ices, almonds, coriander seeds, anise seeds, cinnamon, and pine nuts..."
---The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, Martino of Como, edited and with an introduction by Luigi Ballerni, translated and annotated by jeremy Parzen [University of California Press:Berkeley CA] 2005 (p. 4-5)
"Banquet thrown January 23, 1529 by the son of the Duke of Ferrara for his father and various dignitaries. The total guest list numbered 104. Sugar suclptures of the labors of Hercules appeared first, in deference to the host himself, named "Hercole." The antipasto course consisted of cold dishes: a caper, truffle and raisin salad in pastry, another salad of greens with citron juice and anchovy salads. There were also radishes carved into shapes and animals, little cream pies, prosciutto of pork tongue, boar pies, mortadella and liver pies, smoked mullet served several different ways, and gilt-head bream. The first hot course had capon fritters sprinkled with sugar, quails, tomaselle (liver sausage), capon liver stuffed into a caul (netting of pork fat) and roasted pheasants, an onion dish, pigeons in puff pastry, tarts of fish ilt (spleen), fried trout tails and barbel (a fish), quails, meatballs, white servelat sausage, veal, capon German style in sweeet wine, pigeon pastries, carp, turbot, shrimp, trout roe pies, a yellow almond concoction, and pastires. The third course had partridge, rabbit, turtledoves, sausages, boned capon, pigeons and more fish. This goes on to a fourth course, again with birds, fish, a rice pie, and other dishes. A fifth course with some suckling pig, veal and more birds and fish as well. A sixth course with more veal prepared a different way, peacock, goat, boar and also more fish. The seventh course finally sees some vegetables, fennel, olives, grapes, pears, and other pastries; the ninth citron, lettuce, cucumbers and almonds in syrup, various fruits and confections...What is immediately striking is that guests were given individual plates for many of the dishes, only larger foods or presentations of several ingredients together came out in multiples of 25 or 50, and would have been divided up and served. Many of the foods came out in multiples of 104 on 25 larger plates as well. Because Messisbugo specified the number of plates needed for each food in each course, they can be counted. This meal used 2,835 plates."
---Food in Early Modern Europe, Ken Albala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2002 (p. 124-5)
[NOTE: This book is an excellent source for common foods and regional variations. See: Italy (p. 111-140). Your librarian can help you find a copy.]
Emily
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the veal is the only beef that I noticed, although maybe the meat balls were beef, but is that because of the young calves meat being tender? Lots of sugar and glazing pork and birds and of course versions of pasta. I found that menu to be very interesting as to basics.
claire
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Brian does not have a copy of the book, and failed in his attempt to get the publisher to allow it to be read on the net.
As I said before, Robbie is the hub, and we are happy to depend on him for guidance in what we are to comment on.
And as we know, Robbie has responsibilities to many and has an extremely full schedule.
If there could be any other way to lighten Robbie's load, and prevent the necessity for his having to laboriously type each segment that we read, I would love to see it put into action.
Brian.
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Has anyone ever looked for it online, Brian??
Here's a free download offering on the net:
http://www.alivetorrents.com/search/The%20Story%20of%20Civilization%20%20%20Will%20Durant%20Unabridged
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Several participates here looked for SOC online, I know that I did. I found a CD-ROM for sale on the internet, but it was expensive and that was old technology, so no agreement on that idea. We went to the Books Online site and SOC was not offered. There was nothing from the Durant Foundation about releasing the books for free downloading.
All our efforts were because Robby had fallen and injured his shoulder, as I remember. Some participates did assist in typing from Durant's story, Mal would fill in when Robby was away. After Mal died, others filled in for a while, until Robby got better. We had a short hiatus, but continued to keep the site going until Seniornet axed the discussions.
I checked out the website above. There were only two books in the first list. SOC and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. The rest were movies, games, television, and something called Anime. Sixty minutes did a story on movies being copied in theaters and put on the internet last Sunday. It is illegal. I see "In Glorious Bastards" on that list. It is a recent movie and those who put it on the internet are breaking the law. Television shows like HBO are not free, and it is doubtful they gave permission to put its shows on the internet for nothing.
The library in Nashville now offers e-book downloading to the computer, just like checking out the book. I think these are new releases though. I no longer live there so I don't have access. My small local library does not have that service yet, but I'm sure they will in the future.
I went looking for other books on the files of this site. I found the following listed under books.
Books torrents
Date
Title
Size
Seeds
Leechs
.03-Nov
McGraw-Hill Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics 2nd Edition (2009)8.59 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Names of Allah (Harun Yahya)1.33 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Getting the hang of oral stimulation2.24 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Guide to female orgasm - beginner's advice2.48 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Guide to finding secluded spots in malls5.98 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Hand picked by porn pros - sex advice4.02 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Handbook for better sex performance1.84 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Wiley Ipod Touch for Dummies 200910.12 MB
1
0
.03-Nov
Bypassing JavaScript Filters - the Flash way [SCOFIL]259.98 KB
1
0
.03-Nov
Encyclipedia of Trignometry - Andrew Barnes Complete E-Book [SCOFIL]15.37 MB
1
Emily
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ADOANNIE - - - I did contact the Will Durant organization at the time and had no joy. I'm a bit wary of using the torrent system because of the question of legality and the risk of getting a virus or a trojan. I will wait to see what other advice comes in. I can't believe that they can put the whole SOC unabridged onto 2 Gigabytes!
Emily - - - interesting possible choices you have found.
I think I will stay on the sidelines for a bit until I get some solid advice.
Brian.
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This is a way to make SOC available on Kindle since Robby owns a copy.
https://www.createspace.com/AboutUs.jsp;jsessionid=08647F94D56673F85B23FCAE86C7F68E.mwworker01
that is if this link works. I also signed a request for it to appear on kindle. all eleven volummes are available for eighty dollars but it does not offer them singly.
Maybe we should start a kindle club since so much in the way of this subject is available now in particular the history of ROME.
it beats typing it out anyway.
claire
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"bout CreateSpace
CreateSpace is a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc. We were originally founded as CustomFlix Labs, Inc. in 2002. Back then, our focus was on producing and distributing affordable, on-demand DVDs. Our work caught the attention of Amazon.com, and three years later we proudly became a wholly owned and operated subsidiary.
CreateSpace provides inventory-free, physical distribution of books, CD and DVDs on Demand, as well as video downloads through Amazon Video On Demand™. We manufacture physical products when customers order so no pre-built inventory is needed. Through our service, you can sell DVDs, CDs, and books, for a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing, while maintaining more control over your materials.
With our services, you can make your books, music and video available to millions of customers by selling on Amazon.com and on your own website with a customized eStore."
I thought this was interesting and since it is part of amazon it is safe.
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WOW! Thank you for the food, Emily: that was incredible. Now I see why they were able to drink so much wine. I'll have to think how those menus fit into my new food theory of history.
But I prefer the feast that Brian provided.
I have no solution to the typing problem. I don't own the book, but could get it. Perhaps several of us could take turns typing it in.
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Thanks, Adoannie for helping in trying to find a solution to typing from the book.
Thanks to Claire for her suggestion of the kindle. I do not own one. I have some of the books of SOC, but not all. I have used my local library for those I don't have. They have two complete sets, plus extra books that have been donated by locals.
Brian, you were a leader in our effort to find SOC online. We were not successful at that time.
Joan, that was some feast huh....What about all those plates... I would not have wanted to be the dishwasher on duty. Thanks for volunteering to help.
Emily
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I felt the same way, Brian, and will look around a little bit more. There were others offered when I "googled".
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I don't mind the typing. I have been doing it for eight years. What I need - more than anything else -- is a large group of participants who post regularly and help to make this discussion LIVE! The more I feel the spirit from all of you, the easier it is for me. It is you folks that kept me going all that time.
Robby
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Well, we have our orders from headquarters. You have many posters in here who are way ahead of us "fail to appear" folks, but since I started reading these last few posts, I find myself wanting to appear here more often. I will try but most of my time will be spent getting caught up. That's only for the present history being discussed here. I am not returning to read the whole series that I have missed.
The party looked like such fun but I didn't know who to come as since I haven't been in here for ages. Is that recipe for the apples and cider and sunflowers seeds looks good but does one slice the apples first, then soak? I can't imagine doing it any other way. In fact, I can't imagine doing it without ending up with floppy apple slices. :D
By the way, Brian, your well constructed ad is great. Did you leave it anyplace in Seniors&Friends?? Like in the religious folder or the chat cafe??
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This is my first time at this site. I am interested, after reading the posts. But, I am confused about what book we are discussion. Will someone please guide me how to begin?
Thank you!
Sheila
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Welcome Shelia. We are discussing the fifth book in Durant's Story of Civilization, titled the 'Renaissance'.
It is set mostly in Italy and celebrates Europe's rise out of the dark ages, with books, painting, architecture, etc. A lot was lost during those dark years of war and pestilence. The genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo graced this period.
We have an art historian in Justin, who helps us see the great leaps made in art during the Renaissance. Claire also contributed much to the art discussion.
My interest lies in the books that were gathered and copied, especially of the Greeks, and reintroduced back into Europe. Much was lost, but some was saved even after a thousand years of war and darkness.
Emily
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Welcome Sheila - - - please come and join us in posting. Emily has summed it up well.
I have been learning much through this discussion - - - both from the posts and also from
the subsequent "research" I have been impelled to do.
ADOANNIE - - - No, I did not post the invitation (crafted by Justin) in Seniors and Friends,
but on your suggestion, I will, thanks for the heads-up.
Brian.
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SHEILA, ANNIE: you don't have to get any books or "get caught up". Robby posts exerpts from Will and Ariel Durant's "Story of Civilization" for us (for which we are eternally grateful) and we comment. Some participants know enough to add to what the book said, others (like me) are learning. Either way, we have fun and learn a lot.
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OK, folks. Let's get back to examining the Renaissance. We are now on Page 367 of the Fifth Volume of The Story of Civilization. We are beginning the section entitled "The Triumph of the Papacy - 1418-47 For those of you who are newcomers, be patient. Just lurk a bit to catch the trend of our discussion and feel free to jump in whenever you want. No one here is an expert in everything. We all have opinions no matter where we are in knowledge. We are interested in your views.
"Martin V, though himself a Roman, could not go at once to Rome. The roads were held by the condottiere Braccio da Montone. Martin thought it safer to say in Geneva, then Mantua, then Florence. When at last he reached Rome (1420), he was shocked by the condition of the city, by the delapidation of the buildings and the people.
"The capital of Christendom was one of the least civilzied cities in Europe.
If Martin continued a characteristic abuse by appointing his Colonna relatives to places of income and power, it may be because he had to strengthen his family in order to have some physical security in the Vatican. He had no army but upon the Papal States from every side pressed the amed forces of Naples, Florence, Venice, and Milan. The Papal States, for the most part, had again fallen into hands of petty dictators who though they called themselves vicars of the pope, had assumed practically sovereign powers during the division of the papacy. In Lombardy the clergy had for centuries been hostile to the bishops of Rome.
Beyond the Alps lay a disordered Christendom that had lost most of its respect for the papacy and grudged it financial support."
Is it sometimes necessary to bring ones own family into power in order to solve a difficult situation?
Robby
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Robby, by his slow progression thru those cities, did he not gain a great deal of support?
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emily: my daughter lives in new york and I'm in california and my library has that service you spoke of and she uses it from new york. so is there someone in your old area who will work with you on that?
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http://www.historybookclub.com/Ancient-books/Rome|Greece.html
if Tome is your primary interest here is a site to thrill it with four books at one dollar each available. . .
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Thanks Claire for the suggestion on the e-books. I will check it out.
As for the history books, I have vowed not to buy any more since I don't have a place to put them. I have given away many to the children, and would like them to take most of the rest. There are a few that I cannot part with so they are here close at hand.
Emily
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Robby
Is it sometimes necessary to bring ones own family into power in order to solve a difficult situation?
In order to hold their territory, they had to depend on relatives and kin. That seems to be what Martin V was doing.
The ways of the Clan or Tribe was to produce large extended families with inter-marriage with other clans or tribes. The bigger the Clan, the larger the army they could field to protect their territory. Martin V was protecting his territory.
Some historians suggest that the dependence on 'outsiders' by the Romans to fill their army ranks, led to their eventual collapse. One day the 'outsider' looked at the army and saw that it contained more of his fellow countrymen than Romans and decided to see just what Rome had to offer as loot. They were off and Rome was wide open, without protection.
Emily
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We're dealing here with Nepotism (derived for the Latin word for nephew) - - - although the word has some derogatory aspects, in general it is not always so bad.
Read what Dick Jaffee, Former CEO of Oil-Dri, thinks about it - - -
"I don't like the word nepotism. It suggests unfair favoritism. But if you employ someone and they recommend a relative, they will make sure the relative does a good job. We hire a lot of related employees, and we say, 'You can get paid for what you do, not who you are.' My father started this company selling clay out of the back of his car. I like to say, 'I went to work for my father and he took a liking to me.' Generational change is a key issue. I took over in 1960. My son took over in 1996. He's doing a great job."
Robbie - - - I enjoyed the break, but it is great to be back with the book again.
ADOANNIE - - - I could not find a Chat Café anywhere on Seniors & Friends. I can email you the blurb to post if you wish.
winsummm - - - if you can find a way of making the TEXT of SOC available to us online
(not the audio books or Kindle, I am sure Robbie would be delighted.
Brian
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brian I asked google and it came up with this which offers at least three plans for the stor of civilization and . anyone brave enough to try it.
http://www.filestube.com/597414a2ccdfac2703e9,g/Durant-Will-Ariel-The-Story-Of-Civilization-Full-Text.html
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Brian could Adoannie be talking about the Soda Shoppe? There is also a General Discussion group. I don't usually look in on those. Oh, and if you want to post something over there, don't forget the Classical Corner for us classical music buffs. I believe SOC does discuss music on occasion.
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winsummm - - - thanks for your continued efforts. I have researched most of these sites already,
and am not prepared to risk the health of my computer for the cause.
The site whose link you have given above, is discussed in this article from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidShare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidShare)
and after reading it, I got cold feet - - - and I, for one, am not "brave enough to try it".
Are you?
Brian.
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me brave??? nah!!!!!!!!!
back to durant and robby who wants us to do that. I give up on searching. I just enjoy doing it . .the problem solving thing.
claire
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Emily, thank you for your explanation of how to begin. I ordered a used book, of Volumn 5. For now, I will just follow the discussion.
Sheila
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SHEILA: good. Robby won't let you get lost.
If I was in such a dangerous situation, I would want my family around me, too. But we have seen in following these pages what giving posts on the basis of relationship, rather than merit can lead to.
We'll see how Martin makes out. i assume that all these armies want the riches that the papal states have. Or are they broke?
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WINSOM: I can't get into my mail today for some reason. But my address is there in my profile.
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Frybabe,
Yes, the Soda Shoppe would be it. Good to see you here, my dear. Good idea about the classical music site run by that man with more in his head about music than anyone I know.
I am for the time just trying to read everyday comments whlle I see if I can get a copy of vol 5 or just learn from all of the smart posters right here in front of me plus read Robby's posts.
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Don Reid, who runs the classical music site, joined in the discussion here of Geraldine Brooks' "People of the Book", and was both very interested, and a valuable contributor. If this is within his fields of interest, he would be a superb addition.
I'm getting back gradually by skimming through the posts.
If typing help becomes necessary in the future, I would be glad to do some of it, but there would have to be some lead time for me to get the book.
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For newcomers: you don't have to have the book. Robby feeds us copious extracts, and we take it from there.
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Durant says: "The capital of Christendom was one of the least civilzied cities in Europe.
Is Washington, D.C. civilized? Is Kabul civilized? Is TEheran civilized?
Robby
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Durant says: "The capital of Christendom was one of the least civilzied cities in Europe.
Is Washington, D.C. civilized? Is Kabul civilized? Is TEheran civilized?
Robby
no as centers of power they are more into politics than art I should think. I only know about DC and it's pretty slummy although they are improving their schools there.
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I had a friend who was raised in upper class Terhan and the girls who were enco;uraged to go to college studdied only science and math. there were no art offered.
she and her boyfriend ran away to get married here because there was kidney failure in his family and her family was strongly against their union. I think he did get it. . .the kidney problem. He managed/owned a foreign car dealership here and she opened a mens fine clothing and imports shop in Laguna, studied psychology and practices.
their community made it a practice to do business only within itsef. It has been a long I don't know how they are now. Nice couple who prefer our ways to those of their origen.
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There are four ingredients required for civilization: A society must be economically viable as well as be free from threat of attack. That is; one must have not only provisions for oneself and one's family but chaos must have ended. If one is free from imminent danger then moral traditions may apply and the society may pursuit the arts and knowledge.
Rome was vulnerable in the early part of the fifteenth century. It's local government was corrupt. The enemy was at the gates, in fact, several enemies were at the gates. It's traditional moral force was immoral at best and absent for much of the period.
In the 1420's the arts were barely able to flourish. The leading patron had flown the coop and the usurper was too busy encouraging his physical proclivities to be bothered with the arts. The arts moved from Rome to other cities. Florence and Sienna housed art colonies and the Church in those cities continued to sponsor art.
Learning was struggling to find a center where it could flourish unimpeded. Paris had some success but the influence of religion was both a hindrance and a help.
It is important to remember that when Chaos ends civilization begins.
It is interesting that you choose Washington and Kabul as examples. Kabul is a city in chaos as are many of the cities of the middle east. Security is their main concern and while it is absent civilization will have to wait. While life in Washington, on the other hand, is chaotic it is civilized chaos.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Ambrogio Calepini gave his name to the early English dictionaries (Calepins). and
predated by a couple of hundred years the later lexicographers extolled here by the
Oxford Dictionary -
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/legendarylexicographers/?view=uk)
Wikipedia has a fine picture of a bust of this learned Augustinian monk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrogio_Calepino)
thankyou Justin. a good explanation. have you read three cups of tea? that gave me an image of city life in pakistan that is probably typical for the region?
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Do you get the feeling that many of these people were still living in tribal fashion? Each city had their own armies. I remember reading about Florence, Naples etc. in "The People of the Book".
Were they civilized inside their own city but not outside?? It does seem that Martin would want his own kin and their similar upbringing brought into his new world in Rome. He would have confidence in how they felt about governing in a "walled city" and what needs to be done to run (or is that rule?) Rome. Its important to be able to plan with folks who are on the same page as you are.
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PatH and I are the Washington natives: so we have to stick up for our hometown. Washington has the same inner city slums that most big cities have: possibly less than many. There was a brief period when it was overrun by cocaine dealers, but that has been gotten more in control. But given that, it is not pretty slummy. And it is a center for arts and music with many art galleries and concerts -- not an historical center like Florence, but there is probably more such activity there than any American city except New York.
And the people are a lot more civilized than in New York. Having lived in both places, I'm here to tell you, there is a world of difference in the manners and civility with which people treat each other. Example: when I moved from Washington to New York. I went to a nearby lunch counter. With my Washington manners, I asked: "Can you fix me a hamberger?' The New YUorker behind the counter answered "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CAN I FIX YOU A HAMBERGER! I OWN THIS JOINT--I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT!!"
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for the DC folks. sorrrrry
New York felt unfriendly to me when I went to visit my daughter and went to the stores with her. Here people meet your eyes and return smiles and often will just ssay HI as they go bye so the isolated world of people in new york was noticeable to me. I think though that it is known for that.
when my tall son 6-4 went there to live he clued me in on it because he was living across the river in New Jersy in a low cost area and as such could be perceived by some as a target we discussed it. . .no eye contack no talk and move fast as on business.
He's a friendly california person. it wasn't easy for h im to remember that.
I wonder how people in Rome etc. acted in public as normal citizens. . .i.e ee contact, or be guarded against thieves etc. when in rome do as the romans do the old saying. but how did the romans do? then and now.
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Yes, New Yorkers are essentially existential. Riding the subways, hanging onto straps, riding in elevators, crushed up against another person, one does not look at that person but rather looks past the person. To do otherwise is considered an invasion of privacy. The daily newspaper is the subway riders best friend. It gives the rider a place to focus one's eyes. No one wishes to be challenged with ,"Who you lookin' at mister? That's embarrassing, so folks avoid that kind of encounter. Next door neighbors in apartment houses often do not know one another. New Yorkers are selective in choosing friends. It is not a casual activity brought on by proximity. No where else in the world are folks so concerned that they fail to nod to passersby or say hello and smile in casual encounters.
How do I know this? I was born and raised in Manhattan. I did undergraduate and graduate work in the city and worked there till my fortieth year. I love the city and sometimes I think I miss it enough to return for a final stay. It was the city of my youth and we all seem to think we can recapture the charm of early life by moving back. The truth is I also like saying hello to neighbors and relying upon them to look after me as well as mine do. Herein lies the dilemma of age.
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I am hoping that each of you are trying to recruit at least one more person to enter our discussion. As I have been saying for years, I am only the steering wheel. You folks are the motor which makes us move.
Robby
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a stable populaltion here is not something you can count on Robby. I have a Kindle going with several books on the home screen, twenty two, currently the Boleyn inheritance half way through with Ann of Cleves alone in Richmond Castle and coming in here to help is fine and when the discussion reflects the art of the times but the court scene is a terrible way of life. Ann has just excaped with her life by lying about her freedom o marry, so Henry can marry his little treenage flirt.
what interests me is the ongoing shsifts of power within it and the careful attempts of women to manipulate it with clothing an sideway glances.
the author has her doctorate in English history and it shows here. . .a much better writer than our WD I'm afraid although covering some of the same territory.
that is Philippa Gregory.
Justin When I visited New York my laura with her baby and her riend and I, already lame did some galleryis and museums an;yway and I loved it in Soho. . s[elling. My finish friend Jan Sand misses his Brooklyn,the way it was. I thought Laguna Beach would be the same as it was when I was thirteen and loved it but it isn't and the art is sentimental and boring.
nothing stays the same,, nor do we. now off to the cooling coffee.
claire
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I started with SOC at the beginning 8 years ago and I used to enjoy it very much, but I needed a change and I am more tired of Durant’s style than of the history he writes about which remains interesting as we can easily see that we are all making the same mistakes as the ancient people used to make, such is human nature.
I hope that new participants will continue having as much fun with the 6 remaining volumes as we used to have when there were from 20 to 40 posts each day making the discussion very lively where everyone freely expressed their feelings and opinions openly and if one person didn't agree with another, it was all washed away quickly leaving no hard feelings as the discussion was swamped by posts piling up one behind another stating issues that needed immediate response. Those were the good old days.
I wish you all good luck and God bless you .
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What? My home town slummy? Claire, surely you jest. Actually, you're right about the schools. When I was growing up, DC was a cultural backwater, but that has changed. We certainly meet Justin's 4 criteria. We are as economically viable and safe or free from attack as any large city. We have a very good arts scene--excellent music, decent theater, good art galleries, and we have 3 first-class universities plus a number of others. We're not New York, but we're not bad either.
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Good to hear from you, Eloise!! I hope you are doing well.
Robby
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I'm getting curious. What does Martin do when he gets to run-down Rome?
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Eloise: I hope all is well in Montreal and that you are still as active as you used to be. I have missed you in here and I know others have as well. Come back and tell us what is wrong with Durant's writing style and interpretation of history.
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I'm glad you asked that question, Joan, because Martin really took hold. He attacked the highway robbers in their nest and beheaded the bunch. He quickly realized that the Church needed reform but more importantly it needed money. He got it by selling church offices and charging ecclesiastical fees to the French and the Germans who resented those Italians robbing their purses. Simony was one of the objectionable characteristics of the Church that led to the Reformation. We are in the very early stages of the unrest that culminates in the Reformation. It was in Germany that the fire was eventually lit.
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what is wrong with Durant's writing style and interpretation of history.
Eloise has it right along with many others. so I'll join in. style is spotty with poet bits that are nice and great leaps in logic etc and history and place. Scolarly historians object to his making things up himself when he lacks information. but this is a gret group why not study the history of the times in the general literature. novels are good too if we'r going to have it presented creeatively.
sorry eloise for poppin but this is an old issue with me. . .
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I think Claire's objections to the Durants are one of the reasons we are all in here discussing these books.
The books represent a view of history that one can comfortably take issue with. The source material is often limited and the Durants try to make the most of it. They give us a continuous story for several millenniums. Is the work of the Durants a combination of fiction and fact? That's a tough question. Any historian worth his salt strives to make a readable story based on fact. It is the novelist who gives us a blend.
My own particular area of specialization is medieval Europe- ranging from the reign of Justinian to the Schism -a period of approximately a millennium. When we went through that period I had little quarrel with the Durant's presentation. There were little things of course, in which I saw he had some choice and I might have gone in another direction. When we went through those volumes, I raised those issues and we all talked about them. It is difficult, I think, even among scholars of the various periods, to say, " here one is reaching and adding to fill in unknown material and there one is factual." One must go back to the particular sources and dig out the material, reexamine it and then read the secondary sources and see how others have treated the issue. Finally, one can make a judgement about the liberties taken by one historian as opposed to another.
I think it's very healthy, mentally, that we take issue with what our historian says. That's the essence of what we are all about here in this discussion. If it were not so there would be little to discuss other than the event itself.
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Justin - - - thank you for your last post. It underlines the reason which justifies my decision to read the book with the rest of you. As I have said before, and will probably say again, I am enjoying learning about the past. Let us keep it up, although I can't promise to be around by the time we get to the end.
Brian.
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BRIAN: none of us can promise that, but we'll try our best.
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There is a new book out called the "The Past Lasts" or some similar title. It deals with the Missisippi and Alabama mentality in race relations. Some Mississippi folk think it is wrong to stir up all that stuff again but others see it as an opportunity to review past sins and to learn from the errors of one's fathers. There are isolated backwoods towns in Mississippi where the folk have not yet been repatriated and we should have one more crack at reaching them on a civilized level. Only a revisit to historical material can give people an opportunity the reevaluate their attitudes and to discover the importance of social acceptance.
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This is a time when the problems of the papacy were more governmental than religious and Martin well recognized that condition. He issued bulls reforming the Curia in procedure and in financial matters but when the Pope dies a new Pope takes up the keys and very often puts less emphasis on the reforms of his predecessor. Martin's Bull were deemphasized and the Curia returned to its old ways. I suppose it was all for the best for simony led to the reformation and in many ways the reformation was a good thing for society. It broke up a power base that had a strangle hold on society.
The power of the papacy remains strong today in third world countries. One can see its influence operating in the US. In order for the House of Representatives to reach the 220 votes needed to pass the Health bill The speaker had to compromise on abortion constrictions. Clearly, the power of the papacy over some congressmen was quite strong. So we are not dealing with some irrelevant piece of history here. We are dealing with the first major challenge to Papal authority.
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Where is Trevor?
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Justin - - - I am still in email contact with Trevor, and he still says he is having problems getting through to us. He says "I really would like to join", but so far I cannot see what his problem really is. I have sent him a couple of emails and received a couple of replies.
Brian.
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trevor isn't the only one not getting into this discussion. Jan Sand can't either. he's in Finland so maybe that has something to do with it but seems to not have troube elsewhere.
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The discussion of non-fiction history is more difficult for many people, than fiction. It has been my observation that more often than not, many prefer their history written as historical fiction. Many times that 'fiction' gets quoted as fact.
Today with so many books being published, we have the phenomenon of propaganda as history. There are facts and then there are damn facts, and one can spin it six ways to Sunday, but the fact still remains.
I have defended Durant before and will again. He was not writing about current history, but ancient history. He used whatever record was available to him from the era in which he wrote. He read many of these records and writings in the original Latin or Greek. I always check the biblography in any book I am reading, and Durant lists all his sources. When he began this history in the Thirties some of the sources we have today was not available to him.
Do we know more today than we did in 1930? Of course. Archives have been opened, books have been translated that were not available to Durant. An example, did the Inquisition in Spain happen? Yes, it did. Did the number of people put to death that was reported at the time happen? No, it did not. We now know the numbers were exaggerated during and after the event. Spain kept the records buried until recently, but released them to historians who have written with new information.
Durant gave his sources (books-documents), and wrote about exaggerations when he felt it necessary then let the reader decide its veracity.
Emily
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Well said, Emily.
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Yes, Emily, your explanation is well presented. Not having the book, I depend on Robby for the story. I think that I should take a look at the books for the info that you gave here.
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An excellent post, Emily. I have done a considerable amount of writing over the years. In my day I was a newspaper reporter, director of public relations for a state education department, and currently write a monthly article for a local magazine telling of my varying life's experiences. This requires looking into my memory bank and I have to work hard towrite about what I believe actually happened and not what I "thought" happened or wanted to have happen. Durant did much traveling and much research and wrote (I believe) in what he believed was an objective manner.
Robby
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It has been my observation that more often than not, many prefer their history written as historical fiction. Many times that 'fiction' gets quoted as fact.
That's exactly why I don't read much historical fiction. It's too easy to get mixed up as to what's real.
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historical fiction works for me and actual history does too when is written like a novel. Currently two non fiction books on the Financial collapse interest me whereas they wouldn't ex crept for the approach to show us the characters and even dialogue so as to understand CDS or credit default swaps. . .the basis of the problem in particular and financial products with no real basis other than paper trading and making points with huge bonuses.
The fictional account of the Boleyn inheritance deals with just that. . .lands and money as gifts from the king when he is pleased to his favorites which can change at any time. I see the connection politically any way although we don't cut of heads to make the point. He will drum up charges against the owner, hanging or decapitating him and even women, so as to accumulate this property which can then be given to others.
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Lest we forget: http://www.scoutsongs.com/lyrics/taps.html
We are getting ready to attend the Vets Day celebration at the elementary school where two of our grandchildren attend. They have added a new feature, coffee and donuts before the ceremonies. Ralph didn't expect to be here this day so its a double celebration for him. He's a Vet and he's alive!! Thanks to many prayers from all of you and a heart pump. Wow!!
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Martin V.......When at last he reached Rome (1420), he was shocked by the condition of the city, by the delapidation of the buildings and the people.
The words 'delapidation of the buildings and the people', caught my attention. It is easy to see how buildings can fall into disuse and be robbed of material for other uses, but do people also become 'delapidated'.
I remembered a photograph in a book done by Peter Jennings on the Twentieth Century that my granddaughter had given me. In the photo a woman is sitting on the sidewalk in a dining chair with a baby on her lap and several barefoot children around her. Also on the sidewalk are their belongings. Two chairs, a bed frame, a chest, and a few boxes.
The caption said this photograph was shot on the streets of New York City during the great depression. The woman and her children had been evicted from the tenement where they lived. The husband was off trying to find work in the city.
The apartments looked rather delapidated, but the evictees were relatively young, with several children. Their look at the camera though showed them to be dejected and rather threadbare. They had just moved down the economic ladder a notch, and it showed.
This is just a snapshot in time, made by a photographer who saw a situation and captured it for his paper. No real information on the people other than the fact they had been evicted and were now in the street.
How much worse it must have been in Rome, who had been under the gun for almost a thousand years by then, with only short periods of relief.
I also just read an article on the Roman roads in the south of France, or what was left of them. Over the years the stone had been removed in long stretches for other uses. A Stele found with an inscription was still standing, but overgrown with brush and brambles.
After a while its, patch, patch, patch, whether human, road, or building.
Emily
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Continuing "Triumph of the Papacy."
"Martin V. faced these difficulties with courage and success. Though he had inherited an almost empty treasury, he allotted funds for the partial rebuilding of his capital.. His energetic measures drove the brigands from the roads and Rome. He destroyed a robber stronghold at Montelipo, and had its leaders beheaded. He restored order in Rome and codified its communal law. He appointed one of the earlyu humanists, Poggio Bracciolini, to be a papal secretary. He engaged Gentile da Fabriano, Antonio Pisanello, and Masaccio to paint frescoes in Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Johnin the lateran.
"He recognized men of intellect and character, like Giuliano Cesarini, Louis Allemand, Domenico Capranoica, and Prospero Colonna, to the college of cardinals. He reorganized the Curia to effective functioning but found no way to finance it except by selling offices and services.
"Since the Church had survived for a century without reform but could hardly survive a week without money, Martin judged money to be more urgently needed than reform. Pursuant to the Frequent decree of Constance, he called a council to meet at Pavia in 1423. It was spasely attended. Plague compelled its transference to Siena. When it proposed to assume absolute authority Martin ordered it to dissolve qand the bishops, fearing for their sees, obeyed. To soothe the spirit of reform Martin issued a bull detailing some admirable changes in the procedure and financing of the Curia.
But a thousand obstacles and objections arose, and the proposals faded in the quick oblivion of time."
Like Martin, do we today judge money more important than reform?
Robby
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Throughout this history, financing and how it was done, has reared its head periodically as a major problem. In view of the recent financial troubles in this country, I wish Durant had told us more about it as we went along.
It seemed to me when we read about ancient Rome, that there was something really wrong with the financial structure. The heavy load of debt of ordinary people was mentioned every time there was an uprising, and every new Emporor had to promise to forgive debt. I suspect eventually the only way people could get out of debt was to kill the Emporor, and get a new one.
Now we see the Pope's actions determined by financing. Was he paying for the overspending of others? Had the Papacy become too expensive to maintain? We'll see if/when it becomes financially viable.
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I might be a little sarcastic here, but it seems to me that every time someone reforms something it costs the little guy more one way or the other.
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You may be right.
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The selling of offices and services had long been a complaint from the churchgoer. It seems that Martin did try to get better representatives for the Church, but too many had already spoiled that stew, and once an idea takes hold, it can be hard to suppress.
Little grievances pile up, and who knows where or when they will spill over into full fledged protests and outright rebellion.
Emily
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Hello Robby and all.
Good to see Story of Civilization alive and challenging our thoughts and understanding of past and present.
It is hard not to be all under the same roof, but I'll try to remember and visit more often here, get new perspectives on things.
As Robby said earlier, it is hard to write about the past and remain objective of what was, not coloring it with what we wished for then or now.
I realized that yesterday in the Writers' Nook when I remembered the 6-Days War. Today I surely would not see that so enthusiastically.
So Durant really did well IMHO
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Hey, BUBBLE. Good to see you back. Did you lose your smerf picture on the way?
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Ha ha ha no I did not but it seems noone has here?
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Bubble! So good to see you again! Please stay with us and liven us up even more.
Robby
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I'll try. First I have to get the "feel" of things. I have been away for long... I read the resumé at the top but it is still too dry.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
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"Martin judged money to be more urgently needed than reform". He got the money, but not the reform. I think money is easier to get. We will see what will happen to the current president, trying to get reform at a time when money is a crucial issue. If he doesn't get the right reforms in our financial system, I'm afraid it will catch up with us later, as it did for the Catholic Church.
(I managed to talk about two no-no's in the same post -- politics and religeon. I hope, hope hope zI don't staart a fight).
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ROBBY: I copied the heading, leaving off the bit about the picture of an Augustine monk. If you want it back, let me know.
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Welcome back Bubble. SOC like many other discussion groups was left floating in cyberspace, until our leader and brave commander Robbie, landed us safely here at SeniorLearn.
We need posters. I made an appeal to my non-fiction book club, but they have never forgiven me for selecting 'Albions Seed' for a discussion long ago. We have settled into books discussing current history and recent events. It is my favorite book club, but would like to mix in some ancient history. I have been outvoted.
Emily
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Welcome back, Bubble; at the moment a lot of us are just returning, and still re-orienting ourselves, so don't have much to say, but things will pick up as we figure out where we are.
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Joan, your post on money and reform was well put, and I agree with your deduction.
Politics and current events were always discussed at out dinner table while growing up. I got a globe for my sixth birthday and won a geography contest.
I went looking for the members of ASEAN since it was in the news this week, and to my surprise Borneo had disappeared. It is now known as Kalimantan, and is ruled by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. It is the worlds second largest island, and I was unaware it had been divided up and renamed.
I did know that Burma had been renamed Myanmar, but is still called Burma by the U.S. and a few other western nations.
In our current discussion we have seen states dissolve and fracture. In the Renaissance discussion, we are reading about 'states' because Italy is not yet united as a country.
Emily
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Emily, thanks for the info on Borneo. I hadn't noticed that yet. I think that Myanmar has changed its name back to Burma, but it's slow catching on.
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Good to hear from you, Patti. Yes, we are gradually having increased participation and will soon be back to the way we once were.
Robby
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Bubble: It's a pleasure to see you posting again. We lost so many old friends when we shifted to Senior Learn that the survivors worried about survival of the discussion.
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Martin's reasoning here is interesting. He says the Church was able to survive a century without reform but without funds the Papacy would shut down in a week. The plague was in progress in Europe so lay funds were constrained. Money was tight all over Europe. The pope looked inward. What did he have to sell that had value? Absolution? Baptism? Confirmation? The Eucharist? All that was freely given away. What else was there? Ahaaa! He said to himself one morning. Church offices, that's what I'll sell. So the college of Cardinals and the list of Bishops were enlarged. Then he came upon fees for last rites, burial services, and plots in Holy Ground. Gradually the fees grew in number and size. Until, a German envoy told his King," Greed reigns supreme in Rome.
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Hello all ! I'm a poster from wayback when SNet was going. Thanks to the very kind help from Brian I have managed to re-activate my connection. I must now find out where we are, and then join in, with remarks hopefully pertinent. Will be back soon. ++Trevor
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TREVOR!! HURRAH!
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Welcome back, Trevor! A number of us are getting our feet wet again, so you're in good company.
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Then he came upon fees for last rites, burial services, and plots in Holy Ground. Gradually the fees grew in number and size. Until, a German envoy told his King," Greed reigns supreme in Rome.
Why am I reminded of current airline practices?
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Yes, Pat and banks too.
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I am delighted to see so many of our seniornetters back in here with you Robby.
Welcome here at SeniorLearn. I'm certain that you will find it to your liking. We are still in our infancy and thank Robby for his dedication to SOC through all of our changes.
Emily- that is hysterical that your book group is still holding you responsible. ::)
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Welcome back Trevor. Thank you Brian for assisting in Trevor's return.
The church with their fees seem to be punishing the very people who formed the core of their first believers, the poor and enslaved. As the Roman army marched across Europe they enslaved large numbers of other European people and transported many of them to the Roman slave market.
"It is written that Pope Gregory's first encounter with Englishmen occured as he walked through the Roman market, and taken by their blond beauty, asks what manner of men they are. Angli comes the reply. (Angles or Englishmen) Gregory says, 'they look like Angli, angels. He goes on to see that the English are evangelized, but leaves the captives to be sold"..........Thomas Cahill
We know how all this turned out, but does anyone think it ever crossed Martin's mind that he might be taking the wrong approach. I doubt that it did.
Emily
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Emily: I think Martin was a sharp administrator but I also don't think he had a clue to the consequences of his decision to sell church offices and services. Subsequent Popes tended to let the good stuff he did fall victim to forgetfulness and to expand on his mistakes. Money makers like the sale of indulgences were eventually added to the list of commodities. These, as we all know, led to untold excesses and the reform proposals by Martin Luther.
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Pope Gregory's response to the Angli seems terribly naive to me but he was probably a victim of the prevailing culture. Popes have traditionally railed against contemporary culture but perhaps that is something that happened over time. Today, Benedict says no to women priests, to safe sex in the face of aids, and to other proposals when society recognizes the necessity for such measures. This Pope fails to compromise to curb the evils that lurk in our midst just as Gregory failed to curb Roman slavery. I think they see human problems as not relevant in a religious context. They themselves resorted to torture to achieve their aims. So one cannot expect human compassion of the clergy. If it comes it is the product of individual initiative.
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I think of the Queen Bee who is really a slave to the hive just making egg after egg. Are popes, kings, even dictators in many ways caught up in the struture that they themselves may have created and now find that decisions are automatically made for them?
Robby
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That's got to be at least partly true. They all hold their power at least partly through the backing of their supporters, who all have their own agendas, so the rulers get stuck having to do what the supporters want. And everything takes money, which has to come from somewhere.
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Robby: I know you offer a generalization but it's interesting to speculate on the state of mind of someone like Martin when he realizes he must have money for the church to function but the treasury is empty except for things he ordinarily gives away. Did he think of himself as a victim, as someone locked in to a system, or did he simply rise to a challenge and meet it? I'll bet he spent all of five minutes thinking about what a tough row he picked and how nice it would be to just duck the issue and let his successor handle it. It's a good thing he didn't do that because his successor was a bomb. I think this guy Martin is someone I can admire. He took action when action was needed even though the action was counter to everything the Church had done before. That takes sand.
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Justin
That takes sand.
I had to read that twice before I 'think' I got it Justin. I just translated 'sand' to 'grit' and it all became clear as mud.
Emily
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Not possessing a copy of SOC, I often find myself in the position of having to do research just to understand who we are talking about.
"Martin" as a pope, may be well known to most of you, but for me he was a problem until I came across the following - - -
When the second Pope to take the name Martin was elected, there was confusion over how many Popes had taken the name before. It was believed at the time that there were three, so the second Pope named Martin was called Martin IV. Therefore, the third Pope named Martin was called V. But, in reality, those believed to be Martin II and Martin III were actually called Marinus I and Marinus II, although they are sometimes still known as Martin II and Martin III. This has advanced the numbering of all subsequent Popes Martin by two. Popes Martin IV-V are really the second and third popes by that name.
I hope I am correct in saying that our "Martin" is Martin V.
Having checked out Martin V, I note that he also got money from the Jews in exchange for returning to them the rights they had lost by action of the previous pope. He also found a way round the law that declared the taking of interest on loans to be usury (and illegal) by selling church covered annuities.
Who now can say that our bankers have not been well taught?
Brian.
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This is an only barely relevant digression, but I don't know a lot of people who might appreciate jokes like this. Pope Gregory sees the young English slaves in the market, and says "non sed angli, sed angeli" (not English, but angels).
I own a book, "1066 and All That", by Sellar and Yeatman, which is a humorous retelling and mangling of all the stock stories from British history, and it translates Gregory's remark as "not angels, but Anglicans". Here comes Henry VIII.
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I hadn't thought about "1066 and All That" for years. I was reminded of Pat and my chilhood reading of English history the other day, when Durant said that Martin cleared the brigands off the road. About the only thing I remember about Henry II of England was that he had the trees cut back from the edge of the road so that brigands couldn't jump out and surprise travellers. I'll bet this was a problem in a lot of places.
Which reminds me: I've completely lost track of what years we're talking about. What were the dates for Martin V?
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Martin V was Pope from 1417 to 1431. His reign was cut short by apoplexy. No pun intended.
Brian
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No pun intended.Brian
Yeah, right. Tee hee.
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Pat: The translation of Gregory's comment is "Angles." England at that time was inhabited by Jutes and Angles. The Saxons came later as did the Normans.
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"Martin’s successor faced the accumulated problems of the papacy from the background of a devout Franciscan monk ill equipped for statesmanship.
"The papacy was a government more than a religion. The popes had to be statesmen, sometimes warriors, and could rarely afford to be saints. Eugenius IV was sometimes a saint. True, he was obstinate and dourly inflexible and the gout that gave him almost constant pain in his hands helped his sea of troubles to make him impatient and unsociable. But he lived ascetically, ate sparingly, drank nothing but water, slept little, worked hard, attended conscientiously to his religious duties, bore no malice against his enemies, pardoned readily, gave generously,, kept nothing for himself and was so modest that in public he seldom raised his eyes from the ground.
"Yet few popes have earned so many foes.
"The first were the cardinals who had elected him. As the price of their votes, and to protect themselves from such one man rule as that of Martin, they had induced him to sign capitula – literally, headings – promising them freedom of speech, guarantees for their offices, control over half the revenues, and consultation with them on all important affairs. Such “capitulations” set a precedent regularly followed in papal elections throughout the Renaissance. Furthermore, Eugenius made powerful enemies of the Colonna. Believing that Martin had transferred too much Church property that family, he ordered restoration of many parcels, and had Martins former secretary tortured almost to death to elicit information in the matter.
"The Colonna made war upon the Pope. He defeated them with soldiery sent him by Florence and Venice but in the process he aroused the hostility of Rome. Meanwhile the Council of Basel, called by Martin, met in the first year of the new pontificate and proposed again to assert the supremacy of the councils over the popes. Eugenius ordered it to dissolve. It refused, commanded him to appear before it, and sent Milanese troops to attack him in Rome. The Colonna seized the chance for revenge. They organized a revolution in the city and set up a republican government . Eugenius fled down the Tiber in a small boat pelted by the populace with arrows, pikes, and stones.
"He fund refuge in Florence, then in Bologna. For nine years he and the Curia were exiles from Rome."
No good remains unpunished.
Robby
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Weren't many of Eugenius IV's problem related to his insistance that the newly converted slaves be set free?
Imagine, that was in the 1400's and we're still arguing and discussing slavery of one kind or the other!
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...Are popes, kings, even dictators in many ways caught up in the struture that they themselves may have created and now find that decisions are automatically made for them?
Robby
Eugenius IV is certainly a good example. He tries to do what he thinks is right, and sets an unstoppable series of events in motion.
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Martin V was a Colonna. He had brought his clan into Rome, and distributed to them property, etc. He came from a wealthy family and had lived at Palazzo Colonna before being appointed Pope.
Pope Eugenius IV through his cardinals, revoked much of Martin's (Colonna) giveaway. The Colonna fought back and seem to have lost all, but would regain control over their property once again a hundred years or so later.
Here is a link to Palazzo Colonna in central Rome.
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi63.htm
Emily
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Here is a link to the Colonna private art collection, click on each painting to enlarge.
http://www.galleriacolonna.it/html_eng/collezione.html
Emily
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Emily: thank you. Those links are very interesting. The only artist in their gallery whose name I recognized was Tintiretto. Justin, Claire, what do you think of the artwork?
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Alf: Please tell us more about Eugenius and the slave conversion. That's a side of this Pope I am unfamiliar with but would like to know more.
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Christianity had gained many converts in the Canary Islands by the early 1430s however the ownership of the lands had been the subject of dispute between between Portugal and the Kingdom of Castille. The lack of effective control had resulted in periodic raids on the islands to procure slaves. Pope Eugene IV was concerned that the enslavement of newly baptized Christians would impede the spread of Christianity and therefore issued a Papal Bull, "Creator Omnium", on 17 December 1434.[1]
Eugene excommunicated anyone who enslaved newly converted Christians but no protection was offered to those who declined to become a Christian. Historian Richard Raiswell[1] sees this as a significant turning point because prior to this Canon Law had only sanctioned slavery in the context of a just war and un-baptized captives, but with the issuing of this bull the only protection offered was if the person became a Christian.
Portuguese soldiers continued to raid the islands during 1435 and Eugene issued a further edict Sicut Dudum that prohibited wars being waged against the islands and affirming the ban on enslavement.[1] Eugene condemned the enslavement of the peoples of the newly colonized Canary Islands and, under pain of excommunication, ordered all such slaves to be immediately set free.[2] Joel S Panzer (2008) views "Sicut Dudum" as a significant condemnation of slavery, issued sixty-years before the Europeans found the New World.[3] The prohibitions and ecclesiastical sanctions of Sicut Dudum related to the newly converted.[4] Eugene tempered "Sicut Dudum" with another bull (15 September 1436) due to the complaints made by King Duarte of Portugal, now allowing the Portuguese to conquer any unconverted parts of the Canary Islands. According to Raiswell (1997) any Christian would be protected by the earlier edict but the un-baptized were implicitly allowed to be enslaved.[5] Luis N. Rivera (1992) argues that Eugenes subsequent bull assumes that all Africans are pagans or Saracens and are therefore "enemies of God", language that Nicholas V would reflect later in Romanus Pontifex in which the same groups are described as "enemies of Christ", that they should be reduced to "perpetual servitude" and therefore the black slave market begins with Papal blessing.[6]
Following the arrival of the first African slaves in Lisbon during 1441 Prince Henry asked Eugene to designate Portugal's raids along the West African coast as a crusade, a consequence of which would be the legitimization of enslavement for captives taken during the crusade. On 19 December 1442 Eugene replied by issuing "Illius qui" in which he granted full remission of sins to those who took part in any expeditions against the Saracens.[7] Davidson (1961) asserts that "In Christianity as in Islam...the heathen was expendable.[8]
Richard Raiswell argues that the bulls of Eugene helped in some way the development of thought which perceived the enslavement of Africans by the Portuguese and later Europeans "as dealing a blow for Christendom
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That source was Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, Justin.
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That's fascinating!
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Joan: One thing about these Italian Palazzos, One walks in from a sunny street and sometimes finds really good things in a family collection. Others are just so so. This one has a few interesting pieces but many are just ordinary. Very few of these paintings are from the period we are interested in. There are four rows with seven images in each. If I label them a b c d. and the images with numbers 1-7 you will be able to follow me as we talk about them.
Martin V is in A2. He was full of spaghetti at the time, I think.
The A1 Cortona of Christ in Ascension is a 17th Century work in the Roman Baroque style rather than the Renaissance.
There are a couple of Bronzino pieces- B6 is one. Bronzino is more Mannerist in the late style of Michelangelo. If you look at B6 you will see elongated necks and stretched body trunks on his figures. We're reaching into a new style. there are extra ribs and vertebrae with sweeping french curves in the body lines.
There are a couple of Van Wittells in the group- C3 and C4. He was a part of the Dutch 17th century school. He paints in the style of Caneletto whom we discussed at length in our Venetian period.
There are some interesting portraits in addition to the Martin V. Felice Cortona Orsini is the product of two wealthy and powerful families. Several were Cardinals. You should notice that the lady is wearing Dutch lace in 17th century style. In C2 there is a portrait of Maria Mancini. She has the look of a woman who do great things and probably did, in and out of bed. Her hand gesture signifies her femaleness.
You have already noticed the Tintoretto.
-
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
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Thanks Justin, that's great.
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Thanks, Alf. If Wikipedia can be accepted as a valid source, it looks like the Church put its imprimatur on the African slave trade with Bulls and the label of a Crusade. The Pope made non Christians enemies of Christ just as Islam views non Muslims as enemies of Allah. There is no hope for the infidel.
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Every aspect of this discussion gives explanation as to why many people over the centuries have passed on institutional religion...............the way The Church picks and chooses what parts of their history and teachings they are going to adhere to is quite fascinating, but also horrifying.......................wasn't there a story about Jesus throwing the money changers OUT of the temple? ..............charging for church services in order to keep the institution going? Isn't it really to keep Martin and his cohorts and their power going? Collections? What have they to do w/ being "our brothers' keeper?"
We'll ban slavery of Christians but execute any who will not convert to Christianity?
In the discussion we are coming up on 1492 which is not only a hell of a year - literally - for the Native Americans, but also for the Jews in Spain, all thanks to the Christian Church. ............bah, humbug!...................however it IS important that we know this history, it may - or perhaps has - come back around........................jean
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Durant writes...........
Believing that Martin had transferred too much Church property that family, he ordered restoration of many parcels, and had Martins former secretary tortured almost to death to elicit information in the matter.
Durant writes of Eugenius IV as a sometime saint. I don't think so. Anyone who orders torture of any living thing could never be a saint in my book.
Emily
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"In the discussion we are coming up on 1492 which is not only a hell of a year - literally - for the Native Americans, but also for the Jews in Spain - - - Mabel"
- - - not to mention the jews in Florence !
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pope+Eugenius+IV+and+Jewish+money-lending+in+Florence:+the+case+of+...-a015674106 (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pope+Eugenius+IV+and+Jewish+money-lending+in+Florence:+the+case+of+...-a015674106)
Brian.
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Mabel-
This is purely biblical and not in 1400 with Eugenius IV.
Matthew 12: Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the table of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them "The scriptures declare, "my temple will be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves."
A brother's keeper was any kinsman or of the same tribe.
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It's no wonder the priests of the Sanhedrin were angry with Jesus. Animal sacrifice was the essential element of devotion in the days of the Temple. The practice started as a sacrifice of new born children and the priests gradually weaned the faithful away from human sacrifice by allowing animals to be sacrificed. It was the function of the Hebrew priesthood to slay the beasts selected by the faithful for sacrifice. Breeders existed to produce sacrificial animals and they were stabled within the Temple grounds for sale to the faithful. The priests, if not the high priest, must have taken a little squeeze, from the animal dealers and there must have been a fee for the sacrifice itself and then who ate the slain animal.
Money for the purchase of animals came in hard coin from all over the middle east and money changers were needed to convert the various coins to sheckels, the coin of the realm. Without the money changers, there would be no purchases of animals. The breeders were hurt, the merchants were hurt, the priests were hurt, the high priest was hurt, and the people had no way to talk to the God of Abraham and Moses.
Jesus' action can be compared favorably with the action of Popes who excommunicated Kings and whole countries from the practice of their religion. The dead had to be buried without "last rites" and lovers could not marry with the blessing of a priest. That's what happened when Jesus chased out the money changers. When the Sanhedrin charged Jesus with blasphemy they meant this blasphemy.
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It's interesting, isn't it, how important money is to the practice of religion. Martin understood it.
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Before we sneer too much, remember that a Church, as well as a set of beliefs is an organization, and can't survive without money. Priests and the many others who work for it have to eat and live. Buildings have to be maintained. Of course, there were tremendous abuses and much more moneywas spent than was needed, but still, SOME money would have been necessary.
As a sociologist, I have no trouble distinguishing between religion, a set of beliefs and practices, and a Church which is a social organization with all the needs, problems and weaknesses of all human organizations.
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Brian and Mabel, you two, in my judgment, have hit upon an issue of major significance in the Renaissance. The relationship between Jews and Christians in this period, was one of class discrimination and punishment . The Jews were being paid back for their role in the crucifixion. They were a minority in Europe and they were dominated and persecuted with impunity in most cities. The Holocaust that we experienced in our life time was merely the apex of severe discrimination lasting two millenniums. Christians have committed the most grievous sin possible in this world and in my view they should not escape knowledge of it. Of a lesser degree, perhaps, but equally egregious, is the sin of American whites, particularly southern whites against blacks. We do not live in a perfect world but if we have knowledge of wrongs I think it our duty as fellow humans to right the wrong and to make up for it.
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Yours was an interesting comment, Justin.
In the time of child sacrifice, I don't see how money could become involved. The parents I suppose, would hand over the child, and that was all.
In the case of animal sacrifice, there were the breeders who provided the beast, at a price. Then there would be the purchase of the carcass, presumably for feasting, and money would change hands along the chain, with the priests no doubt taking a cut at each stage.
I wonder if it was the chance of making a few shekels, in the case of animal sacrifice, that steered the Temple away from child to animal sacrifice?
What people will do, if there is a chance of money gathering.....
But I guess all this was covered in the volume "Our Oriental Heritage". Trevor.
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Trevor, ol' friend!! We have been waiting patiently for you to return to us and are looking forward to your regular words of wisdom.
Robby
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just looking in. I'm off in Kindle land right now reading something called The art of racing in the rain written in the first person, the protagonist a dog who expects to evolve into a human man when he dies. His philosophy is based on practicing to live up to he requirements of his new existence when it occurs. It's a good book. I didn't expect that.
I don't have much to add here yet. . .more input needed as to then and now I guess. Comparisons interest me.
claire
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Trevor: How nice to have you back. You make a good point about the period of Child sacrifice. Money may not have been a factor but there was an economic factor. The child would have served in time to come as a field worker for the family or in a related occupation so they were giving up a source of income as well as a source of pride for pop and a source of love for Mom. The story of Abraham and Isaac occurs during the transition. However, there is evidence of parents making the sacrifice as late as the Babylonian captivity.
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Claire is interested in comparisons. Many of us here have read through Durant's volumes on "Our Oriental Heritage," "The Life of Greece," "Caesar and Christ" and "The Age of Faith" and have come across many different conceptions of deity. The column below speaks of comparing how a deity was seen in past times and how that subject is approachd now.
What are your views?
The Religious Wars
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts.
Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes.
Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to Earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking Web sites like www.whydoesGodhateamputees.com. That site notes that although believers periodically credit prayer with curing cancer, God never seems to regrow lost limbs. It demands an end to divine discrimination against amputees.
This year is different, with a crop of books that are less combative and more thoughtful. One of these is “The Evolution of God,” by Robert Wright, who explores how religions have changed — improved — over the millennia. He notes that God, as perceived by humans, has mellowed from the capricious warlord sometimes depicted in the Old Testament who periodically orders genocides.
(In 1 Samuel 15:3, the Lord orders a mass slaughter of the Amalekite tribe: “Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child.” These days, that would earn God an indictment before the International Criminal Court.)
Mr. Wright also argues that monotheism emerged only gradually among Israelites, and that the God familiar to us may have resulted from a merger of a creator god, El, and a warrior god, Yahweh. Mr. Wright also argues that monotheism wasn’t firmly established until after the Babylonian exile, and he says that Moses’s point was that other gods shouldn’t be worshiped, not that they didn’t exist. For example, he notes the troubling references to a “divine council” and “gods” — plural — in Psalm 82.
In another revelation not usually found in Sunday School classes, Mr. Wright cites Biblical evidence that God (both El and Yahweh) had a sex life, rather like the Greek gods, and notes archaeological discoveries indicating that Yahweh may have had a wife, Asherah.
As for Christianity, Mr. Wright argues that it was Saint Paul — more than Jesus, an apocalyptic prophet — who emphasized love and universalism and built Christian faith as it is known today. Saint Paul focused on these elements, he says, partly as a way to broaden the appeal of the church and convert Gentiles.
Mr. Wright detects an evolution toward an image of God as a more beneficient and universal deity, one whose moral compass favors compassion for humans of whatever race or tribe, one who is now firmly in the antigenocide camp. Mr. Wright’s focus is not on whether God exists, but he does suggest that changing perceptions of God reflect a moral direction to history — and that this in turn perhaps reflects some kind of spiritual force.
“To the extent that ‘god’ grows, that is evidence — maybe not massive evidence, but some evidence — of higher purpose,” Mr. Wright says.
Another best-seller this year, Karen Armstrong’s “The Case for God,” likewise doesn’t posit a Grandpa-in-the-Sky; rather, she sees God in terms of an ineffable presence that can be neither proven nor disproven in any rational sense. To Ms. Armstrong, faith belongs to the realm of life’s mysteries, beyond the world of reason, and people on both sides of the “God gap” make the mistake of interpreting religious traditions too literally.
“Over the centuries people in all cultures discovered that by pushing their reasoning powers to the limit, stretching language to the end of its tether, and living as selflessly and compassionately as possible, they experienced a transcendence that enabled them to affirm their suffering with serenity and courage,” Ms. Armstrong writes. Her book suggests that religion is not meant to regrow lost limbs, but that it may help some amputees come to terms with their losses.
Whatever one’s take on God, there’s no doubt that religion remains one of the most powerful forces in the world. Today, millions of people will be giving thanks to Him — or Her or It.
Another new book, “The Faith Instinct,” by my Times colleague Nicholas Wade, suggests a reason for the durability of faith: humans may be programmed for religious belief, because faith conferred evolutionary advantages in primitive times. That doesn’t go to the question of whether God exists, but it suggests that religion in some form may be with us for eons to come.
I’m hoping that the latest crop of books marks an armistice in the religious wars, a move away from both religious intolerance and irreligious intolerance. That would be a sign that perhaps we, along with God, are evolving toward a higher moral order.
Robby
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"Humans may be programmed for religious belief, because faith conferred evolutionary
advantages in primitive times. That doesn’t go to the question of whether God exists, but
it suggests that religion in some form may be with us for eons to come."
We have seen the persecution of the Jews described in SOC and the other bad (and good)
effects resulting from an excessive belief in God -Yahweh - Mahommed - Budda et alia.
Now we may see the shoe on the other foot - - -
"Those who oppose the religious right have been especially concerned about the
influence of the military’s chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, who is himself a West
Bank settler and who was very active during the war, spending most of it in the company
of the troops in the field.
He took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it into a slogan during the
war: “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful.”
Immediately after Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 and then
from several West Bank settlements, there was a call to disband certain religious
programs in the army because some soldiers in them said they would refuse to obey
future orders to disband settlements. "
I can't remember who said - "Money is the root of all evil" - but I am sure that he (or she)
was well aware that it takes money to propagate any and all religions.
God help us - - - for we sorely need help.
Brian.
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Brian writes :- "Humans may be programmed for religious belief, because faith conferred evolutionary advantages in primitive times."
I don't see how faith conferred evolutionary advantages. There are advantages in physical strength and military prowess in a world of scarcity, but faith ?
Could you expand on the concept, please. ++ Trevor
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Hi Trevor - - - welcome back to the fold.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A934283 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A934283)
This sums it up fairly well?
Brian.
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I came a little short in that department too, Trevor. The connection is tenuous, I think. The ancient Egyptians thought that God invented himself, selected his appearance from available substances and then enriched the earth. From the very earliest primeval times Egyptians have worshiped a Sun God whom they split into rising sun, Noon sun, and setting Sun. Lower Egypt called him Amon. Upper Egypt called him Ra. When Upper and Lower Egypt were combined under one King the sun God was called Amon-Ra. Each stage of the sun bore a different name and Amon-Ra is vested in the Pharoah who bears his name, Amon, as in Tutankhamon.
Amon has many names and representations. The scarab is a symbol for Amon. The scarab is a bug that pushes a piece of poop over the landscape. It moves as the sun moves across the sky. The hawk and the falcon are symbols for Amon. The Egyptians have made many gods out of one. But this god is real. He can be seen and felt and his benefits are obvious and tangible. Rational thought can readily lead one to the existence of this god. When Amon goes away, down into the underworld, the world is dark and the earth is unproductive. Man sleeps.
I think the Egyptians had something. If we must be religious lets pick a god that is of some tangible use to humanity as well as one whom we can find with our senses.
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From Robby's link.......
Mr. Wright detects an evolution toward an image of God as a more beneficient and universal deity
NO..NO...NO! That is the same as having the 'flat earth' and the 'four corners' crowd writing our science books. Neither he nor anyone else can 'rewrite' what has already been written and declare it to be a 'new' version. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims are stuck with what they have. Rewriting is unacceptable, so is his fantasy of a different tune to the same song.
One either believes the 'god' these groups created, or they don't, and having them 'repolished' to suit someone's fantasy is propaganda. They are what they are, and all the words of all the languages in the world will not change that fact.
Dawkins and Sam Harris have facts in their books, while Wright and Kristoff spout blatant propaganda that oozes out of their words and puddle in a pool of gibberish.
Emily
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Brian:
This is a phrase which is often misquoted. The actual phrase from 1 Timothy 6:10 in the King James Version of the Bible is: The love of money is the root of all evil. A HUGE difference.
Robby
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Robby - - - this time, deliberately misquoted. Who has money (power) and does not love it? Even the churches love it, and especially the religious fanatics love it.
Emily - - - facts are only facts at the present time. As time changes things - facts change. This is one of the main reasons that churches are called to task - they are too slow to change with the times. Evolution of religion?
Brian.
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I know that fear is a very natural response to danger and that it is accompanied by an adrenalin rush that seems to be involuntary. I don't know much about these things but I suspect a fear response may be hardwired. Fear of the unknown, of climate change, of fire and flood, of events above and beyond our power to control can make us very uncomfortable. Assurance that someone is in control of such cataclysmic natural events and that he/she or it is susceptible to pleadings for relief, is a desirable alternative thus making people vulnerable to a shaman who is able to improve his well being by offering such relief to others.
These conditions have been around since the dawn of man and will probably continue. From time to time the shaman will change his message but that message can never be hardwired. A God or supernatural being is just one of the shaman's messages. Tangible talismen work equally well and they make a salable commodity.
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The article is interesting. But it rests on a premise that you may or may not agree with "Religious faith is a phenomenon derived from biological processes that occur in the brain". The author acts as if he is going to prove that, but in fact, just restates it in various ways.
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I tend toward the first paragraph of Karen Armstrong's statement
she sees God in terms of an ineffable presence that can be neither proven nor disproven in any rational sense. The difference between us is that she calls God a "presence" as tho she is sure it is there (my belief is that if there is such a supreme being it certainly would have no gender) I agree w/ the rest of the sentence "can be neither proven nor disproven," so i guess i am a natural agnostic.
From the second article on "evolutionary religious genetics": Frankl's experience is eloquent, but there are countless records of individuals going through extreme experiences where survival was marginal, who say that it was their faith or their vision of the future that sustained them.
My thinking as i read that "do they mean 'it was their (religious) faith' or their faith in the future?" That is not at all clear in the writing of that sentence. I read Frankl in the 70's along w/ everyone else ;) and that was a long time ago, so i don't remember it clearly, but I do know that he was a devoutly religious man. The statement in this article implies that he stayed alive to be able to tell people about it. My perception of that is that it has nothing to do w/ religious faith. That could also be true of some of the people in the study. If you feel as tho you have something to live for, that you have a vision of your future, a plan for the next 20yrs, perhaps that psychology keeps you alive longer, helps you survive heart surgery, etc. It's possible to have that vision w/ no reliance on religion.
The quirky link given in the first article about god and missing limbs is an exageration of a tho't that i have every time i hear people say praying to god kept them from dying - or some other disaster. Does that mean that if you or your family mbr had died or experienced the disaster that god was to blame for that also. I've never gotten a satisfactory answer from any religious person on that. Any negativity association w/ religion is usually dismissed by religious people as the fault of the "humans" involved in the religious organization. It is irrational to me.
Even so, i am not disliking of people of faith, there have been times in my life when i wished i could have such faith........................I am just not convinced, i.e. I can't take it "on faith." ....................jean
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Brian
Emily - - - facts are only facts at the present time. As time changes things - facts change. This is one of the main reasons that churches are called to task - they are too slow to change with the times. Evolution of religion?
The three faiths of Jews, Christians, and Muslims can never evolve at least according to them. They have all written, 'This is it' in stone. All three have their 'books' and nothing can be added or taken away, that is the basis of all three religions.
People can comment all they please, but it does not change one word in their 'books'. They have all 'closed' the book on any present or future changes.
All three of these religions have had people claiming to be 'prophets' and getting converts and running amok, but nothing has changed since they all shut down the printing presses. No matter how many splinter groups they form, they cannot get rid of the orthodox true believer, kill them all and a thousand will rise up to replace them.
The pull of the occult world of the supernatural is too strong for too many people to have any hope for evolution of the masses. One either believes in the supernatural (gods) or they don't, it is as simple as that for me.
Emily
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I have read all the comments and they are thoughtful and interesting. How nice to have the pleasure of such company.
Sometime early in this discussion, Robby posted the names of some of the gods we had read about in the SOC books. I had from a very early age began to list the gods I had read about or heard about in a notebook. The list grew as I did, and soon became three notebooks full, with a short description of their creation. I stopped some time ago, and my daughter has the books now. I still make a mental note however each time a new one appears, or in this case 'eight million'. This was in a recent edition of Smithsonian magazine.
"A traditional gateway, or Toril marks the threshold to the Shinto shrine, Izumo-Taisha, where all eight million spirit gods are believed to convene in October. Pilgrims write prayers on wooden plaques, posted for the spirits to read"
Emily
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I know it's fashionable to think of the three Abrahamic religions as cast in stone but there may be some degree of freedom in the non-core elements of some of them. Consider the Qu'ran for example. Conservative litteralists seem to adhere to the written word, but so much violence is commanded by various suras that peaceful Muslims must be ignoring parts of the text. If the text is cast in stone, peaceful Muslims are in error, they are ignoring the advice of the book. Similarly, peaceful Christians must ignore the advice of the vengeful God in the Old Testament. The Jews have different story. The Mishna, I think, is a record of all the challenges that have been offered to the Torah and the Hebrew texts. The conservative Hasidim follow the Talmud and contribute criticism and so the core element of Judaism is always subject to commentary.
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The majority of the delegates to the Council of Basel were French.
They aimed, as the bishop of Tours frankly said, “either to wrest the Apostolic See from the Italians, or so to despoil it that it will not matter where it abides.” The Council therefore assumed one after another the prerogatives of the papacy. It issued indulgences, granted dispensations, appointed to benefices, and required that annates should be paid to itself and not to the pope.
Eugenius again ordered its dissolution. It countered by deposing him and naming Amadeus VIII of Savoy as Antipope Felix V. The Schism was renewed. To complete the apparent defeat of Eugenius, Charles VII of France convened at Bourges an assembly of French prelates, princes, and lawyers, which proclaimed the supremacy of councils over popes, and issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
Ecclesistical offices were henceforth to be filled through election by the local chapter or clergy, but the king might make “recommendations.” Appeals to the Papal Curia were forbidden except after exhausting all judicial possibilities in France. The collection of annates by the pope was prohibited. This Sanction in effect established an independent Gallican Church and made the king its master.
A year later a diet at Mainz adopted measures for a similar national church in Germany. The Bohemian Church had separated itself from the papacy in the Hussite revolt. The archbishop of Prague called the pope “the Beast of the Apocalypse.” The whole edifice of the Roman Church seemed shattered beyond repair,
The nationalistic Reformation seemed established a century before Luther.
Speaking of being cast in stone, what do you folks think about all the change here?
Robby
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I wonder what the average person made of all this.
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It is theology that is cast in stone. The changes we are witnessing are those of administration. Traditional institutions were subject to unusual pressures in the fifteenth century. Nationalism appeared in Europe. French, Spanish and English courts engaged in a power struggle with an Italian papacy for the moneys collected by the Pope from all over the world. Fees for service, for indulgences, for clerical office, for burial, for marriage, for Penance, for last rites, etc . all added up to a considerable sum every year. It wasn't long before local royalty realized that there was a way for that money to remain at home instead of being sent to Rome. Clearly, money was at the heart of the dismemberment of the Roman papacy. Once the main cause was in place the rest was just a question of "how to." The councils were, quite simply, an available tool
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Well said Justin.We have learned repeatedly in our study of these volumes, that many of the "great" changes in politics or religion have been only cosmetic. One group wresting control from another, in pursuit of monetary gain.
It has always interested me that the successful usurping group succeeds usually when it manages to convince the populace that it is the morally superior group. If a group convinces the people that it is on the side of the angels, it is home and hosed. ++ Trevor
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From time to time throughout these discussioins I have inserted an article which did not relate to the section of the volume being read (in this case Renaissance.) I do this because many of us here have been together since the first volume "Our Oriental Heritage." Following is an article in today's NY Times which might pull you away for a moment from the topic at hand.
A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.
For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.
The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture’s visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta “goddess” figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.
New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of “civilization” status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.
The little-known culture is being rescued from obscurity in an exhibition, “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” which opened last month at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. More than 250 artifacts from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are on display for the first time in the United States. The show will run through April 25.
At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition’s guest curator, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world” and was developing “many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”
Dr. Anthony is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and author of “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.” Historians suggest that the arrival in southeastern Europe of people from the steppes may have contributed to the collapse of the Old Europe culture by 3500 B.C.
At the exhibition preview, Roger S. Bagnall, director of the institute, confessed that until now “a great many archaeologists had not heard of these Old Europe cultures.” Admiring the colorful ceramics, Dr. Bagnall, a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, remarked that at the time “Egyptians were certainly not making pottery like this.”
A show catalog, published by Princeton University Press, is the first compendium in English of research on Old Europe discoveries. The book, edited by Dr. Anthony, with Jennifer Y. Chi, the institute’s associate director for exhibitions, includes essays by experts from Britain, France, Germany, the United States and the countries where the culture existed.
Dr. Chi said the exhibition reflected the institute’s interest in studying the relationships of well-known cultures and the “underappreciated ones.”
Although excavations over the last century uncovered traces of ancient settlements and the goddess figurines, it was not until local archaeologists in 1972 discovered a large fifth-millennium B.C. cemetery at Varna, Bulgaria, that they began to suspect these were not poor people living in unstructured egalitarian societies. Even then, confined in cold war isolation behind the Iron Curtain, Bulgarians and Romanians were unable to spread their knowledge to the West.
The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures, archaeologists have learned. The settlements maintained close contact through networks of trade in copper and gold and also shared patterns of ceramics.
The Spondylus shell from the Aegean Sea was a special item of trade. Perhaps the shells, used in pendants and bracelets, were symbols of their Aegean ancestors. Other scholars view such long-distance acquisitions as being motivated in part by ideology in which goods are not commodities in the modern sense but rather “valuables,” symbols of status and recognition.
Noting the diffusion of these shells at this time, Michel Louis Seferiades, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, suspects “the objects were part of a halo of mysteries, an ensemble of beliefs and myths.”
In any event, Dr. Seferiades wrote in the exhibition catalog that the prevalence of the shells suggested the culture had links to “a network of access routes and a social framework of elaborate exchange systems — including bartering, gift exchange and reciprocity.”
Over a wide area of what is now Bulgaria and Romania, the people settled into villages of single- and multiroom houses crowded inside palisades. The houses, some with two stories, were framed in wood with clay-plaster walls and beaten-earth floors. For some reason, the people liked making fired clay models of multilevel dwellings, examples of which are exhibited.
A few towns of the Cucuteni people, a later and apparently robust culture in the north of Old Europe, grew to more than 800 acres, which archaeologists consider larger than any other known human settlements at the time. But excavations have yet to turn up definitive evidence of palaces, temples or large civic buildings. Archaeologists concluded that rituals of belief seemed to be practiced in the homes, where cultic artifacts have been found.
The household pottery decorated in diverse, complex styles suggested the practice of elaborate at-home dining rituals. Huge serving bowls on stands were typical of the culture’s “socializing of food presentation,” Dr. Chi said.
At first, the absence of elite architecture led scholars to assume that Old Europe had little or no hierarchical power structure. This was dispelled by the graves in the Varna cemetery. For two decades after 1972, archaeologists found 310 graves dated to about 4500 B.C. Dr. Anthony said this was “the best evidence for the existence of a clearly distinct upper social and political rank.”
Vladimir Slavchev, a curator at the Varna Regional Museum of History, said the “richness and variety of the Varna grave gifts was a surprise,” even to the Bulgarian archaeologist Ivan Ivanov, who directed the discoveries. “Varna is the oldest cemetery yet found where humans were buried with golden ornaments,” Dr. Slavchev said.
More than 3,000 pieces of gold were found in 62 of the graves, along with copper weapons and tools, and ornaments, necklaces and bracelets of the prized Aegean shells. “The concentration of imported prestige objects in a distinct minority of graves suggest that institutionalized higher ranks did exist,” exhibition curators noted in a text panel accompanying the Varna gold.
Yet it is puzzling that the elite seemed not to indulge in private lives of excess. “The people who donned gold costumes for public events while they were alive,” Dr. Anthony wrote, “went home to fairly ordinary houses.”
Copper, not gold, may have been the main source of Old Europe’s economic success, Dr. Anthony said. As copper smelting developed about 5400 B.C., the Old Europe cultures tapped abundant ores in Bulgaria and what is now Serbia and learned the high-heat technique of extracting pure metallic copper.
Smelted copper, cast as axes, hammered into knife blades and coiled in bracelets, became valuable exports. Old Europe copper pieces have been found in graves along the Volga River, 1,200 miles east of Bulgaria. Archaeologists have recovered more than five tons of pieces from Old Europe sites.
An entire gallery is devoted to the figurines, the more familiar and provocative of the culture’s treasures. They have been found in virtually every Old Europe culture and in several contexts: in graves, house shrines and other possibly “religious spaces.”
One of the best known is the fired clay figure of a seated man, his shoulders bent and hands to his face in apparent contemplation. Called the “Thinker,” the piece and a comparable female figurine were found in a cemetery of the Hamangia culture, in Romania. Were they thinking, or mourning?
Many of the figurines represent women in stylized abstraction, with truncated or elongated bodies and heaping breasts and expansive hips. The explicit sexuality of these figurines invites interpretations relating to earthly and human fertility.
An arresting set of 21 small female figurines, seated in a circle, was found at a pre-Cucuteni village site in northeastern Romania. “It is not difficult to imagine,” said Douglass W. Bailey of San Francisco State University, the Old Europe people “arranging sets of seated figurines into one or several groups of miniature activities, perhaps with the smaller figurines at the feet or even on the laps of the larger, seated ones.”
Others imagined the figurines as the “Council of Goddesses.” In her influential books three decades ago, Marija Gimbutas, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, offered these and other so-called Venus figurines as representatives of divinities in cults to a Mother Goddess that reigned in prehistoric Europe.
Although the late Dr. Gimbutas still has an ardent following, many scholars hew to more conservative, nondivine explanations. The power of the objects, Dr. Bailey said, was not in any specific reference to the divine, but in “a shared understanding of group identity.”
As Dr. Bailey wrote in the exhibition catalog, the figurines should perhaps be defined only in terms of their actual appearance: miniature, representational depictions of the human form. He thus “assumed (as is justified by our knowledge of human evolution) that the ability to make, use and understand symbolic objects such as figurines is an ability that is shared by all modern humans and thus is a capability that connects you, me, Neolithic men, women and children, and the Paleolithic painters in caves.”
Or else the “Thinker,” for instance, is the image of you, me, the archaeologists and historians confronted and perplexed by a “lost” culture in southeastern Europe that had quite a go with life back before a single word was written or a wheel turned.
Robby
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That is fascinating. If you go into the NYT online, there is a link to photos of some of the artifacts found. It is well worth looking at. Here is the link (don't know if you have to be a subscriber for it to work).
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/25/science/112409_ARCH_2.html (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/11/25/science/112409_ARCH_2.html)
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Works fine JoanK and I am not even a subscriber. Marvelous artwork. Some of them look almost modern. Wow!
And I thought the Etruscans were a bit mysterious. These people came wAAAAAAy before them. Thanks for the information Robby. I will be on the look out for more information.
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Thanks Robby for the diversion, and thanks Joan for the link to the NYT - - -
The part of the article that immediately caught my attention was the fact that the Spondylus (thorny oyster) shell was used for commercial exchange, either on its own account or made up into jewelry.
The other shell that was commonly used in this manner (though considerably later in time) was the cowrie. The Tiger Cowrie is especially beautiful, and much more durable. I used to collect them, and had them cleaned out for me by ants, which ate the contents after they had been buried in shallow ground.
The spondylus is a bivalve shell, and presents no problem to clean.
Brian.
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Amazing what different people have used for money. The Incas used cocoa beans (chocolate). And here are some pictures of wampum:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=wampum+picture&FORM=IGRE# (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=wampum+picture&FORM=IGRE#)
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I am thinking of cashing in my dollars for Euros.
Robby
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Where are we headed?
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Thank you Robby for a wonderful find. This my first exposure to "old Europe." Till now, as you know, the earliest civilization we have known about is Sumeria. "Old Europe" seems to be coexistent with Sumeria but with origins in Macedonia or the steppes. Their pottery is advanced with complex geometric designs and in one example the vessel bears symbols similar to those used in Early Egyptian #rd Dynasty) pictorial language. Copper tools must have been very difficult to work with-too soft.
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The find in a Romanian cemetary of an ancient civilization that produced artifacts in gold, bronze, and made figurines long before other claims of civilization, brought to mind an article I read a while ago about a cave find there.
I went looking and here is an excerpt...............
Prehistory and Antiquity
The oldest modern human remains in Europe were discovered in the "Cave With Bones" in present day Romania. The remains are approximately 42,000 years old and as Europe’s oldest remains of Homo sapiens, they may represent the first such people to have entered the continent.
But the earliest written evidence of people living in the territory of the present-day Romania comes from Herodotus in book IV of his Histories (Herodotus) written 440 BCE, where he writes about the Getae tribes.
Emily
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We have a priest from Poland visiting Auckland, and my wife, who is Polish born, asked him to stay in our home. Last evening, we were chatting about fees charged for various services by the Church. He told the following story which I found amusing.
A few years back, when the Holy Father was a Pole, he was approached by some American business men, who asked could they suggest a small change be made to the Lord's Prayer.
"Oh, no." said the Pope. "Such a thing could never be done. That prayer contains the very words of Jesus Christ. They could never be changed."
"But still, your Holiness, could you not just hear our proposal. If we come to an agreement we could gift $250 million to the Church."
"No ! Not for any sum could such a thing be done!"
"But Holy Father we would pay well. If in the line where the faithful say ' Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive ... !"
"No ! Never, I say."
"But we would pay so well! If you just added the phrase ' and Coke' after the mention of bread, we would pay you $1 billion!"
"No ! Please leave immediately. The Church will not hear anymore of your request"
Sadly, the Americans caught the next plane back to New York. One was heard to say " If he wouldn't accept even $1billion, I wonder how much the Bakers pay ?" ++ Trevor
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That's very funny Trevor. It's also an indication of how closed the church is on theological topics. Administration policies have changed as a revolving door but theology has been rock solid once they got it all in place. It was pretty fluid for many centuries but once tradition was established change was resisted with vigor. I think Vatican 2 changed lots of trim but not much in the way of theology. The basic ideas are still much the same as they have always been vis a vis the Apostle's Creed. Changes in the constitution of divine revelation served more to clarify what was already established practice rather than to change anything in a drastic way.
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But isn't this story also indicative of how rock solid the business world is by seeing all values only in terms of money?
Robby
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Yes, I think so, Robby. The business model is based on profit. It has always been thus and i suspect it will continue thus. The labels may change from time to time. The process may take a different form from time to time but the driver is always the profit motive and the bottom line the objective.
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So I just barely happened upon this discussion board and I am interested in getting involved. I have owned the Story of Civilization books for several years and I need an excuse to start reading them. It looks like the group has been on the same chapter, "Savonarola and the Republic" for the entire year.....is that right?? Can someone explain to me the format of this group?
Thanks!
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Just catching up with this discussion and thought I'd better stop lurking today and say hello to all.
Thanks Robby for bringing Old Europe to the board. I had no idea. It's fascinating to ponder their society.
Thanks JoanK too for the link to the artifacts found. No trouble in accessing the site. Their decorations have a geometic look to them which I find agreeable and as has been pointed out some have something of the Egyptian look to them.
Brian - I too, have a small collection of cowrie shells - they are quite beautiful - mine range in size from tiny, tiny ones to quite large examples.
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FLANKTON: WELCOME, WELCOME! How did you find us?
You don't need the book. Our fearless leader, Robby, posts passages from it (where are you Robby) and we comment. When we run out of things to say, he posts another one. We started at the beginning, and this is where we've gotten.
Check out our other discussions, too. You get a list by going to home, or clicking on the arrow next to the "go" button at the bottom of the page.
great to see you, GUM. I have a cowrie, too. And a chambered nautilus, neatly sliced in half, so you can see the chambers.
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Welcome, Flankton!! Disregard the info in the Heading. I have not been able to bring it up to date due to our changing from Senior Net. (long story!!) We are now on Page 370 in Volume Five (Renaissance) and are discussing the paragraph which begin "The Majority of the Delegates" on Page 369. I diverted our group her by posting an article about anthropoligical digs in Old Europe. They welcome such diversion from time to time and have been back to Durant. Over the weekend I will go on to the next paragraph.
Robby
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Eugenius was rescued by the Turks.
As the Ottomans came ever nearer to Constantinople, the Byzantines decided that Constantinople was worth a Roman Mass, and that a reunion of Greek with Roman Christianity was an indispensable prelude to securing military aid from the West. The Emperor John VIII sent an embassy to Martin V to propose a council of both churches.
The Council of Basel dispatched envoys to John explaining that the Council was superior in power to the pope, was under the protection of the Emperor Sigismund and would procure money and troops for the defense of Constantinople if the Greek Church would deal with the Council rather than with the Pope.
Eugenius sent his own embassy, offering aid on condition that the proposal of union should be had before a new council to be called by him at Ferrara. John decided for Eugenius. The Pope summoned to Ferrara such of the hierarchy as were still loyal to him. Many leading prelates, including Cesarini and Nicholas of Cusa, abandoned Bas;el for Fverrara, feeling that the matter of prime importance was the negotiation with the Greeks.
The Council at Basel lingered on but with mounting exasperation and declining prestige.
Somehow, in all this, I haven't seen anything about how the church benefits.
Robby
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Like all tyrants Martin wants the whole world for his jurisdiction. Step one is a merger with the Greeks. I think he'd like to get to China before Islam for another piece of the world. Marco polo is already there and the Portuguese will sail into Edo harbor in another few decades. The Ottoman Turks are on the march. They have been engaged in Venice and will continue there until well into the sixteenth century. The contest has been and will continue to be over trade. Religion is a side issue but Martin merges the two and Eugenius is more pious than political. The trick to defeating the Turks is a merger between Genoa and Venice but that answer is a long way off.
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Welcome Flankton and Gumtree. I encourage you to read the book as well as Robby's excerpt. It helps to know the context from which the posting is derived. Nice to have you with us.
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I admit, I'm a little lost. I can see why the Romans would want to bring Greece and the Greek church under their sway, but why would the Greeks want it? Was the plan to conquer Greece? to pursuade Greece? have I misunderstood the whole thing?
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Joan the following explains........
"As the Ottomans came ever nearer to Constantinople, the Byzantines decided that Constantinople was worth a Roman Mass, and that a reunion of Greek with Roman Christianity"
The Ottomans were Turks. Constantinople was in Turkey and the center of Byzantine Christianity. The Turks were on the march to capture Constantinople and turn it into an Islamic city, along with the rest of the territory that now comprises modern day Turkey. They will succeed eventually. The beautiful cathedral will become a mosque.
The city is now called Istanbul. Byzantine Christianity is the Greek Orthodox Church, but the center for the church was in present day Turkey, not Greece.
I hope this helps, I feel a little befuddled myself.
Emily
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Thanks, Emily!
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Catching up.......................
Joan asked
I wonder what the average person made of all this?
I doubt if 1% of them had any idea all of this back and forth discussion was going on. And they probably didn't care until/unless something poked at them in their village church, asking them to change.
The problem w/ being an autocratic person, or institution, is there's always someone(s) who don't want to listen or behave! Darn! If people were just little robots who would do as they were programmed, life would be much easier for the hierarchy.
Isn't much of history a story of how one group or nation has underestimated another group or nation, or nationality, or tribe, or age-group, or regional group - like Southerners, remember Sam Ervin, the "I'm just a simple country lawyer" senator? It would be fun to teach a course based on those assumptions.
And speaking of teaching a course - thank you Robby for that article. If i was teaching Western Civ next semester i'd have to revamp my whole pre-history/early civilizations unit! ??? What a great find! Thank you Joan for the link.
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huuuummmm. From "the more things change, the more they stay the same" school of knowledge.
Many of the figurines represent women in stylized abstraction, with truncated or elongated bodies and heaping breasts and expansive hips.
Beyonce would be popular in every era...........................and then the writer intellectualizes it w/
The explicit sexuality of these figurines invites interpretations relating to earthly and human fertility.
LOL LOL....................jean
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Joan: You will recall that during the Crusades, only a century ago, the first stop on the route to Jerusalem was at Constantinople. It was Adrian, emperor of Constantinople, who petitioned the Pope of that time to help him out because Islam was threatening to close off access to the Christian holy places.
Now, a century later, the emperor of Constantinople is back preparing to ask for more Papal help. He realizes that this time he must give more to get help and a settling of their theological differences is the place to start. So the orthodox churches, based in Constantinople, are playing PMA with the Pope.
The Pope, for his part of the deal, is hard pressed to present a united front as the Pope did a century earlier. He has schism problems. The Cardinals in Council think they are in charge so they respond to the Byzantine's request. Then the Pope responds to the Byzantines. The Council is outfoxed and the Pope takes over the action leaving the council to die on the vine. Most prelates in Western Christendom want a merger.
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Joan:One additional dimension you may be missing.
The Greek Orthodox Church is not only a characteristic of the Greeks it is also Russian, Ethiopean, Rumanian, Albanian, etc. It is all centered in Constantinople and is called Byzantine. The emperor of Constantinople is the eastern half of the split in the Roman empire. He is a Roman Emperor.
Hope that helps. It's easy to get out of sync in this morass of renaissance life.
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AHA! Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks Emily and Justin!!
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Justin:
So does that make Russia and Turkey allies?
Robby
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Nothing can make the Russians and the Turks allies. They were at war from the tenth century through the First World War when the TURKS were crushed by the West.
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But if the Greek Orthodox Church is characteristic of Russia?
Robby
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From Wikipedia
At the Council of Florence (1439), a group of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church leaders agreed upon terms of reunification of the two branches of Christianity. The Russian Prince Basil II of Moscow, however, rejected the concessions to the Catholic Church and forbade the proclamation of the acts of the Council in Russia in 1452, after a short-lived East-West reunion. Metropolitan Isidore was in the same year expelled from his position as an apostate.
In 1448, the Russian Church became independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Metropolitan Jonas, installed by the Council of Russian bishops in 1448, was given the title of Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia. This was just five years before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. From this point onward the Russian Orthodox Church saw Moscow as the Third Rome, legitimate successor to Constantinople, and the Primate of Moscow as head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Greek Orthodox Church with its center in Constantinople expanded East and converted the Russians. Constantinople was the center of Eastern Christianity, as Rome was to the West. The Russians were part of the Eastern Church at Constantinople.
The short excerpt above on the Russian Orthodox church is relative to the time period we are now in SOC. It gives us a timeline of the fall of Constantinople, and the Russian Orthodox church claiming the title once held by the Byzantines.
Emily
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Russia at the time was not Russia at all but Muscovy, a country with Moscow at it center and its borders less than a thousand miles distant from the central city. It did not, for example, include St Petersburg. By 1700, after the czardom of Peter the Great and by 1780 after Catherine the borders were almost as they are now. The defeat of the Ottoman Turks in WW1 brought more territory to Russia.
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Robby: Are we missing your thought?
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Should we consider Russia the East or the West?
Robby
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I think the Russians had the same question.
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I am in hopes that you will all forgive me if I again interrupt "Renaisssance" to post an article which I believe, for many reasons, our group will find relevant.
Thomas Hoving, Who Shook Up the Met, Dies at 78
By RANDY KENNEDY
Thomas Hoving, the charismatic showman and treasure hunter whose decade-long tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art fundamentally transformed the institution and helped usher in the era of the museum blockbuster show, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.
The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Nancy, said.
One of the breed of brash, self-mythologizing leaders like Mayor Edward I. Koch who came to define New York in the 1970s, Mr. Hoving spent a whirlwind year running the city’s parks before taking over the Met at a time when it was, as many thought and as he boldly told trustees, “moribund,” “gray” and “dying.”
He became its seventh director and, at 35, its youngest. And during his tumultuous reign, the museum did many things it had never done before, often for the better, sometimes for the worse: it formed a contemporary art department and displayed Pop painting alongside Poussin and David; regularly draped the now-familiar banners on its facade to advertise shows; created the enlarged front steps that have become Fifth Avenue’s bleachers; paid $5.5 million for a single painting (the Velázquez masterpiece “Juan de Pareja”) while quietly selling works by Van Gogh, Rousseau and others to help pay for it.
The museum also opened new galleries dedicated to Islamic art, organized a major reinstallation of its Egyptian wing and set in motion an expansion program that eventually resulted in a much larger American wing, a glass-walled addition for the Temple of Dendur, a wing for the arts of Africa, the Pacific Islands and the Americas, and a new southwest wing, now dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
Two years into his tenure, the Met received the largest donation of art in its history, the collection of the investment banker Robert Lehman.A new $7 million pavilion to display it — functioning essentially as a museum within the museum — opened in 1975.
In his establishment-rattling mission to make the art museum a more populist institution, Mr. Hoving was “probably the most influential and innovative museum official of the postwar period,” Michael Kimmelman wrote in The New York Times.
Philippe de Montebello, who worked for many years under Mr. Hoving and succeeded him as director, said Thursday: “People criticized him for his excesses, but you have to remember that it is not the timorous who climb life’s peaks. He has left us with a changed museum world.”
Mr. Hoving helped greatly enlarge the Met’s collections, often in dramatic fashion, letting few things, least of all shame, stand in his way. A rangy 6-foot-3 man with boyish, at times explosive energy, he described how he once pleaded with a dealer who knew about the medieval ivory masterpiece known as the Bury Saint Edmunds cross, telling him: “I am being devoured by this cross. I want it, I need it.”
He outmaneuvered the Smithsonian Institution to get the crowd-pleasing Temple of Dendur and helped save an entire prairie house by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose living room was meticulously reassembled in the American Wing.
But the story of probably his greatest acquisition coup — an exquisite 2,500-year-old Greek vase adorned by the master painter Euphronios, bought in 1972 for $1 million — did not end as happily.
Even before the vase went on display, experts contended that it had been wrested illicitly from an Etruscan tomb near Rome. In 2006, after years of demands from the Italian government, the Met agreed to return the vessel to Italy in exchange for long-term loans of other antiquities.
Mr. Hoving admitted in “Making the Mummies Dance,” his rollicking 1993 memoir about his years at the Met, that he knew that the vase, which he jokingly called the “hot pot,” had probably been smuggled out of Italy. But he made no apologies for his ask-questions-later approach to acquisitions, one he had formed as early as his days as a curator at the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum’s medieval branch.
“My collecting style was pure piracy, and I got a reputation as a shark,” he wrote, adding that his little black book of “dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers” was bigger than anyone’s.
Despite his braggadocio, Mr. Hoving, the son of a Fifth Avenue merchandising tycoon, proved to be an able administrator and budgeteer. Even during the city’s fiscal crisis, when many other large cultural institutions were in the red, the museum was usually able to balance its books, and its merchandising operation grew tremendously during his years, eventually contributing more than $1 million in annual income.
But Mr. Hoving tended to receive more attention for his temporary contributions to the Met than for his permanent ones. Along with J. Carter Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, he was one of the architects of the blockbuster exhibition, which introduced to the Met’s galleries the carnival atmosphere of a summer movie opening.
Mr. Hoving defended such shows against criticism that they cheapened the museum and that they were intended solely to plump attendance and admission-fee income. “Great art should be shown with great excitement,” he once said, citing an observation by a previous Met director that the museum is the “midwife of democracy.”
“And damn it, it is!” he said.
His negotiations with Egyptian authorities in 1975 were pivotal in bringing about the first American tour of the treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun. During one of several visits to Egypt to cajole and twist arms, Mr. Hoving recalled, he and his assistants were left mostly alone with piles of Tut artifacts, and Mr. Hoving claimed to have wheeled around the pharaoh’s solid-gold inner coffin himself.
The exhibition arrived at the Met in December 1978 after attracting 5.6 million people at five other museums across the country, and drew almost 1.3 million during its four-month stay in New York, generating more than $100 million in additional tourism money for the city.
Besides the Tutankhamun show, he also oversaw several highly popular and often well-received exhibitions, like “The Great Age of Fresco,” in 1968; “The Year 1200,” in 1970; “Masterpieces of Tapestry” in 1974; “From the Lands of the Scythians,” in 1975, a display of gold treasures mostly from the Hermitage; and “The Impressionist Epoch,” which set a special-exhibition attendance record the same year.
Early in his tenure, however, he helped organize an exhibition that almost ruined his career. “Harlem on My Mind,” a 1969 multimedia show of photographs and recordings focused on the history of Harlem, was intended, as Mr. Hoving later wrote, “to chronicle the creativity of the downtrodden blacks and at the same time encourage them to come to the museum.”
Instead it enraged many New Yorkers, black and otherwise, who saw the show — an exhibition in a major art museum that included no paintings or sculpture — as paternalistic and insulting, though it did result in the discovery of James Van Der Zee’s important photographic work from the 1920s and ’30s. The show’s catalog included anti-Semitic (along with anti-Irish and anti-Hispanic) remarks by a young black essayist, setting off protests by both blacks and Jews. Mr. Hoving apologized for the essay, saying that in approving it he “wholly failed to sense the racial undertones that might be read into portions of it.”
In 1975, decisions he made about another exhibition also got him into trouble. Along with Mr. de Montebello, a deputy at the time, Mr. Hoving cut 50 paintings from a show organized with the Louvre and the Detroit Institute of Arts, “French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution.”
Mr. Hoving said the decision was made solely to control the show’s costs. But Robert Rosenblum, a leading art historian who had helped organize the show, accused the museum of removing the paintings because they were by lesser-known artists, a shameful decision, he said, to sacrifice scholarship for “predictable box-office results.”
The chairman of the museum’s European paintings department and a curator in the department resigned in part because of the decision. Mr. Hoving later wrote that he had tried to convince Mr. Rosenblum and others that “there was a difference between an art exhibition and a scholarly tome.”
“But that made them even angrier.”
Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving was born in New York City on Jan. 15, 1931, the elder child of Walter Hoving, a renowned merchandiser who was president of Bonwit Teller and then chairman of Tiffany & Company, and Mary Osgood Field Hoving, a descendant of Samuel Osgood, the first postmaster general of the United States. His parents divorced when he was 5, and he grew up mostly in Manhattan.
As a child, he spent a considerable amount of time visiting the Metropolitan Museum, where he gravitated to the Egyptian wing and was especially fascinated by a temple relief in which only the pharaoh’s lips remained clearly visible on his profile. “I looked deeply into the lips of King Akhenaten,” he told John McPhee in a profile in The New Yorker in 1967.
Mr. Hoving’s early academic career was checkered. He was eased out of the Buckley School on the Upper East Side in the fourth grade and spent the next five years at Eaglebrook School in western Massachusetts. From there he went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he lasted only six months, leaving after an incident in which he punched a Latin teacher.
He graduated from Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, then worked a summer as a copy boy for the columnist Sidney Fields of the New York newspaper The Daily Mirror, a job that seemed to jumpstart a lifelong, and sometimes ill-advised, affection for media attention. (He joked that his middle initials stood for Publicity Forever.)
During his sophomore year at Princeton, he found his calling when he took an art history course. Princeton is also where he found his wife, Nancy Bell, a Vassar student whom he met at a house party, where they were both trying to avoid their dates.
Besides his wife, Mr. Hoving is survived by his sister, Petrea, of Manhattan; his daughter, also named Petrea, who is known as Trea, and three granddaughters.
Mr. Hoving graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, winning honors for a thesis on architectural history. After three years in the Marines, he announced his intention to pursue a graduate degree in art history, but his father refused to give him money for it. So instead, he won a fellowship.
He earned a master’s, then a doctorate, in art history at Princeton. Then, in 1958, after a lecture he gave at the Frick Collection on the Annibale Carracci frescoes at the Farnese Palace in Rome, a man he didn’t recognize and who didn’t introduce himself invited Mr. Hoving to take a walk up Fifth Avenue to the Met to see a marble table that had once graced the palace. The man turned out to be James J. Rorimer, the Met’s director, who offered Mr. Hoving a job.
He began as a curatorial assistant at the Cloisters, where he distinguished himself early on by identifying a rare Romanesque marble relief that the Met had declined to buy; it reversed itself when he discovered that the relief was a long-missing piece of a noted 12th century Florentine pulpit. His most impressive accomplishment was his globe-trotting role in helping the Met acquire the 12th-century walrus ivory cross attributed to the Abbey of Bury Saint Edmunds in eastern England, considered one of the finest medieval ivories in existence and now on display at the Cloisters.
In 1965 he was named curator of the department of medieval arts and of the Cloisters, but within months his career was to take another direction. He had worked in the early 1960s as a campaign volunteer for John V. Lindsay, the congressman from Manhattan, who became a casual friend. And when Mr. Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City in 1965, he asked Mr. Hoving to be his parks commissioner. Though Mr. Hoving had little administrative experience and scant knowledge of the park system, he plunged into the job. He became a familiar sight at parks around the city, zipping around to them on his Jawa motorcycle. And he quickly generated headlines by winning a fight to close Central Park’s east and west drives to car traffic on Sundays and instituting a series of park gatherings — known as “Hoving’s Happenings,” a term borrowed from the artist Allan Kaprow — in which huge crowds turned out to do things like communal painting or lying in the Sheep Meadow to watch a midnight meteor shower.
Less than six months after Mr. Hoving took over the parks job, his mentor at the Met, James Rorimer, died unexpectedly in his sleep at age 60, and in December 1966, Mr. Hoving was chosen from a field of 40 candidates to take over the museum’s directorship. At the press conference in which he was named, Mayor Lindsay said he felt like a father “who has just given away the bride.”
Mr. Hoving stepped down in 1977, after a decade in the job, with the intention of becoming the head of a new branch of the Annenberg School of Communications, to have been established within the Met for the purpose of making fine art more accessible through television and films. But the plan, backed by a $40 million pledge from the publisher Walter Annenberg, fell apart amid criticism by some city officials, who questioned Mr. Annenberg’s motivations and complained that the center would occupy space in the museum that rightfully should have been used for exhibiting art.
Mr. Hoving’s post-museum career was mostly filled with writing books, several of which sold well, though sometimes for the wrong reasons. “King of the Confessors,” his 1981 account of his pursuit of the ivory cross and the Met’s acquisition of other treasures, was rejected by the Met’s bookshop because museum officials felt that it mischaracterized the museum’s collecting policies.
His memoir of his years leading the Met was written with all the flair of a potboiler, helped along by passages that bordered on the fictional, at least heavily embellished. Mr. Hoving seemed to anticipate criticism of the book and the pivotal years it described by saving some of the harshest assessments for himself, calling himself cold, driven, hypocritical and impulsive.
One thing he never claimed to be was modest. Under his leadership, he wrote, “the most sweeping revolution in the history of art museums had taken place.”
“The Met, once an elitist, stiff, gray and slightly moribund entity, came alive,” he added. “The mummies did dance.”
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THank you , Robby for taking note of the death of Tom Hoving. He specialized in Medieval Art History and that has been my own area of interest for many years. His writing on the Bury St Edmund's Cross in Ivory is a masterpiece of of Art history research. The man had sand as well as a significant intellect and his accomplishments will be long remembered in the field. I regret his passing more than the passing of many another in this century. He had reached a stage in life that one can give over to writing about the things that interested him and I was looking forward to new insights into significant pieces in Medieval Art. He was also a showman who did things in a big way. He is missed.
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Robby, that's a good question about Russia east or west. There is no question that Russia is not western But is it eastern? That's a designation that is open to question. It has been in conflict over the centuries with most countries with a common eastern border. Russia shares an eastern border with Kazakhstan, Turkey, Iran, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan (separated by a few miles of open water), all these countries have an undeniable eastern Flavor and there can be little question that they have influenced Russian culture greatly. Russia also borders the Ukraine, the Balkans and Finland.These countries are neither eastern nor western in character. They are singular, they, as is much of Russia, Slavic in origin and that's a characteristic the Russians share with Poland but not with the eastern cultures. The fact that they followed an an eastern religious orthodoxy for many centuries does not make them oriental: in fact it separates them from the Shinto, Hindu, and Buddist influences of the Far east.
In my judgment the Russians are neither eastern nor western. They are a breed apart, a Slavic breed. They are different politically and culturally from other eastern and western countries. They stand alone, perhaps because of the constant warfare they have engaged in on all their borders.
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I promise you; we will get back to the Renaissance. But at this time of the year many subjects come up which seem related to items in our discussion. And these diversions might liven us up for the Holiday season.
The Hanukkah Story
By DAVID BROOKS
Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s a holiday that accurately reflects how politics is, how history is, how life is.
It begins with the spread of Greek culture. Alexander’s Empire, and the smaller empires that succeeded it, brought modernizing ideas and institutions to the Middle East. At its best, Hellenistic culture emphasized the power of reason and the importance of individual conscience. It brought theaters, gymnasiums and debating societies to the cities. It raised living standards, especially in places like Jerusalem.
Many Jewish reformers embraced these improvements. The Greeks had one central idea: their aspirations to create an advanced universal culture. And the Jews had their own central idea: the idea of one true God. The reformers wanted to merge these two ideas.
Urbane Jews assimilated parts of Greek culture into their own, taking Greek names like Jason, exercising in the gymnasium and prospering within Greek institutions. Not all Jews assimilated. Some resisted quietly. Others fled to the hills. But Jerusalem did well. The Seleucid dynasty, which had political control over the area, was not merely tolerant; it used imperial money to help promote the diverse religions within its sphere.
In 167 B.C., however, the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, issued a series of decrees defiling the temple, confiscating wealth and banning Jewish practice, under penalty of death. It’s unclear why he did this. Some historians believe that extremist Jewish reformers were in control and were hoping to wipe out what they saw as the primitive remnants of their faith. Others believe Antiochus thought the Jews were disloyal fifth columnists in his struggle against the Egyptians and, hence, was hoping to assimilate them into his nation.
Regardless, those who refused to eat pork were killed in an early case of pure religious martyrdom.
As Jeffrey Goldberg, who is writing a book on this period, points out, the Jews were slow to revolt. The cultural pressure on Jewish practice had been mounting; it was only when it hit an insane political level that Jewish traditionalists took up arms. When they did, the first person they killed was a fellow Jew.
In the town of Modin, a Jew who was attempting to perform a sacrifice on a new Greek altar was slaughtered by Mattathias, the old head of a priestly family. Mattathias’s five sons, led by Judah Maccabee, then led an insurgent revolt against the regime.
The Jewish civil war raised questions: Who is a Jew? Who gets to define the right level of observance? It also created a spiritual crisis. This was not a battle between tribes. It was a battle between theologies and threw up all sorts of issues about why bad things happen to faithful believers and what happens in the afterlife — issues that would reverberate in the region for centuries, to epic effect.
The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics. They were not in total revolt against Greek culture. They used Greek constitutional language to explain themselves. They created a festival to commemorate their triumph (which is part of Greek, not Jewish, culture). Before long, they were electing their priests.
On the other hand, they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.
They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first. They retook Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem.
Generations of Sunday school teachers have turned Hanukkah into the story of unified Jewish bravery against an anti-Semitic Hellenic empire. Settlers in the West Bank tell it as a story of how the Jewish hard-core defeated the corrupt, assimilated Jewish masses. Rabbis later added the lamp miracle to give God at least a bit part in the proceedings.
But there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.
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so is christmas any better.the torturous treatment of a religious leader. Not really but it is a lot more fun.
my mother tried to institute the jewish celebration and gave up after one ;year. I fought to get a christmas tree. she believed in christmas cards on the mantel. Personally I think the pagans had the right idea, celebrating the winter solstice with partying.
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Claire, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, and a quietly joyous event within the Christian church. I say 'quiet' because of the reverence but also joyous because of the music and songs.
The pagan rites and rituals were brought along too by the new converts and that can be celebrated by any and all. Even the date given to the birth was pagan. I agree the winter solstice is worth celebrating, as the daylight is short here, and we have had so many cloudy days, I will welcome the sun in all its glorious return.
Christians welcomed the son.
Pagans welcomed the sun.
Emily
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From Robby's article.....
The Jewish civil war raised questions: Who is a Jew? Who gets to define the right level of Observance?
The question 'who is a Jew' in Robby's article brought to mind an article I read recently in the New York Times about a law suit brought by a Jewish family against a Jewish school in England for not admitting their son. The school deemed him not Jewish enough.
So over two thousand years later the question is still being debated within the Jewish religion, as it was in Robby's article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world/europe/08britain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Emily
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I have often wondered how many Israelis are Jews? The Old Testament contains many stories of times when the Hebrew people rejected Jewish beliefs. Jesus Christ was only one of several who over the centuries sought to found a new religion, and also was the only one, I think, to eventually succeed. And then only outside Palestine.
I remember once, disagreeing with Justin, when he said Christ was a Jew. To me the whole essence of Christianity is that He was not a Jew.
During my life I have occasionally met people who claimed to be of the Hebrew race, and also stated that they were not Jews, but were Agnostics or Atheists. ++ Trevor
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Can anyone doubt Christ's Jewishness? The little group he left in Jerusalem under James continued to be a small Jewish sect. Membership required circumcision. Would any male you know who professes admiration for Christianity be willing to submit to a 10% cut without anesthesia in order to be a member of the group? It was Paul who told gentiles they could become associated with the movement without the necessity for circumcision. Paul also broke bread with gentiles. James' group would not do that. That was the moment Christianity came into being. It was long after the death of Christ. Were it not for that offer by Paul the sect would be as the Hasidim today. Christianity is a Gentile religion because Paul made it so.
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Trevor: I think you are absolutely right when you say Christianity was born out side Palestine. That's what the data tells us. However, there is a great tendency to assign founder's laurels to the subject of a movement. It's quite a natural thing to do for the name of that person or subject is at the forefront of the movement.
Don't forget Muhammad when you pick religious winners. Buddha did pretty well too, so did Moses not to slight the Jews.
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Trevor: It's nice to have you back.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Trevor, you raise the toughest questions. In what context can I place Jesus so one can challenge his Jewishness. What did he do in his lifetime, as we know it, that was not consistent with Jewish customs? He railed against animal sacrifice by tossing the money changers out of the temple but in the end he became a very human sacrifice himself. Quite contradictory. He forgave a woman adulterous rather than stoned her to death. What else???? Help me on this one, folks. There must be other differences.
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Trevor says Jesus Christ was only one of several who over the centuries sought to found a new religion, and also was the only one, I think, to eventually succeed. And then only outside Palestine.
In my Methodist Church and my Presbyterian household i was taught that Jesus was Jewish, celebrated the Jewish holidays and was not looking to start a new religion. My perception was that he was quite like Martin Luther and was trying to bring Judaism back to its ideal. I learned that it was the early Christians fanning out from Jerusalem, especially Paul (those letters from Corinth) and Peter, who spread the teachings and story of Jesus, which became Christianity. .................. it's been so long since i did any studying of the period to add specifics w/ any confidence, but every one whom i've had contact w/ over the last 60 yrs, who i remember hearing talk about the subject, had the same opinion......................jean
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Jean: that has always been my understanding too (which doesn't mean it's right, but I'd like to know the basis for thinking otherwise).
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Was Jesus a Jew ?
Justin and Trevor - - - no one will win this argument - - - it's like trying to adjudicate (pun intended) which came first the chicken or the egg.
As professor Joad used to say on British TV : "It all depends on what you mean by . . . Jew".
If you take the definition of Judiasm as the religion of the people of Judea, then Jesus was patently NOT a Jew as he came from Gallilee (Nazareth).
Brian.
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PBS must be peeking in on our discussion. Tomorrow night on Frontline at 9:00 the show is "From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians" " The birthplace and life of Jesus; rise of Christianity after Jesus' death; siege of Jerusalem." Maybe they will answer the question..........
Congrats on being a subject in the book Robby, they know a real good story when they see it...................jean
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Good Try Brian, but no cigar. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a Jewish Mother. Bethlehem is in Judea. He lived in Galilee, in Nazareth and for that reason is often referred to as the Nazarene. However, it is not geography that makes a person a Jew but rather it is birth by a Jewish mother.
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If being born to a mother who is a Jew is all that it takes to make one a Jew, then I guess Christ must have been a Jew.
But where does that leave those who are born to a Gentile mother, and then seek to become a Jew? Also how about those Hebrews who convert to Christianity. Is it impossible for them to renounce their Jewishness?
From my occasional reading of the New Testament, it seems to be full of Christ's condemnation of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Hardly the action of one who thinks of himself as a Jew..,..
He also said " Thy name is Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Unlikely statement of one who regarded himself as a member of the jewish faith...
Lastly, if he was a true member of the Jewish congregation, why did they have him killed ? It seems to me that he was killed because he was regarded as a danger to the Jews. +++ Trevor
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There is a Jewish sect called" Jews for Jesus". They are a group of Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. In Spain during the Inquisition many Jews were baptised as Catholics but they were burned at the stake anyway. If one is born a Jew, one is a Jew, but one may adopt the trappings of another religion certainly without losing one's birthright. One can be both. Alternatively, I see no reason one may not, as a gentile of gentile parentage, adopt the trappings of a Hebrew community without having a Jewish Mama. That makes one a Jew by adoption.
You don't think Mary was Jewish? My God! She traces her ancestry back to Jesse.
The Sadducees and the Pharissees were just two dominant sects at the time but they were not the only sects. (If I recall correctly, Jesus himself was a Pharissee.) The Essenes also disagreed with them. That doesn't make the Essenes any the less Jewish. Why should that make Jesus any the less Jewish? Internecine warfare was common then just as it is now.
The Sadducees were the priests, the descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses.They had the most to lose from any group that opposed animal sacrifice in the Temple. They collected a fee for the service and probably got a cut from the breeders, dealers, and money changers. Jesus had a following and he physically attacked the money changers. He could cause trouble. So they opposed him.
The Pharissees on the other hand were the critics of all that is written and the ways of the priests. They evolved into rabinical judaism after the destruction of the Temple. They were critics in the true sense of the term. They were not against the laws and customs but enjoyed interpreting through argument. When Jesus came of age, probably at the time of his Bar Mitzvah, he argued with the Pharissees in the Temple.
The direction to Peter to build a church is a telling point. However, we don't know what Jesus had in mind. Was it to be what James thought and began to build in Jerusalem, a Jewish sect that accepted Jesus as a Messiah, or was it what Paul developed with the gentiles thirty years later. Was it the Church of the middle ages or the Church as we know it today with all the splinter groups? Who knows what lurked in the mind of that man in the days before Peter denied knowing him?
I talked a little about why he was killed above. His death was a response to his challenge to the Sadducee power base. He was not some little upstart. Jesus had a following and he had radical ideas about the Temple and it's operation. Money is a consideration here just as it is whenever power is challenged. They didn't care about Barabas. He was no threat to them. But Jesus, gentle Jesus, he was a threat and he was. His death was not about religion. Far from it. It was about money. I think you are absolutely right, Trevor. Jesus was a danger to some Jews, especially to the Sadducees.
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Christ was born a Jew, certainly. But as he grew into adulthood, he moved away from that faith and fashioned his own religion.As he was the founder the sect has become known as Christian in honour of his name. He was the first Christian. I sometimes wonder if maybe he has been the only one.
If he was alive today, I wonder what he would think of the Christian Church? His followers were soon taken over, and redirected by Paul, who was really a politician.
But we've been through all this during our reading of 'Caesar & Christ.' Robby will be wanting us to get back on track. ++ Trevor.
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Jesus was argumentative at an early age. At his Bar Mitzvah he argued with strength we are told with the elders of the Temple. He was a Pharisee and it was their job to challenge the ways of their fellow Jews. It is only a century or so since the Jews were engaged in the worship of Baal, a sacred Bull. Monotheism is a new thing to them even though Abraham several centuries earlier had introduced the idea and Moses had tried to reintroduce the concept after several centuries of Bull worship in Egypt. Judaiism in this period, the period of Christ, was not a fixed entity. It's tenets were subject to change just as they are today when a reform movement is quite active. For one to suggest that Jesus moved away from the tenets of Judaism and that in some way made him less a Jew is a very long reach.
Examine the Sermon on the Mount in which he preaches the good neighbor message. That message has been the one unchanging Jewish concept throughout history.
Caiphas did not excommunicate Jesus. He punished him as a blasphemous Jew who attacked the money lenders in the Temple after Caiphas had told them and their patrons to go inside when they complained that the odor of animal dung was too strong for them to function.
It is hard to find a rational argument to support the idea that Jesus was the first Christian and not a Jew for his entire life. AS much as we offer counter positions he took against the powerful Jewish priesthood the more we are forced to give him credit as a Pharisean Jew.
Let us go to the next stage of the discussion and ask what pieces of Christianity came from ideas of the Jews and what parts are from the minds of those who came later?
Robby started us off on this track and he will call us back when he thinks we should end it.
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Good points Justin.
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I will call you back to the topic at hand this weekend when I find a few extra minutes. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves and try to solve this unsolvable question. If Bubble were here, maybe she would give us some words of wisdom.
Robby
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where did I read that some jews broke off from common practices in order to excape circumcision but cotinued to call themselves jews. Justin??? wht aboutthat.
As a secular Jew I know that being born of a jewish mother can be lethal. At least Hitler thought so and sought to destroy the BLOOD line of all jews no matter how small a trace in an individual. Wasn't he Jewish in some respect. . .anyone???
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Whether or not this man passed on the Jewish tradition or something new or was himself the author he was certainly the inspiration for what has become one of the most enduring religious experiences in the history mankind. The monotheism that started in the mind of an Egyptian Pharoah, blossomed in the expressions of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and found fruit in the minds of James, Peter, and Paul. The road to monotheism was paved with the blood of those who contributed to it's eventual acceptance. We see it today, accepted as though it were a natural part of man's inheritance. The Pharaoh Aknaten who worshipped Aten, the God of the Noonday sun, spurned the priests of the multiple Gods worshipped by the people of Egypt and lived to regret it. Jesus died, cast as a criminal. James was stoned to death at the hand of the High Priest. Peter and Paul were killed by the Romans.
I've been trying to find a way to give credence to the premise that Jesus invented a new concept in religion but I have not been successful. Unbiased Biblical scholars, in general, think the idea is bizarre. However, a few have been willing to entertain the notion. I don't know of any who have made a good case. Bruce Chilton thought about it and passed up the idea after reading the available documents in pre Greek translations and in Aramaic and Syriac. He makes a strong case for the Jewishness in Jesus. l
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is formal groups that meet to argue only a part of Jewish tradition? The catholic church discourages lay members reading of the bible.
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Claire: The Catholic Church is not an argumentative thing. It is a take it or leave it proposition. The membership does not have the power to make changes especially in theological questions. The folks cannot do much more than decide to pass the basket from back to front or vice versa. They can of course decide whether to participate or not.
Jewish groups are different. Argument is a virtue.
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justin re: take it or leave it. but if they leave it do they go to hell?
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Justin
"Jewish groups are different. Argument is a virtue."
I disagree with 'argument being a virtue'. There is nothing virtuous in argument for the sake of argument. The end result is always propaganda, and is unreadable and incomprehensible, usually resulting in a thousand page broadsheet with a thousand different interpretations.
Solves nothing, but keeps the propagandists in work.
Emily
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Emily I had a thought about arguing and wondered i it could be in the genes. It is a part of Jewish tradition and look how many jews go into the LAW. I must admit to a characteristic devils advocate flaw if that is one, but I suspect that you share it with me.
claire
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Here is an article whose title might be, 'You may not be a Jew after all'. Dr. Shlomo Sand a professor at Tel Aviv University has written a new book that says 'Jewish people are an invention'.
It was previewed in the New York Times, so they take a few shots at him, and like 'argument for the sake of argument' say 'facts' really don't matter in the long run. The reviewer says 'propaganda' (my word) will overcome any and all reality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/books/24jews.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all
Emily
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so I asked google about discussion or arguing or propiganda etc.
since there is no single authority other than god for jews there are two kinds of law. The Talmud or ORAL law is the basis for change and discussion while the Torah or written law is unchanged.
some of the items discussed can have to do with interpretation of a single word by more than one rabbi and must be submitted to the community for discussion and study before accepted as law. So the entire situation over the many years has been fluid due to this aspect of the system of jewish laws.
all of that is new to me since ours was a reform or liberal family.
claire
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Trevor: Recent archaeological findings indicate the presence of a Bethlehem in Galilee. Mary, a thirteen year old, was pregnant prior to the arrival of Joseph. Nazareth was a small town. Tongues must have wagged and to avoid further damage to his little bride, Joseph may well have taken her to near by Bethlehem in Galilee for the birth and subsequent Brise. The Galilean Bethlehem is the place where Joseph resided with his first wife and therefore felt familiar with the area and the people. (See Mathew 1:18) Bethlehem in Judea seems a long way to go for Joseph and there is no familiarity there for him. The logical location for the birth is Bethlehem in Galilee. Why , I wonder, do the Gospels point to Judea as the Birth place and why did you say He was born in Galilee? Two interesting questions.
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Fitfty years after the death of Jesus, the writer of Matthew's gospel is sitting in Damascus, Syria trying to figure out how to tie in Jesus with Messianic forecasts of the Prophets. I wonder if any prophets connect the predicted Messiah with Judea?
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Good Try Brian, but no cigar.
Justin - - - I'm still looking for that cigar.
“If the historical Jesus were truly born in Bethlehem,” Oshri adds, “it was most likely the
Bethlehem of Galilee, not that in Judaea. The archaeological evidence certainly seems to
favor the former, a busy center [of Jewish life] a few miles from the home of Joseph and
Mary, as opposed to an unpopulated spot almost a hundred miles from home.” In this
Bethlehem, Oshri and his team have uncovered the remains of a later monastery and the
largest Byzantine church in Israel, which raises the question of why such a huge house of
Christian worship was built in the heart of a Jewish area. The Israeli archaeologist
believes that it’s because early Christians revered Bethlehem of Galilee as the birthplace
of Jesus.
Brian.
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That's interesting. I had been told that they went to bethleham because everyone was supposed to return to their birthplace to be counted. But Justin's take seems more probable.
Too bad. I always remember sitting on a hill, looking over at the Bethleham in Judea (then still part of Jordan) and not being able to reach it. It looked a typical sleepy Arab town, and that's how I always think of it.
Bethleham in Hebrew means "house of bread" (i.e. bakery). It would not be surprising to find two towns with that name.
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That's good stuff, Brian. Even the archaeologist is named. You get a cigar. BTW what's the source? Now all we need is a prophet who says the Messiah will be born in Judea. We are engaged in historical research, right here in this little corner of the world called SOC.
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Just back home after spending three days snowbound in a friend's house due to the East Coast snow blizzard of 09. Have read all this with interest.
Robby
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Justin - - - Follow the Navigation on this site.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Bethlehem
Brian.
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Good site. The material is right on topic. The writer points to the Matthew author's problem. How to connect Jesus with the house of David. It looks like he had to move a town in Galilee all the way to Judea, a distance of 100 miles. Now Christianity is stuck with it. Good gracious. They would have give up the Messiah portion of Jesus and he would no longer be Christ for that term is Greek for Messiah. And what are they going to do with the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Judea. My guess is they will ignore the issue and hope it goes away. Who needs a different Bethlehem? The old one is still good, no matter that it's in the wrong place.
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This is the time to wish you all a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year.
Brian
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Our topic is very timely. The morning newspapers have brought us news of archaeological work at Nazareth. They found building foundations dating from 100 BCE to 100 CE. That's the time of Jesus, Mary and Joseph or of Yeshua, Marian, and Yusef. Happy Holidays everyone.
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The news that Christendom, divided between the Greek and the Roman Churches since 1054, was now to be united stirred all Europe.
On February 8, 1438, the Byzantine Emperor, the Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, seventeen Greek metropolitans, and a large number of Greek bishops, monks, and scholars, arrived at Venice, still partly a Byzantine city. At Ferrara Eugenius received them with a pomp that must have meant little to the ceremonious Greeks.
After the opening of the Council various commissions were appointed to reconcile the divergences of the two Churches on the primary of the pope, the use of unleavened bread, the nature of the pains of purgatory, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and/or the Son. For eight months the pundits argued these points, but could come to no agreement. Meanwhile plague broke out in Ferrara, Cosimo de Medici invited the Council to move to Florence and be housed at the expense of himself and his friends. It was so ordered, and some would date the Italian Renaissance from that influx of learned Greeks into Florence (1439).
There it was agreed that the formula acceptable to the Greeks – that the “Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son” (ex Patre per Filium procedit) – meant the same as the Roman formula, “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (ex Patre Filioque procedit). And by June 1439 an accord was reached on purgatorial pains.
The primacy of the pope led to hot debates and the Greek Emperor threatened to break up the Council. The conciliatory Archbishop Bessarion of Nicaea contrived a compromise that recognized the universal authority of the pope but reserved all the existing rights and privileges of the Eastern churches. The formula was accepted and on July 6, 1439 jn the great cathedral that only three years before had received from Breunellesco its majestic dome, the decree uniting the two Churches was read in Greek by Bessarion and in Latin by Cesarini, the two relates kissed and all the members of the Council, with the Greek Emperor at their head, bent the knee before that same Eugenius who had seemed, so recently, the despised and rejected of men.
Any comments about this temporary truce?
Robby
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Sounds just like today w/ the Dems and Reps and the various legislation to which they can't compromise, ......................even w/in the parties where they eventually compromise ...............sans kissing and bending of knees.........perish the tho't! .........They seem to have the same religious zeal about social and economic issues.
What is it about human beings that we must cement ourselves into our theories and beliefs and demonize the opposition as tho we MUST be absolutely right and they MUST be absolutely wrong? I can see that stance more easily in religious issues where i'm taking my belief on faith and therfore if anything i believe is not quite true, than everything i believe could be false. History is just full of these scenes.................usually bringing diasterous consequences, but sometimes there is progress - i guess we can call this unification of the Church as progress.................
The Medicis are fascinating characters of history, in many ways....................jean
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One might well wonder how the delegates to the Council could spend a year or more debating the issues with out coming to an agreement. Two of these differences have no clear basis in scripture. Purgatory had not been invented till the 13th century. There is a reference in Maccabees that says" If we did not expect the fallen to rise again there would be no point in praying for them after death." Justin Martyr and Tertullian both thought "the dead are waiting" and Origen thought everyone would be saved after a little purification. Augustinian thought all the just should enter heaven immediately. The penal character of purgatory came along in the 12th century. The easterners objected to the juridical character of the concept and it was this they resolved in 1439. The pain of purgatory came from being deprived of the sight of God. It's a little like some guys sitting around an office inventing a video game for the internet. They must give the players some chance to win, however small.
The delegates battled over whether the Holy Ghost and its power came from the Father through the Son or from the Father and the Son equally. In the end they found a way to say it both could agree upon but interpret in their own way.
The big political issue was one of Primacy. Who was going to be the boss? They decided Rome could be the chief but the easterners would make all their own decisions.
I too Jean have wondered what it is about humans that causes us to cement ourselves in to protect what we think is ours. It does not seem to matter whether we are protecting trivia or substance. Often we can't tell the difference. However, I think our ideologies will put us in PYA mode quicker than geography or property. It has something to do with pride and fear of loss of face.
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I don't believe PYA has anything to do with pride or loss of face or any other human trait. PYA can be applied to mammals or fish or whatever. I believe that it is the evolutionary need for survival.
Robby
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One might well wonder how the delegates to the Council could spend a year or more debating the issues with out coming to an agreement.
Nothing has changed - - - how can one fit the recent Climate Change "discussions" into a PYA stance?
The Doomsday bunch and the Deny'ers have about as much chance of coming to an agreement.
http://www.kusi.com:80/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a (http://www.kusi.com:80/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a)
Brian.
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Brian: Isn't that what we thought the recent uncovering of climate change emails were all about?
Robby: I think you may be saying something technical. Is there not a connection between human traits and the PYA response? If humans feel threatened, even in a trivial way, the evolutionary survival response (called PYA) is to be expected I should think. You may describe lower level threats, those leading to embarrassment, for example, a human trait, as unworthy of PYA but it's hard for me to draw such a line. Is there some psychological definition that I am unaware of that prevents me from drawing the same conclusion you draw?
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Following the theory of evolution, there are only two basic behaviors - survival and reproduction. We have no trouble understanding that if we are talking about lower level organisms. Darwin worked with pigeons but realized it was also true of plants. As we move toward higher level organisms - humans, for example - as we go about our daily activities, e.g. earning a living, raising a child, passing a law, holding diplomatic discussions, fighting a war. Is not the basic drive one of survival? We want our job to continue. We want our child to grow and prosper. We want the new law to benefit us. We want the diplomatic decision to be in our favor. We want to win the war.
We can speak of such traits as unselfishness, altruism, love, and whatever but allowing that we can all find "exceptions" to the survival trait, whether we are talking about the papacy, the Roman Empire, or the majority in Congress, the bottom line is "me first."
How's that for a kindly thought on this Christmas Day?
Robby
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Altruism, the sacrifice of oneself for others, has been a problem in evolutionary theory. It exists in animals as well as humans.
In humans, there are millions of examples of people dying for a country, a friend, an idea, etc. Max Weber explained it this way: in every society people try to stay alive. But staying alive is meaningless, since it always fails. So in every society, people search for a way to make life meaningful in the face of death.
He studied the ways people use to make life meaningful: passing on something of themselves through children, through increasing knowledge (science) or beauty (art), through leaving the world a "better place" (politics in that broad sense).
He also studied the sense that people have of "who they are" which can be more powerful than the urge to survive, since without it life becomes meaningless (the hero who dashes to certain death rather than admit s(he)'s a coward, the rich man who kills himselfwhen he loses his money etc.)
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Robby; You and Joan in conjunction with Darwin and Weber make me think the protection response is applicable to human traits as well as to survival needs. Challenges to "who I am" as well as to my "survival" will drive me to a defensive response. I'm guessing but I think a survival challenge produces an almost involuntary response whereas an identity challenge gives one options.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
Discussion Leader: robby (rbiallok@earthlink.net/)
Durant continues
The joy of Christendom was brief.
When the Greek Emperor and his suite returned to Constantinople they were met with insults and ribaldry. The clergy and population of the city repudiated the submission to Rome.. Eugenius kept hiis part of the bargain. Cardinal Cesarini was sent to Hungary at the head of an army to join the forces of Ladislas and Hunyadi. They were victorious at Nish, entered Sofia in triumph on Christmas Eve of 1443, and were routed at Varna by Murd II.
The antiunion party in Constantinople won the upper hand and the Patriarch Gregory, who had supported union, fled to Italy. Gregory fought his way back to St. Sophia and read the decree of union there in 1451 but from that time the great church was shunned by the people. The antiunion clergy anathematized all adherents of union, refused absolution to those who had attended the reading of the decree and exhorted the sick to die without the sacraments rather than receive them from a “Uniate” priest. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem repudiated the “robber synod” of Florence. Mohammed II simplified the situation by making Constantinople a Turkish capital. He gave the Christians full freedom of worship and appointed as patriarch Gennadius, a devoted foe of unity.
Eugenius returned to Rome in 1443 after his legate general, Cardinal Virelleschi, had suppressed the chaotic republic and the turbulent Colonna with a ferocity unequaled by the Vandals or the Goths. The Pope’s stay at Florence had acquainted him with the development of humanism and art under Cosimo de Medici and the Greek scholars who had attended the Council of Ferrara and Florence had aroused in him an interest in the preservation of the classic manuscripts that the imminent fall of Constantinople might forfeit or destroy. He added to his secretariat Poggio, Flavio Biondo, Leonardo Bruni and other humanists who could negotiate with the Greeks in Greek. He brought Fra Angelico to Rome and had him paint frescoes in the Chapel of the Sacrament of the Vatican. Having admired the bronze gates that Ghiberti had cast for the Florentine Baptistery, Eugenius commissiond Filarete to make similar doors for the old church of St. Peter. It was significant – though already it aroused hardly any comment – that the sculptor placed upon the portals of the chief church in Latin Christendom not only Christ and Mary and the Apostles but Mars and Roma, Hero and Leander, Jupiter and Ganymede, even Leda and the swan.
In the hour of his victory over the Council of Basel, Eugenius brought the pagan Renaissance to Rome.
Must have been hard for churchgoers not knowing the rules of the day. Were you entitled to go to Heaven or not?
Robby
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Heaven went to Limbo where it was held in suspense till the Patriarch and the Pope could straighten things out.
Today, six centuries later, the Patriarch remains in Istanbul. Tne city continues under Turkish rule however the freedom of worship allowed Christians has greatly diminished. The dominant religion in the city is Islam. They have harassed the Patriarch till he is today confined to a small headquarters in the center of the city. From that small base he rules his flock of 300 million people. The movements of the Patriarch and his staff is severely restricted. His seminaries are closed and Hagia Sophia, the fourth century basilica built by Constantine, is now a Mosque. He doesn't want to move to another city though several have offered space to him. The Eastern Churches have been headquartered at Istanbul for almost 20 centuries. So much for the tolerance of Islam.
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Justin - - - the Hagia Sophia was a mosque until Kemal Atatürk turned it into a museum in 1934.
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/istanbul-hagia-sophia
There's a lot more here.
Brian.
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Thank you, Brian. Even as a secular museum Hagia Sophian art is not completely restored. Many of the Christian mosaics remain uncovered. Visiting Muslims think of it only as a Mosque. They tend to be offended when exposed to Christian imagery and since they are in the majority, and I mean majority, Christian mosaics have had minimum exposure. Many remain covered by plaster.
The Eastern Patriarch is in a tight place and it would be nice if the current Sultan and the Turkish government would lay off. Turkey wants to join the European union and it would be nice if those guys made toleration a condition of membership. The Koran says that's a tenet. So Turkey could not easily object.
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The Koran says that's a tenet. (toleration)
The Koran, like its predecessors the Torah and the New Testament, say one thing in one verse and something else in another. The Koran also stated that when the warriors of Islam came upon those who were not Muslim, to convert them. Sometimes they gave a choice, convert or pay. Other times they did not get the choice to pay and either converted or died. We discussed all that in 'The Age of Faith'. (It now seems so long ago)
The Patriarch of Greece was interviewed on 'Sixty Minutes' a few weeks ago. In the interview the Patriarch stated that since the Turks had closed all the schools, and passed a law that any Patriarch or church leader had to be born in Turkey, when he died there would be no one trained to succeed him. Without priests or leaders the church will wither (which seems to be the Turks aim).
The Turks intend to kill Christianity in the crib they have built, using punative laws they have passed. The term Patriarch of Eastern Churches will be slowly smothered to death.
So much for 'toleration'.
Emily
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Emily - - - the 60 Minutes program can be see here : -
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6001717n&tag=related;photovideo (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6001717n&tag=related;photovideo)
I was impressed by viewers comments - - - especially those who felt that the Armenians in Turkey have also had a very poor deal.
Brian.
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Thanks Brian. I just used my memory and hoped I had the right program.
Emily
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The Patriarch will be forced to move his headquarters if Turkey is not persuaded to change it's ways as an entrance pass into the European Union. Current European Union demands and NATO's as well, do not include toleration as a precursor to membership consideration. But I think it is part of the talk. If pressure does not come from the European source Turkey will be allowed to squeeze the Patriarchy. In the end he must move as did the Papacy when the heat in the kitchen became unbearable. The Patriarch's problem is not so much when to move but where to move and what to do about the ancient libraries that he is responsible for. The Turks will burn the books. Only scholars know their worth so the out cry will not be severe but it will be a lasting one. We will moan some what as we do when we think of the library at Alexandria.
The question of where to move is one of power. The country in which the new base is established will gain in power over the others. A neutral spot would be inappropriate but very helpful.
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It is so sad and ubelievable that thousands of years have passed and religion is still the impetus of world conflicts. However we all came to be on Earth is a mystery. But it seems that religion will inevitably be at the root of our extinction.
Tweety
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Welcome, Tweety - - - I hope you will find much to interest you on SOC.
Brian.
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Nice to have you in here, Tweety. The world has been sometimes Tweet and sometimes Tour and we have fun looking at both conditions. Hope you enjoy your stay.
It is sad that we have not yet caught on to the magic of peace. Lots of talk and bumper stickers but little understanding of reality in the world. You'd think a society capable of getting to the moon would get wise to the perpetrators but that hasn't happened in thousands of years so I don't hold out much hope for peace in the long run. There is a political advantage in having religion in the world though it may not be intuitively obvious. Large masses of people can be parked in one place and controlled by a capable leader. That's an improvement over anarchy but it is fraught with power problems.
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I would like to introduce Tweety to all you folks. She lives in the same Warrenton, Virginia area where I am. She is going through a rough time. Her right arm is in a sling after surgery and she suffered from chronic pain even before that. When I learned that she has a degree in History, I suggested that she become part of us in order to help divert her mind from her pain.
I know that you will all welcome and and include her in our conversation. What happens, Tweety, is that from time to time I print out a page from the fifth volume )Renaissance) of Durant's eleven volume set "The Story of Civilization." People make comments as they see fit and I encourage you to do the same.
Robby
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Welcome Tweety - another history major here...............jean
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me too.
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We are now on Page 373 of the fifth volume.
The Renaissance Captures Rome
1447-92
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The Capital of the World
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When Pope Nicholas V mounted the oldest throne in the world, Rome was hardly a tenth of the Rome that had been enclosed by the walls of Aurelian (A.D. 270-5) and was smaller in area and population (80,000) than Venice, Florence, or Milan.
Since the ruin of the major aqueducts by the barbarian invasions, the seven hills had been without a reliable water supply. Some minor aqu4educts remained, some springs, many cisterns and wells but a large proportion of the inhabitants drank the water of the Tiber. Most of the people lived in the unhealthy plains, subject to inundation from the river and to malarial infection from the neighboring swamps.
The Capitoline hill was now called Monte Caprino, from the goats (Capri) that nibbled its slopes. The Palatine hill was a rural retreat almost uninhabited. The ancient palaces from which it derived its name were dusty quarries. The Borgo Vaticano, or Vatican Town, was a small suburb across the river from the central city and huddled about the decaying shrine of St. Peter.
Some churches, like Santa Maria Maggiore or Santa Cecilian , were beautiful within but plain without. And no church in Rome could compare with the duomo of Florence or Milan, no monastery could rival the Cerrosa di Pavia, no town hall rose to the dignity of the Palazzo Vecchio, or the Castello Sforzesco, or the Palace of the Doges, or even the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena.
Nearly all the streets were muddy or dusty alleys. Some were paved with cobblestones. Only a few were lit at night. They were swept only on extraordinary occasions like a jubilee or the formal entry of some very important person.
I wonder what Pope Nicholas V thought.
Robby
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Rome was a dismal place, not worthy of being the Capital. If I were Pope Nicholas V I would have wanted to move to a nicer city--or work very hard at improving Rome if I decided to stay. Can't wait to find out what happens next!
P. S. Thanks to all for the warm welcome.
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At the first and last mtgs of my college classes i would say "you live in the best of times." Then i would ask who disagreed w/ that statement and the students would tell me, at the first session, when the times were better. Many times they would say the "1950's" were better - ala tv shows they have seen. I would not disagree, but would ask if it mattered "who" you were in the fifties, and did it matter where you lived?
I say all of that to say that we tend to glamorize/romaticize historical periods and places. We forget about simple things like no paved roads, no street lights, the smells of the animals that for thousands of years roamed the streets. We think that streets are dangerous now, but don't realize that thru most of history there have been no public protection for the masses. As we discussed various times and places, the students came to understand why i made the statement the first night of the semester and when i asked it the last night, they had often changed their minds.
I was not a professor who stuck only to battles and politics, altho we covered those. The battles were often covered quickly w/ the students having to understand the causes and results, not the particulars of the battles. I talked alot about the social history and the personalities and personal histories of the historical figures which gave rise to the decisions that they made...............it makes history so much more interesting and memorable..............................jean
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I wish I had taken your classes, I might have been a historian.
We take for granted the simple things, like drinkable water. All the majesty of Rome could go to ruin so easily. Makes you wonder.
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http://www.romancatholicism.org/popes-slavery.htm (http://www.romancatholicism.org/popes-slavery.htm)
as in previous Jubilees, vast sums of money found their way into the treasury of the
Church,
Though Pope Nicholas V did channel most of the money into the rehabilitation of Rome as a leading city, and spent vast sums in aquiring books for the new library, which is presently the heart of the Vatican library.
His stance towards slavery of all non-Catholics was less commendable.
Brian.
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When Nicky took over Rome was in tough shape. The Pope at that time was the secular as well as religious leader of Rome. As secular head of the city and it's most important employer, the Pope was in a unique position to upgrade the city.
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Brian: I ran across that slavery thing too, somewhere but I can't remember where I saw it. I can't help thinking it might have been a commendable action?It could be seen as a first step in the right direction. He was leader of the Catholic world. He takes action to protect his own. The slave trade wasn't big in the Renaissance however, Venice and Genoa imported tens of thousands of slaves every year from Russia and Islam. He couldn't very well end foreign trade or prizes of war. When Capua fell to Papal troops thousands of female Capuans were imported into Rome. Ferdinand the Catholic gave 100 Moorish slaves to Innocent V111 as a gift. He distributed them to the Cardinals, gratuitously.
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Justin - - - "commendable action" - - - "step in the right direction" - - -"protecting his religion" - - - I am sure that was tongue in cheek. I can't feel that the support of slavery comes far behind the killing of "unbelievers" of any religious group.
The details of his papal bull - Dum Diversas - are in the link I cited.
A Danish cartoonist almost lost his life today to a fanatic. I don't care for fanatics of any sort.
Brian.
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Talk about fanatics - - - here's a Jewish rabbi who wants to ban music that he doesn't like
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7609859.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7609859.stm)
I don't like it either, but ban it? I don't think so.
Brian.
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http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/rome-capitoline-museums
I love the statue here in the pictures
Robby thank you I learn alot
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Welcome Tweety. Thank you Bluebird for the Capitoline view.
From Robby's last post in the Renaissance.
The Capitoline hill was now called Monte Caprino, from the goats (Capri) that nibbled its slopes.
From the great temples built for the gods of Rome to the lowly goat who now claimed the Capitoline hill.
The Palatine hill was a rural retreat almost uninhabited. The ancient palaces from which it derived its name were dusty quarries.
One generation builds it and another tears it down.
I recently read "The fall of Baghdad" where what the bombing by the USA did not destroy, the Iraqis finished. They ripped out plumbing and wiring, windows, floors, stairs, and anything that could be removed. These palaces were mostly built of reinforced concrete so they were not easy to tear down or quarry as the Romans did with Palatine hill.
The president of Iraq did not live in any of these palaces according to the author. They were sometimes used for ceremonial events. They did remind one of the Roman and Greek temples built for a similar purpose.
As the saying goes, 'Uneasy the head who wears the crown' or even better 'One day a peacock, next day a featherduster'.
Emily
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'One day a peacock, next day a featherduster'.
That's a good one Emily. I have never heard it before.
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Thanks, Frybabe. I have used it before here, but it seemed to fit the situation under discussion.
Please post more and let us know what you think. Rome has shrunk and become a shadow of its once glorious self. St. Peters was called a decaying shrine. Without constant upkeep any building put up by man will eventually be claimed by mother nature.
Here is another of my favorite sayings, 'In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment. There are consequences." Robert Ingersoll
Emily
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I wait eagerly, hoping we will see Rome raise from the ashes of its former self.
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Brian: I could not agree with you more. It is only necessary to read the Papal Bull on the topic to learn the extent of the support the Church provided the practice of slavery. All non Catholics were declared enemies of the Church and therefore fair game for slavers. All colonial native peoples were particularly vulnerable. Columbus came here to these shores with that in mind. Ferdy and Isabella were interested in tapping the riches of the new world which included enslaveable natives. Many were sent to Spain as examples of the breed. Portugal had similar interests in Japan. Papal blessing went along with the sea captains.
The excesses of religion in it's zeal and desire for exclusivity are often appalling.
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he excesses of religion in it's zeal and desire for exclusivity are often appalling.
How true, Justin. Things haven't changed much in that regard have they?
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No, Fryabee, they haven't. It would be nice to say the Church has modernized and adopted a more tolerant view of life and social activity but they have not. Exclusivity is still prominent in their theology and what is worse it has spread with the formation of the new independent Christian groups. They can not all be right. The truth is,none are right but that matters little as each pushes his own agenda. It is all growing again, now, like a cancer, among the developing nations of the world.
Wouldn't it be wonderful is we say the effect of religion on world stage is peaceful?
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More happiness in the name of religion - - - -
More Churches Attacked in Malaysia in Allah Feud
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:52 a.m. ET
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Firebombs were thrown at three more churches in Malaysia on Sunday and another was splashed with black paint, the latest in a series of assaults on Christian houses of worship following a court decision allowing non-Muslims to use ''Allah'' to refer to God.
Despite the attacks, thousands of Christians nationwide attended Sunday services and prayed for national unity and an end to the violence.
On Sunday, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the All Saints Church in Taiping town in central Perak state early in the morning before it opened, said state police chief Zulkifli Abdullah. He told The Associated Press police found burn marks on the wall but there was no damage to the building.
A broken kerosene bottle with an unlit wick was found early Sunday inside the compound of the St. Louis Catholic church, also in Taiping, said the Rev. David Lourdes. He said it appeared to be a failed attack.
In southern Malacca state, the outer wall of the Malacca Baptist Church was splashed with black paint, police said.
Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said a church in Miri town in eastern Sarawak state on Borneo island also reported an arson attempt.
''The situation is under control and the people should not be worried,'' he was quoted as saying by the national Bernama news agency. An aide confirmed his comments but couldn't give further details.
Four churches were hit by gasoline bombs on Friday and Saturday. No one was hurt and all suffered little damage, except the Metro Tabernacle Church. Parishioners there moved services after fire gutted the first floor. The other churches held regular services Sunday.
The unprecedented attacks have set off a wave of disquiet among Malaysia's minority Christians and strained their ties with the majority Malay Muslims.
The dispute is over a Dec. 31 High Court decision that overturned a government order banning non-Muslims from using the word ''Allah'' in their prayers and literature. The court was ruling on a petition by Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church, whose main publication, the Herald, uses the word Allah in its Malay-language edition. The government has appealed the verdict.
About 9 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Christian, most of whom are ethnic Chinese or Indian. Muslims make 60 percent of the population and most of them are ethnic Malays.
On Sunday, men, women and children from the Metro Tabernacle parish assembled in the cavernous, 1,800-seat meeting hall of the Malaysian Chinese Association party for the service. They lifted their hands and sang ''We put all our faith in you,'' and ''You are the God of love and peace.''
''My wife was worried, but we want to be here to support the church,'' said Michael Chew, 40, who came with two children, aged 1 and 6.
Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, said Christians won't be intimidated by the attacks, describing them as the work of an extremist minority among Muslims.
''We all have to stand together to stamp out terror perpetuated by these extremist groups,'' he said.
The government contends that making Allah synonymous with God may confuse Muslims and ultimately mislead them into converting to Christianity.
Still, government leaders and many Muslims have condemned the firebombings, saying it is un-Islamic to attack places of worship.
Prime Minister Najib Razak visited the Metro Tabernacle church late Saturday and announced a grant of 500,000 ringgit ($147,000) for rebuilding it at a new location, a major concession in a country where permission is rarely given for building new churches or temples.
The Allah ban is unusual in the Muslim world. The Arabic word is commonly used by Christians to describe God in such countries as Egypt, Syria and Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.
Robby
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And another one while we are on the subject of religion.
The God Gene
By JUDITH SHULEVITZ
THE FAITH INSTINCT
How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures
By Nicholas Wade
310 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95
How is a church like a can opener? Among the pleasures of using evolutionary logic to think about matters nonbiological, one is getting to ask questions like that. The evolutionary take on a cultural fact like religion or warfare can cut through the fog of judgment and show how a social institution solves some mechanical problem of human co-existence. What function did intergroup violence serve? What are gods good for?
Nicholas Wade’s book “The Faith Instinct” is at its best when putting us through such exercises and sidelining the by-now tiresome debates about religion as a force for good or evil. According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related. We didn’t become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.
Wade holds that natural selection can operate on groups, not just on individuals, a contentious position among evolutionary thinkers. He does not see religion as what Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called a spandrel — a happy side effect of evolution (or, if you’re a dyspeptic atheist, an unhappy one). He does not agree with the cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer that religion is a byproduct of our overactive brains and their need to attribute meaning and intention to a random world. He doesn’t perceive religious ideas as memes — that is to say, the objects of a strictly cultural or mental process of evolution. He thinks we have a God gene.
So how did this God gene flourish? Wade’s counterintuitive answer repurposes an old social-scientific analysis of religion as a saga of biological survival. Rituals take time; sacrifices take money or its equivalent. Individuals willing to lavish time and money on a particular group signal their commitment to it, and a high level of commitment makes each coreligionist less loath to ignore short-term self-interest and to act for the benefit of the whole. What are gods for? They’re the enforcers. Supernatural beings scare away cheaters and freeloaders and cow everyone into loyal, unselfish, dutiful and, when appropriate, warlike behavior.
Wade walks us briskly through the history of religion to show how our innate piety has adapted to our changing needs. Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian and, shamans aside, had direct access to the divine. But when humans began to farm and to settle in cities and states, religion became hierarchical. Priests emerged, turning unwritten rules and chummy gods into opaque instruments of surveillance and power. Church bureaucracies created crucial social institutions but also suppressed the more ecstatic aspects of worship, especially music, dance and trance. Wade advances the delightfully explosive thesis that the periodic rise of exuberant mystery cults represent human nature rebelling against the institutionalization of worship: “A propensity to follow the ecstatic behaviors of dance and trance was built into people’s minds and provided consistently fertile ground for revolts against established religion,” he writes.
There’s a safari-hatted charm to Wade’s descriptions of what he calls, a little jarringly, “primitive” religion, filled with details of the rites of tribes cut off from the modern world but still available for anthropological observation. But his sketches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam rush by quickly and confusingly and offer only superficial accounts of the spread of those faiths, which was in each case a dicier process than Wade makes it sound. (What if Constantine had held out against the Roman Empire’s Christian factions, instead of converting?) Judaism’s strict moral codes, he argues, held together the rival states of Israel and Judah in Biblical times and provided comfort to Jews in exile, but failed to accommodate the more diverse Jews of the first-century Hellenic world. Early Christians adapted Judaism’s attractive but exclusivist mores to a society that had outgrown tribalism, succeeding “so well that they captured an empire and defined a civilization.” Wade embraces a radically revisionist approach to Islam, which holds that it evolved out of a Syriac branch of Christianity whose members believed that Jesus was human and rejected the Trinity. This sternly monotheistic remnant was Arabized when a new dynasty needed to differentiate itself from a previous one. If the revisionist version of Islam is correct, Wade writes, it “furnishes a case study of how a religion can be adapted with great success to a state’s purposes.”
Wade would probably deny that being adaptive makes any religion better in a non-evolutionary sense than any other. His scientist’s neutrality slips toward the end of the book, however, when he starts making the case for Religion with a capital R. Like Robert Wright in “The Evolution of God,” Wade wants to defend religion from so-called “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, who see it as a malignant illusion. In chapters on religion and trade, religion and warfare, religion and nation, and the “ecology” of religion — the way in which religion regulates fertility and population size — Wade argues that our religious disposition can enhance social and national unity, manage scarce resources, even solve the tricky problem of how to get young men to die for the greater good when that’s called for. But Wade also knows that the faith-based preference for the group has engendered genocide, mass suicide and maladaptive cargo cults. Perhaps that is why he declines to draw one inference that proceeds from his arguments: that individual religions can be compared and ranked and, well, approved or disapproved of, since a religion can be good only insofar as it’s useful.
In any case, Wade says, religion is not going away, because it’s imprinted on the human genome. The first part of this claim is hard to argue with. The second part is probably true, too, but raises the question of how. Wade’s vision of religion as a socializing force is persuasive, but he does not do enough to distinguish socially efficacious religious beliefs from, say, socially efficacious political ideologies. There are biologically or at least neurologically grounded accounts of religion, like Boyer’s, that more successfully capture the weird particularity of religious experience while also revealing its tentacles in many other facets of mental and emotional life. Ask yourself: Why are our gods always equipped with recognizably human minds, even when they’re animals? How do sacred stories differ, if they do, from fairy tales, or from novels? What are holiness, impurity and ritual, exactly, and are they religious in essence, or categories implicated in everything we think and do?
The problem, to my mind, is not that Wade has overambitiously linked genetics and religion. It is that he has underambitiously portrayed religion as less encompassing and consequential than it is. Can we really isolate as distinct adaptations the magnificently bizarre and oddly satisfying behaviors and feelings crammed into that drab pigeonhole of a word, “religion”? I would have thought that would amount to explaining what makes us human.
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Really interesting article.
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Perhaps while we are looking at the origin of religions, the results of indulgence in religion, and the good and bad outcomes of so many different religions in the world - - - we should take a look at the Bahá'i faith.
If the picture projected here is not too good to be true : -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/bahai/ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/bahai/)
then it is well worth a little study.
I do not know of anyone practising the Bahá'i faith who is fanatical about anything.
Brian.
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That does sound too good to be true.
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JoanK - - - you read everything on the site in 8 minutes? It took me a couple of hours.
Brian.
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Since I did not get the 'god' gene, I only skimmed Robby's article but will try to read it later. Just reading the first couple of paragraphs was enough to start me wanting to write a five hundred page manifesto against it. I am tired and need a fresh start, maybe tomorrow.
I will also try to read Brian's article, and comment if I have anything to add to the conversation. It is doubtful.
Emily
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It is interesting to speculate on why people become religious. Many I suppose , inherit a religious association and as they grow older and involved in economic processes, see no reason to challenge the association's supporting assumptions. Some one told me, "there is less risk in believing." That strikes me as the essence of social irresponsibility but I suspect that reason alone accounts for a large segment of the population carrying on the religious tradition.
The fear reason is strongly supported by a professional priesthood that draws it's living from the willingness of a congregation to remain enthralled.
There are herd reasons as well, I suspect. One believes and attends services on Sunday morning because it is done by "the best people in town."
None of those reasons suggest the presence of a gene. I'm sure Robby, you can assign terms to those causes that describe them as very ordinary human reactions produced by a free and independent body.
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The Baha'i concept does reduce the problem of exclusivity by incorporating all religious ideas of God into it's one God idea. It denies the idea of the Christians however, by denying God's incarnation in Jesus. Since it assigns no gender to the deity, the idea of a Trinity and God the Father is anathema.
The religion is probably too advanced for it to adjust to these differences to make it compatible with all the others. When one tries to be all things at once one is often nothing at all but that can be a good thing.
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Justin. Your #680 expresses my 'beliefs' in this matter of religion far better than I could . Right on! Trevor
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I know that I'm inserting a third article in recent days but, like the others, it seems to fit in with our Renaissance discussion of the "battle, disagreement, confrontation" between the two Popes.
Op-Ed Columnist
Let’s Talk About Faith
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.
That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.
A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once. Asked on a Fox News panel what advice he’d give to the embattled Tiger Woods, Hume suggested that the golfer consider converting to Christianity. “He’s said to be a Buddhist,” Hume noted. “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. ”
A great many people immediately declared that this comment was the most outrageous thing they’d ever heard. Hume’s words were replayed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, to shocked laughter from the audience. They were denounced across the blogosphere as evidence of chauvinism, bigotry and gross stupidity. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann claimed, absurdly, that Hume had tried to “threaten Tiger Woods into becoming a Christian.” His colleague David Shuster suggested that Hume had “denigrated” his own religion by discussing it on a talk show.
The Washington Post’s TV critic, Tom Shales, mocked the idea that Christians should “run around trying to drum up new business” for their faith. Hume “doesn’t really have the authority,” Shales suggested — unless of course “one believes that every Christian by mandate must proselytize.” (This is, of course, exactly what Christians are supposed to believe.)
Somewhat more plausibly, a few of Hume’s critics suggested that had he been a Buddhist commentator urging a Christian celebrity to convert — or more provocatively, a Muslim touting the advantages of Islam — Christians would be calling for his head.
No doubt many would. The tendency to take offense at freewheeling religious debate is widespread. There are European Christians who side with Muslims in support of blasphemy laws, lest Jesus or the Prophet Muhammad have his reputation sullied. There are American Catholics who cry “bigotry” every time a newspaper columnist criticizes the church’s teaching on sexuality. Many Christians have decided that the best way to compete in an era of political correctness is to play the victim card.
But these believers are colluding in their own marginalization. If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all.
This doesn’t mean that we need to welcome real bigotry into our public discourse. But what Hume said wasn’t bigoted: Indeed, his claim about the difference between Buddhism and Christianity was perfectly defensible. Christians believe in a personal God who forgives sins. Buddhists, as a rule, do not. And it’s at least plausible that Tiger Woods might welcome the possibility that there’s Someone out there capable of forgiving him, even if Elin Nordegren and his corporate sponsors never do.
Or maybe not. For many people — Woods perhaps included — the fact that Buddhism promotes an ethical life without recourse to Christian concepts like the Fall of Man, divine judgment and damnation is precisely what makes it so appealing. The knee-jerk outrage that greeted Hume’s remarks buried intelligent responses from Buddhists, who made arguments along these lines — explaining their faith, contrasting it with Christianity, and describing how a lost soul like Woods might use Buddhist concepts to climb from darkness into light.
When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?
It’s reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there is.
Robby
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BRIAN: I didn't read the whole article, but enough to see their respect for other people's religions. That's key for me. I can respect other's beliefs as long as they have respect for other people.
By the way, are you still curling? The Winter Olympics is coming up, and I look forward to being able to see some on TV. Needless to say, curling is not usually broadcast here in Southern California. Beach volleyball takes its place.
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JoanK - - - good to hear from you.
I do not know a great deal about Bahà'i, I have only met one follower of the Bahà'i faith, but was most impressed by his earnest interpretation of his beliefs. He, like his faith, came from Persia. The thing that came out most strongly was his insistance that the Bahà'i respect ALL worshippers of ANY God, and are totally opposed to violence in the name of religion. I searched the site and spent a fair amount of time there.
Unfortunately I am no longer able to curl, but that does nothing to diminish my love for the sport. I will, indeed, be following the Olympic Curling, and have great hopes for the Kevin Martin rink which comes from my home city.
Beach volleyball is a good spectator sport.
Brian.
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Thank you, Robby for printing the Douthat article. The tendency we have in our western culture, to think that it is improper or impolite for one to debate religious differences as well as the effects of those differences upon society, denies a constitutional right and leaves the society vulnerable to abuse.
Brit Hume was well within bounds when he suggested Tiger Wood give up Buddism and adopt Christianity in order to gain the forgiveness he sought. Such solace can be achieved with the Buddha but that is an issue apart from the more technical one of Hume's right to address the issue as well as the appropriateness of his comments. There are many, I am sure, who think Hume should have kept his mouth shut.
I am reminded of the Father Coughlin- Westbrook Pegler duel of so many years ago. Coughlin was a demogogue who supported Hitler in his sermons on radio. Pegler said so and it took papal intervention to get Coughlin to close his mouth.
Religion is a topic that must be debated in the public arena to control it's abuses and the religious among us must encourage such debate.
Douthat seems to agree. His opening paragraphs may be seen below:
"Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.
That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home."
If religious debate were a spectator sport we would all be better protected from abuse.
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If religious debate were a spectator sport . . .
It obviously IS on these pages, and I am enjoying being a spectator.
Brian
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I'd like, some day, to describe the benefits of religion. Unfortunately, we are in a period in history in which religion does not show well. It may never have shown well and it may not show well today but in spite of all the damage it inflicts on society there are saving graces that we have not really looked at.
As patron of the arts it contributed to the well being of artists and left us a heritage of work that is magnificent. Some of the earliest hospitals were founded in Medieval times and expanded in the Renaissance. The contributions of the Church to the art of medicine must be substantial. The need to build churches and cathedrals has advanced the arts of the building trades. The master masons of the cathedrals were architects of great skill. They drew in palimpsests and as result their knowledge is left only in the artifacts that remain.
I'd like to say they gave people peace of mind through prayer but they created anxiety by promising everyone a little touch of hell at death.
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When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?
It’s reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there is.
I loved this summary, i agree w/ him even as an agnostic, maybe especially as an agnostic. I'm not sure if it's the most important discussion around the Tiger Woods incident, i think maybe sexual addictions may be more important in that instance. I also like the way there has been discussion around racial issues both by the TW incident and our having an AF-Am'n president. Perhaps the most important thing about Obama's presidency will be the initiation of discussions about race in the USA.
Re: "theology has consequences" comment - our discussions from Durant have spent a great deal of time talking about religion giving truth to his comment. ................jean
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"When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?
It’s reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there."
I loved this summary, i agree w/ him even as an agnostic, maybe especially as an agnostic. I'm not sure if it's the most important discussion around the Tiger Woods incident, i think maybe sexual addictions may be more important in that instance. I also like the way there has been discussion around racial issues both by the TW incident and our having an AF-Am'n president. Perhaps the most important thing about Obama's presidency will be the initiation of discussions about race in the USA.
Re: "theology has consequences" comment - our discussions from Durant have spent a great deal of time talking about religion giving truth to his comment. ................
(I tried to set the quotes, or change the color of the quote, but that didn't work for some reason.).............................jean
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Jean, I endorse that idea as well. Religion has consequences and unless we address the issue squarely we are denying the message of Jesus. He was a revolutionary and a radical and he lost his life because of it. The least we can do is expose the power of the priests in the temple and their excesses.
BTW I hear that women are 51% so they hold up more than half the sky.
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BTW I hear that women are 51% so they hold up more than half the sky.
I don't think they do in China any more.
Brian.
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Justin - we don't want to over reach, modesty is more becoming, but we do want our due............ :D :D..............jean
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OK girls, be modest but I think you guys have real power in this world. You just have to learn to use it. Of course maybe you are using your powers wisely and that's why I am not conscious of it. You may be moving us guys around the chess board and we don't realize it.
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Women Power gets stronger and stronger every day - take a look at the news, isn't it wonderful that we range from Sarah Palin to Hillary Clinton and the chancellor of Germany? I'm serious. Women in the women's rights movement used to say that we'd be equal when some women in power positions could be as stupid and incompetent as some men in similar positions .............i think we've achieved that status!.....................jean
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;D
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More Papal action - - -
On Eve of Pope’s Visit to Synagogue, Some Ask if It Will Help
By RACHEL DONADIO
ROME — When Pope John Paul II visited Rome’s main synagogue in 1986, the first time a pope had ever entered a Jewish house of worship, it was a historic step forward in Catholic-Jewish relations. When Pope Benedict XVI visits the same synagogue on Sunday, the question is whether it will begin to repair the tensions that have developed between the two religions under his papacy.
Since becoming pope in 2005, Benedict has set off several contretemps with Jews. He has advocated a rite that includes a prayer calling for their conversion. He revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops, one of whom had denied the scope of the Holocaust.
Last month, he advanced Pius XII, the World War II-era pope, one step closer to sainthood, a move that almost derailed the synagogue visit and has prompted at least one leading Italian rabbi to boycott it. Many Jews say Pius could have done more to stop the deportation of Jews; his defenders say his silence toward the Nazis was sound diplomacy, aimed at saving more lives.
Amplifying sensitivities is the fact that Benedict, 82, is also a German of a certain generation, an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth, whose every action is scrutinized closely in that light.
“The cloud over the relationship still relates to the Holocaust,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
And yet a visit by a pope to the Jewish community here, the oldest one in Europe, has particular resonance. The city’s Jews have lived in the heart of the Roman Empire and the shadow of the Vatican theocracy for millennia. Consigned by the popes to a ghetto in the mid-16th century, they gained full citizenship only with the unification of Italy in the 1870s, before Mussolini’s 1938 racial laws stripped away many of their rights again.
In 1986, John Paul was warmly received at the Rome synagogue, where he called the Jews “our dearly beloved brothers.” He also quoted from “Nostra Aetate,” a landmark document on interfaith relations from the Second Vatican Council, saying that the church “deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.”
If John Paul’s visit “brought down a wall, then Benedict’s visit builds a bridge across two sides of the Tiber that sometimes seem very far,” said Andrea Riccardi, a church historian and founder of the lay Community of Sant’Egidio, which helped orchestrate Sunday’s event. (The Vatican is on the other side of the Tiber from the synagogue in the former Jewish ghetto.)
Both the Vatican and Jews in Rome see Benedict’s visit, his third trip to a synagogue since becoming pope, as the continuation of an interfaith friendship and an effort to calm recent controversies.
“It’s true that there have been moments of tension and misunderstanding,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. “But a specific meaning of this visit is to affirm from the Catholic side the essentiality and richness and importance of the common elements in the relationship.”
The visit evolved from a longstanding invitation by Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, for Benedict to call at the synagogue. “We have a very, very complicated history and a lot of problems to resolve,” Rabbi Di Segni said. “But it’s one thing to resolve them at a distance marked by chill and total hostility, and it’s another thing to have a willingness to listen respectfully.”
Both sides were waiting for the right time. Tensions flared last January after Benedict revoked the excommunications of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X, a group founded in opposition to the liberalizing changes of the Second Vatican Council. The Vatican has said that Benedict, who has denounced anti-Semitism, was not aware that one of the bishops had publicly denied the scope of the Holocaust.
Relations between the Vatican and Jews improved somewhat after the pope went to Israel and the Palestinian territories last May, although some Israelis complained that he did not mention the word “Nazi” or “German” while at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Benedict’s decision just before Christmas to confirm the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII, moving him closer to sainthood, stung many Jews, especially those in Rome, where 1,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in 1943 during the Nazi occupation.
“These acts happened under the windows of the pope,” Rabbi Di Segni said. But he added that it was “undeniable” that the church helped save thousands of Italian Jews by hiding them in church buildings.
The Vatican has explained that the beatification track of Pius is not a “hostile act” toward Jews and is based on his Christian life, not his historical record.
Scholars and Jewish groups have called on the Vatican to open the archives from Pius XII’s papacy to full historical scrutiny. The Vatican has said it will take at least five more years to catalog all the material.
Yet Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly and a former chief rabbi of Milan, said he would not attend the visit on Sunday, as a protest of the pope’s move on Pius XII. “To do this so close to the visit was in bad taste,” Rabbi Laras said. He said the visit would not help dialogue. “Who gains more?” he asked. “It’s not us, it’s some reactionary elements in the church.”
At the start of what is expected to be a two-hour stop on Sunday afternoon, Benedict is to place a wreath by a plaque in the Jewish ghetto commemorating the deportation to Auschwitz of 1,000 Roman Jews.
Shopkeepers in the former Jewish ghetto surrounding the synagogue seemed generally enthusiastic about the visit. Tending her family’s clothing shop, Fatina Calò displayed the kind of realpolitik and resignation that have helped Rome’s Jews survive for millennia. “Peace is better than war,” she said with a shrug.
How does a Pope know when he is doing something right.
Robby
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" Consigned by the popes to a ghetto in the mid-16th century, they gained full citizenship only with the unification of Italy in the 1870s, before Mussolini’s 1938 racial laws stripped away many of their rights again".
And the seesaw continues. One Pope liberalized the relationship of the church to Jews, the next goes back. If there is one thing we have seen throughout reading this history, it is that, as long as treatment of minorities depends on the rule of one person, human rights will seesaw back and forth like this, at each rulers whim.
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To my prejudicial, stereotypical taught mind "Rabbi Giuseppe" is an oxymoron.......................i had to smile at myself when i read the name.......... ???..........
a question to Robby's question........aren't popes infalible, so doesn't that mean they are always right? ...................jean
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Popes are infallible only in matters of faith and morals. They are jerks in other matters. This man Benedict has absolutely no human sensitivity at all. He is a Hitler youth trained goon who has failed to grasp the error in the Hitler movement. When he absolved the Bishops even though one has repeatedly denied the holocaust. Benedict says he was unaware the man denied the Holocaust but he lies because it was he who publicly chastised the man for his actions and endorsed the punishment. Now that he chooses to raise Pious X11 to sainthood he doubly compounds the insult and the injury. Sometimes these people are despicable.
We had our problems with Geo. Bush because our electorate isn't too smart but the college of cardinals is a collection of smart guys with no human sensitivity.
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religion is "much ado about nothing. has anyone here noticed the earthquake in Haiti. and would the religious claim that it was "god driven". . . We are haivng a spate of quakes above FOUR mag here in southern CA and northern Mexico. I subscribe to a service. gives longetude and latitude.as well as timing and near bye cities. 117 miles from los angeles and closer for me.
when compared to my own, these are capturing my attention along with the coverage of this major catastrophe on the TV. the cell phone donations sent to
HAITI at 90999 raised six million the first day and have doubled that since. even high school kids have been able to join in helping out.
how does religion work here? I don't think it matters at all in any way. . . people have it in ther DNA to help when they see a need. Religion has taken advantage of that and claimed it for its own. "dispicable" indeed.
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Yes, Claire, religion is much ado about nothing but the ado has consequences that affect us all and sometimes very damagingly.
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well justin I speak out against it in reasonable terms hoping that someone or other may begin to question their faith in reasonable terms. No point in making them hate me. They should think about it without any more emotional input than they already have. It is an emotional issue with people, not an intellectual one although they try to make it one, to rationalize it rather than admit what it really does to their lives. . .infantelizes them. Humans are better than that, capable of creative and couragous acts. We don't need a god to be ::) that.
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Hi tweety and welcome. I dip into this discussion now and then when it relates to either art or more modern issues. As an atheist I find the constant role of religion to being the most destructive force in the universe so the history of it only matters in that it seems to be inimitable . . . a constant force. I was an art and psychology major in college. History seems to me to be important only in that it suggests that we should not repeat it.
However I like the people here, so will see you from time to time.
Claire
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The economic support of Rome came partly from pasturage and the production of wool, and the cattle that grazed in the environing fields, but chiefly from the revenues of the Church.
There was little agriculture and only petty trade. Industry and commerce had well nigh disappeared through lack of protection from brigand raids. There was almost no middle class – only nobles, ecclesiastics, and commoners. The nobles, who owned nearly all the land that had not fallen to the Church, exploited their peasantry without Christian compunction or hindrance.
They suppressed revolt and waged their feuds, with bravi – strong arm ruffians kept in their employ and trained to beat or kill. The great families – above all the Colonna and the Orsini – seized tombs, baths, theaters, and other structures in or near Rome and turned them into private fortresses and their rural castles were designed for war. The nobles were usually hostile to the popes or strove to name and govern them. Time and again they created such disorder that the popes fled.
Pius II prayed that any other city might be his capital. When Sixtus IV and Alexander VI warred against such men it was in a forgivable effort to win some security for the Papal See.
I have been saying for the nine(?) years I have been studying along with you the Story of Civilization that history is merely a struggle between classes. Others of you have said the same.
Robby
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robby so what you have learned is that HISTORY IS POLITICAL, about power really. nothing is very different now. Religion, the church hasn't given up although our constitution here in the usa makes it a little harder. what else is new. intellectual evolution??? the survival of the fittest. keep using those brain synapses to make new ones. the elderly, that's us, keep having to do that since we keep losing them as a part of our aging process. I find the current interest in the brain on public TV to be relevant. There is HISTORY there too. The people of the fourteen hundreds seem to be very primative to me.
claire
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Claire: I've been reading your stuff for almost nine years and I think that your 703 is the best thing you have written. It is cogent, relevant, and focused and the message is loud and clear. It is the opposite of the response I have made to the problem but I see no reason to think your approach will be any less effective and probably more effective than mine. I try not to attack religious people personally but rather address the topic as an outsider might dealing primarily with it's effect on society.
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Class separation is quite evident in this period in Rome. The three estates standout with clear distinction. The ecclesiastical, the nobility, and the peasantry are sharply defined. However, as trade develops, as the brigands are brought under control, as artisans gain prominence, the classes tend to grow fuzzy at the edges and eventually a third class appears. This process is going on in a more pronounced way in places such as Genoa and Venice.
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almost a year and a half has passed since I met IDA who is a care giver. She markets for me and trades for art since money is an issue for both of us I appreciate her willingness to do so. She is also a dedicated bible study person and teacher of that to children and we have become close friends. It isn't "respecting each others beliefs" but simply loving and respecting each others humanity. there is a huge difference I have found, so my automatic rejection of personal relationships with believers has had to be modified. Creative people are blessed ??? with adaptability.
claire
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Claire: It's a quirk in human relationships. I would have to reject my whole family and my wife's family were i to avoid believers. We nonbelievers are in the minority- a small minority, at that, and if we are to function in society we must function with believers. If they observe that we get along ok in life and have a positive attitude then being a non believer can't be too bad. If they ask how we cope with sin as one did me and reply that sin is an invention of the guys who wrote the bible and that we are free of sin. "You mean you can commit murder and not have sinned." I say, "yes that's true but at the same time we must recognize that I have broken the law of the land and must be punished." That's a step in the right direction.
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The power of prayer in Haiti - - -
Amid Rubble, Seeking a Refuge in Faith
By DEBORAH SONTAG
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Five days after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, an evangelical pastor in a frayed polo shirt, his church crushed but his spirit vibrant, sounded a siren to summon the newly homeless residents of a tent city to an urgent Sunday prayer service.
Voice scratchy, eyes bloodshot, arms raised to the sky, the Rev. Joseph Lejeune urged the hungry, injured and grieving Haitians who gathered round to close their eyes and elevate their beings up and out of the fetid Champ de Mars square where they now scrambled to survive.
“Think of our new village here as the home of Jesus Christ, not the scene of a disaster,” he called out over a loudspeaker. “Life is not a disaster. Life is joy! You don’t have food? Nourish yourself with the Lord. You don’t have water? Drink in the spirit.”
And drink they did, singing, swaying, chanting and holding their noses to block out the acrid stench of the bodies in a collapsed school nearby. Military helicopters buzzed overhead, and the faithful reached toward them and beyond, escaping for a couple of hours from the grim patch of concrete where they sought shelter under sheets slung over poles.
In varying versions, this scene repeated itself throughout the Haitian capital on Sunday. With many of their churches flattened and their priests and pastors killed, Haitians desperate for aid and comfort beseeched God to ease their grief. Carrying Bibles, they traversed the dusty, rubble-filled streets searching for solace at scattered prayer gatherings. The churches, usually filled with passionate parishioners on a Sunday morning, stood empty if they stood at all.
In a sign of the importance of churches here, President René Préval gathered religious leaders along with political and business leaders at the police station that has become his headquarters. He asked the churches in particular to focus on feeding people, but he gave little guidance on what the government would do to help.
Not far from the makeshift evangelical church at Champ de Mars, parishioners gathered outside the ruins of the capital city’s main cathedral to hear an appeal for forbearance from a bishop.
“We have to keep hoping,” said Bishop Marie Eric Toussaint, although he acknowledged that he had no resources to help the many who were suffering and that he found it hard to state with any confidence whether the cathedral would ever be rebuilt.
Built in 1750, the cathedral, once an architectural centerpiece of the city, is now but a giant pile of twisted metal, shattered stained glass and cracked concrete. Bishop Toussaint said the quake had toppled the residences where priests stayed, crushing many of them.
The Sacre Coeur cathedral, another grand structure, also lay in ruin, with a large, perfectly preserved Christ on a cross bearing witness to the destruction below — and a woman’s body lying across the street atop a mattress, her head resting on a pillow, sheeting draping over her.
“It may seem like a strange moment to have faith,” said Georges Verrier, 28, an unemployed computer expert, his eyes moving from the body to the church. “But you can’t blame God. I blame man. God gave us nature, and we Haitians, and our governments, abused the land. You cannot get away without consequences.”
Sounding a similar note, a self-appointed preacher at Champ de Mars stood on a crate during the makeshift service and proclaimed the earthquake punishment for a long list of sins that he enumerated in a singsong. “We have to kneel down and ask forgiveness from God,” he said.
Vladimir Arisson brushed the self-appointed preacher away with rolled eyes. Mr. Arisson stood propping up his severely wounded girlfriend, Darphcat Charles, whose head was wrapped in bloody gauze, her eyes bruised and her face swollen, infected and grimacing. “My position is God bless, and send us, please, oh Lord, a doctor to plug the hole in my beloved’s head.”
Another man attending the evangelical service introduced his wife, eight months pregnant, who sat on the pavement blank-faced. “A concrete block fell on her stomach, and we don’t know if the baby is still alive,” said the man, Ricot Calixte, 28. “Prayer can help, I think. As I still breathe, I have faith.”
Around them at the service, the clapping and amens intensified in the tent city that boasted no real tents, only tarps at best. The central encampment at Champ de Mars is Mr. Lejeune’s makeshift church, which in its now destroyed home counted 200 active members, three of whom had been killed and many of whom are missing.
“Here we start every day with what I call my ‘cup of hot coffee service,’ ” he said before the Sunday prayers. “We don’t have the real beverage, of course. This is a prayer to wake us up and fortify us as we look ahead and think, ‘What, oh what, next?’ ”
He paused, wrinkling his nose at the wafting odor of human waste, and added: “A church in a bathroom, that’s what we are. For the moment.”
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The evangelical ministers and other priests who give the broken among us comfort when it is most needed are doing a good thing. That's what people think religion is all about and I wish that were so. Our own local Evengelical, Pat Robertson, had other things to say about the disaster and it's causes. Some of these guys are compassionate and understanding and others are much less so.
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"abuse the land" nope we didn't do that. we don't deserve this catastrophe. it is nature doing what it does.
I was struck by an image on the tv on the national geographic channel about elephants ggrouping around a dying member and staying for three days after the death. . . comforting each other, bearing witness, before moving on.
is that what we are doing? those of us who can't stop waching the images on our televisions and following, even contributing in small ways to the efforts that are being made to help. the immediate response to the 90999 HAITI effort was I think part of this. six million the first day by seven o'clock. wow.
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Haiti Earthquake. Events such as these bring much questioning among the faithful who are personally suffering. For some it is taken as a sign that God has no influence over nature, even though they believe that God is the creator of all things The tragedies that inflict us all are blamed on Man's sin, which is thought more powerful than God's forgiveness, and those impacted by such events are being punished for their/our sins.
Some notable, I forget who, claimed that "All things happen for the best, in this best of all possible worlds." He was referring to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, I think.
Some of the wavering faithful will become agnostics, while others will some how have their faith strengthened. The former I can understand, the latter just leave me perplexed. ++ Trevor
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I wish we had another word/concept other than "prayer." Often ideas that are stated in prayer are worth thinking about, but for me making the tie to god is off-putting.
At the Martin Luther King service last night the minister who led the prayer and the minister who provided the sermon both had very good concepts for us to deliberate over.........caring, sharing, peace, brother/sisterhood, as you would imagine. The scripture included the tho't of "to those who have been given much, much is required." This was especially apt for we live in a town that has many very prosperous people and a great education system, but is very stingy about providing housing for low-income people. In fact, even a very small bungalow sells for $300,000 in this town, even in this poor housing market. The beginning teachers who teach in this very good education system can't afford to buy a house here.
So, i was thinking as i sat there that we needed to be reminded of all of those concepts and i would accept the reminder in the form of prayer, but i wished that we could talk about those things and have some other form of reminder that wasn't associated directly w/ religion all the time.
The same is true in the article that Robby posted above. We often need to remember to be grateful of the circumstances we are in as opposed to the circumstances many in the world are in, i just wish we could do it in some other structure. Maybe that is why so many people stay w/ the concept of prayer, (as in "tell her we're praying for her" when we here someone is in dire straits), we don't have another structure.............Or at Thanksgiving it is nice to hear "we give thanks to the hands that prepared this meal" which could be said outside of the form of "saying grace," but i've never heard it done.............maybe i'll have to start a new form.............. :o.................jean
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Trevor - - -
"All things happen for the best, in this best of all possible worlds."
In Voltaire's Candide, Pangloss says this often, as the eternal optimist that he is :
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/themes.html (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/themes.html)
Jean - - - Prayer
- - - we often tell people who ask to be in our prayers, that they will be in our thoughts, and that we think of them often. I agree with you that prayers should not be thought of in a strictly religious context.
Brian.
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Jean I couldn't agree more. Pray is an oxymoron or something like it. Caring and considering and helping if possible exist outside of that demeaning concept. I'm sticking up for us in the discussion at" seniorns and friends" about "atheism, agnostics and humanists" by those who insist that it is a good place to discuss ALL religions and that my position is PREjUDICED against religion a bad word meaning PRE judged. Just the opposite of the real purpose which is to not have to discuss ANY RELIGION while defining our beliefs. come help me. . . whew.
claire
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The language of compassion is often associated with religious devices such as prayer and that vehicle becomes so embedded in our language that it is difficult to find other ways to express the same ideas. Your concern is well taken, Jean. Expressions such as "you are in our thoughts" do not seem to have the same impact as "you are in our prayers." One seems active and the other passive, yet both are ineffective in easing one's burden.
Obama, unlike Bush, seems to say compassionate things without the generalities of prayer. "We will not abandon you. Help is on the way." These are compassionate phrases with real meaning and perhaps that is the way unbelievers can also express compassion. Phrases like "I am standing by to help in any way I can," are useful and compassionate.
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Claire: give me the details. I will come help if I can.
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now that is really compassionate Justin. as for details
the other discussion group, the one called Seniors&Friends has a very varied FORUM. in fact if you go there the first thing you do is I guess select the word from the blue stripe across the top FORUM or maybe you have to sign in first easy enough I guess. Most of us did it a couple of yers ago when Seniornet died.
then you do down the list untill you find continuing discussions under LIBRARY???. I'm not sure. maybe I will just find a hot link and put it in here. I was thinking of quiting and just letting them stew. this is possible by disabling the NOTIFY option in our blue stripe.
ok onwad to the fray and to pick up the url. this is the first place to go. to sign in etc.
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/ind
claire
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this is a link from the url slop but it may not be enough. good luck. . . claire
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?action=post;topic=1231.0;num_replies=587
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Justin - - - try this link : -
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=1288.msg140938#msg140938 (http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=1288.msg140938#msg140938)
Brian.
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brian, I didn't know that existed. In the beginning there were only four or five of us who wanted to keep things civil and who wanted to stay on thread. the inroads made into religeous discussions by believers were so destructive that most of us non believers didn't stay. so you may see that I have been aggressive in trying to stay on thread here. that's how it started and I was just trying to keep it that way. so it is good to have you and justin interested . Pat likes civility.
so do I really but directness is probably my style. This is a serious issue for me..
claire
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Claire - - - I was interested when you said that you had come under fire, and I tried to find the discussion group. Pat has evidently placed it on a HTTPS (extra security) link, and now asks for a personal email addressed to her, in order for members to join this particular discussion. I will possibly lurk on the discussion, as I am not especially fired up on the subject of religion. As I have stated before - - - you cannot change a person's mind when it is firmly made up. either on religion or sex !!!
I like civility also.
Brian.
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there is a woman named ANGELFACE who has moved slightly from a strongly held belief in INTELLIGENT DESIGN to one of maybe several such designs at different times and places. so at least she is THIMKING. ALSO SHE WAS monopolizing the place with long repetitive posts. She's a nice lady just a nuisance. I got irritated after a while which is when Ursa the she bear hopped in to tell me to mind my manners. I have this short fuse or I'd have left then. just was curious about what would happen next and refused to lose n argument. It is a problem sometimes for me. The devils advocate always on the alert.
smiles
Claire
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Claire: Well I'm in. I entered general discussion 6 and found Mahlia holding forth. There is an interesting discussion going on about music. I looked for one covering painting or even art in general but have not seen one. Which discussion are you in? I see Bubble is in one, maybe more. I wonder if it is the same Bubble we have known here in SOC.
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hi justin
brian showed up i the atheist,agnostic,humanist one that I spoke of having e-mailed to pat and gaining access. there is an art discussion with very little action, but I get confused because of the two different sites for seniors both hosted by pretty much the same people. for the religious one look for SOAPBOX which has the political one two. ask brian what he did exactly from there. this seniorLearn group of which this is a part is mostly books. the seniors and friends has much more diversity.And yes that is our Bubble. . . .
Photos and much more is a lead in to art I think. . .
claire
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Brian: Bubble is everywhere, as bubbly as ever. Did you join "Classical music"? that's a great one, if you like classical music: we listen to concerts together.
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Justin - - - if you want to join the "Atheisticism/Agnosticism/Humanism" discussion group you need to drop an email to Pat to gain access to it - - - it only takes a moment.
Start here : -
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=1288.msg140938#msg140938
JoanK - - - the older I get, the less time I have. I love classical music, but tend to be very choosy about what I listen to. I mostly use my CDs.
Does any one think we should return to the SOC? - - - I may not have another nine years to finish the saga.
Brian
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returning to SOC of course if you are a history buff. I just go there when what they are discussing applies to what I find interesting, often a parallel between then and now. Robby tries to bring that up often enough to keep things going. And I find the art interesting because. . . . .
claire
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Yes, of course, Brian. Do not be pessimistic. I fully expect to finish the set and have time left over to think about starting another. Just think, I'll only be 95. That's the time in life when we become childish and I am looking forward to finding pleasure in jumping rope and hop scotch.
Robby, where are we? You led us away and like sheep, we went. Now, like the prodigal, we wish to return.
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Of course we expect a fatted calf (to mix a metaphor).
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Interesting how the brain has its own links. Its thoughts go from popes to battles between popes to the meanings of religion to the doubters of God to atheism. Let us now return to Durant.
The popes felt themselves thoroughly justified in claiming a degree and area of temporal power.
As the heads of an international organization they could not afford to be the captives of any one state, as they had been in effect in Avignon. So trammeled, they could hardly serve all peoples impartially, much less realize their majestic dream of being the spiritual governors of every government. Though the “Donation of Constantine” was a palpable forgery (as Nicholas admitted by hiring Valla), the donation of central Italy to the papacy by Popin confirmed by Charlemagne was an historical fact. The popes had coined their own money at least as far back as 782 and for centuries no one had questioned their right.
The unification of local powers, feudal or martial, in a central government was taking place in the Papal States as in the other nations of Europe. If the popes from Nicholas V to Clement VII ruled their states as absolute monarchs they were following the fashion of the times. They could with reason complain when reformers like Chancellor Gerson of the University of Paris proposed democracy in the Church but deprecated it in the state. Neither state nor Church was ready for democracy at a time when printing had not yet begun or spread. Nicholas V became pope seven years before Gutenberg printed his Bible, thirty years before printing reached Rome, forty eight years before the first publication of Aldus Manutius.
\
Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security and peace.
The secular rule of the popes directly applied to what antiquity had called Latium (now Latzio), a small province lying between Tuscany, Umbria, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Beyond this they claimed also Umb ria, the Marches, and the Romagna (the ancient Romania). These four regions together made a broad belt across central Italy from sea to sea.
They contained some twenty-six cities, which the popes, when they could, ruled by vicars, or divided among provincial governors. Furthermore, Sicily and the whole Kingdom of Naples were claimed as papal fiefs on the basis of an agreement between Pope Innocent III and Frederick II. The payment of an annual feudal fee by these states to the papacy became a major source of quarrels between the Regno and the popes. Finally the Countess Matilda had bequeathed to the popes, as her feudal domain, practically all of Tuscany, including Florence, Lucca, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, and Arezzo.
Overall all these the popes claimed the rights of a feudal sovereign, but were rarely able to give effect to their claim.
There are those who have power and those who claim power.
Robby
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Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security and peace.
Is it still, or was it for the time?
jean
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JEAN: I highlighted the same sentance you did. The Durants always make you think, don't they?
Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security and peace.
If intellegence is used to mean knowledge (knowing what's going on) rather than smarts, I agree. There's no way for people to vote if they have no way of knowing what's happening. the (limited) democracy in Athens presumably worked because it was a small city: people could go to a central place, hear the candidates and issues etc.
And without security, people are afraid to vote. I still remember in the 60s working as a poll worker, and learning that the Blacks in the area had been told they would lose their jobs id they didn't vote for Wallace. I'll never forget the fear in a Blak man's eyes when he asked me whether people could tell how they voted. I started to reassure him, but all the other poll workers were telling him yes, people could tell. I shut up: for all I knew they were right.
And in war, all leaders act despotically. It is the strength of this country, not that it has never happened, but that, after the danger has passed, people react against it, and relative democracy is restored (I'm thinking of Lincoln, suspending habeous corpus, which probably kept Washington and the government from being captured).
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I too landed on the democracy issue. It is so vital a question to day when we think we can build democratic nations based on war, pestilence, tribal loyalties, and religious power. American military Chaplins have had to be reigned in from selling Christianity to Muslims. Elections are won and lost based upon corruption and squeeze. Knowledge is limited and interest among the electorate is devoted to religious orientation.
In my judgment, democracy can not take hold unless the people want it and are willing to abide by it's rules and code. The Middle East is not fertile ground for a democratic government. But if it is planted and protected by military force the people may see some advantages in it and come to grasp its usefulness.
It worked to some extent in ancient Greece for the very reason you mention, Joan. The Greek unit was small enough to allow participation by all citizens. The Greek version was as large a version as it is possible to achieve. We, in the usa have a limited version. We have a representative democracy. The Greeks had a pure version.
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in her speech on c-span re: a free internet hillary clinton made referencr to our form of govt. several times as OUR REPUBLIC. not really a democracy at all.
claire
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The papacy and democracy are words that should not be used in the same sentence. The Papacy is a dictatorship with supreme powers granted by Jesus to Peter.
It was at the time of Nicholas V, the most powerful spiritual entity in the world and when it showed signs of becoming a secular power as well the dictatorship was extended to the Papal states. They covered central Italy, Neapolitan Italy, Sicily, Florence,and Tuscany. We are talking about a real powerhouse here not some trivial little back water community. The Holy Roman Empire, located in what is today germany, a little North of the Vatican was a rival who when combined with France kept the Vatican under control. Is it any wonder that all hell broke loose when Luther in the Holy Roman Empire broke the bonds that bound one and all to the vatican. All the cities in the Vatican area paid tribute to the Church both as secular units and as Papal fiefs. Julius, who succeeded him, maintained an army of substantial magnitude to protect his borders and he rode at the head of it. He took the field. Rome may have been shot but politically, Nicholas and Julius were Popes at the highest level of achievement.
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Claire: We are a democracy alright but not a pure one. There are too many of us for pure democracy to work. We instead elect representatives to speak for us. There is one representative for every four hundred thousand people. I think that's the number. They form the House of representatives and express our wishes for us. In Greece in the Fifth century all citizens gathered in the Agora and as many as eight or ten thousand citizens passed or rejected bills. Can you imagine supporting a bill vocally before eight or ten thousand wild ass ed citizens? Cicero did it and did it well.
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mass voting does take place in our house of reps and senate although not in the thousands, but I watch them both on c-span and most of the time there is a request for when people vote they can electronically sometimes it's done that way and other times it's THE CLERK WILL CALL THE ROLE for a voice vote which meas that it is either aye or no one at a time and sometimes it is the whole membership all at once in the absense of n OBJECTION, something the GOP has done recently was to object, a delaying tactic.. by ONE MEMBER. voting is akward even on this scale.
also I Think the electoral system well out of date and can be replaced digitally by single votes. I really hated the democrats super electors system. Obama won partly because he lined those up from the start. . . chicago politics in action. I voted for Hillary, not a sore loser but I think she's more trustworthy as a liberal. oursystems are still based on old technology and it is a very interesting change in that for all of us. who does not yet have a CELL OPHONE? I voted bye mail the last few years and I contributed to the HAITI mess with my cell phone. wow. at eighty plus am very aware of how technology has changed our lives and amazed at the rapidity off it.
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The United States is a 'Republic'. The founders were appalled at the suggestion of a democracy and direct election. They had no intention of turning the government over to the whims of the ignorant rabble, who would vote in the first 'snake oil salesman' who came down the pike and caught their fancy.
It was a Republic, with no inclinations toward democracy. The House of Representatives was the only direct vote given the people, and the power dispersed so widely that any representation one had was minute. All Senators were appointed by the respective state legislators.
The election of presidents was through electors, not a direct vote, which is why one can win the direct vote and lose the election. The very opposite of a democracy. Even the Democratic party has now put those rules in its selection process by appointing unelected superdelegates who decide close elections, not the voters. The Democratic party should have to forfeit their name. I've been thinking about a new one for them, but off the top of my head, the 'Undemocratic party' sounds about right.
As an Independent who leans Democratic and has supported and worked for Democrats, many who lost, I don't mind losing, I do mind being cheated.
The Papacy is neither a Republic or Democracy. It is as Justin says a Theocracy and a dictatorship.
Emily
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic if you can keep it" responded Franklin."
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2000/cr020200.htm
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Well put Emily
The papacy and democracy are words that should not be used in the same sentence. The Papacy is a dictatorship with supreme powers granted by Jesus to Peter.
thanks for my giggle of the day Justin ................ but of course, except for that short period in Greece, no one had had a democracy of any sort in the period of written history. The hunters and gatherers may have come as close as anybody to pure democracy. Women were prized for the contributions they made to the tribe and had some say at times, and sometimes had control, of living situations of the tribe.............."progress" has not always been kind to women.............jean
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And so -- during the time that Durant is discussing with us - and currently -- who has the power?
Robby
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And so -- during the time that Durant is discussing with us - and currently -- who has the power?
Robby
The same ones who have always had the power, the male side of the equation. All the top gods are male. The popes are male. Through out history all the leaders of tribes, villages, towns, cities, states, and countries have been male with so few exceptions that mentioning it is meaningless.
The role of women in the church is that of servant. I am reminded of Gloria von thurn un Taxis (spelling optional) having dinner with the new Pope and mentioning as an aside the dinner was prepared and served by the nuns who work at the Vatican. They are servants to the men who rule over and run the Vatican.
Durant said there were three groups of people in Rome during the time period we are discussing. The landowning families who owned all the land, the Church and at its head the Pope, and all the masses who lived in this feudal system without power or control.
So those with power were the Pope and the few landowning families. Everyone else was collateral fodder used to feed the landowners and church till.
Behind every great fortune, a crime.
Emily
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robby == who has the power? unfortunately it is RICH WHITE MEN.
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Who has/had the power? The ones with the MONEY - - - i.e. property (landed gentry),
tythes (church), taxes (government), personality (TV stars), athletic ability (hockey, golf, football etc.), the smarts (bankers and financiers).
Remember ? - - - Money is the root of all evil (The love of .... okay)
Brian.
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Would we agree that we are talking prmarily about Europe? Going back to Durant's first volume, "Our Oriental Heritage, were the leaders in China white men? In India, weren't prayers made to goddesses? Was Joan of Arc powerful? Was Mahatma Ghandi powerful? Was Prime Minister Thatcher powerful? Do I understand correctly that in the Hebrew culture there is an important matriarchal power? Or does the exception prove the rule?
Robby
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Obviously, men of all ethnicities have held power where they held the majority, but for women you are right, the exception proves the rule.
Any one who has some knowledge of women's history knows the names of the English queens, Eleanor of Acquataine, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, etc. but you CAN put them all in ONE book......thanks to femiinest studies of the last 50 yrs, a big book, yes, but the names w/ description could fit in one book. Not possible w/ the male history of even just western civ.
"The popes had coined their own money at least as far back as 782 and for centuries no one had questioned their right"
If you can coin your own money - you've got power. The wealthy, the church, the royalty of major empires had the power - for the moment!.....jean
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Mable you clarified it or me but you also made me think of something strange. do you suppose there were black men and women in the various Asian countries then and how would they have been treated if so. Mobility an issue. The world was much larger in those ancient times but now it could be an issue of racial tolerance or not. China has trading relations with Iranians but doesn't like them. . .a brief mention on the cable news.
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I keep bringing us back to the present beause I'm not a historian. I hope no one minds. The present is all I pay attention to these days . . . especially with what is happening to my own Health Care/drug coverage.no more generics.
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The major power brokers in the 15th century were male and the question is concerned with those among the males who were the major holders of power and where did the source for power lay. What gave the Holy Roman Emperor power and how different was his source of power from that of Nicholas V.? These are not ancient times. We are roughly fifty years short of the period of Henry Vlll and his multiple wives. Who had the power in Henry's day? Early on it was the Pope who forced Henry to arrange the death of his wives so he could have a new hot cookie in his bed.
In Italy it was the Orsinis, the Colonnas, and the Medici who had the power after Nicholas died. His successor a Franciscan monk was too pious and too religious to be powerful. When julius succeeded Eugenius the power returned to the Papacy. What is the source of power. My God! How can we ask that question? It is money. Nothing more. When Papal revenues were the only source of funds in Rome, Nicholas ruled. Eugenius gave it all away or allowed it to be taken away. The bankers had the money and the power. Spain and Phillip gained the upper hand by taking the riches of the continent and the Netherlands and by finding a western sea route to India. The buck is all powerful and it still is all powerful.
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What is the source of power. My God! How can we ask that question? It is money. Nothing more.
Just as I said in post #746.
Brian.
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Right, Brian. We're together on this one.
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Does money lead to power, or does power lead to money? Sometimes one, sometimes the other.
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True, Joan, they are multipliers enhancing one another as they go. .
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reciprocity prevails
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Money may be the source of power in many cases, but I don't think it explains Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad, Jesus, or Hitler for that matter. Their power from their gift of persuasion and appeal to emotions. The money came later.
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Frybabe - - - good point. Persuasion = personality ?
Brian
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Good try Fryabee, but Hitler came to power during the depression and promised as well as delivered economic success for all Germans. He kept the power because he continued to deliver economic recovery when France and England had crushed the country with repatriation.
Jesus had no power. He was crushed by the Sadducees in the Sanhedrin who wanted to retain their source of money- animal sacrifice.
Mohammad, gained power by the sword and the riches he took from the people he conquered to fund his growing religion.
Ghandi, of course used poverty as a tool to chase the British out of India and to separate Hindus from Muslims through the creation of Pakistan. His movement was well funded but he exhibited personal poverty as a weapon.
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In many cases, money comes after power has been seized. And power grows out of the muzzle of a gun. That, I suppose, is why criminals, and also those who have no criminal intent, have such a love affair with guns. ++ Trevor
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In many cases, money comes after power has been seized.
That was more or less my point. While the people I mentioned had no money intitally, many gained power by their persuasive abilities and attracted sponsors who subsidized their efforts. I will have to research Mohammad a little, but as I recall he was chased out of number of places before he found a town that believed in him and rallied around him. Jesus is a special case because he did not live to enjoy his power and the riches the church founded in his name gained from it.
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I concur with you guys, Fryabee and Trevor. The power is oft times in the hands of the guy with the gun and money is oft times the motivator.
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Sociologists look at those three things (money, power, and ideals(or ideas)) and argue about which is more basic to understanding history. It's like the chicken and the egg argument.
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POWER: BEAUTIFUL WOMEN HAVE POWER UNTIL IT FADES, SO sex IS VERY POWERFUL OR HE IDEA OF IT. HMMM
CLAIRE
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NICHOLAS V
1447-55
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Raised in poverty at Sarzana, Tommaso Parentucelli somehow found means to attend the University of Bologna for six years.
When his funds ran out he went to Florence and served as tutor in the homes of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Palla de’Strozzi. His purse replenished, he returned to Bologna, continued his studies and received at twenty-two the doctorate in theology. Niccolo degli Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, made him controller of the archepiscopal household and took him to Florence to attend Eugenius IV in the Pope’s long exile there.
In these Florentine years the priest became a humanist without ceasing to be a Christian. He developed a warm friendship with Bruni, Marsuppini, Manetti, Autispa, and Poggio, and joined their literary gatherings. Soon Thomas of Sarzana, as the humanists called him, was aflame with their passion for classical antiquity. He spent almost all his income on books, borrowed money to buy costly manuscripts and expressed the hope that some day his funds would suffice to gather into one library all the great books in the world. In that ambition the Vatican Library had its origin. Cosimo engaged him to catalogue the Marcian Library and Tommaso was happy among the manuscripts.
He could hardly know that he was preparing himself to be the first Renaissance pope.
A humanist AND a Christian? Who was it who said: "It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Robby
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I had highlighted that statement of "humanist and Christian" also. I recognize that in history/philosophy "the Humanists" put emphasis on humanity and not God or religion, but i've always pondered on why any Christian is not also a humanist w/ the caveat that they also believe in God and Christ. I see those two as totally compatible - at least from my 20 some yrs of Christian education about the teachings of Christ.
In fact, what has turned me off from organized religion is that many "Christians" thruout history seem to have separated the two and, in fact, many have denounced humanists as almost satanic...........more of the current demonization and extremism. It's nice to see that a head of the Church at this point could reconcile the two...................jean
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I think in the case of Nicholas it was not only who he knew but also what he knew that brought him to the Papal throne. I assure you, not every Pope comes with a doctorate in theology. He did that at twenty two. At twenty two I was counting my points for discharge. The guy was sharp and able to cope in spite of early poverty.
We owe him for the Vatican Library which I had the pleasure of using a number of years ago. The ancient European libraries do things in a nice way. They treat scholars very well. They wait on one hand and foot and do research in the bargain. If you tell them your objectives they will partner with you to solve research problems. One can make appointments, receive facilities, including well equipped desk space, copiers, pc's, and an attendant librarian who looks after your interest. The library of Congress leaves a lot to be desired in this regard.
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I agree with you, Justin. But his friendship with the Archbishop of Bologna and the other folks mentioned there didn't hurt him a bit.
I was counting points at age 25.
Robby
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you guys want to explain "counting points?" .............jean
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Sorry, Jean. When the war ended, service people became eligible for discharge based on time in service and time in combat. Robby may remember more the details of the formula. The game was called "counting points".
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I agree, Robby. Both elements contributed to making this guy Pope. The fact that he was Italian didn't hurt either.
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Thanks for the explanation, i never heard of that before.......still learning something new everyday ...........hoooray!..........jean
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This may not be accurate but it gives you an idea. This was an answser that one woman wrote in the internet. I don't believe Homer or Caesar used this method.
I beleive the army points system was as follows: 1 point for each month in the service.
1 point for each month overseas.
5 points if you received the bronze.
5 points for any additional medal
5 points for the purple heart.
12 points for each child under 18.
Once you had 85 points yoou were entitled for furlough stateside.
Robby
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The Navy-Marine corps were different. Are they not, always different. ? Twenty-five points and you were eligible for discharge. The allotted points were lower than the army's. I remember counting 28 and saying "I'm outta here". We were between Ulithi and the China Coast. So swim.
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It often astounds me what people thruout history were doing at ages 15 or 20 or 25. I tried to motivate my students by pointing out those people and their ages. I'll try to find the list of the ages of the founding fathers that i handed out, so i can tell you accurately, but many were under 35 including Jefferson who was in his 30's when he wrote the Dec of Ind. (my files are mostly packed away since i haven't taught for the last 5 yrs.) .............jean
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These are the birth dates of a couple of the founders, so you can surmise their age at the time of the Revolution, or the writing of the constitution.
Hamilton - 1755 or 57 - 19 when aide to Geo Washington
Jefferson 1743 - 33 when wrote the D of I
Madison - 1751 - Father of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rts
Gouverneur Morris 1751 - basically funded the Revolution
Ages in 1776 of the whole list
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_average_age_of_the_founding_fathers
Ages in 1787 at the constitution convention
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/delegates/age.html
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That's amazing! How old were some of the Popes we're studying, does anyone know?
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JoanK - - - there are some fascinating facts available here : -
http://papam.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/the-minimum-age-to-be-a-pope/ (http://papam.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/the-minimum-age-to-be-a-pope/)
The youngest cardinal at present is Hungary’s Peter Erdo — who was born on June 25,
1952 (57 years).
The next youngest, at 59, is the French Philippe Xavier Barbarin — #6 on my 2009
papabili list.
The youngest pope elected since 1400 was Leo X (the 13 year old cardinal), at the age of
37, in 1513.
The second youngest, since 1400, happens to be Leo X’s cousin Clement VII, one pope
later, at the age of 45. [So there is a 8 year difference between the youngest and the
second youngest.]
There have been four other popes, since 1400, who were elected prior to turning 50.
Brian
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For twenty years Parentucelli served Albergati in Florence and Bologna.
When the Archbishop died Eugenius appointed Parentucelli to succeed him. Three years later the Pope, impressed by his learning, his piety, and his administrative ability, made him a cardinal. Another year passed, Eugenius passed away and the cardinals, deadlocked between the Orsini and Colonna factions, raised Parentucelli to the papacy. He exclaimed to Vespasiano da Bisticci “Who would have thought that a poor bell ringer of a priest would be made pope, to the confusion of the proud?”
The humanists of Italy rejoiced and one of them, Francesco Barbaro, proclaimed that Plato’s vision had come true. A philosopher had become king.
Nicholas V, as he now called himself, had three aims: to be a good pope, to rebuild Rome, and to restore classical literature, learning, and art. He conducted his high office with modesty and competence, gave audiences at almost any hour of the day and managed to get along amicably with both Germany and France. The Aantipope Felix V, realizing that Nicholas would soon win all Latin Christendom to his allegiance, resigned his pretensions and was gracefully forgiven.
The rebellious but disintegrating Council of Basel moved to Lausanne and dissolved. The conciliar movement was ended, the Papal Schism was healed. Demands for reform of the Church still came from beyond the Alps. Nicholas felt incapable of achieving that reform in the face of all the office holders who would lose by it. Instead he hoped that the Church would regain, as the leader in the revival of learning, the prestige that she had lost at Avignon and in the Schism. Not that his support of scholarship was motivated by political ends. It was a sincere, almost an amorous passion. He had made arduous trips over the Alps in search of manuscripts.
It was he who had unearthed at Basel the works of Tertullian.
He is too good. Something is going to happen to him.
Robby
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He is too good. Something is going to happen to him.
A bit of cynicism from our wise elder?!?
Parentucelli served Albergati - i tho't of how musical that would sound w/ an Italian accent.
What years are we talking about now?
So glad to get to a church leader who sounds rational, intelligent, kind, competent and loves learning. Gives me hope, like our President and Secretary of State gives me hope for politicians. Actually we've had a string of good Secretaries of State, maybe that will happen here w/ popes? ................jean
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"He is too good. Something is going to happen to him."
A bit of cynicism from our wise elder?!?
"Parentucelli served Albergati" - i tho't of how musical that would sound w/ an Italian accent.
What years are we talking about now?
So glad to get to a church leader who sounds rational, intelligent, kind, competent and loves learning. Gives me hope, like our President and Secretary of State gives me hope for politicians. Actually we've had a string of good Secretaries of State, maybe that will happen here w/ popes? ................
(for some reason, no color is showing up on my replies - as in when i highlight quotes) ......................jean
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The years are 1447 to 1455. Nicholas had it all and gave it well. The Turks took the heart out of him and Venice and the nobles of Europe left him disappointed. While polls were non-existent it's safe to say the people of Rome were unappreciative of his great skills and results-(peasants, every last one of them.) His legacy is probably unmatched by any subsequent Papacy.
We could have used a Nicholas V instead of a Benedict these last few years when some reconciliation was possible with the Jews over the Holocaust. John started it, the Polish Pope nudged it along and when Benedict had the ball he not only dropped it, he threw it away.
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I must tell my grandson Nickolas about this pope. Is this the man who became St Nicholas?
Yes, i think the world needs such a religious leader today. Altho i am not particularly religious, i know that many people will listen more carefully to a person of religion and therefore their influence is importatn.
(I see one quote did take the color......... :-[)
Jean
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Anything further about Parentucelli?
Robby
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I think we are done with Nicky. He was great. He just did not last long enough or do the right things to become a saint. He killed only one man and that was because the man was a repeat offender. Popes like Pius X11 become saints. Pious let Hitler do his thing. John XX111 should have been nominated for sainthood, but like Nicky he did all the wrong things. He removed some of the blood hate from the religion.
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Let us not leave Nicholas V just yet. No matter his accomplishments, he is forever damned by his legacy of putting the capture of Africans from the coast of Africa and sending them to the Americas as slaves. By giving his blessing to Portugal and Spain (by a later Pope) to carry out this venture he doomed himself forever in the sainthood race.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Nicholas V and slavery.
Pope Nicholas V and slavery
Nicholas issued the bull "Dum Diversas" (June 18, 1452) in response to a request from the Portuguese monarchy. King Alfonso V was conferred the right to "attack, conquer, and subjugate Saracens, Pagans and other enemies of Christ wherever they may be found." It gave title over all lands and possessions seized and permitted the Portuguese to take the inhabitants and consign them to perpetual slavery. The geographical area of the concession given in the bull is not explicit but Richard Raiswell argues that the use of the terms "pagans" and "other enemies of Christ" indicates the scope of the bull was applicable to the newly discovered lands along the west coast of Africa and that the ambiguity of the text was such that it encouraged the Portuguese to extend their explorations further afield. He further argues that the use of crusading language in the bull served to make the Christian-Muslim relationship the model for Africa.[1]
The ownership of the Canary Islands continued to be a source of dispute between Spain and Portugal and Nicholas was asked to settle the matter, ultimately in favor of the Portuguese.[2] The bull issued by Nicholas "Romanus Pontifex" (8 January 1455) reaffirmed "Dum Diveras" and also sanctioned the purchase of black slaves from "the infidel".[3] According to Raiswell (1997) he expressed enthusiasm when recalling the number of slaves that had been captured, brought back to Portugal, baptised and expressed his hope that the entire populations of these new found lands would be converted. Stogre (1992) notes that this bull, perhaps in part due to misleading information provided by the Portuguese, introduced the concept of military force, rather than peaceful evangelisation, for missionary purposes and that it applied to lands that had never previously been subject to Christian ownership, subsequently leading to the "brutal dispossession and enslavement of the indigenous population".[4] The bull also conferred exclusive trading rights to the Portuguese between Morocco and the Indies with the rights to conquer and convert the inhabitants.[5] A significant concession given by Nicholas in a brief issued to King Alfonso in 1454 extended the rights granted to existing territories to all those that might be taken in the future.[6]
It is argued that collectively the two bulls issued by Nicholas gave the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African coast by force or trade. The concessions given in them were confirmed by bulls issued by Pope Calixtus III "Inter Caetera quae" (1456), Sixtus IV "Aeterni regis" (1481) and Leo X (1514) and they became the models for subsequent bulls issued by Pope Alexander VI : "Eximiae devotionis" (May 3 1493), "Inter Caetera" (May 4 1493) and "Dudum Siquidem (September 23 1493) when he conferred similar rights to Spain relating to the newly discovered lands in the Americas.[7]
Emily
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Emily; The history of the Church on the question of slavery is an abominable one and Nicholas V is not to be given a free pass simply because he did some worthwhile things as well. He and Calixtus and Leo and others gave Portugal and Spain license not only to enslave non-Catholics for purposes of conversion but to do it with force if needed. I have little doubt that Columbus saw the natives of the Americas as Christian prospects and there fore as slaves. That attitude persisted throughout the period of exploration.
It was implemented here in my state of California by the good Father Sera who found the pagans of this land compliant. Mission Churches were built in a chain along the length of California and these are available for tourists to visit. Carvings in altar pieces and other church decoration show the good Fathers coaxing the pagans along with whips and other implements. Funny, they would allow that to be shown but education at that time was by pictures and the whip. I am amazed at the number of tourists who pass through these places and never attempt to read the imagery or to understand it if they do read it. The good Father Sera wouldn't do that. Today we build monuments to this guy who carried out the religious policies of Phillip ll in Californio.
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San Juan Capistrano mission, a tourist trap is known for it's swallows which come and go from and to Argentina. I lived in the city for almost twenty years and went to the mission for it's beauty where many artista sat around drawing and painting. I was amused by the tourists who pointed to pigeons calling out to each other. "look at the swallows" which had deserted the mission to go build their mud nests under the eaves of the taller buildings inland at business parks and universities.
Claire
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Durant continues.
Dowered with the revenues of the papacy Nicholas V sent agents to Athens, Constantinople, and divers cities in Germany and England to seek and buy or copy Greek or Latin manuscripts, pagan or Christian.
He installed a large corps of copyists and editors in the Vatican. He called almost every prominent humanist in Italy to Rome. Wrote Vespasiano in fond exaggeration: “All the scholars in the world came to Rome in the time of Pope Nicholas, partly of their own accord, partly at his request.”
He rewarded their work with the liberality of a caliph thrilled by music or poetry. The subdued Lorenzo Valla received 500 ducats ($12,500?) for putting Thucydides into Latin dress. Guarano da Verona received 1500 ducats for translating Strabo. Nicolo Perotti 500 for Polybius. Poggio was put to translating Diodorus Siculus. Theodorus Gaza was lured from Ferrara to make a new translation of Aristotle. Filelfo was offered a house in Rome, an estate in the country and 10,000 ducats to render into Latin the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The Pope’s death, however prevented the execution of this Homeric enterprise. These rewards were so great that some scholars -- mirabile dictu – hesitated to accept them. The Pope overcame their scruples by playfully warning them: “Don’t refuse. You may not find another Nicholas.”
When an epidemic drove him from Rome to Fabriano he took his translators and copyists with him, lest any of them should succumb to the plague. Meanwhile he did not neglect what might be called the Christian classics. He offered five thousand ducats to anyone who would bring him the Gospel of St. Matthew in the original tongue. He engaged Giamozzo Manetti and George of Trebizond to translate Cyaril, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, and other patrological literature.
He commissioned Maneri and aides to make a new version of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek. This, too, was frustrated by his death. These Latin translations were hurried and imperfect but they for the first time opened Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophen, Polybius, Diodorus, Appian, Philom, and Theophrastus to students who could not read Greek. Referring to these translators, Filelfo wrote: “Greece has not perished, but has migrated to Italy – which, in former days was called Greater Greece.”
Manetti, with greater gratitude than accuracy, calculated that more Greek authors were translated during the eight years of Nicholas’ pontificate than iu all the preceding five centuries.
We might not be reading all this if it were not for Nicholas. And many thanks to people who are multi-kingual.
Robby
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Beginning to sound like GOOGLE.
Brian.
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Beginning to sound like GOOGLE.
Brian that's not all that funny. an article in Salon I think titled GOOGLE OWNS THE WORLD and who owns google. . . I'd be lost without this ready access to whatever and when ever.
claire
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Speaking of San Juan Capistrano mission, it is famous -- I've heard of it all my life. But we were in the town a few months ago for another purpose, and I asked the waitress how far it was to the mission. The waitpeople had never heard of it. We went back without seeing it.
The swallows are cliff swallows. I had heard somewhere that they no longer return to it. Is that true? It ounds worth visiting even without swallows.
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san juan capistrano is really a beautiful site with it's gardens etc. and it's worth it if you like pigeions and perhaps doves.
I think it has a free day for seniors. . .maybae tuesday?
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he expressed enthusiasm when recalling the number of slaves that had been captured, brought back to Portugal, baptised and expressed his hope that the entire populations of these new found lands would be converted.
I am always in a quandry when trying to figure out how i should judge people in history as they behave according to the values of the day. I tend to be harsh w/ religious persons who seem to have laid aside the idea that all human beings are "God's Children" and apply the "you have to take Jesus as your saviour to be a valuable, o.k., person. I had a hard time talking w/ my students about our Founding FAthers who were slave holders. I would tell them we can't judge them by today's standards, but i wasn't sure if that was true. I'm in the same quandry about Nicholas...........he seems to have done a lot of good.............jean
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I don't blame you. Jean. It's easy to have mixed feelings about some of these folks. Certainly, Nicholas V is such a person. What he did for literature was really valuable for the literary world. We would have it today anyway for Latin and Greek are not limiting languages for us but the early availability produced scholars who would not have contributed as much without those works in Greek.
Of course, Nicholas may have been doing something selfish as well as altruistic. That may not nullify what he did but it does temper our understanding of his motives. The slavery issue is something else. He wanted converts and he did not really care how he got them. He was out to save souls. Never mind there is no such thing as a soul unless one is talking about modern music. Benedict is facing the same problem today. His method is to oppose abortion, prohibit contraception, and to discourage unproductive homosexual relationships.
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Since slavery has been around forever and practiced by probably every ethnic group, does it matter whose ox is gored?
Around the time of Nicholas V and his broadside against the Africans, another group of Muslim Africans were enslaving Christian Europeans. Anyone living around the Mediterrian or sailing on it or off the shores of Africa and even as far away as England were subject to becoming slaves. Even President Thomas Jefferson had to deal with the Barbary pirates who took American sailors as slaves.
The middle east was always a hot bed of slavery. Saudi Arabia did not outlaw slavery until the mid 1960's. They had marched slaves out of Africa since before recorded time. They also kept Europeans as slaves. A photo of an Arabian merchant with his white slave was done around the 1900's and appeared in a book by Robert Lacey. He also had photos of many African slaves in Saudi Arabia in the 20th century.
This study done by a professor at Ohio State University and turned into a book may give some insight into the slavery of Christian Europeans by Muslim Africans near the time period we are now discussing.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm
Emily
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we shouldn't judge ancients by our modern standards but i can't help it. Which is probably why I don't like history very much. I find the present more engaging in that my modern standards make sense. Even though it is still very frustrating to watch the world and it's leaders operate.
claire
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Well taken, Emily. Life in the Med was precarious. I'm not absolutely sure but Nicholas V did not have a commercial profit motive, at least, I don't think he did. That's a saving grace for Nicholas. He was little different than other rulers of his time. Slavery was an ok thing. We westerners frown on it today but it is still practiced even in the US.
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JUSTIN: slavery is illegal in the US. we prosecute those who do it as criminals.
claire
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if we find them, Claire.....................jean
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Anything further regarding Post 790?
Robby
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Yes, it's illegal but it is still practiced. We encounter evidence of it almost daily in the newspapers. Women and children are imported from third world countries for domestic work which seems to include sleeping with the boss's friends and customers.
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imprts . . .human ones? children too. it is not the same as institutionazed slavery . . . a living part of a cultures laws and customs. You'r reaching Justin. . .just a little too far. where does guilt end?
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Winsum:"we shouldn't judge ancients by our modern standards but i can't help it. Which is probably why I don't like history very much".
But that's also a good reason for reading history. When we see how people in other ages were blinded by the assumptions of their time, it makes us want to discover how we are being blinded.
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dear JoanK I didn't know I was blinded until I began to see and think for myself about age twelve. be attempting to do that ever since. What I see horrifies me at times and at other times touches me deeeply. it is good to see and not necessary to see through the eyes of those who are blind in order to do so.
claire
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I have found it both edifying and depressing to read and study history. I love learning about the people and events of other times and places, but get depressed thinking how often we go over and over the same issues. We do seem to make some progress in some places, but it seems very slow and it's even more depressing when i find out that we have slipped in what i call progress. The most recent that we all know about is when i think back to 1970 and think about how hopeful i and my acquaintances were about how we were going to solve poverty, population issues, environmental issues, health/care issues, racial issues and how i assumed by the 21st century they would pretty much be taken care of...............................................i could get depressed realizing that no one talks about zero population growth any more, how public transportation in my area is not any better than it was in 1970, how school teachers in this town cannot afford to buy a house in this town, how we sometimes make more problems than we solve, (plastics/hormones/antibiotics given to animals) and how young women are now wearing the most uncomfortable clothing and shoes that we tho't we were getting rid of in the 1970's and 80's!!! AND that women are often more objectified as sex objects and willingly so than any time since the 50's. I think we should all endorse the togas of the Greeks and Romans! ..................lol
The issues of the Catholic Church and how progressive we think Nicholas is is depressing to me. Obviously, the Church forgot about N and John XXIII and are apparently back to pre-J XXIII and maybe even pre-Nicholas V. Or the fact that there are still popes who are only male and still considered to be infallible......................... jean
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hello there
I guess I need to introduce myself first. My name is Deb and have been lurking in the wings following your group initially starting with a group January 2004, whose plan started by reading 10 pages or so daily. Doing this I completed the initial book by W. Durant. Unfortunately the group failed, fell apart or something, & when I caught up to your group before the senior site disbanded, and lucked out again to find you. Whew!
Good to be here anyway.
Never quite realizing some of the book was being copied I struggled to figure out where to dip in. I have spent the last month reading the posts, and feel somewhat comfortable with the era, though I find the Greek/Roman confusing especially with all the strange names.
Anyway glad to be aboard and hope to contribute, but admit never have been online with a group before, and generally unfamiliar with protocols etc.
I am Canadian & reside with my husband, 3 cats & Billie our collie-x dog in central Ontario where we live in our house...the last 6 years we have moved our troop of animals into a fifth-wheel, now RV and spend the winter in Brownsville, Texas.
Reading is my prime enjoyment, and history & people's perspectives and first hand accounts captivate me.
In my own reading was pursuing a book about 'humanists' and then found that was the topic with a certain pope here, then following Mabel's feelings about society striving to get 'it right' post ==we do not really appear to learn from our past.... moved me to begin a post myself.
Humble apologies for not having the courage to post earlier.
Hello to you all.
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Welcome Deb - - - hope you will enjoy the relaxed atmosphere in this group.
Brian.
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Hi :)Deb/bookat
so glad you did chime in. as you can see we wander all over the place. My own focus is modern practises that stem from the old ones.
And Jean I guess I'm a "cup half full" person because although I see all the sad things that are still happening I rejoice in some of the gains. My values are similar to yours also and frustration is a daily problem for me as well. Compromise is the name of the game it seems. It is almost impossible to get it JUST RIGHT, but necessary to keep on tryig.
claire
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deb: welcome, welcome. Jump right in. There is no protocol here, just jump right in.
It sounds like you might also enjoy our nonfiction discussion: back with a link to it.
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Here is a link to the last page of non-fiction. Don't feel you have to read back any further than that: we wander all over the place.
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=84.840 (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=84.840)
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Hi Deb, Welcome!
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hello and thankyou for your welcome
next winter we plan to be travelling so any stationary book group is out of the question
so pleased to be here
...and thank you Joan looked into the site link, the nonfiction group looks like my cup of tea as well
hope you are seeing better weather than where we are rain +++, I know southern Texas needs more rain as a rule, but this is excessive I would think....
have a good day
Deb
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hi Deb
our Texans have a reputation for EXCESSIVE I THINK. WE could use some of that wet stuf here in southern california and they promised us, those know it alls on TV that it would be today and tomorrow. almost noon and still waiting. . . >:( [/i]
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Welcome Deb! Always nice to get an additional voice w/ new experiences and tho'ts. As you've probably figured out, you don't need the book - which ever volume we happen to be on ??? - our fearless leader, Robby, give us food for tho't every so often and off we go - where ever it takes us.................good to have you and isn't nice to have a group you can "take w/ you" no matter where you go?
Claire - i was always a "half full" person myself, very much so, but the longer i live more negative i become. I try to work on that. Actually when i was teaching, right up to two yrs ago, helped me to be more optimistic because i wanted the students to be optimistic. I truly do think that the United States has been a wonderful, exceptional, postive experiment, but it seems to have gotten bogged down w/ me-me-me people. ..................... maybe i'm just watching too much 24/7 cable news, they always have to find something dramatic to tell us and day-to-day good-peoples' lives are not usually very dramatic. I know a lot of good people who are doing very good things and are still working on those issues i mentioned above, and so am i. I just didn't expect to be still doing that at age 70.....................surprise, surprise!...............jean
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The nice thing about teaching younger people is that they still DARE TO BE HOpEFUL. we even elected one of those to be president here in the USA. "The Audocity of Hope" does just that. sounds like his campaign speeches even now at town hall meetings as in NEVADA this morning, exudes that flavor in his responses to questions.
CHANGE takes a while even in the short term and in the long term we often just don't notice it. I'm almost 82 so remember way far back when women and gays and other than whites were treated badly as a matter of course. As for technology the changes are HUGE or I wouldn't be here with you.
claire :)
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Most of us wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the advances in medicine, hygene, etc. But we forget that.
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As you have already been told, Deb, you are most welcome!! Remain with us and share your thoughts with us. As others here have heard me say so many times, each of us has our own area of knowledge and none of us pretends to be an "expert." We share opinions, sometimes backed up by facts from various sources.
In a little while I will be picking up where we left off. We are in Durant's fifth volume of the Story of Civilization entitled "The Renaissance." More specifically, we are in that chapter entitled "The Renaissance Captures Rome" and are reacting to Durant's comments about the Pope, Nicholas V, who was struggling to hold his position.
Robby
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Durant continues.
Nicholas loved the appearance and form as well as the contents orf books. Himself a calligraphist, he had his translations written carefully upon parchment by expert scribes. The leaves were bound in crimson velvet, secured by silver clasps. As the number of his books mounted - finally to 824 Latin and 352 Greek manuscripts -- and these were added to previous papal collections, the problem arose of housing the five thousand volumes -- the largest store of books in Christendom -- in such a way that their complete transmission to posterity might be assured.
The construction of a Vatican Library was one of Nicholas dearest dreams.
He was a bulder as well as a scholar and from the outset of his pontificate he had resolved to make Rome worthy of leading the world. A jubilee year was at hand in 1450. A hundred thousand visitors were expected. They must not find Rome a shabby ruin. The Presitige of the Church and the papacy required that the citadel of Christianity should confront pilgrims with 'noble edifices combining taste and beauty with noble proportions" which would immensely conduce to the exaltation of the chair of St. Peter."
So Nicholas, on his deathbed, apologetically explained his aim. He restored the walls and gates of the city, repaired the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, and had an artist construct an ornamental foundtain at its mouth. He engaged Leon Barrista Alberti to design palaces, public squares, and spacious avenues shielded from sun and rain by arcaded porticoes. He had many streets paved, many bridges renewed, the Castle of Sant’ Angelo repaired.
He lent money to prominent citizens to help them build palaces that would be an ornament to Rome. At his bidding Bernardo Rosellino
renovated Santa Maria Maggiore, San Geiovanni Laterano, San Paolo and San Lorenzo -- fuori le mura – outside the walls – and the forty churches that Gregory I had designated as stations of the cross.
He made majestic plans for a new Vatican Palace that, with its gardens, would cover all the Vatican hill, and would house the pope and his staff, the cardinals, and the administrative offices of the Curia. He lived to complete his own chambers, the library, and the rooms or stanze later decorated by Raphael. He brought Benedetto Bonfigli from Perugia and Andrea del Castagno from Florence, to paint frescoes – now lost – on the Vatican walks and he persuaded the aging Fra Angelico to return to Rome and paint in the Pope’s own chapel the stories of St. Stephen and St. Laurence. He planned to tear down the old and crumbling basilica of St. Peter and raise over the Apostle’s tomb the most imposing church in the world.
It was left for Julius II to take up this audacious aim.
What a man!! Comments, please?
Robby
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Wow! Does Rome have a Pope Nicholas Day? They should...............
FYI -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Library
The Vatican Library will remain close for three years beginning from 14 July 2007 for important work of restoration . The Vatican Library will be closed for ...
212.77.1.230/en/v_home_bav/home_bav.shtml - Cached - Similar -
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=vatican+library&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=ZzCAS7zbDM2Qtgfd-dWeBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5&ved=0CDMQsAQwBA
The third one is images - very interesting
and this one has a video about the renonvations and the scheduled reopening
http://vatsecarc.blogspot.com/2009/10/vatican-library-closed-for-renovations.html
I just realized while looking at the Wiki page of Pope Nicholas V that he was only pope for EIGHT yrs (1447 - 1455) ??? he must have had the energy of the Everready Bunny.............Yes indeed Robby, "What a Man!"
Also, it just dawned on me that my grandson's initials are NVP, close to Pope Nicholas V..............huummm........jean
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wow
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WOW is right Winsumm.
Thanks Jean - that's going to take ages to look at properly.
Hi Robby and all: I'm still around lurking and loving every minute of it.
The conversation about Nicholas is very interesting especially his search for manuscripts and getting the ancient texts copied etc. As Justin, I think, intimated, if Nicholas hadn't done it someone else would have and today we would have them anyway. But the fact remains that Nicholas was the one.
I think it's easy to overlook the degree of slavery still apparent in the world. Maybe it takes different guises and is dressed up differently but it is rife. People everywhere are enslaved even by their government - eg. the Chinese Cultural Revolution sent the people to work in environments and occupations for which they had no desire or skills - and there was no way out for them. Other governments hold their people in thrall to the mighty dollar. Millions are enslaved by poverty, lack of education and basic health care. Each year men, women and children are sold into slavery to be trained as prostitutes and the like. Slavery is all pervasive and it is in our own neighbourhoods.
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This sentence stood out in Durant's latest excerpt. "He (Nicholas) lent money to prominent citizens to help them build palaces."
Nicholas seemed to be impressed with extravagent gestures. He paid scribes and translators outrageous salaries for their work. He lent church funds to the 'well-to-do' to build palaces to impress the pilgrims coming to the jubilee, since the church hoped to make a lot of money, expecting around 100,000 visitors. Nicholas seemed too impressed by 'grandness' on a big scale to be leading a church whose teaching was the opposite.
Nicholas headed the church whose entire reason for being was based on the words of Jesus, and his grand style of spending seemed the exact opposite of those teachings.
It was one thing to spiff up Rome (repair the aquaduct and streets) but quite another to build palaces for the well connected (usually family or war lords).
I love beautiful decorated houses and large well designed buildings as well as anyone, but it seems odd that the leader of a religion that dismissed those things as unimportant and actually an impediment to being a Christian.
Nicholas would have been right at home in today's world of the rich crying poor mouth and asking working Americans to fund their gambling loses to the tune of almost a trillion dollars. He seems the type to take the 'widows mite' to bail out the over paid bankers and gamblers of today. He was way too impressed by wealth to head a church who taught the 'meek shall inherit the earth'.
I don't disagree with what he did (except the building palaces for the well connected), just that he did it under the cloak of Christianity which taught the opposite of grandeur for earthlings.
Nicholas was a hypocrite.
Emily
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Emily, you don't mince words! You bring an entirely different perspective to Nicholas' graciousness. What do the rest of you think?
Robby
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When I traveled through Italy, I remember stopping in a small town that looked lost in time. The houses were humble adobe structures, the people looked poor, but from every place in town, you could see the church: huge, ornate, with a big gilded dome, the epitome of opulance.
I don't think Nicholas can be blamed for this -- much of the art that we are enjoying today is there due to this love of opulant churches. Is this wrong?
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I think i mentioned before that all the old beauty, architecture, glories, mansions, etc. leave me w/ very ambiguous feelings because we know that many people of the day could have used more than a little help. This discussion makes me think of the book Pillars of the Earth and that poor mason who designed the new cathedral, but whose family was "dirt poor" and at the mercy of the bishop's highjinks...........still i know that the church was the patron for many of the lovely things and savior of many books and artifacts that we wouldn't enjoy today......................we keep running into these dichotomies in our thinking about people, things and history, don't we? ................maybe that's what makes it interesting? ............jean
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Here's a bit of interesting information I came across on a site called Delancy.
tidbits on the city of Florence at the flowering of the Renaissance, the 1400s, the time of Cosimo de'Medici, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and countless other guiding lights - tidbits on homosexuals, prostitutes, witches and public spectacle:
"[After the Florentines' military defeat at Lucca] a familiar scapegoat was used to explain the Florentines' ineptness in battle: homosexuality. For years, clergymen such as the Franciscan firebrand Bernardino of Siena had been raging from the pulpit that the crime of sodomy was destroying the city. So famous was Florence for homosexual activity that during the fourteenth century the German slang for 'sodomite' was Florenzer. In 1432, the government took steps to curtail this perceived root of its troubles on the battlefield by establishing an agency to identify and prosecute homosexuals, the Ufficiali di Notte, 'Office of the Night' (a name made even more colorful by the fact that notte was slang for 'bugger'). A less official method of detecting homosexuals was for mothers to rattle their sons' coin bags: if the coins exclaimed, 'fire, fire, fire,' the money was said to be the gift of a sodomite.
"This vice squad worked in tandem with the Orwellian-sounding Ufficiali dell'Onesta, 'Office of Decency,' which was charged with licensing and administering the municipal brothels that had been created in the area around the Mercato Vecchio. The specific aim of these public brothels was to wean Florentine men from the 'greater evil' of sodomy. Prostitutes became a common sight in Florence, not least because the law required them to wear distinctive garb: gloves, high-heeled shoes, and a bell on the head. ...
"Held ... in Florences communal prison, the Stinche ... were more serious Criminals - heretics, sorcerers, witches, and murderers - for whom unpleasant fates awaited: decapitation, amputation, or burning at the stake. Executions took place outside the walls, in the Prato della Giustizia, 'Field of Justice.' These were popular public spectacles - so popular, in fact, that criminals often had to be imported from other cities to satisfy the public's demand for macabre drama."
Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome, Penguin, Copyright 2000 by Ross King, pp. 126-127, 132-133.
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time: UCLA the 1940s == Dr. Karl With Art History classemphasis on Florence, the items/artists you mention Justin but never a word about the homosexual activity there or the many artists we studied as part of it.
claire
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Justin:
Good to see you after a long pause. I was worried and about to send you an email.
Robby
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I appreciate your concern. but heck, Robby, I'm only 86- a young chick in this discussion group. That aside, I have already decided that when the call comes my response will be," I'm not going. Thanks, but no thanks."
Claire; In the 1940's we didn't dare talk about such things for fear of being suspect. We, today, don't fully realize that the openness we experience was not always with us nor do we realize sometimes how far we have come. Coming out of the closet was an unheard of event in ordinary society. Certainly, a professor of Art History, if he wanted to continue teaching, would fail to mention such deviations. Both Leonardo and Michelangelo Buonarotti were homosexual, as were many others, as we know today but in the 1940s that was sub rosa.
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In other words, you could be homosexual to do art, but not to teach it.
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I can only "second" what Justin has just said. Homosexuality was not even mentioned. It was as if it didn't even exist. "Certain" people knew about "certain" things but that was a sub culture which didn't touch the work place as most of us knew it. In the 1940s even the topic of color differences was not on the conscious minds of white people. The blacks, of course, knew it because they were the ones hurting but they kept their mouths shut. I fought across France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany and never saw a soldier who wasn't "white." We never asked about it because it was "natural." We were brought up to know that "this is the way it is," not thinking of it as either good or bad. Some of us, of course, felt badly about it but whether it was sexual orientation or color divide, it was not on the top of our minds. Then Truman desegregated the troops and everything changed. I fought alongside soldiers who I knew (or suspected) that they were gay but didn't give a damn as long as they were wearing the same uniform and their rifles were pointing toward the enemy. I imagine that this attitude will ultimately happen regarding sexual orientation. Notice what is happening how regarding women in combat. Some soldiers still are angered and others don't care.
Those of us in the discussion who have watched cultures and civilizations change should not be surprised that nothing is permanent.
Robby
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ROBBY: "In the 1940s even the topic of color differences was not on the conscious minds of white people".
While living in Maryland, I noticed how color differences worked out so they were invisible to Whites, but very visable to Blcks. A road near my house was paved to a certain point, and then turned into a muddy dirtroad. The paved part led through a White housing development. When it turned to mud, it led to a small area of houses occupied by Blacks (land that had been the slave quarters of a plantation before the Civil War, and had been given to the ex-slaves. Their descendants had held onto the land, but the city had never seen fit to pave the road leading past.
At the Edge, where the paving ended was an elementary school, where my children, who lived a mile away went. The Black children, who lived almost next door to the school, didn't go there: the school district boundaries had been gerrymandered to bus them far away.
This segregation was invisible to theWhites, who never ventured down the dirt road, and didn't know the Black community was there. But it hit the blacks in the face every time they went down that muddy road. (I'm the exception, since my houde overlooked the whole area, so I couls see what was going on).
This was 1971. The situation didn't change until the White community decided that road would be a useful shortcut and lobbied to have it paved.
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My f2f book grp just yesterday was discussing Gail Collins book , When Everything Changed. It is a history of women in the U.S. since 1960. One of the topics of conversation yesterday was how homosexuality was never mentioned in the press thru most of those decades. When we talked about whether we "knew" any one who was gay, most of us did not know an openly gay person until we became involved in the women's movement in the 70's. As Robby said, there were men who were what was then called "fey" and women who were "butch" who we "suspected" may have been gay........isn't that a terrible way to put it, as tho it was criminal to be gay.........but that was the term we used. We didn't say "we tho't" someone may have been gay, but that we "suspected." Of course, lesbians have always had an easier time of it than gay men, particularly in the U.S. where men - in the 20th century at least - haven't been allowed to be affectionate or live together, or sleep together.
The examples of racism are apt, and we also talked yesterday about the fact that Conn v Griswold - the Sup Crt decision allowing, first married couples, and eventually "everybody" (married or not) access to birth control was in 1965!?! Alabama didn't remove their law against interracial marriage until 1990, altho the court decision was in 1968, Va v Love. Can you believe how backward that sounds and it was only 40 yrs ago?
As an employee of Dept of Army for 13 yrs thru the 80's and 90's, i heard a lot of discussion about women and gays in the military. I talked w/ non-coms who said some the best cmdrs they had had were women and they had no problem w/ them, that when in action everybody was a part of the team. I read reports about the Danes having had gays in the mainstream of their military for yrs and having no problems. ............. Denmark sounds like a lovely country to live in...........for many reasons. All of the arguments that have been raised about women or gays were the same arguments raised about Blacks when Truman said the military would integrate. And every time the issue of gays living in the barracks, or sexual issues arising, i want to scream. Heterosexual relationships are NO different. People must learn to be professional and men may have to learn to fend off advances in the same way women have been doing for centuries! Be adults, deal w/ it! And move on. There are systems in place to deal w/ sexual harassment - whether it's heterosexual or homosexual.
I'm also reading Earthly Pleasures by PHillipa Gregory and she mentions King James preferences for young men - that was not the earthly pleasure that the title suggests. :) It has ever been thus! Heterosexuals/homosexuals/prostitutes/etc. etc. This is the world. We are diverse, there are behaviors in our lives that are not choices and we should become adult about these issues. If the behaviors become criminal, or harassing, deal w/ that person, not w/ the group.
Thanks for the quote Justin.......jean
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and so it goes. now that we have THE BOMB we can reverse trends and work our way back to the mountains and the sea . . .what is left of us. History may even go on WITHOUT US. the obama administration is suggesting that it is transitional CLEAN energy to cleaner energy.
Claire
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Joan: Yes, I think your observation is quite true. One could do art but not teach it as an open homosexual. Artistic performance tends to be accomplished by one alone. Teachers are more often working under the auspices of others and therefore less independent than artists.
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The Vatican says it will go 'Green'. It has installed a few solar panels, but without changing the energy it uses now, how is that possible one might ask. It takes energy to create energy, even solar panels.
The cardinals announced that a company in Hungary was donating to the Vatican a plot of land it would replant with trees, and give the carbon credits to the church. The land is wetlands and it was interesting that it was cleared in the Middle ages for farmland.
It is not very large it seems to me, and I don't know how much energy the entire Vatican complex uses, but planting trees that could take 150 years to mature on such a small plot would not seem to be sufficeint.
Was the land cleared because of population growth back in the middle ages? The article doesn't say, but since the church does not believe in birth control, I can see them cutting it down about the time it matures or before if the population continues to grow at the rate it is now. It doesn't take much to throw people into famine, a serious drought or flooding.
I oppose the selling of 'air' and calling it carbon credits. It is just another scam to me. The Vatican will still be belching smoke and it is a long way to Hungary.
This article seems to be from 2007 in the NYT, but I just read about it again a few weeks ago in one of the news magazines. Maybe they have just now started planting trees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/world/europe/17carbon.html
Emily
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There has lately been talk in these pages of Homosexuality.In this country during the last 30-40 years, there has been the same shift from 'anti' to tolerance of such folk, as in your country.
For myself, I think I have moved with the times, and accept Homosexuality as a fact of life. Over the years I have worked with several males and females of that disposition. I feel I have had good relations with them, but even now in my mid eighties, when sexual activity is mostly but dim memory, I still feel an unease in associating too closely with such persons.
Strange, isn't it? But I still shudder if I chance to see two males holding hands, or kissing. I avert my gaze, and think of, to me, more wholesome things.
I regret the twisted meaning given to good English words as in the following poetic lines:-
"No more shall grief of mine the seasons wrong
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay." ( Wordsworth)
All the earth is not gay, as the new meaning tries have it, thank heaven..... +++ Trevor.
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I think of love making in public is embarrasing for all of us onlookers. I'd look away whatever the gender mix. Privacy is the issue with me. It depends on how far the lovers take it to be acceptable for public display.
I've know gay women who came after me and immediately with drew when they found that this exotic artist person was straight. And others who simply ignored me as a social contact. One was one of my room mates, a delightful young fellow who very cheerfully included me in his brunches where all of his gay friends pretended I didn't exist. it works both ways.
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Claire: I've been missing you in the fiction discussions so went looking for you and found you here. How are ya? I guess I'll hang out here so I can keep up with you. It looks like I've been missing a really entertaining discussion, too.
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Yes, Jackie. You have been missing an entertaining discussion. But you are most welcome. Feel free to drop in with remarks whenever you wish. Actually this discussion has been going on for about 6-7 years. We are in the fifth volume of Durant's "Story of Civilization."
Robby
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Oh! Trevor, you have come upon it. The language loses some of it's distinctive sparkle when words are subsumed for special use. Words like "parochial," "gay," hot," "cool," and many others become too specialized for general use by the adoption process you describe. Wordsworth had a less adulterated general vocabulary than we have available. He was fortunate.
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JACKIE: WELCOME!!
Now back to Rome.
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Durant continues.
Even in Rome some disaffection troubled the new prosperity.
Nicholas’ government of the city was enlightened and just from his point of view. And he had made a concession to republican hopes by nominating four citizens who were to appoint all municipal officials and control all taxes levied in the city. But the senators and nobles whose class had ruled Rome during the Avignon papacy and the Schism fretted under the papal government and the populace resented the transformation of the Vatican into a palace fortress secure against such assaults as had driven Eugenius from Rome.
The republican ideas preached by Arnold of the Brescia and Cola di Rienzo still agitated many minds. In the year of Nicholas’ accession a leading burgher, Stefano Porcaro, made a fiery speech demanding the restoration of self government. Nicholas sent him into comfortable exile as podesta of Anagni but Porcaro found his way back to the capital and raised the cry of liberty before an excited carnival crowd. Nicholas banished him to Bologna but left him full freedom except for the necessity of daily showing himself to the papal legate there.
Nevertheless the undiscourageable Stefano managed from Bologna to organize a complicated plot among three hundred of his followers in Rome. On the feast of the Epiphany, while the Pope and the cardinals were at Mass in St. Peters, an attack was to be made on the Vatican, its treasury was to be seized to provide funds for establishing a republic, and Nicholas himself was to be taken prisoner. Porcaro secretly left Bologna and joined the conspirators on the eve of the planned attack. But his absence from Bologna was noted and a courier brought warning to the Vatican. Stefano was traced, found and imprisoned, and on January 9, 1453 he was beheaded in Sant’ Angelo.
The republicans denounced the execution as murder. The humanists condemned the plot as monstrous infidelity to a benevolent pope.,
Any resemblance to our American Revolution?
Robby
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Jackie: I did e-mail you a couple of ties but the address has too may dots in it. I think I fixed it let me know. Robbie the BOOKEIS are very interesting too,especially in the LIBRARY discussion which covers a wide area of subjects. Have a look some time.
I get my reading lists from there and am now in E.L. Doctorow and a short story collection called SWEET LAND STORIES. It is time for me to leave this one for a bit since I a short on history and especially that of Rome. my son likes it though when he has time.I've tried to point him here but . . . he just turned 57 so qualifies
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Nicholas sent him into comfortable exile
Nicholas banished him to Bologna but left him full freedom except for the necessity of daily showing himself to the papal legate there.
I was thinking while reading those two quotes that i'm liking this Nicholas guy more and more, but then reading to the end, of course, we see why Dick Cheney wanted Guantonomo opened...............too bad.
The republicans denounced the execution as murder. The humanists condemned the plot as monstrous infidelity to a benevolent pope. ...............the more things change, the more they stay the same............uh?.......c'est la vie...................jean
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From Durant
"Nicholas' government of the city was enlightened and just from his point of view."
"by nominating four citizens who were to appoint all municipal officials and control all taxes levied in the city."
I had no sooner read Durant's first lines when I connected it to a recent news story, and again see a connection between then and now. Nicholas would have nominated someone in the Vatican circle of influence. He had already built palaces for the 'well connected', so it stands to reason his appointments were to the 'well connected'.
The people had over the centuries seen the results of the Vatican to the 'well connected' and the havoc they spread through their wars and taxes.
Stefano Porcaro wanted self government restored. A republic not a theocracy. The Pope begged to differ and had him beheaded.
It does relate to Washington and King George. In the founding of a Republic in the USA, Washington put his head on the line to fight for it, and if he had not succeeded, King George might have had his head and we would not be a republic today.
In Nicholas' day, the government and the church were one through pal-ocracy. Those connections are still evident today from a news report from Rome via Reuters. An excerpt from the article........Prostitution ring run from inside Vatican
Rome....."Among four people arrested last month in the corruption probe was Angelo Balducci, and engineer who is a board member of Italy's public works department and a construction consultant to the Vatican. Balducci was arrested on corruption charges and allegations of prostitution emerged only later." (from wiretaps connected to the corruption charges)
Balducci is a member of an elite group called "Gentlemen of his Holiness" who serve in Vatican Apostolic Palace on major occasions such as when the Pope receives heads of State or presides at big events."
Another example of how the Vatican and the 'well connected' join together in Rome. Lucky for Nicholas there were no phones to tap in his day, but it would have been interesting to hear how he 'selected' the 'four' who held power over Rome, and who they were and their connections.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2010/03/04/13106366-reuters.html
Emily
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Pal-ocracy, I like that term Emily.
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Thank you Frybabe. I just make them up to fit the occasion. It usually gets the message across without a long drawn out description.
Good to see you posting here.
Emily
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Nicholas was shaken and changed by the discovery that a large section of the citizenry looked upon h im as a despot, however benevolent.
Harrowed with suspicion, embittered by resentment, tortured by gout, he aged rapidly. When news came to him that the Turks had entered Constantinople over the corpses of 50,000 Christians, and had turned St. Sophia into a mosque, all the glory of his pontificate seemed a fitful vanity.
He appealed to the European powers to join in a crusade to recapture the fallen citadel of Eastern Christianity . He called for a tenth of all the revenue of Western Europe to finance the effort, and pledged a tenth of papal, Curial, and other ecclesiastical revenues, and all war between Christian nations was to cease on pain of excommunication.
Europe hardly listened. People complained that money raised by previous popes for crusades had been used for other purposes. Venice preferred a commercial entente with the Turks. Milan took advantage of Venetian difficulties by retaking Brescia. Florence looked with satisfaction on Venice’s loss of Eastern trade. Nicholas bowed to reality and the lust of life cooled in his veins. Worn out with futile diplomacy, and punished for the sins of his predecessors, he died in 1455j at the age of fifty eight.
He had reached peace within the Church, he had restored order and splendor to Rome, he had founded the greatest of libraries, he had reconciled the Church and Renaissance. He had kept his hands free from war, had avoided nepotism, had struggled to turn Italy from suicidal strife. Amid unprecedented revenues he himself had led a simple life, loving the Church and his books, and extravagant only in his gifts. A grieving chronicler expressed the feeling Italy when he described the scholar Pope as “wise, just, benevolent, gracious, peaceable, affectionate, charitable, humble . . . endowed with every virtue.”
It was the verdict of love, and Porcero might have demurred. But we may let it stand.
Is it indeed, true, that bad things happen to good people?
Robby
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" Nicholas bowed to reality and the lust of life cooled in his veins. "
Was his life futile, as he seemed to feel? We'd probably have to say no.
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“wise, just, benevolent, gracious, peaceable, affectionate, charitable, humble . . . endowed with every virtue.”
WoW! Have they made any more of him, or has the mold been broken? .....................I wouldn't call his life futile, but isn't it interesting how we can hone in on a piece of criticism about ourselves and feel diminished and angry about it and allow it to overwhelm the positive, even in our own minds. Or, to feel anger that others seem to be focusing only on the negative and ungrateful of all the other things we've done. It reminds me of Lyndon Johnson being so depressed about the anti-war demonstrators, or that the Civil Rights people didn't appreciate his getting the CR Bill passed. I think that depression took many yrs from his life.
I have a friend who did a remarkable job of saving an historical piece of property almost single-handedly and organized an institute to keep the history in front of people, but the "new" (read younger) staff and board members have largely ignored her in the last decade, in fact, i think they are intimidated by her energy and expertise and act as tho she is "meddling" when she tries to give them advice. She has become bitter and depressed about their behavior and has taken herself out of any activity of the organization. ................. it's sad from both sides of that perspective. ................ altho i think the behaviors are naturally occuring cycles of organizations and history.
I'm so glad to have learned about this man.................jean
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Trials and tribulations of another Pope.
Vatican on Defense as Sex Scandals Build
By RACHEL DONADIO and NICHOLAS KULISH
ROME — Defending itself against a growing child sex abuse scandal in Europe, one that has even come close to the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said Tuesday that local European churches had “acted swiftly and decisively” to address the issue.
In a note read on Vatican Radio, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, also cautioned against limiting the concerns over child sex abuse to Catholic institutions, noting that it also affected the broader society. The comment comes amid a wave of church sex abuse scandals to emerge in recent weeks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, adding to the fallout from a broad abuse investigation in Ireland.
In his note, Father Lombardi said that local churches had demonstrated “a will for transparency, in a certain sense accelerating how the problem had been brought to light, inviting victims to come forward, even regarding cases from a long time ago,” he said.
He noted that in Austria, 17 abuse cases were found in Catholic institutions, while in the same period 510 abuse cases were found “in other environments.” “That should also concern us,” he said.
The newly emerging scandals, particularly those in Germany, cut particularly close to Benedict, who was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, before spending more than two decades as the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is ultimately responsible for investigating abuse cases. Benedict’s moral standing in Germany had already been diminished in some eyes by his outreach to a schismatic bishop, who, it emerged, had denied the scope of the Holocaust.
The connection to Benedict’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, comes from accusations of physical and sexual abuse from former students at two Bavarian boarding schools connected to a choir he directed from 1964 to 1994, leading to questions about whether he could have known about the abuse.
According to a statement by the diocese in Regensburg, one former student said he was “abused through excessive beatings and humiliations, and molested through touching in the genital area” during a period described as “the early 1960s.” And the German magazine Spiegel reported this week on accusations involving one of the schools, quoting a former student, Franz Wittenbrink, as saying the Etterzhausen boarding school had an “elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust,” and that a priest masturbated with pupils in his apartment.
“I find it inexplicable that the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, who had been cathedral choirmaster since 1964, apparently knew nothing about it,” Mr. Wittenbrink told the magazine, adding that a fellow student had committed suicide shortly before graduation.
Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, said in an interview this week with a Bavarian daily that the sexual accusations refer to a period before his tenure. But he apologized for slapping students before corporal punishment was outlawed in Bavaria in 1980.
“In the beginning I also slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience about it,” he told the daily, Passauer Neue Presse, adding that if he had known about excessive corporal punishment, “I would have said something.”
“The problem of sexual abuse was never raised,” Monsignor Ratzinger said. “I believe it wasn’t just the church that remained silent. It was also clearly the society.”
In Germany, new cases continue to come to light in the wake of abuse accusations made public in January involving students at the prestigious Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Austria, Bruno Becker, the head of a Salzburg monastery, resigned Monday after admitting that while studying to be a priest he had sexually abused a boy more than 40 years ago. Last week, the Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands announced it would open an investigation after former pupils at a monastery school told the Dutch media about systematic sex abuse in the 1960s.
In December, several Irish bishops resigned after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Catholic priests in church-run residential schools.
In his note on Tuesday, Father Lombardi said that the church had made a good start in addressing the “very serious issue” of sexual abuse of minors, investigating the accusations and showing concern for the victims.
He added that “errors committed by institutions and members of the church are particularly reprehensible given the church’s educational and moral responsibility.”
Father Lombardi noted that Benedict had “shown his participation” in tackling the issue by meeting with Irish bishops at the Vatican last month and was preparing an open letter to Irish bishops on the abuse scandal. Vatican sources said the letter could appear as soon as next week. On Friday, the pope is expected to meet at the Vatican with Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference. A spokesman for the archbishop said that the abuse cases would be on the agenda.
Father Lombardi also defended the church’s “distinct” internal procedures for handling abuse cases, noting that Canon Law did not impose fines or detention but “prohibits the exercise of ministry” and allows for the “loss of ecclesiastical rights.” Under Canon Law, he said, child sex abuse “has always been considered one of the most serious of acts.”
A day earlier, Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, criticized the church over mounting a “wall of silence” in abuse cases for proceeding with internal investigations before involving law enforcement. In an interview, she said prosecutors should be brought in as soon as possible.”
There is also discussion over whether to extend the statute of limitations in molestation cases, which currently expires 10 years after the accuser turns 18. The Archbishop of Bamberg, Ludwig Schick, came out Tuesday in favor of prolonging the statute of limitations to at least 30 years.
Kristina Schröder, Germany’s federal family minister, has called for a roundtable discussion next month, which the German bishops’ conference plans to participate in. In his note, Father Lombardi said the church was “naturally ready” to join the roundtable. “Probably its painful experience could be a useful contribution for others,” he said.
Robby
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I like your comparison, Emily. Porcaro is a Roman agitator on the order of Sam Adams, the Boston firebrand. Hod Porcaro and his friends been successful they would have been remembered as Roman heros instead of just victims of Nicholas' lost patience. It's interesting that the Roman republic ended at the dawn of the common era and did not return until post WWll. I don't think Garibaldi brought in a republic with his revolt. It seems to me he settled for a constitutional monarchy.
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I wonder how much abuse might be avoided by a change in Church policy. Priests were not always subject to celibacy vows. It seems to me celibacy is more a perversion of natural human proclivities than homosexuality. The Church appears to have it backwards. They should forbid celibacy and accept homosexuality. It might end much of the sexual abuse of children by priests and it might also promote healthy relationships for men and women not attracted by an opposite gender.
Ratzinger and his advisors are out of step with nature. Why can't they see that? What is it about clerics that makes them so obtuse? They are not uneducated like evangelicals. Perhaps, it's the culture. They speak only to others who reinforce these ideas.
A milder form of this ideological integration occurs in the US in politics. Democrats speak only to Democrats and Republicans only to Republicans. No one is interested in solving problems. They are only interested in protecting an ideology and being reelected.
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This is a digression from "Popes" but is relevant because it takes place during the period of time we are discussing.
An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
ROME — By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.
That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip Sohm. He has studied the number of writings (books, catalogs and scholarly papers) on both of them during the last 50 years. Mr. Sohm has found that Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo.
He has charts to prove it.
The change, most obvious since the mid-1980s, doesn’t exactly mean Michelangelo has dropped down the memory hole. To judge from the throngs still jamming the Sistine Chapel and lining up outside the Accademia in Florence to check out “David,” his popularity hasn’t dwindled much.
But, charts or no charts, Mr. Sohm has touched on something. Caravaggiomania, as he calls it, implies not just that art history doctoral students may finally be struggling to think up anything fresh to say about Michelangelo. It suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people. His otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric, which, for postwar generations, now belongs with the poetry of Alexander Pope or plays by Corneille as admirable but culturally remote splendors.
Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven. Coarse not godly, locked into dark, ambiguous spaces by a strict geometry then picked out of deep shadow by an oracular light, his models come straight off the street. Cupid is clearly a hired urchin on whom Caravaggio strapped a pair of fake wings. The angel in his “Annunciation” dangles like Chaplin’s tramp on the high wire in “The Circus,” from what must have been a rope contraption Caravaggio devised.
Rome’s art establishment at the turn of the 17th century, immersed in the mandarin froufrou of Late Mannerism, despised Caravaggio for the filthy, barefoot pilgrims he painted at Mary’s doorstep. Out to “destroy painting,” as Nicolas Poussin, the most high-minded of all French artists, saw it, Caravaggio connected with ordinary people, the ones who themselves arrived barefoot and filthy as pilgrims in Rome. And fortunately for Caravaggio, he also appealed to a string of rich and powerful patrons.
But almost immediately after he died from a fever at 38, in 1610, on the beach at Porto Ercole, north of Rome, his art was written off by critics as a passing fad and neglected for hundreds of years, setting the stage for his modern resurrection. Connoisseurs like Bernard Berenson were still dismissing his work a century ago when Lionello Venturi, Roger Fry and Roberto Longhi, among others, finally revived his reputation as a protomodernist.
Mr. Sohm, who announced his findings during a talk at the College Art Association conference in Chicago last month, focused on publications, not tourist revenues or exhibition attendance figures, and his study says nothing about how Michelangelo and Caravaggio stack up against box-office greats like Rembrandt and van Gogh.
But his research does corroborate evidence plain to anybody in or out of art academe or who has browsed for scarves in Italian airports where motifs of Caravaggio’s “Bacchus” and head of Goliath have become as ubiquitous as coasters bearing bits of David’s anatomy and mugs with the figure of Adam from the Sistine ceiling. Caravaggios are now used to decorate the cover of “Emerging Infectious Diseases,” a medical journal, and to advertise a sex shop in London.
“The only way to understand old art is to make it participate in our own artistic life” is how Venturi phrased it in 1925. That Caravaggio left behind no drawings, no letters, no will or estate record, only police and court records, makes him a perfect Rorschach for our obsessions. He was outed in the 1970s by gender studies scholars, notwithstanding the absence of documents to indicate he was gay. Pop novelists and moviemakers have naturally had a field day with his life. Exhibition organizers cook up any excuse (“Caravaggio-Bacon,” “Caravaggio-Rembrandt”) to capitalize on his bankability. Newly discovered “Caravaggios” test the market every year.
Not long ago, two Caravaggios turned up in the French village of Loches in the Loire Valley, under the organ loft of a local church. Never mind that various Caravaggio experts have since doubted the pictures are by him: Loches is advertising itself as a Caravaggio town. And officials in Porto Ercole lately said his lost remains had been found in an underground ossuary, pending DNA tests with descendants of his brother, who still live near Milan. The iconoclast is even being turned into a religious icon, it seems: Caravaggio’s “bones” may soon become holy relics for art pilgrims.
Another Caravaggio retrospective has also opened, here at the Quirinale: two dozen paintings, on view through June 13, a blue-chip survey, installed ridiculously in darkened rooms with spotlights, as if his art needed more melodrama. But the pictures are glorious anyway. The exhibition is mobbed.
It happens that a show of Michelangelo’s drawings is at the Courtauld Gallery in London, through May 16. Gifts for a beautiful young Roman nobleman, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, on whom Michelangelo had developed a crush, the drawings were ostensibly supposed to help Cavalieri learn to draw. Imagine Roger Federer handing you a DVD of himself at Wimbledon, saying “Just do this.” These are drawings of the most arcane refinement, unearthly beautiful.
By contrast, Caravaggio, wrestling art back to the ground, distilled scenes into a theatrical instant at which time seems suddenly stopped. That’s why his pictures can bring to mind movie stills. The art historian Michael Fried, who has just written a book about Caravaggio, notes the quality of the figures’ absorption. Life-size images, they share our space and we theirs, face to face, as another art historian, Catherine Puglisi, has pointed out (something that doesn’t happen with Michelangelo’s enormous sculptures or his frescoed ceiling that we only see from far away). The immediacy somehow dovetails with the tabloid tawdriness of his biography, with the whole modern celebrity drama.
The other afternoon endless scrums of tourists here jostled before the Caravaggios in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi and the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, feeding pocket change into the boxed light meters. It was probably just coincidental, but in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, nobody stopped to look at the Michelangelo.
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Thanks for those 2 articles Robby. .............. the longer i live the more the old cliches seem like more than theory................re the first article on the church: thou doth protest too much...........the more severe i find people's "rules" about "thou shalt nots" the more i suspect they "may be." It seems everybody who has been caught in "social misbehavior" lately has been strongly opposed to that behavior in speech and act. I think hypocracy has become my most hated behavior.
Regardless of who is now most popular, those two artists are extremely interesting men, are most people who are extremely creative also unique in other parts of their lives? Extreme, even? Does it come w/ the territory of creativity? ........................jean
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Am I totally at odds with others here ? I get the impression that the interests of many, are not in the works of Art as such, but more in the personalities of the Artists. It seems that most commentators in the field, are fascinated by, and wish to know more about "The Singer, not the Song."
For me, it is the other way round. I sympathize with the quip by President Clinton who when a tv interviewer kept asking about his, Clinton's private life, snapped "It's the Economy, stupid."
When I look at a painting, I think, I like that work, or I don't like that work, as the case may be. In other words "It is the painting, stupid, not the painter."
I like mathematics and science. In those fields, it is the theorems and the theories that catch my interest, and I could not care less whether the theorist is or was 'gay', poor or wealthy, honest or sly. Am I the peculiar one here ? LOL.+++ Trevor
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Well, if you are, so am i, because i agree completely. However, i think the discussion here may tend to be about the artist because we can hold his/her story in our heads easier than we can hold the volume of their work in our heads. If i am looking at a particular piece of work, i determine if i like IT or not and most of the time i know nothing about the artist who crafted it.....................jean
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Strange: I saw the show that Simon Shema did on him, and couldn't remember ant of his paintings. But I still remember vividly seeing Michalangelo's David in Florance 45 years ago.
Here are ome of C's paintings:
http://photobucket.com/images/caravaggio/?page=8 (http://photobucket.com/images/caravaggio/?page=8)
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We have slipped ahead from the fifteenth century to the early seventeenth in one short posting, however, it is a nice diversion and one that we would not ordinarily cover in this volume of Durant.
Caravaggio's name is Michelangelo Merisi. He is from Caravaggio and like so many other great painters, he is known by his origins. It is just as well as it helps us to avoid confusion when comparing him with Michelangelo Buonaroti. It is useful to know that Caravaggio fully appreciated the erotic attraction of young male bodies. It helps us to understand paintings such as Amor Vincit Omnia and Bacchus as well as others.
I know it is possible to look at a work of art and see it as a stand alone but that's not all there is. There is more, much more and you deny yourself the pleasure of the full experience when you examine a work out of context. When one sees a triangle it is just a triangle but the educated observer sees that it has special characteristics, that it is a right triangle and that it satisfies the Pythagorean equation and so on. All is not what one sees on the surface. There is often more, much more, that lies hidden from view for the tourist in any field.
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Joan: When I first saw the David in the Accademia it's overall size was overwhelming. I had seen the piece many times before in miniature. In fact I had a replica of it on my shelves at home and I thought I knew the work quite well from having read many of the journal articles about it. But when I first saw it at the end of the long narrow room in which it resides the size of the sculpture seemed enormous. I think it is too large for the enclosure. When one looks at the full size replica in front of the Signoria it does not appear to be overly large. Did you also see the Donatello David while you were in Florence?
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Jean: Art for me is not a question of Like or dislike. Each piece is an interesting challenge. How does it fit in with other pieces of the same mode and period? Why this subject at this time and why this subject from this artist? What else has he/she done and how does this work compare? Are the technical aspects of the work worthy? How does the composition, the iconography, tell the story? Does it add anything to the school of thought that supports the genre? Is it just an amusing thing to observe or does it contribute in some way to our awareness of things?
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Justin - i need to take you w/ me to the art shows/museums........... :)........jean
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Jean: It's a date.
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Just as, in the era we are examining, the Pope was personally under attack, so it seems to be again in our period.
Pope Offers Apology, Not Penalty, for Sex Abuse Scandal
By RACHEL DONADIO and ALAN COWELL
VATICAN CITY — Confronting a sex abuse scandal spreading across Europe, including his native Germany, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologized directly and personally to victims and their families in Ireland, expressing “shame and remorse” and saying “your trust had been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.”
His message, in a long-awaited, eight-page pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, seemed couched in strong and passionate language. But it did not refer directly to immediate disciplinary action beyond sending a special apostolic delegation to investigate unspecified dioceses and religious congregations in Ireland. Moreover, it was, as the Vatican said it would be, focused particularly on the situation in Ireland, even as the crisis has widened among Catholics in Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany.
“You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated,” the pope told Irish victims and their families.
“Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen. Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape for your sufferings,” he continued.
“It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church,” Benedict continued. “In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel.”
Nowhere in the letter did Benedict address the responsibility of the Vatican itself. Many victims’ groups have criticized the Vatican for not recognizing the depth and scope of the abuse crisis sooner. Nor did he use the term punishment, or spell out any consequences for clergy or bishops who had not upheld canon or civil law. Indeed, he laid blame firmly with Irish Catholic leaders.
“I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way church authorities in Ireland dealt with them,” he said. Addressing a section of his letter to abusers, the pope said they must “answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals” urging them to pray for forgiveness, “submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.” He did not specify the nature of the tribunals.
He said those who had committed abuse had “betrayed the trust” of “innocent young people and their parents” and “forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonor among your confreres.”
Speaking on Saturday just before the publication of the letter, Maeve Lewis, an executive director of One In Four, a support group in Dublin for victims of sexual abuse, said that the Vatican had tried to suggest that clerical abuse was an Irish problem. “The events of the last three weeks in Germany and Netherlands suggest otherwise,” she said.
Since last year, the Irish church has been shaken to the core by two damning reports by the Irish government. One revealed decades of systematic abuse of children in religious institutions, another showed an apparent cover-up in the diocese of Dublin of priests who had abused children being allowed to continue in pastoral care.
In neither case did the church routinely inform civil authorities about priests who had committed felonies. Four Irish bishops offered their resignation in the wake of the publication of the so-called Murphy report in November, but the pope has accepted only one.
For many Catholics, the letter offered a critical test of whether the pope can stem a widening crisis that has shaken the credibility and authority of the Roman Catholic church in other parts of the world and challenged the Vatican to end a culture of secrecy and cover-up permeating its cloistered hierarchy.
In his letter, Benedict spoke of “a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situation,” adding that “it is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse.”
The pope attributed the problem in part to “a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person.”
He also cited “inadequate procedures” for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life and “insufficient human, moral, intellectual and spiritual formation” in seminaries.
Benedict also directly addressed the bishops on whose watch the systematic abuse took place.
“It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse,” Benedict wrote. “Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations.”
“I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and the complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice,” he said, adding that besides “fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse,” bishops should also “continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.”
The pope also proposed a “nationwide mission” for all bishops, priests and religious to strengthen their vocations. And he urged Irish dioceses to devote chapels for intense prayer “to make reparation for the sins of abuse that have done so much harm.”
Earlier this week, Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of Ireland, said in extraordinary comments to a mass on St. Patrick’s Day that he was “ashamed” of the situation and of his own actions in compelling two youths to sign secrecy agreements not to report abuse in the 1970s.
“I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologize to you with all my heart,” Cardinal Brady said. ”I also apologize to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back, I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in.”
In Germany the scandal has raised questions about the pope’s own past. This week the German church suspended a priest who had been permitted to work with children for decades after a court convicted him of molesting boys.
In 1980, Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, allowed the priest to move to Munich for therapy after allegations of abuse. The priest returned to pastoral work, but last week another church official took responsibility for allowing that move.
As reports of abuse cases spread many questions have been raised about the collision of Vatican secrecy and civil judicial process.
Some Irish church officials have said the problem has been deepened by confusion over the interpretation of a 2001 directive by Benedict, then a cardinal, reiterating a strict requirement for secrecy in handling abuse cases. The directive also gave the authority in handling such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict was prefect of the congregation from 1982 until becoming pope in 2005.
In the past decade, the congregation has handled 3,000 such cases, 80 percent from the United States, a Vatican official acknowledged last week.
As the crisis deepened, the Vatican condemned what it called an aggressive campaign against the pope in Germany.
A week ago, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was “evident that in recent days there are those who have tried, with a certain aggressive tenacity, in Regensburg and in Munich, to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse.” He added, ”It is clear that those efforts have failed.”
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Robby - - - If the pope wanted to do anything to change the depressingly persistant reality of the system in the Catholic Church of both men and women being "Married to God", he would allow - and encourage - them to schew the unnatural state of celibacy, which his church has enforced through the years.
Brian
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Brian: I agree, completely. Celibacy is at the root of the problem. But I don't think the papacy gives a hoot for the parishioners and their well being . It is ideology that is important; theology ranks above all else.
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From Robby's post.......
a 2001 directive by Benedict, then a cardinal, reiterating a strict requirement for secrecy in handling abuse cases. The directive also gave the authority in handling such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict was prefect of the congregation from 1982 until becoming pope in 2005.
The sexual abuse and physical abuse of a child is a crime. Anyone who knew about the abuse and did not report it to law enforcement is a criminal. Anyone who stressed secrecy is a criminal, and should be charged as a child abuser.
In another of Robby's links it stated that the brother of the Pope was apologizing for slapping children in the face when he directed the boys choir. He is a child abuser and unfit for any duty.
It looks as though the Pope led the cover-up, and prison would be a suitable place for him and his brother.
Getting rid of 'celibacy' would not stop pedophilia.
'Secrecy' is the problem. Make it a crime and lock them all away for life.
Start with the Pope.
Emily
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Getting rid of 'celibacy' would not stop pedophilia.
Emily - - - I agree that cover-up of any sort of crime is heinous, but I feel that enforced celibacy is a major factor, if not THE major reason for sexual aberration resulting from the Catholic Church's (and the pope's) policy.
In addition to which, priests would be of much greater help to their parishioners in sexual
matters if they had a healthy experience of sex themselves.
Brian.
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Has any pope ever said "this is intolerable and criminal and if you do thus and such you will be arrested and removed from the clergy! We have a zero tolerance for abuse!" ? ................... jean
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Mabel - - - does this answer the question?
The Guardian newspaper found a confidential communique from John to Catholic Bishops, allegedly mandating confidentiality in matters of pederasty with the threat of excommunication.[14] These allegations were later refuted by Archbishop Vincent Gerard Nichols, Chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults. Nichols explained that the communique "is not directly concerned with child abuse at all, but with the misuse of the confessional. This has always been a most serious crime in Church law."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_XXIII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_XXIII)
Brian.
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Celibacy and child abuse. Over theyears I have often heared that the two are related. However I must say that abuse of children seems to be practiced by persons in all walks of life. It is in no way confined to Catholic clergy.
I myself am an agnostic, but my wife is a very devout Catholic, and credits that faith with enabling herself and her parents to survive two years in a Soviet Labour camp in Siberia.
They were Poles who were transported along with 1.5 million other Poles from Poland to the Gulag camps where many perished.
As a strong catholic living here in NZ, she makes all members of the clergy welcome in our home. Her younger brother became a Teaching Brother, and he often lived with us through out the teaching year, and frequently invited other members of the faith, all of whom had taken vows of celibacy, to visit us. I often argue with them over the existence of God, and related matters.
I am certain that not even one member of that group could ever be a child abuser, in any way. It is just absurd to claim otherwise. I do not follow their ideas of God, but in all other matters, they are as concerned for the rights of children as anyone here. +++ Trevor.
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"is not directly concerned with child abuse at all, but with the misuse of the confessional. This has always been a most serious crime in Church law."
well, i guess that states the priorities ::) ::)
Trevor - i think we all understand that these are individual cases, not a blanket accusation of the clergy..........but my problem is w/ the church policy and response as much as w/ the abusers.........institutions do tend to protect themselve, but one would assume a religious institution would attempt to do the moral/right thing........isn't child abuse a "sin" (from the church's perspective) as well as a crime?...........Hypocrisy may annoy me more than any other behavior...........jean
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I received this email and don't know if it is from Justin or if it is spam.
From: Justin B Fash
To: undisclosed recipients:
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 9:25 AM
Subject: My Predicament!!!
I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's because of the situation of things right now, I'm stuck in London United Kingdom right now, i came down here on vacation, i was robbed, worse of it was that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone were stolen off me at GUN POINT, so i only have access to my emails, it's such a crazy and brutal experience for me and i was hurt on my right hand, but i'm glad i still have my life. I need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive, i have been to the embassy and the Police here in London,
but they're not helping issues at all, but the good thing is that i still have my passport but don't have enough money to sort the bills and get my flight ticket back home, please i need you to loan me some money, i promise to refund it as soon as I'm back home, you can get it to me through western union.
Justin.
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Did it come from Justin's e-mail address (available in his profile)?
It doesn't sound like the writing of an educated English speaker, even an upset one.
You could e-mail him and see if you get a reply.
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Re that letter that may have come from Justin. I am suspicious that it is from him.
That is because since I rejoined this discussion, I have recieved a large number of e-mails, all addressing me as 'Trevor'. That is not my real name, and this is the only place on the internet that I am known that way. The content of the e-mails is so offensive that I know they could not have come from any regular person here. Perhaps the one purporting to come from Justin is one of that kind.+++ Trevor
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IT IS A SPAM - - - it does not have Justin's true email, and if perchance you DO answer the address at the top of your spam email - - - DO NOT OPEN ANY .EXE files - - - or you will open
yourself to Nigerian spammers and possible virus infection.
Spam messages are generated and sent in vast numbers to people whse email addresses have been "bought " on the internet.
Do not open any attachment that you have not asked for, or you have not been aware of its having been sent to you. They often contain .EXE files that can "take over" control of your computer, and they often have viruses imbedded in them.
Brian.
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If you do happen to receive this spam email (as both Robby and I did) - - - just delete it without opening, and you will come to no harm.
Brian.
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Trevor - - - 3kings - - - or Pat - - - I am sorry to hear that you have received "abusive" emails, but fully agree with you that they are unlikely to have originated from within our discussion group. The wording of "Justin's email" is typical of those from Nigeria. Brian.
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The message you have received from "Justin" seeking funds is not from me. The Nigerians have some how tapped my address file. I am in the process of contacting my guru for advice on the topic. Please delete the message with out opening it.
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I had intended to email you, Justin, if you had not posted but was convinced it was spam. I have deleted that incoming message. I wonder if those in the Renaissance period ever had problems like this?
Robby
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Robby
I wonder if those in the Renaissance period ever had problems like this?
Sure they did. We just discussed Stefano Porcaro attempting to take the money from the Vatican vault to restore self government to Rome.
Unlike the person standing by the Western Union office at Heathrow asking if 'Justin' had any money come in, Stefano actually had to show up and break open the vault. He was beheaded for his plan which was never carried out.
Perhaps we should act like the Pope's spies who caught Stefano on the way to Rome and report to the authorities at Heathrow that there was a scam using Western Union to fleece the unsuspecting friends of Justin.
Emily
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Emily - - - the "Authorities" would be less than interested. This particular spam is rampant right now, and as the prose suggests, is probably of Nigerian origin.
The main thing to highlight is the need for caution in dealing with all emails with attachments, and extra care when browsing the internet not to open areas in sites that one does not fully trust.
Brian.
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Justin - - - was your email list compromised, and did they steal your email password?
I have "000000" as the first name in my address book, and "zzzzzz" as the last one. This means that if my address book is hijacked, and a mass mailing is tried, the effort is aborted as they cannot get past the first or last "name".
Brian.
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This may be of interest to those of us here who were part of our discussion examining Durant's first volume, "Our Oriental Heritage."
After Years of War and Abuse, New Hope for Ancient Babylon
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The most immediate threat to preserving the ruins of Babylon, the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is water soaking the ground and undermining what is left in present-day Iraq of a great city from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II.
It is also one of the oldest threats. The king himself faced water problems 2,600 years ago. Neglect, reckless reconstruction and wartime looting have also taken their toll in recent times, but archaeologists and experts in the preservation of cultural relics say nothing substantial should be done to correct that until the water problem is brought under control.
A current study, known as the Future of Babylon project, documents the damage from water mainly associated with the Euphrates River and irrigation systems nearby. The ground is saturated just below the surface at sites of the Ishtar Gate and the long-gone Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders. Bricks are crumbling, temples collapsing. The Tower of Babel, long since reduced to rubble, is surrounded by standing water.
Leaders of the international project, describing their findings in interviews and at a meeting this month in New York, said that any plan for reclaiming Babylon as a tourist attraction and a place for archaeological research must include water control as “the highest priority.”
The study, aimed at developing a master plan for the ancient city, was begun last year by the World Monuments Fund in collaboration with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. A $700,000 grant from the United States Department of State is financing the initial two-year study and preliminary management plan. An official of the monuments fund said the entire effort could last five or six years.
“This is without doubt the most complex program we’ve ever had to organize,” said Bonnie Burnham, the fund’s president.
A few archaeologists have expressed concern about what they said was the project’s slow start. Project members said that they have had serious problems persuading foreign experts to go to Iraq and then clearing them and their instruments for work there.
Besides the wear of time that all ruins of antiquity are prey to, consider the depredations Babylon has suffered in recent history. German archaeologists who made the first careful study of the site, before World War I, recognized the despoiling inroads of irrigation waters drawn from a tributary of the Euphrates River, 50 miles south of modern Baghdad.
McGuire Gibson, a specialist in Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago, who is not involved in the project, agreed that water is Babylon’s “major problem,” which he said was made worse in recent years when a lake and canal were dug as part of a campaign to lure tourists. Nebuchadnezzar himself, Dr. Gibson noted, dealt with water encroachment by erecting new buildings at ever-higher elevations, on top of mounds of old ruins.
The first German investigators, led by Robert Koldewey, reported finding extensive water damage to mud-brick structures and the intrusion of agricultural fields and villages within boundaries of the original city. People had already carted off bricks and stones, leaving almost nothing of the Ziggurat, known from the historian Herodotus and the Bible as the Tower of Babel. The Germans themselves hauled off the elaborate Ishtar Gate to a museum in Berlin.
Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, casting himself as heir to Nebuchadnezzar’s greatness, had his own imposing palace built at Babylon along the lines of his royal predecessor’s. He even adopted the king’s practice of stamping his own name on the bricks for the reconstruction. Archaeologists were aghast. The new palace and a few other restorations, they say, are hardly authentic, and yet they dominate the site.
What to do with Hussein’s palace is another issue, said the co-director of the project, Jeff Allen. “How to balance integrity of the site with its use as a tourist attraction is the problem,” he explained, noting that Iraq counts on Babylon as a future source of foreign tourist income.
Mr. Allen, an American consultant in cultural preservation who is based in Cairo, said it would cost millions of dollars to demolish the palace or convert it into a visitor center for tourists. “This still has to be studied by other experts,” he said, joking that one suggestion is that the palace would make a perfect casino.
“I’d leave the palace alone,” Dr. Gibson said, pointing out that it was based on sketches left by the German archaeologists.
“So that way, you will walk around in something of what the ancient architecture looked like,” he continued. “Otherwise, you walk around with nothing to see but a bunch of rubble.”
Elizabeth C. Stone, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York who is familiar with Babylon, said she supported efforts to reopen the site to tourists, especially Iraqis themselves. “It’s near Baghdad and is the one site where you used to see Iraqis going to get a sense of their past,” she said.
Further damage was incurred during the Iraq war, started in 2003. Looting was prevalent there and at other archaeological sites. The United States military occupied Babylon for several years, protecting it from plundering but leaving other scars. About one square kilometer of surface soil, some of it with artifacts, “got removed one way or another,” Dr. Stone said.
“The military certainly did not do the place any good,” said Lisa Ackerman, executive vice president of the monuments fund. “They moved a lot of dirt around, but that damage is largely fixable.”
The site was returned to Iraqi control more than a year ago. Ms. Ackerman and Mr. Allen said the project had already surveyed the remains, building by building, and started the restoration of two museums. Although Iraq has a large corps of trained archaeologists, they said, an immediate need is to instruct others in the conservation of ruins and bring in structural engineers and hydrologists to handle the water problem.
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Interesting Robby - there's always the balance between saving antiquity and cost, plus the questions of what is worth saving and for what reason.
On another subj - i was appalled yesterday to hear that a memorial to Dwight Eisenhower is going to cost $100 million!!!!! The man didn't make anywhere near that income in his whole life - i don't know why that tho't came to mind, it really has no significance to the cost of the memorial, but that was my first tho't. I'm an admirer of Gen E., but my goodness! Is that necessary?...................jean
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From Robby's article
The Germans themselves hauled off the elaborate Ishtar Gate to a museum in Berlin.
That statement in the article if refuted by everything I have read on the subject. The Germans were there in 1899 and the German archaelolgist Robert Koldewey did a replica of the gate with materials supplied by Koldewey, now stands in Berlins Pergamon museum.
That is a far cry from hauling off the Ishtar gate. What is left of the damaged Ishtar gate still stands in Babylon. Over the years the damage has been recently added by the occupation of U.S. forces who built Camp Alpha on the ground of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and did heavy damage leading from the Ishtar gate down the ceremonial walkway with heavy equipment destroying the brick lined walk.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072802835.html
Another quote from Robby's article.....
"I'd leave the palace alone", Dr. Gibson said, pointing out that it was based on sketches left by the German archaeologists. "So that way, you will walk around in something of what the ancient architecture looked like," he continued. "Otherwise, you walk around with nothing to see but a bunch of rubble."
I agree with his statement, it was built from Iraqi material by Iraqis using architectual drawings left by the Germans from the 1800's. If the American commentator from Chicago who was quoted and was not actually there, it probably would have been a casino that was built, instead of a replica.
Emily
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Jean, this is for you regarding the Eisenhower memorial.
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/
The GAO selected Frank O. Gehry to design the building and grounds. It will be the first presidential memorial of the 21st century. The article states there are six presidential memorials and Eisenhower's will be the seventh. They list the Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln memorials in Wash. D.C. and Mount Rushmore. I went looking for the other two they counted and found plenty of memorials, but had to do a guess as to the other two. By the way, the carvings on Mt. Rushmore took years and cost a total of almost 990,000, less than a million dollars.
I did not like the columns to nowhere in the second picture down on the design. Otherwise it looked fine, but not a hundred million fine.
I selected the statue of Ulysses S. Grant in Washington D.C. as one of my picks. It is the second largest equestrian statue in the U.S. and third largest in the world. The Mexican conquistador Don Juan de Onate in El Paso, Texas is the largest in the U.S. The largest in the world is a monument to Italy's King Victor Emanuel in Rome.
The other selection I chose because I like the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has a statue on the mall.
The first trip that holds memories to Wash. D.C. was as a sixteen year old high school graduate. We were sent to view historical sites at that time instead of the beach for something called 'Spring break' that we did not have.
One memory was climbing the Washington monument inside a narrow claustrophobic stairway with other students. It was hot and crowded. What a relief to sit in the cool grass outside after that climb.
We did all the memorials, the Congress, White House, museums, etc. Our State representative met us at the Capitol and led us to the gallery to watch congress in action, along with a tour. President Truman was not in the White House. It had only recently reopened for tours since Truman saved it from collapse and it had to be gutted and rebuilt. Truman lived across the street at Blair House. The viewing rooms were restored but had little furniture inside. It looked big and empty without a family living there.
An aside about Eisenhower. When Ronald Reagan died and I wondered if they were ever going to actually bury him, I looked for other presidential elaborate funeral displays.
Eisenhower asked to be buried in the same wooden box or casket, afforded to the common soldier at the cost of under 300 dollars if my memory is right. They did put in a small glass at top for viewing which cost little.
That alone endeared him to me, it showed he was humble.
Emily
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Jean, I had looked through all my notebooks back through 2005 looking for the information on President Eisenhowers funeral service. I had forgotten what year Reagan died. It was in 2004 and I found the information right away from my notes.
Eisenhower's casket was $80 government issue, same as any soldier. His had an inner glass seal at a cost of $115. So total cost of $195.
He lay in state and had a funeral service in Wash.D.C. from Mar. 29 to Mar. 31. He was put on a train to Abilene, Kansas where he is buried in a chapel on the grounds of the Eisenhower Center.
Harry S. Truman died Dec. 26, 1972, funeral and burial on Dec. 27, 1972 in the courtyard of his Library in Missouri.
Lyndon B. Johnson died Jan 22, 1973, buried Jan. 25, 1973 in family cemetary on his ranch.
John F. Kennedy died Nov. 22, 1963 and was buried on Nov. 25, 1963.
Franklin D. Roosevelt died April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia. Funeral train to White House, after funeral ceremony, body placed back on train to Hyde Park, N.Y. where it arrived Apr. 14th. He was buried on April 15, 1945. FDR did not lie in state all over Washington, but spent three days on a train going toward his final resting place in New York.
I had looked all this information up to compare recent presidents deaths and how they were handled as compared to Ronald Reagan during his memorials and funeral services in 2004.
Betty Ford outdid them though with the traveling Gerald Ford funeral services.
Emily
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Emily - thanks so much for all that info. You encouraged me to go looking further and i found this which compliments the site you put up.
http://www.gctelegram.com/news/ap-eisenhower-memorial-03-26-10
As i looked thru the "history" of Ike's memorial planning the cost went from $65 - $85 million to $90 - $120 million. The steel mesh tapestries sound interesting. I see he is doing that in the new section of the PHila Mus of Art. I'll have to check out those. But WHEW! that's a lot of money.
I laughed at your comment about RR [When Ronald Reagan died and I wondered if they were ever going to actually bury him, /color]...............the final day of funerals when they were flying him around the RR Library my friend sent me a msg asking "Are they ever going to bury the SOB?" Obviously she was not a fan...............but you made me laugh remembering that day................jean
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CALIXTUS III 1455-58
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What is a Calixtus? .................. sounds like a disease......... ;D.........jean
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We return to Durant.
The disunion of Italy determined the papal election that followed. The factions, unable to agree on an Italian, chose a Spanish cardinal, Alfonso Borgin, who took the name of Calixtus III. He was already seventy seven. He could be depended upon to die soon, and allow the cardinals another and perhaps more profitable choice. A specialist in canon law and diplomacy, he had a legalistic mind and cared little for the classical scholarship that had enamored Nicholas. The humanists, who had no indigenous root in Rome languished during his pontificate, except that Valla, now quite reformed, was still a papal secretary.
Calixtus was a good man who loved his relatives. Ten months after his coronation he raised to the cardinalate two of his nephews – Luis Juan de Mila and Rodrigo B Borgia – and Don Jayme of Portugal, respectively twenty five, twenty four, and twenty three years of age. Rodrigo (the future Alexander VI) had the additional handicap of being carelessly candid about his mistresses. However, Calixtus gave him the most lucrative post at the papal court – that of vice chancellor. In the same year he made him also commander in chief of the papal troops.
So began, or grew, the nepotism by which pope after pope gave church offices to his nephews or other relatives who were sometimes his sons. To the anger of the Italians, Calixtus surrounded himself with men of his own country. Rome was now ruled by Catalans. The Pope had reasons – he was a foreigner in Rome. The nobles and republicans were plotting against him. He wished to have near him men whom he knew and who would protect him from intrigue while he attended to his prime interest – a crusade. Moreover, the Pope was resolved to have friends in a College of Cardinals perpetually struggling to make the papacy a constitutional as well as an elective monarchy, subject in all its decisions to the cardinals as a senate or privy council.
The popes opposed and overcame this movement precisely as the kings fought and defeated the nobles. In each case absolute monarchy won. But perhaps the replacement of a local with a national economy and the growth of international relations in scope and complexity required, for the time, a centralization of leadership and authority.
Calixtus wore out his last energies in a vain attempt to stir Europe to resist the Turks. When he died Rome celebrated the end of its rule by ‘barbarians.’ When Cardinal Piccolomini was named his successor Rome rejoiced as it had not rejoiced over any pope during the last two hundred years.
Your comments, please.
Robby
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Another pope on the defense.
Pope, in Sermon, Says He Won’t Be Intimidated
By REUTERS
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — Pope Benedict, facing one of the gravest crises of his pontificate as a sexual abuse scandal sweeps the Church, indicated on Sunday that his faith would give him the courage not to be intimidated by critics.
The 82-year-old pontiff led tens of thousands of people in a sunny St. Peter’s Square in a Palm Sunday service at the start of Holy Week events commemorating the last days in the life of Jesus.
While he did not directly mention the scandal involving sexual abuse of children by priests, parts of his sermon could be applicable to the crisis.
The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”
He also spoke of how man can sometimes “fall to the lowest, vulgar levels” and “sink into the swamp of sin and dishonesty.”
One prayer asked God to help “the young and those who work to educate and protect them,” which Vatican Radio said was intended to “sum up the feelings of the Church at this difficult time when it confronts the plague of pedophilia.”
As the scandal has convulsed the Church, the Vatican has gone on the offensive, attacking the media for what it called an “ignoble attempt” to smear Pope Benedict and his top advisers.
On Saturday, the Vatican’s chief spokesman acknowledged that the Church’s response to cases of sexual abuse by priests was crucial to its credibility and it must “acknowledge and make amends for” even decades-old cases.
“The nature of this issue is bound to attract media attention and the way the Church responds is crucial for its moral credibility,” the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said on Vatican Radio.
Although the cases cited happened long ago, “even decades ago, acknowledging them and making amends to the victims is the price for re-establishing justice and looking to the future with renewed vigor, humility and confidence,” Father Lombardi said.
Sunday marked the start of a hectic week during which the Pope presides over seven major events leading up to Easter.
But while Catholics commemorate Christ’s passion, the 1.1 billion member Church is reeling from media reports on abuse that have led to the pope’s doorstep.
The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the abuse of 200 deaf boys in the United States by the Reverend Lawrence Murphy from the 1950s to the 1960s, after reports that he was not defrocked although the case was made known to the Vatican and to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Church’s top doctrinal official, now Pope Benedict.
The Vatican also said that the pope, while archbishop of Munich in 1980, was not involved in the decision by a subordinate to allow a priest who had been transferred there to undergo therapy for sexual abuse to return later to pastoral duties.
The European epicenter of the scandal is Ireland, where two bishops have resigned over their handling of abuse cases years ago. Three others have offered their resignation and there have been calls for the head of the Irish Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, to step down.
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As we compare the Papal crises of over 500 years ago, we are experiencing a current Papal crisis. Durant told us of the uprising of the people and now -- below -- we hear the Catholics speak.
Published on National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline.org)
Home > Credibility gap: Pope needs to answer questions
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Credibility gap: Pope needs to answer questions
Article Details
We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history
The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role -- as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) -- in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church.
The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role -- as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) -- in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.
We urge this not primarily as journalists seeking a story, but as Catholics who appreciate that extraordinary circumstances require an extraordinary response. Nothing less than a full, personal and public accounting will begin to address the crisis that is engulfing the worldwide church. It is that serious.
To date, as revelations about administrative actions resulting in the shifting of clergy abusers from parish to parish emerge throughout Europe, Pope Benedict XVI's personal response has been limited to a letter to the Irish church. Such epistles are customary and necessary, but insufficient.
With the further revelations March 26 [2] by The New York Times that memos and meeting minutes exist showing that Benedict had to be at least minimally informed that an abuser priest was coming into the archdiocese of Munich and that he further had been assigned without restrictions to pastoral duties, it becomes even more difficult to reconcile the strong language of the pope in his letter to Irish bishops and his own conduct while head of a major see.
No longer can the Vatican simply issue papal messages -- subject to nearly infinite interpretations and highly nuanced constructions -- that are passively "received" by the faithful. No longer can secondary Vatican officials, those who serve the pope, issue statements and expect them to be accepted at face value.
We were originally told by Vatican officials, for example, that in the matter of Fr. Peter Hullermann, Munich Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger approved the priest's transfer to the archdiocese, but had no role in the priest's return to parish ministry, where he again molested children. Rather, it was Fr. Gerhard Gruber, archdiocesan vicar general at the time, who, according to a March 12 Vatican statement, has taken "full responsibility" for restoring the priest to ministry. Gruber, subsequent to his statement, has not made himself available for questions.
We are told, moreover, that the case of Hullermann is the single instance during Ratzinger's tenure in Munich where a sexually errant priest was relocated to a parish where he could molest again. If true, this would be a great exception to what, in the two-and-a-half decades NCR has covered clergy abuse in the church, has been an ironclad rule: Where there is one instance of hierarchical administrative malfeasance, there are more.
Given memos and minutes placing the pope amid the discussions of the matter, we are asked to suspend disbelief even further.
Context of mismanagement
The first reported clergy sex abuse stories, dating back in NCR to 1985, focused on the misconduct of priests who had been taken to court by parents of molested children -- parents who had gone to church officials, but received no solace. Instead, what they received from church officials was denial and counter accusation.
Almost from the beginning of the coverage of these trials, it was clear the clergy sex abuse story had two consistent components: the abusing priest and the cover-up by the bishop.
The story grew as more survivors of abuse came forward. What soon became evident was that this was not primarily a story of wayward priests, but of an uncannily consistent pattern by individual bishops. In nearly every instance, bishops, faced with accusations of child abuse, denied them, even as they shuffled priests to new parishes, even as they covered up their own actions.
The story was first flushed out in the United States and soon across Canada. By the year 2000, sex abuse accusations were turning up across the globe. In the United States, the scandal flared anew in 2002 when a judge released thousands of pages of documents dealing with the sex abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese. Suddenly, ordinary Catholics had access to the patterns involved in the cover-up and to the unfiltered language of memos and legal depositions and letters that outlined how church officials sought to protect perpetrators and marginalize their victims. All at once, the public outrage was commensurate with the hierarchy's outrageous behavior. The story would repeat itself around the country: Wherever documents were released or legal authorities conducted investigations, the depth of clerical depravity and the extent of hierarchical cover-up were far greater than previously acknowledged by church authorities.
Knowing they had an unprecedented crisis of credibility and facing potential multibillion-dollar liability, the U.S. bishops met in Dallas in June 2002. The whole world, represented by more than 800 members of the press, was watching.
There the prelates unveiled what came to be a "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People." It was intended to protect children from molestation, establishing a "one strike and you're out" policy for offending priests. It did nothing, however, to hold accountable individual bishops who engineered the cover-up.
By early 2001, responsibility for managing the church's response to the ongoing crisis was delegated to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Ratzinger. The Vatican, by then, viewed the crisis as beyond the boundaries of any one national church.
Crisis crosses borders
In the last decade the story has not gone away. Rather it has continuously reared its head in nation after nation, especially in those countries with a free press and independent judicial system. A dominant characteristic of this story is that where and when it has emerged it has done so without the aid of church hierarchy. To the contrary, it has taken lawsuit after lawsuit, investigative report after investigative report, to bring this horrendous story to necessary light.
Another part of the pattern of this dispiriting tale is that church officials have never been in front of the story. Always late, always responding, and, therefore, at every step of the way losing credibility. This seemed to be the case once again with Benedict's pastoral letter to Irish Catholics.
By the time he issued the letter, the story had moved to his native country, Germany, and had touched him personally. In the past two months, there have been more than 250 accusations of sex abuse in Germany. From the German Catholic viewpoint, the pope's failure to mention anything about these abuse cases has pained them deeply and added to suspicions that the former archbishop of Munich has lost touch with his people.
Inexorably, a story that began with reports on trials in a few U.S. cities a quarter century back has now moved up the Catholic institutional ladder -- from priests to bishops to national bishops' conferences and to the Vatican itself. This last step is the one we see emerging this month. The new focus is unlikely to end anytime soon.
Time for answers
The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?
The questions arise not only about his conduct in Munich, but also, based also as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A March 25 Times story [3], citing information from bishops in the United States, reported that the Vatican had failed to take action against a priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school from 1950 to 1974. Correspondence reportedly obtained by the paper showed requests for the defrocking of the priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, going directly from U.S. bishops to Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state. No action was taken against Murphy.
Like it or not, this new focus on the pope and his actions as an archbishop and Vatican official fits the distressing logic of this scandal. For those who have followed this tragedy over the years, the whole episode seems familiar: accusation, revelation, denial and obfuscation, with no bishop held accountable for actions taken on their watch. Yes, there is a depressing madness to this story. Time after time, this is a story of institutional failure of the deepest kind, a failure to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a failure to put compassion ahead of institutional decisions aimed at short-term benefits and avoiding public scandal.
The strategies employed so far -- taking the legal path, obscuring the truth, and doing everything possible to protect perpetrators as well as the church's reputation and treasury -- have failed miserably.
We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history. How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come.
It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.
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Could Durant possibly be showing us some humor?
"Rodrigo (the future Alexander VI) had the additional handicap of being carelessly candid about his mistresses. However, Calixtus gave him the most lucrative post at the papal court – that of vice chancellor.
Jean
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The current Papal crisis............
Today on the news report from Rome, a reporter asked a man in Vatican square about the current reports of child sexual abuse and cover up within the church.
He said, 'We are all human, it is about sinners and forgiveness.'
No, it is not.
It is about crimes and punishment.
Emily
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Exchange between Justin and me.
Have you seen the "reply" button at the top as well as the bottom?
----- Original Message -----
From: Justin B Fash
To: Robert Iadeluca
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 5:50 PM
Subject: Re: Robby here
I don't blame you for being uncertain but yes, it was from me. There is no reply link available on the posting chain. So I can't bring up a posting area. Post Number 899 is the last one up.
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From: Robert Iadeluca <rbiallok@earthlink.net>
To: justinfash@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Tue, March 30, 2010 3:14:13 AM
Subject: Robby here
Justin:
I received an email saying you were missing a reply button and asking if I could help. I don't know if was indeed from you.
Robby
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Justin: I have emailed you a suggestion.
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I was a Boy Scout, a Scoutmaster, and from 1950 to 1963 was a career Scout Executive so God forbid I should compare this situation with that of the present Pope and past popes. Do you folks here see a similarity or not?
Boy Scouts Open Defense in Oregon $25 Million Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boy Scouts Open Defense in Oregon $25 Million Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:03 p.m. ET
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Attorneys for the Boy Scouts of America have begun their defense of a $25 million lawsuit filed by an Oregon man who was sexually abused decades ago.
The 37-year-old victim was molested in the early 1980s by assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes, who was convicted three times of molesting boys and provided a videotaped deposition in which he acknowledged assaulting the victim.
The trial on the lawsuit began two weeks ago. It claims Boy Scout leaders knew Dykes had been convicted but allowed him to continue Scouting activities.
The case hinges partly on an extensive file the Boy Scouts kept between 1966 to 1984 on suspected molesters among its adult volunteers.
Attorneys for the Boy Scouts say the documents protected children by helping leaders weed out sex offenders.
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Pat and Robby: All seems to be well. I thought I was permanently logged in but may not have been. However, I changed the indicators to show permanent logging. The reply button has returned. Thank You one and all.
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Brian: I have tried to use the technique you suggest for address files but have run into a problem. The zzzzzz's work ok but the 000000's are not acceptable in an alpha oriented list. Do you have a solution?
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Justin - - - Try !000000 - - - it should work.
(Does not have to be red).
Brian.
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Testing. Testing. The administration of this site thinks I am a guest. I post and they say no. What a nuisance.
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The Boy Scouts may have a list of dangerous leaders but unless they dismiss leaders who have been convicted of a crime the list is useless. One who has once tasted the pleasures of silk and young boys, as Elegabalus tasted them, will find it hard to stop the practice. Molesting children is certainly a crime. It may also be a sin but the clergy have never found that to be a deterrent. Benedict has had a list in fact he was the controlling element in the use of the list for many years. It is ridiculous for him to deny knowledge of cases of abuse. He did not govern in a vacuum. He governed with knowledge. That's why he is Pope today. He was a guy who knew what he was doing and he did it well. In this case that means he buried the ugly thing. But in any western country that would be a crime. In a Middle Eastern country They would have his head. We might put him in jail. But at home in the Vatican, he decides what happens to him.
It is hard to understand how he can be brought to justice. He is the controlling figure in a sovereign state. This is a question of morals and the Pope in infallible in handling questions of faith and morals.
There is more here however, for public opinion or rather parish opinion may very well cause the pope to take his forty lashes. I don't know of any Pope who has resigned. Can any of you recall one who has done that. Well, I suppose that during the period of multiple pontiffs there may have been a resignation. But the assumption would be that the resigning Pope was not and never had been Pope. It will be interesting.
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Thank you Brian. It worked.
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Any reaction to Post 897?
Robby
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How can one not react to 897? The Church is poking us in the eye with a stick and they still think they can get away with it.
My concern is that the leadership covers it up. It is a sin for them and they must feel it but the message they send is that sin is ok if one doesn't talk about it. The actual sex involved is nothing. Confession seems to make it all well again.
We are seeing only a small part of the overall hoax. The 13 year old male child goes to confession and tells his tale of a little masturbation. The priest say's, "You must not do that. It is a sin. Say you are sorry and then say the Confiteor. Your penance is ..." The next week the boy is back with the same story. Now, the priest knows he has a live one out there. Next step is a little contrived hanky panky. Before one knows what has happened the boy has a partner who can show him some new tricks. Ain't life grand?
If the boy is smart he will know he's been had. But that happens rarely. Many boys turn into grown men and never recognize the nature of the hoax and for some reason the whole overall hoax never occurs to them either.
I attended a funeral the other day for a 55 year old man who was a close friend for many years. He was Catholic. The priest came, recited a few prayers, mispronounced the man's name, nodded to the bereaved, read a few prayers at the grave and left. Somebody slipped him a few bucks and he disappeared. Nothing personal,was said. He said the things that have been said a million times before by priests, did not know the deceased, did not even get his name right. His job done he received his money and took off. We accept this hoax and many of us would not know what to do without it.
It's hard to blame the clergy for being human. They want sex too in spite of the celibacy oaths. I blame the parishioners. They perpetuate the hoax by encouraging these charlatans to take them for all they are worth. They do it to themselves. Too bad.
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Justin, your good sensible post and others you have written here should be tacked to the churches door all over the world.
Too bad that a large portion of the population does not want facts or realism. They prefer fiction and fairytales.
As for the resignation of Popes.....this from Wikipedia....
Precedents
In 1045, Pope Benedict IX agreed, for financial advantage, to resign the papacy. Pope Gregory VI, who to rid the Church of the scandalous Benedict IX had persuaded him to resign and became his successor, himself resigned in 1046 because the arrangement he had entered into was considered simoniacal; that is, to have been paid for. His successor, Pope Clement II, died in 1047 and Benedict IX became Pope again.
The best known example of the resignation of a Pope is that of Pope Celestine V in 1294. After only five months of pontificate, he issued a solemn decree declaring it permissible for a Pope to resign, and then solemnly resigned. He lived two more years as a hermit and has been canonized. The papal decree that he issued ended any doubt among canonists about the possibility of a valid papal resignation.
The last Pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII (1406-1415), who did so to end the Western Schism, which had reached the point when there were three claimants to the papal throne, Roman Pope Gregory XII, Avignon Pope Benedict XIII, and Antipope John XXIII. Before resigning he formally convened the already existing Council of Constance and authorized it to elect his successor.
Since Pope Benedict's namesake sold his office, it's a sure bet that today's Benedict could get more. He doesn't seem like the 'resigning' type. Seller maybe, but not resign.
Perhaps like Pope Calixtus he has some nephews that need a job. Can anyone imagine a 23, 24, and 25 year old starting at the top with their mistresses in tow at the Vatican. Calixtus wanted allies in the cardinals, he cared about power and keeping it, not about the church.
Durant warns us that more 'poopery' is to come from the Popes with nepotism rising after Calixtus.
Emily
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Sin or a crime? - - -
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/sin-or-crime.html#more (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/sin-or-crime.html#more)
Brian.
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Brian: Thank you for the confirming opinion. The Atlantic adds another dimension when it observes that these priests are victims of arrested sexual development. They are fourteen years of age sexually and are caught in a vortex of solo sex and pornography. It is no wonder they relate to fourteen year old boys. Like fourteen year old boys they feel more comfortable with their buddies than with girls or women. What do psychologists say about the mental state of priests who engage and seek engagement with boys and not with women or girls? Do they see it as the Atlantic sees it? Have the journals covered this question?
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I remember a British novel (can't remember which one) that casually threw in jokes about the priest and "his choirboy", as if it was an accepted thing. And a funny one.
also casual comments about headmasters or senior boys in boys school, leaving the impresion that it's taken for granted that the young boys will e molested, and grow to molest in their turn.
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Going all the way back to the start of civilization, how is this for one way to measure the "Story of Civilization?"
Slightly Used
By ROB WALKER
In each episode of the fascinating BBC Radio 4 series “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, uses one item from that institution’s collection as a jumping-off point to discuss humanity’s long relationship with made things. The journey starts, as you would expect, with something useful: a “stone chopping tool,” believed to be about 1.8 million years old, suggests the dawning of a “relationship between humans and the things they create, which is both a love affair and a dependency,” MacGregor says. “From this point on, we can’t survive without the things we make.”
For some reason this reminded me of a product that I encountered recently on a trend blog: a line of axes from the Best Made Company. These are lovely objects, remarkable for the colorful painted patterns on the handles. Each model has a name (“Gray Scale,” “Palimpsest” ) and costs $200 to $500. A predictable thought crossed my mind: how funny, how absurd, that the cutting tool, the ur-thing of functionality, has evolved into a premium-priced stylish object that seems more suitable for display than for use. But after listening to the first 30 episodes of the radio series (it starts up again in May), which bring the story up to about 300 B.C., I’ve had second thoughts about that glib analysis.
It’s striking how many of the objects discussed on the series are really ornamental items or decorated renditions of functional objects in versions clearly meant to serve a symbolic purpose only: an exquisitely impractical gold cape from more than 3,500 years ago; an elaborate bronze bell from fifth-century-B.C. China; a statue of a Mayan corn god; a representation of two swimming reindeer sculptured from a mammoth tusk during the last Ice Age. Clearly, humans did not need to wait for the Industrial Revolution or late-stage capitalism to begin coveting useless stuff.
One episode deals with an actual ax, called the Olduvai hand ax, from roughly 1.2 million years ago. Surprisingly, MacGregor produces Sir James Dyson, the vacuum guy, to weigh in on this object, and even more surprisingly, Dyson is pretty dismissive. Dyson points out that the Olduvai ax is rather big for a human hand and sharp on all sides, which isn’t practical at all. In fact, it seems more like a “show object,” he argues. “I don’t believe it has any intent — serious intent — behind it.” It sounds as if he’s on the verge of presenting the new Dyson Hand Ax, but then MacGregor’s voice comes on to sweep away doubts and assure us that “of course it is still a practical object.” (And since axes just like this one were used for the next million years or so, let’s just concede it was a very successful design.)
There’s no debate, though, over the nonfunctional nature of yet another ax in the series. Found near modern Canterbury, it is about 6,000 years old and made of polished jade that remains smooth, glossy and unblemished. The blade is sharp; it seems brand new, unused and, indeed, was never meant to be used. It could have functioned as a status marker, a raw thing of beauty or a powerful gift, MacGregor suggests, comparing it to a contemporary luxury watch and a “supreme object of desire.”
The program also notes that such axes are often discovered in burial sites — and this touches on a theme that has quietly recurred throughout the series so far. While our ancestors made a lot of stuff they didn’t need in order to survive in the day-to-day world, much of it did seem to have a kind of function that transcended that context. You and I might see it as useless to try to influence crop yields with statuary or your fate in some afterlife with a really pretty ax. But our ancestors probably saw these objects as being not only visually appealing but also having use-value beyond earthly measure.
The Canterbury hand ax was made from jade from the Italian Alps, suggesting that the fulfillment of object desire created complex trade networks over considerable geography. But the fascinating thing is that archaeologists have determined it was made from a hunk of jade near the top of a mountain — even though an equally beautiful ax could have been made from more accessible material at the base. Why? Possibly, MacGregor says, because the higher-up jade was closer to heaven, the celestial world. This makes sense only by way of a firm belief that such material is, by virtue of this fact alone, intrinsically better than identical material that happens to be easier to get at.
And so it is that history is deduced from objects: the beliefs of a culture reside in that jade, or so our archaeologists and historians believe as they scrutinize the material of a distant time. You can’t help wondering about some experts in the future examining trace remains of a pristine Best Made ax, smartly decorated, never used. Will such a thing tell a story about just what it was that we worshiped?
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A friend and i were discussing the multiple stories of pediphilia in the news: priests, boy scouts, a man in suburban Phila. I recalled that i have had a major change in my beliefs about whether people are basically good or evil. In my philosphy course in college, Dr Kaluger asked us that question, as i suppose he did every Philosophy 101 class, every semester. At the time i responded that there are evil people, but i tho't most people were basically good, as i assume, every class, every semester concluded - we being young and optimistic souls.
After decades of studying history and now adding 24/7 news channels who have to fill that time and want to fill it w/ excitment/adventure/the "abnormal," I now conclude that human beings largely lean toward evil. There is a broad spectrum and many people are good much of the time, but there is a much larger group who lean, in small ways or large ways, toward evil, even toward being despicable! I'm concluding that human beings have to work hard at being good, rather than the at being bad.......... at the same time, i, of course, think that most of the people that I associate w/ are, most of the time and in most ways, good people............lol..............jean
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beliefs about whether people are basically good or evil
Jean - - - You have opened up a can of worms here.
"How can activity be good or wicked? That which is performed with good intention is
good; and that which is performed with evil intention is wicked.... "
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
http://www.unification.net/ws/theme058.htm (http://www.unification.net/ws/theme058.htm)
Brian.
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Jean - - - You have opened up a can of worms here. - "How can activity be good or wicked?..."
You are right Brian, a can of worms indeed. It sounds very Plato-ish to me. As I recall, my encounters with Plato's Dialogs made my head spin. I've started reading your link, but will have to finish it tomorrow.
A thought about intentions: I had someone once tell me that it didn't matter what my intentions are/were, but how the recipient interprets the action. I don't remember the incident, but I did or said something with one intention and he took it another way entirely.
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We look at earlier civilizations and see their tools and marvel that these ancient people were able to survive at all. A millennium or two from now archeologists may uncover some of the tools we use and wonder how we were able to survive at all. Things had to be plugged in to work or man had to use his own power to strike things. Imagine that. No one had any idea what the other fellow was thinking unless the words were spoken. My, my, how primitive they were in the year 2000.
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I suspect there is good and evil in each of us and given the occasion we will apply the appropriate talent. Many times, I think, we do evil while thinking it is a good thing. Something that may be good for me may not necessarily be good for others who are on the receiving end. That means evil is a question perspective. Israel builds a wall to ensure peace in the homeland but the wall keeps Palestinians from reaching jobs in Israel which results in women and children going hungry.
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Hence the expression "One man's meat is another man's poison."
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As I pause to think about the comments here regarding the popes of the past and the present, and as I think about other world figures who hold responsibility, there comes to mind the following fable.
The Emperor’s New Suit
by
Hans Christian Andersen
(1837)
Many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed. He did not care for his soldiers, and the theatre did not amuse him; the only thing, in fact, he thought anything of was to drive out and show a new suit of clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day; and as one would say of a king “He is in his cabinet,” so one could say of him, “The emperor is in his dressing-room.”
The great city where he resided was very gay; every day many strangers from all parts of the globe arrived. One day two swindlers came to this city; they made people believe that they were weavers, and declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined. Their colours and patterns, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.
“That must be wonderful cloth,” thought the emperor. “If I were to be dressed in a suit made of this cloth I should be able to find out which men in my empire were unfit for their places, and I could distinguish the clever from the stupid. I must have this cloth woven for me without delay.” And he gave a large sum of money to the swindlers, in advance, that they should set to work without any loss of time. They set up two looms, and pretended to be very hard at work, but they did nothing whatever on the looms. They asked for the finest silk and the most precious gold-cloth; all they got they did away with, and worked at the empty looms till late at night.
“I should very much like to know how they are getting on with the cloth,” thought the emperor. But he felt rather uneasy when he remembered that he who was not fit for his office could not see it. Personally, he was of opinion that he had nothing to fear, yet he thought it advisable to send somebody else first to see how matters stood. Everybody in the town knew what a remarkable quality the stuff possessed, and all were anxious to see how bad or stupid their neighbours were.
“I shall send my honest old minister to the weavers,” thought the emperor. “He can judge best how the stuff looks, for he is intelligent, and nobody understands his office better than he.”
The good old minister went into the room where the swindlers sat before the empty looms. “Heaven preserve us!” he thought, and opened his eyes wide, “I cannot see anything at all,” but he did not say so. Both swindlers requested him to come near, and asked him if he did not admire the exquisite pattern and the beautiful colours, pointing to the empty looms. The poor old minister tried his very best, but he could see nothing, for there was nothing to be seen. “Oh dear,” he thought, “can I be so stupid? I should never have thought so, and nobody must know it! Is it possible that I am not fit for my office? No, no, I cannot say that I was unable to see the cloth.”
“Now, have you got nothing to say?” said one of the swindlers, while he pretended to be busily weaving.
“Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful,” replied the old minister looking through his glasses. “What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.”
“We are pleased to hear that,” said the two weavers, and described to him the colours and explained the curious pattern. The old minister listened attentively, that he might relate to the emperor what they said; and so he did.
Now the swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms.
Soon afterwards the emperor sent another honest courtier to the weavers to see how they were getting on, and if the cloth was nearly finished. Like the old minister, he looked and looked but could see nothing, as there was nothing to be seen.
“Is it not a beautiful piece of cloth?” asked the two swindlers, showing and explaining the magnificent pattern, which, however, did not exist.
“I am not stupid,” said the man. “It is therefore my good appointment for which I am not fit. It is very strange, but I must not let any one know it;” and he praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. “It is very excellent,” he said to the emperor.
Everybody in the whole town talked about the precious cloth. At last the emperor wished to see it himself, while it was still on the loom. With a number of courtiers, including the two who had already been there, he went to the two clever swindlers, who now worked as hard as they could, but without using any thread.
“Is it not magnificent?” said the two old statesmen who had been there before. “Your Majesty must admire the colours and the pattern.” And then they pointed to the empty looms, for they imagined the others could see the cloth.
“What is this?” thought the emperor, “I do not see anything at all. That is terrible! Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would indeed be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me.”
“Really,” he said, turning to the weavers, “your cloth has our most gracious approval;” and nodding contentedly he looked at the empty loom, for he did not like to say that he saw nothing. All his attendants, who were with him, looked and looked, and although they could not see anything more than the others, they said, like the emperor, “It is very beautiful.” And all advised him to wear the new magnificent clothes at a great procession which was soon to take place. “It is magnificent, beautiful, excellent,” one heard them say; everybody seemed to be delighted, and the emperor appointed the two swindlers “Imperial Court weavers.”
The whole night previous to the day on which the procession was to take place, the swindlers pretended to work, and burned more than sixteen candles. People should see that they were busy to finish the emperor’s new suit. They pretended to take the cloth from the loom, and worked about in the air with big scissors, and sewed with needles without thread, and said at last: “The emperor’s new suit is ready now.”
The emperor and all his barons then came to the hall; the swindlers held their arms up as if they held something in their hands and said: “These are the trousers!” “This is the coat!” and “Here is the cloak!” and so on. “They are all as light as a cobweb, and one must feel as if one had nothing at all upon the body; but that is just the beauty of them.”
“Indeed!” said all the courtiers; but they could not see anything, for there was nothing to be seen.
“Does it please your Majesty now to graciously undress,” said the swindlers, “that we may assist your Majesty in putting on the new suit before the large looking-glass?”
The emperor undressed, and the swindlers pretended to put the new suit upon him, one piece after another; and the emperor looked at himself in the glass from every side.
“How well they look! How well they fit!” said all. “What a beautiful pattern! What fine colours! That is a magnificent suit of clothes!”
The master of the ceremonies announced that the bearers of the canopy, which was to be carried in the procession, were ready.
“I am ready,” said the emperor. “Does not my suit fit me marvellously?” Then he turned once more to the looking-glass, that people should think he admired his garments.
The chamberlains, who were to carry the train, stretched their hands to the ground as if they lifted up a train, and pretended to hold something in their hands; they did not like people to know that they could not see anything.
The emperor marched in the procession under the beautiful canopy, and all who saw him in the street and out of the windows exclaimed: “Indeed, the emperor’s new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!” Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing, for then he would have been unfit for his office or too stupid. Never emperor’s clothes were more admired.
“But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. “Good heavens! listen to the voice of an innocent child,” said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.” And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.
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In the papers this morning there is a story about secrecy in the Papacy. It seems the Vatican has a tendency to hold clerical crimes secret and to try accused clerics in Church courts thinking that should be sufficient. They see clerical crime as an issue of jurisdiction. This is the very issue over which Henry ll of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, quarreled so many centuries ago. It resulted, you may recall, in the murder of Becket. Becket had refused to turn over to civilian authorities a priest who was alleged to have murdered a lay person.
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Just catching up. The article that Robby posted a while bach (#916?) raises a lot of points to think about.
"Clearly, humans did not need to wait for the Industrial Revolution or late-stage capitalism to begin coveting useless stuff".
It made me think about what things people make. They make things to stay alive, but even from very early they make things to satisfy other needs: beauty, religion, status.
Max Weber, the German sociologist, said that all societies had two sides: first came a need to stay alive, but a life spent staying alive was meaningless because it always failed. So the other side was a need to make life meaningless in the face of death. Among the things that people (and society) do to make life meaningful are those listed above: creating beauty which will outlast them, creating religions to make life make sense, status: a sense of "who you are" that is larger than yourself and can be passed down to chidren.
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Joan: Attributed to Max Weber is the thought that among the things people make, we find religions created to help life make sense. Is that what religion is all about? ...making sense of life. Is that why we lean so heavily upon the supernatural? I think rather we invent religions to make sense of death. It is the end of life and fear of the unknown that drives us to imagine what life might be like after this life as we know it ends. I don't think it is inquisitiveness about life and the meaning of life ( as so many others think) that is the source for the complex inventions of religion. I think it is fear that drives one to explain death and life after death. It is not life that must make sense but death. What do you think? Is that explanation closer to reality than Weber's?
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Perhaps.
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Justin you are right in a sense. Humans, I believe, have a fundamental fear of the unknown, whether it be Death or some natural phenomena. So, we need to explain both life events and death to assuage that fear. Max Weber is not a philosopher I have studied, BTW, so I can't speak to his beliefs.
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Joan: Alright, so it not mathematics.
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Fryabee. I agree. Unexplained natural phenomena is also a cause of fear that can be placed in the hands of a benevolent God or at least a God who can be persuaded to be good to his subjects by sacrifice and demonstrations of love and admiration.
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For those of us who were together as we discussed Durant's first volume, "Our Oriental Heritage."
In Syria, a Prologue for Cities
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Archaeologists have embarked on excavations in northern Syria expected to widen and deepen understanding of a prehistoric culture in Mesopotamia that set the stage for the rise of the world’s first cities and states and the invention of writing.
In two seasons of preliminary surveying and digging at the site known as Tell Zeidan, American and Syrian investigators have already uncovered a tantalizing sampling of artifacts from what had been a robust pre-urban settlement on the upper Euphrates River. People occupied the site for two millenniums, until 4000 B.C. — a little-known but fateful period of human cultural evolution.
Scholars of antiquity say that Zeidan should reveal insights into life in a time called the Ubaid period, 5500 to 4000 B.C. In those poorly studied centuries, irrigation agriculture became widespread, long-distance trade grew in influence socially and economically, powerful political leaders came to the fore and communities gradually divided into social classes of wealthy elites and poorer commoners.
Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, a leader of the excavations at Zeidan, said the site’s northern location promised to enrich knowledge of the Ubaid culture’s influence far from where the first urban centers eventually flourished in the lower Tigris and Euphrates Valley. The new explorations, he said, are planned to be the most comprehensive yet at a large Ubaid settlement, possibly yielding discoveries for decades.
“I figure I’m going to be working there till I retire,” said Dr. Stein, who is 54.
There are several reasons for excitement over the Zeidan excavations. Warfare and ensuing unstable conditions have locked archaeologists out of Iraq and its prime sites of Mesopotamian antiquity. So they have redoubled research in the upper river valleys, across the border in Syria and southern Turkey. And Zeidan is readily accessible. Having never been built upon by subsequent cultures, it is free of any overburden of ruins to thwart excavators.
Above all, a driving ambition of archaeologists always is to dig beneath the known past for more than glimpses of the little known.
For almost two centuries, the glory went to expeditions unearthing the houses and temples, granaries and workshops of earliest urban centers like Uruk, seat of the legendary Gilgamesh, and the later splendors of Ur and Nineveh. The challenge was to decipher the clay tablets of a literate civilization with beginnings in what is known as the Uruk period, 4000 to 3200 B.C.
Uruk remains overshadowed the traces of Ubaid cultures, the region’s earliest known complex society. Only a handful of ruins — at Ubaid, Eridu and Oueili in southern Mesopotamia and Tepe Gawra, in the north near Mosul, Iraq — had produced at best a sketchy picture of these older cultures. A few Ubaid sites in northern Syria were either too small to be revealing or virtually inaccessible under other ruins.
A decade ago, Richard L. Zettler, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist with extensive experience in Syria, said, “Our real focus now should not be on the Uruk period, but the Ubaid.”
Last week, Dr. Zettler, who is not associated with the Chicago team but has visited the site, said that Zeidan preserves artifacts over a long sequence of Ubaid culture at a junction of major trade routes. “We should see the transition as the Ubaid spread from the south up to farming regions in the north,” he said.
Guillermo Algaze, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, and an authority on early urbanism in the Middle East not involved in new research, said recently that Zeidan “has the potential to revolutionize current interpretations of how civilization in the Near East came about.”
Tell Zeidan is a two-hour drive southeast of Aleppo and three miles from the modern town of Raqqa. Muhammad Sarhan, a curator of the Raqqa Museum, is co-director, with Dr. Stein, of the excavations, formally known as the Joint Syrian-American Archaeological Research Project at Tell Zeidan.
The site consists of three large mounds on the east bank of the Balikh River, just north of its confluence with the Euphrates. The mounds, the tallest being 50 feet high, enclose ruins of a lower town. Buried remains and a scattering of ceramics on the surface extend over an area of 31 acres, which makes this probably larger than any other known Ubaid community.
It would seem that the mounds had long stood on the semi-arid landscape as an open invitation for archaeologists to stop and dig. A few stopped. The American archaeologist William F. Albright identified the place in 1926. The British archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, husband of the mystery writer Agatha Christie, was intrigued and made a brief survey in the 1930s. A Dutch team led by Maurits van Loon took an interest in 1983, finding that the site appeared to date to the Ubaid period. A German group asked the Syrians for permission to excavate but was turned down.
Finally, after initial visits to Zeidan, Dr. Stein said the Syrian government “encouraged me to submit an application” to dig. Why the change?
“I was incredibly thrilled, but can only speculate on what their reasons were,” Dr. Stein said in a recent interview, referring to the Syrian decision. “Perhaps they were waiting for the right team to come along. Our institute had worked in Syria for something like 80 years, and we were interested in a long-term commitment. We also pointed out that the site was endangered from agricultural development along its edges. Parts of the site had already been bulldozed for fields and a canal.”
In the summers of 2008 and 2009, Dr. Stein directed mapping of the Zeidan ruins and digging exploratory trenches. He said the initial findings confirmed this to be a “proto-urban community” in the Ubaid period, most likely the site of a prominent temple.
A description and interpretation of the discoveries so far was published in the Oriental Institute’s recent annual report, followed by an announcement this week by the University of Chicago. The international excavation team, supported by the National Science Foundation in the United States, is to resume fieldwork in July.
Four distinct phases of occupation have been identified at Zeidan. A simpler culture known as the Halaf is found in the bottom sediments, well-preserved Ubaid material in the middle and two layers of late Copper Age remains on top. From the evidence so far, the transitions between periods seemed to have been peaceful.
Archaeologists have turned up remains of house floors with hearths, fragments of mudbrick house walls, painted Ubaid pottery and sections of larger walls, possibly part of fortifications or monumental public architecture. The ceramic styles and radiocarbon tests date the wall to about 5000 B.C.
One of the most telling finds was a stone seal depicting a deer, presumably used to stamp a mark on goods to identify ownership in a time before writing. About 2-by 2- 1/2 inches, the seal is unusually large and carved from a red stone not native to the area. In fact, archaeologists said, it was similar in design to a seal found 185 miles to the east, at Tepe Gawra, near Mosul.
To archaeologists, a seal is not just a seal. Dr. Zettler said it signifies that “somebody has the authority to restrict access to things — to close and seal jars, bags, doors — and so once you have these seals you must have had social stratification.”
The existence of elaborate seals with near-identical motifs at such widely distant sites, Dr. Stein said, “suggests that in this period, high-ranking elites were assuming leadership positions across a very broad region, and those dispersed elites shared a common set of symbols and perhaps even a common ideology of superior social status.”
Other artifacts attest to the culture’s shift from self-sufficient village life to specialized craft production dependent on trade and capable of acquiring luxury goods, the archaeologists reported. Such a transition is assumed to have required some administrative structure and produced a wealthy class. The expedition will be searching for remains of temples and imposing public buildings as confirmation of these political and social changes.
In what appears to be the site’s industrial area, archaeologists uncovered eight large kilns for firing pottery, one of the most ubiquitous Ubaid commodities over wide trading areas. They found blades made from the high-quality volcanic glass obsidian. An abundance of obsidian chips showed that the blades were produced at the site, and the material’s color and chemical composition indicated that it came from mines in what is now Turkey.
“We found flint sickle blades everywhere,” Dr. Stein said, noting that they had a glossy sheen “where they had been polished by the silica in the stems of wheat that they were used to harvest.”
Zeidan also had a smelting industry for making copper tools, the most advanced technology of the fifth millennium B.C. The people presumably reached as far as 250 miles away to trade for the nearest copper ore, at sources around modern-day Diyarbakir, Turkey. Getting the ore home was no easy task. In a time before the wheel or domesticated donkeys, people had to bear the heavy burden on their backs.
A site like Tell Zeidan, Dr. Zettler said, is “telling us that the Uruk cities didn’t come out of nowhere, they evolved from foundations laid in the Ubaid period.”
Until recently, Dr. Algaze said, “accidents of data recovery” had led scholars to think the origin of cities and states in Mesopotamia was “a fairly abrupt occurrence in the fourth millennium that as concentrated in what is southern Iraq.”
The southern cities may have been larger and more enduring, he said, but increasing exploration on the Mesopotamian periphery, especially the spread of trade and technology among interacting Ubaid cultures, suggests that “the seed of urban civilization” had been planted well before 4000 B.C.
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Isn't it wonderful that we keep learning more and more about all periods of history? I frequently say that i'm so glad there are people who want to be engaged in certain occupations - archeologist, primatologists (out there in the forests/jungles w/ all the bugs, etc.) space research, and on and on - ones that i'm not at all interested in pursuing, but so glad that others are. I love reading about their research, just glad i don't have to do it to learn it. ............. jean
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It's wonderful. Here we are just getting used to the Sumerian civilization with Ur and Uruk and their 5000 to six thousand year old artifacts and now an older civilization comes into view-one several millenniums older. The instability in Iraq has had a cultural benefit as a by-product. I look forward to knowledge of older and older civilizations. I think it's just wonderful that we are able to uncover all these past treasures.
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Tel Zeidan could keep us going for a long time. This is an area that really intrigues me because of the pottery and metal crafts. I would love to see pictures of these items and I know I'm going to need maps with large print on them. what sounds like a casual knowledge of the area is completely strange to me. are there referrals, links with some of this material available?
claire
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look what I found under summerian artifacts. there is more but not obviously noted.
http://xfacts.com/ancient/
hope that link works. YEP AND IT IS WONDERFUL THIRTY FIVE IMAGES
claire
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wikipedia has more and more and more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia#Geography
now I know were Mesopotamia is.
claire
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Niiice Claire, thanks for finding those...............jean
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Justin's - - -
5000 to six thousand year old artifacts
brought me to thinking about the controversy between the Evolutionists and the "Others", and I collected a couple of sites for the fun of it : -
(The first is a little slow to load)
The earth is only 5,000 years old - - - http://www.scribd.com/doc/18764301/Is-the-Earth-4600000000-Years-Old-or-Only-2191000-Days-6000-Years-Old (http://www.scribd.com/doc/18764301/Is-the-Earth-4600000000-Years-Old-or-Only-2191000-Days-6000-Years-Old)
The earth is over 4.5 million years old - - -http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/the_earth_is_older_than_6000_years (http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/the_earth_is_older_than_6000_years)
Who says that history is bunk?
Brian.
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Claire; The Sumerian seals are revealing. Thank you. The Egyptian civilization and the Sumerian one are concomitant. The first Egyptian Dynasty occurs about 3100 BCE and the Sumerians were active in that period and for a millennium prior. Their art shown on seals resembles that of the Egyptians. It is royal and human with animals in a narrative form. Some of the figures on the Sumerian seals indicate gods in the same format as used by the Egyptians ie; human figures with animal heads and head dresses. The gods evidently evolved from one civilization to another just as our gods today evolved from Hebrew to Christianity to Islam.
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Brian: It's hard to be tolerant of people who date the earth to fit their peculiar religious ideas and call it scientific measurement. We don't know the age of the earth yet but we are on the trail of it. Our measuring tools are improving as I write. We have artifacts from the paleolithic period dating from 300,000 BCE. We have human skeletal remains dating from much earlier. We are ready to burst the quark in Switzerland this year. The accelerator is up and running and major experiments are about to begin. We can not stop such work because some believer thinks the Bible is the only source of knowledge.
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I am dismayed by the response of the Papacy to the priestly abuse of children and the proximity of the crime to the Holy Father. The closer the finger of guilt draws to Benedict the more they panic. Now Benedict, worried that the victims have put the finger on him, declares himself a victim rather than a perpetrator. He says, people are advocating a hate Catholics message because he is against Gay marriage and abortion. What is the matter with them. The victims are the priests and the children. The papacy is the perpetrator. I sincerely hope the diversion does not work for them. They are ballsy and scared and bound by the chains of tradition.
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it is easy to be impatient with believers of all stripes and especially the catholic ones, but i don't bother anymore. Not anymore than I would bother being impatient with little kids who want to know about Santa Claus etc.
I think this long seemingly endless religious period,, almost a race to me, is beginning to slow down and who knows when it will end. Even seniors like us don't cling so strongly to such believes any more. "this too will pass"
. except for the harm the fearful religious people and heir various modes of defending do, there is no reason to even pay attention.
I just hit 82 and it seems to matter to me how I spend the rest of my life what there is of it. Why waste it Defending against something which is now Becoming irrelevantl. Time is short.
I have to pay taxes and bills my pet hates, and those are relevant. . . all over my desk staring at me. my car And my home are at risk if I don't pay attention. I can get away with ignoring religion.
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and Justin I can understand your outrage when Popes are morally WRONG. I don't' like it when Jews misbehave either even though I'm only a secular one I still feel the identity. the bad things they do belong to me to.
Dr. Carll Wite at iucla art history started with Mesopotamia and the Egyptians with great emphasis beginning with the straigh abstract figures from the OLD KINDOM. which a 2500 or is it older as you suggest at 3100. the middle king dome had roman heads glaring all over thing and then the new one whose days I forget. the Sumerians came early on and were warlike as well as cultured were they bilingual as wikiedia suggests certain language for certain purposes. hmmm.. . is it true? well time for bed. now THAT is relevant.
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good morning .
my USNG e-mails are still reporting after shocks. I don't feel them although there were a couple over five.0
the earth continues to shake and for a while longer so shall we.
claire
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Claire; Most art history folks start with the Willendorf Venus around 25000 BCE and Franco Cave art of 15,000BCE in the Upper Paleolithic era. Then there are the Spanish Marching Warriors dated at about 8000 BCE. The Catal Huyuk culture comes in about 6000BCE with it's artifacts. The early Sumerians come in about 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia and the Egyptians appear in Upper Egypt, above Ehthiopia and Sudan in a similar period. The Tel Zeidan group falls in between Catal Huyuk and the Sumerians in roughly 5000 to 4000 BCE. As you can see we are beginning to fill-in our awareness of the civilizations of the Paleolithic and neolithic periods.
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Justin what an over view of the time. I saved it and I think we should have it in the heading with a colored map showing where we made these findings. .. . .
fascinating. and I want to see all the art connected to them. wha tkind of potter shards did they find. You can tell a lot from very little. except for the working climate I would have liked to dig up old worlds in my youth.
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I never knew the spanish marching warriers so google introduced me --==-- here
tp://facweb.st-agnes.org/home/lcosta/html/Art_Hist/html/marchingwarriors_info.htm
the art history site says it is 7000 bce?? can't get the new figures right withouth christ as a date line.
keep forgeting what it means in words.
now back to look around. it seems to be a class and I couldn't continue to look for other information there. maybe can sign up though.
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Spanish Marching Warriors or Ritualistic Dancers ? - - -
You can see them here : -
http://art.uga.edu/courses/arhi3000/slides/mesolith/gasgorg.html (http://art.uga.edu/courses/arhi3000/slides/mesolith/gasgorg.html)
Brian.
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B.C. B.C.E. and C.E. - - -
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm (http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm)
Brian.
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The Gospels tell us that Jesus was born shortly before the death of Herod. Herod died in 4BCE so we can fix the date of His birth as shortly before 4BCE. Some say as early as 7BCE and others say January to June of 4BCE because H went in July of that year. There are long involved arguments for each date but I am just as happy with either date. There must have been several Yashuas born in that time period. The name was popular- a little like "Smith." Christ, of course, is Greek and stands for Messiah.
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Bryan what a geat site. so many of these forms look modern. beautiful. thank you. claire
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brian: so there is a controversy over which designation to use .bec or others. the site you stgest wants money so I didn't get very far with that screen in the way since I can't afford to sponser a child. but there are OUTIDE LINKS relative to theology there for others who may enjoy them.
claire
another thing. i took forever but I just charged to my credit card my property taxes. they got their fee for service too but WHaT A RELIEF.
no wonder we get confused ,
claire
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Most of the textbooks have been using BCE and CE for about a decade or more..............(i started to say "all of the t-bks" but remembered that Texas may not buy t-bks that use BCE, etc..............sigh.............)
Jean
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Jean: Yes, Texas is a state that seems to go it's own way. They like to think of the US as a Christian Nation and they are in many ways a Christian State. Sam Houston and Steven Austin would roll over in their graves were they aware of the lack of American ideas among contemporary Texans.
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In today's NY Times.
Do Popes Quit?
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
VATICAN CITY — He is elected for life, by a group of elderly men infused with the will of God. People address him as Holy Father, not Mr. President. After bishop of Rome, his second title is vicar of Jesus Christ.
Can a man like this quit his job?
A smattering of voices suggest that Pope Benedict XVI can, and should, as outrage has built in recent weeks over clerical abuses in the Catholic Church. The calls — from some lay Catholics, bloggers, secular publications like the German magazine Der Spiegel and street protesters — have been fueled by reports that laid blame at his doorstep, citing his response both as a bishop long ago in Germany and as a cardinal heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles these cases. In the most recent disclosure, on Friday, the news emerged that in 1985, when Benedict was Cardinal Ratzinger, he signed a letter putting off efforts to defrock a convicted child-molesting priest. He cited the priest’s relative youth but also the good of the church.
Vatican officials and experts who follow the papacy closely dismiss the idea of stepping down. “There is no objective motive to think in terms of resignation, absolutely no motive,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, in an interview before Friday’s disclosure. “It’s a completely unfounded idea.”
Friday’s disclosure is not likely to change that position. The princes of the church — the cardinals who elected Benedict five years ago — have been virulent in their rejection of criticism of the pontiff. Last week, the dean of the cardinals, Angelo Sodano, told the official Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano that it was not Jesus’ fault that Judas betrayed him and not a bishop’s fault if a priest shamed himself. “And certainly the pontiff is not responsible,” said Cardinal Sodano, who referred to church criticism as “petty gossip” before the pope’s Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square — although on Friday, the Vatican spokesman adopted a softer tone in a Vatican Radio address.
There is a more practical reason why Benedict will most likely remain on the throne of Peter, said Alberto Melloni, a professor of church history and the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna. Who in the hierarchy would want an ex-pope sitting around, possibly passing judgment on his successor, possibly attracting a rival faction?
Mr. Melloni offered another, subtler explanation for why the pope would not be leaving. To resign, paradoxically, the pope has to feel in a strong enough position to say, “Of course, God does not need me; he can drive the church with any other type of driver,” Mr. Melloni said. A pope with that kind of confidence probably wouldn’t need his cardinals to defend him so vigorously, which suggests that Benedict may feel insecure, in Mr. Melloni’s interpretation.
If serious evidence of the pope’s involvement in bad decisions emerges, the cardinals might be inclined to soften in their support. In any case, it is possible that the cardinal electors will take a closer look at the record of candidates on abuse issues for the next election.
Most analysts reject the possibility of resignation. “A lot of foreign newspapers are saying it, but the answer is absolutely no,” said Emma Fattorini, a professor of history at the University of Rome. “The church is not a party, a movement, a newspaper, a government.”
Of course, popes have resigned before — the last a mere 595 years ago, when Gregory XII stepped down to heal a schism. Before that, Celestine V, a fiercely ascetic former hermit who wore his temporal power heavily, resigned in 1294 (Dante consigned him to hell for cowardice, some interpreters of the “Inferno” believe).
While it does not apply to Benedict, another reason for papal resignation was widely discussed in the Vatican in the years before John Paul II’s death in 2005. Several cardinals openly raised the possibility in the event John Paul became too ill to govern.
One of those cardinals was Joseph Ratzinger. If John Paul “sees that he absolutely cannot do it anymore, then certainly he will resign,” the cardinal was quoted as saying in the weekly publication of his old archdiocese, back in 2002. Two years later, he gave some insight into his conception of the papacy in an interview with the Italian Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana. “The pope is chosen for life because he is a father, and his paternity goes beyond his function,” he said, paraphrasing Pope Paul VI.
John Paul himself entertained thoughts about resigning. In his last will and testament, he wrote, “Providence has seen fit for me to live in the difficult century that is departing into the past, and now in the year in which I reach my 80s, one needs to ask oneself if it is not the time to repeat with the biblical Simeon, ‘Nunc dimittis.’ ” The Latin was a reference to a Gospel passage in which Simeon says, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”
John Paul was responsible for two recent but fleeting references to papal resignation in official church policy. A revision of the code of canon law issued under him, in 1983, says, “If it happens that the Roman pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.”
In John Paul’s 1996 constitution on papal succession, “Universi Dominici Gregis,” he made a reference to “the death or valid resignation of the pope” as he set limits on the College of Cardinals’ actions after either event. In any case, it might be no surprise that the leader of a worldwide church of one billion people would at least think about throwing in the towel. Pius XII reportedly planned to resign if the Nazis invaded the Vatican, and some believed that Paul VI, weighed down by the office, contemplated the idea, according to “101 Questions and Answers on Popes and the Papacy,” by Christopher M. Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, N.J.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that this pope will resign,” Mr. Bellitto said. “There’s in his mind and the curia’s mind not enough evidence that he did anything wrong. I imagine he thinks, ‘Probably God put me in this position, and it will be up to God to take me out of this position.’ ”
Robby
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PIUS III
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Returning to Durant - -
Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini began his career in 1405 in the town of Corsignano, near Siena, of poor parents with a noble pedigree.
The University of Siena taught him laws. It was not to his taste, for he loved literature, but it gave keenness and order to his mind and prepared him for the tasks of administration and diplomacy. At Florence he studied the humanities under Filelfo and from that time he remained a humanist. At twenty seven he was engaged as secretary by Cardinal Capranica, whom he accompanied to the Council of Basel.
There he fell in with a group hostile to Eugenius IV. For many years thereafter he defended the Conciliar movement against the papal power. For a time he served as secretary to the Antipope Felix V. Perceiving that he hitched his wagon to a falling star, he coaxed a bishop to introduce him to the Emperor Frederick III. Soon he received a post in the royal chancery and in 1442 he accompanied Frederick to Austria. For a while he remained moored.
In those formative years he seemed quite formless – merely a clever climber who had no sturdy principles, no goal but success. He passed from cause to cause without losing his heart and from woman to woman with a gay inconstancy that seemed to him – and to most of his contemporaries – the proper training for the obligations of matrimony. He wrote for a friend a love letter designed to melt the obstinacy of a girl who preferred marriage to fornication. Of his several illegitimate children he sent one to his father, asking him to rear it and confessing that he was “neither holier than David nor wiser than Solomon. The young devil could quote Scripture to his purpose. He wrote a novel to the manner of Boccaccio It was translated into almost every European tongue and plagued him in the days of his sanctity. Though his further advancement seemed to require taking holy orders, he shrank from the step because like Augustine, he doubted his capacity for continence.
He wrote against the celibacy of the clergy.
Should we be surprised at the papacy of today?
Robby
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I don't think the pope should resign over this, but as i said before he should state a clear policy that the behavior is criminal and not to be tolerated.
Celestine V, a fiercely ascetic former hermit who wore his temporal power heavily, resigned in 1294 (Dante consigned him to hell for cowardice, some interpreters of the “Inferno” believe).
Why would cardinals elect such a man to the papacy and why would he have his name in consideration? Can you remove your name from consideration? ................ former hermit? Doesn't that give some hint as his ability to associate w/ all of the people that a pope has to associate with? ....................... ??? ??? ..............jean
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The election process in the college of cardinals is fraught with politics. Sometimes a really good man is available but not seasoned enough for the job. In such a case the college has been known to chose a man who is old and expected to go in a few short years due age or illness. Sometimes they want a man who is not expected to rock the boat- one who can be manipulated by a leading coterie and hence we get hermits etc. Often the college has been fooled. The man chosen as a time filler turns out to be a game changer.
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If I had to name two Popes I admire I think Nicholas V and Pius ll would be high on my list. Pius was a writer. His Tale of Two Lovers is a pleasant little gem. It's not great but it's tantalizing to read. The question raised is the perenial one. Will the protagonist ever make it to the lady's bed?
The man continued to write fiction even after assuming the Papacy. If you google Aeneas Silvio de Piccolomini you will find some of his works. He wrote a novel similar to that of Boccaccio.He had some trouble with the concept of celibacy for he liked women. Who doesn't like women for goodness sakes but ambition ruled in his case and he succumbed to the mitre and the red hat. He wrote pieces against clerical celibacy and he never gave up writing fiction. Some of it is really enjoyable so I encourage you to read his stuff. I'm not at all sure he gave up women either and he certainly agonized over the oath of celibacy. He fathered several illegitimate children before taking the oath.
As Pontiffs go he was head and shoulders above most of them but his interests were Humanist rather than religious. His election occurred because a strong contender was undesirable to the majority. He was a compromise selection. He knew his way around diplomatically and was in fact a good choice though I don't think his electors were entirely happy with him.
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The use of CE and BCE which has been fairly recent and was changed by the Jews because they don't believe in Jesus. They themselves have a calendar that states it starts at the beginning of creation of the universe. To Jews this is the year 5,770 according to their calendar that begins at 1CE (creation era).
This is what the Jewish calendar link says.........
Jews do not generally use the words "A.D." and "B.C." to refer to the years on the civil calendar. "A.D." means "the year of our L-rd," and we do not believe Jesus is the L-rd. Instead, we use the abbreviations C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), which are commonly used by scholars today.
The Jewish calendar is based on moon cycles instead of sun cycles. It used to be calculated by observation. They have only used mathematics since the 4th century. It makes no sense to anyone else, but their standard of a 5,700 year old universe and earth makes no sense either.
The Islamic calendar states that April 10, 2010 is April 25, 1431. I used the conversion calendar from the Institute of Oriental studies at Zurich University for the Islamic date. They begin the world on the year that Mohammed began his pilgrimages. Like their brothers the Jews, Muslims use the moon cycles and begin their new day at sundown.
So should we be using either of these Arabic peoples to tell us what we can use as to our dates and calendar and how we should designate eras. Not unless one has a permanent room at the lunatic asylum.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm
Emily
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I tho't the point of changing from A.D. and B.C. was that we are a global society now and our academics should be thinking in global terms and using terms that everybody in the world can identify with. If we continue to be Western-centric or Christian-centric we leave out alot of world history and many world citizens. I think we've seen that as we read and discuss this one author, even by looking at just "western civilization." Even tho we define western civ as Judeo-Christian history it contains aspects of cultures from around the world. It's a small change in our mind-set and does no harm to us or to our history, but becomes inclusive for others to be comfortable when talking about a major part of world history. ....................jean
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Mabel: I agree with you completely.
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It is clear that while BC and AD have been in common use in the West for several centuries a trend away from these terms toward adoption of BCE and CE has been gaining in recent years. Since the end of WWll we have recognized that the West is only a part of the world and that if we are to play a strong role in the world at large we must be willing to change many of our little conventions to conventions that encompass more of the world.
The Jews have been using Common era and I think Vulgar era for almost two centuries. The scientific community prefers use of BCE and CE to shift it's dating references into a secular context and to use a more universal term.
I see that the College Board History exams uses the terms BCE and CE. It is also interesting that the Style book for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland also recommends use of BCE and CE.
I suppose it's nit picking and maybe irrelevant to point out that the year one is not the year of Christ's birth.
A related but side issue appeared in recent days. Archeologists have found a 1.8 million year skeleton of a transitional person and of course, we have known about Lucy who is somewhat younger, for some years. These two discoveries strongly point to a populated earth that far exceeds the 5700 years the Jews have allotted to it. I personally think it is time the religions of the world admit they know nothing of the origins of the world and of life. If religion is necessary for some folks to feel comfortable in life perhaps it would be profitable for someone to design a religion based upon up to date knowledge of the world and its peoples.
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Mabel
Even tho we define western civ as Judeo-Christian history
Judaism is an Eastern religion. Like Islam it came from the Middle East. Neither of these religions have any connection to Western civilization. Neither does Christianity for that matter. They are all products of the East, not the West.
They are not part of Western history. Europe had Christianity thrust upon them, but they have jettisoned it for the most part, which shows they are way ahead of the U.S. We are still a young country but are headed in the direction of Europe.
The Gregorian calendar is a civil calendar and is the most widely used calendar in the world. My vote would be to keep the calendar since it's the only one that makes sense, and do away with any mention of any religion, by any religious group or their suggestions.
I like BJ and AJ. That would be 'before jack' and 'after jack'. That would befuddle all those religious charlatans who 'don't know jack'.
The definition of 'jack' used in that way would refer to 'knowledge of the natural world'.
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences." ..........Robert Ingersoll
Emily
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You may call BJ and AJ before Jack and after Jack but I'll bet those charlatans would call the abbreviations Before Jesus and After Jesus.
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Pius ll took his name from Virgil's recurrent phrase, " Pius Aeneas". What do you think about that?
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emily what is WESTERN religion that anyone might recognize as such. Jack not withstanding. the Native American Indians have an interesting religion based on the nature of things. Is that what you mean?
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Emily: I agree that the Abrahamic religions are all Eastern in origin. Islam, of course , is still eastern but the Jews and Christians have been a part of western history since Constantine, at least, perhaps since Paul, but more likely since James landed at Compostella in Spain. The Christianity we see today is a far cry from the Christianity of Jerusalem, and the changes one sees have come about as a result of western absorption of the Christian idea. I think "thrust upon them" is a good characterization of what happened but once it was here the process of adaptation led to an entirely different religious concept. The Jerusalem church wanted circumcision as a rite of passage and the thought of breaking bread with gentiles was abhorrent and sinful. The Christianity of Catholicism is and has been against the precepts of the Jerusalem Church since the very beginning. Catholicism is really the church of Paul and the Councils. They think of the earlier version as a Jewish sect.
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Does this stimulate the thinking?
Thine Is the Kingdom
By JON MEACHAM
Skip to next paragraph
CHRISTIANITY
The First Three Thousand Years
By Diarmaid MacCulloch
Illustrated. 1,161 pp. Viking. $45
It is only a brief moment, a seemingly inconclusive exchange in the midst of one of the most significant interviews in human history. In the Gospel of John, Jesus of Nazareth has been arrested and brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Improbably polite, reflective and reluctant to sentence Jesus to death (the historical Pilate was in fact brutal and quick-tempered), Pilate is portrayed as a patient questioner of this charismatic itinerant preacher. “So you are a king?” Pilate asks, and Jesus says: “You say that I am a king. I was born for this, and I came into the world for this: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is committed to the truth listens to my voice.” Then, in what I imagine to be a cynical, world-weary tone, Pilate replies, “What is truth?”
Jesus says nothing in response, and Pilate’s question is left hanging — an open query in the middle of John’s rendering of the Passion. I have always thought of Pilate’s question as a kind of wink from God, a sly aside to the audience that says, in effect, “Be careful of anyone who thinks he has all the answers; only I do.” The search for truth — about the visible and the invisible — is perhaps the most fundamental of human undertakings, ranking close behind the quests for warmth, food and a mate.
With apologies and due respect and affection to my friends Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, that perennial search for an answer to Pilate’s question usually takes religious form. “All men need the gods,” as Homer has it, and nothing since then — not Galileo, not Darwin, not the Enlightenment, nothing — has changed the intrinsic impulse to organize stories and create belief systems that give shape to life and offer a vision of what may lie beyond the grave.
For Christians, the answer to Pilate’s question about truth is the death and Resurrection of Jesus and what those events came to represent for believers. “Came to” is a key point, for the truth as Peter and the apostles saw it on that dark Friday was not the truth as 21st-century Christians see it. The work of discerning — or, depending on your point of view, assigning — meaning to the Passion and the story of the empty tomb was a historical as well as a theological process, as was the construction of the faith.
Christianity’s foundational belief is that Jesus was the Son of God, who died and rose again as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of a fallen world. It seems banal even to note this. But guess who did not know it on that epic morning of Resurrection long ago? Those closest to Jesus, the disciples, who, when told of the empty tomb by the women who followed Jesus, were perplexed: what could this mean? Jesus had not adequately prepared them for the central dramatic action of the new salvation history that was to take shape in the wake of his Passion. Read carefully, the Gospels tell the story of the disciples’ working out what a resurrected Messiah might mean, and the conclusions they drew formed the core of the belief system that became Christianity.
Why the initial uncertainty? Because it is vastly more likely that Jesus’ contemporaries expected his imminent return to earth and the inauguration of the kingdom of God — a time, in first-century Jewish thought, that would be marked, among other things, by a final triumph of Israel over its foes and a general resurrection of the dead. How else to understand, for instance, Jesus’ words in Mark: “I tell you with certainty, some people standing here will not experience death until they see the kingdom of God arrive with power”? Or why else were the Gospels written decades after the Passion? Could it be because Jesus’ followers believed that they were the last generation and did not expect to need documents to pass on to ensuing generations? If Jesus were returning to rule in a new kind of reality, there would be no need for biographies, for he would be here, as he also said in Mark, “with great power and glory.” As the years passed, however, and the kingdom did not come — despite the prayers of the faithful — the early Christians realized they should record what they could in order to capture the stories and traditions in anticipation of a much longer wait. The Gospels that have survived, then, are apologetic documents, composed to inspire and to convince. John is explicit about this, saying he was writing “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so that through believing you may have life in his name.”
A word of disclosure: I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously (if unemotionally), and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.
I mention this because I sense a kind of kinship with Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at Oxford University, who has written a sprawling, sensible and illuminating new book, “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.” A biographer of Thomas Cranmer and the author of an acclaimed history of the Reformation, MacCulloch comes from three generations of Anglican clergymen and himself grew up in a country rectory of which he says, “I have the happiest memories.” He thus treats his subject with respect. “I was brought up in the presence of the Bible, and I remember with affection what it was like to hold a dogmatic position on the statements of Christian belief,” he writes. “I would now describe myself as a candid friend of Christianity. I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence, and I appreciate the solemnity of religious liturgy as a way of confronting these problems.” Then, significantly, MacCulloch adds, “I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of my species.” That puzzle confronts anyone who approaches Christianity with a measure of detachment. The faith, MacCulloch notes, is “a perpetual argument about meaning and reality.”
This is not a widely popular view, for it transforms the “Jesus loves me! This I know / For the Bible tells me so” ethos of Sunday schools and vacation Bible camps into something more complicated and challenging: what was magical is now mysterious. Magic means there is a spell, a formula, to work wonders. Mystery means there is no spell, no formula — only shadow and impenetrability and hope that one day, to borrow a phrase T. S. Eliot borrowed from Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Magic, however, has powerful charms. Not long ago I was with a group of ministers on the East Coast. The conversation turned to critical interpretations of the New Testament. I remarked that I did not see how people could make sense of the Bible if they were taught to think of it as a collection of ancient Associated Press reports. (Cana, Galilee — In a surprise development yesterday at a local wedding, Jesus of Nazareth transformed water into wine. . . .) “That’s your critical reading of the Gospels,” one minister replied, “but in the pulpit I can’t do that.” “Why?” I asked. “Because,” he said, “you can’t mess with Jesus.”
Well. If the power of Jesus — “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” as Peter called him — cannot survive a bit of biblical criticism, then the whole enterprise is rather more rickety than one might have supposed. Still, the objecting cleric’s remark illuminates one of the issues facing not only Christians but the broader world: To what extent should holy books be read and interpreted critically and with a sense of the context in which they were written, rather than taken literally? To later generations of the faithful, what was written in fluctuating circumstances has assumed the status of immutable truth. Otherwise perfectly rational people think of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven on the 40th day after Easter to be as historical an event as the sounding of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. To suggest that such supernatural stories are allegorical can be considered a radical position in even the most liberal precincts of the Christian world. But the Bible was not FedExed from heaven, nor did the Lord God of Hosts send a PDF or a link to Scripture. Properly understood — and MacCulloch’s book is a landmark contribution to that understanding — Christianity cannot be seen as a force beyond history, for it was conceived and is practiced according to historical bounds and within human limitations. Yes, faith requires, in Coleridge’s formulation, a willing suspension of disbelief; I do it myself, all the time. But that is a different thing from the suspension of reason and critical intelligence — faculties that tell us that something is not necessarily the case simply because it is written down somewhere or repeated over and over.
Which brings us to the significance of the history of Christianity, and to the relevance of MacCulloch’s book. The story of how the faith came to be is a vast and complex tale of classical philosophy and Jewish tradition, of fantastical visions and cold calculations, of loving sacrifices and imperial ambitions. It was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a close-run thing: a world religion founded on the brief public ministry, trial and execution of a single Jew in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. In my view, an unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason. John’s Gospel says that “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Perhaps; I do not know. (No one does; as Paul said, we can only see through a glass, darkly.) But I do know this: Short of the end of all things, it is the knowledge of the history of the faith that can make us free from literalism and fundamentalism.
It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and surprisingly accessible volume on the subject than MacCulloch’s. This is not a book to be taken lightly; it is more than 1,100 pages, and its bulk makes it hard to take anyplace at all. Want a refresher on the rise of the papacy? It is here. On Charlemagne and Carolingians? That is here, too. On the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath? Look no farther.
To me the appeal of the book lies in its illuminating explications of things so apparently obvious that they would seem to require no explanation. How many common readers could immediately discuss the etymology and significance of the word “Israel”? It comes from a stranger who wrestled Jacob and found him to be admirably resilient. Hence Jacob was given the name Israel, or “He Who Strives With God.” Or would know that Emmaus, the scene of the risen Jesus’ revelation of himself to two disciples over bread and wine, may not have been an actual village in first-century Judea but rather an allusion to another Emmaus, two centuries before, the site of the first victory of the Maccabees over the enemies of Israel, a place where, in the words of the author of I Maccabees, “all the gentiles will know that there is one who redeems and saves Israel”? Or, in a wonderfully revealing insight of MacCulloch’s, that the “daily bread” for which countless Christians ask in the Lord’s Prayer is not what most people think it is, a humble plea for sustenance. “Daily” is the common translation of the Greek word epiousios, which in fact means “of extra substance” or “for the morrow.” As MacCulloch explains, epiousios “may point to the new time of the coming kingdom: there must be a new provision when God’s people are hungry in this new time — yet the provision for the morrow must come now, because the kingdom is about to arrive.” We are a long way from bedtime prayers here.
So how did Christianity happen? In fulfillment of the book’s provocative subtitle, MacCulloch begins his tale in remote antiquity, with the Greek search for meaning and order, the Jewish experience of a fickle but singular Yahweh and the very practical impact of Rome’s early globalism. The predominant peace forged by the empire made the spread of ideas, including Christian ones, all the easier. Politics mattered enormously, and the faith’s temporal good fortune began even before the early fourth century, when Constantine decided that the Christian God was the patron of his military victories. As a tiny minority in the Roman world, Christians knew they could not choose their friends: an early supporter of Christians at court was Marcia, the emperor Commodus’ mistress and the woman who instigated his assassination. Accommodations with the princes of the world drove the rise of the faith, and the will to both religious and political power corrupted it, too. “For most of its existence, Christianity has been the most intolerant of world faiths,” MacCulloch says, “doing its best to eliminate all competitors, with Judaism a qualified exception.”
Powerful allies were crucial, but so was the Apostle Paul, whose writings make up the oldest sections of the New Testament. Partly because of the expectation of the imminent coming of the kingdom, Christianity, MacCulloch writes, “was not usually going to make a radical challenge to existing social distinctions.” Hence Paul’s explicit support for slavery. “Everyone should remain in the state in which he was called,” Paul wrote, and his Epistle to Philemon was, MacCulloch says, “a Christian foundation document in the justification of slavery.”
The example of Christianity and abolition, though, is ultimately a cheering one. An evolving moral sensibility led to critical interpretations of Scripture that demolished the biblical arguments for slavery. “It took original minds to kick against the authority of sacred Scripture,” MacCulloch writes, but thankfully such original minds were in evidence, and their legacy “was an early form of the modern critical reconsideration of biblical intention and meaning.” The sheer complexity of the story of Christianity is a welcome and needed reminder that religion is fluid, not static.
Questions of meaning — who are we, how shall we live, where are we going? — tend to be framed in theological and philosophical terms. But history matters, too, and historians, MacCulloch says, have a moral task: “They should seek to promote sanity and to curb the rhetoric which breeds fanaticism.” That truth provides at least one answer to Pilate’s eternal query.
Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”
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TH NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL is my source of inormation about the times of jesus and the way Jews at that time buried their dead. It was a two step process in which the corpese was lashed together with linen strips i the simplest oes and in that of jesus, and placced on a shel in a cvelike structure for a year to rot. the entrance blocked with a square or rectangular rock or the most cases but i the one of jesus with a round rock. the women who stayed way during the interrment came afterwardds to wash the corpse nd this is when they found the tomb empty and the speculations began. such imagination. but humans are blessed or cursed as it may be with just that. IMAGINATION.
The second step consisted in gathering the bones and placing then with the others in the family cript or place in the rock so that all might be together. Later they were encarseated in rather small boxes and with the greek influense expected to arise again but all at once on a given DAY. more imagiation and it keeps getting even more elaborate.
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the resurrection: I just thought of something relative to a novel I read of the period that might explain the disappearance of the body. There were beliefs in magic and spirites and possession that would allow for dispensing of them as well. The only way to remove a vengeful spirit from the body of Jesus after his death was to take it from its ledge to be drawn and quartered and burnt.
how is that for imagination?
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Justin is "locked out" again. He can't find his "reply" button.
Robby
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so justin may have is screen sized too large or too small. my reply button gets lost in the text sometimes just turns dark and shows half of it. maybe he should restarthis computer.
cliare
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Emily - i used the term Judeo-Christian as part of a definition of "Western Civilization" as used by academics and historians. We tend to think of the philosophy and culture of "Western Civilizatioin" as growing out of the foundation of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Judeo-Christian history. It is impossible to speak of Christianity and the values and law that comes from it w/out knowing about Jewish history, culture and law.
Here is a site that says it in a more in-depth statement. Ignore the question of whether it is better or worse and scroll down to the syllabus of ideas presented in the course.
http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/mmarkowski/H112/WC-home.htm
The "Middle East" or "Near East" is considered to be part of that foundation of "western" civilization. The history continues thru Europe and the Americas and includes the laws that we abide by today in most of the "west" and the philosophies of democratic liberalism and individual rights, the scientific and industrial revolutions, etc. ..........jean
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western civilization VS. EASTERN OR asian??. how about AFRICAN and INDONESIAN etc.
.but Jean that says it pretty well right there. I bookmarked it for reference to the discussion on nonbelievers here because it offers a rational approach to thinking about "god" or a higher power which believers have yet to learn. "to doubt is to inquire and to do that is to learn" I couldn't agree more. there is lots of backup material here.
cliare
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I think we should read Mac Culloch's work next. He sees core value in Christianity and warns against the damage wrought by literal readers and fundamentalists. His advice is: know the history of Christianity and thereby free oneself from literalism and fundamentalism. We may not agree that the value in the core of Christianity is worth our interest or adherence but in the "First Three Thousand Years" we at least get the core as well as the magic, mystery, and mumbo-jumbo of modern Christianity exposed.
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Hi Robby and all - I'm still here lurking around from time to time and have spent some time over the past days catching up with all the posts. Such a wide ranging discussion has my head in a spin.
I really would love to get my hands on the book 'The First Three Thousand Years - thanks for posting the review.
This comment really struck me - The sheer complexity of the story of Christianity is a welcome and needed reminder that religion is fluid not static
I think it is important to remember that change has always been a factor within the church because religion, like many things, is a living entity and must change and grow. It is the fundamental core within the ever changing scenario of ritual and ceremony that enables religions to endure and that is the very thing that makes for its complexity.
Anyway, I'm going to put a request in to my library and see what happens - they're very good and quite often surprise me with what they can obtain. Maybe as someone suggested it would make a great discussion after 'Civilisation' is finished with. :D
I also wanted to thank everyone for posting such interesting links - I haven't read them all yet but have bookmarked a few to get back to quickly.
Loved the link to the Sumerian art - ancient art quite blows my mind. Thanks Winsumm.
Justin suggests that 'most art history folks start with the Willendorf Venus around 25000 BCE and Franco Cave art of 15000 BCE in the Upper Paleolithic era...'
Justin - I gather from that that art historians are still not taking cognisance of the rock art of the Australian aborigines which has many examples now dated to 35000 - 40000 years and there are some believed to be 60000 years old. The art of the Kalahari is another source of ancient art and yet no mention is made of it either. Is art only art if it originates in the 'old world' ?
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GUM: "Is art only art if it originates in the 'old world' ?"
Good question. The same holds true for history. How many "Histories of the World" are there that cover the Middle East, Greece, and Europe?
But in the context of religious belief, that makes more sense, since that is the historical path our heritage of ideas has taken. Or is it?
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ar originates in the old world?
gee whiz gum. I make art all the time right here in san clemente. art historians either specialize or die I think. I have a wonderful little book, all pictures called ARCHITECTURE WITHOOUT ARCHITECTS. lots of dome shaped desert structures in communities I haven't seen the ones from ausrailia and new zealand but that is a good idea. must go ask google to guide me.
claire
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starting here for FOLK ARCHITECTURE.
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/vernacular.htm
all over the world. lots with natural materials. a study in itself.
claire
builders o the pacific coast looks wonderful. I could be buying picture books I guess.
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/vernacular.htm
again.
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Gum: It is true certainly that art historians tend to be selective and very often our choices fall within areas that are accessible. I would choose things that are representative of a class of things and also are located in a place most likely to be visited by ordinary travelers. In choosing the Wilendorf Venus and the Spanish caves and not the French caves nor the Australian nor the New Zealand caves nor the Mexican structures, nor the Southwest USA structures, I have selected a representative work but that does not mean that many of the alternative sites are not discussed. There is more room to deal with a broader selection when one is not coping with the demands of a survey. However even in specialized settings one must be selective.
Are any images available from the Australian settings you mentioned? I'd like very much to see examples of the work of early aboriginal people. Has any thought been given to purpose? Why were the images created? How long have the Maori been resident down under?
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Juastin: "Are any images available from the Australian settings you mentioned? "
In the discussion of "The Book Thief", someone posted beautiful pictures from there, but I can't remember the name of the site to google it.
CLARE: wonderful pictures of vernacular architecture. Did you mean to post the same link twice?
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Justin. How long have the Maori been resident down under?
About 1000 years, perhaps 1100. Their art was mostly tattoos, especially of the face.These of course didn't last more than the lifetime of the tattooed one.
Other art was of carved wood on meeting houses, very popular, and carved greenstone (jade). So precious, it was almost sacred. How they carved it I do not know. They had only stone tools.
The Polynesians took 5000 years to spread across the Pacific from Taiwan to Easter Island, moving always against the trade winds. Having once found new islands to the east, they never returned to their starting point, but settled, then 100 years later sailed on eastward looking for more uninhabited land.
The only time they changed their easterly movement was when they traveled north to Hawaii, (300 AD) and southwest to NZ (1000AD) In both cases from Tahiti. ++Trevor
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joan no not twice it got away from me while I was looking for ore examples. now about aboriginal art of australia. let us ask google .
be right back.
some modern versions
http://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/c/24966/1/utopia.html
it is very popular as decorative art. these are just paintings which as prints are for sale. there is a lot of material available on line. ask google.
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Gum:Are any images available from the Australian settings you mentioned? I'd like very much to see examples of the work of early aboriginal people. Has any thought been given to purpose? Why were the images created? How long have the Maori been resident down under?
Justin: I really do appreciate the need for selectivity but if the recent findings of DNA testing which indicates all human races actually stem from one are correct then perhaps it is time for more inclusivity.
And yes, there are lots of images of ancient aboriginal art available - much of the art reflects creation myths and represents the spirits of place and time stemming from the Aboriginal Dreamtime. Other work is thought to be of an instructive nature recording tribal memory and survival skills. Even today, some sites are still held secret by the aboriginal tribal elders who are their traditional owners and who pass the responsibility of caring for the site on to each generation.
Here are a couple of links:
This one gives some background material -
http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/art/rock.php
You need to scroll down for images on this one:
http://www.cap.nsw.edu.au/bb_site_intro/specialplaces/sp
This one is a small slide show with commentary: The site was discovered comparatively recently and is rewriting the perceived history of Australia prior to British settlement.
http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2008/national/indigeno
There are countless other sites - some good, some bad. If anyone would like to see more just go to google and ask for aboriginal rock art
Trevor: Thanks -I see you've answered the Maori part of the question except to say that the Maori people did not settle in Australia. - though lots of them live here these days.
JoanK The slide show link above is, I believe, one of two possible sites where Geraldine Brookes has her fictional conservation expert working at the end of People of the Book when she
is recalled to participate in the final twist of the Sarajevo Haggadah's journey.
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I see a couple of those links don't work - will try to fix them.
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Finally - I keep getting bumped off -
the interactive slide show -
http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2008/national/indigenous-rock-art/index.html
Don't forget to scroll down on this one and click on the image for a larger pic
http://www.cap.nsw.edu.au/bb_site_intro/specialplaces/special_places_st3/Nourlangie/nourlangie.htm
and another:
http://Kimberleycoastalcamp.com.au/rockart_gallery.asp
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Winsumm Thanks for posting the link to some contemporary aboriginal paintings. These are quite different from the ancient art though they all have a narrative - which is not always easy to discern.The aboriginal communities churn them out day after day - some fetch enormous prices on the international market and some have been exhibited in the Louvre.
This is off topic - but I thought you'd be interested in hearing that we had an earthquake here in Western Australia today - it was 4.8 and located near Kalgoorlie about 400 miles north east of where I am in Perth. Kalgoorlie is an old gold rush town - still getting gold out of the ground along with other minerals. Lots of the old heritage buildings have been badly damaged and may have to come down. We don't have many earthquakes here and they are usual fairly small events - last big one was in the early 1970s and was a 7 - destroyed a small rural town.
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We seem to be going through another cycle of earthquakes around the Pacific Rim and environs.
I am saddened to here that some historical buildings may have to be torn down because of the damage.
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Gumtree, Trevor: Thank you very much. There is much to assimilate here. The paintings are similar in many respects to those found at Lascaux in France and in Spain. There are stick figures in both areas and animals as well. There may some religious symbolism in both as well. The French animals and tools as well as weapons are thought to connect with the hunt. I suspect those images of Australian animals are also related to the hunt though there are fewer weapons in evidence. Creation spirits are depicted as well as god enemies of women.
Unlike the Australian rock paintings that have been exposed to the weather the European works were found in caves on walls that were sheltered from the weather so the quality of the paintings is very good. The paintings in Australia on the other hand have been refreshed by Aboriginal people who have assumed responsibility for their care.
The contemporary Aboriginals (why not?) show both the qualities of originality and tradition in their new works.
You should be very pleased with their forms, Claire, some of which are figurative as well as abstract.
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Paul II
[/i][/b]
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The lives of great men oft remind us that a man’s characxter can e formed after his demise.
If a ruler coddles the chroniclers about him they may lift him to posthumous sanctity. If he offends them they may broil his corpse on a spit of venom or roast him to darkest infamy in a pot of ink. Paul II quarreled with Platina. Platina wrote the biography upon which most estimates of Paul depend and handed him down to posterity as a monster of vanity, pomp, and greed.
There was some truth in the indictment, though not much more than might be found in any biography untempered with charity. Pietro Barbo, Cardinal of San Marco, was proud of his handsome appearance, as nearly all men are. When elected pope he proposed, probably in humor, to be called Formosus – good looking. He allowed himself to be dissuaded and took the title of Paul II. Simple in his private life, yet knowing the hypnotic effect of magnificence he kept a luxurious court and entertained his friends and guests with costly hospitality.
On entering the conclave that elected him he, like the other cardinals, had pledged himself, if chosen, to wage war against the Turks, to summon a general council, to limit the number of cardinals to twenty four and the number of papal relatives among them to one, to create no man a cardinal under thirty years of age, and to consult the cardinals on all important appointments.
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What an interesting job description..........."to wage war against the Turks" has not been heard in recent history - unless you are Armenian.
24 cardinals..........wonder how many there are today.........don't hire your relatives! Probably always a good idea. I guess that was more of a problem at the time, especially if they got elevated to the position of bishop or cardinal.........jean
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On entering the conclave that elected him he, like the other cardinals, had pledged himself, if chosen, to wage war against the Turks, to summon a general council, to limit the number of cardinals to twenty four and the number of papal relatives among them to one, to create no man a cardinal under thirty years of age
It is simple to see why this job description came about. Calixtus brought it on with his nepotism and appointing very young lads (his nephews) ages 23, 24, and 25 into Cardinals and Vice-Chancellor of the Papal Court.
Paul II quarreled with Platina. Platina wrote the biography upon which most estimates of Paul depend and handed him down to posterity as a monster of vanity, pomp, and greed.
Durant does not say what the quarrel was about, but I sense jealousy on Platina's part. Anyone who writes either a total condemnation or a total whitewash is not a good biographer in my opinion.
Since I only read non fiction and do read many bio's, there is nothing worse than the 'all bad' or 'all good' type of writing. Both have an agenda, and I never read bio's for the writers point of view, but a balanced look at a persons life without prejudice. It is rare to find such a writer.
Nicholas got the same treatment, but from a writer with a different agenda. According to Durant his biographer wrote from 'love', and tried to declare Nicholas as perfection itself. All those descriptive adjectives he laid on Nicholas were those of lover more than a biographer.
So few writers can keep themselves out of the story they are telling, and when one does, it is such a pleasure to read. Nothing is worse than a 'snowjob', or harder to accept. If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.
Emily
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I agree. People's legacies seem to go through stages. At first, we get biographies telling us only how wonderful they were. Then there seems to be a reaction, and we hear only how awful they were.
Reading in "troublesome Young Men" about Churchill was interesting. Here was a man whose strengths and weaknesses made him the perfect person for the time and place where he found himself. Had he been somewhere else, those same weaknesses might have made him a collossal failure.
We all have a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Of good and bad. (except you of course). A biographer who doesn't recognize this is certainly suspect.
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I wanted to see what the Catholic church had to say about Paul 11. Here is an excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
His suppression in 1466 of the college of abbreviators aroused much opposition, intensified by a similar measure against the Roman Academy. Platina, a member of both organizations, who had been repeatedly imprisoned, retaliated by writing a calumnious biography of Paul II.
That Paul II was not opposed to Humanistic studies, as such, is evidenced by the fact that he protected universities, encouraged the art of printing, and was himself a collector of works of ancient art. The suppression of the Roman Academy was justified by the moral degeneracy and pagan attitude which it fostered
Now we understand what the argument between Platina and Paul was about. The Roman academy and the college of abbreviators (whatever that is) was opposed by Paul and since Platina was a member of both, they argued.
The quote says Platina was imprisoned many times. Paul could have been as coldhearted as Nicholas and had his nemisis beheaded instead of prison, then he might have received better treatment in his biography, written by someone else. Dead men tell no tales.
Paul did not oppose Humanism, protected Universities, encouraged printing, and collected works of ancient art the article states. He did some restoration and seemed more like Nicholas in that he liked to spend money also on his wealthy friends.
The Encyclopedia states that Paul was right in his suppression of the Roman Academy because of its moral degeneracy and pagan attitude.
The pagan attitude is essential for progress. Can one imagine what the world today would look like if we all believed the universe was only 5,770 years old, or that we were still living in the 12th century. Hurray for pagans and heretics who chose science over the gods.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11578a.htm
Emily
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I did a little snooping around on Google regarding the College of Abbreviators. They were the bunch that prepared formal documents such as papal bulls, formal letters, writs and the like before they were written out by the scriptores. They got their name from the "excessive" use of abbreviations. Paul II saw abuses and corruption within the group which he sought to suppress.
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Thank you, Frybabe. I thought as much, but since the link did not say, it was best not to speculate.
They got their name from the "excessive" use of abbreviations.
If Paul thought abbreviations were excessive then, what would he do today in our world. Nearly every organization is named so that its abbreviation has some meaning or is easy to remember. We even remember our presidents by their initials. The Defense department has so many acronyms their meaning would be impossible for the average person to decipher.
Perhaps they began with RCC (Roman Catholic Church).
Texting would probably be a capital offense.
Emily
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It occurred to me that Pious 2 and Paul 2. straddled the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. The Turks subsequently found their advance into Europe Stopped at tne gates of Vienna. Had the Muslims broken through at that time, those of us Americans who originated in Europe, could well be Muslim to day. It was a near thing.
Another thought. When Islam took Constantinople it straddled the eastern trade routes blocking Europe from it's access to the eastern ports, many of which had been opened by Marco Polo, and thus forced Spain, Portugal, Engand, and the Italian city states to find a new route to the east and that led to the opening of the new world. Isn't that interesting?
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Pious tried to unify Europe against the Turks. A month after his coronation he invited all Christian princes to join him at Mantua to lay plans to rescue "eastern Christendom from the Ottoman tide which might at any time cross the Adriatic or continue it's advance along the Danube. No Christian prince from beyond the Alps answered the call. The Pope's political power was waning. Bosnia today, as a result, is a mix of Christian and Islamic adherents. We, the US under Clinton, stopped a persecution of the Bosnian Muslims by the Christians. This game is still being played out. Millosovich, the Christian perpetrator of crimes against the Muslims in Bosnia, was recently executed or died a natural death in prison. I forget which. In either case, he is dead. But the animosity lingers just under the surface.
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I have been regularly saying in the years that I have been part of this discussion, that, in my opinion, best as I could see, a major part of the move toward Civilization has been the struggle of the "have nots" against the "haves". We have been discussing such struggles in the religious field but is it any different from the struggle discussed below?
Thailand’s King Sees His Influence Fading
By SETH MYDANS and THOMAS FULLER
BANGKOK — A battle over Thailand’s future is raging, but the one man who has been able to resolve such intractable conflicts in the past has been notably silent: King Bhumibol Adulyadej, long a unifying father figure for his nation.
Thailand is convulsed by a bitter struggle between the nation’s elite and its disenfranchised poor, played out in protests that have paralyzed Bangkok for weeks and now threaten to expand. The ailing 82-year-old king finds his power to sway events ebbing as the fight continues over the shape of a post-Bhumibol Thailand.
“It’s much bigger than the issue of succession,” said Charles Keyes, an expert on Thailand at the University of Washington in Seattle. “It’s a collapse of the political consensus that the monarchy has helped maintain.”
As his country suffers through its worst political crisis in decades, the king has disappointed many Thais by saying nothing that might calm the turmoil, as he did in 1973 and 1992 when with a few quiet words he halted eruptions of political bloodletting.
For more than two months now, demonstrators known as the red shirts, who represent in part the aspirations of the rural and urban poor, have occupied parts of Bangkok, forcing major malls and hotels to close as they demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve Parliament and hold a new election. Soldiers and protesters continued battling Saturday.
After taking the throne nearly 64 years ago, King Bhumibol expanded his role as a constitutional monarch without political power into an enormous moral force, earned through his civic work and political astuteness. He has also presided over an expansion of the royal family’s now vast business holdings. With the monarchy at its heart, an elite royalist class grew up including the bureaucracy, the military and entrenched business interests. A palace Privy Council has exerted power during the current crisis.
It is this elite class that the protesters are now challenging.
Those who seek to maintain the status quo have proclaimed themselves loyal to the king and have accused the red shirts of trying to destroy the monarchy as they seek changes in Thai society. For their part, most red shirts say they respect the king but want changes in the system he helped create.
The politicization of the king’s name “has ensured that the monarchy cannot play a central conciliatory role any more,” said Chris Baker, a British historian of Thailand.
More broadly, the divisions in society may have become too deep and the anger too hot to reconcile for years to come. Many analysts say a lasting class conflict has been ignited between the country’s awakening rural masses and its elite hierarchy. With the king confined to a hospital since September with lung inflammation and other ailments, concern about the future has sharpened. The heir apparent to the throne, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, has not inherited his father’s popularity.
But discussion about the succession and about the future role of the monarchy are constricted to whispers and forbidden Internet sites by a severe lèse-majesté law. A 15-year penalty for anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the king, queen, the heir apparent or the regent” has been broadly interpreted in cases brought against writers, academics, activists, and both foreign and local journalists.
Though it is the protesters who are pressing for change, including some who may see a republican form of government in the future, it is a leading member of the establishment party that now rules Thailand who put the issue into its plainest terms.
“We should be brave enough to go through all of this and even talk about the taboo subject of monarchy,” said Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, in a speech last month that he gave, significantly, outside Thailand at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “I think we have to talk about the institution of the monarchy, how would it have to reform itself to the modern globalized world.”
He spoke of Britain and the Netherlands as models, with constitutional monarchs who play a largely symbolic role.
On paper at least, those models are not so very different from the system now in place in Thailand. What sets King Bhumibol apart is the aura that surrounds him and the faith among many people that when things are really bad, he will step forward to save them from themselves.
In a way, what some Thais are saying now is simply that it is time for the king’s “children” to grow up and solve their problems themselves.
“There might still be people in Thai society that want to see the king play a role in resolving the crisis,” said Jon Ungpakorn, a former senator and one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for democracy.
“But on the other side, a large section of society realizes that we should not depend on the monarchy for resolving crises,” he said. “If we are to be a democratic system, we must learn to deal with our problems ourselves.”
During weeks of street demonstrations, protesters have assiduously asserted their patriotism. But unlike other protests in the city, there has been a conspicuous absence of portraits of the king. Among both residents of the northeast, the country’s rural heartland, and the red-shirt protesters in Bangkok — many of whom have traveled back and forth in shifts — a new, less reverent tone has quietly crept into conversations.
Krasae Chanawongse, a medical doctor and former government minister in the northeast who is a strong monarchist, laments that “many people are talking about destroying the monarchy.”
But protest leaders insist that they are not challenging the king but the system that is built around him.
“Real democracy would have the king at the top, with no elite class to interfere,” said a protest leader, Nattawut Saikua, in an interview.
Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had built an electoral base among the country’s poor majority, who also form the base of the red-shirt protesters, threatening the traditional supremacy of the old guard. A coup in 2006 that ousted Mr. Thaksin is believed to have had at least the tacit approval of the Privy Council and other elites who saw the prime minister and his base as a challenge to their power. The red shirts have demanded a new election that could bring back Mr. Thaksin, now abroad fleeing a prison sentence for corruption.
Whoever succeeds King Bhumibol, the veneration and the place the king holds at the heart of Thai society are unlikely to survive him.
“In private discussions people say to each other, ‘What will we do without him?’ ” said a prominent poet who, like many people speaking about the monarchy, insisted on anonymity. “They get disappointed and upset and even scared about the change in the future.”
As he has grown older, concerns have risen about divisions and disputes in society that might erupt once he is gone. It appears now, with the king no longer playing the role he has in the past, that those conflicts are already under way.
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Fascinating!
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Once a people agree to be ruled by a system of laws rather than by the whim of a monarch then the "haves and the have nots" can fight it out with rules rather than bloodshed.
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So - considering the fact that survival (whether individual or group) is the name of the game, why would any of us be willing to submit to laws which might at times cause us to lose. After our founders created the Constitution, why did the majority of the populace submit to it?
Robby
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On the one hand redress was guaranteed and on the other, people realized they could not have the benefits of the first ten amendments unless the amendments applied to all equally. However women and slaves did not count as anyone except when counting for the census. Women then counted as one and slaves as one half. It was the southern states that wanted to count slaves for drawing congressional district lines.
It is interesting that at the end of Washington's administration there was much talk about a crown for Washington. I think that means that not everyone was satisfied that the constitution would work.
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Absolutely. The idea of the Republic was very fragile. McCoulough (sp?) in his biography of John Adams said that it wasn't sure that the system was going to work until power had changed hands peacefully, i.e. when Jefferson defeated Adams and became president. It could not have happened -- the election had been very bitter, and there were some who wanted to keep Jefferson from power with armed forces.
I wish our leaders would read this. They think that if a country holds an election, it's a democracy. Not so! It's only when we see that those in power relinquish power peacefully as the result of an honest election that we know we have a democracy.
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From Robby's link on the King of Thailand.....an excerpt
After taking the throne nearly 64 years ago, King Bhumibol expanded his role as a constitutional monarch without political power into an enormous moral force, earned through his civic work and political astuteness. He has also presided over an expansion of the royal family’s now vast business holdings. With the monarchy at its heart, an elite royalist class grew up including the bureaucracy, the military and entrenched business interests. A palace Privy Council has exerted power during the current crisis.
What a clever con man, but aren't they all. The King is put on the throne with no power. His main goal seems to be the theft of the country's resources. He goes out and becomes the face of any project done for the community, like building a school. The Parliment pays for it using money collected from the people. The people pay and the King gets all the glory.
Over time the 'cult of personality' kicks in, and Asians seem very susceptible to this odd trait. (North Korea an example)
With all that 'worship' used to his advantage, he and his cronies systematically steal the country's assets.
For their part, most red shirts say they respect the king but want changes in the system he helped create.
It's not going to happen. Never has to my knowledge. The King and his gang of robbers will never give up their ill gotten assets until each and every one is dead. The King and his cronies have already shown what they will do, shoot unarmed demonstrators down in the street.
I oppose all monarchy for this very reason. The clever psychopath will find a way to power and riches, even is he is only supposed to be a figurehead. I don't believe in figureheads, it seems a useless waste of time and ink.
But discussion about the succession and about the future role of the monarchy are constricted to whispers and forbidden Internet sites by a severe lèse-majesté law. A 15-year penalty for anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the king, queen, the heir apparent or the regent” has been broadly interpreted in cases brought against writers, academics, activists, and both foreign and local journalists.
Such laws are essential in the use of 'personality cult' worship. Once the 'deity' is enthroned its too late for the people to change it especially when one can't even discuss the 'subject'.
The people say they still respect the King (of course they do if they want to survive) but want to change the system he created. The system and the King are one. The people cannot have one and not the other. Until they recognize that, they will continue to die and be imprisoned for nothing.
Behind every great fortune, a crime.
Emily
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If I may be so bold as to return to SoC, where we were commenting on Pius II....
I think Justin in his #959 April 11th, admirably summed up Pius' work, except for two scholars who graced his Pontificate. Durant wrote as follows, ( Page 386, bottom paragraph)
Flavio Biondo, a papal secretary since Nicholas V, was a symbol of the Christian Renaissance: he loved antiquity and spent half his life describing its history and relics, but he never ceased to be a devout, orthodox, and practising Christian. Biondo wrote an encyclopedia in three parts - Roma insturata, Roma triumphans and Italia illustrata- recording the topography, history, institutions, laws, religion, manners, and arts of ancient Italy. Greater still was his 'Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum,' an immense "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" from 476 to 1250, the first critical history if the Middle Ages. Biondo was no stylist, but he was a discriminating historian. The work was unfinished at his death (1463) but it set to later historians an example of conscientious scholarship.
John Cardinal Bessarion was a living vehicle of the Greek culture that was entering Italy. Coming to the Council of Florence as archbishop of Nicaea, he took a leading part in the reunion of Greek and Latin Christianity; returning to Costantinople he and other "Uniates" were repudiated by the lower clergy and the people. Pope Eugenius made him a cardinal(1439), and Bessarion moved to Italy, bringing with him a rich collection of Greek manuscripts. At Rome, his house became a salon of Humanists; Poggio, Valla, and Platina were among his closest friends.
He spent nearly all his income in purchasing manuscripts, or having them copied. He himself made a new translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics; but as a disciple of Gemistus he favoured Plato, and led the Platonic camp in a hot controversy that raged at the time between Platonists and Aristotelians. Plato won that campaign, and the long rule of Aristotle over Western Philosophy, came to an end.
For Pius II, Bessarion undertook dificult diplomatic missions to Germany again seething with revolt against the RomanChurch. In 1471 he narrowly missed election to the Papacy. He died a year later, honoured throughout the world of scholarship.
For myself, I honour him for that victory of Plato over Aristotle..... What do others here think ? ( Trevor)
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Plato vs Aristotle.........It has been so long since I read either that other than realism vs idealism, their arguments are lost in the fog of memory. By the time I came to study both, I had been taught critical thinking by my grandmother, the most admired and realistic person I ever knew. I take what I believe to be real from both and jettison the rest, and that does not leave much.
In my youth and young adulthood, I leaned toward idealism. The real world quickly cured me of that fantasy. I thought everyone was like the wonderful family I grew up in, imagine the shock when I found out how wrong I was. I would like an ideal world, but I am stuck here in the real one, which is far from ideal.
There are thousands of web sites with everyone taking different sides. Here is one argument from Africa for Plato's side by a professor who calls himself an idealist.
http://www.chatafrikarticles.com/articles/1273/1/PLATO-VERSUS-ARISTOTLE-IDEALISM-VERSUS-REALISM-PHILOSOPHY-VERSUS-SCIENCE/Page1.html
Emily
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Claire: If you are lurking, please send me your address.
Aristotle vrs. Plato. and their relationship to RC religion is a worthy topic. Thank you, Trevor.
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Gentile Bellini painted Cardinal Bessarion. Here he is joined with two fraternity members of the Carita showing off his gift of the 'true cross' a relic embedded in the door.
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gentile-bellini-cardinal-bessarion-with-the-bessarion-reliquary
Emily
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The Renaissance is still a topic for review in our own time. Here the Renaissance Quarterly has selected essays on Byzantine scholars of the Renaissance in Italy; Cardinal Bessarion and other emigrees.
A book review by Christian Forstel of the Bibliotheque National de France, Paris of John Monfasani's collected studies series. The book was published around 1995, so the argument continues with new discoveries.
Cardinal Bessarion is to be commended for keeping Greek history alive.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Byzantine+Scholars+in+Renaissance+Italy:+Cardinal+Bessarion+and+Other...-a054600001
Emily
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"Plato won that campaign, and the long rule of Aristotle over Western Philosophy, came to an end."
I never studied philosophy. Is it true that Western philosophy is idealistic, in the midst of our "realistic" society?
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It is a surprise to me, that western philosophers were still staggering around in the illogicalities of Aristotelian 'physics', for nearly 2000 years after Plato and others suggested that Mathematics was the tool to understanding the universe. Even before Plato's time, astronomers with a mathematical background were measuring and explaining the Universe, that in many ways coincided with our 'modern' views.
But then, Aristotle's ideas are still embedded in peoples minds, even today. (Flat earth society and such.) I have read somewhere that the Catholic Church has in recent times got around to reinstating Galileo and Copernicus, so perhaps there is hope for truth to prevail. ++ Trevor
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This is simplistic, but it seems to me there is a very good lesson to be learned in this epic of the Christian Church bad-mouthing and attacking the Islamic religion for so many 100's of yrs over only one aspect of ideology and therefore not benefiting from the knowledge that Muslims had kept alive. The knowledge was so vast, in so many areas, and Europeans ended up in their "black hole" of ignorance thru the "Middle Ages," having to relearn and progress from 1000 yrs before when they finally accepted that Arabs had something of value to teach them. ........... is that the major example of "group think" as we've come to know it in the latter part of the 20th century? ...................and perhaps we could learn to be careful of calling our opposition "evil," which dismisses everything they know or do, and assuming they have nothing positive to contribute to the world..... jean
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Has anyone heard from Robby? I checked and his last post was May 17th. That is almost a month ago. Hope he is okay.
Emily
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Has anyone heard from Robby?
I have not heard from Robby, but I think the publishing of his new book may well be the reason for his relative silence in our group lately.
Brian.
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To continue with Pius II. (Page 389 of SoC)
On the very day of his coronation he had expressed his horror at the advance of the Moslems along the Danube to Vienna, and through the Balkans into Bosnia. Greece, Epirus, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia were falling to the enemies of Christianity; who could say when they would leap across the Adriatic into Italy? ( Shades if GWB ?) A month after his coronation Pius issued an invitation to all Christian princes to join himin a great congress at Mantua and lay plans to rescue Eastern Christendom from the Ottoman tide.
He himself arrived there on may 27th 1459. Arrayed in the most gorgeous vestments of his office, he was born through the city in a litter held up by the nobles and vassals of the Church. He addressed great throngs in one of the most moving orations of his career. But no King or prince came from beyond the Alps, and none sent representatives with powers to commit his state to war; nationalism, which was to achieve the Reformation, was already strong enough to make the Papacy an ineffectual suppliant before the thrones of the kings.
The Pontiff waited patiently for the Emperor, but Frederick III, instead of coming to the aid of the man, who in the past had seved him well, declared war on Hungary in an effort to add to his realm the very nation that was most actively preparing to resist the Turks
At last, in August, an embassy cme from Duke Phillip the Good of Burgundy; in September Francesco Sforza appeared; other Italian princes followed his lead, and on the 26th the Congress held its first sitting, four months after the arrival of the Pope. Four months more passed in argument; finally, by agreeing to the division of Tukish and formerly Byzantine territory in Europe among the victorious powers, Pius won Burgandy and Italy to his plan for a holy war. All Christian laymen were to contribute to the cause a thirtieth of their income, all Jews a twentieth, all Clergy a tenth.
( I wonder if that is the first recording if Jewish financiers investing in 'Christian' wars? There is no mention on what they were to gain from it. ) +++ Trevor
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I am well and thank you all for asking. Very simply, I have -- to use a common expression these days -- "too much on my plate." I joined a second local Chamber of Commerce for business reasons, I write a fairly long article for a monthly magazine, I accepted being a member of the Board of Directors for the local hospice, and -- oh yes -- I continue to see patients from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. five days a week. I did all this to myself so no sympathy is required. On the other hand, if I weren't that kind of person, I would probably be dead by now.
Speaking of "my" book. The book is by Bruce Frankel and one chapter is about me. If any of you have read it, I am interested in your reaction. The name of the book is "What are you going to do with the rest of your life?"
I am going to gfve you all the email address of Nancy, a friend of mine, who lives in the area and is in contact with me almost daily. If something were to happen to me, she would know it. It is nancywalbridge@yahoo.com
Robby
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Thanks so much for letting us know you are well, Robby.
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Glad all is well, Robby.
I'm overwhelmed w/ the Catholic Church and the fights between the Church and the EUropean heads of state. I'm reading Allison Weir's book on Eleanor of Acquataine, which, of course, includes the competition between HenryII and Becket. History is so much more than these battles of ego that many authors seem to concentrate on. Durant seems to have spent a lot of time - way too much imo - on those ego and idealogical battles, or am i just up to my eyeballs in that subject at the moment?
There were all sorts of other events going on in the 14th and 15th centuries that i would find much more interesting. But maybe this was the standard for writing history in the first half of the 20th century when the Durants were laboring away.
National Geo Channel is showing a wonderful series - 4 in one day - about how the EArth Made History: how water, wind, fire and human relationships to the earth effected history. You might enjoy looking at it.........jean
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Robby, good to hear from you. I will try to get the book by Bruce Frankel. I get ebooks online through my small local library. If it's in the state, I will have access and download.
I am not buying any books now, I am trying to give them away. I invited my children to come and take what they wanted, and donated the 'tomes' and coffee table books to the local library.
I still prefer to have the 'book' in hand, but it is so much quicker to download an e-book and read without waiting for an order to come in.
Good for you on all your endeavors. We miss you when you are away.
Emily
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We are planning to discuss the book on Seniorlearn, so maybe we'll all be reading it together.
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Thank you Joan for the reminder about the book discussion.
Emily
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What Volume is being discussed. I an a late arrival to the discussion.
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I bring this from a posting i made on "The Library" discussion.
Tho't it is almost appropriate in time and might generate some discussion while we wait for Robby to get back to us w/ a page from Durant to discuss.
Because of our discussions in other site, I just started reading Tho Costain's The Black Rose last night. It looks like it's going to be a good read. In just the first 50 pages i've sev'l points to think about - my mind went all over history. The book is set in the 1200's, and yet there are those classic issues that seem to just keep going on and on..............religious feuds, class issues, "town vs gown". The first chapter is "Oxford" which made me think of Bill Clinton, Robt Reich and others who were w/ them at O, and i believe that Chelsea spent some time there also. It must be an eery experience if you go to O to think that students have been walking those ground for almost 1000 yrs.
I'm going to learn a lot of useless info reading this book, which is fine w/ me. I've already got a list of dozens of words that i have to look up to find out what they mean. The book was published in 1945 and i'm sure that Costain must have known that the use of medieval terms wouldn't be familiar to his readers.........he also uses Latin terms w/out defining them. I may have to check in w/ some of you Latin students for interpretation... . What do you think authors are thinking when they do that?
He mentions sev'l books that he used as resources including a Pearl Buck translation of a Chinese book, All Men Are Brothers.............amazing how bits and pieces of tho'ts in my head come together at times.................here we were talking about Buck and here she is in the intro of Costain's book.
In my history classes, I called to the attention of the students those surnames that came about because some ancestor was in an occupation of that name. Ya know - mason, painter, carpenter, cooper, smith, wright, etc. I once taught w/ a man whose anme was Fenstermacher - window maker................... Well, i learned a new one last night - fletcher. He was using the term as the occupation of the father of a character. I had never heard that term, but, of course, knew it as a surname. ....................... i looked it up this morning and lo and behold it means arrow-maker!!!
This is going to be a good experience, i believe........jean[/color[/color]]
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JDORUM: WELCOME WELCOME!
We are in the Renaissance. I don't know which volume: many of us don't own the book, but rely on our leader to post text for us.
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Jdorum - - - Yes, Welcome !!
The last time we had a direct link from Robby (our fearless leader) was back in February.
In a little while I will be picking up where we left off. We are in Durant's fifth volume of the Story of Civilization entitled "The Renaissance." More specifically, we are in that chapter entitled "The Renaissance Captures Rome" and are reacting to Durant's comments about the Pope, Nicholas V, who was struggling to hold his position.
Since then we have had a few attempts to get back to discussing the book, but have been off the subject. Which is a pity because the book is L - O - N - G , has been in discussion for years (four, I think) and will take forever, at this pace, to conclude.
I look forward to the return of Robby to the fold as he is, and has always been, the engine for this group.
Brian.
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I hope our NZ contingent have not been in danger because of the earthquake..........has anybody talked to Trevor?............isn't he in NZ?.....jean
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Mabel. I was not touched by the Earthquake In NZ. Thanks for asking. It was centred some 600 miles from my place ( Auckland ) As it happened at 0435 AM, there were few people about in the CBD of Christchurch, where old buildings suffered severe damage. Seems only 2 people severely hurt, and remarkably, no deaths. ++ Trevor
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Thank goodness. I think Kiwi Lady is in Aukland too?
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Good to hear from you Trevor..............jean
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Due to my many activities in the local community, it is impossible -- at least for a period of time -- to continue as Discussion Leader. My interest continues but I know when my plate is full. Perhaps someone else here might consider making arrangements to officially take over. In the meantime the "powers that be" suggest that SofC be placed in the archives.
Robby
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JOAN - Kiwi Lady (Carolyn) posted the following message a few days ago in the Seniors & Learn site RE the recent earthquake. She has been a longtime friend to many of us, so thought I would post the good news here.
Mahlia
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The quake was many miles from me. It was in Christchurch which is our second largest city. We are blessed so far no fatalities. Authorities are doing stellar job. My daughters company has a plant near there and is supplying bottled water. ( she got an email to inform her about this) Everyone is chipping in to help. Damage is heavy. Many beautiful old historic buildings damaged. Cost will run into billions they say. some people had heart attacks from the quake. Two in ICU one is very serious a large chimney fell on him. Some miraculous escapes too. There are search and rescue dogs checking out all the rubble. Christchurch city centre has been evacuated. I feel sorry for the children. The quake was at 4.35am and many will be too traumatised to go to bed for some time yet. They will be scared it will happen again.
After shocks continue constantly.
They say there will probably be another big aftershock.
Carolyn
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I'm so glad Carolyn is alright. Is she posting in Seniors and Friends?
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Robby, we understand how busy you are. There are only so many hours in the day. We all understand how difficult it is for you to step down from your leadership here after so many years. Obviously no one here feels he/she can take your place. So. Reluctantly, we will be moving this discussion to the Archives until you find your schedule less demanding...it will be an easy matter to bring it back.
Thanks for the many years, many discussions under your leadership, old friend!
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Oh, yes, I hope that we can get back to the discussion in the future. You have been valiant, Robby, getting the discussion thru 5 volumes. Thank you for your time and kindness and diligence. .........i'll miss the time w/ you all and all your wonderful knowledge that everyone shared........Jean
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I will miss this discussion very much. It is the one that led me to Seniornet. And I hope you wonderful people who post here will continue to post in other discussions. At least, come over to "nonfiction" and tell us what other history and art books you are reading.
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=84.1200 (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=84.1200)
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I am relieved to know that all the folks from NZ are safe from quake damage.
I suppose we have seen this sad day coming for some time but now that it is here we must either bear with it till you return or find a temporary substitute. I am not a typist of any kind or I would try to undertake the task.
Do I read your last message correctly, Trevor? Is there a chance you might take up the challenge?
Robbie: No matter what happens next, your service over the past five years has been of the yeoman variety and deserving of all the accolades I can offer. Thank you. Come back soon, Please.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Frybabe: Trevor, I am happy to see your post. I echo Justin's hope that the discussion will continue.
As much publicity as the Borgia's have received off and on through the years via books and TV, I still learned something from your post today. I did not know that the Borgia's were Spanish. I always regarded them as Italian. Also, I didn't remember the gap between Alfonso's death and Rodrigo's election to Pope. Mostly I remember the intrigues surrounding Lucrezia, Caesare and their father.
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Robby - - - I add my thanks for your devotion to our group over the years, and wish you all the best for the future.
Trevor - - - I believe that we can, as a group, continue learning from The Story of Civilization, and am delighted that you are prepared to lead us with posting pages from the book.
To the Group - - - Let's get behind Trevor, who is willing and capable, and see if we can finish the mammoth task which Robby set us many years ago.
Brian.
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HOORAY FOR TREVOR!!
AND ZILLIONS OF HOORAYS FOR ROBBIE, our fearless leader for so many years! Robby, don't tell us you don't have time to participate along with us-- we need your comments -- even occasionally.
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The Story of Civilization. V
The Renaissance
Chap. XV Page 382
Calixtus III 1455-8
The disunion of Italy determined the papal election that followed: the factions, unable to agree on an Italian, chose a Spanish cardinal, Alfoso Borgia, who took the name of Calixtus III. He was already seventy seven; he could be depended upon to die soon, and allow the Cardinals another and perhaps more profitable choice. A specialist in canon law and diplomacy, he had a legalistic mind, and cared little for the classical scholarship that had enamoured Nicholas. The humanists who had no indigenous root in Rome, languished during his pontificate, except that Valla, now quite reformed, was still a papal secretary.
Calixtus was a good man, who loved his relatives. Ten months after his coronation he raised to the cardinalate two of his nephews - Luis Juan de Mila and Rodrigo Borgia - and Don Jayme of Portugal, respectively twenty-five, twenty-four, and twenty-three years of age. Rodrigo ( the future Alexander VI) had the additional handicap of being carelessly candid about his mistresses; howerver, Calixtus gave him (1457) the most lucrative post in the papal court - that of Vice-chancellor; in the same year he made him also commander in chief of the papal troops.
So began, or grew the nepotism by which Pope after Pope gave church offices to his nephews or other relatives, who were sometimes his sons. To the anger of the Italians, Calixtus surrounded himself with men of his own country; Rome was now ruled by Calatans. The Pope had reasons: he was a foreigner in Rome; the nobles and republicans were plotting against him; he wished to have near him men whom he knew, and who could protect him from intrigue while he attended to his prime interest - a crusade.
Moreover, the Pope was resolved to have friends in a College of Cardinals perpetually stuggling to make the papacy a constitutional as well as an elective monarchy, subject in all its decisions to the cardinals as a senate or privy council. The popes opposed and overcame this movement precisely as the Kings fought and defeated the nobles. In each case absolute monarchy won; but perhaps the replacment of a local with a national economy, and the growth of international relations in scope and compexity, required, for the time a centralization of leadership and authority.
Calixtus wore out his last energies in a vain attempt to stir Europe to resist the Turks. When he died Rome celebrated the end of its rule by "barbarians." When Cardinal Piccolomini was named his successor Rome rejoiced as it had not rejoiced over any pope during the preceding two hundred years.
I had thought that the idea of a Universal Church would have supplanted nationalism. But clearly not so, and the need for armed troops in a Christian Church shocks me deeply. ~ Trevor
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Trevor, this is wonderful news! Look at the joy you have brought here. Certainly Robby will be delighted. We'll write to him and let him know of your loyalty and committment. Thank you all so much!
Carry on - just as you have for all these years~
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Wonderful, Trevor! I felt badly on seeing this discussion begin to die. No one in this world is indispensable, most certainly including me. There are only 6 1/2 more volumes to go I will stop in to make comments from time to time. Thank you for becoming DL.
An added thought. Back when I had more time I would write BookBytes to be published once monthly and occasionally semi-monthly. This turned out to be successful in bringing "new blood" into the discussion. But recently I never found time to do that and slacked off. I do believe it would help.
Robby
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Robby, you found out the good news before we had a chance to write to you! More good news that you will be stopping in to comment from time to time. Can't ask for more than that.
A good idea to advertise in the monthly Book Bytes...will ask JoanK, our liaison, to bring news about this discussion to the monthly newsletter, hopefully bringing in new participants.
When reading Trevor's post #1043 on the need for armed troops in the Christian Church, I couldn't help but think of the colorfully clad Papal Guard at the Vatican - weren't they brought in during this period? Are they still armed today?
(http://www.swissinfo.ch/media/cms/images/keystone/2008/08/keyimg20080820_9566548_1.jpg)
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Does anyone remember if this was the first Borgia pope? There wind up being a lot of them, if I remember.
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From what I've found, it looks like Alfonso was the first Borgia pope, Rodrigo was the second. There were a several Cardinals. One Borgia joined the Jesuit order and ended up becoming a saint. What a history that family had.
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And I'm sure we'll hear more of them!
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The Papal troops mentioned by Durant seem to have been a fore-runner group of those we know today as the Swiss Guards. The Swiss seem to have formed a definite group about 1480's at the time of Sixtus IV., some 20 years after the time of Calixtus III. ++Trevor.
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I wonder why the Swiss?
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Thank you Robby for leading this discussion for almost nine years. That must be some kind of record for the discussion of one author's books online.
Good wishes for all your pursuits, and I hope you will drop in occasionally to comment.
Emily
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This is a section taken from Wikipedia.
Swiss Guards is the name given to the Swiss soldiers who have served as bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and palace guards at foreign European courts since the late 15th century. In contemporary usage, it refers to the Pontifical Swiss Guard of Vatican City. They have a high reputation for discipline and loyalty to their employers. Apart from household and guard units regular Swiss mercenary regiments have served as line troops in various armies; notably those of France, Spain and Naples up to the 19th century.
Various units of Swiss Guards existed for hundreds of years. The earliest such unit was the Swiss Hundred Guard (Cent-Garde) at the French court (1497 – 1830). This small force was complemented in 1567 by a Swiss Guards regiment. The Papal Swiss Guard in the Vatican was founded in 1506 and is the only Swiss Guard that still exists. In the 18th century several other Swiss Guards existed for periods in various European courts.
The institution reflects the situation of Switzerland at the time. Unlike the present, Switzerland was a poor country whose young men often sought their fortunes abroad.
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That's fascinating! I had no idea.
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Trevor, thank you for taking the lead to continue this discussion.
When I went to the archives and looked at the beginning of this discussion on Nov. 3, 2001, you were there on Nov. 5th. This Nov. 3rd will mark nine years of SOC, and you have played a large part in its continuation.
Bravo!
Emily
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The uniform of the Swiss guards created mostly during the Renaissance and still worn today is not only colorful, but heavy. Here is what Wiki said about the uniform.
The tailors of the uniforms work inside the Swiss Guard barracks. The uniform weighs 8 pounds (4 kg), and may be the heaviest uniform in use by any standing army today. The Renaissance style makes them one of the most complicated to construct. A single uniform requires 154 pieces and takes nearly 32 hours and 3 fittings to complete
During this late Renaissance style, the Spanish were already sailing to the Americas and exploring in their search for gold and treasure. In paintings these explorers are depicted as wearing the same style of dress and headwear.
When Hernando de Soto marched through here where I now live in Tennessee, he probably still had on his uniform. By the time he died near the Mississippi, he was clothed in skins like the natives. There is an historical marker near my mother's farm that marks part of his journey.
De Soto's men portrayed him as a god to the natives, and perhaps his colorful uniform and helmet with a plume helped them sell the idea of deity. When De Soto died they kept it a secret from the natives. It would be hard to explain the death of a god.
The Swiss guard certainly stand out in all their colorful uniforms and plumage, but as protectors of the Vatican, they look like sitting ducks. It seems to me a man with a simple drab long cassock with a 38 or Tec 9 underneath would be more protection.
Emily
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Emily - love the James Bond "picture of guns under cossacks.
3 cheers for Trevor!! .........Jean
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Emily: "When Hernando de Soto marched through here where I now live in Tennessee, he probably still had on his uniform. By the time he died near the Mississippi, he was clothed in skins like the natives."
So DeSoto "went native"?
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:)
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http://lettersfromrome.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/swiss-guard.jpg
You certainly wouldn't get lost in a crowd wearing that uniform. Looking at this picture, it does look heavy. Wonder what material is used. Heavy linen? Light wool?
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It looks like something that has a sheen, doesn't it? Is it the uniform that makes them a tourist attraction? I suppose that's why they keep them even tho they are uncomfortable......Jean
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He doesn't look too happy about it, does he? I'll bet it's as hot as the dickens.
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Durant’s SoC Volume V
Page 391
PAUL II 1464 -71
The lives of great men oft remind us that a man’s character can be formed after his demise. If a ruler coddles the chroniclers about him they may lift him to posthumous sanctity; if he offends them they may broil his corpse on a spit of venom or roast him to darkest infamy in a pot of ink.Paul II quarreled with Platina; Platina wrote the biography upon which most estimates of Paul depend, and handed him down to posterity as a monster of vanity, pomp, and greed.
There is some truth in the indictment, though not more than might be found in any biography untempered with Charity. Pietro Barbo, Cardinal of San Marco, was proud of his handsome appearance, as nearly all men are. When elected pope he proposed, probably in humor, to be called Formosus --good-looking; he allowed himself to be dissuaded, and took the title of Paul II.Simple in his private life, yet knowing the hypnotic effect of magnificence, he kept a luxurious court, and entertained his friends and guests with costly hospitality.
On entering the conclave that elected him he, like the other Cardinals, had pledged himself, if chosen, to wage war against the Turks, to summon a general council, to limit the number to twenty-four and the number of papal relatives among them to one, to create no man a cardinal under thirty years of age, and to consult the cardinals on all important appointments. Paul, elected, repudiated these capitulations as nullifying time-honored traditions and powers. He consoled the cardinals by raising their yearly revenue to a minimum of 4000 florins ($ ????) He himself, coming of a mercantile family, relished the security of florins, ducats, scudi, and gems that held a fortune in a ray of light. He wore a tiara that outweighed a palace in worth.
As cardinal he had kept the goldsmiths busy with orders for jewels, medals, and cameos; these, and costly relics of classic art he had collected in the sumptuous Palazzo San Marco which he had built for himself at the foot of the Capitol.* With all his acquisitiveness he stooped to no simony, repressed the sale of indulgences, and governed Rome with justice if not with mercy.
He is worst remembered for his quarrel with the Roman humanists. Some of these were secretaries to the pope or the cardinals; most of them filled less dignified positions as abbreviatores -- writers of briefs, or keepers of records, for the Curia. Whether as a measure of economy, or to rid the Collegiium Abbreviatorum of the fifty-eight Sienese whom Pius II had appointed to it, Paul disbanded the whole group, gave its work to other departments, and left some seventy humanists jobless or reduced to less lucrative posts.
The most eloquent of these dismissed humanists was Bartolommeo de’ Sacchi, who took the latin name Platina from his native Piadena near Cremona. He appealed to the Pope to re-employ the dismissed men; when Paul refused he wrote him a threating letter. Paul had him arrested, and kept him for four months in Sant’ Angelo, bound with heavy chains. Cardinal Gongaza secured his release; but Platina, Paul thought, would bear watching.
*Pius IV presented it to Venice; hence its later name of Palazzo Venezia. It was the official headquarters of Benito Mussolini during the Fascist regime.
It is clear that these guys spent little time preaching or spreading the word of God among the flock. Acquiring wealth and exercising political power filled their days.
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"If a ruler coddles the chroniclers about him they may lift him to posthumous sanctity; if he offends them they may broil his corpse on a spit of venom or roast him to darkest infamy in a pot of ink."
The Durants' prose hasn't lost it's touch. I like to think of Paul II and his heavy tiera struggling in a pot of ink!
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Interesting. I never connected the word abbreviation w/ the word "brief." DAH!
If this is Paul's reputation, i wonder why John Paul decided to use the name? Maybe i can do a little research and find out.
I like Durant's bits of honesty and humor - of the last pope "He was already seventy seven; he could be depended upon to die soon" made me laugh, and in this section he avows that ".......was proud of his handsome appearance, as nearly all men are." That's not often acknowledged by males, altho we all know it's fact to some extent for all human beings.
Jean
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Joan, I like your analogy of the Pope, tiara, and ink.
I think it was Tommy Lasorda who said, "Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon."
I agree with Trevor, these people were not interested in their only mission (from their god - so they tell us), they wanted worldly things and got them in spades. The Pope was living the life of the despot, no matter how benevolent. To rule without mercy dismisses any good he may have done.
Isn't 'mercy' part of the Christian creed? I remember little about justice, and more about 'mercy' from reading their testament. It has been a long time, and my memory is not as good as it once was. Perhaps a rereading is in order for Pope Paul's shenanigans.
Emily
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From the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew-Chapter five-verse seven, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."
There seems to be little hope for justice for those who follow him. In verse eleven: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."
Verse 12: "Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you" Jesus Christ
Justice or mercy was not expected in this speech. He can only promise those persecuted a place in the mythological heaven.
Durant writes that Pope Paul ruled with justice but without mercy, so he doesn't seem to be following the rules of the founder of the institution he runs.
Emily
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I believe there is also something about it being harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven then to pass thru the eye of a needle? Of course, these guys had the advantage that hardly anyone else could read the Bible, so there weren't many too challenge them...........that doesn't explain today's televangelists and megachurch/mercedes-driving ministers -their congregants CAN read.........Jean
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Jean, it is true they can now read the story, but most don't know the history of how these myths came to power. Religion is purposely not taught as part of history, it could never stand any light shed upon its origins, and those who originated the idea, and most importantly what they actually wrote down as facts which is easily disputed.
When I read claims of myths, fairytales, gods, goddesses, ghosts, devils, angels, demons, and the claim of anything 'supernatural' and by definition of the occult, the first thing I want to know is the history of those making the claim.
Their history belies their myths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all melt like the wicked witch of the west in the Wizard of Oz when put to the test of archeology and history, not to mention common sense.
Their gods like the hundred of thousands of other gods I've read about over the years all melt upon exposure to knowledge of the world and our place in it. Of all those gods, the Arab created gods of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are the least appealing, and most appalling.
I prefer the glacier god in South America worshipped by the people living at its base. The glacier god begins to ejaculate every spring and continues on through the summer to provide the natives with life saving water for their crops. I cannot remember their name or the name they gave their god, but they applied a human trait to him, and he seemed harmless enough, though he has grown old and has receded back up the mountain.
Like everything else gods usually have a short shelf life in the sphere of eternity.
Emily
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I thought about the commonality of myths just yesterday. I found a website titled "free library" and downloaded a book by 19th century intellectual Margaret Fuller. She's very tough to read, using that 19th century habit of loooong sentences and flowery statements, but she's worth plowing through..........she mentioned, in a list of powerful woman, Semiramis, who I had not heard of. So I went looking for her. Her myth is from ancient Assyria and her story is that as an orphaned infant, she was placed by a river and was discovered by a wealthy woman who raised her as her own. Sound familiar?.........Jean
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Jean, yes I recognize the story. No good myth was left behind.
I spent the day cleaning out my files, and as usual did more reading than throwing away. I did find the name of the glacier god. It was in Peru and its name was Qoyllur Rit'i. The people living at the base of the glacier were the Quechua natives of the area. They believe that when Qoyllur Rit'i stops sending down his semen to fertilize their crops the world will end. The glacier has receded so far that they no longer dance at midnight on the glacier paying homage to the glacier god. They use the word apus for god.
We had better get back to the Renaissance. Perhaps I can tie in the Quechua indians to the period we are now discussing about Rome and the Pope. During this time the Spanish were given permission by the Pope to convert and enslave any populations they encountered in their quest for riches. They sailed into Peru and conquered the natives including the Quechua. They converted to Catholicism, but never gave up their own gods either.
A convoluted form of Christianity.
Emily
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most of my kowlege of myths comes from a course I took in GREEK and Roman mythology but as I listen to the discussion here and elsewhere I am struck by the relationship that they all have to bits and pieces of human behavior. They seem to be an attempt to understand the what and why of the things we consistently do that are relevant to living with each other and the world. Early psychology.
claire
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Very much so Claire. When you get right down to it, all of history is the story of dealing with those human behaviors.
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The Story of Civilization
Volume V P392
The leader of the humanists in Rome was Iulio Pomponio Leto, allegedly the natural son of Prince Sanseverino of Salerno. Coming to Rome in youth, he attached himself to Valla as a diciple, and succeeded him as professor of Latin in the University. He became so enamoured of pagan literature that he lived and had his being not in the Rome of Nicholas V or Paul II, but in that of the Catos or the Caesars. He was the first to edit the agricultural classics of Varro and Columella, and he sedulously followed their percepts in tending his vineyard.
He remained content in learned poverty, spent half his time among the historic ruins, wept at their spoliation and desolation, Latinized his name to Pomponius Laetus, and walked to his classroom in ancient Roman dress. Hardly any hall could hold the crowd that gathered at dawn to hear his lectures; some students came at midnight to secure a place. He despized the Christian religion, denounced its preachers as hypocrites, and trained his followers in the Stoic rather than the Christian morality. His home was a museum of Roman antiquities, a meeting place for students and teachers of Roman Lore.
About 1460 he organized them into a Roman Academy, whose members took pagan names, gave such names to their children in baptism, exchanged the Christian faith for a religious worship of the genius of Rome, performed Latin comedies and celebrated the anniversary of Rome’s foundation with pagan ceremonies in which the officiating members were termed sacerdotes, and Laetus was called pontifex maximus. Some enthusiastic members dreamed of restoring the Roman Republic.
Early in 1468 a citizen laid before the papal police a charge that the academy was plotting to depose and arrest the Pope. Certain cardinals supported the charge, and assured the pontiff that a rumor in Rome was predicting his early death. Paul ordered the arrest of Lateus, Platina, and other leaders of the Academy. Pomponius wrote humble apologies and professions of orthodoxy; after due chastening he was released , and resumed his lecturing, but with such careful conformity that when he died (1498) forty bishops attended his funeral. Platina was tortured to elicit evidence of a conspiracy; no such evidence was anywhere found, but Platina, despite a dozen letters of apology, was kept in prison for a year.
Paul decreed the dissolution of the Academy as a nest of heresy, and forbade the teaching of pagan literature in the schools of Rome. His successor allowed the Academy to reopen reformed, and gave the penitent Platina charge of the Vatican Library. There Platina found the materials for his graphic and elegant biographies of the popes; and when he came to Paul II he took his revenge. His indictment might with more justice have been reserved for Sixtus IV.
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An institution with too much power! ......Jean
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He sounds like quite a character! Perhaps, one needed to go to such extremes to contradict the prevailing ideas.
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Yes, a character indeed. He sounds very theatrical. I would have liked him just for his interest in ancient Rome alone. I don't think I would have gone so far as to want to restore the Roman Republic though.
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That extract is just fascinating. So why don't I know about this guy. Marvellous word picture of him. He was obviously too charismatic for his own good - love the idea of his living among 'a museum of Roman antiquities' -
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A recent article in the NYT discussed 'Rome crumbling in the 'old city' while new building goes on outside the walls.
We will need Claire and Justin to describe the new art gallery and its art in this article. Having seen the sculpture of ancient Greece and Rome, I find the new installation mind boggling in its ugliness. The concept alludes me.
Rome needs a Lateus and Platina now, but they seem to have been replaced by immigrants needing large apartment buildings, with no thought of ancient Rome or its history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/arts/design/07abroad.html?_r=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.jsonp&pagewanted=all
Emily
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
SAVONAROLA AND THE REPUBLIC
The Prophet
The Statesman
Literature: The Martyr
Architecture and Sculpture: The Republic and the Medici
Art Under the Revolution
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
I Have not been a participant in this discussion, and I am a day late, but I wanted to wish our dear Dr. Robby a very happy 90th birthday and many happy returns, needless to add. Any 90th birthday is happy, especially for someone with Robby's outlook and attitude. I hope he does still look in here sporadically.
My very best wishes to you, Robby, and as the Japanese saying goes, may you live 10,000 years.
Zulema
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Happy Birthday Robby!
Emily
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Oh, my! HAPPY 90TH BIRTHDAY!
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Happy Happy Birthday, Robby, and 90 more!!
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At the end of my last posting, mention was made of Sixtus IV. So now we study Durant’s writing about him.
Story of Civilization
Volume V Page 393
Sixtus IV: 1471-84.
Of the eighteen cardinals who met to choose a new pontiff fifteen were Italian, Rodrigo Borgia was Spanish, d’Estouteville was French, Bessarion was Greek. One participant later described the election of Cardinal Francesco della Rovere as due to “intrigue and bribery.” (ex artibus et coruptelis), but this seems to have meant only that various offices were promised to various cardinals for their votes. The new pope illustrated the admirable equality of opportunity (among Italians ) to reach the papacy. He was born of a peasant family at Percorile, near Savona.
Repeated ill as a child, he was consecrated to St. Francis by his mother in prayer for his recovery. At nine he was sent to a Franciscan convent, and later entered the Minorite order. For a while , he served as tutor in the della Rovere family, whose name he took as his own. He studied philosophy and thelogy at Pavia, bologna, and Padua, and taught them there and elsewhere to classes so crowded that almost every learned Italian of the next generation was said to have been his pupil.
When, at fifty-seven, he became Sixtus IV, his reputation was that of a scholar distinguished for learning and integrity. Almost over night, by one of the strangest transformations in papal history, he became a politician and a warrior. Finding Europe too divided, and its goverments too corrupt, for a crusade against the Turks, he decided to confine his secular efforts to Italy. There too, of course he found division - in the Papal States the authority of the pope largely flouted by local rulers, in Latium rule by noble violence ignoring the papal power, and in Rome a mob so disorderly that at his coronation it stoned his litter in anger at a crush caused by a stoppage of the cavalcade. Sixtus proposed to restore order in Rome, to reinvigorate legatine authority in the Papal States, and to bring Italy under the unifying rule of the pope.
[These] plans of Sixtus to strengthen the Papal States disturbed the other Goverments of Italy. Lorenzo de’ Medici schemed to get Imola for Florence; Sixtus outplayed him, and replaced the Medici with the Pazzi as bankers for the papacy; Lorenzo tried to ruin the Pazzi, they tried to kill him. Sixtus agreed to the conspiracy but depricated murder; “go and do what you will,” he told the plotters, “provided there be no killing.”The result was a war that lasted (1478-80) until the Turks threatened to overrun Italy.
When that danger subsided, Sixtus was free to resume his liberation of the Papal States. Late in 1480 the Ordelaffi line of dictators died out at Forli, and the people asked the Pope to take over the city; Sixtus bade Girolamo govern Imola and Forli together. Girolamo suggested taking Ferrara next, and persuaded Sixtus and Venice join in war upon Duke Ercole.(1482) Ferrante of Naples sent troops to defend his son-in-law; Florence and Milan also helped Ferrara; and the Pope, who had begun his reign with plans for European peace, found that he had plunged Italy into war. Harassed by Naples in the south, by Florence in the north, and by disturbences in Rome, Sixtus came to terms with Ferrara after a year of chaos and bloodshed . When the Venetians refused to follow suit he excommunicated them, and joined Florence and Milan in war upon his late ally.
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A bit late, but never too late for cake!
Happy Birthday, Robby dear!
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Sixtus' instruction:“go and do what you will,” he told the plotters, “provided there be no killing.”The result was a war that lasted (1478-80) until the Turks threatened to overrun Italy.
A war with no killing ? Of course the papal order "No killing!" referred only to the bankers and other worthys. Meantime, the peasants' function was to die in the battles, or to grow the food on which the upper class dined. Life for them, under the church's control was short, and very, very brutal. How the church could equate these deplorable facts with Christianity, I do not know. ++ Trevor
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I never heard of the Minorite Order. I'll have to look them up.
Hope you had a wonderful Birthday, Robby.
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Trevor, your comment about the difference between church doctrine and its implementation by church leaders is still going on today, 2,000 years from its founding.
With Sixtus we have reached almost 1,500 years of Christianity and still there is a great divide between what the church preaches, and what it actually does. Nothing seems to have changed very much since Sixtus, or before him for that matter.
Those who seek power, even if they are sincere in their belief, seem to be willing to compromise, look the other way, to hold on to office. The 'power' becomes more important than the doctrine.
Sixtus seems to be no different than his predessors. Say one thing and do another.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Volume V Pages 395- 397.
Sixtus was in many ways a preview of Julius II. A stern imperial priest who loved war and art and power, Sixtus persued his purposes without scruple or finesse, but with wild energy and unhesitating courage to the end.. Like latter warior popes he made enemies who tried to weaken his arms by blackening his name. Some gossips accounted for his lavish support of Pietro and Girolamo Riario by calling them his sons; others, like Infessura, called them his lovers, and did not hesitate to term the pope “a sodomite”.* The picture is bad enough without these incredible and unsupported allegations.
After exhausting on his nephews the treasury that Paul II had left full, Sixtus financed his wars by selling ecclesiastical offices to the highest bidder. A hostile Venetian ambassador quotes him as saying “that a pope needs only pen and ink to get whatever sum he wishes”; but this is equally true of most modern governments, whose interest-bearing bonds correspond in many ways with the salary-bearing sinecures sold by the popes. Sixtus, however, was not content with this scheme.
He kept throughout the papal states a monopoly on the sale of corn; he sold the best abroad, and the rest to his people, at a goodly profit. He learned this trick from the other rulers of his time, like Ferrante of Naples; presumable he charged no more than private engrossers would have done, since it is an unwritten law of economics that the price of a product depends on the gullibility of the purchaser; but the poor grumbled forgivably at the thought that their hunger fed the luxuries of the Riarios. Despite these and other devices for raising revenues, Sixtus left debts totaling 150,000 ducats.
[Meantime] the nobles of the capital felt justified, by the example of a warlike pontiff, in renewing their exhilarating feuds. It was one of the polite customs of Rome to plunder the palace of a cardinal just elected to the papacy. In so handling the palace of one of the della Rovere cardinals, a young aristocrat, Fracessco di Santa Croce, had been wounded by a member of the della Valle family. The youth revenged himself by cutting the tendon of della Valle’s heel; della Valle’s relatives revenged him by cleving Francesco’s head; Prospero di Santa Crose revenged Francesco by killing Piero Margani. The feud spread through the city, the Orsini and the papal forces supporting the Santa Croce, the Colonna defending the Valle. Lorenzo Oddone Colonna was captured, tried, tortured into a confession, and put to death in Sant’ Angelo, though his brother Fabrizio surrendered two Colonna fortresses to Sixtus in the hope of having Lorenzo spared.
Prospero Colonna joined Naples in war on the pope, ravaged the Campagna, raided Rome. Sixtus engaged Roberto Malatesta of Rimini to come and lead the papal troops. Roberto defeated the Neapolitan and Colonna forces at Campo Morto, returned to Rome victorious, and died of fever contracted in the Campagna swamps. Girolamo took his place, and Sixtus officially blessed the artillary that his nephew directed against the Colonna citadels. But while the pope’s spirit willed war, his body collapsed inder the strain of successive crises. In June, 1484, he too came down with fever.
On August 11 news came to him that his allies had made peace with Venice over his protests; he refused to ratify it. The next day he died.
* Stefano Infessura composed a Diario della citta di Roma, a history of fifteenth-century Rome from family records and personal observation. He was an ardent republican who looked upon the popes as despots; he was also a partisan of the Colonna; he cannot be trusted when he retails stories, not elsewhere confirmed, about the wickedness of the popes.
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"he cannot be trusted when he retails stories, not elsewhere confirmed, about the wickedness of the popes."
Even without unconfirmed rumors of "wickedness", things are bad enough. I assume all these fights took place in the streets of Rome while ordinary people like us cowered in corners.
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Joan - I think often about the "bystanders" in all the wars. It is a segment of history often ignored. I saw a great show-maybe it was part of the Civil War series by Ken Burns- about the civilians at Gettysburg. It included the necessity to bury not only the dead soldiers but the dead horses. I live in NJ and when I've taught about the Revolutionary War I've talked about how often geographical segments of the state changed sides. Property and food caches would be devoured by one side and then the other side. It's amazing that any civilians survived at all.
Jean
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Wikipedia's summary of Sixtus' life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Sixtus_IV
He did do some positive things, including building the Sistine Chapel and the Sistine Bridge. ( is Donald Trump Catholic? He seems to have taken a page from S IV book on acquiring property and naming things for himself). The Catholic Encyclopedia sums his pluses up tis way:
"Nevertheless, there is a praiseworthy side to his pontificate. He took measures to suppress abuses in the Inquisition, vigorously opposed the Waldenses, and annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance. He was a patron of arts and letters, building the famous Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Bridge across the Tiber, and becoming the second founder of the Vatican Library. Under him Rome once more became habitable, and he did much to improve the sanitary conditions of the city. He brought down water from the Quirinal to the Fountain of Trevi, and began a transformation of the city which death alone hindered him from completing. In his private life Sixtus IV was blameless. The gross accusations brought against him by his enemy Infessura have no foundation; his worst vice was nepotism, and his greatest misfortune was that he was destined to be placed at the head of the States of the Church at a time when Italy was emerging from the era of the republics, and territorial princes like the pope were forced to do battle with the great despots........."
Jean
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"But while the pope’s spirit willed war, his body collapsed under the strain of successive crises. In June, 1484, he too came down with fever.---- On August 11 news came to him that his allies had made peace with Venice over his protests; he refused to ratify it. The next day he died."
What a terrible indictment of a Christian leader. "The pope's spirit willed war; he refused to ratify the peace that the warring parties had arranged."
I can think of nothing less human, or less Christian than that.
However, there were some worthy achievements in his life, as Durant, in my next post, will itemise. ++ Trevor
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Sorry Trevor, didn't mean to jump the gun on you.........Jean
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Jean. No problem . I'm pleased to have you jump in when ever you feel the urge. It's the comments of others that make these pages interesting. Far better than reading the book alone, with no input from others. I hope everyone joins in.. ++ Trevor
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The effects of war on Joan's 'ordinary people' and Jean's 'citizens' is a story that is rarely told. Durant concerns himself here with the power brokers such as the Colonna and the Pope. There is no record of the suffering these two imposed on the ordinary people, who actually fought the wars or the citizens who endured the conflict.
During the war between the States in this country, one young private from the South said and I paraphrase, "It was a rich mans war, and a poor mans fight."
A friend came in possession of her great-great grandfather's diary of the Civil War in 2001. She had it transcribed and printed, and gave me a copy. He was a private and kept his diary until Dec. 1864 when he finally was allowed to go home after the battle of Nashville. He kept a record of where they were, what happened daily and the hardships they suffered. He also wrote about the 'civilians' who suffered loss of both home and food at the hands of friend and foe alike, especially the women and children left to 'tend home and field.'
He was often hungry and cold, and once marched twenty two miles barefoot. He was one of those ordinary people who fight the power brokers wars. Since many of his battles and travels go through the area where I live today, my interest in his journey was hightened.
After reading a transcription of my own ancestor's diary of the war as a young girl (the actual diary is in the State Archives), I have preferred to get my history from those who were in the trenches, a first hand account without historians. I have read transcripts, books (both published and self printed) of many accounts of the same battles and marches, movement and retreat.
I like my history served hot, told by those who actually fought it, not the planners and plotters like the Pope and the Colonna.
Emily
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Does any one know if soldiers are encouraged to keep diaries? I have one that my Dad kept while in France in WWI. I didn't see it until after he died. It seemed so unlike him to have done so and I've seen mention of diaries so often. Maybe it's a "fad" among soldiers and they encourage each other?....jean.
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Jean, you might consider transcribing or coping (if the pages are not too fragile) your father's diary and donating it to your state archives or the national archives.
There was a program just a few years ago asking for diaries, letters, remembrances and etc. of WW11 to be sent to the National archives for permanent storage. This was to become a permanent record of those 'ordinary citizens' you and Joan wrote about in your posts. Not only from the soldier, but also from the homefront.
In my reading of soldiers diaries, there is a lot of boredom and waiting for things to happen. Many spent this time writing letters home or recording the events that happened that day.
Emily
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I have (self printed by my mother) both a diary of an ancester who fought in the civil war and one of my great-great grandfather who participated in the California gold rush. The latter one, especially, really gives you the feeling of having been there.
I doubt if much like that exists for the time period we are studying: since ordinary people couldn't read or write. And I don't think we've quite gotten to the invention of the printing press.
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Joan, the printing press was there during Sixtus time, but it was slow and what got printed was for the most part those scripts already written and in circulation. As you say most people could not read and write, only those who had the leisure time to learn and write were published.
The religious myths consumed most of the early printing. The printing of the New Testament will lead to the split in the Roman Catholic church. Wikipedia on printing...........
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential event in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe the world they live in, and ushering in the period of modernity.
Modern paper and print technology first originated in China. In 105 A.D., Ts’ai Lun invented the process for manufacturing paper, introducing the first use in China. The paper was superior in quality to the baked clay, papyrus and parchment used in other parts of the world.
By 593 A.D., the first printing press was invented in China, and the first printed newspaper was available in Beijing in 700 A.D. It was a woodblock printing. And the Diamond Sutra, the earliest known complete woodblock printed book with illustrations was printed in China in 868 A.D.
Chinese printer Pi Sheng invented movable type in 1041 A.D. Exported to the Western world, it is similar to the technology that German printer Johann Gutenberg used in the 1450s to produce his famous editions of the Bible. Additionally, Chinese inventor Liu Ching produced the first printed map in 1155 A.D.
The mechanical systems involved were not assembled in Europe until the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1441, based on existing screw presses. Gutenberg, a goldsmith by profession, developed a complete printing system, which perfected the printing process through all its stages by adapting existing technologies to printing purposes, as well as making ground-breaking inventions of his own. His newly devised hand mould made for the first time possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities, a key element in the profitability of the whole printing enterprise.
The mechanization of bookmaking led to the first mass production of books in history in assembly line-style. A single Renaissance printing press could produce 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying. Books of bestselling authors like Luther or Erasmus were sold by the hundred thousands in their life-time.
From a single point of origin, Mainz, Germany, printing spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries. By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million volumes.
There were already millions of books in print in the time of Sixtus. The problem was most of the works were based on myths and offered little for the 'ordinary' man to improve his life.
Emily
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Durants' SoC Volume V
The Renaissance
Pages 397 - 398
A substantial portion of Sixtus’ revenues was spent on art and public works. He tried, unsuccessfully, to drain the pestilential marshes around Foligno, and at least dreamt of draining the Pontine swamps. He had the major streets of Rome straightened, widened, and paved; he improved the water supply; restored bridges, walls, gates, and towers; spanned the tiber with the Ponte Sisto that bears his name; built a new Vatican Library, and the Sistine chapel above it; founded the Sistine Choir; and rebuilt the ruined Hospital of Santo Spirito, whose main ward, 365 feet long, could accommodate a thousand patients.
He reorganised the university of Rome and opened to the public the Capitoline Museum that Paul II had established. During his Pontificate, and largely under the direction of Boccio Pontelli, the churches of Santa Maria della Pace and Santa Maria del Popolo were erected, and many others were repaired.
The Sistine Chapel was designed by Giovannino de’ Dolci, simply and unpretentiously, for semiprivate worship by the popes and high ecclesiastics. It was beautified with a marbel santuary screen by Mino de Fiesole, and by spacious frescoes recounting on the south wall scenes from the life of Moses, and on the north wall corresponding scenes from the life of Christ. For these paintings Sixtus called to Rome the greatest masters of the time: Perugino, Signorelli, Pinuriccio, Domenico and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, Boticelli Cosimo Roselli, and Piero di Cosimo. Sixtus offered an additional reward for the best pictue of the fifteen painted there by these men. Roselli knowing his own inferiority in design, decided to stake all on brilliant colouring; his fellow artists laughed at his lavish spread of ultramarine and gold; but Sixtus gave him the prize.
It was for Sixtus that Melozzo da Forli did his best work. Coming to Rome about 1472 after studying with Piero della Francesca, he painted the church of Santi Apostoli a fresco of the Ascension which aroused the enthusiasm of Vasari;all but a few fragments of it disappeared when the church was rebuilt (1702 f) Gracious and tender are the Angel and the Virgin of the Annunciation in the Uffizi Gallery, but finer still the Angei musicanti – one with a viol, one with a lute – in the Vatican.
Melozzo’s masterpiece was painted as a fresco in the Vatican Library, and was lated transferred to canvas. Against the ornate pillars and ceiling of the Library six figures were portrayed with veracity and power: Sixtus seated, massive and regal; at his right the gay Pietro Riario; standing before him the tall dark Giuliano della Rovere; kneeling before him the high powered Platina receiving appointment as a librarian; and behind him Giovanni della Rovere and count Girolamo Riario; it is a living picture of an eventful pontificate.
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but finer still the Angei musicanti- one with a viol, one with a lute-in the Vatican.
Here is the Angei with the viol from Art Encyclopedia done by Melozzo da Forli and is part of the fresco he painted for the Vatican. The bright blonde hair with the pumpkin colored dress does make this Angei stand out. She looks very pregnant to me or else has a pumpkin under that dress.
From this reading, we learn that Sixtus was more impressed with flash than design. Perhaps he liked his 'angels' bawdy and brassy. Since Sixtus was doing the paying (with other peoples money of course) they gave him what he wanted.
Where is Justin? We need his expertise on this to counter my own jaded view of all religious art. Justin can explain the design and art that went into making this fresco, since I never studied art and its history, I can only comment on the result of the finished product and the man who made it happen, Sixtus.
Where is Claire? She is an artist who would give us a different prespective on this painting. She and Justin have contributed greatly to the art presented during the discussion of the Renaissance. They have increased my respect for the artists regardless of the intentions of their benefactors.
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/melozzo_da_forli.html
Emily
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While reading the wiki on printing, I tho't "we at SL should celebrate Gutenberg's birthday," but when I googled him I discovered that there is no date of his birth, only an approximate year. He did die on Feb 3rd, so maybe we can remember to raise our glass to him on that day.......Jean
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Hmmmm! Your right Emily. Where is Claire? I haven't seen her post in about three weeks. Hope she is okay.
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And where is Justin ?? I miss his comments on the art. Also please excuse the many typos in my last piece. I did it at the end of a busy day, which is never a good idea. +++ Trevor
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See Forli at this Wiki site, scroll down, click on paintings to enlarge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melozzo_da_Forlì
O.k. I've tried 4times to get you to da Forli in wikipedia. It comes up when you goggle it, so if the above link doesn't take to the wiki site, it will come up first when you goggle him.......Jean
Jean
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Trevor, please never worry one minute about typos, everyone has them. I am grateful for your effort as I am sure others are, and applaud you for stepping up and saving the discussion.
Emily
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My apologies again ! I mispelled Forlì as Forli . Ill try Forlì in google and see what comes up === Trevor
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Now I'm stuck ! how does one get Melozzo da Forlì into Google ? Google search refuses to accept Melozzo da Forlì ! ++ Trevor
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I didn't have any trouble. Here are some images from google.
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Melozzo+da+Forl%C3%AC&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=9O69TPm_OY-2sAOFl9XSDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CC8QsAQwAA (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Melozzo+da+Forl%C3%AC&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=9O69TPm_OY-2sAOFl9XSDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CC8QsAQwAA)
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I was in the Sistine Chapel 45 years ago. It was overwhelming!! It's hard to see any individual painting, because the overall effect is so great.
The famous Michelangelo of God and Adam is so small from the ground, you can barely see it.
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Joan this link is for you to take a 360 degree view of the Sistine Chapel including the ceiling, and you can telescope in on the ceiling and see each painting. I hope everyone can check this out, it puts one in the Chapel from anywhere in the world. Isn't technology amazing.
I had to experiment with the site to get it to do what I wanted. I clicked on the M at the left side of the page to change the setting to mouse, and then used the mouse and arrows on my keyboard to move up-down-left-right, and the mouse to move in and out of the view.
I turned it up to the ceiling and found the Adam and god depiction in the center. I zoomed in (with the mouse) and it was clear and easy to see. That painting has been photographed and widely distributed, but most of the others have not seen that kind of attention.
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
Emily
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That's amazing! I haven't figure out how to zoom in yet. But I bookmarked it to play with later.
Last night, there was a fascinating program on how the Gothic cathedrals were built. I always want to know how things work, and this showed how pointed arches, flying buttresses, and ribbed vaulted cielings distribute the weight so that you can have tons of stone held up by walls made mainly of glass.
They talked about cathedrals that were in trouble. In the one in Amiens, the buttresses were placed wrong to do their job. A couple of hundred years later, it was realized, and the walls were fortified. In a nearby town, the Cathedral was built higher, which put too great a strain on the system, and it could collapse.
They now have fancy lazer and computer systems that can identify where the points of strain are, so hopefully some of these cathedrals can be fortified so they are safe.
The height and the amount of light from the windows were seen as enhancing the spiritual mission of these cathedrals: to give people the sensation of being close to God. Thus a bit of compitition to make them higher and have more and more windows, sometime pushing things too far. Of course,in an age where few could read, the stained glass windows, like the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, told ordinary people the stories of the Bible.
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I've never seen the whole interior of the Sistine Chapel before. Pretty neat. The pictures of God and Adam were always so blown up and made a fuss over that I thought it pretty much covered the entire ceiling. Here is is only a part of the ceiling paintings. Thanks.
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Joan/Emily many thanks for your work in getting views of the Sistine chapel. We will have need of them when we come to Julius II, some 20 years ahead in our study. ++ Trevor
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The Story of Civilization
Volume V The Renaissance
Pages 398-399
In 1475 the Vatican Library contained 2527 volumes in Latin and Greek; Sixtus added 1100 more, and for the first time threw the collection open to the public. He restored the humanists to favour, though he paid them with preoccupied irregularity. He called Filelfo to Rome, and that warrior of the pen praised the Pope enthusiastically until his salary of 600 florins fell into arrears. Joannes Argyropoulos was invited from Florence to Rome where his lectures on Greek language and literature were attended by cardinals, bishops, and foreign students like Reuchlin. Sixtus brought to Rome the German scientist Johann Müller --Regiomontanus -- and commissioned him to correct the Julian calendar; but Müller died a year later (1476) and calendar reform had to wait a century more (1582).
It is remarkable that a Franciscan friar and professor of philosophy and theology should have become the first secularizing pope of the Renaissance -- or, more precisely the first Renaissance pope whose chief interest was to establish the papacy as a strong political power in Italy. Perhaps excepting the case of Ferrara, whose able rulers had faithfully paid their feudal dues, Sixtus was perfectly justified in seeking to make the Papal States papal, and to make Rome and its environs safe for the popes. History might forgive, as it has forgiven Julius II, his use of war for these ends; it might acknowledge that his diplomacy merely followed the amoral principles of other states; but it finds no pleasure in watching a pope conspire with assassins, bless cannon, or wage war with a thoroughness that shocked his time; the death of a thousand men at Campo Morto was a heavier loss of life than any battle yet fought in Renaissance Italy.
The morality of the Roman court was further lowered by reckless nepotism and unblushing simony, and the costly indecent revels of his kin; in these and other ways Sixtus IV made straight the way for Alexander VI and contributed -- as he responded -- to the moral disintegration of Italy.
It was Sixtus who appointed Torquemada to head the Spanish Inquisition; Sixtus who provoked the virulence and license of Roman satire, gave the Inquisitors in Rome power to prohibit the printing of any book they did not like. At his death he might have admitted many failures -- against Lorenzo, Naples, Ferrara, Venice-- and even the Colonna were not yet subdued.
Three significant successes he had achieved: he had made Rome a fairer and healthier city, he had given it invigorating drafts of fresh art, and he had restored the papacy to its place among the most powerful monarchies in Europe.
History can not forgive, nor condemn. Only individuals can do so, and I don't believe, if we are now truly more civilized, that any today would forgive Sextus.
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Joan, do you know on what channel you saw the program about cathedrals?.....Jean
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JEAN: I get three PBS channels, so I'm not sure. But I think it was on the Los Angeles PBS channel --KCET. Other PBS channels should have it as well.
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hello there, its Deb, from Ontario, Canada, soon to be on the way again to Brownsville, Texas
--sadly my main contribution to Durant's and your readings is by lurking...cannot believe didn't enjoy history when \i attended school in the 60s...have just finished a wonderful book 'The Book of Negroes' and have added to my enlargement of information niches and slowly they merge to a bigger picture...I wish I could contribute, but except for what I am reading thru this site...my knowledge base is non-existent...high school then nursing school then working and struggling for 32 years...it wasn't till I had to stop working that I could concentrate my inherent interest in learning again and came across the 'civilization group around 2002 --what wonderful luck for me....and the internet has provided this portal for me to enjoy my passion for learning---also your past discussions around the popes and their human failings ....
seems like a bit of an interlude, so thought I say my 2 Canadian cents worth
--even read in my recent readings, the previous moderator's thoughts on 'continuous learning' and should have posted as was so pleased to see him and his thoughts in this book; but sadly when I saw this post it seemed past tense to put my thoughts into words
anyway enough said--Deb
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Welcome Deb - i share you love of learning and have enjoyed this site, plus there are tons of books, old and new, re: history. History seems to be a new fad these days, many books being written on U.S. History, Women's history, etc. But my other recent find is the Gutenberg Project and other free books on line. Most of them are out of print and therefore can be provided free. Many of them were written in previous centuries, so are sometimes hard to read w/out a dictionary nearby, but i've found many to be very interesting. (One of the reasons i love my new ipad is that i can sit comfortably almost anywhere and read those old books and have a "dictionary on my lap" as well. ) And isn't it wonderful how people provide us w/ websites to see the places, people and arts that we are talking about?
Please join in the discussion, not all of us have expertise in whatever the subject or period is at the moment. Also, been in enough groups to know that if i have a question, someone else is probably mentally asking the same question, but hasn't verbalized it yet......lol..............jean
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History can not forgive, nor condemn. Only individuals can do so, and I don't believe, if we are now truly more civilized, that any today would forgive Sextus
I tho't the same thing when i read that "passive tense" paragraph. I believe that must have been Durant's thinking, not history's????
Is it because life was so difficult in previous periods of history that powerful people were almost always so cruel? ......... altho as i write that i realize that terrible cruelties are still happening. I guess Torquemada and the tho'ts of the Spanish Inquistion made me think about the most cruel tortures. I have read about them often and always i just think "how can people be so cruel?" Why the lack of empathy? .............jean
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hi Jean
we all talk about history; but we are really talking about perspective, are we not? ...this was bought home to me via an American friend when we were discussing the war of 1812, and recollections of learning about it in high school, and thru readings (Pierre Burton, a Canadian author wrote 2 books about this time frame, and put humanizing issues into the read i.e. one group of warring individuals who in getting ready to raid a group, set up boats for their escape, but someone forgot the paddles, and they were stranded )...I also learned from my American friend that those people I was labelling as 'Empire Loyalists', had quite a different cogitation when being referred to in the United States.....much the same as the Englishman Wolfe who fought and won against the Frenchman Montcalm on the Quebec 'Plains of Abraham' has always been a hero in our English history, but I would be interested in reading a Quebec history of the same time period, and see how it is being presented.
And so for all history I imagine...the perspective, prejudices, open-mindedness, of the observer/writer....influences changing what was once '...a today for people whose lives we look at from the distance of time'...our today...and perhaps we can never truly understand those people's actions; their feeling, perspectives, duress...with centuries standing between us
...even today trying to understand the Middle East and how people view their lives & communicate across the distance of miles, & cultural attitudes & practices & behaviours, is a major buttress in our world of 2010....the author 'Rory Stewart' gave me wonderful perspective of their being, thu his books 'The Places in Between', & 'The Prince of the Marshes first book where he (a Scottish individual) was able to wander thru back areas of the middle east and he wrote of the people he met & their interactions......unbelievable compared to what I experience in my everyday life , yet these people with these mind sets live in this world, at the same time in history as we do
Am presently reading 'Long Shadows, Truth, Lies & History' by Erna Paris--my travelling reading material for the trip down to Brownsville
Did the Durants have bias in their presentation of the materials in their books?? It would be interesting to read some foreign author's 'history of civilization', say from China for instance, ...maybe among the Gutenberg books, with the translating abilities on the internet!!...
isn't the internet a wonderful instrument to have at our use...
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BOOKAD "we all talk about history; but we are really talking about perspective, are we not?"
How true, and how well put!
Do you have friends in Brownsville, or are you going for the birds? Some birds can be seen there that aren't in other parts of the US and Canada.
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my husband Glenn & I don't really fit into either category, we just want a warm place preferably dog friendly to spend the winter; 2002 we were in a hit and run accident with our truck run off the road by a car coming towards us and ended upside down in a bog; the car took off...we all walked away, Glenn, myself & our two dogs...on going to the hospital that evening it was found Glenn had a soft fracture high cervical vertebrae....it is much easier today for his pain management if we are in a warmer climate...my eyesight has deteriorated and I have a lot of trouble with my vision, but I don't let it interfere with my reading though I am on the waiting list for cataract surgery here in Ontario
....the Brownsville libraries are amazing (except they limit each borrower to 7 books on their card...while in Ontario I have 4 libraries at my disposal with almost no limits to what one can take out)
I have read a number of interesting books around locals in Tennessee--The Widow of the South by R. Hicks--and we visited the home of the widow whose house was occupied as a field hospital for one of the bloodiest battles in the civil war ( the widow later dug up graves and repositioned the men of both sides of the war 0on the grounds around her home so they would have their honour maintained and the site is the largest private cemetery, or one of them in the United States--have read a number of books about the Brownsville area including 'The News from Brownsville' ed by E. Coker, about a soldiers wife in the early to mid 1800's (fascinating)--3 books about the hill country just west of San Antonio, Texas mainly from diaries written by women from Santa Ana time onward....'the Alamo, in American History' by R. Sorrels--a major part being the Mexican experience....'Issac's Storm' by E. Larson, about the Galveston hurricane early 1900's and all these places we have been able to visit and the experience of visiting them after the read really plays with my imagination
I currently *well for the last 3 years, have had on my to read list 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' by Paul Kennedy...and that is why am patiently waiting for the Civilization group to get to the next book as don't quite know how to jump into the 1500's history without a pre...idea of how it came tobe....what I am learning though in the meantime with the group and discussion, agrees with my present philosophy of gaia and the wonderful world we live in; forgoing the need to be for reverence in religion, which as such shams associated with striving for power, upper echelon principles as the be all and end all, leaving the man of the street a victim in his worship to the head honchos, so to speak; the things that have been done in the name of religion--it is shameful
--but to the present discussion;
read the first book, on the orient, with the group, then lost them somehow, but could not relate to the greek, roman eras...since last December when I found you guys again, 3rd time going, able to catch the group briefly, but understand there was a problem with seniorlearn--hopefully to stick with you even though the era concerned now is hard for me to grasp, other than the inter meshing and conflicts of competing and succeeding groups--which could be just another word for history!!
but reading the hypocracy involved in the religions,.... it throws my mind how one could feel good about certain religions with their backgrounds....which of course is why so many left for the Americas, to pursue their religion....and the circle begins anew....
Deb
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Bookad, have you read Durant's 'The story of Philosophy'? It was his first book and I read it my Freshman year. It was written in the 1920's and he also worked on his research for the books to follow in SOC. He spent six years and circled the globe twice to complete his first volume which was published in 1935.
Here is a word from John Little, historian and editor of 'Heroes of History' about Durant's philosophy.
By what name would you call Durant’s philosophy of life?
Had he ever chosen to give his creed a name, it might well have been called "Perspectivism" -- as that was his council; to see the part in the light of the whole. To see human nature against the backdrop of our actual history and the practical effects and consequences of certain ideas that went with and against the grain of human nature.
Whereas Spinoza, who was Durant’s personal favorite among the philosophers, had sought to see things sub specie eternitatis – that is, "in view of eternity;" Durant believed that such a view was not possible for human beings to envision because human beings are not eternal but temporal beings. Instead, Durant suggested we seek to see things sub specie totius – "in view of the whole;" that is, from as broad a perspective as possible.
That is how I read Durant, 'in view of the whole'. He said he was sympathetic to the worlds great religions including Buddism. But that did not stop him from writing about the events and consequences of their actions when they wrote about the events in their own time. Every 'leader' leaves a record.
Durant provides a large biblography for each book. One can read these books to see where Durant got some of his information. He also traveled the world and could read Latin, French, English, Greek, and taught himself Sanskrit. If one is good at those languages one should not have a problem in reading the original transcripts and drawing ones own conclusions.
I trust Durant as a historian, else I would not have been in this discussion for nine years.
I hope you will read along with us while you are in Brownsville. The books of Durant are in the library or you can just read along with Trevor's excerpts.
Emily
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I do try to keep my travelling books down to a reasonable amount but you just suggested Durant's book on philosophy....I have a hard cover edition and I must add it to my packing
..I certainly will be following the group discussion...
since I don't foresee myself travelling off the continent in my future, it is exciting to experience postings like 'the Sistine chapel' from yourself Emily, remarkable what computers allow us to see while sitting at home, truly amazing! ...as if we were inside looking around, and no group of tourists to obstruct my view, I am 5 feet tall, and usually manage to stand behind taller individuals who are insist of being front and center ...
It was and still is, an exciting day I discovered this reading group. I think after these last few exchanges with you I have lost my reserve and will be able to enter into the discussions; even just to just briefly share in the exchanges....thank you for your kind replies
Deb
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Let us not forget that Ariel was co-author of all the volumes even tho she was not given credit until, I think, the 7 th volume and they both won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1968............ Jean
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I didn't realize that The Story of Philosophy was his first book. I have it, but haven't read it yet. I was thinking it was kind of an afterword to The Story of Civilization.
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The Story of Philosophy was written in 1926. Durant had been giving lectures at a Protestant church on philosophy to support himself and a publisher came by one night and heard him speak and asked him to write a 'booklet' on each speech and he would publish them. That collection eventually became 'The Story of Philosophy' and made enough money to allow Durant to pursue his dream of writing the story of civilization.
Durant had been collecting data for his first book for some time and after two trips around the world, he finally published the first book in the series SOC in 1935.
Emily
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Durant's SoC Volume V
The Renaissance Pages 399 - 403.
The failure of Sixtus was confirmed by the chaos that ruled Rome after his death. Mobs sacked the papal granaries, broke into the Banks of the Genoese, attacked the palace of Girolamo Rairio. Vatican attendants stripped the Vatican of its furniture. the Noble factions armed themselves; barricades were thrown up in the street; Girolamo was forced to quit his campaign against the Colonna and lead his troops back to the city; the Collona recaptured many of their citadels. A conclave was hastily assembled in the Vatican and an exchange of promises and bribes between Cardinal Borgia and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere secured the election of Giovanni Battista Cibo of Genoa.
He was fifty-two; tall and handsome, kindly and peaceable to the point of complaisant weakness; of moderate intelligence and experience; a contemporary described him as"not wholly ignorant". He had at least one son and daughter, probably more. He was content to be a grandfather, to enjoy domestic affection and ease. He gave Politian two hundred ducats for dedicating to him a translation of Herodotus, but for the rest he hardly bothered his head about the Humanists. He continued leisurely, and quite by proxy, the repair and adornment of Rome. For the most part he left the Patronage of letters and art to magnates and cardinals. In a similar mood of genial laissez-faire he entrusted foreign policy first to Cardinal della Rovere, then to Lorenzo de' Medici. The powerful banker offered his richly dowered daughter Maddalena as a bride for the Pope's son Franceschetto Cibo; Innocent was agreeable, and signed an alliance with Florence ( 1487 ); For five years Italy enjoyed peace.
Like Sixtus IV and most of the rulers of Europe, he replenished his coffers by charging fees for appointments to office; and finding this lucrative, he created new offices to sell. Such practices might have been no worse than selling annuity insurance, had it not been that the incumbents reimbursed themselves not merely by their salaries but by candid venality in their functions. For example, two papal secretaries confessed that in two years they had forged more that fifty papal bulls granting dispensations; the angry Pope had the men hanged and burned for stealing beyond their station ( 1489 ). Every thing in Rome seemed purchasable, from judicial pardons to the papacy itself.
The unreliable Infessura tells of a man who committed incest with his two daughters, then murdered them, and was let off by paying eight hundred ducats. When Cardinal Borgia was asked why justice was not done, he is reputed to have answered: "God desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and live."
The secularization of the papacy-- its absorption in politics, war, and finance-- had filled the college of cardinals with appointees noted for their ability, their political influence, or their capacity to pay for their hats. Despite his promise to keep the college down to twenty-four members, Innocent added to it eight men most of whom were eminently unsuited to such a dignity; so the cardinalate was conferred upon the thirteen-year-old Giovanni de' Medici as part of a bargain with Lorenzo.
Many of the cardinals were men of high education, benevolent patrons of literature, music, drama, and art. A few of them were saintly. Many of them were frankly secular. Some of them imitated the Roman nobles, fortified their palaces and retained armed men to protect themselves from the nobles, the Roman mob, and other cardinals.
The disorder at the top reflected and enhanced the moral chaos of Rome.Violence, thievery, rape, bribery, conspiracy, revenge were the order of the day.Each dawn revealed, in the alleys, men who had been killed during the night. Pilgrims and ambassadors were waylaid, were sometimes stripped naked, as they approached the capital of Christendom. Women were attacked in the streets or in their homes. Over five hundred Roman families were condemned for heresy, but were let off with a fine; perhaps the mercenary Curia of Rome was preferable to the mercenary and murderous inquisitors who were now ravaging Spain.
As the end of Innocent's pontificate approached, prophets appeared who proclaimed impending doom; and in Florence the voice of Savonarola was rising to brand the age as that of Antichrist. On September 20, 1492 it was announced that Pope Innocent III was dead. The dubious Infessura is our oldest authority for the report that three boys died from giving too much of their blood in transfusion designed to revive the failing Pope. He was buried in St. Peter's, and Antonio Pollaiuolo covered his sins with a splendid tomb.[/i]
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...the election of Giovanni Battista Cibo
....The powerful banker offered his richly dowered daughter Maddalena as a bride for the Pope's son Franceschetto Cibo of Genoa
...disorder at the top reflected and enhanced the moral chaos of Rome.Violence, thievery, rape, bribery, conspiracy, revenge were the order of the day...
hi its Deb here, somewhere between Paducah, Kentucky & Branson, Missouri....
I probably have missed it...but this is the first time I noticed a mention of marriage with the pope ....or is it just a mention of children; though they gained a prominent place as marriages were formed around the pope's children for the benefit of certain families....I find it interesting that the present Roman Catholic church and its history derived from such a chaotic state of being .....and uprisings from the 'common joe' angry against the papacy!!!!
electing this pope-- sounds like conspiracy to elect a placid, easy going guy who would sit puppet like, and let the others do what they wished
Deb
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Deb, yes there have been other popes with children. Women were disposable then as now as far as the church was concerned. We have been marching through the Pope's for the past five or so years covering 1,500 years of history of the church and its leaders.
Pope Innocent (a misnomer if I ever heard one) has just died and it is now 1492 and Columbus is sailing the ocean blue. Printing has come to the forefront and the lives of the Popes have more scrutiny then than now. The Vatican ruled Rome and the Senate at that time so their actions and deliberations were known by a larger audience. They were political, declaring wars, and privy to the public purse. They had not lost their political power yet and turned inward and more secretive.
We have been reading in the age of Popes as Kings or wanna be kings. They want political power more than leadership of a religion. There is nothing humble about this flock of fleecers.
Emily
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Ahhhhhh, 1492, what an interesting year. I had to become a really mature adult before I realized that there was more happening in that year than Columbus coming to the western hemisphere.......There's the interesting, if not good, Savonola, the Spanish ouster of the Jews, the de Medicis keep rolling along, etc etc ........looking forward to of what Durant has to remind us. (it really can be awkward avoiding those prepositions at the end of sentences about which my 9th grade English teacher admonished me.)..........Jean
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Durant uses Stefano Infessura and his history of Rome published as "Diary of City of Rome" as a reference but qualifies that reference with the word 'unreliable' which is the tactic the Vatican took when faced with the actions of the Popes during Infessura's lifetime of observation.
It seemed relevant to look into Mr. Infessura and who he was and what he wrote. From Wikipedia........
Stefano Infessura was an Italian historian, lawyer, judge, and Secretary of the Roman Senate. He was in a position to hear everything since the Popes ruled Rome as politicians. He lived and wrote of the events during the reign of three Popes and the beginning of a fourth. His daily record was published as a history of Rome.
Durant seems to have skipped the following excerpt from that history.
Infessura took a degree of Doctor of Laws and served as a judge, before he came to the University at Rome as professor of Roman law. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Under Sixtus IV, his office was affected by the financial measures of that pope, who frequently withheld the income of the Roman University, applied it to other uses, and reduced the salaries of the professors". That may not provide adequate motivation for Infessura's deep opposition to Sixtus' policies, and for anecdotes that would be certainly scurrilous if they are untrue. He was not the only contemporary Roman who noted Sixtus' predilection for young boys— confirmed by the Venetian ambassador to the Holy See— not utterly unheard of in other ages, which so shocked the Catholic historian of the Papacy, Ludwig Pastor, a hundred years ago.
Perhaps Durant was unaware of Ludwig Pastor's findings that confirmed Infessura's charges since their time frame was in the same era.
Certainly those who worked in the Vatican knew what was happening with the boys, but they did not have access to a printing press. Those who did no work but lived off the work of others had no reason to expose their benefactor. The workers talked and it became common knowledge that Pope Sixtus preferred young boys to young girls who were the preference of his predecessor Pope Innocent who brought some of his children with him to the office.
Of course the Vatican cannot deny the written record of the church selling of offices and other vagrancies, but when it comes to the personal lives of the Popes they cover up what they can, even though it was common knowledge that other popes had done the same thing along with a string of Cardinals and other officials within the church.
Instead of the 'Emperor has no clothes' in this situation the 'Church has no clothes'. Today they are naked before the world and it is not a pretty picture.
Emily
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Thanks for that additional information, Emily. Historians do not have access to every piece of info and then have to decide, of what they have, what are they going to include. That was why I told every class that I taught, "based on the information that I have.........such and such is true" and "always ask your question, the answer may be in the material I had to leave out of this presentation." Every year there is more and more history, not just including the last year, but volumes and volumes of new information.
Here is a timeline of events of 1492......the Jews of Sicily were also having problems and Lorenzo the second was born......it's a year which had enormous consequences for the next 50 years,(Lorenzo), the next 200+ years(reformation) and centuries to come (the Columbian impact). Those folks living in 1492 had no idea!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1492
Jean
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Wow, What interesting posts here!! Could anyone recommend a good book on The History and
Background of the popes. Would appreciate it. Fran
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Hi, FRAN WELCOME! Pull up a seat. As you see, we are reading Durant's "Story of Civilization." Does anyone know other books to supplement it?
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Welcome Fran. There are books published only about the Popes, but I would not recommend them. The ones I know of are written from the Catholic perspective only.
Durant was raised Catholic and schooled by the Jesuits. His parents wanted him to be a priest. He changed his mind when he began to read philosophy and the humanists. He had empathy for the 'Church', but he was a historian first and foremost. He did include their view and arguments in his writings sometimes, as he did with Infessura.
Of course Durant is writing about the Renaissance in total, not just the Popes. We spent months on all the great artists of that time and the world they created.
I prefer Durant to the others. Read along with us in the Renaissance and meet Pope Innocent's successor.
Emily
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The SoC
Volume V The Renaissance
The Borgias Pages 404-405.
The most interesting of the Renaissance popes was born at Xativa, Spain, on January 1, 1431. His parents were cousins, both of the Borjas, a family of some slight nobility. Rodrigo received his education at Xativa, Valencia, and Bologa. When his uncle became a cardinal, and then Pope Calixtus III, a straight path was opened for the young man’s advancement in an ecclesiastical career. Moving to Italy, he respelled his name Borgia, was made a cardinal at twenty-five, and at twenty-six received the fruitful office of vice-chancellor -- head of the entire Curia He performed his duties competently, earned some repute as an administrator, lived abstemiously, and made many friends in either sex. He was not yet-- would not be till his thirty-seventh year-- a priest.
He was so handsome in his youth, so attactive in the grace of his manners, his sensual ardor and cheerful temperament, his persuasive eloquence and gay wit, that women found it hard to resist him. Brought up in the easygoing morality of fifteenth-century Italy, and perceiving that many a cleric, many a priest, allowed himself the pleasure of women, this young Lothario in the purple decided to enjoy all the gifts that God had given him and them.
In 1460 Rodrigo’s first son, Pedro Luis, was born or begotten, and perhaps also his daughter Girolama, who was married in 1482; their mothers are not known. Pedro lived in Spain till 1488, came to Rome in that year, and died soon afterward. In 1464 Rodrigo accompanied Pius II to Ancona, and there contracted some minor sexual disease “because,” said his doctor, “he had not slept alone.”
About 1466 he formed a more permanent attachment with Vanozza de Catenei, then some twenty-four years old. Unfortunately, she was married to Domencio d’Arignano, but Domenico left her in 1476. To Rodrigo ( who had become a priest in 1468 ) Vanozza bore four children: Giovanni (1474), Cesare ( whome we shall call Caesar , in 1476,) Lucrezia (in 1480) and Giofre (in 1481 ). These four were ascribed to Vanozza on her tombstone, and were at one time or another acknowledged by Rodrigo as his own. Such persistent parentage suggests an almost monogamous union, and perhaps Cardinal Bogia, in comparison with other ecclesiastics, may be credited with a certain domestic fidelity and stability. He was a tender and benevolent father; it was a pity that his efforts to advance his children did not always bring glory to the Church.
When Rodrigo set his eye on the papacy he found a tolerant husband for Vanozza, and helped her to prosperity. She was twice widowed, married again, lived in modest retirement, rejoiced in the rise of her children to fame and wealth, mourned her separation from them, earned a reputation for piety, died at seventy-six (1518), and left all her substantial property to the Church.
We should betray a lack of historical sense were we to judge Rodrigo from the moral standpoint of our age--or rather our youth. His contemporaries looked upon his perpetual sexual sins as only cononically mortal, and, in the moral climate of his time, venial, and forgivable.
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With all this evidence that the clergy, including the popes, have not been celibate, why does the Church continue this policy of unmarried clergy?........thank goodness for our founding fathers forcing the liberal philosophy of separation of church and state on our new country.....Jean
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Durant's comments at their best: "He was a tender and benevolent father; it was a pity that his efforts to advance his children did not always bring glory to the Church."
Now we get down to the Borgias in all their glory and infamy.
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Mabel,
I am totally of same thinking,....why would the church make such a big thing out of their priests being married legally, & therefore able to hopefully proudly acknowledge wife & offspring,... if it was a priest's wish.....
rather that, than molesting, causing horrors in young lives due to being unable to control sexual impulses......why stand so firm on a policy of celibacy, when past and present (even recent) history show that it is very hard policy for their clergymen to maintain
Deb
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In my observation, and I'm sure for all here, that in matters of sexual dalliance, it " takes two to tango."
This being so, why do we hear only of priests misbehavior? Are we to assume, that in those secret societies, the nunneries, that equally antisocial behavior never occurred ? I'm sure more than a few humans of both sexes, and in all stations of life, have transgressed.
Why do we point the finger so readily at priests alone?
Is it because we expect higher standards from them? And are we right to demand more from them than others ? ++ Trevor
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YES! When you preach morality and the belief in "sin" and make judgements about other people's behavior and, oh yes, have the "authority" to .......I'm not Catholic, so I'm not sure what the proper word is..........forgive? "sins", I expect you to have better behavior than us poor ordinary folks. i.e. Atty General Spitzer! What a hypocrite - he jails others for prostitution, or being a procurer of prostitutes while procuring himself AND THEN gets a tv show, paying big bucks, to make commentary about the rest of the world! I will never watch that show, what was CNN thinking?
Also, I have known 2 woman who have had relationships with priests. One was a neieve 19 yr, who had an alcoholic father, who the priest knew about, and he took advantage of her adoration and innocence. He was in a position of "authority" and should have been the mature thinker and enforcer of the boundaries. Tha other woman was older and both parties were responsible for the relationship. I was never in his presence, so can't speak to his hypocrisy, but I have no doubt that he had spoken against the sev'l "sins" that he was committing.......Jean
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Trevor
Why do we point the finger so readily at priests alone?
Is it because we expect higher standards from them? And are we right to demand more from them than others ? ++ Trevor
'We' are not the ones making the rules. The hierarchy of the Church sets the rules and standards for themselves. How should the flock react when the wolf appears in 'sheep's clothing'? I say run for the hills and avoid them all as one would the plague.
I certainly don't understand their thinking on celibacy. The will to live and procreate are the two strongest traits of all living things. Since they all proclaim their god (take your pick) created all living things, then this group must believe their god made a mistake that they need to correct.
I would wager the 'celibate' decision was made by a sexual deviate and pervert. There are abnormalities in all species and I believe all religions were started by the 'abnormals', so the decision on celibacy is not surprising. There have been religious groups that rage against the 'will to live' also, and that creates mass suicides. It is against humanity no matter what excuse they have for the event, be it celibacy or mass suicide.
Destroy our most dominate traits and you destroy humanity.
Emily
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The Story of Civilzation.
Volume V. The Renaissance
Pages 405 - 406
Even in the generation between the reproof given him by Pius II and Rodrigo’s elevation to the papacy, public opinion had become more lenient toward unobtrusive sexual digressions from clerical celibacy. Pius II himself, besides spawning some love children in his presacerdotal youth, had once advocated the marriage of priests; Sixtus IV had had several children; Innocent VIII had brought his into the Vatican. Some condemned the morals of Rodrigo, but apparently no one mentioned them when the conclave met to choose a successor to Innocent. Five popes, including the reasonably virtuous Nicholas V, had granted him lucrative benefices through all these years, had entrusted him with difficult missions and responsible posts, and had apparently taken no notice of his philoprogenitive exuberance.
What men remarked in 1492 was that he had been Vice-chancellor for thirty-five years, had been appointed and reappointed to that office by five successive popes, and had administered the office with conspicuous industry and competence; and that the external magnificence of his palace concealed a remarkable simplicity of private life. He was popular with Romans, having amused them with games; when news reached Rome that Granada had fallen to the Christians, he regaled Rome with a bullfight in Spanish style.
Perhaps the Cardinals assembling in conclave on August 6, 1492 were also interested in his wealth, for in five administrations he had become the richest cardinal -- excepting d’Estouteville-- in the memory of Rome. They relied upon him to make substantial presents to those who should vote for him; and he did not fail them. To Cardinal Sforza he promised the vice chancellorship, several rich benefices, and the Borgia palace in Rome; to Cardinal Orsini the see and ecclesiastical revenues of Cartagena, the towns of Monticelli and Soriano, and the governorship of the Marches; to Cardinal Savelli Civita, Castellana and the bishopric of Majorca, and so on; Infessura described the process as Borgia’s evangelical distribution of his goods to the poor. It was not an unusual procedure; every candidate had used it for many conclaves past, as every candidate uses it in politics today. Whether money bribes were also used is uncertain. The decisive vote was cast by Cardinal Gherardo, ninety-six years old, and “hardly in possession of his faculties“.
Finally, all the cardinals rushed to the winning side, and made the election of Rodrigo Borgia unanimous ( August 10, 1492). When asked by what name he wished to be called as pope he answered, “By the name of the invincible Alexander.”
It was a pagan beginning for a pagan pontificate.
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There is a fascinating article on the life of Rodrigo de Borgia - who later became Pope : -
http://www.lifeinitaly.com/heroes-villains/rodrigo-borgia.asp (http://www.lifeinitaly.com/heroes-villains/rodrigo-borgia.asp)
I love the way Durant uses words in disparagement - - - "philoprogenitive exuberance" - - - "presacerdotal" - - - and "pagan pontificate".
Where are you Justin when we need you ?
Brian
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That was interesting. What a life. I know Lucretia was supposed to have poisoned people: I assume it was her husbands.
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After searching for a portrait of Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander VI this is the one most available.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/House_of_Borgia
Emily
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Here is the Epitaph to Pope Alexander translated from Latin to English.
Who sacrificed quiet to hatred, with a warrior heart,
who did not stop at quarrels, struggles and slaughters,
is lying here in the coffin for all people to rejoice,
thy supreme pontiff Alexander, oh, capital Rome.
Thou, prelates of Erebus and Heaven, close thy doors
and prohibit the Soul from entering thy sites.
He would disrupt the peace of Styx and disturb Avernus,
and vanquish the Saints, if he enters the sphere of stars.
They buried him along side the other Popes but soon removed him and placed him in a Spanish church away from St. Peters.
Emily
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This man was well and truly damned - - -
Such was Alexander VI's unpopularity that the priests of St. Peter's Basilica refused to accept the body for burial until forced to do so by papal staff. Only four prelates attended the Requiem Mass. Alexander's successor on the Throne of St. Peter, Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini, who assumed the name of Pope Pius III (1503), forbade the saying of a Mass for the repose of Alexander VI's soul, saying, "It is blasphemous to pray for the damned". After a short stay, the body was removed from the crypts of St. Peter's and installed in a less well-known church, the Spanish national church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli.[15]
- - - he either was poisoned by his son Cesar Borgia, or possibly died of malaria - - -
either way, he was generally thought to be "the ugliest corpse ever seen".
Brian
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WOW!!
We can't blame him for being ugly (he was pretty ugly in life as well) but clearly he lived up to his appearance.
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Brian, i also smiled at the Durants' vocabulary, that's part of the fun of reading them.
I love the way Durant uses words in disparagement - - - "philoprogenitive exuberance" - - - "presacerdotal" - - - and "pagan pontificate".
Reading the history of the popes in compact content makes me even more astonished at their behavior and the acceptance of it. I loved this sentence also....." public opinion had become more lenient toward unobtrusive sexual digressions from clerical celibacy." unobtrusive.....digressions? unobtrusive to whom? or what?......i had a general knowledge of the behavior, but whew! How dare the church judge anyone else?....my statement of judgement is not so much on moral grounds, but on the hypocrisy of it all.......jean
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Trevor is right: Justin hasn't posted since September 10. Is anyone in contact with him?
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Here is a site about the Medicis from Yale's Open Course Ware classes, it's a part of their History and Civilization course (Western Civ).
http://www.folksemantic.com/visits/76729
You can see a long list of free college courses at
www.ocwfinder.org
Jean
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I have been in touch with Justin. He is well, and thanks us for our
concern over his health. He gives us his reason for not posting recently.
My available time has been taken over by research for a book I have in the works
I have wished him all our best, and he has said that he will return to SOC "one day",
(probably not too soon - I think.)
Brian
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Thanks for checking, Brian.......jean
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Thanks Brian for checking on Justin. What great news that Justin is writing a book. I hope he will check in occasionally and let us know how he is progressing, and leave a comment on SOC.
Emily
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Great news! Did he tell you what his book is about?
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
JoanK - - - Justin did not say, and I did not ask him.
I got the feeling that he was "very busy" and decided to let him be.
I don't think he will be posting for quite a while.
Brian
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Hopefully, we'll be able to read the book when it comes out.
I'm just transferring our heading to new pages, but not trying to keep it up to date as Robby did. Should I just get rid of the part that tells us where we are?
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Should I just get rid of the part that tells us where we are?
JoanK - - - if it was my choice, I would leave it in, as it gives
a place for people to focus in on our progress in reading the book.
What does anyone else think ? Trevor ?
Brian
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I agree Brian, perhaps just the "green" section, but not the explanations?.......jean
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If we want to leave it in, someone will else will have to update it, or tell me what to put.
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Robby had left the heading at the top of the pages unchanged for quite some time. Where he left, and I began, we had reached Pius II and Paul II. That's quite a way on from Savonarola, in Robby's last heading. I think the green part of the main heading can be dropped from now on, but keep the rest of it.
I will continue to give the chapter and page numbers from the volume at the top of each post I enter. That places where we are. And I follow on in sequence through the Volume.++ Trevor.
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Savonarola is gone, but not the long description following. I just reread it, and was struck by this sentance:
"The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe".
Did the "Oriental mind" rule in Europe for 1000 years? Is that referring to the Bible? We probably discussed it at te time, but I don't remember.
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Joan - two points seem to be exaggerated in that statement,"Europe" and "a thousand yrs".
Of course, i'm not sure what "the Oriental mind" means.
But Muslims or Moors were in control of some parts of Spain from the 700's to 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella famously united Spain under their rule in 1492. Spain, of course, is not all of Europe and 700 yrs is not a thousand.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain
But thank goodness for the Muslims preserving much of the Greek and Roman knowledge and bringing it to Europe, because the "Dark Ages" of Europe had wiped out much of that
knowledge. The philosophers, mathematicians, artists, scientists and writers of the Renaissance could piggy- back the knowlegde carried by the Moors thru the Iberian Penninsula or thru the " Near East", both the Greco-roman knowledge and that of the Arab/Islam history.
Jean
Jean
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Durant's SoC
The Roman Renaissance 1378-1512
Chapter XVI The Borgias
Alexander VI Pages 406-408.
The choice of the conclave was also the choice of the people. Never had any papal election brought so much rejoicing., never had a coronation been so magnificent. The poulace delighted in the panoramic cavalcade of white horses, allegorical figures, tapestries and paintings, knights and grandees, troops of archers and Turkesh horsemen, seven hundred priests, cardinals colourfully clad, and finally Alexander himself, sixty-one years old but magestically straight and tall, overflowing with health and energy and pride, “serene of countenance and of surpassing dignity,” said an eyewitness, and looking like an emperor even while blessing the mutitude. Only a few sober minds, like Giuliano della Rovere and Giovanni de’ Medici, expressed some apprehension lest the new Pope, known to be a fond father, would use his power to aggrandize his family rather than to cleanse and strengthen the Church.
He began well. In the thirty-six days between the death of Innocent and the coronation of Alexander there had been two hundred and twenty known murders in Rome. The new Pope made an example of the first captured assassin; the culprit was hanged, his brother was hanged with him, and his house was pulled down. The city approved this severity; crime hid its head; order was restored in Rome, and all Italy was glad a strong hand was at the helm of the Church.
Art and literature marked time. Alexander did considerable building in and out of Rome; financed a new ceiling for Santa Maria Maggiore with a gift of American gold from Ferdinand and Isabella; remodeled the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the fortified Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and redecorated its interior to provide cells for papal prisoners and more comfortable quarters for harassed popes.
He built between the Castle and the Vatican a long covered corridor, which gave him refuge from Chales VIII in 1494, and saved Clement VII from a Lutherian noose in the sack of Rome. Pinturicchio was engaged to adorn the Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican. Four of these six rooms were restored and opened to the public by Leo XIII. A lunette in one of them contains a vivid portrate of Alexander-- a happy face, a prosperous body, gorgeous robes. In another room a Virgin teaching a child to read was described by Vassari as a portrait of Giulia Farnese, an alleged mistress of the Pope. Vasari adds that the picture also contained “ the head of Pope Alexander adoring her,” but no picture of him is there visible.
He rebuilt the University of Rome, called to it several distinguished teachers, and paid them with an unheard-of regularity. He liked drama, was pleased to have the students of the Roman Academy stage comedies and ballets for his family festivals.. He preferred light music to heavy philosophy . In 1501 he re-established censorship of publications by an edict requiring that no book might be printed without the approval of the local archbishop. But he allowed a wide freedom of satire and debate. He laghed off the bites of the town wits, and rejected Caesar Borgia’s proposal that such snipers should be disciplined. “Rome is a free city, “ he told the Ferrarese ambassador, “ where everyone can say or write whatever he pleases. They say much evil of me, but I don’t mind.”
His administration of Church affairs was, in the early years of his pontificate, unusually efficient. Innocent VIII had left a debt in the treasury; “it needed all the financial ability of Alexander to restore the papal finances"; it took him two years to balance the budget. The vatican staff was reduced, and expenses were curtailed, but records were strictly kept, and salaries were promptly paid. Alexander performed the laborious religious ritual of his office with fidelity, but with the impatience of a busy man.
His magister ceremoniarum was a German, Johann Burchard, who helped to perpetuate the fame and infamy of his employer by recording in a Diarium nearly all he saw, including much that Alexander would have wished unseen. To the cardinals the Pope gave as he promised in the conclave, and he was even more generous to those who, like Cardinal de’ Medici, had longest opposed him. A year after his accession he created twelve new cardinals. Several were men of real ability; some were appointed at the request of political powers that it was wise to conciliate; two were scandlously young -- Ippolito d’Este, fifteen, and Caesar Borgia, eighteen; one of them, Alessandro Farnese, owed his elevation to his sister Giulia Farnese, who was believed by many to be a mistress of the Pope.
The sharp tounged Romans, not forseeing that one day they would acclaim Alessandro as Paul III, called him ’il cardinale della gonnella-- the cardinal of the pettycoat. The strongest of the other cardinals, Giuliano della Rovere, was displeased to find that he, who often ruled Innocent VIII, had little influence on Alexander, who made Cardinal Sforza his favourite counselor. In a huff Giuliano retired to his episcopal see at Ostia, and formed a guard of armed men. A year later he fled to France, and besought Charles VIII to invade Italy, summon a general council, and depose Alexander as a shamelessly simoniacal pope.
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Art and literature marked time. Alexander did considerable building in and out of Rome; financed a new ceiling for Santa Maria Maggiore with a gift of American gold from Ferdinand and Isabella
That gold would not have come from North America, but from South America. It most likely came from the Inca that the Spainsh had invaded and murdered their leader. He offered them a room full of gold to appease them, but they wanted more.
The Vatican coffers will be filled with the blood of the Inca in the form of gold.
Behind every great fortune, a crime.
Emily
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remodeled the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the fortified Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and redecorated its interior to provide cells for papal prisoners and more comfortable quarters for harassed popes.
He built between the Castle and the Vatican a long covered corridor, which gave him refuge
It seems strange to think of a 'church' taking prisoners, but the Vatican had never really operated as a 'church', but more like the King or Emperor over its subjects as they ruled Rome as did Caesar. They made war, condemed prisoners to die, collected taxes and did all the things a ruler does, no matter his title.
Didn't their spiritual founder say and I paraphrase, 'render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto god that which is gods.'
The church had become Caesar now wearing the Papal crown probably made of stolen gold.
Emily
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An aside on the American gold that financed the new ceiling for Santa Maria Maggiore.
In Cuzco in 1589, Don Mancio Serra de Leguisamo — the last survivor of the original conquerors of Peru — wrote, in the preamble of his will, the following (in parts):
We found these kingdoms in such good order, and the said Incas governed them in such wise [manner] that throughout them there was not a thief, nor a vicious man, nor an adulteress, nor was a bad woman admitted among them, nor were there immoral people.
The men had honest and useful occupations. The lands, forests, mines, pastures, houses and all kinds of products were regulated and distributed in such sort that each one knew his property without any other person seizing it or occupying it, nor were there law suits respecting it… the motive which obliges me to make this statement is the discharge of my conscience, as I find myself guilty.
For we have destroyed by our evil example, the people who had such a government as was enjoyed by these natives. They were so free from the committal of crimes or excesses, as well men as women, that the Indian who had 100,000 pesos worth of gold or silver in his house, left it open merely placing a small stick against the door, as a sign that its master was out. With that, according to their custom, no one could enter or take anything that was there.
When they saw that we put locks and keys on our doors, they supposed that it was from fear of them, that they might not kill us, but not because they believed that anyone would steal the property of another. So that when they found that we had thieves among us, and men who sought to make their daughters commit sin, they despised us.
So who is the heathen here?
Emily
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"The Vatican coffers will be filled with the blood of the Inca in the form of gold."
And Spain would pay too. That gold was used to fill coffers, decorate churches, and fight losing wars, not to build the economy of Spain. Spain has suffered ever since.
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His magister ceremoniarum was a German, Johann Burchard, who helped to perpetuate the fame and infamy of his employer by recording in a Diarium nearly all he saw, including much that Alexander would have wished unseen.
Another diary keeper who was with the Pope through his rule. In the following link (it's short) Burchard writes of the death of Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander. This may be jumping ahead but will at least give some insight into the personal coffers of the Pope. All those running to get the 'silver, gold, and jewels' the Pope had stashed away.
Didn't the new testament have an admonition against storing up 'gold and silver' for themselves while on earth. The Pope must have missed that sermon.
Johann Buchard purchased his position in the Vatican for money.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/alexanderVI.htm
Emily
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hi, its Deb here
Emily your post about the last remaining conqueur who gained a conscience in his last remaining years, really touched me....the horrors they committed upon the people they came into contact with in the Americas, truly sad...is your source for this quote from the web site you listed?
Trevor, I have to thank you for when you post book excerpts listing the page reference. I had so much trouble much earlier when following and occasionally getting the book from the library finding where the group was in the book.
It will certainly be interesting to find where the catholic church did an about face on what was acceptable for their religious leaders..... though imagine it won't be in this book, or even the next perhaps...
just touching base with you guys, very hot day in Brownsville today, windy as usual...
Deb
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Hi, Deb. Glad you checked in.
What an interesting account. Such a mixture of wealth and lack of esteem!
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Deb, I did not give a link to the story of the last remaining survivor and his will. I simply forgot.
Here is the site from Wikipedia. Scroll down to 'Society' and it is the first article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_civilization
Emily
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thank you Emily,
I find all these little 'extras' so interesting...I had thought this excerpt might be from the 'eyewitnesstohistory.com' site...and was wondering how to pursue it's location...history becomes more dimensional and humanizing especially with journals & diaries
interesting tonight on the news about the roman catholics changing of heart revolving condom use ...though it sounded like only in certain situations of health concerns...
Deb
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It was written that Rodrigo Borgia was one of the richest Cardinals in the 1500 year history of the church before he reached the throne at St. Peters. He had spent thirty five years making himself rich off the church.
A small group of men controlled the church, and through the appointment of teenage cardinals they could expect to control it in perpetuity. We continue to read of teenagers being simply given the office of 'cardinal' in the church. The former Pope Innocent gave it to a thirteen year old in exchange for a deal with Lorenzo de' Medici.
Now we read of Rodrigo Borgia doing the same by appointing several teenagers to 'Cardinals', one of which would become Pope himself. I see this group of men as a 'cabal' that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with 'greed' and a 'power trip'. They are all beneath contempt imo.
Emily
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DURANT'S SoC
The Renaissance
The Borgias Pages 408-409
Meantime Alexander was facing the political problems of a papacy caught between the millstones of scheming Italian powers. The Papal States hed again fallen into the hands of local dictators who, while calling themselves vicars of the church, had snatched the opportunity provided by the weakness of Innocent VIII to re-establish the practical independence that they or their predecessors had lost under Alboronz or Sixtus IV.
Alexander’s first task then was to bring these states under a centralized papal rule and taxation, as the kings of Spain, France, and England had subdued the feudal lords.This was the mission that he assigned to Caesar Borgia, who accomplished it with such speed and ruthlessness as made Machiavelli gape with admiration.
Closer to Rome, and more immediately harassing, was the turbulent autonomy of the nobles, theoretically subject, actually hostile and dangerous, to the popes. The temporal weakness of the papacy since Boniface VIII (d. 1303) had allowed these barons to maintain a medieval feudal sovereignty on their estates, making their own laws, organizing their own armies, fighting at will their private and reckless wars, to the ruin of the order and commerce in Latium.
Soon after Alexander’s accession Franceschetto Cibo sold to Virginio Orsini, for 40,000 ducats, estates left him by his father Innocent VIII. But this Orsini was a high officer in the Neapolitan army; he had received from Ferrante most of the money for the purchase; in effect Naples had secured two strategic strongholds in papal territory. Alexander reacted by forming an alliance with Venice, Milan, Ferrara, and Siena, raising an army, and fortifying the wall between Sant’ Angelo and the Vatican. Ferdinand II of Spain, fearing a combined attack upon Naples would end the Aragon power in Italy, persuaded Alexander and Ferrante to negotiate. Orsini paid the Pope 40,000 ducats for the right to retain his purchases; and Alexander betrothed his son Giofre, then thirteen, to Sancia, the pretty granddaughter of the Neapolitan king. ( 1494)
In return for Ferdinand’s happy mediation, Alexander awarded him the two Americas. Columbus had discovered the “Indies” some two months after Alexanders succession, and had presented them to Ferdinand and Isabella. Portugal claimed the New World by virtue of an edict of Calixtus III (1479), which confirmed her claim to all lands on the Atlantic coast. Spain retorted that the edict had in mind only the eastern Atlantic. The states were near war when Alexander issued two bulls ( May 3 and 4, 1493) allotting to Spain all discoveries west, and to Portugal all those east,of an imaginary line drawn from pole to pole a hundred Spanish leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, in each case on condition that the lands discovered were not already inhabited by Christians, and that the conquerors would make every effort to convert their new subjects to the Christian faith.
The “grant” of the Pope, of course, merely confirmed a conquest by the sword, but it preserved the peace of the peninsular powers. No one seems to have thought that non-Christians had any rights to the lands in which they dwelt.
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One could teach a world history titled "Arrogance and Self-aggrandizement" and hit all the important periods and people..........tic............Durant has made a good start of it. Do you remember if, in the first volumes, he talked of anything/other than power people?......jean
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Hi Jean. We are currently in the fifth volume of Durant's SOC, and already a month into our tenth year of discussion.
In all the books of course those in power were the one's written about so naturally they are the ones discussed. The average man or woman did not have a written record. Most were uneducated and therefore incapable of recording their lives. The oral tradition left songs, verse, and stories that sometimes was written about but with no attribution.
I recognize from Durant's writing some of the Noble names who still have wealth and position in the church today, such as the Orsini. Many of the Nobel families in Europe became very rich from their dealings with the church.
We learn in Trevor's latest posting that Pope Innocent has left his son several estates that he quickly sells to Orsini. The new Pope Alexander prepares to get them back through war if necessary. Instead Orsini makes him an offer of 40,000 ducats to keep them and Pope Alexander agrees.
Anything could be bought, even the Pope.
Emily
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JEAN: it used to be in the heading, but seems to be gone. Durant goes through each period a number of times emphasizing different aspects. Politics is one of them, art and culture another, economics the third. What else -- someone help me out here someone.
We seem to be mired in the politics (or does this come under "religion"?
As a sociologist, I. too, want to here more about how regular people lived. We get closest to that when he discusses the economy. How do all the people the church is ripping off get their money? Primarily agriculture? Trade? Foreign conquest?
In ancient Rome, most ordinary Roman men were either farmers or soldiers -- if you didn't have land, you went to war. Thus, a lot of people ready to be organized into armies to fight for whomever. Is this still the case? Maybe D will tell us later.
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Joan asks "As a sociologist, I. too, want to here more about how regular people lived. We get closest to that when he discusses the economy. How do all the people the church is ripping off get their money? Primarily agriculture? Trade? Foreign conquest?"
In support of Durant, I can only say that the "regular" people left no record of their lives. It was only by about 1600 that education began slowly to spread among regular folk, until then their was really no middle class to leave any record. The only written records available from those times are those of the Church and possibly the Army.
Durant's volumes are full of references to the written records available. If you like, I could list all Durant's references, but few if any such are regularly available to folk like you and me.
I can readily list them at the end of each post, if you wish ++ Trevor
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From my perspective there is no need to list the references. My thinking was that in the first half if the 20th century, when the Durant's were writing this book, there was more social history being researched and written, so i was thinking that maybe they had included some of that research in these volumes. I think i'm just tired of the popes, they all seem to have a similar story.....altho i did like some of what Nickolas and Sixtus did. I was probably also responding to chuzpah of kings and popes to assume that the Americas were their's to do w/as they wished, to "give" away, Christianity used as the excuse. That part of the history of western civilization just infuriates me.
Thanks for the reminder about the categories, Joan, i had forgotten that heading and those categories.......jean
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TREVOR: "I can readily list them at the end of each post, if you wish ++ "
Heavens no! Then I would feel I had to follow up on them, or rather, feel guilty that I hadn't.
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JoanK is computerless. Hers has died, and it will be at least a few days before she has a temporary solution, so she won't be in here until then.
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Bummer! Hope Joan's computer is fixed soon. I know I feel at a loss when mine goes down. I really spend too much time on this thing. Just love it. ;D
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Durant's SoC
The Renaissance
cont. Alexander VI
The Sinner Pages 411-417
Deferring fuller consideration of alleged poisonings, by Alexander or Caesar Borgia, of high eccleiastics who took too long to die, we may provisionally accept the conclusion of recent research -- that “there is no evidence that Alexander VI poisoned anybody.” This does not quite clear him; he may have been too clever for history. But he could not escape the satirists, pamphleteers and other wits who sold their deadly epigrams to his opponents.
Alexander, as part of his campaign against the Campagna nobles, issued in 1501, a bull detailing the crimes and vices of the Savelli and the Colonna. Its exaggerations were bettered in Mancione’s famous “ Letter to Silvio Savelli,” retailing the vices and crimes of Alexander and Caesar Borgia. This document was widely circulated and did much to create the legend of Alexander as a monster of perversions and cruelty. Alexander won the battle of the sword, but his noble foes, unchecked by Julius II, won the battle of the word, and transmitted their picture of him to history.
He paid too little attention to public opinion, and rarely answered the slanders that so mercilessly multiplied the reality of his faults. He was resolved to build a strong state, and thought that it could not be done by Christian means. His use of the traditional tools of statecraft -- propaganda, deception, intrigue, discipline, war -- was bound to offend those who preferred a Christian Church to a strong one, and those to whose advantage it was that the papacy and the Papal States should be disorganized and weak among the nobles of Rome and the powers of Italy.
Occasionally Alexander stopped to examine his life by evangelical standards, and then he admitted himself to be a simoniac, a fornicator, even -- through war -- a destroyer of human lives. Once when his lucky star seemed suddenly to fall, and all his proud and happy world seemed shattered, he lost his Machiavellian amoralism, confessecd his sins and vowed to reform himself and the Church.
He went on: “We on our part are resolved to amend our life and to reform the Church.... Henceforth benefices shall be given only to deserving persons, and in accordance with the votes of the cardinals.
We renounced all nepoptism. We will begin the reform with ourselves, and so proceed through all the ranks of the Church till the whole work is accompished.”
A comittee of six cardinals was appointed to draw op a program of reform. It laboured earnestly, and presented to Alexander a bull of reform so excellent that if its provisions had been put into effect, they might have saved the Church from both the Reformation and the Counter Reformation. But when Alexander faced the question of how the revenues of the papacy, without the fees paid for ecclesiastical appointments, could finance the papal government, he found no acceptable answer.
Meanwhile Louis XII was preparing a second French invasion of Italy, and soon Caesar Borgia proposed to recapture the Papal States from their recalcitrant “vicars”. The dream of a powerfull political structure that would give the Church a physical and financial leverage in a rebellious and fluent world absorbed the spirit of the Pope; he deferred the reforms from day to day; at last he forgot them in the exciting successes of a son ( Caeasr ) who was conquering a realm for him and making him every ounce a king.
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What an epitaph "he didn't actually poison anybody." Sigh.
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is history mainly about the 'wrongs'
when do we get to -the church able to withstand temptations to put itself first', and truly caring for the 'little man on the street', which not being religious myself I had thought was foremost in the church's endeavour
Deb
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Joan, it is good to see you posting again. I hope your computer problems are fixed.
is history mainly about the 'wrongs'
Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander admitted the following.....Occasionally Alexander stopped to examine his life by evangelical standards, and then he admitted himself to be a simoniac, a fornicator, even -- through war -- a destroyer of human lives.
He swore he would change his ways, but money and power were too enticing and in the end he did nothing. This is his 'history', his record is in the Vatican.
Borgia was unfit to hold any position in the church. He was the exact opposite of everything the church proclaimed to be and he got his position there by buying it like many others.
He had a chance to change his ways but in the end he was what he was........a power mad megalomaniac. We need to study and read about these types because they are in our own time and can affect our lives by gaining power.
Emily
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"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
My computer is working again, but I don't know for how long.
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"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
My thots exactly, Joan. The interesting thing to me about all these popes is that they all did good things too, but the scandals and hypocrisy seem to overshadow the good they did, from our position of looking back on them now. Did the populous actually see the scandals and schemes, at the time? No 24/7 news, most people couldn't read and even if they could there no newspapers, who knew what was going on besides the "in-group"?
Jean
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Good point. I wonder how much I would have known if I'd been a "plebe" in Rome? In the countryside? In the far reaches of Catholic Europe? Rumor and gossip.
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The Vatican today is much more constricted in size and scope than in the day of Pope Alexander (Borgia). During Borgia's reign the church controlled much of central Italy through the Papal States.
In looking for stats on the number of people it takes to run the current Vatican here is what I found.
When he was once asked how many people worked in the Vatican, Pope John XXIII (1958-63) is said to have replied: “About half, I think.”
Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps aware of this gibe, has decided to offer the first financial rewards and corporate-style incentives to Vatican employees who are thought to be “doing a good job”. The bonuses, which will apply to the 3,000 people who work in the Vatican, from the highest cardinal to the humblest cleaner, will be awarded on the basis of “dedication, correctness, professionalism and productivity”.
Around 1,000 people live in the Vatican mostly clergy and nuns but also the Swiss guard and a few non clergy.
Most of the 3,000 people who work there live outside the Vatican in Rome.
So there are estimated to be 4,000 people within this small area daily.(a little over 100 acres) It would seem to me to be very hard to keep anything secret very long in that setting.
But that is today's set-up and during Borgia's reign it would be reasonable to think that many more were needed to carry out the rule over a large territory such as he had to contend. There was even a position called the 'office of the horse'. Just cooking and feeding those living there would have taken an army of servants.
About a year ago I wrote about an article I read on Princess TNT of Austria and her girlfriend from one of the old Roman royalty who went to the Vatican to have dinner with Pope Benedict (he was from the same town in Austria as TNT). She said that the nuns cooked and served them dinner.
Since nuns hold no position of authority within the Vatican, they seem be used as servants to the men.
I don't know how many people were living in the Vatican palace at the time of Borgia, but with all his wheeling and dealing it's a good bet that the palace was full, and that it took an army of workers to keep the place livable.
They did not need a publishing house to know some of what went on there, it was transmitted as it had been from the beginning of time, word of mouth.
If you have a secretary, someone to care for your clothes, make your bed, clean your rooms, carry out the chamber pot, serve your meals, and on and on.........you have no secrets.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2926098.ece
Emily
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An article by AP today about the Vatican bank being in trouble again with authorities. It seems they are accused of money laundering this time. Back in the 80's they had a banking scandal that cost the Vatican millions.
In the 80's scandal two Vatican bank leaders wound up dead. One poisoned in prison and another hanged on a bridge with rocks and money stuffed in his pockets. They seem to keep their old traditions of poison and murder alive and well even in our own time.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/11/world/europe/AP-EU-Vatican-Gods-Bankers.html?ref=aponline&pagewanted=all
Emily
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Durant tells us that Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander liked to be entertained at the Holy See and he brought in actors to perform comedy and light plays. He seemed to prefer this fare over religious pagents. He also staged a real Spanish bullfight there.
While watching the news yesterday a video of Pope Benedict being entertained by acrobats was shown. It had been edited of course for showing and is very short.
In case some missed it here is a short clip from a British newspaper. A commercial comes on first but only lasts about five seconds and then the edited video.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/video/shirtless-acrobats-entertain-pope-benedict/article1838737/
Emily
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I was curious as to who was sitting next to the Pope at yesterday's performance so I looked for the number two man in the Vatican. According to a British newspaper who is printing some of the Wikileaks documents, it is Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. In some of the Diplomatic cables he is referred to as a 'yes man'.
While on my search I saw that Pope Benedict had appointed 24 new Cardinals in November of this year. I went to the newspaper from Egypt (one of the new Cardinals was Egyptian) and found the list. This is a very informative piece and tells much about how cardinals are selected and handled today.
I learned that Cardinals over 80 cannot vote in the election of a new Pope, and that today Cardinals retire instead of drinking the poison. The newly appointed Cardinal from Washington D.C. brought 400 people with him for the ceremony in Rome.
http://thedailynewsegypt.com/religion/pope-creates-24-new-cardinals-amid-cheers-dp1.html
Emily
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Durant's SoC
The Borgias
Ceasar Borgia Pages 417-419
Alexander had many reasons to be proud of his now oldest son. Caesar was blonde of hair and beard, as many Italians wanted to be; keen of eye, tall and straight, strong, and a stranger to fear. Of him, as of Alexander Leonardo, the story was told that he could twist a horseshoe in his bare hands. He rode with wild control the spirited horses collected for his stable; he went to the hunt with the eagerness of a hound sniffing blood.
During the jubilee he astonished the crowd by decapitating a bull with one stroke in a bull baiting contest in a Roman square; on January 2, 1502, in a formal bullfight arranged by him in the Piazza San Pietro, he rode into the enclosure with nine other Spaniards, and attacked singlehanded, with his pike, the more ferocious of two bulls let loose there; dismounting, he played Torre for a while; then, having sufficiently proved his courage and skill he left the arena to the professionals. He introduced the sport into the Romagna as well as at Rome; but after a few amateur matadors had been gored it was sent back to Spain.
To think of him as an ogre is to miss him widely. One contemporary called him “a Young man of great and surpassing cleverness and excellent disposition, cheerful, even merry, and always in good spirits”; another described him as “ far superior in looks and wit to his brother the Duke of Gandia.” Men noted his grace of manner, his simple but costly garb, his commanding glance, and air of one who felt he had inherited the world. Women admired but did not love him; they knew that he took them lightly and lightly cast them aside.
He had studied law in the University of Perugia, enough to sharpen the natural shrewdness of his mind. He spared little time for books or culture, though like everybody he wrote verses now and then; later he flaunted a poet on his staff. He had a discriminating appreciation of the arts; when Cardinal Raffaello Riario refused to buy the work of an unknown Florentine youth, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Caesar gave a good price for it.
He was clearly not made for an ecclesiastical career, but Alexander, having bishoprics rather than principalities at his disposal, made him archbishop of Valencia ( 1492 ), then cardinal (1493). No one took such appointments as religious; they were means of supplying income to youths who had influential relatives, and who might be trained for the practical management of ecclesiastical property and personnel. Caesar took minor orders, but never became a priest.
Since cannon law excluded bastards from the cardinalate, Alexander, in a bull of September 19, 1493, declared him the legitimate son of Vanozza, and d’Arignano. It was inconvenient that in a bull of August 16, 1482, Sixtus IV had described Caesar as the son of “Rodrigo, bishop and vice-chancellor.” The public winked, and smiled, accustomed to see legal fictions veil untimely truths.
In 1497, shortly after Giovanni’s death, Caesar went to Naples as a Papal legate, and had the thrill of crowning a king. Perhaps the touch of a crown stirred his blood. On his return to Rome he importuned his father to let him renounce his ecclesiastical career. There was no way of releasing him from it except through Alexander’s frank admission to the college of cardinals that Caesar was his illegitimate son; it was so done, and the appointment of the young bastard to the cardinalate was duly declared invalid ( August 17, 1498). His illegitimacy restored, Caesar turned with zest to the game of politics.
Alexander hoped that Federigo III, King of Naples, would accept Caesar as husband for his daughter Carlotta, but Federigo had different tastes. Deeply offended, the Pope turned to France, hoping to secure its help in reclaiming the Papal States. An opportunity came when Louis XII asked for the annulment of a marriage that had been forced upon him in his youth, and which, he claimed, had never been consummated. In October, 1498, Alexander sent Caesar to France bearing a decree of divorce for the King, and 200,000 ducats with which to woo a bride.
Pleased with the divorce, further pleased by a papal dispensation to marry Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII, Louis offered Caesar the hand of Charlotte d’Albert, sister to the king of Navarre; moreover, he made Caesar the duke of Valentinois and Diois, two French territories to which the papacy had some legal claim., In May, 1499, the new Duke -- Valentino, as he was henceforth called in Italy-- married the good, beautiful, and wealthy Charlotte; and Rome told the news by Alexander, lit bonfires of rejoicing over the marriage of their prince. The marriage committed the papacy to an alliance with a king who was openly planning to invade Italy and take Milan and Naples.
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Arrrggggghhhhh! And THIS church expects that people should obey the rules IT lays out for them!?! Astonishing! .....It would be interesting to speculate if any of this could happen today w/ 24/7 and international news? If there was a valid story that came out that the pope had children, what might happen? Would it be looked at as a moral issue or just a hypocritical one?
...It's funny how things come to my attention in "groups". I'm reading Thomas Costain's "Below the Salt" which is about the time of King John and the Magna Carta. I don't remember our talking about that period here.But my mind may have lost it...... But it appears that popes have always had problems w/ the kings of England and therefore one or both of them have made problems for the Archbishop of Canterbury.............struggles for power!
Also, last night at dinner w/ friends the book about Pope Joan came up and we had a conversation about the popes and religion in general.
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Durant writes "Alexander had many reasons to be proud of his 'now oldest son'.
So how did Caesar become the 'now oldest son'?
Cesare was initially groomed for a career in the church. He was made Bishop of Pamplona at the age of 15. Following school in Perugia and Pisa where Cesare studied law, along with his father's elevation to Pope, Cesare was made Cardinal at the age of 18. Alexander VI staked the hopes of the Borgia family in Cesare's brother Giovanni, who was made captain general of the military forces of the papacy. Giovanni was assassinated in 1497 in mysterious circumstances: with several contemporaries suggesting that Cesare might be his killer, as Giovanni's disappearing could finally open him a long-awaited military career; as well as jealousy over Sancha of Aragon, wife of Cesare's other brother Gioffre, and mistress of both Cesare and Giovanni. Cesare's role in the act, however, has never been clear.
On August 17, 1498, Cesare became the first person in history to resign the cardinalate.
Caesar's brother Giovanni got the job Caesar wanted (General of the Pope's Army). After Giovanni was assassinated Caesar got the job.
Caesar's contemporaries felt that Caesar either killed Giovanni himself or hired an assassin.
Since Caesar and Giovanni both had their younger brothers wife as their mistress, Caesar would have eliminated a rival.
Regardless... Giovanni is dead and Caesar got his job and a mistress to himself and is on the way toward a fame that will outlast him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Borgia
Emily
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Caesar Borgia
He was originally buried in a marble tomb beneath the altar of the Church of Santa Maria in the town with an inscription "Here lies in little earth one who was feared by all, who held peace and war in his hand." In 1537, the Bishop of Calahorra ordered had the destroyed and the remains transferred to an unconsecrated site outside the church. In 2007, Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, the Archbishop of Pamplona, allowed the remains to be moved back inside the church on the day before the 500th commemoration of Borgia's death.
Like his father in death, he was removed from the church by those who knew them both in life as unfit to be buried there. Both were moved outside the church and buried.
Both have been brought back into the church, Caesar only in 2007 after 500 years of being on the outs.
Emily
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Caesar Borgia in popular culture.
If he lived today he would own a hedge fund, live in NYC, have a reality show, and be running for President.
Here is a list of his credits so far.........
Popular culture
Movies
Lucrezia Borgia (1926)
Lucrèce Borgia (1935)
The Black Duke (1961)
Bride of Vengeance (1948)
Prince of Foxes (1949)
Poisons, or the World History of Poisoning (2001)
The Borgia (2006)
Television
Borgia (2011)
Literature
Caesar Borgia (acted 1680) by Nathaniel Lee.
The Family by Mario Puzo
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, père mentions many conspiracy theories based on Borgia.
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
Madonna of the Seven Hills by Jean Plaidy (Victoria Holt)
Light on Lucrezia by Jean Plaidy (Victoria Holt)
Cantarella, a manga by You Higuri
Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger
The Banner of the Bull by Rafael Sabatini (fiction)
The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis
Kakan no Madonna by Chiho Saito (manga)
The Borgias by Alexandre Dumas, père
The Borgia Testament by Nigel Balchin
Lusts of The Borgias by Marcus Van Heller
City of God, A Novel of the Borgias by Cecelia Holland
Then and Now by W. Somerset Maugham
The Antichrist (1895) by Friedrich Nietzsche Af. #61
Beyond Good and Evil (1886) by Friedrich Nietzsche Af. #197
The Dwarf (1944) by Pär Lagerkvist features an unscrupulous prince likely modeled on Borgia
Borgia, by Milo Manara (artist) & Alejandro Jodorowsky (writer), a comics in the form of serialized graphic novel, depicting the story of the Borgia family.
Cesar by Fuyumi Soryo (manga)
Cesar and Lucrezia Borgia (2009) by Robert Lalonde at http://www.archive.org/details/EveryonesDeathCesar
The Vulture is a patient bird by James Hadley Chase refers to a ring that belonged to Borgia
Valentino: a play in verse by David Wisehart
Carnival of Saints by George Herman features Borgia as one of the main antagonists.
The Artist, The Philosopher and the Warrior by Paul Strathern
"Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance Poisoner Mysteries by Sara Poole
Music
Cesar Borgia is mentioned in the song "B.I.B.L.E.", performed by Killah Priest, which appears on GZA's 1995 album Liquid Swords, as well as Killah Priest's debut album Heavy Mental. He is also mentioned in the song "Jeshurun", on Priest's album Behind the Stained Glass.
Japanese Manga
Cesare Borgia is a central character in three popular serialized mangas, Cesar by Fuyumi Soryo, "Kaken no Madonna" by Chiho Saito, and Cantarella by Higuri Yuu.
Video Games
Cesare is the main antagonist of the video game Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, acting as Captain-General of the Papal army in Rome and ordering an assault on the castle-town of Monteriggioni, home to the protagonist Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
Old psychopaths never die, they just keep getting dug up and resurrected by fellow travelers.
Emily
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Too bad Robby isn't here to tell give us the psychological perspective of what is so appealing about his story..........anyone else have ideas?.........jean
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Jean, please give us your perspective on why you think Caesar Borgia's story was so appealing. It would be interesting if everyone chimed in to answer your question.
How many people in history have such a long shelf life? Most are buried and forgotten but not Caesar Borgia.
The Borgia's are still with us and will appear as historical fiction on a new Showtime series in 2011. I am including a link for those who have the Showtime channel and would like to view the series.
The BBC did a series called 'Borgia' in 1982, and this new series seems to be similar but written and produced for an American audience.
The series may be well written and interesting, but it will be fiction based on history. Too many people get their history from fictional books, movies, and television and somehow it gets passed along as fact.
Since I don't have Showtime I won't get to watch it but perhaps someone here who does could give us their interpetation of the series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borgias_(2011_TV_series)
Emily
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What IS the appeal? Is wickedness more interesting than goodness, or do we have saints with that much written about them?
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Joan, the saint that comes to mind is Joan of Arc. I looked her up and here is what I found.
Numerous books have been written about Jeanne d'Arc.
There are over twenty thousand books about Jeanne d'Arc in the Bibliothèque nationale de France alone. There are so many books written in Different language so it's almost impossible figure out.
Some in the temporary bibliography list are still available.
Most books are out of print, and hard to find
There is a list of four books online along with a poem. I am not familiar with any except the one by Mark Twain and it is fiction and I have not read the book.
There are a few still in print and they are listed, but not my cup of tea. There is also a description of each one, and it looks like only one is a history.
There have been many movies made, but most are European (mainly France) with some American ones, and one supposedly in production now.
It is not her life story that holds the interest, but her manner of death and trial. She was young, a woman, spoke of mystical events and died as a result of her mental illness (my opinion only). Of course most writers want the mystical part of her short life to be the main feature, but others like Voltaire decry her mysticism.
Durant wrote about Joan of Arc in the 'Age of Faith', and we probably discussed her, but I remember little that was said.
http://www.jeanne-darc.dk/p_multimedia/0_literature.html
Emily
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Too many people get their history from fictional books, movies, and television and somehow it gets passed along as fact.
I tend to agree with you there, Emily. I don't mind so much if the characters are ficitional in an historic period, but I do mind when the writers put fictional words into the mouths of people who lived. Some fiction writers do a lot of historical research before writing. These days they have to because people like me are likely to fact check their writing. The facts in some of these fictional books are so entwined with the fiction that it can be hard to tell them apart otherwise. I've even discovered some facts that I was sure were a fictional contrivance before I checked.
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Joan, I also looked up Saint Patrick (these are the only two that came to mind) and they both are more myth and legend than fact, especially Patrick.
The only writing claimed to have been left by Patrick was his confession and a letter to some soldiers. There seem to be few books other than childrens books that have been written about Patrick. I read Thomas Cahill's book "How the Irish saved Civilization' and enjoyed all the myths and legends about the Irish and the scant knowledge of Patrick's life except from his skimpy writings. The book was not about Patrick so much as about the Irish and their myths, legends, and folk ways.
Patrick did convert the Irish to Christianity, but the Irish put their on spin on the religion and did not always follow Rome.
Patrick did not capture the imagination like Caesar Borgia or Joan of Arc. He lived in an earlier time and knowledge of that era is scant and his life story other than being taken captive is not interesting to me. Evangelists are a dime a dozen.
http://classiclit.about.com/od/stpatrick/tp/aatp_stpatrick.htm
Emily
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Thank you, Frybabe.
I only read non fiction now and have for years. I read a lot of fiction, much of it required reading when I was young, but history and biography are my only book reading now. Even there one must be aware of the author and their agenda, especially in auto biography.
Emily
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For a good bit of my adult life I read mostly non-fiction. Biography, however, was never my favorite. The exceptions back then as I recall were T. E. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Picasso and Samuel Johnson. I still have the Shaw and Johnson books. I've acquired and removed various Lawrence bios and autobios several times.
Having said that, biography has loomed larger in my library in the last five or so years. Catch up time (I've been catching up on fiction I missed too). I now have the likes of Cicero, Julius Caesar (his Gallic Wars), a volume on several of the Emperors, Winston Churchill, John Adams, Washington, Champlain, Hamilton, Gertrude Bell, Peter the Great, Layfette and his wife, and others. Most of these are US or European. I need to expand into South America, Canada, Asia, Middle and Near East, and Africa. Like I don't have enough to read already.
I haven't picked up any books on the Borgia family (or the Medici, for that matter), but have seen several interesting programs over the last few years. They both seem to pop up now and again.
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Thinking superficially - i think the Medici/Borgia stories are compelling because their " rich life" has been glamorized so that we can fantasize about what it would be like to wear silks, live in luxurious villas, have sevants do all those nasty chores we don't want to do.......of course, we avoid the thoughts of the negatives of the time - no central heating, dangerous streets, the dirt and grime, no anti-biotics, etc etc. I think we also fantasize about having the power to make things happen for our family and community - who wouldn't like to hire Michaelangelo to paint for us, or to be his patron- and to get revenge in a grand way, even if in our present day life we don't believe in revenge.
Isn't that what all the "action" movies are about? Or why we liked "Dallas" or "Falcon Crest" or watch the "Housewives" series? ...........jean
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Jean, you have it figured out in my opinion. Whatever sells will be produced over and over again with different actors or in the case of books, writers. The Borgias had the drama and as you said there is an audience for that.
In the case of the Borgias, so many people died mysteriously young with no apparent cause of death. We have read of poisonings all through the volumes of SOC especially as regards those in power. Without CSI investigators it would have been hard to prove that they didn't just die of a heart attack at age twenty.
Perhaps poison was in fashion in Rome at that time. It was certainly written about enough by the diarists. That lends drama to the tale. I am curious as to how the new series on television will portray the Borgias.
Emily
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Durant's SoC
Caesar Borgia
Pages 419- 420.
The marriage, (of Caesar and Charlotte ) committed the papacy to an alliance which undid all the work of the Holy League that Alexander had help to form in 1495, and it prepared the scene for the wars of Julius II. Caesar Borgia was among the nobles who escorted Louis XII into Milan on October 6 1499; Castiglione, who was there, described Duke Valentino as the tallest and handsomest man in all the King’s stately retinue. His pride matched his appearance. His sword was engraved with scenes from the life of Julius Caesar and bore two mottoes ‘Alea iacta est’—“the die is cast”; and ‘Aut Caesar aut nullus—“Either Caesar or nobody”.
In this bold youth and happy warrior Alexander found at last the general he had long sought to lead the armed forces of the Church in the reconquest of the Papal States. Louis contributed three hundred French lances, four thousand Gascons and Swiss were recruited, and two thousand Italian mercenaries. It was a small army with which to overcome a dozen despots, but Caesar was eager for the adventure. To add spiritual to military weapons, the Pope issued a bull solemnly declaring that Caterina Sforza and her son Ottaviano, Pandolfo Malatesta, Giulio Varno, Astorre Manfredi, Giudobaldo, and Giovanni Sforza held urban centers only by usurping lands, property, and rights long pertaining in law and justice to the Church; that they were all tyrants who had abused their powers and exploited their subjects; and they must now resign or be expelled by force. Possibly, as some charged, Alexander dreamed of welding these principalities into a kingdom for his son. It is unlikely, for Alexander must have known that neither his successors nor the other states of Italy would long tolerate a usurpation more illegal and unwelcome than any that it would have replaced.
Caesar himself may have dreamed of such a consummation; Machiavelli hoped so, and would have rejoiced to see so strong a hand unite Italy and expel all invaders. But to the end of his life Caesar protested he had no other aim than to win the States of the Church, for the Church, and would be content to be governor of the Romagna as a vassal of the pope.
In January 1500, Caesar and his army marched over the Apennines to Forlì. Imola surrendered at once to his deputy, and the citizens of Forlì threw open the gates to welcome him; but Caterina Sforza, as she had done twelve years before, bravely held the citadel with her garrison. Caesar offered easy terms; she preferred to fight. After a brief siege the papal troops forced their way into the rocca, and put the defenders to the sword.
Caterina was sent to Rome, and was lodged as an unwilling guest in the Belvedere wing of the vatican. She refused to resign her right to rule Forlì and Imola; she tried to escape, and was transferred to Sant’ Angelo. After eighteen months she was released, and entered a nunnery. She was a brave woman, but quite a virago. “She was a feudal ruler of the worst type, and in her dominions, as elsewhere in Romagna, Ceasar was regarded as an avenger commissioned by Heaven to redress ages of oppression and wrong.
But Ceasar’s first triumph was brief. His foreign troops mutinied because Ceasar had insufficient funds to pay them; they were hardly appeased when Louis XII recalled the French detachment to help him recapture the Milan that Lodovico had for a moment regained. Caesar led his remaining army back to Rome, and received almost the honors of a victorious Roman general. Alexander gloried in his son’s success. “The pope,” reported the Venetian ambassador, “ is more cheerful than ever.” He appointed Caesar papal vicar for the conquered cities, and began to lean fondly on his son’s advice.
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Durant writes on Caesar Borgia........
He was clearly not made for an ecclesiastical career, but Alexander, having bishoprics rather than principalities at his disposal, made him archbishop of Valencia ( 1492 ), then cardinal (1493). No one took such appointments as religious; they were means of supplying income to youths who had influential relatives, and who might be trained for the practical management of ecclesiastical property and personnel. Caesar took minor orders, but never became a priest.
So according to Durant Bishops and Cardinals had nothing to do with religion and was merely a way to give your offspring a salary and maybe as a manager of church holdings.
What a cushy job.
Now I have to go back and try to find 'why were these offices of the church created' in the first place. I don't think they were created to give 'junior' a trust fund, but we shall see.
Does anyone know the answer?
Emily
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I need to start a list of cast of characters to keep everybody straight. :)
Interesting how many woman who had some power have been lost to history. When i graduated from college, as a history major no less, the only powerful woman i knew about were the English queens and then only the Elizabeths and Victoria. Oh, i had heard of Cleopatra, as Elizabeth Taylor, of course :) and Catherine the Great, because i had a Russian history course. It's nice to see the Durants include some of those women of lesser, but important significance. I wonder how much of that was Ariel's influence?
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" and to get revenge in a grand way, even if in our present day life we don't believe in revenge."
Wouldn't it be sweet to smugly know that you had the power to get a grand revenge, but were much too angelic to use it. You might even manage to smugly forgive the wwrongdoer. He would be so grateful, he would be your servant for life.
Yeah, right.
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Durants SoC
The Renaissance
Vol V Pages 420-422
The receipts from the jubilee and from the sale of red hats replenished the treasury, and Caesar could now plan a second campaign. He offered a convincing sum to Paolo Orsini to join the papal forces with his armed men; Paolovame, and several other nobles followed suit; with this clever stroke Caesar enlarged his army and protected Rome from baronial raids during the absence of the papal troops beyond the Apennines. Perhaps by similar inducements and the promise of spoils, he enlisted the services and soldiers of Gianpalo Baglioni, lord of Perugia, and engaged Vitellozo Viteli to lead the artillery. Louis the XII sent him a small regiment of lancers, but Caesar was no longer dependent upon French reinforcements. In September, 1500, at Alexanders urging, he attacked the castles occupied by hostile Colonna and Savelli in Latium. One after another surrendered. Soon Alexander was enabled to make a tour in safety and triumph through the regions long lost to papacy. He was received everywhere with popular acclaim, for the feudal barons had not been loved by their subjects.
When Caesar set out on his second major campaign ( October, 1500 ), he had an army of 14000 men, with a retinue of Poets, prelates, and prostitutes to service his troops. Anticipating their arrival, Pandolfo Maletesta vacated Rimini, and Giovanni Sforza fled from Pesaro; the two cities welcomed Caesar as a liberator. At Faenza Astorre Manfredi resisted, and the people supported him loyally. Borgia offered generous terms, Manfredi rejected them. The siege lasted all winter; finally Faenza surrendered on Caesar’s promise of leniency to all. He behaved handsomely to the citizens, and was so warm in praising Manfredi’s resolute defense that the defeated apparently fell in love with the victor, and remained with him as part of his staff or retinue. Astorre’s younger brother did the same, though both were free to go whenever they wished. For two months they followed Caesar in all his wanderings, and were treated with respect. Then suddenly, on reaching Rome, they were thrown in to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. There they remained for a year; then, on June 2, 1502, their bodies were thrown up by the Tiber. What made Caesar – or Alexander—condemn them is not known. Like a hundred other strange events in the history of the Borgias, the case remains a mystery that only the uninformed can solve.
Caesar, now adding the Duke of Romagna to his titles, studied the map, and decided to complete the task assigned to him by his father. Camerino and Urbino remained to be taken. Urbino, though doubtless papal in law,was almost a model state as politics went; it seemed a disgraceful thing to depose so loved a couple as Guidobaldo and Elizabetta; and perhaps they would now have consented to be papal vicars in fact as well as in name. But Caesar argued that the city blocked his easiest avenue to the Adriatic, and might, in hostile hands, cut off his communications with Pesaro and Rimini. We do not know if Alexander agreed; it seams incredible, for about this time he persuaded Giudobaldo to lend the papal army his artillery. It is more likely that Caesar deceived his father, or changed his own plans. On June 12, 1502, now with Leonardo da Vinci as his chief engineer, he set out on his third campaign, apparently headed for Camerino. Suddenly he turned north, and approached Urbino so rapidly that its invalid ruler had barely time to escape, leaving the city to fall into Caesar’s hands ( June 21 ). If this move was made with Alexander’s knowledge and consent it was one of the most despicable treacheries in history, though Machiavelli would have been thrilled by its subtlety. The victor treated the inhabitants with feline gentleness, but appropriated the precious art collection of the fallen Duke , and sold it to pay his troops.
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Interesting the services the priests needed:
"a retinue of Poets, prelates, and prostitutes to service his troops."
I notice only the Poets rate a capital letter. Is this honor bestowed by Durant or Trevor?
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Cesare's treatment of the Manfredi brothers is diabolical. I wonder if he pretended to be generous and befriend them to lure them away from their home area before disposing of them to avoid an uprising of supporters, or if he just had a vicious sense of humor. I considered the possibility that the Manfredi brothers were caught in a plot, but then Cesare would likely have so stated to justify his actions. I wonder if they were dead before the hit the water or were drowned.
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JoanK. I confess. The capital 'P' above in the spelling of 'poets' is my fault. I find I often use capitals inappropriately, but usually manage to correct the error before hitting 'send'. I'm sorry to have mislead you.
Also, it is now 6pm on Christmas day in NZ. I have enjoyed a wonderful day, and now wish all here the best for Christmas, and an enjoyable New Year. == Trevor
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Trevor - - - we are a little behind you here in Alberta Canada, where it is now just after 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
We are looking forward to a wonderful day with our son and daughter and our grandchildren.
I would like to wish all at SeniorLearn (and at Seniors & Friends) a Very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year. You give us something to live for.
Brian
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When Caesar set out on his second major campaign ( October, 1500 ), he had an army of 14000 men, with a retinue of Poets, prelates, and prostitutes to service his troops. what else does a man need, an army and the three "p's"? ........i am sensing a sense of humor from the Durants.......
Thank you Trevor for giving us these passages. Do you have to type each page? What a trooper.
We have completed our Christmas, which we celebrate on C eve. Our dgt, son, DIL and 2 grandsons were here for gift exchange and noshing, now comes the relaxation, wheeeeeew!
Happy New Year to all.......Jean
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We have "moved" Christmas to next week, so the family can be together. So I still have that to look forward to. But the phone is humming with Christmas wishes going back and forth.
Merry Christmas to all!!!
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Durant writes........
Then suddenly, on reaching Rome, they were thrown in to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. There they remained for a year; then, on June 2, 1502, their bodies were thrown up by the Tiber.
Recently I happened upon a program about Rome on the history channel. The program was already almost over but they were in the Castel Sant' Angelo ready to go underground to examine the dungeon underneath the Castle.
The showed the 'cells' for prisoners of the Pope and explained that they had been expanded under Pope Alexander (Borgia) during the Renaissance.
The massive stone walls and darkness without the artificial lights would have been so oppressive that drowning in the Tiber would have been preferable to me. I cannot imagine living in those cells underground for a year as the Manfreddi's were forced to do.
What made Caesar – or Alexander—condemn them is not known. Like a hundred other strange events in the history of the Borgias, the case remains a mystery that only the uninformed can solve.
I reread that last sentence to decipher what Durant meant by 'uninformed'.
Certainly many knew what happened to the Manfreddi's. They also knew the Tiber would 'throw them up' if they told what happened.
So only the 'uninformed' could possibly examine this mystery and come to their own conclusions and since they weren't there could not prove anything.
The Tiber was a favorite place to dispose of 'inconvienent' bodies as we have read all through the history of Rome. Some surfaced and were fished out, but many simply disappeared forever.
Since Durant is writing about this event, it was certainly recorded at the time and many people would have known about the imprisonment, disappearence, and body retrieval. Fear is a powerful emotion, and even on Caesar's tomb it was stated that he was feared by all.
Caesar would have been proud of that epitaph.
Emily
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Durant's SoC
The Borgias,
Pages 422-423
Meanwhile,Borgia's general, Vitelli, apparently on his own authority, seized Arezzo, long since an appanage of Florence. The shocked Signory sent the bishop of Volterra, with Machiavelli, to appeal to Caesar at Urbino. He received them with successful charm. “I am not here to play the tyrant,” he told them, “but to extinguish tyrants.” He agreed to check Vitelli and restore Arezzo to Florentine allegiance; in return he demanded a definite policy of mutual friendliness between Florence and himself. The bishop thought him sincere, and Machiavelli wrote to the Signory with undiplomatic enthusiasm:
"This lord is splendid and magnificent, and is so bold that there is no enterprise so great that it does not seem to him small. To gain glory and dominions he robs himself of repose, and knows neither danger nor fatigue. He comes to a place before his intentions are understood. He makes himself well liked among his soldiers and has chosen the best men in Italy. These things make him victorious and formidable, with the aid of perpetual good fortune."
On July 20 Camerino surrendered to Caesar’s lieutenants, and the Papal States were papal again. Directly, or by proxy Caesar gave them such good government as seemed to vindicate his claim to be a deposer of tyrants; later all of them but Urbino and Faenza would mourn his fall. Hearing that Gianfrancesco Gonzaga ( Elizabetta’s brother and Isabella’s husband ) had gone with several prominent men to Milan to turn Louis XII against him, Caesar hurried across Italy, confronted his enemies, and quickly regained the favour of the King ( August, 1502). It is deserving of note that up to this point, and even after his most questionable exploit, a bishop, a king, and a diplomat later famous for subtlety, should have joined in admiring Caesar, and accepting the justice of his conduct and his aims.
Nevertheless Italy was dotted with men who prayed for his fall. Venice, though it had made him an honorary citizen( gentiluomo di Venezia ), was not happy to see the Papal States so strong again, and controlling so much of the Adriatic shore. Florence fretted at the thought that Forlì, only eight miles from Florentine territory, was in the hands of an incalculable and unscrupulous young genius of statecraft and war. Pisa offered itself to his rule ( December 1502 ); he politely refused; but what if he changed his course—as on the way to Camerino ? The gifts that Isabella sent him were perhaps a blind to disguise the resentment she and Mantua felt against his rape of Urbino. The Collonna and Savelli, and in less degree the Orsini, had been ruined by his victories, and merely bided their time to raise some coalition against him. His own “best men,” who had led his cohorts brilliantly, were not sure but he might attack their territories next, some of which were also claimed by the Church. Gianpaolo Baglioni trembled for his hold on Perugia, Giovanni Betntivoglio for his rule in Bologna; Paolo Orsini and Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, wondered how long it would be before Caesar would do to the Orsini clan what he had done to the Colonna.
Vitelli, raging at being forced to relinquish Arezzo, invited these men, and Oliverotto of Fermo, and Pandolfo Petrucci of Siena, and representatives of Guildbaldo, to meet at La Magione on lake Trasimene ( September 1502). There they agreed to turn their troops against Caesar, capture and depose him, end his rule in Romagna and the Marches, and restore the dispossessed lords. It was a formidable plot, whose success would have brought to a sorry issue the best laid plans of Alexander and his son.
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Ahhhh. The suspense is killing me. Will they succeed?
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
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Ah, hah! Now we have Machiavelli in the mix. What intrigue. What suspense.
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Durant's SoC, Vol. V
The Renaissance
The Bogias
Pages 423-425
The conspiracy began with brilliant victories. Revolts were organised in Urbino and Camerino, with the support of the people; the papal garrisons there were expelled; Guildobaldo returned to his palace ( October 18, 1502 ); everywhere the fallen lords raised their heads and planned to return to power. Caesar suddenly found his lieutenants would not obey him, and that his forces were reduced to a point where he could not possible hold his conquests. In the crisis Cardinal Ferrari opportunely died; Alexander hurriedly appropriated the 50,000 ducats left by him, and sold some of the Cardinal’s benefices; he tuned over the receipts to Caesar, who rapidly raised a new army of 6000 men. In the meantime Alexander negotiated individually with the conspirators, made them fair promises, and won so many of them back to obedience that by the end of October they had all made their peace with Caesar; it was an astonishing feat of diplomacy. Caesar received their apologies with silent scepticism; and he noted that though Guidobaldo again fled from Urbino, the Orsini still held the duchy’s strongholds with their troops.
In December, Caesar’s lieutenants, at his bidding, besieged Senigallia, on the Adriatic. The town soon yielded, but the governor of the castle refused to surrender it except to Caesar himself. A messenger was sent to the Duke at Cesena; he hastened down the coast, followed by twenty-eight hundred soldiers especially devoted to him. Arriving at Senigallia he greeted with apparent cordiality the four leaders of the conspiracy -- Vitellozo Vitelli, Papolo and Francesco Orsini, and Oliverotto. He invited them to a conference with him in the governor’s palace; when they came he had them arrested; and that very night ( December 31, 1502 ) he had Vitelli and Oliverotto strangled. The two Orsini where kept in prison till Caesar could communicate with his father; apparently Alexander’s views agreed with his son’s; and on January 18 the two men were put to death.
Caesar prided himself on his clever stroke at Senigallia; he thought Italy should thank him for ridding it so neatly of four men who were not only feudal usurpers of Church lands but had been reactionary oppressors of the helpless subjects. Perhaps he felt a qualm or two, for he excused himself to Machiavelli: “ It is proper to snare those who are proving themselves past masters in the art of snaring others”. Machiavelli fully agreed with him, and considered Caesar, at this time, the bravest and wisest man in Italy. Paolo Giovio, historian and bishop, called the quadruple extinction of the conspirators ‘bellissimo inganno’-- a “most lovely” ruse. Isabella d’Este, playing safe, sent Caesar congratulations, and a hundred masks to amuse him “after the fatigues and struggles of this glorious expedition.” Louis XII hailed the coup as “ a deed worthy of the great days of Rome.”
Alexander was now free to express his full rage at the conspiracy against his son and the reclaimed cities of the Church. He claimed to have evidence that Cardinal Orsini had plotted with his relatives to assassinate Caesar; he had the Cardinal and several other suspects arrested ( January 3, 1503 ); he seized the Cardinals palace, and confiscated all his goods. The Cardinal died in prison on February 22, probably through excitement and exhaustion; Rome speculated that the Pope had him poisoned. Alexander advised Caesar to root out the Orsini completely from Rome and the campagna. Caesar was not so anxious; perhaps he too was exhausted; he delayed returning to the capital, and then set out unwillingly to besiege Giulio Orsini’s mighty fortress at Ceri ( March 15, 1503 ). In this siege -- perhaps in others -- Borgia used some of Leonardo’s war machines; one was a moving tower holding three hundred men and capable of being raised to the top of the enemy’s walls.
Giulio surrendered, and went with Caesar to the Vatican to ask for peace; the Pope granted it on condition that all Orsini castles in papal territory should be given to the Church; it was done. In the meantime Perugia and Fermo had quietly accepted governors sent them by Caesar. Bologna was still unredeemed, but Ferrara had joyfully received Lucrezia Borgia as its duchess. Aside from these two major principalities -- which would occupy Alexander’s successors -- the reconquest of the Papal States was complete, and Caesar Borgia, at twenty-eight, found himself the governor of a realm equalled in size, in the peninsular, only by the Kingdom of Naples. He was now by common consent the most remarkable and powerful man in Italy.
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Durant writes..............
Alexander was now free to express his full rage at the conspiracy against his son and the reclaimed cities of the Church. He claimed to have evidence that Cardinal Orsini had plotted with his relatives to assassinate Caesar; he had the Cardinal and several other suspects arrested ( January 3, 1503 ); he seized the Cardinals palace, and confiscated all his goods. The Cardinal died in prison on February 22, probably through excitement and exhaustion; Rome speculated that the Pope had him poisoned.
What happened to the 'several other suspects' that were arrested along with Cardinal Orsini? No word on their fate, and even who they were. It seems likely they were part of the Cardinals staff and those who worked for him.
What a dangerous place to work while the Borgias were in power. It didn't take them long to finish off Cardinal Orsini about six weeks seems to have been their limit, and I don't buy the idea that he died of exhaustion. Sitting in a prison cell would be boring but not exhausting. Excitement? I wonder who wrote these two unbelievable explanations of death for Durant to copy many years later.
The Borgia Pope must have been feeling the power to put out such nonsense and expect people to believe it. The people did not believe as stated above, but the Pope had such a criminal mind that he did not care, as those who had to show up for work in that atmosphere knew they could be next.
Emily
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Pope Borgia got all the Orsini castles and land. Here is a photo of one Castle Orsini outside Rome.
http://www.lifeinitaly.com/tourism/lazio/castello-orsini-cesi-borghese
Emily
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Emily, i too had a question abt "exhaustion"......thanks for the link to the castle. I am always intriqued w/ the way those old buildings have been converted for modern living, the "doorway"pic shows a tiny bit of that.......i have often said to my students "you live in the best of times" and have tho't for myself, "thank goodness i was born in the middle of the 20th century". Students often argued w/ me bcs thay didn't know factual history, but you're right living w/ the Borgias would not have been pleasant.....jean
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Hi Jean and all.......I went searching for more castles of the Orsini (they had a lot) and came upon a web site that had the following as an aside after a painting of Macheivelli.
Cesare Borgia
"On the evening of the 31st of October 1501, [Alexander's son] Cesare Borgia hosted in his rooms in the Vatican a party with 50 honorable prostitutes, referred to as courtesans, who after the meal danced with the servants and others present, first in their clothes and then naked.
After the meal the candelabras with the burning candles were stood on the floor and chestnuts spread around them, which the naked prostitutes collected on their hands and knees and crawling between the candelabras, watched by the Pope, Cesare, and his sister Lucrezia [Borgia]."
by Johannes Burcardus,
Alexander VI's master of ceremonies
Durant did quote Johannes Burcardus (used different spelling) in his writings, so he must have read his history of the time he spent with several Popes. He was in charge of all ceremonial activities in the Vatican and I gave an excerpt from his 'history' on the death of the Borgia Pope since Johann was responsible for the funeral set on precedent of past popes.
Perhaps Durant did not think this entry was relevant to the Borgias history, but to me it sums them up well.
I read a history of one of the great leaders of the Moslem empire when they ruled a large swath of territory. In his huge palace in Constantinople he had one of the largest harems known to history.
His overseer of the Harem (an eunuch) told of games the Caliph would play with his concubines. They would get undressed and crawl on the floor in a circle and he would play a game of leap frog until he made his selection.
Extreme measures for a one inch fuse in a room full of dynamite.
Emily
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Forgot the link again. Here it is.............
http://www.all-art.org/Visual%20History/266-1.htm
Emily
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Great site Emily. I've got it bookmarked.
Ahhhh, Yes, powerful men and their games. Hard to read about, but important for us to realize what the people who lacked power have had to endure. Something we might have learned if more women's history was included in our curricula.........jean
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And love that classical music is included in the site, including a history of jazz, w/audio! Am listening to Rhapsody in Blue as i type......thanks again
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Durant's SoC Vol. V
The Renaissance
The Bogias Pages 425-426.
For a time Caesar remained in unwonted quiet at the Vatican. We should have expected him at this point to send for his wife; he did not. He had her left with her family in France, and she had borne him a child during his wars; occasionally he wrote to her and sent her gifts; but he never saw her again. The duchesse of Valentinios lived a modest and retired life in Bourges, or in the chateau de La Mitte-Feuilly in the Dauphine, waiting hopefully to be sent for, or to have her husband come to her. When he was ruined and deserted she tried to go to him; when he died she hung her house with black, and remained in mourning for him until her death. Perhaps he would have sent for her later, had he been given a few more months of peace; more likely he looked upon the marriage as purely political, and felt no obligation to tenderness.
There was apparently only a modicum of tenderness in him, and he kept most of that for Lucrezia, whom he loved as much as he could love a woman. Even when hurrying from Urbino to Milan to circumvent his foes with LouisXII, he had gone considerably out of his way to visit his sister at Ferrara, then dangerously ill. Returning from Milan he stopped there again, held her in his arms while physicians bled her, and stayed with her till she was out of danger. Caesar was not made for marriage; he had mistresses, but none for long; he was too consumed by the will to power to let any woman enter possessively into his life.
In Rome he lived in privacy, almost in concealment. He worked at night and was rarely seen by day. But he worked hard, even in this period of seeming rest; he kept close watch on his appointees in the States of the Church, punished those who misused their position, had one appointee put to death for cruelty and exploitation, and always found time to see men who needed his instructions on the government of the Romagna or the maintenance of order in Rome.
Those who knew him respected his shrewd intelligence, his capacity for going directly to the heart of the matter, for seizing every opportunity that chance presented, and for taking quick, decisive, and effective action. He was popular with his soldiers, who secretly admired the saving severity of his discipline. They highly approved of the bribes , stratagems, and deceits by which he reduced the number and persistence of his enemies and the battles and casualties of his troops. Diplomats were chagrined to find that this swift-moving and fearless young general could out think and outreason them in their shrewdest subtleties, and could, at need, match all their charm and tact and eloquence.
His flair for secrecy made him an easy victim for the satirists of Italy, and for the ugly rumours that hostile ambassadors or deposed aristocrats might invent or spread; it is impossible today separate fact from fiction in these lurid reports. A favourite story was that Alexander and his son made a practice of arresting ecclesiastics on trumped up charges, and releasing them on the payment of large ransoms or fines; so, it was alleged, the bishop of Cesna, for a crime whose nature was not divulged, was cast into Sant’ Angelo, and was freed on paying 10,000 ducats to the Pope. We cannot say whether this was justice or robbery; in fairness to Alexander we should bear in mind it was the custom of both secular and ecclesiastical courts to make crime pay the court by replacing expensive imprisonment with lucrative fines. According to the Venetian ambassador Giustiniani and the Florentine ambassador Vitorio Soderini, Jews were frequently arrested on charges of heresy and could prove their orthodoxy only by substantial contributions to the papal treasury It is possible, but Rome was known for its relatively decent treatment of the Jews, and no Jew was considered a heretic-- or was prosecuted by the Inquisition-- for being a Jew.
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Very interesting person and time. Many of the things that shock us were probably taken for granted then.
So dictators impose their own mix of strengths and weaknesses, bad and good on the society, and the people in it learn to live around those constraints. We still don't know much of what this was like for the person-on-the street.
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I find it interesting that Caesar could be apparently so reasonable that his troops respected him and he would not let wrongs go unpunished within the area he controlled
...............yet he married and left his wife to her own (would that be so he could sire an offspring to continue his linage...would a man bother to get married if the linage was continued thru the wife's side !!!)
Deb
[he kept close watch on his appointees in the States of the Church, punished those who misused their position, had one appointee put to death for cruelty and exploitation, /quote]
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Ask the eastern states Native American tribes that question, Deb. Most of the tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy were matrilineal, the line of the family was thru the women, the husband came to live w/the wife's family, the line of the chief went thru the woman's family, or the women elders picked the chief, etc. The men didn't seem to be insecure or unhappy about this social behavior - well, maybe we can't discern if they were unhappy, but it worked for centuries.......Europeans had a different perspective of course. So you may be right, boys who grew up in european society may have wanted only an heir from marriage, but since virginity was so highly prized, thay may have married for sex also.
Jean
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you jogged my memory Jean, about some of the North American pre-white man era cultures--
also another thought, about their religion which was very respectful of the earth ...I don't remember reading situations where i.e. a person took advantage of his religious position to gain wealth and prestige thru his position of secular power, like continually seen in the present Durant's book era--of course there must have been people with miserable dispositions, people who liked to trod over others rights, throw their weight around & take from others what wasn't theirs to take...
perhaps their society was small enough that their tribal councils were able to contain much of any abuse of their society's systems
....and then maybe I'm off track
I remember thru the years 1975-1980 working in a rehab hospital and on midnight shifts catching Jim Baaker with Tammy building their temple and all the people mesmerized with his preaching ...we were watching because my co-worker was a very religious person herself...I was just intrigued ( not being religious myself) that this man could have so many people within his grasp, enamoured with him, hanging off his every word, till he was jailed....and how many are doing the same just haven't been caught yet, if ever caught!
there seems to be so much opportunity for religious leaders to take advantage of their flock and therefore leave them hanging,their parishoners wanting to believe in rightousness but being led by deceptive human beings pleading 'goodness'
....hypocrisy surrounds everywhere!!....
boy I don't know what got into me don't I sound dismal and depressing, sorry....
Deb
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Durant's SoC
The Renaissance Vol V.
The Borgias Pages 426-428
Many rumours charged the Borgias with poisoning rich cardinals to accelerate the reversion of their estates to the Church. Some such casualties seemed so well attested – rather by repetition than by evidence – that Protestant historians generally accepted them as late as the judicious Jacob Burckhardt ( 1818-97 ); and the Catholic historian Pastor believed it “ extremely probable that Caesar poisoned Cardinal Michiel in order to obtain the money he wanted. This conclusion was founded on the fact that under Julius II ( extremely hostile to Alexander ) a sub deacon, Aquino da Colloredo, being put to the torture, confessed that he had poisoned Cardinal Michiel at the behest of Alexander and Caesar. A twentieth-century historian may be excused for being skeptical of confessions elicited by torture.
An enterprising statistician has shown that the death rate among cardinals was no higher in Alexander’s pontificate before or afterward; but there is no doubt that Rome, in the last three years of that reign, thought it dangerous to be a cardinal and rich. Isabella’Este wrote to her husband to be careful what he said about Caesar, for “ he does not scruple to conspire against those of his own blood; apparently she accepted the tale that he had killed the Duke of Gandia. Roman gossip talked about a slow poison, cantarella, whose base was arsenic, and which, dropped as a powder upon food or into drink – even into the sacramental wine of the mass—would produce a leisurely death difficult to trace to its human cause. Historians now generally reject the slow poisons of the Renaissance as legendary, but believe that in one or two cases the Borgias poisoned rich cardinals. Further research may reduce these cases to zero.
Worse stories are told of Caesar. To amuse Alexander and Lucrezia, we are assured, he released into a courtyard several prisoners who had been sentenced to death, and from a safe point, showed his bowman ship by shooting fatal arrows into one after another of the convicts as they sought some refuge from his shafts. Our sole authority for this tale is the Venetian envoy Capello; it is rather less probable that Caesar did this than that a diplomat should lie. Much history of the Renaissance popes has been written on the authority of war propaganda and diplomatic lies.
The most incredible of the Borgia horrors appears in the usually reliable diary of Alexander’s master of ceremonies, Burchard. Under October 30 1501, his Diarium describes a dinner in the apartment of Caesar Borgia in the Vatican, at which nude courtesans chased chestnuts scattered over the floor while Alexander and Lucrezia looked on. The story appears also in the Perugian historian Matarazzo, who took it, not from Burchard ( for the dairium was still secret ) but from gossip that ranged out of Rome through Italy; “ the thing was known far and wide,” he says.If so, it is strange that the Ferrarese ambassador, who was in Rome at the time, and was later commissioned to investigate the morals of Lucrezia and her fitness to marry Alfonso, son of Duke Ercole, made no mention of the story in his report, but (as we shall see ) gave a most favourable account of her; either he was bribed by Alexander, or he ignored unverified gossip. But how did the story get into Burchard’s diary ? He does not profess to have been present, and could hardly be, for he was a man of sturdy morals. Normally he included in his notes only such events as he had witnessed, or such as had been reported to him on good authority. Was the story interpolated into the manuscript ? Of the original manuscript only twenty-six pages survive All concerning the period following Alexander’s final illness. Of the remainder of the Diarium only copies exist.
All these copies carry the story. It may have been interpolated by a hostile scribe who thought to liven a dry chronicle with a juicy tale; or Burchard may for once have allowed gossip to creep into his notes, or the original may have marked it as gossip. Probably the story was based on an actual banquet, and the lurid fringe was added by fancy or spite. The Florentine ambassador Francesco Pepi, always hostile to the Borgias since Florence was almost always at odds with them, reported on the morrow of the affair that the Pope had stayed up till a late hour in the apartments of Caesar the night before, and there had been “dancing and laughter” ; there is no mention of the courtesans. It is incredible that a pope who was at this time making every effort to marry his daughter to the heir of the duchy of Ferrara should have risked the marriage and a vital diplomatic alliance by allowing Lucrezia to witness such a spectacle.
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"...skeptical of confessions elicited by torture"......huuuummmmm, guess we haven't all learned that lesson, yet.
I believe there has been a recent book about the Borgias, i may have to take a look to see if they have clarified what may or may not be true abt the popes And the Borgias lives.
Jean
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The Borgias and There Enemies by Christopher Hibbert, 2008
Reviews on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Borgias-Their-Enemies-1431-1519/dp/0547247818
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It has always troubled me that we are quick to condemn those who transgress in their sexual activity, ( and I think rightly so ) but admire those who by military action cause the deaths of countless innocent people. The greater the slaughter, the more heroic the action tends to become. And in this slaughter, I am assured by religious folk, that God's wishes are being met....... ? ++ Trevor
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DITTO! Trevor, DITTO!........jean
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It has always troubled me that we are quick to condemn those who transgress in their sexual activity, ( and I think rightly so ) but admire those who by military action cause the deaths of countless innocent people. The greater the slaughter, the more heroic the action tends to become. And in this slaughter, I am assured by religious folk, that God's wishes are being met....... ? ++ Trevor
Trevor I do agree with you that war by its nature is a horror to be condemed and those who start them twice condemed.
If it were not for the holier than thou condemnation that the church put on 'sexual affairs', they could get a pass from me. Since they don't give a pass, they won't get a pass.
Does a leopard change its spots......no it does not.
Therefore Caesar and Rodrigo Borgia were the same sexual predators that Durant had already told us about. Durant had little trouble with Caesar carrying prostitutes along for all his campaigns. Too many private witnesses in the form of soldiers to put that under the rug. He did have trouble admitting that they carried it into the Vatican, even though more than one person wrote about the incidents. Since Durant was raised Catholic and even considered entering the priesthood, I can read his reluctance to 'dancing' on St. Peter.
These two sexual predators wanted to be entertained. Durant wrote of it earlier in their reign. The Pope put on comedies, light plays, and even bullfights. He had an untold number of Mistresses as did his son. He took some of his children to the Vatican with him when he became pope.
We cannot know even a fraction of all the things they did, because to oppose them was a death sentence. Even the few diaries that were written were kept secret until after their death.
I think of the horrors of the lives of the prostitutes in those times. They were expendable fodder, and if history is any guide they were destitute teenage girls.
Speaking of prostitutes I see that the Premier of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has himself in a pickle over prostitutes. He had so many that his latest wife is divorcing him and now the prosecutor is after him.
Even old leopards cannot change their spots. Semper eadem.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/17/world/europe/AP-EU-Italy-Berlusconi.html?_r=1&ref=aponline
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Lucrezia Borgia: 1480-1519
Vol V The Renaissance.
Pages 428-430
Alexander admired, perhaps feared his son, but he loved his daughter with all the emotional intensity of his nature. he seems to have taken profounder pleasure in her moderate beauty, in her long golden hair ( so heavy it gave her headaches ), in the rhythm of her light form dancing, and in the filial devotion she gave him through all contumely and bereavements, than he had ever derived from the charms of Vanozza or Giulia. She was not particularly fair, but she was described in her youth as 'dolce ciera', sweet face; and amid all the coarseness and looseness of her times and her environment, through all the disillusionments of divorce and the horror of seeing her husband murdered almost before her eyes, she kept this 'sweet face' to her pious end, for it was a frequent theme in Ferrarese poetry, Pinturicchio's portrait of her in the Borgia apartment of the Vatican, agrees well with this description of her in her youth.
Like all Italian girls who could afford it, she went to a convent for her education. At an unknown age she passed from the house of her mother Vanozza to that of Donna Adriana Mila, a cousin of Alexander. There she formed a lifelong friendship with Adrianna's daughter-in-law Giulia Farnese, alleged mistress of her father. Favored with every good fortune except legitimacy, Lucrezia grew up in a gay and joyous girlhood, and Alexander was happy in her happiness.
This carefree youth was ended by marriage. Probably she was not offended when her father chose a husband for her; that was then normal procedure for all good girls, and produced no more unhappiness than our own reliance on the selective wisdom of romantic love. Alexander, like any ruler, thought that the marriages of his children should advance the interests of the state; this too, doubtless, seemed reasonable to Lucrezzia. Naples was then hostile to the papacy, and Milan was hostile to Naples; so her first marriage bound her, at the age of thirteen, to Giovanni Sforza, aged twenty-six, lord of Pesaro and nephew to Lodovico, regent of Milan ( 1493 ) Alexander amused himself paternally by arranging a handsome home for the couple in Cardinal Zeno's palace, close to the Vatican.
But Sforza had to live in Pesaro part of the time, and took his young bride with him. She languished on those distant shores, far from her doting father and the excitement and splendor of Rome; and after a few months she returned to the Capital. Later Giovanni joined her there; but after Easter of 1497 he stayed in Pesaro and she on Rome. On June the 14th Alexander asked him to consent to an annulment on the ground of the husband's impotence-- the only ground recognized by canon law for annulling a valid marriage. Lucrezia,whether in grief or shame, or to circumvent scandal-mongers, retired to a convent. A few days later, her brother the duke of Gandia was slain, and the delicate wits of Rome suggested that he had been murdered by agents of Sforza for attempting to seduce Lucrezia. Her husband denied his impotence and hinted that Alexander was guilty of incest with his daughter. The Pope appointed a committee, headed by by two cardinals, to inquire into whether the marriage had ever been consummated; Lucreza took oath it had not, and they assured Alexander that she was still a virgin. Lodovico proposed to Giovanni that he should demonstrate his potency before a committee including the papal legate at Milan; Giovanni forgivably refused. However, he signed a formal admission that the marriage had not been consummated, he returned to Lucrezia her dowry of 31000 ducats; and on December 20, 1497, the marriage was annulled. Lucrezia, who had borne no offspring to Giovanni, bore children to both her later husbands; but Sforza's third wife, in 1505, gave birth to a son presumably his own.
It was formerly assumed that Alexander had broken the marriage in order to make a politically more profitable marriage; there is no evidence for this assumption; it is more likely that Lucrezia told the pitiful truth of the matter. But Alexander could not let her remain husbandless. Seeking a rapprochement with the papacy's bitter enemy, Naples, he proposed to King Federigo the union of Lucrezia with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie, the bastard son of Federigo's heir Alfonso II. The King agreed, and a formal betrothal was signed ( June 1498 ). Federigo's proxy on this occasion was Cardinal Sforza, uncle to the divorced Giovanni. Lodovico of Milan also had encouraged Federico to accept the plan. Apparently Giovanni's uncles felt no resentment at the annulment of his marriage. In August the wedding was celebrated in the Vatican.
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As for Pinturicchio's portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, the only image found was as (perhaps) her depiction of Saint Catherine in a fresco done by the artist.
Here is a link to the work of Pinturicchio in the Vatican apartments of Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander. After the death of Pope Alexander the apartments were sealed off for 300 years. They were finally opened back up by a much later pope at the end of the nineteenth century.
These photographs do not include the one said to depict Lucrezia as Saint Catherine, but I will get the link later.
If they had to be sealed off for 300 years, the scene must have been worse than baaaaaaad. The rooms have been scrubbed of the Borgias and only Pinturicchio's work remains.
http://thiswritelife.wordpress.com/2010/07/
Emily
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Here is a link to the Borgia apartment frescos. Scroll down to the 'Saint Catherine Disputation' to see Saint Catherine standing before Emperor Maxentius. The model for Catherine was said to be Lucrezia Borgia.
Click on the photo to make it larger.
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/pinturic/vatican/
Emily
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Below a link to Raphael's 'School of Athens' a fresco done for the Borgia pope successor, Pope Julius. The apartments of Julius were above the Borgia apartments and were said to have better light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Escola_de_atenas_-_vaticano.jpg
Emily
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They are beautiful, and to think they were for the private apartments where most folks couldn't see them. I don't think I was aware that "The School of Athens" is a painted wall in the Vatican. I don't suppose I ever really thought about it.
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Frybabe, here is what wikipedia says about 'School of Athens'
The School of Athens, or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance."
Emily
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WOW! They are amazing! ..........jean
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Yes they are. If L. is the ?woman? in a blue sleeve and gold wrap, indeed she is not very feminine.
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V. The Renaissance
Lucrezia Borgia
Pages 430-432
Lucrezia facilitated matters by falling in love with her husband. It helped that she could mother him, for she was eighteen now, and he was a child of seventeen. But it was their misfortune to be important; poltics entered even their marriage bed. Caesar Borgia, rejected in Naples, went to France for a bride ( October 1498); Alexander entered into an alliance with LouisXii, the declared enemy of Naples; the young Duke of Bisceglie was increasingly ill at ease in a Rome filling up with French agents; suddenly he fled to Naples . Lucrezia was brokenhearted. To appease her and heal the breach, Alexander appointed her regent of Spoleto ( August, 1499); Alfonso joined her there; Alexander visited them at Nepi, reassured the youth, and brought them back to Rome. There Lucrezia was delivered of a son, who was named Rodrigo after her father.
But again their happiness was brief. Whether because Alfonso was uncontrollably high strung, or because Caesar Borgia symbolized the French alliance, Alfonso took a passionate dislike to him, which Borgia disdainfully returned, On the night of July 15, 1500, some bravos attacked Alfonso as he was leaving St. Peter’s. He received several wounds, but managed to reach the house of the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico. Lucrezia, summoned to him, fainted on seeing his condition; she soon recovered, and, with his sister Sancia, tended him anxiously. Alexander sent a guard of sixteen men to protect him from further injury. Alfonso slowly convalesced. One day he saw Caesar walking in a nearby garden. Convinced this was the man who had hired his assassins, Alfonso seized bow and arrow, aimed at Caesar, and shot to kill. The weapon narrowly missed its mark. Ceasar was not a man to give an enemy a second chance; he called his guards and sent them up to Alfonso’s room, apparently with orders to slay him; they pressed a pillow upom his face until he died, perhaps under the eyes of his sister and his wife. Alexander accepted Caesar’s account of the matter, gave Alfonso a quiet burial, and did what he could to console the inconsolable Lucrezia.
She retired to Nepi, and there signed her letters ‘la infelicissima princopessa’, “ the most miserable princess,” and ordered Masses for the repose of Alfonso’s soul. Strange to relate, Caesar visited her at Nepi ( October 1 1499 ) only two and a half months after Alfonso’s death, and stayed overnight as her guest. Lucrezia was malleable and patient; she seems to have looked upon the killing of her husband as the natural reaction of her brother to an attempt upon his life. She does not appear to have believed that Caeser had hired the unsuccessful assassins of Alfonso, though this seems to most probable explaination of another Renaissance mystery. During the remainder of her life she gave many proofs that her love for her brother had survived all trials. Perhaps because he too, like her father, loved her with Spanish intensity, the wits of Rome, or rather of hostile Naples, continued to accuse her of incest; one synoptic scribe called her “ The Pope’s daughter, wife, and daughter-in-law.” This, too, she bore with quiet resignation. All students of the epoch are now agreed that these charges were cruel calumnies, but such libels formed her fame for centuries.
That Caesar killed Alfonso with a view to remating her to better political result is improbable. After a period of mourning she was offered to an Orsini, then to Colonna—matches hardly as advantageous as that with the son of the heir to the Neopolitan throne. Not till November, 1500, do we hear of Alexander proposing her to Duke Ercole of Ferrara for Ercole’s son Alfonso; and not till September, 1501, was she betrothed to him. Presumably Alexander hoped that a Ferrara ruled by a son-in-law, and a Mantua long since bound to Ferrara by marriage, would in effect be papal states; and Caesar seconded the plan as offering greater security for his conquests, and an elegant background for an attack upon Bologna. Ercole and Alfonso hesitated, for reasons already retailed. Alfonso had been offered the hand of the countess of Angoulême, but Alexander topped his offer with the pledge of an immense dowry, and practical remission of the annual tribute that Ferrara had been paying the papacy. Even so, it is hardly credible that one of the oldest and most prosperous ruling families in Europe would have received Lucrezia as wife to the future duke had it believed the lurid stories bandied about by the intellectual underworld of Rome. As neither Ercole nor Alfonso had yet seen Lucrezia, they followed customary procedure in such diplomatic matings, and asked the Farrarese ambassador in Rome to send them a report on her person, her morals, and her accompishments. He replied as follows:
Illustrious Master: Today after supper Don Gerardo Saraceni and I betook ourselves to the illustrious Madonna Lucrezia to pay our respects in the name of Your Excellency and His Majesty Don Alfonso. We had a long conversation regarding various matters. She is a most intelligent and lovely, and also an exceedingly gracious, lady. Your Excellency and the Illustrious Don Alfonso -- so we were led to conclude—will be highly pleased with her. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest, lovable, and decorous. Moreover, she is a devout and God-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion. She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking. In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect anything “ sinister “ of her; but on the contrary we look for only the best… Rome, December 23, 1501 ….. Your Excellency’s servant,
Joannes Lucas.
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The mystery continues --- was she sinister? (only her hairdresser knows for sure).
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Durants' SoC
The Renaissance
Volume V Pages 432-433
The Excellent and Illustrious Estensi were convinced, and sent a magnificent body of knights to escort the bride from Rome to Ferrara. Caesar Borgia equipped two hundred cavaliers to accompany her, and supplied musicians and buffoons to amuse the arduous travel hours. Alexander, proud and happy, provided her with a retinue of 180 persons, including five bishops. Vehicles, especially built for the trip, and 150 mules, carried her trousseau; and this included a dress valued at 15,000 ducats, a hat worth 10,000, and 200 bodices costing a hundred ducats each. On January 6, 1502, having privately taken leave of her mother Vanozza, Lucrezzia began her bridal tour across Italy to join her fiancé. Alexander, after bidding her good-bye, went from point to point on the line of procession to catch another glimpse of her as she rode on her little Spanish horse all caparisoned in harness of leather and gold; he watched until she and her retinue of a thousand men and women were out of sight. He suspected that he would never see her again.
Rome had probably never witnessed such an exit before, nor Ferrara such an entry. After 27 days of travel, Lucrezia was met outside the city by Duke Ercole and Don Alfonso with a superb cavalcade of nobles, professors, seventy-five mounted archers, eighty trumpeters and fifers, and fourteen floats carrying highborn ladies sumptuously dressed. When the procession reached the cathedral two ropewalkers descended from its towers and addressed compliments to Lucrezia.
As the ducal palace was reached all prisoners were given their liberty The people rejoiced in the beauty and smiles of their future duchess; and Alfonso was happy to have so splendid and charming a bride.
The collapse of the Borgia power.
The final years of Alexander were apparently happy and prosperous. His daughter was married into a ducal family; and was respected by all Ferrara; his son had brilliantly accomplished his assignments as general and administrator, and the Papal States were flourishing under excellent government. The Venetian ambassador describes the Pope, in those last years, as cheerful and active, apparently quite easy of conscience; “ nothing worries him. “ He was seventy years old on January 1, 1501, but, reported the ambassador, “he seems to grow younger every day.”
On the afternoon of August 5, 1503, Alexander, Caesar, and some others dined in the open air at the villa of Cardinal Adriano da Corneto not far from the Vatican. All remained in the gardens until midnight, for the heat in doors was exhausting. On the eleventh the Cardinal was attacked by a severe fever which lasted three days and then subsided. On the twelfth both the Pope and his son were bedded with fever and vomiting. Rome, as usual , talked of poison; Caesar, said the gossip, had ordered the poisoning of the Cardinal to secure his fortune; by mistake the poisoned food had been eaten by nearly all the guests. Historians now agree with the physicians who treated the Pope, that the cause was malarial infection, invited by prolonged exposure to the night air of summer Rome. In the same month malarial fever laid low half the household of the Pope, and many of these cases proved fatal; in Rome there were hundreds of deaths from the same cause in the season.
Alexander lingered for thirteen days between life and death, occasionally recovering to the extent of resuming conferences of diplomacy; on August 13 he played cards. The doctors bled him repeatedly, probably once too much, depleting his natural strength. He died on August 18. Soon afterward the body became black and fetid, lending colour to hasty rumors of poison. Carpenters and porters, “joking and blaspheming,” says Burchard, had trouble forcing the swollen corpse into the coffin designed for it. Gossip added a little devil had been seen, at the moment of death, carrying Alexander’s soul to hell.
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200 bodices!?! Extravagance is not a new thing.....the more things change.........
I am always amazed at how much travel folks did before the mid-twentieth century, when it was sooo difficult. 28 days in a coach! Oh my! Even in my young yrs, that seems like a travail.
What interesting characters these are. I must find the new book on the Borgias, hope it's written in an interesting way......jean
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Another view of Lucrezia Borgia from the historians in Rome. There was the case of the 'Roman enfante', a child born and claimed by both Caesar and Pope Alexander according to two Papal bulls. Lucrezia was said to have given birth to this child while waiting for her divorce from her first husband. The child was named Giovanni, the same name as her husband, but was raised as a Borgia. Lucrezia denied the enfant was hers, and since there was no DNA at the time, anthing could be denied.
An excerpt from Wikipedia...........
In June 1497 she retired to the convent of San Sisto to await the outcome of the divorce which was finalised in the December of that year. In February 1498 the bodies of a servant, Pedro Calderon, and a maid, Pantasilea, were found in the Tiber. In March 1498 the Ferrarese ambassador reported that the Lucrezia had given birth. Although this was denied, a child was born in that year before Lucrezia's marriage to Alfonso of Aragon. He was named Giovanni but known to historians as the Roman Infante.
Some believe the child was her brother Cesare's, but that Perotto, due to his fondness for Lucrezia, claimed that it was his. During her pregnancy, she stayed away from Rome at a convent, so no one would know, and Perotto would bring her messages from her father in Rome. According to this theory, Lucrezia was worried that if news of her pregnancy reached the citizens of Rome, they would surely know it was Cesare's child. Cesare, at the time, was a Cardinal of the Church; if he had been sharing an illicit sexual relationship with his sister during her marriage to Giovanni, it would have to be concealed from everyone.
In 1501, two papal bulls were issued concerning the child, Giovanni Borgia. In the first, he was recognized as Cesare's child from an affair before his marriage. The second, contradictory, bull recognized him as the son of Pope Alexander VI. Lucrezia's name is not mentioned in either, and rumours that she was his mother have never been proven. The second bull was kept secret for many years, and Giovanni was assumed to be Cesare's son. This is supported by the fact that in 1502, he became Duke of Camerino, one of Cesare's recent conquests, hence the natural inheritance of the Duke of Romagna's oldest son. However, some time after Alexander's death, Giovanni went to stay with Lucrezia in Ferrara, where he was accepted as her half-brother.
Emily
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Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander) and his bastard son Caesar had an unnatural fascination with his bastard daughter Lucrezia when she was still a child.
The machinazations of these two sexual predators are as sleazy as any pornographic story. They trained Lucrezia well and she was as unfaithful to her husbands as they were to every woman they met. After her last marriage one of her affairs was with the poet Bembo.
A quote from Lord Byron........
On 15 October 1816, the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the Ambrosian Library of Milan. He was delighted by the letters between (Lucrezia) Borgia and Bembo, "The prettiest love letters in the world"
Lucrezia died after giving birth to her seventh or eighth child. With the cover of a husband, she didn't deny these babies, and perhaps the servants were relieved not to be drowned in the river, but as to who their fathers were, only dna could say.
What a bag of sleezeballs these criminal Borgias were, all the while pimped out in the Vatican Palace.
Emily
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" Cesare, at the time, was a Cardinal of the Church; if he had been sharing an illicit sexual relationship with his sister during her marriage to Giovanni, it would have to be concealed from everyone."
So there WAS a limit to what people would accept from their spiritual leaders!
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 433-435
The Romans rejoiced at the passing of the Spanish Pope. Riots broke out, the “catalans” were chased from the city or were killed in their tracks; their houses were plundered by the mob; one hundred dwellings were burned. The armed troops of the Colonna and the Orsini entered the city on August 22 and 23, over the protests of the college of cardinals. Said Guicciardini, the patriotic Florentine:
“The whole city of Rome ran together with incredible alacrity, and crowded about the corpse in St. Peter’s Church, and were not able to satisfy their eyes with the sight of a dead serpent, who, with his immoderate ambition and detestable treachery, with manifold instances of horrid cruelty and monstrous lust, and exposed to sale all things without distinction, both sacred and profane, had intoxicated the whole world.”
Machiavelli agreed with Guicciardini:
“Alexander did nothing but deceive, and thought of nothing else during the whole of his life; nor did any man vow with stronger oaths to observe promises which he afterwards broke. Nevertheless he succeeded in everything, for he was well acquainted with this part of the world.”
These condemnations were based on two assumptions: that the tales told of Alexander in Rome were true, and that Alexander was unjustified in the methods that he used to reclaim the Papal States. Catholic historians while defending Alexander’s right to restore the temporal power of the papacy, generally join in condemning Alexander’s methods and morals. Says the honest Pastor:
“He was universally described as a monster, and every sort of foul crime was attributed to him. Modern critical research has in many points judged him more fairly and rejected some of the worst accusations made against him. But even though we must beware of accepting without examination all the tales told of Alexander by his contemporaries. . . and though the bitter wit of the Romans found its favourite exercises in tearing to pieces without mercy, and attributing to him in popular pasquinades and scholarly epigrams a life of incredible foulness, still so much against him has been clearly proved that we are forced to reject the modern attempts at whitewashing him as an unworthy tampering with truth . . . From the Catholic point of view it is impossible to blame Alexander too severely. “
Protestant historians have sometimes shown a generous lenience to Alexander . William Roscoe, in his classic Life and Pontificate of Leo X ( 1827), was among the first to say a good word for the Borgia Pope:
“Whatever were his crimes, there can be no doubt that they have been highly overcharged. That he was devoted to the aggrandizement of his family, and that he employed the authority of his elevated station to establish a permanent dominion in Italy in the person of his son, cannot be doubted; but when almost all the sovereigns of Europe were attempting to gratify their ambition by means equally criminal, it seems unjust to brand Alexander with any peculiar and extraordinary share of infamy in this respect. While Louis of France and Ferdinand of Spain conspired together to seize upon and divide the Kingdom of Naples, by an example of treachery that can never be sufficiently execrated, Alexander might surely think himself justified in suppressing the turbulent barons, who had for ages rent the dominions of the Church with intestine wars, and in subjecting the petty sovereigns of the Romangna, over whom he had an acknowledged supremacy, and who had in general acquired their dominions by means as unjustifiable as those which he adopted against them. With respect to the accusation so generally believed, of a criminal intercourse between him and his own daughter . . . it might not be difficult to show its improbability. In the second place the vices of Alexander were accompanied, though not compensated, by many great qualities, which in the consideration of his character ought not to be passed over in silence. . . Even by his severest adversaries he is allowed to have been a man of elevated genius, of a wonderful memory, eloquent, vigilant, and dexterous in the management of all his concerns.”
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pasquinades
I don't remember coming across this word before.
It has a most interesting derivation - - - I looked it up in Wikipedia.
There is little doubt that Alexander was a prime rogue.
Brian
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And by being an "elevated genious" was able to accomplish more with his roguery.
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Thank you Brian for calling attention to the word 'pasquinades'. I sometimes speed read right past such gems.
Here is a description from wikipedia on its origins. The lampooning tradition was ancient among Romans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasquino
Emily
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Thanks for the vocabulary lesson. That's one my little favorite things abt the internet, that i can find those little gems immediately.......jean
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The best part of Brian's mention of 'pasquinades' was going to the link to read of its origins. While reading I clicked on a link inside the first one and found the following.
The link was to Domus Aurea (Golden House). Nero built it after Rome burned. I had heard of the Golden House but not the details of its building or the details of its being submerged for centuries under other projects. The story of its erection is not long and well worth the time.
Here is the connection to the 'Renaissance' from the link below.
Renaissance
When a young Roman inadvertently fell through a cleft in the Aventine hillside at the end of the 15th century, he found himself in a strange cave or grotta filled with painted figures. Soon the young artists of Rome were having themselves let down on boards knotted to ropes to see for themselves. The fourth style frescoes that were uncovered then have faded to pale gray stains on the plaster now, but the effect of these freshly-rediscovered grottesche decorations was electrifying in the early Renaissance, which was just arriving in Rome. When Pinturicchio, Raphael and Michelangelo crawled underground and were let down shafts to study them, carving their names on the walls to let the world know they had been there, the paintings were a revelation of the true world of antiquity.
Beside the graffiti signatures of later tourists, like Casanova and the Marquis de Sade scratched into a fresco inches apart (British Archaeology June 1999), are the autographs of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Martin van Heemskerck, and Filippino Lippi.
It was even claimed that various classical artworks found at this time - such as the Laocoön and his Sons and Venus Kallipygos - were found within or near the Domus's remains, though this is now accepted as unlikely (high quality artworks would have been removed - to the Temple of Peace, for example - before the Domus was covered over with earth).
The frescoes' effect on Renaissance artists was instant and profound (it can be seen most obviously in Raphael's decoration for the loggias in the Vatican), and the white walls, delicate swags, and bands of frieze — framed reserves containing figures or landscapes — have returned at intervals ever since, notably in late 18th century Neoclassicism, making Famulus one of the most influential painters in the history of art.
I remember from reading Pliny's Natural History and the artists known as Famulus and Amulius. We called them 'Fabulus' and 'Amorulius' but that is what teenagers do when studying Roman history. It has been over sixty years and I never knew the connection to Pinturicchio, Raphael, and Michelangelo cenutries later.
The Domus Aurea is being excavated and part of it can be viewed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Aurea
Emily
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Love the graffitti statement.....the more things change......... Jean
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The story of "pasquinades" is wonderful! People will find away to make themselves heard, even in the most oppressive regime.
Look what is happening in Egypt now. I hope the protesters have acheived what they think they have, and not just gotten a new military dictator.
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And the "Domus" remains. What a pity they have faded, even if the highest quality statues were preserved, I guess they couldn't preserve the frescos.
What a treasure trove this discussion is!
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Durant writes..........
Protestant historians have sometimes shown a generous lenience to Alexander . William Roscoe, in his classic Life and Pontificate of Leo X ( 1827), was among the first to say a good word for the Borgia Pope:
“Whatever were his crimes, there can be no doubt that they have been highly overcharged. That he was devoted to the aggrandizement of his family, and that he employed the authority of his elevated station to establish a permanent dominion in Italy in the person of his son, cannot be doubted; but when almost all the sovereigns of Europe were attempting to gratify their ambition by means equally criminal, it seems unjust to brand Alexander with any peculiar and extraordinary share of infamy in this respect.
I will make this short Roscoe. You have no ethics, morals, or judgement.
To say that because your neighbor went out on a killing spree, that should entitle you to do the same without condemnation shows you to be as immoral and ethnically challenged as Pope Borgia.
There would be no civilization if the likes of Roscoe and Borgia and their ideas became the law of the land.
A pox on both their houses.
Emily
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Durants' SoC.
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 435-437
Bishop Creighton summarized Alexander’s character and achievements in general agreement with Roscoe’s judgment, and far more mercifully than Pastor. A later judgment is more favorable still-- by Protestant scholar Richard Garnett in The Cambridge Modern History :
“Alexander’s character has undoubtedly gained by the scrutiny of modern historians. It was but natural that one accused by so many critics, and unquestionably the cause of many scandals, should alternately appear as a tyrant and a voluptuary. Neither description suits him. The groundwork of his character was extreme exuberance of nature. The Venetian ambassador calls him a carnal man, not implying anything morally derogatory, but meaning a man of sanguine temperament, unable to control his passions and emotions. This perplexed the cool unimpassioned Italians of the diplomatic type then prevalent among rulers and statesmen, and their apprehensions have unduly prejudiced Alexander, who in truth was not less but more human than most princes of his time. This excessive “carnality” wrought for good and ill. Unrestrained by moral scruples, or in any spiritual conception of religion, he was betrayed by it into gross sensuality of one kind, though in other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principal of justice, though even here he only performed a necessary work which could not, as one of his agents said, have been accomplished by “holy” water. On the other hand, his geniality and joyousness preserved him from tyranny in the ordinary sense of the term. . . . As a ruler, careful of the material weal of his people, he ranks among the best of his age; as a practical statesman he was the equal of any contemporary. But his insight was impaired by his lack of political morality; he had nothing of the higher wisdom which comprehends the characteristics and foresees the drift of an epoch, and he did not know what a principle was.”
Those of us who share Alexander's sensitivity to the charms and graces of woman, cannot find it in their hearts to throw stones at him for his amours. His prepapal deviations were no more scandalous than those of Aeneas Sylvius, who fares so well with the historians, or of Julius II, whom time has graciously forgiven. It is not recorded that these two Popes took such care of their mistresses and their children as Alexander did of his. Indeed there was something familial and domestic about Alexander that would have made him a relatively respectable man if the laws of the Church, as well as the customs of Renaissance Italy and protestant Germany and England, had allowed the marriage of clergy; his sin was not against nature but against the rule of celibacy soon to be rejected by half of Christendom. We cannot say that his relation with Guilia Farnese was carnal; so far as we know, neither Vanozza, nor Lucrezia, nor Guilia’s husband expressed any objection to it; perhaps it was the simple delight of a normal man in the lure and vivacity of a beautiful woman.
Our judgment of Alexander’s politics must distinguish between his ends and his means. his purposes were entirely legitimate-- to recover the “Patrimony of Peter” ( essentially the ancient Latium) from disorderly feudal barons, and to regain from usurping despots the traditional States of the Church. The methods used by Alexander and Caesar in realizing these aims were those used by all other states then and now-- war, diplomacy, deceit, treachery, violation of treaties, and desertion of allies. Alexander’s abandonment of the Holy League, his purchase of French soldiers and support at the price of surrendering Milan to France, were major crimes against Italy. And those secular means that states use, and consider indispensable, in the lawless jungle of international strife, offend us when employed by a pope pledged to the principles of Christ. Whatever danger the Church ran of becoming subject to some domineering government-- as to France at Avignon--- if she lost her own territories, it would have been better for her to sacrifice all temporal power, and be as poor again as the Galilean fishermen, than to adopt the ways of the world to achieve her political ends. By adopting them, and financing them, she gained a state and lost a third of Christendom.
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Time for a thanks here - - - thank you Trevor for your constancy in posting
the pages of our chosen book. May you live long enough to finish the task !
And while I am waxing poetic, may I be granted the plaudits given to Alexander
when my time arrives to exit this world - - -
The groundwork of his character was extreme exuberance of nature.
his sin was not against nature but against the rule of celibacy
it was the simple delight of a normal man in the lure and vivacity of a beautiful woman.
Brian
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I am surprised that historians, as opposed to mere commentators, should spend so much time on the sexual activities between seemingly consenting adults. Such behavior has little to do with "Urbi et Orbi", which in my opinion is the real subject of history.
In any study of the Borgias' activities, sex seems so often to be the overriding concern. I would rather hear about......" Alexander's insight was impaired by his lack of political morality; he had nothing of the higher wisdom which comprehends the characteristics and foresees the drift of an epoch, and he did not know what a principle was ."
That above all else identifies the essence of the man, and also his contemporaries.
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Thank you Brian, and others who have made similar remarks. It is pleasing to hear that my efforts are appreciated....... Trevor
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Ditto to Trevor's good work for us!!!
And ditto about the sexual exploits of popes. Do the Durant's have much more of this for us? It's beginning to bore me. ......... Jean
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TREVOR: let us know you are all right. Do you live anywhere near christchurch, where the earthquake was?
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Thanks for asking. All the old seniornet group who used to post in those and these pages, live in the North Island, far from Christchurch, which is a South Island city. So we are all OK.
The first quake, last September happened at 4am, and though it caused massive damage, miraculously no one was killed. This last quake happened at 1pm, when the city was crowded, and the loss of life is going to be in the hundreds.
Many countries, including the US, are sending special rescue teams and so far many trapped under the rubble have been rescued alive. But time is running short, and aftershocks are interrupting rescue efforts. +++ Trevor
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Thank you Trevor for the report on our friends in New Zealand. We are thankful that you and others who post on these forums are not in the affected zone.
Our thoughts are with those who live on the South Island and the hope that many can be rescued.
I also join the others to thank you for serving as our 'host' on this forum and 'keyboarder in chief'. In looking at the logs, you were there from the very beginning in Nov. 2001 for this discussion, and if we make it to November of this year it will mark ten years of discussion on one subject 'civilization'.
Are we there yet?
I don't think so, as countries are still trying to depose tyrants, dictators, despots, and thieves whose main purpose in life seems to be to live the 'high life' and steal from the public purse to benefit them and theirs, similiar to the Borgias.
I have never understood the near godlike worship of celebrity and the power brokers whether elected or not who seize power, and the rabble who allow them to rule, sometimes for years. The rabble only seem to 'rise up' when their circumstances become desperate.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 437-439
Caesar Borgia, slowly recovering from the same illness that had killed the Pope, found himself enmeshed in a dozen unanticipated perils. Who could have foreseen that he and his father would be incapacitated at the same time? While the doctors bled him the colonna and the Orsini quickly recovered the castles that he had taken from them; the deposed lords of the Romagna, with the encouragement of Venice, began to reclaim their principalities; and the Roman mob, already out of hand, might at any moment, now that Alexander was dead, plunder the Vatican and seize the funds upon which Caesar depended for the payment of his troops. He sent some armed men to the Vatican; they compelled Cardinal Casanuova, at swords’ points, to give up the treasury; so Caesar repeated Caesar after fifteen centuries. They brought back to him 100,000 ducats in gold, and 300,000 ducats’ worth of plate and jewellery. At the same time he sent galleys and troops to prevent his strongest enemy, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, from reaching Rome. He felt that unless he could persuade the conclave to elect a pope favourable to him, he was lost.
The cardinals insisted that the troops of Caesar, the Orsini, and the Colonna should leave Rome before an unintimidated election could be held. All three groups yielded. Caesar retired with his men to Civita Castellana, while Cardinal Giuliano entered Rome and led, in the conclave, the forces hostile to all Borgias. On September the 22, 1503, the rival factions in the college chose Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini as a compromise pope. He took the name Pius III, in honor of his uncle Aeneas Sylvius. He was a man of integrity and learning, though he was also the father of a large family. He was sixty-four, and suffered from an abscess in his leg. He was friendly to Caesar, and allowed him to return to Rome. But on October 18th Pius III died.
Giuliano della Rovere was chosen pope (Oct 31 1503 ), and took the name Julius II, as if to say, he too would be a Caesar, and better Alexander. Julius bade Caesar go to Imola and recruit a new army for the protection of the Papal States. Caesar agreed, and proceeded to Ostia with a view to sailing to Pisa. At Ostia a message from the Pope commanded him to surrender his control of the Romagna fortresses. In a crucial error suggesting that sickness had impaired his judgment, Caesar refused. Julius ordered him to return to Rome; Caesar obeyed, and was subjected to house arrest. There Guidobaldo, the newly appointed commander of the papal armies, came to see the fallen Borgia. Caesar humbled himself before the man whom he had deposed and despoiled, gave him the watchwords of the fortresses, returned to him some precious books and tapestries left from the Urbino pillage, and begged his intercession with Julius. Julius refused to release him until Caesar persuaded the Romagna castles to yield to the Pope.
Lucrezia implored her husband to help her brother; Alfonso did nothing. She appealed to Isabella d’Este; Isabella did nothing; probably she and Alfonso new that Julius was immovable. Caesar finally gave the word of surrender to his loyal supporters in the Romagna; the Pope freed him, and he fled to Naples.( April 19 1504 ). There he was welcomed by Gonzalo de Córdoba, who gave him safe conduct. His courage returning sooner than his good sense, he organized a small force, and was preparing to sail with it to Piombino, where he was arrested by Gonzalo on orders from Ferdinand of Spain; In August Caesar was transported to Spain, and fretted in prison there for two years.
Lucrezia again sought to have him freed, but in vain. His deserted wife pled for him with her brother Jean d’Albret, King of Navarre; a plan of escape was devised; and in November, 1506, Caesar was again a free man. He soon found a chance to repay d’Albret. The Count of Lerin, a vassal of the King, rebelled. Caesar led part of Jean’s army against the Count’s fortress at Viana; the Count made a sortie, which Caesar repulsed; Caesar pursued the defeated too recklessly; the Count, reinforced, turned upon him, Caesar’s few troops fled; Caesar with only one companion, stood his ground’ and fought till he was cut down and killed ( March 12, 1507). He was thirty-one years old.
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Caesar with only one companion, stood his ground’ and fought till he was cut down and killed ( March 12, 1507).
What on earth was the man thinking? That sounds like suicide, plain and simple.
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It sounds like he's acting more and more like a cornered animal.
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Durants' SoC
Volume V
The Renaissance
Pages 439-440
It was an honourable end to a questionable life. There are many things in Caesar Borgia that we cannot stomach: his insolent pride, his neglect of his faithful wife, his treatment of women as mere instruments of passing pleasure, his occasional cruelty to his enemies. But even he had virtues. He must have had extraordinary ability to rise so rapidly, to learn so readily the arts of leadership, negotiation, and war. Given the difficult task of restoring, with only a small force at his command, the papal power of the Papal States, he accomplished it with surprising rapidity of movement, skill of strategy, and economy of means. Empowered to govern as well as conquer, he gave the Romagna the fairest rule and most prosperous peace that it had enjoyed in centuries. But his victories, his methods, his power, his dark secrecy, his swift incalculable attacks, made him the terror instead of the liberator of Italy. The faults of his character ruined the accomplishments of his mind. It was his basic tragedy that he had never learned to love.
Except again Lucrezia. What a contrast she offered to her fallen brother in the modesty and prosperity of her final years! She who in Rome had been the subject and victim of every scandalmonger was loved by the people of Ferrara as a model of feminine virtue. She tried there to forget all the horrors and tribulations of her past; she recaptured, with due restraint, the joyousness of her youth, and added to it a generous interest in the needs of others. Ariosto, Tebaldeo, Bembo, Tito and Ercole Strozzi praised her profitably in their verse; they called her ‘pulcherrima virgo’, “most beautiful maiden,” and no one blinked an eye. Perhaps Bembo tried to play Abelard to her Hèloïse, and Lucrezia now became something of a linguist, speaking Spanish, Italian, French,, and reading a “ little Latin and Greek.” We are told she wrote poetry in all these tongues. Aldus Manutius dedicated to her his edition of the Strozzi poems, and implied, in the preface, that she had offered to underwrite his great printing enterprise.
Amid all these learned concerns she found time to bear to her third husband four sons and a daughter. Alfonso was well pleased with her in his uneffusive way. In 1506, having occasion to leave Ferrara, he appointed her regent; and she fulfilled her duties with such good judgment that the Ferrarese were inclined to pardon Alexander for having once left her in charge of the Vatican.
In the last years of her brief life she devoted herself to the education of her children, and to works of charity and mercy; she became a pious Franciscan tertiary. On June 14, 1519, she was delivered of her seventh child, but it was stillborn. She never rose from that bed of pain. On June 24, aged thirty-nine, Lucrezia Borgia, more sinned against then sinning, passed away.
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There was a televised interview today with the actor Jeremy Irons who is portraying Rodrigo Borgia in the new Showtime series 'The Borgias'. He was asked about the fact that he looked nothing like the Borgia pope. He is tall and thin, and Borgia is fat with a receeding chin with a porcine profile.
Jeremy Irons did say that the show had a representative from the Vatican as a consultant. He did say that the Borgias were the first criminal mafia family and the 'Godfather' movies were based on the Borgias. He also stated that Rodrigo Borgia had twelve children by many different women and he was 'never' married.
So outlawing 'celibacy' and allowing the leaders in the Catholic church to marry would not have had any affect on Borgia. He had impregnated and abandoned scores of women and children before he ever got to Rome and the Vatican. Durant tells us that fact early on.
Bring on Julius...........
Emily
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This quote from Durant on Lucrezia Borgia........
Ariosto, Tebaldeo, Bembo, Tito and Ercole Strozzi praised her profitably in their verse; they called her ‘pulcherrima virgo’, “most beautiful maiden,” and no one blinked an eye.
So Lucrezia is paying five 'publicists' to promote her in the public realm. More propaganda and lies, but I suppose it beats working for a living. 'Maiden' my eye.
Where did she get the money for this 'self promotion'? Stolen from the Vatican coffers, her husband? Helping others....claptrap......this was a self promotion racket.
Another quote from Durant........
Amid all these learned concerns she found time to bear to her third husband four sons and a daughter........On June 14, 1519 she was delivered of her seventh child.
Lets see, four sons and a daughter equals five. Where did these other two children come from? Durant must have overlooked this little addition problem.
According to what we have read, her first husband never consumated the marriage and it was annuled. Her second husband was murdered by her brother and his henchmen over Caesar's jealously of Lucrezia's teenage husband.
Where were Lucrezia's other children.........One note that I posted earlier about the two Papal bulls that Rodrigo Borgia wrote claiming one child to be Caesars and another Papal bull claiming he was the father of one child. After the Pope's death, one child did go to live with Lucrezia and her third husband, that was accepted as her half brother, but Rome claimed she had given birth to the child.
Maiden.......no way.
Emily
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The Durant's Soc.
Volume V The Renaissance.
Julius II
Pages 441-442
If we place before us Raphael’s searching and profound portrait of Julius II, we shall see at once that Giuliano della Rovere was one of the strongest personalities that ever reached the papal chair.A massive head bent with exhaustion and tardy humility, a wide high brow, a large pugnacious nose, grave, deep-set, penetrating eyes, lips tight with resolution, hands heavy with rings of authority, face somber with the disillusionments of power: this is the man who for a decade kept Italy in war and turmoil, freed it from foreign armies, tore down the old St. Peter’s, brought Bramante and a hundred other artists to Rome, discovered, developed, and directed Michelangelo and Raphael, and through them gave to the world a new St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the “stanze” of the Vatican. ‘Voilà un homme!’—here is a man.
His violent temper presumably characterized him from his first breath. Born near Savonna ( 1443 ) a nephew of Sixtus IV, he reached the cardinalate at twenty-seven, and fumed and fretted in it for thirty-three years before being promoted to what had long seemed to him his manifest due. He paid no more regard to his vow of celibacy than most of his colleagues; his master of ceremonies at the Vatican later reported that Pope Julius would not allow his foot to be kissed because it was disfigured “ex morbo gallico – with the French disease". He had three illegitimate daughters, but he was too busy fighting Alexander to find time for the unconcealed parental fondness that in Alexander so offended the cherished hypocrisies of mankind. He disliked Alexander as a Spanish intruder, denied his fitness for the papacy, called him a swindler and a usurper, and did all he could to unseat him, even to inviting France to invade Italy.
He seemed made as a foil and contrast to Alexander. The Borgia pope was jovial, sanguine, good-natured (if we except an occasional poisoning or two ); Julius was stern, Jovian, passionate, impatient, readily moved to anger, passing from one fight to another, never really happy except at war. Alexander waged war by proxy, Julius in person; the sexagenarian Pope became a soldier, more at ease in military garb than in pontifical robes, loving camps and besieging towns, having guns pointed and assaults delivered under his commanding eyes. Alexander could play, but Julius moved from one enterprise to another, never resting. Alexander could be a diplomat; Julius found it extremely difficult, for he liked to tell people what he thought if them; often his language overstepped all bounds in its rudeness and violence, and this fault increased perceptibly as he grew older. His courage, like his language, knew no limits; stricken with illness time and again in his campaigns, he would confound his enemies by recovering and leaping upon them once more.
Like Alexander, he had had to buy a few cardinals to ease his way to the papacy, but he denounced the practice in a bull of 1505. If in this manner he did not reform with inconvenient precipitation, he rejected nepotism almost completely, and rarely appointed relatives to office. In selling church benefices and promotions, however, he followed Alexander’s example, and his grants of indulgences shared with the building of St. Peter’s in angering Germany. He managed his revenues well, financed war and art simultaneously, and left Leo a surplus in the treasury. In Rome he restored social order, which had declined in Alexander’s later years, and he governed the States of the Church with wise appointments and policies. He allowed the Orsini and the Colonna to reoccupy their castles, and sought to tie these powerful families to loyalty by marriages with his relatives.
When he came to power he found the states of the Church in turmoil, and half the work of Alexander and Caesar Borgia undone .
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Here is Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius. In the link on the history of what happened to the portrait after Julius died the following.......
History
The painting was "purloined" from the church by Cardinal Sfondrati, the Pope's nephew. He put his collection on the market a few years later, and it was nearly all sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese. This painting was in the Borghese Collection in 1693, as a small inventory mark at bottom left shows. It presumably left the collection in the 1790s, and was in the Angerstein Collection by 1823, and was acquired by the National Gallery in 1824.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Pope_Julius_II_(Raphael)
The endless looting of the Vatican coffers after the death of each pope in this saga by relatives and friends seems unending. Everything and anything goes up for sale from church property to artwork paid for by the faithful.
Emily
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Durant writes.........."hands heavy with rings of authority'.
I had no clue as to a rings 'authority', so I looked it up. One ring the pope wears is called 'the ring of the fisherman' or piscatory ring. This ring's crest was once used as a stamp in wax as a 'seal' of the pope. He put his 'ring stamp' on official papers.
Eventually they had to cut the ring into pieces and destroy the 'seal' after the death of the pope, because cardinals and vatican personel had written up documents and put the pope's 'seal' on them after his death. That was how the claim for 'vatican land holdings' and the so called 'papal states' came into being. Illegal and fraudulent from the start.
But Julius is now off to recapture all those 'fraudulent' holdings. The church knew of this fraud, that is why they started destroying the 'ring of the fisherman' used by each pope and as a seal on official papers. They knew, but their greed did not stop them from continuing the fraud.
Here is a link to Pope Benedict's 'ring of the fisherman'. If you don't want to read the goldsmiths story of its making just scroll down to the last two pictures to see what the ring looks like up close.
http://www.dieter-philippi.de/en/ecclesiastical-fineries/ring-of-the-fisherman-piscatory-ring
Emily
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The link to Raphael's portrait didn't work mfor me. try this one:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Italian%2520Images/images/Firenze/Medici/Raphael-Julius-II-BR2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Church_Stuff/Popes.htm&h=500&w=413&sz=58&tbnid=pEe7quA6h755aM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Draphael%2Bjulius%2Bii&zoom=1&q=raphael+julius+ii&hl=en&usg=__gqKXOOEEec9bVxTOgaX3mELfdGQ=&sa=X&ei=tiqATdL_HoGysAOGl8Ue&sqi=2&ved=0CCEQ9QEwAQ (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Italian%2520Images/images/Firenze/Medici/Raphael-Julius-II-BR2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Church_Stuff/Popes.htm&h=500&w=413&sz=58&tbnid=pEe7quA6h755aM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Draphael%2Bjulius%2Bii&zoom=1&q=raphael+julius+ii&hl=en&usg=__gqKXOOEEec9bVxTOgaX3mELfdGQ=&sa=X&ei=tiqATdL_HoGysAOGl8Ue&sqi=2&ved=0CCEQ9QEwAQ)
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Where is everyone?
Durant's writing on Pope Julius is so full of words and phrases that set off blips on my radar, wish I had time to comment on all of them.
Here are two..........
Alexander waged war by proxy, Julius in person.
Julius had courage and Alexander (Borgia) did not.
I admire courage and loathe cowardice, especially in those who suppose themselves to be leaders.
Alexander could play, but Julius moved from one enterprise to another, never resting.
Alexander was a 'playa', Julius a doer.
Julius left a legacy with the Vatican, and Alexander left nothing.
I like a 'doer' and detest a 'playa'. So Julius gets my vote for the better of the two, and that isn't saying much.
Emily
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I guess Popes aren't a great interest to me just now. I've been here reading along, just haven't had any comments. Pope Julius, sometimes called the Warrior Pope, provided work for many artists and in so doing gave the world some of the most exquisite art the world has ever seen (IMO).
HBO is soon to begin a series called The Borgias. Colm Feore is scheduled to play the part of Julius when he was a Cardinal. Feore played Lord Marshall in The Chronicles of Riddick, one of my favorite SciFi movies.
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FRY: we won't be on the popes forever.
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Emily --- I, too, am reading along, and have not found anything
in Trevor's recent posts from the S. of C. that has urged me to
put my fingers to the keyboard.
As JoanK says - - - the Durants will move to other subjects.
Brian
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Thanks Joan for the link of Raphael's portrait of Julius. He seems to have five rings on his fingers. Don't know what the others represent (if anything) other than the 'fishermans ring'. Does anyone know?
Emily
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Emily - - - they represent the love of beautiful (and expensive) things -
The pontiff sits before us in an armchair on which is carved his own personal emblem, the acorn. Julius’s family name was della Rovere which is the Italian word for oak. Raphael has not positioned the pope “face-on” as was the norm for portraits of enthroned rulers of that time. Raphael has captured in this painting an ageing man with a lined face and its sagging flesh. Raphael however has given it colour and radiance. The fingers of his hands bear emerald and ruby rings.
My quote comes from a description of Raphael's protrait.
Brian
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Thanks everyone for your posts.
Everyone seems to be of the same opinion that the story of the Popes has become boring and mundane. To me this character study of the popes is fascinating as it relates to 'power' and how to get it and use it.
There are so many parallels to today's headlines that a comparison is easy to make. Today's headline says that the King of Saudi Arabia has sent troops into Bahrain to put down the protesters in that country. He is supporting the Sunni King of Bahrain, a minority ruling over a majority with no say in how they are governed.
The Saudi king is waging war by proxy like the Borgia pope against people who have no power or weapons. They are killing their own people to retain power as corrupt absolute dictators.
Since the religion of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all began in the Arabian peninsula and that hotbed of corruption that is the middle east, I see the popes, rabbis, mullahs, dictators, and despots as one, only separated by time.
The desire for power over others and unbridled greed unites them all.
Emily
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I'm also am reading along....... Jean
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I detect some growing boredom with the political and military aspects of this Pope. There are some five more pages in this vain, so I propose moving on to a discussion of Julius II as a patron of the Arts. I feel the military activities of Popes as marking a low point in the Story of Civilization, and so can usefully be ignored.
I would have liked the Durants to have had more interest in science and mathematics, but I know those are tastes that not all are interested in. If others agree, I will move on to telling the story of Julius II, as lover of the arts and architecture. ++ Trevor.
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Trevor - - - I'm with you all the way in that decision. Let's go !
Brian
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I'll second that motion.
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Me too.......
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I'll third the motion.
Trevor, I'm with you. This was a period of great expansion in scientific ideas. I hope Durant will tell us some of that.
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The Durants' SoC.
Vol. V The Renaissance
Julius II Pages 447-449
Roman Architecture 1492-1513
The most lasting part of his work was his patronage of art. Under him the Renaissance moved its capital from Florence to Rome. And there reached its zenith in art, as under Leo X it would reach its peak in literature and scholarship. Julius did not care much for literature; it was too quiet and feminine for his temperament; but the monumental in art accorded well with nature and life.So he subordinated all other arts to architecture, and left a new St. Peter’s as an index of his spirit and a symbol of the Church whose secular power he had saved. That he should have financed Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a hundred more, as well as a dozen wars, and left 700,000 florins in the papal treasury, is one of the wonders of history, and one of the causes of the Reformation.
No other man ever brought so many artists to Rome. It was he, for example, who invited Guillaume de Marcillat from France to set up the fine stained-glass windows of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was characteristic of his vast conceptions that he should try to reconcile Christianity and paganism in art as Nicholas V had done in letters; for what are the stanze of Raphael but a pre-established harmony of classic mythology and philosophy, Hebrew theology and poetry, Christian sentiment and faith? And what could better represent the union of pagan and Christian art and feeling than the portico and dome, the interior columns, statuary, paintings, and tombs of St. Peter’s? Prelates and nobles, bankers and merchants, now crowding into an enriched Rome, followed the Pope’s lead, and built palaces with almost imperial splendor in opulent rivalry. Broad avenues cut through or from the chaos of the medieval city; hundreds of new streets were opened; one of them still bears the great Pope’s name. Ancient Rome rose out of its ruins, and became again the home of a Caesar.
St. Peter’s aside, it was, in Rome, an age of palaces rather than churches. Exteriors were uniform and plain: a vast rectangular facadeof brick or stone or stucco, a portal of stone usually carved in some decorative design; on each floor rows of windows, topped with triangular or elliptical pediments; and almost always a crowning cornice whose elegant configuration was a special test and care of the architect. Behind this unpretentious front the millionaires concealed a luxury of ornament and display seldom revealed to the jealous popular eye: a central well, usually surrounded or divided by a broad staircase of marble; on the ground floor, simple rooms for transacting business or storing goods; one the first (Americans’ second) floor, the piano nobile, the spacious halls for reception, and entertainment, and galleries of art, with pavements of marble or sturdy colored tile; the furniture, carpets, and textiles of exquisite material and form; the walls strengthened with marble pilasters, the ceilings coffered in circles, triangles, diamonds, or squares; and on walls and ceilings paintings by famous artists, usually of pagan themes—for fashion now decreed the Christian gentleman, even of the cloth, should live amid scenes from classical mythology; and on the upper floors the private chambers for lords and ladies, for liveried lackeys, for children and nurses, tutors and governesses and maids. Many men were rich enough to have, beside their palaces, rural villas as refuges from the city’s din or summer heat; and these villas too might conceal sybaritic glories of ornament and comfort, and mural masterpieces by Raphael, Peruzzi, Giuoio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo…..
This palace and villa architecture was in many ways a selfish art, in which the wealth drawn from unseen and countless laborers and distant lands vaunted itself in gaudy decoration for a few; in this respect ancient Greece and medieval Europe had shown a finer spirit, devoting their wealth not to private luxury but too the temples and cathedrals that were the possession, pride, and inspiration of all, the home of the people as well as the house of God.
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"This palace and villa architecture was in many ways a selfish art ...
in this respect ancient Greece and medieval Europe had shown a finer spirit, devoting their wealth not to private luxury but too the temples and cathedrals that were the possession, pride, and inspiration of all, the home of the people as well as the house of God."
An excellant point. Do we have access to that villa art now, I wonder.
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This makes me wonder: when did the idea of public art museums start in Europe, does anyone know?
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JoanK - - - I did not know the answer to your question about the first public art museums in Europe, but this might help - - -
The Capitoline Museums, the oldest public collection of art in the world, began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome.
- - - it comes from - - -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum#History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum#History)
Brian
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The Farnese Palace designed by Antonio da Sangallo, and enlarged by Michelangelo.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Farnese_Palace.html
Emily
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Another link to Palazzo Farnese with up to date history. It is currently the French Embassy (they have a 99 year lease). There are also some photos of artwork in the palace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Farnese
Emily
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More renaissance architecture..........Palazzo Massimi........
Today they call themselves Massimo, and Prince Stefano Massimo says the family descends from Hercules which is why they decorated the ceiling of their entrance hall with the infant Hercules strangling the snakes Hera sent to kill him.
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi76.htm
Emily
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Since we have been reading about the Borghese, here are photos of the villa they built in Rome during the renaissance. Click on the photos for a description.
Villa Borghese
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi187.html
Emily
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The villa Borghese gallery is presented here with some of the sculpture and paintings. Scroll down and click on the work for a description. From Raphael's Deposition description........
Raphael's Deposition was painted for Atalanta Baglioni in memory of her son Grifonetto, who was killed in the fighting for the dominance of Perugia, and housed in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia in 1507.
It remained there for 101 years, until it was removed at night with the complicity of the priest and sent to Pope Paul V, who gave it to his nephew for his collection and it thus became the property of the Borghese family.
After the Treaty of Tolentino the painting was sent to Paris in 1797. When it came back to Rome in 1816, only the central scene was returned to the Borghese collection, while the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, remained in the Vatican Museums (the ornamentation surmounting it by Tiberio Alfani is in the National Gallery of Umbria).
Perhaps this will partially answer Joan's question about 'galleries' and how they began and when. Part of Raphael's work went back to the Borghese and the rest to the Vatican, with the ornamental aspects going to the Umbria gallery.
As we have read all through the history of the church, the popes had a 'confiscation' rule (that they wrote) that allowed them to seize the legal property of others. It was theft, pure and simple.
The pope wrote out a paper put his stamp on and took it (in the name of the church of course) and then gave it to his nephew who put it in his own home.
The Borghese built this villa as more of a show place and entertainment center than for a home. A place to show the collection of artwork and sculpture they had collected through their connections, and a place to party.
http://www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/en/edefault.htm
Emily
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Thanks for the links Emily. Jean
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Wonderful.
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Since Lucrezia Borgia married Alfonso d'Este and we have just finished reading their story, here is the Villa d'Este.
http://www.romeartlover.it/Tivoli3.html
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Since the Medici have appeared throughout the history of the Popes, here is one of their villas purchased from the Ricci during the renaissance.
When some families fell out of favor with the regime of the day, their villas and palaces went on the market, or they sold off the 'embellishments' to others, or had them stolen outright by the pope of the moment.
In reading about the building of one of the palaces it said they had taken the marble for the floors and staircases from the coliseum. Property rights have more protection today, but the saying, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" seems appropriate.
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi188.html
Emily
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Durant writes........
....his master of ceremonies at the Vatican later reported that Pope Julius would not allow his foot to be kissed because it was disfigured "ex morbo gallico....with the French disease."
Here is an explanation of what the so called 'French disease' actually was, syphilis. From Wikipedia....
The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1494 when it broke out among French troops besieging Naples. The French may have caught it via Spanish mercenaries serving King Charles of France in that siege. From this centre, the disease swept across Europe.
As Jared Diamond describes it, "[W]hen syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall from people's faces, and led to death within a few months." The disease then was much more lethal than it is today. Diamond concludes,"y 1546, the disease had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today." The epidemiology of this first syphilis epidemic shows that the disease was either new or a mutated form of an earlier disease.
Researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus' voyages. Many of the crew members who served on this voyage later joined the army of King Charles VIII in his invasion of Italy in 1495 resulting in the spreading of the disease across Europe and as many as 5 million deaths. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions and low immunity of the population of Europe.
Syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. In his Serpentine Malady (Seville, 1539) Ruy Diaz de Isla estimated that over a million people were infected in Europe.
Since this outbreak occured during the Renaissance with the introduction of syphilis to Europe, claimed by some researchers to have been brought there by the Spanish from the Americas, it seemed relevant to the discussion.
Since we have read about the kissing of the Popes ring (that I don't get), I am unfamiliar with the 'foot kissing' fetish. Does anyone know what those things mean to Christianity?
Emily
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Those buildings are so beautiful. Can't imagine living in one. Put as usual i have ambivalence, what was the cost to others for the owners to be able to afford to build them and to pay artists to drcorate them. I'm glad they used some of their money to support artists, and that therefore get to see their work centuries later ....... "Can't have it both ways jean, do you condemn or praise the families/church for their lifestyles?" i want it both ways.... ???........ Jean
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Since we have read about the kissing of the Popes ring (that I don't get), I am unfamiliar with the 'foot kissing' fetish. Does anyone know what those things mean to Christianity?
I think kissing the pope's ring is a sign of respect. I always thought (may have gotten this impression from the movies) that kissing a King's ring came with an acknowledgment that the kisser is to do the King's bidding. Anyhow, it always seems to be member of lower ranks that kiss a higher ranking official's ring.
The foot kissing thing could be similar. There again, I associate foot kissing with grovelling and great thanks for a charity given, rather than simply a respect thing.
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Re kissing of a Pope's feet. My wife, a Polish catholic, tells me that it must be many centuries ago that kissing the feet of a Pope was stopped. She thinks that at Easter time the Pope washes the feet of several priests, and perhaps this leads many to believe that kissing of feet is a current practice.
However, there is still the current practice of kissing the Pope's ring, which contains an ancient relic of Christendom. Sorry I can't be more informative about all this.. ++ Trevor
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Thank you Frybabe and Trevor for answering the question of kissing the ring and feet in Catholicism. I do know there are passages in the new testament on foot washing. I will try to look it up tomorrow.
Emily
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The Durants' SoC
Volume V The Renaissance
Pages 449-451
Of the architects outstanding in Rome in the pontificates of Alexander VI and Julius II were two brothers, and a third was their nephew. Giuliano da Sangallo began as a military engineer in the Florentine army; passed to the service of Ferrante of Naples; and became a friend of Giulliano della Rovere in the early days of the latter’s cardinalate. For Guiliano, the cardinal,Guiliano the architect turned the abbey of Grottaferrata into a castle fortress; probably at Alexander’s behest he designed the great coffered ceiling of Santa Maria Maggiore, and gilded it with the first gold brought from America. He accompanied Cardinal della Rovere into exile, built a palace for him in Savona, went with him to France, and returned to Rome when his patron at last became pope. Julius invited him to submit plans for the new St. Peter’s; when those of Bramante were preferred, the old architect reproached the new Pope, but Julius knew what he wanted. Sangello outlived both Bramante and Julius, and was later appointed ‘administer et coadjutor’ to Raphael in the building of St. Peter’s; but he died two years later. Meanwhile his younger brother Antonio da Sangallo had also come from Florence, as architect and military engineer for Alexander VI, and built the imposing church of Santa Maria di Loreto for Julius; and a nephew, Antonio Picconi da Sangallo had begun (1512) the most magnificent of the Renaissance palaces of Rome-- the Palazzo Farnese.
The greatest name in the architecture of this age was that of Donato Bramante. He was already fifty-six when he came from Milan to Rome (1499), but his study of the Roman ruins fired him with youthful zeal to apply classical forms to Renaissance building. In the court of a Franciscan convent near San Pietro in Montorio he designed a circular Tempietto, or Little Temple, with columns and cupola so classical in form that architects studied and measured it as if it had been a newly discovered masterpiece of ancient art. From that beginning Bramante passed through a succession of chefs-d’oeuvre: the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, the elegant cortile of San Damaso... Julius overwhelmed him with assignments, both as architect and as military engineer. Bramante laid out the Via Giulia, finished the Belvedere, began the Loggie of the Vatican and designed a new St. Peter’s. He was so interested in his work that he cared little for money, and Julius had to command him to accept appointments whose revenue would maintain him; some rivals, however, accused him of embezzling papal funds and using shoddy materials in his buildings. Others described him as a jovial and generous soul, whose home became a favourite resort of Perugino, Signorelli, Pinturicchio, Raphael, and other artists in Rome.
The belvedere was a summer palace built for Innocent VIII, and situated on a hill some hundred yards away from the rest of the Vatican. It took its name from the beautiful view (bel vedere) that extended before it; and it gave its name to various sculptures that were housed in it or its court. Julius had long been a collector of ancient art; his prize possession was an Apollo discovered during the pontificate of Innocent VIII; when he became Pope he placed it in the Cortile of the belvedere. and the Apollo Belvedere became one of the famous statues of the world. Bremante gave the palace a new facade and garden court, and planned to connect it with the Vatican proper by a series of picturesque structures and gardens, but both he and Julius died before the plan could be carried out.
If we attribute the Reformation proximately to the sale of indulgences for the building of St. Peter’s, the most momentous event in the pontificate of Julius was the demolition of the old St.Peter’s and the beginning of the new. According to the received tradition the old church had been built by Pope Syvester I (326 ) over the grave of the Apostle Peter near the Circus of Nero. In that church many emperors, from Charlemagne onward, had been crowned, and many popes. Repeatedly enlarged, it was in the fifteenth century a spacious basilica with nave and double aisles, flanked with smaller churches, chapels, and convents. By the time of Nicholas V it showed the wear of eleven centuries; cracks veined its walls, and men feared that it might at any moment collapse, perhaps upon a congregation. So in 1452 Bernardo Rossellino and Leon Battista Alberti were commissioned to strengthen the edifice with new walls. The work had hardly begun when Nicholas died; and succeeding popes, needing funds for crusades, suspended it. In 1505 after considering and rejecting various other plans, Julius II determined to tear down the old church, and build an entirely new shrine over what was said to be St. Peter’s grave. He invited several architects to submit designs. Bramante won with a proposal to rear a new basilica on the plan of a Greek cross ( with arms of equal length ), and to crown its transept crossing with a vast dome; in the famous phrase ascribed to him, he would raise the dome of the Pantheon upon the basilica of Constantine. In Bramante’s intent the new majestic edifice would cover 28,900 square yards-- 11,600 more than the area covered by St. Peter’s today. Excavation began in April 1506. on April 11 Julius, aged 63 descended a long and trembling rope ladder to a great depth to lay the foundation stone. The work progressed slowly as Julius and his funds were more and more absorbed in war. In1514 Bramante died, happily not knowing that his design would never be carried out.
Many good Christians were shocked at the thought of destroying the venerable old Cathedral. Most of the cardinals were strongly opposed, and many artists complained that Bramante had recklessly shattered the fine columns and capitals of the ancient nave when with better care he might have taken them down intact.
A satire published three years after the architects death told how Bramante on reaching St. Peter’s gate, had been severely rebuked by the Apostle, and had been refused admittance to Paradise. But, said the satirist, Bramante did not like the arrangement of Paradise anyway, nor the steep approach to it from the earth.” I will build a new, broad, and commodious road, so that old and feeble souls may travel on horseback. And then I will make a new paradise with delightful residences for the blessed” When Peter rejected this proposal Bramante offered to go down to hell and build a better inferno, since the old one by this time be almost burned out. But Peter returned to the question: “Tell me, seriously, what made you destroy my church?” Bramante tried to comfort him: “Pope Leo will build you a new one.” “Well, then, “ said the Apostle, you must wait at the gate of paradise until it is finished.”
It was finished in 1626.
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The Old St Peters was in itself quite an edifice, and it is not hard to understand
why there was a strong feeling that it should not have been pulled down.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Donationconstantine.jpg/220px-Donationconstantine.jpg)
Brian
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Funny, how the names of artists from that period are household words, but we rarely think about the architects.
Did anyone see the PBS program describing how the Gothic cathedrals worked: and why some of them are in danger of falling down?
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Was that program broadcast recently, Joan?
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No: several months ago, if I remember correctly. The days kind of slide into each other.
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance
pages 457-459
Raphael and Julius II: 1508-13
Rarely since Pheidias had so many great artists gathered in one city and year. Michelango was carving figures for Julius’ gigantic tomb, and was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling; Bramante was designing the new St. Peter’s; Fra Giovanni of Verona, master woodworker, was carving doors and chairs and bosses for the ‘stanze’; Perugino, Signorelli, Peruzzi, Sodoma, Lotto, Pinturicchio had already painted some of the walls; and Ambrogio Foppa, called Caradosso, the Cellini of his age, was making gold in every way.
Julius assigned to Raphael the ‘Stanza della Segnatura’, so called because usually in this room the Pope heard appeals and signed pardons. He was so pleased with the youth’s first paintings here, and saw in him so excellent and pliable an agent to execute the grand conceptions that seethed in the papal brain, that he dismissed Perugino, Signorelli, and Sodoma, ordered their paintings whitewashed, and offered Raphael the opportunity to paint all the walls of the four rooms. Raphael persuaded the pope to retain some of the work done by the earlier artists; most of it however, was covered over, so that the major paintings might have the unity of one mind and hand. For each room Raphael received 1200 ducats and on the two rooms that he did for Julius he spent four and a half years. He was now twenty-six.
The plan for the Stanza Della Segnatura was lordly and sublime; the paintings were to represent the union of religion and philosophy, of classic culture and Christianity, of Church and State, of literature and law, in the civilization of the Renaissance. Probably the Pope conceived the general plan, and chose the subjects in consultation with Raphael and the scholars of his court—Inghirami and Sadoleto,-- later Bembo and Bibbiena. In the great semicircle formed by one side wall Raphael pictured religion in the persons of the Trinity and the saints, and theology on the form of Fathers and Doctors of the Church discussing the nature of the Christian Faith as centered in the doctrine of the Eucharist. How carefully he prepared himself for the first test of his ability to paint on a monumental scale may be seen from the thirty preliminary studies that he made for this Disputa del Sacramento. He recalled Fra Bartolomeo’s Last Judgement in Santa Maria Nuova at Florence, and his own Adoration of the Trinity in San Severo at Perugia; and on them he modelled his design.
The result was a panorama so majestic as almost to convert the most obdurate skeptic to the mysteries of the faith. The top of the arch, radial lines, converging upward, make the uppermost figures seem to bend forward; at the bottom the converging lines of a marble pavement give the picture depth. At the summit God the Father—a solemn, kindly Abraham—holds up the globe with one hand, and with the other blesses the scene; below Him the Son sits, naked to the waist, as in a shell; on His right Mary in humble adoration, on his left the Baptist still carrying his shepherd’s staff crowned with a cross; beneath Him a dove represents the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity; everything is here. Seated on a fluffy cloud around the Saviour are twelve magnificent figures of Old Testament or Christian history. Adam, a bearded Michalangelesque athlete, almost nude; Abraham; a stately Moses holding the tables of the Law; David, Judas Maccabaeus, Peter and Paul, St. John writing his evangel, St. James the greater, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, and two others of debated identity; among them, and in the clouds—everywhere except in the beards—cherubim and seraphim dart in and out, and angels weave through the air on the wings of song. Dividing and uniting this celestial assembly from an earthly throng below are two cherubim holding the Gospel, and a monstrance displaying the Host. Around this a varied assemblage of theologians gathers to consider the problems of theology: St. Jerome with his Vulgate and his lion; St. Augustine dictating The City of God; St. Ambrose in his episcopal robes; Popes Anacletus and Innocent III; the philosophers Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Danes Scotus; the dour Dante crowned as if with thorns; the gentle Fra Angelico; the angry Savonarola (another Julian revenge on Alexander VI ); and finally in a corner, bald and ugly, Raphael’s protecting friend Bramante. In all these human figures the young artist has achieved an astonishing degree of individualization, making each face a credible biography; and in many of them a degree of superhuman dignity ennobles the whole picture and theme. Probably never before had painting so successfully conveyed the epic sublimity of the Christian creed.
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I'm surprised to find that the name Michelangelo is some times spelled as Michelango throughout the volume. I think the former is the correct version. Trevor
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Here is a link to Raphael's 'Stanza della segnatura' that Durant has just described. Click on the art for larger. There is a short description of each.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Rooms#Stanza_della_Segnatura
Emily
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WOW!
There's so much there, it's overwhelming! It would take years to really appreciate it.
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Yea! Wow! The Durant exclamation was interesting to read......... Jean
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Durants' SoC
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 459-463
Raphael and Julius (1508-1513)
But could the same youth, now twenty-eight, represent with equal force and grandeur the role of science and philosophy among men? We have no evidence that Raphael had ever done much reading; he spoke with his brush and listened with his eyes; he lived in a world of form and colour in which words were trivial things unless they issued in the significant actions of men and women. He must have prepared himself by hurried study’ by dipping into Plato and Diogenes Laertius and Marsilio Facino, and by humble conversation with learned men, to rise now to his supreme conception.The School of Athens-- half a hundred figures summing up the rich centuries of Greek thought, and all gathered in an immortal moment under the coffered Arch of a massive pagan portico.
There, on the wall directly facing the apotheosis of theology in the Disputa, is the glorification of philosophy: Plato of the Jove like brow, deep eyes, flowing white hair and beard, with a finger pointing upward to his perfect state; Aristotle walking quietly beside him, thirty years younger, handsome and cheerful, holding out his hand with downward palm, as if to bring his master’s soaring idealism back to earth and the possible; Socrates counting off his arguments on his fingers, with armed Alcibiades listening to him lovingly; Pythagoras trying to imprison in harmonic tables the music of the spheres; a fair lady who might be Aspasia; Heraclitus writing Ephesian riddles; Diogenes lying carelessly disrobed on the marble steps; Archimedes drawing geometries on a slate for four absorbed youths; Ptolemy and Zoroaster bandying globes; a boy at the left running eagerly with books, surely seeking an autograph; an assiduous lad seated in a corner taking notes; peeking out at his left, little Federigo of Mantua, Isabella’s son and Julius’ pet; Bramante again; and hiding modestly, almost unseen, Raphael himself, now sprouting a moustache.
There are many more, about whose identity we shall let leisurely pundits dispute; all in all, such a parliament of wisdom had never been painted, perhaps never been conceived, before. And not a word about heresy, no philosophers burned at the stake; here under the protection of a Pope too great to fuss about the difference between one error and another, the young Christian has suddenly brought all these pagans together, painted them in their own character and with remarkable understanding and sympathy, and placed them where the theologians could see them and exchange fallibilities, and where the Pope, between one document and another, might contemplate the co-operative process and creation of human thought. This painting and the Disputa are the ideal of the Renaissance-- pagan antiquity and Christian faith living together in one room and harmony. These rival panels, in the sum of their conception, composition, and technique, are the apex of European painting, to which no man has ever risen again.
A third wall remained, smaller than the other two, and so broken by a casement window that unity of pictorial subject seemed impossible there. It was a brilliant choice to let the surface picture poetry and music; so a chamber heavily laden with theology and philosophy was made light and bright with the world of harmonious imagination, and gentle melodies could sing silently through the centuries across the room where unappealable decisions gave life or death. In this fresco of Parnassus, Apollo seated under some laurel trees atop the sacred mount, draws from his viol “ditties of no tone”; and at his right a muse reclines in graceful ease, baring a lovely breast to the saints and sages on the adjacent walls; and Homer recites his hexameters in blind ecstasy, and Dante looks with unreconciled severity even at this goodly company of graces and bards; and Sappho, too beautiful to be Lesbian, strums her cithara; and Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus and other singers chosen by time mingle with Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Sannazaro, and lesser voices of more recent Italy. So the young artist suggested that “life without music would be a mistake”, and that the strains and visions of poetry might lift men to heights as lofty as the myopia of wisdom and the impudence of theology.
Finally Raphael in this period raised portrait painting to a height that only Titian would reach again. The portrait was a characteristic product of the Renaissance, and corresponds to the proud liberation of the individual in that flamboyant age. Raphael’s portraits are not numerous but they all stand on the highest level of the art. One of the finest is Bindo Altoviti. Who could surmise that this gentle but alert youth, healthy and clear eyed, and as pretty as a girl, was no poet but a banker, and a generous patron of artists from Raphael to Cellini? He was twenty-two when so portrayed; in 1556 hr died at Rome after a noble but disasterous and exhausting effort to save the independence of Siena from Florence. And of course to this period belongs the greatest of all the portraits, the Julius II of the Uffizi Gallery ( c. 1512 ) We cannot say that this is the original that first came from Raphaels hand; possibly it is a studio replica; and the marvelous copy in the Pitti Palace was made by none other than that rival portraitist, Titian. The fate of the original is unknown.
Julius himself died before the Stanza d’Eliodora was finished, and Raphael wondered whether the great plan of the four stanze would be carried out. But how could a pope like Leo X, wedded to art and poetry almost as deeply as to religion, hesitate? The young man from Urbino was to find in Leo his most loyal friend; the living genius of happiness was to know under a happy pope his happiest years.
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There's a new novel, Sins of the House of Borgia by Sarah Bower. My library is processessing it, i'm on their hold list. Here's the rsviews of it from Amazon.....
http://www.amazon.com/Sins-House-Borgia-Sarah-Bower/dp/1402259638
Showtime is showing a series called "The Borgias" here is the schedule. I don't have Showtime, but they've been producing some good historical series.
http://www.sho.com/site/borgias/schedule.sho
Jean
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" He (Raphael) must have prepared himself by hurried study’ by dipping into Plato and Diogenes Laertius and Marsilio Facino, and by humble conversation with learned men, to rise now to his supreme conception.The School of Athens--. "
For the Durants, that must seem like hurried study. For us, it would be a major effort!!
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Since Durant mentions the portrait of Bindo Altoviti by Raphael as being one of his best, below is a link to the portrait.
This work is at the museum in Washington D.C. 'The National Gallery'. I have been to the museum, but never saw the portrait of Bindo Altoviti.
Families will sometimes keep portraits of ancestors for years and other generations come along and 'sell them off to the highest bidder', or get bilked out of it by some shyster art dealer.
I am acquainted with a woman who had a large full sized portrait painted about forty years ago by a prominent artist. She was concerned about what her children would do with her portrait after she died. First they had no room big enough to hang such a large portrait. There are two local museums who would probably take it as a donation or perhaps purchase, since it was painted by a well known artist. She was concerned it would wind up in storage or an attic somewhere.
My mother remembers a portrait of her great-grandmother (my mother is 98 years old). The painting disappeared after the death of her grandparents (who had the portrait in their home)
and no one in the family knows what happened to it.
The value of a portrait has more to do with the artist than the subject.
Raphael's work is listed at the bottom of this page. Click on any work to view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Bindo_Altoviti_(Raphael)
Emily
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I think I'm going to have to argue with Durant's statement that Raphael was the best portrait painter, and stick up for Rembrandt. Raphael's portrait above is interesting, but I don't get the feeling of "Oh, noW I know him" that I do with some of Rembrandt's. What do you all think?
Shama in his biography of Rembrandt that we read together on Seniornet makes an interesting comparison between the two of them.
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Joan, Durant may have been comparing Raphael to other artists in his own era (late Renaissance). In his bio it does state that as a draftsman his drawings knew no peer.
Since Rembrandt lived a century after Raphael and lived into his sixties, where as Raphael died at age 37, there may have been no comparison outside the Renaissance. They both began painting at a very young age. Durant states that Raphael worked four and a half years on the Stanza for Pope Julius painting two rooms and was only then 26 years. That would make him twenty one when he started. Perhaps had he lived longer he would have perfected his portrait painting.
I agree that Rembrandt's portraits have more intrigue and catch the eye in a way that Rahpael does not. Some of Rembrandt's work seems all darkness and shadow, there is little there to actually see and what one does see is impressive. I see Raphael as light and Rembrandt as dark with only a flicker of light. Can one compare the School of Athens with Night Watch. I think they are so different that they are not comparable.
I vote Rembrandt for single portraits and Raphael for painting an entire wall with half a hundred portraits all in the brilliant light of the Greek forum. Perhaps their access to 'light' had an influence on their selection of color.
I am simply a novice in the art world, one of those 'I know it when I see it type'. Realism appeals to me and I won't waste one minute of my time trying to figure out what a painting is or means unless it is obvious at first glance.
I hope others will chime in and answer Joan's question.
Emily
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I'm definitely a novice of the "I know it when I see it. I agree with you on this: "I vote Rembrandt for single portraits and Raphael for painting an entire wall with half a hundred portraits all in the brilliant light of the Greek forum. Perhaps their access to 'light' had an influence on their selection of color."
I wonder how much of Rembrandt's darkness is due to the darkening of the paints he used?
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If you are asking which I like better, I would have to say Rembrandt, overall. I love his use of light and dark. Is there much call for giant wall art painted directly on the wall these days? I wonder that the great masters would be dabbling into if they lived now. Computer art? Graphic design/illustrations? Film? Broadway or opera set design? Now there is a fun speculation, however, as they likely were then, I suspect they would in a category all their own.
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Is there much call for giant wall art painted directly on the wall these days? I wonder that the great masters would be dabbling into if they lived now. Computer art? Graphic design/illustrations? Film? Broadway or opera set design? Now there is a fun speculation, however, as they likely were then, I suspect they would in a category all their own.
Interesting question Frybabe. Today artists can digitally photograph ancient frescos or murals and reproduce them and cover a wall with the result. I think they call it digitalfrescography or some such.
Today murals can be painted and produced in many ways. I watched the progress of a young painter from NYC in a private home. He painted a mural on the dining room walls. It was in the Chinese style, in which less is more. He put his cat (from South East Asia, which is larger than an average house cat) in the corner of one wall erect as climbing up a vine. Since he lived in an apartment on the upper west side, I asked if the poor cat ever got outside to see a vine or climb. He was very young and I was impressed with his work.
Eric worked for the interior design firm of Parrish Hadley.
Watched an English artist do Trompe l' oeil in a hallway and bathroom, I saw him turn unfinished baseboards and floors into the look of dark green marble. It seemed effortless for him (it's all about mixing the paint) except for the bending and stooping.
Once spent the summer in a gatehouse on a large estate in Southampton (hey, it was free), and the entire small house was Trompe l' oeil and murals in the French style. It seemed claustrophobic to me, and it only works in large rooms or spaces in my opinion. A large armoire in the sitting room was done in Trompe l' oeil as a bookcase with lots of books and figurines, and when opened contained a television and electronic equipment. Climbing the stairs to the bedroom was enough to give one vertigo with the scenes painted on the walls of the curved staircase.
Here is a link from wikipedia on murals, and about half way down 'murals in comtemporary interior design'. That is where many artists today get their patronage, from Interior designers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mural
Emily
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Here is a type of art that seems to be a new way of expression. It is called 3D sidewalk art. It is all painted on a flat surface such as a sidewalk or street, but gives the illusion of three dimensions. The artist is Julian Beever who is British. Viewed from a certain angle it seems real, but is actually an illusion.
There are twenty photographs in this view. Click on the next button at the top of each photo to see the next one.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/01/3d-sidwalk-art-that-will_n_478649.html#s71257&title=Rocky_Road
Emily
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Here is another link to sidewalk 3D art. It may have repeats of the other link but is worth a look just for the sidewalk art painted in front of the Bank of England of a manhole with two politicians falling inside the hole. It too is by the British artist Julian Beeber.
http://villageofjoy.com/amazing-3d-sidewalk-art/
Emily
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Aren't they great? I've not seen one in person, but there was one at the beginning of the PBS Masterpiece Contemporary program, Framed.
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Here is a link to the Philadelphia wall murals
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1649278_1421152,00.html
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Durants' Soc
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 463-466
Michelangelo
Youth: 1475-1505
We have left to the last Julius’ favorite painter and sculptor, a man rivaling him in temper and teribilita, in power and depth of spirit -- the greatest and saddest artist in the records of mankind.
Born at Caprese on march 6 1475, and named, like Raphael after an archangel, Michelangelo was the second of four brothers. When he was six months old the family moved to Florence. He received some schooling there, enough to enable him, in after years, to write good Italian verse. He learned no Latin, and never fell so completely under the hypnosis of antiquity as did many artists of the time; he was Hebraic not classic, Protestant in spirit rather than Catholic.
His father apprenticed Michael, aged thirteen, to Domenico Ghirlandaio, then the most popular painter in Florence. The contract bound the youth to stay with Domenico three years “ to learn the art of painting"; he was to receive six florins the first year, eight the second ten the third, and presumably shelter and food. He had been with Ghirlandaio hardly a year when a combination of nature and chance turned him to sculpture. Like many other art students he had free access to the gardens in which the Medici had disposed their collections of antique statuary and architecture.He must have copied some of these marbles with special interest and skill, for when Lorenzo, asked Ghirlandaio to send him some students of promise in that direction, Domenico gave him Francesco Granacci and Michelangelo Buonarroti. The boy’s father hesitated to let him make the change from one art to another; he feared his son would be put to cutting stone; and indeed Michael was so used for a time, blocking out marble for the Laurentian Library. But soon the boy was carving statues. All the world knows the story of Michael’s marble faun: How he chiseled a stray piece into the figure of an old faun: how Lorenzo, passing’ remarked that so old a faun would hardly have so complete a set of teeth; and how Michael remedied the fault with one blow by knocking a tooth out of the upper jaw, Pleased with the boy’s product and aptitude, Lorenzi took him into his home and treated him as his son. For two years the young artist lived in the Palazzo Medici, regularly ate at the same table with Lorenzo, Politian, Pico, Ficino, and Pulci, heard the most enlightened talk about politics, literature, philosophy and art.
These years in the Medici Palace might have been a period of pleasant growth had it not been for Pietro Torrigiano. Pietro one day took offense at Michael’s banter, and so “Clenching my fist, I gave him such a blow on the nose that I felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles; and this mark of mine he will carry to the grave.” It was so: Michelangelo for the next seventy four years showed a nose broken at the bridge. It did not sweeten his temper.
In those same years Savonarola was preaching his fiery gospel of puritan reform. Michael went often to hear him, and never forgot those sermons, or the cold thrill that ran through his youthful blood at the prior’s angry cry, announcing the doom of corrupt Italy, pierced the stillness of the crowded cathedral. When Savonarola died , something of his spirit lingered in Michelangelo: a horror of moral decay about him, a fierce resentment of despotism, a somber presentiment of doom. Those memories and fears shared in forming his character, in guiding his chisel and his brush; lying on his back under the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he remembered Savonarola; painting The Last Judgment, he resurrected him, and hurled the friar’s fulminations down the centuries.
In 1492 Lorenzo died, and Michael returned to his father’s house. He continued his sculpture and painting, and now added a strange experience to his education. The prior of the hospital of Santo Spirito allowed him, in a private room, to dissect corpses. Michael performed so many dissections that his stomach revolted, and for a time he could hardly hold any food or drink. But he learned anatomy.
He had an absurd chance to show his knowledge when Piero de’ Medici asked him to mold a gigantic snowman in the court of the palace. Michael complied, and Piero persuaded him to live again in the Casa Medici ( January 1494)
Late in 1494 Michelangelo, in one of his many hectic moves, fled through the winter snow of the Apennines to Bologna. At Bologna he studied carefully the reliefs by Iacopo della Quercia on the facade of San Petronio. he was engaged to finish the tomb of St Dominic, and carved for it a graceful Kneeling Angel; then the organized sculptors of Bologna sent him warning that if he, a foreigner and interloper, continued to take work out of their hands, they would dispose of him by one or another of the many devices open to Renaissance initiative. Meanwhile Savonarola had taken charge of Florence, and virtue was in the air. Michael returned there in1495.
He found a patron in Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, of the collateral branch of the Medici. For him he carved a 'Sleeping Cupid ' which had a strange history. Lorenzo suggested that he treat the surface to make it look like an antique; Michael complied; Lorenzo sent it to Rome, where it was sold for thirty ducats to a dealer who sold it for two hundred to Raffaello Riario, Cardinal di San Giorgio. The Cardinal discovered the cheat, sent back the 'Cupid', recovered his ducats. It was later sold to Caesar Borgia, who gave it to Guidobaldo of Urbino; Caesar reclaimed it on taking that city, and sent to Isabella d'Este, who described it as 'without a peer among the works of modern times.' Its later history is unknown.
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Kneeling Angel - - -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Angel_by_Michelangelo_-_1.JPG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Angel_by_Michelangelo_-_1.JPG)
Interestingly enough, people are still making copies of this and they find ready sale.
Brian
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When I was in the Sistene Chapel, the criling from the ground is so detailed and so far away, you really can't appreciate the details. It needs the close-up photos to appreciate it. But the story of M lying on his back, painting it is endlessly appealing.
David is another story. You're on a narrow street in Florence, round a corner, and there it is! With people going by paying no attention (I think when I was there, the real one was still outside: they hadn't taken it in and put up a substitute yet)
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I remember reading Irving Stone's The Agony andthe Ecstasy decades ago and most non-fiction i've read abt him since has been bery similar. Do any of you art historians have an opinion abt that book? .....I was less fond of the movie, but i think Charleston Heston had some say in how he portrayed Michelangelo and was less concerned w/ accuracy than how he wld look to the audience. .....
I have begun reading Sins in the House of Borgia that i mentioned some time ago.....here is what i posted in " fiction".
Just starting an interesting and well written book: Sins of the House of Borgia, by Sarah Bower. The protagonist is a Jewish woman who "converts" to Christianity to bcm a lady-in-waiting to Lucrezia Borgia. The detail is very interesting and appears to be factual. The
cruelty of the powerful to the non-powerful makes me very glad i live in 21st century America.
But then reading any history has always made me feel that way. At this point -80 pages in- i
wld say if you like historical fiction to give it a try. It is one of those books where i have to sit
w/ my ipad near by to look up some words that are not familiar to me - usually something of
the time.
I mentioned her conversion bcs she has interesting questions about both religions as she lives in her new " Christian world". It is only a small part of the story, at least at this point........Jean
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7 answers to questions abt Sistine ceiling
http://arthistory.about.com/od/famous_paintings/a/sischap_ceiling.htm
The whole ceiling
http://arthistory.about.com/od/famous_paintings/a/sischap_ceiling.htm
Some close up images
http://www.google.com/search?q=sistine+chapel+ceiling&hl=en&client=safari&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FNCpTaPDB5CqsAOP7-X5DA&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=981&bih=632
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I was wrong. He didn't lie on his back. he wasn't up there all alone. I must have seen the movie (although I don't remember doing so) and internalized the image. If Heston wanted to make an impression, he obviously succeeded.
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Irving Stone talks abt M lying on his back, which is where the movie got it, but i don't know if he had any documentation on it. But i loved the story, also those of Van Gogh and Pissarro and Rodin. All of those books appeared to be well researched, but i'm sure there was some poetic license taken by all the authors. I think it's the passion of the artists to stick w/their art that enthalled me. ...... Jean
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That passion must be part of whatever the genius is that allows them to create such works. I think of Mozart, in his last days, creating one masterpiece after another in a frenzy. Who can understand it!
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Amazing work for someone who hadn't painted much and didn't particularly like it.
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That was a surprise to me the first time i read it, probably in The Agony and the Ecstasy, many decades ago, that M didn't like painting. Are there other artist/sculptor people? I'm sure there are, i just can't think at the moment, it's been a busy, tiring day. Did the question make sense? Are there other artists who were famous both as a sculptor and painter, is that clearer? ...... Sigh, smile.....
While at my son's today, babysitting for grandson, i watched the first program of The Borgias from Showtime. I thot it was quite good. Someone, somewhere mentioned that the settings were beautiful. It should win both best set direction and best costume emmys, IMO. It reminded me of a comment i made abt Sense and Sensibility, that every frame looked like a painting. ....... Jean
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Jean, I have read also that Michelangelo preferred sculpting to painting. There must have been many more sculptors than painters since when he sculpted the 'kneeling angel' for Saint Dominic's shrine in Bologna, the other sculptors told him he had better get out of town or he would be 'floating with the fishes', another way of saying a 'renaissance accidential death'.
Perhaps he decided 'painting' was a safer profession. To that end he disected many corpses to learn anatomy.
When viewing Brian's link to the 'kneeling angel' at Saint Dominic's tomb and basicilla, one could not help but notice all the sculpting that went into such an elaborate show for one person. Around the top there were so many sculpted representations of people lined up, perhaps to worship at the tomb of this man.
The elaborate decoration for 'one man' and all the work it took to complete it, as opposed to the 'throw away' of bodies of other men and women to Michelangelo to 'cut and slice' as he saw fit, leaves an ethical and moral chasm that I cannot cross.
The teaching of anatomy has changed. Today they can view on video the dissected body in slices. It still is a human body, but by putting it all on video they don't need a fresh supply all the time.
The New Yorker did an article on this a few years ago and told the story of how a man on death row was executed and then sent off to be sliced up and it all captured on video. The new corpse is laid out in full at 360 degrees and can be turned in any direction. The arm can be clicked on and every sinew and muscle viewed as a dissected piece.
There are probably still places where bodies are dissected but it is not necessary with all the new technology.
I once read an article by a medical student who said that he had no problem with dissection except for the hands. He said he felt a persons humanity more in their hands than their face.
My dilemma is that I have never understood the worship of men or women either for that matter. I too love beautiful sculpture but of the 'human' not of specific men or women. Give me a sample of those living at the time, 'The dying Gaul' comes to mind.
Anonymous humanity works for me. Just don't put a name on it.
Emily
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Since I mentioned the 'Dying Gaul' here is a link to it from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Gaul
Emily
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I meant to say when i saw the Kneeling Angel how exquisite the detail was. It looks like if you touched the "material" of the clothes, it would move. Is that typical of M? ..... Jean
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Durants' The Story of Civilization
Volume V
Michaelangelo. Pages 466-469
With all his versatile ability Michael found it hard to earn a living by art in a city where there were almost as many artists as citizens. An agent of Riario invited him to Rome, assuring him that the Cardinal would give him employment, and that Rome was full of wealthy patrons. So in 1496 Michaelangelo moved hopefully to the capital, and received a place in the household of the Cardinal. Here, almost at the outset, the artist distinguished his work by showing the figure in a moment and attitude of action. The Greek preference for repose in art was alien to him, except in the Pieta. Michaelangelo chose rather to portray an individual imaginary in conception, realistic in detail. He did not imitate the antique, except in costumes; His work was characteristically his own, no renaissance, but a unique creation.
The greatest product of his first stay in Rome was the Pieta that is now one of the glories of St. Peter’s. The contract for it was signed by Cardinal Jean de Villiers, French ambassador at the papal court (1498); the fee was to be 450 ducats; the time allowed one year. There are some blemishes in this glorious group of the Virgin Mother holding her dead Son in her lap: the drapery seems excessive, the Virgin’s head is small for her body, her left hand is extended in an inappropriate gesture; her face is that of a young woman clearly younger than her Son. To this last complaint Michaelangelo, as reported by Condivi, made answer:
Do you not know that chaste women maintain their freshness far longer than
The unchaste ? How much more would this be the case with a virgin into
whose breast there never crept the least lascivious desire which would affect
the body ! Nay, I will go further, and hazard the belief that this unsullied bloom
of youth, besides being maintained in her natural causes, may have been
miraculously wrought to convince the world of the virginity and perpetual
purity of the mother.
It is a pleasant and forgivable fancy. The spectator is soon reconciled to that gentle face, untorn by agony, calm in her grief and love, the bereaved mother resigned to the will of God, and consoled by holding for some final moments the dear body here cleansed of its wounds, freed from its indignities, resting in the lap of the woman that bore it, and beautiful even in death. All the essence and tragedy and redemption of life are in this simple group: the stream of births by which woman carries on the race; the certainty of death as the penalty for every birth; and the love that ennobles our mortality with kindness, and challenges every death with new birth. Francis I was right when he pronounced this the finest achievement of Michaelangelo. In all the history of sculpture no man has ever surpassed it, except, perhaps the unknown Greek who carved the Demeter of the British Museum.
The success of the Pieta brought Michaelangelo not only fame, which he humanly enjoyed, but money, which his relatives were ready to enjoy with him. His father had lost, with the fall of the Medici the little sinecure that Lorenzo the Magnificent had given him; Michael’s older brother had entered a Monastery; the two younger brothers were improvident, and Michael became now the main support of the family. He complained of this necessity, but gave generously.
Probably because the disordered finances of his relatives called him, he returned to Florence in 1501. A unique Assignment came to him in August of that year. The Operai or Board of Works at the cathedral owned a block of Carrara marble thirteen and a half feet high, but so irregularly shaped that it had lain unused for a hundred years. The board asked Michaelangelo could a statue be chiseled out of it. He agreed to try; and on Augusts 16 the Operai del Duomo and the Arte della Lana ( the wool Guild ) signed the contract:
That the worthy master Michaelangelo.... has been chosen to fashion, complete,
and finish to perfection that male statue called “Il gigante,” of nine cubits in height...
That the work shall be competed within two years from September, at a salary
of six golden florins per month...... and when the statue is finished Guild Consuls and the Operai ... shall estimate whether he deserve a larger recompense, and this shall be left to their consciences.
The sculptor toiled on the refractory material for two and a half years; with heroic labour he drew from it, using every inch of his height, his ‘David’. On January 25 1504 the Operai assembled a council of leading artists in Florence to consider where ‘IL gigante’ as they called the ‘David’, should be placed. They could not agree, and finally left the the matter to Michaelangelo, who asked it be placed on the platform of the Palazzo Vecchio. The task took forty men four days; a gateway had to be heightened by breaking a wall above it before the colossus could pass; and twenty one further days had to be spent in raising it into place. For 369 years it stood in the open and uncovered porch of the Palazzo, subject to weather, urchins, and revolution. The Medici, returning to power in 1513, left it untouched, but in the uprising that again deposed them (1527 ) a bench thrown from a window of the Palace broke the statue’s left arm. Two lads of sixteen, gathered and preserved the pieces, and a later Medici, Duke Cosimo, had the fragments put together and replaced. In 1873, after the statue had suffered erosion from the weather, David was laboriously transferred to the Accademia delle Belle Arti, where it occupies the place of honour as the most popular figure in Florence.
It was ‘a tour de force’ and as such can hardly be overpraised; the mechanical difficulties were brilliantly overcome. Esthetically one may pick a few flaws; the right hand is too large, the neck too long, the left leg overlong below the knee, the left buttock does not swell as any proper buttock should. Peri Soldering head of the republic thought the nose excessive; Vasari tells the story -- perhaps a legend -- how Michaelangelo, hiding some marble dust in his hand, mounted a ladder, pretended to chisel off a bit of the nose while leaving it intact, and let the marble dust fall from his hand before the Gondolier, who then pronounced the statue much improved. The total effect of the work silences criticism; the splendid frame, not yet swollen with the muscles of Michaelangelo’s later heroes, the finished texture of the flesh, the strong yet refined features, the nostrils tense with excitement, the frown of anger and the look of resolution subtly tinged with diffidence as the youth faces the fearsome Goliath and prepares to fill and cast his sling-- these share in making the ‘David’ with one exception * the most famous statue in the world. Vasari thought it surpassed all other statues ancient and modern, Latin and Greek.
* Which should be the ‘Hermes ‘ of Praxiteles but more probably is the Statue of Liberty.
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I saw a program the other night about the Vatican. The highlights for me were the lovely shots of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and a walk through the Vatican Library.
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WOW! Durant's prose has never been better than describing the pieta. Here is a picture:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://watercolorjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/michelangelos_pieta_5450_cropncleaned.jpg&imgrefurl=http://watercolorjournal.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/art-during-the-renaissance-perion-part-4-michelangelo-buonarroti-part-1/&h=1660&w=1584&sz=637&tbnid=deqnW4MH_hmurM:&tbnh=230&tbnw=219&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpieta%2Bmichelangelo%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pieta+michelangelo&hl=en&usg=__AI_PvQzBVUr2IzNAGl0prc3IA_g=&sa=X&ei=HyCzTZbZD4fliALY3I2wBg&ved=0CCcQ9QEwAA (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://watercolorjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/michelangelos_pieta_5450_cropncleaned.jpg&imgrefurl=http://watercolorjournal.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/art-during-the-renaissance-perion-part-4-michelangelo-buonarroti-part-1/&h=1660&w=1584&sz=637&tbnid=deqnW4MH_hmurM:&tbnh=230&tbnw=219&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpieta%2Bmichelangelo%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pieta+michelangelo&hl=en&usg=__AI_PvQzBVUr2IzNAGl0prc3IA_g=&sa=X&ei=HyCzTZbZD4fliALY3I2wBg&ved=0CCcQ9QEwAA)
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"The success of the Pieta brought Michaelangelo not only fame, which he humanly enjoyed, but money, which his relatives were ready to enjoy with him."
(Smile) subtle, very subtle .......
Yes Joan, agree about the prose.
Re: M's quote about Mary's perpetual "innocence"- didn't Jesus have a brother James? Or, perhaps, not being able to read rhe Bible in those days and not having the research to read, M may not have known that fact.
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I'm pretty sure he did have at least one sibling.
Is Mary supposed to be "guilty" if she has sex with her husband?
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Well, that's the way i read M's response.
"Do you not know that chaste women maintain their freshness far longer thanThe unchaste ? How much more would this be the case with a virgin into whose breast there never crept the least lascivious desire which would affect
the body ! Nay, I will go further, and hazard the belief that this unsullied bloom
of youth, besides being maintained in her natural causes, may have been
miraculously wrought to convince the world of the virginity and perpetual
purity of the mother."
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Many thanks to those who searched out links to art etc, and to those who came in with comment on the subjects under discussion. Your efforts really add interest to these pages. Please keep it up ......
I hope to enter the next installment very soon. Trevor
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TREVOR: thank you so much. you don't get enough credit for all you do.
My computer is balking at putting in the headings. As soon as I get it figured out, I'll start doing so again.
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Durant writing about Michelangelo's Pieta said the following.......
In all the history of sculpture no man has ever surpassed it, except, perhaps the unknown Greek who carved the Demeter....
Here's to the unknown Greek and a photograph of his Demeter, now in the British museum. Demeter is the very essence of a young fertile woman who produces a life of abundance. The opposite of what Michelangelo said of Mary.
Durant also wrote, "He did not imitate the antique, except in costumes."
The draping of Demeter's garments and Mary's garments are similar, so it is obvious that Michelangelo did copy the 'draping' that Jean commented on earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter
Emily
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Durants' SoC Vol. V
Michaelangelo and Julius II : 1503-13
Pages 470-474
Michael must have seen at once he would be miserable with Julius, they were so much alike. Both had temper and temperament: the Pope imperious and fiery, the artist somber and proud. Both were Titans in spirit and aim, acknowledging no superior, admitting no compromise, passing from one grandiose project to another, stamping their personalities on their time, and laboring with such mad energy that when both were dead all Italy seemed exhausted and empty.
Julius, following the example long since set by cardinals, wanted for his bones a mausoleum whose size and splendor should proclaim his greatness even to distant and forgetful posterity. he looked with envy upon the beautiful tomb that Andrea Sansovino had just carved for Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Santa Maria del Popolo. Michael proposed a colossal monument twenty- seven feet in length and eighteen in width. Forty statues would adorn it: some symbolizing the redeemed Papal States; some personifying Painting, Architecture, Sculpture, Poetry, Philosophy, Theology -- all made captive by the irrestible Pope; others depicting his major predecessors, as for example, Moses; two would picture angels-- one weeping at Julius’ removal from the earth, the other smiling at his entrance to heaven. At the top would be a handsome sarcophagus for the mortal remains. All this was to stand in the Tribune of St. Peter’s . It was a design that would use many tons of marble, many thousands of ducats, many years of the sculptor’s life. Julius approved, gave Angelo two thousand ducats for the purchase of marble, and sent him off to Carrara instructed to pick the finest veins. When the marble that he had bought arrived and was piled up in a square by his lodgings near St. Peter’s, people marveled at its quantity and cost, and Julius rejoiced.
The drama became tragedy. Bramante, desiring money for the new St. Peter’s, looked askance at this titanic project; moreover he feared that Michelangelo would replace him as the Pope’s favorite artist; he used his influence to divert papal funds and passion from the proposed tomb. For his part, Julius was planning a war upon Perugia and Bologna (1506), and found Mars an expensive god ; the tomb could wait for peace. Meanwhile Michael had received no salary, had spent on marble all that Julius had advanced him, had paid out of his own pocket to furnish the house the Pope had provided for him. He went to the Vatican on Holy Saturday to ask for money; he was told to return on Monday; he did, and was told to return on Tuesday; like rebuffs met him on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Friday, he returned home and wrote a letter to Julius:
‘Most blessed father, I have been turned out of the Palace today by your orders; whereof I give you notice that from this time forward, if you want me, you must look for me elsewhere than in Rome.’
He gave instructions for the sale of furniture he had bought, and took horse towards Florence. At Poggibonsi he was overtaken by couriers bearing a letter from the Pope, which commanded him to return at once to Rome. If we may accept his own account ( he was an unusually honest man ) he sent back a reply that he would come only when the Pope agreed to fulfill the conditions of their understanding for the tomb. He continued to Florence.
Almost at once the Pope sent for him. Angelo went back to Rome, and was chargrined to find that Julius wanted him not to carve the great tomb but to paint the ceiling of the chapel of Sixtus IV. He hesitated to face the problems of perspective and foreshortening in painting a ceiling sixty-eight feet above the floor; he protested again that he was a sculptor, not a painter; in vain he recommended Raphael as a better man for the work. Julius commanded and coaxed, pledging a fee of 3000 ducats; Michael feared the Pope and wanted the money. Still murmuring, “This is not my trade “, he undertook the arduous and uncongenial task. He sent to Florence for five assistants trained in design; tore down the clumsy scaffolding Bramante had raised, erected his own, and set to work measuring and charting the ten thousand square feet of the ceiling, planning the general design, making cartoons for each seperate space, including the spandrels, pendentives, and lunettes; in all there would be 343 figures. Many preliminary studies were made, some from living models. When the final form of a cartoon was finished it was carried carefully up the scaffolding and was applied, face outward, to the freshly plastered surface of its corresponding place; the lines of the composition were then pricked through the drawing into the plaster, the cartoon was removed, and the sculptor began to paint.
For over four years -- from May, 1508, to October 1512, -- Angelo worked on the Sistine ceiling. Not continuously, there were interuptions of uncertain length, as when he went to Bologna to besiege Julius for more funds. And not alone: he had helpers to grind the colors, prepare the plaster; perhaps to draw or paint some minor features; parts of the frescoes reveal inferior hands. But the five artists whom he had summond to Rome were soon dismissed; Angelo’s style of conception, design, and coloring were so different from theirs and the traditions of Florence that he found them more hindrance than aid. Besides, he did not know how to get along with others, and it was one of his consolations, up there on the scaffold, that he was alone; there he could think, in pain but in peace; there he could exemplify Leonardo’s saying: “If you are alone, you will be wholly your own.”
To the technical difficulties Julius added himself by his impatience to have the great work completed and displayed. Picture the old Pope mounting the frail frame, drawn up to the platform by the artist, always asking, “When will it be finished?” The reply was a lesson in integrety: “When I shall have done all that I believe required to satisfy art.”
Yielding later to the papal impatience, Angelo took down the scaffolding before all final touches had been applied. Then Julius thought that a little gold should be added here and there, but the weary artist persuaded him that gold trimmings would hardly become the Prophets or the Apostles. When for the last time Michaelangelo descended from the scaffold he was exhausted, emaciated, prematurely old. A story says that his eyes, long accustomed to the subdued illumination of the chapel, could hardy bear the light of the sun; and another story that he found it now easier to read by looking upward than by holding the page beneath his eyes.
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This is the Durants at their best!
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When I watched a program about the Vatican last week, I noticed that the Pope's photographer is a Sforza.
I am glad that Julius did not take up Michelanglo's recommendation that Raphael do the ceiling instead. While I like Raphael's work, it seems rather flat compared to the magnificent work Michelangelo did on the Sistine Chapel.
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It seems that Julius and Michelangelo were very much alike in their approach to whatever work they were doing. Both thought they could do it better than anyone else, so Julius went off to war and Michelangelo went off to paint.
The combination of the two and what they accomplished is remarkable, and would probably not have happened with any other person or either side.
Emily
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That's an interesting point, Emily. I guess it's people like that who accomplish great things in life. Not easy to live with though!
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I just checked the TV viewing for tonight and discovered that History International is showing a 2007 program called Michelangelo Superstar at 8pm and 12M Eastern time. I don't remember seeing that before.
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Durants' SoC
Renaissance, Vol. V.
Julius II, Pages 474-476
The original plan of Julius for the ceiling had been merely a series of Apostles; Michelangelo prevailed upon him to allow an ampler and nobler scheme. He divided the convex vault into over a hundred panels by picturing columns and mouldings between them; and he enhanced the tridimensional illusion with lusty youthful figures upholding the cornices or seated on capitals. In the major panels, running along the crest of the ceiling, Angelo painted episodes from Genesis: the initial act of creation separates light from darkness; the sun , moon, and the planets come into being at the command of the creator—a majestic figure, stern of face, powerful of body, with beard and robes flying in the air; the Almighty, even finer in form and feature than in the previous panel, extends His right arm to create Adam, while with his left arm he holds a very pretty angel—this panel is Michelangelo’s pictorial masterpiece; God, now a much older and patriarchal deity, evokes Eve from Adam’s rib; Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree, and are expelled from Eden; Noah and his sons prepare sacrificial offering to God; the flood rises; Noah celebrates with too much wine. All in these panels is Old Testament, all is Hebraic; Michelangelo belongs to the prophets pronouncing doom, not to the evangelists expounding the Gospel of love.
In the spandrels of alternate arches Angelo painted magnificent figures of Daniel, Isaiah, Zechariah, Joel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Jonah. In the other spandrels he pictured the pagan oracles that were believed to have foretold Christ; the graceful Libyan Sibyl, holding an open book of the future; the dark unhappy, powerful Cumaean Sibyl; the studious Persian; the Delphic and Erythrean Sibyls; these too are such paintings as rival the sculptures of Pheidias; indeed, all these figures suggest sculpture; and Michelangelo, conscripted into an alien art, transforms it into his own. In the large triangle at one end of the ceiling, and in two others at the other end, the artist still stayed in the Old Testament, with the raising of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the victory of David over Goliath, the hanging of Haman, the beheading of Holofernes by Judith. Finally, as if by concession and afterthought, in the lunettes and arched recesses above the windows, Angelo painted scenes expounding the genealogy of Mary and Christ.
No one of these pictures quite equals Raphael’s School of Athens, in conception, drawing, color, and technique; but taken all together, they constitute the greatest achievement of any man in the history of painting. The total effect of repeated and careful contemplation is far greater than in the case of the Stanze. There we feel a happy perfection of artistry, and an urbane union of pagan and Christian thought. Here we do not merely perceive technical accomplishment—in the perspective, the foreshortenings, the unrivalled variety of attitudes; we feel the sweep and breath of genius, almost as creative as in the windswept figure of the Almighty raising Adam out of the earth.
Here again Michelangelo has given his ruling passion free rein; and though the place was the chapel of the popes, the theme and object of his art was the human body. Like the Greeks he cared less for the face and its expression, than for the whole physical frame. On the Sistine ceiling are half a hundred male, a few female, nudes. There are no landscapes, no vegetation except in picturing the creation of plants, no decorative arabesques; as in Signorelli’s frescoes at Orvieto, the body of man becomes the sole means of decoration as well of representation. Signorelli was the one painter, as Iacopo della Quercia was the one sculptor, from whom Michelangelo cared to learn. Every little space left free in the ceiling by the general pictorial plan is occupied by a nude figure, not so much beautiful as athletic and strong. There is no sexual suggestion in them, only the persistent display of the human body as the highest embodiment of energy, vitality, life. Though some timid souls protested against this profusion of nudity in the house of God, Julius made no recorded objection; he was a man as broad as his hatreds, and he recognised great art when he saw it. Perhaps he understood that he had immortalized himself not by the wars that he had won, but by giving the strange and incalculable divinity fretting in Angelo freedom to disport itself on the papal chapel vault.
Julius died four months after the completion of the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo was nearing his thirty-eighth birthday. He had placed himself at the head of all Italian sculptors by his David and Pieta; by this ceiling he had equaled or surpassed Raphael in painting; there seemed no other world for him to conquer. Surely even he hardly dreamed that he had over half a century yet to live, that his most famous painting, his most mature sculpture, were yet to be done. He mourned the passing of a great Pope, and wondered whether Leo would have as sure an instinct as Julius for the noble in art. He retired to his lodgings, and bided his time.[/I]
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"taken all together, they constitute the greatest achievement of any man in the history of painting"
Do we agree?
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I do agree, Joan. His long life allowed him to produce more art than most of his contemporaries. His figures were realistic and therefore lifelike which is necessary for my vote.
I vote yes.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance
Leo X 1513-1512
Pages 477-481.
The Pope that gave his name to one of the most brilliant and immoral ages in the history of Rome owed his ecclesiastical career to the political strategy of his father. Lorenzo de’ Medici had been almost destroyed by Sixtus IV; he hoped the power of his family, and the security of his progeny in Florence, would be helped by having a Medici sitting in the college of cardinals, in the inner circles of the Church. He destined his second son for the ecclesiastical state almost from Giovanni’s infancy. At seven ( 1482 ) the boy was given the tonsure; soon he was dowered with the benefices ‘in commendam’: i.e., he was made absentee beneficiary of church properties, and received their surplus revenue.. At eight he was appointed protonotary apostolic; at fourteen he was made a cardinal.
The young prelate was provided with all the education available to a millionaire’s son. He grew up among scholars, poets, statesmen, and philosophers; he was tutored by Marsilio Ficino; he learned Greek and philosophy. From his father, perhaps, he learned the profuse and sometimes reckless generosity, and the gay, almost epicurean, manner of life which were to distinguish his cardinalate and his pontificate, with far-reaching results to the Christian world. At thirteen he entered the university that his father had established at Pisa. At sixteen Lorenzo sent him off (March 12, 1492 ) to join the college of cardinals in Rome.
Lorenzo died less than a month later, and Giovanni had hardly reached the “sink of iniquity’ when he hurried back to Florence to support his elder brother Piero in a precarious inheritance of political authority. It was one of Giovanni’s rare misfortunes that he was again in Florence when Pieri fell. to escape the indiscriminate wrath of the citizens against the Medici family he disguised himself as a Franciscan friar, made his way unrecognised through hostile crowds, and applied for admission to the monastery of San Marco, which his forbears had lavishly endowed, but which was at the time under the command of his father’s enemy, Savonarola. The friars refused him admission, he hid for a time in a suburb, and then made his way over the mountains to join his brothers in Bologna. For six years he lived as a fugitive or an exile, but apparently never out of funds. He visited Germany, Flanders, and France. Finally, reconciling himself to Alexander, he took up his residence in Rome (1500).
His vicissitudes were resumed when Julius II appointed him papal legate to govern Bologna and the Romagna ( 1511 ). He accompanied the papal army to Ravenna; walked unarmed amid the battle, encouraging the soldiers; stayed too long on the field of defeat, administering the sacraments to the dying; and was captured by a Greek detachment in the service of the victorious French. Taken as a prisoner to Milan, he escaped from his lenient captors, joined the Spanish- papal forces that sacked Prato and took Florence, and shared with his brother Giuliano in the restoration of the Medici to power ( 1512 )A few months later he was called to Rome to take part in selecting a successor to Julius II.
He was still only thirty-seven, and could hardly have expected that he would himself be chosen pope. He entered the conclave in a litter, suffering from an anal fistula. After a week of debate, and apparently without simony, Giovanni de’ Medici was elected Pope ( March 11 1513 ) and took the name of Leo X. He was not yet a priest, but this defect was remedied on March 15.
Everybody was surprised and delighted. After the wars and turbulence and tantrums of Julius, it was a relief that a young man already distinguished for his easy going good nature, his tact and courtesy, and his opulent patronage of letters and art, was now to lead the Church, presumably in the ways of peace.
The inauguration ceremonies were lavish beyond any precedent,costing 100,000 ducats. The banker Agostino Chigi provided a float on which a Latin inscription proclaimed hopefully: “Once Venus”( Alexander ) “ reigned, then Mars” (Julius ), now Pallas”. Never had a man mounted the pontifical chair under more favourable auspices of public approbation.
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" Never had a man mounted the pontifical chair under more favourable auspices of public approbation."
Let's hope he can live up to this.
So"the college of cardinals in Rome" is now"the sink of iniquity".
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Pope Leo is compared to Pallas.
Here is a description from Greek mythology. It is short.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/pallas.html
Emily
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Hmm. I know Pallas Athena was the goddess of wisdom. Was Pallas also considered wise, I wonder?
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There seem to be several entities called Pallas who were associated with Athena. Depending on which tale you've heard, Pallas could have been her father, her sister, her best friend, or her teacher. In the sister/best friend/teacher versions Athena accidently kills Pallas. Being grief stricken, she takes on the name Pallas in honor of her dead sister/friend/teacher. At any rate Athena seems to be a well rounded gal with, in addition to wisdom, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, female arts, crafts, justice and skill within her purview. Pallas her father and Pallas the Giant both has something to do with war, the latter Athena slew during the Olympian-Titan war for control over the cosmos.
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A portrait of Leo X by Raphael..........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Leo_X_(Raphael)
Emily
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"Leo traveled around Rome at the head of a lavish parade featuring panthers, jesters, and Hanno a white elephant."
My opinion: Anyone who keeps wild animals caged for their own amusement should themselves be put in a cage, fed an inappropriate diet, and forced to live with the animals.
Hanno the elephant has his own website on wikipedia. Here is an excerpt........
Hanno (Italian, Annone; c. 1510 – 8 June 1516) was the pet white elephant given by King Manuel I of Portugal to Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de' Medici) on his coronation. Hanno, actually an Asian elephant, came to Rome in 1514 with the Portuguese ambassador Tristão da Cunha and quickly became the Pope's favorite animal. Hanno died two years later from complications of a treatment for constipation with gold-enriched laxative.
Hanno was said to be white in colour, and arrived by ship from Lisbon to Rome in 1514, aged about four years, and was kept initially in an enclosure in the Belvedere courtyard, then moved to a specially constructed building between St. Peter's Basilica and the Apostolic Palace, near the Borgo Sant'Angelo
Hanno became a great favourite of the papal court and was featured in processions. Two years after he came to Rome, he fell ill suddenly, was given a purgative, and died on 8 June 1516, with the pope at his side. Hanno was interred in the Cortile del Belvedere at the age of seven.
The artist Raffaello Santi designed a memorial fresco (which does not survive), and the Pope himself composed the epitaph:
“ Under this great hill I lie buried
Mighty elephant which the King Manuel
Having conquered the Orient
Sent as captive to Pope Leo X.
At which the Roman people marvelled, --
A beast not seen for a long time,
And in my brutish breast they perceived human feelings.
Fate envied me my residence in the blessed Latium
And had not the patience to let me serve my master a full three years.
But I wish, oh gods, that the time which Nature would have assigned to me,
and Destiny stole away,
You will add to the life of the great Leo.
That which Nature has stolen away
Raphael of Urbino with his art has restored.
Bring out the cage and someone shove Leo in, lock it, and throw the key in the Tiber.
Emily
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A pope writing a poem to an elephant? That has to be a first!
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But I wish, oh gods, that the time which Nature would have assigned to me,
and Destiny stole away,
You will add to the life of the great Leo.
What a massive ego Leo had.
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Durant writes.........
At seven ( 1482 ) the boy was given the tonsure; soon he was dowered with the benefices ‘in commendam’: i.e., he was made absentee beneficiary of church properties, and received their surplus revenue. At eight he was appointed protonotary apostolic; at fourteen he was made a cardinal.
Soon after turning seven, Leo was raking in money from church properties. No wonder his father put him into the 'church business'. The goal was to head the church as 'pope' where the real money and power resided. Leo wasn't even a priest.
What does a 'fourteen year old cardinal' do? They sent him off to school for a couple of years to study Greek and philosophy, and then sent him to Rome at the age of 16. So what does a '16 year old' cardinal do in the 'sink of iniquity' as Durant wrote. My dictionary states that iniquity is WICKEDNESS and SIN. They even used capital letters for the words as I have copied them.
I think I read that the catholic church no longer names pre-teens or teenagers as cardinals. Someone correct me if I am wrong. I know that the last few popes in this series have named teens to the office of cardinal and we are now into the 1500's.
I still don't understand what a 16 year old (uneducated in the church) cardinal would do.
Emily
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The Durant's SoC
Vol.V The Renaissance
pages 481-486
Leo X: The Happy Pope.
He began with excellent measures. He forgave the cardinals who had staged the anti council of Pisa and Milan; that threat of schism ended. He promised -- and kept his promise -- to refrain from touching the estates left by cardinals. He reopened the Lateran Council. He effected some minor ecclesiastical reforms, and reduced taxes; but his edict calling for larger reforms ( May 3 1514 ) encountered so much opposition from the functionaries whose incomes it would abate, that he made no strenuous effort to enforce it. “I will think the matter over,” he said, “ and see how I can satisfy everybody.” This was his character, and his character was in his face.
Raphael’s portrait of him ( Pitti ), painted between 1517 and 1519, is not as well known as that of Julius, but that was partly Leo’s fault; there were in this case less depth of thought, heroism of action, and worth of inner soul to give majesty to the outward face and frame. The representation is merciless. A massive man of more than medium height, and much more than medium weight -- the indignity of obesity concealed under a fur trimmed robe of velvet white and cape of scarlet red; hands soft and flabby, here shorn of the many rings that normally adorned them; a reading glass to help short sighted eyes; round head and plump cheeks, full lips and a double chin; large nose and ears; some lines of bitterness from the nose to the corners of the mouth; heavy eyes and a slightly frowning brow: this is the Leo disillusioned with diplomacy, and perhaps soured with the unmannerly Reformation rather than the lighthearted hunter and musician, the generous patron, the cultivated hedonist whose accession had so gladdened Rome. To do him justice the record must be added to the picture. A man is many men, to divers men and times; and not even the greatest portraitist can show all these features in one moment’s face.
The basic quality in Leo, born of his fortunate life, was a good nature. He had a pleasant word for everybody except the Protestants ( whom he could not begin to understand )’ and gave so generously to so many that even this profuse philanthropy, involving heavy drafts on Christian purses, shared in causing the Reformation. He could lie like a diplomat when he had to, and now and then bettered the instruction of the treacherous statesmanship that enmeshed him. More often he was humane, as when he forbade ( in vain ) the enslavement of American Indians, and did his best to check the Inquisitorial ferocity of Ferdinand the Catholic.
We get a kindlier view of the Pope than in Raphael’s picture when we read how the peasants and villagers would come to greet him as he passed along their roads, and would offer him their modest gifts-- which were so handsomely returned by the pontiff that the people awaited his hunting trips. To the poor girls among them he gave marriage dowries; he paid the debts of the sick and aged, or the parents of large families. These simple folk loved him more sincerely than the 2000 persons who made up his menage at the Vatican.
But Leo’s court was no mere focus of amusement and hilarity. It was also the meeting place of responsible statesmen, and Leo was one of them. The labours of Popes from Nicholas V to Leo himself in the improvement and adornment of the Vatican, in the assemblage of literary and artistic genius, and of the ablest ambassadors in Europe, made the court of Leo the zenith not of the art ( for that had come under Julius) but of the literature and brilliance if the Renaissance. In mere quantity of culture history had never seen its equal, not even in Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome.
The city itself prospered and expanded as Leo’s gathered gold flowed along its economic arteries. In thirteen years after his accession, said the Venetian ambassador, ten thousand houses were built in Rome, chiefly by newcomers from northern Italy following the migration of the Renaissance. Paolo Giovio who moved in Leo’s court, estimated the population of Rome at 85,000. It was not yet so fair a city as Florence or Venice, but it was now by common consent the hub of Western civilization. Marcello Alberini, in 1527, called it “the rendezvous of the world”. Leo, amid amusements and foreign affairs, regulated the importation and price of food, abrogated monopolies and “corners “, reduced taxes, administered justice impartially, struggled to drain the Pontine mashes, promoted agriculture in the Campagna, and continued the work of Alexander and Julius in opening or improving the streets of Rome. Like his father in Florence, he engaged artists to plan gorgeous pageants, encouraged the masked festivities of Carnival, even allowed Borgian bullfights to be staged in St. Peter’s square. He wished the people to share in the happiness and jollity of the new Golden Age.
The city took its cue from the Pope, and let joy be unconfined. Prelates, poets, parasites, panders, and prostitutes hurried to Rome to drink the golden rain. The cardinals -- dowered by the pontiffs, and above all by Leo, with innumerable benefices that sent them revenues from all parts of Latin Christendom -- were now far richer than the old nobility, which was sinking into economic and political decay. Some cardinals lived in stately palaces maned by as many as three hundred servants and adorned with every art and luxury known to the time. They did not quite think of themselves as ecclesiastics; they were statesmen, diplomats, administrators; they were the Roman Senate of the Roman Church; and they proposed to live like senators. They smiled at those foreigners who expected of them the abstinence and continence of priests. Like so many men of their age, they judged conduct not by moral but by aesthetic standards; a few commandments might be broken with impunity if it were done with courtesy and taste.
They surrounded themselves with pages, musicians, poets and humanists, and now and then dined with costly courtesans. They mourned that their salons were normally woman less. They envied Ferrara, Urbino, and Mantua, and rejoiced when Isabella d’Este came to spread her robes and feminine graces over their unisexual feast. There had been cultivated circles in the smaller capitals, and Castiglione preferred the quiet coterie of Urbino to the cosmopolitan, noisier, flashier civilization of Rome. But Urbino was a tiny island of culture, this was a stream, a sea.
Luther came and saw it, and was shocked and repelled; Erasmus came and saw it, and was charmed to ecstasy. A hundred poets proclaimed that the ‘Saturnia regna’ had returned.
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Well, well, well, the more things change, the more they stay the same - it must be human nature and we should continue to expect it, thereby creating less stress for ourselves..........uh?
Jean
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I just found this site while looking for a bust of Beatrice D'Este. (i am reading a free online bio of Isabelle D'Este and they mentioned a bust of Beatrice sculpted by Cristoforo Romano! So i went looking for a picture) the site looks like it could keep one busy for days. Play around w/ the links that are those weird symbols at the top of the page and then future pages, you will find info for much of history.
http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/DOOR.html
Jean
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This is the site on "3rd millennium library" that discusses the Estes, just an fyi. I can't vouch for the info bcs i haven't yet found any information about who's managing the site, but i find the whole 3rd millennium site very interesting.
http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/BEATRICE_D_ESTE/BEA_DOOR.html
(oh, i just noticed that the Beatrice D'Este info was writren by Julie Cartwright Ady - a prominent art historian.)
Jean
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Jean, I got curious about who put the Third Millennium site up too. The contact name is Cristo Raul, but I can't find any other info about hm or who sponsors the site. Lots and lots of books, and I did run into a page in the essay group for "The Origin of Tyranny" that can be downloaded to an ebook reader. So at least some of these are downloadable. Most of the author's names are unfamiliar to me, but I did see Henry Cabot Lodge's book on George Washington. I looked up Jacob Abbott whose name appears frequently in the titles. He was primarily a writer of children's books and was known for the Rollo children's series.
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What a resource!!!
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This is a particulary interesting chapter in Beatrice d'Este's bio from " the third millenium site" - actually, i had started reading it from the " free books" site before i saw it on 3rd M. The chapter is on 1492 and Lodovico's (her husband) reviving of the universities, libraries, the arts and literature, architecture, towns, and his 16 yr support if Leonardo de Vinci.
It's very interesting to me how many prominent historical events happened, or were happening in 1492. Huumm, numerology? Astrology? Coincidence?
http://www.third-millennium-library.com/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/BEATRICE_D_ESTE/11.html
A quote from Leonardo about Lodovico
"In the poet's words, he (Lodivici) was the magnet who drew men of genius (virtuosi) from all parts of the world to Milan. He might be an exacting and critical master, he was certainly never satisfied with any work short of the best—even Leonardo, we have seen, did not always find him easy to please—but once he discovered a man who was excellent in any branch of knowledge, he thought no cost too great to retain him at his court. And so the foremost scholars and the finest artists, Giorgio Merula and Lancinus Curtius, Caradosso and Cristoforo Romano, Bramante and Leonardo, were all drawn to Milan in turn, and, having once entered the Moro's service, remained there until the end."
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The Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 498-501
Michelangelo and Leo X
Julius II had left funds to his executor for the completion, on a smaller scale, of the tomb that Michelangelo had designed for him. The artist worked at this task for the first three years of Leo’s pontificate, and received from the executors, in those years, 6100 ducats. Most of what remains of the monument was probably produced in this period, along with the ‘Christ Risen ‘ of Santamaria Sopra Minerva-- a handsome naked athlete whom later taste clothed in a loincloth of bronze. A letter written by Michelangelo in May 1518, tells how Signorelli came to his studio and borrowed eighty giulli ( $800?) which he never returned, and adds “he found me working on a marble statue four cubits in height, which has the hands bound behind the back”. A statue in the Louvre fits the description. Near it is a finer “Captive”, naked except for a narrow band about the breast: here the musculature is not exaggerated; the body a symphony of health and beauty; this is Greek perfection. Four unfinished Schiavi or Slaves in the Florence Academy were apparently intended as caryatids to support the superstructure of the tomb. The aborted tomb is now in Julius’ church of San Pietro in Vincoli: a magnificent massive throne, pillars elegantly carved, and a seated “Moses”-- an ill-proportioned monster of beard and horns and wrathful brow, holding the tables of the Law.
If we choose to believe an improbable story in Vasari, Jews could be seen on any Saturday entering the Christian church “ to worship this figure, not as a work of human hand, but as something divine.” The remaining figures of the tomb were indifferently carved by his aids: above the Moses and Madonna, and at her feet the half-recumbent effigy of Julius II, crowned with the papal tiara. The whole monument is a torso, a painfully interrupted work of scattered years from 1506 to 1545, confused, enormous, incongruous, and absurd.
While these figures were being chiselled out, Leo -- perhaps during a stay in Florence -- conceived the idea of finishing the church of San Lorenzo there. This was the shrine of the Medici, containing the tombs of Cosimo Lorenzo, and many other members of the family.Bruunellesco had built the church, but had left the facade unfinished. Leo asked Raphael, Giuliano da Sangallo, Baccio d’Agnolo, Andrea and Iacopo Sansovino to submit plans for completing the front. Michelangelo, apparently of his own accord sent in a plan of his own, which Leo accepted as the best; hence the Pope cannot be blamed, as so many have blamed him, for diverting Michelangelo from Julius’ Tomb. Leo sent him to Florence where he hired assistants for the work, quarrelled with them, sent them packing, and brooded inactively in his uncongenial role as architect. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, Leo’s cousin, appropriated some of the idle marble for work on the Cathedral; Michael fumed, but still dallied. At last ( 1520 ) Leo freed from the contract, and required no accounting for the funds that had been advanced to the artist. Leo recognized Michelangelo’s supremacy in art, but, he said, “he is an alarming man, as you yourself see, and there is no getting on with him.” Sebastastino reported the conversation to Michelangelo adding: “I told his holiness that your alarming ways did no man any harm, and that it was only your devotion to the great work to which you have given yourself that made you seem terrible to others.”
Michelangelo was the least prepossessing figure in an age brilliant with proud beauty of person and splendour of dress. Middle height, broad shoulders, slim frame, large head, high brow, ears protruding beyond the cheeks, temples bulging out beyond the ears, drawn and sombre face, crushed nose, sharp, small eyes, grizzly hair and beard -- this was Michelangelo in his prime. He wore old clothing, and clung to it till it became almost part of his flesh; and he seemed to have obeyed half of his father’s advice: “ see that you do not wash. Have yourself rubbed down, but do not wash.” Though rich, he lived like a poor man, not only frugally but penuriously. He ate whatever he found at hand, sometimes dining on a crust of bread. At Bologna he and his three workmen occupied one room, slept in one bed. “ While he was in full vigour,” says Condivi, “ he usually went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn because of a chronic tendency to cramp.... At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time that when he drew them off, the skin came away together with the leather.” As Vasari put it, “he had no mind to undress merely that he might have to dress again.”
While he prided himself on his supposed noble lineage, he preferred the poor to the rich, the simple to the intellectual, the toil of a worker to the leisure and luxuries of wealth. He gave most of his earnings to maintain his shiftless relatives. He liked solitude; he found it intolerable to make small talk with third rate minds; wherever he was, he followed his own train of thought. He cared little for beautiful women, and saved a fortune by continence. When a priest expressed regret that Michelangelo had not married and begotten children, he replied “ I have only too much of a wife in my art, and she has given me trouble enough. As to my children, they are the works that I shall leave; and if they are not worth much, they will at least live for a long time.” He could not bear women about the house. He preferred males both for companionship and for art. He painted women, but always in their maternal maturity, not in the bright charm of youth; it is remarkable that both he and Leonardo where apparently insensitive to the physical beauty of woman, who had seemed to most artists the very embodiment and fountain head of beauty. There is no evidence that he was homosexual; apparently all the energy that might have gone into sex was in his case used up in work. He had periods of apparent sluggishness, and then the sudden fever of creation would possess him again, and everything would be ignored, even the sack of Rome.
His bitter temper and sombre mood were his lifelong tragedy. At times he was melancholy to the edge of madness; and in his old age the fear of hell so obsessed him that he thought of his art as a sin, and he dowered poor girls to propitiate an angry God. A neurotic sensitivity brought him almost daily misery. As early as 1508 he wrote to his father: “It is now about fifteen years since I had a single hour of wellbeing.” He would not have many more, though he still had fifty-eight years to live.
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The Durants' SoC.
Volume V The Renaissance.
Pages 507-509
To understand Raphael and Leo’s Rome we must pause for a moment and look at the egregious Chigi. He typified a new group in Rome: rich merchants or bankers, usually of non -Roman origin, whose wealth put the old Roman nobility in the shade, and whose generosity to artists and writers was exceeded only by that of popes and cardinals. Born in Siena, he had imbibed financial subtlety with his daily food. By the age of forty-three he was chief Italian money lender to republics and kingdoms, Christian or infidel. He financed trade with a dozen countries including Turkey, and by lease from Julius II acquired a monopoly in alum and salt. In 1511 he gave Julius an additional reason for war on Ferrara-- Duke Alfonso had dared to sell salt at a lower price than Agostino could afford to take. His firm had a branch house in every major Italian town, and in Constantinople, Alexandria,Cairo,Lyons, London, Amsterdam. A hundred vessels sailed under his flag; twenty thousand men were in his pay; a half dozen sovereigns sent him gifts; his best horse was from the Sultan; when he visited Venice ( to which he had lent 125,000 ducats ), he was seated next to the doge. Asked by Leo to estimate his wealth, he answered perhaps for reason of tax, that it was impossible to gauge; however his annual income was reckoned to be 70,000 ducats. His silver plate and jewellery equalled in quantity that of all the Roman nobility combined. His bedstead was carved in ivory and encrusted with gold and precious stones. The fixtures of his bathroom were of solid silver. He had a dozen palaces and villas, of which the most ornate was the Villa Chigi, on the west bank of the Tiber. Designed by Baldassare Peruzzi, adorned with paintings by Peruzzi, Raphael, Sodoma, Giulio Romano, and Sebastiano del Piombo, it was hailed by Romans, on its completion in 1512, as the lordliest palace in Rome.
The Chigi banquets had almost the reputation that those of Lucullus had gained in Caesar’s time. In the stables that Raphael had just completed, and before they were occupied by handsomer beasts than men, Argostino entertained Pope Leo and fourteen cardinals, in 1518, with a repast that proudly cost him 2000 ducats. At that distinguished function eleven massive silver plates were stolen, presumably by servants in the retinue of the guests. Chigi forbade any search and expressed courteous astonishment that so little had been stolen. When the feast was over, the silk carpet, the tapestries, and the fine furniture were removed, and a hundred horses filled the stalls.
A few months later the banker gave another dinner, this time in the loggia of the villa, projecting out over the river. After each course all the silver used in serving it was thrown into the Tiber before the eyes of the guests, to assure them that no plate would be used twice. After the banquet Chigi’s servants drew up the silver from the net that had secretly been lowered into the stream beneath the windows of the loggia. At a dinner given in the main hall of the villa on August 28 1519, each guest-- including Pope Leo and twelve cardinals-- was served on silver or gold plate faultlessly engraved with his own motto, crest, and coat of arms, and was fed with special fish, game, vegetables, fruits, delicacies, and wines, freshly imported for the occasion from his own country or locality.
Chigi financed the editing of Pindar by the scholar Cornelio Benigo of Viterbo, and set up in his own home a press for its printing; and the Greek type cut for that press excelled in beauty that which Aldus Manutius had used in publishing the 'Odes’ two years before. This was the first Greek text printed in Rome. (1515) Next to money and his mistress, Chigi loved all the forms of beauty that art had fashioned. He rivalled Leo in commissions to artists, and lead him a merry chase in the pagan interpretation of the Renaissance. He seems to have thought of his villa as not merely his home, but as a public gallery of art, to which the public might occasionally be admitted.
In that villa, at the aforementioned dinner in August 28, 1519, Leo himself officiating, Chigi at last married the faithful mistress with whom he had lived for the preceding eight years. Eight months later he died, within a few days of the death of Raphael. His estate, valued at 800,000 ducats was divided chiefly among his children. Lorenzo, the oldest son, led a life of dissipation, and was adjudged insane in 1553. The villa Chigi was sold to the second Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for a small sum about 1580, and from that time bore the name of Farnesina.
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Ah yes, Salt. Although I don't remember reading about Chigi, I did read a great deal about the collection and trade of salt along the Italian coastline. For more than you ever want to know about salt, see Mark Kurlansky's book Salt: A World History.
Scroll down to see a lovely picture of the salt works at the Valli di Comacchio which is east and a little south of Ferrara.
http://www.emiliaromagnaturismo.it/en/apennines-and-nature/po-delta/delta-po-ferrara.html
Only a small area is now maintained, mostly for educational and tourist purposes. Most of the Comacchio has been rehabilitated and is now a nature reserve. Each year they hold an international birdwatching fair. YouTube has a number of videos showing the reserve (and lots of flamengos) if you are interested.
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Loved Kurlansky's book on salt, so many interesting tidbits of connecting nature's bounty to historical events and to human's needs for survival.
I never heard of Chigi. Google " Villa Chigi" to see many sites of Chigi houses.
Charleton Heston portrayed an unfriendly Michaelangelo in the movies, but the Durants make him sound totally anti-social and nasty to be around. I wonder how he would be treated in today's world? Would his artistic genius be lost in today's world of medications and isolation of anyone not behaving in the narrow range of "normal"; in a world of eccentric behavior thrown up on the web for the world to see; in a world of sanitation standards that where obviously higher than M would be willing to adhere to. If he was medicated for his obvious depression, would he exhibit the creative genius that he did? .......Hhhuuuuuuummmmmm...... Jean
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Lovely pictures of Po Ferraro, Frybabe.
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In reading Durant's description of Leo and his pleasant easy going nature and generousity, my first thought was why not? Leo had never worked, he had lived off the work of others all his life, and was one who lived the life of leisure and liked to be entertained. For some reason this verse come to mind.
This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought
Should contrive our fees to pilfer, one who for his native land,
Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.
Aristophanes 422BC
In checking out what others had to say, this excerpt from Wikipedia seemed interesting.
Spendthrift
Leo's lively interest in art and literature, to say nothing of his natural liberality, his alleged nepotism, his political ambitions and necessities, and his immoderate personal luxury, exhausted within two years the hard savings of Julius II, and precipitated a financial crisis from which he never emerged and which was a direct cause of most of what, from a papal point of view, were calamities of his pontificate.
He sold cardinals' hats. He sold membership in the "Knights of Peter". He borrowed large sums from bankers, curials, princes and Jews. The Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the paying number of offices on Leo's death at 2,150, with a capital value of nearly 3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats.
The ordinary income of the pope for the year 1517 had been reckoned at about 580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the States of the Church, 100,000 from annates, and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by Sixtus IV.
These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as they were received. Then the pope resorted to pawning palace furniture, table plate, jewels, even statues of the apostles. Several banking firms and many individual creditors were ruined by the death of Leo.
Of the last few popes, only Julius seemed to have a lick of sense when it came to managing the affairs of the Vatican. Borgia was a spendthrift before him, and Leo after him. It is a wonder the entire place did not get down to a chamber pot.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Vol V The Renaissance.
Pages 519-522.
In July 1517, Leo named thirty-one new cardinals, many of them men of ability, but most chosen frankly for their capacity to pay for the honor and power. Even blasé Italy was shocked; and in Germany the story of the transactions shared in the anger of Luther’s revolt . ( October 1517) When, in this momentous year, Sultan Selim conquered Egypt for the Ottoman Turks, Leo appealed in vain for a crusade. In his blind eagerness he sent agents throughout Christendom to offer extraordinary indulgences in return for contrition, confession, and contributions to the expenses of the proposed crusade.
Sometimes he borrowed money at forty percent from the bankers of Rome, who charged him such rates because they feared that his careless administration of papal finances would ensure bankruptcy. As security for some of these loans he pledged his silver plate, his tapestries, his jewels. All in all, he spent during his pontificate 4,500,000 ducats, and died owing 400,000 more. A pasquinade expressed the opinion of Rome: “ Leo has eaten up three pontificates: the treasury of Julius II, the revenues of Leo, and those of his successor.” When he died Rome experienced one of the worst financial crashes in its history.
The Pope was ill in in August, 1521, partly from the pain of his fistula, partly from the worries and excitement of war. He recovered, but fell ill again in October. At midnight, December 1-2, 1521, he died, ten days before completing his forty-fifth year. Many of the attendants, and some members of the Medici family, carried off from the Vatican everything they could lay their hands on. Guicciardini, Giovio, and Castiglione thought that he had been poisoned, but apparently he died of malarial fever, like Alexander VI.
In Rome, the bankers despoiled themselves. The Bini firm had lent Leo 200,000 ducats, the Gaddi 32000, the Ricasoli 10,000; moreover, Cardinal Pucci had lent 150,000, and Cardinal Salviati 80,000. The cardinals would have first claim on anything salvaged; and Leo had died worse than bankrupt. Artists, poets, and scholars knew the heyday of their good fortune had passed, though they had no suspicion yet of the extent of their disaster.
Erasmus had rightly praised his kindness and humanity, his magnanimity and learning, his love and support of the arts, and had called Leo’s pontificate an age of gold. But Leo was too habituated to gold. Raised in a palace, he learned luxury as well as art; he never labored for his income, though he faced perils bravely; and when the revenues of his papacy were placed in his trust, they slipped through his careless figures while he basked in the happiness of recipients, or planned expensive wars. Proceeding on the lines laid down by Alexander and Julius, and inheriting their achievements, he made the papal states stronger than ever, but he lost Germany by his extravagance and his exertions. He could see the beauty of a vase, but not the Protestant Reformation taking shape beyond the Alps. He was a glory and a disaster to the Church.
He loved beautiful form too much, too little the revealing significance that great art clothes in beautiful form.. He overworked Raphael, underestimated Leonardo, and could not, like Julius, find a way through Michelangelo’s temper to his genius. He liked comfort too much to be great. It is a pity to judge him so harshly, for he was lovable. His support of the Roman humanists helped to spread to France their cultivation of classic literature and form. Under his aegis Rome became the throbbing heart of European culture; thither the artists flocked to paint or carve or build, the scholars came to study, the poets to sing, the men of wit to sparkle. “ Before I forget thee, Rome,” wrote Erasmus, “ I must plunge into the river of Lethe... What precious freedom, what treasures in the way of books, what depths of knowledge among the learned, what beneficial intercourse ! Where else could one find such literary society, of such versatility of talent in one and the same place ? The gentle Fiocondo, Raphael, and Sansovini and Sangalli, Sebastiano and Michelangelo -- Where shall we find again, in one city and decade, such a company ?
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A pasquinade expressed the opinion of Rome: “ Leo has eaten up three pontificates: the treasury of Julius II, the revenues of Leo, and those of his successor.” When he died Rome experienced one of the worst financial crashes in its history.
We keep saying "the more things change, the more they stay the same", but those sentences could describe the last decade!
Yes, the Protestant Reformation was all geared up to clean house, now some of them need ckeaning up. Human beings are amazing, someone(s) screw up and others clean up, thank goodness, but then the "lord of the flies" syndrome takes over for the cleaner-uppers and it just goes round and round.
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Having been the victem of a spendthrift relative, I'm interested in spendthrifts. A number of great people were spendthrifts, van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Thomas Jefferson, on and on, and they all left broken people behind them who pay, not only with money (although not on the scale that Leo did).
One surprising trait they all seem to have in common is that they are unusually generous. So, Leos generosity enabled him to leave us many good things. This generosity is usually thought of as a virtue, but I think it is part of the distorted view of money and material goods that they have. Today is today: if they have money, they are happy to spend it, or give it to someone else. Tomorrow and the consequences tomorrow will bring don't exist for them. Tomorrow comes, either more money comes, or it doesn't, and they either spend it or find someone they can borrow from. They can borrow again and again saying they will pay it back, and BELIEVING it (even though they never have paid back all their other loans. yesterday doesn't exisst for them either). After all, that's tomorrow, and something will come up.
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Mabel and Joan interesting comments on the 'Spendthrift'. It is good to see that Durant included this passage in the story. I read the book about three years ago and my memory of Leo is scant, and since I no longer have the book, I must rely on Trevor or whatever I can find online.
Brian are you out there? It would be good to hear your comments on 'spendthrifts', and the comments of all others who have posted here on that subject. Trevor? Frybabe?
For myself, I am not a spendthrift. I have always lived within my income and saved when I could. I like Joan have known some spendthrifts and wouldn't trust them with a wooden nickel.
I see usury was alive and well at some of the banks and the interest rates sky high. Who other than an 'airhead' would enter into such ruinous agreements. My opinion of Leo has dropped another few notches, and is now at rock bottom.
Emily
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I'm here Emily. I certainly do not fit in the spendthrift catagory. My one downfall, howefvwer, is books. Even so, after I go layed-off from work the book buying slowed down considerably. With a Kindle for Christmas and a new membership at the Library, I can still read without spending.
I'd hate to think what the loan sharks are charging now-a-days. When I was in high school we learned that interest rates above 12% (or there abouts) was usury. Look at what those who use credit cards and don't pay all their balances have to pay today.
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I am also following this discussion, but have not posted recently.
Thanks to Trevor for his devoted attention to posting regular chunks
of material, and to those who give their opinions on them.
As for spendthrifts - - - don't we all have a weakness here? I used to be
a smoker (quit 40 years ago) - what a dangerous waste of money that was.
And though I am fortunate enough to 'live within my means' there are times
when I splurge, and am not ashamed of my actions later.
Keep up the good work!
Brian
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"My one downfall, howefvwer, is books". That's me! Everyone has one area where they "let loose" a bit. But that is so far from being a spendthrift. It's almost like they HAVE TO spend money!
Do any of you know Connie Kinsella's books about the "shopoholic"?
FRY: how do you not spend money with a kindle? I find it's a bit of a money-pit if I'm not careful.
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JoanK, most of my e-books are from Project Gutenberg or Many Books. They are all free and they have several versions to fit different E-readers. Gutenberg used to also have versions in pdf form, but I cannot locate any now. Many Books does have pdf, so if you have Acrobat Reader, but don't have an E-book reader like Kindle, you can still download a book to your computer and read it that way. Granted, most are all really old, out of copyright books, but I get to read a lot of old classics that I missed when I was younger.
What I do is download a book file to my computer, hook up my Kindle to the flash drive port, and then copy the file into my Kindle file folder for text. If I really wanted to, I could also download audio books to the audio folder. Project Gutenberg (I am not sure about Many Books) has many of the books in audio files. My Kindle will also accept Audible.com audio books.
I like free! If it is a newer book, I check the used bookstore first before buying new.
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There's still the library! I am not a book buyer, except for a very few fiction books that i just loved, and non-fiction books i have used in my teaching, and women's history, and i have read thousands of books. Even today, if i couldn't get to the library - it's only 3 blocks up the street - i can download books from their website. There are many, many free book sites online. Some of them are repeats of the classics, or out of print books, but there are also sites that want readers of new authors. I never am at a lose for books to read, thank goodness.......
Jean
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I never am at a lose for books to read, thank goodness.......
Amen to that, Jean.
I am in the middle of reading my first library book (for the A Novel Bookstore discussion). There are several others I have in mind to borrow afterward. I still prefer to have my own, but it is a good way to read books I don't intend on reading again or lend to my sisters. It is also a good way to discover if it is worth buying for my shelves.
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The Durants' SoC
Vol.V The Renaissance
The Intellectual Revolt 1300-1534
Pages 525-528
In every age and nation, civilization is the product, privilege, and responsibility of a minority. The historian acquainted with the pervasive pertinacity of nonsense reconciles himself to a glorious future of superstition; he does not expect perfect states to arise out of imperfect men; he perceives that only a small proportion of any generation can be so freed from economic harassments as to have leisure and energy to think their own thoughts instead of those of their forebears or their environment; and he learns to rejoice if he can find in each period a few men and women who have lifted themselves, by the bootstraps of their brains, or by some boon of birth or circumstance, out of superstition, occultism, and credulity to an informed and friendly intelligence conscious of its infinite ignorance.
So in Renaissance Italy civilization was of the few, by the few, and for them. The simple common man, named legion, tilled and mined the earth, pulled the carts, or bore the burdens, toiled from dawn to dusk, and at evening had no muscle left for thought. He took his opinions, his religion, his answers to the riddles of life from the air about him, or inherited them with the ancestral cottage; he let others think for him because others made him work for them. While the uncommon man in Italy was half a century or more ahead of his class beyond the Alps in wealth and culture, the common man south of the Alps shared equally with his transalpine peers the superstitions of the time.
The people of Italy reckoned so many objects as true relics of Christ or the apostles that one might have furnished from the Renaissance Roman churches alone all the scenes of the Gospels. One church claimed to have the swaddling cloth of the Infant Jesus; another, hay from the Bethlehem stall; another, fragments of the multiplied loaves and fishes; another the table used at the Last Supper; another the picture of the Virgin painted by the angels for St. Luke. Venetian churches displayed the body of St. Mark, an arm of St. George, an ear of St. Paul, some roasted flesh of St. Lawrence, some of the very stones that had killed St. Stephen.
Some Carmelite monks at Bologna ( till Sixtus IV condemned them in 1474 ) taught that there was no harm in seeking knowledge from devils; and professional sorcerers offered their expert charms in invoking the aid of demons for paying customers. Witches -- sorcerers usually female-- were believed to have special access to such helpful devils, whom they treated as lovers or gods. In 1484 a bull of innocent VIII ( Summis desiderantes ) forbade resort to witches, took for granted the reality of some of their claimed powers, and, by spells and magic rhymes, curses, and other diabolical arts, had done grievous harm to men, women, children, and beasts. The Pope advised the officers of the inquisition to be on the alert against such practices. The bull did not impose belief in witchcraft as the official doctrine of the Church, nor did it inaugurate the prosecution of witches; popular belief in witches, and occasional punishment of them, long antedated the bull. The Pope was here faithful to the Old Testament which had commanded, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live “ In the year following the promulgation of the bull forty-one women were burned for witchcraft in Como alone. In 1486 the inquisitors at Brescia condemned several alleged witches to the “secular arm”-- ie. to death; but the government refused to execute the sentence, whereat Innocent was much peeved.
Matters went more harmoniously in 1510, when we hear of 140 persons burned at Brescia for witchcraft; and in 1514, in the pontificate of the gentle Leo, three hundred more were burned at Como. Whether through perverse stimulation by persecution, or from other causes, the number of persons who believed themselves, or were believed to have practised witchcraft rapidly increased, especially in subalpine Italy; it took on the nature and proportions of an epidemic.; popular report claimed that 25000 persons had attended a “witches’ Sabbath” on a plain near Brescia. In 1518 the inquisitors burned seventy alleged witches from the region, and had thousands of suspects in their prisons.. The Signory of Brescia protested against this wholesale detention, and interfered with further executions; whereupon Leo X, in a bull ‘Honestus ‘( February 15, 1521 ) ordered the excommunication of any officials, and the suspension of religious services in any community that refused to execute, without examination or revision, the sentences of the inquisitors.
The Signory, ignoring the bull, appointed two bishops, two Brescian physicians and on inquisitor to supervise all further witchcraft trials, and to enquire into the justice of previous condemnations; only these men were to have the power to condemn the accused. The Signory admonished the papal legate to put an end to the condemnation of persons for the sake of confiscating their property. It was a brave procedure; but ignorance and sadism got the upper hand, and in the two next centuries, in Protestant as well as Catholic lands, in the New World as well as the old, burnings for witchcraft were to form the darkest spots in the history of mankind.
The mania to know the future supported the usual variety of fortune-tellers-- palmists, dream interpreters, astrologers; These last were more numerous and powerful in Italy than in the rest of Europe. When Lorenzo de’ Medici re-established the University of Pisa he made no arrangements for a course in astrology, but the students clamoured for it, and he had to yield. In Lorenzo’s erudite circle Pico della Mirandola wrote a powerful attack upon astrology, but Marsilio Facino, still more learned, defended it. Yet astrology had in it a certain groping toward a scientific view of the universe; it escaped in some measure from belief in a universe ruled by divine or demonic whim, and aimed to find a co-ordinating and universal natural law.
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Is it just my imagination- or my lack of memory - or are those first two paragraphs a change in writing style for the Durants? The style seems a personal statement of historiography, rather than a statement of historical facts. I found it interesting but curious.
I wasn't here for the first several volumes, have they talked about witchcraft and its effect on women before this?
I'm watching "The Tudors" which has a lot of examples of the state/church confiscating property after accusing the owners of something or other. The Bill of Rights diminished that action significantly, thank goodness, but the issue of public domain is still often controversial.
Again, i find myself ambivalent about enjoying the artifacts of a minorities wealth - estates, art, jewels of that small royal/church hierarchy class - but at the same time, sad about the effect on ordinary people of the time and their resulting and continuing poverty. Altho having the court system, and building and maintaining those estates, did give thousands of people employment. It's like having the two little devils, one on each shoulder who are saying " on the one hand.......and on the other hand........" if i believed in astrology, i'd say it's my Libra-self being manifested........:)
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"In every age and nation, civilization is the product, privilege, and responsibility of a minority. The historian acquainted with the pervasive pertinacity of nonsense reconciles himself to a glorious future of superstition; he does not expect perfect states to arise out of imperfect men; he perceives that only a small proportion of any generation can be so freed from economic harassments as to have leisure and energy to think their own thoughts instead of those of their forebears or their environment; and he learns to rejoice if he can find in each period a few men and women who have lifted themselves, by the bootstraps of their brains, or by some boon of birth or circumstance, out of superstition, occultism, and credulity to an informed and friendly intelligence conscious of its infinite ignorance. "
this is the Durants at their Durantyist! The Durant who left the Church disillusioned. He doesn't show this side of him often, but it comes through. A break in their real attempt to be judicious and fair. In other words, they're human.
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Jean, (Mabel) I throughly enjoyed reading your post.
We have discussed witchcraft at one time or another through the years of this discussion. Evidently it has been around since man first hit on the idea of blaming women for most of the worlds problems, and that was before they could even read or write and put it into their law. Judaism put it in the Torah and I paraphrase, 'thou shall not suffer a witch to live'.
When the Jews created Christianity and sold it to the Roman Emperor, the Romans pushed it on the rest of Europe, as they entered into the Dark Ages.
The Roman Catholic Church became the enforcers against so called 'witches'.
There is no way to imagine a more 'uncivilized' act than that.
Emily
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Mabel1015j asks "I wasn't here for the first several volumes, have they talked about witchcraft and its effect on women before this?"
Durant talks about the subjugation of women to men on page 33 of the very first volume in the series. The word witchcraft appears first in VOL 3, " The Life of Greece " but from the trend in the discussion, it is clear that Durant thought that ideas of witchcraft were common in earlier mid-east civilizations. Trevor
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Joan, I agree with your assessment of Durant. He sometimes did bend over to defend the church and take their side in an argument. This time however he questioned all religion and its origins. It was good to read a grain of truth from Durant in the sea of superstition and occultism that forms all religions.
Up unto the Twentieth Century few men had the courage to take on religions and their occult beginnings, and if they did they were quickly silenced or eliminated. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all had the death penalty for non believers. Those middle east religions did not tolerate any thinking for yourself.
Today all three of these Arab religions down play their bloody birth, but they have been the cause of more death and destruction and waste of human potential than all of the natural disasters ever visited on humanity.
Emily
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Trevor, thank you for the information Jean asked about. These almost ten years have taken a toll on my memory bank.
I heard that Eloise was seriously ill and since she posted in this discussion over the years, I thought I should mention it here. She dropped out when Senior Net went down, but she was a regular over several years. I am sorry to hear of her health problems and wish her well.
Emily
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Eloise is indeed quite ill. They do not know how long she has. For more detail, look in The Library.
I'm sure she would appreciate cards. Here is her address:
E.DePelteau
10207 Av Larose
Montreal Quebec
Canada
H2B 2Y8
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Definitely send a card to Eloise. When Don (Radioman) asked, she was quite "emphatic" about it.
I've noticed in earlier volumes occasional critical comments that led me to believe that the Durants were not particularly fond of organized religion if not religious beliefs as a whole.
I am convinced that many people used the hunt for witches and heretics was used by more than a few people to accuse and destroy rivals and others who were not well liked, or were a little odd (as in mental illness or mental disabilities). The other nasty bit was that they didn't stop at witches, but collected and burned cats as well.
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Thank you Joan for the address for Eloise. I had hoped she could join us to celebrate our Tenth year this fall. So many of the early posters are no longer with us.
Trevor is still going strong, and for that I am thankful.
Emily
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I'm so sorry to hear about Eloise. I have enjoyed her contributions on this and other sites.
Thank you all for your answers to my questions, especially to Trevor for your specificity of Durant's discussion of witches. Do you have all the volumes?
There is an interesting theme in those two paragraphs of "minorities" in societies. In the first sentence they (i suppose by this volume Ariel has been acknowledged as co-author? Maybe that's why it reads a little differently) speak to the effect of the "minority" as the motivators/providers of the civilization of society. Then they speak of the small number of persons who had thelack of "economic harrassment" (love that phrase) to be able to think for themselves. They then lead us to thinking about the people who were burned at the stake for witchcraft over the centuries, "to form the darkest spots in the history of mankind". Yes, but overall a relative minority of people were burned. But it was ONE pope with his bull (interesting word from the sense of how that word can be used today) who scared the hell out of the masses and created the hysteria of the 25,000.
If i was teaching this in class, i would use this passage as a jumping off point to talk about a mythology of history.......... I bet most people who are not students of history, off the top of their heads, perceive that the great periods and twists and turns of history are created by majorities in societies, when in reality most major events of history are created by a minority, if not a few!.........any thoughts on that?
Jean
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" I bet most people who are not students of history, off the top of their heads, perceive that the great periods and twists and turns of history are created by majorities in societies, when in reality most major events of history are created by a minority, if not a few!.........any thoughts on that?"
That's worthy of a lot of thoughts, and people have gone back and forth about it. Yes, "one pope with his bull" created hysteria, but only because there was already an atmosphere that was ready for hysteria. If the pope today issued that bull, would the same thing happen?
I personally don't believe that history is created ONLY by individuals or ONLY by overall trends. Ther is a mixture. What do othes think?
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Durants' SoC
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 528-530
SCIENCE
The superstitions of the people, rather than the opposition of the church retarded the development of science. Censorship of publications did not become a substantial hindrance to science until the Counter Reformation that followed the council of Trent. ( 1545f ). Sixtus IV brought to Rome ( 1463 ) the most famous astronomer of the fifteenth century, Johann Muller “Regiomontanus”. During Alexander’s pontificate Copernicus taught mathematics and astronomy in the University of Rome. Copernicus had not yet come to his world-shaking theory of the earth’s orbital revolution, but Nicholas of Cusa had already suggested it; and both men were churchmen. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Inquisition was relatively weak in Italy, partly through the absence of the popes in Avignon, their quarrels in the Schism, and their infection with the enlightenment of the Renaissance. In 1440, the materialist Amadeo de’ Landi was tried by the Inquisition at Milan, and was acquitted; in 1497 Gabriele da Salo, a free thinking physician, was protected from the Inquisition by his patron, though “ he was in the habit of maintaining that Christ was not God but the son of Joseph.” Despite the inquisition, thought was freer in Italy, and education more advanced, than in any other country in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Her schools of astronomy, law, medicine, and literature were the goals of students from a dozen lands. Thomas Linacre, English physician and scholar, after completion of his university courses in Italy, set up an alter in the Italian Alps as he was returning to England, and, taking a last view of Italy, dedicated the altar to her as ‘Alma mater studiorum,’ the fostering mother of studies, the postgraduate university of the Christian world.
If, in this atmosphere of superstition beneath, and liberalism above, science made only modest advances in the two centuries before Vesalius ( 1514-64), it was largely because patronage and honour went to art, scholarship, and poetry, and there was as yet no clear call, in the economic or intellectual life of Italy, for scientific methods and ideas. A man like Leonardo could take a sweeping cosmic view, and touch a dozen sciences with eager curiosity; but there were no great laborities, dissection was only beginning, no microscope could help biology or medicine, no telescope could yet enlarge the stars, and bring the moon to the edge of the earth. The medieval love of beauty had matured into magnificent art; but there had been little medieval love of truth to grow into science; and the recovery of ancient literature stimulated a sceptical Epicureanism idealizing antiquity, rather than a stoic devotion to scientific research aiming to mould the future. the Renaissance gave its soul to art, leaving a little for literature, less for philosophy, least for science. In this sense it lacked the multiform mental activity of the Greek heyday from Pericles and Aeschylus to Zeno the Stoic and Aristarchus the astronomer. Science could not advance until philosophy had cleared the way.
Therefore it is natural that the same reader who knows by name a dozen Renaissance artists will find it hard to recall one Renaissance Italian scientist , barring Leonardo; even of Amerigo Vespucci he will have to be reminded; and Galileo ( 1564--1642) belongs to the seventeenth century. In truth there are no memorable names except in geography and medicine. Odorise Pordenone went to India and China as a missionary ( c, 1321 ), returned via Tibet and Persia, and wrote an account of what he had seen, adding much of value to what Marco Polo had reported a generation before. Paolo Toscanelli, astronomer, physician, and geographer, noted Halley’s comet in 1456, and was reputed to have given Columbus knowledge and encouragement for his Atlantic venture. Amerigo Vespucci of Florence made four voyages to the New World (1497f), claimed to have been the first to discover the mainland, and prepared maps of it; Martin Waldseemuller, publishing them, suggested that the continent be called America; the Italians liked the idea, and popularized it in their writings.
The biological sciences were the last to develop, for the theory of the special creation of man -- almost universally accepted -- made it unnecessary and dangerous to inquire into his natural origin. For the most part these sciences limited themselves to practical pursuits and studies in medical botany, horticulture, floriculture, and agriculture. Pietro de’ Crescenzi, at the age of seventy-six ( 1306), published Ruralia Commoda, an admirable manual of agriculture, except that it ignored the still better writings of the Spanish Moslems in this field. Lorenzo de’ Medici had kept a semi-public garden of rare plants at Carregi; the first public botanical garden was founded by Luca Ghini at Pisa in 1544. Almost all rulers of style had zoological gardens; and Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici kept a human menagerie -- a collection of barbarians of twenty different nationalities, all of splendid physique
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Almost all rulers of style had zoological gardens; and Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici kept a human menagerie -- a collection of barbarians of twenty different nationalities, all of splendid physique
I don't like the sounds of that. Reminds me of several SciFi programs/movies that had people in zoo cages for display.
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"beauty had matured into magnificent art; but there had been little medieval love of truth to grow into science; and the recovery of ancient literature stimulated a sceptical Epicureanism idealizing antiquity, rather than a stoic devotion to scientific research aiming to mould the future. "
It's been a long time since we read about the difference between the stoics and the epicureans: does this seem a fair contrast?
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Joan, it does seem a fair comparison if one considers the 'stoics' as devoted to scientific research.
This quote from Durant says that nothing trumped the world of the 'Occult'.
The biological sciences were the last to develop, for the theory of the special creation of man -- almost universally accepted -- made it unnecessary and dangerous to inquire into his natural origin.
I vehemently disagree with the words, 'almost universally accepted'. To say the Arab gods were accepted universally during the time period 1100AD to 1500AD stretches credulity.
During that time period of the Renaissance, who in the entirety of the Americas, that includes Canada, United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America knew anything about the Arab gods at the end of the Fifteenth century when they were discovered by Europeans.
China certainly did not adopt the Arab gods, India had been invaded by the Moslems but most remained Hindu or other sects. The world outside the middle east and Europe was not even aware of the Arab created gods. I would venture to say that the 'majority' of the peoples of the world had never heard of 'yahweh', 'Jesus', or 'Allah'.
I would also venture to say that even those who had heard the 'occult tales' of the Arab gods, many did not believe a word they said.
As Durant said, it was 'dangerous'...........
Fear is the mother of superstition.
Emily
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Almost all rulers of style had zoological gardens; and Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici kept a human menagerie -- a collection of barbarians of twenty different nationalities, all of splendid physique.
Frybabe, here is what Wikipedia says about the 'human zoo' during the Renaissance.
During the Renaissance, the Medicis developed a large menagerie in the Vatican. In the 16th century, Cardinal Hippolytus Medici had a collection of people of different races as well as exotic animals. He is reported as having a troup of "Barbarians", speaking over twenty languages and there were also Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans.
There doesn't seem to be much information on the Vatican's 'human zoo' except what we have read from Durant's short paragraph, and this one from wiki. The reason we do not know much is the 'Vatican' has kept the information secreted, away from prying eyes, or simply destroyed after the fact.
Since most historians agree that Leo X was a homosexual, the fact of having all those 'barbarians' of splendid physique hanging around must have been desirable. Otherwise they would have been in the Roman slave market on the auction block to make money since Leo was always in need of more funds.
Leo's secretary said that Leo was 'not active' during his reign as Pope. Leo did arrive in Rome on a 'litter' because of a fistula on his anus, but that did not mean that he could not 'look'.
A motto for Leo: Only capture the young, good looking, well built guys.
Amen.
Emily
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I haven't had time to read the most recent posting, but i saw this in my email from a history site "wonders and marvels" that relates to our previous discussion about history changers.
http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2011/07/mightier-than-the-sword.html
Jean
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The Human Zoo..............
This New York Times article writes about the stories in the paper back in Sept. 1906. The story was about Oto Benga, a Congolese pygmy and the fact that he became part of an exhibit at the Monkey House in the zoo.
Here is an excerpt from the editorial written in the NYT on Sept. 1906 about Oto Benga.
The New York Times wrote in an editorial: “Not feeling particularly vehement excitement ourselves over the exhibition of an African ‘pigmy’ in the Primate House of the Zoological Park, we do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter. Still, the show is not exactly a pleasant one, and we do wonder that the Director did not foresee and avoid the scoldings now aimed in his direction.” The editorial added, “As for Benga himself, he is probably enjoying himself as well as he could anywhere in his country, and it is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation he is suffering.”
Poor Oto Benga, in his own country of the Congo he was a slave and not accepted by his captors (a different tribe), and in America he never found acceptance either, even from his fellow Africans. What does everyone think about the NYT editorial?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/06zoo.html?ei=5087&en=c2cc9b84edc068cd&ex=1155009600&pagewanted=all
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 530-533
III MEDICINE
The most prosperous science was medicine, for men will sacrifice anything but appetite for health. Physicians received a stimulating share of Italy’s new wealth. Padua paid one of them two thousand ducats a year to serve as a consultant, while leaving him free to charge for his private practice. Petrarch, standing on his benefices, indignantly denounced the high fees of physicians, their robes of scarlet and their miniver hoods, their sparkling rings and golden spurs. He earnestly warned the sick Pope Clement VI against trusting physicians:
“I know that your bedside is beleaguered by doctors, and naturally this fills me with fear. Their opinions are always conflicting, and he who has nothing new to say, suffers the shame of limping behind the others. As Pliny said, in order to make a name for themselves through some novelty, they traffic with our lives. With them,-- not as with other trades—it is sufficient to be called a physician to be believed to the last word, and yet a physician’s lie harbours more danger than any other. Only sweet hope causes us not to think of the situation. They learn their art at our expense, and even our death brings them experience; the physician alone has the right kill with impunity. Oh, most Gentle Father, look upon their band as an army of enemies. Remember the warning epitaph which an unfortunate man had inscribed on his headstone: “I died of two many physicians.”
In all civilized lands and times physicians have rivalled women for the distinction of being the most desirable and satirized of mankind.
The basis of progress in medicine was the renaissance of anatomy. Ecclesiastics, co-operating with physicians as well as with artists, sometimes corpses for dissection from the hospitals that they controlled. Mondino de’ Luzzi dissected cadavers at Bologna, and wrote an ‘Anatomia’ ( 1316 ), which remained a classic text for three centuries. In 1319 some medical students at Bologna stole a corpse from a cemetery and brought it to the teacher at the University who dissected it for their instruction. The students were prosecuted but acquitted, and from that time the authorities winked an eye at the use of executed and unclaimed criminals in “anatomies.” Dissection was practised at the University of Pisa at least as early as 1341; soon it was permitted at all the medical schools of Italy, including the papal school of medicine in Rome. Sixtus IV ( 1471- 84 ) officially authorized such dissections. Meanwhile the new art of printing accelerated medical progress by facilitating the diffusion and international exchange of medical texts.
We may loosely estimate the medieval relapse of medical science in Latin Christendom by noting that the most advanced anatomists and physicians of this age had barely reached, by 1500, the knowledge possessed by Hippocrates, Galen, and Soranus in the period from 450 B.C. to A.D. 200. The first known transfusion of blood was attempted by a Jewish physician, in the case of Pope Innocent VIII (1492); it failed. Michele Savonarola, father of the fiery friar, wrote a ‘Practica medicinae “ ( c. 1440) and some shorter treatises; one of these discussed the frequency of mental pathology ( bizaria ) in great artists; another told of noted men who had lived long by the daily use of alcoholic drinks.
Medical quacks were still numerous, but medical practice was now more careful regulated by law. Penalties were prescribed for persons who practised medicine without a medical degree; and this presumed a four year medical course. (1500) No physician was allowed to prognose a grave disease except by consultation with a colleague. Venetian legislation required physicians and surgeons to meet once a month to exchange clinical notes, and to keep their knowledge up to date by attending a course on anatomy at least once a year. The graduating medical student had to swear that he would never protract the sickness of a patient, that he would supervise the preparation if his prescriptions and that he would take no part of the price charged by the apothecary for filling them. The same law ( Venice, 1368 ) limited the apothecary’s charge for filling a prescription to ten ‘soldi’ -- coins now impossible to evaluate. We hear of several cases in which the medical fee, by specific contract, was made conditional on cure.
Surgery was rising rapidly in repute as its repertoire of operations and instruments approached the variety and competence of ancient Egyptian practice. Bernardo da Rapallo devised the perineal operation for stone ( 1451) and Mariano Santo became famous for his many successful lithotomies by lateral incision ( c. 1530) Giovanni da Vigo, surgeon to Julius II, developed better methods of ligature for arteries and veins. Plastic surgery, known to the ancients, reappeared in Scilly about 1450: mutilated noses, lips, and ears were repaired by grafts of skin taken from other parts of the body, and so well that the lines of adhesion could scarcely be detected.
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I didn't realize that skin grafting had such a long history.
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Here are some prints and engravings from anatomy in the Renaissance period. Move the cursor across the picture to enlarge or read the short excerpt on each, and click on the numerical link within the article.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/anat/hd_anat.htm
Emily
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In reading history we so often hear of the unhelpful mistakes that physcians were practicing that it makes one wonder why anyone would call a doctor, so there must have been successes often enough for people to have some faith in them. I remember being astonished when reading- let's see if my memory serves me - "The Egyptian"??? In the 1950's. There was a story of a doctor performing brain surgery - removing a piece of the skull and then a tumor(?) i'm not sure if i'm remembering right about the tumor, or if he just removed the piece of skull to relieve pressure on the brain. The story, of course, was set in one or two thousand B.C. at the height if the Egyptian civilization.
Also, in studying women's history i read so often about women who were expert at medicine, especially childbirth and herbal meds. It's generally accepted that when doctors were first required to have medical degrees in the U.S. that more women died from the male doctor's
lack of experience and cleanliness than died from being cared for by midwives. We don't read so much about them in general histories
In all civilized lands and times physicians have rivalled women for the distinction of being the most desirable and satirized of mankind.
Interesting comment, i have to think about that statement
Jean
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Jean, you may well be remembering correctly. I do know that ancient South American cultures were practicing trepanation. I looked up the history and several sites say it has been practiced for 7000 years. The oldest skull was found in France. I found mention of its' use in Africa, Asia, Mesopotamia, ancient Greece and Rome, and South America. It is apparently still practiced today, but I didn't catch where.
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The first paragraph of this latest excerpt interested me enough to read it again. The following excerpts from that paragraph impressed because of how I was taught from childhood onward.
"They traffic with our lives"
"A physician's lie harbours more danger than any other"
"They learn their art at our expense"
"Our death brings them experience"
"The physician alone has the right to kill with impunity"
"Look upon their band as an army of enemies"
Although in my family we don't look upon them as an 'army of enemies', I was taught to take every mans measure and act in my own self interest. If unsure, wait and think it over. Today, we are told to get a second opinion if there are questions.
I never go to a doctor unless I have a problem I can't solve myself. I've never had a checkup. My mother has never had a checkup and she is ninety eight. We both avoid doctors and prescription medicine with the exception of an anti-biotic when necessary. The only medicine in my house is Aloe and neosporin, and the Aloe is grown by me. I did have a small bottle of aspirin, but it was so old that I threw it away a few months ago.
I took my cues from my mother whose method was to rub some camphorated oil or aloe on the problem. We can no longer buy the camphorated oil here.
We believe in vaccines and penicillin and that is about it as far as medicines are concerned.
Today, the warning should be 'Beware of doctors bearing prescription pads'.
Emily
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Hello,
i just learned of this site, after joining on another venue. I have a complete set of the "Story of Civilization" by Will & Ariel Durant, in great condition, for sale. Please let me know if anyone is interested in this 11 volume set. Thank you, JoeF
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WELCOME, JoeF. Do join us. We have been going 10 years and are up to the 1500s.
We don't need the books to follow, since trevor kindly posts excerpts for us. but I'm sure someone would like a set.
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On medicine, I remember that GINY once posted a tool from ancient Rome, and asked if we could tell what it was. it was a speculum, and hadn't changed at all for 2000 years. I mentioned this to a doctor who said that women should be angry that in all that time, a better one hadn't been invented. When she retires, that is what she wants to do.
In our day, we've taken some of the pressure off doctors and transferred it to lawyers.
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Durants' SoC
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 533-537
Medicine
Public sanitation was improving. As Doge of Venice (1343-1354), Andrea Dandolo established the first known municipal commission of public health; other Italian cities followed the example. These ‘magistrati della sanita’ tested all foods and drugs offered for sale, and isolated the victims of some contagious diseases. As a result of the Black Death, Venice in 1374 excluded from her port all ships carrying persons or goods suspected of infection. Hospitals were multiplying under the zeal of both laity and clergy. Siena built in 1305 a hospital famous for its size and services, and Francesco Sforza founded the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan (1456). Florence in the fifteenth century had thirty-five hospitals. These establishments were generously supported by public and private donations. Luther, who was so shocked by the immorality that he found in Italy in 1511, was also impressed by its charitable and medical institutions. He described the hospitals in his ‘Table Talk’:
“In Italy the hospitals are handsomely built, and admirably provided with excellent food and drink, careful attendants, and learned physicians. The beds and bedding are clean, and the walls are covered with paintings. When a patient is brought in, his clothes are removed in the presence of a notary who makes a faithful inventory of them, and they are kept safely. A white smock is put on him, and he is laid on a comfortable bed, with clean linen. Presently, two doctors come to him, and servants bring him food and drink in clean vessels.... Many ladies take turns to visit the hospitals and tend the sick, keeping their faces veiled, so that no one knows who they are; each remains a few days and returns home, another taking her place... Equally excellent are the foundling asylums of Florence, where the children are well fed and taught, suitably clothed in a uniform, and altogether admirably cared for.”
It is often the fatality of medicine that its heroic advances in therapy are balanced -- almost pursued-- by new diseases. Smallpox and measles, hardly known in Europe before the sixteenth century, now come to the fore; Europe experienced its first recorded influenza epidemic in 1510; and epidemics of typhus- a disease not mentioned before 1477 -- swept Italy in 1505 and 1528. But it was the sudden appearance and rapid dissemination of syphilis in Italy and France toward the end of the fifteenth century that constituted the most startling phenomenon and test of Renaissance medicine. Whether syphilis existed in Europe before 1493, or was brought from America by the return of Columbus in that year, is a matter still debated by the well informed, and not to be settled here.
In any case the new disease spread with terrifying speed. Caesar Borgia apparently contracted it in France. Many cardinals, and Julius II himself, were infected, but we must allow the possibility, in such instances, of infection by innocent contact with persons or objects bearing the active germ. The Church preached chastity as the one prophylaxis needed, and many churchmen practised it.
The name syphilis was first applied to the disease by Girolamo Fracastoro, one of the most varied and yet best integrated characters of the Renaissance. He had a good start: he was born in Verona (1483 )of a patrician family that had already produced outstanding physicians. At Padua he studied almost everything. He had Copernicus as a fellow student, and Pomponazzi and Achillini to teach him philosophy and anatomy; at twenty-four he was himself professor of logic. Soon he retired to devote himself to scientific, above all medical, research, tempered with fond study of classic literature. The association of science and letters produced a rounded personality, and a remarkable poem, written in Latin on the model of Virgil’s ‘Georgics’ and entitled ‘Syphilis, sive de morbo gallico’ (1521). Italians since Lucretius have excelled in writing poetical didactic poetry, but who would have supposed that the undulant spirochete would lend itself to fluent verse? Syphilis, in ancient mythology was a shepherd who decided to worship not the gods, whom he could not see, but the king, the only visible lord of the flock; whereupon angry Apollo infected the air with noxious vapors, from which Syphilis contracted a disease fouled with ulcerous eruptions over his body; this is essentially the story of Job. Fracastoro proposed to trace the first appearance, epidemic spread, causes, and therapy of “a fierce and rare sickness never before seen for centuries past, which ravished all of Europe and the flourishing cities of Asia and Libya, and invaded Italy in that unfortunate war whence from the Gauls it has its name”. He doubted that the ailment came from America, for it appeared almost simultaneously in many European countries far apart.
The poem goes on to discuss treatment by mercury or by guaiac-- a “holy wood” used by the American Indians. In a later work, ‘ De contagione,” Frascastoro dealt in prose with various contagious diseases --syphilis, typhus, tuberculosis-- and the modes of contagion by which they could be spread. In 1545 he was called by Paul II to be head physician for the council of Trent. Verona raised a noble monument to his memory, and Giovanni dal Cavino graved his likeness on a medallion which is one of the finest works of its kind.
Before 1500 it was usual to class all contagious diseases together under the indiscriminate name of the “ Plague “. It was one measure of the progress of medicine that it now clearly distinguished and diagnosed the specific character of an epidemic, and was prepared to deal with so sudden and virulent an eruption as syphilis. Mere reliance on Hippocrates and Galen could never have sufficed in such a crisis; it was because the medical profession had learned the necessity of ever fresh and detailed study of symptoms, causes, and cures, in an ever widening and intercommunicated experience, that it could meet this unexpected test.
And it was because of such high qualifications, devotion, and practical success, that the better class of physicians was now recognized as belonging to the untitled aristocracy of Italy. Having completely secularized their profession, they made it more respected than the clergy. Several of them were not only medical but as well the political advisers, and the frequent and favored companions, of princes, prelates, and kings. Many of them were humanists, familiar with classical literature, collecting manuscripts and works of art; often they were the close friends of great artists. Finally, many of them realized the Hippocratic ideal of adding philosophy to medicine; they passed with ease from one subject to another in their studies and their teaching; and they gave the professional philosophical fraternity a stimulus to subject Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas -- as they subjected Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna -- to a fresh and fearless examination of reality.
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It's neat that the Durant's cover such a wide spectrum of subjects in the Story. I always wondered where Syphillis got its name.
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It's interested that the Durants equated the Syphilis myth with the story of Job. Surely there was much more to Job than skin ulcers. I must find and reread the myth.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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The Durants' SoC
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 571-575
The Morals of the Clergy.
The Church might have sustained the supernatural sanctions provided by the Hebraic Scriptures and the Christian tradition, if her personnel had led lives of decency and devotion. But most of them accepted the bad as well as the good in the morals of the time, and reflected the antithetical facets of the laity. The parish priest was a simple ministrant, usually of slight education, but normally leading an exemplary life; ignored by the intelligentsia but welcomed by the people. Among the bishops and abbots there were some high livers, but many good men; and perhaps half the college of cardinals maintained a pious Christian conduct that shamed the gay worldliness of their colleagues. All over Italy there were hospitals, orphan asylums. schools, almshouses, loan offices and other charitable institutions managed by the clergy. The Benedictine, Observantine, and Carthusian monks were honored for the relatively high moral level of their lives. Missionaries faced a thousand dangers to spread the faith in “heathen “ lands and among the pagans of Christiandom. Mystics hid themselves away from the violence of the times, and sought closer communion with God.
Amid this devotion there was much laxity of morals among the clergy and a thousand testimonies could be adduced to prove it. The same Petrarch who remained faithful to Christianity to the end, and who drew a favourable picture of discipline and piety in the Carthusian monastery where his brother lived, repeatedly denounced the morals of the clergy on Avignon. From the novel of Boccaccio in the fourteenth century, through those of Masaccio in the fifteenth, to those of Bandello in the sixteenth, the loose lives of the Italian clergy form a recurrent theme of Italian literature. Boccaccio speaks of “the lewd and filthy life of the clergy” in sins “natural or sodomitical.” Apparently the nuns, who today are angels and ministers of grace, shared in the revelry. They were especially lively in Venice, where monasteries and nunneries were sufficiently close to each other to allow their inmates, now and then, to share a bed; the archives of the “Proveditori sopra monasteri” contain twenty volumes of trials for the cohabitation of monks and nuns. Aretino speaks unquotably about the nuns of Venice. And Guicciardini, usually temperate, loses his poise in describing Rome. “ Of the court of Rome it is impossible to speak with sufficient severity, for it is a standing infamy, an example of all that is most vile and shameful in the world”.
These testimonies seem exaggerated and may be prejudiced. Here again we must discount something since no saint can be trusted to speak of human conduct without indignation.
But we accept the summing up of a catholic historian: “it is not surprising, when the higher ranks of clergy were in such a state, that among the regular orders and secular priests, vice and irregularities of all sorts should have become more and more common. The salt of the earth had lost its savor.... It was such priests as these that gave occasion to the more or less exaggerated descriptions of the clergy by Erasmus and Luther, who visited Rome during the reign of Julius II. But it is a mistake to suppose that the corruption of the clergy was worse in Rome than elsewhere; there is documentary evidence of the immorality of priests in almost every town in the Italian peninsula. In many places -- Venice for instance -- matters were far worse than in Rome. No wonder, as contemporary writers sadly testify, the influence of the clergy had declined, and that in many places hardly any respect was shown for the priesthood. Their immorality was so gross that suggestions in favor of allowing priests to marry began to be heard..... Many of the monasteries were in deplorable condition. The three essential vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience were in some convents almost entirely disregarded.... The discipline of many convents of nuns was equally lax.”
Less forgivable than irregularities of sex and festivities of diet were the activities of the Inquisition. But these remarkably declined in Italy during the fifteenth century. In 1440 Amadeo de’ Landi, a mathematician, was tried on a charge of materialism, but was acquitted. In 1478 Galeotto Marcio was condemned to death for writing that any man who lived a good life would go to heaven whatever his religion might be; but Pope Sixtus IV saved him. In 1497 the physician Gabriele da Salo was protected from the Inquisition by his patients, though he maintained that Christ was not God but was the son of Joseph and Mary, conceived in the usual ridiculous way; that Christ’s body was not in the consecrated wafer; and that His miracles had been performed not by divine power but through the influence of the stars; so one myth drives out another.
Amid the ecclesiastical decay were several centres of wholesome reform. The outstanding effort at monastic reform in this age was the foundation of the Capuchin Order. Matteo di Bassi, a friar of the Franciscan Observantines at Montefalcone, thought he saw St. Francis in a vision, and that he heard him say: “I wish my rule to be observed to the letter, to the letter, to the letter.” Learning that St. Francis had worn a four cornered pointed hood, he adopted that headdress. Going to Rome, he secured from Clement VII (1528) permission to establish a new branch of the Franciscans distinguished by the cappuccio or cowl, and by firm adherence to the final rule of St. Francis. They dressed in the coarsest cloth, went barefoot throughout the year, lived on bread, vegetables, fruit and water, kept rigorous fasts, dwelt in narrow cells in poor cottages made of wood and loam, and never journeyed except on foot. The new order was not numerous, but it gave a stirring example and stimulus to the more widespread self reform that came to the monastic and medicant orders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Some of these reforms were undertaken in response to the Protestant Reformation. Many of them were of spontaneous generation, and indicated a saving vitality in Christianity and the Church.
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Durant writes.......
....there was much laxity of morals among the clergy and a thousand testimonies could be adduced to prove it.
Durant continues with an excuse for the clergy........
These testimonies seem exaggerated and may be prejudiced. Here again we must discount something since no saint can be trusted to speak of human conduct without indignation.
This last quote of Durant's has made me so angry that my rebuttal will probably not do me justice.
Now if Durant was speaking of simple private citizens, unless it harmed others, most people would not care about their conduct. But Durant is not speaking about them at all. He is speaking about the clergy in the Catholic church. He will accept generalizations about them, as long as it is not specific.
How would civilization continue, if noone kicked A** and took names. It would be every man for himself without laws and certainly no way to enforce them. If a man was killed and his killer was known, but no one could actually name the killer, because others had done the same thing somewhere.
Those who join the priesthood are selling purity and poverty. They take vows to uphold those traits themselves while selling it to the average man and woman. For Durant to say that even a saint cannot criticize them for their own refusal to follow the church laws is not only ridiculious but obscene.
That is how pedeophiles, perverts, and thieves have survived in the church for centuries without ever having to answer for their crimes. Those who covered it up for the perps, are as gulity as the ones committing the crime. That has worked well for the church who continue to cover-up and hide their own depravity.
If you are selling ice cream and giving the customer a cup of dung for money, then you deserve to be exposed as a crook, liar, and common criminal.
All the Arab cults teach the rabble (those they consider beneath them) that they are not to judge others. Only their false gods can give judgement, and they are talking about themselves of course (the priest, the rabbi, and the mullah).
What a scam!
Emily
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Durants' SoC
The Renaissance
Pages 575-580
III. Sexual morality.
It is not clear that adultery was less popular in the Middle Ages than in the Renaissance
And as medieval adultery was tempered with chivalry, so in the Renaissance it was softened, in the leisure classes, by an idealization of the refinement and spiritual charms of the educated woman. Greater equality of the sexes in education and social standing made possible a new intellectual comradeship between men and women.
Girls of good family were kept on relative seclusion from men not of their own household. They were sedulously instructed in the advantages of premarital chastity; sometimes with such success that we hear of a young woman drowning herself after being raped. Nevertheless there must have been considerable premarital adventure; otherwise it would be difficult to account for the extraordinary number of bastards to be found in any Renaissance city. Not to have bastards was a distinction; to have them was no serious disgrace; the man on marrying, usually persuaded his wife to let his illegitimate progeny join the household and to be brought up with her own children To be a bastard was no great disability; the social stigma involved was almost negligible; legitimation could be obtained by lubricating an ecclesiastical hand. In default of legitimate and competent heirs bastard sons could succeed to estate, even a throne, as Ferante I succeeded Alfonso I at Naples, and Leonello d‘Este succeeded Niccolo III at Ferrara. When Pius II came to Ferrara in 1459 he was received by seven princes, all illegitimate.
The rivalry of bastards with legitimate sons was a rich source of Renaissance violence.
As for homosexuality, it became almost an obligatory part of the Greek revival. The humanists wrote about it with a kind of scholarly affection. Aretino described the aberration as quite popular in Rome, and he himself, between one mistress and another, asked the duke of Mantua to send him an attractive boy. The council noted that some men had taken to wearing feminine garb, and that some women were adopting male attire, and called it a “species of sodomy”. Likewise, with prostitution. According to Infessura-- who liked to load his statistics against papal Rome-- there were 6,800 registered prostitutes in Rome in 1490, not counting clandestine practitioners, in a population of 90,000.
As wealth and refinement increased, a demand arose for courtesans with some education, and social charm; and as in the Athens of Sophocles, hetaerae rose to meet this demand. The most renowned of these ‘cortigiane oneste’ was Imperia de Cugnatis. Made rich by her patron Agostino Chigi, she adorned her house with luxurious furniture and choice art, and gathered about her a bevy of scholars, artists, poets, and churchmen; even the pious Sadoleto sang her praise. She died in the flower of her beauty at the age of twenty-six ( 1511) and received honorable burial in the church of San Gregrio, with a marble tomb engraved in the finest lapidary style. The devotions of the troubadours, the Vita Nuova of Dante, and Plato’s discourses on spiritual love had begotten in a few circles a fine sentiment of adoration toward women-- usually another man’s wife. Most people paid no attention to the idea, preferring their love in a frankly sensual form; They might write sonnets, but their goal was coitus; and hardly once in a hundred cases, did they marry the object of their love.
For marriage was an affair of property, and property could not be made dependent upon the passing whims of physical desire. Betrothals were arranged by family councils, and most young people accepted without effectual protest the mates so assigned to them. Girls could be betrothed at the age of three, though marriage had to be delayed till twelve. In the fifteenth century a daughter unmarried at fifteen was a family disgrace. Men, who enjoyed all the privileges and facilities of promiscuity, could be lured into marriage only by brides bringing substantial dowries. Florence established a kind of state dowry insurance-- 'Monte delle faniulle,' or fund of the maidens-- from which marriage portions were given to girls that had paid small yearly premiums. In Siena there were so many bachelors that the laws had to inflict legal disabilities upon them; in Lucca a decree of 1454 debarred from public office all unmarried men between twenty and fifty. Raphael painted half a hundred Madonnas, but would not take a wife; and this was the one thing in which Michelangelo agreed with him.
Weddings themselves consumed enormous sums; Leonardo Bruni complained that his matrimonium had squandered his patrimonium. Kings and queens, princes and princesses spent half a million dollars on a wedding while famine raged among the people. After marriage the woman usually kept her own name; so Lorenzo’s wife continued to be called Donna Clarise Orsini; sometimes however, the wife might add her husband’s name to her own-- Maria Salviati de’ Medici. In the medieval theory of marriage it was expected that love would develop between man and wife through the varied partnerships of marriage in joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity; and apparently the expectation was fulfilled in the majority of cases. No loyalty could have been greater than that of Elisabetta Gonzaga, accompanying her crippled husband through all his misfortunes and exiles, and faithful to his memory till her death.
Nevertheless adultery was rampant. Since most marriages among the upper classes were diplomatic unions of economic or political interests, many husbands felt warranted in having a mistress; and the wife, though she might mourn, usually closed her eyes -- or lips --to the offence. Among the middle classes some men assumed adultery was a legitimate diversion; Machiavelli and his friends seem to have thought nothing of exchanging notes about their infidelities. When in such cases, the wife avenged herself by imitation, the husband was like as not to ignore it, and wear his horns with grace. But the influx of Spaniards in to Italy, via Naples and Alexander VI and Charles V, brought the Spanish “ point of honor” into Italian life, and in the sixteenth century the husband felt called upon to punish his wife’s adultery with death, while preserving his pristine privileges unimpaired. The husband might desert his wife and still prosper; the deserted wife had no remedy except to reclaim her dowry, return to her relatives, and live a lonely life; she was not allowed to marry again. She might enter a convent, but it would expect a donation of her dowry. In general, in the Latin countries, adultery is condoned as a substitute for divorce.
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I recently finished a 1904 biography of Lucretia Borgia. Actually, I think the book was somewhat mistitled. Since the book was taken entirely from legitimate records (legal documents, household accounts and letters) most of it was not about LB but about the society that surrounded her. The book paid some attention to dress, travel and visits to other households, and a detailed description of LB's wedding preparations for her marriage to Alphonso de Este. Mistresses and bastards were certainly not neglected or shamed when it came to the men. LB, however, was not as fortunate. Unsubstantiated rumors that she had lovers were a scandal and may have been the reason for at least one man's murder.
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..........and so it goes! Humankind seems to be ever generous and greedy, unfaithful, creative, power-seeking, vengeful, spiritual and religious. ...... Jean
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 580-581
IV Renaissance Man.
The combination of intellectual enfranchisement and moral release produced ”the man of the Renaissance.”He was not typical enough to merit that title; there were a dozen types of man in that age as in any other; he was merely the most interesting, perhaps because he was exceptional. The Renaissance peasant was what peasants have always been until machinery made agriculture an industry. The Italian proletaire of 1500 was like those of Rome under the Caesars or Mussolini; occupation makes the man. The Renaissance businessman was like his past and present peers. The Renaissance priest however, was different from the medieval or modern priest; he believed less, and enjoyed more; he could make love and war. Amid these types was an arresting mutation, a sport of the species and the time, the kind of man we think of when we recall the Renaissance, a type unique in history, except that Alcibiades, seeing him, would have felt reborn.
The qualities of this type revolved about two foci; intellectual and moral audacity. A mind sharp, alert, versatile, open to every impression and idea, sensitive to beauty, eager for fame. It was a recklessly individualistic spirit set on developing all its potential capacities; a proud spirit, scorning Christian humility, despising weakness and timidity, defying conventions, morals, taboos, popes, even, occasionally, God. In the city such a man might lead a turbulent faction; in the state, an army; in the Church he would gather a hundred benefices under his cassock, and use his wealth to climb to power. In art he was no longer an artisan working anonymously with others on a collective enterprise, as in the middle ages; he was a single and separate person who stamped his character upon his works, signed his name to his paintings, even, now and then, carved it on his statues, like Michelangelo on the Pieta. What ever his achievements, this “ Renaissance man” was always in motion and discontent, fretting at limits, longing to be a “universal man” – bold in conception, decisive in deed, eloquent in speech, skilled in art, acquainted with literature and philosophy, at home with women in the palace and with soldiers in the camp.
His immorality was part of his individualism. His goal being the successful expression of his personality, and his environment imposing upon him no standards of restraint either from the example of the clergy, or from the terror of supernatural creed, he allowed himself any means to his ends, and any pleasure on the way. None the less he had his own virtues. He was a realist, and seldom talked nonsense except to a reluctant woman. He had good manners when he was not killing, and even then he preferred to kill with grace. He had energy, force of character, direction and unity of will; he accepted the old Roman conception of virtue as manliness, but added to it skill and intelligence. He was not needlessly cruel, and excelled the Romans in his capacity for pity. He was vain, but that was part of his sense of beauty and form. His appreciation of the beautiful in woman and nature, in art and crime, was a mainspring of the Renaissance. He replaced the moral with the aesthetic sense; If his type had multiplied and prevailed, an irresponsible aristocracy of taste would have supplanted the aristocracies of birth and wealth.
But again, he was only one of many kinds of Renaissance man. How different was the idealistic Pico, with his belief in the moral perfectibility of mankind--- or the grim Savonarola, blind to beauty and absorbed in righteousness—or the gentle gracious Raphael, scattering beauty about him with an open hand—or the demonic Michelangelo, haunted with the last judgment long before he painted it – or the melodious Politian who thought there would be pity even in hell—or the honest Vittorino da Feltre, so successfully binding Zeno to Christ—or the second Giuliano de Medicci, so kindly that his brother the Pope considered him unfit for Government. We perceive, after every effort to abbreviate and formulate, that there was no “Man of the Renaissance.” There were men agreeing only in one thing: that life had never been lived so intensely before. The Middle Ages had said – or had pretended to say – No to life; the Renaissance, with all its heart and soul and might, said Yes.
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We have left the Greeks and Romans behind, but we still neeed to read what they wrote. We are picking a new classic book or play to read in October. Come and join us.
Look at the list and discussion here: http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2395.40
Vote here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CRGVGSH
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Durants' SoC.
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 581-586
Renaissance woman.
The emergence of woman was one of the brightest phases of the period. Her status in European history has usually risen with wealth, though Peri clean Greece, too near the Orient, was an exception. When hunger is no longer feared, the male quest turns to sex; and if a man still despoils himself for gold, it is it lay it at a woman’s feet, or before the children she has given him. If she resists he idealizes her. Usually she has the good sense to resist him, and to make him pay dearly for the boons whose contemplated splendour swells his veins. If, moreover she adds graces of mind and character to her body’s charms, she gives man the highest satisfaction he can find this side of glory; and in return raises her to an almost queenly dominance in his life.
We must not imagine that this was the pleasant role of the average woman in the Renaissance; it fell to a fortunate few, while the far greater number put off their bridal robes to carry domestic burdens and family headaches to their graves. Hear San Bernardino on the proper time for beating a wife:
“And I say to you men, never beat your wives while they are great with child, for therein would lie great peril. I say not that you should never beat them; but choose your time...... I know men who have more regard for a hen that lays fresh eggs daily than for their own wives. Sometimes the hen will break a pot or cup, but the man will not beat her, for fear of losing the eggs that are her fruit. How stark mad, then, are many the cannot suffer a word from their own lady who bears such fair fruit! For if she speak more than he thinks fit, forthwith he seizes a staff and begins to chastise her; and the hen, which cackles all day without ceasing, you suffer patiently for her egg’s sake.”
A girl of good family was carefully trained for success in getting and keeping a prosperous mate; this was the major subject of her curriculum. Till a few weeks before marriage she was kept in relative seclusion in a convent or in a home, and received from her tutors or nuns an education as thorough as that which came to all but the scholars among the men of her class. Usually she learned some Latin, and became distantly acquainted with the leading figures of Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy She practised some form of music and sometimes played at sculpture or painting. A few women became scholars, and publicly debated problems of philosophy with men, but this was highly exceptional. But the educated woman of the Renaissance retained her femininity, her Christianity, and its moral code; and this gave her a union of culture and character that made her irresistible to the higher Renaissance man.
Not content with these gifts, Renaissance woman, like any other, dyed her hair-- almost always blonde-- and added false locks to fill it out; peasant women, having spent their beauty, cut off their tresses and hung them out for sale. Perfumes were a mania in sixteenth-century Italy: Hair, hats, shirts, stockings, gloves, shoes, all had to be scented; Artetino thanks Duke Cosimo for perfuming a roll of money he had sent him; “ some objects that date from that period have not yet lost their odor.”A well to do woman’s dressing table was a wilderness of cosmetics, usually in containers of ivory, silver, or gold. Rouge was applied not only to the face but to the breasts, which in larger cities were left mostly bare. Pearls, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, agates, amethysts, beryls, topazes, or garnets adorned the fingers in rings. the arms in bracelets, the head in tiaras, and after 1525, the ears in earrings; beside which jewellery might be studded into headgear, the dress, the shoes, and the fan.
The educated women of the Renaissance emancipated themselves without any propaganda of emancipation, purely by their intelligence, character, and tact, and by the heightened sensitivity of men to their tangible and intangible charms. They influenced their time in every field; in politics by their ability to govern states for their absent husbands; in morals by their combination of freedom, good manners, and piety; in art by developing a matronly beauty which modelled a hundred Madonnas; in literature by opening their homes and their smiles to poets and scholars. There were innumerable satires on women, as in every age; but for every bitter or sarcastic line there were litanies of devotion and praise. The Italian Renaissance, like the French enlightenment, was bisexual. Women moved into every sphere of life, men ceased to be coarse and crude, and were moulded to finer manners and speech; and civilization, with all its laxity and violence, took on a grace and refinement such as it had not known in Europe for a thousand years.
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Durant in his first paragraph must be describing himself, as that description fits no man I've ever read about in history.
The ninety nine and nine tenths of women during the Renaissance were mentioned in passing as having to cut and sell their hair, probably to keep their children from starving. They also get a description as to when they can be beaten (not while 'heavy' with child), so most of their life was a 'headache' according to Durant.
Poor women in India still sell their hair, probably for the same reasons as women five hundred years ago. So nothing really changes much, except at least in this country if your husband decides to beat you, he can be charged with assault and sent away (hopefully).
Nothing has changed in the type of women (rich) being written about today. I have a stack of New Yorkers (I'm behind) on my table and have read five today. The women I've read profiles on, are women who are rich, and I disagree with everything they espouse. I find nothing to warrant their inclusion for a profile.
So five hundred years from now when someone digs out an old New Yorker or Vanity Fair and reads about how life was at the turn of the century, they will only know the superficial, manilupative, deceptive, shallow people put in those pages. Many of them also have unreadable books out too, which is a bad omen for how we will be remembered if the next 'Durant' finds them.
Emily
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A friend completely stumped me yesterday by asking how many women are named in the bible. I had no idea. Do you?
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JoanK, there are 188 women combined in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament.
These are women that have been 'named' usually as the 'sister of', 'wife of, or 'daughter of' some man the story is about.
I searched for a list and found it on Wikipedia that gives a short description and location where they can be found in both bibles. Some people have waaaaaaay too much time on their hands, but it does give us an answer to the question. Even with a name, most of these women are nothing more than an unpronounceable name translated into English to make them more presentable to an English speaking audience. We know nothing about the majority, and very little about the others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women_in_the_Bible
Emily
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The Durants' SoC.
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 586-590
The Home
The rising refinement showed itself in the form and life of the home. While the dwellings of the populace remained as before-- unadorned whitewashed stucco or plaster walls, flagstone floors, an inner court usually with a well, and around the court one or two stories of rooms furnished with the simple necessaries of life-- the palaces of nobles and the nouveaux riches took on a splendour and luxury again recalling Imperial Rome. The wealth that in the middle ages had been concentrated on the cathedral now poured itself out into mansions equipped with such furniture, conveniences, delicacies, and ornaments as could hardly be found north of the alps in the seats of princes and kings. The Villa Chigi and the palazzo Massimi both designed by Baldassare Peruzzi, enclosed a labyrinth of rooms, each ornate with columns and pilasters, or fretted cornice, or gilded cpffered ceilings, or paintings on vault and walls, or sculptured chimney pieces, or stucco carvings and arabesques, or floors of marble or tile. Great fireplaces warmed the rooms, and lamps, torches, or chandeliers lighted them. All that was lacking in these palaces was children.
For family limitation rises as the means of supporting children mount. The Church and the Scriptures bade men increase and multiply, but comfort concealed infertility. Even in the countryside were children were economic assets, families of six children were rare; in the city, where children were liabilities, families were small-- the richer the smaller-- and many homes had no children at all. What lovely children Italian families could have appears in the bambini and putti of the artists. The solidarity of the family, the mutual loyalty and love of parents and children, stand out all the more attractively amid the moral looseness of the times. The family was still an economic, moral, and geographical unit. Usually the debts of one defaulting member were paid by the rest-- a marked exception to the individualism of the age. Rarely did any member marry or leave the state without the family’s consent. Servants were freeborn free spoken members of the family Paternal authority was supreme, and was obeyed in all crises; but normally the mother ruled the household. Maternal love was as found n the princesses as in the paupers. Most families of the middle class kept a register of births, marriages, deaths, and interesting events, interspersed here and there with intimate comments.
Public Morality.
Commercial and public morality was the least attractive side of Renaissance life. Then, as now, success, not virtue, was the standard by which men were judged. Then, as now, men itched for money, and stretched their consciences to grasp it. Kings and princes betrayed their allies, and broke their most solemn pledges, at the call of gold. Artists were no better: many of them took advance payments, failed to finish or begin the work, but kept the money just the same. The papal court itself gave a high example of money lust; hear again the greatest historian of the papacy;
“A deep-rooted corruption had taken possession of nearly all the officials of the curia.... The inordinate number of gratuities and exactions had passed all bounds. Moreover, on all sides deeds were dishonestly manipulated, and even falsified, by the officials. No wonder that there arose from all parts of Christendom the loudest complaints about the corruption and financial extortions of the papal officials. It was even said that in Rome everything had its price.”
The Church still condemned all taking of interest as usury. Preachers inveighed against it; cities sometimes forbade it under pain of exclusion from the sacraments and from Christian burial. But the lending of money at interest went on, because such loans were indispensable in an expanding commercial and industrial economy. Laws were passed prohibiting a higher rate than twenty per cent, but we hear of cases where thirty per cent was charged. Christians competed with Jews in money lending, and the town council of Verona complained that the Christians exacted harder terms than the Jews; public resentment however fell chiefly on the Jews, and occasionally led to outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence. The Franciscans met the problem for the most helpless borrowers by establishing, through gifts and legacies, ‘monti di pieta’ funds ( literally heaps ) of charity, from which they made loans to the needy, at first without interest. The first of these was organized at Orvieto in 1463; soon every major city had one. Their growth involved expenditures of administration; and the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) granted the Franciscans the right to charge for each loan an amount necessary to cover the costs of management. Instructed by this experience, some theologians of the sixteenth century allowed a moderate interest on loans. Through the competition of the ‘monti di pieta’, and probably more through the increasing competence and rivalry of the professional bankers, the rate of interest fell rapidly during the sixteenth century.
Industry became more ruthless with its size, and with the disappearance of a personal relationship between employer and employed. Under feudalism the serf enjoyed certain rites along with his burdensome dues: in sickness,economic depression, war, and old age his lord was expected to take care of him. In the cities of Italy the guilds performed something of this function for the better class of labour; but in general the”free’ labourer was free to starve when he could find no work. When he found it, he had to take it on the employer’s terms, and these were hard. Every invention and improvement in production and finance added to profits, rarely to wages. Businessmen were as severe with one another as with their employees; we hear of their many tricks in competition, their deceptive contracts, their innumerable frauds; when they cooperated it was to ruin their competitors in another town. However there were instances of a fine sense of honour among many Italian merchants; and the Italian financiers had the best reputation in Europe for integrity.
Social morality was a blend of violence and chastity. In the correspondence of the times we find many evidences of a tender and kindly spirit; and the Italians could not compete with the Spaniards in ferocity, or with the French soldiery in wholesale butchery. And yet no nation in Europe could match the endless merciless slander that swept around all prominent persons in Rome; and who but the Italians of the Renaissance could have called Aretino divine? Family feuds were refreshed by the breakdown of custom and belief, and the inadequate administration of the laws; men took vengeance into their own hands, and families murdered one another for generations. At ferrara , as late as 1537, duelling to the death was legal and practised; even boys were allowed to fight each other with knives in these legal lists. A man had to live on the alert in those days; any evening, if he left the house, he might be ambushed and robbed, and be lucky not to be killed; even in church he was not safe; and on the highways he had to be ready for brigands. The Renaissance mind, living amid these dangers, had to be as sharp as an assassin's blade.
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Thank goodness i was born in the middle of the 20th century in the USA! Women have been able to improve their lives and opportunities. Altho, it still seems as tho human psychological needs keep the same kinds of behavior happening is every era of history.
I wish the Durants had talked some about the kinds of birth control used at this time. How did families limit their numbers of children? I know that condoms were known about - usually made of sheepskin- but i wonder how many people were using them. Was it merely a matter of abstimence?
Jean
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Hi Jean, Durant only mentions infertility in accounting for the absence of children. He does not mention any types of birth control, although it was practiced as you point out.
We have already read that Rome had doubled and tripled in size as people from the countryside moved to the city. Durant states that children in the cities were a 'liability', unlike in the country where they could help their parents in the fields.
Emily
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Every "modern" society has gone through a period when people moved to the city: first a period of awful overcrowding, and then a lowered birth rate. It's interesting that the same thing happened that long ago.
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Sicne we received word of Eloise's passing last evening, we have been working on a Memorial site where we can share memories of our time with Eloise and words of condolences for Eloise's family. It will probably won't come as a surprise to them that she was loved, but by so many!
Even if you've expressed some thoughts here since yesterday, will you please repeat them in the site we intend to send on to the family? Thanks.
Memorial Page for Eloise De Pelteau (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2486.0)
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Thank you JoanP for the link for remembering Eloise. I was saddened to hear of her passing.
Emily
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Durants' SoC.
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 593-595
Manners and Amusements.
Amid violence and dishonesty, and the boisterous life of university students, and the rough humor and kindliness of peasant and proletaire, good manners grew as one of the arts of the Renaissance. Italy now led Europe in personal and social hygiene, dress, table manners, cooking, conversation, and recreations; and in all these except dress Florence claimed to lead Italy. Florence patriotically mourned the filth of other cities, and Italians made ‘Tedesco’, (German), a synonym for courseness of language and life. The old Roman habit of frequent bathing continued in the educated classes; the well-to-do displayed their finery and “took the waters” at various spas, and drank sulphurous streams as an annual penance to purge digestive sins. Male dress was as ornate as female, except for jewelry: tight sleeves and colored hose, and such wonderous baggy bonnets as Raphael caught on Castiglione. Hose ran up the legs to the loins, splitting men into tunic and silk frills and ruffles of lace; even gloves and shoes sported wisps of lace. At a tournament given by Lorenzo de’ Medici, his brother Giuliano wore garments costing 8000 ducats.
A revolution in table manners came in the fiffteenth century with the increasing sustitution of a fork for fingers in carrying food to the mouth. Thomas Coryat, touring Italy about 1600, was struck by the novel custom,”which”, he wrote, “is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels”; and he shared in introducing the idea into England. Knives, forks, and spoons were of brass, sometimes of silver—which was lent out to neighbors preparing banquets. Meals were modest except on such occasions or at State functions; then excess was compulsory. Spices—pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, juniper, ginger etc.—were used in abundance to flavor food and stimulate thirst; hence every host offered his guests a variety of wines. The reign of garlic in Italy , can be traced back to 1548, but doubtless had begun long before. There was very little drunkeness or gluttony; the Italians of the Renaissance, like the later French, were gourmets, not gourmands. When men were apart from their families they might invite a courtesan or two, as Aretino did when he entertained Titian. More careful people would grace the meal with music, poetic improvisations, and educated conversation.
The art of conversation—‘bel parlare’—to speak with intelligence, urbanity, courtesy, clarity, and wit—was reinvented by the Renaissance. Greece and Rome had known it, and here and there in medieval Italy—as at the courts of Frederic II and Innocent III – it had been kept precariously alive. Now in Lorenzo’s Florence, in Elizabetta’s Urbino, in Leo’s Rome, it flourished again: nobles and their ladies, poets and philosophers, generals and scholars, artists and musicians met in the companionship of minds, quoted famous authors, made an occasional obeisance to religion, graced their language with a light fantastic touch, and basked in one another’s audience. Such conversation was so admired that many essays and treatises were cast in dialogue form to appropriate its elegance. In the end the game was carried to excess; language and thought became too precious and refined; an enervating dilettantism softened manliness. Urbino became Rambouillet in France, and Moliere attacked ‘les precieuses’ just in time to save the art of good converse for France.
Despite the preciosity of a few , Italian speech enjoyed a freedom of subject and epithet that would not be allowed by social manners today. Since general conversation was rarely heard by unmarried women of good character, it was assumed that sex might be openly discussed. But beyond this, and even in higher male circles, there was a loosness of sexual jest, a gay freedom in poetry, a course obscenity in drama, that seem to us now among the less presentable aspects of the Renaissance,. Educated men could scribble lewd verses on statuary, the refined Bembo wrote in praise of Priapus. Youths competed in obscenity and profanity to prove their maturity. And yet the phrases of courtesy had never been so flowery, forms of address had never been so gracious; women kissed the hand of any intimate male friend on meeting or leaving him, and men kissed the hand of a woman, presents were ever passing from friend to friend; and tact of word and deed reached a development that seemed unattainable in northern Europe. Italian manuals of manners became favored texts beyond the Alps.
The same was true of Italian handbooks of dancing, fencing, and other recreations; in recreation, as in conversation and profanity, Italy lead the Christian world. Card playing was even more popular than dancing; in the fifteenth century it became a mania in all classes. Often it involved gambling. Men gambled also with dice, and sometimes loaded them. The Council of Ten twice forbade the sale of cards or dice, and called upon servants to report masters violating these ordinances. Young men had their special games, mostly in the open air. The upperclass Italian was trained to ride, wield sword and lance, and tilt in tournaments. As these combats proved insufficiently mortal, some rash youths, in the Roman Colosseum in 1332, introduced the bullfight; on that occasion eighteen knights, all of Roman families, were killed, and only eleven bulls.
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Near Nashville each year a Renaissance Fair is held. An old college friend and her husband attend. They both dress in renaissance style, and she says she orders theirs online.
Here is a link to Renaissance styles for women that can be purchased online. They are supposed to be copies of real Renaissance styles. These are probably more French and English than Italian, since Nashville was founded by a Frenchman and settled by the English and French.
http://www.realarmorofgod.com/store/html/Products/Historical-Clothing/Renaissance-Women/index.html
Emily
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Here is the link for Renaissance styles for men that can be purchased online.
There seems to be something for every class from pirate to king.
http://www.realarmorofgod.com/store/html/Products/Historical-Clothing/Renaissance-Men/index.html
Emily
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Things I have learned in this discussion keep coming up. In the Plutarch pre-discussion, the question of the transition from vengence as a personal matter to that as a matter for the state has come up with respect to the Oresteia (sp). I always remember discussing here some years ago that every society in it's development must go through that transition before it can be peaceful and well ordered.
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It seems strange to me that no one had come up with a "fork" before this time. It just makes so much sense. Of course, the aristocracy led the way in most social things and the way they traveled with hoards of people, i guess it was easier to have people eating with their hands rather than trying to round up a hundred or more pieces of "silverware" when an entourage arrived.
The Durants are a good example of the trend toward "social" history in the first half of the 20th century. Reporting on more than just politics, economics and wars and telling us about lifestyles, etc. Unfortunately, for students everywhere, social history lost some appeal after WWII and women, minorities, labor and regular people's history got lost again, but has made a rousing comeback in the second half of the 20th century. Thank goodness. It makes history much more interesting to many of us.
Jean
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Interesting look at the clothing. When i visit old houses with their narrow, curved stairs - the Betsy Ross house comes to mind - i think of a woman with a baby on one hip trying to hold up her skirts with the other hand, making her way up those stairs. Or, tending a fire and cooking a meal! Thank goodness for shorter hems in my lifetime!
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Jean, I remember thinking the same thing when I was climbing the back stairs at Mt. Vernon (Washington's home). The stairway was so narrow, only one person at a time could ascend or descend, and forget about a basket of laundry.
I was still a teenager at the time, but remember thinking, all the public rooms in the house are light and airy, and all the workplaces are cramped or dark.
Emily
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JoanK
...the transition from vengence as a personal matter to that as a matter for the state........
I have already forgotten the name of the Pope who with his army took over the city of Rome and the Papal states. He dismissed the Roman Senate and government and ruled from the Vatican. Some Popes were good admistrators but many were not.
Durant tells us there were, "inadequate administration of the laws, and men took vengence into their own hands."
Anytime there is a breakdown in 'law and order' there will be chaos and lawlessness. It can happen anywhere, a city, a state, or a country. People must be ruled by laws that are enforced. Without that, civilization goes down the drain.
Somalia is an example. Back to the stone age from the 21st century in a couple of decades.
Emily
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WELCOME, JoeF. Do join us. We have been going 10 years and are up to the 1500s.
We don't need the books to follow, since trevor kindly posts excerpts for us. but I'm sure someone would like a set.
Thank you, JoanK, for your response these several months ago. i had not gotten back to your site until 16Sept, due to my incompetence. i will be reading with you all, and posting from time-to-time. FYI, i live in the northern California's Plumas National Forest.
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That sounds wonderful! I live in the Southern California beach cities. The ocean and wonderful weather (almost) make up for all the traffic.
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That sounds wonderful! I live in the Southern California beach cities. The ocean and wonderful weather (almost) make up for all the traffic.
Thanks, Joan, I like Souther Calif, also, but for its huge parking lot, and its air. BTW, i noticed that there was a "+" to the Book discussion's right header. After clicking that button, I found the listing for my posts, and areas of interest. Thank you.
And thank Peranza (sp?) JoeF
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Welcome JoeF. I hope you will not only read along with us, but post from time to time on Trevor's selection from Durant's writing.
Emily
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I just noticed that this site has been read 34,000+ times, isn't that amazing?
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I just noticed that this site has been read 34,000+ times, isn't that amazing?
Jean it does seem amazing, but when you consider that we have been discussing the 'Renaissance' since Nov. 27, 2006 (that will soon be five years), it doesn't seem too much.
We began the 'Renaissance' discussion on SeniorNet five years ago. With the demise of SeniorNet and all the transitions this discussion has endured, it's amazing that we are still here. Mal died before SeniorNet's demise, we had a long hiatus, and then Robby retired from the discussion. Thankfully, we had Trevor who picked up the standard and marched us all forward.
Emily
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Oh gosh! You mean it doesn't include all the discussion from the beginning of the "story"? That means there must have been 100,000 posts since the beginning!?! I think i came in during the Middle Ages.
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Durants' SoC.
Vol. V. The Renaissance.
Pages 605-608.
PERSPECTIVE
Were the morals of Renaissance Italy really worse than those of other lands and times? It is difficult to make comparisons, since all evidence is a selection. The age of Alcibiades in Athens displayed much of the immorality of the Renaissance in sexual relations and political chicanery; it too practised abortion on a large scale, and cultivated erudite courtesans; it too liberated simultaneously the intellect and the instincts; and, anticipating Machiavelli, Sophists like Thrasybulus in Plato’s ‘Republic’ attacked morality as weakness. Perhaps ( for in these matters we are limited to vague impressions ) there was less violence in classic Greece than in Renaissance Italy, and a bit less corruption in religion and politics. During an entire century of Roman history-- from Caesar to Nero -- we find greater corruption in government, and a worse breakdown in marriage, than in the Renaissance; but even in that epoch there remained many Stoic virtues in the Roman character; Caesar, with all his ambivalent capacity in bribery and love, was still the greatest general in a nation of generals.
Political deceit, treachery, and crime were probably as rife in France, Germany, and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as in Italy, but those countries had the wisdom not to produce a Machiavelli to expound and expose the principles of their statecraft. Manners, not morals, were coarser north of the Alps than below them, except for a small class in France-- exemplified by the Chevalier Bayard and Gaston de Foix-- which still retained the better side of chivalry. Given the opportunity, the French were as adept at adultery as the Italians; observe how readily they adopted syphilis; note the sexual melee in the ‘fabliaux’; count the twenty-four mistresses of Duke Philip of Burgundy, and the Agnes Sorels and Dianes de Poitiers of the French kings; read Brantome.
Germany and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were too poor to rival Italy in immorality. Travellers from these countries were astounded by the laxity of Italian life. Luther, visiting Italy in 1511, concluded that “if there is a hell, then Rome is built upon it; and this I have heard in Rome itself.” He quotes as an established proverb the saying, “Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato: “An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate.” Machiavelli reckoned Italy as “ more corrupt than all other countries; next come the French and the Spaniards.” He admired the Germans and the Swiss as still possessing many of the virile virtues of ancient Rome. We may diffidently conclude that Italy was more immoral because she was richer, weaker in government and the reign of law, and further advanced in that intellectual development which usually makes for a moral release.
The Italians made some laudable efforts to check license. The vainest of these efforts were the sumptuary regulations that in nearly every state forbade extravagance of immodesty of dress; the vanity of men and women overrode with sly persistence the occasional assiduity of the law. The popes inveighed against immorality, but were in some cases swept along with the stream; their attempts at reforming abuses in the Church were nullified by the inertia or vested interests of the clergy; they themselves were rarely as wicked as passionate history once painted them, but they were more concerned to re-establish the political power of the papacy than to restore the moral integrity of the Church. Valiant attempts at reform were made by the great preachers of the time, men like St. Bernardino of Siena, Roberto da Lecce, San Giovanni da Capistrano, and Savonarola. They denounced vice with a vivid detail that contributed to their popularity; they persuaded feudalists to forswear revenge and live in peace; they induced governments to release insolvent debtors and let exiles return home; they brought hardened sinners back to long neglected sacraments.
Even these powerful preachers failed. The instincts formed through a thousand years of hunting and savagery had re-emerged through the cracked shell of a morality that had lost the support of religious belief, of respected authority, and established law. The great Church that had once ruled kings could no longer govern or cleanse itself. The destruction of civil liberty in state after state had dulled the civic sense that had enfranchised and ennobled the medieval communes; where there had been citizens there were now only individuals. Excluded from Government and flush with wealth, men turned to the pursuit of pleasure, and foreign invasion surprised them in siren arms. The city states had for two centuries directed their forces, their subtlety, and their treachery against one another; it was now impossible for them to unite against a common foe. Preachers like Savanarola, rebuffed in all pleas for reform, called down the judgment of heaven upon Italy, and predicted the destruction of Rome and the break-up of the Church. France, Spain,and Germany, weary of sending tribute to finance the wars of the Papal States and the luxuries of Italian life, looked with amazement and envy at a peninsula so shorn of will and power, so inviting in beauty and wealth. The birds of prey gathered to feast on Italy.
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I came in just at the start of Rome, and asked if it was too late to join!!
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The birds of prey gathered to feast on Italy.
I can't wait for the next installment.
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What an interesting comparison....who is more or less moral and why? Does wealth make people less moral, or is it just more obvious, or do the poor have less time and energy to indulge in immoral behavior?? Advanced Intellectual development makes for moral release???
Can one (Machiavelli, ex) judge one's own culture against others of which we have less knowledge? Doesn't what's right in front of us give us more insight than one 100s of miles away? Do we always think those around us are less moral because we know them and their behaviors better than others farther away? Do we idolize those farther from us because we don't see their personal behaviors?
Hasn't humanity always leaned toward immorality? Therefore the neccesity for law.
Whew!..........Jean
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Oh! I meant to say, i'm going to have to pull out Barbata Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, about the fourteenth century, and see what she has to say on morality. I read it so long ago, i don't remember the details.
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I don't remember the details either, but I remember she wound up not liking the 14th century very much, and from her book, I agreed with her.
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Durant in comparing Italy to the rest of Europe on the moral issue tells us.............read Brantome
I did not know Brantome, so I looked him up, and found the following.......an excerpt from Wiki.........
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur (and abbé) de Brantôme (c. 1540 – 15 July 1614) was a French historian, soldier and biographer.
Brantôme was born in Périgord, Aquitaine, the third son of the baron de Bourdeille. His mother and maternal grandmother were both attached to the court of Marguerite of Navarre, on whose death in 1549 he went to Paris, and later (1555) to Poitiers, to finish his education.
He was given several benefices, the most important of which was the abbey of Brantôme, but had no inclination for an ecclesiastical career.
He became a soldier and came into contact with many of the great leaders of the continental wars. He travelled in Italy; in Scotland, where he accompanied Mary, Queen of Scots (then the widow of Francis II of France); in England, where he saw Elizabeth I (1561, 1579); in Morocco (1564); and in Spain and Portugal.
He fought on the galleys of the Order of Malta, and accompanied his great friend, the French commander Filippo di Piero Strozzi (grandson of Filippo Strozzi the Younger), in his expedition against Terceira, in which Strozzi was killed (1582).
During the French Wars of Religion under Charles IX of France, he fought for the Catholics (including at the Siege of La Rochelle (1572-1573), but he allowed himself to be won over temporarily by the ideas of the Huguenot reformers, and though he publicly separated himself from Protestantism, it had a marked effect on his mind.
A fall from his horse compelled him to retire into private life about 1589, and he spent his last years in writing his Memoirs of the illustrious men and women whom he had known. Brantôme left distinct orders that his manuscript should be printed; a first edition appeared late (1665–1666) and not very complete. Later editions include:
Brantôme can hardly be regarded as a historian proper, and his Memoirs cannot be accepted as a very trustworthy source of information. But he writes in a quaint conversational way, pouring forth his thoughts, observations or facts without order or system, and with the greatest frankness and naiveté.
His works certainly gave an admirable picture of the general court-life of the time, with its unblushing and undisguised profligacy. There is not an homme illustre or a dame galante in all his gallery of portraits who hasn't engaged in what Medieval Christian prescriptions as well as the Victorian society would regard as sexual immorality; and yet the whole is narrated with the most complete unconsciousness that there is anything objectionable in their conduct.
Besides the general promiscuity of the characters, some parts of the work depict in a more or less detailed fashion the practices of homosexualism
Emily
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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and so it goes........forever and ever, amen!
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Since Brantome was given several benefices and had no interest in church duties, I wanted the Catholic definition of what a 'benefice' was to them. An excerpt from Wiki......
[edit] Catholic Church
In ancient Rome a benefice was a gift of land (precaria) for life as a reward for services rendered, originally, to the state. The word comes from the Latin noun beneficium, meaning "benefit". The expanded practice continued through the Middle Ages within the European feudal system.
This same customary method became adopted by the Christian Church
The church's revenue streams came from, amongst other things, rents and profits arising from assets gifted to the church, its endowment, given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, and later to a much smaller extent certain tithes calculated on the sale of the product of the people's personal labour such as cloth or shoes and the people's profits from specific forms of, also God-given, natural increase such as crops and in livestock.
Initially these grants, then grants of land, were granted for life but the land was not alienated from the bishoprics. However the council of Lyons of 566 annexed these grants to the churches. By the time of the council of Mainz of 813 these grants were known as beneficia.
Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson and cardinal-nephew of Pope Paul III, held sixty-four benefices simultaneously.Holding a benefice did not necessarily imply a cure of souls but each benefice had a number of spiritual duties, attached to it.
The benefice system was open to abuse. Worldly prelates occasionally held multiple major benefices.
Forget the 'worldly prelates', many of those we have read about in these chapters who received large grants of land and property had no intention or desire to serve in the church.
Brantome was one of those.
Emily
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Renaissance Italy is about to feel the ire of Catholic Europe during the 1500's.
Today the Catholic Pope Benedict arrives in Germany for a visit, and is met by protests. His visit to Spain recently is being sharply criticized there for its cost.
An excerpt from the NYT on the Pope's visit to Germany.....
Critics of Pope Benedict XVI protested on Wednesday.
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: September 21, 2011
BERLIN — Instead of a pleasant visit to his native land, the trip to Germany this week by Pope Benedict XVI promises to be a journey to one of the front lines in the battle over the future of the Roman Catholic Church.
Once Catholic Europe is becoming more secular by the day, with both Catholics and Protestants officially leaving the church in droves. Those Catholics that remain are making demands on the church to reform (again....again)
IMO, no religion will ever reform, that would end their reason for existence and an admittance that the whole scheme was always a myth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/europe/visiting-berlin-pope-benedict-faces-a-combative-homeland.html?_r=1&hp
Emily
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Ahhhh, but the question before the statement is where did the church get all that land? I'm sure some was willed to it by people hoping to get into heaven, but how much of it was confiscated?
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Durants' SoC
Volume V The Renaissance
Pages 609-613
Recall the situation of Italy in 1494. the city states had grown through the rise of a middle class enriched by the development and management of commerce and industry. They had lost their communal freedom through the inability of semi democratic governments to maintain order amid the feuds of families and the conflicts of classes. Their economy remained local in structure even while their fleets and products reached out to distant ports. They competed with another more bitterly than with foreign states; they offered no concerted resistance to the expansion of French, German, and Spanish commerce into regions once dominated by Italy. Though Italy gave birth to the man who rediscovered America, it was Spain that financed him; trade followed in his wake, gold accompanied his return; the Atlantic nations flourished, and the Mediterranean ceased to be the favoured home of the white man’s economic life. Portugal was sending ships around Africa to India and China, avoiding Muslim hindrances in the Near and Middle East; even the Germans were shipping through the mouths of the Rhine rather than over the Alps to Italy. Countries that had for a century bought Italian woollen products were now making their own; nations that had paid interest to Italian bankers were nursing their own financiers. Tithes, Annates, Peter’s Pence, indulgence payments , and pilgrims coins were now the chief economic contribution of transalpine Europe to Italy; and soon a third of Europe would divert that flow. In this generation when the stored up wealth of Italy raised her cities to their supreme brilliance and art, Italy was economically doomed.
She was also politically doomed. While she remained divided into warring economies and states, the development of a national economy was compelling and financing, in other European societies, the transition from feudal principalities to the monarchical state. France unified herself under Louis XI, reducing her barons to courtiers and her burghers to patriots; Spain unified herself by wedding Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile, and England unified herself under Henry VII; and while Germany was almost as fragmented as Italy, it acknowledged one king and emperor, and occasionally gave him money and soldiers to make war upon one or another of the Italian states. England, France, Spain, and Germany raised national armies out of their own people, and their aristocracies provided Cavalry and leadership; the Italian cities had small forces of mercenaries inspired only by plunder, led by purchasable condotterieri, and prejudiced against sustaining mortal injuries. It needed only one engagement to reveal to Europe the defencelessness of Italy.
Half the courts of Europe now seethed with diplomatic intrigue as to which should seize the plum. France claimed the first right, and with reason. Francesco Sforza, took Milan by right of his wife, Bianca. But Charles, Duke of Orleans, claimed Milan, denounced the Sforzas as usurpers, and proclaimed his resolve, when opportunity should offer, to appropriate the Italian principality. Moreover, said the French, Charles, Duke of Anjou, had received the Kingdom of Naples from Urban IV in 1266, as reward for defending the papacy against the Hohenstaufen kings; and in 1482 Sixtus IV, at odds with Naples, invited Louis XI, King of France to come and conquer Naples, “which,” said the Pope, “belongs to him.” About this time Venice, hard pressed in war by a league of Italian states, called in desperation to Louis to attack either Naples or Milan, preferably both. Louis was busy unifying France; but his son Charles VIII inherited his claim to Naples, listened to Angevin-Neapolitan exiles at his court, noted that the crown of Naples was joined to that of Sicily, which carried with it the crown of Jerusalem; He conceived, or was sold, the grandiose idea of capturing Naples and Sicily, getting himself crowned King of Jerusalem, and then leading a crusade against the Turks. Encouraged by half of Italy, Charles prepared to invade. To protect his flanks he ceded Artois and Franche-Comte to Maximilian of Austria, and paid a large sum to Henry VII for renouncing English claims to Brittany.
In March, 1494, he assembled his army at Lyons: 18000 cavalry, 22000 infantry. A fleet was sent to keep Genoa safe for France; on September 8 it recaptured Rapallo from a Neapolitan force that had landed there; and the unrestrained bloodiness of this first encounter shocked an Italy accustomed to reasonable slaughter. In that month, Charles and his army crossed the Alps, and paused at Asti. Lodovico of Milan and Ercole of Ferrara went there to meet him, and Lodovico lent him funds. On November 17 Charles and half his army paraded through Florence; the populace admired the unprecedented cavalcade, grumbled at petty thefts by the soldiery, but noted with relief that they refrained from rape. In December Charles moved on toward Rome.
In a meeting of King and Pope, Charles behaved with moderation: he asked only a free passage through Latium for his army, the custody of the papal prisoner Djem ( who might be used as a pretender and ally in a campaign against the Turks ), and Caesar Borgia’s company as a hostage. Alexander agreed; the army marched south (January 25 1495 ), Borgia soon escaped, and Alexander was free to reform the lines of his diplomacy. On February 22 Charles entered Naples in unresisted triumph and acclaimed by the cheers of the populace. He showed his appreciation by reducing taxes and pardoning those who had opposed his coming; and at the request of the barons who ruled the hinterland he recognized the institution of slavery. Thinking himself secure, he relaxed to enjoy the climate and scenery. Naples so charmed him that he forgot about Jerusalem and his crusade.
While he dallied in Naples, and his army enjoyed the women of the streets and the stews and caught or spread the “French disease,” trouble was organising behind him. The occupying army added insult to injury by their open contempt of the Italian people; in a few months the French had worn out their welcome, and earned a hatred that waited in fierce patience for a chance to expel the invaders. On may 21 Charles left Naples in charge of his cousin the count of Montpensier, and led half his army northward. At Fornova, on the river Taro, his 10,000 troops found their way blocked by an allied army of 40,000. There on July 5 1495, came the first real test of French vs Italian arms and tactics. The battle was indecisive; both sides claimed victory; the French lost their baggage train but remained victors of the field. During the night they marched on to Asti, where Louis, third Duke of Orleans, waited with reinforcements. In October Charles, with damaged repute but a whole skin, was back in France.
The territorial results of the invasion were slight, the indirect results were endless. It proved the superiority of a national army to mercenary troops. The Swiss mercenaries were a temporary exception; armed with Pikes eighteen feet long they formed a solid barrier to advancing cavalry. But soon the invincibility of this revived Macedonian phalanx would be ended by improved artillery. In the Middle Ages the arts of defence had outrun the means of attack, and had discouraged war; now attack was gaining on defence, and war became bloodier. The Swiss mercenaries learned in this year of war how fertile were the plains of Lombardy; they would hereafter invade them repeatedly. The French learned that Italy was divided into fragments that awaited a conqueror. Charles lost himself in armours, and almost ceased to think of Naples, but his cousin and heir was of sterner stuff. Louis XII would try again.
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A question i've tho't of often thru my study of history........how do you feed 40,000 soldiers on the road? Even to have them eat "off the land" seems an impossibility.
As to "civilization" in others parts of world, i am, coincidentally, listening to "1491," a book that focuses on Native Americans before the coming of the Europeans, naturally. The first part of the book talks a lot about the clash of the Spainards and the NA's, the battles, the conquests, but also on the huge communities of NA's in Mexico and central and south America. mexico city being the largest city in the world by far, having many more paved streets than London and they were swept clean everyday, even tho they didn't have the urine and manure of horses that European cities had in their streets that didn't get swept.
The second part of the book focuses on how the NA's got here, when they came, and how the various theories evolved. The third part which i'm listening to now speaks to the great variety of vegatables they had cultivated and their importance to sustaining these great numbers of people and the impact on the eastern hemisphere countries when they were taken back there.
The author has a new book out, "1493". I wonder what it focuses on because he has talked about the impact of European diseases and on the nutritional foods going to the east..........he spoke on booktv this weekend, but i missed it. I will go online and watch the interview. Does Durant write about Native American civilization in any if his volumes?
Jean
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So there were two things going on here. First, the countries that unified were stronger than the warring city-states (was this the start of "Nationalism"?
And second " the Atlantic nations flourished, and the Mediterranean ceased to be the favoured home of the white man’s economic life." Easy to forget how much of our Western history to this point centers on the Mediteranean, and how this relatively ssmall and easy-to-navagate body of water gave a natural ropute for trade and conquest.
In the centuries ahead, it will be those best exploiting longer routes to the New World and the East who will prosper.
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mabel1015
A question i've tho't of often thru my study of history........how do you feed 40,000 soldiers on the road? Even to have them eat "off the land" seems an impossibility.
Since this is the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I am reading published diaries of Southern soldiers and sailors. Many of these have been printed for family members only, and reading one usually leads to another. A friend sent me a copy of her gr-gr-grandfather's civil war diary last year. He had three different diaries and she put them together and had them printed and put in the Tennessee archives.
He wrote with such a beautiful script but was a poor speller. He had three other brothers who were soldiers also, one who fought for the Union who lived in Missouri. Three of his brothers died in the war, one who was in his own company. He went to find him when he found out he was shot, and saw that he had been shot in the head. The doctor told him his brother would not survive. They moved them behind the lines and he begged to stay with him till he died, but the answer was no. The next day his only entry said, 'I am so lonely tonight'. His brother died that night as he tells us the next day.
As for feeding the soldiers, many, many days they were hungry. He mentions this in his diary often. They seemed to be always marching, fighting, and looking for food. They once walked over a hundred miles across the mountains with no food. It took them three days.
They could not confiscate food. They had to buy it from the farms. They only fought in the South, and many people were alligned with the cause, but certainly not all.
This is a fascinating story of a German who settled in Virginia and owned several businesses, and the daughter of the only lawyer in a small town in Tennessee who was from New York City. They all headed west and were in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains by the time the Civil War started with Fourteen children who all lived to adulthood. They sent four sons to fight in the war and only one came back. There were dozens of letters also in the book.
This family did not own slaves. The grandfather said he had all the help he needed with eight sons and six daughters. Everyone had to work. He lived a few days past his 98th birthday and died a very wealthy man, most of it in hundreds of acres of hardwood forest. He owned a tannery, made saddles, bridles, boots, etc. He owned a sawmill and finishing place. His brother opened a general store and got the postal appointment. They started a college to educate their children.
Pretty good for walking into an uninhabited cove without a soul there and building everything from nothing after his first purchase of a few acres.
One story about food......They went to a farm that had a large peach orchard (they were in Georgia) and asked the farmer how much for peaches. He told them they could have all they found on the ground for free. There had been a storm the day before and the ground was covered. He loaded up his buddy with all he could carry and told him to bring back help. They carried off so many peaches that he worked all night making peach pies. He had been wounded at Perryville, Ky. battle, so he was assigned to the rear to help secure food and cook.
The entire company was moving at night to north Ga. and they were attacked by the Yankees. He had to run and hide and leave the wagons with the food and cooking utensils. He watched as they set the wagons on fire, and did not come out until daybreak to assess the damage. It was bad and for several days they were hungry, and most of the horses were dead or gone.
These were not thousands of men, but in the big battles they all arrived at the same point and there were thousands who fought. During battle they did not have time nor place to eat.
Emily
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Since Durant is writing about the 'massing of armies' against the city states of Italy, I thought this article in the NYT this week was interesting about the 'boys' who came to fight for both North and South during the Civil War. I'm sure those who gathered to fight against Rome, some were 'boys', not men.
This year to mark the sesquicentennial, the New York Times has produced a series of articles titled 'Disunion', about the Civil War. I have read most of the articles, and even though the 'boys' in the article are Union troops, the Confederates had as many or more who were under age even though it was against the military rules.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/the-boys-of-war/
Emily
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I had always read that Napoleon lost in Russia because he moved beyond his supply lines, but even in western Russia how did he feed his soldiers. I have a feeling that most soldiers thruout history, until WWII and ........(something) rations, somebody help me, and now MREs, .........ate when and where they could find it and not often.
So, i guess we can't be too judgemental when we hear of "those other folks"(Viet Namese, Bosnians, Rwandians) have young boys in their armies.
Emily, thanks for the bits of the diaries, they were interesting.
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Thanks Jean. I love reading the diaries of the average soldier or sailor. Many days are boring, but they all give the weather report daily. The severity of the cold in the winter of '64 was heartbreaking, and some of the best writing I've seen in years.
Back to Italy, the Italian city states were all at war with 'each other' on a never ending basis it seems. Venice was asking the French to invade their enemies in Naples or Milan, preferably both. It would be many years before Italy became unified.
Emily
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I have the diary of a relative who fought for the north. Not as hungry as the Southerners, but still often hungry. Ken Burns "Civil War" quoted from many soldier's diaries: among the best parts of that amazing documentart. i've watched it twice: if they rebroadcast it, I'll watch it again.
We are just reading in "The Classics corner" how civil war distroyed the Roman Republic. With all the pain, suffering and bitterness that our Civil War left, our form of government survived.
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JoanK, Rome underwent a series of Civil and other wars during the late Republic that spanned a period between 91BC to 30BC. That much fighting probably weakened the Republic considerably, both in manpower and economically. I am sure there were earlier wars and skirmishes. Fortunately, we only underwent one. Also, the spacing of the wars we have been in seem to be farther apart than those of Rome which seemed to be embroiled is some war or other almost constantly during that 60 year period. The moral of that, I think, the US would do well to be careful about how many and how often to get ourselves into wars. The other saving grace for us is that we've managed to avoid any wars, civil or otherwise, on our own soil.
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Oh Joan, I wish you lived nearby so we could exchange diaries for a few days. I would like to read your ancestor's account.
The Tennessean had an article last month about finding the diary of a Union soldier in the old archives building. They looked for him in the records and he seems to have died in the 'Battle of Nashville' and is buried in the cemetary there.
The boxes they found came from the U.S. Provost office in Nashville after the Union troops had left. Union troops had occupied Nashville for some time before the battle. They remained after the battle so the diary was in their possession, and they simply left it behind along with other records.
It's a wonder anything survives a bloody war.
Emily
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EMILY: wouldn't that be neat.
FRY: we are reading about just that period of the breakdown of the Republic. Wednesday, we start a new account: Plutarch's account of the life of Antony (Anthony and Cleopatra), the original that Shakespeares play and Liz taylor's movie were based on. The text is on the internet. Come and join us, anyone who hasn't.
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2489.200 (http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=2489.200)
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Has anyone heard from Trevor? He has not posted since Oct. 3. I hope nothing is wrong.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Volume V The Renaissance
Pages 613-617
Maximilian, “King of the Romans”—i.e. of the Germans—provided an interlude. He fretted at the thought that his great enemy, France, should be strengthened, and outflank him, by capturing Italy; he had heard how rich and fair and weak that land was, not yet a country but only a peninsula. He, too, had claims on Italy.Moreover, many Italians invited him. Maximilian came, with a handful of troops. His campaign failed through inadequate co-ordination and support, and he returned to Germany only slightly a wiser man.
In 1498 the Duke of Orleans became Louis XII. On the day of his coronation he assumed, among others, the titles of Duke of Milan, King of Naples and Sicily, and Emperor of Jerusalem. Toclear his path he renewed a treaty of peace with England, and concluded another with Spain. A month later ( March, 1499) he made an agreement with the Swiss cantons to supply him with soldiers in return for an annual subsidy of 20,000 florins. In May he brought Alexander VI into the alliance by giving Caesar Borgia a French bride of royal blood, the duchy of Valentinois, and a pledge of aid in reconquering the Papal States for the Papacy.On October 6 1499 Louis entered Milan in triumph, welcomed by nearly all Italy except Naples.
In July, 1501, a French army under the Scot Stuart d’Aubigny, Caesar Borgia, and Francesco di San Severino marched through Italy to Capua, took and plundered it, and advanced upon Naples. Frederico, abandoned by all, yielded the city to the French in return for a comfortable refuge and annuity in France. When the Spanish army came into contact with the French on the borders between Apulia and Abruzzi, disputes arose over the boundary line between the two thefts; and to Alexander’s relief Spain and France went to war over the exact division of the spoils ( July 1502 ) “ If the Lord had not put discord between France and Spain”, said the Pope to the Venetian ambassador, “where should we be?”
Louis assigned his Neapolitan rights to his relative Germaine de Foix, who was, however, to marry the widowed Ferdinand and bring Naples to him as her dowry. The crowns of Naples and Sicily were added to those already on Ferdinand's insatiable head; and there after, till 1707 the Kingdom of Naples remained an appanage of Spain.
On December 10, 1508, a grand conspiracy was hatched against Venice at C ambrai. The Emperor Maximilian joined the league because Venice had taken from Imperial control Goriza, Trieste, Pordenone, and Fiume, and because Venice had refuse him and his little army free passage toward Rome for the papal coronation upon which he had set his heart. Louis XII joined the league because disputes had arisen between France and Venice as to the division of northern Italy. Julius joined the league (1509) because Venice not only refuse to evacuate the Romagna, but made no secret of her ambition to acquire Ferrara. The European powers now planned to absorb all the mainland holdings of Venice. Had the plan succeeded Italy would have ceased to exist. France and Germany would have reached down to the Po, Spain almost up to the Tiber; the Papal States would have been hemmed in helplessly; and the Venetian bulwark against the Turks would have been destroyed. In this crisis no Italian state offered Venice aid; she had provoked almost all of them by her rapacity.
Venice deserved sympathy now only because she stood alone against an overwhelming power, and because her loyal rich and her conscripted poor alike fought with incredible pertinacity to a Pyrrhic victory. The Senate offered to restore Faenza and Rimini to the papacy, but the angry Julius responded with a blast of excommunication, and sent his troops to recapture the Romagna cities while the French advance compelled Venice to concentrate her forces in Lombardy. At Agnadello the French defeated the Venetian's in one of the bloodiest battles of the Renaissance (May 14, 1509); six thousand men died there on that day. Maximilian came down with the largest army—some 36,000 men – yet seen in those parts, and laid siege to Padua. The surrounding peasantry made all the trouble they could for his men; The Paduans fought with a bravery that attested the good government they had enjoyed under Venice. Maximilian, impatient and always pressed for funds, left in disgust. Julius suddenly ordered his troops to withdraw from the siege. Louis XII, having obtained his share of the spoils, disbanded his army.
Julius had by this time realized that the full victory of the League would be a defeat for the papacy, since it would leave the popes at the mercy of northern powers among whom the Reformation was already beginning to find voice. When Venice again offered him all that he could ask, he, " vowing that he would never consent, consented." (1510)
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European history can be so confusing, between all the different titles one person can hold -still today Prince William is also Duke of something, etc - and the nations/city states/regions whose boundaries are different today and changed quickly at the time, i have to sit with a map to know what is being said and who is being talked about.
E.g. "maximillian, king of the Romans i.e. Germans"
Jean
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We're starting to read about Cicero in Plutarch, if anyone wants to join us.
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Trevor, what a convoluted excursion through armies marching, disbanding, retreating, fighting, withdrawing, saying you'll never give in and then consenting.
The entire escapade seems more like a game of double dare. Some don't want to play and others only want to stir up trouble. When civilization has a renaissance as Durant wrote and long wars wind down, men will turn to other pursuits. But not for long.
I see little difference between where we are today than where we were six or seven hundred years ago. Today we are the strong country and are using our military to go after what we want, namely oil and the trillions of dollars it creates.
We want your oil and your money.
Emily
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Emily. I agree with your comments. Even after skipping several paragraphs of detail in SoC, and trying to tie it all up into a coherent whole, I confess I'm still confused by the chaotic mess in Italy during those times. And as you remark, it seems that the Western Powers and the Middle East Nations are today squabbling with themselves and with each other, in much the same way as the Renaissance and Reformation guys did in the 1500's. When will all of us learn to avoid such disasters ?--- Trevor.
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Trevor, you did a great job of putting all that together.
We are only nine days away from this forum being ten years old. Robby dated the heading and all his questions to start it off on Nov. 1, 2001. By the morning of the 3rd posters came in and the rest is history.
Do you ever hear from Justin or Robby? It would be nice if they would come by and comment on ten years since they were a big part of this discussion for much of that time.
Brian, where are you? We haven't heard from you in a while. I hope everything is alright.
Emily
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10 years! Unbelievable! What volume number are we in now? I've been here since about 2005, i think. I'll have to check. I'd love to hear from everybody and their comments and reflections...... Jean
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I've been here about the same length of time as Jean. We were just starting the Romans. I've dug that book out, and am finding it very useful for background in the Plutarch discussion.
Has anyone been here from the beginning?
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Joan, yes Trevor has been here since the beginning. He posted within the first few days.
I posted some time during the first months, don't know the exact date. I did not post daily as did some participants since I was still working. I read though from day one when I had time. I had never participated in an online book discussion, but had been in book clubs since I was a teenager.
Jean, we are in volume five, and are close to the end of that book. Book six will be the 'Reformation'.
Is ten years some sort of record for an online discussion of one authors work?
Emily
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Durants' SoC
Volume V The Renaissance.
Pages 616-619
Julius, having reclaimed what he considered to be the just property of the Church, was free to turn the fury of his spirit against the French who, controlling both Lombardy and Tuscany, were now unpleasant neighbours of the Papal States. At Mirandola he vowed never to shave till he had driven the French from Italy; so grew the majestic beard of Raphael's portrait. Now the pope gave to Italy, too late, a stirring motto, “Fuori i b arbari !”-- “Out with the Barbarians !” In October 1511, he formed a “League of Holy Union” with Venice and Spain; soon he won to it Switzerland and England.
By the end of January 1512, only one French force remained in Italy, under the command of a dashing and courtly youth of twenty-two years. Resenting inaction, Gaston de Foix lead his army first to the relief of besieged Bologna, then to defeat the Venetians at Isola della Scala, then to retake Brescia, finally to win a brilliant but costly victory at Ravenna ( April 11 1512 ) Nearly 20,000 corpses fertilized that battlefield; and Gaston himself, fighting in the front, received mortal wounds.
Julius repaired with negotiation what had been lost by arms. He persuaded Maximilian to sign a truce with Venice, to join the Union against France, and to recall 4000 German troops that had been part of the French army. On his urging, the Swiss marched down into Lombardy with 20,000 men. The French forces fell back before a converging mass of Swiss Venetian, and Spanish soldiery, and retreated to the Alps. Out of apparently complete disaster the “Holy Union” had in two months after the battle of Ravenna, through papal diplomacy, driven the French from Italian soil; and Julius was hailed as the liberator of Italy.
But Julius left many problems to his successor. He had not really driven out the foreigners; the Swiss held Milan as a guard for Sforza, the Emperor claimed Vicenza and Verona as his reward, and Ferdinand the Catholic, wiliest bargainer of them all, had consolidated the power of Spain in southern Italy. Only French power seemed finished in Italy. Louis XII sent another army to take Milan, but it was defeated by the Swiss at Novara with the loss of eight thousand Frenchmen (June 6 1513 ) When Louis died (1515) nothing remained of his once extensive Italian empire except a precarious foothold at Genoa.. But Francis I proposed to recapture it all. In August 1515 he led over a new alpine pass 40,000 men -- the largest army yet seen in these campaigns. the Swiss came out to meet it at Marignano; a furious battle raged for two days. Francis himself fought like a Roland, and was knighted on the spot. The Swiss left 13000 dead on the field; they abandoned Milan, and the city became French again.
The councillors of Leo X, vacillating, asked Machiavelli’s advice. He warned of neutrality between King and Emperor, on the grounds that the papacy would be as helpless before the victor as if it had taken part; and he recommended an entente with France as the lesser of two evils. Leo so ordered and on December 11, 1515, Francis and the Pope met at Bologna to arrange terms of concord. So ended (1516) the wars of the League of Cambrai, in which the partners had changed as in a dance, and the last condition of affairs was essentially as the first, and nothing had been decided except that Italy was to be the battlefield on which the great powers would fight duel after duel for the mastery of Europe.
Italy was devastated, but art and literature continued to flourish, whether by the stimulus of tragic events, or by the impetus of a prosperous past. The worst was yet to come.
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Oh dear! The worst was yet to come........
What a waste of lives and the Reformation is not going to help.
Prosperity is also about to come to some with the goodies from the western hemisphere. If you like this period of time, read "1491", and then "1493". I dont have the author's name in my head. I have read 1491 which talks about the Native Americans, particularly the Mayans, beforethe Europeans arrived and i understand that 1493 is about the effects of the Columbian Exchange. There is an interview w/ the author on cspan. I'll look for the link.
Emily, this has got to be some kind of record for a group to be discussing the same author for ten years!..........think the NYT books section would be interested in the story!?! ;)
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Charles Mann is the author of 1491 and 1493. Here is his interview w/ Terry Gross on NPR....
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/138924127/in-1493-columbus-shaped-a-world-to-be
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How long since Rome fell? At least a thousand years, and still the country is broken into cities and states. In the 'every man for himself' attitude that seemed to prevade Italy and kept it from unifying and protecting themselves from continual foreign invasion. This will go on for a few hundred years more.
It seems that 'once broken' it is more difficult to put back together than tear apart. Even in my lifetime there are many that were broken up through war, namely, Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Yugoslavia, India, Russia, etc.
I saw on the news today that of the Seven Billion people in the world, the 'average' man of these billions was a Han Chinese, 28 years old, works in a city, does not own a car. They did a composite drawing and found a man in Queens, N.Y. that fit the discription. He works as the New York correspondent for a Chinese newspaper.
Emily
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Durant's SoC
Vol V The Renaissance
Pages 619-622
Leo and Europe
The conference at Bologna pitted prestige and diplomacy against audacity and power. The handsome young King (Francis) came with victory in his plumes and armies at his back, eager to swallow Italy, merely keeping the Pope as a policeman; against which Leo had nothing but the glamour of his office and the subtlety of a Medici. If Leo thereafter played King against Emperor, and veered from side to side elusively, and simultaneously signed treaties with each against the other, we must not be too righteous about it; he had no other weapons to wield and had the heritage of the Church to protect. The secret agreements made at this meeting have remained secret to this day. The one definite result of the Concordat of 1516 was the repeal of the pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. This Sanction (1438) had asserted the superior authority of a general council over that of the popes, and had given the French king the right to appoint to all major ecclesiastical offices in France. Francis consented to annul the Sanction, provided the royal power of nomination remained; Leo agreed. It might seem a defeat of the Pope; but in so agreeing Leo was only accepting a custom centuries old in France; and without so planning it, he was marrying Church and State in France in a way that left the French monarchy no fiscal reasons for supporting the Reformation. Meanwhile he ended the long conflict between France and the papacy over the relative power of councils and popes.
The conference concluded by the French leaders begging forgiveness of Leo for having warred against his predecessor. “Holy Father,” said Francis, “you must not be surprised that we were such enemies of Julius II, since he was always the greatest enemy to us; He was in fact a most excellent commander, and would have made a much better general than a pope.” Leo gave all these doughty penitents absolution and benediction, and they ended by almost kissing his feet away.
When Maximilian died (1519) his grandson Charles was put forward to succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire. Francis thought himself fitter to be Emperor than the nineteen-year-old King of Spain, and actively sought election. Leo was again in a dangerous position. He would have preferred to support Francis, for he foresaw that the union of Naples, Spain, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands under one head would give that ruler such preponderance of territory, wealth, and men as would destroy the balance of power that had hitherto protected the Papal States. And yet the election of Charles over papal opposition would alienate the new emperor precisely when his aid was vitally needed to suppress the Protestant revolt. Leo hesitated too long to make his influence felt; Charles was chosen emperor, and as such Charles I became Charles V. Still playing balance of power, the Pope offered Francis an alliance; when the king in turn hesitated, Leo abruptly signed an agreement with Charles. The young Emperor offered almost everything including protection of the Papal States and Florence from any attack.
In September, 1521, the duel was renewed. “My cousin Francis and I,” said the Emperor “are in perfect accord; he wants Milan, and so do I”. The French forces in Italy were led by Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec; Francis had appointed him at the solicitation of Lautrec’s sister, who was for the moment the Kings mistress. Louise of Savoy, the King’s mother, resented the appointment, and secretly diverted to other uses the money provided for Lautrec’s army by Francis; and the Swiss in that army deserted for lack of pay. As a strong papal-imperial force approached Milan, the Ghibelline supporters of the Empire there raised a successful revolt of the overtaxed populace. Lautrec withdrew from the city into Venetian territory, the troops of Charles and Leo took Milan almost bloodlessly; and Leo could die (December 1, 1521 ) in the unction of victory.
ADRIAN VI 1522-1523
His successor was an anomaly in Renaissance Rome: a Pope who was resolved at all costs to be a Christian. Born of lowly folk in Utrecht (1459) Adrian Dedel imbibed piety and scholarship at the University of Louvain. At 34 he was chancellor of that university; at forty-seven he was appointed tutor of the future Charles V., in 1520 he became regent of Castile. Through all this progress he remained modest in everything but certainty, lived simply and pursued heretics with a zeal that endeared him to the people. His repute reached Rome, and Leo made him a cardinal. In the congress that met after Leo’s death his name was put forward as a candidate for the Papacy. On January 2 1522, for the first time since 1378 a non-Italian -- for the first time since 1161 a Teuton -- was chosen pope. How could the Romans forgive such an affront. The populace denounced the cardinals as madmen, as “ betrayers of Christ’s blood “; pamphleteers demanded to know why the Vatican had been “surrendered to German fury.”
Adrian felt himself a prisoner in the Vatican, and pronounced it fit for the successors of Constantine rather than Peter. He discontinued all further decoration of the Vatican chambers; the followers of Raphael, who had been working there, were dismissed. He was horrified by the looseness of sex and tongue and pen in Rome, and agreed with Lorenzo and Luther that the capital of Christianity was a sink of iniquity. He asked the cardinals to put an end to their luxuries, and to content themselves with a maximum income of 6000 ducats ($75000) a year. “All ecclesiastical Rome,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “ is beside itself with terror, seeing what a pope has done in the space of eight days.”
But the eight days were not enogh, nor the brief thirteen months of Adrians active pontificate. Vice hid its face for a while but survived; reforms irked a thousand officials, and met with sullen resistance and the hope for Adrian’s early death.
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Since today is November 1st, we have successfully completed ten years in the online discussion of 'Story of Civilization'.
A big round of applause for Trevor who has been here all ten years. Clap...clap....clap....
While cleaning out files, I found some notes on Will Durant. Between 1911-1913 he spent summers in Europe. He began to collect and write and continued on until his death.
From his first journey in 1911 until today is exactly 'one hundred years'.
Durant circled the globe twice between 1929 and 1935. He went to the places he writes about and read many original documents. He did his homework and never stopped thinking and writing.
As much as I admire Durant, I certainly have a bone to pick with Francis who let Leo lead him into an alliance that doomed France to Catholicism for the next few hundred years.
He also doomed my French ancestors who were driven from their own country by this agreement, and a blue eyed maiden from the Dutch Reformed Church that caught his eye. And as they say the rest is history.
I'm happy they sailed west after a layover in London, and made Manhattan their home.
Emily
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Durants' SoC
The Renaissance Vol V
pages 623-626
Amid these tribulations he faced as honorably as he could the critical problems of foreign policy. He restored Urbino to Francesco Maria della Rovere, and left Alfonzo undisturbed in Ferrara. Ousted dictators took advantage of the pacific Pope and again seized power in Perugia, Rimini, and other Papal States. Adrian appealed to Charles and Francis to make peace, or at least accept a truce, and join in repelling the Turks, who were preparing to attack Rhodes. Instead Charles signed with Henry VIII of England the Treaty of Windsor ( June 1522 ), which pledged them to make a concerted assault on France . On December 21 the Turks took Rhodes, the last Christian stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it was rumoured that they were planning to land in Apulia and conquer disorganized Italy.
When Turkish spies were captured in Rome the trepidation mounted to a point that recalled the city’s fear of invasion after Hannibal’s victory at Cannae in 216 BC. To quite fill Adrian’s cup of gall, Cardinal Francesco Soderini, his chief minister and confidante, and a principal agent in his negotiations for a European peace, plotted with Francis a French attack on Sicily. When Adrian discovered the plot, and learned that Francis was massing troops on the border of Italy, he abandoned neutrality, and leagued the papacy with Charles V. Then, broken in body and spirit, he fell sick and died( September (14 1523 ) His will left his property to the poor, and his last instructions were that he should be given a quiet and inexpensive funeral.
Rome greeted his death with more joy than if the city had been saved from Capture by the Turks. Some believed he had been poisoned for art’s sake, and a wag attached to the door of the Pope’s physician an inscription “ Liberatori patriae SPQR”--- expressing the gratitude of the “Senate and People of Rome to the Liberator of the Fatherland.” The dead Pontiff was blackened by a hundred satires; he was accused of greed, drunkenness, and the grossest immorality, and every act of his career was transformed into wickedness by malice and ridicule; now the surviving freedom of the “press” in Rome prepared by its excesses its own unmourned demise. It was a pity that Adrian could not understand the Renaissance; but it was a greater crime and folly that the Renaissance could not tolerate a Christian pope.
CLEMENT VII:
The conclave that met on October1, 1523 fought for seven weeks over the selection of Adrian’s successor, and finally named a man who by universal opinion was the happiest possible choice. Giulio de’ Medici was the illegitimate son of that amiable Giuliano who had fallen a victim to the pazzi conspiracy, and of a mistress, Fioretta, who soon disappeared from history. Loenzo took the boy into his family and had him brought up with his sons. These included Leo, who as pope, dispensed Giulio from the canonical impediment of bastardy, made him archbishop of Florence, then a cardinal, then the able administrator of Rome, and the chief minister of his pontificate. Now forty-five, Clement was tall and handsome, rich and learned, well mannered and of moral life, an admirer and patron of literature, learning, music and art. Rome greeted his elevation with joy as the return of Leo’s golden age. Bembo prophesied that Clement VII could be the best and wisest ruler the Church had ever known.
He began most graciously. He distributed among the cardinals all benefices that he had enjoyed, entailing a yearly revenue of 60000 ducats. He won the hearts and dedications of scholars and scribes by drawing them into his service or supporting them with gifts. He dealt out justice justly, gave audience freely, bestowed charity with less than Leonine, but with wiser, generosity, and charmed all by his courtesy to every person and class. No pope ever began so well, or ended more miserably.
The task of steering a safe course between Francis and Charles in a war almost to the death, while the Turks were overrunning Hungary, and one third of Europe was in full revolt against the Church, proved too much for Clements's abilities, as for Leo’s too. The magnificent portrait of Clement in his early pontificate, by Sebastiano del Piombo, is deceptive: he did not show in his actions the hard resolution that there seemed limned in his face; and even in that picture a certain weak weariness shows in the tired eyelids drooping upon sullen eyes. Clement made irresolution a policy. He carried though to an excess, and mistook it as a substitute for action instead of its guide. He could find a hundred reasons for a decision, and a hundred against it; it was as if Buridan’s ass sat on the papal throne. Berni satirized him in bitter lines prophetic of posterity’s judgment:
A papacy composed of compliment,
Debate, consideration, complaisance,
Of furthermore, then, but, yes, well, perchance
Haply, and such like terms inconsequent.....
Of feet of lead, of tame neutrality........
To speak tame truth, you shall live to see
Pope Adrian sainted through the papacy.
He took as his chief councillors Gianmatteo Giberti who favoured France, and Nikolaus Schonberg who favoured the Empire; He allowed his mind to be torn in two between them, and when he decided for France-- only a few weeks before the French disaster at Pavia-- he brought down upon his head and his city all the wiles and forces of Charles, and all the fury of a half Protestant army unleashed upon Rome.
It was Clement’s excuse that he feared the power of an Emperor holding both Lombardy and Naples; and he hoped by siding with Francis, to secure a French veto on Charles troublesome idea of a general council to adjudicate the affairs of the Church. When Francis came down over the alps with a new army of 26000 French, Italians, Swiss, and Germans, seized Milan, and besieged Pavia, Clement, while giving Charles assurances of loyalty and friendship, secretly signed an alliance with Francis ( December 12 1524 ), brought Florence and Venice into it, and reluctantly gave triumphant Francis permission to levy troops in the Papal States and to send an army through Papal territory against Naples. Charles never forgave the deception. "I shall go into Italy”, he vowed "and revenge myself on those who have injured me, especially on that poltroon the Pope. Some day, perhaps, Martin Luther will become a man of weight.” At that moment some men thought that Luther would be made pope; and several of the Emperor’s entourage advised him to contest the election of Clement on the ground of illegitimate birth.
Charles sent a German army under Georg von Frundsberg and the Marquis of Pescara to attack the French outside of Pavia. Poor tactics nullified the French artillery, while the hand firearms of the Spanish made a mockery of Swiss pikes; the French army was almost annihilated in one of the most decisive battles of history ( Feb. 24-5, 1525 ) Francis behaved gallantly: while his troops retreated he plunged forward into the enemies ranks, making royal slaughter; his horse was killed under him, but he kept on fighting; at last, thoroughly exhausted, he could resist no more, and was taken prisoner along with several of his captains. From a tent among the victors he wrote to his mother the message so often half quoted: “All is lost save honour -- and my skin, which is safe.” Charles, who at this time was in Spain, ordered him sent as a prisoner to a castle near Madrid.
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He could find a hundred reasons for a decision, and a hundred against it
I know that scenario, weighing all the conflicting pros and cons, trying to gather more and more information until you get so tied up in knots you can't make a decision. Sounds like me. Indecision.
Re Buridan’s ass: I looked this up. It's the ultimate case of indecision and a problem of philosophy that I never ran across in philosophy classes. Too bad. I could have done a right good job of a paper on it. When I Googled, I came up with all sorts of interesting articles from free will to computers. Here are some of the links
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Buridan%27s%20Ass%20Phenomenon I like this one. It describes me well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass The ubiquitous Wikipedia, good overview.
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue81/Why_Buridans_Ass_Doesnt_Starve George used to tell the waitress that we would all starve before I made a choice.
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I like the "Why Buridans Ass doesn't starve". I especially like that it says "no animals were harmed in the making of this article,"
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;D
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Frybabe, thanks for the description of 'Buridans ass'. Perhaps Charles and Francis should have had that problem, and there might have been less war and more peace.
When Pope Clement was called a 'poltroon', I looked it up to be sure I had the right meaning of its use. It means 'an ignoble or total coward' according to the dictionary.
Here is the portrait of Pope Clement mentioned in Durant's piece. He had his portrait done on stone because it lasted longer than canvas.
He wanted to be remembered and liked his portrait so he had no lack of ego. He looks very manly in this portrait and not like a 'poltroon', but looks can be deceiving.
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=1027&handle=li
Emily
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He certainly doesn't look like one you'd want to go for clemancy!
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I confess I am one who can not discern either the personality or the likely attitudes of an individual from their portrait, or appearance. I guess it means that I am unlearned in this regard. In my dealings with others throughout my life, I have often been wrong in thinking that so and so on first meeting, was not to be trusted. ( Or alternately could be .)
To illustrate my point, I would like to tell you a story often related by my wife, that illustrates my argument. She is Polish, and during the WW2. She, then ten years old, and her family were deported by the invading Russians and sent to a Siberian labour camp. When Germany attacked Russia, the British and exiled Polish Governments negotiated their release. The family, and perhaps some hundred thousand other deported Poles, made their way to Uzbekistan, where there was a much warmer climate. There her father was accepted into the Polish army and sent to Iran, leaving Malwina, my wife, and her mother alone in the USSR.
One day in her desperate search for food and lodgings the mother left Malwina alone in a tea house filled with Uzbek men, and a few Russian women. ( Uzbek women were not allowed on the premises.) She was gone a long time, and Malwina began to worry that she might not return. Among the men she noticed a man whose appearance frightened her greatly. He was filthy, dressed in rags, hair and beard unshorn, a terrifying sight to a frightened young child.
Clutching her small bag of belongings in her arms she began to pray ,in Polish, calling upon God's help in her hour of need. To her terror, the unkempt man recognized her polish prayer, and said, in polish, "A Polish child ! Are you a Pole ?" Scared to death, she nodded mutely, and began to cry. The man drew a piece of moldy bread from his filthy clothing and offered it to Malwina. She refused to take it, hoping he would desist, and leave her alone. But he didn't leave. He persisted in speaking to her, and little by little heard from her how her mother had gone out into the street, looking for food in rubbish tins or anywhere.
Gradually, the man found out where her mother had gone, and telling Malwina to stay where she was, he went out looking for the mother, having gathered as much description as Malwina could provide. He eventually, after much searching found her. She had fainted from exhaustion and lack of food, and was lying on a bench in a small park.
He reunited them, helped them find the local Polish delegate, who provided them with what little help he could spare. So a man whose appearance was enough to scare a frightened child almost witless, turned out to be a knight, if not in shining Armour , still was their Saviour in their desperate hour of need.
Malwina often tells this story, and emphasises that an individual must never be judged on appearances, but rather on actions.
This has little to do with SoC, I know, but I was just trying to illustrate a point.
Please excuse .
--- Trevor.
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That could count as a little miracle, Trevor. Just when you think all is lost, they appear.
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Trevor, the story of your wife's ordeal is very fitting for this discussion. It is a fine example of 'looks being deceiving'. Since your wife was a child at the time in a room full of strangers, she had a right to be concerned about all of them.
Durant uses portrait descriptions a lot especially in describing the Popes. How much more one could perceive in person.
Just today I was discussing 'new friends' with my grandson (a sophmore in college). I told him that I had a small circle of friends, but a ton of acquaintances. I tried to explain the difference and he said 'he got the message'.
Emily
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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I remember that conversation, Emily, with my Dad when I was a teen. We used to have such marvelous debates. He said he was speaking from the real world and I from an ideal. I cannot tell you how many times I would go back to him, sometimes years later, and say "Dad you were right". Thanks for the memory jogger. I miss my conversations with my parents.
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That's a wonderful story, Trevor.
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Durants' SoC
Vol. V.
Pages 626-628
Milan reverted to the Emperor. All Italy itself at his mercy, and one Italian state after another presented him with diverse bribes for permission to remain in existence. Clement, fearful of invasion by the imperial army, and a revolution against the Medici in Florence, abandoned his French alliance and signed a treaty ( April 1, 1525 ) with Charles de Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples for Charles, pledging Pope and Emperor to mutual aid; the Emperor would protect the Medici in Florence accept Francesco Maria Sforza as imperial vicar in Milan; the Pope would pay Charles, for past affronts and future services, 100,000 ducats ($1,250,000 ?) which were badly needed for the imperial troops. Shortly afterward Clement connived at a plot by Girolamo Morone to free Milan from the Emperor. The Marquis of Pescara revealed it to Charles, and Morone was jailed.
Charles treated captive Francis with feline procrastination. After softening him with almost eleven months of courteous imprisonment, he agreed to free him on the impossible conditions that the King should surrender all the French rights, actual or alleged, to Genoa, Milan, Naples, Flanders, Artois, Tournai, Burgundy, and Navarre .That Francis should surrender all ships and troops for an expedition against Rome or the Turks, that Francis should marry Charles sister Elenora, and that the king should surrender his eldest sons == Francis, ten, and Henry, nine years old== to Charles as hostages for the fulfilment of these terms. By the treaty of Madrid (9 January ) Francis agreed to all these conditions with solemn oaths and mental reservations. On March 17 he was allowed to return to France, leaving his sons in his place as prisoners. Arrived in France, he announced he had no intention of honouring promises made under duress. Clement, with the support of canonical law, absolved him from his oaths and on May 22 Francis, Clement, Venice, Florence, and Francesco Maria Sforza signed the League of Cognac, pledging them to restore Asti and Genoa to France, to give Milan to Sforza as a French fief, to return to each Italian state all its prewar possessions, to ransom French prisoners for 2,000,000 crowns, and to bestow Naples upon an Italian prince who would pay a yearly tribute of 75,000 ducats to the King of France. The Emperor was cordially invited to sign this agreement; if he refused, he knew the league proposed to war upon him until he and all his forces were driven from Italy.
While Christendom so exercised itself in treachery and war, the Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent overwhelmed the Hungarians at Mohacs (August 29, 1526), and captured Budapest ( Sept.10). Clement, alarmed less Europe should become not merely Protestant but Mohammedan, announced to the cardinals that he was thinking of going to Barcelona in person to plead with Charles to make peace with Francis and join forces against the Turks.
On September 20 the Colonna family entered Rome with 5000 men and, overriding feeble resistance, plundered the Vatican, St. Peter’s and the neighbouring Borgo Vecchio, while Clement fled to Castel Sant’ Angelo. the papal palace was completely stripped, including Raphael’s tapestries and the Pope’s tiara; sacred vessels, treasured relics, and costly papal vestments were stolen; an hilarious soldier went about in a white robe and red cap of the Pope, distributing papal benedictions with mock solemnity. On the following day the Pope’s tiara was restored and he was assured that the Emperor had only the best intentions toward the papacy. The frightened Pope signed an armistice with the Empire for four months, and pardoned the Colonna Family.
Despite this Clement raised a new papal force of seven thousand troops. At the end of October ordered to march against the Colonna strongholds. At the same time he appealed to Francis I and Henry VIII for aid; Francis sent dilatory excuses; Henry, absorbed in the difficult task of begetting a son, sent nothing. Another papal army, in the north, was kept inactive by the apparently treacherous Fabianism of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, who could not forget that Leo X had ousted him from his duchy, and was not especially grateful that Adrian and Clement had let him return and stay. A braver leader was with that army-- young Giovanni de’ Medici, handsome son of Caterina Sforza, heir to her dauntless spirit . Giovanni was all for action against Milan, but Francesco Maria overruled him.
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This is like reading about a group of teenagers playing dungeons and dragons or grade schoolers in a game of 'King of the hill'. No one can trust anything the other says. In that atmosphere a mans word is not his bond and is absolutely worthless.
In Durant's writing so far, he has used the word 'Mohammedan' to describe Muslims. I looked up Muslim in my dictionary and found the date 1615 for the word Muslim in Arabic.
Since Arabia did not have a unified language when Mohammed was dictating the Koran, and Arabic only came into use later, his followers were called Mohammedan as Durant has done so far in his story. I know that some of the older books that I have read used that description exclusively.
Emily
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I don't know much about Dungeons and Dragons but all of this seems pretty comical if it weren't that these people were serious. Tragicomedy!
The etymology of Mohammaden is interesting, Emily. Studying word origins is fun and enlightening.
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I was surprised to find the Durants using the, to me, modern term Fabianism, as in " treacherous Fabianism of Francesco Maria della Rovere .... "
I have always felt that fabianism, capitalism, communism, socialism etc. were modern terms, that post-dated the early 16 th century.
By the way, I'm also thankful that persons names these days are shortened to at most three. Typing out long winded names becomes something of a bore. I would prefer some thing like F.M. d'Rovere, and such. I wonder, did they use such long names in everyday speech?----Trevor.
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I think i still have a textbook from my grad school course of comparative religions titled Mohammedenism. I was told some decades later, maybe in the 80s that that was no longer an acceptable term. I don't remember if i was given a reason and i don't to this day know why it is so...... Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 628-633
The Sack of Rome.
Charles, still remaining in Spain, and moving his pawns with magic remote control, commissioned his agents to raise a new army. They approached the Tirolese condottiere, Georg von Frundsburg, already famous for the exploits of the Landsknechte-- German mercenaries -- who fought under his lead. Charles could offer little money, but his agents promised rich plunder in Italy. Frundsberg was still nominally a Catholic, but he strongly sympathized with Luther, and hated Clement as a traitor to the Empire. He pawned his castle, his other possessions, even the adornments of his wife; with the 38000 gulden so obtained he collected some 10,000 men eager for adventure and pillage and not averse to breaking a lance over a papal head; some of them, it was said, carried a noose to hang the Pope. In November, 1526, this impromptu army crossed the mountains and descended toward Brescia. Alfonso of Ferrara repaid the papacy for its many efforts to depose him, by sending Frundsberg four of his mightiest cannon. Near Brescia Giovanni delle Bande Nere was shot in a skirmish with the invaders; he died at Mantua on November 30, aged twenty-eight.. No one remained to hinder the Duke of Urbino from doing nothing.
Frundsberg’s rabble crossed the Po as Giovanni died, and ravaged the fertile fields of Lombardy so effectively that three years later English ambassadors described the terrain as “the most pitiable country that ever was in Christendom”. In Milan, the imperial commander was now Charles, Duke of Bourbon; created constable of France for bravery at Marignano, he had turned against Francis when the King’s mother, as he felt, had cheated him of his proper lands; he went over to the Emperor, shared in defeating Francis at Pavia, and was made Duke of Milan. Now, to raise and pay another army for Charles, he taxed the Milanese literally to death. He wrote to the Emperor that he had drained the city of its blood. His soldiers, quartered with the inhabitants, so abused them with theft, brutality, and rape that many Milanese hanged themselves, or threw themselves from high places into the streets. Early in February, 1527, Bourbon led his army out of Milan and united it with Frundsberg’s near Piacenza. The conglomerate horde, now numbering nearly 22,000 men, moved east along the Via Emilia, avoiding the fortified cities but pillaging as it went, and leaving the countryside empty behind it.
Now at last Rome realized that it was the intended and helpless prey. On Holy Thursday (April 8 ), when Clement was giving his blessing to a crowd of 10000 persons before St. Peter’s, a fanatic clad only in a leather apron mounted the statue of St. Paul and shouted to the Pope; “Thou bastard of Sodom! For thy sins Rome shall be destroyed. Repent and turn thee! If thou wilt not believe me, in fourteen days thou shalt see .”
Bourbon, perhaps hoping to satisfy his men with an enlarged sum, sent to Clement a demand for 240,000 ducats; Clement replied that he could not possibly raise such a ransom. The horde marched to Florence; but the Duke of Urbino, Guicciardinni, and the Marquis of Saluzzo had brought in enough troops to man its fortifications effectively; the horde turned away baffled, and took the road to Rome. Clement, finding no salvation in truce, rejoined the League of Cognac against Charles and implored the help of France. He appealed to the rich men of Rome to contribute to a fund for defence; they responded gingerly, and suggested that a better plan would be to sell red hats. Clement had not hitherto sold appointments to the college of cardinals, but when Bourbon’s army reached Viterbo, only forty-two miles from Rome he yielded and sold six nominations. Before the nominees could pay, the Pope could see, from the windows of the Vatican the hungry swarm advancing across the Neronian fields. He had now 4000 soldiers to protect Rome from an attacking host of 20,000 men.
On May 6 Bourbon’s multitude approached the walls under cover of fog. They were repelled by a fusillade; Bourbon himself was hit, and died almost instantly. But the assailants could not be deterred from repeated attack; their alternatives were to capture Rome or starve. They found a weakly defended position; they broke through it, and poured into the city. The Roman militia and Swiss guards fought bravely, but were annihilated. Clement, most of the resident cardinals and hundreds of officials fled to Sant’ Angelo, whence Cellini and others tried to stop the invasion with artillery fire. But the swarm entered from a confusing variety of directions; some were hidden by fog; others so mingled with fugitives that the castle cannon could not strike them without killing the demoralized populace. Soon the invaders had the city at their mercy.
As they rushed on through the streets they killed indiscriminately any man, woman, or child who crossed their path. They marched into St. Peter’s, and slew the people who had sought sanctuary there. They pillaged every church and monastery they could find, and turned some into stables; hundreds of priests monks, bishops, and archbishops were killed. Every dwelling in Rome was plundered, and many were burned, with two exceptions: the Cancellaria, occupied by Cardinal Colonna and the palazzo Colonna, in which Isabella d’Este and some rich merchants had sought asylum; these paid 50000 ducats to leaders of the mob for freedom from attack, and took 2000 refugees within their walls. In most houses all the occupants were required to ransom their lives at a stated price; if they did not pay, they were tortured, thousands were killed; children were flung from high windows to pry parental savings from secrecy; some streets were littered with dead. The millionaire Domenico Massimi saw his sons slain, his daughter raped, his house burned, and then was himself murdered. “In the whole city,” says one account,” there was not a soul above three years of age who had not to purchase his safety.”
Of the victorious mob half were Germans, of whom most had been convinced that the popes and cardinals were thieves, and that the whole wealth of the Church of Rome was a theft from the nations, and a scandal to the world. The Lutherans among the invaders took especial delight in robbing cardinals, exacting high ransoms from them as the price of their lives, and teaching them new rituals Nuns and respectable women were violated ‘in situ,’ or were carried off to promiscuous brutality in the various shelters of the horde. Women were assaulted before the eyes of their fathers or husbands. Many young women, despondent after being raped, drowned themselves in the Tiber.
The sack lasted eight days, while Clement looked on from the towers of Sant’ Angelo. He ceased to shave, and never shaved again. He remained a prisoner in the Castle from May 6 to December 7 1527, hoping that rescue would come. Charles, still in Spain, was glad to hear that Rome had been taken, but was shocked when he heard of the savagery of the sack; he disclaimed responsibility for the excesses, but took full advantage of the Pope's helplessness. On June the 6 his representatives compelled Clement to sign a humiliating peace. The whole edifice of the papacy , material and spiritual, seemed to be collapsing into a tragic ruin that awoke the pity even of those who felt some punishment was deserved by the infidelities of Clement, the sins of the papacy, the greed and corruption of the Curia, the luxury of the hierarchy, and the iniquity of Rome.
Erasmus wrote : “Rome was not alone the shrine of the Christian Faith, the nurse of noble souls, and the abode of the Muses, but the mother of nations. To how many was she not dearer and sweeter and more precious than their own land !..... In truth this is not the ruin of one city, but of the whole world.”
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The horrors of the Sack seem outsized in proportion to Clement's poor performance as a Pope. There must be a lot I am missing in this narrative. Of course, a lot of it can be attributed to the excesses of previous Popes as well. The Protestant Reformation was underway which, I am sure, contributed greatly to the conflicts.
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Yes, the excesses of the Popes going back many years contributed to the sack of Rome.
These passages read like a movie script. This is not the first time Rome has been sacked. One of the quotes I remember came from the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire when (was it Alaric?) who approached the gates of Rome and stopped his army outside the gates.
Rome sent out emissaries to see what they wanted. They asked how much they wanted for payment to pass on by. The leader answered, ''everything you have".
The Roman emissary answered, "Then what would that leave us".
The leader of the Army answered, "Your life".
It was the custom to 'pay opposing armies off' with a bribe if possible and give them safe passage around the city. This form of bribery was still alive and well after over a thousand years.
The actions of the soldiers was no different from what has happened in 'armies on the move' taking territory since time began. Remember that Islam was on the march during this century and killing in wholesale slaughter. They attacked the Slavs and murdered and plundered until they were driven out of their territory into the far icy regions of the north. Those not murdered on the spot were enslaved. The young men were taken and sold as slaves to the Jews of Venice who chained them in the bottom of ships to row with oars. The women who survived the forced march to Samarkand were sold in the slave market to the far east.
So if one sees a person with blue or green eyes, anywhere in the middle east or far east, it is the result of at least one girl surviving to produce a child. Most died and did not survive long enough to produce anything.
This was a case of genocide against the Slavs and the jews and muslims produced it, so christianity was not the only religion at war. The Arab religions were also at war against Europe.
The word slave derives from Slav.
Emily
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The Sack of Rome.
Charles, still remaining in Spain, and moving his pawns with magic remote control
Durant's use of the word 'magic' to describe remote control is understandable in the era in which he wrote. In today's world where many things are controlled by remote devices the word 'magic' would seem silly.
I've read several articles about the predator drones we use all over the world but mainly in the war zones around Afghanistan. The 'remote controller' is sitting in a room outside Las Vegas, Nevada and on his screen the predator drone flys over Afghanistan. He sees someone who is digging alongside a road and assumes he is planting a bomb.
He prepares the missiles to fire, and goes in for a closer look. One person is digging and a smaller one is standing by. He prepares to go in closer for the kill, when the smaller one bundles up what looks like brush and puts it on his back and turns up the mountain. The man stops digging and gathers up the remaining brush and follows the boy.
Wood is scarce and many afghans dig up brush alongside the roads for heat and cooking. The controller in Las Vegas was ready to fire a missile and this man and boy barely escaped being blown to bits when he realized what they were actually doing. He related this story to the writer of the article.
The other article did not have that good ending. A large group of boys were playing in a field with old bicycle rims and a stick (they were racing each other) were all killed by a remote controlled missile.
No magic needed today, just push a button.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 634-637
The opponents of Charles began seriously to think of rescuing the Pope. Henry VIII, fearing that an imprisoned pontiff might not grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, sent Cardinal Wolsey to France to confer with Francis on measures to liberate Clement. Early in August, the two kings offered Charles peace and 2,000,000 ducats on condition that the Pope and the French princes should be freed and that the Papal States should be restored to the Church. Charles refused. By the treaty of Amiens ( August 18 ) Henry and Francis pledged themselves to war against Charles; soon Venice and Florence joined the new league. French forces captured Genoa and Pavia, and sacked the latter city almost as thoroughly as the imperialist army sacked Rome. Mantua and Ferrara, dreading the present French more than the distant Charles, now joined the league. Nevertheless Lautrec, the French commander, unable to pay his troops, dared not march upon Rome.
The Emperor, hoping to restore his grace in Catholic Christendom, and to cool the ardour of the growing league, agreed to release the Pope, on condition that Clement should give no aid to the league, should at once pay the imperialist army in Rome 112000 ducats and should give hostages for his good behaviour. Clement raised the money by selling red hats, and by granting the Emperor a tenth of ecclesiastical revenues in the Kingdom of Sant’ Angelo. Then, disguised as a servant, he made his way humbly out of Rome to Orvieto, apparently a broken man.
Charles seems to have thought for a while of deposing Clement, annexing the Papal States to the Kingdom of Naples, making Rome the seat of his empire, and reducing the Pope to his primeval role as Bishop of Rome and subject to the Emperor. But this would drive Charles into the arms of the Lutherans in Germany, and would court civil war in Spain, and would arouse France, England, Poland, and Hungary to resist him with their full and united power. He abandoned the scheme, and returned to the idea of making the papacy his dependent ally and spiritual aid, in dividing Italy between them.
Charles and Clement met at Bolonga on November 5, 1529, each now convinced that he needed the other. Strange to say , this was Charles first visit to Italy; he had conquered it before seeing it. When he knelt before the Pope at Bologna, and kissed the foot of the man whom he had dragged in the dust, it was the first time that these two figures-- the one representing the Church in decline, the other the rising and here victorious modern state -- had ever seen each other. Clement swallowed all pride, forgave all offences; he had to. He could no longer look to France.
The alliance of Pope and Emperor was sealed with Florentine blood. Resolved to restore his family to power, Clement paid 70,000 ducats to Philibert, Prince of Orange ( who had kept him prisoner ), to organize an army and overturn the republic of rich men that had been set up there in 1527. Philibert sent on this mission 20,000 German and Spanish troops, many of whom had shared in the sack of Rome. In December, 1529, this force occupied Pistoia and Prato, and laid siege to Florence. Michelangelo left his sculpture of the Medici tombs to build or rebuild the ramparts and forts. The siege continued mercilessly for eight months; food became so scarce in Florence that cats and dogs brought some $12.50 apiece. Churches surrendered their vessels, citizens their plate, women their jewelry, to be transformed into money for the provision of arms. Patriotic monks like Fra Benedetto da Foiano kept up the spirit of the people with fiery sermons. The general whom Florence had hired to lead the defense, Malatesta Baglioni, entered into a treacherous agreement with the besiegers; he let them into the city, and turned his guns upon the Florentines. Starving and disorganised, the republic surrendered ( August 12, 1530).
Alessandro de’ Medici became Duke of Florence, and disgraced his family by his rapacity and cruelty. Hundreds of those who had fought for the Republic were tortured, exiled, and slain. Fra Benedetto was sent to Clement, who ordered him imprisoned in Sant’ Angelo; there, said an uncertain report, the monk was starved to death. The Signory was disbanded; the Palazzo della Signoria now began to be called the Palazzo Vecchio; and the great eleven ton bell, ‘La Vacca -- the Cow --’ that had from the lovely tower called so many generations to ‘parlamento’, was taken down and broken to pieces, “in order” said a contemporary diarist, “ that we shall hear no more the sweet sound of liberty .“
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We Yanks are too full of turkey from Thanksgiving today to think about the Medici. Does New Zealand have a similar harvest celebration? I asked a friend who'd lived in England if England had a harvest celebration, and she couldn't think of one.
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" no more the sweet sound of liberty "
If a movie director were to use this last page for the script of a film
he would be lambasted by the critics for portraying the "unbelievable".
Thanks to Trevor for his heroic efforts to keep us reading.
I do not post very often now, but I continue to read all the posts.
Brian
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Ditto Brian!
Clement raised the money by selling red hats, ....what does that mean? Is Durant saying he sold the cardinal positions, or is that a literal statement?
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Yes, mabel1015j - - - I am sure he means selling the rank of cardinal.
In the Catholic Church the colour of the cardinal's hat is RED, other churches
have been known to use other colours.
This means dollars (or ducats !) for the recipient.
Brian
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JoanK. You asked if NZ had a harvest festival. No, we do not. I don't think such festivals are held in any part of the British community of nations. But come to think of it, Canada might do so, being influenced by her big neighbour to the south. I wish all folk in the U.S. had an enjoyable day. --- Trevor.
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Canada might do so
Yes, Trevor, Canada does celebrate Thanksgiving Day (on the 2nd Monday in October).
The original day was to celebrate the safe passage of Frobisher on his return to England.
It is now more of a Harvest Festival, and comes well before Thanksgiving Day in the U.S
which falls on the 4th Thursday in November.
Brian
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Yes, Thanksgiving is late for a harvest festival. Nontheless, it's good to remember that, thanks to good harvests, we'll have food to eat this winter. not everyone in the world is so lucky.
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Durants' S o C
Vol V The Renaissance.
Pages 637 - 645
Pope Clement’s efforts to restore Rome revealed a spark of the administrative genius and aesthetic appreciation that had made the Medici family great. He took vigorous action to protect Italy from the Turkish fleets that now commanded the Eastern Mediterranean. He fortified Ancona, Ascoli, and Frano, and paid the costs by persuading the consistory of June 21, 1532-- over the opposition of the cardinals-- to impose a levy of fifty percent upon the incomes of the Italian clergy, including the cardinals. Partly by selling ecclesiastical offices, he raised funds to rebuild the property of the Church, to restore the university of Rome, and to resume the patronage of scholarship and art. He took measures to ensure the proper supply of grain despite the raids of the Barbary pirates upon shipping near Sicily. In a remarkably short time Rome was functioning again as the capital of the Western world.
The city was still rich in artists. Baldassare Peruzzi made his sonorous name ring for a generation across the mountains of Italy. He was the son of a weaver. (Artists were mostly of lowly stock: the middle classes seek utility first, hoping to have time for beauty in their senility; aristocrats, though they nourish art, prefer the art of life to the life of art.) Born in Siena ( 1481 ) Baldassare learned painting under Sodoma and Pinturicchio, and soon went off to Rome. Apparently it was he who painted the ceiling of the Stanza d’Eliodoro in the Vatican, and Raphael thought the work good enough to leave much of it unchanged. Meanwhile, like Bramante, he fell in love with the classic ruins, measured the ground plans of the ancient temples and palaces, and studied the diverse forms and arrangements of columns and capitals. He became a specialist in the application of perspective to architecture.
When Agostino Chigi decided to build the Villa Chigi, Peruzzi was invited to design it (1508). The banker was pleased with the result-- the stately crowning of a Renaissance facade with classic moldings, and cornices; and finding that Peruzzi could also paint, he gave the young artist freedom to decorate several rooms of the interior in competition with Sebastiano del Piombo and Raphael. In the entrance hall and the loggia Baldassare pictured Venus combing her hair, Leda and her swan, Europa and her bull, Danae and her golden shower, Ganymede and his eagle, and other scenes calculated to raise the tired moneylender from the prose of his days to the poetry of his dreams. Peruzzi set off his frescoes with borders painted in such tricks of perspective that Titian thought them to be veritable reliefs in stone. In the hall of the upper floor Baldassare made illusory architecture with his brush: cornices sustained by pictured caryatids, friezes supported by pictured pilasters, mimic windows opening upon pictured fields. Peruzzi had fallen in love with architecture, and made painting a handmaid, obeying all the builder’s rules, but spiritless. Let us make an exception here for the biblical scenes that he painted in a semidome of Santa Maria della Pace ( 1517), where Raphael had painted sibyls three years before. Baldassare’s frescoes stood the comparison well, for these are his finest paintings, while Raphael’s there were not his best.
Despite his multiform ability Peruzzi died poor, not having had the heart to haggle with popes, cardinals, and bankers for fees commensurate with his skill. When Pope Paul III heard he was dying he bethought himself that only Peruzzi and Michelangelo remained to raise St. Peter’s from wall to dome.. He sent the artist a hundred crowns. Baldassare thanked him, and died nevertheless, at the age of fifty-four.(1535) Vasari, after suggesting that a rival had poisoned him, relates that “all the painters, sculptors, and architects in Rome followed his body to the grave.”
The End of an Age. 1528-34
Clement did not die until he had one more reversal of policy, and had crowned his disasters by losing England for the Church. (1531) The spread of the Lutheran revolt in Germany had created for Charles V difficulties and dangers that might, he hoped, be eased by a general council. He urged this upon the Pope, and was angered by repeated excuses and delays. Irritated in turn by the Emperor’s award of Reggio and Modena to Ferrara, Clement veered again toward France. He accepted a proposal of Francis that Caterina d’ Medici should marry the King’s second son Henry, and he signed secret articles binding himself to help Francis recover Milan and Genoa ( 1531) It was a prime defect of the Medici as popes that they thought of themselves as a royal dynasty, and sometimes rated the glory of their family above the fate of Italy or the Church. Clement tried to persuade Francis to make peace with Charles; Francis refused, and had the audacity to ask papal acquiescence to a temporary alliance of France with the Protestants and the Turks against the Emperor. Clement thought that this was going a bit too far.
“Under these circumstances,” says Pastor, “it must be considered fortunate for the Church that the Pope’s days were numbered.” At his accession Henry VIII was still‘Defensor fidei,‘ defender of the orthodox faith against Luther; and the protestant revolt had as yet proposed no vital doctrinal changes, but only such ecclesiastical reforms as the Council of Trent would legislate for the Church in the next generation. At Clement’s death ( Sept 25, 1534 ) England, Denmark, Sweden, half of Germany, part of Switzerland, had definately broken away from the Church, and Italy had submitted to a Spanish domination fatal to the free thought and life that had for good or evil marked the Renaissance.
It was beyond doubt the most disastrous pontificate in the history of the Church. Everyone had rejoiced at Clement’s accession, everyone rejoiced at his death; and the rabble of Rome repeatedly defiled his tomb.
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Below a link to Bablassare Peruzzi's work at Villa Chigi (now known as Villa Farnesina)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9JXPhqBs8M
Emily
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At Clement’s death ( Sept 25, 1534 ) England, Denmark, Sweden, half of Germany, part of Switzerland, had definately broken away from the Church, and Italy had submitted to a Spanish domination fatal to the free thought and life that had for good or evil marked the Renaissance.
This looks like the end of the Renaissance in Italy. Eventually most of western Europe will leave the church with the exception of France and of course Spain who is now in control of events. The 50% tax was sure to end any popularity Clement had within the church.
Emily
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Emily/Mabel
regarding your posting from mid-October...I was with a group doing the civilization books but they were beginning Dec or so 2003 Durant's summary of history then beginning the civilization books in January 2004...hoping to complete 6 pages/day and be done in 8 or so years....I began reading the first book with them and completed the 'orient' book when my husband and I first started coming down to Florida in 2004...but sometime after the first book was completed I lost touch with the group and ran into your group a year or so ago
I found it hard reading the greek/roman books having no background and being confused by the numerous 'foreign' names and the fast progression of events...struggling to catch up once again and try to stay current with the discussion...looking forward to the next book where it looks like it may be easier to keep up with the Durant's narrative
its been amazing though following all the pope's and their human failings reinforcing my feelings about religion groups in general
been a fascinating read, following all everyones postings and all the links
Deb
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Welcome Deb. We are nearing the end of the 'Renaissance', and our next book will be the 'Reformation'. That will be book six in the series.
When the Renaissance is finished we will have completed five books. There are six more to go so we are not half way through yet. I will never make it through to the end and have tried to recruit some younger members to no avail.
Please join in and comment on Trevor's posting. He posts excerpts from the book, so if you don't have the book, you can still comment. Most libraries have Durants work.
Again....welcome.
Emily
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Welcome. Deb! Just go along -- if one piece of history confuses you, there'll be another one along.
Thanks to Trevor's hard work, I haven't felt it necessary to own the books, but follow along on the computer.
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nice to be here once again
up to now have just been reading the online passages...but hope to buy a copy of the next book ...it seems there are copies to be had for very little money from amazon...as long as the books haven't been written in I would be happy with a well worn copy or library cast off
have an e-reader but not that proficient using it yet ...do any of you read this book from an e-reader?
take care
Deb
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Welcome Deb - - - I don't think our book is available in e-book form.
If it were, it would lighten Trevor's job immensely.
Brian
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Brian thanks for your post. I just looked to see if SOC was available on e-books. It is available. I am providing the link.
Since my library has all eleven volumes, I can download on the Kindle via the library. The kindle has recently added the library connection. I have not tried it so don't quote me until it is a done deal.
My daughters are getting me an e-book for Christmas which I have resisted, but since I can't keep all the books I have and am in the process of distributing them to the children, I suppose I will have to adapt. I am downsizing so it seems a natural fit.
http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/durants-the-story-of-civilization-available-in-ebook-form/
Emily
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It's great to see that the volumes are in ebook form. Several of mine are falling apart even though I have not or hardly touched them. Very poor quality binding.
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That's GREAT! I've long meant to buy the Greek volume (I joined the discussion at the start of the Romans. The Romn volume was a great help when we were reading Plutarch, lives of some of the Romans. If we do some Greeks next, Durant would be a good thing to have.
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 686 - 688
The Waning of the Renaissance. 1534 -1576
The wars of invasion were not yet at an end, but they had already changed the face and character of Italy. The northern provinces had been so devastated that English envoys advised Henry VIII to leave them to Charles as a punishment. Genoa had been pillaged; Milan had been staved to death. Venice had been subdued by the league of Cambrai and the opening of new trade routes. Rome, Prato, and Pavia had suffered sack, Florence had been starved and financially bled, Pisa had half destroyed herself in her struggle for freedom, Siena was exhausted with revolutions. Ferrara had impoverished herself in her long contest with the popes, and had dishonoured herself by abetting the irresponsible attack upon Rome. The Kingdom of Naples, like Lombardy had been ravaged and plundered by foreign armies, and had long languished under alien dynasties. Sicily was already the nursery of brigands. The only consolation of Italy was that its conquest by Charles V had probably saved it from spoliation by the Turks.
By the settlement of Bologna ( 1530 ) the control of Italy passed to Spain with two exceptions: cautious Venice retained her independence, and the chastened papacy was confirmed in its sovereignty over the States of the Church. Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan became Spanish dependencies, ruled by Spanish viceroys. Savoy and Mantua, Ferrara and Urbino, which had usually supported or connived with Charles, were allowed to keep their indigenous dukes subject to their good behaviour. Genoa and Sienna retained their republican forms, but as Spanish protectorates. Florence was compelled to accept another line of Medici rulers, who survived by co-operating with Spain.
The victory of Charles marked another triumph of the modern state over the Church. What Philip IV of France had begun in 1303 was completed by Charles and Luther in Germany, by Francis I in France, by Henry VIII in England, and by all in Clements's pontificate. The powers of northern Europe had not only discovered the weakness of Italy, they had lost their fear of the papacy. The humiliation of Clement injured the respect that the transalpine populations had felt for the popes, and prepared them mentally for their secession from Catholic authority.
In some ways the Spanish hegemony was a boon to Italy. It put an end for a time to the wars of the Italian states against one another, and after 1559 it ended, till 1796, the battle of foreign powers on Italian soil. It gave the people some continuity of political order, and quieted the fierce individualism that had made and unmade the Renaissance. Those who craved order accepted he subjugation with relief; those who cherished freedom mourned. But soon the costs and penalties of peace by subjection damaged the economy and broke the spirit of Italy. The high taxes levied by the viceroys to sustain their pomp and soldiery, the severity of their laws, the state monopolies in grain and other necessaries discouraged industry and commerce; and the native princes, competing in vain luxury, followed the same policy of taxing to frustration the economic activity that supported them. Shipping declined to a point where the surviving galleys could no longer protect themselves from Berber pirates, who raided ships and coasts and carried Italians off to serve Moslem dignitaries as slaves. Almost as irksome were the foreign troops quartered on Italian homes, openly despising a once unrivalled people and civilization, and contributing more than their share to the sexual laxity of the age.
Another misfortune befell Italy, more enduringly disastrous than the devastations of war and the subjection to Spain. The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope (1488) and the opening of an all water route to India (1498) provided a cheaper means of transport between the Atlantic nations and Central Asia and the Far East than the troublesome route across the Alps to Genoa or Venice, thence to Alexandria, overland to the Red Sea, and again by ship to India. After 1498 Venetian and Genoese trade, and Florentine finance, declined. As early as 1502 the Portuguese bought so much of the available pepper in India that the Egyptian- - Venetian merchants there found little left for export. The price of pepper rose 33% in one year on the Rialto, while in Lisbon it could be had for half the price that Venetian merchants had to charge. German traders began to desert their Fondaco on the Grand Canal and transfer their buying to Portugal. In 1517 Luther pinned his rebel theses to the door of Wittenberg church.
The Reformation was both a cause and a result of the economic decline of Italy. It was a cause in so far as it diminished the movement of pilgrims and ecclesiastical revenues from the northern nations into Rome. It was an effect in so much as the replacement of the Mediterranean-Egyptian route to India by the all-water route, and the development of European commerce with America, enriched the Atlantic countries while helping to impoverish Italy; German trade moved more and more down the Rhine to North Sea outlets, less and less over the mountains to Italy; Germany became commercially independent of Italy; a northward drift and pull of power wrenched Germany from the Italian web of trade and religion, and gave Germany the will and strength to stand alone.
The discovery of America had even more lasting effects upon Italy than the new route to India. Gradually the Mediterranean nations declined, left on a siding in the movement of men and goods; The Atlantic nations came to the fore, enriched with American gold and trade. This was a revolution in commercial routes than any that history had recorded since Greece, by her victory at Troy, had opened to her vessels the Black sea route to Central Asia. It would be equalled and surpassed only by the airplane transformation of trade routes in the second half of the twentieth century
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Please correct the line four from the bottom. insert " this was a greater revolution " etc. Sorry about that.
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I read that these books are available on 'Kindle'. Is there some way that the e books can be used so as to get around all this typing from a real book ? Would it be possible ? And can copyright restrictions be overcome ? I'm hoping it may be so. What do you think BRIAN ? Trevor
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Trevor - - - I, personally, tried to download one of the books without success.
And I do not have, or use, an e-reader.
I don't think there could be any problem with the copyright, but you might find trouble
with the logistics. Give it a shot. I might be persuaded to use a Kindle.
Brian
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V The Renaissance
Pages 688-691
The final factor in the fading of the Renaissance was the Counter Reformation. To Italy's own political disorder and moral decay, to her subjugation and desolation by foreign powers, to her loss of trade to the Atlantic nations, to her forfeiture of revenue in the Reformation, was now added a detrimental but natural change in the mood and conduct of the Church. The unformulated, perhaps unconscious, gentlemen’s agreement by which the Church, while rich and apparently secure, had permitted considerable freedom of thought in the intellectual classes provided these made no attempt to disturb the faith of the people -- to whom that faith was the vital poetry, discipline, and consolation of life-- was ended by the German Reformation, the English seccession, and the Spanish Hegemony.
When the people themselves began to reject the doctrines and authority of the Church, and the Reformation made converts even in Italy, the whole structure of Catholicism was threatened in its foundations, and the Church, considering herself a state, and behaving like any state imperilled in its very existence, reacted from tolerance and liberalism to a frightened conservatism that laid severe restraints upon thought, inquiry, publication, and speech. The Spanish domination affected religion as well as politics; it shared in transforming the lenient Catholicism of the Renaissance into the rigid orthodoxy of the Church after the council of Trent ( 1545-1563 ). the popes who followed Clement VII took over the Spanish system of uniting Church and state in strict control of religious and intellectual life.
Just as a Spaniard had been instrumental in establishing the Inquisition when, in the thirteenth century, the Albigensian revolt had vitally challenged the Church in southern France, and new religious orders had then been founded to serve the Church and renew the fervour of the Christian faith, so now in the sixteenth century the rigour of the Spanish Inquisition was imported into Italy, and a Spaniard founded the Jesuits ( 1534 )-- that remarkable Society of Jesus which would not only accept the old conventional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but would go forth into the world to spread the orthodox faith, and to fight, every where in Christendom, against religious heresy or revolt. The intensity of religious debate in the age of the Reformation, the Calvinist intolerance, the mutual persecutions in England, encouraged a corresponding dogmatism in Italy; the urbane Catholicism of Erasmus gave place to the militant orthodoxy of Ignatius Loyola. Liberalism is a luxury of security and peace.
That censorship of publications which had begun under Pope Sixtus IV was extended by the establishment of the ’ Index librorum prohibitorum ’ in 1559 and the Congregation of the Index in 1571. Printing facilitated censorship; it was easier to watch public printers than private copyists. So in Venice, which had been so hospitable to intellectual and political refugees, the state itself, feeling that religious division would damage social unity and order, instituted ( 1527 ) a censorship of the press,
and joined with the Church in suppressing Protestant publications. Italians here and there resisted these policies; the Roman populace, on the death of Paul IV (1559), cast his statue into the Tiber, and burned the headquarters of the Inquisition to the ground. But such resistance was sporadic, unorganized, and ineffectual. Authoritarianism triumphed, and a solemn pessimism and resignation fell upon the spirit of the once joyous and exuberant Italian people. Even the dark Spanish dress-- black cap, black doublet, black hose, black shoes-- became the fashion in once colourful Italy, as if the people had put on mourning for glory departed and liberty dead.
Some moral advance accompanied the intellectual retreat. The conduct of the clergy improved, now that competitive faiths put them on their mettle; and the popes and the Council of Trent reformed many ecclesiastical abuses. Whether a similar movement occurred in the morals of the laity is hard to determine; apparently it is as easy to gather instances of sexual irregularity, illegitimacy, incest, obscene literature, political corruption, robbery, and brutal crime in the Italy of 1534-1576 as before. Criminal law remained as severe as before: torture was frequently applied to innocent witnesses as well as to the accused, and murderers still had their flesh torn away by red-hot pincers before being hanged. The restoration of slavery as a major economic institution belongs to this period. When Pope Paul III opened war upon England in 1535 he decreed that any English soldiers captured might lawfully be enslaved. About 1550 the custom developed of using slaves and convicts to row the galleys of trade and war.
Nevertheless the popes of this period were men of relatively high morals in their personal lives. Paul II was the greatest of them -- that same Alessandro Farnese who had obtained the cardinalate through the effect of his sister’s golden hair upon the spirits of Alexander VI. It is true that Paul had begotten two bastards; but this had been an accepted custom in his youth, and Guicciardini could still describe him as “a man adorned with learning, and of unspotted character.” He had been trained as a humanist by Pomponikus Laetus; his letters rivalled those of Erasmus, in the classic elegance of their Latin; he was an accomplished conversationalist, and surrounded himself with capable and distinguished men. However he was elected probably less for his talents and virtues than for his age and infirmities; he was sixty-six, and the cardinals could reasonably rely upon him to die soon and give them another chance to make bargains and receive more lucrative benefices. He held them at bay for fifteen years.
For Rome his pontificate was among the happiest in the history of the city. Under his direction Latino Manetti, his ‘maestro delle strade’ drained, levelled, and widened streets, opened up many new public squares, replaced slum houses with handsome dwellings, and so improved one avenue -- the Corso-- that it became the Champs Elysees of Rome. As a diplomat Paul’s greatest feat was to persuade
Charles V and Francis I to a ten years’ truce ( 1538 ).He almost achieved a greater aim-- a reconciliation of the Church with the Protestants of Germany; but his efforts came too late. He had the courage-- so lacking in Clement VII -- to call a general council. Under his presidency and with his approval the Council of Trent restated the orthodox faith, reformed many ecclesiastical abuses, restored discipline and morality among the clergy, and shared with the Jesuits in saving the Latin nations for the Roman Church.
Paul’s tragic failure was his nepotism. He gave Camerino to his grandson Ottavio, and he invested his son Pierluigi with Piacenza and Parma. Pierluigi was assassinated by discontented citizens, and Ortavio joined the conspiracy against his grandfather. Paul lost his love of life, and died two years later of a heart stroke at eighty-three ( 1549 ) He was mourned by the Romans as no other pope since Pius II a century before.
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funny how you hear bits of history, but never put them together. Somehow, I never thought of the stream of happening: the liberalism of thought while the church was secure in power, the reformation, in part as a reaction to the corruption, the reaction with the inquisation and rigidity of thought that accompanies it, closing down on art as well as thought. And Spain at the center.
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.....and how habits began with cultures ...as the Italians adopting the Spanish way of dress, sombre, black, austere and it sounds like their mode of dress before was quite the opposite,
Deb
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V. The Renaissance
Pages 691 - 695
Science and Philosophy.
In those sciences that did not affect theology Italy continued to make such moderate progress as could come from a nation predominantly disposed to art and literature, and in reaction against an intellect that had discarded conscience. Varoli, Eustachio, and Fallopio, whose names are imbedded in the terminology of modern anatomy, date from this brief age. Niccolo Tartaglia found a way to solve cubic equations; he confided his method to Jerome Cardan ( Geronimo Cardano), who published it as his own ( 1545 ). Tartaglia challenged him to an algebraic duel, in which each was to propose thirty-one problems to be solved by the other. Cardan accepted, but disdainfully delegated one of his pupils to solve Tartaglia’s problems. The pupil failed, Tartaglia succeeded, but Cardan wrote a strange and fascinating autobiography which has kept his head above the Lethe of time.
It begins with the startling candor that characterizes it to the end;
“Although various abortive medicines, as I have heard, were tried in vain
I was born on September 24 1501..... Since Jupiter was in the ascendant and Venus ruled the horoscope, I was not maimed save in the genitals, so that from my twenty-first to my thirty-
first year I was unable to lie with women; and many a time I lamented my fate, envying all other
men their good fortune.”
This was only one of his disabilities. He stuttered, suffered all his life from hoarseness and catarrh of the throat, frequently from indigestion, palpitation of the heart, rupture, colic, dysentery, haemorrhoids, gout, itching skin, a cancerous growth on the left nipple, the plague, tertian fever, and “an annual period of sleeplessness lasting about eighty days.” “In 1536 I was overtaken with an extraordinary discharge of urine; and although for forty years I have been afflicted with this trouble, giving from sixty to a hundred ounces in a single day, I live well”
Endowed with all this clinical experience, he became a successful physician, cured himself of almost everything except vanity, achieved the reputation of being the most sought-for physician in Italy, and was called as far afield as Scotland to cure an incurable archbishop, whom he cured. At thirty-four he gave public lectures in Milan on mathematics, and at thirty-five, on medicine. In 1545, borrowing a title from Raymond Lully, he published a book, “ Ars magna, “ wherein he made substantial contributions to algebra-- which still speaks of “Cardan’s rule,” for solving cubic equations. He was apparently the first to perceive that quadratic equations might have negative roots. With Tartaglia, and long before Descartes, he considered the application of algebra to geometry. Amid sickness, travels, and devastating tribulations, he wrote 230 books, of which 138 have been printed, some he had the courage to burn.
He was as expert and as absurd as Freud in interpreting dreams, and as firm a believer in guardian angels as Fra Angelico. Yet he named , as the ten greatest intellects in history, men not overwhelmingly Christian: Archimedes, Aristotle, Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, Archytas of Tarentum, al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, Gebir, Duns Scotus, and Richard Swineshead-- all scientists except Duns. Cardan made a hundred enemies, invited a thousand calumnies, married miserably, and fought unsuccessfully to save his eldest son from being executed for poisoning an unfaithful wife. In 1570 he moved to Rome. He was arrested there for debt or heresy or both; but Gregory XIII released and pensioned him.
At seventy-four he wrote De vita propria liber ( a book of my own life )-- one of three remarkable autobiographies composed in this period in Italy. With almost the garrulousness and fidelity of Montaigne, he analyzes himself-- body, mind, character, habits, likes and dislikes, virtues and vices, honors and dishonors, errors and prophecies, illnesses, eccentricities, and dreams. He accuses himself of obstinacy, bitterness, unsociability, hasty judgment, pugnacity, cheating at gambling, vengefulness, and mentions “ the debaucheries of the Sardanapalian life I led in the year when I was rector of the University of Padua. He lists “ things in which I feel that I have failed“-- especially the proper rearing of his sons. He asks himself, “What animal do I find more treacherous, vile, and deceitful than man?” and offers no reply. But he records many things that gave him happiness, including change, food, drink, sailing, music, puppies, cats, continence, and sleep. “Of all else that man may attain, none seems more worthy or more pleasing than the recognition of truth “
Medicine was the only science that made any significant progress in this period of Italy’s decline. The greatest scientists of the age spent many years in Italy as students and teachers-- Copernicus from 1496 to 1506, Vesalius from 1537 to 1546; but we must not steal from Poland and Flanders to further honor Italy. Realdo Colombo expounded the pulmonary circulation of the blood in De re Anatomica ( 1558), probably unaware that Servetus had proposed the same theory twelve years before. Colombo practised the dissection of human cadavers at Padua and Rome, apparently without ecclesiastical opposition; he seems also to have vivisected dogs. Gabrielle Fallopio, a pupil of Vesalius discovered and described the semicircular canals and the chorda tympani of the ear, and the tubes, now named after him, that bear the ova from the ovaries to the uterus. Costanzo Varoli studied the pons Varolii -- a mass of nerves on the under surface of the brain.
We have no figures as to the effects of medicine on human longevity in the Renaissance. Varoli died at thirty-two, Fallopio at forty, Colombo at forty-three, Eustacio at fifty. On the other hand Michelangelo lived to eighty-nine, Titian to ninty-nine, Luigi Carnaro to approximately a century. Born at Venice in 1467 or earlier, Luigi was rich enough to indulge in every luxury of food, drink, and love. “These excesses caused me to fall a prey to various ailments, such as pains in the stomach, frequent pains in the side, symptoms of gout-- a low fever that was almost continuous... and an unquenchable thirst. This evil condition left me nothing to hope for except that death should terminate my troubles.” When he was forty his physicians abandoned all medicaments and advised him that his only hope of recovery lay in “ a temperate and orderly life..... I was not to partake of any foods, either solid or liquid, save such as are prescribed for invalids; and of these, small quantities only. He was allowed to eat meat and drink wine, but always in mo0deration; and he soon reduced hisdaily intake to twelve ounces of food and fourteen of wine. Within a year, he tells us, “ I found myself entirely cured of all my complaints..... I grew most healthy, and have remained so from that time to this. i.e. age eighty-three.” He found that this order and moderation of physical habits made for similar qualities and health of mind and character; his “ brain remained constantly in a clear condition;..... melancholy, hatred, and the other passions “ left him; even his aesthetic sense was sharpened, and all lovely things seemed to him now more beautiful than ever before.
He spent a quiet and comfortable old age at Padua, undertook and financed public works, and wrote at eighty-three, his autobiographical Discorsi della vita sobria. Tintoretto has pictured him for us in a delectable portrait: bald head but ruddy face, eyes clear and penetrating, wrinkles spelling benevolence, white beard thinned with years, hands still revealing, so near to death, an aristocratic youth. His octogenarian vivacity encourages us as he rallies those who thought life after seventy to be a meaningless valetudinarian procrastination :
“let them come and see me, and wonder at my good health, how I mount on horseback without help, how I run upstairs and uphill, how cheerful, amusing, and contented I am, how free from care, and disagreeable thoughts. Peace and joy never quit me.... all my senses ( thank God ) are in the best condition, including the sense of taste; for I enjoy more the simple food that I now take in moderation than all the delicacies that I ate in my years of disorder... When I come home I see before me not one or two but eleven grandchildren. I take delight in hearing them sing and play on different musical instruments. My life therefore is alive, not dead; nor would I exchange my old age for the youth of such as live in the service of their passions.”
At eighty-six, “ full of health and strength” he wrote a second discourse, expressing his joy at conversion of several of his friends to his way of life. At ninety-one he added a third essay, and told how “I constantly write, and with my own hand, eight hours a day, and .... in addition to this I walk and sing for many hours... For I feel, when I leave the table, that I must sing.. Oh how beautiful and sonorous my voice has become!” At ninety-two he composed “ A loving exhortation.... to all mankind to follow the orderly and temperate life“. He looked forward to completing a century, and to an easy death through the gradual diminution of his senses, feelings, and vital spirits. he died in 1566; some say at ninety-nine, others at one hundred and three or four. His wife, we are told, obeyed his precepts, lived to nearly a century and died in “perfect ease of body and security of soul”
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Jerome Cardan (Geronimo Cardano).......I don't understand why Durant would include this blathering, blubbering, hypocrondiac, and delusional egomanic in his history. If ever a man should be thrown in the dustbin, it should be him.
Cardano states, "An annual period of sleeplessness lasting about eighty days".
It must have been during his annual 'eighty days without sleep' that he wrote his delusional books.
I doubt if anyone knows who this bozo was, but he was unfit to be in public no matter who he was or 'pretended to be'. Charlatans always cover up their true idenity.
Emily
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Wow! you really like him.
Here is a black and white version of his portrait:
http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/result.html?*sform=wellcome-images&_IXACTION_=query&%24%3Dtoday=&_IXFIRST_=1&%3Did_ref=M0013767&_IXSPFX_=templates/t&_IXFPFX_=templates/t&_IXMAXHITS_=1 (http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/result.html?*sform=wellcome-images&_IXACTION_=query&%24%3Dtoday=&_IXFIRST_=1&%3Did_ref=M0013767&_IXSPFX_=templates/t&_IXFPFX_=templates/t&_IXMAXHITS_=1)
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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Thanks Joan for the image of Luigi Cornaro.
My post was about Jerome Cardan, the first short bio that Durant gave us. After reading what I wrote I realized I could have said it all in one sentence. Put Cardan's own words in quote, and then have written my one sentence.
"I don't believe a word of it."
Emily
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Emily Your dismissal of Gerolamo Cardano, AKA Jerome Cardan, seems a little harsh. As well as his prominence in medicine he was also an outstanding mathematician. His finding of the full solution to cubic equations (after stealing a hint from Tartaglia),was first class and he made the first discoveries in the mathematical theory of probability. In his work on cubic and quintic equations he also was the first to glimpse and note the existence of complex numbers.
Probability and complex numbers are at the heart of present day theories on Quantum Mechanics! Also he designed the very first combination lock on safes, and invented the universal joint named after him as a 'cardan-shaft', a device fitted today on the drive shaft of every motor car.
I think he was much more than a non-entity. Trevor
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Trevor, I was responding to what Durant wrote. An excerpt......
Niccolo Tartaglia found a way to solve cubic equations; he confided his method to Jerome Cardan ( Geronimo Cardano), who published it as his own ( 1545 ).
Durant traveled to Italy and read the documents published at the time of this incident. I trust Durant not a later day rewriting of history. Jerome Cardan was a thief according to what Durant wrote. Durant said that Niccolo Tartaglia solved the equation and told Cardan about it, nothing about a 'hint'. Cardan published it as his own. That is the record of what happened. Cardan outlived Tartaglia and evidently from what Durant wrote, published reams of claims to 'his own greatness.'
Once a thief always a thief.
My comment about Cardan however pertained to his many autobiographies (there is a clue). I did not believe a word he wrote.
So in my opinion Cardan was a liar and a thief and no matter how long he lived, he was who he was. All the rewriting of history will not change that fact. It seems he met others with ideas, schematics, and prototypes that perhaps he purloined and claimed for his own.
Knowing his history puts everything he claimed or put his name on to question. By outliving all those he stole from, he said it often enough and wrote about it often enough that it became 'his' in his own mind, and history is full of such egomaniacs.
I am certainly not questioning your answer to my post. I am sure that is what you were taught in school. Quantum physics or mechanics is not my cup of tea, but charlatans are, and Cardan was a charlatan.
Emily
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I had no idea that the concept of complex numbers (numbers involving the square root of -1) was so old. Surely practical applications of it are much more recent?
Unfortunately, mathematicias and scientists "borrowing" idea and claiming them as there own is a lot more common than we would like to believe. There may be a fine (or not so fine) line between taking another's idea, and developing it in new ways and out and out stealing.
And I was shocked to learn that this "borrowing" was also common among some of the classical music composers that we revere.
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I did a little research on Cardan. He was an avid gambler, and in his work you can see the very beginnings of what eventually developed into the study of probability. He wasn't always right. He was positive that luck had a role, and that the attitude of the dice thrower had an effect on the outcome. His writings, according to the book, were the first evidence of an attempt to mathematically describe random patterns.
I first ran across the term pattern recognition in Psychology classes and Scientific American articles (especially having to do with sight and how the brain interprets what we see. Pattern recognition is big business now what with barcodes, RFID, and facial recognition software, for example. Oh, and lets not forget things like SETI, where the computers are looking for distinct patterns in the background noise of space. Uh oh, I am off on a tangent. Sorry!
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The Durants' S o C
The Renaissance Vol. V
Pages 711-714
The age of decline for Italy was a resurrection for Savoy. As a lad of eight Emmanuel Philibert might have seen the French invade and conquer the duchy (1536). At twenty-five he inherited its crown but not its soil; at twenty-nine he played a leading part in the victory of the Spanish and the English over the French at St. Quentin ( 1557); and two years later France surrendered to him his ruined country and bankrupt throne. His regeneration of Savoy and Piedmont was a masterpiece of statesmanship. The Alpine slopes of his duchy were the haunts of Vaudois heretics, who were progressively transforming Catholic Churches into whitewashed conventicles of Calvinist worship. Pope Pius IV offered him a year’s ecclesiastical revenues to suppress the sect; Emmanuel took some drastic measures, but when these resulted in large scale emigration he turned to a policy of tolerance, checked the ardour of the Inquisition, and gave asylum to Huguenot refugees. He founded a new university at Turin, and financed the compilation of an encyclopaedia. He was always courteous, and repeatedly unfaithful, to his wife, Margaret of Valois, who gave him wise council and diplomatic aid, and who presided over the bright social life and intellectual life of Turin. When Emmanuel died (1580) his duchy was one of the best governed lands in Europe. From his lines in the nineteenth century would come the kings of united Italy.
Meanwhile Andrea Doria, who in the late wars had passed from French to Spanish sides with timely treachery, maintain his leadership in Genoa. The bankers there had helped to finance the campaigns of Charles V, who repaid them by leaving undisturbed their domination of the city. Not as badly hurt as Venice by the movement of commerce out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, Genoa became again a great port and strategic citadel. Galeazzo Alessi of Perugia, a pupil of Michelangelo, built sumptuous churches and palaces in Genoa. Vasari described the Via Balbi as the most splendid street in Italy.*
When Francesco Maria Sforza, last of his line as rulers, died in 1535, Charles V appointed an imperial vicar to govern Milan. Subjection brought peace, and the ancient city prospered once more. The most distinguished Milanese of the age was San Carlo Borromeo, who reinacted at the close of the Renaissance the role played by St. Ambrose in the decline of antiquity. He came of a rich patrician family; his uncle Pius IV made him a cardinal at twenty-one, and archbishop of Milan at twenty-two ( 1560). he was probably at that time the richest prelate in Christendom. But he renounced all his benefices except the archbishopric, gave the proceeds to charity , and consumed himself in almost fanatical devotion to the Church. He founded the order of Oblates of St. Ambrose, brought the Jesuits into Milan and vigorously supported all movements for ecclesiastical reform that remained loyal to Catholicism. Accustomed to wealth and power, he insisted on the full medieval jurisdiction of his Episcopal court, took into his hands much of the work of maintaining law and order, filled his Episcopal dungeons with criminals and heretics, and for twenty-four years was the real ruler of the city. All the cardinal’s severity was forgiven when, in the plague of 1576, while most notables fled, he stayed at his post and comforted the sick and bereaved with tireless visits, vigils, and prayers.
As we take our parting look at Renaissance Rome we are struck by the rapidity of her recovery from the disaster of 1527. Clement VII had shown more skill in remedying the ruin than in preventing it. His surrender to Charles had saved the Papal States, and their revenues helped the papacy to finance the restoration of Church discipline and the partial reconstruction of Rome. The full effect of the Reformation in reduced income was not yet felt in the papal treasury; and under Paul III the spirit and splendour of the Renaissance seemed for a moment revived.
Some arts were dying, others were being born or changing form. Giulio Clovio, a Croatian domiciled with Cardinal Farnese, was almost the last of the great illuminators of manuscripts. But in 1567 Claudio Monteverdi was born at Cremona; soon opera and oratorio would be added to the arts, and the polyphonic masses of Palestrina were already celebrating the reinvigoration of the Church. The great age of Italian painting was ending; Perino del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, epigoni of Raphael, turned the art toward decoration. Sculpture was becoming baroque; Raffaello da Montelupo and Giovanni da Montorsoli exaggerated the exaggerations of their master Michelangelo, and produced statues with limbs contorted into original but bizarre and ungainly poses.
The most popular architect in or about Rome in this age was Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. Coming from Bologna to study the classic ruins, he formed his style by marrying the pantheon of Agrippa to the basilica of Julius Caesar., seeking to combine cupola and arches, columns and pediments; and, like Palladio, he wrote a book to propagate his principles. But his most influetial work was done at Rome in the Villa di Papa Giulio, and the church of the Gesu (1568-75) In this famous edifice, built for the rising Jesuits, Vignola designed a nave of impressive breadth and height, and converted the aisles into chapels; later architects would make this church the first clear manifestation of the baroque style--
curved or contorted forms surfeited with ornament. In 1564 Vignola succeeded Michelangelo as chief architect at St. Peter’s, and shared in the honour of raising the great dome that Angelo had designed.
*The Via Balbi was shattered in the Second World War.
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Here is a picture of the church of the Gesu:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ehritzema.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/june-2008-512.jpg&imgrefurl=http://ehritzema.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/day-14-rome-part-1/&h=1200&w=1600&sz=889&tbnid=xl_ed-1pSeO9oM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=129&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dchurch%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGesu%2Bpicture%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=church+of+the+Gesu+picture&docid=nV1ugLPDpAzlEM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-nj7Tqn8PILkiALV5IymDg&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQ9QEwCQ&dur=3214 (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ehritzema.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/june-2008-512.jpg&imgrefurl=http://ehritzema.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/day-14-rome-part-1/&h=1200&w=1600&sz=889&tbnid=xl_ed-1pSeO9oM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=129&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dchurch%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGesu%2Bpicture%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=church+of+the+Gesu+picture&docid=nV1ugLPDpAzlEM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-nj7Tqn8PILkiALV5IymDg&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQ9QEwCQ&dur=3214)
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I didn't know Andrea Doria was anything but a ship. Here is Wikipedia's skimpy article. I put it here because of the pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Doria
Here is a link to more useful information about Doria. http://www.nndb.com/people/692/000093413/
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I was in college, studying European history, before i realized that Italy as i knew it in the 1940s and 50s didn't come into being until the 1870s. What a surprise that was.
Why was the "great age of Italian painting ......ending?" was it because of a loss of patrons? Was there a diminishing of the number of "schools" w/ the deaths of the great artists? Was it bcs of the constant wars? The diminishing of the Catholic Church? The rise of protestanism? Surely there was no difference in the amount of talented people, or if there was, why?
Our PBS station is showing a documentary on Martin Luther this week, you might want to look for it on your station.
Jean
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'Why was the "great age of Italian painting ......ending?"'
That's the 64 dollar question. Why does a certain period have a certain flavor, followed, often, by its opposite? This seems to be true throughout history. Durant seems to think in this case that it was the church's reaction to the reformation, that stifled thought and also creativity.
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'Why was the "great age of Italian painting ......ending?"'
I think the cause of the decline in "Italian" art was, as Durant indicates, the economic strength slipped away from the Roman church, and Italian cities. It was supplanted by the rise of the Protestant church , and the Atlantic port cities of western Europe. Art needs wealthy patrons.
Western Europe ( Portugal, France, England, Holland, Germany,) took over from the Mediterranean centres about 1550, for 350 years, then suffered a steep decline at the end of the Victorian age, which saw the U.S. become the world centre. Today, that centre seems to be shifting again, to China, and the East. Trevor
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But did we in the US have a similar flowering of the arts? Will China now?
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Did US have a flowering of the arts ? Well for many, Hollywood is THE art centre of the world.... I read in yesterday's paper that a painting of one panel of a children's comic was sold recently at some fabulous price by a US art gallery. The picture was of a stern detective peering through a key hold, and a speech balloon saying "this room is definitely empty". Don't know if I remember correctly, but I think the price was in the Sixty million bracket? Art, Like beauty, is in the eye of the smitten, I guess. Trevor
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The U.S. is full of artists, and they work by commission as they did in Rome. They do not work for one person or entity such as the Vatican but they come close. Painting portraits for the U.S. government can keep a bevy of artists busy. Here is an excerpt from one such group contacts............
Contacted by...
The White House, U.S. Senate, U.S. Supreme Court, the Pentagon, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army, SOCOM, Homeland Security, Department of the Treasury, HUD and other United States and state government agencies, universities, hospitals, film industry, major corporations such as Tiffany & Company and New York Life Insurance have all referenced our site in the artist selection process.
Mural painting and trompe l'oeil is still done in buildings and private homes. I met one such artist who was commissioned to paint the dining room of a home with a mural. I have photos of his work but it was on film and I no longer have a scanner or I would put it here. His name was Erik Filban and he was only in his twenties, living in NYC and working for one of the famous decorators of the day. (this was in the 1990's) I looked him up and found out he had moved to Seattle, Wa. and has his own business that does between $500,000 and a million a year. He stayed in the guest house for a week or so while working and then came back for a couple of days to touch up. He was great.
Aaron Shikler who did the portrait of my boss is an artist. He also did some White House portraits namely Jackie Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, and Nancy Reagan. (these are the ones I know) there may be more.
Another and perhaps my favorite is Alejo Vidal-Quadros Roca. He did the portraits of my boss and his wife, working in Palm Beach. These were life size drawings (I think in charcoal).
Ann Street is another portratist who lives in Nashville and has sketched and drawn many of the leaders in the community and most definitely all their children. She has retired, but her work is very good.
When I think of previous centuries, John Singer Sargent comes to mind along with Mary Cassett. During the Renaissance the number of artists who were considered great would fill a page or two. In our country today it would probably fill a notebook.
Much of the art that is done is in private homes as it was during the Renaissance, but all our public offices both State and National are filled with art and certainly portraits.
How good this art is, as Trevor says, is up to the viewer. I am no artist, but I know what I like, and those that I have referenced are excellent in my opinion.
Many of these artists have banned together and with today's connections via websites can advertise their talents to a larger audience. Here is one with a group of artists and I've only heard of a couple of them, but they do portraits, a lot of them for the U.S. government.
http://www.portraitartist.com/
Emily
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Alice Walton (walmart heiress) built a museum in the Ozarks in Arkansas featuring American artists. I read about this in the New Yorker but have plucked this from wiki to show some of the American art she has collected.
Her interest in art led to her spearheading the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Crystal Bridges, opened in November of 2011, is envisioned as a premier venue for a national art institution dedicated to American art and artists, and a place of learning and community.
In December 2004, the art collection of Daniel Fraad and wife, Rita, went up for public auction at Sothebys in New York. Since almost every collector was at the auction, no one could figure out who on the phone was bidding such high prices. It was later discovered that Walton purchased at least $20 million worth of art that day. She bid for most of the items while on a three-year-old gelding named IC LAD preparing to compete in the first qualifying round of the National Cutting Horse Association Futurity at the Will Rogers Coliseum in Ft. Worth, TX.
In 2005, Walton purchased Asher Brown Durand's celebrated painting, Kindred Spirits, in a sealed-bid auction for a purported US$35 million dollars. The 1849 painting, a tribute to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, had been given to the New York Public Library in 1904 by Julia Bryant, the daughter of Romantic poet and New York newspaper publisher William Cullen Bryant (who is depicted in the painting with Cole). She has also purchased works by American painters Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, as well as a notable portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, in preparation for the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. In 2009 Crystal Bridges museum has acquired Norman Rockwell's iconic Rosie the Riveter painting for its permanent collection at an undisclosed price.
John Wilmerding, an advisor and board member to Crystal Bridges said Walton has collected the work of some artists in depth, quietly buying substantial bodies of work by Martin Johnson Heade, Stuart Davis, George Bellows and John Singer Sargent. Walton's attempt to quit smoking led to the purchase two great smoking paintings by Alfred Maurer and Tom Wesselman. In a 2011 interview, she spoke about acquiring great works by other artists. She described Marsden Hartley as "one of my favorite artists-he was a very complex guy, somewhat tormented, but a very spiritual person, and love the emotion and the feel and the spirituality of his work". She went on to say "and Andrew Wyeth-the mystery and loneliness that is expressed. How do you paint loneliness?"
Walton serves on the board of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and is a member of the Trustees' Council of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
American art is alive and well (and expensive). The number of museums grow each year. It looks as though Alice Walton will have one of the largest collections of American art before she is finished.
Emily
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I'm pleased that she is supporting artists, past and present, and horse breeders. I'm glad she is opening an art gallery in AK. I would be curious to know if she earned any of those millions, or did she inherit it all. I'm thinking of a quote from a famous atty at the Army/McCarthy hearings ".....have you no shame?" Twenty million, or $35 million would have bought a lot of benefits for the employees of Walmart who labored in part-time jobs w/out any health care or pensions at minimum wage.
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Hi Mabel, I don't think Alice Walton 'earned' any of the millions she got from her father Sam. She is an heiress and as such can pay the 'millions' for art.
By buying art that has been in private collections and putting it in a museum the public will have access whereas before very few would see the work.
I understand that the money for the 'art' comes from the 'Walton Foundation' which is 'tax free' money set aside for the family to use for their purpose. Art seems to be her interest.
Emily
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hi there,
its Deb, from North Fort Myers...just got my copy of the next book in the series of 'civilization'....hard to believe so few pages left in this one....
just wanted to wish you all the best for the new year, and hope you're having a nice new years eve
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Hi, DEB. Good to see you back.
I'm reading an interesting book that was recommended here on Seniornet. It's called "The Swerve". It's about the discovery, during the Renaissance, of a hitherto unknown Roman manuscript by Lucretius, a follower of Epicurus. The author contends that this document influenced the spirit of the time, turning it in a secular direction. Critics say no: while the Renaissance was influence by classical philosophy, not in this way. I don't remember Durant talking about specifics of how Classical philosophy influenced the Renaissance.
Most of the book so far has been talking about how the ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts were preserved by monks, and about those who spent their lives going from monastery to monastery searching for unknown ones. The man who discovered this manuscript had previously been secretary to the Pope, so there is also a lot about the life in the Papal state, pretty much as Durant presents it.
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 714-716
MICHELANGELO: THE LAST PHASE. 1534 - 1564
Through all these years Michelangelo had survived as an unruly ghost from another age. He was 59 when Clement died, but no one seemed to think that he had earned the right to rest. Paul III and Francesco Maria of Urbino fought over his living body. The Duke, as executor for Julius II, clamoured for the completion of his uncle’s tomb, and flourished a contract long since signed by Angelo. But the imperious pontiff would not hear of it. “For thirty years,” said Paul to Bounoarroti, “I have wanted you to join my service; and now that I am Pope will you disappoint me ?! That contract shall be torn up, and I’ll have you work for me, come what may!" The Duke protested, but finally settled for a much smaller mausoleum than Julius had dreamed of. The knowledge that the tomb was an abortion shared in darkening the Titan’s later years.
In 1535 the triumphant Pope issued a brief appointing Michelangelo chief architect, sculptor, and painter at the Vatican, and proclaiming his eminence in each field. The artist was given a life pension of 1200 crowns a year. Clement VII, shortly before his death, had asked him to paint the fresco of the ’Last Judgment’ behind the alter of the Sistine Chapel. Paul proposed that this commission should now be carried out. Michael was reluctant; he wanted to carve, not paint; he was happier with hammer and chisel than with brush. The very size of the wall to be painted-- sixty-six by thirty-three feet, might have given him pause. Nevertheless in September, 1535, aged sixty, he began his most famous painting.
Perhaps the repeated frustrations of his life-- the maimed mausoleum of Julius, the destruction of his statue of that pope at Bologna, the unfinished facade of San Lorenzo, the unfinished Medici tombs, -- had accumulated in him a bitterness that poured itself into this consummation of divine wrath. Memories of Savonarola may have come back to him across forty years-- those dire prophecies of doom, those denunciations of human wickedness, clerical corruption, Medicean tyranny, intellectual pride, and pagan joys, those blasts of hell-fire searing the soul of Florence; now the dead martyr would speak again from the most intimate altar in Christendom. The sombre artist whom Leonardo had called learned in Dante would soak himself anew in the brine of the ‘Inferno’, and put its horrors on the wall where for generations to come future popes might have that inescapable judgment before them as they read Mass. And meanwhile, in this citadel of a religion that had until lately scorned and maligned the human body, he would be sculptor even with the brush, and would paint that body in a hundred conditions and attitudes, in the contortions and grimaces of agony, in the drowsy then excited resurrection of the dead, in inflated angels blowing the fateful summons, in a Christ still showing His wounds, yet strong enough, with His titanic shoulders and Herculean arms, to hurl into hell those who had thought themselves superior to the commandments of God and even Christ Himself in His majestic anger, became an incarnation of the Adam of the Sistine ceiling, a God made in the image and likeness of man. There is too much flesh here, there, too many arms and legs, biceps and swelling calves, to lift the spirit to contemplate the wages of sin. Even the lecherous Aretino thought these pullulating nudes were a bit out of place. Everyone knows how Paul III’s master of ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, complained that such a celebration of the human form would more fitly adorn a wineshop than the chapel of the popes; how Michelangelo avenged himself by painting Biagio among the damned; and how Paul ,when Biagio begged him to order the erasure of the portrait, replied with excellent humour and theology that not even a pope can release a soul from hell. Yielding to protests like Biagio’s, Paul IV bade Daniele da Volterra paint breeches on the more glaring parts; whereupon Rome called the poor artist ‘il Braghettone‘, the breeches tailor. The noblest figure in the dark panorama is completely clothed -- Mary, whose raiment is the master’s last triumph in the painting of drapery, and whose look of horror and mercy is the one redeeming element in this apotheosis of human ferocity.
After six years of labour the picture was unveiled for the Christmas celebration of 1541. A Rome now entering upon a religious reaction against the Renaissance accepted “The Last Judgment ‘ as good theology and great art. Vasari pronounced it the most wonderful of all paintings. Artists admired the anatomy, and were not offended by the muscular exaggerations, the bizarre attitude, the carnal excess; on the contrary many painters imitated these mannerisms of the Master, and formed the mannerist school that began the decadence of Italian art. Even laymen marvelled at the foreshortenings -- which gave parts of the picture the semblance of relief-- and the acute sense of perspective that had made the lower figures two metres in height, the middle figures three, the upper figures four. We who view the fresco today cannot judge it fairly; it has been injured by Daniele’s tailoring, a further draping of some figures in 1762, and the dust and candle smoke and natural darkening of four centuries.
After some months of rest Michelangelo began (1542) work on two frescoes in the chapel that Antonio da Sangallo had built in the Vatican for Paul III. He was seventy-five when he completed these pictures, and he told Vasari that he painted them against his will, and with great effort and fatigue. He did not feel too old for sculpture; indeed, he said, the hammer and the chisel kept him in health. In 1539 he carved his stern and powerful ‘Brutus’ ( in the bargello), worthy of the greatest Roman portrait sculpture. Perhaps he meant it to sanction the recent tyrannicide of Alessandro de’ Medici in Florence, and to serve as a reminder to future despots. Eleven years later, in a tenderer mood, he carved the ‘Pieta’ that stands behind the high altar of the Florentine cathedral. He hoped to make this his own sepulchral monument, and he worked on it feverishly. But an over furious blow of the hammer so injured the statue that he abandoned it as irrevocably spoiled. His servant Antonio Mini begged it as a gift, received it, and sold it to a Florentine. It is an astonishing product for a man of seventy-five years. The body of the dead Christ is represented without exaggeration; the figure of Mary, unfinished, is tenderness petrified; and the noble face of the hooded Nicodemus could well portray, as some have thought, Michelangelo himself, who now so often meditated on the Passion of Christ.
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Joan K--the book you mentioned sounds interesting, so interesting that there are 18 reserves for it on the library system down here; but the CD audio copy looks free so have put a hold on it...failing that there is a copy in the Midland library at home in Ontario....following Durant's renaissance book seems like one corrupt pope after the other, couldn't put a mind map to the course of events; though it is interesting to realize how large a religion grew out of that background, with some narrow minded principals as not allowing birth control (or that is how I read it)
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Welcome back Bookad, drop by more often.
Link below is Brutus sculpture by Michelangelo.......
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/michelangelo/bust-of-brutus
Emily
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Yes, BOOKAD: the picture of the Popes that "The Swerve" posts is just as bad as Durant's picture, perhaps worse.
I really like michalangelo's sculpture. I assume he didn't really know what brutus looked like, and just made him look like a noble Roman. (Although, he could have had an idea, if a Roman bust had survived. The Romans were the first to do portraiture: their busts look like real perople, unlike the greek's, which were always idealized.
What a mixed up time this is: degregation and beautiful art. You have to love it and hate it.
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I agree Joan that it is a mixed up time.
When I read of Biagio's complaint about Michelangelo's painting, it reminded me of a quote. When Michelangelo included him in the painting as one of the damned, Biagio went on the offensive and complained to the Pope. When that didn't work he was still complaining to the next Pope, Paul IV, that had a another painter put breeches on some of the most glaring parts.
As a result of all this bickering Biagio's name wound up in the Papal record, Durant reads it 400 years later and writes about it and here sixty years or so later we are again reading about Biagio the damned.
Had Biagio simply remained silent on this matter no one within a few years would have remembered. Here is the quote I was reminded of from Charles Dickens.
"Death is nature's remedy for all things."
Emily
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I have a collection of 'quotes' that 'hit home' about the world
and life generally--have not heard that quote before, and will
have to include it in my collection.
bookad
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JoanK--just finished disc 1 of 8...of 'The Swerve'..finding it quite interesting as I came midway into the book 'The Renaissance' couldn't seem to get much more from it other than the hipocracy & underhanded going on with the papal group
I was really quite interested to find Michelangelo wasn't able to pursue his main love of sculpturing being cornered into painting religious extensive time consuming murals
anyway really getting into this book & have to thank the 18 people who had reserved the book copy of 'The Swerve' the narrator has a nice voice and lets one relax and let the words flow over, a lovely alternative to reading the material
I notice the Durant's books are now available on CD's; I wonder how they would be to listen to ...not about to buy any though
Deb
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Durants' S o C
Vol.V The Renaissance
Pages 724 - 728
ENVOI.
It has been a profound and grateful experience to study so many of the phases and personalities of these rich and vibrant centuries. How endless was the wealth of this Renaissance, which even in its waning produced men like Tintoretto, and Veronese, Aretino and Vasari, Paul III and Palestrina, Sansovino and Palladio, Duke Cosimo and Cellini, and such art as the rooms of the ducal Palace and St. Peter’s dome! What frightening vitality there must have been in those Renaissance Italians, living amid violence, seduction, superstition, and war, and yet eagerly alive to every form of beauty and artistry, and pouring forth-- as if all Italy had been a volcano -- the hot lava of their passions and their art, their architecture and assassinations, their sculpture and liaisons, their painting and brigandage, their Madonnas and grotesques, their hymns and macaronic verse, their obscenities and piety, their profanity and prayers! Has there ever been elsewhere such depth and intensity of Yea-saying life ? To this day we feel the lifting breath of that afflatus, and our museums overflow with the spared surplus of that inspired and frenzied age.
It is difficult to judge it calmly, and we grudgingly rehearse the charges that have been brought against it. First of all, the Renaissance ( limiting that term to Italy ) was based materially upon the economic exploitation of the simple many by the clever few. The wealth of papal Rome came from the pious pennies of a million European homes; the splendor of Florence was the transmuted sweat of lowly proletaires who worked long hours, had no political rights, and were better off than medieval serfs only in sharing the proud glory of civic art and the exciting stimulus of city life. Politically the Renaissance was the replacement of republican communes with mercantile oligarchies and military dictatorships. Morally it was a pagan revolt that sapped the theological supports of the moral code, and left human instincts grossly free to use as they pleased the new wealth of commerce and industry. Unchecked by the censorship from a Church herself secularized and martial, the state declared itself above morality in government, diplomacy, and war.
Renaissance art ( the indictment continues ) was beautiful, but seldom sublime. It excelled Gothic art in detail, but fell short of it in grandeur, unity, and total effect; it rarely reached Greek perfection or Roman majesty. It was the voice of an aristocracy of wealth that divorced the artist from the artisan, up rooted him from the people, and made him dependent upon upstart princes and rich men. It lost its soul to a dead antiquity and enslaved architecture and sculpture to ancient and alien forms. What an absurdity it was to put false Greco-Roman fronts upon Gothic churches, as Aklberti did in Florence and Rimini! perhaps the whole classical revival in art was a grievous mistake. A style once dead cannot properly be revitalised unless the civilization that it expressed can be restored; the vigour and health of the style lie in its harmony with the life and culture of its time. There was in the great age of Greek and Roman art, a stoic restraint idealized by Greek thought and often realized in Roman character; but that restraint was quite foreign to the Renaissance spirit of freedom, passion, turbulence, and excess. What could be more contrary to the Italian temper in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than the flat roof and ceiling, the regular rectangular facade, the dreary rows of identical windows, that stigmatized the Renaissance palace? When Italian architecture tired of this monotony and artificial classicism, it let itself go, like a Venetian merchant robed for Titian, in excessive ornament and splendour, and fell from the classic into the baroque-- ‘corruptio optimi pessima’.
Neither could classic express the Renaissance. For restraint is essential to sculpture; the enduring medium does not fitly embody a contortion or an agony that by its nature must be brief. Sculpture is a motion immobilized, passion spent or controlled, beauty or form preserved from time by metal congealed or lasting stone. Perhaps for this reason the greatest sculptures of the renaissance are mostly tombs or ‘pietas’, in which restless man has at last achieved tranquillity. Donatello, try as he might to be classic, remained striving, aspiring, Gothic; Michelangelo was a law to himself, a titan imprisoned in his temperament, struggling through ‘Slaves’ and ‘Captives’ to find aesthetic peace, but ever too lawless and excited for repose.
Renaissance painting succeeded in expressing the colour and passion of the time, and brought the art to a technical refinement never surpassed. But it too, had its faults. Its stress was on sensuous beauty, on lordly raiment and rosy flesh; even its religious pictures were a voluptuous sentimentality, more intent upon corporeal forms than upon spiritual significance; and many a medieval crucifix reaches deeper into the soul than the demure Virgins of Renaissance art. Flemish and Dutch artists dared to picture unattractive faces and homely dress, and to seek behind these simple features the secrets of Character and the elements of life. How superficial the nudes of Venice == even the Madonnas of Raphael== seem beside the Van Eycks’”Adoration of the Lamb.”
Well, what shall we say to this harsh indictment of an epoch that we have loved with all the enthusiasm of youth ? We shall not try to refute that indictment; though it is weighted with unfair comparisons, much of it is true. Refutations never convince, and to pit one half truth against its opposite is vain unless the two can be merged into a larger and juster view. Of course the Renaissance culture was an aristocratic superstructure raised upon the backs of the labouring poor; but, alas, what culture has not been ? Doubtless much of the literature and art could hardly have arisen without some concentration of wealth; even for righteous writers unseen toilers mine the earth, grow food, weave garments, and make ink. We shall not defend the despots; some of them deserved a Borgian garrotting; many of them wasted in vain luxury the revenues drawn from the people; but neither shall we apologise for Cosimo and his grandson Lorenzo, whom the Florentines obviously preferred to a chaotic plutocracy As for the moral laxity, it was the price of intellectual liberation; and heavy as the price was, that liberation is the invaluable birthright of the modern world, the very breath of our spirits today.
For Renaissance painting there shall be no word of apology; it is still the high point of that art in history. Spain approached that zenith in the halcyon days of Velasquez, Murillo, Ribera, Zurbaran, and El Greco; Flanders and Holland came not quite so close in Rubens and Rembrandt. Chinese and Japanese painters scaled heights of their own’ and at times their pictures impress us as especially profound, if only because they see man in a large perspective; yet their cold, contemplative philosophy and decorative elegance is outweighed by the richer range of complexity and power, and the warm vitality of colour, in the pictorial art of the Florentines, of Raphael and Correggio and the Venetians. Indeed Renaissance painting was a sensual art, though it produced some of the greatest religious paintings, and -- as on the Sistine ceiling-- some of the most spiritual and sublime. But that sensuality was a wholesome reaction. The body had been vilified long enough; woman had borne through ungracious centuries the abuse of a harsh asceticism; it was good that life should reaffirm, and art enhance, the loveliness of human forms. The Renaissance had tired of original sin, breast beating, and mythical post-mortem terrors; it turned its back upon death and its face to life; and long before Schiller and Beethoven it sang an exhilarating, incomparable ode to joy.
For a time the tensions of Reformation and Counter Reformation, the debates of theology and the wars of religion, overlaid and overwhelmed the influence of the Renaissance; men fought through a bloody century for the freedom to believe and worship as they pleased, or as pleased their kings; and the voice of reason seemed stilled by the clash of militant faiths. But it was not altogether silent; even in that unhappy desolation men like Erasmus, Bacon, and Descartes echoed it bravely, gave it fresh and stronger utterance; Spinoza found for it a majestic formulation; and in the eighteenth century the spirit of the Italian Renaissance was reborn in the French Enlightenment. The strain was carried on, through revolution and counterrevolution, through advance and reaction, somehow surviving war, and patiently ennobling peace. Everywhere today in Europe and the Americas there are urbane and lusty spirits-- comrades in the Country of the Mind-- who feed and live on this legacy of mental freedom, aesthetic sensitivity, friendly and sympathetic understanding; forgiving life its tragedies, embracing its joys of sense, mind, and soul; and hearing ever in their hearts, amid hymns of hate and above the cannon’s roar, the song of the Renaissance.
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That is the finish of Vol. V. Next we start The Reformation Vol. VI.
A history of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin : 1300 - 1564.
Hope you will stay with us. -- Trevor
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I still need to read this last post, but i was curious, i know Robby had posted this before, but i have forgotten the particulars - when did this discussion start? Can Robby tell us how long he anticipated it would take to go thru the 11 volumes? I think it's fascinating how much discussion these volumes have generated and I'm sure the Durands wld be amazed to find us here in 2012. :D :D
Thanks to all of you who have honchoed the discussion, especially Robby. I wish he wld pop in and let us know how he is doing.
Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the discussion, i have learned a lot from all of you and enjoyed the links that you have proided.
Jean
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Oh, my. There is so much to think of in this las post. Whom is Durant arguing with. In the first 5 paragraphs he presents one point of view, and criticizes it in the rest. Is the beginning a quote?
And whom are we going to agree with? There is a question there. Do we need the liscventiousness and immorality of the rennaissance in order to have its art? How will we see art and creativity springing up again around the corners of the repression of ideas in the period that follows? (Durant's purple prose is very bad for my writing!)
trevor, I hope you're willing to go on: I certainly am.
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TREVOR: I posted this for the Bookbytes going out today, assuming that you wanted to go on. If not. let Marcie or me know.
THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION: well, the Renaissance is over, with all its glory and immorality, and we are about to start a new volume about the Reformation. If you've hesitated to jump into the middle of a discussion, now is the perfect time: we can all start the new book together.
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Thanks Trevor for taking over from Robby. You are doing a heroic job.
Before we leave the Renaissance, if there is anyone who has not visited this site : -
http://www.vatican.va:80/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html (http://www.vatican.va:80/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html)
to see the Sistine Chapel in detail, take this opportunity to leave with a bang.
You can move around freely and the zoom is fantastic.
Brian
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thank you for re-posting that Brian; I had deleted all my bookmarks from previous posts thru the book--that we have the ability to view with all the perspectives thru our technologies is wonderful, especially as I know I'll never travel off our continent except vicariously in my arm chair with a book or computer
I have the next book in hand ready to start.
Deb
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I don't know what we would do without Trevor. You're the greatest!
Speaking of the Reformation, there wass a biography of Martin Luther on PBS recently. As usual, I didn't know it was going to be on and only caught bits of it. Did any of you catch it?
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. VI. The Reformation
Pages 4 - 8
The Roman Catholic Church 1300-1517
Through a formative millennium, from Constantine to Dante, the Christian Church offered the gifts of religion to men and states. It moulded the figure of Jesus into a divine embodiment of virtues by which rough barbarians might be shamed into civilization. It formulated a creed that made every man’s life a part, however modest, of a sublime cosmic drama; it bound each individual in a momentous relation with God Who had created him, Who had spoken to him in sacred Scriptures, Who had therin given him a moral code, Who had descended from heaven to suffer ignominy and death in atonement for the sins of humanity, and Who had founded the Church as the repository of His teaching and the earthly agent of His power. Year by year the magnificent drama grew; saints and martyrs died for the creed, and bequeathed their example and their merits to the faithful. A hundred forms-- a hundred thousand works-- of art interpreted the drama and made it vivid even for letter less minds. Mary the Virgin Mother became “ the fairest flower of all poesy,” the formative model of feminine delicacy and maternal love, the recipient of the tenderest hymns and devotions, the inspirer of majestic architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. An impressive ceremony raised daily, from a million altars, the mystic and exalting solemnity of the Mass. Confession and penance purified the contrite sinner, prayer comforted and strengthened him, the Eucharist brought him into an awesome intimacy with Christ, the last sacraments cleansed and anointed him in expectation of paradise. Rarely had religion developed such artistry in its ministrations to mankind.
The Church was at her best when she took the place vacated by the Roman Imperial government as the chief source of order and peace in the Dark Ages, ( approximately 524 - 1079 ) of the Christian world. To the Church, more than any to any other institution, Europe owed the resurrection of civilization in the West after the barbarian inundation of Italy, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. Her monks developed waste lands, her monasteries gave food to the poor, education to boys, lodging to travellers; her hospitals received the sick and the destitute. Her nunneries sheltered mate less women and directed their maternal impulses to social ends; for centuries the nuns alone provided schooling for girls. For a thousand years, from Ambrose to Wolsey, it was the Church that trained Western Europe’s teachers, scholars, judges, diplomats, and ministers of the state; the medieval state rested on the Church. When the Dark Ages ended -- say with the birth of Abelard -- it was the Church that built the universities and the Gothic Cathedrals, providing homes for the intellect, as well as for the piety, of men. Through nine centuries almost all European art was inspired and financed by the Church, and even when art took a pagan colour the popes of the Renaissance continued their patronage.
Above all, the Church at her zenith gave to the states of Europe an international moral code and government. The Roman Church, claiming divine establishment and spiritual leadership, proposed herself as an international court, to which all rulers and states were to be morally responsible. Pope Gregory VII formulated this doctrine of a Christian Republic of Europe. The Emperor Henry the IV, recognized it by submitting to Gregory at Canossa ( 1077); A century later a stronger emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, after a long resistance, humbled himself at Venice before a weaker pope Alexander III; and in 1198 Pope Innocent III raised the authority and prestige of the papacy to a point where for a time it seemed that Gregory’s ideal of a moral superstate had come to fulfilment.
The great dream broke on the nature of man. The administrators of the papal judiciary proved human, biased, venal, even extortionate; and the kings and peoples, also human, resented any supernational power. The growing wealth of France stimulated her pride of national sovereignty; Philip IV successfully challenged the authority of Pope Boniface VIII over the property of the French Church; the kings emissaries imprisoned the aged Pontiff for three days at Anagni, and Boniface died soon afterward ( 1303). In one of its aspects -- the revolt of secular rulers against the popes -- the Reformation there and then began.
The Church at Nadir. 1307 - 1417
Throughout the fourteenth century the Church suffered political humiliation and moral decay She had begun with the profound sincerity and devotion of Peter and Paul; she had grown into a majestic system of familial, scholastic, social international discipline, order, and morality; she was now degenerating into a vested interest absorbed in self-perpetuation and finance. Philip IV secured the election of a Frenchman to the papacy, and persuaded him to move the Holy See to Avignon on the Rhone. For 68 years the popes were so clearly the pawns and prisoners of France that other nations gave them a rapidly diminishing reverence and revenue. The harassed pontiffs replenished their treasury by multiple levies upon the hierarchy, the monasteries, and the parishes. Every ecclesiastical appointee was required to remit to the papal Curia-- the administrative bureaus of the papacy -- half the income of the office for the first year, and thereafter annually a tenth or tithe. On the death of any cardinal, archbishop, bishop, or abbot, his personal possessions reverted to the papacy. In the interim between the death of an ecclesiastic and the installation of his successor, the popes received the net revenues of the benefice, and were accused of prolonging this interval.
“Wolves are in control of the Church,” cried the Spanish prelate Alvaro Pelayo, “ and feed on the blood.” of the Christian flock. Edward III of England, himself an adept in taxation, reminded Clement VI “ that the successor of the Apostles was commissioned to lead the Lord’s sheep to pasture, not to fleece them “ In Germany papal collectors were hunted down, imprisoned, mutilated, strangled. In 1372 the clergy of Cologne, Bonn, Xanthein, and Mainz bound themselves by oath not to pay the tithe levied by Gregory XI.
Amid all the complaints and revolts, the popes continued to assert their absolute sovereignty over the kings of the earth. About 1324 Agostino Trionfo wrote “The power of the Pope is from God, Whose vice-regent he is on earth; even when he is a great sinner he must be obeyed, he may be deposed by a general council of the Church for manifest heresy; but short of this his authority is second only to God’s, and transcends that of all earthly potentates. The pope stands higher than the angels, and may receive equal reverence with the Virgin and the saints. Nevertheless the flight of the popes from Rome, and their subservience to France, undermined their authority and prestige. The English government fumed at the loans of the popes to the kings of France during the Hundred Years’ War, and connived at the attacks of Wyclif upon the papacy.
In 1376 Florence, quarrelling with Pope Gregory XI, confiscated all ecclesiastical property in its territory, demolished the buildings of the Inquisition, jailed or hanged resisting priests, and called upon Italy to end all temporal power of the Church. It became clear that the Avignon popes were losing Europe in their devotion to France. In 1377 Gregory XI returned the papacy to Rome.
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Thanks Trevor for leading us to the end of the Renaissance, I thought for a while we would never get there, but you have led us out of the wilderness.
Trevor has been in this discussion since the very beginning and has now been here longer than anyone including Robby. It would be nice if both Robby and Justin dropped in to let us know all is well.
I don't have the Reformation, but will get it at the library and continue with the discussion.
Durant has taken us through Italy for almost three hundred years, and now he will tell us what was going on in the rest of Europe while Italy slid in and out of the Renaissance. He lists the years 1300-1564.
My ancestors were still in Europe during this time in both France and England. By the end of this time period France would have chased away both its native son and daughter (my grandparents-many times removed) and they would eventually come to America and never return, though their descendants would in both war and peace.
Forward march!
Emily
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I may be out of line; but ....are we part of a divine cosmic drama
or...is it all a comedy??
the church is part of what leads to greater harmonious relationships
between groups then succumbs to greed, etc., etc., etc., leading to
the roman catholic downfall eventually as pope's took more and more
advantage of those who entrusted their faith in them
don't understand the first part of
her monks developed wastelands
!! that part of the quote....the rest follows is self evident to me her monasteries gave food to the poor, education to boys, lodging to travelers; her hospitals received the sick and the destitute. Her nunneries sheltered
....
and so on
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glad to be underway in this book, have been looking forward to this for a long time
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What a good summary of millenium! I am not religious and as a student of history my summary readings have generally had negative things to say about the what the Church was doing, that first section is the best, most concise, positive statement that i have ever read about the Church's activities.
If i understand your comment, bookad, about "wastelands", i too stopped and went back to reread that. The first time i read it i read " the Church MADE wastelands." but rereading i recognizedit meant "the Church made farmland OUT OF wastelands."
Joan, i saw most of the Martin Luther show. It was very good. I learned that in my teaching of the importance of the Reformation i had missed a bit. I taught survey courses on Western Civ and was therefore being largely superficial, just hitting the big ideas and one of the ideas coming out of the Reformation was that the individual mattered. That the individual could have his/her own relationship w/ God, from there a straight line to democracy and individual rights. The program pointed out that Luther got so concerned about the power of the reform, and the uprisings of the "people" that he wrote and preached from the scriptures that people were in their rightful place, according to scripture and the peasants must be submissive to their lords and masters..........a straight line to "slaves, stay in your place and be submissive to your masters."
But, i'm too far ahead of the discussion, we can come back to that.
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So what was happening in the rest of Europe while Italy was in the renaissance, the 'hundred years' war' for one thing. The two main protaginists were France and England, but it has been so long since I studied this event that I forgot how the other parts of Europe took sides. I looked it up and below is a short excerpt......
Date 1337–1453
Location Primarily France and the Low Countries
Result French victory
House of Valois secure throne of France
Territorial
changes England lose all continental territory except for the Pale of Calais
Belligerents
House of Valois
Supported by:
France
Scotland
Wales
Castile
Genoa
Majorca
Bohemia
Crown of Aragon
Brittany (Blois) House of Plantagenet
Supported by:
England
Burgundy
Aquitaine
Brittany (Montfort)
Portugal
Navarre
Flanders
Hainaut
Luxembourg
The Hundred Years' War was a series of separate engagements marked by various truces, waged from 1337 to 1453 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France and their various allies for control of the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings. The House of Valois controlled France in the wake of the House of Capet; a Capetian cadet branch, the Valois claimed the throne under Salic Law. This was contested by the House of Plantagenet, the Angevin family that had ruled England since 1154, who claimed the throne of France through the marriage of Edward II of England and Isabella of France.
The war was in fact a series of individual "wars", commonly divided into three or four phases: the Edwardian War (1337–1360), the Caroline War (1369–1389), the Lancastrian War (1415–1429), and the slow decline of Plantagenet fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc (1412–1431). Several other contemporary European conflicts were directly related to this conflict: the Breton War of Succession, the Castilian Civil War, the War of the Two Peters, and the 1383-1385 Crisis. The term "Hundred Years' War" was a later term invented by historians to describe the series of events.
The conflict was punctuated by several periods of peace, before the French succeeded in recovering early gains made by the English, expelling them from the majority of France by the 1450s. The Plantagenets lost most of their continental territory, including Gascony, which they had held since the twelfth century, though they retained the Pale of Calais. The ruling houses of England would continue to claim the French throne until 1800. However, the war nearly fiscally ruined France, while the English enriched themselves with plunder. France suffered greatly from the war, since most of the conflict occurred in that country.
The war owes its historical significance to a number of factors. Though primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of both French and English nationalism. Militarily, it saw the introduction of new weapons and tactics, which eroded the older system of feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry in Western Europe. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire were introduced for the war, thus changing the role of the peasantry.
For all this, as well as for its long duration, it is often viewed as one of the most significant conflicts in the history of medieval warfare. In France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines and marauding mercenary armies turned to banditry reduced the population by about one-half.
France won the war but lost half its population, so it was a loser too.
Emily
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Emily: what a synopsis, I have only read about the 100 year
war in High School history, ....and it was maybe a paragraph
with the years and few facts....
all our English history was wars, dates, couple of sentences
linage of kings/queens...when one can route out further info
other than dates it becomes alive...unless maybe now I am
past school learning where I can get further into something like
the Durant's teachings everything gets interesting
interesting to learn England had control of some of today's French territory; would have thought at the dates stated that the French were more
a grouping of isolated ??countries within what is France today still dualing
for control of territories among other settlements of people
quite interesting
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Thanks, Emily. It is a very good synopsis.
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EMILY: I've always been confused about the 100 yeas war: your post makes so mmuch sense of it. Thank you.
I was named after Joan of Arc (as were probably many of the Joans of my age: she was declared a Saint shortly beforeI was born, and Joan was a popular name. But we were always taught the battles in which she fought as isolated incidents.
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what a colourful history of the pope/popes during this period
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Hi, bookad. "Colorful" is an excellent word!
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A really good book about the 14th century is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. She is a wonderful writer, accurate and interesting, easy for the lay-historian to enjoy.
My thanks also to Emily for the summary.
Jean
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Mabel1, it is a small world; in looking up Barbara Tuchman and the book you suggested, I find she also wrote, The Guns of August--am in the process of reading Lyn MacDonald's books about the first world war, and was looking forward to 'The Guns of August', especially following your mention of her writing style which sounds her books would be well worth reading
--always like it when I can find a new author, especially one writing history; am especially interested to read more about the time frame we are currently reading about
take care
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pages 8 = 13
When it became clear that the Avignon popes were losing Europe in their devotion to France, Gregory XI returned the papacy to Rome (1377) When he died (1378) the conclave of cardinals, overwhelmingly French but fearful of the Roman mob, chose an Italian as Pope Urban VI. Urban was not urbane; he proved so violent of temper, and so insistent upon reforms unc ongenial to the hierarchy, that the reassembled cardinals declare his election invalid as having been made under duress, and proclaimed Robert of Geneva pope. Robert assumed office as Clement VII in Avignon, while Urban persisted as pontiff in Rome. The Papal Schism (1378- 1417 ) so inaugurated, like so many of the forces that prepared the Reformation, was conditioned by the rise of the State; in effect it was an attempt by France to retain the moral and financial aid of the papacy in her war with England. The lead of France was followed by Naples, Spain, and Scotland; but England, Flanders, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Hungry, Italy, and Portugal accepted Urban, and the divided Church became the weapon and victim of the hostile camps. Half the Christian world held the other half to be heretical, blasphemous, and excommunicate; each side claimed the sacraments administered by priests of the opposite obedience were worthless, and that the children so baptized, the penitents so shriven, the dying so anointed, remained in mortal sin, and were doomed to hell -- or at best to limbo -- if death should supervene. Expanding Islam laughed at disintegrating Christendom.
Urban’s death in (1389) brought no compromise; the cardinals in his camp chose Boniface IX, then Innocent VII, then Gregory XII, and the divided nations prolonged the divided papacy. The Avignon cardinals named a Spanish prelate to be Benedict XIII. He offered to resign if Gregory followed suit, but Gregory’s relatives, already entrenched in office, would not hear of it. The king of France urged Benedict to withdraw; Benedict refused; France renounced its allegiance to him, and adopted neutrality. When Benedict fled to Spain his cardinals joined with those who had left Gregory, and together they issued a call for a council to meet at Pisa and elect a pope acceptable to all. The Council of Pisa met in March 25, 1409. It summoned Benedict and Gregory to appear before it; they ignored it; it declared them deposed,and elected a new pope, Alexander V, bade him call another council before May 1412, and adjoined. There were now three popes , instead of two. Alexander did not help matters by dying (1410), for his cardinals named as his successor John XXIII, the most unmanageable man to mount the pontifical chair since the twenty-second of his name. Governing Bolonga as papal vicar, this ecclesiastical ‘condottiere,’ Baldassare Cossa, had permitted and taxed every thing, including prostitution, gambling, and usury; According to his secretary he had seduced 200 virgins, matrons, widows, and nuns. But he had money, and an army; perhaps he could conquer the Papal States from Gregory, and so reduce him to impecunious abdication.
John XXIII delayed as long as he could the calling of the council decreed at Pisa. When opened at Constance, November 1414, it demanded the abdication of Gregory XII, Benedict XIII, and John XXIII. Receiving no answer from John, it accepted the presentation of fifty-four charges against him as a pagan, oppressor, liar, simoniac, traitor, lecher, and thief; sixteen other charges were suppressed. On May 29, 1415, it deposed him. Gregory, was more pliant and subtle; he agreed to resign, but only on condition that he should first be allowed to reconvene the council on his own authority.. So reconvened, the council accepted his resignation (July 4). To further attest its orthodoxy, it burned at the stake (July 6) the Bohemian reformer, John Huss. On July 26 it declared Benedict XIII deposed; he settled in Valencia, and died there at ninety, still holding himself pope. On November 17, 1417, an electoral committee chose Cardinal Ottone Colonna as Pope Martin V. All Christendom acknowledged him and the Papal Schism came to an end.
The victory of the council in this regard defeated its other purpose-- to reform the Church. Martin V at once assumed all the powers and prerogatives of the papacy. Playing off each national group of delegates against the others, he persuaded them to accept a vague and innocuous minimum of reform. The council yielded to him because it was tired. On April 22, 1418, it dissolved.
THE TRIUMPHANT PAPACY 1417-1513.
Martin reorganized the Curia to more effective functioning, but could find no way to finance it except by imitating the secular governments of the age and selling offices and services. Since the Church had survived for a century without reform, but could hardly survive a week without money, he concluded that money was more urgently needed than reform. In 1430, a year before Martin’s death, a German envoy to Rome sent his prince a letter that almost sounded the theme and tocsin of the Reformation:
“Greed reins supreme in the Roman court, and day by day finds new devices.... for extorting money from Germany...... Hence much outcry and heart burnings..... many questions in regard to the papacy will arise, or else obedience will at last be entirely renounced, to escape from these outrageous exactions by the Italians; and this latter course, as I perceive, would be acceptable to many countries.”
Martin’s successor, (Eugenius IV), faced the accumulated problems of the Apostolic See from the background of a devout Franciscan friar, ill equipped for statesmanship. The papacy had to govern states as well as the Church; the popes had to be men of affairs with at least one foot in the world, and could rarely afford to be saints. Eugenius IV might have been a saint had not his troubles embittered his spirit. In the first year of his pontificate the council of Basel proposed again to assert the supremacy of general councils over the popes. Eugenius ordered it to dissolve; instead it declared him deposed, and named Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, as Antipope Felix V (1439). The Papal Schism was renewed.
Eugenius was rescued by the Turks. As the Ottomans came ever nearer to Constantinople, the Byzantine government decided that the Greek capital was worth a Roman Mass, and that a reunion of Greek with Latin Christianity was an indispensable prelude to winning military or financial aid from the West. Greek prelates and nobles came in picturesque panoply to Ferrara, then to Florence, to meet the Roman hierarchy summoned by the Pope (1438). After a year of argument an accord was reached that recognised the authority of the Roman pontiff over all Christendom. The concord was brief, for the Greek clergy and people repudiated it; but it restored the prestige of the papacy, and helped to bring the new schism, and the council of Basel, to an end.
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That is an incredible story. Does anyone know which sequence of popes the Catholic church now recognizes as having been the legitimate pope? It came up in another discussion.
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Joan, whoever wins out at the end of the battle is the Pope of the moment. There is a list of Pope's but the sequence probably left out all the losers.
There have been other 'anti-popes' but they are left off the list. I suppose the Catholic church decided who was and who was not a legitimate Pope over the years.
The Greeks dismissed them all.
Emily
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is this chapter a synopsis from the previous book 'The Renaissance'?
if so I wish I'd had something like this to read before the lengthy pages of one corrupt pope
after the other in the last book; like you suggested sort of a timeline JoanK
how was it the councils leaned to voting for a person to be pope who ultimately turned to corruption/ or did anyone striving to be pope if voted in think he had hit the jack pot...also apparently the pope's family members and friends would be excited as well, expecting good changes in their living circumstances
what a world!
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I seem to remember from earlier that when the cardinals elected the urban who was the cause of the schism, he was a compromise, they couldn't agree and so picked an unknown inoffensive monk. Then either he went crazy, or he trieed to really reform things (or both), and they quickly tried to get rid of him.
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Bookad you ask : is this chapter a synopsis from the previous book 'The Renaissance'?
Perhaps I should let Durant explain in a note to the reader;
The prospective reader deserves a friendly notice that The Reformation is not quite an honest title for the book An accurate title would be: "A history of European Civilization Outside of Italy from 1300 to 1564, or Thereabouts, Including the History of Religion in Italy and an incidental View of Islamic and Judaic Civilization In Europe, Africa, and Western Asia".
Why so meandering a thematic frontier? Because Vol. IV "The Age of Faith " in this "Story of Civilization" brought European history only to 1300, and Vol. V "The Renaissance " confined itself to Italy 1304- 1576 deferring the Italian echoes of the Reformation.. So this Vol VI must begin at 1300; and the reader will be amused to find that Luther arrives on the scene only after a third of the tale has been told. But let us privately agree that the Reformation really only began with John Wyclif and Louis of Bavaria in the fourteenth century, progressed with John Huss in the fifteenth, and culminated explosively in the sixteenth with the reckless monk of Wittenburg. Those whose present interest is only in the religious revolution may omit chapters III- VI and IX-X without irreparable loss.
Wold the readers here like me to do as Durant suggests, or shall I carry on from page one to page 940? ++ Trevor.
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thank you Trevor
I also see the next paragraph in the present book states
The reformation, then is the central but not the only subject of this book. We begin by considering religion in
general, its functions in the soul and the group, and the conditions and problems of the Roman Catholic in the two centuries before Luther.
so I guess with the title of the first chapter, probably self explanatory ...about the Roman Catholic Church...
interesting further on in William Durant's introduction, he relates he was brought up 'feverent catholic, and that I retain grateful memories of the devoted secular priests, and learned Jesuits, and kindly nuns who bore so patiently with my brash youth;....also....derived much of my education from lecturing for thirteen years in a Presbyterian church...'
I particularly love the following passage by Durant
Less than any man have I excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.
.....
...that he can maintain that kind of faith after researching and finding the church; how it mismanaged thru popes with ulterior motives and callous self interests....and then today's ugly truths coming forward with certain Roman Catholic hierarchy....his faith must have been very deep indeed
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my vote would be to continue reading the book as is
from where we are thru to the ending
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I finally looked up the list of Popes from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The list is complete and it does list all the anti-popes, albeit in small print under the official Pope.
The anti-popes finally seemed to disappear after about 1500AD. Maybe it took them 1500 years to figure out the selection process.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm
Emily
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That is very interesting, Emily. I didn't realize that there had been several periods of anti-popes. I thuink the one that came up was Benedict XV, but I'll have to check.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI The Reformation
Pages 13-14
A succession of strong popes, enriched and exalted by the Italian Renaissance, now raised the papacy to such splendour as it had not known even in the proud days of Innocent III. Nicholas V. earned the admiration of the humanists by devoting Church revenues to the patronage of scholarship and art. Calixtus III established the genial custom of nepotism -- giving offices to relatives -- which became a pillar of corruption in the Church. Pius II brilliant as author and barren as pope, struggled to reform the Curia, and the monasteries. He appointed a commission of prelates reputed for integrity and piety to study the shortcomings of the Church, and to this commission he made a frank confession :
“ Two things are particularly dear to my heart: the war with the Turks and the reform of the Roman court. The amendment of the whole state of ecclesiastical affairs, which I have determined to undertake, depends upon this court as a model. I purpose to begin by improving the morals of the ecclesiastics here, and banishing all simony and other abuses.”
But hardly anyone in Rome wanted reform; every second functionary or dignitary there profited from some form of venality. Apathy and resistance defeated Pius, while the abortive crusade that he undertook against the Turks absorbed his energy and his funds.
Despite the labours of popes like Nicholas V and Pius II, the faults of the papal court mounted as the fifteenth century neared its end. Paul II wore a papal tiara that outweighed a palace in its worth. Sixtus IV made his nephew a millionaire, entered avidly into the game of politics, blessed the cannon that fought his battles, and financed his wars by selling church offices to the highest bidders. Innocent VIII celebrated in the Vatican the marriages of his children. Alexander VI, like Luther and Calvin, thought celibacy a mistake, and begot five or more children before subsiding into reasonable continence as a pope. His gay virility did not stick so sharply in the gullet of the time as we may suppose; a certain clandestine amorousness was often accepted as usual in the clergy.
What offended Europe was that Alexander’s unscrupulous diplomacy, and the ruthless generalship of his son Caesar Borgia, rewon the Papal States for the papacy and added needed revenues and strength to the Apostolic See. Pope Julius II out caesared Borgia in waging war against rapacious Venice and the invading French; he escaped whenever he could from the prison of the Vatican, led his army in person and relished the rough life and speech of martial camps. Europe was shocked to see the papacy not only secularised but militarised. Yet it could hardly withhold some admiration from a mighty warrior miscast as a pope; and some word went over the Alps about the services of Julius to art in his discriminating patronage of Raphael and Michelangelo. It was Julius who began the building of the new St. Peter’s, and first granted indulgences to those who contributed to its cost. It was in his pontificate that Luther came to Rome and saw for himself that “sink of iniquity “ which had been Lorenzo de’ Medici’s name for the capital of Christendom.
No ruler in Europe could any longer think of the papacy as a moral supergovernment binding all the nations into a Christian Commonwealth; the papacy itself, as a secular state, had become nationalistic; all Europe, as the old faith waned, fell into national fragments acknowledging no supernational or international moral law, and doomed to five centuries of interchristian wars.
To judge these Renaissance popes fairly we must see them against the background of their time. Northern Europe could feel their faults, since it financed them; but only those who knew the exuberant Italy of the period between Nicholas V (1447-1455) and Leo X (1513-1521) could view them with understanding lenience. Though several of them were personally pious, most of them accepted the Renaissance conviction that the world, while still for so many a vale of tears and devilish snares, could be a scene beauty, intense living and fleeting happiness; it did not seem scandalous to them that they enjoyed life and the papacy.
They had their virtues. They laboured to redeem Rome from the ugliness and squalor into which it had fallen while the popes were at Avignon. They drained marshes ( by comfortable proxy ), paved streets, restored bridges and roads, improved the water supply, established the Vatican Library and the Capitoline Museum, enlarged hospitals, distributed charity, built or repaired churches, embellished the city with palaces and gardens, reorganized the University of Rome, supported the humanists in resurrecting pagan literature, philosophy, and art, and gave employment to painters, sculptors, and architects whose works are now a treasured heritage of all mankind.
They squandered millions; they used millions constructively. They spent too much on the new St. Peter’s, but hardly more in proportion than the kings of France would spend on Fontainebleau and Versailles and the Chateaux of the Loire; and perhaps they thought of it as transforming scattered crumbs of evanescent wealth into lasting splendour for the people and their God. They raised the papacy, which had so lately been scorned and destitute, to an impressive majesty of power.
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"They drained marshes ( by comfortable proxy ), "
Durant has not lost his way with words.
I remember driving through Italy, being in a small town whose name I forget. The people looke very poor and warn, but dominating the town was the church, with a large dome covered in gold. Did the people there resent it, or were they glad to have that beauty in their lives?
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Durant writes........
No ruler in Europe could any longer think of the papacy as a moral supergovernment binding all the nations into a Christian Commonwealth; the papacy itself, as a secular state, had become nationalistic; all Europe, as the old faith waned, fell into national fragments acknowledging no supernational or international moral law, and doomed to five centuries of interchristian wars.
secular........rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations......
Europe has dismissed the old Arab myths that created gods, and its seat of power (the pope) and his entourage ignored the religious part and no matter where the 'Pope' was installed, it was a business, not a religion.
Europe fought for five hundred years, not for religion, but for the wealth that religion brought. The learned and officials of the church did not believe, but there were enough of the populace who under threat constantly and duress still turned to the church for solace from the world these monsters created.
Most people knew the church was corrupt, but instead of destroying the myth, they thought they could fix it. How sad they let that golden opportunity pass, and millions would die for a scam pulled off by the church, all in the name of religion.
secular......rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.
religion.....the service and worship of supernatural gods.
supernatural.......of or relating to a god, demigod, spirit, or devil.
occultism.....belief in or study of the action or influence of supernatural powers.
All religions are cults.
Emily
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That section alone could make me an atheist if i was not already an agnostic. :) if god had any control over people's behavior, surely he would have discilpined these guys.
Jean
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do you think the Roman Catholic church upper echelons will ever get their act together and become honourable with their misdealing s of children, rules for women regarding their own bodies and birth control, hiding wrongs done in the name of their religion etc. etc. etc....doesn't this say that men are men regardless of hierarchy of position or trust from a populace ....and totally susceptible to temptation
really any person is susceptible given temptation... men, women but as women are not allowed to any upper position in the catholic church, I didn't include them in the above.
it will be interesting to know about the rest of Europe, how the church behaved.....
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The Durants' S o C
Vol.VI The Reformation
Pages 18-25
Being worldly, the servants of the Church were often as venal as the officials of contemporary governments. Corruption was in the mores of the time and in the nature of man; secular courts were notoriously amenable to the persuasiveness of money, and no papal election could rival in bribery the election of Charles V as emperor. This excepted, the fattest bribes in Europe were paid at the Roman court. Reasonable fees had been fixed for the services of the Curia, but the cupidity of the staff raised the actual cost twenty times the legal sum. Aeneas Sylvius, before becoming pope, wrote that everything was for sale in Rome, and nothing could be had there without money. A generation later the monk Savonarola, with the exaggeration of indignation called the Church of Rome a “harlot’ ready to sell her favours for coin. Another generation later, Erasmus remarked: “ The shamelessness of the Roman Curia has reached its climax.”
From the moderate fee charged for priestly ordination to the enormous sums that many cardinals paid for their elevation, nearly every appointment required the clandestine lubrication of superiors. A favourite papal device for raising funds was to sell ecclesiastical offices, or (as the popes saw the matter) to appoint to sinecures or honours, even to the cardinalate, persons who would make a substantial contribution to the expenses of the Church. Alexander VI created eighty new offices, and received 760 ducats ( $19,000 ? ) from each of the appointees. Julius II formed a “college “ or bureau of 101 secretaries, who together paid him 74,000 ducats for the privilege. Leo X nominated sixty chamberlains and 141 squires to the papal household, and received from them 202,000 ducats. The salaries paid to such officials were looked upon, by giver and recipient, as endowment policy annuities; but to Luther they seemed the rankest simony.
A more serious charge was laid against the personal morality of the clergy. “The morals of the clergy are corrupt,” said the Bishop of Torcello ( 1458 ). “ they have become an offense to the laity.” The monastic rules formulated in the fervour of early devotion proved too rigorous for a human nature increasingly freed from supernatural fears. Absolved by their collective wealth from the necessity of manual labour, thousands of monks and friars neglected religious services, wandered outside their walls, drank in taverns, and pursued amours.
A fourteenth century Dominican, John Bromyard, said of his fellow friars:
“They are consumed in gluttony and drunkenness..... not to say in uncleanliness, so that now the assemblies of clerics are thought to be brothels of wanton folk and congregations of play-actors”.
Erasmus repeated the charge after a century. ‘Many convents of men and women differ little from public brothels.”
The chief sin of the simple parish priest was his ignorance, but he was too poorly paid and hard worked to have funds or time for study, and the piety of the people suggest that he was often respected and loved. Some confessors solicited sexual favours from female penitents. Thousands of priests had concubines; In Germany nearly all. In fairness to these priests we should consider that sacerdotal concubinage was not profligacy, but an almost universal rebellion against the rule of celibacy that had been imposed upon an unwilling clergy by pope Gregory VII ( 1074 ) Just as the Greek and Russian orthodox Church, after the schism of 1054, had continued to permit marriage to its priests, so the clergy of the Roman Church demanded the same right; and since the cannon law of their Church refused this, they took concubines. In Pomerania, about 1500, such unions were recognized by the people as reasonable, and were encouraged by them as protection for their daughters and wives; at public festivals the place of honour was given as a matter of course to priests and their consorts. Aeneas Sylvius was quoted by the contemporary historian Platina, librarian of the Vatican, as saying “there were good reasons for clerical celibacy, but better reasons against it. “ The moral record of pre-Reformation priesthood stands in better light if we view sacerdotal concubinage as a forgivable revolt against an arduous rule unknown to the Apostles and to the Christianity of the East.
The complaint that finally sparked the Reformation was the sale of indulgences. Through the powers apparently delegated by Christ to Peter ( Matt. 16:19), by Peter to bishops, and by bishops to priests, the clergy were authorized to absolve a confessing penitent from the guilt of his sins, and from punishment in hell, but not from doing penance for them on earth. Christ by His death had added an infinity of merits; these merits, said the theory of the Church could be conceived as a treasury, upon which the pope might draw to cancel part or all of the temporal penalties incurred and unperformed by absolved penitents. The substitution of a money fine ( Webergeld ) for punishment was a long established custom in secular courts; hence no furore was caused by the early application of the idea to indulgences. A shriven penitent, by paying such a fine to the expenses of the Church, would receive a partial or plenary indulgence, not to commit further sins, but to escape a day, a month, a year in purgatory, or all the time he might have had to suffer there to complete his penance for his sins. The indulgence did not cancel the guilt of sins; this, when the priest absolved a contrite penitent, was forgiven in the confessional. An indulgence, therefore, was the remission, by the Church, of part or all of the temporal ( not eternal ) penalties incurred by sins whose guilt had been forgiven in the sacrament of penance.
This ingenious and complicated theory was soon transformed by the simplicity of the people, and by the greed of the ‘quaestiarii ‘, or pardoners, commissioned or presuming to distribute the indulgences. As these purveyors were allowed to retain a percentage of the receipts, some of them omitted to insist upon repentance, confession, and prayer, and left the recipient free to interpret the indulgence as dispensing him from repentance, confession and absolution, and as depending almost entirely upon the money contribution.
The popes -- Boniface IX in 1392, Martin V in 1420, Sixtus IV in 1478 , repeatedly condemned these misconceptions and abuses, but they were too pressed for revenue to practice effective control. They issued bulls so frequently, and for so confusing a variety of causes, that men of education lost faith in the theory, and accused the Church of shamelessly exploiting human credulity and hope. A Franciscan friar of high rank described with anger how chests were placed in all the churches of Germany to receive payments by those who, having been unable to go to Rome for the Jubilee of 1450, could now obtain the same plenary indulgence by money dropped in the box; and he warned the Germans, a half century before Luther, that by indulgences and other means their savings were being drained off to Rome. Even the clergy complained that indulgences were snaring into papal coffers contributions that might otherwise been secured for local ecclesiastical uses.
The poor complained that through their inability to pay for Masses and indulgences it was the earthly rich, not the meek, who would inherit the kingdom of heaven; and Columbus ruefully praised money because he said “ he who possesses it has the power of transporting souls into paradise.” Among laymen, Erasmus reported, the title of clerk or priest or monk was a term of bitter insult. In Vienna the priesthood, once the most desired of all careers, received no recruits in the twenty years preceding the Reformation. Passionate Italians like Arnold of Brescia, Joachim of Flora, and Savonarola of Florence had attacked ecclesiastical abuses without ceasing to be Catholics but two of them had been burned at the stake. Nevertheless, good Christians continued to hope that reform might be accomplished by the Church’s loyal sons. Humanists like Erasmus, Colet, More, and Bude dreaded the disorder of an open break; it was bad enough that the Greek Church remained resolutely apart from the Roman; any further rending of “the seamless robe of Christ “ threatened the survival of Christianity itself. The Church tried repeatedly, and often sincerely, to cleanse her ranks and her courts,, and to adopt a financial ethic superior to the lay morality of the times. The councils tried to reform the Church, and were defeated by the popes; the popes tried, and were defeated by the cardinals and the bureaucracy of the Curia. Enlightened churchmen like Nicholas of Cusa achieved local reforms, but even these were transient.
Denunciations of the Church’s shortcomings, by her enemies and her lovers, excited the schools, disturbed the pulpits, flooded the literature, mounted day by day, year by year, in the memory and resentment of men, until the dam of reverence and tradition burst, and Europe was swept by a religious revolution more far-reaching and profound than all the political transformations of modern times.
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notoriously amenable to the persuasiveness of money
Durant sums it all up - - - - as usual he is indefatigable in his verbosity.
The "Occupy" or "99 to 1" groups would do well to find a writer who could compete.
We need a "Reformation" right now.
Brian
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Brian, I agree we need a reformation, just not like the one that happened with the Catholic church that did not work. They may have stopped the 'indulgences' but they did nothing to stop all the other crimes against humanity they participated in and continue today.
What the occupy movement needs is a list of names of those most responsible for the 'crash of 08'. The 'occupiers' don't seem to know who the culprits are, and if you can't name the 'criminals' you don't have a case.
I can easily compose the 'list' but these people have so much money (which means power), they are considered untouchable (at least by our Justice Department).
Case closed.
Emily
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Emily - - - I'd love to see your list :)
Brian
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The Durant's S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pages 26-29
On February 25th 1308, Edward II took the oath that England requires of all her sovereigns. Having done so and being duly anointed with holy oils, he consigned the government to corrupt and incompetent hands, then devoted himself to a life of frivolity with one Piers Gaveston, his Ganymede. The barons soon rebelled, caught and slew Gaveston ( 1312 ), and subordinated Edward and England to their feudal oligarchy. After returning in disgrace from his defeat by the Scots at Bannockburn ( 1314 ), Edward solaced himself with a new love, Hugh le Despenser III. A conspiracy by his neglected wife, Isabella of France, and her paramour, Roger de Mortimer, deposed him ( 1326 ); he was murdered in Berkeley Castle by Mortimer’s agent ( 1327 ); and his fifteen-year-old son was crowned as Edward III.
The noblest event of this age in English history was the establishment, (1322 ) of a precedent that required the consent of a national assembly for the validity of any law. It had long been the custom of English monarchs, in their need, to summon a “King’s Council” of prominent nobles and prelates. In (1295) Edward I, warring with France, Scotland, and Wales, and most earnestly desirous of cash and men, instructed “every city, borough, and leading town“ to send two Burgesses ( enfranchised citizens), and every shire or county to send two knights ( minor nobles ), to a national assembly, they would form, with the King’s Council, the first English Parliament. The towns had money, which their delegates might be persuaded to vote to the king; the shires had yeomen, who would make sturdy archers and pikemen. The time had come to build these forces into the structure of English government. There was no pretence at full democracy. The nobles and clergy remained the rulers of England. They owned most of the land , employed most of the population as their tenants or serfs, and organised and directed the armed forces of the nation.
The Parliament, (as it came to be called under Edward III ) met in the royal palace at Westminster, across from the historic Abbey. The archbishops, the eighteen bishops, and the major abbots sat at the right of the king; half a hundred dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons sat on his left, while the judges of the realm, seated on woolsacks to remind them how vital the wool trade was to England, attended to advise on points of law. At the opening of the session the burgesses and knights-- later known as the Commons-- stood uncovered below a bar that separated them from the prelates and lords; now, for the first time (1295 ) the national assembly had an Upper and Lower House. The united Houses received from the king a ’pronunciato’ ( “the speech from the throne” ) explaining the subjects to be discussed and the appropriations desired. Then the Commons withdrew to meet in another hall, where they debated the royal proposals. Their deliberations ended, they delegated a “speaker” to report to the Upper House , and to present their petitions to the king. Then the two houses were given the reply of the sovereign, and were dismissed by him. Only the king had the right to summon or dissolve the Parliament.
In theory the powers of Parliament extended to legislation; in practice most of the statutes passed had been presented as bills by the royal ministers; but the Houses often submitted recommendations and grievances, and delayed the voting of funds till some satisfaction was obtained. The only weapon the Commons had was this “power of the purse “; but as the cost of administration and the wealth of the towns grew, the power of the Commons rose. The monarchy was neither absolute nor constitutional; the king could not openly and directly change a law made by Parliament or enact a knew one; but throughout the year he ruled without Parliament to check him. He succeeded to the throne not by election but by pedigree. His person was accounted religiously sacred; obedience and loyalty to him were inculcated with all the force of religion, custom, law, education,, and ceremonious oath. If this might not suffice, the law of treason directed that a captured rebel against the state should be dragged through the streets to the gallows, should have his entrails torn out and burned before his face, and should then be hanged.
In 1330 Edward III, eighteen, took over the government, and began one of the most eventful reigns in the history of England. “His body was comely,” says a contemporary chronicler, “ and his face was that of a god.”; till venery weakened him he was every inch a king. He almost ignored domestic politics, being a warrior rather than a statesman; he yielded powers to Parliament amiably so long as they financed his campaigns. Through his long rule he bled France white in the effort to add her to his crown. Yet there was chivalry in him, frequent gallantry, and such treatment of the captured French King John as would have graced King Arthur's court. Froissart tells a story, unverified, of how Edward tried to seduce the lovely Countess of Salisbury, was courteously repulsed, and staged a tournament in order to feast his soul on her beauty again. A charming legend tells how the countess dropped a garter while dancing at court, and how the king snatched it up from the floor, and said, “ Hone soit qui mal y pense” “shame on him who evil thinks of it “ The phrase became the motto of that Order of the Garter which Edward founded toward 1349.
Alice Perrers proved less difficult than the Countess; though married, she yielded herself to the avid monarch, took large grants of land in return, and acquired such influence over him that Parliament registered a protest. Queen Phillipa bore all this patiently, forgave him, and on her deathbed, asked him only to fulfill her pledges to charity, and “ when it shall please God to call you hence, to choose no other sepulchre but to lie by my side.” He promised “with tears in his eyes,“ returned to Alice, and gave her the Queen’s jewellery.
He waged his wars with energy, courage, and skill. War was then rated the highest and noblest work of kings; unwarlike rulers were despised, and three such in England’s history were deposed. If one might venture a slight anachronism, a natural death was a disgrace that no man could survive. The people suffered from the wars but, till this reign, had rarely fought in them; their children lost the memory of the suffering, heard old knightly tales of glory, and crowned with their choicest laurels those of their kings that shed the most alien blood.
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“ Hone soit qui mal y pense”
This should be HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
Was that a misprint from Durant or a slip of the finger from Trevor ?
Other renditions include HONNI SOIT QUY MAL Y PENSE, but I have
never seen HONE before in this context.
Brian
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I've always bwondered here the Order of the Garter came from.
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Brian. Sorry about that. (HONE instead of HONI, my mistake.) I sometimes have Wisia read and correct my typing, but this time I neglected to do so. I'm sure you all would have noted I also wrote KNEW instead of NEW!! My apologies. I must try and improve.... Trevor
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No problem, Trevor - - - you are doing an excellent job.
Brian
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If you can put up with my bad typing and terrible spelling, I can certainly forgive the occasional mistake in the reams of material you have to enter!
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Eastside, Westside, mid 1960s!! Longer ago than i thot. Elizabeth Wilson - don't remember her, Cicely Tyson, set in NYC.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056753/
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house of commons
throne speech
parliament
speaker of the house
fascinating to find where origins of government systems
came into being--I remember an interesting course while in
high school some 40+ years ago regarding our Canadian
parliamentary system...so very interesting at the time, but
faded from memory now
always enjoy when the past hooks up with the present; finding the
whys of present customs of doing things
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Sorry, i just realized the above comment was in the wrong site.... ??? ::) my ipad hexed me!
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I'm reading The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman, which is subtitled "a novel of Richard III," but through the first half (500 pages) spends as much time on EdwardIV as on Richard. Penman portrays Edward IV much as Durant portrays Edward III in appearance and behavior. As i read Durant's paragraph about parliament it dawned on me that Penman ignored any activity of parliament, Edward IV has been concerned only about the Wars of the Roses and keeping the crown out of the hands of the Lancastrians. But i see, as Durant goes on, that he acknowledges as much about the kings, the importance of war and power above all else.
The people's lives seem to be of no value, a constant concern of which army is coming thru and what they will do and will i be on the right side in the end? Endless cruelty. Endless greed for power. Has the world changed? Or not?
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"Has the world changed? Or not?"
Only in that, for many people, it doesn't matter whether you are on the right side or not. modern weapons don't care.
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It was interesting to read how many of those medieval kings were warriors who felt it was degrading to die a natural death. Then I remembered my favorite book read last year was AGINCOURT by Bernard Cornwell, an exciting historical fiction story of Henry V's invasion of France in 1415.
Re Mabel's question, "Has the world changed? Or not?" Currently, the United States has about 700 military bases in (per Wikipedia) more than 150 countries around the world. And unlike medieval times, where warfare was conducted by hand-to-hand bloody combat, warfare is now being conducted from remote areas. I.e., we are now planning to use more and more drone airplanes to attack people. From hundreds or thousands of miles away, pilot "operators" can move and manipulate these drones with their lethal cargo to their destinations. Like a deadly video game.
Marj
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Maybe my question should have been, have people changed? In many ways i see that people around the world are less prone to physical violence, but then we have the ruler of Syria and his followers who appear to have no qualms about killing and maiming, as have other armies throughout the world.
OTOH, soldiers in our military and European militaries have been brought to trial for rape and pillage in recent decades, so "western" gov'ts no longer sanction rape and pillage. (i hate to use the word western, it can be misconstrued as prejudicial, but those are the countries i have the most knowledge about) It seems in many countries today it is inappropiate to declare your greed for power and money, unless you are Donald Trump. ;D But we still admire people who have been "ambitious" enough to acguire power and money....... We seem to have a scheziphrenia about power and money.
I guess my answer to my question is that we as human beings have changed somewhat in our belief in the value of the person and some socities have rules, therefore values, that support caring about the individual and denounce cruelty, theft and violence. I would say that's some improvement in the human psyche.
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Durant's S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
pages 29-35
When Edward proposed to conquer France, few of his councillors dared to advise conciliation. Only when the war dragged on through a generation, and had burdened even the rich with taxes, did the national conscience raise a cry for peace. Discontent neared revolution when Edward’s campaigns, passing from victory to failure, threatened the collapse of the nation’s economy. Till 1370 Edward had profited in war and diplomacy from the wise and loyal service of Sir John Chandos. when his hero died, his place at the head of the King's Council was taken by Edward’s son, the Duke of Lancaster, named John of Gaunt. John carelessly turned the government over to political buccaneers who fattened there purses at the public expense. Demands for reform were raised in Parliament, and men of good will prayed for the nations happy recovery through the King’s speedy death. Another of his sons the Black Prince -- named probably for the colour of his armour-- might have brought new vigour to the government, but in 1376 he passed away while the old king lingered on. The “Good Parliament “ of that year enacted some reform measures, put two malfeasants in jail, ordered Alice Perrers from the court, and bound the bishops to excommunicate her if she returned. After the parliament dispersed, Edward, ignoring its decrees, restored John of Gaunt to power and Alice to the royal bed; and no bishop dared reprove her. At last the obstinate monarch consented to die (1377). A son of the Black Prince succeeded to the throne as Richard II, a lad of eleven years, amid economic and political chaos, and religious revolt.
JOHN WYCLIF: 1320-84
What gnawed at the purse nerves of laity and government was the expanding and migratory wealth of the English Church. The clergy on several occasions contributed a tenth of their income to the state, but they insisted that no tax could be laid upon them without the consent of their convocations. They gathered, directly or by proctors, in convocations under the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and determined there all matters dealing with religion or the clergy. It was usually from the ranks of clergy, as the best-educated class in England, that the king chose the highest officials of the state. The bishops’ courts had sole jurisdiction over tonsured offenders. Also, in many towns the Church leased property to tenants and claimed full judicial authority over these tenants, even when they committed crimes. Such conditions were irritating, but the major irritant was the flow of wealth from the English Church to the popes-- i.e. in the fourteenth century, to Avignon --i.e. to France. It was estimated that more English money went to the pope than to the state or the king. In 1333 Edward III refused to pay any longer the tribute that King John of England had pledged to the popes in 1213. In 1351 the Statute of Provisors sought to end papal control over the personnel or revenues of English benefices. The First Statute of Praemunire 1353, outlawed Englishmen who sued in “foreign“ ( papal ) courts on matters claimed by the king to lie under secular jurisdiction. In 1376 the Commons officially complained that papal collectors in England were sending great sums of money to the pope, and that absentee French cardinals were drawing rich revenues from English sees. The anticlerical party at the court was led by John of Gaunt, whose protection enabled John Wyclif to die a natural death.
Wyclif, the first of the English reformers was born at Hipswell near the village of Wyclif, in north Yorkshire about 1320. He studied at Oxford, became professor of theology there, and for a year ( 1360) was Master of Balliol College. His literary activity was alarming. He wrote vast Scholastic treatises on metaphysics, theology, and logic, two volumes of polemics, four of sermons, and a medley of short but influential tracts, including the famous “Tractatus de civili dominio“. Most of his compositions were in graceless and impenetrable Latin that should have made them harmless to any but grammarians. But hidden among these obscurities were explosive ideas that almost severed Britain from the Roman Church 155 years before Henry VIII, plunged Bohemia into civil war, and anticipated nearly all the reform ideas of John Huss and Martin Luther.
Putting his worst foot forward, and surrendering to Augustine’s logic and eloquence, Wyclif built his creed upon the awful doctrine of predestination which was to remain even to our day the magnet and solvent of Protestant theology. God, wrote Wyclif, gives his grace to whomever He wishes, and has predestined each individual, an eternity before birth, to be lost or saved through all eternity. Good works do not win salvation, but they indicate that he who does them has received divine grace and is one of the elect. We act according to the disposion that God has allotted to us; to invert Heraclitus, our fate is our character. Only Adam and Eve had free will; by their disobedience they lost it for themselves and for posterity.
God is sovereign lord of us all. The allegiance that we owe Him is direct, as is the oath of every Englishman to the king, not indirect through allegiance to a subordinate lord, as in Feudal France. Hence the relationship of man to God is direct, and requires no intermediary; any claim of Church or priest to be a necessary medium must be repelled. In this sense all Christians are priests, and need no ordination. God holds dominion over all the earth and the contents thereof; a human being can justly hold property only as His obedient vassal. Anyone who is in a state of sin- which constitutes rebellion against the Divine Sovereign -- loses all right of possession; for rightful possession ( “dominion” ) requires a state of grace.
Wyclif argued; Now it is clear from Scripture that Christ intended His apostles, their successors and their ordained delegates to have no property. Any church or priest owning property is violating the Lord’s commandment, is therefore in a state of sin, and consequently cannot validly administer the sacraments. The reform most needed in Church and clergy is their complete renunciation of worldly goods. As if this were not troublesome enough, Wyclif deduced from his theology a theoretical communism and anarchism. Any person in a state of grace shares with God the ownership of all goods; ideally everything should be held by righteous common. Private property and government ( as some Scholastic philosophers had taught ) are results of Adam’s sin. ( ie. of human nature ) and man’s inherited sinfulness; in a society of universal virtue there would be no individual ownership, no man made laws of either Church or state. Suspecting that the radicals, who were at this time meditating revolt in England, would interpret this literally, Wyclif explained that his communism was to be understood only in the ideal sense; the powers that be, as Paul had taught, are ordained by God, and must be obeyed. This flirtation with revolution was almost precisely repeated by Luther in 1525.
The anticlerical party saw some sense, if not in Wyclif’s communism, at least in his condemnation of ecclesiastical wealth. When parliament again refused to pay King John’s tribute to the pope( 1366) Wyclif was engaged as “peculiaris regis clericus “-- a cleric in service of the king-- to prepare a defense of the act. In 1374 Edward the III gave him the rectory of Lutterworth, apparently as a retaining fee. When John of Gaunt proposed that the government should confiscate part of the Church’s property, he invited Wyclif to defend the proposal in a series of sermons in London; Wyclif complied ( September 1376 ), and was thereafter branded by the clerical party as a tool of Gaunt. The preacher was summoned to appear before a council of prelates at St. Paul‘s. He came accompanied by John of Gaunt with an armed retinue. A fracas ensued and the Bishop thought it discreet to adjourn. Wyclif returned unhurt to Oxford. In May, Gregory XI issued bulls condemning eighteen of Wyclif’s proposals, mostly from the treatise “ On Civil Dominion “, and ordered Archbishop Sudbury and Bishop Courtenay to inquire whether Wyclif still held these views; if he did , they were to arrest him and keep him in chains pending further instructions.
By this time Wyclif had won support of a large body of public opinion. The Parliament that met in October (1376 ) was strongly anticlerical. The argument for disendowment of the Church had charms for many members, who reckoned that if the King should seize the wealth now held by English bishops, abbots, and priors, he could maintain with it fifteen earls, 1500 knights, 6200 squires, and have 20,000 pounds a year left for himself. At this time France was preparing to invade England, and the English treasury was almost empty; how foolish it seemed to let papal agents collect funds from English parishes for a French pope and a college of cardinals overwhelmingly French! The King’s advisers asked Wyclif to prepare an opinion on the matter. He answered in a pamphlet that in effect called for the severance of the English Church from the papacy. Wyclif recommended the ecclesiastical independence of England. “ The Realm of England, in the words of Scripture, ought to be one body, and clergy, lords, and commonality members of that body.” This anticipation of Henry VIII seemed so bold that the King’s advisers directed Wyclif to make no further statements on the matter.
The Parliament adjourned on November 28. On December 18 the embattled bishops published the condemnatory bulls, and bade the Chancellor of Oxford to enforce the Pope’s order of arrest. Half the faculty supported Wyclif, at least in his right to express his opinions. The Chancellor refused to obey the bishops, and denied the authority of any prelate over the university in matters of belief; meanwhile he counselled Wyclif to remain in modest seclusion. But it is a rare reformer who can be silent. In March 1378, Wyclif appeared before the bishop’s assembly at Lambeth to defend his views. As the hearing was about to begin, the Archbishop received a letter from the mother of King Richard II deprecating any final condemnation of Wyclif; and in the midst of proceedings a crowd forced its way in from the street, and declared that the English people would not tolerate any Inquisition in England. Yielding to this combination of government and populace, the bishops deferred decision, and again Wyclif went home unhurt-- indeed triumphant. On March 27 Gregory XI died and a few months later the Papal Schism divided and weakened the papacy, and the whole authority of the Church. Wyclif resumed the offensive, and issued tract after tract, many in English, extending his heresies and revolt.
He is pictured to us in these years as a man hardened by controversy, and made puritan by age. He was no mystic; rather a warrior and an organizer, and perhaps carried his logic to merciless extremes. His talent for vituperation now disported itself freely. He denounced the friars for preaching poverty and accumulating wealth. “ Prelates deceive men by feigned indulgences or pardons, and rob them cursedly of their money... Men be great fools that buy these bulls of pardon so dear.” If the pope had the power to snatch souls from purgatory, why did he not in Christian charity take them out at once? With mounting vehemence Wyclif alleged that “ many priests..... defile wives, maidens, widows, and nuns in every manner of lechery” and demanded that the crimes of the clergy should be punishable by secular courts. He excoriated curates who flattered the rich and despised the poor, who easily forgave the sins of the wealthy but excommunicated the indigent for unpaid tithes, who hunted, hawked, and gambled, and related fake miracles. Luther’s language is forecast. “Simony reigns in all states of the Church.... The simony of the court of Rome does most harm, for it is most common, and under the colour of holiness, and robs most of our land of men and treasure. “ Christ had not whereon to rest His head, but men say this pope has more than half the Empire . . . Christ was meek . . . the pope sits on his throne and makes lords kiss his feet. Perhaps, Wyclif gently suggested, the pope is the Antichrist predicted in the First Epistle of the Apostle John, the Beast of the Apocalypse, heralding the second coming of Christ.
The solution of the problem, as Wyclif saw it, lay in separating the Church from all material possessions and power. Christ and His apostles had lived in poverty, so should his priests. If the clergy should not disendow themselves by a voluntary return to evangelical poverty, the state should step in and confiscate their goods. Kings are responsible to God alone, from Whom they derive their dominion. Instead of accepting the doctrine of Gregory VII and Boniface VIII that secular governments must be subject to the Church, the state should consider itself supreme in all temporal matters. Priests should be ordained by the king. In general we should doubt the validity of a sacrament admistered by a sinful or heretical priest. Nor can a priest, good or bad, change the bread and wine of the Eucharist into the physical body and blood of Christ. Like Luther, Wyclif denied transubstantiation, but not the Real Presence. By a mystery that neither pretended to explain, Christ was made spiritually, truly, really, effectively present, along with the bread and wine, which did not , as the Church taught , cease to exist.
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I am finding it fascinating that era of late 1300s & in the book group with 'Charles Dickens' a Wat Tyler is in 1800s book 'Bleak House'--Wat Tyler leads a peasant revolt against injustices delivered by the British aristocratic some 30 years following the 'black death'
interesting the timelines overlapping in two book groups...too bad not as easy to put all the 1300 era events easily together
to be Wat Tyler, occupation roof tiler, alive in that time subjected to the clergy, the aristocrats and their whims, surrounded by his friends all struggling because of their lot in life --the head tax imposed that expected every man whether high born or poor to pay the same money....sounds as this last fact might have been 'the straw that broke the camel's back' in provoking the peasant uprising
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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"that expected every man whether high born or poor to pay the same money"
Sounds like the Tea Party people of today. LOL.
Marj
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"Men of good will prayed for the nations happy recovery through the King's speedy death"
Their prayers were not answered.
I am reading a book and the setting is Indonesia. In a village one of the villagers comments on the 'tribal leader'. "He is respected, but resented by all."
Sounds like the King of England, when they start praying for you to die, better get a food taster.
Emily
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Good grief, I just had the mind numbing experience of looking up 'predestination' on Google. I read it all but since psychobabble can be boring and unrepeatable one will not get an honest answer there.
The 'omniscient' god began with Judaism. The know all, see all, god who knew you before you were created, and all that nonsense. Since the Jews wrote both the 'old testament' and the 'new testament' and their words set the stage for 'predestination' it belongs to them.
I know many Christians and none of them believe in 'predestination' as prescribed by John Wyclif. I know many Jews and none of them believe in 'predestination' either. Of course I don't know any 'orthodox jews' or 'calvinist christians' either who do believe in the 'omniscient god' who knows all and sees all and preordains all.
As for Islam, my experience is limited. I organized a group of adults to serve as tutors in the school system for first through third grade. They would spend an hour with students selected by the teacher or an hour with the entire class reading and discussing a book. There was an Egyptian boy in the third grade and he lived directly across the street from the school. I went calling to see if his mother would volunteer for a couple of hours a week. I knocked on the door and the father answered it, I asked to speak to his wife and he said no, I gave him my card and asked if she would call me. He said she would not.
But the other muslim was a blessing. He was attending the 'space center' school for a semester at a nearby military facility. The children loved him. He was a young Iranian who spoke perfect English and kept the children enthralled with a continuing 15 minute story time after their reading.
Since reading comprehension was my goal I had no idea what they believed about religion.
Since I don't believe in gods, faries, ghosts, demons, saints, or any of the other mumbo jumbo put out by the 'cults', predestination is simply foolish and silly in my opinion and not fit for discussion.
Emily
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The Durants' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
pages 35 - 39
Wyclif would not admit these ideas were heretical, but this theory of “consubstantiality” alarmed
some of his supporters. John of Gaunt hurried over to Oxford, and urged his friend to say no more about the Eucharist. Wyclif rejected this advice, and reaffirmed his views in a “Confessio “ dated May 10 1381. A month later social revolution broke out in England, and frightened all property owners into discountenancing any doctrine that threatened any form of property, lay or ecclesiastical. Wyclif now lost most of his backing in the government, and the assassination of Archbishop Sudbury by the rebels promoted his most resolute enemy, Bishop Courtenay, to the primacy of England. Courtenay felt that if Wyclif’s conception of the Eucharist were allowed to spread it would undermine the Church’s moral authority.
Embarrassed by the admiration expressed for him by the priest John Ball, a chief protagonist of the revolt, Wyclif issued several tracts dissociating himself from the rebels; he disclaimed any socialist views and urged his followers to submit patiently to their terrestrial lords in the firm hope of recompense after death. Nevertheless he continued his pamphleteering against the Church, and organized a body of “Poor Preaching Priests “ to spread his Reformation among the people. All went robed in black wool and barefoot; all were warmed by the ardor of men who had rediscovered Christ. Theirs was already the protestant emphasis on an infallible Bible as against the fallible traditions and dogmas of the Church. Wyclif set himself and his aides to translate the Bible as the sole and unerring guide to true religion. He appears to have translated the New Testament himself, leaving the Old Testament to Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey. It was not a model of English prose, but it was a vital event in English history.
In 1384 Pope Urban VI summoned Wyclif to appear before him in Rome. A different summons exceeded it in authority. On Dec 28 1384 the ailing reformer suffered a paralytic stroke as he was attending Mass, and died three days later. Search was made for his writings, and as many as were found were destroyed.
All the major elements of the Reformation were in Wyclif: the revolt against the worldliness of the clergy, and the call to sterner morality; the return of the Church to the Bible, from Aquinas to Augustine, from free will to predestination, from salvation by works to election by divine grace; the rejection of indulgences, auricular confession, and transubstantiation; the deposition of the priest as an intermediary between God and man; the protest against the alienation of national wealth to Rome; the invitation to the state to end its subordination to the papacy; the attack ( preparing for Henry VIII ) on the temporal possessions of the clergy. If the Great Revolt had not ended the government’s protection of Wyclif’s efforts, the Reformation might have taken form and root in England 130 years before it broke out in Germany.
THE GREAT REVOLT: 1381
England and Wales had in 1307 a population precariously estimated at 3,000,000 - a slow increase from a supposed 2,500,000 in 1066. The figures suggest a sluggish advance of agricultural and industrial techniques-- and an effective control of human multiplication by famine, disease, and war -- in a fertile but narrow island never meant to sustain with its own resources any great multitude of men. Probably three fourths of the people were peasants, and half of these were serfs: in this regard England lagged a century behind France.
Class distinctions were sharper than on the continent. Life seemed to revolve about two foci: gracious or arrogant lordship at one end, hopeful or resentful service at the other. The barons, aside from their limited duties to the king, were masters of all they surveyed, and of much beyond. The feudal lord bound his vassal knights and their squires to serve and defend him and wear his “ livery.” The middle classes assumed such manners of the aristocracy as they could manage; they began to address one and another as Master in England, Mon seigneur in France; soon every man was a Master or Mon seigneur, and every woman a Mistress or Madame.
Industry progressed faster than agriculture. By 1300 almost all the coalfields of Britain were being worked; silver, iron, lead, and tin were mined, and the export of metals ranked high in the nation’s trade. It was a common remark that “ the Kingdom is of greater value under the land than above “.
The woollen industry began in this century to make England rich. The lords withdrew more and more lands from the common uses formerly allowed to their serfs and tenants, and turned large tracts into sheep enclosures, more money could be made by selling wool than by tilling the land. The wool merchants were for a time the wealthiest traders in England, able to yield great sums in taxes and loans to Edward III, who ruined them. Tired of seeing raw wool go from England to feed the clothing industry of Flanders, Edward (1331 f.) lured Flemish weavers to Britain and through their instruction established a textile industry there. Then he forbade the export of wool and the import of most foreign cloth. By the end of the fourteenth century the manufacture of clothing had replaced the wool trade as the main source of England’s liquid wealth and had reached a semi-capitalistic stage.
The new industry required the close co-operation of many crafts-- weaving, falling, carding, dyeing, finishing; the old craft guilds could not arrange the disciplined collaboration needed for economical production; enterprising masters- entrepreneurs - gathered diverse specializations of labour into one organization, which they financed and controlled. However no such factory system arose here as in Florence and Flanders; most of the work was still done in small shops by a master, his apprentices, and a few journeymen. The craft guilds fought the new system with strikes, but its superior productivity overrode all opposition; and the workers who competed to sell their toil and skill were increasingly at the mercy of men who furnished capital and management. Town proletarians “ lived from hand to mouth . . . indifferently clad and housed, in good times fed, but in bad times not fed at all.”
Poverty was bitter, though probably less extreme than in the early nineteenth century. Beggars abounded, and organized to protect and govern their profession. Churches, monasteries, and guilds provided a limping charity.
Upon this scene the Black Death burst as not only a catastrophic visitation but almost as an economic revolution.
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When the feudal lords and land barons heard of Wyclif's call for no ownership of the land by church or lord they immediately went into action. Threaten their 'title to property' and Wyclif was toast. They didn't care about all the other propaganda, but they would kill every serf in England and Wales to keep their titles and property if necessary.
If I had lived in England at this time, I would have been against both the aristocracy and the church. Since both these entities controlled everything in England and Wales, I would have joined the revolt, but not for the same reasons as Wyclif and his followers, I would not want reform of either, but elimination of both practices.
Off with her head.
Emily
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Interesting....
Not much time, but i'll repeat, one of the best books about the 14th century is Barbara Tuchman's "The Distant Mirror." Easily readable, but because of the events i read it in bits and pieces.
Jean
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Emily said, "Since I don't believe in gods, faries, ghosts, demons, saints, or any of the other mumbo jumbo put out by the 'cults', predestination is simply foolish and silly in my opinion and not fit for discussion."
I'm with you, Emily, but I fear we are in the minority. (Suggestion: don't watch the GOP debates. They get off on their weird religious ideas and I almost gagged.)
Marj
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The DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REfORMATION
Pgs. 39 - 43
The English people lived in a climate more favourable to vegetation than to health; the fields were green the year round, but the population suffered from gout, rheumatism, asthma, sciatica, tuberculosis, dropsy, and diseases of eyes and skin. All classes ate a heavy diet and kept warm with alcoholic drinks. “Few men now reach the age of forty" said Richard Rolle about 1340, “and fewer still the age of fifty.“
In 1349 bubonic plague crossed from Normandy to England; it returned to England repeatedly during the years 1361 to 1464; all in all it carried away one Englishman out of every three. Nearly half the clergy died; perhaps some of the abuses later complained of in the English Church were due to the necessity of hastily impressing into her service men lacking the proper qualifications of training and character. Morals suffered; family ties were loosed, sexual relations overflowed the banks within which the institution of marriage sought to confine them for social order’s sake. The laws lacked officers to enforce them, and were frequently ignored.
Many peasants, having lost their children or other aides, deserted their tenancies for the towns; landowners were obliged to hire free workers at twice the former wage, and to commute feudal services into money payments. The landlords appealed to the government to stabilize wages. Parliament issued (February 9, 1351) a Statute of Labourers, specifying that no wages should be paid above the 1346 rate, fixing definite prices for a large number of services and commodities. A further act of 1360 decreed that peasants who left their lands before their contract expired might be brought back by force, before justices of the peace, and might be branded on the brow. Similar measures, were enacted between 1377 and 1381. Wages rose despite them, but the strife so engendered between labourers and government inflamed the conflict of classes, and lent new weapons to the preachers of revolt. All citizens, even parish priests, denounced the governmental mismanagement of Edward III’s last years, of Richard II’s earliest. They asked why English arms had so regularly been beaten after 1369, and why such heavy taxes had been raised to finance such defeats. They particularly abominated Archbishop Sudbury and Robert Hales, the chief ministers of the young king, and John of Gaunt as the front and protector of governmental corruption and incompetence.
The Lollard preachers had little connection with the movement, but they had shared in preparing minds for the revolt. John Ball, the intellectual of the rebellion, quoted Wyclif approvingly, and Wat Tyler followed Wyclif in demanding disendowment of the Church. Ball was the “mad priest of Kent.” who taught communism to his congregation, and was excommunicated in 1366. He became an itinerant preacher, calling for a return of the clergy to evangelical poverty, and making fun of rival popes who, in the Schism, were dividing the garments of Christ. Tradition ascribed to him a famous couplet :
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
i.e., when Adam dug the earth and Eve plied the loom, were there any class divisions in Eden?
He was quoted as saying : My good friends, matters cannot go well in England until all things shall be in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they behave to us! For what reason do they thus hold us in bondage? Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve ? We are called slaves, and if we do not perform our service we are beaten... Let us go to the king and remonstrate with him; he is young, and from him we may obtain a favourable answer; and if not we must ourselves seek to amend our condition.
The poll tax of 1380 capped the discontent. The government was nearing bankruptcy, the pledged jewels of the king were about to be forfeited, the war in France was crying out for new funds. A tax of 100,000 pounds ( $100,000,000?) was laid upon the people, to be collected from every inhabitant above the age of fifteen. Thousands of persons evaded the collectors, and the total receipts fell far short of the goal. Mass meetings of protest against the tax were held in London; they sent encouragement to the rural rebels, to march upon the capital, and “so press the king that there should no longer be a serf in England.”
A group of tax collectors entering Kent met a riotous repulse. On June 6, 1381, a mob broke open the dungeons at Rochester, freed the prisoners, and plundered the castle. On the following day the rebels chose as their chief Wat Tegheler, or Tyler. Nothing is known of his antecedents; apparently he was an ex-soldier, for he disciplined the disorderly horde into united action, and won its quick obedience to his commands. On June 11 Tyler turned his army toward London. At Maidstone it delivered John Ball from jail; he joined the cavalcade, and preached to it every day. Now, he said, would begin that reign of Christian democracy which he had so long dreamed of and pled for; all social inequalities would be levelled; there would no longer be rich and poor, lords and serfs; every man would be a king.
Meanwhile related uprisings occurred over much of southeast England. At Bury St. Edmund the people cut off the head of the prior, who had too stoutly asserted the feudal rights of the abbey over the town. Wherever possible they destroyed the rolls, leases, or charters that recorded feudal ownership or bondage; hence the townsfolk of Cambridge burned the charters of the University. On June 11 a rebel army from Essex and Hertford approached the northern outskirts of London; on the 12th the Kent insurgents reached Southwark, just across the Thames. Richard II, Sudbury, and Hales hid in the Tower. Tyler sent the King a request for an interview; it was refused. On June 13 the Kent forces marched into the capital, were welcomed by the people, and joined by thousands of labourers. Tyler held his host fairly well in leash, but appeased its fury by allowing it to sack the palace of John of Gaunt. Nothing was stolen there; one rioter who tried to filch a silver goblet was killed by the crowd. But everything was destroyed; costly furniture was thrown out of the windows, jewellery was smashed to bits; then the house was burned to the ground., and some jolly rebels who had drunk themselves to stupor in the wine cellar were consumed in the flames.
Thereafter the army turned on the Temple, citadel of the lawyers of England; the peasants remembered that lawyers had written the deeds of their servitude, or had assessed their holdings for taxation; there too, they made a holocaust of the records, and burned the buildings to the ground. The jails were destroyed, and the happy inmates joined the mob. Wearied with its efforts to crowd a century into a day, the multitudes lay down in the open spaces in the city, and slept.
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WOW! A communist/ capitalist conflict in the mid-14th century! I had forgotten about this uprising and maybe had not thought of it as "communism" when i studied it before, and was surprised to see Durant use the word.
Of course, i was studying the period in the 1950s when the label communism was not attached to anything positive, or conversely, anything that was considered "pink" or "red" was not talked about.....i.e. I was never told that Jane Addams and Emily Green Balch had won Nobel Peace Prizes. "Peace" and internationalism were considered too left wing to let us weak-minded students know about. Hull House and social work was o.k., but not being pacifists to try to end WWI.
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I've heard of the rebellion, but knew very little about it. And never thought about the amount of social change and upheaval the deaths of the plague must have brought.
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pages 43-45
That evening the King’s Council thought better of its refusal to let him talk with Tyler. Shortly after dawn on June 14 the fourteen-year-old King, risking his life, rode out of the tower with all his council except Sudbury and Hales, who dared not show themselves. The little party made its way through the hostile crowd to Mile End, where the Essex rebels were already gathered. Part of the Kent army followed, with Tyler at its head. He was surprised at the readiness of Richard to grant nearly all demands.
Serfdom was to be abolished throughout England, all feudal dues and services were to end, the rental of the tenants would be as they asked, and a general amnesty would absolve all those who shared in the revolt. One demand the King refused -- that the royal ministers and other traitors should be surrendered to the people.
Not satisfied with this answer Tyler and a selected band rode rapidly to the Tower. They found Sudbury singing Mass in the chapel. they dragged him into the courtyard and severed his head. The insurgents then beheaded Hales and two others. They mounted the heads on pikes, carried them in procession through the city and set them up over the gate of London Bridge. All the remainder of the day was spent in slaughter. London tradesmen, resenting Flemish competition, bade the crowd kill every Fleming found in the capital. Over 150 aliens-- merchants and bankers-- were slain in London on that day in June, and many English lawyers, tax collectors, and adherents of John of Gaunt fell under the axes. Apprentices murdered their masters, debtors their creditors.
Next day, many rebels dispersed. On June 15 the King sent a modest message to the remaining rebels asking them to meet him in the open spaces of Smithfield. Tyler agreed. Before keeping his rendezvous, Richard, fearing death, confessed and took the Sacrament; then he rode out with a retinue of 200 men, whose peaceful garb hid swords. At Smithfield Tyler came forward with only a single companion to guard him. He made new demands, uncertainly reported, but apparently including the confiscation of Church property and the distribution of the proceeds among the people. A dispute ensued; one of the King’s escort called Tyler a thief. Tyler directed his aid to strike the man down. Mayor Walworth blocked the way; Tyler stabbed at Walworth, whose life was saved by the armour under his cloke.. Walworth wounded Tyler with a short cutlass, and one of Richards squires ran Tyler through twice with a sword. Tyler rode back to his host crying treason, and fell dead at their feet. Shocked, the rebels set their arrows, and prepared to shoot. But Richard now rode out bravely toward them, crying out, “ Sirs will you shoot your King? I will be your chief and captain; you shall have from me that which you seek.” He rode out slowly, not sure they would follow. The insurgents hesitated, then followed him, and most of the royal guard mingled in their midst.
Walworth, however, turned sharply back, galloped into the city, and sent orders to the aldermen to join him with all the armed forces they could muster. Many citizens who at first had sympathised with the revolt were now disturbed by the murders and pillage; every man who had property felt his goods and his life in peril; so the mayor found an impromptu army of 7000 men. These he led back to the king, and offered to massacre the rebels. Richard refused; the rebels had spared him when he was at their mercy, and he would not now show himself less generous. The Essex and Hertford remnants rapidly melted away; the London mutineers disappeared; only the Kent contingent stayed. Their way was bared by Walworth's men, but Richard ordered that no one should molest them; they marched off in safety. The King returned to his mother, who greeted him with tears of happy relief. Richard said “now rejoice and praise God, for today I have recovered my heritage that was lost, and the realm of England too.”
On July 2 the embittered King revoked all charters and amnesties granted by him during the outbreak, and opened the way to a judicial inquiry into the identity and actions of the main participants. Hundreds were arrested and tried; 110 or more were put to death. John Ball was caught at Coventry; he avowed his leading role in the insurrection, and refused to ask pardon of the King. He was hanged, drawn and quartered; and his head, with those of Tyler and Jack Straw, replaced those of Sudbury and Hales as adornments of London Bridge.
On November 13 Richard laid before parliament an account of his actions; if, he said, the assembled landowners wished the serfs to be freed he was quite willing. But none did ; they voted that all existing feudal relations should be maintained. The beaten peasants returned to their plows, the sullen workers to their looms.
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If a writer were to write this story in a novel it would be thought to be unbelievable.
Too much treachery - - - too much forgiveness - - - too much trust - - -
but, in fact, it's just politics - then, and still to the present time.
If you can beat them, then go to it. If you can't beat them, give in till you can beat them.
Plus ça change !
Brian
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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest........Denis Diderot
Emily
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Eeuuuwwww!
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Jean, it is a disgusting practice but the Kings of England used to 'disembowel' those that challenged the King, after they had dragged them through the streets behind a horse, hung them from a ladder until almost dead, disembowel them, cut off their head, cut them into quarters, and send the parts all over the country to show their 'power'.
Here is a description with a drawing of the event to show what it entailed. This covers the era we are currently reading in SOC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered
Emily
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I know, Emily. I'll repeat......i'm so happy to be living it the U.S. In the 21st century.
But, as usual, i am analyzing.....what were they thinking? What allows people to do that to another human being? I know life was hard and fragile and, perhaps, not so valued by some, but the cruelty has always amazed me. Was life so hard that compassion for other's pain was extinguished? And what effect does doing something so horrible have on the "actor"?
Jean
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just getting caught up in reading this section--finding it really interesting the page with details of Wat Tyler and his role in trying to bring about change for the serfs....and it seems he almost succeeded as the young King Richard granted reforms & abolishing the class of serfs....??if the peasants had not pushed their luck by the brutality they continued with in their further rampages upon the groups that angered them, do you think some bit of reform might have actually began; or was Richard just stringing them along trying to diffuse their anger and revolt; ...even though he did ride out without any backup which must have taken a lot of courage
even though when something is put into law, it would not mean the reforms would happen overnight but it would have been a beginning and awareness and perhaps English history would have read differently, with its class system and nose in the air group that lasted so long----
I have read that the class system even caused problems as recent as the first world war, in that the aristocrats who bought into their appointments of command did not know the people who were in their units well... keeping more to their separations in 'class'/ while in the Canadian/American forces, their ability to communicate without the barriers of 'class' made it easier for their units to function especially thru times of crisis
Deb
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The Durant's S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
Pge. 45-57.
The NEW LITERATURE
The English language was becoming by slow stages a fit vehicle for literature. The Norman invasion of 1066 had stopped the evolution of Anglo-Saxon into English, and for a time French was the official language of the realm. Gradually a new vocabulary and idiom formed, basically Germanic, but mingled and adorned with Gallic words and turns. The long war with France may have spurred the nation to rebel against this linguistic domination by an enemy. In 1362 English was declared to be the language of law and the courts; and in 1363 the chancellor set a precedent by opening Parliament with an English address. Scholars, chroniclers, and philosophers continued to write in Latin to reach an international audience, but poets and dramatists henceforth spoke the speech of England.
The oldest drama extant in English was a “mystery” - a dramatic representation of a religious story - performed in the Midlands about 1350, under the title of “The Harrowing of Hell ,” which staged a duel in words, at the mouth of hell, between Satan and Christ. In the fourteenth century it became customary for the guilds of a town to present a cycle of mysteries. About 1378 another variety appeared - the “morality “ which pointed a moral by acting a tale; this form would reach its peak in “ Everyman “ (c. 1480 ) In 1348 Exeter raised the first known English theatre, the first European building, since classic Roman structures, specifically and regularly devoted to dramatic representations. From the interludes would evolve the comedies, and from the mysteries and moralities would develop the tragedies, of the lusty Elizabethan stage..
The first major poem -- one of the strangest and strongest poems -- in the English language called itself The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman.” Nothing is known of the author except through his poem; assuming that this is autobiographical, we may name him William Langland, and place his birth near 1332. He took minor orders, but never became a priest; he wandered to London and earned something short of starvation by singing Psalms at Masses for the dead. He lived dissolutely, sinned with covetousness of eyes and concupiscence of the flesh , had a daughter, perhaps married the mother and dwelled with them in a hovel in Cornhill. He was fond of his poem and issued it thrice (1362, 1377,1394 ) and each time spun it out to greater length.
Piers the Plowman is a model farmer, honest, friendly, generous, trusted by all, working hard, living faithfully with his wife and children, and always a pious son of the Church. The clergy, says the poet, are no longer a saving remnant, many have become corrupt, they deceive the simple, absolve the rich for a consideration, traffic in sacred things, sell heaven itself for a coin. What is a Christian to do in such a debacle ? He must , says William, go forth again, over all intervening institutions and corruptions, and seek the living Christ Himself.
Piers became for the rebels of England a symbol of the righteous, fearless peasant; John Ball recommended him to the Essex insurgents of 1381; as late as the Reformation his name was invoked in criticizing the old religious order and demanding a new. If all of us, the poet concluded, were like Piers, simple, practicing Christians, that would be the greatest, the final revolution, no other would ever be needed.
Another poet, John Gower is a less romantic poet and figure than the mysterious William Langland. He was a rich landowner of Kent who imbibed too much scholastic erudition, and achieved dullness in three languages. He, too, attacked the faults of the clergy; but he trembled at the heresies of the Lollards, and marvelled at the insolence of peasants, who, once content with beer and corn, now demanded meat and milk and cheese. Three things, said Gower, are merciless when they get out of hand; water, fire and the mob. Disgusted with this world, worried about the next, moral Gower retired in old age to a priory, and spent his closing years in blindness and prayer. His contemporaries admired his morals, regretted his temper and his style, and turned with relief to Chaucer.
Geoffrey Chaucer 1340-1400
His name, like so much of his language, was of French origin; it meant shoemaker, and probably was pronounced “shosayr’. He won a good education from both books and life; his poetry abounds in knowledge of men and women, literature and history. In 1357 “ Geoffret Chaucer” was listed in the service of a royal household. Two years later he was off to the wars in France; he was captured but was freed for a ransom, to which Edward III contributed. In 1366 he married Philippa, a lady serving the Queen, and lived with her in moderate discord till her death. Richard II gave him a pension to which John of Gaunt added ten pounds. There were other aristocratic gifts, which may explain why Chaucer, who saw so much of life, took little notice of the Great Revolt.
Despite all discounts, Chaucer’s ‘Troilus’ is the first great narrative poem in English. Scott called it “long and somewhat dull ,” which it is. Rossetti called it “ perhaps the most beautiful narrative poem of considerable length in the English language.” and this too is true. All long poems, however beautiful, become dull; passion is of poetry‘s essence, and a passion that runs to 8,386 lines becomes prose almost as rapidly as desire consummated. Never were so many lines required to bring a lady to bed, and seldom has love hesitated, meditated, procrastinated, and capitulated with such magnificent and irrelevant rhetoric, melodious conceits, and facile felicity of rhyme. Only Richardson’s Mississippi of prose could rival this Nile of verse on the leisurely psychology of love. Yet even the heavy-winged oratory, the infinite wordiness, the obstructive erudition obstinately displayed, fail to destroy the poem. It is, after all, a philosophic tale -- of how a woman is designed for love, and will soon love B if A stays too long away. Chaucer ended his amorous epic with a pious prayer to the Trinity, and sent it, conscience-stricken to “moral Gower, to correct of your benignitee.”
In his last years his joy in life yielded to the melancholy of a man who in the decay of health and sense recalls the carefree lustiness of youth. He died on October 25 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first and greatest of many poets who there bear the beat of measured feet.
Richard II
“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
“Richard II” says Holinshed, “was seemly of shape and favour, and of nature good enough, if the wickedness and naughtie demeanour of such as were about him had not altered it .... He was prodigal, ambitious and much given to pleasure of the bodie.” He loved books, and helped Chaucer and Froissart. He had shown courage, presence of mind, and judicious action in the Great Revolt; but after that enervating crisis he lapsed into enervating luxury and left the government to wasteful ministers. Against these men a powerful opposition formed. This faction dominated the “Merciless Parliament “ of 1388, which impeached and hanged ten of Richard’s aides. But in 1390 the King took active charge and for seven years he governed constitutionally.
The death of Richard’s Bohemian Queen Anne ( 1394 ) deprived him of a wholesome and moderating influence. In 1396 he married Isabelle, daughter of Charles VI, in the hope of cementing peace with France; but as she was only seven years old, he spent his substance on male and female favourites.
When the Parliament of 1397 sent Richard a bill of complaint against the extravagance of the court, he replied haughtily that such matters were outside the jurisdiction of Parliament. He demanded the name of the member who proposed the complaint; Parliament, cowed, condemned the proponent to death; Richard pardoned him.
Soon thereafter Gloucester and Arundel suddenly left London. Suspecting a plot to depose him, the King ordered their arrest. Arundel was beheaded, Gloucester was smothered to death (1397 ) In 1399 John of Gaunt died, leaving a rich estate; Richard, needing funds for an expedition to Ireland, confiscated the Duke’s property, to the horror of the aristocracy. While the King was restoring peace in Ireland, Gaunt’s exiled son and disinherited heir, John Bolingbroke landed in York with a small army that rapidly grew, as powerful nobles joined his cause. On returning to England, Richard found himself outnumbered. He surrendered his person and throne to Bolingbroke, who was crowned as Henry IV (1399). So ended the Plantagenet dynasty that had begun with Henry II in 1154; so began the Lancastrian dynasty that would end with Henry VI in 1461. Richard II died in prison at Potefract (1400), aged thirty-three, possibly slain, as Holinshed and Shakespeare thought, by servants of the new King.
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What an interesting passage for me. All three examples of literature harks back to my college English lit course, but i remember little of the discussion in that class. ;D
The Durants' humor had me laughing out loud more then once, especially in his description of "Troilus."
The evolution of language is interesting to me. Do you remember a series on PBS that followed the evolution of language? I think i'll go see if it's in their archives and look at some of it again, or maybe my library has the video.
Jean
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When the Parliament of 1397 sent Richard a bill of complaint against the extravagance of the court, he replied haughtily that such matters were outside the jurisdiction of Parliament. He demanded the name of the member who proposed the complaint; Parliament, cowed, condemned the proponent to death; Richard pardoned him.
And this bit is just beautifully humour too !
Brian.
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Jean, I remember The Story of English which, I think, was hosted by Robert MacNeill. I am almost positive that there was another series, but I can't think what it is just now.
I also remember reading articles in Scientific American by Colin Renfrew about language origins and the spread of Indo-European languages. Now retired, Renfrew was an archaeologist.
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
Pages 58 - 61
France Besieged 1300-1461
The French Scene.
The France of 1300 was by no means the majestic realm that today reaches from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and from the Vosges and Alps to the Atlantic. On the east it reached only to the Rhone. In the southwest a large area had been added to the English crown by the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine ( 1152 ). Provence, the Dauphine, and Franche-Comte ( free country ) belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, whose heads were usually Germans. Brittany, Burgundy, and Flanders were French fiefs, but they were, as Shakespeare called them, “ almost kingly dukedoms “ behaving as virtually independent states. France was not yet France.
The most vital and volatile of the French fiefs at the opening of the fourteenth century was the county of Flanders. In all Europe north of the Alps only Flanders rivalled Italy in economic development. Used loosely, “Flanders “ included Brabant, Liege. Cambrai, and Hainaut. On the north were seven little principalities roughly composing the Holland of today. These Dutch regions would not reach their flowering till the seventeenth century, when their empire would stretch, so to speak, from Rembrandt to Batavia. But already in 1300 Flanders and Brabant throbbed with industry, commerce, and class war. A canal twelve miles long joined Bruges to the North Sea; a hundred vessels sailed it every day, bringing merchandise from a hundred ports in three continents. The goldsmiths of Bruges made up an entire division of the towns militia; the weavers of Ghent provided twenty-seven regiments of its armed forces, which totalled 189,000 men.
The medieval guild organization, which had dowered the craftsmen with the dignity of freedom and the pride of skill, was now giving way, in the textile and metal industries of Flanders and Brabant, to a capitalist system in witch an employer supplied capital, materials, and machinery, to shop workers paid by the piece and no longer protected by the guild. Admission to a guild became ever costlier; thousands of workers became journeymen -- day labourers -- who went from town to town, from shop to shop, getting only temporary employment, with wages that forced them to live in slums and left them little property beyond the clothes they wore. Communistic ideas appeared among ‘proletaires’ and peasants.; the poor asked why they should go hungry while the barns of the barons and bishops creaked with grain; and all men who did not work with their hands were denounced as parasites. The employers in their turn complained of the risks their investments ran, The uncertainty and periodicity of supplies, the foundering of their cargoes, the fluctuations of the market, the tricks of competitors, and the repeated strikes that raised wages and prices to the edge of solvency. Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders, sided too strongly with the employers. The populace of Burges and Ypres , supported by the neighbouring peasantry, rose in revolt, deposed Louis, plundered abbeys, and slew a few millionaires. The Church laid an interdict upon the revolted regions. The rebels neverthe less forced the priests to say Mass and one leader, stealing a march of 450 years on Diderot, vowed he would never be content till the last priest had been hanged.. Louis appealed to his liege lord, the French King. Philip VI came, defeated the revolutionary forces at Cassel 1328, hanged the burgomaster of Bruges, restored the Louis, and made Flanders a dependency of France.
France in general was much less industrialised than Flanders; Manufacturing for the most part remained in the handicraft stage. Internal commerce was hampered by bad roads and feudal tolls, but favoured by canals and rivers that constituted a system of natural highways throughout France. The rising business class, in alliance with the kings, had attained by 1300 to a high position in the state and to a degree of wealth that shocked the land-rich, money-poor nobility. Merchant oligarchies ruled the cities, controlled the guilds, and jealously restricted production and trade. Here, as in Flanders, a revolutionary proletariate simmered in the towns.
In 1300 an uprising of poor peasants, known to history as ‘Pastoureaux’-- shepherds-- surged through the cities as in 1251,. Led by a rebel monk they marched southward, proclaiming Jerusalem as their goal. Philip IV shut himself up in the Louvre, the nobles retired to their strongholds, the merchants cowered in their homes. The horde passed on, swelled by the destitute; it now numbered 40,000 men and women, ruffians and priests. At Verdun, Auch, and Toulouse they slaughted all available Jews. When they gathered on the Mediterranean, the sheriff of Carcassonne surrounded them with his forces, cut off their supplies, and waited till all rebels had died of starvation or pestilence except a few, whom he hanged.
What kind of government was it that left France at the mercy of greedy wealth and lawless poverty? In many ways it was the ablest government in Europe. The strong kings of the thirteenth century had subjected the feudal lords to the state, had organised a national judiciary and administration with a trained civil service, and had on occasion summoned an Estates or Estates-General: originally a general gathering of estate owners, then a consultative assembly of delegates from the nobility, the clergy, and the burgesses or middle class. All Europe admired the French court, where powerful dukes, counts, and knights mingled with silk-robed women in elegant festivities and graceful cuckoldry, and clashing jousts in glittering tournaments sustained the glamour of Chivalry. King John of Bohemia called Paris “the most chivalrous residence in the world”.
Philip IV, despite his quasi-piratical confiscations from Templars and Jews, bequeathed an almost empty treasury to his son. ( 1314 ) Louis X died after a brief reign (1316), leaving no heir but a pregnant wife. After an interval, his brother was crowned as Philip V. A rival faction sought the throne for Louis’ four year old daughter Jeanne; but an assembly of nobles and clergy issued the famous ruling ( 1316 ) that “ the laws and customs inviolably observed among the Franks excluded daughters from the crown.” Very probably the decision aimed also to exclude from the succession the sister of Philip IV, Isabelle, who had married Edward II of England and had borne Edward III ( 1312 ) The French were resolved that no English king should rule France.
When Charles IV died without male issue ( 1328 ) the direct line of Capetian kings came to an end. Edward III, who had become King of England the year before, presented to the assembled aristocracy of France his claim to the French throne as a grandson of Philip IV. The assembly denied his claim as the barons preferred a nephew of Philip IV. So Philip VI began that Valois dynasty which ruled France till Henry IV inaugurated the Bourbon line ( 1589 ). Edward protested but in 1329 came to Amiens and did homage, and pledged full loyalty to Philip VI as his feudal lord. As Edward grew in years and wile, he repented his homage. His advisers assured him that the new Philip was a weakling, who planned to leave soon on a crusade to the Holy Land. It seemed a propitious time to begin the Hundred Years War.
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Durant's S o C
Vol VI The Reformation
Pages 61 - 64
THE ROAD TO CRÉCY : 1337 - 47
In 1337 Edward formally renewed his claim to the French Crown. The rejection of his claim was only the proximate cause of war. After the Norman conquest of England, Normandy had for 138 years belonged to the English kings; Philip II had reconquered it for France (1204 ); now many English nobles of Norman descent could look upon the coming war as an attempt to regain their motherland. Part of English Guienne had been nibbled away by Philip IV and Charles IV. Guienne was fragrant with vineyards, and the wine trade of Bordeaux was too precious a boon to England to be lamely lost, merely to defer by a few years the deaths of 10,000 Englishmen. Scotland was a burr in England’s side; and the French had repeatedly allied themselves with Scotland in its wars with England. The North Sea was full of fish; the English navy claimed sovereignty in those waters, in the channel, in the Bay of Biscay, and it captured French ships that flouted this first proclamation of English rule over the waves. Flanders was a vital outlet for British wool; English nobles whose sheep grew the wool, English merchants who exported it, disliked the dependence of their prime market on the good will of the King of France.
In 1336 the Count of Flanders ordered all Britons there to be jailed; Edward III retaliated by ordering the arrest of all Flemings in England, and forbidding the export of wool to Flanders. Within a week the Flemish looms stopped for lack of material; workers darkened the streets crying for employment. At Ghent artisans and manufacturers united in renouncing allegiance to the Count; they chose an alleged brewer, Jacob van Artevelde, as governor of the city, and approved his policy of seeking the friendship and wool of England. ( 1337 ) Edward lifted the embargo; the Count fled to Paris; all Flanders accepted Artevelde’s dictatorship and agreed to join England in war on France. On November 1, 1337, Edward III, following the custom of chivalry, sent to Philip VI a formal declaration that after three days England would begin hostilities.
The first major encounter of the Hundred Years’ War was a naval engagement off the Flemish coast at Sluis (1340), where the English navy destroyed 142 of 172 vessels in the French fleet. Later that year Joan of Valois, sister of Philip and mother-in- law of Edward, left her convent at Fontenelle and induced the French king to commission her as an emissary of peace. Proceeding through many perils to the camp of the English leaders, she won their consent to a conference, and her heroic mediation persuaded the Kings to a nine month truce. By the efforts of Pope Clement VI, peace was maintained till 1346.
During this lucid interval class war seized the stage. The well organized weavers of Ghent were the aristocracy of labour in the Lowlands. They denounced Artevelde as a cruel tyrant, an embezzler of public funds, a tool of England, and a ‘bourgeoisie.’ Artevelde had proposed that Flanders should accept the Prince of Wales as its ruler, and Edward III came to Sluis to confirm the arrangement. When Artevelde returned from Sluis to Ghent his house was surrounded by an angry crowd. He pleaded for his life as a true Flemish patriot, but was dragged into the street and hacked to death ( 1345 ) The weavers established a proletarian dictatorship in Ghent, and sent agents through Flanders to urge the workers to revolt. But the Ghent fullers fell out with the weavers, the weavers were deposed and many of them massacred, the people tired of their new government, and Louis de Male, now Count of Flanders, brought all its cities under his rule.
The truce having expired, Edward III invaded and devastated Normandy. On August 26 1346, the English and French armies met at Crécy and prepared for a decisive battle. Leaders and men of both sides heard Mass, ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus Christ, and asked His aid in dispatching one another. Then they fought with courage and ferocity, giving no quarter. Edward the Black Prince earned on that day the praise of his victorious father; Philip himself stood his ground till only six of his soldiers were left on the field. Thirty thousand men, in Froissart’s loose estimate died in that one engagement. Feudalism almost died there, too; the mounted chivalry of France, charging gallantly with short lances, stopped helpless before a wall of long English pikes pointed at their horses’ breasts. The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined. Artillery was used at Crécy on a small scale, but the difficulties of moving and reloading it made it more troublesome than effective, so that Villani limited its usefulness to its noise.
From Crécy Edward led his army to the siege of Calais, and there employed cannon against the walls ( 1347 ) The town held out for a year, then starving, it accepted Edward’s condition that the survivors might leave in peace if six principal citizens would come to him with ropes around their necks, and the keys of the city in their hands. Six so volunteered, and when they stood before the king he ordered them beheaded. The Queen of England knelt before him and begged for their lives; he yielded to her, and she had the men escorted to their homes in safety. The women stand out with more credit than the kings in history, and fight bravely a desperate battle to civilize the men.
Calais became now, and remained till 1558, a part of England, a strategic outlet for her goods and troops on the Continent. In 1348 it rebelled; Edward besieged it again, and himself, incognito, fought in the assault. A French knight, Eustace de Ribeaumont, twice struck Edward down, but was overpowered and made prisoner. When the city was retaken, Edward entertained his noble captives at dinner; English lords and the Prince of Wales waited upon them, and Edward said to Ribeaumont:
“Sir Eustace, you are the most valiant knight in Christendom that I ever saw attack an enemy.....
....I adjudge to you the prize of valour above all the knights of my court.”
Removing from his head a rich Chaplet that he wore, the English King placed it upon the head of the French Chevalier, saying;
“Sir Eustace, I present you with this chaplet......and beg of you to wear it this year for love of me. I know you are lively and amorous and love the company of ladies and damsels; therefore say, where ever you go, that I gave it to you. I also give you your liberty, free of ransom, and you may go wither you will.”
Here and there, amid greed and slaughter, chivalry survived, and the legends of Arthur came close to living history in the pages of Froissart.
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"The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined."
An early indication of the eventual decline of the importance of the aristocracy?
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"The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined."
An early indication of the eventual decline of the importance of the aristocracy?
Joan, that quote caught my attention also. The man who had a horse had heretofore had an advantage over the regular foot soldier. Whoever thought of 'going for the horse' instead of the rider was a very smart man. Get rid of the horse and it was more of a fair fight.
My answer to your question would be NO on the aristocracy. At least the decline would not happen for too many years. Hundreds of thousands would have to die first.
Even today the aristocracy are trotted out and photographed and regaled in magazines like Vanity Fair. They are still considered the elite and certainly still live pretty high on the hog. They now play with the 'Socialites' which are mostly a motley crew of robbers and thieves. The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.
I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.
Emily
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The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.
I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.
My goodness, Emily, that's pretty radical.
Brian
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The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.
I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.
My goodness, Emily, that's pretty radical.
Brian
Brian, the term 'Eurotrash' was coined by the New York City press back in the Eighties to describe those former 'aristocrats' who no longer ruled and had long been exiles. Their parents had however absconded with the treasury so that their parasitic children could live well without working.
I did not coin the term 'Eurotrash', but I agree with it whole heartedly.
My family landed on Manhattan in the 1600's. Later (before the Revolution) one grandfather many times removed spoke out in public against the British King. He was arrested and hauled before a judge where he was fined for his opinion. That record is in the archives of the NYC court. His sons fought in the Revolution.
They paved the way so that I might speak my mind. I am anti-monarchy in all its forms. I consider them all parasites.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 64-67
BLACK DEATH AND OTHER
The Great Plague fell impartially upon an England prosperous with French spoils and a France desolate in defeat. Pestilence was a normal incident in medieval history; it harried Europe during thirty-two years of the fourteenth century, forty-one years of the fifteenth, thirty years of the sixteenth; so nature and human ignorance, those resolute Malthusians, co-operated with war and famine to counteract the reproductive ecstasies of mankind. The Black death was the worst of these visitations and probably the most terrible physical calamity in historic times. It came into Provence from France and Italy, and perhaps more directly from the Near East through Oriental rats landing at Marseille. The medical profession was helpless, it did not know the cause of the disease ( Kitazato and Yersin discovered the bacillus of the bubonic plague in 1894 ), and could only recommend bleedings, purges, cordials, cleanliness of home and person, and fumigation with vapours of vinegar. A few physicians and priests, fearing infection, refused to treat the sick, but the great majority of them faced the ordeal manfully; thousands of doctors and clergymen gave their lives. Of twenty-eight cardinals alive in 1348, nine were dead a year later; of sixty-four archbishops, twenty-five; of 375 bishops, 207.
As the poor died in greater proportion than the rich, a shortage of labour followed; thousands of acres were left untilled, millions of herring died a natural death. Labour enjoyed for a while an improved bargaining power; it raised wages, repudiated many surviving feudal obligations, and staged revolts that kept noble teeth on edge for half a century; even priests struck for higher pay. Serfs left farms for cities, industry expanded, the business class made further gains on the landed aristocracy. The immensity of the suffering and the tragedy weakened many minds, producing contagious neuroses, whole groups seemed to go mad in unison, like the Flagellants who in 1349, as they had done in the thirteenth century, marched through the city streets almost naked, beating themselves in penitence, preaching the Last Judgment, Utopias , and pogroms. Even the business of war suffered a passing decline; from the siege of Calais to the battle of Poitiers ( 1356 ) the Hundred Years’ War dallied in reluctant truce, while the decimated ranks of the infantry were replenished with men too poor to value life at more than a few shillings above death.
Philip VI consoled himself for plague and defeat by marrying, at fifty-six, Blanche of Navarre, eighteen, whom he had intended for his son. Seven months later he died. His son, John II, “the Good “, ( 1350-54 ) was good indeed to the nobles; he absolved them from taxes, paid them to defend their lands against the English, and maintained all the forms and graces of Chivalry. He also debased the currency, as an old way to pay war debts, repeatedly raised taxes on the lower and middle classes, and marched off in splendour to meet the English at Poitiers. There his 15000 knights, Scots, and servitors, were routed, slain, or captured by 7000 men of the Black Prince; and King John himself, fighting lustily, leading foolishly, was among the prisoners, along with his son Philip, seventeen earls, and countless barons, knights, and squires. Most of these were allowed to ransom themselves on the spot, and many were freed on their promise to bring their ransom to Bordeaux by Christmas. The prince treated the King royally, and took him leisurely to England..
REVOLUTION AND RENEWAL: 1357-80
All France fell into chaos after the disaster at Poitiers. The dishonesty and
incompetence of the government; the depreciation of the currency, the costly ransoms of King and knights, the desolations of war and plague, brought the nation to desperate revolt. A States-General of the northern provinces, summoned to Paris by the nineteen-year-old Dauphin,* Charles of Valois, to raise new taxes, undertook to establish a parliamentary government in France. This States-General, controlled by a transient coalition of clergy and Bourgeoisie, demanded of the royal council why the vast sums raised for war had produced only undisciplined troops and shameful defeats; it ordered the arrest of twenty-two government agents, and commanded the administrators of the treasury to return the sums they were accused of embezzling; it imposed restrictions on the royal prerogative; it thought even of deposing John the Good, barring his sons from the succession, and giving the throne of France to King Charles the Bad of Navarre, a lineal descendant of Hugh Caper. Appeased by the prudent humility of the Dauphin, it recognised him as regent, and appointed a committee of thirty-six men to keep an eye on the operations and expenditures of government. This “Great Ordinance” of 1357 also forbade the nobles to leave France or to wage private war, and instructed the local authorities of the towns to arrest any noble violating this edict. In effect the aristocracy was to be subject to the communes, the nobles to the business class; king, prince, and barons were to obey the chosen representatives of the people. France was to have a constitutional government four centuries before the revolution.
The Dauphin signed the ordinance in March, and began to evade it in April. The English were demanding a ruinous ransom for his father, and were threatening to advance upon Paris. Hard pressed for cash, Charles further debased the currency to increase his funds. On February 2 Étienne Marcel, a rich merchant who, as head of the merchant guilds, had played a leading part in formulating the “Great Ordinance” and had been governing Paris for a year, led an armed band of citizens into the royal palace. He rebuked Charles for disobeying the instructions of the “States General“. and when the Prince would not pledge obedience Marcel had his men kill two chamberlains who guarded the Dauphin, so that the blood spurted upon the royal robe. The Dauphin took refuge with nobles in Picardy, raised an army, and called upon the people of Paris to surrender. Marcel organized the capital for defence, ringed it with new walls, and occupied the Louvre.
While revolution captured Paris the peasants of the countryside thought it an opportune time to revenge themselves on their masters. Still mostly serf, taxed to equip their lords, taxed to ransom them, pillaged by soldiers and brigands, tortured to disclose their laborious savings, decimated by plague and starved by war, they rose in uncalculating fury, forced their way into feudal castles, cut all the noble throats their knives could reach, and relieved their hunger and thirst in baronial hoards and cellars. The nobles had traditionally given the typically good-natured peasant the nickname of Jacques Bonhomme -- James Goodman ; now thousands of such Jacques, their patience spent, plunged into ferocious ‘jacqueries’, slew their lords, violated the ladies, murdered the heirs, and dressed their own wives in the finery of the dead.
* This was apparently at first a proper name, Delphinus ( Dolphin ), which often repeated in the ruling families of Vienne and Auvergne, became ( c. 1250 ) a title of dignity. In 1283 it was officially conferred upon the eldest son of the Count of Vienne, and Delphinatus or Dauphiné was henceforth used to designate the county, of which Grenoble is now the principal seat. In 1349 Count Humboldt II of the Vennois sold the Dauphiné , with the title Dauphin, to Charles of Valois, son of King John II. When Charles became king in 1364 he transferred the title to his eldest son; and thereafter the eldest son of a French king was regularly known as the Dauphin of the Viennois.
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As the poor died in greater proportion than the rich, a shortage of labour followed; thousands of acres were left untilled, millions of herring died a natural death. Labour enjoyed for a while an improved bargaining power; it raised wages, repudiated many surviving feudal obligations, and staged revolts that kept noble teeth on edge for half a century; even priests struck for higher pay. Serfs left farms for cities, industry expanded, the business class made further gains on the landed aristocracy. The immensity of the suffering and the tragedy weakened many minds, producing contagious neuroses, whole groups seemed to go mad in unison, like the Flagellants who in 1349, as they had done in the thirteenth century, marched through the city streets almost naked, beating themselves in penitence, preaching the Last Judgment, Utopias , and pogroms. Even the business of war suffered a passing decline; from the siege of Calais to the battle of Poitiers ( 1356 ) the Hundred Years’ War dallied in reluctant truce, while the decimated ranks of the infantry were replenished with men too poor to value
life at more than a few shillings above death.
This effect from the plague is one of my favorite pieces of European history. I learned about the plague in my high school world history course, but didn't learn about the positive effects until college and grad school and thot that was fascinating.
The info about the Dauphin's name is very interesting. I love those kinds of bits and pieces from history.
Jean
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Can you imagine what it was like to live in a time like this? Whole towns were wiped out, maybe your whole family gone in a week, and you never knew from one day to the next if you would be next. it's a wonder there was any semblance of order left at all.
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Pestilence was a normal incident in medieval history; it harried Europe during thirty-two years of the fourteenth century, forty-one years of the fifteenth, thirty years of the sixteenth
At least one third of each century was consumed by the plague. Why did the plague abate? Did the middle east rats die out or did the survivors get immunity? Then in the next century it all happened over again, and eventurally went off and on for over 300 years.
If the survivors had some immunity, their future children and grandchildren would have none once it abated. When the next influx of plague hit, it was played out all over again.
What do others think caused the plague to suddenly abate only to reappear again in the next century? Did the rats just die out, only to come back on another ship? Or did the population get immunity, or something else enitirely?
Emily
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Bubonic plague is carried by rats and transferred to humans by fleas.
The abating of the pestilence after the Black Death - and after each
subsequent outbreak - is due to the death of the fleas and the rats
associated with the increased care by the affected population in keeping
better hygiene.
Vaccines against the organism have not yet proved to be effective.
Brian
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There was a case of it in New Mexico when I was there. I understand there are still rare cases.
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Duirants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pges 67-71
Hoping that this rural revolution would divert the Dauphin from attacking Paris, Marcel sent 800 of his men to aid the peasants. So reinforced, they marched upon Meaux. The Duchesses of Orléans and Normandy, and many more women of lofty pedigree, had sought refuge there; now they saw a mob of serfs and tenants pouring into the town, and gave themselves up as lost in both virtue and life. Then miraculously, as in some Arthurian romance, a knightly band returning from a crusade galloped into Meaux, fell upon the peasants, killed thousands of them, and flung them by heaps into neighbouring streams. The nobles came out of hiding, laid punitive fines upon the villages, and went through the countryside massacring 20,000 rustic s, rebel and innocent ( June 1358).
The forces of the dauphin approached Paris, and cut off its food supply. Despairing of successful resistance by other means, Marcel offered the crown to Charles the Bad, and prepared to admit his forces to the city. Rejecting this plan as treason, Marcel’s aide and friend, Jean Maillart, made a secret agreement with the Dauphin, and on July 31 Jean and others slew Marcel with an axe. The Dauphin entered Paris at the head of the armed nobility. He behaved with moderation and caution, and set himself to ransom his father and to restore the morale and economy of France. The men who had tried to create a sovereign parliament retreated into obscurity and silence; the grateful nobles rallied around the throne; and the States-General became the obedient instrument of a strengthened monarchy.
In November 1359, Edward III landed with a fresh army at Calais. He avoided Paris, respecting the walls recently raised by Marcel, but he subjected the surrounding countryside, from Reims to Chartres, to so systematic a destruction of crops that Paris again starved. Charles pleaded for peace on abject terms; France would yield Gascony and Guinenne to England, free from all feudal bond to the French king; it would also cede (much territory ); and it would pay 3,000,000 crowns for the return of the French king. In return Edward renounced, for himself and his descendants, all claim to the French throne. This peace of Brétigny was signed on May the 8th 1360, and one third of France fretted and fumed under English rule. Two sons of king John were sent to England as hostages for French fidelity to the treaty; John returned to Paris amid the ringing of bells and the joy of the noble and the simple. When one of the sons broke parole and escaped to join his wife, king John returned to England to replace his son as hostage, and in the hope of negotiating a milder peace. Edward received him as a guest, and feted him daily, as the flower of Chivalry. John died in London in 1364, and was buried at St. Paul’s, captive in death. The Dauphin aged twenty-six, became Charles V of France. He deserved the name le Sage, the Wise, which his people gave him, if only because he knew how to win battles without raising his hand. His right hand was perpetually swollen, so he could not lift a lance. Half forced to a sedentary life, he gathered about him prudent councillors, reorganized every department of Government, reformed the judiciary, rebuilt the army, encouraged industry, stabilized the currency, supported literature and art, and collected in the Louvre the royal library that provided classic texts and translations for the French Renaissance, and formed the nucleus of the Bibliothèque Nationale. He yielded to the nobles in restoring feudal tolls, but he went over their heads to appoint as constable-- commander-in-chief of all French armies-- a swarthy, flat nosed, thick-necked, massive-headed Breton , Bertrand Du Guesclin. Faith in the superiority of this “Eagle of Brittany “ to all English generals shared in determining Charles to undertake the redemption of France from English rule. In 1369 he sent Edward III a formal declaration of war.
The Black prince responded by subduing Limoges and massacring 3,000 men, women, and children; this was his conception of political education. It proved inadequate; every city in his path fortified, garrisoned, and provisioned itself to successful defence, and the Prince was reduced to laying waste the open country, burning crops and raising deserted homes of the peasantry. Du Guesclin refrained from giving battle, but harassed the princely rear, capturing foragers, and waited for the English troops to starve. They did, and retreated; Du Guesclin advanced; one by one the ceded provinces were reclaimed; and after two years of remarkable general ship, and the mutual loyalty of commander and king, the English were driven from all France except Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais; France for the first time reached to the Pyrenees. Charles and his great constable could die with honours in the same year ( 1380) on the crest of victory.
THE MAD KING: 1380-1422
The gamble of hereditary monarchy now replaced a competent ruler with a lovable idiot. Charles VI was twelve when his father died; his uncles acted as regents till he was twenty, and allowed him to grow up in irresponsible debauchery while half Europe marched to the brink of revolution. In 1359 the workingmen of Bruges, wearing red hats, stormed the historic hotel de ville in transient revolt. In 1366 the lower classes of Ypres rose in rebellion preaching a holy war against the rich. In 1378 the ciompi established in Florence the dictatorship of the proletariat. In1379 the starving peasants of Languedoc -- south central France -- began six years of guerrilla warfare against nobles and priests under a leader who gave orders to “kill all who have soft hands “ Workers revolted in Strasbourg in 1380, in London in 1381, in Cologne in 1396. from 1379 to 1382 a revolutionary government ruled Ghent. In Rouen a stout draper was crowned king by an uprising of town labourers; and in Paris the people killed with leaden mallets the tax collectors of the king.( 1382 )
Charles VI took the reigns of government in 1388 and for four years reigned so well that he won the name Bien-Aime, Well Beloved. But in 1392 he went insane. He could no longer recognize his wife, and begged the strange woman to cease her importunities. For five months he had no change of clothes, and when at last it was decided to bathe him a dozen men were needed to overcome his reluctance. For thirty years the French crown was worn by a pitiful imbecile, while a virlle young king prepared to renew the English attack upon France.
On August 11 1415, Henry V sailed from England with 1300 vessels and 11,000 men. On the fourteenth they landed near Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine. Harfleur resisted gallantly and in vain. Jubilant with victory and hurried by dysentery, the English marched toward Calais. The chivalry of France met them at Agincourt. The French having learned nothing from Crécy and Poitiers, still relied upon cavalry. Many of the horses were immobilized by mud; those that advanced met the sharp stakes that the English had planted at an angle in the ground around the bowmen. The discouraged horses turned and charged their own army; the English fell upon this chaotic mass with maces, hatchets, and swords; their king Hal led them valiantly, too excited for fear; and their victory was overwhelming. French historians estimated the English loss at 1,600, the French at 10,000.
Henry returned to France in 1417, and besieged Rouen. The citizens ate up their food supply, then their horses, their dogs, their cats. To save food, women, children, and old men were thrust forth beyond the city walls; they sought passage through the English lines, were refused, remained foodless and shelter less between their relatives and their enemies, and starved to death; 50,000 French died of starvation in that merciless siege. When the town surrendered, Henry restrained his army from massacring the survivors, but levied upon them a fine of 300,000 crowns, and kept them in prison till the total was paid. In 1419 he advanced upon a Paris in which nothing remained but corruption, destitution, brutality, and class war. Outdoing the humiliation of 1360, France by the Treaty of Troyes ( 1420 ), surrendered everything, even honour. Charles gave his daughter Katherine to Henry V in marriage, promised to bequeath the French throne, turned over to him the governance of France, and to clear up any ambiguity, disowned the Dauphin as his son. Queen Isabelle, for an annuity of 24,000 francs, made no defence against this charge of adultery; and, indeed, in the royal courts of that age it was not easy for a woman to know who was the father of her children. The Dauphin, holding south France, repudiated the treaty, and organised his Gascon and Armagnac bands to carry on the war. But the King of England reigned in the Louvre.
Two years later Henry V died of dysentery; the germs had not signed the treaty. When Charles VI followed him(1422), Henry VI of England was crowned King of France; but as he was not yet a year old the duke of Bedford ruled as his regent. The Duke governed severely, but as justly as any Englishman could govern France. He suppressed brigandage by hanging 10,000 bandits in a year; judge there from the condition of the land. Demobilized soldiers -- écorcheurs ( skinners ), coquillards (shell men )-- made the highways perilous, and terrorized even large cities like Paris and Dijon. Over Normandy the ravage of war had passed back and forth like an infernal, murderous tide; peasants fled to cities, or hid in caves, or fortified themselves in churches, as armies or feudal factions or robber bands approached. Many peasants never returned to their precarious holdings, but lived by thievery or beggary, died of starvation or plague. Churches, farms, whole towns were abandoned and left to decay. In Paris in 1422 there were 24,000 empty houses, 80,000 beggars in a population of some 300,000. People ate the flesh and entrails of dogs. The cries of hungry children haunted the streets.
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Forgive me....I know I'm in the wrong place. Thrilled to see the SofC still going strong after all these years. I'll try to make my way back here later.
I'm trying to get to information about the Latin Classes and when they might be starting again. Nothing I click takes me there. If someone would just point me in the right direction....? I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks, Sun (sunknow from a good while back).
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sunknow as you know, jane (search for her name) runs the Latin classes - - - you can get the information you want directly from her. I believe they are in recess until early April.
Brian
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Sunknow, you can find Latin class information here: http://seniorlearn.org/classics/
If you click on the course description link at the beginning of the page and scroll down to near the bottom of that page, you will find Jane's email address.
I have some catching up to do here. My accounting classes this semester are taking up most of my time, just when we are getting into more interesting stuff (for me anyway). Got mighty tired of the Popes. Anyhow, classes end in the second week of May. Then I can devote more time to SoC
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What a time to live in. Agincourt doesn't sound as noble from the French side as it does in Shakespeare.
"In Rouen a STOUT draper was crowned king by an uprising of town labourers." (my caps). It is rediculous, crowning a draper, but crowning a stout draper is absurd beyond belief. He must be a fool! (as someone who is stout, I resent this).
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The gamble of hereditary monarchy now replaced a competent ruler with a loveable idiot.......for thirty years the French crown was worn by a pitiful imbecile.
The above statement by Durant is one of the best arguments against inherited monarchy. One day an idiot, the next day an imbecile.
I agree with Joan, calling the Draper 'stout' had nothing to do with his leadership and was insulting. He does seem to be the only 'man' with desireable qualities (such as a brain) in this entire episode.
Emily
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Thanks, Brian and Frybabe.
Carry on......
Sun
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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Joan and Emily - - - I wonder if Durant was using a different dictionary than yours when he called the draper "stout".
Merriam Webster does not get around to "fat" till #4 in the definitions.
Definition of STOUT
1: strong of character: as a : brave, bold b : firm, determined; also : obstinate, uncompromising
2: physically or materially strong: a : sturdy, vigorous b : staunch, enduring c : sturdily constructed : substantial
3: forceful <a stout attack>; also : violent <a stout wind>
4: bulky in body : fat
I have always considered "stout" to be a favourable adjective. Physically I am "thin" :)
Brian
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Thank you Brian for that description of 'stout'. Durant was likely using either an original document in French or a translation in English when he wrote these lines.
In America no one I know or ever heard uses the word 'stout' to describe someone as brave, bold, strong, enduring, or forceful. We use the descriptive terms brave, bold, strong, enduring, and forceful, not 'stout'.
Actually when I hear the word 'stout' the other Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary description is what immediately comes to mind. I just opened my MWCD and here it is:
stout-
1. a very dark full-bodied ale
2. a fat person
3. a clothing size designed for the large figure
We have Americanized the word 'stout' and given it a completely different meaning. Come to America and ask one hundred people (who have been here for many years) to describe a 'stout woman' and I will guarantee you that no one would describe her as brave and bold.
So 'stout' has lost its original meaning here as have many other words. Language is fluid and ever changing. It's a miracle there aren't more misunderstandings when using the written word.
Again thanks for bringing this forward and allowing me to explain the Americanized version of 'stout'.
Emily
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- - - and Will Durant was an American writer, so he probably WAS using the word
in a derogatory sense - - - I wonder why ?
This is not the first time I have been in trouble over the North American use of the
English language. When I first visited Canada I asked my hostess to waken me
one morning as I had a commision for the day. I said she was to knock me up
good and early! ::)
Brian
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"The gamble of hereditary monarchy now replaced a competent ruler with a loveable idiot......."
This is one of the major things I've learned from following "The Story of Civilization" over the years. Over and over the same pattern emerges: a really competant leader takes over. Things get better in every way. But in the process, more and more power is ceded to this leader: power that the leaders that follow sooner or later start abusing, and things go to h--- in a handbasket.
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Brian
- - - and Will Durant was an American writer, so he probably WAS using the word
in a derogatory sense - - - I wonder why ?
Durant's description of the Breton as a stout draper would have come from the books he was reading at the time, all written in French describing the events surrounding the life and times of Charles King of France. That description would have most likely have been the same as the example you gave of 'stout'. In rereading the passage, your meaning of the word fits and my Americanized version does not. The Breton was certainly brave and bold.
Durant was a worldly writer, and did not write about America. Here is an excerpt from his bio.
Durant was born in North Adams, Massachusetts of French-Canadian parents Joseph Durant and Mary Allard, who had been part of the Quebec emigration to the United States.
Durant was educated by the Jesuits in St. Peter's Preparatory School and, later, Saint Peter's College. In 1907 he began teaching Latin, French, English, and geometry at Seton Hall University. He was also made librarian at the college.
Durants parents were from Quebec and spoke French. His education was more European than American. His mother wanted him to be a priest. Durant was born in the late 1800's, and America as a country was only a hundred or so years old at the time. His interest was the world, not America.
In the Reformation that we are currently reading, all Durant's research is European, not American. Therefore no Americanization would have been possible. Durant used the word 'stout' just as you supposed the first time. I simply wanted to answer your query and let everyone know that in America that description is no longer used to describe such things as bravery.
Emily
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And, to round off this little digression, getting "knocked up" in British
fashion means having some one knock on your door to waken you.
Believe it or not, the coal mines even employed men to go round the
streets to wake the miners. They were called "knockers-up".
Brian
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Yes, what a terrible time to have lived, but so much of history has been like this, much more so than the peaceful lives much of the world lives in now. I think we've been spoiled. It brings a question to my mind as to what is human nature truly like? People thru most of history have been so cruel and so selfish. Today we ask, how can people treat each other so badly? How do people w/ authority, just for additional power and authority, put "their people" into such cruel circumstances? I guess only if you've been in war and been in constantly life-threatening circumatances can you consider behaving so cruelly - or, is that behavior the true human nature?
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Duirants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
pages 71-75.
Life Among the Ruins
Morals were such as any country might expect from so long and tragic a disablement of economy and government. The morality of the people shared in the common debacle. Cruelty, treachery, and corruption were endemic. Commoner and Governor were alike open to bribes. Profanity flourished; Chancellor Gerson complained that the most sacred festivals were passed in card-playing,* gambling, and blasphemy. Sharpers, forgers, thieves, vagabonds, and beggars clogged the streets by day, and gathered at night to enjoy their gleanings, at Paris, in the Cours des Miracles, so called because the medicants who had posed as cripples during the day appeared there marvellously sound in every limb.
Sodomy was frequent, prostitution was general, adultery was almost universal. A sect of “Adamites” in the fourteenth century advocated nudism, and practised it in public till the Inquisition suppressed them. Nicolas de Clémanges, Archdeacon of Bayeux, described the convents of his district as “ sanctuaries devoted to the cult of Venus.” High born ladies continued to hold formal discussions on the casuistry of sexual relations. Phillip “The Bold” of Burgundy established a “court of love” in Paris in 1401. Amid or beneath this moneyed laxity there were presumably some virtuous women and honest men.
Persecutions of Jews ( 1306, 1384, 1396 ) and lepers ( 1321), trials and executions of animals for injuring or copulating with humans, public hangings that drew immense crowds of eager spectators, entered into the picture of the age. Deschamps reviled life in almost all its parts; the world seemed to him like a weak, timorous, covetous old man, confused and decayed; “ all goes badly,” he concluded. Gerson agreed with him” We live in the senility of the world, and the last Judgment is near.”
What did religion do in this collapse of an assaulted nation? In the first four decades of the Hundred Years’ War the popes, immured at Avignon, received the protection and commands of the French kings. Much of the revenues drawn from Europe by the popes of that captivity went to those kings to finance the struggle of life and death against Britain; In eleven years ( 1345-1355 ) the Church advanced 3,392,000 florins to the monarchy. The popes tried again and again to end the war, but failed. Knights and footmen ignored religion until the hour of battle or their death, and must have felt some qualms of creed at the maddening indifference of the skies. The people, while breaking all commandments, clung fearfully to the church and the faith; They brought their pennies and their griefs to the comforting shrines of the Mother of God; they rose ‘en masse’ to religious ecstasy at the preaching of Friar Richard or St. Vincent Ferrer.
The intellectual leaders of the Church in this period were mostly Frenchmen. Pierre d’ Ailly was not only one of the most suggestive scientists of the time; he was among the ablest and most incorruptible leaders of the Church; and he was one of the ecclesiastical statesmen who, at the Council of Constance, healed the schism in the papacy. Gerson condemned the superstitions of the populace, and the quackeries of astrology, magic, and medicine; but he admitted that charms may have efficacy by working upon the imagination. Our knowledge of the stars, he thought, is too imperfect to allow specific predictions; we cannot even reckon a solar year precisely; we cannot tell the true positions of stars because their light is refracted, as it passes down to us, through a variety of mediums. Gerson advocated a limited democracy, and the supremacy of the councils in the church, but favoured a strong monarchy in France; perhaps his inconsistency was justified by the condition of the country, which needed order more than liberty. He led the movement to depose rival popes and reform the Church; and he shared in sending John Huss and Jerome of Prague to the stake.
The homes of the poor remained as in former centuries, except that glass windows were now general. But the villa and townhouses of the rich were no longer gloomy donjons; they were commodious and well furnished mansions, with spacious fountained courts, broad winding stairs, overhanging balconies, and sharply sloping roofs that cut the sky and sloughed the snow; they were equipped with servants’ rooms, storerooms, guard room, porter’s room, linen room, laundry, wine cellar, and bakery, in addition to the great hall and bedrooms of the master’s family. Interiors were now sumptuously furnished: magnificent fireplaces, which could warm at least one side of a room and its occupants; sturdy chairs and tables indefatigably carved; cushioned benches along tapestried walls; gigantic dressers and cupboards displaying gold and silver plate, and far lovelier glass; thick carpets and floors of polished oak or enamelled tiles; and high canopied beds vast enough to hold the lord, his lady, and a child or two. On these recumbent thrones the men and women of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries slept naked; night gowns were not yet an indispensable impediment.
*Playing cards entered Europe probably in the fourteenth century; the first definite mention of them is in 1379. Apparently they came from the Moslems through Africa, Spain and the crusades. The Chinese claim to have used them as early as A.D. 1120
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"Persecutions of Jews ( 1306, 1384, 1396 )" : in some periods, the Jews were blamed for causing the plague by poisoning the wells. People were desperate for a scapegoat!
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The people, while breaking all commandments, clung fearfully to the church and the faith; They brought their pennies and their griefs to the comforting shrines of the Mother of God
War, death, destruction, inhumane treatment, starvation, plagues, and all the 'man made' pestilence brought down on the people keep 'religion' alive, though barely breathing.
Emily
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"the people, while breaking all commandments, clung fearfully .... " That is an apt description of todays' society, and of society through all the years of history. Very few of today's 'believers' would honor the fourth commandment, to name but one, when all about them, persons were breaking that law. It takes a very courageous person to stand against the tide. I have known of only one such in all my 84 years of living.
I, myself was never put to the test, and sometimes wonder if I would have the necessary strength to behave as my acquaintance did. Even his family, including his wife, disowned him in his time of travail. He paid a huge price. === Trevor
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Sun day or the Sabbath ?
The halo is actually just the sun behind the person's head, as illustrated above (in a picture of a saint). It's easy to recognize once one realizes what it is, although it's also often stylized to make it less obvious. Originally a very devious way of mixing idolatrous sun worship with Christianity by converts who were not all that converted, the pagan halo became an unfortunate tradition in Christian art.
God's Calendar and The Pagan Calendar
Today, the names that are used for the days of the week are all named after the sun, moon, or pagan gods. Sunday ("sun" day), Monday ("moon" day), Tuesday ("Tiwe's" day), Wednesday ("Woden's" day), Thursday ("Thor's" day), Friday ("Frie's" day) and Saturday ("Saturn's" day) are all pagan in origin.
Brian
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That explanation of the halo is fascinating!
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Brian
God's Calendar and The Pagan Calendar
Today, the names that are used for the days of the week are all named after the sun, moon, or pagan gods. Sunday ("sun" day), Monday ("moon" day), Tuesday ("Tiwe's" day), Wednesday ("Woden's" day), Thursday ("Thor's" day), Friday ("Frie's" day) and Saturday ("Saturn's" day) are all pagan in origin.
All the days of the week were named for a god. There were always a 'sun god' and 'moon god' in almost every group of people I've read about. Makes sense to me since without the sun and its position to earth there would be NO life on this planet. Thor is a Viking god and Saturn is a Roman god, and I see no difference in their god and the claim of others to their 'god'. Thankfully they are all named after different gods and not after the claimed 'one god'. Wouldn't it be awful to have 'yahweh' for all seven days of the week?
Of course the Vikings and Romans long ago gave up the idea of some 'god' ruling over them. Others no longer worship the sun and the moon.
There are some who still worship a god. They are the 'pagans' of today.
Emily
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The DURANT'S S o C
Vol VI. The REFORMATION
pge 78-81
ART
The artists of France were in this epoch superior to her poets, but they too suffered from bitter impoverishment. No lavish patronage supported them, of city, Church, or king. The communes which had expressed the pride of their guilds through majestic temples to an unquestioned faith, had been weakened or destroyed by the extension of royal authority, and the enlargement of the economy from a local to a national frame. The French Church could no longer finance or inspire such stupendous structures as had risen in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from the soil of France. Faith as well as wealth had declined; the hope that in those centuries had undertaken at once the crusades and the cathedrals -- the enterprise and its care -- had lost its generative ecstasy. It was more than the fourteenth century could do to finish, in architecture, what a more sanguine era had begun.
The Rayonnant style of Gothic design was now (1275 f.) gradually yielding to a geometrical Gothic that stressed Euclidean figures instead of radiating lines. In this manner Bordeaux built her cathedral ( 1320-25 ), Caen raised a handsome spire ( shattered in the second world war ) on the church of St. Pierre,(1308); and Rouen enhanced her architectural glory with the noble church of St. Ouen ( 1318-1545).
In the final quarter of the fourteenth century, when France thought herself victorious, her architects displayed a new Gothic, joyous in spirit, exuberant in carved detail, fancifully intricate in tracery, revelling recklessly in ornament. The ogive, or pointed arch of a continued curve, like the tongue of flame that gave the style its Flamboyant name. Capitals fell into disuse; columns were fluted or spiralled; Choir stalls were profusely carved, and were closed with iron screens of delicate lacery; pendentives became stalactites; vaults were wildernesses of intertwined, disappearing, reappearing ribs; spires seemed built of decoration; structure vanished behind ornament. The new style made its debut in the chapel of St. Jean-Baptiste (1375 ) in the cathedral of Amiens; by 1425 it had captured France. Perhaps the revival of French courage and arms by Joan of Arc and Charles VII, the growth of mercantile wealth and the inclination of the rising ‘bourgeoisie’ to luxurious ornament helped the Flamboyant style to its triumph in the first half of the fifteenth century. In that feminine form Gothic survived til French kings and nobles brought back from the wars in Italy the classical architectural ideas of the Renaissance.
The growth of civil architecture revealed the rising secularism of the time. Kings and dukes thought there were churches enough, and built themselves palaces to impress the people and house their mistresses; rich burghers spent fortunes on their homes; municipalities announced their wealth through splendid ‘hôtels-de- ville’ or city halls. Some hospitals, like Beaune’s, were designed with a fresh and airy beauty that must have lulled the ill to health. Louis of Orléans raised the château of Pierrefonds, and John, Duke of Berry, though hard on his peasants, was one of the great art patrons of history.
[For that] discriminating lord, Jacquemart de Hesden painted ‘Les petites heures, Les belles heures, and Les grandes heures,‘ all illustrating books of ‘hours‘ for the canonical daily prayers. Again for Duke John the brothers Pol, Jehannequin, and Herman Malouel of Limburg produced ‘Les tres riches heures ‘ (1416 ) sixty-five delicately beautiful miniatures picturing the life and scenery of France; nobles hunting, peasants working, a countryside purified with snow. These Very Rich Hours, now hidden from tourist eyes in the Condé Museum at Chantilly, and the miniatures made for Le bon roi, René of Anjou, were almost the last triumphs of illumination; for in the fifteenth century that art was challenged both by wood-block engraving and by the development of thriving schools of mural and easel painting. Beauneveû and the Van Eycks brought Flemish styles of painting to France; Italian art influenced the French long before French arms invaded Italy. By 1450 French painting stood on its own feet, and marked its coming of age with the anonymous ‘Pietà of Villeneuve, now in the Louvre.
Jean Fouquet is the first clear personality in French painting. Born at Tours (1416) he studied for seven years in Italy ( 1440-1447 ), and returned to France with that predilection for classical architectural backgrounds which in the seventeenth century would become the mania of Nicholas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Nevertheless he painted several portraits that are powerful revelations of character: Archbishop Juvénal des Ursins, Chancellor of France -- stout and stern and resolute, and not too pious for statesmanship; Etienne Chevalier, treasurer of the realm-- a melancholy man troubled by the impossibility of raising money as fast as a government can spend it; Charles VII himself, after Agnès Sorel had made a man of him; and Agnès with the rosy flesh, transformed by Fouquet into a cold and stately Virgin with downcast eyes and uplifted breast. An enamelled medallion in the Louvre preserves Fouquet as he saw himself- no princely Raphael riding high, but a simple artisan of the brush, dressed for work, eager and diffident. He passed without mishap from one reign to another, and rose at last to be ‘peintre du roi’ for the incalculable Louis XI. After many years of labor comes success, and soon thereafter death.
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A good site to start looking at some of the works mentioned in this four pages
of our book is : -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_Janvier.jpg
Brian
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Goodness, that's quick work Brian ! 15 minutes after I enter my piece you come up with places to go to view the mentioned arts. I couldn't have read it in that interval ! +++ Trevor
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Trevor - - - What are you doing up and posting so early in the morning ? (3:35 a.m.)
or shouldn't I ask ?
Brian
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Interesting painting! Rhe colors are awfully bright for something that old. Perhaps a reproduction, rather than a photo.
On the Gothic cathedrals: there was an interesting program about them on PBS a while ago -- did anyone see it? Many of them are in danger of falling down. They wanted to stretch the idea of reaching to the heavens to the limit. Some of thee architects didn't realize that the details, especially the shape of the arches, were not just pretty, but were exactly designed to distribute the weight above correctly. Even a small changewould make the structure unstable.
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Below is a link to the French artist Jean Fouquet mentioned in Trevor's last post.
I liked the self portrait best.
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jean-fouquet
Emily
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Images for the Cathedral of Amiens..........
http://www.google.com/search?q=cathedral+of+Amiens&hl=en&rlz=1R2ADSA_enUS383&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1ICPT6_iA4mc8QTdg9GeBA&ved=0CEsQsAQ&biw=800&bih=403&sei=24CPT_a6M4Gg9QSQw4iNBA
Emily
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Yes. The colors are bright in those paintings. Can it be the kind of paint that was used?
I am always astonished at the detail on the cathedrals. All those little scuptures of figures, the sculptured designs, the beautiful stained glass windows and, yes, the height. How can they be maintained?
Thanks for all the links, very interesting.
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Our May book club online is "Women in Greek Drama": reading three Greek plays featuring strong women. Find out why these women have been famous in literature for two thousand years. Join us for the pre-discussion here:
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=3156.0
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Will break in just to mention what I found funny in our local paper and local news yesterday.
Most people know that our latest Govern er of Illinois got sentenced to Prison in February this year. 16 years I believe. (not enough). Well he is working in the Kitchen for 3 months and then after he will be teaching Greek Literature and Shakespeare writings. Now I am sure that when the prisoners finish serving their time this will really add to their way to make a living.. Must come under. Job training these days.
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The Chantilly chateau and its Conde museum link below has an interesting history. The Chantilly racetrack and the 'history of the horse' can be found there.
The Conde museum is second only to the Louvre in its collection. Actually some of the artwork at the Louvre came from the Chantilly chateau when it was destroyed by the revolution. They did manage to retrieve some of the collection.
Click on the left to see apartments, galleries, etc.
http://www.chateaudechantilly.com/en/galleries-of-paintings.p96.html
Emily
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Wonderful site Emily.
I just had time to really read carefully this last passage. Very interesting to think about the evolution of the architecture and the art and how current events effect them, the decline of the church and the disatrous natural events of the 14th century leading to he decline of the wealth, therefore the decline in monies available to the artists. It is nice to see the switch from the religious to the scular buildings.
I can see the awesome feeling that people must have felt standing under those vaulted ceilngs of those cathedrals. I have only been in the National Cath in D.C. and a smaller one in Philda. Have any of you been in these monsters in Europe? How does it feel?
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Durant's S O C
Vol VI The Reformation
Pgs 81-86
JOAN OF ARC. 1412-31
In 1422 the repudiated son of Charles VI had himself proclaimed king as Charles VII. In her desolation France looked to him for help, and fell into deeper despair. This timid, listless, heedless youth of twenty hardly credited his own proclamation, and probably shared the doubts of Frenchmen as to the legitimacy of his birth. He was fearfully religious, heard three Masses daily, and allowed no canonical hour to pass without reciting its appointed prayers. In the interval he attended to a long succession of mistresses, and begot twelve children upon his virtuous wife. He pawned his jewels and most of the clothes from his back, to finance resistance to England, but he had no stomach for war, and left the struggle to his ministers and his generals. When the English moved south to lay siege to Orléans (1428), no concerted action was taken to resist them, and disorder was the order of the day. Orléans lay at a bend in the Loire; if it fell, all the south, now hesitantly loyal to Charles VII, would join the north to make France an English colony. North and south alike watched the siege, and prayed for a miracle.
Even the distant village of Domremy, half asleep by the Meuse on the eastern border of France, followed the struggle with patriotic and religious passion. Men and women there, as generally throughout rural France, thought of the English as devils who hid their tails in their coattails. Someday, said a prophecy in the village, God would send ‘a pucelle,’ a virgin maid, to save France from these demons, and end the long Satanic reign of war. The wife of the mayor of Domremy whispered these hopes to her goddaughter Joan.
Joan’s father, Jacques d’Arc, was a prosperous farmer, and probably gave no mind to such tales. Joan was noted among these pious people for her piety. One day, when she had been fasting, she thought she saw a strange light over her head, and that she heard a voice saying, “Jeanne, be a good obedient child. Go often to Church.”. During the next five years her “voices” as she called the apparitions, spoke many councils to her. At another time the voice said: “Daughter of God, thou shalt lead the Dauphin to Reims that he may there receive worthily his anointing” and coronation. If the holy oil should be poured upon his head France would unite behind him and be saved.
After a long and troubled hesitation Joan revealed her visions to her parents. Her father was shocked at the thought of an innocent girl undertaking so fantastic a mission; rather then permit it, he said, he would drown her with his own hands. To further restrain her he persuaded a young villager to announce that she had promised him her hand in marriage. She denied it, and to preserve the virginity that she had pledged to the saints, as well as to obey their command, she fled to an uncle, and prevailed upon him to take her to Vaucoulers ( 1429) There Captain Baudricourt advised the uncle to give her a good spanking, and restore her to her parents; but when Joan forced her way into his presence, and firmly declared she was sent by God to help king Charles save Orléans, the bluff commandant melted and even while thinking her charmed by devils, sent to Chinon to ask the king’s pleasure. Royal permission came, Baudicourt gave the Maid a sword, the people bought her a horse, and six soldiers agreed to guide her on the long journey. Perhaps to discourage male advances she donned a masculine and military garb, and cut her hair like a boy’s.
After travelling 450 miles in eleven days she came to the king and his council. Listening to her story and still doubtful, Charles sent her to Poitiers to be examined by the pundits there. They found no evil in her, and commissioned some women to enquire into her virginity, and on that delicate point they too were satisfied. For like the Maid, they held that a special privilege belonged to virgins as the instruments and messengers of God.
Dunois, in Orléans, had assured the garrison that God would soon send someone to their aid. Hearing of Joan, he half believed his own hopes, and pleaded with the court to send her to him at once. They consented, gave her a black horse, clothed her in white armour, put in her hand a white banner embroidered with the fleur-di-lis of France, and dispatched her to Dunois. It was not hard to find entry into the city ( April 29, 1429) The English had not surrounded it entirely.. The people of Orléans hailed Joan as the Virgin incarnate, accompanied her to church, prayed when she prayed, wept when she wept. At her command the soldiers gave up their mistresses, and struggled to express themselves without profanity; one of their leaders, La Hire, found this impossible, and received from Joan a dispensation to swear by his baton. It was this Gascon condottiere who uttered the famous prayer: “Sire God, I beg Thee to do for La Hire what he would do for Thee wert Thou a captain and La Hire a God.”
Joan sent a letter to Talbot, the English commander, proposing that both armies should unite as brothers, and proceed to Palestine to redeem the Holy Land from the Turks; Talbot thought that this exceeded his commission. Some days later, a part of the garrison, without informing Dunois or Joan, issued beyond the walls and attacked one of the British bastions. The English fought well, the French retreated; but Dunois and Joan, having heard the commotion, rode up and bade their men renew the assault; it succeeded, and the English abandoned their position. On the morrow the French attacked two other forts and took them, the Maid being in the thick of the fight. In the second encounter an arrow pierced her shoulder; when the wound had been dressed she returned to the fray. Meanwhile the sturdy cannon of Guillaume Duisy hurled upon the English fortress of Les Tourelles balls weighing 120 pounds each. Joan was spared the sight of the victorious French slaughtering 500 Englishmen when the stronghold fell. All France rejoiced, seeing in the “Maid of Orléans” the hand of god; but the English denounced her as a sorceress, and vowed to take her alive or dead.
Acclaimed as inspired and holy by half of France Joan almost forgot now to be a saint, and became a worrior. She was strict with her soldiers, and deprived them of the consolations that all soldiers hold as their due; and when she found two prostitutes accompanying them she drew her sword and struck one so manfully that the blade broke and the woman died. She followed the King and his army in an attack on Paris. Their assault failed, they suffered 1500 casualties, and cursed Joan for thinking that a prayer could silence a gun. She retired with her detachment to Compiègne, but before reaching safety, she was dragged from her horse and was taken as a captive to John of Luxembourg ( May 24, 1430). A bribe of 10,000 crowns was offered to John which after much agonizing, he accepted. Joan was handed over in chains, and her trial began on February 21, 1431, and continued till May 30. [ with much debate and soul searching]. On 31 May a few of the judges convened and sentenced her to death.
That morning the faggots were piled high in the market place of Rouen. The Maid was brought in a cart, accompanied by an Augustinian monk, Islambart, who befriended her to the last at peril to his life. The English soldiers snatched her from the priests. The faggots were lighted, Joan invoked her voices, her saints and Christ, and was consumed in agony.
In 1455 Pope Calixtus, at the behest of Charles VII, ordered a re-examination of the evidence; and in 1456 ( France by now victorious ) the verdict of 1431 was declared unjust, and void.
In 1920 Benedict XV numbered the Maid of Orléans among the saints of the Church.
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"In 1920 Benedict XV numbered the Maid of Orléans among the saints of the Church."
And many young women decided to name their daughters Joan. My mother was one of them, and 13 years later, I became one of the many Joans of that generation.
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Faggot.........a bundle of sticks tied together.
I looked it up to be sure of the definition. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could burn someone alive, or even watch an event like burning at the stake.
Emily
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.....and how does the word become a nasty word for homosexuals? Or does that word have a different origin?
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mabel - - - Meaning of the word faggot - - -
the word has been used in English since the late 16th century as an abusive term for women, particularly old women, and reference to homosexuality may derive from this, as female terms are often used with reference to homosexual or effeminate men (cf. nancy, sissy, queen). The application of the term to old women is possibly a shortening of the term "faggot-gatherer", applied in the 19th century to people, especially older widows, who made a meagre living by gathering and selling firewood.
Brian
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For goodness sake! So we get sexism, agism, and anti-homosexuals all tied up in one term! An equal opportunity hater.
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Thanks Brian, that's very interesting. I love the way language evolves.
I'm glad to get the full story of Joan D'Arc. I've always heard of her, of course. It's fascinating how people have needed "messangers of God" throughout history and to see the ones they've chosen to accept. I can understand that need in those fearful times.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pages 86-88
FRANCE SURVIVES 1431 - 53
We must not exaggerate the military importance of Joan of Arc; her tactics of reckless assault won some battles and lost others; and England was feeling the cost of a Hundred Years’ War. In 1435, England’s ally, Phillip of Burgundy, tired of the struggle and made a separate peace with France. His defection weakened the hold of the English on the conquered cities of the south; one by one these expelled their alien garrisons. In 1436 Paris itself, for seventeen years a captive, drove out the British, and Charles VII at last ruled in his capital.
Strange to tell, he who had for so long been a do-nothing shadow of a king had learned by this time to govern. What had wrought this transformation? The inspiration of Joan had begun it, but how weak he still seemed when he raised not a finger to save her! His remarkable mother-in-law, Yolande of Anjou, had helped him with wise council. Now -- if we may believe tradition -- she gave her son-in law the mistress who for ten years ruled the heart of the king.
Agnès Sorel was the daughter of a squire in Touraine. Isabelle, Duchess of Lorraine took Agnès, then twenty-three, to visit the court in the year after Joan’s death. Snared in the girls chestnut tresses, Charles marked her out as his own. Yolande persuaded Marie, her daughter, to accept this latest of her husband’s mistresses. Agnès remained till death faithful in this infidelity, and a later king, Francis I, after much experience in these matters, praised the “Lady of Beauty” as having served France better than any cloistered nun. Charles allowed Agnès to shame him out of indolence and cowardice into industry and resolution. He gathered about him men like Constable Richemont, who led his armies, and Jacques Cœur, who restored the finances of the state, and Jean Bureau, whose artillery brought recalcitrant nobles to heel, and sent the English scurrying to Calais.
Jaques Cœur was a condotiere of commerce; a man of no pedigree and little schooling, who, however, could count well; a Frenchman who dared to compete successfully with Venetians, Genoese, and Catalans in trade with the Moslem East. He owned and equipped seven merchant vessels, manned them by hiring convicts and snatching vagrants off the streets, and sailed his ships under the flag of Mother of God. He amassed the greatest fortune of his time in France, some 27,000,000 francs when a franc was worth some five dollars of today‘s currency. As States-General of 1439, enthusiastically supporting Charles’ resolve to drive the English from French soil, he empowered the King, by a famous succession of ordinances ( 1443-47), to take the whole taille of France -- i.e., all taxes hitherto paid by tenants to their feudal lords; the government’s revenue now rose to 1,800,000 crowns a year. From that time onward the French monarchy, unlike the English, was independent of the Estates’ “power of the purse” and could resist the growth of the middle-class democracy. This system of national taxation provided the funds for the victory of France over England; but as the King could raise the rate of assessment, it became a major tool of royal oppression, and shared in causing the Revolution of 1789.
Jacques Cœur played a leading role in these fiscal developments, earning the admiration of many and the hatred of a powerful few. In 1451 he was arrested on a charge-- never proved-- of hiring agents to poison Agnès Sorel. He was condemned and banished, and all his property was confiscated to the state-- an elegant method of exploitation by proxy. He fled to Rome, where he was made admiral of a papal fleet sent to the relief of Rhodes. He was taken ill at Chois, and died there in 1456, aged sixty-one.
Meanwhile Charles VII, guided by Cœur, had established an honest coinage, rebuilt shattered villages, promoted industry and commerce, and restored the economic vitality of France. He compelled the disbandment of private companies of soldiers, and gathered these into his service to form the first standing army in Europe.( 1439 ) He decreed that in every parish some virile citizen, chosen by his fellows, should be freed of all taxation, should arm himself, practice the use of weapons, and be ready at any moment to join his like in the military service of the king. It was these ‘francs tireurs’, or free bowmen, who drove the English from France.
By 1449 Charles was prepared to break the truce that had been signed in 1444. The English were surprised and shocked. They were weakened by internal quarrels, and found their fading empire in France relatively as expensive to maintain in the fifteenth century as India in the twentieth; in 1427 France cost England 68,000 pounds, brought her only 57,000 pounds.
The British fought bravely but not wisely; they relied too long on archers and stakes, and the tactics that had stopped the French cavalry at Crécy and Poitiers proved helpless at Formigny (1450) against the cannon of Bureau. In 1449 the English evacuated most of Normandy; in1451 they abandoned its capital, Rouen. In 1453 the great Talbot himself was defeated and killed at Castillon; Bordeaux surrendered; all Guienne was French again; the English kept only Calais. On October 19, 1453, the two nations signed the peace that ended the Hundred Years War.
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Interesting choice of words by the Durants :
Snared in the girls chestnut tresses, Charles marked her out as his own. Yolande persuaded Marie, her daughter, to accept this latest of her husband’s mistresses. Agnès remained till death faithful in this infidelity, and a later king, Francis I, after much experience in these matters, praised the “Lady of Beauty” as having served France better than any cloistered nun. :)
Charles allowed Agnès to shame him out of indolence and cowardice into industry and resolution. And how did she do that? :)
Vive la France!
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"the tactics that had stopped the French cavalry at Crécy and Poitiers proved helpless at Formigny (1450) against the cannon of Bureau."
And more than 200 years later, in the US civil War, generals still hadn't learned that lesson and changed their tactics against cannon.
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Jacques Coeur----arrested on a charge----never proved---he was condemned and banished-----all his property was confiscated to the state-----an elegant method of exploitation by proxy.
We have read this same event happening over and over all through history. It still happens today and 'freezing ones assets' before 'trial' is a common practice of the U.S. government. They can never get enough, whether King, President, Prime Minister, Witch Doctor, or whatever title they wish to choose. Banksters however have been given immunity in the U.S. as long as they support the 'would be king', and hand over his share of the loot.
Emily
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For all who remember her then and now:
GLADYS BARRY
It's with sadness that we announce the death of our long time online friend of many years, Gladys Barry.
Please join us in conveying deepest sympathy to the family of Gladys.
(More information as we have it)
To unsubscribe from these announcements, login to the forum and uncheck "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email." in your profile.
You can view the full announcement by following this link:
http://www.seniorsandfriends.org/index.php?topic=2475.0
Regards,
The Seniors & Friends Team.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 89 - 91
GALLIA PHOENIX 1453 – 1515
LOUIS XI: 1461 - 83
The son of Charles VII was an exceptionally troublesome dauphin. Married against his will at thirteen (1436 ) to Margaret of Scotland, aged eleven, he revenged himself by ignoring her and cultivating mistresses. Margaret, who lived on poetry found peace in an early death ( 1444), saying as she died “Fie upon life! Speak to me no more of it. “ Louis twice rebelled against his father, fled to Flanders after the second attempt, and waited fretfully for power. Charles accommodated him by starving himself to death ( 1461) and for twenty-two years France was ruled by one of her strangest and greatest kings.
He was now thirty-eight, thin and ungainly, homely and melancholy, with distrustful eyes and far reaching nose. He looked like a peasant, dressed like an impoverished pilgrim in a rough gray gown and a shabby felt hat, prayed like a saint, and ruled as if he had read ‘The Prince‘ before Machiavelli was born. He scorned the pomp of feudalism, laughed at traditions and formalities, questioned his own legitimacy, and shocked all thrones with his simplicity. He lived in the gloomy palace Des Tournelles in Paris, usually like a bachelor, though a second time married; penurious though possessing France; keeping only the few atendants he had in exile, eating such food as any peasant might afford. He looked not an iota, but would be every inch, a king.
He subordinated every element of character to his resolve that France should under his hammer be forged out of feudal fragmentation into monarchic unity and monolithic strength, and that his centralized monarchy should lift France out of the ashes of war to new life and power. To this political purpose he gave his thinking day and night, with a mind clear, cunning, inventive, restless, like Caesar counting nothing done if anything remained to do. “ As for peace,” said Comines, “ he could hardly endure the thought of it.” However, he was unsuccessful in war, and preferred diplomacy, espionage, and bribery to force; he brought men around to his purposes by persuasion, flattery, or fear, and kept a large staff of spies in his service at home and abroad; he paid regular secret salaries to the ministers of England’s Edward IV. He made major blunders, and recovered from them with unscrupulous and disconcerting ingenuity. He spared time for literature and art, read avidly, collected manuscripts, recognized the revolution that printing presaged, and enjoyed the company of educated men, particularly if they were Bohemians in the Parisian sense
He was hard on the rich, careless with the poor, hostile to artisian guilds, favourable to the middle class as his strongest support, and in any class ruthless with those who opposed him. After a rebellion in Perpignan he ordered that any banished rebel who dared to return should have his testicles amputated. In his war with the nobles he had some special enemies or traitors imprisoned for years in iron cages. These were contrived by the Bishop of Verdun, who later occupied one for fourteen years. At the same time Louis was much devoted to the Church, needing her aid against nobles and states. He had a rosary nearly always at hand, and repeated paternosters and Ave Marias with the assiduity of a dying nun. When he died, he himself was represented as a saint on an abbey portal in Tours.
With the help of his faults he created modern France. He found it a loose association with feudal and ecclesiastical principalities, he made it a nation, the most powerful in Latin Christendom. He brought in silk weavers from Italy, miners from Germany; he improved harbours and transport, protected French shipping, opened new markets to French industry, and allied the government of France with the rising mercantile and financial bourgeoisie. Feudalism was no longer needed for the protection and management of agriculture; the peasantry was slowly freeing itself from a stagnant serfdom; the time had passed when the feudal barons could make their own laws, mint their own coins, play sovereign in their domains; by fair means or foul he would bring them, one by one, to submission and order. He restricted their right to trespass on peasant properties in their hunts, established a governmental postal service that ran through their estates ( 1464 ), forbade them to wage private wars, and demanded of them all the back dues they had failed to pay their liege lords, the kings of France.
They did not like him. Representatives of 500 noble families met in Paris and formed the ‘ Ligue du bien public’ , to uphold their privileges in the sacred name of the public good. Louis’ own brother, Charles, Duke of Berry, decamped to Brittany, and headed the revolt. Enemies and armies rose against the King on every side. If they could unite, he was lost; his only hope was to defeat them piecemeal. He dashed south across the Allier river and compelled a hostile force to surrender; he rushed back north just in time to prevent a Burgundian army from entering the capital. Each side claimed victory in the battle of Montlhéry; Louis entered Paris, the Burgundians returned and laid siege to the city. Unwilling to risk rebellion by Parisians too intelligent to starve, Louis yielded almost all that his foes demanded; lands, money, offices; brother Charles received Normandy. Nothing was said about the public good; the people had to be taxed to raise the required sums. Louis bided his time.
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"Bohemians in the Parisian sense" ? I'm not sure whether that is complementary, or derogatory. Trevor
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
In this volume the term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples.
In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.
Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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"With the help of his faults he created modern France." I love that.
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I left the article about Gladys Barry dying because when one clicks on the link in the article, you are taken to a page dedicated to Gladys Berry and there are pictures of her there. One of those pictures shows her dancing with Robby (Robert Iadalucca) who started up this discussion in 1999. I was hoping Robby would see this. Thanks for not deleting the notice.
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Images for Louie XI........
http://www.google.com/search?q=Louis+X1&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=chKzT5GIIYa88AT8ipCMCQ&ved=0CHMQsAQ&biw=800&bih=403#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=louis+xi&revid=774371551&sa=X&ei=chazT6GyHIGk8gSU18XRCA&ved=0CEEQgxY&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=db96b50d724c60d0&biw=800&bih=403
Emily
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The story (read elsewhere) of Louis pardoning a condemed man if he would undergo gall bladder surgery to remove gallstones. Did Louie himself perhaps have gallstones, and was using this man as a test subject. Surgery was dangerous and risky, and I don't know the outcome.
With second wife Charlotte he had eight children but only three made it to adulthood. Child birth was also risky and many babies never reached their first birthday.
Emily
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How come all of these guys thruout history never could figure out that their lives and the lives of their people could be simpler and more pleasant if they were not so greedy and power hungry? Where does the tyranny and meaness come from? Bullying always appears to be the personality of every leader. All of the lives of everyone we've read about has been about acquiring more land and more power. They seem to have been caught in a vicious circle of "if i don't do it to them, they will do it to me." is there something inherent in that behavior?
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 89 - 93
LOUIS XI (continued)
Charles, ( Louis’ brother ) soon slipped into war with Duke Francis of Brittany, who captured him; Louis marched into Normandy and regained it bloodlessly. But Francis, rightly suspecting that Louis wanted Brittany too, joined with Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy in an offensive alliance against the irrepressible King. Louis strained every nerve of diplomacy, made a separate peace with Francis and agreed to a conference with Charles. at Péronne. There, in effect, Charles took him prisoner, and compelled him to cede Picardy and share the sack of Liége. Louis returned to Paris at the nadir of his power and repute; even the magpies were taught to mock him (1468). Two years later, in this reciprocation of treachery, Louis took advantage of Charles preoccupation in Gelderland, and marched his troops in to Saint-Quentin, Amiens and Beauvais. Charles persuaded Edward IV to unite with him against France, but Louis bought Edward off. Knowing Edward’s keen appreciation of women he invited him to come and divert himself with the ladies of Paris; moreover he would assign to Edward, as royal confessor, the Cardinal of bourbon, who would “willingly absolve him if he should commit any sin by way of love or gallantry.” He manoeuvred Charles into war with Switzerland; and when Charles was killed Louis took not only Picardy but Burgundy itself(1477). He soothed Burgundian nobles with gold, and pleased the people by taking a Bugundian mistress.
Now he felt strong enough to turn upon the barons who had so often fought him, and had so seldom obeyed his summons to come out and fight for France. Many of the lords who had fought against him in 1465 were dead, or incapacitated by age. Their successors had learned to fear a king who cut off the heads of traitorous aristocrats and confiscated their estates, who had built a strong army of mercenaries, and seemed always able to raise immense sums for purchases and bribes. Preferring to spend his subjects money rather than their lives, Louis bought Cerdagne and Roussillon from Spain. Anjou and Maine reverted to the monarchy; in 1483 Flanders, seeking the aid of Louis against The Holy Roman Empire ceded to him the county of Artois, with the thriving cities of Arras and Douai. With the barons subdued, and the municipal parliaments and communes submitting to the king, Louis accomplished for France that national unification and centralized administration which, a decade later, Henry VII was to achieve for England, Ferdinand and Isabella for Spain, and Alexander VI for the Papal States. Though this substituted one tyranny for many, it was at the time a progressive move, enhancing internal order and external security, standardizing currency and measurements, moulding dialects into a language, and furthering the growth of vernacular literature in France. The monarchy was not absolute; the nobles retained large powers, and the consent of the States-General was usually required for new taxes. The nobles, the officials, and the clergy were exempt from taxation; the nobles on the ground that they fought for the people, the officials because they were so poorly paid and bribed, and the clergy because they protected king and country with their prayers. Public opinion and popular customs checked the king; the local parliaments still claimed that no royal edict could become law in their districts until they accepted and registered it. Nevertheless the path had been opened to Louis XIV and “L’état c’est moi.”
Amid these triumphs Louis himself decayed in body and mind. He imprisoned himself at Plessis-les-Tours, fearing assassination, suspicious of all, seeing hardly anyone, punishing faults and defections cruelly, and then dressing himself in robes whose magnificence contrasted the poor garb of his earlier reign. For years he had suffered agonies from piles, and had occasional apoplectic strokes. On August 25, 1483 another attack deprived him of speech, and five days later he died.
His subjects rejoiced for he made them pay unbearably for his defeats and victories; the people had grown poorer, as France had become greater, under his merciless statesmanship. Nevertheless later ages were to benefit from his subordination of the nobles, his reorganization of finance, administration, and defence, his promotion of industry, commerce, and printing, his formation of a modern unified state. He and his generation paid for the future prosperity and splendour of France.
Charles VIII was thirteen when his father died. For eight years his sister Anne de Beaujeu, only ten years his elder, wisely ruled France as regent. She reduced government expenditures, forgave the people a quarter of the poll tax, recalled many exiles, freed many prisoners, and successfully resisted the attempt of the barons, in their Guerre Folle, or foolish war (1485) to regain the semi-sovereignty that Louis had overthrown. When Brittany joined with Orléans, Lorraine, Angouleme, Orange, and Navarre in a further revolt, her diplomacy and the generalship of Louis de la Trémouille defeated them all, and she ended the turmoil triumphantly by arranging the marriage of Charles to Anne of Brittany, who brought her great duchy as dowry to the crown of France (1491). The regent then retired from the government and lived her remaining thirty-one years in peaceful oblivion.
The new queen was quite another Anne. Short, flat, thin, and lame, with a stubby nose over a spacious mouth on a Gothically elongated face, she had a mind of her own, as shrewd and parsimonious as any Bretonne’s should be. Though she dressed simply in black gown and hood, she could on occasions of state, gleam with jewellery and cloth of gold; and it was she, rather than Charles, who favoured artists and poets, and commissioned Jean Bourdichon to paint Les heures d’Anne de Bretagne. Never forgetting her beloved Brittany and its ways, she hid her pride in modesty, sewed industriously and struggled to reform the morals of her husband and his court.
Charles, says the gossipy BrantÔme, “loved women more than his slight constitution could endure.” After his marriage he restricted himself to one mistress. He could not complain of the Queen’s looks; he himself was a macrocephalic hunchback, his features homely, his eyes big and colourless and myopic, his underlip thick and drooping, his speech hesitant, his hands twitching spasmodically. However, he was good natured, kindly, sometimes idealistic.. He read chivalric romances, and conceived the notion of reconquering Naples for France, and Jerusalem for Christendom.
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Though this substituted one tyranny for many
It has often been said that the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship.
He and his generation paid for the future prosperity and splendour of France
The rewards of a dictatorship are not always apparent at the time.
Perhaps it was not altogether benevolent !
Brian
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Just been watching Quentin Durwood movie on the TV.
This is fiction from the pen of Walter Scott, but it takes in much of the graft,
treachery and violence of the time we are reading about.
If you have not seen the movie and you have a couple of hours to spare
I would recommend it to you. Louis XI and Charles are well presented.
Brian
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Nevertheless later ages were to benefit from his subordination of the nobles, his reorganization of finance, administration, and defence, his promotion of industry, commerce, and printing, his formation of a modern unified state. He and his generation paid for the future prosperity and splendour of France.
This comment reminds me of something I read the other day about 'The Silent Generation'. The author called the time period from 1930 to 1945 'the silent generation'. Those born during that decade and half never produced a president of the United States.
The 'silents' were too busy working building this country into a superpower, paving the country from coast to coast with interstates, building the structure to send a man to the moon, feeding a lot of the world, building everywhere, manufacturing the goods we needed. We were too busy to run for president.
Now the worm has turned and we have more 'non-workers' than workers in this country according to the article. The 'baby boomers' who produced our last three presidents are taking us in a different direction.
The prosperity through austerity that Louis X1 left for France's future would be their undoing with another Louie who carried the title to the opposite extreme.
Emily
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Thanks Brian for the movie suggestion. I will watch it if it appears on our television.
Emily
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Hi, all! I notice that Will Durant's books are now available as e-books on both Mac and PC. ( Search in Google. ) I saw the current volume we are reading quoted as $16.99 Would all readers be willing to download a copy? If so we could set say a week to read and discuss each section as displayed in the Table of Contents, and then move on to the next.
This would save an great amount of laborious one finger typing, but I am willing to carry on as at present if that is what readers would prefer. What say you all ? -- Trevor
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Trevor, that is an excellent idea. I can download books from my library onto my computer or Kindle.
You can still direct us as to the chapters we will be discussing so that everyone is on the same page.
You do a great job, and 'one finger typing' no less. I took typing in high school over sixty years ago, and got a typewriter for my birthday in my junior year, so have always typed since then.
Emily
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Trevor - - - I personally have gotten used to the present format of looking at a page of text and discussing it instantaneously, and I enjoy doing it that way.
Is it possible for you to download the eBook (I see from searching Google that the Volumes are actually available free) and then for you to continue giving us "homework" as previously.
by copying (cut and paste), the task on to our SeniorLearn page ?
I have resisted the idea of acquiring the entire book or even the volume that we are presently discussing. Not because of expense, but because I think it is so much more congenial to have a smaller and specific passage to discuss.
If this is possible, and feasible, it would certainly put an end to your painstaking two-finger
typing that must have taken ages of your time - - - and for which I am truly grateful.
Brian
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OK, it's The Reformation, right? I downloaded a sample. It's $14.99 on the kindle. Page numbers are useless on kindle: but headings and sub-headings would do it. I'll download the whole thing when/if we agree.
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I have the print set, so I can still use that. Spent big bucks for it when it came out, and the darn things are falling apart. Cheap binding, cheap covers.
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Re e-book proposal. I have found that Will Durant's ' the Reformation' is available in NZ in e-book format. But to have it downloaded to my computer, I will have to buy it with a credit card, no cheques will be accepted. As I do not have a credit card, I shall have to contact my bank and get one.
The only alternative is for you each to get a copy of the book, either free e-mail or print.
I think that is too much to ask of you all, so will have to have some other brain wave.
I will download the book and then see if I can copy and paste the text. I have a suspicion that such might not be allowed by the e-book publishers. Never-the-less I will try and see if I can work something out over the next few days. I'll let you know what happens by the end of next week == Trevor.
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DURANT’S S o C
Vol. VI the REFORMATION
Pgs 93-96
The house of Anjou had held the Kingdom of Naples (1268-1435 ) until evicted by Alfonso of Aragon. The claims of the Anjou dukes had been bequeathed to Louis XI; they were now proclaimed by Charles. His council thought him the last person in the world to lead an army in a major war; but they hoped that a captured Naples would allow French commerce to dominate the Mediterranean. To protect the royal flanks they ceded Artois and Franche-comté to Maximilian of Austria, and Cerdagne and Roussillon to Ferdinand of Spain; they thought to get half of Italy for the parings of France. Heavy taxes, pawned gems, and loans from Genoese bankers and Lodovico, Regent of Milan, provided an army of 40,000 men, one hundred siege guns, eighty-six ships of war.
Charles set out gaily (1494), perhaps not loath to leave two Annes behind. He was welcomed in Milan ( which had a score to settle with Naples ), and found its ladies irresistible. He left a trail of natural children on his march, but handsomely refused to touch a reluctant maiden, who had been conscripted to his pleasure by his ‘valet-de-chambre’; instead he sent for her lover, presided over a betrothal, and gave her a dowry of 500 crowns. Naples had no force capable of resisting his; he entered it in easy triumph ( 1495), enjoyed its scenery, cuisine, women, and forgot Jerusalem. He was apparently one of the lucky Frenchmen who did not contract, in his campaign, the venereal disease that was later called ‘morbus gallicus’ because it spread so rapidly in France after the troops’ return. A “Holy Alliance” of Alexander VI, Venice, and Lodovico of Milan ( who had changed his mind ) forced Charles to evacuate Naples and retreat through a hostile Italy. His reduced army fought an indecisive engagement at Fornovo( 1495), and hastened back to France, carrying with it, among other contagions, the Renaissance.
It was at Fornovo that Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard, then twenty-two, first displayed the courage that earned him half the famous title of ‘le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche.’ Born in the Château Bayard in the Dauphiné, he came of a noble family every head of which, for two centuries past, had died in battle; and in this encounter Pierre seemed bent on continuing the tradition. He had two horses killed under him, captured an enemy standard, and was knighted by his grateful King. In an age of coarseness, promiscuity, and treachery he maintained all the virtues of chivalry -- magnanimous without display, loyal without servility, honorable without offensive pride, and carrying through a dozen wars a spirit so kindly and gay that contemporaries called him le bon chevalier. We shall meet him again.
Charles survived his Italian journey by three years. Going to watch a game of tennis at Amboise, he struck his head against a loosened door and died of a cerebral lesion at the age of twenty-eight. As his children had predeceased him, the throne past to his nephew the Duke of Orléans, who became Louis XII (1498) Born to Charles of Orléans when the poet was seventy, Louis was now thirty-six , and already in feeble health. His morals were abnormally decent for the time, and his manners so frank and amiable that France learned to love him despite his futile wars. He seemed guilty of discourtesy when, in the year of his accession, he divorced Jeanne de France, daughter of Louis XI; but he had been forced by that pliantly inflexible king to marry the unprepossessing girl when he was but eleven years old. He could never develop affection for her, and now he persuaded Alexander VI -- in return for a French bride, county, and pension to the pope’s son Caesar Borgia-- to annul that marriage on grounds of consanguinity, and to sanction his union with the widowed Anne or Brittany, who carried her duchy in her trousseau. They took up their abode at Blois, and gave France a royal model of mutual devotion and loyalty.
Louis XII illustrated the superiority of character to intellect. He had not the shrewd mind of Louis XI, but he had good will and good sense, and wit enough to delegate many of his powers to wisely chosen aides. He left administration, and most policy , to his life long friend Georges, Cardinal d’Amboise; and this prudent and kindly prelate managed affairs so well that the whimsical public, when any new task arose, would shrug its shoulders and say, “let Georges do it.”. France was astonished to find its taxes reduced, first by a tenth, then by a third. The king, though reared in riches, spent as little as possible on himself and his court, and fattened no favourites. He abolished the sale of offices, forbade the acceptance of gifts by magistrates, opened the government postal service to private use, and bound himself to choose, for any administrative vacancy, one of three men nominated by the judiciary, and not to remove any state employee except after open trial and proof of dishonesty or incompetence. Some comedians and courtiers made fun of his economies, but he took their humour in good spirit. “Amongst their ribaldries,” he said," they may sometimes tell us useful truths; let them amuse themselves, provided they respect the honour of women... I had rather make courtiers laugh at my stinginess than make my people weep by my extravagance.” The surest means of pleasing him was to show him some new way of benefiting the people.. They expressed their gratitude by calling him Père du peuple. Never in its memory had France known such prosperity.
It was a pity this happy reign tarnished its record with further invasions of Italy. Perhaps Louis and other French kings undertook these sallies to occupy and decimate the quarrelsome nobles who might otherwise have harassed France with civil war, threatening the still unstable monarchy and national unity. After twelve years of victory in Italy, Louis XII had to withdraw his troops from the peninsular, and then lost to the English at Guinegate ( 1513), an engagement derisively called the Battle of the Spurs because the French cavalry fled from the field in such unwonted haste. Louis made peace, and was content thereafter to be only King of France.
The death of Anne of Brittany (1514) completed the cycle of his woes. She had given him no heir, and it was with little pleasure that he married his daughter Claude to Francis, Count of Angoulême, now next in line for the throne. His aides urged him, at fifty-two, to take a third wife and cheat the ebullient Francis by begetting a son. He accepted Mary Tudor, the sixteen-year-old sister of Henry VIII. She led the king a merry and exhausting life, insisting on all the attentions due to beauty and youth. Louis died in the third month of his marriage (1515), leaving his son-in-law a defeated but prosperous France that remembered with affection the Father of the People.
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He left a trail of natural children on his march, but handsomely refused to touch a reluctant maiden, who had been conscripted to his pleasure by his ‘valet-de-chambre’
Hard to imagine 40,000 soldiers in your town and the King sending his valet out to 'conscript' maidens. If the King didn't get you the soldiers would.
Speaking of valets, Pope Benedict's valet butler, who is with him wherever he goes, is in the Vatican jail tonight. He has been accused of giving the press private papers concerning the Pope and Vatican. He will appear before a judge in the Vatican.
"No man is a hero to his valet"............Anne Cornuel
Emily
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Durants’ S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 96-105
THE RISE OF THE CHÂTEAUX
Every French art but ecclesiastical architecture now felt the influence of the strengthened monarchy and its Italian forays. Church building kept to Flamboyant Gothic, declaring its own decadence through extravagant decoration and prodigal detail, but dying like an operatic courtesan with all the fascination of feminine delicacy, adornment, and grace. Noble civic buildings redeemed the strife and chaos of the age. Stately city halls rose in Arras, Douai, Saint-Omer and other places. Grenoble built a Palais de Justice in 1505, Rouen a still more resplendent one in 1493; Robert Ango and Rolland Leroux designed it in ornate Gothic, the nineteenth century redecorated it, the second world war gutted it.
This was the first century of the French châteaux. The Church had been made subject to the state; the enjoyment of this world encroached upon preparation for the next; the kings would themselves be gods, and make for their leisure a Mohammedan paradise along the Loire. Between 1490 and 1530 the château fort or castle changed into the château de plaisance. Charles VIII returning from his Neapolitan campaign, demanded of his architects a palace as splendid as those he had seen in Italy. He had already restored the old castle at Amboise; now he commissioned Italian architects, sculptors and painters, along with French builders and artisans, to transform it “ in the style of Italy”. The result was superb, a luxurious ’ logis du roi‘, a royal lodge. A mass of towers, pinnacles, cornices, corbels, dormers, and balconies, rising imperially on a slope overlooking the peaceful river. A new species of architecture had come to birth.
The style offended patriots and purists by wedding Gothic towers to Renaissance palaces, and by replacing Flamboyant decoration with classical forms and details. The walls, the cylindrical towers, the high sloping roofs, the machicolated battlements, the occasional moats, were still medieval, recalling a time when a man’s home had to be his castle and his fort; but the new spirit brought the dwelling out of its massive martial shell, broadened the windows in rectilinear line to let in the sun, beautified them with frames of carved stone, adorned the interior with classical pilasters, moldings, medallions, statues, arabesques, and reliefs, and surrounded the building with gardens, fountains, flowers, and usually , a hunting wood or smiling plain, In these amazing homes of luxury, darkness gave way to light, medieval fear and gloom, to Renaissance confidence, audacity, and joy. The love of life became an architectural style.
Gothic sculpture made its exit with infinite grace in the exquisitely carved decoration of the tombs and retable in the church at Brou, where the figure of Sibyl Agrippa is as fair a form as any at Chartres or Reims. But meanwhile Italian artists were remolding French sculpture to Renaissance independence, symmetry, and grace. Intercourse between France and Italy was growing through the visits of ecclesiastics, diplomats, merchants, and travellers; With Charles VIII and Georges and Charles d’Amboise the movement became an impetuous stream. Nicolas Froment began with an almost Dutch realism in ‘The Resurrection of Lazarus’. But in 1476 he moved from Avignon to Aix-en-Provence, and painted a triptych, ‘The Burning Bush’ whose central panel, showing the Virgin enthroned, has Italian qualities in the background. A like evolution of style marked the work of the “Master of Moulins”- probably Jean Perréal.
The one unforgettable figure in the French literature of the fifteenth century is François Villon. He lied, stole, cheated, fornicated, and killed like the kings and nobles of his time, but with more rhyme and reason. He was so poor he could not call even his own name his own. Born François de Montcorbier ( 1431), reared in plague and misery in Paris, and adopted by a kindly priest, Guillaume de Villon, he took his foster-father’s name, disgraced it, and gave it immortality. Guillaume put up with the lad’s pranks and truancies, financed his studies at the university, and took proud comfort when François received the degree of master of arts ( 1452). It must have saddened the hearts of Guillaume and François’ mother to see him turning from piety to poetry, from theology to burglary. Paris was rich in rakes, trolls, quacks, sneak thieves, beggars, bullies, procurers, and drunks, and the reckless youth made friends in almost every category; for a while he served as a pimp. On June 5, 1455, a priest, Philippe Chermoye, started a quarrel with him, and cut his lip with a knife, whereupon Villon gashed him so deeply in the groin that within a week Philippe was dead. An outlaw hunted by the police, the poet fled from Paris and for almost a year hid in the countryside.
He returned shrunk and wan, sharp of features and dry of skin, keeping an eye out for gendarmes, picking a lock or pocket now and then, and hungering for food a and love. he became enamored of a Bourgeois lass, who bore with him, till she could find a better cavalier, who beat him; he loved her the more, but commemorated her later, as “ma demoiselle au nez tortu”-- “my lady of the twisted nose.” On Christmas Eve, 1456 he joined three others in robbing the College of Navarre of some 500 crowns. ( $12,500 ?)Again we lose track of him; then, suddenly, he reappears, condemned to death in a prison at Orléans (1460 ) Released in an amnesty by Charles, he eventually went back to Guillaume de Villon and the cloisters, and his mother rejoiced. But the law had not forgotten him. The College of Navarre had him arrested and consented to his liberation only on condition that he repay his share of the loot -- at forty crowns a year. On the night he was released there was a brawl in which a priest was stabbed. Though apparently not involved in the brawl, he was again arrested; he was tortured by having water forced down his throat and then condemned to death. He sent a message to his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, who could forgive seventy times seven, once more interceded for the poet. On January 3, 1463 the court ordered that his sentence be annulled, on condition that he be banished for ten years from the town and viscounty of Paris. François thanked the court, packed his bundle, grasped the bottle of wine and the purse that the good Guillaume gave him, and marched out of Paris and history. We hear nothing of him more.
He was a thief, but a melodious thief, and the world has need of melody. He could be brutally coarse, and he flung epithets at women who fell short of his desires. All this we can forgive for the sins that were committed against his sins, and the wistful music of his verse. He paid the penalty for what he was, and left us only the reward.
All in all, excepting the châteaux, the fifteenth century was a fallow age in French art. The soil was ploughed by soldiers’ feet and fertilized with wartime blood; but only toward the end of the period would men have the means and leisure to sow the seeds of the harvest that Francis I would reap. the self portrait of Fouquet betrays an age of humiliation and distress; the miniatures of his pupil Bourdichon reflect the familial peace of Louis XII’s second marriage, and the smiling ease of a recovered land.
The worst was over for France; the best was about to come.
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And here is the Fouquet self-portrait: "betraying an age of humiliation and distress::
http://www.abcgallery.com/F/fouquet/fouquet3.html
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Villon appears to have been quite the character !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Villon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Villon)
Brian
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Here is a link to the minatures of Jean Bourdichon...........
http://www.google.com/search?q=bourdichon&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8RzQT_r4K-H20gGYm8XNDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CFwQsAQ&biw=800&bih=403
Emily
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Interesting. Did you notice the two prints of a woman's head that were obviously the same picture, but reversed?
I followed up the picture of the workers, since it stood out among the saints and aristocrats. It's called The Four Estates of Society.
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The more history i learn the closer i lean toward the concept that humanity has more evil than good in it.
Jean
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Chateau at Amboise
http://www.werbeka.com/schloss/frankr/amboe.htm
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The church at Brou - click on the picture to enlarge it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monastery_of_Brou
And the Sibyl of Agrippa
http://www.lessing-photo.com/search.asp?a=1&kc=202020205633&kw=TOMB+OF+MARGARETE%2C+AUSTRIA&p=1&ipp=
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Durants' S o C
Vol VI The Reformation
Pgs. 106-109
England in the Fifteenth Century.
Henry IV, having reached the throne, found himself challenged by revolt. In Wales Owain Glyn Dwr overthrew the English domination for a moment.(1401-1408), but the future Henry V, now Prince of Wales, overcame him with dashing strategy; and Owen Glendower, after leading a hunted life for eight years in Welsh fastnesses and crags, died a few hours after receiving full pardon from his gallant conqueror. Synchronizing his rebellion with Glendower’s, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, led some nobles of the north into an uprising against a king unable to keep all the promises he had made to them for their aid in deposing Richard II. The Earl’s reckless son Harry “Hotspur” ( unwarrantably lovable in Shakespeare ) led a hesitant and inadequate force against the king at Shrewsbury ( 1403); there the youth died in foolish heroism, Henry IV fought manfully in the front ranks, and his gay wastrel son, “Prince Hal ,“displayed the bravery that would win Agincourt and France. These and other troubles left Henry little time or zest for statesmanship; his revenues limped behind his expenditures; he quarrelled tactlessly with Parliament, and ended his reign amid fiscal chaos and the personal tribulations of leprosy, prolapse of the rectum, and venereal disease. “He departed to God,” says Holinshed, “in the year of his age forty-six.... in great perplexity and little pleasure.”
In tradition and Shakespeare, Henry V had lived a free and frolicsome youth, and had even conspired to seize the throne from a father incapacitated by illness but tenacious of power. Contemporary chroniclers merely hint at his revels, but assure us that after his accession “ he was changed into an other man, studying to be honest, grave, and modest. He who had romped with topers and tarts now declared himself to leading a united Christendom against the advancing Turks -- adding however, that he must first conquer France. He accomplished his proximate aim with astonishing speed, and for a precarious moment an English king sat on the throne of France. German princes sent him homage, and thought of making him emperor. He rivalled Caesar briefly in the planning of campaigns, the provisioning of his armies, the affection of his troops, and in exposing himself in all battles and weathers. Suddenly, still a youth of thirty-five, he died of fever at Bois-de-Vincennes ( 1422)
His death saved France, and almost ruined England. His popularity might have persuaded the taxpayers to rescue the government from bankruptcy; but his son Henry VI was, at accession, only nine months old, and a disgraceful sequence of corrupt regents and inept generals sank the treasury into irredeemable debt. The new ruler never rose to royal stature; he was a delicate and studious neurasthenic who loved religion and books, and shuddered at the thought of war; the English mourned that they had lost a king and won a saint. In 1452, imitating Charles VI of France, Henry VI went mad. A year later his ministers signed a peace acknowledging England’s defeat in the Hundred Years’ War.
Richard, Duke of York, governed for two years as Protector ; in a cloudy-lucid interval Henry dismissed him ( 1454 ); the angry Duke claimed the throne through decent from Edward III; he branded the Lancastrian kings as usurpers, and joined Salisbury, Warwick, and other barons in those Wars of the Roses -- Lancastrian red and Yorkist white -- which through thirty-one years ( 1454-85 ) pitted noble against noble in the indefatigable suicide of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, and left England impoverished and desolate. Soldiers demobilized by unwanted peace, and loath to resume the chores of peasantry, enlisted on either side, plundered the villages and towns, and murdered without a qualm all who stood in their way. The Duke of York was killed in battle at Goldsmith’s Wakefield (1460), but his son Edward, Earl of March, carried on the war remorselessly, slaughtering all captives, with or without pedigree; while Margret of Anjou, the virile queen of the gentle Henry, led the Lancastrian resistance with unblushing ferocity. March won at Townton (1461), ended the Lancastrian dynasty, and became, as Edward IV, the first Yorkist king.
But the man who really ruled England for the next six years was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Head of a rich and numerous clan, possessed of a dominating and yet engaging personality, as subtle in statesmanship as he was brilliant in war, “Warwick the Kingmaker” had fathered the victory at Townton, and had raised Edward to the throne. The king, resting from the strife, dedicated himself to women, while Warwick governed so well that all England south of the Tyne and east of the Severn ( for Margaret was still fighting) honoured him as in all but name the king. When Edward rebelled against the reality and turned against him, Warwick joined Margaret, drove Edward from England, restored Henry VI to nominal power ( 1470 ) and ruled again. But Edward organized an army with Burgundian aid, crossed to Hull, defeated and slew Warwick at Barnet, defeated Margaret at Tewkesbury ( 1471 ), had Henry VI murdered in the Tower, and lived happily ever afterward. He was still only thirty-one. Comines describes him as “one of the handsomest men of his age,” who “ took no delight in anything but ladies, dancing, entertainment, and the chase.” He replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the Nevilles, and by accepting from Louis XI, as bribes to peace, 125,000 crowns and promise of 50,000 more per year. So eased, he could ignore Parliament. Feeling himself secure, he surrendered himself again to luxury and indolence, wore himself out lovingly, grew fat and jolly, and died at forty-one in the amplitude of his person and his power. ( 1483 ).
He left two sons; the twelve-year-old Edward V, and Richard, Duke of York, aged nine. Their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had for the past six years served as chief minister, and with such industry, piety, and skill, that when he made himself regent, England accepted him without protest, despite his “Ill featured limbs, crooked back, hard-favoured visage, and left shoulder much higher than his right”. Whether through the intoxication of power, or just suspicion of conspiracies to unseat him, Richard imprisoned several notables, and executed one. On July 6 1483, he had himself crowned as Richard III, and on July 15 the two young princes were murdered in the Tower -- no one knows by whom. Once again the nobility rose in revolt, this time led by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. When their modest forces met the King’s far larger army on Bosworth Field ( 1485 ), most of Richard’s soldiers refused to fight; and -- lacking both a kingdom and a horse-- he died in a desperate charge. The Yorkist dynasty ended; the earl of Richmond, as Henry VII, began the Tudor line that would close with Elizabeth.
Under the blows of necessity Henry developed the virtues and vices that seemed to him demanded by his place. Holbein pictured him in a Whitehall fresco; tall, slender, beardless, pensive, humane, hardly revealing the subtle, secret calculation, the cold, stern pride, the flexible but patiently obdurate will that brought England from its destitute disintegration under the sixth Henry to its wealth and concentrated power under the eighth. He taxed the nation ingeniously, bled the rich with ‘benevolences” or forced gifts, made avid use of fines to feed his treasury and discourage crime, and winked as judges fitted the fine, not to the offence but to the purse. He was the first English king since 1216 who kept his expenses within his income, and his charities and generosities mitigated his parsimony. His life was darkened with perennial suspicion, not without cause; he trusted no one, concealed his purposes, and by fair means or dubious he achieved his ends. He established the Court of Star Chamber to try in secret sessions, obstreperous nobles too powerful to fear local judges or juries; and year by year he brought the ruined aristocracy and the frightened prelacy into subordination to the monarchy. Strong individuals resented the decline of liberty and the desuetude of Parliament; but peasants forgave much in a king who disciplined their lords, and manufacturers and merchants thanked him for his wise promotion of industry and trade.
He had found England a feudal anarchy, a government too poor and disreputable to win obedience or loyalty; he left to Henry VIII a state respected, orderly, solvent, united, and at peace.
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As a schoolboy, in the early 1940s we seemed to spend ages in history classes learning about all those damned Henrys and Richards.... I never could sort them all out. It was a relief to me, when, several years later I found the Durants' telling of this period, and at last I began to find a way through it all.
Just why, we in NZ had to learn about this period of English history has always been a mystery to me. I suppose it had something to do with Shakespeare and all that jazz. -- Trevor
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English/European history gave Shakespeare such wonderful characters to study and define for us. One of the reason i love history are the personal stories we learn of such characters. I taught my classes w/ emphasis on the personalities of historical subjects. The students loved it and would ask "Why didn't they teach us history n this way in high school, it's so much more interesting?"
Jean
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If you only want to remember the names of the English Kings, it's easy. English schools provide us with this nice poem to help remember.
"The first line, "Willy, Willy, Harry, Stee" translates as William I, William II, Henry I, Stephan etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_verse_of_monarchs_in_England#The_verse
I learned it as a child, and never forgot it. but the version I learned as a child ended "And George 6 brings us up to date."
You can see how old I am!
My ambition, as yet unfulfilled, is to make one for the US Presidents. I have the first two lines:
"Georgie, John, and Jeff make three
Madison, Monroe anf John Quinceee."
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The verse i learned for the first 7 presidents was Wash And Jeff Made Many A Joke
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Here it is: Each word is the initial of a president: Washington And(Adams) Jefferson Made(Madison) etc.
Washington And Jefferson Made Many A Joke.
Van Buren Had To Pay, Taylor's Frying Pan Broke.
Lincoln Just Got Home Greatly Astonished;
Cleveland Had Copied McKinley's Relish. (as in, of course, the recipe.)
Taft Was Here Cooling His Red Tomatoes.
Eisenhower Kindly Joined Nixon For Cocoa.
Reagain's Bananas Comveniently Bring
our list of Presidents to an end.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 109-111
THE GROWTH OF ENGLISH WEALTH
Apparently nothing had been gained by the Great Revolt of 1381. Many Servile dues were still exacted, and as late as 1537 the House of Lords rejected a bill for the final, manumission of all serfs. The enclosure of “commons” was accelerated; thousands of displaced serfs became propertyless proletarians in the towns; the sheep, said Thomas More, were eating up the peasantry. In some ways the movement was good: lands approaching exhaustion were renitrogenated by the grazing sheep, and by 1500 only 1% of the population were serfs. A class of yeomen grew, tilling their own land, and gradually giving the English commoner the sturdy independent character that would later forge the Commonwealth and build an unwritten constitution of unprecedented liberty.
Feudalism became unprofitable as industry and commerce spread into a national and money economy bound up with foreign trade. When the serf produced for his lord, he had scant motive for expansion or enterprise; when the free peasant and the merchant could sell their product in the open market the lust for gain quickened the economic pulse of the nation; the villages sent more food to the towns, the towns produced more goods to pay for it, and the exchange of surpluses overflowed the old municipal limits and guild restrictions to cover England and reach out beyond the sea.
Some guilds became “merchant companies” licensed by the King to sell English products abroad. Whereas in the fourteenth century most English trade had been carried in Italian vessels, the British now built their own ships, and sent them into the North Sea, the coastal Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. The Genoese and Hanseatic merchants resented these newcomers, and fought them with embargoes and piracy; but Henry VII, convinced that the development of England required foreign trade, took English shipping under governmental protection, and arranged with other nations commercial agreements that established maritime order and peace. By 1500 the “merchant adventurers” of England ruled the trade of the North Sea. With an eye to commerce with China and Japan, the farseeing King commissioned the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, then living in Bristol as John Cabot, to seek a northern passage across the Atlantic (1497 ).Cabot had to be content with discovering New Foundland and, in a second voyage (1498) exploring the coast from Labrador to Delaware; he died in that year, and his son Sebastian passed into the service of Spain. Probably neither the sailor nor his King realized that these expeditions inaugurated British imperialism, and opened to English trade and colonists a region that would in time be England’s strength and salvation.
Meanwhile protective tariffs nourished national industry; economic order reduced the rate of interest sometimes as low as 5%; and governmental decrees rigorously regulated wages and the conditions of labour. A statute of Henry VII (1495 ) ruled:
that every artificer and labourer be at his work, between the midst of the month of March and the midst of the month of September, before five o’clock in the morning and that he have but half an hour for his breakfast, and an hour and a half for his {midday } dinner, at such time as he hath season for sleep . . . and that he depart not from work . . . till between seven and eight of the clock in the evening . . . And that from the midst of September to the midst of March every artificer and labourer be at their work in the springing of the day, and depart not till night . . . and that they sleep not by day.
However the worker rested and drunk on Sundays, and on twenty-four additional holidays in the year. “Fair prices” were set by the State for many commodities, and we hear of arrests for exceeding these figures. Real wages in relation to prices, were apparently higher in the late fifteenth century than in the early nineteenth.
The revolts of English labour in this age stressed political rights as well as economic wrongs. Semi-communistic propaganda continued in almost every year, and workingmen were repeatedly reminded that “you be made of the same mold and metal as the gentles be made of; why then should they sport and play, and you labour and toil? -- why should they have so much of the prosperity and treasure of this world, and ye so little?” Riots against enclosures of common lands were numerous, and there were periodic conflicts between merchants and artisans; but we hear too of agitations for municipal democracy, for the representation of labour in Parliament, and for a reduction of taxes.
In June 1450, a large and disciplined force of peasants and town labourers marched upon London and camped at Blackheath. Their leader, Jack Cade, presented their grievances in an orderly document. “All the common people, what for taxes and tallages and other oppressions, might not live by their handiwork and husbandry.” The Statute of Labourers should be repealed, and a new ministry should be formed. The government accused Cade of advocating communism** The troops of Henry VI, and the retainers of certain nobles, met the rebel army at Sevenoaks ( June 18 1450 ). To the surprise of all, the rebels won, and poured into London. To appease them the King’s Council ordered the arrest of Lord Say and William Crowmer, officials especially hated for their exactions and tyranny. On July 4 they were surrendered to the mob that besieged the Tower; they were tried by the rebels, refused to plead, and were beheaded. According to Holinshed the two heads were raised on pikes and carried through the streets in joyous procession; every now and then their mouths were knocked together in a bloody kiss. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Winchester negotiated a peace, granting some demands and offering amnesty. The rebels agreed and dispersed. Jack Cade, however, attacked the castle of Queensborough in Sheppey; the government outlawed him, and on July 12 he was mortally wounded while resisting arrest. Eight accomplices were condemned to death, the rest were pardoned by the King, “ to the great rejoicing of all his subjects.”
** Cf. Shakespeare’s caricature of Jack Cade: “there shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. . . I will make it a felony to drink small beer; all the realm shall be a common... And here . . I charge and command that of the city’s cost the pissing conduit run nothing but claret wine. . . Henceforth all things shall be in common” --- Henry VI, iv, 2, 6 .
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I admire Jack Cade. He may have died fighting for the rights of the common man, but without someone standing up to the nobles (what a misnomer) and the king and his retinue of parasites, nothing would ever have changed and all but the so called 'no-bility' would have remained slaves which is what the serfs were.
Jack Cade may be dead, but some of his family members made it to America, across the tidewater, lowlands, and Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia into the Smokey mountains of Tennessee. There is a wonderful place called Cades cove. It has been over fifty years since I've been there but it was one of the most beautiful spots I remember from childhood. The quiet (which I like) was embracing like a warm coat.
Everyone tells me things have changed and now with the National park, everything is such a tourist trap that I would not enjoy it anymore. I have found a replacement for my perfect place for 'quiet' and it is about 20 or so miles from where I live. It too is in a cove at the foot of the Cumberlands. It is so quiet one can hear themselves breathing.
And we all can drink blackberry wine to honor Jack Cade.
Emily
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Emily: that's a neat story. i had no idea of that history.
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Durant's S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pages 111--115
MORALS AND MANNERS
The Venetian ambassador, about 1500, reported to his government :
The English are for the most part -- both men and women, of all ages handsome and well proportioned . . . They are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say “he looks like an Englishman,” and that it is a great pity that he is not one.
The English might have answered that most of his description, ‘mutatis mutandis,’ would fit all peoples. Assuredly, they were a vigorous stock, in body, character, and speech. They swore so heartily that even Joan of Arc regularly called them Goddams. The women too were plainspoken, talking of matters physiological and genetic with a freedom that might shock sophisticates of today. Humour was as coarse and profane as speech. Manners were rough, even in the aristocracy. The lusty spirit that would agitate the Elizabethans was already formed, in the fifteenth century, out of a life of danger, violence, and insolence. Every man had to be his own policeman, ready to meet blow with blow and, at need, kill with a steady stomach. These same powerful animals could be generous, chivalrous, and on occasion, even tender. Margaret Paston’s letter to her sick husband ( 1443 ) shows how timeless and raceless love can be. We should add, however, that this same lady almost broke the head of her daughter for refusing to marry the parental choice.
Girls were brought up in protective demureness and modesty, for men were beasts of prey, and virginity was an economic asset in the marital market. Marriage was an incident in the transfer of property. Girls could legally marry at twelve, boys at fourteen, even without their parent’s consent; but in the upper classes, to accelerate property transactions, betrothals were arranged by the parents soon after the children reached the age of seven. Since love marriages were exceptional, and divorce forbidden, adultery was popular, especially in the aristocracy. “There reigned abundantly,” says Holinshed, “ the filthie sin of lechery and fornication, with abominable adulteries, speciallie in the King.” Edward IV after sampling many loves, chose Jane Shore as his favourite concubine. She served him with wanton fidelity, and proved a kind friend at court to many a petitioner. When Edward died, Richard III, possibly to parade his brother’s vices and disguise his own, forced her to march through London streets in the white robe of a public penitent. She lived to a destitute old age, despised and rejected by those whom she had helped.
Never in known history had Englishmen ( now so law-abiding ) been so lawless. A hundred years of war had made men brutal and reckless, nobles returning from France continued to fight in England, and employed demobilized soldiers in their feuds. Bribary was almost universal: judges could scarcely judge without “gifts”; juries were paid to be friendly to plaintiff or defendant or both; tax collectors were “greased” to let exemptions slip readily from their palms; recruiting officers, like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, could be induced to overlook a town; an English army invading France was bought off by the enemy. Men were as mad for money as now, and poets like Chaucer, having denounced greed, practiced it. The moral structure of society might have collapsed had not its foundations been mortised in the simple life of common men and women, who, while their betters plotted the wars and mischief of the time, maintained the home and carried on the race.
To save oil, the main meals were taken in daylight, “dinner” at ten in the morning, “supper “ at five in the afternoon. Men wore hats at table, to keep their long hair from falling into the food. Forks were reserved for special purposes, like serving salad or toasting cheese; their English use in the modern manner first appears in 1463. The knife was supplied by the guest who carried it in a short sheath attached to his girdle. Etiquette required that food should be brought to the mouth with the fingers. As handkerchiefs were not in use until the middle of the sixteenth century, men were requested to blow their noses with the hand that held the knife rather than that which conveyed the food. Meat was the national food; vegetables were scarce or shunned. Beer and ale were the national drinks; wine was not as plentiful or popular as in France or Italy, but a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns. Dress was splendid in the aristocracy. simple men wore a plain gown or hood, or a short tunic convenient for work; moneyed men liked furred and feathered hats, flowered robes, or fancy jackets bulging at the sleeves, and tight high hose which, Chaucer's parson complained, “ shewen . . . the horrible swollen members, that seemeth . . . hernia, and eke the buttocks . . . as it were the hindre part of a she ape in the fulle of the moon.” The long pointed toes of the fourteenth century disappeared in the fifteenth, and shoes became rounded or broad at the toe. As for “the outrageous array of wommen, God wot that though the visages of somme of them seem full chaste and debonaire, yet notify they,” by “ the horrible disordinate scantinesse” of their dress, their “likerousnesse” ( lecherousness) “ and pride”
. However, the pictures that have come down to us show the alluring sex tightly encased in a plethora of garments from ears to feet.
Amusements ranged from checkers and chess, backgammon and dice, to fishing and hunting, archery and jousts. Playing cards reached England toward the end of the fifteenth century. Dancing and music were as popular as gambling; nearly every Englishman took part in choral song. Henry V rivalled John Dunstable among the outstanding composers of the day, and English singers were acclaimed on the continent. Men played tennis, handball, football, bowls, quoits; they wrestled and boxed, set cocks to fighting, baited bears and bulls. Crowds gathered to see acrobats and ropewalkers perform the feats that amused antiquity and amaze modernity. Women moved freely among men everywhere: drank in taverns, rode to hounds, hunted with falcons, distracted the spectators from the combatants. It was they who, led by the queen, judged the jousters and awarded the golden crown.
Travel was still travail, but nobody seemed to stay home -- a bad mark for monogamy. Roads were mud or dust, and robbers made no distinction of race, sex, class, or creed. Inns were picturesque and dirty, stocked with roaches, rats, and flees. Nearly every one of them had a Doll Tearsheet for sale, ( is that a prostitute? -- Trev.) and virtue could hardly find a bed. The poor went on foot, the well-to-do on horseback, usually in armed companies; the rich used new-fangled horse-drawn coaches -- reputedly invented by a fifteenth-century Hungarian in the village of Kocz.
Crime flourished, lawyers abounded. Towns were too poor to have any but unpaid volunteer police; but all males were required to join in the “hue and cry” after a fleeing criminal. Deterrents were sought in severe penalties for the few who were caught; burglary, larceny, arson, and sacrilege, as well as murder and treason, were punished with hanging on any convenient tree, and the corpse was left as a warning to others, and a feast for crows. The practice of torture -- both on the accused and on witnesses -- developed under Edward IV, and continued for 200 years.
Perhaps we judge the age too harshly, forgetting the barbarities of our enlightened century. Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice under Henry VI, thought more highly of his time, and wrote in its honour, two works once renowned. In a Dialogue, “De laudibus legum Angliae,” he praised the laws of England, gloried in the right of trial by jury, mourned the use of torture, and, like a thousand philosophers, warned princes to make themselves law-abiding servants of the people. In the “Monarchia, or Governance of England” he compared France and England patriotically: in France men could be condemned without trial, the States General was rarely called, the King levied taxes on necessities like salt and wine. After so exalting his country, Sir John concluded that all governments should be subject to the Pope, ‘usque ad pedum oscula ‘ -- “ even to kissing his feet”.
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Plus ca change - - - -
Brian
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Amen to Brian's comment....
Just catching up.....I don't believe i had read before that John Cabot was Italian. I may have and have just forgotten.
I love the cultural history, a nice change from the politics and religion and reenforces Brian's comment. Actually it is a little surprising how similar the 15th century life is to our 21st century one. I think i'll go searching for some more 16th century cultural history.
I have probably said before that studying history makes us aware that there's nothing new under the sun when observing human nature. What changes is the technology and how it's used.
Jean
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Below is a link to Shakespeare's 'Henry 1V' where Doll Tearsheet appears at the Boars Head Tavern in Eastcheap. Check some of her language out and decide if she is portrayed as a 'prostitute' or a woman trying to survive in a mans world.
http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry4p2&Act=2&Scene=4&Scope=scene
Emily
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Emily - - - you sent me scurrrying back to my Shakespeare volumes - - -
and I thank you for that.
I loved the true time honoured use of the word "swaggering" and have found the
original use of the casual remark we often use on parting - - - "Take care !"
"Well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself."
Shakespeare was a genius.
Brian
P.S. I think she was a prostitute.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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Brian, I too, think she was a woman of that age old profession. -- Trevor
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Trevor - - - Does that make you and I - male chauvinist pigs?
Brian
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Trevor and Brian - i'd think we'd need more substantial evidence to hang that moniker on you two, one act does not an mcp make...... ;)
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Mabel - - - Speaking for myself - it was not an act, I believe it.
Do you really think that a "Doll" is a woman struggling to find chastity in a male-driven world?
btw that's another term that Shakespeare introduced me to. "She's a real doll" may not
be the compliment it appears.
Brian
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I have to agree with you two. There are enough hints that she was a prostitute. But that doesn't mean that she wasn't also a woman trying to survive in a mans world. There weren't a whole lot of options open to women who had to support themselves.
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Thanks Joan for clarifying my 'survival' comment. I agree with you, and that was what I meant.
Doll Tearsheet, just the name, is a big hint as Trevor comments.
Had I written the play, one of the men would have been named Childe Rapier, and it would be easy to come up with a stable of names for all that entered the Boars Head. I would even change the name of the establishment, see how easy it would be to turn the tables and the tale.
It is still a mans world, but we are lucky that we have gentlemen here and I must say I agree with their statements. They were just being realistic and that is a good thing.
Emily
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Shakespeare WAS absolutely brilliant.
He even used "Spoonerisms" before they were claimed as an invention
by another William - William Archibald Spooner.
Remember the name of the tavern?
Brian
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Good point, brian. I missed that!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
pages 115 - 117
THE LOLLARDS
Archbishop Arundel, in 1407, reaffirmed the supremacy of canon or ecclesiastical law over all secular legislation, and condemned as a major heresy any rejection of papal decree. Recovering from Wyclif the Church grew stronger in fifteenth century England, and rising wealth overflowed into its coffers. “Chantries” were now a frequent form of contribution: persons expecting death paid for the building of a chapel and for the chanting of Masses to expedite their souls into paradise. As some twenty bishops and twenty-six abbots sat in the House of Lords with only forty-seven laymen, the Church controlled the major chamber of Parliament. To offset this, Henry VII -- and later Henry VIII-- insisted on the right of kings to nominate the bishops and abbots of England from the eligible clergy; and this dependence of the hierarchy on the monarchy eased the clerical surrender to Henry VIII’s assertion of royal supremacy over the English Church.
Meanwhile Wyclif’s Poor Preachers continued to spread their anticlerical ideas. As early as 1382 a monastic chronicler reported, with frightened exaggeration, that “ they multiplied exceedingly, like budding plants, and filled the whole realm... You could scarce meet two men on the road but that one of them was a disciple of Wyclif.” They found their readiest audience among the weavers of Norfolk. In 1395 the Lollards felt strong enough to present to parliament a bold statement of their principles. They opposed clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, image worship, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, the wealth and endowment of the Church, the employment of ecclesiastics in state offices, the necessity of the confession to priests, the ceremonies of exorcism, and the worship of the saints. In other pronouncements they recommended that all should read the Bible frequently, and should follow its precepts as superior to the decrees of the Church. They denounced war as unchristian, and luxury as immoral; they called for sumptuary laws that would compel a return to simple foods and dress; they abhorred oaths, and substituted for them such phrases as “I am sure,” or “it is sooth”--i.e., truth; already the Puritan mind view were taking form in Britain. A few preachers mingled socialism with their religion, but most of them refrained from attacking private property, and sought support of knights and gentry as well as of peasants and prolétaires.
Nevertheless the upper classes could not forget their narrow escape from social revolution in 1381, and the Church found in them a new readiness to protect her as a stabilizing force in the community. Richard II threatened with arrest the representatives of the Lollards in Parliament, and reduced them to silence. In 1397 the English bishops petitioned the king for the execution of impenitent heretics “ as in other realms subject to the Christian religion,” but Richard was loath to go to such lengths. In 1401 however, Henry IV and his parliament issued the famous statute De haeretico comburendo: all persons declared by an ecclesiastical court to be persistent heretics were to be burned, and all heretical books were to be destroyed. In that same year William Sawtrey, a Lollard priest, was burned at the stake. Other Lollards were arrested, recanted, and were treated leniently. In 1406 the Prince of Wales presented to Henry IV with a petition alleging that the propaganda of the Lollards, and their attacks on monastic property, threatened the whole existing fabric of society. The King ordered a more vigorous prosecution of the heretics, but the absorption of the bishops in the politics of the Papal Schism temporarily deflected their energy from the hunt. In 1410 Badby, a Lollard tailor, was condemned by the Church and was burned in Smithfield Market. Before the faggots were lighted “Prince Hal “ pleaded with Badby to recant, and offered him life and money; Badby refused, and mounted the pyre to his death.
The prince came to the throne in 1413 as Henry V, and gave his full support to the policy of suppression. One of his personal friends was sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, whom some of Shakespeare’s audience later identified with Falstaff Oldcastle had served the nation well in the field, but he tolerated and protected Lollard preachers on his lands in Herefordshire and Kent. Thrice the bishops summoned him to trial; thrice he refused to come; he yielded, however, to a writ from the King, and appeared before the bishops ( 1413 ) in that chapter house of St. Paul’s where Wyclif had stood trial thirty-six years before. He affirmed his sincere Christianity, but would not reject the Lollard views on confession or the Eucharist. he was condemned as a heretic, and was confined to the Tower of London; forty day’s grace was allowed him in the hope he would recant; instead he escaped. At the news the Lollards around London rose in revolt, and tried to seize the King. (1414) The attempt failed, and some leaders were caught and hanged. Oldcastle hid for three years in the mountains of Herefordshire and Wales; finally he was captured, hanged as a traitor, and then burned as a heretic (1417), state and Church both demanding their due.
As compared with other persecutions, that of Lollardry was almost moderate; the executions for heresy numbered eleven between 1400 and 1485. We hear of several Lollard congregations surviving until 1521; as late as 1518 Thomas Man, who claimed to have converted 700 to Lolllardry, suffered death at the stake; and six more were burned in 1521. When Henry VIII divorced England from Rome, and the nation accepted the change without revolution, the Lollards might have claimed that in some measure they had prepared the way.
In 1450 Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, published a book which he called, in the whimsical fashion of the times, ‘ Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy.’ It was avowedly a refutation of Lollardry, and assumed a vigorous anticlericalism among the people. It proposed to check these ideas not by imprisonment at the stake but solely by an appeal to reason. The enthusiastic bishop reasoned so much that he fell in love with reason and in ganger of heresy; he found himself refuting by reason some Lollard arguments from Scripture. In a ’Treatise on Faith’, he definitely placed reason above the Bible as a test of truth -- a position that Europe would take 200 years to regain For good measure the irrepressible Repressor added that the fathers of the Church were not always to be trusted; that Aristotle was not an unquestionable authority; that the Apostles had had no hand in the Apostles' Creed; and that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. The English bishops hailed the proud Pecock before the court (1457), and gave him a choice between recanting or burning. He disliked burning, read a public abjuration, was deposed from his see, and was segregated in Thorney Abbey to the end of his days ( 1460).
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The Lollards did lead the way to England breaking away from the Roman Catholic church, and the country accepting that fact. Henry V111 had another objective alltogether, divorcing his wife. He could not have cared one way or the other as long as his desires were met.
I liked the story of Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, who in his arguments for 'reason' got himself in a pickle and died soon after. Only after recanting 'reason' to keep from burning at the stake.
Burning people alive seemed to be a great deterent. While the Arab cultist whispered in the ear of the king that he must keep their cult out of the reach of 'reason'.
Emily
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I haven't had a chance to read this yet........i'll be back.........
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In 1410 Badby, a Lollard tailor, was condemned by the Church and was burned in Smithfield Market. Before the faggots were lighted “Prince Hal “ pleaded with Badby to recant, and offered him life and money; Badby refused, and mounted the pyre to his death.
Wikipedia gives a different account and places the event in the Midlands and not in London.
Smithfield is a meat market just beside St Bartholomew's Hospital.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Badby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Badby)
Many's the pint of beer I have had in the pub in Smithfield market, but that was many years ago.
Brian
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An Enlightment man in the 15th century! Love it!
I have frequently been impressed with the courage of a minority group of people who are willing to speak up for reform even in the face death. Of course, i guess there is a fine line between what i consider "reformers" and what others consider extremists and vice versa.
Speaking of "street markets" in the Middle ages, i'm reading Food in History and just last night read a gruesome section about the unsanitary conditions of the markets. Of course i was sublimally aware that a lack of hygiene would be reality, but reading it in black and white made it more real in my mind. I'm not fond of buying street food today, but, oh my, those folks literally took their lives in their hands. Between rancid meats and fleas and Rats and unwashed hands and animal refuse drawing flies......WHEW! Thank goodness i was born in the mid-20th century.......i say that often....:)
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I just noticed that our PBS station is showing Michael Wood/Story of England at 8:00 tonight. The description is: the Seeds of Reform: recalling Kibworth (?) during the Hundred Yrs War; also the town's first school; a rebellion against Henry V; Henry VIII's Protestant Reformation; the English Civil War; and the rise of the middle-class.
Whew! All of that in one hour!?! But it fits our discussion :)
Jean
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Gene, The Story of England is a series of four programs. The one you saw was the second in the series. The first one, From Romans to Normans, is available online for viewing. http://www.pbs.org/programs/michael-woods-story-england/
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Thanks Frybabe, i'm watching it now and i'll look on line for the first one. It's quite interesting.
They're talking all about Wycliff and the Lollards and the English Reformation. How nice of them to coordinate their broadcast w/ our reading! ;)
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Let's add a little history of the women of the period and the beginning of the House if Tudor...
Catherine of Valois was crowned Queen of England at Westminster Abbey in February, 1421. The son of Catherine and Henry, the future Henry VI, was born in December of 1421. Henry V died in August 1422, leaving the crown of England in the hands of a minor. During Henry's youth he was educated and raised by Lancastrians while the Duke of York, Henry's uncle, held power as Protector.
After the death of her husband, Henry V, Catherine of Valois began a secret relationship with Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire. In 1428 Parliament reacted to the rumors about this relationship by forbidding Catherine from marrying without consent of the king and the council. Historians are divided on whether Catherine had already married Owen Tudor before that Act of Parliament, or whether they married secretly in 1429.
In 1436, Owen Tudor was imprisoned and Catherine retired to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died the next year.
Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor had five children, half-siblings to King Henry VI. One daughter died in infancy and another daughter and three sons survived. The eldest son, Edmund, became Earl of Richmond in 1452. Edmund married Margaret Beaufort. Their son won the crown of England as Henry VII, claiming his right to the throne through conquest, but also through descent through his mother, Margaret Beaufort.
From About.com
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When we read Richard the third here in Seniornet, I briefly understood that lineage. But I can't seem to remember it.
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This is rather long, but it can be skimmed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pages 120 - 123
CAXTON and MALORY
The great literary event in fifteenth-century England was the establishment of its first printing press. Born in Kent, William Caxton migrated to Bruges as a merchant. In his leisure he translated a collection of French romances. His friends asked for copies, which he made himself; but his hand, he tells us, became “ weary and not steadfast with much writing,” and his eyes were dimmed with overmuch loking on the whit papae.” On his visit to Cologne, he may have seen the printing press set up there ( 1466) by Ulrich Zell, who had learned the new technique in Mainz. In 1471 Colard Mansion organized a printing shop in Bruges, and Caxton resorted to it as a means of multiplying copies of his translation. In 1476 he returned to England, and a year later he installed at Westminster the fonts -- perhaps the presses-- that he brought from Bruges. He was already fifty-five and only fifteen years were left him; but in that period he printed ninety-eight books, several of them translated by himself from the Latin or the French. His choice of titles, and the quaint and charming style of his prefaces, laid a lasting mark on English literature. When he died (1491) his Alsatian associate, Wynkyn de Worde, carried on the revolution.
In 1485 Caxton edited and published one of the most lovable masterpieces of English prose -- ‘The Noble Histories of King Arthur and of Certain of His Knights.’ Its strange author had died, probably in prison, some sixteen years before. Sir Thomas Malory, in the Hundred Years’ War, served in the retinue of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and represented Warwick in the Parliament of 1445. Lonesome for the licence of war, he broke into the home of Hugh Smyth, raped Hugh’s wife extorted a hundred shillings from Margaret Kyng and William Hales, broke again into Hugh Smyth’s house, and again raped his wife. He stole seven cows, two calves, and 335 sheep, twice looted the Cistercian Abbey at Coombe, and was twice clapped in jail. It seems incredible that such a man should have written that tender swan song of English chivalry which we now call ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’; but after a century of dispute it is agreed that these delightful romances were the product of Sir Thomas Malory’s incarcerated years.
He took most of the stories from the French forms of the Arthurian legends, arranged in tolerable sequence, and phrased them in the style of wistful, feminine charm. To an aristocracy losing chivalry in the brutalities and treacheries of war, he appealed for a return to the high standards of Arthur’s knights, forgetting their transgressions and his own. Arthur, after outgrowing fornication and incest, settles down with his pretty but venturesome Guinevere, governs England -- indeed, all Europe -- from his capital at Camelot ( Winchester), and requires the 150 knights of his Round Table to pledge themselves
never to do outrage nor murder ... by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy... and always to do ... gentlewomen succour, upon pain of death.
Love and war are the mingled themes of a book resounding with the combats of incomparable chevaliers for dames and damosels beyond compare. Tristram and Lancelot cuckold their kings, but are the soul of honour and bravery. What a leap it is from this airy realm, in which no one ever worked for a living, and all women were “gentlewomen”, to the real matter of fact world of the “Paston Letters”, whose living missives that bound a scattered family together in affection and finance in the England of the fifteenth century. Here is John Paston who practices law in London or on circuit, while Margret rears her children and pangs for his property at Norwich; he is all business, stern, stingy, competent; she is all submission, a humble, able, timid wife, who trembles at the thought that she has offended him; such were the Guineveres of the actual world. And yet here too are delicate sentiments, mutual solicitude, even romance; Margery Brews confesses to Sir John Paston II that she loves him, and mourns that the dowry she can bring him falls far below his state; “but if ye love me, as I trust verily you do, ye will not leave me therefore”; and he, master of the Paston fortune, marries her despite the complaints of his relatives-- and himself dies within two years. There were hearts tender and bruised under the hard surface of that disordered age.
THE ENGLISH HUMANISTS
We must not wonder that the exuberance of classical scholarship in the Italy of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici awoke only a timid echo in the England whose merchants cared little for letters, and whose nobles were not ashamed of illiterate wealth. Sir Thomas More, at the outset of the sixteenth century, reckoned that some 40 per cent of the English people could read. The Church and the Universities which she controlled were as yet the sole patrons of scholars. It is to the credit of England that under the circumstances, and amid the waste and violence of war, men like Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, and Colet were touched by the Italian fire, and brought enough of its heat and light to England to make Erasmus, Europe’s ‘arbiter litterarum‘, feel at home when he came to the island in 1499. The humanists, devoted to the study of pagan as well as Christian culture, were denounced by a few ingrown “Trojans’” who feared these “Greeks” bringing gifts from Italy; but they were bravely defended and befriended by great churchmen like William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and later, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Chancellor of England.
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My sole knowledge of Caxton is the type face named after him. Now I know who he was.
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" Sir Thomas More, at the outset of the sixteenth century, reckoned that some 40 per cent of the English people could read."
That's amazing! Can it possibly be true?
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The DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 123-125
THE ENGLISH HUMANISTS
From the time when Manuel Chrysoloras visited England (1408) some young English scholars caught a fever whose only cure, they felt, was study or lechery in Italy. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, came back from Italy with a passion for manuscripts, and collected a library that afterward enriched the Bodleian. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, studied under Guarino da Verona at Ferrara and John Argyropoulos at Florence, and returned to England with more books than morals. In 1464-1467 the monk William Tilley of Selling studied at Padua, Bologna, and Rome, brought back many pagan classics, and taught Greek at Canterbury.
One of his fervent pupils there was Thomas Linacre. When Tilley went again to Italy ( 1487 ), Linacre accompanied him, and remained twelve years. He studied under Politian and Chalcondyles in Florence, edited Greek works for Aldus Manutius in Venice, and returned to England so accomplished in diverse fields of learning that Henry VII summoned him to tutor Arthur, Prince of Wales. At Oxford he and Grocyn and Latimer constituted almost an Oxford Movement towards the classic languages and literatures; their lectures inspired John Colet and Thomas More, and attracted Erasmus himself. Linacre was the most universal of the English humanists, at home in Greek and Latin, translating Galen, promoting scientific medicine, founding the Royal College of Physicians and leaving his fortune to endow chairs of medicine at Oxford and Cambridge. Through him, said Erasmus, the new learning was so established in Britain that no Englishman need any longer go to study in Italy.
William Grocyn was already forty when he joined Linacre in Florence. Returning to England in 1492, he hired rooms in Exeter College, Oxford, and lectured daily in Greek, over the protests of conservatives who trembled lest the original text of the New Testament should upset the thousand year-old authority of Jerome’s Vulgate Latin translation. But Grocyn was reassuringly orthodox in doctrine and rigidly upright in his moral life. English humanists never developed, as in some scholars of the Italian Renaissance , even a concealed hostility to Christianity; it treasured the Christian heritage above all intellectual refinements, and its most famous disciple found no embarrassment in being dean of St. Paul’s.
John Colet was the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, a rich merchant who begot twenty-two children and served two terms as mayor of London. At Oxford the youth caught the humanist fervour from Linacre and Grocyn, and eagerly devoured Plato, Plotinus and Cicero. In 1493 he travelled in France and Italy, met Erasmus and Budé in Paris, was strongly moved by Savonarola in Florence, and was shocked by the levity and license of cardinals and Alexander VI in Rome. On his return to England, having inherited his father’s wealth he might have risen to high places in business or politics, but he preferred scholastic life in Oxford. Ignoring the tradition that only a priest might teach theology, he lectured on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans; he replaced Scholastic dialectic with criticism and elucidation of the Vulgate text; and his large audiences felt refreshed by the novelty of his method, and by his stress on the good life as the best theology. Erasmus, who saw him at Oxford in 1499, described him as a saint perpetually tempted to lust and luxury, but “keeping the flower of his virginity till his death,” scorned the easygoing monks of his time, and dedicating his fortune to pious uses and charity.
He was a loyal opposition in the Church, loving her despite her faults. He questioned the literal truth of Genesis but accepted the divine inspiration of the Bible. He foreshadowed the Reformers in stressing the authority of the Scriptures as against ecclesiastical traditions and forms, in rejecting the Scholastic philosophy as an intellectual dilution of simple Christianity, in doubting the confessional powers of priests and the Real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread, and in denouncing the worldliness of the clergy
In 1504 Colet was appointed dean of St. Paul’s. from that high pulpit he preached against the sale of bishoprics, and the evil of plural benefices held by one man. He aroused an angry opposition, but Archbishop Warham protected him. Linacre, Grocyn, and More were now established in London, free from the conservatism and Scholasticism of Oxford, stimulated by the visits of Erasmus, and soon to enjoy the support of the young Henry VIII. Everything seemed prepared for an English Renaissance that would move hand in hand with a peaceful Reformation.
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"Everything seemed prepared for an English Renaissance that would move hand in hand with a peaceful Reformation."
Durant knows how to shake me up. Why didn't it happen that way? Why all those martyrs on both sides? It could have been avoided? Was it all Henry's lust? Tune in next time!
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Durant now leaves the English Humanists, in 1509, and begins treating other states and their development in the years 1300 to 1515. Would readers prefer me to leave out these pages treating Middle Europe, the Ottomans, Spain, Germany, and Conquest of the Sea, Science, Erasmus, the Inquisition and developments during 1300-1515 , and move on to the Reformation after 1515 ?
There is a lot of material to cover, and if readers would like me to skip over it and get on with the Reformation events following 1515, I would do so. I see no point in boring folk with events that are not of interest. What say you all? --- Trevor.
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The book we are reading is called "The History of Civilization"
and civilization was not confined to Britain.
Speaking for myself I would like to continue reading the book
as written, but if out-voted I will be content to move directly
to the Reformation.
Brian
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TREVOR: why don't you pick and choose a bit. The inquisition will not be fun to read about, but should we skip it entirely? And our Euro-centered histories always shortchange what was happening in the East. could we get some of that? Without a copy of the book, I can't tell what else is skippable. Was there signifigent science and exploration before 1515? (We Yanks all know the story of Columbus in 1492).
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I prefer to continue thru the book and agree w/ Joan to have Trevor pick and choose.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 126 - 129
Episode in Burgundy 1363-1515.
By its position on the eastern flank of France around Dijon, and by the subtle statesmanship of its Dukes, Burgundy emerged with little harm from the Hundred Year’s War and became for half a century the brightest spot in transalpine Christendom. When the Burgundian ducal family of the Capetian line became extinct, and the duchy reverted to the French Crown, John II gave it to his fourth son Philip (1363) as a reward for valour at Poitiers. During his forty-one years as Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold ( Philippe le Hardi) managed so well, and married so diplomatically, that Flanders and several other areas came under his rule; and the duchy of Burgundy, technically a province of France, became in effect an independent state, enriched by Flemish commerce and industry, and graced by the patronage of art.
In 1419 Philip the Good, renounced all Feudal allegiance to France, allied Burgundy with England, and annexed Tournai, Namur, Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Limburg, and Louvain. When he made his peace with France (1435) he exacted the recognition of his duchy’s practical sovereignty, and the cession of Luxembourg, Liége, Cambrai, and Utrecht. Burgundy was now at its zenith, rivalling in wealth and power any kingdom in the West. Burgundian society at Bruges, Ghent, Liége, Louvain, Brussels, and Dijon was now (1420-60) the most polished and amorous in Europe, not excepting the contemporary Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici. The dukes preserved all the forms of chivalry; it was Philip the Good who founded the Order of the Golden Fleece( 1429); and it was in part from her Burgundian allies that England took the chivalric pomp and glamour that brightened the rough surface of English manners, glorified the campaigns of Henry V, and shone in the pages of Froissart and Malory. The Burgundian nobles, shorn of independent power, lived chiefly as courtiers, and developed all the graces of dress and bearing that could adorn parisitism and adultery. Merchants and manufacturers robed themselves like royalty, and fed and gowned their wives as if preparing the scene for Rubens. Under so loving a Duke, monogamy would have been ‘Lèse-majesté.’ John of Heinsberg the Jolly Bishop of Liége, spawned a dozen bastards; John of Burgundy, Bishop of Cambrai, had thirty-six children and grandchildren begotten out of wedlock; many of the elite, in this eugenic age , were so born. Prostitutes could be found at almost any time and price at the public baths. Festivals were many and extravagant; famous artists were engaged to design the pageants and decorate the floats; and people came over frontiers and seas to view gorgeous spectacles in which nude women played the part of ancient goddesses and nymphs.
In sombre contrast with the effervescent society were the saints and mystics who, under the dukes, gave Holland a high place in religious history. Jan van Ruysbroeck, a Brussels priest, retired at fifty ( 1343) to an Augustinian Monastery at Groenendael, near Waterloo, where he devoted himself to mystical contemplation and compositions. He professed that the Holy Spirit guided his pen; neverthe less his pantheism verged upon a denial of individual immortality:
“When, beyond all names given to God or to creatures, we come to expire, and pass over in eternal namelessness, we lose ourselves ... and contemplate all these blessed spirits which are essentially sunken away, merged and lost in their superessence, in an unknown darkness without mode.”
The Netherlands and Rhenish Germany saw in this period the profusion of lay groups -- Beghards, Beguines, Brethren of the free Spirit-- whose mystic raptures led often to piety, social service, quietism, and pacifism, sometimes a rejection of the sacraments as unnecessary, and occasionally to a cheerful acceptance of sin as quite swallowed up in union with God. Gerrit Groote of Deventer, after receiving a good education at Cologne, Paris, and Prague, spent many days with Ruysbroeck at Groenendael, and was moved to make the love of God the pervading motive of his life. Having received deacon orders (1379), he began to preach in the towns of Holland, in the vernacular, to audiences so large that the local churches could not hold them, people left their shops and meals to hear him. Scrupulously orthodox in doctrine, and himself a “hammer of heretics”, he nevertheless attacked the moral laxity of priests as well as of laymen, and demanded that Christians should live strictly in accord with the ethics of Christ. He was denounced as a heretic and the Bishop of Utrecht withdrew from all deacons the right to preach. Groote died at forty-four ( 1384) of a pestilence contracted while nursing a friend, but his Brotherhood spread its influence through 200 ‘Fraterhuizen’ in Holland and Germany. The schools of the Brotherhood gave the pagan classics a prominent place in their curriculum, preparing the way for the Jesuit schools that took over their work in the Counter Reformation. The Brethren welcomed printing soon after its appearance, and used it to disseminate their ‘moderna devotio’. Alexander Hegius at Deventer ( 1475-98) was a memorable example of the type that fortunate students have known-- the saintly teacher who lives only for instruction and moral guidance of his pupils. He improved the curriculum, centred it around the classics, and won the praise of Erasmus for the purity of his Latin style. When he died he left nothing but his clothes and his books; everything else he secretly gave to the poor. Among the famous pupils of Deventer were Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Rudolf Agricola, Jean de Gerson, and the author of the ‘IMITATION of CHRIST.’
“ Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, except to love God, and Him only to serve. This is the highest wisdom, by contempt of the world to tend toward the Kingdom of Heaven... Yet learning is not to be blamed.. for that is good in itself and ordained by God, but a good conscience and a virtuous life is always to be preferred.
Fly the tumult of men as much as thou canst, for the treating of worldly affairs is a great hindrance. . . . Truly it is misery to live on the earth . . . It is a great matter to live in obedience, to be under a superior, and not to be at our own disposing. . . It is much safer to obey than to govern.. The cell, constantly dwelt in, groweth sweet.”
There is a gentle eloquence in the ‘Imitation’ that echoes the profound simplicity of Christ’s sermons and Parables. It is an ever needed check on the intellectual pride of frail reason and shallow sophistication. When we are weary of facing our responsibilities in life we shall find no better refuge than Thomas a Kempis’ Fifth Gospel. But who shall teach us how to be Christians in the stream and storm of the world?
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"Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity" In the Bible, the hebrew word used is "Chaval", a waste, a pity. This is the same as the Hebrew name we translate as Abel of Cain and Abel.
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Having a map always help me when reading about changing boundaries, and in France they changed frequently. Here is one dated 1435 to 1493 of Burgundian lands. Scroll down to get map. The duchy of Burgundy and the County of Burgundy are outlined.
http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/burgundian_lands_1361_1543.htm
Emily
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Imitation of Christ...........
Truly it is misery to live on the earth . . . It is a great matter to live in obedience, to be under a superior, and not to be at our own disposing. . . It is much safer to obey than to govern.. The cell, constantly dwelt in, groweth sweet.”
I never read 'Imitation of Christ' and for that I am grateful and happy and will be about my own disposing without a superior. Who in their right mind would want to live in a cell? Sounds like he could use a room in the psych ward.
Emily
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Love the map. I remember when we read "Rembrandt's Eyes" by Simon Shama. I could have given anything for a decent map. He was making points about the differences between catholic and Protestant Holland, but kept throwing place names around, assuming you would know which part it fell in. I was horribly confused.
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Interesting maps. I found that in the time of Attila, ( 450ad) the Burgundians were in occupation of what is now Poland. Wonder how they came to be in Northern France ?-- Trevor
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Ah, Trevor, you are asking about the stuff of legend. Tradition says that the Burgundians originally came from Scandinavia. They migrated into Poland, and what with various wars and such found some of them migrating into Germany along the Rhine Valley. Those that stayed in Poland came under the influence of the Huns. The eventual conflict with the Huns and the Burgundians at Worms nearly destroyed the Burgundians. The remaining Burgundians pulled up stakes again and ended up in France. The epic tale of their defeat at the hands of the Huns is told in The Nibelungenlied which inspired Wagner's Ring Cycle. If I remember my reading correctly, The Nibelungenlied isn't the only version of epic tale, but it is the best known. It is a fascinating tale.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 130 - 132
The provinces under Burgundian rule indulged in considerable intellectual activity. The dukes themslves -- Philip the Good above the rest -- collected libraries and encouraged literature and art. Schools multiplied, and the university of Louvain, founded in 1426, was soon among the leading educational centers of Europe. Georges Castellain’s ‘Chronique des ducs de Bourgogne ‘ recordered the history of the duchy with rhetorical effulgence and a minimum of philosophy, but in a vigorous French that shared with Froissart and Comines in forming the favourite medium of clear and graceful prose. The two languages of the realm -- the French or Romance of the Walloons in the south and the German dialects of the Flemings and Dutch in the north -- rivalled each other in producing poets who repose in the peace of oblivion.
The supreme expression of the duchy was in art. Antwerp began in 1352 its vast , many-aisled cathedral, and finished it in 1518; Louvain raised the beautifully proportioned St. Pierre -- another casualty of the second World War. Men and cities were so rich that they could afford mansions or town halls almost as magnificent as the churches that they conceded to God. The bishops who governed Liége housed themselves and their staff in the largest and most elegant palace in the Lowlands. Bruges added its ‘hotel de ville’ in 1377-1421, and crowned it with a world famous belfry (1393-96) that served as a landmark to mariners far out to sea. While these noble gothic structures expressed the pride of cities and merchants, the dukes and aristocracy of Burgundy financed for their palaces and tombs a brilliant outburst of sculpture, painting, and manuscript illumination. Flemish artists, frightened from France by war, flocked back to their own cities. Philip the Bold gathered a veritable pleiad of geniuses to adorn his summer residence at the Chartreuse de Champmol -- a Carthusian monastery in the ‘gentle field’ adjoining Dijon.
In 1386 Philip commissioned Jean de Marville to design for him an elaborate mausoleum in Chartreuse. When Marville died (1389) Claus Sluter of Holland continued the work; when Sluter died (1406) his pupil Claus de Werve carried on; at last (1411) the tomb was completed, and received the bones of the Duke, now seven years dead. In 1793 a revolutionary assembly at Dijon ordered the dismantling of the great sepulchre, and its components were scattered and destroyed. In 1827 the communal fathers, breathing a reverse political breeze, collected the remaining pieces and housed them in the Dijon museum. The Duke and his Duchess, Marguerite of Flanders, lie in handsome alabaster on a massive marble slab; and below them forty pleurant figures -- sole survivors of the ninety carved -- mourn the ducal death in silent and graceful grief. For the portal of the chapel at the Chartreuse, Sluter and his pupils ( 1391-94) chiselled out five superb figures: the Virgin receiving the homage of Philip and Marguerite, presented to her by John the Baptist and St. Catherine of Alexandria. In the courtyard Sluter set up his master work, the ‘Puits de Moïse,’ the ‘Well of Moses’; a pedestal bearing statues of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Isaiah, and Daniel, originally surmounted by a “calvary” or crucifixion scene, of which nothing remains but a sombre, noble head of Christ crowned with thorns. No sculpture of such masculine power and unique audacity had been seen in Europe since the best days of Roman art.
The painters formed as remarkable a dynasty as the sculptors. Count William of Hainaut paid well for the illumination of ‘Les tres heures de Notre Dame’ ( 1414) and the unknown genius (perhaps Hubert van Eyck) set a model and pace for a thousand Lowland landscape artists by depicting with microscopic zeal a port with ships beached or in full sail, passengers disembarking, sailors and longshoremen at their diverse tasks, waves breaking on crescent shore, white clouds moving stealthily across the sky -- all in the space of a picture card. In 1392 Melchior Broederlam of Ypres brightened the Chartreuse de Champmol with the oldest significant panel extant outside of Italy. But Broederlam and the artists who painted the walls and statuary of the monastery used traditional tempera -- mixing their colours with some gelatinous material. Nuances of shading and tint, translucency of tone, were hardly attainable by these means, and moisture could ruin the finished work. As early as 1329 Jacques Compere of Ghent had experimented with colours mixed in oil. Through a hundred years of trial and error the Flemings developed the new technique; and in the first quarter of the fifteenth century it revolutionized pictorial art. When Hubert van Eyck and his younger brother Jan painted ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ for the Cathedral of St. Bavon at Ghent, they not only established the superiority of oil as a vehicle of colour; they produced some of the supreme masterpieces in the history of painting, for whose sake St. Bevon has been a goal of pilgrimage ever since.
The reverse of the polyptych declines from the exalted type of the inner panels. In the middle row an angel at the left and Mary at the right separated by a room, picture the Annunciation-- the faces stereotyped, the hands remarkably fine, the draperies as lovely as any in Flemish painting. At the bottom is a Latin poem of four lines; some words have been worn out by the centuries; the rest reads, “ Hubertus van Eyck, great and skilled beyond any other, began the heavy task, and Johannes, second in art. . . encouraged by the bequest of Jodocus Vyd. This work on the sixth of May calls you to behold the finished work”; and in the final line certain letters add in their numerical value to 1432, the year of completion. Vyd and his wife were the donors. How much of the picture was painted by Hubert, how much by Jan, is a problem happily insoluble, so that dissertations thereon may be written till all trace of the painting disappears.**
Perhaps there is in this epochal picture an undue profusion of figures and minutiae: every man, woman, angel, flower, branch, blossom, beast, stone, and gem is reproduced with heroic patience and fidelity -- to the amusement of Michelangelo, who saw in Flemish a sacrifice of central significance to incidental and irrelevant detail. But nothing in contemporary Italy rivalled the painting in scope, conception, or effect; and in later pictorial art only the Sistine Chapel ceiling of Michelangelo surpasses it, and the Vatican frescoes of Raphael and probably Leonardo’s Last Supper before it began its long decay. Even in its own day all literate Europe talked of the ‘Adoration‘. Alfonso the Magnanimous pleaded with Jan van Eyck to come to Naples and paint for him such men and women, with golden hair, as sang in this picture but were so rare in southern Italy.
** THE ADORATION OF THE LAMB has survived many restorations and vicissitudes. It was retouched in 1550, 1663,1825, 1829, 1859, 1936, 1951. The major portions were removed by the French Revolutionary Army to Paris in 1794, and were returned in 1816. The wings ( without Adam and Eve ) were sold to an art dealer (1816), were bought by the Berlin Museum ( 1821), and restored to Ghent by the treaty of Versailles (1919). In the second World War the polyptych was removed to France for protection; in 1942 it was taken by the Germans; in 1944 it was hidden in Austrian salt mines; in 1946 it was restored to its Chapel in the church of St. Bavon by the Army of the United States.
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The adoration of the lamb by van Eyck in the link below. Scroll down to see a close up of the several panels that make up the work.
http://www.themasterpiececards.com/famous-paintings-reviewed/bid/29887/Famous-Artwork-The-Adoration-of-the-Lamb
Emily
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Durant's interesting use of language and dry wit surfaces again..."parasitism"??
"The Burgundian nobles, shorn of independent power, lived chiefly as courtiers, and developed all the graces of dress and bearing that could adorn parisitism and adultery. Merchants and manufacturers robed themselves like royalty, and fed and gowned their wives as if preparing the scene for Rubens. Under so loving a Duke, monogamy would have been ‘Lèse-majesté.’ John of Heinsberg the Jolly Bishop of Liége, spawned a dozen bastards; John of Burgundy, Bishop of Cambrai, had thirty-six children and grandchildren begotten out of wedlock;"
And Groote "demanded that Christians should live strictly in accord with the ethics of Christ. He was denounced as a heretic and the Bishop of Utrecht withdrew from all deacons the right to preach. "
Sometimes he just makes the statement and lets it hang out there...
Images of Antwerp Cathedral
http://www.google.com/search?q=antwerp+cathedral&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=VewbUPW8OqjZ0QHIrIDoAg&ved=0CHkQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=644
Do i remember correctly that Durant was raised as a Catholic and was schooled by the Jesuits? If so, some of that "appears" from time to time.
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This is out of our time period, but I'm now reading a book "The Archimedes Codex". Before printing was invented, books were handwritten on parchment (animal skin, specially treated). Preparing parchment was expensive and time consuming (it took 24 sheep tp make a book) so medieval scribes, who didn't care anything for "pagan" writing, would scrape the letters off of old Greek and Roman manuscipts and write over them. recently, a manuscript of the greek mathematician Archimedes was discovered under a 10th century prayer book. The book i'm reading is by two authors, one telling how the book (codex) was obtained and restored, the other a translator of Aerchimedes, talking about the content and what it adds to our knowledge of mathematics.
the math nerd in me is fascinated by the latters description of the difference in how the greeks "saw" mathematics, and how we see it. Reading it, I now understand something about my late husband (a mathematician) that I could never grasp. he "saw" mathematics the same way Archimedes did: when he would try to show me, I could never see it, looking at it a very different way. But his way helped him to see thing in the fourth (or higher) dimension, something I could never do.
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Durant's S o c
V ol. VI The REFORMATION.
Pgs. 136-14
ART in the LOWLANDS: 1465-1515
Southern Flanders declined for a time after Philip the Good. {Political disturbances drove many weavers to England; the growth of the British clothing industry took trade and raw materials from the Flemish cities; by 1520 English cloth crowded the markets of Flanders itself. Brussels, Mechlin, and Valenciennes survived through superior lace, carpets, tapestries, and jewellery, Namur by its leather, Louvain through its university and its beer. About 1480 the canal that brought the sea to Bruges began to silt its bed; heroic efforts were made to clear it; wind and sand won; after 1494 seagoing vessels could no longer reach Bruges. Soon its merchants , then its workers, left Bruges for Antwerp, which deep-draught ships could enter by the estuaries of Scheldt. Antwerp signed agreements with English exporters, and shared with Calais the British trade with the continent.
Life in Holland existed by grace of the dykes, which had to be repeatedly rebuilt, and might at any time collapse; some gave way in 1470 and drowned 20,000 of the population. the only major industry was the capture and cure of herring. Holland produced many of the famous painters of this period, but was too poor to hold them; all but Geertgen tot Sint Jans migrated to Flanders.
There even in cities that suffered decline, rich burghers dressed gorgeously, dwelt in sturdy brick houses luxuriously furnished -- hung with the tapestries of Arras or Brussels, and gleaming with the brass vessels of Dinant. They built lovely churches like Notre Dame dui Sablon at Brussels and St. Jacques at Antwerp, raised stone by stone the towering facade of Antwerp Cathedral, and began the proud hall of Ghent. They financed the painters, sat for portraits, bribed heaven with votive art, and allowed their women to read books. Perhaps it was their earthy mood that led Flemish painting, in its second flowering, to stress realism and landscape even in religious pictures, and to seek new subjects in homes and fields.
Dirk Bouts inaugurated realism with the exaggerations natural to innovators. He came from his native Haarlem to Brussels, studied there under Rogier van der Weyden, settled in Louvain, and painted for its church of St. Pierre a polyptych, ‘the Last Supper’, with an interesting panel -- ’Passover in a Jewish Family’ -- which seemed to suggest that the Last Supper was a celebration of an orthodox Hebrew rite by Jews still faithful to Judaism. For a chapel in the same church Bouts painted the ’Martyrdom of St. Erasmus’ with a shocking literalness: two executioners turn a windlass that slowly draws the intestines from the naked saint. In the ‘Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus’ four horses, driven in four directions, pull out the arms and legs of the holy victim. There are vivid colours in these paintings, now and then a good landscape or perspective; but their mediocre drawing, rigid figures, and lifeless faces suggest that time does not always winnow wisely.**
Charles the Bold left no son, but he had betrothed his daughter Mary to Maximilian of Austria in the hope that the Hapsburgs would protect Burgundy from France. When Louis XI nevertheless appropriated the duchy, Mary fled to Ghent. There, as the price of being accepted as their constitutional sovereign by Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, and Holland, she signed the ’Groote Privilgie’ ( February 1477 ), which pledged her to enter into no marriage, levy no taxes, declare no war, without the consent of “Estates” or assemblies of the signatory provinces. By this and other charters, including the ’Joyeuse Entrie’, as Brabant termed its own grant of local liberty, the Netherlands began a century-long struggle for independence. But Mary's marriage to Maximilian ( August 1477) brought the powerful Hapsburgs into the Lowlands. When Mary died (1482) Maximilian became regent. When Maximilian was elected Emperor (1494) he transmitted the regency to his son Philip. When Philip died (1506) his sister, Margaret of Austria, was appointed governor-general by the Emperor. When Philip’s son , the future Charles V, then fifteen was declared of age (1515), the Netherlands became part of a vast Hapsburg empire under one of the craftiest and most ambitious rulers in History. Thereby would hang a tale.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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The ** above mark several pages about art in the Netherlands that seem to be little more than a retelling of ugly arts, much as already discribed. I have left those pages out, as I think they add nothing whatsoever to the S o C. == Trevor
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Good idea, Trevor.
I took the description of the last volume out of the heading. Sorry I was so slow in realizing it was outdated.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 144-145
MIDDLE EUROPE 1300-1460
Since man lives by permission of physical geography, it is his fate to be divided by mountains, rivers, and seas into groups that develop, in semi-isolation their diverging languages and creeds, their climatically conditioned features, customs, and dress. Driven by insecurity to suspect the strange, he dislikes and condemns the alien, outlandish looks and ways of other groups than his own. All those fascinating varieties terrain-- mountains and valleys, fiords and straits, gulfs and streams-- that make Europe a panorama of diverse delight, have broken a population of a minor continent into a score of peoples cherishing their differences, and self-imprisoned in their heritage of hate. There is charm in this mosaic of originalities, and one would deprecate a world of people confined in identical myths and pantaloons. And yet, above and beneath these dissimilarities of costume, custom, faith, and speech, nature and man’s needs have forced upon him an economic uniformity and interdependence that became more visible and compelling as invention and knowledge topple barriers away. From Norway to Sicily, from Russia to Spain, the unprejudiced surveying eye sees men not so much as diversely dressed and phrased, but as engaged in like pursuits moulding like characters: tilling and mining the earth, weaving garments, building homes, altars, and schools, rearing the young, trading surpluses, and forging social order as man’s strongest organ of defence and survival. For a moment we shall contemplate Middle Europe as such a unity.
In Scandinavia man’s prime task was to conquer the cold, in Holland the sea, in Germany the forests, in Austria the mountains; agriculture, the ground of life, hung its fate on these victories. By thirteen hundred the rotation of crops had become general in Europe, multiplying the yield of the soil. But from 1347 to 1381 half the population of Central Europe was wiped out by the Black Death; and the mortality of men arrested the fertility of the earth. In one year Strasbourg lost 14,000 souls, Cracow 20,000, Breslau 30,000. For a century the Harz mines remained without miners. With simple animal patience men resumed the ancient labours, digging and turning the earth. Sweden and Germany intensified their extraction of iron and copper; coal was mined in Aachen and Dortmund, tin in Saxony lead in Harz, silver in Sweden and the Tyrol, gold in Carinthia and Transylvania.
The flow of metals fed a growing industry, which fed a spreading trade. Germany, leader in mining, naturally led in metallurgy. The blast furnace appeared there in the fourteenth century; with the hydraulic hammer and the rolling mill it transformed the working of metals. Nuremberg became an ironmongers’ capital, famous for its cannon and bells. The industry and commerce of Nuremburg, Augsburg, Mainz, Speyer, and Cologne made them almost independent city-states. The Rhine, Main, Lech, and Danube, gave the south German towns first place in the overland traffic with Italy and the East. Great commercial and financial firms, with far-flung outlets and agencies, rose along these routes, surpassing, in the fifteenth century, the reach and power of the Hanseatic League. The league was still strong in the fourteenth century, dominating trade in the North and Baltic seas; but in 1397 the Scandinavian countries united to break this monopoly; and soon thereafter the English and Dutch began to carry their own goods. Even the herring conspired against the Hanse; about 1417 they decided to spawn in the North Sea rather than the Baltic; Lubeck, a pillar of the league, lost the herring trade and declined; Amsterdam won it and flourished.
Underneath the evolving economy the class war seethed -- between country and city, lords and serfs, nobles and business men, merchant guilds and craft guilds, capitalists and proletarians, clergy and laity, Church and state. In Sweden, Norway and Switzerland serfdom was going or was gone, but elsewhere in Middle Europe it was taking on new life. In Denmark, Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, where peasants had earned their freedom by clearing the wilderness, serfdom was restored in the fifteenth century by a marital aristocracy; we may judge the harshness of these Junkers from a proverb of the Brandenburg peasants, which wished long life to the Lord’s horses, least he should take to riding his serfs. In the Baltic lands the barons and Teutonic knights, at first content to enserf the conquered Slav inhabitants were induced, by the labour shortages that followed the Black Death and the Polish war of 1409 to impress into bondage any idlers “who roam on the roads and in the towns;” and treaties were made with neighbouring governments for the extradition of fugitive serfs.
The mercantile ‘Bourgeoisie’, favoured by the emperors as a foil to the barons, ruled the municipalities so definitely that in many cases the city hall and merchant’s guildhall were one. Craft guilds were reduced to subjection, submitted to municipal regulation of wages, and were prohibited from united action; here as in England, and France, proud craftsmen were turned into defenceless ‘proletaires.’ Now and then the workers tried revolt. In 1348 the artisans of Nuremburg captured the municipal council and ruled the city for a year, but the Emperor’s soldiers restored the patrician merchants to power. In Prussia an ordinance of 1358 condemned any striker to have an ear cut off. Peasants rebellions flared up in Denmark ( 1340, 1441). Saxony, Silesia, Brandenburg, and the Rhineland ( 1432), in Norway and Sweden ( 1434); but they were too laxly organised to achieve more than a passing cathartic violence. Revolutionary ideas circulated through cities and villages. In 1438, an anonymous radical wrote a pamphlet expounding an imaginary “ Kaiser Sigismund’s Reformation” on socialistic principals. The stage was slowly prepared for the Peasants’ War of 1525.
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There's no one like the Durants at their best.
"All those fascinating varieties terrain-- mountains and valleys, fiords and straits, gulfs and streams-- that make Europe a panorama of diverse delight, have broken a population of a minor continent into a score of peoples cherishing their differences, and self-imprisoned in their heritage of hate."
Wow, that makes me think!
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that make Europe a panorama of diverse delight, have broken a population of a minor continent into a score of peoples cherishing their differences, and self-imprisoned in their heritage of hate.
To write that Europeans have a 'heritage' of hate, had to have been written by a hater of Europe. It does not sound like Will Durant. Durant was of European heritage himself, and I have read his works including his books on philosophy, and hating Europeans was not part of his work.
People who throw around the word 'hate' are suspect in my eyes, and I do not remember Will Durant using that word to describe any other group of people, even though we have read of every atrocity in the world being committed by every group we have studied from Asia through the Arabian peninsula.
Durant said that the 'lust for power' underlay all forms of politics, but he never referred to any group as a whole as having a 'heritage of hate' until this comment on Europe.
The invasions of Europe from the East was not about hate according to history, but about the 'easterners' whether Arab or Mongol wanting to take Europe for their own. They wanted what Europe had, and that is called 'greed', not hate. The Europeans fought back, and that is called 'survival' not hate.
Emily
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The Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 145-147
THE ORGANIZATION OF ORDER
Order is the mother of civilization and liberty; chaos is the midwife of dictatorship; therefore history may now and then say a good word for kings. Their medieval function was to free the individual in rising measure from local domination, and to centralize in one authority the power to legislate, judge, punish, mint, and make war. The feudal baron mourned the loss of local autonomy, but the simple citizen thought it good that there should be, in his country, one master, one coinage, one law. Men rarely hoped, in those half-illiterate days, that even kings might disappear, and leave no master but the laws and blunders that men had freely made.
Scandinavia had some remarkable monarchs in the fourteenth century. Magnus II of Sweden organized the conflicting laws of his kingdom into a homogeneous national code (1347) In Denmark Eric IV disciplined the barons and strengthened the central power; Christopher II weakened it; Waldemar IV restored it, and made his country one of the major forces in European politics. But the supreme figure in the Scandanavian dynasties of this age was Waldemar’s daughter Margaret. Married at ten (1363 ) to Haakon VI of Norway, who was the son of Magnus II of Sweden, she seemed destined by blood and marriage to unite the kindred thrones. When her father died ( 1375) she hurried to Copenhagen with her five year old son Olaf, and persuaded the baronial and ecclesiastical electors to accept him as king and herself as regent. When her husband died (1380) Olaf inherited the crown of Norway; but as he was still only ten, Margaret, now twenty-seven, there too acted as regent. Her prudence, tact, and courage astonished her contemporaries, who were accustomed to male incompetence or violence; and the feudal lords of Denmark and Norway, after dominating many kings, proudly supported his wise and beneficent queen. When Olaf came of age ( 1385) her diplomacy won for him the succession to the Swedish throne. Two years later he died, and her patient, far-seeing plans for the unification of Scandinavia seemed frustrated by his death. But the royal council of Denmark, seeing no male heir available who could match “Margrete” in ability to maintain order and peace, overrode Scandinavian laws against a woman ruler, and elected her Regent of the Realm ( 1387). Proceeding to Oslo, she was chosen Regent of Norway for life ( 1388) and a year later the Swedish nobles, having deposed an unsatisfactory king, made her their queen. She prevailed upon all three kingdoms to recognise her grandnephew Eric as heir to the thrones. In 1397 she summoned the three councils of state to Kalmar in Sweden; there Sweden, Norway and Denmark were declared forever united, all to be under one ruler, but each to keep its own customs and laws. Eric was crowned king, but as he was only fifteen, Margaret continued to act as regent till her death (1412). No other European ruler of the age had so extensive a realm, and so successful a reign.
Her grandnephew did not inherit her wisdom. Eric allowed the Union to become in effect a Danish Empire, with a Council at Copenhagen ruling the three states. In this empire Norway declined, losing the literary leadership that she had held from the tenth to the thirteenth century. In 1434 Engelbrekt Engelbreksson led a revolt of Sweden against the Danish hegemony; he gathered at Arborga (1435 ) a national diet of nobles, bishops, yeomen and burghers; and this broad based assembly became, through a continuity of 500 years, the Swedish Riksdag of today. Engelbreksson and Kark Knutsen were chosen regents. a year later the hero of the revolution was assassinated, and Knutsen ruled Sweden as regent, then intermittently as king, till his death (1470).
Meanwhile Christian I (1448-81) began the Oldenburg dynasty that governed Denmark till 1863 and Norway till 1814. Iceland came under Danish rule during Margaret’s regency (1381). the high point of the island’s history and literature had passed, but it continued to give chaotic Europe an unheeded lesson in competent and orderly government..
The strongest democracy in the world at this time was in Switzerland. In the history of that invincible country the heroes were the Cantons. First were the German-speaking “forest cantons” of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, which in 1291 united a confederation of mutual defence. After the historic victory of the Swiss peasants over the Hapsburg army at Morgarten ( 1315) the Confederation, while formally acknowledging the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire, maintained a virtual independence. New cantons were added; Lucerne ( 1332), Zurich (1351), Glarus and Zug (1352), Bern (1353); and the name Schwyz was in 1352 extended to the whole. Encouraged to autonomy by geographical barriers, and accepting French, German, or Italian speech and ways according to the slope of its valleys and the course of its steams, each canton made its own laws, through assemblies chosen by the vote of the citizens. The extent of the franchise varied from canton to canton, and from time to time, but all cantons pledged themselves to a united foreign policy and to the arbitration of their disputes by a federal diet. Though the cantons fought one another, nevertheless, the constitution of the Confederation became and remains an inspiring example of federalism-- the union of self governing regions under freely accepted common agencies and laws.
To defend its liberty the Confederation required military training of all males, and military service, at call, from all men between ten and sixty years of age. The Swiss infantry, armed with pikes and sturdy discipline, provided the most feared and expensive legions in Europe. The cantons, to eke out their income, leased their regiments to foreign powers, and for a time “made Swiss valour an article of merchandise.” Austrian overlords still claimed feudal rights in Switzerland, and occasionally tried to enforce them; they were repulsed at Sempach (1386) and Nafels ( 1388 ) in battles that merit some remembrance in the records of democracy. In 1446 the Treaty of Constance once more confirmed the formal allegiance of Switzerland to the Empire, and its actual liberty.
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I believe we may see Ariel's influence in this passage.
I know little about Scandinavian history, what is it that combines Sweden, Norway and Denmark into Scandinavia? Was it the Norseman? Was it Margaret? Are there cultural similarities?
I also don't remember that i learned any Swiss history, that was interesting.
Jean
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I am sorry to have missed so many posts lately - it is not that I am no longer interested - I have replaced my trusty old computer with a new one, and am having problems getting back to the sites to which I previously contributed.
I will pay better attention from now on.
Brian.
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I don't know whether Ariel had anything special to do with the last passage that Trevor put up for us, but I am quite sure that this sentence came directly from the pen of Durant himself.
Order is the mother of civilization and liberty; chaos is the midwife of dictatorship
Brian
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A King Olaf always shows up in crossword puzzles, along with a Saint Olaf. Probably not the same Olaf.
Amazing how little i know about either Scandenavia or Switzerland, compared to the rest of Europe. Recently, I was in a restaurant, and the people at the next table were talking to the waitress in a language I'd never heard before. I was listening, trying to fiogure ouit what language it was, and finally asked the waitress. They were Swedish. I wish I had asked about the roots of the language, I couldn't pick out any Latin or Germanic roots, as you can with most European languages.
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Ha, it's a descendant of Old Norse, and "mutually intelligible" with Norwegian and Danish. It's also spoken in a few parts of Finland (although I believe the Finns do not consider themselves Scandinavian).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps
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Bluebird: that's an absolutely fascinating site: I could spend forever on it.
I notice how many of the maps are round, with land in the center, and an ocean encircling it. The oldest map (Babylonian ) is like that: maybe the Greeks got their idea from them.
I love the description of the islands that lay beyond the ocean:
'The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean. The descriptions of five of them have survived[4]:
the third island is where "the winged bird ends not his flight," i.e., cannot reach.
on the fourth island "the light is brighter than that of sunset or stars": it lay in the northwest, and after sunset in summer was practically in semi-obscurity.
The fifth island, due north, lay in complete darkness, a land "where one sees nothing," and "the sun is not visible."
the sixth island, "where a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer"
the seventh island lay in the east and is "where the morning dawns."'
They are so close to seeing the world as a sphere!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION.
Pgs. 147 - 150
GERMANY CHALLENGES THE CHURCH
Germany too was a federation, but its constituent parts were ruled not by democratic assemblies but by secular or ecclesiastical princes acknowledging only a limited fealty to the head of the holy Roman Empire. Some of these states -- Bavaria, Württemberg, Thuringia, Hesse, Nassau, Meissen, Saxony, Brandenburg, Carinthia, Austria, and the Palatinate -- were ruled by dukes, counts, margraves, or other secular lords; some -- Magdeburg, Mainz, Halle, Bamberg, Cologne, Bremen, Strasburg, Salzburg, Trier, Basel, Hildesheim -- were politically subject in varying degrees to bishops and archbishops; but nearly a hundred cities had by 1460 won charters of practical freedom from their lay or church superiors. In each principality delegates of the three estates -- nobles, clergy, commons -- met occasionally in a territorial diet that exercised some restraint, through its power of the purse, on the authority of the prince. Principalities and free cities sent representatives to the Reichstag or Imperial Diet. A special Kurfurstentag, or Diet of Electors, was called to choose a king; normally it was composed of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, the count palatine, and the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. Their choice created only a king, who became the acknowledged head of the Holy Roman Empire when he was crowned emperor by the Pope; hence his precoronation title of “King of the Romans.” He made his capital primarily in Nuremburg, often elsewhere, even in Prague. His authority rested on tradition and prestige rather than on possessions or force; he owned no territory beyond his own domain as one feudal prince among many; he was dependent upon the Reichstag or Kurfurstentag for funds to administer his government or to wage war; and this dependence condemned even able men like Charles IV or Sigismund to humiliating failures in foreign affairs. The destruction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty by the powerful popes of the thirteenth century had fatally weakened the Holy Roman Empire founded ( ad. 800) by Pope Leo III and Charlemegne. In 1400 it was a loose association of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Holland, and Switzerland.
The conflict between Empire and papacy revived when, on the same day in 1314, two rival groups of electors chose Louis of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria as rival kings. John XXII, from his papal seat at Avignon, recognized both as kings, neither as emperor, and argued that since only a pope could crown a king as emperor, he should be accepted as judge of the validity of the election; moreover, said the ambitious pontiff, the administration of the empire should belong to the papacy between the death of an emperor and the coronation of his successor. Louis and Frederick preferred the arbitrament of war. At Muhldorf (1322) Louis defeated and captured Frederick, and henceforth assumed full Imperial authority. John ordered him to resign all titles and powers, and to appear before the papal court to receive sentence as a rebel against the Church. Louis refusing, the Pope excommunicated him (1324 ), bade all Christians in the Empire to resist his rule, and laid an interdict upon any region that recognized him as king. Most of Germany ignored these edicts, for the Germans, like the English, rated the Avignon popes as servants or allies of France. In the progressive weakening of faith and papacy men were beginning to think of themselves as patriots first and Christians afterward. Catholicism, which is supernational, declined; nationalism, which is Protestant, rose.
At this juncture Louis received aid and comfort from incongruous allies, Pope John's bull “Cum inter nonmulla (1323) had branded as heresy the notion that Christ and the Apostles refused to own property, and he had directed the inquisition to summon before its tribunal the “ Spiritual Franciscans” who affirmed that view. Many friars retorted the charge of heresy upon the Pope; they expressed holy horror at the wealth of the Church; some of them called the aged pontiff Antichrist; and the general of the Spirituals, Michael Cessna, led a large minority of them into open alliance with Louis of Bavaria ( 1324 ). Emboldened by their support, Louis issued at Sachsenhausen a manifesto against “John XXII, who calls himself pope”; denounced him as a man of blood and a friend of injustice, and who was resolved to destroy the Empire; and demanded that a general council should try the Pope for heresy.
The king was further encouraged by the appearance, at his court in Nuremberg, two professors from the univesity of Paris -- Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun -- whose book, “defensor Pacis’, attacked the Avignon papacy in terms that must have pleased the royal ears. “ What do you find but a swarm of simoniacs from every quarter? what but the clamour of pettifoggers, the . . . abuse of honorable men? There justice to the innocent falls to the ground, unless you can buy it for a price.” Echoing the Albigensian and Waldensian preachers of the thirteenth century, and anticipating Luther by two hundred years, the authors argued that Christianity should be based exclusively upon the Bible. A general council of the church should be summoned not by the pope but by the emperor; the latter’s consent should be required for the election of any pontiff; and the pope, like everybody else, should be subject to the emperor. Delighted to hear this , Louis decided to go to Italy and have himself crowned emperor by the people of Rome. Early in 1327 he set out with a small army, some Franciscans and two philosophers whom he employed to compose his public pronouncements. In April the Pope issued new bulls, excommunicating John and Marsilius, and ordered Louis to leave Italy. But Louis was welcomed into Milan by the ruling Visconti, and received the iron crown as the formal sovereign of Lombardy. On January the 7th, 1328, he entered Rome amid the acclimations of a populace resentful of the papal residence at Avignon. He established himself in the Vatican Palace and summoned a public assembly to meet at the Capitol. To the multitude there he appeared as a candidate for investiture with the Imperial Crown. It gave its tumultuous consent; and on January 17 the coveted diadem was placed upon his head by the old syndic Sciarra Colonna -- that same unrelenting foe of the papacy who, almost a quarter of a century before, had fought and threatened with death Boniface VIII, and who again symbolised for a moment the challenge of the rising state to the weakened Church.
Pope John, now seventy-eight, never dreamed of accepting defeat. He proclaimed a holy crusade to depose Louis from all authority, and bade the Romans, under pain of interdict, to expel him from their city and return to papal obedience. Louis replied in terms recalling his excommunicated predecessor Henry IV; he convoked another popular assembly, and in its presence issued an Imperial edict accusing the Pope of heresy and tyranny, deposed him from ecclesiastical office, and sentencing him to punishment by secular powers. A committee of Roman clergy and laity, under his instructions, named Peter of Corvara as a rival pope. Reversing the roles of Leo III and Charlemagne, Louis placed the papal tiara upon Peter’s head, and proclaimed him Pope. Nicholas V (May 12, 1328 ). The Christian world marvelled, and divided into two camps, almost along the same lines that would divide Europe after the Reformation.
Petty local events changed the situation dramatically. Louis had appointed Marsilius of Padua spiritual administrator of the Capital; Marsilius ordered the few priests who remained in Rome to celebrate Mass as usual, despite the interdict; some who refused were tortured; an Augustan friar was exposed in a den of lions on the Capitol. Many Romans felt that this was carrying philosophy too far. The Italians had never learned to love Tuetons; when some German soldiers took food from the markets without paying for it, riots ensued. To support his troops and retinue Louis needed money; he imposed a tribute of 10,000 florins ( $250,000) upon the laity, and equal sums upon the clergy and Jews. Resentment mounted so dangerously that Louis thought it time to return to Germany. On August 4, 1328, he began a retreat through Italy. Papal troops took possession of Rome the next day; the palaces of Louis’s Roman supporters were destroyed, and their goods confiscated to the Church. The people made no resistance, but returned to their devotions and their crimes.
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How much division and quarreling there has always been in Europe, and in the church!!
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'A swarm of simoniacs' and a 'clamour of pettifoggers'
Simoniacs and pettifoggers are not two words much in use today, if at all. I don't use them, but perhaps in religious circles they may still be used.
Simoniacs: the buying or selling of church offices
Pettifoggers: a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable. (I like the word 'shyster' for these types.)
I called a neighbor, who was a judge, and asked him if he had heard the word 'pettifogger' used to describe a lawyer. He laughed and said, 'no' but he had heard them called almost every other name in the book over the years.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. Vi The REFORMATION
Pgs 150 - 152
Louis was consoled at Pisa by receiving another recruit, the most famous philosopher of the fourteenth century . William of Ockham had fled from a papal prison in Avignon; now hw offered his services to the Emperor, saying ( according to an unverified tradition ), “Tu me defendas gladio, ego te defendam calamo”-- “Defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen.” He wrote vigorously, but he could not save the situation. Louis had alienated all the ruling elements in Italy. His Ghibelline adherents had hoped to rule the peninsular in his name for their own good; they were chagrined to find him assuming all the powers and perquisites of government; moreover, he made them levy unpopular taxes for his exchequer. As his forces were ill proportioned to his pretensions, many Ghibellines, even the Viscounti, abandoned him and made what peace they could with the Pope. The Antipope, left to his own resources, submitted to arrest by papal officers, was led before John XXII with a halter around his neck, threw himself at the Pope’s feet and begged for pardon (1328). John forgave him, embraced him as a returned prodigal, and imprisoned him for life.
Louis returned to Germany, and sent repeated embassies to Avignon offering recantations and apologies for papal pardon and recognition. John refused, and fought on until his death (1334). Louis recovered some ground when England, beginning the Hundred Years’ War, sought his alliance; Edward III recognised Louis as Emperor, and Louis hailed Edward as King of France. Seizing the opportunity provided by this alliance of two major powers against the papacy, an assembly of German princes and prelates at Rense ( July 16, 1338) proclaimed that the choice of a German king by the German electors could not be annulled by another authority; and a diet at Frankfurt-am-Main (August 3, 1338) declared the papal pronouncements against Louis null and void; the Imperial title and power, it ruled, were the gift of the Imperial electors, and needed no confirmation by a pope. Germany and England ignored the protests of Pope Benedict XII, and moved a step toward the Reformation.
Reckless with success, Louis now decided to apply to the full the theories of Marsilius, and to exercise ecclesiastical as well as secular supremacy. he removed papal appointees from church benefices, and put his own candidates in their place; he appropriated the funds that papal collectors were rising for a crusade; he dissolved the marriage of Margaret of Carinthia -- heiress to much of Tyrol -- and wedded her to his own son, who was related to her by a degree of kinship canonically invalidating marriage. The repudiated husband, his elder brother Charles, and their father, King John of Bohemia, vowed vengeance; and Clement VI, who had become the pope in 1342, saw an opportunity to unseat the aging enemy of the Papal See.Skillful diplomacy won elector after elector to the view that peace and order could be restored in the Empire only by deposing Louis and making Charles of Bohemia emperor; and Charles, as the price of papal support, pledged obedience to papal commands. In July 1346, an electoral diet at Rense unanimously declared Charles to be king of Germany. Louis, having failed to secure a hearing at Avignon for his offers of submission, prepared to fight to the death for his throne. Meanwhile, aged sixty, he hunted vigorously, fell from his horse, and was killed. (1347).
Charles IV, as King and Emperor, governed well. The Germans disliked him because he made Prague the Imperial capital; but in Germany as well as in his homeland. he improved administration, protected commerce and transport, reduced tolls, and maintained an honest currency; and to the whole Empire he gave a generating of comparative peace. In 1356 he acquired equivocal fame in history by issuing a series of regulations known as the Golden Bull -- though they were only a few of many documents bearing the Imperial golden seal. Perhaps convinced that his long absence from Germany necessitated such an arrangement, he granted to the seven electors such powers as almost annulled the Imperial authority. the electors were to meet annually to legislate for the realm; the king or emperor was to be merely their president and executive arm. They themselves in their own states were to enjoy full judiciary power, ownership of all minerals and metals in the soil, the right to mint their own coinages, to raise revenue, and, within limits, to make war and peace. The Bull gave its legal sanction to existing facts, and tried to build upon them a co-operative federation of principalities. The electors however, absorbed themselves in their regional affairs, and so neglected their responsibilities as an Imperial council that Germany remained only in name. The local independence of the electors made possible the protection of Luther by the elector of Saxony, and the consequent spread of the protestant faith.
In his old age Charles secured the Imperial succession of his son by wholesale bribery (1378). Wenceslaus IV had some virtues , but he loved alcohol and his native land; the electors resented his tastes, and deposed him (1400) in favour of Rupert III, who left no trace on history. Sigismund of Luxembourg had at the age of nineteen been chosen King of Hungary (1387); In 1411 he was elected King of the Romans, and soon assumed the title of emperor. He was a man of varied accomplishments and personal charm, handsome and vain, generous and amiable, occasionally cruel; he learned several languages and loved literature only next to women and power. His good intentions might have paved a small inferno, but his courage failed him in crisis. He tried honourably to reform the abuses and weaknesses of the German government; he passed some excellent laws, and enforced a few of them; but he was frustrated by the autonomy and inertia of the electors, and their unwillingness to share in the cost of checking the advancing Turks. In his later years he consumed his funds and energies in fighting the Hussites of Bohemia. When he died (1437 ) Europe mourned that one who for a time had been the voice of European progress had failed in everything but dignity.
He had commended his son in law, Albert of Hapsburg, to the electors of Bohemia, Hungary, and Germany. Albert II graced the three crowns, but before his abilities could bear fruit he died of dysentery in a campaign against the Turks (1440). He left no son, but the electors voted the royal and imperial crowns to another Hapsburg, Frederick of Styria; thereafter their choice fell repeatedly to a Hapsburg prince, and the imperial power became in effect the hereditary possession of that talented and ambitious family. Frederick III made Austria an archduchy; the Hapsburgs made Vienna their capital; the heir presumptive was regularly the Archduke of Austria; and the genial quality of the Austrian and Viennese character entered like a graceful feminine theme to cross with the brusque masculinity of the north in the Teutonic soul.
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This is reminding me of my European history college classses. Since leaving college i have focused my self-education on American history. Except for teaching a few survey courses of Western Civ i have not increased my knowledge of European history very much.
Jean
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William of Ockam is famous in scientific circles for the idea of Ockham's razor --- If a simple answer exists, don't bother with a complicated one.
(At least, I assume it's the same Ockham. If a simple Ockham exists, don't bother to find another one).
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Actually, I looked it up. OCkham didn't invent the idea, but used it a lot and it was named after him. Wicci states it :from competing hypotheses, chose the one that makes the fewest assumptions.
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JoanK. There is much more on Ockham coming up later. Durant gives us much more about him several pages ahead. Trevor.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Faith
Durant
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham
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Where is Ockham?
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Bluebird: that's very interesting, although the philosophy got too deep for me.
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Where is Ockham?
Ockham ( /ˈɒkəm/) is a small village near East Horsley, in Surrey, England. The village lies to the east of the A3 between Cobham and Guildford. Other neighbouring villages include Ripley, Wisley and Effingham.
Ockham appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Bocheham. It was held by Richard Fitz Gilbert. Its domesday assets were: 1½ hides, 1 church, 2 fisheries worth 10d, 3 ploughs, 2 acres (8,100 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 60 hogs. It rendered £10.
Most notably, Ockham is believed to be the birthplace of William of Ockham—famous Mediaeval philosopher and the proponent of Occam's razor
Emily
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Thanks, Emily.
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Durant introduces us to the Hapsburgs who ruled all over Europe and even into Mexico. Frederick and Carlotta ruled for a short time as Emperor and Empress of Mexico.
I bought a necklace once that had brownish green stones in it, and my children called it my Empress Carlotta necklace.
I liked the motto of the Austrian rulers. 'Let others go to war, merry Austria will marry.' And that they did, expanding their power to many lands. After 1918 they no longer ruled, but they kept their titles and the last Archduke I found was born in 1996, so he would be sixteen years old. Or perhaps he was a Count, it doesn't matter, I don't condone so called 'aristocracy'.
After deaths and imprisonments and failure to produce heirs, the Hapsburgs came along and gave them a long line of succession.
The House of Habsburg and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and Spanish Empire and several other countries.
The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built around 1020–1030 in present day Switzerland by Count Radbot of Klettgau, who chose to name his fortress Habsburg. His grandson, Otto II, was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "von Habsburg" to his title. The House of Habsburg gathered dynastic momentum through the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.
By 1276, Count Radbot's seventh generation descendant, Rudolph of Habsburg, had moved the family's power base from Habsburg Castle to the Archduchy of Austria. Rudolph had become King of Germany/Holy Roman Emperor in 1273, and the dynasty of the House of Habsburg was truly entrenched in 1276 when Rudolph became sovereign ruler of Austria, which the Habsburgs ruled for the next six centuries.
A series of dynastic marriages enabled the family to vastly expand its domains, to include Burgundy, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, and other territories into the inheritance.
Emily
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Correction................
It was Maximilian who was emperor of Mexico, not Frederick.
I came by to write about something else and in looking for the last post saw that I had written Frederick instead of Maximilian.
I was considering looking for a biography on Frederick and must have had him on my mind.
Emily
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I find the Hapsburgs very interesting. .......i'm reading, tho not commenting much, enjoying your comments.
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Durants’ S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 154- 156
The Gothic style lingered in Germany long after it had given way, in Italy and France, to the classic influences of the Renaissance. Now it crowned the thriving cities of Central Europe with churches not as overpowering in grandeur as the great shrines of France, yet lifting the spirit with a quiet beauty and unpretentious dignity. (Among much cathedral building in the 12-15 centuries), Nuremberg gloried in four famous churches that gave piety a schooling in art and taste. The Stefansdom, or Cathedral of St. Stephen (1304-1476), was a beloved landmark; its steep roof covered nave and aisles in a single span, and fell to Mars in 1945. The Frauenkirche, or church of Our Lady ( 1355-61), with its richly sculptured vestibule, was almost demolished in the Second World War, but is now restored; and every day at noon the four manikin electors in the famous clock of the facade, bow to Charles IV in untiring acknowledgment of his famous Bull. Sculpture was still crude, but the churches in Breslau and Hallgarten, and the Sebalduskirche in Nuremberg, received stone or wood Madonnas of some nobility.
The cities beautified not only their churches but their public buildings, their shops, and their homes. Now rose those gabled and half-timbered houses that give the German towns a wistful medieval charm for idealizing modern eyes. The Rathaus, or Council Hall, was the centre of civic life, sometimes also the rendezvous of the greater guilds; its walls might bear frescoes, and its woodwork was usually carved with Teutonic fullness and strength. The Rathaus of Cologne ( 1360-1571), which had seated the first general convocation of the Hanseatic League; of Münster (1335), where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed; of Brunswick, a fourteenth century gem of civic Gothic; of Frankfurt-am-Main (1405), where the electors dined a newly chosen emperor: All were destroyed in the Second World War. In Marienburg the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order built their massive Deutschordenschloss (1309-80). With its sculptures, churches, and secular architecture, Nuremberg, in the three centuries between 1250 and 1550, represented the German spirit at its highest and best. The meandering streets were mostly narrow and unpaved; yet the future Pope Pius II wrote of Nuremberg:
“ The imperial castle proudly dominates the town, and the burghers’ dwellings seem to have been built for princes. In truth the kings of Scotland would gladly be housed so luxuriously as the common citizen of Nuremberg.”
In the German cities the industrial and minor arts -- in wood, ivory, copper, bronze, iron, silver, gold, -- reached now the full ripening of their medieval growth. Artists and weavers composed amazing tapestries; the wood engravers prepared for Dürer and Holbein; the miniaturists illuminated fine manuscripts on the eve of Gutenberg; woodworkers carved gorgeous furniture; and the metal founders cast for the churches, in the fifteenth century, bells whose beauty of tone has never been surpassed. Music was not merely an art; it was half the leisure life of the towns. Nuremberg and other cities staged great carnivals of popular drama and song. The ‘Volkslied’ expressed the pious or amorous sentiments of the people. The middle classes made a mass attack upon the problems of polyphony; the guilds competed in gigantic choruses; butchers, tanners, bell casters, and other mighty men contested the Meistersinger prize in tumultuous vocal tournaments. The first famous school of Meistersinger was established at Mainz in 1311. Students who passed through the four degrees of Schüler, Schulfruend, Dichter, and Saenger ( scholar, friend of the school, poet, and singer) earned the title of Meister. The romantic and idealistic strain of the minnesingers was brought to earth as the German burghers tied their lusty realism to the wings of song.
Since the business class dominated the cities, all the arts except church architecture took a realistic turn. The climate was cold and often wet, discouraging nudity; the pride and cult of the body did not find a congenial home here , as in Renaissance Italy, or ancient Greece. We read in a chronicle of 1380: “There was in Cologne at this time a famous painter named Wilhelm, whose like could not be found in all the land. He portrayed men so cunningly that it seemed they were alive.” Meister Wilhelm was one of many “primitives,” such as The Master of the Heisterbacher Altar -- who, chiefly under Flemish influence created a discipline of mural painting in Germany, and suffused the traditional Gospel themes with an emotional piety traceable, it may be, to Eckhart and other German mystics.
In Stephen Lochner, who died at Cologne in 1451, this preliminary development ends, and we reach the zenith of the early school. His ‘Adoration of the Magi’, now a prize of the Cologne Cathedral, can bear comparison with most paintings produced before the middle of the fifteenth century: a lovely Virgin at once modest and proud, a delightful infant, the Wise Men of the East, very German but credibly wise, the composition orthodox, the colouring bright with blue and green and gold. In ‘The Virgin of the Rose Trellis’ and ‘The Madonna of the Violet‘, ideal young German mothers, of a soft and pensive beauty, are portrayed with all the technical resources of a medieval art visibly moving toward modernity.
Germany was on the threshold of its greatest age.
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A link to Stephen Lochner paintings........
http://www.google.com/search?q=stephan+lochner+paintings&hl=en&sa=X&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=G9dMUNi1G43a9AS6t4CwBA&ved=0CCQQsAQ&biw=800&bih=403
Emily
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI. THE REFORMATION
Pgs 156-159
GUTENBERG
What put an end to the middle ages? Many causes, operating through three centuries : the failure of the crusades; the spreading acquaintance of renascent Europe with Islam; the disillusioning capture of Constantinople; the resurrection of classic pagan culture; the expansion of commerce through the voyages of Henry the Navigator’s fleet, and Columbus, and Vasco da Gama; the rise of the business class, which financed the centralization of monarchical government; the development of national states challenging the supernational authority of the popes; the successful revolt of Luther against the papacy; printing.
Before Gutenberg nearly all education had been in the hands of the Church. Books were costly; copying was laborious and sometimes careless. Few authors could reach a wide audience until they were dead; They had to live by pedagogy, or by entering a monastic order, or by pensions from the rich or benefices from the Church. They received little or no payment from those who published their works; and even if one publisher paid them they had no copyright protection, except occasionally by a papal grant. Libraries were numerous, but small; monasteries , cathedrals, colleges, and some cities had modest collections, seldom more than 300 volumes; the books were usually kept inside the walls, and some were chained to lecterns or desks. Charles V of France had a library renowned for its size -- 910 volumes; the library of Christ Church priory at Canterbury was probably as large as any outside Islam, having some 2000 volumes in 1300. The best publicized library in England was that of Richard de Bury St. Edmunds, who wrote affectionately of his books in ’THE PHILOBIBLON’ (1345), and made them complain of their mistreatment by “that two- legged beast called woman who insisted on exchanging them for fine linen or silk.”
The business classes found literacy useful in the operations of industry and trade; women of the middle and upper classes escaped, through reading, into a world of compensatory romance; by 1300 the time had passed when only the clergy could read. It was this rising demand, even more than the increased supply of paper and the development of an oily ink, that led to Gutenberg. Moslems had brought paper manufacture to Spain in the tenth century, Sicily in the twelfth; it passed into Italy in the thirteenth, into France in the fourteenth; the paper industry was a hundred years old in Europe when printing came. In the fourteenth century, when linen clothing became customary, cast off linens provided cheap rags for paper; the cost of paper declined, and its readier availability co-operated with the extension of literacy to offer a material and market for printed books.
Printing itself, as imprinting, was older than Christianity. The Babylonians had printed letters or symbols upon bricks, the Romans and many others upon coins, potters upon their wares, weavers upon cloths, bookbinders upon book covers; any ancient or medieval dignitary used printing when he stamped documents with his seal. Similar methods had been employed in the production of maps and playing cards. Block printing -- by blocks of wood or metal engraved with words, symbols, or images -- goes back in China and Japan to the eighth century, probably beyond. The Chinese in this way printed paper money in or before the tenth century. Block printing appeared in Tabriz in 1294, in Egypt toward 1300; but Moslems preferred calligraphy to printing, and did not serve in this case as in so many others, to carry cultural developments from the east to the west..
Typography -- printing with separate and movable type for each character or letter -- was used in China as early as 1041. In 1314 Wang Chen employed nearly 60,000 movable wooden type characters to print a book on agriculture; he had tried metal type first, but he had found that it did not take or hold ink as readily as wood. Movable type, however, offered little advantage or convenience to a language that had no alphabet, but had 40,000 separate characters; consequently block printing remained customary in China till the nineteenth century. In 1403 a Korean emperor printed a large number of volumes from movable type; characters were engraved in hard wood, molds of porcelain paste were made from these models, and in these molds metal type was cast.
In Europe printing from movable type may have developed first in Holland; according to Dutch traditions not traceable beyond 1569, Laurens Coster of Haarlem printed a religious manual from movable metal type in 1430; but the evidence is inconclusive. Nothing further is heard of movable type in Holland till 1473, when Germans from Cologne set up a press in Utrecht. But these men had learned the art in Mainz.
Johann Gutenberg was born there of a prosperous family about 1400. His father’s name was Gensfleisch -- gooseflesh; Johann preferred his mother’s maiden name. He lived most of his 40 years in Strasbourg, and appears to have made experiments there in cutting and casting metal type. On August 22, 1450, he entered into a contract with Johann Fust, a rich goldsmith, by which he mortgaged his printing press to Fust for a loan of 800 guilders, later raised to 1600. A letter of indulgence issued by Nicholas V in 1451 was probably printed by Gutenberg; several copies exist, bearing the oldest printed date, 1454. In 1455 Fust sued Gutenberg for repayment; unable to comply, Gutenberg surrendered his press. Fust carried on the establishment with Peter Schöffer, who had been employed by Gutenberg as a typesetter. Some believe that it was Schöffer who had by this time developed the new tools and technique of printing; a hard punch of engraved steel for each letter, number, and punctuation mark, a metal matrix to receive the punches, and a metal mold to hold the matrix and letters in line.
In 1456 Gutenberg with borrowed funds, set up another press. From this he issued, in that year or the next, what has been generally considered the first type-printed book, the famous and beautiful “Gutenberg Bible “ -- a majestic folio of 1,282 large double-columned pages In 1462 Mainz was sacked by the troops of Adolf of Nassau; the printers fled, scattering the new art through Germany. Gutenberg struggled painfully through one financial crisis after another, until Adolf gave him (1465) a benefice yielding a protective income. Some three years later he died.
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This is my favorite passage from The Durants about the "Dark/Middle Ages."
Wasn't Gutenberg Life Magazine's Most Influential Person of the millennium? Actually, i think on several lists? I'm sure all the readers on SeniorLearn would agree. The arguement was that because of the movable type press, any other person/idea that might have been on the list got saved and circulated, therefore becoming more important then they might otherwise have been w/out Gutenberg. A lot more was going on during the "Dark Ages" than the name would imply. That is the general theme in college Western Civ teachings about the era. the first paragraph of this passage sets us up for the exciting times to follow. Looking firward to it.
Thanks again Trevor for posting the passages.
Jean
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As I was typing up my last letter piece for S o C, I was visited by a friend, a retired school teacher, who told me the following story. He was with a group traveling through Europe and when in Mainz he, because of his knowledge of German -- he was head of the language section at his school-- he became the groups leader. They visited the place in Mainz where Gutenberg did his work, and were shown just how Gutenberg had printed his famous bible. They were shown just how the type was assembled and printed onto the pages.
My friend asked if he could print a few words using Gutenberg's method. The demonstrator agreed, so my friend began assembling the type into a short passage in English. Suddenly, a bell rang and some office person came and told the group to leave, as it was now lunch hour and the visitors must go. The tourists all protested, but to no avail. "Ve haf vays to arrange our time." my friend said, mimicking the English/ American parody of a German speaking English. And so he never got a copy of type produced using Gutenberg's method. -- Trevor
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What a coincidence, Trevor. Who would have thought any friend could come up with a Gutenberg story!?! How disappointing for him not to have finished his project. I could be stereotypical and make a comment about German discipline and rigidity, but i won't :D
I've forgotten Gutenberg's birthdate, but i think we should celebrate it, especially on this site, SeniorLearn. (smile).
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol.V The REFORMATION
Pgs 159-160
GUTENBERG (cont.)
Doubtless his use of movable type would have been developed by others had he never been born; it was an obvious demand of the times; this is true of most inventions. A letter written in 1470 by Guillaume Fichet of Paris suggests how enthusiastically the invention was welcomed: “ There has been discovered in Germany a wonderful new method for the production of books, and those who have mastered the art are taking it from Mainz out into the world . . . The light of this discovery will spread from Germany to all parts of the Earth.” But not all welcomed it. Copyists protested that printing would destroy their means of livelihood; aristocrats opposed it as a mechanical vulgarization, and feared it would lower the value of their manuscript libraries; statesmen and clergy distrusted it as a possible vehicle of subversive ideas. It made its triumphant way nevertheless. In 1464 two Germans set up a press in Rome; in or before 1469 two Germans opened a printing shop in Venice; in 1470 three Germans brought the art to Paris; in 1471 it reached Holland, in 1472 Switzerland, in 1473 Hungary, in 1474 Spain, in 1476 England, in 1482 Denmark, in 1483 Sweden, in 1490 Constantinople. Soon half the European population was reading as never before, and a passion for books became one of the effervescent ingredients of the Reformation age. “At this very moment,” writes a Basel scholar to a friend, “ a whole wagon load of classics, of the best Aldine editions has arrived from Venice. Do you want any? If you do, tell me at once, and send the money, for no sooner is such a freight landed than thirty buyers rise up for each volume, merely asking the price, and tearing one another’s eyes out to get hold of them.” The typographical revolution was on.
To describe all its effects would be to chronicle half the history of the modern mind. Erasmus, in the ecstasy of his sales, called printing the greatest of all discoveries, but perhaps he underestimated speech, fire, the wheel, agriculture, writing, law, even the lowly common noun. Printing replaced esoteric manuscripts with inexpensive texts rapidly multiplied, in copies more exact and legible than before, and so uniform that scholars in diverse countries could work with one another by references to specific pages of specific editions. Quality was often sacrificed to quantity, but the earliest printed books were in many cases models of art in typography and binding. Printing published -- i.e., made available to the public -- cheap manuals of instruction in religion, literature, history, and science; it became the greatest and cheapest of all universities, open to all. It did not produce the Renaissance, but it paved he way for the Enlightenment, for the American and French revolutions, for democracy. It made the Bible a common possession, and prepared the people for Luther’s appeal from the popes to the Gospels; later it would permit the rationalist’s appeal from the Gospels to reason.
It ended the clerical monopoly of learning, the priestly control of education. It encouraged the vernacular literatures, for the large audience it required could not be reached through Latin. It facilitated the international communication and co-operation of scientists. It effected the quality and character of literature by subjecting authors to the purse and tastes of the middle classes, rather than to aristocratic or ecclesiastical patrons. And, after speech, it provided a readier instrument for the dissemination of nonsense than the world has ever known until our time.
A footnote: The “Gutenberg Bible,” also known as the “Mazarin Bible,” because it was discovered about 1760 in the library left by that cardinal. Forty-six copies survive. The Morgan library of New York in 1953 paid $75,000 to a Swiss monastery for a “Constance Missal” which it believes was printed by Gutenberg before the Bible, probably in 1452.
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Re: the footnote on a sale from the Gutenberg press for $75,000 in 1953. I believe that was the year Durant published the 'Reformation'.
Update: Keio University Library in Tokyo paid $5.4 million for an incomplete Gutenberg bible.
A complete copy today estimated to cost $25 million to $35 million. Individual leaves now sell for $20,000 to $100,000 depending on condition and desirability.
Emily
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I think it would be great fun to take a course on the "Impact of Gutenberg", don't you? Of course, while teaching Western Civ i talked about the discussions that historians have had about how much longer it would have taken for the Reformation to take hold if Luther's and other's manuscripts had not been so available as the movable press made them. And as you mentioned the same goes for the writings of the Enlghtenment and john Locke and on to Jefferson, Tho Paine, etc.
We're moving into an exciting period in history in this discussion.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 161 - 163
THE WESTERN SLAVS. 1300-1500
BOHEMIA
Heretofore the Slavs had been human flotsam, surging westward at times to the Elbe, southward to the Mediterranean, eastward to the Urals, north even to the Arctic Sea; then in the thirteenth century repulsed in the west by the Livonian and Teutonic knights, and subjected to Mongol and Tartar domination in the east. In the fourteenth century Bohemia led the Holy Roman Empire and the pre-Lutheran Reformation; and Poland, united with a vast Lithuania, became a major power, with a highly cultured upper class. In the fifteenth century Russia freed herself from the Tartars, and unified her far flung principalities into a massive state. Like a tidal wave the Slavs entered history.
In 1306 the death of Wenceslaus III ended the ancient Przemyslid line in Bohemia. After an interlude of minor kings the baronial and ecclesiastical electors brought John of Luxembourg to found a new dynasty ( 1310). His gallant adventures made Bohemia for a generation an unwilling citadel of chivalry. He could hardly live without tournaments, and when these proved too innocuous he sallied forth to war in almost every realm of Europe. It became a ‘bon mot’ of the times that “ nothing can be done without the help of God and the King of Bohemia.”
Brescia, besieged by Verona, begged his aid; he promised to come; at the news thereof the Veronese raised the siege. What Frederick I Barbarossa and Frederick II Wonder of the World had been able to secure by arms, this king obtained almost by the magic of his name. His dashing wars added terrain to Bohemia, but forfeited the affection of the people, who could not forgive him for being so often absent from their country that he neglected its administration and never learned its speech. In 1336, on a crusade in Lithuania, he contracted a disease that left him blind. Nevertheless, when he learned that Edward III of England had landed in Normandy and was moving toward Paris, John and his son Charles, with 500 Bohemian knights, rode across Europe to succour the king of France.
Father and son fought in the van at Crécy. When the French retreated, the blind king bade two knights bind their horses on either side to his, and lead him against the victorious English, saying, “ So will it God, it shall not be said that a king of Bohemia flies from the battlefield.” Fifty of his knights were killed around him; he was mortally wounded and was taken, dying, to the tent of the English king. Edward sent the corpse to Charles with a courtly message; “this day has fallen the crown of chivalry.”
Charles IV was a less heroic but much wiser king. He preferred negotiation to war, and was not too cowardly to compromise; yet he extended the boundaries of his kingdom. In the thirty-two years of his reign he kept the Slavs and the Germans in unwanted peace. He reorganised the government, reformed the judiciary, and made Prague one of the handsomest cities in Europe. He protected the peasantry from oppression, and promoted commerce and industry. He founded the University of Prague, (1347), transmitted to his countrymen the cultural interest he had acquired in France and Italy, and provided the intellectual stimulus that exploded in the Hussite revolt. His court became the centre of the Bohemian humanists, lead by bishop John of Stresa, Petrarch’s friend. The Italian poet admired Charles beyond any other monarch in Europe, visited him in Prague, and begged him to conquer Italy; but Charles had better sense. His reign, despite his Golden Bull, was Bohemia’s Golden Age.
Wenceslaus was a youth of eighteen when his father died ( 1378) His good nature, his affection for his people, his lenience in taxing them, his skill in administration, won him great favour with all but the nobles, who thought their privileges imperilled by his popularity. His occasional hot temper, and his addiction to drink, gave them leverage for displacing him. They surprised him at his country seat, threw him in prison ( 1394), and restored him only on his promise to do nothing of moment without the consent of a council of nobles and bishops. New disputes arose; Sigismund of Hungary was called in; he arrested Wenceslaus, his brother, and took him prisoner to Vienna. ( 1402 ) Wenceslaus escaped a few years later, made his way back to Bohemia, was received with joy by the people, and regained his throne and powers. The rest of his story mingles with the tragedy of Huss.
JOHN HUSS: 1369-1415
Wenceslaus was loved and hated for winking at heresy and scowling at the Germans. A rapid infiltration of Bohemia by German miners, craftsmen, merchants, and students had generated a racial hostility between Teutons and Czechs; Huss would have received less support from people and king had he not symbolized a native resentment of German prominence. Wenceslaus did not forget the archbishops of Germany had led the movement to depose him from the Imperial throne. His sister Anne had married Richard II of England, and had seen -- probably had sympathized with-- the attempt of Wyclif to divorce England for the Roman Church. In 1388 Adelbert Ranconis left a sum to enable Bohemian students to go to Paris or Oxford. Some of these in England secured or transcribed works by Wyclif, and took them to Bohemia. Milíĉ of Kromêříže and Conrad Waldhouser roused Prague with their denunciations of immorality in laity and clergy; Matthias of Janov and Thomas of Stitny continued his preaching; the Emperor, and even Archbishop Ernst, approved; and in 1391 a special church, called the Bethlehem Chapel, was founded in Prague to lead the movement of reform. In 1402 John Huss was appointed to the pulpit of this chapel.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 163 - 167
John Huss: 1369-1415
Huss had begun life in the village of Husinetz, and was known as John of Husinetz, which he later shortened to Huss. Toward 1390 he came as a poor student to Prague, where he earned his way by serving in the churches. He joined in what Paris would later term the gay “ Bohemian” ways of university youth. In 1396 he received his degree of master of arts, and began to teach at the university; in 1401 he was chosen dean of the faculty of arts. As head of the Bethlehem Chapel he became the most famous preacher in Prague. He preached in Czech, and taught his congregation to take an active part in the service by singing hymns.
His accusers later affirmed that in the very first year of his ministry he had echoed Wyclif’s doubts as to the disappearance of bread and wine from the consecrated elements of the Eucharist. Unquestionably he had read some of Wyclif’s works; he had made copies of them which still exist with his annotations; and at his trial he confessed to having said “Wyclif, I trust, will be saved; but could I think he would be damned, I would my soul were with his.” In 1403 the opinions of Wyclif had won such vogue in the university of Prague that the chapter -- the administrative clergy -- of the cathedral submitted to the university masters forty-five excerpts from the writings of Wyclif, and asked such doctrines be barred from the university. Several masters, including Huss, answered No; but the majority ruled that thereafter no member of the university staff should, either publicly or privately, defend or adhere to any of the forty-five articles.
Huss must have ignored this prohibition, for 1408 the clergy of Prague petitioned Archbishop Zbynek to reprove him. The Archbishop proceeded cautiously, being then in conflict with the king. But when Huss continued to express sympathy for Wyclif’s views Zbynek excommunicated him and several associates ( 1409); and when they persisted in exercising their priestly functions he placed all Prague under an interdict. He ordered all writings of Wyclif that could be found in Bohemia to be surrendered to him; 200 manuscripts were brought to him; he burned them in the courtyard of his palace. Huss appealed to the newly elected Pope John XXIII. John summoned him to appear before the papal court. He refused to go.
In 1411 the Pope, desiring funds for a crusade against Ladislas, King of Naples, announced a new offering of indulgences. When this was proclaimed in Prague, and the papal agents seemed to the reformers to be selling forgiveness for coin, Huss and his chief supporter Jerome of Prague, publicly preached against indulgences, question the existence of purgatory, and protested against the Church’s collecting money to spill Christian blood. Descending to vituperation, Huss called the Pope a money grubber, even Anti-Christ. A large section of the public shared Huss’ views and subjected the papal agents to such ridicule and abuse that the king forbade any further preaching or action against the offering of indulgences. Three youths who violated this edict were hauled before the city council; Huss pleaded for them, and admitted that his preaching had aroused them; they were condemned and beheaded. The Pope now launched his own excommunication against Huss; and when Huss ignored it John laid an interdict upon any city where he should stay ( 1411) On the advice of the king, Huss left Prague, and remained in rural seclusion for two years.
In those years he wrote his major works, some in Latin, some in Czech, nearly all inspired by Wyclif, some echoing the heresies and anticlericalism that a remnant of the Waldensians had brought with them into Bohemia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries. He rejected image worship, auricular confession, and the multiplication of ornate religious rites. He gave his movement a popular and nationalistic character by denouncing the Germans and defending the Slavs.
In a tract on “ Traffic in Holy things.” he attacked the simony of the clergy; in “De sex erroribus” he condemned the taking of fees by priests for baptism, confirmation, Masses, marriages, or burials. His treatise “De ecclesia” became his “apologia” and his ruin; from its pages were drawn the heresies for which he was burned. He followed Wyclif into predestinarianism, and agreed with Wyclif, Marsilius, and Ockham that the Church should have no worldly goods. Like Calvin, he defined the Church neither as the clergy nor as the whole body of Christians, but as the totality, in Heaven and on Earth, of the saved. Christ, not the Pope is the head of the Church; the Bible, not the pope, should be the Christians’ guide. The pope is not infallible, even in faith or morals; the pope himself may be a hard headed sinner or heretic. Accepting a legend widely credited at the time ( even by Gerson ), Huss made much of a supposititious Pope John VIII who ( said the legend ) had revealed her sex by giving unpremeditated birth to a child on the streets of Rome. A pope, Huss concluded, is to be obeyed only when his commands conform to the law of Christ. “To rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.”
When a general council met at Constance in 1414 to depose three rival popes and enact a program of ecclesiastical reform, a chance seemed open to reconcile the Hussites with the Church. Emperor Sigismund, heir apparent to the childless Wenceslaus IV, was anxious to restore religious unity and peace in Bohemia. He suggested that Huss should go to Constance and attempt a reconciliation. For this hazardous journey he offered Huss a safe conduct to Constance, a public hearing before the council, and a free and safe return to Bohemia in case Huss should reject the judgment of the assembly. Despite the anxious warnings of his associates, Huss set out for Constance ( October 1414), escorted by three Czech nobles and several friends. About the same time Stephen of Palecz and other Bohemian opponents of Huss went to Constance to indict him before the council.
Arrived, he was at first treated courteously, and lived in freedom. But when Palecz laid before the council a list of Huss’s heresies they summoned and questioned him. Convinced by his replies that he was a major heretic, they ordered him imprisoned. He fell ill and for a time was close to death; Pope John XXIII sent papal physicians to treat him. Sigismund complained that the action of the council violated the safe conduct that he had given Huss; it answered that it was not bound by his action; that his authority did not extend to spiritual concerns; that the church had the right to overrule the state in trying an enemy of the church. In April Huss was removed to the fortress of Gottlieben on the Rhine; there he was placed in fetters and was so poorly fed that he again fell gravely ill.
Meanwhile his fellow heretic, Jerome of Prague, had rashly entered Constance, and had nailed to the city gates, to the doors of churches, and upon the houses of cardinals, a request that the Emperor and the council should give him a safe-conduct and a public hearing. At the urging of Huss’s friends he left the city and began to return to Bohemia; but on the way he stopped to preach against the council’s treatment of Huss. He was arrested, brought back to Constance, and jailed.
Huss on July 5, after seven months of imprisonment, was led in chains before the council, and again on the seventh and eighth. Confronted with extracts from his book, “On the Church,” he expressed his willingness to recant such as could be refuted from Scripture ( precisely the position taken by Luther at Worms ). The council argued that Scripture must be interpreted not by the free judgment of individuals but by the heads of the Church, and it demanded that Huss should retract all the quoted articles without reservation. Both his friends and his accusers pleaded with him to yield. He refused. He lost the good will of the vacillating Emperor by declaring that a secular as well as a spiritual authority ceases to be a lawful ruler the moment he falls into mortal sin.
Further efforts were made to secure some semblance of retraction from Huss. He gave always the same reply: he would abandon any of his views that could be disproved from Scripture. On July the 6th, 1415, in the cathedral of Constance, the Council condemned both Wyclif and Huss, ordered that Huss’s writings be burned, and delivered him to the secular arm. He was at once unfrocked, and was led out of the city to a place where a pile of faggots had been prepared. A last appeal was made to him to save himself with a word of retraction; he again refused. The fire consumed him as he chanted hymns.
Jerome, in a forgivable moment of terror recanted before the Council the teachings of his friend. Remanded in prison he gradually regained his courage. He asked for a hearing, and after a long delay he was led before the assembly. The charges were read to him one by one, and he answered each without retraction. When he was at last allowed to speak freely he almost won over the Council by his fervor and sincerity. He reviewed some of the historic cases in which men had been killed for their beliefs; he recalled how Stephen the Apostle had been condemned by priests, and held that there could hardly be a greater sin than that priests should wrongly slay a priest. He reaffirmed his faith in the doctrine of Wyclif and Huss, and branded the burning of Huss as a crime certain to be punished by God. The council gave him four days to reconsider. Unrepentant he was condemned ( May 30) and was lead to the spot where Huss had died. When the executioner went behind him to light the fire, Jerome bade him, “Come in front, and light it before my face; if I feared death I should never had come here.” He sang a hymn till he choked with smoke.
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Enjoyed reading these passages for the history review, but i'll refrain from commenting for fear of offending some w/ my thinking that the Church has been foolish throughout it's lifetime.
Jean
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that the church had the right to overrule the state in trying an enemy of the church.
Between the 'State' and the 'Church' life was cheap, and it was so easy to eliminate dissenters. The beheading of three youths for repeating Huss was no more than a blip on a radar screen.
I am grateful for the gift our founding leaders gave us separating church and state. The power of life and death was snatched away from the church and their evil hands.
Emily
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I had been reading a book called "The English Wars" about the history of the English language. Unfortunately, it got returned to the library by mistake, so I can't quote it, but the section on the gradual establishment of English as the official language in England, replacing the french that was used by the upper class was interesting. I'm not apt to think of language as having political importance, but of course it does; a common language being an important part of establishing pride in a common heritage.
Chaucer was important in this: a major work in English. Much later, Shakespeare was important in the pride in England that bloomed after Henry Eighth left the Catholic church: not only the English religion was better than that of the continent, but all things English including the English language.
And of course, church services all over Europe began to be held (by the Protestants) in the local language. And the bible so translated. This of course has great religious significance in terms of the protestant belief that each individual can understand religion without needing a priest to interpret. but I wonder if it had significance in terms of nationalism as well.
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JoanK
but I wonder if it had significance in terms of nationalism as well.
I would say yes. A common spoken language is necessary for a nation to be cohesive. Reading and writing in the common language creates a unified people. Nationalism follows as night follows day, and not just for the large countries, but for the smaller ones as well.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pages 167 - 169
THE BOHEMIAN REVOLUTION
1415 - 1436
The news of Huss’s death, relayed by couriers to Bohemia, aroused a national revolt. An assembly of Bohemian and Moravian nobles sent to the council of Constance ( Sept. 2, 1415) a document signed by 500 leading Czechs; it upheld Huss as a good and upright Catholic, denounced his execution as an insult to his country, and proclaimed that the signatories would fight to the last drop of their blood to defend the doctrines of Christ against man-made decrees. A further declaration pledged the members to obey thereafter only such papal commands as agreed with Scripture; the judges of such agreement were to be the faculty of the University of Prague. The university itself hailed Huss as a martyr. The Council summoned the rebellious nobles to appear before it and answer charges of heresy; none came. It ordered the university closed; the majority of masters and students went on with their work.
About 1412 one of Huss’s followers, Jakoubek of Strzibo, had proposed that the early Christian custom of administering the Eucharist in both forms -- sub utraque specie -- Wine as well as bread -- should be restored throughout Christendom. When the idea captivated the rank and file of his supporters, Huss gave his approval. The council forbade it and defended the abandonment of the primitive custom on the ground that it risked the spilling of Christ’s blood. After Huss’s death the University of Prague and the nobles led by Queen Sophia, adopted lay communion in both kinds as a command of Christ, and the chalice became the symbol of the “Utraquist” revolt. The followers of Huss formulated in 1420 the “Four Articles of Prague” as their basic demands; that the Eucharist should be given in wine as well as bread; that ecclesiastical simony should be promptly punished; that the Word of God should be preached without hindrance as the sole standard of religious truth and practice; and that an end should be put to the ownership of extensive material possessions by priests and monks. A radical minority among the rebels rejected the veneration of relics, capital punishment, purgatory, and Masses for the dead. All the elements of the Lutheran Reformation were present in this Hussite revolt.
King Wenceslaus, who had sympathized with the movement, possibly because it promised to transfer church property to the state, now began to fear it as threatening civil as well as ecclesiastical property. In the “New Town “ that he had added to Prague, he appointed only anti-Hussites to the council, and these men issued punitive regulations designed to suppress the heresy. On July 30, 1419, a Hussite crowd paraded in the New Town, forced its way into the council chamber, and threw the councillors out of the windows into the street, where another crowd finished them off. A popular assembly was organized, which elected Hussite councillors. Wenceslaus confirmed the new council, and then died of a heart attack (1419).
The Bohemian nobles offered to accept Sigismund as their king if he would recognize the Four articles of Prague. He countered by demanding from all Czechs full obedience to the Church, and burned at the stake a Bohemian who refused to renounce the “lay chalice “. The new Pope, Martin V, announced a crusade against the Bohemian heretics, and Sigismund advanced with a large force against Prague (1420). almost overnight the Hussites organised an army; nearly every town in Bohemia and Moravia sent impassioned recruits; Jan Zizka, a sixty year old knight with one eye, trained them, and led them to incredible victories. Twice they defeated Sigismund’s troops. He raised another army, but when a false report came that Zizka’s men were approaching, this new host fled in disorder without ever sighting an enemy. Inflated with success , Zizka’s Puritans now adopted from their opponents the idea that religious dissent should be suppressed by force; they passed up and down Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia like a devastating storm, pillaging monasteries, massacring monks, and compelled the population to accept the Four Articles of Prague. The Germans in Bohemia, who wished to remain C atholic, became the favourite victims of Hussite arms. Meanwhile, and for seventeen years ( 1419- 36) Bohemia survived without a king.
Diverse and conflicting elements had united to make the Bohemian revolution. The native Bohemians resented the wealth and arrogance of the German settlers, and hoped to drive them from the country. The nobles coveted ecclesiastical properties and thought them worth an excommunication. The middle classes hoped to raise their modest power, as against the nobility, in the Diet that ruled Prague and gave some government to Bohemia. The serfs, especially on church estates, dreamed of dividing those blessed acres, and at worst of freeing themselves from villein bonds. Some of the lower clergy, fleeced by the hierarchy, gave the rebellion their tacit support, and provided for it the religious services interdicted by the Church.
When the arms of the Hussites had won them most of Bohemia, the contradictions in their arms broke them into fratricidal factions. After the nobles had seized most of the property they felt that the revolution should subside. While the serfs who had tilled these lands for the Church clamoured for their division among themselves as freemen, the noble appropriators demanded that the peasants should serve the new masters on the same servile basis as before. Zizka supported the peasants, and for a time besieged the now conservative “Calixtine” or chalice Hussites in Prague. Tiring of the struggle, he accepted a truce, withdrew to eastern Bohemia, and founded a “horeb Brotherhood” dedicated to the Four Articles and to killing Germans. When he died (1424 ) he bequeathed his skin to be made into a martial drum.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 169 - 172
THE BOHEMIAN REVOLUTION (cont.)
In the town of Tabor another party of Hussites formed, who held that real Christianity required a communistic organization of life. Long before Huss there had been in Bohemia little groups of Waldensians, Beghards, and other irrepressible heretics mingling religious with communistic ideals. They had maintained a salutary quiet until Zizka’s troops had over thrown the power of the Church in most of Bohemia; now they came into the open, and captured doctrinal leadership at Tabor. Many of them rejected the Real Presence, Purgatory, prayers for the dead, and all the sacraments except baptism and communion, and discouraged the veneration of relics, images, and saints; they proposed to restore the simple ritual of the Apostolic Church, and repudiated all ecclesiastical rites and robes that they could not find in early Christianity. They objected to altars, organs, and the splendour of church decoration, and they destroyed such ornaments wherever they could. Like later Protestants, they reduced divine worship to communion, prayer, Scriptural readings, a sermon, and the singing of hymns; and these services were conducted by clergymen indistinguishable from the laity in dress. Most of the Taborites deduced communism from millenarianism: Christ would soon come to establish His Kingdom on earth; in that Kingdom there would be no property, no Church or state, no class distinctions, no human laws, no taxes, no marriage; surely it would please Christ, when he came, to find such a heavenly utopia already established by His worshipers. At Tabor and some other towns these principals were put into practice; there, said a contemporary professor in the University of Prague, “ all is held in common, no one owns anything for himself alone; so to own is considered a deadly sin They hold that all should be equal brothers and sisters“.
A Bohemian peasant turned philosopher, Peter Chelcicky, went further, and wrote in vigorous Czech a series of Tolstoyan tracts advocating a pacifistic anarchism. He attacked the powerful and the rich, denounced war and capital punishment as murder, and demanded a society without lords or serfs, or laws of any kind. He bade his followers take Christianity literally as they found in the New Testament; to baptise only adults, to turn their backs upon the world and its ways, upon oaths and learning and class distinctions, upon commerce and city life; and to live in voluntary poverty, preferably tilling the land, and completely ignoring “civilization” and the state. The Taborites found this pacifism unsuited to their temperament. They divided into moderate and advanced radicals ( these preached nudism and a communism of women), and the two factions passed from argument to war. In the course of a few years unequal abilities developed inequalities of power and privilege, finally of goods; and the apostles of peace and freedom were replaced by ruthless lawgivers wielding despotic force.
Christendom heard with horror of this supposedly communistic Christianity. The baronial and burgher Hussites in Bohemia began to yearn for the Church of Rome as the only organisation strong enough to stop the immanent dissolution of the existing social order. They rejoiced when the council of Basel invited reconciliation. A delegation from the Council, without papal authorization, came to Bohemia, and signed a series of compacts so worded that complaisant Hussites and Catholics could interpret them as accepting and rejecting the Four Articles of Prague (1433). As the Hussites refused to recognise these compacts, the conservative Hussites joined with the surviving orthodox groups in Bohemia, attacked and defeated the divided Taborites and put an end to the communistic experiment. (1434) The Bohemian Diet made its peace with Sigismund, and accepted him as king (1436).
But Sigismund, accustomed to crowning his victories with futility, died the following year. During the chaos that ensued, the orthodox party secured the upper hand in Prague. An able provincial leader, George of Podebrad, organised an army of Hussites, captured Prague, restored the Utraquist Jan Rokycana to the archiepiscopal see, and established himself as Governor of Bohemia ( 1451). When Pope Nicholas V refused to recognize Rokycana, the Utraquists mediated a transfer of their allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church, but the fall of Constantinople to the Turks ended the negotiations. In 1458. Seeing that Podebrad's excellent administration had restored order and prosperity, the Diet chose him king.
Podebrad in 1464 invited the monarchs of Europe to form a permanent federation of European states, with its own legislature, executive, and army, and a judiciary empowered to settle current and future international disputes. The kings did not reply; the reinvigorated papacy was too strong to be defied by a League of Nations. Pope Paul II declared Podebrad a heretic, freed his subjects from their oaths of obedience, and called upon Christian powers to depose him (1466) Matthias Corvinus of Hungary undertook the task, invaded Bohemia, and was crowned king by a group of Catholic nobles 9 1469). Podebrad offered the throne to Ladislas, son of Casimir IV of Poland. Then worn out with war and dropsy, he died aged fifty-one ( 1471). Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, honours him as, next to Charles IV, her greatest king.
The Diet accepted Ladislas II, and the nobles took advantage of his youthful weakness to consolidate their economic and political power, to reduce the representation of the towns and burghers in the Diet, and to debase into serfdom the peasantry that had just dreamed of utopia. Thousands of Bohemians, during this period of revolution and reaction, fled to other lands. * In 1485 the Catholic and Utraquist parties signed the treaty of Kutna Hora, pledging themselves to peace for thirty years.
In Eastern Bohemia and Morovia the followers of Chelcicky formed (1457) a new sect, the Jednota Bratrska, or Church of the Brotherhood, dedicated to a simple agricultural life on the principles of the New Testament. In 1467 it renounced the authority of the Catholic Church, consecrated its own priests, rejected purgatory and the worship of saints, anticipated Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith, and became the first modern church to practice Christianity. By 1500 it claimed 100,000 members. These “Moravian Brethren” were almost exterminated in the fury of the Thirty Year’s War; they survived through the leadership of John Comenius; they still exist, in scattered congregations in Europe, Africa, and America, astonishing a violent and sceptical world with their religious toleration, their unassuming piety, and their peaceful fidelity to the principles they profess.
* The French, confusing the Bohemian exiles with Gypsies who in the fifteenth century were entering Western Europe, supposedly from Bohemia, made ‘Boheme’ their word for Gypsy. The name Gypsy is a corruption of “Egyptian’ and reflects the claim of the tribe to have come from ‘Little Egypt’. Burton traces them to India. In Byzantine lands they took the name Rom-- i.e. (eastern) Roman; in the Balkans and Central Europe they were called by variants of Arzigan (Czigany, Zigeuner, Zingary), a word of uncertain origin. In European records they first appear in the early fourteenth century as wondering groups of craftsmen, musicians, dancers, fortune-tellers, and --in general belief -- thieves. Usually, they accepted baptism, but they took religion and Commandments lightly, and soon ran foul of the Inquisition. Aside from the gay varicoloured dress and ornaments of their more prosperous women, their contribution to civilization lay in dancing and music-- whose alternations of sadness and exuberance have inspired some major composers.
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Excellent job Trevor, and what a lot of work !
The main thing I learned from the post was an understanding of the origin of the Gypsies
or "Egyptsies" and the reason for their indifference to religious edicts.
At least we have benefited from their musical prowess.
Brian
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I remember reading a long time ago a book that explained the Gypsy religeon, and compared it to the Amish and other groups. Don't remember aby details now, but apparently they were able to maintain it through the inquisition. It did say that they had one set of moral principles toward other gypsies and another toward outsiders. That is true of many groups, unfortunately.
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A painting of Jan Hus before the 'Council of Constance' by Vaclav Brozik.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bro%C5%BE%C3%ADk,_V%C3%A1clav_-_Hus_p%C5%99ed_koncilem_6._%C4%8Dervence_1415.jpg
Emily
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The Council of Constance was called mainly to settle the 'Three Popes Controversy'. They eventually deposed John XX111 and Benedict X111. Pope Gregory X11 sent them his resignation and they eventually elected Martin V.
Many Catholics wanted 'reform' in the church. Jan Hus was one of them. He appeared before the Council, and received a death sentence. His fellow reformer got the same treatment. They were burned at the stake.
It was better and 'smarter' to be an infidel than a follower of an Arab cult and be branded a heretic. The 'Smart Ones', I read recently had banded together and formed their own organization sans occultism of course.
Emily
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I know this information is important historically, as the whole Protestant Reformation is an important historical event for many, many reasons, including its relationship to Europeans coming to the western hemisphere, but as i read i just think "oh my goodness, what silliness."
I did learn something new - i had not read before about the relationship of the term Gypsy to Egyptians. One of the best things, IMO, the gypsies gave the world is Django Reinhardt's music
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=django%20reinhardt&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CMgBELcCMAk&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVpmOTGungnA&ei=n3h8UP-EJe-70QGJ7YHQDQ&usg=AFQjCNHpkgamxSWPHnkXWB52AFw03n4nDA&sig2=NVTNEb5gVTyx2KyQAWk1hg
(i dont know how to shorten that link, but it works. ;D)
And what is "the communism of women?"
Jean
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Would this be the answer to your question Mabel ? : -
An American woman comrade, C. Perkins Stetson, wrote some years ago: “As women become free, economic social factors, so becomes possible the full social combination of individuals in collective industry.” That industrial freedom is what Russian women now possess; and the task that lies before English working women is to stand with their men in the ever-intensifying struggle for the ownership and control by the proletariat of the means of life.
www.marxists.org/archive/montefiore/1920/11/04.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/montefiore/1920/11/04.htm)
Brian
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Where else can I come to the computer and find a discussion of art, religion, music, and communism in one place?
You certainly have no trouble guessing which one is hus in the picture, as well as who has the power and who doesn't.
I like the Gypsy jazz. Kind of insulting to call it "minor jazz".
So the "communism of women" means "stand with your man"? No wonder we're confused!
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Ditto to everything you said Joan! ;D ;D
I don't know Brian, that statement was from 1920, do you think they meant the same thing in the 15th century?
Jean
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Mabel - - -
The Durants knew about Karl Marx, and although the word "Communism" has been
in use since Biblical time, I don't think it has been linked to "Women" before the time
of Marxism.
I may be wrong - - - it won't be the first time !
Brian
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 172 - 174
POLAND: 1300-1505
The maintenance of peace is difficult even in regions deriving unity and protection from geographical barriers; consider how much more difficult it is in sites exposed on one or more borders to neighbours always avid, sometimes tempting, sometimes powerful. Poland in the fourteenth century was half stifled by Teutonic knights, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Moravians, Bohemians, and Germans pressing upon her frontiers. When Ladislas the Short became grand prince of Lesser -- southern -- Poland (1306), he faced a multitude of enemies. The Germans in Greater -- western -- Poland rejected his authority; the Knights seized Danzig and Pomerania; the margrave of Brandenburg plotted to destroy him; and Wenceslaus III of Bohemia claimed the Polish throne. Ladislas fought his way through this sea of troubles by arms, diplomacy, and marriage, united Lesser and Greater Poland into a coherent kingdom, and had himself crowned at Cracow, his new capital (1320). Dying at seventy-three (1333), he bequeathed his uneasy throne to his son, Casimir the Great.
Some might begrudge Casimir III this title, since he preferred negotiation and compromise to war. Resigning Silesia to Bohemia, and Pomerania to the knights, he consoled himself by acquiring Galicia, around Lwow, and Mazovia, around Warsaw. He devoted his reign of thirty-seven years to administration, bringing varied territories under one law, “that the state might not look like a many-headed monster.” Under his direction a group of Jurists unified the divergent legislation and customs of the provinces into the “Statutes of Casimir.” -- the first codification of Polish laws, and a model of humanitarian moderation by comparison with contemporary codes. Casimir protected Jewish, Greek orthodox, and other racial or religious minorities, encouraged education and the arts, established the University of Cracow ( 1364), and built so extensively that men said had found a Poland of wood and had rebuilt it in stone. He so wisely promoted all phases of the nation’s economy that farmers hailed him as “the peasants’ king.” Merchants throve in the security of peace, and all classes called him Great.
Having no male heir he left his crown to his nephew Louis the Great of Hungary (1370), hoping to win for his country the protection of a strong monarchy, and a share in the cultural stimulus that the Angevin dynasty had brought from Italy and France. But Louis was absorbed in Hungary, and neglected Poland. To keep the proud nobles loyal to him in his absence he granted them, by the “Privilege of Kasa” (1374), exemption from most taxes, and a monopoly of high offices. A war of succession followed his death, ( 1382). The Seym or Parliament recognized his daughter Jadwiga, eleven years old, as king; but disorder ended only when Jagello, Great Prince of Lithuania, married Jadwiga ( 1386 ), uniting his spacious realm with Poland, and bringing a masterful personality to the Government.
The growth of Lithuania was a major phenomenon of the fourteenth century. Gedymin and his son Olgierd brought under pagan rule nearly all western Russia; some of these were glad to find, under the Great Prices, a refuge from the Tartar Golden Horde that held eastern Russia in fief When Jagello succeeded Olgierd( 1377) the Lithuanian Empire, governed from Wilno, reached from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and almost to Moscow itself. This was the gift that Jagello brought to Jadwiga, or Poland was the dowry that she brought to him. She was only sixteen at their marriage; she had been reared as a Roman Catholic in the finest culture of the Latin Renaissance. He was thirty=six, illiterate and heathen but he accepted baptism, took the Christian name of Ladislas II, and promised to convert all Lithuania.
It was a timely union, for the eastward advance of the Teutonic Knights was endangering both wedded states. The “Order of The Cross,” originally dedicated to Christianizing Slavs, had become a band of martial conquerors taking by the sword whatever terrain they could snatch from pagan or Christian, and establishing a harsh serfdom over lands once tilled by a free peasantry. In 1410 the Grand Master, from his capital in Marienburg, ruled Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Prussia, and eastern Pomerania, shutting Poland off from the sea. In a ferocious Northern War, the Grand Master's army and that of Jagello--- each we are told numbering 100,000 strong-- met in the battle of Grunewald or Tannnenburg (1410). The Knights were defeated and fled, leaving behind them some 14,000 prisoners and 18,000 slain -- among these the Grand Master himself. From that day the Order of the Cross rapidly declined until in the peace of Thorn, (1466) it ceded Pomerania and western Prussia to Poland, with the free port of Danzig as a door to the sea.
During the reign of Casimir IV ( 1447- 1492 ) Poland attained the apex of her spread, her power, and her art. Though himself quite illiterate, Casimir ended the Knightly scorn of letters by giving his sons a thorough education. Queen Jadwiga, dying, left her jewels to finance the re-opening of Cracow University -- which, in the next century, would teach Copernicus. Literature, as well as science and philosophy, used the Latin tongue; In Latin Jan Dlugosz wrote his classic “History of Poland”(1478) In 1477 Viet Stoss of Nuremburg was invited to Cracow he stayed there seventeen years, and raised the city to a high place in the art of the time. For the Church of Our Lady he carved choir stalls, and an enormous altarpiece, forty feet by thirty-three, with a central shrine of the Assumption as impressive as Titan's painting, and with eighteen panels depicting the life of Mary and her Sons -- panels almost worthy, though in wood, to bear comparison with the bronze doors that Ghiberti had made for the Florentine Baptistery a generation before. With these works Gothic sculpture in Poland reached its crown and end. In the reign of Casimir’s son Sigismund I ( 1506-48) Polish art accepted the style of Italian Renaissance. Lutheranism seeped in from Germany, and a new age began.
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Cracow's great altar by Viet Stoss....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altarpiece_of_Veit_Stoss
Emily
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"The growth of Lithuania was a major phenomenon of the fourteenth century." Who knew!
Our view of history in the US is narrowed down to about four countries in Europe and the US.
that altar is amazing. Equally amazing that it was rescued and put back in one piece.
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Podebrad in 1464 invited the monarchs of Europe to form a permanent federation of European states, with its own legislature, executive, and army, and a judiciary empowered to settle current and future international disputes. The kings did not reply; the reinvigorated papacy was too strong to be defied by a League of Nations.
So, George of Podebrad was the first to suggest a 'European Union' in 1464. What a shame they did not unite and stop the foolish wars that seemed never ending. Every time a competent leader came along the 'church' did everything they could to quash or kill them. It was and is all about money and power today as yesterday.
Emily
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he bequeathed his uneasy throne to his son, Casimir the Great.
Some might begrudge Casimir III this title, since he preferred negotiation and compromise to war.
I was surprised to see Durant write these words. So to be great in most peoples eyes, one would have to be a militant military leader who settled everything by 'WAR'.
To me negotiation and compromise would be preferable to war. It may not always work, but should be the first resort, not the last. If that does not work, then fight to the death.
Casimar's wife Jadwiga could be called 'Great' for her support of education. How refreshing to read about two people who are admirable and were a benefit to their country.
Emily
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EMILY: I think Durant is being sardonic (is that the right word here). There are always some who wish to benifit from a war. Including nobles who get their wealth from war.
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Durants' S o C
V ol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 175 - 178
The Ottoman Tide
Second blooming in Byzantium 1261 - 1373
The Byzantine Empire, bloodlessly restored under a new Palaeologus dynasty 1261, survived despite itself for almost two centuries. Its territory was reduced by the advance of the Moslems in Asia and Europe, by the expansion of the Slavs in its rear, and by scattered fragments of its former self retained by the Christian enemies who had sacked Constantinople in 1204 -- Normans, Venetians, and Genoese. Industry lingered in the towns of the empire, but its products were carried in Italian Vessels that paid no revenue into the treasury. Of the once numerous middle class only a fringe remained. Above it were luxurious nobles and prelates gorgeously garbed, who had learned nothing from history and had forgotten everything but their privileges. Below were turbulent layers of monks who salted piety with politics, and peasant proprietors lapsing into tenancy, and tenant farmers slipping into serfdom and proletaires dreaming of egalitarian utopias.. A revolution in Salonika (1341) expelled the aristocracy, pillaged palaces, and set up a semi-communistic republic that ruled for eight years before it was suppressed by troops from the capital. Constantinople was still a thriving nexus of commerce, but a Muslim traveller in 1330 noted “many destroyed houses, and sown fields within the city walls“; and a Spanish diplomat about 1409, wrote : “Everywhere throughout the capital are great churches, palaces, and monasteries, but most of them are in ruins.” The glory had departed from the Queen of the Bosporus.
In philosophy the old contest between Platonists and Aristotelians recaptured the stage. Gemistus Pletho in 1400 wrote a treatise bearing Plato’s title, “THE LAWS”, in which he proposed the replacement of both Christianity and Mohammedanism by the religion of ancient Greece, merely transforming all the Olympians but Zeus into symbolic personifications of creative processes or ideas; Pletho did not know that religions are born, not made. He returned to Mistra, subsided theologically, became an archbishop, and died at ninety-five.
The revival of art was as marked as the rejuvenation of letters. In the frescoes that increasingly replaced expensive mosaics in the decoration of churches and palaces, the ecclesiastical hold relaxed and figures of vivid fantasy and secular story appeared beside the legends of the saints. Greece was now again a centre of great art. On the eastern coast of Greece, high on the promontory of Mount Athos, monasteries had been raised in the tenth century, and in most centuries since: in the fourteenth the majestic Pantocrator, in the fifteenth, St. Paul’s.
While Byzantine art experienced this final ecstasy, the Byzantine government declined. The army was in disorder, the navy in decay; Genoese or Venetian vessels controlled the Black sea, and pirates roamed the Greek archipelago. A band of mercenaries from Catalonia captured Gallipoli (1306), mulcted the commerce of the Dardanelles, and set up a republic of robbers in Athens (1310); no government succeeded in suppressing them, and they were left to be consumed by their own violence. For many years the Byzantine Emperors were so fearful of the Christian West that they had no energy or courage to resist the Moslem advance. When that fear subsided the Ottoman Turks were at the door.
Some of the emperors bought their own destruction. In1342 John VI Cantacuzene, involved in a civil war, asked aid of Ockham, Sultan of the Ottomans; Ockham sent him ships and helped him take Salonika; the grateful emperor gave him his daughter Theodora as an extra wife; the sultan sent him an extra 6000 troops. When John Palaeologus undertook to depose him, John Cantacuzene robbed the churches of Constantinople to pay Ockham for 20,000 more Turks, and promised the Sultan a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese. In the hour of his apparent victory the people of Constantinople turned against him as a traitor, and revolution transformed him overnight from an emperor into an historian. (1355). He retired to a monastery, and wrote the history of his times in a last attempt to overwhelm his enemies.
John V Palaeologus found no ease on the throne. He went to Rome as a suppliant (1369) and offered, in return for help against the Turks, to bring his people into obedience to the papacy. Before the high altar of St. Peter’s he abjured the Greek Orthodox Church. Pope Urban V promised aid against the infidels, and gave him letters to the princes of Christendom. But these were busy with other affairs. Instead of receiving assistance, John was held at Venice as a hostage for the payment of Greek debts. His son Manuel brought the money; John returned to Constantinople poorer than before, and was denounced by his people for foreswearing the Orthodox creed. Failing in a second attempt to get succour from the West, he recognized Sultan Murad I as his suzerain, agreed to provide military aid to the Ottoman army, and gave his beloved Manuel as hostage for the fulfilment of his pledge. Appeased for the moment, Murad spared Byzantium, and turned to subjugate the Balkans.
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Durant's remark "Pletho did not know, religions are born, not made."
I do not agree with Durant on this one. I think religion, like all other human ideas are made by man. I think such things as mathematical laws are facts that pre-exist man, but not religion. Religions have the smell and colour of man's story telling. -- Trevor
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From what I've seen of Durant, I would have thought he would agree with you.
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Durant's remark "Pletho did not know, religions are born, not made."
I do not agree with Durant on this one. I think religion, like all other human ideas are made by man. I think such things as mathematical laws are facts that pre-exist man, but not religion. Religions have the smell and colour of man's story telling. -- Trevor
Thank you Trevor. I had just come in to read and highlighted that very quote to comment. You have saved me the effort.
Man has created thousands of gods over their time on this earth. I once kept a list, and still take note of any new god I encounter in my reading.
Why did man need the occult and supernatural? He was scared of living and afraid of dying. Did all his finagling help him beat the grim reaper, NOPE.
Emily
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On the Eastern coast of Greece, high on the promontory of Mount Athos, monasteries had been raised...
Here are photos of some of those monasteries. Click on the photo shown and you will go back to others. Click on them and click again to return.
http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/Monasteries_and_Churches/Mount_Athos/8.shtml
Emily
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Wow! I guess you can't be a monk if you're afraid of heights!
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The Durants' S o C
Vol VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 178 - 181
THE BALKANS MEET THE TURKS.
Hitherto the fourteenth century had been for the Balkans a peak in their history. In Wallachia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania, hardy Slavs cut the forests, mined and tilled the earth, pastured flocks, and eagerly bred their own replacements. From the Adriatic to the Black Sea, from the black Sea to the Baltic, Slavs, Italians, Magyars, Bulgars, Greeks, and Jews carried the trade of East and West, and cities sprouted in their path.
The great man of Serbia at this time was Stephen Dushan. His father Stephen Urosh III, begot him in a brief detour from monogamy, gave him the affectionate name of Dusha -- i.e. Soul -- and had him crowned as heir apparent. When a more legitimate son arrived, and received fond nicknames in his turn, Stephen deposed his father, allowed him to be strangled, and ruled Serbia with a strong hand for a generation. “Of all men of his time,” wrote a contemporary, “he was the tallest, and terrible to look upon.” Serbia forgave him everything, for he waged a successful war. He trained a large army, led it with masterly generalship, conquered Bosnia, Albania, Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Macedonia, Thessaly. Transferring his capital from Belgrade to Skopje, he convened there a parliament of nobles, and bade it unify and codify the laws of his diverse states; the resultant Zabonik Tsara Dushana, or Law book of Czar Dushan ( 1349). Financed and perhaps stimulated by this political exaltation, Serbian art in the fourteenth century rivalled the contemporary flourish in Constantinople and the Morea; magnificent churches were built, and their mosaics were freer and livelier than those normally allowed by the more conservative ecclesiasticism of the Greek capital. In 1355 Dushan assembled his armies for the last time. He asked them whether they preferred to be led against Byzantium or Hungary. They answered that they would follow him wherever he chose to lead. “To Constantinople !” he cried . On the way he fell sick and died.
His empire was too heterogeneous to be held together except by a man of alert intelligence and disciplined energy. Bosnia seceded, and attained for a proud moment, under Stephen Trtko, the hegemony of the Balkans. Bulgaria under John Alexander had its last great age. Wallachia, once part of the Byzantine Empire, detached itself ( 1290 ) and ruled the spreading delta of the Danube. Moldavia threw off its allegiance to Hungary (1349).
Upon these centrifugal statelets the Turkish blight fell even before John V Palaeologus made Byzantium vassal to Murad I. Suleiman, the dashing son of Sultan Orkhan , had led Turkish troops to the aid of John VI Cantacuzene; he received, or took, as his reward the fortress of Tzympe on the European side of the Dardanelles ( 1353). When an earthquake shattered the walls of nearby Gallipoli, Suleiman moved into the defenceless town. At his invitation Turkish collonists crossed from Anatolia and spread along the northern coast of the sea of Marmora almost to Constantinople itself. With an expanding Turkish army Suleiman marched into Thrace and captured Adrianople (1361) Five years later Murad made it his European capital. From that centre the Turks would for a century aim their blows at the divided Balkans.
Pope Urban V, recognizing the significance of this Turkish infiltration into Europe, called upon all Christendom for another Crusade. An army of Serbs, Hungarians, and Wallachians marched gallantly toward Adrianople. At the river Maritsa they celebrated their unresisted advance with a feast. Amid their cups and revelry they were surprised by a night assault from a relatively small Turkish force. Many were slain before they could arm; many were drowned trying to retreat across the river; the rest fled.(1371) In 1385 Sofia capitulated, and half of Bulgaria fell to the Ottomans. In 1386 they took Nish, in 1387 Salonika. All Greece lay open to the Turks. For one heroic year little Bosnia stemmed the tide. Stephen Trtko joined forces with the Serbians under Lazar I, and defeated the Turks at Plochnik (1388) A year later Murad marched west with an army that included many Christian contingents. At Kosovo he was met by a coalition of Serbs, Bosnians, Magyars, Vlachs, Bulgars, Albanians, and Poles. A Serb knight, pretended to be a deserter and informer, made his way into Murad’s tent, killed the sultan, and was hacked to death. Murad’s son and heir, Bajazet I rallied the Turks to angry courage, and led them to victory. King Lazar was captured and beheaded; Serbia became a tribute-paying vassal of the Turks, and its new king, Stephen Lazarevitch, was compelled to send arms and men to Bajazet. In 1392 Wallachia under John Shishman joined the roster of Balkan states tributary to the Ottomans, Only Bulgaria and Byzantium remained capable of defence.
In 1393 Bajazet invaded Bulgaria. After a siege of three months Trnovo , the capital fell; the Churches were desecrated, and the palaces set on fire; the nobles were invited to a conference and were massacred. The Pope again appealed to Christendom, and king Sigismund of Hungary summoned Europe to arms.. France, though engaged in a life or death struggle with England, sent a force of cavaliers under the count of Nevers; The counts of Hohenzollern and the Grand Master of the Knights of St., John came with their followers; the Elector Palatine brought a company of Bavarian horses. John Shishman renounced his vassalage and came with his troops to fight under the Hungarian King.
The united army, 60,000 strong, marched through Serbia and besieged the Turkish garrison in Nicopolis. Warned that Bajazet with an army from Asia was coming to raise the siege, the French knights, gay with wine and women, promised to annihilate it. For his part Bajazet vowed he would stable his horse at the high altar of St. Peter’s in Rome. He placed his weakest troops in front, with strategy that should have been obvious. The French knights plunged through them triumphantly, then through 10,000 Janissaries, then through 5000 Turkish cavalry, then charged recklessly up a hill. Just beyond its summit they found themselves faced with the main force of the Turkish army -- 40,000 lancers. The nobles fought nobly, were killed or captured or put to flight, and the allied infantry behind them were disordered by their rout The Hungarians and Germans were nevertheless driving back the Turks when Stephen Lazarevitch of Serbia led 5,000 Christians against the Christian army, and won the crucial battle of Nicopolis for the Sultan (1396).
Maddened by the sight of so many of his men lying dead on the field, and by the claim of the rescued garrison that the Christian besiegers had killed their Turkish prisoners, Bajazet ordered that the 10,000 captives be put to death. The Count of Nevers was allowed to choose twenty-four knights to be saved for the ransom they might bring. Several thousand Christians were slaughtered in a bloody ritual that went on from sunrise to late afternoon until the Sultans officers persuaded him to spare the rest. From that day until 1878 Bulgaria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Bajazet now took most of Greece, and then marched against Constantinople.
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Again, this is all completely new to me. "From that day until 1878 Bulgaria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. "
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I went to my Millennium Atlas that I bought in the year 2,000 to see how the map of Europe had changed since the 14th century where our 'Story' has us at the moment.
Then I went looking for a 14th century map of Europe to see how these countries looked before the invasion of the Muslim Turks.
I found a map of Europe that takes us from the year 1000 to the year 2000. Just click on the link and when it loads click the start bar at the left (like youtube video) and the entire map of a changing Europe proceeds before your eyes. Watching the Mongol invasion was harrowing, but then here come the muslim Turks as their invasion of Europe unfolds.
I hope all of you enjoy this map journey as much as I did.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-map-of-europe-1000-ad-to-today/
Emily
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That was amazing!! I knew Europe was unstable, but I had no idea how much,
I was frustrated that there weren't changing dates on the map. I kept thinking "When was that?"
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The DURANT'S S o C
THE REFORMATION Vol. VI
Pgs 181 - 184
The LAST YEARS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 1373 - 1453
No other government ever so fully deserved to fall as the Byzantine. Having lost the will to defend itself, and unable to persuade the too sophisticated Greeks that it is sweet and noble to die for one’s country, it sent no contingent to the Christian armies at the Maritsa, Kosovo, or Nicopolis. It provided 12,000 soldiers for the Sultan in 1379; and it was Byzantine troops that, on the order of John VII Palaeologus, compelled the Byzantine city of Philadelphia, in Asian Minor, to surrender to the Turks (1390).
When Bajazet resumed the siege of Constantinople ( 1402), the Byzantine Empire was reduced to its capital: Bajazet commanded both coasts of the Sea of Marmora, controlled the Dardanelles, ruled nearly all of Asia Minor and the Balkans, and passed safely between his Asiatic and European capitals. The final hour seemed to have struck for the beleaguered city. Starving Greeks let themselves down over the walls, and deserted to the Turks in order to eat. Suddenly from the Moslem East an “infidel” saviour appeared for the outpost of Christendom. Timur the Lame __ Tamerlane the Great __ had determined to check the growth and insolence of Ottoman power. As the Tatar hordes rolled west Bajazet abandoned the siege of Constantinople, and hurried to regroup his forces in Anatolia. Turks met Tatars at Ankara ( 1402); Bajazet was defeated and captured. The Turkish tide ebbed for a generation; God at last seemed to be on the side of the Christians.
Under the wise rule of Manuel II Byzantium recovered most of Greece and parts of Thrace. But Mohammed I reorganized the Turkish army, and Murad II led it, after a major defeat, to major victories. The Muslims still drew inspiration from the belief that to die for Islam was to win paradise; even if there should be no paradise and no houris, they were impartial enough to consider the Greek maidens beautiful. The Christians were not so impartial. Greek Catholics hated Roman Catholics and were hated in turn.
When Venetians hunted and massacred Greek Catholics in Crete for refusing to accept the Roman ritual and papal supremacy, Pope Urban V joined Petrarch in congratulating the doge on his firm protection of the one true Church (c. 1350). Most Balkan States hated their neighbours more than the Turks, and some preferred to submit to the Moslems, who taxed no more than the Christian rulers, persecuted heresy less or not at all, and allowed four wives.
Murad II reconquered Greece, Salonika, and most of Albania. Serbia resisted manfully under George Branković ; a combined army of Serbians and Hungarians under Hunyadi János defeated Murad at Kunovitza ( 1444) and Branković ruled Serbia until his death at the age of ninety ( 1456). Murad signed a peace with the Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus, and retired to Adrianople to die ( 1451 ).
Mohammed II surnamed the Conqueror, came to the Ottoman throne at twenty-one. He confirmed the treaty with Constantine and sent his nephew Orkhan to be brought up ( possibly as a spy ) at the Byzantine court. When other Moslem powers challenged his authority in Western Asia, Mohammed ferried his army across the straits and left his European possessions in charge of the Vizier Khalil Pasha, known for his friendliness to Byzantium. Constantine thought the revolt in Asia offered an opportunity to weaken the Turks in Europe. But he had neglected to secure either his alliances in the west or his communications to the south. Mohammed made peace with his Moslem enemies, and with Venice, Wallachia, Bosnia, and Hungary. Crossing back to Europe he raised a powerful fortress on the Bosporus above Constantinople, thereby ensuring unimpeded passage of his troops between the continents. He hired Christian gunsmiths to cast for him the largest cannon yet known, which could hurl stone balls weighing 600 pounds. In June 1452 he declared war, and began the final siege of Constantinople with 140,000 men.
Constantine led the defence with desperate resolution.. He equipped his 7,000 soldiers with small cannon, lancers, bows and arrows, and crude firearms. He supervised every night the repair of the damage done to the walls during the day. Nevertheless the ancient defences crumbled more and more before the battering rams and superior artillery of the Turks; now ended the medieval fortification of cities by walls. On May 29 the Turks fought their way across a mote filled with the bodies of the slain, and surged over or through the walls into the terrorized city. The Greeks at last fought bravely; the young Emperor was everywhere in the heat of the action, and the nobles who were with him died to a man in his defence. Surrounded by Turks, he cried out, “Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?” He threw off his Imperial garments, fought as a common soldier, disappeared in the rout of his little army, and was never heard of again.
The victors massacred thousands, till all defence ceased. Then they began the rampant plunder which had so long been the substance of their hopes. Every usable adult among the defeated was taken as a prize; nuns were ravished like other women in an impartial mania of rape; Christian masters and servants, shorn of the garb that marked their state, found themselves suddenly equalised in indiscriminate slavery. Pillage was not quite uncontrolled; when Mohammed II found a Moslem piously destroying a marble pavement of St. Sophia, he smote him with the royal scimitar, and announced that all buildings were to be reserved for orderly rapine by the Sultan. St. Sophia was transformed into a mosque after proper purification; all its Christian insignia were removed, and its mosaics were whitewashed into oblivion for 500 years. On the very day of the city’s fall, or on the ensuing Friday, a muezzin mounted the tallest turret of Hagia Sophia, and summoned the Moslems to gather in it for prayer to victorious Allah.
The capture of Constantinople shook every throne in Europe. The bulwark had fallen that had protected Europe from Asia for a thousand years. That Moslem power and faith which the Crusaders had hoped to drive back into Asia had now made its way over the corpse of Byzantium, and through the Balkans to the very gates of Hungary. The papacy, which had dreamed of all Greek Christianity submitting to the rule of Rome, saw with dismay the rapid conversion of millions of south-eastern Europeans to Islam. Routes of commerce once open to Western vessels were now in alien hands, and could be clogged with tolls in peace or closed with guns in war.
In one sense nothing was lost, only the dead had died. Byzantium had finished its role, and yielded its place, in the heroic and sanguinary, noble and ignominious procession of mankind.
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"In one sense nothing was lost, only the dead had died. Byzantium had finished its role, and yielded its place, in the heroic and sanguinary, noble and ignominious procession of mankind."
Durant really lets you feel the "procession of mankind", doesn't he. This is just what we need after the heat of an election, which tends to give us an ant's-eye view of history.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 184 - 186
HUNYADI JÁNOS 1378 - 1456
The population of Hungary, numbering some 700,000 in the fourteenth century, was a fluctuating mixture of Magyars, Pannonians, Slovaks, Bulgars, Khzars, Patzinaks, Cumans, Slavonians, Croats, Russians, Armenians, Walachians, Bosnians, and Serbs: in summary, a minority of Magyars ruled a majority of Slavs. In the nascent cities a mercantile middle class and an industrial proletariat began to form in the fourteenth century; and as these were mostly immigrants from Germany, Flanders, and Italy, new racial tensions were added to the ethnic maze.
When Andrew III died, ending the Arpád dynasty (907-1301), a war of succession further divided the nation, and peace returned only when the higher nobility, having made the monarchy elective, conferred the crown of St. Stephen upon Charles Robert of Anjou (1308). Charles brought with him French ideas of feudalism and chivalry; Italian ideas of business and industry. He promoted the development of Hungary’s gold mines, encouraged enterprise, stabilized the currency, cleansed the judiciary, and gave the nation a competent administration. Under Charles and his son Louis, Hungary became a western state, eager to win the help of the West against the proliferating East.
Louis I, wrote Voltaire, “ reigned happily in Hungary forty years.”(1342-82) and not so happily “in Poland twelve years. His people gave him the surname Great, which he well deserved; and yet this prince is hardly known (in Western Europe ) because he did not reign over men capable of transmitting his fame and virtues to other nations. How few know in the fourteenth century there was a Louis the Great in the Carpathian mountains!” His character mingled urbane culture and chivalrous sentiments with military ardour and capacity. He indulged occasionally in wars- - to avenge his murdered brother in Naples, to recover from Venice the Dalmatian ports that had long seemed to Hungary its due outlets to the sea, and to check the aggressive expansion of Serbia and Turkey by bringing Croatia, Bosnia, and northern Bulgaria under Hungarian control. By example and percept he spread the chivalric ideal among the nobility, and raised the level of manners and morals in his people. In 1367 Louis founded the university of Pécs, but this, along with much of Hungary’s medieval glory, disappeared in the long and exhausting struggle with the Turks.
Louis’s son in law, Sigismund I, enjoyed a reign whose length ( 1387- 1437) should have made possible long-term and and farsighted policies. But his tasks were greater than his powers. He led a huge army against Bajazet at Nicopolis, and barely escaped from that disaster with his life. He realized that the Turkish advance was now the paramount problem in Europe; he devoted great care and failing funds to fortifying the southern frontier, and built at the junction of the Danube and the Save the great fortress of Belgrade. But his election to the Imperial Office compelled him to neglect Hungary during long absences in Germany; and his acquisition of the Bohemian crown widened his responsibilities without enlarging his capacities.
Two years after his death the spreading Turks invaded Hungary. In this crisis the nation produced its most famous hero. Hunyadi János received his surname from the castle of Hunyadi in Transylvania, a stronghold granted to his father for services in war. János --i.e John -- was trained for war almost daily in his youth. The repulse of the Ottomans became the absorbing devotion of his career. When they entered Transylvania he led against them newly disciplined troops inspired by his patriotism and his general ship. It was in that battle that Simon Kemény, beloved in Hungarian literature, gave his life for his leader. Knowing that the Turks had been instructed to seek out and kill Hunyadi, Simon begged and received permission to exchange costumes with him. He died under concentrated assaults while Hunyadi directed the army to victory ( 1442 ). Murad II dispatched 80,000 new troops to the front. Hunyadi lured them, by feigned retreat, into a narrow pass where only a fraction of them could fight at one time, and again Hunyadi’s strategy triumphed. Harassed by revolts in Asia, Murad sued for terms, and agreed to pay a substantial indemnity. At Szeged, King Ladislas and his allies signed with Murad’s representatives a truce pledging both sides to peace. Ladislas swore on the Bible, the Turkish ambassadors on the Koran (1442).
But Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, papal legate at Buda, presently judged the time propitious for an offensive. Murad had moved his army to Asia; an Italian fleet, controlling the Dardanelles could prevent his return. The Cardinal, who had distinguished himself for probity and ability, argued that a pledge to an infidel could not bind a Christian. Hunyadi advise peace, and the Serbian contingent refused to violate the truce. The envoys of the western nations agreed with Cesarini, and offered to contribute money and men to a a sacred crusade. Ladislas yielded, an d in person led an attack upon Turkish positions. The promised reinforcements from the West did not come; The Ottoman army, 60,000 strong, eluded the Italian admiral, and crossed back k to Europe. At Varna near the Black Sea-- his standard bearer5 holding the dishonoured treaty aloft on a lance -- Murad inflicted an overwhelming defeat upon Ladislas’ 20,000 men ( 1444). Hunyadi counselled retreat, the King ordered advance. Hunyadi begged him to stay in the rear; Ladislas plunged into the van of the fight, and was killed. Cesarini did not quite regain his honour by losing his life.
In 1456 the Turks laid siege to Belgrade. Mohammed II aimed against the citadel the heavy artillery that had shattered the walls of Constantinople. Europe had never known such a violent bombardment; Hunyadi led the defence with a skill and courage never forgotten in Hungarian poetry. At last, preferring the anaesthesia of battle to the agonies of starvation, the besieged rushed from the fortress, fought their way to the Turkish cannon, and so decisively vanquished the enemy that for sixty years thereafter Hungary was spared any Moslem attack. A few days after this historic defence Hunyadi died of fever in the camp. Hungary honours him as its greatest man.
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"How few know in the fourteenth century there was a Louis the Great in the Carpathian mountains!”
Indeed. And the poetry. I wonder if any of it has been translated to English.
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So I went to my World Poetry book to find out, and I'm sorry that I did. the polish poet included is Jan Kochanowski 1530-1584
TO A Mathematician
"He discovered the age of the sun, and he knows
Just why the wrong or the right wind blows.
He has looked at each nook of the ocean floor
But he doesn't see that his wife is a -----."
As a mathematician (and wife of a mathematician), I resent that for all mathematician's wives throiugh the ages. I'm sure Poland had much more to contribute to world literature than that!
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Emily - that was a great link to the evolving map of Europe. I wish they had put a rolling scroll of the years as we saw the changing map. I remember how surprised i was when in my college Western Civ class i learned that the countries of Europe were not stabilized into the boundaries i knw them to be in 1960, until 1870. Not having had much European history in high school, i had assumed those boundaries had been true for centuries. I was able to tell on the link when it was at 1870 and Italy became the state we know today. I will look at it more than one more time.
Joan, i stand w/ you in your resentment - for all women :)
The 14th century was so horrific in Europe, i'm glad -again- that i'm living in 20 & 21st centuries in the USA?
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 187 - 190
THE HUNGARIAN RENAISSANCE 1456 – 90
In the half century of security that Hunyadi had won for Hungary, his son Matthias Corvinus led the nation to historic culmination. Matthias was only sixteen at his accession, matured into a good soldier and general, defeated the Turks wherever he encountered them, absorbed Moravia and Silesia, failed to conquer Bohemia. He fought four wars against the Emperor Frederick III, took Vienna and annexed Austria ( 1485 ); the first Austro-Hungarian Empire was Hungarian.
His victories made monarchy transiently supreme over nobility; here, as in Western Europe, centralization of government was the order of the day. At Buda, and in the King’s palace at Visegrad, his court equalled any royal grandeur of the age; great noblemen became his servitors.
Matthias’ diplomacy was cunning and unscrupulous, amiable and generous, he bought with gold what would have cost twice as much by arms. Roaming in disguise among the people, the soldiery, and the courts, he inspected at first hand the behaviour of his officials, and corrected incompetence and injustice without favouritism or fear. He did what he could to protect the weak from the strong, the peasants from the rapacious landlords. While the Church continued to claim the country as papal property, Matthias appointed and disciplined prelates, and enjoyed the furore when he made a seven-year-old Italian lad the primate of Hungary. The merchants of Ferara with rival humour, sent the new archbishop an assortment of toys.
Nobles and prelates joined the King in supporting artists and scholars; even the mining towns of the interior had rich men who sublimated wealth into art. Handsome buildings, civic as well as ecclesiastical, rose not only at Buda but at Visegrad, Tata, Esztergom, Nagyvárad, and Vác. Giovanni Dalmata made notable statues of Hunyadi and other Hungarian heroes. In the parish church of Beszterczebánya another group carved in stone a great relief, ‘Christ in the Garden of Olives,’ astonishing in its careful details and dramatic effect. Almost all the art of this Hungarian heyday was destroyed or lost in the Ottoman invasions of the sixteenth century. Some of the statues are in Istanbul, to which they were carried by the victorious Turks.
Matthias’ interests were literary rather than artistic. Humanists, foreign or native, were welcome in his court, and received lucrative sinecures in the government. Probably in Italy alone could one find, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, such a galaxy of artists and scholars as received sustenance at Matthius’ court. ‘The Sodalitas Litteraria Danubia’, founded at Buda in 1497, is among the oldest literary societies in the world.
The centralized power that Matthias had organized only briefly survived his death ( 1490). The resurgent magnates dominated Ladislas II, and embezzled revenues that should have paid the troops. The army mutinied, the soldiers went home. Freed from taxation, the nobles wasted their income and energies on riotous living, while Islam pressed against the borders, and a bitterly exploited peasantry seethed with revolt. In 1514 the Hungarian Diet declared a crusade against the Turks, and called for volunteers. Peasants in great numbers flocked to the cross, seeing little to choose between life and death. Finding themselves armed, the thought spread among them; why wait to kill distant Turks when hated nobles were so near? A soldier of fortune, György Dózsa, led them in a wild ‘Jacquerie’; they over ran all Hungary burning castles and massacring all nobles – men, women, children – who fell into their hands. The nobles called in aid from all directions, armed and paid mercenaries, overwhelmed the disorganized peasants, and punished their leaders with frightful torments. For two weeks Dósza and his aids were kept without food; then he was tied to a red-hot iron throne, a red-hot crown was placed on his head, a red-hot sceptre forced into his hand; and his starved companions were allowed to tear the roasted flesh from his body while he was still conscious. From barbarism to civilization requires a century. From civilization to barbarism needs but a day.
The peasants were not slaughtered, for they were indispensable; but the Tripartite Code
(1514) decreed that “ the recent rebellion …. has for all time to come put the stain of faithlessness upon the peasants, and they have thereby forfeited their liberty, and have become subject to their landlords in unconditional and perpetual servitude…. Every species of property belongs to the landlords, and the peasant has no right to invoke justice and the law against a noble.”
Twelve years later Hungary fell to the Turks.
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" From barbarism to civilization requires a century. From civilization to barbarism needs but a day."
We've seen this over and over again in this journey.
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Durants' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 191 - 194
PORTUGAL INAUGURATES the COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
1300 - 1517
Through no natural advantages except a sea coast, but by sheer courage and tenacious enterprise, little Portugal in this period made herself one of the strongest and richest of European states. Founded as a kingdom in 1139, her government, language, and culture reached an established form under her best-loved ruler, Diniz “the Labourer” -- administrator, reformer, builder, educator, patron of the arts, and skilled practitioner of literature and love. His son Alfonso IV, after some precautionary murders, matured into a beneficent ruler, whose growing trade with England bound the two countries into a practical amity that has endured till our time.
To confirm a prudent alliance with rising Castile, Affonso urged his son Pedro to marry Donna Constanza Manuel. Pedro married her, but continued to love the lovely Inés de Castro, herself of royal lineage. After Constanza’s death Inés was an obstacle to a second diplomatic marriage for Pedro; Affonso, after due reluctance, had her killed (1355). Camoëns, the Portuguese Milton, recounted this famous romance in his national epic, ‘The Lusiads.”
So against Inez came that murderous crew....
The brutes their swords in her white breasts imbue .....
And in mad wrath themselves incardine,
Nor any vengeance yet to come divine.
Pedro supplied the vengeance when, two years later, he inherited the throne. He murdered the murderers, exhumed the corpse of his beloved, crowned her queen, then reburied her in regal style. He ruled with a severity nurtured by this tragedy.
A less exalted romance disordered the reign of his successor. Fernando I lost his head and heart to Leonora, wife of the lord of Pombeiro, repudiated his engagement to a Castilian princess, and married Leonora. After Fernando’s death (1383), Leonora assumed the regency, made her daughter Beatriz queen, and betrothed her to John I of Castile. The people revolted against the prospect of becoming a Castilian appanage; a Cortes at Coimbra declared the Portuguese throne elective and chose as king Don Joao -- John -- son of Pedro and Ines. Castile undertook to establish Beatriz by force; John improvised an army, borrowed 500 archers from England, and defeated the Castilians at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385 -- which is annually celebrated as Portugal’s Independence Day.
“John the Great” now opened a reign of forty-eight years, and a dynasty __ The House of Aviz -- that held the throne for two centuries. Administration was reorganized, law and judiciary were reformed, the Portuguese language was made official, and its literature began.
John was honoured in his sons. Duarte -- Edward -- succeeded him and governed almost as well; Pedro codified the law; Henrique -- “Henry the Navigator’ -- inaugurated the commercial revolution that was to transform the map of the globe. When John I captured Ceuta from the Moors (1415), he left the twenty-one-year-old Henry as governor of that strategic stronghold, just across the Strait from Gibraltar. Excited by Moslem accounts of Timbuktu and Senegal and the gold, ivory, and slaves to be had along the West African coast, the ambitious youth determined to explore the terrain and add it to Portugal. The Senegal river that his informants spoke of might lead eastward to the headwaters of the Nile and to Christian Abyssinia; a water route would be opened across Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. -- therefore to India; the Italian monopoly of trade with the East would be broken; Portugal would be a major power. The conquered region might be converted to Christianity, and African Islam would be flanked on north and south by Christian states, and the Mediterranean become safe for Christian navigation. Henry does not appear to have thought of a route around Africa, but that was the historic result of his work.
About 1420 he set up at Sagres, on the south-western tip of Portugal and Europe, an informal clearing house of nautical knowledge and enterprise. For forty years he and his aides, including Jewish and Moslem astronomers and map makers, gathered and studied there the accounts of sailors and travellers, and sent out into perilous seas frail vessels powered with sails and oars and thirty to sixty men. One of Henry's captains had already (1418) rediscovered Madeira, which had been seen by Genoese mariners seventy years before and then forgotten; now Portuguese colonists developed and encouraged the Portuguese government to meet Henry’s appeals for funds. Noting the Azores marked on an Italian map of 1351, he commissioned Gonzalo Cabral to find them; it was done, and in 1432-44, one after another, these jewels of the sea were added to the Portuguese crown.
But it was Africa that lured Henry most insistently. Catalan and Portuguese navigators had sailed some 900 miles down the west coast as far as Bojador ( 1341-46) . There, however, the enormous westward bulge of the great continent into the Atlantic disheartened mariners seeking the south; they crept back to Europe with self-excusing tales of horrible natives, a sea so thick with salt that no prow could cleave it, and assurances that any Christian who passed Bojador would be transformed into a Negro. With similar apologies Captain Gilianes returned to Sagres in 1433. Henry ordered him forth again, and bade him bring back a clear account of the lands and seas south of the forbidding cape. So prodded Gilianes reached 150 miles beyond Bojador and was astonished to find lush vegetation in Equatorial regions where, according to Aristotle and Ptolemy, only deserts could exist under the burning sun. Six years later Nuno Tristao sailed down to Cape Blanco, and brought home some sturdy negroes, who were at once baptised and enslaved; feudal barons put them to work on Portuguese plantations, and the first major result of Henry’s labours was the inauguration of the slave trade. Fresh financial support now came to the Prince. His ships went out nominally to explore and convert, really to get gold, ivory, and slaves. Captain Lanzarote in 1444 brought back 165 “blackamoors,” who were set to tilling the lands of the monastic-military “Order of Jesus Christ“. A Portuguese contemporary described the capture of these “black moors”:
“Our men crying out, “Sant’ Iago! San Jorge!’ fell upon them, killing or capturing all they could. There you might have seen mothers catch up their children, husbands their wives, each one escaping as best he could. Some plunged into the sea; others thought to hide themselves in the corners of their hovels; others hid their children under shrubs.. where our men found them. And at last our Lord God, Who gives to all a due reward, gave to our men that day a victory over their enemies; and in recompense for all their toil in His service they took 165 men, women, and children, not counting the slain.”
In 1448 over 900 African slaves had been brought to Portugal. We should add that the Moslems of North Africa had anticipated the Christians in develoing a slave trade, and African Negro chieftains themselves bought Negro slaves from the Portuguese with ivory and gold.
Man was a commodity to human beasts of prey.
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More bad poetry (sigh). Followed by the slave trade.(sigh, sigh).
when will we stop being "human beasts of prey"?
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
pgs 197 - 200
SPAIN
1300 - 1517
Spain’s mountains were her protection and tragedy: they gave comparative security from external attack, but hindered her economic advance, her political unity, and her participation in European thought. In a little corner of the northwest, a half-nomad population of Basques led their sheep from plains to hills and down again, with the diastole and systole of the seasons. Though many Basques were serfs, all claimed nobility, and their three provinces governed themselves under the loose sovereignty of Castile or Navarre. Navarre remained a separate kingdom until Ferdinand the Catholic absorbed its southern part into Castile (1515), while the rest became a kingly appanage of France. Sardinia was appropriated by Aragon in 1326; Baleares followed in 1354, Sicily in 1409. Castile was the strongest and most extensive of the Spanish monarchies. Its kings played to the largest audience, and for the greatest stakes, in Spain.
Alfonso XI ( r. 1312-50) improved the laws and courts of Castile, deflected the pugnacity of the nobles into wars against the Moors, supported literature and art, and rewarded himself with a fertile mistress. His wife bore him one legitimate son, who grew up in obscurity, neglect, and resentment, and became Pedro el Cruel. His accession at fifteen (1350) so visibly disappointed the nine bastards of Alfonso that they were banished, and Leonora de Guzman, their mother, was put to death. When Peter’s royal bride, Blanche of Bourbon, arrived unsolicited from France, he married her, spent two nights with her, had her poisoned on a charge of conspiracy (1361), and married his paramour, Maria de Padilla, whose beauty, legend assures us, was so intoxicating that the cavaliers of the court drank with ecstasy the water in which she bathed. Pedro was popular with the lower classes, which supported him to the very bitter end; but the repeated attempts of his half brothers to depose him, drove him to such a series of treacheries, murders, and sacrileges as would clog and incarnadine any tale. Finally Henry of Tastamara, Leonora’s eldest son, organised a successful revolt, slew Peter with his own hand, and became Henry II of Castile (1369).
But we do nations injustice when we judge them by their kings, who agreed with Machiavelli that morals are not made for sovereigns. While the rulers played with murder, individual or nationalized, the people, numbering some 10,000,000 in 1450, created the civilization of Spain. Proud of their blood, they were an unstable mixture of Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Vandals, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews. At the social bottom were the slaves, and a peasantry that remained serf till 1471; above them were artisans, manufacturers, and merchants of the towns; above these in rising layers of dignity, were the knights ( caballeros), the nobles dependent on the king, ( bidalgos), and the independent nobles, (proceres); and alongside these laymen were grades of clergy mounting from parish priests through bishops and abbots to archbishops and cardinals. Every town had its council, and sent delegates to join nobles and prelates in provincial and national courtes; in theory the edicts of kings required the consent of these coutes to become laws. Wages, labour conditions, prices, and interest rates were regulated by councils or the guilds. Trade was hampered by royal monopolies, by state or local tolls on imports and exports, by diverse weights and measures, by debased currencies, highway brigands, Mediterranean pirates, ecclesiastical condemnation of interest, and the persecution of Moslems-- who manned most industry and commerce-- and Jews, who managed finance. A state bank was opened in Barcelona (1401) with governmental guarantee of bank deposits; bills of exchange were issued, and marine insurance was established by 1435.
As the Spaniards mingled anti-Semitism with Semitic ancestry, so they retained the heat of Africa in their blood, and were inclined, like the Berbers to rarity and violence of action and speech. They were sharp and curious of mind, yet eagerly credulous and fearfully superstitious They were acquisitive and had to be, but they did not look down upon the poor, or lick the boots of the rich. They despised and deferred labour, but they bore hardship stoically; they were lazy, but they conquered half the New World. They relished danger, if only by proxy; the bullfight, a relic of Crete and Rome, was already a national game, formal, stately, colourful, exacting, and teaching bravery, artistry, and an agile intelligence. But the Spaniards, like the modern (unlike the Elizabethan ) English, took their pleasures sadly, the aridity of the soil and the shadows of the mountain slopes were reflected in the dry sombreness of mood. Manners were grave and perfect, much better than hygiene; every Spaniard was a gentleman, but few were knights of the bath. Chivalric forms and tourneys flourished amid the squalor of the populace; the “point of honour” became a religion; women in Spain were goddesses and prisoners. The men affected perfume and high heels, and the women, not content with their natural sorcery, bewitched the men with colour, lace and mystic veils. In a thousand forms and disguises the sexual chase went on; solemn ecclesiastical terrors, lethal laws and the “punto de onor “ struggled to check the mad pursuit, but Venus triumphed over all, and the fertility of women outran the bounty of the soil.
The Church in Spain was an inseparable ally of the State. It took small account of the Roman Pope; it made frequent demands for the reform of the papacy, even while contributing to it the unreformable Alexander VI; in 1513 Cardinal Ximenes forbade the promulgation in Spain at the indulgence offered by Julius II for rebuilding St. Peter’s. In effect the King was accepted as head of the Spanish Church; in this manner Ferdinand did not wait for Henry VIII to instruct him; no Reformation was needed in Spain to make state and Church, nationalism and religion, one. The Churches’ personnel, even in minor orders, were subject only to ecclesiastical courts. It owned great tracts of land, tilled by tenants; it received a tenth of the produce of other holdings, but paid a third of this tithe to the exchequer; Otherwise, it was exempt from taxation. It was probably richer in comparison to the state, than in any other country except Italy. Clerical concubinage was wide spread and condoned. Asceticism continued in Spain while declining north of the Pyrenees; even lovers scourged themselves to melt the resistance of tender, timid senoritas, or to achieve some masochistic ecstasy.
The people were fiercely loyal to Church and King, because they had to be in order to fight with courage and success their immemorable enemies, the Moors. On holy days men, women, and children, rich and poor, paraded the streets in solemn procession They believed intensely in the spiritual world as their real environment and eternal home; beside it earthly life was an evil and transitory dream. They hated heretics as traitors to the national unity and cause, and had no objections to burning them; this was the least they could do for their outraged God.The lower classes had hardly any schooling, and this was nearly all religious. Stout Cortes, finding among the pagan Mexicans a rite resembling the Christian Eucharist, complained that Satan had taught it to them just to confuse the conquerors
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Moslems of North Africa had anticipated the Christians in develoing a slave trade, and African Negro chieftains themselves bought Negro slaves from the Portuguese with ivory and gold.
Of course the Moslems of North Africa expected anyone who came to Africa to do what they had been doing since the beginning of mankind. The Moors were slavers and had roamed the Mediterainian for centuries, and had raided Portugal many times returning with slaves.
Slavery of the Negro had been going on since the arrival of the Arabs, whether pagan, Muslim, or Jew, centuries before Europeans arrived. Arabia did not outlaw slavery until the late 1960's.
An excerpt on slavery in Africa.......
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route
The writer speaks only of the Muslim slave trade since Mohamed for a thousand years, but the Arabs had been using Africans as slaves for more than a thousand years before Islam. It was easier to document after Mohamed and the creation of Arabic (a central language).
Emily
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More on enslaved Europeans, especially the Slavs.......an excerpt........
Medieval slave trade in Europe was mainly to the East and South: Byzantine Empire and the Muslim World were the destinations, Central and Eastern Europe an important source.
Slavery in medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London in 1102, and the Council of Armagh in 1171.
Because of religious constraints, the slave trade was monopolised in parts of Europe by Iberian Jews (known as Radhanites) who were able to transfer the slaves from pagan Central Europe through Christian Western Europe to Muslim countries in Al-Andalus and Africa.
So many Slavs were enslaved for so many centuries that word 'Slav' became synonymous with slavery. The derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history and explains why the two words (slaves and Slavs) are so similar; they are, in fact, historically identical.
Emily
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A tiny window into the enslavement of Europeans by Africans, the Muslim and Jews of the Arabian peninsula, and the Muslim Turks of the East who controlled the Mediterranean with piracy for years. The men who survived their raids were taken as 'oar slaves' and shackled in the bottom of galleys as oarsmen.
An excerpt from Slavery in Africa.........
Mamluks were slave soldiers who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ayyubid sultans during the Middle Ages. The first mamluks served the Abbasid caliphs in 9th century Baghdad. Over time they became a powerful military caste, and on more than one occasion they seized power for themselves, for example, ruling Egypt from 1250–1517. From 1250 Egypt had been ruled by the Bahri dynasty of Kipchak Turk origin. White enslaved people from the Caucasus served in the army and formed an elite corp of troops eventually revolting in Egypt to form the Burgi dynasty.
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. The coastal villages and towns of Italy, Portugal, Spain and Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by its inhabitants; after 1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman Barbarossa, and his older brother Oruç, Turgut Reis (known as Dragut in the West), Kurtoğlu (known as Curtogoli in the West), Kemal Reis, Salih Reis and Koca Murat Reis.
In 1544, Hayreddin Barbarossa captured Ischia, taking 4,000 prisoners in the process, and deported to slavery some 9,000 inhabitants of Lipari, almost the entire population. In 1551, Dragut enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island Gozo, between 5,000 and 6,000, sending them to Libya. When pirates sacked Vieste in southern Italy in 1554 they took an estimated 7,000 slaves. In 1555, Turgut Reis sailed to Corsica and ransacked Bastia, taking 6000 prisoners. In 1558 Barbary corsairs captured the town of Ciutadella, destroyed it, slaughtered the inhabitants and carried off 3,000 survivors to Istanbul as slaves. In 1563 Turgut Reis landed at the shores of the province of Granada, Spain, and captured the coastal settlements in the area like Almuñécar, along with 4,000 prisoners. Barbary pirates frequently attacked the Balearic islands, resulting in many coastal watchtowers and fortified churches being erected. The threat was so severe that Formentera became uninhabited.
These are only some highlights of the slave trade of European captives sold to the East in the slave markets, or put in the front lines of battles, or chained in the bottom of galley ships to oars. This was not new, and had gone on for thousands of years, but it is a glimpse into the era that Durant is writing about in our present reading.
Emily
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The DURANTS" S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 200 - 201
THE SPANISH SCENE 1300 - 1469 (continued)
The intensity of Catholicism in Spain was enhanced by economic competition with Moslems and Jews, who together made almost a tenth of the population. It was bad enough that the Moors held fertile Granada; but more closely irritating were the Mudejares -- the unconverted Moors who lived among the Spanish Christians, and whose skill in business, crafts, and agriculture was the envy of a people mostly bound in primitive drudgery to the soil. Even more unforgivable were the Spanish Jews. Christian Spain had persecuted them through a thousand years: had subjected them to discriminatory taxation, forced loans, confiscations, assassinations, compulsory baptism; had compelled them to listen to Christian sermons, sometimes in their own synagogues, urging their conversion, while the law made it a capital crime for a Christian to accept Judaism. They were invited or conscripted into debates with Christian theologians, where they had to choose between shameful defeat or a perilous victory. They and the Mudejares had been repeatedly ordered to wear a distinctive badge, usually a red circle on the shoulder of their garments. Jews were forbidden to hire a Christian servant; their physicians were not allowed to prescribe for Christian patients; their men, for cohabitating with a Christian woman, were to be put to death.
In 1328 the sermons of a Franciscan friar goaded the Christians of Estella, in Navarre, to massacre 5,000 Jews and burn down their houses. In 1391 the sermons of Fernán Martínez aroused the populace in every major centre of Spain to massacre all available Jews who refused conversion. In 1410 Valladolid, and then other cities, moved by the eloquence of the saintly and fanatical Vicente Ferrer, ordered the confinement of Jews and Moors within specified quarters-- Juderia or albama-- whose gates were to be closed from sunset to sunrise; this segregation, however, was probably for their protection.
Patient, laborious, shrewd, taking advantage of every opportunity for development, the Jews multiplied even under these disabilities. Some kings of Castile, like Alfonso XI and Pedro el Cruel, favoured them and raised brilliant Jews to high places in government. Alfonso made Don Joseph of Écija his minister of finance, and another Jew, Samuel ibn- Wakar, his physician; they abused their position, were convicted of intrigue, and died in prison. Samuel Abulafia repeated the sequence; he became state treasurer under Pedro, amassed large fortune, and was put to death by the king. Three years earlier (1357 ) Samuel had built at Toledo a classically simple and elegant synagogue, which was changed under Ferdinand into the Christian church of El Transito, and is now preserved by the government as a monument of Hebraeo- Moorish art in Spain. Pedro’s protection of the Jews was their misfortune: when Henry of Trastamara deposed him 1200 Jews were massacred by the victorious soldiers ( Toledo 1355); and worse slaughters ensued when Henry brought into Spain the “Free Companions” recruited by Du Guesdlin from the rabble of France.
Thousands of Spanish Jews preferred baptism to the terror of abuse and pogroms. Being legally Christians, these Conversos made their way up the economic and political ladder, in the professions, even in the Church; some became high ecclesiastics, some were counsellors to kings. Their talents in finance earned them invidious prominence in the collection and management of revenue. Some surrounded themselves with aristocratic comforts, some made their prosperity offensively conspicuous. Angry Catholics fastened upon the conversos the brutal name of Marranos-- swine. Nevertheless Christian families with more pedigree than cash, or with a prudent respect for ability accepted them in marriage. In this way the Spanish people, especially the upper classes, received a substantial infusion of Jewish blood. Ferdinand the Catholic and Torquemada the inquisitor had Jews in their ancestry. Pope Paul IV, at war with Phillip II, called him and the Spanish the “ worthless seed of the Jews and Moors.”
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 201 - 204
GRANADA 1300-1492
Ibn-Batuta described the situation of Granada as “ unequalled in any city of the world.... Around it on every side are orchards, gardens, flowering meadows, vineyards”; and “in it, noble buildings.” Its Arabic name was Karnattah -- of uncertain meaning; its Spanish conquerors christened it Granada --- “full of seeds.”--- probably from the neighbouring abundance of the pomegranate tree. The capital rose “like a watchtower’ to a summit commanding a magnificent valley, which rewarded careful irrigation and scientific tillage with two crops a year. A wall with a thousand towers guarded the city from its encompassing foes. Mansions of spacious and elegant design sheltered the aristocracy; in the public squares fountains cooled the ardour of the sun; and in the fabulous halls of the Alhambra the emir or caliph held his court.
A seventh of all agricultural produce was taken by the government, and probably as much by the ruling classes as a fee for economic management and military leadership. Rulers and nobles distributed some of their revenue to artists, poets, scholars, scientists, historians, and philosophers, and financed a university where learned Christians and Jews were allowed to hold chairs and occasional rectorships. On the college portals five lines were inscribed: “The world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valour of the brave.” Women shared freely in the cultural life; we know the names of feminine savants of Moorish Granada. Education, however, did not prevent the ladies from stirring their men not only to swelling passions but to chivalric devotion and displays. Personal cleanliness and public sanitation were more advanced than in contemporary Christendom. Morals were easy, violence was not rare, but Moorish generosity and honour won Christian praise. The reputation of the citizens of Granada for trustworthiness”, said a Spanish historian, “was such that their bare word was more relied upon than a written contract is among ourselves.” amid these high developments growth of luxury sapped the vigour of the nation, and internal discord invited external attack.
Christian Spain, slowly consolidating its kingdoms and increasing its wealth, looked with envious hostility upon this prosperous enclave, whose religion tainted Christianity as an infidel power; moreover, those fertile fields might atone for many a barren acre in the north. Only because Catholic Spain was divided among factions and kings did Granada retain its liberty. Even so the proud principality agreed (1457) to send annual tribute to Castile. When a reckless emir, Ali abu-al-hasan, refused to contribute this bribe to peace (1466), Henry IV was too busy with debauchery to compel obedience. But Ferdinand and Isabella, soon after their accession to the throne of Castile, sent envoys to demand resumption of the tribute. With fatal audacity Ali replied: “tell your sovereigns that the kings of Granada who paid tribute are dead. Our mint now coins nothing but sword blades” Unaware that Ferdinand had more iron in him than was in the Moorish mint, and claiming provocation by Christian border raids, Ali abu-al-hasan took by assault the Christian frontier town of Zahara, and drove all its inhabitants into Granada, to be sold as slaves (1481) The Marquis of Cadiz retaliated by sacking the Moorish strong hold of Alama (1482) The conquest of Granada had begun.
Love complicated war. Abu-al-hasan developed such an infatuation for one of his slaves that his wife, the Sultana Ayesha, roused the populace to depose him and crown her son abu-Abdallah, known to the west as Boabdil (1482 ). Abu-al Hasan fled to Malaga. A Spanish army marched to besiege Malaga, it was almost annihilated in the mountain passes of the Ajarquia range by troops still loyal to the fallen emir. Jealous of his father’s martial exploits, Boabdil led an army out of Granada to attack a Christian force near Lucena. He fought bravely, but was defeated and taken prisoner. He obtained his freedom by promising to aid the Christians against his father, and to pay the Spanish government twelve thousand ducats a year. Meantime, a three-cornered civil war ensued among Boabdil, his father and uncle. The father died, the son seized the Alhambra, the uncle retired to Guadix, whence he emerged repeatedly to attack Spaniards. Stirred to imitation, Boabdil repudiated pledge and tribute, and prepared his capital to resist inevitable assault.
Ferdinand and Isabella deployed 30,000 men to devastate the plains that grew Granada’s food. Mills, granaries, farm houses, vineyards, olive and orange groves were destroyed. Malaga was besieged to prevent its receiving or sending supplies to Granada; it held out until its population had consumed all available horses, dogs, and cats, and were dying by hundreds of starvation and disease. Ferdinand forced its unconditional surrender, condemned the 12000 survivors to slavery, but allowed the rich to ransom themselves by yielding up all their possessions. The entire province of Granada was now in Christian hands.
On November 25, 1491, Boabdil signed terms of capitulation that did rare honour to the conquerors. The people of Granada were to keep their property, language, dress, religion, ritual; They were to be judged by their own laws and magistrates; no taxes were to be imposed till after three years, and then only such as Moslem rulers had levied. The city was to be occupied by the Spanish, but all Moors who wished to leave might do so, and transportation would be provided for those who wished to cross to Moslem Africa.
Nevertheless the Granadines protested Boabdil’s surrender. Insurrection so threatened him that he turned the keys of the city over to Ferdinand ( January 2, 1492) and rode through the Christian lines to the little mountain principality which he was to rule as a vassal of Castile. From the Crags over which he passed he turned to take a last look at the wonderful city that he had lost; that summit is still called El Ultimo Sospiro del Moro -- The last sigh of the Moor. His mother reproved him for his tears. “You do well to weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man”.
Meanwhile the Spanish army marched into Granada. Cardinal Mendoza raised a great silver cross over the Alhambra, and Ferdinand and Isabella knelt in the city square to give thanks to God who after 781 years had evicted Islam from Spain.
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It's sad to read time after time of the flourishing of a people and culture which is destroyed by the greed of a few.
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Here is a map of Spain showing Granada at the southern end on the Mediterranean.
The Moors never conquered all of Spain, but did control the best land in the south.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://struxtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/granada-spain-map.jpg&imgrefurl=http://struxtravel.com/2010/08/21/snapshot-granada-spain/&h=377&w=351&sz=34&tbnid=bQbfbm_zbhmygM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=84&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmap%2Bof%2Bgranada%2Bspain%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=map+of+granada+spain&usg=__Wud5uxIXgyITtIIIi8MbrBcldYA=&docid=ba_qDx4J01JL-M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5qK-UMGiFpLo9gScloGgAg&sqi=2&ved=0CDIQ9QEwAg&dur=875
Emily
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Durant's S o C
Vol IV The REFORMATION
pages 204 - 208
FERDINAND AND ISABELLA
The century between the death of Henry of Trastamara (1379) and the accession of Ferdinand to the throne of Aragon was a fallow time for Spain. The long reign of John II (1406-1454) of Castile, who loved music and poetry too much to care for the chores of state, was followed by the disastrous tenure of Henry IV, who by his administrative incompetence, his demoralization of the currency, and his squandering of revenue on favoured parasites, earned the title of Enrique el Impotente. He willed his throne to Juana, whom he called his daughter; the scornful nobles denied his parentage and potency, and forced him to name his sister Isabella as his successor. But at his death (1474) he reaffirmed Juana’s legitimacy and her right to rule. It was out of this paralysing confusion that Ferdinand and Isabella forged the order and government that made Spain for a century the strongest state in Europe.
The diplomats prepared the achievement by persuading Isabella, eighteen, to marry her cousin Ferdinand, seventeen ( 1469). Bride and bridegroom were both descended from Henry of Trastamara. Ferdinand was already king of Sicily; on the death of his father he would be also King of Aragon. The marriage therefore, wed three states into a powerful kingdom.. Paul II withheld the papal bull needed to legalize the marriage of cousins; the requisite document was forged by Ferdinand, his father, and the Archbishop of Barcelona; after the ‘fait’ had been ‘accompli’ a genuine bull was obtained from Pope Sixtus IV. A more substantial difficulty lay in the poverty of the bride, whose brother refused to recognise the marriage, and of the bridegroom, whose father, immersed in war could not afford a royal ceremony. A Jewish lawyer smoothed the course of true politics with a loan of 20,000 sueldos, which Isabella repaid when she became Queen of Castile.
Her right to the throne was challenged by Alfonso V of Portugal, who had married Juana. War decided the issue at Toro, where Ferdinand led the Castilians to victory. Three years later he inherited Aragon; all Spain except Granada and Navarre was now under one government. The internal administration of Castile was reserved to Isabella, but royal charters and decrees had to be signed by both sovereigns, and the new coinage bore both the regal heads. Their complimentary qualities made Ferdinand and Isabella the most effective royal couple in history.
Isabella was incomparably beautiful, said her courtiers -- that is, moderately fair; of medium stature, blue eyes hair of chestnut brown verging on red. She had more schooling than Ferdinand, with a less acute and less merciless intelligence. She could patronise poets and converse with cautious philosophers, but she preferred the company of priests. She chose the sternest moralists for her confessors and guides. Wedded to an unfaithful husband she seems to have sustained full marital fidelity to the end; living in an age as morally fluid as our own, she was a model of sexual modesty. Amid corrupt officials and devious diplomats, she herself remained frank, direct, and incorruptible. Her mother had reared her in strict orthodoxy and piety; Isabella developed this to the edge of asceticism, and was as harsh and cruel in suppressing heresy as she was as kind and gracious in everything else. Her orthodoxy did not deter her from condemning the immorality of some Renaissance popes. She excelled in both physical and moral bravery; she withstood, subdued and disciplined powerful nobles, bore quietly the most devastating bereavements, and faced with contagious courage the hardships and dangers of war. She laboured conscientiously in the tasks of government, took the initiative in wholesome reforms, administered justice with perhaps undue severity; but she was resolved to raise her realm from lawless disorder to a law-abiding peace. Her subjects worshiped her, while they bore impatiently with the King.
The Castilians could not forgive Ferdinand for being a foreigner -- i.e. an Argonese; and they found many faults in him, even while they gloried in his successes as statesman, diplomat, and warrior. They contrasted his cold and reserved temperament with the warm kindness of the Queen, his calculated indirectness with her straightforward candour, his parsimony with her generosity, his extramarital gallantries with her quiet continence. Probably they did not resent his establishment of the Inquisition; They applauded the campaign against heresy, the conquest of Granada, the expulsion of unconverted Jews and Moors; they loved most in him what posterity would least admire. We hear of no protest against the severity of his laws -- cutting out the tongue for blasphemy, burning alive for sodomy. They noted he could be just, even lenient, when it did not hinder personal advantage or national policy; that he could lead his army dauntlessly and cleverly, though he preferred to match minds in negotiation rather than men in battle. They forgave his duplicity as a diplomat, his frequent faithlessness to his word; were not all other rulers trying by like methods to cozen him and swindle Spain? “ The King of France,” he said grimly, “ complains that I have twice deceived him. He lies, the fool; I have deceived him ten times, and more.” Machiavelli carefully studied Ferdinand’s career, relished his cunning, praised “his deeds....all great, and some extraordinary.” Some accounted Ferdinand lucky, but in truth his good fortune lay in careful preparation for events and prompt seizure of opportunities. When a balance was struck between his virtues and his crimes, it appeared that by fair means and foul he had raised Spain from a motley of impotent fragments to a unity and power that in the next generation made her the dictator of Europe.
One of Isabella's most trusted counsellors was Abraham Senior; he and Isaac Abrabanel collected the revenue for Ferdinand, and organized the financing of the Granada war. The king and queen were at this time especially concerned about the ‘Conversos’. They had hoped that time would make these converts sincere Christians; Isabella had had a catechism specially prepared for their instruction; yet many of them secretly maintained their ancient faith, and transmitted it to their children. Catholic dislike of the unbaptised Jews subsided for a time, while resentment against “New Christians “ rose. The religious problem had also become racial; and the young king and queen pondered means of reducing the disorderly medley and conflict of peoples, languages, and creeds to homogeneous unity and social peace. They thought that no better means were available for those ends than to restore the Inquisition in Spain.
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Ferdinand and Isabella (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo%2520Pages/Spain/Spain_History/Catholic-Monarchs-BAR.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Chronologies/Genealogies/Spanish_Monarchs/Spanish%2520Monarchs.htm&h=351&w=450&sz=53&tbnid=5K3R7oSz-45LfM:&tbnh=108&tbnw=139&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dferdinand%2Band%2Bisabella%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=ferdinand+and+isabella&usg=__uoX4y1GHGtYkK4rZmFvJYahdU9w=&docid=fl2RQIfOuZjQSM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WQbAUOGSCZCE8AT-tYGYCg&sqi=2&ved=0CEYQ9QEwAw&dur=17328)
The above link is a painting of Ferdinand and Isabella.
What about those teenagers who worked to unite their country into one nation. Instead of having a 'seat of power' in one place, they traveled the country and moved from one place to another, getting their people behind a unified nation. Amazing!
Emily
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" A Jewish lawyer smoothed the course of true politics with a loan of 20,000 sueldos, which Isabella repaid when she became Queen of Castile."
Yeah, repayed him by throwing the Jews out!
History owes them a lot, both good and bad. They financed Columbus, (Thank you, we Americans say) but exiled the Jews and Moors.
Do you suppose if Columbus hadn't discovered America, someone else would have about the same time? Exploration was in the air.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 208 - 211
We are today so uncertain and diverse in our opinions as to the origin and destiny of the world and man that we have ceased, in most countries, to punish people for differing from us in their religious beliefs. Our present intolerance is rather for those who question our economic or political principles, and we explain our frightened dogmatism on the ground that any doubt thrown upon these cherished assumptions endangers our national solidarity and survival. Until the middle of the seventeenth century Christians, Jews, and Moslems were more acutely concerned with religion than we are today; their theologies were their most prized and confident possessions; and they looked upon those who rejected these creeds as attacking the foundations of social order and the very significance of human life. Each group was hardened by certainty into intolerance, and branded the others as infidels.
Nearly all medieval Christians, through childhood schooling and surroundings, believed that the Bible had been dictated in every word of God, and that the Son of God had directly established the Christian Church. It seemed to follow, from these premises that God wished all nations to be Christian, and that the practice of non-Christian -- certainly of anti-Christian -- religions must be a crass insult to the Deity. Moreover, since any substantial heresy must merit eternal punishment, its prosecutors could believe that in snuffing out a heretic they were saving his potential converts, and perhaps himself, from everlasting hell.
Probably Isabella, who lived in the very odour of theologians, shared these views. Ferdinand, being a hardened man of the world, may have doubted some of them; but he was apparently convinced that uniformity of religious belief would make Spain easier to rule, and stronger to strike its enemies. At his request, and Isabella’s, Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull ( November 1, 1478 ) authorising them to appoint six priests, holding degrees in theology and canon law, as an inquisitional board to investigate and punish heresy. The remarkable feature of this bull was its empowerment of the Spanish sovereigns to nominate the inquisitional personnel, who in earlier forms of the inquisition had been chosen by the provincial heads of the Dominican or Franciscan orders. Here, for three generations, as in Protestant Germany and England in the next century, religion became subject to the State. The government was to pay the expenses, and receive the income, of the Inquisition. Of all Ferdinand's instruments of rule, this became his favourite. His motives were not primarily financial; he profited from the confiscation of property of the condemned, but he refused tempting bribes from rich victims to overrule the Inquisitors. The aim was to unify Spain.
After 1483 the entire Inquisition was put under a governmental agency, the “Concejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion“, usually called the Suprema.The jurisdiction of the Inquisition extended to all Christians in Spain; it did not touch unconverted Jews, or Moors; Its terrors were directed at Christians charged with heresy; till 1492 the unchristened Jew was safer than the baptised. Priests, monks, and friars claimed exemption but their claim was denied; the Jesuits resisted the Inquisition for half a century, but they too were overcome. The only limit to the power of the Suprema was the authority of the sovereigns; and in later centuries even this was ignored. The Inquisition demanded, and usually received, co-operation from all secular officials.
The inquisition made its own laws and procedural code. Before setting up its tribunal in town, it issued to the people, through their parish pulpits, an “Edict of Faith” requiring all who knew of any heresy to reveal it to the inquisitors. Everyone was encouraged to be a delator, to inform against his neighbours, his friends, his relatives. (In the sixteenth century, however, the accusation of a near relative was not allowed.) Informers were offered full secrecy and protection; a solemn anathema-- ie. excommunication and curse-- was laid upon all who knew and concealed a heretic. If a baptised Jew still harboured hopes of a Messiah to come; if he kept the dietary laws of the Mosaic code; if he observed the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest, or changed his linen for a day; if he celebrated in any way any Jewish holy day; if he circumcised any of his children, or gave any of them a Hebrew name, or blessed them without making the sign of the cross; if he prayed with motions of the head, or repeated a Biblical psalm without adding a Gloria; if he turned his face to the wall when dying: these and the like were described by the Inquisitors as signs of heresy, to be reported at once to the tribunal. Within a “Term of Grace “ any person who felt guilty of heresy might come and confess it; he would be fined or assigned a penance, but would be forgiven, on condition that he should reveal any knowledge he might have of heretics.
When the tribunal was unanimously convinced of a person’s guilt, it issued a warrant for his arrest. The accused was kept incommunicado; no one but the agents of the inquisition was allowed to speak with him; no relative might visit him. Usually he was chained. He was required to bring his own bed and clothing, and to pay all expenses of his incarceration and sustenance. If he did not offer sufficient cash for this purpose, enough of his property was sold at auction to meet the costs. The remainder of his goods was sequestrated by Inquisition Officers lest it be hidden or disposed of to escape confiscation. In most cases some of it was sold to maintain such of the victim’s family as could not work.
When the arrested person was brought to trial the tribunal, having already judged him guilty, laid upon him the burden of proving his innocence The trial was secret and private, and the dependant had to swear never to reveal any facts about the case. No witnesses were adduced against him, none was named to him; the inquisitors excused this procedure as necessary to protect their informants. The accused was not at first told what charges had been brought against him; he was merely invited to confess his own derelictions from orthodox belief and worship, and to betray all persons whom he suspected of heresy. If his confession satisfied the tribunal, he might receive any punishment short of death. If he refused to confess he was kept in solitary confinement. In many instances he was tortured to elicit a confession. Usually the case was allowed to drag on for months, and the solitary confinement in chains often sufficed to secure any confession desired.
Torture was applied only after a majority of the tribunal had voted for it on the ground that guilt had been made probable, though not certain, by the evidence. The inquisitors appear to have sincerely believed that torture was a favour to the defendant already found guilty, since it might earn him, by confession, a slighter penalty than otherwise; even if he should, after confession, be condemned to death, he could enjoy priestly absolution to save him from hell. However, confession of guilt was not enough; torture might also be applied to compel a confessing defendant to name his associates in heresy or crime. Contradictory witnesses might be tortured to find out which was telling the truth; slaves might be tortured to bring out testimony against masters. No limits of age could save the victims; girls of thirteen and women of eighty were subject to the rack; but the rules of the Spanish Inquisition usually forbade the torture of nursing mothers, or persons with weak hearts, or those accused of minor heresies, such as sharing the widespread opinion that fornication was only a venial sin. Torture was to be kept short of permanently maiming the victim, and was to be stopped when ever an attendant physician so ordered. The victim might have his hands tied behind his back and be suspended by them; he might be bound into immobility and then have water trickled down his throat till he nearly choked; he might have cords tied around his arms and legs and tightened till they cut through the flesh and bone. We are told that the tortures used by the Spanish Inquisition were milder than those employed by the earlier papal inquisition, or by the secular courts of the age. The main torture was prolonged imprisonment.
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Thank you Trevor and Emily, very interesting history. I've been very busy, so don't get to sit down and read the long passages as often a before, or to respond, but i appreciate all your information and your postings.
Jean
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This is hard to read, but it's important to know what people can do when they are convinced that they are right and opposition is threatening.
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It is so like Durant to compare us to the inquisators. I don't know if this was written in the fifties and the Red scare:
" Our present intolerance is rather for those who question our economic or political principles, and we explain our frightened dogmatism on the ground that any doubt thrown upon these cherished assumptions endangers our national solidarity and survival. "
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Joan, yes Durant was writing this book in the fifties. It was published in 1957.
This book is called the Reformation, but I have seen little reform. Our next volume is called the 'Age of Reason' and it is my hope that we can find some 'reason' to celebrate man coming to his senses.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 213 - 216
Progress of the Inquisition 1480 - 1516
The first inquisitors were appointed by Ferdinand and Isabella in September 1480 for the district of Seville. Many Sevillian Conversos fled to the country side, and sought sanctuary with Feudal lords. These were inclined to protect them, but the inquisitors threatened the barons with excommunication and confiscation, and the refugees were surrendered. In the city itself some Conversos planned armed resistance; the plot was betrayed; the implicated persons were arrested; soon the dungeons were full. Trials followed with angry haste, and the first “auto-da-fé” of the Spanish Inquisition was celebrated on February 6, 1481, with the burning of six men and women. By November 4 of that year 298 had been burned; seventy-nine had been imprisoned for life.
In 1483, at the nomination and request of Ferdinand and Isabella, Pope Sixtus IV
appointed a Dominican Friar, Tomás de Torquemada, inquisitor-general for all of Spain. He was a sincere and incorruptible fanatic, scorning luxury, working feverishly, rejoicing in his opportunity to serve Christ by hounding heresy. He reproved inquisitors for lenience, reversed many acquittals, and demanded that the rabbis of Toledo, on pain of death, should inform on all Judaizing ‘Conversos’. Pope Alexander VI who had at first praised his devotion to his tasks, became alarmed at his severity, and ordered him (1494) to share his powers with two other “inquisitors general.” Torquemada over rode these colleagues, maintained a resolute leadership, and made the Inquisition an “imperium in imperio”, rivalling the power of the sovereigns. Under his prodding the Inquisition at Ciudad Real in two years ( 1483-1484) burned fifty-two persons, confiscated the property of 220 fugitives and punished 183 penitents. Two further autos-da-fé in that year (1486) at Toledo disciplined 1,650 penitents. Like labours were performed in Valladolid, Guadalupe, and other cities of Castile.
Aragon resisted the Inquisition with forlorn courage. At Teruel the magistrate closed the gates in the face of the inquisitors. These laid an interdict upon the city; Ferdinand Stopped the municipal salaries, and sent an army to enforce obedience; the environing peasants, always hostile to the city, ran to the support of the Inquisition, which promised them release from all rents and debts due to persons convicted of heresy. Teruel yielded, and Ferdinand authorised the inquisitors to banish anyone whom they suspected of having aided the opposition. In Saragossa many old Christians joined the New Christians in protesting against the entry of the Inquisition. When, nevertheless, it set up its Tribunal there, some “Conversos” assassinated an inquisitor ( 1485 ). It was a mortal blunder, for the shocked citizens thronged the streets, crying “Burn the Conversos!” The archbishop calmed the mob with a promise of speedy justice. Nearly all the conspirators were caught and executed. In Valencia the courtes refused to allow the inquisitors to function; Ferdinand ordered his agents to arrest all obstructers. Valencia gave way. In support of the Inquisition the King violated one after another of the traditional liberties of Aragon; the combination of Church and monarchy, of excommunications and royal armies, proved too strong for any single city or province to resist. In 1488 there were 983 condemnations for heresy in Valencia alone, and a hundred were burned.
Several popes tried to check the Inquisition’s excesses, and gave occasional protection to its victims. In 1482 Sixtus VI issued a bull which, if implemented would have ended the Inquisition in Aragon. He complained that the inquisitors were showing more lust for gold than zeal for religion. He commanded that in future no inquisitor should act without the presence and concurrence of some representative of the local bishop; that the names and allegations of the accusers should be made known to the accused; that prisoners of the Inquisition should be lodged only in Episcopal jails; those complaining of injustice should be allowed to appeal to the Holy See, and that all further action in the case should be suspended until judgment should be rendered on the appeal; that all persons convicted of heresy should receive absolution if they confessed and repented, and that thereafter should be free from prosecution or molestation on that charge. It was an enlightened decree, and its thoroughness suggests its sincerity. Yet we must note it was confined to Aragon, whose Conversos had paid for it liberally. When Ferdinand defied it, arrested the agent who had procured it, and bade the inquisitors to go on as before, Sixtus took no further action in the matter, except that five months later he suspended the operation of the bull.
How did the people of Spain react to the Inquisition? The upper classes and the educated minority faintly opposed it; The Christian populace usually approved it. The crowds that gathered at the autos-da-fe showed little sympathy, often active hostility, to the victims. Christians flocked to buy at auction the confiscated goods of the condemned.
Did the Inquisition succeed? Yes, in attaining its declared purpose-- to rid Spain of open heresy. The idea that persecution of beliefs is always ineffective is a delusion; it crushed the Albigensians and Huguenots in France, the Catholics in Elizabethan England, and Christians in Japan. It stamped out in the sixteenth century the small groups that favoured Protestantism in Spain. On the other hand, it probably strengthened Protestantism in Germany, Scandinavia, and England by arousing in their peoples a vivid fear of what might happen to them if Catholicism were restored.
It is difficult to say what share the Inquisition had in ending the brilliant period of Spanish history from Columbus to Velasquez ( 1492-1660). The peak of that epoch came with Cervantes (1547-1616) and Lopede Vega, after the Inquisition had flourished in Spain for a hundred years. The Inquisition was an effect, as well as a cause of the intense and exclusive Catholicism of the Spanish People; and that religious mood had grown during centuries of struggle against “infidel” Moors. The exhaustion of Spain by the wars of Charles V and Phillip II , and the weakening of the Spanish economy by the victories of Britain on the sea, and the mercantile policies of the Spanish government, may have had more to do with the decline of Spain than the terrors of the Inquisition. The executions for witchcraft, in northern Europe and New England, showed in Protestant peoples a spirit akin to that of the Spanish Inquisition -- which, strange to say, sensibly treated witchcraft as a delusion to be pitied and cured rather than punished. Both the Inquisition and the witch-burning were expressions of an age afflicted with homicidal certainty in theology, as the patriotic massacres of our era may be due in part to homicidal certainty in ethnic or political theory. We must try to understand such movements in terms of their time, but they seem to us now the most unforgivable of historic crimes.
A supreme and unchallengeable faith is a deadly enemy to the human mind.
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A supreme and unchallengeable faith is a deadly enemy to the human mind.
One line says it all, and nothing has changed over the centuries.
Money and religion have a lot to answer for.
If we throw in sex (virgins for the righteous) we've said all there is to say.
Brian
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In reading Durant on the inquisition in Spain, I detect the writings of Henry Lea who wrote about that subject and published in 1904.
Studies in the 70's from Archival records have revised the common belief in what the Inquisition was and who its targets were. Henry Kamen has written about the inquisition, his latest book published in 2006. The largest group hauled before the 'inquisitors court' were civil matters concerning enforcement of 'local laws' (secular) which brought ordinary Spaniards before the tribunal to answer for things like bigamy, solicitation, sodomy, and all things concerning sex. It may have begun as a religion question, but it soon devolved into a sex question. Isn't that always the case.
An excerpt on the Henry Kamen book, The Spanish Inquisition.
One of the first books to challenge the classical view was The Spanish Inquisition (1965) by Henry Kamen. Kamen purported that the Inquisition was not nearly as cruel or as powerful as commonly believed. The book was very influential and largely responsible for subsequent studies in the 1970s to try to quantify (from archival records) the Inquisition's activities from 1480 to 1834.
Those studies showed there was an initial burst of activity against conversos suspected of relapsing into Judaism, and a mid-16th century pursuit of Protestants, but the Inquisition served principally as a forum Spaniards occasionally used to humiliate and punish people they did not like: blasphemers, bigamists, foreigners and, in Aragon, homosexuals and horse smugglers.
There were so few Protestants in Spain that widespread persecution of Protestantism was not physically possible. Kamen went on to publish two more books in 1985 and 2006 that incorporated new findings, further supporting the view that the Inquisition was not as bad as once described by Lea and others. Along similar lines is Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988).
Emily
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An excerpt from the Henry Charles Lea book that I found interesting because it concerns the Americas. The Inquisition came with the Spanish to the new world.......
The 'Suprema' happens to mention in a letter to the tribunal in Lima, that it had lent the King 40,000 pesos of which 10,000 came from Peru and 30,000 from Mexico. The 'Count of Medellin' had become security for the return of the loan.
Emily
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More from the archives by Henry Kamen...............
Other offenses........Although the Inquisition was created to suppress heresy, it also occupied itself with a wide variety of offences that only indirectly could be related to religious heterodoxy. Of a total of 49,092 trials from the period 1560–1700 registered in the archive of the Suprema, appear the following: judaizantes (5,007); moriscos (11,311); Lutherans (3,499); alumbrados (149); superstitions (3,750); heretical propositions (14,319); bigamy (2,790); solicitation (1,241); offences against the Holy Office of the Inquisition (3,954); miscellaneous (2,575).
These data demonstrate that not only New Christians (conversos of Jewish or Islamic descent) and Protestants faced investigation, but also Old Christians could be targeted for various reasons as well.
Witchcraft.........The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. The witch-hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries (particularly France, Scotland, and Germany). One remarkable case was that of Logroño, in which the witches of Zugarramurdi in Navarre were persecuted. During the auto-da-fé that took place in Logroño on November 7 and November 8, 1610, 6 people were burned and another 5 burned in effigy. In general, nevertheless, the Inquisition maintained a skeptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft, considering it as a mere superstition without any basis. Alonso de Salazar Frías, who, after the trials of Logroño took the Edict of Faith to various parts of Navarre, noted in his report to the Suprema that, "There were neither witches nor bewitched in a village until they were talked and written about".
Blasphemy........Included under the rubric of heretical propositions were verbal offences, from outright blasphemy to questionable statements regarding religious beliefs, from issues of sexual morality, to misbehaviour of the clergy. Many were brought to trial for affirming that simple fornication (sex between unmarried persons) was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary. Also, members of the clergy itself were occasionally accused of heretical propositions. These offences rarely lead to severe penalties.
Bigamy.......The Inquisition also pursued offences against morals, at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals. In particular, there were numerous trials for bigamy, a relatively frequent offence in a society that only permitted divorce under the most extreme circumstances. In the case of men, the penalty was five years service as an oarsmen in a royal galley (tantamount to a death sentence). Women too were accused of bigamy. Also, many cases of solicitation during confession were adjudicated, indicating a strict vigilance over the clergy.
Sodomy.......Inquisitorial repression of the sexual offence of sodomy, considered, according to Canon Law, as a crime against nature, merits separate attention. This included cases of incidences of heterosexual and homosexual anal sex, rape, and separately bestiality. Civil authorities at times executed those convicted.
In 1506 at Seville the Inquisition made a special investigation into sodomy, causing many arrests and many fugitives and burning 12 persons, but in 1509 the Suprema in Castile declared that crime not within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition deciding that cases of sodomy could not be adjudicated, unless related to heresy. Alleging that sodomy had been introduced to Spain by the Moors, in 1524 the Spanish Ambassador to Rome obtained a special commission from Clement VII for the Holy Office to curb its spread by investigating laymen and clergy in the territories of Aragon, whether or not it was related to heresy; and proceeding according to local, municipal law in spite of the resistance by local bishops to this usurpation of their authority.
The tribunal of Zaragoza distinguished itself for its severity in judging these offences: between 1571—1579, 101 men accused of sodomy were processed and at least 35 were executed. In total, between 1570 and 1630 there were 534 trials (incl. 187 for homosexuality, 245 for bestiality, and 111 with unknown specification of the charges) with 102 executions (incl. 27 for homosexuality, 64 for bestiality and 11 uncertain cases).
The first sodomite was burned by the Inquisition in Valencia in 1572, and those accused included 19% clergy, 6% nobles, 37% workers, 19% servants, and 18% soldiers and sailors. A growing reluctance to convict those who, unlike heretics, could not escape by confession and penance led after 1630 to greater leniency. Torture decreased: in Valencia 21% of sodomites were tortured prior to 1630, but only 4% afterwards. The last execution in persona for sodomy by the Inquisition took place in Zaragoza in April 1633. In total, out of about 1,000 convicted of sodomy - 170 were actually burnt at the stake, including 84 condemned for bestiality and 75 for homosexuality, with 11 cases where the exact character of the charges is not known.
Nearly all of almost 500 cases of sodomy between persons concerned the relationship between an older man and an adolescent, often by coercion; with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. About 100 of the total involved allegations of child abuse. Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young (under ca. 12 years) or when the case clearly concerned rape, did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether. As a rule, the Inquisition condemned to death only those "sodomites" over the age of 25 years. As about half of those tried were under this age, it explains the relatively small percent of death sentences.
Freemasonry.......In 1815, Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almería, suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to atheism, to sedition and to all errors and crimes." He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".
Emily
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The DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 216 - 220
IN EXITU ISRAEL
The Inquisition was intended to frighten all Christians, new or old, into at least external orthodoxy, in the hope that heresy would be blighted in the bud, and that the second or third generation of baptised Jews would forget the Judaism of their ancestors. There was no intent to let baptised Jews leave Spain: when they tried to emigrate, Ferdinand and the Inquisition forbade it. But what of the unbaptised Jews? Some 235,000 of them remained in Christian Spain. How could the religious unity of the nation be effected if these were allowed to practice and profess their faith? Torquemada thought it impossible, and recommended their compulsory conversion or their banishment.
Ferdinand hesitated. He knew the economic value of Hebrew ability in commerce and finance. But he was told that the Jews taunted the Conversos and sought to win them back to Judaism, if only secretly. His physician, Ribas Altas, a baptised Jew, was accused of wearing on a pendant from his neck a golden ball containing a representation of himself in the act of desecrating a crucifix; the charge seems incredible, but the physician was burned. (1488). A Conversos was arrested on a charge of having a consecrated wafer in his knapsack; he was tortured again and again until he signed a statement that six Conversos and six Jews had killed a Christian child to use its heart in a magic ceremony designed to cause the death of all Christians and the total destruction of Christianity. The confessions of the tortured man contradicted one another, and no child was reported missing; however four Jews were burned, two of them after having their flesh torn away with red-hot pincers. When Granada surrendered ( Nov. 5, 1491), and the industrial and commercial activities of the Moors accrued to Christian Spain, the economic contribution of the unconverted Jews no longer seemed vital. Meanwhile popular fanaticism, inflamed by “autos-da-fe” and the preaching of the friars, was making social peace impossible unless the government either protected or expelled the Jews.
On March 30, 1492 -- so crowded a year in Spanish history -- Ferdinand and Isabella signed the edict of exile. All unbaptised Jews of whatever age or condition were to leave Spain by July 31, and were never to return on penalty of death. They might take with them movable goods and bills of exchange, but no currency silver, or gold. Abraham Senior and Isaac Abrabanel offered the sovereigns a large sum to withdraw the edict, but Ferdinand and Isabella refused. A supplementary edict required that taxes to the end of the year should be paid on all Jewish property and sales. Debts due from Christians or Moors were to be collected only on maturity, through such agents as the banished creditors might find. In this enforced precipitancy the property of the Jews passed into Christian hands at a small fraction of its value. A house was sold for an ass, a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews, in despair, burned down their houses, others gave them to the municipality. In a few months the largest part of the riches of the Spanish Jews, accumulated through the centuries, melted away. Approximately 50,000 Jews accepted conversion, and were permitted to remain; over 100,000 left Spain in a prolonged and melancholy exodus. The thousands who sailed from Gibraltar, Malaga, Valencia, or Barcelona found that in all Christendom only Italy was willing to receive them with humanity.
The most convenient goal of the pilgrims was Portugal. A large population of Jews already existed there, and some had risen to wealth and political position under friendly kings. But John II was frightened by the number of Jews -- perhaps 80,000 -- who poured in. He granted them a stay of eight months, after which they were to leave. John facilitated the departure of immigrant Jews by providing ships at low cost; But those who confided themselves to these vessels were subject to robbery and rape; many were cast upon desolate shores or left to die of starvation, or to be captured and enslaved by Moors.
When the eight months of grace had expired, John II sold into slavery those Jewish immigrants who still remained in Portugal. Children under 15 were taken from their parents and sent to St.Thomas Islands to be reared as Christians. John’s successor, Manuel, gave the Jews a breathing spell: he freed those whom John had enslaved, forbade the preachers to incite the populace against Jews, and ordered his courts to dismiss as malicious tales all allegations of the murder of Christian children by Jews. But meanwhile, Manuel courted Isabella, daughter and heiress of Isabella and Ferdinand, and dreamed of uniting both thrones under one bed. The Catholic sov ereigns agreed, on condition that Manual expel from Portugal all unbaptised Jews. Loving honours above honour, Manual consented, and ordered all Jews and Moors in his realm to accept baptism or banishment (1496). The Catholic clergy opposed this measure, but it was carried out. Manuel grew ferocious; he hindered the departure of Jews, then ordered them to be baptised by force. The Portuguese Conversos sent a dispatch to Pope Alexander VI begging his intercession; his reply is unknown; it was probably favourable, for Manuel now (May 1497) granted to all forcibly baptised Jews a moratorium of twenty years. But the Christians of Portugal resented the economic competition of the Jews, baptised or not ; when one Jew questioned a miracle said to have occurred in a Lisbon church, the populace tore him to pieces; for three days massacre ran free, 2000 Jews were killed; hundreds were buried alive. Catholic prelates denounced the outrage, and two Dominican friars who had incited the riot were put to death. Otherwise for a generation there was almost peace.
From Spain the terrible exodus was complete. But religious unity was not yet achieved: the Moors remained. Granada had been taken, but its Mohammedan population had been guaranteed religious liberty. Archbishop Hernando de Talavera, scrupulously observed this compact, and sought to make converts by kindness and justice. Ximenes did not approve such Christianity. He persuaded the queen that faith need not be kept with infidels, and induced her to decree ( 1499) that the Moors must become Christians or leave Spain. Going himself to Granada he overruled Talavera, closed the Mosques, made public bonfires of all the Arabic books and manuscripts he could lay his hands on. The Moors protested that when their forefathers had ruled much of Spain, they had given religious liberty, with rare exceptions to the Christians under their sway, but the sovereigns were not moved. Boys under fourteen and girls under twelve were forbidden to leave Spain with their parents, and feudal barons were allowed to retain their Moorish slaves provided they were kept in fetters. During the sixteenth century 3,000,000 superficially converted Moslems left Spain. Cardinal Richelieu called the edict of 1502, “The most barbarous in history” ; but the friar Bleda thought it “ the most glorious event in Spain since the time of the Apostles. Now,” he added “religious unity is secured and an era of prosperity is certainly about to dawn”.
Spain lost an incalculable treasure by the Exodus of Jewish and Moslem merchants, craftsmen, scholars, physicians, and scientists, and the nations that received them benefited economically, and intellectually. For good or ill, Spain chose to remain medieval, while the rest of Europe, by the commercial, typographical, intellectual and Protestant revolutions, rushed into modernity.
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Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. The other thing that Spain did was to waste the treasure in gold that they got from the New World in lavish buildings and unprofitable wars, dooming the country to poverty.
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There is just enough rationalism and progress of civilization throughtout history to keep us hopeful through all the wars, mayhem, poisonings, beheadings and cruelty.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 226 - 229
Sovereign Death.
Isabella had preceded her energetic minister in the culminating adventure. With all her severity she was a woman of deep sensitivity, who bore bereavements more heavily than wars. In 1496 she buried her mother. Of her ten children five were stillborn or died in infancy, and two others died in early youth. In 1497 she lost her only son, her sole hope for an orderly succession, and 1498 her best loved daughter, the Queen of Portugal, who might have united the Peninsula in peace. Amid these blows she suffered the daily tragedy of seeing her daughter Juana, now heiress-apparent to the throne, slowly going insane.
Juana had married Philip the handsome, Duke of Burgundy and son of Emperor Maximilian I ( 1496) By him she bore two future emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I Whether because of a fickle temperament, or because Juana was already incompetent, Philip neglected her, and carried on a liaison with a lady of her court at Brussels. Juana had the charmer’s hair cut off, whereupon Philip swore he would never cohabit with his wife again. Hearing of all this Isabella fell ill. On October 12, 1504, she wrote her will, directing that she should receive the plainest funeral, that the money so saved should be given to the poor, and that she should be buried in a Franciscan monastery within the Alhambra. She died November 24, 1504 and was buried as she had directed. “The world,” wrote Peter Martyr, “has lost its noblest ornament...... I know none of her sex, in ancient or modern times, who in my judgment is at all worthy to be named with this incomparable woman.” ( Margaret of Sweden had been too remote from Peter’s ken, and Elizabeth of England was yet to be. )
Isabella’s will had named Ferdinand as regent in Castile for a Philip absorbed in the Netherlands and a Juana moving ever more deeply into a consoling lunacy. Hoping to keep the Spanish throne from falling to the Hapsburgs in the person of Philip’s son Charles, the fifty-three-year-old Ferdinand hurriedly married (1505) Germaine de Foix, the seventeen-year-old niece of Louis XII, but the marriage increased the distaste of the Castilian nobles for their Aragonese master, and its only offspring died in infancy. Philip now claimed the crown of Castile, arrived in Spain, and was welcomed by the nobility ( 1506 ), while Ferdinand retired to his role as King of Aragon. Three months later, Philip died, and Ferdinand resumed the regency of Castile in the name of his mad daughter. Joana la Loca remained technically Queen, she lived till 1555, but never after 1507 left her royal palace at Tordesillas; she refused to wash or be dressed, and day after day she gazed through a window at the cemetery that held the mortal remains of the unfaithful husband whom she had never ceased to love.
Ferdinand ruled more absolutely as regent than before as king. Freed from the tempering influence of Isabella, the hard and vindictive elements in his character came to sharp dominance. He had already recovered Roussillon and Cerdagne (1493) and Gonzalo de Cordoba had conquered Naples for him in 1503. Ferdinand had mastered everything but time. Gradually the wells of will and energy in him sank. His hours of rest grew longer, fatigue came sooner; he neglected the government; he became impatient and restless, morbidly suspicious of his most loyal servitors. In January 1516 he fled south to Andalusia where he hoped to spend the winter in the open country. He fell ill on the way, and was at last persuaded to prepare for death. He named Ximenes regent for Castile, and his own illegitimate son, the archbishop of Saragossa, regent for Aragon. He died in January 23 1516, aged sixty-four.
No wonder Machiavelli admired him: here was a king who acted ‘The Prince’ before its author thought of writing it. Ferdinand made religion a tool of national and military policy, filling his documents with pious phrases, but never allowed considerations of morality to overcome motives expediency or gain. No one could doubt his ability, his competent supervision of government, his discerning choice of ministers and generals, his invariable success in diplomacy, persecution, and war. Personally neither greedy nor extravagant; his appetite was for power rather than luxury, and his greed was for his country, to make it one and strong. He had no belief in democracy; under him local liberties languished and died. His achievement, and Isabella’s, was to replace anarchy with monarchy, weakness with strength. To accomplish this he was guilty of what to our time seems barbarous intolerance and inhuman cruelty, but seemed to his contemporaries a glorious victory for Christ.
Ximenes as regent preserved the absolutism of the throne, perhaps as an alternative to a relapse into feudal fragmentation. When some nobles asked by what right he curbed their privileges, he pointed not to the insignia of office, but to the artillery in the courtyard of the palace. He repeatedly urged the young King Charles to come to Spain to assume the royal authority. When Charles came Ximenes hurried forth to meet him. But Charles’s Flemish counsellors had given Ximenes so unfavourable a report that the young king despatched a letter to him, thanking him for his services , and bidding him to retire. Ximenes died shortly after, aged eighty-one. People wondered how, though apparently incorruptible, he had amassed the great personal fortune that his will left for the University of Alcala.
He ended for Spain an age rich in honours, horrors, and forceful men. The aftermath suggests that the victory of the crown over Cortes and communes removed the medium through which the Spanish character might have expressed and maintained independence and variety; that the unification of faith was secured at the cost of riveting upon Spain a machine for the suppression of original thought; that the expulsion of unconverted Jews and Moors undermined Spanish commerce and industry, just when the opening of the New World called for economic expansion and improvement; that the progressive involvement of Spain in the politics and wars of France and Italy ( later of Flanders, Germany, and England ), instead of turning policy and enterprise toward the development of the Americas, laid unbearable burdens upon the nation’s resources in money and men. This however, is hindsight and judges the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella in terms no European people of their time would have understood. All religious groups except for a few Moslems and Anabaptists persecuted religious dissent; all governments -- Catholic France and Italy, Protestant Germany and England-- used force to unify religious faith; all countries hungered for the gold of the Indies. East and West; all used war and diplomatic deceit to ensure survival, extend their boundaries or increase their wealth.
To all Christian governments Christianity was not a rule of means but a means of rule; Christ was for the people, Machiavelli was preferred by kings. The state in some measure had civilized man, but who would civilize the state?
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Who, indeed!
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While reading about Spain during this era, the 'burning at the stake' and 'burning if effigy' was written as the sometimes punishment for the same offense. The explanation for 'burning in effigy' was that one could sometimes ask to be 'garroted' after a 'guilty plea' which meant they would be killed by the 'garrote' and then 'burned in effigy' (a bag of straw perhaps with a rope tied near the top to represent a body) at the 'burning at the stake' (burned alive) of those who chose not to plead guilty.
I think I would have to choose the 'garrote' over being burned alive, but pleading guilty to anything concerning 'ocultism' (which encompasses all religions) would be false and presents another dilemma.
This article from wiki on the 'garrote' informed me about its use. It seems to have fallen by the wayside as a means of 'execution' but is still in use as a means of killing. I was surprised to learn that it is used by the U.S. military since WW11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrote
What do all of you think about these two methods of killing. Being 'burned alive' or the 'garrote'?
Emily
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What a choice! But the garrote sounds less painful. (Why is my neck hurting?)
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Gloomy, rainy day, good day to catch up on Durant......
However, this first paragraph
Isabella had preceded her energetic minister in the culminating adventure. With all her severity she was a woman of deep sensitivity, who bore bereavements more heavily than wars. In 1496 she buried her mother. Of her ten children five were stillborn or died in infancy, and two others died in early youth. In 1497 she lost her only son, her sole hope for an orderly succession, and 1498 her best loved daughter, the Queen of Portugal, who might have united the Peninsula in peace. Amid these blows she suffered the daily tragedy of seeing her daughter Juana, now heiress-apparent to the throne, slowly going insane.
makes me depressed just reading it! How many mothers endured such happenings with their children? So many! Or died giving birth to that 9th, 10th or 15th child. Again, i am so pleased to be living in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
Jean
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I know. I have letters of my great great grandparents. They had 10 children, and only two lived to adulthood. It was more common than not, tragically.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 230 - 240
THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE
1300-1517
The two centuries whose European history has been so hastily sketched in the preceding posts is still part of what tradition calls the Middle Ages-- the life of Europe between Constantine and Columbus, 325 to 1492 A.D. As we summarize the science, pedagogy, and philosophy of Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it must be remembered that rational studies had to fight for soil and air in a jungle of superstition, intolerance, and fear. Amid famines, plagues, and wars, in the chaos of fugitive or divided papacy, men and women sought in occult forces some explanation for the unintelligible miseries of mankind, some magical power to control events, some mystical escape from a harsh reality; and the life of reason moved precariously in a milieu of sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, palmistry, phrenology, numerology, divination, portents, prophecies, dream interpretations, fateful stellar conjunctions, chemical transmutations, miraculous cures, and occult powers in animals, minerals, and plants. All these marvels remain deathless with us today, and one or another wins from almost everyone of us some open or secret allegiance; but their present influence in Europe falls far short of their medieval sway. The stars, men believed, were guided by angels, and the air was congested with invisible spirits, some from heaven, some from hell. Demons lurked everywhere, especially in one’s bed; to them some men ascribed their night losses, some women their untimely pregnancies; and theologians agreed that such infernal concubines were real. Books of magic were among the best sellers of the day. The bishop of Cahors was tortured, scourged, and burned at the stake (1317) after confessing that he had burned a wax image of pope John XXII in the hope that the original, as the magic art promised, would suffer like the effigy. People believed that a wafer consecrated by a priest would, if pricked, bleed with the blood of Christ.
The repute of the alchemists had declined, but their honest research and glittering chicanery went on. They persuaded some kings that alchemy might replenish exhausted treasuries, and simple people swallowed “potable gold, “ guaranteed to cure anything but gullibility. ( Gold is still taken by patients and physicians in treating arthritis ).*** The tomb of Pierre de Luxembourg, a cardinal who at eighteen died of ascetic austerities, became a favourite goal, where, within fifteen months of his death, 1,964 cures were ascribed to the magic efficacy of his bones.
Witchcraft was the practice of sorcery by persons who were alleged to worship Satan, in nocturnal assemblies or “Sabbaths”, as the master of the demons whom they affected to employ. According to popular belief the witches, usually women, secured supernatural powers at the price of this devil worship. Erasmus and Thomas More accepted the reality of witchcraft; some priests in Cologne doubted it; the university of Cologne affirmed it. Most churchmen claimed -- and lay historians in some measure agree -- that the secret gatherings at night were excuses for promiscuous sexual relations, and for initiating young people into the arts of debauchery.
Secular and Episcopal courts joined in efforts to suppress what seemed to them the most blasphemous depravity. Several popes in 1374, 1409, 1437, 1451, and especially Innocent VIII in 1484 commissioned agents of the inquisition to deal with witches as abandoned heretics, whose sins and machinations blighted the fruit of fields and wombs, and whose pretensions might seduce whole communities into demonolatry. The popes took literally a passage in Exodus “ (22 : 18 ): “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
In 1487 the Dominican inquisitor Jacob Sprenger, published an official guide for the detection of witches, “Malleus maleficarum ( Hammer of Witches.”) These maleficent women, said Sprenger, by stirring up some devilish brew in a cauldron, or by other means, can summon swarms of locusts to devour a harvest; they can make men impotent and women barren; they can dry up a woman’s milk, or bring abortion. Some of them kidnap children, roast them, and eat them. Sprenger wondered why there were more female than male witches, and concluded that it was because women were more light headed and sensual than men; besides, he added, they had always been favourite instruments of Satan. He burned forty-eight of them in five years. From this time onward the ecclesiastical attack upon witchcraft was intensified until it reached its full fury in the sixteenth century, under Catholic and Protestant auspices alike; in this type of fearful ferocity the middle ages were outdone by modern times. In 1554 an officer of the inquisition boasted that in the preceding 150 years the Holy Office had burned at least 30,000 witches, who if they had been left unpunished would have brought the whole world to destruction.
The great antagonist of astrology in this age was Nicole Oresme, who died as bishop of Lisieux in 1382. He laughed at astrologers who could not predict the sex of an unborn child but, after its birth, professed to foretell its earthly fate. Many people, said Nicole, are credulous of magic because they lack acquaintance with natural causes and processes. They accept on hearsay what they have not seen, and so legend -- as of a magician climbing a rope thrown into the air -- may become a popular belief. (This is the oldest known mention of the rope-climbing myth. ) ***
Despite such brave advances toward a scientific spirit, the old superstitions survived, or merely changed their form. Edward III of England paid a great sum for a phial which, he was assured, had belonged to St. Peter. Charles V of France was shown, in Sainte Chapelle, a phial allegedly containing some of Christ’s blood; he asked his savants and theologians whether this could be true; they answered cautiously in the affirmative. It was in this atmosphere that education, science, medicine, and philosophy struggled to grow.
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*** The use of gold to cure disease still has its believers today. I remember in the 1950’s that John Foster Dulles, an important figure in the Eisenhower presidency, took gold in an unsuccessful attempt to cure cancer.
I was intrigued to read Durant’s reference to the Indian Rope Trick, wherein a rope is thrown up into the air, and though not supported remains hanging vertically while a child climbs to the top of the rope and disappears. Durant, writing in S o C, clearly is not a believer.
I am at present reading a popular maths book called “1089 and all That. “ In a discussion on chaos the author refers to Daniel Bernoulli’s 1738 discussion of a multiple system of pendulums suspended from a fulcrum.
The author of the book decided to turn Bernoulli’s system upside down and support the system not by hanging from a fulcrum but by standing the wire to which the pendulums were attached by the bottom end , leaving the whole assembly free.
By vibrating the assembly in a vertical direction. and choosing the correct frequency for the induced vibration, the whole assembly will remain stable for as long as one wishes. One can imagine a small insect climbing up to the top of the system like the small Indian boy was thought to have done.
Anyone interested can find details in David Achesons book 1089 and All That. Oxford University Press . __ Trevor
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Ordered a sample of "1089 and All that" for my kindle. the title is a takeoff on a great funny book of English history "1066 and All that", which I remember loving as a child. But Please tell me what happened in 1089.
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JoanK You've got it ! 1089 and all that is a take off on 1066 and all that. I remember it was very popular sometime about 1935 or so. My older sister had a boyfriend who lived with us on our farm during the great depression. He bought a copy of 1066 for her. My sister died last year, aged 94. She still had her copy in her collection after all those years.... Trevor
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I wanted to order "1066" for my kindle. There were a handful of versions with different authors -- i got confused, and didn't.
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Joan, here is a short intro to the book.
1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates is a tongue-in-cheek reworking of the history of England.
Written by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman and illustrated by John Reynolds, it first appeared serially in Punch magazine, and was published in book form by Methuen & Co. Ltd. in 1930.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 235 - 238
THE TEACHERS
The rise of commerce and industry put a new premium on education. Literacy had been a costly luxury in an agricultural regime; it was a necessity in an urban commercial world. Law tardily recognised the change. In England (1391 ) the feudal landowners petitioned Richard II to enforce the old rule that forbade a serf to send his son to school without the lord’s consent and reimbursement for the loss of a farm hand. Richard refused, and in the next reign a statute decreed that any parent might send any of his children to school.
Under this education - emancipation act, elementary schools multiplied; In the countryside monastic schools survived; in the cities grade schools were provided by churches, hospitals, chantries, and guilds. Usually the teachers were priests, but the proportion of lay instructors rose in the fourteenth century. The curriculum stressed the catechism, the Creed, the basic prayers, reading, writing, arithmetic, singing and flogging. A divine explained “ the boys’ spirits must be subdued” Agnes Paston urged the tutor of her unstudious son to “bash him “ if he did not attend, “ for I have lever he were fairly buried than lost by default.”
Secondary schools continued the religious training, and added Grammatica, which included not merely grammar and composition, but the language and expurgated literature of classic Rome; the students learned to read and write Latin, however indifferently, as a necessity in foreign trade as well as in a church career. The best secondary schools of the time were those established in the Lowlands and Germany by the Brethren of the Common Life; the one at Deventer drew 2,000 students. The wealthy and energetic Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham set a precedent by founding there ( 1372 ) the first of England’s “Public Schools,” institutions endowed, by private or public philanthropy, to provide college preparatory training for a limited selection of boys. The example was followed by Henry VI who established (1440) the richly endowed Eton School to prepare students for Kings College, Cambridge.
Above the elementary level the education of women, with some high born exceptions, was confined to the home. Many women of the middle class, like Margaret Paston, learned to write fair English, and a sprinkling of women acquired some acquaintance with literature and philosophy. The sons of the aristocracy received an education quite different from that of the schools. Till the age of seven they were taught by the women of the house; then they were sent to serve, as pages, a related or neighbouring noble. Safe from the excesses of affection, they learned reading, writing, religion, and manners from the ladies and the local priest. At fourteen they became squires -- ie adult servitors of their lord. Now they learned to ride, shoot, hunt, joust, and wage war. Book learning they left to their inferiors.
These inferiors were meanwhile developing one of the noblest legacies of the Middle Ages -- the Universities. While the ecstasy of ecclesiastical architecture cooled,, the zeal for founding colleges mounted. They were not yet colleges in the modern sense; they were “halls,” places of residence for selected students; hardly a tenth of the students at Oxford lived in them. Most university instruction was given by clergymen in school rooms or auditoriums scattered about town. Benedictine monks, Franciscan, Dominican, and other friars maintained their own colleges at Oxford, and from these monastic academies came some of the most brilliant minds of the fourteenth century; among them were Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, both of whom did some damage to orthodox theology.
In Oxford no love was wasted between gown and town -- citizens and scholars. In 1355 the hostile camps rushed into open warfare, and so many were killed that the year was known as that of the Great Slaughter. Despite the introduction of flogging into the universities of England (c. 1350 ) the students were a troublesome lot. Forbidden to engage in intramural athletics, they spent their energy in profanity, tippling, and venery; taverns and brothels throve on their patronage. Attendance at Oxford fell from its thirteenth century peak to as low as 1000; and after the expulsion of Wycliffe academic freedom was rigorously curtailed by Episcopal control.
Cambridge profited from the Wycliffe controversy and the Lollard scare; cautious conservatives kept their sons from Oxford, and sent them to the younger university, so that, by the end of the fifteenth century the rival institutions had a fairly equal registration. Mental activity was in this period more vigorous in Central Europe than in France or Spain. In 1347 Charles IV founded the University of Prague, Other Universities soon appeared at Cracow, Vienna, Geneva, Heidelberg, and many other places. In the second half of the fifteenth century these institutions seethed with students and debates. Cracow alone had 18,338 students at one time. Scholasticism sat in the chairs of philosophy, while Humanism grew outside the university walls. Most of the universities of Germany adhered to the church during the Reformation, with two significant exceptions. Erfurt, where Luther studied, and Wittenberg, where he taught.
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The Durants make you think about different aspects of history. Universities are being established during this period: looks like only a matter of time before they produce a Martin Luther or someone like him.
Sociologists wonder to what extent indeviduals' ideas change history and to what extent they reflect ideas that are growing in the times.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
PGS 238 - 243
THE SCIENTISTS
The scientific mood was hardly more popular with the pundits than with the people. The spirit of the age inclined to the “humanities; even the revival of Greek studies ignored Greek science. In mathematics the Roman numerals obstructed progress; they seemed inseperable from Latin culture; the Hindu-Arabic numerals seemed heretically Mohammedan, and were coldly received, especially north of the Alps ; The Cour des Comptes -- the French bureau of Audit used the clumsy Roman figures till the eighteenth century. Nevertheless Thomas Bradwardine, who died of the plague (1349) a month after being consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, introduced into England several Arabic theorems in trigonometry.
Nicole Oresme led an active ecclesiastical career, and yet invaded a dozen sciences successfully He paved the way for analytical geometry by developing the systematic use of co-ordinates. He played with the idea of the fourth dimension, but rejected it. In a commentary on Aristotle's “De caelo et mundo, “ he wrote; “We cannot prove by any experiment that the heavens undergo a daily movement and the earth does not;” he said. “there are good reasons indicating that the earth, and not the sky, undergoes a daily motion.” When we consider that no telescope or camera existed as yet to watch or record the sky, it is encouraging to note the energy and intelligence of medieval astronomers, Moslem, Jewish, and Christian. Jean de Liniers, after years of personal observations, calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic to within seven seconds of the most modern estimate. Another proposed to reform the Julian calendar, which was outstripping the sun, but the reform had to wait till 1582, and still awaits international and interfaith understanding. William Merle of Oxford rescued meteorology from astrology by keeping a record of weather through 2,556 days. Unknown observers or navigators discovered in the fifteenth century the declination of the magnetic needle: the needle does not point due north, but inclines toward the astronomic meridian at a small but important angle, which, as Columbus noted, varies from place to place.
The peak figure in the mathematics and astronomy of this epoch, was Johann Muller, known to history as Regiomontanus from his birth ( 1436) near Konigsberg in Lower Franconia. At fourteen he entered the University of Vienna, where Georg von Purbach was introducing humanism and the latest Italian advances in Mathematics and Astronomy. Both men matured and died too soon: Purbach at thirty-eight, Muller at forty. In 1475 Sixtus IV summoned Muller to Rome to reform the callendar. There a year later, Regiomontanus died. The short span of his life limited his achievements. Under the title of Ephemerides he issued ( 1474) an almanac showing the daily positions of the planets for the next thirty-two years; from this book Columbus would predict the lunar eclipse that would fill the stomachs of his starving men on Feb. 29, 1504. One of his students Martin Behaim, drew in colour on vullum the oldest known terrestrial globe ( 1492), still preserved in the Germanisches Museum in Nuremberg.
Modern geography was created not by geographers but by sailors, merchants, missionaries, envoys, soldiers, and pilgrims. Catalonian skippers made or used excellent maps; their portolani-- pilot guides to Mediterranean ports -- were in the fourteenth century almost as accurate as the navigation charts of our time. Old trade routes to the east having fallen into Turkish hands, European importers developed new overland routes through Mongol Territory. Johann Schnittberger of Bavaria, captured by the Turks at Nicopolis (1396) wandered for thirty years in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, and Siberia, and wrote in his Reisebuch the first West-European description of Siberia.
In one particular the most influential medieval treatise on Geography was the Imago mundi (1410) of Cardinal Pierre d’Aily, which encouraged Columbus by describing the Atlantic as traversable “ in very few days if the wind be fair.” It was but one of half a dozen works that this alert ecclesiastic wrote on astronomy, geography, meteorology, mathematics, logic, metaphysics, psychology, and the reform of the calendar and the Church. Reproached for giving so much time to secular studies, he replied that a theologian should keep abreast of science.
The best scientific thought of the fourteenth century was in physics. Dietrich of Freiburg (d,1311) gave essentially our modern explanation of the rainbow as due to two refractions, and one reflection of the sun’s rays in drops of water. Jean Buridan did excellent work in theoretical physics, it is a pity that he is famous only for his ass, which may not have been his. Born near Arras before 1300, Buridan studied and taught at the university of Paris. He not only argued for the daily rotation of the earth, but he eliminated from astronomy the angelic intelligences to which Aristotle and Aquinas had ascribed the guidance and motion of the heavenly bodies. Nothing more is needed to explain their movements, said Buridan, than a start originally given them by God, and the law of impetus-- that a body in motion continues in motion except as hindered by some existing force; here Buridan anticipated Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The motions of planets and stars, he added, are governed by the same mechanical laws that operate on earth. These propositions, now so trite, were deeply damaging to the medieval world view. They almost date the beginning of astronomical physics.
Complicated windmills were used to pump water, and grind grain. In a drawing by the Hussite engineer Conrad Keyser, occurs the earliest representation of reciprocating motion converted into rotary motion: two arms, moving in alternation, revolve a shaft precisely as the pistons turn the crankshaft of an automobile. Better mechanisms for measuring time were demanded as commerce and industry grew. City life required some uniform divisions of time, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries clocks and watches were made that divided the day into equal parts throughout the year. In some places the hours were numbered from one to twenty-four: and as late as 1370 some clocks, like that of San Gotardo in Milan, struck the full number. This proved to be a noisy extravagance. By 1375 the day was regularly divided into two halves of twelve hours each.
While physics thus foreshadowed the Industrial Revolution, alchemy slowly grew into chemistry. By the close of this age the alchemists had discovered and described zinc, bismuth, liver of sulfur, regulus of antimony, volatized mercury, and made sulphuric acid They bequeathed to chemistry the experimental method that would prove the greatest gift of medieval science to the modern mind.
Botany was still mostly confined to manuals of husbandry or to herbals describing medicinal plants. Henry of Hesse ( 1325-97 ) suggested that new species, especially among plants, might evolve naturally from old ones; this some 500 years before Darwin. Anatomy and physiology had for the most part depended upon the dissection of animals, the wounds of soldiers, and occasional cases where the law required post-mortem autopsy. Honest Christians felt reasonable objections to the dissection of human bodies which, however dead, were supposed to rise intact from grave at the Last Judgement. All through the fourteenth century it was difficult to get cadavers for anatomical study; north of the Alps very few physicians before 1450, had ever seen a dissected human corpse. Dissections were performed before medical students at Venice in 1368, Vienna in 1404; and in 1445 the university of Padua built the first anatomical theatre. The results for medicine were endless.
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Ephemerides ; An Almanac. "From this book Columbus would predict the lunar eclise that would fill the stomachs of his starving men on February 29, 1504."
Does anyone know the story and details of this event? --- Trevor
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"Jean Buridan did excellent work in theoretical physics, it is a pity that he is famous only for his ass, which may not have been his."
Have to look this one up!
Of course! It's the donkey who can't decide between two haystacks: goes first toward one, then te other, and starves to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
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And here is Columbus' lunar eclipse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1504_lunar_eclipse
This device (awing strangers into doing what you want by predicting an eclipse) is used in fiction (mark twain in Connecticut Yankee), but I didn't know it ever actually happened.
And now we know how Columbus did it! This is why this book is so much fun. You never know what will come up.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 243 - 246
THE HEALERS
In the science and practice of medicine, as in literature and art, northern Europe was half a century or more behind Italy; and even Italy had by 1300 barely regained the medical knowledge reached by Galen and Soranus a thousand years before. But the medical schools at Montpelier, Paris, and Oxford were making good progress, and the greatest surgeons of this age were French. The profession was now well organised and defended its privileges lustily; but as the demand for health always exceeded the supply, herbalists, apothecaries, midwives, wandering leeches and barber surgeons -- not to mention quacks -- everywhere competed with trained practitioners. The public, inviting disease by wrong living, and then seeking infallible diagnoses and cheap overnight cures, made the usual complaints about mercenary or murderous doctors. Froissart considered it “the object of all medical men to gain large salaries.” -- as if this were not a disease endemic to all civilisation.
The most interesting medical men of the age were the surgeons. They had not yet persuaded the physicians to recognise them as equals; indeed the University of Paris would admit no student to its school of medicine in the fourteenth century except on his oath never to perform a surgical operation. Even blood letting which had already
become a panacea, was forbidden to physicians and had to be left to their underlings. Barbers were still used by the people for many operations; but the barber surgeons were now abandoning tonsorial practice, and were specialising in surgery; in 1365 there were forty such barber surgeons in Paris; in England they continued till 1540. The great names in surgery, in the first half of the fourteenth century, were Henri de Mondeville, and Guy de Chauliac. Froissart might have noted that Mondeville, though always in great demand, remained poor to the end of his days, and carried on his work despite his own asthma and tuberculosis. His ‘Chirurgia’ ( 1306-20) the first work on surgery by a Frenchman, covered the whole field with a thoroughness and competence that earned a new standing for surgeons. His distinctive contribution was the application and development of a method which he had learned from Theodoric Borgognoni at Bologna for treating wounds by complete cleansing, prevention of suppuration, exclusion of air, and dressings with wine. He defended his innovations by warning against a supine acceptance of Galen or other classic authorities. “ Modern authors,” he wrote , using a favourite medieval adjective, “are to the ancient like a dwarf placed upon the shoulders of a giant; he sees all that the giant sees, and farther still.”
The generation after him produced the most famous of medieval surgeons. Born of peasant stock in the French village that gave him his name, Guy de Chauliac so impressed the lords of the manor that they paid for his tuition at university. In 1342 he became papal physician at Avignon, and held that difficult position for twenty-eight years. When the Black Death struck Avignon he stayed at his post, ministered to the victims, contracted the pestilence, and barely survived. Like any man he committed many errors: he blamed the plague now on an unfortunate conjunction of planets, now on Jews aiming to poison all Christendom, and he retarded the surgery of wounds by rejecting Mondeville’s simple cleansing method and returning to the use of plasters and salves. But for the most part he lived up to the finest traditions of his great profession.
Social and individual hygiene hardly kept pace with the advances of medicine. Personal cleanliness was not a fetish; even the King of England bathed only once a week, and sometimes skipped. The Germans had public baths-- large vats in which the bather stood or sat naked, some times both sexes together. In all Europe -- not always excepting the aristocracy -- the same articles of clothing were worn for months, or years, or generations. Many cities had a water supply, but it reached only a few homes; most families had to fetch water from the nearest fountain, well, or spring. The air of London was befouled by the odour of slaughtered cattle, till such carnage was forbidden in 1371.
In 1388, prodded by several returns of the plague, Parliament passed the first Sanitary Act for all England. Similar ordinances were promulgated in France about this time. Epidemics continued to occur -- The sweating sickness in England, diphtheria and smallpox in Germany -- but with diminished virulence and mortality. The treatment of the insane gradually passed from superstitious reverence or barbaric cruelty to semi scientific care. Matters improved in the fifteenth century. A monk named Jean Joffre, filled with compassion for lunatics who were being hooted through the streets of Valladolid by a mob, established there an asylum for the insane ( 1409 ), and his example was followed in other cities. The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, founded in London in 1247, was transformed into an insane asylum in 1402 and the word Bethlehem, corrupted into Bedlam, became a synonym for a place of insanity.
Confirmed lepers were still outcast from society, but leprosy almost disappeared form Western Europe in the fifteenth century. Syphilis took its place. Possibly a development of the ‘gros verole’ previously known in France, possibly an importation from America, it appeared definitely in Spain in 1493, in Italy 1495; it spread so widely in France that it came to be called morbus gallicus; and some cities in Germany were so ravaged by it that they begged exemption from taxation. As early as the end of the fifteenth century we hear of mercury being used in treating it. The progress of medicine ran a brave race then as now with the inventiveness of disease.
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The treatment of the insane gradually passed from superstitious reverence or barbaric cruelty to semi scientific care.
There was nothing scientific about what they did. They simply gave asylum to people who were unable due to their disability to live and care for themselves in greater society. It was a wonderful and caring act and gave those least capable a safe and secure place. An asylum from the harsh reality of life.
This country has reversed that trend. A prison cell or living back on the street has become the norm here. When the ------(fill in the blank) decided that a place of asylum was not what these people needed, but they should be put back into society and live among all the people, they closed the places of asylum down and many were left wandering the streets.
They sold the one here to Dell computer, a large farm of beautiful rolling countryside with trees, meadows, a dairy, park like land with gazebos and benches. They even tore down the crafted wrought iron gates and sold them. We used to pass it on the way to Nashville before they built the interstate. There were many well kept buildings in a pristine setting with flowers and vegetable gardens. At least that is the description given when the local paper showed a picture of them tearing down the gates. Their families could visit them, today many don't know where their mentally ill relative is or what has happened to them.
Here we are in the 21st century and our government has chosen to revert back to 12th century science. Even with all the scientific knowledge we have today little is known about the brain, that other organ which can be diseased the same as the heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, stomach etc. That disease is treated much differently than the other vital organs.
Had I been so unfortunate as to be born with a malfunctioning brain, I would certainly have hoped for a place of asylum, instead of the streets or jails. I would think that all people deserve a place of safety.
Emily
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I agree with you! I remember the propaganda campaign at the time: we were doing these people a favor to return them to loving families. Yes, for the small minority who have loving families who can afford and are able and willing to care for them. But what about the rest? A cost cutting measure disguised as benevolence.
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Durants' S o C
Vol VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 246 - 248
THE PHILOSOPHERS
Though the age of the system-makers had passed, philosophy was still vigorous; indeed in the fourteenth century it shook the whole dogmatic structure of Christendom. A change of emphasis ended the sway of the theologians in philosophy: the leading thinkers now took a major interest in science , like Buridan, or in economics, like Oresme, or in Church organization, like Nicholas of Cusa, or in politics, like Pierre Dubois and Marsilius of Padua. Intellectually these men were quite the equal of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Siger de Brabant, Bonaventura, and Duns Scotus.
Scholasticism -- both as a method of argument and exposition and as an attempt to show the consistency of reason with faith -- continued to dominate the northern universities. Aquinas was canonized in 1323; thereafter his fellow Dominicans, especially at Louvain and Cologne, felt it a point of honour to maintain his doctrine against all challenges. The Franciscans as a loyal opposition, preferred to follow Augustine and Duns Scotus. One unmoored Dominican, William Durand of Saint- Pourcain, shocked his order by going over to the Scotists. At thirty-eight ( c.1308 ) he began a vast commentary, which he finished in old age. As he progressed he abandoned Aristotle and Aquinas, and proposed to put reason above the authority of any doctor, “however famous or solemn “ == here was a philosopher with some sense of humour. While remaining overtly orthodox in theology, he prepared for the uncompromising nominalism of Ockham by restoring the conceptualism of Abelard; only individual things exist; all abstract or general ideas are merely the useful shorthand concepts of the mind. William’s friends called him Doctor Resolutissimus his opponents called him Durus Durandus == Durand the Hard == and warmed themselves with the hope that the fires of hell would soften him at last.
William of Ockham was much harder, but did not wait till death to burn; his whole life was one of hot controversy, cooled only by occasional imprisonment, and the compulsion of the times to phrase his heat in Scholastic form. He admitted in philosophy no authority but experience and reason. He took his theorems passionately, and set half of Europe by the ears in defending his views. His life, adventures, and aims prefigure Voltaire’s, and perhaps his effect was as great.
We cannot say precisely where or when he was born; probably at Ockham in Surrey, toward the end of the thirteenth century. While yet young he entered the Franciscan order, and about the age of twelve he was sent to Oxford as a bright lad who would surely be a shining light in the Church. At Oxford, and perhaps at Paris, he felt the influence of another subtle Franciscan, Duns Scotus; for though he opposed the realism of Scotus he carried his predecessor’s rationalist critique of philosophy and theology many steps further, to a scepticism that would dissolve alike religious dogmas and scientific laws. Apparently before 1324 -- while still a tyro in his twenties -- he wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Peter Lombard, and his most influential book, “Summa totius logicae” -- a summary of all logic.
It seems at first sampling to be a dreary desert of logic chopping and technical terminology, a lifeless procession of definitions, divisions, subdivisions, distinctions, classifications, and subtleties. Ockham knew all about “semantics”; he deplored the inaccuracy of the terms used in philosophy, and spent half his time trying to make them more precise. He resented the Gothic edifice of abstractions -- one mounted upon the other like arches in superimposed tiers -- that medieval thought had raised. We cannot find in his extant works precisely the famous formula that tradition called “Ockham’s razor : ‘entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitate -- entities are not to be multiplied beyond need“. But he expressed the principle in other terms again and again: “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” --a plurality ( of entities or causes or factors ) is not to be posited ( or assumed ) without necessity; and “frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” -- it is vain to seek to accomplish or explain by assuming several entities or causes what can be explained by fewer. The principal was not new; Aquinas had accepted it, Scotus had used it. But in Ockham’s hands it became a deadly weapon, cutting away a hundred occult fancies and grandiose abstractions.
Applying the principle to epistemology, Ockham judged it needless to assume, as the source and material of knowledge, anything more than sensations. From these arise memory ( sensation revived), perception ( sensation interpreted through memory ), imagination ( memories combined ), anticipation ( memory projected ), thought ( memories compared ) and experience ( memories interpreted through thought). “Nothing can be an object of the interior sense” ( thought ) “without having been an object of the exterior sense, ( sensation ): here is Locke’s empiricism 300 years before Locke. All that we ever perceive outside ourselves is individual entities -- specific persons, places, things, actions, shapes, colours, tastes, odours, pressures, temperatures, sounds; and the words by which we denote these are “ words of first intention” or primary intent, directly referring to what we interpret as external realities.
By noting and abstracting the common features of similar entities so perceived, we may arrive at general or abstract ideas -- man, virtue, height, sweetness, heat, music, eloquence; and the words by which we denote such abstractions are “words of second intention” referring to conceptions derived from perceptions. These “universals “ are never experienced in sensation, they are “ termini, signa, nomina,” -- terms, signs, names-- for generalisations extremely useful ( and dangerous ) in thought or reason, in science, philosophy, and theology; they are not objects existing outside the mind. “ Everything outside the mind is singular, numerically one. Reason is magnificent, but its conclusions are vain and perhaps deceptive abstractions. How much nonsense is talked or written by mistaking ideas for things, abstractions for realities ! Abstract thought fulfils its functions only when it leads to specific statements about specific things.
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I have always been fascinated by Ockham's Razor as used in philosophic arguments,
and coming across it again here, was activated into looking it up again on the net.
There are two major difficulties with Ockham’s Razor. The first is that other things are rarely (if ever) equal, so the ceteris paribus clause is not satisfied. The second, perhaps still more important objection is that the unknown (or additional) entities parsed away may have explanatory power outside the domain of consideration, or they may offer further methodological suggestions which subsequently show that the utility (or even truth) granted to the former explanation was too narrow.
The 14th century was a great time for the thinkers in all types of endeavour.
Medicine, politics, nature, the universe and just the very fact of being alive.
Brian
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These flowerings of thought occur periodically, and disappear again. Why? I'm sure the inquisition will cut all this off.
Brian: I like your critique of Occam's razor. I've never seen it as an imperitive, but as a suggestion.
Does anyone understand this sentance: "While remaining overtly orthodox in theology, he [William Durand] prepared for the uncompromising nominalism of Ockham by restoring the conceptualism of Abelard"
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JoanK - - - I have to fall back on the web for a reply to your question.
Nominalism was first formulated as a philosophical theory in the Middle Ages. The French philosopher and theologian Roscellinus (c. 1050-c. 1125) was an early, prominent proponent of this view. It can be found in the work of Peter Abelard and reached its flowering in William of Ockham, who was the most influential and thorough nominalist. Abelard's and Ockham's version of nominalism is sometimes called conceptualism, which presents itself as a middle way between nominalism and realism, asserting that there is something in common among like individuals, but that it is a concept in the mind, rather than a real entity existing independently of the mind.
Brian
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Gotcha.
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DURANT'S S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 246 - 251
THE PHILOSOPHERS (cont.)
From this “nominalism” Ockham moved with devastating recklessness into every field of philosophy and theology. Both metaphysics and science, he announced, are precarious generalizations, since our experience is only of individual entities in a narrowly restricted area and time; it is mere arrogance on our part to assume the universal and eternal validity of the general propositions and “ natural laws “ that we derive from this tiny sector of reality. Our knowledge is moulded and limited by our means and ways of perceiving things ( this is Kant before Kant ); it is locked up in the prison of our minds, and it must not pretend to be the objective or ultimate truth about anything.
As for the soul, it too is an abstraction. It never appears in our perceptions, external or internal; all that we perceive is will, the ego asserting itself in every action and thought. Reason itself and all the glory of intellect are tools of the will; the intellect is merely the will (This is Schopenhauer ).
God himself seems to fall before this razor philosophy. Ockham ( like Kant ) found no conclusive force in any of the arguments used to prove the existence of deity. He rejected Aristotle's notion that the chain of motions or causes compels us to assume a Prime mover or First Cause; an “infinite regress” of motions or causes is no more inconceivable than the unmoved Mover or uncaused Cause of Aristotle's theology. Since nothing can be known save through direct perception, we can never have any clear knowledge that God exists -- “nonpotest sciri evidenter quod Deus est”-- That God is omnipotent or infinite, omniscient or benevolent or personal, cannot be shown by reason, much less can reason prove that there are three persons in one God, or that God became man to atone for Adam and Eve’s disobedience, or that the son of God is present in the consecrated Host. Nor is monotheism more rational than polytheism; there may be more worlds than one, and more gods to govern them.
What then remained of the majestic edifice of Christian faith, its lovely myths and songs and art, its God given morality, its fortifying hope? Ockham recoiled before the ruin of theology by reason, and in a desperate effort to save a social order based on a moral code based on religious belief, he proposed at last to sacrifice reason on the altar of faith. Though it cannot be proved, it is probable that God exists, and He has endowed each of us with an immortal soul. We must distinguish ( as Averroes and Duns Scotus had advised ) between theological truth and philosophical truth, and humbly accept in faith what proud reason doubts.
It was too much to expect that this caudal appendage in honour of “practical reason” would be accepted by the Church as atoning for Ockham’s critique of pure reason. Pope John XXII ordered an ecclesiastical inquiry into the “abominable heresies” of the young friar, and summoned him to appear at the papal court in Avignon. Ockham came, for we find him, in 1328, in a papal prison there, with two other Franciscans. The three escaped and fled to Aiguesmortes; they embarked in a small boat, and were picked up by a galley which took them to Louis of Bavaria at Pisa. The pope excommunicated them, the Emperor protected them. William accompanied Louis to Munich, joined Marsilius of Padua there, lived in an anti-papal Franciscan monastery, and issued from it a torrent of books and pamphlets against the power and heresies of the popes in general, and of John XXII in particular.
As he had in his metaphysics outdone the scepticism of Scotus, so now in his practical theory Ockham carried to daring conclusions the anticlericalism of Marsilius of Padua. He applied the “razor” to the dogmas and rites that the Church had added to early Christianity, and demanded a return to the simpler creed and worship of the New Testament. In a pugnacious ‘Centiloquium theologicum” he brought before the tribunal of his reason a hundred dogmas of the Church, and argued that many of them led logically to intolerable absurdities. If, for example Mary is the Mother of God, and God is the father of us all, Mary is the mother of her father. Ockham questioned the Apostolic succession of the popes, and their infallibility; on the contrary, he argued, many of them had been heretics, and some had been criminals. What Christianity needed, he thought, was a return from the Church to Christ, from wealth and power to simplicity of life and humility of rule. The Church should be defined not as the clergy alone but as the whole Christian community. This entire fellowship including the women, should choose representatives, including women, to a general council, and this council should choose and govern the pope. Church and state should be under one head.
The state itself should be subject to the will of the people, for in them is vested all final sovereignty on the earth. They delegate their right of legislation and administration to a king or emperor on the understanding that he will enact laws for the welfare of all. If the common good requires it, private property may be abolished. We know little of Ockham's fate. He compared himself to John the Evangelist on Patmos, but he dared not leave the protective orbit of the Emperor. Ockham played a part, if only a voice in the uprising of the nationalist state against the universalist Church. His propaganda for ecclesiastical poverty influenced Wyclif, and his assaults upon the papacy prepared for Luther, who ranked Ockham as “ the chiefest and most ingenious of Scholastic doctors.” His skepticism passed down to Ramus and Montaigne, perhaps to Erasmus; his subjectivist limitation of knowledge to ideas foreshadowed Berkeley; his attempt to rescue faith through “practical reason“ anticipated Kant. His emphasis on sensation as the sole source of knowledge gave him a place in the procession of empirical English philosophy from Roger and Francis Bacon through Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Mill, and Spencer to Bertrand Russell.
His occasional sallies into physical science stimulated thinkers from Jean Buridan to Isaac Newton. The general effect of his work, like that of Duns Scotus, was to undermine the basic assumption of Scholasticism -- that medieval Christian dogma could be proved by reason. Scholasticism maintained till the seventeenth century a pallid post-mortem existence, but it never recovered from these blows.
Ockham died of the Black Death in 1349 or 1350, still in the prime of life.
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Now that is a clear and concise description of Ockham. (Since I haven't read O, I have no way of knowing how accurate it is.) I'm impressed (as often) by the thought the Durants have put into this. And glad to know more of him: his "razor" is still seen a lot in the scientific thought I was educated in, and it's easy to forget how radical his ideas were at the time (and how much he was risking in expressing them).
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JoanK Im pleased you found my selection of Durant's treatment of Ockham clear and understandable. In the book I copy from there were two paragraphs that had become rather confused. ( parts of sentences repeated and placed out of sequence). I'm glad my selection is coherent. Trevor
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Hi Trevor - - - Thanks for your yeoman work, not having a copy of the book,
your efforts are a boon to me. Are we ever going to finish our task?
Ockham, one of our greatest philosophers, can be summed up by one of his quotes
Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.
(It is pointless to do with more, what can be done with less.)
Brian
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God himself seems to fall before this razor philosophy. Ockham found no conclusive force in any of the arguments used to prove the existence of deity.
What then remained of the majestic edifice of Christian faith, its lovely myths and songs and art, its God given morality, its fortifying hope? Ockham recoiled before the ruin of theology by reason, and in a desperate effort to save a social order based on a moral code based on religious belief, he proposed at last to sacrifice reason on the altar of faith.
Myth: an unfounded or false notion. a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence.
As for the Arab god given 'morality', the opposite occurs to me. The Arab's god in their myth did not make the people 'moral', it did just the opposite, made them immoral and then punished them for their 'immorality'. That seems to be the theme of their fairytale.
So Ockham sacrafices 'reason' for something called faith. At least that is what he wrote. He was after all living in a monastery under protection from the Pope. He could hardly have been honest and kept his head or his feet out of the fire. Reason flys out the window when the threat of death comes calling.
All religion was created by megalomaniacs to gain power over others.
Emily
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Emily - - -
All religion was created by megalomaniacs to gain power over others.
I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make in your post, but I agree with you 100%
that over the years, religion has been used to control the populace, in the face of reason.
I have always been favour of separation of "Church" and "State", and cannot understand why Ockham
is quoted as a disciple of government by both these entities together.
Brian
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Perhaps because the idea was so unheard of at the time, that he couldn't possibly have "meant it".
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 251 - 253
THE REFORMERS
While ibn-Khaldun was founding sociology in Islam, Pierre Dubois, Nicole Oresme, Marsilius of Padua and Nicholas of Cusa, were developing kindred studies, less systematically, in Christendom. Dubois served Philip IV of France as Ockham and Marsilius served Louis of Bavaria, by aiming intellectual broadsides against the papacy, and singing doxologies to the state. In a ‘Supplication du peuple de France au roi contre le pape Boniface ( 1308), and in a treatise ‘De recuperatione terre sancte ( On the recapture of the Holy Land, 1305), the ardent lawyer recommended that the papacy should shed all its temporal possessions and powers, that the rulers of Europe should repudiate the papal authority in their realms, and that the French Church should divorce itself from Rome and submit to secular authority and law. Moreover, proceeded Dubois, all Europe should be united under the French King as Emperor, with his capital at Constantinople as a bastion against Islam. An international court should be established to adjudicate the quarrels of nations, and an economic boycott should be declared against any Christian nation that should open war against another. Women should have the same educational opportunities and political rights as men.
No one seemed to pay much attention to these proposals, but they entered into the intellectual currents that undermined the papacy. Two centuries after Dubois, Henry VIII, who doubtless had never heard of him, followed his program, and Wyclif’s in religion, and in the early nineteenth century Napoleon set up for a moment a united Europe under French leadership, with the pope a captive of the state. Dubois belonged to that rising legal profession which aspired to replace the clergy in administering the government. He won his battle, we live in the heyday of his victory.
Oresme, who stirred so many pools, wrote toward 1355 one of the clearer and most straight forward essays in all economic literature -- “On the Origin, Nature, Law, and alterations of Money“. The money of a country, he argued, belongs to the community, not to the king; it is a social utility, not a royal perquisite; the ruler or government my regulate its issue, but should make no profit from minting it, and should maintain its metallic utility undebased. A king who dilutes the coinage is a thief. Moreover, bad money ( as “Gresham’s Law” would say two centuries later ) drives good money out of circulation.; people will secrete or export gold coin, and the dishonest government will receive in its revenues only its depreciated currency. These ideas of Oresme were not merely ideals, he taught them, as a tutor, to the son of John II. When his pupil became Charles V, the young king, after one desperate devaluation, profited from his teacher’s instruction, by restoring the shattered finances of war ridden France to a sound and honest basis.
Marsilius of Padua was of more volatile temperament than Oresme: an uncompromising individualist proud of his intellect and courage, and making his political philosophy an inextricable part of his hectic life. Son of a notary in Padua, he studied medicine at the university; probably he owed some of his anticlerical radicalism to the atmosphere of Averroistic skepticism that Petrarch found and denounced there in the same generation.. Passing to Paris he became for a year rector of the university. In 1324 with the minor collaboration of John of Jandun, he composed the most remarkable and influential, political treatise of the middle ages -- ‘Defensor pacis ‘-- ( the Defender of peace.) Knowing that the book must be condemned by the Church, the authors fled to Nuremburg and placed themselves under the wing of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, then at war with the pope.
They could not have expected so lusty a fighter as John XXII to take calmly their bellicose defence of peace . The book argued that the peace of Europe was being destroyed by strife between state and Church, and that peace could be restored and best maintained by bringing the Church, with all her property and personnel, under the same Imperial or royal authority as other groups and goods. It was ( ran the argument ) a mistake for the Church ever to have acquired property; nothing in Scripture justified such acquisition.
Like Ockham, the authors defined the Church as the whole body of Christians. As the Roman people, in Roman law, was the real Sovereign, and merely delegated its authority to consuls, senate, or emperors, so the Christian community should delegate, but should never surrender its powers to its representatives, the clergy; and these should be held responsible to the people whom they represent. The derivation of the papal supremacy from the Apostle Peter is, in Marsilius’ view, an historical error; Peter had no more authority than the other Apostles, and the bishops of Rome, in their first three centuries, had no more authority than the bishops of several other ancient capitals. Not the pope but the emperor or his delegates presided over the first general councils. A general council, freely elected by the people of Christendom, should interpret the scriptures, define the Catholic faith, and choose the cardinals, who should choose the pope. In all temporal matters the clergy, including the pope, should be subject to civil jurisdiction and law. The state should appoint and remunerate the clergy, fix the number of churches and priests, remove such priests as it finds unworthy, take control of ecclesiastical endowments, schools, and income, and relieve the poor out of the surplus revenues of the Church.
Here again was the strident voice of the upsurging national state. Having through the support of the rising middle classes, subdued the barons and the communes, the kings now felt strong enough to repudiate the claims of the Church to sovereignty over the civil power. Seizing the opportunity presented by the deterioration of the Church’s international and intellectual authority, the secular rulers now dreamed of mastering every phase of the life in their realms, including religion and the Church. This was the basic issue that would be fought out in the Reformation; and the triumph of the state over the Church would mark one terminus of the Middle Ages. ( in 1535 Henry the VIII, at the height of his revolt against the Church, had the “Defensor pacis” translated and published at governmental expense.)
Marsiliuis, like Ockham and Luther, after proposing to replace the authority of the Church with that of the people, was compelled, both for social order and for his own security, to replace it with the authority of the state. But he did not raise the kings into ogres of omnipotence. He looked beyond the triumph of the state to the day when the people might actually exercise the sovereignty that legal theorists had long affected to vest in them. In ecclesiastical reform he advocated democracy: each Christian community should choose its representative to church councils, each parish should choose its own priests, control them, dismiss them if need be, and no member of the parish should be excommunicated without its consent.
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Now, here's a thought for the new Pope, when he is elected. I suppose the creation of female
Cardinals and Priests is still outside the realm of possibility.
I am all for the absolute separation of 'Church and State'.
Brian
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"While ibn-Khaldun was founding sociology in Islam, Pierre Dubois, Nicole Oresme, Marsilius of Padua and Nicholas of Cusa, were developing kindred studies, less systematically, in Christendom."
Durant makes me feel so ignorant. I have a graduate degree in sociology, but never heard of any of these people.
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As i used to say to my students Joan, "that's not ignorance ( they defined the word as "stupid") that's just an experience, or knowledge, you hadn't come in contact with as yet. " :D
Young people often assumed that everybody had had the same opportinities they as individuals had had and were "ignorant" if they didn't know the same "facts."
The recent chapters have been interesting, thanks Trevor.
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Well, I had to look up ibn-Khaldoun. He is trying to make generalizations about society, and about peoples. here is an interesting one:
"When civilization [population] increases, the available labor again increases. In turn, luxury again increases in correspondence with the increasing profit, and the customs and needs of luxury increase. Crafts are created to obtain luxury products. The value realized from them increases, and, as a result, profits are again multiplied in the town. Production there is thriving even more than before. And so it goes with the second and third increase. All the additional labor serves luxury and wealth, in contrast to the original labor that served the necessity of life. On economic growth [1]"
Source: quoted in Wikipedia.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 254 - 257
THE REFORMERS (cont.)
Marsilius, like Ockham and Luther, after proposing to replace the authority of the Church with that of the people, was compelled, both for social order and for his own security, to replace it with the authority of the state. But he did not raise the kings into ogres of omnipotence. He looked beyond the triumph of the state to the day when the people might actually exercise the sovereignty that legal theorists had long affected to vest in them. In ecclesiastical reform he advocated democracy: each Christian community should choose its representative to church councils, each parish should choose its own priests, control them, dismiss them if need should be; and no member of the parish should be excommunicated without its consent. Marsilius applied similar principles to civil government, but with hesitant modifications.
“We declare, according to truth and opinion of Aristotle, that the legislator --- the prime and proper effective cause of law -- should be the people, the whole body of citizens, or its weightier part (valentiorem partem ), commanding or deciding by its own choice of will, expressed verbally in a general assembly of citizens. Only out of the deliberation and will of the whole multitude is the best law produced. A majority, more readily than any of its parts, can discern the defects in a law proposed for enactment, for an entire body is greater in power and worth than any of its separate parts.”
This is a remarkable statement for its time (1324 ), and the conditions of the age justify its hesitations. Even Marsilius would not advocate equal suffrage for all adults in Europe where hardly one person in ten could read, communication was difficult, and class divisions were mortised in the cement of time. Indeed he rejected complete democracy, wherein policy and legislation would be determined by a count of noses (egenorum multitudo -- a multitude of needy people ). And to correct this “ corruption of a republic,“ he was willing that individuals should have political power commensurate with their value to the community -- but he did not say how or by whom this was to be judged. He left room for monarchy, but added that “ a ruler who is elected is greatly to be preferred to rulers who are hereditary.”
These ideas had a medieval, even an ancient, origin: the Roman lawyers and the Scholastic philosophers had regularly endowed the people with a theoretical sovereignty, the papacy itself was an elective monarchy; the pope called himself “servus servorum Dei -- servant of the servants of God.” Here in one man, Marsilius, in the fourteenth century, were the ideas of both the protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. Marsilius was too far a head of his time to be comfortable. He rose rapidly with Louis of Bavaria, and fell rapidly with Louis’ fall. When Louis made peace with the popes he was required to dismiss Marsilius as a heretic. We do not know the sequel. Apparently Marsilius died in 1343, an outcast alike from the Church that he had fought and from the state that he had laboured to exalt.
His temporary success would have been impossible had not the rising legal profession given to the state an authority rivalling that of the Church. Over and above the ruins of feudal and communal law, beside and often against the canon law of the Church, the lawyers raised the “positive law “ of the state; and year by year this royal or secular law extended its reach over the affairs of men. The law schools Montpelier, Orleans, and Paris, turned out bold and subtle legists who used Roman law to build up, as against papal claims, a theory of divine right and absolute power for their royal masters. These ideas were strongest in France where they evolved into “L’etat c ‘est moi “ and “Le roi soleil;” They prevailed also in Spain, preparing the absolutism of Ferdinand, Charles V, and Phillip II; and even in parliamentary England Wyclif expounded the unlimited authority of the divine king. Lords and Commons opposed the theory, and Sir John Fortescue insisted that the English king could not issue laws without the consent of Parliament, and that English judges were bound, by their oath, to judge by the law of the land, whatever the king might desire; but under Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth, England too would kneel to absolute rulers. Some idealistic spirits clung to the notion of a “natural law, “ a divine justice implanted in the human conscience, phrased in the Gospels, and superior to the law of man. Neither the state nor the Church paid more than lip service to this conception; it remained in the background; professed and ignored but ever faintly alive. In the eighteenth century it would father the American Declaration of Independence and the French declaration of the Rights of Man, and would play a minor but eloquent role in a revolution that for a time upset both the absolutisms that had ruled mankind.
Nicholas of Cusa fought, and then resigned himself to the absolutism of the papacy. His varied career showed the best face of organised Christianity to a Germany always suspicious of the Church. Philosopher and administrator, theologian and legist, mystic and scientist, he combined in one powerful personality the best constituents of those Middle Ages that were closing with his life. In a year at Heidelberg he felt the influence of Ockham’s nominalism; at Padua he was touched for a time with the scepticism of Averroes, at Cologne he absorbed the orthodox tradition of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas; all the elements were so mixed in him that it would make him the most complete Christian of his time.
He rejected the Scholastic rationalism that sought to prove theology by reason; all human knowledge, he felt, is relative and uncertain; truth is hidden in God. Generally he rejected astrology; but, succumbing to the delusions of his epoch, he reckoned that the end of the world would come in 1734. He kept abreast of scientific thought. He urged more experiment and more accurate measurements; he suggested timing the fall of different bodies from different heights; he taught that the earth “ cannot be fixed, but moves like other stars; every star, however fixed it may seem, moves; no orbit is precisely circular; earth is not at the centre of the universe, except in so far as any point may be taken as the centre of an infinite universe. These were sometimes judicious borrowings, sometimes brilliant apercus. Nicholas pictured the Church as an organic unity, incapable of successful functioning except through the harmonious co-operation of its parts. Instead of concluding, as the popes might have done, that the parts should be guided by the head, Nicholas argued that only a general council could represent, express, and unify the interdependent elements of the Church.
He repeated Aquinus and Marsilius, and almost plagiarized Rousseau and Jefferson, in an idealistic passage:
“Every law depends upon the law of nature; and if it contradicts this it cannot be a valid law... Since by nature all men are free, and every government... exists solely by the agreement and consent of the subjects... the binding power of any law consists in this tacit or explicit agreement and consent.
The sovereign people delegates its powers to small groups equipped by education or experience to make or administer laws; but these groups derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. When the Christian community delegates its powers to a general council of the Church, that council, and not the pope, represents the sovereign authority in religion. Nor can the pope rest his claim to legislative absolutism on the supposed Donation of Constantine, for that donation is a forgery and a myth. A pope has a right to summon a general council, but such a council, if it judges him unfit, may rightly depose him. And the same principles hold for secular princes. An elective monarchy is probably the best government available to mankind in its present depraved condition; but the secular ruler, like the pope, should periodically convene a representative assembly, and should submit to its decrees.
Nicholas’ later life was a model for prelates. Made a cardinal ( 1448) he became in person a Catholic Reformation. In a strenuous tour through the Netherlands and Germany, he held provincial synods, revived ecclesiastical discipline, reformed the nunneries and monasteries, attacked priestly concubinage, furthered the education of the clergy, and raised, at least for a time, the level of clerical and popular morality. “Nicholas of Cusa,” wrote the learned abbot Trithemius, “ appeared in Germany as an angel of light and peace amid darkness and confusion. He restored the unity of the Church, strengthened the authority of her Supreme Head, and sowed a precious seed of new life.”
To his other titles Nicholas could have added that of Humanist. He loved the ancient classics, encouraged their study, and planned to print for wide circulation the Greek manuscripts that he himself had brought from Constantinople. In a “Dialogue of Peace.” composed in the very year when Constantinople fell to the Turks, he pleaded for mutual understanding among the religions as diverse ways of one eternal truth. And in the Dawn of modern thought, when the rising freedom of the intellect was an intoxication, he wrote sound and noble words:
“To know and to think, to see the truth in the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure that this affords him.... As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavour after knowledge and truth the life of the mind. Amid the moments of time, the daily labour, perplexities, and contradictions of life, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grip of.... the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacity of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wonderful works of Nature around us, but remembering always that in humility alone lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are profitable only in so far as our lives are governed by them.”
Had there been more Nicholas's there might have been no Luther.
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"To know and to think, to see the truth in the eye of the mind, is always a joy. The older a man grows, the greater is the pleasure that this affords him.... As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavour after knowledge and truth the life of the mind."
Not a bad motto for life.
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In the Griffith Observatory gift shop, bought Einstein and Newton finger puppets. They had plenty of Einstein, but had run out of Galileo. Not sure what that means.
Einstein and Newton are now sitting on my refrigerator arguing about gravity. But they agree in getting rid of that pesky uncertainty principle!
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
Pgs 258 - 261
The Conquest of the Sea.
It was “manifest destiny” that someone would dare the perils of the Atlantic to find India or “Cathay”. The failure of the crusades compelled the discovery of America; the domination of the eastern Mediterranean by the Turks, the closing or obstruction of land routes by the Ottomans at Constantinople and by anti-Christian dynasties in Persia and Turkestan, made the old avenues of East-West trade costly and dangerous. The problem for Portugal and Spain was to find a better route. Portugal found one round Africa; nothing was left for Spain but to try a passage west.
The growth of knowledge had long since established the sphericity of the earth. The very errors of science encouraged audacity by underestimating the width of the Atlantic, and picturing Asia as lying ready for conquest and exploitation on the far side. Scandinavian mariners had reached Labrador in 986 and 1000, and had brought back news of an immense continent. In 1477, if we may believe his own account, Christopher Columbus visited Iceland and presumably heard proud traditions of Leif Ericsson’s voyage to “Vinland.” All that was needed now for the great adventure was money. Bravery abounded.
Columbus himself, in the will that he made before setting out on his third voyage across the Atlantic, named Genoa as his birthplace. Possibly his forebears had been Spanish Christianized Jews, who had migrated to Italy; the evidence of Hebraic blood and sentiment in Columbus is almost convincing. He tells us that he became a sailor at fourteen. In Genoa every road leads down to the sea. In 1482, probably as an officer, he joined a Portuguese fleet that sailed the African coast to Elmina. He read with interest, Pope Pius II’s “Historia rerum gestarum,” which suggested the circumnavigability of Africa.
But his studies more and more inclined him to the west. He accepted the prevailing estimate of the Earth’s circumference as 18,000 to 20,000 miles; and combining this with Polo’s idea that Japan was some 1,500 miles east of the Asian mainland, he reckoned that the nearest Asiatic islands would be some 5,000 miles west of Lisbon.
About 1484 he proposed to John II of Portugal that the King should equip three vessels for a year of exploration across the Atlantic and back; that Columbus should be appointed “ Great Admiral of the Ocean,” and perpetual governor of whatever lands he might discover; and that he should receive a tenth of all revenues and precious metals thereafter derived from those lands by Portugal. ( obviously the idea of spreading Christianity was secondary to material considerations.) The King submitted the proposal to a committee of savants; they rejected it on the ground that Columbus’s estimate of the distance across the Atlantic as merely 2,400 miles was far to small. ( it was approximately correct from the Canary Islands to the West Indies). In 1485 two Portuguese navigators proposed a similar project to King John, but agreed to finance it themselves: John gave them at least his blessing; they sailed (1487), followed too northern a route, encountered rough westerly winds, and turned back in despair.
Columbus renewed his appeal (1488). The King invited him to an audience; Columbus came just in time to witness the triumphant return of Bartholomeu Dias from a successful rounding of Africa. Absorbed in prospects of an African route to India, the Portuguese government abandoned consideration of a passage across the Atlantic. Columbus commissioned his brother to sound out Henry VII of England, who invited Columbus to a conference. When the invitation reached him he had already committed himself to Spain. He was now (1488) some forty-two years old; tall and thin, with long face, ruddy complexion, eagle nose, blue eyes, freckles, bright red hair turning gray, and soon to be white. His son and friends described him as modest, grave, affable, discreet, temperate in eating and drinking, fervently pious. Others alleged that he was vain, that he paraded and inflated the titles he received, that he ennobled his ancestry in his imagination and his writings, and that he bargained avidly for his share in the New World’s gold; However he was worth more than he asked. After his wife’s death Beatriz Enriquez bore him an illegitimate son (1488). Columbus did not marry her, but he provided well for her in his life and will.
Meanwhile he laid his petition before Isabella of Castile ( May 1486). She referred it to a group of advisers presided over by the saintly Archbishop Talavera. After a long delay they reported the plan to be impracticable, arguing that Asia must be much further west than Columbus supposed. After the Talavera committee, for a second time rejected the plan, Columbus resolved to submit it to Charles VIII of France. Fray Juan Perez, head of the monastery of La Rabida, dissuaded him by arranging another audience with Isabella. She sent him 20,000 maravedis to finance his trip to her headquarters at the siege city of Santa Fe. He went, she heard him kindly enough, but her advisers once more discounted the idea. He resumed his preparations for going to France. At this critical juncture a baptised Jew prodded the march of history.
Luis de Santander, finance minister to Ferdinand, reproached Isabella for lack of imagination and enterprise, tempting her with the prospect of converting Asia to Christianity, and proposed to finance the trip himself with the aid of his friends. Several other Jews -- Don Isaac Azbrabanel, Juan Cabrero, Abraham Senior-- supported his plea. Isabella was moved, and offered to pledge her jewels to raise the needed sum. Santander judged this unnecessary; he borrowed 1,400,000 from the fraternity of which he was treasurer, he added 350,000 out of his own pocket and Columbus somehow got together 250,000 more. On April 17th 1492, the King signed the requisite papers. Then or later he gave Columbus a letter to the Khan of Cathay; it was China, not India that Columbus hoped to reach, and which to the end of his life he thought he had found. On August 3 the Santa Maria ( his flagship). the Pinta, and the Nina sailed from Palos with eighty-eight men, and provisions for a year.
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I wonder what else Columbus was doing while he was trying to get financing.
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DURANTS’ S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 261 - 263
They headed south to the Canary Islands, seeking winds from the east before they faced into the west. After a long stay at the islands they ventured forth ( September 6) along the 28th parallel of latitude-- not quite far enough south to get the full boon of the trade winds; we know that a still more southerly crossing would have shortened the distance and tribulation to America. Thirty-three days passed anxiously. Columbus understated to his men the nautical mileage of each day; but as he overestimated his speed, his statements were unwillingly correct. On October 9 the captains of the Pinta and the Nina boarded the flagship and pleaded for an immediate turnabout back to Spain. Columbus promised that unless land was sighted in three days he would do as they wished. On October his own crew mutinied but he appeased them with the same pledge. On October 11 they drew from the ocean a green branch bearing flowers; their trust in the Admiral returned. At two o'clock the next morning, under a nearly full moon, Rodrigo de Triene , the lookout on the Nina, shouted “Tierra! tierra!,” it was land at last.
When dawn came they saw naked natives on the beach, “ all of good stature.” The three captains were rowed to the shore by armed men, they knelt, kissed the ground, and thanked God. Columbus christened the island San Salvador -- Holy Saviour -- and took possession of it in the name of Ferdinand, Isabella, and Christ. The savages received their future enslavers with civilized courtesies. The Admiral wrote:
“In order that we might win good friendship--because I knew that they were people who could better be freed and converted to our Holy Father by love than by force, I gave them some red caps and some glass beads.... and many other things of slight value, in which they took much pleasure. They remained so much our friends that it was a marvel; and later they came swimming to the ships’ boats, and brought us parrots and cotton thread. Finally they exchanged with us everything they had, with good will.”
The report of the “friendly and flowing savage” which was to bewitch Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and Whitman may have begun then and there. But among the first things that Columbus learned on the island was that these natives were subject to slave raids by other native groups, and that they themselves, or their ancestors, had conquered earlier indigenes. Two days after landing the Admiral struck an ominous note in his journal: “these people are very unskilled in arms... With fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.”
But alas, there was no gold in San Salvador. On October 14 the little fleet sailed again, seeking Cipango -- Japan --- and gold. On October 28 a landing was made on Cuba. There too the natives were well disposed. When Columbus showed them gold they seemed to indicate that he would find some at a point in the interior, which Columbus misheard as “El gran can “--- The Great Khan. He sent two Spaniards to find the elusive potentate. They returned without locating the Khan, but with a pleasant account of the natives’ courtesies. They brought also the first report, by Europeans, of American tobacco. They had seen males and females smoking tobacco herbs rolled into a cigar, which was inserted into the nose. Columbus left Cuba taking with him, by force five native youths to serve as interpreters, and seven women to comfort them. All died enroute to Spain.
Meanwhile Columbus’s senior captain, Martin Alonso Pinzon, had deserted with his ship to hunt gold on his own. On December 5 Columbus reached Haiti. There he remained four weeks. He found some gold and felt himself a bit closer to the Khan; but his ship grounded on a reef, and was smashed. Luckily the Nina was near by to rescue the crew, and the natives salvaged most of the cargo. The Admiral thanked God for the gold, forgave Him for the shipwreck, and wrote in his journal that Ferdinand and Isabella would now have sufficient funds to conquer the Holy Land. On January 6 1493 Pizon rejoined him with the Pinta; his apologies were accepted. On January 16 they began the journey home.
It was a long and miserable voyage. All through January the winds were against them, and on February 12 a violent storm buffeted the tiny ships which were not much more than seventy feet long. As they approached the Azores, Pinzon deserted again, hoping to be the first to reach Spain. The Nina anchored off Santa Maria in the Azores, February 17; half the crew went ashore partly to make a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Virgin; they were arrested by the Portuguese and were kept in jail for four days, while Columbus fretted ashore. They were released and Columbus sailed again; but another storm drove it from its course, split its sails, and so depressed the sailors that they vowed to spend the first day on land fasting on bread and water, and observing the Ten Commandments. On march 3 they sighted Portugal, and though Columbus knew that he was risking a diplomatic mess, he decided to disembark at Lisbon rather than attempt the remaining 225 miles to Palos with one sail. John II received him with courtesy; the Nina was repaired; and on March 15 it reached Palos after “infinite toil and terror “( said Columbus), 193 days after leaving the port. Martin Pinzon had landed in north-western Spain several days before , and had sent a message to Ferdinand and Isabella, but they refused to see him or his messenger. The Pinta sailed into Palos a day after the Nina. Pinzon fled in fear and disgrace to his home, took to his bed, and died.
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Some member of the Catholic hierarchy said today how appropriate it was to have a pope from South America, that people there had been in the Church in great numbers since the SIXTEENTH CENTURY!?! I think the Europeans may have been killing and torturing the people of the Carribean and the peoples of the western hemisphere who were refusing to convert to Catholicism in the SIXTEENTH century. Sadly the majority of the people who heard that statement don't know how wrong he was.
Jean
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How near we came to not being "discovered" by Columbus. But someone else would have done it: there was exploration in the air.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 263 - 266
THE WATERS OF BITTERNESS
Columbus was welcomed ( after the initial exploration ) by King and Queen at Barcelona, lived six months at the court, and received the title ‘Almirante del Mar Oceano ‘ -- “Admiral of the Ocean sea”-- by which was meant the Atlantic west of the Azores. He was made Vice King and General Governor of the Islands and Terra Firma of Asia and India. As John II was rumoured to be fitting out a fleet to cross the Atlantic, Ferdinand appealed to Alexander VI to define the rights of Spain in the “Ocean Sea”. The Spanish Pope in a series of bulls (1493), allotted to Spain all non Christian lands west, and to Portugal all those east, of an imaginary line drawn north and south 270 miles west of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. The Portuguese refused to accept this line of demarcation, and war was imminent when the rival governments , by the treaty of Toresillas ( June 7th, 1494 ) agreed that the line should run along a meridian of longitude 250 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands for discoveries before that date, but 250 leagues west for later discoveries. (The eastern corner of Brazil lies east of this second line.) The papal bulls termed the new terrain “Indies”; scholars like Pietro Martire d’ Anghiera, accepted Columbus’s notion that he had reached Asia, and this delusion persisted till Magellan circumnavigated the globe.
Hoping for gold, Ferdinand and Isabella provided Columbus with a new fleet of seventeen vessels, equipped with 1,200 seamen, animals to start flocks and herds in the Indies, and five ecclesiastics to shrive the Spaniards, and convert the “Indians”. The second voyage sailed from Seville on September 25, 1493” Thirty-nine days later ( as against seventy days for the first voyage ) the watch sighted an island which Columbus, because the day was Sunday, named Dominica. No landing was made there, the Admiral scented bigger prey. He disc overed Puerto Rico; he dallied there briefly, then hurried on to see what had happened to the Spanish settlement he had left in Haiti ten months before. Hardly a man remained of it. The Europeans had roamed the island robbing the natives of gold and women; they had established a tropical paradise with five women to each man; they had quarrelled and murdered one another, and nearly all the rest had been killed by the outraged Indians.
The fleet sailed eastward along the Haitian coast. The Admiral landed men and cargo to found a new settlement, which he called Isabella. After supervising the construction of a town, and the repair of the ships, he left to explore Cuba. Unable to circumnavigate it, he concluded that it was the mainland of Asia, perhaps the Malay Peninsular. He turned back toward Haiti ( oct. 29, 1494 ) wondering how his new settlement had fared. He was shocked to find it had behaved like its predecessor; that the Spaniards had raped native women, stolen native stores of food, and had kidnapped native boys to serve as slaves; and that the natives had killed many Spaniards in revenge. Columbus himself now became a slave dealer. He sent out expeditions to capture 1500 natives; four hundred of these he gave to the settlers, 500 he dispatched to Spain. Two hundred of these died on the voyage; the survivors were sold at Seville; but died in a few years, unable to adjust themselves to a colder climate, or perhaps to the savagery of civilisation.
Columbus sailed for Spain( March 1496) and reached Cadiz after an unhappy voyage of ninety-three days. He presented his sovereigns with Indians and gold nuggets; it was not much, but modified the doubts that had formed at court about the wisdom of pouring more money into the Atlantic. The Admiral asked for at least eight ships for another trial of fortune. The sovereigns consented, and in May 1498, Columbus sailed again. He reached Santo Domingo August 31. This third settlement had survived, but one of every four of the five hundred that he had left there in 1496 was suffering from syphilis, and the settlers had divided into two hostile groups that were now on the verge of war. To appease the discontent, Columbus allowed each man to appropriate a large tract of land, and to enslave the natives dwelling on it; this became the rule in the Spanish settlements. Worn now with hardships, disappointments, arthritis, and a disease of the eyes, Columbus almost broke down under these problems, his mind clouded occasionally, he became irritable, querulous, dictatorial, avaricious, and ruthless in his punishments; so at least many of the Spaniards claimed, and they fretted under an Italian’s rule. He recognised that the problems of managing the settlement were alien to his training and temperament. He sent two caravels to Spain with a request that Ferdinand and Isabella should appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern the island.
The sovereigns took him at his word, and appointed Francisco de Bobadilla, but going beyond the Admirals request, they gave their commissioner full authority, even over Columbus. Bobadilla heard many complaints of the manner in which Cristoforo and his brothers Bartolome and Diego had ruled what was now called Hispaniola. Bobadilla had Columbus cast into jail, with manacles on his arms and fetters on his feet. After a further inquest the commissioner sent the three bothers, in chains, to Spain. (October 1, 1500). Ferdinand was busy dividing the Kingdom of Naples with Louis XII; six weeks went by before he ordered Columbus and his brothers released, and summoned them to court. King and Queen received them, consoled them, and restored them to affluence, but not to their former authority in the New World. They allowed the Admiral to collect all his property rights at Santo Domingo, and all that was hitherto due to him of the gold diggings and trade. Columbus lived the rest of his life a rich man.
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I love this period of history. It is amazing to me how these brilliant people put together ideas to form new theories and ideas. Remember the BBC series "Connections" in the 70s or 80s? (did i mention it here before?) how ideas come together from unlikely backgrounds to move thinking forward? I so enjoy reading about those things and am often astonished at the visions of folks. I have always been in awe of those folks who figured out astronomical physics with the limited instruments and previous knowledge they had. I loved Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. ( did i get those in the right order?)
As i sit here watching the cowardice of U.S. senators who won't vote for a background check on gun buyers or to limit gun magazines to potentially safe 3,000 lives a year, for fear of losing their jobs, the thought of someone taking a stand like the reformationists did is incredible. Too bad we can't put this into operation on the gun issue......
“We declare, according to truth and opinion of Aristotle, that the legislator --- the prime and proper effective cause of law -- should be the people, the whole body of citizens, or its weightier part (valentiorem partem ), commanding or deciding by its own choice of will, expressed verbally in a general assembly of citizens. Only out of the deliberation and will of the whole multitude is the best law produced. A majority, more readily than any of its parts, can discern the defects in a law proposed for enactment, for an entire body is greater in power and worth than any of its separate parts.”
On the other hand, the arrogance of individuals who believe they have the authority to make decisions to own lands and people and control lives has amazed me thruout my studying of history. It is individual decisions that make history, even though historians/writers say "the Spanish", " the Portugese", "europeans". Countries do not make decisions. :)
Jean
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The Durant's way with words again:
"the survivors were sold at Seville; but died in a few years, unable to adjust themselves to a colder climate, or perhaps to the savagery of civilisation".
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 266-269
Though he was now a rich man, Columbus was not content. He importuned the King and Queen for one more fleet, and they felt that they owed him one more trial. On May 9 1502 Columbus began his fourth voyage, with four ships and 140 men. On June 29, feeling a storm in the air, and in his joints, he anchored off a sheltered spot near Santo Domingo. A fleet of about 30 ships was in the main harbour, about to sail for Spain. Columbus advised the governor that a hurricane was brewing, and suggested that he detain the vessels for a while. The warning was rejected and the fleet dispatched. The hurricane arrived; the Admiral’s ships survived it with minor damage; of the governor’s fleet all vessels but one were wrecked; 500 lives were lost, and a rich cargo of gold was surrendered to the sea.
Columbus now began the most arduous and tragic months of his troubled career. Continuing westward, he reached Honduras, and explored the coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the hope of finding a strait that would let him circumnavigate the earth. On December 5, 1502 a tempest of wind and rain arose, whose mad force is vividly described in Columbus’s journal. To add to the terror of wind, water, lightning, and rocky reefs near by, a waterspout appeared, perilously close to the ships, and shooting “water up to the clouds.” After twelve awful days the fury passed, and the fleet rested in a harbour near the present eastern end of the Panama Canal. There Columbus and his men celebrated sadly the Christmas of 1502 and the New Year’s Day of 1503, not knowing that the Pacific was only forty miles away.
Further misfortunes came. Thirteen sailors rowing the flagship’s boat upriver to find water, were attacked by Indians; all but one of the Spaniards were killed, and the boat was lost. Two vessels had to be abandoned as too worm-eaten to be seaworthy; the other two leaked so badly that the pumps had to be worked day and night. Finally the worms proved stronger than the men, and these surviving ships had to be beached on the shore of Jamaica, ( June 25, 1503). There the hapless crew remained for a year and five days, depending for food on the precarious friendship of the natives, who themselves had little to spare. Diego Mendez, whose calm courage in all this adversity kept Columbus from complete despair, volunteered to lead six Christians and ten Indians in a dugout canoe 455 miles -- eighty of them out of sight of land-- to Santo Domingo to solicit aid. Mendez reached his goal, but Ovando would not or could not spare a vessel till May 1504, to go to the Admiral’s relief. By January the Jamaica Indians had reduced their gifts of food to the stranded crew to the point where the Spaniards began to starve. Columbus had with him Regiomontanus’s Ephemerides, which calculated a lunar eclipse for Feb 29. He called in the native chiefs, and warned them that God, in his anger at their letting his men starve, was about to blot out the moon. They scoffed, but when the eclipse began they hurriedly brought food to the ships. Columbus reassured them, saying he had prayed to God to restore the moon, and had promised Him that the Indians would properly feed the Christians thereafter. The moon reappeared.
Four more months passed before help came; even then the ship that Ovando sent leaked so badly that it was barely able to return to Santo Domingo. Columbus, with his brother and son, sailed in a stouter vessel to Spain, arriving November 7 after a long and stormy voyage. The King and Queen were disappointed that he had not found more gold, or a strait to the Indian Ocean; and neither Ferdinand nor Isabella, who was dying, had time to receive the white haired sailor finally home from the sea. His “tenths” from Haiti were still paid to him; he suffered from arthritis, but not from poverty. When at last Ferdinand consented to see him, Columbus, older than his fifty-eight years could hardly bear the long journey to the court at Sergovia. He demanded all the rights, titles, and revenues promised him in 1492. The King demurred, and offered him a rich estate in Castile. Columbus refused. He followed the court to Salamanca, and Valladolid; and there, broken in body and heart, he died, May 20 1506. No man had ever so remade the map of the earth.
The NEW PERSPECTIVE
Now that he had shown the way, a hundred other mariners rushed to the New World. The name was apparently first used by a Florentine merchant whose own name now described the Americas. Amerigo Vespucci was sent to Spain by the Medici to straighten out the affairs of a Florentine banker. In 1495 he won a contract to fit out twelve vessels for Ferdinand. He caught the exploration fever, and in letters later ( 1503-1594 ) written to friends in Florence, he claimed he had made four voyages to what he termed ‘novo mondo‘, and that on one of these, in June 16, 1497 he had touched the mainland of South America. Vespucci’s account would give him the credit of being the first European to reach the mainland of the Western Hemisphere since Leif Ericsson (c. 1000) Confusion and inaccuracies in Vespucci’s reports have cast doubt on his claims. In 1508, Vespucci was made ‘piloto mayor‘-- chief of all the pilots -- of Spain,-- and held that position until his death.
In 1500, shortly after Cabral’s accidental discovery of Brazil, Vicente Pinzon who had commanded the Nina on Columbus’s first voyage, explored the Brazilian coast, and discovered the Amazon. In 1513 Vassco Nunez de Balboa, sighted the Pacific, and Ponce de Leon, dreaming of a fountain of youth, discovered Florida.
The discoveries begun by Henry the Navigator, advanced by Vasco da Gama, culminating in Columbus, and rounded out by Magellan, affected the greatest commercial revolution in history before the coming of the airplane. The opening of the western and southern seas to navigation and trade ended the Mediterranean epoch in the history of civilization, and began the Atlantic era. As more and more of America’s gold came to Spain, economic decline progressed in the Mediterranean States. The Atlantic nations found in the New World an outlet for their surplus population, their reserve energy, and their criminals, and developed avid markets for European goods. Industry was stimulated in Western Europe, and demanded the mechanical inventions, and better forms of power, that made the industrial Revolution. New plants came from America to enrich European agriculture -- the potato, tomato, artichoke, squash, maize. The influx of gold and silver raised prices, encouraged manufacturers, harassed workers, creditors, and feudal lords, and generated and ruined Spain’s dream of dominating the world.
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"The influx of gold and silver raised prices, encouraged manufacturers, harassed workers, creditors, and feudal lords, and generated and ruined Spain’s dream of dominating the world."
I remember reading, decades ago, an author, whose name I don't remember, who claimed that Spain frittered away the wealth that the new world brought in lavish decoration and fruitless wars, and has been poor ever since. While England built up trade and manufacture and prospered. Even amoung nations, some manage money better than others.
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Hi,
Just interrupting to say Robby was on my mind a couple of days ago and so I wrote him, and got a lovely reply. He's doing splendidly and is still seeing patients 5 days a week and active in civic affairs, the old Robby.
He wrote last night: Ginny, if there are any who remember me, please feel free to give them my email address. I would love to hear from them. rbiallok@earthlink.net
So I am passing that on. :)
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Hoorah, good for him.
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Wonderful to hear that. Thank you Ginny for thinking of Robby and us.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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In reading the last few postings by Trevor, I was shocked at the deaths of all the captives that Columbus took back to Spain on his first voyage. These were young men and women who would seem to have been most fit for the voyage, yet Columbus reports they all died.
On a later voyage Columbus takes several hundred back and about half are dead by the time they reach Spain. The rest die soon after their arrival.
The Spainish were brutal to the natives they met according to the records, and Columbus established a colony of Spainards on Hispaniola. So what happened to the native Arawak/Taino who inhabitied the island of Hispaniola before the arrival of Columbus?
Here is an excerpt of what I found, which states that the natives of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) have been eradicated from the island, not only the people but the culture as well. A total genocide.
THE GENOCIDAL END OF THE ARAWAK/TAINO NATIVES ON THE ISLAND OF HISPANIOLA
Robert Corbett
There is a great debate as to just how many Arawak/Taino inhabited Hispaniola when Columbus landed in 1492. Some of the early Spanish historian/observers claimed there were as many as 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. These numbers seem to be based on very little reliable evidence and are thought to be gross exaggerations. However, since nothing like a census was done, the methods for estimating the numbers are extremely shaky, whether by these early historians or later critics.
One long technical article on the population comes in the with the low estimate of 100,000. Several other modern scholars seem to lean more forcefully in the area of 300,000 to 400,000. Whatever the number, what happened to them is extremely tragic. They were not immune to European diseases, especially smallpox, and the Spanish worked them unmercifully in the mines and fields. By 1507 the Spanish were settled and able to do a more reliable job of counting the Arawak/Tainos. It is generally agreed that by 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. By 1531 the number was down to 600. Today there are no easily discerned traces of the Arawak/Taino at all except for some of the archaeological remains that have been found. Not only on Hispaniola, but also across the Windward Passage in Cuba, complete genocide was practiced on these natives.
It is important to pause and think about what is claimed here. The claim is not that the entire population of CARIBBEAN (and possibly even Floridian) Taino/Arawaks were wiped out, but that population which was on the island of Hispaniola when Columbus arrived. Further, this is not to say that no drop of Taino/Arawak blood survived, or than not a single word of the language drifted in later Haitian Creole, perhaps even a zemi god influenced Voodoo here or there.
Rather, the claim is that the Taino/Arawak as a discernible people with a discernible culture simply disappeared ON THE ISLAND OF HISPANIOLA.
It is clear that the Taino/Arawak survived in others areas of the Caribbean, even in near-by Puerto Rico. The claim is limited to those Taino/Arawaks who inhabited the island of Hispaniola when Columbus arrived in 1492.
Disease was a major cause of their demise. However, on Columbus' 2nd voyage he began to require a tribute from the Arawak/Tainos. They were expected to yield a certain quantity of gold per capita. Failing that each adult of 14 was required to submit 25lbs. of cotton. For those who could not produce the cotton either, there was a service requirement for them to work for the Spanish. This set the stage for a system of assigning the Arawak/Taino to Spanish settlers as effective slave labor. This system contributed significantly to their genocide.
In Sidney Lintz's interesting introduction to James Leyburn's THE HAITIANS, he argues that not only did the natives die out, but nearly all cultural traces did too. He says this is a very unusual phenomenon. Haiti's culture is almost entirely African and European. There are some anthropologists who believe that some Voodoo rites, and especially the Petwo Voodoo rites, might have their origins in Arawak/Taino religion, but this is speculative.
Regardless, it does seem that the Arawak/Tainos disappeared without a trace. Michel Laguerre does caution that despite the early date of the demise of the Arawak/Taino, numbers of them did last long enough to have worked alongside the African slaves who were being brought to Haiti in increasing numbers. Laguerre suggests that there would probably have been some inter-mating and thus it is highly unlikely that Indian blood completely died out in Haiti, even though their cultural heritage did disappear without a trace.
[Special note: Given my focus on the history of Haiti as shaping the current situation in Haiti and using history to understand Haiti today, what is contained in the few paragraphs before this note is very important. It says, in effect, that the pre-Columbian period has virtually no role at all in shaping contemporary Haiti.
Emily
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"the pre-Columbian period has virtually no role at all in shaping contemporary Haiti."
That's so sad. I hope he's wrong and both the blood and the culture survived a little bit.
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When i was teaching Western Civ the textbooks gave the info that 90% of the persons who were here in the Americas in 1491 had not survived by 1900.
Here are two interesting reviews of books "1491" and "1493"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09baker.html?_r=0
http://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-Columbus-Created-ebook/dp/B004G606EY
I loved teaching about "the Columbian exchange". Students were always surprised at what products started where in the world and what a great impact the exchange of goods had on the entire world.
http://www.amazon.com/Columbian-Exchange-Alfred-Crosby-Jr/dp/0275980928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312840262&sr=1-1
If you don't want to read the book, here is the wiki summary of the Exchange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange
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That's very interesting. I knew some of it, but hadn't realiozed how widespread and important it was.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 271 - 273
The moral and mental effects of the explorations rivalled the economic and political results. Christianity was spread over a vast hemisphere, so that the Roman Catholic Church gained more adherents in the New World than the Reformation took from her in the old. The Spanish and Portuguese languages were given to Latin America, and produced their vigorous independent literatures. European morals were not improved by the discoveries, the lawless brutality of the colonists flowed back to Europe with returning seamen and settlers, and brought an intensification of violence and sexual irregularity. The European intellect was powerfully moved by the revelation of so many peoples, customs, and cults; the dogmas of the great religions suffered by mutual attrition; and even while Protestants and Catholics raised their hostile certainties to ruinous wars, those certitudes were melting away into the doubts and consequent tolerance of the Enlightenment.
Above all, a pride of achievement inspired the human mind just when Copernicus was about to reduce the cosmic importance of the Earth and its inhabitants.. Men felt that the world of matter had been conquered by the courage of the human mind. The medieval motto for Gibraltar -- ne plus ultra-- was denied by abbreviation, it became now ‘plus ultra’ -- ‘more beyond‘. All limits were removed; all the world was open; everything seemed possible.
Now, with a bold and optimistic surge, modern history began.
Erasmus the Forerunner
1469 - 1517.
The Education of a Humanist.
The greatest of the Humanists was born in or near Rotterdam in 1466 or 1469, the second and natural son of Gerard, a clerk in minor orders, and of Margaret, the widowed daughter of a physician. The father became a priest after this contretemps. We do not know how the boy came by the fond name of Desiderius Erasmus, meaning the ‘desired beloved‘. His first teachers taught him to read and write Dutch, but when he went to study with the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer he was fined for speaking his native tongue; there Latin was the ‘piece de resistance‘, and piety was as rigorous as discipline. Erasmus began at Deventer to acquire his astonishing command of the Latin language and literature.
About 1484 both his parents died. The father left a modest estate to his two sons, but their guardians absorbed most of it, and steered the youths into a monastic career as one requiring no patrimony at all. They protested, wishing to go to a university; finally, they were persuaded -- Erasmus, we are told, by the promise of access to many books. The older son accepted his fate, and rose to be (Erasmus reported) ‘strenuous compotor nec scortator ignavus’ -- “ a mighty toper and no mean fornicator.” Desidererius took vows as an Augustinian canon in the priory of Emmaus at Steyn. He tried hard to like monastic life, even wrote an essay ‘De contemptu mundi’ to convince himself that a monastery was just the place for a lad of avid spirit and queasy stomach. But the vow of obedience proved yet more irksome than that of chastity. The kindly prior took pity on him, and lent him as secretary to Henry of Bergen, Bishop of Cambrai. Erasmus now (1492) accepted ordination as a priest.
But wherever he was, he had one foot elsewhere. Paris exuded an aroma of learning and lust that could intoxicate keen senses across great distances. After some years of able service Desiderius induced the Bishop to send him to the university of Paris, armed with just enough money to survive. He listened impatiently to lectures, but consumed libraries He attended plays and parties, and occasionally explored feminine charms; he remarks, in one of his Colloquies that the most pleasant way of learning French was from the ’filles de joie’. Nevertheless his strongest passion was for literature, the musical magic of words opening the door to a world of imagination and delight. He taught himself Greek. Wandering at will through the centuries, he discovered Lorenzo Valla, the Neapolitan Voltaire; he relished the elegant Latin and reckless audacity with which Valla had flayed the forgery of the “Donation of Constantine,” had noted serious errors in the Vulgate, and had debated whether Epicureanism might not be the wisest ’modus Vivendi’; Erasmus himself would later startle theologians, and comfort some cardinals, by seeking to reconcile Epicurus and Christ.. Echoes of Duns Scotus and Ockham still resounded in Paris; nominalism was in the ascendant, and threatened such basic doctrines as transubstantiation and the Trinity. These escapades of thought damaged the young priest’s orthodoxy, leaving him not much more than a profound admiration for the ethics of Christ.
His addiction to books was almost as expensive as a vice. A rich student Mountjoy, took him to England (1499). There, in the great country houses of the aristocracy, the harassed scholar found a realm of refined pleasure that turned his monastic past into a shuddering memory. At Mountjoy’s house in Greenwich, Erasmus met Thomas More, then only twenty-two, yet distinguished enough to secure the scholar an introduction to the future Henry VIII. At Oxford he was almost as charmed by the informal companionship of students and faculty as he had been by the embraces of country-house divinities. There he learned to love John Colet, who, though “assertor and champion of the old theology,” astonished his time by practicing Christianity. Erasmus was impressed by the progress of humanism in England:
“When I hear my Colet I seem to be listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn who does not marvel at such a perfect world of learning? What can be more acute, profound, and delicate than the judgment of Linacre? What has nature ever created more gentle, sweet, and happy than the genius of Thomas More?”
These men influenced Erasmus profoundly for his betterment. From a vain and flighty youth, drunk with the wine of the classics and the ambrosia of women, he was transformed into an earnest and painstaking scholar. When he left England (January 1500) he had formed his resolve to study and edit the Greek text of the New Testament as the distilled essence of that real Christianity which, in the judgment of reformers and humanists alike, had been overlaid and concealed by the dogmas and accretions of centuries.
His pleasant memory of this first visit to England was darkened by the final hour. At Dover, passing through the customs, the money which his English friends had given him, amounting to some 20 Pounds ($2,000?) was confiscated by the authorities, as English law forbade the export of gold and silver. Thomas More, not yet a great lawyer, had mistakenly advised him that the prohibition applied only to English currency; and Erasmus had changed the pounds into French coins. Thus Erasmus embarked for France practically penniless.
“I suffered shipwreck,” he said, “before I went to sea.”
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"But wherever he was, he had one foot elsewhere."
What an interesting account of Erasmus!
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"He taught himself Greek."
I see Erasmus as an autodidact. A person who can self-educate without the trappings of an expensive school, and reams of teachers and professors, is the only one who can be called an 'intellectual' in my opinion.
I heard someone say recently, "My ship sailed before I got to port". I doubt they knew they were paraphrasing Erasmus.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I The REFORMATION
Pgs 273 - 276
Peripatetic Erasmus
Stationing himself for a few months in Paris, he published his first significant work, ‘Collectanea adagiorum’, a collection of 818 adages or quotations, mostly from classical authors. The revival of learning -- i.e. of ancient literature -- had set a fashion of adorning one’s opinions with a snatch from some Greek or Latin author; we see the custom in extreme form in Montaigne’s ‘Essays’ and Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’; it lingered in to the eighteenth century in the forensic oratory of England. Erasmus accompanied each adage with a brief comment, usually pointed to current interest and salted with satiric wit; so, he observed, “priests are said in Scripture to devour the sins of the people, and they find sins so hard to digest they must have the best wine to wash them down.” The book sold so well that for a year Erasmus could feed himself unaided. Archbishop Warham, relishing the book despite its barbs, sent the author a gift of money and offered him a benefice in England; Erasmus, however, was not prepared to abandon a continent for an island. Sixty editions appeared in his lifetime; translations were issued from the original Latin into French, Italian, German, and Dutch; altogether it was among the best sellers of its time.
Even so the proceeds were meagre; and food was not enough. Pinched for pounds, Erasmus wrote to his friend James Bart, who was tutoring a son of Lady Anne of Vere, asking him to
“ point out to her how much more credit I shall do her by my learning than the other divines whom she maintains. They preach ordinary sermons; I write what will live for ever. They, with their silly rubbish are heard in one or two churches; my works shall be read by all who know Latin or Greek in every country in the world. Such unlearned ecclesiastics abound everywhere; men like me are scarcely found in many centuries. Repeat all this to her unless you are too superstitious to tell her a few fibs for a friend.”
When this approach failed he wrote in January, suggesting that Barr tell the lady that Erasmus was loosing his eyesight, and adding “ Send me four of five gold pieces of your own, which you will recover out of the Lady’s money. As Bart did not enter this trap, Erasmus wrote directly to the Lady, comparing her with the noblest heroines of history and the fairest concubines of Solomon, and predicting for her an eternity of fame. To this ultimate vanity she succumbed, Erasmus received a substantial gift, and recovered his eyesight. Erasmus could have had benefices, episcopacies, even later, a cardinal’s hat; he refused such offers time and again in order to remain a ‘free lance,‘ intellectually fetterless. He preferred to beg in freedom rather than decay in bonds.
In 1502, fleeing plague, Erasmus moved to Louvain. Adrian of Utrecht, head of the university offered him a professorship; Erasmus declined. Returning to Paris, he settled down to earning a living by his pen -- one of the earliest modern attempts at that reckless enterprise. He translated Cicero’s Offices, Euripides’ Hecuba, and Lucian’s Dialogues.
“Good heavens! with what humour, with what rapidity does Lucian deal his blows, turning everything to ridicule, and letting nothing pass without a touch of mockery. His hardest strokes are aimed at the philosophers . . . on account of their supernatural assumptions, and the Stoics for their intolerable arrogance . . . He uses no less liberty in deriding the gods, whence the surname atheist was bestowed upon him -- an honourable distinction coming from the impious and superstitious.”
On a second visit to England (1505-1506) he joined Colet in a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Erasmus told how “Gratian” (Colet) offended their monastic guide by suggesting that some of the wealth that adorned the cathedral might be used to alleviate the poverty in Canterbury; how the monk showed them milk that had really come from the Virgin’s breast, “and an amazing quantity of bones,” all of which had to be kissed reverently; how Gratian balked at kissing an old shoe that Becket was said to have worn; and how as a climactic favour and a sacred souvenir the guide offered Gratian a cloth allegedly used by the saint to wipe his brow and blow his nose, and still showing evidence thereof, whereat Gratian grimaced and rebelled. The two humanists, mourning for humanity, returned to London.
Good fortune came to Erasmus there. Henry VII’s physician was sending two sons to Italy; Erasmus was engaged to accompany them “as general guide and supervisor”. He stayed with the lads at Bologna for a year, devouring the libraries, and adding daily to his fame for learning. In 1508 we find him still in Italy. Moving to Rome (1509), he was charmed by the easy life, fine manners, and intellectual cultivation of the cardinals. He was amused -- as Luther, in Rome the year before, had been shocked -- by the inroads that pagan themes and ways had made in the capital of Christendom. What offended Erasmus more was the martial policy, ardour, and pursuits of Julius II; there he agreed with Luther, but he agreed also with the cardinals, who warmly approved of the frequent absences of the pugnacious Pope.
Just as he was learning to love the Eternal City, Mountjoy sent him word that HenryVII had died, that the friend of the humanists had become Henry VIII, and that all doors and preferments would now be open to Erasmus if he would come back to England. And along with Mountjoy’s letter came one from Henry VIII himself:
“Our acquaintance began when I was a boy. The regard which I then learned to feel for you has been increased by the honourable mention you have made of me in your writings, and by the use to which you have applied your talents in the advancement of Christian truth. So far you have borne your burden alone; give me now the pleasure of assisting and protecting you so far as my power extends... Your welfare is precious to us all.... I propose therefore that you abandon all thought of settling elsewhere. Come to England, and assure yourself of a hearty welcome. You shall name your own terms; they shall be as liberal and honourable as you please. I recollect that you once said that when you were tired of wandering you would make this country the home of your old age. I beseech you, by all that is holy and good, carry out this promise of yours. We have not now to learn the value of either your acquirements or your advice. We shall regard your presence among us as the most precious possession that we have.... You require your leisure for yourself; we shall ask nothing of you, save to make our realm your home... Come to me, therefore, my dear Erasmus, and let your presence be your answer to my invitation.”
How could so courteous and generous an invitation be refused? Even if Rome made him a cardinal, Erasmus’ tongue would be tied; In England, surrounded by influential friends and protected by a powerful king, he might write more freely, and yet be safe. Half reluctantly he bade farewell to the humanists of Rome. He made his way again over the Alps, to Paris, and to England.
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It will be interesting to see how E takes to England. I'm guessing not well.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 276 - 281
ERASMUS the SATIRIST
He stayed in England five years, and in all that time he received from the King nothing more than an occasional salutation. Was Henry too busy with foreign relations or domestic relatives? Erasmus waited and fretted. Mountjoy came to the rescue with a gift, Warham dowered him with the revenues of a parish in Kent; and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of Cambridge University, appointed him professor of Greek at $1,300 a year. To raise this income, to the maintenance of a servant and horse, Erasmus dedicated his publications to his friends, who responded ever inadequately.
In the first year of his third sojourn in England, and in the house of Thomas More, Erasmus wrote in seven days his most famous book.‘The Praise of Folly.’ Its Latinized Greek title ‘Encomium Moriae’, was a pun on More’s name, but moros was Greek for ‘fool,’ and moria for ‘folly.’ Forty editions were published in his life time; there were a dozen translations; Rabelais devoured it; as late as 1632 Milton found it in “ everyone’s hand” at Cambridge.
Moria in Erasmus’ use meant not only folly, absurdity, ignorance and stupidity, but impulse, instinct, emotion and unlettered simplicity, as against wisdom, reason, calculation, intellect. The whole human race, we are reminded, owes its existence to folly, for what is so absurd as the male’s polymorphous pursuit of the female, his feverish idealization of her flesh, his goatish passion for copulation? What man in his senses would pay for such detumescence with the lifelong bondage of monogamy? What woman in her senses would pay for it with the pains and tribulations of motherhood? Is it not ridiculous that humanity should be the accidental by-product of this mutual attrition? If men and women paused to reason, all would be lost.
This illustrates the necessity of folly, and the foolishness of wisdom. Would bravery exist if reason ruled? Would happiness be possible? Or was Ecclesiastes right in believing that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief”? Who would be happy if he knew the future? Fortunately science and philosophy are failures, are ignored by the people, and do no great damage to the vital ignorance of the race. The astronomers “will give you to a hair’s breadth the dimensions of the sun, moon, and stars, as easily as they would do that of a flagon or a pipkin,” but “nature laughs at their puny conjectures. “ The philosophers confound the confused and darken the obscure; they lavish time and wit upon logical and metaphysical subtleties with no result but wind; we should send them, rather than our soldiers, against the Turks, who would retreat in terror before such bewildering verbosity. The Physicians are no better; “their whole art as now practiced, is one incorporated compound of imposture and craft.” As for the theologians, they :
“Will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you as to how -- our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb, and will demonstrate, in the consecrated wafer, how accidents may subsist without a subject .... how one body can be in several places at the same time, and how Christ’s body in heaven differs from His body on the cross or in the sacrament.”
Think also of the nonsense purveyed as miracles and prodigies -- apparitions, curative shrines, evocations of Satan, and “such like bugbears of superstition.”
These absurdities -- are a good trade, and procure a comfortable income to such priests and friars as by this craft get their gain... What shall I say of such as cry up and maintain the cheat of pardons and indulgences?-- that by these compute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory, and assign them to a longer or shorter continuance according as they purchase more or fewer of these paltry pardons and saleable exemptions?
The satire runs on at the expense of monks, friars, inquisitors, cardinals, popes. Monks pester the people by begging and think to take heaven by a siege of soporific psalmodies. The secular clergy hunger and thirst after money; “they are most subtle in the craft of getting . . tithes, offerings, perquites, etc. All ranks and varieties of the clergy agree in putting witches to death. The popes have lost any resemblance to the Apostles in their riches, honours, jurisdictions, offices, dispensations, licenses, indulgences ... ceremonies and tithes, excommunications and interdicts,” Their lust for legacies, their worldly diplomacy and bloody wars. How could such a Church survive except through the folly, the gullible simplicity of mankind ?
“The praise of Folly” stirred the theologians to an understandable fury. “You should know,” wrote Martin Dropsius to Erasmus, “that your ‘Moria’ has excited a great disturbance even among those who were formerly your most devoted admirers.” But the satire in this gay devastation was mild compared to that which marked Erasmus’ next outburst. The third and final year of his teaching at Cambridge ( 1513) was the year of Pope Julius II’s death. In 1514 there appeared in Paris a skit or dialogue called ‘Iulius exclusus‘. Erasmus made every effort, short of explicit denial, to conceal his authorship, but the manuscript had circulated among his friends. It may stand as perhaps an extreme sample of Erasmus the satirist. It is an outrageously one sided attack upon the dead Pope Julius II.
No such unredeemed rascal as Erasmus depicted, could have freed Italy from her invaders, replaced the old St. Peter’s with the new, discovered, directed, and developed Michelangelo and Raphael, united Christian and classic civilization in the ‘Stanze’ of the Vatican, and offered to Raphael’s skill that visage of profound thought and exhausting care pictured in the incomparable portrait of Julius in the Uffizi Gallery. And poor Erasmus, calling all priests to apostolic poverty while himself importuning his friends for coin! That a priest should pen so savage an indictment of a pope reveals the rebellious mood of the time.
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After reading the "the peripatetic Erasmus" i thought "oh, an early Elmer Gantry", but i then loved "Erasmus the satirist" and I'm thinking i need to read more of Erasmus. I loved the paragraph on men and women, so true! ;D and, of course, i totally agree with his satire of the church and its stories.
I read this statement of "folly" right after reading an email making the rounds "We Are Doomed" w/ stories such as the McD's clerk and manager who couldn't make change after being given $5.25 for a $4.25 charge, or a bank teller when asked for "larger bills" said "bills are all the same size", etc. LOLOL
And being the wife of a biologist and a lover of history i am always enchanted by how many discoveries that are now considered "progress" came about by chance/ folly. Great passage! Thank you Trevor!
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"That a priest should pen so savage an indictment of a pope reveals the rebellious mood of the time."
He's not only rebelling against the Church, in "the Praise of Folly", he's rebelling against the learning he worked so hard to obtain! Reminds me of Ecclesiastes "A waste, a waste, it's all a waste."
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Durants' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 282-283
ERASMUS the SATIRIST (Cont)
In 1514 another product of Erasmus’ pen startled the intellectual world of Western Europe From 1497 onward he had composed informal dialogues, professedly to teach Latin style and conversation, but incidentally discussing a rich variety of lively topics guaranteed to rouse schoolboys from their daily slumbers. His friend Beatus Rhenanus, with his permission, published a series of these as ‘ Familiarum colloquiorum formulae”-- “Forms of Familiar Conversations,” by Erasmus of Rotterdam, useful not only for polishing a boy’s speech but for building his character. Latin editions added more colloquies, so that they became Erasmus’ most substantial composition.
They are a strange concoction -- serious discussion of marriage and morals, exhortations to piety, exposés of absurdities and abuses in human conduct and belief, with a sprinkling of pungent or risqué jokes -- all in a chatty and idiomatic Latin which must have been harder to write than the formal language of learned discourse. An English translator in 1742 judged “ no book fitter to read which does, in so delightful and instructing a manner, utterly overthrow almost all the Popish Opinions and Super- stitions.” This slightly overstates the point, but certainly Erasmus, in his gay way, used his “textbook of Latin style” to attack again the shortcomings of the clergy. He condemned relic-mongering, the misuse of excommunication, the acquisitiveness of the prelates and priests, the false miracles foisted on the credulous, the cult of saints for worldly ends, the excesses of fasting, the shocking contrasts between the Christianity of the Church and the Christianity of Christ. He made a prostitute praise monks as her most faithful clients. He warned a young lady that who whished to keep her virginity that she should avoid “those brawny, swill-bellied monks . . . . . Chastity is more endangered in the cloister than out of it. He deplored the exaltation of virginity, and sang a paean to married love as superior to celibacy. He mourned that men so carefully mated good horses with good, but, in marriages of financial convenience wed healthy maids to sickly men, and he proposed to forbid marriage to Syphilitics or persons with any other serious disability or disease. Mingled with the sober reflections were passages of broad humour. A pregnant woman was hailed a unique blessing “Heaven grant that this burden that you carry . . . may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance” Circumcision was recommended “ for it moderates the itch of coition.” A long dialogue between “ the Young Man and the Harlot” ended reassuringly with the lady’s reform.
Critics complained that these colloquies were a very reckless way of teaching Latin style. Charles V made their use in school a crime punishable with death. Luther here agreed with the Emperor “ On my deathbed I shall forbid my sons to read Erasmus’ Colloquies.“ The furore assured the books success, 24000 copies were sold soon after publication, till 1550 only the Bible outsold it. Meanwhile Erasmus had almost made the Bible his own.
THE SCHOLAR
He left England in July 1514 and made his way through fog and customs to Calais. There he received from the Prior of his forgotten monastery at Steyn a letter suggesting that his leave of absence had long since expired, and he had better return to spend his remaining years in repentant piety. He was alarmed, for in canon law the prior might call upon secular power to drag him back to his cell. Erasmus excused himself, and the prior did not press the matter; but to avoid a recurrence of the embarrassment the wondering scholar asked his English friends to secure for him from Leo X a dispensation from his obligations as a monk.
While these negotiations were proceeding, Erasmus made his way up the Rhine to Basel, and offered to Froben the printer, the manuscript of his most important production -- a critical revision of the Greek text of the New Testament, with a new Latin translation and a commentary. The preparation had taken years, and the printing and editing would be laborious and expensive, the presumption to improve upon Jerome’s Latin version, long sanctified as the “Vulgate”, might be condemned by the Church, and the sales would probably fail to meet the costs. Erasmus reduced one hazard by dedicating the work to Leo X. In February 1516 Froben at last brought out “Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. recognitum et emendatum.” A later edition (1518) changed Instrumentum to Testamentum. In parallel columns Erasmus presented the Greek text as revised by him, and his Latin Translation. His knowledge of Greek was imperfect, and he shared with the typesetters the responsibility for many errors; from the standpoint of scholarship this first edition was inferior to that, which a corps of scholars had completed and printed for Cardinal Ximenes in 1514, but which was not given to the public till 1522. These two works marked the application of humanistic learning to the early literature of Christianity, and the beginning of that Biblical criticism which in the nineteenth century restored the Bible to human authorship and fallibility. [/i]
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Erasmus continues to amaze .
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Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-erasmus
Emily
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I bet Ben Franklin was a reader of Erasmus!!!
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 284 - 289
Erasmus repeatedly signalized the difference between primitive and current Christianity. So on Matthew 23:27, he commented:
What would Jerome say could he see the Virgin’s milk exhibited for money, with as much honour paid to it as to the consecrated body of Christ; the miraculous oils; the portions of the true cross, enough, if collected to freight a large ship? Here we have the hood of St. Francis, there our Lady’s petticoat, or St. Anne’s comb..... not presented as innocent aids to religion, but as the substance of religion itself -- and all through the avarice of priests and the hypoc- risy of monks playing upon the credulity of the people.
Noting that Matthew 19:12 (“Some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”) was alleged to council monastic celibacy, Erasmus wrote:
In this class we include those who by fraud or intimidation have been thrust into that life of celibacy where they were allowed to fornicate but not to marry; so that if they openly keep a concubine they are Christian priests, but if they take a wife they are burned. In my opinion parents who intend their children for celibate priesthood would be much kinder to castrate them in infancy, rather than to expose them whole against their will to this temptation to lust.
And on I Timothy 3:2 :
There are priests now in vast numbers, enormous herds of them, seculars and regulars, and it is notorious that very few of them are chaste. The great proportion fall into lust and incest and open profligacy. It would be better if those who cannot be continent should be allowed lawful wives of their own, and so escape this foul and miserable pollution.
Finally, in a note on Matthew 11:30, Erasmus sounded the basic note of the Reformers -- the return from the Church to Christ:
Truly the yoke of Christ would be sweet, and his burden light, if petty human institutions added nothing to what He Himself imposed. He commanded us nothing save love for one another, and there is nothing so bitter that affection does not soften and sweeten it. Everything according to nature is easily borne, and nothing accords better with the nature of men than the philosophy of Christ, of which the sole end is to give back to fallen nature its innocence and integrity... The Church added to it many things, of which some can be omitted without prejudice to the faith. What rules, what superstitions, we have about vestments! .... How many fasts are instituted! .... what shall we say about vows .. about the authority of the pope, the abuse of absolutions and dispensations ?... Would that men were content to let Christ rule by the laws of the Gospel, and that they would no longer seek to strengthen their obscurant tyranny by human decrees!
It was probably the notes that carried the book to a success that must have surprised the author and publisher alike. The first edition was disposed of in three years, new and revised editions were issued in sixty-nine printings before Erasmus died. Criticism of the work was vehement; many errors were pointed out. Leo X however praised the work, and Pope Adrian VI asked Erasmus to do for the Old Testament what he had done for the New; but the council of Trent condemned Erasmus’ translation and pronounced Jerome’s Vulgate the only authentic Latin version of the Bible. Erasmus’ New Testament was soon superseded as scholarship, but as an event in the history of thought its influence was immense. It facilitated and welcomed the vernacular translations that were soon to follow.
Like most philosophers, Erasmus reckoned monarchy the least evil form of government; he feared the people as a “fickle many headed monster,” deprecated the popular discussion of laws and politics, and judged the chaos of revolution worse than the tyranny of kings. But he counselled Charles, his Christian prince to guard against the concentration of wealth. Taxes should fall only upon luxuries. There should be fewer monasteries, more schools. Above all, there should be no war among Christian states, not even against the Turks. “ We shall better overcome the Turks by the piety of our lives than by arms; the empire of Christianity will thus be defended by the same means by which it was originally established. “ What does war beget except war --- but civility invites civility, justice invites justice”
“I pass silently over the tragedies of ancient wars. I will stress only those which have taken place in the course of these last years. Where is the land or sea where people have not fought in the most cruel manner? Where is the river that has not been dyed with human blood?... With Christian blood? O supreme shame! They behave more savagely than wild beasts..... All these wars were undertaken at the caprice of princes, to the great detriment of the people, whom these conflicts in no way concerned. Bishops, cardinals, popes who are vicars of Christ -- none among them is ashamed to start the war that Jesus so execrated. What is there in common between the helmet and the mitre? Bishops, how dare you, who hold the place of the Apostles, teach people things that touch on war at the same time that you teach the precepts of the Apostles? There is no peace, even unjust, which is not preferable to the most just of wars.
We must not look to Erasmus for any realistic conception of human nature, or of the causes of war, or of the behaviour of states. The function of Erasmus was not to construct a positive and consistent philosophy. He was not even sure he was a Christian. He thought of the Eucharist as a symbol rather than a miracle; he obviously doubted the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Virgin Birth. He called in question one after another of the Christian usages of his time -- indulgences, fasting, pilgrimages, auricular confession, monasticism, clerical celibacy, relic worship, prayers to the saints, the burning of heretics.
Despite this strong bent toward rationalism, Erasmus remained externally orthodox. He never lost his affection for Christ, nor for the gospels. He favoured a lenient attitude toward religious heresy; his ideal was the imitation of Christ. We must admit, however that his own practice was less than evangelical.
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Yesterday, I wrote the line where Erasmus said "there should be no wars, even against the Turks". Erasmus hope, with which I agree, has still not been achieved. I entered that remark yesterday which happened to be April 25th, the date on which Australia and New Zealand remember those fallen in battle, especially of the ANZACS ( Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.) who died on April 25th 1915 when they, and British and French forces, stormed the beaches at Gallipoly at the entrance to the Dardanelles in Turkey. 400 hundred years after Erasmus' hope, and we (including members of my family') still fight the Turks, and anyone else, whether Christian or not. Will our nations ever become civilized?
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"Will our nations ever become civilized?"
I'm beginning to think not!
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Me too Joan. I just said that to a friend recently. The more i know about history and current events the more fatalist i become. As a young person i was optimistic that the world, and especially the United States, was becoming better and better in the way people treat each other, and we have moved forward in our laws, but human beings seem to take two steps forward and one step back, consistently.
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DURANTS’ S o C
Vol. VI. The REFORMATION
Pgs. 293 - 296
GERMANY on the EVE of LUTHER
1453 - 1517
The age of the Fuggers
In the final half-century before the Reformation all classes in Germany prospered except the knights. Probably it was the rising status of the peasants that sharpened their resentment against surviving disabilities. A few were bondsmen, a minority were proprietors, the great majority were tenant farmers paying rent to feudal lords in produce, services, or money. The tenants complained of the lord’s exactions; of the twelve -- in some cases sixty -- days of labour which custom required them to give him yearly; of his withdrawal of land from the Allgemeine or commons in which tradition had allowed them to fish, cut timber, and pasture their animals; of the damage done to crops by the lord’s huntsmen and hounds; of the biased administration of justice in the local courts which the landlords controlled; and of the death tax laid upon the tenant family when the passing of its head interrupted the care of the land. Peasant proprietors raged at the usurious rates they had to pay for loans to move their crops, and at the quick foreclosure of farms by clever moneylenders who had made loans to owners obviously unable to repay. All classes of tillers grudged the annual tithe levied by the Church on their harvests and broods.
Three discontents ignited revolts sporadically throughout the fifteenth century (1431, 1476 and 1491.) Then in 1512 Joss Fritz secretly organized a movement in which God, the pope,, and the emperor were to be spared, but all feudal ownership and dues were to be abolished. A peasant who had been constrained to join this “Bund” exposed it to his confessor; the authorities arrested and tortured the leaders; the revolt aborted, but Joss Fritz lived to join in the peasants’ Revolt of 1525. In 1517 a league of 90,000 peasants in Styria and Carinthia undertook to end feudalism there: For three months their bands attacked castles and slew lords; finally Emperor Maximillian, who sympathised with their cause but rebuked their violence, sent against them a small force of soldiery, which subdued them into sullen peace. But the stage was set for the Peasants' War and Anabaptist communism of Reformation Germany.
Meanwhile a more matter-of-fact revolution was proceeding in German industry and commerce. Most industry was still handicraft, but it was increasingly controlled by entrepreneurs who provided material and capital, and bought and sold the finished product. The mining industry was making rapid progress; great profits were drawn from mining silver, copper, and gold; gold and silver bullion now became a favourite means of storing wealth; and the royalties paid for mining rights to territorial Princes-- especially to the elector of Saxony who protected Luther -- enabled some of them to resist both pope and emperor. Reliable silver coins were minted, currency multiplied, the passage to a money economy was almost complete. Even statues of silver or gold accumulated in the German churches, and inclined princes to a religious reform that allowed them to confiscate ecclesiastical wealth.
The financiers were now a major political power. The Jewish money lenders of Germany were displaced by the Christian family-firms of the Welsers, the Hochstetters and the Fuggers-- all of Augusburg, which, at the end of fifteenth century, was the financial capital of Christendom. Johannes Fugger, a weavers son, became a textile merchant, and left at his death, ( 1409) a small fortune of 3,000 florins ( $75,000) His son Jakob expanded the business; when he died (1469) his wealthy ranked seventh in Augsburg. Jakob’s sons raised the firm to supremacy by advancing money to the princes of Germany, Austria, and Hungary in return for the revenue of mines, lands, or cities. From these speculative investments the Fuggers derived immense profits, so that by 1500 they were the richest family in Europe.
Jakob II was the culminating genius of the family, enterprising, ruthless,, and industrious. He trained himself by studying every phase of the business, every advance in bookkeeping, manufacturing, merchandising, and finance. He demanded the sacrifice of everything but the family itself to the business, and the subordination of every individual Fugger to the family interest. He formed cartels with other firms to control the price and sale of various products. In 1488 the family lent 150,000 florins to Archduke Sigismund of Austria, and as security it received the entire yield of the Schwarz mines until the debt should be repaid. In 1492 the Fuggers intermarried with the Thurzos of Cracow in a cartel to work the silver and copper mines of Hungary, and to maintain the highest possible prices for the products. By 1511, when Jacob II became sole head of the firm, its assets reached 196,791 guilders; by 1527 ( two years after his death ) its capital reached over 2,000,000 guilders “ a profit of 50% per year through sixteen years.” Though the firm rejected the ecclesiastical limitations on interest, and the attempts of churchmen to fix a “fair price” for consumers’ goods, he remained a Catholic, and with Ulrich, obtained (1494) the management of papal finances in Germany, Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Hungary.
In his final years Jakob Fugger was the most honoured and unpopular citizen in Germany. Some Catholics attacked him as a usurer, some nobles for outbidding them in the pursuit of office or power, many workers for overriding medieval regulations of trade and finance; most Protestants for managing the export of German money to the popes. Jakob tried to atone for his wealth by building 106 houses for the Catholic poor of Augsburg*. He died in the odour of sanctity, leaving millions of Guilders, and no children.
From him we may date the capitalist era in Germany, the growth of private monopolies, the dominance of businessmen controlling money over feudal lords owning land.
* This settlement, the “Fuggerei” still exists. It charges forty-two pfennigs (eighty-six cents) per family per year.
Those figures are Durants’ 1957 . I can’t see them being correct in 2013 !
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As we know, much the same thing is happening today. This time it is Germany taking over in Spain and Greece. It will be interesting to see how it all works out -- Trevor
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Just picked up a book from the library on science before Galileo. It seems to be restricted to European science in the few centuries before G (not Durant's wide scope). I'll let you know if it's interesting.
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Durants’ S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 296 -- 299
The German Capitalists.
German mining and textiles were already organized on capitalist lines -- ie., controlled by providers of capital, by the end of the fifteenth century following the lead of Flanders and Italy in textiles a hundred years before. The Middle ages had thought of private property as in some measure a public trust: The rights of the owner were limited by the necessities of the group whose organization gave him opportunities, facilities and protection. Perhaps under the influence of Roman law -- which now overshadowed German jurisprudence -- the property owner began to think of his ownership as absolute; he felt he had a right to do what he liked with his own. It did not seem wrong to the Fuggers, the Hochstetters, and the other “merchant princes,” to corner a product and then force up its price, or to form cartels for the limitation of output and the control of trade, or to manipulate investments so as to cheat small stockholders. Ambrose Hochstetter bought up all available quicksilver, then raised the retail price 75%. A German company bought 600,000 guilders worth of pepper from the king of Portugal at higher than the usual price, on condition that the king would charge a still higher price to all other importers of pepper from Portugal into Germany. Partly through such agreements and monopolies, partly through growing wealth and an increase in demand, partly through a rising supply of precious metals from Central Europe and America, prices mounted between 1480 and 1520 with a celerity rivalled only in our century. “In a short time, because of usury and avarice,” Luther complained, “he that could formerly live on a hundred guilders cannot do so now on two hundred.” It is more than a twice-told tale.
The middle ages had seen great inequalities of political power; the new age of the Fuggers added such economic disparities as Europe had not seen since the millionaires and slaves of Imperial Rome. Some merchant capitalists of Augsburg or Nuremberg were worth 5,000,000 francs each. Many bought their way into the landed aristocracy, sported coats of arms, and repaid highborn contempt with conspicuous consumption. The luxuriously furnished and artistically decorated homes of rich businessmen aroused the resentment of nobility, clergy, and proletariat alike. Preachers, writers, revolutionaries, and legislators joined in fulminating against monopolists. Geiler von Kaisersberg demanded that they “should be driven out like wolves, since they fear neither God nor man, and breed famine, thirst, and poverty.” Ulrich von Huttern distinguished four classes of robbers: merchants, jurists, priests, and knights, and judged the merchants to be the greatest robbers of them all. The Cologne Reichstag of 1512 called upon all civic authorities to proceed “ with diligence and severity against all usurious, forestalling, capitalistic companies.” Such decrees were repeated by other diets, but to no effect; some legislators themselves had investments in the great merchant firms, agents of the law were pacified with shares of stock, and many cities prospered from the growth of unimpeded trade.
Ninety-six German cities were “free cities” -- ie. they made their own laws, sent representatives to the provincial and Imperial diets, and acknowledged no political obedience except to the emperor, who was too indebted to them for financial or military aid to attack their liberties. Though these cities were ruled by guilds dominated by businessmen, nearly everyone of them was a paternalistic “welfare state” to the extent that it regulated production and distribution, wages and prices, and the quality of goods, with a view to protecting the weak from the strong, and to ensure the necessaries of life to all.
Aeneas Sylvius, a proud Italian, wrote of these German cities enthusiastically in 1458:
“Never has Germany been richer, more resplendent than today. Without exaggeration it may be said that no country in Europe has better or more beautiful cities. They look as fresh and new as if they had been built yesterday, and in no other cities is so much freedom to be found. Nothing more magnificent can be found in all Europe than Cologne, with its wonderful churches, city hall, towers, and palaces, its dignified burghers, its noble streams, its fertile cornfields. Nor is Augsburg surpassed in wealth by any city in the world....”
Augsberg was not only the financial centre of Germany, it was the main commercial link with then flourishing Italy. It was Augsburg merchants who built and managed that Fonaco Tedesco, in Venice, whose walls were frescoed by Giorgione and Titian. So bound to Italy Augsberg echoed the Italian Renaissance; its merchants supported scholars and artists, and some of its capitalists became models of manners and culture, if not of morals. So Konrad Peutinger, syndic or mayor in 1493, was diplomat, merchant, scholar, jurist, Latinist, Hellenist, and antiquarian as well as businessman.
Nuremberg was a centre of arts and crafts rather than of large scale industry or finance. The people were not as affluent here as in Augsberg, but they were joyous, ‘gemütlich’, and loved to disport themselves in festivities such as carnival of mask, costume, and dance. Here Hans Sachs and the Meistersingers sang their lusty airs, here Albrecht Dürer raised German painting and engraving to their zenith.
The churches of the cities became repositories and museums of art, for every guild or corporation or prosperous family commissioned some work of beauty for the shrine of a patron saint. Regiomontanus chose Nuremberg as his home “because I find here without difficulty all the peculiar instruments for astronomy; and it is easiest for me to keep in touch with the learned of all countries, and thanks to the perpetual journeyings of her merchants, Nuremberg may be counted the centre of Europe.” The voyages of Da Gama and Columbus, and Maximilian’s wars with Venice disturbed the trade between Germany and Italy. More and more German exports and imports moved along the great rivers to the North sea, and the Atlantic. Wealth and power passed from Augsburg and Nuremberg to Cologne, Hamburg, and above all Antwerp. The Fuggers and Welshers furthered this trend by making Antwerp a chief centre of their operations. Nuremberg’s most famous merchant, Willibald Pirkheimer, was an enthusiastic humanist, and devoted friend of Dürer. Erasmus called Pickheimer “ the chief glory of Germany. “
The northward movement of German money and trade divorced northern Germany from the Italian economy, and made it strong enough to protect Luther from emperor and pope. South Germany, perhaps for opposite reasons, remained Catholic.
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Gosh, I had never heard of these financiers, or the culture. But that was what enabled Luthor to be safe? Interesting.
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Durants’ S o C
THE REFORMATION Vol. VI
Pgs. 299 - 302
THE GERMAN STATE
How was Germany governed in this critical and formative age?
The knights or lower nobility who in former years had ruled the country-side as vassal of feudal seigneurs, were losing their military, economic, and political position. Mercenary troops hired by princes or cities, and equipped with firearms and artillery, were mowing down knightly cavalry helplessly brandishing swords; commercial wealth was raising prices and costs, and were outstripping landed property as a source of power; cities were establishing their independence, and princes were centralizing authority and law. The knights took some revenge by waylaying the commerce that passed their way; and when merchants and municipalities protested, the knights asserted their right to wage private wars. Comines described the Germany of this time as prickly with castles from which, at any time “robber barons” and their armed retainers might pour forth to plunder. Some knights made it their custom to cut off the right hands of the merchants they robbed. Götz von Berlichingen, though he himself had lost his right hand in the service of his prince, substituted an iron hand, and led knightly bands to attack not only merchants but cities. His friend Franz von Sickingen laid claims against the city of Worms, ravaged its environs, seized its councillors, tortured its burgomaster, resisted all attempts of Imperial troops to capture him, and was transiently subdued only by receiving an annual subsidy to serve the emperor. Twenty-two cities of Swabia -- chiefly Augsburg, Ulm, Freiburg, and Constance -- joined with some of the higher nobility to reform the Swabian League ( 1488); these and other combinations checked the robber knights, and succeeded in having private war declared illegal, but Germany on the eve of Luther was a scene of social and political disorder, “ a universal reign of force.”
The secular and ecclesiastical princes who preceded over the chaos contributed to it by their venality, their diverse coinages and customs dues, their confused competition for wealth and place, their distortion of Roman Law to give themselves almost absolute authority at the expense of the people, the knights, and the emperor. Great families like the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg, the Wettins in Saxony, the Wittelbachers in the Palatinate, the dukes of Württemberg, not to speak of the Hapsburgs of Austria, behaved like irresponsible sovereigns. If the power of the Catholic emperor over the German princes had been greater, the Reformation might have been defeated or postponed; and the rejection of Rome by many of the princes was a further move toward financial and political independence.
The character of the emperors in this period accentuated the weakness of the central government. Frederic III ( r.1440-11493) was an astrologer and alchemist who so loved the studious tranquillity of his gardens at Graz that he allowed Schleswig-Holstein, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary to detach themselves from the Empire. But toward the end of his fifty-three-year reign he played a saving stroke by betrothing his son Maximilian to Mary, heiress to Charles the Bold of Burgundy. When Charles fought himself into an icy grave in 1477, the Hapsburgs inherited the Netherlands.
Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519) emperor elect but never crowned, began his reign with every omen of success. All the empire rejoiced in his good looks and good nature, his unassuming sensibility, his effervescent cheerfulness, his generosity and chivalry, his courage and skill in joust and hunt; it was as if an Italian of the High Renaissance had mounted a German throne. Even Machiavelli was impressed, calling him “ a wise, prudent, God-fearing prince, a just ruler, a great general, brave in peril, bearing fatigue like the most harden soldier.....” a pattern of many princely virtues. He dreamed of restoring the grandeur of the Holy Roman Empire, by recapturing its former possessions and influence in Italy; he invaded the peninsular time and again in futile wars; he allowed himself to think of deposing the doughty Julius II and making himself pope as well as emperor. But he was constitutionally and financially incapable of sustained enterprise; he was unable to will the means, as well as to wish the ends, and at times he was so poor he lacked funds to pay for his dinner. He laboured to reform the administration of the Empire, but he violated his own reforms, and they died with him. If Maximilian had been as great as his plans, he would have rivalled Alexander and Charlemagne.
He left Germany and the Empire ( if only through economic developments ) far stronger than he had found them. Population had risen, education had spread, Vienna was becoming another Florence, and soon his grandson, inheriting half of Western Europe, would become the most powerful ruler in Christendom.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 302 - 305
THE GERMANS
They were probably at this time the healthiest, strongest, most vital and exuberant people in Europe. They were coarse but jolly, and tempered their piety with sensuality. They could be cruel, as witness the awful instruments of torture that they used on criminals, but they could be merciful and generous, too, and rarely displayed their theological ferocity in physical ways; in Germany the inquisition was bravely resisted and usually subdued. Their robust spirits made for bibulous humour rather than dry wit, dulled their sense of logic and beauty, and denied them the grace and subtlety of the French or Italian mind. Their meagre Renaissance foundered in bibliolatry, but there was a steady persistence, a disciplined industry, a brute courage, in German thought that enabled them to break the power of Rome, and already gave promise of making them the greatest scholars in history.
By comparison with other nations they were clean. Bathing was a national passion. Every well-arranged house even in rural districts, had its bathroom. As in ancient Rome, the numerous public bathhouses provided much more than baths; men could be shaved there, women could have their hair dressed, diverse forms of massage were offered, drinking and gambling were allowed, and relief could be found from monogamy. Usually the two sexes bathed together, chastely clothed; but there were no laws against flirtations, and an Italian scholar, visiting Baden-Baden in 1417, remarked that “ no baths in the world are more fit for the fecundity of women.”
The Germans of that age could not be accused of Puritanism. They drank too much at all ages and imbibed sexual experience lavishly in their youth. Erfurt in 1501 seemed to the pious Luther “nothing better than a brothel and beer-house.” German rulers, ecclesiastical as well as secular, agreed with St. Augustine and St, Thomas Aquinas that prostitution must be allowed if women are to be safe from seduction or assault. We read of the bishops of Strasbourg and Mainz receiving revenues from brothels, and the bishop of Würzburg gave the municipal brothel to Graf von Hennenburg as a revenue-producing fief. In the actual moral code of Europe in the later Middle Ages resort to a prostitute was condoned as a venial but normal sin. Perhaps the spread of syphilis after 1492 made it a mortal affair.
Marriage, as elsewhere, was a union of properties. Love was considered a normal result, not a reasonable cause, of marriage. Betrothal was as binding as matrimony. Weddings ceremonious and luxurious in all classes; festivities might last a week or two; purchase of a husband was as expensive as the upkeep of a wife. The authority of the husband was theoretically absolute, but was more real in deeds than in words. The women of Nuremburg were undaunted enough to pull the half naked Emperor Maximilian from bed, throw a wrap around him, and lead him in a merry nocturnal dance in the street.
Family life flourished. An Erfurt chronical reckons eight or ten offspring per couple as normal; households of fifteen children were not uncommon. The numbers included bastards, for illegitimate children, who abounded, were usually taken into the father’s home after his marriage. Family names came into use in the fifteenth century, often indicating ancestral occupation or place of origin, but now and then congealing a moment’s jest into the rigor of time. Discipline was firm at home and school. German homes were now (1500) the most comfortable in Europe, with wide staircases, sturdy balustrades, massive furniture, cushioned chairs, carved chests, windows of coloured glass, canopied beds, carpeted floors, shelves crowded with books or flowers, or silver plate, and kitchens gleaming with all the utensils for a German feast.
Externally the houses were mostly made of wood, and fires were frequent. Overhanging eaves and windowed balconies shaded the streets. Only a few avenues in the larger towns were paved. Street lighting was unknown except on festival evenings; life was unsafe outdoors at night. There were no organised police; severe punishments were relied upon to deter crime. The penalty for robbery was death, or, in mild theft, cutting off the ears. Women who had murdered their husbands were buried alive, or were tortured with red hot tongs and then hanged. Die verflÜchte Jungfer, or Cursed maiden of iron, who received the condemned with arms of steel, enclosed him in a spiked embrace, and then relaxing, let him fall to a slow death in a pit of revolving knives and pointed bars.
Political morality accorded with general moral laxity. Bribery was wide spread, and worst at the top. Commercialism -- the sacrifice of morals to money -- was as intense as in any age; money, not man, was the measure of all things. Yet these same hustling burghers gave large sums to charity. “In papal times,” Luther wrote, “men gave with both hands. It snowed alms, foundations, and legacies. Our forefathers, lords and kings, princes and other folk gave richly -- yes to overflowing -- to churches, parishes, burses, hospitals.” It was a sign of a secularizing age that many charitable bequests were left, not to ecclesiastical bodies but to town councils, for distribution to the poor.
Manners became coarser-- in France and England as well as in Germany -- when the plutocracy of money superseded the aristocracy of birth in controlling the economy. Drunkenness was the national vice; both Luther and Hutten denounced it. Forks had come to Germany in the fourteenth century, but men and women still liked to eat with their fingers.
Dress was grandiose. Workmen were content with cap or felt hat, short blouse and trousers tucked into boots, or high shoes. Rich women wore crowns of gold, or gold embroidered hoods, and braided gold threads in their hair. On festive occasions men might outshine women in magnificence. Thousands of men and women travelled. They moved in painful delight on horses or mules, bearing the discomfort of unpaved roads and unwashed inns. Sensible persons, when they could, journeyed by boat along the Rhine, the Danube, or other great rivers. By 1500 a postal service, open to all, united the major towns.
All in all the picture is one of a people too vigorous and prosperous to tolerate any longer the manacles of feudalism or the exactions of Rome. A proud sense of German nationality survived all political fragmentation, and checked supernational emperors as well as supernatural popes. The Reformation would defeat the Holy Roman Empire as well as the papacy. In the 1,500 year war between Teuton and Roman, victory was once more, as in the fifth century, inclining toward Germany.
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I'm reading..........but we're at the beach with lots of family and friends, will respond later. This one is an interesting entry.
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It is interesting. I admit, I'm relieved to hear about the bathing. it makes me uneasy to know that Queen Elizabeth of England only took a bath once a year. (and that was 100 years later). Kind of spoils the romance.
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There were no organised police; severe punishments were relied upon to deter crime. The penalty for robbery was death, or, in mild theft, cutting off the ears
Here in this country we have gone so far in the other direction that we are essentially a police state.
I recently read an article about an elderly couple who had a greenhouse where they imported bulbs from South America, planted them and grew beautiful orchids which they sold to supplement their meager income. They were a small operation.
Unknown to them the agency which oversees such operations had passed a new regulation on the importation of bulbs. Their home was raided by the 'Fish and Wildlife' with a swat team, and they were taken to the police station. They were charged, and made bond.
Both were convicted, but the husband was sentenced to over a year in a Federal prison. As the prosecutor said, "Ignorance is no excuse before the law."
After reading that article, I wanted to find out how many 'Federal laws' are on the books. I searched but could find no definitive answer. No one seems to know, even our elected representatives. When one considers all the regulations that become law, some say thousands.
I read an article by a Professor of Law (Tulane?) who stated that any citizen of this country over the age of 18 could be arrested any day, because we have so many laws and regulations of which we are unaware that we break some everyday.
We have an enormous police force. First the Federal police, then all 50 States have their own police, and every county, city, town have theirs also.
I asked my State Representative how many new laws are introduced into the legislature each year and he said thousands. Even though the majority of these do not become law, many do and we have a hodgepodge of arcane laws.
I joined others and began a campaign to get rid of some of the obsolete and foolish laws. Two Representatives began looking at the code, and the first repeal introduced was the number of balloons one could release.
Between the Feds, State, County, City, Town we have so many laws that everyone becomes a lawbreaker according to the law professor.
We live in a 'police state' and have more people imprisoned than any other country on earth.
I support necessary regulation for the safety of the public. I support laws against those who would do us bodily harm or steal from us.
The rest is totalitarianism.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 306 - 311
THE MATURING OF GERMAN ART
This coming of age first manifested itself in art. We may find it hard to believe, but it is true, at the very height of the Italian Renaissance -- from the birth of Leonardo (1452 ) to the death of Raphael ( 1520 ) -- German artists were in demand throughout Europe for their excellence in every craft -- in wood, iron, copper, bronze, silver, gold, engraving, painting, sculpture, architecture. Felig Fabri of Ulm wrote in 1484: “when ever one wishes to have a first rate piece of workmanship in bronze, stone, or wood, he employs a German craftsman. I have seen German jewellers, goldsmiths, stone cutters, and carriage makers do wonderful things among the Saracens; they surpassed even the Greeks and Italians in art.” Some fifty years later an Italian found this still true: “The Germans,” wrote Paolo Giovio, “are carrying everything before them in art, and we sluggish Italians must need send to Germany for good workmen.” Heit Stoss captivated Cracow, Dürer received honours in Venice, and Holbein the Younger took England by storm.
Sculpture was the glory of the age. Minor carvers abounded who would have shone as major stars in a less brilliant galaxy. The career of Veit Stoss was a tale of two cities. Nurtured in Nuremberg, and acquiring fame as an engineer, bridge-builder, architect, engraver, sculptor, and painter, he went to Cracow at thirty, and did his best work there in a flamboyant Late Gothic style that well expressed both the piety and excitability of the Poles. He returned to Nuremberg(1496) with sufficient funds to buy a new house and marry a second wife, who bore him five children to add to her predecessor’s eight. At the height of his abundance Veit was arrested for having shared, perhaps unwittingly, in a forgery; he was branded by burning through both cheeks, and was forbidden ever to leave Nuremburg again. The Emperor Maximilian pardoned him, and restored his civic rights ( 1506) but Stoss remained an outcast to the end of his painfully long life. In 1517 he carved a large group representing the Annunciation of Angelical Salutation; he enclosed the two figures -- among the most nearly perfect in all the range of wood sculpture -- in a garland of roses, surrounded this with a rosary, attached seven medallions picturing the joys of the Virgin, and crowned the whole -- all in linden wood -- with an unprepossessing portrayal of God the Father. The fragile composition was suspended from the vault of the choir in the Lorenzkirche, where it still hangs as a treasured relic of the great city’s halcyon days. Stoss carved in wood a Crucifixion never surpassed in its kind (1520). At this time the Reformation captured Nuremberg; Andreas was replaced as prior because he remained a Catholic; Veit Stoss himself clung to the colourful faith that had inspired his art; he spent his final ten years in blindness, solitude, and desolation, predeceased by his wives, abandoned by his children, and rejected by an age too absorbed in theology to recognise that it was losing, at ninety-three (1533) the greatest wood carver in history.
As Viet Stoss excelled in wood, so Adam Kraft led all his contemporaries in the sculpture of stone. German chroniclers pictured him, and Peter Vischer the elder, and Sebastian Lindenast ( who designed the obsequious electors on the Frauenkirche clock) as devoted artists and friends. Hans Imhoff, a merchant prince, commissioned Kraft to design a ciborium to hold the bread and wine of the Eucharist in the Lorenzkirche. Adam made this Sakrementhaus a tall and slender tabernacle in Late Gothic style, a miracle of stone filigree rising stage by stage to a height of sixty-four feet, and tapering to a graceful crosier- head curve; the pillars alive with saints, the doors of the “house” guarded by angels, the square surfaces cut in relief with scenes from the life of Christ, and the whole airy edifice resting anomalously on three crouching figures-- Adam Kraft and two of his aids. There are no compliments in the self-portrait: the clothes are worn and torn with toil, the hands are rough, the beard is unkempt, the broad uplifted face is intent upon the conception and execution of the work. When this absorbing masterpiece was finished Kraft returned to his favourite subject by carving seven stone pillars with scenes from the Passion. Six of these are now in the Germanisches Museum, one of them “The Entombment,” is typical of Teutonic art-- a courageous realism that does not need idealization to convey a sincere piety and faith.
Engraving by cutting a design into wood or copper developed in the fifteenth century into a mature art, respected on a par with painting. The greatest painters cultivated it. Martin Schongauer carried it to completion; some of his engravings “The Scourging of Christ, Carrying the Cross, St. John on Patmos, The temptation of St. Anthony -- are among the greatest of all time. Etching by covering a metal surface with wax, cutting a design in the wax, and letting an acid eat (German, ätzen) into the exposed lines, grew from the decoration of armour into the incision of metal plates from which etchings could be printed. Daniel Hopfer, an armourer, seems to have made the first recorded etching in 1504.
In painting this was Germany’s greatest age. German painters in the second half of the fifteenth century graduated from Gothic intensity and ungainliness into a more graceful line, and figures that moved with ease in natural scenes reflecting the domestic life of the triumphant bourgeoisie. Year by year the thriving cities of the south stole the leadership of German art from Cologne and the north. The greatest of Dürer’s predecessors was Matthias Gothardt Neihardt, who by a scholar’s error became known as Matthais Grünewald. His masterpiece -- probably the greatest German painting is the complex polyptych made for a monastery at Isen in 1513. The central panel shows the Virgin and her Child in an almost Turneresque glow of golden colour against a background of distant seas. But the outstanding and unforgettable panel is a gruesome Crucifixion: Christ in his final agony, the body covered with wounds and bloody sweat, the limbs distorted with pain; Mary swooning in the arms of St. John; Magdalene hysterical with angry and incredulous grief.
This almost theatrical outburst of pictorial power is the culmination of German Gothic painting on the eve of the triumph of line and logic in a Dürer who, rooted in the mysticism of medieval Germany, stretched out hands of longing to the humanism and art of the Italian Renaissance.
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Since I share a surname with Adam Kraft, I had to look him up.
http://www.google.com/search?q=adam+kraft&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=g-2sUdyFOcK2iwL7yIC4Cg&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=853&bih=585
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And here is Viet Stoss' altar. Seeing figures with beards makes me realize that Italian figures never have beards.
http://www.google.com/search?q=veit+stoss+altar&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ru6sUYvCNoLOiwKE-oDIDQ&ved=0CD8QsAQ&biw=853&bih=585
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Sorry I am late with posting. Have had breakdown with computer. Hope to have new post with you shortly . Trevor
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Durants' S o C
Vol. XI The REFORMATION
PGS 311- 313
Albrecht Dürer: 1471 - 1528
No other nation has so unanimously chosen one of its sons as its representative in art as Germany -- protestant and Catholic, North and South - has chosen Dürer. On April 6th, 1928 the four-hundredth anniversary of his death, the Reichstag in Berlin and the city council in Nuremberg put aside politics and dogmas to honour the artist whom Germany loves best. Meanwhile connoisseurs vainly offered $1,000,000 for a painting -- The Feast of the Rose Garlands -- for which Dürer himself received 110 guilders ($2,750?)
His Hungarian father was a goldsmith settled in Nuremberg. Albrecht was the third of eighteen children, most of whom died in infancy. In the parental studio the boy learned to draw with pencil, charcoal, and pen, and to engrave with burin; he taught himself to observe microscopically, and to represent objects and subjects in indefatigable detail, so that in some of his portraits almost every hair seems to have received its individual stroke of the brush. The father had hoped that his son would be another goldsmith, but he yielded to the youth’s desire to widen his art, and sent him as an apprentice to Wolgemut (1486 ) Albrecht developed slowly; his genius lay in ambition, perseverance, patience. “ God gave me industry,” he said, “so that I learned well, but I had to put up with a great deal of annoyance from his assistants.”
Attracted by Schongauer’s engravings he made his way to Colmar ( 1492) only to find the master was dead. He learned what he could from Schongauer’s brothers, then passed on to Basel, where he absorbed from Grünewald the secret of intensely religious art. His father urged him to come home and marry; a wife had been chosen for him in his absence. He returned to Nuremberg, and settled down to wedded life with Agnes Frey (1494). In 1500 he pictured himself, simply costumed, his face elongated between masses of hair falling to the shoulders, the penetrating eyes mystically intent; Dürer seems here to have deliberately presented himself in an imagined likeness of Christ, not in impious bravado, but presumably in his oft voiced opinion that a great artist is an inspired mouthpiece of God. Vanity was the prop of his industry.
He could not have been infatuated with his wife, for he set out for Italy shortly after his marriage, leaving her behind. He was anxious to see at first hand what it was that had given the Italians their excellence in painting and sculpture, in prose and poetry. When he came back to Nuremberg (1495) he had somehow received the stimulus that sparked the rapid productivity of his next ten years. In 1507 with a loan of a hundred florins he went again to Italy and this time stayed for a year and a half. He noted that artists had won a much higher social standing in Italy than in Germany. “Here,” he wrote “I am a fine gentleman, at home I am a parasite.” --i.e., “Unproductive of material goods.” In Italy he became accustomed to the nude in art, if only by studying classic statuary. He adopted with enthusiasm the Italian admiration for pagan art. With these two trips of Dürer to Italy the Gothic style came to an end in German painting, and the same generation that rejected Rome in religion accepted Italy in art.
Dürer himself remained in a creative but confusing tension between the middle ages and the Renaissance, between German mysticism and Italian worldliness and the joy of life that he had seen in Italy never quite overcame in his soul the medieval meditation on death. He illustrated with relish and humour the life and doings of country folk. He loved the Germans, painted their enormous heads and rubicund features without protest, and introduced them into the unlikeliest environments, always richly robed like prosperous burghers, and wrapped and muffled, even in Rome or Palestine, against the German cold. His drawings are an ethnography of Nuremberg. As Titian loved to portray the nobility and royalty, Dürer was most at home in the middle class, and his woodcut of the Emperor made him look like what Louis XII had called him -- the “burgomaster of Augsburg.” There is seldom refinement in his male portraits, no elegance, only force of character. He pointed out that an artist can draw or paint a beautiful picture of an ugly object or disagreeable subject. He was a Teuton, all industry, duty, fidelity; he left beauty and grace to the ladies, and concentrated on power.
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Thank you Joan for those links, the detail in those works is amazing. I thought as i read about Durer that today we would probably label these guys obssessive-compulsive, or something similiar. They were probably fortunate that that diagnosis wasn't available at the time and they were only considered eccentric artists. :)
I found the Durants' humor - or at least i found them humorous - coming through in these last few passages, and their great turn of a phrase........."we may find it hard to believe, but it is true .....that at the heart of the Italian Renaissance....German artists were in demand".....all over Europe for their skills. (present-day Germans might be insulted, but this was being written at the beginnings of Nazi Germany, right?) Or, "he could not have been infatuated with his wife........." :)
I also keep saying to myself "thank goodness i'm living in 20/21st century in the U.S. - "burned thru his cheeks" as punishment!?! I suppose some such hideous things are going on somewhere in the world and even in the U.S. but hopefully not by our government.
Thank you again Trevor for your diligent work in posting these selected passages.
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Here are some images for Durer. (I admit to loving the owl).
http://www.google.com/search?q=durer+pictures&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=tOG8UdLCFYnXygGSuoGYCg&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=853&bih=585
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Oh, me too Joan, also like the bunny. But my favorites are the female nudes - finally a body i can identify with!?! ;D
Jean
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Funny, I just ran across a book by Durer about two hours ago.
http://manybooks.net/titles/dureralbrecetext02admjv10.html
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Mabel ;D
And who knew he wrote a book.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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From Frybabe's link...............
From At Antwerp(April 11-May 17, 1521), about Martin Luther, page 43:)
And if we lose this man [Martin Luther], who has written more clearly than
anyone in a hundred and forty years, and to whom Thou hast
given such an evangelic spirit, we pray Thee, O Heavenly
Father, that Thou give again Thy spirit to another
He seems to appreciate Martin Luther.
Durant says that Durer was not superstitious, which would be a first step toward rejecting occultism.
Durer is a first rate artist. His botanical paintings are as near perfect as any I have seen. He seems to have been proficient at every thing he attempted.
I have not heard the word 'Teuton' used in reference to Germans in years. The dictionary says it is ancient Germanic people. Like Gaul, Celt, Viking, etc. its use has given way to different European states with their own language as an identifier.
Emily
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I remember when I read Undine, the translator mentioned that Durer and his allegorical painting, Knight, Death and the Devil, inspired the allegorical nature of the novel as well as allegorical writings of others.
http://www.adolphmenzel.org/painting-Albrecht%20Durer-Kinght,Death%20and%20Devil-42342.htm
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In 1513-14 Dürer reached his summit as a draftsman in three Master Engravings. The Knight, Death, and the Devil, is a powerful version of a sombre medieval theme: a stern-faced rider in full armour on a Verroc-chian steed, hemmed in by ugly figures of death and Satan, but moving forward resolutely to the triumph of virtue over all; it seems uncreditable that such plenitude and delicacy of detail could be cut into metal. St. Jerome, in His Study shows a quieter phase of the Christian victory: the old saint bent over his manuscript, wrighting apparently by the light of his halo, a lion and a dog lying peacefully on the floor, a scull sitting in silent eloquence on a window sill, and what looks for all the world like his wife’s hat hanging on the wall-- the whole room drawn in the most careful perspective, with all shadows and sun rays meticulously drawn. Finally the engraving that Dürer entitled Melancholia I reveals an angel seated amid the chaos of an unfinished building, with a medley of mechanical tools and scientific instruments at her feet; a purse and keys attached to her girdle as emblems of wealth and power; her head resting pensively on one hand, her eyes gazing half in wonder, half in terror, about her. Is she asking to what end all this labour, this building and demolition and building, this pursuit of wealth and power and the mirage called truth, this glory of science and Babel of intellect vainly fighting inevitable death? Can it be that Dürer, at the very outset of the modern age, understood the problem faced by triumphant science, of progressive means abused by unchanging ends?
So drawing by drawing, painting by painting, with an arduous industry and patience so different from Leonardo’s procrastination and Raphael’s ease, Dürer passed into the age of Luther. About 1508 he bought the house that made Nuremberg famous; the second World War destroyed it; the tourist trade rebuilt it as a copy of the original. Here for sixteen years Dürer lived in moderate misery with his childless wife. Agnes was a simple hausfrau who wondered why Albrecht spent so much time on unremunerative studies or with bibulous friends. He moved in circles beyond her mental reach, neglected her socially, travelled most often without her, and when he took her to the Netherlands, dined with celebrities or with his host, while leaving his wife to eat “ in the upper kitchen” with their maid. In 1504 his widowed mother joined Dürer’s household, she persisted ten years more; his portrait of her moves our sympathy for the wife-- who was not too charming herself. His friends considered Agnes a shrew incapable of sharing Dürer’s intellectual life.
In his later years the Nuremberg master enjoyed a European fame as the leader and glory of German art. In 1515 the emperor allotted a modest pension of a hundred florins a year. This was irregularly paid, for Maximilian’s income never caught up with his plans. On Max’s death the pension stopped, and Dürer decided to visit Netherlands and solicit its renewal from Charles V. He met Erasmus, Lucas van Leyden, Bernaert van Orley, and other Netherland worthies. In the mosquito swamps of Zeeland he contracted the malaria that ruined the health of his remaining years. At Antwerp ( May 1521) a rumour reached him that Luther had been “treacherously seized” on leaving the Diet of Worms. Dürer did not know that this abduction had been arranged to protect Luther; and fearing that the reformer had been killed, he wrote in his journal a passionate defence of the rebel, and appealed to Erasmus to come to the aid of the party.
“O Erasmus of Rotterdam, where wilt thou remain? Wilt thou see the injustice and blind tyranny of the powers now ruling? Hear me, knight of Christ, ride by the side of our Lord XS; old as thou art .... thou too mayst win the martyr’s crown .... make thy voice heard!... O Erasmus, may God thy Judge be glorified in thee!”
In 1526 he completed his greatest group of paintings -- THE FOUR APOSTLES -- improperly named since Mark the Evangelist was not one of the twelve; but perhaps that very error pointed to the Protestant idea of returning from the Church to the Gospels. The two panels are among the proudest possessions of that Haus der Kunst in which war wounded Munich has regathered her famous collection of art. One panel pictures John and Peter, the other Mark and Paul -- all four in gloriously coloured robes hardy befitting fishermen communist saints; in these vestments Dürer bowed to Italian idealization, while in the broad and massive heads he asserted his German environment.
In 1525 the municipal council of Nuremberg declared for the Reformation. Dürer presented the panels to the city, and affixed to each panel inscriptions strongly stressing the importance of the Gospels. Despite the keys in Peter’s hand -- usually taken as representing the divine establishment and powers of the Church -- these paintings could be interpreted as Dürer’s Protestant testament.
He missed supreme stature as an artist by sacrificing the greatest task of art in a lesser one: he was so charmed to see the passing shapes of persons, places, and things take lasting life under his hands that he absorbed himself chiefly in representing the real -- lovely or ugly, significant or meaningless -- and only occ- asionaly fused the scattered elements of sense perception to form in creative imagination, and then in line or colour, ideal beauties to give us goals to aim at, or revealing visions to offer understanding or peace. But he rose to the call of his time. His pen or pencil, burin or brush evoked the hidden souls of the forceful men who trod the stage of the age; he made the epoch live for us, across four centuries, in all its enthusiasms, devotions, fears, superstitions, protests, dreams, and wonderment. He was Germany.
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Durant's usual way with words: "Here for sixteen years Dürer lived in moderate misery with his childless wife." Sigh
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Here is the Knight, Death and the Devil. The picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/a/d%C3%BCrer_knight,_death_and_devil.aspx
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And here are th Four Apostles.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artway.eu/userfiles/Durer%2520Four%2520Apostles%25201526.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artway.eu/content.asp?id%3D1038%26lang%3Den%26action%3Dshow&h=1200&w=936&sz=257&tbnid=ZHKkN2NOjqksoM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=70&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddurer%2Bthe%2Bfour%2Bapostles%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=durer+the+four+apostles&usg=__KdqQ962Ya6_n1tAl7j318T_Kimg=&docid=XiS2o-v8Sw5JdM&sa=X&ei=henEUYihHaHOiwLnoIGwCA&ved=0CDIQ9QEwAQ&dur=6869
I admit, I find this easier to look at than The Knight, which is so cluttered, as Durant says.
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He missed supreme stature as an artist by sacrificing the greatest task of art in a lesser one: he was so charmed to see the passing shapes of persons, places, and things take lasting life under his hands that he absorbed himself chiefly in representing the real -- lovely or ugly, significant or meaningless --
So Durer represented life as it was, and without a true representation, we would have no record to see life as it was lived over 500 years ago.
The world can be ugly, and rather than being meaningless it is truth without propaganda and air brushing. Speaking of air brushing and touch ups which is what we get now in photography for advertisements and making ordinary people look glamorous, the following is a true story.
After the death of the Duchess of Windsor, a photographer published a photograph he had made of the Duke and Duchess some time earlier. He had two photographs on facing pages. On the first page was his original as they actually looked. They looked their age (past sixty) they had wrinkles, sagging jowls, puffy eyes, and wrinkled and gnarley hands.
On the opposing page they looked like they did when they married. This was the photograph they allowed to be released for some event. There was not a wrinkle in sight, no sagging jowls, and hands like a young adult. (of course we know that neither of these two had ever worked a day in their life), but a persons hands tell the story of ageing.
A young medical student said that his first day of dissection he was worried about the face, but it was a persons hands that affected him most as that alone told more about them than their faces, and somehow made them not just a cavader, but a real human being who had lived and worked.
If we cover up the world as it is and are only provided with a fake, air brushed scene, or the people who lived within the scene, we are presenting propaganda and denying any form of truth or reality.
I live in the real world, but media today is smoke and mirrors, fakery and propaganda.
Emily
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 320 - 323
THE GERMAN HUMANISTS
It was a lusty Germany in letters as well as in life and art. Literacy was spreading. Books were pouring forth from sixteen publishers in Basel, twenty in Augsburg, twenty-one in Cologne, twenty-four Nuremberg; there Anton Koberger alone employed twenty-four presses and a hundred men. The trade in books was a major line in the busy commerce of the fairs at Frankfurt, Salzburg, Norlingen, and Ulm. “Everybody nowadays wants to read and write,” said a contemporary German; and another reported: “There is no end to the new books that are written.” Schools multiplied in the towns; every city provided bursaries or scholarships for poor but able students; nine new universities were founded in this half-century; and those at Vienna, Heidelberg, and Erfurt opened their doors to the New Learning. Rich burghers like Peutinger and Pirkheimer, and the Emperor Maximilian himself, opened their libraries, art collections, and purses to eager scholars. The Church in Germany, following the lead of the popes, welcomed the Renaissance, but emphasized linguistic studies of Biblical and patristic texts. The Latin Vulgate Bible was printed in twenty-six editions in Germany between 1453 and 1500. There were twenty German translations of the Bible before Luther’s; the spread of the New Testament among the people prepared them for Luther’s challenging contrast between the Gospels and the Church; and the reading of the Old Testament shared in the Protestant re-Judaizing of Christianity.
The humanist movement in Germany was at first -- and after its flirtation with Luther -- more orthodox in theology than its Italian counterpart. Germany had no classical past like Italy‘s; she had not had the privilege of being conquered and educated by Imperial Rome; she had no direct bond with non-Christian antiquity. Her memory hardly went beyond her Christian centuries; Her scholarship in this age, hardly ventured beyond the Christian Fathers; her Renaissance was a revival of early Christianity rather than of classical letters and philosophy. In Germany the Renaissance was engulfed in the Reformation.
Nevertheless German humanism took its lead from Italy. Humanists, visiting Germany, brought the seed; German students, pilgrims, ecclesiastics, merchants, and diplomats, visiting Italy, came back bearing on them, even unwittingly, the pollen of the Renaissance. Rodolphus Agricola, son of a Dutch parish priest, received plentiful schooling at Erfurt, Cologne, and Louvain; gave seven years to further studies of Latin and Greek in Italy; and returned to teach at Groningen, Heidelberg, and Worms. The age marvelled at his unpopular virtues -- modesty, simplicity, honesty, piety, chastity. He wrote in Latin almost worthy of Cicero, he predicted that Germany would soon appear no less Latin than Latinum; and indeed Agricola’s Holland produced in Erasmus a Latinist who would have been quite at home in the Rome of Tacitus and Quintilian. It was on a trip to Rome that Agricola contracted the fever from which he died at Heidelberg at the age of forty-two ( 1465)
He was rivalled in influence -- hardly in amiability -- by Jacob Wimpheling whose temper was as harsh as his Latin was smooth. Resolved to lift Germany to Italy’s level in education and letters, this ”Schoolmaster of Germany” drew up plans for a system of public schools, established learned societies, and foresaw how dangerous intellectual advance would be without moral development. “What profits all our learning,” he asked, “if our characters be not correspondingly noble, all our industry without piety, or all our knowledge without love of our neighbour, or all our wisdom without humility?”
The last of these orthodox humanists was Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, who nevertheless wrote in 1496; “The days of building monasteries are past; the days of their destruction are coming.” A less devout humanist, Celtes, described Trithemius as “ Abstemious in drink, disdaining animal food, living on vegetables, eggs, and milk, as did our ancestors when ... no doctors had begun to brew their gout-and-fever-breeding concoctions.” In his brief life he became a very summa of learning . The common people of the time could only explain his attainments on the theory that he possessed secret supernatural powers. However he died at fifty-four ( 1516 ).
Conradus Celtes was the most zealous and effective of the German humanists. Wherever he went he gathered students about him, and inspired them with his passion for poetry, classical literature, and German Antiquities. In 1447 the Emperor Frederick III crowned him poet laureate of Germany. At Mainz, Celtes founded 1491 the influential Rhenish Literary Society, which included scientists, theologians, philosophers, physicians, historians, poets, lawyers, and scholars. In the course of his studies Celtes apparently lost his religious faith, for he raised such questions as “ Will the soul live after death?” and “Is there, really, a God?” In his travels he took many samples of femininity, but none to the altar.
This sceptical amoralism grew in fashion among German humanists in the final decades before Luther. Eoban Hesse wrote in good Latin imitating Ovid even more in scandal than in form; he included love letters from Magdalen to Jesus, and from Virgin Mary to God the Father. To suit deed to word, he lived as loosely as Cellini, outdrank all rivals, and thought nothing of emptying a bucket of ale at one draught. Conradus Mutianus Rufus, however, achieved an amiable reconciliation of scepticism with religion. He taught his students to “esteem the decrees of philosophers above those of priests;” but, he warned them, they must conceal their doubts of Christian dogma from the multitude by a gentlemanly adherence to ecclesiastical ceremonies and forms. "By faith,” he said, “we mean not the conformity of what we say with fact, but an opinion about divine things founded upon credulity and profit seeking persuasion. He objected to Masses for the dead as useless. To fasts as unpleasant, and to auricular confession as embarrassing. The Bible, he thought, contains many fables; probably Christ had not died on the cross; the Greeks and the Romans, so far as they lived honourably, were Christians without knowing it, and doubtless went to paradise. Creeds and ceremonies are to be judged not on their literal claims but by their moral effects; if they promote social order and private virtue they should be accepted without public questioning. He demanded a clean life from his disciples. Having lived with all the consolations of philosophy, he died with all the blessings of the Church.
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I've never heard of any of these men. How fickle is fame.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 323 - 325
The German Humanists (cont)
The natural resentment aroused among the orthodox by the scepticism of the later humanists fell in accumulation upon the mildest and kindliest scholar of the time. Johannes Reuchlin observed the medieval tradition of gathering education from a dozen centres through the ubiquity of Latin as the language of instruction in Western Europe. Gradually his admiration for Hebrew eclipsed his devotion to the classics. The Hebrew language,” he wrote, “is unadulterated, concise, and brief. It is the language in which God spoke to man, and in which man conversed with the angels face to face.” Through all his studies he retained the orthodox faith.
A strange medley of circumstances made him the hero of the German Renaissance. In 1508 Johannes Pfefferkorn, a rabbi turned priest, issued a book, “Judenspiegel” (Mirror of the Jews) condemning persecution of the Jews, and clearing them from legendary crimes popularly laid to their charge, but urging them to give up moneylending and the Talmud, and accept Christianity. Supported by the Dominicans of Cologne, he submitted to the Emperor, a recommendation that all Hebrew books except the Old Testament should be suppressed. Maximilian ordered that all Jewish literature critical of Christianity should be surrendered to Pfefferkorn, and that it should be examined by the Universities. All but Reuchlin advised that the books should be burned. Reuchlin's minority opinion proved a landmark in the history of religious toleration. He divided Jewish books into seven classes, one group, consisting of works expressly mocking Christianity, should be burned. All the rest, including the Talmud, should be preserved, if only because they contained much of value to Christian scholarship. Moreover he argued, the Jews had a right to freedom of conscience, both as citizens of the Empire and having undertaking no obligations to Christianity. In private correspondence Reuchlin spoke of Pfefferkorn as an “ass” who had no real understanding of the books he proposed to destroy.
Pfefferkorn responded to these courtesies in a Handspiegel that attacked Reuchlin as a bribed tool of the Jews. Reuchlin responded in the same vituperative vein in an Augenspiegel that aroused a storm among the orthodox. The theological faculty at Cologne complained to Reuchlin that his book was making the Jews too happy, and they urged him to withdraw it from circulation. Reuchlin appealed to Leo X; the Pope turned the matter over to various councillors, who reported the book was harmless. Leo suspended action, but assured the humanists around him that no harm should come to Reuchlin. Meanwhile Pfefferkorn and his Dominican supporters accused Reuchlin, before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Cologne, as an unbeliever and a traitor to Christianity. The matter was remitted to Rome, which passed it on to the Episcopal court at Speyer, which acquitted Reuchlin. The Dominicans in their turn appealed to Rome; and the university faculties at Cologne, Erfurt, Mainz, Louvain, and Paris ordered that Reuchlin’s books be burned.
It is remarkable -- and eloquent of Germany’s cultural vitality in this age -- how many nobles now came to Reuchlin’s defence; Erasmus, Pirkheimer, Peutinger, and many others, even some of the higher clergy who, as in Italy, favoured the humanists. Letters from his defenders were collected and published (1514) as “Clarorum virorum epistolae ad Johannem Reuchlin.” In 1515 the humanists sent forth a more devastating book, “Epistolae obscurorum virorum ad venerabilem virum magistrum Ortuinum Gratium.” This is one of the major satires in literary history. The authors pretended to be pious monks, admirers of Gratius, and enemies of Reuchlin, and concealed themselves under grotesque pseudonyms. In Latin made deliberately bad to imitate the monastic style, the writers complained of the ridicule heaped upon them by the “poets” ( as the German humanists were called); they inquired eagerly about the prosecution of Reuchlin; meanwhile they exposed absurd ignorance, the grossness of their morals and their minds; they argued ridiculous questions in solemn Scholastic form , quoted Scripture in extenuation of obscenities , and unwittingly made fun of auricular confession, the sale of indulgences , the worship of relics, the authority of the pope-- the very themes of the reformation. All literate Germany puzzled over the authorship of the volumes; only later was it admitted that Crotus Rubianus of Erfurt , a disciple of Mutianus, had written most of the first edition, and Hutten most of the continuation. Roused to anger, Leo X forbade the reading or possession of the book, condemned Reuchlin, but let him off with the costs of the Speyer trial (1520) Reuchlin, sixty-five and exhausted, retired into obscurity, peacefully lost in the glare of the reform.
The German humanist movement too disappeared in that conflagration. On one side it was fought by most of the universities; on the other, the Reformers, engaged in a struggle for life, strengthened their cause with a religious faith that centred on personal salvation in the other world, and left little time for studies of classical civilization, or of human amelioration here below. The German humanists themselves invited defeat by failing to advance from Greek literature to Greek philosophy, by wandering into coarse polemics or a mysticism far less mature than Eckhart’s. They left no major works. And yet who knows if Luther would have dared sling his David’s shots at Tetzel and the popes if the mind of Germany had not been in some measure freed from ultramontane terrors by the humanists?
The followers of Reuchlin were a vigorous minority at Erfurt, where Luther studied for four years. And the greatest German poet of the age, nurtured in humanism, became the ardent herald of the Reformation.
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"The Hebrew language,” he wrote, “is unadulterated, concise, and brief.""
I join Reuchlin in his admiration of the Hebrew language. I struggled to learn it the three years I lived in Israel and later, after I returned set myself the task of reading the Torah in Hebrew (I got about two thirds through).
I had always thought that the music in the King James version of the Bible came from the English of the time (Shakespeare's time, and indeed it sometimes sounds like Shakespeare). But it doesn't -- it's in the Hebrew.
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http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/refo/hd_refo.htm
look at the top
the art
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Joan, i too enjoyed Durant's descriptions of Durer's wife and mother :)
And i also never heard of the German humanists, but then we didn't touch much on German history in public school or college. Was that because of WWII and our anger at the Nazis, spreading that feeling to all Germans - evil, inhumane?
What volume # is this and when was it published? He mentions Durer's house being rebuilt after WWII. I was thinking that most of the books were written in the 30's, guess i was wrong.
Hi Bluebird. Welcome! Are you new to our discussion, or did i just miss/forget you being here before. A senior moment if i did, sorry.
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HI, BLUEBIRD. Good to see you again.
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Duirants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 328 - 333.
THE GERMAN CHURCH
What actually was the condition of the German Church in the youth of Luther? One indication appeared in the readiness of high ecclesiastics to accept the criticism and critics of the Church. There were some scattered atheists whose names are lost in the censorship of time; and Erasmus mentions “men among us who think, like Epicurus, that the soul dies with the body. Wessel Gransfort, wrongly known as Johann Wessel questioned confession, absolution , indulgences, and purgatory, made the bible the sole rule of faith, and made faith the sole source of salvation; here was Luther in a sentence. “If I had read his works before ,” said Luther in 1522, “my enemies might have thought that Luther had borrowed everything from Wessel, so great is the agreement between our spirits.”
Never-the-less, by and large, religion was flourishing in Germany, and the overwhelming majority of the people were orthodox-- and between their sins and cups -- pious. There must have been faithful ministers of the faith to produce or sustain such widespread piety among the people. The parish priest, as like as not, had a concubine or common-law-wife; but the lion-loined Germans seem to have condoned this as an improvement upon promiscuity; and had not the popes themselves in this lusty period, rebelled against celibacy? The Benedictines had settled into a half-worldly ease, and the Teutonic Knights continued their loose morals, marital cruelties, and territorial greed; but the Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian friars returned to the observance of their rules, and performed many works of practical benevolence. They kept with apparent fidelity their monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and were learned enough to fill many chairs in German universities. It was this order that Luther chose when he decided to become a monk.
The complaints against the German clergy were chiefly against the prelates, and on the score of their wealth and worldliness. A learned Catholic prelate and historian, Johannes Janssen has summed up perhaps too severely the abuses of the German Church on the eve of the Reformation: “ the contrast of pious love and worldly greed, of godly renunciation and godless self-seeking, made itself apparent in the ranks of the clergy as well as in other classes of society. Avarice, the besetting sin of the age, showed itself among the clergy of all orders and degrees, in their anxiety to increase to the utmost extent all clerical rents and incomes, taxes, and perquisites. The German church was the richest in Christendom. For the sake of amassing money, new indulgences have daily been published , and war tithes imposed, without consulting the German prelates. The Germans have been treated as if they were rich and stupid barbarians, and drained of their money by a thousand cunning devices. But now Germany’s nobles have awakened as from sleep; now they have resolved to shake of the yoke, and win back their ancient freedom.”
When Cardinal Piccolomini became Pius II (1458) he defied this challenge. From Diether von Isenburg he demanded 20,500 guilders before confirming him as the next archbishop of Mainz (1459). Diether refused to pay, charging the sum exceeded every precedent. Pius excommunicated him; Diether ignored the ban, and several German princes supported him. Diether engaged a Nuremberg jurist, Gregor Heimburg, to arouse public sentiment for giving councils supremacy over the popes. Papal agents detached from the movement one after another of Diether’s allies, and Pius appointed Adolf of Nassau to replace him. The armies of the two archbishops fought a bloody war; Diether was defeated; he addressed to the German leaders a warning that unless they stood together they would be repeatedly oppressed; and this manifesto was one of the first documents printed by Gutenberg.
The Emperor Maximillian grumbled that the pope drew a hundred times more money from Germany than he himself could collect. In 1510, being at war with pope Julius II he directed the humanist Wimphling to draw up a list of Germany’s grievances against the papacy. A basic diversity of material interests finally opposed the German Reformation -- demanding an end to the flow of German money into Italy-- to an Italian Renaissance that financed poetry and art with transalpine gold.
Among the people anticlericalism went hand in hand with piety. “ a revolutionary spirit of hatred for the Church and clergy,” writes the honest Pastor, “had taken hold of the masses in various parts of Germany, the cry of Death to the priests, “ which had long been whispered in secret was now the watchword of the day.”
A thousand factors and influences -- ecclesiastical, intellectual, emotional, economic, political, moral -- were coming together, after centuries of obstruction and suppression, in a whirlwind that would throw Europe into the greatest upheaval since the barbarian conquest of Rome. The weakening of the papacy by the Avignon exile and the papal schism; the breakdown of monastic discipline and clerical celibacy; the luxury of the prelates, the corruption of the Curia, the worldly activities of the popes; the morals of Alexander VI, the wars of Julius II, the careless gaiety of Leo X; the relic-mongering and peddling of indulgences ; the triumph of Islam over Christianity in the Crusades and the Turkish wars; the spreading acquaintance with non-Christian faiths; the influx of Arabic science and philosophy; the collapse of Scholasticism in the irrationalism of Scotus and the skepticism of Ockham; the failure of the conciliar movement to effect reform; the discovery of pagan antiquity and of America; the invention of printing; the extension of literacy and education; the translation and reading of the Bible; the newly realized contrast between the poverty and simplicity of the Apostles and the ceremonious opulence of the Church; the rising wealth and economic independence of Germany and England; the growth of a middle class resentful of ecclesiastical restrictions and claims; the protests against the flow of money to Rome; the secularization of law and government; the intensification of nationalism and the strengthening of monarchies; the nationalistic influence of vernacular languages and literatures; the fermenting legacies of the Waldenses, Wyclif and Huss; the mystic demand for a less ritualistic, more personal and inward and direct religion; all these were now uniting in a torrent of forces that would crack the crust of medieval custom, loosen all standards and bonds, shatter Europe into nations and sects, sweep away more and more of the supports and comforts of traditional beliefs, and perhaps mark the beginning of the end for dominance of Christianity in the mental life of European man.
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Hi Mabel! No I'm not new:)
Hi JoanK good to see you too!
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"an Italian Renaissance that financed poetry and art with transalpine gold."
That's interesting. I never questioned where all the money in the Renaissaince came from.
Do those priests sound like some modern televangelists?
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While at the library I picked up our current book, The Reformation which was published in 1957. We owe Trevor a large debt for giving us excerpts from this heavy book. I did not realize how heavy until I toted it home.
This is the sixth book in Durant's SOC, which means we are half finished with the series of eleven books. The SOC was published from 1935 to 1975 over forty years of labor, a tribute to Will Durant.
My introduction to Durant was in high school with his 'Story of Philosophy', which was published in 1926.
I looked to see how many pages there are in 'The Reformation' and there are 940 pages. At the end Durant writes........
Courage, reader: We near the end.
Of course pages of Bibliographical guides, notes, and index follow.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
pgs 337 - 341
The Reformation in Germany
1517 - 1524.
On March 15, 1517, Pope Leo X promulgated the most famous of all indulgences. It was a pity, yet just, that the Reformation should strike during a pontificate that gathered in Rome so many of the fruits, and so much of the spirit, of the Renaissance. Leo, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was now head of the Medici family, which had nourished the Renaissance in Florence; he was a scholar, a poet, and a gentleman, kindly and generous. His morals were good in an immoral milieu; his nature inclined to a gaiety pleasant and legitimate, which set an example of happiness for a city that a century before had been destitute and desolate. All his faults were superficial except his superficiality.
The son of a banker, Leo was accustomed to spending money readily, and chiefly on others. He inherited full papal coffers from Julius II, and emptied them all before he died. Possibly, with some reluctance he offered the indulgence of 1517 to all who would contribute to the cost of completing the new St. Peter’s. Where kings were powerful, Leo was considerate. He agreed that Henry VIII should keep a fourth of the proceeds in England; he advanced a loan of 175,000 ducats to King Charles I against expected collections in Spain; and Francis I was to retain part of the sum raised in France. Germany received less favoured treatment, having no strong monarchy to bargain with the pope. However, the Emperor Maximilian was allotted a modest 3,000 florins from the receipts, and the Fuggers were to take from the collection 20,000 they had loaned to Albrecht of Brandenburg, while Leo agreed that Albrecht should manage the distribution of the indulgence (and receive the collected funds) in Magdeburg and Halberstadt as well as in Mainz.
Albrecht’s principle agent in these events was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who had acquired skill and reputation as a money-raiser. Since 1500 his main occupation had been in disposing of indulgences. Usually, on these missions he received the aid of the local clergy: when he entered a town a procession of priests, magistrates, and pious laity welcomed him with banners, candles, and song, and bore the bull of indulgence aloft on a velvet or golden cushion, while church bells pealed and organs played. So propped Tetzel offered, in an impressive formula, a plenary indulgence to those who would penitently confess their sins and contribute according to their means to the building of the new St. Peter’s:
“ May our lord Jesus Christ have mercy on thee, and absolve thee by the merits of His most holy Passion. And I, by His authority, that of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the most holy Pope, granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee, first from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they may have been incurred, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, how enormous soever they may be, even from such as are reserved for the recognizance of the Holy See; and as far as the keys of the Holy Church extend, I remit to you all punishment which you deserve in purgatory on their account, and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the Church...... and to that innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism; so that when you die the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight shall be opened....... In the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
Myconius, a Franciscan friar perhaps hostile to the Dominicans, heard Tetzel perform and reported, for this year 1517: “It is incredible what this ignorant monk said and preached. He gave sealed letters stating that even the sins which a man was intending to commit would be forgiven. The pope, he said, had more power than all the Apostles, all the angels and saints, more even than the Virgin Mary herself; for these were all subject to Christ, but the pope was equal to Christ.” This is probably an exaggeration but that such a description could be given by an eyewitness suggests the antipathy that Tetzel aroused. A like hostility appears in the rumour mentioned sceptically by Luther, which quoted Tetzel as having said at Halle that even if,‘per impossible,’ a man had violated the Mother of God the indulgence would wipe away his sin.
Tetzel would have escaped history had he not approached too closely to the lands of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. He, not wishing the coin of Saxony to emigrate, forbade the preaching of the 1517 indulgence in his territory. But Tetzel came so close to the boarders of Saxony that people crossed the border to obtain the indulgence. Several purchasers brought these “ papal letters “ to Martin Luther, professor of theology, and asked him to attest their efficacy. He refused. The refusal came to Tetzel’s ears; he denounced Luther, and became immortal.
Tetzel had underestimated the pugnacity of the professor. Luther quickly composed in Latin ninety-five theses, which he entitled ‘Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum’ (Disputation for Clarification of the Power of Indulgences ) He did not consider his propositions heretical, nor were they induitably so. He was still a fervent Catholic who had no thought of upsetting the Church; his purpose was to refute the extravagant claims made for indulgences, and to correct the abuses that had developed in their distribution. He felt that the facile issuance and mercenary dissemination of indulgences had weakened the contribution that sin should arouse, had indeed made sin a trivial matter to be amicably adjusted over a bargain counter with a peddler of pardons.
He did not yet deny the papal “Power of the keys” to forgive sins; he He conceded the authority of the pope to absolve the confessing penitent from the terestrial penalties imposed by churchmen; but in Luther’s view the power of the pope to free souls from purgatory depended on the intercessory influence of papal prayers, which might or might not be heard. He exonerated the popes from responsibility for the excesses of the preachers, but slyly asked “why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of Holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there, if he so readily redeems a number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church?”
At noon on October 31, 1517, Luther affixed his theses to the main door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg. To make sure that the theses would be widely understood, Luther had a German translation circulated among the people. He sent a copy of the theses to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz.
Courteously, piously, unwittingly, the Reformation had begun.
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Pope Leo..........
All his faults were superficial except his superficiality.
The son of a banker, Leo was accustomed to spending money readily, and chiefly on others. He inherited full papal coffers from Julius II, and emptied them all before he died.
There is nothing worse in my opinion than a superficial parasite, and that was the Leo. To have the gall to even consider himself for the position of Pope (as I have read the requirements and responsibilities of that office), showed just how superficial he was. Parasites are not concerned with anything other than latching on to the next victim or victims. They see themselves as entitled.
Leo the parasite.
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Luther came along at just the right time. If he hadn't set the match to the tinder, someone else would have.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 341 - 343
THE GENESIS OF LUTHER
What circumstances of heredity and environment had molded an obscure monk, in a town of three thousand souls, into the David of the religious revolution ?
His father Hans was a stern, rugged, irascible anticlerical; his mother was a timid, modest, woman much given to prayer; both were frugal and industrious. Hans was a peasant at Möhra, then a miner at Mansfeld; but Martin was born at Eisleben on November 10, 1483. Six other children followed. Hans and Grethe believed in the rod as a magic wand for producing righteousness; once, says Martin, his father beat him so assiduously that for a long time they open enemies; on another occasion, for stealing a nut, his mother thrashed him till the blood flowed; Martin later thought “the severe and harsh life I led with them was the reason that I afterward took refuge in the cloister and became a monk”. The picture of deity which his parents transmitted to him reflected their own mood: a hard father and strict judge, exacting a joyless virtue, demanding constant propitiation, and finally damning most of mankind to everlasting hell. Both parents believed in witches, elves, angels, and demons of many kinds and specialities; and Martin carried most of these superstitions with him to the end. A religion of terror in a home of rigorous discipline shared in forming Luther’s youth and creed.
At school in Mansfeld there were more rods and much catechism; Martin was flogged fifteen times in one day for misdeclining a noun. At fourteen he was transferred to the school of St. George at Eisenach, and had three relatively happy years lodging in the comfortable home of Frau Cotta. Luther never forgot her remark that there was nothing on earth more precious to a man than the love of a good woman. It was a boon that he took forty-two years to win. In this healthier atmosphere he developed the natural charm of youth -- healthy, cheerful, sociable, frank. He sang well, and played the lute.
In 1501 his prospering father sent him to the university at Erfurt. The curriculum centred around theology and philosophy, which was still Scholastic; but Ockham's nominalism had triumphed there, and presumably Luther noted Ockham’s doctrine that popes and councils could err. He found Scholasticism in any form so disagreeable that he complimented a friend on “not having to learn the dung that was offered” as philosophy. There were some mild humanists at Erfurt; he was slightly influenced by them; they did not care for him when they found him in earnest about the other world. He learned a little Greek and less Hebrew, but he read the major Latin Classics. In 1505 he received the degree of master of arts. His proud father rejoiced when he entered upon the study of law. Suddenly, after two months of such study, and to his father’s dismay, the youth of twenty-two decided to become a monk.
The decision expressed the contradiction in his character. Vigorous to the point of sensuality, visibly framed for a life of normal instincts, and yet infused by home and school with the conviction that man remains by nature sinful, and that sin is an offense against an omnipotent and punishing God, he had never in thought or conduct reconciled his natural impulses with his acquired beliefs. Passing presumably through the usual erotic experiments and fantasies of adolescence, he could not take these as stages of development, but viewed them as the operations of a Satan dedicated to snaring souls into irrevocable damnation. The conception of God that had been given him contained hardly any element of tenderness; the consoling figure of Mary had little place in the theology of fear, and Jesus was not the loving son who could refuse nothing to His mother; He was the Jesus of the Last Judgment so often pictured in the Churches, the Christ who had threatened sinners with everlasting fire. One day he was returning from his father’s house to Erfurt when he encounted a frightful storm. Lightning flashed about him and struck a near-by tree. It seemed to Luther a warning from God that unless he gave his thoughts to salvation, death would surprise him unshriven and damned. Where could he live a life of saving devotion? Only where four walls would exclude, or ascetic discipline would overcome, the world, the flesh, and the devil: only in a monastery. He made a vow to St. Anne that if he survived that storm he would become a monk.
There were twenty cloisters in Erfurt. He chose one known for faithful observance of monastic rules -- that of the Augustinian Eremites. In September 1506, he took the irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and in May 1507 he was ordained a priest.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 343 - 348
LUTHER (cont.)
Luther’s fellow friars gave him friendly council. One assured him that the passion of Christ had atoned for the sinful nature of man, and had opened to redeemed man the gates of paradise. Luther’s reading of the German mystics, gave him hope of bridging the awful gap between a naturally sinful soul and a righteous, omnipotent God. Then a treatise by John Huss fell into his hands, and doctrinal doubts were added to his spiritual turmoil; he wondered why “ a man could write so Christianly and so powerfully yet had been burned.” He shut the book and turned away with a wounded heart.
One day in 1508 or 1509 he was struck by a sentence in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans ( 1:17) “ They shall live by faith.” These words led him to the doctrine that man can be “justified” i.e. made just and therefore saved from hell -- not by good works -- but only by complete faith in Christ and his atonement for mankind. In Augustine Luther found another idea that perhaps renewed his terror -- predestination -- that God, even before the creation had forever destined some souls to salvation, the rest to hell, and that the elect had been chosen by God’s free will to be saved by the divine sacrifice of Christ. From that consistent absurdity he fled back again to his basic hope of salvation by faith.
Slowly, during the years (1512-17), his religious ideas moved away from the official doctrines of the Church. In 1515 he ascribed the corruption of the world to the clergy, who delivered to the people too many maxims and fables of human invention, and not the Scriptural world of God. He blamed the preachers of indulgences for taking advantage of the simplicity of the poor. In private correspondence he began to identify the Antichrist of John’s First Epistle with the pope. Three months later the reckless friar challenged the world to debate the ninety-five theses that he had posted on Wittenberg Church.
The theses became the talk of literate Germany. Thousands had waited for such a protest, and the pent-up anticlericalism of generations thrilled at having found a voice. The sale of indulgences declined. But many champions rose to meet the challenge. Tetzel himself, with some professional help, replied in “One Hundred and Six Anti-Theses” (Dec 1517). He made no concessions or apologies, but “ gave at times an uncompromising, even dogmatic, sanction to mere theological opinions that were hardly consonant with the most accurate scholarship”. Luther answered Tetzel in “ A Sermon on Indulgences and Grace,” concluding with a characteristic defiance. “If I am called a heretic by those whose purses will suffer from my truths, I care not much for their brawling, for only those whose dark understanding has never known the Bible.” Johann Eck issued a pamphlet which charged Luther with disseminating “Bohemian poison” ( The heresies of Huss). Luther countered in a Latin brochure (April 1518). The text spoke quite handsomely of Pope Leo X:
“Most blessed Father, I offer myself prostrate at the feet of your Holiness, with all that I am and have. Quicken, slay, call, recall, approve, reprove, as may seem to you good. I will acknowledge your voice as the voice of Christ, residing and speaking in you. If I have deserved death I will not refuse to die.”
However, as Leo’s advisors noted Luther’s publications affirmed the superiority of an ecumenical council to the pope, spoke slightingly of relics and pilgrimages, denied the surplus merits of the saints and rejected all additions made by the popes in the last three centuries to the theory and practise of indulgences. As these were the prime source of papal revenue, Leo was at his wits’ end to finance his amusements and wars, as well as the administration of the Church. The harassed Pontiff, who had at first brushed the dispute aside, now took the matter in hand, and summoned Luther to Rome.
Luther faced a critical decision. He might in Rome find himself politely silenced and buried in a monastry, to be soon forgotten by those who now supported him. He wrote to the Elector Frederick, suggesting that German princes should protect their citizens from compulsory extradition to Italy. The Elector agreed. He had a high regard for Luther who had made the university of Wittenberg prosper; and besides, Emperor Max, seeing in Luther a possible card to play in diplomatic contests with Rome, advised the Elector to “take good care of that monk.”
Leo was disposed to lenience. Indeed , a protestant historian has ascribed the triumph of the Reformation to the moderation and goodwill of Leo X. He instructed his legate to offer Luther full pardon, and future digities, if he would recant and submit. Armed with an imperial safe-conduct, Luther met Archbishop Cajetan at Augsburg. The Cardinal was a man of great theological learning and exemplary life, but he misread his function to be that of judge, not diplomat. As he saw the matter, it was primarily a question of ecclesiastical discipline and order: should a monk be allowed to criticize publicly his superiors to whom he had vowed obedience. Refusing to discuss the right or wrong of Luther’s statements, he demanded a retraction and a pledge never again to disturb the peace of the Church.
Each lost patience with the other. Luther returned impenitent to Wittenberg, and wrote a spirited account of the meeting, and added “I send you my trifling work that you may see whether I am not right in supposing that , according to Paul, the real Anti-christ holds sway over the Roman court. I think he is worse than any Turk.” In a milder letter to Duke George he asked that “ a common ’reformation’ should be undertaken of the spiritual and temporal estates”.
This was his first known use of the word that was to give his rebellion its historic name.
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My god, it's a wonder anybody survived with any semblance of mental stability in those days between the frightening concepts of religion and the beatings for any small secular or theological infraction. I didn't know a lot of this bio of Luther, thanks for posting this.
Ahhh, predestination, shades of my maternal Scottish ancestors who came to the colonies in 1730s to found 3 Presbyterian churches in south central Pennsylvania................very religious descendants right up to my Mother's generation............some how that gene didn't get passed on to me. :D
I understand the psychology of "you must be good to prove that you are one of the people who has been chosen to go to heaven." But, I think the flip side of that could be very appealing to some - "if I'm not one of the chosen, I might as well have as good a time as I wish, it makes no difference."
Where did these people grab on to such theories, it just is amazing the diversity of religious concepts that have continued for centuries if not eons.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 371 - 377
LUTHER’S THEOLOGY
Though his theology was founded with trusting literalness on the Scriptures, his interpretation unconsciously retained late medieval traditions. His nationalism made him a modern, his theology belonged to the Age of Faith. His rebellion was far more against Catholic organisation and ritual than against Catholic doctrine; most of this remained with him to the end. Even in his rebellion he followed Wyclif and Huss rather than any new scheme: like theirs his revolt lay in rejecting the papacy, the councils, the hierarchy, and any other guide to faith than the Bible; like them he called the pope Antichrist; and like them he found protection in the state. The line from Wyclif to Huss to Luther is the main thread of religious development from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Theologically the line was anchored on Augustine’s notions of predestination and grace, which in turn were rooted in the Epistles of Paul, who had never known Christ. Nearly all the pagan elements in Christianity fell away as Protestantism took form; the Judaic contribution triumphed over the Greek; the prophets won against the Aristotle of the Scholastics and the Plato of the humanists; Paul, in the line of the Prophets rather than that of the Apostles -- transformed Jesus into an atonement for Adam, the Old Testament overshadowed the new; Yahweh darkened the face of Christ.
Luther’s conception of God was Judaic. Basic in him was the old picture of God the avenger, and therefore of Christ as the Final Judge. He believed, without recorded protest that God had drowned nearly all mankind in a flood, had set fire to Sodom, and had destroyed lands, peoples, and empires, with a breath of His wrath and a wave of his hand. Luther reckoned “that few are saved, infinitely many are damned.” The mitigating myth of Mary as intercessor dropped out of the story, and left the Last Judgement in all its stark terror for naturally sinful man. Meanwhile God had appointed wild beasts, vermin, and wicked women to punish men for their sins. He accepted magic and witchcraft as realities and thought it a simple Christian duty to burn witches at the stake. Most of these ideas were shared by his contemporaries, Catholic or Protestant. The belief in the power and ubiquity of devils attained in the sixteenth century an intensity not recorded in any other age; and his preoccupation with Satan bedevilled much of Protestant theology.
He took heaven and hell for granted, and believed in an early end to the world. He described a heaven of many delights, including pet dogs “with golden hair shining like precious stones”-- a genial concession to his children, who had expressed concern over the damnation of their pets. He spoke as confidently as Aquinas about angels as bodiless and beneficent spirits. He accepted fully the medieval conception of devils wandering about the earth, bringing temptation, sin, and misfortune to men, and easing man’s way into hell. All the Teutonic folk-law about the poltergeist , or noise making spirit was apparently credited by Luther at its face value. Snakes and monkeys were favourite incarnations of the devil. The old notion that devils could lie with women and beget children seemed plausible to him; in one such case he recommended that the resultant child should be drowned.
He wrote, “No one is by nature Christian or pious . . . the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian . . the wicked always outnumber the good.” Even in the good man evil actions outnumber the good , for he cannot escape from his nature; as Paul said ,” there is none righteous, no, not one.”
“We are children of wrath,” Luther said; “and all our works , intensions and thoughts are nothing at all in the balance against our sins. So far as good works go, everyone of us would merit damnation “. By good works Luther meant especially those forms of ritual piety recommended by the Church -- fasting, pilgrimages, prayers to the saints, Masses for the dead, indulgences , processions, gifts to the Church; but he also included all works , “what ever their character.” He did not question the need for charity and love for a healthy social life, but he felt that even a life blessed with such virtues could not earn an eternity of bliss. Only the redeeming sacrifice of Christ -- the suffering and death of the Son of God -- could atone for man’s sins; and only belief in that divine atonement can save us from hell. As Paul said to the Romans “ If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” It is this faith that ‘justifies‘ -- makes man ‘just’ despite his sins, and eligible for salvation. Christ Himself said: He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not, shall be damned.” It is with comment about Faith and Belief in the sacrifice of Christ that Luther sought to comfort sinners. He wrote “Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the devil, so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings; if one is too frightened of sinning, one is lost ... oh, if I could find some really good sin that would give the devil a toss!”
Such lusty and humorous ’abiter dicta’ invited misconstruction. Some of Luther’s followers interpreted this as condoning fornication, adultery, murder. However, by faith Luther meant not merely intellectual assent to a proposition, but vital, personal self committal to a practical belief; and he was confident that complete belief in God’s grace, given because of Christ’s redeeming death, would make a man so basically good that an occasional frolic with the flesh would do no lasting harm. Faith would soon bring the sinner back to spiritual health. “Good works” he said, “do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” And what makes a man good? Faith in God and Christ. By divine predestination the elect are chosen for eternal happiness, the rest are left graceless and damned to everlasting hell.
This is the acme of faith, to believe that God, who saves so few and condemns so many, is merciful; He is Just, and yet has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that He seems to delight in tortures of the wretched, and to be more deserving of hatred than of love. If by any effort of reason I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and iniquity, could be merciful and just, there would be no need of faith.
So Luther, in his medieval reaction against a paganising Renaissance Church, went back not only to Augustine but to Tertullian : ‘Credo quia incredibile‘; It seemed to him a merit to believe in predestination because it was, to reason, unbelievable. Yet it was, he thought , by hard logic that he was driven to this incredibility. The theologian who had written so eloquently about the “freedom of Christian man” now (1525), in a treatise “de servo arbitrio,” argued that if God was omnipotent He must be the sole cause of all actions, including man’s; that if God is omniscient He foresees everything, and everything must happen as He has foreseen it; that therefore all events , through all of time have been predetermined in His mind, and are forever fated to be.
Luther concluded, like Spinoza, that man is as free “as a block of wood, a rock, a lump of clay, a pillar of salt.” More strangely still, the same divine foresight deprives the angels , nay, God Himself, of freedom. He too, must act as He has foreseen; His foresight is His fate.
A lunatic fringe interpreted this doctrine ’ad libitum.’ Much of these conclusions lay annoyingly implicit in medieval theology, and were deduced by Luther from Paul and Augustine with irrefutable consistency. He seemed willing to accept medieval theology if he might disown the Renaissance Church; he could tolerate the predestination of the multitudinous damned more easily than the authority of scandalous tax gathering popes.
As for the sacraments , viewed as priestly ceremonies conferring divine grace; Luther severely reduced their role. He believed they involve no miraculous powers, and their efficacy depends not on their forms and formulas, but on the faith of the recipient.
Luther’s doctrine of the sacraments, his replacement of the Mass by the Lord’s Supper, and his theory of salvation by faith rather than good works, undermined the authority of the clergy in northern Germany. In Lutheran Europe civil courts became the only courts , secular power the only legal power. Secular rulers appointed Church personnel, appropriated Church property, took over Church schools and monastic churches. Theoretically Church and state remained independent; actually the Church became subject to the state. The Lutheran movement, which thought to submit all life to theology, unwittingly, unwillingly, advanced that pervasive secularisation which is the basic theme of modern life.
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I wish I could follow the implications of all this. But I find it difficult.
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This is the acme of faith, to believe that God, who saves so few and condemns so many, is merciful; He is Just, and yet has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that He seems to delight in tortures of the wretched, and to be more deserving of hatred than of love. If by any effort of reason I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and iniquity, could be merciful and just, there would be no need of faith.
The implications of Martin Luther dismantling of the Roman Catholic church including the pope in his country and implementing a secular government was enormous.
The 'church' had lost its power and would continue to lose its influence over the people as they read for themselves the 'scribbling of the psychopaths'.
Only a tribe of 'psychopaths' could have invented this much evil and instilled it all into their 'god'.
Emily
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Amen, Emily! :)
I don't have much comment to the pieces on religion because i agree with your last sentence, but i also agree with your first sentence about the importance of ML.
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 352 - 357
Heartened by the support he had received, Luther wrote:
“I have cast the die. I now dispute the rage of the Romans as much as I do their favour. I will not reconcile myself to them for all eternity. Let them burn and condemn all that belongs to me; in return I will do as much for them.... Now I no longer fear them, and am publishing a book in the German tongue about Christian reform, directed against the pope, in language as violent as if I were addressing Antichrist.”
On June 15 , 1520 Leo X issued a bull, ‘Exsurge Domine,’ which condemned forty-one statements by Luther, ordered the public burning of the writings in which these appeared, and exhorted Luther to abjure his errors and return to the fold. After sixty days of further refusal to come to Rome and make a public recantation, he was to be cut off from Christendom by excommunication, he was to be shunned as a heretic by all the faithful, all the places where he stayed were to suspend religious services, and all secular authorities were to banish him from their territory or deliver him to Rome.
Luther marked the end of the sixty days of grace given to him by publishing the first of three little books that constituted a program of religious revolution. Hitherto he had written in Latin for the intellectual classes, now he wrote in German -- and as a German patriot. Luther attacked the “three walls” that the papacy had built round itself: the distinction between the clergy and the laity, the right of the pope to decide the interpretation of Scripture, and his exclusive right to summon a general council of the Church. All these defensive assumptions, said Luther, must be overthrown.. A council should be called very soon; it should examine the “horrible” anomaly that the head of Christendom lives in more splendour than any king; it should end the appropriation of German benefices by Italian clergymen; it should reduce to a hundred the “swarm of vermin” holding ecclesiastical sinecures in Rome and living chiefly on money from Germany.
“Some have estimated that every year more than 300,000 gulden find their way from Germany to Italy... We here come to the heart of the matter.... How comes it that we Germans must put up with such robbery and such extortion of our property at the hands of the pope? .. If we justly hang thieves and behead robbers, why should we let Roman avarice go free? For he is the greatest thief and robber that has come or can come into the world, and all in the holy name of Christ and St. Peter! Who can longer endure it or keep silence?”
“Above all, we should drive out from German lands the papal legates with their “powers”... which they sell us for large sums of money... to legalise unjust gains, dissolve oaths, vows, and agreements, saying that the pope has authority to do this--- though it is sheer knavery. If there were no other evil wiles to prove that the pope is the true Antichrist, this one thing would be enough to prove it. Hear this, oh pope, not most holy of men but most sinful. Oh that the God from heaven would soon destroy thy throne and sink it in the abyss of hell!... O Christ my Lord, look down, let the day of Thy judgment break, and destroy the devil’s nest in Rome!”
This headlong assault of one man against a power that pervaded all Western Europe became the sensation of Germany. Cautious men considered it intemperate and rash; many reckoned it among the most heroic deeds in German history. Germany, like England, was ripe for an appeal to nationalism; There was as yet no Germany on the map, but there were Germans, newly conscious of themselves as a people. As Huss had stressed his Bohemian patriotism, as Henry VIII would reject not Catholic doctrine but papal power over England, so Luther now planted his standard of revolt not in theological deserts, but in the rich soil of the German national spirit. Wherever Protestantism won, nationalism carried the flag.
Luther now sent to Leo the third of his manifestoes. He called it “A treatise on Christian liberty.” He expressed with uncongenial moderation his basic doctrine -- that faith alone, not good works, makes the true Christian, and saves him from hell. For it is faith in Christ that makes a man good; his good works follow from the faith. “ the tree bears fruit, the fruit does not bear the tree.” A man firm in his faith in the divinity and redeeming sacrifice of Christ enjoys not freedom of will, but the profoundest freedom of all; freedom from his own carnal nature, from all evil powers, from damnation, even from the law. Yet this free man must be servant to all men, for he will not be happy if he fails to do all in his power to save others as well as himself. He is united to God by Faith, to his neighbour by love. Every believing Christian is a ministering priest.
In places the Church was successful in proclaiming the bull of excommunication. In Ingolstadt Luther’s books were confiscated, and in Mainz, Louvain, and Cologne they were burned. But in other towns the posted bull was pelted with dirt and torn down. At Erfurt many professors and clergymen joined in the general refusal to recognise the bull, and students threw all available copies in the river.
When Luther learned that the papal envoys were burning his books, he decided to reply in kind. He asked the students of Wittenberg to assemble outside the Elster gate of the city on the morning of December 10. There he cast the papal bull into the fire with his own hands. The students joyfully collected other books of the kind, and with them kept the fire burning all afternoon.
On December 11 Luther proclaimed that no man could be saved unless he renounced the rule of the papacy. The monk had excommunicated the pope.
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"He expressed with uncongenial moderation his basic doctrine -- that faith alone, not good works, makes the true Christian, and saves him from hell."
This is an argument that continues to this day.
"For it is faith in Christ that makes a man good; his good works follow from the faith."
If only that were true.
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On December 11 Luther proclaimed that no man could be saved unless he renounced the rule of the papacy. The monk had excommunicated the pope.
Luther would win this argument, and so would Henry in England. Soon the 'secret world' of the bible would be put into the language of all the different countries of Europe and elsewhere. The protestants would soon be involved in their own arguments, but eventually all of the religious mumbo jumbo would prove its own undoing. Long ago the churches of Europe lost membership and today the churches are mostly empty.
I am rereading the bible. The first reading was around the age of twelve so there is a huge gap of time passed, but my interpetation is the same, I don't believe a word it says, and that includes the words 'the and a'. A fairy tale with lots of killing and rape where women are treated as chattel, and all the men are sex perverts.
When Winston Churchill's son was on a military expedition and they were in camp with nothing to do, he asked for something to read and all they had was a bible. Since he had never read it or knew much about it, he sat down to read.
He did not get too far into the story when he threw the book across the way and said, "This god, what a sh*t'. He never picked the book up again.
Emily
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TREVOR Hi! hope this gets to you. I have a computer virus that is causing trouble. I hope to have it fixed today but if not it will be next monday/tuesday. Sorry all.
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Interesting rule for being "saved" and interesting that ML felt he could command who/how one could be "saved".
Got your msg Trevor. Relax and have a good weekend, :)
Jean
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 377 - 379
THE REVOLUTIONIST
When some bishops sought to silence Luther and his followers, he emitted an angry roar that was almost a tocsin of revolution. In a pamphlet he branded the prelates as the biggest wolves of all, and called on all good Germans to drive them out by force.
“It were better that every bishop were murdered, every foundation or cloister rooted out, than that one soul should be destroyed, let alone that all souls should be lost for the sake of their worthless trumpery. Of what use are they who thus live in lust, nourished by the sweat and labour of others? If they will not hear God’s Word but rage and rave with burnings, killings, and every evil, what do they better deserve than a strong uprising which will sweep them from the earth?”
He was at this time almost as critical of the state, as of the Church. Stung by the prohibition of the sale or possession of his New Testament in regions under orthodox rulers, he wrote, in the fall of 1522, a treatise “On Secular Authority: to what Extent It should be Obeyed.” He began amiably enough by approving St. Paul's doctrine of civil obedience and the divine origin of the state. This apparently contradicted his own teaching as to the perfect freedom of the Christian man. Luther explained that though true Christians do not need law, and will not use law or force on one another, they must obey the law as good examples to the majority, who are not true Christians, for without law the sinful nature of man would tear a society to pieces. Never-the-less the authority of the state should end where the realm of the spirit begins.
“You must know that from the beginning of the world a wise prince is a rare bird indeed; still more so a pious prince. They are usually the greatest fools on earth. They are God’s jailers and hangmen, and his divine wrath needs them to punish the wicked and preserve outward peace.... The common man is learning to think, and contempt of princes is gathering force among the multitude and the common people..... Men ought not, men cannot, men will not suffer your tyranny and presumption much longer. Dear princes and lords, be wise and guide yourselves accordingly. God will no longer tolerate you. The world is no longer what it was when you hunted and drove people like so much game.” What would the princes have said had they read Luther’s letter to Wenzel Link ( March 19 1522 ) “We are triumphing over the papal tyranny, which formerly crushed kings and princes, how much more easily then, shall we not overcome and trample down the princes themselves. I believe that in this community or Christendom all things are in common, and each man’s goods are the other’s, and nothing is simply a man’s own.”
These were casual ebullitions, and should not be taken too literally. Actually Luther was a conservative, even a reactionary in politics and religion, in the sense that he wished to return to early medieval beliefs and ways. He considered himself a restorer, not an innovator. He agreed with the medieval church in condemning interest, merely adding, that interest was an invention of Satan. He regretted the growth of foreign trade, called commerce a “nasty business,” and despised those who lived by buying cheap and selling dear. He denounced as “manifest robbers” the monopolists who were conspiring to raise prices; “the authorities should do right if they took from such people everything they have, and drove them out of the country” He thought it high time to “put a bit into the mouth of the Fuggers” (ie. Bankers )
“Kings and princes ought to look into these things and forbid them by strict laws, but I hear that they have an interest in them, and the saying of Isaiah is fulfilled. “Thy princes have become companions of thieves.”
“They hang thieves who have stolen a gulden or half a gulden, but trade with those who rob the whole world..... Big thieves hang the little ones and as the Roman senator Cato said, “simple thieves lie in prisons and in stocks; public thieves walk abroad in gold and silk.” But what will God say to this at last? He will do as he says by Ezekiel: princes and merchants, one after another, he will melt them together like lead and brass, as when a city burns, so that there shall be neither princes nor merchants any more. That time I fear, is already at the door.”
It was.
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Clearly he hadn't thought out his political philosophy very much. It's chock full of contradictions. Clear on what he dislikes, not so on what he would like instead.
But then, it's always easier to say what's wrong, than to think of a better alternative.
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Joan, so true. Luther seems so enraged by Rome and all its foibles that he wants to condemn everything at once.
I do agree with the premise that princes, kings, queens, popes, etc. should be put to work to earn their own bread. The people should be under secular laws of their own making as they had been for thousands of years. The same punishment to everyone whether prince or pauper.
To quote Durant....
“They hang thieves who have stolen a gulden or half a gulden, but trade with those who rob the whole world..... Big thieves hang the little ones and as the Roman senator Cato said, “simple thieves lie in prisons and in stocks; public thieves walk abroad in gold and silk.” ......so that there shall be neither princes nor merchants any more. That time I fear, is already at the door.”
It was.
Alas, it may have ended for a while but, thievery on a large scale is not only back but bigger than ever. This time it is not the Pope stealing us blind, but the money changers cult. They do not create anything, they do not produce or make anything, they steal from the public.
I just read 'Den of Thieves' published over twenty years ago, and nothing has changed except there are more of them today, and their jets are bigger and their reach is global. They steal from everyone all over the world.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 383 - 395
THE PEASANT’S REVOLT.
To a later session of the Diet (January 1524 ) a new pope, Clement VII, sent Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio with fresh demands for the arrest of Luther. Crowds jeered the nuncio at Augsburg; he had to enter Nuremberg secretly to avoid hostile demonstrations; and he had the humiliation of seeing 3,000 persons, including the Emperor's sister, receive the Eucharist in both kinds from a Lutheran pastor. He warned the Diet that the religious revolt, if not soon suppressed, would soon undermine civil authority and order; but the Diet replied that any attempt to put down Lutheranism by force would result in “riot, disobedience, slaughter... and a general ruin.” While the deliberations proceeded the social revolution began.
The religious revolt offered the tillers of the fields a captivating ideology in which to phrase their demands for a larger share in Germany’s growing prosperity. The hardships that had already spurred a dozen rural outbreaks still agitated the peasant mind, and indeed with feverish intensity now that Luther had defied the Church, berated the princes, broken the dams of discipline and awe, made every man a priest, and proclaimed the freedom of the Christian man. In the Germany of that age Church and state were so closely meshed -- that the collapse of ecclesiastical prestige and power removed a main barrier to revolution. The circulation of the New Testament in print was a blow to political as well as religious orthodoxy. It exposed the compromises that the secular clergy had made with the nature of man and the ways of the world; it revealed the communism of the Apostles, the sympathy of Christ for the poor and oppressed; in these respects the New Testament was for the radical of this age a veritable “Communist Manifesto.” Peasant and proletarian alike found in it a divine warrant for dreaming of a utopia where private property would be abolished, and the poor would inherit the earth.
Another pamphlet of 1521, by Johannes Eberlin, demanded universal male suffrage, and subordination of every ruler and official to popularly elected councils, the abolition of all capitalist organisations, a return to medieval price-fixing for bread and wine, and the education of all children in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, astronomy, and medicine. One revealed that heaven was open to peasants but closed to nobles and clergymen; another counselled the peasants to give no more to priest or monk. But Luther, the preachers, and the pamphleteers were not the cause of the revolt; the causes were the just grievances of the peasantry. But it could be argued that the gospel of Luther and his more radical followers” poured oil on the flames,” and turned the resentment of the oppressed into utopian delusions, uncalculated violence, and passionate revenge.
In nearly every section of Germany peasant bands were running riot. Monasteries were sacked, or were compelled to pay high ransoms. “Nowhere,” says a letter of April 7 1525 “do the insurgents make a secret of their intention to kill all clerics who will not break with the church, to destroy all cloisters and Episcopal palaces, and to root the catholic religion utterly out of the land.”
Amid this torrent of events Luther issued from the press at Wittenberg, toward the middle of May 1525, a pamphlet “Against the robbing and murdering hordes of Peasants.” Its vehemence startled prince and peasant, prelate and humanist, alike. Shocked by the excesses of the infuriated rebels, dreading a possible overturn of all law and government in Germany, and stung by charges that his own teachings had loosed the flood, he now ranged himself unreservedly on the side of the imperial lords. “In a former book I did not venture to judge the peasants, since they had offered to be set right and be instructed..... but as I look around they, forgetting their offer, betake themselves to violence and rob and rage and act like mad dogs .... It is the Devil’s work they are at, and in particular it is the work of the arch devil who rules at Mulhausen .... I must begin by setting their sins before them.
“Any man against whom sedition can be proved is outside the law of God and the Empire, so that the first who can slay him is doing right and well ... for rebellion brings with it a land full of murder and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down......”
He rejected the supposed Scriptural warrant for communism :
“The gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the Apostles and disciples did in Acts iv. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others -- of a Pilate or Herod should be common,-- but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have other men’s goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians, these! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants.”
The losses of German life and property in the Peasants Revolt were to be exceeded only in the Thirty Years War. Of peasants alone some 130,000 died in battle or in expiation. There were 10,000 executions under the jurisdiction of the Swabian League. One Executioner boasted that he had killed 1,200 condemned men with his own practiced hand. The peasants themselves had destroyed hundreds of castles and monasteries. Hundreds of villages and towns had been depopulated or ruined. Over 50,000 homeless peasants roamed the highways, or hid in the woods.
On May 30th 1525, Luther wrote to Nicholas Amsdorf “ My opinion is that it is better that all peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine authority.” Mercy, Luther argued, is the duty of the Christians in their private capacity; as officers of the state, however they must normally follow justice rather than mercy, for since Adam and Eve’s sin, man has been so wicked that government, laws, and penalties are needed to control him. We owe more consideration to the community endangered by crime, than to criminals endangering the community.
And yet the peasants had a case against Luther. He had not only predicted social revolution, he had said he would not be displeased by it, he would greet it with a smile, even if men washed their hands in Episcopal blood. He too had made the revolution. Some of the peasants, in angry despair at Luther’s change of heart, became cynical atheists. Many, or their children, shepherded by Jesuits, returned to the Catholic fold. Others followed the radicals whom Luther had condemned, and found in the New Testament a summons to communism.
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A communist revolution that early? Who knew?
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On May 30th 1525, Luther wrote to Nicholas Amsdorf “ My opinion is that it is better that all peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine authority.”
Luther, with these words has ended any sympathy ever accorded him. Who was this divine authority he spoke about? He himself, according to Durant, had asked the people to do just what the so called 'rustics' had done.
This puts Luther in a different light and his support of the 'princes' over the peasants is no different to me than the 'pope' over the people. Luther asked for a revolt and then when he got one, he changed sides.
Be careful what you wish for.
Emma
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So apropos Emma. :)
Jean
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
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This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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DURANTS" S o C
THE REFORMATION Vol. VI
Pgs. 395 398
THE ANABAPTISTS TRY COMMUNISM 1534 - 36
Only by observing with what devout enthusiasm some of our contemporaries adopt economic heresies can we understand the fervour with which pious rebellious minorities followed, even to the stake, one or another turn of the religious revolution in the sixteenth century.
The most radical of the new sects took the name of Anabaptists ( Wiedertäufer, Again-Baptizers) from its insistence that baptism, if given in infancy, should be repeated in maturity, and that still better it should be deferred, as by John the Baptist, till the mature recipient should knowingly and voluntarily make his profession of the Christian faith. There were sects within this sect. Some denied the divinity of Christ: He was only the most godly of men, Who had redeemed us not by His agony on the cross but by the example of His life. They exalted the individual conscience above the Church, the state, and the Bible itself. Most Anabaptists adopted a Puritan severity of morals and simplicity of manners and dress. Developing with rash logic Luther’s idea of Christian liberty, they condemned all government by force, and all resistance to it by force. They rejected military service on the ground that it is invariably sinful to take human life. Their usual salutation was “ The peace of the Lord be with you.”-- an echo of the Jewish and Moslem greeting, and a forerunner of the Quaker mode. While Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox agreed with the popes on the absurdity of religious toleration, the Anabaptists preached and practiced it; one of them, Balthasar Hübmaier, wrote the first clear defence of it (1524). They shunned public office and all resort to litigation. They were Tolstoyan anarchists three centuries before Tolstoy.
In general, however, the sect rejected any compulsory sharing of goods, advocating voluntary mutual aid, and held that in the Kingdom of Heaven communism would be automatic and universal. All the Anabaptists groups were inspired by the Apocalypse and the confident expectation of Christ’s early return to earth. Then all the ungodly -- in this case all but Anabaptists-- would be swept away by the sword of the lord, and the elect would live in glory in a terrestrial paradise without laws or marriage and abounding in all good things.
The Anabaptists appeared first in Switzerland. Communistic passages in More’s Utopia may have stirred the scholars who gathered around Erasmus. They preached adult baptism and the coming of Christ, rejected Church and state, and proposed an end to interest charges, taxes, military service, tithes, and oaths. The apparent success of the Peasants’ War in the spring of 1525 promoted many of their beliefs, but its failure encouraged the propertied classes in the Swiss cities to repressive measures. The council of Zurich arrested the leaders and ordered that all obstinate Anabaptists “should be laid in the tower,” kept on bread and water, and left to die and to rot. Protestant and Catholic cantons showed equal energy in subduing the sect, and by 1530 nothing remained of it in Switzerland except some secret and negligible bands.
Meanwhile the movement had spread like a rumour through South Germany. A zeal for evangelistic propaganda caught the converts and turned them into ardent missionaries for the new creed. In Tirol many miners, contrasting their poverty with the wealth of the Fuggers and Hochstetters who owned the mines , took up Anabaptism when the Peasants’ Revolt collapsed. In that year (1529) Charles V issued a mandate making rebaptism a capital crime, and the Diet ratified the Emperor’s edict, and ordered that Anabaptists everywhere were to be killed like wild beasts as soon as taken, without judge or trial. By (1530) 2000 Anabaptists had been put to death. In Salzburg those who recanted were allowed to have their heads cut off before being placed upon the pyre; the unrepentant were roasted to death over a slow fire. Despite these killings the sect increased and moved into Northern Germany. In Prussia and Württemberg some nobles welcomed the Anabaptists as peaceful and industrious workers. In Saxony the valley of Werra was filled with them, and in Erfurt they claimed to have sent forth 300 missionaries to convert the dying world.
Hut and his followers established a communistic centre at Austerlitz, where, as if foreseeing Napoleon, they renounced all military service, and denounced every kind of war. Confining themselves to tillage and petty industry, these Anabaptists maintained their communism for almost a century. The nobles who owned the land protected them as enriching the estates by their conscientious toil. Farming was communal among them; materials for agriculture and handicraft were bought and allotted by communal officers; part of the proceeds were paid to the landlord for rent, the rest was distributed according to need. The social unit was not the family but the Hausbabbe, or household, containing some 400 to 2000 persons, with a common kitchen, common laundry, a school, a hospital, and a brewery. Children, after weaning, were brought up in common, but monogamy remained. In the Thirty Years’ War this communistic society was suppressed. Its members accepted Catholicism or were banished. Some of the exiles went to Russia, some to Hungary. We shall hear of them again.
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Sounds like the kibbutzim in Israel.
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An excerpt from the anabaptists who came to America, and also Canada, Mexico, Central and South America.
United States general Mennonites (often referred to as Swiss-German Mennonites).
These are descendants of the 16th century Swiss Brethern movement whose adherents dispersed throughout Europe, including Germany, Switzerland and eastern France, with subsequent migration to Eastern Pennsylvania and later throughout the United States. Numerous sub-sects have formed but are all grouped in this category since Mennonites are generally more mobile and hence overlap to a considerable extent.
OOA: Old Order Amish (some are today known as New Order Amish)
The Amish are descendents of a 17th century split from the Mennonite movement, led by Jakob Ammann who garnered his followers primarily from Swiss Mennonite migrants to the Alsace and Palatinate areas of Eastern France. They were early known as Amish Mennonites, but, following their immigration to America in two large waves (1727-1770 and 1815-1860) were simply called Amish. Most came from the 19th century Atlantic crossings and, finding the Eastern Pennsylvania Amish more traditional and conservative than what they were accustomed to, chose to move to Western Pennsylvania and later to Indiana and Ohio. Today they live in settlements in more than 25 states.
APA: Old Order Amish of Eastern Pennsylvania
These seem to be genetically distinct descendents of Ammann’s followers who, with the encouragement of William Penn, settled in a large tract in Eastern Pennsylvania (with today’s settlement centered in Lancaster County). These immigrants were among the earliest Swiss-German and Netherland Anabaptists to come to America to escape an increasingly hostile environment in Europe. The distribution of surnames and blood groups testify to their genetic uniqueness apart from other Amish settlements.
DGM: Dutch-German Mennonites
Many Swiss Mennonites fled to the Netherlands where they enjoyed a period of relative freedom before being forced to flee again to Poland, then to the Ukraine, and finally to America. Perhaps 10,000 of the early immigrants settled in the Midwest where they gradually assimilated with other Anabaptists. More conservative immigrants from Russia in the 20th century settled in the provinces of Western Canada where today more than 27,000 live. These have remained relatively isolated with little interaction with other Mennonites so that slow genetic drift has created a generally unique genetic profile. As many as 7,000 of these early immigrants eventually settled in Mexico as well as in Central and South America where they presently number more than 75,000.
HUT: Hutterites
Hutterites are descendents of largely Austrian populations of Anabaptists who today live in several communal isolates in Western Canada. Of all the groups, Hutterites have remained most isolated and today are the best defined population of plain people. Today they number more than 40,000 descended from about 100 immigrants in the mid-19th century.
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Except for the return of Christ and the rejecting on modern inventions, i could go for much of the Anabaptists theology. Having grown up among Mennonites, i never realized how much i agreed with them.
As to the info that Emily posted about Mennonites - just an update - as families grew and there was a problem with inbreeding between families in Lancaster Co and the available farmlands of Lancaster Co diminished, the Amish and Mennonites began to disperse from there. As i was growing up in Cumberland and Franklin Co, south and west of Lancaster, more and more A and M were moving into those counties. That trend has continued. Many buggies are on the roads in Cumberland, Franklin and Adams Counties and probably even further west by this time. My sister and BIL owned a dairy farm across the road from a Mennonite family and they very much believed in helping their neighbors, but also expected there to be reciprocation - which was only fair.
Many of the young women worked as "practical nurses" or "home health aides" in homes of people who needed . My Mother had them at least twice as she aged in her home. Ironically, many worked for Lutheran Social Services.
Jean
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DURANT"S S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 398-402
In the Netherlands, Melchior Hofmann, a Swabian tanner, preached the Anabaptist gospel with exciting success He sent out through Holland twelve apostles to announce the glad tidings.The ablest of them was a young tailor, Jan Beuckelszoon, known to history as John of Leyden and to Meyerbeer’s opera as Le Prophet. Without formal education, he had a keen mind, a vivid imagination, a handsome presence, a ready tongue, a resolute will. He heard Jan Matthys and was won to Anabaptism ( 1533). He was then twenty-four. In that year he accepted a fatal invitation to come and preach in Münster, the rich and populous capital of Westphalia.
Named from a monastery around which it had grown, Münster was feudally subject to its bishop and cathedral chapter. Nevertheless the growth of industry and commerce had generated a degree of democracy. The assembled citizens, representing seventeen guilds, chose ten electors, who chose the city council. But the well-to-do minority provided most of the political ability, and naturally dominated the council. In 1525, enthusiastic over peasants uprisings, the lower classes presented thirty-six “demands” to the council. A Lutheran preacher, Bernard Rottman, made himself the mouthpiece of discontent, and asked Jan Marthys to send some Dutch Anabaptists to his aid. Fearing insurrection the “party of Order” arranged to have Bishop Franz von Waldeck enter the town with some 2000 troops. The populace , led by Matthys, Rottman, and John of Leyden fought them in the streets, drove them out, and took martial control of Münster ( Feb. 10, 1534). New Elections were held; the Anabaptists won the council; the exciting experiment began.
Münster found itself at once in a state of war, besieged by the bishop and his reinforced army, and fearful that soon all the powers of order and custom in Germany would unite against it. To protect itself against internal opposition, the new council decreed that all non Anabaptists must accept rebaptism, or leave the city.. It was a cruel measure , for it meant that old men, women carrying infants, and bare footed children had to ride or trudge from the town at the height of the German winter. During the siege both sides executed without mercy any persons found working for the enemy. Matthys died fighting in an abortive sortie, (April 1534) and thereafter John of Leyden ruled the city as its king.
The communism that was now set up was a war economy, as perhaps all strict communism must be; for men are by nature unequal, and can be induced to share their goods and fortunes only by a vital and common danger; internal liberty varies with external security, and communism breaks under the tensions of peace. In peril of their lives if they fall short of unity, inspired by religious faith and inescapable eloquence, the besieged accept a “socialist theocracy” in the desperate hope they were realizing the New Jerusalem visioned in the Apocalypse. The members of the Committee of Public Safety were called “ the elders of the twelve tribes of Israel” and John Leyden became “King of Israel”.
Public morals were regulated by strict laws. Dances, games, and religious plays were encouraged, under supervision, but drunkenness and gambling were severely punished, prostitution was banned, fornication and adultery were made capital crimes. An excess of women caused by the flight of many men, moved the leaders to decree, on the basis of Biblical precedents, that unattached women, should become companions of wives -- in effect, concubines. The newly attached women seem to have accepted the situation as preferable to solitary barrenness. John, released and re-enthroned, took several wives, and (said his enemies) governed with violence and tyranny. He must have had some genial qualities, for thousands gladly bore his rule, and offered their lives in his service. When he called for volunteers to follow him in a sortie against the bishop, many more women enlisted than he thought wise to use.
Though many Anabaptists in Germany and Holland repudiated the resort of their
Münster brethren to force, many more applauded the revolution. From Amsterdam, fifty vessels sailed (March 1535 ) to carry reinforcements to the beleaguered city, but all were dispersed by Dutch authorities. Confronted with this spreading revolt, the conservative forces of the Empire, Protestant as well as Catholic, mobilised to suppress Anabaptism. Luther, who in 1528 had counselled lenience with the new heretics, now advised (in 1530) “the use of the sword “ against them as “they were not only blasphemous but highly seditious.” City after city sent money or men to the bishop; a Diet at Worms ordered a tax on all Germany to finance the siege of Münster by its bishop.
Facing famine and deteriorating morale, king John announced that all who wished might leave the city. Many women and children, and some men , seized the opportunity.. The men were imprisoned or killed by the bishop’s men, who spared the women for divers services. One of the émigrés saved his life by offering to show the bishop’s soldiers an undefended part of the city walls. A force of Landsknechts scaled them and opened a gate. Soon several thousand troops poured into the town.. Starving citizens barricaded themselves in the market place, then they surrendered on a promise of safe conduct to leave Münster. When they yielded up their arms they were slaughtered. John Leyden and two of his aids were bound to stakes; every part of their bodies was clawed with red-hot pincers, their tongues were pulled from their mouths; at last daggers were thrust into their hearts.
The Bishop regained his city and augmented his former power. Luther advised Philip of Hesse to put to death all adherents of the sect. The Anabaptists accepted the lesson, postponed communism to the millennium, and resigned themselves to the practice of such of their principles-- as did not offend the state. Menno Simons, a catholic priest converted to Anabaptism (1531) gave to his Dutch and German followers such skilful guidance that the “Menonites” survived all tribulations, and formed successful agricultural communities in Holland, Russia, and America. There is no clear filiation between the Continental Anabaptists and the English Quakers and the American Baptists; but the Quaker rejection of war and oaths, and the Baptists insistence on adult baptism probably stem from the same traditions of creed and conduct that in Europe took Anabaptist forms.
The theology that supported them through hardship, poverty, and martyrdom hardly accords with our transient philosophy; but they too, in their sincerity, devotion, and friendliness, enriched our heritage, and redeemed our tarnished humanity. *
*A branch of the Anabaptists migrated (1719) from Germany to Pennsylvania and settled in or near Germantown, Philadelphia: these ’Dunkers’ now number some 200,000. In 1887 many Anabaptists of Moravian descent left Russia and settled in South Dakota and Alberta. In eastern Pennsylvania the “Amish” Mennonites -- named from a seventeenth-century leader, Jokob Amen -- still officially reject razors, buttons, railroads, automobiles, motion pictures, newspapers, even tractors, but their farms are among the tidiest and most prosperous in America. The world total of Mennonites in 1949 was 400,000.
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There is a small group of Mennonites near where I used to live in Maryland as well.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 415 - 420
Luther
Having summarized the economic, political, religious, moral and intellectual conditions that cradled the Reformation, we must still count it among the wonders of history that in Germany one man, Luther, should have unwittingly gathered those influences into a rebellion transforming a continent. What was he like, this lusty voice of his time, this peak of German history ? A portrait (1532), showed Luther cheerfully obese, with a broad, full face; this man enjoyed living. He had slipped into marriage by inadvertence. He agreed with St. Paul that it is better to marry than to burn, and proclaimed sex to be as natural and necessary as eating. He condemned virginity as a violation of the divine precept to increase and multiply. If “a preacher of the Gospel cannot live chastely unmarried, let him take a wife; God has made a plaster for that sore.” He had the traditional and German conception of woman as divinely designed for childbearing, cooking, praying, and not much else. “If women get tired and die of bearing, there is no harm in that; let them live as long as they bear; they are made for that.”
Apparently it was for no physical need that Luther married. When on his recommendation, some nuns left their convent, he undertook to find them husbands. Finally, only one remained unmatched, Catherine von Bora, a woman of good birth and character, but hardly designed to arouse precipitate passion. She had set her sights on a young student of patrician stock; she failed to get him, and entered domestic service to keep alive. Luther suggested a Dr. Glatz as a husband; she replied Glatz was unacceptable, but that Dr. Luther would do. Luther was forty-two, Catherine twenty-six; he thought the discrepancy prohibitive, but his father urged him to transmit the family name. On June 27, 1525, the ex-monk and the ex-nun became man and wife.
The Elector gave them the Augustinian monastery as a home and raised Luther’s salary to 300 guilders, later increased to 400, then 500. Luther bought a farm, which Catherine managed and loved. She bore him six children, and cared faithfully for them, for all Martin’s domestic needs, for a home brewery, a fish pond, a vegetable garden, chickens, and pigs. His letters to or about Catherine reveal his growing affection for her. He repeated in his own way, what he had been told in his youth. “The greatest gift of God to man is a pious, kindly, God-fearing, home loving wife.”
He was a good father, knowing as if by instinct the right mixture of discipline and love. “Punish if you must, but let the sugar-plum go with the rod.” His sturdy spirit, which could face an emperor in war, was almost broken by the death of his favourite daughter Magdalena at the age of fourteen. He said to her “ Lena dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to remain here with thy father; art thou willing to go to that other Father?” “Yes dear father,” Lena answered “just as God wills.” When she died he wept long and bitterly “ Du liebes Lenichen, you will rise and shine like the stars and the sun. How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet be so sorrowful!”
We perceive that he was a man, not an inkwell; he lived as well as he wrote. No healthy person will resent Luther’s relish for good food and beer, or his fruitful enjoyment of all the comforts that Catherine Bora could give him. Luther ate too much, but he could punish himself with long fasts. He drank too much, and deplored drinking as a national vice, but beer was the water of life to the Germans, as wine to the Italians and French. “ If God can forgive me for having crucified Him with Masses twenty years running, He can also bear with me, for occasionally taking a good drink to honour Him.” All in all, Luther’s conception of life was remarkably cheerful for one who thought that “all natural inclinations are either without God or against Him,” and that nine out of every ten souls were divinely predestined to everlasting hell. The man was immeasurably better than his theology.
His intellect was powerful, but it was too clouded with the miasmas of his youth, too incarnadined with war, to work out a rational philosophy. Like his contemporaries, he believed in goblins, witches, demons, the curative value of live toads. He ridiculed astrology but sometimes talked in its terms. He praised mathematics , “as relying on demonstrations and sure proofs.“ He admired the bold reach of astronomy into the stars, but he rejected the Copernican system as contradicting Scripture. He insisted that reason should stay within the limits laid down by religious faith. He had the courage to defy his enemies because he did not have the intellect to doubt his truth. He was what he had to be, to do what he had to do.
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Here are some pictures of him (google couldn't believe I didn't want Martin Luther King. thus, fame.
https://www.google.com/search?q=martin+luther+pictures&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UdRFUtiWCcPKiwKg0YDgAg&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=853&bih=585&dpr=1
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What a nice look at ML.
On the other hand, because of the previous post, the story of Munster, i definitely have an answer for Dr Kaluger (my college philosophy professor) "human beings ARE more evil then good." how do people do such atrocious things to each other? Are we innately programmed to think that our ideas are RIGHT? You other guys are WRONG, even if it is simply a question of "at what age should people be baptised????"
The older i get and the more history i study leads me to that conclusion. Now, is that because history tells us the more dramatic stories over time, therefore giving us more examples of evil then of good and not telling us about those marvelous little day-to-day good deeds that people do for each other? Ala 24 hr news channels? If we add up all the small, ordinary good deeds, do they overwhelm the atrocities? ....... More philosophical questions..........ahhhhhh, Dr Kaluger i have not forgotten.
Jean
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This morning in my Keirsey Temperament Newsletter ( Keirsey wrote a book for "civilians" on the Myers/Briggs personality "type" theory) is a quote from David Keirsey about his habit of reading anything and everything. Durant was a favorite of his.
I began reading when I was seven. Read (most of) a twelve volume set of books my parents bought, Journeys through Bookland. Read countless novels thereafter, day in and day out. I educated myself by reading books. Starting at age nine my family went to the library once a week, I checking out two or three novels which I would read during the week. Then, when I was sixteen, I read my father’s copy of Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. I read it over and over again, now and then re-reading his account of some of the philosophers. (Long afterwards I read his magnificent eleven volumes—The Story of Civilization. I also have read his The Lessons of History many times, this being his brilliant summary of the eleven volumes.)
I mention Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy because it was a turning point in my life, I to become a scholar as did Durant, thereafter reading the philosophers and logicians—anthropologists, biologists, ethologists, ethnologists, psychologists, sociologists, and, most important, the etymologists, all of the latter—Ernest Klein, Eric Partridge, Perry Pepper, and Julius Pokorny—of interest to me now as then.
I think i'll try to find Durant's The Lessons of History, i've never read it.
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The Lessons of history is available on Kindle. I've ordered a sample. Let you know what I think.
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Fortunately, i see my library has a copy. But i can't get it now, i'm already got enough books for the next three months. ;D sounds like a good book for the cold winter. :P
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I am reading Barbara Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets". It is a history about public festivals, carnivals, religious holidays and dancing in the streets. Very interesting. I came upon it as a footnote in a book about the song "Dancing in the Street." They are very different subjects however. ;) According to BE people from the beginning of time have come together in dance and celebration, at first in 'religious' gatherings, and this behavior continued quite prominently until the Reformation! Surprise, surprise! However, it was the Calvinists - my ancestors - who squelched it, not ML.
BE writes " In Florence in the 1490s the crusading monk Savonarola raged against worldly extravagance and folly in all forms, not the least of them carnival, preaching that " boys should collect alms for the respectable poor (sound familiar?), instead of mad pranks, throwing stones and making floats for carnival." In Germany, during the yrs when young Luther was quietly agonizing over his relationship to the pope and the deity, reforming priests were already inveighing against Church festivals, arguing that the attendant drinking, dancing, and gaming wr "the ruin of the common people." Of particular concern to early 16th century Catholic reformers was the mockery of religious ritual common to so many festivities. the late 15th century had seen a growing number of mandates against such parodies, as well as against people costuming themselves for carnival as priests and nuns.
Luther did aim to abolish the 'superstitious' worship of saints which meant the end of saints' days and the festivities that had grown up around them. But he found nothing intrinsically evil in the trad'l communal pleasures, stating in a sermon:Because it is the custom of the country, just like inviting guests, dressing up, eating, drinking, and making merry, I can't bring myself to condemn it, unless it gets out of hand, and so causes immoralities or excess. And even though sin has taken place in this way, it's not the fault of dancing alone. Provided they don't jump on the tables or dance in church.....But so long as it's done decently, I respect the rites and customs of weddings.....and I dance, anyway.
(Well who know ML was such a gay blade???)
Luther even introduced a powerful new experience of community solidarity and uplift into the Christian service, in the form of hymn singing, many of the hymns being of his own composition, and to Christians accustomed to silence and passivity at the Catholic mass, this must hv seemed an exceedingly lively innovation!"
This is a totally different picture of ML then I have seen in my previous studies - both Durant and Ehrenreich are filling in the gaps in my information. I believe my Calvinist ancestors may have mislead me :D and the writers of the textbooks I have read about ML gave a much more foreboding picture of him.[/size][/size]
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Read Durant's "Lessons of History" last night (it's short!). I was disappointed in it. But I'll feed in some of the "lessons" gradually.
He divides it into the influence of various factors on history. As to the earth, all history is at the mercy of geology, as earthquakes etc. can change history in an instant. Water has been very important in history: the flourishing civilizations have always been the seafaring ones. But that should change with the growth of alternate forms of transportation.
I'll feed in more later.
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Thank you Jean and Joan for your insightful posts. I agree with Joan on Durant's 'Lessons of History', it is short and I too was disappointed when I read it.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs.420 - 425
THE INTOLERANT HERETICS
It is instructive to observe how Luther moved from tolerance to dogma as his power and certainty grew. Among the “errors” that Leo X in the bull ‘Exsurge Domine’, denounced in Luther was that “to burn heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit. In the “Open letter to the Christian Nobility (1520) Luther ordained “every men a priest,” with the right to interpret The Bible according to his private judgement and individual light, and added "We should vanquish heretics with books, not with burning.”
In a letter to Elkector Frederick ( April 21,1524) Luther asked toleration for his own enemies. ”You should not prevent them from speaking. There must be sects, and the word of God must face battle..... Let us leave in His hands the combat and free encounter of minds.” In 1528, when others were advocating the death penalty for Anabaptists, he advised that unless they were guilty of sedition, they should be merely banished. Likewise, in 1530 he recommended that the death penalty for blasphemy should be softened to exile. It is true that even in those liberal years he talked as if he wished his followers or God to drown or otherwise eliminate all “Papists”; but this was “campaign oratory,” not seriously meant. He wrote, “I would not have the Gospel defended by violence or murder.” In May 1529, he condemned plans for the forcible conversion of Catholic parishes to Protestantism. As late as 1531 he taught that “We neither can nor should force anyone into the faith.”
But it was difficult for a man of Luther’s forceful and positive character to advocate tolerance after his position had been made relatively secure. A man who was sure he had God’s Word could not tolerate its contradiction. The transition to intolerance was easiest concerning the Jews. Till 1537 Luther argued that they were to be forgiven for keeping their own creed, “since our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks, those course assheads, dealt with the Jews in such a manner that any Christian would have preferred to be a Jew. “Indeed, had I been a Jew, and had seen such idiots and dunderheads expound Christianity, I would rather become a hog than a Christian. “ I would advise anybody to deal kindly with the Jews, and to instruct them in the Scripture; in such case we could expect them to come over to us.”
Luther may have realised in some aspects Protestantism was a return to Judaism, in its rejection of monasticism and clerical celibacy, its emphasis on the Old Testament, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and its adoption ( Luther himself excepted) of a sterner sexual ethic than that of Catholicism. He was disappointed when the Jews made no corresponding move toward Protestantism and his hostility to the charging of interest helped him to turn against the Jewish moneylenders, then against the Jews in general. In his declining years he fell into a fury of anti-Semitism, denounced the Jews as “a stiffnecked, unbelieving, proud, wicked, abominable nation,” and demanded that “their schools and synagogues should be raised with fire.”
“And let whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them.... And this must be done for the honour of Our Lord and of Christianity, so that God may see that we are indeed Christians. Let their houses also be shattered and destroyed; let their rabbis be forbidden, on pain of death, to teach henceforth any more.. Let them be forbidden to practice usury, and let all their money, and all their treasures of silver and gold be taken from them and put away in safety. And if all this be not enough, let them be driven like mad dogs out of the land.
Luther should never have grown old. Already in 1522 he was out papaling the popes. “I do not admit,” he wrote, “that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, even the angels. He who does not receive my doctrine cannot be saved.” In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, he found an explicit command, allegedly from the mouth of God , to put heretics to death. “Neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou conceal him, even though he be thy brother, or thy son, or the wife of your bosom.... but thou shalt surely kill him, thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death.” On that awful warrant the Church had acted in annihilating the Albigensians in the thirteenth century; that divine imprecation had been made a certificate of authority for the burnings of the Inquisition. Despite the violence of Luther’s speech he never rivalled the severity of the Church in dealing with dissent. In 1525 he invoked the aid of existing censorship regulations in Saxony and Brandenburg to stamp out the “pernicious doctrines “ of the Anabaptists. We should note however, that toward the end of his life Luther returned to his early feeling for toleration. In his last sermon he advised abandonment of all attempts to destroy heresy by force; Catholics and Anabaptists should be borne with patiently till the Last Judgment, when Christ will take care of them.”
Luther demanded the suppression of all books that opposed or hindered Lutheran teaching. Whereas he was content with the expulsion of Catholics from regions governed by Lutheran princes, others favoured corporal penalties. It was agreed that the civil power was in duty bound to promulgate and uphold, “ the Law of God” i.e. Lutheranism. Luther however counselled that where two sects existed in a state the minority should yield to the majority; in a predominantly Catholic principality the Protestants should yield and emigrate; in a prevailing Protestant province the Catholics should give way and depart; if they resisted, they should be effectively chastised.
Excommunication, like censorship, was adopted by the Protestants from the Catholics. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 proclaimed the right of the Lutheran Church to excommunicate any member who should reject a fundamental Lutheran doctrine. Luther explained that “ although excommunication in popedom has been and is shamefully abused, and made a mere torment, yet we must not suffer it to fall, but make right use of it, as Christ commanded.”
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One of Durant's "lessons from history" is that revolutionaries when tey succeed always end up showing the same characteristics they revolted against. It looks like Luther was an example of that.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 417 - 431
Erasmus Appendix: 1517-1536
The reaction of Erasmus to the Reformation provides a living debate among historians and philosophers. Which method was the better for mankind -- Luther’s direct attack upon the Church or Erasmus’ policy of peaceful compromise and piecemeal reform? The answers almost define two types of personality:” tough minded” warriors of action and will, “tender-minded” compromisers given to feeling and thought. Luther was basically a man of action; his thoughts were decisions, his books his deeds. His thinking was early medieval in content, early modern in result; his courage and decisiveness, rather than his theology, co-operated with nationalism to establish the modern age. Luther spoke in masculinely vigorous German to the German people, and aroused a nation to overthrow an international power; Erasmus wrote in femininely graceful Latin for an international audience, a cosmopolitan elite of university graduates. He was too sensitive to be a man of action; he praised and longed for peace while Luther waged and relished war. He knew too much to see truth or error all on one side; he saw both sides, tried to bring them together, and was crushed in between.
Erasmus applauded Luther’s Theses. In march 1518, he sent copies of them to Colet and More, and wrote to Colet: “ The Roman Curia has caste aside all shame. What is more impudent than these indulgences?” As Luther’s revolt passed from criticism of indulgences to rejection of papacy and councils, Erasmus hesitated. He had hoped that Church reform could be advanced by appealing to the good will of the humanist Pope. He still revered the Church as ( it seemed to him) an irreplaceable foundation of social order and individual morality; and though he believed that the orthodox theology was shot through with nonsense, he had no trust in the wisdom of popular judgment to develop a more beneficent ritual or creed. He acknowledged his share in opening a path for Luther. His own “Praise of Folly’ was at that moment circulating by the thousands throughout Europe, pointing scorn at monks and theologians, and giving sharp point to Luther’s blunt tirades.
Erasmus had now to make one of the pivotal decisions of his life, and either horn of the dilemma seemed fatal. If he renounced Luther he would be called a coward. If he associated himself with Luther in rejecting the Roman Church he would not merely forfeit three pensions and the protection that Leo X had given him against obscurantist theologians; he would have to abandon his own plan and strategy of Church reform through the improvement of minds and morals of influential men, such as Bishop Fisher, Dean Colet, Thomas More, Francis I, Charles V. These men, of course, would never consent to renounce the Church, but they could be enlisted in a campaign to reduce the superstitions and horrors in the prevailing cult, to cleanse and educate the clergy, to control and subordinate the monks, and to protect individual freedom for the progress of the mind. To exchange that program for a violent division of Christendom into warring halves, and for a theology of predestination and unimportance of good works, would seem to these men, and seemed to Erasmus, the way to madness.
In April he wrote to Elector Frederick encouraging him to protect Luther as more sinned against than sinning. Finally (May 30), he wrote to Luther:
“Dearest brother in Christ, your epistle, showing the keenness of your mind and breathing a Christian spirit, was most pleasant to me. I cannot tell you what a commotion your books are raising here. [People] cannot by any means be disabused of the suspicion that your works are written by my aid, and that I am, as they call it, the standard-bearer of your party...... I have testified to them that you are entirely unknown to me, that I have not read your books, and neither approve nor disapprove of your writings, but that they should read them before they speak so loudly...... It was of no use; they are as mad as ever.... I am myself the chief object of animosity. It might be wiser of you to denounce those who misuse the Pope’s authority than to censure the Pope himself. Old institutions cannot be rooted up in an instant. Avoid all appearance of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody. Do not get excited over the noise you have made.... Christ give you His spirit, for His own glory, and the world’s good.”
Despite this cautious ambivalence the theologians continued to attack Erasmus as the fountainhead of the Lutheran flood. On October 8 1520, Aleander arrived, posted the papal bull excommunicating Luther, and scored Erasmus as a secret fomenter of the revolt. The pundits accepted Aleander’s lead, and expelled Erasmus from the Louvain faculty. He moved to Cologne, and there defended Luther in conference with Fredrick of Saxony (November 5). With the Dominican Johann Faber he composed a memorial to Charles V, recommending that Charles, Henry VIII, and Louis II of Hungary should appoint an impartial tribunal to try Luther’s case.
But Luther made it more and more difficult for Erasmus to intercede for him, since with each month the violence of Luther’s speech increased, until in July 1520, he invited his readers to wash their hands in the blood of bishops and cardinals. Erasmus confessed himself shocked; now he feared civil war.
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Erasmus "knew too much to see truth or error all on one side; he saw both sides, tried to bring them together, and was crushed in between."
Isn't that always the fate of the mediator?
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(Erasmus) He still revered the Church as ( it seemed to him) an irreplaceable foundation of social order and individual morality; and though he believed that the orthodox theology was shot through with nonsense, he had no trust in the wisdom of popular judgment to develop a more beneficent ritual or creed.
Why would anyone need rituals or creeds that were shot through with nonsense? All one needs is the rule of 'law' that applies equally to all humanity.
Neither Erasmus nor Luther give humanity any credit for thousands of years of survival and progress without this particular brand of ritual and nonsense. Of course they had their own brand of ritual and nonsense over those years, but as time moved on they had begun to shed the old gods only to have them replaced with even more unbelievable nonsense.
I do not buy the argument that humans need this sort of foolishness or they would all go wild and have no morals. Morals have nothing at all to do with ritual and occultism. IMO one is either born with empathy or without empathy. If one is born a psychopath all the rituals ever devised by the occult will not change that fact one iota. The rest of humanity does not need rituals, they need laws that will remove the psychopaths from society to a secure facility.
Both Erasmus and Luther were wrong imo and simply aided the continued use of occultism to prey on society. Religions are still a big business, but science is gaining ground.
Emma
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DURANT'S S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 431 - 435
LUTHER AND ERASMUS
Luther made it more and more difficult for Erasmus to intercede for him, since with each month the violence of his speech increased, until in July 1520 he invited his readers to wash their hands in the blood of bishops and cardinals. As the Diet of Worms approached, a German prince asked Erasmus to come to Luther’s aid, but he replied that it was too late. He regretted Luther’s refusal to submit to the pope’s wishes. Such submission, he thought, would have furthered the movement for reform, now he feared civil war. In February 1521 Erasmus wrote to a friend:
“ Everyone confessed that the Church suffered under the tyranny of certain men, and many were taking council to remedy this state of affairs. Now this man has arisen to treat the matter in such a way.... that no one dares to defend even what he has said well. Six months ago I warned him to beware of hatred. The “Babylonian Captivity” has alienated many from him, and he daily puts forth even more atrocious things.”
Luther now abandoned hope of Erasmus support, and put him aside as a cowardly pacifist, who thinks “that all can be accomplished with civility and benevolence.” At the same time, theologians continued to attack Erasmus as a secret Lutheran. Disgusted, he moved to Basel, where he hoped to forget the young Reformation in the old Renaissance. Basel was the citadel of Swiss humanism. Here laboured Beatus Rhenanus, who edited the printing of Erasmus’ New Testament. Here were printers and publishers who were also scholars, like that saint among publishers, Johann Froben (ius) who wore himself out over his presses and texts, and, said Erasmus, “left his family more honour than fortune.” Here Durer lived for years; here Holbein made breath-taking portraits of Froben and others.
Living with Froben, Erasmus acted as literary adviser, wrote prefaces, edited the Fathers. Holbein made famous portraits of him at Basel ( 1523-24). One is still there, another now in the Louvre, is Holbein’s masterpiece. Standing at a table writing, wrapped in a heavy fur trimmed coat, hooded with a beret covering half of each ear, the greatest of the humanists betrays in his premature age ( he was now fifty-seven) the toll taken by ill health, a peripatetic life of controversy, and spiritual loneliness and grief brought on by his attempt to be fair to both sides, in the dogmatic conflicts of his time. Grim, thin lips; features refined but strong; a sharp ferreting nose; heavy eyelids almost closed on tired eyes; here, in one of the greatest of all portraits, is the Renaissance slain by the Reformation.
Adrian VI’s Successor, Clement VII, urged Erasmus to enter the lists against Luther. When finally the scholar yielded, it was with no personal attack on Luther, no general indictment of the Reformation, but an objective and mannerly discussion of free will, (De libero arbitrio, 1524) He admitted that he could not fathom the mystery of moral freedom, not reconcile it with divine omniscience and omnipotence. But no humanist could accept the doctrines of predestination and determinism without sacrificing the dignity and value of man or of human life: here was another basic cleavage between the Reformation and the Renaissance. To Erasmus it seemed obvious that a God who punished sins that His creatures as made by Him could not help committing, was an immoral monster unworthy of worship or praise; and to ascribe such conduct to Christ’s “Father in heaven” would be the direst blasphemy. On Luther’s assumptions the worst criminal would be an innocent martyr, fated to sin by an act of God, and then condemned by divine vengeance to eternal suffering. How could a believer in predestination make any creative effort, or labour to improve the condition of mankind? Erasmus confessed that a man’s moral choice is fettered by a thousand circumstances over which he has no control; yet man’s consciousness persists in affirming some measure of freedom, without which he would be a meaningless automaton. In any case, Erasmus concluded, let us admit our ignorance, our incapacity to reconcile moral freedom with divine prescience or omnipresent causality; let us postpone the solution to the Last Judgement; but meanwhile let us shun any hypothesis that makes man a puppet, and God a tyrant crueller than any in history.
Most Catholics were disappointed by the conciliatory and philosophical tone of the book; they had hoped for an exhilarating declaration of war. Luther, in a delayed response entitled “De servo arbitrio ( 1525)” defended predestination uncompromisingly:
“The human will is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose its rider.... God foresees, foreordains, and accomplishes all things by an unchanging, eternal, and efficacious will ..... By this thunderbolt free will sinks shattered in the dust.”
It is significant of the sixteenth-century mood that Luther rejected free will not, as some eighteenth century thinkers would do, because it ran counter to a universal reign of law and causality, nor as many in the nineteenth century would do, because heredity, environment, and circumstance seemed to determine, like another trinity, the desires that seem to determine the will. He rejected free will on the ground that God’s omnipotence makes Him the real cause of all events and all actions, and that consequently it is He, and not our virtue or our sins, Who decides our salvation or damnation. Luther faces the bitterness of his logic manfully:
“Common sense and natural reason are highly offended that God by His mere will deserts, hardens, and damns, as if He delighted in sin and such eternal torments, He Who is said to be of such mercy and goodness. Such a concept of God seems wicked, cruel, and intolerable, and by it many men have been revolted in all ages. I myself was once offended to the very depth of the abyss of desperation, so that I wished that I had never been created. There is no use trying to get away from this by ingenious distinctions. Natural reason, however much it is offended, must admit the consequences of the omniscience and omnipotence of God.... It is difficult to believe in God’s mercy and goodness when he damns those who do not deserve it. We must recall that if God’s justice could be recognised as just by human comprehension, it would not be divine.”
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These four pages about a time 500 years ago, are just as relevant today, as they were then, and are the main reason that I choose to be a Humanist.
I still think that almost all wars are fuelled by religion and/or money.
More Muslims are killed by Muslims than by anyone else.
More poor people are attacked by richer people in search of even more riches, either in the shape of land, or what that land has produced or contains in the way of minerals or oil.
Call me cynical if you like, but today's posting by Trevor finally got me off my butt to add my comments. Too long have I been a lurker.
Brian
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Brian, we thought you had left us as many have over the years. It is good to see your thoughtful and insightful post. I agree with everything you said, and you said it well.
Hope to see you here more often.
Emily
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Thanks, Emily.
This is the portrait of Erasmus, by Hans Holbein, that is
referred to in our excerpt. It was painted in 1523.
Brian
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/tag/erasmus-of-rotterdam#supersized-search-230849 (http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/tag/erasmus-of-rotterdam#supersized-search-230849)
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Brian, that portrait of Erasmus writing with an ink pen reminds me of my first attempt at writing with ink. I was in second grade and only allowed to have a pencil, but I begged my father for ink and a pen. He bought me one with the metal tip at the end of a wooden shaft and a bottle of ink. I practiced until I could write without using a blotter constantly.
He also looks as though he is dressed for outdoors, but since this was in northern Europe, it was probably cold inside and out. The robe looks extremely heavy and that hat must have been worn inside also.
Erasmus does not look like a fellow who smiles very much.
Old sour puss.
Emma
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BRIAN: nice to know you're with us!
Now that I see the portrait, I realize I've seen it many times. To me, he doesn't look like a sourpuss, so much as thoughtful.
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Durant writes "Erasmus wrote in femininely graceful Latin ". Oh how i wish i could have a conversation with D about what that means.
These two passages are a fine rationale as to why i too have been a humanist and agnostic all my life. Yes, i mean that. I can't ever remember as a child thinking that the "Christmas story" was anything more then a story. I don't know where that came from, but i remember at least by jr high school believing that the Bible was a history/mythology of Judeo-Christianity. AND this coming from a child of generations of Calvinist Presbyterians on my mother's side. My father's agnostic genetics must have been powerful. I have probably said here before that my mother's Scotch-Irish ancestors came to Penna in the 1730's, four brothers named Chambers who started three Presbyterian churches in south central Pa, and founded the town of Chambersburg. And one aunt and one uncle of mine had not lessened their religious fervor of Calvin in more then two centuries (1940's) - no drinking, no card playing, no board game playing or movie going or anything else FUN on Sundays. My mother was not so eighteenth century in her thinking, she allowed me to get a waitressing job where i sometimes had to work on Sundays and my aunt never stopped badgering her about it.
Yes, my ninth grade English teacher would have a coronary of my use of a conjunction to start sentences.......i used them for emphasis. ☺
Jean
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"Yes, my ninth grade English teacher would have a coronary of my use of a conjunction to start sentences."
I guess there's more than one kind of strict orthodoxy in your past!
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;D ;D Good catch, Joan!
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Wow ! I seem to have unleashed a flurry of Humanism.
Meanwhile the group who follow "Agnosticism, Atheism and Humanism"
have become bogged down in the politics of helping, or not, people
across the world.
Perhaps we should invite them to join us with the Durants in reading
how the world got us into the troubles in the first place.
Brian
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 435 - 437
ERASMUS. (cont.)
Even at this stage Erasmus continued his efforts for peace. To his correspondents he recommended tolerance and courtesy. He thought that the Church should permit clerical marriage and communion in both kinds; that she should yield some of her vast properties to lay authorities and uses; and that such divisive questions as predestination, free will, and the Real Presence should be left undefined, open to diverse interpretations. He advised Duke, George of Saxony, to treat the Anabaptists humanely; “it is not just to punish with fire any error whatever, unless there be joined to it sedition or some other crime such as the laws punish with death.” This was in 1524; in 1533, however, moved by friendship or senility, he defended the imprisonment of Heretics by Thomas More. In Spain, where some Humanists become Erasmians, the monks of the Inquisition began a systematic scrutiny of Erasmus’ works, with a view to having him condemned as a heretic( 1527). Nevertheless he continued his criticism of monastic immorality and theological dogmatism as main provocatives of the Reformation. In 1528 he repeated the charge that “many convents, both of men and women, are public brothels,” and “ in many monasteries the last virtue to be found is chastity.” In 1532 he condemned the monks as importunate beggars, seducers of women, hounders of heretics, hunters of legacies, forgers of testimonials. He was all for reforming the Chuch while deprecating the Reformation. He could not bring himself to leave the Church or see her torn in half. “I endure the Church till the day I shall see a better one.”
He was dismayed when he heard of the sack of Rome by Protestant and Catholic troops in the service of the Emperor ( 1527); he had hoped that Charles would encourage Clement to compromise with Luther; now Pope and Emperor were at each other’s throats. A closer shock came when, in a pious riot, the reformers in Basel destroyed the images in the churches. The incensed and senseless denudation of churches seemed to him an illiberal and barbarous reaction. He left Basel and moved to Freiburg-im-breisgau, in Catholic Austrian territory. When the Imperial pension came too irregularly the Fuggers sent him what ever funds he needed. But the monks and theologians of Freiburg attacked him as a secret sceptic, and as the real cause of the turmoil in Germany. He returned to Basel, where university professors went out to welcome him.
He was now sixty-nine, thin, with features drawn with age. He suffered from ulcers, diarrhea, pancreatitis, gout, stone, and frequent colds. Harassed with pain, and hearing daily of attacks made upon him by both Protestants and Catholics, he lost the good humour that had endeared him to his friends, and became morose. On June 6th 1536, he was stricken with acute dysentery. He knew he was dying, but did not ask for a priest or confessor, and passed away( June 12) without the sacraments of the Church. The humanists, the painters, and the bishop of the city joined in erecting over his remains a stone slab, still in place, commemorating his “incomparable erudition in every branch of learning.”
His standing with posterity fluctuated with the prestige of the Renaissance. Almost all parties, in the fever of religious revolution, called him a trimmer and a coward. The Reformers charged him with having led them to the brink, inspired them to jump, and then taken to his heals. At the council of Trent he was branded an impious heretic, and his works were forbidden to Catholic readers. As late as 1758 Horace Walpole termed him “a begging parasite, who had parts enough to discover the truth, and not courage enough to profess it.” Late in the nineteenth century, a learned and judicious Protestant historian mourned that the Erasmian conception of reform was soon interrupted and set aside by ruder and more drastic methods. “The Reformation of the sixteenth century was Luther’s work; but if any fresh Reformation is coming it can only be based upon the principles of Erasmus.”
Luther had to be; but when his work was done, and passion cooled, men would try again to catch the spirit of Erasmus and the Renaissance, and renew in patience and mutual tolerance the long, slow labour of enlightenment.
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"Almost all parties, in the fever of religious revolution, called him -- a coward."
The fate of moderates and mediators everywhere.
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I was intrigued by the reference that Erasmus was financed by "the Fuggers".
They were a family of Jewish extraction in Bavaria, and made their money
by the sale of copper and by lending money to those in need. Before their
time it was illegal to charge interest for a loan - - - they changed that !!
http://wolfgangcapito.wordpress.com/tag/jacob-fugger/ (http://wolfgangcapito.wordpress.com/tag/jacob-fugger/)
Brian
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That's very interesting.
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It did not surprise me that the Fuggers were giving money to Erasmus. After all Erasmus wanted the Roman Catholic Church along with the Pope to survive and stay relevant in Germany. The Fuggers had no interest in the Catholics except as a money source.
An excerpt from the Fuggers history in Germany.......
With the help of their brother Markus in Rome Ulrich and his brother George handled remittances to the papal court of monies for the sale of indulgences and the procuring of church benefices. From 1508 to 1515 they leased the Roman mint. Ulrich died in 1510.
The Fuggers made money from the church selling of indulgences and the buying of church offices. Both Erasmus and Luther were opposed to this practice. Luther stood his ground and Erasmus sold out for money from the Fuggers to keep this practice going.
Those who knew Erasmus and called him a coward perhaps did not know at the time that he was also someone who played both sides to benefit himself. A man who says he believes one thing and does the opposite has no morals or ethics.
Emily
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More on the Fuggers from the International and Brittannica encyclopedia, the history of Banking, and the Fugger and Wesler Museum from Wikipedia.
When the Fuggers made their first loan to the Archduke Sigismund in 1487, they took as security an interest in silver and copper mines in the Tirol. This was the beginning of an extensive family involvement in mining and precious metals.[4] The Fuggers also participated in mining operations in Silesia. The Fuggers also owned copper mines in Hungary and their trade in spices, wool and silk extended to almost all parts of Europe.
Ulrich's youngest brother Jakob Fugger (illustration, below) was born in 1459, and was to become the most famous member of the dynasty. He married Sibylla Artzt Grand Burgheress to Augsburg in 1498, but they had no children, his wife was the daughter of an eminent Grand Burgher of Augsburg (German Großbürger zu Augsburg). This marriage opened the opportunity for Jakob himself to elevate to Grand Burgher of Augsburg and later entitled him the privilege to also access his aspiration of pursuing a seat on the city council (German Stadtrat) of Augsburg. He was elevated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in May 1511, and in 1519, led a consortium of German and Italian businessmen that loaned Charles V 850,000 florins (about 95,625 oz(t) of gold) to procure his election as Holy Roman Emperor over Francis I of France. The Fuggers' contribution was 543,000 florins.
In 1494 the Fuggers established their first public company. Jakob's aim was to establish a copper monopoly by opening foundries in Hohenkirchen and Fuggerau (named for the family, in Carinthia) and by expanding the sales organization in Europe, especially the Antwerp agency. Jakob leased the copper mines in Neusohl (modern Banská Bystrica, Slovakia) in 1495, eventually making them up into the greatest mining centre of the time.
At the height of his power Jakob Fugger was sharply criticized by his contemporaries, especially by Ulrich von Hutten and Martin Luther, for urging the Pope to rescind or amend the prohibition on the levying of interest and for the sale of indulgences and benefices. The imperial fiscal and governmental authorities in Nuremberg brought action against him and other merchants trying to halt their monopolistic tendencies.
Jakob died in 1525. He is considered to be one of the richest persons of all time,[6] and today he is well known as Jakob Fugger 'the rich'.
Jakob's successor was his nephew Anton Fugger, son of his elder brother Georg. Anton was born in 1493, married Anna Rehlinger, and died in 1560.
In 1525 the Fuggers were granted the revenues from the Spanish orders of knighthood together with the profits from mercury and silver mines.[7] The formerly rich yield of the Tirolean and Hungarian mines decreased but Anton established new trade ties with Peru and Chile and started mining ventures in Sweden and Norway. He was involved in the slave trade from Africa to America Eventually he was forced to renounce the Maestrazgo lease after 1542 and to give up the silver mines of Guadalcanal.
Anton's oldest son, Markus, carried on the business successfully and during the period 1563–1641 the Fugger company which was completely dissolved only after the Thirty Years' War, earned some 50,000,000 ducats from the production of mercury at Almadén alone.
Emily
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The Weslers were partners to the Fuggers. An excerpt from the article.....
Welser was a German banking and merchant family, originally a patrician family from Augsburg, that rose to great prominence in international high finance in the 16th century as financiers of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Along with the Fugger family, the Welser family controlled large sectors of the European economy, and accumulated enormous wealth through trade and the German colonization of the Americas. (South America)
The family received colonial rights of the Province of Venezuela from the King of Spain in 1528, becoming owners and rulers of the South American colony of Klein-Venedig (roughly corresponding to modern Venezuela), but were deprived of their rule in 1556.
Claiming descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius, the family is known since the 13th century. By the early Age of Discovery, the Welser family had estasblished trading posts in Antwerp, Lyon, Madrid, Nuremberg, Sevilla, Lisbon, Venice, Rome and Santo Domingo. The Welsers financed not only the Emperor, but also other European monarchs.
Philippine Welser, wife of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, In the 15th and 16th centuries, branches of the family settled at Nuremberg and in Austria, respectively.
The Venezuela purchase
Bartholomeus V. Welser lent the Emperor Charles V a great sum of money for which in 1528 he received as security the Province of Venezuela, developing it as Klein-Venedig (little Venice) but in consequence of their rapacious acts the Welsers were deprived of their rule before the Emperor's reign was over. His son, Bartholomeus VI. Welser, explored Venezuela and was executed by local Spanish Governor Juan de Carvajal in 1546.
The Fuggers and Weslers did not arrive in Augsburg (Germany) until the end of the Fourteenth century. Like those who came after them they were deceivers. When reading how the Rothschild cult got their name, they said they picked one of the common names in Germany when they arrived. These cultists possess a greed that would consume the entire world if they could, and they have tried.
I am still reading the Torah, and the exact receipe for this kind of deception and greed is told in detail in Exodus. It is a 'how to' tale of Joseph who says he's Governor and head honcho.
During the famine in Egypt the people had spent all their money on bread, and Joseph now had all the money and the bread. So he tells them, 'bring your cattle and give it to me, and I will give you bread. Now Joseph had all their money and cattle. In the second year of the drought the people show up and all they have is their land left. Joseph took all the land of Egypt for bread. Joseph moved them to cities from one end of Egypt to the other. Only the priests kept a portion.
They got seed to sow land they no longer owned. 1/5 of any crop produced went to Pharoh. So Israel moved to the land of Egypt and they took possession of the land. They grow and multiply.
A 'How to lesson on how to steal a country' in one easy session.
Emily
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 438 - 441
The Faiths at War
1525 - 1560
What combination of forces and circumstances enabled nascent Protestantism to survive the hostility of both Papacy and Empire? Mystical piety, Biblical studies, religious reform, intellectual development, Luther’s audacity, were not enough; they might have been diverted or controlled. Probably the economic factors were decisive; the desire to keep German wealth in Germany, to free Germany from papal or Italian domination, to transfer ecclesiastical property to secular uses, to repel Imperial encroachments upon the territorial, judicial, and financial authority of the German princes, cities, and states. Add certain political conditions that permitted the Protestant success. The Ottoman Empire, after conquering Constantinople and Egypt, was expanding dangerously in the Balkans and Africa, absorbing half of Hungary, besieging Vienna, and threatening to close the Mediterranean to Christian trade. Charles V and Archduke Ferdinand required a united Germany and Austria -- Protestant as well as Catholic money and men -- to resist this Moslem avalanche. The Emperor agreed with his pensioner Erasmus, that the Church badly needed reform; he was intermittently at odds with Clement VII and Paul III even to allowing his army to sack Rome; only when Emperor and Pope were friends could they effectually combat the religious revolution.
But by 1527 the “Lutheran heresy” had become orthodoxy in half of Germany. The cities found Protestantism profitable;" they do not care in the least about religion,” mourned Melanchthon; “they are only anxious to get dominion into their hands, to be free from the control of the bishops”; for a slight alteration in their theological garb they escaped from Episcopal taxes and courts, and could appropriate pleasant parcels of ecclesiastical property. Yet an honest desire for a simpler and sincerer religion seems to have moved many citizens. In Brunswick the writings of Luther were widely circulated; his hymns were publicly sung; his version of the New Testament was so earnestly studied that when a priest misquoted it, he was corrected by the congregation; finally the city council ordered all clergymen to preach only what could be found in the Scriptures, to baptise in German, and to serve the sacrament in both forms ( 1528 ). Iconoclastic riots broke out in Augsburg, Hamburg, Brunswick, Stralsund; probably some of this violence was a reaction against the ecclesiastical use of statues and paintings to inculcate ridiculous and lucrative legends.
The princes, gladly adopting Roman Law-- which made the secular ruler omnipotent as delegate of the sovereign people-- saw in Protestantism a religion that not only exalted the state but obeyed it; now they could be spiritual as well as temporal lords, and all the wealth of the Church could be theirs to enjoy. Phillip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, formed with John the League of Gotha and Torgau ( 1526 ), to protect and extend Lutheranism. Other princes fell in line. Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights, following Luther’s advice, abandoned his monastic vows, married, secularized the lands of his order, and made himself Duke of Prussia. Luther saw himself apparently by the mere force of his personality and eloquence, winning half of Germany.
For good or evil, for spiritual or material ends, the great transformation progressed. Whole provinces went over almost unanimously to Protestantism; nothing could better show how moribund Catholicism had become. “The people everywhere,” wrote Erasmus ( January 1530) “are for the new doctrines.” This was true, however, only in northern Germany. Southern and western Germany -- which had been part of the ancient Roman Empire, and had received some Latin culture -- remained for the most part loyal to the Church.
Hungary entered vitally into the drama. The premature accession of Louis II at age of ten (1516) and his premature death, were formative elements in the Hungarian tragedy. Louis grew into a handsome youth, kindly and generous, but given to extravagance and festivities on meagre resources amid a corrupt and incompetent court. When Sultan Suleiman sent an ambassador to Buda the noble refused to receive him, dragged him around the country, cut off his nose and ears, and returned him to his master. The infuriated Sultan invaded Hungary and seized two of its most vital strongholds-- Szabacs and Belgrade (1521). After long delays, and amid the treason and cowardice of his nobles, Louis raised an army of 25,000 men and marched out with mad heroism to face 100,000 Turks. The Hungarians were slaughtered almost to a man, and Louis himself was drowned in stumbling flight. Suleiman entered Buda in triumph; his army sacked and burned the handsome capital, destroyed all its major buildings, and gave to the flames most of Matthias Corinus’s library. The victorious host spread over eastern Hungary, burning and pillaging, and drove 100,000 Christian captives before him to Constantinople.
When Suleiman returned to the attack, marching 135 miles from Buda along the Danube to the gates of Vienna, Ferdinand successfully defended his capital. But the westward advance of the Turks so obviously advantaged Protestantism that Philip of Hesse rejoiced at Turkish victories. When Suleiman retired to Constantinople, Catholics and Protestants felt free to renew their struggle for the soul of Germany.
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Caliph Suleiman was quite a fellow. He was the original Suleiman the Great,
and a very short and effective summary of his life is here - - -
http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/s/Suleiman_the_Magnificent.htm (http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/s/Suleiman_the_Magnificent.htm)
Brian
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Thanks Brian for that link on Suleiman. We studied him in 'The Age of Faith' but that has been some time ago and at this age the mind wanders.
The description given of Suleiman by his biographers of his 'light skin' and tall skinny neck leads me to believe he was part Slav. Perhaps his own mother was a Slav, after all he married one and his own children and successors were half Slav.
One memory I have is that when the Slavs were captured the women all went to the slave market, at least those who survived. The fact that his wife survived capture, sold as a slave and was bought for the Sultan's harem and became his favorite is a story of survival against all odds.
The biographers have lauded Suleiman and called him 'magnificent' but he wasn't smart enough to make a law that would determine his successor. To watch your own child being beaten and strangled to death (which was their method for eliminating those in line to the throne) is so inhuman it defies description. I would label him Suleiman the Psychopath.
In the paintings of Suleiman that enormous pile of bed sheets on his head makes him look abnormal. Perhaps he had a small head and the extremely large turban made up for his head size. Just speculation on my part, I don't get the picture.
Any one have any idea on Suleiman's 'Big Head'?
Emma
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/neanderman.jpg) |
What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
| (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/children1.jpg) |
Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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This discussion began on Nov. 1, 2001. We have completed twelve years of discussion on the Story of Civilization. My gratitude to Robby for creating this discussion and leading it for several years. Then the loss of the website Senior net, we found a new forum here at Senior Learn. Thanks to Trevor for leading the discussion forward. He (Trevor) has been here from the beginning and for that I am grateful.
I am grateful for Joan, Jean, and Brian and all others who have posted in this forum.
Emma
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The size of the headgear is possibly meant to reflect his strength
and wisdom. The Sikhs used it in this way.
http://qualityjunkyard.com/2009/12/16/large-turbans/ (http://qualityjunkyard.com/2009/12/16/large-turbans/)
Brian
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With you, Emily, I have previously expressed my gratitude to both Robby and to Trevor.
Has anybody heard news of Robby lately ? Like the rest of us he's not getting any younger.
Brian
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Thank you so much, TREVOR, for picking up where Robby left off.
Those turbans are amazing! just thinking of wearing them makes my neck hurt!
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I agree with Joan on the turban, it gives me a headache just looking at it.
Thanks Brian for the information on the turban. Someone posted here they had written to Robby and he stated he would welcome e-mail from posters. I sent him an e-mail and he answered saying all was well and that he is still busy and active.
Emma
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION.
Pgs 441 - 444
THE DIETS DISAGREE: 1526 - 1541
As internal liberty varies ( other things equal ) with external security, Protestantism, during its safe period, indulged in the sectarian fragmentation that seemed inherent in the principles of private judgement and the supremacy of conscience. Already in 1525 Luther wrote : “There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as there are heads.” Melanchthon was kept grievously busy moderating his master and finding ambiguous formulas for reconciling contradictory certitudes. Catholics pointed gleefully at the mutually recriminating Protestant factions, and predicted that freedom of interpretation and belief would lead to religious anarchy, moral disintegration, and scepticism abominable to Protestants as well as Catholics.
Having made his peace with Clement, Charles returned to the natural conservatism of a king, and ordered the Diet of Speyer to reconvene. Under the influence of the presiding Archduke and the absent Emperor the new assembly repealed the “Recess” of 1526, and passed a decree permitting Lutheran services -- but requiring the toleration of Catholic services -- in Lutheran states, completely forbidding Lutheran preaching or ritual in Catholic states, enforcing the Edict of Worms, and outlawing Zwinglian and Anabaptist sects everywhere. On April 25, 1529, the Lutheran minority published a “Protest” declaring that conscience forbade their acceptance of this decree; they appealed to the emperor for a general council; meanwhile they would adhere to the original Recess of Speyer at what ever the cost. The term Protestant was applied by the Catholics to the signers of this Protest and gradually came into use to designate the German rebels from Rome.
Still needing German unity against the Turks, Charles called another diet, which met at Augsburg June 20 1530, under his presidency. During this conference he stayed with Anton Fugger, now head of the firm that had made him emperor. According to an old story, the banker pleased the ruler by lighting a fire with an Imperial certificate of indebtedness. As the Fuggers were financially allied with the popes, the gesture may have moved Charles a step nearer to the papacy. Luther did not attend, for he was still under the Imperial ban, and might at any moment be arrested; but he went to Coburg, on the Saxon border, and kept in touch, through messengers, with the Protestant delegation. He complained that “each bishop brought as many devils,” or voters to the Diet “ as there are flees on a dog on St. John’s day.”
On June 24 Cardinal Campeggio appealed to the Diet for the utter suppression of Protestant sects. On the 25 June Christian Bayer read to the Emperor and a portion of the assembly the famous Augsburg Confession, which Melanchthon had prepared, and which with some modifications, was to become the official creed of the Lutheran churches. Partly because he feared a war of the combined imperial and papal forces against the divided Protestants, partly because he was by temperament inclined to compromise and peace, Melanchthon gave the statement ( says a Catholic scholar) “a dignified, moderate, and pacific tone,” and strove to minimize the difference between Catholic and Lutheran views. He expiated on the heresies that the Evangelicals (as the Lutherans called themselves from their sole reliance on the Gospels or the New Testament.) and the Roman Catholics alike condemned; he dissociated the Lutheran from the Zwinlian reform, and left the latter to fend for itself. He softened the doctrines of “predestination, “consubstantiation,” and justification by faith. He defended with courtesy the administration of the sacrament in both forms, the abolition of monastic vows, the marriage of the clergy, and he appealed to Cardinal Campeggio to accept the Confession in the conciliatory spirit in which it had been composed. Luther regretted some of the concessions, but gave to the document his approval.
The extreme faction of the Catholics, led by Eck, retorted with a confutation so intransigent that the assembly refused to submit it to the Emperor until it had twice been toned down. So revised, it insisted on transubstantiation, seven sacraments, the invocation of saints, clerical celibacy, communion in bread alone, and the Latin Mass. Charles approved this confutation and declared that the Protestants must accept it or face war. A milder party of Catholics entered into negotiation with Melanchthon, and offered to permit communion in bread and wine. Melanchthon in return agreed to recognize auricular confession, fasts, episcopal jurisdiction, even with some provisos, the authority of popes. But other Protestant leaders refused to go so far; Luther protested that the restoration of Episcopal jurisdiction would subject the new ministers to the Roman hierarchy, and would soon liquidate the Reformation. Seeing agreement impossible, several Protestant princes left for their homes.
On November 19 the diminished Diet issued its final decree. All phases of Protestantism were condemned; the Edict of Worms was to be enforced; the Imperial Chamber of Justice ( Reichskammergericht ) was to start legal actions against all appropriators of ecclesiastical property; the Protestants were to have until April 15 1531 to accept the confutation peaceably. Charles’s signature made this “Recess of Augsburg” an Imperial decree. To the Emperor it must have seemed the height of reasonableness to give the rebels six months to adjust themselves to the will of the Diet. Within that period he offered immunity from the Edict of Worms. Thereafter if other duties allowed, he might have to submit the rival theologies to the supreme court of war.
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It is depressing, isn't it, that even in this 21 century, those who profess Christianity so loudly are the ones who throughout history have been the loudest brayers for war?
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Very depressing. I wonder what the common people were thinking while this was going on.
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And in the middle of this, I wondered why dogs would have more fleas on St. John's Day. It celebrates the birthday of John the Baptist: maybe it occurs at the height of flea season.
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Trevor, good to see your comment, and I agree with it completely.
Charles called another diet, which met at Augsburg June 20 1530, under his presidency. During this conference he stayed with Anton Fugger, now head of the firm that had made him emperor. According to an old story, the banker pleased the ruler by lighting a fire with an Imperial certificate of indebtedness. As the Fuggers were financially allied with the popes, the gesture may have moved Charles a step nearer to the papacy.
Anton Fugger was not a Christian, and his only interest in the Catholics was the collection of money for indulgences and the selling of church offices. He was a common criminal whose greed was so overwhelming that he was devoid of all humanity. Charles was unfit to rule over a den of snakes. They plot against humanity and want war. Their greed and lust for power over others is repulsive.
Emma
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I love WORDS and the uses they get put to (if you'll pardon the grammar!)
Consubstantiation :
The idea is that in the communion, the body and blood of Christ, and the bread and wine, coexist in union with each other. “Luther illustrated it by the analogy of the iron put into the fire whereby both fire and iron are united in the red-hot iron and yet each continues unchanged
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And who could have put it better than the Durants with : -
- - - the supreme court of war - - -
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We have been reading the History of Civilization, for over ten years.
Now, you can watch the History of the Universe, in little over two minutes
starting with the "Big Bang".
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=MrqqD_Tsy4Q (http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=MrqqD_Tsy4Q)
Brian
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WOW!
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DITTO!
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As i read about the Augsburg Confession i wondered if it was a predecessor of the Apostle's Creed, but i discovered that the Apostle's Creed was a thousand years older. Here is Wiki's take on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles'_Creed
In our Methodist church in the fifties we did not say "he descended into hell." Uummm, interesting, why the change? Changed belief of there being a "hell"? Wanted to make it less terrifying? Didn't believe he went to hell - a Catholic idea? (and we were staying far away from anything that smacked of Catholicism).
Aahhh "connections". Interesting to me how when you become familiar with a name, a place or an idea, you see it over and over again often in places you never expected. I'm reading "Girls Like Us", a triple bio of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. In a section on Carly Simon talking about her emvironment while growing up there was this statement "Both houses (they had houses in NY and Conn) overflowed with lived culture, -'there were books everywhere', the youngest Simon sibling, Peter, recalled recently - and the makers of culture, including Irvin Shaw, Will and Ariel Durant, bridge master Charles Goen, poet Louis Untermeyer, myriad other writers and scholars, and once, even Albert Einstein."
Wow! Can you imagine? A child probably wouldn't appreciate that experience, besides it was just typical for her. They also were a musical family and aways had evening musicales often with musical names you would recognize. I'm so jealous, altho it didn't turn out to be a positive childhood for her. Her parents were very involved in these events and people and not very nurturing, especially for Carly who felt like the ugly duckling and the outsider. ( altho, i'm beginning to realize that many of us felt like outsiders in our youth, seems like just the psychology of youth. Robby, we need your expertise!)
Jean
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Thanks Jean for your interesting post. Will Durant being a writer of history required him to read thousands of books and original documents most in their language of origin such as Latin. He would probably have welcomed a respite from that aloneness being a writer of non fiction, where facts matter.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs 444 - 447
While the Diet was yet in session several states formed a Catholic League for the defence and restoration of the traditional faith. Interpreting this as a martial gesture, protestant princes and cities organised( March 1531 ) the Schmalkaldic League, which took its name from its birthplace near Erfurt. Ferdinand, now “King of the Romans,” proposed to Charles to begin war. But Charles was not yet ready. Suleiman was planning another attack upon Vienna: Suleiman’s confederate ,Barbarossa, was raiding Christian commerce in the Mediterranean; and Suleiman’s ally, Francis of France, was waiting to pounce upon Milan the moment Charles became involved in a German civil war. In 1531, instead of enforcing the Augsburg decree, he suspended it, and asked for protestant aid against the Turks. Luther and the princes responded loyally; Lutherans and Catholics signed the peace of Nuremberg (July 1532), pledging united aid to Ferdinand, and mutual religious toleration until a general council should be convened. So numerous an army of Protestant and Catholics Germans or Spanish and Italian Catholics, gathered under the Emperors standard at Vienna that Suleiman found the omens unfavourable and turned back to Constantinople, while the Christian army, drunk with its bloodless victory, plundered Christian towns and homes, “spreading greater disaster,” said eyewitness Thomas Cranmer of England, “ than the Turks themselves.”
The patriotism of the Protestants gave their movement new dignity and impetus. When Aleander, again papal emissary, offered the Lutheran leaders a hearing at a general council if they would promise submission to the council’s final decisions they rejected the proposal. A year later (1534) Phillip of Hesse, disregarding Luther’s condemnation of any offensive policy, accepted French aid in restoring the Protestant Duke Ulrich to power in Württemberg. Ferdinand’s rule there was ended; the churches were pillaged, the monasteries were closed, and their property was taken by the state. Ferdinand was absorbed in the east, Charles in the west; the Anabaptists were apparently consolidating a communistic revolution in Münster; Jürgen Wullenwever’s radicals captured Lübeck (1535); the Catholic princes now needed Lutheran aid against internal revolt as much as against the Ottomans. Moreover Scandinavia and England had by that time renounced Rome, and Catholic France was seeking the alliance of Lutheran Germany against Charles V.
Elated with this growing strength, the Schmalkaldic League voted to raise an army of 12,000 men. It repudiated the Imperial Chamber of Justice, and notified the Emperor's vice-chancellor that it would not admit the right of Catholics to retain Church property, or to carry out their worship, in the territories of Protestant princes. The Catholic states renewed their League, and demanded of Charles full enforcement of the powers given to the Reichskammergericht. He replied with gracious words, but fear of Francis I at his back kept him at bay.
When the Catholic Duke George of Albertine Saxony died he was succeeded by his brother Henry, a Lutheran; Henry in turn was succeeded by Maurice, who was to be the military saviour of Protestantism in Germany. In 1542 the duchy of Cleves, the bishopric of Naumburg, even Albrecht ht’s see of Halle, were added to the Protestant roster by timely mixtures of Politics and war; and in 1543 Count Herman von Wied, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, shocked Rome by transforming himself into a Lutheran. The Protestant leaders were so confident that in January 1540, Luther, Melanchthon and others, issued a declaration to the effect that peace could be had only through the renunciation, by the Emperor and the Catholic clergy, of their “idolatry and error,” and by the adoption of the “pure doctrine” of the Augsburg Confession. And the document proceeded: “Even if the Pope were to concede to us our doctrines and ceremonies, we should still be obliged to treat him as a persecutor and an outcast, since in other kingdoms he would not renounce his errors.”
“It is all up with the Pope,” said Luther” as it is with his god, the Devil.” Charles almost agreed, for in April 1540, he took the religious initiative from the Pope, and invited the Catholic and Protestant leaders of Germany to meet in “Christian colloquy” to seek again a peaceful settlement of their differences. “Unless the Pope intervenes decisively,” wrote a papal nuncio, “the whole of Germany will fall prey to Protestantism.” At a preliminary conference in Worms a long debate between Eck and Melanchthon resulted in the tentative acceptance, by the previously intransigent Catholic, of the mild positions formulated in the Augsburg Confession. Encouraged, Charles summoned the two groups to Ratisbon (Regensburg). There, under his leadership, they made their closest approach to a settlement. Paul III was disposed to peace, and his chief delegate, Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, was a man of goodwill, and of high moral character. The Emperor, harassed by threats from France and appeals from Ferdinand for help against the returning Turks, was so anxious for an agreement that many Catholic leaders suspected ted him of Protestant leanings. The conference concurred in permitting marriage of the clergy and communion in both kinds; but no legerdemain could find a formula at once affirming and denying the religious supremacy of the popes, and transubstantiation in the Eucharist; Contarini was not amused by a protestant query whether a mouse that nibbled at a fallen consecrated Host was eating bread or God. The conference failed, but Charles, hurrying off to war, gave an interim pledge to the Protestants that there would be proceedings against them for holding the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, or for retaining confiscated Church property.
During these years of controversy and growth the new faith had created a new Church. At Luther’s suggestion it called itself Evangelical. He had originally advocated an ecclesiastical democracy, in which each congregation would select its own minister and determine its own ritual and creed; but his increasing dependence on the princes compelled him to surrender these prerogatives to commissions appointed by, and responsible to, the state. As a doctrinal guide for the new churches Luther drew up a five-page “Kleiner Katechismus ( 1529) consisting of the ten commandments, the Apostles Creed, and brief interpretations of each article. It would have been considered quite orthodox in the first four centuries of Christianity. “Divine Service” retained much of the Catholic ritual.--- alter, cross, candles, vestments, and parts of the Mass in German; but a larger role was given to the sermon, and there were no prayers to the Virgin or saints. Religious paintings and statues were discarded. The most pleasant innovation was the active participation of the congregation in the music of the ceremony. Even the noteless long to sing, and now every voice could fondly hear itself in the protective anonymity of the crowd. Luther became overnight a poet, and wrote didactic, polemical, and inspirational hymns of a rough and masculine power typical of his nature.. Not only did the worshipers sing these and other protestant hymns; they were called together during the week to rehearse them; and many families sang them in their homes.
A worried Jesuit reckoned that “ the hymns of Luther killed { converted} more souls than his sermons.” The Protestant music of the Reformation rose to rival the Catholic painting of the Renaissance.
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timely mixtures of Politics and war
Once again, I have to say that the Durants keep coming up with wonderful phrases.
If you can't get the others to agree with what you are saying, or in the case of the
Protestants, what you are singing - - - then you have to bash a few skulls - - -
unless of course you have the Turks at your door.
Brian
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A worried Jesuit reckoned that “ the hymns of Luther { converted} more souls than his sermons.” The Protestant music of the Reformation rose to rival the Catholic painting of the Renaissance.
Durant calls Luther a 'didactic' who wrote poetry and music to add to his already enormous output. A man of many talents. I agree with the Jesuit that music has a power all its own, especially when the words are in the voice of the parishoner.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 447 - 453
THE LION OF WITTENBERG 1536 - 1546
Luther took no direct part in the pacific conferences of these his declining years; the princes rather then the theologians were now the Protestant leaders, for the issue concerned property and power far more than dogma and ritual. Luther was not made for negotiation, and he was getting too old to fight with weapons other than the pen. A papal envoy described him in 1535 as still vigorous and heartily humorous; but his expanding frame harboured a dozen diseases -- indigestion, insomnia, dizziness, colic, stones in the kidneys, abscesses in the ears, ulcers, gout, rheumatism, sciatica, and palpitation of the heart. He used alcoholic drinks to dull his pain and bring him sleep; he sampled the drugs that the doctors prescribed for him; and he tried impatient prayer; the diseases progressed. In 1537 he thought he would die of stone, and he issued an ultimatum to the Deity: “If this pain lasts longer I shall go mad and fail to recognise Thy goodness.” His deteriorating temper was in part an expression of his suffering. His friends increasingly avoided him “ for hardly one of us,” said a saddened votary, “ can escape his anger and his public scourging.”
His political opinions in his later years suggest that silence is trebly golden after sixty. He had always been politically conservative even when appearing to encourage social revolution. His religious revolt was against practice rather than theory; he objected to the high costs of indulgences and later to papal domination, but he accepted to the end of his life the most difficult doctrines of orthodox Christianity -- Trinity, Virgin Birth, Atonement, Real Presence, hell -- and made some of these more indigestible than before. He despised the common people and would have corrected Lincoln’s famous error on that spawn of carelessness. Herr Omnes -- Mr. Crowd -- needs strong government, “lest the world becomes wild, peace vanish, and commerce be destroyed... No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood ... the world cannot be ruled with a rosary.” But when government by rosaries lost its power, government by the sword had to take its place. So Luther had to transfer to the state most of the authority that had been held by the Church; therefore he defended the divine right of kings. “The hand that wields the secular sword is not a human hand but the hand of God. It is God, not man, who wages war; who hangs and breaks on the wheel, and decapitates, and flogs;” In this exaltation of the state as now the sole source of order lay the seeds of the absolutist philosophies of Hobbes and Hegel, and a premonition of Imperial Germany. In Luther, Henry IV brought Hildebrand to Canosa.
The aged Luther became more conservative than the princes. He approved the exaction of forced labour and heavy feudal dues from the peasants; and when one baron had twitches of conscience Luther reassured him on the ground that if such burdens were not imposed upon them, commoners would become overbearing. He quoted the Old Testament as justifying slavery. “ Sheep, cattle, men-servants, and maid servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters; it were a good thing if it were still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk. To serve God is for everyone to remain in his vocation and calling, be it ever so mean and simple.” This conception of vocation became a pillar of conservatism in Protestant lands.
A prince who had been a loyal supporter of the Protestant cause brought Luther an uncomfortable problem in 1539. Philip of Hesse was at once warlike, amorous and conscientious. His wife, Christine of Savoy, was a faithful and fertile eyesore; Philip hesitated to divorce one so deserving, but he powerfully desired Margaret of Saale, whom he had met while convalescing from syphilis. After practicing adultery for some time he decided that he was in a state of sin, and must abstain from the Lord’s Supper. This proving inconvenient, he suggested to Luther that the new religion, so indebted to the Old Testament, should, like it, allow bigamy == for which however the prevailing legal penalty was death. After all, was this not more seemly than Francis I’s succession of mistresses, and more humane than Henry VIII’s executive husbandry? [ Henry’s executive husbandry !?! that will tickle Brian’s sense of humour] So anxious was Philip for this Biblical solution that he intimated his defection to the Imperial, even the papal camp, if the Wittenberg theologians could not see the Scriptural light. Luther was ready; indeed in the “Babylonian Captivity” he had preferred bigamy to divorce; and he had recommended bigamy as the best solution for Henry VIII.
Though Malanchthon was reluctant, he finally agreed with Luther that their consent should be given, but insisted that the details should be withheld from the public. Christine consented too, on condition that Philip “ was to fulfil his marital duties to her more than ever before.” The grateful prince sent Luther a cartload of wine as a ‘pourboire’ When news of the settlement leaked out Luther denied giving consent; “the secret Yea,” he wrote “ must for the sake of Christ’s Church remain a public Nay.” Most Evangelicals were scandalised. Catholics were amused and delighted, not knowing that Pope Clement VII had himself thought of allowing bigamy to Henry VIII.
Luther's temper became hot lava as he neared the grave. In 1545 he attacked the Zwinglian “Sacramentarians” with such violence that Melanchthon mourned the widening chasm between the Protestants of the south and north. Asked by Elector John to restate the case against participation in a papally directed council, Luther sent forth a tirade “Against the Papacy at Rome Founded by the Devil,” in which his flare for vituperation surpassed itself. The word ‘devil’ peppered the text; “the Pope was the most hellish father,” “this Roman hermaphrodite” and “Sodomite pope”; the cardinals were desperately lost children of the Devil .... ignorant asses...One would like to curse them so that thunder and lightning smite them, hell fire burn them, the plague, syphilis, epilepsy, scurvy, leprosy, carbuncles, and all diseases attack them.” He repudiated again the notion that the Holy Roman Empire was a gift of the popes; on the contrary, he thought, the time had come for the Empire to absorb the Papal States.
Perhaps his mind had begun to fail when he wrote this clarion call to violence. The gradual poisoning of the internal organs by time and food and drink may have reached and injured the brain. In his later years Luther became uncomfortably stout, with hanging jowls and convoluted chin. He described himself as “old, decrepit, sluggish, weary, cold, with but one good eye. I am tired of the world, and it is tired of me.” Early one morning he fell ill with stomach pains. He weakened rapidly, then an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech, and in its course, he died. ( Feb 18, 1546.) The body was taken back to Wittenberg, and was buried in the Castle Church on whose door he had pinned his Theses twenty-nine years before. Those years were among the most momentous in history, and Luther had been their strident and dominant voice.
His faults were many. He lacked appreciation of the historic role that the Church had played in civilising northern Europe, lacked understanding of mankind’s hunger for symbolic and consolatory myths, lacked the charity to deal justly with his Catholic and Protestant foes. He freed his followers from an infallible pope, but subjected them to an infallible book. He retained the most cruel and incredible dogmas of medieval religion, while allowing almost all its beauty to be stamped out in its legends and its art, and bequeathed to Germany a Christianity no truer than the old one, far less joyous and comforting, only more honest in its teaching and personnel. He became almost as intolerant as the Inquisition, but his words were harsher than his deeds. He was guilty of the most vituperative writing in the history of literature. He taught Germany the theological hatred that incarnadined its soil until a hundred years after his death.
It remains that with the blows of his rude fist he smashed the cake of custom, the shell of authority, that had blocked the movement of the European mind. If we judge greatness by influence-- which is the least subjective test that we can use-- we may rank Luther with Copernicus, Voltaire, and Darwin as the most powerful personalities in the modern world. More has been written about him than any other modern man except Shakespeare and Napoleon. His influence on German literature and speech was as decisive and pervasive as that of the King James Bible on language and letters in England. No other German is so frequently or so fondly quoted.
His influence lessened as it spread; it was immense in Scandinavia, transitory in France, superseded by Calvin’s in Scotland, England, and America. But in Germany it was supreme. He was the most powerful figure in German history, and his countrymen love him not less because he was the most German German of them all.
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My comment on Martin Luther, "He was a highly intelligent man without a lick of common sense"
Comments from other sources that I would apply to the situation.........
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
"Man will never be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" Denis Diderot
"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic" John F. Kennedy
"Fear believes - Courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays - Courage stands erect and thinks"
"Fear is barbarism - Courage is civilization"
"Fear is religion - Courage is science"
"Fear is the mother of Superstition"
"in Nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - There are consequences." Robert G. Ingersoll
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" Seneca the younger 4 bc - 65 ad
"Every tryant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself" Elbert Hubbard
I am a common woman of old age. I will throw my lot in with common humanity against all tryants and egomaniacs of every stripe and description.
Emma
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Good quotes, Emily. Thanks for finding and posting them.
And Durant's comments are good too: His political opinions in his later years suggest that silence is trebly golden after sixty made me giggle.
This conception of vocation became a pillar of conservatism in Protestant lands. Au courant, as Ginny would say. Lol.
And this paragraph is incredible as we look at it from the 21st century!!!
"A prince who had been a loyal supporter of the Protestant cause brought Luther an uncomfortable problem in 1539. Philip of Hesse was at once warlike, amorous and conscientious. His wife, Christine of Savoy, was a faithful and fertile eyesore; Philip hesitated to divorce one so deserving, but he powerfully desired Margaret of Saale, whom he had met while convalescing from syphilis. After practicing adultery for some time he decided that he was in a state of sin, and must abstain from the Lord’s Supper. This proving inconvenient, he suggested to Luther that the new religion, so indebted to the Old Testament, should, like it, allow bigamy == for which however the prevailing legal penalty was death. After all, was this not more seemly than Francis I’s succession of mistresses, and more humane than Henry VIII’s executive husbandry? [ Henry’s executive husbandry !?! that will tickle Brian’s sense of humour] So anxious was Philip for this Biblical solution that he intimated his defection to the Imperial, even the papal camp, if the Wittenberg theologians could not see the Scriptural light. Luther was ready; indeed in the “Babylonian Captivity” he had preferred bigamy to divorce; and he had recommended bigamy as the best solution for Henry VIII."
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Mabel - - - you have quoted two of my favourite bits
from Trevor's post - - -
"silence is trebly golden after sixty"
and
"faithful and fertile eyesore"
Brian
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Me too! Lol!
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Most Evangelicals were scandalised. Catholics were amused and delighted, not knowing that Pope Clement VII had himself thought of allowing bigamy to Henry VIII.
With all the inconvenient wives of those in power, both Luther and the Pope show what hypocrites they are, and how beneath they are to those they call common folk. I prefer the words 'workers and doers' to 'common'. These workers are head and shoulders above any parasite who ever lived, and that would include the Pope and Luther.
The megalomaniac wants and desires rules for the 'workers and doers' of the world, but they don't believe those rules apply to them and their cronies. In the hundreds of biographies read over the years, I began to write down the 'law-breaking' committed by these people with casual disregard for the public.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 453 - 458
THE TRIUMPH OF PROTESTANTISM 1542 - 1555
Luther died just a year before a disaster that seemed fatal to Protestantism in Germany. In 1545 Charles V, helped by Lutheran troops, compelled Francis I to sign the Peace of Crépy. Suleiman, at war with Persia, gave the West a five year truce. Pope Paul III promised the Emperor 1,100,000 ducats, 12,000 infantry, 500 horse, if he would turn his full force against the heretics. Charles felt that at last he might effect what all along had been his hope and policy: to crush Protestantism, and give to his realm a unified Catholic faith that would he thought, strengthen and facilitate his government. Now, for a fleeting season he was free to fight back against the Protestant forces, and to mould his chaotic realm into one faith and force. He decided for war. In May 1546 he mobilized his Spanish, Italian, German, and Lowland troops. When the Protestant princes asked the meaning of his moves, he answered that he intended to restore Germany to Imperial obedience. The Fuggers promised financial aid, and the Pope issued a bull excommunicating all who should resist Charles, and offering indulgences to all who should aid him.
Realising that not only their theology but their goods and persons were at stake, Elector John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, the princes of Anhalt, the cities of Augsburg, Strasbourg, and Ulm mobilized all their forces, and put into the field 57,000 men. But when John and Philip marched south to challenge Charles, Ferdinand moved north and west to seize John’s duchy; appraised of this John hurried north to defend his duchy. He did it brilliantly; but meanwhile Philip’s troops began to desert for lack of pay, and the Protestant cities, lured by promises of fair play, sued for peace with Charles, who let them off with heavy fines that broke the backbone of their freedom. Charles was now as superior in arms as he was in diplomacy. Now Pope Paul III began to fear too great a success for the Emperor; if no Protestant princes should survive to check the Imperial power, it would establish itself as supreme in northern as well as southern Italy, would surround or absorb the Papal States, and would irresistibly dominate the papacy. Suddenly Paul ordered the papal troops who were with Charles to leave him and return to Italy. They gladly obeyed. The Pope found himself heretically rejoicing over the victories of Elector John in Saxony.
But Charles was determined to bring the campaign to a decision. Marching north, he met the depleted forces of the Elector at Muhlberg, routed them completely(April 24, 1547) and took John captive. Ferdinand demanded the execution of the doughty prince; canny Charles agreed to commute the sentence to life imprisonment if Wittenberg would open its gates to him; it did, the capital of German Protestantism fell into Catholic hands while Luther slept peacefully under the slab in the Castle Church. No one seemed left to challenge the victorious Emperor. Henry VIII died on January 28, Francis I on March 31. Never since Charlemagne had the Imperial power been so great.
But the winds of fortune veered again. German princes, assembled in another Diet at Augsburg resisted the efforts of Charles to consolidate his military victory into a legal autocracy. Paul III accused him of conniving at the murder of Pierluigi Farnese, the Pope’s natural son; and Bavaria, ever loyal to the Church, turned against the Emperor. A Protestant majority re-formed among the princes, and wrung from Charles his temporary consent to clerical marriage, the double administration of the sacrament, and the Protestant retention of Church property (1548). The Pope fumed at the Emperor’s assumption of power to rule on such ecclesiastical matters, and Catholics murmured that Charles was more interested in extending his Empire and entrenching the Hapsburgs than in restoring the one true faith. Maurice, now Elector of Saxony at Wittenburg, found himself, Protestant and victorious, dangerously unpopular amid a population Protestant and conquered; his treachery had poisoned the power it had won. Secretly Maurice joined the Protestant princes in the Treaty of Chambord, by which Henry II of France promised aid in expelling Charles from Germany. While Henry invaded Lorraine and seized Metz, Toul, and Verdun, Maurice and his Protestant allies marched south with 30,000 men. Charles, resting on his laurels at Innsbruck, had carelessly disbanded his troops; he had now no defence but diplomacy, and even at that shifty game, Maurice proved his match. Ferdinand proposed an armistice; Maurice prolonged the negotiations meanwhile advancing on Innsbruck. On May 9, Charles moved painfully, by litter, through rain and snow, and night, over the Brenner Pass to Villach in Carinthia. One throw of fortune’s dice had transformed the master of Europe into a gouty fugitive shivering in the Alps.
Arms and circumstances now so favoured the Protestants that they demanded everything; they were to be free in the practice of their faith in all Germany; Catholic worship was to be forbidden in Lutheran territory; present and future confiscations of Church property were to be held valid and irrevocable. Ferdinand and Augustus worked out a compromise that in four famous words -- Cuius regio eius religio --embodied the spiritual infirmity of the nation and the age. In order to permit peace among and within the states each prince was to choose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism. All his subjects were to accept “his religion whose realm it was”; and those who did not like it were to emigrate. There was no pretence on either side to toleration; the principle which the Reformation had upheld in the youth of its rebellion, the right of private judgment, was as completely rejected by the Protestant leaders as by the Catholics. The princes banished dissenters instead of burning them-- a rite reserved for witches; and the resultant multiplication of infallibilities weakened them all. The real victor was not freedom of worship but the freedom of the princes. Each became, like Henry VIII of England, the supreme head of the Church in his territory, with the exclusive right to appoint the clergy and the men who should define the obligatory faith. In effect the Holy Roman Empire died, not in 1806 but in 1555.
The German cities, like the Empire, lost in the triumph of the princes. The growing vigour of Holland absorbed most of the trade that poured German products into the North Sea through the mouths of the Rhine. Not for two centuries to come would the German towns show again the vitality of trade and thought that had preceded and supported the Reformation.
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JOHN CALVIN 1509 - 64
John ( Jean) was born in Noyon, France, July 10 1509. His father Gerard Chauvin, was secretary to the bishop. Jean’s mother died while he was still young; the father married again, and perhaps Calvin owed to stern step-rearing part of his sombre spirit. Gerard himself was excommunicated after a financial dispute with the cathedral chapter, and had some trouble getting buried in holy ground. Jean was sent to the College de la Marche at the university of Paris. In the hot pursuit of esoteric knowledge or fascinating theory he read far into the night. Having taken his degree as Licentiate or Bachelor of Laws (1531), he returned to Paris and entered upon a voracious study of classical literature. Feeling the common urge to see himself in print, he published a Latin essay on Seneca’s “De Clementia.” The sternest of religious legislators began his career with a salute to mercy. He sent a copy to Erasmus, hailing him as the “second glory” ( after Cicero) and “first delight of letters.” He seemed dedicated to humanism when some sermons of Luther reached him and stirred him with their audacity.
Among Calvin’s friends was Nicholas Cop, chosen rector of the university. Calvin probably had a hand in preparing Cop’s fateful inaugural address ( November 1, 1533 ) It began with a Erasmian plea for a purified Christianity, proceeded to a Lutheran theory of salvation through faith and grace, and ended with an appeal for a tolerant hearing of the new religious ideas. The speech created a furore; the Sorbonne erupted in anger; the ‘parlement’ began proceedings against Cop for heresy. He fled, a reward of 300 crowns was offered for his capture alive or dead, but he managed to reach Basel, which was now Protestant.
Calvin was warned by friends that he and Roussel were scheduled for arrest. He left Paris and found refuge in Angouleme, and there, probably in the rich library of Louis de Tillet, he began to write his ‘Institutes’. He returned clandestinely to Paris, talked with Protestant leaders, and met Servetus, whom he was later to burn. When extremists posted some abusive placards at various points in Paris, Francis I retaliated with a furious persecution. Calvin fled just in time and joined Cop in Basel. There, a lad of just twenty-six, he completed the most eloquent, fervent, lucid, logical, influential, and terrible work in all the literature of the religious revolution.
The book was soon sold out, and a new edition invited. Calvin responded with a much enlarged version ( 1539), again in Latin; in 1541 he translated this into French, and this form of the work is one of the most impressive productions in the gamut of French prose. Calvin hoped to reinforce political expediency with theological arguments, and help incline the king, like his sister, towards the Protestant cause. He was anxious to dissociate this from the Anabaptist movement then verging on communism in Munster. He described the French reformers as patriots, devoted to the king and averse from all economic or political disturbance.
It is difficult for us, in an age when theology has given place to politics as the centre of human interest and conflict, to recapture the mood in which Calvin composed the ‘Institutes’ . He, much more than Spinoza, was a God intoxicated man. He was overwhelmed by a sense of man’s littleness and God’s immensity. How absurd it would be to suppose that the frail reason of so infinitesimal a mite as man could understand the Mind behind these innumerable, obedient stars? In pity of man’s reason God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible. That this Holy Book is His Word (says Calvin) is proved by the unrivalled impression that it makes on the human spirit.
Consequently this revealed Word must be our final authority, not only in religion and morals but in history, politics, everything. We must accept the story of Adam and Eve; for by their disobedience to God we explain man’s evil nature and his loss of free will. How could so depraved a being ever deserve eternal happiness in paradise? Not one of us could ever earn it by any amount of good works. Good works are good, but only the sacrificial death of the Son of God could avail to earn salvation for men. But His mercy has chosen some of us to be saved; and to these he has given an upholding faith in their redemption by Christ. To the question why God should chose men for salvation or damnation without merits, Calvin answers again in the words of Paul: “for He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
Calvin admits that predestination is repulsive to reason, but he replies, “It is unreasonable that man should scrutinize with impunity those things which the Lord has determined to be hidden in Himself. Yet he professes to know why God so arbitrarily determines the eternal fate of billions of souls: it is “to promote our admiration of His glory” by the display of His power. He agrees that this is “a horrible decree” (decretum horrible) “but no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before He created him, and that He foreknew it because it was appointed by His own decree.” Others might argue, like Luther, that the future is determined because God has foreseen it and His foresight cannot be falsified; Calvin reverses the matter, and considers that God foresees the future because He has willed and determined it. And the decree of damnation is absolute; there is no purgatory in Calvin’s theology, no half way house where one might, by a few million years of burning, wipe out his “reprobation.” And therefore there is no room for prayers for the dead.
We might suppose that on Calvin’s assumptions there would be no sense in any kind of prayer; all being fixed by divine decree, not an ocean of orisons could wash away one jot of the inexorable destiny. However, Calvin is more human than his theology: let us pray with humility and faith, he tells us, and our prayers will be answered; the prayer and the answer were also decreed. Let us worship God in humble religious services, but we must reject the Mass as a sacrilegious pretence of priests to transform earthly materials into the body and blood of Christ. Christ is present in the Eucharist only spiritually, not physically, and the adoration of the consecrated wafer as literally Christ is sheer idolatry. All religious pictures and statuary, even the crucifix, should be removed from the churches. The ideal government will be a theocracy, and the Reformed Church should be recognised as the voice of God. All the claims of the popes for the supremacy of the Church over the State were renewed by Calvin for his Church. It is remarkable how much of Roman Catholic tradition and theory survived in Calvin's theology. In Calvinism the Reformation again repudiated the Renaissance.
That so unprepossessing a theology should have won the assent of hundreds of millions of men in Switzerland, France, Scotland, England, and North America, is at first sight a mystery, then an illumination. Why should Calvinists, Huguenots, and Puritans have fought so valiantly in defence of their own helplessness? And why has this theory of human impotence shared in producing some of the strongest characters in history? Is it because these believers gained more strength from believing themselves the elect than they lost by admitting that their conduct contributed nothing to their fate? Calvin himself, at once shy and resolute, was confident that he belonged to the elect, and this so comforted him that he found the “ horrible decree” of predestination “ productive of the most delightful benefit.” The belief that they were chosen of God gave many souls the courage to face the vicissitudes and apparent aimlessness of life, as a similar faith enabled the Jewish people to preserve itself amid difficulties that might otherwise have sapped the will to live.
The confidence in divine election must have been a tower of courage to Huguenots suffering war and massacre, and to Pilgrims uprooting themselves perilously to seek new homes on hostile shores. Calvin enhanced this feeling of pride in election by making the elect, penniless or not, an heredity aristocracy; the children of the elect were automatically elect by the will of God. So, by a simple act of faith in one’s self, one could possess and transmit paradise. For such immortal boons a confession of helplessness was a bargain price. For the poor or unfortunate, who cover the earth, it may have been an indispensable belief.
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So where is Calvin's influence today? In the dust bin of history where it belongs. All those lunatics who promoted 'Serial killer god' of the bible, have gone the way of the dodo bird. Good riddance.
All these men we have been reading about are megalomanics, who despise humanity. They see themselves as special and everyone else as fodder. I don't believe they ever had the influence Durant bestows on them. They certainly don't have it today, and haven't for a long time.
The churches in Europe are empty except for a few old women who use it as a 'social' place to gather. The same here in the U.S. The church attendees are a minority, not the majority.
Emma
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Included in Trevor's latest postings, Suleiman is again on the march, preparing to attack Vienna. When Suleiman had his son murdered (while he watched) by his 'eunuchs', I was curious about where this evil originated. I was not surprised that the middle east had the first reports on 'eunuchs'. It seems to be an Eastern invention and was most popular there.
Here is an excerpt from Wiki on the eunuch by the Ottomans....
Ottoman Empire
Chief Eunuch of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II at the Imperial Palace, 1912. In the Ottoman Empire, eunuchs were typically slaves imported from outside their domains. A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs.
The Ottoman court harem—within the Topkapı Palace (1465–1853) and later the Dolmabahçe Palace (1853–1909) in Istanbul—was under the administration of the eunuchs. These were of two categories: Black Eunuchs and White Eunuchs. Black Eunuchs were Africans who served the concubines and officials in the Harem together with chamber maidens of low rank. The White Eunuchs were Europeans from the Balkans. They served the recruits at the Palace School and were from 1582 prohibited from entering the Harem.
An important figure in the Ottoman court was the Chief Black Eunuch (Kızlar Ağası or Dar al-Saada Ağası). In control of the Harem and a perfect net of spies in the Black Eunuchs, the Chief Eunuch was involved in almost every palace intrigue and could thereby gain power over either the sultan or one of his viziers, ministers or other court officials. One of the most powerful Chief Eunuchs was Beshir Agha who played a crucial role in establishing the Ottoman version of Hanafi Islam throughout the Empire by founding libraries and schools.
The eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire were created mainly at one Coptic monastery, at Abou Gerbe monastery on Mount Ghebel Eter. The Coptic priests sliced the penis and testicles off Nubian or Abyssinian slave boys around the age of eight. The boys were captured from Abyssinia and other areas in Sudan like Darfur and Kordofan, then brought into Sudan and Egypt.
During the operation, the Coptic clergyman chained the boys to tables and after slicing off their sexual organs, stuck a piece of bamboo into the genital area, then submerged them in neck-high sand to burn. The recovery rate was ten percent. The resulting eunuchs fetched large profits in contrast to eunuchs from other areas
I watched last night on the news, the choice of the new 'Pope' for the Eastern Orthodox church. They had a small boy come up and select one of three balls in a large glass jar. The one he selected became the new 'Pope'.
I thought of the boys who had been mutilated by these same people not that long ago. The last 'eunuch' of the Chinese Imperial palace died in 1996.
Why was this practice mainly confined to the East? Why was the West different? Why didn't we practice this evil? What about all the other millions in the world who never practiced genital mutilation? The American Indian took enemies as slaves, but I never read of them cutting off genitals to make 'eunuchs'.
Emma
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Brutality is not confined to one area of the globe or one people. We are about to read of the brutalities in Europe.
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An excerpt on the treatment of women in the harem of Topkapi palace...........
The harem at Topkapi
Tragedy frequently struck the harem. The women were often too young to die, but there were some cases, like the tasters. These girls, who had been educated in the harem schools under a mistress to be a taster for a kadin or a sultana, tasted every drink, snack, meal, or anything else the woman they served would eat to make sure there was no poison. They took pride in their self-sacrifice and had much dignity. Sometimes a taster would die from poison, foaming and writhing on the floors. They were taken to the Mistress of the Maladies, but nobody would ever hear of her fate. If the girl did survive most of the time her liver or another organ would be destroyed and she would be of no service so she was sent home. However, there were many deaths, which was very ominous and left many feeling unsafe in their golden cage.
There was one devastating tragedy under Padishah Ibrahim I (1615-1648). When her heard rumors from his lover, Sechir Para (Sugar Cube), that one of his concubines was sporting with a man outside of the palace, he raged for days and had his chief eunuch torture a few of the harem girls to discover the identity of the mysterious girl. None of them spoke and so Ibrahim tied up every single one of his 280 harem women to weighted sacks and had them thrown into the Bosporus River in Istanbul.
Only one girl survived (other than the sultana, kadins, and Sechir Para, who were spared) because her sack was not sufficiently tied and she was saved by a French ship. The Valide Sultana became jealous of Sechir Para's power after the drownings and had Sechir Para strangled. Ibrahim was told that she had died of a mysterious illness.
The harem moved with the entire court and household twice a year, they would live at Topkapi normally during the fall and winter. Sometimes the harem would stay in Topkapi the year round, like when the padishah, Ahmed III, was constructing his palace Sadabad on the Sweet Waters of Asia, the inlet of the Istanbul harbor where two streams met with the Golden Horn.
When a padishah died, his entire harem was moved into the infamous Palace of Tears. Originally built as one of the Padishah's Istanbul houses, the palace was given to the women of the harem that was discarded to make way for the new padishah's harem. This was a sad and lonesome place. No man ever entered the building, nor were there many visitors. The women were forbidden to leave and spent the rest of their lives in the dark and morbid atmosphere. Even the Valide Sultana, once a very powerful woman, was now discarded to make way for the new woman to take her position. The women spent the rest of their days here, a sad end to an imprisoned life.
The end of the harem at Topkapi came in the 19th century when the padishahs decided to move into the Yildiz Palace. About 100 years later, the Ottoman Empire fell after World War I and the Republic of Turkey was established. The President, Kemal Ataturk, brought sweeping changes, including forbidding men to marry more than once and forbidding women to be kept imprisoned in their homes and being protected by veils. The days of the harems had died. All the women, including those in the Palace of Tears, were let free, back to the lives they had before they entered the harem. They found this hard, as their lifestyle was that of the harem. Most returned to their villages hoping to find their families. Others began new lives. Today the harem in Topkapi is empty, besides tourists who flock every year to the palace, the #1 destination in Istanbul.
Emma
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The DURANT'S S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 467 - 470
GENEVA AND STRASBOURG : 1536 - 1541
Geneva the capital of French Switzerland was older than history. In prehistoric times it was a congeries of lake dwellings, built upon piles, some of which can still be seen. In Caesar's day it was a busy crossing of trade routes at the bridge where the Rhone rushes out of Lake Leman to wonder through France in search of the Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages Geneva fell under the secular as well as spiritual rule of its bishop. In the fifteenth century the Dukes of Savoy, which lay just beyond the Alps, secured control of the chapter, and raised to the episcopate men subservient to Savoy, and given to the pleasures of this world for fear there might not be a next. The once excellent Episcopal government, and the morals of the clergy under it, deteriorated. A priest bidden to dismiss his concubine, agreed to do so as soon as his fellow clergymen would be equally ungallant; gallantry prevailed.
With this ecclesiastical-ducal rule the leading families of Geneva organised a Council of Sixty for municipal ordinances. Usually the Council met in the bishop’s cathedral of St. Peter; and religious and civil jurisdiction were so mingled that while the bishop minted the coinage and led the army, the Council regulated morals, issued excommunications, and licensed prostitutes. As in Trier, Mainz, and Cologne, the bishop was also a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and assumed functions from which the bishops are now free. To strengthen this movement some Patriotes effected an alliance with Catholic Fribourg and Protestant Bern. Adherents of the alliance were called by the German term for confederates -- Eidgenossen, oath comrades; the French corrupted this into Huguenots. By 1520 the Genovese leaders were mostly businessmen, for Geneva, unlike Wittenberg, was a commercial city, mediating in trade between Switzerland in the north, Italy in the south, and France in the west. The Genovese burghers set up ( 1526 ) a small council of twenty-five, which became the real ruler of the municipality. The bishop declared the city in rebellion, and summoned ducal troops to his aid. These seized Bonnivard, and imprisoned him in the Castle of Chillon. The Bernese army came to the aid of the beleaguered Geneva; the dukes forces were defeated and dispersed; the bishop fled to Annecy; Byron’s hero was freed from his dungeon. The Great Council, angered by the clergy’s support of Savoy, declared for the Reformed faith, and assumed ecclesiastical as well as civil jurisdiction throughout the city ( 1536 ), two months before Calvin arrived.
The doctrinal hero of this revolution was William Farel. Like Luther, he was passionately pious in youth. At Paris he came under the influence of Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples, whose translation and explanation of the Bible upset Farel’s orthodoxy; for in the Scriptures he could find no trace of popes, bishops, indulgences, purgatory, seven sacraments, the Mass, the celibacy of the clergy, the worship of Mary, or the saints. Distaining ordination, he set out as an independent preacher, wandering from town to town in France and Switzerland. In 1532, he began to preach in Geneva. He was arrested by the bishop’s agents, who proposed to throw the “Lutheran dog” into the Rhone; the syndics intervened, and Farel escaped with a few bruises on his head. He won the council of Twenty-Five to his views. He aroused so much popular support that nearly all the Catholic clergy departed. On May 21 1536, the Small Council decreed the abolition of the Mass, and the removal of all images and relics from the Churches. Ecclesiastical properties were converted to Protestant uses for religion, charity, and education; education was made compulsory, and free of charge; and a strict moral discipline was made law. The citizens were called upon to swear allegiance to the Gospel, and those who refused to attend Reformed services were banished. This was the Geneva to which Calvin came.
Calvin and Farel, sincerely accepting the Bible as the literal Word of God, felt an obligation to enforce its moral code. They were shocked to find many of the people given to singing, dancing and similar gaieties; moreover, some gambled, or drank to intoxication, or committed adultery. An entire district of the city was occupied by prostitutes, under the rule of their own ‘Reine du Bordel,’ the ‘Brothel Queen.’ The Council ordered all citizens to go to the church of St. Peter and swear allegiance to Farel’s Confession. Any manifestation of Catholicism -- such as carrying a rosary, or observing a saint’s day as holy, was subject to punishment. Women were imprisoned for wearing improper hats. Bonivard, too joyous in his liberty, was warned to end his licentious ways. Gamblers were put into stocks. Adulterers were driven through the streets into banishment.
The Patriotes, who had freed the city from bishop and duke, reorganised to free it from its zealous ministers. Capturing a majority in the Great Council they told the two ministers to keep out of politics, and deposed the two and ordered them to leave the city within three days. The people celebrated the dismissal with public rejoicings. Farel accepted a call to Neuchatel; there he preached to the end of his days (1565), and there a public monument honours his memory.
Calvin went to Strasbourg, and ministered to a congregation of Protestants, chiefly from France. To eke out the fifty-two guilders annually paid him by the church, he sold his library and took students as borders. Finding bachelorhood inconvenient in this situation, he asked Farel to search out a wife for him, and listed specifications “ I am none of these insane lovers who, when once smitten with a fine figure of a woman, embrace also her faults. This only is the beauty that allures me -- that she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, economical, patient, and careful for my health.” After two false starts he married (1540) Idelette de Bure, a poor woman with several children. She bore him one child, who died in infancy. When she passed away (1549) he wrote to her with the private tenderness that underlay his public severity. He lived in domestic loneliness the remaining fifteen years of his life.
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I wish I'd known this history when I was in Geneva.
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The Patriotes, who had freed the city from bishop and duke, reorganised to free it from its zealous ministers.
Capturing a majority in the Great Council they told the two ministers to keep out of politics, and deposed the two and ordered them to leave the city within three days. The people celebrated the dismissal with public rejoicings
I rejoice along with the people. After reading about the lunatics who reject one form of occultism with another it is refreshing to read about a show of intelligence for a change.
I salute my friends Eduard and Maria who hail from Geneva and explained the government of Switzerland which encompasses the three different canons, the French, German, and Italian sections who all form Switzerland as we know it today.
I always intended to go to Geneva, but life got in the way. I wanted to see Maria's ancestral home with walls three feet thick. It had been in the family for all their memory and probably beyond.
Eduoard served in the Swiss army as did all young men who were able. They stored their ammo and guns in caves, and when called they reported for duty and served their time. The Swiss were neutral in the wars that engulfed Europe during his service, but they still had to report for duty when they reached a certain age.
Joan please tell us about your time in Geneva, and your impressions.
Emily
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I was only there for a few days but I took a tour of the city and was very impressed with it. My impressions were of an attractive, super clean, well run city. It's amazing to hear of all this turmoil: the opposite of the staid impression the city gives today.
I did fall off a bus while I was there! I ran for a bus, and jumped on a little platform it had to mount. The driver didn't see me. and started, which caused the platform to snap up , pinning my leg in the door and knocking me to the ground. If the bus had started to move, I could have been killed. But the passengers all screamed at the driver, and he released me. Stupid me, I jumped back on the bus and continued to where I was going. But the next day, I felt terrible. I went to a doctor, and was told it was shock -- I should have rested after the accident.
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Joan, what a scary experience with the bus. I commend you for your courage to get on that bus again, I'm sure I would have backed away.
Happy New Year to everyone! 2014 can you believe it?
In 1950 I was a student and could not comprehend the year 2000. Time seemed to be moving so slow, then in the blink of an eye, I woke up one day and it was Jan. 1, 2000. Fourteen years has passed since then and time seems to be speeding by at an alarming rate.
Emily
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 472 - 476
CALVIN IN GENEVA
After many requests, Calvin left Strasbourg and returned to Geneva. He laboured twelve to eighteen hours a day as preacher, administrator, professor of theology, superintendent of churches and schools, adviser to councils, and regulator of public morals. His first task was the reorganization of the Reformed Church. The Small Council, soon after his return, appointed a commission of five clergymen and six councillors, with Calvin at their head, to formulate a new ecclesiastical code. On 2 January 1542, the great council ratified the resultant “Ordinances ecclesiastiques,” whose essential features are still accepted by the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches of Europe and America. The new clergy, while never claiming the miraculous powers of the Catholic priests, became under Calvin more powerful than any priesthood since ancient Israel. The practical men in the councils may have had some doubts, but they appear to have felt that social order was so profitable to the economy that some ecclesiastical assumptions might for the time being, go unchallenged. Through an astonishing quarter of a century a theocracy of clergymen seemed to dominate an oligarchy of merchants and men of affairs. Calvin held power as the head of this Presbytery; from 1541 till his death in 1564 his voice was the most influential in Geneva. Hildebrand, revived, could have rejoiced over this apparent triumph of the Church over the State. Calvin was as thorough as any pope in rejecting individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism completely repudiated that principle of private judgement with which the new religion had begun.
Under Calvin, persistent absence from Protestant services, or continued refusal to take the Eucharist, was a punishable offense. Heresy again became an insult to God and treason to the state, and was punished with death. Catholicism, which had preached this view of heresy, became heresy in its turn. Between 1542 and 1546 fifty-eight persons were put to death, and seventy six were banished, for violating the new code. Here, as elsewhere, witchcraft was a capital crime; in one year fourteen alleged witches were sent to the stake on the charge that they had persuaded Satan to afflict Geneva with plague.
To regulate lay conduct a system of domiciliary visits was established: one or another of the elders visited, each house in the quarter assigned to him, and questioned the occupants on all phases of their lives. Consistory and Council joined in the prohibiting of gambling, card playing, profanity, drunkenness, the frequenting of taverns, dancing, indecent or irreligious songs, excess in entertainment, extravagance in living, immodesty in dress. The allowable colour and quantity of clothing, and number of dishes permissible at a meal, were specified by law. Jewellery or lace were frowned upon. A woman was jailed for arranging her hair to an immoral height. Children were to be named not after saints in the Catholic calendar but preferably after Old Testament characters. Books of erroneous religious doctrine, or of immoral tendency were banned. Fornication was to be punished with exile or drowning; adultery, blasphemy, or idolatry, with death. In one extraordinary instance a child was beheaded for striking his parents. Between 1542 and 1546 there were seventy-six banishments and fifty-eight executions; the total population of Geneva was then about 20,000. As everywhere in the sixteenth century, torture was often used to obtain confessions or avoidance.
Regulation was extended to education, society, and the economic life. Calvin established schools and an academy, searched through Western Europe for good teachers in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and theology, and trained young ministers who carried his gospel into France, Holland, Scotland, and England with all the ardour and devotion of Jesuit missionaries in Asia; in eleven years 1555- 1566 Geneva sent such envoys to France, many of whom sang Huguenot psalms as they suffered martyrdom. C alvin considered class divisions natural, and his legislation protected rank and dignity by prescribing the quality of dress, and the limits of activity for each class. Every person was expected to accept his place in society, and perform its duties without envy of his betters or complaint about his lot.
Calvin gave to hard work, sobriety, diligence, frugality, and thrift a religious sanction and laurel they may have shared in developing the industrious temper of the modern Protestant businessman; but this relationship has been overstressed. He had no sympathy with acquisitive speculation or ruthless accumulation. Like some late-medieval Catholic theorists, he permitted interest on loans, but in theory he limited it to 5%, and urged loans without interest to necessitous individuals or the state. With his approval the Consistory punished engrossers, monopolists, and lenders who charged excessive rates; it fixed prices for food and clothes and surgical operations; It censured or fined merchants who defrauded their clients, dealers who skimped their measures. Sometimes the regime moved towards state socialism: the Venerable Company established a bank, and conducted some industries.
Calvin could not long have kept his leadership had he obstructed the commercial development of a city whose commerce was its life. He adjusted to the situation, allowed interest rates of 10% and recommended state loans to finance the introduction or expansion of private industry, as in the manufacture or production of silk. Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London took readily to the first modern religion that accepted the modern economy. Calvinism took the middle class into its fold, and grew with their growth.
What were the results of Calvin's rule? The difficulties of enforcement must have been extreme, for never in history had such strict virtue been required of a city. A considerable party opposed the regimen, even to the point of open revolt, but a substantial number of influential citizens must have supported it, if only on the general theory of morals -- that others need them. The influx of French Huguenots and other Protestants must have strengthened Calvin's hand; and the limitation to Geneva and its hinterland raised the chances of success. The recurrent fear of invasion and absorption by hostile states compelled political stability and civic obedience; external danger promoted internal discipline. Bernardino Ochino, an Italian Protestant, wrote of Geneva:- “Cursing and swearing, unchastity, sacrilege, adultery, and impure living, such as prevail in many places where I have lived, are here unknown. There are no pimps and harlots. Benevolence is so great that the poor need not beg ......”
The extant records of the council for this period do not quite agree with Bernardino: they reveal a high percentage of illegitimate children, abandoned infants, forced marriages, and sentences of death. Calvin’s son-in-law and his stepdaughter were among many condemned for adultery. But then again, many others praised Geneva under Calvin’s rule.
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Goodness. I had no idea. That fits the staid, ordered impression I had of Geneva.
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THE CONFLICTS OF CALVIN.
Calvin’s character harmonized with his theology. The oil painting in the University Library at Geneva pictures him as a severe and sombre mystic; dark but bloodless complexion, scanty beard, high forehead, penetrating ruthless eyes. He was short and thin and physically frail, hardly fit to carry a city in his hands. But behind the weak frame burned a mind, sharp, narrow, devoted and intense, and a firm, indomitable will, perhaps a will to power. His memory was crowded and yet precise. He was ahead of his time in doubting astrology, abreast of it in rejecting Copernicus, a bit behind it ( like Luther) in ascribing many terrestrial occurrences to the Devil. He was painfully sensitive to criticism. Racked with illness, bent with work, he often lost his temper. His virtues did not include humour, which might have softened his certainties, nor a sense of beauty which might have spared ecclesiastical art. Yet he was no kill-joy; he bade his followers be cheerful, play harmless games like bowling or quoits, and enjoy wine in moderation. He could be a kind and tender friend, and an unforgiving enemy, capable of hard judgments and stern revenge. Sexually, he showed no fault. He lived simply, ate sparingly, fasted unostentatiously, slept only six hours a day, never took a holiday, used himself up without stint in what he thought was the service of God. He refused increases in salary, but laboured to raise funds for the poor. “The strength of that heretic,” said Pope Pius IV, “consisted in this, that money never had the slightest charm for him. If I had such servants, my dominion would extend from sea to sea.”
A man of such mettle must raise many enemies. He described his opponents as riffraff, idiots, dogs, asses, pigs, and stinking beasts -- epithets less becoming to his elegant Latinity than to Luther’s gladiatorial style. Calvin’s controversy with Joachim Westphal was more important. This Lutheran minister of Hamburg denounced as “Satanic blasphemies” the view of Zwingli and Calvin that Christ was only spiritually present in the Eucharist, and thought the Swiss Reformers should be refuted not by the pens of theologians, but by the rods of magistrates. Calvin answered him in terms so severe that his fellow Reformers at Zurich, Basel, and Bern refused to sign his remonstrance. He issued it nevertheless. Westphal and other Lutherans returned to the attack. Calvin branded them as “apes of Luther” and argued so effectively, that several regions hitherto Lutheran-- were won to the Swiss view and the Reformed Church.
Turning from these assaults on the right, Calvin faced on the left a group of radicals recently arrived in Switzerland from Counter Reformation Italy. Caelius Secundas Curio teaching in Lausanne and Basel, shocked Calvin by announcing that the saved -- including many heathen-- would far outnumber the damned. Laelius Socinus, settled in Zurich, studied Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew in order to understand the Bible better, learned too much, and lost his faith in the Trinity, predestination, original sin, and the atonement. He expressed his scepticism to Calvin, who answered as well as possible. Socinus agreed to refrain from public utterance of his doubts; but later he spoke out against the execution of Servetus, and was among the few who, in that fevered age, stood up for religious toleration.
Jacques Gruet, was arrested on suspicion of having written a placard, critical of Calvin. In his room were found papers, allegedly in his handwriting, calling Calvin a haughty and ambitious hypocrite, and ridiculing the inspiration of the Scriptures and the immortality of the soul. He was tortured twice daily for thirty days until he confessed-- we do not know how truthfully-- that he had written the attack on Calvin. On July 26th half dead, he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed to it, and his head was cut off.
Tension mounted until, on December 16, 1547, the Patriotes and Libertins came armed to a meeting of the Great Council, and demanded an end to the power of the Consistory over the citizens. At the height of a violent tumult Calvin entered the room, faced the hostile leaders and said, striking his breast; “If you want blood there are still a few drops here; strike then!” Swords were drawn, but no one ventured to be the first assassin. Calvin addressed the gathering with rare moderation, and finally persuaded all parties to a truce. “I hardly hope that the church can be upheld much longer, at least by my ministry. Believe me, my power is broken.”
But the opposition now divided into factions and subsided till the trial of Servetus offered another opportunity.
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In the Classical music discussion on Seniors and friends, someone posted a link to a BBC program about the life of Bach, which talks about Luther's influence on Bach and on church music in general. Luther apparently was a firm believer in music as bringing to life the teachings of the Bible, and took many popular songs familiar to audiences of the day (including bawdy ones) and set religious words to them so congregations could "belt them out".
I knew he was credited with writing some of the hymns still used today, and wondered about it. The program said he was a great influence on Bach, but didn't say whether spiritually or musically. Bach sang in the same church as a child where Luther had been.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiQbppQq54E&app=desktop
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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DURANTS' STory of Civilization
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Ah, Joan beat me to it, i was going to mention the BBC Bach documentary in here. It may seem strange to mention during "the reformation" since Bach is 200 yrs later, but they talk about Luther's influence on Bach.
(my response to comments in "Classical music" in Seniors and Friends): I was doing more listening then watching the first time i played the Bach because i was fixing dinner. I watched it closely later and it is so beautiful. Obviously the music itself, the voice and instrumental performances, but then there were those beautiful pipe organs in those equally beautiful churches. Some producer was clairvoyant enough to say let's shoot this in winter-time Germany!!! Everything covered with snow, i just loved it.
I showed my husband the part where they talked about Bach reversing the music (turning the page upside down) and playing one measure ahead, we got a good laugh about that and that it took anyone 100 yrs to realize what he had done. We also enjoyed the continuing .discussion of his being obessed with numbers and the science of that and then i loved his putting B, A, C, H notes in many pieces. However i don't understand the "H" in the German scale, can someone explain it to me?
Joan mentioned in The Story of Civilization site in Seniorlearn the influence Martin Luther had on his music. That was interesting to me also.
Jean
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putting B, A, C, H notes in many pieces
from Mabel on Jan 6th 2014.
If I understand correctly in the German scale B natural is referred to as H and B flat is referred to as B.
I found this very clear explanation in a forum. It seems that in Germany the notes B and Bb were referred to as hard and soft B. The "hard" B is where the letter H comes from.
Now, I will have to admit that I am not a Bach fan. I love Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler and Bruckner.
I enjoy most or all the Northern European composers, but there is little that I enjoy among the works
of Bach - his music strikes me as repetitive and boring. Many pieces seem to have been written to
impress the purists and mathmaticians.
Brian
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" If I understand correctly in the German scale B natural is referred to as H and B flat is referred to as B."
That is the way they explained it in the piece.
Maybe it's because I'm a math nerd that I like Bach. The BBC piece we mentioned played mainly his choral works, which you might like better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiQbppQq54E&app=desktop&noredirect=1
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I understood what they said in the program about the "H", but i was wondering how that happened - is the German scale A, Bflat, H, Cflat, C, Dflat, D etc?
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MICHAEL SERVETUS 1511-1553.
Miguel Serveto was born at Villanova ( some sixty miles north of Saragossa ), son of a notary of good family. He grew up at a time when the writings of Erasmus were enjoying a transitory tolerance in Spain. He was in some measure influenced by the literature of the Jews and the Moslems; he read the Koran, made his way through rabbinical commentaries, and was impressed by the Semitic criticism of Christianity ( with its prayers to a Trinity, to Mary, and to saints.) as polytheistic. Luther called him “the Moor." Michael discovered Protestantism, and liked it; he visited Oecolampadius at Basel, and Capito and Bucer at Strasbourg; soon he was too heretical for their taste, and was invited to graze in other fields.
In 1531 and 1532 he published the first and second edition of his basic work, “De Trinitatis Erroribus.” It was rather confused and in a crude Latin that must have made Calvin smile if ever; but in a wealth of Biblical erudition for a lad of twenty. Jesus, in Servetus’ view, was a man into whom God the Father had breathed the Logos, the Divine Wisdom, in this sense Jesus became the Son of God; but he was not equal or co-eternal with the Father, Who might communicate the same spirit of wisdom to other men. The Son was sent from the Father in no other way than as one of the prophets. This was pretty close to Mohammed’s conception of Christ. “All those who believe in a Trinity in the essence of God are tritheists.” and he added, they are “true atheists” as deniers of the “One God.” This was youthfully extreme, but Servetus tried to soften his heresy by indicting rhapsodies on Christ as the Light of the World; most of his readers however, felt that he had extinguished the light. As if to leave no stone unhurled, he concurred with Anabaptists that baptism should be given only to adults. Oecolampadius and Bucer repudiated him, and Servetus, reversing Calvin’s itinerary, fled from Switzerland to France.(1532).
On July 17 the Inquisition at Toulouse issued a warrant for his arrest. He thought of going to America, but found Paris more agreeable. There, disguising himself as Michel de Villeneuve ( the family name ) he studied mathematics, geography, astronomy, and medicine, and flirted with astrology. The great Vesalius was his fellow student in dissection and their teachers praised them equally. Out of so many scholars available he was chosen to edit a Latin translation of the Bible, by Santes Pagnini. The work took him three years. In a note on Isaiah 7 : 14 which Jerome had rendered “ a virgin shall conceive” Servetus explained that the Hebrew word meant not virgin but young woman, and he suggested that it referred not prophetically to Mary but simply to Hezekiah’s wife. In the same spirit he indicated that other seemingly prophetic passages in the Old Testament referred only to contemporary figures or events. This proved disconcerting to Protestants and Catholics alike.
We do not know when Servetus discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood -- the passage of the blood from the right chamber of the heart along the pulmonary artery to and from the lungs, its purification there by aeration, and its return via the pulmonary vein to the left chamber of the heart. So far as is now known, he did not publish his finding till 1553, when he included it in his final work. Deferring for a while the problem of Servetus’s priority in this discovery, we note that he had apparently completed the “Christianismi restituto” by 1546 for in that year he sent the manuscript to Calvin.
The very title was a challenge to the man who had written the “Christianae religionis instituitio”; but further the book sharply rejected, as blasphemy, the notion that God had predestined souls to hell regardless of their merits or guilt. God, said Servetus, condemns no one who has not condemned himself. Faith is good, but love is better, and God himself, is love. Calvin thought it sufficient refutation of all this to send Servetus a copy of the ‘Institutes’ Servetus returned it with insulting annotations, and followed up with series of letters so contemptuous that Calvin wrote to Farel, “Servetus has just sent a long volume of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word, for should he come, if my authority is of any avail, I will not suffer him to get out alive.”
Angry at Calvin’s refusal to continue the correspondence wrote to Abel Poupin, one of the Genevese ministers :
“Your Gospel is without God, without true faith, without good works. Instead of a God you have a three-headed Cerberus [ the predestinating Trinity?] For faith you have a deterministic dream..... Man is with you an inert trunk, and God is a chimera of enslaved will.. I shall not warn you again. In this fight of Michael I know that I shall certainly die... but I do not falter.. ..Christ will come...... He will not tarry.”
Obviously Servetus was a bit more insane than the average of his time. He announced that the end of the world was at hand; that the Archangel Michael would lead a holy war against both the papal and the Genevese Antichrists.
On April 4 Servetus was arrested. Three days later he escaped by leaping over a garden wall. On June 17 the civil court of Vienne condemned him, if found, to be burned alive by slow fire. Servetus wondered about France for three months. He decided to seek refuge in Naples, and to go there via Geneva. He went to church there, was recognised and arrested again. He was confined in the former Episcopal palace, now a prison, to await trial. On August 17 and 21 Calvin appeared in person as the accuser. Claim and counter claim were presented to the court which deliberated until October 26, and with no member dissenting, passed sentence of death. Servetus, after his appeal to Calvin for mercy was rejected, asked to be beheaded rather than burned. Calvin was inclined to support this plea, but the aged Farel, in at the death, reproved him for such tolerance; and the Council voted that Servetus should be burned alive.
The sentence was carried out the next morning Oct 27 1553. on the hill of Champel, just south of Geneva. Servetus claimed “I am not guilty, I have not merited death“; and he besought God to pardon his accusers. He was fastened to a stake by iron chains, and his last book was bound to his side. After half an hour of burning he died.*
* In 1903 a monument was raised to Servetus at Champel. First on the list of contributors to the cost was the Consistory of the Reformed Church of Geneva.
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Heading for above piece should be
DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 479-484
(Sorry about that) Trevor
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Mabel and Joank - - - The "H" in the German scale is derived
from the German word "Hart" which translates into the English word
"Hard", or, as we call it "Natural".
More, I cannot give you. Ain't life funny !
I don't care for many of Bach's choral works either, and the word
I was looking for was "Mathematician" - Not the way I misspelled it.
Tomorrow I will try to get "back" to discussing the results of Trevor's
"hard" work, for which I am truly grateful.
Brian
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Unbelievable! The arrogance of mankind. "I am right, you are wrong and if you don't agree with me i have the power to kill you in the most tortuous way i can think of." And so it goes, and so it goes, even in the name if religion - or perhaps most especially in the name of religion, for if i say "that's what i know is true, god told me" what else can be discussed?
Thank you Brian for that explanation, i love learning about word origins.
Jean
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Durant makes us chuckle again: "Obviously Servetus was a bit more insane than the average of his time." Sounds like he's right.
I also liked the Bach BBC program because it shows the effect of the religious divisions on one man. Working for churches, Bach is constantly in the middle of arguments with the church officials, but not, it seems, over the grand issues we talk about here, but over petty rivalries, such as occur today. Although a passionate Lutheran, at one point, fed up with his job, he hears of an opening in a catholic church and writes a Catholic mass, hoping to get the job. The catholic churches have the better musicians. When he doesn't land the job, he writes secular music in coffeehouses.
All very far from the big issues of faith that Durant discusses, but very human.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 484 - 488
AN APPEAL FOR TOLERATION
Catholics and Protestants united in approving the sentence given to Servetus. The Inquisition, cheated of its living prey, burned him in effigy. Melanchthon, in a letter to Calvin,” gave thanks to the Son of God ” for the “ punishment of this blasphemous man.” Yet even in Calvin’s day some voices spoke for Servetus. An Anabaptist, published a protest against the execution, but under a pseudonymn; after his death his authorship was discovered; his body was exhumed and publicly burned (1566)
The political opponents of Calvin naturally condemned his treatment of Servetus. Such criticism must have been widespread, for in February 1554 Calvin issued a ‘Defenso orthodoxies Fidei de sacra Trinitrate contra prodigiosus errors Michaelis Servitia. ”If,” he argued,” we believe in the inspiration of the Bible, then we know the truth, and all who oppose it are enemies and blasphemers of God. Since their offense is immeasurably greater than any other crime, the civil authority must punish the heretics as worse than murderers; for murder merely kills the body, while heresy accepted damns the soul to everlasting hell.” ( This was precisely the Catholic position.) Moreover, God Himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics, to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true faith revealed by Him. Calvin quoted the ferocious decrees of Deut. 13: 5-15, 17: 2-5; Exodus 22:20; and Lev. 24: 16 and argued from them with truly burning eloquence.
There is no question here of man’s authority; it is God who speaks, and it is clear what law He would have kept in the Church even to the end of the world. Wherefore does He demand of us so extreme severity if not to show us that due honour is not paid Him so long as we set not His service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory?
What, meanwhile, had become of the Erasmian spirit of tolerance? Erasmus had been tolerant because he had not been certain; Luther and Melanchthon had abandoned tolerance as they progressed to certainty; Calvin, with lethal precocity, had been certain almost from his twentieth year. A few humanists who studied classic thought, remained to suggest, diffidently, that certainty in religion and philosophy is unattainable, and that therefore theologians and philosophers should not kill.
The humanist who most clearly spoke for tolerance amid the clash of certainties had been for a time one of Calvin’s closest friends. Sebastian Castellio, became an adept in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, taught Greek at Lyons, lived with Calvin in Strasbourg. While he admired Calvin as a man, he abominated the doctrine of predestination, and fretted under the new discipline of body and mind. In 1544 he charged the Genevese ministers with intolerance, impurity, and drunkenness. Calvin complained to the Council; Castellio was found guilty of calumny, and was banished. For nine years he lived in great poverty, supporting a large family, and working at night on his version of the Scriptures. He finished this in (1551); then lonesome for the placid drudgery of scholarship, he began again at Genesis 1;1 and translated the Bible into French. He sympathized with the Unitarians, longed to help Servetus, and was shocked by Calvin’s defence of execution. Under assumed names he and Caelius Curio published the first modern classic on toleration.
The main body of the work was an anthology, compiled by Curio, of Christian pleas for tolerance, from Lactantius and Jerome to Erasmus, the early Luther, and Calvin himself. For hundreds of years, he pointed out, men had debated free will, predestination, heaven and hell, Christ and the Trinity, and other difficult matters; no agreement had been reached; probably none would ever be reached. But none is necessary said Castellio; such disputes do not make men better; all we need is to carry the spirit of Christ into our daily lives, to feed the poor, help the sick, and love even our enemies. Can we imagine Christ ordering a man to be burned alive for advocating adult baptism? The Mosaic laws calling for the death of a heretic were superseded by the law of Christ, which is one of mercy, not of despotism and terror. What a tragedy (he concluded) that those who so lately freed themselves from the terrible Inquisition should so soon imitate its tyranny, should so soon force men back into Cimmerian darkness after so promising a dawn!
Knowing Castellio’s sentiments, Calvin at once recognized his hand in the work. He deligated the task of answering it to his most brilliant disciple, Theodore de Besze. Theodore studied law at Orleans and Bourges, practiced it successfully in Paris, wrote Latin poetry, charmed some women by his wit, more by his prosperity, lived a gay life, married, fell dangerously ill, experienced a sickbed conversion reverse to Loyola’s, adopted Protestantism, fled to Geneva, presented himself to Calvin, and was made professor of Greek at the University of Lausanne. It is remarkable that a protestant refugee from a Huguenot-persecuting France should have undertaken to defend persecution. He did it with the skill of a lawyer and the devotion of a friend. He pointed out again that religious toleration was impossible to one who accepted the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. To a sincere believer in the Bible there could be only one religion; all others must be false or incomplete. Yes, the new Testament preaches a law of love, but this does not excuse us from punishing thieves and murderers; how then does it warrant us in sparing heretics? Castellio returned to the contest in a manuscript anticipating Descartes by making the art of doubting a first step in the pursuit of truth. He defended free will and the possibility of universal salvation . In1562, he appealed in vain to Catholics and Protestants to end the civil wars that were devastating France, and to allow every believer in Christ “to serve God according not to other men’s faith but to his own.” Hardly anyone heard a voice so out of tune with the time. Castellio died in poverty at the age of forty-eight (1563). Calvin pronounced his early death a just judgment of a just God.
Amid these battles for the Lord, Calvin continued to live simply, and to rule Geneva by the power of personality armed with the delusions of his followers. His position became stronger as the years gave it roots. His only weakness was physical; headaches, asthma, dyspepsia, stone, gout, and fever racked and thinned his frame. He now had to keep to his bed most of the time. On April 25, 1564, he made his will, full of confidence in his election to everlasting glory. Many flocked to his bedside, and after many days of prayer and suffering Calvin found peace ( May 27, 1564 ).
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I have a new computer. having some trouble getting it to do what I want! Trevor
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I know the feeling!
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DURANTS’ S O C
Vol VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 488 – 490
CALVIN’S INFLUENCE
His influence was even greater than Luther’s, but he walked in a path that Luther had cleared. Luther had protected his new church by rallying German nationalism to its support; the move was necessary, but it tied Lutherism too narrowly to Teutonic stocks. Calvin loved France, and laboured to promote the Huguenot cause, but he was no nationalist; religion was his country; and so his doctrine, however modified, inspired the Protestantism of Switzerland, France, Scotland, and America, and captured large sectors of Protestantism in Hungary, Poland, Germany, Holland, and England. Calvin gave to Protestantism in many lands an organization, confidence, and pride that enabled it to survive a thousand trials.
But year by year the business leaders who controlled the Councils resisted more and more successfully the attempts of the Consistory and the Venerable Company to place moral checks upon economic operations. After 1608 the merchant princes consolidated their supremacy, and the Genevan Church lost the directive privileges that Calvin had won for it in non religious affairs. In the eighteenth century the influence of Voltaire moderated the Calvinist tradition, and ended the sway of a puritan ethic among the people. Catholicism patiently struggled to recapture a place in the city; it offered a Christianity without gloom and an ethic without severity; in 1954 the population was 42% Catholic, 47% Protestant.
Meanwhile the hard theocracy of Calvin was sprouting democratic buds. The efforts of the Calvinist leaders to give schooling to all, and their inculcation of disciplined character, helped the sturdy burghers of Holland to oust the alien dictatorship of Spain, and supported the revolt of nobles and clergy in Scotland against a fascinating but imperious queen. The stoicism of a hard creed made the strong souls of the Scottish Covenanters, the English and Dutch Puritans, the Pilgrims of New England. It steadied the heart of Cromwell, guided the pen of blind Milton, and broke the power of the backward facing Stuarts. It encouraged brave and ruthless men to win a continent and spread the base of education and self-government until all men could be free. Men who chose their own pastors soon claimed to choose their governors, and the self-ruled congregation soon became the self-governed municipality. The myth of divine election justified itself in the making of America.
When this function had been performed, the theory of predestination fell into the backwaters of Protestant belief. A social order returned in Europe after the Thirty Year’s War, in England after the revolutions of 1642 and1689, in America after 1793. The pride of divine election changed into the pride of work and accomplishment; men felt stronger and more secure; fear lessened and the frightened cruelty that had generated Calvin’s God gave way to a more humane vision that compelled reconception of deity. Decade by decade the churches that had taken their lead from Calvin discarded the harsher elements of his creed. Theologians dared to believe that all who died in infancy were saved, and one respected divine announced, without causing a commotion, that the number of the finally lost.... will be very inconsiderable. We are grateful to be so reassured, and we will agree that even error lives because it serves some vital creed. But we shall always find it hard to love the man who darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honoured history of nonsense.
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We are grateful to be so reassured, and we will agree that even error lives because it serves some vital creed. But we shall always find it hard to love the man who darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honoured history of nonsense.
So much for Calvin and Luther !
It's been a long journey through the religious turmoil, and the Durants have
not lost their sense of humour in telling us about it.
We are not finished with the effects of religion on history though - will we ever be?
Brian
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No!
"Men who chose their own pastors soon claimed to choose their governors, and the self-ruled congregation soon became the self-governed municipality. The myth of divine election justified itself in the making of America.
When this function had been performed, the theory of predestination fell into the backwaters of Protestant belief."
So it was Calvin who led to the formation of the ideals of the US?
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Well, those last two paragraphs give me a whole new respect for my ancestors. As i've mentioned before, 4 Chambers brothers arrived in the colonies in the mid 1700s and three of them started three Presbyterian churches in south central Pa. As i've studied bits and pieces of Calvin through my life i've itched to talk to them to find out why they were so strongly approving of that theology.
I understood where my stoicism came from, but didn't get the connection to democracy. I love that. From another branch of my maternal ancestry came the Scottish Morrows. I don't know what year they arrived in the country, but i'd like to think that the Chambers and the Morrows stood on the democracy side of the theology rather then the predestination side. Some powerful force motivated them to cross the Atlantic, i'd like to think it was individual liberty and freedom and independence. :)
Perhaps they also sent me the gene that has led me to love the colonial and federalist periods of American History.
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The era that interests me is after the revolution, when our founding fathers were struggling with questions of how to structure this new country. I think everyone should study it, to understand how our government is constructed, and what kind of issues they (and we) face.
And also understand how power can supersede ideals. Jefferson with his high ideals and dirty electioneering and slave holding; Adams with his understanding of the balance of power and his Alien and Sedition act, making him all powerful.
I think the most important thing I've learned by following this discussion for years is the extent to which power corrupts.
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Durant seems to think that it was adherence to the Protestant Christian religion that enabled the settlers to establish their rule over what was to become the US. It takes only a glance at a map to see that those who followed the Catholic religion conquered an even larger section of the Americas. Does this mean that Catholism is the better religion?
It is clear that religion played a negligible part in the conquests. It was of course greater fire power that enabled the European conquests, nothing more. In any case the original Asiatic settlers who moved across the Bering straights and settled, were the real conquerors of the entire continent. Christianity, or the lack of it, played no real part in any of this.
In my case, the conquest of New Zealand, did have some religious elements. The missionaries had some influence, in that they largely wrote the treaty of Waitangi, which cajoled the Maoris to grant sovereignty to the Europeans. When, several years later, the Maoris realized what they had done, and sought to re-establish their ownership of the country by resort to arms, the ready availability of guns and artillery to the European invaders ensured that the Maori efforts ended in defeat.
I feel that the Durants’ enthusiasm for religion is not really tenable. Trevor.
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It encouraged brave and ruthless men to win a continent and spread the base of education and self-government until all men could be free. Men who chose their own pastors soon claimed to choose their governors, and the self-ruled congregation soon became the self-governed municipality. The myth of divine election justified itself in the making of America.
Trevor - the Durants do seem to aggrandize the role of Calvinism, "win a continent" is a gross exaggeration if they are speaking of the actual work of Protestants, but in terms of believing in the concepts of public education, self-determination, independence, democracy and no divine rights, those became the pillars of the United States' ideals. Whether they ALL stemed from Protestantism is debatable.
Religion was used as the excuse by many for conquering the continent, by both Catholics and Protestants, although it doesn't hold up in reality.
♪♫♪•*¨•.¸¸♪♫ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ money, money, money ♪♫♪•*¨•.¸¸♪♫ ¸¸.•*¨does appear to be the engine driving the train of much of history, along with power, of course.
Jean
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Jean: As a fellow sociologist, you know that money, power, and ideas are the three factors that sociologists see driving people, with endless arguments at to which comes first.. As they tend to belong to the same people, it's hard to separate them. (Those who have money, get power and control ideas. Those who control ideas, get power and money follows, etc. etc.)
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Yes Joan, i do. I was just musing after having read the latest posting by Trevor.
Something you al might want to play around with:
From this morning's Open Culture newsletter.......as schools and colleges moved to be multicultural in the 80s and 90s, some moved away from Western literature. Howard Bloom wrote a book suggesting a "Western Canon" many of which are available for free online. Here's the article and the list along with some audio of Bloom discussing the battle. I wish i could find an interesting MOOC - college class - that discussed them for me, i'll have to look.
http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/harold-bloom-creates-a-massive-list-of-works-in-the-western-canon.html
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
pgs. 491 - 496
Francis 1 and the Reformation in France.
1515 - 1559
He was born under a tree in Cognac on September 12, 1494. His grandfather was Charles of Orleans, the poet; perhaps song and the love of beauty were in his blood. His father was Charles of Valois and Orleans, count of Angouleme, who died, after many adulteries in the third year of Francis’ life. His mother was Louise of Savoy, a woman of beauty, ability, and ambition, with a taste for wealth and power. Widowed at seventeen, she refused the hand of Henry VII of England, and devoted herself -- barring some liaisons -- to making her son king of France. She did not mourn when Anne of Brittany, second wife of Louis XII, had a stillborn son, leaving Francis heir to the throne. Louis sadly made Francis Duke of Valois, and appointed tutors to instruct him in the art of royalty. Louise and his sister Marguerite mothered him to idolatry, and prepared him to be a ladies’ king. He was handsome, gay, courteous, brave; he met dangers like a Roland or an Amadis; when a wild boar, escaping from its cage, sought to frolic in his princely court, it was Francis who, while others fled, faced the beast and slew it splendidly.
At the age of twelve (1506) he was betrothed to Claude of France, the seven year old daughter of Louis XII. At fourteen Francis was bidden leave his mother and join Louis at Chinon. At twenty he married Claude. She was stout and dull, lame and fertile and good; she gave him children in 1515, 1516, 1518, 1520, 1522, 1523, and died in 1524. Meanwhile he became King. (Jan.1 1515). Everybody was happy, above all his mother, to whom he gave the Duchies of Angouleme and Anjou, the Barony of Amboise,. But he was generous to others too. -- to nobles artists, poets, pages, mistresses. France rejoiced, and placed high hopes in him, as England in those years in Henry VIII, and the Empire in Charles V; and Francis, even more than Leo X, was resolved to enjoy his throne..
What was he really, this Arthur plus Lancelot? Physically he would have been magnificent, had not his nose been more so; irreverent contemporaries called him “ le roi grand nez.” He was six feet tall, broad shouldered, agile, strong, he could run, jump, wrestle, fence with the best; he could wield a two-handed sword or a heavy lance. Brantome, whose ‘Dames Galantes’ cannot be taken as history, wrote therein that “King Francis loved greatly and too much; for being young and free, he embraced now one, now another, with indifference... from which he took the “grande verole “ that shortened his days. The king’s mother was reported to have said “He was punished where he had sinned.” His intellectual ability did not equal his charm of character. He had little Latin and no Greek, but he astonished many men by the variety and accuracy of his knowledge in agriculture, hunting, geography, military science, literature, and art; and he enjoyed philosophy when it did not interfere with love or war. He was too reckless and impetuous to be a great commander, too fascinated by appearances to get to essences, too amiably influenced by favourites and mistresses to chose the best available generals and ministers, too open and frank to be a competent diplomat. Louis XII, who admired him as “ a fine young gallant,” saw with foreboding the lavish hedonism of his successor. “All our work is useless,” he said; “this great boy will spoil everything.”
France was now enjoying the prosperity engendered by a bountiful soil, a skilful and thrifty people, and a beneficent reign. The population was some 16,000,000, compared with 3,000,000 in England and 7,000,000 in Spain. Paris, with 300,000 was the largest city in Europe. The social structure was semi-feudal: nearly all the peasants owned the land they tilled, but usually they held it in fief-- and owed dues or services -- to seigneurs and chevalies whose function was to organise agriculture and provide military protection to their locality and nation. Inflation, caused by the repeated debasement of coinages and the mining or import of precious metals, eased the traditional money dues, and enabled peasants to buy land cheaply from the land rich, money poor nobility; hence a rural prosperity that kept the Frenchy peasant happy and Catholic while the German Bauer was making economic and religious revolution. French energy drew from the soil the best corn and wine in Europe; cattle grew fat and multiplied; milk, butter and cheese were on every table; chickens and other fowl were in almost every yard; and the peasant accepted the odour of his pigsty as one of the blessed fragrances of life.
The town worker -- still chiefly a craftsman in his shop -- did not share in this prosperity. Inflation raised prices faster than wages, and protective tariffs and royal monopolies, as of salt, helped to keep the cost of living high. Discontented workers went on strike, but were nearly always defeated; and the law forbade workingmen to unite for economic purposes. Commerce moved leisurely along the bountiful rivers, but painfully along the poor roads, paying each lord a toll to pass through his domain. Lyons, where the trade of the Mediterranean ascending the Rhone, met the flow of goods from Switzerland and Germany, was second only to Paris in French industry and only to Antwerp as a centre of investment and finance.
From this economy Francis drew revenues to the limit of tolerance. The taille (cut) fell as a personal or property tax upon all but nobles and clergy; the clergy paid the king ecclesiastical tithes and grants, the nobles supplied and equipped the cavalry that was still the flamboyant mainstay of French arms. Taking a lesson from the popes, Francis sold -- and created to sell -- noble titles and political offices; in this way the nouveaux riches slowly formed (as in England ) a new aristocracy, and the lawyers, buying offices, established a powerful bureaucracy that -- sometimes over the head of the king -- administered the government of France.
The function of the nobles was twofold: to organize the army, and to serve the king at court. The court, consisting of the administrative heads, the leading nobles, their wives, and the family and favourites of the king, now became the head and front of France, the mirror of fashion, the mobile perpetual festival of royalty. At the summit of this whirl was the master of the King’s household, who organized the whole and patrolled the protocol; then the Chamberlain, who had charge of the royal bedchamber; then four Gentlemen of the Bedchamber or First lords in waiting, who were always at the King’s elbow to wait upon his desires; these men were changed every three months, to give other nobles a turn at this exhilarating intimacy; lest anyone be overlooked there were twenty to fifty-four Lords of the Bedchamber to serve the highest four; add twelve Pages of the bedchambers, and four Ushers of the Bedchamber, and the King’s sleeping quarters were adequately cared for. Twenty lords served as stewards of the King’s cuisine, managing a staff of forty-five men and twenty-five cupbearers. Some thirty ’enfants d’honneur’ -- boys of awesome pedigree -- functioned as royal pages, shining in silvered livery; and a host of secretaries multiplied the hand and memory of a King. A cardinal was Grand Chaplain of the royal chapel; a bishop was Master of the oratory or prayer service; and fifty diocesan bishops were allowed to grace the court and so augment their fame. Honorary positions as “grooms of the chamber” with pensions of 240 livres, were awarded for divers accomplishments, as to scholars like Bude and poets like Marot. We must not forget seven physicians, seven surgeons, four barbers, seven choristers, eight craftsmen, eight clerks of the kitchen, eight ushers for the audience chamber. Each of the King’s sons had his own attendants -- stewards, chancellors, tutors, pages, and servants. Each of the two Queens at court -- Claude and Marguerite -- had her retinue of fifteen or ten ladies in waiting, sixteen or eight maids of honour -- foilles demoiselles. All the potentates of Europe taxed their peoples to provide some minor mirroring of this Parisian fantasy.
The cost of all this perambulating glory was enormous. The treasury was always near bankruptcy, taxes were forever mounting, the bankers of Lyons were dragooned into risky royal loans. In 1523, perceiving that his expenditures were loosing sight of his revenues, the King promised to put a limit on his personal indulgences, “not including, however, the ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures.” Now the government of France became bisexual. Francis ruled in apparent omnipotence, but he was so fond of women that he readily yielded to his mother, his sister, his mistress, even his wife. He must have loved Claude somewhat, to keep her so constantly pregnant. He had married her for reasons of state; he felt entitled to appreciate other women more artistically designed. The court followed the lead of the King in making a mannerly art of adultery. The clergy adjusted themselves after making the requisite objections. The people made no objections, but gratefully imitated the easy code of the court -- except one girl, who, we are told, deliberately marred her beauty to deflect the royal lechery.(1524).
The most influential woman at the court was the King’s mother. Very often her advice was good, and when she served as his regent the country fared better than at his own hands. But her covetousness drove the Duke of Bourbon to treason, and let a French army starve in Italy. Her son forgave her everything, grateful that she had made him a god.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
PGS. 497 - 501
Marguerite of Navarre .
Francis probably loved his sister next to his mother, and above his mistresses -- whose ministrations gave him something less lasting and profound than her selfless adoration. Love was her life -- love of her mother, of her brother, of her husbands, Platonic love, mystical religious love. A pretty story said “she was born smiling, and held out her little hand to each comer. By her birth she was Marguerite of Angoulême, Orlêans, and Valois. Two years older than Francis, she shared in bringing him up, and in their childhood games “she was his mother, his mistress, and his little wife.” She watched over him as fondly as if he had been some saving divinity become man; and when she found that he was also a satyr she accepted that disposition as the right of a Greek god, though she herself seems to have taken no taint from her environment. She far outstripped Francis in studies, but she never equalled his connoisseur’s appreciation of art. She learned Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew; she surrounded herself avidly with scholars, poets, theologians, and philosophers. Nevertheless she grew into an attractive woman, not physically beautiful ( she too had the long Valois nose), but exercising a strong fascination by her charms of character and intellect. She was sympathica, agreeable, generous, kind, with a frequent dash of sprightly humour. She herself was one of the best poets of the time, and her court at Nérac or Pau was the most brilliant literary centre in Europe. Everyone loved her and wished to be near her. That romantic but cynical age called her ‘la perle des Valoi -- for ‘margarita’ was Latin for pearl; and a pretty legend grew that Louise of Savoy had conceived her by swallowing a pearl.
The letters to her brother are among the fairest and tenderest in literature. There must have been much good in him to draw out such devotion. Her other loves flowed or ebbed, burned or cooled; this pure passion was constant through fifty years, and always intense. The breath of that love almost clears the air of that perfumed time.
Gaston de Foix, nephew of Louis XII, aroused her first romance, then went off to Italy to conquer and die at Ravenna ( 1512). Guillaume de Bonnivet fell deeply in love with her, but found her heart still full of Gaston; He married one of her ladies in waiting to be near to her. At seventeen (1509) she was wed to Charles, Duke of Alençon, also of royal pedigree; Francis had requested the marriage to cement an alliance of troublesomely rival families; but Marguerite found it hard to love the youth. Bonnivet offered her the consolations of adultery; she disfigured her face with a sharp stone to break the spell of her charm on him. Both Alençon and Bonnivet went to fight for Francis in Italy; Bonnivet died a hero at Pavia. Alençon was reported to have fled at the crisis of battle. He returned to Lyons to find himself universally scorned. Louise of Savoy berated him as a coward; he fell ill of pleurisy; Margurite forgave him and nursed him tenderly but he died (1525)
After two years of widowhood Marguerite, now thirty-five married Henri d’Albret, titular King of Navarre, a youth of twenty-four. He treated Marguerite, as a mother, almost as a mother-in-law; he did not imitate her fidelity to the marriage vows, and she had to console herself by playing hostess and protectress to writers, philosophers, and protestant refugees. In 1528 she bore Henri a daughter, Jeanne d’Albret. Two years later she gave birth to a son, who died in infancy; thereafter she wore nothing but black. Francis commanded her and Henri to surrender Jeanne to him to be brought up near the royal court. He feared that the girl would be reared as a Protestant. This separation was the profoundest of Marguerite’s many grief's before the death of the King, but it did not interrupt her devotion to him. It is sad but necessary to relate that when Francis bade Jeanne marry the Duke of Cleves, and Jeanne refused, Marguerite supported the King to the point of instructing Jeanne’s governess to thrash her till she consented. Several beatings were administered but plucky Jeanne -- a girl of twelve -- issued a signed document to the effect that if she were forced into the marriage she would hold it null. The wedding was arranged neverthe less, on the theory that the needs of the state were supreme law; Jeanne resisted to the last, and had to be carried into the church. As soon as the ceremony was over she fled, and went to live with her parents at Pau, where her extravagance in dress, retinue, and charities almost ruined them.
Marguerite herself was the embodiment of charity. She walked unescorted in the streets of Pau, allowed anyone to approach her, and heard at first hand the sorrows of the people. “No one ought to go away sad or disappointed from the presence of a Prince,” she said, “for Kings are the ministers of the poor... and the poor are the members of God.” She called herself the “Prime Minister of the Poor.” She visited them in their homes, and sent them physicians from her court. Henri co-operated fully in this, for he was as excellent a ruler as he was a negligent husband, and the public works directed by him served as a model to France. Together he and Marguerite financed the education of a large number of poor students, among them the Amyot who later translated Plutarch. Marguerite gave shelter and safety to Marot, Rebelias, Desperiers, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Calvin, and many others.
Aside from her charities three interests dominated her life at Nérac and Pau. Literature, Platonic love, and a mystic theology that found room for Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and tolerance even for free thought. She published in her lifetime several volumes of poetry and drama; they are not as fine as her letters, which were not printed until 1841. All the world knows of her ‘Heptameron’ because of its reputed indecency; but patrons of pornography will be disappointed in it. They are the tales related by the men and women of Marguerite’s court, or that of Francis. They appeared ten years after her death. She had intended them to form another ‘Decameron’, but as the book stopped short on the seventh day, the publisher called it ‘Heptameron’ Many of the narratives seem to be authentic histories, disguised with changed names. Brantôme tells us that his mother was one of the storytellers and that the fourth tale of the fifth day is an account of Bonnivet’s attempts upon Marguerite herself.
It must be admitted that the professed taste of our day would feel obliged to blush at these stories of seduction. Some of the incidental remarks are startling. “You mean to say, then, that all is lawful to those who love, provided no one knows?” “Yes in truth; tis only fools who are found out.” The general philosophy of the book finds expression in a pregnant sentence of the fifth story: “Unhappy the lady who does not carefully preserve the treasure which does her so much honour when well kept, and so much dishonour when she continues to keep it.” That Marguerite should have enjoyed or collected these tales points to the mood of the age, and cautions us not to picture her as a saint until her declining years. Apparently the men, and most of the women, thought of love between the sexes in unashamedly sexual terms. It was a custom of French women, in that light hearted reign, to make presents of their garters to imaginative men. It was good, Marguerite felt, that women should accept, in addition to the usual sexual passion, the devotion of men who were to be rewarded only with a tender friendship and some harmless intimacies; this association would train aesthetic sensitivity in the male, refine his manners, and teach him moral restraint; so woman would civilise man.. But in her philosophy there was a higher love than either the sexual or the Platonic-- love of goodness, beauty, or any perfection, and therefore, above all, the love of God. But to love God one must first love a human creature perfectly.
Her religion was as complex and confused as her conception of love. Just as the selfishness of her brother could not dim her devotion to him, so the tragedies and brutalities of life left her religious faith pure and fervent, however unorthodox. She had sceptical moments; in ‘Le miroir de l’âme pécheresse’ she confessed that at times she had doubted both Scripture and God; she charged God with cruelty, and wondered had He really written the Bible. In 1533 the Sorbonne summoned her to answer an accusation of heresy; she ignored the summons; a monk told his congregation she deserved to be sewn in a sack and thrown in the Seine. But the King told the monks to leave his sister alone. She despised the religious orders as idling, wenching wastrels; reform, she felt, was long overdue. She read some Lutheran literature, and approved its attacks upon ecclesiastical immorality and greed. Francis was amazed to find her, once, praying with Farel -- the John the Baptist of Calvin. She spread her protective skirts over fugitive Protestants, including Calvin himself. She would gladly have composed the Edict of Nantes for her grandson. In Marguerite the Renaissance and the Reformation were for a moment one.
In the nineteenth century the protestant Michelet in that magnificent, interminable, unwearying rhapsody called Histoire de France, offered her his gratitude. “let us always remember this tender Queen of Navarre, in whose arms our people, fleeing from prison or pyre, found safety, honour, and friendship.. Our gratitude to you, lovable Mother of our Renaissance!”
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What an interesting character! "In Marguerite the Renaissance and the Reformation were for a moment one." Quite a feat.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 501 - 504
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS.
No one questioned the need for religious reform The same ecclesiastical good and evil appeared here as elsewhere: faithful priests, devout monks, saintly nuns, here and there a bishop dedicated to religion rather than politics; and ignorant or lackadaisical priests, idle and lecherous monks, money grubbing friars pretending poverty, weak sisters in the convents, bishops who took the earthly cash and let the celestial credit go. As education rose, faith fell; and as the clergy had most of the education, they showed in their conduct that they no longer took to heart the once terrifying eschatology of their official creed. Monks denounced the worldliness of the bishops; priests denounced the monks. The first sentence in the ‘Heptameron’ describes the Bishop of Sees as itching to seduce a married woman; and a dozen stories in the book retail the similar enterprises of various monks.
The acquisitiveness of Louise, mother of Francis, the polygyny of her son, and the anarchic morals of the court, gave no inspiring example to the clergy, who were so largely subject to the King. In 1516 Francis secured from Leo X a Concordat empowering him to appoint the bishops and abbots of France; but since he used these appointments largely as rewards for political services, the worldly character of the prelacy was confirmed. The Concordat in effect made the Gallican Church independent of the papacy and dependent upon the state. In this way, Francis, a year before Luther’s Theses, achieved in fact, though graciously not in form, what the German princes and Henry VIII would win by war or revolution -- the nationalization of Christianity. What more could French Protestants offer the French King?
The first of them outdated Luther. In 1512 Jacques Lefèvre born at Etaples in Picardy but then teaching at the University of Paris, published a Latin translation of Paul’s Epistles, with a commentary expounding, among other heresies, that ten years later would be basic to Luther: that man can be saved not by good works but only by faith in the grace of God earned by redeeming sacrifice of Christ; and that Christ is present in the Eucharist by His own operation and good will , not through any priestly transubstantiation of bread and wine. Lefèvre, like Luther, demanded a return to the Gospel; and like Erasmus, he sought to restore and clarify the authentic text of the New Testament as a means of cleansing Christianity from medieval legends and sacerdotal accretions. In 1523 he issued a French translation of the Testament, and, a year later, of the Psalms. “How shameful it is,” said one of his comments, “to see a bishop soliciting people to drink with him, caring for naught but gambling... constantly hunting..... frequenting bad houses.” The Sorbonne condemned him as a heretic, he fled to Strasbourg. Marguerite interceded for him; Francis recalled him and made him royal librarian at Blois and tutor to his children, In 1531, when protestant excesses had angered the King, Lefévre took refuge with Marguerite in southern France, and lived there until his death at the age of eighty-seven (1527).
His pupil Guillaume Briçonnet, appointed Bishop of Meaux (1516) set himself to reform that diocese in the spirit of his master. After four years of zealous work he felt strong enough to venture upon theological innovations. He appointed to benefices such known reformers as Lefèvre, Farel, Louis de Berquin, Gérard Roussel, and François Vatable, and encouraged them to preach a return to the Gospel. Marguerite applauded him, and made him her spiritual director. But when the Sorbonne -- the school of theology that now dominated the University of Paris --- proclaimed its condemnation of Luther (1521) Briçonnet bade his cohorts make their peace with the Church. The unity of the Church seemed to him, as to Erasmus and Marguerite, more important than reform. The Sorbonne could not stop the flow of Lutheran ideas across the Rhine. Students and merchants brought Luther’s writings from Germany as the most exciting news of the day. Discontented workingmen took up the New Testament as a revolutionary document, and listened gladly to preachers who drew from the Gospels a utopia of social equality. In 1523, when Bishop Briçonnet published on his cathedral doors a bull of indulgences, Jean Leclerc, a wool carder of Meaux, tore it down ,and replaced it with a placard calling the pope Antichrist. He was arrested and by order of the ’Parliament’ of Paris, was branded on the forehead. He moved to Metz, where he smashed the religious images before which a procession was planning to offer incense. His right hand was cut off, his nose was torn away, his nipples were clucked out with pincers, his head was bound with a band of red hot iron, and he was burned alive.( 1526)
The people of France generally approved of these executions, it cherished its religious faith in God’s own revelation and covenant, and abominated heretics as robbing the poor of their greatest consolation. No Luther appeared in France to rouse the middle class against papal tyranny and executions. Francis himself tolerated the Lutheran propaganda so long as it offered no threat of social or political unrest. He too had his doubts -- about the powers of the pope, the sale of indulgences, the existence of purgatory; and possibly he thought to use his toleration of Protestantism as a weapon over a pope too inclined to favour Charles V. He admired Erasmus, sought him for the Collège Royale, and believed with him in the encouragement of education and ecclesiastical reform -- but by steps that would not divide the people into warring halves, or weaken the services of the Church to private morality and social order.
“The King and Madame” (Louise of Savoy), wrote Marguerite to Briçonnet in 1521, “are more than ever well-disposed toward the reformation of the Church.” When the Sorbonne arrested Louis de Berquin for translating some of Luther’s works he was freed by Marguerite’s intercession with the King. But Francis was frightened by the peasants’ Revolt in Germany, which seemed to him to have grown out of Protestant propaganda; and before leaving for his debacle at Pavia he bade the prelates stamp out the Lutheran movement in France. While the King was a captive in Madrid, Berquin was again imprisoned, but Marguerite again secured an order for his release. When Francis himself was freed he indulged in a jubilee of liberalism, perhaps in gratitude to the sister who had so laboured for his liberation. He recalled Lefèvre and Roussel from exile, and Marguerite felt the movement for reform had won the day. Two events drove the King back to orthodoxy. He needed money to ransome the two sons whom he had surrendered to Charles in exchange for his own freedom; the clergy voted him 1,300,000 livres, but accompanied the grant with a request for a firmer stand against against heresy; and he agreed ( 1727).
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"man can be saved not by good works but only by faith in the grace of God earned by redeeming sacrifice of Christ"
Still the question today!
"When Francis himself was freed he indulged in a jubilee of liberalism, ...Two events drove the King back to orthodoxy"
Religion and dictatorship -- a lethal combination!! People in the US who argue for the weakening of the separation of church and state should read history
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The difference between Will's earliest volumes and the later ones when Ariel got involved, or had more influence, is significant. No other male historian of his time includes as much information about women of the period being discussed as does Will Durant. Even Charles and Mary Beard's History of the United States does not and Mary Beard was a very important writer of women's history.
Do you think any other institution has created more violence then religion?
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol Vi The REFORMATION
Pgs. 504 - 506
The mood of the king varied with the shifts of his diplomacy. In 1532, angry at the collaboration of Clement VII with Charles V, he made overtures to the Lutheran princes of Germany, and allowed Marguerite to install Roussel as preacher to large gatherings in the Louvre; and when the Sorbonne protested, he banished its leaders from Paris. In October 1532 he was on good terms with Clement, and promised active measures against the French Protestants. On November 1 Nicholas Cop delivered his pro-Lutheran address at the university; the Sorbonne rose in wrath, and Francis ordered a new persecution. But then his quarrel with the Emperor sharpened and he sent Guillaume du Bellay, favourable to reform, to Wittemberg with a request that Melanchthon should formulate a possible reconciliation between the old faith and the new ideas (1534), and thereby make possible an alliance of Protestant Germany and Catholic France. Melanchthon complied, and matters were moving fast, when an extreme faction among the French reformers posted in the streets of Paris, Orleans, and other cities, and even on the doors of the King’s bedchamber at Amboise, placards denouncing the Mass as idolatry, and the Pope and the Catholic clergy as a “brood of vermin .... apostates, wolves .... liars, blasphemers, murderers of souls.”
Enraged, Francis ordered an indiscriminate imprisonment of all suspects; soon the jails were full. Many printers were arrested and for a time all printing prohibited. Marguerite, Marot, and many moderate Protestants joined in condemning the placards. The King, his sons, ambassadors, nobles, and clergy marched in solemn silence, bearing lighted candles, to hear an expiatory Mass in Notre Dame (January 21, 1535). Francis declared that he would behead his own children, if he found them harbouring such blasphemous heresies. That evening six Protestants were burned to death in Paris, by a method judged fit to appease the Deity: they were suspended over a fire, and were repeatedly lowered into it and raised from it, so that their agony might be prolonged. Pope Paul III reproved the King for needless severity, and ordered him to end the persecution.
Before the year was out Francis was again wooing the German Protestants. He himself wrote to Melanchthon July 23, 1535, inviting him to come and “confer with some of our most distinguished doctors as to the means of re-establishing in the Church that sublime harmony which is the chief of all my desires.” Melanchthon did not come. Perhaps he suspected Francis of using him as a thorn in the Emperor’s side; or he was dissuaded by Luther or the Elector of Saxony, who said, “The French are not Evangelicals, they are Erasmians.” This was true of Marguerite and Briconnet, not true of the placardists, or of the Calvinistic Huguenots who were beginning to multiply in southern France.
The darkest disgrace of Francis’ reign was only partly his fault. The Vaudois or Waldenses, who still cherished the semi-Protestant ideas of Peter Waldo, their twelfth-century founder, had been allowed, under royal protection, to maintain their Quakerlike existence in some thirty villages along the Durance River in Provence. In 1530 they entered into correspondence with reformers in Germany and Switzerland, and two years later they drew up a profession of faith based on the views of Bucer and Oecolampadius. A papal legate set up the Inquisition among them. They appealed to Francis; he bade the prosecution cease (1533). But Cardinal de Tournon, alleging that the Waldenses were a treasonable conspiracy against the government, persuaded the ailing, vacillating King to sign a decree (January 1, 1545), that all Waldenses found guilty of heresy should be put to death. The Officers of the Parliament at Aix-en-Provence interpreted the order to mean mass execution. The soldiers at first refused to obey the command; they were, however, induced to kill a few; the heat of murder inflamed them, and they passed into massacre. Within a week (April 12-18) several villages were burned to the ground; in one of them 800 men, women, and children were slaughtered; in two months 3,000 were killed, twenty-two villages were razed, 700 men were sent to the galleys. Twenty-five terrified women seeking refuge in a cavern, were asphyxiated by a fire built at its mouth. Protestant Switzerland and Germany raised horrified protests; Spain sent Francis congratulations. A year later a small Lutheran group was found meeting at Meaux under the leadership of Pierre Leclerc, brother of branded Jean; Fourteen of the group were tortured and burned, eight after having their tongues torn out (October 7, 1546 )
These persecutions were the supreme failure of Francis’ reign. The courage of the martyrs gave dignity and splendour to their cause; Thousands of onlookers must have been impressed and disturbed, who without these spectacular executions might never have bothered to change their inherited faith. Despite the recurrent terror, clandestine “swarms” of protestants existed in 1530 in Lyons, Bordeaux, Reims, Dijon and many more towns and cities. Huguenot legions sprang almost out of the ground. Francis, dying, must have known that he had left his son not only the encompassing hostility of England, Germany, and Switzerland, but a heritage of hate in France herself.
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What a heritage of hate. it makes me cry just to think of it.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs., 506 - 509
It was not to be expected that so volatile a monarch as Francis would be content to surrender all the hopes that had agitated his predecessors for adding Milan, and if possible Naples, as brilliants in the French crown. Louis XII had accepted the natural limits of France, but now Francis challenged the right of Duke Maximilian Sforza to Milan. During several months of negotiations Francis ceased to recognise the Alps as a natural boundary, and collected and equipped an immense force. In August 1515, he led it by a new and perilous path -- blasting his way across rocky cliffs-- over the Alps, and down into Italy. At Marignano, nine miles from Milan, the French met Duke Maximilian’s Swiss mercenaries in two days of such killing as Italy had not known since the barbarian invasions; 10,000 men left dead on the field. Francis entered Milan as its master, sent the deposed Duke Maximilian to France with a comfortable pension, and signed with Leo X , a treaty and Concordat that allowed both Pope and King to claim a diplomatic victory.
Francis returned to France the idol of his country men, and almost of Europe. In the intoxication of fame he made his greatest mistake: he entered his candidacy for the Imperial Crown. He was legitimately disturbed by the prospect of having Charles I, King of Spain and Naples and Count of Flanders and Holland, become also head of the Holy Roman Empire. Within such a new Empire France would be surrounded by apparently invincible enemies. Francis bribed and lost. Charles bribed more, and won. (1519) The bitter rivalry began that kept Western Europe in turmoil until within three years of Francis’ death. Charles and Francis never ran out of reasons for hostility. Above many ‘casus belli’ lay the question of questions: Who was to be master of Europe -- Charles or Francis? The Turks answered, Suleiman.
Francis struck the first blow. Noting that Charles had on his hands a political revolution in Spain and a religious revolution in Germany, he sent an army across the Pyrenees to recapture Navarre; it was defeated. Another army went south to defend Milan; the troops mutinied for lack of pay; they were routed at La Bicocca by Imperial mercenaries, and Milan fell to Charles V (1522). To cap these mishaps the Constable of the French armies went over to the Emperor.
Charles Duke of Bourbon, was head of the powerful family that would rule France from 1589 to 1792. He was the richest man in the country after the King. He was the last of the great barons who could defy the monarch of the new centralized state. He served Francis well in war; less well in government, alienating the Milanese by his harsh rule. Ill supplied with funds from the King, he laid out 100,000 livres of his own, expecting to be repaid; he was not. Francis looked with jealous misgiving upon this most royal vassal. He recalled him from Milan, and offered him thoughtless or intentional affronts that left Bourbon his brooding enemy. The Duke had married Suzanne of Bourbon, whose extensive estates were by her mother’s will to revert to the crown if Suzanne should die without issue. Suzanne so died, but after making a will that left all her property to her husband. Francis and his mother claimed the property as the most direct descendants; Charles fought the claim. The ’ parlement’ of Paris decided against him. Francis proposed a compromise that would let the Duke enjoy the property until his death, and it would then revert to the crown. He rejected the offer, and others. Charles the V made a rival offer, the hand of his sister Elenora in marriage, and full support by imperial troops, of the Duke’s claims. The Duke accepted, fled at night across the frontier, and was made lieutenant-general of the Imperial Army in Italy (1523). Francis sent Marguerites lover, Bonnivet, against him. He proved incompetent; his forces were overwhelmed at Romagnano by the Duke, who then entered into an agreement with Charles V and Henry VIII by which all three were to invade France simultaneously, overwhelm all French forces and divide the land between themselves.
Francis thought it wise to pursue the Duke and recapture Milan. He was advised to take Pavia first, and then come upon Milan from the south; he agreed, and laid siege. But here too the defence was superior to the offence; for four months the French host was held at bay, while Bourbon, Charles of Lannoy ( Viceroy of Naples), and the Marquis of Pescara ( husband of Vittoria Colonna) gathered a new army of 27,000 men. Suddenly this force appeared behind the French; on the same day (February 24, 1525 ) Francis found his men assaulted on one side by this unexpected multitude, and on the other by a sortie from Pavia. As usual, he fought in the van of the melee, and killed so many of the enemy with his own sword that he thought victory assured. But his generalship was sacrificed to his courage; his forces were poorly deployed; his infantry moved in between his artillery and the foe, making the superior French guns useless. Francis challenged his disordered army to follow him back into battle; only the most gallant of his nobles accompanied him, and a slaughter of French chivalry ensued. His loyal knights fell one by one, till he was left alone. He was surrounded by enemy soldiers, and was about to be slain when an officer recognised him, saved him, and led him to Lannoy, who with low bows of respect accepted his sword.
The fallen King was confined in the fortress of Pizzighettone near Cremona.
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twenty-two villages were razed, 700 men were sent to the galleys.
The Raddanites of Venice took captives of war and used them as slaves chained to the oars in the bowels of their ships. War was the main means of creating slaves. They took the very young and killed the rest. There were no POW camps.
All the slaughter and for what.......another title.....none of which would survive them. So much megalomania, it boggles the mind.
Emma
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 509 - 512
The fallen King was confined in the fortress of Pizzighettone near Cremona, whence he was allowed to send his oft quoted, oft misquoted letter to his mother, who was ruling France in his absence:
To the regent of France: “Madame, that you may know how stands the rest of my misfortune: there is nothing in the world left to me but honour and my life, which is saved ( de toute chose ne m’est demeuré que l’honneur et la vie, qui est sauvée ). And in order that in your adversity this news might bring you some little comfort, I prayed for permission to write you this letter ... entreating you in the exercise of your accustomed prudence, to do nothing rash, for I have hope, after all, that God will not forsake me ....”
Charles received the news of his victory over Francis calmly, and refused to celebrate it, as many suggested, with a splendid festival. To Francis and Louise he sent what seemed to him moderate terms for peace, and the liberation of the King. (1) France must give up Burgundy and all claims to Flanders, Artois, and Italy. (2) all lands and dignities claimed by the Duke of Bourbon must be surrendered to him. (3)Provence and Dauphiné should be made an independent state. (4) France must restore to England all French territory formerly held by Britain -- i.e. Normandy, Anjou, Gascony, and Guienne. (5) Francis must sign an alliance with the Emperor, and join him in a campaign against the Turks. Louise answered that France would not yield an inch of French territory, and was prepared to defend it to the last man. ( the lady made no mention of women? My remark, not the Durants’.) The regent acted now with an energy, resolution, and intelligence that made the French people forgive her headstrong faults. She arranged at once the organization and equipment of new armies, and sent them to guard all points of possible invasion. To keep the Emperor’s mind off France, she urged Suleiman of Turkey to defer his attack on Persia and undertake instead a westward campaign; we do not know what part her plea played in the Sultan’s decision, but in 1526 he marched into Hungary, and inflicted so disastrous a defeat upon the Christian army at Mohács that any invasion of France by Charles would have been deemed treason to Christendom. Meanwhile, Louise pointed out Henry VIII and ClementVII how both England and the papacy would be reduced to bondage if the Emperor were allowed all the territory that he demanded. Henry wavered; Louise persisted, and offered him an “indemnity” of 2,000,000 crowns; he signed a defensive and offensive alliance with France ( August 30, 1525) This female diplomacy opened male eyes, and shattered Charles’ confidence.
By agreement among Louise, Lannoy, and the Emperor, the captive King was transported to Spain. When Francis reached Valencia, (July 2 1525), Charles sent him a courteous letter, but his treatment of his prisoner went no further toward chivalry. Francis was assigned a narrow room in an old castle in Madrid, under rigorous vigilance; the sole freedom allowed him was to ride a mule near the castle, under watch of armed and mounted guards. Louise offered to meet the Emperor and negotiate, but he thought it better to play upon his prisoner than have a woman charm him into lenience. She informed him that her daughter Marguerite, now a widow, “would be happy if she could be agreeable to his Imperial Majesty,” but he preferred Isabella of Portugal, who with a dowry of 900,000 crowns, could provide him at once with bed and board. After two months of anxious imprisonment, Francis fell dangerously ill. The Spanish people regretting the Emperor’s severity, went to their churches to pray for the French King. Charles prayed too, for a dead ruler would be worthless as a political pawn. He visited Francis briefly, promised him an early release, and sent permission to Marguerite to come and comfort her brother.
When at last she reached the bedside of her brother she found him apparently recovering; but he had a relapse, fell into a coma, and seemed to be dying. A tedious convalescence followed. Marguerite stayed with Francis a month, then went to Toledo to appeal to the Emperor. He received her pleas coldly; he had heard of Henry’s league with France, and longed to punish the duplicity of his late ally, and the audacity of Louise. Francis had one card left to play, though it would almost certainly mean his life long imprisonment. Having warned his sister to leave Spain as quickly as possible, he signed a formal letter of abdication in favour of his eldest son; and since this second Francis was a boy of only eight years, he named Louise -- and in case of her death, Marguerite-- as regent of France. Charles saw at once that a king without a throne, with nothing to surrender, would be useless. But Francis had more physical than moral courage. On January 14, 1526, he signed with Charles the treaty of Madrid. Its terms were those that the Emperor had proposed to Louise; but they were even more severe, for they required that the two eldest sons of the King should be handed over to Charles as hostages for the faithful execution of the agreement. Francis further consented to marry the Emperor’s sister, Eleonora, Queen-dowager of Portugal; and swore that if he should fail to carry out the terms of the treaty he would return to Spain to resume imprisonment. However, on August 22, 1525, he had deposited with his aides a paper nullifying in advance “ all pacts, conventions, renunciations, quittances, revocations, derogations, and oaths that he might have to make contrary to his honour and the good of the crown”; and on the eve of signing the treaty he repeated this statement to his French negotiators, and declared that “it was through force and constraint, confinement, and length of imprisonment that he was signing, and that all that was contained in it was and should remain null and of no effect.”
On March 17, 1526, Viceroy Lannoy delivered Francis to Marshal Lautrec on a barge in the Bidasso River, which separates Spanish Irún from French Hendaye; and in turn Lannoy received Princes Francis and Henry. Their father gave them a blessing and a tear, and hurried on to French soil. There he leaped upon a horse, cried joyfully, “I’m King again!” Louise brought with her a pretty, blonde-haired maid of honour, eighteen years old, Anne de Heilly de Pisselieu, who as planned, struck the King’s eye. He wooed her in haste, and soon won her as his mistress; and from that moment till death parted them the new favourite shared with Louise and Marguerite the heart of the King. She put up patiently with his marriage to Eleonora and with his incidental liasons. To save appearances he gave her a husband, Jean de Brosse, made him Duc, and her Duchesse d’Etampes, and smiled appreciatively when Jean retired to a distant estate in Britanny
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Well, I'm glad to see a woman winning the day, a king surviving, and France remaining. (Of course the poor people in Hungary, who had nothing to do with the conflict, suffered. Such is war).
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What a dramatic story! I guess it's too long to make into a movie, maybe an HBO or SHOWTIME mini series!?! Very interesting and i say ditto to Joan's reply.
Jean
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DURANT"S S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs., 512 - 517
Hapsburg and Valois: 1515 - 1526 .
When the terms of the treaty of Madrid became generally known they aroused almost universal hostility to Charles. The German Protestants trembled at the prospect of facing so strengthened an enemy, Italy resented his claim to suzerainty in Lombardy. ClemeWhen the terms of the treaty of Madrid became generally known they aroused almost nt VII absolved Francis from the oath he had sworn at Madrid and joined France, Milan, Genoa, Florence, and Venice informing the league of Cognac for common defence (May 22,1526). Charles called Francis “no gentleman,” bade him return to his Spanish prison, ordered a harsher confinement for the King’s sons, and gave free reign to his generals to discipline the Pope.
The Imperial army collected in Germany and Spain, poured down through Italy, scaled the walls of Rome, ( the Duke of Bourbon dying in the process ) sacked the city more thoroughly than any Goths or Vandals had ever done, killed 4000 Romans, and imprisoned Clement in Sant’ Angelo. The Emperor, who had remained in Spain, assured a scandalized Europe that his starving Army had exceeded his instructions; nevertheless his representatives in Rome kept the Pope shut up in Sant’ Angelo from May to December 7, 1527, and exacted from an almost bankrupt papacy an indemnity of 368,000 crowns. Clement appealed to Francis and Henry for aid.. Francis dispatched Lautrec to Italy with an army that sacked Pavia in reckless revenge for its resistance two years before, and Italy wondered whether French friends were any better than German enemies. Lautrec by-passed Rome and besieged Naples, and the city began to starve. But meanwhile Francis had offended Andrea Doria, head of the Genoese navy. Doria called his fleet from the siege of Naples, went over to the side of the Emperor, and provisioned the besieged. Lautrec’s army starved in turn; Lautrec himself died and his army melted away (1528).
The comedy of the rulers hardly relieved the tragedy of the people. When the emissaries of Francis and Henry appeared at Burgos to make a formal declaration of war, Charles retorted to the French envoy: “The King of France is not in a position to address me to such a declaration; he is my prisoner..... Your master acted like a dastard and a scoundrel in not keeping his word that he gave me touching the treaty of Madrid; if he likes to say the contrary I will maintain my words against him with my body to his”. This challenge to a duel was readily accepted by Francis, who sent a herald to tell Charles “you have lied in your throat.” Charles responded by naming a place for the encounter and asking Francis to name the hour; but French nobles intercepted the messenger, and judicious delays put off the match to the Greek Kaleds. Nations had grown so large that their differences of economic or political interest could not be settled by private combat, or by the small mercenary armies that had been playing the game of war in Renaissance Italy. The modern method of decision by competitive destruction took form in this Hapsburg--Valois debate. *
It took two women to teach the potentates the art and wisdom of peace. Louise of Savoy communicated with Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and suggested that Francis, anxious for the return of his sons, would abandon all claims to Flanders, Artois, and Italy, and should pay a ransom of 2,000,000 gold crowns for his children, but would never cede Burgundy. Margaret persuaded her nephew to defer his claim to Burgundy, and to forget the claims of the Duke of Bourbon, now conveniently dead. On August 3, 1529, the two women and their diplomatic aides signed La Paix des Dames -- the “Ladies Peace” of Cambrai. The ransom was raised out of the commerce, industry, and blood of France, and the royal princes, after four years in captivity, returned to freedom with stories of cruel treatment that enraged Francis and France. While the two able women found lasting peace -- Margaret in 1530, Louise in 1531 -- the kings prepared to renew their war.
Francis turned every where for help. To Henry VIII he sent a money appeasement for having almost ignored him in the Cambrai settlement; and Henry, furious at Charles for opposing his “divorce,” pledged his support to France. Within a year or so Francis negotiated alliances with the Protestant leaders of Germany, with the Turks, and with the Pope. The vacillating pontiff however, soon made peace with Charles, and crowned him Emperor (1530) the last coronation of a Holy Roman Emperor by a Pope. Then frightened by a monarch who had in effect made Italy a province of his realm, Clement sought a new bond with France by offering his niece Catherine de Medici in marriage to Francis’ son Henry, Duke of Orleans. King and Pope met at Marseille (Oct.28, 1533 ) and the marriage, pregnant with history, was performed by the Pope himself. A year later Clement died, having not yet made up his mind about anything.
The Emperor, already old at thirty-five, shouldered his self-imposed burdens with weary fortitude. He was shocked to learn -- on the word of the Sultan’s vizier to Ferdinand of Austria -- that the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1529 had been undertaken in response to an Appeal from Francis, Louise, and Clement VII for help against the encompassing Empire.. Moreover Francis had allied himself with the Tunisian chieftain Khair ed-Din Barbarossa, who was harassing Christian commerce in the western Mediterranean, raiding coastal towns, and carrying captive Christians into slavery. Charles collected another army and navy, crossed into Tunis(1535), captured it, freed 10,000 Christian slaves and rewarded his unpaid troops by letting them loot the city and massacre the Moslem population.
The Emperor’s fortunes now ebbed. His young wife, whom he had learnt to love, had died (1539), and his own health was worsening. Francis declared war on him over Milan; the king’s allies now included Sweden, Denmark, Gelderland, Cleves, Scotland, the Turks, and the Pope. Only Henry VIII supported Charles, for a price.
[How the Pope and the Turks together, could be allies against the Holy Roman Emperor shows how crazy things had become. -Trevor]
By diplomacy, and good luck Charles retrieved the situation and went on to overwhelm the Protestants at Muhlberg; Titan pictured him there without arthritis, proud and triumphant, worn and weary after a thousand vicissitudes, a hundred turns of fortunes ironic wheel.
As for Francis, he was finished, and France nearly so. In one sense it lost nothing but honour; he had preserved his country by scuttling the ideals of chivalry. Yet the Turks would have come without his call, and their coming helped Francis to check an Emperor, who, unresisted might have spread the Spanish Inquisition into Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Francis had found France peaceful and prosperous; he left it bankrupt and on the brink of yet another war.
He consoled himself with beauty living and dead. He surrounded himself with a ’Petite Banda’ of young women who pleased him with their good looks and gaiety. In 1538 a disease injured his uvula, and thereafter he stammered shamefully. He tried to cure what was probably his syphilis with mercury pills. The king confessed his sins in hurried summary, and breathing painfully, welcomed death. He was fifty-three and had reigned thirty-two years. France felt that it was too much, but when it had recovered from him it forgave him everything, because he had sinned gracefully, he had loved beauty, he had been incarnate France.
In that same year Henry VIII died, and two years later, Marguerite. She had been too long away from Francis, and too far, to realize that death was stalking him. When word came to her, in a convent at Angoulème, that he was seriously ill, she almost lost her reason.
*The duel had existed in the middle ages as an appeal, under royal or judicial sanction and control, to the judgment of God. In the sixteenth century it became a private and individual defense of slighted honour; it developed its own strict laws outside the law of the state; and it shared in some measure in developing the rules of gentlemanly courtesy and discreet restraint. It was not legally permitted in France after 1547, but public opinion continued to sanction it. In England it fell into disuse under Elizabeth; trial by combat, however, remained legal there till 1817.
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Very interesting. I'm going to look for books about the women mentioned. More items on my TBR list
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I take back what I said about LHM not being interested in nature. he gives a correct species name for every bird he mentions. (almost unheard of in writing). I seem to remember that he took along a Peterson field guide to birds. As a birder, I love to think of him stopping to look up the name of birds he saw (presumably, if he couldn't find it, he didn't mention it).
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JoanK what's with the birds? Was your message meant for some other group? TREVOR
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 518 - 520
DIANE DE POITIERS
The “old gallant,” Francis, had had seven children, all by Claude. The eldest son, Francis, was like his father, handsome, charming, gay. Henry, born in 1519, was quiet, shy, a bit neglected; he matched his brother only in misfortune. Their four years of hardship and humiliation in Spain had marked them indelibly. Francis died six years after liberation. Henry grew more taciturn than before, turned within himself, shunned the frolics of the court; he had companions, but they rarely saw him smile. Men said that he had become Spanish in Spain.
It was not his choice to marry Catherine de Médicis, not hers to marry him. She too had had tribulations. Both her parents had died of syphilis within twenty-two days of her birth( 1519); and from that time till her marriage she was shifted from place to place, helpless and unasked. When Florence expelled its Medici rulers ( 1527) it kept Caterina as a hostage for their good behaviour, and when these exiles returned to besiege the city she was threatened with death to deter them. Clement VII used her as a pawn to win France to papal policies; she went obediently to Marseille, a girl of fourteen, and married a boy of fourteen who hardly spoke to her during all the festival. When they arrived in Paris she met a cold reception because she brought so many Italians with her. Despite many efforts she remained barren for ten years. Loosing hope of offspring, Catherine de Médicis, as she was called in France, went to Francis weeping, and offered to submit to a divorce, and retire to a convent. The king graciously refused the sacrifice. At last the gates of motherhood burst, and children came in almost annual succession. Ten in all, they were chiefly Francis II , who would marry Mary Stuart; Elizabeth, who would mary Philip II; Charles IX who would give the order for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; Edward who became the tragic Henry III; and Marguerite of Valois, who would marry and harry Henry of Navarre.Through all the first four of these barren or fertile years her husband, while begetting children on her body, gave his love to Diane de Poitiers.
Diane was unique among the royal mistresses who played so leading a role in French history. She was not beautiful. When Henry, seventeen, fell in love with her (1536), she was already thirty-seven, her hair was turning gray and wrinkles were beginning to score the years on her brow. Her only physical charms were grace, and a complexion kept fresh by washing with cold water at all seasons. She was not a courtesan; apparently she was faithful to her husband, Louis de Brézé, till his death; and though, like Henry, she indulged in two or three asides during her royal liaison, these were venial incidents, mere grace notes in her song of love. She was not romantic; rather she was too practical, making hay while the sun shone; France condemned not her morals but her money. Diane had good education, good sense, good manners, good wit; here was a mistress who charmed with her mind.
She came of high lineage, and was brought up at the art loving court of the Bourbons at Moulins. Her father, Jean de Poitiers, shared the Duke of Bourbon’s treason after trying to prevent it; he was captured and sentenced to death; Diane’s husband, in favour with Francis, secured her father’s pardon. Louis de Brézé was grandson of Charles VII by Agnés Sorel; he had ability or influence, for he became Grant’ Sénéschal and Governor of Normandy. He was fifty-six when Diane, sixteen, became his wife (1515). When he died (1531), she raised to his memory a magnificent tomb with an inscription vowing eternal fidelity. She never maried again, and wore, thereafter, only black and white.
She met Henry when, a lad of seven, he was being handed over at Bayonne as a hostage for his father. The bewildered boy wept; Diane, then twenty-seven, mothered and comforted him, whose own mother, Claude was two years dead; and perhaps the memory of those pitying embraces revived in him when he met her again eleven years later.Though then four years a husband, he was still mentally immature, as well as abnormally melancholy and diffident; he wanted a mother more than a wife; and here again Diane appeared, quiet, tender, comforting. He came to her first as a son, and their relations for some time were apparently chaste. Her affection and council gave him confidence; under her tutelage he ceased to be a misanthrope, and prepared to be a king. Popular opinion credited them with having one child, Diane de France, whom she brought up with her two daughters by Brézé; she also adopted the daughter borne to Henry in 1538 by a piedmontese maiden who paid for her royal moment by a lifetime as a nun. Another illegitimate child resulted from Henry’s later affair with Mary Fleming, governess of Mary Stuart. Despite these experiments, his devotion was increasingly to Diane de Poitiers. He did not entirely neglect Catherine; usually he dined and spent the evenings with her; and she, grateful for the parings of his love, accepted in silent sorrow the fact that another woman was the real dauphiness of France. She must have felt it as an added wound that Diane occasionally prodded Henry into sleeping with his wife.
His infatuation with Diane made her almost as rich as the queen. He guaranteed to Diane a fixed percentage of all receipts from the sale of appointments to office, and nearly all appointments were in her power. He gave her the crown jewels that the Duchesse d’Étampes had worn; when the Duchess protested, Diane threatened to accuse her of Protestantism, and was brought off only by a gift of property. Henry allowed her to keep for her use 400,000 thalers that Francis had bequeathed for secret support of the Protestant princes in Germany. So dowered, Diane rebuilt the old Brézé mansion of Anet into an extensive château that became not only a second home for the King but also a museum of art, and a handsome reendezvous for poets, artists, diplomats, dukes, generals, cardinals, mistresses, and philosophers. Here in effect sat the Privy Council of the state, and Diane was prime ministress, passionless and intelligent. Everywhere dishes,coats of arms,works of art, choir stalls bore the bold symbol of the royal romance, two D’s placed back to back with a dash between them forming the letter H.
In the struggle of the Church against heresy, Diane put all her influence behind orthodoxy and suppression. She had abundant reasons for piety; her daughter was married to a son of Francis, Duke of Guise; and Francis, with his brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, both favourites at Anet, were the leaders of the Catholic party in France. As for Henry, his childhood piety had been intensified by his years in Spain; his love letters confused God and Diane as rivals for his heart. The Church was helpful; it gave him3,000,000 golden crowns for canceling his father’s decree restricting the power of ecclesiastical courts.
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"At last the gates of motherhood burst, and children came in almost annual succession."
Can't help wondering whether at that point, she decided she needed another man to help things along. I admit, that's what I might have done if my husband was spending all his time with his mistress.
Sorry about the birds. I meant the comment for "Blue Highways".
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI. THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 520 - 522
Nevertheless Protestantism was growing in France. Calvin and others were sending in missionaries whose success was alarming. Several towns, Caen, Poitiers, La Rochelle, and many in Provence -- were predominantly Huguenot by 1559; a priest reckoned the French Protestants in that year at nearly a quarter of the population. Says a Catholic historian: “The source of the apostasy in Rome -- ecclesiastical corruption -- had not been removed, nay, had only been strengthened, by the ... Concordat” between Leo X and Francis I. In the lower and middle classes Protestantism was in part a protest against a Catholic government that curbed municipal autonomy, taxed unbearably, and wasted revenues and lives in war. The nobility, shorn of its former political power by the kings, looked with envy at Lutheran princes victorious over Charles V; Perhaps a similar feudalism could be restored in France by using widespread popular resentment against abuses in Church and state.
For its theology Gallic Protestantism adopted Calvin’s ‘Institutes”; its author and language were French, and its logic appealed to the French mind. After 1559 Luther was almost forgotten in France; the very name Huguenot came from Zurich through Geneva to Provence. In May 1559, the Protestants felt strong enough to send deputies to their first general synod, held secretly in Paris. By 1561 there were 2000 “Reformed” or Calvinistic churches in France.
Henry II set himself to crush the heresy. By his instructions the ‘Parlement’ of Paris organised a special commission (1549) to prosecute dissent; those condemned were sent to the stake, and a new court came to be called “le chambre ardente, the burning room.” By the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551) the printing, sale, or possession of heretical literature was made a major crime, and persistence in Protestant ideas was to be punished with death. Informers were to receive a third of the goods of the condemned. In three years the ‘chambre ardente’ sent sixty Protestants to a flaming death. Henry proposed to Pope Paul IV that the Inquisition should be established in France on the new Roman model, but the Parlement objected to allowing its authority to be superseded. One of its members, Anne du Bourg boldly suggested that all pursuit of heresy should cease until the Council of Trent should complete its definitions of orthodox dogma. Henry had him arrested, and vowed to see him burned, but fate cheated the King of this spectacle. { The mismatch of female name and masculine pronouns is how Durant or the printers wrote the sentence, not me.}
Meanwhile he had been lured into renewing the war against the Emperor. He could never forgive the long imprisonment of his father, his brother, and himself; he hated Charles with the same intensity with which he loved Diane. When the Lutheran princes made their decisive stand against the Emperor for Christ and feudalism, they sought alliance with Henry, and invited him to seize Lorraine. In a rapid and well directed campaign he took with little trouble Toul, Nancy, Metz, and Verdun. Charles, readier to yield victory to Protestantism in Germany than to Valois in France, signed a humble peace with the princes Passau, and hurried to besiege the French in Metz. Francis, Duke of Guise, made his reputation there by the skill and pertinacity of his defence. From October 19 to December 26 1552, the siege continued then Charles, pale, haggard, white bearded, crippled, withdrew his disheartened troops. “I see very well,” he said, “that fortune resembles a woman; she prefers a young king to an old emperor. Before three years are up,” he added, “I shall turn Cordelier” -- i.e., a Franciscan friar.
In 1555-56 he resigned his power in the Netherlands and Spain to his son, signed the truce of Vaucellas with France, and left for Spain ( Sept 17,1556) He thought he was bequeathing to Philip a realm at peace, but Henry felt that the situation called for another sally into Italy. Philip had no reputation as a general, he was unexpectedly plunged into war with Pope Paul IV; to Henry the opportunity seemed golden. He sent Guise to take Milan and Naples, and himself prepared to meet Philip on the ancient battle fields of north-eastern France. Philip rose to the occasion. He borrowed a million ducats from Anton Fogger {remember him, one of the first capitalist bankers? -- Trevor} and charmed Queen Mary of England into the war. At Saint-Quentin( August 10,1537) Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy led Philip’s combined armies to an overwhelming victory, took Coligny and Montmorency prisoners, and prepared to march on Paris. The city was in a panic; defence seemed impossible. Henry recalled Guise and his troops from Italy; the Duke crossed France, and by remarkable celerity of movement surprised and captured Calais (1558), which England had held since 1348. Philip, hating war and anxious to return to Spain, was readily persuaded to sign the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (April 2,1559): Henry agreed to stay north of the Alps, and Philip consented to let him keep Lorraine and -- over Mary’s tears,-- Calais. Suddenly ,the two kings became friends; Henry gave his daughter Elizabeth in marriage to Philibert, who now recovered Savoy; and a stately festival of jousts, banquets, and weddings was arranged.
Henry, now forty, insisted on entering a royal tournament. In such jousts victory was adjudged to the rider who, without being unhorsed, broke three lances against the armour of his foe. Henry accomplished this upon the Dukes of Guise and Savoy, who knew their proper roles in the play. But a third opponent Montgomery, after breaking a lance against the King, awkwardly allowed the sharp-pointed stump of the weapon to pass under Henry’s visor, it pierced the King’s eye and reached the brain. For nine days he lay unconscious. On July 9 the marriage of Philibert and Marguerite was celebrated. On July 10 ,the King died. Diane de Poitiers retired to Anet, and survived seven years. Catherine de Medicis, who had hungered for his love, wore mourning all the rest of her life.
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Believe it or not, the State Sport of the state of Maryland, where I lived for many years, is jousting. Once a year, during a fair, they stage a jousting event, and I was able to see it. They ham it up -- announcing it in much the same way that wrestling is announced today, making it anything but a dignified sport. I don't know if that is historically accurate or not, but I enjoyed it hugely.
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I'm reading a book about the history of the Spanish language. Interesting that the people who were important in language development get little attention in history books. I don't remember talking about Alphonso X of Spain who rationalized the Spanish language in about 1270.
I've just gotten to a discussion of how important the ejection of the Moors and Jews from Spain was to language development, sprinkling educated Spanish speakers to many places.
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Joan, interesting that the State sport of Maryland is jousting. We have 'Medieval Fairs' in the state of Tennessee. Period costumes are worn and jousting is one of the contests.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 523 - 525
HENRY VIII and CARDINAL WOLSEY
1509 - 1529
1. A Promising King 1509 - 11
No one, beholding the youth who mounted the throne of England in 1509, would have foreseen that he was to be both the hero and the villain of the most dramatic reign in English history. Still a lad of eighteen, his fine complexion and regular features made him almost girlishly attractive; but his athletic figure and prowess soon cancelled any appearance of femininity. Foreign ambassadors vied with native eulogists in praising his auburn hair, his golden beard, his “extremely fine calf.” “He is extremely fond of tennis,” reported Guistiniani to the Venetian Senate; “it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of finest texture.” He was also an accomplished musician, “sang and played all kinds of instruments with rare talent” ( wrote the papal nuncio ), and composed two Masses, which are still preserved. he ate with gusto, and sometimes prolonged state dinners to seven hours, but in the first twenty years of his reign his vanity curbed his appetite. Everybody liked him, and marvelled at his genial ease of manners and access, his humour, tolerance, and clemency. His accession was hailed as the dawn of a new age.
Originally destined for an ecclesiastical career, he became something of a theologian, and could quote Scripture to any purpose. Sir Thomas More said of him that he “has more learning than any English monarch ever possessed before him” -- no high praise. “What may we not expect,” More continued, “from a king who has been nourished by philosophy and the nine Muses?” Erasmus visited, and for a moment shared the delirium. “Heretofore,” he wrote, “the heart of learning was among such as professed religion. Now, while these for the most part gave themselves up to the belly, luxury, and money, the love of learning is gone from them to secular princes, the court, and the nobility .... the King admits not only such men like More to his court, but he invites them -- forces them -- to watch all that he does, to share his duties and his pleasures. He prefers the companionship of men like More to that of silly youths or girls on the rich.” In the year of Henry’s accession Colet, inheriting his father’s fortune, used much of it to establish St. Paul’s School. Some 150 boys were chosen to study, there, classical literature and Christian theology and ethics. Colet violated tradition by staffing schools with lay teachers; it was the first non-clerical school in Europe. The “Trojans” who in Oxford inveighed against the teaching of classics on the ground that it led to religious doubt, opposed Colet’s program, but the King over ruled them and gave Colet full encouragement. Though Colet was himself orthodox and a model of piety, his enemies charged him with heresy. Archbishop Warham silenced them, and Henry concurred. When Colet saw Henry bent on war with France, he publicly condemned the policy, and declared, like Erasmus, that an unjust peace was to be preferred to the justest war. Even with the King seated in the congregation Colet denounced war as flying in the face of the precepts of Christ. Henry privately begged him not to disrupt the morale of the army, but when the king was urged to depose Colet he answered: “Let everyone have his own doctor.. this man is the doctor for me.” Colet continued to take Christianity seriously. To Erasmus he wrote (1517) in the spirit of Thomas à Kempis:
“Ah, Erasmus, of books of knowledge there is no end; but there is nothing better for this short term of ours than that we should live a pure and holy life, and daily do our best to be cleansed and enlightened ..... by the ardent love and imitation of Jesus. Wherefore it is my most earnest wish that, leaving all indirect courses, we may proceed by a short method to the Truth. Farewell.”
In 1518 he prepared his own simple tomb, with only ‘Johannes Coletus’ inscribed on it. A year later he was buried in it , and many felt that a saint had passed away.
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Unfortunately, something has changed the print on my computer to tiny type. Until I figure out how to change it back, I can't manage your posts, Trevor.
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Ha! I did it. after three false tries. We'll see if it stays, and if I can remember.
Trust Durant to find an unfamiliar side to such a familiar king. henry VIII a scholar? Who knew?
This I did know, thanks to a mystery story I read. "“He is extremely fond of tennis,”" The tennis he played is different from the modern game, and there are groups of people in England who still play it, sneering at the modern version. I'm a tennis fan, but I couldn't figure out from the book I read how the game went (nor do I remember the name of the book -- I'll look for it). But it was clearly very different.
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Okay, here is a youtube description of "real tennis". Notice, he uses the same quote Durant did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od9s1u3LJI4
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What is it ( besides those six wives) that is so intriguing about HenryVIII? We know so much more about him - and his wives - then any other king of England. More stories and movies about him and the wives, I think, still to today.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.Vi The REFORMATION
Pgs. 525 - 527
Wolsey
Henry, who was to become the incarnation of Machiavelli’s ‘Prince,’ was as yet an innocent novice in international politics. He recognized his need for guidance, and sampled the men around him. More was brilliant, but only thirty-one, and inclined to sanctity. Thomas Wolsey was a mere three years older, and was a priest, but his whole turn was for statesmanship, and religion was for him part of politics. Born at Ipswich “of low extraction and despicable blood” ( so the proud Guiccardini described him), Thomas had covered the baccalaureate course at Oxford by the age of fifteen; at twenty-three he was bursar at Magdalen college, and showed his quality by applying adequate funds, beyond his authority, for completion of that hall’s majestic tower. He knew how to get along. Henry VIII, on accession, made him almoner -- director of charaties. Soon the priest was a member of the Privy Council, and shocked Archbishop Warham by advocating a military alliance with Spain against France.
Louis XII was invading Italy, and might again make the papacy a dependency of France; in any case France must not become too strong. Henry yielded in this matter to Wolsey and his own father-in -law, Ferdinand of Spain; he himself at this time inclined to peace. “ I content myself with my own,” he told Giustiniani; “I wish to command only my own subjects; but on the other hand I do not choose that anyone shall have it in his power to command me.” This almost sums up Henry’s political career. He had inherited the claim of the English kings to the crown of France, but he knew that this was an empty pretence. The war petered out quickly in the battle of the Spurs (1513). Wolsey arranged the peace, and persuaded Louis XII to marry Henry’s sister Mary. Louis X, pleased with having been rescued, made Wolsey Archbishop of York (1514) and Cardinal (1515). Henry, triumphant, made him Chancellor (1515). The King prided himself on having protected the papacy; and when a later pope refused him marriage easement he deemed it gross ingratitude.
The first five years of Wolsey’s chancellorship were among the most successful in the record of English diplomacy. His aim was to organize the peace of Europe by using England as a makeweight to preserve a balance of power between the Holy Roman Empire and France; presumably it entered into his purview that he would thus become the arbiter of Europe, and that peace on the Continent would favour England’s vital trade with the Netherlands. As a first step he negotiated an Alliance between France and England (1518), and betrothed Henry’s two-year-old daughter Mary( later Queen) to the seven-month-old son of Francis I. Wolsey’s taste for lavish entertainment revealed itself when French emissaries came to London to sign the agreements; he feted them in his Westminster Palace with a dinner “the like of which,” reported Guistiniani “ was never given by Cleopatra or Caligula, the whole banqueting hall being decorated with huge vases of gold and silver.” But the worldly Cardinal could be forgiven; he was playing for high stakes, and he won. He insisted that the alliance should be open to Emperor Maximilian I, King Charles of Spain, and Pope Leo X; they were invited to join; they accepted; and Erasmus, More, and Colet thrilled with the hope that an era of peace had dawned for all Western Christendom. Even Wolsey’s enemies congratulated him. He took the opportunity to bribe English agents in Rome to secure his appointment as papal legate ‘a latere’ in Britain; the phrase meant “on the side, confidential,” and was the highest designation of a papal emissary. Wolsey was now supreme head of the English Church, and -- with strategic obeisances to Henry -- ruler of England.
The peace was clouded a year later by the rivalry of Francis I and Charles I for the Imperial throne; even Henry thought of flinging his beret into the ring, but he had no Fugger. The winner, as now Charles the V, briefly visited England (May 1520), paid his respects to his aunt Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s Queen, and offered to marry Princess Mary ( already betrothed to the Dauphin). If England would promise to support Charles in any future conflict with France; so unnatural is peace. Wolsey refused, but accepted a pension of 7000 ducats from the Emperor, and drew from him a pledge to help him become pope.
The brilliant Cardinal achieved his most spectacular triumph in the meeting of the French and English sovereigns on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. (June 1520) Here, in an open space between Guines and Ardres near Calais, medieval art and Chivalry displayed themselves in sunset magnificence. Four thousand English noblemen, chosen and placed by the Cardinal and dressed in the silks, flounces, and lace of late medieval costume, accompanied Henry as the young and bearded King rode on a white palfrey to meet Francis I; and not last or least came Wolsey himself, clad in crimson satin robes rivalling the splendour of the Kings. An impromptu palace had been built to receive their Majesties, their ladies, and their staffs; a pavilion that had been covered with gold-threaded cloth, and hung with costly tapestries, shaded the conference and the feasts; a fountain ran wine; and space was cleared for a royal tournament. The political and martial alliance of the two nations was confirmed. The happy monarchs jousted, even wrestled; and Francis risked the peace of Europe by throwing the English King. With characteristic French grace he repaired his faux pas by going, early one morning, unarmed and with a few armed attendants, to visit Harry in the English camp. It was a gesture of friendly trust which Harry understood. The monarchs exchanged precious gifts and solemn vows.
In truth neither could trust the other, for it is a lesson of history that men lie most when they govern states. From seventeen days of festivities with Francis, Henry went to three days of conference with Charles of Calais ( July 1520). There King and Emperor, chaperoned by Wolsey, swore eternal friendship, and agreed to proceed no further with their plans to marry into the royal family of France. These separate alliances were more precarious for European peace than the multilateral entente that Wolsey had arranged before Maximilian’s death, but it still left England in the position of mediator and, in effect, arbiter -- a position far loftier than any that could be based on English wealth or power. Henry was satisfied. To reward his Chancellor he ordered the monks of St. Albans to elect Wolsey as their abbot and dower him with their net revenue, for “ my Lord Cardinal has sustained many charges in this his voyage.” The monks obeyed, and Wolsey‘s income neared his needs.
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" even Henry thought of flinging his beret into the ring, but he had no Fugger"
I wonder what that means?
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Ah, here are the Fuggers: a banking family that controlled much of the economy of Europe in the 15th and 16th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 529 - 532
WOLSEY (cont.)
He was, on a grander scale than most of us, a fluid compound of virtues and faults. His morals were imperfect. Twice he slipped into illegitimate parentage; these were peccadilloes readily overlooked in that lusty age; but if we may believe a bishop, the cardinal suffered from the “pox”. He accepted what might or might not be called bribes, large gifts of money from both Francis and Charles; he kept them bidding against each other with the pensions and benefices that they offered him; these were courtesies of the time; and the expensive Cardinal who felt that his policies were serving all Europe, felt that all Europe should serve him. Beyond doubt he loved money and luxury, pomp and power. A large part of his income went to maintain an establishment whose surface extravagance may have been a tool of diplomacy, designed to give foreign ambassadors an exaggerated notion of English resources. Henry paid Wolsey no salary, so the Chancellor had to live and entertain on his ecclesiastical revenues and his pensions from abroad. He was the richest and most powerful subject in the nation; “seven times more powerful than the Pope,” thought Giustiniani; he is,said Erasmus, “the second king.” Only one step remained to be taken -- the papacy. Twice Wolsey tried for it, but in that game the wily Charles, ignoring promises, outplayed him.
The Cardinal believed that ceremony is the cement of power; force can gain power, but only public habituation can cheaply and peaceably sustain it; and people judge a man’s altitude by the ceremony that hedges him in.. So in his public and official appearances Wolsey dressed in the formal splendour that seemed to him advisable. Red hat of a cardinal, red gloves, robes of scarlet or crimson taffeta, shoes of silver or gilt inlaid with pearls and precious stones. Here were Innocent III, Benjamin Disraeli, and Beau Brummel all in one. He allowed his attendants to kneel in waiting upon him at table. Five hundred persons, many of them of high lineage, served him in his office and his home. Hampton Court that he built as his residence was so luxurious that he presented it to the king (1525) to avert the evil eye of royal jealousy.
Sometimes, however, he forgot that Henry was King. An ambassador wrote “If it were necessary to neglect either King or Cardinal it would be better to pass over the King; the Cardinal might resent precedence conceded to the King.” Peers and diplomats seldom obtained audience with the Chancellor until the third request. With each passing year the Cardinal ruled more and more openly as a dictator; he called parliament once during his ascendancy; he paid little attention to constitutional forms; he met opposition with resentment and criticism with rebuke. The historian Polydore Vergil wrote that these methods would bring Wolsey’s fall; Vergil was sent to the Tower, and only repeated intercession by Leo X secured his release. Opposition grew.
Perhaps those whom Wolsey superseded or disciplined secured the ear of history, and transmitted his sins unabsolved. But no one questioned his ability. He was generous to scholars and artists, and began a religious reform by replacing several monasteries with colleges. He was on his way to a stimulating improvement of English education when all his enemies he had made in the haste of his labours and the myopia of his pride, conspired with a royal romance to engineer his fall.
He recognised and largely exemplified the abuses which still survived in the ecclesiastical life of England; absentee bishops, worldly clergymen, idle monks, and priests snared into parentage. The state which had so often called for a reform of the Church, was now part of the evils, for the bishops were appointed by the kings. Some bishops, like Morton and Warham and Fisher, were men of high character. and calibre; many others were too absorbed in the comforts of prelacy to train their clergy in spiritual fitness as well as financial assiduity. The sexual morality of the curates was probably better than in Germany, but among 8,000 parishes in England there were inevitably cases of sacerdotal concubinage, adultery, drunkenness, and crime -- enough to make Archbishop Morton say ( 1486) that “the scandal of their lives imperilled the stability of their order.” The parish priests, suspecting that their promotion depended on their collections were more than ever exacting tithes; some took a tenth , each year, of the peasant’s chickens, eggs, milk, cheese, and fruit, even of all wages paid to his help; and any man who left no legacy to the Church ran high risk of being denied Christian burial, with prospective results too horrible to contemplate. In short, the clergy, to finance their services, taxed almost as sedulously as the modern state. By 1500 the Church owned, on a conservative Catholic estimate, almost a fifth of all property in England. The nobility, here as in Germany, envied this ecclesiastical wealth, and itched to recover lands and revenues alienated to God by their pious or fearful ancestors.
The regular or monastic clergy incurred severe censure. Archbishop Morton in 1489 charged Abbot William of St. Albans with “simony, usury, embezzlement, and living publicly and continuously with harlots and mistresses within the precincts of monastery and without”; he accused the monks of “ a life of lasciviousness . . . nay, of defiling the holy places, even the churches of God, by infamous intercourse with nuns,” making a neighbouring priory “a public brothel.” In 1520 there were some 130 nunneries in England. Only four had over thirty inmates. Eight were suppressed by the bishops, in one case, said the bishop, because of “the dissolute disposition and incontinence of the religious women of the house, by reason of the vicinity of Cambridge University.”
The clergy were not popular. Eustace Chapuys, Catholic ambassador of Charles V to England wrote to his master in 1529 “Nearly all the people hate the priests.” Many men fully orthodox in creed denounced the severity of ecclesiastical taxation, the extravagance of the prelates, the wealth and idleness of the monks.
When the chancellor of the bishop of London was accused of murdering a heretic ( 1514), the bishop begged Wolsey to prevent trial by a civil jury, “for assured I am, if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set in favour of heretical pravity that they will cast and condemn my clerk though he were as innocent as Abel.” Heresy was rising again. In 1506 forty-five men were charged with heresy before the bishop of Lincoln; forty-three recanted, two were burned. In 1510 the bishop of London tried forty heretics, burned two; in 1512 he tried forty-five and burned five. Among the heresies were contentions that the consecrated Host remains merely bread; that priests have no more power than other men to consecrate or absolve; that the sacraments are not necessary to salvation; that pilgrimages to holy shrines, and prayer for the dead, are worthless; that prayers should be addressed only to God; that man can be saved by faith alone, regardless of good works; that the faithful Christian is above all laws but that of Christ; that the bible, not the church should be the sole rule of faith; that all men should marry, and that monks and nuns should repudiate their vows of chastity. Some of these heresies were echoes of Lollardry, some were reverberations of Luther’s trumpet blasts. As early as 1521 young rebels in Oxford eagerly imported news of religious revolution in Germany. Several of them, anticipating persecution, migrated to the Continent, printed anti-Catholic tracts, and sent them clandestinely into England.
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Not a pretty picture.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 532 - 534
HENRY VIII and CARDINAL WOLSEY
Cambridge in 1521 - 1525 harboured a dozen future Heresiarchs. Several of them anticipating persecution, migrated to the continent, printed anti-catholic tracts, and sent them clandestinely into England. Possibly as a deterrent to this movement, and perhaps to display his theological erudition, Henry VIII issued in 1521 his famous ‘Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther.' Many thought Wolsey the secret author, and Wolsey may have suggested the book and its leading ideas as part of his diplomacy at Rome; but Erasmus claimed that the King had actually thought out and composed the treatise, and opinion now inclines to that view. The book has the ring of a tyro; it hardly attempts rational refutation, but relies on Biblical quotations, Church traditions, and vigorous abuse. “What serpent so venomous,” wrote the future rebel against the papacy, “as he who calls the pope’s authority tyrannous? . . . What a great limb of the devil he is, endeavouring to tear the Christian members of Christ from their head!” No punishment could be too great for one who “will not obey the Chief Priest and Supreme Judge on earth,” for “the whole Church is subject not only to Christ but .... to Christ’s only vicar, the pope of Rome.” Henry’s agent, presenting the book to Leo X, asked him to confer on Henry and his successors the title “Defensor Fidei” -- Defender of the Faith. Leo consented and the inaugurator of the English Reformation placed the words upon his coins.
Luther took his time in answering. In 1525 he replied characteristically to that “lubberly ass,” that “frantic madman . .. that King of Lies, King Heinz, by God’s disgrace King of England . . . since with malice aforethought that damnable and rotten worm has lied against my King in heaven, it is right for me to bespatter this English monarch with his own filth.” Henry, unaccustomed to such sprinkling, complained to the Elector of Saxony, who was too polite to tell him not to meddle with lions. The king never forgave Luther, despite the latter’s apology; even when in full rebellion against the papacy he repudiated the German Protestants.
Luther’s most effective answer was his influence in England. In that same year 1525 we hear of a London “Association of Christian Brothers,” whose paid agents went about distributing Lutheran and other heretical tracts, and English Bibles in part or whole. In 1408 Archbishop Arundel, disturbed by the circulation of Wyclif’s version of the Scriptures, had forbidden any vernacular translation without Episcopal approval, on the ground that an unauthorized version might misconstrue difficult passages, or colour the rendering to support a heresy. Many clergymen had discouraged the reading of the Bible in any form, argue that special knowledge was necessary to a right interpretation, and that Scriptural excerpts were being used to foment sedition. The Church had raised no official objection to pre-Wyclif translations, but this tacit permission had been of no moment, since all English versions before 1526 were manuscript.
Hence the epochal importance of the English New Testament printed by Tyndale in 1525-26. Early in his student days he had planned to translate the Bible, not from the Latin Vulgate as Wyclif had done, but from the original Hebrew and Greek. When an ardent Catholic reproved him, saying, “It would be better to be without God’s law”-- i.e., the Bible -- “than without the pope’s” Tyndale answered: “If God spare me life, ere many years have passed I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.” In 1524 Tyndale went to Wittenberg, and continued the work under Luther's guidance. At Cologne he began to print his version of the New Testament from the Greek text as edited by Erasmus. An English agent roused the authorities against him; Tyndale fled from Catholic Cologne to Protestant Worms, and there printed 6,000 copies, to each of which he added a separate volume of notes and aggressive prefaces based on those of Erasmus and Luther. All these copies were smuggled into England, and served as fuel to the incipient Protestant fire. Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, tried to suppress the edition by buying all discoverable copies and publicly burning them, but new copies kept coming from the continent, and More commented that Tunstall was financing Tyndale’s press.
The king thought to quiet the disturbance by forbidding the reading or circulation of the Bible in English. Meanwhile all printing, sale, importation, or possession of heretical works was banned by the government. Wesley sent orders to arrest Tyndale, but Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, protected the author, and he proceeded, at Marburg, with his translation of the Pentateuch (1530). Slowly, by his own labour or under his supervision, most of the Old Testament was rendered into English. But in a careless moment he fell into the hands of Imperial officials; he was imprisoned for sixteen months at Vilvorde ( Near Brussels) and was burned at the stake. Tradition reports his last words as “ Lord, ope the King of England’s eyes.” When the historic Authorized Version appeared ( 1611) 90% of the greatest and most influential classic in English literature was unaltered Tyndale.
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What an interesting pair.............. I am still reading the posts, i just haven't had much time to write comments.
Jean
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Durant writes of future 'Heresiarchs' who have the ring of a 'tyro' in their writings.
I had to look up the meaning of 'tyro'. It meant what I thought it did, but I have never used that word in a sentence or remember reading it before today. It means 1. a beginner in learning......A. amateur....B novice.
Does anyone use the word 'tyro' instead of novice or amateur?
I frequently put two words together to make a 'new word' such as Durant's 'heresiarchs'. It is so true that 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. They all are flaming hypocrites, and one cannot take anything they say as fact.
Tyndale did humanity a favor by translating the 'myth' of the Arab gods for the west. When the 'boy behind the plow' could finally read that book for himself, it eventually ended the 'reign of terror' imposed by that fairy tale.
Emma
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I've seen "tyro" in print, but never heard anyone use it in speech. There are a lot of words like that.
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Thanks Joan.
The news today was about two former popes being made 'saints' by the current pope and the retired pope. I have yet to meet any pope in our discussion who could be deemed a 'saint' by any stretch of the imagination. There were 'protesters' at today's festivities who say they should not be made 'saints' because of the 'child molestation' charges that happened during their reign, and they did nothing to stop it.
In the time we are reading about she would have been charged with heresy and burned at the stake. Today she is on international television, seen all over the world, and her charges are legitimate.
Emma
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An excerpt from wikipedia on heresy........
In England, the 16th-century European Reformation resulted in a number of executions on charges of heresy. During the thirty-eight years of Henry VIII's reign, about sixty heretics, mainly Protestants, were executed and a rather greater number of Catholics lost their lives on grounds of political offences such as treason, notably Sir Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher, for refusing to accept the king's supremacy over the Church in England. Under Edward VI, the heresy laws were repealed in 1547 only to be reintroduced in 1554 by Mary I; even so two radicals were executed in Edward's reign (one for denying the reality of the incarnation, the other for denying Christ's divinity).
Under Mary, around two hundred and ninety people were burnt at the stake between 1555 and 1558 after the restoration of papal jurisdiction. When Elizabeth I came to the throne, the concept of heresy was retained in theory but severely restricted by the 1559 Act of Supremacy and the one hundred and eighty or so Catholics who were executed in the forty-five years of her reign were put to death because they were considered members of "...a subversive fifth column." The last execution of a "heretic" in England occurred under James I and VI in 1612. Although the charge was technically one of "blasphemy" there was one later execution in Scotland (still at that date an entirely independent kingdom) when in 1697 Thomas Aikenhead was accused, among other things, of denying the doctrine of the Trinity.
A heretic.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 534 - 536
Wolsey’s attitude toward this nascent English Reformation was as lenient as could be expected of a man who headed both Church and State. He had an intelligent plan for Church reform. “He despised the clergy,” according to Bishop Burnet, “ and in particular .... the monks who did neither the Church nor state any service,” but were through their scandalous lives a reproach to the Church and a burden to the state. Therefore he resolved to suppress a great number of them, and to change them to another institution.” To close a malfunctioning monastery was not unheard of; it had been done by ecclesiastical order in many instances before Wolsey. He began (1519) by issuing statutes for the reform of the canons regular of St. Augustine; if these rules were followed the canons became quite exemplary. He commissioned his secretary, Thomas Cromwell to visit the monasteries in person or through agents, and to report the conditions found; these visitations made Cromwell a practiced hand in later executing Henry’s orders for a severer scrutiny of England’s conventional life. Complaints were heard of the harshness of these agents, of receiving or exacting “gifts” and of their sharing these with Cromwell and the Cardinal. In 1524 Wolsey obtained permission from Pope Clement VII to close such monasteries as had less than seven inmates, and to apply the revenues of these properties to establishing colleges. He was happy when these funds enabled him to open a college in his native Ipswich and another at Oxford. He hoped to continue this process, to close more monasteries year by year and replace them with colleges. But his good intentions were lost in the confusion of politics, and the chief result of his monastic reforms was to provide Henry with a respectable precedent for a more extensive and lucrative scheme.
Meanwhile the Cardinal’s foreign policy had come to grief. Perhaps because he sought the Emperor’s support for election to the papacy, he allowed England to join Charles in war with France (1522). The English campaigns were unsuccessful and expensive in money and lives. To financed fresh efforts Wolsey summoned (1523) the first parliament in seven years, and shocked it by asking an unprecedented subsidy of 800,000 pounds -- a fifth of every layman’s property The Commons protested, and then voted a seventh; the clergy protested, but yielded half a year’s revenue from every benefice. When news came that Charles’s army had overwhelmed the French at Pavia (1525) and taken Francis prisoner, Henry and Wolsey thought it advisable to share in the impending dismemberment of France.. A new invasion was planned; more money was needed; Wolsey risked the last shreds of his popularity by asking all Englishmen with over 50 pounds( $5000) income, to contribute a sixth of their goods to an” Amicable Grant” for the prosecution of the war to a glorious end. The demand was so widely resisted that Wolsey had to veer to a program of peace. But in 1527 Imperial troops captured Rome and the Pope; Charles seemed now the invincible master of the Continent; Wolsey’s policy of check and balance was ruined. In January 1528, England joined France in war against Charles.
Now Charles was the nephew of Catherine of Aragon, from whom Henry earnestly desired a divorce; and Clement VII, who could grant it for reasons of state, was in person and policy a captive of Charles.
THE KING’S “DIVORCE”
Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, came to England in 1501, aged sixteen, and married ((November 14) Arthur, aged fifteen, oldest son of Henry VII. Arthur died on April 2 1502. It was generally assumed that the marriage had been consummated; the Spanish ambassador dutifully sent “proofs” thereof to Ferdinand; and Arthur’s title, Prince of Wales, was not officially transferred to his younger brother Henry till two months after Arthur’s death. But Catherine denied the consummation. She had brought with her a dowry of 200,000 ducats ($5,000,000?) Loath to let Catherine go back to Spain with these ducats, and anxious to renew a marital alliance with the powerful Ferdinand, Henry VII proposed that Catherine should marry Prince Henry, though she was the lad’s elder by six years. A biblical passage ( Lev. 20:21) forbade such a marriage." If a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an unclean thing . . they shall be childless.” Another passage, however, ruled quite the contrary: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, . . . her husband’s brother ... shall take her to him to wife.”( Deut. 25:5) Archbishop Warham condemned the proposed union; Bishop Fox of Winchester defended it if a papal dispensation could be obtained from the impediment of affinity. Henry VII applied for the dispensation; Pope Julius granted it (1503) Some canonists questioned, some affirmed, the papal power to dispense from a Biblical precept, and Julius himself had some doubts. The betrothal -- in effect a legal marriage was made formal (1503), but as the bridegroom was still only twelve, cohabitation was postponed. In 1505 prince Henry asked to have the marriage annulled as having been forced upon him by his father, but he was prevailed upon to confirm the union as in the interest of England ; and in 1509, six weeks after his accession, the marriage was publicly celebrated.
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And here we go on the merry-go-round of henry's wives.
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And why are people 500 yrs later still so intrigued with Henry and his wives? That's a mystery to me, altho i am also intrigued and have read much about them. ???
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I have the same question. I'll bet there is more written about him now than all the other monarchs of England put together.
I'm used to a picture of him older, incredibly fat and slothful. I like the Durants' picture of him young, athletic, and scholarly. (But it still doesn't make me like him).
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A biblical passage ( Lev. 20:21) forbade such a marriage." If a man shall take his brother’s wife it is an unclean thing . . they shall be childless.” Another passage, however, ruled quite the contrary: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, . . . her husband’s brother ... shall take her to him to wife.”( Deut. 25:5)
Archbishop Warham condemned the proposed union; Bishop Fox of Winchester defended it if a papal dispensation could be obtained from the impediment of affinity. Henry VII applied for the dispensation; Pope Julius granted it (1503)
Some canonists questioned, some affirmed, the papal power to dispense from a Biblical precept, and Julius himself had some doubts.
Ever which way the wind blows. Nothiing is real, it's both sides against the middle with this group of self interested despots, and that goes for their supposed 'holey book' in spades.
These men believe in nothing but their own self promotion.
Emma
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http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/refo/hd_refo.htm
click on picture you want to look at
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That's quite a site, BLUEBIRD. Thank you.
Here's a picture of Martin Luther from Bluebird's site.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/55.220.2
He looks like someone who would have done what he did.
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Just browsing in BLUEBIRD's site: here is a history and pictures of tapestries made in Europe in a period covering ours. Tapestries were popular, and you can see why: they covered the stone walls in those castles, which must have been freezing. But these are unbelievable in their detail:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/taps/hd_taps.htm
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One of the best parts of the 12? years of this discussion has been all the great links to other sites. Thanks Joan and Bluebird for adding to that.
Jean
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Has it been that long? I joined just as we started reading about Rome, and asked if it was too late to join. This was the discussion that attracted me to Seniornet.
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I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Robby had said he was facilitating it for 7/8 years at one point, how long has he been "retired" from this "job"? :)
It must be ten years because i found it when i was teaching Western Civ and i think i taught it between 1999 and 2004.
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How long has it been, Trevor? You've been doing such a great job, but never talk about yourself.
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EMMA posted this last November.
This discussion began on Nov. 1, 2001. We have completed twelve years of discussion on the Story of Civilization. My gratitude to Robby for creating this discussion and leading it for several years. Then the loss of the website Senior net, we found a new forum here at Senior Learn. Thanks to Trevor for leading the discussion forward. He (Trevor) has been here from the beginning and for that I am grateful.
I am grateful for Joan, Jean, and Brian and all others who have posted in this forum.
Emma
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Years ago, when we were called S'Net, Robby had guided us through a book about the US. I forget its title. He proposed starting Durant's S o C. I felt then that it was a task which we with our gathering old age, would never finish. I still hold to that view. But Robby pressed on until he became too busy to carry on. This was some years after the old S'Net lost. After some discussion it was agreed that I would try and take his place in this venture, an attempt that has fallen far short of his excellent work. If you can put up with my efforts I'll try and keep on, but I must admit that at 86 years I'm finding it difficult. Others at my age find such matters no problem, but I regret I am not so capable. Still, bear with me, and I'll keep trying. Trevor. ( If anyone is interested my name is Patrick Trevor Schwieters, I usually answer to Pat, but in these pages I came to be Trevor.)
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 536 - 538
HENRY VIII and CARDINAL WOLSEY
In 1509, six weeks after his accession, the marriage of Henry and Catherine was publicly celebrated. Seven months later ( Jan 31, 1510) Catherine bore her first child, which died at birth. A year later she bore a son; Henry rejoiced in a male heir who would continue the Tudor line; but in a few weeks the infant died. A second and third son succumbed soon after birth (1513, 1514 ). Henry began to think of a divorce -- or more precisely, an annulment of his marriage as invalid. Poor Catherine tried again, and in 1516 she gave birth to the future Queen Mary. In 1518 Catherine was delivered of another still born child. The disappointment of the king and country was sharpened by the fact that Mary, aged two, had already been betrothed to the dauphin of France; if no son came to Henry, Mary would inherit the English throne, and her husband, becoming the King of France, would in effect be King of England too, making Britain a province of France. The dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Buckingham had hopes of displacing Mary and securing the crown; Buckingham talked too much, was accused of treason, and was beheaded (1521 ). Henry expressed fear that his sonlessness was a divine punishment for having used a papal dispensation from a Biblical command. He took a vow that if the Queen would bare him a son he would lead a crusade against the Turks; but Catherine had no further pregnancies. By 1525 all hope of additional offspring by her was abandoned.
Henry had long since lost taste for her as a woman. He was now thirty-four, in the prime of lusty manhood; she was forty, and looked older than her years. She had never been alluring, but her frequent illnesses and misfortunes had deformed her body and darkened her spirit. She excelled in culture and refinement, but husbands have seldom found erudition charming in a wife. She was a good and faithful spouse, loving her husband only next to Spain. She thought of herself as -- for a time she was -- Spanish envoy, and she argued that England should always side with Ferdinand or Charles. About 1518 Henry took his first-known post-marriage mistress, Elizabeth Blount, sister of Erasmus’ friend Mountjoy. She gave him a son in 1519; Henry made the boy Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and thought of entailing the succession to him. About 1524 he took another mistress, Mary Boleyn; indeed, Sir George Throckmorton accused him to his face of adultery with Mary’s mother, too. It was an unwritten law of the times that royalty, if married for reasons of state rather than choice, might seek outside of marriage the romance that had missed the legal bed. In or before 1527 Henry turned his charm upon Mary’s sister Anne. Their father was Sir Thomas Boleyn, a merchant and diplomat long favoured by the King; their mother was a Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Anne was sent to Paris as a finishing school; there she was made a lady in waiting to Queen Claude, then to Marguerite of Navarre, from whom she may have imbibed some Protestant leanings. Henry could have seen her as a vivacious girl of thirteen at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Returning to England as a vivacious girl of thirteen ( 1522) she became lady in waiting to Queen Catherine. We do not know when Henry began to court her; the earliest of his extant love letters to her is conjecturally assigned to July 1527.
Wolsey was apparently unaware of any royal intention to marry Anne when, in July 1527 he went to France partly to arrange a union between Henry and Renée, that daughter of Louis XII who was soon to make a Protestant stir in Italy. The first known reference to Henry’s intention is in a letter sent on August 6 16,1527, by the Spanish Ambassador informing Charles V of a general belief that if the King obtained a “divorce” he would marry “ a daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn”; this could hardly have meant Mary Boleyn, for by the end of 1527 Henry and Anne were living in neighbouring apartments under the same roof in Greenwich. We may conclude that Henry’s suit for annulment was accelerated though hardly caused by his infatuation with Anne. The basic cause was his desire for a son, to whom he might transmit the throne with some confidence in a peaceful succession. Practically all England shared that hope. The people remembered with horror the many years (1454-1485) of the war between the houses of York and Lancaster for the crown. The Tudor dynasty was but forty-two years old in 1527; its title to the throne was dubious; only a legitimate and direct male heir to the King could continue the dynasty unchallenged. If Henry had never met Ane Boleyn he would still have desired and deserved a divorce and an adequately fertile wife.
Wolsey agreed with the King on this point, and assured him that a papal annulment could be readily obtained; the Papal power to grant such separations was generally accepted as a wise provision for precisely such national needs, and many precedents could be adduced. But the busy Cardinal had reckoned without two disagreeable developments; Henry wanted not Renée but Anne, and the annulment would have to come from a pope who, when the problem reached him, was the prisoner of an emperor who had plentiful cause for hostility to Henry. Probably Charles would have opposed the annulment as long as his aunt resisted it, and all the more if a new marriage such as Wolsey planned would ally England firmly with France. The proximate cause of the English Reformation was not the climbing beauty of Anne Boleyn but the obstinate refusal of Catherine and Charles to see the justice of Henry’s desire for a son; The Catholic Queen and the Catholic Emperor collaborated with the captive Pope to divorce England from the Church. But the ultimate cause of the English Reformation was not Henry’s suit for annulment so much as the rise of the English monarchy to such strength that it could repudiate the authority of the pope over English affairs and revenues.
Henry affirmed that his active desire for an annulment was occasioned by Gabriel de Grammont, who came to England in February 1527, to discuss the proposed marriage of Princess Mary with French royalty. Grammont, according to Henry, raised a question as to Mary’s legitimacy, on the ground that Henry’s marriage with Catherine might have been invalid as violating a Scriptural ban irremovable by a pope. Some have thought that Henry invented the story, but Wolsey repeated it, it was reported to the French Government( 1528), it was not ( so far as is known ) denied by Grammont, and Grammont laboured to persuade Clement that Henry’s suit for annulment was just. Charles informed his ambassador in England ( July 29,1527) that he was advising Clement to deny Henry’s plea.
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"But the ultimate cause of the English Reformation was not Henry’s suit for annulment so much as the rise of the English monarchy to such strength that it could repudiate the authority of the pope over English affairs and revenues"
That's interesting. Do you agree: even if the pope had granted the annulment, would henry have found another reason to break his power?
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Yes, I agree. Even if the pope had agreed to the annulment, he would have found something else to take England away from Catholic domination. Why? Because he had the power and position in society to do so. The "Henrys" of this world never miss a chance to enlarge their self importance. Even if it means killing their own wives
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs.539 - 541
Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey
While he was in France Wolsey was definitely informed that Henry wished to marry not Renée but Anne. He continued to work for the annulment, but did not hide his chagrin over Henry’s choice. By-passing his Chancellor, the King, in the fall of 1527, sent his secretary, William Knight, to present two requests to the captive Pope. The first was that Clement, recognising the doubtful validity of Henry's marriage, its lack of mail issue, and Catherine’s unwillingness to be divorced, should allow Henry to have two wives. A last minute order from Henry deterred Knight from presenting this proposal; Henry’s audacity had abated; and he must have marvelled when, three years later, he received from Giovanni Casale, one of his agents in Rome, a letter dated September 18 1530, saying, “A few days ago the Pope secretly proposed to me that your Majesty might be allowed two wives.” Henry’s second request was quite as strange: that the Pope should grant him a dispensation to marry a woman with whose sister the King had had sexual relations. The Pope agreed to this on condition that the marriage with Catherine should be annulled; but as to this annulment he was not yet ready to decide. Clement was not only fearful of Charles; he was reluctant to rule that a previous pope had made a serious error in validating the marriage. At the end of 1537 he received a third request -- that he should appoint Wolsey and another papal legate to sit as a court in England, to hear evidence, and to pass judgment on the validity of Henry’s marriage to Catherine. Clement complied (April 13, 1528), named Cardinal Campeggio to sit with Wolsey in London, and promised -- in a bull to be shown only to Wolsey and Henry -- to confirm whatever decision the legates should render. Probably the fact that Henry had joined Francis (Jan. 1528) in declaring war on Charles, and pledging themselves to liberate the Pope, affected Clement’s compliance.
Charles protested, and sent to Clement a copy of a document which he claimed to have found in the Spanish archives, and in which Julius II confirmed as valid the dispensation that Henry and Wolsey proposed to void. At his wits’ end the Pope, still a prisoner of Charles , rushed instructions to Campeggio “not to pronounce sentence without express commission hence . . . . if so great an injury be done to the Emperor, all hope is lost of universal peace, and the Church can not escape utter ruin, as is entirely in the power of the Emperor’s servants . . . Delay as much as possible.
On Campeggio’s arrival in England (October 1528) he tried to secure Catherine’s consent to retire to a nunnery. She agreed, on condition that Henry should take monastic vows. But nothing could be further from Henry's mind than poverty, obedience, and Chastity; however, he suggested that he would take these vows if the Pope would promise to release him from them on demand. Campeggio refused to transmit this proposal to the Pope. Instead he reported (February 1529 ) the King’s determination to marry Anne. “It moves me to pity to see how the King’s life, the stability and downfall of the whole country hang upon this one question.”
Changes in the military situation turned the Pope more and more against Henry's proposal. The French army that Henry had helped to finance failed in its Italian campaign, leaving the Pope completely dependent upon the Emperor. Florence expelled its ruling Medici -- and Clement was as devoted to that family as Charles to the Hapsburgs. Who could now rescue the papacy except its captor? “ I have quite made up my mind,” said Clement (June 1529). to become an Imperialist, and to live and die as such.” On June 29 he signed the Treaty of Barcelona, by which Charles promise to restore Florence to the Medici, Ravenna to the papacy, and liberty to Clement; but one condition was that Clement would never agree to the annulment of Catherine's marriage without Catherine’s free consent. On August 5th Francis I signed the treaty of Cambrai, which in effect surrendered Italy and the Pope to the Emperor.
On May 31 Campeggio, opened with Wolsey the legatine court to hear Henry's suit. Catherine, having appealed to Rome, refused to acknowledge the competence of the court. On June 21, however, both King and Queen attended. Catherine threw herself on her knees before him. She reminded him of their many labours, her compete fidelity, her patience with his extramural sports; she took God to witness that she had been a maid when Henry married her; and she asked, in what had she offended him? Henry raised her up, and assured her that he wished nothing so earnestly as that their marriage had been successful; he explained that his reasons for separation were not personal but dynastic and national, and he rejected her appeal to Rome on the ground that the Emperor controlled the Pope. She withdrew in tears, and refuse to take further part in the proceedings. Bishop Fisher spoke in her defence, thereby earning the enmity of the King. Henry demanded a clear decision from the court. Campeggio procrastinated skilfully, and finally ( July 23, 1529) adjourned the court for the summer vacation. To make indecision more decisive Clement “revoked” the case to Rome.
Henry raged. Feeling that Catherine had been unreasonably obstinate, he refused to have anything more to do with her, and spent his leisure hours with Anne. She, wise in the ways of men and kings, had apparently given him as yet only encouragement and titillation; now she complained that her youth was passing, while cardinals, who could not understand the desire of a maid for a well-to-do man, dallied over Henry’s right to adorn desire with a marriage tie. She blamed Wolsey for not pressing Henry’s appeal with more resolution; the king shared her resentment.
Wolsey had done his best, though his heart was not in the matter. He had sent money to Rome to bribe the cardinals, but Charles had sent money too, and an army to boot. The cardinal had even connived at the idea of bigamy, as Luther would a few years afterward. Yet Wolsey knew Anne and her relatives were maneuvering for his fall. Her hostility grew as the annulment issue dragged on. He foresaw that if the annulment should be granted Anne would be queen and would ruin him; and if it were not granted Henry would dismiss him as a failure, and he would demand an account of his stewardship, in painful financial detail.
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WOW! I had no idea of all this maneuvering! I wonder how much of it the public knew. And in general, what they thought of all of this. (Not that Henry cared).
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http://www.historicfood.com/RecipesIndex2.htm
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
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Volume Five (The Renaissance)
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BLUEBIRD: that's a great link! I always wondered what a syllabub was.
"Take one Quart of Cream, one Pint and an half of Wine..." Sigh. this was before they heard of cholesterol. Or AA.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol VI. THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 541 - 544
Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey
The King had many reasons for dissatisfaction with his Chancellor. The foreign policy had collapsed, and the turn from friendship with Charles to alliance with France had proved disastrous. Hardly a man in England now had a good word to say for the once omnicompetent Cardinal. The clergy hated him for his absolute rule; the monks feared more dissolution of monasteries; the commons hated him for taking sons and money to fight futile wars; the merchants hated him because the war with Charles obstructed their trade with Flanders; the nobles hated him for his exactions, his upstart pride, his proliferating wealth. Some nobles, reported the French ambassador (Oct. 17, 1529 ), “intend, when Wolsey is dead or destroyed, to get ride of the Church, and spoil the goods of the Church and Wolsey both.” Kentish clothiers suggested that the Cardial should be installed in a leaking boat and set adrift in the sea.
Henry was subtler. On October 9 1529, one of his attorneys issued a writ summoning Wolsey to answer, before the King’s judges, a charge that his acts as a legate had violated the Statute of Praemunire (1392), which imposed forfeiture of goods upon any Englishman who brought papal bulls into England. It made no difference that Wolsey had secured the legatine authority at the King’s request, and had used it chiefly in the King’s behalf. Wolsey knew that the King’s judges would convict him. He sent to Henry a humble admission, confessing his failures, but begging him to remember also his services and his loyalty, then he left London by a barge on the Thames. At Putney he received a kindly message from the King. In abject gratitude he knelt in the mud and thanked God. Henry appropriated the rich contents of the Cardinal’s palace at Whitehall, but allowed him to retain the Archbishopric of York, and enough personal goods to require 160 horses and 72 carts to haul them to his Episcopal seat. The duke of Norfolk succeeded Wolsey as Prime Minister; Thomas More succeeded him as chancellor ( November 1529).
For almost a year the fallen Cardinal served as a pious and exemplary archbishop. But ambition reawoke in him as the fear of death subsided. He wrote letters to Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador to England, they are lost, but a report f rom Chapuys to Charles reads: “I have a letter from the Cardinal’s physician, in which he tells me that his master... thought the Pope should proceed to weightier censures and should call in the secular Arm”, i.e. excommunication, invasion, and civil war. Norfolk got wind of these exchanges, arrested Wolsey’s physician, and drew from him, by means uncertain, a confession that the Cardinal had advised the Pope to excommunicate the King. Henry, or the Duke, ordered Wolsey’s arrest.
He submitted peaceably (Nov. 4, 1530) bade farewell to his household and set out for London. At Sheffield Park a severe dysentery confined him to his bed. There the King’s soldiers came with orders to conduct him to the Tower. He resumed the journey, but after two days of riding he was so weak that his escort allowed him to take to bed in Leicester Abbey. To the King’s officer, Sir William Kingston, he uttered the words reported by Cavendish and adapted by Shakespeare: “if I had served my God as diligently as I have done my King, He would not have given me over to my grey hairs.” In Leicester Abbey, November 29, 1530, Wolsey, aged fifty-five, died.
Henry VIII and Thomas More
In the parliament that assembled at Westminster on November 3, 1529, the controlling groups -- the nobles in the Upper House, the merchants in the Commons -- agreed on three policies; the reduction ecclesiastical wealth and power, the maintenance of trade with Flanders, and support of the King in his campaign for a male heir. This did not carry with it approval of Anne Boleyn, who was generally condemned as an adventuress, nor did it prevent an almost universal sympathy with Catherine. The lower classes, politically impotent, were as yet unfavourable to the divorce, and the northern provinces, intensely Catholic, sided whole heartedly with the Pope. Henry kept this opposition temporarily quiet by remaining orthodox in everything but the right of the popes to govern the English Church. On that point the national spirit, even stronger in England than in Germany, upheld the hand of the King; and the clergy, though horrified at the thought of making Henry their master, were not averse to independence from a papacy so obviously subject to a foreign power.
About 1528 one Simon Fish published a six page pamphlet which Henry read with no known protest, and many read with frank delight. It was called “The supplication of the Beggars,” and asked the King to confiscate, in whole or in part, the wealth of the English Church:
In the times of your noble predecessors past, [there] craftily crept into your realm . . . holy and idle beggars and vagabonds . . bishops, abbots, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks, canons, friars, pardoners, and summoners. And who is able to number this idle, ruinous sort, which (setting all labour aside ) have begged so importunately that they have gotten into their hands more than a third part of your Realm? The goodliest lordships, manors, lands, and territories are theirs. Besides this, they had the tenth part of all corn, meadow, pasture, grass, wool, colts, calves, lambs, pigs, geese, and chickens. Yea, and they look so narrowly upon their profits that the poor wives must be countable to them of every tenth egg, or else she gettith not her rights at Easter . . . who is she that will set her hand to work to get 3d. a day, and may have at least 20d. a day to sleep an hour with a friar, a monk, or a priest?
The nobles and merchants might have admitted some exaggeration in the indictment, but they thought it led to a charming conclusion -- the secularisation of Church property. Wolsey had held off this attack on Church property, but his fall left the clergy powerless except through the (declining) faith of the people; and the papal authority that might have protected them by its prestige was now the main object of royal wrath, and the football of Imperial politics. Custom required that legislation affecting the Church in England should be passed, by the Convocation of the clergy. Could this assembly assuage the anger of the King and check the anticlericalism of Parliament ?
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"the papal authority ..... was now .... the football of Imperial politics."
Yep.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 545 - 546
Henry VIII and Thomas More. (cont )
The battle was opened by the Commons. It drew up an address to the King, professing doctrinal orthodoxy, but strongly criticising the clergy. This famous “Act of Accusation” charged that Convocation made laws without the consent of King or Parliament, seriously limiting the liberty of laymen, and subjecting them to heavy censures or fines; that the clergy exacted payment for the administration of the sacraments; that the bishops gave benefices to “certain young folks, calling them their nephews,” and despite the youth or ignorance of such appointees; that the episcopal courts greedily exploited their right to levy fees and fines; that the courts arrested persons, and imprisoned them, without stating the charges against them; that they indicted and severely punished laymen upon the suspicion of the slightest heresy; and the document concluded by begging the King for the “reformation” of these ills. Henry, who may have been privy to the composition of this address, submitted its main points to the Convocation, and asked for an answer. The bishops admitted some abuses, which they attributed to occasional individuals; they affirmed the justice of their courts; and they looked to the pious King, who had nobly rebuked Luther, to aid them in suppressing heresy. Then, grieviously mistaking the royal temper, they added warlike words:
Forasmuch as we repute and take our authority of making the laws to be grounded upon the Scriptures of God and the determination of the Holy Church . . . we may not submit the execution of our charges and duty, certainly prescribed to us by God, to your Highness’ assent .. .. with all humility we therefore beseech your Grace . . . to maintain and defend such laws and ordinances as we . . . by the authority of God, shall for His honour make to the edification of virtue and the mantaining of Christ’s faith.
The issue was joined. Henry did not meet it at once. His first interest was to get Parliament’s approval of a strange request. -- That he be excused from repaying the loans that had been made to him by his subjects.* The Commons protested and consented. Three other bills were introduced , which aimed to check the authority of the clergy over the probate of wills, their exaction of death taxes, and their holding of plural benefices. These bills were passed by the Commons; they were passionately opposed by the bishops and abbots sitting in the Upper House; they were ammended, but in essence they were made law.
Thomas Cranmer, a doctor of divinity at Cambridge, now suggested to Henry that the major universities of Europe should be polled on the question whether a pope could permit a man to marry his brother’s widow. A royal game of rival bribery ensued: Henry’s agents scattered money to induce negative judgements; Charles’ agents used money or threats to secure affirmative replies. The Italian answers were divided; the Lutheran universities refused any comfort to the Defender of the Faith; but the University of Paris, under pressure by Francis, gave the answer so doubly dear to the King. Oxford and Cambridge, after receiving stern letters from the government, approved Henry’s right to have his marriage annuled.
So strengthened, he issued through his attorney general (Dec. 1530 ) a notice that the government intended to prosecute, as violators of the Praemunire Statute, all clergymen who had recognised Wolsey’s legatine power. When Parliament and Convocation reassembled (Jan.16, 1531) the King’s agents happily announced to the clergy that the prosecution would be withdrawn if they would confess their guilt and pay a fine of 118,000 (11,800,000) pounds. They protested that they never wanted Wolsey to have such power, and had recognised him only because the King had done so in the trial of his suit before Wolsey and Campeggio. They were quite right, of course, but Henry sorely needed the money. They mournfully agreed to raise the sum from their congregations. Feeling his oats, the King now demanded that the clergy should acknowledge him as “the protector and only supreme head of the Church and clergy of England.” -- i.e. that they should end their allegiance to the Pope. They offered a dozen compromises, tried a dozen ambiguous phrases; Henry was merciless, and insisted on Yes or No. Finally (Feb. 10, 1531 ) Archbishop Warham, now eighty-one, reluctantly proposed the King’s formula, with a saving clause -- “ as far as the law of Christ permits.” The convocation remained silent; the silence was taken as consent; the formula became law. Mollified, the King now allowed the bishops to prosecute heretics.
Parliament and Convocation adjourned again (March 30, 1531 ), In July Henry left Catherine at Windsor, never to see her again. Soon thereafter she was removed to Ampthill, while princess Mary was lodged at Richmond. The jewels that Catherine had worn as Queen were required of her by Henry, who gave them to Anne Boleyn. Charles V protested to Clement, who addressed a brief to the King ( January 25, 1532) rebuking him for adultery, and exhorting him to dismiss Anne and keep Catherine as his lawful queen until decision should be given on his application for annulment. Henry ignored the rebuke, and pursued his romance.
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And we think that divorces now are messy! This is definitely not British royal's shining hour... Again, I wonder what the average English person thought of all this.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 546 - 549
HENRY, PARLIAMENT, and CHURCH
When Parliament and Convocation reconvened ( Jan. 15,1532 ) Henry secured from all four houses further anticlerical legislation: that clerics under the degree of subdeacon, when charged with felony, should be tried by civil courts; that fees and fines in ecclesiastical courts should be reduced; that ecclesiastical death dues and probate fees should be lowered or abolished; that the annates ( the first year’s revenues of a newly appointed prelate ) should no longer be paid to the Pope; and that the transfer of English funds to Rome for dispensations, indulgences, and other papal services should cease. A sly hint was sent to the Curia that the annates would be restored to the Pope if the marriage with Catherine should be annulled.
By this time a majority of the bishops had been won over to the view that they would not lose in authority or revenue if the English Church were independent of Rome. In March 1532, the Convocation announced its readiness to separate from the papacy: “May it please your Grace to cause the said unjust exactions to cease . . . And in case the Pope will make process against this realm for the attaining these annates . . may it please your Highness to ordain in the present Parliament that the obedience of your Highness and of the people be withdrawn from the see of Rome.” And on May 15 the Convocation presented to the King a pledge to submit all its subsequent legislation to a committee -- half laymen, half clergymen -- empowered to veto any ordinances which it should judge injurious to the realm. So, in this epochal “Reformation Parliament” and Convocation the Church of England was born, and became an arm and subject of the state.
On May 16 Thomas More, having failed to stem the anticlerical tide, resigned as chancellor and retired to his home. In August Archbishop Warham died, after dictating a deathbed repudiation of the Convocation’s submission to the King. Henry replaced More with Thomas Audley, and Warham with Thomas Cranmer. The revolution proceeded. In February 1533, Parliament enacted a “Statute of Appeals,” by which all litigation that had formerly been sent for judgement to Rome, was henceforth to be decided “in the spiritual and temporal courts within the Realm, without regard to any . . . foreign . . . inhibition, excommunication, or interdict.”
On January 15,1533 Henry married Anne, who was already four months pregnant. The King had now urgent reasons for the annulment of his union with Catherine. Having made, without result, another appeal to the Pope, he secured from Convocation an approval of his “divorce” (April 1533); on May 23 Cranmer, as Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage of Catherine unlawful and void; and on May 28 he pronounced Anne to be Henry’s lawful wife. Three days later Anne, in brocade and jewels, rode to her coronation as Queen of England in a stately pageant designed by tradition and Hans Holbein the Younger. Amid the exaltation she noticed the disapproving silence of the crowd, and she may have wondered how long her uneasy head would wear the crown. Pope Clement pronounced the new marriage null, and its future offspring illegitimate, and excommunicated the King (July 11, 1533). On September 7 Elizabeth was born. Charles’s ambassador reported to him that the King’s mistress had given birth to a bastard.
Parliament, which had adjourned on May 4, resumed its sittings on January 15, 1534. Annated and other papal revenues were now definitely appropriated to the crown, and the appointment of bishops became in law, as already in practice, a prerogative of the King. Indictments for heresy were removed from clerical to civil jurisdiction.
In 1533 Elizabeth Barton, a nun of Kent, announced that she had received orders from God to condemn the King’s remarriage. The royal court put her through a severe examination, and drew from her a confession that her divine revelations were impostures, and she had permitted others to use them in a conspiracy to overthrow the King. She and six accomplices were tried by the House of Lords, were judged guilty, and were executed ( May 5, 1534). Bishop Fisher was accused of having known of the conspiracy and of having failed to warn the government; it was also charged that he and Catherine had been privy to a plan, conceived by Chapuys and discouraged by Charles, for an invasion of England to coincide with an insurrection of Catherine's supporters. Fisher denied the charges, but remained under suspicion of treason.
Henry’s most aggressive agent in these affairs was Thomas Cromwell. Born in 1485, the son of a Putney blacksmith, he grew up in poverty and hardship. He entered the textile business, became a money lender, and made a fortune. He served Wolsey faithfully for five years, defended him in adversity, and earned Henry’s respect for his industry and loyalty. He was made successively chancellor of the exchequer, master of the rolls, and (May 1534 ), secretary to the King. From 1531 to 1540 he was the chief administrator of the government as an obedient executor of the royal will. His aristocratic enemies, who despised him as a parvenu symbol of their rising rivals, the businessmen, accused him of practicing the principles of Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’, of accepting bribes, of selling offices, of inordinately loving wealth and power. His aim, which he hardly sought to disguise, was to make the king supreme over every phase of English life, and to finance an absolute monarchy with the confiscated wealth of the Church. In pursuing his purposes he showed consummate and unscrupulous ability, multiplied his fortune, and won every battle except the last.
It was probably at his suggestion and through his manipulation that Henry, disturbed by increasing hostility among the people, persuaded Parliament to pass an act of Succession (March 30, 1534) which declared the marriage with Catherine invalid, transformed Mary into a bastard, named Elizabeth heiress to the throne unless Anne should have a son, and made it a capital crime for any person to question the validity of Anne’s marriage to Henry, or the legitimacy of their offspring. All Englishmen and women were by the Act required to take an oath of loyalty to the King. Royal Commissioners, supported by soldiery, rode through the country, entered homes, castles, monasteries, and convents, and exacted the oath. Only a few refused it; among these were Bishop Fisher and Thomas More. They offered to swear to the succession, but not to the other contents of the Act. They were committed to the Tower. Finally the parliament voted the decisive Statute of Supremacy (November 11, 1534) This reaffirmed the King’s sovereignty over Church and state in England, christened the new national Church ‘Ecclesia Anglicana,” and gave the king all these powers over mortals, organization, heresy, creed, and ecclesiastical reform which had heretofore belonged to the Church. The Act made it treason to speak or write of the King as a usurper, tyrant, schismatic, heretic, or infidel. The new oath was required of all bishops, that they accept the civil and ecclesiastical supremacy of the King without reservation “So far as the law of Christ allows,” and would never in the future consent to any resumption of papal authority in England.
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The poor man had the worst luck with pregnancies - either the wives were pregnant before he married them, or they couldn't birth the right sex! ???
Jean
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And of course, the women were blamed for having daughters when we now know it is the sperm that determines the sex of the child.
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http://origins-of-english-reformation.wikispaces.com/file/view/Anne_Henry.jpg/33891999/Anne_Henry.jpg
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I can't remember if i ever read how tall Henry was. Was he tall as well as heavy? That would be very imposing............remembrances of L.B.J. :)
And speaking for God, or hearing from God can be dangerous.In 1533 Elizabeth Barton, a nun of Kent, announced that she had received orders from God to condemn the King’s remarriage. The royal court put her through a severe examination, and drew from her a confession that her divine revelations were impostures, and she had permitted others to use them in a conspiracy to overthrow the King. She and six accomplices were tried by the House of Lords, were judged guilty, and were executed
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A lot of historical novels have been written about the period. I stay away from those, they often aren't very accurate, and try to tell us what historical figures were thinking, feeling, "really like", which no one can know.
But I do like a series of detective stories by CJ Sansom set in the time, and told from the standpoint of a lawyer/detective. It tells more about how ordinary people like us viewed life then, although the narrator is always on the edge of court politics . The descriptions are very vivid and detailed (especially the smells. How do you arrange toileting facilities when an entourage of hundreds of court followers descends on a small village in Henry's travels?)
A list of them is here:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/c-j-sansom/
They are set in chronological order, so repay reading in order. The first one (Dissolution") is set in 1537 and Thomas Cromwell has ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. He doesn't come off very well in the series. The last one published which I haven't read yet ("Lamentation") is in the last days of his reign, and narrator is a servant of his then wife Catherine Parr.
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They sound interesting Joan and my library has many of them. Thanks for the tip.
Jean
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His aim, which he hardly sought to disguise, was to make the king supreme over every phase of English life, and to finance an absolute monarchy with the confiscated wealth of the Church. In pursuing his purposes he showed consummate and unscrupulous ability, multiplied his fortune, and won every battle except the last.
Cromwell was just following the example set down by the Pope and his cohorts in Rome. This is how they got absolute power, and it does not matter whether 'King' or 'Pope', it's the 'money and power' they are after and nothing else matters.
Emma
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DURANT"S S o C
The REFORMATION Vol. VI
Pgs.549 - 551
HENRY the VIII and THOMAS MORE (cont.)
All the forces of the government were deployed to paralyse the opposition to these unprecedented decrees. The secular clergy generally pretended to submit. Many monks and friars, owing a direct allegiance to the Pope, shied away from the oaths, and their resistance shared in the King’s later decision to close the monasteries. Three Carthusians priors came to Cromwell to explain their reluctance to acknowledge any layman as head of the Church in England; Cromwell sent them to the Tower. On April 26, 1535, they, with another friar and a secular priest, were tried by the King’s judges, who were for pardoning them; but Cromwell, fearing that lenience would encourage wider resistance, demanded a verdict of guilty, and the judges yielded. On May the 3rd, all five men, still refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy, were dragged on hurdles to Tyburn, and one after another, were hanged, cut down alive, disembowelled, and dismembered. One severed arm was hung over the entrance arch of the Charterhouse to instruct the remaining friars, but none withdrew his refusal. Three were put in the Tower; they were fastened to uprights by irons around their necks and feet, and were forced to stand in that position for seventeen days, but never loosed for any natural need. The remaining Carthusians, still obdurate, were dispersed among other monasteries, with the exception of ten who were imprisoned in Newgate; nine of these died of “prison fever and filth.”
Henry was now sole judge of what, in religion and politics, the English people were to believe. Since his theology was still Catholic in every respect except the papal power, he made it a principle to persecute impartially Protestant critics of Catholic dogma, and Catholic critics of his ecclesiastical supremacy. Indeed the prosecution of heresy had continued, and would continue all through his reign. In 1531, by order of chancellor More, Thomas Bilney was burned for speaking against religious images, pilgrimages, and prayers for the dead. James Bainham was arrested for holding that Christ was only spiritually present in the Eucharist; he was tortured to draw from him the names of other heretics; he held fast, and was burned at Smithfield in April 1532. two others were burned in that year, and the bishop of Lincoln offered an indulgence of forty days to good Christians who would carry a faggot to feed the fire.
This reign of terror reached its apex in the prosecution of Fisher and More. Erasmus had described the Bishop of Rochester as “ a person loaded with every virtue.” But Fisher had himself been guilty of persecution, and he had joined the Spanish ambassador in urging Charles to invade England and depose Henry. In law he had committed treason to the state, which could not excuse him on the plea that he had been loyal to the Church. The new pontiff, Paul III, made the mistake of naming the imprisoned Bishop a cardinal. Though Fisher declared that he had not sought the honour, Henry interpreted the appointment as a challenge. On June 17, 1535, the Bishop, now in his eightieth year, was given a final trial, and again refused to sign the oath acknowledging Henry as head of the English Church. On June 22 he was led to a block on Tower Hill, “a long lean body”, an eye witness described him, “ nothing in manner but skin and bones, so that the most part that there saw him marvelled to see any man, bearing life, to be so far consumed.” On the scaffold he received an offer of pardon if he would take the oath; he refused. His severed head was hung upon London Bridge; it might now, if it could, said Henry, go to Rome and get its cardinal’s hat.
But a more troublesome recusant remained.
The father of Thomas More was a successful lawyer and prominent judge. Thomas received his education at St. Antony’s School in London; was farmed out as a page to Archbishop Morton, and was by him confirmed in orthodoxy, integrity, and cheerful piety. Morton predicted, we are told that “ this child here waiting at table . . . will prove a marvellous man.” At fifteen the youth went to Oxford, and was soon so fascinated with classical literature, that his father, to save the youth from becoming an impecunious scholar, pulled him out of the university and sent him to study law in London. Oxford and Cambridge still aimed at preparing students for an ecclesiastical career; New Inn and Lincoln’s Inn trained the men who were now taking over from the clergy the government of England. Only eight members of the House of Commons in the Reform Parliament of 1529-37 had received a university education, while a rising proportion were lawyers and businessmen.
In 1499, aged twenty-one, More met Erasmus, and was charmed into humanism. They were both given to measured merryment, and salted their studies with laughing satire. They shared a distaste for Scholastic philosophy, whose subtleties, said More, were as profitable as milking a he-goat into sieve. They both hoped to reform the Church from within, avoiding a violent disruption of religious unity and historical continuity. More was not the peer of Erasmus in learning or tolerance; indeed his customary gentleness and generosity were sometimes interrupted by strong passions, even by bigotry; in controversy he stooped now and then, like nearly all his contemporaries, to fierce invective and bitter vituperation. But he was the superior of Erasmus in courage, sense of honour, and devotion to a cause. The letters they exchanged are a precious testimony to the graces of an ungracious age.
More was one of the most religious men of the century, shaming with his laic piety and worldliness the ecclesiastics like Wolsey. At twenty-three, when was already advanced in the study of law, he thought of becoming a priest. He gave public lectures (1501) on Augustine’s ‘City of God”. Though he criticized the monks, for shirking their rule, he fervently admired the sincere monastic state, and sometimes regretted he had not chosen it. He believed in miracles and saintly legends, therapeutic relics, religious images, and pilgrimages, and wrote devotional works to the medieval tune that life is a prison, and that the aim of religion and philosophy should be to prepare us for death. He married twice and brought up several children in a Christian discipline at once sober and cheerful, with frequent prayer, mutual love, and complete trust in Providence. The Manor House in Chelsea, to which he moved in 1523, was famous for its library and gallery, and its gardens extending for one hundred yards down to the Thames.
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Sad to read about promising people caught in this snarl.
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and one after another, were hanged, cut down alive, disembowelled, and dismembered.
Psychopaths, one and all.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 550 - 555
More's Utopia.
In 1504, Thomas More, then twenty-six was chosen a burgess delegate to Parliament. There he argued so successfully against a measure proposed by Henry VII that the king briefly imprisoned and heavily fined the senior More, Thomas’s father, as a devious means of teaching the young orator the comforts of conformity. At the close of that parliament Thomas returned to private life, and prospered in practice of law. His judgements earned him wide renown for wisdom and impartiality, and his polite refusal of presents from litigants violated time-dishonoured precedents that were still vigorous in Francis Bacon’s day. Soon he was back in Parliament; and by 1515 he was speaker of the House of Commons.
In a famous letter to Hutten (July 23 1517) Erasmus described More as of medium height, pale complexion, careless of dress or formality, abstemious in food and drink, cheerful with quick humour and ready smile, inclined to jokes and pranks, and keeping in his house a jester, a monkey, and many minor animal pets; “all the birds in Chelsea come to him to be fed.” A faithful husband, a loving and idolised father, a persuasive orator, a judicious counsellor, a man alert with charity and friendly offices -- “in short,” concluded this fond sketch, “what did Nature ever create milder, sweeter, and happier than the genius of Thomas More ?”
He found time to write books. He began a ‘History of Richard III’, but as its tenor was sharply against autocracy, and autocracy was on the throne, he thought it discreet to avoid the fatality of print. It was published after his death; Shakespeare based a play on it; and the biography, broadcast by the drama, may bear some responsibility for the character that Richard bears. In 1516, as if in playful aside, More tossed off, in Latin, one of the most famous of all books, creating a word, setting a precedent and pace for modern utopias, anticipating half of socialism, and voicing such criticism of English economy, society, and government that again he put valour behind discretion, and had the volume published abroad in six Latin editions before allowing it to be printed, still in Latin, in England. He professed to have written it for amusement, with no intention to make it public; but he thanked Erasmus for seeing it through the press at Louvain. It was translated into German, Italian, and French before the first English version appeared (1551), sixteen years after the author’s death. By 1520 it was the talk of the Continent.
More had called it ‘Nusquama’, Nowhere; we do not know who had the happy thought of changing this, amid the printing, to the Greek equivalent ‘Utopia’.
“Among the Utopians ... all things being in common, every man hath abundance of everything . . . I compare with them so many nations . . . where every man calleth that which he hath gotten, his own proper and private goods . . . I hold well with Plato . . that all men should have and enjoy equal portions of wealth and commodities. For where every man, under certain titles and pretences, draweth and plucketh to himself as much as he can, so that the few divide among themselves all the whole riches . . . there to the residue is lack and poverty.”
In Utopia each man takes his product to the common store, and receives from it according to his needs. None asks more than enough, for security from want forestalls greed. Meals are eaten in common, but if a man wishes he may eat at home. There is no money in Utopia, no buying cheap and selling dear; the evils of cheating, stealing, and quarrelling over property are unknown. Gold is used not as currency but to make useful things, like chamber pots ( ! ) No famines or lean years come, for the communal store houses maintain a reserve against emergencies. Every family engages in both agriculture and industry, men and women alike. In order to ensure adequate production, six hours of work per day are required of each adult, and choice of occupation is limited to collective needs. The Utopians are free in the sense of freedom from hunger and fear, but they are not free to live on the labour of others. There are laws in Utopia, but they are simple and few; therefore every man is expected to plead his own case, and no lawyers are allowed. Those who violate the laws are condemned for a time to serve the community as bondmen; they do the more disagreeable tasks; but after finishing their turn they are restored to full equality with their fellow men. Those who repeatedly and seriously offend are put to death. The supply of bondsmen is raised by ransoming prisoners condemned to death in other lands.
The unit of society in Utopia is the patriarchal family. “ the wives be ministers to their husbands, the children to their parents. Monogamy is the only form of sexual union permitted. Before marriage the betrothed are advised to view each other naked, so that the physical defects may be revealed in time; and if they are serious the contract may be annulled. The wife after marriage goes to live with her husband in his father’s household. Divorce is allowed for adultery and by free mutual consent, conditional on the consent of the communal council. Annually every thirty families choose a phylarch to govern them; every ten phylarchs choose a chief phylarch to administer a district of 300 households. The 200 phylarchs serve as a national council, which elects for life the prince or king.
A basic obligation of the phylarchs is to preserve the health of the community by providing clean water, public sanitation, medical and hospital care; for health is the chief of all earthly boons. The rulers organise education for children and for adults; they stress vocational training, support science, and discourage astrology, fortune telling, and superstition. They make war on other peoples if they judge that the good of the community so requires. “ They count this the most just cause of war, when any people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good nor profitable use, keeping other from the use or possession of it, who . . . by the law of nature ought thereby to be nourished and relieved.” ( Was this a defence of the colonization of America?) But the Utpians do not glorify war; “they hate it as plainly brutal . . .and, contrary to the sentiment of nearly every other nation, they regard nothing more inglorious than glory derived from war.”
Religion in Utopia is almost, not quite, free. Tolerance is given to any creed except atheism and the denial of human immortality. The utopian may if he wishes worship the sun or the moon. But those who use violence of action or speech against any recognised religion are arrested and punished, for the laws seek to prevent religious strife. Deniers of immortality are not punished, but they are excluded from office, and are forbidden to voice their views to any but priests and “men of gravity.” Otherwise “it should be lawful for every man to favour and follow what religion he would.” So in Utopia there are various religions, but” the most and wisest part . . believe there is a certain godly power unknown , everlasting, incomprehensible, inexplicable, far above the reach and capacity of man’s wit, dispersed through the world.” Monasticism is permitted, provided the monks will busy themselves with works of charity and communal utility, such as reparing roads and bridges, cleaning ditches, cutting timber, acting as servants, and they may marry if they so desire. There are priests but they too marry. The state keeps as holidays the first and last days of each month and year. On each of these holidays wives and children prostate themselves before their husbands or parents, and ask foregiveness for any offense comitted, or any duty omitted; and no one is to come to church until he has made peace with his enemy.--- it is a Christian touch, but More’s youthful humanism appears in his partial acceptance of the Greek view of suicide: if a man suffers from a painful and incurable disease he is permitted and encouraged to end his life. In other cases, More believes, suicide is cowardice, and the corpse “is to be cast unburied in some stinking marsh.”
We do not know how much of this represented More’s considered conclusions, how much was Erasus’. However, the young statesman carefully dissociated himself from the socialism of his utopians: “I am of the opinion that men shall never live wealthy where all things are in common. For how can the abundance of goods . . where the regard of his own gains driveth not to work, but the hope that he hath in other men’s travails make him slothful . . . it is not possible for all things to be well unless all men are good --- which I think will not be yet these good many years.”
Yet other pages of the Utopia critisize with angry severity the exploitation of the poor by the rich. Enclosures of once common lands by English lords are condemned with much detail and spirit as seem unlikely in one who is a foreigner; “The unreasonable covetousness of a few hath turned to the utter undoing of your land . . Suffer not these rich men to buy up all, to engross and forestall, and with their monopoly to keep the market alone as pleases them... . they invent and devise all means and crafts... how to hire and abuse . . the labour of the poor for as little money as may be . . . These devices are then made laws.”
It is almost the voice of Karl Marx moving the world from a foot of space in the British Museum. Certainly the Utopia is one of the most powerful, as well as one of the first, indictments of the economic system that continued in Europe until the twentieth century; and it remains as contemporary as a planned economy and the welfare state.
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Religion in Utopia is almost, not quite, free. Tolerance is given to any creed except atheism and the denial of human immortality.
Not only would I deny human immortality, I would deny immortality to every living thing on earth. Humans, animals, insects, trees, plants, fish, birds, and anything that lives on this planet.
There goes Utopia out the window.......
Emma
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On each of these holidays wives and children prostate themselves before their husbands or parents, and ask foregiveness for any offense comitted, or any duty omitted; and no one is to come to church until he has made peace with his enemy.
This Utopia was created for men, and since I would not be allowed to speak, would not go to their church, would not prostate myself to my husband, this brand of Utopia went out the window with the contents of the 'chamber pot'.
My review of 'Utopia'.
Emma
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One person's Utopia is another person's hell!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 555 - 558
Thomas More: Martyr
How did it come about that a man with such ideas seething in his head should have been appointed to Henry VIII’s council in the year after the publication of Utopia? Probably the king, could not bear to read the book in Latin, and died before it was Englished. More kept his radical fancies for his friends. Henry knew him as a rare synthesis of ability and integrity, valued him as a tie with the House of Commons, knighted him, made him Under-Treasurer ( 1521) and entrusted him with delicate tasks of diplomacy. More opposed the foreign policy by which Wolsey led England into war with Charles V; the Emperor, in More’s view, was not only dangerously resourceful, he was also the heroic defender of Christendom against the Turks. When Wolsey fell, More so far forgot his manners as to review, in Parliament the faults and errors that had caused the fall. As leader of the opposition he was the logical successor of the Cardinal, and for thirty-one months he served as Chancellor of England.
But the real successor to Wolsey was the King. Henry had discovered his own power and capacity, and was resolved, he said, to free himself from an unfriendly and obstructive papacy, and to legitimate his union with the woman whom he loved, and who could give him an heir to the throne. More found himself no guide of policy, but a servant of aims that ran counter to his deepest loyalties. He consoled himself by writing books against Protestant theology, and prosecuting Protestant leaders. In “A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1528) and in later works , he agreed with Ferdinand II, Calvin, and the Lutheran princes on the necessity of religious unity for national strength and peace. He feared the division of Englishmen into a dozen or a hundred religious sects. He who defended Erasmus’ Latin translation of the New Testament protested against Tyndale’s English version as distorting the text to prove Lutheran points; translations of the Bible, he felt, should not be turned into weapons for tavern philosophers.
From this mood he passed to the burning of Protestants at the stake. The charge that in his own house he had a man flogged for heresy is disputed; More’s account of the offender seems far removed from theology. “If he spied a woman kneeling” in prayer, and “if her head hung anything low in her meditations, then would he steal behind her, and . . . would labour to lift up her clothes and cast them quite over her head.” It maybe in the three death sentences pronounced in his diocese during his Chancellorship he was obeying the law that required the state to serve as the secular arm of ecclesiastical courts; but there is no doubt that he approved of the killings. He admitted no inconsistency between his conduct and the large toleration of religious differences in his Utopia; for even there he had refused toleration to atheists, deniers of immortality, and those heretics who resorted to violence or vituperation. Yet he himself was guilty of vituperation in arguing against the English Protestants.
There came a time when More thought Henry the most dangerous heretic of all. He refused to approve the marriage with Anne Boleyn, and he saw in the anticlerical legislation of 1529-1532 a ruinous assault upon the Church that to his mind was an indispensable base of social order. When he retired from office to the privacy of his Chelsea home (1532), he was still in his prime at fifty-four, but he suspected he had not much longer to live. His expectations were fulfilled. Early in 1534 he was indicted on a charge of having been privy to the conspiracy connected with the Nun of Kent. He admitted having met her, but he denied knowledge of conspiracy. Cromwell recommended, Henry granted forgiveness. But on April 17 More was committed to the Tower for refusing to take oath to the Act of Succession, which, as presented to him, involved a repudiation of papal supremacy over the Church of England. Many efforts were made to him, begging him to take the oath; he smilingly resisted them all. On July 1, 1535 he was given a final trial. He defended himself well, but he was pronounced guilty of treason. On the day before his execution he sent his hairshirt to his daughter Margaret, with a message that “tomorrow were a day very meet” to “ go to God. . . Farewell, my dear child; pray for me, and I shall pray for you and all your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven.” The executioner asked his forgiveness; More embraced him, and asked the spectators to pray for him, and “to bear witness that he suffered death in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church.” His head was afterward affixed to London Bridge.
A wave of terror passed through England that now realized the resolute mercilessness of the King, and a shudder of horror ran through Europe. Erasmus felt he himself had died, for “we had but one soul between us.” He said he had now no further wish to live, and a year later he too was dead.
Dean Swift thought More the man “of greatest virtue.” Pope Paul III formulated a bull of excommunication outlawing Henry from the fellowship of Christendom, interdicting all religious services in England, forbidding all trade with it, absolving all British subjects from their oaths of allegiance to the King, and commanding them, and all Christian princes, to depose him forthwith. When the bull was promulgated Charles and Francis forbade its publication in their realms, unwilling to sanction papal claims to power over kings. The failure of the bull signalised again the decline of papal authority and the rise of the sovereign national state.
On the four hundredth anniversary of their execution the Church of Rome enrolled Thomas More and John Fisher among her saints.
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An excerpt from American Catholic on Thomas More
Four hundred years later in 1935, Thomas More was canonized a saint of God. Few saints are more relevant to our time. In the year 2000 in fact, Pope John Paul II named him patron of political leaders. The supreme diplomat and counselor, he did not compromise his own moral values in order to please the king, knowing that true allegiance to authority is not blind acceptance of everything that authority wants. King Henry himself realized this and tried desperately to win his chancellor to his side because he knew More was a man whose approval counted, a man whose personal integrity no one questioned. But when Thomas resigned as chancellor, unable to approve the two matters that meant most to Henry, the king had to get rid of Thomas More.
Patron Saint of:
Attorneys
Civil servants
Court clerks
Lawyers
Politicians, public servants
I did not know the Catholic church made Thomas More a saint. The following sentence from Durant "but there is no doubt that he approved of the killings," left me with the impression that More was no different from Henry, he had blood on his hands.
A perfect saint for politions.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 558 - 559
A TALE OF THREE QUEENS
Within some thirty months of More’s death Henry lost three of his six queens. Catherine of Aragon wasted away in her northern retreat, still claiming to be Henry’s only lawfully wedded wife and England's rightful Queen. Her faithful maids continued to give her that title. In 1535 she was removed to Kimbalton Castle , near Huntingdon, and there she confined herself to one room, leaving it only to hear Mass. Mary, now nineteen, was kept at Hatfield, only 20 miles away, but mother and daughter were not allowed to see each other, and were forbidden to communicate.. They did, nevertheless, and Catherine’s letters are among the most touching in all literature. Henry offered them better quarters if they would acknowledge his new queen; they would not. Anne Boleyn had her aunt made governess to Mary, and bade her keep “the bastard” in place by “a box on the ears now and then.” In December 1535, Catherine sickened, made her will, wrote to the Emperor asking him to protect her daughter, and addressed a moving farewell to her “most dear lord and husband” the King.
“ The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, advise you of your soul’s health, which you aught to prefer above all considerations of the world of flesh whatsoever; for which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into troubles. But I forgive you all, and pray God to do likewise. For the rest I commend unto you, Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her -- lastly I make this vow, that my eyes desire you above all things. Farewell.”
Henry wept on receiving the letter; and when Catherine died (Jan 7 1536 ), aged fifty, he ordered the court into mourning. Anne refused.
Anne could not know, that within five months she too would be dead; but she knew she had already lost the King. Her hot temper, her imperious tantrums, her importunate demands, wearied Henry, who contrasted her railing tongue with Catherine’s gentleness. On the day of Catherine's burial Anne was delivered of a dead child; and Henry, who still yearned for a son, began to think of another divorce - - or as he would put it, an annulment; his second marriage, he was quoted as saying, had been induced by witchcraft, and was therefore void. From October 1535, he began to pay special attention to one of Anne’s maids, Jane Seymour. When Anne reproached him he bade her bare with him patiently, as her bettors had done. Perhaps following ancient tactics, he accused her of infidelity. It seems increditable that even a flighty woman should have risked her throne for a moments dalliance, but the King seems to have sincerely believed her guilt. He referred the rumours of her amours to his council; it investigated, and reported to the King that she had committed adultery with five members of the court. The five men were sent to the Tower, and on May 2, 1536, Anne followed them.
Henry wrote to her holding out hopes of forgiveness or lenience if she would be honest with him. She replied she had nothing to confess. On May 11 the grand jury of Middlesex, having been asked to make local enquiries into offences allegedly committed by the Queen in that county, reported that it found her guilty with all five of the accused men. Four of the men were tried at Westminster by a jury including Anne’s father. One confessed himself guilty as charged, the others pleaded not guilty; all four were convicted. On May 15, Anne and her brother were tried by a panel of twenty-six peers under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, her uncle, but political enemy. Sister and brother affirmed their innocence, but each member of the panel announced himself convinced of their guilt, and they were sentenced to be “ burned or beheaded, as shall please the King.” On that day one of the five men was hanged, the remaining four beheaded. Archbishop Cranmer was required by royal commissioners to declare the marriage of Anne invalid, and Elizabeth a bastard; he complied. The grounds for this judgment are not known, but presumably Anne’s alleged prior marriage with Lord Northumberland was now pronounced real.
On the eve of her death Anne knelt before Lady Kingston, wife of the warden, and asked a last favour; that she should go and kneel before Mary and beseech her, in Anne’s name, to forgive the wrongs that had come to her through the pride and thoughtlessness of a miserable woman. On May 19 she begged that her execution should take place soon. That noon she was led to the scaffold. She asked the spectators to pray for the King, “for a gentler and more merciful prince was there never; and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord.” No one could be sure of her guilt, but few regretted her fall.
On the day of her death Cranmer gave the King a dispensation to marry again in renewed quest for a son; on the morrow Henry and Jane Seymore were secretly betrothed; on May 30 1536 they were married, and on June 4 she was proclaimed queen. She was of royal lineage, being descended from Edward III. She was related to Henry in the third or fourth degree of consanguinity, which called for another dispensation from the obedient Cranmer. She discouraged the Kings advances while Anne lived, refused his gifts, returned his letters unopened, and asked him never to speak to her except in the presence of others.
One of her first acts after marriage was to effect a reconciliation between Henry and Mary. He did it in his own way. He had Cromwell send her a paper entitled “The confession of the Lady Mary”: it acknowledged the King as supreme head of the Church in England, repudiated the “Bishop of Rome’s pretended authority,” and recognized the marriage of Henry with Catherine as “incestuous and unlawful.” Mary was required to sign her name to each clause. She did, and never forgave herself. Three weeks later the King and Queen came to see her, and gave her presents and 1000 crowns. She was again called Princess; and at Christmas, 1536, she was received at court. There must have been something good in Henry -- and in “Bloody Mary”-- for in his later years she almost learned to love him.
When Parliament met again (in June 8, 1536 ) it drew up at the King’s request a new Act of Succession, by which both Elizabeth and Mary were declared illegitimate, and the crown was settled on the prospective issue of Jane Seymour. In July Henry’s bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, died; Now all the hopes of the King lay in Jane’s pregnancy. England rejoiced with him when (Oct 12, 1537) she was delivered of a boy, the future Edward VI. But poor Jane, to whom the King was now as deeply attached as his self centred spirit allowed, died twelve days after her son’s birth. Though Henry married thrice again, he asked, at his death, to be buried beside the woman who had given her life in bearing his son.
What was the reaction of the English people to the events of this world shaking reign? It is difficult to say; the testimony is prejudiced, ambiguous, and sparse. Chapuys reported in 1533 that, in the opinion of many Englishmen, “the last King Richard was never so much hated by his people as this King.” Generally the people sympathised with Henry’s desire for a son, condemned his severity to Catherine and Mary, shed no tears over Anne, but were deeply shocked by the execution of Fisher and More. The nation was still overwhelmingly Catholic, and the clergy -- now that the Government had appropriated the annates -- were hoping for reconciliation with Rome. But hardly any man dared raise his voice in criticism of the King.
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Durants' S o C
Vol 6 The REFORMATION
Pgs. 563 - 566
Henry VIII and the Monasteries
In 1535 Henry, too busy with love and war to play pope in retail as well as gross, appointed the agnostic Cromwell “vice-regent of the King in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction.” Cromwell now guided foreign policy, domestic legislation, the higher judiciary, the Privy Council, the intelligence service, the Star Chamber, and the Church of England. Wolsey at apogee had never had so many long and grasping figures in so many juicy pies. Cromwell’s innumerable spies kept him informed on all movements or expressions of opposition to Henry or himself. In special cases, to make conclusions certain, Cromwell acted as prosecutor, jury, and judge. Nearly everyone in England feared and hated him.
His chief difficulty was that Henry, though omnipotent, was bankrupt. How to raise money? Taxes were already high to the point where resistance made further collection more costly than lucrative; the bishops had drained their parishes to appease the King; and no gold poured in from America such as daily succoured England’s enemy, the Emperor. Yet one institution was wealthy, suspect, decrepit, and defenceless: the monasteries. They were, in the eyes of the government, a foreign body in the nation, bound to support any Catholic movement against the King. They were decrepit because they had in many cases ceased to perform their traditional functions of education, hospitality, and charity. They were defenceless because the bishops resented their exemption from Episcopal control; because the nobility, impoverished by civil war, coveted their wealth; because the business classes looked upon monks and friars as idling wasters of natural resources; and because a large section of commonality, including many good Catholics, no longer believed in the efficacy of the relics that the monks displayed, or in the Masses that the monks, if paid, offered for the dead. The English Parliament had already ( 1533 ) voted authority to the government to visit the monasteries and compel their reform.
In the summer of 1535 Cromwell sent out a trio of “visitors,” each with a numerous staff to examine and report on the physical, moral, and financial condition of the monasteries and nunneries of England, and for good measure, the universities and Episcopal sees as well. These “visitors” were “ young impetuous men, likely to execute their work rather thoroughly than delicately”; they were not immune to “presents”; the object of their mission was to get up a case for the Crown, and they probably used every means in their power to induce the monks and the nuns to incriminate themselves. It was not difficult to find, among the 600 monasteries of England, an impressive number that showed sexual -- sometimes homosexual -- deviations, loose discipline, acquisitive exploitation of false relics, sales of sacred vessels or jewellery to add to monastic wealth and comforts, neglect of ritual, hospitality, or charity.
To the Parliament that met on February 4 1536, Cromwell submitted a “Black Book”, now lost, revealing the faults of the monasteries, and recommending, with strategic moderation, that monasteries and convents having an income of 200 pounds ( $ 20,000 ?) or less per year, should be closed. The Parliament, whose members had been largely chosen by Cromwell’s aids, consented. A Court of Augmentations was appointed by the King to receive for the royal treasury the property and revenues of these 376 “lesser monasteries.” Two thousand monks were released to other houses or to the world to find work.
[ A backlash against Cromwell’s closing of monasteries now took place. In rural areas far from cities and towns, the local populace, not understanding that Cromwell was working on the King’s behalf as well as his own, took matters into their own hands and attacked the “visitors”, and their supporters, killing several, all the while claiming to be loyal to the King, as well as to the Roman Catholic Church. ]
But now, understanding that King and Cromwell were working in union, an army of 60,000 men assembled at Lincoln and drew up demands which were dispatched to the King; the monasteries should be restored, taxes should be remitted or eased, the clergy should no more pay tithes or annates to the Crown. Cromwell should be removed from the Privy Council, and heretic bishops -- chiefly Cranmer and Latimer -- should be deposed and punished.
The King’s answer was furious and uncompromising. He charged the rebels with ingratitude to a gracious ruler; insisted that the closing of the lesser monasteries was the will of the nation expressed through Parliament; and bade the insurgents surrender their leaders and disperse to their homes on pain of death and confiscation of goods. At the same time Henry ordered his military aides to collect their forces and march under the Earl of Suffolk to the assistance of Lord Shrewsbury, who already organized his retainers to withstand attack; and he wrote privately to the few nobles who had joined the revolt. These now perceiving that the King could not be awed, and that the poorly armed insurgents would soon be overwhelmed, persuaded so many of them to return to their villages that the rebel army, over the protests of the priests, rapidly melted away. The captured leaders were taken to London and the Tower; thirty-three, including seven priests and fourteen monks, were hanged; the rest were leisurely freed.
Meanwhile a still more serious uprising had developed in Yorkshire. On October 15, 1536, an army of some 9,000 men, under Richard Aske, laid siege to York. The citizens of the city compelled the mayor to open the gates. Aske kept his men from pillage, and in general maintained remarkable order. He proclaimed the reopening of the monasteries; the monks joyfully returned to them, and gladdened the hearts of the pious with the new ardour of their chants. The demands then sent to the king included: suppress all heretics and their literature, resume ecclesiastical ties with Rome, legitimise Mary, dismiss and punish Cromwell’s “visitors”, and annul all enclosures of common lands since 1489.
This was the most critical point in Henry’s reign. Half the country was in arms against his policies; Ireland was in revolt; and Paul III and cardinal Pole were urging Francis I and Charles V to invade England and depose the King. With a burst of declining energy, he sent out orders in all directions for the mustering of loyal troops, and meanwhile instructed the Duke of Norfolk to bemuse the rebellious leaders with negotiations. The Duke arranged a conference with Aske and several nobles, and won them over by a promise to pardon all. Henry invited Aske to a personal conference, and gave him a safe-conduct. He came to the King, was charmed by the aura of royalty, and returned meek and mild to Yorkshire. (January 1537); there however he was arrested and sent to London as a prisoner. Shorn of its captains, the insurgent host fell into angry divisions and wild disorder; defections multiplied; and as the united levies of the King approached, the rebel army disappeared (Feb 1537).
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I'm sorry to have been absent from this discussion, but the last 6 wks have been the worst of my life - my DH and i each had a sibling die within 3 weeks of each other and in the middle of that my oldest sister had a serious health crisis, and sev'l other minor mishaps occurred. I haven't been doing much that takes good concentration, which includes this discussion. I'll catch up when the planets realign in their proper place and my world settles down.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 566 - 569
Henry VIII and the MONASTERIES. (cont.)
When Henry was assured that the revolt and invasion had both collapsed, he repudiated Norfolk’s promise of a general pardon, ordered the arrest of such disaffected leaders as could be found, and had several of them, including Aske, put to death. With the opposition so sternly terrified, Cromwell proceeded to close the remaining religious houses in England. All the monasteries and nunneries that had joined the revolt were dissolved forthwith, and their property was confiscated to the state. Many monks, anticipating closure, sold relics and valuables from their houses to the highest bidder. The historic tomb of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury was demolished; Henry VIII proclaimed the victor over Henry VII to have been no real saint; the relics that had offended Colet and amused Erasmus were burned; the precious objects donated by the piety of pilgrims during 250 years were carried away to the royal treasury; and thereafter Henry wore on his thumb a great ruby taken from the shrine. By 1540 all monasteries, and all monastic property except cathedral abbey churches, had passed to the King.
All in all 578 monasteries were closed, some 130 convents; 6521 monks or friars were dispersed, 1,560 nuns. The confiscated land and buildings had enjoyed an annual income of some 200,000 pounds ( $20,000,000 ?) The total spoils in goods and income accruing to Henry during his life may have been some 1,423,500 pounds. The King was generous with these spoils. Cromwell received or bought six abbeys, with an annual revenue of 2,293 pounds; his nephew Sir Richard Cromwell received seven abbeys; this was the origin of the fortune that made Richard’s great-grandson Oliver a man of substance and influence in the next century.
Some of the spoils went to build ships, forts, and ports; some helped to finance war, some went into the royal palaces at Westminster, Chelsea, and Hampton court; some the King lost at dice. The new aristocracy created by Henry’s gifts and sales became a powerful support to the Tudor throne, and a bulwark of economic interest against any Catholic restoration. The old feudal aristocracy had decimated itself; the new one, rooted in commerce and industry, changed the nature of the English nobility from static conservatism to dynamic enterprise, and poured fresh blood and energy into the upper classes of England. This -- and the spoils -- may have been one source of Elizabethan exuberance.
The effects of the dissolution were complex and interminable. The liberated monks may have shared modestly or not in the increase of England’s population, from about 2,500,000 in 1485 to some 4,000,000 in 1547. A temporary increase in the unemployed helped to depress the earnings of the lower classes for a generation, and the new landlords proved more grasping than the old. Politically the effect was to augment still further the power of the monarchy; the church lost the last stronghold of resistance. Morally the results were a growth of crime, pauperism, and beggary, and a diminished provision of charity. Over a hundred monastic hospitals were closed; a few were rehabilitated by municipal authorities. The sums that fearful or reverent souls had bequeathed to priests as insurance against infernal or purgatorial fire were confiscated in expectation that no harm would come to the dead; 2,374 charities, with their endowments for Masses, were appropriated by the King. The severest effects were in education. The convents had provided schools for girls, the monasteries and the Charity priests had maintained schools and ninety colleges for boys; All these institutions were dissolved.
Having stated the facts as impartially as unconscious prejudice allowed, the historian may be permitted to add a confessedly hypothetical comment. Henry’s greed and Cromwell’s ruthlessness merely advanced by a generation an inevitable lessening in the number and influence of English monasteries. These had once done admirable work in education, charity, and hospital care, but the secularisation of such functions was proceeding throughout Western Europe, even where Catholicism prevailed. The decline in religious fervour and other worldliness was rapidly narrowing the flow of novices into conventional establishments; and many of these were reduced to so small a number as seems out of proportion to the splendour of their buildings and the income of their lands. It is a pity the situation was met by the brusque haste of Cromwell rather than by Wolsey’s humane and sounder path of transforming more and more monasteries into colleges. Henry’s procedure here, as in his quest for a son, was worse than his aim. It was good that an end should be put, in some measure, to the exploitation of simple piety by pious fraud. Our chief regrets go to the nuns who for the most part laboured dutifully in prayer, schooling, and benevolence; and even one who can not share their trustful faith must be grateful that their like again minister, with lifelong devotion, to the needs of the sick and the poor.
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There are supposedly veiled references to sorrow at the closing of the monasteries in Shakespeare, who was raised catholic. centuries later, their ruins, especially that of Tinturn Abbey, became the subject of romantic art https://www.google.com/search?q=Tintern+Abbey+art&tbm=isch&imgil=bHoADPzN8YhgMM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcR5ogQUGBT_AwHZDPldlSmkv_low83MTe3Ciqrkdh0RoVyeblnn3g%253B362%253B478%253B0IV1rUgFcxifNM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fpausalso.blogs.uv.es%25252Ftintern-abbey%25252F&source=iu&usg=__pctNjUnFwqUXZWw4nDz7j4RD2uY%3D&sa=X&ei=zJq9U8nNJYr2oATnm4Aw&ved=0CCIQ9QEwAA&biw=853&bih=570#facrc=_&imgrc=bHoADPzN8YhgMM%253A%3B0IV1rUgFcxifNM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmarasuic.blogs.uv.es%252Ffiles%252F2010%252F11%252Ftintern-abbey.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fpausalso.blogs.uv.es%252Ftintern-abbey%252F%3B362%3B478
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And poetry:
http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/RCOldSite/www/rchs/reader/tabbey.html
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 569 - 570
THE OBSTINATE IRISH
English kings justified their dominion of Ireland on the ground that a hostile Continental power might at any moment use that verdant isle for a flank attack upon England; and this consideration, seconding the love of power, became more active when protestant England failed to win Ireland from the Roman Church .The Irish people, heroic and anarchic, virile and violent, poetically gifted and politically immature, resisted, every day, their subjection to an alien blood and speech.
The evils of the English occupation mounted. Under Edward III many Anglo-Irish landowners returned to England to live there in ease on Irish rents; and though the English Parliament repeatedly denounced the practice, “absentee landlordism” rose through three centuries to be a leading spur to Irish revolts. Englishmen who remained in Ireland tended to marry Irish girls, and were gradually absorbed into Irish blood and ways. Anxious to dam this racial drain, the Irish Parliament, dominated by English residents and influence, passed the famous Statute of Kilkenny (1366), which, along with some wise and generous provisions, forbade intermarriage, fosterage, or other intimate relations between the English and the Irish in Ireland, and any use, by the English, of Irish speech, customs, or dress, on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of property. No Irishman was henceforth to be received into any English religious organization; and no bards or storytellers were to enter English homes. These prohibitions failed; the roses in Irish cheeks outshone the majesty of the law, and racial fusion went on in that narrow March, Border, or Pale where alone the English in Ireland dared to dwell.
In the Wars of the Roses, Ireland might have expelled the English had the Irish chiefs united but they preferred fraternal strife, sometimes encouraged thereto by English gold. Henry VII re-established English authority in the Pale, and his lord deputy, Sir Edward Poynings, pushed through the Irish Parliament the humiliating “Poynings’ Law” (1494); that in future no Irish Parliament should be convened until all bills to be presented to it had been approved by the king and Privy council of England. So emasculated, the English government in Ireland became the most incompetent, ruthless, and corrupt in Christendom. By this time Henry VIII had completed his divorce from the Roman Church. With characteristic audacity he bade the Irish Parliament acknowledge him head of the Church of Ireland as well as in England. It did. Reformers entered the churches in the Pale, and demolished religious relics and images. All monasteries but a remote few were closed, their property was taken by the Government, their monks were dismissed with pensions if they made no fuss. Some of the spoils were distributed among the Irish chiefs; so oiled, most of them accepted titles of nobility from the English King, acknowledged his religious supremacy, and abjured the pope ( 1539). The clan system was abolished, and Ireland was declared a kingdom, with Henry as king.
Henry was victorious, but mortal; he died within five years of his triumph. Catholicism in Ireland survived. The chieftains took their apostasy as a passing incident in politics; they continued to be Catholics ( as Henry did) except for ignoring the pope; and the priests whose ministrations they supported and received remained quietly orthodox. The faith of the people underwent no change; or rather it took on new vigour because it maintained the pride of nationality against a schismatic king and, later, a protestant Queen. The struggle for freedom became more intense than before, since now it spoke for body and soul.
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"The Irish people, heroic and anarchic, virile and violent, poetically gifted and politically immature"
Quite a description. Any Irish out there to comment?
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I'm almost caught up with the reading of the posts. I can read other of the sites while watching tv, but i have to turn off the tv and concentrate to really take in this info. :)
I'm Scots-Irish, does that count? Probably not, i think that's a comment on the Green Irish, not the Orange! But it sounds about right based on the prejudices of the English and maybe the Scots-Irish also. Lol
forbade intermarriage, fosterage, or other intimate relations between the English and the Irish in Ireland, and any use, by the English, of Irish speech, customs, or dress, on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of property. No Irishman was henceforth to be received into any English religious organization; and no bards or storytellers were to enter English homes. These prohibitions failed; the roses in Irish cheeks outshone the majesty of the law, and racial fusion went on in that narrow March, Border, or Pale where alone the English in Ireland dared to dwell.
People just NEVER learn from history, even those few who know history. Money! Power! Controlling "the other!" And then killing the Other. Just goes on and on in different iterations.
Jean
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I'm almost caught up with the reading of the posts. I can read other of the sites while watching tv, but i have to turn off the tv and concentrate to really take in this info. :)
I'm Scots-Irish, does that count? Probably not, i think that's a comment on the Green Irish, not the Orange! But it sounds about right based on the prejudices of the English and maybe the Scots-Irish also. Lol
forbade intermarriage, fosterage, or other intimate relations between the English and the Irish in Ireland, and any use, by the English, of Irish speech, customs, or dress, on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of property. No Irishman was henceforth to be received into any English religious organization; and no bards or storytellers were to enter English homes. These prohibitions failed; the roses in Irish cheeks outshone the majesty of the law, and racial fusion went on in that narrow March, Border, or Pale where alone the English in Ireland dared to dwell.
People just NEVER learn from history, even those few who know history. Money! Power! Controlling "the other!" And then killing the Other. Just goes on and on in different iterations.
Jean
Sorry didn't mean to duplicate
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Jean, so sorry to read of your loss of a family member, also your husbands loss.
I too have been away from this forum. My mother was 100 last year and she is having some problems that has taken most of my attention lately.
As for the Irish, here is a quote said about them........'All their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.'
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 570 - 573
EVERY OUNCE A KING
Henry in 1540 was the most absolute monarch that England had ever known. The old Norman nobility, whose ancestors had checked even William the Conqueror, were now timidly obedient, and almost forgot the Magna Charta of their prerogatives. The new nobility, enriched by commerce and endowed by the King served as a barrier to aristocratic or religious revolts. The House of Commons, once the jealous protector of English liberties but now handpicked by agents of the King, yielded to him almost unprecedented powers: the right to confiscate property, to name his successor, to determine orthodoxy and heresy, to send men to death after only a mock trial, and to issue proclamations that were to have the authority of acts of Parliament. The English people accepted this absolutism partly through fear, partly because it seemed the alternative to another War of the Roses. Order was more important than Liberty.
The same alternatives persuaded Englishmen to suffer Henry’s ecclesiastical supremacy. With Catholics and Protestants ready to fly at each other’s throats, with Catholic citizens, ambassadors, and potentates conspiring against him, almost to invasion, Henry believed that order could be secured in the religious life of England only by royal determination of faith and ritual; implicitly he accepted the case that the Church had made for authority in religion. He tried to dictate who should read the Bible. When the bishops suppressed Tyndales translation he bade them prepare a better one; When they dallied too long he allowed Cromwell to commission a new translation by Miles Coverdale. In 1539 a revised edition was printed, and Cromwell ordered the “Great Bible” placed in every English Church.
Henry, “of the royal liberality and goodness,” granted the citizens the privilege of reading the Bible in their homes; and soon it became a daily influence in nearly every English family. But it was a fountain of discord as well of inspiration; every village sprouted amateur exegetes who proved anything or its opposite by Scripture; fanatics wrangled over it in churches, and came to blows in taverns. Some ambitious men gave their wives writs of divorce, or kept two wives at once, on the plea that this was sound Biblical practice. The King regretted the liberty of reading that he had allowed, and reverted to the Catholic stand. In 1543 he induced Parliament to rule that only nobles and property owners might legally possess the Bible, and only priests might preach on it, or discuss it publicly. It was difficult for the people -- even for the King -- to know the King’s mind. Catholics continued to go to the stake or the block for denying his ecclesiastical supremacy, Protestants for questioning Catholic theology.
In 1539, King, Parliament, and Convocation, by the “Act of the Six Articles,” proclaimed the Roman Catholic position on the Real Presence, clerical celibacy, monastic vowels, Masses for the dead, the necessity of auricular confession to a priest, and the sufficiency of communion in one kind. Whoever, by spoken or written word, denied the Real Presence should suffer death by burning, without opportunity to abjure, confess, and be absolved; whoever denied any of the other articles should for the first offence forfeit his property, for the second his life. All marriages hitherto contracted by priests were declared void, and for a priest thereafter to retain his wife was to be a felony. The people, still orthodox, generally approved these articles, but Cromwell did his best to moderate them in practice; and in 1540, the King, tacking again, ordered prosecution under the act to cease. On July 30 1540, three Protestants and three Catholic priests suffered death at Smithfield in unwilling unison, the Protestants for questioning some Catholic doctrines, the Catholics for rejecting the ecclesiastical sovereignty of the King.
Henry was as forceful in administration as in theology. He chose competent aids as ruthless as himself. He reorganized the army, equipped it with new weapons, and studied the latest tactics. He built the first permanent royal navy, which cleared the coasts and Channel of pirates and prepared for the naval victories of Elizabeth. But he taxed the people to the limits of tolerance, repeatedly debased the currency, repudiated his debts, borrowed from the Fuggers, and promoted the English economy in the hope that it would yield added revenue.
Agriculture was in depression. Serfdom was still widespread; Enclosures for sheep pasturage continued, and the new landlords, unhindered by feudal traditions, doubled or quadrupled the rents of their tenants, and refused to renew expiring leases. Thousands of dispossessed tenants made their way to London. Catholic More drew a pitiful picture of the beggared peasantry, and Protestant Latimer denounced the “rent-raiser steplords.” Parliament laid ferocious penalties upon vagabondage and beggary. Gradually the displaced peasants found work in cities. In the end productivity of the land was raised by large-scale farming, but the inability of the government to ease the transition was a criminal and heartless failure of statesmanship.
The same government protected industry with tariffs, and manufacturers profited from cheap labour made available by the migration of peasants to the towns. Capitalistic methods reorganised the textile industry, and raised a new class of wealthy men to stand beside the merchants in support of the King; cloth now replaced wool as England’s chief export. most exports were of necessaries produced by lower classes; most imports were of luxuries available only to the rich. Commerce and industry were benefited by a law of 1536 legalising interest rates of 10%. Rents rose 1,000% between 1500 and 1576; food prices rose 250% to 300 %; wages rose 150%. “Such poverty reigneth now,” wrote Thomas Starkey about 1537, “that in no case may stand with a very true and flourishing common weal.” Guild members found some relief in the insurance and mutual aid provided against poverty and fire; but in 1545 Henry confiscated the property of the guilds.
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An excerpt from the New York Times July 14, 2014
LONDON — After years of deadlock and division, the Church of England voted on Monday to allow women to become bishops, overturning centuries of tradition and overcoming a long-running dispute that had undermined the unity of Anglicans.
The vote taken in the General Synod, the decision-making body of the Church of England, was supported by the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the church and the global Anglican Communion, who told the BBC before the vote that the public would find the exclusion of women “almost incomprehensible.”
After the result, he said in a statement that he was delighted and described the move as “the completion of what was begun over 20 years ago with the ordination of women as priests.”
The changes will be considered by Parliament. Provided they are approved there, a formal announcement will be made at the next meeting of the General Synod, in November.
The General Synod voted to ordain women as priests in 1992, and ordinations began two years later. Now, around one-third of Anglican clerics are women, and women can hold senior positions such as canon or archdeacon.
The church of England probably had little choice in this matter since most of the attendants were older women. If only they could get the Archbishop post and declare the entire scam null and void.
Oh for a woman of courage and intellect.
I would not call Henry 'Every Ounce a King', he was 'Every Ounce a Despot'.
Emma
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It's about time.
Meanwhile, while the attention of historians is on Henry and his Marital and religious hijinks, even more important things are happening:
"Agriculture was in depression. Serfdom was still widespread; Enclosures for sheep pasturage continued, and the new landlords, unhindered by feudal traditions, doubled or quadrupled the rents of their tenants, and refused to renew expiring leases. Thousands of dispossessed tenants made their way to London....
The same government protected industry with tariffs, and manufacturers profited from cheap labour made available by the migration of peasants to the towns. Capitalistic methods reorganised the textile industry, and raised a new class of wealthy men to stand beside the merchants in support of the King; cloth now replaced wool as England’s chief export"
We are seeing the start of the transformation of England from a primarily rural agricultural nation to an urban manufacturing economy, centuries earlier than happened in other countries. This helped secure England's early dominance in trade.
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Oh my goodness!!! The Church of England comes into the 20th century! Yes! I meant 20th! Well, actually some protestant denominations had women ministers in the 19th century. So we could say they are two centuries behind! (Shaking my head.)
"Henry, “of the royal liberality and goodness,” granted the citizens the privilege of reading the Bible in their homes; and soon it became a daily influence in nearly every English family. But it was a fountain of discord as well of inspiration; every village sprouted amateur exegetes who proved anything or its opposite by Scripture; fanatics wrangled over it in churches, and came to blows in taverns. Some ambitious men gave their wives writs of divorce, or kept two wives at once, on the plea that this was sound Biblical practice. The King regretted the liberty of reading that he had allowed, and reverted to the Catholic stand. In 1543 he induced Parliament to rule that only nobles and property owners might legally possess the Bible, and only priests might preach on it, or discuss it publicly. "
This doesn't sound too different then in some other churches today! History does repeat itself. I keep saying that, don't i?
Power brokers keep learning that it's dangerous to allow non-power people knowledge and liberty, they get their own opinions and then they're OUT of CONTROL! Ala the internet and people in China, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Ukraine, etc, etc, etc.
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 573 - 578
THE DRAGON RETIRES
What sort of man was this ogre of a king. Holbein the younger, coming to England about 1536 painted portraits of Henry and Jane Seymour. The gorgeous costume almost conceals the royal corpulence; the gems and ermine, the hand on the jewelled sword, reveal the pride of authority, the vanity of the uncontradicted male; the broad fat face bespeaks a hearty sensualism; the nose a pillar of strength; the tight lips and stern eyes warn of a despot quick to anger and cold to cruelty. Henry was now forty-six, at the top of his political curve, but entering physical decline. He was destined to marry thrice again, yet have no further progeny. From all his six wives he had but three children who outlived infancy. One of these three -- Edward VI -- was sickly and died at fifteen; Mary remained desolately barren in marriage; Elizabeth never dared marry, probably through consciousness of some physical impediment. The curse of semi-sterility or bodily defect lay upon the proudest dynasty in English history.
Henry’s mind was keen, his judgement of men was penetrating, his courage and will power were immense. His manners were coarse, and his scruples disappeared with his youth. Born to royalty, he was surrounded from birth with obeisance and flattery; only a few men dared withstand him, and they were buried without their heads. “Surely,” wrote More from the Tower, it is a great pity that any Christian prince should by a flexible [ knee bending] council ready to allow his affections [desires] and by a weak clergy. . . be with flattery so shamefully abused” This was the external source of Henry’s retrogression in character -- that the absence of resistance to his will, after the death of More, made him as flabby in moral sense as in physique. He was greedy for money as well as for power, and seldom allowed considerations of humanity to halt his appropriations. His ungrateful readiness to kill women whom he had loved, or men, who like More and Cromwell, had served him loyally for many years, is despicable; yet in result he was not one tenth as murderous as the well meaning Charles IX sanctioning the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or Charles V condoning the sack of Rome, or German princes fighting through thirty years for their right to determine the religious belief of their subjects.
The inner source of his deterioration was the repeated frustration of his will in love and parentage, while suffering intermittent agony from an ulcer in his leg, buffeted with revolts and crises throughout his reign, forced at almost every moment to arm against invasion, betrayal, and assassination -- how could such a man develop normally, or avoid degeneration into suspicion, craft, and cruelty? And how shall we, who fret at pinpricks of private tribulation, understand a man who bore in his mind and person the storm and stress of the English Reformation. He weaned his people by perilous steps from a deeply rooted loyalty, and yet must have felt in his divided soul an erosive wonder-- had he freed a nation or shattered Christendom?
Danger, as well as power, was the medium in which he lived. In 1538 he ordered the arrest of Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother to Reginald. Fearing torture, Geoffrey confessed that he, another brother, Lord Montague, Sir Edward Neville, and the Marchioness of Exeter had had treasonable correspondence with the Cardinal. Geoffrey was pardoned; Exeter, Montague, and several others were hanged and quartered (1538-39). Lady Exeter was imprisoned; and the Countess of Salisbury, mother of the Poles, was placed under guard. When the Cardinal visited Charles V in Toledo ( 1539) bearing a futile request from Paul III that the Emperor would join with Francis in outlawing all commerce with England. Henry retaliated by arresting the Countess, who was now seventy years old; perhaps he hoped by keeping her in the Tower he could check the Cardinal’s enthusiasm for invasion. All was fair in the game of life and death.
Having remained for two years unmarried, Henry bade Cromwell seek for him a marital alliance that would strengthen his hand against Charles. Cromwell recommended Anne, sister of the Duke of Cleaves, who was then at odds with the Emperor. Cromwell set his heart on the marriage, by which he hoped ultimately to form a league of Protestant states, and thereby compel Henry to repeal the anti-Lutheran Six Articles. When Anne came, and Henry laid eyes on her (Jan 1, 1540), love died at first sight. He shut his eyes, married her, and prayed again for a son to strengthen the Tudor succession now that Prince Edward was revealing his physical frailty. But Henry never forgave Cromwell.
Four months later, alleging malfeasance and corruption, he ordered the arrest of his most profitable minister. Hardly anyone objected; Cromwell was the most unpopular subject in England -- for his origin, his methods, his venality, his wealth. In the Tower he was required to sign documents impugning the validity of the new marriage. Anne, confessing she was still a maid, agreed to an annulment in return for a comfortable pension. She chose a lonely life in England; and it was small comfort to her that when she died (1557) she was buried in Westminster Abbey. Cromwell was beheaded on July 28,1540.
On the same day Henry married Catherine Howard, twenty years old, of a strictly Catholic house; the Catholic party was gaining. Henry made his peace with the Emperor. He now turned his fancy northward in the hope of annexing Scotland. He was distracted by another rebellion in the north of England. Before leaving to suppress it, and to discourage conspiracy at his back, he ordered all the political prisoners in the Tower, including the Countess of Salisbury, to be put to death (1541). The rebellion collapsed, and Henry returned to Hampton Court to seek solace from his new Queen.
The second Catherine was the fairest of his mates. and the king learned almost to love her, and he gave thanks to God for “the good life he was leading and hoped to lead.” But on November 2, 1541, Archbishop Cranmer handed him documents indicating that Catherine had premarital relations with three successive suitors. Henry was inclined to pardon Catherine, but evidence was given him that she had, since her royal marriage committed adultery with her cousin. The royal court pronounced her guilty; and on Feb 13, 1542, she was beheaded on the same spot where Ann Boleyn’s head had fallen six years before.
The King was now a broken man. His ulcer baffled the medical science of the day, and syphilis, never cured, was spreading its ravages through his frame. Losing the zest for life, he allowed himself to become an unwieldily mass of flesh, his cheeks overlapping his jaws, his narrowed eyes half lost in the convolutions of his face. He could not walk from one room to another without support. He issued a new decree fixing the succession to his throne: first on Edward, then Mary, then on Elizabeth. In a final effort to beget a healthy son, he married a sixth wife July 12, 1543). Catherine Parr had survived two previous husbands, but the King no longer insisted upon virgins. She was a woman of culture and tact; she nursed her royal invalid patiently, reconciled him with his long neglected daughter Elizabeth, and tried to soften his theology and persecuting zeal. Theological bonfires continued to the end of his reign; twenty-six persons were burned for heresy in its final eight years. In 1543 he fell into war with Scotland and his “beloved Brother” Francis I, and soon found himself allied with his old enemy Charles V. To financed his campaigns he demanded new “loans” from his subjects, repudiated payment on loans of 1542, and confiscated the endowments of the universities. His armies invaded Scotland and wrecked the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, and five other monasteries, but were routed at Ancrum Moor (1545).
He was now so weak that noble families openly contended as to which should have the regency for young Edward. A poet, the earl of Surrey, was so confident that his father, the Duke of York, would be regent that he adopted a coat of arms suitable only for an heir-apparent to the throne. Henry arrested both; they confessed their guilt; the poet was beheaded on Jan 9, 1547, and the Duke was scheduled for execution soon after the twenty-seventh. But on twenty-eighth the King died. He was fifty-five years old. He left a large sum to pay for the Masses for the repose of his soul.
The thirty-seven years of his reign transformed England more deeply than perhaps he imagined or desired. He thought to replace the pope while leaving unchanged the old faith that had habituated the people to moral restraints and obedience to law; but his defence of the papacy, his swift dispersal of monks and relics, his repeated humiliation of the clergy, his appropriation of Church property, and his secularisation of the government so weakened ecclessaiastical prestige and authority as to invite the theological changes that followed the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth. The English Reformation was less doctrinal than the German, but one outstanding result was the same-- the victory of the state over the Church. The people had escaped from an infallible pope into the arms of an absolute king.
In a material sense they had not benefited. they paid church tithes as before, but the net surplus went to the government. Many peasants now tilled their tenancies for “steplords” more ruthless than the abbots whom Carlyle was to idealize in ‘Past and Present’ William Cobbett thought that “viewed merely in its social aspect, the English Reformation was in reality the rising of the rich against the poor.” Records of prices and wages indicate that the agricultural and town workers were better off at Henry’s accession than at his death.
The moral aspects of the reign were bad. The King gave the nation a demoralizing example in his sexual indulgence, his callous passing in a few days from execution of one wife to the bed of the next, his calm cruelty, fiscal dishonesty, and material greed. The upper classes disordered the court and government with corrupt intrigues; the gentry emulated Henry in grasping at the wealth of the Church; the industrialists mulcted their workers and were mulcted by the King. The decay of Charity did not complete the picture, for there remained the debasing subserviency of a terrified people to a selfish autocrat. Only the courage of the Protestant and Catholic martyrs redeemed the scene, and Fisher and More, the noblest of them, had persecuted in their turn.
In a large perspective even those bitter years bore some good fruit. The reformation had to be; the break with the past was violent and painful, but only a brutal blow could shake its grip on the minds of men. When the incubus was removed, the spirit of nationalism became a popular enthusiasm and a creative force. The elimination of the papacy from English affairs left the people for a time at the mercy of the state; but in the long run it compelled them to rely on themselves in checking their rulers. Under a vacillating but triumphant queen, Elizabeth, the nation would rise in a burst of liberating energy, and lift itself to the leadership of the European mind. Perhaps Elizabeth and Shakespeare could not have been had not England been set free by her worst and strongest king.
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Henry is such a flamboyant personality and physicality that historians and pseudo-historians (us) just can't get enough of him.
What does this mean? "Elizabeth never dared marry, probably through consciousness of some physical impediment. " i never heard that theory. I always assumed that she didn't want to share, or weaken, her power, even emotionally, that she wanted to stand tall and majestiic, all on her own.
Jean
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Two statements on Elizabeth's not marrying, no mention of "physical impediment"
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/historical-notes-why-did-elizabeth-i-never-marry-1163767.html
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/virgin-queen.htm
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume VI THE REFORMATION
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."
This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
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SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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Very interesting.
The PBS dramatization of the life of Queen Elizabeth plays up the role of the Earl of Leicester, as her closest, maybe only, friend. He's shown as, while at the beginning perhaps a genuine friend, over the years becoming a conniver, maybe even murdering his wife so that he would be free to marry her.
There is an unforgettable scene where they show how much her ladies had to work on her to make her presentable. The earl surprises her before she is worked on, looking completely ravaged by age and looking terrible. he is loading her with extravagant complements on her beauty, and she is clearly believing him.
I cant wait to see what the Durants have to say.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 579 - 581
EDWARD VI and MARY TUDOR
The-ten-year-old boy who succeeded to the throne of England as Edward VI had been painted by Holbein four years before in one of the most appealing of all portraits; feathered beret, red hair, ermine-collared robe, and a face of such gentleness and wistful delicacy that we should imagine him to be all Jane Seymour, nothing of Henry VIII. Perhaps he inherited the physical frailty that had made her life his ransom; he never gained the strength to rule. He showed to all except nonconforming Catholics so much kindness and good will that England thought it had buried an ogre to crown a saint. Educated by Cranmer he had become an ardent Protestant. He discouraged any severe punishment for heresy, but was unwilling to let his Catholic half sister Mary hear Mass, for he sincerely believed the Mass to be the most blasphemous idolatry. He accepted gladly the decision of the Royal Council that chose as regent for him his uncle Edward Seymour – soon to be made Duke of Somerset – who favoured a Protestant policy.
Somerset was a man of intelligence, courage, and integrity imperfect but, in his time, outstanding. Handsome, courteous, generous, he shamed by his life the cowardly and self-seeking aristocracy that could forgive him everything but his sympathy for the poor. Though almost absolute in power, he ended the absolutism of Henry VII and VIII, allowed much greater freedom of speech, required sounder evidence for conviction, returned their dowries to the widows of condemned men, and repealed the more oppressive laws of the preceding reign concerning religion. The King remained head of the English Church, and to speak irreverently of the Eucharist was still a punishable offence; but the same statute ordered the sacrament to be administered in both kinds, prescribed English as the language of the service, and repudiated purgatory and Masses for the dead. English Protestants who had fled from England returned with the pollen of Luther, Zwingli , and Calvin on them. Anabaptists and Unitarians crossed the channel to preach in England heresies that shocked Protestants as much as Catholics. Archbishop Cranmer “did eat meat openly in Lent, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian Country.” Under Somerset’s lead Parliament ( 1547) ordered every picture on church wall or window, commemorating a Prophet, Apostle, or saint, should be extirpated “ so that there should remain no memory of the same.” Most of the stained glass in the churches was destroyed; most of the statues were crushed; Crucifixes were replaced with the royal arms; whitewashed walls and windows took the colour out of the religion of England. There was a general scramble in each locality for Church silver and gold; and in 1551 the government appropriated what remained. The magnificent medieval cathedrals barely remained.
The leading spirit in these changes was Archbishop Cranmer; their leading opponents were Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Cranmer had them sent to the fleet. [ a London Jail so named from its proximity to the Fleet Stream, an estuary (now covered) of the Thames]. Meanwhile the Archbishop had been working for years on an attempt to provide in one book a substitute for both the missal and breviary of the defeated Church. This first book of Common Prayer (1548) was essentially Cranmer’s personal product, in which zeal for the new faith merged with a fine sense for solemn beauty in feeling and phrase; even his translations from the Latin had the spell of genius on them. The book was not quite revolutionary; it followed some Lutheran leads, as in rejecting the sacrificial character of the Mass, but it neither rejected nor affirmed transubstantiation; it retained much Catholic ritual, and could be accepted by not too precise a Romanist. The book was made law of the realm, and every church in England was ordered to adopt it. Bonner and Gardiner who were released in a general amnesty (1549) were reimprisoned when they rejected the right of Parliament to legislate on religion. Princess Mary was allowed to hear Mass in the privacy of her chambers.
A dangerous international situation quieted for a time the violent debate between Catholics and Protestants. Henry II of France demanded the evacuation of Boulogne; refused, he prepared to besiege it; and at any moment Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, then a girl of five in France, might bring Scotland into the war. Learning that the Scots were arming and were stirring up rebellion in Ireland, Somerset led a force across the border, and defeated them at Pinkie Cleugh ( September 10, 1547). The terms that he offered the Scots were remarkably generous and far seeing; the Scots were not to suffer any forfeiture of liberty or property; Scotland and England were to merge into one “Empire of Great Britain”; each nation was to have self rule under its own laws, but both were to be ruled, after the current reign, by the offspring of the Queen of Scots. This was precisely the union effected in 1603 , except that it would have facilitated a restoration of Catholicism in England and its continuance in Scotland. The Catholics of Scotland rejected the plan for fear that English Protestantism would infect their own land; besides, Scottish nobles were receiving pensions from the French Government, and thought a livre in the hand worth two pounds in the bush.
Frustrated in seeking peace, facing war with France, struggling to establish a compromise among uncompromising faiths at home, and hearing renewed noises of agrarian revolt in England, Somerset drank the cup of power to the dregs when his own brother plotted to overthrow him. Thomas Seymour was not content to be Lord High Admiral and a member of the Privy Council, he would be king. He wooed Princess Mary, then Princes Elizabeth, but in vain. He received money stolen from the mint, and spoils from the pirates whom he allowed in the Channel; and so financed he gathered secret stores of arms and ammunition. His conspiracy was discovered; he was accused by the Earls of Warwick and Southampton; he was condemned by both houses of Parliament; and on March 20, 1549 he was put to death. Somerset tried to protect him, but failed, and the protector’s prestige fell with his brother’s head.
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Loved these three lines......
English Protestants who had fled from England returned with the pollen of Luther, Zwingli , and Calvin on them.
whitewashed walls and windows took the colour out of the religion of England.
a livre in the hand worth two pounds in the bush.
Gave me a smile this morning.
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
Pgs 582 - 584
Somerset’s ruin - Ket’s rebellion
Somerset’s ruin was completed by Ket’s rebellion. That uprising illustrated the apparent anomaly that whereas in Germany peasant revolt was Protestant, in England it was Catholic; in each case religion was a front for economic discontent, and in England the front was Catholic because the government was now Protestant. “In the Experience of the agricultural poor,” wrote the Protestant Froude, “an increase of personal suffering was the chief result of the Reformation.” It is to the credit of Protestant divines in this reign – Cranmer, Latimer, Lever, Crowley – that they condemned exploitation of the peasantry; and Somerset with hot indignation denounced the merciless exactions of new landowners “sprung from the dunghill” of city wealth. Parliament could think of no wiser remedies than to pass ferocious laws against beggary, and instruct the churches to take up weekly a collection for the poor. Somerset sent out a commission to get the facts about enclosures and high rents; it met with subtle or open resistance from the landlords; tenants were terrified into concealing the wrongs against them; and modest recommendations of the commission were rejected by Parliament, in which the agricultural districts were represented by landowning gentry. Somerset opened a private court in his own house to hear the complaints of the poor. More and more nobles, led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, joined in a movement to depose him.
But now the peasants, furious with accumulated wrongs and frustrated suits for redress, burst into revolt from one end of England to the other. Somersetshire rose first, then Wilts and Gloucestershire, Dorset and Hampshire, Berks and Oxford and Buckingham, in the west Cornwall and Devon, in the east Norfolk and Kent. At Norwich a minor landlord, Robert Ket, organized the rebels, seized the municipal government, and set up a peasant commune that for a month ruled the town and its hinterland. On mousehold hill, north of the city, Ket encamped 16,000 men, and there, under an oak tree, he sat daily in judgement upon offending landlords arrested by the peasants. He was not bloodthirsty; those whom he condemned were imprisoned and fed. But of property rights and title deeds he made small account. He bade his men scour the surrounding country, force entry into the manor houses, confiscate all weapons, and corral for the commune all cattle and provisions wherever found. Sheep – chief rivals of the peasants for use of the soil – were rounded up to the number of 20,000 and were incontinently consumed, along with “infinite beeves,” swans, hinds, ducks, venison, and pigs. Amid this feasting Ket nevertheless maintained remarkable order, even allowing preachers to exhort the men to abandon the revolt. Somerset felt much sympathy with the rebels, but agreed with Warwick that they must be dispersed least the whole economic structure of English life should be overturned. Warwick was sent against them with an army recently raised to fight in France. He offered the rebels a general pardon if they would return to their homes. Ket favoured acceptance, but hotter heads were for judgement by battle, and Ket yielded to them. On August 17, 1549, the issue was decided; Warwick’s superior tactics won, 3500 of the rebels were cut down; but when the remnant surrendered Warwick contented himself with nine hangings, and sent Ket and a brother to prison in London. News of the defeat took the heart out of the other rebel groups; one after another laid down their arms on promise of amnesty. Somerset used his influence to have most of the rebel leaders released, and the Ket brothers for a while survived.
The Protestor was accused of having encouraged the revolt by his outspoken sympathy with the poor. He was branded also with failure in foreign affairs, for France was now besieging Boulonge. He was justly accused of allowing corruption among governmental personnel, of debasing the currency, of augmenting his own fortune, of building his own sumptuous Somerset House amid the near bankruptcy of the nation. Warwick and Southhampton led a move to unseat him. The majority of the nobles, who could pardon his wealth but not his tenderness for the peasants, seized the opportunity for revenge. On Oct. 12, 1549, the Duke of Somerset was paraded as a prisoner through the streets of London, and was shut up in the Tower.
THE WARWICK PROTECTORATE 1549 – 1553.
By the standards of the time Somerset’s enemies were lenient. He was deprived of such property he had acquired during his regency; On FEB 6, 1550, he was released; in May he was restored to membership in the Royal Council. But Warwick was now Protector of the Realm. He was a frank Machiavellian. Himself inclined to Catholicism, he adopted a Protestant line because his rival Southampton was the accepted leader of the Catholics, and the majority of the nobles were financially wedded to the new creed. He had learned well the art of war, but he knew that with a bankrupt government and an impoverished people he could not hold Boulogne against a France having twice the resources of England. He surrendered the town to Henry II, and signed an ignominious, inescapable peace (1550).
Under the domination of Landlords noble or common, Parliament passed legislation fearfully punishing the rebellion of peasants. Enclosures were sanctified by express law; the taxes that Somerset had imposed on sheep and wool to discourage enclosures were repealed. Severe penalties were prescribed for workers who combined to raise their wages. Assemblies gathering to discuss a lowering of rents or prices were declared illegal; persons attending them were to forfeit their property; Robert Ket and his brother were hanged. Poverty increased, but the almshouses that had been swept away by the religious movement were not replaced. Sickness became endemic, but hospitals were abandoned. The people were famished, but the currency was again debased, and prices soared. The once sturdy yeomanry of England were perishing, and the poorest of the poor were sinking into savagery.
Religious chaos rivalled economic anarchy. The majority of the people remained Catholic, but the victory of Warwick over Southampton left them leaderless, and they felt the weakness of those who stand for the past. The collapse of the spiritual and moral authority of the priesthood, together with the instability and corruption of government, allowed not only a growth of immorality but a bedlam of heresies that frightened Protestants and Catholics alike. Roger Hutchinson (c. 1550) wrote of “Sadducees and Libertines” (freethinkers), “who say that the Devil is nothing but a filthy affection of the flesh ... that there is neither place of rest nor pain after this life... that hell is nothing but a tormenting and desperate conscience, and that a joyful, quiet, and merry conscience is heaven.” And John Hooper, Protestant Bishop of Gloucester reported that there are some who say “that the soul of man is no better than the soul of a beast, and is mortal and perishable. There are wretches who dare, in their conventicles, not only to deny that Christ is our saviour, but to call that blessed Child a mischief-maker and deceiver.”
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I really like the fact that the Durant's take us beyond the antics of the princes to show us what was going on for ordinary people.
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I agree. I did not know of Somerset, Warwick, and Ket until I first read of them in Durants' book. There was no mention of them in my school years. And certainly no word about the economic plight of ordinary folk. We heard only of Henry VIII and his wives. Trevor
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We are seeing the start of the conversion of England from a primarily rural to an urban society, much earlier than happened in other countries. Elsewhere, industrialization brought new jobs in the cities and drew people in to fill them. In England, long before there was industrialization, the Enclosure act threw people off the land to allow more raising of sheep for the wool trade, and a mercantile nation. But the wool trade alone couldn't provide enough jobs for the displaced peasants. Beggars and incredible poverty in cities resulted.
Thinking about it, that probably contributed to the eagerness of the English to explore the world and colonize. With no jobs at home, these were probably the only options for many.
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DURANTS' S O C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 584 - 587
The Warwick Protectorate 1549 – 1553 (cont.)
Utilizing the liberty that had been granted by Somerset, a reckless fringe among the Protestants satirized the old religion heartlessly. Oxford students parodied the Mass in their farces, chopped missals to pieces, snatched consecrated bread from the altar and trampled it underfoot. London preachers called priests “imps of the whore of Babylon” – i.e. the pope. An order of Council confiscated to the treasury all plate remaining in the churches. Later Parliament appropriated for the government the coins in the poor boxes of the churches. Further funds were found for the government or its personnel by cancelling scholarships for poor students, and suppressing the regius (state supported) professorships established at the universities by Henry VIII.
Religious persecution, so long of heretics by Catholics, was now in England, as in Switzerland and Lutheran Germany, of heretics and Catholics by Protestants. Parliament now passed a Second Act of Uniformity, which required of all persons to attend regularly, and only, religious services conducted according to the Book of Common Prayer, three violations of this Act was to be punished with death.
While virtue and orthodoxy became law, the Warwick protectorate was distinguishing itself, in a corrupt age, by its corruption. This did not prevent the malleable young Edward from making Warwick Duke of Northumberland ( October 4, 1551 ). A few days later the Duke atoned for an act of political decency - - the release of Somerset by charging his predecessor with an attempt to re-establish himself in power. Somerset was arrested, tried, and convicted, chiefly on evidence given by Sir Thomas Palmer; an order of the King was forged to call for Somerset’s execution. And on January 22, 1552, he met his death with courage and dignity. Northumberland, when he in turn faced execution, confessed that through this means Somerset had been falsely accused; and Palmer, before his death, confessed that the evidence he had sworn to had been invented by Northumberland.
Rarely in English history had an administration been so unpopular. Protestant clergymen, who had praised the new Protector in gratitude for his support, turned against him as his crimes increased. King Edward was sinking towards death; Mary Tudor, by an act of Parliament, had been named heiress to the throne if Edward remained childless; and Mary, if made Queen, would soon revenge herself on those who had led England from the old faith. Northumberland felt that his life was in jeopardy. He induced the dying king to settle the crown upon Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk and granddaughter of Henry VIII‘s sister; moreover, Jane had recently married Northumberland’s son. Nearly all England took Princess Mary’s accession as inevitable and just; and Jane protested that she did not wish to be queen. She was a woman of unusual education; she wrote Greek, studied Hebrew, and corresponded with Bollinger in Latin as good as his own. She was no saint; she could be sharply critical of Catholics, and laughed at transubstantiation; but she was far more sinned against than sinning. At first she took her father-in-law’s scheme as a jest. When her mother-in-law insisted, Jane resisted. Finally her husband commanded her to accept the throne, -- “not choosing,” she said, “to be disobedient to her husband” – she obeyed. Northumberland now prepared to arrest Mary’s leading supporters, and to lodge the Princess herself in the Tower, where she might be taught resignation.
Early in July the King neared his end. He coughed and spat blood, his legs swelled painfully, eruptions broke out over his body, his hair fell out, then his nails. No one could say what this strange disease was; many suspected that Northumberland had poisoned him. At last, after long suffering, Edward died (July 5, 1553 ), still but fifteen, too young to share the guilt of his reign.
The next morning Northumberland rode out toward Hunsdon to seize the princess, but Mary, warned, escaped to Catholic friends in Suffolk, and Northumberland returned to London without his prey. By promises, threats, or bribes, he persuaded the Privy Council to join him in proclaiming Jane Grey queen. She fainted. Recovering, she still protested that she was unfit for the perilous honour forced upon her. Her relatives pleaded with her, arguing that their lives depended on her acceptance. On July 9 she reluctantly acknowledged herself to be Queen of England.
But on July 10 news reached London that Mary had proclaimed herself queen, that northern nobles were flocking to her support, and that their forces were marching on the capital. Northumberland hurriedly gathered what troops he could, and led them out to the issue of battle. At Bury his soldiers told him they would not take another step against their lawful sovereign. Crowning his crimes, Northumberland sent his brother, with gold and jewels and the promise of Calais and Guines, to bribe Henry II of France to invade England. The privy Council got wind of the mission, intercepted it, and announced allegiance to Mary. The Duke of Suffolk went to Jane’s room, informed her that her ten-day reign was over. She welcomed the news, and asked innocently might she now go home; but the Council, which had sworn to serve her, ordered her confined to the Tower. There, soon, Northumberland too was a prisoner, praying for pardon, but expecting death. The Council sent out heralds to proclaim Mary Tudor queen. England received the tidings with wild rejoicing. All through that summer night bells carolled and bonfires blazed. The people brought out tables and food, and picnicked and danced in the streets.
The nation seemed to regret the Reformation, and look with longing upon a past that could now be idealized since it could not return. And truly the reformation had as yet shown only its bitterest side to England; not a liberation from dogma, inquisition and tyranny, but their intensification; not a spread of enlightenment but a spoliation of universities and the closing of hundreds of schools; no enlargement of kindness but almost an end to charity and carte blanche to greed; no mitigation of poverty but such merciless grinding of the poor as England had not known for centuries – perhaps had never known. Almost any change would be welcome that would eliminate Northumberland and his crew. And poor princess Mary, who had won the secret love of England by her patience in twenty two years of humiliation – surely this chastened woman would make a gentle queen. [/b] [/I].
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Infuriating how the women are used as pawns!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 587 - 589
THE GENTLE QUEEN
To understand her we should have had to live with her the tragic youth during which she hardly ever tasted happiness. She was scarcely two when her father took to mistresses and neglected her grieving mother; eight when he asked for an annulment of his marriage; fifteen when her parents parted, and mother and daughter went into separate exile. Even when the mother was dying the daughter was forbidden to go to her. After the birth of Elizabeth (1533), Mary was declared a bastard, and was shorn of the title of princess. The imperial ambassador feared that Anne Boleyn would seek the death of her daughter’s rival for the throne. When Elizabeth was moved to Hatfield, Mary was compelled to go and serve her there, and to live in “ the worst room of the house.” Her servants were taken from her, and were replaced by others subject to Miss Shelton of Hatfield who, reminding her that she was a bastard, said, “if I were in the Kings place I would kick you out of the King’s house for your disobedience,” and told her that Henry expressed his intention to have her beheaded. All that first winter at Hatfield ( 1534 ) Mary was ill, her nerves shattered with contumely and fear, her body and soul not unwillingly near death. Then the King relented and spared her some casual affection, and for the remainder of the reign her position eased. But as the price of this hard graciousness she was required to sign an acknowledgement of Henry’s ecclesiastical supremacy, her mother’s “incestuous marriage,” and her own “illegitimate” birth.
Her nervous system was permanently affected by these experiences; “she was subject to a heart complaint,” and she remained in frail health to the end of her life. Her courage returned when, under the Somerset protectorate, Parliament declared her heiress-apparent to the throne. Since her Catholic faith, bred into her childhood with Spanish fervour, and strengthened by her mother’s living and dying exhortations, had been a precious support in her grief, she refused to abandon it when she hovered on the edge of power; and when the King’s council bade her cease hearing Mass in her rooms (1549) she would not obey. Somerset connived at her resistance; but Somerset fell, her brother the King approved the order, and three of her servants, for ignoring it, were sent to the Tower (1551) The chaplain who had said Mass for her was taken from her, she finally agreed to forgo the beloved ritual. Her spirit broken, she begged the Imperial ambassador to arrange her escape to the Continent. The cautious Emperor refused to sanction the plan, and it fell through.
Here moment of triumph came at last when Northumberland could find no man to fight against her, and those who came in arms to uphold her cause asked no pay, but brought their own supplies and offered their personal fortunes to finance the campaign. When she entered London as queen (August 3, 1553 ) even that half- Protestant city rose almost unanimously to welcome her. Princess Elizabeth came diffidently to meet her at the city gates, wondering whether Mary would hold against her the indignities suffered in Elizabeth’s name; but Mary greeted her with a warm embrace, and kissed all the ladies in her half sister’s train. England was as happy when Henry VIII, young and handsome and generous, had mounted the throne.
Mary was now thirty-seven, and heartless time had already crossed her face with omens of decay. She had seldom known an adult year without a serious illness. She was treated with repeated bloodlettings, which left her nervous and pale. Her recurrent amenorrhea plunged her at times into hysterical grief with fear that she would never bear a child. Now her body was thin and frail, her forehead wrinkled, her reddish hair streaked with grey, her eyes were so weak that she could read only with the page held close to her face. She had some womanly accomplishments-- she knitted patiently, embroidered skilfully, and played the lute; to which she added a knowledge of Spanish, Latin, Italian, and French. She would have made a good woman had she not been cursed with theological certainty and royal power. She was honest to the point of simplicity, incapable of diplomacy, and pitifully anxious to be loved and to love. She was obstinate, but not proud; she recognised her mental limitations, and listened humbly to advice. She was inflexible only where her faith was concerned; otherwise she was clement and compassionate, liberal to the unfortunate, and eager to address the wrongs of the law. Frequently she visited incognito the homes of the poor, sat and talked with housewives, made note of needs and grievances, and gave whatever help she could. She restored to the universities the endowments filched from them by her predecessors.
On August 13 the Queen issued an official declaration that she would not “compel or constrain consciences” in the matter of religious belief; this was one of the first proclamations of religious tolerance by a modern government.
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How sad a story! And religious tolerance comes out of it?
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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward,_Prince_of_Wales_(later_Edward_VI)_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_and_Studio.jpg
click on pictures
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DURANTS" S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 593 - 595
Mary Tudor
On August 13 the Queen issued an official declaration that she would not “compel or constrain consciences” in the matter of religious belief; this was one of the first proclamations of religious tolerance by a modern government. The Parliament that met on October 5, 1553, was by no means subservient. It agreed to repeal all the legislation of Edward’s reign concerning religion; it reduced to their earlier proportions the severe penalties prescribed in the laws of Henry VIII and Edward VI; and it graciously informed the queen that “ the legitimation of your most noble person “ was now annulled, and she had ceased to be a bastard. By an edict of March 4, 1554, the Catholic worship was completely reinstated. Protestantism and other heresies were made illegal, and all protestant preaching or publication was prohibited.
The nation was much less disturbed by this return of the theological pendulum, than by Mary's marriage plans. She was constitutionally fearful of marriage, but she faced the trial in the hope of having an heir who would prevent the accession of Protestant Elizabeth. Mary claimed to be a virgin, and probably was; perhaps if she had sinned a bit, she would have been less sombre, tense, and certain. Charles the V offered Mary his son Philip, to whom he was about to bequeath all but the imperial title; and he pledged the Netherlands as a gift to any male issue of the marriage. Mary thrilled at the thought of having as her husband the ruler of Spain, Flanders, Holland, Naples, and the Americas, and her half Spanish blood warmed at the prospect of a political and religious union of England with Spain. She modestly suggested that her greater age -- ten years above Philip’s -- was a barrier; she feared that her faded charms would not suffice his youthful vigour or imagination; she was not even sure she would know how to make love. For his part Philip was reluctant; his agents reported that “Mary was a perfect saint.” who “dressed badly.”
Charles persuaded him by pointing out that the marriage would give Spain a strong ally against France, and precious support in the Netherlands, which was bound to England commercially; and the union of the Hapsburgs and the Tudors would constitute a power capable of giving Western Europe a generation of compulsory peace. The Queen’s Council and the English people recognized the force of these considerations, but they feared the marriage would make England an appendage of Spain, and would involve England in recurrent wars against France. Charles countered by offering, in his sons name, a marriage contract by which Philip should bear the title King of England only so long as Mary lived; she was to retain sole and full royal authority over English affairs; she was to share all Philips titles; and if Don Carlos ( Philips son by an earlier marriage) died without issue, Mary or her son was to inherit the Spanish Empire; moreover added the astute Emperor, Mary was to receive 60,000 pounds a year from the Imperial revenues.
But the people of England resented her choice. Protests were voiced everywhere in the land. Four nobles laid plans for an uprising to begin on March 18, 1554. The conspiritors made the mistake of confiding plans to Courtenay, whose task it was to secure Elizabeth’s cooperation. Bishop Gardiner who had kept watch on Courtenay had him arrested, and Courtenay, presumably under torture, betrayed the plot. Mary herself could not understand why the country that had so welcomed her accession should refuse her the happiness and fulfilment that she had dreamed of through so many years of misery. She went in person to the Guildhall and faced an excited assemblage that was debating which side to take. She told it she was quite ready to abandon the Spanish marriage if the commons so wished,. “I cannot tell,” she said, “how naturally the mother loveth her child, for I was never the mother of any; but certainly if a queen may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects as the mother does her child, then assure yourselves that I, being your lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favour you.” Her words and spirit were warmly applauded, and the assembly pledged her its support. Agents of the day were able, almost in a day, to muster 25,000 men. Mary breathed safely again, but she was never more the gentle Queen.
Her advisers had often condemned her policy of pardon. How she was asked, could Philip trust himself in a land where his enemies were left unhindered to plot his assassination? Bishop Gardiner argued that mercy to the nation required that traitors should be put to death. The Queen, in a panic of fright, veered to the views of her councillors. She ordered the execution of Lady Jane Grey, who had never wanted to be queen, and of Jane’s husband, who had so wanted to be king. Jane, still but seventeen, went to her death stoically, without protest or tears (February 12, 1554). Suffolk her father was beheaded, and a hundred lesser rebels hanged. Wyatt at first incriminated Elizabeth as privy to the plan, but on the scaffold (April 11 1554 ) he exonerated her of all cognisance. Mary sent for Elizabeth and kept her in the Tower. Renard urged her immediate execution, but Mary objected that Elizabeth’s complicity had not been proved. During these fateful months Elizabeth’s life hung in the balance, and this terror helped to form her character to suspicion and insecurity, and was echoed in the severity of her later reign, when she had the same worry about Mary Stuart that Mary Tudor now had about Elizabeth.
Mary Tudor’s desire to give Philip a son, and England an heir was so absorbing that she soon conceived herself pregnant. Digestive disturbances were accepted as additional proofs of motherhood. For a long time Mary rejoiced in the thought that she too, like the poorest woman in her realm, could bear a child; and we cannot imagine her desolation when her doctors finally convinced her that her swelling was dropsy. Meanwhile the rumour of her pregnancy had swept through England; men and women feasted in the streets, church bells rang, and a clergyman announced that the child was fair and beautiful as becomes a prince. Now broken with frustration and shame, Mary hid herself for months from the public view.
Philip stayed with Mary thirteen months, hoping with her for a child; when no sure sign of it appeared he begged her to let him go to Brussels, where the planned abdication of his father required his presence. She consented sadly, went with him to the barge that was to take him down the Thames, and watched from a window till the barge disappeared. Philip felt he had done his duty through an arduous year of making love to a sick woman, so he rewarded himself with the full blooded women of Brussels.
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Thanks for the picture, BLUEBIRD. Such a sweet child, buried in finery.
Poor Mary -- never had a chance.
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http://www.nndb.com/people/180/000346139/mary-tudor-1-sized.jpg
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Thanks, Bluebird.
Sigh. She looks so sweet. If only history had given her a different life: she was clearly not queen material.
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I remember reading a long time ago something more recently written then Durant that Mary's "pregnancy" was a tumor. I don't remember who authored that, so i can't give it any more credibility then Durant. Wikipedia says it was a "false pregnancy."
Jean
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It could have been a psychological pregnancy. We'll probably never know.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 595 - 599
BLOODY MARY
Mary was in a measure consoled by the return of Cardinal Pole to England. Charles had detained him in Brussels because Pole had opposed the Spanish marriage; but now that this had been consummated the imperial objections subsided; The Cardinal, as papal legate, crossed the Channel ( November 20, 1554 ) to the land he had left twenty-two years before; and the warm welcome given him by officials, clergy, and people attested the general satisfaction over renewal of relations with the papacy. He greeted Mary with almost the choicest phrase in his vocabulary. “ Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus,” and he trusted he might soon add, “blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” When parliament learned that Pole brought papal consent to the retention of confiscated Church property by present holders, all went merry as a wedding should. Parliament, on its knees, expressed repentance for its offences against the Church, and Bishop Gardiner, having confessed his own vacillation, gave the penitents absolution. The old statutes against Lollardry were renewed, and censorship of publications was returned from state to Church authorities. After the turmoil of twenty years everything seemed as before.
Pole was now the most influential man in England. He busied himself with the reorganization and reform of the English Church. With May’s help he restored some monasteries and a nunnery. Mary was happy to see the old religious customs live again, to see crucifixes and holy pictures again in churches, to join in pious processions of priests, children, or guilds, to sit or kneel through long masses for the quick and the dead. Now that hope of motherhood had gone, religion was her sustaining solace. But she could not resurrect the past. the new ideas had aroused exciting ferment in city minds; there were still a dozen sects clandestinely publishing their literature and creeds. Mary was pained to hear of groups that denied the divinity of Christ, the existence of the Holy Ghost, the transmission of original sin. To her simple faith these heresies seemed mortal crimes, far worse then treason. Word came to her that one preacher had prayed aloud, before his congregation, that God would convert her or soon remove her from the earth. One day a dead dog with a monastically tonsured head, and a rope round its neck, was thrown through a window into the Queen’s chamber.
It seemed unreasonable to Mary that the Protestant émigrés, to whom she had allowed safe departure from England, should be sending back pamphlets attacking her as a reactionary fool, and speaking of the “lousy Latin service” of an “idolatrous Mass.” A meeting of 17,000 persons at Aldgate (March 14, 1554 ) heard a call to put Elizabeth on the throne.
Mary was by nature and habit merciful -- till 1555. What transformed her into the most hated of English queens? Partly the provocation of attacks that showed no respect for her person, her faith, or her feelings; partly the fear that heresy was a cover for political revolt; partly the sufferings and disappointments that had embittered her spirit and darkened her judgment; partly the firm belief of her most trusted advisors that religious unity was indispensable to national solidarity and survival. Cardinal Pole, like Mary, was of a kindly disposition, but inflexible in dogma; he loved the Church so much that he shuddered at any questioning of her doctrines or authority.. He did not take any direct or personal lead in the Marian persecution; he counselled moderation and once freed twenty persons whom bishop Bonner had sentenced to the stake. Nevertheless he instructed the clergy that if all peaceful methods of suasion failed, major heretics “should be removed from life and cut off as rotten members from the body.” Mary’s own view was expressed hesitantly. “Touching the punishment of heretics, we think it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving meanwhile to do justice to such as by learning would seek to deceive the simple.” Her responsibility was at first merely permissive, but it was real. When (1558) the war with France proved disastrous to her and England, she ascribed the failure to God’s anger at her lenience with heresy, and thereafter she positively promoted persecution.
Gardiner opened the reign of terror by summoning to his Episcopal court (January 22, 1555) six clergymen who had refused to accept the re-established creed. One recanted; four, including John Hooper, deposed Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, were burned ( February 4-8, 1555 ). Gardiner seems to have had a revulsion of feeling after these executions; he took no further part in the persecution; his health broke down, and he died in November of this year. Bishop Bonner took charge of the slaughter. Philip, still in England, advised moderation; when Bonner condemned six more to the stake the Imperial ambassador, Renard, objected to “this barbarous precipitancy; and Philips confessor, a Spanish friar, denounced the convictions as contrary to the mild and forgiving spirit inculcated by Christ.” Bonner suspended the sentences for five weeks, then ordered them carried out. To each heretic he offered full pardon for recantation, and often added a promise of financial aid or some comfortable employment; but when such inducements failed he passed sentence grimly. In 1555, Cranmer sixty-six, Ridley, sixty-five; and Latimer, eighty, were brought from the Tower to stand trial at Oxford. On October 1 they were condemned; on October 6 they were burned. They were bound with chains to an iron post, a bag of powder was hung round each man’s neck, the faggots were lit. “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley,” said Latimer, “play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
These deaths marked the zenith of the persecution. Some 300 persons died in its course, 273 of them in the last four years of this reign. As the Holocaust advanced it became clear that it had been a mistake. Protestantism drew strength from its martyrs as early Christianity had done, and many Catholics were disturbed in their faith, and shamed in their Queen by the sufferings and fortitude of the victims. Bishop Bonner, though he did not enjoy the work, came to be called “Bloody Bonner”; one woman called him “the common cutthroat and general slaughter-slave to all the bishops in England.” In April 1556, British agents discovered a conspiracy, to depose Mary and enthrone Elizabeth.. The movement was suppressed, but it left Mary in constant fear of assassination.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 599 - 601
BLOODY MARY (cont.)
One group of fugitives encountered tribulations that reveal the dogmatic temper of the times. Jan Laski, a Polish Calvinist, had come to London in 1548, and had founded there the first Presbyterian church in England. A month after Mary’s accession Laski and part of the congregation left London in two Danish vessels. At Copenhagen they were denied entry unless they signed the official Lutheran confession of faith. As firm Calvinists they declined. Refused permission to land, they sailed to Wismar, Lubeck, and Hamburg, and in each case met with the same demand and repulse. The Lutherans of Germany shed no tears over Mary’s victims, but denounced them as detestable heretics and “Devil’s martyrs” for denying the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Calvin condemned the merciless sectarianism of the Lutherans, and in that year ( 1553 ) burned Servitus at the stake. After buffering the North Sea through most of the winter, the refugees at last found entry and humanity at Emden.
Mary moved with sombre fatality to her end. Her pious husband, now anomalously at war with the papacy as well as France, came to England (March 10,1557) and urged the Queen to bring Britain into the war as his ally. To make his mission less hateful to the English, he persuaded Mary to moderate the persecution.. But he could not so easily win public support; on the contrary, a month after his arrival, Thomas Stafford, a nephew of Cardinal Pole, fomented a rebellion with a view to freeing England from both Mary and Philip. He was defeated, and hanged (May 28, 1557 ) To fill the Queen’s cup of misery the Pope in that month repudiated Pole as papal legate, and accused him of heresy. On June 7 Mary, anxious to please Philip, and convinced that Henry II had supported Stafford’s plot, declared war against France. Having accomplished his purpose, Philip left England in July. Mary suspected she would never see him again. In this unwanted war England lost Calais (Jan. 6, 1558 ) which it had held for 211 years, and the thousands of Englishmen and women who had lived there, and now fled as penniless fugitives to Britain, spread the bitter charge that Mary’s government had been criminally negligent in defending England’s last possession on the Continent. Philip made a peace favourable to himself, without requiring the restoration of Calais. It was an old phrase that that precious port was the “brightest jewel in the English crown.”
Early in 1558 the Queen again thought herself pregnant. She made her will in expectation of a dangerous delivery, and despatched a message to Philip, beseeching his presence at the happy event. He sent his congratulations, but he did not have to come; Mary was mistaken. She was now quite forlorn, perhaps in some measure insane. She sat for hours on the floor, with knees drawn up to her chin; she wandered like a ghost through the papacy galleries; she wrote tear-blotted notes to a king who, anticipating her death, ordered his agents in England to incline the heart of Elizabeth toward marriage with some Spanish grandee, or with Philip himself.
In Mary’s final summer a plague fever moved through England. In September 1558, it struck the Queen. Combined with dropsy and a “superfluity of black bile,” it so weakened her that her will to live fell away. On November 6 she sent the crown jewels to Elizabeth. It was a gracious act, in which love of Church yielded to a desire to give England an orderly succession. She suffered long periods of unconsciousness; from one of these she awoke to tell how she had happily dreamed of children playing and singing before her. On November 17, she heard Mass early, and uttered the responses ardently. Before dawn she died.
On the same day died Cardinal Pole, as profoundly defeated as his Queen. In estimating him we must record the bitter fact that at the beginning of his last month he had condemned three men and two women to be burned for heresy. Nowhere in contemporary Christendom -- not even in Spain -- were so many men and women burned for their opinions as during Reginald Pole’s primacy of the English Church.
For Mary we may speak a more lenient word. Grief, illness, and many suffered wrongs had warped her mind. Her clemency passed into cruelty only after conspiracies had sought to deprive her of her crown or her head. She does not quite deserve the name “Bloody Mary”; it simplifies pitilessly a character in which there had been much to love. It is a strange distinction that she carried on the work of her father in alienating England from Rome. She showed to an England still Catholic the worst side of the Church she served. When she died England was readier than before to accept the new faith that she had laboured to destroy.
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"Grief, illness, and many suffered wrongs had warped her mind. Her clemency passed into cruelty only after conspiracies had sought to deprive her of her crown or her head. She does not quite deserve the name “Bloody Mary”; it simplifies pitilessly a character in which there had been much to love".
How tragic. And even more so that her personal tragedy became the tragedy of hundreds of others. I wish I could say that humanity has learned from this and countless other stories of the use and abuse of power, but I can't.
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OMG, this is like reading science fiction, except it's not. And we think ISIS is bad!?!
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
PGS 602 - 603
FROM ROBERT BRUCE TO JOHN KNOX J
The Indomitable Scotts
The warm and genial south generates civilization; the cold and hardy north repeatedly conquers the lax and lazy south, and absorbs and transforms civilization. The extreme north -- Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland -- fights the almost arctic elements to provide some welcome to civilization, and to contribute to it in the face of a thousand obstacles.
In Scotland the sterile, roadless Highlands encouraged feudalism and discouraged culture, while the green and fertile Lowlands invited invasion after invasion by Englishmen who could not understand why Scotland should not receive their overflow and their kings. The Scots anciently Celtic, medievally mingled with Irish, Norse, Angles, Saxons, and Normans, had by 1500 merged into a people narrow as their peninsular in feelings and ideas, deep as their mists in superstition and mythology, proud as their promontories, rough as their terrain, impetuous as their torrents; at once ferocious and tender, cruel and brave, and always invincible. Poverty seemed rooted in geography, and manners in poverty; so parsimony grew out of the grudging soil. The peasants were too burdened with toil to have time for letters, and the nobles who kept them in bondage prided themselves on illiteracy, finding no use for the alphabet in their feuds or wars. The mountains and the clans divided the sparse population into passionate jealousies that gave no quarter in war, no security in peace. The nobles, having nearly all the military power in their private bands, dominated Parliament and the kings; the Douglases alone had 5000 retainers, and revenues rivaling the crown’s.
Before 1500 industry was primitive and domestic, commerce was precarious, cities were few and small. All Scotland had some 600,000 inhabitants -- half of Glasgow’s number today. Glasgow was a minor fishing town; Perth was, until 1452, the capital; Edinburgh had 16,000 souls. The individual, local, and national spirit of independence expressed itself in village and township institutions of self-government within the framework of feudalism and monarchy. The burghers -- the enfranchised citizens of the towns -- were allowed representatives in the Parliament or Assembly of Estates, but they had to sit, not in their own Commons as in England, but amid the feudal landowners, and their voice and vote were lost in the noble majority. Unable to buttress their power against the nobles by an alliance, as in France, with rich merchants and populous cities, the kings sought support in the affluence and influence of the Church. The nobles, always at odds with the kings, learned to hate the Church and love her property, and joined in a universal cry that national wealth was being siphoned to Rome. In Scotland it was the nobles -- not, as in England, the kings and merchants who made the Reformation i.e. freed secular from ecclesiastical power.
Through its hold on the piety of the people the Scottish Church achieved opulence amid dulling poverty and transmundane hopes. A papal envoy, toward the end of the fifteenth century, reported to the pope that ecclesiastical income in Scotland equaled all other income combined. The preachers and the burghers almost monopolized literacy. The Scotish clergy were already in the sixteenth century noted for scholarship, and it was the Church of course, who founded and maintained the universities of St. Andrews and Aberdeen. After 1487 the bishops and abbots were “nominated” -- in effect appointed -- by the kings, who used these offices as rewards for political services or as sinecures for their illegitimate sons. James V endowed three of his bastards with the ecclesiastical revenues of Kelso, Melrose, Holyrood, and St. Andrews. The wordly tastes of these royal appointees were in a measure responsible for the deterioration of the clergy in the sixteenth century. The pre-Reformation poets of Scotland spared no words in satirizing the clergy; and the clergy themselves, ascribed the degredation of the Church in Scotland to corruption in morals and profane lewdness of life in churchmen of all ranks. We should add that the morals of the clergy merely reflected those of the laity -- above all, of the nobles and kings.
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" a people narrow as their peninsular in feelings and ideas, deep as their mists in superstition and mythology, proud as their promontories, rough as their terrain, impetuous as their torrents; at once ferocious and tender, cruel and brave, and always invincible."
Wow! Any Scots here to comment? (It sounds awfully good, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense).
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Cardinal_Reginald_Pole.jpg
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Here i am, Scotch-Irish in my bones, descendent of founders of 3 Presbyterian Churches in central Pa in the 18th century. The arguments here against Catholicism sound much like what i heard from my , still, Presbyterian grandparents, Mother and aunts and uncles. The only prejudice i remember hearing in my house was against Catholics. AND - i know, my 9th grade English teacher would have a fit at my starting a sentence with a conjunction, but i use it for emphasis ;D - how ironic to be reading these arguments against the Church and England as Scotland prepares to vote on secession from the UK!!! In 2014!!!
I love the second paragraph, it could be used all alone to teach analogy, "deep as", "rough as", "proud as"............... Miss High (9th grade English teacher) would love it too. JoanK, i don't know if they were much different then people all over the world at the time. What do you think?
Jean
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Undoubtedly there were cultural differences between England and Scotland (and probably proud of it!). Why wouldn't there be? The problem with descriptions like the Durants', while they undoubtedly contain some truth, they are often used as a basis for unfair prejudice and discrimination.
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When is the reformation?
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Martin Luther starts the Reformation in Germany in 1517.
Joank, yes cultural differences, but the attributes to Scottish behavior seems to me to be typical human behavior. Maybe i'm not breaking it down enough.
Jean
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JEAN: good point!
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Hello,
I'm a first generation Scottish and Irish person. My mother was from a Presbyterian family from Forfar, Scotland and my blessed father was an Irish Catholic from Cork. My dear father always said that every Scotsman's dream was to marry an Irishman.
Peg Mahoney
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Hi Peg, welcome!
Why did a Scots man want to marry an Irishmen? ;)
Jean
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Hi, Peg. Welcome. You're just in time to hear the Durants' take on Scottish history.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 604 - 606
ROYAL CHRONICLE 1314 - 1554
The basic fact in the history of the Scottish state is fear of England. English kings, for England’s safety from rear attack, time and again tried to annex Scotland to the English crown. Scotland, to protect itself, accepted alliance with England's perennial enemy, France. Thereby hangs this chronicle.
With bows and arrows and battle axes the Scots won freedom from England at Bannockburn ( 1314 ). Robert Bruce, having there led them to victory, ruled them till his death by leprosy ( 1329) His son David II, like the Scottish kings from time beyond memory, was crowned on the sacred “Stone of Destiny” in the abbey of Scone. When Edward III of England began the Hundred Years’ War with France he thought it wise first to secure his northern front; he defeated the Scots at Halidon Hill, and set up Edward Balliol as his puppet on the Scottish throne ( 1333) David II regained the crown only by paying the English a ransom of 100,000 marks, ( $6,667,000). As he left no direct heir at his death ( 1371), the kingdom passed to his nephew Robert Stuart, with whom the fateful Stuart dynasty began.
The war of Britains two halves against the whole was soon resumed. The French sent an army to Scotland; Scots and French ravaged the border countries of England, took Durham and put to death all its inhabitants-- men, women, children, nuns, monks, priests.. Playing the next move in this royal chess, the English invaded Scotland, burned Perth and Dundee, and destroyed Melrose abbey.( 1385) Robert III carried on; but when the English captured his son James (1406) he died of grief. England kept the boy king in genteel imprisonment until the Scots signed the perpetual peace ( 1423 ), renouncing all further co-operation with France.
James I picked up, in captivity, considerable education, and an English bride. In honour of this “milk white dove” he composed, in the Scots tongue, “The King’s Quair “(i.e. book) an allegorical poem of surprising merit for a king. Indeed James was remarkable in many ways. He was one of the best wrestlers, runners, riders, archers, spearmen, craftsmen, and musicians in Scotland, and he was a beneficent and competent ruler. He imposed penalties upon dishonest commerce and negligent husbandry, built hospitals, required taverns to close at nine, turned the energies of youth from football to martial exercises, and demanded a reform of ecclesiastical discipline and monastic life. When his active reign began ( 1424 ) he pledged himself to put down chaos and crime in Scotland, and to end the private wars of the nobles and their feudal despotism; “ if God gives me but a dog’s life I will make the key keep the castle and the bracken keep the cow” i.e. end robbery of homes and cattle -- “through all Scotland”.
A Highland thief robbed a woman of two cows, she vowed that she would ne’er wear shoon till she had walked to the King to denounce the weakness of the law. “You lie “ said the thief; “I will have you shod.” and he nailed horse-shoes to her naked feet. She found her way to the King nevertheless. He had the robber hunted down, had him led about Perth with a canvas picture of the crime, and saw to it that the brute was safely hanged. Meanwhile he quarrelled opportunely with obstructive barons, brought a few to the gallows, confiscated excess holdings, taxed the lords as well as the burgesses and gave the government the funds needed to replace many tyrannies with one. He called to the Parliament the lairds -- proprietors of the lesser estates -- and made them and the middle class an offset to the nobles and the clergy. In 1437 a band of nobles killed him.
The sons of the nobles whom he had cut down in life or property continued against James II their struggle against the centralising monarchy. While the new king was still a lad of seven his ministers invited the young Earl of Douglas, and a younger brother, to be the King’s guests; they came, were given a mock trial, and were beheaded(1440) Twelve years later James II himself invited William, Earl of Douglas, to his court at Stirling, gave him safe conduct, entertained him royally, and slew him on the charge that he had had treasonable correspondence with England. The King captured all English strongholds in Scotland but one, and was blown to bits by the accidental exp-losion of his own cannon. James III paid the penalty of his father’s lawlessness; after many ferocious encounters he was captured by nobles and killed(1488). James IV married Margaret Tudor , sister of Henry VIII. Through that marriage Mary Queen of Scots would later claim the English throne. Nevertheless, when Henry joined Spain, Austria, Venice, and the papacy in attacking France ( 1511), James felt bound to help- Scotland’s old ally, now so imperilled, by invading England. On Flodden Field he fought with mad courage while many of his men turned and fled; and in that disaster he died (1513).
James V was then but a year old. An involved struggle ensued for the regency. David Beaton -- an ecclesiastic distinguished by ability, courage, and an appreciation of women-- secured the prize, was made Archbishop of St. Andrews, then Cardinal, and trained the young King in fervent allegiance to the Church. In 1538 James married Mary of Lorraine, sister of Francis, Duke of Guise, the leader of the Catholic party in dogma-divided France. The Scottish nobility, increasingly anticlerical, looked with interest at the current divorce of England from the papacy, envied English lords appropriating or receiving church property, and took “wages” from Henry VIII to oppose their King’s alliance with France. When James V waged war on England the nobles refused to support him. Defeated at Solway Moss (1542), he fled in shame to Falkland, and died there December 14. On December 8 his wife had given birth to Mary, who, six days old, became Queen of Scots.
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I'm hoping someone here will explain the current upcoming vote in Scotland to clueless me.
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Joan - here is the wiki site - very up to date - on the issue of Scotland's independence. If you don't want to read the whole history click on "reasons" under "support" and "opposition" at the bottom of the index list. No news channel did a good job on explaining the reasons.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence#Independence_referendum.2C_2014
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pg. 606
THE ROYAL CHRONICLE (cont.)
Beaton produced a will in which the late King had named him regent for the infant Queen. The nobles questioned the authenticity of the document, imprisoned the Cardinal, and chose as regent James, Earl of Arran; but Arran released Beaton and made him chancellor. When Beaton renewed the alliance with France, Henry VIII resolved on merciless war. To his army in the north he sent orders to burn and destroy everything in its path, “putting man, woman, and child to fire and sword without exception where any resistance shall be made,” and particularly “sparing no creature alive” in Beaton’s St. Andrews. The army did its best; “abbey and grange, castle and hamlet, were buried in common ruin”; for two days Edinburgh was sacked and burned; farm villages for seven miles around were pillaged and razed; 10,000 horned cattle, 12,000 sheep, 1,300 horses, were led away to England( 1544). Sir James Kirkcaldy, Norman Leslie, and other Scottish gentlemen offered to help the English “burn places belonging to the extreme party in the Church, to arrest and imprison the principal opponents of the English alliance, and to apprehend and slay the Cardinal himself.” Henry welcomed the offer, and promise a thousand pounds toward expenses. The plan fell through for a time, but was carried out on May 29, 1546. Two Kirkcaldies, two Leslies, and a numerous band of nobles and cutthroats forced entry into the Cardinal’s palace, and slew him almost ‘in flagrante delicto,’ “for,” said Knox, “he had been busy at his accounts with Mistress Ogilvy that night.” “Now because the weather was hot,” Knox added, “it was thought best, to keep him from stinking, to give him great salt enough, a cope of lead . . . to await what exequies his brethren the bishops could prepare for him. These things we write merrily.” The assassins retired to the castle of St. Andrews on the coast, and awaited aid from England by sea.
Arran resumed charge of the government. To assure French help he promised the infant Queen Mary Stuart to the French Dauphin; and to prevent her seizure by the English she was clandestinely sent to France ( Aug 13, 1548) The accession of Mary Tudor in England ended for a time the danger of further English invasions; Catholicism now ruled on both sides of the border. French influences prevailed upon Arran to resign the regency ( 1554), to Mary of Lorraine, mother of the absent Queen. She was a woman of intelligence, patience, and courage, who yielded only to the overwhelming spirit of the age. Dowered with the culture of the French Renaissance, she smiled tolerantly at the rival religious dogmas that raged around her. She ordered the release of several imprisoned Protestants, and allowed such freedom of preaching and worship to ‘heretics’ that many French Protestants, fleeing from Mary Tudor, found refuge, and were allowed to form congregations, under Mary of Lorraine. She was the most humane and civilized ruler that Scotland had known for centuries.
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I don't think it matters at all in the great scheme of things, but according to the heading of these current pages we are still on vol. V THE RENAISSANCE, but we have been on Volume VI THE REFORMATION, for quite some time now. And my post numbers are stuck at Trevor 299. or some such. LOL.
Speaking of print errors, the phrase 'in flagrante delicto' as given in the volume I'm copying from is written as "fragrante delicto". I wonder if Durant was having a little joke ? Trevor
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TREVOR: thanks for the heads up. I'll see what the techies can do about your number of posts. I'll see if I can fix the heading (knock on wood).
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the heading seems to have worked and I reported the number of posts problem. You certainly deserve credit for all the work you've done.
Thank you for that piece on the referendum. I don't know which way I would have voted; thank goodness I didn't have to decide.
In recent (to me anyway) times, I've seen a lot of small states split off from bigger ones, only to find they had no independent source of economic prosperity. There is a relatively minor (to me anyway) case of that here in California. Many in Northern California really want to split off as a separate state. But all the money is in the South (all the water is in the North).
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume VI THE REFORMATION
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends." This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
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Trevor, thank you for all of your work facilitating this discussion! I've bumped your posts to 300 to see if that will make the automatic numbering kick in. If that doesn't work next time you post a message here, if you only post in this discussion try posting in another discussion to see if that will increase the number. If so, we'll know that the problem is somehow in this discussion.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
Pgs. 607 - 608
JOHN KNOX: 1505 - 1559
The propaganda of reform was already a hundred years old in Scotland. In 1433 Paul Crawar was accused of importing the doctrines of Wyclif and Huss; he was convicted by the Church and burned by the state. In 1494 thirty “Lollards of Kyle” were summoned before the Bishop of Glasgow on charges of repudiating religious relics and images, auricular confession, priestly ordination and powers, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, Masses for the dead, clerical celibacy, and papal authority; here was almost a summary of the reformation twenty-three years before Luther’s Theses. Apparently the accused men recanted.
Soon after 1523 the writings of Luther entered Scotland. A Scots translation of Wyclif’s New Testament circulated in manuscript, and a cry rose for a Christianity based exclusively on the Bible. Patrick Hamilton went to Paris and Louvain, studied Erasmus and Greek philosophy, returned to Scotland swelling with the new dogmas, preached justification by faith, was invited by James ( uncle of David) Beaton, then archbishop of St. Andrews, to come and explain himself, came, stood his ground, and was burned (1528). Two other “ Professors” as the early Scottish reformers called themselves, were burned in 1534. Four men were hanged, and one woman drowned, in 1544; according to the not always reliable Knox, she went to her death with a sucking babe at her breast.
These murders had been too scattered in time and place to arouse any powerful reaction; but the hanging of George Wishart touched the souls of many, and was the first effective event of the Scottish Reformation. About 1543 Wishart translated the First Helvetic Confession; unfortunately this Protestant declaration ordered secular powers to punish heretics. From that time the Swiss forms of Protestantism -- at first humanely Zwinglian, then rigorously Calvinist -- more and more displaced Lutheranism in the Scottish movement. Wishart preached in Montrose and Dundee, bravely tended the sick in a plague, and expounded the new faith in Edinburgh at a time when David Beaton was holding a convocation of Scottish clergy there. The Cardinal had Wishart arrested and tried for heresy; he was convicted and burned.( 1546).
Among his converts was one of the most powerful and influential figures in history. John Knox was born between 1505 and 1515 near Haddington. His peasant parents destined him for the priesthood; he studied at Glasgow; was ordained (c,1532) and became known for his learning in both civil and canon law. His autobiographical ‘History’ says nothing of his youth, but suddenly introduces him (1546) as the ardent disciple and fearless bodyguard of George Wishart, bearing a heavy two handed sword. After Wishart's arrest Knox wandered from one hiding place to another; then, at Easter of 1547, in the Castle of St. Andrews, he joined the band that had killed Cardinal Beaton.
Feeling a need for religion, the hunted men asked Knox to be their preacher. He protested his unfitness, consented, and they soon agreed that they had never heard such fiery preaching before. He called the Roman Church “The Synagogue of Satan,” and identified her with the awful beast described in the Apocalypse. He adopted the Lutheran doctrine that man is saved “only by faith that the blood of Jesus Christ purges us from all sins.” In July a French fleet sailed up and bombarded the Castle. For four weeks the besieged held out; finally they were overpowered, and for nineteen months Knox and others laboured as galley slaves. We have few details of their treatment, except that they were importuned to hear Mass, and Knox tells, stoutly refused.. Perhaps those bitter days, and the cut of the overseer’s lash, shared in sharpening Knox’s spirit to hatred and his tongue and pen to violence.
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It looks like your number of posts is increasing, Trevor. The number showing in all of your old posts will have changed also. You may not have realized that when the number of posts increases, the SAME number appears in ALL of your posts.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 608 - 610
JOHN KNOX (cont.)
When the captives were freed (February 1549) Knox took service as a protestant clergyman in England on a salary from the Somerset government. He preached every day of the week. We of today, who do not often enjoy sermons, can but faintly imagine the hunger that the sixteenth century felt for them. The parish priest left preaching to the bishops, who had left it to the friars, who were occasional. In Protestantism the preachers became journals of news and opinion; they told their congregation the events of the week or day; and religion was then so interwoven with life that nearly every occurrence touched the faith or its ministers. They denounced the vices and errors of their parishioners, and instructed their government as to its duties and faults. In 1551 Knox, preaching before Edward VI and Northumberland, asked how it was that the most pious princes had so often the most ungodly councillors. The Duke tried to silence him with a bishopric, but failed.
Mary Tudor was more dangerous, and after some cautious dallying Knox fled to Dieppe and Geneva ( 1554). Calvin recommended him to an English speaking congregation at Frankfurt, but his code and countenance proved too severe for his hearers, and he was asked to leave. He returned to Geneva (1555), and we may judge the force of Calvin’s character from the influence he now exerted upon a personality as positive and powerful as his own. Knox described Geneva under Calvin as “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the Apostles.” Calvinism suited his temper because that faith was sure of itself, sure of being inspired by God, sure of its divine obligation to compel the individual in conduct and in creed, sure of its right to direct the state. All this sank into Knox’s spirit, and through him into Scottish history. Anticipating with horror the rule of Catholic Mary Stuart in Scotland, he asked Calvin and Bollinger whether a people might righteously refuse to obey “a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion.” They would not commit themselves, but John Knox knew his own mind.
In the fall of 1555, now presumably fifty years old, he showed the tender side of a rough character by returning to Mary Tudor’s England, going to Berwick, and marrying Margaret Bowes because he loved her mother. Mrs Elizabeth Bowes had five sons, ten daughters, and a Catholic husband. She was won to Protestantism by Knox’s preaching; she confided her domestic troubles to him; he found pleasure in advising her, and comfort in her friendship, and apparently the relationship remained spiritual to the end. When Margaret married Knox, Mrs Bowes left her husband and went to live with her daughter and her confessor. The wife died after five years of marriage. Knox married again, but Mrs Bowes remained with him. Rarely in history has a mother-in-law been so loving and loved.
The strange trio went to Scotland where Mary of Lorraine still found tolerance useful in winning the support of the Protestant faction in the nobility. He praised the Regent as “a princess honourable, endowed with wisdom and graces singularly.” He organized Protestant congregations in Edinburgh and elsewhere, and made such influential converts as William Maitland, laird of Lethington, and Mary Stuart’s illegitimate brother, James Stuart, destined to be regent as Earl of Murray or Moray. An Ecclesiastical court, disliking this development, summoned Knox to give an account of his doings. He chose discretion, and slipped out of Scotland with his wife and her mother ( July 1556). In his absence the ecclesiastical court burned him in effigy. This painless martyrdom ennobled him in the eyes of the Scottish Protestants, and from that moment, wherever he was, he was accepted as leader of the Scottish Reform.
In Geneva, as pastor of an English congregation, he developed the full Calvinist program of ministerial supervision over the morals and manners of his parishioners. At the same time he invited Mrs Anne Locke, whom he had converted in London, to leave her husband and come with her daughter to live near him in Geneva. Over the opposition of her head, Mrs Locke left London and arrived in Geneva ( 1557) with a son, a daughter, and a maid. The daughter died a few days later, but Mrs. Locke remained near Knox, and helped the aging and now less comforting Mrs. Bowes to minister to the preacher’s needs. We have no evidence of sexual relations, and we hear no complaints from Mrs. Knox; we hardly hear of her at all. The old home-breaker would be mothered, and had his way in Christ’s name.
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Strange home life.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 610 - 613
KNOX (cont.)
He had his way in almost everything. Like so many great men, he was physically small, but his broad shoulders warned of strength, and his stern visage announced certitude and demanded authority. A man of fanatical energy, who liked to preach two or three times a week for two or three hours at a time, and in addition, governed public affairs, and private lives -- no wonder that in “twenty-four hours I have not four free to natural rest.” His courage was tempered with timely timidity; he had the good sense to flee from imminent death; he was accused of urging Protestants to perilous revolution in England and Scotland while remaining at Geneva or Dieppe; yet he faced a hundred dangers and denounced the corrupt Northumberland to his face, and would later proclaim democracy to a queen. No money could buy him. He thought or claimed that his voice was the voice of God.
The Calvinist creed was one source of his strength. God had divided all men into the elect and the damned; Knox and his supporters were of the former group, and were therefore divinely destined to victory; their opponents were reprobates, and sooner or later hell would be their home. For such God-damned opponents no Christian love was due, for they were the sons of Satan, not of God; there was no good in them whatever, and it would be well to exterminate them completely from the earth. In conflict with the reprobate all methods were justified -- lies, treachery, flexible contradictions of policy. The cause hallowed the means. Yet Knox’s moral philosophy, on its surface, was precisely the opposite of Machiavelli’s. He did not admit that statesmen should be freed from the moral code required of citizens; he demanded that governors and governed alike should obey the precepts of the Bible. But the Bible to him meant chiefly the Old Testament; the thundering prophets of Judea were more to his purpose than the man on the cross. He was an undeceivable judge of other men’s characters, sometimes of his own. “Of nature I am churlish,” he handsomely confessed; and he attributed his flight from Scotland to human weakness and “wickedness.” He gave himself in full blooded sincerity to his task, which was to set up the sway of a cleansed and learned priesthood over mankind, beginning with the Scots. He believed in a theocracy, but did more for democracy than any other man of his time.
His writings were no literary exercises; they were political thunderclaps. They rivalled Luther’s in vigour of vituperation. The Roman Church was to him, “a harlot.... altogether polluted with all kinds of spiritual fornication.” Catholics were “pestilent papists” and “Mass- mongers,” and their priests were “ bloody wolves.” When Mary Tudor married Philip II, Knox burst out in a “A faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Truth in England” ( 1554).
Has not Mary shown herself : to be an open traitress to the Imperial Crown of England . . . to bring in a stranger and make a proud Spaniard King, to the shame, dishonour, and destruction of the nobility; to the spoil from them and theirs of their honours, lands, possessions, chief offices, and promotions; to the utter decay of the treasures, commodities, navy, and fortifications of the Realm; to the abasing of the yeomanry, to the slavery of the commonality, to the overthrow of Christianity and God’s true religion; and finally to the utter subversion of the whole public estate and commonwealth of England?. . . God, for His great mercy’s sake, stir up some Pinehas, Elijah, or Jehu, that the blood of abominable idolaters may pacify God’s wrath that it consume not the whole multitude !
More characteristic was the ‘ First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,’ written in Dieppe in 1558 against what seemed to Knox a plague of women rulers in Europe -- Mary Tudor, Mary of Lorraine, Mary Stuart, and Catherine De Médicis. We can understand his horror at Mary Tudor’s application of his principles. But even if Mary had not persecuted, Knox would have considered her a monster, a political freak, violating the normal rule that men should govern states.
He began:
Wonder it is that amongst so many pregnant wits as the Isle of Great Britain hath produced, so many godly and zealous preachers as England did sometime nourish, and amongst so many learned, and men of grave judgment, as this day by Jezebel {Mary Tudor} are exiled, none is found so stout of courage, so faithful to God . . . that they dare admonish the inhabitants of that Isle how abominable before God is the Empire or Rule of a wicked woman, yea, of a traitorous and bastard ; and what may a people or nation left destitute of a lawful head do by authority of God’s Word in electing and appointing common rulers and magistrates . . . We hear the blood of our brethren, the members of Christ Jesus, most cruelly to be shed, and the monstrous empire of a cruel woman . . . we know to be the only occasion of all those miseries....
To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to Nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice. . . for who can deny but it is repugnant to nature that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see? That the weak, sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole strong? And finally that the foolish, mad, and phrenetic shall govern the discreet, and give counsel to such as be of sober mind? And such be all women, compared unto men in bearing of authority . . . Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.
For this Knox quoted indisputable Scriptural authority; but when he passed to history , and sought for examples of states ruined by women rulers, he was evidently perplexed to find their record much better than that of the kings. Nevertheless he concluded with confident damnation: Cursed Jezebel of England with the pestilent and detestable generation of papists make no little bragging and boast that they have triumphed not only against Wyatt . . . I fear not to say that the day of vengeance, which shall apprehend that horrible monster Jezebel of England is already appointed in the council of the Eternal.... Let all men be advised, for the Trumpet has once blown.
Mary banned the book as an incitation to rebellion, and made its possession a capital crime.
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"the Monstrous Regiment of Women". I always wondered where that phrase came from. Well boo to him. He would have had apoplexy if he lived now. (Maybe not -- there seem to have been more women rulers then than now.)
Still, cutting off your head for possessing a book is just wrong.
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He thought or claimed that his voice was the voice of God.
Another megalomaniac who should have been confined to the insane asylum. He could have been given work digging holes and filling them back up, and that would have had more meaning than any words spewing from his filthy mouth.
Knox was a gasbag and blowhard and was unfit to live in the civil world.
Emma
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 615 - 616
KNOX AND THE CONGREGATION OF JESUS CHRIST
Knox returned to the attack in “An Appellation to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland.” (July 1558):
“ None provoking the people to Idolatry ought to be exempted from the punishment of death.. . . The same ought to be done wheresoever Christ Jesus and His Evangel is so received...... as under King Edward of late days was done in England. . . . I fear not to affirm that it had been the duty of the nobility, judges, rulers, and people of England not only to have resisted and againstanded Mary, that Jezebel . . . but also to have punished her to the death.”
Knox urged the people of Scotland to apply this doctrine of legitimate rebellion to Mary of Lorraine. He complained that the Regent ( Mary of Lorraine ) had surrounded herself with French courtiers and soldiers who were eating the spare substance of the Scots:
“While strangers are brought in to suppress us, our commonwealth, and posterity; while idolatry is maintained, and Jesus Christ, His true religion despised, while idle bellies and bloody tyrants, the bishops, are maintained and Christ’s true messengers persecuted; while, finally, virtue is contemned and vice extolled . . what godly man can be offended that we shall seek reformation of these enormities ( yes even by force of arms, seeing that otherwise it is denied us )?
There is a strange mixture of revolution and reaction in Knox’s appeals. Many thinkers were to agree with him on the occasional justification of tyrannicide. Yet his conviction that those who were sure of their theology should suppress -- if necessary, kill -- their opponents harked back to the darkest practices of the Inquisition. Knox took the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy as still in force, and interpreted it literally. Every heretic was to be put to death, and cities predominantly heretical were to be smitten with the sword and utterly destroyed, even to the cattle therein, and every house in them should be burned down.
An obscure Anabaptist in those same years penned a criticism of Calvinism, under the title of ‘Careless by Necessity‘. Its author wondered how the Calvinists, after knowing Christ’s conception of a loving Father, could believe that God had created men whose eternal damnation he had foreseen and willed. God, said the Anabaptist, had given man a natural inclination to love their offspring; if man was made in the image of God how could God be more cruel than man? Calvinists, the author continued, did more harm than atheists for they are less injurious to God who believe He is not than those who say He is unmerciful, cruel and an oppressor.” Knox replied that there are mysteries beyond human reason.
Unconvinced by reason, and believing himself faithful to the spirit of Christ, Knox in 1559, when England was under a Protestant queen, sent to its people ‘A Brief Exhortation’ advising them to atone for the Marian persecution by making the Calvinist creed and its moral discipline compulsory throughout the land. England rejected his advice. In that year Knox returned to Scotland to preside over the theology of its revolution.
The population of Edinburgh, firmly catholic in 1543 bore most directly and resentfully the influx of supercilious Gauls during the regency of Mary of Lorraine. Everything was done to make life miserable for the intruders. Feeling rose on both sides, and as the clergy supported the French, the spirit of nationalism took on anti-Catholic overtones. Religious processions -- in which images of the Virgin and the saints were carried and apparently worshiped, and relics were reverently displayed and kissed -- aroused increasing ridicule and doubt. According to Knox similar iconoclastic sallies occurred in all parts of the country.
On December 3, 1557, a ‘Common Band’ of anticlerical nobles met at Edinburgh ( which had become the capital in 1542), and signed the “First Scottish Covenant.” They called themselves “Lords of the Congregation of Jesus Christ, “ as opposed to the “congregation of Satan “-- i.e. the Church. They resolved to establish reformed churches throughout Scotland, and announced that the Book of Common Prayer, prescribed for England under Edward VI, was to be adopted by all their congregations. The Catholic bishops protested against this bold schism, and urged archbishop Hamilton to suppress it. Reluctantly, he ordered the burning of Walter Milne -- an aged priest who had unfrocked himself, married, and taken to preaching the Reformed faith among the poor. The people had high respect for the old man; they voiced their horror at this last burning of a Scottish Protestant for heresy, and raised a cairn of stones over the site of his death. When another preacher was summoned to trial his defenders took up arms, forced their way into the Regent’s presence, and warned her that they would allow no further persecution of religious belief. The Lords of the Congregation notified the Regent (Nov. 1558 ) that unless liberty of worship were granted they would not be responsible “ if it shall chance that abuses be violently reformed.” In that month they sent word to Knox that they would protect him if he returned.
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Here are two links about current church attendance and secularism in Scotland after the last census.
http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/04/scots-are-losing-their-religion
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/census-reveals-huge-rise-in-number-of-non-religious-scots.22270874
Emma
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Interesting. I'll bet the numbers are similar in other countries.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 616 - 618
KNOX and the CONGREGATION
Knox took his time, but in May 2, 1559, he reached Edinburgh. On May 3 he preached at Perth a sermon that let loose the revolution. It was a sermon, he tells us, “vehement against idolatry”; it explained “what idolatry and what abomination was in the Mass,” and “ what commandment God had given for the destruction of the monuments thereof.” The “rascal multitude,” as he describes it, got out of hand. A priest, in Knox’s account, “gave a child a great blow, who in anger took up a stone, and casting at the priest, did hit the tabernacle and broke down an image; and immediately the whole multitude who were about, cast stones, and put hands to the said tabernacle, and to all other monuments of idolatry.” The crowd poured into three monasteries, pillaged them, smashed the images, but allowed the friars to carry away whatever their shoulders could bare. “ Within two days these three great places... were so destroyed that the walls only did remain.”
The Regent was between two fires. Her brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, advised her to imitate Mary Tudor and cut down the leading protestants, while in and around Perth the victorious rebels were threatening to kill any priest who dared to say Mass. The Congregation dispatched an appeal to the nobles to support the revolt. Regent Mary entered Perth with what troops she could muster. But the friends of the Congregation gathered in armed array, and Mary, perceiving that she could not overcome them, signed a truce (May 29, 1559 ) Knox retired to St Andrews, and over archiepiscopal prohibitions, preached in the parish church against idolatry. Moved by his fervour, his hearers removed all monuments of idolatry” from the churches of the city, and burned these images before the eyes of the Catholic clergy. The archbishop fled to Perth; but the forces of the Congregation, claiming that Mary had violated the truce by using French funds to pay her Scottish troops, attacked and captured that citadel ( June 25 ). On the 28th they attacked and burned the abbey of Scone. If we may believe the imaginative Knox, a “poor aged matron, watching,” said “now I see and understand that God’s judgments are just. Since my remembrance this place has been nothing but a den of whoremongers. It is incredible .... how many wives have been adulterated and virgins deflowered by the filthy beasts that have been fostered in this den, but especially by that wicked man . . . the bishop.”
Mary of Lorraine, now so seriously ill that she momentarily expected death, fled to Leith, and tried to delay the victorious Protestants with negotiations until aid might come from France. The Congregation overplayed her by winning support from Elizabeth of England. Knox wrote the Queen a letter assuring her that she had not been included in his trumpet blast against female sovereigns. William Cecil, Elizabeth’s first minister, advised her to help the Scottish revolution as a move toward bringing Scotland into political dependence upon England. This he felt, was a legitimate protection against Mary Stuart, who, on becoming Queen of France( 1559), had claimed also the throne of England on the ground that Elizabeth was a bastard usurper. Soon an English fleet in the firth of Forth blocked any landing of French aid for the Regent, and an English army joined the congregation’s forces in attacking Leith. Mary of Lorraine retired to the castle of Edinburgh, and having kissed her retinue one by one -- died. (June 10, 1560). She was a good woman cast for the wrong part in an inescapable tragedy.
Her last defenders, blockaded and starving, surrendered. On July 6th, 1560, the representatives of the Congregation, of Mary Stuart, France, and England, signed the treaty of Edinburgh, whose articles were to enter deeply into the later conflict between Mary and Elizabeth.. All foreign troops except 120 French were to leave Scotland; Mary Stuart and Francis II relinquished claim to the English crown; Mary was acknowledged Queen of Scotland but she was never to make peace or war without the consent of the Estates; these were to name five of the twelve men in her privy council; no foreigner or clergy man was to hold high office; and a general amnesty was to be declared, with exceptions to be specified by the Estates. It was a humiliating peace for the absent Queen, and a remarkable and almost bloodless triumph for the Congregation.
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A little science fiction - think what history/historians/history books would be without religious infighting. I suppose human beings would have found other things to fight about.
♪♫♪•*¨•.¸¸♪♫ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ there is power, power, wonder working power♪♫♪•*¨•.¸¸♪♫ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ (in the blood of the lamb)
I guess you have to have been raised in the Christian protestant church to know that song, but much of history is about acquiring power isn't it? And what ever box the power comes in has been used as an excuse to go to battle. Now which comes first - humans need to fight, or humans need for power?
Jean
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" Now which comes first - humans need to fight, or humans need for power?"
That's a good question. I think they are both there.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 618 - 620
Confession of Faith by Knox
The Parliament that met on August 1, 1560 accepted, with only eight dissenting votes, a Confession of Faith drawn up by Knox and his aids. As still the official creed of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, some major articles should be commemorated :
1. We confess and acknowledge only one God . . . in three persons.
II. We confess and acknowledge this our God to have created man ( to wit, our first father Adam ), of whom also God formed the woman in His own image . . . so that in the whole nature of man could be noted no imperfection. From which honour and perfection man and woman did both fall, the woman being deceived by the serpent, and man obeying to the voice of the woman ... .
III. By which transgression, commonly called Original Sin, was the image of God utterly defiled in man; and he and his posterity of nature became enemies to God utterly defiled in man; and he and his posterity nature became enemies of God, slaves to Satan, and servants to sin; in samekill that death everlasting has had, and shall have, power and dominion over all that has not been, are not, or shall not be regenerate from above; which regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost, working in the hearts of the elect of God an assured faith in the promise of God . . . by which faith they apprehend Christ Jesus . . .
VIII. That same eternal God and Father . . . of mere mercy elected us in Christ Jesus . . . before the foundation of the world. . . .
XVI. We most earnestly believe that from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be, a Church, that is to say, a company and multitude of men chosen by God, who rightly worship and embrace Him by true faith in Christ Jesus. . . out of which Church there is neither life nor eternal felicity. And therefore we utterly abhor the blasphemy of those that affirm that men which live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion soever they have professed . . .
XXI. We acknowledge . . . . two chief sacraments only . . . Baptism and the Supper . . . Not that we imagine any transubstantiation of bread into God’s natural body . . . but by the operation of the Holy Ghost . . . we believe that the Faithful, in the right use of the Lord’s Table, so do eat the body, and drink the blood, of the lord Jesus . . .
XXIV. We confess and acknowledge empires, kingdoms, dominions, and cities to be . . . ordained by God . . . To kings, princes, and magistrates . . . chiefly and most principally the conservation and purgation of the Religion appertains; so that not only are they appointed for civil policy, but also for maintenance of the true Religion, and for suppressing of idolatry and superstition whatsoever . . .
Pursuant to this Confession the Scottish Reformation Parliament repudiated the jurisdiction of the pope, made the reformation creed and ritual compulsory, and forbade celebration of the Mass on pain of corporal punishment and confiscation of goods for the first offence, exile for the second, death for the third. But as the nobles who controlled the Parliament wanted land rather than blood, and did not take the Calvinist theology literally, the persecution of those Scots who still remained Catholic was kept comparatively mild, and never came to corporal punishment. Now that the nobles were allowed to reject purgatory as a myth, they claimed to have been cheated in some part of their patrimony by ancestral donations of land or money to pay priest to say Masses for the dead, who, on the new theology, were irrevocably saved or damned before the creation of the world. So the appropriation of ecclesiastical property could be pleasantly phrased as the restoration of stolen goods. Most of the Scottish monasteries were closed, and their wealth taken by the nobles. At first no provision was made by the government for the Calvinist ministers; these had been used as ideological aids to the revolution, but the nobles had now lost interest in theology. Knox and his fellow preachers, who had risked and sacrificed so much for the new order, had expected the property of the church to be applied to the support of the Kirk and its clergy. They petitioned Parliament for such an arrangement, they received no reply, but were finally allotted a sixth of the spoils. Finding this inadequate, they turned against the grasping aristocracy, and began the historic alliance of Scottish Presbyterianism with democracy.
Of all the Reformations, the Scottish shed the least blood., and was the most permanent. The Catholics suffered silently; their priest fled; most parish priests accepted the change as no worse than Episcopal exactions and visitations. Rural districts lost their wayside crosses, ancient shrines of pilgrimage were deserted, the saints no longer provided easeful holidays. Many spirits must have mourned and idealised the past, many must have waited hopefully for the coming of the young queen from France. The change had to be. When the recriminations died down, and men adjusted themselves to the new order, it would be a boon that some likeness of faith joined with converging lines of loyalty to end the bitter wars between Scots and Englishmen. Soon the weaker nation would give the stronger land a king, and Britain would be one.
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Good summary, Durants!
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 629 - 631
Protestantism in Eastern Europe.
Poland had her Golden Age under Sigismund I (1506- 1548) and his son Sigismund II (1548-1572). Both were men of culture and spirit, discerning patrons of literature and art, and both gave to religious thought and worship a freedom which, though imperfect, made most other nations of Europe seem medieval by comparison. Sigismund I married the gay and talented Bona Sforza (1519) daughter of Duke Giangaleazzo of Milan; she brought to Cracow a retinue of Italian courtiers and scholars, and the king, instead of resenting them, welcomed them as a bridge to the Renaissance. A taste for luxury in ornate dress and rich furnishings took hold of the aristocracy, language and manners became more refined, letters and arts flourished, and Erasmus wrote (1523): “I congratulate this nation . . . which now, in sciences, jurisprudence, morals, and religion, and in all that separates us from barbarism, is so flourishing that it can rival the first and most glorious of nations.” Dominating her husband by her beauty, grace, and craft, Bona became queen in fact as well as fashion. Her son Sigismund II was a humanist, linguist, orator, and transvestite. Wars marred these brilliant reigns, for Poland was involved with Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, in a contest for control of the Baltic Sea and ports. Poland lost Prussia, but she absorbed Mazovia, including Warsaw, (1529), and Livonia, including Riga ( 1561). Poland was in this age a major European state.
Meanwhile the Reformation filtered in from Germany and Switzerland. The freedom of worship guaranteed by the Polish Crown to its Greek Catholic subjects had habituated the nation to religious tolerance, and the century-long rebellion of Hussites, and Utraquists in neighbouring Bohemia had made Poland somewhat careless of distant papal authority. The bishops, nominated by the kings, were cultured patriots, favouring Church reform with Erasmusian caution, and generously supporting the humanist movement. This, however, did not allay the envy with which nobles and townsmen looked upon their property and revenues. Complaints grew of national wealth being drained off to Rome, of indulgences expensively absurd, of ecclesiastical simony, of costly litigations in Episcopal courts. The ’szlachta’ or lesser nobility, took particular offence at the exemption of the clergy from taxation, and the clerical collection of tithes from the nobles themselves. Probably for economic reasons some influential barons listened with sympathy to Lutheran criticism of the Church; and the semi-sovereignty of the individual feudal lords provided protection to local Protesnt movements, much as the indendence of the German princes made possible the revolt and shielding of Luther. In Danzig a monk championed Luther’s thesis, called for ecclesiastical reforms, and married an heiress (1518); another preacher followed the Lutheran vein so effectively that several congregations removed all religious images from their churches ( 1522); the city council released monks and nuns from their vows and closed the monasteries ( 1525); by 1540 all Danzig pulpits were in Protestant hands. When some clergymen in Polish-Prussian Braunsberg introduced the Lutheran ritual, and the cathedral canons complained to the bishop, he replied that Luther based his views on the Bible, and that whoever felt able to refute them might undertake the task (1520). Sigusmund I was prevailed upon to censor the press and forbid the importation of Lutheran literature; but his own secretary and Bona’s Franciscan confessor were secretly won to the forbidden creed; and in (1539) Calvin dedicated his ‘Commentary on the Mass’ to the crown prince.
When the prince became Sigismund II both Lutheranism and Calvinism advanced rapidly. The Bible was translated into Polish, and the vernacular began to replace Latin in religious services. Prominent priests like Jan Laski announced their conversion to Protestantism. In 1548 the bohemian Brethren, exiled from their own country, moved into Poland, and soon there were thirty conventicles of their sect in the land. The attempt of the Catholic clergy to indict some members of the ’szlachta’ for heresy, and to confiscate their property, led many minor nobles to rebel against the church.(1552) the national diet of 1555 voted religious freedom for all faiths based on “the pure word of God,” and legalized clerical marriage and communion in bread and wine. The reform of Poland was now at its crest.
The situation was complicated by the development, in Poland, of the strongest Unitarian movement in sixteenth-century Europe. As early as 1546 the anti-trinitarian tentatives of Servetus were discussed in this Far East of Latin Christianity. In 1561 the new group issued its confession of faith. Continuing the confusion of Servetus’s theology, they restricted full divinity to God the Father, but professed belief in the supernatural birth of Christ, His divine inspiration, miracles, resurrection, and ascension. They rejected the ideas of original sin and Christ’s atonement; they admitted baptism and communion as symbols only; and they taught that salvation depended above all upon a conscientious practice of Christ’s teachings. When the Calvinist synod of Cracow (1536) condemned these doctrines, the Unitarians formed their own separate church.
The Catholic Church fought these developments with persecution, literature, and diplomacy. In 1539 the bishop of Cracow sent to the stake an eighty-year-old woman on the charge that she refused to worship the consecrated Host. Stanislaus Hosius, bishop of Kulm in Prussia, later cardinal, carried on the counter offensive with ability and zeal. He laboured for ecclesiastical reform, but had no sympathy with Protestant theology and ritual. Sigismund II was won to active support of the Church by stressing the divisions among the protestants, and magnifying the difficulty of organizing the moral life of the nation on such inimical and fluctuating creeds. In 1564 Hosius and Commundone brought the Jesuits to Poland. These trained and devoted men secured strategic places in the educational system, caught the ear of pivotal personalities, and turned the Polish people back to the traditional faith.
The Bohemians had been Protestants before Luther, and found little to terrify them in his ideas. By 1560 Bohemia was two thirds Protestant; but in 1561 Ferdinand introduced the Jesuits, and the tide turned back to the orthodox Catholic creed. By 1550 it seemed that all Hungary would become Protestant. But Calvinism began to compete with Lutherism in Hungary; the Magyars, constitutionally anti-German, supported the Swiss style of Reform; and by 1558 the Calvinists were numerous enough to hold an impressive synod at Czenger. The rival forces of reform tore the movement in two. Many officials or converts, seeking social stability or mental peace, returned to Catholicism; and in the seventeenth century the Jesuits, led by the son of a Calvinist, restored Hungary to the Catholic fold.
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It's nice to read about a relatively peaceful reformation!
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Yes!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 631 - 635
CHARLES V AND THE NETHERLANDS
In the Flanders of Charles’s maturity a thriving commerce was more than making up for sporadic industrial decline. Bruges and Ghent were depressed, but Brussels survived for being the Flemish capital, Louvain was brewing theology and beer, and Antwerp was becoming -- would be by 1550 -- the richest and busiest city in Europe. To that hectic port on the broad and navigable Scheldt international trade and finance were drawn by low import and export dues, by the political connection with Spain, and by a bourse dedicated, its inscription said, “ ad usum mercatorum cuisque ac linguae --” “To the use of merchants of every land and tongue.” Business enterprises here were free from the guild restrictions and municipal protectionism that had kept medieval industry unprogressive. Here Italian bankers opened agencies, English “merchant adventurers” established a depot, the Fuggers centred their commercial activities, and the Hanse built its lordly House of Easterlings (1564). The harbour saw 500 ships enter or leave on any day, and 5,000 traders trafficked on the exchange. A bill on Antwerp was now the commonest form of international currency. In this period Antwerp replaced Lisbon as the chief European port for the spice trade; cargos sailing into Lisbon were bought afloat by Flemish agents there, and were sailed directly to Antwerp for distribution through northern Europe. “I was sad at the sight of Antwerp,” wrote a Venetian ambassador, “ for I saw Venice surpassed”; he was witnessing the historic transfer of commercial hegemony from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic. Spurred on by this commerce, Flemish industry revived, even in Ghent, and the Lowlands provided Charles V with 1,500,000 livres ($37,500,000?) a year, half his total revenue.
He responded by giving Flanders and Holland reasonably good government except in religious liberty.-- a boon hardly conceived by his friends or his foes. Generally Charles ruled the Netherlands by indirection, through regents acceptable to the citizens; first his aunt , nurse, and tutor, Margaret of Austria, then his sister Mary, ex queen of Hungary, both women of competence, humanity, and tact. But Charles became more imperious with more Empire. He stationed Spanish garrisons in the proud cities, and suppressed with severity any serious contravention of his international policies. When Ghent refused to vote the military funds demanded by him and granted by other cities, Charles put down the revolt by a show of indisputable force, exacted the subsidy and an indemnity, abolished the traditional liberties of the municipality, and substituted Imperial appointees for the local chosen government. (1540). But this was hardly typical. Despite such occasional harshness Charles remained popular with his Lowland subjects; he received credit for the political stability and social order that supported the economic prosperity; and when he announced his abdication nearly all citizens mourned.
Accepting the current theory that national peace and strength required unity of religious belief, and fearing that Protestantism in the Netherlands would endanger his flank in his strife with France and Lutheran Germany, Charles fully supported the Church in persecuting heresy in Flanders and Holland. The reform movement was mild before Luther; after 1517 it entered as Lutheranism and Anabaptism from Germany, as Zwinglianism and Calvinism from Switzerland, Alsace, and France. Luther’s writings were soon translated into Dutch, and were expounded by ardent preachers in Antwerp, Ghent, Dordrecht, Utrecht, Zwolle, and the Hague. The Emperor, still young, thought to stop the agitation by publishing (1521), at the Pope’s request, a “placard”, forbidding the printing or reading of Luther’s works. On July 1, 1523, Henry Voes and Johann Eck, two Augustinian friars, were sent to the stake at Brussels as the first Protestant martyrs in the Lowlands. Henry of Zutphen, friend and pupil of Luther’s, and prior of the Augustinian monastery at Antwerp, was imprisoned, escaped, was caught in Holstein, and was there burned ( 1524). These executions advertised the reformers’ ideas.
A longing for the restoration of Christianity to its pristine simplicity generated a millenarian hope for the early return of Christ and the establishment of a New Jerusalem in which there would be no Government, no marriage, and no property; and with these notions were mingled communistic theories of equality, mutual aid, and even “free love”. Fanned by famine, the movement became a social revolt. Mary of Hungary, then Regent, warned the Emperor that the rebels planned to plunder all forms of property among the nobility, clergy, and mercantile aristocracy, and to distribute the spoils to every man according to his need. The Anabaptist rebels made heroic efforts; one group captured and fortified a monastery in West Friesland; the governor besieged them with heavy artillery; 800 died in a hopeless defence ( 1535) On May 11 some armed Anabaptists stormed and captured the city hall of Amsterdam; the burghers dislodged them, and wreaked upon the leaders the frightful vengeance of frightened men: tongues and hearts were torn from living bodies and flung into the faces of the dying or dead..
Thinking the whole social structure challenged by a communistic revolution, Charles imported the Inquisition into the Netherlands, and gave its officials power to stamp out the movement, and all other heresies, at whatever cost to local liberties. The most violent of these ( September 25 ,1550) revealed the deterioration of the Emperor, and laid the foundation for the revolt against his son:
“We forbid all lay persons to converse or dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly . . . or to read, teach, or expound the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied theology, or have been approved by some renowned university . . . on pain of being . . . punished as follows . . . the men ( to be beheaded ) with the sword, and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they persist in them they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases to be confiscated by the crown. . . . .
Through these desperate edicts the Netherlands were made a major battleground between the old and the new forms of Christianity. Of the Dutch Anabaptists some fled to England where they became active supporters of Protestantism under Edward VI and Elizabeth. The communistic movement in the Netherlands collapsed, frightened by prosecution and stifled by prosperity. As the Anabaptists subsided a stream of hunted Huguenots poured into the Lowlands from France, bringing the gospel of Calvin. The Calvinist acceptance of work as a dignity instead of a curse, of wealth as a blessing instead of a crime; of republican institutions as more responsive than monarchy to the political ambitions of the business class, was welcomed by the population. It was with Calvinism, not Lutherism or Anabaptism, that Charles’ son would be locked in the conflict that would break the Netherlands in two, liberate Holland from the Spanish domination, and make her one of the major homes and havens of the modern mind.
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A lot of interesting things here.
First The Venetian Ambassador "was witnessing the historic transfer of commercial hegemony from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic".
For two thousand years, we have a European history played out primarily around the Mediterranean. Now it's expanding. The Atlantic will become more and more important.
Next we have a mini communist revolution. I wonder if Marx knew that?
And finally, a promise that the Netherlands will become "one of the major homes and havens of the modern mind."
I can't wait for the next installment.
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on pain of being . . . punished as follows . . . the men ( to be beheaded ) with the sword, and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they persist in them they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases to be confiscated by the crown. . . . .
Why did the punishment for the women 'being buried alive' or 'burned alive' as opposed to that of a man who was beheaded seem more humane for men than women?
What people will do to retain power. Perhaps Diderot was right when he wrote, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Emma
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Yes, love that quote Emma.
There IS nothing new under the sun........the establishment of a New Jerusalem in which there would be no Government, no marriage, and no property; and with these notions were mingled communistic theories of equality, mutual aid, and even “free love”. Fanned by famine, the movement became a social revolt.
Well, i am a little surprised that when Jesus returns and establishes a new Jerursalem there will be no...........etc etc. i didn't learn that in my Methodist Church teachings. Of course, i may have stopped listening after "when Jesus returns." That was never a believable concept for me.
I must research the Holy Roman Empire history and timeline. It has so many different shapes at different times - they look like gerrymandered voting districts - that i would like to know how those aquisitions and subsequent changes came about.
I'm with Joan in looking forward to what the Durants have for us next.
A dinner companion asked me recently how the volumes of "Civilization" became so popular, and how would they be regarded today? How would you have answered him?
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Good question, Jean. I don't hear of people reading them today: people don't have the patience for something so long and detailed. but I'd bet if people were introduced to chunks of them, they'd love them.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 635 - 639
CHARLES V and the NETHERLANDS
In 1555 Charles V put aside all dreams except that of dying in sanctity. He relinquished his hope of either suppressing Protestantism in Germany and the Netherlands, or reconciling it with Catholicism at the Council of Trent. He abandoned his aspiration to lead Protestants and Catholics, German and French, in a magnificent march against Suleiman, Constantinople, and the Turkish threat to Christendom. His excesses in eating, drinking, and sex, his exhausting campaigns, the burdens of an office that bore the brunt of revolutionary change, had ruined his body, dulled his statesmanship, and broken his will. Suffering from ulcers at thirty-three, old at thirty-five, afflicted at forty-five with gout, asthma, indigestion, and stammering, he was now half his waking time in pain, and found it hard to sleep; often his difficulty in breathing kept him sitting upright all the night through. His fingers were so distorted with arthritis that he could hardly grasp the pen with which he signed the Peace of Crépy. Perhaps his occasional cruelty, with which he attacked Protestantism in the Netherlands came from the exhaustion of his patience by his pains. He ordered the amputation of the feet of captured German mercenaries who had fought for France, though his son the future inexorable Philip II, begged mercy for them. He had mourned long and bitterly the death of his beloved wife Isabella (1539), but in time he allowed helpless maidens to be brought to his bed.
In the fall of 1555 he called a meeting of the States-general of the Netherlands for October 25, and summoned Philip to it from England. At the meeting Charles stood up, leaning on the tall and handsome Prince of Orange, and spoke of his rise to successively wider powers, and the absorption of his life in government. He recalled that he had visited Germany nine times, Spain six, Italy seven, France four, England and Africa twice, and had made eleven voyages by sea. When he sank painfully into his chair the audience forgot his sins, his persecutions, and his defeats in pity for a man who for forty years had laboured according to his lights under the heaviest obligations of the time. Philip was formally installed as ruler of the Netherlands, and took a solemn oath ( as he would later be reminded ) to observe all the laws and traditional rights of the provinces. Early in 1556 Charles surrendered to him the crown of Spain, with all its possessions in the Old World and the New. On September 17, 1556, Charles sailed from Flushing to Spain.
SPAIN: 1516 - 1558
It was a questionable boon for Spain that her King Charles I (1516-56 ) became Emperor Charles V ( 1519 - 58 ). Born and reared in Flanders, he acquired Flemish ways and tastes, until in his final years the spirit of Spain conquered him. The King could be only a small part of the Emperor who had his hands full with the Reformation, the papacy, Suleiman, Barbarossa, and Francis I; the Spaniards complained he gave them so little of his time and spent so much of their human and material resources on campaigns apparently foreign to Spanish interests.. And how could an emperor sympathize with communal institutions that had made Spain half a democracy before the coming of Ferdinand the Catholic, and that she so longed to restore?
Charles’ first visit to his kingdom (1517) earned him no love. Though King for twenty months past, he still knew no Spanish. His curt dismissal of the devoted Ximenes shocked Spanish courtesy. He came surrounded by Flemings who thought Spain a barbarous country waiting to be milked; and the seventeen-year-old monarch appointed these leeches to the highest posts. The various provincial Cortes, dominated by the hidalgos or lower nobility, did not conceal their reluctance to accept so alien a king. The Cortes of Castile refused him the title, then grudgingly recognized him as co-ruler with his demented mother Juana; and let him understand that he must learn Spanish, live in Spain, and name no more foreigners to office. Amid these humiliations Charles received news that he had been elected emperor, and that Germany was summoning him to show himself and be crowned. When he asked the Cortes at Valladolid ( then the capital) to finance the trip, he was rebuffed and a public tumult threatened his life. To make matters trebly perilous he sent corregidores to protect his interests in the cities, and left his former tutor, Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, as regent of Spain.
Now one after another of the Spanish municipalities rose in “The revolt of the Comuneros”, or commune members. They expelled the corregidores, murdered a few of the delegates who had voted funds to Charles, and leagued themselves in a Santa Comunidad pledged to control the king. Nobles, ecclesiastics, and burghers alike joined the movement, and organised at Avila (August 1520) the Santa Junta, or Holy Union, as a central government. They demanded that the Cortes should share with the royal council in choosing a regent, that no war should be made without the consent of the Cortes, and that the town should be ruled not by Corregidores, but by alcaldes or mayors chosen by the citizens. Antonio de Acuna, Bishop of Zamora, openly advocated a republic, turned his clergy into revolutionary warriors and gave the resources of his diocese to the revolt. Their leader was made commander of the rebel forces. He led them to the capture of Tordesillas, took Juana la Loca as a hostage, and urged her to sign a document deposing Charles and naming herself queen. Wise in her madness, she refused.
Adrian appealed to Charles to return, and frankly blamed the revolt on the King’s arbitrary and absentee government. Charles did not come, but either he or his councillors found a way to divide and conquer. The nobles were warned that the rebellion was a threat to the propertied classes as well as to the Crown. And indeed the working classes, long oppressed with fixed wages, forced labour, and prohibition of Unions, had already seized power in several towns. In Valencia and its neighbourhood a Germania or Brotherhood of Guildsmen took the reins, and ruled the committees of workmen. This proletarian dictatorship was unusually pious; it imposed upon the thousands of Moors who still remained, the choice of baptism or death; hundreds of the obstinate were killed. In Majorca the commons, whose masters had treated them as slaves, rose in arms, deposed the royal governor, and slew every noble who could not elude them.
In Madrid, Sigüenza, and Guadalajara the new municipal administration excluded all nobles and gentry from office; here and there aristocrats were slain; and the junta assessed for taxation noble properties formerly exempt. Pillage became general; commoners burned the palaces of nobles, nobles massacred commoners. Class war spread through Spain.The nobles turned against the proletarian government and after days of mutual slaughter (1521) overthrew it. At the height of the crisis the rebel army divided into rebel groups. The Junta also split into hostile factions. When Charles returned to Spain July 1522 with 4000 German troops, victory had already been won by the nobles, and nobles and commoners had so weakened each other that he was able to subdue the municipalities and guilds, and establish an almost absolute monarchy. The democratic element was so completely suppressed that the Spanish commons remained cowed and obedient till the nineteenth century. Charles tempered his power with courtesy; learned to talk good Spanish; Spain was pleased when he remarked that Italian was the proper language to use to women, German to enemies, French to friends, Spanish to God.
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Well! Serendipity rears its head again. I wanted to know about the Holy Roman Empire, which preceded the House of Hapsburg which together ruled for 600 yrs. This morning in my History Newsletter, they review a book about the House of Hapsburg (or Habsburg, which ever is your preference). It sounds very interesting. Then Jonathan gives me a section of Durants that answers some of my questions about the Holy Roman Empire.
It looks like Marriages kept them adding to that strangely shaped empire. Thank you daughters of Europe!
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157373
Wikipedia says this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg
Jean
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JEAN:The first article is interesting. they attribute the long reign and success of the House of Hapsburg to their system for careful choice of advisors, and downfall to not listening to advisors. Sounds like it might be a bit exaggerated to me, but an interesting point.
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Yes, that sounds too simple Joan, but if they found a way to make that assessment to get good leaders, i wish some historical researcher would hurry up and find their formula.
Jean
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You also have to have a king who cares about the welfare of his subjects and country, is willing to believe that his advisors know more than he does, and is involved enough to keep an eye on how they're doing. Unfortunately, this is rare, especially over long periods.
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Yes, it has been almost impossible.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 641 - 643
THE SPANISH PROTESTANTS
Only one power could now challenge Charles in Spain -- the Church. He was pro-Catholic but anti-papal. Like Ferdinand-the-Catholic he sought to make the Spanish Church independent of the popes, and he so far succeeded that during his rule ecclesiastical appointments and revenues were in his control, and were used to promote governmental policies. In Spain, as in France, no Reformation was needed to subordinate the Church to the state. Nonetheless, during the half of his reign that Charles spent in his kingdom, the fervour of Spanish orthodoxy so worked upon him that in his later years nothing ( except the power of the Hapsburgs ) seemed more important to him than the suppression of heresy. While the popes tried to moderate the Inquisition, Charles supported it till his death. He was convinced that heresy in the Netherlands was leading to chaos and civil war, and was resolved to circumvent such a development in Spain.
The Spanish Inquisition abated its fury under Charles, but extended its jurisdiction. It undertook the censorship of literature, had every bookstore searched, and ordered bonfires of books charged with heresy. It investigated and punished sexual perversions. It instituted rules of ‘limpieza’ (purity of blood ), which closed all avenues of distinction to descendants of ‘Conversos’ and to all who had ever been penanced by the tribunal. It looked upon mystics with a stern eye, for some of these claimed that their direct intercourse with God exempted them from attending church, and others gave their mystical ecstasies a suspiciously sexual flavour. The lay preacher Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz announced that coitus was really union with God; and Friar Francisco Ortiz explained that when he lay with a pretty fellow mystic -- even when he embraced her naked body -- it was not a cardinal sin but a spiritual delight. The Inquisitions delt leniently with these ‘Alumbrados’ (enlightened Ones ), and kept its severest measures for the Protestants of Spain..
As in Northern Europe, an Erasmian skirmish preceded the Protestant battle. Perhaps Lutheranism had seeped into Spain with Germans and Flemings in the royal entourage Francisco de San Roman’ the first-known Spanish Lutheran, was burned at the stake in 1542, while fervent onlookers pierced him with their swords. Juan Diaz of Cuenca imbibed Calvinism at Geneva; his brother Alfonso rushed up from Italy to reconvert him to orthodoxy; failing, Alfonso had him killed ( 1546 ). Another semi-Protestant group developed in Valladolid; and here influential nobles and high ecclesiastics were involved. They were arrested and condemned; some, trying to leave Spain, were caught and brought back. Charles V, then in retirement at Yuste, recommended no mercy be shown them, that the repentant should be beheaded, and the unrepentant burned On Trinity Sunday, May 21 1559 fourteen of the condemned were executed before a cheering crowd. All but one recanted, and were let off with beheading; Antonio de Herrezuelo, impenitent, was burned alive. His twenty-three-year-old wife, Leonora de Cisneros, repentant, was allowed life imprisonment.. After ten years of confinement she retracted her recantation, proclaimed her heresy, and asked to be burned alive like her husband; her request was granted. Twenty-six more of the accused were displayed in an auto-da-fé on October 8 1559, before a crowd of 200,000, presided over by Philip II.Two victims were burned alive, ten were strangled..
Between 1551 and 1600 in Spain there were some 200 executions for Protestant heresies. The temper of the people, formed by centuries of hatred for Moors and Jews, had congealed into an unshakeable orthodoxy; Catholicism and patriotism had merged; and the Inquisition found it a simple matter to stamp out a generation or two of passing Spanish adventure with independent thought.
On September 28, 1556, Charles V made his final entry into Spain. At Bargos he dismissed with rewards most of those who had attended him, and took leave of his sisters, Mary of Hungary and Eleonora, widow of Francis I. After suffering many ceremonies en Route, he reached the village of Juandilla, some 120 miles west of Madrid. There he tarried several months while workmen completed and furnished the accommodations that he had ordered in the monastery of Yuste ( St. Justus ) six miles away. When he made the final stage of his journey (February 3, 1557 ) it was not to a monastic cell but to a mansion spacious enough to house the more intimate of his fifty servitors. The monks rejoiced to have so distinguished a guest, but were chagrined to find that he had no intention of sharing their regimen. He ate and drank as abundantly as before -- i.e. excessively. Sardine omlets, Estremadura sausages, eel pies, pickled partridges, fat capons, and rivers of wine and beer disappeared into the Imperial paunch; and his physicians were obliged to prescribe large quantities of senna and rhubarb to carry off the surplusage. Instead of reciting rosaries, litanies, and psalms, Charles read or dictated dispatches from or to his son, and offered him advice in every aspect of war, theology, and government. In his final year he became a merciless bigot; he recommended ferocious penalties to cut out “the root of heresy,” and he regretted he had allowed Luther to escape him at Worms. He ordered that a hundred lashes should be laid upon any woman who should approach within two bowshots of the monastery walls. He revised his will to provide that 30,000 Masses should be said for the repose of his soul. We should not judge him from those senile days; some taint of insanity may have come down from his mother’s blood. In August 1558, his gout developed into a burning fever. For a month he was racked with all the pains of death before he was allowed to die. ( Sept. 21, 1558 )
Charles V was the most impressive failure of his age, and even his virtues were sometimes unfortunate for mankind. He gave peace to Italy, but only after the Italian Renaissance withered under that sombre mastery. He defeated and captured Francis, but he lost at Madrid a royal opportunity to make with him a treaty that could have saved all faces and a hundred thousand lives. He helped turn back Suleiman at Vienna, and checked Barbarosa in the Mediterranean. He strengthened the Hapsburgs but weakened the Empire; he lost Lorraine and surrendered Burgundy. The princes of Germany frustrated his attempt to centralise authority there, and from his time the Holy Roman Empire was a decaying tissue waiting for Napoleon to pronounce it dead. He failed in his efforts to crush Protestantism in Germany, and his method of repressing it in the Netherlands left a tragic legacy to his son. He found the German cities flourishing and free; he left them ailing under a reactionary feudalism. When he came to Germany it was alive with ideas and energy beyond any other nation in Europe; when he abdicated it was spiritually and intellectually exhausted, and would lie fallow for two centuries. In Germany and Italy his policies were a minor cause of decline, but in Spain it was chiefly his action that crushed municipal liberty and vigour. He might have saved England for the Church by persuading Catherine to yield to Henry’s need for an heir; instead he forced Clement into a ruinous vacillation.
And yet it is our hindsight that sees his mistakes and their enormity; our historical sense can condone them as rooted in the limitations of his mental environment and in the harsh delusions of the age. He was the ablest statesman among his contemporaries, but only in the sense that he dealt courageously with the profoundest issues in their widest range. He was a great man dwarfed and shattered by the problems of his time.
Two fundamental movements pervaded his long reign. The most fundamental was the growth of Nationalism under centralised monarchies; in this he did not share. The most dramatic was a religious revolution rising out of national and territorial divisions and interests. Northern Germany and Scandinavia accepted Lutheranism; Southern Germany, Switzerland and the Lowlands divided into Protestant and Catholic sections; Scotland became Calvinist Presbyterian, England became Anglican Catholic or Calvinist Puritan. Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, remained loyal to a distant or chastened papacy. Yet among the double fragmentation a subtle integration grew: the proudly independent states found themselves inter-dependent as never before, increasingly bound in one economic web, and forming a vast theatre of interrelated politics, wars, law, literature, and art.
The Europe that our youth knew was taking form.
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"Yet among the double fragmentation a subtle integration grew: the proudly independent states found themselves inter-dependent as never before, increasingly bound in one economic web, and forming a vast theatre of interrelated politics, wars, law, literature, and art.
The Europe that our youth knew was taking form."
Not quite sure what he means by this. Was it the Protestant states that became interdependent, or all the European states?
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 647 - 650
THE STRANGERS IN THE GATE
THE UNIFICATION OF RUSSIA 1300 - 1584
In 1300 Russia did not exist. The north belonged for the most part to three self-governed city-states. The western and southern provinces were dependencies of Lithuania. In the east the principalities of Moscow, Ryazan, Suzdal, Nijni Novgorod, and Tver all claimed individual sovereignty, and were united only in common subjection to the Golden Horde.
The Horde took its noun from Turkish ‘ordu‘, camp, and its adjective from the domed tent, covered with cloth of gold, that had served as headquarters for Batu the Splendid, grandson of Genghis Khan. The Horde was partly agricultural, partly nomad pastoral. The ruling families were Mongol, the rest were mostly Turks. The name Tatar came to the Horde from the Ta-ta tribes of the Gobi, who in the ninth century had started the Mongol avalanche toward the West. The chief results of the long subjection of Russia to the Horde were social: the autocracy of the Moscow dukes, the servile loyalty of the people to their princes, the low status of woman, the military, financial, and judicial organization of the Muscovite government on Tatar lines. The Tatar domination deferred for two centuries the attempt of Russia to become a European Occidental state.
The Russian people faced the most arduous conditions with silent stoicism. Their enemies called them coarse, cruel, dishonest, cunning, and violent. But their patience, good humour, friendliness, and hospitality redeemed them. They were beaten into civilization by barbarous laws and frightful penalties. Like any people fighting cold, the Russians drank alcohol abundantly, sometimes to drunken stupor; even their food was seasoned to warm them. They enjoyed hot baths, and bathed more frequently than most Europeans. Religion bade women hide their tempting forms and hair, and branded them as Satan’s chosen instrument; yet they were equal with men before the law. The Russian Church preached a strict morality, and prohibited conjugal relations during Lent; presumably the severity of the code was a counterpoise to the tendency of people to indulge excessively in almost the only pleasure left to them.
Marriages were arranged by the parents and came early; girls of twelve, boys of fourteen, were considered nubile. Wedding ceremonies were complex, with ancient symbolism and festivities; through all these the bride was required to keep a modest silence; her revenge was deferred.. On the morrow she was expected to show to her husband’s mother the evidence that he had married a virgin. Usually the women of the household remained in an upper apartment or terem, away from the men; and the authority of the father was as absolute in the family as that of the czar in the state.
Piety sublimated poverty as a preparation for paradise. Every house of any size had a room decorated with icons as a place of frequent prayer. A proper visitor, before saluting his hosts, saluted the icons first. Good women carried rosaries wherever they went. Prayers were recited as magic incantations; so, said the ’Domostroi ’ a famous manual of the sixteenth century; a certain prayer repeated 600 times a day for three years, would cause the incarnation, in the re-petitioner, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But there were many beautiful features in this superstitious religion. On Easter morning people greeted one another with the joyful words “ Christ has risen.” In this hope death was in some measure eased; facing it, a decent man would pay his debts, relieve his debtors, free one or more of his bond men, leave alms to the poor and the Church, and breathe his last in confident expectation of eternal life.
The Russian Church stimulated this piety with architecture, murals, icons, powerful sermons, hypnotic ceremonies, and massive choral song that seemed to rise from the most mystical depths of the soul or stomach. Monasteries were numerous and immense. One, founded in 1335, had amassed by 1600 such extensive lands that over 100,000 peasants were needed for their cultivation. In return the monasteries distributed charity on a Russian scale; some fed 400 people daily; in a famine year the monastery at Volokolamsk fed 7000 in one day. Monks took a vow of chastity, but priests were obliged to marry. These “papas” were mostly illiterate, but that was not held against them by the people. The metropolitans of Moscow were in many cases the ablest, as well as the most learned, men of their generation, risking their silver to preserve the state, and guiding the princes toward national unity. St. Alexis was the virtual ruler of Russia during his tenure of the Muscovite see ( 1354-70).
With all her faults -- which may have been dictated by her tasks -- the Russian Church in this formative age served as the supreme civilizing agent among a people brutalized by the hardships of life and the predatory nature of man.
In 1448 the Russian Church, repudiating the merger of Greek and Roman Christianity at the council of Florence, declared her independence of the Byzantine patriarch; and when, five years later, Constantinople fell to the Turks, Moscow became the metropolis of the Orthodox faith. The Church was almost the sole patron of letters and arts, and therefore their dictator. The best literature was unwritten. The songs of the people, passing from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, celebrated their loves, weddings, sorrows, seasons, holydays, and deaths. Blind men or cripples went from village to village singing such songs and lays and sacred chants. Written literature was nearly all monastic, and served religion.
It was the monks who now brought icon painting to a finished art. Upon a small panel of wood, sometimes covered with cloth, they applied a glutinous coat; on this they drew their design; within this they laid their colours in tempera; they covered the painting with varnish, and enclosed it in a metal frame. The subjects were determined by ecclesiastical authority; the figures and features were derived from Byzantine models, and went back in continuous evolution through the mosaics of Constantinople to the paintings of Hellenistic Alexandria.
Every ruler signalised his splendour, and eased his conscience, by building or endowing a church or monastery. After the fall of Constantinople and the expulsion of the Tartars the dependence of Russia upon Byzantine and Oriental art subsided, and influences from the West entered to modify the Slavic style. In 1472 Ivan III, hoping thereby to inherit the rights and titles of the Byzantine emperors, married Zoë Palaeologus, niece of the last ruler of the Eastern Empire. She had been brought up in Rome, and had imbibed something of the early Renaissance.. She brought Greek scholars with her, and acquainted Ivan with Italian art. It may have been at her suggestion that he sent the first Russian mission to the west ( 1474 ), with instructions to secure Italian artists for Moscow. Several Italian artists and builders came. It was these Italians who, with Russian aides and labour, rebuilt the Kremlin.
Yuri Doloruki had founded Moscow (1156) by raising a wall around his villa. This fortress (kreml) was the first form of the Kremlin. In time the enclosure was enlarged and churches and palaces rose within a massive wall of oak. It was from this many templed centre of Russia that the grand princes and metropolitans of Moscow spread their rule over nobles, merchants, and peasants, and laid in blood and bones and piety the foundations of one of the mightiest empires in history.
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"massive choral song that seemed to rise from the most mystical depths of the soul or stomach."
The Durant's way with words again. Have any of you heard any of those choral songs?
I've seen some of the icons in museums. I'm afraid I've never appreciated them.
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Here are some examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+icons&biw=853&bih=570&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=dCd2VLnwEpC3oQTF94CoBw&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQsAQ
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 650 - 653
THE PRINCES OF MOSCOW
Moscow remained an obscure village until Daniel Alexandrovitch, toward the end of the thirteenth century, extended its hinterland and made it a minor principality. Historical hindsight attributes Moscow’s growth to its position on the navigable Moscow river which was connected by short overland portage to the Volga on the east and the Oka, Don, and Dnieper on the south and west. Yuri Danielovitch -- son of Daniel -- Prince of Moscow, coveted the neighbouring principality of Suzdal, with its relatively rich capital, Vladimir; Michael, prince of Tver, coveted the same; Moscow and Tver fought for the prize; Moscow won; Michael was killed and canonized; Moscow grew. Yuri’s brother and successor, Ivan I, took the double title of Grand Prince of Moscow and grand duke of Vladimir.
As collector of Russian tribute for the Tatar Khan, Ivan collected more than he remitted, and prospered wickedly. His rapacity won him the nicknamed Kalita, Moneybag, but he gave the principalities thirteen years’ respite from Tatar raids. He died as a tonsured monk, censored with the odour of sanctity (1341). Ivan II was a gentle and peaceable ruler, under whom Russia fell into fratricidal war. His son Dimitri had all the requisite martial qualities; he defeated every rival, and defied the khan. In 1380 Khan Mamai assembled a Horde of Tatars, Genoese mercenaries, and other flotsam, and advanced toward Moscow. Dmitri and his Russian allies met the Horde at Kulikovo, near the Don, defeated it (1380), and won the cognomen Donskoi. Two years later the Tatars attacked again, with 100,000 men. Moscow was burned; 24,000 of the population was massacred. Dmitris son Vasili I made peace with the Tatars, and compelled Novgorod, and Viatka to accept him as their overlord.
The Grand princes of Moscow adopted the Tatar technique of despotism. Under an autocracy of violence and craft a bureaucracy on Byzantine lines administered the government, subject to a Council of Boyars advising and serving the Prince. The boyars were at once the leaders of the army, the governing lords of their localities, the organizers, protectors, and exploiters of the semifree peasants who tilled the land. Adventurous colonists migrated to unsettled regions, drained the swamps, fertilized the soil by burning the woods and brush, and moved on again till they reached the White sea and the Urals, and seeped into Siberia. In the endless plains, towns were many but small; houses were of wood and mud, calculated to burn down within twenty years at most. Roads were unpaved, and were least agonizing in winter, when they were covered with snow packed by sleds and patient boots. Merchants preferred rivers to roads. Probably it was this spreading commerce that overcame the individualism of the princes and compelled the unification of Russia. Vasili II (1425-62), called Tëmny, the Blind, because his foes gouged out his eyes ( 1446), brought all rebels to obedience with torture, mutilation, and the knout, and left his son a Russia sufficiently strong to end the ignominy of Tatar rule.
Ivan III became “the Great” because he accomplished his task, and made Russia one. He was built to need; unscrupulous, subtle, calculating, tenacious, cruel, guiding his armies to distant victories from his seat in the Kremlin; punishing disobedience or incompetence savagely, whipping, torturing, mutilating even the boyars, beheading a doctor for failing to cure his son, and so sternly dominating his entourage that women fainted at his glance. Russia called him the Terrible until it met his grandson. Ivan extended his rule to Finland, the Arctic, and the Urals. When Ivan’s brothers died he refused to let their appanages descend to their heirs; he added their territories to his own. One brother, Andrei flirted with Lithuania; Ivan captured and imprisoned him; Andrei died in jail; Ivan wept, but confiscated Andrei’s lands. La politique n’a pas d’entrailles.
Liberation from the Tatars seemed impossible and proved easy. The remnants of the Mongol-Turkish invaders had settled down in three rival groups centring at Sarai, Kazan, and in the Crimea. Ivan played one against another until he was assured that they would not unite against him. In 1480 he refused tribute. Khan Akhmet led a great army up the Volga, to the banks of the Okra and Ugra south of Moscow; Ivan led 150,000 men to the opposite banks. For months the hostile forces faced each other without giving battle; When the rivers froze and no longer protected the armies from each other, Ivan ordered a retreat . Instead of pursuing, the Tatars too retreated (1480). It was an immense and ridiculous victory. From that time no tribute was paid by Moscow to the Horde; The rival khans were maneuvered into mutual war; Akhmet was defeated and slain; the Golden Horde of Sarai melted away.
Lithuania remained. Neither the Grand prince nor the metropolitan of Moscow could suffer peace so long as the Ukraine and Kiev and Western Russia were under a perpetually threatening Moscow, and inviting Orthodox Christians into Latin Christianity. An alleged Polish plot to assassinate Ivan gave him a casus belli and let loose a holy war for the redemption of the seduced provinces( 1492 ). Many Lithuanian princes, uneasy under the Polish-Roman-Catholic union, opened their gates to Ivan’s troops. Alexander, Great Prince of Lithuania, made a stand at Vedrosha, and lost (1500). Pope Alexander VI arranged a six-year truce; meanwhile Moscow kept the region it had won -- west to the river Sozh, including Chernigov and reaching almost to Smolensk. Ivan III now sixty-three, left the redemption of the remainder to his heirs.
His reign of forty-three years was as important as any in the history of Russia before the twentieth century. Whether inspired by lust for wealth and power, or by a conviction the security and prosperity of the Russians required the unification of Russia, Ivan III achieved for his country what Louis XI was doing for France, Henry VII for England, Ferdinand and Isabella for Spain, Alexander VI for the Papal States; the simultaneity of these events revealed the progress of nationalism and monarchy, dooming the supernational power of the Papacy. The boyars lost their independence, the principalities sent tribute to Moscow, Ivan took the title “Sovereign of all the Russias.” Possibly at the behest of his Greek Wife he assumed also the Roman-Greek title of Czar ( Caesar), adopted the imperial double eagle as the national emblem, and claimed inheritance to all the political and religious authority of defunct Byzantium. Byzantine theories and ceremonies of government and of the Church as an organ of state, followed Byzantine Christianity, the Byzantine Greek alphabet, and Byzantine art forms into Russia; and so far as Byzantium had been Orientalised by its proximity to Asia, so Russia, already oriented by Tatar rule, became in many ways an Oriental monarchy, alien and unintelligible to the West.
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"His rapacity won him the nicknamed Kalita, Moneybag, but he gave the principalities thirteen years’ respite from Tatar raids.... Ivan II was a gentle and peaceable ruler, under whom Russia fell into fratricidal war."
So which was the better ruler? Sigh.
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"Ivan III achieved for his country what Louis XI was doing for France, Henry VII for England, Ferdinand and Isabella for Spain, Alexander VI for the Papal States [unification into one country]; the simultaneity of these events revealed the progress of nationalism and monarchy, dooming the supernational power of the Papacy."
And the 20th century seems to be one where nations want to split apart again on ethnic lines -- including Russia. A pendulum of sorts?
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Catching up!
Joan re: your post of Nov 21st....
IYet among the double fragmentation a subtle integration grew: the proudly independent states found themselves inter-dependent as never before, increasingly bound in one economic web, and forming a vast theatre of interrelated politics, wars, law, literature, and art.
Intrigued me too. I think he must have meant all of Europe, although the protestant countries thrived due to their belief in capitalism as well as protestantism. But then Spain and England were into their exploration and colonial period. I think there were many more factors to take into account than the fragmentation because of religion.
Jean
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
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Volume VI THE REFORMATION
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends." This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
I know i got an "A" in my graduate course in Russian History, but if asked me about any details, i couldn't tell you much. I do know rulers names and i know some of Ivan the Terrible's story and the upcoming Catherine and Peter. Their accomplishments were more then just wars, that probably interested me more.
Going back to Durant's comment on Europe and it's becoming the Europe we knew in the mid - 20th century......i remember being surprised in my undergrad European Histry course when i found out that Italy, as i knew Italy all of my life, had just become "Italy" in 1870. Have i said that before? That's one of the reasons i like history, learning how we got to "now." have you seen that tv show on PBS? My first assignment to my US History 102 classes (post Civil War) was "talk to the oldest people in your family and find out how you got to NJ in the 1990s". Most of them actually liked doing it and learned a lot about their family history that no one had ever talked about before.
Yes, Durant's writing is well-done, colorful, sarcastic and witty, and sometimes boring! Like most history!
There is something unigue and interesting about the Russian persona. I speak only from books, movies and histories, i've never known a Russian person personally.
Sorry for the jumbled message, i am waiting for my grandson to come out of school and there is a grandmother with three grandchildren who are running everywhere and she hasn't stopped yelling at them with one order after another for the last 10 minutes!!! My concentration has been off! Arghhhhh!
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JEAN: you find it hard to concentrate when dealing with your grandchildren? gee, I never heard of that before. ;)
Thanks for your comment on unification. Yes, thinking about it, it was mainly Spain, England (and Portugal) who were looking outward to new exploration and trade. And the rest of Europe looking inward.
I never took a graduate history course. The simpler ones I took concentrated too much on names of kings and battles, none of which interested me.
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I remember reading the comment that Spain wasted all the wealth she got from the New World on lavish churches and fruitless European wars, and is still poor. Of course France gave away much of her holdings for peanuts in the Louisiana Purchase. I don't know what happened in Portugal. Only England was able to hold on to wealth from trade and conquest for a long time.
Is that too simplistic?
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Yeah, a little :)....... There are the Louis' and Napoleon who spent a lot of money and men in France, altho they were the star in Europe for a long time (especially during the Enlightenment) before Napoleon got finished ravaging much of Europe. Little tiny England did get control of much of the world for awhile. They were amazing. I can 't wait til we get to the 17th century. I know, it's coming very soon. Much more interesting than the "Middle Ages."
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 653 - 656
III IVAN THE TERRIBLE; 1533 - 1584
Vasili III Ivanovitch ( 1505 - 1533 ) continued the integration of Russia. He brought Smolensk within his realm, and compelled the principalities of Ryazan and Novgorod- Severski to acknowledge his sovereignty. “Only the infants at the breast,” said a Russian annalist, “could refrain from tears” when the once proud republic of Pskov submitted to Vasili’s rule (1510). Russia was now a major European power; Vasili corresponded on equal terms with Maximilian I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Leo X. When some boyars tried to limit his autocracy he checked them with a contemptuous word -- “peasants!”-- and had one noble head cut off. Getting no children from his wife, he divorced her and married the accomplished and masterful Helena Glinski. The boyars resumed their turbulence when she died; their rival factions controlled the government in turn; they disordered the cities with their violence, and spilled the blood of their helpless muzhiks in civil war.
Among these struggles the young Sovereign of All the Russias was almost ignored, even at times left destitute. Seeing brutality everywhere around him, he took it as accepted behaviour, adopted the most cruel sports, and grew into a moody and suspicious youth. Suddenly, while still a boy of thirteen he threw to his dogs Andrei Shuiski, leader of a boyar faction, and seized command of the state. Three years later he had himself crowned czar by the metropolitan of Moscow. Then he ordered a selection of noble virgins to be sent to him from divers parts of his realm; from them he chose and married Anastasia Romanovna, whose family name would designate a dynasty.
In 1550 he summoned the first national assembly (Zemski Sobor) of all Russia. He confessed to it the errors of his youth, and promised a just and merciful government. Perhaps influenced by the Reformation in Germany and Scandinavia, the assembly considered a motion to confiscate ecclesiastical wealth for the support of the state. The proposal was rejected, but a related motion was passed by which all allodial lands -- those free from liens -- deeded to the church, were to be restored, all gifts made to the Church during Ivan’s minority were cancelled and monasteries were no longer to acquire certain kinds of property without the czar’s consent. The clergy were partly appeased when Ivan took the priest Sylvester as his spiritual director and made him and Alexis Adashef his chief ministers. Supported by these able aids, Ivan at twenty-one was master of a realm reaching from Smolensk to the Urals, and from the Arctic Ocean almost to the Caspian Sea.
His first care was to strengthen the army, and to balance the forces provided by the unfriendly nobles with two organizations responsible directly to himself. Cossack cavalry and Strietsi infantry armed with barquebuses -- matchlock firearms invented in the fifteenth century. The Cossacks originated in that century as peasants whose position in South Russia, between Moslems and Muscovites, obliged them to be ready to fight at short notice, but gave them irresistible opportunities to rob the caravans that carried trade between south and north. The main Cossack “hosts”-- the Don Cossacks in south-eastern Russia and the Zaporogue Cossacks in the southwest--- were semi-independent republics , strangely democratic; male householders chose a hetman ( German Hauptmann, head man) as executive officer of a popularly elected assembly. All land was owned in common, but was leased to individual families for temporary use; and all classes were equal before the law. Famous for their dashing courage, the Cossack horsemen became the main support of Ivan IV at home and in war.
His foreign policy was simple: he wanted Russia to connect the Baltic sea with the Caspian. The Tatars still held Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea, and still demanded tribute from Moscow, though in vain. In 1552 the young Czar led 150,000 men against the gates of Kazan in a siege that lasted fifty days. The 30,000 Moslems resisted with religious pertinacity; they sallied out in repeated sorties; and when some of them were captured and hanged on gibbets before the walls, the defenders shot them with arrows, saying “it was better for these captives to receive death from the clean hands of their countrymen than to perish by the impure hands of Christians. When the besiegers lost heart after a month of failure, Ivan sent to Moscow for a miraculous cross; this, displayed to them, reanimated his men; on both sides God was conscripted into military service. A German engineer mined the walls; they collapsed; the Russians poured into the city, crying “God with us!” -- and massacred all who could not be sold as slaves. Ivan, we are told wept with pity for the defeated; “they are not Christians,” he said, “but they are men”. He repeopled the ruins with Christians. Russia acclaimed him as the first Slav to take a Tatar stronghold, and celebrated the victory as France had hailed the check of the Moslems at Tours (732). In 1554 Ivan took Astrakhan , and the Volga became a completely Russian stream. The Crimea remained Moslem until 1774, but the Cossacks of the Don now bowed to Moscow’s rule.
Having cleared his frontier in the east, Ivan looked toward the west. He dreamed of Russian commerce flowing west and north along great rivers into the Baltic. He envied the industrial and commercial expansion of Western Europe, and looked for any opening by which the Russian economy might attach itself to that development. In 1553 Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor were commissioned by London merchants to find an Arctic route around Scandinavia to China. They sailed from Harwich in three vessels, two perished in a Lapland winter, but Chancellor reached the site of Arkhangelsk, which the British so named after the archangel Michael. Chancellor made his way through a hundred hardships to Moscow. With him, and later with Anthony Jenkinson, Ivan signed treaties giving “The London and Muscovite Company” special trading privileges in Russia, but Charles V refused to agree to the idea of Russia trading through Germany.
A great river, the Southern Dvina, flowed from the heart of Russia into the Baltic near Riga, but through hostile Livonia. The headquarters of the Dvina and Volga were not far apart; the two rivers could be connected with canals; here, by “manifest destiny” was the water route that might atone for the disproportion of Russia’s enormous land mass to her coasts and ports; so the Baltic would mingle with the Caspian and the Black Sea, East and West would meet, and amid the interchange of goods and ideas the West could repay some of its ancient cultural debt to the East.
So in 1557 Ivan invented a casus belli -- usually a case of the belly -- with Livonia. He sent against it an army, under Shah-Ali, lately Tarta Khan of Kazan; it ravaged the country brutally, burning houses and crops, enslaving men, raping women till they died. In 1558 another Russian army captured Narva, only eight miles from the Baltic. Desperate Livonia appealed to Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, all central Europe trembled at the prospect of a Slav inundation reaching westward, as in the sixth century, to the Elbe. Stephen Báthory roused the Poles, and led them to victory over the Russians at Polotsk ( 1582). Ivan, defeated yielded Livonia to Poland.
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WOW! I wish I had a map. I'm so ignorant of geography, it's hard to follow.
The horsemen of Mongolia are still famous. Are these the descendants of the Cossacks?
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Yes, map is necessary, Russia covers a lot of ground ( so to speak).
Jean
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Here's a map of "expansion of lands under Ivan the Terrible. Now if my eyes were better, maybe I could read it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=russia+Ivan+the+terrible+map&biw=853&bih=570&tbm=isch&imgil=Vrsuexwv4jiH1M%253A%253B9kbkjOu0dzaPSM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fpeople.wm.edu%25252F~fccorn%25252FHIST377-HistoricalMaps.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Vrsuexwv4jiH1M%253A%252C9kbkjOu0dzaPSM%252C_&usg=__CYaAWcfGU4Dsf0MePnl2DMsb7T0%3D&ved=0CCsQyjc&ei=NtqIVNS1Mo6vogS11ICQDQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Vrsuexwv4jiH1M%253A%3B9kbkjOu0dzaPSM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fpeople.wm.edu%252F~fccorn%252FHIST377-MapofExpansionUnderIvantheTerrible.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fpeople.wm.edu%252F~fccorn%252FHIST377-HistoricalMaps.html%3B587%3B454
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
PGS 656 - 660
IVAN THE TERRIBLE (cont.)
Ivan, defeated, yielded Livonia to Poland.. Long before this decisive setback the failure of his campaigns had led to revolt at home. The merchants whom Ivan had thought to enrich with new avenues of trade lost stomach for the costly and disruptive war. The nobles had opposed it as bound to unite the Baltic Powers. During and before the war, Ivan had suspected the boyars of conspiracies against the throne, several of whom deserted to Poland, and took up arms against Russia; in 1564 Ivan’s bosom friend and leading general, Prince Andei Kurbski, joined this flight. From Poland Kurbski sent to Ivan what amounted to a declaration of war. Kurbski, in the evening of his life, wrote a relentlessly hostile “History of Ivan,” which is our chief source for Ivan’s ‘terribilitia’.
These plots and desertions illuminate the most famous and peculiar event of the reign. On Dec 13, 1564, Ivan left Moscow with his family, his treasury, and a small force of soldiery, withdrew to his summer home at Alexandrovsk, and sent to Moscow two proclamations. One alleged that the boyars, the bureaucracy, and the Church had conspired against him and the state; therefore “with great sorrow” he now resigned his throne, and would henceforth live in retirement.. The other assured the people of Moscow that he loved them, and they might rest assured of his lasting good will. They broke out in threatening cries against the nobility and the clergy, and demanded that a deputation of Bishops and boyars should go to the Czar, and beg him to resume his throne. It was done, and Ivan agreed to “take unto him his state anew.”
He returned to Moscow ( Feb. 1565 ). He summoned the national assembly, and announced that he would execute the leaders of the opposition, and confiscate their property. The assembly, fearing the revolt of the masses, yielded and dissolved. Ivan decreed that Russia should be divided into two parts; one , the assemblage of provinces, was to remain under the government of the boyars and their duma; it was to be taxable in gross by the Czar. The other half," the separate estate,” was to be ruled by him, and was to be composed of lands assigned by him to this separate class, chosen by him to police and administer this half realm. The new officials -- at first a thousand, ultimately six thousand, were selected chiefly from the younger sons of the nobility, who being landless, were ready to support Ivan in return for the estates now being conferred upon them. These lands were taken largely from the confiscated properties of the rebellious boyars. This revolution was akin to that which Peter the Great attempted 150 years later.
Ivan’s revolution, like others, had its terror. A monastic chronicle, presumably hostile to him, reckoned the casualties of his wrath in those years (1560-1570) at 3,470; often it reports, the victim was executed with his wife, or with his wife and children. An Englishman, who witnessed some of the butchery prayed, “ Would to God our own stiff-necked rebels were taught their duty to their Prince after the same fashion!”
The climax of the terror came in Novgorod. Ivan had recently given its archbishop a large sum to repair churches. But he was informed that a document -- not indisputably genuine -- had been found behind a picture of the Virgin in a Novgorod monastery, pledging the co-operation of Novgorod and Pskov with Poland in an attempt to overthrow the Czar. On January 2, 1570, a strong military force, pounced upon Novgorod, sacked its monasteries, and arrested 500 monks and priests. Arriving in person on January 6, Ivan ordered those clerics who could not pay fifty roubles’ ransom to be flogged to death. According to the Third Chronicle of Novgorod a massacre of the population ensured for five weeks; sometimes 500 persons were slain in a day; Since many merchants, eager for the reopening of trade with the West, were believed to have shared in the conspiracy, the soldiers of the Czar burned all the shops in the city and the homes of the merchants in the suburbs; even farm houses in the environs were destroyed. Unless unfriendly chroniclers have exaggerated the carnage, we must go back to the punishment of rebellious Liége by Charles the Bold (1468) or the Sack of Rome by the troops of Charles V (1527) to find analogies for Ivan’s savage revenge. Novgorod never recovered its old prominence in the commercial life of Russia. Ivan passed on to Pskov, where he restricted his soldiers to pillage. Then he returned to Moscow, and celebrated with a royal masquerade ball his escape from a dangerous conspiracy.
So turbulent a reign hardly favoured economic progress or cultural pursuits. Commerce was favoured in peace and wounded in war. In the lands allotted by Ivan, and then in other lands as well, the peasant was legally attached to the soil as a means of promoting continuous cultivation (1581); serfdom, rare in Russia before 1500, became by 1600 the law of the land. Taxation was predatory, inflation was precipitous. The rouble in 1500 was worth ninety-four, in 1600 twenty-four times the rouble of 1910; we need not follow the decline further, except to note, as one of the lessons of history, that money is the last thing that a man should save.
The improvident fertility of families and exhaustion of soils compelled a restless migration to fresh terrain. When this passed the Urals it found a Tatar khanate established over a population of Bashkirs and Ostyaks, around a capital known by the Cossack word Sibir. In 1581 Semen Stroganov enlisted 600 Cossacks and sent them under Ermak Timofeevitch to conquer these tribes. It was done; western Siberia became part of the swelling Russian realm; and Ermak, who had been a brigand chief, was canonized by the Orthodox Church.
The Church remained the real ruler of Russia, for the fear of God was everywhere, while Ivan’s reach was limited. Strict rules of ritual, if not of morality, bound even the Czar; the priests saw to it that he washed his hands after giving audience to ambassadors from outside the orthodox pale. No Roman Catholic worship was allowed, but Protestants were tolerated as fellow foes of the Roman Pope. Ivan, at a Sunday service in the Cathedral of the Assumption (1568). Phillip, metropolitan of Moscow, conspicuously refused the blessing that Ivan requested. When his attendants demanded reason for the refusal, Philip began to list Ivan’s crimes and debaucheries. “Hold thy peace,” cried the Czar, and give me thy blessing!” “my silence, answered the prelate, lays a sin upon thy soul, and calls down thy death.”
Ivan departed unblessed, and for a wondering month Philip remained unhurt. Then he was seized and dragged to prison. His fate is debated; the account accepted by the Russian Church is that he was burned alive. In 1652 he was canonized and his relics remained till 1917 an object of reverence in the Uspenskiy Sobor.
The Church produced most of the literature and art of Russia. Ivan’s confessor Sylvester composed a famous Domostroi, or Household Book, as a guide to domestic economy, manners, and eternal salvation; we note in it the admonition to the husband to beat his wife lovingly, and precise instructions for spitting, and blowing of the nose.
The most brilliant product of Russian art under his rule was the Church of Basil the Blessed (Khram Vasilia Blajennoi), which still stands aloof from the Kremlin at one end of the Red Square. On returning from his triumphant campaigns against Kazan and Astrakan, Ivan began what he called Pokrovski Sobor -- the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin, to whom he judiciously ascribed his victories. Around this central shrine of stone there later rose seven chapels in wood, dedicated to saints on whose festivals Ivan had overcome his foes. Each chapel was crowned with a graceful painted cupola, each bulbous but varying from the others in ornament. The final chapel, raised to St. Basil in 1588, gave its name to the whole charming ensemble. Inevitable legend credited the architecture to an Italian, and told how Ivan had gauged out his eyes lest he should ever rival this masterpiece; but it was two Russians, Barma and Postnikov, who designed it, merely adopting some Renaissance motives in its decoration. Every year, on Palm Sunday, as part of the wisdom of government, the lords and clergy of Moscow walked in awesome procession to this Cathedral; the metropolitan rode sideways on a horse equipped with artificial ears, to simulate the ass on which Christ was described as entering Jerusalem; and the Czar, on foot, humbly lead the horse by the bridle. Banners, crosses, icons, and censers flourished, and children raised hosannas of praise and gratitude to inclement skies for the blessings of Russian life.
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What a way to find out if the people would support him! And once he had their support, he did anything he wanted (almost).
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IVAN the TERRIBLE (Cont.)
By 1580 Ivan seemed to have triumphed over all his enemies. He had survived several wives, was married to a sixth, and thought of adding another in friendly bigamy. He had four children; the first died in infancy, the third, Feodor, was a half wit; the fourth, Dmitri was alleged to have epileptic fits. One day in November 1580, the Czar, seeing the wife of his second son, Ivan in what seemed to him immodest attire, reproved and struck her; she miscarried; the Czarevitch reproached his father; the Czar, in unpremeditated rage, struck him on the head with the imperial staff; the son died from the blow. The Czar went insane with remorse; he spent his days and nights crying aloud with grief; each morning he offered his resignation; but now even the boyars preferred him to his sons. He survived three years more. Then a strange disease attacked him, which made his body swell and emit an unbearable stench. On March 18,1584, he died while playing chess with Boris Godunov. Gossip accused Boris of poisoning him, and the stage was set for grand opera in the history of the Czars.
We must not think of Ivan as merely an ogre of brutality. Tall and strong, he would have been handsome but for a broad flat nose that overlay a spreading moustache and heavy auburn beard. The appellation ‘Groznyi’ is mistranslated Terrible; it meant, rather, awesome, like the ‘Augustus’ that was applied to the Caesars; Ivan III had also received the same name. To our minds, and even to his cruel contemporaries, he was repulsively cruel and vengeful, and he was a merciless judge. He lived in the age of the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of Servitus, the decapitating habits of Henry VIII, the Marian Persecution, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; When he heard of this holocaust ( which a pope welcomed with praise) he denounced the barbarism of the West. He confessed and at times exaggerated his sins and crimes, so that his enemies could only plagiarize him in their accusations. He had a sense of humour, and could roar with Jovian laughter, but a sinister cunning showed often in his smile. He paved his hell with wonderful intensions; he would protect the poor and the weak against the rich and strong; he would favour commerce and the middle classes as checks on the feudal and quarrelsome aristocracy; he would open the door of trade in goods and ideas to the West; he would give Russia a new administration class not bound, like the boyars, to ancient and stagnant ways; he would free Russia from the Tatars, and raise her out of chaos into unity. he was a barbarian barbarously struggling to be civilized.
He failed because he never matured to self mastery. The reforms that he had planed were half forgotten in the excitement of revolution. He left the peasants more bitterly subject to the landlords than before; he clogged the avenues of trade with war; he drove able men into the arms of the enemy; he divided Russia into hostile halves, and guided her into anarchy. He gave to his people a demoralising example of pious cruelty and uncontrolled passion. He killed his ablest son, and bequeathed his throne to a weakling whose incapacity invited civil war. He was one of many men of his time of whom it might be said that it would have been better for their country and humanity if they had never lived.
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Ivan survived five wives and sought more ! That maybe his greatest feat. I have never heard of any wife who survived 6 husbands ! We men are the greatest! Trevor.
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;D ;D
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!!!!!!!!!!
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"it's good to be the king," may be a better analysis Trevor. :D
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Durants' S o C
Vol. Vi THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 663 - 666
THE GENIUS OF ISLAM.
The Moslem world had sustained, from 1095 to 1291, a series of assaults as violent and religious as those by which it later subdued the Balkans and changed a thousand churches into mosques. Eight Crusades, inspired by a dozen popes, had hurled the royalty, chivalry, and rabble of Europe against Mohammedan citizens in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Tunisia; and though these attacks had finally failed, they had greatly weakened the order and resources of the Moslem states. In Spain the Crusades had succeeded; there Islam had been beaten back while its survivors were crowded into a Granada whose doom was leisurely delayed. Sicily had been taken by the virile Normans. But what were these wounds and amputations compared to the wild and ruinous descent of the Mongols ( 1219-1258) into Transoxiana, Persia, and Iraq? City after city that had been a haven of Moslem civilisation was subjected to pillage, massacre, and fire -- Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Merv, Nishapur, Rayy, Herat, Baghdad, . . . provincial and municipal governments were shattered; canals, neglected, succumbed to the swirling sand; commerce was put to flight; schools and libraries were destroyed; scholars and scientists were scattered, slaughted, or enslaved. The spirit of Islam was broken for almost a century. It slowly revived; and when Timur’s Tatars swept across western Asia in a fresh desolation, and the Ottoman Turks cut their way through Asia Minor to the Bosporus, no other civilisation in history had known disasters so numerous, so widespread, and so complete.
And yet the Mongols, Tatars, and Turks brought their new blood to replace the human rivers they had shed. Islam had grown luxurious and supine; Baghdad, like Constantinople, had lost the will to live by its own arms; men were so in love with easeful life that they half invited death; that picturesque civilization too, as well as the Byzantine, was ripe to die. But so rich had it been, that -- like ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy -- it was able, by its salvaged fragments and memories, to civilize its conquerors. Persia under the Mongol Il-Khans developed an enlightened government, produced good literature and majestic art, and graced history with a noble scholar, Rashidu’d-Din. In Anatolia the Turks were already civilized, and poets among them were as plentiful as concubines. In Egypt the Mamluks continued to build like giants; and meanwhile Islam was spreading through India to the farthest reaches of the east.
When Marco Polo set out across Persia (1271) to see the China of Kublai Khan, he found himself within the Mongol Empire almost all the way. History had never recorded so vast a realm. On the west it touched the Dnieper in Russia; in the south it included the Crimea, Iraq, Persia, Tibet, and India to the Ganges; in the east it embraced Indochina, China, and Korea; in the north lay its original home, Mongolia. Throughout these states the Mongol rulers maintained roads, promoted commerce, protected travellers, and permitted freedom of worship to diverse faiths.
Hulagu, grandson of Ghenghis Khan, after destroying Baghdad ( 1258) established a new capital at Maragha in northwest Persia. When he died (1265), his son Abaqa became Khan or prince of Persia, loosely subject to the distant Kublia Khan; so began the Il-Khan dynasty that ruled Persia and Iraq til 1337. Greatest of the line was Ghazan Khan. He broke off allegiance to the Great Khan in Mongolia and made his state an independent kingdom, with its capital at Tabriz. He reformed administration, stabilized the currency, protected the peasants from landlords and robbers, and promoted such prosperity as recalled Baghdad in its proudest days. He built a mosque, two colleges, a philosophical academy, an observatory, a library, a hospital. He set aside revenues from certain lands in perpetuity to support these institutions, and secured for them the leading scholars, physicians, and scientists of the age. He himself was a man of wide culture and many languages, including Latin.
Marco Polo described Tabriz as a “great and glorious city.” Fra Oderic (1320) pronounced it “ the finest city in world trade. Every article is found here in abundance..... The Christians say that the revenue the city pays to its ruler is greater than that which all France pays to its king.” Clavijo (1404) called it a “Mighty city abounding in riches and goods,” with “many fine buildings,” magnificent mosques, and “the most splendid bathhouses in the world.” Uljaitu continued the enlightened policies of his brother Ghazan. The carer of his chancellor, Rashidu’d-Din Fadlu’llah, illustrates the prosperity of education, scholarship, and literature at this time. Rashidu’d-Din Fadlu’llah was born in 1247 at Hamadan, perhaps of Jewish parentage; so his enemies held, citing his remarkable knowledge of Mosaic Law. He served Ababa as physician, Ghazan as premier, Uljaitu as treasurer. In an eastern suburb of Tabriz he established the Rab’-i-Rashidi, or Rashidi foundation, a spacious university centre. One of his letters, preserved in the Library of Cambridge University, describes it:
In it we have built twenty-four Caravanserais ( Inns) touching the sky, 1500 shops and 30,000 fascinating houses. Salubrious baths, pleasant gardens, stores, mills, factories for cloth weaving and paper making.... have been constructed .... people from every city and border have been removed to the said Rab’, among them 200 reciters of the Koran. . . . we have given dwellings to 400 other scholars, theologians, jurists, and traditionalists in the street which is named “The street of the scholars.” Daily payments, pensions, yearly clothing allowances, soap money and sweets money have been granted for them all. We have established 1,000 other students . . . and have given orders for their pensions and daily pay.. . . . in order that they may be comfortably and peacefully occupied in acquiring knowledge and profiting people by it. We have prescribed, too, which and how many students should study with which professor and teacher; and after ascertaining each knowledge-seekers aptness of mind and capability of learning a particular branch of the sciences . . . we have ordered him to learn that science. . . .
Fifty skilled physicians who have come from the cities of Hindustan, China, Misr {Egypt}, and Sha’m {Syria} have all been granted our particular attention and favour in a thousand ways; we have ordered that they should frequent our ‘House of Healing’ ( hospital) every day, and that every one should take ten students capable of learning medicine under his care, and train them in the practice of this noble art. For all these men. . . we have founded a quarter behind our hospital . . . their street is called the ‘Street of the Healers”. Other craftsmen and industrialists too, whom we have transferred from various countries, have been established, each group in a particular street.
We must marvel at the industry of a man who, while actively sharing in the administration of a kingdom, found time and knowledge to write five books on theology, four on medicine and government, and a voluminous history of the world. He laboured seven years on his ‘Compendium of Histories’; Here were substantial accounts of Mongols from Genghis Khan to Ghazan; of the various Mohammedan states and dynasties in Eastern and Western Islam; of Persia and Judea before and after Mohammed; of China and India, with a full study of Buddha and Buddhism; and a chasteningly brief report on the doings and ideas of European kings, popes, and philosophers. He appears to have read Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Turkish, and Mongolian authorities -- in their original languages.
Much of his work has been lost, perhaps as a result of his political disaster. In 1312 Uljaitu associated with him Ali-Shah as co-chancellor of the exchequer. Under Uljaitu’s successor, Abu Sa’id, Ali-Shah spread divers charges against his colleague, and persuaded the Khan that Rashid’d-Din and his son Ibrahim had poisoned Uljaitu. The historian was dismissed and soon after put to death (1318), at the age of seventy, along with one of his sons. His properties were confiscated, his foundations were deprived of their endowments, and the suburb of Rab’-i-Rashidi was plundered and destroyed. After Abu Sa’id’s death a period of anarchy brought the dynasty of Il-Khans to an end, and their realm was divided into petty states ravaged by war and redeemed by poetry.
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"their realm was divided into petty states ravaged by war and redeemed by poetry,"
Is poetry redeeming? I would dearly love to read some of it.
And here, we learn nothing of all this. We learn "world history" meaning the history of Western Europe and the US.
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Imagine what the world would be like after 1500, if we could remove the wars and distruction of knowledge, buildings, art, science, medicine, libraries from the "Dark Ages/Middle Ages" so that the Renaissance didn't not have to relearn all the things that the Greeks, Romans and Moslems had already learned. Imagine if some of these well organized, well run cities weren't destroyed, but continued in their progress.
Joan - even learning what we learn from "western civ", we still don't seem to learn that most wars are just destructive with few positive results, except in technology. WWII is the only war that seems to me to have been NEEDED to be fought. Some might say the Civil War was necessary, but others believe that the need for slaves was already decreasing and the society just needed to figure out how to emancipate and assimilate those 3 million people. I suppose there were other demagogues that should have been unseated, but humanity seems to be unable to find solutions to that situation that don't destroy people, places and knowledge in the process of destroying the demagogue.
Maybe step one would be to stop glamorizing the battles and the people who lead them with memorials everywhere and start glamorizing and building statues to researchers, caregivers, innovators and peacekeepers. I remember how hopeful many people were about the development of the United Nations concept, but it just became another battleground by the men of the Cold War.
Jean
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JEAN: I couldn't agree with you more. One of the main things I've learned from this discussion is that people keep making the same mistakes over and over and -----.
We are incredibly lucky to live in a time and place where we have a decent chance of living a full life and seeing our family grow up around us. But we haven't seem to have been able to use that chance to build anything of lasting worth for the generations that follow us. Too caught up in the trials and tribulations of the day.
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DURANT'S S o C
Vol. V I THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 666 - 670
Hafiz: 1320 - 89
[After Abu Sa’id’s death a period of anarchy brought the dynasty of the Il-Khans to an end, and their realm was divided into petty states ravaged by war and redeemed by poetry.] For in Persia every other man wrote verses, and kings honoured poets only next to mistresses, calligraphers, and generals. In Hafiz’s time a score of Persian poets won renown from the Mediterranean to the Ganges and from Yemen to Samarkand. All of them, however, bowed to Shamsu’d-Din Muhammed Hafiz, and assured him that he surpassed the melodious Sa’id’s himself. He agreed with this estimate, and addressed himself reverently:
I have never seen any poetry sweeter than thine, O Hafiz,
I swear it by the Koran which thou keepest in thy bosom.
Hafiz means rememberer; it was given to anyone who, like our poet, had memorized the whole Koran. Born at Shiraz at a date and of ancestry unknown, he soon fell into verse. His first patron was Abu Ishaq, who had been appointed Shah of Fars ( southeastern Persia) by Ghazan Khan. Abu Ishaq so loved poetry that he neglected government. When warned that hostile forces were preparing to attack his capital, Shiraz, he remarked what a fool a man must be to waste so fair a spring on war. An insensitive general, Ibn-Muzaffar, captured Shiraz, killed Abu Ishaq ( 1352 ), forbade the drinking of wine, and closed every tavern in the town. Hafiz wrote a mournful elegy:
Though wine gives delight, and the wind distills the perfume
of the rose,
Drink not the wine to the strains of the harp, for the constable
is alert.
Hide the goblet in the sleeve of the patchwork cloak,
for time like the eye of the decanter, pours forth blood.
Wash the wine stain from your dervish cloak with tears,
for it is the season of piety, and the time of abstinence.
Muzaffar’s successor, finding prohibition impracticable, or having discovered that wine-bibers can be more easily ruled than puritans, reopened the taverns, and Hafiz gave him immortality. He followed Persian conventions in spending so many verses on wine; at times he reckoned a glass of wine as “worth more than a virgin’s kiss.” But even the grape grows dry after a thousand couplets, and soon Hafiz found love, virginal or practiced, indispensable to poetry:
Knowest thou what fortune is? ’Tis beauty’s sight obtaining;
‘Tis asking in her lane for alms, and royal pomp disdaining.
No freedom now seemed so sweet as love’s slavery. . . .
Our stay is brief, but since we may attain
The glory that is love, do not disdain
To hearken to the pleadings of the heart;
Beyond the mind life’s secret will remain.
Leave then your work and kiss your dear one now,
With this rich council I the world endow;
When the spring buds lure, the wind deserts his mill
And gently glides to kiss the leafy bough....
He who made the gold and silk your tresses spun,
Who made the red rose and the white rose one,
And gave your cheek to them for honeymoon....
Can He not patience give to me, His son?
He seems at last to have cooled into marriage, if we interpret his subtle verses rightly. He found a wife, and had several children, before he could quite make up his mind between woman and wine. In any case he became domesticated, cultivated a quiet privacy, and seldom stirred abroad. He would, he said, let his poems travel for him. His love for Shiraz kept him prisoner, he doubted if paradise itself had streams as lovely, or roses as red. He indited a laud, now and then, to the Persian kinglets of his time, in hopes of a gift to ease his poverty; for there were no publishers in Persia to launch one’s ink upon public seas, and art had to wait, hat in hand, in the antechambers of nobles and kings.
The ‘divan’ or collected poetry of Hafiz contains 693 poems. Most are odes, some are quatrains, some are unintelligable fragments. They are more difficult than Dante to translate, for they jingle with multiple rhymes which in English make doggerel, and they teem with recondite allusions that tickled the wits of the time but now lie heavy on the wings of song.
Hafiz was one of those blessed and harassed souls who, through art, poetry, imitation, and half-unconscious desire, have become so sensitive to beauty that they worship -- with eyes and speech and fingertips -- every fair form in stone or paint or flesh or flower, and suffer in stifled silence as beauty passes by; but who find, in each day’s fresh revelation of loveliness or grace, some forgiveness for the brevity of beauty and the sovereignity of death. So Hafiz mingled blasphemies with his adoration, and fell into angry heresies even while praising the Eternal One as the source from which all earthly beauty flows. When he died his orthodoxy was so doubtful, and his hedonism so voluminous, that some objected to giving him a religious funeral; but his friends saved the day by allegorizing his poetry. A later generation enshrined his bones in a garden -- the Hafiziyya --- flaming with the roses of Shiraz, and the poets prediction was fulfilled -- that his grave would become “ a place of pilgrimage for the freedom lovers of the world.”
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Marcie posted this:
"I've just heard from Robby in response to the latest Book Bytes. He says:
Just wanted to let you know that I am still around. I recently celebrated my 94th birthday and still go to work each day in my practice as a clinical psychologist in Warrenton, Virginia. Please say “hello” to those around who may remember me.
rbiallok@earthlink.net
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I read somewhere that the Islamic idea of poetry is different. They look at single lines, and admire their beauty and beautiful language.
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Muzaffar’s successor, finding prohibition impracticable, or having discovered that wine-bibers can be more easily ruled than puritans, reopened the taverns, and Hafiz gave him immortality.
Loved this! Thank you Durants for the chuckle.
That's an interesting perspective, Joan, about Islamic poetry. One of the reasons i still like studying in my 8th decade. Tidbits of knowledge can give us new ways of looking at things.
Jean
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TIMUR: 1336 - 1405
We first hear of the Tatars as a nomad people of Central Asia, kin and neighbours to the Mongols, and joining them in European raids. A Chinese writer of the thirteenth century describes the common run of them much as Jordanes had pictured the Huns a thousand years before; short of stature, hideous of visage to those unfamiliar with them , innocent of letters, skilled in war, aiming their arrows unerringly from a speeding horse, and continuing their race by an assiduous polygamy. In trek and campaigns they took with them bed and board -- wives and children, camels, horses, sheep, and dogs; pastured the animals between battles, fed on their milk and flesh, clothed themselves in their skins. They ate gluttonously when supplies were plentiful, but they could bare hunger and thirst, heat and cold, “ more patiently than any people in the world.” Armed with arrows -- sometimes tipped with naphtha -- and cannon and all the medieval mechanisms of war, they were a fit and ready instrument for a man who dreamed of empire with his mother’s milk.
When Genghis Khan died ( 1227) he divided his dominions among his four sons. To Jagatai he gave the southern region around Samarkand, and the name of his son came to be applied to the Mongol or Tatar tribes under his rule. Timur ( i.e. iron ) was born at Kesh in Transoxiana to the emir of one such tribe. According to Clavijo the new “Scourge of God” assumed this function precociously: he organised bands of young thieves to steal sheep or cattle from near -by herds. His enemies called him Timur-i-Lang, Timur the lame, which careless Occidentals like Marlowe made into Tamburlane or Tamerlane. He found little time for schooling; he read poetry, and knew the difference between art and degeneration. When he was sixteen his father bequeathed to him the leadership of the tribe and retired to a monastery, for the world, the old man said, is filled with scorpions and serpents. The father, we are told, advised his son always to support religion. Timur followed the percept even to turning men into minarets.
In 1361 the Khan of Mongolia appointed Khoja Ilias governor of Transoxiana, and made Timur one of Khoja’s councillors. But the energetic youth was not ripe for statesmanship; he quarrelled violently with other members of Khoja’s staff, and was forced to flee from Samarkand into the desert. He gathered some youthful warriors about him, and joined his band with that of his brother Amir Hussein, who was in like straits. They were raised to moderate fortune by being employed to suppress a revolt in Sistan. So ripened, they declared war on Khoja, deposed and slew him, and became joint rulers, at Samarkand. Five years later Timur connived at the assassination of his brother Amir Husein, and became sole sultan.
He taught the towns and tribes of Transoxiana to accept his rule docilely; he subdued the rich cities of Herat and Kabul; he discouraged resistance and revolt by savage punishments. When the city of Sabzawar surrendered after a costly siege, he took 2000 captives" piled them alive upon one another, compacted them with bricks and clay and erected them into a minaret, so that men, “being appraised of the majesty of his wrath, might not be seduced by the demon of arrogance.” The town of Zirih missed the point and resisted; the heads of its citizens made more minarets. In 1387 Isfahan yeilded, and accepted a Tatar garrison, but when Timur had gone the population rose and slew the garrison. He returned with his army, stormed the city, and ordered each of his troops to bring him the head of a Persian. Seventy thousand Isfahan heads, we are told, were set on the walls, or made into towers to adorn the streets. Appeased, Timur reduced the taxes that the city had been paying to its governor. The remaining towns of Persia paid ransom quietly.
While Timur was in south Persia, word was brought to him that Tuqatmish, Khan of the Golden Horde, had taken advantage of his absence to invade Tranoxiana. Timur marched 1000 miles north (consider the commissary problems involved in such a march), and drove Tuqatmish back to the Volga. Turning south and west, he raided Iraq, Georgia, and Armenia. Slaughtering routed the heretical Sayyids, whom he branded as “misguided communists.” He took Baghdad (1393) at the request of its inhabitants, who could no longer put up with the cruelty of their Sultan Ahmed ibn Uways. Finding the old capital in decay, he made his aids rebuild it; meanwhile he added some choice wives to his harem, and a celebrated musician to his court. Ahmed found asylum in Brusa with the Ottoman Sultan Bajazet I; Timur demanded Ahmed‘s extradition; Bajazet replied that this would violate canons of hospitality.
Timur would have advanced at once upon Brusa, but Tuqatmish had again invaded Transoxiana. The angry Tatar swept across south Russia, and while Tuqatmish hid in the wilderness, he sacked the Golden Horde’s cities of Saria and Astrakhan. Unresisted, Timur marched his army westward from the Volga to the Don, and perhaps planned to add all Russia to his realm. Russians of all provinces prayed feverishly, and the Virgin of Vladimir was borne to Moscow between lines of kneeling supplicants who cried out, “Mother of God, save Russia!” The poverty of the steppes helped to save it. Finding little to plunder, Timur turned back at the Don, and led his weary and hungry soldiers back to Samarkand ( 1395 - 96).
In 1399, still remembering Ahmed and Bajazet, he marched forth again. He crossed Persia to Azerbaijan, deposed his wastrel son as governor there, hanged the poets and ministers who had seduced the youth into revelry, and redevistated Georgia. Entering Asia Minor, he besieged Sivas, resented its long resistance, and, when it fell, had 4000 Christian soldiers buried alive -- or were such stories war propaganda? Wishing to protect his flank while attacking the Ottomans, he sent an envoy to Egypt proposing a nonaggression pact. The Sultan al-Malik imprisoned the envoy and hired an assassin to kill Timur. The plot failed. After reducing Aleppo, Hims, Baalbek, and Damascus, the Tatar moved onto Baghdad, which had expelled his appointees. He took it at great cost, and ordered each of his 20,000 soldiers to bring him a head. It was done -- or so we are told: rich and poor, male and female, old and young, paid this head tax, and their skulls were piled in ghastly pyramids before the city’s gates ( 1401). Moslem mosques, monasteries were spared; everything else was sacked and destroyed, so thoroughly that the once brilliant capital recovered only in our time, by the grace of oil. (?!)
Feeling now reasonably sure on left and right, Timur sent Bajazet a final invitation to submit. The Turk, made too confident by his triumph at Nicopolis (1396) retorted that he would annihilate the Tatar army, and would make Timur’s chief wife his slave. The two ablest generals of the age joined battle at Ankara ( 1402 ). Timur’s strategy compelled the Turks to fight when exhausted by a long march. They were routed. Bajazet was taken prisoner, Constantinople rejoiced, Christendom was for half a century saved by the Tatars from the Turks. Timur continued Europeward to Brusa, burned it and carried away its Byzantine library and silver gates. He marched to the Mediterranean, captured Smyrna from the Knights of Rhodes, butchered its inhabitants, and rested at Ephesus. Christendom trembled again. The Genoese sent in their submissions and tribute. The Sultan of Egypt released the Tatar envoy, and entered the distinguished company of Timur’s vassals. The conqueror returned to Samarkand as the most powerful monarch of his time, ruling from Central Asia to the Nile, from the Bosphorous to India. Henry IV of England sent him felicitations, France sent him a bishop with gifts. Henry the III of Castile dispatched to him a famous embassy under Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo.
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Marcie posted this:
"I've just heard from Robby in response to the latest Book Bytes. He says:
Just wanted to let you know that I am still around. I recently celebrated my 94th birthday and still go to work each day in my practice as a clinical psychologist in Warrenton, Virginia. Please say “hello” to those around who may remember me.
rbiallok@earthlink.net
I started taking the Latin 101 course this past year so I am very familiar with this website and all the various offerings for book discussions, news, TV shows, etc. So tonight I am reading a book that mentions SeniorLearn and the Story of Civilization's online discussion group which was led by one of the subjects in the book, Robert Iadeluca. Robby, as he is referred to in the book. Being curious by nature I decided to see if this gentleman was still leading the group and to my delight I see this post. I was doing the math in my head and knew he would be in his 90's and I really hoped he was still active on the site. What a wonderful treat for me seeing this post and although he is not active on SeniorLearn it is really fantastic to read he is working and still making a difference. Life surely is interesting.
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BeckiC: it sure is, and we learn something every day. Trevor bravely took over when Robbie decided to move on, and is doing a great job. I've been on the site for over ten years.
Come join us.
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My very limited knowledge of the moguls comes from two places. First a fascinating movie about an (American) Blind man, who learned Mongolian throat singing and traveled to Mongolia to compete in a throat-singing competition.
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Here is a video of Mongolian throat singing. Starting minute 4 is a song, with pictures of Mongolia. The high whistling sound is also made with the throat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkeMfmqrKdk
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my other contact with Mongolia is through giving microloans. Microloans were started by a banker in Bangladesh who won a nobel Peace Prize for it. he realized that poor people often needed just small amounts of money to start a business and become self sufficient. I give a microloan of $25 every month through an organization that has been set up : kiva.org Several of those have gone to families in Mongolia, sometimes to start a small business, sometime to make their house warmer for the winter (They don't seem to live in yurts anymore -- but in houses).
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Durant's S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 674 - 676
TIMUR (cont.)
Henry III of Castile sent a famous ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo to Timur. It is to Clavijo’s detailed memoirs that we owe most of our knowledge of Timur’s court. Clavijo left Cádiz on May 1403, travelled via Constantinople, Trebizond, Erzerum, Tabriz, Tehran (here first mentioned by a European), Nishapur, and Mashhad, and reached Samarkand August 1404. He had with some reason expected to find there only a horde of hideous butchers. He was astonished at the size and prosperity of Timur’s capital, the splendour of the mosques and palaces, the wealth and luxury of the court, the concourse of artists and poets celebrating Timur.
The city itself was over 2000 years old, had some 150,000 inhabitants, and “most beautiful houses,” and many palaces “embowered among trees”: altogether, and not including the extensive suburbs, Clavijo reckoned Samarkand to be “rather larger than Seville.” Water was piped into houses from a river which ran by the city, and irrigation canals greened the hinterland. There the air was fragrant with orchards and vineyards; sheep grazed, cattle ranged, lush crops grew. In the towns were factories that made artillery, armour, bows, arrows, glass, porcelain, tiles, and textiles of unsurpassed brilliance, including the ‘kirimze’ or red dye that gave its name to crimson. Working in shops or fields, dwelling in houses of brick or clay or wood, or taking their ease urbanely on the riverside promenade, were Tatars, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Iraqis, Afghans, Georgians, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, Nestorians, Hindus, all freely practicing their rights and preaching their contradictory creeds. The principal streets bordered with trees, shops, mosques, academies, libraries, and an observatory; a great avenue ran in a straight line from one end of the city to the other, and the main section was covered with glass.
Clavijo was received by the Tatar emperor. He passed through a spacious park “ wherein were pitched many tents of silk,” and pavilions hung with silk embroideries The tent was the usual abode of the Tatar; Timur himself, in this park, had a tent 300 feet in circumference. But there were palaces there too, with floors of marble or tile, and sturdy furniture inset with precious stones or sometimes altogether made of silver or gold. Clavijo found the monarch seated cross-legged on silken cushions “ under the portal of a most beautiful palace," facing a fountain that threw up a column of water which fell into a basin wherein apples bobbed incessantly. Timur was dressed in a cloak of silk, and wore a wide high hat studded with rubies and pearls. He had once been tall, vigorous, alert; now, aged sixty-eight, he was bent, weak, ailing, almost blind; he could barely raise his eyelids to see the ambassador.
He had acquired as much culture as a man of action could bear; he read history, collected art and artists, befriended poets and scholars, and could on occasion assume elegant manners. His vanity equalled his ability, which no one exceeded in that time. Contradicting Caesar, he reckoned cruelty a necessary part of strategy; yet, if we may believe his victims, he seems to have been often guilty of cruelty as mere revenge. Even in civil government he conferred death lavishly -- as to a mayor who had oppressed a city, or a butcher who had charged too much for meat. He excused his harshness as needed in ruling a people not yet reconciled to law, and he justified his massacres as a means of forcing disorderly tribes into the order and security of a united and powerful state. But, like all conquerors he loved power for its own sake, and spoils for the grandeur they could finance.
In 1405 he set out to conquer Mongolia and China, dreaming of a half-world state that would wed the Mediterranean to the China sea. His army was 200,000 strong; but at Otrar, on the northern border of his realm, he died. His last orders were that his troops should march on without him; and for a while his white horse, saddled and riderless, paced the host. But his soldiers knew that his mind and will had been half their might; soon they turned back, mourning and relieved, to their homes. His children built for him at Samarkand the majestic Gur-i-Mir, or Mausoleum of the Emir, a tower crowned with a massive bulbous dome, and faced with bricks enamelled in lovely turquoise blue.
His empire crumbled with his brain. The western provinces almost at once fell away, and his progeny had to content themselves with the Middle East. The wisest of this Timurid line was Shah Rukh, who allowed his son Ulug to govern Transoxiana from Samarkand, while he himself ruled Khurasan from Herat. Under these descendants of Timur the two capitals became rival centres of a Tatar prosperity and culture equal to any in Europe at the time (1405-49). Shah Rukh was a competent general who loved peace, favoured letters and art, and founded a famous library at Herat. Ulug Beg cherished scientists, and raised at Samarkand the greatest observatory of the age. He was, says a florid Moslem biographer,
“Learned, just, masterful, and energetic, and attained to a high degree in astronomy, while in rhetoric he could split hairs. In his reign the status of men of learning reached its Zenith . . . In geometry he expounded subtleties, and in questions of cosmography he elucidated Ptolemy’s Almagest.... he recorded observations of the stars with the co-operation of the foremost scientists.... he constructed in Samarkand a college the like of which, in beauty, rank, and worth, is not to be found in seven climes.”
This paragon of patronage was murdered in 1449 by his bastard son; but the high culture of the Timurid dynasty continued under the sultans Abu Sa’id and Husein-ibn-Baiqara at Herat till the end of the fifteenth century. In 1501 the Uzbeg Mongols captured Samarkand and Bokhara; in 1510 Shah Ismail, of the new Safavid dynasty, took Herat. Babur, last of the Timurid rulers, fled to India, and founded there, a Mogul ( Mongol) dynasty which made Moslem Delhi as brilliant a capital as Medicean Rome.
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I seldom take time to think what a monstrous research job the Durant's did. How does he even know of the existence of Clavijo's memoirs, much less find a copy and read it. Wow.
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BeckiC: ........
Come join us.
Thank you for your kind invitation Joan. I am busy learning Latin from Ginny at the moment. Talk about learning something new everday.....;)
Best regards, BeckiC
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Enjoy! :)
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Durant's S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 678 - 681
THE OTTOMANS: 1288 - 1517
History begins after origins have disappeared. No one knows where the “Turks” arose; some have guessed that they were a Finno-Ugric tribe of the Huns, and that their name meant a helmet, which is ‘durko’ in one Turkish dialect. They formed their languages from Mongolian and Chinese, and later imported Persian or Arabic words; these “Turkish” dialects are the sole means of classifying their speakers as Turks. One such clan took its name from its leader Seljuq; it grew from victory to victory, until its multiplied descendants, in the thirteenth century, ruled Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Asia Minor. A kindred clan under Ortoghrul fled in that century from Khurasan to avoid drowning in the Mongol inundation. It found military employment with the Seljuq emir of Konya ( Iconium) in Asia Minor, and received a tract of land to pasture its herds.When Ortoghrul died (1288?) his son Othman or Osman, then thirty years old, was chosen to succeed him; from him ,the Ottomans or Osmanlis received their name They did not before the nineteenth century, call themselves Turks; they applied that name to semi-barbarous peoples in Turkestan and Khursan.
In 1290, seeing that the Seljuqs were too weak to prevent him, Othman made himself the independent emir of a little state in north-western Asia Minor; and in 1299 he advanced his head-quarters westward to Yeni-sheir. He was not a great general, but he was patiently persistent; his army was small, but it was composed of men more at home on a horse than on foot, and willing to risk a weary life or limb for land, gold, women, or power. Between them and the Sea of Marmora lay drowsy Byzantine cities, ill governed and poorly defended. Othman laid siege to one such town, Brusa; Failing at first, he returned again and again to the attempt; finally it surrendered to his son Orkhan, while Othman himself lay dying at Yeni-Sheir (1326).
Orkhan made Brusa, sanctified with his father’s bones, the new capital of the Ottomans. “Manifest destiny” -- i.e., desire plus power drew Orkhan toward the Mediterranean, ancient circlet of commerce, wealth, and civilization. In the very year of Brusa’s fall he seized Nic-omedia, which became Izmid; in 1330 Nicaea which became Iznik; in 1336 Pergamum, which became Bergama. These cities, reeking with history, were centres of crafts and trade; they depended for food and markets upon environing agricultural communities already held by the Otomans; they had to live in this hinterland or die. They did not resist for long; they had been oppressed by their Byzantine governors, and heard that Orkhan taxed lightly and allowed religious liberty; and many of these Near Eastern Christians were harassed heretics -- Nestorians or Monophysites. Soon a large part of the conquered terrain accepted the Moslem Creed; so war solves theological problems before which reason stands in hesitant impotence. Having thus extended his realm, Orkhan took the title Sultan of the Ottomans. The Byzantine emperors made their peace with him, hired his soldiers, and allowed his son Suleiman to establish Ottoman strongholds in Europe. Orkhan died in 1359, aged seventy-one, firmly placed in the memory of his people.
His successors formed a dynasty hardly equalled in history for a merger of martial vigour and skill, administrative ability, barbarous cruelty, and cultured devotion to letters, science and art. Murad (Amurath) I was the least attractive of the line. Illiterate, he signed his name by pressing his inked fingers upon documents, in the fashion of less distinguished homicides. When his son Saondji led a criminally unsuccessful revolt against him Murad tore out the youth’s eyes, cut off his head, and compelled the fathers of the rebels to behead their sons. He trained an almost invincible army, conquered most of the Balkans, and eased their submission by giving them a more efficient government than they had known under Christian domination.
Bjazet I inherited his father’s crown on the field of Korsova ( 1389).After leading the army to victory, he ordered the execution of his brother Yakub, who had fought valiantly throughout that crucial day. Such fratricide became a regular aftermath of an Ottoman accession, on the principal that sedition against the government was so disruptive that all potential claimants to the throne should be disposed of at the earliest convenience. Bajazet earned the title of Yielder -- the Thunderbolt -- by the speed of his military strategy, but he lacked the statesmanship of his father, and wasted some of his wild energy in sexual enterprise. Stephen Lazarevitch, vassal ruler of Serbia, contributed a sister to Bajazet’s harem; this Lady Despoina became his favourite wife, taught him to love wine and sumptuous banquets, and perhaps weakened him as a man. His pride flourished till his fall. After deflowering Europe’s chivalry at Nicopolis he released the Count of Nevers with a characteristic challenge:
“John I know well thou art a great lord in thy country, and son to a great lord. Thou art young, and peradventure thou shalt bear some blame or shame that this adventure hath fallen to thee in thy first chivalry; and to excuse thyself of this blame, and to recover thine honor, peradventure thou wilt assemble a puissance of men and come to make war upon me. If I were in doubt or fear of thereof , ere thou departed I should cause thee to swear by thy law and faith that never thou, nor none of thy company, should bear arms against me. But I will neither make thee nor none of thy company to make any such oath or promise, but I will that when thou art returned and art at thy pleasure, thou shalt raise what puissance thou wilt, and spare not, but come against me; thou shalt find me always ready to receive thee and thy company. And this that I say, show it to whom thou list, for I am able to do deeds of arms, and ever ready to conquer further into Christendom.”
When Timur captured Bajazet at Ankara he treated him well. He ordered the Sultans bonds removed, seated him at his side, and assured him that his life would be spared. But when Bajazet tried to escape he was confined to a room with barred windows, which legend magnified into an iron cage. Bajazet fell ill; Timur summoned the best physicians to treat him and sent the Lady Despoina to console him. These ministrations failed to revive the vital forces of the broken Sultan. His son Mohammed I reorganized the Ottoman government. Though he blinded one pretender and killed another, he acquired the cognomen “Gentleman” by his courtly manners, his just rule, and the ten years of peace that he allowed Christendom. Murad II had like tastes and preferred poetry to war. But when Constantinople set up a rival to depose him, and Hungary violated its pledge of peace, he proved himself at Varna (1444) as good a general as any. Then he retired to Magnesia in Asia Minor, where twice a week he held reunions of poets and pundits, read verse, and talked science and philosophy. A revolt at Adrianople called him back to Europe. When he died (1451) after thirty years rule, Christian historians ranked him among the greatest monarchs of his time.. His will directed that he should be buried at Brusa in a modest chapel without a roof, “so that the mercy and blessing of God might come unto him with the shining of the sun and moon, and the falling of the rain and dew upon his grave.”
Mohammed II equalled his father in culture and conquests, political acumen, and length of reign, but not in justice or nobility. Bettering Christian instruction, he broke solemn treaties, and tarnished his victories with superfluous slaughter. He was orient ally subtle in negotiation and strategy. He spoke five languages, was well read in several literatures, excelled in mathematics and engineering, cultivated the arts, gave pensions to thirty Ottoman poets and gave royal gifts to poets in Persia and India. For this he was known as the “Sire of Good Works.” Mohammed was also “Sire of Victory”; to him and his canon Constantinople fell; under the guns of his navy the Black Sea became a Turkish pond; before his legions and diplomacy the Balkans crumbled into servitude. But this irresistible conqueror could not conquer himself. By the age of fifty he had worn himself out by every form of sexual excess; aphrodisiacs failed to implement his lust; finally his harem classed him with his eunuchs. He died (1481) aged fifty-one, just when his army seemed on the verge of conquering Italy for Islam.
A contest among his sons gave the throne to Bajazet II. The new sultan was not inclined to war but when Venice took Cyprus, and challenged Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean, he roused himself, deceived his deceivers with a pledge of peace, built an armada of 270 vessels, and destroyed a Venetian fleet of the coast of Greece. A Turkish army raided northern Italy as far west as Vicenza( 1502). Venice sued for peace; Bajazet gave her lenient terms, and retired to poetry and philosophy. His son Selim deposed him and mounted the throne (1512).
History is in some aspects an alternation of contrasting themes: the moods and forms of one age are repudiated by the next, which tires of tradition and begets impressionism; a period of war calls for a decade of peace, and peace prolonged invites aggressive war. Salem I despised his father’s pacific policy. Vigorous in frame and will, indifferent to pleasures and amenities, loving the chase and the camp, he won the nickname “Grim,” by having nine relatives strangled to contracept revolt, and waging war after war of conquest. In 1515 he turned his artillery and Janissaries against the Mamluks, and added Syria, Arabia, and Egypt to his realm ( 1517). He carried to Constantinople as an honoured captive, the Cairene “Caliph”-- rather the high priest -- of orthodox Mohammedanism; and thereafter the Ottoman sultans, like Henry VIII, became the masters of the church as well as the state.
In the full glory of his powers Salem prepared to conquer Rhodes and Christendom. When all his preparations were complete he caught the plague and died (1520). Leo X, who had trembled more at Salem’s advance than at Luther's rebellion, ordered all Christian churches to chant a litany of gratitude to God.
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Some interesting comments here:
"so war solves theological problems before which reason stands in hesitant impotence." Hmm.
And "History is in some aspects an alternation of contrasting themes: the moods and forms of one age are repudiated by the next, which tires of tradition and begets impressionism; a period of war calls for a decade of peace, and peace prolonged invites aggressive war."
Sociologists have been trying to figure out the latter for a long time.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
pgs. 689 - 692
Islamic Thought
In science and philosophy the glory had gone. Religion had won its war against them, just when it was giving ground in the adolescent West. The highest honours now went to theologians, dervishes, fakirs, saints; and scientists aimed rather to absorb the findings of their predecessors than to look nature freshly in the face. At Samarkand Moslem astronomy had its last fling when the stargazers in the observatory of Uleg Beg formulated (1437) astronomical tables that enjoyed high esteem in Europe till the eighteenth century. Armed with tables and an Arab map, an Arab navigator piloted Vasco da Gama from Africa to India on the historic voyage that ended the economic ascendancy of Islam.
In Geography the Moslems produced a major figure in this age. Born at Tangier in 1304, Mohammad Abu Abdalla ibn-Batuta wandered through Daru’l-Islam -- the Mohammedans World -- for twenty-four years and returned to Morocco to die in Fez. His itinerary suggests the immense spread of Mohammed’s creed: he claims to have travelled 75,000 miles ( more than any other man before the age of steam); to have seen Granada, North Africa, Timbuktu, Egypt, the Near and Middle East, Russia, India, Ceylon, and China, and to have visited every Moslem Ruler of the time. We see our own provincialism mirrored in him when he lists “the seven mighty kings of the world,” all Moslems except one Chinese. He describes not only persons and places, but the fauna, flora, minerals, food, drinks, and prices in various countries, the climate and physiography, the manners and morals, the religious rituals and beliefs. He speaks reverently of Jesus and Mary, but takes some satisfaction in noting that “ every pilgrim who visits the church [ of the Resurrection in Jerusalem ] pays a fee to Moslems.” When he returned to Fez and related his experiences, most of his hearers put him down as a romancer, but the vizier ordered a secretary to record Batuta’s dictated memoirs. The book was lost and almost forgotten until it was discovered in modern French occupation of Algiers.
Between 1250 and 1350 the most prolific writers on “natural history “ were Moslems. Mohammed ad-Damiri of Cairo wrote a 1,500-page book on zoology. Medicine was still a Semitic forte; hospitals were numerous in Islam; a physician of Damascus, Ala’al-din ib n-al-Nafis, expounded the pulmonary circulation of the blood 270 years (c. 1260) before Servitus; and a Granada physician, Ibn-al-Katib, ascribed the black death to contagion -- and advised quarantine for the infected-- in the face of a theology that attributed it to divine vengeance on man’s sins. His treatise ‘On Plague’ ( 1360) contained a notable heresy: It must be a principle that a proof taken from the traditions of the companions of Mohammed “has to undergo modification when in manifest contradiction with the evidence of the senses”.
Scholars and historians were as numerous as poets. Always they wrote in Arabic, the Esperanto of Islam; and in many cases they combined study and writing with political activity and administration. Abu-l-Fida of Damascus took part in a dozen military campaigns, served al-Nasir at Cairo, returned to Syria as a governor of Hamah, collected an extensive library, and wrote some books that in their day stood at the head of their class. His treatise on Geography ( Taqwin al-Buldan ) outranged in scope any European work of the kind and time; it calculated that three quarters of the globe were covered in water, and noted that a traveller gained or lost a day in going westward or eastward around the world.
But the great name in the historiography of the fourteenth century is Abd-er-Rahman ibn-Khaldun. Here is a man of substance, even to Western eyes: solid with experience, travel, and practical statesmanship, yet familiar with the art and literature, science and philosophy of his age, and embracing almost every Moslem phase of it in a ‘Universal History’. The Black Death took his parents and many teachers, but he continued his studies until “I found at last that I knew something’- - a characteristic delusion of youth. At twenty he was secretary to the sultan at Tunis; at twenty-four, to the sultan at Fez; at twenty-five he was in jail. Returning to Africa, he became Chief minister to Prince Abu Abdallah, but he had to flee for his life when his master was deposed and slain. He removed to Cairo(1384). His fame as a scholar was already international; when he lectured in the Mosque students crowded round him. He was appointed royal judge, took the laws too seriously, and closed the cabarets, was lampooned out of office, again retired to private life. Restored once again as chief qadi, he accompanied Sultan Nasir in a campaign against Timur. The Egyptian forces were defeated and the sultan sought refuge in Damascus. Timur besieged it; the historian, now an old man, led a delegation to ask lenient terms of the invincible Tatar. Like any other author he brought a manuscript of his history with him; he read to Timur the section on Timur, and invited corrections. The plan worked; Timur freed him; soon he was once more chief judge at Cairo; and he died in office at the age of seventy-four.
Amid this hectic career he composed an epitome of Averroes’ philosophy, and treatises on logic and mathematics, a History of the Berbers, and The Peoples of the East. Only the last three works survive. He also authored the Prolegomena, one of the highlights in Islamic literature and in the philosophy of history, an amazingly “modern” product for a medieval mind. He conceives history as “an important branch of philosophy,” and takes a broad view of the historian’s task:
“History has for its true object to make us understand the social state of man, i.e., his civilization; to reveal to us the phenomena that naturally accompany primitive life, and then the refinement of manners..... the diverse superiorities that peoples acquire, and which beget empires and dynasties; the diverse occupations, professions, sciences and arts; and lastly all the changes that the nature of things can effect in the nature of society.”
Believing himself the first to write history in this fashion, he asks pardon for inevitable errors:
“I confess that of all men I am the least able to traverse so vast a field.. . . I pray that men of ability and learning will examine my work with good will, and when they find faults will indulgently correct them. That which I offer to the public will have little value in the eyes of scholars . . . but one should always be able to count on the courtesy of his colleagues.”
He hopes his work will help in the dark days that he foresees:
“ When the world experiences a complete overturn it seems to change its nature in order to permit new creation and a new organization. Hence there is need today of an historian who can describe the state of the world, of its countries and peoples, and indicate the changes in customs and beliefs.”
He devotes some proud pages to pointing out the errors of some historians. They lost themselves, he feels, in the mere chronicling of events, and rarely rose to the elucidation of causes and effects. They accepted fable almost as readily as fact, gave exaggerated statistics, and explained too many things by supernatural agency. As for himself, he proposes to rely entirely on natural factors in explaining events. He will judge the statements of historians by the present experience of mankind, and will reject any alleged occurrence that would now be accounted impossible. The true subject of history, says Ibn-Khaldun, is civilization: how it arises, how it is maintained, how it develops letters, sciences, and arts, and why it decays. Empires like individuals, have a life and trajectory of their own. They grow, they mature, they decline.
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"“History has for its true object to make us understand the social state of man, i.e., his civilization; to reveal to us the phenomena that naturally accompany primitive life, and then the refinement of manners..... the diverse superiorities that peoples acquire, and which beget empires and dynasties; the diverse occupations, professions, sciences and arts; and lastly all the changes that the nature of things can effect in the nature of society.”
And again " some historians...lost themselves, he feels, in the mere chronicling of events, and rarely rose to the elucidation of causes and effects."
My bias would put Abd-er-Rahman ibn-Khaldun as the first sociologist. What do you think?
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JoanK if you peek ahead to page 694, you'll find you are in good company. Trevor
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Islamic thought (cont.)
Empires grow, mature, decline. What are the causes of this sequence? The basic conditions of the sequence are geographical. Climate exercises a general but basic influence. The cold north eventually produces, even in peoples of southern origin, a white skin, light hair, blue eyes, and a serious disposition; the tropics produce in time a dark skin, black hair, “dilatation of the animal spirits,” lightness of mind, gaiety, quick transports of pleasure, leading to song and dance. Food affects character: a heavy diet of meats, condiments, and grains begets heaviness of mind and body, and quick succumbing to famine or infection; a light diet, such as desert peoples eat, makes for agile and healthy bodies, clearness of mind, and resistance to disease. There is no inherent inequality of potential ability among the peoples of the earth; their advancement or retardation is determined by geographical conditions, and can be altered by a change in those conditions, or by migration to a different habitat.
Economic conditions are only less powerful than the geographical. Ibn-Khaldun divides all societies into nomad or sedentary, according to their means of getting food, and ascribes most wars to the desire for a better food supply. Nomad tribes sooner or later conquer settled communities because nomads are compelled by the conditions of their life to maintain the martial qualities of courage, endurance, and solidarity. Nomads may destroy a civilization, but they never make one; they are absorbed, in blood and culture, by the conquered, and the nomad Arabs are no exception. Since a people is never long content with its food supply, war is natural. It is war that generates and renews political authority. Hence monarchy is the usual form of government, and has prevailed through nearly all history. The fiscal policy of a government may make or break a society; excessive taxation or the entry of a government into production and distribution, can stifle incentive, enterprise, and competition, and kill the goose that lays the revenues. On the other hand, an excessive concentration of wealth may tear a society to pieces by promoting revolution.
There are moral forces in history. Empires are sustained by the solidarity of the people, and this can best be secured through the inculcation and practice of the same religion; Ibn-Khaldun agrees with the popes, the Inquisition, and the Protestant Reformers on the value of unanimity in faith.
“To conquer, one must rely upon the allegiance of a group animated with one corporate spirit and end. Such a union of hearts and wills can operate only through divine power and religious support. When men give their hearts and passions to a desire for worldly goods, they become jealous of one another and fall into discord. If, however they reject the world and its vanities for the love of God .. .. jealousies disappear, discord is stilled, men help one another devotedly; their union makes them stronger; the good cause makes rapid progress, and culminates in the formation of a great and powerful empire.”
Religion is not only an aid in war, it is likewise a boon to order in a society and to peace of mind in the individual. These can be secured only by a religious faith adopted without questioning. The philosophers concoct a hundred systems, but none has found a substitute for religion as a guide and inspiration for human life. “ Since man can never understand the world, it is better to accept the faith transmitted by an inspired legislator, who knows better than we do what is better for us, and has prescribed for us what we should believe or do.” After this orthodox prelude our philosopher-historian proceeds to a naturalistic interpretation of history.
Every Empire passes through successive phases. (1) A victorious nomad tribe settles down to enjoy its conquest of a terrain or state.” The least civilized peoples make the most extensive conquests.” (2) As social relations become more complex, a more concentrated authority is required for the maintenance of order; the tribal chieftain becomes king. (3) In this settled order wealth grows, cities multiply, education and literature develop, the arts find patrons, science and philosophy lift their heads. Advanced urbanization and comfortable wealth mark the beginning of decay. (4) The enriched society comes to prefer pleasure, luxury, and ease to enterprise, risk or war; religion loses its hold on human imagination or belief; morals deteriorate, pederasty grows; the martial virtues and pursuits decline; mercenaries are hired to defend the society; these lack the ardour of patriotism or religious faith; the poorly defended wealth invites attack by the hungry seething millions beyond the frontiers. (5) External attack, or internal intrigue, or both together, over throw the state. Such was the cycle of Rome, the Amaroids and Almohads in Spain, of Islam in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, and “it is always so.”
These are a few of the thousands of ideas that make the Maqaddama the most remarkable philosophical product of its century. Ibn-Khaldun has his own notions on almost everything but theology, where he thinks it unwise to be original. While writing a major work on philosophy he pronounces philosophy dangerous, and advises his readers to let it alone; probably he meant metaphysics and theology rather than philosophy in its wider sense, as an attempt to see human affairs in a large perspective. At times he talks like the simplest old woman in the market place; he accepts miracles, magic, the evil eye, the occult properties of the alphabet, divination through dreams, entrails, or the flight of birds. Yet admires science, admits the superiority of the Greeks to the Moslems in that field, and mourns the decline of scientific studies in Islam. He rejects alchemy, but acknowledges some faith in astrology.
Certain other discounts must be made. He shares many of the limitations of Islam. In three volumes of the Maqaddama he finds room for but seven pages on Christianity. He makes only casual mention of Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe. Sometimes he is culpably ignorant: he thinks Aristotle taught from a porch, and Socrates from a tub. His actual writing of history falls far short of his theoretical introduction.
To recover our respect for Ibn-Khaldun we need only ask what Christian work of philosophy in the fourteenth century can stand beside the Prolegomena. Ibn-Khaldun felt, and with some reason that he had created the science of sociology. Our leading contemporary philosopher of history has judged the Muqaddama to be “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any place or time.” We may agree with a distinguished historian of science, that the most important historical work of the middle ages was the Muqaddama of Ibn-Khaldun.
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Empires grow, mature, decline. What are the causes of this sequence? The basic conditions of the sequence are geographical.... Economic conditions are only less powerful than the geographical....There are moral forces in history....Every Empire passes through successive phases"
I told you we had sociology here. Sociologists when studying a group always look at three things: economic conditions, the ideas or ideals of the people studied (including religion), and the power structure. They influence each other, and there are arguments about "which came first," but no argument that these are the important things. Only the ideas about the influence of geography are missing.
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(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/soc/soctitle.jpg)
"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume VI THE REFORMATION
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends." This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORENDOM
Pgs. 695 - 698
AFRICAN ISLAM: 1200-1566
It is hard for us, pigeonholed in Christendom, to realise that from the eighth to the thirteenth century Islam was culturally, politically, and militarily superior to Europe. Even in its decline in the sixteenth century it prevailed from Delhi and beyond to Casablanca, from Adrianople to Aden, from Tunis to Timbuktu. Visiting the Sudan in 1353, Ibn-Batuta found there a creditable civilization under Moslem leadership; and a Negro Mohammedan, Abd-er-Rahman Sa’di, would later write a revealing and intelligent history, Tarik-es-Sudan (c.1650), describing private libraries of 1600 volumes in Timbuktu, and massive mosques whose ruins attest a departing glory.
The Marini dynasty( 1195-1270) made Morocco independent, and developed Fez and Marraqesh into major cities each with august gateways, imposing mosques, learned libraries, colleges squatting amid shady colonnades, and wordy bazarres where one could buy anything at half the price. In its Karouine Mosque, seat of Morocco’s oldest university, religion and science lived in concord, taking eager students from all African Islam, and -- in arduous courses of three to twelve years -- training teachers, lawyers, theologians, and statesmen. Emir Yaqub II (1269-86) ruling Morocco from Fez or Marraqesh, was one of the most enlightened princes of a progressive century, a just governor, a wise philanthropist, tempering theology with philosophy, shunning bigotry, and encouraging friendly relations with Europeans. The two cities received many refugees from Spain, and these brought a new stimulus to science, art, and industry. Ibn-Batuta, who had seen nearly all of vast Islam, called Morocco the Earthly paradise.
On the way from Fez to Oran the modern traveller is surprised to find at Tlemcen the modest remnant of what in the thirteenth century was a city of 125,000 souls. Three of its once sixty-four mosques are among the finest in the Mohammedan world. Marbled columns, complex mosaics, brilliant mihrabs, arcaded courts, carved wood, and towering minarets survive to tell of a splendour gone and almost forgotten. Here the Abd-el-Wahid dynasty (1248-1337, 1359-1553) maintained for three centuries a relatively enlightened rule, protecting Christians and Jews in religious freedom, and providing patronage to letters and arts. After the Turks captured the city (1553) it lost its importance as a centre of trade, and declined into the shadows of history.
Farther east, Algiers flourished through a mixture of commerce and piracy. Half hidden in a rock-bound semicircular bay, this picturesque port, rising in tier upon tier of white tenements and palaces from the Mediterranean to the Casbah, provided a favourite lair for privateers. After 1492 Algiers became a refuge for Moors fleeing from Spain; many of them joined the pirate crews, and turned in vengeful fury upon what Christian shipping they could waylay. Growing in number and audacity the pirates manned fleets as strong as national navies. Spain retaliated with protective expeditions that captured Oran, Algiers, and Tripoli (1509-10).
In 1516 a colourful buccaneer entered the picture. The Italians called him Barbarossa from his red beard; his actual name was Khair ed-Din Khizr; he was a Greek of Lesbos, who came with his brother Horush to join the pirate crew. While Khair ed-Din raised himself to command of the fleet, Horush led an army against Algiers, expelled the Spanish garrison, made himself governor of the city, and died in battle (1518). Khair ed-Din, succeeding to his brother’s power, ruled with energy and skill. To consolidate his position he went to Constantinople, and offered Selim I sovereignty over Tripoly, Tunisia, and Algeria in return for a Turkish force adequate to maintain his own authority as vassal governor of these regions. Salim agreed, and Suleiman confirmed the arrangement. In 1533 Khair ed-Din became the hero of Western Islam by ferrying 70,000 Moors from inhospitable Spain to Africa. Appointed first admiral of the entire Turkish fleet, Barbarossa, with eighty-four vessels, raided town after town on the coasts of Sicily and Italy, and took thousands of Christians to be sold as slaves. Landing near Naples he almost succeeded in capturing Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, reputed the loveliest woman in Italy. She escaped half clad, rode off with one knight as her escort, and, on reaching her destination, ordered his death for reasons which she left to be inferred.
But Barbarossa aimed at less perishable booty than a beautiful woman. Landing his Janissaries at Bizerte, he marched against Tunis (1534 ). Muley Hassan, the current prince, had alienated the people by his cruelties. He fled as Barbarossa approached; Tunis was taken bloodlessly; Tunisia was added to the Ottoman realm, and Barbarossa was master of the Mediterranean. It was another crisis for Christendom, for the unchallenged Turkish fleet could at any moment secure a foothold for Islam in the Italian boot. Strangely enough, Francis I was at this time allied with the Turks, and Pope Clement VII was allied with France. Fortunately, Clement died ( Sept.25, 1534 ). Pope Paul III pledged funds to Charles V for an attack on Barbarossa, and Andrea Doria offered the full co-operation of the Genoese fleet. Charles crossed the Mediterranean, and laid siege to La Goletta. After a month’s fighting La Goletta fell and the Imperial army marched on to Tunis. Barbarossa tried to stop the advance; he was defeated and fled. Charles entered the city unresisted. For two days he surrendered it to pillage by his soldiers, who would have otherwise mutinied; thousands of Moslems were massacred; the art of centuries was shattered in a day or two. The Christian slaves were freed, and the surviving Mohammedan population was enslaved. Charles reinstated Muley Hassan as his tributary vassal, left garrisons, and returned to Europe.
Barbarossa escaped to Constantinople, and there with Suleiman’s funds, built a new fleet of ships. In july, this force effected a landing at Taranto, and Christendom was once again besieged. A new “Holy League” of Venice, the Papacy, and the Empire took form, and gathered 200 vessels off Corfu. On Sept.27th the rival armadas, at the entrance to the Ambraciań Gulf, fought an engagement almost in the same waters where Antony and Cleopatra had met Octavian at Acrium. Barbarossa won, and again ruled the seas. Sailing east, he took one after another of the Venetian possessions in the Aegean and Greece, and forced Venice to a separate peace.
Charles and Doria led an expedition agains Algiers; it was defeated on land by Barbarossa’s army, and at sea by a storm. Barbarossa returned the call by ravaging Calabria, and landing, unhindered, at Ostia, the port of Rome. The great capital shivered in its shrines, but Paul III was at the time on good terms with Francis, and Barbarossa, allegedly out of courtesy to his ally, paid in cash for all he took at Ostia, and departed peacefully. He sailed up to Toulon, where his fleet was welcomed by the matter-of-fact French; he asked that the church bells should suspend their ringing while Allah’s vessels were in the harbour, for the bells disturbed his sleep, and his request was law. Then, seventy-seven, the triumphant corsair retired with full honours to die in bed at eighty ( 1546)
The Ottoman Empire now reached from Algiers to Baghdad. Only one Moslem power dared to challenge its predominance in Islam, -- Safavid Persia.
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How little we know of all that history. Truly, the winners write the history books.
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DURANTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 698 - 702
SAFAVID PERSIA: 1502 - 76
Persia, which had enjoyed so many periods of cultural fertility, was now entering another epoch of political vitality and artistic creation. When Shah Ismail I founded the Safid Dynasty ( 1502 - 1736) Persia was a chaos of kinglets, many of which were independent states. In a succession of ruthless campaigns Ismail of Azerbaijan conquered most of these principalities, captured Herat and Baghdad and made Tabriz again the capital of a powerful kingdom. The people welcomed this native dynasty, gloried in the unity and power it gave their country, and expressed their spirit in a new outburst of Persian art.
Ismail’s rise to royalty is an incredible tale. He was three years old when his father died (1400), thirteen when he set out to win himself a throne, still thirteen when he had himself crowned Shah of Persia. We are told he was as “amiable as a girl,” but he killed his own mother ( or stepmother), ordered the execution of 300 courtesans at Tabriz, and massacred thousands of his enemies. Yet he was so popular that the “name of God is forgotten” in Persia said an Italian traveller, “and only the name of Ismail is remembered.
Religion and audacity were the secrets of his success. Religion in Persia was Shi’a -- i.e.,“the party” of Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed. The Shi’a recognized no rightful caliphs but Ali and his twelve lineal descendants -- “imams,” or holy kings; and since religion and government were not distinct in Islam, each such descendant had, in this doctrine, a divine right to rule both church and state. As Christians believed that Christ would return to establish His kingdom on earth, so the Shi’ites believed that the twelfth imam -- Muhammad ibn-Hasan -- had never died but would some day reappear and set up his blessed rule over the Earth. And as Protestants condemned Catholics for accepting tradition, along with the bible, as a guide to right belief, so the Shi’ites denounced the Sunnites -- the orthodox Mohammedan majority -- who found the sunna or path of righteousness not only in the Koran but also in the practice of Mohammed as handed down in the traditions of his companions and followers. And as Protestants gave up praying to the saints and closed the monasteries, so the Shi’ites discountenanced the Sufi mystics and closed the cloisters of the dervishes, which, like the monasteries of Europe in their prime, had been centres of hospitality and charity. As Protestants called their faith “the true religion,” so the Shi’ites took the name al-Ma-minum, “true believers.” No faithful Shi’ite would eat with a Sunnite, and if a Christian’s shadow passed over a Shi’ites meal, the food was to be discarded as unclean.
Ismail claimed descent from the seventh imam, Safi-al-Din (“Purity of the faith), from whom the dynasty was named. By proclaiming Shi’a as the national and official religion of Iran and as the sacred standard under which he fought, Ismail united his people in pious devotion against the Sunite Moslems who hemmed Persia in -- the Uzbeks and Afghans on the east, the Arabs, Turks, and Egyptians on the west. His strategy succeeded. Despite his cruelties he was worshipped as a saint, and his subjects so trusted in his divine power to protect them, that some refused to wear armour in battle.
Having won this fervent support, Ismail felt strong enough to challenge his neighbours. The Uzbeks who ruled Transoxiana, had spread their power into Khurasan; Ismail took Herat from them, and drove them out of Persia. Secure in the east, he turned against the Ottomans. Each faith now persecuted the other with holy intensity. Sultan Selim, we are reliably told, had 40,000 Shi’ites in his dominions killed or imprisoned; and Shah Ismail hanged some of the Sunnites who formed a majority in Tabriz, and compelled the rest to utter daily a prayer cursing the first three caliphs as usurpers of Ali’s rights. Nevertheless, in battle at Chaldiran, the Persians found Shi’a helpless before the artillery and Janissaries of Salem the grim; the Sultan took Tabriz and subdued all northern Mesopotamia( 1516 ). But his army mutinied, he retreated, and Ismail returned to his capital with all the glory that shrouds a martial king. After twenty-four years or rule Ismail died at thirty-eight, leaving his throne to his ten-year old son (1524).
Shah Tamasp I was a faithless coward, a melancholy sybarite, an incompetent king, a harsh judge, a patron and practitioner of art, a pious Shi’ite, and the idol of his people. Perhaps he had some secret virtues which he hid from history. The continuing emphasis on religion disturbed as well as strengthened the government, for it sanctioned a dozen wars, and kept the Islam of the Near and Middle East divided from 1508 to 1638. Christendom benefited, for Suleiman interrupted his assaults upon the West by campaigns against Persia; “only the Persian stands between us and ruin,” wrote Ferdinand’s ambassador in Constantinople. In 1533 the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha led a Turkish army into Azerbaijan, took fortress after fortress by bribing Persian generals, and finally captured Tabriz and Baghdad without striking a blow ( 1534). Fourteen years later during an armistice with Ferdinand, Suleiman led another army against “the rascally red-heads” ( the Turkish name for Persians), took thirty-one towns, and then resumed his attacks on Christendom. Between 1525 and 1545 Charles repeatedly negotiated with Persia, presumably to co-ordinate Christian and Persian resistance to Suleiman. The West rejoiced when Persia assumed the offensive and captured Erzerum; but in 1554 Suleiman returned, devastated great stretches of Persia, and forced Tamasp to a peace in which Baghdad and lower Mesopotamia fell permanently under Turkish rule.
More interesting than these dismal conflicts were the venturesome journeys that Anthony Jenkinson made into Transoxiana and Persia in search of an overland trade route to India and “Cathay.” In this matter Ivan the Terrible proved amiable: he welcomed Jenkinson in Moscow, sent him as his ambassador to the Uzbek rulers at Bokhara, and agreed to let English goods enter Russia duty free and pass down the Volga and across the Caspian. After surviving a violent storm on that sea, Jenkinson continued into Persia and reached Qasvin (1561) There he delivered to Tamasp letters of salutation from a distant queen who seemed to the Persians a minor ruler over a barbarous people. They were inclined to sign a trade agreement, but when Jenkinson confessed himself a Christian they bade him depart; “we have no need of friendship with infidels,” they told him; and as he left the Shah a servant spread purifying sand to cover the Christian footprints that had polluted the Shi’a court.
The death of Tamasp (1576) concluded the longest but one of all Mohammedan reigns, and one of the most disastrous. It was not distinguished by any literature lovingly cherished in Persian memory. But Safavid art, though its zenith would come later, already in these two reigns began to pour forth works of that grandeur, brilliance, and refinement which for twenty-two centuries have marked the products of Persia. In Isfahan the mausoleum of Harun-i-Vilaya displayed all the finesse of classic Persian design and the best colour and cutting of mosaic faience; and a complex half dome crowned the portal of the great Friday Mosque.
In many instances the delicate work of the illuminators and calligraphers has outlasted the architectural monuments, and has made the book, in Islam, almost an idol of loving reverence. The Persians above all made their script an art in adorning mihrabs and portals of the mosques, the metal of their weapons, the clay of their pottery, the texture of their rugs, and in transmitting their Scriptures and their poets in manuscripts that many generations would cherish as delights to the eye and soul. Their Nastaliq or sloping script, which had flourished under the Timurids at Tabriz, Herat, and Samarkand, returned to Tabriz under the Safavids and went with them to Isfahan. As the mosque brought together a dozen arts, so the book employed poet, calligrapher, miniaturist, and binder into a collaboration quite as dedicated and devout.
The same loving care and delicate designs went into textiles and rugs. A Moslem sat and ate not on chairs but on the floor or ground covered with a rug. A special “prayer rug” usually bearing religious symbols and a Koranic text received his prostrations in his devotions. Rugs were favoured as gifts to friends or kings or mosques. Some dominating feature of design classified the rugs as of the garden, floral, hunting, vase, diaper, or medallion type; but around these basic forms were meandering arabesques, Chinese cloud configurations, symbols conveying secret meanings to the initiate, animals lending a pattern to life, plants and flowers giving it a kind of linear fragrance and joyful tone; and through the complex whole an artistic logic ran, a contrapuntal harmony of lines more intricate than Palestrina’s madrigals, more graceful than Godiva’s hair.
Some famous Persian rugs survive from this first half of the sixteenth century. One is a medallion rug with 30,000,000 knots in wool on silk warp ( 380 to the inch ); it lay for centuries in a mosque at Ardabil, and is now divided between the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the County Museum in Los Angeles. In a cartouche at one end is a verse from Hafiz, and beneath this the proud words: “The work of the slave . . . Maqsud of Kashan, in the year 946,” after the hegira --- i.e., A.D. 1539. Also in the Los Angeles Museum is the “Coronation Carpet” used at the crowning of Edward VII in 1901. The Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan, before the Second World War smashed the building, counted among its greatest treasures a hunting rug by Ghiyath ad-Din Jami of Yazd, a person of great rug design. The Duke of Anhalt Rug in the Duveen Collection, won international renown for its golden yellow ground and seductive arabesques in crimson, rose, and turquoise blue.
The rug and the book are among the unchallengeable titles of Safavid Persia to a high place in the remembrance of mankind.
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Sorry I am so late with this last post. My excuse is that this last week we have had Auckland's DEMISEMISEPTCENTENNIAL. (I'M TOLD THAT IS THE CORRECT LATIN WORD FOR IT). (175 years). Also the International Rugby Sevens and Rugby League matches which required my constant watching (!!)
Trying to negotiate the crowds with my uncertain gait, I had a fall and was out of action for a few days. Things ok again now though. Trevor
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Wow, what a week. Glad you're ok!
" The continuing emphasis on religion disturbed as well as strengthened the government, for it sanctioned a dozen wars, and kept the Islam of the Near and Middle East divided from 1508 to 1638."
That's still true today!
"One is a medallion rug with 30,000,000 knots in wool on silk warp ( 380 to the inch ); it lay for centuries in a mosque at Ardabil, and is now divided between the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the County Museum in Los Angeles. ... Also in the Los Angeles Museum is the “Coronation Carpet” used at the crowning of Edward VII in 1901. "
I live in Los Angeles County, and had no idea there WAS a county museum. I'll have to check it out!
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 702 - 705
SULEIMAN and the WEST
Suleiman succeeded his father Selim I in 1520 at the age of twenty-six. Ghislain de Busbeq ambassador of the Hapsburgs wrote almost fondly of the Hapsburg’s most persistent enemy:
“He has always had the character of being a careful and temperate man; even in his early days, when according to the Turkish rule, sin would have been venial, his life was blameless, for not even in youth did he indulge in wine or commit those unnatural crimes which are common among the Turks.... it is a well known fact that from the time he made her his lawful wife he has been perfectly faithful to her, although there is nothing in the laws to prevent his having mistresses as well.”
It is a picture worth noting, but too flattering: Suleiman was doubtless the greatest and noblest of the Ottoman sultans, but we shall find him, now and then, guilty of cruelty, jealousy, and revenge. Let us, however, as an experiment in perspective, try to view dispassionately his conflict with Christendom.
The military debate between Christianity and Islam was already 900 years old. It began when Moslem Arabs snatched Syria from the Byzantine Empire (634). It proceeded through the year-by-year conquest of that Empire by the Saracens, and the conquest of Spain by the Moors. Christendom retaliated in the Crusades, in which both sides covered with religious phrases and ardour their economic aims and political crimes. Islam retaliated by taking Constantinople and the Balkans. Spain expelled the Moors. Pope after pope called for fresh crusades against the Turks; Salem I vowed to build a mosque in Rome; Francis I proposed to the Western powers(1516) that they should utterly destroy the Turkish state and divide its possessions among themselves as infidel spoils. This plan was frustrated by the division of Germany in religious war, and the revolt of the Spanish communes against Charles V, and the second thought of Francis himself-- to seek Suleiman’s aid against Charles. Suleiman may have been saved by Luther, as Lutheranism owed so much to Suleiman.
Every government strives to extend its borders, partly to enlarge its resources and revenues, partly to create additional protective terrain between its frontiers and its capital. Suleiman supposed that the best defence was offence. In 1521 he captured the Hungarian strongholds of Szabacs and Belgrade; then, feeling safe in the West, he turned his forces against Rhodes. There the Christians, under the knights of St. John, held a heavily fortified citadel directly athwart the routes from Constantinople to Alexandria and Syria; it seemed to Suleiman a dangerous alien bastion in an otherwise Turkish sea; and in fact the pirate ships of the Knights preyed upon Moslem commerce in one end of the Mediterranean as the Moslem pirates of Algeria preyed upon Christian commerce in the other. When Moslems were taken in these Knightly raids they were usually slain. Vessels carrying pilgrims to Mecca were intercepted on suspicion of hostile purposes. A distinguished English historian writes “ It was in the interest of public order that the island should be annexed to the Turkish realm.”
Suleiman attacked with 300 ships and 200,000 men. The defenders fought the besiegers for 145 days, and finally surrendered under honourable terms: the Knights and their soldiery were to leave the island in safety, but within ten days; the remaining population were to have full religious freedom, and were exempt from tribute for five years. On Christmas day Suleiman asked to see the Grand Master; he condoled with him, praised his brave defence, and gave him valuable presents; and to the Vizier Ibrahim the sultan remarked “that it caused great sorrow to be obliged to force this Christian in his old age to abandon his home and his belongings”. On Jan 1st 1523, the Knights sailed off to Crete, whence, eight years later, they passed to a more permanent home in Malta. The Sultan tarnished his victory by putting to death the son and grandchildren of Prince Djem because they had become Christians, and might be used, as Djem had been, as claimants to the Ottoman throne.
Early in 1525 Suleiman received a letter from Francis I, then a captive of Charles V, asking him to attack Hungary and come to the rescue of the French King. The Sultan answered “Our horse is saddled, our sword is girt on.” He set out in April 1526, with 100,000 men and 300 cannon. Pope Clement VII urged Christians rulers to go to the aid of Hungary; Luther advised the Protestant princes to stay home, for the Turks were obviously a divine visitation, and to resist them would be to resist God. Charles V remained in Spain. The consequent rout of the Hungarians was a moral as well as a physical defeat for Christendom. Hungary might have recovered from the disaster if Catholics and Protestants, Emperor and Pope, had laboured together; but the Lutheran leaders rejoiced in the Turkish victory, and the army of the Emperor sacked Rome.
In 1529 Suleiman returned, and besieged Vienna with 200,000 men; from the spire of St. Stephen’s, Count Nicholas von Slam, to whom Ferdinand entrusted the defence, could see the surrounding plains and hills darkened with the tents, soldiery, and armament of the Ottomans. This time Luther summoned his adherents to join in the resistance, for clearly if Vienna fell Germany would be the next object of Turkish attack. Reports ran through Europe the Suleiman had vowed to reduce all Europe to the one true faith -- Islam. Turkish sappers dug tunnel after tunnel in the hope of blowing up the walls or setting up explosions within the city, but the defenders placed vessels of water at danger points, and watched for movements that would indicate subterranean operations. Winter came, and the Sultan’s long line of communications failed to maintain supplies. On October 14 he called for a final and decisive effort, and promised great rewards; spirit and flesh were both unwilling; the attack was repulsed with great loss, and Suleiman sadly ordered a retreat. It was his first defeat.,; yet he retained half of Hungary, and carried back to Constantinople the royal crown of St. Stephen. Suleiman promised he would soon hunt out Charles himself, who dared to call himself Emperor, and would wrest from him the lordship of the West.
The West took him seriously enough. Rome fell into a panic; Clement VII, for once resolute, taxed even the cardinals to raise funds to fortify Ancona and other ports through which the Ottomans might enter Italy. In April 1532 Suleiman marched westward once more. His departure from his capital was a well staged spectacle : 120 cannon led the advance; 8000 Janissaries followed, the best soldiers in the realm; a thousand camels carried provisions; 2,000 elite horsemen guarded the holy standard -- the eagle of the Prophet; thousands of captive Christian boys, dressed in cloth of gold and plumed red hats, flaunted lances with innocent bravery; the Sultan’s own retinue were men of giant stature and handsome mien; among them, mounted on a chestnut horse rode Suleiman himself, robed in crimson velvet embroidered with gold, under a turban inset with precious stones; and behind him marched an army that in its final mustering numbered 200,000 men. Who could resist such splendour and power? Only the elements and space.
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So, the trouble between 'Christian' West and 'Moslem' Islam began in 634. I wonder if it will ever end. Perhaps if we really tried Christ's and Mohammed's suggested way to avoid conflict we might begin to get somewhere? Certainly 1380 years of military action has achieved nought. TREVOR.
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I will be back to catch up on the last three book postings. I've been very busy with company, babysitting for grandchildren, etc., but since the weather reports for the Deleware Valley contain the words "snow, wind gusts to 50 mph, wind chills below zero," I will not be sticking my nose out of the door and will have time to read them all.
Jean
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keep warm, JEAN
"Suleiman may have been saved by Luther, as Lutheranism owed so much to Suleiman."
I can see why Suleiman owed Luther, but why did Lutheranism owe so much to Suleiman? I'm being dense, here.
TREVOR: I agree. When will we ever learn?
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Why did Luther owe so much to Suleiman ? I confess I can not see any reason for Luther to be grateful to Suleiman. I've looked back and can find nothing in Durant that could lead one to that conclusion. Anyone else got any idea ? TREVOR
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 705 - 707
Suleiman (cont.)
To meet this avalanche Charles, after much pleading, received from the Imperial Diet a grant of 40,000 foot and 8,000 horse; he and Ferdinand provided 30,000 additional men at their own expense; and with these 78,000 gathered in Vienna, they awaited siege. But the Sultan was delayed at Güns. It was a small town, well fortified, but garrisoned with only 700 troops. For three weeks they fought back every Turkish attempt to break through the walls; eleven times they were pierced, eleven times the defenders blocked the opening with metal, flesh, and desperation. At last Suleiman sent a safe conduct and hostages to the commander, Nicholas Jurischitz, inviting him to a conference. He came, and was received with honours by the Grand Vizier; his courage and generalship was sorrowfully praised, the Sultan presented him with a robe, guaranteed him against further attack, and sent him back to his citadel under a handsome escort of Turkish officers. The invincible avalanche, defeated by 700 men, passed on to Vienna.
But there too, Suleiman lost his prey. Charles would not come out to fight; he would have been foolish to forfeit the advantage of his defences for the gamble of the open field. The Sultan turned away, ravaged Styria and Lower Austria, and took stray captives to grace his defeat. It would have been no comfort to him to hear that while he was marching uselessly back and forth across Hungary, Andea Doria had chased the Turkish fleet into hiding, and captured Patras and Coron.
When Ferdinand sent an emissary to Constantinople to seek peace Suleiman welcomed him; he would grant peace “not for seven years, not for twenty-four years, not for a hundred years, but for two centuries, three centuries, indeed forever -- if Ferdinand himself would not break it, and he would treat Ferdinand as a son”. However he asked a heavy price. Ferdinand must send him the keys to the city of Grau. Charles and Ferdinand were so eager to free their arms against Christians that they were ready to make concessions to the Turks. Ferdinand sent the keys, and acknowledged Suleiman’s sovereignty over much of Hungary. No peace was made with Charles.
Putting theology aside Suleiman agreed to co-operate with Francis I in another campaign against Charles. He offered the most amiable terms to the king; peace should be made with Charles only on his surrendering Genoa, Milan, and Flanders to France; French merchants were permitted to sail, buy, and sell throughout the Ottoman Empire on equal terms with the Turks; French consuls in that realm were to have civil and criminal jurisdiction over all Frenchmen there, and these were to enjoy full religious freedom. The “capitulations” so signed became a model for latter treaties of Christian powers with Eastern states.
Charles countered by forming an alliance of the Empire, Venice, and the papacy. Ferdinand joined in; so short was forever. Venice bore the brunt of the Turkish attack, lost her possessions in the Aegean and on the Dalmatian coast, and signed a separate peace( 1540). A year later Suleiman’s puppet in Buda died and the Sultan made Hungary an Ottoman province. Ferdinand sent an envoy to Turkey to ask for peace, and another to Persia urging the Shah to attack the Turks. Suleiman marched west, took more of Hungary into the pashalik of Buda. In 1547, busy with Persia, he granted the West a five year armistice. Both sides violated it. Pope Paul IV appealed to the Turks to attack Phillip II, who was more papal than the popes. The death of Francis and Charles left Ferdinand a freer hand to come to terms. In the Peace of Prague (1562), he acknowledged Suleiman’s rule in Hungary and Moldavia, pledged a yearly tribute of 30,000 ducats, and agreed to pay 90,000 ducats as arrears.
Two years later he followed his brother. Suleiman had survived all his major enemies, and how many popes had he not out lived? He was the master of Egypt, North Africa, Asia Minor, Palestine, Syria, the Balkans, and Hungary. The Turkish navy ruled the Mediterranean, the Turkish army had proved its prowess east and west. The Ottomans were now the strongest power in Europe and Africa, if not in the world.
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Who has heard of the town of Güns ? Durant does not say. Could that be where our word gun comes from? And what a victory ! 700 men against many thousands.... It must be the biggest military defeat in history.... Bigger than the Soviet loss in Afghanistan or the U.S.’s in Vietnam. News these days here in NZ is that the U.S. has asked us to join them and return our troops to Iraq. Not as a fighting force, but as a training force of the Iraqi army..... nudge, nudge, wink, wink ! And so the unending 1380 year war in the Middle East goes on .... Trevor.
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GOOGLE :
Middle English gunne, gonne, perhaps from a nickname for the Scandinavian name Gunnhildr, from gunnr + hildr, both meaning ‘war.’
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Durants' S o C
Vol. Vi THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 708 - 711
THE OTTOMAN CIVILIZATION.
Were they civilized? Of course; the notion that the Turks were barbarians as compared with the Christians is a self-propping delusion. Their agricultural methods and science were at least as good as those of the West. The land was tilled by tenants of feudal chieftains who in each generation had to earn their holdings by serving the sultan satisfactorily in administration and war. Except in textiles, ceramics, and perhaps in arms and armour, industry had not yet developed a factory system as in Florence or Flanders, but Turkish craftsmen were famous for their excellent products, and the absence of capitalism was not mourned by rich or poor. Trade between Turk and Turk was noted for its relative honesty, but between Turk and Christian no holds were barred. Foreign commerce was mostly left to foreigners. Moslem caravans moved patiently over the ancient and medieval land routes into Asia and Africa, even across the Sahara; and Caravansaries, many of them set up by Suleiman, offered the merchant and traveller resting places on the way. Moslem vessels, till 1500, controlled the sea routes from Constantinople and Alexandria through the Red Sea to India and the East Indies, where exchange was made with goods borne by Chinese junks. After the opening of India to Portuguese merchants by the voyage of Da Gama and the naval victories of Albuquerque, the Moslems lost control of the Indian Ocean, and Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Venice entered into a common commercial decline.
The Turk was a man of the sea and the land, and gave less thought to religion than most other Mohammedans. Yet, he too reverenced mystics, dervishes and saints, took his law from the Koran, and his education from the mosque. Like the Jews, he shunned graven images in his worship, and looked upon Christians as polytheistic idolaters. Church and state were one; the Koran and the traditions were basic law; and the same ulema, or association of scholars, that expounded the Holy Book, also provided the Teachers, Lawyers, Judges, and Jurists of the realm. It was such scholars who, under Mohammed II and Suleiman I compiled the definitive Ottoman codes of law.
At the head of the ulema was the mufti or ‘sheik ul-Islam”, the highest judge in the land after the sultan and grand vizier. As sultans had to die, while the ulema enjoyed a collective permanence, these theologian-lawyers were the rulers of everyday life in Islam. Because they interpreted the present in terms of past law, their influence was strongly conservative, and shared in the stagnation of Moslem civilization after Suleimans death. Fatalism -- the Turkish ‘qismet’ or lot -- furthered this conservatism; since the fare of every soul had been predetermined by Allah, rebellion against one’s lot was impiety and shallowness; all things, death in particular, were in the hands of Allah, and must be accepted without complaint. Occasionally a free thinker spoke too frankly, and in rare instances, was condemned to death. Usually, however, the ulema allowed much liberty of thought, and there was no Inquisition in Turkish Islam.
Christians and Jews received a large measure of religious freedom under the Ottomans, and were permitted to rule themselves by their own laws in matters not involving a Moslem. Mohammed II deliberately fostered the Greek Orthodox Church because the mutual distrust of Greek and Roman Catholics served the Turks in countering crusades. Though the Christians prospered under the sultans, they suffered serious disabilities.Technically they were slaves, but they could end that status by accepting Mohammedanism, and millions did. Those who rejected Islam were excluded from the army, for Moslem wars were ostensibly holy wars for the conversion of infidels. Such Christians were subject to a special tax in lieu of military service; they were usually tenent farmers, paying a tenth of their produce to the owner of the land; and they had to surrender one infant out of every ten to be brought up as a Moslem in the service of the sultan.
The sultan, the army, and the ulema were the state. At the Sultan’s call each feudal chieftain came with his levy to form the sipahis or cavalry, which under Suleiman’s reign reached the remarkable figure of 130,000 men. Ferdinand’s ambassador envied the splendour of their equipment: clothing of brocade or silk in scarlet, bright yellow, or dark blue; helmets gleaming with gold, silver, and jewelry, on the finest horses that Busbeq had ever seen. An elite infantry was formed from captive or tributary Christian children, who were brought up to serve the sultan in his palace, in administration, and above all in the army, where they were called ‘yeni cheri ‘( new soldiers ) which the West corrupted into Janissaries. Murad I had originated this unique corps (c.1360), perhaps as way of freeing his Christian population from potentially dangerous youth. They were not numerous -- some 20,000 under Suleiman. They were highly trained in all the skills of war, they were forbidden to marry or engage in economic activities. They were indoctrinated with martial pride and ardor and the Mohammedan faith, and they were as brave in war as they were restlessly discontent in peace. The favourite weapon was still the bow and arrow and lance; firearms were just coming into use; and at close quarters men wielded the mace and short sword. Suleimans army and military science were the best in the world at the time; no other army equaled it in handling artillery, in sapping and military engineering, in discipline and morale, in the care of the health of the troops, in the provisioning of great numbers of men through great distances. However , the means were too excellent merely to serve an end; the army became an end in its self; to be kept in condition and restraint it had to have wars; and after Suleiman, the army -- above all the Janissaries -- became masters of the sultans.
The conscripted and converted sons of Christians formed most of the administrative staff of central Turkish government. We should have expected that a Moslem sultan would fear to be surrounded by men who might, like Scanderbeg, yearn for the faith of their fathers; on the contrary, Suleiman preferred these converts because they could be trained from childhood for specific functions of administration. Very likely the bureaucracy of the Ottoman state was the most efficient in existence in the first half of the sixteenth century, though it was notoriously subject to bribery. The Diwan or Divan, like the cabinet in Western government, brought together the heads of administration, usually under the presidency of the Grand Vizier. The Judiciary was manned by qadis ( judges) and mullas (superior Judges) from the ulema. A great English historian believed that “under the early Ottoman rulers the administration of justice was better in Turkey than in any European land.” The streets of Constantinople were policed by Janissaries and were probably freer from murders than any other capital in Europe. The regions that fell under Moslem rule -- Rhodes, Greece, the Balkans -- preferred it to their former condition under the Knights or Byzantines or the Venetians, and even Hungary thought it fared better under Suleiman than under the Hapsburgs.
However, the law of imperial fratricide was barbarous. Mohammes II had phrased it frankly in his Book of Laws: “The majority of the legists have declared that those of my illustrious children who shall ascend the throne shall have the right to execute their brothers, in order to ensure the peace of the world; they are to act accordingly”; that is, the Conqueror calmly condemned to death all but the eldest born of his royal progeny. It was another discredit to the Ottoman system that the property of a person condemned to death reverted to the Sultan, who was therefore under perpetual provocation to improve his finances by closing his mind to an appeal; we should add that Suleiman resisted this temptation. As against such vices of autocracy we may acknowledge in the Ottoman government an indirect democracy: the road to every dignity but the sultinate was open to all Moslems, even to all converted Christians.
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Sounds like, if you weren't the brother of the Sultan, you were better off than the Europeans. Wonder if he'll talk about the place of women.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 707 - 711
OTTOMAN MORALS
The diversity of Ottoman from Christian ways flagrantly illustrated the geographical and temporal variation of moral codes. Polygamy reigned quietly where Byzantine Christianity had so recently exacted formal monogamy; women hid themselves in seraglios, or behind veils, where once they had mounted the throne of the Caesars; and Suleiman attended dutifully to the needs of his harem with none of the qualms of conscience that might have disturbed or enhanced the sexual escapades of Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII, or Alexander VI. Turkish civilization, like that of ancient Greece, kept women in the background, and allowed considerable freedom to sexual deviations. Ottoman homosexuality flourished where “Greek Friendship” had once won battles and inspired philosophers.
The Turks were allowed by the Koran four wives and some concubines, but only a minority could afford the extravagance. The warring Ottomans, often far removed from their wanted women, took as wives or concubines, “currente thalamo,” the widows or daughters of the Christians they had conquered. No racial prejudice intervened: Greek, Mongol, Bulgarian, Serbian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Persian, and Arab women were welcomed with open arms, and became the mothers of children, who were all alike accepted as legitimate and Ottoman. Adultery was hardly necessary under the circumstances, and when it occurred it was severely punished: the woman was obliged to buy an ass and ride it through the city; a man was flogged with one hundred strokes, and was required to kiss and reward the executioner who dealt them. A husband could secure a divorce by a mere declaration of intent, but a wife could free herself only by complex and deterrent litigation.
Suleiman remained a bachelor till his fortieth year. Since the wife Bajazet had been captured and allegedly abused by Timur and his Tatars, the Ottoman sultans, to forestall another such indignity, had made it a rule not to marry, and admit none but slaves to their bed. Suleiman’s seraglio contained some 300 concubines, all bought in the market or captured in war, and nearly all of Christian origin. When they expected a visit from the sultan they attired themselves in their finest robes and stood in line to greet him; he saluted courteously as many as time allowed, and placed his handkerchief on the shoulder of one who especially pleased him. That evening, on retiring, he asked that the recipient should return his handkerchief. The next morning she would be presented with a dress of cloth of gold, and her allowance would be increased. The sultan might remain in the harem two or three nights, spreading his bounty; then he would return to his own palace to live day and night with men. Women rarely appeared in his palace, and took no part in state dinners or ceremonies. Nevertheless it was considered a great honour to be assigned to the seraglio. Any inmate of it who reached the age of twenty-five without earning a handkerchief was freed, and usually found a husband of high estate. In Suleiman’s case the institution did not lead to physical degradation, for in most matters he was a man of signal moderation.
Social life among the Ottomans was unisexual, and lacked the gay stimulation of women’s charms and laughing chatter. Yet manners were as refined as in Christendom, probably more refined than in any lands except China, India, Italy, and France. Domestic slaves were numerous, but they were humanely treated, many laws protected them, and manumission was easy. Though public sanitation was poor, personal cleanliness was common. The institution of public baths, which the Persians seem to have taken from Hellenistic Syria, was transmitted to the Turks. In Constantinople and other large cities of the Ottoman Empire the public baths were built of marble and attractively decorated. Some Christian saints had prided themselves on avoiding water; the Moslem was required to make his ablutions before entering the mosque or saying his prayers; in Islam cleanliness was really next to Godliness. Table manners were no better than in Christendom; meals were eaten with the fingers off wooden plates; there were no forks. Wine was never drunk in the house; there was much drinking of it in taverns, but there was less drunkenness than in Western lands. Coffee came into use among the Moslems in the fourteenth century; we hear of it first in Abyssinia; then it appears to have passed into Arabia. The Moslems, we are told, used it originally to keep themselves awake during religious services. We find no mention of it by a European writer until 1592.
Physically, the Turk was tough and strong, and famed for endurance. Even the ordinary Turk carried himself with dignity, helped by robes that concealed the absurdities of the well fed form. Commoners donned a simple fez, which dressy persons enveloped in a turban. Both sexes had a passion for flowers; Turkish gardens were famous for their colour; thence, apparently, came into Western Europe the lilac, tulip, mimosa, cherry laurel, and ranunculus. There was an aesthetic side to the Turks which their wars hardly revealed. We are surprised to be told by Christian travellers that except in war they were “not by nature cruel,” but “docile, tractable, gentle . . . lovable, and generally kind.” Francis Bacon complained that they seemed kinder to animals than to men. Cruelty emerged when security of the faith was threatened; then the wildest passion was let loose.
The Turkish code was especially hard in war. No foe was entitled to quarter; women and children were spared, but able bodied enemies, even if unarmed and unresisting, might be slaughtered without sin. And yet many cities captured by Turks fared better than Turkish cities captured by Christians. When Ibrahim Pasha took Tabriz and Baghdad (1534) he forbade his soldiers to pillage them or harm the inhabitants; when Suleiman again took Tabriz ( 1548) he too preserved it from plunder or massacre, but when Charles V took Tunis (1535) he could pay his army only by letting it loot. Turkish law however, rivalled the Christian in barbarous penalties. Thieves had a hand cut off to shorten their grasp.
Most of the administrative offices of the central government were located in the ‘serai’ or imperial quarters. To this enclosure, three miles in circuit, admission was by a single gate, highly ornamented and called by the French the Sublime Porte -- a term which, by a whimsy of speech, came to mean the Ottoman government itself. Second only to the sultan in this centralized organization was the Grand Vizier. The word came from the Arabic ‘wazir’, bearer of burdens. He bore many, for he was the head of the Diwan, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the army, and the diplomatic corps.The heaviest obligation was to please the sultan in all matters, for the vizier was usually an ex-Christian, technically a slave, and could be executed without trial at a word from his master. Suleiman proved his own good judgment in choosing Ibrahim Pasha, a Greek who had been captured by Moslem corsairs and brought to Suleiman as a promising slave. The Sultan found him so diversely competent that he entrusted him with more and more power, paid him 60,000 ducats a year, gave him a sister in marriage, regularly ate with him, and enjoyed his conversation. This was one of the great friendships of history, almost in the tradition of Classic Greece.
One wisdom Ibrahim lacked-- to conceal with external modesty his internal pride. He had many reasons to be proud: it was he who raised the Turkish government to its highest efficiency, whose diplomacy divided the West by arranging the alliance with France, he who, while Suleiman marched into Hungary, pacified Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt by reforming abuses and dealing justly and affably with all. However, he angered the army by forbidding it to sack Tabriz and Baghdad, and trying to prevent its sack of Buda. In that pillage he rescued part of Matthias library, and three bronze statues of Hermes, Apollo, and Artemis; these he set up before his palace in Constantinople, and even his liberal master was disturbed by this flouting of the Semitic commandment against graven images. Gossip charged him with despising the Koran. Roxelana, favourite of the harem, resented Ibrahims influence, and day by day, with feminine persistence, filled the imperial ear with suspicions and complaints. The Sultan was finally convinced. On March 31 1536 Ibrahim was found strangled in his bed., presumably as a result of royal command. It was a deed whose barbarism matched the burning of Servetus and Berquin.
Official morals were as in Christendom. The Turks were proud of their fidelity to their word, and they usually kept the terms of capitulation offered to surrendering foes. But Turkish casuists, like such Christian counterparts as St. John Capistrano, held that no promise could bind the faithful against the interest or duties of their religion, and that the sultan might abrogate his own treaties, as well as those of his predecessors. Christian travellers reported “honesty, a sense of justice . . benevolence, integrity, and charity” in the average Turk, “ but practically all Turkish office holders were open to bribery”; a Christian historian adds that “most Turkish officials were ex-Christians,” but we should further add that they had been brought up as Moslems. In the provinces the Turkish pasha, like the Roman proconsul, hastened to amass a fortune before the whim of the ruler replaced him; he exacted from his subjects the full price that he had paid for his appointment. The sale of offices was as common in Constantinople or Cairo as in Paris or Rome.
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"The Moslems, we are told, used it (coffee) originally to keep themselves awake during religious services" A usage which has survived.
What a mix of good and bad in a culture. it's hard to know what to think.
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SULEIMAN HIMSELF
It was the west that named Suleiman “the Magnificent”; his own people called him Kanuni, the Lawgiver, because of his share in codifying Ottoman law. He was magnificent, not in appearance but in the size and equipment of his armies, in the scope of his campaigns, in the adornment of his city, in the building of mosques, palaces, and the famous Forty Arches aqueduct; magnificent in the splendour of his surroundings and retinue; magnificent, of course, in the power and reach of his rule. His empire marched from Baghdad to within ninety miles of Vienna, to within 120miles of Venice, the Adriatic’s quondam queen. Except in Persia and Italy all the cities celebrated in Biblical and classical lore were his; Carthage, Memphis, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, Palmyra, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Damascus, Ephesus, Nicaea, Athens, and two Thebes. Never had the Crescent held so many lands and seas in the hollow of its curve.
Was the excellence of his rule commensurate with its extent? Probably not, but we should have to say this of any spacious realm except Achaemenid Persia and Rome under the Antonines. The area governed was too vast to be well administered from one centre before the coming of modern communications, transport, and roads. Laxity and corruption ran through the government; yet Luther said; “It is reported that there is no better temporal rule than among the Turks.” In religious toleration Suleiman was bolder and more generous than his Christian compeers: these thought religious conformity necessary to national strength. Suleiman allowed Christians and Jews to practice their religion freely. In November 1561, while Scotland, England, and Lutheran Germany were making Catholicism a crime, and Italy and Spain were making Protestantism a crime, Suleiman ordered the release of a Christian prisoner, “not wishing to bring any man from his religion by force.” He made a safe home in his empire for Jews fleeing from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. His defects appeared more clearly in his family relations than in his government. His people not only admired him, they loved him. We do not hear in his case, of that addiction to the harem which was to undermine the health and power of some later sultans. But we do find him so susceptible to the passions of love as to forget justice, prudence, and even parental affection.
In the earlier years of his reign his favourite mistress was a Circassian slave known as the “Rose of Spring” She bore him a son, Mustafa, who grew into a handsome, able, and popular youth. But in the course of love Khurrem -- “The laughing one” a Russian captive whom the west called Roxelana, won the sultan away from the Circassian; and her beauty, gaiety, and wiles kept him enchanted till tragedy was consummated. Overriding the rule of his recent predecessors, Suleiman made Khurrem his wife (1534), and he rejoiced in the sons and daughters that she gave him. But as he aged, and the prospect of Mustafa’s accession loomed, Khurrem dreaded the fate of her sons, who might legitimately be killed by the new sultan. She succeeded in marrying her daughter to Rustem Pasha, who in 1544 became Grand Vizier; and through his wife, Rustem was brought to share Khurrem’s fear of Mustafa’s coming power.
Meanwhile Mustafa had been sent to govern Diyarbekir, and had distinguished himself by his valour, tact, and generosity. Khurren used his virtues to destroy him; she insinuated to Suleiman that Mustafa was courting popularity with a view to seizing the throne. The harassed Sultan, now fifty-nine, doubted, doubted....wondered.... believed.. He went in person to Eregli, summoned Mustafa to his tent, and had him killed as soon as he appeared.. Khurrem and Rustem then found it simple to induce the Sultan to have Mustafa’s son slain, least the youth should seek revenge. But Salim’s brother Bajazet, seeing assassination as his fate, raised an army to challenge Selim; civil war raged, Bajazet, defeated, fled to Persia ( 1559); Shah Tamasp, for 300,000 ducats from Suleiman and 100,000 from Selim, surrendered the contender; Bajazet was strangled ( 1561), and his five sons were put to death for social security. The ailing Sultan, we are told, thanked Allah that all these troublesome offspring were departed, and he could now live in peace.
But he found peace boring. He brooded over news that the Knights whom he had ousted from Rhodes were strong in Malta. If Malta could be made safe for Moslems, the Mediterranean would be safe for Islam. In April 1564, he sent a fleet with 20,000 men, to seize the strategic isle. The Knights, skilfully led, fought with their wonted bravery; The Turks captured the fort of St. Elmo by sacrificing 6000 men, but the arrival of a Spanish army compelled the sultan to raise the siege.
The old Magnificent could not end his life on so sour a note. Maximillian II, who had succeeded Ferdinand as emperor, held back the promised tribute by his father, and attacked outposts in Hungary. Suleiman decided on yet another campaign, and resolved to lead it himself. Through Sofia, Nissa, and Belgrade, he rode with 200,000 men. On the night of September 5-6, 1566, he yielded his life upright in his tent; like Vespasian, he was too proud to take death lying down. The siege had cost the Turks 30,000 men, and summer was fading. A truce was signed, and the army marched disconsolately back to Constantinople, bringing not victory but a dead emperor.
Compared with his analogues in the West, Suleiman seems at times more civilized, at times more barbarous. Of the four great rulers in the first half of the sixteenth century, Francis, despite his swashbuckling vanity and hesitant persecutions, strikes us as the most civilized, yet he looked to Suleiman as his protector and ally, without whom he might have been destroyed.. Suleiman won his lifelong duel with the West; Charles V had stopped the sultan at Vienna, but what Christian army had dared approach Constantinople? Suleiman was master of the Mediterranean, and for a time it seemed that Rome remained Christian by his and Barbarrosa’s sufferance. He ruled his empire indifferently well, but how much more successfully than poor Charles’ struggling against the princely fragmentation of Germany! He was a despot, by unquestioned custom and the consent of his people; did the absolutism of Henry VIII in England or of Charles in Spain win such public affection and confidence? Charles could hardly have been capable of ordering the execution of his son on mere suspicion of disloyalty; but Charles in his old age could cry out for the blood of heretics, and Henry could send wives and Catholics and Protestants to the block or the pyre without missing a meal. Suleiman’s religious tolerance, limited though it was, makes these executions look barbarous by comparison.
Suleiman fought too many wars, killed half his progeny, had a creative vizier slain without warning or trial; he had faults that go with unchecked power. But beyond question he was the greatest and ablest ruler of his age.
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"Suleiman fought too many wars, killed half his progeny, had a creative vizier slain without warning or trial; he had faults that go with unchecked power. But beyond question he was the greatest and ablest ruler of his age."
What an age! No wonder our forefathers insisted on separation of powers and checks and balances.
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs.720 - 724
THE JEWS 1300 - 1564
The Wanderers
The Jews of the dispersion found least misery under the sultans in Turkey and the popes in Italy and France. Jewish minorities lived safely in Constantinople, Salonika, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, and Moorish Spain. The Berbers gave them a reluctant toleration, yet Simon Duran led a flourishing settlement in Algeria. In Alexandria the Jewish community, as described by Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro in 1488, lived well, drank too much wine, sat cross-legged on carpets like the Moslems, removed their shoes before entering the synagogue or the home of a friend. German Jews finding refuge in Turkey wrote back to their relatives enthusiastic descriptions of the happy conditions enjoyed there by the Jews. In Palestine the Ottoman Pasha allowed the Jews to build a synagogue on the slopes of Mount Zion. Some western Jews made pilgrimages to Palestine, holding it good fortune to die in the Holy Land, and best of all in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless the centre and zest of Jewish thought in this age were in the unforgiving West. They were the least unfortunate in enlightened Italy. In Naples they enjoyed the friendship of King Robert of Anjou. “Italy has many Jews,” said Erasmus in 1518; “Spain hardly any Christians.” Commerce and finance were respected in Italy, and the Jews who served those necessities were valued as stimulating agents in the economy. The old requirement that Jews should wear a distinguishing badge or garment was generally ignored in the peninsula; well-to-do Jews dressed like the Italians of their class. Jewish youths attended the Universities, and an increasing number of Christians studied Hebrew.
Occasionally some holy hater like St. John of Capistrano would excite his hearers to demand the full enforcement of the “blue law” canonical disabilities against the Jews; but though Capistrano was supported by popes Eugennius IV and Nicholas V, the efficacy of his eloquence was transient in Italy. Another Franciscan friar, Bernardino of Feltre, attacked the Jews so vociferously that the civic authorities of Milan, Ferrara, and Venice ordered him to be silent or decamp. When a three-year-old child was found dead near the house of a Jew in Trent, (1475), Bernadino proclaimed that the Jews had murdered it. The bishop had all the Jews in Trent imprisoned, and some, under duress of torture, said they had slain the boy and drunk his blood as part of a Passover ritual. All the Jews in Trent were burned to death. The corpse of “little Simon” was embalmed, and displayed as a saintly relic; thousands of simple believers made pilgrimages to the new shrine; the story of the alleged atrocity spread over the alps in to Germany, and intensified anti-Semitic feeling there. The Venetian Senate denounced the tale as a pious fraud, and ordered the authorities within Venetian jurisdiction to protect the Jews. Pope Sixtus IV was urged to canonise Simon, but he refused, and forbade honouring him as a saint; however, Simon was beatified in 1582.
In Rome for centuries the Jews enjoyed fairer conditions of life and liberty than anywhere else in Christendom, partly because the popes were usually men of culture, partly because the city was ruled and divided by uprising and colonna factions too busy fighting each other to spare hostility to others, and perhaps because the Romans were too close to the business side of Christianity to take the religion fanatically. There was yet no Ghetto in Rome; most of the Jews lived in the ‘Septus Hebraicus’ on the left bank of the Tiber, but they did not have to; palaces of the Roman aristocracy rose amid Jewish dwellings, and synagogues near Christian churches. Some oppression remained: the Jews were taxed to support the athletic games, and were forced to send representatives to take part in them, half naked, against Jewish customs and tastes. Racial antagonism survived; Jews were caricatured on the Roman stage and in Carnival farces, but Jewesses were regularly presented as gentle and beautiful; note the contrast between Barabas and Abigail in Marlowe’s ‘Jew of Malta,’, and between Shylock and Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice.”
By and large the popes were as generous to the Jews as could be expected of men who honoured Christ as the Messiah and resented the Jewish belief that the Messiah had yet to come. In establishing the inquisition the popes exempted unconverted Jews from its jurisdiction; it could summon such Jews only for attacks on Christianity, or for attempts to convert a Christian to Judaism. Jews who never ceased professing Judaism were, on the whole, left undisturbed by the Church, though not by the state or the populace. Pope Clement VI made papal Avignon a merciful haven for Jews fleeing from the predatory government of France. Martin V, in 1419 proclaimed to the Catholic world:
Whereas the Jews are made in the image of God, and a remnant will one day be saved, and whereas they have besought our protection: following in the foot steps of our predecessors, we command that they be not molested in their synagogues; that their laws, rights, and customs be not assailed; that they be not baptised by force, constrained to observe Christian festivals, nor to wear new badges, and that they be not hindered in their business relations with Christians.
Eugenius IV and Nicholas, issued repressive legislation; but for the rest, says Graetz, “among the masters of Italy, the popes were most friendly to the Jews. Contemporary Jewish writers celebrated gratefully the security enjoyed by their people under the Medici popes. One of them called Clement VII “the most gracious friend of Israel.” Says a learned Jewish historian;
This was the heyday of the renaissance period, and a succession of cultured, polished,
luxurious, worldly wiser popes in Rome regarded the promotion of culture as being as
important a part of their function as the forwarding of the religious interests of the
Catholic Church ..... They tended, therefore, from the middle of the fifteenth century
onward to show a wide tolerance for those who were not Catholic. The Jewish loan-
bankers constituted an integral part of the economic machinery of their dominions..
. . . Hence the persecutory regulations that had been elaborated by the Fathers of the
Church, . . . . were almost entirely neglected by them. Though they were disturbed by
occasional interludes of violence or fanaticism -- as for example when Savonarola
obtained control of Florence in 1497 -- the Jews mixed with their neighbours and
shared their life to a degree that was almost unexampled.
Some once famous figures illustrate these bright days in the relations of Catholics and Jews. Immanuel ben Solomon Haromi (i.e. of Rome ) was born in the same year as Dante ( 1265) and became his friend. Physician by profession, preacher, Biblical scholar, grammarian, scientist, man of wealth and affairs, poet, and “writer of frivolous songs that often passed the bounds of decency”. One of his poems expresses a distaste foe heaven with all its virtuous people ( he thought only ugly women were virtuous), and a preference for hell, where he expected to find the most tempting beauties of all time. He composed a weak imitation of Dante--- ‘Topheth we-Eden’ (Heaven and Paradise ). In Judaism, as in Protestantism, there was no purgatory. More generous than Dante, he admitted into heaven all “the righteous of the nations of the world;” however, he condemned Aristotle to hell for teaching the eternity of the universe.
A similar spirit of light-hearted humour gave tang and verve to the writings of Kalonymos ben Kalonymos. The King Robert of Naples noticed the young scholar of the Beautiful Name. At first Kalonymos was all for science and philosophy. But when he moved to Rome he became a Jewish Horace, satirizing amiably the faults and foibles of Christians, Jews, and himself. He made fun of the Talmud, and the popularity of this satire among Roman Jews suggests that they were not as pious as their more unhappy brethren in other lands.
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" Pope Clement VI made papal Avignon a merciful haven for Jews fleeing from the predatory government of France."
But I know that during bouts of the plague, the Jews in Avignon were blamed for "poisoning the wells" and many were killed.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The Reformation
Pgs. 724 - 727
The JEWS (cont.)
The Renaissance revived not only Greek but Hebrew studies. Cardinal Egidio de Viterbo invited Elijah Levita from Germany to Rome (1509); for thirteen years the Jewish scholar lived in the cardinal’s palace as an honoured guest, teaching Egidio, Reuchlin, and other Christian pupils of Jewish teachers. Chairs of Hebrew were established in several Italian universities or academies. Elijah del Medigo, who taught Hebrew at Padua, was so highly regarded there, despite his refusal of conversion, that when a violent controversy broke out among Christian scholars over a problem in scholarship the university and the Venetian Senate appointed Del Medigo to arbitrate, which he did with such erudition and tact that all parties were satisfied. Pico della Mirandola invited him to teach Hebrew in Florence. There Elijah joined the humanist circle of the Medici, and we may still see him among the figures painted by Benozzo Gozzoli on the Medici palace walls. The scholar gave no encouragement to Pico’s notion of finding Christian dogmas in the Cabala; on the contrary, he ridiculed that apocalypse as a heap of stupefying absurdities.
North of the Alps the Jews were less fortunate than in Italy. They were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Flanders in 1370. France recalled them in 1315 on condition of giving to the king two thirds of any money they might collect on loans made before their expulsion; when the royal profits on these operations ended the Jews were banished again, 1321. They returned in time to be blamed for the Black Death and were again exiled, 1349. They were recalled (1360) to lend financial aid and skill in raising money to ransom the captured French King from England. But in 1394 an Israelite converted to Christianity mysteriously disappeared; the Jews were accused of killing him; some tortured Jews confessed that they had advised the convert to return to Judaism; public opinion was inflamed, and Charles VI reluctantly ordered another banishment of the harassed race.
There was a substantial community of Jews in Prague. Some of them wept to hear the summons of Huss's forerunner Milicz because he showed so much knowledge and appreciation of the Old Testament. Huss studied Hebrew, read Hebrew commentaries, and quoted Rashi and Maimonides. The Taborites, who carried Huss’s reforms close to communism called themselves the Chosen People, and gave names Edom, Moab, and Amalek to the German provinces against which they waged war. The Hussite armies, however, were not averse to killing Jews; when they captured Prague ( 1421) they gave them not the Mohammedan choice of conversion or taxation, but the simpler choice of apostasy or death.
Of all the Christian states Poland was second only to Italy in hospitality to the Jews. In 1098, 1146, and 1196 many Jews migrated from Germany to Poland to avoid death at the hands of Crusaders. They were well received, and prospered; by 1207 some of them owned large estates. In 1264 King Boleslav the Pious gave them a charter of civil rights. After the Black Death more Germans moved to Poland, and were welcomed by the ruling aristocracy as a progressive economic ferment in a nation still lacking a middle class. Casimir III the Great (1333-70) confirmed and extended the rights of the Polish Jews, and the Grand Duke Vitovst guaranteed these rights to the Jews of Lithuania. But in 1407 a priest told his congregation at Cracow the Jews had killed a Christian boy and had gloated over his blood; the charge provoked a massacre. Casimir IV renewed and again enlarged the liberties of the Jews (1447); “we desire,” he said, “that the Jews, whom we wish to protect in our own interest as well as in the interest of the royal exchequer, should feel comforted in our beneficent reign.” The clergy denounced the king; Archbishop Olesnicki threatened him with hell-fire; and John of Capistrano, coming to Poland as papal legate, delivered incendiary speeches in the market place of Cracow (1543). When the king suffered defeat in war the cry arose that he had been punished by God for favouring infidels. As he needed the support of the clergy in further war, he recindered his charter of Jewish liberties. Pogroms occurred in 1463 and 1494. Perhaps to prevent such attacks, the Jews of Cracow were thereafter required to live in a suburb, Kazimierz.
There, and in other Polish or Lithuanian centres, the Jews, overcoming all obstacles, grew in number and prosperity. Under Sigismund I their liberties were restored, except of residence; and they remained in favour with Sigismund II. In 1556 three Jews in the town of Sokhachev were charged with having stabbed a consecrated Host and made it bleed; they protested their innocence, but were burned at the stake by order of the bishop of Khelm. Sigismund II denounced the accusation as a “pious fraud” designed to prove to Jews and Protestants that the consecrated bread had really been changed into the body and blood of Christ. “I am shocked by this hideous villainy,” said the King; “nor am I sufficiently devoid of common sense as to believe that there could be any blood in the Host.” But with the death of this sceptical ruler ( 1572) the era of good feelings between the government and the Jews of Poland came to an end.
For a time the Jews lived peaceably in medieval Germany. They functioned actively along the great river avenues of trade, in the free cities and the ports; even archbishops asked Imperial permission to harbour Jews. By the Golden Bull (1355) the Emperor Charles IV shared with the Imperial electors the privilege of having Jews as ‘servi camerae” -- servants of the chamber; i.e., the electors were empowered to receive Jews into their dominions, protect them, use them and mulct them. In Germany, as in Italy, students eager to understand the Old Testament at first hand learned Hebrew; the conflict between Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn stimulated this study; and the first complete printing of the Talmud (1520) provided further impetus.
The influence of Judaism culminated in the Reformation. Theologically this was a reversion to the simpler creed and severer ethic of early Judaic Christianity. Protestant hostility to religious pictures and statuary was, of course, a return to Semitic antipathy to “graven images”; some Protestant sects observed Saturday as the Sabbath; the rejection of “Mariolatry” and the worship of saints approached the strict monotheism of the Jews; and the new ministers, accepting sex and marriage, resembled the Rabbis rather than the Catholic priests. Critics of the Reformers accused them of Judaizing, called them “semi Judaei”, ‘half Jews;’ Carlstadt himself said the Melanchthon wanted to go back to Moses; Calvin included Judaizing among the seven deadly sins of Servetus, and the Spaniard admitted that his Hebrew studies had influenced him in questioning the Trinitarian theology. Calvin’s rule in Geneva recalled the dominance of the priesthood in ancient Israel. Zwingli confessed himself enchanted by the Hebrew language:
“I found the Holy Tongue beyond all belief cultivated, graceful, and dignified. Although poor in the number of words, yet its lack is not felt because it makes use of its store in so manifold a fashion. No language is so rich in many-sided and meaningful modes of imagery. No language so delights and quickens the human heart.”
Luther was not so enthusiastic. “How I hate people,” he complained, “who lug in so many languages as Zwingli does; he spoke Greek and Hebrew in the pulpit at Marburg.” In the irritability of his senility Luther attacked the Jews as if he had never learned anything from them; no man is a hero to his debtor. In a pamphlet
“ Concerning the Jews and Their Lies” ( 1542) he discharged a volley of arguments against the Jews: that they had refused to accept Christ as God, that their age-long sufferings proved God’s hatred of them, that they were insolent intruders in Christian lands, and in their usurious prosperity: that the Talmud sanctioned the deception, robbery, and killing of Christians; that they poisoned springs and wells, and murdered Christian children to use their blood in Jewish rituals.
We have seen in his ageing character, how he advised the Germans to burn down the homes of Jews, to close their synagogues and schools, to confiscate their wealth, to conscript their men and women to forced labour, and to give all Jews a choice between Christianity and having their tongues torn out. In a sermon delivered shortly before his death he added that Jewish physicians were deliberately poisoning
Christians. These utterances helped to make Protestantism -- so indebted to Judaism --
more anti-Semitic than official Catholicism; though not more so than the Christian populace. They set the tone in Germany for centuries, and prepared its people for genocidal holocausts.
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"the Christian populace. They set the tone in Germany for centuries, and prepared its people for genocidal holocausts."
I wonder if this is fair. Anti-Semitism seems to come in waves (I suspect when times are hard, and a scapegoat is needed to vent frustration on), and then subside.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 727 - 751
THE JEWS (cont.)
Why did Christians and Jews hate each other? Doubtless a pervasive and continuing reason was a vital conflict in religious creeds. The Jews were a perennial challenge to the fundamental tenets of Christianity.
This religious hostility led to a racial segregation at first voluntary, later compulsory, issuing in the establishment of the first ghetto in 1516. The segregation accentuated differences of dress, ways, features, worship, and speech; these differences encouraged mutual distrust and fear; this fear generated hate. The Jews turned into a glory their usual exclusion from marriage with Christians; their pride of race boasted of descent from kings who had ruled Israel a thousand years before Christ. They scorned the Christians as superstitious polytheists, a little slow of mind, mouthing gentle hypocrisies amid merciless brutalities, worshiping a Prince of peace and repeatedly waging fratricidal wars. The Christians scorned the Jews as outlandish and unprepossessing infidels. Thomas More told of a pious lady who was shocked to learn that the virgin was a Jewess, and who confessed that thereafter she would be unable to love the mother of God as fervently as before.
The theory of the Eucharist became a tragedy for the Jews. Christians were required to believe that the priest transformed the wafer of unleavened bread into the body and blood of Christ; some Christians, like the lollards, doubted it; stories of consecrated wafers bleeding at the prick of a knife or a pin could strengthen belief; and who would do so horrible a deed but a Jew? Such legends of a bleeding host were plentiful in late medieval centuries,. In several cases, as at Neuburg ( near Passau ) in 1338, and at Brussels in 1369, the allegations led to the murder of Jews and the burning of their homes. In Brussels a chapel was set up in the cathedral of St. Gudule to commemorate the bleeding Host of 1369, and the miracle was annually celebrated with a festival that became the Flemish Kermess. In Neuberg a clerk confessed that he had dipped an unconsecrated Host in blood; had hidden it in a church, and had accused the Jews of stabbing it. It should be added that enlightened ecclesiastics like Nicholas of Cusa condemned as shameful cruelties the legends of Jewish attacks on the Host.
Economic rivalries hid behind religious hostility. While the papal prohibition of interest was respected among Christians, the Jews acquired almost a monopoly of money lending in Christendom. When Christian bankers ignored the taboo on usury, firms like the Bardi, Pitti, and Strozzi in Florence, the Welsers, Hochstetters, and Fuggers in Augsburg, rose to challenge this monopoly, and a new focus of irritation formed. Both Christian and Jewish bankers charged high interest rates, reflecting the risks of lending money in an unstable economy rendered more unstable by rising prices and debased currencies. Jewish lenders ran greater risks than their competitors; the collection of debts owed by Christians to Jews was uncertain and hazardous; ecclesiastical authorities might declare a moratorium on debts, as in the Crusades; kings might, and did, lay confiscatory taxes upon Jews and absolve their debtors, or force loans from them, or expel the Jews, or exact a share in permitted collections. North of the Alps nearly all classes except business still regarded interest as usury, and condemned the Jewish bankers especially when borrowing from them. Since Jews were generally the most experienced financiers, they were in several countries employed by the kings to manage the finances of the state; and the sight of rich Jews holding lucrative posts and collecting taxes from the people inflamed popular resentment.
Even so, some Christian communities welcomed Jewish bankers. Frankfurt offered them special privileges on condition that they would charge only 32%, while their rate to others was 43%. This seems shocking, but we hear of Christian money lenders charging up to 266%; the Holzschuhers of Nuremberg charged 220% in 1304; The Christian lenders in Brindisi charged 240% We hear of towns calling for the return of Jewish bankers as more lenient than their Christian counterparts. Ranenna stipulated, in a treaty with Venice, that Jewish financiers should be sent to it to open credit banks for the promotion of agriculture and industry.
Nationalism added another note to the hymn of hate. Each nation thought it needed ethnic and religious unity, and demanded the absorption or conversion of its Jews. Several Church councils, and some popes, were aggressively hostile. The council of Vienne(1312) forbade all intercourse between Christians and Jews. The Council of Zamora (1313) ruled Jews must be kept in servitude. The Council of Basel ( 1431-33) renewed canonical decrees forbidding Christians to associate with Jews, to serve them or to use them as physicians, and instructed secular authorities to confine Jews to separate quarters, compel them to wear a distinguishing badge, and ensure their attendance at sermons aimed to convert them. Pope Eugenius IV, at war with the Council of Basel dared not to be outdone by it, in troubling the Jews; he confirmed the disabilities decreed by that Council, and added that Jews should be ineligible for any public office, could not inherit property from Christians, must build no more synagogues, and must stay in their homes, behind closed doors and windows, in Passion Week( a wise precaution against Christian violence); moreover the testimony of Jews against Christians should have no validity in law. Eugenius complained that some Jews spoke scandalously about Jesus and Mary, and this was probably true; hatred begot hate. In a later bull Eugenius ordered that any Jew found reading the Talmudic literature should suffer confiscation of property. Pope Nicholas V commissioned St. John of Capistrano (1447), to see to it that every clause of this repressive legislation should be enforced, and authorised him to seize the property of any Jewish Physician who treated a Christian.
[ DURANT follows with several pages listing the terrible killing of Jews in the pogroms of the 14 and 15 centuries. I propose to move on to study instead the lives of the other citizens, who, while committing these attacks on Jews, were themselves experiencing both victories and hardships in the harsh life of those times.. . . If I may ? Trevor]
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Of course. remember Robby always skipped anything he found tedious, and you have full permission from me to do the same.
Anyone disagree?
"Thomas More told of a pious lady who was shocked to learn that the virgin was a Jewess, and who confessed that thereafter she would be unable to love the mother of God as fervently as before."
I wonder what would have happened if someone had told her that Christ was a Jew?
There seems to be no limit to the hatred humans can show to one another!
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Yes, Robby didn't give us every part of the book. I trust your judgment Trevor, as i did Robbie's. Please do.
Jean
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Durants' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs. 751 - 753
The Life of The People
In one sense the drama of religious, political, and martial conflict that filled the front of the sixteenth century was superficial, for it proceeded only by permission of a deeper drama behind the historic scenes or beneath the pompous stage -- man’s daily and perpetual battle with the soil, the elements, poverty, and death. What after all were the bulls and blasts of popes and Protestants, the rival absurdities of murderous mythologies, the strut and succession, gout and syphilis, of emperors and kings, compared with the inexorable struggle for food, shelter, clothing, health, mates, children, life ?
Throughout this period the villagers of Europe had to keep watch night and day against wolves, wild boars, and other threats to their flocks and homes. The hunting stage survived within the agricultural age; man had to kill or be killed, and weapons of defence made possible the routine of toil. A thousand insects, the beasts of the forest, and the birds of the air competed with the peasant for fruit of his seeds and drudgery; and mysterious diseases decimated his herds. At any time the rains might become erosive torrents or engulfing floods, or they might hold back till all life withered; hunger was always around the corner, and fear of fire was never far from mind. Sickness made frequent calls; doctors were distant; and in almost every decade plague might carry off some member of the household, precious in the affections of the family or in the siege of the earth. Of every five children born, two died in infancy, another before maturity At least once in each generation the recruiting officer took a son for the army, and armies burned villages and ravaged fields. From the crop at last grown and harvested, a tenth or more went to the landlord, a tenth to the Church. Life on the land would have been too hard for body or soul had not happiness intervened in the gaiety of children, the games of the evening home, the release of song, the amnesia of the tavern, and the half believed, half doubted hopes of another and more merciful world. So the food was produced that fed the barons in the castle, the kings in their courts, the priests in their pulpits, the merchants and craftsmen in the towns, the physicians, teachers, artists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and, last and least, the slaves of the soil themselves. Civilisation is a parasite on the man with the hoe.
Agricultural science marked time; progress in productivity came chiefly through the replacement of small holdings by large tracts. The new land-owning merchants and capitalists brought into stagnant rural areas a lust for profits that increased both production and misery. Enterprising importers introduced into Europe a new fertilizer rich in phosphates and nitrogen -- the guano or dung deposited by birds of the coast of Peru, -- and shrubs from Asia or America were naturalised in the soil of Europe; the potato, magnolia tree, the century plant, the pepper plant, the dahlia, the nasturtium . . the potato plant was brought from Mexico to Spain in 1558; a year later Jean Nicot, French ambassador in Lisbon, sent some seeds of it to Catherine de Medicis; history rewarded him by giving his name to a poison.
The fishing industry grew as population increased, but the Reformation dealt a passing blow to the herring trade by allowing meat on Fridays. Mining progressed rapidly under capitalistic organisation . Newcastle was exporting coal in 1549. The Fuggers multiplied the output of the mines by prodding labour to greater and more orderly effort, and by improving the methods of refining ore.
Georg Agricola takes us into a sixteenth century mine:
The chief kinds of workmen are miners shovelers, windlass men, carriers, sorters, washers, and smelters. The twenty-four hours of a day and night are divided into three shifts, and each shift consists of seven hours. The three remaining hours are intermediate between the shifts, and form an interval during which the workmen enter and leave the mines. The first shift begins at the fourth hour in the morning, and lasts until the eleventh hour; the second begins at the twelfth hour and is finished at the seventh; these two are day shifts in the morning and afternoon. The third is the nightshift, and commences at the eighth hour in the evening and finishes at the third hour in the morning. The Bergmeister does not allow this third shift to be imposed on the workmen unless necessity demands it. In that case . . . they keep their vigil by the night lamps, and to prevent themselves falling asleep from the late hours or fatigue, they lighten their long and arduous labours by singing, which is neither wholly untrained nor unpleasing. In some places one miner is not allowed to undertake two shifts in succession, because it often happens that he falls asleep in the mine, overcome by exhaustion from too much labour . . . . Elsewhere he is allowed to do so, because he cannot subsist on the pay of one shift, especially if provisions grow dearer. The labourers do not work on Saturdays, but buy those things which are necessary to life, nor do they usually work on Sundays or annual festivals, but on those occasions devote the shift to holy things. However, the workmen do not rest . . . if necessity demands their labour. Sometimes the rush of water compels them to work, sometimes an impending rock fall . . . and at such times it is not considered irreligious to work on holidays. Moreover, all workmen of this class are strong, and used to toil from birth.
In 1527 Georg Agricola was made city physician of Joachimsthal. In that mining town he became between times a mineralogist; there and elsewhere he studied with zeal and fascination the history and operations of mining and metallurgy; and after 20 years of research he completed ( 1550) his ’De re metallica’, which is as epochal a classic in its field as the masterpieces of Copernicus and Vesalius appearing in the same decade He was the first to assert that bismuth and antimony are true primary metals; he distinguished some twenty mineral species not previously recognised; and he was the first to explain the formation of veins (canales, channels ) of ore in beds of rock by metallic deposits left by streams of water flowing into and under the earth.*
Mining, metallurgy, and textiles received most of the mechanical improvements credited to this age. The earliest railways were those on which miners pulled or pushed ore-carrying carts. In 1533 Johann Jürgen added to the spinning wheel, hitherto spun by hand, a treadle that spun it by foot, leaving the hands of the weaver free; production soon doubled. Watches were improved in reliability while diminishing in size; they were engraved, chased, enamelled, bejewelled; Henry VIII wore a tiny one that had to be wound only every week. However, the best watches of this period erred by some fifteen minutes per day.
* Agricola rejected as useless the divining rod or “forked twig” then often employed to detect metals under the soil. Our Geiger counters incline us to look with lenience upon these hopeful rods. { Just what Geiger counters have to do with water divining escapes me. -- Trevor }
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I think the first two paragraphs in the above selection contain some of the most powerful writing I have found in Durant's essays. Excellent stuff....
"Civilisation is a parasite on the man with the hoe." I guess this remark refers to the famous painting of " the man with a hoe."
"Bowed by the weight of the centuries he stands and leans upon his hoe,
The darkness of the ages in his face."
I'm sure you all remember that painting.
In explaining life for the workers in sixteenth century mines, I thought I was reading the employment contract under which I spent forty years of shift work as a government aviation weather forecaster. The working laws were very much like those of the sixteenth century, and had been enacted in New Zealand by the first Labour Government way back in 1936. Very socialistic for their times. Sad commentary on what must have happened in those years Sixteenth century to the early Twentyith century. Life for the workers during those centuries must have been tough.
Trevor .
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Yes, that's one thing I love about the Durants. They know that kings and wars are the surface of history, and below that propping it up, are people like us and the lives we lead. That's what I always want to hear about.
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Oh, yes, i like those two paragraphs also. I wish i had known about this passage when i was trying to have students understand how fragile life was before WWII. Those two paragraphs are a good summary, giving a graphic picture of most people's lives. A book that also gives that picture (altho being a book instead of two paragraphs, it would not have appealed to the students much) is Barbara Tuchman's The (something) Mirror, (I'll get back to you on the correct title) about 14th century Europe, not a good time or place to be alive.
The third paragraph reminds me of the tv show Connections with James Burke. I've recently discovered that he has done more of those shows and you can see them on youtube. Apparently the new ones weren't shown on American tv. The ones i remember were on PBS in the 80s, i believe. Love them. Meandering from one subject to another. I did have some wonderful charts for my students on the "Columbian Exchange", all those products and animals that crossed the Atlantic in both directions and were new to the people on both sides of the ocean.
A Distant Mirror
Jean
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I remember reading that book and being very impressed with it.
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Durants' S o C
The REFORMATION V ol. V I
Pgs. 753 - 755
Life of the People.
Communication and transport limped behind commerce and industry. Postal service was gradually extended to private correspondence during the sixteenth centry. The commercial revolution stimulated improvements in shipbuilding: deeper and thinner keels helped stability and speed; masts increased from one to three, sails five to six. Francis I and Henry VIII ran a race not only in war and love and dress but in shipping; each had a grandiose vessel built to order and whim, crowned with superstructure and flaunting the pennants of their pride. In the Mediterranean a ship of the early sixteenth century could make ten miles an hour in fair weather, but the heavier vessels designed for the Atlantic were lucky to make 125 miles a day. On land the fastest travel was by postal courier, who rode some eighty-five miles a day; yet important news usually took ten or eleven days to get from Venice to Paris or Madrid. Probably no one then appreciated the comfort of having news arrive late for action. Land travel was mostly on horseback; hence the heavy iron tethering ring fastened to the entrance door of a house. Coaches were multiplying, but the roads were too soft for wheeled traffic; coaches had to be equipped with six or more horses to drag them through the mud, and they could not expect to travel more than twenty miles a day. Litters carried by servants were still used by ladies of means, but simple people travelled on foot across the continent.
Travelling was popular, despite the roads and inns. Erasmus thought the inns of France were tolerable, chiefly because the young waitresses “ giggle and play wonton tricks,” and, “when you go away, embrace you.” and “all for so small a price.” But he denounced German innkeepers as ill-mannered, ill-tempered, dilatory, and dirty.
“When you have taken care of your horse you come into the Stove Room, boots, baggage, mud, and all, for that is a common room for all comers . . . In the Stove Room you pull off your boots, put on your shoes, and, if you will, change your shirt . . . There one combs his head, another . . . belches garlic, and . . . there is great confusion of tongues as at the building of the tower of Babel. In my opinion nothing is more dangerous then for so many to draw in the same vapour, especially when their bodies are opened with the heat ... not to mention . . . the farting, the stinking breaths . . . and without doubt many have the Spanish, or, as it is called, the French, pox, though it is common to all nations.”
If matters were really so in some inns, we can forgive a sin or two to the traveling merchants who put up at and with them in the process of binding village with village, nation with nation, in an ever spreading economic web. In each decade some new trade route was opened -- overland as by Chancellor in Russia, overseas by a thousand adventurous voyages. Shakespeare’s Shylock trafficked with England, Lisbon, Tripoli, Egypt, India,, and Mexico. Genoa had trading colonies in the Black Sea, Armenia, Syria, Palestine, and Spain; it made its peace with Porte, and sold arms to the Turks who were at war with Christendom. France saw the point, made her own ententes with the sultans, and, after 1560, dominated Mediterranian trade. Antwerp received goods everywhence, and shipped them everywhere.
To meet the needs of this expanding economy the bankers improved their services and techniques. As the cost of war rose with the change from feudal levies, bringing their own bows and arrows, pikes and swords, to masses of militia or mercenaries equipped with fire- arms and artillery, payed for by the state. The governments borrowed unprecendented sums from the bankers, and the interest they paid or failed to pay made or broke financial firms. The savings of the people were lent at interest to bankers, who therewith financed expensive undertakings in commerce and industry. Notes of exchange replaced cumbersome transfers of currency or goods. Rates of interest varied not with the greed of the lender so much as with the reliability of the borrower; so the free cities of Germany, controlled by merchants prompt in payments, could borrow at 5%, but Francis I paid 10 %, and Charles V 20 %. Rates declined as economies were stabilized.
Gold and silver from the mines of Germany, Hungary, Spain, Mexico, and Peru provided an abundant and fluid currency. The new supplies of precious metal came just in time, for goods had been multiplying faster than coin. Imports from Asia were paid for only partly by exports, partly by gold or silver; hence, in the decades before Columbus, prices fell, to the discouragement of enterprise and trade. After the development of European mines, and the import of gold and silver from Africa and America, the supply of precious metal outran the production of goods; prices rose, business rejoiced; an economy based on mobile money dislodged the old economy rooted in the holding of land or the control of industry by the guilds, which were in decay.
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Transportation of bulky goods by ship was still the best way, hence the importance of access to water. It's still true that landlocked countries are at a trading disadvantage.
In what will become the United States, all important cities will develop either as seaports or on the "fall line", the point where it's no longer easy to navigate up a major river.
Perhaps the West never developed a beast of burden as useful as the camel.
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Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION.
Pgs. 755 - 757
The Life of the People.
The Guilds were in decay. They had taken form in times of municipal autarky and protectionism; they were not organised either to raise capital or to buy wholesale from distant sources, or to use factory methods and the division of labour, or to reach distant markets with their products. From the thirteenth century onward they had developed an aristocratic exclusiveness, and had made conditions so hard for the journeyman as to drive him into the arms of the capitalist employer. The capitalist was motivated by the profit motive, but he knew how to gather savings into capital’ how and where to buy machinery and raw materials, run mines, build factories, recruit workers, divide and specialise labour, open and reach foreign markets, finance elections, and control governments. The new supplies of gold and silver cried out for profitable investment; American gold became European capital. In the resultant capitalism there was a zest for competition, a stimulus to enterprise, a feverish search for more economical ways of production and distribution, which inevitably left behind the self-contentment of guildsmen plodding in ancient grooves. The new system surpassed the old in quantity, not in quality, of its product; and merchants were crying out for quantity production to pay with manufactured exports for their imports from the East.
The new wealth was largely confined to the merchants, financiers, manufacturers, and their allies in government. Some nobles still made fortunes through vast holdings of land with hundreds of tenants, or through enclosures that supplied wool to the textile industry; but for the most part the landowning aristocracy found itself squeezed between kings and business-controlled cities; it declined in political power, and had to content itself with pedigrees. The proletariat shared with the nobility the penalties of inflation. From 1500 to 1600 the price of wheat, with which the poor baked their bread, rose 150 per cent in England, 200 per cent in France 300 per cent in Germany Eggs had been 4d. for ten dozen in England in 1300; in 1400 the same quantity cost 5d., in 1500 7d., in 1570 42d. Wages rose, but more slowly, since they were regulated by government. In England the law (1563) fixed the annual wage of a hired farmer at $12.00, of a farm hand at $ 9.50, of a “man servant” at $7.25; allowing the purchasing power of these sums to have been 25 times greater in 1563 than in 1954, they came close to $ 180.00 or so per year. We should note, however that in all these cases bed and board were added to the wage. By and large the economic changes of the sixteenth century left the working classes relatively poorer, and politically weaker, than before. Workers produced the goods that were exported to pay for imported luxuries that brightened and softened the lives of a few.
The war of the classes took on a bitterness hardly known since the days of Spartacus in Rome; let the revolt of the Comuneros in Spain, the Peasant’s War in Germany, Ket’s Rebellion in England, serve as evidence. Strikes were numerous, but they were suppressed by a coalition of employers and government. In 1538 the English Cloth workers’ Guild, controlled by the masters, decreed that a journeyman who refused to work under the conditions laid down by the employer should be imprisoned for the first offence, whipped and branded for the second. The laws of vagrancy under Henry VIII and Edward VI were so savage that few workers dared to be found unemployed. A law of 1547 enacted that an able-bodied person leaving his work and roaming the country as a vagrant should be branded on the breast with a letter V, and be given as a slave to for two years to some citizen of the neighbourhood, to be fed on “bread and water and small drink, and refuse of meat.”; and if the vagrancy be repeated the offender was to be branded on cheek or forehead with the letter S, and be condemned to slavery for life. It is to the credit of the English nation that these laws could not be enforced, and had soon to be repealed, but they display the temper of the sixteenth century governments. Duke George of Saxony decreed that the wages of miners under his jurisdiction should not be raised, that no mimer should leave one place to seek work in another, and that no employer should hire anyone who had fomented discontent in another mine. Child labour was sanctioned, explicitly or implicitly, by law. The lace making industry in Flanders was entirely worked by children, and the law forbade any girl over twelve years of age to engage in that occupation. Laws against monopolies, “corners,” or usury were evaded or ignored.
The Reformation fell in with the new economy. The Catholic Church was by temperament antipathetic to “business”; it had condemned interest, had given religious sanction to guilds, had sanctified poverty and castigated wealth, and had freed workers from toil on holydays so numerous that in 1550 there were in Catholic countries 115 nonworking days in the year; this may have played a part in the slower industrialisation and enrichment of Catholic lands. Theologians approved by the Church had defended the fixing of “just prices” by law for the necessaries of life. Thomas Aquinas had branded as “sinful covetousness” the pursuit of money beyond one’s needs, and had ruled that any surplus possessions were “ due by natural law to the purpose of succouring the poor.” Luther had shared these views. But the general development of Protestantism unconsciously co-operated with the capitalist revolution. Saint’s holydays were abolished, with a resultant increase in labour and capital. The new religion found support from businessmen, and returned the courtesy. Wealth was honoured, thrift was lauded, work was encouraged as a virtue, interest was accepted as a legitimate reward for risking one’s savings.
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"Some nobles still made fortunes through vast holdings of land with hundreds of tenants, or through enclosures that supplied wool to the textile industry; but for the most part the landowning aristocracy found itself squeezed between kings and business-controlled cities; it declined in political power, and had to content itself with pedigrees."
This is one of the biggest social changes that occurred in historic times: the shift of the main source of wealth from land to trade and manufacturing and it played out over many centuries, causing many internal and external wars and shifts in ideas and customs. It is omnipresent in British literature, written from the landed aristocracy's point of view, trying to hold their prestige against those "in trade." As late as the early twentieth century, we have the TV drama "Downton Abbey" where a landed aristocrat struggles to hold onto his estate and way of life in a world that has passed him by.
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Vagrancy was a huge problem in England. Much of it was caused by the "Enclosure Acts." The landed aristocrats, in order to share the new wealth from trade, were allowed to kick their tenants off the lands, and enclose them to breed sheep whose wool would feed the textile industry, the backbone of British trade. The farmers who had lost their land swarmed into the city, but manufacturing was not yet developed enough to absorb them. The jobless, homeless became vagrants.
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DURANTS" S o C
Vol.VI THE REFPRMATION
Pgs. 757 - 760
LAW.
It was a cruel age, and its laws corresponded to a pitiless economy, a shameful pauperism, a sombre art, and a theology whose God had repudiated Christ.
Among populations mostly fated to poverty here and damnation hereafter, crime was natural. Murder was plentiful in all classes. Every man of calibre dangled a dagger, and only the weakling relied on the law to redress his wrongs. Crimes of passion were as frequent in life as in Shakespeare, and any Othello who failed to slay his suspected wife was rated less than a man. Travellers took highwaymen for granted, and proceeded in groups. In the cities, still unlit at night, robbers were as plentiful as prostitutes, and a man’s home had to be his castle. In the heyday of Francis I a gang of thieves called ‘mauvais garçons’despoiled Paris in full sunlight. If we classify as crimes the adulteration of goods, the chicanery of business frauds, the bribery of courts, the seizure of ecclesiastical property, the extension of frontiers by conquest, every second man in Europe was a thief; we may give some the benefit of clergy, and allow for an honest craftsman here and there. Add a little arson, a little rape, a little treason, and we begin to understand the problems faced by the forces of law and order.
These were organised to punish, rather than to prevent, crime. In some large towns, like Paris, soldiers served as guardians of the peace; city blocks had their wardens, parishes their constables; but by and large cities were poorly policed. Statesmen weary of fighting the nature of man reckoned it cheaper to control crime by decreeing ferocious penalties, and letting the public witness executions. A score of offences were capital; murder, treason, heresy, sacrilege, witchcraft, robbery, counterfeiting, smuggling, arson, perjury, adultery, rape, ( unless healed by marriage), homosexual actions, “ bestiality,” falsifying weights and measures, adulterating food, damaging property at night, escaping from prison, and failure in attempted suicide. Execution might be by relatively painless beheading, but this was usually a privilege of ladies and gentlemen; lesser fry were hanged; heretics and husband killers were burned; outstanding murderers were drawn and quartered; and a law of Henry VIII ( 1531) punished prisoners by boiling them alive, as we gentler souls do today with shellfish. A Salzburg municipal ordinance required that “a forger shall be burned or boiled to death, a perjurer shall have his tongue torn out by the neck; a servant who sleeps with his master’s wife, daughter, or sister, shall be beheaded or hanged.” Julienne Rabeau, who had killed her child after a very painful delivery, was burned at Angers ( 1531). Usually the corpse of the hanged was left suspended as a warning to the living, until the crows had eaten the flesh away. Imprisonment for debt was common throughout Europe. All in all, the penal code of the sixteenth century was more severe than in the Middle Ages, and reflected the moral disorder of the time.
The people did not resent these ferocious punishments. They took some pleasure in attending executions, and sometimes lent a helping hand. When Monteccucculi confessed, under torture, that he had poisoned, or had intended to poison, Francis, the beloved and popular son of Francis I, he was dismembered alive by having his limbs tied to horses which were then driven in four directions ( Lyons 1536); the populace, we are told, “ cut his remains into little morsels, hacked off his nose, tore out his eyes, broke his jaws, trained his head in the mud, and ‘made him die a thousand times before his death’,”
To the laws against crime were added “blue laws” against recreations supposedly infringing upon piety, or innovations too abruptly deviating from custom. Fish eating on Friday, required by common law in Catholic lands, was required by state law in the Protestant England of Edward VI to support the fishing industry and so train men to the sea for the navy. Gambling was always illegal and always popular. Francis I, who knew how to amuse himself, ordered the arrest of people who played cards or dice in taverns or gaming houses ( 1526), but he allowed the establishment of a public lottery ( 1539). Drunkenness was seldom punished by law, but idleness was almost a capital crime. Sumptuary laws -- designed to check conspicuous expenditure by the newly rich, and to preserve class distinctions -- regulated dress, adornment, furniture, meals, and hospitality. “ When I was a boy,” said Luther, “all games were forbidden, so that card-makers, pipers, and actors, were not admitted to the sacraments; and those who had played games, or been present at shows or plays, made it a matter of confession.” Most such prohibitions survived the Reformation, to reach their peak in the later sixteenth century.
It was some consolation that enforcement was rarely as severe as the law. Escape was easy; a kindly, bribed, or intimidated judge or jury let many a rascal go lightly punished, or scot free. ( “Scot” originally meant an assessment or fine.). The laws of sanctuary were still recognised under Henry VIII. However laxity of enforcement was balanced by frequent use of torture to elicit confessions or testimony. Here the laws of Henry VIII, though they were the severest in the history of England, were ahead of their time; they forbade torture except where national security was held to be involved. Delay in trying an indicted person could also be torture; one complaint of the Spanish Cortes to Charles V was that men charged with even slight offences lingered in prison for as long as ten years before being tried, and that trials might drag on for twenty years.
Lawyers bred and multiplied as the priesthood declined. They filled the judiciary and the higher bureaucracy; they represented the middle classes in the in the national assemblies and the provincial parliaments; even the aristocracy and the clergy depended upon them for guidance in civil law. A new ‘noblesse de robe’ -- the ‘Furred Cats’ of Rebelais -- formed in France. Canon law disappeared in Protestant countries, and jurisprudence replaced theology as the ‘pièce de résistance’, in universities. Roman Law sprang back to life in Latin countries, and captured Germany in the sixteenth century. Local law survived alongside it in France, “common law” was preferred in England. But the Justinian Code had some influence in shaping and sustaining the absolutism of Henry VIII. Yet in Henry’s own court his chaplain, Thomas Starkey, composed (c. 1537) a ‘Dialogue’ whose main theme was that laws should dictate the will of the king, and that king should be subject to election and recall.
“That country cannot long be well governed, nor maintained with good policy, where all is ruled by the will of one not chosen by election but cometh to it by natural succession; for seldom seen it is that they which by succession come to kingdoms and realms are worthy of such high authority.... what is more repugnant to nature than a whle nation to be governed by the will of a prince? What is more contrary to reason than all the whole people to be ruled by him which commonly lacketh all reason? It is not man that can make a wise prince of him that lacketh wit by nature. But this is in man’s power to elect and choose him that is both wise and just, and make him a prince, and him that is a tyrant so to dispose.” Starkey died a strangely natural death a year after writing the above..... but 334 years before it reached print......
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It is several months now since anyone other than MABEL & JOANK have remarked on any of my posts. I wonder, is this because there is no else there but us three, all others having got tired of my selections?
If there are no others reading the selections but us, then perhaps we should think of other things that we need to do...... Just wondering out loud. . . . Trevor.
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I'll see if there's any more interest out there.
Attempted suicide was punishable by death? Strange thinking there!
those times seem so cruel to us. but attitudes toward death would almost have to be different at a time when few children survived to adulthood and life was short and brutal. People who are nostalgic for historic times never really deal with the realities of the times.
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DURANMTS' S o C
Vol.VI THE REFORMATION
Pgs.760 - 763
MORALS
How did the people of Latin Christendom behave? We must not be misled by the religious professions; these were more often expressions of pugnacity than of piety. The same sturdy men who could believe so fiercely could fiercely blaspheme, and the girls who on Sunday bowed demurely before statues of the Virgin, roughed their cheeks hopefully during the week, and many of them got themselves seduced, if only as a proposal of marriage. Virginity had to be protected by every device of custom, morals, law, religion, paternal authority, pedagogy, and “point of honour”: yet it managed to get lost. Soldiers returning from campaigns in which sex and liquor had been their chief consolations found it painful to adjust themselves to continence and sobriety. Students majored in venery, and protested that fornication was but a venial sin which enlightened legislators would overlook. Female dancers not infrequently performed on stage and elsewhere “absolutely naked”; this apparently, is one of the oldest novelties in the world. Artists looked down their noses at the rules and regulations of sexual behaviour, and lords and ladies agreed with the artists. The bookstores were stacked with licentious literature, for which high prices were greedily paid. Aretino was as popular in Paris as in Rome. Rebelais, a priest, did not feel that he would reduce the sales of his Gargantuan epic by spattering it with such speech as would have made Aretino run to cover. All the perversions found place in this period, as in the aristocratic pages of Brantôme.
Prostitution prospered in income and prestige; it was in this age that its practitioners came to be called ‘cortigiane’ -- courtesans -- which was the feminine of ‘cortigiani’ -- courtiers. Some generals provided prostitutes for their armies as a safe guard for the other women of occupied towns. But as venereal disease grew almost to the proportions of a plague, government after government legislated against the unhappy ‘filles de joie’. Luther, while affirming the naturalness of sexual desire, laboured to reduce prostitution, and under his urging many cities in Lutheran Germany made it illegal. In 1560 Michel de l’Hôpital, Chancellor of France, renewed the laws of Louis IX against the evil, and apparently his decree was enforced.
Meanwhile the absurd lust of flesh for flesh begot the hunger of the soul, and all the delicate embroidery of courtship and romantic love. Stolen glances, billets-doux, odes and sonnets, lays and madrigals, hopeful gifts and secret trysts, poured out of the coursing blood. A few refined spirits, or playful women, welcomed from Italy and Castiglione the pastime of Platonic love, by which a lady and her courtier might be passionate friends but sedulously chaste. Such restraint, however, was not in the mood of the age; men were frankly sensual, and women liked them so. Love poetry abounded, but it was as a prelude to possession, not to marriage.
Parents were still too matter-of-fact to let love choose mates for life; marriage, in their dispensation, was a wedding of estates. Erasmus, sensitive to the charms of woman, but not of matrimony, advised youngsters to marry as the oldsters wished and trust to love to grow with association rather than wither with satiation; Rebelais agreed with him. Notwithstanding these authorities, a rising number of young people, like Jeanne D’Albret, rebelled against marriages of realty. Roger Ascham, tutor to Elizabeth, mourned that “our time is so far from the old discipline and obedience as now not only young gentlemen but even girls dare... marry themselves in spite of father, mother, God, good order, and all”. Luther was alarmed to learn that Melanchthon’s son had betrothed himself without consulting his father,: this, the reformer thought, was bound to give Wittenberg a bad name.
In the University he wrote, (Jan.22,1544)
We have a great horde of young men from all countries, and the race of girls is getting bold, and run after the fellows into their rooms and chambers and wherever they can, and offer them their free love; and I hear that many parents have ordered their sons home . . . saying that hang wives around their necks . . . the next Sunday I preached a strong sermon, telling men to follow the common road and manner which has been since the beginning of the world. . . namely, that parents should give their children to each other with prudence and good will, without their own preliminary engagement. . . . . such engagements are an invention of the abominable pope, suggested to him by the Devil to destroy and tear down the power of parents, given and commended to them earnestly by God.
Marriage contracts could be arranged for boys and girls as young as three years, but these marriages could be annulled later, if not consummated. The legal age for full marriage was generally fourteen for boys, twelve for girls. Sexual relations after betrothal and before the wedding were condoned. Even before betrothal, in Sweden and Wales, as later in some American colonies, “bundling” was allowed; some lovers would lie together in bed, but were admonished to keep a sheet between them. In Protestant lands marriage ceased to be a sacrament, and by 1580 civil marriage was competing with marriage by clergymen. Luther, Henry VIII, Erasmus, and pope Clement VII thought bigamy permissible under certain conditions especially as a substitute for divorce. Protestant divines moved slowly toward allowing divorce, but at first only for adultery. This offence was apparently most prevalent in France, despite the custom of killing adulterous wives. Illicit love affairs were part of normal life of French women of good social standing. A triangular Ménage like that of Henry II, Catherine de Medicis, and Diane de Poitiers was quite frequent -- the legal wife ‘de conv- enance’ accepting the situation with wry grace, as sometimes in France today.
Except in the aristocracies, women were goddesses before marriage and servants afterward. Wives took motherhood in their stride, gloried in their numerous children, and managed to manage their managers. They were robust creatures, accustomed to hard work from sunrise to sunset. They made most of the clothing for their families, and sometimes took in work from capitalist entrepreneurs. The loom was an essential part of the home; in England all unmarried women were “ spinsters”. The women of the French court were a different species, encouraged by Francis I to prettify themselves in flesh and dress, and sometimes turning national policy by the guided missiles of their charms. A feminist movement was imported into France from Italy, but rapidly faded as women perceived that their power and prominence were independent of politics and laws. Many French women of the upper classes were well educated; already, in Paris and elsewhere, the French salon was taking form as rich and cultivated ladies made their homes a rendezvous of statesmen, poets, artists, scholars, prelates, and philosophers. Another group of French women -- let Anne of France, Anne of Brittany, Claude, and Renée serve as instances -- stood quietly virtuous amid the erotic storm. In general the Reformation, being Teutonic, made for the patriarchal view of woman, and the family It ended her Renaissance enthronement as an exemplar of beauty and a civiliser of man. It condemned the Church’s lenience with sexual diversions, and after Luther’s death, it prepared the way for the Puritanic chill.
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"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"
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What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
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Volume VI THE REFORMATION
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends." This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.
SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK (joankraft13@yahoo.com) & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor (patschwiet@hotmail.com)
Is there anyone there apart from Mabel, Joan, and me.??
If there is, could they please acknowledge my request by saying hi or something?
Joan and I have the volumes of course, and I think Mabel at least has access to them. This being the case, it seems that I put in a lot of work for little reason. I'm 87 years now, and there are other things I could be doing rather than one finger typing of a huge number of words, interesting and impressive though they be. Please answer if there are any readers. Thanks, TREVOR.
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I understand your feelings Trevor. You have done a good thing taking over for Robby and i've enjoyed continuing with the postings, but i have thought over the last couple of months that at 12 yrs +, we may have run the race.
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I tried to get some more interest, but seem to have failed. You have done a marvelous job, TREVOR, but perhaps it is time to stop.
This has been a great enterprise. It was what drew me in to Seniornet in the first place, about 10 or 11 years ago. I remember we were just starting the Romans, (I regret missing the Greeks) and I remember asking if I was too late!
I have learned so much here! The details, of course -- so much that is not taught in our history classes -- but even more, the feeling for the flow of history. The ups and downs, the patterns that repeat over and over. How different people can be, and yet how the same. In this time, where everything is about the NOW, I'll never be able to look at the world that way.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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Ironically, SofC brought me to Seniornet also, about the same time, Joan. I was looking for something related to the Western Civ course i was teaching, and lo and behold, i found a whole site (seniornet) on a myriad of things, but especially the book discussions! Cheers! Cheers ! Cheers!
Thank you to Robby and Trevor and all of you who fueled the discussion of SofC and ALL the discussions. If i never used the internet for anything else, these discussions would be worth the price. Oh! That's right! It's FREE! Just like the library!
Hours and hours and hours of fun and information!
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Trevor what a wonderful service you have done for our readers all this time! We know people are reading the discussion but they are not commenting. I can't imagine the length of time it takes you to type all that with one finger!
I can't type well and I would fall over if I had to type that so often with 10 fingers. What a job that has been. How good of you to do it so steadfastly!
Even tho I don't participate in this discussion I do want you to know how much we have appreciated your wonderful commitment (something rare these days) to doing something of value even if unsung.
Thank you so much for all you have done all this time.
I hope you won't be a stranger here, we'd miss you, if so.
Many grateful thanks from all of us.
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Many thanks for all the nice comments. I remember cautioning Robby many years ago when he first proposed tackling the Durant volumes, that I doubted if we lesser mortals than the Durants could ever complete the task. Robby pressed on and made a tremendously good job of the task, but even he had to resign from the effort. I salute you Robby. I will remain in these sites as I was when I first joined S'NET years and years ago. Hope to see you all later. TREVOR. (Pat Schwieters.)
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Can't help tearing up a bit: this has been part of my life for so long. But I think you are making the right decision.
I hope to see you in some of the other sites.
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Trevor, I am sad about your decision but undertand the reason.
I have been away for some time and 'unwired'. I left everything at home, the laptop, tablet, kindle, and phone.
This was one discussion, I did not want to give up, but all things must end sometime, and without Trevor it would have ended when Robby left, so I am grateful for his tenure.
Trevor was involved in this discussion group from the beginning. It has lasted thirteen and one half years. That is a pretty good record for a group in their eighties. (I am past eighty myself).
Thanks to Joan and Mable for their continuous presence, and all others who contributed.
For Trevor, you were an excellent host and I applaud you, and wish you well for the future. I finished reading the book soon after we started, but there is so much detail that I enjoyed rereading the passages you selected, and greatly enjoyed all the comments.
Emma
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Bookad posted a great comment in the Library:
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=881.msg257152#msg257152
Thank you all for your participation over these years. This discussion is now archived.