Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Name of the Pope

It is common practice for popes of the Roman Catholic Church to take a new name—called their regnal name—upon elevation to the Throne of Peter. They will usually offer a reason for the new name. Cardinal Albino Luciani took the names of both his immediate predecessors and called himself Pope John Paul I. When he died after a very short (33 days) reign, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla chose to honor him by taking the name Pope John Paul II upon his accession.

Pope "Mercurius"
It hasn't always been thus, however. Whereas now almost all popes take the name of a saint, early popes used their own names—names that were not always common. So you had popes named Anacletus, Evaristus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Soter, Eleuterus, Zephyrinus and others among the more common names like Felix and Boniface and John; and they only rarely needed numbers next to their names, because the likelihood of there being more than one pope named "Anterus" or "Eutychian" or "Miltiades" was slight.

The practice of taking a new name began not to honor a predecessor, however, but to avoid an embarrassment.

After the death of Pope Boniface II in October 532, there was a two-month vacancy in the position. Part of the reason for this was a (ahem) change in the process. You see, it had become common for some candidates to ensure their election through bribes and gifts. The Roman Senate forbade this practice just before the death of Boniface. Athalaric, the King of the Ostrogoths in Italy, upheld the Senate's decision, and added his own flourish: a disputed papal election that needed to come before his court would be fined 3000 solidi (a solidi was a gold coin of 4.5 grams) and the money given to the poor.

The cardinals fell into agreement on a distinguished priest of Rome, aged about 60. He was willing to take the job, but he had one concern. His Roman parents had given him a theophoric birth name—a name that honors a god in order to impart luck and protection to a child. His name was Mercurius. Father Mercurius did not think it was appropriate for a Christian pope to bear the name of a Roman god. He decided to take the name of a pope from a decade earlier who had had a good working relationship with Athalaric's grandfather.

And so Father Mercurius became Pope John II, the first pope known to have taken a new name upon election.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The New Year

Tying the start of a year to the season of spring makes perfect sense in agrarian cultures. The Romans started their year in spring for a long time, seeing March 25th as a logical "New Year's Day" because the days were clearly getting longer after that date.

The reason why they (and we) use the 25th of certain months instead of the 21st (when astronomically significant events like solstices and equinoxes take place), is because 4 days was the length of time it took for an observer without instruments to be certain that the seasons were, in fact, changing.

When Julius Caesar decided to reform the calendar in 45 BCE (adding a "leap day) each four years), he chose to start his new version on January 1. Named for Janus, the duo-visaged god of transitions and beginnings, it made sense to start a significant change at the start of his month. Friends would create good omens for the start of the year by giving each other token gifts of figs and honey, and wishing each other well for the coming year.

In the Middle Ages, the Church preferred to use a date of greater religious significance (Christian religion, that is, rather than Roman). March 25th (as The Annunciation) was sometimes used, and December 25th as Christmas, and March 1st (for convenience, since it could start a month and a year).

When Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar again,* he chose January 1st to be the official start of the year. He didn't cause the whole world to follow his lead. Most European countries had already settled on the "Julian solution" for the first day of the year.

Happy New Year.

*Technically, when he carried out the reforms planned by Pope Paul III.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Medieval PDAs

[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts. The following is from 19 June 2012.]
Re-creation of wax tablets [link]
Herman of Tournai (1095–1147), an abbot of St. Martin of Tournai (in Belgium) wrote an account called The restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin of Tournai. In the prologue, he comments "I even wrote down a certain amount on tablets." He would have been referring to a wax tablet, which were used since the Roman Empire and became increasingly common in the Middle Ages.

A shallow wooden or ivory frame filled with soft wax could be written on with a stylus; the other end of the stylus was a flattened blade shape that could be used to smooth out the wax for re-use. The beeswax would be mixed with plant oils and/or carbon to create a more legible surface. Tablets were often not simply one piece; They could be turned into leather-laced "booklets" where the outer tablets held wax on the inside, and inner "pages" would have wax on both sides. 

Wax tablets were great for business records. A hospital in Enns, Austria used multiple-page wax tablets (that still exist) to track some financial records. Payables due would be printed on parchment and stuck to the left side; money received would be written on the right side in wax and added up. The impression would store indefinitely—so long as you didn't let it get hot. 

Tablets were also ideal for transactions that did not need to be kept long-term. The impression could last for a week or month or season, and then warmed up and smoothed over for the next set of transactions off the boat. 

Here's an extensive directory of links to pictures of tablets from across the centuries.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Rosemary

[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts.]

Rosemary in England
The fragrant and tasty rosemary (from ros marinus, "dew of the sea") grows natively in the Mediterranean. Perform an Internet search for "rosemary + England + herb" and you'll likely be told that it was brought to England by Queen Philippa of Hainault in 1327, when she married Edward III of England. (Examples are here, here, and here; but don't bother.)

The origin of this story seems to be with the translator of a manuscript found in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The manuscript is a poetic treatise sent by Queen Philippa's mother, the Countess of Hainault, about rosemary's many uses. Presumably it was sent with a rosemary plant, and thus the legend of the introduction of rosemary to England was born. The treatise has such useful advice as:
mighteth the boones and causeth goode and gladeth and lighteth all men that use it. The leves layde under the heade whanne a man slepes, it doth away evell spirites and suffereth not to dreeme fowle dremes ne to be afeade. But he must be out of deedely synne for it is an holy tree.Strengthens the bones and causes good, and gladdens and lightens all men that use it. The leaves, laid under the head when a man sleeps, do away with evil spirits, and will not allow one to dream foul dreams or be afraid. But he must not be in a state of sin, for it is a holy tree.
So was it known in England before the 14th century?

The British Library has a manuscript (Royal 12, D xvii) known colloquially as "Bald's Leechbook," a ninth-century medical text written in Old English. Rosemary is mentioned in a number of remedies, for fever, horses leprosy, and toothache (always mixed with multiple other substances). It is highly likely that the Saxons found rosemary growing all over England because of its introduction by the Romans centuries earlier.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Figuring out the Sun


[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts. For Christmas I received A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I have just read the section on the brilliant Lord Kelvin, who estimated the age of the Earth at as high as 400 million years. Interestingly, he kept revising his estimate, from 400 million to 100 million to 50 million and, finally, to 24 million. The difficulty in adhering to his longer estimates, for him and others in the burgeoning field of geology, was not that they could not imagine the Earth being older, but that for the Earth to be that old, the Sun would have to be around—and their best estimates of how the Sun worked could not imagine the nuclear forces that would allow it to produce heat continuously for hundreds of millions of years. This reminded me of the post for 10 June 2012.]

How Does the Sun Work?

Robert Grosseteste (c.1175-1235) is considered by some to be the founder of modern English intellectualism. Among other topics, he focused (pun intended) on light. One of his works sought to explain how the sun produced heat.

He first explained the three methods of heat generation:
  1. An object that is hot
  2. Motion/Friction
  3. The scattering of rays
He determined that Method 1 cannot apply here. For heat to transfer from a hot object, there must be a medium through which it travels, and that medium will heat up during the transfer of heat. Clearly everything between the sun and us does not heat up.

He decided that Method 2 was also insufficient to explain the heat, because the motion that creates heat is caused by two substances moving in opposite directions—for instance, rubbing your hands together to warm them up—and the sun's circular motion does not act upon a second substance moving in an opposite direction: everything up there moved from east to west.

Method 3, he decided, must pertain. He reminds his reader that Euclid explained how a concave mirror can focus the sun's rays to cause a fire. He stated that the sun's rays falling upon the earth are scattered, but reflection by a mirror or refraction by a (clear) spherical body can change the direction of the rays, focusing them via the medium of the dense air and generating heat. For him, this had much to do with the denseness of the medium: he stated that the same amount of light falls on a mountaintop and scattering can be observed there, but the thinness of the medium of air disallows the generation of heat.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Anonymous IV

[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts. Today's is new, however, inspired by a music CD I received: Secret Voices by the female a capella group Anonymous 4.]

In the post on the Las Huelgas Codex I mentioned that many of the pieces in the codex were new to scholars, but some were familiar. Where else had they been seen?

Notre Dame Cathedral
The collection of recorded polyphonic music produced by composers working at Notre Dame Cathedral from c.1160-c.1250 is referred to as the Notre Dame School of Polyphony. A majority of medieval polyphonic music up to this time was committed to parchment by the Notre Dame School.

This does not man, sadly, that we can set a manuscript in front of a modern musician and have the notes played as they were intended to be heard. Differences in musical notation and rhythm make it close to impossible to know precisely how these pieces were performed centuries ago. For us to make an attempt is only feasible because of analyses of music written by a handful of people. Franco of Cologne was one, John of Garland another (best estimates are that he was keeper of a bookshop in Paris who edited two treatises on music), and the later writing of the industrious student known only as Anonymous IV.*

The "Alleluia nativitatis" by Pérotin
Thanks to Anonymous IV, we have contemporary definitions of what is meant by organum (a plainchant melody with one voice added to enhance harmony), discantus ("singing apart"; a liturgical style of organum with a tenor plainchant and a second voice that moves in "contrary motion"), the rules for consonance and dissonance, and other terms and rules of polyphony.

One "ironic" result of the writing of Anonymous IV is that. through him, we know the names of two composers who would otherwise have been lost to obscurity. He writes about Léonin and Pérotin with such detail and feeling that, although Anonymous would have lived several decades after they lived and composed, they were presumably so famous that their reputations lived on in the school. Léonin and Pérotin are some of the earliest names of artists that we can actually link to their works.

As much as we have been given by the treatise of Anonymous IV, his own identity and details of his life are unknown. Two partial copies of his work survive at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, England; one is from the 13th century, and one from the 14th. Clearly, his work was considered important enough to copy and preserve—but not his name. He was likely an English student who was at Notre Dame for a time in the late 13th century. Thanks to his interests, we understand more about the development of medieval polyphonic music than we otherwise would have.

*His name is the inspiration for a modern female a capella group.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The St. Scholastica Day Riot

[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts.]

The St. Scholastica Day Riot was one of the most famous altercations in the history of Oxford, England.
Perhaps the most famous instance of Town vs. Gown took place on February 10, 1355, in Oxford. Two students (Roger de Chesterfield & Walter Spryngeheuse) complained about the ale at the Swyndlestock Tavern (located at the southwest corner of the intersection called Carfax). The argument led to the students flinging their drinks in the face of the tavern keeper and beating him. When the mayor of Oxford asked the university chancellor to punish the students (all students fell under the jurisdiction of the university, not the town), and the chancellor refused, a mob of students decided to attack the mayor and town. The town called for help from the surrounding countryside, and attacked the university. The resulting riot lasted two days and killed (supposedly) 63 students and 30 townspeople. [from DailyMedieval, May 18, 2012]
Appealing to the Crown did not help the town. The king held the university in high esteem, apparently, and supported its right to its own governance. The town was not allowed to prosecute students or staff of the university.

For the town's part in the conflict, its penance was for the mayor and council members to march bare-headed through the streets annually on February 10th. Moreover, each year the town was to pay a fine of 1 penny for each scholar killed. The fine of 5 shillings and threepence was paid annually until 1825. The Swindlestock Tavern itself had not existed for over a hundred years by that time. On the 600th anniversary of the Riot, a ceremony was held in which the mayor was given an honorary degree and the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford was made an Honorary Freeman of Oxford, putting (they hoped) the Town vs. Gown rivalry to rest once and for all.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Music of Las Huelgas

From a facsimile edition of the Codex
[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts. Today's is new, however, inspired by a music CD I received: Secret Voices by the female a capella group Anonymous 4.]

The Abbey of Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas was founded in 1187 by Alfonso VIII of Castile, at the request of his wife, Eleanor of England, the daughter if Henry II an Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was founded on land that was going unused at the time; huelgas meant land that is fallow, although nowadays it is used to refer to "labor strikes."

Its origin granted it many royal privileges: it was exempt from taxes, held many valuable items that belonged to royal families, and became a traditional site for many royal weddings, such as that between Edward I of England and Eleanor of Castile. The monastery became Cistercian in 1199 and the burial sit for the royal family. Two of the first royal burials were the founders, Alfonso VIII and Eleanor of England.

Known for the privileges of its abbess, and for the hospital founded by Alfonso VIII, Las Huelgas gave to the modern world one more fascinating item left over from the Middle Ages: music.

In 1904, while doing research on the origins and development of Gregorian chant, two Benedictine monks found a manuscript in Las Huelgas containing 45 monophonic pieces and 141 polyphonic pieces. They are written on fairly durable parchment in red and black ink with Franconian notation (briefly discussed here and here). The Las Huelgas Codex includes many pieces familiar to scholars, but also pieces that are not recorded elsewhere.

Most of the pieces are from the late 13th century, when it is known that Las Huelgas had a 100-woman choir. We have to assume that, despite the Cistercian rules against the performance of polyphonic music, the choir of Las Huelgas performed these pieces at will, thanks to their royal patronage and privileges (the abbess was allowed for a long time to call synods, confirm abbesses of other monasteries, and even hear confession and grant absolution!).

Here is a recording of the Benedicta et venerabilis II and the Benedicamus dominu, with pictures from the Abbey's architecture and art. Enjoy!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

The Christmas King

Christmas Day was not celebrated in the past with all the pomp and circumstance we grant it today. It was, however, an auspicious day. Coming four days after the winter solstice, it is the day when it is easy to confirm (without careful measurement by instruments) that the days are, indeed, growing longer and therefore the "sun is returning." This made it an important day for many pre-literate cultures, and this importance was not forgotten.

Schoolchildren learning about the history of Western Civilization all hear the story of how Charlemagne was in Rome on Christmas Day in 800, and while at mass the pope placed the crown of the Holy Roman Emperors on his head, at once elevating him to the highest temporal position in Europe and implying that the pope had power to choose and make the emperor. (Actually, the pope owed Charlemagne a favor: the people of Rome disliked him and tried to torture him, and Leo III fled to Charlemagne, asking for support. Charlemagne traveled with Leo back to Rome in November of 800 and restored him to his papal throne.)

The 25th of December was an easy day to remember, and some rulers after Charlemagne used it as the official start to their reigns.

In 1066, William the Conqueror of Normandy was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey in London, having waited well over a month since defeating his enemies and establishing his rule.

Baldwin of Boulogne (c.1058-1118), one of the leaders of the First Crusade, was chosen to rule Jerusalem after the death of his brother, Godfrey of Bouillon. Godfrey refused the title "King," believing it was inappropriate for anyone other than Jesus Christ to be styled "king" of Jerusalem. Godfrey died in July 1100. Baldwin had no trouble either calling himself "King of Jerusalem" or driving the lesson home by being crowned in Jerusalem on the day celebrating Christ's birth.

Baldwin takes the crown of Jerusalem
Roger II of Sicily (1095-1154) started life as Count of Sicily, later becoming Duke of Apulia and Calabria. He worked to unite all the Norman-conquered lands of Sicily and southern Italy. By 1130 he was ruling over a wide area including Apulia, Calabria, Capua, Naples, and part of Spoleto. "Count" and "Duke" were no longer sufficient for his stature, and he had himself crowned the first King of Sicily on Christmas Day in 1130.

Christmas Day is a day we associate with gifts. For some people in history, Christmas "gifts" were on a much grander scale than a pair of socks.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Night of the Mothers

Were the Norse Norns/Fates the "Mothers"?
Among the notable works of the Venerable Bede (c.673-735) is De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time). It explains why the length of days and nights changes (Bede knew the Earth was a globe); it explains how the Sun and Moon cause the phases of the Moon, and it addresses the relationship between the Moon and the tides (but doesn't understand how the relationship works). It also includes an explanation of various calendars used by different cultures. The whole point of his scholarship was to explain how to calculate the date of Easter, that "floating Holy Day" that can be held anywhere from 22 March to 25 April.

One of the events he discusses as part of other calendars is Mōdraniht (Night of Mothers), intended to be the start of the New Year:
...began the year on the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. That very night, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is, "mothers night", because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night. [Wallis, Faith (1999). Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Liverpool University Press.]
The 25th of December was notable in the past because it came four days after the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. By the 25th, it was possible to determine even without precise measurements and instruments that the days were growing longer. The 25th therefore became a day of celebrating the returning Sun.

Who were the "Mothers" meant by Bede? We think he was referring to female spirits that had to do with mankind's welfare, and who would be sacrificed to and invoked for bounty for the coming year. Some scholars have linked them to the dísir (singular dís), female spirits that watch over the fate of Norse clans. These would be similar to the Norns of Norse mythology who function like the Fates of Greek mythology.

Bede seems to be reliable on many of the observations he makes of other cultures. Unfortunately, he did not elaborate on the "ceremonies" that he "suspected" were performed on Mōdraniht, and we have no other contemporary source for information on what the celebration entailed.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Queen Lionheart

Let us look at a classic "political marriage."

Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England and  mother of Richard called Lionheart, wanted the best possible match for her son. He was originally betrothed to Princess Alys, the sister of King Philip II of France, but she saw other opportunities for him.

In 1190, while Richard was on the Third Crusade, Eleanor met with King Sancho VI of Navarre, who hosted a banquet for her in Pamplona. It is likely that Eleanor negotiated the marriage of her son to Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho and his Queen, Sancha of Castile. Berengaria had been given the fief of Monreal in 1185; that, and an alliance between Richard and Navarre, would give protection to the southern border of the Aquitaine, the province in southern France that Eleanor had given to Richard. Berengaria had other fine qualities: commentators of the time say she was both attractive and intelligent.

Eleanor decided there was no time to waste, and she (now in her 60s!) and Berengaria undertook the long journey to meet with Richard. They caught up with him in Messina on the Island of Sicily. This was possibly the first time Richard and Beregaria ever met, although some believe there was an earlier occasion when they saw each other.

Richard ended his betrothal to Alys that year (after all, there were rumors that his father was having an affair with her). Unfortunately, it was Lent during their time in Sicily, so a marriage ceremony was not appropriate. Richard embarked on the next leg of the Third Crusade, and Berengaria took ship with Richard's sister, Joan of England, the widowed Queen of Sicily.* The ladies' ship foundered off the coast of Cyprus, where Isaac Comnenus opportunistically took them prisoner. When Richard learned of this, he brought part of his army to Cyprus, defeated and captured Comnenus, and took control of Cyprus. Berengaria and Richard were married on 12 May 1191, then left Cyprus for Palestine.


Abbey crypt and tomb of Berengaria
Once arriving in the Holy Land, Berengaria left for Poitou. It is likely that she never saw her husband again. When Richard was going home in 1194, he was captured in Germany. Berengaria and Eleanor separately raised ransom money. Richard spent little time in England as king, and Berengaria never went there, preferring her own southern lands. She did not attend his funeral at Fontevrault.

After Richard's death, his brother John refused to pay Berengaria's pension, despite intervention by Eleanor and Pope Innocent III. John's son, Henry III, finally paid the debt of £4000. She used some of the money to found a Cistercian monastery, the Pietas Dei at L’Épau. When she died, on 23 December 1230, she was buried there, rather than at Fontevrault next to her husband.

*Richard's diversion to Sicily was to free his sister from imprisonment by the usurper, Tancredi.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

The King of Sicily

Sicily, an island of less than 10,000 square miles just off the coast of Italy, would not seem to merit its own king, and for a long time it didn't have one. But just as England was brought to heel under a Norman ruler, so too did Normans take over Sicily and eventually expand its power.

Christ crowns Roger II of Sicily [art link]
Before William of Normandy conquered England, Normans were also traveling in other directions. Norman mercenaries went through southern Italy in the late 10th century, looking for employment. Originally they fought on behalf of the city-states in the region, but by the 11th century they were actually ruling the regions of Naples, Capua, Apulia, Clabria, and had carved up Sicily into several smaller counties and dukedoms.

Roger Hauteville and his brother Robert Guiscard came to southern Italy and discovered the Byzantine Greek Christians living under Muslim rule by Moors from Tunisia. In 1061 the two brothers and an army took Messina, then captured Palermo in 1071. Over the next few years they expelled the Moors, and Roger became Count of Sicily. Roger had three wives and several children. One of his last children was also named Roger.

Roger II (22 December 1095-1154) became Count of Sicily in 1105, inheriting the title (and parts of Sicily) when his elder brother died. At the age of 16, he was named Count of Sicily and Calabria. In 1122, Roger's cousin, Duke William of Apulia, accepted Roger's help in dealing with an enemy; in exchange, he offered to renounce his claims to certain lands. When William died in 1127, Roger claimed all lands that had been distributed to members of the Hauteville family on Sicily and in the Italian peninsula: Calabria and Apulia, as well as Capua.

Pope Honorius II was wary of the growing power of Normans in southern Italy and Sicily, but his attempts to counter Roger with force or politics failed. By 1129, Roger's rule of Apulia was accepted by his neighbors. When Honorius died in 1130, Roger threw his support behind Anacletus II against Innocent II. Anacletus prevailed and, despite being later declared an antipope, he was able to reward his supporter with a papal bull declaring Roger King of Sicily. Roger was undisputed ruler of the island and much of southern Italy, a worthy kingdom indeed.

Roger continued to expand his territory. When Roger's sister, Matilda, who had married Ranulf II of Alife, came to Roger claiming to have been abused by her husband, Roger took Ranulf's lands as well as his brother's county.

Pope Anacletus died in 1138, and Pope Innocent II sent an army to teach Roger a lesson: the pope mistrusted the power of the expansive Kingdom of Sicily, and wanted a buffer state between Sicily and his own territory. Innocent thought Capua would make a good neutral space between the two. His army failed, however.

The King of Sicily had a long life and accomplished numerous things, but I'll mention just one more: Roger invented a new coin that would standardize monetary exchanges throughout the Mediterranean. He named this gold coin after the duchy of Apulia: the ducat. (To be honest, this coin failed to be widely adopted. The ducat with which we are familiar was introduced by Venice in 1284.)

Friday, December 21, 2012

The End of the World

Given all the fuss about the Mayan calendar, I thought it would be fun to look at other times when people thought the world might end.

The Epistles of Paul (1st century CE) in the New Testament suggest that Jesus' return was imminent and would start the process of the end times.

Saint Clement (c.90 CE) predicted the end of the world was imminent (probably influenced by Paul).

Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (c.300-c.368) was called the "Hammer of the Arians" for his opposition to them. He claimed in 365 that Emperor Constantius II (a semi-Arian) was the Antichrist, and the Apocalypse was imminent.

Hilary's student, St. Martin of Tours (316-397), claimed the end would come by 400 CE.

Hippolytus (170-35), sometimes called the first antipope, was a great scholar who thought 500 CE was a good round number for the end of the world. The historian Sextus Julius Africanus (c.160-c.240) also thought 500 was a good round number for the end times.

In 968 CE, the army of German Emperor Otto III saw an eclipse and widely believed that the end was nigh.

In 992 CE, Good Friday (a "floating" holy day) coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation. This concurrence had been thought to be a sign of the end. A report came from Germany that the sun rose in the north, and that suns and moons were fighting in the sky. Other countries missed that sight.

In May of 1000 CE, Charlemagne's body was disinterred in order to fulfill a legend that an emperor would rise from his sleep to fight the Antichrist.

A belief that Jesus would return 1000 years after his death made people look to 1033 CE as a date for the beginning of the end.

Pope Innocent III, scholar that he was, added the legendary number 666 to the date of the founding of Islam, and concluded that the end would come in 1284 CE.

The Black Death was seen by many as the end.

...and so on.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Urban Blight

While other history sites were celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of King Henry II yesterday, I was thinking about the anniversary of the death of Pope Urban V (1310-1370).

Born William de Grimoard to an aristocratic family, he became a Benedictine monk and later was abbot at the Abbey of St. Victor, where he made a tribute to John Cassian. He was sent to several universities to exercise his clever mind, and became an expert in Canon Law, the laws of the Church. He taught Canon Law at Avignon, Montpelier, and Paris. Returning to Avignon from a trip to Naples, where he had been sent by Pope Innocent IV, he found the pope dead. In the conclave that followed, no clear winner could be found, and Abbot William found himself being put forward as a compromise candidate. At this point, election of a pope required that the candidate be a cardinal, and William wasn't even a bishop. A hasty ordination was arranged.

Not a fan of ostentation, he continued to wear his Benedictine habit. A fan of education, he restored a school of medicine in Montpelier. His personal physician was the most-renowned surgeon of the day. He tried to restore the papacy to Rome from Avignon. He tried to get England to pay several years' worth of payments due the papacy, and clashed with Wycliffe over it. He attempted a Crusade against the Turks, which never got off the ground.

He also took a strong stand against heretics.

In 1363, he proclaimed the papal bull In caena Domini (At the table of the Lord), a collection of pronunciations of popes that merited excommunication for transgressors, and for which only the pope could give absolution. This bull, amended to include later papal injunctions, was repeated annually on Holy Thursday or Easter Monday. It listed infringements against papal authority as well as heresies, sacrileges, and other crimes. It was used to justify many an inquisition.

Over the centuries, rulers of Europe—both Catholic and Protestant—considered In caena Domini to be an infringement on their rights as sovereigns and complained. The annual recital of it was finally ended in 1770 by Pope Clement XIV.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

A Tale of Two Pots

What do a Jewish philosopher, a Greek fabulist, and a Latin poet have in common? The following story and its moral.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus (c.200-175 BCE), also called the Wisdom of Sirach, is one of the disputed books of the Old Testament. It is included in the 2nd century BCE Jewish Septuagint (the Greek version of Jewish scriptures used by Diaspora Jews), but is not considered canonical in Judaism, only in Christianity. In it there is a piece of advice:
"Have no fellowship with one that is richer than thyself. What agreement shall the earthen pot have with the kettle? For if they knock one against the other, it shall be broken." [13.2-3]
Is it possible that Sirach was a fan of the fables of Æsop (c.620-564 BCE)? Æsop has a Tale of Two Pots, one earthenware and one metal:
Two Pots, one of brass and the other of clay, stood together on the hearthstone. One day the Brass Pot proposed to the Earthen Pot that they go out into the world together. But the Earthen Pot excused himself, saying that it would be wiser for him to stay in the corner by the fire.
"It would take so little to break me," he said. "You know how fragile I am. The least shock is sure to shatter me!"
"Don't let that keep you at home," urged the Brass Pot. "I shall take very good care of you. If we should happen to meet anything hard I will step between and save you."
So the Earthen Pot at last consented, and the two set out side by side, jolting along on three stubby legs first to this side, then to that, and bumping into each other at every step. The Earthen Pot could not survive that sort of companionship very long. They had not gone ten paces before the Earthen Pot cracked, and at the next jolt he flew into a thousand pieces.
The same story crops up again in the early Middle Ages in the fables of Avianus (5th century CE). In Avianus' version, two pots are floating downstream.* The metal pot suggests that they stick together, but the clay pot wants him to keep his distance, explaining "Whether the wave crashes me into you or you into me, in either case I will be the only victim."

The moral is that one should deal with equals; socializing (or going into business) with those above your station was risky. In cultures where society was sharply divided into different classes, this was advice worth repeating.

*Apparently, Avianus was fine with pots having a conversation, but walking on legs was too unrealistic for him!