Saturday, May 31, 2014
more news briefs, later May 2014
The election in Ukraine this week, marked a turn for the situation there. The 'pro-business' Petro Poroshenko is positioning himself as western-leading, yet stable, as west-Europe turns more far-right, in EU affairs. More background of the uprising, the Maidan overthrow and the different factions vying for Ukraine, by Timothy Snyder, from the New York Review of Books, March 20, 2014.
The 42 minute extended interview Jon Stewart did with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the Daily Show?
You want a great online resource for all the works of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton? Welcome to Burtoniana.org
brief biographic notes on Francesco Guicciardini 1482 - 1540
From the Start. After a brief dedication to Countess of Pomfert (who may be this person), and a note 'To the Reader' on the current (2nd) edition, ... our translator of Guicciardini, Austin Goddard, gives us 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini ...'. Goddard says this came from a Signior Domenico Manni, an 18th century Florentine philologist and historian. Maybe that's this Domenico Manni. This is the briefest of summaries of that brief life.
Guicciardini was born into a powerful and venerable, noble family. As testament to this nobility they could point to sixteen of its members that were Gonfaloniere in Florence. Many kinsmen were also sent to foreign embassies when communications with the outside world were so important. The center of the family was and had remained a central house on the Arno, near Chiesa Santa Felicita, just down the street and within sight of the famous Ponte Vecchio, as well as viewing (or almost in view of) every part of the center of the city itself. The family had a number of other castles , and benefited a number of churches, chief of which was Santa Felicita. One of their family houses was sold in 1445 for 3000 florins.
His father, named Piero, was a lawyer and appointed Commissary General of Florence in 1501. Later as ambassador to Pope Leo X, the father Piero once gave a speech so well before the pope and his audience, that they proclaimed no one else could say a speech as well as the Florentines. Manni - our source here - tells us that although people say that eloquence is not hereditary, there should be an exception in this case, since the son turned out so like his father in this way.
His mother, Simona Gianfiliazzi bore seven more siblings than Francesco, three brothers and four sisters. Manni tells us that he himself saw a manuscript in Guicciardini's own hand that described his life.
He says he received his Degrees - of Doctor of Civil Law - from the chapter of St Lawrence at the University of Pisa, in November 1505. He lists his sponsors for that accomplishment: M Antoni Malagonelli, M Francesco Pepi, & M Vittorio Sonderini. He chose Civil Law instead of Canon Law, as that was 'of little Importance'.
Austin Goddard (our 18th century translator) says that Guicciardini, in his 23rd year, was made 'Professor of the Institutes', for Florence and widely consulted as a lawyer. In 1506 he married Maria Salviati, daughter of Allemano Everardo Salviati, called then, the greatest man in Florence. In 1507 he was selcted by 'many Cities' to be standiing Counsellor in Law. In 1509 he was chosen 'Advocate of the Florentine Chapter' and elected 'Advocate of the Order of Camaldoli' . He worked for two more years like this.
In January 1512, Guicciardini was selected by the city as Ambassador on behalf of the city, to King Ferdinand of Spain.From Florence's point of view, France and Spain were in league together against the whole of Italy. He served so well, for two years, that they didn't have to replace him. Then his father died and he came home.
In 1515, the day after (probably) that Manni tells us, Giovanni di Lorenzo Medici became pope as Leo X, Francesco was made his Advocate of the Consistory.
In 1518, Guicciardini became governor of Modena and Reggio. This was a new direction that would occupy his talents for most of the rest of his years.
In 1526 he was made President of Romagna by pope Clement VII and on June 6th was named Lieutenant General of all the papal troops. This claim is uniquely followed by a number of old citations. But the entire passage from the third or fourth page is a kind of praiseworthy declamation that modernists call hagiography.
Part way between encomium and brassy argument, hagiography is a form of description that lists honors and accomplishments with only cursory looks at (or for) the traits of an individual. This form of history, itself a kind of digest, a praiseworthy but prosaic simplification of a life, reduces individualism to a few motifs, usually of grandeur and successes. It is deeply European and by our records, stretches back to earliest written forms. Yet it is at minimum an historical shorthand, for books. Often it is all that's left, especially with Roman emperors, Christian saints, etc. Our term hagiography perhaps has changed since the 19th century Romantic Age of European literature, since people or books don't really use this style anymore. In any event, remembered or not, Guicciardini was clearly judged by his contemporaries as being very good at Civil Order and Political Transactions. [p. xiii]
Guicciardini served at the pleasure then, of two of his Florentine compatriots, the two Medici popes from 1515-34. But he was also there at the coronation of Emperor Charles V in 1530, and sought out by His Imperial Highness, just to be able to talk about history with him.
He was made Governor of Bologna in 1531 by pope Clement and held the city after that pope died and usurpers tried to take the city. and overwhelm his castle, and him. Some time after this he was able to retire and write his many books. He died, says the manuscript, of grief, or fever, or self-administered poison, upset at the state of the loss of freedom for the City of his birth, on 27 May 1540.
Described as tall, 'with a Venerable aspect, large Shoulders, plain Face, a strong and robust Constitution', his visage and voice could command a room or a field of troops. He was 'quick and high Conception, singular of Judgement, good Memory, profound and prudent in Counsels...'. Again this should probably be seen as hagiography: a bit too shiny or glowing of a picture.
His wife lived until 1559. They had three daughters that survived him. He also had three brothers that survived. The wiki has a list of his written works.
Alll the above taken from the online photocopy of the John Adams Library copy of this Second Edition of Austin Goddard's translation of 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini' in The History of Italy, volume i, London, 1763.
Guicciardini was born into a powerful and venerable, noble family. As testament to this nobility they could point to sixteen of its members that were Gonfaloniere in Florence. Many kinsmen were also sent to foreign embassies when communications with the outside world were so important. The center of the family was and had remained a central house on the Arno, near Chiesa Santa Felicita, just down the street and within sight of the famous Ponte Vecchio, as well as viewing (or almost in view of) every part of the center of the city itself. The family had a number of other castles , and benefited a number of churches, chief of which was Santa Felicita. One of their family houses was sold in 1445 for 3000 florins.
His father, named Piero, was a lawyer and appointed Commissary General of Florence in 1501. Later as ambassador to Pope Leo X, the father Piero once gave a speech so well before the pope and his audience, that they proclaimed no one else could say a speech as well as the Florentines. Manni - our source here - tells us that although people say that eloquence is not hereditary, there should be an exception in this case, since the son turned out so like his father in this way.
His mother, Simona Gianfiliazzi bore seven more siblings than Francesco, three brothers and four sisters. Manni tells us that he himself saw a manuscript in Guicciardini's own hand that described his life.
"... Doctor of Civil and Common Law, was born the 6th of March, 1482, in Florence about Ten of the Clock.... [named for] Francesco Nerli ...[his father's mother's father].... I was also Christened by the Name of Thomas, the Day I was born happening to be the Festival of Saint Thomas Aquinas. My Godfathers were M Marsilio Ficino the greatest Platonic Philosopher then in the Universe, Giovanni Canacci and Piero del Nero, also Philosophers."He began to study law in Florence in 1498. His uncle, Archdeacon of the Metropolitan Church of Florence, nearing death decided to give his benefices to Francesco before his own five sons. Francesco was delighted since he thought he might be young enough to go through the system, the Way of Profferments and one day become a Cardinal in the Church. His purpose was not to end up lazy and idle but to do the work necessary to reach this exalted station.
He says he received his Degrees - of Doctor of Civil Law - from the chapter of St Lawrence at the University of Pisa, in November 1505. He lists his sponsors for that accomplishment: M Antoni Malagonelli, M Francesco Pepi, & M Vittorio Sonderini. He chose Civil Law instead of Canon Law, as that was 'of little Importance'.
Austin Goddard (our 18th century translator) says that Guicciardini, in his 23rd year, was made 'Professor of the Institutes', for Florence and widely consulted as a lawyer. In 1506 he married Maria Salviati, daughter of Allemano Everardo Salviati, called then, the greatest man in Florence. In 1507 he was selcted by 'many Cities' to be standiing Counsellor in Law. In 1509 he was chosen 'Advocate of the Florentine Chapter' and elected 'Advocate of the Order of Camaldoli' . He worked for two more years like this.
In January 1512, Guicciardini was selected by the city as Ambassador on behalf of the city, to King Ferdinand of Spain.From Florence's point of view, France and Spain were in league together against the whole of Italy. He served so well, for two years, that they didn't have to replace him. Then his father died and he came home.
In 1515, the day after (probably) that Manni tells us, Giovanni di Lorenzo Medici became pope as Leo X, Francesco was made his Advocate of the Consistory.
In 1518, Guicciardini became governor of Modena and Reggio. This was a new direction that would occupy his talents for most of the rest of his years.
In 1526 he was made President of Romagna by pope Clement VII and on June 6th was named Lieutenant General of all the papal troops. This claim is uniquely followed by a number of old citations. But the entire passage from the third or fourth page is a kind of praiseworthy declamation that modernists call hagiography.
Part way between encomium and brassy argument, hagiography is a form of description that lists honors and accomplishments with only cursory looks at (or for) the traits of an individual. This form of history, itself a kind of digest, a praiseworthy but prosaic simplification of a life, reduces individualism to a few motifs, usually of grandeur and successes. It is deeply European and by our records, stretches back to earliest written forms. Yet it is at minimum an historical shorthand, for books. Often it is all that's left, especially with Roman emperors, Christian saints, etc. Our term hagiography perhaps has changed since the 19th century Romantic Age of European literature, since people or books don't really use this style anymore. In any event, remembered or not, Guicciardini was clearly judged by his contemporaries as being very good at Civil Order and Political Transactions. [p. xiii]
Guicciardini served at the pleasure then, of two of his Florentine compatriots, the two Medici popes from 1515-34. But he was also there at the coronation of Emperor Charles V in 1530, and sought out by His Imperial Highness, just to be able to talk about history with him.
He was made Governor of Bologna in 1531 by pope Clement and held the city after that pope died and usurpers tried to take the city. and overwhelm his castle, and him. Some time after this he was able to retire and write his many books. He died, says the manuscript, of grief, or fever, or self-administered poison, upset at the state of the loss of freedom for the City of his birth, on 27 May 1540.
Described as tall, 'with a Venerable aspect, large Shoulders, plain Face, a strong and robust Constitution', his visage and voice could command a room or a field of troops. He was 'quick and high Conception, singular of Judgement, good Memory, profound and prudent in Counsels...'. Again this should probably be seen as hagiography: a bit too shiny or glowing of a picture.
His wife lived until 1559. They had three daughters that survived him. He also had three brothers that survived. The wiki has a list of his written works.
Alll the above taken from the online photocopy of the John Adams Library copy of this Second Edition of Austin Goddard's translation of 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini' in The History of Italy, volume i, London, 1763.
Monday, May 26, 2014
The German Noble: Diminishing Glories for Most
The sketch of German nobles in the period of the Renaissance that Thomas A Brady Jr gives us, points to the widening gap, in numbers, between titled and untitled nobles in those widely expansive lands. But nobles still ruled and all else followed. The only way you could make the two equal, Brady reminds us up front, was when the two were dead and in the ground. But nobles of the princely, administrative, territorial varieties were becoming fewer. These ministerial posts did get tied to certain places to a greater degree in this period, and by the fifteenth century, were even occupied by less than a dozen families. All else, had to find other things to do.
As Brady points out, 'both, whether titled or untitled', a noble, had to protect his holdings, his family and his family's future interests. These included good marriages for the daughters and enough land and property for sons to hold onto, if they could. As fewer and fewer families were chosen in administrative spots, there was also a concerted effort to codify territories and the specific offices ruling those territories. This process happened differently in different places and took time. But it doesn't take too many calculations to recognise that within a few generations, even the most steadfast of gurdians could see it all fall apart. A grandfather of a noble house could have a dozen grandsons and if all wanted a piece of an inheritance, some, or their children, may not have much to rule or sustain themselves in years to come. All the while fending off neighboring territorial advances, Imperial exactions, living through disasters, disease, uprisings. This is a simple view, but captures the state of change that landed interests, whether wealthy, connected or otherwise had left to find benefit or service in. Marriages became the preferred method for many, including Maximillian and the Habsburgs, rather than battle.[pp. 42-5]
Many nobles and their families and relatives went and served the church. Some became mercenaries and travelled Europe. Some few became members of the Imperial Guard or part of the retinue of some office-holder. But the change, this gulf between the nobles who were running state affairs and the many, many more members of noble houses that no longer had a clear function in society, was itself recognized in the literature of the day. The noble, chivalric knight of Chaucer of a century before can be contrasted with the hapless, impossibly zealous bufoonery of Cervantes' Don Quixote of a century later. All through the period everybody knew of and would even celebrate the several available sorts of knights, in different stages of advancement, as well as in different ways continent-wide. The names and honors and colors and flags and steeds and weapons and armor, the hunts and jousts, the holidays were all highlights of the communal experience. The lords and knights could still win this attention and acclaim thru contest, whether real or imagined. Albrecht Dürer published a number of engravings of knights. This one is from 1513.
As internal wars decreased and as more arable land was put to use, prices for agricultural products fell. But with increasing concentrations of people in cities, the flourishing of trade all over Europe, and the resurgence of guilds after the earlier disruptions (c. 1350-1450), the price of manufactured goods went up. Brady highlights this change for the many lesser nobles.
The examples Brady gives offer a wide view of outcomes. Many would live out lives in poverty, or be cut to lives of servitude, some becoming wealthy bandits while others stayed still and suffered. Stuck in one place, still with some responsibility, protecting some fortress or keep of a lord they might not feel beholden to. Like Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) a Franconian, that was
These quotes Brady tells us, are from a 'famous' letter sent to Willibeld Pirckheimer (1470-1530) in Nuremburg and detailed in the Gerald Strauss edited book Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, 193; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
___________________________________________________
quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
"The princes, though not the other nobles, formed with the monarchy the principle agents and bulwarks of Imperial governance. Through all the changes, there nonetheless survived a common noble culture based on eligibility for enfiefment and the honor of knighthood, a noble lifestyle (when they could afford it), a shared military ethos, and a boundless taste for celebrating their lineages in image, word, and deed." [p. 42]Despite the longevity of the holy warrior culture - that had peaked perhaps in the 12th-13th century- there was less and less for a noble knight to do locally, with fewer offices of power available, princely city-states absorbed into larger regional seats, the Pope and church failing to call or pay for, any sustaining crusade. There were as well a host of personal reasons. The very nature of existence for a noble house to maintain continuity, for an inheritor of a name and an estate to last more than a generation or two was already extremely perilous.
As Brady points out, 'both, whether titled or untitled', a noble, had to protect his holdings, his family and his family's future interests. These included good marriages for the daughters and enough land and property for sons to hold onto, if they could. As fewer and fewer families were chosen in administrative spots, there was also a concerted effort to codify territories and the specific offices ruling those territories. This process happened differently in different places and took time. But it doesn't take too many calculations to recognise that within a few generations, even the most steadfast of gurdians could see it all fall apart. A grandfather of a noble house could have a dozen grandsons and if all wanted a piece of an inheritance, some, or their children, may not have much to rule or sustain themselves in years to come. All the while fending off neighboring territorial advances, Imperial exactions, living through disasters, disease, uprisings. This is a simple view, but captures the state of change that landed interests, whether wealthy, connected or otherwise had left to find benefit or service in. Marriages became the preferred method for many, including Maximillian and the Habsburgs, rather than battle.[pp. 42-5]
Many nobles and their families and relatives went and served the church. Some became mercenaries and travelled Europe. Some few became members of the Imperial Guard or part of the retinue of some office-holder. But the change, this gulf between the nobles who were running state affairs and the many, many more members of noble houses that no longer had a clear function in society, was itself recognized in the literature of the day. The noble, chivalric knight of Chaucer of a century before can be contrasted with the hapless, impossibly zealous bufoonery of Cervantes' Don Quixote of a century later. All through the period everybody knew of and would even celebrate the several available sorts of knights, in different stages of advancement, as well as in different ways continent-wide. The names and honors and colors and flags and steeds and weapons and armor, the hunts and jousts, the holidays were all highlights of the communal experience. The lords and knights could still win this attention and acclaim thru contest, whether real or imagined. Albrecht Dürer published a number of engravings of knights. This one is from 1513.
Albrecht Durer - "The Knight, Death and the Devil" pic.twitter.com/Xbo1WiJtVt
— RealDaveR (@OtrOOne) February 6, 2014
At home, across German lands, the number of nobles engaged in regional organizations, or Leagues that met and mustered local nobles for military purposes, dwindled over the fifteenth century. Emperor Maximillian tried in 1495 to enlist the great majority of them for a new Imperial cadre of knights, but they didn't want to contribute or become a standing army. [p. 46] Brady comes to his point in the middle of this chapter."The knight, like all mortals, was doomed to die, but so, believed many sixteenth-century observers and most modern historians, was his entire estate. The lesser nobles, with their small holdings and their inability to forge their limited judicial authority over peasants into a kind of proto-sovereignty, had certainly lost much economic substance during the agrarian crisis." [p. 45]This crisis was a result of the awful destructions of the waves of plague from the century before, where half the population died and most lands were bought up by fewer and fewer families. A 'proto-sovereign' system that was coming into place in some areas had not met with widespread practice and would not for most places until the seventeenth century, when territorial states would become enshrined in both law and practice.
As internal wars decreased and as more arable land was put to use, prices for agricultural products fell. But with increasing concentrations of people in cities, the flourishing of trade all over Europe, and the resurgence of guilds after the earlier disruptions (c. 1350-1450), the price of manufactured goods went up. Brady highlights this change for the many lesser nobles.
"The price scissors caught them, as it did peasants, between falling farm prices and rising ones for manufactured goods.... [Yet] the nobles' incomes were ... surely falling behind those of wealthy burghers.... Constrained by custom from increasing rents, now increasingly fixed in cash rather than produce, the nobles adapted to shore up their incomes. Some hitched their wagons to princely stars, others imitated the burghers by getting educations and yet others moldered away in their old lifestyles of ignorant banditry, hated by the common people and bullied by princes." [pp. 45-46]The last of the independent noble leagues did last until the sixteenth century but they no longer had military responsibilities. A number over the years would become enterprisers, ones who would recruit fighters and lead them behind a captain, for mercenary hire. "To fight for pay was to move with the times."[p. 47]
The examples Brady gives offer a wide view of outcomes. Many would live out lives in poverty, or be cut to lives of servitude, some becoming wealthy bandits while others stayed still and suffered. Stuck in one place, still with some responsibility, protecting some fortress or keep of a lord they might not feel beholden to. Like Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) a Franconian, that was
"... a veteran of ten German and Italian universities and one of the best educated nobles of his age. He chose princely service to escape the relentless monotony, the squalor, and the stinks of country life... country gentlemen [he wrote] spend their days "in the fields, in the woods, and in fortified strongholds," leasing their lands to "a few starveling peasants who barely manage to scratch a living from it. From such paupers we draw our revenues, and income hardly worth the labor spent on it." It was dangerous to leave his fortified residence, it was disgusting to live in its "dark rooms crammed with guns, pitch, sulfur, and other materials of war," where "the stench of gunpowder mixed with the the smell of dogs and shit and other such pleasant odors." "[p. 48]
These quotes Brady tells us, are from a 'famous' letter sent to Willibeld Pirckheimer (1470-1530) in Nuremburg and detailed in the Gerald Strauss edited book Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, 193; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
___________________________________________________
quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Historic European & Indian Elections: As Found On Twitter, In Comedy: May 25, 2014
From Dublin, Glasgow and London, from Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Athens, Kiev and Donetsk, voting results have been trickling in all night. It was really a mixed bag of outcomes. The French National Front and the UKIP won many seats and have overlapping views on the right-end of the spectrum, but their winners all seem to be pulling in different directions.
The vote in Brussels gained a great number of farther right representatives but this result, in the larger view seems difficult to interpret, with regards to outcomes. The pundits will spend all next week talking about that, gnashing on about immigration issues, along then, with the views of those abroad and the consequences this 'rightward lurch' will mean for them.
But the traditional right, conservative party in Britain lost big.
A Sinn Fein advocate Lynn Boylan will represent Dublin for the EU.
In Spain a rising People's Party helped repudiate the recent Socialist-led coalition, along with a number of smaller moderate left-leaning parties. They seem determined to throw-off the shackles of economic austerity.
Last week (19May), elections in India brought them a new Prime Minister from a new party. Of course, despite being the biggest election on the planet, probably the best way Americans could find out about it was through watching a completely farcical Canadian comedian, Jason Jones explain it on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. First some stereotypes have to be dispensed with. Then he learns that even the illiterate and homeless get to vote, everywhere. They have their issues like those in the west, as in the presentation of polls or candidates made by the media. But who is this Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi that won?
National Front take quarter of the vote in French Euro-elections http://t.co/ZvY9s8z41C @MailOnline
— David Schantz (@DavidSchantz) May 26, 2014
The vote in Brussels gained a great number of farther right representatives but this result, in the larger view seems difficult to interpret, with regards to outcomes. The pundits will spend all next week talking about that, gnashing on about immigration issues, along then, with the views of those abroad and the consequences this 'rightward lurch' will mean for them.
But the traditional right, conservative party in Britain lost big.
Tories’ climate change scepticism melts after winter floods – in their constituencies http://t.co/bR8cAIQcDT pic.twitter.com/OssdwOLGZR
— CECHR (@CECHR_UoD) May 25, 2014
A Sinn Fein advocate Lynn Boylan will represent Dublin for the EU.
BREAKING: Sinn Fein's Lynn Boylan elected as an MEP in Dublin after 3 counts #ee14 #ep14 pic.twitter.com/Wj91pOI2Y1
— Fergal O'Brien (@FergalTodayFM) May 25, 2014
In Spain a rising People's Party helped repudiate the recent Socialist-led coalition, along with a number of smaller moderate left-leaning parties. They seem determined to throw-off the shackles of economic austerity.
Spain: People's party triumphs while smaller parties make gains: http://t.co/85pqwaFkBw
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 25, 2014
Yet in Greece, elections there brought the leftwing party to power who are also seeing their victory as a repudiation to budget cuts and fiscal strangulation.
Leftwing Syriza party triumphs in European elections in Greece http://t.co/kvm7YmANG9
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 25, 2014
Still with all this fissuring division across the continent, the most fervently anticipated results was from the vote in Ukraine today. There they were not electing a representative to send to Brussels but to choose a new president. In what seems to be, so far, free and fair votes and tallies, the overwhelming winner seems to be Poroshenko, the said to be, western-leaning 'chocolate billionaire'. So far, there have not been any announcements of any factions contesting the results in Ukraine, which is a good sign since civil war has been looming for months. An official from Donetsk said they would not contest results. Perhaps, east and west can now move forward.
Meet Ukraine's new billionaire president, Petro Poroshenko, the "Chocolate King." http://t.co/pipJYG46Ok pic.twitter.com/Bshuj75QWW
— Mashable (@mashable) May 25, 2014
Last week (19May), elections in India brought them a new Prime Minister from a new party. Of course, despite being the biggest election on the planet, probably the best way Americans could find out about it was through watching a completely farcical Canadian comedian, Jason Jones explain it on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. First some stereotypes have to be dispensed with. Then he learns that even the illiterate and homeless get to vote, everywhere. They have their issues like those in the west, as in the presentation of polls or candidates made by the media. But who is this Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi that won?
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Kings & Republics Like Their Secrets: Letters From England: Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533
A bill posted in Venice to select a new ambassador to England May 3, 1533, created a debate amongst her leaders. Despite the forty Venetians they had in Southampton, acting as her servants there in what was a substantial port hub, both transeferring and accounting for bales of wool and finished tin and pewter goods, ser Alvise Mocenigo thought they didn't need an ambassaor to such a place anymore. The current man in charge there, ser Carlo Capello had to remain at the post longer than expected as there was no ready replacement to be had, and this, despite a high salary and a great deal of local power in the far-off Anglo-trading entrepot.
Our Editors chose to give us as example some letters - that Sanudo provided- from ser Capello in his active duty of informing the Signoria of all aspects on British doings. Notably the reception and dinner and afterward discussion in Greenwich, with English King Henry VIII and his new bride Queen Anne Boleyn, back in April.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Letters from England, from our ambassador Capello from London on April 16, received on May 21 in the evening. He writes this one by way of Antwerp: a gentleman came from the king before noon to tell me to go to the court of Granuzi [Greenwich] to dine."
He went and dined with the father and brother of Queen Anne and the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Exeter, then was ushered in to see the king. There he was, with Anne and several ministers, and they all greeted him warmly, and he gave them all his best wishes. They asked if he had any news. Capello said no.
The King then said their imperial ambassador had just confirmed that an alliance had been struck between the Signoria in Venice and the pope, and Emperor Carlos V. The King accused Venice of pretending to have not joined such a league and that a proclamation had been made stating Venice's complicity.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "At that point our ambassador denied such a claim, saying that the Signoria had been solicited to join the league but had refused and that the proclamation had been printed in Bologna [papal lands] and not in Venice, and had been done as they [the league members] wished. His Majesty appeared to be satisfied by this, saying that the pope and the emperor were making this known to give greater authority to their league."
It would make sense that a king would want to know such things. His annullment with Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Anne, he knew, had already sent a fissure of division across the continent. Did the king of England think he could do anything he wanted, in stark contravention to the sacred oaths before the authority of the Catholic Church? He and his wife seemed to think so. But what Henry says next in this story says something about what the two powers had in common. A king and a Republic both had secrets that they would rather silence or, simply, keep hidden altogether.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Then he said, "You have passed a law that upon pain of capital punishment all are prohibited from divulging matters of the Council of Ten and the Senate." He is of the opinion that the Signoria governs most prudently and that this decision was very wise, saying, "I can affirm that most of your matters have reached many ears." He showed that his words were meant kindly, indicating this with words and with gestures."
The king asked if Venice had 30,000 troops massed near Padua. Capello answered those were troops in review, who did that regularly at this time. He said he believed that and asked when the galleys from Venice would arrive again. Capello replied they came regularly at the end of November. Then the king turned and let him greet Anne his Queen.
The next day, in the letters and that Sanudo reported the next day, as well, told of a new royal order. This was that all guilds in the city of London were not dare to speak of the new Queen unless it were in favorable terms. That any one mentioning the previous Queen would meet with capital punishment and that not one of the churches or mendicant orders would preach on these henceforward proclaimed hoildays celebrating the marriage festivities, unless approved beforehand by the archbishop.
_________________________________________________
notes from 'our editors', and Sanudo Diaries from pp 200-03: Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll, editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Our Editors chose to give us as example some letters - that Sanudo provided- from ser Capello in his active duty of informing the Signoria of all aspects on British doings. Notably the reception and dinner and afterward discussion in Greenwich, with English King Henry VIII and his new bride Queen Anne Boleyn, back in April.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Letters from England, from our ambassador Capello from London on April 16, received on May 21 in the evening. He writes this one by way of Antwerp: a gentleman came from the king before noon to tell me to go to the court of Granuzi [Greenwich] to dine."
He went and dined with the father and brother of Queen Anne and the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Exeter, then was ushered in to see the king. There he was, with Anne and several ministers, and they all greeted him warmly, and he gave them all his best wishes. They asked if he had any news. Capello said no.
The King then said their imperial ambassador had just confirmed that an alliance had been struck between the Signoria in Venice and the pope, and Emperor Carlos V. The King accused Venice of pretending to have not joined such a league and that a proclamation had been made stating Venice's complicity.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "At that point our ambassador denied such a claim, saying that the Signoria had been solicited to join the league but had refused and that the proclamation had been printed in Bologna [papal lands] and not in Venice, and had been done as they [the league members] wished. His Majesty appeared to be satisfied by this, saying that the pope and the emperor were making this known to give greater authority to their league."
It would make sense that a king would want to know such things. His annullment with Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Anne, he knew, had already sent a fissure of division across the continent. Did the king of England think he could do anything he wanted, in stark contravention to the sacred oaths before the authority of the Catholic Church? He and his wife seemed to think so. But what Henry says next in this story says something about what the two powers had in common. A king and a Republic both had secrets that they would rather silence or, simply, keep hidden altogether.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Then he said, "You have passed a law that upon pain of capital punishment all are prohibited from divulging matters of the Council of Ten and the Senate." He is of the opinion that the Signoria governs most prudently and that this decision was very wise, saying, "I can affirm that most of your matters have reached many ears." He showed that his words were meant kindly, indicating this with words and with gestures."
The king asked if Venice had 30,000 troops massed near Padua. Capello answered those were troops in review, who did that regularly at this time. He said he believed that and asked when the galleys from Venice would arrive again. Capello replied they came regularly at the end of November. Then the king turned and let him greet Anne his Queen.
The next day, in the letters and that Sanudo reported the next day, as well, told of a new royal order. This was that all guilds in the city of London were not dare to speak of the new Queen unless it were in favorable terms. That any one mentioning the previous Queen would meet with capital punishment and that not one of the churches or mendicant orders would preach on these henceforward proclaimed hoildays celebrating the marriage festivities, unless approved beforehand by the archbishop.
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notes from 'our editors', and Sanudo Diaries from pp 200-03: Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll, editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
The German Burgher: Useful Positions Worthy of Respect
German Burghers along with their Hanseatic allies, were a central, indispensable part of the solidity, continuity and growth of central Europe in our period. Educated, even multi-disciplined, in all their forms they provided many functions tying the various means and ends of civic order together. In the cities and many towns, individuals overcoming the language, familial and fraternal differences was the same experience for everyone. If you were born into wealth, you might keep it through work or lose it in bad investments. If you were born poor, in time, with education, work and skill development (and a little luck), you could become respectable. These paths sound familiar but have more to do with them than us. It was their milieu, their civic sense of cultural correctness and devotion to good practice and even religious duty, that proved their works a success that grew, more than any more recent myths of free market capitalism or that famous German order, or opportunism in general.
For one thing there weren't so many poeple along and east of the Rhine, and not in any great clusters.
Southern houses tended to be like Italian houses with dynastic holdings centered on certain markets or products. Northern associations tended to be more diverse, acting as investors in several businesses at once. But both forms found expression all over. The Fundaco de Tedeschi was an example of the investor-type corporate association and was located in Venice. There were also dynastic merchants in Copenhagen as well as independent, free Hansa members in far east Riga, Gdansk.
Further examples. Young educated men, sent from Nuremburg to Venice, worked the great German warehouse that was the Fundaco de Tedeschi and learned how a great shipping hub was maintained there. By 1484 they had sent home the knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping, bills of exchange and the efficient use of arabic numerals. [p. 36]
Most burghers were not great bankers or merchants. Instead they ran shops, were local artisans, even servants who served a master or municipality under contract, paid annually or even by piece or project work. To run a shop, a dock, a manufacturer that fashioned or refined products, sets these burghers side by side with guild members, petty laborers and skilled workers from peasant stock. Sometimes individuals could fill all these positions in a lifetime.
One brief example, Burkhard Zink (1396-1468) was born into a 'solid artisan' family in Memmingen. His mother died at an early age and he was sent to live with an uncle, a priest. Later from a Catholic school south of Ljubljana, he then graduated to work with a furrier. Fom this point he went on several journeys, taking work or patrons where he could find them. He studied in Ulm, Nuremburg, Augsburg. He worked for a wine merchant, a lawyer and eventually married and found work as a secretary. They were poor until she died, but she gave him ten children. Six of which died before adult hood. He married three more times and in all fathered twenty-two children. As an old man he had won several civic offices and honors and could call himself a comfortable burgher. We have his story because he wrote it and 19th century German chroniclers set it down. [pp. 41-2]
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
For one thing there weren't so many poeple along and east of the Rhine, and not in any great clusters.
"In 1500 only twenty-seven of them housed more than 10,000 persons, and half of these lay in the Low Countries. Cologne, the largest German-speaking city, was a metropolis of 40,000 souls, and Prague was nearly as large, but from these giants the gradient ran steeply down to tiny places with only some hundreds of residents. More than half the German lands' burghers lived in small or middling cities of fewer than 10,000 souls. Large, middling, or small these cities possessed similar functions as strong places, markets, and modes of consumption, production, and communications. They also dominated their hinterlands, from which they drew food, raw materials, and labor, and over which they sometimes acquired political lordship." [p. 35]Our source here is Thomas A Brady Jr's 2009 German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650. It is the latest History of the Germans in the time of the Reformation, published by UC Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press. His brief sketch here lays out the terrain for both German and Hanseatic burgher.
"The burghers' power began with writing, which they learned from the clergy, and extended to trade, which they mastered by themselves. German merchants operated in two zones, northern and southern, each with its distinctive institutions, business methods, and languages (Low German in the north, High German and Italian in the south)."The Hansa, in the north is the traditional term in English for these traders and merchants and associtaes, but in German, the name simply means 'league'. North and south counterparts and all those in between had, over the centuries, smoothed their cooperative endeavors even though theirs were security, legal and commercial concerns all at work at the same time.
"They collaborated to improve the terms of trade and to protect their ships and goods from pirates and bandits, though their loosely structured association possessed no permanent organs, fleets, armies, or taxes. The league thus replicated the ad hoc look of the typical northern business firm, which was a small operation of two to four partners formed to organize capital, cargos, and ships for individual voyages. Such firms spread risks by borrowing from rural nobles, clergymen, even harbor workers, and by avoiding specialization in wares. The Hanseatic merchants sailed long distances from London and Bruges via Lübeck to Reval/Tallinn, carrying wax and furs westward and textiles and salt eastward, together with Swedish copper and butter, Danish and Swedish dried fish, Scottish and English wool, Prussian and Polish grain, Hungarian metals and south German metal wares, and French and Portuguese sea salt. The merchants spread their Low German as the northern trade's lingua franca and German brewed lager beer as its universal lubricant." [p. 35]
Southern houses tended to be like Italian houses with dynastic holdings centered on certain markets or products. Northern associations tended to be more diverse, acting as investors in several businesses at once. But both forms found expression all over. The Fundaco de Tedeschi was an example of the investor-type corporate association and was located in Venice. There were also dynastic merchants in Copenhagen as well as independent, free Hansa members in far east Riga, Gdansk.
Further examples. Young educated men, sent from Nuremburg to Venice, worked the great German warehouse that was the Fundaco de Tedeschi and learned how a great shipping hub was maintained there. By 1484 they had sent home the knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping, bills of exchange and the efficient use of arabic numerals. [p. 36]
Most burghers were not great bankers or merchants. Instead they ran shops, were local artisans, even servants who served a master or municipality under contract, paid annually or even by piece or project work. To run a shop, a dock, a manufacturer that fashioned or refined products, sets these burghers side by side with guild members, petty laborers and skilled workers from peasant stock. Sometimes individuals could fill all these positions in a lifetime.
One brief example, Burkhard Zink (1396-1468) was born into a 'solid artisan' family in Memmingen. His mother died at an early age and he was sent to live with an uncle, a priest. Later from a Catholic school south of Ljubljana, he then graduated to work with a furrier. Fom this point he went on several journeys, taking work or patrons where he could find them. He studied in Ulm, Nuremburg, Augsburg. He worked for a wine merchant, a lawyer and eventually married and found work as a secretary. They were poor until she died, but she gave him ten children. Six of which died before adult hood. He married three more times and in all fathered twenty-two children. As an old man he had won several civic offices and honors and could call himself a comfortable burgher. We have his story because he wrote it and 19th century German chroniclers set it down. [pp. 41-2]
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Burchard in Naples: Alum Mines and Grottoes In Pozzuoli: April-May 1494
In April 1494, Johann Burchard was sent by pope Alexander VI to Naples on an important mission. It was in his offficial capacity as Master of Ceremonies to the papal court, that Cardinal Orsini asked him to ready at once, to journey south to Naples. He was to arrange two ceremonies for the court there. One was the coronation of Alfonso after the death that year of his father King Ferrante. The other was the marriage of Sancia, an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso, to one of the pope's relations, Don Joffre.
The pope was at last taking action on previous perceived slights and for the guarded restraint shown for the Neapolitan kingdom. Both of these, the coronation and the marriage, were intending to send a signal by this new Borgia pope, showing his support for the continuity of dynastic reign for the Aragon family in Naples. And this was despite the recent and increasingly clamorous inheritance claims of the new French King Charles VIII on the kingdom of Naples. These activities for Burchard took about three weeks. As it turned out, these solemn actions clothed in some of the deepest of Catholic traditions, would not prove a lasting legacy.
After his duties were discharged, Burchard spending a day off, took a tour of the area around Naples, including their famous steam baths and alum mines. To the east of Naples lay Mt Vesuvius. To the west the famous and ancient steam baths of Pozzuoli. Master Burchard made a day tour of it and wrote down details of what he found. Even the details of how he travelled are interesting for us to see how someone of his station could go sightseeing. It seems he had never been there before.
Our editor/translator for these interesting details of the mining industry, Geoffrey Parker, tell us that alum was essential for the dyeing of wools and thus, we also know, essential for the growing clothing, tapestry and fabric markets. Previously, he explains, the source for alum was the Turks, as that was who now controlled Asia Minor and, where the substance was still controlled, mined and refined. He goes on.
The next day he returned to Rome after receiving a generous gift from king Alfonso of 100 ducats. Burchard left by Vespers, he said, and arrived safely in Rome five days later on 19 May, 1494. [p. 89]
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quotes and pagination from Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963
The pope was at last taking action on previous perceived slights and for the guarded restraint shown for the Neapolitan kingdom. Both of these, the coronation and the marriage, were intending to send a signal by this new Borgia pope, showing his support for the continuity of dynastic reign for the Aragon family in Naples. And this was despite the recent and increasingly clamorous inheritance claims of the new French King Charles VIII on the kingdom of Naples. These activities for Burchard took about three weeks. As it turned out, these solemn actions clothed in some of the deepest of Catholic traditions, would not prove a lasting legacy.
After his duties were discharged, Burchard spending a day off, took a tour of the area around Naples, including their famous steam baths and alum mines. To the east of Naples lay Mt Vesuvius. To the west the famous and ancient steam baths of Pozzuoli. Master Burchard made a day tour of it and wrote down details of what he found. Even the details of how he travelled are interesting for us to see how someone of his station could go sightseeing. It seems he had never been there before.
"On the morning of Tuesday, May 13th, I set out from Naples to visit its ancient and valued monuments, and with me rode Bellaguardia, one of the royal dispensers who had my household's affairs committed to his charge by the court. He brought with him a mule loaded with wine, loaves, meat, cake, wood and other things suitable for our nourishment and to enable us to see what we wished, whilst additionally various members of my company joined me to see the sights.
We came first to a place called Agnano, four miles from Naples, where a great many shelters were erected over ground from which there arose such a heat that a person soon freely perspired. As a result, they called these places steam-baths, and in them men could be cured from all kinds of illness. There was one shelter amongst the rest which it was death to enter unless a man immediately threw himself into the cold bath provided, and in this way avoided being killed. A mile away was Lumara where alum was made; stones hewn out from the mountain close by were broken down by firing; then scattered out for exposure, and washed repeatedly with water: they were next heated again with fresh water in great receptacles fashioned like furnaces, and were finally extracted to be put back again into medium-sized salt-pans or casks and made into alum." [pp.85-6]
Our editor/translator for these interesting details of the mining industry, Geoffrey Parker, tell us that alum was essential for the dyeing of wools and thus, we also know, essential for the growing clothing, tapestry and fabric markets. Previously, he explains, the source for alum was the Turks, as that was who now controlled Asia Minor and, where the substance was still controlled, mined and refined. He goes on.
"Rich deposits of alum were found in 1462 at Tolfa in the Papal State, and from this source the pope was able to establish virtually his own monopoly to supply the European markets; the revenue at the time was to be used for preparing a crusade, but all too soon was diverted to other papal needs. Other volcanic areas, as at Lumara in the Neapolitan Kingdom, were also found to have small alum deposits, and were worked independently of the pope's control. Such smaller mines were later closed...."The mining of alum spread across Europe. In Italy, in those places like Tolfa, it continued to be exploited until the invention of synthetic alum in the 19th century. They also mined sulfur on the other side of the mountain.[p. 85]
"The region was flat, shaped like a wheel whose perimeter was half a mile long, and it was surrounded by mountains at a greater distance: one road led out from it to Pozzuoli. There were two lakes there some distance apart which bubbled continually, and a hole from which a geyser of steam repeatedly shot up, deafeningly and with a violent shock each time, though without any flame. The mountains and the land, in fact all the things to be seen there, appeared to be covered in sulfur... Pozzuoli lay at a distance of a mile and a half from it, but a mile away there was a very old building like the Roman Colosseum and called the Truglio, with caves underneath where three thousand or so horses could be stabled... Not far away was another great subterranean grotto, over whose caves gardens were planted and cultivated with trees and various fruits. Bellaguardia pointed out particular matters of interest for us, and also saw to it that we lacked nothing from the royal bounty for our needs." [pp. 86-7]After dinner they continued by barge to Baiae where most of the baths were. Some were opulent like the Marvellous Grotto. Some Burchard called dirty, like at Trepergole. There was the peak of Monte Guaro, there were more baths at Bagnoli, and more underground caves, tunnels and passages running this way and that under the hills. There were also a number of ancient ruins of forts and castles dotting the hills. [p. 88]
The next day he returned to Rome after receiving a generous gift from king Alfonso of 100 ducats. Burchard left by Vespers, he said, and arrived safely in Rome five days later on 19 May, 1494. [p. 89]
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quotes and pagination from Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963
news brief: mid-May 2014
Last week there were a number of mainstream and public broadcasting stories around the NSA and their secret activities of the last decade.
On Fresh Air, a 45 min piece with the producer of a Frontline documentary on the origins of mass surveillance program
The Frontline two hour documentary on the birth and gowth of the surveillance system
A 26 minute interview on Democracy Now! with Glenn Greenwald the journalist that broke the Edward Snowden story July 2013.
Another 44 minute interview on Fresh Air with Greenwald.
In other news, as lack of money for public defenders makes a lie out of the increasingly child-like pledge-of-allegiance coda 'with liberty and justice for all', ...
courts that are skewed toward paying customers, breeds culture where imprisoning those who cannot pay court fees and fines -while strictly illegal - becomes commonplace. NPR has a series of articles.
New economic book author Thoams Piketty talks - for ninety minutes - with nobel laureates about problems of increasing economic inequality and ways to back away from that divide.
On Fresh Air, a 45 min piece with the producer of a Frontline documentary on the origins of mass surveillance program
The Frontline two hour documentary on the birth and gowth of the surveillance system
A 26 minute interview on Democracy Now! with Glenn Greenwald the journalist that broke the Edward Snowden story July 2013.
Another 44 minute interview on Fresh Air with Greenwald.
In other news, as lack of money for public defenders makes a lie out of the increasingly child-like pledge-of-allegiance coda 'with liberty and justice for all', ...
courts that are skewed toward paying customers, breeds culture where imprisoning those who cannot pay court fees and fines -while strictly illegal - becomes commonplace. NPR has a series of articles.
Floods in Balkans are the worst in over a century. http://t.co/jLz5XtzZ79 pic.twitter.com/h0Vfqm8EE3
— USA TODAY Weather (@usatodayweather) May 20, 2014
New economic book author Thoams Piketty talks - for ninety minutes - with nobel laureates about problems of increasing economic inequality and ways to back away from that divide.
Monday, May 19, 2014
All Athirst: Birth of Pantagruel: Rabelais On Drought of 1532
Does every Age await their own Godot? The child of Gargantua was so huge when he was born, that the birthing killed his mother. When Pantagruel was born there was such a severe drought that the whole world was thirsty. When he was born the midwives saw,
Others affirm, he tells us, that this very year that Pantagruel was born, the earth was witnessed to sweat great copious drops.
This then was the state of the world when Pantagruel was born. His father named him this on account of the extreme condition they found themselves in. Panta is Greek for 'all' and, Rabelais tells us, Gruel is Hagarene for 'thirsty'. The Hagars were a biblical tribe that attacked the Jews of Saul and, in Rabelais' time, conflated with Muslims in Palestine. Now they are assumed to be the same as Ishmaelites. [p. 238]
But, it cannot be left out, that the Wicked Rich Man, Putnam tells us, is the same told as that rich man in hell that met Lazarus, in the gospel of Luke 16: 19-25. And what about the mother? She was the daughter of the king of the Amaurots that one can find in Thomas More's Utopia. But she was suffocated during childbirth, because the baby was 'so marvelously big and heavy' it could not come to light without killing her. In another sad aside, it is a pity this child did not have a mother in his life. Rabelais deals harshly with her single role in the child's life.
It is assumed today that Rabelais began this story because of a great drought in Europe in the summer of 1532.
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from pp. 234 - 238: Samuel Putnam: Portable Rabelais: Viking Portable Library: Second Printing: The Colonial Press Inc. USA, 1955
"... as the mid-wives were waiting to receive the child, there came out first from the mother's belly sixty-eight mule drivers, each one leading by the halter a mule loaded with salt; after these came nine dromedaries loaded with hams and smoked beef-tongues, seven camels loaded with eels, and, finally, twenty-four cartloads of leeks, garlic, onions, and shallots, all of which greatly frightened the said mid-wives." [p. 237]One of the midwives did speak up and said this plenty was welcome.
"That's a goodly store; and it's a lucky thing, for we drink only in miserly fashion these days.... It is a good sign, for those are the goads of wine.""Rabelais is setting up the newly born hero here hopefully, as a bringer of wine. The problem was everyone was already thirsty as there had been a great drought for some years. Salt, ham, eels, all very salty and with onions and garlic on mules, camels, carts and drivers, not terribly sweet. Without a drink in sight, more salty foods can only increase the desire. The drought had already been long and this, Rabelais tells us, was the reason the child was given his name. 'You should note,' he tells us,
"... that there was, that year, so great a drought throughout all the land of Africa that thirty-six months, three weeks, four days, and a little more than thirteen hours passed without any rain, and with the sun so intense that all the earth was dried up. It was not more scorched in the time of Elijah than it was then, for there was not a single tree on the earth that had either leaf or flower. The grass was without any green, the river beds were empty, and the fountains were dry; the poor fish, tired of their own element, wandered over the earth, crying horribly; the birds fell from the air for lack of dew; and the wolves, foxes, deer, wild boars, fallow-deer, hares, rabbits, weasels, martins, badgers, and other beasts were to be found dead in the fields, their jaws dropping open."That was sad enough. The effects on humans was just as bad.
"As for human beings, that was a great pity. You might have seen them with their tongues hanging out, like rabbits which have been running for six hours; some cast themselves into wells, while others crawled into the bellies of cows to find a little shade.... The whole country was at anchor. It was a pitiable thing to see the effort which human beings expended in protecting themselves against the horrible thirst. It was all they could do to save the holy water in the churches from being used up; but an order went out from the council of Messieurs the Cardinals and the Holy Father that no one was to take more than a single lick at it. And so, whenever anyone entered a church, you might have seen a score of poor thirsty devils running up behind the one who distributed the water, their chops open, in the hope of catching some little drop, like the Wicked Rich Man, for they did not want any to go to waste. Oh, how happy that year was the one who had a nice, cool, well-furnished cellar!" [p 235]As if that weren't bad enough, Rabelais explains that the very saltiness of the sea occurred because the sun had veered off course and grown too close to the earth. Phoebus Apollo in his daily traversing of the sky, carrying the sun in his chariot, one day, lent the duties to his son. It was he, who, going off course, burnt up the earth, the sea, even the Milky Way. The earth became so scorched that it had a tremendous outpouring of sweat, so that even the ocean gave up water, but retained its salt, just like sweat. This is a backwards construction of course, just like many other Rabelais inventions. He affirms that sweat is salty, "... if you care to taste your own," and so, must also be the oceans and the earth.
Others affirm, he tells us, that this very year that Pantagruel was born, the earth was witnessed to sweat great copious drops.
"...[O]ne Friday, when everybody was engaged in devotions and they were having a fine procession, with many litanies and beautiful chants, begging Almighty God that he would deign to look upon them with an eye of mercy in their discomfort -- while this was taking place, there were clearly seen going up from the earth great drops of water, as when someone is sweating copiously. And the poor people began to rejoice, as if it had been something that was to do them good, for as certain of them remarked, there was not a single drop of moisture in the air from which they might hope for rain, and so the earth was supplying the lack." [p. 236]Not like the source of the Nile, Rabelais counters Seneca, he says. [Samuel Putnam, our translator, in his notes, tells us that the reference to Seneca is probably wrong. But a parallel story might be found in the third book of Seneca's Questiones Naturalium and credited to Theophrastus.] When people tried to catch a capful of this dew as it rose, Rablais declares, it tasted like brine, and was saltier than seawater.
This then was the state of the world when Pantagruel was born. His father named him this on account of the extreme condition they found themselves in. Panta is Greek for 'all' and, Rabelais tells us, Gruel is Hagarene for 'thirsty'. The Hagars were a biblical tribe that attacked the Jews of Saul and, in Rabelais' time, conflated with Muslims in Palestine. Now they are assumed to be the same as Ishmaelites. [p. 238]
But, it cannot be left out, that the Wicked Rich Man, Putnam tells us, is the same told as that rich man in hell that met Lazarus, in the gospel of Luke 16: 19-25. And what about the mother? She was the daughter of the king of the Amaurots that one can find in Thomas More's Utopia. But she was suffocated during childbirth, because the baby was 'so marvelously big and heavy' it could not come to light without killing her. In another sad aside, it is a pity this child did not have a mother in his life. Rabelais deals harshly with her single role in the child's life.
It is assumed today that Rabelais began this story because of a great drought in Europe in the summer of 1532.
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from pp. 234 - 238: Samuel Putnam: Portable Rabelais: Viking Portable Library: Second Printing: The Colonial Press Inc. USA, 1955
Friday, May 16, 2014
Bernal Diaz Digest: Last Days With Moctezuma In Mexico: Ch. XCV - CVI
There were a number of things that Cortes & Co. had done in the capital city before he and some dozen others returned to the coast in order to address Panfilo de Narvaez. Cortes and Moctezuma talked about religion, they played a local form of dice. Cortes had messengers sent to instruct those on the coast, at Vera Cruz to melt down the iron from the ships and make great chains and gather those things to be then sent inland, so that ships could be built on the great lake of the Valley of Mexico. Cortes also meted out justice in the capital for those servants of Moctezuma who had killed those Spaniards on the coast. Already, in a few months, far from the desperate and uncertain days before the 'capture' of Moctezuma (however that actually happened), Cortes could witness himself as in control. And Diaz could testify to this as well. All three stories of very different attitude give a picture of a leader at ease, in charge of the present and yet, mindful of the future.
After the brief story in Diaz [ch xcv] where Moctezuma was captured but allowed to have visitors and leave the palace, the captains who killed the Spaniards on the coast were then brought. Diaz also has Moctezuma send for Cortes to come 'for judgement'. He questions them outside of the king's presence, but they confess to being ordered by Moctezuma to kill the Europeans that they found on the coast. Cortes orders for them to be burnt in front of the palace. The names that Diaz gives of those killed in this way were those of the chief 'Quetzalpopoca', referred to now as Cuauhpopoca, and also Coate and Quiavit. He then has Cortes explain that the king should suffer for this betrayal, but because he loves him so, he would rather suffer punishment himself. Moctezuma may have been angry but Cortes talked to him soothingly and they had some sort of emotional exchange, and the incident was allowed to pass. But the news went far and wide in New Spain, according to Diaz.
The story of the exchange of captains of Villa Rica on the coast, replacing Alonso de Grado with one Gonzalo de Sandoval, came next in ch xcvi. De Grado was brought to Mexico and was put into 'newly made stocks' for two days. It was Sandoval that Cortes had ordered to assemble the tools and metal needed to build a ship and chain, and he that sent them back.
They play a local game, like dice, but thrown at ingots with points given and taken away, called totoloque in ch xcvii. They are shown having a good time. A conversation about rank and bad manners among the Europeans is given by Orteguilla, the 'page' to the king. Bernal Diaz also tells of the time that he himself was addressed by the great Moctezuma and given a woman - doña Francisca - for him, on account of his 'noble temperament'. Diaz says he kissed the king's hands on account of this. This too was in the textual context of more stories about European guards (Pedro de Alvarado, Trujillo, Pero Lopez) having bad manners while around the king.
The great chains from the coast arrive, newly fashioned and Moctezuma was informed. In ch xcviii the 'brigantines' are built, and in ch xcix they are given a test and the local lords and Moctezuma given a ride on this new ship in the great Lake of the City. A hawk was captured and given to the Spaniards to see if they could tame it and make it hunt. All on the command of the king.
Elsewhere there were 'close relatives' of Moctezuma that came to know of his condition and apparently had decided to take matters into their own hands. They had risen up to take control where the king had failed to. But when the king heard of this he gave orders that the chief antagonist of these many, Cacamatzin, lord of Texcoco be captured and brought to him. This was done and he was confined to the brig in the lake. After a while, so were the other conspirators. [ch c]
Cortes then asked for and was given maps that had locations for 'gold mines' elsewhere in Mexico controlled lands. Guides were summoned and sent out and the precious ore collected from three separate places. [ch cii-ciii]
In Chapters civ-cvi they talk about money and tribute and gifts and more on allegiance, as in ci.
____________________________________________
in Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
After the brief story in Diaz [ch xcv] where Moctezuma was captured but allowed to have visitors and leave the palace, the captains who killed the Spaniards on the coast were then brought. Diaz also has Moctezuma send for Cortes to come 'for judgement'. He questions them outside of the king's presence, but they confess to being ordered by Moctezuma to kill the Europeans that they found on the coast. Cortes orders for them to be burnt in front of the palace. The names that Diaz gives of those killed in this way were those of the chief 'Quetzalpopoca', referred to now as Cuauhpopoca, and also Coate and Quiavit. He then has Cortes explain that the king should suffer for this betrayal, but because he loves him so, he would rather suffer punishment himself. Moctezuma may have been angry but Cortes talked to him soothingly and they had some sort of emotional exchange, and the incident was allowed to pass. But the news went far and wide in New Spain, according to Diaz.
The story of the exchange of captains of Villa Rica on the coast, replacing Alonso de Grado with one Gonzalo de Sandoval, came next in ch xcvi. De Grado was brought to Mexico and was put into 'newly made stocks' for two days. It was Sandoval that Cortes had ordered to assemble the tools and metal needed to build a ship and chain, and he that sent them back.
They play a local game, like dice, but thrown at ingots with points given and taken away, called totoloque in ch xcvii. They are shown having a good time. A conversation about rank and bad manners among the Europeans is given by Orteguilla, the 'page' to the king. Bernal Diaz also tells of the time that he himself was addressed by the great Moctezuma and given a woman - doña Francisca - for him, on account of his 'noble temperament'. Diaz says he kissed the king's hands on account of this. This too was in the textual context of more stories about European guards (Pedro de Alvarado, Trujillo, Pero Lopez) having bad manners while around the king.
The great chains from the coast arrive, newly fashioned and Moctezuma was informed. In ch xcviii the 'brigantines' are built, and in ch xcix they are given a test and the local lords and Moctezuma given a ride on this new ship in the great Lake of the City. A hawk was captured and given to the Spaniards to see if they could tame it and make it hunt. All on the command of the king.
Elsewhere there were 'close relatives' of Moctezuma that came to know of his condition and apparently had decided to take matters into their own hands. They had risen up to take control where the king had failed to. But when the king heard of this he gave orders that the chief antagonist of these many, Cacamatzin, lord of Texcoco be captured and brought to him. This was done and he was confined to the brig in the lake. After a while, so were the other conspirators. [ch c]
Cortes then asked for and was given maps that had locations for 'gold mines' elsewhere in Mexico controlled lands. Guides were summoned and sent out and the precious ore collected from three separate places. [ch cii-ciii]
In Chapters civ-cvi they talk about money and tribute and gifts and more on allegiance, as in ci.
____________________________________________
in Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Columbus Along Southern Coast of Cuba: On Second Voyage: mid-May 1494
This week there is news that the wreck of Columbus' pilot ship, the Santa Maria may have been found off the north coast of Hispaniola. The location and the remains seem correct to certain experts. Independent studies of the 15th century artifacts have begun.
On the 13th of May, in 1494, Columbus decided to return to what he thought was the mainland, i.e. Cuba. On the 14th his son tells us, they sailed north from Jamaica and after making Cabo de la Cruz [where there is now a lighthouse] they began heading north-west for a few days. According to his son's biography, the Admiral already was sick with an illness, poor food and no rest.
There were cranes like in Spain, but red. There were sea turtles and those hatching from eggs then, crows, goosanders, sweet-singing small birds and lovely scents that "... seemed to be in a rose garden full of the most delightful scents in the world."
Some locals were fishing with remora, or suckerfish that attach themselves to other aquatic life. The sailors were so intrigued they waited for the locals to end fishing and then invited them aboard ship. They would have given them anything, Columbus' son tells us, but they had little with them but fish. The Admiral gave them some small objects and they went away happy. But the ships were running out of food and Columbus wondered if they could go much further.
___________________________________________________
quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, 1969 and for The Penguin Group, London,
On the 13th of May, in 1494, Columbus decided to return to what he thought was the mainland, i.e. Cuba. On the 14th his son tells us, they sailed north from Jamaica and after making Cabo de la Cruz [where there is now a lighthouse] they began heading north-west for a few days. According to his son's biography, the Admiral already was sick with an illness, poor food and no rest.
"As he followed the coast he was overtaken by a heavy thunderstorm with terrible lightning which put him in great danger. His difficulties were increased by the many shallows and narrow channels which he found, and he was compelled to seek safety from those two dangers which demanded opposite remedies. To protect himself from the storm he should have lowered the sails; to get out of the shallows he had to keep them spread. Indeed, if his difficulties had continued for eight or ten leagues he would never have escaped."There was all these inlets and shoals that continued to make passage more difficult. But it was beautiful, full of birds and the peaceful locals were more attuned to their fishing than the big ships.
"Though they saw large trees on some, the rest were sandbanks which scarcely rose above water level. ... the nearer they came to Cuba the higher and more beautiful these inlets were. Since it would have been useless and difficult to give a name to each one, the Admiral called them collectively El Jardin de la Reina. But if they saw many islands that day, they saw even more on the next and they were on the whole bigger than those they had sighted before.... That day they sighted as many as 160 of these islets, which were divided by deep channels through which the ships sailed." [p. 173]
There were cranes like in Spain, but red. There were sea turtles and those hatching from eggs then, crows, goosanders, sweet-singing small birds and lovely scents that "... seemed to be in a rose garden full of the most delightful scents in the world."
Some locals were fishing with remora, or suckerfish that attach themselves to other aquatic life. The sailors were so intrigued they waited for the locals to end fishing and then invited them aboard ship. They would have given them anything, Columbus' son tells us, but they had little with them but fish. The Admiral gave them some small objects and they went away happy. But the ships were running out of food and Columbus wondered if they could go much further.
___________________________________________________
quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, 1969 and for The Penguin Group, London,
Francesco Guicciardini Gives Examples For Study of History of Italian Wars
Francesco Guicciardini (1483 - 1540) was born of a well-off connected family in Florence. He was a diplomat, governed Reggio and Modena for the papacy, was a member of Florence's Signoria and wrote a great number of books. Much more about his life, experience, works, the criticism on that, etc. will come later. Here he is, late in life where he gives a kind of prospectus at the beginning of his twenty volume History of the Wars in Italy.
"... Italy for a longSeries of Years having laboured under all such Calamities as the Almighty is wont, in his Displeasure, to inflict on wretched Mortals for their Impieties and Wickedness. From the Knowledge of so many, so various, and so important Incidents, every one may draw Instructions of some sort or other, conducive both to his own and to the Public Good. By numberless Examples it will evidently appear, that human Affairs are as subject to Change and Fluctuation as the Waters of the Sea, agitated by the Winds: and also how pernicious, often to themselves, and ever to their People, are the precipitate Measures of our Rulers, when actuated only by the allurement of some vain Project, or present Pleasure and Advantage. Such Princes never allow themselves Leisure to reflect on the Instability of Fortune ; but, perverting the Use of that Power which was given them to do good, become the Authors of Disquiet and Confusion by their Misconduct and Ambition. " [p. 2]
This is from a 1763 published translation by Austin Parke Goddard into English, compleat with its own period's Capitalization of specific Nouns. The author a man in his 50's, wrote it probably in the late 1530's in Italian. The translator, a man in his 20's, translated it in the 1750's for an English audience. This huge undertaking was also shipped to the Americas and this work used by people like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, collecting and keeping them in their homes and reading them. Which just goes to show a bit of how widely these have gone on to be read and how they can be read.
It needs to be mentioned again that Guiccciardini was, as a statesman, a politician as well as a Florentine partisan who, as a family member served also the allied de' Medici clan as partisans in his times, in all manner of Florentine and Italian affairs. It is safe to say that we have a Florentine point of view here when we read Guicciardini describing the Italian wars of his period, and much else and that he lived through them and even played some part in them, later on.
But for the start of the Italian Wars, and the advancement of the French King Charles in 1494 over the Alps, into Italy, Guicciardini places much of the blame on Ludovico Sforza as is commonly accepted in modern times. What he does do that is more surprising, since he was so Florentine and such a servant to Leo X, and Clement VII, is how much blame he puts into the lap of Piero de'Medici, the son of the great Lorenzo. This son Piero led affairs for Florence in the period of the French invasion.
There is no need for citation for this huge amazing, revealing source. It's online at archive.org.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
news and opinion early May 2014
Really liked this that I saw the other day:
That, among other things, is a referent to the famous Rene Magritte painting called, The Treachery of Images, 1929. This currently is housed ironically enough in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art just a few city blocks south of Hollywood. But the silver disc pictured in the tweet above can be readily recognized as the 'Death Star' famous from the 1977 Star Wars movie. It then quotes a character named Obi Wan Kenobi saying, 'that's not a moon', but in french, like the painting of the pipe.
A remarkable breakthrough in conductivity science happened this week.
Big NAVY just solved the Big Oil problem in Big tech advance and nobody noticed?
On May 1 this local article appeared discussing the repeated attempts in Topeka to outlaw wind power generation. This video from May 9 expands and fills out details of this obstruction, for a national audience. More on the policies that state representatives in Kansas tout.
Word continues to spread about the woes of Kansas' state economy. Hjow Governor Brownback's experiment of cutting taxes for rich while raising sales tax for all has resulted in record revenue shortfalls.
But across the country, survey says more millionaires agree to taxes being raised.
A criticism of modern libertarian and far right economists is that they ignore the growth of the middle class and the progress of the New Deal legislation that got the US out of the economic depression of the 1930's. A pretty typical 20th century libertarian look at major banking houses in the world today that demonizes the US Federal Reserve, pines for a return to the gold standard, in 26 min video. British economist Simon Dixon explains why debt is more real in Britain, 18 min video.
Ceci n'est pas une lune pic.twitter.com/XU5nPZAZjG
— The Clarke Award (@ClarkeAward) May 7, 2014
That, among other things, is a referent to the famous Rene Magritte painting called, The Treachery of Images, 1929. This currently is housed ironically enough in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art just a few city blocks south of Hollywood. But the silver disc pictured in the tweet above can be readily recognized as the 'Death Star' famous from the 1977 Star Wars movie. It then quotes a character named Obi Wan Kenobi saying, 'that's not a moon', but in french, like the painting of the pipe.
A remarkable breakthrough in conductivity science happened this week.
Big NAVY just solved the Big Oil problem in Big tech advance and nobody noticed?
On May 1 this local article appeared discussing the repeated attempts in Topeka to outlaw wind power generation. This video from May 9 expands and fills out details of this obstruction, for a national audience. More on the policies that state representatives in Kansas tout.
Word continues to spread about the woes of Kansas' state economy. Hjow Governor Brownback's experiment of cutting taxes for rich while raising sales tax for all has resulted in record revenue shortfalls.
Kansas tax revenues fall while other states see rise as found on http://t.co/IOcmLtlTEU "Questions need answers".
— Barbara Casey (@teachn_oz) May 10, 2014
pic.twitter.com/GrMnu2tgeH
— tmservo433 (@tmservo433) May 2, 2014
But across the country, survey says more millionaires agree to taxes being raised.
A criticism of modern libertarian and far right economists is that they ignore the growth of the middle class and the progress of the New Deal legislation that got the US out of the economic depression of the 1930's. A pretty typical 20th century libertarian look at major banking houses in the world today that demonizes the US Federal Reserve, pines for a return to the gold standard, in 26 min video. British economist Simon Dixon explains why debt is more real in Britain, 18 min video.
Sights Along The Columbus Itinerary: Cuba & Jamaica: May1494: On Second Voyage
After exploring the northern part of the island Hispaniola, Columbus saw to the end the building of those life-saving mills at Isabela. Then after hearing more reports of gold there, he set out again, back into the sea to try to find more sources of the precious mineral. He appointed men to take charge in Isabela, saw to their abundance of food and pushed off, still not certain where he was going.
On April 24 he left Isabela and the sailed west along the coast. After several days they put in at the island of Tortuga which Columbus had named previously on the first voyage. Encounters with locals along the way were sometimes beneficial with leaders peacefully bearing food and sometimes they were hostile, or, at times, fearfully fleeing. But it was because of the contrary winds that kept them there, they did not reach Mole Saint-Nicolas until April 29. With better weather they began sailing west again and the next day were sailing along the southern coast of Cuba.
Columbus thought this had to be the mainland of Asia. Since he believed that Hispaniola was the island of Japan, this being how he reconciled what he saw with what he had learned from Marco Polo's writings, this new coastline had to be in his mind, the mainland of China. On the 30th of April, his son tells us they put into a large bay. This Columbus called Puerto Grande because the entrance was deep and 150 yards wide. It is now known as Guantanamo, Cuba.
On 3 May, Columbus decided to go to Jamaica. The next day sailing south, he sighted it and the following day, anchored next to it. This "... seemed to him the most beautiful island of any he had ever seen in the Indies. An amazing number of natives came out in canoes great and small." There were so many though that they decided to put into a more tranquil harbor and that one Columbus named Puerto Bueno.
quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, 1969 and for The Penguin Group, London,
On April 24 he left Isabela and the sailed west along the coast. After several days they put in at the island of Tortuga which Columbus had named previously on the first voyage. Encounters with locals along the way were sometimes beneficial with leaders peacefully bearing food and sometimes they were hostile, or, at times, fearfully fleeing. But it was because of the contrary winds that kept them there, they did not reach Mole Saint-Nicolas until April 29. With better weather they began sailing west again and the next day were sailing along the southern coast of Cuba.
Columbus thought this had to be the mainland of Asia. Since he believed that Hispaniola was the island of Japan, this being how he reconciled what he saw with what he had learned from Marco Polo's writings, this new coastline had to be in his mind, the mainland of China. On the 30th of April, his son tells us they put into a large bay. This Columbus called Puerto Grande because the entrance was deep and 150 yards wide. It is now known as Guantanamo, Cuba.
"On the following day [a Thursday in his calendar], which was 1 May, he left this place and sailed along the coast, on which he found very convenient harbours, most beautiful rivers and very high wooded hills, and in the sea, ever since leaving the island of Tortuga, he found great quantities of that weed which he had met in the ocean on his way to and from Spain. As he sailed along the coast many natives of the island came out to the ships in canoes, believing that our people had come down from the sky. They brought us their bread, water and fish, which they gave us gladly, asking for nothing in return. But in order to leave them happy, the Admiral ordered that everything should be paid for and gave them glass beads, hawks' bells, little brass bells and suchlike." [pp 170-71]The son knew it was Cuba, but the father, our translator tells us, clung to the belief that it was China as long as he could.
On 3 May, Columbus decided to go to Jamaica. The next day sailing south, he sighted it and the following day, anchored next to it. This "... seemed to him the most beautiful island of any he had ever seen in the Indies. An amazing number of natives came out in canoes great and small." There were so many though that they decided to put into a more tranquil harbor and that one Columbus named Puerto Bueno.
"And when the Indians came out from there also, and hurled their spears, the crews of the boats fired such a volley from their crossbows that the natives were compelled to retire with six or seven wounded. Once the fight was over great numbers of canoes came out very peaceably, from neighboring villages, bringing to the ships various foods and otyher articles for sale and barter." [pp 171-72]Here repairs were made to the ships that were leaking, including the Admiral's which was bringing on water. This took the rest of the week. By Friday, 8 May, they were ready and sailed west along the north edge of Jamaica and managed to round the western end of the island higing the coast. Winds from the south and east checked their progress and after a few days, Columbus decided to return to what he thought was the mainland.
"He was resolved not to turn back until he had sailed five or six hundred leagues and make certain whether it was island or mainland.
Just as the ships were putting to sea a very young Indian came out and said he wanted to go to Castile. He was followed by many of his relatives and other people in canoes, who begged him most insistently to return to the island, but they could not deflect him from his purpose. Indeed, to avoid the tears and groans of his brothers he hid in a place where no one could see him. The Admiral was amazed at this Indian's persistence and ordered that he should be well treated." [p 172]_______________________________________________
quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, 1969 and for The Penguin Group, London,
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
KS news apr-may2014: Part One: As Seen On Twitter: Bad News In Kansas; Congress Passes Bad Bills To Make It Worse
It's been a bad couple weeks for the highest levels of government in the US state of Kansas.
Late on 26th April, Tim Carpenter of the local Topeka paper reported that the FBI were investigating the activities of former close aides of Governor Sam Brownback who were acting now as lobbyists for his KanCare policy.
On the 29th and 30th of April there was further news that the state had lost credibility on a couple issues. One was from the Kansas Health Institute that claimed the state was indeed suffering from having refused the Federal Medicaid Expansion $ allotted to the state to cover those not covered through the ACA, aka Obamacare.
The very next day, Thursday May 1, came news from Wall Street that the rating agency Moody's had downgraded the state's bond buying capacity because of its budgetary problems.
Meanwhile others are having problems from state government some of whom want to make it more difficult to utilize sun and wind for energy production.
Late on 26th April, Tim Carpenter of the local Topeka paper reported that the FBI were investigating the activities of former close aides of Governor Sam Brownback who were acting now as lobbyists for his KanCare policy.
Sources: FBI examines lobbying by Brownback loyalists | http://t.co/lNxwxh0S2y http://t.co/2IG0lliN1R
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) April 28, 2014
On the 28th of April, at town hall type meetings in Goddard and Derby KS, towns outside Wichita, citizens expressed frustrations at attending legislators.
KS speakers at SC #ksleg forum are just plain pissed off. These legislators really managed to make people angry. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!
— Steve Maack (@SteveMaack) April 29, 2014
At SCKs Leg forum, spkrs now talking about how extremist lgslatrs have hurt KS hlth care, especially 4 disabled. Man, they r catching hell.
— Larry Smith (@LarrySmith259) April 29, 2014
'you legislators have committed Pearl Harbor on Teachers. And we know how that turned out. See you in November!' #ksed #ksleg
— tmservo433 (@tmservo433) April 29, 2014
This of course, had followed a couple late night session of the House of Representatives in Topeka which passed an education bill by April 8. That budget bill did pay for some things, expanded others, but also did away with the 'due process' portions of public teacher's contracts. Essentially they can be fired now by local administrators without the longstanding legal protections that teachers have been able to rely on for decades. These protections, once fought for, have now been stripped by state fiat and this new policy was then added to a larger budget bill which was signed by Governor Brownback on May 2.On the 29th and 30th of April there was further news that the state had lost credibility on a couple issues. One was from the Kansas Health Institute that claimed the state was indeed suffering from having refused the Federal Medicaid Expansion $ allotted to the state to cover those not covered through the ACA, aka Obamacare.
"Decision to pass on #Medicaid expansion costing state, panelists say"
http://t.co/zoDV7Avlak #Brownback #KSLeg
— KS Democratic Party (@KansasDems) April 29, 2014
The other came the following day when it was discovered that state revenues had fallen $93 million short of expectations. Expectations that the Republican majority and the Governor expected and crowed about as expectations for months.The very next day, Thursday May 1, came news from Wall Street that the rating agency Moody's had downgraded the state's bond buying capacity because of its budgetary problems.
Moody’s downgrades Kansas’ credit rating, citing sluggish recovery, risky tax plan http://t.co/fg2wa94QDX #ksleg #UniteBlue
— Turn Kansas Blue (@UniteBlueKS) May 2, 2014
Almost predictably, the Governor blamed the president. But, Moody's didn't downgrade other states for their fiscal policies.
Literally everyone told Gov. Brownback tax cuts would cripple state revenue. Now that it's happened he blames Obama pic.twitter.com/d4MHJxKhqQ
— ksleg problems (@kslegproblems) April 30, 2014
Meanwhile others are having problems from state government some of whom want to make it more difficult to utilize sun and wind for energy production.
Kansas, which has neverending wind, wants to repeal energy standards bringing in jobs: http://t.co/syhhYLM1Lb Why? Kochs prefer oil. #ksleg
— Matthew Calcara (@matthewcalcara) May 2, 2014
The very next day, May 2 was a Friday and Congress in Topeka decided to cut the spring legislative session short and pass as many bills as they could. Without warning. The KCStar reported on it the next day.House, Senate pass $14.6 billion budget http://t.co/v2i0x1DDdO via @kansasdotcom
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) May 3, 2014Sunday, May 4, 2014
Cortes & Malintzin Rush Back To Coast; May 1520
It could be no later than mid-May of 1520 that Cortes went to the coast to confront Panfilo de Narvaez. Sent with 800 men by Diego de Velasquez the Governor of Cuba, Narvaez was his 2nd in command and came bearing a permit from the king to conquer the mainland. They were coming to do this the correct, and imperially sanctioned way. Camilla Townshend tells us that Cortes probably got word of this in April - and that through Moctezuma's messengers - and began planning what to do next. By the end of a month or maybe two, Cortes would ensure Moctezuma's compliance and protection in the city, race off to the coast, and then deal with Narvaez completely, one way or the other.
As Townshend tells it in her lively fashion, activities were already frequent and complex. The translator Malintzin would remain at the center of it all. That winter and early spring were full.
Townshend also concludes that the timing of finding out about Narvaez and, the actual physical capture of Moctezuma, probably happened within the same short number of days. [p.99] Then, some of Narvaez' men arrived, escorted to the great city, sent by Gonzalo de Sandoval. This new captain that Cortes had sent to command Villa Rica, when the old one had grown lax, was doing his job well. First capturing the Narvaez scouts, he then bundled them off inland to the trek over the mountains to the city.
Once there, Cortes drew them aside and wined and dined them, hoping to learn more about these new arrivals on the coast. He gave them gifts and promised more. He gave orders for men there in the city, to keep Moctezuma under guard and then, quickly assembled a team to go back over the mountains and confront the governor's second in command. Malintzin would go as well. He rode on horseback. She did not. [p. 100]
_______________________________________________
quotes and pagination from Malintzin's Choices: an Indian Woman In The Conquest of Mexico, Camilla Townshend, University of New Mexico Press, as part of the series Dialogos, 2006
As Townshend tells it in her lively fashion, activities were already frequent and complex. The translator Malintzin would remain at the center of it all. That winter and early spring were full.
"For now, the Spanish continued their project of gathering information about Moctezuma's territories and resources. Cortes had his host send for mapmakers so that they could give him a report on all possible ports, and he soon learned that the River Coatzacoalcos was the only waterway with the length and depth he was looking for. Though they had never seen it..." [p. 96]they knew just where to find it and even came back with glowing reports, though what they had found was swampland and would never make a good port. This was where Malintzin was from and she may have been the one that directed them in that direction. Townshend also tells how all three, Cortes, Diaz and Andres de Tapias had said that the report of the additional Spaniards on the coast first came from Mexican messengers. In a footnote (4,21) she adds that it was de Tapias' later Chronicle that said these new ships were depicted by painted signs and hand delivered to Tenochtitlan.
Townshend also concludes that the timing of finding out about Narvaez and, the actual physical capture of Moctezuma, probably happened within the same short number of days. [p.99] Then, some of Narvaez' men arrived, escorted to the great city, sent by Gonzalo de Sandoval. This new captain that Cortes had sent to command Villa Rica, when the old one had grown lax, was doing his job well. First capturing the Narvaez scouts, he then bundled them off inland to the trek over the mountains to the city.
Once there, Cortes drew them aside and wined and dined them, hoping to learn more about these new arrivals on the coast. He gave them gifts and promised more. He gave orders for men there in the city, to keep Moctezuma under guard and then, quickly assembled a team to go back over the mountains and confront the governor's second in command. Malintzin would go as well. He rode on horseback. She did not. [p. 100]
_______________________________________________
quotes and pagination from Malintzin's Choices: an Indian Woman In The Conquest of Mexico, Camilla Townshend, University of New Mexico Press, as part of the series Dialogos, 2006
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Bernal Diaz Details Capture of Moctezuma, ~c. 1520
Messages delivered to Cortes by Tlaxcalan allies, Diaz says, told of the death of the chief constable at the fort called Villa Rica on the coast. Juan de Escalante, his horse, along with six others had been killed along wth many local Totonac locals. Bernal Diaz gives us this story and makes a point to say he's doing just that, prior to explaining, how the Spaniards took Moctezuma in his own capital. But there was more.
He tells us he wants to tell the story completely, "... not to leave anything out, because it must be clearly understood." The backdrop of fear and uncertainty and urgency are made plain by our witness, and renewed every so many pages, as the larger looming context here. It is a dramatic tale, told knowing that, and knowing the hugeness of the stakes, and the credit, Diaz says, was given to God.
News of the death of their captain, and at the hands of servants of their host Moctezuma, had to be a frightful prospect for the few europeans far inland, in the capital city. Diaz, at this point in his tale, after criticizing the version told by Gomara of this moment, credits the Mexica messengers as telling Moctezuma a story of what happened at Nautla. That they were showing him the head of a Spaniard from Leon, named Argüello and his horrified response. That Moctezuma had asked these Mexica messengers bearing the head of Argüello why they did not overwhelm the few Europeans along the coast. The Mexica responded that
Our translator tells us that tequecihuata here meant 'lady' and previously, that teules meant 'lords', leaving them intact as foreign words in his english translated text. I don't mean anything more than to simply point out that these happen to be the words chosen for these, actually, very different kinds of european honorifics of extreme ends of the chivalric spectrum. And Diaz gives them local names in the mouth of Mexican messengers. It just is there to be pointed out. Again, the backdrop of fear, the worse bad news from the coast at Almeria/Nautla, then the reassurance of the aid from the Blessed Virgin Mary for these Spanish conquistadors and then a whole night in prayer begins a new chapter.
Next day, Cortes took with him a small armed contingent, including Diaz as well as the translators, Aguilar and Malintzin, sent word he was coming, and went to Moctezuma's palace. There, after 'paying the usual respects,' Cortes gave a speech to Moctezuma. He accused him of treachery after the personal kindnesses shown. He accused him of giving orders to kill a Spaniard and a horse, leaving out what he was told about the subsequent death of Escalante and the others. He accuses him of betraying Cortes' own kindnesses, of his own men serving Moctezuma's needs and being treated insolently by M's servants and aids. That he knew some aids were talking about having them killed there. "I do not want to start a war," Diaz has Cortes say,
Moctezuma, Diaz confides, told Cortes not to insult him, to take some relatives as hostages instead. Cortes calmly tells the great king that, only he could do this, personally. That it was he that had to go with them and that's all there was left to do. They talked some more, Cortes making sure that no alarm be made to anyone by the great king. Then his litter was called, and they all left together. Moctezuma played his part perfectly and they all then went to the chambers occupied by the europeans. [pp. 225-6]
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from ch xciii -xcv in Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
He tells us he wants to tell the story completely, "... not to leave anything out, because it must be clearly understood." The backdrop of fear and uncertainty and urgency are made plain by our witness, and renewed every so many pages, as the larger looming context here. It is a dramatic tale, told knowing that, and knowing the hugeness of the stakes, and the credit, Diaz says, was given to God.
News of the death of their captain, and at the hands of servants of their host Moctezuma, had to be a frightful prospect for the few europeans far inland, in the capital city. Diaz, at this point in his tale, after criticizing the version told by Gomara of this moment, credits the Mexica messengers as telling Moctezuma a story of what happened at Nautla. That they were showing him the head of a Spaniard from Leon, named Argüello and his horrified response. That Moctezuma had asked these Mexica messengers bearing the head of Argüello why they did not overwhelm the few Europeans along the coast. The Mexica responded that
"... neither their spears nor arrows nor good fighting was any use to them, that they could not make them retreat, because a great tequecihuata of Castile appeared before them, and that lady frightened the Mexicans and said words to her teules that encouraged them. Then Montezuma believed that the great lady was Saint Mary, who we had told him was our advocate." [p. 223]
Our translator tells us that tequecihuata here meant 'lady' and previously, that teules meant 'lords', leaving them intact as foreign words in his english translated text. I don't mean anything more than to simply point out that these happen to be the words chosen for these, actually, very different kinds of european honorifics of extreme ends of the chivalric spectrum. And Diaz gives them local names in the mouth of Mexican messengers. It just is there to be pointed out. Again, the backdrop of fear, the worse bad news from the coast at Almeria/Nautla, then the reassurance of the aid from the Blessed Virgin Mary for these Spanish conquistadors and then a whole night in prayer begins a new chapter.
Next day, Cortes took with him a small armed contingent, including Diaz as well as the translators, Aguilar and Malintzin, sent word he was coming, and went to Moctezuma's palace. There, after 'paying the usual respects,' Cortes gave a speech to Moctezuma. He accused him of treachery after the personal kindnesses shown. He accused him of giving orders to kill a Spaniard and a horse, leaving out what he was told about the subsequent death of Escalante and the others. He accuses him of betraying Cortes' own kindnesses, of his own men serving Moctezuma's needs and being treated insolently by M's servants and aids. That he knew some aids were talking about having them killed there. "I do not want to start a war," Diaz has Cortes say,
"or destroy this city for these reasons. Everything will be forgiven if right away silently and without making any disturbance, you come with us to our lodgings; you will be served there and looked after very well, as if in your own house. But if you make a disturbance or call out, these captains of mine will immediately kill you; I brought them for no other purpose." [p. 224]Moctezuma replied that he had never given any such order and that 'he was not a person that could be ordered to leave' and, he didn't want to. Cortes tried to persuade him, Moctezuma gave better reasons to stay. They talked like that for some time until one of the men grew impatient and vented to Cortes the danger of the situation. Moctezuma saw his emotion and asked Malintzin what he meant. She was reassuring and told him to go with the Spaniards or he might be left for dead. That he would learn the truth if he went with them.
Moctezuma, Diaz confides, told Cortes not to insult him, to take some relatives as hostages instead. Cortes calmly tells the great king that, only he could do this, personally. That it was he that had to go with them and that's all there was left to do. They talked some more, Cortes making sure that no alarm be made to anyone by the great king. Then his litter was called, and they all left together. Moctezuma played his part perfectly and they all then went to the chambers occupied by the europeans. [pp. 225-6]
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from ch xciii -xcv in Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012
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