Sunday, December 31, 2017

Al-Hasan in Italy: Travelling, Writing, Watching: 1520-3

As a detective of journalist's work would perhaps, or, a journalist's historian involved in detective work, Natalie Zemon Davis reveals the who, what, when and how of al-Hassan al-Wassan's production of books. The story comes in a series of layers. Once the process is learned, the narrative pages lifted and removed and analyzed and then placed expertly back into place, one after another, she renders it seemingly simply as the details coalesce into a fine grain picture. But unlike a regular linear book here, over and over, certain details and approaches and relations with the people, places, and processes are slightly repeated in order to tease out this or that aspect of the various contexts. This is also a wonderful thing if at first, it seems a bit ponderous. Going back to this book again and again, I find more and more each time I do.

Forced into leaving with his family as refugees from Spain, he found work. Literate he could act as a scribe in present-day Morooco as a kind of notary, and then after many trials as an ambassador to the sultan of Fez. After many more travels he found himself captured by pirates and then under guard under the Castell San Angelo in Rome. In time, after catechism and conversion, and the curious adoption by Pope Leo X in 1520, al-Hasan opted to travel.  Venturing to Venice and Florence, Naples, and probably, Davis figures, spending more time in Bologna and Viterbo outside of Rome, he could learn enough of the local language and customs, as well as the words for certain things from the many people he could meet along the way.

In addition to a grammar for Arabic, al-Hasan wrote a number of other books while in Italy, that is, before his departure in 1527. Either with (or working for) Cardinal Egido in Viterbo, or, for Alberto Pio (now the ambassador for French King Francis), or alongside (perhaps even in consultation with) Jacob Mantino (the Jewish doctor in Rome), al-Hasan found time to write a number of collections.

What he is most known for though is his Description of Africa. This too Davis so carefully pores over layer upon layer, that she can make look easy revealing all that time has gathered in curtains of obscurity. There are the possible influences, as well as physical processes, even interpreted intentions she brings to light and places it all in those turbulent times. Nothing all at once, each in its time, each article carefully handled and turned to see how it might fit with the other pieces of all these stories that have come down to us.

The Cardinal didn't like Muslims in Europe or Asia or Africa, but accepted al-Hasan as his godson. Davis quotes this cardinal's sermons as divisive examples regarding various misinterpretation of Islamic traditions, pointing out that al-Hassan had to know the good cardinal was getting it wrong. [pp. 81-2]

However, a great project in the west was in compiling translations of the Bible and comparing them. Controversy over Erasmus and his (1516) New Testament translation of koine Greek apart from the Latin Vulgate (and its traditions) encouraged many others in the following years to look into Hebrew and Greek and even Aramaic languages. Some like Cisneros in Spain wanted direct comparisons between all the languages including Arabic.

From Cardinal Egido though, al-Hasan was given a Latin translation of the Quran obtained while the cardinal was in Spain. Egido had received this from one Joannes Gabriel, in order for his godson to correct the manuscript. Davis notes that al-Hasan surely found some pleasure in this work in setting many things right. [pp.241]

During this time in Italy, al-Hasan also found himself in the service of Alberto Pio. An ambassador for Maximillian and then for French King Francis, this Duke of Capri asked al-Hasan for him to copy an Arabic translation of the letters of Paul found then in the Vatican Library. [p. 69] Both their association and the task could be beneficial for al-Hasan. Through dialogue with this august person, he might learn some of the intentions of the new French King, who Pio represented in Rome, and also, from such a text, at least potentially, a clearer view into the ways Paul's thought could be expressed in Arabic. This too could also more firmly base al-Hasan's working knowledge in many common terms and concepts used in Biblical translation that he might use elsewhere as a translator.

Back in Rome, he would stay near Sant' Agostino in the Campo Marzio, Cardinal Egido's Order. [p.70] Here he could keep his access to manuscripts from the Church, have time and space to work on an increasing number of projects and, keep an eye on the various comings and goings of churchmen and ambasadors and the swirling opinions that always seemed to be rising to a fever pitch there and then.

In the early 1520's there had been a rapid succession of popes. Leo X (the Medici pope that had adopted and baptised al-Hasan), died on the first of December, 1521, and he was replaced with Adrian of Utrecht. A doctor of theology at the University of Leuven, Adrian had become tutor to the future Charles V, and even co-regent with Cisneros over Spain, until Charles could mature and gain accession there. In this way Adrian's own accession to the papacy was fraught with dissent as many at first feared a schism or severe break among the churches of Italy, France or Spain, with the head at Rome. Everyone wanted their own man and everyone distrusted each other. But even Adrian knew there were two chief concerns for a new pope. There was an acknowledged need within the church for broad reform and a need to quell spreading Lutheranism. There was also a stated need to combat the Turk who had extended territorially in places beyond Greece.

It took over seven months for Adrian to arrive from Spain to Rome, and after a few attempts at reform, and just after a year and two weeks there, he died. Again for the next vote, Medici influence in Rome prevailed and Giulio di Giuliano, a cousin to Leo X became the new pope. Francis I in Paris was alarmed at this return to Italian-based power and focused on reestablishing French power there by sending his armies to Milan. Against this background of shifting power, alliances and motivations, a wise observer might avoid trouble by staying clear out of the way, working on manuscripts, detailing translations, writing down things if only he could recall.

Where Cardinal Egido or Alberto Pio might dictate letters or essays to a scribe, Davis tells us, al-Hasan would write in his own hand with a pen and ink, going left to right on a line, and in the local Italian language. [p.96] He had reasons too for writing this for an Italian audience. With reports coming in daily of news from the wider world, their imaginative and mental world was rapidly filling up with exciting tales of explorers in the Americas. Al-Hasan could see the locals here also knew less about their continental neighbors to the south. During his stay he could see the proliferation of printed books and how they could influence and educate whether with accurate or inaccurate information and much else.

If he could secure a publisher, his work on Africa might find many eager readers even beyond those well-educated who knew Latin. But with a press he could also guess that his work might travel and last longer than a single hand-written manuscript. Thus anything he might say about Africa or the people there, their customs or, about Islam or its traditions and histories might also be read by some future Muslim reader. [pp. 106-8, 124] This, Davis points out is another reason for al-Hasan to be careful about what and how he set things down.

This manuscript on Africa would be finished March 10, 1526 and stretch out over 900 pages. This would be given to a scribe who would rewrite it, mistakes and all, and then hand it over to be shelved. This copy was discovered around 1930 and stays at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome. The stories of 'Leo Africanus' would proliferate and spread many misunderstandings in the intervening years but this seems to be the fault of the messengers along the way and does not seem the result of al-Hasan's work.

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Davis, Natalie Zemon: Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth Century Muslim Between Worlds, Hill and Wang, A Division of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, NY, 2006


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new fiction already dun, year's end 2017

Finishing a couple more books of fiction this year, it seemed as good a time as any to mention those, and the others done, and a few additional items that have worked their way to the top of the various piles roundabout. The only way out is through. This blog continues so very slowly, ponderously. The dispatches seem random or misplaced. But this too paralells the times: falling backward into the future. A manufactured past, born of some pined-over, wished-for narrative. No matter how perfectly imagined, fantastic, dangerous or absurd, is no guarantor of a more certain modernity. The message seems to be again and again: "Just don't go out."

For one thing it is terminally cold. Right now it is the coldest it has been all year here. At year's end and beginning. The furnace here won't come on automatically, so the oven and stovetop become the primary heatsource. A secondary ground level space heater barely registers when kept in proximity of outstreched legs. Additional layers about the shoulders, and a single bulb lit above completes this wan, brief picture.

Unlike earlier this year, these last two books I'm finishing today end with the imposition of gunshots. The reader was warned with plenty of foreshadowing and circumstance. Plenty of projected possibilities on who and what, but not why. Or rather, the motives are expertly set up and lain out but then, the location, the actors, the scene are disrupted. Old ghosts of memory play tricks and pure chance grabs scene-stealing thunder. The authors are prize-winning modernists of very different genres, but I can't escape the conclusion the endings feel pat. The gunshots. The someones who always fall and who least deserve it. After so much literate beauty or elegance, the racing zing of strophaic plot suspension, usually for memory-bound exposition, in the end, these solutions, for me, lack sublimity. Maybe it's the weather and my mental mood instead.

Which is too bad because the writing in the great bulk of both of these is fantastic, immersive, thoughtful, adventurous. Zadie Smith's bestselling, award-winning White Teeth (2000) has immense characterization of entire families over several generations and continents. The narrative style crams so much street patois and interjects so many cultural monikers, deftly, quickly, and then, passed up for more heaping ladles of steaming post-modern, stomach-clutching laughter, one has to look again to see if there wasn't something you missed. It's thoughtful and real by turn, penetrating with its talk of genetics, and appearance and, sequestered longing. A part or apart?

Most of the characters live out of the baggage they alone carry in memory. Not just their baggage, their interpretation of the baggage. They all have different understandings of how they got here and what it means, how to carry on. What to do about their condition. But they manage not to be really heard except by strangers and that's always fleeting. But main characters do learn and grow, a little, somewhat.

This is the case in Robert Olen Butler's Perfume River (2016) which I happened to read in an uncorrected proof. The style here is spare, simple, straightforward. Almost all of it moves in those interior spaces between thought and emotion, and mostly before these are expressed verbally. This is handled with an almost austere delicacy and the subject matter deserves it. There are a pair of brothers whose father fought under Patton in WWII. One brother goes to Viet Nam, the other to Canada. The father wants his boys to be like him. Neither are. One pretends all his life as if he is, the other could not care less.

The silences between all the characters here takes up as much space in this book as would adding five or six additional agonists. The silences between them are part of the narratives that drive these characters along. What to say or not to say, the habitual reply, the muted surprise, the weighted pause, all veil long-guarded interior fields of barren shrubbery or, desolate warehouses. These are counterpoised by a third rail that never gets to go live, a character whose wheel never hums. But the same could be said for the secondary characters here in this edition as well. Mother and son grow by book's end. But the spouses of all these, at this stage are cardboard cutout with muted color transfers. They neither sing nor turn. But, those intermittent distances between bright memory and dull present are so carefully handled by Butler, we so easily slip in and out of them, it's as if he writes with map at hand. It may be this uncorrected proof was his map and the later wide-release edition fleshes these out more fully.
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Monday, December 18, 2017

US Tax Bill Overhaul 2017

They're making sausage in Washington again. But only half of the two Houses in Congress are making it. The Senate bill produced this time carried without a single vote by the opposing party. This followed the House bill which had passed there the week before. The two branches then looked at the comparative chunks of their respective 'tax bills' in committee that might be passed before Christmas.
Touted by the Republican party as the first meaningful attempt at tax reform in a generation, after failing all year to come up with any other bills of substance (with or without help from President Trump), they want this 'tax plan' event tomorrow seen as a culmination highlighting their ability to govern. But the actual sausage for their national tax policy seeems only what intestines produce in a still living animal. It remains two weeks later a very partisan effort. For unless you are members of the very rich whose interests have lobbied for this kind of 'reform' by way of payment of millions of US Dollars over many years to Congress members and their parties, the opportunities remain murky. The crafters claim there is much to gain from this passage of ordure. But economists and even former Republican strategists find much to disavow.

The reason is pretty easily explained by looking again at the Citizens United v FEC case decided in 2010.

Many seem so excited,  in fact in such a haste to write and pass this multi-generational reform, that the public at large has been allowed but little time to scrutinize this product, let alone to have its consequences explained. Some are so willing to push this mess to pass in these last few weeks, they show how willing they are to do just about anything.
But of course it's worse than that. The tax bill overall according to its cheerleaders will spur growth and spending which will create an increase in GDP growth and thus, jobs. But if interest rates continue to rise as expected, this will offset any increase in GDP generated by this tax bill. Already the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again next year after having just done so slightly last week to set its benchmark at 1.5%.

Many economists think this tax bill's effects instead will cause the opposite to happen and send the US economy into an unnecessary recession. The final vote is expected tomorrow with debates about individual prizes amidst details falling like bombs in the media landscape. It has been too difficult to even look at the procedure anymore which may explain why this process has been kept so shrouded even from the other party.
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Thursday, November 30, 2017

Aldus Manutius Sets His Text

One of the great watersheds of world history was the recent conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Much more than the military and naval battles that overtook this now diminished city-state with its environs, this grand city had once been the great capital of the great Eastern Empire of Rome. As part of that grand edifice, along with the great churches and convents that the capital had supported for over a thousand years, were its books. And for a time, as important as these books were, were those who knew what was in which of them.

There were few readers of ancient Greek outside of Greek monasteries, and no systematic way of disseminating this knowledge (until the spread of the printing press over the next few generations). It fell to people like Cardinal Nicenas, known as Bessarion, to carry these Greek texts, and by virtue of their foresight then became of central importance to the transmission of so many of the various documents of the wider western civilization. And often by precarious boat. He at least knew what he was bringing in the decades before the final battles.

By the time the great capital fell, he was already living in Italy. In 1468, Bessarion gave a great gift of many such documents to the city of Venice. It took nearly fifty years for the city to find the time and money to properly house them with attendant losses in her wet climate. But Aldo Manutius found time for some specific items to publish.

Another of these transmitters of crucial import was Constantine Lascaris. Born to a noble family in Constantinople, he escaped to Rhodes in 1453. Later he managed to find patronage under Francesco Sforza in Milan. There Lascaris must have spent ten years or so at the court in Milan, hired on to teach Greek to the famous leader's clever daughter, Ippolita. These must have been the happiest of sad circumstances for him in Milan compared with the lives of multitudes that could escape the city of his birth or, find rest and welcome elsewhere. Thousands had left and thousands remained in Constantinople. When the great Sforza died in 1466 , through the help of Bessarion himself, a 'chair' was found for Lascaris in Messina. He would stay there in Sicily teaching Greek to the monks of St Basil (and others along the way) until his death from the plague in 1501.

Lascaris wrote a grammar for Greek while in Milan, and later saw it published in 1476. This grammar Aldo Maunzio knew had seen additional versions (1480 in Milan and, out of Verona in 1489, 1491), before he built his press in Venice. He aimed to press one with more recent corrections and much additional material. Manutius says he received such a version personally corrected by Lascaris himself from Pietro Bembo and Angelo Gabriele who, he says, had studied under the great teacher while in Messina. But the process for Manuzio was much more than finding a good recent and corrected manuscript. It took years for him to set it all up.

His motivations for the project can be seen clearly in the order that he accomplished things. First the mechanics, the press itself, the letters carved, the weights and levers calibrated. These and the ink and paper all had to be paid for. Then the first work to appear was a Latin grammar in spring of 1493. This Aldo dedicated to a former student of his, Alberto Pio. More on him later. In addition to this former student turned benefactor, another patron was Lorenzo Maioli. Later, Marcus Musurus, another like Lascaris (also a Greek refugee), would become central to the circle of production at the Aldine press.

Next in the series after the Latin was the Greek grammar. This, based on that by Constantine Lascaris, appeared finally two years later, in March of 1495. After this the series of works of Aristotle began appearing, and still more. But by then, Venice and Italy had been transformed by war. It was on everybody's mind. In an era full of recurring war, recurring plague, recurring controversy and upset, the view into another age, for Aldus, could bring a measure of clarity. As well as an income and association with important people. But the wars that would sweep across Italy over the next twenty years would continually beset and trouble him.

In this very first of publications, Manuzio saw fit to complain about them, resorting to his knowledge base. The production was of enormous expense, partly due to the wars themselves, because,
"God is angry at our misdeeds, and look as if they will soon upset or indeed shatter the whole world, on account of the multifarious crimes of humanity, far more numerous and serious than those which were once the reason for an angry God to submerge and destroy in a flood the whole human race. How very true, Valerius Maximus [1st c. CE], is that remark of yours, a golden saying which deserves to be quoted: "With slow steps divine anger moves to punish, and it compensates for its slow pace by the gravity of the punishment." There is a well known proverb in the vernacular: "Ancient misdeed, recent punishment."... would that we were human in reality as well as in name, not just in name but in practice to be counted among the animals. Cicero says, "Some people are men not in reality but in name." ... God will bring these matters also to an end." i,1
Showing a strong faith in righteous retribution of a vengeful God, Manutius also reaches back to the time of Christ to prove the ancients as well had stern warnings for current affairs.
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Manutius, Aldus: The Greek Classics ed. & trans. by N.G. Wilson, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRI); by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2016
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University in Wittenberg: Back of the Front

Lyndal Roper in the new biography of Martin Luther describes Wittenberg as a sleepy, out of the way, provincial sort of university town in the early 1500's. "An obscure university in an unknown corner ... created the kind of small community in which a man like Luther could flourish, where he could develop his ideas unhindered, outside the restrictions of an older, more established institution." [p. 63] It was already the site of much construction and with Luther's fame came many more students and scholars and, through the sixteenth century, much more expansion and attention.

Roper tells us it was a fortress town when it was founded just over five-hundred years before. A colonial fortress. As the populations expanded east again in the late tenth century, Wittenberg was one of the places where the Saxons put down roots on the edge of Slavic territory. Just 10km from the point the River Elbe turned west, the town grew up on the north side of the river that it hugged.

For centuries a moat surrounded the wall around town. Remnants can be still seen of this in the Stadtgraben that runs in places. The two roads, one north to Potsdam and Berlin, the other south in the direction of Leipzig, along with the river traffic of the Elbe, kept the town informed of the happenings afar, but not close enough to be in them. Nevertheless conflicts arose within between the local Slavic Wends and the ruling Saxon class.

On one side of town was the Elector's Castle where semblance of governance resided since 1485. On the other was the Augustinian monastery where, among many others, Martin Luther took study in 1508-09 and, where he returned in 1511. Just off Collegienstraße in buildings built to house adherents, Luther moved into a very collegiate atmosphere. Considered unsophisticated to outsiders, lacking taste or fashion, the University in Wittenberg had previously been founded by Friedrich III, Elector of Saxony as late as 1502.

The previous elector had been Friedrich's father, Ernest, who had won Wittenberg in the Treaty of Leipzig of 1485. But the year after, both Friedrich's parents had died and he, at the age of twenty-three had to take on the role. Having a fascination for Christian relics, Friedrich used some of the proceeds from his silver and growing tin mines far to the south in the Ore Mountains, to invest in these items of then universal wonder. They were a big draw and money and people poured into town. Regulations on new constructions, tax exemption on current building projects spurred new growth over the prior 'low wooden houses'. [pp. 64, 66]

This Elector even kept a hand over how the school would be run, using part of both the Augustinian and Franciscan monasteries as hands to administer it and offer themselves as 'core lecturers' to students. Roper makes it explicit.
"The whole enterprise was funded out of the foundation of All Saints, which had grown rich on the money made from pilgrims who came to view Friedrich's astonishing collection of relics. These funds were topped up with money from the Elector's own treasury, yet the university's finances were still stretched and Wittenberg found it difficult to compete with the academic salaries offered by Tübingen, Leipzig, or Cologne.... More than once Luther would have to wring more money out of the Elector to help keep Melanchthon, the new professor of Greek, who became Luther's right-hand man." [p.67]
This revenue stream for Friedrich had direct competition in the sale of papal indulgences. When the university was founded the Church in Rome was in a period that found as many ways as possible to encourage these. Indulgences, according to Rome's logic, paid off the expiation of sins, which in turn cut the penitent's time in purgatory. Pilgrimages to view relics, on the other hand, could encourage the faithful to give money (or goods and services) in hopes of more immediate gratification. To simply view a relic might elicit a miracle for the beholding faithful. This was enough for many, and it wasn't Rome's answer in far off Wittenberg.
"Friedrich refused to permit indulgences to be sold in his territory, partly because he feared that the Wittenberg pilgrimage trade might be endangered if indulgences were preached in other churches in Saxony." [p.67]
It was a good trade that promoted local patriotism with so many holy relics. Artists were encouraged to build proper reliquaries, a book with illustrations of these and their items was produced in 1509 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. But all of this could occur only because of the Elector. There was no council of oligarchs, no semblance of deliberation among peers. The court here presided over wills, properties, disputes and the important ones were decided by Friedrich himself. Nothing of substance happened without a question being asked of him and him agreeing to it.
"Ultimate power was vested in the princely ruler, and closeness to the Elector, not membership of the council, was what gave an individual political influence." [pp. 70-1]
This was what a prince did in those times. Power came from above. Luther would have little experience with any other arrangement and this would inform his understanding and Roper says, effect where Lutheranism would spread.
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notes and quotes from Roper, Lyndal: Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet; Random House, NY, 2017
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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Girolamo Savonarola: Dialogue On Truth of Prophecy: ii, prelude

Meeting foreign pilgrims [advenae peregre],
"Deambulanti in secessu... secumque divina meditanti..."
...'walking in a hidden place... and thinking with himself things of divinity', the newcomers ask Savonarola if he can help them find Girolamo of Ferrara. After awhile he admits to being the one they sought and agrees to answer their questions. The dialogue that follows, across many books, Savonarola wrote through 1497 as a kind of defense in allegory for the charges against him of false prophecy. What the author says in the text that they are doing from the outset is asking to dispute. This was an accepted, formal discussion of a topic, in a method polished over centuries by scholastics. Savonarola states in his premise statement (what he calls argumentum) that the topic of this dialogue is the truth of prophecy, which refers to things foretold by himself, Girolamo. The result was an explanation for a certain audience. This text may have been completed by November 1497, but, rather than quickly being published, it was shelved until later.

After an introduction to his themes in book one, Savonarola turns to dispute with Uriah, the first of these seven 'pilgrims' in book two. First determining that the color of a lily is white despite what anyone else might say, Savonarola next asks, 'Unde hoc?', or 'where does this come from?' This pilgrim, Uriah, then answers that the notion of whiteness of the lily comes 'a forma', from its form. This discussion then sprouts into a lengthy one about the nature of sight, regarding proximity, clarity of judgement and the necessary presence of light, which fills the intervening space between object and viewer. The light which allows for the focus by the eye, is then expounded upon as a substantial, concrete analog to the transmission of spiritual, or supernatural, or even invisible matters of faith.

Several times the pilgrim asks Savonarola about the point of discussing light and images as related to form. A reader in his time familiar with basic scholastic inquiry would recognize these as accepted understandings of the nature of sight, form, light, and its judgement, based on their working knowledge of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. So, for an audience, like Uriah and the others it would seem superficially to be treading already proven ground, and, it's worth noting, as basic notions in optics and discernment, these were the accepted norms of the educated late-Medieval or Renaissance European. Aristotle's separate notions of matter and form are clear here, as well as Aquinas on form and sight.

Further, Savonarola develops a keen Socratic method in his disputation. A question is followed by an answer which is followed by more questions, leading to specific conclusions which reveal potentially different understandings. These are all solidly found as basic notional underpinnings in the classic western civilization self-conception. As a dialogue undergoing disputation, Savonarola has himself describe himself as explaining these, in order to show himself as well within the status quo, culturally, intellectually, spiritually and scholastically speaking, for his audience, the prospective reader. There is a lot going on here. For example:
Girolamo:... if perception really proceeded from the form and nature of vision, then one would be able to see at all times. For what is natural is always in operation. But we cannot see in the dark, even though we have the capacity for sight.
Uriah: It is not the nature of vision that one sees in the shadows but in the light, by whose action the medium is made transparent; the species of the object is carried through the medium to the eye, and transmits its form to it, and thus "informed," the eye sees. ii,3 
Again:
Girolamo: The visual sense is informed by the power of light, then, so that it may distinguish colors.
Uriah: Just so. For who may see without light?
Girolamo: And you do not think that vision can be deceived in any way?
Uriah: Regarding its proper object, if the object lies at the right distance... [it] can, however, be mistaken when drawing conclusions about an object from characteristics it shares in common with other objects, and when drawing conclusions about an object from its accidental attributes. 
Here, Savonarola is quick to point out how we do make mistakes by comparing proper, common and accidental objects. These are constructions of Aquinas in his description of sight and perception. Savonarola's examples are immediate, found in life. Near sees better than far, variations in size, number, quality grow mistakes: 'the sun looks small, birds high aflight seem round, stars twinkle or the heavens look constant.' Again, 'Flavor does not follow from color.' ii,4

But, again, following Aquinas, Savonarola reminds that the proper objects of sight are like the proper objects of the intellect.
Girolamo: Just as the proper object of vision stands in relation to vision itself, so, too, the proper object of the intellect stands in relation to the intellect: neither can be deceived regarding its proper object. ii,6
Uriah agrees. Even the philosophers can agree quod quid est,  'that which is' remains among first principles. And so it is. All of this is important to understand where Savonarola is going. With this maintained, Savonarola breaks out asking, in what ways is the intellect deceived if not in first principles? Here, Uriah gives a staggered response: those farther away from the senses - since everything is known thru sense perception - are prone to mistaken conclusions. Math is a subject where the intellect can only rarely be deceived. But, Uriah says, in the natural sciences many conclusions are false, and, in divine matters, very little is understood at all. ii,7

Savonarola accepts all this and also says that the study of supernatural things is prone to mistakes as are accidental objects. He means here spiritual things are prone to misapprehension, misunderstanding, on the sideline laying dormant without real study, as if only on the periphery. Unfortunately, not proper objects. All this is groundwork. For here it is that Savonarola next takes his turn and presents the basic arguments underlying the controversial gist of his singular preaching of the preceding several years.
_______________________________

It's worth mentioning again here the physical context which this Dominican friar found himself. Savonarola had been named as excommunicated from the Church by the Pope earlier, the very year that he began writing this. For years previously, he had gained a great deal of power in the dynamic City of Florence through his preaching and his dramatic stunts. Here he was, in the convent of San Marco, defending his right to prophesize( if that was what God willed) and, regardless of what the pope, or anyone else might say: preaching only sometimes, writing, working over the arguments, and their presentations. In a letter sent mid-November, 1497 to the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d'Este, Savonarola boasted all was well and that there might even be a reprieve or reconsideration from Rome. But, in the City and all 'round published pamphlets mocked him, people in the streets hurled passing insults at his followers, and the youth brawled in the public spaces. 

In quick bursts, Girolamo has come to his central points. If Christians do not believe him when he says there are both Christians in fact and, also in name, then they also may lack faith. He asks his Uriah if he is a Christian in name [nomen] only, or in fact [re ipsa]. In a surprised response Uriah retorts that, it was often heard, Savonarola had dared to call those who would not believe him to not truly be Christian. Savonarola denies it, asserting that only 'those who contradicted him with unheeding closed minds did he accuse of not being true Christians'. [... qui protervo et obstinato animo contradicunt, dixi non esse vere Christianos.] ii,9

When asked why, Girolamo says no one of closed minds can dismiss that which is divinely revealed unless they have 'lost the light of supernatural light'. Worth quoting as there is much packed into spare latin as our editor and translator points out.
Girolamo: Quia nemo divinis revelationibus obstinato potest animo contradicere, nisi supernaturale fidei lumen amiserit. [ii,10]

Though we don't have to believe everything God reveals, he says, we should test all things and, like scripture says, 'hold to what is good' [I Thess. 5:20-21]. Quickly, the friar says he has said nothing against natural reason, or scripture, nothing contrary to the Church. In fact all he has said was within the bounds of reason, scripture, and crucially, that all things are possible by God. Doesn't the lack of belief in these things then show lack of faith in those who fight against them?

Carefully, Savonarola has turned the tables and made his attackers (but not his current written audience) the ones who lack faith, the ones who are Christian in name only. They are the ones who ignore natural reason, sacred scripture, and the power of God. The friar has just begun here but, since he believes that if what he says can be shown by natural reason, is borne up by scripture, and all things are possible by God, then, he asks, why would anyone want to refute them? He will continue with his Uriah and the other six interlocutors.

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Savornarola, Girolamo: Apologetic Writings; ed. and trans. in english , by M. Michele Mulchahey, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRI); by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2015

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Thursday, November 2, 2017

more news late oct 2017

Lots of things have been happening that aren't given much notice because of the constant shocks to the senses with the other major stories, but in any other period would seem rather alarming indeed.
This Senator decided he'd had enough.

Then there's this US Congresswoman who's getting death threats. And yes, there were four US soldiers killed in Niger a couple weeks ago which surprised everyone. The WH Admin doesn't like talking about that one much which has alarmed many. President's Trump Chief of Staff General Kelly said the widow of one of the fallen soldiers was lying about Trump's call. This Congresswoman spoke up for the widow and Trump's Chief arranger seemed unconcerned what she thought. And then the threats came.
Some of Congress managed to make it easier for some businesses to exploit consumers more easily.
But surely, they wouldn't let this happen, would they?
See them rise and fall.
Then this happened on Monday opening the gates of speculation with some specific bits of clarity.
Even going at them with the clarity of footnotes.
In the UK, one Aaron Banks was exposed causing all manner of trouble with the people most clinging to power there.
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And then Tuesday was Halloween and somebody drove a rented truck down a bike lane in Manhattan killing eight and wounding eleven more. Unlike the shooting spree on a Las Vegas crowd October 1st, the feds are immediately saying this one on New York is definitely terrorism.
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A way things used to be.
Time lapse of a funeral procession for the late King of Thailand.
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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Last Things First: Notes On Sources: Landucci, Cordero, Villari

Here is a quick mention of sources from a modern biography in English on the life and times of Dominican Friar Girolamo Savonarola. This listing follows the narrative of Lauro Martines in his penetrating study Fire In The City, concerning the capture and interrogation of Lamberto dell' Antella in the summer of 1497, and their consequences, and the subsequent execution of a number of prominent Florentines.

This post lists the sources of a number of topics in Martines' account of this brief but tumultuous set of events. That is followed by brief looks at a number of prominent sources for this situation as listed by Martines in his account. Footnotes and Sources, yay! At the top, after a brief look at Luca Landucci, The first block of text are notes, pages, and sources, with their locations in cited texts following that author's name (and sometimes the publication date). Again, a topic is followed by page number in Martines (2006), followed by the source listed in the footnotes there in Martines as an authors's name, and that source's page number(s). Then after a break, a brief look of a number of other secondary sources and accounts listed here, as well as an excerpt from Martines' bibliography.

As Luca Landucci appears here, as a Florentine chronicler living in the city during these times, his voice, like Cerretani, should be shown to also hold a prominent place in understanding the waves of change then. An apothecary who wrote a diary 1450-1516, Landucci in particular, helps us see the arcs of change in the city's moods precisely because he himself believed Savonarola was an agent of change for the good restoration and rennovation of Florence and the Church. Later, when like so many, he heard the 'confession' of the Friar read out in public (April 19, 1498), this news made him, along with many others, greatly dismayed. Of course, we are lucky to have other chroniclers and analysis as well.

Lamberto dell 'Antella wanted to return, and his confession: p. 183 : Villari II, iii-xv.
Cambi and Pucci confess names: p. 184 : Cerretani, 236-7; Parenti (Schnitzer) 206-7; Landucci (1927), 125; Manfredi in Capelli, 382-5.
Nicolo Ridolfi conspirator:p. 186-7: Bullard, 268; Rao, 75-6.
Lorenzo Tornabuoni conspirator: Landucci (1927), 126; Cerretani, ibid; Rao 166-7; Guicciardini, Storie 143; Villari II, xxxii-iii ; De Roover, 367, 370.

empty city of summer's august pestilence: p. 189: Nardi, Istorie, 130-3.
Claim that dell'Antella story was fake news: p. 190: Cerretani, ibid.
trial read out as evidence, an open vote held description : from Parenti (Schnitzer), 207-8.
decision made, it was appealed: But there was a law enacted March 1495: p. 192: Cadoni, Provissioni, 111-18; Guicciardini, Storie, 139-44; Martines (1968), 494.
Vespucci's further argument: p. 193: Guicciardini, 141.
Also, other views Fachard Consulte, (2002), 509, 511, 509-14; Cerretani, 238, Martines (1968), 441-5.
That night: pp. 194-6;  Cambi, 113; Cerretani, 237-40; Villari II, xlix; Fachard (2002), 511-12; Parenti (Schnitzer), 211; Guicciardini 141-2.
the executions: Cordero thought Savonarola meant justice meant the deaths of the conspirators, p.197: Cordero IV, 102-24; rumor of Cerretani, 238.
Machiavelli (Discoursi i, 45) thought this was a turning point for Savonarola, Martines thinks not, p. 198.
But S asked for mercy in other cases: Weinstein, 'The Prophet'.
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Cordero, Franco. 1986-88. Savonarola. 4 vols. Rome and Bari.

Landucci, Luca. 1927. A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516. Trans. Alice de Rosen Jervis. London and New York.

Villari, Pasquale. 1930. La storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de' suoi tempi. New ed. 2 vols. Florence.

In his bibliography, Lauro Martines prioritizes the many sources that he uses and singles out one recent study for both praise and intense criticism.
"The most ambitious study in recent times ... well researched and ... is often brilliant, as in the tracking of Savonarola's canny rhetorical dodges. But the entire work is also self-destructive... Cordero so detests the Friar that he is constantly... in the ring with him ... hoping for a knock-out blow.... on the brink of losing all objectivity, as he scorns, derides, and highlights Savonarola's  posturing, inconsistencies, illogicalities, egomania, bad faith, and rhetorical violence." [p. 313]
What Martines calls Cordero's 'Freudian approach', limits him to abusing his subject, he says while going on to point out a number of some of the harsh epithets Cordero uses to describe Savonarola's actions and behaviors. Still, Martines calls his one of the 'best and most complex of the narratives' that are to be found.

Savonarola continues to be controversial and to excite great passion. Part of this must be the human attraction toward that rare dynamic of multiple characteristics within a person, or in society, struggling against each other, tumbling into view, and then being swept aside. This one which was able to simultaneously engage Christian mystical elements with some balance of political power, mixed in a charismatic figure, who gave voice and organized, on multiple levels, and who was able to bring his solution front and center to the table of public discourse. Eventually his voice was stopped. But not his controversies. Twenty years later, Martin Luder, a Bible professor in Wittenburg would argue against many of the same injustices that Savonarola had argued. But Luther didn't see himself acting as a prophet.

Luca Landucci is described by Martines as often siding with Savonarola, if only in admiration at what the lowly friar could accomplish. But, again from his bibliographic heading, Martines says, even Landucci's "... allegiances were occasionally split, such as over the executions of August 1497." [p. 313]

But Martines gives prize of place to Pasquale Villari for leading his list of 'best and most complete of narratives' in the scholarship of the modern period going over the rich, complex and erudite material  of Florence in those longer ago days. Villari's story was published in 1859 and generated much excitement and interest in the friar for his own times, sending historians back to the archives to find more.
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Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 


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Polyneices and Jocasta Speak On Exile via Euripides, Phoenissae, i

From the Greek text of Euripides as found in the tufts.edu collection. What follows here is the reunion of mother and child. As lain out before, this is a dialogue presented by Euripides in his Phoenissae. This dialogue also is what Francesco Filelfo chose to introduce the concept of exile in his dialogue from the fifteenth century. This bit of conversation begins here with a rush of words from Polyneices (lines 358-78) presented in English from a twentieth century translation by Peter Burian and Brian Swann and published by Oxford University Press (1981). There follows a rough translation of the rapid-fire back and forth between mother and son as she looks to learn the son's motives and experience. This will continue later, along with Filelfo's latin rework of the same bit of dialogue.

Scene. Jocasta, at the palace gate in Thebes, hears at length the Chorus of women there calling to her, asking why she takes so long to hold her son in her arms. She sees him, she greets him, she tells him she grieves. She tells him his father, blind, looks to escape life, cursing his children. She has to tell the son, she knows, already, he is married, grieving that she could not host his wedding. She tells him that regardless of why, all these burdens fall on her.

Euripides has his chorus leader step forward, almost reassuringly, to remind that this is indeed how women respond when their life turns upside down, and they have to explain again.
"The pains of childbirth are frightening and painful/ for women. And so all women worship their children."
Polyneices steps forward warily.
Mother, after careful thought, I have come/
carelessley among my enemies. But no one/
can choose not to love his own native soil./
He who says otherwise loves words, not truth./
I was so frightened, I came in such fear that some ruse/
of my brother would ruin me, that I walked through this city/
clutching my sword, turning my head this way and that./
Only one thing gave me comfort: your truce, and your pledge/
that let me pass through ancestral walls. I came/
weeping, seeing after so long the seats and altars/
of the gods, the gymnasia where I was seated,/
the waters of Dirke. I have been exiled from these,/
living in a strange land, my eyes streaming tears --/
but I go from one grief to another, I see you,/
your hair cropped close, dressed in black robes./
O, my sorrows! How strange and monstrous, mother,/
is hatred within families./ [lines 358-78]*
...
His mother Jocasta thinks it's wrong for the gods to destroy this family, where the son forced himself on the mother, so that she gave birth to children she knows are called wrong. But that's all done.
ἀτὰρ τί ταῦτα; δεῖ φέρειν τὰ τῶν θεῶν. 
What's to do about it? One must bear these things from the gods.
The thing she wants to know though she doesn't want to hurt him in asking.
 ἃ χρῄζω: διὰ πόθου δ᾽ ἐλήλυθα.
These are the things I want: across desire and having come.
She wants to know what was the longing like, the reasons for return.
__________

Polyneices answers, he'll tell her and not leave things out.
What is your plan, what are such things to me, mother, dear.
__________

Jocasta will ask first then, what a thing it is to be deprived of one's country? A great badness?
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μέγιστον: ἔργῳ δ᾽ ἐστὶ μεῖζον ἢ λόγῳ.
The biggest. And it's bigger in doing than in telling.
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τίς ὁ τρόπος αὐτοῦ; τί φυγάσιν τὸ δυσχερές;
What was the turn of it? What is it they run from?
Literally, those let go, what do they flee?
__________
ἓν μὲν μέγιστον, οὐκ ἔχει παρρησίαν.
The biggest is in not keeping all speech.
__________

δούλου τόδ᾽ εἶπας, μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ.
The lot of a slave you say, not to speak what's on your mind.
__________

τὰς τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίας φέρειν χρεών.
The follies of the strong must be carried.
__________

 καὶ τοῦτο λυπρόν, συνασοφεῖν τοῖς μὴ σοφοῖς.
and such misery, to join with the unskilled rather than with those skilled.
__________

 ἀλλ᾽ ἐς τὸ κέρδος παρὰ φύσιν δουλευτέον.
another is that the reward of slavery is against nature.
__________

 αἱ δ᾽ ἐλπίδες βόσκουσι φυγάδας, ὡς λόγος.
But hopes nourish exiles, so it's said.
__________
καλοῖς βλέπουσαί γ᾽ ὄμμασιν, μέλλουσι δέ.
Beautiful to have seen especially with the eyes, as intended.

In other words, hopes are better realized, rather than just wanted.

To be continued...
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*Euripides, Phoenician Women ; translated Peter Burian and Brian Swann; Oxford University Press, 1981, NY

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