Consulte fiorentina: Notes & Arguments from Martines & Fachard: mid March 1498

In the arguments in the pratiche held in Florence on March 14, 1498, both the health of its Republic and the tumult of its passions could be seen. Despite this intense and prolonged, but reasonable 'venting' in the City's traditional practice of discussion, the collective fever would soon boil over.

March 13: as late as this date, Savonarola could write to Pope Alexander VI: 'you should worry about the state of your immortal soul': [Lettere (1984) 226-7]

March 14: Another pratica held by the Signory; Papal briefs read out; [Fachard, Denis: Consulte 1993: I, 42-61]. Martines summarizes:

"The threat of a papal interdict had widened the splits in the political class, and many citizens while revering the Friar, were now ready to see him temporarily silenced, in the hope that Rome would refrain from imposing the city-wide anathema. Their feeling that all Italy was against Florence made the threatened interdict all the more ominous." [p. 209]

Three of the sixteen Gonfalonieres changed their view and now thought the Signory and Florence should listen to the pope. As recently as the third of March, ten of them had been still willing to resist the Papal declaration that S suspend preaching. Now only seven, and less than the majority of this group, thought so.
The previous elected Twelve Good Men were still in near unanimous agreement to let the friar continue. But the next group of Twelve that had been elected but not assumed office yet, were for listening to the pope instead. So here was a clear shift.

"Speaking for the new Twelve, Giovanni Canacci made one of the most hostile speeches ever recorded against Savonarola... up to that point." [p. 209]

The Captains of the Guelfs who had been praiseworthy now thought they should seek to satisfy the pope.
The Ten were of the same opinion as last time. Savonarola was a jewel and should continue with his sermons for Lent.
The Eight still stood in favor of the Friar as well. They too had nothing new to add to the discussion. What would turn out to be the new growing consensus was allowed greater room this day to speak. As Martines says:

"The debate had turned into a revealing performance. Something subtle was taking place. The Savonarolans were beginning to lose the initiative and vigour, not because their belief in the Friar or in the Republic was failing, but because the papal threat was now so strong, so urgent, that it was changing the Florentine political atmosphere. In short, action and fresh arguments were required, if the leaders of the Frateschi were to retain forcefulness in their ranks." [p. 211]

The Monte Officials who oversaw the Treasury and trade sided with the Friar and, to let him preach. 'There had been interdicts before...'. [p.211]

Another speaker, this time speaking for the collected corps of doctors of law, one Guidantonio Vespucci stepped forward. He was both a lawyer defending those who were executed the previous August, and a diplomat with alliances in the anti-Savonarolan camps. His argument (slightly condensed from Martines' sharp exposition) was straight-forward and practical: "We are what we are in Italy."

Vespucci said, the ambassador was in Rome to get absolution from the Pope, and a decima. This was that special papal permission for the City to be allowed to collect a tenth of clerical income (in that City and her territorities) as a tax. If that could not be accomplished, he said, then the City could not cover its expenses. Since the City still desired control of Pisa and its incomes, it made no sense, and seemed counterproductive, to do or encourage things that were offensive to the Pope. Whether the Friar is in the wrong or not, the Pope thinks so, and if an interdict goes through, many there in the City would lose their things. Already merchants couldn't send their stuff to markets elsewhere. At least the Papacy he reminded them had the power to stop a thing through censure. Anyway, there was not even agreement in the City if the Friar actually did speak for God. If he did for certain, by all means, he should go ahead and preach. But we can't agree on that, so better to let him lay off for awhile, to see if that makes better relations with the See in Rome. Then the City might ask for more favorable conditions about Pisa from Rome. [p.212]

Those law doctors that still supported the Friar were represented by Antonio Malegonnelli who could admit the Pope was the supreme religious leader and understandably might think he could give out orders. The problem as he saw it was that other states in Italy had long been assailing the Friar, for years. It was these forces who attacked the Friar and thus divided the Florentine population against itself so dangerously. Because of this, the independence of the Friar should be supported and upheld. [p.212]

There were many who still thought he was a holy man that had saved the city from take-over, from civil war istelf, maybe even from the sword of God, by his form of impassioned shepherding. But to cut him off might open an avenue for some external force to sieze such an influential rudder to popular opinion, or rush in to fill the void left from his absence. On the other hand, if the City allowed the Pope to order them to deliver Savonarola up, then they were acting as hired police for the Pope. This was simply unseemly, using temporal, physical force to test or contain a spiritual force like the Friar or his movement's adherents. Next time, this Pope would ask for something else once this concession was granted. After all, another said, Pisa was already in the hands of Venice and Milan. [p. 213]

Giuliano Gondi, international merchant sided firmly against Savonarola. [p. 214]
There are still a couple more pages of these attitudes expressed in Martines gathered from those collected and edited by Denis Fachard, in Consulte e pratiche della repubblcca fiorentina 1498-1505, Geneva, 1993.
________________________________

quotes, notes, pagination from Martines, Lauro:  Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence; Oxford University Press, Inc.,NY 2006 

March 16: Signory summons leaders to again state their views - this time a majority say S should stop preaching
March 17: S informed of papal brief of Mar 9
March 18: S preaches for last time

news mid March 2018

ummm...

Mood Shift Amid Papal Vitriol Against Savonarola: early March 1498

If there was a time to pinpoint when the mood changed among the leadership in Florence concerning the Domenican friar Girolamo Savonarola, it would be difficult to find one more markedly clear than early March of 1498. At the first of the month, the Signory met and, at least, could well recognize that the city and its leadership was utterly divided over the implications of the friar and his preaching. Twice they met and heard extensive arguments for and against the preacher, the papal excommunication, the issue of the war over control of Pisa, and Florentine pride over sovereignty and autonomy, both within itself and regarding the power in Rome.

In a season of letters sent back and forth, and bold declarations, there were also warnings and attacks. As with the year before, Florence's new envoy to Rome was having problems. Two years before (June 1496) messer Domenico Bonsi had been accused in Florence of 'beastliness and lies' by what turned out to be seen as a Savonarolan-allied attorney working from the office of the Archbishop of Florence. The man, ser Giuliano da Ripa had attacked Bonsi for playing with people's fears of higher taxes, all with an aim of driving people along to support their agendas. The accuser himself was atacked and took refuge in San Marco. Then he was captured, tortured, and interrogated over the inner workings of the network against San Marco. Found sufficiently guilty for the day, he was banished for two years.

By late February 1498, Bonsi had only bad things to tell regarding the opinions at the court in Rome. Another strongly foreboding warning was felt when Bonsi himself was attacked. As Lauro Martines tells us in his Fire In The City:

"On the night of the 21st, at about 3:00am, three men, armed with swords and an axe, had smashed their way into his garden and courtyard, where one of them had mounted the wall to get up to his terrace, to force an entry into the house. In the event, he toppled into the courtyard and broke a leg, whereupon the others fled. Bonsi concluded that their aim had not been robbery but murder, because the injured man came from Montepulciano, an attractive Tuscan town... that had rebelled against its Florentine masters with the help of Siena." [p. 202] 

After this, a strongly worded statement came out that the Pope was so incensed with Florence that he refused audience with her envoy, Bonsi himself, despite (disbelieving?) the attack.

February 22: messer Bonsi survives intruder attack: p. 202, 207 in Martines, source: [Gherardi, 178-9, 201]
February 26: Pope sends breve to Signory in Florence for them to arrest and send S to Rome in chains; [Gherardi, 183-5; Sanudo, Diarii i, 899-900, 905, 920; Villari II, lxvi-lxvii] ...
But by the next day His Holiness was willing 'to absolve Savonarola if the Friar would stop preaching'. [Martines, p.203]

March 01: Savonarola [S] changed venues from San Reparata to San Marco 'for his protection' he said later, as he continued to preach on Exodus. The new Signory was being sworn in.

March 03: the new Signoria begins talks on what to do about the Friar; the Sixteen were divided 10-6, the Twelve were all for him, as were the Ten. This meant a majority still backed him so they decided at that point to wait and see. Thus the Ten resolved to write to messer Domenico Bonsi in Rome that S was 'preaching to produce good fruit' in the City; Martines, p. 208 [in Gherardi, 187-8].

March 04: Receiving letters from Pope and Bonsi, the Priors wrote to the Pope stung that he could not see S was merely defending what they saw as goodness and correct doctrine [Marchese, Documenti intorno al S, 165-7]
March 07: Bonsi back to the Signory and Ten: S must stop; [Gherardi, 192]

March 09: Papal brief ('as a spreader of poison' S should be arrested) and Bonsi cover letter sent to Signory [in Gherardi, 192-6]
March 10: letter from the Ten to the Pope explaining S's sermons should be seen as allegory, even trying with different words to say the same things [Gherardi, 198]. When they received they couldn't hardly believe it. They already knew how to read.

________________________________

from Martines, Lauro:  Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence Oxford University Press, Inc.,NY 2006 

March 13: S to Pope: 'you should worry about the state of your immortal soul': [Lettere (1984) 226-7]

March 14: pratiche held by the Signory; Papal briefs read out; [Fachard, Denis: Consulte 1993: I, 42-61]
March 16: Signory summons leaders to again state their views - this time a majority say S should stop preaching
March 17: S informed of papal brief of Mar9
March 18: S preaches for last time

Savonarola Makes Last Stand: Jan-Feb 1498

The Feast of Epiphany, the celebrations marking the appearance of the divine Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi, is the chief Catholic Festival in January. In Florence, Italy, in the year 1498, there was a private ceremony held at San Marco where friar Savonarola received visitors from the city's Signoria who came to kiss his hand. But Savonarola had been excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and all who heard or worked with him were putting themselves at risk of such ostracism as well. He had been forbidden from preaching, but, the little friar himself said he answered to God's will, not the Pope's. His critics were outraged by the performance at San Marco but his followers patiently worked for a motion by the Great Council for word that the friar could preach again.

By the first of February, Savonarola himself was telling Manfredi, the Ambassador to Ferrara, that he was ready to preach, if he could only get a sign. He told others he was waiting for a reprieve from the Papal See. But, when it became clear in those first couple weeks there would be no absolution or reparation with the Church without the matter of Pisa being resolved, Savonarola once again took to the podium.

This matter of Pisa, of course, was Florence's recent alliance with France and Charles VIII, for control of interests over Pisa. The Pope and Venice had created a League trying to secure Pisa against its control by France or Florence. The war had not been trivial and would continue to rage. Born from the disaster when Piero de' Medici had given Pisa away to the French King in his 1494 march down the length of Italy, the French had quickly assumed control and Florence then, quickly threw Piero and all his family (and several of his closest allies) out of the city. Savonarola had been the one then preaching that  the French incursion was God's agent of 'scourge and renewal', and the King was a New Cyrus, a Second Charlemagne.  Everyone in Italy had taken sides or could be paid to do so, and now, the Pope's minions were saying flatly "that Florence had to abandon its alliance with Charles VIII and join the League to keep him out of Italy." [p.249] But Savonarola said in the new year that his followers were dying of spiritual hunger.

On the morning of February 11, Savonarola and his men returned.

"From San Marco he and his friars walked in stately procession but without his usual armed escort, through streets bordered by the devout, the curious, and the hostile, to the Cathedral. Entering he made his way along the enormous nave, less crowded than in former times, and mounted to the pulpit. When the congregation had finished singing the Te Deum Laudamus he recited the Third Psalm, "O Lord, why are my foes so many?" then took up his text." [p.249]

His sermon was on Exodus and the story of Hebrew liberation from their captivity in Egypt. So too, would the present-day Florentines be liberated from their current enemies. He would be their Moses and lead them across the Red Sea. Pharoah had ordered him to be silent, but he could not. He instead would be their prophet, lawgiver, protector, and champion. He could accept Pharoah's authority, His Holiness in Rome, but the Pope's pronouncements did not apply to him, as his orders came from God. If his detractors denied his message then they should should come and see him hold the sacrament and hear his sermon. If he was not telling the word of God then, may the fire of God come down and consume him. [p.252]

The following Sunday, 18 February he continued his sermon on Exodus. By the following Sunday, he announced plans for a return to the great bonfires over Carneval as in previous years. Clearly, the 'little' Dominican friar, Savonarola was not backing down. So fiery were his words, that many believed he would perform a miracle by the following Shrove Tueday. It didn't happen, and he wasn't struck down, so his followers would defend him anyway. The bonfire this year included copies of Pulci's Il Morgante, nude sculptures, and even looking glasses. Twelve boys dressed in white carrying crosses made their way to the Piazza to start the blaze. And then they danced and the fervent crowd joined in. [p.253] An independent writer said the friar watched from a distance.

Meanwhile, in a letter to his friend Ricciardo Becchi, Nicolo Macchiavelli reported that a new Signoria and Gonfaolniere had been selected on 26 February, and which Savonarola feared was nearly two-thirds hostile to him. So, in a change Macchiavelli notes, the friar was instead warning about tyranny from Rome and that the time had come for Florentines to unite against the hostile forces that were then trying to undermine him from within the city. [p.258]

Almost immediately, the new government began to act. By the 14th of March another pratica had been assembled to finally, after numerous attempts, to settle what should be done. By the end of the month the mob would decide it needed proof, in order to confirm their faith, one way or another.
____________________________________
quotes and pagination in Donald Weinstein: Savonarola: the rise and fall of a renaissance prophet , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011

pageturner chronicles iii: 1914, 1434, c. 1908

Since the other day was called #WorldBookDay, on twitter, perhaps a different alignment may be indulged in for this chapter. Rather than a mere gathering of different stories in some place, or signposts connected with highpoints in historical circumstances (or scattered across this blog), here today, a number of quotes from fiction will follow. These are plucked from the list of things I'm currently reading and show the twist and tug of so many central tensions, now and then, here and there, fiction and too real. Revealing further examples still held in suspense for today's audience.
___________________________________
...

"The clean, cozy cubicles of the regional criminal court made the most favourable impression on Švejk -- the white washed walls, the black-painted bars and the fat Mr Demartini, the chief warder for the prisoners on remand, with his purple facings and purple braid on his government-supplied cap. Purple is the colour prescribed not only here, but also at religious services on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

The glorious times of Roman rule over Jerusalem were coming back. The prisoners were led out and brought before the Pontius Pilates of 1914 down on the ground floor. And the examining magistrates, the Pilates of modern times, instead of honourably washing their hands, sent to Teissig's for goulash and Pilsen beer and passed more and more indictments to the Director of Prosecutions.

Here all logic mostly disappeared and the § triumphed. The § strangled, went mad, fumed, laughed, theatened, murdered and gave no quarter. The magistrates were jugglers with the law, high priests of its letter, devourers of the accused, tigers of the Austrian jungle, who measured their spring on the accused by the number of clauses." ... [p.24]

Oh! you don't know Švejk? You're in for a treat then! Written in Czech in the years during and following World War I  - for those who lived it, it was The Great War, and for those who did not survive, the only World War - its author Jaroslav Hašek was an anarchist. A traveller thru East Europe, a soldier, a drunkard, accustomed to sleep off nights or months in a cell, he had practice as a rabble-rouser. Both intense and silly, hilarious and at times violent, he took to writing stories in serial fashion during the war and the years after, sending manuscripts off without correction, often after deadline.  Later twentieth century luminaries like Bertolt Brecht were to find inspiration in these stories of a common, simple man caught up in the absurd affectations of Empire about to fall. Joseph Heller has said his Catch-22 would not have been written without the precedent of Hašek's Švejk. Turns out to be both warning and balm in today's times. Go find it!

Jaroslav Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk : translated by Cecil Parrott,  published by William Heinemann in association with Penguin Books, 1973
____________________________________

After a long discussion about Christian virtue and championing various aspects of that as found under the traditional umbrella of what they remembered, and its people in its long history, the narrator turns to what it is not. Palla Strozzi, instructing his son Onofrio reminds that despite what others may say or think, there are still those who justify their own acts based on erroneous assumptions. Relative to such things, this parent counsels that exile should not be considered the worst of his son's worries. The real topic of merit he insists is what a chaste man with high standards might think and act upon. Nearing the end of that night's discussion, he then has to return to and remind of basic elements.
 ...

"But what is the point of my discourse? That we understand that there is something disgraceful and evil by nature, which in the eyes of some is neither disgraceful nor evil; that some things are held to be disgraceful and evil that are not such by nature; and the same thing is disgraceful and evil in the eyes of some that others regard as honorable and good. Therefore we must take pains that it not escape us which things are honorable and good by nature and which are otherwise. For if we err in these matters, even if no disgrace attaches to us, we are dishonorable." [i,230]

These notions are couched in fifteenth-century Italo-Christian notions of evil and honor and disgrace and good actions. That there is evil that some think is not evil. That there are things held as evil that are not by nature. And, that these same things, that may not be evil by nature, are still proclaimed as evil by some, and honorable and good by others. He is making pains to show that all these judging notions are actually separate and distinct. The son Onofrio thinks exile is evil as it is a dishonor. The father Palla disavows this notion, saying the distinction between evil and good is more basic. First one must be able to distinguish between what is evil and good on one's own, and before other men's opinions affect our judgment.

"But we should not altogether despise the things that are merely judged to be such [evil or good by nature] by men's opinion. For to do so shows an overfastidious and immoderate character. But we must earnestly consider by whose opinion the judgment is made. For we ought to be influenced by what good and wise men think of us, not fools and scoundrels."

Onofrio: "But, father, the public magistrates are inflicting this disgrace upon us." [i, 231]
Palla: ""The magistracy," as Bias remarked, "shows the man.""

Here Palla agrees, on principle, with Onofrio. This, he counters, is why their opinion should not matter to him, regardless of their pronouncements of exile or, power in office. Palla (and Filelfo, the author of this fictional dialogue) is quoting from Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (1130a1-2) in his discussion of justice, showing a clear understanding of the difference between one's own kept virtue (or not), and how one practices that virtue (or not) toward others.

"At Florence currently men exercise magistracies who do not understand either in practice or in theory, the meaning and extent of a magistrate's power. For what correct or sound principle would men understand whose god is their belly and their boundless lust? They think and care about nothing else than to act intemperately, greedily, disgracefully, insultingly, and dishonorably. Should you, then, fear disgrace inflicted by beasts of such a nature that it would be a dishonor to be honored by them? I think the good man should make no more of the judgment of such wastrels than if Galileo Bufonio, who, though an ignoramus in medicine, claims to be the most skilled physician, judges that a man of excellent constitution and health is feeble and sickly. [i, 232] Therefore such disgrace is not by its own nature an evil, nor can there be any evil in exile."

Francesco Filelfo, On Exile, i, 230-3; edited by Jeroen de Keyser, translated by W. Scott Blanchard, published by The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013
________________________________

record skip

Taking a number of leaps to Old El Paso, and to Thomas Pynchon's fictional World Against The Day, Frank Traverse and Estrella Briggs stroll back from the river when two men approach quickly from behind. Estrella, aka "Stray", affirms this is "Hatch" and "his saddle pal of the day." Of course, Frank is there to help facilitate an arms deal pre-arranged with Ewball Oust, making quick profit on the misfortune of others and, who had just happened to run into his old pal. This takes place c. 1906-10 and before the armed uprisings and the Revolution of Mexico. People protecting their interests on multiple levels.

    "She didn't turn around to look, but had reached casually beneath her duster and come out with a little over-and-under. Twirling the parasol for, he guessed, distraction. "Well," Frank checking his own outfit, "I was hoping for more caliber there, but happy to see you're heeled, and say -- let's figure on one apiece, how's that? They don't look too professional."
    "Nice to see you out in public again, Miss Estrella. This here your beau?"
    "This yours, Hatch?"
    "Wasn't lookin for no round and round," advised the other one, "just being neighborly."
    "Well, neighbors," her voice maintaining a smooth contralto, "you're a long way from the old neighborhood, hate to see you come all this distance for nothin."
     "Be easy to fix that, I would guess." 
    "Sure, if it was anythin but simple damn thievery."
    "Oh? Somebody around here's a damn thief?" inqured Hatch in what he must have been told was a menacing voice. Frank, who'd been watching the men's feet, took a short off-angle step so as to have speedier access to his Police Special. Coat buttons meantime were being undone, hatbrims realigned for the angle of the sun, amid a noticeable drop-off in pedestrian traffic around the little group.
    Though having been obliged not long ago to gun Sloat Fresno into the Beyond... Frank still harbored too many doubts about triggerplay to be out looking to repeat it with just anybody -- still, there was no denying he'd lost a whole ensemble of hesitancies back down the trail, and Hatch here, though perhaps enjoying even less acquaintance with the homicidal, might have detected this edge, raising the interesting question of how eager he might be to back up his sidekick.
    For really it was the sidekick who presented the problem. Restless type. Fair hair, hat back on his head so the big brim sort of haloed his face, shiny eyes and low-set, pointed ears like an elf's. Frank understood this was to be his playfellow -- Stray meantime having slowly drifted into a pose that only the more heedless of their safety would've read as demure. The daylight had somehow thickened, as before a tempest on the prairie. Nobody was saying much, so Frank figured the verbal part of this was done, and the practical matter nearly upon them. The elfin sidekick was whistling softly through his teeth the popular favorite "Daisy, Daisy," ...[a] sort of telegraphic code among gun-handlers for Boot Hill. Frank gazed brightly, all but sympathetically, into the eyes of his target, waiting for a fateful tell.
    Out of nowhere, "Well, hi everybody," a cheerful voice broke in, "watch-y'all doin?" It was Ewball Oust, pretnding not to be a cold, bleak-eyed Anarchist who'd left all operational doubt miles back in the romantic mists of youth, whenever that was.
    "Damn," breathed the pointy-eared gent, in a long, unrequited sigh. Everybody at their own pace went about relocating their everyday selves.
    "So nice runnin into you again," Hatch as if preparing to kiss Stray's hand, "and don't you be a stranger, now."
    "Next time," nodded the sidekick with a poignant smile at Ewball. "Maybe in church. What church y'all go to?" he seemed to want to know, in an oily voice.
    "Me?" Ewball laughed, far exceeding the humor of the moment. "I'm Mexican Orthodox. How about you? Amigo?"
    Whereupon the sidekick was observed to take a hesitant step or two backward. Stray and Hatch over his hat crown exchanging a look.
    "Sorry I'm late," said Ewball.
    "You're right on time," said Frank."

 from Against The Day pp. 646-8, by Thomas Pynchon and published by Penguin Press, 2006.

flash winter spot Feb2018

The 2018 Winter Olympics have started in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and politics wrestles for attention with the games.

South Korea really gave us the most beautiful opening ceremony I have ever seen 😻 everything was done so beautifully, the imagery, symbols, hope and capturing what SK is all about. #Olympics2018 #OlympicOpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/yg3tNYDGOb

— ♡☆ kdrama overdose ☆♡ (@jinyounglatte) February 10, 2018

While the rest of the world continues to reveal it's wounds.

JUST IN: U.N. says details of @Reuters report on Myanmar massacre 'alarming,' show need for 'full and thorough investigation' into Rakhine state violence - spokesman. Read investigation: https://t.co/AMBYmZtsev pic.twitter.com/UMgfbM9b48

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) February 9, 2018

The feels.

New York in the 50s, photography by Saul Leiter pic.twitter.com/IkT3D3iiTb

— History Lovers Club (@historylvrsclub) February 9, 2018

the current list, feb2018

Tonight I've pulled myself away from other things long enough to realize again I've put this off too many times. There's too much to list and not enough explanation of absence. But there's a slew of new books started and lines of notes made and a few more things coming into focus, so some account of those need to be shown.

An older, slim edition on Moorish Spain (1992) by Richard Fletcher seems already to reaffirm what I learned twenty years ago but at least acts as a refresher. It will shed some light on some contexts for a few more sources.

The dynamic expansionist press from the Ottoman Turks in the east, as depicted in The Histories, and sprung again from the fifteenth century hand of Laonikos Chalkokondyles, was recently published with a companion volume, A New Herodotus (2014), by The Dumbarton Oaks trustees at Harvard. This preparatory unrolling here by our editor and translator, Anthony Kaldellis, for the Chalkokondyles text is especially necessary because of who Chalkokondyles may have been and what he was attempting to do.

Laonikos Chalkokondyles says he was born an Athenian in the years marking the great many series of defeats by the overwhelming Ottoman forces mid-century . His own noteworthy family (if his biographer Kyriacus - Cyriac of Ancona - can be believed) was exiled from that famed city when little Laonikos was perhaps five or six. Yet with his familial connections he went to school and studied in Mistra under the Greek philosopher western tradition remembers as Plethon. There, Laonikos learned a form of Greek neoplatonism and Latin, Italian, and ancient Greek, and likely, Turkish as well.

Kaldellis calls him 'New Herodotus' because his work so carefully uses templates of both Herodotus and Thucydides (pagan Greeks though they were) in telling his story of his times. This was the end of the Greek control of what he called Byzantion, then known widely to Christians as Constantinople and for our times, Istanbul. We know of him now because Anthony Kaldellis and the Dumbarton Oaks have published a text and translation of Chalkokondyles' careful, if unfinished work, and also have produced this fine, yet carefully measured draught of Anthony Kaldellis. There is much untangled here.

Another strange yet penetrating and compelling look from the fifteenth century comes to us as autocrats today get around to tell us what they want now that they have all the money. In a format now considered classic but which, when it was produced was considered novel, is Aurelio Brandolini's Republics and Kingdoms Compared, also by a Harvard Press subsidiary (2009). Another dialogue of explication for 'edification', this rare thing was produced only twice. Once in dedication to Lorenzo de Medici 1492/4 and again for his son (the future Pope Leo X) some time in the following decade. The subject matter avoids, and yet, neatly dovetails that of Nicolo Machiavelli's two most famous works, The Prince, and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. And precedes them by at least two decades. I look forward to it with anticipation.

Still, it is nothing less than mesmerizing how Natalie Zemon Davis' modern day Trickster Travels (2006) looks at the many reflections and activities around the various depictions then of Africa and Europe. These studies again will be prelude to other research.

The biographies of Erasmus and Luther continue with both their arcs at the cusp or in the ascendant swing in their respective lives. At some point I would also like to look at the long life of Ximenes de Cisneros to get a greater sense of his take and influence on Christian ecclesia. Also will follow some English perspective with near-contemporary lives of Thomas More and Cardinal Wolsey. A biography of someone with the stature of John Colet also needs investigating.

Stories of exploration and mercantile quests, as in Hugh Thomas' Rivers of Gold, or, the Letters of Hernan Cortes will reveal motivations and methods, changing practices with both hasty and planned out solutions. In England, the story continues there with The Early Tudors, as well as German Histories In the Age of Reformation as time allows.

Leaders in the book trade in Venice, like Manutius, will be returned to, as its historians like Bembo and Sanudo. Exiles on parade in Florence have much to talk about via Francesco Filelfo, and, more correspondence from Italy, this time from Lorenzo Valla who connects many names and stories. Anecdotes of Poggio Bracciolini will continue. Girolamo Savonarola still makes his case. He will come to an end with that and Florence will see to it.

Another title new to me looks at Convent Chronicles noting changing norms among Conventuals in German lands. And much more. So if it looks like I've done little with the blog it's because I've been busy elsewhere.

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.

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

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.

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.

And that's it. By a vote of 51-49, taken at nearly 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate has just voted to gut the U.S. tax code, with implications for every American.
A bunch of old white men are applauding as democracy dies in the darkness. pic.twitter.com/UAPFzQyTNg

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 2, 2017

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.

This tax bill demonstrates,once again, the total collapse of all and any rigor around the policy making process in the GOP congress. It is built on a foundation of lies. It adds more than a trillion to the debt. No real conservative should vote for this

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) December 1, 2017

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

Two words explain why this terrible tax bill will pass: Citizens United. GOP cares more about donors than voters https://t.co/JrtzpBKKdB

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) December 2, 2017

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.

I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote. One page literally has hand scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better. pic.twitter.com/q6lTpXoXS0

— Senator Jon Tester (@SenatorTester) December 2, 2017

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%.

The best part of this farce will be when the new Fed chair raises rates next year to totally nullify whatever (small) growth effect there might have been.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 2, 2017

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.

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.
_________________________________________-
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

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.
__________________________________
notes and quotes from Roper, Lyndal: Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet; Random House, NY, 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.

________________________________
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

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.

CIA corrects director: We haven't concluded that Russian interference had no impact on election result https://t.co/s6uJ2BzaI3 pic.twitter.com/5ZHehezx4c

— The Hill (@thehill) October 19, 2017

This Senator decided he'd had enough.

Arizona's Jeff Flake announces he will not seek re-election to U.S. Senate https://t.co/VIgrLoKGix via @USATODAY

— Anabelle 🇺🇸 (@Tahoesquaw1) October 24, 2017

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.

Congresswoman Wilson’s Office Overwhelmed By Lynching Threats After Trump’s Repeated Attacks https://t.co/7wP7itNbTx

— Neal Carter (@nealcarter) October 22, 2017

Some of Congress managed to make it easier for some businesses to exploit consumers more easily.

Folks who attacked Hillary for being "in the pocket of the globalist banks" for giving a talk at Goldman Sachs seem less interested in this. https://t.co/Iw0M0d0QsY

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) October 25, 2017

But surely, they wouldn't let this happen, would they?

The plan aimed to overthrow Qatar emir https://t.co/UfJTJyQ5Ir

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 21, 2017

See them rise and fall.

The Mechanics of History by Yoann Bourgeois. Performed at the Pantheon (via @fguzfguz) pic.twitter.com/dXgQ5eCOhC

— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) October 22, 2017 

Then this happened on Monday opening the gates of speculation with some specific bits of clarity.

“The United States is investigating…potential collusion…by American citizens” -from newly unsealed Distrcit Court opinion. pic.twitter.com/RXCGy3FRST

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) October 30, 2017

Even going at them with the clarity of footnotes.

Wow. Read this section of the Papadopoulos charge, including the footnote. Someone “low level” has to visit Russia as to not send a signal. pic.twitter.com/Qz2c1zNQ6Y

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) October 30, 2017

In the UK, one Aaron Banks was exposed causing all manner of trouble with the people most clinging to power there.

And here's @Arron_banks - man who founded @LeaveEUOfficial & bankrolled Brexit. March, 2017: "We made no secret of working with Cambridge".. pic.twitter.com/3oOYpp4M21

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) May 14, 2017

________________________________________

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.

At least 8 dead, numerous injuries: What we know about the truck attack in Manhattan https://t.co/3cxLC5CCSd

— 🗽Jeffrey Levin 🗽 (@jilevin) November 1, 2017

________________________________________

A way things used to be.

Crimea in the middle of the 15th century. https://t.co/NiIODPGnMZ pic.twitter.com/9lqFNJywjA

— Paul Banks (@PaulBanks84) October 19, 2017

Time lapse of a funeral procession for the late King of Thailand.

Time lapse footage charts the lavish funeral procession in Bangkok, as thousands pay tribute to Thailand's late king https://t.co/QwHXWqjX0c pic.twitter.com/S24W8jhwOl

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 27, 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'.
___________________________________
___________________________________

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.
___________________________________
Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006