Friday, July 4, 2014
Pope Leo X Sends Out Bull To Counter Martin Luther: June 15, 1520
While looking at a bit of the papal bull called Exsurge Domini, I noticed a pro-Luther blog fiercely and dismissively refuting some of that bull's basic ideas. Delightfully surprised and impressed with the volume of posts and detailed nature of topics there, it left me with much to wonder about with current Luther apologists. Surprised that there is so much scriptural exegesis as there is, and from a Luther-defending position, and impressed by the volume of this over years, in the current era, my wonder kept increasing. I did find much that seemed untenable, but everyone is entitled to an opinion. I'll return to that blog as I dive into the history of the Reformation. This is the page that blog offers as a resource for Luther's writings. Lots to see out there in the internet and the world of faith.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
The German Clergy: Mobility Had Benefits
Every town and village in German lands had or needed a priest. So did all the places in between that extended through the rural countryside. At least to administer the sacraments, say Mass, baptize and christen babies, to preach, bury the dead and keep records. For this they were paid a tithe, they took in a collection. But, Thomas A Brady Jr tells us, most of these priests for small towns were individually poor. Overseeing these necessary rites for every Christian soul wasn't enough to live on, unless they could be done at several places. To improve one's lot in the priesthood a young man had often better chances in the cities.
There, or at university, he might learn that there were many cities of men, but, as in St Augustine's construction, only one city of God. The job of the clergy, Brady reminds us, was to tend the channels or, the means for grace, in connecting these two cities. [p. 49] If the city of God was perfect, then the city of men was far from that and thus needed more channels, more means for connection and communication between the two.
The organization of the church was widespread, far-reaching, ancient and well understood, both in theory and in practice. The sins of man were also understood but could be managed and held back, in theory, by enough servants, at all levels in the hierarchy, topped by the bishops, and extending across German lands and all the way to Rome. Brady reminds as well that there was also the parallel structure of the many orders, the abbeys, convents, monasteries, nunneries, etc. which also had their own structures, priorities and means.
These efforts required benefices to operate. A benefice could be anything and come from anywhere. But they were usually delivered promises. A lord, widow or bishop might give a benefice of land, a castle, a vineyard, or a wine press. The benefit might be remitted by an annual clutch of chickens or sheep, pigs, cattle, or a shipment of parchment. An abbey or order might agree to provide the product of their work to a church or parish in order to maintain their end of a benefice that they had received in days gone by. In short, an agreement had been struck, services were rendered - the delivering of food or fruit or garlands for a holy festival, the ill or maimed getting tended to, sermons being preached - and all in the name of the mercy of God.
In the period 1450 to 1520, Brady tells us that, in the diocese of Strasbourg, 400 of 529 parish priests came from somewhere else. Most were Swabians and Bavarians, with different dialects and 'foreign ways'. They came to this growing city, he suggests, because that is where new benefices could be found. But this example illustrates the trend of new priests making their way in the growing cities. [p.51]
A priest in the fifteenth century here did not even need to remain celibate. A papal dispensation could grant exemption for their sons entering priesthood since officially they were born out of wedlock. This relatively new admission by the church was born from necessity in order to prevent and reduce scandal. But it was also helpful in educating upcoming clergy. Those clergy that had education saw the value in it and if they had children would want to extend that to the next generation, whether legitimately born or not. This change in social mores would extend throughout Protestantism and, in time, many eventually would insist that clergy be married, in order to ensure the education of their children.
There were also many 'regular' clergy assigned to some abbey or monastery, one of the conventual or observant orders or, one of the other mendicant, wandering or beguine orders. More than thirty different orders in German lands, along with dozens or hundreds of much smaller 'collegiate chapters', Brady says. A century after the black plague had struck and, with its deprivations and hardships still in present memory, the impulse to reform lax conventuals gained earnest adherents.
A great example that Brady mentions is Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516). Abbot at Sponheim by 1483, "... he labored to turn a poor, lax, and physically ruinous abbey into an important center of learning." [p.54]
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There, or at university, he might learn that there were many cities of men, but, as in St Augustine's construction, only one city of God. The job of the clergy, Brady reminds us, was to tend the channels or, the means for grace, in connecting these two cities. [p. 49] If the city of God was perfect, then the city of men was far from that and thus needed more channels, more means for connection and communication between the two.
The organization of the church was widespread, far-reaching, ancient and well understood, both in theory and in practice. The sins of man were also understood but could be managed and held back, in theory, by enough servants, at all levels in the hierarchy, topped by the bishops, and extending across German lands and all the way to Rome. Brady reminds as well that there was also the parallel structure of the many orders, the abbeys, convents, monasteries, nunneries, etc. which also had their own structures, priorities and means.
These efforts required benefices to operate. A benefice could be anything and come from anywhere. But they were usually delivered promises. A lord, widow or bishop might give a benefice of land, a castle, a vineyard, or a wine press. The benefit might be remitted by an annual clutch of chickens or sheep, pigs, cattle, or a shipment of parchment. An abbey or order might agree to provide the product of their work to a church or parish in order to maintain their end of a benefice that they had received in days gone by. In short, an agreement had been struck, services were rendered - the delivering of food or fruit or garlands for a holy festival, the ill or maimed getting tended to, sermons being preached - and all in the name of the mercy of God.
In the period 1450 to 1520, Brady tells us that, in the diocese of Strasbourg, 400 of 529 parish priests came from somewhere else. Most were Swabians and Bavarians, with different dialects and 'foreign ways'. They came to this growing city, he suggests, because that is where new benefices could be found. But this example illustrates the trend of new priests making their way in the growing cities. [p.51]
A priest in the fifteenth century here did not even need to remain celibate. A papal dispensation could grant exemption for their sons entering priesthood since officially they were born out of wedlock. This relatively new admission by the church was born from necessity in order to prevent and reduce scandal. But it was also helpful in educating upcoming clergy. Those clergy that had education saw the value in it and if they had children would want to extend that to the next generation, whether legitimately born or not. This change in social mores would extend throughout Protestantism and, in time, many eventually would insist that clergy be married, in order to ensure the education of their children.
There were also many 'regular' clergy assigned to some abbey or monastery, one of the conventual or observant orders or, one of the other mendicant, wandering or beguine orders. More than thirty different orders in German lands, along with dozens or hundreds of much smaller 'collegiate chapters', Brady says. A century after the black plague had struck and, with its deprivations and hardships still in present memory, the impulse to reform lax conventuals gained earnest adherents.
"... the old monastic orders, particularly the Cictercians and Carthusians, remained relatively strict, while others were generally lax, notably the many foundations of canonesses who lived under versions of the Augustinian or Benedictine rule but sometimes kept private servants and property... The struggles to return to the rules were especially pronounced among the mendicants, whose programs went under the name of "Observance,"... ." [p. 53]The Benedictines did well too. But they led many of the reforms from within. In 1446 the Council of Basel gave approval for six Benedictine abbeys, for example, who chose to follow a stricter life. This spread the practice widely, as was the notion of reform. But reform is popular where corruption is perceived. These regular clergies would get the worst of the criticism until Savonarola.
A great example that Brady mentions is Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516). Abbot at Sponheim by 1483, "... he labored to turn a poor, lax, and physically ruinous abbey into an important center of learning." [p.54]
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
Monday, June 30, 2014
Francesco Guicciardini: House of Anjou in Naples: Joanna I
Francesco Guicciardini does give some space in his narration to the prior history of Naples, the claims on it by the French and, eventually, a few of the royal advisor's names of those working with and around the young French King Charles VIII in the early 1490's. Looking to show the many possible motivations for the French invasion of Italy in 1494, Guicciardini gives a sweeping but still informative view of the previous history of French claims and their interests on the ancient city.
This look back into the farther past shows a great deal about this Italian author, his choices, his assumptions, but he does this with only spare comments, and only now and then. The broad lines of what Guicciardini tells us in his narration comes down to us intact, and informed, with 220 years summed up clearly in just a few pages. Still the biases, as we may see them, from Guicciardini, nearly leap off the page.
Charles of Anjou first took and then was granted control of Naples, much of south Italy and Sicily in 1262 by his brother, French King Louis IX (St Louis) and the pope. This period was also fraught with much war and intrigue all over Europe, perhaps most spectacularly culminating in the Sicilian Vespers. This subject is probably best told in English in the book by that title, The Sicilian Vespers, by Steven Runciman.
The title of investiture granted to those ruling these lands became part of the legacy kept within the House of Anjou. Charles I of Anjou and Naples gave the title to his son, Charles II. When he died he gave it to his son Roberto, who had a son, Charles, called duke of Calabria. But this Charles died, and when Roberto grew old, he willed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as these lands were then called, to his granddaughter, Joanna.
Queen Joanna ruled Naples for nearly forty years, was Countess of Provence, called princess of Achaea, Jerusalem and Sicily, and supported the French papacy at Avignon. At the age of seven in 1333, she was named Duchess of Calabria, and betrothed the next year, to her cousin Andrew who was also in the Hungarian line of House of Anjou. She may have loved him, but he didn't last long. Kept out of King Robert's will, he was set upon by different forces until he fell. Many years after his death and other captains, and husbands, having come and gone over the years, it was forces driven by a claim by the Hungarians who finally captured her and her husband, Otto. She had been careful, she had sought support and gained it from the French Kings of her time, John II and in turn Charles V, of the Valois line.
The wiki for Charles of Durrazzo, the man who would replace her, by act of pope Urban VI, has the effrontery to say that she was obsessed with him 'throughout her life'. But she had spent nearly the whole time in power - nearly fifty years - defending her lands in south Italy from the popes in Rome. A glowing picture of her court and reputation for advancing public health and granting benefices, her great personal piety and associations with notable contemporary mystics and saints like Catherine of Siena is to be found on wikipedia today. She was also Queen of Naples at the time that the bubonic plague struck Italy.
Guicciardini, has a very different view of this heir and her reign. He admits her lineage leading in a direct line back to the original Charles of Anjou and Naples, but says as little as possible about her.
In quick succession after Charles Durazzo - after Louis III, the son of Louis (II) of Anjou mentioned above - came the heirs of Charles Durazzo, both Ladislav and Joanna, in turn. These became sovereign in Naples, carrying the familial and Angevin (House of Anjou) line into the fifteenth century. When Joanna II died in 1435, the line died with her as she had no children. It was this Joanna who had asked to procure Assistance from Alfonso V of Aragon which afterward, began the claims by that house on the Kingdom of Naples. She had left Naples to Rene of Anjou - the brother to Louis III - and it was Rene and Alfonso of Aragon who would spend the next decade fighting over the city's legacy. This Joanna is buried at Santa Annunziata, in Naples.
Guicciardini had little but harsh words for her as well. Rene of Anjou would bestow the unclaimed title of Naples to his son Charles, and he, to the French King Louis XI.
Quotes from The History of Italy, translated and printed by 1763 into English and found online at archive.org.
This look back into the farther past shows a great deal about this Italian author, his choices, his assumptions, but he does this with only spare comments, and only now and then. The broad lines of what Guicciardini tells us in his narration comes down to us intact, and informed, with 220 years summed up clearly in just a few pages. Still the biases, as we may see them, from Guicciardini, nearly leap off the page.
Charles of Anjou first took and then was granted control of Naples, much of south Italy and Sicily in 1262 by his brother, French King Louis IX (St Louis) and the pope. This period was also fraught with much war and intrigue all over Europe, perhaps most spectacularly culminating in the Sicilian Vespers. This subject is probably best told in English in the book by that title, The Sicilian Vespers, by Steven Runciman.
The title of investiture granted to those ruling these lands became part of the legacy kept within the House of Anjou. Charles I of Anjou and Naples gave the title to his son, Charles II. When he died he gave it to his son Roberto, who had a son, Charles, called duke of Calabria. But this Charles died, and when Roberto grew old, he willed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as these lands were then called, to his granddaughter, Joanna.
Queen Joanna ruled Naples for nearly forty years, was Countess of Provence, called princess of Achaea, Jerusalem and Sicily, and supported the French papacy at Avignon. At the age of seven in 1333, she was named Duchess of Calabria, and betrothed the next year, to her cousin Andrew who was also in the Hungarian line of House of Anjou. She may have loved him, but he didn't last long. Kept out of King Robert's will, he was set upon by different forces until he fell. Many years after his death and other captains, and husbands, having come and gone over the years, it was forces driven by a claim by the Hungarians who finally captured her and her husband, Otto. She had been careful, she had sought support and gained it from the French Kings of her time, John II and in turn Charles V, of the Valois line.
The wiki for Charles of Durrazzo, the man who would replace her, by act of pope Urban VI, has the effrontery to say that she was obsessed with him 'throughout her life'. But she had spent nearly the whole time in power - nearly fifty years - defending her lands in south Italy from the popes in Rome. A glowing picture of her court and reputation for advancing public health and granting benefices, her great personal piety and associations with notable contemporary mystics and saints like Catherine of Siena is to be found on wikipedia today. She was also Queen of Naples at the time that the bubonic plague struck Italy.
Guicciardini, has a very different view of this heir and her reign. He admits her lineage leading in a direct line back to the original Charles of Anjou and Naples, but says as little as possible about her.
"Giovanna for her Weakne∫se, and Di∫∫olute Cour∫e of Life, was very much de∫pi∫ed, and the de∫cendants of Charles the Fir∫t by Charles the Second (who left ∫everal children) endeavoured to dethrone her. The Queen, to procure A∫∫i∫tance, adopted for her Son Lewis Duke of Anjou brother to that King Charles, whom the French thought proper to di∫tingui∫h by the name Sage...". [book i, p. 36]Guicciardini gives neither source nor explanation for his claim here of 'Weakness', or a 'Dissolute Course of Life ' in this Joanna. Further he puts the actions for and against her coming from her own family as she was also descended from both Charles I and Charles II, like her cousins that Guicciardini lists by name only in a different context: Charles Durazzo. This Lewis above is that second Louis Duke of Anjou that came and tried to take Naples from Charles Durazzo after he ordered Joanna's assassination in 1382. This Charles Durazzo, once an ambassador in the wars between Venice and Croatia, was second cousin to Joanna in the same Anjou line from Charles II. He was the man picked by pope Urban VI to rule in Naples. And so he would remain, for a time. Joanna's body was brought back to Naples, shown in public and then thrown into a deep well at Santa Chiara Church, in Naples.
In quick succession after Charles Durazzo - after Louis III, the son of Louis (II) of Anjou mentioned above - came the heirs of Charles Durazzo, both Ladislav and Joanna, in turn. These became sovereign in Naples, carrying the familial and Angevin (House of Anjou) line into the fifteenth century. When Joanna II died in 1435, the line died with her as she had no children. It was this Joanna who had asked to procure Assistance from Alfonso V of Aragon which afterward, began the claims by that house on the Kingdom of Naples. She had left Naples to Rene of Anjou - the brother to Louis III - and it was Rene and Alfonso of Aragon who would spend the next decade fighting over the city's legacy. This Joanna is buried at Santa Annunziata, in Naples.
Guicciardini had little but harsh words for her as well. Rene of Anjou would bestow the unclaimed title of Naples to his son Charles, and he, to the French King Louis XI.
Quotes from The History of Italy, translated and printed by 1763 into English and found online at archive.org.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
some news and opinion later june 2014
Big news from the US Supreme Court ruling on privacy and the need for a warrant to search a cellphone today.
The advance of ISIS in Iraq has continued . So has the talk in Washington and in the US media about Iraq and Syria. There was news of another huge bomb in Beirut. Dexter Filkins, now of The New Yorker was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today giving a view on the state of things there. A long hour. In addition, a strong case against 'action' and for more humanitarian aid has been put forward by Andrew Bacevich, and in a longer interview with Billl Moyers.
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Human rights advocate Salwa Bugaighis was killed in Libya.
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These men were sentenced to seven years, and one to a ten year term in an Egyptian prison for being journalists.
The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals just released a document listing the justifications, in legal terms, that were used to kill Americans overseas with drones.
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Here's looking at some of the relative US economies in a great series of graphs with the NY Times.
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Was Goldman Sachs implicated in mortgage security failure in 2008?
The 2014 World Cup in Brasil has been threatening to suck the oxygen out of rooms all over the world for a couple weeks now. Much time expended, many views expressed both revolving around the actual games and the people and countries involved, even the stadiums across the country accomodating the games. A nice view on local Brasilians who cheer for other futbol teams, because their ancestors immigrated from Japan, Italy was on npr. 4 min audio
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Horace Silver died a week ago. This may be his most well known song.
MT: US High Court Says Police Need A Warrant For Most Cellphone Searches http://t.co/BGkA4UEWOe :Via @nprnews:
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) June 25, 2014
___________________________________________________The advance of ISIS in Iraq has continued . So has the talk in Washington and in the US media about Iraq and Syria. There was news of another huge bomb in Beirut. Dexter Filkins, now of The New Yorker was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today giving a view on the state of things there. A long hour. In addition, a strong case against 'action' and for more humanitarian aid has been put forward by Andrew Bacevich, and in a longer interview with Billl Moyers.
___________________________________________________
Human rights advocate Salwa Bugaighis was killed in Libya.
___________________________________________________
These men were sentenced to seven years, and one to a ten year term in an Egyptian prison for being journalists.
Journalists in cages. http://t.co/jbZi7hTceH via @mashable & @GettyImages pic.twitter.com/a541xg9Jit
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) June 23, 2014
___________________________________________________The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals just released a document listing the justifications, in legal terms, that were used to kill Americans overseas with drones.
Court releases secret memo providing legal justification for using drones to kill Americans: http://t.co/QSA7PCo7la pic.twitter.com/IN7hMFy6pX
— Cassandra (@CassandraRules) June 23, 2014
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Here's looking at some of the relative US economies in a great series of graphs with the NY Times.
___________________________________________________
Was Goldman Sachs implicated in mortgage security failure in 2008?
Goldman Sachs Involved in Fraudulent Activities in Toxic Mortgage-backed Securities http://t.co/ODn3Ki05dS via @grtvnews
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) June 24, 2014
____________________________________________________The 2014 World Cup in Brasil has been threatening to suck the oxygen out of rooms all over the world for a couple weeks now. Much time expended, many views expressed both revolving around the actual games and the people and countries involved, even the stadiums across the country accomodating the games. A nice view on local Brasilians who cheer for other futbol teams, because their ancestors immigrated from Japan, Italy was on npr. 4 min audio
____________________________________________________
Horace Silver died a week ago. This may be his most well known song.
Horace Silver 5tet - Song For My Father [1968]: http://t.co/lAxtog1bh4 via @YouTube
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) June 19, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Making the Case For Cortes In Spain; Rebellion In New Spain: May-June 1520
The months of both May and June were fraught with much tumult in Mexico in 1520. Cortes in a stunning reversal of fortunes, had the newly arrived Panfilo de Narvaev captured, and his newly arrived army put to work. He and his army, had been sent by Diego Velazquez, governor of Cuba in order to capture Cortes and put a stop to his efforts. There was the massacre (and the Aztec version of the massacre) of locals by Spanish forces led by Pedro de Alvarado in the great city during a special festivity of Toxcatl, perhaps as early as May 20. The Aztecs said that massacre was started by the Spanish lust for gold. By the end of this month, Cortes returned to the capital but was too late and, today, it is thought, that Moctezuma saw his end (June 30) after a series of uprisings. It is Diaz that says that the great king was stoned to death by his own people.
The previous year, Cortes had sent a letter and gold and the representatives, Montejo and Puertocarrero, to petition the king in Spain. Along the way they stopped in Cuba, but then made it to Seville in November, 1519. But the king was in Barcelona, raising money for his trip to Germany. These representatives unloaded the treasure to the authorities and then went to Barcelona in January, but the king had left for Burgos. Meanwhile the treasure they had brought back - the gifts of Moctezuma - was held in Seville and had made quite a stir. It was bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca a former conquistador with Columbus and fierce advocate for the governor of Cuba who held some of this treasure. That became a scandal and caused a distance between bishop Fonseca and the Flemish advisers then currently favored around Carlos V.
Montejo and Puertocarrero did gain their audience by March of 1520 with the king, near Valladolid. He was intrigued but listened to Bishop Fonseca and his spokesman Gonzalo de Guzman as well. They characterized Cortes and these men as rebels, usurpers, effectively stealing from under the authority of Governor Velazquez. King Carlos agreed to another audience and this time some of the treasure arrived from Seville. Though some of it as the Cortes partisans avowed, was not brought and used this fact as leverage in their argument against the partisans of bishop Fonseca. The king would not make a definitive claim as for Cortes or the scandal about the treasure, but would not call Cortes a rebel. Then King Carlos sailed off to be crowned emperor Charles V in Germany.
This was good news for the Corets faction. Cortes had not offended the king, and the faction of Velazquez and bishop Fonseca had not shut out their cause. For Fonseca things were not so good. Uprisings by the common people in Burgos, and all over Spain, required his attention. He and governor Velazquez would have to pin their hopes, disappointingly on Narvaez. Panfilo de Narvaez would spend the next couple years imprisoned at Veracruz. It must have seemed a cruel irony to Cortes and his faction, having captured and secured Narvaez only to return to Tenochtitlan and find such tumult in the city. Things had fallen to such a pitch that Cortes and his remaining men were compelled to flee the great city the night Moctezuma was killed.
This draws together and ends the various threads of the story here of the trek Cortes and his men took into the interior of Mexico. There will be occasional looks at the conflict that lasted for the next thirteen months in New Spain, further indications of the will of King Carlos, the effects on the governor in Cuba as well as the career of bishop Fonseca of Burgos and the life of the woman, Malintzin, called Doña Marina.
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culled from pp xxiv-xxvi in "Cortes, Velazquez and Charles V", the introductory essay by JH Elliott (1971), found in Hernán Cortés: Letters From Mexico, translated, edited and with a new intro by Anthony Pagden, as a Yale Nota Bene book, Yale University Press, USA 2001
The previous year, Cortes had sent a letter and gold and the representatives, Montejo and Puertocarrero, to petition the king in Spain. Along the way they stopped in Cuba, but then made it to Seville in November, 1519. But the king was in Barcelona, raising money for his trip to Germany. These representatives unloaded the treasure to the authorities and then went to Barcelona in January, but the king had left for Burgos. Meanwhile the treasure they had brought back - the gifts of Moctezuma - was held in Seville and had made quite a stir. It was bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca a former conquistador with Columbus and fierce advocate for the governor of Cuba who held some of this treasure. That became a scandal and caused a distance between bishop Fonseca and the Flemish advisers then currently favored around Carlos V.
Montejo and Puertocarrero did gain their audience by March of 1520 with the king, near Valladolid. He was intrigued but listened to Bishop Fonseca and his spokesman Gonzalo de Guzman as well. They characterized Cortes and these men as rebels, usurpers, effectively stealing from under the authority of Governor Velazquez. King Carlos agreed to another audience and this time some of the treasure arrived from Seville. Though some of it as the Cortes partisans avowed, was not brought and used this fact as leverage in their argument against the partisans of bishop Fonseca. The king would not make a definitive claim as for Cortes or the scandal about the treasure, but would not call Cortes a rebel. Then King Carlos sailed off to be crowned emperor Charles V in Germany.
This was good news for the Corets faction. Cortes had not offended the king, and the faction of Velazquez and bishop Fonseca had not shut out their cause. For Fonseca things were not so good. Uprisings by the common people in Burgos, and all over Spain, required his attention. He and governor Velazquez would have to pin their hopes, disappointingly on Narvaez. Panfilo de Narvaez would spend the next couple years imprisoned at Veracruz. It must have seemed a cruel irony to Cortes and his faction, having captured and secured Narvaez only to return to Tenochtitlan and find such tumult in the city. Things had fallen to such a pitch that Cortes and his remaining men were compelled to flee the great city the night Moctezuma was killed.
This draws together and ends the various threads of the story here of the trek Cortes and his men took into the interior of Mexico. There will be occasional looks at the conflict that lasted for the next thirteen months in New Spain, further indications of the will of King Carlos, the effects on the governor in Cuba as well as the career of bishop Fonseca of Burgos and the life of the woman, Malintzin, called Doña Marina.
_________________________________________________
culled from pp xxiv-xxvi in "Cortes, Velazquez and Charles V", the introductory essay by JH Elliott (1971), found in Hernán Cortés: Letters From Mexico, translated, edited and with a new intro by Anthony Pagden, as a Yale Nota Bene book, Yale University Press, USA 2001
Monday, June 16, 2014
On False Opinions: Niccolo Machiavelli, Discoursi ii, 22
In the second book (of three) of The Discourses (in English) the overall scope is that of the 'expansion' of Rome. Like the first, Machiavelli picks topics from this period of the early Republican period but as he says, focuses on how Rome increased in size and rule. In his preface to this second book he furthers his case on the lessons of history.
If that weren't enough, Machiavelli furthers the case against false opinions in chapter 22 of this second book of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy's History of Rome. After the header quoted here for ch 22, he follows with a couple of examples comparing a Roman situation with an Italian one in the early 1500's. It applies in ways to situations today, as well.
* Like the time, he says of his own times, when Francis I, king of France thought he would be able to retake Milan, then guarded by the Swiss.
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quotes and pagination in Niccolo Machiavelli The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy Edited by Bernard Crick, translated by Leslie J Walker, thrird revision by Brian Richardson, Penguin Books, London, 1970, 2003
"Men always, but not always with good reason, praise bygone days and criticize the present, and so partial are they to the past that they not only admire past ages the knowledge of which has come down to them in written records, but also, when they grow old, what they remember having seen in their youth. And when this view is wrong, as it usually is, there are, I am convinced, various causes to which the mistake may be due.
The first ... is [that] the whole truth about olden times is not grasped, since what redounds to their discredit is often passed over in silence, whereas what is likely to make them appear glorious is pompously recounted in all its details." [p. 265]Another reason he says is that men have no reason to be afraid of, or envious of, the past. Men hate things due to fear or envy, but the past lacks the incentive to frighten or make men jealous.
If that weren't enough, Machiavelli furthers the case against false opinions in chapter 22 of this second book of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy's History of Rome. After the header quoted here for ch 22, he follows with a couple of examples comparing a Roman situation with an Italian one in the early 1500's. It applies in ways to situations today, as well.
"How frequently men form false opinions has been observed and is still observed by those who happen to be witnesses of their decisions, the which, unless made by men of first-class ability, are very often the reverse of being sound. And because in corrupt republics, especially [*] in untroubled times, men of first-class ability are ousted by the envy and ambitious scheming of others, men fall back on what by a common error is judged to be good, or else by those who are seeking popularity rather than the common good. Such mistakes are discovered afterwards when things go wrong, and recourse is then had of necessity to those who in peaceful times had been, as it were, forgotten.... There sometimes occur also events about which men who have had no great experience of affairs, are easily mistaken, since such happenings have plausible features which make men believe that the outcome in such a case will be what they have persuaded themselves it will be." [p. 344]
* Like the time, he says of his own times, when Francis I, king of France thought he would be able to retake Milan, then guarded by the Swiss.
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quotes and pagination in Niccolo Machiavelli The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy Edited by Bernard Crick, translated by Leslie J Walker, thrird revision by Brian Richardson, Penguin Books, London, 1970, 2003
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Position, Population and Work In The Low Countries, from "The Dutch Republic"
In order to give example for the rigorous organization found in that modern established work covering Dutch history of Jonathan I Israel (and for Oxford), a few brief extracts will suffice. Hitting the main points in a systematic way, the author takes us on a broad view of a place and a time before the great changes. Literally, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, the ideas are broached, listed, explored and then specific details are provided to illustrate the points made. Structured, systematic exposition can be a trusted introduction in many topics, as long as it is remembered there will always be counter-examples and other aspects that are inevitably left out, usually for space considerations or the sake of clarity.
The text is plain, straighforward, though very broad in scope.This example is taken from the First Part, "The Making of the Republic, 1477-1588", and the sixth chapter is entitled, "Society Before the Revolt". Each section is given its own heading. This one is "The Land, Rural Society, and Agriculture". In these, the first paragraph will be quoted, followed by the first two sentences of the second paragraph, then the first sentence or two of each subsequent paragraph. By itself these 'headers' quoted below, give a solid overview (along with the following section 'Urbanization' which isn't covered here), which led me to this summation the other day. This is how chapter six starts.
...
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pp. 106-12. in Jonathan I Israel; Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, & Fall: 1477 - 1806 : Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998
The text is plain, straighforward, though very broad in scope.This example is taken from the First Part, "The Making of the Republic, 1477-1588", and the sixth chapter is entitled, "Society Before the Revolt". Each section is given its own heading. This one is "The Land, Rural Society, and Agriculture". In these, the first paragraph will be quoted, followed by the first two sentences of the second paragraph, then the first sentence or two of each subsequent paragraph. By itself these 'headers' quoted below, give a solid overview (along with the following section 'Urbanization' which isn't covered here), which led me to this summation the other day. This is how chapter six starts.
"A broad tendency developed, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards, throughout the Low Countries towards freeing the peasantry from feudal ties and obligations. Land reclamation, and colonization of new areas, in Flanders and Brabant, as well as north of the rivers, together with the high level of urbanization, led the nobility and Church to offer attractive terms, and free status, in order to coax peasant farmers to work newly cultivated areas (and others to remain on older land) as well as counter the attraction of migration to newly colonized regions of Germany. Thus, at a faster rate than in France or England, it became usual, in the greater part of the Netherlands, north and south to lease lands out to peasant framers, free from seigneurial control, for plain money rents."
"While seigneurial ties dissolved in the south and centre, in the northernmost areas -- Friesland, West Friesland, Groningen -- feudal forms and institutions had never gained any hold. Consequently, by 1500, the larger part of the low Countries was a country in which most of the land was held in fee simple and the bulk of the peasantry was free." [pp. 106]...
"The whole Netherlands was thus a land of comparatively weak seigneurial control of the land, characterized, especially in the highly urbanized provinces, by a prevailing pattern of short-term leases of farms for money rents."...
"The Orange-Nassau dynasty owned a considerable territory in northern Brabant, and along the rivers, which was handsomely expanded by William the Silent's first marriage, in 1551, to Anne of Buren, heiress to the sovereign lordships of Buren, Leerdam, IJsselstein, and Cuyck.... But apart from this, [and a couple other examples]... there were scarcely any sizable blocks of land belonging to high nobles in the north."
"It is true that inland, in the sandy-soil, more wooded, regions ... one encountered a rural society which approximated more closely to what one found in most of western Europe. Here the pull of the village was stronger, and seigneurial influence greater. But ... research has emphasized, here too rural life was les static and self-contained than was once supposed." [p. 107; footnoting Bieleman, J., Boeren op het Drentse zand, 1600-1910 (Washington, 1987)]...
"Most noble land in the north belonged to a relatively large number of middling and lesser nobles and was fragmented into scattered and mostly small holdings."...
"A third of the land in Holland... was owned by town-dwellers." [p 108]
"Although generally, the buying and selling of land was fluid and free from legal restrictions, for reasons of prestige, tradition, and legal status, the nobility and Church treated land-ownership differently from independent farmers and town-dwellers, being more concerned with the social and seigneurial aspects and less willing to alienate their lands." [p. 109]...
"Outside Friesland and Groningen... noble status was legally defined and institutionalized."...
"The areas of greatest seigneurial influence were Gelderland, the outlying parts of Brabant, both ... north and south of the main Brabant towns, and in the French-speaking southernmost provinces, particularly east Hainault, Namur, and Luxembourg. The Church too was strongly represented in those areas as well...." [p. 110]...
"But by far the most striking feature of agriculture in Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, west Urecht, Friesland and Groningen -- the highly urbanized maritime seaboard -- was its sustained intensity, versatility, and higher crop yields than were to be found elsewhere in Europe. This was the only part of Europe which had, thus far, experienced a true 'agricultural revolution' and it was one which was already largely complete in Flanders and south Brabant by 1500."Here is footnoted 'The Problem of the "Agricultural Revolution" in Flanders and in Belgium: Myth or Reality': CV Vandenbroeke and W Vanderpijpen in H van der Wee E van Cauwenberghe (eds.), Productivity and Agricultural Innovation in the Low Countries (1250-1800) (Leuven, 1978).
...
"As the quantity of Baltic grain imported into the Low Countries increased -- and it rose by five times between 1500-1560 -- one might have expected arable farming, at least in the north, to contract, making way for more dairy output. Several dairy products, especially cheese, were valuable export items and there was indeed a considerable growth in production. Yet paradoxically the main shift, even in Friesland, was towards an extension of arable farming, stimulated above all by the growth of the cities and needs of industry in Flanders and Brabant." [p. 111]But the increase in agricultural production only partly explained the dramatic rise in population.
"A great many seamen and fishermen dwelt in villages rather than towns. The maritime area abounded also in bargemen, peat-diggers, and shipbuilding workers, as well as villagers employed in dike maintennance. In 1514 in south Holland, landless poor active mainly outside of agriculture already constituted a third of the rural population."Here is footnoted J De Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age 1500-1700 (New Haven, Conn., 1974).
"Dike drainage, and water regulation techniques in the low-lying zones markedly improved during the sixteenth century. A major factor here was the new windmills and the more systematic use of windmills for drainage." [p. 112]This statement of improvements is logically followed by a list of the number of great difficulties and failures in the period when floods burst the many dikes.
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pp. 106-12. in Jonathan I Israel; Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, & Fall: 1477 - 1806 : Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998
Thursday, June 12, 2014
news: early June 2014
Latest al-Qaeda inspired Sunni group ISIS has taken Mosul - where 500,000 have fled - and by Thursday it was widely reported advancing on Baghdad. Iraqi government has asked ofr help. Videos, maps and other articles from the NYT at the link.
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World map of sterotypes by Martin Vargic is hilarious, ignorant, and mostly incorrect, but a masterpiece for our times. The link to the full resolution allows close-ups. Here's just one:
The beginning of an overview on 2014 Kansas politics on All In w/ Chris hayes:
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The World Cup in Brazil starts today and Google has a neat page up, showing the many streets in many towns that are painted for the occasion. The games begin today with Brazil playing Croatia. But there is also this.
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Seriously funny Do's & Dont's, if you're in the US: Parody on TheDailyShow telling it like it is. 4 minute video link.
Iraq seems to be fast slipping out of government control http://t.co/npvUtsCIcA pic.twitter.com/qthnyJU9HM
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 12, 2014
UPDATE!!! In a rare move, Iraqi Shi'a leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called followers to take up arms to protect 'land, honor and holy places', due to the Sunni forces and ISIS taking places in northern Iraq. This happened the week before June 14, 2014, reported by marketwatch.________________________________________________________
World map of sterotypes by Martin Vargic is hilarious, ignorant, and mostly incorrect, but a masterpiece for our times. The link to the full resolution allows close-ups. Here's just one:
I want a print “@Slate: This map of possibly offensive world map of stereotypes is hilarious: http://t.co/3qqKVVtdxL pic.twitter.com/VcE7mKcQfs”
— Anna Masera (@annamasera) June 8, 2014
_______________________________________________________The beginning of an overview on 2014 Kansas politics on All In w/ Chris hayes:
First on a series on Kansas politics by the folks at All In w/ @chrislhayes http://t.co/KKzsZwkygj
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) June 12, 2014
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The World Cup in Brazil starts today and Google has a neat page up, showing the many streets in many towns that are painted for the occasion. The games begin today with Brazil playing Croatia. But there is also this.
“@NesterTweets: Protesto EM SÃO PAULO Contra a Copa! Será no Metrô Carrão, 10:00, dia 12/06! pic.twitter.com/B4vMpHEXL6”
— Victor Olivares (@Victorleaks) June 12, 2014
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Seriously funny Do's & Dont's, if you're in the US: Parody on TheDailyShow telling it like it is. 4 minute video link.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Columbus Tries To Stay Adrift: On Second Voyage, May-June 1494
Columbus was lost. He and his ships kept getting stuck in shallows through both May and June. The weather was unhelpful. The Admiral had been sick for over a week and when he recovered, they still did not know where they were, had not found any gold, and had to ask the locals where the best way lay, in order to leave.
On 19 May Columbus said he had been severely ill and had suffered eight sleepless nights. There were many islands. On 20 May he said they counted seventy-one and then many more toward sunset.
What was it like for the captain in these days? This quick description might capture much of the farntic sense of busy peril.
At last they made land and on Cuba in order to take on fresh water. Sailors were sent ashore as scouts and they encountered some locals, described as wearing white and, spectacularly, "All three were as white as ourselves." It's not clear if this refers to the pigment of their skin, or indeed, their clothing. But the Spaniards clothing by this time had to be something less than white, away at sea as long as they had been. But the locals they saw ran away before any further encounter could be made. [p. 177]
Ten leagues farther there were more locals who came out in canoes and offered water and food. Columbus ordered one be 'seized' after these victuals were 'paid for'. They questioned him (who the son says, was 'quite content with this') and he explained that Cuba was an island, and that the king of the western part spoke only to his people through signs. He also said there were many islands there and that the water would be shallow for a great distance.
This encounter may have happened on 10 June, as the son wrote. [p. 178] For these sorts of details we have to believe this information came from Columbus' own notes, as the son says they do, and which are now long since lost. There is no other authority.
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quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, The Penguin Group, London, 1969
On 19 May Columbus said he had been severely ill and had suffered eight sleepless nights. There were many islands. On 20 May he said they counted seventy-one and then many more toward sunset.
"These islands and shallows are very dangerous on account of their numbers, for they appear on all sides, but even more so because of the thick mist which rises every evening and muffles the eastern sky. This mist appears to threaten a heavy hailstorm and is accompanied by severe thunder and lightning, but when the moon rises it all vanishes, partially breaking up in rain and wind." [p. 175]This happened according to Columbus every night. His son agrees this was so when he toured the area in 1503, during the fourth voyage. On May 22, still on the south side of Cuba, they found Santa Marta, or Cayo Largo del Sur. This lay at the eastern end of what is now the Cannareos Archipelago which stretch eastward leading away from Isla de Juventad. There at what they called Santa Marta, they found a village but no inhabitants. They deduced that the locals ate fish and left.
What was it like for the captain in these days? This quick description might capture much of the farntic sense of busy peril.
"The Admiral was much exhausted by having to steer among all these islands and shallows, for no sooner did he make course for the west than he had to veer either north or south according to the disposition of the channels. Despite all his care and precautions in sounding the bottoms and keeping a look-out in the rigging to observe the depth, the ship very often ran aground, which was unavoidable since there were so many shoals everywhere." [p. 176]
At last they made land and on Cuba in order to take on fresh water. Sailors were sent ashore as scouts and they encountered some locals, described as wearing white and, spectacularly, "All three were as white as ourselves." It's not clear if this refers to the pigment of their skin, or indeed, their clothing. But the Spaniards clothing by this time had to be something less than white, away at sea as long as they had been. But the locals they saw ran away before any further encounter could be made. [p. 177]
Ten leagues farther there were more locals who came out in canoes and offered water and food. Columbus ordered one be 'seized' after these victuals were 'paid for'. They questioned him (who the son says, was 'quite content with this') and he explained that Cuba was an island, and that the king of the western part spoke only to his people through signs. He also said there were many islands there and that the water would be shallow for a great distance.
This encounter may have happened on 10 June, as the son wrote. [p. 178] For these sorts of details we have to believe this information came from Columbus' own notes, as the son says they do, and which are now long since lost. There is no other authority.
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quotes, pagination from: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, The Penguin Group, London, 1969
Monday, June 9, 2014
Urbanization In The Low Countries, c. 1500
One benefit of a great history book like Jonathan Israel's Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, & Fall: 1477 - 1806 is its deep organization. One can open to the Table of Contents, run a finger down the page and see just how the tale will proceed. Even more, the same reader can pick a topic, go to its start, and within a few lines, at the beginning of just a few paragraphs, begin to chart the course, the scope of the topic, if not its destination. Sometimes, as here, there are the copious tables, fantastic bibliographic info or other footnotes and apparati, all of which give testament to the prior scolarship that went into the work. The growth of these strategies in what is commonly called 'scholarship' today grew a lot through the 20th century. Centering on provenance of sources, referents themselves, and related materials, they reveal the many chains of communication with previous generations of scholars, as well as among contemporaries. But you often need to be able to read several foreign languages.
This clear, direct form of exposition comes at first, Israel makes plain, from a solid, well-established outline (worked out well in advance) which, for its sake, limits confusing distractions. For it can be seen, once that initial pattern of organization is set, recognized, and a few iterations borne out, the pattern itself makes for easier use, as a result, in teaching the material as well. But while the method is established, useful and predictable, the style, as prose, loses much of its more engaging possibilities. This dryness of exposition is seen also, as an admirable trait, especially in controversies.
What could be controversial about Holland 500 years ago? Plenty. Israel makes a case, borne out by evidence we have, that The Low Countries, as we now call that part of northwest Europe including Holland and Belgium and bits of Northern France, was on its own, a highly urbanized society. This simply means that there was a higher production of goods there, and all of which were generated in literally smaller spaces. Around 1500 there was no clear overarching ruler here. No hegemonic king or any leader or faction, no Duke or Count or Prince, nor any singular or real group of families, or sets of interests, leading any other group in the area, for long. There were some families that were richer and held larger plots of land, but they were usually farther south or east. There were no obvious gigantic merchandise or production facilities run by anybody except for the obvious harbours and ports for shipping concerns, and those for the river estuaries, in their places.
Instead what Israel describes is a great variety of people, close-packed, all busy at playing a part in a job or skill. Many of those skills when all put together in their right places, multiplying the opportunities for production and consumption, for all. This is where a thousand controversies popped up. People of every station began to see their personal share grow and naturally wanted more. The peasants slowly lost feudal or seigneurial ties and slowly gained more rights, if not all privileges in the marketplace. More people became expert at numerous skills and could pass this information on. Including things like printing books. There was just one Catholic Church, of course, but with so many different clerical orders, festivals and the like, a wide range of observance and belief could and did develop.
Still the cities in this time did not increase so much in size due to the physical constraints of land. The limited scope in land, and in particular, its limited uses necessitated restraints on population growth. So villages and towns could fill up but then would soon find limits on habitation. Near 1500 there were probably less than a million inhabitants in what we would call the Low Countries today. Yet they weren't concentrated in any one or handful of cities. There were sixteen towns with 10,000 inhabitants or more, but only a couple with 40,000 or more. Along the way, somehow, they found enough parcels of dredged up land, cut by rivers, held in place by dikes, and lining canals which, turned out to be room enough to do everything.
More got done here than in most places across Europe, rivalled only by north Italy at the time. In addition to foreign shipping concerns, from the ocean and the British Isles and beyond, theer were numerous rivers that emptied here. All year there was produce from all over Europe, deposited here and processed and sent somewhere else. There were as a result also more languages spoken here.
There were shipbuilders here as well as merchants and market sellers, there was a market for peat which required those many that dug and hauled and processed peat. This peat was then used as a fuel that, for centuries, powered the popular beer breweries, which then could be sold and transported. Varieties of Cheese proliferated even though that comes from milk, which comes from sheep and goats and cattle. But all of these could be found at hand in the area because of local innovations like individual stalls for milking animals.
There were guilds, there were associations of trade and maritime competitions. There were churches and monasteries and layclerics, nunneries and neighborhood associations. There were land reclamation teams, as well as dairy farmers and cheese makers. But there was little if any state involvement. A tithe went to the Church. Neighbors and property owners sluiced canals. All the little towns next to the larger populated cities had different roles to play and continually tried to work things out. Changes were afoot here as well.
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pp. 106-16. in Jonathan I Israel; Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, & Fall: 1477 - 1806 : Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998
This clear, direct form of exposition comes at first, Israel makes plain, from a solid, well-established outline (worked out well in advance) which, for its sake, limits confusing distractions. For it can be seen, once that initial pattern of organization is set, recognized, and a few iterations borne out, the pattern itself makes for easier use, as a result, in teaching the material as well. But while the method is established, useful and predictable, the style, as prose, loses much of its more engaging possibilities. This dryness of exposition is seen also, as an admirable trait, especially in controversies.
What could be controversial about Holland 500 years ago? Plenty. Israel makes a case, borne out by evidence we have, that The Low Countries, as we now call that part of northwest Europe including Holland and Belgium and bits of Northern France, was on its own, a highly urbanized society. This simply means that there was a higher production of goods there, and all of which were generated in literally smaller spaces. Around 1500 there was no clear overarching ruler here. No hegemonic king or any leader or faction, no Duke or Count or Prince, nor any singular or real group of families, or sets of interests, leading any other group in the area, for long. There were some families that were richer and held larger plots of land, but they were usually farther south or east. There were no obvious gigantic merchandise or production facilities run by anybody except for the obvious harbours and ports for shipping concerns, and those for the river estuaries, in their places.
Instead what Israel describes is a great variety of people, close-packed, all busy at playing a part in a job or skill. Many of those skills when all put together in their right places, multiplying the opportunities for production and consumption, for all. This is where a thousand controversies popped up. People of every station began to see their personal share grow and naturally wanted more. The peasants slowly lost feudal or seigneurial ties and slowly gained more rights, if not all privileges in the marketplace. More people became expert at numerous skills and could pass this information on. Including things like printing books. There was just one Catholic Church, of course, but with so many different clerical orders, festivals and the like, a wide range of observance and belief could and did develop.
Still the cities in this time did not increase so much in size due to the physical constraints of land. The limited scope in land, and in particular, its limited uses necessitated restraints on population growth. So villages and towns could fill up but then would soon find limits on habitation. Near 1500 there were probably less than a million inhabitants in what we would call the Low Countries today. Yet they weren't concentrated in any one or handful of cities. There were sixteen towns with 10,000 inhabitants or more, but only a couple with 40,000 or more. Along the way, somehow, they found enough parcels of dredged up land, cut by rivers, held in place by dikes, and lining canals which, turned out to be room enough to do everything.
More got done here than in most places across Europe, rivalled only by north Italy at the time. In addition to foreign shipping concerns, from the ocean and the British Isles and beyond, theer were numerous rivers that emptied here. All year there was produce from all over Europe, deposited here and processed and sent somewhere else. There were as a result also more languages spoken here.
There were shipbuilders here as well as merchants and market sellers, there was a market for peat which required those many that dug and hauled and processed peat. This peat was then used as a fuel that, for centuries, powered the popular beer breweries, which then could be sold and transported. Varieties of Cheese proliferated even though that comes from milk, which comes from sheep and goats and cattle. But all of these could be found at hand in the area because of local innovations like individual stalls for milking animals.
There were guilds, there were associations of trade and maritime competitions. There were churches and monasteries and layclerics, nunneries and neighborhood associations. There were land reclamation teams, as well as dairy farmers and cheese makers. But there was little if any state involvement. A tithe went to the Church. Neighbors and property owners sluiced canals. All the little towns next to the larger populated cities had different roles to play and continually tried to work things out. Changes were afoot here as well.
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pp. 106-16. in Jonathan I Israel; Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, & Fall: 1477 - 1806 : Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998
On Falseness of Many Grand Designs: Niccolo Machiavelli: Discoursi i, 53
In the 53rd chapter of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, Niccolo Machiavelli [M] asserts a kind of truism. He then spends some time illustrating different sides of this idea through telling other historical examples of it as phenomenon, as he understood them. The idea is that people, big masses of people that he calls the populace, essentially like to believe things if presented well. Even if these may not be true. A story, he says, told while highlighting the projected outcomes of some action, one that can be painted both boldly and aggressively and that also matches what people can be convinced that they desire - like honor and prestige, propety or treasure - is too compelling for people. If told well enough, M says, the populace will be for it. And crucially, this story seemed to stay true for them, regardless of available facts or even previous understanding. But it has to agree with what they think they want.
Machiavelli [M] begins this chapter with reference to the discussion about what to do with Veii. An early rival for early Rome, the nearby kingship of Veii was a chief antagonist for Livy in his History of Rome until their city was taken. The discussion afterwards, as M tells it, foundered on whether half of Rome should go there and settle away from Rome. There was so much rich soil there, but also there would remain fewer people in Rome "... to interfere with its civic proceedings."
Machiavelli says this was the case for Venice at the beginning of what we call the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice. They didn't know what to do when it seemed everyone was against them.
Machiavelli cites this same dischord between the people and its leaders occurring during the famous Punic Wars against Hannibal and the Carthaginians. The patient but unpopular delaying tactics of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, drained the Carthaginian army and its general Hannibal of much of their formidable strength, as they were ranging up and down the Italian peninsula in the third century BCE. But the populace back in Rome could wait only so long. They sent another general out to engage with Hannibal and were utterly defeated at the battle of Cannae.
In Florence, Machiavelli tells us again, the populace agreed to the bold plan of Ercole Bentivoglio, captain of the Florentimne forces, when he said he could take Pisa. But when that failed, these captains lost all favor despite all they had done before.
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pp 238-42 in Niccolo Machiavelli The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy Edited by Bernard Crick, translated by Leslie J Walker, thrird revision by Brian Richardson, Penguin Books, London, 1970, 2003
Machiavelli [M] begins this chapter with reference to the discussion about what to do with Veii. An early rival for early Rome, the nearby kingship of Veii was a chief antagonist for Livy in his History of Rome until their city was taken. The discussion afterwards, as M tells it, foundered on whether half of Rome should go there and settle away from Rome. There was so much rich soil there, but also there would remain fewer people in Rome "... to interfere with its civic proceedings."
"The project seemed to the senate and to wiser folk in Rome to be so futile and so likely to do harm that they openly declared that it would be better to suffer death than to agree to such a plan. The result was that, when the matter came up for discussion, the plebs became so incensed against the senate that there would have been armed conflict and bloodshed, had not the senate been shielded by some citizens of mature age and high repute, and had not the plebs been deterred by the respect it had for them from proceeding further with this impertinence."It took certain old and respected men that the people had confidence in, to come forward and explain a way or a process or means to get out of certain disasters. But not every era or instance of upheaval gets those sorts of leaders. There are just as often other sorts of men with more selfish ends who know how to tell about happy outcomes.
"...[T]he populace, misled by the false appearance of good, often seeks its own ruin, and, unless it be brought to realize what is bad and what is good for it by someone in whom it has confidence, brings on republics endless dangers and disasters. Again, when by ill chance the populace has no confidence in anyone at all, as soometimes happens owing to its having been deceived in the past either by events or by men, it spells ruin, and necessarily so."
Machiavelli says this was the case for Venice at the beginning of what we call the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice. They didn't know what to do when it seemed everyone was against them.
Machiavelli cites this same dischord between the people and its leaders occurring during the famous Punic Wars against Hannibal and the Carthaginians. The patient but unpopular delaying tactics of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, drained the Carthaginian army and its general Hannibal of much of their formidable strength, as they were ranging up and down the Italian peninsula in the third century BCE. But the populace back in Rome could wait only so long. They sent another general out to engage with Hannibal and were utterly defeated at the battle of Cannae.
In Florence, Machiavelli tells us again, the populace agreed to the bold plan of Ercole Bentivoglio, captain of the Florentimne forces, when he said he could take Pisa. But when that failed, these captains lost all favor despite all they had done before.
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pp 238-42 in Niccolo Machiavelli The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy Edited by Bernard Crick, translated by Leslie J Walker, thrird revision by Brian Richardson, Penguin Books, London, 1970, 2003
Saturday, May 31, 2014
more news briefs, later May 2014
The election in Ukraine this week, marked a turn for the situation there. The 'pro-business' Petro Poroshenko is positioning himself as western-leading, yet stable, as west-Europe turns more far-right, in EU affairs. More background of the uprising, the Maidan overthrow and the different factions vying for Ukraine, by Timothy Snyder, from the New York Review of Books, March 20, 2014.
The 42 minute extended interview Jon Stewart did with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the Daily Show?
You want a great online resource for all the works of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton? Welcome to Burtoniana.org
brief biographic notes on Francesco Guicciardini 1482 - 1540
From the Start. After a brief dedication to Countess of Pomfert (who may be this person), and a note 'To the Reader' on the current (2nd) edition, ... our translator of Guicciardini, Austin Goddard, gives us 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini ...'. Goddard says this came from a Signior Domenico Manni, an 18th century Florentine philologist and historian. Maybe that's this Domenico Manni. This is the briefest of summaries of that brief life.
Guicciardini was born into a powerful and venerable, noble family. As testament to this nobility they could point to sixteen of its members that were Gonfaloniere in Florence. Many kinsmen were also sent to foreign embassies when communications with the outside world were so important. The center of the family was and had remained a central house on the Arno, near Chiesa Santa Felicita, just down the street and within sight of the famous Ponte Vecchio, as well as viewing (or almost in view of) every part of the center of the city itself. The family had a number of other castles , and benefited a number of churches, chief of which was Santa Felicita. One of their family houses was sold in 1445 for 3000 florins.
His father, named Piero, was a lawyer and appointed Commissary General of Florence in 1501. Later as ambassador to Pope Leo X, the father Piero once gave a speech so well before the pope and his audience, that they proclaimed no one else could say a speech as well as the Florentines. Manni - our source here - tells us that although people say that eloquence is not hereditary, there should be an exception in this case, since the son turned out so like his father in this way.
His mother, Simona Gianfiliazzi bore seven more siblings than Francesco, three brothers and four sisters. Manni tells us that he himself saw a manuscript in Guicciardini's own hand that described his life.
He says he received his Degrees - of Doctor of Civil Law - from the chapter of St Lawrence at the University of Pisa, in November 1505. He lists his sponsors for that accomplishment: M Antoni Malagonelli, M Francesco Pepi, & M Vittorio Sonderini. He chose Civil Law instead of Canon Law, as that was 'of little Importance'.
Austin Goddard (our 18th century translator) says that Guicciardini, in his 23rd year, was made 'Professor of the Institutes', for Florence and widely consulted as a lawyer. In 1506 he married Maria Salviati, daughter of Allemano Everardo Salviati, called then, the greatest man in Florence. In 1507 he was selcted by 'many Cities' to be standiing Counsellor in Law. In 1509 he was chosen 'Advocate of the Florentine Chapter' and elected 'Advocate of the Order of Camaldoli' . He worked for two more years like this.
In January 1512, Guicciardini was selected by the city as Ambassador on behalf of the city, to King Ferdinand of Spain.From Florence's point of view, France and Spain were in league together against the whole of Italy. He served so well, for two years, that they didn't have to replace him. Then his father died and he came home.
In 1515, the day after (probably) that Manni tells us, Giovanni di Lorenzo Medici became pope as Leo X, Francesco was made his Advocate of the Consistory.
In 1518, Guicciardini became governor of Modena and Reggio. This was a new direction that would occupy his talents for most of the rest of his years.
In 1526 he was made President of Romagna by pope Clement VII and on June 6th was named Lieutenant General of all the papal troops. This claim is uniquely followed by a number of old citations. But the entire passage from the third or fourth page is a kind of praiseworthy declamation that modernists call hagiography.
Part way between encomium and brassy argument, hagiography is a form of description that lists honors and accomplishments with only cursory looks at (or for) the traits of an individual. This form of history, itself a kind of digest, a praiseworthy but prosaic simplification of a life, reduces individualism to a few motifs, usually of grandeur and successes. It is deeply European and by our records, stretches back to earliest written forms. Yet it is at minimum an historical shorthand, for books. Often it is all that's left, especially with Roman emperors, Christian saints, etc. Our term hagiography perhaps has changed since the 19th century Romantic Age of European literature, since people or books don't really use this style anymore. In any event, remembered or not, Guicciardini was clearly judged by his contemporaries as being very good at Civil Order and Political Transactions. [p. xiii]
Guicciardini served at the pleasure then, of two of his Florentine compatriots, the two Medici popes from 1515-34. But he was also there at the coronation of Emperor Charles V in 1530, and sought out by His Imperial Highness, just to be able to talk about history with him.
He was made Governor of Bologna in 1531 by pope Clement and held the city after that pope died and usurpers tried to take the city. and overwhelm his castle, and him. Some time after this he was able to retire and write his many books. He died, says the manuscript, of grief, or fever, or self-administered poison, upset at the state of the loss of freedom for the City of his birth, on 27 May 1540.
Described as tall, 'with a Venerable aspect, large Shoulders, plain Face, a strong and robust Constitution', his visage and voice could command a room or a field of troops. He was 'quick and high Conception, singular of Judgement, good Memory, profound and prudent in Counsels...'. Again this should probably be seen as hagiography: a bit too shiny or glowing of a picture.
His wife lived until 1559. They had three daughters that survived him. He also had three brothers that survived. The wiki has a list of his written works.
Alll the above taken from the online photocopy of the John Adams Library copy of this Second Edition of Austin Goddard's translation of 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini' in The History of Italy, volume i, London, 1763.
Guicciardini was born into a powerful and venerable, noble family. As testament to this nobility they could point to sixteen of its members that were Gonfaloniere in Florence. Many kinsmen were also sent to foreign embassies when communications with the outside world were so important. The center of the family was and had remained a central house on the Arno, near Chiesa Santa Felicita, just down the street and within sight of the famous Ponte Vecchio, as well as viewing (or almost in view of) every part of the center of the city itself. The family had a number of other castles , and benefited a number of churches, chief of which was Santa Felicita. One of their family houses was sold in 1445 for 3000 florins.
His father, named Piero, was a lawyer and appointed Commissary General of Florence in 1501. Later as ambassador to Pope Leo X, the father Piero once gave a speech so well before the pope and his audience, that they proclaimed no one else could say a speech as well as the Florentines. Manni - our source here - tells us that although people say that eloquence is not hereditary, there should be an exception in this case, since the son turned out so like his father in this way.
His mother, Simona Gianfiliazzi bore seven more siblings than Francesco, three brothers and four sisters. Manni tells us that he himself saw a manuscript in Guicciardini's own hand that described his life.
"... Doctor of Civil and Common Law, was born the 6th of March, 1482, in Florence about Ten of the Clock.... [named for] Francesco Nerli ...[his father's mother's father].... I was also Christened by the Name of Thomas, the Day I was born happening to be the Festival of Saint Thomas Aquinas. My Godfathers were M Marsilio Ficino the greatest Platonic Philosopher then in the Universe, Giovanni Canacci and Piero del Nero, also Philosophers."He began to study law in Florence in 1498. His uncle, Archdeacon of the Metropolitan Church of Florence, nearing death decided to give his benefices to Francesco before his own five sons. Francesco was delighted since he thought he might be young enough to go through the system, the Way of Profferments and one day become a Cardinal in the Church. His purpose was not to end up lazy and idle but to do the work necessary to reach this exalted station.
He says he received his Degrees - of Doctor of Civil Law - from the chapter of St Lawrence at the University of Pisa, in November 1505. He lists his sponsors for that accomplishment: M Antoni Malagonelli, M Francesco Pepi, & M Vittorio Sonderini. He chose Civil Law instead of Canon Law, as that was 'of little Importance'.
Austin Goddard (our 18th century translator) says that Guicciardini, in his 23rd year, was made 'Professor of the Institutes', for Florence and widely consulted as a lawyer. In 1506 he married Maria Salviati, daughter of Allemano Everardo Salviati, called then, the greatest man in Florence. In 1507 he was selcted by 'many Cities' to be standiing Counsellor in Law. In 1509 he was chosen 'Advocate of the Florentine Chapter' and elected 'Advocate of the Order of Camaldoli' . He worked for two more years like this.
In January 1512, Guicciardini was selected by the city as Ambassador on behalf of the city, to King Ferdinand of Spain.From Florence's point of view, France and Spain were in league together against the whole of Italy. He served so well, for two years, that they didn't have to replace him. Then his father died and he came home.
In 1515, the day after (probably) that Manni tells us, Giovanni di Lorenzo Medici became pope as Leo X, Francesco was made his Advocate of the Consistory.
In 1518, Guicciardini became governor of Modena and Reggio. This was a new direction that would occupy his talents for most of the rest of his years.
In 1526 he was made President of Romagna by pope Clement VII and on June 6th was named Lieutenant General of all the papal troops. This claim is uniquely followed by a number of old citations. But the entire passage from the third or fourth page is a kind of praiseworthy declamation that modernists call hagiography.
Part way between encomium and brassy argument, hagiography is a form of description that lists honors and accomplishments with only cursory looks at (or for) the traits of an individual. This form of history, itself a kind of digest, a praiseworthy but prosaic simplification of a life, reduces individualism to a few motifs, usually of grandeur and successes. It is deeply European and by our records, stretches back to earliest written forms. Yet it is at minimum an historical shorthand, for books. Often it is all that's left, especially with Roman emperors, Christian saints, etc. Our term hagiography perhaps has changed since the 19th century Romantic Age of European literature, since people or books don't really use this style anymore. In any event, remembered or not, Guicciardini was clearly judged by his contemporaries as being very good at Civil Order and Political Transactions. [p. xiii]
Guicciardini served at the pleasure then, of two of his Florentine compatriots, the two Medici popes from 1515-34. But he was also there at the coronation of Emperor Charles V in 1530, and sought out by His Imperial Highness, just to be able to talk about history with him.
He was made Governor of Bologna in 1531 by pope Clement and held the city after that pope died and usurpers tried to take the city. and overwhelm his castle, and him. Some time after this he was able to retire and write his many books. He died, says the manuscript, of grief, or fever, or self-administered poison, upset at the state of the loss of freedom for the City of his birth, on 27 May 1540.
Described as tall, 'with a Venerable aspect, large Shoulders, plain Face, a strong and robust Constitution', his visage and voice could command a room or a field of troops. He was 'quick and high Conception, singular of Judgement, good Memory, profound and prudent in Counsels...'. Again this should probably be seen as hagiography: a bit too shiny or glowing of a picture.
His wife lived until 1559. They had three daughters that survived him. He also had three brothers that survived. The wiki has a list of his written works.
Alll the above taken from the online photocopy of the John Adams Library copy of this Second Edition of Austin Goddard's translation of 'The Life of Francesco Guicciardini' in The History of Italy, volume i, London, 1763.
Monday, May 26, 2014
The German Noble: Diminishing Glories for Most
The sketch of German nobles in the period of the Renaissance that Thomas A Brady Jr gives us, points to the widening gap, in numbers, between titled and untitled nobles in those widely expansive lands. But nobles still ruled and all else followed. The only way you could make the two equal, Brady reminds us up front, was when the two were dead and in the ground. But nobles of the princely, administrative, territorial varieties were becoming fewer. These ministerial posts did get tied to certain places to a greater degree in this period, and by the fifteenth century, were even occupied by less than a dozen families. All else, had to find other things to do.
As Brady points out, 'both, whether titled or untitled', a noble, had to protect his holdings, his family and his family's future interests. These included good marriages for the daughters and enough land and property for sons to hold onto, if they could. As fewer and fewer families were chosen in administrative spots, there was also a concerted effort to codify territories and the specific offices ruling those territories. This process happened differently in different places and took time. But it doesn't take too many calculations to recognise that within a few generations, even the most steadfast of gurdians could see it all fall apart. A grandfather of a noble house could have a dozen grandsons and if all wanted a piece of an inheritance, some, or their children, may not have much to rule or sustain themselves in years to come. All the while fending off neighboring territorial advances, Imperial exactions, living through disasters, disease, uprisings. This is a simple view, but captures the state of change that landed interests, whether wealthy, connected or otherwise had left to find benefit or service in. Marriages became the preferred method for many, including Maximillian and the Habsburgs, rather than battle.[pp. 42-5]
Many nobles and their families and relatives went and served the church. Some became mercenaries and travelled Europe. Some few became members of the Imperial Guard or part of the retinue of some office-holder. But the change, this gulf between the nobles who were running state affairs and the many, many more members of noble houses that no longer had a clear function in society, was itself recognized in the literature of the day. The noble, chivalric knight of Chaucer of a century before can be contrasted with the hapless, impossibly zealous bufoonery of Cervantes' Don Quixote of a century later. All through the period everybody knew of and would even celebrate the several available sorts of knights, in different stages of advancement, as well as in different ways continent-wide. The names and honors and colors and flags and steeds and weapons and armor, the hunts and jousts, the holidays were all highlights of the communal experience. The lords and knights could still win this attention and acclaim thru contest, whether real or imagined. Albrecht Dürer published a number of engravings of knights. This one is from 1513.
As internal wars decreased and as more arable land was put to use, prices for agricultural products fell. But with increasing concentrations of people in cities, the flourishing of trade all over Europe, and the resurgence of guilds after the earlier disruptions (c. 1350-1450), the price of manufactured goods went up. Brady highlights this change for the many lesser nobles.
The examples Brady gives offer a wide view of outcomes. Many would live out lives in poverty, or be cut to lives of servitude, some becoming wealthy bandits while others stayed still and suffered. Stuck in one place, still with some responsibility, protecting some fortress or keep of a lord they might not feel beholden to. Like Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) a Franconian, that was
These quotes Brady tells us, are from a 'famous' letter sent to Willibeld Pirckheimer (1470-1530) in Nuremburg and detailed in the Gerald Strauss edited book Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, 193; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
___________________________________________________
quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
"The princes, though not the other nobles, formed with the monarchy the principle agents and bulwarks of Imperial governance. Through all the changes, there nonetheless survived a common noble culture based on eligibility for enfiefment and the honor of knighthood, a noble lifestyle (when they could afford it), a shared military ethos, and a boundless taste for celebrating their lineages in image, word, and deed." [p. 42]Despite the longevity of the holy warrior culture - that had peaked perhaps in the 12th-13th century- there was less and less for a noble knight to do locally, with fewer offices of power available, princely city-states absorbed into larger regional seats, the Pope and church failing to call or pay for, any sustaining crusade. There were as well a host of personal reasons. The very nature of existence for a noble house to maintain continuity, for an inheritor of a name and an estate to last more than a generation or two was already extremely perilous.
As Brady points out, 'both, whether titled or untitled', a noble, had to protect his holdings, his family and his family's future interests. These included good marriages for the daughters and enough land and property for sons to hold onto, if they could. As fewer and fewer families were chosen in administrative spots, there was also a concerted effort to codify territories and the specific offices ruling those territories. This process happened differently in different places and took time. But it doesn't take too many calculations to recognise that within a few generations, even the most steadfast of gurdians could see it all fall apart. A grandfather of a noble house could have a dozen grandsons and if all wanted a piece of an inheritance, some, or their children, may not have much to rule or sustain themselves in years to come. All the while fending off neighboring territorial advances, Imperial exactions, living through disasters, disease, uprisings. This is a simple view, but captures the state of change that landed interests, whether wealthy, connected or otherwise had left to find benefit or service in. Marriages became the preferred method for many, including Maximillian and the Habsburgs, rather than battle.[pp. 42-5]
Many nobles and their families and relatives went and served the church. Some became mercenaries and travelled Europe. Some few became members of the Imperial Guard or part of the retinue of some office-holder. But the change, this gulf between the nobles who were running state affairs and the many, many more members of noble houses that no longer had a clear function in society, was itself recognized in the literature of the day. The noble, chivalric knight of Chaucer of a century before can be contrasted with the hapless, impossibly zealous bufoonery of Cervantes' Don Quixote of a century later. All through the period everybody knew of and would even celebrate the several available sorts of knights, in different stages of advancement, as well as in different ways continent-wide. The names and honors and colors and flags and steeds and weapons and armor, the hunts and jousts, the holidays were all highlights of the communal experience. The lords and knights could still win this attention and acclaim thru contest, whether real or imagined. Albrecht Dürer published a number of engravings of knights. This one is from 1513.
Albrecht Durer - "The Knight, Death and the Devil" pic.twitter.com/Xbo1WiJtVt
— RealDaveR (@OtrOOne) February 6, 2014
At home, across German lands, the number of nobles engaged in regional organizations, or Leagues that met and mustered local nobles for military purposes, dwindled over the fifteenth century. Emperor Maximillian tried in 1495 to enlist the great majority of them for a new Imperial cadre of knights, but they didn't want to contribute or become a standing army. [p. 46] Brady comes to his point in the middle of this chapter."The knight, like all mortals, was doomed to die, but so, believed many sixteenth-century observers and most modern historians, was his entire estate. The lesser nobles, with their small holdings and their inability to forge their limited judicial authority over peasants into a kind of proto-sovereignty, had certainly lost much economic substance during the agrarian crisis." [p. 45]This crisis was a result of the awful destructions of the waves of plague from the century before, where half the population died and most lands were bought up by fewer and fewer families. A 'proto-sovereign' system that was coming into place in some areas had not met with widespread practice and would not for most places until the seventeenth century, when territorial states would become enshrined in both law and practice.
As internal wars decreased and as more arable land was put to use, prices for agricultural products fell. But with increasing concentrations of people in cities, the flourishing of trade all over Europe, and the resurgence of guilds after the earlier disruptions (c. 1350-1450), the price of manufactured goods went up. Brady highlights this change for the many lesser nobles.
"The price scissors caught them, as it did peasants, between falling farm prices and rising ones for manufactured goods.... [Yet] the nobles' incomes were ... surely falling behind those of wealthy burghers.... Constrained by custom from increasing rents, now increasingly fixed in cash rather than produce, the nobles adapted to shore up their incomes. Some hitched their wagons to princely stars, others imitated the burghers by getting educations and yet others moldered away in their old lifestyles of ignorant banditry, hated by the common people and bullied by princes." [pp. 45-46]The last of the independent noble leagues did last until the sixteenth century but they no longer had military responsibilities. A number over the years would become enterprisers, ones who would recruit fighters and lead them behind a captain, for mercenary hire. "To fight for pay was to move with the times."[p. 47]
The examples Brady gives offer a wide view of outcomes. Many would live out lives in poverty, or be cut to lives of servitude, some becoming wealthy bandits while others stayed still and suffered. Stuck in one place, still with some responsibility, protecting some fortress or keep of a lord they might not feel beholden to. Like Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) a Franconian, that was
"... a veteran of ten German and Italian universities and one of the best educated nobles of his age. He chose princely service to escape the relentless monotony, the squalor, and the stinks of country life... country gentlemen [he wrote] spend their days "in the fields, in the woods, and in fortified strongholds," leasing their lands to "a few starveling peasants who barely manage to scratch a living from it. From such paupers we draw our revenues, and income hardly worth the labor spent on it." It was dangerous to leave his fortified residence, it was disgusting to live in its "dark rooms crammed with guns, pitch, sulfur, and other materials of war," where "the stench of gunpowder mixed with the the smell of dogs and shit and other such pleasant odors." "[p. 48]
These quotes Brady tells us, are from a 'famous' letter sent to Willibeld Pirckheimer (1470-1530) in Nuremburg and detailed in the Gerald Strauss edited book Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, 193; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
___________________________________________________
quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Historic European & Indian Elections: As Found On Twitter, In Comedy: May 25, 2014
From Dublin, Glasgow and London, from Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Athens, Kiev and Donetsk, voting results have been trickling in all night. It was really a mixed bag of outcomes. The French National Front and the UKIP won many seats and have overlapping views on the right-end of the spectrum, but their winners all seem to be pulling in different directions.
The vote in Brussels gained a great number of farther right representatives but this result, in the larger view seems difficult to interpret, with regards to outcomes. The pundits will spend all next week talking about that, gnashing on about immigration issues, along then, with the views of those abroad and the consequences this 'rightward lurch' will mean for them.
But the traditional right, conservative party in Britain lost big.
A Sinn Fein advocate Lynn Boylan will represent Dublin for the EU.
In Spain a rising People's Party helped repudiate the recent Socialist-led coalition, along with a number of smaller moderate left-leaning parties. They seem determined to throw-off the shackles of economic austerity.
Last week (19May), elections in India brought them a new Prime Minister from a new party. Of course, despite being the biggest election on the planet, probably the best way Americans could find out about it was through watching a completely farcical Canadian comedian, Jason Jones explain it on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. First some stereotypes have to be dispensed with. Then he learns that even the illiterate and homeless get to vote, everywhere. They have their issues like those in the west, as in the presentation of polls or candidates made by the media. But who is this Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi that won?
National Front take quarter of the vote in French Euro-elections http://t.co/ZvY9s8z41C @MailOnline
— David Schantz (@DavidSchantz) May 26, 2014
The vote in Brussels gained a great number of farther right representatives but this result, in the larger view seems difficult to interpret, with regards to outcomes. The pundits will spend all next week talking about that, gnashing on about immigration issues, along then, with the views of those abroad and the consequences this 'rightward lurch' will mean for them.
But the traditional right, conservative party in Britain lost big.
Tories’ climate change scepticism melts after winter floods – in their constituencies http://t.co/bR8cAIQcDT pic.twitter.com/OssdwOLGZR
— CECHR (@CECHR_UoD) May 25, 2014
A Sinn Fein advocate Lynn Boylan will represent Dublin for the EU.
BREAKING: Sinn Fein's Lynn Boylan elected as an MEP in Dublin after 3 counts #ee14 #ep14 pic.twitter.com/Wj91pOI2Y1
— Fergal O'Brien (@FergalTodayFM) May 25, 2014
In Spain a rising People's Party helped repudiate the recent Socialist-led coalition, along with a number of smaller moderate left-leaning parties. They seem determined to throw-off the shackles of economic austerity.
Spain: People's party triumphs while smaller parties make gains: http://t.co/85pqwaFkBw
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 25, 2014
Yet in Greece, elections there brought the leftwing party to power who are also seeing their victory as a repudiation to budget cuts and fiscal strangulation.
Leftwing Syriza party triumphs in European elections in Greece http://t.co/kvm7YmANG9
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 25, 2014
Still with all this fissuring division across the continent, the most fervently anticipated results was from the vote in Ukraine today. There they were not electing a representative to send to Brussels but to choose a new president. In what seems to be, so far, free and fair votes and tallies, the overwhelming winner seems to be Poroshenko, the said to be, western-leaning 'chocolate billionaire'. So far, there have not been any announcements of any factions contesting the results in Ukraine, which is a good sign since civil war has been looming for months. An official from Donetsk said they would not contest results. Perhaps, east and west can now move forward.
Meet Ukraine's new billionaire president, Petro Poroshenko, the "Chocolate King." http://t.co/pipJYG46Ok pic.twitter.com/Bshuj75QWW
— Mashable (@mashable) May 25, 2014
Last week (19May), elections in India brought them a new Prime Minister from a new party. Of course, despite being the biggest election on the planet, probably the best way Americans could find out about it was through watching a completely farcical Canadian comedian, Jason Jones explain it on The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart. First some stereotypes have to be dispensed with. Then he learns that even the illiterate and homeless get to vote, everywhere. They have their issues like those in the west, as in the presentation of polls or candidates made by the media. But who is this Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi that won?
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Kings & Republics Like Their Secrets: Letters From England: Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533
A bill posted in Venice to select a new ambassador to England May 3, 1533, created a debate amongst her leaders. Despite the forty Venetians they had in Southampton, acting as her servants there in what was a substantial port hub, both transeferring and accounting for bales of wool and finished tin and pewter goods, ser Alvise Mocenigo thought they didn't need an ambassaor to such a place anymore. The current man in charge there, ser Carlo Capello had to remain at the post longer than expected as there was no ready replacement to be had, and this, despite a high salary and a great deal of local power in the far-off Anglo-trading entrepot.
Our Editors chose to give us as example some letters - that Sanudo provided- from ser Capello in his active duty of informing the Signoria of all aspects on British doings. Notably the reception and dinner and afterward discussion in Greenwich, with English King Henry VIII and his new bride Queen Anne Boleyn, back in April.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Letters from England, from our ambassador Capello from London on April 16, received on May 21 in the evening. He writes this one by way of Antwerp: a gentleman came from the king before noon to tell me to go to the court of Granuzi [Greenwich] to dine."
He went and dined with the father and brother of Queen Anne and the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Exeter, then was ushered in to see the king. There he was, with Anne and several ministers, and they all greeted him warmly, and he gave them all his best wishes. They asked if he had any news. Capello said no.
The King then said their imperial ambassador had just confirmed that an alliance had been struck between the Signoria in Venice and the pope, and Emperor Carlos V. The King accused Venice of pretending to have not joined such a league and that a proclamation had been made stating Venice's complicity.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "At that point our ambassador denied such a claim, saying that the Signoria had been solicited to join the league but had refused and that the proclamation had been printed in Bologna [papal lands] and not in Venice, and had been done as they [the league members] wished. His Majesty appeared to be satisfied by this, saying that the pope and the emperor were making this known to give greater authority to their league."
It would make sense that a king would want to know such things. His annullment with Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Anne, he knew, had already sent a fissure of division across the continent. Did the king of England think he could do anything he wanted, in stark contravention to the sacred oaths before the authority of the Catholic Church? He and his wife seemed to think so. But what Henry says next in this story says something about what the two powers had in common. A king and a Republic both had secrets that they would rather silence or, simply, keep hidden altogether.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Then he said, "You have passed a law that upon pain of capital punishment all are prohibited from divulging matters of the Council of Ten and the Senate." He is of the opinion that the Signoria governs most prudently and that this decision was very wise, saying, "I can affirm that most of your matters have reached many ears." He showed that his words were meant kindly, indicating this with words and with gestures."
The king asked if Venice had 30,000 troops massed near Padua. Capello answered those were troops in review, who did that regularly at this time. He said he believed that and asked when the galleys from Venice would arrive again. Capello replied they came regularly at the end of November. Then the king turned and let him greet Anne his Queen.
The next day, in the letters and that Sanudo reported the next day, as well, told of a new royal order. This was that all guilds in the city of London were not dare to speak of the new Queen unless it were in favorable terms. That any one mentioning the previous Queen would meet with capital punishment and that not one of the churches or mendicant orders would preach on these henceforward proclaimed hoildays celebrating the marriage festivities, unless approved beforehand by the archbishop.
_________________________________________________
notes from 'our editors', and Sanudo Diaries from pp 200-03: Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll, editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Our Editors chose to give us as example some letters - that Sanudo provided- from ser Capello in his active duty of informing the Signoria of all aspects on British doings. Notably the reception and dinner and afterward discussion in Greenwich, with English King Henry VIII and his new bride Queen Anne Boleyn, back in April.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Letters from England, from our ambassador Capello from London on April 16, received on May 21 in the evening. He writes this one by way of Antwerp: a gentleman came from the king before noon to tell me to go to the court of Granuzi [Greenwich] to dine."
He went and dined with the father and brother of Queen Anne and the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Exeter, then was ushered in to see the king. There he was, with Anne and several ministers, and they all greeted him warmly, and he gave them all his best wishes. They asked if he had any news. Capello said no.
The King then said their imperial ambassador had just confirmed that an alliance had been struck between the Signoria in Venice and the pope, and Emperor Carlos V. The King accused Venice of pretending to have not joined such a league and that a proclamation had been made stating Venice's complicity.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "At that point our ambassador denied such a claim, saying that the Signoria had been solicited to join the league but had refused and that the proclamation had been printed in Bologna [papal lands] and not in Venice, and had been done as they [the league members] wished. His Majesty appeared to be satisfied by this, saying that the pope and the emperor were making this known to give greater authority to their league."
It would make sense that a king would want to know such things. His annullment with Catherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Anne, he knew, had already sent a fissure of division across the continent. Did the king of England think he could do anything he wanted, in stark contravention to the sacred oaths before the authority of the Catholic Church? He and his wife seemed to think so. But what Henry says next in this story says something about what the two powers had in common. A king and a Republic both had secrets that they would rather silence or, simply, keep hidden altogether.
Sanudo Diaries: May 24, 1533; (58:200-201): "Then he said, "You have passed a law that upon pain of capital punishment all are prohibited from divulging matters of the Council of Ten and the Senate." He is of the opinion that the Signoria governs most prudently and that this decision was very wise, saying, "I can affirm that most of your matters have reached many ears." He showed that his words were meant kindly, indicating this with words and with gestures."
The king asked if Venice had 30,000 troops massed near Padua. Capello answered those were troops in review, who did that regularly at this time. He said he believed that and asked when the galleys from Venice would arrive again. Capello replied they came regularly at the end of November. Then the king turned and let him greet Anne his Queen.
The next day, in the letters and that Sanudo reported the next day, as well, told of a new royal order. This was that all guilds in the city of London were not dare to speak of the new Queen unless it were in favorable terms. That any one mentioning the previous Queen would meet with capital punishment and that not one of the churches or mendicant orders would preach on these henceforward proclaimed hoildays celebrating the marriage festivities, unless approved beforehand by the archbishop.
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notes from 'our editors', and Sanudo Diaries from pp 200-03: Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll, editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
The German Burgher: Useful Positions Worthy of Respect
German Burghers along with their Hanseatic allies, were a central, indispensable part of the solidity, continuity and growth of central Europe in our period. Educated, even multi-disciplined, in all their forms they provided many functions tying the various means and ends of civic order together. In the cities and many towns, individuals overcoming the language, familial and fraternal differences was the same experience for everyone. If you were born into wealth, you might keep it through work or lose it in bad investments. If you were born poor, in time, with education, work and skill development (and a little luck), you could become respectable. These paths sound familiar but have more to do with them than us. It was their milieu, their civic sense of cultural correctness and devotion to good practice and even religious duty, that proved their works a success that grew, more than any more recent myths of free market capitalism or that famous German order, or opportunism in general.
For one thing there weren't so many poeple along and east of the Rhine, and not in any great clusters.
Southern houses tended to be like Italian houses with dynastic holdings centered on certain markets or products. Northern associations tended to be more diverse, acting as investors in several businesses at once. But both forms found expression all over. The Fundaco de Tedeschi was an example of the investor-type corporate association and was located in Venice. There were also dynastic merchants in Copenhagen as well as independent, free Hansa members in far east Riga, Gdansk.
Further examples. Young educated men, sent from Nuremburg to Venice, worked the great German warehouse that was the Fundaco de Tedeschi and learned how a great shipping hub was maintained there. By 1484 they had sent home the knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping, bills of exchange and the efficient use of arabic numerals. [p. 36]
Most burghers were not great bankers or merchants. Instead they ran shops, were local artisans, even servants who served a master or municipality under contract, paid annually or even by piece or project work. To run a shop, a dock, a manufacturer that fashioned or refined products, sets these burghers side by side with guild members, petty laborers and skilled workers from peasant stock. Sometimes individuals could fill all these positions in a lifetime.
One brief example, Burkhard Zink (1396-1468) was born into a 'solid artisan' family in Memmingen. His mother died at an early age and he was sent to live with an uncle, a priest. Later from a Catholic school south of Ljubljana, he then graduated to work with a furrier. Fom this point he went on several journeys, taking work or patrons where he could find them. He studied in Ulm, Nuremburg, Augsburg. He worked for a wine merchant, a lawyer and eventually married and found work as a secretary. They were poor until she died, but she gave him ten children. Six of which died before adult hood. He married three more times and in all fathered twenty-two children. As an old man he had won several civic offices and honors and could call himself a comfortable burgher. We have his story because he wrote it and 19th century German chroniclers set it down. [pp. 41-2]
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
For one thing there weren't so many poeple along and east of the Rhine, and not in any great clusters.
"In 1500 only twenty-seven of them housed more than 10,000 persons, and half of these lay in the Low Countries. Cologne, the largest German-speaking city, was a metropolis of 40,000 souls, and Prague was nearly as large, but from these giants the gradient ran steeply down to tiny places with only some hundreds of residents. More than half the German lands' burghers lived in small or middling cities of fewer than 10,000 souls. Large, middling, or small these cities possessed similar functions as strong places, markets, and modes of consumption, production, and communications. They also dominated their hinterlands, from which they drew food, raw materials, and labor, and over which they sometimes acquired political lordship." [p. 35]Our source here is Thomas A Brady Jr's 2009 German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650. It is the latest History of the Germans in the time of the Reformation, published by UC Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press. His brief sketch here lays out the terrain for both German and Hanseatic burgher.
"The burghers' power began with writing, which they learned from the clergy, and extended to trade, which they mastered by themselves. German merchants operated in two zones, northern and southern, each with its distinctive institutions, business methods, and languages (Low German in the north, High German and Italian in the south)."The Hansa, in the north is the traditional term in English for these traders and merchants and associtaes, but in German, the name simply means 'league'. North and south counterparts and all those in between had, over the centuries, smoothed their cooperative endeavors even though theirs were security, legal and commercial concerns all at work at the same time.
"They collaborated to improve the terms of trade and to protect their ships and goods from pirates and bandits, though their loosely structured association possessed no permanent organs, fleets, armies, or taxes. The league thus replicated the ad hoc look of the typical northern business firm, which was a small operation of two to four partners formed to organize capital, cargos, and ships for individual voyages. Such firms spread risks by borrowing from rural nobles, clergymen, even harbor workers, and by avoiding specialization in wares. The Hanseatic merchants sailed long distances from London and Bruges via Lübeck to Reval/Tallinn, carrying wax and furs westward and textiles and salt eastward, together with Swedish copper and butter, Danish and Swedish dried fish, Scottish and English wool, Prussian and Polish grain, Hungarian metals and south German metal wares, and French and Portuguese sea salt. The merchants spread their Low German as the northern trade's lingua franca and German brewed lager beer as its universal lubricant." [p. 35]
Southern houses tended to be like Italian houses with dynastic holdings centered on certain markets or products. Northern associations tended to be more diverse, acting as investors in several businesses at once. But both forms found expression all over. The Fundaco de Tedeschi was an example of the investor-type corporate association and was located in Venice. There were also dynastic merchants in Copenhagen as well as independent, free Hansa members in far east Riga, Gdansk.
Further examples. Young educated men, sent from Nuremburg to Venice, worked the great German warehouse that was the Fundaco de Tedeschi and learned how a great shipping hub was maintained there. By 1484 they had sent home the knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping, bills of exchange and the efficient use of arabic numerals. [p. 36]
Most burghers were not great bankers or merchants. Instead they ran shops, were local artisans, even servants who served a master or municipality under contract, paid annually or even by piece or project work. To run a shop, a dock, a manufacturer that fashioned or refined products, sets these burghers side by side with guild members, petty laborers and skilled workers from peasant stock. Sometimes individuals could fill all these positions in a lifetime.
One brief example, Burkhard Zink (1396-1468) was born into a 'solid artisan' family in Memmingen. His mother died at an early age and he was sent to live with an uncle, a priest. Later from a Catholic school south of Ljubljana, he then graduated to work with a furrier. Fom this point he went on several journeys, taking work or patrons where he could find them. He studied in Ulm, Nuremburg, Augsburg. He worked for a wine merchant, a lawyer and eventually married and found work as a secretary. They were poor until she died, but she gave him ten children. Six of which died before adult hood. He married three more times and in all fathered twenty-two children. As an old man he had won several civic offices and honors and could call himself a comfortable burgher. We have his story because he wrote it and 19th century German chroniclers set it down. [pp. 41-2]
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quotes and pagination from: Thomas A Brady Jr: German Histories in The Age of Reformations, 1400-1650; University of California, Berkeley for the Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Burchard in Naples: Alum Mines and Grottoes In Pozzuoli: April-May 1494
In April 1494, Johann Burchard was sent by pope Alexander VI to Naples on an important mission. It was in his offficial capacity as Master of Ceremonies to the papal court, that Cardinal Orsini asked him to ready at once, to journey south to Naples. He was to arrange two ceremonies for the court there. One was the coronation of Alfonso after the death that year of his father King Ferrante. The other was the marriage of Sancia, an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso, to one of the pope's relations, Don Joffre.
The pope was at last taking action on previous perceived slights and for the guarded restraint shown for the Neapolitan kingdom. Both of these, the coronation and the marriage, were intending to send a signal by this new Borgia pope, showing his support for the continuity of dynastic reign for the Aragon family in Naples. And this was despite the recent and increasingly clamorous inheritance claims of the new French King Charles VIII on the kingdom of Naples. These activities for Burchard took about three weeks. As it turned out, these solemn actions clothed in some of the deepest of Catholic traditions, would not prove a lasting legacy.
After his duties were discharged, Burchard spending a day off, took a tour of the area around Naples, including their famous steam baths and alum mines. To the east of Naples lay Mt Vesuvius. To the west the famous and ancient steam baths of Pozzuoli. Master Burchard made a day tour of it and wrote down details of what he found. Even the details of how he travelled are interesting for us to see how someone of his station could go sightseeing. It seems he had never been there before.
Our editor/translator for these interesting details of the mining industry, Geoffrey Parker, tell us that alum was essential for the dyeing of wools and thus, we also know, essential for the growing clothing, tapestry and fabric markets. Previously, he explains, the source for alum was the Turks, as that was who now controlled Asia Minor and, where the substance was still controlled, mined and refined. He goes on.
The next day he returned to Rome after receiving a generous gift from king Alfonso of 100 ducats. Burchard left by Vespers, he said, and arrived safely in Rome five days later on 19 May, 1494. [p. 89]
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quotes and pagination from Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963
The pope was at last taking action on previous perceived slights and for the guarded restraint shown for the Neapolitan kingdom. Both of these, the coronation and the marriage, were intending to send a signal by this new Borgia pope, showing his support for the continuity of dynastic reign for the Aragon family in Naples. And this was despite the recent and increasingly clamorous inheritance claims of the new French King Charles VIII on the kingdom of Naples. These activities for Burchard took about three weeks. As it turned out, these solemn actions clothed in some of the deepest of Catholic traditions, would not prove a lasting legacy.
After his duties were discharged, Burchard spending a day off, took a tour of the area around Naples, including their famous steam baths and alum mines. To the east of Naples lay Mt Vesuvius. To the west the famous and ancient steam baths of Pozzuoli. Master Burchard made a day tour of it and wrote down details of what he found. Even the details of how he travelled are interesting for us to see how someone of his station could go sightseeing. It seems he had never been there before.
"On the morning of Tuesday, May 13th, I set out from Naples to visit its ancient and valued monuments, and with me rode Bellaguardia, one of the royal dispensers who had my household's affairs committed to his charge by the court. He brought with him a mule loaded with wine, loaves, meat, cake, wood and other things suitable for our nourishment and to enable us to see what we wished, whilst additionally various members of my company joined me to see the sights.
We came first to a place called Agnano, four miles from Naples, where a great many shelters were erected over ground from which there arose such a heat that a person soon freely perspired. As a result, they called these places steam-baths, and in them men could be cured from all kinds of illness. There was one shelter amongst the rest which it was death to enter unless a man immediately threw himself into the cold bath provided, and in this way avoided being killed. A mile away was Lumara where alum was made; stones hewn out from the mountain close by were broken down by firing; then scattered out for exposure, and washed repeatedly with water: they were next heated again with fresh water in great receptacles fashioned like furnaces, and were finally extracted to be put back again into medium-sized salt-pans or casks and made into alum." [pp.85-6]
Our editor/translator for these interesting details of the mining industry, Geoffrey Parker, tell us that alum was essential for the dyeing of wools and thus, we also know, essential for the growing clothing, tapestry and fabric markets. Previously, he explains, the source for alum was the Turks, as that was who now controlled Asia Minor and, where the substance was still controlled, mined and refined. He goes on.
"Rich deposits of alum were found in 1462 at Tolfa in the Papal State, and from this source the pope was able to establish virtually his own monopoly to supply the European markets; the revenue at the time was to be used for preparing a crusade, but all too soon was diverted to other papal needs. Other volcanic areas, as at Lumara in the Neapolitan Kingdom, were also found to have small alum deposits, and were worked independently of the pope's control. Such smaller mines were later closed...."The mining of alum spread across Europe. In Italy, in those places like Tolfa, it continued to be exploited until the invention of synthetic alum in the 19th century. They also mined sulfur on the other side of the mountain.[p. 85]
"The region was flat, shaped like a wheel whose perimeter was half a mile long, and it was surrounded by mountains at a greater distance: one road led out from it to Pozzuoli. There were two lakes there some distance apart which bubbled continually, and a hole from which a geyser of steam repeatedly shot up, deafeningly and with a violent shock each time, though without any flame. The mountains and the land, in fact all the things to be seen there, appeared to be covered in sulfur... Pozzuoli lay at a distance of a mile and a half from it, but a mile away there was a very old building like the Roman Colosseum and called the Truglio, with caves underneath where three thousand or so horses could be stabled... Not far away was another great subterranean grotto, over whose caves gardens were planted and cultivated with trees and various fruits. Bellaguardia pointed out particular matters of interest for us, and also saw to it that we lacked nothing from the royal bounty for our needs." [pp. 86-7]After dinner they continued by barge to Baiae where most of the baths were. Some were opulent like the Marvellous Grotto. Some Burchard called dirty, like at Trepergole. There was the peak of Monte Guaro, there were more baths at Bagnoli, and more underground caves, tunnels and passages running this way and that under the hills. There were also a number of ancient ruins of forts and castles dotting the hills. [p. 88]
The next day he returned to Rome after receiving a generous gift from king Alfonso of 100 ducats. Burchard left by Vespers, he said, and arrived safely in Rome five days later on 19 May, 1494. [p. 89]
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quotes and pagination from Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963
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