animatic

The Calvert Journal has an interesting profile of the lesser scrutinised art form, relegated to children’s entertainment, of animation and the role that allegory communicated through this medium played in protest movements in Eastern Europe and Soviet satellite states, particularly in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The study with a gallery of examples (not the ersatz Itchy and Scratchy pictured) from the 1950s onward demonstrates the parabolic reach of the message (the animatic being the synchronised storyboard) considering that in most cases the state was the lone patron of cartoons, looking into the past when puppet theatre and other antecedents could be as covertly subversive, plus how contemporary artists are rediscovering animation as powerful form of commentary.

cross-roads

Though I can’t say for certain that many hikers will cross our path, we discovered that our new home, remote and rather secluded as it is, lies just behind the intersection of two of the European Long Distance Routes (the nearest point of reference shared by both trails is the City of Coburg), marked and maintained hiking paths that follows ancient trade and pilgrimage routes. From north to south, one stretches from Lapland through Finland and Sweden through Germany and Austria to the Adriatic coast, and from west to east, the other spans from Spain following el Camino de Santiago (der Jakobsweg) through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic onto the shores of the Black Sea in Bulgaria. What an amazing journey to embark on and to think we are at if not the centre-point at least a nexus of sorts.

canting arms

Mental Floss presents an interesting assortment of emblems and symbols on national and territorial flags that tells the lore behind the scampering marten of Croatia, the Phrygian cap (hat on a stick) motif that represented manumission from slavery, and made me think of the aurochs, an extinct wild bull of Europe that’s on many coats-of-arms. I did not know, however, why Bermuda has, seemingly inauspiciously, a shipwreck on their flag and how that near-disaster inspired Shakespeare to pen to The Tempest—and nor did I realise that for its side bar of five intricately woven carpets representing the five chief tribes, the flag of Turkmenistan is considered the most vexillogically complex banner in the world.

ulysses or hocus-porcus

By its nature, mythology does not admit to definitive versions, although the fables and folklore of the Greeks, once committed to paper by Homer and Hesiod and countless others took on an air authority that was not a uniting theme in the tradition of story-telling. Although different accounts circulated long afterwards and inheritor traditions continue to build on that unstaid corpus still, lore, variation and invention is sourced to the Heroic Age—those who fought in the Trojan War, and abruptly ended with that diasporic, lost generation afterwards.
Maybe it was because those stories were written down and the winningest narratives became the prevailing ones—competition continued among poets, championing their own character-analyses, morals and retribution and it’s now hard to imagine as the readership that there were opposing legends presented to audiences, amok-time scenarios where Electra and Œdipus had normal families and lost their place in the popular imagination to the racier, received versions. One of the very last myths constructed, a lost epic that seems groundless morose but somewhat reconstituted, by the Greeks is called the Telegony and dealt again with re-deploying veterans and the homecoming of Odysseus, but told from the perspective of the seductress and enchantress Circe. During Odysseus’ captivity on the exile-island of Aeaea—Lošinj, Croatia—(Circe was banished to this remote location to keep her out of trouble), Circe became pregnant and bore Odysseus a son after his departure, the eponymous Telegonus, whose name meant born far away due to his father’s distant home. Athena urges Circe to reveal to her young adult son—juxtaposed with the massacre and funeral service for opportunist suitors of his wife, Penelope, whose advances she solemnly rebuffed for the two decades’ absence of her husband that open the story—who his father is. Telegonus resolves journey to Ithaca to find Odyssey.
Why Athena, as Odysseus’ constant champion and protector, encouraged this reunion seems impenetrable and without the entire story—that’s just been teased out of a few lines and other myths referencing the Telegony—the goddess’ motivation will remain a mystery, I suppose. Before going on this long and dangerous voyage, Circe asks the blacksmith of the gods to craft her son a supernatural spear with the poison tip of a string-ray to defend himself. Just as Telegonus arrives in the Ionian Sea, he is visited by a terrible storm and disoriented, does not realise that he has already arrived at his destination. Though the trope seems rather predictable to us thanks to the tragedies of Sophocles, Telegonus poached one of his father’s cows and was ambushed by Odysseus and his men. As he deftly defends himself, Telegonus strikes down Odysseus, fulfilling a prophesy that the wily hero who satisfied his charge with burying an oar in a land where they never had heard of the ocean that stated he would meet his demise from the sea, and recognizes, too late, that he is his father. Beside himself with remorse, Telegonus takes Odysseus’ body, widow and half-brother, Telemachus (meaning “far from the battle-field” also unborn when Odysseus went off to war) back to Aeaea in the Adriatic. Circe’s magic was unable to restore Odysseus to life but is able to make the landing party immortal. Telegonus marries his step-mother, Penelope, and Circe, Odysseus’ lover, marries Telemachus. I wish we had the whole story in order to make this outcome seem plausible—the classic myths were hinged together in such a way where one could always suspend ones disbelief and accept that a character was fated to be transformed into a tree or flower or would be forced to experiment with the lesser-evils and impossible choices. I wonder if this outline could be expanded.

hella throughput

One other state assess to undergo privatisation, despite protests and public sentiment is the historic and busy port Piræus in Attica, one of the largest in the world and fount of Greece’s thalassocracy—a sea-going empire and later shipping tycoons and trade magnates and island-hopping around the archipelago. Piræus also happens to be the name of our second favourite Greek restaurant—having been recently unseated by a new favourite called Athen, being the German form of the great city Αθηνα and it strikes me as curious how different name cases come across in different languages with different conjugations and declinations, Athens sounding something akin to, “Let’s go to Walmart’s.”
Having the public relinquish a controlling stake in this venture is really torturous and I wonder how the past and the future will judge this decision.  Piræus is also known as the Lion’s Port—referencing a monumental fountain that stood at the harbour’s entrance from the third century BC to the late seventeenth century, when it was looted along with other spoils by invading Venetians during the War of the Holy League, the belligerents being Western Europe and Balkan rebels against the Ottoman Empire of the east. This ancient lion, somewhat defaced by the graffiti Nordic mercenaries excited over their war trophies, was delivered to the Arsenal (shipyard) of Venice—where it still stands along with other captive lions. The sobriquet is also still in place, despite the lion’s three centuries of absence, and I wonder if Greece has asked for it to be returned.

five-by-five

storyboard: scene-by-scene recreation of Doctor Strangelove using everyday objects

exoplanet: retro, WPA style NASA travel posters

enclava: another aspiring micronation cleaved out of terra nullius

riff-solo: a website that turns one’s typing into drum-beats

century of progress: seven maps that could only be made in the last one hundred years

mikronárod

Earlier this month, on a small but serviceably large (bigger than the Vatican and Monaco) patch of terra nullius, a disputed area along the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia, an enterprising Czech politician founded a new micronation called Liberland.
Although the fledgling nation is not officially recognised by any traditional legitimising authority yet, the boundaries are already on the map thanks to a concerted marketing and branding offensive that rivals those of many well established countries. The profile from Quartz Magazine features links to Liberland’s extensive virtual presence with designs to have a permanent, physical presence in the near future. Given the successful organising charter and faith of volunteers and aspiring citizens, it makes one wonder what constitutes a state and who else might be able to pull it off.  Do the trappings and symbols of state confer statehood alone?  What do you think?

cowboys and indians: the fourth crusade or the tale of the two sicilies

The Latin Church, going into another apoplectic shock over the failure of the Third Crusade, with the failure to retake Jerusalem back from the forces of Saladin and what was seen as an unacceptable appeasement—bordering on tolerance—of the Muslims wherein the Crusaders only barely managed to cling to the coastline with the cities of Jaffa, Acre, Tripoli and Antioch, decided to once and for all settle matters by again taking the reins, as happened in the First Crusade, a century beforehand. Pope Innocent III dispatched legates and recruiters to all corners of Christendom, determined to carefully control the quality of holy warriors, skilled and pious knights only with no more of those roadies that the Pontiff blamed for past fiascoes or avarice souls only coming along for material gain. Owing to the untimely death of Richard Lionheart by a stray arrow that led to his little brother John taking the throne, whose sympathetic dealings with the French nobility and general lack of restraint incited a revolt among his own barons and a crisis of succession and civil war that ended with John persuaded to check his own power with by signing the Magna Carta in the field of Runnymede. All these events took far longer to play-out that the two year campaign of the Fourth Crusade to come, so enlistment efforts in England were fruitless. So too were they in neighbouring France, with Louis II unwilling to budge or part with his armies until this matter was resolved.
Even though relations with the Holy Roman Empire under the ambitions of Hohenstaufen Emperor Henry VI was strained, Germany was more responsive to the entreaties of the Pope. Henry VI was hoping to undo the embarrassment of the dissolution of the German contribution to the Third Crusade after order fell asunder when his father, Barbarossa, unceremoniously drowned en route, but this putting on a brave face also carried ulterior-motives. Henry was also a match-maker, tutored in building strategic alliances through matrimony by veteran Eleanor of Aquitaine, and secured loyalties at home before incorporating more and more lands into the empire.
Henry conquered the important naval power of Sicily and had many of the Papal States as well as the buffer kingdoms of Armenia and Cyprus in his corner, and hoped to established an universal empire that stretched throughout Europe and across the Mediterranean to rival Byzantium, if not entice it to merge into a single super-power. Perhaps Henry would have succeeded too and the world would be very different, had he not, like his father, died of malaria in transit. Like with the earlier, disastrous German campaign (whose only legacy was the creation of the imitative Order of the Teutonic Knights to protect the pilgrims who did not retreat), the Crusade careered off course shortly afterward, despite Pope Innocent’s efforts to wrest back control. The Church’s original plan would have the armies of Europe travel to Egypt by ship and launch a conquest on Jerusalem. Fatefully, Henry’s own Sicily was at war with Genoa and Pisa, leaving Venice as the only sea-going city state from which to depart—although some of the English and French volunteers left from Flanders and Marseilles.
Venice had been scheming against Byzantium from sometime and despite having been expelled from the capital of Constantinople along with the other Latin Christian population (depriving the merchants of lucrative trade opportunities) recently found themselves charged with naval protection of the empire’s flank along the Adriatic—the admiralty having dissolved and sold the Byzantine fleet for personal gain. It was this and other lapses of leadership that had caused the people of Byzantium to revolt against the Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who was forced to abdicate and blinded in a palace-coup, and surrender the throne to his brother, Alexios III. The defeated man began plotting against his brother and conspired with the Venetians, persuading them it was time to attack Byzantium and restore him to power. Conveniently, the Crusader armies were on their way, and a detour to Constantinople surely would be tolerated. The Germans acquiesced to the stop over, though presciently Pope Innocent admonished the Crusaders that they were entering fellow-Christian lands as visitors and on the pain of excommunication, forbid any one damaging or pilfering Byzantine property. This command was not well circulated and mostly ignored and the armies, beginning a series of atrocities that goes very nearly unmatched in recorded history, first sacked Zadar and Trieste on the Dalmatian coast, despite the cities both confessing the Roman Catholic rite. And spurred on by this conquest and the allure of even greater booty, the Crusader army put the ancient and wealthy city of Constantinople under siege and proceeded with raids once the port was taking, looting immeasurable wealth, defiling churches, taking holy relics as war-trophies, destroying libraries and other storehouses of knowledge and burning a fifth of the city.
The deposed, blind emperor was restored—as were the free-trade zones and consulates of the thalasso- cracies, but the city and the empire would never recover. Jesus wept.  The Great Schism occurred, the Eastern Orthodox Church splitting with the Latin Church over irreconcilable differences and disgust that been sorely sustained for centuries afterwards. The attack and following civil-unrest, the Greeks not at all pleased with being ruled by a puppet-emperor of Western Europe severely crippled their ability to defend themselves from Ottoman invaders and eventually Byzantium fell, with Turkish territory spanning at its apogee from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf to the suburbs of Vienna, from Baku to Algeria. Only a fraction of the Crusaders reached the Holy Land, those embarking from France and Belgium, and only helped maintain the status quo in the diminished Crusader holdings. Overcome with grief and guilt for the destruction that resulted from the venture, the Latin Church would never again sanction a crusade to the Holy Land—those to follow are the doing of secular powers, but did, after the fall of Byzantium, launch expeditions to beat back the Ottomans and restore the Eastern Empire.

jubilee

The Washington Post reports that the government of Croatia has spent around twenty-seven million euro to forgive the financial obligations of some sixty thousand of its poorest citizens. Thousands of families caught in an unending cycle of indebtedness—that could well be inherited across generations have been given the chance to start anew, and it does seem a very small price to pay to restore a degree of dignity and independence as well as probably being more of a bargain in the long-term over paying benefits that only enrich the lenders. What do you think about this bold and unique act?

vertreibung oder flüchtlingsthematik

A small village near Weimar, the city that hosted Goethe and Schiller, Bauhaus and the Weimar Republic, is facing some sharp criticism over its suggestion to house refugees in the officers' barracks of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. There unspeakable horrors associated with the memories of this place, and ironically it seems that our memory has become quite a feeble and atrophied thing. The immigration question is a complex one, but so is Germany’s relation to its past—much more so. Do Germans yet have guilt to discharge from the first half of the twentieth century? Surely, as do many of us—but does this make them to feel grudgingly obligated to accept more and more evacuees? That’s harder to answer—as with the Wirtschaftswunder that characterized Germany’s rebuilding and recovery after the wars ended was made possible to a very large extent through its guest worker programme, many also argue that Germany needs an infusion of a young population to sustain its present and retiring work-force and that Germany on balance benefits from immigration. I also feel that we are prone to lose our perspective as well: we’re welcoming in these people who’ve mostly been on the run from poverty and violence.
Mostly—and I think we choose to focus on those exceptions and malingerers. We also forget that while the sites of former concentration camps are sacred places, they were not recognized and consecrated as such right away and were regarded very differently depending on whether one found himself in East or West. Buchenwald was used by the Soviets initially as an internment camp for Nazi prisoners-of-war—although political-dissidents were also held there; Dachau and other locations in West Germany was first used to contain Germany’s own refugee crisis. Some fourteen million ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from territories either ill-gotten and taken back (like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia), lands that had been historically German, like much of Prussia that went to Poland and the Soviet Union, for centuries and other European cities where they were no longer welcome, like Amsterdam, were resettled in a Germany in ruins. Not only did the expelled Germany have to leave everything behind, they also faced the prospect of starting all over in a homeland that maybe was not at all familiar to them—their families perhaps living abroad for generations, spoke differently, had strange mannerisms, didn’t eat proper German food and were failing to integrate—and try to live among a population that if not outright hostile to the refugees were themselves struggling and barely had enough to provide for themselves, to say nothing for these newcomers. In the 1950s, once these crises had somewhat subsided, the regimes of the two Germanys took different positions on how the past was to be remembered. East Germany was quicker to turn Buchenwald and other sites into memorials and strongly encouraged people to visit, especially school-children, to face the incomprehensible and dread past. Whereas, in the West, the subject remained uncomfortable and while not going ignored or unexplored, talk was taboo for a long time and it really was not until Reunification that the public became more willing to confront their autobiographies.  Perhaps empathy is yet harder to face.

/self-/determination

Though this article may not be complete and totally up-to-date, the Wikipedia entry, yet loving tended for its apparent faults, on separatist and succession movements in Europe provides a pretty powerful illustration—with a map of the tensions and disputes—of how we regard outsiders and insiders even on the smallest regional levels.

Of course most splotches of colour are not typically violent and many just want greater recognition, but surveying the land and finding large areas that don’t contain some sort of break-away politics makes one wonder if the people there are all completely agreeable, just naïve or too cowed to complain. Looking at this situation presented on this map, I am not sure what to think about it. While I am sure that motivations are genuine and not frivolous and people have the right to proportional representation—historic borders being far from infallible too, I suppose that this sort of fractocracy and devolution does fiddle a bit with not only the spirit of integration but also of equal-rights and minority-protection—and we’re all happily minorities in one way or another, and rather than making an honest-effort to try to get along with one’s neighbours (oppressors, by some estimates) simply compartmentise them with a new sovereignty.

father frost

Reviewing a list of seasonal gift-bearers, I found it a bit jarring at first to see the list of regional variations on the familiar characters of Santa Claus and Saint Nikolaus to abruptly change to Saint Basil for the Greeks and other lands that follow the Orthodox Church.

It is not as if the historical personage of Saint Nikolaus, also hailing from Asia Minor, comes to us directly down the chimney in his present rosy and jovial form without some significant outside influences and concessions to preexisting customs, but—without knowing the evolution of the saint, it seems that this aesthetic monk who is the patron (among other things) of Russia—though Nikolaus is the protector of Moscow—and hospital administrators, and sometimes professional commencement speaker who delivers presents on 1 January seems vastly different. Not a direct counterpart, the Orthodox Church considers Nikolaus moreover an advocate for sailors, though sharing the same charitable feelings for children and the poor, and instead allows this early Church doctor and delegate to the synod that Constantine convened at Nicaea in order that those squabbling Christians could hash out their differences once and for all to champion the cause of delivering gifts and good cheer at Christmas time. As Nikolaus became conflated with Santa Claus, his helpers and Father Christmas, so too did Basil take on the manners and duties of Дед Мороз (going by many names), Father Frost. Originally a Slavic spirit of the wintry weather, parents used to ransom their children with treats for the spirit to protect them during these harsh months. Saint Basil helped Father Frost have a change of heart and he reversed his ways and began paying back the community. Compare this to one of Basil’s historical missions when he rallied the town of Caesarea to denote all their material wealth to raise an army to defend themselves from immanent Raids.

All the people of the town, from the richest to the poorest readily complied but when the attackers never materialised, no one was quite sure what they had given, so Basil decreed that the gold coins be baked into sumptuous loaves and given out to all residents, and so was the wealth redistributed. This lucky tradition is observed in Greece and other lands on New Years to this day—the vasilopita, Basil’s pie. Father Frost was also considered secular enough a figure to sneak past the Communist regimes that sought to eradicate religious practises. Saint Basil’s reputation for caring for the poor also stemmed from his marshaling of traditions that formed the self-sufficient monastic orders. Outside the gates of Caesarea, there was a grand campus called the Basiliad, which was a model for later monasteries with a guesthouse, hospital, a hospice and a library. This basic unit of government greatly influenced the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church and the monastic movement took hold in far-flung places like Ireland, helping to preserve learning and the faith with supporting institutions, like the Roman Empire, fell is but one accomplishment among the retinue of Basil’s legacy—plus bring presents.

finding krampus oder knecht ruprecht

In a delightful little holiday safari called Searching for Krampus, one of Boing Boing’s happy mutants covers the slow and careful cultivation of an old Germanic tradition transported to Hollywood.
The old masters from Austria (though similar devils haunt a broad swath of Europe) that ultimately helped realise a Krampus festival were skeptical at first, worried that without proper guidance that the custom would become mere cos-play and horror-camp but there seems to be a genuine fascination for this demonic foil—that’s maybe reflective of broader laments over the over-commercialisation of the season. This is always a sore topic and all chime-in when it comes to Christmas-Creep, but I can imagine that the Celts, the ancient Germanic tribes, and the ancient Roman were feeling pretty much the same way when they saw their mistletoe, Yuletide and Saturnalia taken over by Christian rites. Knecht Ruprecht is a related but non-demonic companion of Saint Nicholas, meaning Farmhand Rupert, who threatens disobedient children and hashes out appropriately wretched presents—and although maybe not enjoying the same seasonal celebrity as the monstrous Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht is pretty famous in the Deutsche Sprachraum as the name of the Simpson family pet greyhound, Santa’s Little Helper, in the German version of the series.

it happened on the way to the forum: off the reservation or roman gothic

H and I took advantage of a nice afternoon to take a stroll around our second-city of Wiesbaden. As we walked around the Kurpark, we thought about the Roman influence that is nearly forgotten jenseits the Rhine. Few obvious relics remain and though somewhat an idyll—like the trend, the conceit during Victorian times for English villages to Latinise their names, c.f., Weston-super-Mare rather than Weston-upon-the-Sea of Faulty Towers fame—this settlement did original appear on the map with the designation Aquis Mattiacis (Aquae Mattiacorum), by the Waters of the Mattiacæ, a branch tribe of the Germanic Chatti. The remote settlement, now known Spa-in-the-Meadows, within the defensible footprint of the larger fortifications of Mainz (Mogontiacum) just across the Rhein, did also gain renown for its thermal springs that were a source of pigment that Roman women, as was the fashion, could use to dye their hair red. These artfully arranged ruins are not Roman but remnants of the construction of the nearby opera house, and the interior of the casino is modeled with the grand opulence of a Roman bath house.
A true archeological leftover remains, however, in the form of the so-called Heidenmauer (ironically, the Heathens' Wall) which is the preserved part of a Roman-era aqueduct commissioned under the reign of Valens after he and his brother and co-emperor Valentinian finally some made gains on this frontier, the Limes Germanicus.
This headway in Germany by the Emperor of the West, however, was obscured by a more fateful entreaty and the way it was carried out on another distant fluvial border. A Gothic tribe pleaded with Rome to be allowed to ford the Danube in the Balkans and seek refuge from an even greater peril, the marauding Huns, which the Western Empire would not even survive to face. There was no Gothic invasion of Rome, but rather a horrible and snowballing misstep taken by abandoning established safeguards and protocols.
For centuries, Rome had been integrating barbarian refugees, transforming former enemies into citizens and soldiers, with carefully constructed plans for avoiding diaspora through redistribution, resettlement and conscription against common enemies—the Romans were also not above simply buying loyalty with bribes and pay-offs. But with attention vested in internal revolts and problems in the East, Rome bypassed the usual measures and empanelled the influx of Goths, primarily the Thervingii and the Greutungii under the leadership of Alavivus and Fritigern, to refugee camps with very austere conditions. The still-banded tribes reached the breaking point after chieftains were invited to a reconciliatory banquet and then held hostage and the starving people were offered grain in exchange for selling their offspring into slavery.
 A united Gothic people claimed the run of the Empire’s countryside but were unable to raid walled and fortified cities, lacking the resources and experience. The Eastern Emperor, Valens, finally had had enough of this nuisance, just at the gates, and took a stand on the fields of Adrianople (Edirne in Turkey). With superior fighting strength, however, the Gothic forces successfully routed the Romans, killing many key military figures and the Eastern Emperor himself and captured the city, which proved to be a gateway to controlling all of Thrace.

Peace proved even more costly to the Empire, with a settlement reached that essential established an autonomous Gothic kingdom within Roman territory. Though the Goths were temporarily pacified, external pressure set by this new precedent did not go unnoticed by all parties involved, a demoralized Rome, an emboldened bunch of barbarians—including the relatively tame and reliable Germanic tribes, and it did not take long for the Empire in the West to fracture into many such independent enclaves. The evidence left in Wiesbaden seems to invoke more tranquil times for Rome.

it happened on the way to the forum: christogram or eastern-pivot

Born into the power-sharing arrangement that Diocletian established and the attendant civil wars that erupted across the Empire whenever one leader sought to recall the devolved governance, which even Diocletian witnessed in his retirement in Dalmatia—his careful planning collapsing despite his gracious bowing-out—though refusing entries to return and put an end to the in-fighting and poisonous ambition for more than a good regional share of the world, Constantine the Great, fore-father of the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires and revered as a saint in the Eastern tradition is a character of indubitable significance but forever escaping true comprehension.
Stripping away every other accomp- lishment and monument and joining him at the beginnings of his career, Constantine was a regional leader, an Augustus with his power-base centred in Trier. Dissatisfied only holding imperium over the Germania and Gaul, Constantine also tried to consolidate his holdings, launching offensives against his imperial colleagues. Whether his campaigns were carefully calculated in the name of self-interest or as a defender of the faith is a matter of much debate and ultimately the answer is something as private and inaccessible as belief and credulity. Perhaps recognising the political capital vested within the growing Christian population was more valuable that simply using these vaguely treasonous up-standing citizens as convenient scapegoats or perhaps out of genuine concern to stop the persecutions, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan that legitimised Christianity and banned their mistreatment—which effectively undid the terror visited on the community by Diocletian—the torture, the marginalising, the confiscation of property.
Constantine also famously raised campaigns against these pretenders but not exactly under the ægis of the Cross and rather by a vision communicated to him to him that his troops ought to bear the sign Chi-Rho (the Greek ligature of the letters Χ and Ρ, ☧, which appeared as marginalia short-hand and the equivalent of Latin NB, nota bene—good or important, long before it was understood as a monogram of Jesus), who were proponents for the return of Christian oppression. Whether their advocacy was rooted in slighted patrons, pagans that were remiss to have their abated riches taken back, or out of genuine devotion to the elder pantheon, Constantine's co-emperors were felled. Either out of a preponderance of caution or a demurring sense of being non-committal, however, the Triumphal Arch erected to immoralise his conquests bore no mention of the High God of the Christians and there was little talk of Christ and God, yet. Constantine’s sainted mother, Helen, was dispatched on a long good-will tour, making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a large entourage and collecting a lot of relics along the way. Mother and son commissioned the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the original St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, on the spot where the apostle was martyred. Despite his building initiatives which included many public facilities and infrastructure projects aside from the churches, Constantine remained rather silent on the matter of faith and proselytising but was always troubled by the squabbling within the hierarchy of the emerging Church.
Seemingly wanting to present a united front rather than risk a tradition that would plunge just as easily into sectarianism, Constantine began to directly engage doctrinal controversies. First, there was emergent issue of what to do about the Christians who had been pragmatic during the purges and obliged by making sacrifices to the pagan gods in order to escape punishment, and then there was the matter of the Arian schism (named for the priest, Arius of Alexandria) concerning the nature of Christ—whether He, as begotten, could still be considered divine or whether the Trinity was just different aspects of the self-same God. Constantine seemed to think that this was a rather petty question and certainly not worth excommunication and disunity. To let the opposing schools of thought finally hash out their differences, Constantine called together a meeting of the bishops and although the winning side and compromised reached was not exactly the outcome that the Emperor was backing—and Constantine could of course been more dictatorial as Pontifex Maximus had he wanted and just decided matters for himself—he respected the group’s decision. A bit naïve about Church politics and the volatility of opposing camps in matters of faith with the Arianists and non-Arianists certainty did not feeling that their squabble was trivial, Constantine was quite nonplussed that once debate was over, the two sides did not come together and all disagreements did not suddenly evaporate. So to try to settle matters once and for all, the Emperor called for a bigger council that represented a much broader swath of the faithful and convened the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, with bishops from all across the known world. Over the weeks, the nature of the Son of God was fixed—though as an even more confusing answer than the question posed, the calculus for determining the dates of moveable feasts like Eastertide, who was eligible for baptisms, and a host of other questions. With the matter appearing tidily resolved, Constantine could embark on other matters of state, including creating for himself a new capital. The City of Rome itself know abandoned as a sort centre emeritus, and all other metropolitan candidates, like Milan or Trier or Salona, fell short in one way or another. Constantine therefore decided to build up a fishing village on the Bosporus, styling it New Rome.
That name never caught on and the great capital was referred to as Constantinople (the city of Constantine) and ultimately İstanbul, derived from the accusative case of “the City.” Constantine did some momentous things during a career that spanned three decades and founding institutions that would go on shaping the world forever more, but the genuineness of his belief, and Whom exactly was his champion, remains mysterious. His ambitions and general deportment—including executing his wife and son for the sake of inheritance—was not very Christian, plus after all those efforts at reform and elevating the religion, Constantine himself was seemingly a death-bed convert, albeit that it was an efficient use of a baptismal since it is cumulative and the dying Emperor did not get the chance to commit any more egregious acts afterwards. Some blame the spread of Christianity for the downfall of the Empire and by extension, civilisation, and say the Church only saved the most Byzantine and corruptible elements of Roman bureaucracy. The great Emperor also had his failings, including monetary reform that pared away inflation but only benefited the wealthy and created class disparity with little mobility, poor succession-planning that led to the resumption of the civil wars that engulfed the Empire, a rift in the Church that only expanded in manifold ways, and a senseless war with Persia—ostensibly to protect the Christian population of Armenia, that benefited no one as one of his last official acts. Whatever the fundamental motivations—and this is an important question, the so-called Donation of Constantine is all around us to this day.

it happened on the way to the forum: command economy or endangered specie

After the comic-tragedy of of a succession of rulers elevated, blindsiding both the nominees—ambitious or inuring and the state with no forward-looking policies in place and only filling the power-vacuum by whatever pretender might be sucked in next with the sufficient gravitas to plug the hole for a few years and sometimes just for a few weeks, Diocletian from Illyria (modern-day Dalmatia in Croatia) came on the scene, having risen through the military ranks to command the cavalry during campaigns in Persia and on the Danube frontier and radically reformed the way the Empire was governed, by turning the state back to the role of state-craft.
In order to prevent any potential usurpers from raising a fighting force that could unseat the incumbent, during the reign of Aulerian, the Emperor had taken personal charge of the bulwark of the legions and when crises emerged, marched his private army to whatever new insurgency, domestic uprising or incursions on the borderlands, was presenting itself. The tacit seemed to bring a measure of stability to the Empire, with Aulerian's tenure exceptionally long and productive compared to other office-holders of the time, but was very taxing and inefficient, given how the troops had to rush to counter any and all threats, and threatened to endanger the Empire any time there was an attack on more than one front. Realising these risks, either sacrificing border-security for the safety of the regime or vice versa, Diocletian took the bold and ingenious move of sharing imperium—first with a trusted co-regent—and then splitting the Empire into four united regions, reasoning that no man could let his ambitions get the better of him ruling a quarter of the civilised world with virtually full autonomy. Tax havens were eliminated and no province, even what had formerly been the home province of Italy, was accorded especial treatment, with capitals established at Antioch (on the Syrian/Turkish border), Nicomedia (near the more famous Constantinople), Milan and Trier, and demarcating a division of skill-sets that was not distinguished before, created separate military and civil-service career tracks that put professional administrators in charge of tax-collecting, the courts, assessment and public-works projects.
The bureaucratic hierarchy established put the persons of the Emperors behind endless corridors of intermediaries, answerable to the next higher officer, and lent them an air of almost a demi-god and not the the aura of the First Citizen, a common-man brought up in the ranks of soldiering and fraternising with the people, putting forth the principal of rule by the grace of God, the divine right of kings. The Empire consisted of around one hundred small provinces, which were grouped into larger political units called diocese (of the same Greek root for administration as the cognomen Diocletian), under the governance of an ombudsman called a vicar. These vicars coordinated the larger federal policies among the regional powers, and this structure was preserved, with essentially the same borders, by the Catholic Church after the Fall in the West to the present day. Of course, this apparatus was not just put in place to shield the upper echelons of leadership or to protect personal and dynastic interests, but rather, there was a lot of business, civil-affairs and economic-recovery, to attend to. These matters had been neglected for years, with emperors expected to preside over decisions large and small in trials and policy and near continual debasement of coins, reducing the precious metal (specie) content which resulted in inflation. Diocletian knew that simply coining more money made it worthless and began to round the worthless coppers and slugs and minted new currency of nearly pure silver and gold content.  His attempt was a worthy one, but Diocletian and his ministers did not take nearly enough of the old coins out of circulation and his successors did not enforce all the elements of the recovery plan, as tradesmen and later governments did not understand the economic principles in play. Money was still not worth its face-value.

Because tax revenues were falling precipitously and pur- chasing- power was declining, Diocletian suggested another bold reform that simply removed the intermediary of money and instituted payment in-kind. Sending out his legion of bureaucrats to take stock of what non-liquid assets every one possessed and how much each family needed to live, they returned and constructed a comprehensive equivalency chart to, without the medium of money, show that so many hours of work in the fields or of tending the herds or of soldiering or of shuttling munitions or of arrow-making, etc. was equal to so many units of grains, bolts of fabric, jugs of wine, tableware, etc. This thoroughly researched commissariat determined the annual budget for all the land, and actually functioned pretty well, leading to a better and more equitable return of services in exchange for what the Empire doled out. Barter such as this was naturally not conducive to international trade, the rest of the world having been introduced and now hopelessly accustomed to the Roman coin, but helped to stabilise the economy and replenish state coffers with fiat money. Diocletian even anticipated what might happen if everyone went after the easy or glamourous jobs, like prospector or astrologer, instead of more menial and harder work in exchange for their stipends, like garbage-collector or butcher, and called for the formation of trade guilds which set quotas and applied standards for admissions. Though ultimately the Empire fell in the West over invasion, military coup and economic implosion, Rome did go on existing for another one hundred or so years, already moribund when Diocletian came to power, and chose co-regents that allowed the Empire in the East to survive for another millennium. Diocletian retired graciously, the first and only Emperor to abdicate, to his homeland.

it happened on the way to the forum: ubi et orbi or as the empire turns

After real and perceived achievements during the Gallic campaigns—helped through self-propagrandisement, Caesar made excursions across the Rhine, which was the superstitious northern boundary of the Empire and beyond which lie the Germanic tribes—marshalling his engineers to construct a bridge in less than a month to support the movement of forty-thousand soldiers and their wagon train, only to tear it down again once the troops were paraded in Teutonic territories—and their point was proven.
Caesar’s legions went on to land on the mythical Isle of the Britons—though no colony was established there until Hadrian’s time. Though essentially exiled from Rome, Caesar and his troops were generally enjoying their time in the field and wanted for no hardships. Despite the fact that neither the general nor his senatorial opponents really respected the jot and tittle technicalities of the law—unless it served them well, Caesar, with his string of successes, was fully confident that he would be allowed to serve a second consecutive term as pro-counsel on the frontier of Gaul, as the second five year term would bring Caesar to the ten-year limitation of standing for counsel of the city. Realising Caesar’s intentions, the Senate demanded that the general disband his legions and issued his recall to Rome. Caesar refused to return to Rome unless he was allowed to retain the protection of his armies—since he would no longer be immune from prosecution, and while the Senate probably would not have crucified this war-hero, Caesar would be compelled to retire from political life, a prospect which probably struck him as worse than death.
Facing the eventual attrition of his legions (the Senate starving them out and no relief fighters coming if not an attack from the army of the republic—though such an assault would be without precedence), Caesar decided to act immediately and marched his legions south. By crossing the Rubicon, going from the province of Gaul into the Empire proper, Caesar mobilised a Roman fighting force against Rome itself. It was no bluff, but the Senate, not knowing the size of the army on the march, fled to Greece and abandoned the city, bringing along most of those with means with them and leaving Rome defenseless and empty. In truth, neither side wanted the bad publicity of open fighting between factions, and Caesar was keen on forgiveness, generally pardoning his enemies—at least the leadership, no matter the transgression. Caesar declared himself dictator of the deserted city, and appointed his long-time brother-in-arms, a brilliant strategist though hopeless dissolute in his private life, Mark Antony as caretaker, while he went to pursue the opposing armies, under the direction of Pompey, a once loyal member of Caesar’s coalition of three, the Triumvirate. Caesar chased Pompey to Egypt, where the defender of the Republic, bereft of his military and leader of a Senate only in name sought refuge. The kingdom with its capital in Alexandria, ruled by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty since its founding by Alexander the Great, had maintained an uneasy peace with Rome as a client state, bribing diplomats for their continued independence and keeping Rome at arm’s length. Pompey believed he could find some supporters there—especially if he could vouchsafe their sovereignty. Once Pompey arrived, however, he was immediately beheaded by a faction loyal to Caesar who believed that they were executing Caesar’s wishes—and he might be able to forgo an unwelcome, prolonged visit—besides Egypt was in the midst of its own civil war and did have the time to deal with Roman intrigues, just as Rome—appointed as executor of the Egyptian ruler’s last will and testament had been too busy with its own constitutional crisis to enforce the other’s wishes. When the last ruler of Alexandria died, as was tradition, joint leadership passed on to his children, young Ptolemy XIII and his older sister Cleopatra.
The royal advisors, knowing it would be an easier matter to control a ten-year-old rather than the experienced and savvy Cleopatra sought to divest her of all power. In the midst of these maneuvers, Caesar arrived in Alexandria, looking for Pompey. When Caesar was presented with his old associate’s head, the sole-survivor of the Triumvirate was mortified—possibly more remorseful for having lost the chance to forgive his rival and be an all-around good-winner. Caesar had the assassin executed and because of the boy-king’s advisors’ involvement in the act, sided with Cleopatra (also admiring her moxy in being snuck back into the capital, hidden in a linen basket) and helped her regain her place on the throne. Since destined to wed her brother, in order to keep the royal succession in the family, and grateful for the support, the young queen became quite enamoured with the old general—and for the first time in a decade, Caesar took a vacation—in the form of a month-long luxury cruise down the Nile. Although it was surely relaxing and resulted in the only male child, Ptolemy XV Caesarion, that Caesar was to sire (known, at least), the general saw no reason to squander a chance to make an impression upon the countryside, with some four-hundred ships regaled in the wake of Caesar’s yacht. Here was another land where Roman presence was entrenched. After this liaison and enemies dispatched with, Caesar returned to Rome to relieve the remaining populace from the terror of Antony, who carried himself with hedonism and casual disregard for the common-man as well as any future emperor. Caesar was cheered and even mostly when he presented Cleopatra—except by his wife and those suspicious of this Eastern temptress.  Wave after wave of tribute-parades were celebrated but the thronged masses grew weary of the spectacle when the floats started depicting those local personalities who fell from grace.

The crowd may have been starting to appreciate the countermands of his opponents and seeing the triumphs in the sobre and disappointing light of a man responsible for so much bloodshed and sorrow by his singular refusal to give up the limelight. Possibly due to having a scarcity of choice, Caesar announced that he would be launching a campaign to pacify the Balkans, whose amity emerged as a threat out of nowhere. Those elements that remained that feared Caesar's tyranny—he had indeed resigned from his self-proclaimed earlier dictatorship but later had it reinstated for life, knew they had to act quickly before Caesar once again repaired to the borderlands, and contrived a simple plot, with no thought for succession-planning. The conspirators resolved to rid Rome of a usurping king, thought that is exactly what they got for the rest of the Empire's career, and lured Caesar to the Senate on the eve of his departure with a fabricated bill that required his attention. Despite portends from friends and family, Caesar did not want to be seen as standing-up the Senate again and went to his chambers. Caesar was stabbed thirty-four times. Eulogised by Antony, Caesar's will was unsealed and bequeathed Rome quite an unexpected cliffhanger: Caesar's last testament called for the posthumous adoption of his nephew Octavian (though Caesar recognised potential), a frail and rather unspectacular youth, and left the lion's share of his fortune and estate to him. Antony, Caesar's loyal confidant and trusted second in command felt more than slighted by this omission. Almost right away, the alliance between Octavian (who took his adoptive father's name) and Antony fell asunder, with Antony consumed with retaking the reigns and rich rightly his. Finding one another in similar straits, feeling betrayed by the same man, Antony took up with Cleopatra and retreated to Egypt.  Together, with the Egyptian queen elevated to Antony's co-general, the two raised an army to wrest power away from Octavian.  Though the Senate, despite being defanged themselves, had long since stripped Antony of all executive powers, he and Cleopatra declared that Caesarion, Caesar's illegitimate son, and the twins that were the result of Antony's affair, were princes and princesses of the Roman provinces.

This announcement particularly incensed Octavian, being that Antony was married to his sister, and though adultery was tolerated in Roman culture provided it was done sufficiently on the sly, Octavian began to style Cleopatra as some sort of wicked enchantress, like Circe, and had the formerly loyal Antony under her spell.  After a failed sea-battle, the duo were eventually cornered in Alexandria, hiding out in the chambers of a tomb that Cleopatra had been building for herself, nothing as conspicuous as a pyramid, however.  Forlorn at their poor prospects and cramped-quarters, Antony called for Cleopatra, but weary, she sent a slave to inform Antony that she was already dead.  Wracked with grief, Antony stabbed himself and hearing his death-moans, Cleopatra came running to comfort Antony.  Cleopatra was captured at that instant and had no time to follow his example.  Faced with the prospect of being paraded around Rome as a prisoner, Cleopatra had a deadly asp smuggled into her cell in a basket by a slave and poked at it until it struck.  In rapid-succession, our Roman adventures present themselves a lot like the plot from a soap-opera, and there is much more below the surface and popular idioms.  Hopefully for you too, such a portrayal might be inspiration to learn more.

arm-chair coaching or ARG:GER

I realise that this speculation is a little behind in coming, but we watched the final match at a Public-Viewing in Rovinj while on vacation, and I continued to be fascinated by the fact the tense stand-off, also being followed by two living Popes, who happened to hail from the countries of the opposing teams, and how such a coincidence of events will never occur again. The Argentine pope had earlier pledged neutrality, asking for no divine intervention, but I don't know what the thoughts of the Pope-Emeritus from Germany were on that subject. They may have watched the game together, though their minders suggested that play started well past their bedtimes.

croatia week: linguistic landmark

Brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius are probably best known for the Cyrillic alphabet and orthography named after them, but the missionaries to the Slavs were also diplomats to the Muslim world and tried to improve relations between the Caliphate and Byzantium and philosophy professors at the university of Constantinople, before undertaking Great Moravia. There, they devised the so-called Glagolitic script, which the Cyrillic script is derived from, in order to give the people a system of writing, derived—like Cyrillic—from their native Greek alphabet but suited to the character of the Slavic language. I am not sure how exactly a way of writing is matching how a language is composed, especially when invented, but you can download the font here.  There are many manuscripts and inscriptions, ancient and retro-revival, all over Croatia, where the system was developed.

The written word, however, did not succeed in standising the Croatian language. Today, a Latin system of writing is employed, devised by Ljudevit Gaj who based his script off of the special letter forms and diacritical marks invented for Czech and Polish, and the language has, bolstered by national and literary identity, taken on a lexical standard, though much mutual-intelligibility is retained among neighbouring languages and dialects. I tried to learn a little bit and I think it accorded us some special attention for the effort, and would like to pick up some more for a return visit. Aside from the usually pleasantries and politely saying I want something, I remember the fun word for waterfall—Slap—and the term for feedback (Fragenbogen)—Upitnik, which sounds like something one would not want to solicit, being all up in another’s business.

croatia week: zadar or nunc dimittis

The city of Zadar has many fine churches with equally rich treasuries but one of the more curious is a reliquary of Saint Simeon (Sveti Šimun).

The structure and its dedications are a hagiography of a saint—not to be confused with Simeon the apostle, better known by his regnal name as first pope of Peter, or the hermit who lived for thirty-seven years on top of a high pillar or among pillars of ruined temples and his admirers were convinced he flew up there and from one to another, or the slap-sick patron of puppeteers and jesters, Simeon the Fool, blinding someone to show that he could be cured—who was the individual presiding over the ritual Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Candlemas). Ancient of days and world-weary, Simeon was granted a peaceful death afterwards, as that was the saint's meaning in life. Nunc dimittis—now you are dismissed. The holy remains of Saint Simeon, tradition holds, wound up in Croatia in the year 1204 when a Venetian merchant was transporting the loot back from Constantinople and was shipwrecked here on the Dalmatian coast.
While repairing his ship, the merchant re-interred the body in a stone coffin in a graveyard for safekeeping. In the meantime, the merchant fell ill and came under the care of a some hospitable monks, whose churchyard he had covertly used as a hiding place. The monks had a prophetic dream that led them to the fresh grave and upon discovering the saint’s body and the wonders it worked, never allowed the treasure to leave. About two centuries later Elizabeth of Bosnia (Queen of Hungary and Croatia) attended mass where the relic was kept and a finger from the saint's mummified, incorruptible body.
It is hard to say why the queen was so possessed to do this capricious thing, but historically, she seemed like a real nasty character—ambitious and having her rivals' children killed, sort of a wicked step-mother figure who ruled as regent after the deaths of her well-wed husbands.
 The story goes that Elizabeth hid the finger in her dress and it immediately started to decompose with squirming maggots and all the rigours of fourteen hundred years of deadness. Elizabeth ran shrieking down the aisle of the church and had to confess what she had done. Mortified, Elizabeth commissioned the finest sarcophagus to seal in the saint's remains (with reliefs depicting his miracles and curiously her attempted theft) and a fine church of his own in Zadar. Just afterwards, Venice loss its claim to its lands in Dalmatia.