freixenet

This overview of medieval European microstates (micronations can be equally idiosyncratic but with severely limited recognition) that came into being either through omission, neglect or force, with nearly half still in existence, struck us a fascinating material and urged us to learn more. One favourite that we had not heard of was the outpost Fraxinet, a stronghold founded and held by Muslim pirates (a press-gang) sailing from Andalusia (al-Andalus) in the vicinity of Saint-Tropez in the late ninth century.
The settlement expanded and was as much a centre of trade and commerce as a place of piracy, if not more, and peace was negotiated among other Frankish ruling families in the area. The uneasy peace held for an astonishing eighty years with the Andalusis bringing all sorts of innovations to the indigenous people, including medical skills, tar, ceramics and the tambourine, but Fraxinet finally ended with the Battle of Tourtour when a group of nobles from Provence dispatched with the raiders, worried that they would seize control of an important Alpine pass nearby, conveniently spurred to action at the ransoming of an influential abbot.

oxen free

Hyperallergic directs to a rather delightful little illustrated study from 1801 that researcher and engraver Joseph Strutt compiled on the games, sports and pastimes of the people of medieval England. Before the advent of modern, genteel distractions, social affairs were really physically demanding and verged towards the sadistic.
The thirty-nine colour plates inspired by Middle Ages painting, song and nursery-rhymes speculate on the rules of hoodman blind (an early version of blind man’s “bluff”—traditionally called buff as in to push or shove around in Old English but as that term fell out of common-usage and play was less violent bluff started making more sense), wrestling, something called “hot cockles” as well as ones whose play defied hazarding a guess as well as more recognisable sports, like jousting tournaments and birding. These fun and games of course were more than a way to stave-off boredom and moreover in a conservative society a way for the sexes to mingle in an albeit regimented but acceptable manner—and makes us wonder how our contemporary games might be regarded by future generations.

brazen bull

Despite the relative profusion of medieval torture museums and the odd device displayed in a cellar or alcove—settings that lend an air of authenticity, it is interesting to think how an inflated idea of savagery has been perpetuated, and in fact torture and public gatherings to watch an execution were exceedingly rare occurrences.
Such spectacles did happen from time to time to seed the imagination and set an example, of course, but these were in the main orchestrated to assert legitimacy for new regimes—to suppress revolts and to claim a divine right of republic when dynastic orders were pushed aside. The artefacts, often shameless reconstructions cannibalised from other less exciting machine parts, planks and ploughshares from an appropriate age with no disclosure to the visitor—real or imaginary, are sort of a caprice, an idyll of hobbyists that I am not sure from what tradition of urban legends originate—though it seems rather Victorian to cultivate such diversions. Whatever the compulsion was to begin with, it seems that the historically selective and seldom practices carry the same forces of propaganda, though inverted, by suggesting that the same contemporary lexicon is hyperbole and drawing on the brutality of an uncivilised past, which was probably much more restrained.

5x5

babel: elegant diagram of the world’s most spoken languages

anachronistic: is this a lap top being presented on this ancient funerary frieze?

eye of the beholder: via Dangerous Minds, computer picks out the most creative works of art of all time

sandbox: old school playground reimagined for the age of helicopter parenting

medieval woman: a look housewifery in the Middle Ages, via the Everlasting Blort
 

docket or kangaroo court

Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe until the Enlightenment, it was not uncommon to see animals put on trial, often times provided with a defense counsel, and with due-process served, summarily executed.

Often the allegations levied against these barnyard creatures was for injuring their master, destruction of crops or for being barren—but sometimes the scope of the law was extended to more esoteric miscarriages, with pets charged with being familiars of certain known amici curiae, wolves along with their human avatars tried for being werewolves, and there is documentation of a rooster in Basel being burnt at the stake for the unnatural accomplishment of laying an egg, which hatched and loosed a cockatrice—a bipedal dragon with a chicken head, on the village. At least the domesticated poor beasts had a court-provided advocate in most cases.

alfred the great or yakety sax

Recently, I learnt about a seminal character of British history who was quite enlightened for living in the Dark Ages. King of Wessex, Alfred the Great, during the latter half of the ninth century, instituted many calculated reforms—only in part driven by the incursions of the Anglo-Saxons’ former neighbours, the Danes, drawn by the outrageous fortune of this island—which elevated his character to legendary proportions through his very real measures, ensuring the English identity at a time when it was buffeted by many outside threats.
Although a late-learner himself, like his more famous precedent influence to the south, Charlemagne, after negotiating an uneasy peace with the Nordic raiders that were given domain over the east of England in the Danelaw (Danelag) and persuading those tribes to embrace Christianity, Alfred lamented his ignorance and the general decay in scholarship in his land. There were no more experts in classical Latin, the language of the Church, left in England—in part because Charlemagne had prosecuted such a talent-drain by luring literacy to his court in order to evangelise to the continental Saxons. Absent classic academics, Alfred undertook to learn Latin and decreed that the native language, Old English, become the primary language of erudition. Wessex and Mercia, the formerly antagonising western kingdom won over by a clever union by Alfred’s daughter Æthelfæld—who got to rule the kingdom in her own right, cohabited with the raiders—just as they had done themselves some centuries before. Subsequently, there was a veritable explosion in literacy and a sizable body of literature, including the Chronicles of the Anglo-Saxons, an invaluable extant historic resource which first sought to document the people’s past and then faithfully maintained as a yearbook for the next four centuries. What is truly amazing is that Alfred accomplished all these reforms while on the run from the Danes.
Instead of retreating to the mainland as many of his fellow English regents had done, Alfred remained in Wessex and set up camp deep in the marshes of Somerset on the island of Athelny. Although there are some parallels to the capital of Rome repairing to the swampy protection of Ravenna, I can imagine, comically, Alfred staying one step ahead of the “Heathen Armies” and rushing here and there. After cleaning up the classroom, Alfred undertook the task of ensuring that the English identity would not just survive in letters but also thrive militarily. Ordering the fortification of key cities, the king ensured that no settlement was isolated and vulnerable to attack. Alfred established the English armada to counter Viking incursions—though with mixed success as Alfred insisted on designing the warships himself. Because the vast majority of conscripts were farmers with crops to look after, the season for waging battle was formerly a designated time of the year. As the invaders, however, did not respect these constraints, the peasantry was at a marked disadvantage, facing either poverty and starvation or being pillaged and massacred.

To remedy this situation, a rotating cycle of deployments was instituted so duty to family and duty to country imposed less of an egregious choice and a standing-army was ready at all times.  Alfred’s greatest coup was a diplomatic one, allowing the Danes to enjoy an independent society, cleaving to the east but slowly accepted into the fold, both sides exchanging cultural memes and vows that blended the two peoples and became an integral component of an English identity.

three-d or camera obscura

The ever-inspired Mental Floss presents an engrossing lesson in art history, through the lens of the Portrait Project's timeline of depictions of the Western world, where there is a very noticeable shift towards realism and perspective around the year 1400 from simple two-dimensional portrayals of people and things to a jaggedly more accurate picture that acknowledges size and shadow.
While I was expecting some sort of explanation like the latter rediscovery of the forgotten lensing technique of camera obscura—a pinhole projection of an image onto a screen, tabula rasa fit for tracing that ushered in, speculatively, a revolution in painting, portrait-studio quality representation. The article goes on to account how in medieval Europe general misery with the human-condition led to a shunning of the classic artistic techniques of accuracy with their minds on the here-after, and surviving simplicity was a revolt and expressive way to remind viewers that worldly existence was something flat.
I wonder if it was the case, like in the relatively concurrent Muslim world there was a proscription against the rendering of natural things, which led to the elaboration of calligraphy and abstraction, that led to abandonment and subsequent reconditioning contemporary with the Western Renaissance.

siss-boom-bah or vital spark

The fireworks have not ceased altogether, to be sure, and the ever excellent antiquary, Bibliodyssey, features a scholarly, beautifully illustrated essay on the the development of gunpowder and pyrotechnics in the Western world through the lens of an extensive German manual, Büchsenmeister und Feuerwerksbuch (Master Gunsmith and Fireworks Book—to show how it was impossible to divorce awe from practicality), from the last years of the 1500s, and how an evening's entertainment became more sophisticated and acclaimed much sooner than the substance could be harnessed for more destructive applications.

The alchemist with the ability to make a spectacle was regarded by his audience, it seems, in the early Renaissance, not as an entertainer or magician but rather as an educator who was able to make laboratory-style demonstrations of astral phenomena—lightening, comets—the moon, the stars and the sun, rather than mastering some strange new wonder of chemistry. Conjuring up the power of Nature through through carefully prepared potions became at that time also a literal understanding for the figurative, but not so inaccurate, investigation into the animating principle of life, believing that reawakening a fire from basically organic sources was evidence for the the vital spark, not the body electric (as I am sure electricity was looked at philosophically, theologically before being put to mundane use), but rather one that coursed and burnt with the stuff of skyrockets and sparklers.