barbary states

I think I must just be a little naïve, because although I never felt that the threat that the Caliphate poses was not a very real one, proved wrenchingly cruel and callous but not potent many times over, though shock and determination which can sometimes make up for other shortcomings for a little while—and when it seemed their violence had reached a sort of plateau, unspeakably gruesome reports come that ISIL may be harvesting the bodily organs of its victims to sell on the black-market—I never saw the potential for Rome and the Vatican to become prime targets, but I suppose they always were. ISIL is gaining territory in Libya—the former Italian colony on just the other side of the Mediterranean. Taking advantage of the power-vacuum created with the overthrow of strongman Qaddafi, whom had ambitions for creating a superstate across the Maghreb as well, the group is finding another staging ground in a leaderless land, like that American mandate, Iraq, that’s also proved to be vulnerable over its vacuity in leadership. They’ll be no defenders forthcoming for that past peerage of dictators, but destabilising order, especially a tyrannical one, has consequences.

five-by-five

gotham drowing: a projection of New York City under a hundred feet of water

alternate history: new serial adaptation of the Philip K. Dick classic, The Man in the High Castle, is in the making

lady liberty: Bartholdi’s iconic statue was originally intended to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal on the Red Sea

through the looking glass: Physics Girl illustrates how mirrors work

sea monkey kingdom: the diminutive horseshoe shrimp is one of the oldest species on earth

cowboys and indians: side-show

A word or two more on the quite disastrous dress-rehearsal that preceded the commencement of the opening act: Urban II was not quite alone in stirring up furor, but surely the Pope’s summons inspired all the other holy-recruiters. The group that managed to get themselves, mostly, massacred in Anatolia, however, probably did not need to be enticed, over-much, to leave behind the drudgery of the manor to secure a blessing in a distant land, maybe even the Holy Land, which they understood to be the land of milk and honey. Being the first wave to embark on their crusade, the peasant army had easy going at first, but soon ran into complications.  Urban II orchestrated the details of the adventure carefully, delaying departure until after the autumn harvest, so the rear-detachment that kept the home-fires burning, already having lost a good deal of their manpower to the advance-party, would not be without food during the winter and the Crusaders might encounter farmers with their lagers full and would be willing to share their bounty.
 Aside from the awful mission-creep that excused the marchers to torment the Jews (which the nobility also championed though not condoned by the Church), it also apparently became license for indiscriminate pillaging and violence, plundering everything in their wake as they crossed the frontier into Byzantium, murdering any one who crossed them, even before the reached total desperation with their supplies dwindling, the local being left with little to share with the advancing horde, the summertime being the leanest season a thousand years ago, as the afore-mentioned crops had not matured and last year’s harvest was nearly depleted. By the time the rabble arrived in Constantinople, under escort, the Emperor Alexius was rather at a loss for words, as this group of untrained hooligans was not exactly the calvary he’d asked the Pope to send. In fact, camped outside the city walls while the emperor tried to figure out how to manage this influx, this relief army proved a much greater liability and terrorised the countryside even more than the occasional, more scrupulous raids carried out by the Turks and Normans—another desperate group of restless plunders suffering from mission-creep. Given a target in Turkish-controlled territory, the peasants decamped and were more or less summarily dispatched, but not without leaving an important blemish—not on the Crusades really since there are no winners in this exercise but on humanity. A few of the peasants even defected, as it were, to the other side, not that as if their convictions had not been tossed away long ago, and fight to expel the Byzantine Greeks. Once the professional crusaders came through months later, following the same route along the Danube to reach the Levant via Anatolia, they were regarded with great suspicion, locals fearing more of the same trouble and disappointment, and the Crusaders faced mounting resistance when it came to provisioning. Moreover, the Seljuk Turks assumed when the encountered this new army that it would be as handily rebuffed as the previous mob.

spread-eagle

Looking at the cover of the latest edition of an environmental publication that I receive from time to time, I was immediately reminded of the way that the best-preserved fossilised examples of the fabled archeopteryx are framed and thought that this posing pigeon meant to call for their preservation also.

It’s just a funny coincidence, I suppose, and a gentle reminder that even the most innovative and integrated among us can face the same fate, and without even the courtesy of being fawned over by future generations.

cowboys and indians: on the way to canossa

The shrewd administrator and extremely accidental pope Urban II toured France and Italy, mostly to set aright the balance of the respective domains of Church and State—not to pull the twain asunder nor to eschew the clerics’ civic responsibility, which most would describe as meddling—by putting the secular powers firmly in their place. Urban was heir to the battle royale of the wills between the papacy and the imperial throne. His predecessor Pope Gregory VII had excommunicated Emperor Henry IV for his attempts to circumvent Church authority by giving out (or rather selling, what’s known as simony) religious offices as sort of grace-and-favour rewards to his loyal nobles.

Once excommunicated, the allegiance of his subjects was null and void and effectively ended his reign—except that Henry went one better and installed his own anti-pope in Rome to rechristen him as the Holy and Roman emperor of the Germans. The genuine Holy See elevated an anti-king, and so on. Urban was a powerful public speaker and his arguments and railing against the nobles appealed to a vast audience, but a chance plea for assistance from the Byzantine emperor of the East gave the resourceful Urban the cementing petition he needed to reassert religious supremacy over the landed-gentry. The Seljuk Turks had occupied the Anatolian peninsula and the Norman conquests had established enclaves in the Balkans and Alexius I Comnenus request for help (on behalf of the Eastern Church, ostensibly) to the legitimate Church became a seductive rallying point. Although the incursions in Byzantium which threatened its territorial integrity were recent developments and the mad, cruel reign of Caliph Al-Hakim bi Amr Allāh that over saw the destruction of many Jewish and Christian places of worship (to be restored and rebuilt by his predecessor) in the Holy Land was reportedly violent enough to be topical though it was some seventy years hence, on balance there was little strife among the three Abrahamic religions—and under Muslim rule, which had taken hold in the Middle East over four centuries earlier, practising other faiths was tolerated and even protected. Not everything was peaceable, of course, but given the threats that confronted daily life a thousand years ago, disease, brigandage and the general cheapness of life, it was a pretty manageable arrangement.
Such facets of the complicated geo-politics of the day (and the Muslims surely had their own sectarian and sacred and mundane intrigues to contend with and spin as well) were too bothersome to try to extract, so in the year 1095 with fire-and-brimstone Urban rallied the crowds to commit themselves to retaking the lands lost in the Eastern Empire—and, with spot-on improvisational skills, the Holy Land itself—with tales, harking back to the worse atrocities magnified of the mad caliph. Urban attached a grave urgency to this holy campaign, as churches were being desecrated and pilgrims tortured and executed—a pilgrimage being a popular way to atone for one’s sins, though Canossa was not arduous enough to impress Pope Gregory. The pope hoped to let his convocation germinate and give the feudal lords the chance to assemble men and supplies, but perhaps his speech was a little too persuasive, as instead of under the leadership warrior-bishops or the knights of those newly created recruiting orders (the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutons or the Maltese) the peasants marched off at their own accord, infused with righteous indignation. Some forty thousand massed in Köln and headed towards Constantinople. Along the way, I suppose to vent some aggressions and prime themselves for combat, they burned synagogues and harassed the Jewish population. Shamed into quick action and more importantly, deprived of the serf labour force needed to work the land and provide protection, the armies of the nobility marched the other direction, towards Jerusalem on their crusade—the peasants having all been captured or killed in their zeal by the Turks.