The Black Death

I am currently enrolled in another history class at the university called "History of Medicine and Health". The past two weeks or so we have been talking about the plague that destroyed approximately half of the European and Central Asian populations and is today known as the Black Death. I have taken an interest in the subject and have chosen a book on which to write my critical book review called "The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350". My interest lies mostly in the transmission and symptoms of the disease, but I just read the chapter about religious mentalities during this time and was surprised to learn how different religions viewed the plague.

In doing more research I found a page dealing with how the Black Death was received by the Islamic world during the mid-14th century outbreak that also touches on the response from the Christian world.

Christians viewed the disease as a punishment from God for, not only the sins that they had committed, but also for original sin, or the sin that one is born into. The Muslims could agree to the fact that the plague was a punishment, but only for those who had a lack of faith. They recognized that good people were also being affected by the disease. To explain this they determined that the plague was a gift from God to those who were faithful so that they could die as martyrs. Both religions believed that the plague was sent to each individual that was infected directly from God. They did not understand for some time that human contact played a huge role in the circulation of the disease.

As we know today, the plague did not choose its victims based on a person's character or beliefs. Today we understand the concepts of germs and disease transmission, but my challenge to you is this: try to imagine a world in which we could not understand. How much larger of an epidemic would swine flu be right now if we did not even know how it was transferred from person to person?

Stop saying the word!!!

The thing that interests me the most in world history is the rise of empires, which we will go over in class soon. Empires play a hugely important role in world history, mainly because of their size and multicultural populations. The mixing of different ideas and cultures in these empires caused many great technological breakthroughs.

The earliest example I can think of is the Persian empire. The Reilly textbook mentions the royal road from Susa into Anatolia. This allowed for faster communication and greater control over the empire. The unofficial motto of the royal messengers of Persia was also adopted by the US postal service. The Persians also acquired coinage when they conquered the Lydians in Anatolia; coins soon spread throughout the empire along with the standard weights and measures of the empire which was a huge economic advantage over barter systems.

The Roman empire was an even greater innovator than Persia. The size of the Empire required a way to move quickly from place to place. the result of this was the extensive construction of paved roads across Europe. These roads had ditches on either side for water to run off and were so well built that they remained in use for centuries after the fall of Rome. They were also great architects, the best example of this is their extensive use of the arch. The arch made possible the construction of the great aqueducts that brought water to Roman cities and made it possible for Romans to have running water and fountains. like the roads these aqueducts outlasted the people that built them; some aqueducts still stand and bring water to European cities. Arches also can be seen in their monuments and the Colosseum. The Romans also invented concrete which enabled them to build great domes like the one in the Pantheon. Even after the fall of Rome Europeans were influenced by the memory of Rome. Great leaders like Charlemagne and Barbarossa tried to build a holy roman empire with limited success. to learn more click here

One more empire came after Rome that played an important role in Europe's history. The Islamic empire controlled everything from Spain to India. The Caliphs in Baghdad established great houses of wisdom for scholars of all faiths and ethnicity's, the best of the best came to Baghdad. The combined Knowledge of three continents lead to great breakthroughs in science and even finance. The Islamic empire was the first to use checks, a check written in Spain could be cashed in India through the Empire's advanced banking system. Arab doctors were the first to use quarantines for infectious diseases and the city of Cordoba in Spain had streetlights while the rest of the continent was in the dark ages. But more important to Europe was the fact that the Islamic Empire had preserved the classic writings of Plato Aristotle and other Philosophers; these writings would eventually return to Europe and spark the renaissance.

The crusades against this empire also changed Europe. the final reconquest of Spain by Cristian soldiers exposed Europe to Islamic architecture which influenced the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. in the holy land crusaders were exposed to soap, silk, spices and other eastern luxuries which led to trade with the far east and eventually the age of exploration. If you want to learn more abut this empire I recommend the documentary "the Golden age of Islam" which covers everything from Muhammad to the Ottomans, I watched it in my MES class.

Greek Gods and the story of Medusa

I realized about a week ago as I sat on the couch watching the history channel, that I love Greek history. (I figured this out while history channel ran a Greek Mythology day.. And if you're interested in this stuff too, I was excited to learn History Channel has a series called Clash of the Gods, it's on Mondays at 10 PM, which is where I heard Medusa's story).
As many are already aware, the Ancient Greeks held respect and fear for more than one god. They believed there were multiple gods for the Heaven, Earth and sea. The gods who were part of each category were thought to live in different places: i.e, the gods who govern the heavens were thought to dwell on Mt. Olympus, in Thessaly. Gods of the earth and sea -(they are typically both thought as of the Earth)- were, as it says on history.com

"thought to dwell on or under the earth, and were closely associated with the heroes and the dead."

The gods were believed to have control over forces of nature and the world, but with restraint. Even the gods had a higher being: Ananke, who was in charge of the gods.
Indeed, the ancient Greeks had an almost ridiculous amount of gods. A few of the more well known ones are listed below:

"At the head of the divine hierarchy was Zeus, the spiritual father of gods and men. His wife was Hera, queen of heaven and guardian of the sanctity of marriage...Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom and war, preeminent as a civic goddess; Apollo, deity of light, poetry, and music, and his sister Artemis, goddess of wildlife and, later, of the moon; Ares, god of war, and his consort, Aphrodite, goddess of love; Hermes, the divine messenger, later, god of science and invention"

Among the lesser deities (however, still well known), were Poseidon, ruler of the seas; the worship of whom was often accompanied by worship of his wife, Amphitrite. Also, Hades, ruler of the underworld and his wife, Persephone.
Aside from these, there are still many gods who played very specific roles in the Ancient Greek culture, alongside both the higher and lower gods.

The Ancient Greeks were most certainly dependent on the mercy of their gods, who they believed controlled all forces of nature. The relation between the mortals and their gods was cordial, but divine wrath was used when necessary. With relation to that idea, the show I happily stumbled upon the other day was the misconception of Medusa, which I find terribly interesting.

Before Medusa was what we picture in our minds today, she was actually a priestess of Athena, and she was beautiful. The typical cliche that all men want her and all women want to be her. Being the priestess, she was bound by her role to her purity.
But one alone refused to let this be: Poseidon. Inside of Athena's temple, Medusa was raped, which was a sacrilegious act given Medusa's role, and where it happened. Because she was no longer a virgin, she was no longer allowed to be a priestess and was devastated. And, since Athena's temple was desecrated, she was angered. However, the twist of the story is Athena does not punish Poseidon, but Medusa, because as the explanation goes, as a powerful male god, his actions should have been expected. Medusa is cursed by Athena without warning, and thus begins the transformation of what we accept as Medusa today; she is a gorgon, named for an ancient Greek word meaning terrible, it is mythical monster with scaly skin, large staring eyes and can turn people into stone with a single gaze. Tragically, she went from being a beautiful woman to one impossible to look at. Their gods were as merciful as they were complicated, this much is clear.

If you liked my post, you can check out where my information came from: Read more!

Also, you can watch the Clash of the Gods episodes online, here: Watch them!

“Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!”

The topic for my blog this week comes from "The Barbarian West" by J.M. Wallace-Hadril (I highly recommend it). It is a wonderfully funny book about the various barbarian tribes and their immigration to and replication of the Roman people after their fall. Wallace-Hadril speaks of the Lombards, the Franks, the Germans, Goths, Visigoths, Anglo-Saxons, and how each group is effected by immigration as well as the rising political and spiritual power of the Church. Well, I was reading a selection on Gaul and the Franks, of which Charlemagne took up most of the chapter. It was deep into the selection when I came across a small reference to a Byzantine Empress, Irene, and that she alone came to power. This caught my attention. An Empress? A woman taking over an full power of an entire empire? In a time where women were low on the totem pole, this struck me not as odd, but something worth looking into, something about which to know more. I seemed to already have a sense of respect for this woman. How was it a woman could rule in a rough time, a time of men? This is what I needed to know. Thus began my historical journey into the bizarre life and time of Irene of Athens.

It was upon the death of her husband, Leo IV in 780 CE of Byzantine, that Irene of Athens became “regent’ of the eastern Roman Empire for her ten year old son, Constantine VI – who became official Emperor. Soon after, however, Irene’s ambition overcame her and she began calling herself, in the Greek, “emperor” instead of “empress.” Immediately she began work on the restoration of Icon veneration, a well-known Orthodox practice, not altogether practiced in the western empire or entirely by the papacy. However, it was due to Pope Hadrian I that this was “reaffirmed” as “proper veneration.” This was seen as a helping hand in uniting both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though only for a short time. Hadrian’s successor, Pope Leo III did not recognize the legitimacy of Irene’s rule in Constantinople. It was then on Christmas day 800 Leo crowned Charlemagne, the King of Franks and Gaul, as Imperator Augustus. This only reinforced the rift between the two opposing forces, however Irene is said to have negotiated a wedding between her son and a daughter of the, now, Roman Emperor. This failed due to reluctance on the part of her son. Irene, persistent and zealous, then negotiated a marriage contract between her and Charlemagne himself thus uniting the two empires not only politically, but spiritually as well. This was not to be, however, as a plot by the underlings of the brother of Irene’s dead husband only served to ruin the attempted match.

Irene went on ruling the Byzantine Empire, much to the dismay of her son. She did not give up her power when Constantine reached the legal age to assume power. The two were said to have clashed many times over this and multiple issues of state.

Michael Psellus, an 11th Century historian and philosopher, depicts it as “…hit and hit back in turn, and now Irene exercised absolute power, now Constantine took possession of the palace alone, again the mother, again the son, until their conflict resulted in a disaster for both.” This sums up their power “sharing” arrangement accurately. After some time, Constantine made a move against his mother, which failed due to an earthquake. Not unaware, Irene took action then, forcing the entire army to take an oath of loyalty to her and her alone, ignoring the legitimacy of her son. Not taking this well, the army itself rose up and calling for Constantine as their only ruler. In taking the power he was being given, son imprisoned mother, but did not depose her, rather confining her to one of her various palaces for a two-year stint. It was then in 792 Constantine recalled his mother and restored her title of Empress, though it was made clear that he was Emperor.

Yet, Constantine proved to be only so much, as he never led the Byzantine army to any kind of greatness. The army called for Caesar Nicephorus (Constantine’s uncle) to come out of retirement and become Emperor. Once again producing disastrous results, Irene advised her son to take action against him, which he did and only half succeeded. While he did achieve mutilation of his uncle and some followers thereof, this, in turn, resulted in a “full-scale revolt.” While this uprising was subdued, the Emperor was now on thin ice, being seen as weak to rely on his mother.

Some years past but the bitter taste of Irene still lingered in the mouths of many. On October 31st, 802, Irene was deposed as Empress, the seat of power usurped by her Finance Minister, Nicephorus with the help of courtiers, members of the army, and even relatives of Irene alike. Perhaps taking pity on her, Nicephorus did not kill her, rather exiled her to the island of Lesbos. It was here she was reduced to subsistence living by way of weaving. She promptly died at the end of that year.

Though during her rule she is said to have been something of a philanthropist. She set money aside for the construction for hostiles for the young, homes and hospices for the old and sick, even final resting places for those who could not afford to be buried. She was also praised by many for her re-institution of icon veneration, something that still lives on today.

Pie Jesu Domine Dona Eis Requiem

As an English major, learning about how we came to speak English as our primary language has always been a fascinating topic to me. During the course of my studies at Grand Valley, I chose to take English 362: History of the English Language. It was a fun and exciting course that covered mostly Old English history up until around the time of Shakespearean language, near the turn of the 17th century. As this course in particular involves World History up to 1500, however, I will discuss the early shift from Celtic languages to Old English in this blog post!

The dates are not entirely clear during this time in history as we do not have a lot of written text to inform us when things actually happened. But around 500-600 AD, there was a huge shift from speaking Latin or Celtic languages (such as Gaelic). In England during this time, the majority of the people spoke some kind of Celtic language. Gaelic was a primary language (much like English is today), though there are several different kinds of Gaelic languages. One can think of these different kinds as different dialects of Gaelic, such as we have different dialects of English today. With the Gaelic language, there's only 18 letters compared to the 26 that we currently have: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U. The main dialects of Gaelic consist of Scottish and Irish Gaelic, which are very different in pronunciation. It's also important to note that Scottish Gaelic is not the same as the Scots language, which is more widely spoken in Scotland today (and descendant from Old English, as well). A good source, if you are interested in searching for more information on Gaelic or early language, is this book, written by David Crystal (a famous linguist).

From around this 500-600 AD timeline to 1066, both Gaelic dialects and Old-English were spoken throughout the land. As there wasn't primarily a strong consistency with the written word, there weren't consistent spellings or even pronunciation of words in the earliest languages spoken in England. But in 1066, a very important event occurred that fully shifted the language from mostly Gaelic to what we now call Old English: The Norman Conquest of the British Isles. However, it's not as simple to say that in 1066, Old English became the native language and Gaelic was completely wiped out of existence. During this time, what was to become known as Old English also adopted many of the stylistic influences from Gaelic; this is part of the reason why the English language survives today. It can easily adopt other languages into its own. There are Germanic as well as Latin influences within Old English. The Latin influences, however, are particular to the language of the Church, as during this time, Latin was the language spoken in Church and Latin was the language that Church documents were written in.

As previously mentioned, we don't have many written documents from this particular time period. We do, however, have one very famous epic poem in literature that is still widely read and taught in English courses today. It's the poem of Beowulf. The author is unknown, though it is believed to have been written by a monk during this time as monks were the few people who were literate at this time in history. here is a link to the original Old English version of Beowulf. I highly encourage anyone who has a fascination with languages to at least look at this link. It is read just as modern poetry would be read: from left to right, even across the break in the lines of poetry. That was just the style of poetry from this era in history. Thanks to my course in English language history, I can read perhaps one word in every five on that page as we were taught Old English grammar as part of that course.

Hopefully this post was informational to many of you. I give you bonus points if you can translate the title of this post from Latin into English!