Quotulatiousness

October 31, 2020

Atun-Shei’s Dracula

Filed under: Books, Britain, Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 30 Oct 2020

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An in-depth analysis of Dracula, the original 1897 book by Bram Stoker, possibly the most influential horror novel ever written. Why has the Count enjoyed such longevity in popular culture? What made Dracula so scary for Victorian readers? And what – pray tell – makes vampires so attractive?

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~REFERENCES~

[1] “Dracula Movies” (2016). IMDB https://www.imdb.com/list/ls058255047/

[2] Leslie S. Klinger. The New Annotated Dracula (2008). W.W. Norton & Company, Page xvi

[3] Klinger, Page xxi

[4] Dr. Andrzej Diniejko. “Slums and Slumming in Late-Victorian London.” The Victorian Web http://www.victorianweb.org/history/s…

[5] Gill Davies. “London in Dracula; Dracula in London” (2004). Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London, Volume 2 Number 1 http://www.literarylondon.org/london-…

[6] Klinger, xxxii-xli

[7] “An 1897 Review of Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (2019). Literary Hub https://bookmarks.reviews/an-1897-rev…

[8] “The Spectator‘s Review of Dracula, 1897″ (2012). The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/t…

[9] olly Furneaux. “Victorian Se‱ualities” (2014). British Library https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victo…

[10] Klinger, Page xvii-xviii

[11] Greg Buzwell. “Daughters of Decadence: The New Woman in the Victorian Fin De SiĂ©cle” (2014). British Library https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victo…

October 23, 2020

“The Lion From The North” – Gustavus Adolphus – Sabaton History 090 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 22 Oct 2020

It was a time of religion and war. Legends tell the tale of a mighty Swedish King, a Lion from the North, who arrived in the German Empire with a mighty host to save Protestantism. Beyond the legends, Gustavus Adolphus was a warrior king who sought to create a Swedish empire through hegemony on the Baltic Sea. Once, Sweden’s involvement in the 30 Years War had begun out of sheer necessity, but soon send her armies on a path of glory and fame. But would this path lead the Swedish King to victory or his inevitable demise?

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “The Lion From The North” on the album Carolus Rex: https://music.sabaton.net/CarolusRexEN

Watch the Official Music Video of “The Lion From The North” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1gvN…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: PÀr Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: PÀr Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina DoƂęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Visual Sources:
– Nationalmuseum
– Arms of Vasa courtesy of Sodacan from Wikimedia
– Nils Forsberg Gustav II Adolf courtesy of Nils Forsberg, Swedish painter from Wikimedia
– Death of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden by Carl Wahlbom courtesy of Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP (Glasg) from Wikimedia
– Icons from The Noun Project: Cannon by Graphic Nehar, Man by Milinda Courey

All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

October 20, 2020

The watchful algorithms of the Nanny State’s AI tools

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren considers the evolution of the Nanny State’s arsenal of technological surveillance (supplemented by the Karenstapo):

While it is not in my interest, currently, for gentle reader to get off the Internet, the idea must have occurred to him. In times like these, why put yourself under watch from Big Brother (or, Big Sibling, as he might prefer)? Why surround yourself with his electronic eyes, the way I am presently surrounded by jackhammers?

Granted, Nanny State was devising ways to track its citizens, and to exercise “crowd control,” long before the Internet was invented. But we had the advantage with them, for they were incompetent, often laughably inept. However, Internet-plus-meejah-plus-activists-plus-Guvmint makes a more capable adversary.

I am not recommending a systematic withdrawal from the world. That is for people with a religious calling, or some grave eccentricity. Rather I am thinking of self-defence, in the spirit of buying a gun. Of course, I am writing from Canada, one of the countries where owning a gun is more-or-less illegal; as is any other form of self-defence. (“When seconds count, the police will be here in minutes.”) Though I have noticed that, upcountry, the “No Hunting” signs tend to be used for target practice.

The “other side,” as I see it, which always worked on numbers, now has algorithms. “Artificial Intelligence” can home right in. The Nanny State never took the individual seriously, except when he was offering a threat. Now it is threatened by anything human. It is, as it were, utilitarian in outlook — “the greatest good for the greatest number” — along with other fatuous concepts, unamenable to reason. By its nature, it is positivist, nominalist, relativist, and “idealistic” in a very abstract way.

Whereas we, so far as we are human, take ourselves quite personally. In a clinch, we often prefer our own survival, and the survival of family and friends, to the requirements of a bureaucratic “policy.” That this is “selfish” should be immediately affirmed.

Because the masses are now deprived of a Christian education, they misconstrue the “selfishness” of Christian teaching, which tells us that we ought selfishly to become saints. Our intention should be to get ourselves to Heaven, along with any we know who can be taken with us. But charity is not “selfish,” in ways they understand. Under modern tenets of “multiculturalism,” even fidelity to the old Christian view is decried as a form of selfishness, calling out for persecution. For this is because it is “cultural,” not “multi” — for all the many languages it speaks.

Our enemy wants us to eschew uniqueness, and become instead “diverse” — by which it means homogenized and narrowly interchangeable. Increasingly, this adversary has the means to enforce its arbitrary will.

October 18, 2020

QotD: Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence”

Filed under: Books, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In making Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence the theme of this book, Gillespie has set himself a huge task. Not only is it one of the philosopher’s weakest and most unconvincing theses, it is the one that sits in opposition to nearly everything else he wrote. For Nietzsche, despite his writing appearing wistful and gothic Romantic, was essentially an empiricist. He had no time for the dualism of Plato and only a fleeting but unconvinced interest in Kantian metaphysical idling about what lay beyond the tangible world. Nietzsche wrote that all there was for sure was the here and now.

This is exactly why he was not a militant atheist in the way we understand the expression today. He felt no need to concern himself with the veracity of Christianity’s claims about the afterlife, something we cannot be sure about. He seldom railed against the theological pretensions of Christianity or the absurdity of religion because to him the only thing that mattered was how religion affected us. He objected to Christianity because he saw it as nihilist and life-negating. It taught people to be meek, humble and to accept their lot. Nietzsche was an empiricist in that he wanted people to fulfil their life in the here and now, something that Christianity was hostile to.

Yet Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence belongs strangely to the realm of metaphysics and dualism. Its fatalism and determinism contradicts Nietzsche’s exhortation for each of us to become our own masters and to become who we truly are. While he did not believe in free will, he did believe that the Übermensch could harness and master the forces of his inner “will to power”. Contrarily, the eternal recurrence condemns us to history and supernatural fate. The notion of “eternal recurrence” reeks too much of his youthful dalliance with Schopenhauerian metaphysics.

This is perhaps why Nietzsche rarely mentioned it, and made even less effort to explain it in the books published in his lifetime. It seems too much of a flight of fancy, and the only time he spoke of it in all seriousness is when he recounted one day in August 1881, when walking in the Swiss mountains, when he had a kind of strange, rapturous religious experience – the day when the notion of “eternal recurrence” came to him in the first place.

Patrick West, “Nietzsche and the struggle against nihilism”, Spiked, 2018-08-03.

October 6, 2020

Rowan Atkinson Live – The devil Toby welcomes you to hell

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Rowan Atkinson Live
Published 29 Jul 2010

In this sketch, Rowan plays the devil, also known as “Toby”, he welcomes new people to hell.

Selected Highlights from Rowan’s stand up tours during the years 1981 to 1986.

Whether mesmerising us with the sheer visual mastery of Mr. Bean, beguiling us with the acerbic wit of Edmund Blackadder, or simply entertaining us as the suave, but rather hapless British Secret Agent Johnny English, you surely won’t have escaped the comic genius that is Rowan Atkinson.

In Rowan Atkinson Live, co-written with Richard Curtis (4 Weddings & a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually) and Ben Elton, Atkinson runs the whole gamut of his remarkably versatile 30 year career, with sketches, mimes and monologue’s that are guaranteed to have you shedding tears of laughter. Performing live on stage alongside “straight man” Angus Deayton, the show features a number of original and familiar routines, including sketches that appeared in the original Mr. Bean series.

“The Caucasus is a bad neighborhood”

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, Religion, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia last week over the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a quasi-independent Armenian-majority territory still technically part of Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh’s declaration was not followed by formal recognition by other states). Mark Movsesian provides some historical background to the conflict in First Things:

Thirty years ago, in response to discriminatory treatment and outright pogroms against Armenians, the region declared independence. Armenia (population 3 million) supported Karabakh — though it has never formally recognized its independence — and a bloody war followed, in which 30,000 people died and hundreds of thousands on both sides became refugees. Against all odds, Armenia and Karabakh prevailed and established a buffer zone comprising perhaps 20 percent of Azeri territory.

An unstable ceasefire has held since 1994. But last week, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against Karabakh and Armenia itself. This is more serious than past Azeri efforts to break the stalemate. Flush with petrodollars, Azerbaijan has purchased a large stockpile of heavy weapons, which it now employs against Armenia. Moreover, Turkey (population 80 million), which borders Armenia on the other side, is supporting Azerbaijan. Azeris are a Turkic people, though they are Shia, not Sunni, Muslims, and the Erdogan government sees the conflict as a way to pursue its goal of pan-Turanism. Turkey has supplied Azerbaijan with military advisers and equipment, including drones and fighter jets and thousands of Islamist soldiers from Syria, who fight for Azerbaijan on the front lines.

[…]

One needs to go back at least a century, to the collapse of the Ottoman and Czarist Empires. The two empires had long contested the border between them, which ran to the southwest of the Caucasus. Armenians, an ancient Christian people who lived on both sides of the border, found themselves in the crosshairs. During World War I, fearful that Armenians on the border would rise up and side with Russia — some Armenians did fight with the Russians, but many others fought with the Ottomans, and the Armenian threat was always exaggerated — the Ottoman government undertook an ethnic cleansing campaign, killing millions of Armenians and other Christians in the Armenian Genocide.

The Genocide eliminated Turkey’s once sizable Christian population. It likely would have eliminated the Armenian population on the other side of the border, too, except that a hastily-organized Armenian militia stopped a Turkish army in 1918 at the Battle of Sardarabad, which took place just outside the city of Yerevan, today Armenia’s capital. Sardarabad is unknown in the West, but the image of a small group of Christian Armenians fighting, alone, to stop a Muslim Turkish army bent on their annihilation is a powerful part of Armenian consciousness today.

When the war ended, the Soviet Union quickly settled the border dispute with Turkey, giving up some historic Armenian lands around the city of Kars, and took over the Caucasus and divided it among the region’s ethnic groups. The Soviets initially promised to place Karabakh, whose Armenian identity dated back many centuries and whose population was more than 90 percent Armenian, in the new Soviet Republic of Armenia. But Stalin, as commissar for nationalities, decided to place the region in Azerbaijan instead, as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Armenians never accepted the decision and, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the nations of the Caucasus gained independence, the conflict over the region resumed.

October 3, 2020

History Summarized: Hawai’i

Filed under: History, Humour, Pacific, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 2 Oct 2020

To learn more about the Native Hawaiian community and their culture, visit: https://www.hawaiiancouncil.org/about

This year, to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, we’re taking a look at the history of Hawai’i, from its early history in the Polynesian maritime culture to its forming a Kingdom to its annexation by the United States. Beyond simply a special case in the story of American expansion, Hawai’i has a deep history that deserves to be better known.

SOURCES & Further Reading: Great Courses Lecture “Lifeways of Australia and the Pacific” by Craig Benjamin, Britannica Hawai’i, “The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific” By Low & Estus, Lonely Planet Hawai’i History, and lots of discussion with a native Islander (see discord section below).

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/kguuvvq — Come to the #New-Video-Discussion channel to chat about this video, and ask questions about Hawai’i to my friend Lady Eris#9175, a native Islander!

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October 1, 2020

English lead and the European markets of the 1600s

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, History, Religion, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes considers the meteoric rise in lead production in England and Wales from the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII to the Thirty Years’ War in Europe:

The well-preserved ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian monastery near Ripon in North Yorkshire. Founded in 1132 and dissolved by order of King Henry VIII in 1539. It is now owned by the Royal Trust as part of Studley Royal Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Photo by Admiralgary via Wikimedia Commons.

In the early sixteenth century, England was a minor producer of the stuff. It was widespread and cheap enough to be used for roofing buildings (unlike much of the rest of Europe, where copper was preferred), but the country never produced more than a few hundred tons per year. It didn’t really need to. Like stone in [the game] Dawn of Man, you could amass a stockpile and not worry too much about any leaky bucket problems [where stockpiles need to be replenished due to wastage or other “drains”]. The lead in roofs could always be recycled, and hardly any more was needed for pipes or cisterns. The vast majority of the demand came from Germany, and then the New World, where it was used to extract silver from copper ore. Even this dissipated in the mid-sixteenth century, when the New World silver mines began to switch to using mercury instead.

Yet by 1600, England was producing about 3,000 tons of lead a year, up from just 300 in the 1560s. By 1700, it was producing two thirds of Europe’s lead — a whopping 20,000 tons a year. How?

Unlike copper or iron, there is no evidence that lead mining or processing techniques were imported. If anything, they seem to have emerged from the Mendips, in Somerset, where production costs fell with the introduction of furnace smelting in the 1540s. As well as raising the extraction rates from the ore coming up from the mines, the new furnaces allowed previously unusable ores — found in the easily-accessible waste tips of old mining camps — to be smelted after some simple sifting. Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear idea of who was responsible for the innovation.

Yet the source of England’s supremacy was really, at first, religious. Following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530s, the melting down of their roofs dumped some 12,000 tons of lead onto England’s markets — at least a year’s worth of Europe’s entire output. Although the immediate effect was to annihilate England’s own lead industry, the medium-term effect was to send the other European producers into disarray. By the 1580s, once the stockpile had depleted, England’s lead producers were among the only ones left standing. The sale of monastic lead ensured that the English retained a foothold in foreign markets, while the cost-saving innovations then gave them the competitive edge. These factors explain, at least, England’s eventual hold over the European lead market.

But there was yet another phenomenon responsible for the industry’s massively increased scale: the development of hand-held firearms. Gunpowder technology was of course centuries old, but cannon had largely fired balls made of stone or cast iron. Muskets and pistols, however, used bullets made of lead. With the proliferation of the weapons over the course of the seventeenth century, lead thus acquired a major leaky bucket problem. Bullets were too costly to recycle, leading to an estimated fifth of Europe’s annual production of lead disappearing every year — a wastage that only increased as armies grew, weapons’ rate of fire improved, and the continent experienced extraordinary violence. Europe lost an estimated fifth of its population to the Thirty Years’ War, and England itself succumbed to civil strife.

England’s lead industry thus had to drastically increase its production just to maintain Europe’s stock of lead, let alone increase it. It was from soldiers entering the fray, to trade bullets across sodden fields, that it owed its extraordinary success.

September 21, 2020

QotD: Prohibition and the Temperance movement

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Prohibition was the culmination of nearly a century’s worth of propaganda, and repeated failed attempts to get such laws to work at the local and state level. Read J.C. Furnas’ The Life and Times of the Late Demon Rum for an overview of the pre-1919 Temperance/Prohibition movement.

… [T]he original Temperance movement started out with the very best of intentions, and was trying to deal with a real problem. In colonial and early-19th-century America, people (men, women and OH HORRORS even children!) drank enough that by modern standards we’d call them alcoholics. Modern Russians drink more, but if they were transported back to that time and place, they’d fit right on in. Part of it was because water was often not safe to drink (tea and coffee were often expensive and hard to get, while beer and other alcoholic drinks were made just about everywhere), part of it was snobbery (only really poor people drank water!) and part of it was because people back then believed that alcohol strengthened and warmed the body.

Two of the good side effects of the Temperance/Prohibition movement were the provision of safe, clean drinking water in American cities and towns, and the modern fruit-juice industry (as a lot of churches went hot-Prohibition, they got uneasy about serving wine at Communion, so they went to work and came up with non-alcoholic substitutes.) Welch’s Grape Juice was started by a pastor who wanted non-alcoholic “wine” for Communion, and caught on, real big.

Eric Oppen, posting to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, 2020-06-18.

September 13, 2020

Irish War of Independence – WW1 Veterans In A New Battle I THE GREAT WAR 1920

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published 12 Sep 2020

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The conflict between the Irish independence movement and the UK government had been heating up since 1919. The summer of 1920 brought a new level of escalation with the arrival of the the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Former veterans of the First World War were brought in to quell the rebellion and get hold of the strongholds controlled by the IRA.

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» SOURCES
Hart, Peter: The IRA and Its Enemies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Harvey, A.D: “Who Were the Auxiliaries?” The Historical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep. 1992)

Hopkinson, Michael: The Irish War of Independence (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002)

Leeson, David: The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920-1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

McMahon, Sean: The War of Independence (Cork: Mercier Press, 2019)

O’Brien, Paul: Havoc: The Auxiliaries in Ireland’s War of Independence (Cork: Collins Press, 2017)

Riddell, George: Lord Riddell’s Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After: 1918-1923 (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1933)

Roxbourgh, Ian: “The Military: The Mutual Determination of Strategy in Ireland, 1912-1921” in Duyvendak, Jan Willem & Jasper, James M. (eds) Breaking Down the State: Protesters Engaged (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015)

Townshend, Charles: The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923 (London: Penguin Books, 2014)

“Tubbercurry”, Manchester Guardian, 4 October 1920.

Hugh Martin: “‘Black and Tan’ Force a Failure”, Daily News, 4 October 1920.

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September 7, 2020

Who Was Leif Erikson?

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 9 Oct 2019

Happy Leif Erikson Day! Allow me to regale you with the saga of the daring Viking who sailed to North America five hundred years before Columbus (that hack) and called it Vinland. We all know his name and his famous deeds – but what sort of man was Leif Erikson?

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September 5, 2020

History Summarized: The Viking Age

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Humour, Religion, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Sep 2020

The Vikings are enjoying a new wave of enthusiasm in popular culture, but these seafaring Norsemen are still quite clearly a misunderstood force in medieval European history. So let’s take a wide look at the European world during The Viking Age!

Check out Yellow’s livestreams over at https://Twitch.tv/LudoHistory

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Vikings by Walaker Nordeide and Edwards, Vikings: A Very Short Introduction by Richards, Age of the Vikings and The Conversion of Scandinavia by Winroth, The Vikings By Harl via The Great Courses, The Viking World by Graham-Campbell, The Viking Way by Price.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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From the comments:

Ludohistory
23 hours ago (edited)
Thanks so much for having me on and letting me help out! It was a lot of fun (even if I talked a little too fast sometimes)! To clarify a piece that I know I did cover too briefly — missionary trips to Scandinavia occurred in Denmark around 823, on the orders of Louis the Pious, and in Sweden in 829, when Ansgar, a Frankish monk, traveled to the town of Birka, where he found a very small Christian community, probably mostly enslaved or formerly enslaved people, and converted a couple of Norse people, including the town prefect. (The graveyard for that town, incidentally, is where the 10th century “female warrior” that made waves a few years ago was buried).

There’s a lot we didn’t get a chance to talk about about the diaspora and its ending, so if there’s anything you all are curious on or find unclear, let me know here or on twitter 🙂

Finally, if you liked this, all the VODs for my personal streams (where I try to ramble about history in games) can be found by clicking on my name, and tomorrow I’ll be streaming CKIII on twitch (link in the description)!

August 20, 2020

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162-1170

Filed under: Britain, History, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Reverend Steve Morris tries to show why St. Thomas of Canterbury needs a “reboot” for modern eyes:

Stained glass showing the murder of St. Thomas at Canterbury on 29 December, 1170.
Wikimedia Commons.

It’s 850 years since that night when four knights murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s been a rocky old road for Thomas Becket despite hundreds of years as the poster-boy of the cult of saints which swept medieval England. His reputation, his legacy and his conduct have been filleted over the last few centuries and we are left with just a ghost of the man who, once upon a time, stood for all that was good.

It is a cautionary tale of historical revisionism, measuring yesterdays’ saints by today’s “standards” and assembling a set of half-truths to trash the reputation of England’s great, perhaps greatest, saint. It is high time he made a comeback – especially in these political times. After all, Becket was perhaps the greatest political martyr we have. Of course, there is always truth in just about any criticism. And Becket lays himself open. He was, to say the least, stubborn. He was a contrarian and he was reckless with his own safety. In an age of kingly power, it doesn’t do to embarrass the monarch.

The charge sheet does quickly stack up. Becket was a canny careerist (although you’d be hard pushed to find anyone of influence at the time who wasn’t). He seemed to have a death wish, or at least refused to listen to perfectly sensible advice on taking a more circumspect path. And his cause, seen through a certain lens, seems off-beam for modern times. He has been painted as standing for the ancient legal power of the church against a reforming king who began to kick-start Common Law. But of course, it’s never as simple as this.

But none of this was the real problem and none of it was what caused our great saint to be consigned to the historical dustbin. As is often the way, the problem comes down to background and class. Becket was born to only modestly well-off parents in London (he has always been London’s saint). His father was middle-class, and a merchant. Becket was “trade” by background and it was something he couldn’t shake off. But his rise was an astounding feat of defying gravity.

In an era of complex geopolitics and conflicts between pope and state Thomas rose through the ranks and became Archbishop of Canterbury. At first, he seemed like the king’s man, but relations soured. Becket and the king were entangled in a fight to the death, with the archbishop excommunicating various opponents and generally throwing his weight around.

His death was gruesome. Four knights ambushed him. He could have run or barricaded himself in the cathedral, but he told his followers that God’s house should not be made a fortress. He pushed one of his attackers. What followed was a flurry of sword-strokes to the head – one of which took his tonsured skull right off. The contemporaneous reports paint a ghastly picture of brain fluid and blood mixing freely on the cathedral floor. But it didn’t end there.

August 17, 2020

Dateline Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, 5 August 2020

Filed under: History, India, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

That’s a significant date, as Tom Holland explains at UnHerd:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi performing Bhoomi Pujan at Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh on August 05, 2020.
Photo released by the Press Information Bureau on behalf of the Prime Minister’s Office, (ID 90071) via Wikimedia Commons.

Last week, on 5 August, the Prime Minister of India laid a foundation stone and helped bury a distinctive period in global history. Narendra Modi had travelled to Ayodhya, a city long identified by Hindus with one of their most beloved gods. Lord Rama — avatar of Vishnu and hero of the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana — was said to have ruled within its walls as the very model of those who uphold truth and justice. Like Camelot, the court of Rama glimmers tantalisingly in the imaginings of those who fall beneath its spell: the reminder of a vanished golden age, the hope that it might come again.

In recent decades, the mingled regret and yearning that the memory of Rama’s capital can inspire among Hindus had come to be focused on one particular location in the modern city of Ayodhya: the Ram Janmabhoomi, the “birthplace of Rama”. At the moment, nothing serves to mark the sacred spot. But soon enough that will change. A great complex of buildings will rise. As Modi, officially declaring the process of construction begun, put it: “A great temple will now be built for our Lord Rama.”

A fortnight earlier, the President of Turkey had celebrated a similar reconsecration. In 1453, when the Christian capital of Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, its most stupefying building, the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia, had been converted into a mosque, and duly served for almost half a millennium as a monument to the triumph of Islam over a defeated and superceded order. Then, in 1935, a decade and more after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement within its heartlands by a Turkish republic, the mosque of Ayasofya was turned into a museum. So, for decades, it remained. Then, this summer, the museum once again became a mosque. On 24 July, Hagia Sophia opened for Friday prayers. “It is breaking away from its chains of captivity,” President Erdogan declared rhapsodically. “It was the greatest dream of our youth. It was the yearning of our people and it has been accomplished.”

The synchronicity between Modi’s trip to Ayodhya and Erdogan’s to Hagia Sophia is striking, and only flimsily obscured by the fact that the Prime Minister of India is trampling the legacy of an Islamic empire much as the President of Turkey has trampled the legacy of a Christian one. In the early sixteenth century, shortly after the Moghul conquest of the lands that once, so Hindus believed, had constituted the Ram Rajya, the “realm of Rama”, a mosque was built in Ayodhya. By the twentieth century, large numbers of Hindus had come to believe that this same mosque, the Babri Masjid, stood directly on the site of the Ram Janmabhoomi. In the 1980s, the BJP — the party to which Modi belongs — began a campaign to demolish it. In 1992 a mob duly tore it down. Communal riots exploded. Thousands died.

Last November, even as the site was formally granted to Hindus, the Supreme Court of India condemned the demolition of the mosque as a crime. But a crime by whose standards? Not, it would seem, by Modi’s. Just as Erdogan justified the conversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque by “right of conquest”, so the Prime Minister of India, hailing the opportunity to build a temple on the site where the Babri Masjid had stood, invoked the ancient traditions of his country. It was, he declared, “a unique gift from law-abiding India to truth, non-violence, faith and sacrifice.” History as well as justice stood on his side.

QotD: Orwell and faith

Filed under: Quotations, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I spent a day with Orwell just before he died. I sat on his sanatorium bed, tried to smoke the frightful cigarettes he insisted on making for himself. I heard him say: “The problem of the world is this: Can we get men to behave decently to each other if they no longer believe in God?”

Charles Curran, “Orwell: The man behind 1984 — and all that”, Daily Mirror, 1954-12-14.

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