The Renaissance Times

In 1417, Poggio made the greatest discovery of his career – Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, aka “On The Nature Of Things”, the last surviving copy of his five-book epic attempt to explain Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience in poem. Little did Poggio realise the impact this book would have on the world. * Scholars aren’t exactly sure where he made it. * Because he kept it a secret. * Because he found a gold mine of old manuscripts and he didn’t want anyone else to find out about it * But one place might have been Fulda. * smack bang in the middle of Germany * Benedictine monastery founded In 744 by Saint Sturm, “Saint Storm” – pretty bad ass name * True story – Great-great ancestor of Susan Storm aka the Invisible Woman, wife of Reed Richards * Storm was a disciple of Saint Boniface, the so-called “apostle of the Germans” * Boniface is often pictured with a large book pierced by a sword * Because tradition has it that when robbers killed him, he tried to protect himself by holding up a gospel. * They killed him anyway * So much for that self-defense training * Money wasted * “Lads – what would like to learn? Gung Fu – or the ancient art of hiding behind a gospel?” * The monastery later served as a base from which missionaries could accompany Charlemagne’s armies in their military campaigns to fully conquer and convert pagan Saxony. * Fulda lends its name to the Fulda Gap, a traditional east-west invasion route used by Napoleon I and others. * During the Cold War, it was presumed to be an invasion route for any conventional war between NATO and Soviet forces. * contains two corridors of lowlands through which tanks might have driven in a surprise attack * Anyway – the monastery. * In the early 9th century, the abbot was Rabanus Maurus * a learned scholar and prolific author * He was one of the most prominent teachers and writers of the Carolingian age * Best known for his encyclopaedia De rerum naturis (“On the Natures of Things”) * Rabanus, who as a young man had studied with Alcuin, the greatest scholar of the age of Charlemagne, considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. * Which we haven’t talked much about but it happened in the 7th and 8th centuries. * Mostly confined to the clergy. * A lack of Latin literacy in eighth century western Europe caused problems for the Carolingian rulers by severely limiting the number of people capable of serving as court scribes in societies where Latin was valued. * Charlemagne ordered the creation of schools in 787. * A major part of his program of reform was to attract many of the leading scholars of the Christendom of his day to his court. * Carolingian workshops produced over 100,000 manuscripts in the 9th century, of which some 7,000 or 6% survive. * The Carolingians produced the earliest surviving copies of the works of Julius Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Martial * And so Rabanus knew where to get his hands on important manuscripts. * He had them brought to Fulda, where he trained a large cohort of scribes to copy them. * And so he had built what was for the time a stupendous collection. * And even thought the monastery’s intellectual seriousness had declined since the times of Rabanus, and a lot of those pagan documents might not have been looked at for centuries – he hoped some might have survived. * And boy – was he right. * He found the only surviving copy of the 17-book epic poem Punica, about the Second Punic War, the longest surviving poem in Latin at over 12,000 lines, by Silius Italicus around c. 83 to c. 96 CE * Born (c. 28 – c. 103 CE), a Roman consul, orator, and poet. * an informer under Nero, prosecuting in court persons whom the emperor wished condemned * He was consul in the year of Nero’s death (AD 68), and afterward became a close friend and ally of the emperor Vitellius in the Year of the Four Emperors. * proconsul of Asia AD 77-78 * After his proconsulship in Asia he retired, and wrote. * Developed an incurable tumour after the age of 75, and starved himself to death around 103 CE, keeping a cheerful countenance to the end. * Interesting sidenote: In Punica, he mentions that Vesuvius had thundered and produced flames worthy of Mount Etna in the year 217 BCE, the last major eruption before 79 CE. * Poggio also discovered the only surviving copy Manilius’ work on astronomy “Astronomica”, written at the very beginning of the empire, during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. * Written AD 10–20 * The poem espouses a Stoic, deterministic understanding of a universe overseen by a god and governed by reason. * But where the universe also *is* god or A god. * Pantheism * Hard to find an english translation. * He found many other lost works. * Including a large fragment of Ammianus Marcellinus’s history of Rome from the accession of the Emperor Nerva in 96 to the death of Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in

So back to January 1417. Poggio made a number of book hunting trips that winter. So he must have had a lot of funding from back home. Here’s a short clip from today’s episode:   Bruni wrote to him, saying “keep going, don’t worry about the cost, I’ll cover them all, just find more books” On this trip, he had with him a companion, another apostolic secretary from Constance, Bartolomeo de Aragazzi. They were close friends and avid humanists. But they were also rivals. Great fame and glory was to be had for whomever found lost treasures. So in late January, they went their separate ways. Each hoping to find a great treasure. Poggio headed north. Bartolomeo headed to a monastery of hermits deep in the Alps, where he had heard they had a trove of ancient books. But he fell ill and had to return to Constance to recover. Poggio had with him a German scribe he was training. Now Poggio apparently didn’t like monks very much. He thought of them mostly as superstitious, ignorant, and hopelessly lazy He thought Monasteries were the dumping grounds for those deemed unfit for life in the world. Noblemen fobbed off the sons they judged to be weaklings, misfits, or good-for-nothings; merchants sent their dim-witted or paralytic children there; peasants got rid of extra mouths they could not feed. He complained that the only thing they were good at was singing. “What would they say if they rose to go to the plough, like farmers, exposed to the wind and rain, with bare feet, and with their bodies thinly clad? ” But of course he didn’t let on how he really felt when he arrived at a monastery looking for books. Like you, he never said what he really thinks. Skilled in the diplomatic arts. The founders of the early monastic orders didn’t think of copying manuscripts as some kind of esteemed activity it was shit kicker work in old Rome it had been done by slaves So the work was tedious and humiliating. Like being a podcaster. it was excellent work for humbling the spirit. But not for Poggio. For him this was the highest of callings. He was like Indiana Jones. But even in the monasteries, scribes, especially the good ones, who would write neatly and accurately, eventually came to be valued. In early German codes of law, they had the Weregild (vera-gilt) a payment you had to make as punishment if you killed someone. Weregild “were” man, geld “payment” As in Were Wolf, man wolf Killing a scribe was ranked equal to the loss of a bishop or an abbot. Which suggests how difficult and expensive it was to find someone who could copy books. And they needed books to enforce the reading rule. Compared to the ancient libraries of Rome, Alexandria, Baghdad, the libraries of these monasteries were tiny. They eventually developed a special room, the scriptoria, where monks would sit in absolute silence for long hours of painstaking work. Most books in the ancient world took the form of scrolls. But in the fourth century, Christians developed the codex, which was more like a modern book. It was easier to paginate, index and bookmark. For thousands of years, ancient texts were typically written on papyrus, made from the pith or centre tissue of the papyrus plant. But papyrus had come from Egypt. And after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was expensive to get papyrus. trade with the papyrus makers of Egypt had long vanished Paper did not come into general use until the fourteenth century. So for more than a thousand years the chief writing material used for books was made from the skins of animals—cows, sheep, goats, and occasionally deer. Parchment and vellum started being used in the first century BCE. It was initially expensive to produce, so papyrus was more common. But after the fall of the empire, parchment because the cheaper option. monastic rules mandated that monks learn the laborious art of making parchment and salvaging existing parchment. You could make it locally, so it was cheaper and faster. The finest parchment, the one that made life easier for scribes and must have figured in their sweetest dreams, was made of calfskin and called vellum. And the best of the lot was uterine vellum, from the skins of aborted calves. Brilliantly white, smooth, and durable, these skins were reserved for the most precious books, ones graced with elaborate, gemlike miniatures and occasionally encased in covers encrusted with actual gems. But monks weren’t supposed to enjoy their work. Or supposed to read or understand the book they were copying. The work was painful and tedious. Like a Zen monk sitting in meditation pose for hours. The pain was the point, almost. Curiosity was to be avoided at all costs. Monks weren’t allowed to fix someone else’s mistakes in the original text, or to replace one word with another to make the text clearer. Which was a good thing. It prevented wholesale corruption of the texts, as monks tried to fix stuff they knew nothing about. But of course it also meant that errors crept in and the

Poggio had to use all of his talents to talk his way into monastery libraries. In some he had to be super serious. In others, he would tell wild stories about stupid peasants, or sexy housewives and rapey priests. Whatever it takes to get his hands on their books. The post #54 Poggio Bracciolini Part 2 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

In the year 1417, 17 years before Cosimo De Medici took control of Florence, a man called Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini went hunting in the middle of Germany. Hunting for manuscripts. Thanks to Poggio, we have today several masterpieces of Roman literature, including Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, Vitruvius’ De Architectura, and Lucretius’ On The Nature Of Things.   The post #53 Poggio Bracciolini appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The return of Cosimo de Medici! On 5 October, 1434, Cosimo arrived at his villa outside Florence and stopped for some food. The Signoria sent him a message begging him NOT to arrive that day, because they thought it would cause a riot. So he sneaks in at night and goes straight to visit the Pope. Rinaldo degli Albizzi, his sons and descendants were all banished from Florence, as were many families of the oligarchy. The Medici family rule supreme. But, like Augustus Caesar 1450 year earlier, Cosimo tries to appear like a normal citizen and keeps up the appearances of the Republic. He’s not it in for personal glory. He just wants political stability, safety for his family and, most of all – to make money. The post #52 The Rise Of The Medici (part 14) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

By April 1434, six months after Cosimo de Medici’s banishment, the people were turning against Rinaldo degli Albizzi. Even the banking families weren’t supporting him, not sure he could be around much longer. According to Cosimo, nobody could be persuaded to fill the city treasury ‘with so much as a pistachio nut’. He was so unpopular, that supporters of Cosimo were elected to all 8 seats on the Signoria and a Medici business partner from the wool guild even ended up as gonfaloniere. Albizzi first tried to prevent them from taking office, then relents on one condition – they swear not to bring back the Medici. And they so swear. With their fingers crossed behind their backs.   The post #51 The Rise Of The Medici (part 13) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

So Cosimo de Medici is sent into exile by his enemies. As is the rest of the family. But at least he’s alive. And the business survived. So he’s still FILTHY rich. It could have been a lot worse. He ends up living at the San Giorgio Maggiore monastery in Venice. Florence is in the control of the Albizzi and the old oligarchy. But the Medici money spigot has been turned off. They aren’t around to bail the city out when it gets into financial trouble – as it always does. The post #50 The Rise Of The Medici (part 12) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Albizzi tries to get the Signoria to pass the death sentence on Cosimo. Meanwhile, Cosimo waits nervously for his brother Lorenzo, Niccolo da Tolentino and his mercenaries to rescue him from his cell, while expecting his execution to come at any time.   The post #49 The Rise Of The Medici (part 11) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Florence’s war with Lucca was like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It set off a string of conflicts across northern Italy. When Cosimo gets back to the city, he finds it in chaos and broke. So he bails it out. And then he gets arrested.   The post #48 The Rise Of The Medici (part 10) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

When the Florentines attack the town of Lucca in 1430, Milan sends mercenary Francesco Sforza to their defense. The Florentines, outmatched militarily, do what rich people always do when they get in trouble – they bribe their way out of it. The post #47 The Rise Of The Medici (part 9) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

While in Rome, Cosimo gets himself a sexy slave girl – Maddalena. And when Papa Joe dies, Cosi took over as head of the family. He decided the Medici should have a genuine palazzo of their own and commissioned old mate Bruno to design something nice. And he also commissioned sculptor Donatello to produce a bronze statue of David. Then Rinaldo degli Albizzi, the leader of the old oligarchy families, decides to fight back against the new taxation system by starting a war. The post #46 The Rise Of The Medici (part 8) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Papa Joe Medici dies, leaving control of the Medici Bank and the family fortune – now the largest in Italy – to his son, Cosimo Di Giovanni de Medici. The post #45 The Rise Of The Medici (part 7) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The Medici continue their rise to power. In 1421, Papa Joe became gonfaloniere. Around the same time, Pope Marty finally appointed the Medici as the papal bankers. And Papa Joe retires and hands over control of the bank to his two sons – Cosimo and Lorenzo. Then in 1422, Florence gets involved in a costly war with Milan, which bankrupts the city and gives rise to the castato taxation system – a new way of taxing the rich. The post #44 The Rise Of The Medici (part 6) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

So Ziggy declared John XXIII was deposed and thrown in jail. The other popes were encouraged – by showing them a stake with wood stacked around it no doubt – to drop their claims to the title. And the Great Schism was finally healed – but electing an entirely NEW pope in 1417 – Martin V. Possibly the fattest and ugliest pope ever. But Ziggy is keeping ol’ Baldy a prisoner until someone pays a massive ransom. And, of course, Ziggy turns to his BFF – ol’ Joey Medici.   The post #43 The Rise Of The Medici (part 5) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

In 1414, the future Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (aka Ziggy Stardust) suggested to Mr Baldy (aka Baldassare Cossa aka Pope John XXIII) that he should get all of the active Popes – John XXIII, Gregory XII and Benedict XIII – together for a big party to work out the pope situation. Baldy said…. sure, Okay, I’ve heard Cam & Ray say NEVER GO TO PARTIES, but I’m game as long as you promise my safety. Ziggy said…. I PROMISE. Someone else he promised would be safe was Jan Hus, the Czech theologian who is considered the first church reformer. Oh I’m sure it’ll all work out just FINE. The post #42 The Rise Of The Medici (part 4) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Our guest today is friend of the show, one of our favourite people – artist Alex Kynaston. She was with us in Durham NC while we shot the Jesus film and was also on our inaugural European tour. She and Cameron (and her dad Tony) smoked stogies and caught some jazz in NYC and have hung out in Toronto. She’s known Cameron since she was 10 years old – and has been listening our to our shows since she was 15. She sent us a picture of herself wearing a toga when she was 14. So that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her. Today she’s studying fine arts in Melbourne and already has forgotten more about art than we ever will know. So we asked her to come on and talk about Florence’s special relationship with David & Goliath and the differences between Donatello’s twink statue versus Michelangelo’s swole version. Check out Alex’s website and commission a painting from her! The post #41 David & Goliath appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

THE MEDICI FAMILY fortunes eventually passed into the hands of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, head of the Cafaggiolo branch of the family, so called because it retained property in the Medici’s home village in the Mugello. Things started to really turn around for Giovanni in 1402 because of his relationship with a dodgy bloke called Baldassare Cossa, whom Giovanni befriended during his spell at the Rome office. Cossa would soon become Pope John XXIII. The post #40 The Rise Of The Medici (part 3) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The rise of the Medici included a few false starts, due to a failed military campaign and a working class revolution. Meanwhile Florence prospered, in part because of the integrity of their coinage – the florin. The post #39 The Rise Of The Medici (part 2) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

One of the one of the most powerful and influential families of the Renaissance – the Medici – took centuries to rise to power. But when they did, they changed the world.   The post #38 The Rise Of The Medici (part 1) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Against complaints about how much they were demanding, the popes said “hey looking this good isn’t easy!” Clement VI had been forced to lend Philip VI of France 592,000 gold florins – $135 million. And 3,517,000 more to King John II, Philip’s son and heir. Roughly $800 million. Quick quiz – how long did the Hundred Years’ War last? 116 years. Fought from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. Who was the last Plantagenet king of England? Richard III. Now is the winter… A lot of money had to be spent trying to reconquer the lost papal states in Italy. Despite all taxes the popes suffered dire deficits. John XXII rescued the papal treasury by paying into it 440,000 florins from his personal funds; Innocent VI had to sell his silver plate, his jewelry and works of art; Urban V had to borrow 30,000 florins from his cardinals; Gregory XI owed 120,000 francs when he died. Some people said the huge deficits were caused mostly by the worldly luxury of the papal court. Clement VI was surrounded by male and female relatives attired in precious stuffs and furs; by knights, squires, sergeants at arms, chaplains, ushers, chamberlains, musicians, poets, artists, doctors, scientists, tailors, philosophers, and chefs who were the envy of kings—all in all, some four hundred persons, all fed, clothed, lodged, and salaried by a lovably lavish Pope who had never known the cost of money. Clement thought of himself as a ruler who had to awe his subjects and impress ambassadors by “conspicuous consumption” after the custom of kings. The cardinals too, as the royal council of a state as well as the princes of the Church, had to maintain establishments befitting their dignity and power; their retinues, equipages, banquets were the talk of the town. Perhaps Cardinal Bernard of Garves overdid it, who hired fifty-one dwellings to house his retainers; and Cardinal Peter of Banhac, five of whose ten stables sheltered thirty-nine horses in comfort and style. Even bishops fell in line, and, despite remonstrances from provincial synods, kept rich establishments with jesters, falcons, and dogs. Avignon assumed the morals as well as the manners of royal courts. One bishop wrote: “That the whole Christian folk take from the clergy pernicious examples of gluttony is clear and notorious, since the said clergy feast more luxuriously and splendidly, and with more dishes, than princes and kings” And Petrarch had this too say about Avignon: the impious Babylon, the hell on earth, the sink of vice, the sewer of the world. There is in it neither faith nor charity nor religion nor the fear of God…. All the filth and wickedness of the world have run together here…. Old men plunge hot and headlong into the arms of Venus; forgetting their age, dignity, and powers, they rush into every shame, as if all their glory consisted not in the cross of Christ but in feasting, drunkenness, and unchastity…. Fornication, incest, rape, adultery are the lascivious delights of the pontifical games. Of course, Petrarch was biased. He was pissed that the papacy had vacated Rome. But even St. Catherine of Siena, who was declared patron saint of Rome in 1866, and of Italy in 1939, and patron saint of Europe in 1999 by Pope John Paul II, told Gregory XI that at the papal court “her nostrils were assailed by the odors of hell.” BTW – Christ’s foreskin is known as the “Holy Prepuce”. St Catherine claimed to wear Christ’s foreskin as an invisible wedding ring. Charlemagne gave it to Pope Leo III when was crowned Emperor. It’s last known location was the village of Calcata, north of Rome. Unfortunately it was reported stolen in 1983 – which happened to be the same year Bowie released “Let’s Dance”. Coincidence? You tell me. All of this undermined the prestige and authority of the church. In the 80 years they were in Avignon, the popes named 113 Frenchmen as new cardinals – out of a total of 134. As a result, the Germans decided the popes would have no more role in the election of their kings and emperors. In 1372 the abbots of the archdiocese of Cologne, in refusing the tithe to Pope Gregory XI, publicly proclaimed that “the Apostolic See has fallen into such contempt that the Catholic faith in these parts seems to be seriously imperiled. The laity speak slightingly of the Church because, departing from the custom of former days, she hardly ever sends forth preachers or reformers, but rather ostentatious men, cunning, selfish, and greedy. Things have come to such a pass that few are Christians in more than name.” The status of the Church in Italy was terrible. Louis of Bavaria had invaded Italy, marched to Rome, and declared himself the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis IV, in 1328. Despite Pope John XXII being against it. The Pope had actually excommunicated Louis a few years earl

After the death of Clement V, Dante wrote to the Italian cardinals and urged them to hold out for an Italian pope who would return the papacy to Rome. But only six of the 23 cardinals were Italian. And when they met just outside Avignon in their conclave to decide the new Pope, there were people outside shouting “Death to the Italian cardinals!” And then the mob set fire to the building where the conclave was meeting. So the cardinals made a run for out through a passage in a rear wall and there was no conclave for two years. When they finally met again in Lyon, under the protection of French soldiers, they made Jacques Duèze the pope. John XXII He was already 72 years old and not expected to live long. But he survived 18 years and had huge influence in affairs. But he was French. The son of a cobbler. Had been the teacher of the children fo the French king of Naples, Robert. And it was Robert who bribed the Italian cardinals to make John pope. John XXII had a great skill for making money. He sold benefices – a permanent Church appointment, typically that of a rector or vicar – like his predecessors, but, like Trump telling a huge lie, he did it without blushing. When he died, the papal treasury had 18 million gold florins, est $4.1 billion and 7 million florins value ($1.6 billion) in plate and jewellery. The buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges – is called simony which comes from Simon Magus (Acts 8:18). Who tried to buy the secret to conferring the Holy Ghost from Peter. He is also remembered for being the guy who made witchcraft something that could be tried under the Inquisition. Before then, witchcraft was either ignored as being an old, harmless pagan superstition – and bit like we think of Christianity. Then John was apparently the victim of an assassination attempt using poison and magic and he suspected witchcraft, so he went after them. The Inquisition started in 12th-century France to combat religious dissent, in particular the Cathars. The Cathars believed there were two gods – the good one of the NT and the evil one of the OT. They also didn’t believe in killing, so they were vegetarians. And they were against war and capital punishment. Which made them very unusual in the Middle Ages. They were also against reproduction, because they believed that continued the suffering and the chain of reincarnation – makes them sound a lot like Buddhists. And they allowed women to be leaders of their churches, so that didn’t go down well with the Catholics. Pope Innocent III launched a crusade against them in 1208. This is where the famous story comes from, where the Crusaders were laying siege to a city and a commander was asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. He replied “Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own” The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly at least 7,000 innocent men, women and children were killed there by Catholic forces. Elsewhere in the town, many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. What remained of the city was razed by fire. Arnaud-Amaury wrote to Pope Innocent III, “Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex.” ANYWAY…. John XXII was also accused of heresy during his lifetime for making the claim that people who died did not see the presence of God – known as the beatific vision – until the Last Judgment. When John died in 1334, he was replaced by Jacques Fornier, aka Benedict XII, the son of a baker. Another Frenchman. The conclave were ready to elect another guy, the Bishop of Porto, if he would only swear in advance to agree not to return the Papacy to Rome, but he refused to make any promises in order to get elected. So they elected Fornier instead. He clamped down on some of the excesses of John – there was less bribery and corruption. It’s said that Benedict was happy to live a simple life. But he also built a palace for himself and future popes in Avignon. He invited Giotto to come and cover it with frescos, but Giotto died before he could get there. So he invited Giotto’s pupil Simone Martini instead. Martini was a friend of Petrarch and, according to Vasari, painted two portraits of Laura for him. The next pope was born Pierre Roger – Clement VI. He came from French nobility and liked luxury. He didn’t understand why a pope should live a simple life when the papal treasury was fully stocked. He gave out benefices to everyone who asked for one. He said he didn’t like people to leave disappointed. Especially his own family. His nepotism was ultimately reflected in the 44 statues of relatives which surrounded his sarcophagus. At one point he said he would give gifts to any clergyman who came to see him within the following two months – 100,000 came. He also

We want to go back and discuss the political situation in Italy in the 14th century. We mentioned in an earlier episode that in 1309, Pope Clement V moved the Papacy from Rome to Avignon. He was French. The former bishop of Bordeaux. And King Philip IV of France, who arrested Pope Boniface VIII, and almost starved him to death, was the guy who made Clement the new Pope. Clement knew he wasn’t safe in Rome. And most of the “Sacred College” was now made up of French cardinals. They also didn’t feel safe in Italy So they all moved to Avignon. Which wasn’t actually controlled by France at the time. Provence was actually controlled by the King Of Naples. So Clement tried to keep a little distance. For centuries, the Popes had tried to subordinate the kings of Europe to the papacy. But it had failed. France, Florence, Venice, Lombardy, Naples had all rejected papal control. Rome had twice tried to bring back a republic. We talked in an earlier episode about Rienzo. But that was later, in 1346. In the other Papal States, a series of feudal magnates had supplanted the Church. For centuries, the church had been able to demand homage and tribute from the kings of Europe. On threat of excommunication. And now, with the Papacy basically run by the French king, Germany, Italy, England and Bohemia saw it as a hostile power. And they increasingly started to ignore it, including excommunications and prohibitions. They could sell it to their people as a fake news papacy. Clement V tried to keep his head up. He bowed as little as possible to Philip IV. Despite Philip’s threats to hold a post-mortem inquest into the private conduct and beliefs of Boniface VIII. In 1302, Boniface issued a papal bull saying “Popes are the boss of the kings.” that it is “absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff”. Even more than the Popes who came before him, he claimed to have temporal as well as spiritual power over every human. Philip decided to tax the church in France and Boniface told him to get fucked and excommunicated him. So Philip had him arrested and tortured. He was released but died weeks later. His successor, Pope Benedict XI, only lasted 8 months before he also died, probably poisoned – and Philip forced a deadlocked conclave to elect the French Clement V as Pope in 1305. Clement lead a fairly clean and frugal life. But the Papacy was also short on funds so he sold ecclesiastical benefices to the highest bidder And suffered from a painful disease—lupus (malfunctioning immune system, skin rashes, joint and muscle pain and fatigue) And probably a fistula Caused by fisting. Almost immediately after being elected Pope, Clement withdrew the bull of Boniface VIII that asserted papal supremacy over secular rulers. He’s also remembered for suppressing the order of the Knights Templar and allowing the execution of many of its members. On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France. Apparently motivated by Philip’s desire to take control of their wealth and get rid of his debt to them. They were the papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East From the very day of Clement V’s coronation, the king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, heresy, sodomy, immorality, and abuses. The order was founded in 1119. After Europeans in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey. In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims. The king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon’s Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or “Templar” knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. They didn’t stay poor for long. They got the support of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who founded the Cistercian Order of monks and was the nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard was the guy who called for the Second Crusade in Vezelay in 1146. Louis VII of France, his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine were both there. I’ve been to that church. Heard a polyphonic mass. Anyway, the Templars ended up being one of the most popular charities in Europe. Then 1139, Pope Innocent II’s papal bull Omne Da

BTW – in 1421, Bruno was awarded the world’s first ever patent for invention. The patent describes Bruno as “a man of the most perspicacious intellect, industry and invention,” And this document granted him a patent of monopoly for “some machine or kind of ship, by means of which he thinks he can easily, at any time, bring in any merchandise and load on the river Arno and on any other river or water, for less money than usual.” This ship was called Il Badalone, “the Monster.” According to the terms of the patent, any boat copying its design, and thereby violating Filippo’s monopoly, would be condemned to flames. The design of the boat is a bit of a mystery. Might have had paddles like a paddle steamer. Di Prato again said it was doomed to fail. He wrote a poem where He called Bruno a “pit of ignorance” and a “miserable beast and imbecile,” and promised to commit suicide should Filippo’s plan succeed. Lucky for him – he didn’t have to kill himself. Bruno promised the Opera his boat would be able to ship all of the marble they needed from Carrara cheaper and faster. Unfortunately on its maiden voyage, something went wrong – we don’t know what. But the marble never arrived. And the Opera forced him to replace it with his own money. BTW in 1423, two years after Filippo finished building his hoist, a Sicilian adventurer named Giovanni Aurispa returned from Constantinople with a hoard of 238 manuscripts written in Greek, a language that scholars in Italy had learned only in the previous few decades. Among these treasures were six lost plays by Aeschylus and seven by Sophocles, as well as works by Plutarch, Lucian, Strabo, and Demosthenes. But there was also a complete copy of the works of the geometer Proclus of Alexandria and, even more important for engineers, a treatise on ancient lifting devices, the Mathematical Collection of Pappus of Alexandria. This latter work, from the fourth century A.D., describes the windlass, the compound pulley, the worm and wheel, the screw and the gear train—all essential features of hoists and cranes. In the decades that followed, so many manuscripts on Greek mathematics and engineering emerged that it is possible to speak of a “renaissance of mathematics” in fifteenth-century Italy. But even if Bruno had got his hands on these manuscripts in time to help with the dome, he wouldn’t have been able to read them, as he couldn’t read Latin or Greek. Manetti also suggests another inspiration for the ox-hoist. He claims that Bruno, while still a young goldsmith, built a number of mechanical clocks equipped with “various and diverse generations of springs.” Which, if true, is amazing, because spring-loaded clocks weren’t used for another hundred years when metallurgical techniques were refined enough that it became possible to manufacture resilient wire. There’s no other evidence for this, except a drawing made decades later. He also invented GASLIGHTING. Tell the Fat Carpenter story. With the Dome finished, the city proved itself as good – or greater – than Ancient Rome in architecture. A new sense of self-esteem. But then came the lantern, the bit up the very top. Bruno must have thought that after all this time, he’d proven himself and they’d just let him design the fucking lantern. But no. In 1436 he had to undergo another competition. Gibbo didn’t have to sit through another competition when he finished the first set of doors. Imagine Bruno’s indignation. And of course Gibbo is competing for this work as well, Along with some other guys. Including Antonio di Ciaccheri Manetti – not to be confused with the Manetti who was his biographer. This Manetti was a colleague and friend. Who now became a competitor. After a long period of deliberation, Bruno’s design is declared the winner. EXCEPT – the Opera tell him to BE COOL – and let Manetti offer up one more design. He apparently said “hey I’ve got a cool new idea”. So Manetti did produce another design – and it was pretty close to Bruno’s. Bruno apparently said “Hey let him do another one and it’ll be exactly like mine.” So Bruno gets the job. His design (now on display in the Museum Opera del Duomo) was for an octagonal lantern with eight radiating buttresses and eight high arched windows. Construction of the lantern was begun a few months before his death in 1446. Octagonal in shape, the lantern sits on a marble platform supported by the sandstone chain. Its eight buttresses rise in line with the eight ribs of the dome to support 30-foot-high pilasters crowned with Corinthian capitals. Between the pilasters are eight windows, each also 30 feet in height. The interior features a small dome above which a spire rises 23 feet, to be topped by the bronze ball and a cross. Inside one of the buttresses (all of which are hollow in order to decrease the weight of the lantern) a stairway leads to a series of ladders, which in turn lead up through the spire and into the bronze b

So what was the magic solution that Bruno brought to the Dome on August 7, 1420? How do you build a dome out of bricks, that curves upwards, with no support, that won’t fall down? Well he actually invented not one, not two, but a handful of new tricks. And this is even BEFORE he invented linear perspective. The first thing I want to talk about is called In Italian – (”Spina di Pesce”) – spine of the fish. In English we call it Herringbone A Zig zag pattern. His idea was to zigzag the bricks. If you have all of the bricks lying horizontal, the forces are all pushing in a single direction. But if you stick a vertical brick in there every few bricks, it pushes back on the horizontal forces. If you climb the dome, you’re actually walking in between the inner and the outer domes. And in certain sections, where there isn’t any plaster on the walls, you can actually see the zigzag pattern. This was so original, Bruno not only needed to convince the board of the committee, he needed to convince the workers that it wouldn’t all fall down on them . They were working 230 feet in the air. If the bricks fell down on them, it was certain death. How did he make them trust him? That 12 foot high demo dome we talked about last time – in the car park of the Duomo museum.. Another thing is that if you could take off the outer layer of tiles and look at the dome brickwork, you’d notice that the Spina di Pesce patterns follows the dome around each side like a spiral – so it becomes a single dome, not 8 sides. This apparently spreads out the forces, making it more stable. Very stable. Like Trump. A very stable genius. Where exactly Filippo learned of the herringbone bond is one of the dome’s unsolved mysteries. The herringbone pattern had of course been known to masons and bricklayers for many centuries. The Romans made extensive use of something they called opus spicatum, literally “spiked work” and the pattern is also found in the half-timbered brick walls of Tudor houses in England. In both these cases, however, it is decorative rather than structural; the Romans used it only in ornamental paving on the floors of their villas. However – systems of interlocking brickwork similar to that in the dome can be found in certain Persian and Byzantine domes, which leads some scholars to think that Filippo may have visited these lands during his Rome years. Another trick he used to make it more stable is that if you looked at the bricks from corner to corner you’d see they form a downward arch. Higher in the corners, lower in the centre of each wall. This pushes the weight downwards. Like you pushed me downwards in Vegas. But there’s another great story about the zigzag pattern. I said earlier that when you climb up the staircase, some sections aren’t covered in plaster? Well apparently that was deliberate. In the sections that Bruno didn’t plaster over, the amount of mortar between the bricks is way too small to contain the forces of the bricks. But in sections where the plaster has chipped away over the centuries, you can see the right amount of mortar has been used. Bruno knew his successors would think he was demonstrating his techniques for them to learn from, but really he was cleverly ensuring that they would fail in their attempts to recreate his work. Sneaky fucker. But another question is how he got all of the sides to look even and meet at the top? Imagine if you’re putting bricks on top of each other, with varying sizes of brick – handmade obviously – and you’re slapping on mortar in between them – over 4 million bricks, Weighing 40,000 tons, there are going to be variations in height. Not to mention the angle of the bricks with a slanting wall. How did he get it so even? And The octagonal building the dome was going on top of unfortunately hadn’t been built precisely evenly. People have wondered how he did this for centuries. And in recent years, one guy thinks he worked it out. His name is Massimo Ricci – he teaches architecture at the University of Florence and he’s been working on a model 1:5 scale for 30 years. Longer that Bruno. He published a book -Il fiore di Santa Maria del Fiore in 1983 In it he talks about a guy called Giovanni di Prato – aka Joe The Prat – who, around 1425, five years after work began, wrote a critique of Bruno’s methods. The only contemporary surviving account of the work. Discovered in the archives in the mid 19th century but no-one really understood the importance of it until Ricci. De Prato was Ghiberti’s deputy. In his own right he was a lecturer on Dante at the University of Florence, And from the get go he didn’t like Bruno. And he thought Bruno was fucking it up. De Prato said Bruno wasn’t sticking to the original design, and the dome would fall down. Turns out he was wrong on both counts – the finished dome is exactly to the original design. And so far it’s still standing. It was probably a m

It’s thought that Bruno returned to Florence probably in 1416 or 1417 Which means he was in Rome for 15 years. How did he earn a living? Vasari says he didn’t have to at first. Before he left Florence he sold a small farm that he owned. So he lived off that money for a while. When that ran out he worked as a goldsmith. Vasari states that while in Rome, there wasn’t a single standing classical structure that Bruno didn’t measure and study. When he got back to Florence, he would have noticed that the Duomo had just acquired its new name, Santa Maria del Fiore, “Saint Mary of the Flower,” having previously been referred to as Santa Reparata, the name of the older cathedral, which was now completely demolished. The cathedral gets its name from the lily flower, the symbol of Florence. They got it from the French monarch – Fleur-de-lis fleur means “flower”, and lis means “lily” And no-one seems sure how it came to represent the French throne. One hypothesis is that the French or Franks, before entering Gaul itself, lived for a long time around the river named Leie in Dutch in the Flanders. In French it’s the Lys. And a species of wild iris, the Iris pseudacorus, grew around there. So they were the Flower of Lys. The city name is from Roman Colonia Florentia, “flowering colony,” either literal or figurative, and became Old Italian Fiorenze, modern Italian Firenze. Controversy continues over who founded Florence. One old theory is that Florence was founded by Sulla as a military colony But the most commonly accepted story tells us that Julius Caesar founded Florentia around 59 BC, He made it a strategic garrison on the narrowest crossing of the Arno river and controlling the Via Flaminia linking Rome to northern Italy and Gaul (France). Archaeological evidence suggests the presence of an earlier village founded by the Etruscans of Fiesole around 200 BC. But the Roman garrison might have been founded as late as 30 B.C. which would make it under Augustus. Might have been Agrippa who set it up. Which would make the whole Pantheon – Duomo connection even more exciting. And as we’ll see – a flower was an important part of Bruno’s solution for building the dome. When Bruno arrived back in Florence he is described as “middle aged, short, bald, and pugnacious looking, with an aquiline nose, thin lips, and a weak chin”. So basically he looked like Ray. He had dirty and disheveled clothing. But in Florence looking like that was almost a badge of genius. He was simply the latest in a long and illustrious line of ugly or unkempt artists. The name of the painter Cimabue means “ox head,” Giotto was so unattractive that Giovanni Boccaccio devoted a tale to his appearance in the Decameron, He marvelled at how “Nature has frequently planted astonishing genius in men of monstrously ugly appearance.” Later, Michelangelo would become legendary for his ugliness, which was partly the result of a broken nose earned in a fracas with the sculptor Pietro Torrigiani. And like both Giotto and Filippo, Michelangelo was indifferent to the state of his dress, often going for months on end without changing his dogskin breeches. In the end, ugly and eccentric artists would become so much the norm that the guy who wrote Bruno’s biography, the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari — who himself had a skin disease and dirty, uncut fingernails — was shocked that an artist as talented as Raphael should actually have been physically handsome. And that bias against talented artists survives to this very day. For example, People are often shocked when they find out how handsome I am. Perhaps unsurprisingly Bruno was unmarried. But although in Florence bachelorhood was not unusual for a man in his forties, since men married late and generally took much younger women as their brides, Filippo would never marry, and in this abstention from family life he also became part of a long and glorious tradition of artists that included Donatello, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Many Florentine artists and thinkers took a dim view of both marriage and women. Boccaccio, who never married, criticized Dante for having done so, claiming that a wife was a hindrance to study. But a lot of these guys might have been gay. And this is something I only realised on our last trip to Florence – a lot of the great masters were gay. Why? Does being gay make you more artistic? Or does being artistic make you gay? Or was there something about Florence in the Renaissance that made men gay? Was it something in the water? Were the women just really ugly? Or were the men so ugly they couldn’t get a woman? And men aren’t as picky? Of course, during the time of the Renaissance, sodomy was illegal. Thomas Aquinas, the immensely influential theologian, argued that sodomy is second only to murder in the ranking of sins. In France during the Late Middle Ages, first-offending sodomites lost their testicles, sec

When Bruno – or Pippo was he was known to his friends (short for Filippo) went to Rome, after the embarrassment of the Baptistery doors competition, it wasn’t the Rome of Augustus. At its height, Rome’s population was one million people. When Bruno arrived there, it was less than 20,000, thanks to the Black Death of 1348. 1/50th of its heyday. Can you imagine what that would look like? Rome had shrunk into a tiny area inside its ancient walls retreating from Seven hills to huddle among the few streets on the bank of the Tiber across from Saint Peters whose walls were in danger of collapse. It was full of wild animals and beggars everywhere. There were livestock grazing in the forum which was now known as the field of cows. The temple of Jupiter was a Dunghill and both the theatre of Pompey and the mausoleum of Augustus had become quarries. People would come and take the building materials for use in other buildings some as far away as England. Statues were lying around in rubble everywhere. Some through neglect, but others had been deliberately destroyed by Christians who saw them as pagan idolatry. The true nature of Bruno’s visit to Rome was unknown even to Donatello, his travelling companion. Bruno would walk around studying ancient ruins while pretending to be doing something else, and making notes in a secret cipher in his notebook. This was common practice in those days. There was no such thing as copyright or patents. Manetti claims Bruno was measuring heights and proportions of the buildings. Where did he get this idea? And how did he measure them? Might have used a rod. Or he might have used the mirror trick. Both of these methods were discussed in Leonardo Fibonacci’s book Practica Geometriae. The mirror trick – you position a mirror facing the object you want to measure, then walk backwards until the top of the object appears in the center of the mirror. Then its height is arrived at by multiplying the distance between the object and the mirror by the height of the observer divided by his own distance from the glass. Or he could have employed a quadrant. So you know how that works? Get a quadrant – like a protractor – and mark it off at a 45 degree angle. Make sure it’s level to the ground and walk backwards from the object you are measuring until the top of it is in line with the 45 degree marker. You then have an isosceles triangle. has two sides of equal length The distance from where you are standing to the base of the column would be equal to the height of the column. Or you could just ask Siri. He was measuring the columns and pediments to determine the measurements specific to the three architectural orders – Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Devised by the Greeks, refined by the Romans. Governed by precise mathmatical ratios A series of proportional rules that regulated the aesthetic effects. For example the height of a Corinthian entablature is a quarter of the height of the columns on which stands While the height of each column is 10 times its diameter The entabulature is the upper part of a classical building supported by columns commonly divided into the architrave (the supporting member immediately above), the frieze (an unmolded strip that may or may not be ornamented), and the cornice (the projecting member below the pediment). The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of columns. It’s the earliest form. The Ionic capital is characterized by the use of volutes, a spiral, scroll. The Corinthian is the most ornate of the orders. This architectural style is characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. Here’s how to remember them. Doric rhymes with Boring. Corinthian is the longest word and is the most developed column. Ionic is ironically in the middle. portico of the Pantheon the Corinthian. The Colosseum makes use of all three: Doric on the lowest level, Ionic on the second, and Corinthian at the top. So why did Bruno go to Rome? To get to the other side. He grew up looking at the homeless top of the Duomo. By the beginning of the 15th century, after a hundred years of construction, the structure was still missing its dome. And when he lost the competition for the Baptistery doors to Ghiberti, he said to himself “I’m going to build that dome.” And there would have been lots of domes to see in Rome. After large parts of the city were burned in the fire of 64, Nero had established regulations that widened the streets, controlled the water supply, and—most vital from an architectural perspective—restricted the use of inflammable building materials. The Romans therefore started to use concrete, a relatively new invention, in their buildings. The secret of Roman concrete was in its mortar, which contained a volcanic ash made available by active volcanoes such as Vesuvius. Combined with lime mortar, it resulted in a strong, fast-setting cement to which they ad

After he finished the first set of doors, he was commissioned to make a huge bronze statue of John The Baptist by the same guild – by the cloth merchant’s guild, the Arte di Calimala. – for the outside wall of Orsanmichele (Orsan-mikele) – (or “Kitchen Garden of St. Michael”) – another church in Florence. It was the largest statue ever cast in Florence up to that point. From its base, it rises 2.55 meters. By comparison, Michelangelo’s David stands at 5.17-metres. Vasari: In this work, which was placed in position in the year 1414, there is seen the beginning of the good modern manner, in the head, in an arm which appears to be living flesh, in the hands, and in the whole attitude of the figure. He was thus the first who began to imitate the works of the ancient Romans, whereof he was an ardent student, as all must be who desire to do good work. Ghiberti also wrote a book, which he called his Commentary. This was the first artist’s autobiography. Now this is a big deal. One thing we haven’t mentioned, is that at this stage, and actually for a long time afterwards, these visual artists weren’t celebrities. They were working joes. Florence was the city of guilds. Craftsmen. Being an artist was a craft. Sure – you had some craftsmen who were more talented, or who worked harder, or had higher standards, than others. But they weren’t superstars like we think of artists today. What they were producing wasn’t “art” as we think of it. It was more like… wallpaper. Something to cover your walls with. Not something you’d go into a hushed gallery and stare at for hours. But it was more than wallpaper. It was like wallpaper and picture books combined. Because most people were still illiterate and uneducated. But everyone can look at a picture, a sculpture. And from that they can learn, or be reminded of, the stories from the Bible. But this position of “artist as celebrity” started to emerge in Florence during the Renaissance. Because the wealth elite wanted the very best artists to work on their projects, there was a lot of competition. And some artists ended up in a position where they were admired during their lifetimes. The Medici had a lot to do with this. But we’ll get to that in later episodes. So anyway, for Gibbo to write a book about himself, is a pretty big deal. As we said earlier in the series, Augustine of Hippo wrote Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, around 400. Although the idea of writing about yourself obviously wasn’t new. Julius Caesar wrote his own commentaries about his own campaigns. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote his own autobiography in the late first century. Anyway, back to Ghiberti’s book. Unfortunately, the only copy of Gibbo’s Commentaries we have is a single corrupt manuscript. Vasari wasn’t a big fan: Vasari: The same Lorenzo wrote a book in the vulgar tongue, wherein he treated of many diverse matters, but in such wise that little profit can be drawn from it. The only good thing in it, in my judgment, is this, that after having discoursed of many ancient painters, and particularly of those cited by Pliny, he makes brief mention of Cimabue (Chim-a-boo-ay), Giotto, and many others of those times; and this he did, with much more brevity than was right, for no other reason but to slip with a good grace into a discourse about himself, and to enumerate minutely, as he did, one by one, all his own works. Nor will I forbear to say that he feigns that his book was written by another, whereas afterwards, in the process of writing as one who knew better how to draw, to chisel, and to cast in bronze, than how to weave stories-talking of himself, he speaks in the first person, ” I made, ” “I said, ” “I was making, ” I was saying”. Finally, having come to the sixty-fourth year of his age, and being assailed by a grievous and continuous fever, he died, leaving immortal fame for himself by reason of the works that he made, and through the pens of writers; and he was honourably buried in S. Croce. His portrait is on the principal bronze door of the Church of S. Giovanni, on the border that is in the middle when the door is closed, in the form of a bald man, and beside him is his father Bartoluccio; and near them may be read these words: LAURENTII CIONIS DE ĢHIBERTIS MIRA ARTE FABRICATUM LORENZO cione de ĢHIBERTIS – wonderful art fabricator Okay let’s talk a little more about Bruno. We know about his life because the first artist’s biography (in the western tradition) is Antonio Manetti’s biography of Filippo Brunelleschi, written in the 15th century. After he lost the Baptistery commission, Bruno and his friend Donatello visited Rome to study its ancient ruins. Donatello, like Brunelleschi, was trained as a goldsmith. And as we know, Donatello returned to Florence to help Gibbo with the bronze doors. But Bruno seems to have decided he couldn’t return to paintin

Anyway – governors of Florence may have had a more immediate reason for selecting this story. The climax of the story emphasizes divine intervention, and we must remember that the Florentines were facing a series of threats from outside forces – we’ll discuss them in later episodes – and had just had another dose of the plague. So at the end of the year, all of the artists handed in their work. And it came down to two finalists: Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi. So let’s introduce him. He’s another one of the founding fathers of the Renaissance. Born in 1377 in Florence and is considered the first modern engineer. AND for developing a technique for linear perspective in art. Because hey – only complete losers are famous for just one thing. I mean – I invented long form history podcast, the world’s first podcast network AND – recording podcasts over Skype. So that’s THREE things. One better than Brunelleschi. So fuck him. We don’t know much about his youth, except his father was a notary, a civil servant, and like all sons, Filippo – aka Philly B – was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps. But Bruno was artistically inclined, and he enrolled in the Arte della Seta, the silk merchants’ Guild. We’ll explain the role of the guilds in detail in future episodes. But for now, just think of them as secular corporations that controlled the arts and trades in Florence from the twelfth into the sixteenth century. They also had a significant role in the government of Florence, in between the years when the Medici family ran it. Florence was a city run by business people, which is one of the reasons it prospered and the arts flourished. But more on that in later episodes when we get into the politics of Florence. The silk merchants’ Guild also included goldsmiths, metalworkers, and bronze workers. Which is why Bruno joined it. He became a master goldsmith in 1398. So when the Baptistery door competition was being held, Philly B was only 24 years old. Lorenzo Ghiberti – Gibbo – was only 21. Their submissions – the Abraham and Isaac panel – have been preserved. They are the only ones that have survived. The two preserved competition panels represent the same moment in the story: the angel intervenes as Isaac kneels on the altar, his father about to put a knife to his throat. The two servants, the ram caught in the thicket, and the donkey drinking from a stream are represented in both panels. Perhaps the inclusion of these elements was required by the competition. Brunelleschi’s relief is an original creation, full of action-filled poses. Abraham twists Isaac’s head to expose his neck, while the angel has to rush in and physically restrain Abraham to prevent the sacrifice. The body of the boy is scrawny, the poses of the two main figures tense, and the drapery rhythms sharp and broken. All are rendered in a new, profoundly naturalistic style. This is a big thing because art, including painting as well as sculpture, before this time, was very boring. Even into the 14th century or the “trecento” as it’s known. Even if you look at the works of Giotto, the master of the 14th century, the first artist to depict three-dimensional figures in western European art. When I think of Byzantine art, I think of flat paintings. Very 2D. And a ton of gold and silver, because they wanted to show how much insane bling Jesus had given them. But Giotto tried to make his scenes more realistic. His fabric folds are more realistic, and he used light, shadow, and color to create the appearance of fabric. You can also see the Contours of the body underneath these fabric fold. But His figures all have faces made of stone. Look at the Ognissanti Madonna from 1310 which is in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy. The faces are all ’tranquil’ like drugged cows walking into the slaughterhouse. But Giotto was a huge step forward. The importance of Giotto was not lost on his contemporaries. Our friend Boccaccio wrote in The Decameron that Giotto had “brought back to light” the art of painting “that for many centuries had been buried under the errors of some who painted more to delight the eyes of the ignorant than to please the intellect of the wise” (Decameron, VI, 5). One artist in the 15th century declared that Giotto had translated painting from Greek (by which he meant Byzantine) into Latin. In the sixteenth century, Vasari wrote that Giotto had abandoned the “rude manner” of the Greeks and, since he continued to “derive from Nature, he deserves to be called the pupil of Nature and no other.” For his contemporaries and successors the virtue of Giotto’s style seems to have been based in its fidelity to the human, natural, Italian world they knew, as against the artificial manner from the Byzantine East. But let’s not get too deep into Giotto. We’ll talk about him in another episode. But the creators of th

If you’ve ever been to Florence, you’ve no doubt paid a visit to the Duomo, the Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. Known as the Duomo. Well we’re NOT going to be talking about that today. Instead we’re going to be talking about the building right next to it – the Baptistery of St John, one of the most historic and important buildings in Florence. Aka the Battistero di San Giovanni John the Baptist was the patron saint of baptistries as well as the patron saint of the city of Florence. In particular we want to talk about the doors of the Baptistery. And the man who cast them in bronze – Lorenzo Ghiberti. Also sometimes called Di Bartoluccio. When we were in Florence in July, I took everyone to see the bronze doors but unfortunately the greatest of them, the so-called ‘Gates of Paradise”, were covered up and undergoing cleaning. However – the doors that ARE there – aren’t even the original doors! They are a copy of the originals, made in 1990 so they could preserve the originals which had over five hundred years of exposure and damage. To protect the original panels for the future, they are being restored and kept in a dry environment in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the museum of the Duomo’s art and sculpture But they are easy to miss because I think for most tourists, the Duomo is far more famous and attention-grabbing. But the baptistery doors are famous, brilliant and played a huge role in the Duomo’s construction. Lorenzo was born just outside of Florence in the year 1378 or 1381. According to one story, he was the son of Cione di Ser Buonaccorso Ghiberti and Fiore Ghiberti. At some point, his mother, Fiore, went to Florence and shacked up with a goldsmith by the name of Bartolo di Michele. Either true love or he was able to give her lots of nice shiny necklaces. So we’re not sure who Lorenzo’s biological father really was. But either way, Bartolo was the only father he ever knew. And when Cione died, Fiore married Bartolo. But that wasn’t until 1406 when Lorenzo would have been around 25. Lorenzo started studying goldsmithing under Bartolo. And apparently was starting to overtake him, then the plague hit Florence again in 1400. Young Lorenzo, aged about 20, went to Rimini with another artist, where he worked as a painter, painting the apartment of a rich dude. While he was away from Florence, he kept up his studies, including studying sculpture. Once the plague had died down in Florence, in 1401, the governors of the Baptistery were holding a competition and sending for masters who were skilled in bronze working. It was actually the Arte di Calimala (Cloth Importers Guild) who were paying the commission. The doors were to serve as a votive offering to celebrate the sparing of Florence from the recent plague. And it was going to be an expensive project. The eventual cost was 22,000 florins, equal to the entire defense budget of the city of Florence. Imagine if the United States spent $700 billion on a single art project? So Lorenzo headed back to his hometown to enter into the competition. Now let’s talk about The Baptistery It is one of the oldest buildings in the city, constructed between 1059 and 1128. But there was another baptistery on that site from way way back. A baptistery BTW is where people get baptised. And it’s still being used for that today! We got Fox baptised in it while we were there. Only joking. For a long time, people believed the Baptistery was originally a Roman temple dedicated to Mars. But twentieth-century excavations have shown that there was a first-century Roman wall running through the piazza with the Baptistery, which may have been built on the remains of a Roman guard tower on the corner of this wall, or possibly another Roman building. It is, however, certain that a first octagonal baptistery was erected here in the late fourth or early fifth century. It was replaced or altered by another early Christian baptistery in the sixth century. Its construction is attributed to Theodolinda, queen of the Lombards (570-628) to seal the conversion of her husband, King Authari. She was a Bavarian Catholic and he, being a Lombard, was probably Arian, although he could have still been a pagan. It didn’t stop her from poisoning him and marrying his successor a year later but anyway. At least he died a Catholic. So then it was re-built from 1059 and 1128 in green and white marble, like the Cathedral next door, which wasn’t started for another 150 years. The sculptor Andrea Pisano had built the first set of doors in 1329. Depicting twenty scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist. And now they wanted more doors. Because you can never have enough doors. That’s my policy. The original idea for the doors was to have them depict scenes from the Old Testament. There were seven artists from around Italy who were chosen for the competition. They were all given some funds, some bronze and a year to complete their submissi

So let’s talk about The Decameron. The book’s primary title exemplifies Boccaccio’s fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines two Greek words, δέκα, déka (“ten”) and ἡμέρα, hēméra (“day”), to form a term that means “ten-day [event]”. Ten days is the period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales. It was set during the Black Death hit Florence in 1348. Boccaccio wasn’t there at the time, he was back in Naples. According to Machiavelli, Florence lost 96,000 people. Modern estimates are the population of Florence was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351. 45–50% of the European population died during a four-year period. It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia. The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death rate of about a third. about 40% of Egypt’s population. Half of Paris’s population of 100,000 people died. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well. Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted “various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims”, lepers, and Romani, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis. Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe. Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague’s emergence. The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins. This belief led to the idea that the cure to the disease was to win God’s forgiveness. There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In February 1349, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed. These massacres eventually died out in Western Europe, only to continue on in Eastern Europe. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm welcome from King Casimir the Great. But the stories the Decameron were probably written from 1344 – 1350. He might have been writing them before the Black Death. And then he retrofitted them into Florence and the Black Death. It was finally published in 1353. The book is about seven young women and three young men who run from Florence during the plague to escape infection. They hide out in the countryside for a two weeks, of which ten days are spent storytelling, making one hundred tales in all. Each story ends with a canzione, or song. So it’s a compendium of stories and verse. It was hugely popular immediately and people would ransack it for inspiration over the next two centuries. The church and the stiffer element of society did not like it, for it represents the more liberal approach to lifestyles and opinion of the younger generation, contrasted to the formalities and stuffiness of the past. The rest liked it for precisely this reason. It was a “progressive” book, the harbinger of a growing Renaissance trend. Apparently it was written in an Italian prose – the Florentine dialect actually – that was new and exciting and magical at the time, for which he’s known as the “Father of Italian Prose”. A bit like Cicero was considered the master of Latin. The other important thing about it is that the characters are from the lower classes. And it was unusual to write about the lives of the lower classes. This is humanism. Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn. The king or queen gets to choose the theme of the stories for that day. And the stories are all over the place. It’s like reading 1001 Arabian nights. The first story, for example, is about an evil cunt, murderer, thief, womaniser, etc, who goes to a strange land to recover some debts, gets sick, and tricks a priest into giving him absolution by pretending he’s a saintly Christian, then he dies, is buried in the grounds of this priest’s church, where he is considered a saint and people believe he has magical powers. So it’s a story about how religious people are easily fooled. Other stories talk about the power of fortune, there are love stories that end tragically or happily, devious tricks that women play on men and examples of virtue. There’s a story about a guy who kills slays his wife’s lover, then gives her his heart to

Let’s talk about the Filocolo The title means “the one struck down by love”. It is considered to be the first novel of Italian literature written in prose. Florio, son of the King of Spain, and Biancifiore, an orphan. They grow up together, get separated, have a lot of adventures, then he searches for her and finds her and they are reunited. The story influenced Chaucer and Shakespeare and many others. Boccaccio and Maria also appear thinly disguised in the novel. Anyway – the novel is packed full of him talking about Maria, who he calls Fiammetta (Italian for “little flame”), about how beautiful she is and how much he (as another character) is in love with her. He writes that her teeth were candid Eastern pearls, her lips, living rubies clear and red, her cheeks, roses mixed with lilies, her hair, all gold like an aureole about her happy face. Around 1334, he first read Petrarch and they started a correspondence. They didn’t meet until 1350. But during this period she doesn’t give him many chances to see her. Finished in 1336 or 1338. He was 23. It took him FIVE YEARS During these years he became so consumed with his mad love for Maria, and his writing, that he finally quit his canon law studies. During this period, he starts work on The FILOSTRATO: The title, a combination of Greek and Latin words, can be translated approximately as “laid prostrate by love” The story goes back to Homer’s Iliad. Which, strangely enough, Boccaccio hadn’t read, because it wouldn’t be translated into Italian until 20 years later – and he was the guy who made that happen. Troilus and Cressida, minor characters in the older stories. Tragic lovers from opposite sides of the tracks, he’s a Trojan, she’s a Greek. Boccaccio is the first person to write an entire story with them as the main characters. Apparently in the same year he finished Filocolo, 1336, he is invited to go on vacation with her a group of her friends to her house near her old convent. And she seems to have given him hope that one day he’d get into her pants. But not quite yet. He says it took 135 days. Not that he was counting. One day while her husband was away, Boccaccio let himself into her bedroom. Probably bribed her maid to help him. He hid himself behind the curtains in the room. Maria came in with her maid, who undressed her and put her into bed, then left, half laughing, half crying. He waited until she was asleep. Then he crawled into bed beside her. He put his arms around her. When she woke up and saw him there, she started to cry out, but he says he shut her mouth with kisses. She tried to escape and get out of bed, but he held her tightly. But then she told him he was wasting his time – because she wouldn’t give up her pussy. So he got out of bed, took a dagger out of his belt, and said: “I come not, O lady, to defile the chastity of thy bed, but as an ardent lover to obtain relief for my burning desires; thou alone canst assuage them, or tell me to die: surely I will only leave thee satisfied or dead not that I seek to gratify my passion by violence or to compel any to raise cruel hands against me; but if thou art deaf to my entreaties with my dagger I shall pierce my heart. “ Well she didn’t want a dead man in her room, Wu’s pigs were already full, and it’s so fucking hard to get a bloodstain out of the carpet. So she asked him why he loved her. And he told her the long story of all the years of waiting, hoping. Tragic fucking loser. He asked her again if he should kill himself. She took the dagger and threw it away. And he fell on her and had his way with her. And they are together for about a year. Hiding it from her husband, of course. Then after a year of heavenly bliss, she starts to grow cold and distant. In 1338, she tells him he can’t go to the country vacation with her, because her husband is suspicious. But while she’s away, she has a new lover. And his sorry ass is dumped. Ironically – In the Filostrato, written before this time, Cressida dumps Troilus for another man. So he is heart broken. And decides he’s going to win her back by writing more poetry. But he leaves Naples and returns to Florence around 1340. And he continues to write love poetry which are vaguely concealed autobiographies about his relationship with Maria. Hoping to win her back Unfortunately – She was an accomplice in the 1345 murder of King Andrew, the husband of her niece and Robert’s successor, Queen Joanna I. Which is a good story. Joanna was the fourth but eldest surviving child of Charles, Duke of Calabria (eldest son of King Robert the Wise of Naples), and Marie of Valois (sister of King Philip VI of France). But her father died in 1328 when she was a baby, and she was next in line to the throne of Naples when King Robert, her grandfather, died. The other claimant to the throne would be Andrew, the younger son of Robert’s nephew, Charles I of Hungary. His claim to Naples might be stro

Let’s talk about the other, slightly more creepy and rapey father of the Renaissance. For books in the vernacular to appear in considerable quantities, there must be a demand for them. There must exist a class of people who have had enough education to be considered literate and to have an interest in reading for leisure, but who are more fluent in the vernacular than in Latin. In Italy, these were the merchants. Interestingly, the rise of the merchant class was also a consequence of the increase in literacy and the use of the vernacular. Until the twelfth century merchants tended to travel around through Europe, conducting their business on the spot. But two major developments changed this. The first was the development of better accounting techniques which would eventually lead to the invention of double-entry accounting. The second were the increased possibilities for correspondence. With these new developments, merchants could stay at home and conduct business through agents. This meant that merchants no longer had to be on the road all the time, and therefore had time for leisure. Although these merchants were literate, their education had been mainly focused on numeracy and most of them had no knowledge of Latin. For them, the vernacular was the only language in which to read or write In civil government big changes also occurred. City councils in the north of Italy increasingly began to rely on written records, and the legal system also. This meant that there was an ever greater demand for notaries, lawyers and judges. This administrative literacy developed earlier in Italy than elsewhere. In the middle of the thirteenth century, Italian city-government was highly bureaucratic, and minute records were being kept of council meetings and court proceedings, most of them in the vernacular. The combination of higher levels of literacy in society and the acceptance of the vernacular as a written language led to the development of literature in the vernacular. Giovanni Villani, the Florentine chronicler, states that in 1339 in Florence, eight to ten thousand boys received elementary education. On a total of about 90.000 inhabitants, this would mean that 10% of the population was receiving some education at any given time. Villani further states that one fourth of the boys would go on to one of six abacco schools in the city to learn commercial mathematics, and a further 550 to 600 of the pupils would receive further education at one of four grammar schools in Florence. In 1288, a schoolmaster in Milan, Bonvicinus de Ripa, estimated that there where at least seventy ‘teachers of beginning letters’ and a further eight ‘professors of grammar’. Giovanni Boccaccio Interesting guy. One of the father’s of the Renaissance. But also… a little creepy and rapey. Little known fact: originally pronounced Bukakkio He invented bukakke If you don’t know what the means… It’s when a Mommy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy and a Daddy all decide that Mommy needs some special facial moisturiser Most people haven’t heard of him. If you’ve studied literature, you might know him as one of the world’s greatest story-tellers, as the author of the Decameron. But only students of humanism know him also as one of the pioneers of the Revival of Learning and as one of the world’s greatest lovers. Like Petrarch, he turned his love experiences into literary masterpieces. We mentioned him earlier as a friend of Petrarch This encounter turned Boccaccio himself from a career of writing vernacular prose tales in the medieval tradition, such as his famous Decameron, to a career dominated by classical studies. Boccaccio’s greatest service to Renaissance humanism was that he recognized the originality and greatness of Petrarch and became the central figure in a group of avowed disciples at Florence. Through his efforts, Petrarch’s ideas first gained a foothold in the city. He was born in Paris 16 June 1313 The son of a Florentine banker, Boccaccino, the little known brother of Capuccino, and, as Will Durant puts it – “a French lass of doubtful name and morals” Not long after, his father moved back close to Florence to the town of Certaldo and seems to have married another woman, Margerhita, a step-mother who didn’t like him, especially after she had her own son. She was like Caitlin Stark, and he was Jon Snow. At the age of ten (1323) or fifteen (1328), he was sent to Naples, where he was apprenticed to a career of finance and trade. Which he hated as much as Petrarch hated the law. Apparently the secret to being one of the fathers of the Renaissance was to hate a white collar job. After six years studying finance and trade, his father eventually agreed to let him quit his finance studies if he agreed to study canon law. Which he did for another six years, before he gave that up too, because he really only wanted to be a poet. He apparently made that decision while standing at t

“Africa” became alternately Petrarch’s obsession and his revulsion, and he left it incomplete at his death. Despite Petrarch’s best efforts to conceal his occupation, word of the Africa spread quickly. It was not long before Petrarch’s fame reached the court of King Robert of Naples, a ruler considered by his contemporaries to be enlightened and studious. Robert gave Petrarch the resources he needed to devote himself to the Africa, and the king’s favor rewarded the poet’s efforts with wide acclaim. Paris and Rome were soon contending with each other to crown Petrarch poet laureate, an honor he accepted in 1341 from the Eternal City. The last time someone had received a laurel wreath in Rome it was the poet Statius and he received it from Domitian in the first century. During the ceremony on the Capitoline Hill, Petrarch was wearing a purple robe given to him by the King of Naples. It was a huge deal, with the senator and the elite (what was left of it in Rome) all coming out for the ceremony. Petrarch gave a big speech about poetry, quoted from Virgil. Then he marched to St Peters, where he left the crown as a votive offering to God. But later in life, Petrarch would admit that his best years were still ahead of him at the time of the ceremony, and that the leaves on the crown were immature. He was mostly known at this stage for his Canzoniere, written in the vernacular. It was after this date that he wrote most of Africa, in Latin, his “Lives of Illustrious Men” and his Secretum, the dialogues between himself and St Augustine. These biographies are a set of Lives similar in idea to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. There is as yet no English translation. What the Secretum gives us is the picture of Petrarch as he was in the crisis of his middle years. It was written in or about the year 1342 when he was thirty-eight. He’s looking back at his life so far and wondering if he’s wasted it or not. And he’s arguing with St Augustine about the nature and the value of love. It’s a fascinating read. But it wasn’t just Augustine he wrote to. He also wrote to Homer, Cicero, Livy as if they were living comrades, and complained that he had not been born in the heroic days of the Roman Republic Around this time he knocked up a women (or two) and had two illegitimate children – a son and a daughter. Mind you – he’s still technically in the minor orders. And he’s supposed to be celibate. According to the Second Lateran Council held in 1139 And he’s still in love with Laura. After his daughter was born in 1343, he says he became free of sin. Meaning he stopped fucking. Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. He’s incredibly famous and on personal terms with the Popes and Kings. In the fall of 1343 Petrarch went to Naples on a diplomatic mission for Cardinal Colonna. He recorded his travel impressions in several letters (Familiares V, 3, 6). Upon his return he stopped at Parma, hoping to settle there. Because he loves a good chicken parma. But a siege of Parma by Milanese and Mantuan troops forced him to flee to Verona in February 1345. There, in the cathedral library, he discovered the first 16 books of Cicero’s letters to Atticus and his letters to Quintus and Brutus. Petrarch personally transcribed them, and these letters of Cicero stimulated Petrarch to plan a formal collection of his own letters. In 1346 the Pope makes him a canon at Parma. A couple of years later he’s made an archdeacon. These come with money attached. It was also around this time that Petrarch attached himself to another guy who wanted to see Rome made great again. The politician and reformer, Cola di Rienzo, or Rienzi as he’s sometimes called. Cola was born in Rome of humble origins. He claimed to be the natural child of Henry VII, the Holy Roman Emperor, but in fact his parents were a washer-woman and a tavern-keeper named Lorenzo Gabrini. During his youth he read everything he could about ancient Rome. Rienzi wanted to make Rome great again. By the middle of the 14th century Rome had fallen on very hard times. It was officially controlled by the Popes – since the donation of Pepin – and legend had it that it went back even further to the donation of Constantine – even though that was a complete forgery. And technically the Popes had controlled the area around Rome since the Lombard invasion had separated Rome from Byzantium in the 6th century. At their height, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio (which includes Rome), Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. So the Popes had temporal power as well as spiritual power. They were effectively kings. But From 1305 to 1378, the popes lived in the papal enclave of Avignon, surrounded by Provence and under the influence of the French kings. During this period the city of Avignon itself was added to the Papal States; it rem

Now that his parents are dead, Petrarch decides to dump law and become a scholar and a poet. But you couldn’t make a living as a poet in the early 14th century. So he took minor orders with the church. In the Catholic Church, you have the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and simple priest), deacon and subdeacon, and the four minor orders, that of acolyte, exorcist, lector and porter in descending sequence. And although he apparently hated Avignon, his father had made lots of influential contacts there in the Papal court, and Petrarch moved back there to take advantage of them. And it was there, in Avignon, at the age of 23, that he first saw Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon – the woman he was to fall madly in love with and dedicate his lifetime of work to. Even though they possibly never even spoke to each other. On the 6th April, 1327, Good Friday, he first saw Laura in the Church of St. Claire, and was overwhelmed at once with the love of which he tells us: “In my youth I bore the stress of a passion most violent, though honourable and the single one of my life; and I should have borne it even longer than I did, had not Death, opportune in spite of its bitterness, quenched the flame just as it was beginning to grow less intense.” Who was Laura? We don’t know. If she really existed, he probably deliberately hid her identity. His friends often teased him that she didn’t exist at all. That “Laura” was just laurel crown of poetry – he really was just in love with the idea of becoming the poet laureate of Rome. But scholars today are mostly sure that she was real. Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch’s work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. Scholars believe she was real for a couple of reasons. Petrarch wrote a secret kind of diary, his “Secretum”, in the form of him having a discussion with St Augustine, which he never published, and which wasn’t even known about until well after his death, and in this he mentions her as a real woman. He says she refused him because she was already married. He also made some references to her, the date he first saw her and the date of her death, on the fly-leaf of his copy of Virgil. He channeled his feelings into love poems. Byron uses Petrarch and Laura as an example of the thought that love could only exist outside marriage: There’s doubtless something in domestic doings Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis; Romances paint at full length people’s wooings, But only give a bust of marriages; For no one cares for matrimonial cooings, There’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss: Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life? Suffering through years of unrequited love, Petrarch poured out his soul into his most famous poems, the Canzoniere. Il Canzoniere (English: Song Book), also known as the Rime Sparse (English: Scattered Rhymes), but originally titled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (English: Fragments of common things, that is Fragments composed in vernacular) is 366 poems he wrote about love. And he wrote them in vernacular Italian instead of Latin. Even though he thought that Latin was far superior. One theory is that he did this so Laura could read his love poems. Petrarch’s meticulous dating of his manuscripts has allowed scholars to deduce that the poems were written over a period of forty years, with the earliest dating from shortly after 1327, and the latest around 1368. The transcription and ordering of the sequence itself went on until 1374, the year of the poet’s death. His work would go on to become what Spiller calls ‘the single greatest influence on the love poetry of Renaissance Europe until well into the seventeenth century’. The love theme in his poems was the nucleus around which he developed a deeper psychological analysis. And this is also where Petrarch’s analysis of what it meant to be human sets him apart from most of his contemporaries. Remember that during the Middle Ages, people were mostly concerned with how to be good little Christians. And Petrarch cares about that too. But he also writes about love and the meaning of life. Thanks to his poems inspired by Laura he talks about his aspirations to reach glory. He says that Man in his first stage of youth is the slave of appetites, which may all be included under the generic name of Love or Self-Love. But as he gains understanding, he sees the impropriety of such a condition, so that he strives advisedly against those appetites and overcome himself with Chastity, that is, by denying himself the opportunity of satisfying them. Amid these struggles and victories Death overtakes him. Nevertheless,

I want to pick up our story in the year 1302 To talk about a man called Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo. Well actually I want to talk about his SON. But we’ll get there. And to get there, we’re going to need to duck in and out of the 800 years we’ve skipped since our last episodes. So hang in there. Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo was a notary in FLORENCE. A contract lawyer. At some point in 1302, he was falsely charged with faking some documents. He belonged to the political party of the White Guelphs along with the famous poet Dante, who was its most illustrious member. The Guelphs and Ghibellines were Italian factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. The division goes back to the 12th century and Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152. He was crowned King of Italy on 24 April1155 in Pavia and Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV on 18 June 1155 in Rome. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 480, when Julius Nepos was was deposed in 475 by Orestes, the title of Emperor lay dormant until Charlemagne revived it He was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III in 800, and his successors maintained the title until the death of Berengar I of Italy in 924. No pope appointed an emperor again until the coronation of the German king Otto the Great in 962. Who, despite being a German, was the Great-great-great-great grandson of Charlemagne. The actual Holy Roman Empire is usually considered to have begun with Otto He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962 by Pope John XII in Rome after he defeated the pagan Magyars and was declared the saviour of Christendom. Why was the Pope now crowning Emperors? The Holy Roman Emperor was widely perceived to rule by divine right by Roman Catholic rulers in Europe. It also goes back to an agreement between the Frankish kings to defend the Popes from their enemies in return for the continued support of the Pope. The leader of the Catholics could – and often did – cause huge problems for European royalty. Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short, defended the papacy against the Lombards and issued the Donation of Pepin, which granted the land around Rome to the pope as a fief. In 754, Pope Stephen II crossed the Alps to anoint Pepin king, which enabled the Carolingian family to supplant the old Merovingian royal line. In return for Stephen’s support, Pepin gave the Pope the lands in Italy which the Lombards had taken from the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire Pope Stephen II conferred on Pepin the dignity of Patricius Romanus – the Father of the Romans. And then 46 years later, in 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the Roman Emperor. The first time the title had been used in 300 years. The precise term “Holy Roman Empire” was not used until the 13th century. So anyway. Back to Barbarossa. Before his imperial election, Frederick was the Duke of Swabia. He had a castle called Waiblingen (German pronunciation: [ˈvaɪblɪŋən]). His supported would cry that out in battle. In Italy, that word became Ghibellino in Italian. His opponents were from the House of Welf, the family of the dukes of Bavaria. Their supporters would shout out WELF! And in Italy, that became Guelph. When Barbarossa was trying to take Italy, his supporters were the Ghibellines. They tended to be rural nobility whose wealth came from agriculture. His enemies were the Guelphs. They supported the Pope’s control over the various Italian cities, They were typically the urban faction whose wealth came from commerce. Which gets us back to Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo. He was a merchant who also worked for the State as a notary. Notaries were professional writers of contracts, wills, and a wide variety of legal documents. He was basically a lawyer and came from generations of notable lawyers – notable notaries – before him. He also belonged to a political faction known as the White Guelphs. So he was accused by another faction, the Black Guelphs, of the charge of having falsified a legal document. At the close of the 13th century the Ghibellines had been pretty thoroughly eradicated, and the Guelphs began fighting each other over whether or not they should maintain any allegiance to the Pope. Black Guelphs were those who still thought of themselves as the “church party” opposed to the “imperial party”, while White Guelphs felt that, with the Emperor and the Ghibellines falling into irrelevance, there was no further need for the Pope as a leader and their loyalty should be to each other and their cities. All this is important to know for when we get to the Medicis and Florence later on in the series. The White Guelphs were promoting an early form of secular nationalism. Anyway, Pietro di Parenzo di Garzo refused to stand for trial. He believed the whole thing was a stitch up. He left town and was convicted in absence, and then was given the choice of paying a heavy fine or having his right hand cut off. As he still refused

Justin was born near modern Skopje, in the fake Macedonia. He started off life as a peasant and a swineherd. But he rose through the ranks of the army and ultimately became Emperor, in spite of the fact he was illiterate and almost 70 years old at the time of accession. So there you go Ray. There’s hope for you yet. He managed this because at the time of the death of the previous emperor, Anastasius I, Justin was the commander of the palace guard and controlled the only troops in the Constantinople. It’s apparently pretty easy to get voted Emperor when you control the troops. BTW, you know how in a recent episode of Augustus – RIP – we talked about his law that senators couldn’t marry actresses? Well over 500 years later, in 525, Justin repealed that law. So his adopted nephew Flavius Petrus Sabbatius, who changed his name to Justinian to be a complete suckup – could marry Theodora, a former mime actress, and perhaps a prostitute. A contemporary historian, Procopius, commonly held to be the last major historian of the ancient Western world, wrote an infamous history, called his “Secret History”, where he dishes the dirt on the Justinians. He has this to say about Theodora’s acting career: Often, even in the theatre, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their bills and eat. And that’s where the saying “you lucky, lucky goose” comes from. And he had this to say about Justinian: And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian’s head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanished head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it. This eventually resulted in a major change to the old class distinctions at the Imperial court. Anyway, Justin was the first mega Catholic to rule for 50 years, and he started oppressing the Arians a few years into his rule. Which of course the Goths were. The Roman Senate, whose who were all Catholics, shifted their support to the Emperor. Theodoric sent Pope John I to Constantinople to negotiate a better deal for the Arians. But when Pope John got back from his mission, Theodoric suspected a rat and threw him in prison where he died. Which made the Goths even more unpopular with the Catholics. When Theodoric died himself a couple of years later, the kingdom was left to his infant grandson. This caused the network of alliances that surrounded the Ostrogothic state to disintegrate. The Visigoths, the Franks, and the Vandals all went separate ways. With the Franks becoming the new power, especially in Gaul. One thing lead to another and it all culminated in The Gothic War between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom was fought from 535 until 554 in Italy, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily and Corsica. It is commonly divided into two phases. The first phase lasted from 535 to 540 and ended with the fall of Ravenna and the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. Then the Goths fought back from 541–553 under a new leader, Totila, the penultimate King of the Ostrogoths. He recovered almost all the territories in Italy that the Eastern Roman Empire had captured. He sacked Rome in 546 after a siege that lasted almost a year. But the commanders of the garrison in Rome was a bit of a cunt. Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, writes: “Rome was afflicted by the avarice, and guarded by the valor, of Bessas, a veteran chief of Gothic extraction, who filled, with a garrison of three thousand soldiers, the spacious circle of her venerable walls. From the distress of the people he extracted a profitable trade, and secretly rejoiced in the continuance of the siege. It was for his use that the granaries had been replenished: the charity of Pope Vigilius had purchased and embarked an ample supply of Sicilian corn; but the vessels which escaped the Barbarians were seized by a rapacious governor, who imparted a scanty sustenance to the soldiers, and sold the remainder to the wealthy Romans.” Procopius says the ordinary Romans, who wer

In 423, Honorius, the son of Theodosius who ruled the Western part of the empire, died, of natural causes. He had ruled for 30 years. He was only 38 years old. Over the next 50 years, the Western empire had a 11 emperors. Some last for years – others lasted only months. The last emperor of the West is usually considered to be Flavius Romulus Augustus. Also known as Romulus Augustulus – which means “Little Augustus” He was the son of Orestes, a Roman aristocrat who once served as a secretary in the court of Attila the Hun before coming into the service of one of the Roman emperors, Julius Nepos, in 475. Attila ruled the huns for nearly 20 years, from 434 to 453. The Huns came from Scythia, think modern Kazahstan, south Russia, north of Iran. Unlike the Goths, who were Arian Christians, it is believed that the Huns practiced a form of shamanism, called Tengerism. It was the prevailing religion of the Turks, Mongols, Hungarians, Xiongnu and Huns. Shamanism is an animistic belief system in which all things have spirits. This includes everything from animals and plants, to rocks and rivers. Animals can also have significance. Among the Huns, bears symbolized peace while wolverines symbolized war. Still practiced today in places like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Khukh tengri means “blue sky” in Mongolian, Mongolians still pray to Munkh Khukh Tengri (“Eternal Blue Sky”) Attila was also the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, and Alans. He was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. But he defeated the Roman army, which left the Huns virtually unchallenged in Eastern Roman lands and they raided as far south as Thermopylae. The war came to an end in 449 with an agreement in which the Romans agreed to pay Attila 6,000 Roman pounds of golds and an annual tribute of 2100 pounds of gold. In 450, Honoria, sister of the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, sent Attila her engagement ring and begged him to help her escape from having to marry a Roman senator. Imagine being THAT guy. Attila claimed her as his bride and half the Western Roman Empire as dowry. Attila went to Gallia Belgica to claim his dowry with an army said to be 500,000 He was eventually defeated by an alliance of the Goths in Gaul and the Romans. But he returned a couple of years later, and attacked Italy. Venice was invented as a result of his attacks. People escaped his assaults by moving to the Venetian lagoons. It was mostly just a series of small fishing villages before then. Italy had suffered from a terrible famine in 451 and her crops were faring little better in 452. Attila’s ravaging of the countryside didn’t help. But then Attila suddenly died while celebrating his latest marriage to a very beautiful young woman called Ildico. According to Priscus, the 5th-century Roman diplomat and Greek historian: He had given himself up to excessive joy at his wedding, and as he lay on his back, heavy with wine and sleep, a rush of superfluous blood, which would ordinarily have flowed from his nose, streamed in deadly course down his throat and killed him, since it was hindered in the usual passages. Thus did drunkenness put a disgraceful end to a king renowned in war. His empire fell apart from soon after his death. Oh and Honoria, the princess? When her brother found out what she’s done, he sent her into exile, married her quickly off to some nobody, and then she spent the rest of her life under house arrest. So – back to Orestes. In the same year he went to work for Nepos, the Roman emperor, he was promoted to the rank of magister militum. But then he led a military revolt that forced Nepos to flee into exile. His partners in the revolt were the foederati. A Foederatus was any one of several outlying nations to which ancient Rome provided benefits in exchange for military assistance. The term was also used, especially under the Roman Empire for groups of “barbarian” mercenaries of various sizes, who were typically allowed to settle within the Roman Empire. It’s also the basis of our word FEDERATION. Orestes promised his barbarian soldiers a third of Italian territory in exchange for assisting with getting rid of the emperor. Orestes then elevated his son Romulus to the rank of Augustus – the boy was only 15 years old. But when Orestes reneged on his deal with the barbarians, they revolted under the German Odoacer, whom they declared to be their king on August 23, 476. Odoacer led them against their former employer, ravaging every town and village in northern Italy and meeting little resistance. Orestes fled to the city of Pavia, where the city’s bishop gave him sanctuary within the city walls. Despite the protection he received from the bishop, Orestes was forced to flee for his life when Odoacer and his men broke through the city d

When the Greek author Herodotus, the ‘father of history’, sat down to write the first history he declared that his aim was to make ‘inquiries’ – historias, in Greek – into the relations between the Greeks and the Persians. He was so even-handed with the way he treated both sides, that he was accused by the Greeks of being a ‘barbarian lover’. Christian historians took a different view. Our old friend Eusebius – the ‘father of Church history’ – wrote that the job of the historian was NOT to record everything but instead only those things that would do a Christian good to read. In his History on the persecutions of Diocletian, he says he doesn’t want to talk about the people who escaped the persecutions by renouncing their faith. ‘I shall include in my overall account only those things by which first we ourselves, then later generations, may benefit.’ Herodotus had seen history as an enquiry. But The father of Church history saw it as a parable. Which, by the way, is how I think we should read the Gospels. They were written as parables, not as history. But I digress. Of course, we know that most ancient writers of history didn’t think about it in the same academic way we do today. They often wrote propaganda even when they claimed to be writing history. But I think it’s interesting that Eusebius was so open about it. He only thinks he should talk about things that are edifying to Christianity. And later Christians adopted this motto. If someone wrote something that was hostile to Christianity or even if a Christian wrote something that had ideas which were later discarded – these books weren’t recopied or passed on, or they were actively suppressed. For example. In Alexandria, towards the end of the fifth century, a Christian writer named Zachariah of Mytilene says he entered the house of a man and found that he was ‘sweating and depressed’. Zachariah says he instantly knew what was wrong: this man was struggling with demons. Either that – or he’d had a really bad acid trip. Zachariah knew where these demons were coming from – the man had some scrolls containing pagan spells in his house. ‘If you want to get rid of the anxiety,’ he told the man ‘burn these papers.’ And so he did. He took his scrolls and, in front of Zachariah, set them on fire. The story finishes with a homily being read to the man who had now been cleansed of his ‘demons’ – not to mention of part of his library. As Zachariah makes very clear – he didn’t consider that he has harmed this man by forcing him to burn his papers. He had not bullied him, or acted cruelly towards him. Quite the reverse: he had saved him. By forcing him to burn heretical books, he’d saved his soul. This is another attitude that was widespread. Remember how Constantine ordered the works of the heretic Arius to be burned and had condemned to death all who hid the heretic’s books? That didn’t work – half of the empire is still Arian 200 years later, but you can’t blame him for not trying,. We know that book burning was common. The fifth-century Syrian bishop Rabbula said ‘Search out the books of the heretics . . . in every place, and wherever you can, either bring them to us or burn them in the fire.’ A thousand years later, the Italian preacher Savonarola wanted the works of the Latin love poets Catullus – Pedicabo et Irrumabo – and Ovid to be banned another preacher said that all of these ‘shameful books’ should be let go, ‘because if you are Christians you are obliged to burn them’. Of course Christian book burning goes back to the Bible. Acts 19 has Paul doing magic tricks and casting out evil demons. Then an evil demon beats up a bunch of guys. “And it says: Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.” In 367 CE, Athanasius, the zealous bishop of Alexandria… issued an Easter letter in which he demanded that Egyptian monks destroy all such unacceptable writings, except for those he specifically listed as ‘acceptable’ even ‘canonical’—a list that constitutes the present ‘New Testament’. We also have the examples of Cyril of Alexandria burning almost all the writings of Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, shortly after 435 CE, when he’d been declared a heretic. In the late 6th century Recared, King of the Visigoths and first Catholic king of Spain, converted to Catholicism, and ordered that all Arian books should be collected and burned. Christians obviously weren’t the first people to burn books – Augustus did it, Diocletian did it – but when Christians did it, it was on a much larger scale. Augusuts had prophetic scrolls destroyed. Diocletian had the books of the Manicheans burned. It was targeted desctruction. It seems the Christians just wanted to wipe out all writings that weren’t Christian and or that weren’t the app

When did the decline in an interest in the classics start to emerge in the West? It possibly started with Basil. Basil of Caesarea Basil was an influential bishop from Cappadocia, Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Died in the late 4th century. He was born into a wealthy family, raised a Christian by his mother, after his father was martyred before Constantine’s edict. He got a classical education, first in Caesarea and then in Constantinople. Then he fell under the spell of a charismatic preacher and decided to leave his legal and teaching career and devote himself to Christianity. He wrote: I had wasted much time on follies and spent nearly all of my youth in vain labors, and devotion to the teachings of a wisdom that God had made foolish. Suddenly, I awoke as out of a deep sleep. I beheld the wonderful light of the Gospel truth, and I recognized the nothingness of the wisdom of the princes of this world. He gave away his family fortune and is known for his work with the poor, setting up soup kitchens, and trying to convert theives and prostitutes. In the Greek and Eastern tradition, it’s St Basil who is associated with Santa Claus, not St Nicholas. He’s also known for having a huge influence on the monastic movement. But what we want to talk about is his influential pamphlet ‘The Right Use of Greek Literature’ or “To Young Men, On How They Might Profit From Pagan Literature”. This document was written later in his life, probably in the late 370s. And it basically says this: Look kids, reading the pagan literature is pretty cool. But DON’T READ THE NAUGHTY BITS because they will corrupt your soul. The naughty bits included anything that talked about sex or nudity or there being multiple gods or gods have fights and sex with other gods and humans. But least of all shall we give attention to them when they narrate anything about the gods, and especially when they speak of them as being many, and these too not even in accord with one another. For in their poems brother is at feud with brother, and father with children, and the latter in turn are engaged in truceless war with their parents. But the adulteries of gods and their amours and their sexual acts in public, and especially those of Zeus, the chief and highest of all, as they themselves describe him, actions which one would blush to mention of even brute beasts–all these we shall leave to the stage-folk. But apparently it was still okay to read about Yahweh impregnating Mary. He says you should be like Alexander the Great when he captured the daughters and wife of Darius – even though they were beautiful, he wouldn’t look upon them, because that would be mean. Basil also says you shouldn’t even think naughty sexy thoughts, because that’s bad. He says good Christians should be like bees – just take the good stuff from the flower, don’t take all of the flower. The pagan literature was full of all kinds of sins. Open Homer’s Iliad and you might find your eyes falling on a passage about how the god Ares seduced golden Aphrodite – and how they were both then caught in flagrante delicto. Open Oedipus the King and you might find a declaration that ‘the power of the gods is perishing’. Even works by the most conservative authors were not without danger: open a work by the virtuous Virgil, and you might find Dido and Aeneas up to no good in a cave in a rainstorm. Idolatry, blasphemy, lust, murder, vanity – every sin was there. That was what made them so enjoyable to the Greeks and Romans and so sinful to the Christians. Reminds me of my grandmother who used to take a black felt pen and redact all of the naughty words in books I liked to read as a kid, racey things like Jack London’s White Fang. The classical writers should also be ignored, according to Basil, whenever they wrote too rapturously about the pleasures of great banquets, or when they enjoyed a wanton song. Even to speak such works out loud was to pollute oneself. ‘Carmen 16’ by the poet Catullus was a particular thorn. This poem opens with the infamously bracing line: PEDICABO ET IRRUMABO – ‘I will bugger you and I will fuck your mouths’ – and you can get your t-shirt and coffee mug with that written on it on our redbubble site. He probably didn’t like ‘Epigram 1.90’ of Martial either – this little verse attacks a woman for having affairs with other women. Or, as Martial put it: You improvised, by rubbing cunts together, And using that bionic clit of yours To counterfeit the thrusting of a male. I didn’t know Steve Austin was around in those days. As we’ve seen on the Augustus show, Ovid like to talk about his own lunchtime lovemaking (‘Oh, how the shape of her breasts demanded that I caress them!’) and inspired people to make out, eventually getting himself exiled. Basil says that when you come across such passages, a good Christian ‘must flee from them and stop up your ears’ So it’s an intereting shift in human appreciation of sex. It’s like the people who complain about

* Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Deuteronomy 12:2-3 * I want to tell the story of Hypatia of Alexandria * They were known as the ‘parabalani’ – ‘the reckless ones’. * At first, the name had been a compliment. * In Alexandria, city founded by Alexander the Great himself, built by Alexander’s general Ptolemy, and his son Ptolemy II, 700 years old in the 400s CE. * At the crossroads of busy trading routes. * Someone needed to carry away the bodies of the sick and the weak. * From 249 to 262, the Roman Empire had endured the Plague of Cyprian. * It erupted in Ethiopia around Easter of 250 CE. * St. Cyprian (200-258 CE), bishop of Carthage, remarked that it appeared as if the world was at an end. * We know if mostly through his first-hand account: “This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight darkened;—is profitable as a proof of faith. What a grandeur of spirit it is to struggle with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so many onsets of devastation and death! what sublimity, to stand erect amid the desolation of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God; but rather to rejoice, and to embrace the benefit of the occasion; that in thus bravely showing forth our faith, and by suffering endured, going forward to Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod, we may receive the reward of His life and faith according to His own judgment!” * Sufferers experienced bouts of diarrhea, continuous vomiting, fever, deafness, blindness, paralysis of their legs and feet, swollen throats and blood filled their eyes (conjunctival bleeding) while staining their mouths. * More often than not, death resulted. * The pagans interpreted it as a punishment from the gods. * Modern theories are that it was either smallpox, measles or ebola. * It lasted nearly 20 years and, at its height, reportedly killed as many as 5,000 people per day in Rome. * It killed millions, seriously decimated the Roman army, and had people fleeing from the countryside to the cities, bringing multiple problems, farming, city infrastructure, etc. * It coincided with the rise of Decius (deshus) as the emperor. * He introduced an edict which required every citizen of the empire to make a sacrifice in the presence of a magistrate. * Which of course the Christians refused to do. * Which lead to the first persecution of the Christians, the so-called Decian persecution. * And the plague was blamed on the Christians. * The gods were angry. * Anyway, back to the parabalani. * They were members of a Christian brotherhood who voluntarily undertook the care of the sick and the burial of the dead. * They knew they could die, catching the plague from the bodies they touched, but they did it anyway. * They came from the bottom of society: they were not wealthy, or educated, or even literate, but they had muscle, they had faith – and they had strength in numbers. * By the beginning of the fifth century there were an estimated 800 members of the parabalani in Alexandria alone * an army of young men, devoted to the service of God * Or actually to the service of the bishops. * in cities across the empire at this time, powerful clerics were beginning to marshal huge followings of young men; strong believers, in both senses of the word. * In the fourth and fifth centuries, bishops controlled de facto militaries of the faithful – and they were not afraid to use them. * When Catholic Christianity became the only legal religion in Rome, these bishops felt it was their duty to use their young army – or the Jesus Youth – to destroy the pagans and the heretics. * ‘Terror’ is the word used in Roman legal documents about them. * One spring day in AD 415, the parabalani would go much further than merely threatening violence. * On that day, they committed one of the most infamous murders in early Christianity. * Hypatia of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. * She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. * And the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. * It’s said she was the greatest mat

How St Augustine provided the ultimate Christian justification for acts of violence – Jesus did it first and it’s okay as long as you do it with love. * Still talking about Augustine and his “City Of God” * Last time we looked his theory that God knowing certain women deserved to be raped. * But the majority of the book is his way of saying “Look, Rome was a horrible place with lots of problems BEFORE we became 100% Christian, so you cant blame it on us.” * But I have to hand it to him – dude could write. * He knew his history and mythology. * His arguments are quite lame. * But he sells them with full conviction. * And he mentions all of our old friends – Caesar, Augustus, Cicero, Sulla, Marius, the Gracchi * Speaking of Cicero, one of the last known surviving copies of Cicero’s De Re Publica, was written over by Augustine. * Meaning he or someone scraped the ink off the original text and then wrote something new over the top of it. * Augustine himself once declared to a congregation in Carthage that ‘that all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!’ * He got wild applause, and this speech was possibly the cause of religious riots resulting in sixty deaths. * It is estimated that pagans still made up half of the Empire’s population. * Augustine called this religious violence against the pagans “merciful savagery”. * “Where there is terror, there is salvation. Oh, merciful savagery.” * One of Augustine’s other contributions to the dark ages was how he managed to balance the ideas of “turn the other cheek” and killing your enemies. * He came to the conclusion that as long as you LOVED your enemies while you killed them, then that was the Christian thing to do and got the Jesus tick of approval. * If you shoot someone in the head but you tell them you love them, then it’s all going to be okay. * In COG he justifies the idea of a just war: “But, say they, the wise man will wage Just Wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars.” * So the term “just war” comes from Augustine. * Although the concept goes back to Cicero. * He later justifies having the Emperor using force against the Donatists, who were still around * Remember they were the Christians from North Africa who thought the Christians who gave up the holy books during the persecutions shouldn’t be let back into the fold * Their property was to be confiscated, their services forbidden and their clergy exiled. * Augustine ejected the Donatists from Hippo and, taking over their churches and posting his own anti-Donatist texts on the walls. * He came to the position ‘that the thing to be considered when any one is coerced, is not the mere fact of the coercion, but the nature of that to which he is coerced” * So if you think the thing you are forcing someone to do is the right thing – like, accept your religious views – then it’s okay to use force. * From his “A Treatise Concerning the Correction of the Donatists”. * He actually makes the point that Jesus used violence against Paul – blinding him – and then, after Paul believed in him, Jesus was nice. * So – “Why, therefore, should not the Church use force in compelling her lost sons to return, if the lost sons compelled others to their destruction?” * But, he says, it’s all okay, because “they congratulate themselves that these most wholesome laws were brought to bear against them”. * In his earlier works Augustine was reluctant to condone the compelling of outsiders into the church. * “Words should be our instruments, arguments our weapons, reason our means of conquest [sic] and we should avoid making enforced Catholics out of those whom we had known as open heretics.” * There was no support from New Testament texts for persecution * in fact, the Donatists were to taunt Augustine with Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake . . .” * But his tolerant views changed over time. * He began with the argument that Donatism intimidated many ordinary Christians and it was the duty of the “true” church to release them from such coercion. * And his experience of ordinary former Donatists was that most became excellent Christians when forced to do so. * Therefore, compulsion was permissible. * Just as God could punish in the exercise of his love, so could the church * It was saving sinners from everlasting hell fire. * And boy, didn’t THAT idea catch on over the next 1500 years. * In the thirteenth century a papal legate reported on the extermination of the Cathars, a sect which preached a return to the ascetic ideals of early Christianity: “Nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword regard

Augustine said he heard a childlike voice he heard telling him to “take up and read” which he took as a divine command to open the Bible and read the first thing he saw. He opened the bible at a random page and read from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapter 13, verses 13 and 14: Let’s behave decently, as people who live in the light of day. No wild parties, drunkenness, sexual immorality, promiscuity, quarreling, or jealousy! And Augustine though “oh fuuuuuuck.” Or NOT fuck, to be more accurate. Now – if Augustine had taken the time to read the previous two verses, he might have waited before he converted. Because they read: And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Because Paul believed the end of the world was going to happen ANY FUCKING MINUTE. And not like we think of it. I mean, if you thought the world was going to end tomorrow, you’d be fucking your brains out, getting shit faced, punching people you don’t like in the face, having sex with animals – hey you have to try everything before you die! But Paul thought JAYSUS was coming and if you were in the middle of fucking or you were drunk when he came, you might miss the Jesus Train! So sure, it made sense for Paul to say that. But Augustine is living 300 years later! Jesus STILL hadn’t come! Paul didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Anyway, Augustine gets baptised in 387. As does his son from the old hag, Adeodatus. The following year, 388, he completed his apology On the Holiness of the Catholic Church. So let me get this straight. In two years he goes from thinking Christianity is a bunch of Jack Shit to writing an entire book justifying it? Fuck off. In 388 he and his son both go back to Africa. His mother dies and he seems to inherit a fortune, because he and his son live like kings. And he definitely does NOT hook up with the old hag, not even for a random booty call. YEAH RIIIIGHT. You know he gets his freak on. GET YOUR FREAK ON – MISSY But then his son dies – from getting his freak on too much, I heard. And Augustine gives all his money away, except the family home which he turns into a monastery for himself and some friends. The Catholics in North Africa are still battling agains the Donatists (who believe people who gave up the holy books during the persecutions shouldn’t be allowed back into the fold) and the Manichaens. So they need a smart, well educated guy in the region to be the point man. So in 391 Augustine was ordained a priest in Hippo Regius (now Annaba), in Algeria. Which is a backwater. But he spends the rest of his life there, nearly 40 years. He would go on to write three of the most important books in Christianity history: Confessions, the City Of God Against The Pagans, and “De Trinitate” (“On the Trinity”). the cornerstone of the western Christian tradition Confessions – Basically it’s Augustine telling God that he thinks he’s awesome. Most of the book is just Aug saying “wow God you are awesome, you really are, no, seriously, I mean it.” And how when he was younger, he liked to fuck, and steal fruit, just to be a little cunt. Not because he was hungry or anything. Just because he was a little cunt. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written He wrote it when he was about 40, not long after his conversion to Christianity What is remarkable about the Confessions is that for the first time in western literature the world of the interior mind—with, in this case, all its guilt and uncertainty—is explored in detail in what is essentially a dialogue with God. Augustine talks in the Confessions, as throughout his writings, of the supreme importance of the love of God, but the dominant picture he gives in the Confessions is of a God who is angry and punitive. I broke all your lawful bounds and did not escape your lash. For what man can escape it? You were always present, angry and merciful at once, strewing the pangs of bitterness over all my lawless pleasures to look for others unallied by pain. You meant me to find them nowhere but in yourself, O Lord, for you teach us by inflicting pain, you smite so that you may heal and you kill us so that we may not die away from you. And then he grew up to be a big cunt and wrote City of God Against The Pagans. it’s a horrible books by a horrible little man. This is the one that was his attempt at apologetics to justify why the God of the Christians allowed Rome to get pillaged – by other Christians. Because the pagan were saying “See! You stopped us sacrificing to the old gods and this is what happened!” Augustine’s argument is: look, it could have been a LOT worse. Compared to other pillagings of other cities throughout his

* Let’s talk more about Augustine of Hippo, aka St Augustine. * He’s one of the most important figures in all of Christianity. * Through his sheer intellectual power, and enormous output of work , he has come to be seen as the cornerstone of the western Christian tradition. * it has been said that anyone who claims to have read all of Augustine’s works must be lying * And a lot of the stuff he came up with helped lead the world into the dark ages. * He was born in 354 in North Africa, a place known then as the Roman province of Numidia, today it’s mostly Algeria. * His mother Monica was a Christian, a Berber, an indigenous ethnic group from Numidia. * His father was a Pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed, and a Roman citizen, probably a freed slave himself or descended from a freed slave. * All of this means that Augustine, one of the most influential Christians, was quite possibly a black African. * Why does this matter? * Because the Christians ended up enslaving millions of Africans because they believed they were subhuman. * And Augustine himself justified slavery by saying slavery was God’s punishment for sin. * Anyway, Augustine got a reasonably good education for the time and turned out to be a really bright kid. * When he was 17, he had a sugar daddy who paid to send him to Carthage where he continued his studies in rhetoric. * He studies the masters – Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Demosthenes. * And he’s a quick learner. * It was there that he first read Cicero’s “On Philosophy”, which taught that genuine human happiness is to be found by using and embracing philosophy, and it changed his life and gave him an interest in philosophy. * It also gave him an interest in fucking. * He hung out with other guys who liked to brag about their sexual exploits and it seems Augustine did the same. * It was during this period that he supposedly uttered his famous prayer, “grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” * Because he was incontinent. * Always shitting himself in public. * And – he liked it. * “Lord, please stop me from shitting myself in public – but not today, Lord, I’m going out to a club later, you know Lord, one of those clubs where the kinky shit is okay, and I need to shit myself. The name of the club is two girls one cup, Lord. So please just hold off on that a little bit.” * LORDY CAT * It’s also about this time that he meets a young woman who he falls in lust with. * And this is where it gets REALLY fucked up. * He’s with this woman for 15 years – we don’t know her name – and they have a kid together. * The kid’s name is Adeodatus (‘Given by God’), may have been a reflection of the fact that the baby’s arrival was evidently unplanned. * Or – it was a virgin birth. * Can’t be completely sure. * These things happen. * But they couldn’t get married because his mother wanted him to marry someone of his own class. * Someone who would provide a dowry so he could make his mark on the world. * His CHRISTIAN mother didn’t want him to marry the woman he obviously loved. * And wants his child to be a bastard. * But during this 15 years, he teaches grammar and rhetoric in his hometown and then in Carthage. * Also during this time he left the Christian church to follow the Manichean religion. * We talked about them briefly before. * Followers of the prophet Mani. * It was a gnostic religion. * Mani declared himself to be an “apostle of Jesus Christ”, and his teaching was intended to succeed and surpass the teachings of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. * Remember we talked about how they were heavily persecuted by Diocletian for being a foreign religion. * As was Christianity – but one of them became the official state religion and one didn’t. * And for nearly ten years Augustine chose the one that didn’t. * In fact it was still fringe and being persecuted when he joined it. * Theodosius I issued a decree of death for all Manichean monks in 382 CE * So to choose this religion suggests something about the man. * Either he’s a seeker of truth, or he’s a seeker of punishment. * The Manicheans drew heavily on Christianity and accepted Jesus as an important spiritual leader, but their main teachings centered on the nature of evil. * Evil, symbolized by darkness, and it was found in all matter, like the dark side of the force. * Evil was involved in an endless struggle against Good, the forces of light. * They thought that uncontaminated light remained in the sun and the moon, and these acted as kind of rallying points for the forces of light themselves, with God as the ultimate force of life. * The human body, was made of matter, so it must be evil * They figured it had been deliberately designed by the forces of evil to trap the soul, which was a potential source of light. * So the soul had to be set free, and this was the role of Jesus * But they believed that he could never have entered a human

After three days of pillage, Alaric left Rome. * Instead of heading for Ravenna, he headed for southern Italy. * He took with him lots of gold and hostages, including Honorius’ sister, the daughter of Theodosius. * They sacked many cities in southern Italy and were preparing to go on to Sicily and Africa when Alaric died of an illness, just a few months after the sack. * According to legend, he was buried with his treasure by slaves in the bed of the Busento river. * The slaves were then killed to hide its location. * His brother-in-law Ataulf was elected king in 410. * And they headed for Gaul. * He married Honorius’ sister in 414 * But then he also died a year later in 415. * In Gaul, the Goths set up the Visigothic Kingdom in 418 under the new king, King Wally. * It lasted for three hundred years. * Honorius did a deal with them and used them to help kick the Vandals and the Suevi out of Hispania. * As for Rome, it was obviously devestated. * The population fell from 800,000 in 408 to 500,000 by 419. * land taxes dropped anywhere to one-fifth to one-ninth of their pre-invasion value * This was the first time the city of Rome had been sacked in almost 800 years, and it had revealed the Western Roman Empire’s increasing vulnerability and military weakness. * It was shocking to people across both halves of the Empire who viewed Rome as the eternal city and the symbolic heart of their empire. * The Roman Empire at this time was still in the midst of religious conflict between pagans and Christians. * The sack was used by both sides to bolster their competing claims of divine legitimacy. * Paulus Orosius, a Christian priest and theologian, a student of Augustine of Hippo, writer of the Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, which was very influential throughout the Middle Ages – believed the sack was God’s wrath against a proud and blasphemous city, and that it was only through God’s benevolence that the sack had not been too severe. * Classic. * Okay, sure, God let our city be attacked. * But it could have been much worse. * He stopped it from being worse. * It’s like saying, oh sure, God let thousands of little kids die in Africa from starvation, but hey, it could have been worse. * He’s a MERCIFUL god. * The mental hurdles you have to jump through. * This is an idea that Augustine himself goes to extreme lengths to explain in one of his books as we’ll see. * Of course, the sack of Rome was no doubt seen by the Arian Christians as proof that they were the right version of Christianity, that Jesus favoured them over the Trinitarians. * Of course, only a few years earlier, Ambrose had written his work “De Fide”, On Faith, in which he arrogantly equated victory in war with acceptance of the Nicene creed and points out that the Homoians are always losing battles because they insult God through their heresy. * “the army is led not by military eagles or the flight of birds but by your name, Lord Jesus, and Your Worship.” * So much for that! * He would have been feeling VERY silly – but he died in 397 and wasn’t around for the sack. * Rome had lost its wealth, but Roman sovereignty endured. * Of course the Pagan Romans felt the sack was divine punishment for turning away from the traditional pagan gods to Christ. * Zosimus, a Greek pagan historian who lived in Constantinople towards the end of the 5th century, believed that Christianity, by abandoning the ancient traditional rites, had weakened the Empire’s political virtues, and that the poor decisions of the Imperial government that led to the sack were due to the lack of the gods’ care. * The religious and political attacks on Christianity spurred Saint Augustine to write a defense, The City of God Against The Pagans, which went on to become foundational to Christian thought. * The Roman army meanwhile became increasingly disloyal to the Empire. * The large landowners—more and more, laws unto themselves—ignored the emperor’s decrees, going even so far as to use the great public edifices as quarries for private palaces. * Rome itself, abandoned by the emperors for the more defensible marshes of Ravenna, saw the splendor of its public buildings crumble before the destructiveness of private greed. * Though the emperor announced dire punishments for any official who cooperated in this destruction—fifty pounds of gold for a magistrate, a flogging and the loss of both hands for a subordinate—the looting continued unabated. * The Vandals were not the only vandals. * And of course it was now evident to other tribes that Rome was weak. * A more severe sack of Rome by the Vandals, also Arian Christians, followed in 455, and the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 when the Germanic Odovacer removed the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and declared himself King of Italy. * But more on that later. The post #13 – The Blame Game appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Stilicho and the chief ministers of his party were treacherously slain on Honorius’ orders. * Stilicho had been accused by one of his enemies at court, Olympius, of treason and wanting to put his own son on the throne. * So Stilicho went to Ravenna to meet with the Emperor to protest his innocence. * Honorius, now believing the rumors of Stilicho’s treason, ordered his arrest. * Stilicho sought sanctuary in a church in Ravenna, but he was lured out with promises of safety. * Stepping foot outside, he was arrested and told he was to be immediately executed on Honorius’ orders. * Stilicho refused to allow his followers to resist, and he was executed on August 22, 408. * His son was also executed. * And Alaric didn’t get his gold * Olympius was appointed magister officiorum and replaced Stilicho as the power behind the throne. * His new government was strongly anti-Germanic and obsessed with purging any and all of Stilicho’s former supporters. * Roman soldiers began to indiscriminately slaughter allied barbarian foederati soldiers and their families in Roman cities. * Thousands of them fled Italy and sought refuge with Alaric in Noricum. * Their wives and children of the other Germanic tribes were murdered. * Alaric led them leaisurely across the Julian Alps and, in September 408, stood before the walls of Rome (now with no capable general like Stilicho as a defender) and began a strict blockade. * Sarus and his band of Goths, still in Italy, remained neutral and aloof. * The city of Rome may have held as many as 800,000 people, making it the largest in the world at the time. * No blood was shed this time; Alaric relied on hunger as his most powerful weapon. * He blockaded the city – I don’t know how long it was, but it must have been a while as people starved to death. * Julius Caesar would have been proud. * there was an attempt to reinstate pagan rituals in the still religiously mixed city to ward off the Visigoths. * Pope Innocent I even agreed to it, provided it be done in private. * I guess that speaks volumes about how much confidence the Pope had in his monotheism and his God. * The pagan priests, however, said the sacrifices could only be done publicly in the Roman Forum, and the idea was abandoned. * Serena, the wife of the Stilicho and a cousin of emperor Honorius, was in the city and believed by the Roman populace, with little evidence, to be encouraging Alaric’s invasion. * Galla Placidia, the sister of the emperor Honorius, was also trapped in the city and gave her consent to the Roman Senate to execute Serena. * Serena was then strangled to death. * Hopes of help from the Imperial government faded as the siege continued and Alaric took control of the Tiber river, which cut the supplies going into Rome. * Grain was rationed to one-half and then one-third of its previous amount. * Starvation and disease rapidly spread throughout the city, and rotting bodies were left unburied in the streets. * The Roman Senate then decided to send two envoys to Alaric. * When the envoys boasted to him that the Roman people were trained to fight and ready for war, Alaric laughed at them and said, “The thickest grass is easier to cut than the thinnest. * The envoys asked under what terms could the siege be lifted, and Alaric demanded all the gold and silver, household goods, and barbarian slaves in the city. * One envoy asked what would be left to the citizens of Rome. * Alaric replied, “Their lives.” * Ultimately, the city was forced to give the Goths 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silken tunics, 3,000 hides dyed scarlet, and 3,000 pounds of pepper in exchange for lifting the siege. * The barbarian slaves fled to Alaric as well, who swelled his ranks to about 40,000. * To raise the needed money, Roman senators were to contribute according to their means. * This led to corruption and abuse, and the sum came up short. * The Romans then stripped down and melted pagan statues and shrines to make up the difference. * Zosimus reports one such statue was of Virtus, and that when it was melted down to pay off barbarians it seemed “all that remained of the Roman valor and intrepidity was totally extinguished”. * So that ended Alaric’s first siege of Rome. * The greatest impact of their attack on Rome was psychological * Rome had considered itself immune from attack. * No foreign invader had breached the city walls since the Gauls in 390 BCE, exactly eight hundred years earlier. * The Visigoths themselves moved on to Erturia, modern Tuscany and Umbria, in Central Italy. * But Alaric wasn’t done with the Romans. * He demanded a block of territory 200 miles long by 150 wide between the Danube and the Gulf of Venice (to be held probably on some terms of nominal dependence on the Empire) and the title of commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army. * In January 409, the Senate sent an embassy to the imperial court at Ravenna to encourage the Emperor to come

⁃ Theodosius’ army rapidly dissolved after his death. ⁃ And as he apparently hadn’t given the Goths the rewards they expected for helping him defeat Eugenius at the Battle of the Frigidus, they decided to just TAKE their rewards – and more. ⁃ As his heir in the East, Theodosius left his son Arcadius, who was then about eighteen years old, and in the West his son Honorius, who was ten. ⁃ Neither ever showed any sign of fitness to rule, and their reigns were marked by a series of disasters. ⁃ As their guardians Theodosius left Flavius Stilicho and Flavius Rufinus ⁃ Stilicho was the magister militum who was half Vandal, a large East Germanic tribe, and married to the niece of Theodosius ⁃ Stilicho ruled in the name of Honorius in the Western Empire and the magister officiorum (“Master of Offices”) ⁃ Flavius Rufinus was the actual power behind the throne of Arcadius in the East. ⁃ Edward Gibbon called Stilicho “the last of the Roman generals”. ⁃ BTW, it’s from the Vandals obviously that we get the word “vandalism”. ⁃ We’ll talk more about the Vandals, and their role in the Sack of Rome, in coming episodes. ⁃ Stilicho claimed that Theodosius actually made him the guardian of both Honorius AND Arcadius. ⁃ So he and Rufinus were immediate enemies. ⁃ Things came to head between them pretty quickly in 395. ⁃ The Visigoths living in Lower Moesia, think Serbia, had recently elected Alaric as their king. ⁃ And as I mentioned before, Alaric helped Theodosius defeat Eugenius at the Battle of the Frigidus, and didn’t get the rewards he was promised, even though he lost 10,000 men. ⁃ According to rumour, exposing the Visigoths in battle was a convenient way of weakening the Gothic tribes. ⁃ Alaric apparently hoped he would be promoted from a mere commander to the rank of general in one of the regular armies. ⁃ So he broke his treaty with Rome and decided to build his own empire. ⁃ according to Jordanes, a 6th-century Roman bureaucrat of Gothic origin who later turned his hand to history, both the new king and his people decided “rather to seek new kingdoms by their own work, than to slumber in peaceful subjection to the rule of others.” ⁃ Alaric struck first at the eastern empire. ⁃ He marched to the neighborhood of Constantinople but decided it was going to be too difficult to put under siegeYou got to admire his moxy Don’t start off small or anything – just try to stab the heart of the empire! So he retraced his steps westward and then marched southward through Thessaly and the pass of Thermopylae into Greece. ⁃ The army that had been victorious at the Frigidus – but obviously without the Visigoth contingent – was assembled by Stilicho. ⁃ However, since the armies of the Eastern Empire were busy dealing with Hunnic incursions in Asia Minor and Syria, and so they weren’t going to be of any use against Alaric, Rufinus attempted to negotiate with Alaric in person. ⁃ Officials in Constantinople suspected Rufinus was in league with the Goths. ⁃ Stilicho led his army to the Balkans to confront the Goths anyway. ⁃ According to the last classical Roman poet Claudius Claudianus, Stilicho was in a position to destroy them, but was ordered by Arcadius to leave Illyricum. ⁃ Soon after, Rufinus was hacked to death by his own soldiers. ⁃ Some sources blame Stilicho for the death of Rufinus. ⁃ Rufinus’ death and Stilicho’s departure gave free rein to Alaric’s movements; he ravaged Attica but spared Athens, which capitulated at once. ⁃ In 396, as a good Christian, he wiped out the last remnants of the Mystery Religion of Eleusis in Attica, which ended a tradition of religious ceremonies going back to the Bronze Age. ⁃ Then he penetrated into the Peloponnese and captured its most famous cities—Corinth, Argos, and Sparta—and sold many of their inhabitants into slavery. ⁃ Because that’s how Jesus would have done it. ⁃ Then he suffered a serious setback. ⁃ In 397 Stilicho crossed the sea to Greece and succeeded in trapping the Goths in the mountains. ⁃ Alaric escaped but only barely – and there were rumours that he had cut a secret deal with Stilicho. ⁃ Alaric then crossed the Gulf of Corinth and plundered Greece. ⁃ His rampage continued until the eastern government appointed him magister militum per Illyricum, ⁃ That gave him the Roman command he had desired, as well as the authority to resupply his men from the imperial arsenals. ⁃ But he couldn’t be bought off that easily now. ⁃ He had a taste for Roman blood. ⁃ In 401 he made his first invasion of Italy. ⁃ Like Constantine, he also heard gods talking to him. ⁃ He heard a voice coming from a sacred grove that said, “Break off all delays, Alaric. This very year thou shalt force the Alpine barrier of Italy; thou shalt penetrate to the city.” ⁃ But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled at this time. ⁃ After making his way through North Italy and striking terror into the citizens of Rome, Alaric was met by Sti

• Ambrose had Theodosius so whipped that he was able to publicly declare that the emperor had recognised the moral supremacy of the church over the actions of an emperor. • It’s from this point onwards that the church decides it has the power to make and break emperors. • It was soon after the incident in 390 that Ambrose forced Theodosius embark on a massive programme suppressing paganism. • But maybe it wasn’t only Ambrose. • Another theory is that it was the work of a guy called Flavius Rufinus. • Rufinus’ official title in Milan had been magister officiorum, `head of the offices’, a powerful position in the court. • Rufinus is known to have been fanatical in his Christian belief and determined to take one of the top posts in the eastern administration. • This meant ousting Tatianus, the praetorian prefect, who was a pagan. • So maybe the harsh laws of 391 to 392 against paganism might be related to the power struggle, those of 391 having been passed when Theodosius was on the way back to the capital with Rufinus. • In the summer of 392, Tatianus was deposed and Rufinus, who inherited his post as praetorian prefect of the east, issued a wide-ranging law against paganism. • Sacrificing was forbidden, as it had been before, but now entry to pagan shrines was banned as well. • Which brings us back to the Theodosian decrees againt paganism. • The punishment for worshipping pagan images was the forfeiture of your house. • The punishment for sacrificing in temples or shrines was a fine of twenty-five pounds, 11 kgs, of gold. • Which is a lot of fucking gold. • And the oppression of the pagans started to spread across the empire. • In the year 391 in Alexandria “busts of Serapis which stood in the walls, vestibules, doorways and windows of every house were all torn out and annihilated…, and in their place the sign of the Lord’s cross was painted in the doorways, vestibules, windows and walls, and on pillars. • In 392, he authorized the destruction of many pagan temples throughout the empire. • Including the temple of Serapis in Alexandria, or the Serapeum. • This building was so fabulous that writers in the ancient world struggled to find ways to convey its beauty. • the historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: ‘Its splendour is such that mere words can only do it an injustice,’ Another writer thought, ‘one of the most unique and uncommon sights in the world. • For nowhere else on earth can one find such a building.’ Another called it ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. • One day, early in AD 392, a large crowd of Christians started to mass outside the temple, with Theophilus, the Bishop of Alexandria, at its head. • Then the crowd surged up the steps and burst into the most beautiful building in the world. • And then they began to destroy it. • Theophilus’s followers began to tear at the famous artworks, the lifelike statues and the gold-plated walls. • But they hesitated when they came to the massive statue of the god: rumour had it that if Serapis was harmed then the sky would fall in. • Theophilus ordered a soldier to take his axe and hit it. • The soldier struck Serapis’s face with a double-headed axe. • the statue shattered. • The Christians surged round to complete the job. • Serapis’s head was wrenched from its neck; the feet and hands were chopped off with axes, dragged apart with ropes, then, for good measure, burned. • Any activity associated with pagan rites was suppressed and any symbol of paganism was banned. • Officials could even enter homes in search of offensive material. • There was really no precedent for this kind of sweeping law. • To find an equivalent one would have to go back to midfourteenth century BCE Egypt when the pharaoh Akhenaten was banning all rivals to his god Aten. • Akhenaten’s campaign collapsed with his death. • Theodosius’ proved permanent. • Archaeological research confirms that the temples in the Roman forum were still being restored in the 380s. • By the 390s, on the other hand, Jerome, the protégé of Pope Damasus, was reporting that `the gilded Capitol falls into disrepair, dust and cobwebs cover all Rome’s temples … • The city shakes on its foundations, and a stream of people hurries, past half-fallen shrines, to the tombs of the martyrs.’ Jerome approvingly recorded the sacking of a temple of Mithras indeed excavations under the church of St Prisca on the Aventine Hill have uncovered a ruined Mithraeum, in a building built by the Emperor Trajan, on which the church was later built. • The destruction of temples to Mithras is well documented – with their initiation rites, internal hierarchies and welcoming of free citizen, slave and freedman, they appear to have been rivals to the Christian communities. • The Olympic Games – inaugurated in the eighth century BC – were held for the last time in 393, and it is belie

* Theodosius appointed his young children as his co-emperors, but he’s the sole emperor * He died a few months later, leaving the empire in the hands of his two young children. * Before we get on to what happened next, we need to talk about “Cunctos populos” * the so-called “Edict of Thessalonica” * On 27 February 380, together with Gratian and Valentinian II, Theodosius had issues the edict which declared Nicene Trinitarian Christianity to be the only legitimate imperial religion and the only one entitled to call itself Catholic, which means universal. * All other Christians were declared to be “foolish madmen” and `insane and demented heretics’. * When he first entered Constantinople in November 380, Theodosius summoned the bishop there, Demphilus, and demanded he renounce his “homoian” beliefs and accept the Nicene creed. * This is how silly it’s become. * Homoian mean Jesus was “similar” to God, but said nothing about substance. * And even that was a heresy now. * So Demophilus refuses, Theodosius fires him, and appoints his own Nicene bishop. * Even though the Nicene contingent in the city was quite small. * To ensure his safety from the Homoian masses, troops had to line the streets and even take up guard inside the Church of the Holy Apostles where his enthronement took place. * A year later, in 381, Theodosius begun his persecutions of the pagans. * He also declares that only Nicenes can become bishops. * Everyone else is locked out of the church. * They had to surrender their churches to those clergy who came within Theodosius’ definition, lose any tax exemptions they had and they could not build replacement churches within the city walls. * Not surprisingly disorder broke out as the new laws were enforced. * The church had built up so much wealth and enjoyed so many privileges that expelling the `Arians’ from their churches was explosive. * One pro-Nicene historian, writing in the next century, talks of ` [Arian] wolves harrying the flocks up and down the glades, daring to hold rival assemblies, stirring sedition among the people, and shrinking from nothing which can do damage to the churches’. * It’s worth stopping and wondering why Theodosius might have favoured the Nicene version. * The problem for anyone, emperor, senior administrator or aristocratic landowner, who was concerned with upholding the hierarchical structure of the empire, was that the Jesus of the gospels was a rebel against the empire and had been executed by one of its provincial governors. * He had preached the immediate coming of the kingdom in which the poor would inherit the earth, hardly what the elite wished to hear at a time of intense danger. * There was an incentive to shift the emphasis from the gospels to the divine Jesus, as pre-existent to the Incarnation and of high status `at the right hand of the Father’. * Less talk about how Jesus was executed by Romans and is coming to take his revenge. * More talk about how one day, if you’re nice and obedient and don’t cause trouble, you might get to heaven. * He reiterated Constantine’s ban on pagan sacrifice, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan associations and destroyed pagan temples. * In 388 he sent a prefect to Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor with the aim of breaking up pagan associations and the destruction of their temples. * The Serapeum at Alexandria, an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III Euergetes 600 years earlier, was destroyed during this campaign, probably around 391. * the Serapeum was the largest and most magnificent of all temples in the Greek quarter of Alexandria. * It may have also housed the last remains of the collection of the great Library of Alexandria. * It was closed in July of 325 AD, likely on the orders of Constantine. * The Christian leader of Alexandria in 391 was Theophilus. * In 391, Theophilus discovered a hidden pagan temple. * He and his followers mockingly displayed the pagan artifacts to the public which offended the pagans enough to provoke an attack on the Christians. * The Christian faction counter-attacked, forcing the pagans to retreat to the Serapeum. * A letter was sent by the emperor that Theophilus should grant the offending pagans pardon, but destroy the temple; * according to Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary of his, the latter aspect (the destruction of the temple) was added as a result of heavy solicitation for it by Theophilus. * Scholasticus goes on to state that: * “Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the utmost … he caused the Mithraeum to be cleaned out… Then he destroyed the Serapeum… and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the midst of the forum. … the heathen temples… were therefore razed to the ground, and the images of their gods molten into pots and other convenient utensils for the use of the Alexandrian church”

Vally went to Theodosius in Thessalonica, agreed to marry off his sister Galla to him to cement their alliance, and together they invaded from the east the following year and defeated Maximus in battle. He surrendered, pleaded for mercy as one good Christian to another… and was executed. His young son was also strangled by Theodosius’s trusted general Arbogast. Because that’s how Jesus would have wanted it. After the defeat of Maximus, Theodosius remained in Milan until 391. Vally and his court were installed in Vienna in Gaul. Why? Who knows. But Theodosius started appointing ministers of his own in the West and minting coins. All of which suggests he had talked Vally into letting him run things as his guardian. Justina had just died and Vienna was far away from the influence of Ambrose. Theodosius’ general Arbogast stayed in Vienna as Vally’s protector cum manager. It was Arbogast who went on campaign on the Rhine and it was Arbogast who cut the throat of Vally’s best friend, Harmonius, IN FRONT OF HIM, when Harmonius had been accused of accepting bribes. Things came to a head when Vally wanted to lead his armies into Italy to help fight some barbarians and Arbogast wouldn’t let him. Vally formally fired Arbogast, who took the order and tore it up in public, and said “bitch, I don’t work for you”. So Vally wrote to Ambrose, telling him he didn’t want to be an Arian anymore and he wanted Ambrose to come to Vienna to baptise him as a Nicene. A few days later, Vally was found hanged in his apartment. It was declared a suicide. By Arbogast. Like that 22-year-old black man who died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser a few years ago – the cops said he shot himself IN THE BACK, even though his hands were cuffed behind his back and he’d been frisked twice and the coroner’s report said he’d been shot in the chest. But sure, nobody went to jail for that, nothing to see here, move along. After Gratian was killed in a rebellion in 383, Theodosius appointed his own elder son, Arcadius, to be his co-ruler in the East. Arcadius was a good choice. Sure – he was only six years old. But hey, he was advanced for his age. After the death in 392 of Valentinian II, Theodosius ruled as sole Emperor, appointing his son Honorius Augustus as his co-ruler of the West (Milan, on 23 January 393). But at least this time he wasn’t making a six year old Augustus! That doesn’t happen twice! Honorius was 8 years old. The only problem with that plan is that Arbogast had appointed his OWN Augustus. In 392 when Vally accidentally shot himself in the back, Flavius Eugenius, a former teacher of grammar and rhetoric, was made Augustus of the West by Arbogast. He made him emperor by the granted to him by… oh fuck it, he just did it because he couldn’t declare himself emperor. Eugenius was a Roman. And Arbogast was a Frank. His full name was actually Frank Arbogast. And you can’t make anyone called FRANK an Emperor. Can you imagine it? Emperor Frank? Doesn’t work. Not even Barry and Stan could fix that. Anyway. So Eugenius – pronounced “oh you genius”. Which BTW, and this is completely true, is what Fox says to me all the time. “Daddy you genius.” I’m sure he has no idea what it means. Eugenius replaced most of the ministers in Milan, who had been installed there by Theodosius, with his own men. Eugenius was a Christian, but his men convinced him to use public money to fund pagan projects, like the rededication of the Temple of Venus and Rome and the restoration of the Altar of Victory within the Curia (removed by Emperor Gratian). This religious policy created tension with Theodosius and the powerful and influential Bishop Ambrose, who left his see in Milan when the imperial court of Eugenius arrived. The tension with Theodosius might have had something to do with, oh I don’t know, the fact that Theodosius had made his own son Augustus of the West! Eugenius sent an embassy to Theodosius asking for his blessing. Instead Theodosius gathered his army and marched towards Milan. They fought at the Battle of the Frigidus, in Slovenia, in September 394. About evenly matched, 30,000 – 50,000 soliders each. Important to note is that on Theodosius’ side were 20,000 Goths, including the Visigoth chieftain Alaric. Arbogast’s army had a ton of Gauls and Franks. So here we have a battle for the control of the Roman Empire – contested by Germans and Gauls. Caesar would have wept. The battle lasted for two days. On the first day, Eugenius and Arbogast were the victors. Theodosius’ army suffered heavy losses and had to retreat. Arbogast sent troops after them to block their return. But the next morning, Theodosius got news that the troops Arbogast sent had decided to desert over to his side. Probably with promises of untold wealth. So he went back and did battle a second time. This time luck was on his side. The bora winds blew up and blew dirt and dust into the faces of Eugenius’s troops. According to legend, the

At the end of episode 6, the Augustii Valens and Gratian were dead. Valens burned alive in a cottage by the Goths. Gratian assassinated by a rebel general under Magnus Maximus. One story about that. While he was hunting down Gratian, The general, Andragathius, apparently hid himself in a litter carried by mules. He ordered his guards to send out a report that the litter contained the wife of Gratian. Sneaky fucker. So that was in 383. The only Augustus left with any real authority is Theodosius. But there’s also the kid emperor, Valentinian II. He’s about 12. Now in the last episode we also mentioned the Bishop Ambrose of Milan He is also an important guy in this story. Ambrose was born in into a Roman Christian family somewhere around 340 in Gallia Belgica, aka Belgium. His father was some kind of official, perhaps a praetorian prefect of Gaul. Ambrose followed him into public service and ended up the governor of the Aemilia-Liguria region in northern Italy. Which was a pretty important region, because it’s capital was Milan. And the imperial court had been based in Milan, or Mediolanum as it was called, since Diocletian moved it there in 286. After he moved to Nicomedia, Maximian, who BTW was the spitting image of Orson Welles, based his court in Milan, making it the court of the Western Empire. Rome was still the capital of the empire, and the Senate was still based there. But Milan was just closer to the rest of the empire for a few good reasons. It was kind of in the middle of the Western empire. Which is why it’s called Mediolanum. I think it actually means “middle of the plains”. But you get the idea. So by being closer to Gaul, it saved the emperor and field army weeks of travel time in an emergency; it was also more politically independent of the Senate (there was a lot of friction between the emperors and the Senate in the period when the former were Christian while the latter was still predominantly pagan), and it was safer from a potential sea attack from Africa (which was periodically in rebellion, and later occupied by the Vandals). Strategically speaking, Rome was not well-placed to address effectively the threats faced by the Late Roman Empire. Emperors needed to be on borders, to defend actively provinces against external pressure. Rome, precisely, was not on any Roman border—an attractive position in terms of safety, not of reactivity. But also not so great in terms of safety. As we’ll see when the Goths decide to make their home in Rome. So Ambrose is the governor of the region where Milan is based. He was given the position by one of the richest Roman aristocrats of the time – Sextus Claudius Petronius Probus. AKA Sexy Claudy PP. He was a Christian who had been Proconsul of Africa and then Praetorian prefect four times in various regions. And then he was co-consul with the Emperor Gratian. For some reason, maybe he knew his father, he made Ambrose governor of Aemilia-Liguria. It’s a pretty good gig and he holds that position for a couple of years. Then in 374, the bishop of Milan, an Arian, died. There’s a power struggle between the Arians and the Nicenes as to who should replace him. Ambrose goes to the place where the elections are taking place to try to keep the peace. Before you know it, someone has suggested he takes up the job as the new bishop. The only problem is – Ambrose wasn’t even baptised. And he had zero training in theology. But hey – they are just hiccups. Hiccups for the bishupps. Gratian is still alive at this stage and says he thinks its a good idea that good men are made bishops, whether or not they have any fucking clue about Christianity. So he takes the job. That’s the story as history tells it. But let’s stop and think for a moment. Why would the governor of one of the most important regions of the empire, the region where the imperial court of the Western empire sits, become a bishop? He could have been a contender for emperor. And why would anyone want to make a guy with zero theological experience a bishop? Especially the bishop of the most important region of the empire? There’s something fishy going on here. Smells like… teen spirit. Or victory in the morning. One of those. I think Gratian and Ambrose cooked it up amongst themselves. The previous bishop of Milan, Auxentius, was Arian. So you have an Arian bishop in the home of the Nicene emperor, Gratian. There’s also a new Pope in Rome at the time – Damasus. Also, of course, a Nicene. He’s also accused of murder and adultery with a married woman, but that’s a story for another time. This Pope has accused Auxentius of being a heretic. And you can’t afford to have a heretic as the bishop of the diocese of Milan! Where the Emperor lives! So Auxentius died – maybe suspicious circumstances, maybe not – and Gratian engineers it so his buddy Ambrose is the new bishop. So he’s got a guy who “gets it” – a politician, not a theologian. A lot like when American businesses got R