"The king's name is a tower of strength": Richard III's (Possible) Bones, Roundup

Detail from a late 16th century painting
of Richard III, artist unknown.

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"Richard III dig: Results expected in January," BBC, November 19, 2012

The remains were found underneath a Leicester car park on the former site of the Greyfriars church in September.

Prof Lynn Foxhall, from the University of Leicester, said the team has got to be sure of its facts before it confirmed whether it was the monarch.>>>

Anthony Faiola, "Unverified remains dig up the twisted legacy of England’s Richard III," Washington Post, November 24, 2012

Underneath a drab parking lot 90 miles northwest of London, archaeologists have unearthed what may become one of this nation’s finds of the century — half-a-millennium-old bones thought to be the remains of the long-lost monarch. But if the discovery has touched off a feverish round of DNA tests against his closest living descendants, it has also lurched to the surface a series of burning questions in a country where even arcane points of history are disputed with the gusto of modern-day politics.>>>

"History could be rewritten if remains of Richard III have been discovered, say Leicester historians," University of Leicester News and Events, November 9, 2012

For Professor Norman Housley and Dr Andrew Hopper of our School of Historical Studies, if the remains found by the University of Leicester are Richard III's, it would rewrite history by bringing closure to the fate of the mysterious king. In addition, by observing that Richard's deformity may have been a result of scoliosis, the idea of him being a 'hunchback' will fade away.>>>

Martin Hickes, "Should Richard III - the last Yorkist king - be reburied in Yorkshire?" Guardian, September 18, 2012

Two major organisations which have exhaustively researched and promoted the 'true' name and history of Richard, which they assert is at odds with the traditional Shakespearean 'evil hunchback' depiction, are expecting much debate at their forthcoming conferences.>>>

Middle East History Roundup

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Ishaan Tharoor, "A History of Middle East Mercenaries," Time, February 23, 2011
. . . . Foreign warriors were valued by monarchs wary of their own restive populations and the rivalries and jealousies of local nobles. The great empires of the Middle East all boasted a rank of soldiers drawn (or abducted) from abroad. The Ottomans had the janissaries, mostly young Christians from the Caucasus and the Balkans, who converted to Islam and were reared from an early age to be the Sultan's elite household troops, often forming a powerful political class of their own in various parts of the empire. Elsewhere, the Mamluks, slave warriors from Africa to Central Asia forced into service by Arab potentates, managed to rule a large stretch of the modern Middle East from Egypt to Syria for some 300 years, repulsing the invasions of European crusaders as well as the Mongol hordes.>>>

John Melloy, "Middle East Mirrors Great Inflation Revolutions Since 1200 AD," CNBC, February 23, 2011
Inflation has led to political revolutions since Medieval times and we may be witnessing the fifth such great revolution in history unfolding in the Middle East and in our own country right now, said Dr. Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist of Yardeni Research.

Yardeni cites the work of historian David Hackett Fischer, who described civilization’s first four major inflation cycles in his 1999 work The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History.>>>

"Different Meanings Of Democracy For West, Middle East," NPR, February 5, 2011
The chants, chaos and cries from the streets of Cairo and other cities in Egypt this week revive questions for historians and political scientists that politicians have to answer with practical policies. Host Scott Simon speaks with Dr. J. Rufus Fears, a historian and Classics scholar at the University of Oklahoma, about western concepts of democracy and the events now sweeping Egypt and the Middle East.>>>

Robert Darnton, "1789—2011?" NYRB blog, February 22, 2011
The question has come to haunt every article and broadcast from Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the region whose people have revolted: what constitutes a revolution? In the 1970s, we used to chase that question in courses on comparative revolutions; and looking back on my ancient lecture notes, I can’t help but imagine a trajectory: England, 1640; France, 1789; Russia, 1917 … and Egypt, 2011?>>>

Ibrahim Al-Marashi, "The Arab World's Leadership Deficit," History and Policy (February 2011)
The Arabs have few victories to claim, going back a millennium, all the way to 1187 to celebrate a leader, Salah al-Din and his victory in Jerusalem during the Crusades. What remains after that date are only a few de facto victories. Victories defined in terms of survival. In 1956, when the Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser lost a war against Britain, France and Israel, the Arabs claimed it a victory because he stood up to the 'West'. Even then, the highly popular Egyptian leader was feared among the elites in Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. When Saddam Hussein was soundly defeated by Coalition forces in the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi leader claimed it a victory because he stood up to the 'West' and survived.>>>

Medieval History Roundup

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"Binham Priory discovery of giant medieval graffiti," BBC, January 20, 2011

Thousands of years of history at a remote priory in Norfolk could be unearthed after the discovery of giant medieval graffiti on its walls. The Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey (NMGS) group claims to have found 8ft (2.4m) building plans etched into the stonework of Binham Priory, near Wells. . . . "It was difficult to believe what I was seeing," said NMGS's Matthew Champion. "Most graffiti inscriptions tend to be relatively small and modest. This was just so big that it wasn't really possible to see exactly what it was until we had surveyed the whole wall surface.>>>

David Abel, "Below the Western Wall, passage to a cherished history," Boston Globe, February 13, 2011

JERUSALEM — The giant slabs of limestone, which have remained standing for two millennia despite repeated efforts to demolish them, make up the most sacred structure in the world for Jews, the ancient wall that once protected the Temple Mount. . . . The painstaking work of exploring the underworld along the hidden portion of the Western Wall has led to perhaps the most interesting and controversial tour in Jerusalem, one that has to be made by appointment.>>>

Arminta Wallace, "Time travel with an app," Irish Times, February 12, 2011

The iPhone app Dublin City Walls is a virtual tour guide of a kind that could transform our experience of historical sites YOU KNOW the way you sometimes go to visit a historical site and when you find it there’s just a bump in the ground or a pile of stones – and that, pretty much, is that? Those who are trained in matters historical can get their imagination into gear and fill in some of the gaps. But for the rest of us it can be a somewhat underwhelming experience. A new iPhone app promises to revolutionise the way we interact with our heritage sites. Dublin City Walls uses high-resolution graphics, 3D imaging, video and GPS technology to bring the marvels of medieval Dublin right into the palm of your hand.>>>

Helen Castor, "The death-throes of the Wars of the Roses," TLS, January 26, 2011

Historical explanation is a tricky business. The reality of the past is lost to us, and all historical writing is an act of re-creation, in which the historian has a bewildering number of choices to make. One approach – adopted here by Desmond Seward – is to take a single thread and trace its path through the fabric of history. His theme in The Last White Rose is the precariousness of the Tudor title to the throne, and the repeated challenges the fledgling dynasty faced during the reigns of the first two Tudor kings.>>>

How We View the Dead

Randall J. Stephens

Were they like us? Historians and non-historians often ask that question about the people of the past. Certainly we share less with the Hittites of ancient history than we do with the city dwellers in the early modern era. Time, space, and culture shape our relationships with the dead and with dead civilizations.

(It would be interesting to ask historians which of the following eras are most like ours: Revolutionary American, the Age of Western Exploration, Imperial Rome, late-19th Century Britain, the Han Dynasty, Mayan civilization at its apex, Viking Norway. . .)

What of the men and women of the Middle Ages? Their enchanted universe is quite different from ours. Their views about cause and effect, providence, and how the natural world works is very unlike the views most westerners have now.

Paul Freedman's review of The Axe and the Oath in the TLS ("From ordalie to ordure," 22 October 2010) traces some of these questions and concerns.

Riffing off Robert Fossier's book, Freedman says, "Despite our superiority, our lives are hemmed in by the same worries, unpredictability, limitations and even diversions as those experienced by Medieval Europeans."

Scholars must think through the contingencies of the period. "For most historians," says Freedman, "the inhabitants of this different [Medieval] world are to be regarded on their own terms rather than as either progressive originators of the modern (parliaments, universities, common law) or, backwards in their living standards and superstitions."

Historians should always cultivate a bit of sympathy and humility regarding their subjects. Long ago the New Left English historian E. P. Thompson warned against "the enormous condescension of posterity." That's still useful advice.

How did They Perceive the World?

Randall Stephens

A recent BBC documentary explores the world of Medieval Europe. Among other things the program asks: How did they live, think, and behave?

Watching it, I wondered why more history documentaries don't explore the day-to-day lives of regular people in the past. It would be terrific to have a film on 17th-century colonial America, which looked at the mindset of Puritans and Native Americans. (The first installment of We Shall Remain was ok on this. PBS's Colonial House had a fun take on daily life in the 1600s.) A similar program on what it was like to live poor and destitute in mid 19th-century New York City would be illuminating. In fact, one could think of a number of eras that could do with a "lived history" documentary.

Of course, the BBC program embedded here, Inside the Medieval Mind, is not without its baroque hyperboles. (New BBC docs make heavy use of lighting effects and deep contrast/saturation tricks.) But, I'd take that over our History Channel's parade of ancient aliens, Nostradamus, and Mayan apocalypse any day. Here's part of the description of Inside the Medieval Mind.

Robert Bartlett of St Andrew's University, investigates the intellectual landscape of the medieval world.

In the first programme, Knowledge, he explores the way medieval man understood the world - as a place of mystery, even enchantment. The world was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.

History through the Eyes of . . . Jean de Venette: Paris and the Black Death, 14th Century, #2

Randall Stephens

Jean de Venette (ca. 1308-ca. 1369), a Carmelite friar in Paris, wrote about the horrifying devastation brought on by the Black Death. Venette came from peasant stock and sympathized with the lower orders. No hauler of water was he, though. He was master of theology at the University of Paris. His historically valuable Chronicle dealt with the years 1340-1368. His commentary, say historians, is fairly unique. Reflecting on the plague, Venette offered a personal portrait. He speculates on the causes of the pandemic, which wrecked so much havoc on Europe, and records the results with stunning detail.

Little in recorded history did as much to change society as the plague did. England's population in 1400 may have been half of what it was a century before. It is possible that one-third of Europe's population died from the Black Death. (Click on map from Bedford's Mapcentral.)

Jean de Venette, Chronicle (1340-1368).

In 1348 C.E., the people of France and of almost the whole world were struck by a blow other than war. For in addition to the famine which I described in the beginning and to the wars which I described in the course of this narrative, pestilence and its attendant tribulations appeared again in various parts of the world. In the month of August,1348, after Vespers when the sun was beginning to set, a big and very bright star appeared above Paris, toward the west. It did not seem, as stars usually do, to be very high above our hemisphere but rather very near. As the sun set and night came on, this star did not seem to me or to many other friars who were watching it to move from one place. At length, when night had come, this big star, to the amazement of all of us who were watching, broke into many different rays and, as it shed these rays over Paris toward the east, totally disappeared and was completely annihilated. Whether it was a comet or not, whether it was composed of airy exhalations and was finally resolved into vapor, I leave to the decision of astronomers. It is, however, possible that it was a presage of the amazing pestilence to come, which, in fact, followed very shortly in Paris and throughout France and elsewhere, as I shall tell. All this year and the next, the mortality of men and women, of the young even more than of the old, in Paris and in the kingdom of France, and also, it is said, in other parts of the world, was so great that it was almost impossible to bury the dead. People lay ill little more than two or three days and died suddenly .... He who was well one day was dead the next and being carried to his grave. Swellings appeared suddenly in the armpit or in the groin-in many cases both-and they were infallible signs of death. This sickness or pestilence was called an epidemic by the doctors. Nothing like the great numbers who died in the years 1348 and 1349 had been heard of or seen or read of in times past. This plague and disease came from . . . association and contagion, for if a well man visited the sick he only rarely evaded the risk of death. Wherefore in many towns timid priests withdrew, leaving the exercise of their ministry to such of the religious as were more daring. In many places not two out of twenty remained alive. So high was the mortality at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris that for a long time, more than five hundred dead were carried daily with great devotion in carts to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris for burial. A very great number of the saintly sisters of the Hotel-Dieu who, not fearing to die, nursed the sick in all sweetness and humility, rest in peace with Christ, as we may piously believe.

This plague, it is said, began among the unbelievers, came to Italy, and then crossing the Alps reached Avignon, where it attacked several cardinals and took from them their whole household. Then it spread, unforeseen, to France, through Gascony and Spain, little by little, from town to town, from village to village, from house to house, and finally from person to person. It even crossed over to Germany, though it was not so bad there as with us. During the epidemic, God of His accustomed goodness deigned to grant this grace, that however suddenly men died, almost all awaited death joyfully. Nor was there anyone who died without confessing his sins and receiving the holy viaticum. To the even greater benefit of the dying, Pope Clement VI through their confessors mercifully gave and granted absolution from penalty to the dying in many cities and fortified towns. Men died the more willingly for this and left many inheritances and temporal goods to churches and monastic orders, for in many cases they had seen their close heirs and children die before them.

Some said that this pestilence was caused by infection of the air and waters, since there was at this time no famine nor lack of food supplies, but on the contrary great abundance. As a result of this theory of infected water and air as the source of the plague, the Jews were suddenly and violently charged with infecting wells and water and corrupting the air. The whole world rose up against them cruelly on this account. In Germany and other parts of the world where Jews lived, they were massacred and slaughtered by Christians, and many thousands were burned everywhere, indiscriminately. The unshaken . . . constancy of the men and their wives was remarkable. For mothers hurled their children first into the fire that they might not be baptized and then leaped in after them to burn with their husbands and children. It is said that many bad Christians were found who in a like manner put poison into wells. But in truth, such poisonings, granted that they actually were perpetrated, could not have caused so great a plague nor have infected so many people. There were other causes; for example, the will of God and the corrupt humors and evil inherent in air and earth. Perhaps the poisonings, if they actually took place in some localities, re-enforced these causes. The plague lasted in France for the greater part of the years 1348 and 1349 and then ceased. Many country villages and many houses in good towns remained empty and deserted. Many houses, including some splendid dwellings, very soon fell into ruins. Even in Paris several houses were thus ruined, though fewer here than elsewhere.