Archive for the ‘Ancient Europe’ Category
By: The Scribe on November, 2007
It was only after one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Middle Ages –
The Battle of Anchialos – that the Bulgarians were able to rightfully settle in the area of territory known today as the country of Bulgaria. Initially, the area was known as the First Bulgarian Empire, and the first capital city was established by the Bulgarians’ ruler –
Khan Asparukh.
The capital of Pliska was constructed in an area of 23 square kilometers, and had a moat and ramparts surrounding the outer walls. Refusing to take any chances against Byzantine invaders, even the inner walls of the capital were over 2.5 meters thick, and were built to about 12 meters high! The careful attention to stability, longevity, and strategic detail when it was built have caused the city to still be considered as one of the most impressive monuments of early Medieval architecture today.
Pliska was ahead of the neighbors in plenty of ways – the city had a functioning sewage system that was modeled on Roman sewers, and the heating systems throughout the entire city ensured that the people were kept safe and warm throughout the harsh winters. Fortress walls surrounded the city, both inner and outer, and at each corner there was a cylindrical-shaped tower for lookouts and nightly watchmen.
The interior of the city contained a palace for a later ruler, the Khan Omurtag, and this ‘Grand Palace’ contained a throne room and an adjacent Small Palace which served as the private residence of the Khans while they were in power.
In 811 AD, the city was sacked by the Byzantine army – but the Khan Krum was able to rid the city of its invaders after a short period. In an effort to help improve the city after its brief attack – and to maintain morale among the people – the next Khan actually hired and brought in several hundred artisans and craftsmen for the sole purpose of improving the city!
Pliska would see changes in its governmental structure, and in 865 AD, Christianity was adopted as the primary religion under Prince Boris. He constructed the Grand Basilica as a place of worship for the public, and in 886 AD, he established the Pliska Literary School in order to help ensure that the people were intelligent and well educated! However in 892 AD, the king’s son Vladimir revolted against the established changes, attempting to re-establish paganism as the official religion of Bulgaria.
Naturally, he was punished by his father – Vladimir’s eyes were “put out”, ie. blinded – and his younger brother Simeon was made ruler of Bulgaria. The period which followed has often been referred to by Medieval historians as the “Golden Age” in Bulgaria’s history. However, since the population and territory was growing – not to mention that Pliska still seemed to have deep-rooted pagan influences – Simeon soon moved Bulgaria’s capital from Pliska to Preslav, which was another fortified town in the same general area.
The importance of Pliska in the Bulgarian Empire gradually waned over the course of the 10th century, as Preslav saw a concentration of resources and governmental power. Two attacks by Byzantine raiders in 969 and 972 AD destroyed many portions of Pliska, and due to the shift of power into Preslav, the city was not rebuilt after the second raid.
Although the ancient Bulgarian capital is in ruins today, the city of Pliska is still greatly admired by historians as an example of some of the finest early Medieval architecture ever created.
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Tomorrow: More Ancient Standard
By: The Scribe on November, 2007
In October 2007, 75-year-old hobby historian doing research in the German town of
Weimar stumbled across something rather unexpected – as he paged through the town’s archives, he noticed something written inside a heavy tome of parchment that appeared to have been inscribed with pen and ink.
The contents of the inscription? A 600-year-old recipe for the German sausage commonly referred to as Thuringian bratwurst! The inscription dates back to 1432, and actually presents guidelines for Thuringian sausage makers – it turns out that only the purest and unspoiled meat could be used for the sausages, and anyone who broke the guidelines would be slapped with a fine of 24 pfennigs, the equivalent of a day’s wages.
Although it was known that Medieval town markets in Germany often formed committees to be in charge of monitoring produce quality, these sausage regulations confirm the strict commitment to consumer protection laws during the Middle Ages. It is perhaps this adherence to quality that allowed the Thuringian bratwurst to become one of the most ubiquitous symbols of German’s cultural heritage!
Prior to this discovery, the oldest known recipe for bratwurst dated back to 1613 and was also kept in the Weimar State Archive. A smoked variety of the sausage was mentioned in a document from 1797, though the oldest known reference to bratwurst – without listing any details on the production process – comes from a transcript of a bill from an Arnstadt convent in 1404. Undoubtedly, the bratwurst’s history dates back even further, but unfortunately, there are no surviving grocery lists or trade records in Ye Olde High German that mention this strictly regulated meat product.
The 1432 bratwurst recipe is scheduled to be kept on display in the historic Bratwurst Museum in the capital of Thuringia.
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Tomorrow: The king even Roman Emperors feared.
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
It’s one thing to want a unique book cover for your favorite journal or volume of literature… but it’s quite another to use human skin to bind your book together. Yet, during the 18th century, this wasn’t altogether an uncommon practice…
In 2006, a 300-year-old ledger was found in the area of Leeds in England, dropped by a burglar as he fled – which is quite fortunate, as skin-bound books are rather rare to come by these days. During the French Revolution however, it was not out of the ordinary to have a skin book or two in one’s collection, which may explain why this particular book was written in French.
The practice of binding a book in human skin is called “anthropodermic bibliopegy”, and some scholars would assert that this was commonly done with things like trial proceedings, where the account of the trial would be bound in a killer’s skin, or in cases where individuals would request that their memoirs be bound in their own skin after they passed away.
The truth is, binding a book in human skin isn’t all that different from creating a leather binding – which was why, historically, it could be easily done. The Bancroft Library in California has a book that was bound in human skin during the Revolution in the 1790s, which is actually a tome of prayers that had been published a century earlier – someone wanted a new cover on their prayer book and apparently decided that human skin would suit it best.
Brown University Library in Rhode Island has three of these ancient skin volumes – one is an anatomy text, presumably bound in the skin of a dissected cadaver, while the other two are editions of a Medieval morality tale from the 1800s called “The Dance of Death”. One of the copies from 1816 – rebound in skin in 1893 – has a clear separation where it is visible that the binder didn’t have enough skin to go all the way around the volume and had to split it in two. The front cover was bound with an outer layer of human skin, which feels like soft sandpaper to touch. The back cover and the spine were made from the inner layer of skin, resulting in a fine, suede-like texture.
Whereas the first volume was then left plain to show off the binding material, the second volume of the Medieval tale had elaborate leather inlays and a goldwork skull on the cover – however, when examined up close, the pores of the former skin’s owner are still clearly visible.
The Athenaeum Library in Boston has a copy of a highway robber’s memoirs that was wrapped in his own skin, dating to 1837; the College of Physicians in Philadelphia has four volumes bound by the doctor John Stockton Hough, who became famous for diagnosing the first case of trichinosis in the city – after which, he used the patient’s skin to bind three of his four books.
One of Harvard University’s libraries also contains a treaty on Spanish law from 1605 with an inscription on the inside, which reads:
“The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the 4th day of August, 1632. King Btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas’ chief possessions, together with ample of his skin to bind it.”
As disturbing as it may be to modern sensibilities, it turns out that some of the world’s best libraries have copies of books that were bound in human skin!
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Tomorrow: Ghosts in Ancient Rome and Greece!
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
The details of Mary Read’s life are disputed from the very beginning: some say she was born in Devonshire, others claim it was London; some reports explain that she was the daughter of a sea captain’s widow, while still others accuse her of being an illegitimate child, since the rightful father had been at sea too long for Mary to have been his own. Either way, one thing is clear: Mary spent nearly all of her childhood as a boy.
According to history, Mary’s brother died when he was quite young, and in order for Mary’s mother to continue receiving financial help from her mother-in-law, she needed to disguise Mary as the young boy – that way, Mary and her mother could receive the deceased son’s inheritance. Mary’s grandmother was apparently fooled, which allowed Mary’s mother to support herself and her child well into Mary’s teen years. However, the money eventually ran out, forcing Mary to find work to help support the two of them.
Disguised as a boy, Mary was hired as a footboy to a French family. She worked there for awhile, until her longing for adventure brought her to a British Man-o-War, where she was employed for some time. Eventually, she fell in love with a fellow sailor, and – although details are scant – allegedly revealed herself as a woman to him, which naturally resulted in a marriage. The newlyweds then left the military, opening their own inn called The Three Horseshoes (or The Three Trade Horses, depending on who’s telling the story).
For the first time, Mary lived her life as a woman… but this was to be short-lived, as her husband died of fever within a few years. She tried to join the military again, dressed once more as a man, but found that something was lacking. Thus, Mary Read quit the military, boarded a ship headed for the West Indies, and subsequently found herself on board a vessel being attacked by pirates. Indeed, it was Calico Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny.
Faced with the choice of either joining Rackham’s crew or being run through with a sword, Mary chose self-preservation – although she kept her true gender a secret. Before long, Anne Bonny had taken a liking to the new young man and often followed him around the ship, trying to engage him in conversation. As the story goes, Bonny walked in on the young man one day as he was undressing, fully intending to engage him in something other than conversation… and was shocked to find herself faced with another woman.
Although the two women tried to hide Read’s identity from the rest of the ship, Rackham soon became jealous that his lover was spending so much time with the ‘new guy’, and demanded to know what was going on. It was simple enough to explain: Mary bore her breasts to him, and the matter was settled. Before long, the rest of the crew discovered that there were two women aboard – but since they’d been pulling their weight and always fought just as hard as any man on the ship, they were allowed to stay. There are even rumors that Mary fell in love with one of the pirates on Rackham’s ship, and intended to marry him.
One version of the story explains that although Mary was in love, another rather large and burly pirate aboard the ship – who wasn’t yet aware that Mary was a woman – challenged Mary’s lover to a duel, for some reason or another. Fearing for her lover’s life, Mary challenged the burly pirate to a duel of her own, and demanded that it be settled immediately. According to the Pirate Code, the combatants had to be rowed ashore to settle their score. Each of them was given a pistol and a cutlass, and both fired their pistols immediately and missed. As they began the swordfight, Mary’s ability to move quickly worked to her advantage against the stronger man.
As they fought, Mary was able to study the larger pirate’s attacks, avoiding his lunges and simply waiting for him to make a mistake. During one of his lunges, the pirate stumbled a bit, and Mary took her chance. In that moment, she ripped open her shirt – exposing her breasts to the unbelieving gaze of the pirate – and was able to swing her cutlass around and nearly decapitate him as he gaped at her chest, realizing he’d been dueling with a woman. Whether this account is true or not is another matter entirely, however it certainly reveals that Mary’s femininity was no hindrance to her participation in pirate life.
While Calico Jack and his crew had plenty of success for a period of about three months, they began to spend more and more time “celebrating” their victories – namely, drinking and lounging about the ship. When the ship was eventually captured in October 1720, the only crew members who resisted against the British Navy were Mary and Anne – the rest of the crew cowered below deck in a drunken stupor.
Although Mary was sentenced to hang for her crimes, as was her fellow female pirate Anne Bonny, both the women received stays of execution due to being pregnant. Unfortunately for Mary, her time in prison was far worse than expected. She contracted a foreign illness and died of fever in early 1721, before she was able to give birth. According to some accounts, Mary was able to give a final statement to the court before being placed in prison when they asked her why a woman would ever turn to piracy. Instead of giving a statement that could have possibly earned her pardon, she explained:
“As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the seas, that men of courage must starve.”
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Tomorrow: The first Aztec tomb
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