Hahahahaha, but we are contractually obligated to give cahn all the juicy parts!
This was one of those things, like kickboxer kicks, war chariots, and frogs, that I found myself going, "...Did this really happen?" So I must add the following two caveats. Acton asked himself the same "Did this really happen?" question, and concluded:
Unspeakably revolting scenes were said to have followed and though we may not give credit to them all, as the saying goes: there is no smoke without fire.
While I believe that there is certainly smoke without fire, especially where celebrities are concerned, in a well-documented century like the 18th, I'm more willing to credit it. Especially the rowdiness on the public streets with many witnesses.
So Tuscan shenanigans were definitely happening.
As for Giuliano Dami, Italian wiki says his most thorough biographer (1997) concludes that Dami was victim of the "evil advisor" trope, and that he pretty much just did what he was told. Now, not having read the book or the primary sources, I can easily imagine that his revisionist biographer would be biased in Dami's favor, but it's worth noting that there is an alternative account out there.
(The biography is at Stabi--unfortunately, in Italian. And I can't get a cheap copy to disassemble and run through Google Translate, so unfortunately, I think the road runs out here. Same for the same author's bio of Gian Gastone.)
Let's also note that if 1731 is the year of Spanish occupation and rowdy Ruspanti, 1733 is the year of Algarotti falling in love with the city and being super disillusioned 6 weeks later and deciding to leave.
This is also of great interest to me, because fix-it fic that will never get written has our protagonists--Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, Keith--arriving in Italy for a Grand Tour circa 1733 (exact year not decided). So I'm absolutely looking for any insights into what tourists might have encountered (besides dishy young bisexual Italians looking for a job).
hot lackey Giuliano Dami, who is exceptionally beautiful, and whom Gian Gastone falls for and takes with him to Germany when he sets off to marry as ordered by Dad.
Who, per Wikipedia, was not yet 14 when the wedding took place, so if you add in travel time and some time for Gian Gastone to acquire him in Italy before that, was 13 at most when Gian Gastone decided he was hot stuff, and 15 when he was allegedly winning Gian Gastone over to a debauched lifestyle in Prague. (Gian Gastone was 12 years older.)
Maybe, maybe not.
their prominence embarrasses the polite historian, though he may not cancel the rôles they played in Gian Gastone's latter years.
Take note, Roaring Twenties editor of Sophie's letters! I somehow doubt she had 370 prostitutes staging orgies in her bedroom and running wild in the streets. :P
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Giuliano Dami: his age definitely is a powerful argument for him being unfairly blamed in the who corrupted whom stakes in Prague. Incidentally, for a moment I wondered how either Dami or Gian Gastone would find the beautiful young men in Prague at first, given that neither of them spoke German, let alone Czech, but then I recalled Gian Gastone at least was bound to be fluent in French and Dami probably picked up some German and French during the two preceding years.
Incidentally, Acton is really down on Franziska, Gian Gastone's wife, saying that the portraits of her German ancestors with their "piggy eyes" reveal how ugly she must have been (because her own portrait is rather flattering, but okay, that doesn't have to mean anything), and taking all of Gian Gastone's justifications (in letters to Dad) of how she was an ill tempered shrew on faith. And he mentions her talking to her horses as a sign of her being either stupid or really weird, when I don't own a horse, but my cousin's wife does, and she talks to it all the time when with it. And of course her liking the country life and agriculture makes her deeply stupid. Whereas when you filter out what was said vs what was done, what it comes down to that Franziska evidently was not willing to play the game of patient wives and straying husbands. She had undoubtedly heard how the marriage between her new parents-in-law had gone and how Marguerite-Louise had relentlessly campaigned to go home to France. And refusing to go with Gian Gastone to Tuscany as opposed to staying in her own territory where she called the shots and he was the stranger strikes me not as stupid but as great common sense. (I'm also impressed that even when Cosimo marshalled the Pope writing to her, she remained unmoved.) She might every well have been non-intellectual and not interested in culture, but stupid? I don't think so.
Also: as opposed to his older brother Ferdinando, who comes as across as bisexual leaning towards the gay end of the spectrum but with some female lovers whom no one forced him to have so still bi, Gian Gastone did not have a single mistress between all the boys, so: he was definitely completely gay, and only married in the first place because Dad frogmarched him and Ferdinando had syphilis. That marriage was doomed in any case, but at least Franziska managed to come out of it with her life intact and unruined, which is more than you can see for various other ladies of our aquaintance married to gay nobles.
Speaking of whom, an interesting parallel to the Hohenzollern brothers is that just as Fritz and Heinrich were able to be nice and supportive to unhappily married women they themselves were not married to, Gian Gastone had a good relationship with his sister-in-law Violante (remember, devoted to Ferdinando who found her dull) and she did a lot of the representing and some governing during his reign, and tried her best to get him back into society and attend some public banquets at least (not a good idea, since, see above), while Ferdinando was the only family member who tried to remain in contact with Marguerite Louise (he was after all the oldest of her children and had the most memory of her) and who while he was still compos mentis defended where whenever someone critiqued her. But to their own wives? Repeat after me: symbols of parental oppression forced on them.
As for the Florence the gang would find in your fixit story: no more bigotted anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws, on the one hand, and Violante and the Electress trying to restore some culture to the city; otoh, Ruspanti running wild. In RL Wilhelmine did visit Florence, I think, but that was in the 1750s, meaning Autrian-Lorraines ruled there (by distance, FS wasn't yet dead, and only after his death did son Leopold move to Tuscany), so her experience by necessity was very different than how it would have been in the early 1730s. (Other than the obvious art to admire, which tourists could even then.)
Acton makes an interesting comparison: if Cosimo III and his entire reign were like a caricature of Louis XIV in his later years (rigidly pious, impoverishing the country by wars badly managed economy, kicking out Protestants and in Cosimo's case Jews by super bigotted laws against them), Gian Gastone was like a caricature of Philippe d'Orleans the Regent and the Regency. I quote from the book:
Florence during Gian Gastone's reign might aptly be compared with Paris during the Regency. Florentine society was imitating the French . In France ‘ the flaunting vice of a clique is often represented as a natural reaction against the austerity of Louis XIV's later years'; in Florence it was the inevitable reaction against a whole century of gloom and bigotry. Gian Gastone was not solely responsible for this epidemic of licentiousness. The Regent d'Orléans, wrote Saint-Simon, was bored with himself from birth. He sought relief in wine and witty women; vice with him was neither passion nor fashion, but the tiresome habit of a tired man. Substitute Ruspanti for witty women, and the same applies to the last Grand Duke of the Medici.
Incidentally, Gian Gastone's last appearance outside his bedroom was in 1729, so our lot really could not have met him. Just the Ruspanti.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Incidentally, Acton is really down on Franziska, Gian Gastone's wife, saying that the portraits of her German ancestors with their "piggy eyes" reveal how ugly she must have been
I know, I saw that, and I was NOT impressed! None of what he said about her actually made me think a single negative thing about her based on actual evidence, but quite a lot of it made me think several negative things about him.
when I don't own a horse, but my cousin's wife does, and she talks to it all the time when with it.
Does Acton like even own a pet? Or know anyone who does? People talk to their pets! We have Fritz on record talking to the Italian greyhounds!
Incidentally, Gian Gastone's last appearance outside his bedroom was in 1729, so our lot really could not have met him. Just the Ruspanti.
Agreed, but much like they're not meeting Philip when they show up in Spain, they're at least going to hear about him! Which is why it's super important for this fic that I will never write that I know what's going on for them to hear about.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
I just recalled that felis told us Knobelsdorff is travelling in Italy in the mid 1730s as well, i.e. a bit later, and while he doesn't get more south than Rome, he was in Florence. (And wasn't impressed with the opera there.) But felis didn't say whether he met any Ruspanti!
Talking to pets: precisely! And I see we're of a mind re: authorial bias regarding wives who refuse to let their unloving and unloved husbands call the shots.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
While he doesn't mention them explicitely, he might have! If I'm reading this correctly, he actually met Gian Gastone, who died only a couple of months later I see. Knobelsdorff himself actually broke his arm on the way to Florence and therefore couldn't write while he was there, so he gives a short report after the fact, in March 1737, from Venedig. The relevant Florence bit: The Florentines seem more courteous than the Romans [...], [but] one thing is certain, everything that can be viewed here has to be payed for fourdouble; even visiting the Duke [= GG I assume?? he doesn't name names, it's just "der Herzog"] can't happen without money and this bed-ridden gentleman is living capital, he earns his sixteen chamber servants lots of interest daily - but since foreigners are excepted from this tribute for their first visit, I took advantage of this generosity and payed my respects.
By the way, since he's comparing the Florentines to the Romans here and you were talking about antisemitic laws elsewhere, here's an excerpt on the Roman nobility: The current Roman nobility is a shadow of its former self; where the ancestors were skilled with epee and quill alike, the current ones, who choose the path of the clergy most of the time, want to be seen as smart solely through affecting a profound face and reading the mass with unnatural devotion [...]. The ones who stay wordly, learn knightly exercises from the Jesuits, are skilled at steering coach horses with their own hands, but still prefer to focus on converting poor sinners who were condemned to death. A couple of days ago, I myself saw a dozen duces who were busy trying to convert to the right path towards paradise two Jews on their way to the gallows, but regardless of their efforts - some of them even climbing the ladder with them - the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
And while I'm here and the other topic of your comment is animals, also from Rome: I'm content to have witnessed a couple [religious ceremonies], the most entertaining and most numerous on the day of St. Anthony [January 17th]: all horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep and dogs appear on the same day, adorned with ribbons, to receive this saint's blessing, for which their keepers present a wax light or money. After they went away blessed, all mosquitoes, wasps and flies were conversely condemned; all of Rome was on the move and this animal pilgrimage [Bestialische Wahlfahrt] ended with the setting of the sun.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
one thing is certain, everything that can be viewed here has to be payed for fourdouble; even visiting the Duke [= GG I assume?? he doesn't name names, it's just "der Herzog"] can't happen without money and this bed-ridden gentleman is living capital, he earns his sixteen chamber servants lots of interest daily
I assume it's GG! He was bedridden, and Giuliano Dami notoriously got rich charging people to visit him. So if he was alive, and Wikipedia tells me he died July 9, 1737, then I think our Knobelsdorff saw him!
- but since foreigners are excepted from this tribute for their first visit, I took advantage of this generosity and payed my respects.
Aha, so our cast *could* have met him! For free!
One thing GG and Fritz had in common:
His appearance was singularly whimsical; he received those whom he suffered to approach him, in his shirt, without ruffles, a cravat of considerable length, made of muslin, none of the finest, and a night- cap; all of which were besmeared with snuff. The late Earl of Sandwich acquainted this writer (the Rev. Mark Noble) that this filthy 'habit so far grew upon Gian Gastone towards the latter part of his life, that to stifle the disagreeable smells of his bed, the room was covered entirely, when his lordship was introduced to His Royal Highness, with new -gathered roses.'
As Selena has commented, between his endless snuff-taking, and the fact that he thought sweating was healthy, Fritz must have stunk pestilentially. (Though there was that perfume prinzsorgenfrei found. ;))
One advantage Fritz had was that at least he was moving from room to room and spending lots of time outdoors, rather than letting all the smells accumulate in one room. I can see why GG's situation got dire enough to call for emergency roses.
the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
Well, good for Knobelsdorff.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Definitely GG, as Mildred says! Thank you for the great Knobelsdoff quotes. Having read the Gundling books rather recently, and the book on capital punishment in Germany until ca. 1800, I have to add this, though:
A couple of days ago, I myself saw a dozen duces who were busy trying to convert to the right path towards paradise two Jews on their way to the gallows, but regardless of their efforts - some of them even climbing the ladder with them - the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
Knobelsdorff, you could have seen something similar at home in Berlin. The court news paper both Stade and Sabrow used as sources, and so did the capital punishment guy, also include the fact that when Jews were condemned to execution, Protestant preachers kept having a go at them, trying to persuade them to convert. And FW era Prussia wasn't alone in this. Famously, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was offered a reduced sentence after his show trial in equally Protestant Würtemberg if he converted to Christianity. (And didn't take it but remained a Jew and got executed.)
The St. Anthony's ritual is fascinating, though. I only know him as the Saint responsible to help you find items you lost. (My paternal grandmother was called Antonie, so he was her patron and she always prayed to him when looking for something, and lit a candle in church if she found it.) That he was responsible for animals is news to me, though I don't doubt the description. Having googled it, I see Antonius of Padua is specifically responsible for horses, mules and asses, not the rest of the animals.
The St. Anthony's ritual is fascinating, though. I only know him as the Saint responsible to help you find items you lost.
In Brazil, that's St. Longinus, and you promise to give three little hops if the lost item turns up. (There's a rhyme that goes with it where Longinus' name rhymes with "little hops"). I know this because my wife's Brazilian and her grandmother was very into invoking the saints. I have jokingly done the three hops just to be silly.
St. Anthony, in contrast, is the one that Granny used to invoke to pray for her unmarried granddaughters to find husbands.
Me: But you didn't both find wives? My wife: Well, these are modern times. Modern St. Anthony helps your granddaughters find wives!
Fascinating! I wonder how the difference in saintly reponsibilities per country/continent came to be. Wiki tells me it' a Brazil only thing for Longinus, but it doesn't say whether there was a comparable story around in Renaissance Portugal or whether it came to be post colonization. AS for St. Anthony, wiki names him the world wide patron for lost things but allows for the marriage tradition in Spain, Portugal and Brazil "because legends exist of him reconciling couples". (Should be patron saint of marriage councillors then as well, surely!) So in that case, there's definitely an Iberian, not just a Brazilian angle.
In Goethe's Faust, Mephisto(pheles) endears himself to Gretchen's neigbour Marthe by claiming he can testify her husband died and is buried near St. Anthony's in Padua. (Marthe hasn't seen her husband in years and wants to marry again.) In Fontane's "Effi Briest", Emmy, who's sixteen when getting engaged to Innstetten, is taken by him on a trip through Italy as a honeymoon and when they're in Padua, he quotes lines from Faust to her from that Mephisto/Marthe conversation - "Er liegt zu Padua begraben, beim heiligen Antonius" - which she doesn't get at all, which is an early signal not just of how mismatched they are but that Innstetten is the type to completely fail at irony - Mephisto is lying, after all, and it's an overall very teasing flirtatious conversation in "Faust" (Marthe tries to land Mephisto as her next husband), whereas he intones the line in utter seriousness and meaningful and then is baffled Effi doesn't recognize it.
Selena: In Goethe's Faust, Mephisto(pheles) endears himself to Gretchen's neigbour Marthe by claiming he can testify her husband died and is buried near St. Anthony's in Padua. (Marthe hasn't seen her husband in years and wants to marry again.) Me: But -- I've only seen the opera -- Faust: frowns at me from the shelf Me: (One day! Got to get through Don Carlos and Sandman first!) -- but doesn't she want to marry Mephistopheles? Selena: Marthe tries to land Mephisto as her next husband -- Me: oh! hee!
but seriously, this is useful to know if/when I read Effi Briest; otherwise I'd probably just be confused :) in conclusion, I love the German literature footnotes! <3
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Hahahahaha, but we are contractually obligated to give
This was one of those things, like kickboxer kicks, war chariots, and frogs, that I found myself going, "...Did this really happen?" So I must add the following two caveats. Acton asked himself the same "Did this really happen?" question, and concluded:
Unspeakably revolting scenes were said to have followed and though we may not give credit to them all, as the saying goes: there is no smoke without fire.
While I believe that there is certainly smoke without fire, especially where celebrities are concerned, in a well-documented century like the 18th, I'm more willing to credit it. Especially the rowdiness on the public streets with many witnesses.
So Tuscan shenanigans were definitely happening.
As for Giuliano Dami, Italian wiki says his most thorough biographer (1997) concludes that Dami was victim of the "evil advisor" trope, and that he pretty much just did what he was told. Now, not having read the book or the primary sources, I can easily imagine that his revisionist biographer would be biased in Dami's favor, but it's worth noting that there is an alternative account out there.
(The biography is at Stabi--unfortunately, in Italian. And I can't get a cheap copy to disassemble and run through Google Translate, so unfortunately, I think the road runs out here. Same for the same author's bio of Gian Gastone.)
Let's also note that if 1731 is the year of Spanish occupation and rowdy Ruspanti, 1733 is the year of Algarotti falling in love with the city and being super disillusioned 6 weeks later and deciding to leave.
This is also of great interest to me, because fix-it fic that will never get written has our protagonists--Fritz, Wilhelmine, Katte, Keith--arriving in Italy for a Grand Tour circa 1733 (exact year not decided). So I'm absolutely looking for any insights into what tourists might have encountered (besides dishy young bisexual Italians looking for a job).
hot lackey Giuliano Dami, who is exceptionally beautiful, and whom Gian Gastone falls for and takes with him to Germany when he sets off to marry as ordered by Dad.
Who, per Wikipedia, was not yet 14 when the wedding took place, so if you add in travel time and some time for Gian Gastone to acquire him in Italy before that, was 13 at most when Gian Gastone decided he was hot stuff, and 15 when he was allegedly winning Gian Gastone over to a debauched lifestyle in Prague. (Gian Gastone was 12 years older.)
Maybe, maybe not.
their prominence embarrasses the polite historian, though he may not cancel the rôles they played in Gian Gastone's latter years.
Take note, Roaring Twenties editor of Sophie's letters! I somehow doubt she had 370 prostitutes staging orgies in her bedroom and running wild in the streets. :P
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Incidentally, Acton is really down on Franziska, Gian Gastone's wife, saying that the portraits of her German ancestors with their "piggy eyes" reveal how ugly she must have been (because her own portrait is rather flattering, but okay, that doesn't have to mean anything), and taking all of Gian Gastone's justifications (in letters to Dad) of how she was an ill tempered shrew on faith. And he mentions her talking to her horses as a sign of her being either stupid or really weird, when I don't own a horse, but my cousin's wife does, and she talks to it all the time when with it. And of course her liking the country life and agriculture makes her deeply stupid. Whereas when you filter out what was said vs what was done, what it comes down to that Franziska evidently was not willing to play the game of patient wives and straying husbands. She had undoubtedly heard how the marriage between her new parents-in-law had gone and how Marguerite-Louise had relentlessly campaigned to go home to France. And refusing to go with Gian Gastone to Tuscany as opposed to staying in her own territory where she called the shots and he was the stranger strikes me not as stupid but as great common sense. (I'm also impressed that even when Cosimo marshalled the Pope writing to her, she remained unmoved.) She might every well have been non-intellectual and not interested in culture, but stupid? I don't think so.
Also: as opposed to his older brother Ferdinando, who comes as across as bisexual leaning towards the gay end of the spectrum but with some female lovers whom no one forced him to have so still bi, Gian Gastone did not have a single mistress between all the boys, so: he was definitely completely gay, and only married in the first place because Dad frogmarched him and Ferdinando had syphilis. That marriage was doomed in any case, but at least Franziska managed to come out of it with her life intact and unruined, which is more than you can see for various other ladies of our aquaintance married to gay nobles.
Speaking of whom, an interesting parallel to the Hohenzollern brothers is that just as Fritz and Heinrich were able to be nice and supportive to unhappily married women they themselves were not married to, Gian Gastone had a good relationship with his sister-in-law Violante (remember, devoted to Ferdinando who found her dull) and she did a lot of the representing and some governing during his reign, and tried her best to get him back into society and attend some public banquets at least (not a good idea, since, see above), while Ferdinando was the only family member who tried to remain in contact with Marguerite Louise (he was after all the oldest of her children and had the most memory of her) and who while he was still compos mentis defended where whenever someone critiqued her. But to their own wives? Repeat after me: symbols of parental oppression forced on them.
As for the Florence the gang would find in your fixit story: no more bigotted anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws, on the one hand, and Violante and the Electress trying to restore some culture to the city; otoh, Ruspanti running wild. In RL Wilhelmine did visit Florence, I think, but that was in the 1750s, meaning Autrian-Lorraines ruled there (by distance, FS wasn't yet dead, and only after his death did son Leopold move to Tuscany), so her experience by necessity was very different than how it would have been in the early 1730s. (Other than the obvious art to admire, which tourists could even then.)
Acton makes an interesting comparison: if Cosimo III and his entire reign were like a caricature of Louis XIV in his later years (rigidly pious, impoverishing the country by
warsbadly managed economy, kicking out Protestants and in Cosimo's case Jews by super bigotted laws against them), Gian Gastone was like a caricature of Philippe d'Orleans the Regent and the Regency. I quote from the book:Florence during Gian Gastone's reign might aptly be compared with Paris during the Regency. Florentine society was imitating the French . In France ‘ the flaunting vice of a clique is often represented as a natural reaction against the austerity of Louis XIV's later years'; in Florence it was the inevitable reaction against a whole century of gloom and bigotry. Gian Gastone was not solely responsible for this epidemic of licentiousness.
The Regent d'Orléans, wrote Saint-Simon, was bored with himself from birth. He sought relief in wine and witty women; vice with him was neither passion nor fashion, but the tiresome habit of a tired man. Substitute Ruspanti for witty women, and the same applies to the last Grand Duke of the Medici.
Incidentally, Gian Gastone's last appearance outside his bedroom was in 1729, so our lot really could not have met him. Just the Ruspanti.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
I know, I saw that, and I was NOT impressed! None of what he said about her actually made me think a single negative thing about her based on actual evidence, but quite a lot of it made me think several negative things about him.
when I don't own a horse, but my cousin's wife does, and she talks to it all the time when with it.
Does Acton like even own a pet? Or know anyone who does? People talk to their pets! We have Fritz on record talking to the Italian greyhounds!
Incidentally, Gian Gastone's last appearance outside his bedroom was in 1729, so our lot really could not have met him. Just the Ruspanti.
Agreed, but much like they're not meeting Philip when they show up in Spain, they're at least going to hear about him! Which is why it's super important
for this fic that I will never writethat I know what's going on for them to hear about.Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
Talking to pets: precisely! And I see we're of a mind re: authorial bias regarding wives who refuse to let their unloving and unloved husbands call the shots.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
While he doesn't mention them explicitely, he might have! If I'm reading this correctly, he actually met Gian Gastone, who died only a couple of months later I see. Knobelsdorff himself actually broke his arm on the way to Florence and therefore couldn't write while he was there, so he gives a short report after the fact, in March 1737, from Venedig. The relevant Florence bit: The Florentines seem more courteous than the Romans [...], [but] one thing is certain, everything that can be viewed here has to be payed for fourdouble; even visiting the Duke [= GG I assume?? he doesn't name names, it's just "der Herzog"] can't happen without money and this bed-ridden gentleman is living capital, he earns his sixteen chamber servants lots of interest daily - but since foreigners are excepted from this tribute for their first visit, I took advantage of this generosity and payed my respects.
By the way, since he's comparing the Florentines to the Romans here and you were talking about antisemitic laws elsewhere, here's an excerpt on the Roman nobility: The current Roman nobility is a shadow of its former self; where the ancestors were skilled with epee and quill alike, the current ones, who choose the path of the clergy most of the time, want to be seen as smart solely through affecting a profound face and reading the mass with unnatural devotion [...]. The ones who stay wordly, learn knightly exercises from the Jesuits, are skilled at steering coach horses with their own hands, but still prefer to focus on converting poor sinners who were condemned to death. A couple of days ago, I myself saw a dozen duces who were busy trying to convert to the right path towards paradise two Jews on their way to the gallows, but regardless of their efforts - some of them even climbing the ladder with them - the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
And while I'm here and the other topic of your comment is animals, also from Rome: I'm content to have witnessed a couple [religious ceremonies], the most entertaining and most numerous on the day of St. Anthony [January 17th]: all horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep and dogs appear on the same day, adorned with ribbons, to receive this saint's blessing, for which their keepers present a wax light or money. After they went away blessed, all mosquitoes, wasps and flies were conversely condemned; all of Rome was on the move and this animal pilgrimage [Bestialische Wahlfahrt] ended with the setting of the sun.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
I assume it's GG! He was bedridden, and Giuliano Dami notoriously got rich charging people to visit him. So if he was alive, and Wikipedia tells me he died July 9, 1737, then I think our Knobelsdorff saw him!
- but since foreigners are excepted from this tribute for their first visit, I took advantage of this generosity and payed my respects.
Aha, so our cast *could* have met him! For free!
One thing GG and Fritz had in common:
His appearance was singularly whimsical; he received those whom he suffered to approach him, in his shirt, without ruffles, a cravat of considerable length, made of muslin, none of the finest, and a night- cap; all of which were besmeared with snuff. The late Earl of Sandwich acquainted this writer (the Rev. Mark Noble) that this filthy 'habit so far grew upon Gian Gastone towards the latter part of his life, that to stifle the disagreeable smells of his bed, the room was covered entirely, when his lordship was introduced to His Royal Highness, with new -gathered roses.'
As Selena has commented, between his endless snuff-taking, and the fact that he thought sweating was healthy, Fritz must have stunk pestilentially. (Though there was that perfume
One advantage Fritz had was that at least he was moving from room to room and spending lots of time outdoors, rather than letting all the smells accumulate in one room. I can see why GG's situation got dire enough to call for emergency roses.
the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
Well, good for Knobelsdorff.
Re: Harold Acton: Last of the Medici I: How to make really bad marriages
A couple of days ago, I myself saw a dozen duces who were busy trying to convert to the right path towards paradise two Jews on their way to the gallows, but regardless of their efforts - some of them even climbing the ladder with them - the good Hebrews died as martyrs for their religion.
Knobelsdorff, you could have seen something similar at home in Berlin. The court news paper both Stade and Sabrow used as sources, and so did the capital punishment guy, also include the fact that when Jews were condemned to execution, Protestant preachers kept having a go at them, trying to persuade them to convert. And FW era Prussia wasn't alone in this. Famously, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was offered a reduced sentence after his show trial in equally Protestant Würtemberg if he converted to Christianity. (And didn't take it but remained a Jew and got executed.)
The St. Anthony's ritual is fascinating, though. I only know him as the Saint responsible to help you find items you lost. (My paternal grandmother was called Antonie, so he was her patron and she always prayed to him when looking for something, and lit a candle in church if she found it.) That he was responsible for animals is news to me, though I don't doubt the description. Having googled it, I see Antonius of Padua is specifically responsible for horses, mules and asses, not the rest of the animals.
Saints of finding things
In Brazil, that's St. Longinus, and you promise to give three little hops if the lost item turns up. (There's a rhyme that goes with it where Longinus' name rhymes with "little hops"). I know this because my wife's Brazilian and her grandmother was very into invoking the saints. I have jokingly done the three hops just to be silly.
St. Anthony, in contrast, is the one that Granny used to invoke to pray for her unmarried granddaughters to find husbands.
Me: But you didn't both find wives?
My wife: Well, these are modern times. Modern St. Anthony helps your granddaughters find wives!
Re: Saints of finding things
In Goethe's Faust, Mephisto(pheles) endears himself to Gretchen's neigbour Marthe by claiming he can testify her husband died and is buried near St. Anthony's in Padua. (Marthe hasn't seen her husband in years and wants to marry again.) In Fontane's "Effi Briest", Emmy, who's sixteen when getting engaged to Innstetten, is taken by him on a trip through Italy as a honeymoon and when they're in Padua, he quotes lines from Faust to her from that Mephisto/Marthe conversation - "Er liegt zu Padua begraben, beim heiligen Antonius" - which she doesn't get at all, which is an early signal not just of how mismatched they are but that Innstetten is the type to completely fail at irony - Mephisto is lying, after all, and it's an overall very teasing flirtatious conversation in "Faust" (Marthe tries to land Mephisto as her next husband), whereas he intones the line in utter seriousness and meaningful and then is baffled Effi doesn't recognize it.
*ends of German literature footnote*
Re: Saints of finding things
I agree! And so does my wife, who laughed when I passed that on.
Thank you for the German literature footnote. This free online university being conducted in
Re: Saints of finding things
Me: But -- I've only seen the opera --
Faust: frowns at me from the shelf
Me: (One day! Got to get through Don Carlos and Sandman first!) -- but doesn't she want to marry Mephistopheles?
Selena: Marthe tries to land Mephisto as her next husband --
Me: oh! hee!
but seriously, this is useful to know if/when I read Effi Briest; otherwise I'd probably just be confused :) in conclusion, I love the German literature footnotes! <3