18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

[cahn]

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Comments

Re: The Ottonians

[mildred_of_midgard]

More podcast fun!

So, Gerbert of Aurillac is, according to Wikipedia (which is easier to copy-paste than to find the equivalent passage in the podcast and transcribe it):

...a French-born scholar and teacher who served as the bishop of Rome and ruled the Papal States from 999 to his death. He endorsed and promoted study of Arab and Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics and astronomy, reintroducing to Europe the abacus and armillary sphere, which had been lost to Latin Europe since the end of the Greco-Roman era. He is said to be the first in Europe to introduce the decimal numeral system using the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. He is credited with the invention of the first mechanical clock in 996.

...Gerbert of Aurillac was a humanist long before the Renaissance. He read Virgil, Cicero and Boethius; he studied Latin translations of Porphyry and Aristotle. He had a very accurate classification of the different disciplines of philosophy....

Gerbert was said to be one of the most noted scientists of his time. Gerbert wrote a series of works dealing with matters of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), which he taught using the basis of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). In Rheims, he constructed a hydraulic-powered organ with brass pipes that excelled all previously known instruments, where the air had to be pumped manually...Gerbert may have been the author of a description of the astrolabe that was edited by Hermannus Contractus some 50 years later.

Pretty impressive guy!

So I was listening to the podcast yesterday, and imagine my hysterical laughter when I learned that Otto III, reaching his majority,

invites Gerbert to become his teacher and political advisor to, in his words, 'help him overcome his Saxon rusticity and acquire Greek sophistication.'

Voltaire: Political advisor?!

Fritz: Dream on.

But seriously. I was not expecting that so many German kings openly admitted to needing famous French scholars to help them overcome their Saxon/Brandenburgian rusticity. :'D

I was hoping for a major falling out with much popcorn-munching, but Wikipedia isn't giving me any indication of one, just Gerbert becoming pope Silvester II with Otto's help. (I'm currently in the middle of Otto III's reign.)

Re: The Ottonians

[selenak]

I was not expecting that so many German kings openly admitted to needing famous French scholars to help them overcome their Saxon/Brandenburgian rusticity. :'D

Hey, we're all descendants of Charlemagne. :)

Given that Otto III's mother was Teophanu, i.e. a Byzantine princess whose court and country of origin might have been lethal but also way more cultured and sophisticated then anything the Ottonians had to offer until that point, I can think of another thing he might have had in common with Fritz that made him seek out French scholarly aide...

(ETA: Not that SD had anything like Teophanu's political savvy. Her insistance on the English marriage project seems to have been fuelled by prestige thinking rather than political alliance strategizing.)

Re: The Ottonians

[cahn]

Huh, that's very cool!

...Gerbert of Aurillac / Pope Sylvester II rings a bell; wait! Judith Tarr wrote a book about this guy! Ars Magica. I remember almost nothing about this book -- oh, wait, I think it might have had a "gotcha" ending based on the end of Gerbert's life, maybe? -- but I remember otherwise liking it. I don't have my childhood copy anymore, but it looks like the library has it... maybe I ought to reread it :) (I mean, I am pretty sure that, as with her other books, it's history in Magic!AU, but her background is in history and my sense was that she tended to be pretty good about the history, with the usual novelist liberties.)

Re: The Ottonians

[mildred_of_midgard]

Historical fiction FTW! I had no idea who he was.