cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

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From:

selenak

So, as mentioned at my journal, I've finished the podcast episodes released so far that Mildred recced, and I can only add to the rec;

cahn, I think you'd enjoy listening (well, not the First Crusade episode with its attendant massacres among the Jews, but that episode was necessary for the overall picture), and the length is on avarage less than half an hour.

Now, because I know more about the Hohenstaufen than I know about the Salians and Ottonians, I did have some "huh? but I thought..." moments in the last few episodes (as, in for example, yes, Philipp/Irene is one of the few royal love stories of the era, but was he in Italy at the time? I thought they only met once she'd been sent to... *looks up* yes, he was in Italy at time; or, more seriously: "hang on, Henry (VI) didn't just imprison little William III, he had him blinded and castrated!", then I looked it up, and it said "supposedly", i.e. it's never been proven but was the story at the time, so, fair enough. Meaning all in all, I'm as impressed with our podcaster's take on the eras I know something about as of those I had not much previous knowledge.

You also can tell he's doing this for a primarily English speaking audience by whose names get anglisized - i.e. Henry not Heinrich, Frederick not Friedrich, - and whose don't - Adelheid not Adelaide. (The difference: Adelheid does not have the crucial "ch" that spells trouble to a lot of non German speakers when wanting to talk about said people.

What listening to said podcast also reminded me of was what a very tragic figure Henry IV (busband of Bertha and Praxidis, famed for Canossa) was, which wasn't exactly news (what I did recall from school certainly saw him that way, too), but was hammered down here. Another thing: Horowski would approve of this podcast, because it emphasises the family connections via the women as well as the men and points out that 19th century historians who only went through patrilinear definitions and clans set their own trap when marvelling why for example young future Barbarossa hangs out with and fights at the side of his maternal uncle Welf rather than with his paternal Uncle Konrad when according to them it's a death feud between Welfs and Hohenstaufens already, completely overlooking that the Staufer themselves referred to each other not as von Hohenstaufen but by a (higher ranking) female ancestor, Agnes von Waiblingen, as "Waiblingers", and young future Barbarossa seeing himself as a Welf as well as a Waibling at this point of his life would have been in line with that.

Also, because the podcast points out the various female characters of the saga (Adelheid and Teophanu, Mathilde of Tuscany, Kunigunde, Gisela, etc.) and pays them due to credit, it also can point out when an Empress is really not very good at Empressing, which unfortunately was the case for Henry IV's mother Agnes of Poitou, without coming across as unfair, let alone sexist. Not that Agness was worse than many a male ruler, but the problem was that the situation she inherited when her husband died and little Henry IV was just a small child was so hidiously complicated and screwed up that you would have needed to be a genius to navigate through it, a genius, she wasn't, and so she committed some blunders which because she was Regent of the Empire had terrible repercussions.

What was of particular interest to me as well because I have do some related research elsewhere is all the stuff about the early to high medieval Papacy, which went through some truly epic changes. Mildred already mentioned the biggest ones - from Popes as bishops of Romes (and even this nominal, as they're short lived adolescents or early 20s playboys who are puppets of two competing Roman families in the 10th century to Popes as leaders of Christendom in the sense of all monarchs, kings and Emperors alike, being able to be deposed by them, but also in the sense of being seen as actual moral authorities - but there's also the whole procedure of how Popes got elected (or not) - when we start out with this podcast, there aren't yet any Cardinals, let alone a college of Cardinals, and there's not just one procedure, either, which during the time of the Pornocracy (will never get tired of that term) made it so easy for those two feuding Roman clans to get their guys essentially consecrated, made bishops and then Pope within two days or so. (Made it also possible for visiting Emperors who go WTF? at the goings on to appoint their own Popes.) Even the Pope Gregory who had the big showdown with Henry IV and who instituted the reforms that created the procedures we're more familiar with (Cardinals existing, and Cardinals only being able to vote for a Pope) actually had to be consecrated pronto because while he'd been a church adminstrator official for eons, he had not been a priest until aiming for the top job, AND he got said top job via popular acclaim of the Roman populace, not because the bishops and future Cardinals voted for him.

I was intrigued by the different type of Church nadir going on in the Renaissance just before and during the Reformation, because say what you want about the likes of Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI), Giuliano della Rovere (Julius II), Giovanni de' Medici (Pope Leo) and Alessandro Farnese (Paul III) - all guilty of simony, and nepotism, all regarding celibacy as not for them, to put it mildly, BUT they actually to know their theology, to have studied it, and they had opinions on it (beyond "do as I say", I mean). They also were their respective clans head honchos, rather than their puppets. And then there's the part where they're responsible for a lot of Renaissance art patronage which I suppose also helped assuring them a somewhat more layered treatment than the Popes of the Pornocracy got.

How you can tell the podcast is accumulating American listeners: our podcaster at the start of one episode has to defend himself against the charge of presenting the Popes as always evil and being mean about churchmen. Trust me, he really really doesn't, and isn't. The entire podcast is as non judgmental as you can get without making light of, well, massacres. (So the Bishop of Mainz who has the blood of the Jewish citizens of said city during the First Crusade on his hands does not get handwaved with "these were the times", because we also get examples of both church and laymen acting differently.) On the contrary, the podcast, even when one is able to tell that, say, in the Henry IV vs Pope Gregory struggle, our podcaster's sympathy is with Henry, the podcast also emphasizes what an achievement Gregory's papacy was. Context: Henry IV's Dad, Henry III, had been the one deposing three Popes and installing our Bamberg loving Suidger/Clement II and a string of goody two shoes Popes which ended the Pornocracy. At this point, it's normal that the Emperor is the one who appoints bishops and abbots within the (not yet called that) HRE, that the Emperor is the one seen as the leader of Christendom; and within a generation, mostly due to Hildebrand/Gregory and his reforms (and his ambitions, and his dealing with the Normans), you have the idea and practice of the Pope as an authority over kings, the big Investure Controversy (which ends with the Pope as the one appointing bishops and abbots), and of course a much needed institutional renewal (to be followed by corruption again later, for such are the cycles). This was also when celibacy went from being obligatory for monks but not for priests to being obligatory for all clergy, not least because it put a stop (for a while) to priests and bishops being concerned with accumulating land for their families, as opposed to the Church.

Lastly, I'm no longer as hard on Matthew Kneale who in his entertaining "History of Rome in Seven Sackings" in his chapter on the Sacco di Roma when reccounting the backstory of Charles V's history with the various Popes claims the quondam Giulio de' Medici (Clement as Pope) was seriously afraid Charles would depose him and install Martin Luther as Pope. I mean, it's still ridiculous if you know anything about Charles and Luther (especially since at the time Kneale makes this claim for, Luther was already married and was way, way, WAY beyond any possibility of reintegrating within the Catholic Church, plus say what you want about Luther's own flaws and hypocrisies, but this wasn't one of them - he would never have accepted being made Pope, even if an AU!Charles would have suggested it), but if you're a writer covering centuries and thus reading up on a lot of deposed Popes and antipopes and all the many Emperors vs Popes struggles of earlier eras where indeed Emperors would have been able to get Popes deposed, or later on at least tried, you're probably just tricked by the bigger picture.

(Still. Charles, being a Renaissance prince, OF COURSE wanted Popes friendly to his cause in St. Peter, as did contemporaries Francis I. of France and not much longer in the Church Henry VIII, but being a Renaissance Prince, he tried to achieve this the Renaissance way, i.e. by lobbying, leaning on people and promising cash and lands to various bishops. Also with marriage alliances.
Otoh, using something like the sacking of Rome to install an Antipope would not have occured to him. He was a Burgundian-raised Habsburg with a Spanish powerbase, not a medieval Ottonian or Salian or Hohenstaufen!)

Edited Date: 2022-11-28 09:03 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

cahn, I think you'd enjoy listening

I agree! I didn't want to put one more thing on your list, but I really do think the part of you that enjoys salon would enjoy this too, and it would be super educational.

(well, not the First Crusade episode with its attendant massacres among the Jews

Yeah, if you decide to listen to that one, I recommend you read my post with the spoilery trigger warnings if you haven't already, especially since you have kids. (I'm sure you'll be able to handle it, but going in knowing what to expect is not a bad thing. Even I would have appreciated more of a warning, and I am not known for empathy or sensitivity.)

Meaning all in all, I'm as impressed with our podcaster's take on the eras I know something about as of those I had not much previous knowledge.

Good to know! He has not yet hit an era about which I know enough to comment, so I've been proceeding based on the assumption that you have to start *somewhere*, and this podcast has been super successful in its intended purpose of making it so I can read books about medievals with the same names and not get lost.

That said, I then proceeded to go and read: a bio of Otto the Great, a bio of Henry IV, a bio of Otto von Freising, a book on the investiture controversy, a (short) book on the Ottonians, a (short) book on the Salians, and part of a bio of Matilda of Tuscany that I had read earlier this year, all in German, plus several journal articles also in German, after starting this podcast, and none of what I read made me lose respect for his accuracy. Historians don't always agree, of course, but the disagreements seemed reasonable.

(Tangentially, this is actually why I haven't finished the podcast: I started trying to read along with books in German, and as we all know, I read German very slowly and also non-linearly, so I stalled out when I got side-tracked by Leopold and Peter Keith*. I still have plans to go back, read the bios of Henry the Lion and Barbarossa I have, and then resume the podcast!)

* I used to try to read in an organized manner, but then I gave in and accepted that while I am an organized person, I am not an organized reader, and that will never work.

the crucial "ch" that spells trouble to a lot of non German speakers when wanting to talk about said people.

I admit, if we ever meet in person, I'm just going to embarrass myself. ;)

I feel for Dirk when he apologizes repeatedly every time he has to make an attempt at a Hungarian or Polish name. His French is good, though, at least as far as this non-French speaker can tell!

Another thing: Horowski would approve of this podcast, because it emphasises the family connections via the women as well as the men

Yes! I also had the thought that Horowski would approve of this!

during the time of the Pornocracy (will never get tired of that term)

Lol! So say we all.

the Pope Gregory who had the big showdown with Henry IV and who instituted the reforms that created the procedures we're more familiar with (Cardinals existing, and Cardinals only being able to vote for a Pope) actually had to be consecrated pronto because while he'd been a church adminstrator official for eons, he had not been a priest until aiming for the top job, AND he got said top job via popular acclaim of the Roman populace, not because the bishops and future Cardinals voted for him.

Yeah, this part was really interesting, and it reminded me of something I read in that bio of Matilda of Tuscany. She was apparently going around investing bishops long after the popes had decided this was a no-no, which made the biographer go, "...Did she actually understand what the controversy was about, or was she just being loyal to the Pope because of reasons?"

Note that that is not as misogynistic as it might sound, because everyone agrees that numerous male monarchs famous for their religious meddling, like Louis XIV and Constantine the Great, did not give a shit about the theological nuances of every dispute. They just wanted the controversy to stop.

So I am fine with concluding that Matilda, while she may have sincerely favored church reform, was not up on the latest theology either.

he got said top job via popular acclaim of the Roman populace, not because the bishops and future Cardinals voted for him.

And to clarify the chronology for

cahn here:

- In olden times, popular acclaim was perfectly kosher.
- Then, as part of goody two-shoes popes cleaning up the Church, in 1059 a synod set up actual formal election rules, which involved the cardinals having to make the selection. Only after the election by the cardinals did the rest of Rome get to acclaim the choice (but not make the choice).
- Gregory becomes pope by popular acclaim in 1073, whoops.

In other words, Gregory did not get elected by this new method the reformers had decided on, despite being *the* most vocal proponent of reform.

That could have been a vulnerability if the Germans (emperor and nobles) had played their cards right, but things were a bit too chaotic north of the Alps for that, and they waited too long to protest. (I.e., "Well, if his election was so problematic, why have you been treating him as pope for the last X years?")

if you're a writer covering centuries and thus reading up on a lot of deposed Popes and antipopes and all the many Emperors vs Popes struggles of earlier eras where indeed Emperors would have been able to get Popes deposed, or later on at least tried, you're probably just tricked by the bigger picture.

Yeah, I could see that. Wrong but understandable.

From:

selenak

How's the Otto of Freising biography, enquiring minds want to know? Incidentally, after the relevant podcast episodes, I myself recalled that many years ago, I had read a novel about Adelheid and Theophanu which I hadn't much liked and felt disappointed by, but I didn't recall anymore WHY, so I went back to the book, which I still had - and after 20 pages, I remembered again. Of the many ways you could possibly characterize tough-as-nails-Adelheid and her life, the author chose to... make her a swooning damsel and let her fall in obsessive forbidden love with, drumroll, Otto the Great's troublesome younger brother Henry. (

cahn, that's the one who rebelled a couple of times and got forgiven, which amazed Dirk, and got handed a major duchy with major responsibilities - Bavaria - which then kept him busy and happy, though he also found the time to feud with his oldest nephew, Otto's son Liutolf, which was part of the reason why Liutolf, too, rebelled. And it's really presented as a life long obsessive passion: child!Adelheid attends with her family Otto's ascension and meets who she thinks is Otto (but is actually Henry, which because the meeting is short and she's still a child she doesn't realise), and then later during her brief first marriage (which in the novel isn't to Hugo's son Lothar but Hugo her stepfather) fantasizes of "Otto" saving her, and then during the famous imprisonment by Berengar the Otto saving fantasies intensify (also her daughter Emma does not exist, nor does she escape on her own with Emma, which is one of the cool things about rl Adelheid), and then when her hero finally arrives she's first delighted and then crushed when he finally introduces himself, because by then she's exchanged letters with Otto (the real one) and promised to marry him in writing. And thus the fateful passion commences.

cahn, the only thing this even remotely seems to be based on is that Henry was sent by Otto to pick Adelheid up in Italy and escort her to him, and that Henry did manage to befriend her, which came in handy for him during the Liutolf feud. But that's it. Anyway, I didn't reread further, recalling now why I hadn't liked it in the first place, and also recalling this forbidden love thing continues into the next generation, where Henry's son Henry the Quarrelsome is in forbidden love with Theophanu. (Reminder that in rl, Henry the Quarrelsome made a failed bid to get the regency for himself which the Adelheid and Theophanu team-up defeated.)

...you know, if these two ladies had had lives without any drama I could maybe understand why a novelist wanted to give them affairs. But they had all the real drama in the world! Why????

it reminded me of something I read in that bio of Matilda of Tuscany. She was apparently going around investing bishops long after the popes had decided this was a no-no, which made the biographer go, "...Did she actually understand what the controversy was about, or was she just being loyal to the Pope because of reasons?"

I hadn't known she continued to invest! But yes, with you that her being generally pro Gregorian Reforms is compatible with her not really being up to the key point of the investiture controversy. BTW, what's the biographer's explanation for her leaving her lands to Henry V, or does the biographer think she didn't?

Another thing I admire about the podcast is that he's able to do change the pov and show us what's going on from another perspective, as in the case of Henry IV's heartbreaking final years, and then flipping back to show why Henry V did what he did.

"Well, if his election was so problematic, why have you been treating him as pope for the last X years?"

Mind you, I did like the lengthily quoted fiery "Hildebrand, false monk and not Pope!" letter as well as Gregory's reply as examples of medieval rethoric in the relevant episode. :) That's another appealing thing about the podcast; it chooses its original quotes well and provides good paraphrases elsewhere.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

How's the Otto of Freising biography, enquiring minds want to know?

I am utterly unqualified to have an opinion on it, but with the caveat that I've never read anything else on the subject, I found the book interesting and informative. It may, of course, be very inaccurate or have poor interpretations of his work! But if you wanted to check it out, I see no reason you shouldn't.

ETA: Oh, I should tell you it's the one by Joachim Ehlers, although there probably aren't a lot of others you could have confused it with.

Of the many ways you could possibly characterize tough-as-nails-Adelheid and her life, the author chose to... make her a swooning damsel

WHAT. Adelheid?! This is like making Voltaire boring! (A challenge writers of historical fiction are apparently also up to.)

Argh. Well, I don't blame you for abandoning it.

I hadn't known she continued to invest!

Even better than that, now that I revisit that chapter, she invested the Archbishop of Milan, and she invested him with staff and ring. She either wasn't keeping up with the papal decisions or she did not care!

cahn, that will mean nothing to you, but

1. Investing the Archbishop of Milan was one of the ways Henry IV kicked off the controversy in the first place.

2. Investing with the ring and staff as symbols of authority and fealty was even more controversial and, at this point, more forbidden than just investiture.

3. As a layperson, she shouldn't have been investing at this stage at all.

Biographer says she narrowly avoided a scandal, but the Holy See decided they couldn't afford to alienate their most important and most reliable supporter, so they let it slide. Lol. Well played, Matilda.

In her defense, what we call the investiture controversy didn't start out being primarily about investiture, i.e. when Matilda started getting involved, and it was like a constant state of breaking news about the latest developments re what was and wasn't allowed, as the pope and emperor kept trying to work out a compromise. Still a bit shocking, as Selena's exclamation mark in response to learning this bit of information shows. ;)

BTW, what's the biographer's explanation for her leaving her lands to Henry V, or does the biographer think she didn't?

The biographer is agnostic about whether she did but pretty skeptical. She says that's the traditional explanation of what was in this mysterious treaty between Henry V and Matilda, which is only referred to by Matilda's biographer Donizo, and Donizo doesn't say what was in the treaty, but considering Matilda had already left her lands to the papacy *and* adopted a son, it's kind of unlikely, but not impossible, that she was then also leaving her lands to Henry V.

Another thing I admire about the podcast is that he's able to do change the pov and show us what's going on from another perspective, as in the case of Henry IV's heartbreaking final years, and then flipping back to show why Henry V did what he did.

Mind you, I did like the lengthily quoted fiery "Hildebrand, false monk and not Pope!" letter

Yeah, that was great. Descend, descend, to be damned throughout the ages. (Really wish I could find the Latin original; Dirk says "descend or be damned," literally every other source I can find says "descend to be damned" or the equivalent "descend and be damned." Dirk's makes a lot of sense, but isn't backed by anything I can find, in English or in German.)

as examples of medieval rethoric

Oh, speaking of medieval rhetoric!

One of the things I studied back in my Jacobites-but-also-Scotland-in-general days was the period of the Scottish wars of independence (made famous through the movie Braveheart). A passage that gets cited a million times (and maybe even in the movie?) is from the Declaration of Arbroath, 1320:

For, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Imagine my surprise when Dirk reads aloud Otto von Northeim's speech in 1073, and it contains:

So not against the king, but against the unjust robber of my freedom; not against the fatherland, but for the fatherland, and for freedom, which no good man surrenders other than with his life at the same time, I take up arms.

That must have been a line you could use when rebelling in the Middle Ages!

Edited Date: 2022-11-29 01:58 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

WHAT. Adelheid?! This is like making Voltaire boring! (A challenge writers of historical fiction are apparently also up to.)

I know. It should not be possible, but there it is. Such wastes of compelling characters to bad fiction!

Even better than that, now that I revisit that chapter, she invested the Archbishop of Milan, and she invested him with staff and ring.

LOL! Oh good lord. Did she do this within Henry IV's life time? If so, one wishes to know his feelings.

Incidentally, what's the biography's take on Mathilda and second Mrs. Henry/Praxidis? 19th century (largely Protestant) German historians came down hard on her and basically concluded she fed the younger woman the entire sordid tale to be used as clerical propaganda. (

cahn, whereas the contemporary take was that Mathilda rescued her from a life of shame and gang rape and then enabled her to tell her tale to all and sunder.) Without having read any biographies of all the players, as you know my own speculation was that Eupraxia/Adelheid/Praxidis really did not like being married to Henry but that her reasons would not have held up to contemporaries (him being a rarely present depressed older husband who is excommunicated more often than not, who at the very least did not treat her as a companion the way Bertha had been but as a supervised trophy, and whom she did not want to have sex with would not have counted at any ecclesiastical court) but which would have been valid to us, and while originally helping her escape for free, Mathilda most likely did hint that something stronger was required for continued papal support.

That must have been a line you could use when rebelling in the Middle Ages!

Nifty discovery! And if you think about it, while it's unlikely the rebelling Scots had heard of Otto von Northeim, I guess it's more than likely that the chronicler noting down the Scottish event might have read the chronicles recording Otto von Northeim's declaration. Because everyone was writing in Latin, and there was some serious international cultural exchange going on. Plus tropes existed even then. (And did long before. I'm reminded of how we were taught in Latin class that when Tacitus provides us with some fiery speeches by rebelling Britons and Germans, he most likely did not have an idea of the wording of what they actually said, just that they said something, and he was delivering up the tropes intended to chastize his Roman reading audience.)

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-11-30 08:42 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

Even better than that, now that I revisit that chapter, she invested the Archbishop of Milan, and she invested him with staff and ring. She either wasn't keeping up with the papal decisions or she did not care!

[personal profile] cahn, that will mean nothing to you

Haha, it doesn't, but it sounds awesome! I am all for church/state struggles with controversial symbology! I appreciate both of you giving me background, because I don't have any :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Henry IV's heartbreaking final years, and then flipping back to show why Henry V did what he did.

cahn, since you will not have gotten to this part yet, I should clarify that what Henry V did was rebel against his father, Henry IV, start a civil war, and in the end, overthrow him. And lock him up after promising his safety.

Why? To quote from the transcript:

Henry V’s worst-case scenario was that his father would suddenly die, and the Gregorian party would then propose their own candidate as king. All Henry V could rely upon was that he had been formally elected, anointed, and crowned in 1099 and that all the magnates had sworn fealty to him. But what is that worth? His own father was elected, anointed and crowned when the magnates deposed him in 1076. All it needs is a Gregorian pope to excommunicate him, and all that frankincense and Myrrh would fade into nothingness. As far as Henry V was concerned, his father needed to reconcile with the pope pronto or the new king’s reign would start with a civil war.

...There was one way Henry IV could achieve a reconciliation with the pope, and that was by giving up all the investiture rights, the last remaining open issue between pope and emperor. But that would also mean that the empire would be finished. No investiture means no control over bishops, which means no call on episcopal military, which means no central power.

That would be the worst of all worlds for Henry V, a contested succession to an empire that was barely worth of its name.

The only way to avoid that outcome was to take over right now, put himself at the head of the Gregorian party and take a stab at reconciling with the pope.

And to summarize what

selenak said about the tragedy of Henry IV:

What a life. Henry IV had been emperor from 1056 to 1105, 49 years in total. In that time he was abducted by a faction of his nobles, abandoned by his mother, forced to marry a girl he saw as a sister, betrayed a hundred times by his nobles, forced to stand in the snow for three days to do penance, stabbed in the back by his eldest son, publicly accused of the worst misdemeanours by his second wife, and finally deposed by his youngest son. Where is the scriptwriter who sells the story to Netflix?

I see he's stating the "Bertha as sister" guess as a fact, but in any case, Henry was forced to marry her and stay married to her when he didn't want to, for whatever reason.

Edited Date: 2022-12-01 05:31 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

re: Bertha: Also she stayed married to himm; once the excommunication series started, she could have deserted him and fled to the bosom of the Church, even without such sensational accusations as his second wife did, yet she did not, and instead went on the mid winter alpine crossing with him, risking eternal damnation herself.

(Reminder that the way this medieval excommunication of a monarch business worked was that it not only banned the monarch himself from all sacraments but also not only allowed but pushed anyone who'd ever sworn an oath to him to rejecting that oath, and absolved them from all duties to him. This is why it was such a powerful instrument (originally), it basically gave all the nobility and the family a shoot to kill or at least drop licence. I say at first, because by the time we've arrived at the Emperors Frederick of Hohenstaufen, both Barbarossa, his sons and his grandson were, well, not blasé, but far more hardened to it, and also they managed to keep many more of the nobility AND the bishops on their side. Fast forward a few centuries, and of course Elizabeth I, the child of a schism, got excommunicated, too, and it had no practical effect at all (which is why later Popes upped the ante to declare it was the duty of her Catholic subjects to assassinate her, at which point life became really hard for English Catholics.)

Theatre history note: Luigi Pirandello's play Enrico IV isn't actually about Henry IV himself but about an Italian aristocrat who believes himself to be Henry IV. Ironically enough, said aristocrat ships himself with Mathilda of Tuscany!

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-04 05:12 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

selenak - Date: 2022-12-05 08:53 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-18 10:15 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

Of the many ways you could possibly characterize tough-as-nails-Adelheid and her life, the author chose to... make her a swooning damsel and let her fall in obsessive forbidden love with, drumroll, Otto the Great's troublesome younger brother Henry.

WHAT
WHY

From:

selenak

So say we all. It's the characterisation equivalent of telling young MT's story in a way that doesn't have her square off with Fritz and several other European powers after her ascension to the throne but being secretly in love with her brother-in-law Charles of Lorraine and angsting about that none stop.

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-04 07:48 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

I'm dying, you guys, so much awesome new-post stuff I want to respond to, I will come back!

But I just wanted to say I have been reading

selenak's DW reviews of the podcast and I have actually been trying to listen to it! Podcasts are for me like... like watching video is for

mildred_of_midgard :P I will keep trying, though. Possibly if I hit just the right confluence of mental preparedness for it I can get through it, because the content is great and I love his sense of humor :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, ha! The salon hive mind at work again. :D

Podcasts are for me like... like watching video is for [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard :P

Awww, too bad. Podcasts (or lectures) are normally like video for me as well--it's the "processing information via audio" part that's the problem. But this guy checks all my boxes for something I can listen to while doing something else (walking in my case). My wife listened while knitting; would that help?

Interesting that you can watch shows but not do podcasts, but all brains are different.

the content is great and I love his sense of humor :D

It is indeed an excellent podcast, and I'm glad I found it, almost completely by accident. I'm glad Google search results turned up the good German history podcast and not the one I was looking for! I don't think I would have tried a second time if I'd hit the dud first.

Selena, as the only one of us who doesn't have a problem listening to podcasts, do you have plans for any of the other ones Dirk recommended?

Cahn, come back soon!

Edited Date: 2022-11-29 11:42 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

I've just started the story of Byzantium, and also want to try out Thugs and Miracles. Though not the Italy one, because the one sample episode about Matilda was a bit too cutesy at times for my taste.

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-11-30 07:43 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

selenak - Date: 2022-12-05 08:22 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: News from the Middle Ages

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-05 09:08 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

The difference is the video! This is also part of how I got into opera -- modern opera direction (as opposed to e.g. even the 1980's) is a lot more "cinematic," a lot more about the characters visually reacting to each other than just standing still and singing. Now, I also have a reputation for not paying attention to visual stuff, so idk why it makes such a difference -- I think I don't need super good quality visuals, but I do work a lot better with them.

Sadly I already have audio for knitting -- I do it during work meetings :D But I may be able to listen to it in the car -- will report back :)

From:

cahn

I admit, if we ever meet in person, I'm just going to embarrass myself. ;)

This is me :P Fortunately Selena was nice enough not to mention my ch's (and other wild mispronounciations) :)

during the time of the Pornocracy (will never get tired of that term)

Lol! So say we all.

I agree!

- In olden times, popular acclaim was perfectly kosher.
- Then, as part of goody two-shoes popes cleaning up the Church, in 1059 a synod set up actual formal election rules, which involved the cardinals having to make the selection. Only after the election by the cardinals did the rest of Rome get to acclaim the choice (but not make the choice).
- Gregory becomes pope by popular acclaim in 1073, whoops.

Haha, wow, this is awesome.

From:

selenak

You didn't mention my German accent, either!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

My inner historical linguist has decided it wants to write a comment, so here we go.

The reason "pornocracy" is such a hilarious word in the twenty-first century is because the modern meaning of "porn" is a slang term for sexually explicit material.

But my inner historical linguist feels obliged to state that 19th century Protestant German theologians who knew their Greek at least well enough to read the New Testament knew that πόρνη meant "prostitute" in Greek, and they coined "pornocracy" to mean that Rome was being run by the popes' mistresses. "Or, to give them their proper name, whores," in the words of 18th century Protestant German "theologian" FW. (From the opening of his 1722 Political Testament.)

So it's a very misogynistic term as originally intended, though as a product of the late twentieth century, I can't help telling my inner historical linguist to be quiet, it obviously means the rule of sexually explicit material. :P

From:

luzula

Your inner historical linguist will always have an audience. : )

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Good to know! I resisted writing this one as long as I could, because I know I have a tendency to go on about the history of words, and this is the history salon, not the historical linguistics salon. ;)

Oh, man, now I'm imagining what would happen if the people I knew when I went to grad school got together for an online historical linguistics salon, and it would be SO GREAT. Why do we have a university model when the salon model works so much better?? :P

From:

luzula

Well, I mean, I would not diverge from the subject of history salon too far. For example, I would not start writing here about how excited I am about the two new-to-me liverwort species Riccardia palmata and Tritomaria exsectiformis that I just determined under the microscope! Because that is just too far off topic. (Ha ha, sorry for doing so anyway.)

But I feel like historical linguistics is definitely related enough, especially when you're writing about a word that has come up a lot. : )

I know! The salon model is great. It's how I learned biology, really, though I haven't thought about it that way.

Re: Pornocracy

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mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-01 10:09 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pornocracy

From:

luzula - Date: 2022-12-01 10:20 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pornocracy

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-01 10:30 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Pornocracy

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-04 05:14 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

I think the university model at its best is actually supposed to be kind of like an in-person salon? But agreed, in practice it often doesn't work that way, and I imagine it can depend a lot on the field and the professors involved, I think. (Parts of grad school, in particular, were a lot like salon for me, partially because my field was small and tight-knit, and partially because my advisor was in the process of building a salon-like institute at the time. It's the part about academia that I miss the most. Although admittedly it would have been hard for someone to come in and learn everything from scratch, the way you guys were so nice to do for me at the genesis of salon :) But I definitely knew other people whose grad school experiences were emphatically not salon-like!)

From:

cahn

hahahaha okay whoreocracy is also misogynistic, but I'm glad they called it pornocracy just because I think it's so hilarious :D

From:

cahn

How you can tell the podcast is accumulating American listeners: our podcaster at the start of one episode has to defend himself against the charge of presenting the Popes as always evil and being mean about churchmen.

Haha, maybe these are non-religious American listeners, because as i've mentioned before, as someone who was brought up in a largely Protestant culture my view was "weren't all the Popes evil?" :P

BUT they actually to know their theology, to have studied it, and they had opinions on it (beyond "do as I say", I mean)

Ah, this I didn't know!

From:

selenak

Oh yes. Lorenzo de' Medici would be a bishop's seat and the cardinal's hat for his son Giovanni, but still expect Giovanni to study in Pisa, and be good at it (and be rewarded if he did well). Rodrigo Borgia also sent his son Cesare to study in Pisa in addition to making him a bishop, and later a Cardinal, and just to round the budding theologians from Pisa off, Alessandro Farnese also studied in Pisa. (I thought they were all in the same class, so to speak, but

liraen reminded me this is fiction; Alessandro studied a few years earlier, though Giovanni and Cesare were the same age and had some of the same professors.) That's two future Popes and the most notorious condottiere of the era, and I often wondered what their teachers later thought. :)

Rodrigo Borgia himself studied at the university of Bologna (the oldest and still one of the most challenging of the European universities - bear in mind here he was from Spain, so Bologna wasn't something nearby or easy to get into). What I'm getting at here, again: as a Renaissance prince of the church, you or your family probably bought that office or got through some wheeling and dealing, if you didn't have a mistress, you were probably Charles V's old teacher from the Netherlands and doomed to have a very brief papacy, and you better were a first class power player because between the French and the HRE duking it out on Italian territory, the Turks invading and that English guy starting his own shop, you needed to be - BUT the one thing even Luther could not have accused you off would have been a lack of proper education. Whereas the Popes during the Pornocracy seem to have been chosen at random by the two main Roman families on the principle of "who's available and will do what Marioza or Theodora tell him to do?"

as someone who was brought up in a largely Protestant culture my view was "weren't all the Popes evil?" :P

St. Peter: Thanks a lot.
Clement II/Bamberg-loving Suidger: *looks hurt*
Sylvester II: And me a more succesful clerical Voltaire; just ask Mildred. And a Judith Tarr main character.
Adrian VI: Are you a Cardinal determined to off me?

Edited Date: 2022-12-04 02:34 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

That's two future Popes and the most notorious condottiere of the era, and I often wondered what their teachers later thought. :)

Heh, that does sound... very interesting for their teachers!

St. Peter: Thanks a lot.

Oh, you're okay, St. Peter! I only mean after 300 AD or so :P (actually, this might be my-church-specific)

Everyone else, sorry! :P :) (oh man, I still have to (re)read Ars Magica! I started it and gosh I remember absolutely nothing about it!)