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:

mildred_of_midgard

Haha, I figured after last post you'd change the title. :)

The changing ideas of conception was at least partly 18th century, though! To which I have the following to add, which I ran across today. Lorenzo Nannoni, prominent surgeon in Florence in the late 18th century

...always remained faithful to the doctrine that science was meant to serve people, not people science. He declared artificial insemination in human beings to be ridiculous, no matter what the great Lazzaro Spallanzani said to the contrary. Who is she, he asked, "who would prefer an annoying little squirt to a sweet, pleasant, virile instrument and then abstain from the use of the latter for nine whole months, just to test the thesis of a philosopher?"

Since I'm currently on hold from the podcast and the Middle Ages, and am reading a bio of Leopold II, you're going to get more 18th century from me in this post tomorrow. I'm also going to move the most recent Trenck comment here for ease of discussion.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Relocated from the last post.

in fact, since the one to her was not different to the ones to the others.

But in BLOOD? You seem rather blase about this part. Mind you, I am blase about stealing bones for propagandistic purposes, seen it a million times, yawn, so maybe we just have different ideas of what constitutes "more bizarre" in history. ;) (The problem with Putin is that he's happening *now*, and we all agree the past is a terrible place to live and we want the present to be nothing like it, instead of exactly like it.) (That was a reference to an email exchange, for those of you who are reading this in confusion right now.)

I don't recall right now, alas. Only cups and carvings made by him.

If you don't recall any blood-writing, and I don't recall any blood-writing, I'm going to assume this is a new discovery.

Though some further googling around says he wrote in his memoirs about writing in blood in his bibles during the Magdeburg imprisonment. Perhaps you read it and didn't consider it noteworthy enough to tell us. ;)

These two pages are the "Register", which I was translating as "table of contents", written on the first two blank pages of the digitized Bible.

This is one of the pages referred to in the table of contents, item 5, that refers to Amalia, but I can't quite read all the handwriting here or in the table of contents. Unfortunately, item 3 in the table of contents, the letter to Amalie, doesn't come with a page number, so I'm not sure where in the book it is (presumably some unnumbered blank page), and I haven't yet been successful in tracking that one down.

They were not kidding about the drawings! He's a pretty good artist, especially considering the limitations of the materials he has to work with! Which, having searched for "blood" through the memoirs, I find:

After the first relief, [the guard] handed me a wire, round which a sheet of paper was rolled, also a piece of small wax candle, which came luckily through the grate ; I got likewise some sulphur, a piece of burning tinder, and a pen: I now had a light, cut my finger, and my blood served for ink.

And also:

Not being allowed ink, I did not write less than eight volumes with my blood, one of which I received from the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel after I was liberated.

Judging by some googling I've done, he means that he wrote in the margins and blank pages of 8 books he was provided to read, not that he wrote 8 volumes from beginning to end. Still!

Anyway, unless you can make out all the handwriting, with your superior knowledge of German, this might be a job for

prinzsorgenfrei.

cahn, continuing to do my best to keep you entertained with the shenanigans of history! (In between lengthy foreign policy discussions, which I realize no one finds as interesting as I do.)

From:

luzula

Who is she, he asked, "who would prefer an annoying little squirt to a sweet, pleasant, virile instrument and then abstain from the use of the latter for nine whole months, just to test the thesis of a philosopher?"

Ha ha ha! I wonder if he had tried that as a pick-up line. "Who are you to abstain from my sweet, pleasant, virile instrument?".

From:

mildred_of_midgard

New findings!

- Werner Vogel has published an edition of Trenck's blood-writings from this Bible.

- Somebody else reviewed the edition, and I was able to get a copy of the review.

To summarize the review...

One, it answered my most important question, which is: was this really written in blood, or was Trenck just exaggerating again?

According to the reviewer, the editor of the book, who used to be an director of the Prussian Secret State Archives, says Trenck's claim to have written all this stuff in blood is proven.

All right, then! 8 volumes in blood it is! (Most were given away or lost, the existence of only 3 can be proven today, and only one is the archives.)

Second, the contents of his writings in this Bible can be divided into three parts:

1. A summary of his life.
2. Poetry, narratives in ballad form, and religious and moral reflections.
3. Biblical commentary.

The summary of his life is definitely along the lines of his memoirs, which means protesting waaay too much about how he's totally innocent and a victim of the universe and none of this is his fault.

The second part is why there hasn't been an edition before this: Trenck's success with women was supposed to have been legendary, and even by 18th century standards, his writings here are super libertine. And that's why no edition was published before 2014.

In the third part, Trenck has *opinions*, which are basically:
1. God created us as libertines, so why not. It makes him happy when we enjoy ourselves.
2. I'm not an atheist, atheism is bad.

The drawings are mostly not included, but Vogel says there will be another, special edition with drawings.

Nothing about Amalie in this review. I am tempted by the edition itself, but shipping costs to the US, which effectively double the cost of the book, are making me hesitate.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So I just made a connection of two things we learned at disparate points in salon.

Once, long ago near the beginning of salon, I found some Saxon noblewoman had adopted Fredersdorf in the 1740s and made him heir to her estate in Saxony. He accepted but delegated the management of it to someone else, because he was much too busy.

Then, last year, Selena did a write-up on the founding of the Kiekemal colony, the one where Fredersdorf allegedly got dismissed for embezzlement (and I'm writing a paper arguing that, no, he didn't, but actually Pfeiffer was found guilty and everyone who said he was found innocent was wrong). In the course of this episode, one of the entrepreneurs of the endeavor is Colonel Trachenberg, who acquires a brewery, and then things get weird and complicated. Details in Rheinsberg. Our conclusion was, "The whole Trachenberg - Fredersdorf - Marschall transfers do look pre arranged and shady, but if Fredersdorf sold the lands to Frau von Marschall for the same sum he originally provided, then it looks to me that the one personal profit he made out of this was via the brewery and making the colonists buy his beer. That he told Frau von Marschall she wouldn't have to give them rent- and tax-free years was dastardly towards the colonists, but not profitable to him personally, as he no longer owned the lands in question by the time the colonists started to work on them."

Well, today, on my continuing quest to find archival material, I found the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, which contains a whole bunch of material related to Kiekemal, and which I think must have been Emmi Wegfraß's source.

One of the descriptions of archive records goes like this: "Schenkung eines Wohn- und Brauhauses zu Köpenick sowie des Vorwerkes Kiekemal vom Oberst von Trachenberg an seinen Adoptivsohn dem Geheimen Kämmerer Fredersdorf, 1752": "Donation by Colonel von Trachenberg of a residential building and brewery in Köpenick as well as the outbuildings in Kiekemal to his adoptive son, the secret chamberlain Fredersdorf, in 1752."

So I went and looked up, who was that Saxon noblewoman who adopted Fredersdorf? And lo, it was Baroness von Trachenberg and her husband Colonel Baron von Trachenberg (who had transferred to Prussian service). And the adoption and transfer of the estate in Saxony were taking place in...drumroll...1752. There was this whole complex-sounding business arrangement between Fredersdorf and the Trachenbergs (unfortunately, pages are not included in the Google book sample, so I might have to order a copy).

Glancing at Wegfraß's account (which I have yet to read for myself), she is aware that Fredersdorf is Trachenberg's adoptive son, but doesn't say anything about any other business arrangements they have going on in 1752 in Saxony.

Nor does the author of the book that goes into great detail about the Saxon dealings seem to have any idea about Kiekemal beyond what's in Wikipedia.

So...One, further research is required. I obviously need to read Wegfraß (which is on my list for when I'm more actively working on this paper), and I think I need to order the book with the Saxon dealings and read it (relying on Wikipedia or at best Fahlenkamp, and not citing a source either way, is not great, and we found other issues with this book in the past, but it's better than nothing).

Two...is it just me, or did the appearance of prearranged dealings just get more pronounced? I'm not saying Fredersdorf intentionally embezzled the colonists, I'm just saying his relationship with Trachenberg is not a one-off limited to this affair. They seem to be deep in each other's pockets. My Poirot spidey sense is tingling and saying this lead should be explored.

Curiouser and curioser!

From:

selenak

Let me add that one reason why the passage where he says he used his own blood for writing in his memoirs probably didn't remain in my memory (or was in my original write-up) was that I found the "Fritz had me chained to my own tombstone" claim far more sensational (and this one I remembered) - writing with your own blood for years, though, is admittedly more hardcore. BTW, I do wonder why he wasn't allowed ink, because I seem to recall Volz said at least in the last stage of his imprisonment, he was allowed prostitutes, and I would hope the later are more expensive than the former. Then again: probably not during the 7 Years War, given lots of women forced to earn money with their husband dead on the one hand, and supply difficulties of material on the other. But that would account only for the later years of his imprisonment.

I also wonder why Fritz was ready to release him to the French in 1755 (which only fell through because the ship to the colonies had already taken off, and then the next year there was war) and still would not provide ink. Let's not forget, other prisoners in the same institution included the Abbé de Prades, who cleaned out his fellow prisoners with card games.

Trenck's success with women was supposed to have been legendary

Here I have to add the phrasing in the German review "legendär gewesen sein sollen" - the conditionalis - makes it sound a bit sceptical. Also, I don't think we have anyone's word but Trenck's on it, because I don't recall contemporary accounts referencing him by people who haven't read his memoirs.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Truly, Trenck is so over-the-top that it's hard to choose what is the MOST outrageous. :D

I would hope the later are more expensive than the former.

Glancing at his memoirs, he was writing in his blood to smuggle illicit messages out of the prison, and I feel like not being allowed ink is not a terribly uncommon thing for prisoners. Fouquet, for example, was writing in his books in invisible ink because he wasn't allowed real ink, and he had a chemistry background that allowed him to construct it out of the materials at hand.

Trenck: Who needs a chemistry background when you have BLOOD??

Fouquet: I said invisible. I was only caught because of the extraordinarily unlikely coincidence of a bolt of lightning striking an arsenal of gunpowder, exploding the tower, and starting a fire that warmed up the air in my room enough that the ink showed on the paper! That's an act of god that I could not have been expected to account for.

I also wonder why Fritz was ready to release him to the French in 1755 (which only fell through because the ship to the colonies had already taken off, and then the next year there was war) and still would not provide ink.

Well, that is a mystery indeed. Perhaps he was afraid Trenck would use the ink to organize another prison escape? Being allowed out under custody of the French is not the same as being allowed to break out on your own terms.

Here I have to add the phrasing in the German review "legendär gewesen sein sollen" - the conditionalis - makes it sound a bit sceptical.

Yep, my intention was to convey that with "was supposed to," but thank you for making it explicit.

Edited Date: 2022-11-28 01:32 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thanks to the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, I have one of his testaments! Given that we've found a wide variety of names for him, it's nice to have "Carl Ernst Reinhardt (sp?) von Keith" in his own handwriting.

Citation: Rep 4A Testamente Nr. 8828

No, I do NOT understand why they have to cover up some of the text with a color-checker. ??? But I have alerted the ever talented

prinzsorgenfrei to our need!

ETA: Wow, is your boss not expecting work from you for two months good for salon productivity! (Back pain efforts, the reason for this time off/reduced time, have been unfruitful so far...but detective work continues apace in the meantime.)

Edited Date: 2022-11-27 05:35 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So I'm reading Peham's bio of Leopold II, which Selena had read and summarized for us a while back. (Still mad I can't find Wandruszka's bio for sale online anywhere!) Some commentary:

1. MT as mom.

MT forbade the governesses to speak baby talk to the kids, and also gave orders that none of the kids should be allowed to bond with one particular chamberwoman, lest the kids refuse to get dressed or otherwise behave except for their favorite.

Me reading this, with a modern understanding of developmental psychology: "No, MT, no!!!"

Peham: "From a modern perspective on childrearing and psychology, MT made a significant mistake, since this made it difficult for the kind of mother-child bond that's necessary for childhood development to arise."

She says Leopold seems to have suffered from this lack of mother-child bond, and that was responsible for his lifelong pronounced mistrust of others. Now, given how many kids she had and how radically different they all turned out, I don't think you can do simplistic cause-effect here, if only because kids have different needs...but there is evidence that this is not how you stack the deck in a kid's favor.

Unfortunately, Leopold grew up to do exactly the same with his kids. His instructions, from which Peham quotes, specify that the children should be taught to converse indifferently with everyone in their surroundings, and not show a special fondness for anyone in particular.

This "best of intentions" approach to not letting kids bond reminds me of how the US foster system used to work: they didn't want kids bonding with their foster parents, because they'd be heartbroken when they had to leave. And when they had to leave, contact had to be cut off immediately and completely, so that the kids could "move on." Not until, I think, the 1980s and 1990s did biologists and psychologists start to realize that one of the primary emotional needs of mammalian children is stable bonds during the formative years. (Granted that I had stable parental bonds and turned out like Leopold anyway*, there is a mixture of nature and nurture at play here, but...yeah.)

* I saw the phrase "he had brains for a heart" in Wikipedia when looking at Habsburgs named Leopold earlier, and I went, "Yes! Exactly! Relatable." :P

Also on the MT parenting front, whenever prominent foreign visitors came to court, she would be all, "Okay, gather all the kids together for a Hallmark moment that makes it look like I spend a lot of time with them! It's PR time!" Peham refers to this as "playing a comedy" for visitors.

What she apparently did was spend more time than usual for her class writing out instructions on her kids education and supervising the results, but in terms of being the warm and loving mom in their lives...she apparently exaggerated that for effect, and her actual interactions with them varied wildly based on which kid we're talking about.

Her obsession with pedagogy, by the way, extended to the point where she later didn't want to her adult kids raise their own children their way, but instead just to follow the instructions she wrote out for her grandchildren. This especially drove Joseph and Leopold crazy, because they had inherited her obsession with pedagogy and had their own ideas, which didn't always align with MT's!

A couple of Leopold ideas that jumped out at me: The kids don't get a vacation or recreation day ever. Even Easter is just a regular day, only the activities are different.

I see you get your time-off policies from your mom, Leopold. ;)

One thing he didn't get from Mom: no letting his kids learn to play cards! Chess, yes, but no cards. (I have to wonder if that was a dig at her.)

2. Peham (1987) is homophobic and describes Isabella's feelings for MC as an "unnatural love." Boo.

3. Reforms!

Now, being me and not being Selena, I am *here* for Leopold's reforms and don't need a human interest angle (one of the reasons I wanted to read this book for myself), and indeed, the reforms are *very* *very* interesting if you're me, so I'm going to write up my favorites.

The Leopold reforms in Tuscany that I've read about so far revolve largely around agriculture. Now, way back in Florence's heyday, it was the city of industry that we all know and love. But by the 18th century, the flourishing cloth industry has died out, and Tuscany is predominantly an agricultural state.

Unfortunately, it's an agricultural state still being run by medieval and Renaissance laws that haven't adapted at all to the early modern period, and, at least according to our author, that's why there are famines and such. After Leopold, no more famines, despite bad harvests.

Things I did not realize:

- Tuscany was still cobbled together from several different states that had different laws, rights, and internal tolls.

- Only Florentines were full citizens with all the rights.

- The guilds were still around, making sure you couldn't practice a trade unless you were a member of the relevant guild.

- Primogeniture was legally enforced, because in olden times, the state decided big family businesses needed to be passed down intact in order for industry to flourish, and the Medici never chagned this. This meant that even when Leopold took over, younger sons still basically couldn't afford to marry, so there were tons of men and women going into the church for lack of any better way to support themselves. The ratio of monks, nuns, and other clergy to the population was way too high (4,428 out of 78,635 people), considering most of these people were not actually doing anything terribly economically productive.

Leopold changed all this.

- No more internal tolls, Tuscany is one unified economic entity now. (And dramatically reduced tariffs and restrictions on external trade.)

- No more Florentines having special rights, everyone is a citizen.

- He got rid of the guilds and said his subjects could practice any trade they felt inclined to, as long as it was an honest trade.

I was actually kind of surprised the guilds were still around! They were such a big deal in the period from which I actually know something about Florence, but then Florence totally passes off my radar after its decline.

- You can now pass your lands to a younger, more competent son, or divide them up among the sons.

5. Selena told us that Leopold introduced a law to treat mental illness the same as any illness, not as demonic possession. Not only that, but he developed this amazing public hospital:

Patients received better medical care. Rooms were swept daily and washed twice a week, more fresh air was blown into the rooms from enlarged windows, and perfume was sprayed to cover up bad odors. Every newcomer was immediately washed, his hair and nails trimmed, the men shaved. All patients received hospital nightshirts. For food they received twelve ounces of bread, four and a half ounces of wine, and three ounces of meat twice a day, more than most ate and drank at home. No class distinctions were made, for those who had no money received free treatment and medication. Those who had sufficient income had to pay strictly according to their income. Medical students and 50 paid servants were on constant duty for the 1,034 beds to attend to the patients' needs. In 1783 a number of laws and ordinances underpinned the medical care of the populace. At that time, medical care in Florence was at a high level compared to other countries.

6. At one point, Peham says that Leopold had good luck in appointing ministers that he trusted, and that his government had greater ministerial stability than in most of the rest of Europe, where princes were jealous of their ministers, and that this helped with the reforms.

But then in most places I've read, the emphasis is all on Leopold not being able to trust his ministers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7. On the grounds that only defensive wars are legitimate, and standing armies are not, Leopold gets rid of the army and navy, and replaces it with a citizen militia that's only to be called out in times of invasion. Apparently, he wrote up this whole one-sided treaty of neutrality, stating to all Europe that Tuscany would remain neutral in any wars, and that it was therefore not okay to invade Tuscany ever. This never got published, but he maintained a foreign policy of neutrality anyway. (Peham says this was his only reasonable option given his resources and foreign policy situation.)

Apparently, Tuscan troops had been called forward during the Seven Years' War to serve in Bohemia, and they had been useless, and Leopold, who witnessed this, was like, "Yeah, no. Tuscan troops are just for defending Tuscany, there will be no sending them to fight in Austrian or anyone else's wars."

8. One really interesting thing is a compare and contrast with another book I'm reading, Eric Cochrane's Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: 1527-1800. Over and over again I read the same paragraph, once in German by Peham and once in English by Cochrane. You know that passage I quoted from Peham about the hospital? Here's Cochrane's version of this same reform:

At the same time, the treatment of patients at the hospital was notably improved. Every corner was swept daily and mopped twice a week. Bigger windows were put in to improve ventilation, and perfume was regularly sprayed in the wards to banish bad odors. Anyone brought into the reception room was immediately admitted, washed, given a hair- and nail-cut and a shave, put in a hospital nightshirt (camicia, gabbanella, e berretto), and assured of 8 ounces of bread, 10-1/2 ounces of wine, and 3 ounces of meat twice a day—which is more than most of them ever ate at home. Whoever could not pay was assured of free treatment, free medication, and even free house-calls after discharge, without the slightest discrimination. Whoever could pay was charged strictly in proportion to his income. A staff of medical students and fifty “paid servants” (not a bad proportion for 1,034 beds) was constantly on duty “to answer all calls from said patients even for the most menial service.” And in 1783 a new set of regulations was issued, regulations which completed the redefinition of medicine as public health rather than private treatment and made Florentine medicine fully worthy “of the enlightenment that is the honor of our century.”

There's no way the commentary "which is more than most of them ever ate at home" and "more than most ate and drank at home" is two people independently writing about the same factual events.

Here's another example, one of many. Peham on a hot air balloon incident:

Once, on February 2, 1788, a successfully launched balloon suddenly burst over the Piazza della Signoria and tumbled down onto the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Now many Florentines became skeptical and thought that the time of air travel was by no means as close as the newly founded "Academia Fiorentina" thought.

Cochrane:

When, on February 2, 1788, a balloon that had been successfully suspended in mid-air over the Piazza della Signoria suddenly went crashing into the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, many Florentines became skeptical as well:

Behold the mob there, gazing at the sky,
pushing, shoving, all for . . . know you why?
Well, someone’s made a ball of paper fly! (Lorenzo Pignotti, “I palloni volanti”)

They finally concluded that the age of air travel was not nearly as imminent as the Accademia Fiorentina thought it to be.

This happens so many times that I checked to see if Peham (1987) was citing Cochrane (1973), and sure enough. Maybe this is normal among historians and I'm just not used to finding people's sources so easily, but I'm just taken aback by how close the paraphrasing is.

The two authors do not always agree, though! If you want an antidote to Leopold-stanning, check out Cochrane. He's not a fan. And sometimes they come to exactly opposite conclusions, like this.

Peham:

Leopold was adept at selecting his employees. He chose them not by birth or recommendation, but by personal merit, knowledge, experience, and rectitude. Over time, Leopold attracted more and more Tuscans to his court in order to avoid being spied on by his mother and brother in Vienna. By the end of his reign, his closest associates were almost exclusively locals.

Cochrane:

Pietro Leopoldo contradicted his own standard of promotion through talent alone by excluding Florentines from most subordinate positions. For another thing, he occasionally reverted to Habsburg tradition in preferring foreigners to nationals.

Now, those could both be true: excluding Florentines from subordinate positions is not incompatible with attracting non-Florentine Tuscans to court for top positions. And an "occasional" exception to his own standard isn't inconsistent with normally selecting based on merit. But the emphasis is exactly opposite in a way that's striking.

Likewise, Peham:

Nevertheless, because of his suspicions, he had officials transferred from one ministry to another so that they would not become too accustomed to a particular superior. Overall, Leopold's bureaucracy, and thus the bureaucracy, proved to be more efficient and cheaper, and it was perfectly capable of executing the laws enacted by "His Royal Highness". But it could not be prevented that a few bureaucrats were established who only did what they were told to do. Leopold and Gianni often complained about it.

Cochrane:

Finally, he was careful “to move employees frequently around from one department to another,” not for the purpose of training them but for the purpose of preventing “their becoming too attached to [any particular] superior.”...The policy did have one notable advantage. It made the bureaucracy more efficient, less costly, and thoroughly “capable of carrying out and enforcing the [laws] that Your Royal Highness may be pleased to introduce,”...But it also had some notable disadvantages. It encouraged the advancement of mediocrities, like the “poor, proud gentleman of little talent and application” who “went happily ahead . . . with full honors” by doing no more than he was told to do. It left bureaucrats with no other means of self-expression than spontaneous slow-downs, about which both Gianni and Pietro Leopoldo constantly complained.

Same policy, different emphases. One makes it sound like the bureaucracy works really well with the exception of a few bad apples, the other makes it sound like the system encourages this, and bureaucratic obstruction is a way of life.

Given how closely Peham is following Cochrane, and how close the facts in these paragraphs are, I wouldn't be surprised if the more positive take in Peham isn't an independent reassessment based on looking at the same evidence, but simply a rose-colored rephrasing of Cochrane's own assessment.

And that is where I am, halfway through Peham. Perhaps more to come if I feel like writing it up!

Cochrane, btw, is long and dense, but not a bad read. He definitely has opinions and a personality that shows through, which always makes a firehose more bearable. Most authors dumping this much info on you don't manage to be this readable, although Goldstone he is not, nor even Blanning. Maybe a step above Beales. There are a *ton* of numbers and data, so not for everyone, and I am massively skimming (and skipping the 17th century stuff for now). But if anyone ever wanted to set fanfic in 17th or 18th century Florence, this would be an absolute gold mine.

Edited Date: 2022-11-28 12:26 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

NB: This is neither comprehensive nor anything I'm knowledgeable about. This is "stuff I've figured out in the last two days that helps put some other stuff, especially Leopold's reforms, in context."

Mercantilism: Mercantilism was the dominant economic theory in Europe in the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. It goes like this.

Wealth consists in the amount of money (bullion) a state has. Because this is a finite and stable quantity, economics is a zero-sum game, and a state can only expand at the expense of its neighbors. The goal is to increase exports (other states give you money--good) and reduce imports (you give other states money--bad). This means protectionism, monopolies, and high tariffs.

Physiocracy: Physiocracy was a short-lived economic theory in the 18th century. It was developed in reaction to mercantilism and its shortcomings. It goes like this.

Wealth consists in agriculture. Only farmers are producing new wealth, industry and everything else is just working with what you have. In order for agriculture to flourish, you need to facilitate trade of grain by removing monopolies and tariffs, and let competition and the balance of supply and demand work things out.

Physiocracy is the precursor to classical economics, and yes, this is exactly when Adam Smith is writing.

Specific application of physiocracy: because only agriculture is productive, only land, or alternately its agricultural yield, should be taxed. Anything else comes from the land, so taxing it would just be taxing the same thing twice.

Cameralism: Cameralism is...I have seen a bunch of definitions and scholars arguing with each other, but for purposes of this oversimplified intro, you can think of it as basically mercantilism with more bureaucracy, as developed and practiced mostly by Germans, in the 18th and first half of the 19th century. Its practitioners are also called Antiphysiocrats: they believe in a strong government controlling a centralized economy. No points for guessing this one is popular in Prussia.

In the 1760s, the school of thought that's getting the most ink spilled on it, as far as I can tell, is physiocracy, but in practice, mercantilism and cameralism are going strong by governments that care less about theory.

With that as background, we have some more context for various figures from salon.

Leopold: Leopold's reforms have traditionally been called physiocratic. He and his advisors were well read in the works of the big physiocratic thinkers, they admired physiocractic thinkers, and one of the first things he did when taking over Tuscany was open up free trade on grain. He wrote a lot of things like "The state should only interfere with free trade when absolutely necessary," and he wiped out a lot of the mercantilist and even pre-mercantilist (a lot of Florentine laws went back to the days of the Republic) restrictions.

This was a big deal and gets a whole chapter in Peham, because when Leopold arrived, Tuscany was in the middle of its worst famine since the 14th century. As noted in the Leopold comment above, after Leopold's 1760s reforms, no more famines, not even in years of bad harvests. (Remember that in France, continuing bad harvests and famines/rising prices of bread were a proximate cause driving the Revolution.)

But! As gets pointed out a lot, including by Peham but also various other authors I'm reading, Leopold was not a doctrinaire. He did not subscribe wholesale to all of physiocracy's tenets, and especially the one where industry was inherently not productive.

His subjects like this, because even if Tuscany is now predominantly an agricultural state and its great industrial days are over, "Florentines were too well read in their own history to believe that manufacturing was really unproductive." So Leopold being flexible in his economic approach is popular.

It does, however, mean that when this one minister from Denmark sets off on an "economic Grand Tour" through Europe, hoping to see for himself how physiocracy works out in practice, he finds that of the two places where it was supposedly adopted, it wasn't really: Both in Tuscany and Baden, the implementers believed in the productivity of manufacturing and did not blindly follow what the French thinkers who'd developed physiocracy said.

Also, spoiler: attempts to implement something like physiocracy on top of the existing structures did not work in Baden and had to be abandoned.

Turgot: Famous minister of Louis XVI who tried and failed to fix the economy of France and prevent the French revolution was a physiocrat, or possibly an early classical economist (it gets fuzzy). Two of the big reforms he wanted to implement that came out of physiocracy were a single nationwide tax on land and free trade of grain.

If you look at the existing situation in France, you can see why he met with so much opposition. One, having a single tax on land means only landowners pay taxes. That means a lot of nobility suddenly has to bear the tax burden, and the whole point of being a noble was major tax exemptions. (This was not a thing in Tuscany and never had been, making Leopold's job easier.)

Two, removing limitations on the trade of grain would take power out of the hands of the rich and powerful who were able to speculate on grain and make a killing in years of bad harvests. Yes, this can happen under a free trade system too, and was one of the major objections to it by the cameralists, who thought the government should disallow capitalists stockpile grain and instead use their strong centralized power to ensure affordable prices in all years, but, the point is that the people who might benefit under the free trade system might not be the same people who are currently benefitting under the existing system, and the latter don't want to lose their existing benefits. No one ever wants to lose their existing benefits.

Note that pre-revolutionary France, like Tuscany when Leopold took over, was made up of many provinces that all had customs duties with all the other provinces, because they'd historically been separate, and they'd only agreed to be united if they could keep their own ways of doing things. So free trade of grain inside the country, never mind lifting tariffs on imports and limitations on exports, would have been a *big* step. Big enough, in the end, that it took a revolution.

Also! One of the reasons Turgot opposes French sending money to support the American Revolution is that, while he generally agrees with the principles of said Revolution, he has some issues with it, and one is the Founding Fathers deciding to have a super complicated tax system (me: *sob*) instead of a simple land tax.

Voltaire: Our antihero, who has written a scathing satire on everything, has written a scathing satire on physiocracy. It's called "L'homme aux quarante écus," or "The Man of Forty Crowns." I have not read the whole thing, but I read enough to get the gist of it: a small farmer who owns a plot of land and barely gets by (he has forty crowns a year) gets taxed under this single land tax system, but a rich minister who speculates in industry gets off scot-free, because industry is "unproductive." The man of forty crowns keeps asking what he can do to get ahead, and he's told, "Get married and have kids!" By having the guy ask increasingly penetrating questions about exactly what economic benefit he will get out of this, Voltaire skewers the proposition.

Pfeiffer: Pfeiffer, the guy who got imprisoned for embezzlement in the Kiekemal affair, was a cameralist. And not just a cameralist but a voluminously writing one. He wrote so much, and ended up founding the professorship of cameralism at Mainz, that he's one of the best known antiphysiocrats of his time and has had books written on him, one of which is a collection of essays called Physiocracy, Antiphysiocracy, and Pfeiffer, which I got for my Kiekemal research but which is heavily informing this write-up.

Pfeiffer agrees with classical economists in that he agrees that individuals act in their own self-interest, but he believes that this is as likely to lead to bad things and diminished overall utility as anything good. Because people are unaware that other people want to act in their own self-interest, and thus they behave badly toward each other. Most people don't understand why vice is bad and thus they are not capable of making good use of liberty.

But he also doesn't want the state to grow and grow and get out of control, which he realizes an absolute monarchy is prone to doing, so he advocates for a mixed monarchy.

To quote from the author of this essay, Frambach, "What is missing from Pfeiffer's considerations, from the modern point of view, is the idea of the market as an instrument of control, although he definitely treats its elements (price, demand and supply, production and consumption)."

Bielfeld: Our Freemason friend of Fritz at Rheinsberg and tutor to and friend of the Divine Trio is also a cameralist (and his Wikipedia article cares more about his writings on this subject than about more human interest topics, like how he sensibly ran away when AW started setting trees on fire). His stance is unsurprising, as I don't think Fritz would have been a big fan of being told he couldn't control things. :P

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:

selenak

What she apparently did was spend more time than usual for her class writing out instructions on her kids education and supervising the results, but in terms of being the warm and loving mom in their lives...she apparently exaggerated that for effect, and her actual interactions with them varied wildly based on which kid we're talking about.

Mind you, being a working monarch, she had a better excuse than other noble women/consorts of monarchs, not to mention the sheer number of kids. I think Pelham also misses out on one reason for the Big Family Public Picture, which wasn't exactly the post-Victorian "Royal/Imperial Family As Wholesome Model Family" idea of the mid 19th century onwards, but a demonstration of We Are A Big Sound Dynasty Of Many Marriable Members And Will Not Repeat Pragmatic Sanction Emergencies. I.e. MT herself and her sister had been the only surviving children of her father, her uncles had "only" produced a few daughters as well, and we all know how the Spanish Habsburgs had ended up. So within a 18th Century context, I see an important part of the image MT wanted to project was "Hey! No more sick, infertile Habsburgs! Lots of kids! Healthy! Of Sound Mind! A plus future monarchs! Because I'm that good!"

There's also the relative new territory of a female ruler who is a wife and mother at the same time. We already talked about the contradiction between "wifes should be subject to their husbands" (not just a thing for traditional Catholics but also most of the Enlightened Philosphers, though not all) and "being an absolute monarch and thus the ultimate authority", and how FS' unpopularity at the Viennese court after their marriage but before MT's ascension was to a great part caused by the expectation he'd rule through her because of the "natural" wife/husband relationship. Now, "being a mother is the highest calling any woman can have, and nothing and nobody should be more important to a woman than her children" is an even stronger (not just 18th century) dogma that goes into direct conflict with "a monarch should devote themselves foremost to the realm". Of the other contemporary female monarchs, Queen Anne (Stuart) had had lots of dead babies but no more living children by the time she became Queen and was widely seen as dominated by her favourites anyway, Anna Ivanova had no children, Anna Leopoldovna had children but was also seen as weak and in any event didn't reign long, and Elizabeth did not have children. Meaning that in that century, models of how to fulfill expectations of being a good monarch AND a good mother at the same time were none existant, but MT undoubtedly was aware that being seens as a BAD or neglectful mother (not bad parent! Specifically bad mother) would have been nearly as damaging to her reputation as being seen as a weak monarch.

All this said: would not have wanted to be a Habsburg kid any more than a Hohenzollern one. Well, if I had only these two to choose from, Habsburg, because FW, and a greater survival chance for my potential lovers as well as a greater chance to travel. But otherwise....

simply a rose-colored rephrasing of Cochrane's own assessment

I'm also reminded on our medieval podcast's version of young Henry IV's argument as to why he wants a divorce vs wikipedia's. They're not exactly different in content, but podcaster Dirk's phrasing makes Henry sound far more sympathetic. This said, it's of course always possible Peham has Wandruszka's take to back her up on her more Leopold-sympathetic phrasing, and I take it W. did a lot of original research.

From:

selenak

I dimly seem to recall Wegfraß thinks the adoption business was done for the Kiekemal occasion specifically. But yes, to me it looks like a part of a larger long term business arrangement between Fredersdorf and the Trachtenbergs.

Here's something tangentially I'm curious about: Did either of the Trachtenbergs outlive Fredersdorf? also, October 1752 is when Fredersdorf becomes engaged. I.e. before this point, presumably if he died his heirs would have been his biological family (surviving siblings, nieces and nephews), but would the adoption business also made the Trachtenbergs potential heirs? Because while usually the one who inherits is the one who gets adopted, not the one who adopts, I could see the Trachtenbergs (nobles) going as far as adoption of commoner Fredersdorf not simply for this one Kiekemal estate business or because that gives them an in with the powerful Chamberlain and Secret Councillor, but also because they think, he's really wealthy by now, but also very sickly, and if we're not v. old and sick ourselves, we might have the chance to outlive him and get part of that money.

...which would no longer be the case once Fredersdorf is actually married and doesn't only have a wife but the (theoretical) chance for children. But since the engagement doesn't happen until October 1752, earlier 1752 events would not have been affected by this from the Trachtenberg pov. Of course, I could be entirely wrong here, and the adoption would not have given the Trachtenbergs any claims on Fredersdorf's inheritance in any event, even if he'd died a bachelor.

From:

selenak

I refreshed my mind on Trenck via rereading my Volz-skewers-Trenck write-up, and it reminded me we have Austrian contemporary testimony on Trenck being a libertine (though not in the sense that he's catnip for the ladies), to wit, the first Austrian post-war envoy Ried writing to Kaunitz: Regarding Trenck, (...) it just depends on finding a good moment to petition the King. For now, I haven‘t achieved anything beyond making his imprisonment somewhat more bearable for him, and gotten permission to allow him to improve his conditions through third parties sending him money now and then. This man‘s regular behavior, however, is so badly that one can‘t take his party in public, for as soon as he sees the slightest hope to expect some help, he starts with his debaucheries. Not withstanding this, I still hope to free him; for those who have his fate in their hands are as much invested in his cause as I am.

BTW, I still want to know what exactly Trenck did for the Austrians in the first place to make them use considerable efforts on his behalf. (Only for him to blame them for things they actually weren't guilty of in the memoirs.) Also, I think I changed my mind again re: did Trenck at least flirt a bit with Fritz, never mind Amalie, not least due to all the Glasow stuff that's come up since, and while Volz proves Trenck was lying about being with Fritz at Soor and about when he joined the Prussian army, the conditions Fritz made to the Austrians for his ultimate release - not just that Trenck never puts his foot on Prussian soil again but, more importantly that he is forbidden by the Austrians to say anything about Fritz in either written or oral form ever - is at the very least suggestive of Trenck actually having something to say. Now, I'm with Volz that "I was Fritz' absolute fave until he found out about me and Amalie!" was Trenck making things up, not least because all those gossipy envoys and spies never mention him, whereas they report on other Fritzian faves, even short lived ones like Grigori the suicidal (?) hussar who got Fredersdorf temporarily kicked out of the royal tent. BUT since Trenck was actually at Hohenfriedberg, and certainly fits the swashbuckling, extrovert profile, maybe there was a one night stand, followed by this business with the he-swears-he-didn't spying for the Austrians?

(The tv show based on Trenck's memoirs from the 70s which I think I mentioned to you before had Fritz being reminded of Katte by Trenck and then being extra insulted (by implication, we're in the 1970s) that Trenck went for Amalie instead. Which is something Trenck himself does not suggest - not least because he has too much ego, I think, to imagine a scenario where Fritz likes him for something other than Trenck's own charms - but which works in fiction.)

From:

selenak

Last year when I read up on Margaret of Parma (and the other Margarets), an incident was mentioned in her biography which I kept wanting to research, and now I have. Turns out the incident in question is at the very least dubious, with a 1962 article referring to it as "discredited". So what am I talking about?

Reminder: after Alessandro de' Medici got murdered, Margaret after a short widowed interlude next got married by her father Charles V. to another papal relation, this one of the new Pope, Paul III, aka Alessandro Farnese. Margaret's husband, Ottavio, was even younger than teenage her, and they did not get on from the start, with Ottavio claiming he'd had her in the wedding night and Margaret scornfully saying he only wet himself, which he never forgave her for. She also refused to have sex with him for years until her grandfather-in-law the Pope talked her around, at which point Ottavio and Margaret reproduced, twins, and thereafter kept out of each other's ways again for the most part. But the guy who concerns us now is Ottavio's father and the Pope's son, Pier Luigi. Pier Luigi Farnese, whom his father had made Grand Captain of the Church (i.e. basically top general of the Papal army, i.e. Cesare Borgia's old job) had and still has a terrible reputation. That's not debated. What is debated is whether shortly before Margaret married Ottavio, he committed one particular crime: the "Rape of Fano". Essentially: raping a young bishop to death.

The facts, such as they can be ascertained, are these: Cosimo Gheri, Bishop of Fano, only 24 and thus a typical Renaissance prince of the church who inherited the job from his late uncle, died in September 1737. According to a laudatory account of him written by a former fellow student of his, Ludovico Beccadelli, he died of a fever (probably malaria); he got praised for his learning and devotion, and Fano historians have certified to his good works during his short time in office.

Pier Luigi Farnese had visited Fano in May 1537, and on that occasion, on May 23rd, did have dinner with the bishop alone, according to a letter of the bishop to Beccadelli. So far, so non-sensational. However, more than a year after the bishop's death, on November 18, 1538, an agent of Cardinal Conzaga's writes to his patron that a friend has seen in a bookstore at Nuremberg books about "il sanguinolento fatto d'armi di Pier Luigi col Vescovo di Fano". (Reminder, at this point, the Reformation is in full swing, Nuremberg has become majorly Protestant, and stories about papal bastards buggering bishops are eaten up with a spoon.)
By 1549, at which point Pier Luigi has been gruesomely killed by his new subjects in Parma and Paul III. has died more peacefully, there's a printed in English satire on the occasion of Paul III's death which does mention in detail, the story of Pier Luigi (or rather Peter Aloysius, an anglization which I have to admit sounds funny to me) having raped the young Bishop of Fano and the young guy dying of it afterwards. However, this wasn't the first take in English on this story. There's a far earlier one, from March 1539, written by one Richard Morryson who started out as a law student in Padua and living in the household of future Cardinal and last Plantagenet Reginald Pole, and then got recruited by Hilary Mantel hero Thomas Cromwell in whose service he wrote half a dozen tracts about the evils of the Catholic Church. In a March 1539 pamphlet, he gives us the "Pier Luigi and the Bishop of Fano" saga in incredible detail. Choice Tudor English quote, after Pier Luigi has come into town and the Bishop, being a polite host, has said that he and his palace are at the Captain (of the Church)'s disposal:

I knew the bysshoppe wonderfull well: he was undoubted, as well lerned a yonge man, as fewe were in Italy. (...) The Capytaine, after the byshop had bydden hym good nyghte, called 3 or 4 of his men to hym, tellynge them all of the byshops offer, sayinge, I lyke well this parte of the offer, that his body is at my commandemente, I intende to morrow int he mornynge to prove, whether he be a man of his worde or noo. If I canne not obteyne by fayre meanes, I intende to use your helpe, and have it by force.

The dastardly plan is followed up, the poor young bishop gets beaten up and raped by Pier Luigi. The bishop then comes up with a surprise twist: The byshop sayd, Sodom & Gomorrah sunke for this synne (...) woll not the emperour one day se lawes m ade for such syn executed? I trust to se his maiestie, er it be longe, I truste to be harde, and nothyinge doubt, but he woll se this ultrage, this vylanye, that thou haste done me, punished.

Pier Luigi, apparantly sure that Dad won't punish him but the Emperor (i.e. Charles V.) will, decides he better do something and has the Bishop poisoned. So far the 1539 Morryson pamphlet. The next and most famous take on the story is by Benedetto Varchi in his official Storia Fiorentina, commissioned in 1547. Here, the outrage happens as well, but somewhat differently:

In that same year a case took place, of which I do not remember having heard or read [...] a more execrable one [...] Messer Cosimo Gheri from Pistoia, Bishop of Fano, was aged twenty-four [...] when Lord Pier Luigi da Farnese (drunk of his own success and sure of his father's indulgence so that he was not to be chastised nor scolded, he went to the lands of the Church raping, either out of love or by force, how many young people he saw and liked) he left the city of Ancona to go to Fano, where a friar was Governor [...]. Having heard the coming of Pier Luigi and wishing to meet him, he asked the Bishop if he wanted to go to honor the Pontiff's son and Gonfalonier of the Holy Church; which he did, yet not very willingly. The first thing that Pier Luigi asked the Bishop was (but in his own and obscene words according to his custom, which was extremely disheartened) "how he enjoyed and had good time with those beautiful women of Fano". The Bishop, who was no less shrewd than good, acknowledging the question (and who made it) for what they were, replied modestly although somewhat indignant that "this was not his business" and, to draw himself out of that reasoning, he added: "Your excellency would do a great good to this city, which is all divided into factions, and through prudence and authority unify and pacify it". The next day, having planned what he intended to do, Pier Luigi sent (as if he wanted to reconcile the people of Fano) to call first the Governor, then the Bishop. The Governor left the room as soon as he saw the Bishop, and Pier Luigi began palpating and wrinkling the Bishop, wanting to do the most dishonest acts one could do with females. Because the Bishop, who was of little and very weak complexion [...] defended himself vigorously not only from him (who, being full of syphilis, almost couldn’t stand up), but from his other accomplices too, who were bidding to keep him still, he had him tied up [...]. Not only did they keep their naked daggers at his throat threatening him continually, if he moved, to slaughter him, but they also struck him with the tips and the knobs so that the signs remained there.

The bishop then dies after forty days of physical and emotional shock. In Rome only Cardinal Carpi dares to protest, the Pope instantly issues a bull of absolution (hasn't been found), and when the news reach Germany, the Lutherans have a blast deriding "this new kind of martyrdom of the saints". No threat to tell the Emperor is mentioned, nor any poisoning.

Now, the George B. Parks essay points out that Beccadilli, former fellow student of the bishop's, whose account is scandal free, quotes various letters from his schoolmate between Pier Luigi's May visit and the bishop's death in September which indicate normal activities until the last fifty days before his death during which he was sick, and also that he, the bishop, remained in Fano when Pier Luigi Farnese paid a return visit on July 5th, at which point he hadn't been ill yet. (Meaning, I presume, that if the bishop had been raped on May 23rd or 24th (depending on whether you believe the story where he gets raped the next day or the one where he gets raped the same day), one would expect him to be out of town for the return of his rapist.

Which sounds true enough, and also Varchi's description of Pier Luigi being so eaten by syphilis that he can't stand on his own is demonstrably false (he went on to live, lead armies and terrorize people, which involved a lot of riding under stressful conditions, for ten years more), but otoh, I don't see Pier Luigi completely in the clear on this one yet. Not least because the young Bishop is hardly unique in dying of a fever in Italy, and yet a year later you have gossip in very different places - Rome, Nuremberg, Britain, and a decade later Florence. Now, Nuremberg Protestants and Cromwell's pamphleteer are hardly unbiased chroniclers - they're Protestants invested in making the Papacy look as terrible as possible, and when for example Morryson, who at this point lives in England and is cut off from his earlier connections to Pole's household, gives us lengthy dialogue between Pier Luigi and the bishop, and Pier Luigi and his men, he's clearly making things up since he can't have witness reports on these. As for Varchi, Florence and Rome are into mutual loathing each other. But, different and ideologically motivated as these accounts are, they do agree on one thing: Pier Luigi raping the Bishop. And it's not like this young guy was famous so that his early death would have needed an explanation. (Like the disappearing Princes in the Tower.) So why does everyone fixate so quickly on this guy as Pier Luigi's victim? As for Beccadelli NOT mentioning anything unusual in his elogy on his dead friend, well, if you'll recall Formey's elogy of Peter Keith as referenced by Mildred manages to vaguely mention "circumstances" causing Peter to spend a decade abroad (escape attempt, what's that?). So if I were a member of the jury, I might not think there's enough to convict, but I would have still my doubts Pier Luigi didn't do something that people noticed. Not a gang rape or a gang beating with ensueing rape, maybe, but he could have made a pass?

(That he was at the very least bi in the modern sense and not always bothering with consent is certified; there's a letter from his father the Pope reproaching him for taking male lovers when on a official mission to the Emperor's court, and according to wiki another from the chancellor of the Florentine embassy detailing a man-hunt he had mounted in Rome to search for a youth who had refused his advances.)

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:

mildred_of_midgard

Huh! I wasn't familiar with this episode (if you mentioned it, I have long since forgotten), so seeing it from a detailed historiographical perspective was neat.

So if I were a member of the jury, I might not think there's enough to convict, but I would have still my doubts Pier Luigi didn't do something that people noticed. Not a gang rape or a gang beating with ensueing rape, maybe, but he could have made a pass?

Yeah, that seems reasonable. Smoke doesn't always mean fire, but after reading this account, I have a lot of questions.

the young Bishop is hardly unique in dying of a fever in Italy

Trufax! Cahn, if you listen to the podcast, you will get an example almost every episode. (A while back, after listening to a bunch of those episodes, my wife wanted to know how the Normans even survived setting up a kingdom in southern Italy. I said, probably the same way the Normans survived everywhere: the men showed up, spread their Y chromosomes, and procreated with the local women. Their descendants presumably had all the same mutations that allowed the locals to survive malaria in great enough numbers to sustain a population. Then I started reading this article on the history of malaria in southern Europe, because getting sidetracked is a way of life. :'D)

Morryson, who at this point lives in England and is cut off from his earlier connections to Pole's household, gives us lengthy dialogue between Pier Luigi and the bishop, and Pier Luigi and his men, he's clearly making things up since he can't have witness reports on these.

Yeah, and I admit, "If I canne not obteyne by fayre meanes, I intende to use your helpe, and have it by force" immediately made me suspicious, because people don't usually admit up front to their victims that they're not using fair means, they will usually try to rationalize why their use of force would be justified. Especially if they're trying to get said victim to give in without the immediate use of force.

another from the chancellor of the Florentine embassy detailing a man-hunt he had mounted in Rome to search for a youth who had refused his advances.

Wow, a manhunt? That's not just rape, that's a sense of entitlement and inability to take no for an answer that's hardcore.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So within a 18th Century context, I see an important part of the image MT wanted to project was "Hey! No more sick, infertile Habsburgs! Lots of kids! Healthy! Of Sound Mind! A plus future monarchs! Because I'm that good!"

This does make sense!

Of the other contemporary female monarchs, Queen Anne (Stuart) had had lots of dead babies but no more living children by the time she became Queen and was widely seen as dominated by her favourites anyway, Anna Ivanova had no children, Anna Leopoldovna had children but was also seen as weak and in any event didn't reign long, and Elizabeth did not have children. Meaning that in that century, models of how to fulfill expectations of being a good monarch AND a good mother at the same time were none existant

Huh, yeah, that is a really good point. That makes me wonder how Isabella Farnese handled her childrearing. Because while she wasn't a reigning monarch in her own name, she was dominating her husband, or at least perceived as such, and she definitely had her share of living children. (*checks* Six.)

Mostly what she's remembered for is driving an aggressive foreign policy to acquire more territory for her children to inherit. If she was perceived as a "good mother" in other regards, I haven't run across it in my reading. But then I also haven't read a bio of her.

I'll keep an eye out for that, that's interesting.

MT undoubtedly was aware that being seens as a BAD or neglectful mother (not bad parent! Specifically bad mother) would have been nearly as damaging to her reputation as being seen as a weak monarch.

Yep!

All this said: would not have wanted to be a Habsburg kid any more than a Hohenzollern one. Well, if I had only these two to choose from, Habsburg, because FW, and a greater survival chance for my potential lovers as well as a greater chance to travel. But otherwise....

Lol, well, and for me, because FS seems to have been a clear win over SD, even if you're Fritz the favorite. In addition to being a more nurturing dad than MT was a mother (and of course having way more free time), he wasn't driving a marriage policy that meant it was impossible to please both parents and setting up a no-win game for everyone. And you didn't have a 50% chance of being born a gender that meant you would be on the receiving end of abuse from him that would result in a "which parent was worse?" argument with your siblings later in life.

So Habsburgs, but, Fritz and Wilhelmine were allowed to bond to individuals, which is key even if you have two decent parents.

And MT had the Countess Fuchs, that seems a bit hypocritical! I can see Leopold going, "Well, this is all I've ever known, that's how you raise kids," but what the heck, MT?! You had her buried in the Habsburg crypt!

I'm also reminded on our medieval podcast's version of young Henry IV's argument as to why he wants a divorce vs wikipedia's. They're not exactly different in content, but podcaster Dirk's phrasing makes Henry sound far more sympathetic.

That is a great analogy! Same facts, radically different interpretations.

This said, it's of course always possible Peham has Wandruszka's take to back her up on her more Leopold-sympathetic phrasing, and I take it W. did a lot of original research.

True, and that is why I would love to get my hands on Wandruszka! Cochrane relies primarily on W too, btw, which makes their opposite takes even more interesting. We know W is a fan, so Cochrane must be getting his darker spin on Leopold from other, probably Italian (he was an Italian Renaissance scholar) sources.

Also, Cochrane informed me that Leopold had "notebooks full of pungent barbs [at Joseph] in a code that remained unintelligible until Adam Wandruszka broke it in the 1960s." If you told us this, I had forgotten.

Curse out-of-print books!

Well, it took me something like six months, but I got my own copy of Kiekemal by searching regularly, and I will keep searching for Wandruszka.

From:

selenak

Wow, a manhunt? That's not just rape, that's a sense of entitlement and inability to take no for an answer that's hardcore.

Yep. Mind you, "a youth" is different from "a Bishop" (i.e. prince of the church, noble with connections), and it's not like Pier Luigi couldn't think strategically. He had a fairly successful career as a condottiere before his father ever became Pope. The Farnese even managed to play their cards right during the Sacco di Roma - Pier Lugi fought for the Imperials, his brother Rannuccio for Pope Clement, when the imperial troops took the city, Pier Luigi "occupied" the family palace, thereby ensuring it wasn't sacked (while pretty much everyone else's palaces were), but because his brother meanwhile was holed up with the Pope (and Cardinal Dad Farnese) in San Angelo, Clement had no room for complaints against the general Farnese loyalty when the dust was settling.

However, no one I've seen is making the case Pier Luigi was anything but a ruthless Renaissance thug either before or after his father made Pope, and if he had good qualities, his Dad must have been the only one to see them. (Note: Alessandro Farnese the future Pope Paul III seems to have had all his known children with the same woman, Silvia Ruffini, and there are no other known mistresses, either. Which probably intensified the family bod. Also Alessandro/Paul III was nothing if not loyal; he defended and spoke well of his original patron, Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI, till his dying day, when it had been convenient for everyone else to pretend the Borgia had been the worst (as opposed to Spaniards daring to successfully interfere where only the Italian nobility wanted to go) and to distance themselves.) Pier Luigi's death was also one of these spectacularily nasty Renaissance events where he got stabbed to death and then his body was hung out of the window of his own palace. Since Charles V. (by then having joined the ranks of Pier Luigi's multitudes of enemies) had at the very least known about the conspiracy leading up to this, and likely greenlighted it, which grieving father Paul III. promptly accused the Emperor of in public, life for Margaret must have been very difficult. (Especially since her grandfather-in-law the Pope was the only one of her in-laws whom she actually got on well with and liked, and vice versa.)

(Margaret's two marriages: featuring two of the more infamous murders of the Renaissance.)

I admit, "If I canne not obteyne by fayre meanes, I intende to use your helpe, and have it by force" immediately made me suspicious, because people don't usually admit up front to their victims

Indeed. It sounds like the outline of drama scene more than like a real life event. What I found interesting isn't that Morryson has the whole event ending by poison (as opposed to a broken heart/soul like Varchi), but that he has the Bishop threaten to appeal to the Emperor in order to motivate the poisoning. Why do I find this interesting? Because if his pamphlet is from 1539, this is BEFORE the official fallout between Charles and the Farneses, and it's not like Charles "No, you're not divorcing my Aunt" V. was a good guy as seen by Morryson's patron Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII - there was no money in presenting him as a higher authority, either, you want your English readers to root for Henry as the ultimate authority in everything, after all.

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

I dimly seem to recall Wegfraß thinks the adoption business was done for the Kiekemal occasion specifically.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I need to read this.

Here's something tangentially I'm curious about: Did either of the Trachtenbergs outlive Fredersdorf?

Same thing I was curious about! But I couldn't find them in a quick google yesterday. I will have to put on my detective hat and try again.

Okay! She was 66 in 1752, childless, and the sole heir of her family (her brother had died unmarried). She was thrown out of a carriage thanks to a careless driver in April, she lay in bed in pain dictating her last will, she died June 1.

Her two heirs are her husband, Colonel Baron von Trachenberg, and her adoptive son, Fredersdorf. Her husband gets most of the inheritance, Fredersdorf gets an estate, but he has to pay Trachenberg 800 talers in cash every year, for his support in his old age.

Ah! He dies in May 1757, aged 68, so just after Fredersdorf retired (April 1757).

But, in 1752 Trachenberg is very concerned that Fredersdorf will die before him, so he goes and gets a notarized document from the Saxon authorities saying that the payment will be made even if Fredersdorf dies, and also that Fredersdorf's not allowed to sell or mortgage it. "800 talers a year," says the author, "that will be a heavy burden on Fredersdorf until the death of the baron."

Now to tie this in with the Kiekemal chronology, from the Rheinsberg post: "On July 7th 1752, Colonel von Trachenberg transfers all his claims on the Bock property plus the Kiekenmal land to Fredersdorf."

So first the Trachenbergs adopt Fredersdorf, then the wife leaves a property to him, then she dies, then her husband transfers the Kiekemal property to him, then a few months later (January 1753) Fredersdorf offers to sell the Kiekemal property to Frau von Marschall.

Then Fredersdorf dies a few months after Colonel Baron von Trachenberg. His heirs for the estate in Saxony are his surviving siblings and children of his predeceased siblings.

In conclusion, it was kind of a race for who would die first, the elderly Trachenberg or the sickly Fredersdorf, but it doesn't seem like Trachenberg was expecting an inheritance from Fredersdorf if he died childless (esp. since he was apparently very worried about not even being able to get any money from the estate that used to belong to his wife, never mind the stuff that had nothing to do with him).

That's what I've got so far! More discoveries no doubt await us.

I have to say, though, it is really interesting to be linking up the chronology of Fredersdorf and the Trachenbergs at Kiekemal with the chronology of Fredersdorf and the Trachenbergs at Rübenau in Saxony, which apparently no one has ever done before!

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:

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

BUT since Trenck was actually at Hohenfriedberg, and certainly fits the swashbuckling, extrovert profile, maybe there was a one night stand, followed by this business with the he-swears-he-didn't spying for the Austrians?

Maaaaybe! We've established Fritz had a thing for cheerful extraverts.

The tv show based on Trenck's memoirs from the 70s which I think I mentioned to you before had Fritz being reminded of Katte by Trenck

Oh, right, I remember this now! Huh. Well, now that we've seen one thing he and Katte had in common...I accept this as historical fiction!

In other news on Trenck's blood Bible, I found a journalist for a Magdeburg paper interviewing the editor of the book (who died just two years later, which may be why I haven't found a special edition of the book with illustrations). The parts I found most interesting:

Q: Did he really write in his blood?
Me: The question we all have, lol.
A: It was definitely human blood. We couldn't do a DNA test in 1975 to tell if it was *his* blood.

Q: What was the deal with him and Amalie and the alleged affair?
A: Nothing about that can be read in his writings. He admired (verehrte) her very much.
Me: But--but! You mean in this particular blood Bible? I guess that makes sense of why she didn't come up in the book review.

Q: What surprised you the most?
A: His beautiful handwriting. This was not written chained to a wall.
Me: Ha! And yes, the beautiful handwriting surprised me as well!

Edited Date: 2022-11-30 12:32 am (UTC)

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)