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Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40
I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
Yes indeed. And it keeps happening! You'd think they'd have learned the third time or so around, because the pattern of inner strife + outer invasions = huge loss of territory and influence isn't hard to miss, but noooo.
Incidentally, a more positive pattern is that most Emperors who were succesful (success in the sense that they weren't maimed, exiled or killed but kept themselves and their dynastry on the throne and handed over the Empire either larger than they'd gotten it or, in later years, not worse off) had either a strong right hand man or a capable Empress or both at their side, all the way from Justinian + Belisarius + Theodora. And like I said, in Alexios Kommenos' case it was the fact that not only did he have a very capable mother but also that his older brother (Isaac) did not resent not having been the one to gain the purple but instead remaind solid supporting guy instead of backstabing relation) that enabled him to stabilize an Empire torn apart again. If he'd had to fear yet another candidate for Emperor would try every time he left the capital, or would try at one border while he was busy at the other, he couldn't have done it. The Byzantine Emperors were far more absolute monarchs than the German Emperors unless it was time for civil war again, but with all that concentrated power came the danger that if the Emperor wasn't up for the job, as poor Isaac Angelos was not, having swept into power more or less by sheer accident and the beheading of a guy with the courage of desperation, collapse happened far quicker and easier.
BTW, if you listen to the pod cast with its half an hour installments, something else that's noticeable is the transition from Emperors with mainly Latin names early on - Justin, Justinian, Leo, the occasional Tiberius - to Emperors with Greek and Jewish originated names - Heraclios, Alexios, Isaac, Manuel, even a David - which made me realize that the later isn't true for the HREs, whose names never seem to hail from the Bible. Which in turn reminded me of how the Byzantine self image changed in the century where Byzantium went straight from finally winning the eternal Rome vs Persia struggle that started all the way back in the days of the Roman Republic to losing province after province to the big wave of conquest following the birth of Islam and the first Caliphate, going from "We're the New Rome, Fuck Yeah" to "We're the new Jerusalem, surrounded by powerful enemies but holding on, unite, ye faithful!"
The Alexiad: according to the podcast, which includes an interview with a philogist about it, it's written in Attic Greek, i.e. Anna didn't use her contemporary Greek but deliberately went for the style of the Ancients, and also is a strange and unique mixture of historian style and performative feminity, i.e. every now and then Anna interrupts the narrative with an emotional lament to show she's not an unnatural unfeminine woman despite daring to write history, and then she switches back to continue with the story.
Disfigurement as something that disqualifies you from kingship: indeed that was the reason, and it was seen as a compromise, i.e. this way you didn't straight out murder your rival, which, well, bad in theory for Christians. It was cutting or slitting noses at first, but then the Emperor Justinian II, whose nose was cut and who was banished to Cherson (the podcast episode in question being made years ago, the podcaster could not count on Cherson being in the headline news, of course, so explained Cherson was as far as you could be banished in the Byzantine Empire), from which he made a spectacular comeback with a golden nose in place of the old one, a marriage to a Khan's daughter to supplement himself with a fighting force, and a gigantic grudge to those who deposed him. Ever after, deposed Emperors got blinded instead. Rebels who didn't make it to the throne still could get either option. BTW, Justinian "Slit-Nose" II's new wife had to baptized first before he could marry her, and the name he chose for her was, inevitably, Theodora. Alas he and his Theodora still had a far worse end than the original Justinian and Theodora.
Name outrage: There's also this episode of how the Great Schism came to be. Now Western and Eastern Europoean Christian habits and concerns had begun to drift apart for a while. For example, for the Byzantines, the big "Iconoclasm: yes or no?" question was a gigantic one, whereas the Latins couldn't have cared less. Moreover, as far as the Eastern Romans were concerned, the Bishop of Rome was one of five Patriarchs (of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome) like in ye olde early Christian days, and okay, maaaaaybe the first among equals, but not by that much. Needless to say, that's not how the Popes in Rome saw it. Still, it was one united church able to come togeether in ecunomical synods until ca the 800s, when the Byzantines in their big iconoclasm: yes or no? struggles kept declaring the pro icons synod valid or invalid depending on who ruled in Constantinople, while the Latins ignored this, and so the number of synods were counted differently in West and East. It still was one church until this happened:
Western Europe: less and less priests learn Greek.
Eastern Europe: less and less priests learn Latin.
Pope: By papal decision, religious services in Italy, and we do mean all of Italy, will take place in Latin. This includes you, Greek churches in Southern Italy.
Patriarch of Constantinople: How dare! Lemme shut down all Latin service churches in Constantinople in retaliation.
Pope: Argghh, with all these newly arrived Normans in Italy and my temporary imprisonment by same I actually wanted to send a delegation to Constantinople to ask the Emperor for help. Legates, make nice! But if the Patriarch behaves too high handedly, show him what's what.
Greek Bishop of Ohrid: Lemme add to this situation via sending a letter to the Pope detailing in great detail how very wrong several practices of the Latin service churches are, and how he needs to listen to the Patriarch of Constantinople instead. This letter will send in copies to a lot of other people, so the Legates will have read it upon arrival in Constantinople.
Papal Legates: HOW DARE!!!!! We need to do something about this. Hey, I've heard the Pope is in bad health. So let's go for broke and demand the Patriarch recognizes the Pope as his superior and the head of Christianity once and all. If he says no, well, we could, in theory, deliver excommunications in his name which the next Pope can take back. That surely will send a strong message to the Patriarch without destroying inter church relations for good. Yeah, that's what we'll do.
Patriarch: No way I am recognizing the Bishop of Rome as my boss.
Legates: Decide to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople. In Constantinople.
Patriarch: HOW DARE!!!!!!!!! I'm excommunicating the lot of you, impudent Westerners!
Emperor: Under these circumstances, I don't think I can help the Pope against the Normans.
Pope: You know what, I've changed my mind. Normans, let's make a deal. I'll grant you Byzantine territory in Southern Italy, you help me out when I need some military backup, y/y?
=> Schism. Not immediately recognized as such, and reconciliation seemed to be possible for a while longer, but today, that's seen at the occasion.
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
and also is a strange and unique mixture of historian style and performative feminity, i.e. every now and then Anna interrupts the narrative with an emotional lament to show she's not an unnatural unfeminine woman despite daring to write history, and then she switches back to continue with the story.
Heh, that sounds odd.
The synopsis of the Schism was kind of hair-raising with how it kept escalating! Although I must admit your increasing numbers of capital letters and exclamation points totally made me laugh.
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
Now, Theophanu married Otto II before the Schism, of course. But in the church in Cologne where Teophanu is buried, St Pantaleon, there are both Catholic and Greek Orthodox services, praying for understanding and unity among East and West:
http://www.sankt-pantaleon.de/freunde_in_der_anderen_welt/theophanu.html
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
Did the philologist say anything about how fluent the Attic Greek was? Because what I remember reading was that she did her best, but you can tell that she's not a native speaker. But I'm no longer qualified to tell for myself, if I ever was, though it's not out of the question I might read this when I get around to reviving my Greek.
also is a strange and unique mixture of historian style and performative feminity, i.e. every now and then Anna interrupts the narrative with an emotional lament to show she's not an unnatural unfeminine woman despite daring to write history, and then she switches back to continue with the story.
Now that I didn't know!
Western Europe: less and less priests learn Greek.
Eastern Europe: less and less priests learn Latin.
My Barbarossa biographer tells me that when the Byzantine emperors would write to their western counterparts, they would send the letter in Greek but include a Latin translation, because they knew it wasn't going to be understood otherwise.
Even with the translation, though, misunderstandings crept in, as we saw with Isaac Angelos, who either had a surname or an overinflated and possibly blasphemous opinion of himself.
Of course, Cahn, if you keep listening to the podcast, you'll get to the part where there's a mistranslation within Latin, wherein the Germans use "beneficium" to mean "fief"* and the Italians use it to mean "nice things" and use "feudum" to mean "fief". So when the Pope sends a letter saying he wants to give the emperor "maiora beneficia" and the German chancellor translates that as the pope wanting to bestow more fiefs on the emperor, all hell breaks loose. The Papal legate and future pope Alexander III almost gets run through with a sword.
But the emperor protects him, and the pope writes a conciliatory letter explaining that the word doesn't mean "fiefs" in Italy, but, uh, the episode doesn't do papal-imperial relations any good.
* Speaking of bilingualism:
Me: "The Germans use 'beneficium' to mean 'Lehen'...dammit, what is the English word again?" *googles* :P Hilariously, this has happened before, when I was telling my wife a story and had to say "Wappen", and then give an elaborate explanation of what it meant, because I was blanking on "coat of arms".
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
No, not that I recall.
Lehen! I'm proud of your German vocabulary triumphing over the English expressions. To celebrate, have the most famous poem featuring the word, by Walther von der Vogelweide, first in medieval German, and then in modern German. Walther - who switched sides repeatedly in the Staufer versus Welfen wars and thus first wrote poetry for Philip von Schwaben, and then for Otto von Braunschweig, and finally for young Friedrich II - was delighted that he finally was rewarded with a Lehen for his poetical and satirical efforts:
Ich hân mîn lêhen, al die werlt, ich hân mîn lêhen
Nû entfürhte ich niht den hornunc an die zêhen
Und will alle boese hêrren dester minre flêhen
Der edel künec, der milte künec hât mich berâten
Daz ich den sumer luft und in dem winter hitze hân
Mîn nâhgeburen dunke ich verre baz getân:
Sie sehent mich niht mêr an in butzen wîs als sî wîlent tâten
Ich bin ze lange arm gewesen ân mînen danc
Ich was sô voller scheltens daz mîn âten stanc:
Daz hât der künec gemachet reine, und dar zuo mînen sanc.
Modern German:
Ich hab mein Lehen, alle Welt, ich hab mein Lehen!
Nun fürchte ich nicht mehr den Februar an den Zehen
und werde alle schlechten Herren um nichts mehr bitten.
Der edle König, der mildtätige König hat für mich gesorgt,
dass ich im Sommer kühle Luft und im Winter Wärme habe.
Bei meinen Nachbarn bin ich viel geschätzter:
Sie sehn mich nicht mehr als Schreckgespenst, wie sie es einst taten.
Ich bin zu lange arm gewesen ohne meine Schuld:
ich war so voller Schelte, dass mein Atem stank.
Das hat der König rein gemacht und mein Singen dazu.
(Translation by Margarita Kuhn.)
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast
Lehen! I'm proud of your German vocabulary triumphing over the English expressions.
I thought you would be! :DD I've hardly read any history in English in the last year, only German (and increasingly French).
Okay, speaking of English and German, though, yesterday I heard from the Brandenburg archive in answer to a question I sent them in English, and it was again in German. Given that you said this the first time I got up my courage to write someone in Germany in English and got a reply in German:
Also, I am tempted to explain the lack of English on the part of your corrspondents by stating that Frankfurt an der Oder is in the very east of East Germany, and depending on the age of your correspondent, that means they might have learned (some, if any) English late in life. Whereas if you were corresponding with a historical society located in Frankfurt am Main (aka Mainhattan), I would be seriously disturbed if they had not replied to you in English.
...how surprising or unsurprising is it that 4 out of 5 separate archivists in Berlin and Potsdam, some of whom have "Dr." in their title, respond to English emails with 2-3 sentences in German?
Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast