March 11

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1829

Bach’s St Matthew Passion is revived

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is now recognized as the towering genius of classical music but there was a time after his death when he had largely faded from public memory. His work was respected by later composers but JS Bach’s major works were seldom performed. Such was the case of his monumental musical treatment of the suffering and death of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew. Written for two choirs and two orchestras it was meant to be performed on Good Friday.

Felix Mendelssohn had been given a copy of The St Matthew Passion which Bach had written in 1727 and which had not been performed outside of Leipzig since 1750. Mendelssohn’s staging of the oratorio in 1829 attracted great crowds in three sell-our performances and contributed much to the revival of interest in Bach’s music.

Here is a video of the final chorus, performed by a Swedish choir and orchestra.

March 10

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1931 Birth of Georges Dor

After the British conquered New France in 1759 during the Seven Years’ War, they decided to let the inhabitants keep their French language, Catholic religion, and civil law, partly as a counterweight to the restive English-speaking colonies to the south. This allowed the Québecois to develop a unique culture, as distinct from the rest of Canada as it was from France. 

In the 1950s and 60s, this culture became self-consciously aware and aggressively separatist, producing writers, composers, and singers who were proud to flaunt their indifference to American and Canadian artists. This was particularly marked among the singer-songwriters known as chansonniers, such as Gilles Vigneault, Pauline Julien, and Georges Dor.

Dor was a radio disk jockey and news director who wrote poetry in his spare time. In 1968 he penned his masterpiece “La Manic”, a love letter from a lonely worker in the north of Québec labouring on the Manicouagan power project. It rose to the tops of the Quebec charts and even captured the fancy of Anglophone prairie boys a thousand miles to the west. He sings it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2RzMhqbrkY

Its beginning in French goes:

Si tu savais comme on s’ennuie
À la Manic
Tu m’écrirais bien plus souvent
À la Manicouagan.
 
Parfois je pense à toi si fort
Je recrée ton âme et ton corps
Je te regarde et m’émerveille
Je me prolonge en toi
Comme le fleuve dans la mer
Et la fleur dans l’abeille.
An English translation:
 
If you only knew how bored we are at La Manic,
You’d write to me a lot more often in La Manicouagan.,
 
Sometimes I think of you so hard
I recreate your soul and your body,
I look at you and wonder,
I extend myself in you
Like the river in the sea
And the flower in the bee.
 
The chansonnier genre’s greatest hit was Gilles Vigneault’s beautiful “Mon Pays”, a hymn to winter in Québec, which became an unofficial separatist anthem
. 
Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver
Mon jardin, ce n’est pas un jardin, c’est la plaine
Mon chemin, ce n’est pas un chemin, c’est la neige
Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver.
 
Some cretin took the music and turned it into the thrice-execrable disco number “From New York to L.A.” Unforgivable.

March 9

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1862 Battle of Hampton Roads

One of the North’s most effective tactics in the battle against the Confederacy was a naval blockade of southern ports. This hampered the import of arms and vital supplies and cut off the export of cotton to Europe, a major source of income. In order to thwart this embargo, the Confederate navy took the hull and engines of a captured US frigate USS Merrimack, armour plated it and mounted 14 guns and a ram, turning it into the ironclad CSS Virginia.

On March 8, 1862 the Virginia fought a successful engagement against the Union navy, sinking wooden vessels, USS Congress and USS Cumberland, and forcing a third, USS Minnesota to run aground. Virginia was mauled during the fray but returned the following day to complete her mission. In this she found herself confronted by a rival ironclad, USS Monitor, a vessel quite unlike the Virginia in build and armament which had hurried south from Brooklyn to confront its rival.

Monitor was lower and nimbler, though outgunned. She pounded Virginia with her two smoothbore guns in a revolving turret and Virginia thundered back but no significant damage was done to either vessel in this, the first battle between ironclads. Both ships retired from the action and never fought each other again. Virginia would be scuttled a few months later and Monitor would sink in a storm by the end of 1862.

March 8

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1868 Sakai Massacre

Japan, which had kept itself in isolation for over two centuries, punishing foreigners who landed or were shipwrecked there, and executing Japanese who returned from abroad, had its doors blown open in the 1850s by American and European navies. This enforced exposure to the outside world was welcomed by some but also inflamed anti-foreigner sentiment that often broke out in violence. The illustration below is an expression of the “expel the barbarians” movement.

OnMarch 5, 1868 a party of 11 French sailors in Sakai harbour was set upon by local samurai and massacred. To pacify the French, the government ordered that those responsible be ordered to commit seppuku, suicide by disembowelment. After 11 had done so, the French captain whose crewmen had been butchered said that sufficient penalty had been paid and asked that the remaining 9 be spared.

March 7

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Sumptuary laws

How we clothe and adorn our bodies has always been a public concern. Every religion has something to say about proper or improper dress or headwear or hairstyles. Every state has regulations regarding the outward show of a decent citizen. The outlandish garb of the 21st century against we oldsters impotently rail have their antecedents in every culture. Inevitably, the more outré clothing has been fingered as the cause of national calamities. 

Pierre Lacroix, a writer of the 19th century – an era which produced such crimes against fashion as the bustle, tartan trousers, and leg-o-mutton sleeves – here rants against the dandies of the 14th century.

“We must believe that God has permitted this as a just judgment on us for our sins,” say the monks who edited the Grande Chronique de St. Denis, in 1346, at the time of the unfortunate battle of Crecy, “although it does not belong to us to judge. But what we see we testify to; for pride was very great in France, and especially amongst the nobles and others, that is to say, pride of nobility, and covetousness. There was also much impropriety in dress, and this extended throughout the whole of France. Some had their clothes so short and so tight that it required the help of two persons to dress and undress them, and whilst they were being undressed they appeared as if they were being skinned. Others wore dresses plaited over their loins like women; some had chaperons cut out in points all round; some had tippets of one cloth, others of another; and some had their headdresses and sleeves reaching to the ground, looking more like mountebanks than anything else. Considering all this, it is not surprising if God employed the King of England as a scourge to correct the excesses of the French people.”

Other contemporary writers, and amongst these Pope Urban V and King Charles V, inveigh against the poulaines, [long-toed shoes] which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in fashion when they were made as a kind of appendix to the foot, measuring at least double its length, and ornamented in the most fantastical manner. The Pope anathematized this deformity as “a mockery of God and the holy Church,” and the King forbad craftsmen to make them, and his subjects to wear them. All this is as nothing in comparison with the profuse extravagance displayed in furs, which was most outrageous and ruinous, and of which we could not form an idea were it not for the items in certain royal documents, from which we gather that, in order to trim two complete suits for King John, no fewer than six hundred and seventy martens’ skins were used.

March 6

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More from Pierre Lacroix and the strange world of our medieval predecessors.

Because the rudimentary police forces of the Middle Ages were so ineffective, it was widely believed that punishment should be harsh, exemplary, and public. The Church did its best to rein in the more barbaric customs, both those inherited from the Romans and those introduced by the Germanic peoples. In 866, for example, Pope Nicholas V. condemned the Bulgarian custom of torturing the accused, telling them it was considered contrary to divine as well as to human law: “For,” says he, “a confession should be voluntary, and not forced. By means of the torture, an innocent man may suffer to the utmost without making any avowal; and, in such a case, what a crime for the judge! Or the person may be subdued by pain, and may acknowledge himself guilty, although he be not so, which throws an equally great sin upon the judge.” Priests could not shed blood nor take part in any procedure that might result in the death penalty. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 abolished the various forms of trial by ordeal. 

Nonetheless, every state employed torture and gruesome methods of imposing penalties on the culprit. In Germany public executioners could attain civic prominence and prosperity (though still be shunned by decent folk). In England, there was no such officer and executions were often botched by amateurs. Of his own country, Lacroix notes:

 In France, the executioner, otherwise called the King’s Sworn Tormentor, was the lowest of the officers of justice. His letters of appointment, which he received from the King, had, nevertheless, to be registered in Parliament; but, after having put the seal on them, it is said that the chancellor threw them under the table, in token of contempt. The executioner was generally forbidden to live within the precincts of the city, unless it was on the grounds where the pillory was situated; and, in some cases, so that he might not be mistaken amongst the people, he was forced to wear a particular coat, either of red or yellow. On the other hand, his duties ensured him certain privileges. In Paris, he possessed the right of havage, which consisted in taking all that he could hold in his hand from every load of grain which was brought into market; however, in order that the grain might be preserved from ignominious contact, he levied his tax with a wooden spoon. He enjoyed many similar rights over most articles of consumption, independently of benefiting by several taxes or fines.

We may add that popular belief generally ascribed to the executioner a certain practical knowledge of medicine, We which was supposed inherent in the profession itself; and the acquaintance with certain methods of cure unknown to doctors, was attributed to him; people went to buy from him the fat of culprits who had been hung, which was supposed to be a marvellous panacea. 

March 5

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440px-Katyn_-_decision_of_massacre_p1

1940

Stalin orders the Katyn Massacre

World War II began in Europe with the German invasion of Poland. This unprovoked attack was made possible by a secret pact between the Nazis and the USSR, an agreement which allowed the Soviets to annex the eastern part of Poland. This partition brought tens of thousands of Polish prisoners under the rule of Joseph Stalin who, at the urging of his secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria, determined to use the opportunity to exterminate Poland’s leadership class. On this date in 1940, six members of the Politburo (Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Kalinin) signed an order condemning imprisoned “nationalists and counterrevolutionaries” — the captive officers and intelligentsia — to death.

In April, 1940, 22,000 Poles were taken from their prison camps and dispatched to killing zones where they were shot and secretly buried. About half of the Polish officer class were killed — an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 85 privates, 3,420 non-coms, 7 chaplains (including the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army), and 200 pilots, but also government officials, landowners, university professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers and journalists. The purpose was to eliminate anyone who might be a leader in a future Poland.

After June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the USSR began to think of creating an anti-German army out of its remaining Polish prisoners, questions began to be asked about the fate of the missing officers. The Soviets were able to dodge awkward questions until early 1943 when the occupying German army was alerted to mass graves containing the corpses of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. Sensing a propaganda coup, the Nazis brought in a team of neutral experts to examine the bodies and determine the date of their execution. Despite their findings that the men had been killed at a time when the Soviets were in control of the area, the USSR continued to blame the Germans.  Shamefully, it was in the interests of Allied cooperation with the Soviets to agree to go along with the lie during the war. 

When I was a grad student in London in the 1970s, I went on a march to the Soviet Embassy, which had objected to a Katyn memorial being erected with the date 1940 inscribed on it. Communists were still insisting that the Germans had carried out the massacre in 1941 during their occupation of  the western USSR. Only after the fall of the Soviet Union did Russia acknowledge that the atrocity had been carried out by the Soviet secret police.

An excellent fictional account of the 1943 discovery is Philip Kerr’s A Man Without Breath.

Les_mrtvych_v_Katyne

March 4

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More on the past as a foreign country.

Paul Lacroix was a 19th-century French librarian, historian, and novelist, best known for his encyclopedic works on the life of the Middle Ages. In his Manners, Customs and Dress During the Middle Ages, he provides wonderful glimpses of customs long dead. Today we will look at what he had to say about attitudes to food and fasting therefrom.  As we are now in the midst of the Lenten season, it is proper to notice the seriousness with which our ancestors regarded the duties of abstinence.

A monk of the Abbey of Cluny once went on a visit to his relations. On arriving he asked for food; but as it was a fast day he was told there was nothing in the house but fish. Perceiving some chickens in the yard, he took a stick and killed one, and brought it to his relations, saying, “This is the fish which I shall eat to-day.” “Eh, but, my son, they said, “have you dispensation from fasting on a Friday?” “No,” he answered; “but poultry is not flesh; fish and fowls were created at the same time; they have a common origin, as the hymn which I sing in the service teaches me.”

This simple legend belongs to the tenth century; and notwithstanding that the opinion of this Benedictine monk may appear strange nowadays, yet it must be acknowledged that he was only conforming himself to the opinions laid down by certain theologians. In 817, the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle decided that such delicate nourishment could scarcely be called mortification as understood by the teaching of the Church. In consequence of this an order was issued forbidding the monks to eat poultry, except during four days at Easter and four at Christmas. But this prohibition in no way changed the established custom of certain parts of Christendom, and the faithful persisted in believing that poultry and fish were identical in the eyes of the Church, and accordingly continued to eat them indiscriminately. We also see, in the middle of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas, who was considered an authority in questions of dogma and of faith, ranking poultry amongst species of aquatic origin. 

An edict of Henry II, 1549, forbade the sale of meat in Lent to persons who should not be furnished with a doctor’s certificate. Charles IX forbade the sale of meat to the Huguenots; and it was ordered that the privilege of selling meat during the time of abstinence should belong exclusively to the hospitals. Orders were given to those who retailed meat to take the address of every purchaser, although he had presented a medical certificate, so that the necessity for his eating meat might be verified. Subsequently, the medical certificate required to be endorsed by the priest, specifying what quantity of meat was required.

March 3

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1924 Abolition of the Caliphate

“Caliph” means “successor”, successor to the Arab prophet Muhammed and, thus, the supreme voice of Sunni Islam. Throughout history a number of dynasties have claimed the caliphate and from the early 1500s, the Ottoman emperors in Constantinople were considered to be the rightful holders of the title. In 1914 as World War I began, Mehmed V in his role as Caliph allied his realm with Germany and Austria and declared a jihad against the British and French. The result was a disaster; the Ottomans lost their holdings in the Middle East and North Africa and the empire was reduced to an Anatolian rump. Worse was to come. A movement led by Kemal Pasha (later known as Ataturk) deposed the Ottomans – Mehmed VI was the last on the throne – and proclaimed a secular republic in 1922. The title of caliph, now severed from the imperial post, fell to a cousin of Mehmed, Abdulmejid.

For a time, Kemal tolerated the existence of a Caliph at least as a figurehead. When Abdulmejid requested increased state funding for his office, Kemal snapped, “Your office, the Khalifate, is no more than an historic relic. It has no justification for existence. It is a piece of impertinence that you should dare write to any of my secretaries!” When Indian supporters of the Khilafat Movement, a pan-Islamic group, tried to agitate inside Turkey, Kemal decided to abolish the caliphate altogether on this date in 1924. Abdulmejid was sent into exile and he spent his last days painting (he was a very accomplished artist). He died in Paris in 1944 as the city was being liberated from German occupation and was buried in Medina.

Since then the dream of a restored caliphate has been kept alive. The leader of ISIS , Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed himself Caliph in 2013 but his reign was cut short by his suicide under attack by US special forces in 2019. His successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurash died under similar circumstances in 2022. At this moment there is no indication that the title has been passed on.

March 2

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1882 An assassination attempt on Queen Victoria

P.G. Wodehouse said, “It is never difficult to distinguish between with a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” One such irate Hibernian, Roderick MacLean, was annoyed with English folk and Queen Victoria in particular and entered the annals of infamy with a bungled regicide.

Roderick MacLean was born in 1854 and seems to have fallen into a what we could today a state of paranoia schizophrenia, convinced that he was beset with enemies and secret watchers.  He believed that he spoke personally with God who had assured him that he would ascend the British throne someday. God also gave him the secret number four and the colour blue as his lucky signs. After stating that he was intent on killing someone — anyone — his sister had him committed to a lunatic asylum. On his release he acquired a pistol and made his way to Windsor.

On March 2, 1882, as Queen Victoria made her way from the train to her coach, MacLean raised a gun and fired on her. The shot missed and he was set upon by the crowd. He was put on trial for high treason but a jury took only 5 minutes to pronounce him not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent the rest of his days in Broadmoor Prison, dying in 1912.

This was the last of 8 assassination attempts made upon Queen Victoria. They may well have led to an increased popularity with Britons. The monarch told her daughter that she was moved by the “enthusiasm, loyalty, sympathy and affection” shown by her subjects, and added: “It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved.”