January 3

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by gerryadmin

106 BC The birth of Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on this date to a family of the equestrian class who had made it big in the chickpea business.  (Cicer is the Latin name for that useful legume). He was given an excellent education in philosophy rhetoric and the law and, as any young ambitious Roman of the elite did, embarked on the cursus honorum. In his life of public service, he rose from praefect to aedile to praetor to consul to provincial governor. Cicero earned a reputation as the greatest orator of his age and was a deadly advocate in the law courts, particularly fame for his prosecution of Cataline and his would-be rebels.

Cicero’s downfall came when he meddled in factional politics and chose the wrong side in the last days of the corrupt republic. He cheered the assassination of Caesar and made an enemy of the dictator’s heir and best friend, Octavian Caesar and Mark Antony who put him on a death list. He was murdered on December 7, 43 BC, and his head and hands were nailed up in the Forum. 

Cicero’s speeches, letters, and books were considered to be written in the purest form of Latin and inspired much imitation during the Renaissance. (The reader will recall the demand of the dying prelate in Robert Browning’s poem “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s” that his epitaph be in finest “Tullian” style.) His works have never been out of print for the last 500 years.

Since he would have been 2128 years old today, it seems fitting to conclude with remarks from his book On Old Age.

When I reflect on this subject I find four reasons why old age appears to be unhappy: first, that it withdraws us from active pursuits; second, that it makes the body weaker; third, that it deprives us of almost all physical pleasures; and, fourth, that it is not far removed from death.

The greatest states have been overthrown by the young and sustained and restored by the old. … Rashness is the product of the budding-time of youth, prudence of the harvest-time of age.

No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.

When the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed; and, just as apples when they are green are with difficulty plucked from the tree, but when ripe and mellow fall of themselves, so, with the young, death comes as a result of force, while with the old it is the result of ripeness. To me, indeed, the thought of this “ripeness” for death is so pleasant, that the nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in his home port after a long voyage.

In short, enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life’s race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature’s fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.

It’s not just a Canadian thing

Home / Today in History / It’s not just a Canadian thing
by gerryadmin

The recent Canadian hysteria over renaming public buildings or schools and tearing down statues of national heroes who no longer meet current tastes in political correctness appears to be shared by other nations.

On the African continent one looks in vain for Salisbury (now Harare) or Fort Victoria (now Masvingo). India too has for some time been renaming cities in accordance with local usages — thus Bombay becomes Mumbai, Madras becomes Chennai and Calcutta becomes Kolkata. A recent change in an island name may be more controversial. The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Modi has decided that Ross Island, named after a colonial-era marine surveyor will now be known as Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep.

Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist and one-time leader of the Congress Party, fighting for independence from Britain. Like Gandhi, he opposed Indian aid to the Allies in the Second World War but Bose took his resistance to a higher plane. In 1941 he escaped from India through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union (then an ally of Adolf Hitler) which sent him on to Nazi Germany. There he attempted to raise a volunteer force of Indian prisoners of war — the Indian Legion — to aid the German war effort in the hope that this would drive the British from India. The Nazis were lukewarm to his pretensions and to the military might of his Legion but realized he might do some real damage if he were sent back to Asia.  In February 1943 he was dispatched in a German submarine to the Indian Ocean off Madagascar where he rendezvoused with a Japanese submarine. He had ceased to be a Nazi puppet and was now an agent of Imperial Japan.

In Japan he took over the Indian exile movement and quickly raised a large force — the Indian National Army– from prisoners of war captured in Malaya. He proclaimed himself the head of the true Indian government with its own banks, postal system and administration. The INA took part in battles against the British in the Japanese drive to invade India but this was a disastrous campaign which resulted in a rout of the invaders. At the end of the war Bose died in a plane crash on Taiwan. He remains a beloved figure among Indian nationalists, despite (or, perhaps, because of) his admiration for fascism and violence.

December 30

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by gerryadmin

1916 The murder of Rasputin

Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was a Siberian mystic whose seemingly supernatural powers won him the friendship of the Russian ruling family and a place of influence at a time of crisis in the empire. On this day in 1916 he was murdered by an aristocratic cabal.

Born into a peasant family in 1869, Rasputin underwent some sort of religious experience in his late 20s; he began making pilgrimages to to monasteries and holy men and soon acquired his own reputation for holy powers. Influential churchmen introduced him to high society in the capital St Petersburg and by 1905 he had met Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

The tsar’s son Alexei, heir to the Romanov dynasty, was a victim of hemophilia. Rasputin was asked to pray for the boy but it was his personal visits to the child that seemed to stem the disease. The tsarina Alexandra called Rasputin “our friend”, bringing him into intimate contact with the royal family. Lurid rumours spread about his relationship with the empress and her daughters, especially after news of Rasputin’s sexual behaviour with his many female followers gained public credence.

As Russia’s fortunes in World War One grew grim, Rasputin was blamed as a malign influence and a threat to national security. He had already been the subject in 1914 of an unsuccessful assassination attempt when he was lured to the palace of Prince Felix Yusopov in late 1916. There a gang of high-ranking nobles and politicians poisoned him and shot him, leaving Rasputin for dead. But when Yusopov went back to check on the body the prince recalled:

Rasputin lay exactly where we had left him. I felt his pulse: not a beat, he was dead.

Scarcely knowing what I was doing I seized the corpse by the arms and shook it violently. It leaned to one side and fell back. I was just about to go, when suddenly noticed an almost imperceptible quivering of his left eyelid. I bent over and watched him closely; slight tremors contracted his face.

All of a sudden, I saw the left eye open … A few seconds later his right eyelid began to quiver, then opened. then saw both eyes–the green eyes of a viper-staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred. The blood ran cold in my veins. My muscles turned to stone. wanted to run away, to call for help, but my legs refused to obey me and not a sound came from my throat.

 Then a terrible thing happened: with a sudden vio lent effort Rasputin leapt to his feet, foaming at the mouth. A wild roar echoed through the vaulted rooms, and his hands convulsively thrashed the air. He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were burst ing from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips. And all the time he called me by name, in a low raucous voice.

 No words can express the horror I felt. I tried to free myself but was powerless in his vice-like grip. A ferocious struggle began … This devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die.

 I realized now who Rasputin really was. It was the reincarnation of Satan himself who held me in his clutches and would never let me go till my dying day. By a superhuman effort I succeeded in freeing myself from his grasp.

Rasputin struggled to his feet, made it out of the house and into the courtyard where he was shot yet again. His body was then thrown into the river from which it was recovered the next day.

His assassins claimed they were working for the good of Russia. In order to minimize scandal the killers were exiled or sent to the front lines of the war. Two months later the Russian Empire was overthrown in the February Revolution.

December 29

Home / Today in Church History / December 29
by gerryadmin

December 29 is the saint’s day of the English martyr Thomas Becket, murdered in 1170 at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral by knights of King Henry II. In the Middle Ages a legend grew up about the parentage of the saint, a legend that was credible enough even in the 19th century when Charles Dickens recounted it in his A Child’s History of England.

Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert À Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who told him that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing to marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The merchant returned her love, until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did not trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more loving than the merchant, left her father’s house in disguise to follow him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the sea-shore. The merchant had taught her only two English words (for I suppose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made love in that language), of which London was one, and his own name, Gilbert, the other. She went among the ships, saying, “London! London!” over and over again, until the sailors understood that she wanted to find an English vessel that would carry her there; so they showed her such a ship, and she paid for her passage with some of her jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was sitting in his counting-house in London one day, when he heard a great noise in the street; and presently Richard came running in from the warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his breath almost gone, saying, “Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!” The merchant thought Richard was mad; but Richard said, “No, master! As I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down the city, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!” Then, he took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out of the window ; and there they saw her among the gables and water-spouts of the dark, dirty street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, surrounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly along, calling “Gilbert, Gilbert!” When the merchant saw her, and thought of the tenderness she had shown him in his captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran down into the street; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were married without loss of time, and Richard (who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole day of the wedding; and they all lived happy ever afterwards.  

Professional historians who don’t like to leave a good story alone have pooh-poohed the legend, but what do they know?  The triptych above shows the Saracen maid’s baptism and marriage and her rocking the cradle of the infant Thomas.

Childermas

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by gerryadmin

The Feast of the Holy Innocents

December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorates the murder of the male babies of Bethlehem by King Herod. In England the day was known as Childermas (or Dyzemas) and was considered an ill-omened time; few would want, for example, to be married on that date. Not only was no business conducted on that day, but the day of the week on which it fell was deemed unlucky for the rest of the year. In Ireland it was Lá Crostna na Bliana, the “cross day of the year” when no new enterprise was begun. Many sailors would not sail on that day; on the Aran isles no one was buried on Childermas (or the day of the week on which it occurred); and in Cornwall to wash on that day was to doom one of your relatives to death. Childermas was also a day for ritual beatings. The seventeenth-century writer Gregorie notes the custom of whipping children in the morning of that day so that Herod’s murderousness “might stick the closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in kind.”

In the Middle Ages the Shearmen and Tailors’ Guild of Coventry took their part in the famous cycle of mystery plays staged annually at the feast of Corpus Christi. The Bible stories they were responsible for portraying included the Massacre of the Innocents. It is this story for which the song known as “The Coventry Carol” was written, sung in the pageant by women of Bethlehem trying to keep their children quiet lest their crying betray them to the murderous soldiers of King Herod.

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day?

This poor youngling for whom we sing,

“By, by, lully, lullay.”

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day.

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child for Thee!

And ever morn and say,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

“By, bye lully, lullay.”

The painting above by Pieter Brueghel sets the massacre in a Dutch village in the 16th century as if it were carried out by the occupying Spanish army.

December 27

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by gerryadmin

1814 The death of a prophetesss

When I was a young man, still in my teens, I visited London. The attractions included an English  girl I had met back in Saskatoon, Carnaby Street, the British Museum, and London newspapers. I was dazzled by the journalism, high and low. One advertisement in a tabloid caught my eye — it demanded that the Bishops open Joanna Southcott’s Box. It was implied that untold wisdom and cosmic secrets would be revealed and national calamities averted if they did. Who was Joanna Southcott? And what was in her box? Here is a near-contemporary account of the remarkable woman.

Joanna Southcott was born about the year 1750, of parents in very humble life. When about forty years old, she assumed the pretensions of a prophetess, and declared herself to be the woman mentioned in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation. She asserted that, having received a divine appointment to be the mother of the Messiah, the visions revealed to St. John would speedily be fulfilled by her agency and that of the son, who was to be miraculously born of her. Although extremely illiterate, she scribbled much mystic and unintelligible nonsense as visions and prophecy, and for a time carried on a lucrative trade in the sale of seals, which were, under certain conditions, to secure the salvation of the purchasers. The imposture was strengthened by her becoming subject to a rather rare disorder, which gave her the appearance of pregnancy after she had passed her grand climacteric. The faith of her followers now rose to enthusiasm. They purchased, at a fashion-able upholsterer’s, a cradle of most expensive materials, and highly decorated, and made costly preparations to hail the birth of the miraculous babe with joyous acclamation.

The delusion spread rapidly and extensively, especially in the vicinity of London, and the number of converts is said to have amounted to upwards of one hundred thousand. Most of them were of the humbler order, and remarkable for their ignorance and credulity; but a few were of the more educated classes, among whom were two or three clergymen. One of the clergymen, on being reproved by his diocesan, offered to resign his living if ‘the holy Johanna,’ as he styled her, failed to appear on a certain day with the expected Messiah in her arms. About the close of 1814, however, the prophetess herself began to have misgivings, and in one of her lucid intervals, she declared that ‘if she had been deceived, she had herself been the sport of some spirit either good or evil.’

On the 27th of December in that year, death put an end to her expectations—but not to those of her disciples. They would not believe that she was really dead. Her body was kept unburied till the most active signs of decomposition appeared; it was also subjected to a post-mortem examination, and the cause of her peculiar appearance fully accounted for on medical principles. Still, numbers of her followers refused to believe she was dead; others flattered themselves that she would speedily rise again, and bound themselves by a vow not to shave their beards till her resurrection.

It is scarcely necessary to state, that most of them have passed to their graves unshorn. A few are still living, and within the last few years several families of her disciples were residing together near Chatham, in Kent, remarkable for the length of their beards, and the general singularity of their manners and appearance. Joanna Southcott was interred, under a fictitious name, in the burial-ground attached to the chapel in St. John’s Wood, London. A stone has since been erected to her memory, which, after reciting her age and other usual particulars, concludes with some lines, evidently the composition of a still unshaken believer, the fervor of whose faith far exceeds his inspiration as a poet.

In the twentieth century the sealed box she had left behind was, indeed, opened. She had specified that it was to be examined only in a time of national crisis and in the presence of 24 bishops of the Church of England. In 1927 one bishop was found who agreed to be present at the opening — it contained only a few odd papers, a lottery ticket, and a horse pistol. True believers insisted that this was not the genuine casket and that the Panacea Society continues to hold it in a secret location until a conclave of 24 bishops is assembled.

December 26

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by gerryadmin

mankatomn38

1862

The largest mass execution in American history

In the summer of 1862, a number of Sioux tribes in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory rose up in a violent protest against their mistreatment by American government agents. Encroaching settlements had reduced their ability to hunt for food and promised supplies did not arrive, leaving the natives starving. On August 17, a hunting party of Sioux massacred 5 settlers, an act which encouraged a Dakota war council under Little Crow to sanction an all-out war which they hoped would drive the white man from their territory. Indian agencies were attacked, farm families were killed, detachments of troops were defeated and a number of towns were burnt to the ground. Trade on the Red River between Winnipeg and St Paul was halted and travel on the roads became too dangerous.

Because the United States was deeply involved in the Civil War, Washington was slow to send reinforcements to the area but when they arrived their numbers and firepower proved overwhelming. Bit by bit the tribes’ war-making capacity was reduced and though fighting would continue farther west, the majority of Sioux had surrendered by late September. Hundreds of their men were subjected to a far-too-speedy and ruthless trial; 303 were convicted of murder and rape and sentenced to death.

Henry Whipple, the Episcopal bishop in Minnesota, travelled to Washington to appeal for clemency but feeling among whites in the state was all for the execution of the Sioux. Politicians and generals warned that if mercy were granted, private vengeance might be the result. Abraham Lincoln personally helped whittle down the list to 38 who seemed most guilty. These men were executed at Mankato on a single gallows platform on December 26, 1862.

December 24

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by gerryadmin

The feast of Saints Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, the ancestors of the human race, were first honoured as saints in the churches of Eastern Christianity and during the Middle Ages their cult spread into the West. Though the Catholic church never officially recognized them with a feast day, popular veneration of Adam and Eve was widespread, particularly on December 24 when it was thought fitting that those responsible for the Fall of mankind be linked with the birth of the Saviour who came to redeem humanity.

Medieval dramas which told the story of Adam and Eve had as a stage prop a tree representing the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree was decorated with apples or round wafers representing the host of the Mass and it is this “Paradise Tree” which some historians see as a precursor to the modern Christmas tree. This link is evident when we note that as late as the nineteenth century some American and German Christmas trees had images of Adam and Eve and the Serpent underneath them. Godey’s magazine claimed “an orthodox Christmas-Tree will have the figures of our first parents at its foot, and the serpent twining itself. The apples were placed on the table on Christmas Eve to recall those through whose sin mankind first fell as well as the Virgin Mary, the new Eve.”