First full-length study of birds and their metamorphoses as treated in a wide range of medieval poetry, from the Anglo-Saxons to Chaucer and Gower.
Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people’s lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems: The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of his chosen poems.
Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Native Foreigners: Migrating Seabirds and the Pelagic Soul in The Seafarer
Avian Pedagogies: Wondering with Birds in the Exeter Book Riddles
A Bird’s Worth: Mis-Representing Owls in The Owl and the Nightingale
‘Kek Kek’: Translating Birds in The Parliament of Fowls
Birds’ Form: Enabling Desire and Identities in Confessio Amantis
Epilogue
Glossary: Old and Middle English bird names
Bibliography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael Warren has studied Medieval English at Royal Holloway as well as Magdalen College, Oxford. In 2017 he obtained his Phd with the thesis, Bird Kind: Avian Transformations, Species and Identities in Medieval English Poetry, was submitted in December 2016 and succesfully passed in April 2017. He is now a visiting lecturer at Holloway, teaching on the first year an undergraduate course on medieval poetry whilst continuing to work as an English teacher at Cranbrook School in Kent. His research focuses on birds, environments and the natural world generally, as depicted in medieval poetry (Anglo-Saxon to 15th century).
In 1993, the contents of the reliquary of the Holy Sepulchre in Pamplona were carefully explored. The following documentation shows that the reliquary is not only unique as a piece of art. It had been fitted with precious and “authentic” relics related to the “empty” tomb.
The reliquary of the Holy Sepulchre in Pamplona belongs together with the Lignum Crucis, to the former royal collection of the crown of Navarre. The reliquary from c. 1255 (1300) takes the form of an open aedicule raised on an oblong platform. It belongs to the arthistorical cathegory: Gothic micro-architecture. Buttresses, topped by pinnacles and cusped arches, flank the four open sides, while the windows are decorated with champlevé enamel. This decorative element may also be found on the sarcophagus in the middle of the tableau, which shows the dramatic scene with the sleeping soldiers, the angel claiming, “he is not here”, and the holy women staring down in horror into the empty grave filled with the sudario, the holy shroud, which John writes, was carefully folded and laid to the side.
And he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. (John 20: 6 – 7).
Apart from the fact that the tableau represents an amalgamation of the “Empty Grave Scenes” from Mark and John, it ads an extra layer. The sarcophagus is fitted with a lid made of rock crystal, through which we together with the holy women may glimpse a gold capsule with what we are told is a fragment of the original sudario – DE SUDARIO DOMINI, we read. We don’t just see the scene, we are carefully invited into the grave participating in the horror and the adoration.
The Pamplona reliquary thus represents a new type of reliquaries, which do not enshrine the holy relics, but rather open them up to let us participate. We become more than just spectators. We get enrolled in the scene with the gesturing figurines replaying inside a temporal sequence the emotional eruption, which the biblical verses only hint at … for terror and amazement had seized them, writes Mark (Mark 16:8).
The Contents of the Reliquary
The reliquary of the Holy Sepulchre from Pamplona. Source: Wikipedia
In 1993 the reliquary was opened in order to register and study the contents. Inside the tiny sarcophagus, three small capsules were found.
The first, a small flat capsule decorated with Gothic openwork, was inscribed with + De Sudario Domino. The second was inscribed with + de Sepulcro Domino, while the last was inscribed with + DE MENSA CENE DOMINI. While the first contained a piece of red linen, the second a small piece of a rock wrapped in linen, while the third contained small pieces of stones. Further the sarcophagus contained a piece of white silk, a piece of linen, fragments of wood, a pebble, a lock of blond hair, small pieces of stained glass, and some red linen wrapping pieces of wood. Also included was a written list explaining the importance of the stones and fragments, all derived from the life and passion of the Lord. These lists are written in a hand form the 16thcentury.
Unfortunately, the exploration of the contents of the sarcophagus did not lead to a camparison of the textile fragments with the alleged Sudario kept in the Cathedral in Orviedo. It would have been nice to know if the tiny fragment had been cut off from that and afterwards placed in its capsule in Pamploma.
The reliquary has traditionally been considered a wedding gift from St. Louis, King of France, to his daughter Isabel in 1255, when she married Theobald II of Navarrea Recently, though, it has been proposed that the reliquary dates from 1284, when Phillipe (a grandson of St. Louis) married Juana de Navarra. The reliquary may have been created as a reflection of the architecture of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1248); as perhaps is also the case with the reliquary of St. Louis, which was donated to St. Domenico in Bologna c. 1300. To a large extent, the two reliquaries may be seen to mirror the same artistic ambition and taste.
When was Beowulf composed? In the 10th and 11th centuries as the Toronto School decided in a postmodern whiff? Around AD 700 as linguistic studies have proven? Or as an oral epos, around AD 550, and in Gotland as suggested in a new book?
In the 1980s a scandal broke out in Toronto. No longer a venerated poem of the Dark Ages, Beowulf was dated to the turn of the millennium and characterised as a very late Anglo-Saxon pastiche. Although metrical, linguistic, and palaeographic evidence was brought forward to staunch the postmodern erudition flowing from the medievalists – who had drunk from the poisoned chalice of Derrida, Baudelaire, and Kristeva – the standard bearers from Toronto nevertheless succeeded in banning the use of the text by historians and archaeologists. Under pain of shunning, students might no longer “use” the beautiful verses to illuminate the murky mead-hall.
Later, hard-core linguists were luckily able to turn the tide and reclaim the poem from this literary evisceration. Nevertheless, challenges have continued to mar the understanding of the epos and the cultural crucible, in which it was forged.
Finally, this summer, a magisterial and erudite analysis by the archaeologist, Bo Gräslund, was published in Sweden outlining the material world and a probable background for the text.
Let it be said initially. Bo Gräslund is the grand old man of Swedish Archaeology. He has worked at the National Museum in Stockholm as well as taught as a professor at the University in Uppsala. Apart from this, he has served as head of the Royal Academy of History and Antiquity, the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Uppsala and several other august academies. To this should be added a very long list of publications. In his later years he has been occupied with outlining the events in the 6th century leading up to and following the climatic crisis AD 536 – 550. It is as part of this project, the study of Beowulf has been undertaken. Thus, Gräslund is not a perky young fellow with a fixed idea running wild on the fringes of the academic scene. He arrives at the scene with a solid ballast.
Further, the book is softly written, courteously and mildly. Yet, it delivers a decisive blow to the last 200 years debate and adds some well-argued propositions and hypotheses as to the what, where, when, and how of the Beowulf.
First of all, we are met with a catalogue of the material culture of the late migration to early Vendel period. With its gold, rings, ring-swords, swine-helmets, and chain-mails, we are obviously transported way back in time, either prior to or around the period 536 to 50. Secondly, it is demonstrated that several of these particular artefacts are virtually unknown in an early Anglo-Saxon context. Not until the Viking Age, do we meet “rings” in the archaeological assemblies in Britain. Nevertheless, they are mentioned 44 times in the poem, and whenever they are further characterised, they are made of gold. How should an English poet c. 700 be acquainted with this particular cultural item – golden rings – which is never found in a British context, and which disappeared in Scandinavia in the late 6th century, Gräslund asks? As for ring-swords, it is important to note, that while three ring-swords have been found in England, most (77) have been found in France, Germany, and Scandinavia. And one of those – the one from Sutton Hoo – is probably Swedish, he writes. At the same time, he notes that the only chain mail ever found in an Anglo-Saxon archaeological context is from the same grave, making it a unique item in an English context from c. 400 – 1000. Finally, Gräslund draws attention to the fact that the descriptions of the cremations of Hnæfs and Beowulf have a sensual character, which makes it mind-boggling to imagine that a Christian poet c. 700 was able to describe these events in such details. Thus, the material culture of the poem does not fit at all with an Anglo-Saxon origin, Gräslund concludes.
In the second part of the book, Gräslund discusses the ethnonyms in the poem and argues that the main group, to which Beowulf belongs – the Geats – in all likelihood came from Gotland. Seafaring islanders, known also as wederas, the latter epithet has been consistently translated as wind, weather, or storm. However, much more likely, writes Gräslund convincingly, the prefix in weder-geatas refers to Proto-Germanic wedrą, meaning ram – Old English weder, Old High German wetar, Old Norse veðr etc. It so happens, that rams were significant symbols of the people from Gotland, as witnessed in documents, sagas, and in the official seal.
Pictorial Stone from the Church in Bro in Gotland. Source: Wikipedia
Gräslund also touches upon the Christian varnish and concludes (as have others before him) that it seems to have been added as a gloss. In its core, the poem is heathen. This conclusion leads to Gräslund’s next hypothesis that the poem was composed as an oral epic in the mid-sixth century and probably in Gotland; but also that it would have circulated widely, for instance in a Swedish context at Uppsala.
We know Rædwald of East Anglia was married to a pagan princess who worked assiduously to make her husband relapse. We also know, that his presumed grave at Sutton Hoo held an assemblage of artefacts with a clear Swedish origin. Were these objects – the helmet, the chain-mail and the sword – bridal gifts of a Swedish princess? Did she bring a bard along in her entourage? After which the oral poem circulated untilit was written down by an Anglicising and Christianising scribe c. 700? We shall never know, but the hypothesis fits the facts as well as Ockham’s razor.
The third part of the book finally offers a close reading of the events in the text to see if they fit the historical facts of the events in 6th century Scandinavia, such as they may be gleaned from archaeological excavations and historical sources. Much here is believable, less, slightly hypothetical. The conclusion, however, is that the poem was composed in a volatile and dangerous situation in the mid-sixth century. In 536 – 41 a series of volcanic eruptions of frightening proportions caused a dust veil to wrap itself around huge parts of the world, forcing a dramatic climatic downturn. Average temperatures in northern and middle Scandinavia fell by 3 – 4 C˚ and the decade between 536 – 45 has been characterised as the coldest inside 2500 years. Other studies have shown that Norse poems like Hyndluljóð and Vafþrúðnismál in all likelihood were composed as comments to these events. Here and elsewhere (in Gylfaginning) we hear about the Fimbulwinter, a dark and frozen prelude to the events of Ragnarök causing hunger and untold suffering. Enter Grendel, a name, whose meaning hitherto has eluded scholars. Perhaps Grendel is derived from Old West Norse grenna (-grenda, grendr) meaning make thin, reduce, make gray. The name Grendel should accordingly mean the one who famish people. Grendel is the symbol of the great hunger. He is also a “guest” who under cover of the ethos of caring for strangers, eats out the people of Heorot, which by the way gets located on Stevns and not Lejre. Also, Gräslund notes, Grendel and his mother live in a black and swampy mist while the heavens cry (v.1374 – 1376). Possibly, this dismal place echoes the sodden and dark landscape, from which water is held back from evaporating by the cold weather and the lack of sunlight. In Gräslunds understanding, Grendel is a metaphor for the devastation caused by the sudden disruption of the weather in the mid 6th century.
It is a complicated argument, and readers deserve to be guided by Gräslund and not a foreshortened version in a review. Also, some of the points have been argued by other archaeologists and anthropologists over the years. So, please read the book for this vivid and enticing tour-de-force.
Accordingly, let the following suffice: Through the years, I have followed the painstaking effort of numerous scholars and linguists trying to come to grips with Beowulf and its cultural context. It is only fair to say that the last ten to twenty years have brought us much closer to a formal understanding of the text in its written Anglo-Saxon version. Gräslund’s tour de force, though, lifts us to another level. His study of “Beowulfkvädet” deserves to be translated into English as soon as possible. No time to waste. Perhaps the good people in Toronto may finally succumb and dress up in sacks and ashes. They ought to…
Stevns is a peninsula in South Eastern Zeeland in Denmark. Flat, although it raises towards the east, where it breaks into the sea in the form of high cliffs, it has recently been suggested as the location for Heorot, the hall of Hrodgar, and the home of Grendel. What did it look like from the 6th to 10th centuries?
Map of Viking harbours, Strøby Toftegård, and the Roman Iron Age centre at Himlingeøje on Stevns. Based on Ulla Fraes Rasmussen 2000
Stevns is a fertile peninsula located south of Copenhagen. Famously, it ends in a 15 km-long fossil-rich coastal cliff, which was listed in 2014 as UNESCO World Heritage. Also, it was recently claimed as the “brimclifu blican” and “beorgas steape” (v. 222) of Beowulf, the sunlit cliffs and sheer crags, in the hinterland of which, Beowulf came to visit Hrodgar.
The area is primarily known for its extraordinary Roman finds in graves dating from the Early Iron Age. However, from 1995 – 2013, a magnate’s farm from c. 600 – c. 1000 was excavated at Strøby Toftegård. Although only parts of the excavation reports have been published, an overview may be gained from a preliminary report by Anna S. Beck[1]as well as the work of Sofie Laurine Albris. (See also the presentation at the website “Førkristen Kultpladser” at the National Museum in Copenhagen).
While partly protected from the sea by the forests and cliffs to the east and southeast, the locality was nevertheless accessible for small boats and barges sailing down Tryggevælde Å. The settlement consisted of a large hall rebuilt on a plateau between three to five times. All these halls measured between 37 – 40 meters and consisted of a large hall with additional rooms at the ends. No byres were found in these buildings, indicating their function as ceremonial gathering places.
The plateau had been artificially erected as part of the construction of the buildings. Surrounding the halls, the archaeologists found a ring of cooking-pits – so-called “hørgs” – which yielded an abundance of left-overs from what was obviously ritual feasts. The cooking pits had functioned as a kind of fence or marker in the landscape, segregating the hall(s) from the more ordinary part of the settlement.
Here, some smaller houses, typically with byres and outhouses, and probably organised as separate farms, were located.
In and around the plateau with the halls, finds were made of fibulas, pearls, carnelian gemstones, tools, fragments of Frankish glass from the 5th to the 7th century, weapons (arrows, parts of swords, spurs), amulets (“guldgubber”), weights, and silver-coins (African, Arabian, Central Asia). Of particular interest are some fragments of silver closely related to the so-called Witham Bowl from the Anglo-Irish context. As such, they belong to the same category of hanging bowls as the famous one from Sutton Hoo.
In the more “ordinary” part of the settlement, finds consisted of pottery and remains of animals as well as tools for spinning and weaving.
The hall of the magnate was located in a landscape of other important settlements – a harbour[2]by the mouth of the river Tryggevælde, a probable shipyard by “Snekkemosen”, another at Vallø Toftegård, a possible market-place at Kastanjehøj, a village near Varpelev and a large mound, Hothershøj from the 5th to 6th century, in the present churchyard of Hårlev Church. It is claimed that the large Viking Runic Stone, had originally been raised on this mound. The stone is dated to c. 900 – 950 and tells of Ragnhild, who was a sister to Ulf, and who raised “this stone, made this mound and built this stone-ship” in memory of her husband Gunulfr, son of Nefir, and a clamorous man”. The same Ragnhild is believed to have been responsible for another stone at Glavendrup in the island of Funen.
All-in-all, the complex at Strøby Toftegård may be categorised as a sacral centre of power akin to those at Tissø, Lejre and Uppåkra. Marked by continuity from c. 600 – 1000 it holds all the essential elements, including the remains of ritualised festivities (cooking and brewing) as well as an elite lifestyle.
Place Names
This conclusion is furthered by the studies of the place-names carried out by Sofie Laurine Albris in her Phd-thesis[3].
According to her, the place names at Stevns witness to the settled landscape going way back. Approximately half of the place-names can be dated to the oldest category with 50% dated to the Viking Age or later.
A significant early type of names characterised with the Southern Scandinavian suffix, -lev/-löv and often paired with a personal name are prominent in the landscape. The suffix means “that, which is left” and often believed to denote an inheritance. Hence “Gjordslev” means the “inheritance of Gyrth.” Sofie Laurine Albris, though, argues in her thesis that such names, in fact, means not so much the inheritance or property of Gyrth, but rather the land” which he was given or acquired control of as part of his official role, which he was appointed to as part of his alliance with an overlord (king or petty-king). A significant indicator is that these toponyms with the suffix -lev can be found near rich burials or graves. Such is the case for Hårlev just north of Hellested – a sacred place (from hēlaghær = holy, sacred). The presumed farm connected to this grave, though, has not as yet been located.
Interestingly enough, the area in a radius of 3.5 km around Strøby Toftegård is devoid of these older types of names (characterised by the suffixes -lev, -inge, -sted, or –høj). Instead, these names – and especially the names ending on –lev – abound in a radius of 10 – 19 km from the magnate’s centre. We may speculate whether the traditional Roman Iron Age centre further south lost its centrality due to the crisis in the 6th century, leading to the new settlement at Strøby with its corresponding “new” satellites, the –lev villages.
She reveals the way in which this new Germanic Iron Age magnate-centre was surrounded by seven –lev settlements in a radius of 10 km and 4 more at 20 km – to name them: Varpelev, Gjorslev, Hårlev, Vellev (Vallø), Endeslev, Sigerslev, Frøslev, Lyderslev, Alslev, Havnelev and Jørslev.
The same pattern can be found at the magnates’ residences at Lejre, Tissø, and Uppåkra from the same period c. 550 to 1000; yet, specifically not at Gudme, which went out of circulation around the time of the mid-sixth century crisis. Here, it is believed the centre moved further north to “Odins Vi” – present-day Odense.
Sofie Laurine Albris also lists the prefixes of these –lev-names, where they cannot be considered a personal name. The prefixes are *harjar, *saiwa, * Þunrawīhar, Iarl, *frø, wæ/wihar, and goði; or translated – warrior, sea-warrior, priest of Thor, earl, lord, sacred place, or god-man/priest.
If it is correct, as suggested in Albris’ thesis, that these types of place-names, which surrounded the magnate’s residences, indicated places or land, which were “given” to people in the lord’s retinue as part of their entrusted status, we get a fine sense of what “jobs” were available. According to this list, you might be a warrior, a sea-warrior, a priest of Thor or just a priest, set in charge of a sacred place, or “just” an earl or a lord. To fulfil the roles, your over-lord would fit you out with a piece of land or a village. At least, this is a reasonable hypothesis.
Strøby Toftegård may thus have been forged in the crucible of the mid 6th century-crisis leading to the establishment of a new elite centre at a time when the slightly older centre at the Himlingøje complex had utterly lost its significance. This conclusion, though, is as yet hypothetical due to the lack of archaeological evidence, writes Sofie Laurine Albris.
In a recent, ground-breaking treatment of the poem of Beowulf by one of the most prominent archaeologists in Sweden, Bo Gräslund, he suggests – based on the material culture and other linguistic and semantic evidence – that the poem was composed orally between c. 550 and 600 at the island of Gotland[4]; and that we may trace the sea-faring Beowulf to the peninsular Stevns on his quest for the trophy of Grendel .
Whether or not, the Hall of Heorot was “really” located at Strøby Toftegaard is at best highly speculative. At least, however, the physical attributes of the landscape fits the description with the high cliffs, the rugged shore, the sheer crags, the looming highlands, and later, the beautiful roads, the high-timbered hall “standing on its high ground” – as such halls were prone to do! And with its gold-adorned pillars in the centre (so-called “suler”). Since the golden foil amulets are mainly found in postholes, it is believed they were pinned to such posts, rendering the “timbered hall, splendid and ornamented with gold.“
A titillating thought…
NOTES:
[1]Toftegård – store og små forhold på Stevns.
By Anna S. Beck
In: H. Lyngstrøm & L. Sonne (red.): Vikingetidens aristokratiske miljøer. Tekster fra et seminar i seed-money netværket “Vikingetid i Danmark”. Saxo-instituttet – Københavns Universitet den 29. november 2013. Københavns Universitet. 7-10.
[2]Anløbspladser ved Køge Bugt – fra Vikingetid og Middelalder. By Ulla Fraes Rasmussen. In: Historisk Samfund for Roskilde Amt (2008), pp. 93- 110
[3]Stednavne og Storgårde i Sydskandinavien i 1. årtusind. By Sofie Laurine Albris
University of Copenhagen 2017, p. 205ff.
[4]And probably brought to Britain as part of the ”treasure” accompanying the heathen princess, who married Readwald and whose ”Swedish” gifts were laid to rest at Sutton Hoo. Highly speculative, there is no doubt the poem was orally composed in the 6th century Scandinavia and only later (c. 700) ”translated” into Old English. See: Beowulfkvädet. Den nordiska Bakgrunden. By Bo Gräslund. Acta Academia Regiae Gustavi Adolphi. Vol 149. Opia 64. Uppsala 2018.
Of all the fighting units struggling toward the final liberation of Italy, the men of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force are among the most warmly remembered in the towns and villages of the Apuan Alps and the Apennines, where they freed towns from occupying fascists. On local commemorations of the end of the war in the north three flags may fly: The Italian Tricolore, the U.S. Stars and Stripes, and the striking blue, green and gold banner of Brazil. With the passage of time the Brazilian Smoking Cobras, however, are largely forgotten in their own country, and rarely appear in Allied accounts of the war.
Nevertheless, the only Latin American unit thrown up against the Reich in Europe possesses a history as rich and dramatic as any other troops: twenty-five thousand underprepared men who arrived late and were battered by early losses in the field, but ended the war as a band of brothers with significant victories to call their own.
“Brazil is Present in the Fields of Europe!” An expeditionary force of 25,000 Brazilians fought alongside the Allies in decisive battles for Italy. Credit: O Globo, Rio de Janeiro
“The Brazilians will go to war when the snake smokes,” Hitler is reputed to have said, dismissing the possibility that the far-away, pro-fascist dictatorship of Gen. Getulio Vargas would commit troops to the European theatre, let alone to the Allied side. By 1943, however, President Roosevelt had cajoled the biggest country in South America with the promise of U.S. assistance to post-war industrial development – a Vargas dream; Rio allowed the U.S. Navy to begin building airstrips and bases on the strategic Brazilian hump, only 1800 miles from the closest city in Africa – Dakar; and U-boats began to sink Vargas’ ships. The die was cast. In July, 1944, the first ships from Rio arrived in Naples, and the Brazilians found themselves learning about U.S. arms under U.S. trainers at an old royal hunting ground outside Pisa. In a challenge to the Fuehrer, they called themselves the “Smoking Cobras” and sewed insignia of green and gold onto their sleeves. The patches carried an image of a rising cobra with a pipe in its mouth, smoke wafting up from the bowl.
When the Brazilians arrived 1944 Allies had occupied Italy south of the Arno River, but the country north of the river was still in enemy hands. The region was defended by the Gothic Line, 180 miles of iron, tank traps and sniper towers designed to be impregnable.
Lt. General Euclides Zenóbio, a charismatic 51-year old officer, led the assault that gave the Smoking Cobras their first victory, taking back from the enemy the town in western Tuscany called Camaoire. “He did not waste time,” the Brazilian chief of Staff, Floriano de Lima Brayner wrote. Zenóbio commanded “with bits of recklessness…not worrying about the dangers surrounding him.”
The Brazilians succeeded joyfully at Camaiore, but in general they lost more skirmishes to the Germans than they won in their first weeks in the field. Churchill had been wrong to say the Germans would not fight for Italy. Only when the Smoking Cobras crossed into the Serchio River Valley did they begin to come into their own. Zenóbio led the men town by town toward the Northern Apennines, which the historian of the Fifth Army, to which the Brazilians were attached, has called “the most formidable mountain barrier [the Fifth Army] was ever to face in combat operations in Italy.” Unfortunately, the advance was a miserable slog: seasonal rains came down in torrents, trucks slid from the roads, soldiers on foot were prey to flash floods and mud so deep it could swallow a man.
Nazi groups in Blumenau, Brazil invited locals to sports events, dancing, speeches, games and films like the German language movie, Germany Awakes. Credit: Fundaçao Cultural de Blumenau
The Brazilians found the Serchio Valley towns occupied by the Germans, or elements of the Italian Black Brigade, loyal to Mussolini. Not far away, fascist troops slaughtered civilians, sometimes as warnings for suspected collaboration with the Italian partisans. In a hill town called Sant’Anna de Stazzema, SS troops took reprisals for one partisan operation by murdering 700 residents, including 130 children, and burning their bodies. A local priest in the town of occupied Barga, a walled city 25 miles from the massacre, wrote that his flock looked “like anyone with a loved one dying.”
As the Allies approached Barga in numbers, however, the Germans and Italians retreated to nearby hills. On October 11, 1944 townspeople cheered as the Brazilians entered triumphally in jeeps. Too triumphally. “Get out of the streets!” someone yelled, perhaps one of the partisans who had entered the town two days before. Enemy fire rained down from the hills.
For weeks, the Brazilians and other allied troops fought to root out the enemy, liberating more towns. One night in November they moved by truck 75 miles east and north of the Serchio Valley to a new frontline in sight of a 3,240-foot-high rise, Monte Castello. Many of the South Americans stared in wonder when the first snow fell because they had seen the white flakes descend and pile up in drifts only in movies, or in their dreams. Soon the snow meant not enchantment but frostbite, rotting feet, burning skin.
Ferocious cold or not, the commander of the expeditionary force, Joâo Baptista Mascarenhas de Moraes, was determined his men would do their country – and himself – proud. German Field Marshal Albert Kesserling described Monte Castello as “of maximum importance for the possession of Bologna and the routes of communication toward the south, north and northwest.” The Brazilians’ new orders from Allied headquarters: take the mountain. Thus Mascarenhas began the trial by fire that finally forged the Smoking Cobras into seasoned fighters.
For the next months, Monte Castello loomed before the Smoking Cobras like Ahab’s white whale, taunting, seemingly unconquerable, yet something that must be mastered no matter what the cost. They threw themselves at the mountain in November, December and January, without success. One battalion failed to perform reconnaissance, and became sitting ducks for the Germans. On another day, rain turned the slopes into fatal marshes; forty-nine Brazilians died. Finally, on their fifth attempt, on February 21, 1945, the Brazilians launched an assault by way of the mountain’s flanks, not frontally as they had done before. As dark fell, Zenobio placed a call to Mascarenas. “The mountain is ours,” he said.
Buoyed by success, the Smoking Cobras became unstoppable, ending the war by taking the surrender of the entire 148th division of the German army. Commemorative plaques can be found today in Italian towns the Brazilians liberated during the war, some engraved by locals with the image of a rising snake confidently smoking a pipe.
BONUS – Watch the book trailer for The Tango War:
Born in Chicago, MARY JO MCCONAHAY is an award-winning reporter who covered the wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. She has traveled in seventy countries and has been fascinated by the history of World War II since childhood, when she listened to the stories of her father, a veteran U.S. Navy officer. A graduate of the University of California in Berkeley, she covers Latin America as an independent journalist. Her previous books include Maya Road and Ricochet. She lives in San Francisco.
Like many state senators in the spring of 1912, Franklin Roosevelt was a busy man. The Triangle fire and the work of the Factory Investigating Commission had transformed the debates in Albany and inspired legislation and regulations that historians would later celebrate as milestones of progressive thought. In the byzantine corridors of the capitol, beefy men from the city like Big Tim Sullivan and Thomas McManus, Roosevelt’s colleagues in the state senate, proceeded to their offices with a new urgency, for there were bills to pass and causes to adopt and constituents to satisfy—constituents who were making it clear that times had changed and they wanted more than a friendly ear in the clubhouse and a chance to line up for free shoes for their children.
But Franklin Roosevelt’s crowded schedule in the spring of 1912 had little to do with Albany’s new agenda. In fact, the earnest lobbying for new social welfare and labor laws was becoming downright tiresome. As lawmakers were beginning to pass the bills Smith and Wagner wrote, Frances Perkins seized on the momentum to get her fifty-four-hour bill passed. It was a critical piece of the reformers’ agenda, and, she reckoned, the practical politicians could no longer run away and hide from the issue just because a few factory owners objected. She was right: lawmakers like Sullivan and McManus and other roughnecks, as she called them with increasing affection, were lining up in support of the bill.
The bill was a natural, she figured, for Franklin Roosevelt. She saw him one day as he was preparing to leave the senate chamber, tall and handsome and utterly unapproachable. She approached him anyway. As other senators brushed by, Perkins raised her eyes to Roosevelt’s and told him about the fifty-four-hour bill, explaining how it would improve the lives of working women and would help, in some small way, to ease the exploitation of industrial workers.
The young senator did not attempt to disguise his utter lack of interest. “No, no,” he said as he waved her way. “More important things. Can’t do it now. Can’t do it now. Much more important things.” He rushed away, head in the air, leaving Frances Perkins to wonder how this man Roosevelt could be so “absurd”—a favorite word of hers.
Roosevelt did indeed have many other things to keep him busy as Smith and his allies devoted themselves to the concerns of working men, women, and children. He had formed a new law partnership with a fellow Groton and Harvard graduate, Langdon Marvin, and another lawyer, Harry Hooker, within weeks of being sworn in as a state senator, and Marvin was making it clear that he expected business to boom thanks to Roosevelt’s connections in Albany. “We want more business and big business,” Marvin wrote, underlining the words “business” and “big business,” just in case FDR didn’t get the point. “Keep this in mind and watch for legislative committee work, etc. We can investigate anything the State thinks needs looking into.”
The state, in the form of the Factory Investigating Commission, was looking into a good many things in the spring of 1912, but it did not require the assistance of Marvin, Hooker & Roosevelt, Counsellors at Law.
Edward Litchfield, on the other hand, did.
Edward Litchfield was a fabulously wealthy New Yorker reared in a mansion off Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He fell in love with the castles he saw during a childhood trip to Germany and was now in the process of building himself a palace of his own in the tiny village of Tupper Lake in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid. It would have a hundred rooms, each with a custom ceiling. There would be dozens of fireplaces and a veranda measuring seven hundred feet. A special trophy room, with a thirty-five-foot ceiling designed by Louis Tiffany, would show off his collection of art and furniture. The driveway from the gate of the estate to the chateau itself would be five miles.
It all sounded quite lovely. There was, however, a problem, which is why Litchfield presented himself to the offices of Marvin, Hooker & Roosevelt at 52 Wall Street one day in early 1912. He wanted a road built between Tupper Lake, home to his dream castle, and Long Lake, a nearby town. He expected the state to build it, and to achieve that goal he expected Marvin, Hooker & Roosevelt to make the necessary arrangements. He gave Marvin a blueprint of the planned road and, in essence, told him to make it happen. There would be more business for the firm, he promised.
Marvin immediately sensed the possibilities. This wasn’t just business, this was big business. He began a yearlong correspondence with Roosevelt about getting Litchfield’s road built. Legislation to fund the road already was in the works in both the assembly and senate, but Litchfield needed somebody to make sure it passed. Marvin wrote to Roosevelt, “He is very anxious indeed to have this bill go through. Will you, therefore, see what can be done to advance this bill?”
Through the remainder of the 1912 legislative session and beyond, Roosevelt made the case for Litchfield’s road to colleagues with more power and influence. Roosevelt reported that “through a good deal of diplomacy” he had succeeded in getting the necessary legislation reported out of the senate’s Finance Committee, a crucial step forward for Litchfield’s road. “I do not believe that there will be more trouble passing it,” FDR said with the confidence of a freshman legislator new to the intrigues of Albany. Marvin remained nervous about satisfying the firm’s wealthy client. He told FDR, “I want … every effort made to get this bill pushed now before the opposition becomes … acute.”
The fight for the Litchfield road bill was a classic case of a private interest seeking to benefit from the expenditure of public money, and as Roosevelt himself pointed out, it was hardly the only one of its kind. But Franklin Roosevelt had run for election and, in 1912, was running for reelection as a progressive politician in debt to no boss, no special interest.
In the end, Litchfield did not get his bill. Roosevelt was informed in February 1913—as the state legislature was passing bill after bill upon the recommendation of the Factory Investigating Commission—that any new funding for roads had to be used for roads designated in a state bond issue, and the Litchfield road was not among them.
As Roosevelt reported this bad news to Marvin, he was just about done with Albany, and Albany was just about done with him. He was hoping to land a job with the new administration of Woodrow Wilson, who won the presidency in 1912 over two Republicans, incumbent William Howard Taft and Roosevelt’s cousin Theodore, who finished in second place running on the Progressive Party line.
Franklin Roosevelt in 1913. Image is in the public domain via Wikipedia.
Franklin had his eye on cousin Teddy’s old job as assistant secretary of the navy. The offer came on the very day that Wilson was inaugurated as president, March 4, 1913, and when Roosevelt returned to Albany after attending the inauguration, he felt obliged to ask for the advice of his legislative leader, Robert Wagner. Should he take the job?
Wagner never hesitated.
“Go, Franklin, go,” Wagner replied. “I’m sure you’ll be a big success down there.” The taciturn German immigrant no doubt tried his best to contain his relief.
He was in Washington days later, sworn into office on March 17, the eighth anniversary of his marriage to Eleanor. Cousin Ted dropped him a note of congratulations. “It is interesting to see that you are in another place which I myself once held,” he wrote.
He was glad to be away from Albany, away from men like Tammany’s Murphy, whom he compared to a “noxious weed.” But, oddly, he also wanted to make sure that he was remembered there for the right reasons. He had kept his distance from the social legislation that was making New York a leader in a new kind of progressivism, but he did agree to sponsor a bill requiring employers to give their workers a day off every seven days. Practically speaking, it guaranteed a day of rest on Sunday.
The bill had the support of Christian clergymen in his district who otherwise had little to say about the new social legislation, so their approval may have had something to do with Roosevelt’s interest. Whatever the case, just a few weeks before he headed to Washington, he made a point of writing to the Factory Investigating Commission’s lead attorney, Abram Elkus. “I hope you are not going to forget my small contribution to this legislature, the so-called One Day Rest in Seven bill,” he wrote. Perhaps sensing, at last, the historic work of the Factory Investigating Commission, Roosevelt wished to note that he was on the right side of history, that he was at the ramparts when the status quo was overthrown. In later years, he would concoct a story that placed him at the center of change in Albany, an audacious claim that few would bother to check.
But people like Abram Elkus and his colleagues knew who was carrying on with the hard work of reform, and it wasn’t Franklin Roosevelt. It was Al Smith.
TERRY GOLWAY is a senior editor at POLITICO and the author of several works of history, including Frank and Al and Machine Made. He has been a columnist and city editor at the New York Observer, a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, and a columnist for the Irish Echo. He holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Rutgers University and has taught at the New School, New York University, and Kean University.
On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove―to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his pregnant wife―“that the hours of his life belong to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, appears unbidden to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.
The Ninth Hour is a historical novel that begins deep inside Catholic Brooklyn, in the early part of the twentieth century. Decorum, superstition, and shame collude to erase the man’s brief existence. Yet his suicide, although never spoken of, reverberates through many lives and over the decades testing the limits and the demands of love and sacrifice, of forgiveness and forgetfulness, even through multiple generations.
The characters we meet, from Sally, the unborn baby at the beginning of the novel, who becomes the center of the story, to the nuns whose personalities we come to know and love, to the neighborhood families with whose lives they are entwined, are all rendered with extraordinary sympathy and McDermott’s trademark lucidity and intelligence. Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour is a crowning achievement by one of the premiere writers at work in America today—keep reading for an excerpt.
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At six, the streetlamps against the wet dark gave a polish to the air. There was the polish of lamplight, too, on streetcar tracks and windowpanes and across the gleaming surface of the scattered black puddles in the street. Reflection of lamplight as well on the rump of the remaining fire truck and on the pale faces of the gathered crowd, with an extra gold sparkle and glint on anyone among them who wore glasses. Sister St. Saviour, for instance, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, who had spent the afternoon in the vestibule of the Woolworth’s at Borough Hall, her alms basket in her lap. She was now on her way back to the convent, her bladder full, her ankles swollen, her round glasses turned toward the lamplight and the terrible scent of doused fire on the winter air.
The pouch with the money she had collected today was tied to her belt; the small basket she used was tucked under her cloak and under her arm. The house where the fire had been looked startled: the windows of all four floors were wide open, shade cords and thin curtains flailing in the cold air. Although the rest of the building was dark, the vestibule at the top of the stone stoop was weirdly lit, crowded with policemen and firemen carrying lamps. The front door was open, as, it appeared, was the door to the apartment on the parlor floor. Sister St. Saviour wanted only to walk on, to get to her own convent, her own room, her own toilet—her fingers were cold and her ankles swollen and her thin basket was crushed awkwardly under her arm—but still she brushed through the crowd and climbed the steps. There was a limp fire hose running along the shadowy base of the stone banister. Two of the officers in the hallway, turning to see her, tipped their hats and then put out their hands as if she had been summoned. “Sister,” one of them said. He was flushed and perspiring, and even in the dull light, she could see that the cuffs of his jacket were singed. “Right in here.”
The apartment was crowded with people, perhaps every tenant in the place. The smell of smoke and wet ash, burned wool, burned hair, was part and parcel of the thick pools of candlelight in the room, and of the heavy drone of whispered conversation. There were two groups: one was gathered around a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves and carpet slippers who was sitting in a chair by the window, his face in his hands. The other, across the room, hovered beside a woman stretched out on a dark couch, under a fringed lamp that was not lit. She had a cloth applied to her head, but she seemed to be speaking sensibly to the thin young man who leaned over her. When she saw the nun, the woman raised a limp hand and said, “She’s in the bedroom, Sister.” Her arm from wrist to elbow was glistening with a shiny salve— butter, perhaps.
“You might leave off with that grease,” Sister said. “Unless you’re determined to be basted.” The young man turned at this, laughing. He wore a gray fedora and had a milk tooth in his grin. “Have the courtesy to doff your hat,” she told him.
It was Sister St. Saviour’s vocation to enter the homes of strangers, mostly the sick and the elderly, to breeze into their apartments and to sail comfortably through their rooms, to open their linen closets or china cabinets or bureau drawers—to peer into their toilets or the soiled handkerchiefs clutched in their hands—but the frequency with which she inserted herself into the homes of strangers had not diminished over the years, her initial impulse to stand back, to shade her eyes. She dipped her head as she passed through the parlor, into a narrow corridor, but she saw enough to conclude that a Jewish woman lived here— the woman on the couch, she was certain, a Jewish woman, she only guessed, because of the fringed lampshade, the upright piano against the far wall, the dark oil paintings in the narrow hallway that seemed to depict two ordinary peasants, not saints. A place unprepared for visitors, arrested, as things so often were by crisis and tragedy, in the midst of what should have been a private hour. She saw as she passed by that there was a plate on the small table in the tiny kitchen, that it contained a half piece of bread, well bitten and stained with a dark gravy. A glass of tea on the edge of a folded newspaper.
In the candlelit bedroom, where two more policemen were conferring in the far corner, there were black stockings hung over the back of a chair, a mess of hairbrushes and handkerchiefs on the low dresser, a gray corset on the threadbare carpet at the foot of the bed. There was a girl on the bed, sideways, her dark skirt spread around her, as if she had fallen there from some height. Her back was to the room and her face to the wall. Another woman leaned over her, a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
The policemen nodded to see the nun, and the shorter one took off his cap as he moved toward her. He, too, was singed about the cuffs. He had a heavy face, stale breath, and bad dentures, but there was compassion in the way he gestured with his short arms toward the girl on the bed, toward the ceiling and the upstairs apartment where the fire had been, a compassion that seemed to weigh down his limbs. Softhearted, Sister thought, one of us. The girl, he said, had come in from her shopping and found the door to her place blocked from the inside. She went to her neighbors, the man next door and the woman who lived here. They helped her push the door open, and then the man lit a match to hold against the darkness. There was an explosion. Luckily, the policeman said, he himself was just at the corner and was able to put the fire out while neighbors carried the three of them down here. Inside, in the bedroom, he found a young man on the bed. Asphyxiated. The girl’s husband.
ALICE MCDERMOTT is the author of seven previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; At Weddings and Wakes; and Someone. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1962 an Alemannic graveyard in Niederstotzingen in Southern Germany was discovered and excavated. New studies of the aDNA of thirteen individuals – ten male adults and three infants – presents a snapshot of the local group of warriors.
The Alemannic graveyard in Niederstozingen dated to the end of the 6th century is famous for three reasons. First of all, the results were published soon after the excavation. Thus it came to define a horizon, against which other and later excavated burial grounds were compared. Secondly, some of the grave goods were exceptional, particularly the helmet and armour made in a Byzantine style from overlapping scales. Thirdly, one of the buried individuals was later identified as a woman, albeit buried with “male” grave-goods, This raised a scholarly debate on the phenomena of “amazons” in the migration period.
Recently, new studies were published adding to as well as offering corrections to the general understanding of the graves, the grave-goods, the interred individuals and not least the social structure of the group. The studies were carried out by researchers at the Eurac Research Centre in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, and at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, in Germany.
No female warrior
Reconstruction of Lammellen Helmet from Niederstotzingen. Source: Wikipedia
First of all, the new studies laid the question of a “female” warrior to rest. Eleven of the thirteen individuals had enough DNA preserved to identify them as males, while no definitive sex could be determined for two. But “she” was not among these two. Accordingly, the graves witness to a burial practice with males to one side, and females to the other. If women were ever buried at the site, they were later translated from a pillaged grave and moved elsewhere.
Also, analyses of strontium showed that eleven out of thirteen individuals had grown up and lived locally, while two individuals, who had grown up in another locality, had lived as grown-ups in Niederstotzingen. These two individuals were further characterised by the wear and tear on their skeletons, signalling that they were professional soldiers. One of these individuals probably derived from Southern or South Eastern Europe.
A recent study of the aDNA of all the individuals aimed to reconstruct patterns of kinship. This new information has helped shed even more light on the cultural context presented by the funerary artefacts.
Genome-wide analyses helped to estimate the genetic affiliation of the majority to modern West Eurasians. Of these, at least five individuals belonged to the same patrilinear kin-group, consisting of two brothers – obviously leaders of the group – one of which had two sons, and a grandchild, thus constituting three generations. Mothers, though, had judged by the mapping of haplogroups been recruited from far away, confirming the results from other similar investigations that marriages were exogenous and patrilocal.
Remarkably, though, neither kinship nor geographical origin could be related to the different ensembles of grave-goods. Thus, the objects found in the graves of the five individuals, who were identified as belonging to the same patrilineal kin-group, could be characterised as Byzantine, Franconian, as well as Lombardian. Especially the two assemblages, belonging to the two brothers in the first generation, are unusual: one was Byzantine, while the other was Franconian. Compared with the finds in all twelve graves, both these interred individuals were laid to rest with the most magnificent objects – respectively the Byzantine Helmet and the Franconian double-edged-ring-sword together with an engraved lance. In this context, it is interesting to note that the study of the strontium profiles of the two brothers showed that they had not only been born locally, they had for several years also lived together locally. Which means that we have two brothers born and living together with descendants and retinue while showing off military equipment of very diverse cultural styles. It does not seem farfetched to imagine that they laid their hands on the weapons and armour as part of raids less than gifts from the war-lords, for whose service, they had signed up. Perhaps, though, the Franconian Ring-sword did represent a gift from a Merovingian overlord recruiting our man to be the local official representative.
The research group publishing the results conclude that kinship and fellowship was held in equal regard. We might add, that the findings also show the outline of a small band of brothers with their retinue, who had settled on the crossroad of two former Roman highways living off the countryside as early medieval highway robbers. Or as the authors write, they constituted a “military outpost guarding an important land route”. The remaining question is: would there be a difference?
Sadly, the corresponding female burial ground has not been found and excavated.
Ancient genome-wide analyses infer kinship structure in an Early Medieval Alemannic graveyard.
by Niall O’Sullivan, Cosimo Posth, Valentina Coia, Verena J. Schuenemann, T. Douglas Price, Joachim Wahl, Ron Pinhasi, Albert Zink, Johannes Krause, Frank Maixner. Ancient genome-wide analyses infer kinship structure in an Early Medieval Alemannic graveyard. Science Advances( 2018), vol. 4, no. 9
After an extensive renovation of the Musée de Cluny in Paris, the first major exhibition focuses on the birth of the Gothic sculpture in and around Paris.
Between 1135 and 1150, a new and revolutionary art form was launched at St. Denis north of Paris. Here Abbot Suger ruled from 1122, and it was here, he propelled an aesthetic rethinking as well as the massive rebuilding of the Abbey church. In the following centuries, this came to set its mark from one end of Europe to the other. Labelled Gothic – that is antiquated and barbarous – by the masters of the Renaissance, contemporaries thought of it as highly modern.
Suger was a jack-of-all-trades. Accomplished politician, writer, and administrator, we never the less know him best as a dedicated patron of his Abbey, as witnessed today by the rebuilt western end, the famous ambulatory and shrine choir, and the creative use of stained windows and sculptural embellishments. Out of reverence for the old Merovingian church, Suger was keen to preserve the fabric of yesteryear. Nevertheless, the new Abbey Church at St. Denis came to be considered the crucible of Gothic Art. Not least, because we have personal reflections preserved in his writings and his testament on what he thought about his building projects – theologically, aesthetically, and regarding practicality.
Nevertheless, St. Denis has an obscure artistic context. The challenge is, that we seem to know so much about St. Denis, that we forget that considerable parts of the surrounding edifices and preserved artistic legacy is not so well dated. The question is, what and whom, inspired Suger? And what influence did Suger and St. Denis have on the burgeoning art scene of île-de-France? Thus, it is still debated whether Chartres inspired St. Denis or vice-versa. Also, did the choirs in the Cathedral at Noyon and in the Abbey church at St-Germer-de Fly predate or postdate the work of Suger?
One of the significant elements to ponder in connection with this question is the use of early Gothic Sculpture, which spread throughout the île-de-France region from 1135 – 1150. The most prominent feature was, of course, the use of triple portals flanked by sculptures, such as is still preserved at Chartres. We know from fragments of the portals from St. Denis as well as a series of pre-revolutionary drawings from the 18th century that such sculptured portals also graced the Abbey church.
However, this early Gothic sculpture was not limited to the emblematic portals adorned with column-statues, while new models circulated and new forms of expression were explored. An unprecedented virtuosity in the cutting and carving of stone allowed for infinite variations on decorative themes, which were shared with illuminations and stained-glass windows. With a sense for narration and a marked taste for the monumental, such refined and detailed work helped to spread the new artistic gospels across borders.
This autumn, Musée de Cluny invites the public to enjoy, study, and compare the magnificent sculptural heritage of the early 12th century and how it came to inspire Europe in a gigantic wave rapidly reaching the outer shores of England, Scotland, and Germany. With loans of statues from the Royal Portal at Chartres, the fragmentary vestiges of those from the western portals of the Abbey in Saint-Denis, as well as other sculptural remnants from the Sainte-Anne Portal of Notre-Dame de Paris and the Saint-Denis Cloister, visitors will be able to observe how the birth of a whole new form of art came about.
Afterwards, it is suggested to make a short detour to St. Denis, in order to experience the Cathedral, as it stands today, as well as the interesting archaeological museum where finds from extensive excavations are exhibited.
Under the leadership of its curators, Damien Berné and Philippe Plagnieux, the exhibition brings together about 130 works. In addition to the collections in the Musée de Cluny Museum and the Louvre, sculptures and other pieces of work have been loaned from museums in France as well as abroad
Curators: Damien Berné, Heritage Curator at the Musée de Cluny, and Philippe Plagnieux, Professor of Medieval Art History (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne & École Nationale des Chartes). In partnership with RMN-GP.
With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France invites you to explore the parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions. The Mapping Gothic France project was initiated by Stephen Murray, Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and Andrew Tallon, Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College and funded through the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mapping Gothic France was developed within the framework of collaboration between the Media Center for Art History in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, the Visual Resources Library at Vassar College, and the Columbia University Libraries.
Vertical, emotional, illusional, terrifying… Gothic Art dominated the architecture as well as minor art forms from the 13thto 15thcenturies, lifting the soul of mankind towards the heavens. This autumn Paderborn houses a major exhibition on Gothic Architecture
The reliquary of the Holy Sepulchre from Pamplona. Source: Wikipedia
Vertical, emotional, illusional, terrifying… Gothic Art dominated the architecture as well as minor art forms from the 13th to 15th centuries, lifting the soul of mankind towards the heavens. This autumn Paderborn houses a major exhibition on Gothic Architecture
Charlemagne may have commissioned the first cathedral in Paderborn. Completed in 799 it was trice destroyed by fires in the 11thand 12thcenturies, the present building dates to the 12thand 13thcenturies and presents itself predominantly as a Gothic monument. This autumn, the Cathedral and the Diocesan Museum mount a major exhibition on Gothic style, celebrating the 950-year anniversary of the building of the second cathedral.
The Diocesan Museum in Paderborn is renowned for its large exhibitions on its Carolingian past. 2018, the focus has shifted to a later epoch, the Gothic era. Parading treasures borrowed from Pamploma, Paris, Reims, Mainz, and elsewhere, the exhibition is shown in the Cathedral as well as the Diocesan Museum.
The aim is to present an overview of the Gothic style and how it spread as a distinctive architectural style from12th century France across Europe. And how the Gothic style came to reverberate in other art forms – stone sculptures, carvings, ivories, the works of goldsmiths, manuscripts etc.
Characteristic for Gothic Art is its fundamental links to the art of architecture and the main focus in the exhibition will be the interplay between the new forms of architecture, and the sculptural implementations of the new ideal. Other art forms, however, will also be represented – reliquaries, covers of manuscripts, ivories etc. All inspired by architecture. And ll inspired by the new idea of the contemplative soul moving vertically towards a full reunion with God.
The famous reliquary is believed to have been a gift from St. Louis in connection with the marriage of his daughter, Isabel, to Theobald III, king of Navarre, in 1255. Another date proposed is 1284. The reliquary is a unique presentation of the scene at the empty grave when the women arrive early Easter morning. One of the peculiar characteristics may be seen from above. The open and otherwise empty tomb contains several relics, among them a presumed fragment of the Sudario (headcovering) of the Lord. Source: Wikipedia
The bill was a natural, she figured, for Franklin Roosevelt. She saw him one day as he was preparing to leave the senate chamber, tall and handsome and utterly unapproachable. She approached him anyway. As other senators brushed by, Perkins raised her eyes to Roosevelt’s and told him about the fifty-four-hour bill, explaining how it would improve the lives of working women and would help, in some small way, to ease the exploitation of industrial workers.
At six, the streetlamps against the wet dark gave a polish to the air. There was the polish of lamplight, too, on streetcar tracks and windowpanes and across the gleaming surface of the scattered black puddles in the street. Reflection of lamplight as well on the rump of the remaining fire truck and on the pale faces of the gathered crowd, with an extra gold sparkle and glint on anyone among them who wore glasses. Sister St. Saviour, for instance, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, who had spent the afternoon in the vestibule of the Woolworth’s at Borough Hall, her alms basket in her lap. She was now on her way back to the convent, her bladder full, her ankles swollen, her round glasses turned toward the lamplight and the terrible scent of doused fire on the winter air.
