Renaissance Conflict!

In Florence, during that time period which we call the "Renaissance", lived the famous speaker Savonarola (born 1452). He gained his fame as a Christian critic of the popular arts and entertainment, and began a movement to reform society. Savonarola wanted to reduce the problems of alcohol abuse, the sexual exploitation of women, and a general attitude of people wanting to simply be entertained, instead of being productive and constructive and seeking intellectual challenges.

But Savonarola's good intentions went bad. At some point, he slipped away from his original Christian viewpoint, and instead merely claimed to be a Christian, while in fact actually seeking to control the lives of those around them, by trying to make them conform to his arbitrary standards. Instead of inspiring people with a hopeful message, he began to simply place a series of legalistic demands upon them.

What did the good, enlightened Renaissance people of Florence do to Savonarola? They simultaneously burnt and hanged him!

So, nobody really ends up looking very good in the this situation: Savonarola abandoned his attempt to help people and sought instead merely to control them. In return, the so-called "Renaissance" people, known for their "intellectual curiousity", decided to burn him at the stake. So much for the Renaissance!

An Emperor By Any Other Name

You've heard of "Charlemagne", and you've heard him mentioned as "Charles the Great" and even "Carolus Magnus" in Latin. These names are, obviously, all equivalent, but he would have answered to none of them. He was a Frank, and spoke Frankish until the day of his death. (His biographer and close friend, Einhard, says that Charlemagne investigated learning Latin, but decided not to do it.) He hired diplomats to speak in Latin for him.

His name, in the only language he ever knew, was simply "Karl". The Frankish language is a dialect of German, and a modern version of it is still spoken in the homeland of the Franks. This region, Frankenland (or "Franconia" in English), constitutes the northern half of the modern province of Bavaria. As his reputation grew, he became known as "Karl der Grosse" (properly "Karl der Große"), meaning "Karl the Great".

His people, the Franks, left their name on city of Frankfurt, which means literally "the ford of the Franks", because that is where the Franks crossed the river during the era which we call the "migration of peoples" (historians call this the "Völkerwanderung"). There are actually three towns named "Frankfurt", separated by several hundred miles. By these town names, one can re-trace the route of the Franks during the Völkerwanderung. Even Michigan has its Frankenmuth. The nation of France also bears the name of this Germanic tribe - a bit of irony!

Could it be that he became known as "Charlemagne" or "Charles the Great" because French-speaking and English-speaking historians didn't want to admit that the first and most powerful central European empire was formed and ruled by a German?

Constantine

So why do they call him Constantine "the Great"? Well, he did manage to unify a Roman Empire that was threatening to politically disintegrate; he moved the capitol from Rome to Constantinople (a/k/a Byzantium); he triggered an artistic creative spree of buildings and sculptures and mosiacs; and, perhaps most significantly, he legalized Christianity - taking this belief system from an illegal activity punishable by death or imprisonment to an accepted, and even admired, status within the empire.

Interestingly, Constantine did not illegalize the other belief systems in the empire - those versions of polytheistic paganism which had been responsible for executing hundreds of thousands of Christians. Rather, he showed them a type of tolerance which they had never shown to the Christians. Constantine thereby demonstrated what the Romans could expect from their first Christian emperor. Given a chance to exact blood revenge from his former persecutors, he chose not to do so. It is this voluntary surrender of power, the decision not to oppress, which would characterize a new era. Perhaps this is what makes him great.

Julius Caesar - Hero or Jerk?

The guy who almost was the first Roman emperor was amazingly popular - yeah, that's right, Julius Caesar never actually was emperor, but he almost was, and he was really quite well-liked by the average Roman citizen, at least for most of his career. Toward the end of his life, his popularity went down a little, because some folks suspected that his loyalties might be split between Rome and Egypt - or, more accurately, between Rome and Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt. But, anyway, he was well-liked by most of the people most of the time.

He worked to keep his popular status by handing out citizenships to some of the residents of the territories which had been added to the empire - they didn't resent being conquered so much, if they could get some benefit out of it. And he made sure that the average Roman citizen had access to the minutes of the meetings of the Senate.

But this popular guy also had his dark side. In the course of conquering Gaul, he boasted that he killed a million people, and sold another million into slavery. Now, these numbers might not be exact - it could be a little more, or a little less. But the bottom line is this: to kill anywhere near that many people, we're not talking about soldiers falling in battle. We're talking about genocide. We're talking about killing children, women, cripples, and old folks. We're talking about burning entire villages to the ground.

So maybe Julius Caesar wasn't such a nice guy, after all.

Cuturally Schizophrenic

Between 50 A.D. and 800 A.D., the Christian faith spread through Europe. The continent had previously been dominated by various systems of polytheistic paganism. The new faith did not immediately erase all traces of the earlier belief system. On the contrary, we can see “split personality” in European culture.

Consider Beowulf: this story reflects much of the blood-thirstiness and lack of regard for human life which was the culture of Norse mythology - yet, at the same time, traces of the Christian virtues of humility and helping other humans are found. So the characters evince simultaneously desires for blood-revenge and a selfless altruism: a truly mixed lot!

Likewise, the ideology of “courtly love” (which may be only a literary idea, and never carried out in real life) contains both traces of Christian pacifistic concepts, and traces of the pagan “warrior-cult” mentality.

The German folktale known as the "Nibelungenlied" was re-written in the 1200's to include references to Christian concepts of self-sacrifice to aid others, yet its main plot is one of pagan revenge and power-seeking.

When reading European literature, it is necessary to unravel the tangled strands of paganism and Christianity which mingled to yield characters who act in seemingly inconsistent ways: these individuals seem, at one moment, to be vicious polytheists - at the next moment, they appear to have the Christian ideal of respect for human life.

The Punic Wars

Rome experienced three wars with Carthage between 264 B.C. and 146 B.C.; they are called the “Punic” Wars because the early founders of Carthage were from Phoenicia. These wars would essentially determine whether Rome or Carthage would be the dominate geo-political power in the Mediterranean area.

In the first Punic War, Rome, led in part by a military hero named Regulus, won Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.

In the second Punic war, Hamilcar, a Carthiginian leader, consolidated Spain under Carthage's rule. His son, Hannibal, attacked a Roman outpost in Spain, and then marched with elephants over both the Pyrenees and the Alps, and came close to the city of Rome itself. In panic, the citizens of Rome conducted human sacrifices to convince their idols to defend them. Hannibal did not take the city, due in part to a tactically disastrous hesitation on his part, and in part to the fact that the supply lines which were to bring him more troops and equipment were cut by the Romans. The Roman officer Scipio Africanus the Elder captured Spain, and then began to invade northern Africa. Hannibal abandoned his campaign in Italy and went south to defend the city of Carthage itself. By the end of this war, Carthage was stripped of its various territories, and reduced to a small area around the city of Carthage itself. It was forced to pay tribute to Rome.

The Roman politician Cato the Elder incited Scipio Africanus the Younger to attack Carthage in the third Punic War. Carthage was completely destroyed by the dominating Roman military.

These wars left Rome as the clear master of the Mediterranean region; world history would be very different had Carthage won these wars: your computer would have a font called “Times New Carthaginian”, and you would use “Carthaginian numerals”.

Is Marcus Aurelius Important?

Marcus Aurelius wrote a book which remains a best-seller over a thousand years later; in 2003 and 2004, several thousand copies were sold. So is this guy important?

Well, that depends. In the context of Roman history, he is remembered as one of the “good” emperors; he held the empire together when various social and political forces - not to mention the enemy's armies - were trying to pull it apart. He did not engage in the extreme vices of the “bad” emperors: he did not enjoy human torture as a form of entertainment, organize sadistic orgies, etc. But his career is also located in the era of the final and gradual decline of empire. Rome was past its prime, and Aurelius was simply doing the best job he could to manage the empire. His son would prove to be hopelessly wicked and corrupt, causing further imperial decline. In the big picture of 500 years of imperial history, Aurelius was probably no more, and no less, important that dozens of other emperors whose names we find only in small print in seldom-read books. Historically, we might be tempted to say that he is not that important.

Philosophically, on the other hand, his little book seems to have interested thousands of readers over the years - readers who may have little or no interest in the history of the Roman Empire. Philosophically, Aurelius has sparked thoughts in countless minds, and may be responsible for the fact that Stoicism is still viewed as an important philsophical system.

So is Marcus Aurelius important? Well, the answer may be that he is historically unimportant, but philsophically important.

Everybody's a Hypocrite!

History is filled with all sorts of sages who give us moral advice and ethical guidance. But it seems that each of these sages has his own dirty laundry: Marcus Aurelius gave us an impassionate personal Stoicism, yet allowed the blood-thirsty polytheists in his empire to execute Christians by the thousands; Cicero discovered the principle of Natural Law, upon which most later legal systems are founded, yet was a mercenary lawyer who did whatever dirty work was needed to win his latest political encounter; Octavian-Augustus, the first Roman emperor, prevented the empire from social disintegration by strengthening the fellowship of the basic family unit (mom, dad, kids), yet he may have had a fling or two with a woman who was not his wife. And so it goes: great moral advice given by individuals who do, in some situations, the very opposite. They're all hypocrites! Shall we then simply ignore them and their advice?

All humans are, however, hypocrites. This is, in fact, part of the human situation: we are by nature imperfect. And it is this nature which makes us seek, and give, ethical guidance. So we can't really blame our philosophers for being hypocrites; in fact, they have to be - if they weren't, they wouldn't be human, and they wouldn't be able to help us with our dilemmas.

We must separate the advice from the advice-giver; Cicero's Natural Law, Octavian's civil doctrine of marriage, and Aurelius's Stoicism can help us - but we must, in the same breath, condemn their actions even as we embrace their words. And if we condemn their actions but embrace their words, what then shall we do with the men themselves? Neither condemn nor praise them, but simply view them as our fellow humans, flawed, yet having those flashes of creative human insight which are, along with our flaws, a necessary and unalterable aspect of being human.

Gothic?

As you already know, "Gothic" architecture nothing (or very little) to do with the Goths, a Germanic tribe which roamed around Europe. But, although the Goths didn't invent this architectural style, they had a sophisticated culture of their own.

Historians sometimes picture the Goths as "savage", uncultured, crude, and blood-thirsty. This is far from true.

By 100 A.D., at the latest, the Goths were literate (i.e., they could read and write). Some historians believe that they were literate even eariler.

The earliest Gothic writings are preserved in "runes". Runes, which are now sometimes used in silly fortune-telling games, are simply the letters of an early Germanic alphabet, which was used to write Gothic and Scandinavian languages.

By around 350 A.D., the Gothic leader Wulfila (also spelled "Ulfilas" and several other ways) revised the Gothic spelling and grammar, and created a more modern alphabet for the language. By 400 A.D., there was quite a literary culture among the Goths. One surviving work is a commentary on Greek texts.

So the Goths weren't uncultured. Nor were they savage: when they became Christianized around 300 A.D., they stopped human and animal sacrifice.

So why do we have this image of Goths as "rude and crude"? Perhaps because the earliest historians to write about them were Romans, and these Romans, upset about the decline of their own empire, needed to find somebody who looked even worse, so as to make the Romans look good by comparison. Later historians, then, simply relied on the earlier historians, and painted a rather grim picture of the Goths.

Gothic, as a living and spoken language, survived in isolated, obscure pockets until around 1400 A.D., mainly in small villages around the Crimean Sea.

The U of M, here in Ann Arbor, has two noted Gothic specialists, who are famous around the world for their expertise in this language. They have published several books on Gothic grammar.

Is this a future career for you? Would you like to be a specialist in the Gothic language?

So What is a Palimpsest?

In the early Middle Ages, parchment (a type of thin leather from goat or sheep skin) was a common writing surface. It was relatively expensive, but very durable. We're talking about writing books and essays, not letters to Grandma.

If you wanted to write something, but had neither parchment nor money for parchment, you might take a rough stone and rub it over the surface of an already-written parchment to erase what was already written there, and then you could write. Centuries later, scientists discovered that you could, using ultra-violet light in some cases, infra-red in others, still read what had been erased. In still other cases, chemical reactions or sub-atomic particles could bring the erased writing back to life.

In this way, books and essays which have been lost for centuries can be recovered ... a sort of scientific detective work in the service of history and literature.

A "palimpsest" is a piece of parchment which has been erased and re-written. The task is to figure out what was erased.

Major universities have several palimsest readers, people who do this kind of scientific investigation.

Would you like to be a palimpsest reader?

What do Professors at Duke University say about Humanities?

A tenured full professor at Duke says that he enjoyed "the Humanities course, which was my favorite in high school, and indeed may be the most eye-opening class I have ever had."

This scholar graduated from Huron in 1979, and went on to study at Kalamazoo College, Notre Dame University, and the German Universität in Hannover. He has published books and articles on Des Cartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and Malebranche.

Merely an "Excerpt"?

This Humanities course is a "survey course" as schools call them. We cover roughly 4,000 years of history between August and May. We touch upon many of the most important people, books, and events. But we cannot do it in depth: we can merely give you a brief glimpse. When you get to the university, you can choose to take in-depth classes in these various subjects, where you will cover much less material, but cover it much more thoroughly.

In such a survey course, one necessary compromise is to read excerpts from famous texts. There isn't time to read everything every written by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thucydides, Shakespeare, and all the other pivotal thinkers. So we read only brief selections from their writings. And this is where you have to do some critical thinking about "spin".

For example, depending on which pages you read, you can make Thucydides seem either like a spokesman for noble morality of the ancient Greeks, or a social critic denouncing their mercenary blood-thirstiness.

Depending on which chapters of the "Republic" you read, Plato can seem either like a proto-Marxist social engineer, or a other-worldly observer of philosophical abstractions.

So, while you think about what you're reading, remember to also think about what you're NOT reading.

The Mystery of Saladin

In the long history of attacks on Europe, starting in the 700's when Charles Martell ("Karl the Hammer") defended the European heartland at the battle of Tours (732/733 A.D.) and repelled the invaders, and lasting at least until 1683, when Vienna was attacked, but not conquered, the figure of Saladin stands out as one of the most vicious military leaders to attempt to destroy Europe.

After military confrontations, the standard practice of his troops was to torture and kill the military prisoners as well as any civilians from the opposing side. Women and children were no exception, and Saladin's soldiers used rape to terrorize local populations.

On July 3, 1187, when Saladin's army attacked a group of Europeans at Hattin, he gave an order which has been preserved for us in writing: all the Europeans were beheaded; no prisoners were taken.

The mystery of Saladin is why, a few months later, in October of 1187, when he captured the city of Jerusalem, he did not execute the Europeans there. In his long and bloody career, this was the one time that he choose not to kill the prisoners he had taken. Why?

His magnanimity was actually pragmatism. He had intially planned to put to death all the Christians in the city. However, when the Christian commander inside Jerusalem, Balian of Ibelin, threatened in turn to destroy the city before Saladin could get inside, Saladin relented - although once inside the city he did enslave those Christians who could not afford to buy their way out of town.

So Saladin made a double profit: ransom from those who could pay, and income made from selling the rest as slaves.

Balain of Ibelin, by the way, was not a European. He was a native Middle Easterner, but one who had escaped the forced conversion to Islam being spread by armies like Saladin's.

Saladin, it seems, was content to put aside his genocidal passions, if he could gain financially from it.

Bach's Newest CD!

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685, which makes him a little old to be releasing new CD's, but somehow, he's managing.

A researcher was looking through some old papers, and found a two-page, hand-written aria for soprano and harpsichord, the first Bach vocal work discovered in seventy years. The text is a twelve-stanza poem, beginning "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohne ihn" (Everything with God, and nothing without Him). A reviewer has called the music "a reflective, meditative, soothing piece, as Bach's church music so often is."

The CD should be available at your local store soon.

Humanistic Reflections

In our Humanities course, we surf speedily along over centuries of thought - philosophy, religion, literature, art, history, music. What impact does a “humanistic” education have on the individual?

I'll note in passing that “humanistic” is a word with varying definitions; take a look at a dictionary.

Those who lack at least some experience with philosophy, humanism, or any human expression of wrestling with questions of meaning are prone to be guided by three things:

(1) avoiding clear negative consequences - legal, physical, or economic pain
(2) moving in sync with popular opinions
(3) seeking “what feels good”

Those three principles are likely to leave the individual stuck in an intellectual nightmare, whether she or he realizes it or not. The first and third principles will lead the agent to act in opposition to the principles of those she or he admires: one's hero or role-model accepts pain, and is willing to live without “what feels good”, in order to achieve higher goals. The second principle leads to self-contradiction as opinion changes. All three lack any intellectual justification.

On the other hand, a person with some intellectual foundation in philosophy or “the humanities” will be guided, at least in part, by reflections upon transcendent standards:

* truth
* beauty
* justice

and will work out a course of action which is guided by a logical, rational consideration of what is entailed by those standards, and what is likely to bring one closer to them, to realize them.

So taking this Humanities Class might just be good for you, after all!

Grendel's Mom: Messiah vs. Monster?

One of the most striking features of the narrative (you'll figure out which book I'm discussing here, so I won't tell you) is that it is the mother who attempts to avenge Grendel - not Grendel's friend, brother, or father. Why the mother?

One answer might lie in the bizarre mix of paganism and early Christianity which characterizes this book; this uncomfortable blend is also found in the Nibelungenlied (a famous Germanic folktale), and in the ideas surrounding the earliest formulations of chivalry and courtly love.

Did the author intend to see in Grendel and his mother an inverse image of Christianity? Is Grendel an anti-Jesus figure? If so, then his mother would be an anti-Mary, hence her otherwise unexpected prominence in the narrative.

Can we find other hints that Grendel might be mirror image of Christ? Grendel crawls into his grave to die, instead of emerging from it to live. Grendel brings fear and death, instead of "peace be with you" and life.

Perhaps the author was aware of his clashing mix of violent paganism and altruistic Christianity, and so wove into his story an opposite analogue to a Christ-figure. Is there then also a Christ-figure in the story? You decide.

European Judaism

European Judaism, which by the 10th century was already quite distinct from the forms of Judaism practiced in Palestine and Ethiopia, was monolithic until the 1600's. At that point in the time, the “Hasidic” (also spelled “Chasidic”) movement began.

Rebbe (i.e., “Rabbi”) Yisrael, called “the Baal Shem Tov” (meaning “Master of the Good Name”) was the founder of the Chassidic movement.

Hassidism was distinguished from the Orthodox Judaism by its mystical and emotional emphasis. Hassidism has a number of sub-varieties within itself: Breslov, Lubavitch, and Satmar.

Rebbe (“Rabbi”) Nachman of Breslov was the great-grandson “the Baal Shem Tov”. Rebbe Nachman was born in 1772 (1 Nisan 5532) in the Ukrainian town of Medzeboz. He grew to be an outstanding tzaddik (saint), Torah sage, teacher and Chassidic master. During his lifetime he attracted a devoted following of “chassidim” (Hassidic followers) who looked to him as their prime source of spiritual guidance in their quest for God, as “the Rebbe.” From the autumn of 1802 until the spring of 1810 Rebbe Nachman lived in Breslov, Ukraine. He then moved to Uman where he passed away from tuberculosis six months later, at the age of thirty-eight. He is buried there till today.

Thus, by the mid-1800's, a variety of forms of Judaism were practiced in Europe. Geographically, the Hasidic forms were found more in the East, the orthodox more in the west. The Orthodox Jews in the England, Spain, France, and the Benelux countries (Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands) tended to see the Hasids as too emotional, too mystical, irrational, and a little simple-minded. The Hasids in Eastern Europe tended to the view their fellow Jews in Western Europe as too cold and formal, and not perceptive regarding spiritual matters.

As we have seen varieties of Christianity influence history and be influenced by history, so also with the varieties of Judaism. The East / West divisions can be seen as reflecting the areas of Europe which were more receptive to Cartesian rationalism, Hume’s Empiricism, and the Enlightenment, all of which flourished in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, Hume, Descartes, and the Enlightenment didn't make much of an impact (in Poland, the Ukraine, etc.).

Much of what we now consider typical, or stereotypical, Judaism is actually European, or eastern European, culture. When one examines the native Judaisms of places like Ethiopia, or the Judaisms of those Jews who, for two thousand years, never left Palestine, they seem almost “un-Jewish” by the standards of American or European culture, because they do not carry the cultural influences of Europe; yet they are every bit as much “Jewish” as the Jews of Germany, Poland, and Russia.

Jewish texts in western thought:

Although it is known that there has been far too much persecution of the Jews in European history, the remarkable fact is that for about 1500 years, Jews and Christians co-existed in Europe rather peacefully, these regrettable times of persecution being exceptions, rather than the rule.

One factor which made this co-existence possible was a substantial amount of overlap between Jewish and Christian belief systems. (Hence the modern phrase, “Judeo-Christian”.) The following excerpt from the Talmud gives us a sample of Jewish thought, which was incorporated into Christianity:

He (Rabbi Elazar HaKappar) used to say, The born will die, the dead will come to life, and the living will be judged - so that they know, make known, and become aware that He is G-d, He is the Fashioner, He is the Creator, He is the One who understands, He is the Judge, He is the Witness, He is the Litigant, and He will eventually judge. Blessed be He, for there is not before Him wrongdoing, forgetfulness, favoritism, or the acceptance of bribes - for all is His. And know that everything is according to a reckoning. And do not let your evil inclination assure you that the grave is a refuge for you - for against your will were you created, against your will were you born, against your will do you live, against your will do you die, and against your will you will stand in judgment before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.

Note that Jewish texts often contain the word “God” written as “G-d”. This is a literary mechanism designed to show respect.

Jewish thought:

From the examples of Spinoza and Husserl (to name but two of many), we see that Jewish thinkers were involved in the central questions of the development of European thought. They brought with them their intellectual heritage.

Although the central text of Judaism is the Tanakh, which is binding upon all Jews, another text, called the Talmud, is also very influential, although it is not technically binding.

The Talmud consists of two parts, first the “mishnah”, which is a series of regulations, and second the “gemorah”, which is a commentary on the mishnah. The gemorah ranges from technical questions about how to apply the laws of the mishnah in various cases, to more philosophical questions about issues raised, but not directly addressed by, the mishnah. Because the Talmud, as stated above, is not binding, it has exercised its influence upon the intellectual tradition by means of its method of discussion, rather than via its direct content, i.e., the most influential aspect of the Talmud is not what it directly states, but rather the manner of debate and commentary and analysis which is used in it.

Major Jewish intellectuals carried this manner into other fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, and philology (i.e., the careful grammatical analysis of ancient languages), and thereby made major contributions to European thought.

The influence of the Tanakh is the opposite: it is its direct content, its assertions, which are both binding and shaping upon Jewish thought. It has little of the Talmudic manner of discourse in it. The Tanakh also shaped culture by exemplifying the rules of Hebrew poetry.

One of the more popular sections of the Talmud is called “Avot” (“the fathers”), and it is a charming, folksy collection of ethical proverbs. Although it is a great deal of fun to read, study, and discuss, it is actually a-typical, different from the bulk of the Talmud, in that it does not engage in detailed technical and philosophical discussion. But it is probably the most-quoted section of the Talmud. Here are some examples:

Mishna 26: Rabbi Yossi bar (son of) Yehuda of K'far HaBavli said, 'one who learns from the young, to what is he compared? To one who eats unripe grapes and drinks wine from the press. And one who learns from the old, to what is he compared? To one who eats ripened grapes and drinks aged wine.'

Mishna 27: Rabbi Meir (mai-eer) said, 'do not look at the flask but what is in it. There are new flasks filled with old wine and old flasks which do not even contain new wine.'

Do you have a pocket full of art?

The coinage of the United States is an example of the lasting influence of Greco-Roman classicism. Examine current coins: the Lincoln penny, the Jefferson nickel, the Roosevelt dime, the Washington quarter, the Kennedy half-dollar, and the new one-dollar coin. The influence of late Roman portraiture and Greek architecture is evident. The influence of classical symbolism is evident: what, exactly, is on the back of a dime?

The classical influence in U.S. numismatics has, if anything, only gotten stronger in recent years. While the 19th century and early 20th century displayed some non-classical themes (the Indian penny and the Buffalo nickel), current designs are almost exclusively classical in style.

Look at the architectural designs on the back of a penny and a nickel. Can you identify them by style?

The question is open ... to you.

Numismatic iconography

We’ve discussed the influences on numismatic iconography. Look at the back of a penny and a nickel. Which type of architecture do you see? What are the symbols on the back of a dime, and in which style are they engraved? What about the back of the quarter and half-dollar? What is the “fasces” symbol?

The front side of the penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar all have portraits. Which style of portrait is this?

Within the last decade, we have two new coins featuring women: Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea have been pictured on one-dollar coins. You might think that this represents progress for women, but women have been pictured on coins often in the past.

During the first one hundred years of our country’s history, only women were pictured on coins: no men at all! Some of the women whose images appeared on coins were Native American Indians. The first coin to picture a president was also the first coin to have a male image, and did not appear until 1909!

So women were actually more favored than men on coins in the past.

The habit of placing presidents on coins comes from the Romans.

King Arthur

In drawing the sometimes not-so-obvious lines between history, legend, myth, and outright fiction, King Arthur can be a useful example.

Yes, there really was a King Arthur. One of the earliest historians to mention him was Nennius, a Welshman who wrote around 796 A.D., by which time Arthur was already over three hundred years into the past. Nennius tells us that Arthur united the Britains, who missed the unifying if imposed influence of the Romans, against the Saxon invaders. Nennius contrasts Arthur's Christian manners with the savage attacks of the pagan Saxons.

The Romans left in the early 400's, and Arthur seems to have assumed political leadership around 452. There were several decades in which there was no unifying political influence in Britain, each town caring for itself only. Arthur was needed, because a unified defense had to be presented to the various Germanic tribes which kept invading: the Saxons, the Vandals, and Schwaben. Although Arthur worked with heroism, the Saxons ultimately took over the island.

Concerning the legends and tales about knights in shining armor, we can probably conjecture that Arthur didn't wear metal armor, might not have had a horse, or even the formal title of "king", and whatever castles he may have inhabited probably resembled simple, small, crude stone houses. He's not the Arthur of the fairy tales, but he played a more than imporant role in British history.

The Black Death

Imagine what it must be like when huge numbers of people die from a disease: “crazed dogs running wild on deserted streets, nighttime fires winking from the crowded fields and vineyards around the city; dusty, sun-drenched roads filled with sweaty, fearful refugees; sick stragglers wandering off to nearby woods and huts to die,” in the words of historian John Kelly.

The plague which swept through Europe in the 1300's was a cultural turning point in many ways. After such devastation, society had to re-build itself, and in so doing, re-designed itself. Approximately 33% of Europe died; that would be 25 million people. In some towns, everyone died; other towns had fewer casualties. Early in the century, “earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, heavy rains, and” high winds had hit Europe, leaving crops “stunted and waterlogged,” and bringing thousands to the edge of starvation; combined with poor sanitation - waste and filth were everywhere - which made a good home for the rats which carried the sickness, Europe was a ripe target for a plague. It moved quickly across the continent.

The civil response was helpful, but limited. In England, “steady leadership” sustained “order, self-control, and lawfulness.” In Florence and Venice, public health systems were established “to oversee sanitation and the burial of the dead.” But the human and spiritual response was amazing: “In the worst years of the mortality, Europeans witnessed horrors comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but even when death was everywhere and only a fool would dare to hope, the thin fabric of civilization held - sometimes by the skin of its teeth, but it held. Enough notaries, municipal and church authorities, physicians, and merchants stepped forward to keep governments and courts and churches” running. Human power alone can't generate that kind of “resiliency: even in the most extreme and horrific of circumstances, people” do actually carry on, powered by the external forces of altruism and faith.

Political and economic conditions changed after the plague: there were fewer people, more jobs, and a higher standard of living.