The book Paris, 1200 is pretty good read for anyone interested in 'point in time' history:
> Paris in 1200 was a city in transition. The great cathedral of Notre Dame was halfway through its construction and walls were being built to enclose the new, larger limits of the city. Pope Innocent III ordered all French churches closed to punish King Philip Augustus for his remarriage; the king himself negotiated an unprecedented truce with the English; and the students of Paris threatened a general strike, punctuated with incidents of violence, to protest infringements of their rights. John W. Baldwin brilliantly resurrects this key moment in Parisian history using documents only from 1190 to 1210—a narrow focus made possible by the availability of collections of the Capetian monarchy and the medieval scholastic thinkers. This unique approach results in a vivid snapshot of the city at the turn of the thirteenth century. Paris, 1200 introduces the reader to the city itself and its inhabitants. Three "faces" exemplify these that of the celebrated scholar Pierre the Chanter, of King Philip Augustus, and of the more deeply hidden visages of women. The book examines the city's primary the royal government, the Church, and its celebrated schools that evolved into the university at Paris. Finally, it offers an account of the delights and pleasures, as well as the fears and sorrows, of Parisian life in this period.
Awesome book. Students were already gaming the system as extremists in 1200 Paris.
> (the cleric students were) marked by the tonsure, which granted them two major privileges:
> the privilegium canonis, protected their persons, which were regarded as sacred. Any physical violence against them entailed excommunication, which could only be lifted after severe penance. One did not mistreat a cleric without exposing oneself to serious consequences.
> The second was the privilegium fori, which placed clerics under the sole jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts... Philip Augustus is said to have observed the boldness of clerics who rushed into the fray brandishing swords, yet wearing neither armour nor helmets. Hardly surprising, when a shaved head offered better protection than a helmet.
I loved this book in my high school AP Euro class. I revisited it much later in my studies, and was dismayed to realize how lacking in proper research and citation it was. Manchester makes numerous bold claims without mentioning resources, many of which were directly contradicted by the more thoroughly-established works I was then reading. I had learned a lot of "facts" that turned out to be inaccurate, imprecise, or speculative.
I'll let others with more knowledge correct me, but my overall impression is that he was pushing sensational narratives rather than advancing historical knowledge.
> One Summer: America
I haven't heard of this and will take a look. Thanks for the recommendation.
There was already a museum of a Roman era settlement out in the plaza. It's somewhat confusingly named the Archeological Crypt, but it's not the crypt of the Notre Dame Cathedral. (The Cathedral doesn't have a crypt; I think the water table is too low to allow there to be significant spaces below the level of the nearby river.)
So I'm unclear on exactly what this dig is. I get the impression that it's around the edge of the plaza. Perhaps it will be incorporated into the The Crypte Archéologique de l'İle de la Cité?
I second that recommendation. It's my favorite part of the Louvre. It's a very castle-looking castle; it feels like it's straight out of a movie.
To my mind, all of the best stuff in the Louvre is in the basement: the Codex Hammurabi, Babylonian artifacts, etc. Yeah, it's all just as stolen as the artifacts in the British Museum that get more attention, but it's more significant than their art collection that are "the greatest" because they said so.
(Not that they aren't also great works. But there are many great works, and the distinction of these has more to do with French nationalism than any serious consideration of artistic merit.)
It's surprising that they're not doing that systematically around the building, but then again I guess that applies to a large part of the city as well.
One always wonders which incredible books we lost, from amazing mysterious old philosophers. The burning of the library of Alexandria is such an incredible sadness
> It's surprising that they're not doing that systematically around the building, but then again I guess that applies to a large part of the city as well.
In some places in Italy, Greece, Malta, probably others I don't know, people always joke that you shouldn't try to ever do any renovations lest you end up finding something and lose your house. Some places you're almost guaranteed to find stuff if you just dig once or twice.
There is a wonderful museum it the Italian city of Lecce that started when someone went to fix some plumbing in their house and ended up finding so much amazing historical stuff that they ended up opening the house as a museum:
The whole region is awesome for food and wine - we did a walk (over few days) from Santa Maria di Leuca to Otranto - sometimes along the coast and sometimes in paths through the lovely countryside. We started and ended that trip in Lecce - staying in a few agriturismos along the way, all of which had sublime food.
We've also been to Bari as well - which has a lovely old town as does Otranto - where the town centre is basically one large fortress.
One very pleasant surprise we had was using the Frecciarossa express train - we had two business class seats for a journey of a couple of hours and it was less than 50 euros and it was extremely comfortable!
I live in Bologna and went to Puglia at the end of last year for the first time, loved it!, here are some highlights off the top of my head:
- We stayed a few nights in an _Agroturismo_ near Cisternino that makes olive oil, our room was actually a _Trullo_ [1], a type of building typical of the area. There are many such places.
- If you want to see lots of Trulli in a picturesque town, Alberobello is beautiful but quite touristy. Still worth the visit imo.
- In Cisternino, they have these amazing restaurants (that is, if you eat meat) that are basically butcher shops where you choose the meat you want and they grill it for you. One of the specialties are "bombettes". The town itself is pretty.
- In Martina Franca, you have to try (again meat) "Capocollo di Martina Franca", which is like the Parma ham of the region. You can probably find it throughout Puglia, but the town is nice.
- Ostuni is a very beautiful white washed town.
- Lecce is well worth the visit, I can't really remember all the restaurants we visited, just one for seafood "Il Vico Del Gusto", we liked it a lot.
- Coming from Lecce but you can probably find them in other places in Puglia are the pastries "pasticciotto", which is a shortcrust pastry filled with custard cream, (sometimes they add other ingredients). Yum.
- Another typical dish of the region is the pasta "orecchiette con le cime di rapa", which is this ear-shaped little pasta with broccoli rabe, garlic, chili flakes, olive oil, and sometimes anchovies. Simple but very nice.
I didn't know there was a game. The movie is great, but it focuses on the crime plot and unfortunately leaves most of the historical/philosophical/linguistic meat out, which is not surprising when you compress a 500 page book into a 100 page screenplay. I guess an adventure game would actually be more suitable for incorporating some of the things the film left out.
The game is called La Abadía del Crimen and as far as I know was only released in Spain and never translated to any other language, so even though it is a cult classic in Spain, it is pretty much unknown outside.
"Twenty centuries are stacked in 4 meters (13 feet) of earth — or about the height of two-and-a-half Napoleon Bonapartes standing on top of one another."
Way to get history wrong in your story about history.
I actually was about to post this quote for another reason as well. Usually you make these references to “known sizes” so people can relate. But no one has seen Napoleon in the flesh _and_ they underestimate his size. This was a useless comparison.
That said, the dig itself is pretty cool and I’m excited to see what they’ll unearth. I’m pretty interested in Roman history but haven’t gone as deep into the history of the provinces.
Semi-related to that, if someone reading this is in the Toronto area, the bata shoe museum has an exhibit (Vindolanda) about unearthed Roman footwear in England
Not to engage in whataboutism, but every major power or even near-peer power has engaged in those types of atrocities. We like to talk about international law, but anyone who has paid attention understands that the only international law that exists is power.
I wish it were different, but the language they spoke back then was conquest, and every nation and ethnicity spoke that language, and embraced it. And they weren't just unaliving people. They were having their way with the women and unaliving the male children. The Arabs did this. The Persians did this. The Europeans did this. The Asians did this. Everyone.
There's a reason why 0.5% of the male global population today has Genghis Khan's DNA.
I'm not white, but it boggles my mind how modern society has been so radicalized and brainwashed that a particular segment of our population actually thinks white people are the only people in history that have done this.
Certainly not every people spoke the language of conquest. The high mountain ranges of the world are populated by peoples who escaped the conquering activity of their neighbors by moving upsteam into less and less easily cultivable terrain, land no one else wanted.
I never said "every people". I said "every major power or even near-peer power". Isolated mountain villages and their people do not fall into the categories I referenced: (1) every major power; (2) near-peer power.
Fine. But you then wrote “the language they spoke back then was conquest, and every nation and ethnicity spoke that language, and embraced it”, which seemed like a pretty umbrella description, hence why I replied with what I did.
You're right, of course, but the post-War consensus in which (most) major powers (mostly) acknowledged international law and (mostly) restricted themselves to economic, rather than military, competition was... nice. It took the two most destructive wars in history, back-to-back, to reach that state of (imperfect, relative) peace, and I'm sorry to see it ending.
> Paris in 1200 was a city in transition. The great cathedral of Notre Dame was halfway through its construction and walls were being built to enclose the new, larger limits of the city. Pope Innocent III ordered all French churches closed to punish King Philip Augustus for his remarriage; the king himself negotiated an unprecedented truce with the English; and the students of Paris threatened a general strike, punctuated with incidents of violence, to protest infringements of their rights. John W. Baldwin brilliantly resurrects this key moment in Parisian history using documents only from 1190 to 1210—a narrow focus made possible by the availability of collections of the Capetian monarchy and the medieval scholastic thinkers. This unique approach results in a vivid snapshot of the city at the turn of the thirteenth century. Paris, 1200 introduces the reader to the city itself and its inhabitants. Three "faces" exemplify these that of the celebrated scholar Pierre the Chanter, of King Philip Augustus, and of the more deeply hidden visages of women. The book examines the city's primary the royal government, the Church, and its celebrated schools that evolved into the university at Paris. Finally, it offers an account of the delights and pleasures, as well as the fears and sorrows, of Parisian life in this period.
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/8937746-paris-1200
* https://www.sup.org/books/history/paris-1200
> (the cleric students were) marked by the tonsure, which granted them two major privileges:
> the privilegium canonis, protected their persons, which were regarded as sacred. Any physical violence against them entailed excommunication, which could only be lifted after severe penance. One did not mistreat a cleric without exposing oneself to serious consequences.
> The second was the privilegium fori, which placed clerics under the sole jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts... Philip Augustus is said to have observed the boldness of clerics who rushed into the fray brandishing swords, yet wearing neither armour nor helmets. Hardly surprising, when a shaved head offered better protection than a helmet.
Paris in 1200 was at least somewhat recognizable.
1. A World Lit Only by Fire — William Manchester
2. One Summer: America, 1927 — Bill Bryson
I loved this book in my high school AP Euro class. I revisited it much later in my studies, and was dismayed to realize how lacking in proper research and citation it was. Manchester makes numerous bold claims without mentioning resources, many of which were directly contradicted by the more thoroughly-established works I was then reading. I had learned a lot of "facts" that turned out to be inaccurate, imprecise, or speculative.
I'll let others with more knowledge correct me, but my overall impression is that he was pushing sensational narratives rather than advancing historical knowledge.
> One Summer: America
I haven't heard of this and will take a look. Thanks for the recommendation.
So I'm unclear on exactly what this dig is. I get the impression that it's around the edge of the plaza. Perhaps it will be incorporated into the The Crypte Archéologique de l'İle de la Cité?
To my mind, all of the best stuff in the Louvre is in the basement: the Codex Hammurabi, Babylonian artifacts, etc. Yeah, it's all just as stolen as the artifacts in the British Museum that get more attention, but it's more significant than their art collection that are "the greatest" because they said so.
(Not that they aren't also great works. But there are many great works, and the distinction of these has more to do with French nationalism than any serious consideration of artistic merit.)
One always wonders which incredible books we lost, from amazing mysterious old philosophers. The burning of the library of Alexandria is such an incredible sadness
There's a very good reason for that: archaeological techniques improve all the time. The idea here is to leave something for future archaeologists.
In some places in Italy, Greece, Malta, probably others I don't know, people always joke that you shouldn't try to ever do any renovations lest you end up finding something and lose your house. Some places you're almost guaranteed to find stuff if you just dig once or twice.
https://www.museofaggiano.it/en/home/
And that's just one house in one city in one country!
Edit: I strongly recommend the museum, Lecce and indeed all of Puglia!
We've also been to Bari as well - which has a lovely old town as does Otranto - where the town centre is basically one large fortress.
One very pleasant surprise we had was using the Frecciarossa express train - we had two business class seats for a journey of a couple of hours and it was less than 50 euros and it was extremely comfortable!
- We stayed a few nights in an _Agroturismo_ near Cisternino that makes olive oil, our room was actually a _Trullo_ [1], a type of building typical of the area. There are many such places.
- If you want to see lots of Trulli in a picturesque town, Alberobello is beautiful but quite touristy. Still worth the visit imo.
- In Cisternino, they have these amazing restaurants (that is, if you eat meat) that are basically butcher shops where you choose the meat you want and they grill it for you. One of the specialties are "bombettes". The town itself is pretty.
- In Martina Franca, you have to try (again meat) "Capocollo di Martina Franca", which is like the Parma ham of the region. You can probably find it throughout Puglia, but the town is nice.
- Ostuni is a very beautiful white washed town.
- Lecce is well worth the visit, I can't really remember all the restaurants we visited, just one for seafood "Il Vico Del Gusto", we liked it a lot.
- Coming from Lecce but you can probably find them in other places in Puglia are the pastries "pasticciotto", which is a shortcrust pastry filled with custard cream, (sometimes they add other ingredients). Yum.
- Another typical dish of the region is the pasta "orecchiette con le cime di rapa", which is this ear-shaped little pasta with broccoli rabe, garlic, chili flakes, olive oil, and sometimes anchovies. Simple but very nice.
Hope that helps/convinces you to go!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trullo
You might be interested in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a historical novel about such a lost work.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/474030/The_Abbey_of_Crime...
We should only excavate what is about to be destroyed.
( And we shouldn't destroy stuff just to put up yet another shitty modern building. )
It's not a building.
Way to get history wrong in your story about history.
That said, the dig itself is pretty cool and I’m excited to see what they’ll unearth. I’m pretty interested in Roman history but haven’t gone as deep into the history of the provinces.
Semi-related to that, if someone reading this is in the Toronto area, the bata shoe museum has an exhibit (Vindolanda) about unearthed Roman footwear in England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot
Or almost exactly one Companhia worth of Tauri stacked on top of each other.
(there's a programming joke in there btw)
I wish it were different, but the language they spoke back then was conquest, and every nation and ethnicity spoke that language, and embraced it. And they weren't just unaliving people. They were having their way with the women and unaliving the male children. The Arabs did this. The Persians did this. The Europeans did this. The Asians did this. Everyone.
There's a reason why 0.5% of the male global population today has Genghis Khan's DNA.
I'm not white, but it boggles my mind how modern society has been so radicalized and brainwashed that a particular segment of our population actually thinks white people are the only people in history that have done this.
But yeah, the French...
Tried pasting a beer ASCII art but didn't work