Christmas

 A merry Christmas to everyone! 

These splendid angels are from the Priory Church, Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Christmas Parties

No, this is a gathering, not a party, and all Covid regulations were followed, and in any case it never took place. 

The Divine Right of Kings

It is often said that the "Divine Right of Kings" is a medaeval doctrine, but I do not believe that this was in fact the case. In the mediaeval world there were different and conflicting traditions at work.

In the Byzantine Empire the Emperor had quasi-divine status, deriving from ancient Near Eastern traditions. He was surrounded by a court of bureaucrats, bishops and eunuchs, with very elaborate ritual, and kept the Greek church, headed by the Patriach at Constantinople, under tight control. When the early crusaders reached Constantinople at the end of the 11th century, they looked on all this with amazement. But there was never a long-lasting dynasty of Emperors, and many were forcibly deposed or even killed. In the Chinese Empire, this was called "the mandate of heaven being withdrawn".

In the Germanic and Viking traditions, a King was elected by the chiefs of the clans, and his main job was to lead in battle. If a King died, leaving an adult son to succeed him, there was seldom a problem; but what if he was childless, or left only a daughter, or a young boy? Or what if the new King proved to be grossly incompetent? Then the chiefs reserved the right to depose him and look elsewhere. In English history we can consider the deposition and murder of Edward II and Richard II, and the Wars of the Roses, which stemmed from the pious but otherwise useless Henry VI. 

   All monarchs in Western Europe were nominally elective, and in Poland and the Holy Roman Empire there were actual elections, right through till the 18^th century. Also, in the feudal system, the great lords were always deeply suspicious and resentful of any attempt by the King’s government to impinge on their local power. 

One added ingredient was that the Pope claimed sovereignty over earthly monarchs. A powerful Pope, like Gregory VII or Innocent III could, and did, excommunicate a hostile King or Emperor and call upon his subjects to rebel and depose him (though this wasn’t always successful!). The Popes claimed that the Holy Roman Emperor only held the title after he had been crowned in Rome.

The notion that monarchic authority descended by strict hereditary was not necessarily a mediaeval idea. Indeed,one school of thought was that authority really only began at the coronation of the new King. Interestingly, the vital part of the coronation,both in England and France, was not the crowning but the anointing with the holy oil. In the coronation of Elizabeth II, this part of the ritual was carefully screened from the television cameras.

The full notion of the “Divine Right of Kings” (especially when it is portrayed as hereditary) really only emerges in later times, in the 16^th & 17^th centuries, when the feudal system had effectively ended, monarchs had brought the Church under proper control and there a much stronger financial & bureaucratic base available to central government. In England it began with the Tudors, whose claim to the throne, in terms of hereditary descent, was shaky to say the least.

Political Philosophy: Augustine's Question

Saint Augustine (lived 354-430) is the greatest of the early Christian theologians. He lived in North Africa and studied in Rome, where he read and admired Plato and Cicero. He then became a lecturer in Rhetoric, had a mistress and a son, and followed a Manichaean beliefs (see footnote). His life was transformed in 387, when he was baptised a Christian in 391; he was ordained a priest and later appointed Bishop of Hippo, near Carthage. In his autobiography, “ The Confessions”, he tells of his sinfulness before his conversion. As a bishop, he combatted the Arians, Pelagians and other heretics. He came to reject the pagan philosophers, because they had nothing to say about salvation. In 410 the fall of rome to the Goths caused an enormous shock throughout the western world, and caused Augustine to begin writing “The City of God”, setting out his own philosophical ideas.   

 Augustine's views were as follows:-

There are two cities: the earthly city is what we all live in, good & bad together; but Christians, who know God through Christ, are at the same time members of the City of God. We are pilgrims on this earth, and our ultimate goal is not material wellbeing, but salvation. The Greek and Roman writers are wrong in seeing citizenship in a rational and just state as the best life, because it ignores the question of sin. We all inherit Adam’s original sin, as a result of which we are filled with self-love and lack self-control. All of us deserve eternal damnation, from which we can only be saved by God’s grace.

What part can the earthly state play in this? A just state would be united by love of God instead of material wealth; but any earthly state contains evilly-intentioned people, and can never be entirely just. It can act morally or immorally. 

Augustine tells a story of a bandit who was brought before Alexander the Great, who asked him, “How dare you go around killing and robbing people?”, to which the bandit answered, “Well, you go around killing and robbing too; the only difference being that you do it on a far greater scale! So I get called a bandit, and you're called a conquerer!” This leads to the question: what is the difference between a state and a large and well-organised gang of bandits?

The question still merits discussion. One answer might be that we obey the bandit gang merely out of fear, because they have power (in the shape of weapons). But is our motive for obeying the policeman or the tax-collector also based on fear, or is there more to it? Is it based on a broader level of self-interest; namely, that we benefit from living in a peaceful, prosperous society, and would be unlikely to benefit in a chaotic, lawless one. But would we still think like this if we lived under a violent dictatorship, or were part of a persecuted minority group?

  We have no moral duty to obey orders given to us by an armed robber. But the state claims to have authority over us: we ought to obey it. What is the nature of this authority? Where does it originate? Is it absolute and unlimited? Or is all obedience ultimately based on self-interest, and are claims to authority mere propaganda, to induce us to obey? 

Augustine’s answer: The state, although a fallible human construct, is capable of doing God’s will if it maintains the peace, prevents crime and violence, promotes moral conduct and rules with justice. Under these circumstances, Christians ought to obey. 

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Footnote: Manichaeism is named after Mani, a Persian, who was executed there in 276 A.D. Using ideas from the Persian Zoroastrian religion, Christian Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, he portrayed the world as the scene of a titanic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, in which we are all involved. Although never officially approved, Manicaeist beliefs have crept into Christianity and also into Islam. Various mystics and some heretical groups have seen the human soul as a fragment of the godhead trapped in the material universe, which is under the control of the forces of darkness, and from which it is always striving to escape. 

 

Musings: Boris Johnson and Napoleon III

 There has been loose talk on social media depicting Boris Johnson as a potential "fascist" (whatever that word might be taken to mean), but I do not agree. I think the most interesting parallel is with the Emperor Napoleon III in mid-19th century France. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the nephew of the great man, displayed impressive cunnning and ingenuity, plus a huge helping of luck, in being elected President of the French Republic after the revolution of 1848, and then a few years later staging a coup and proclaiming himself Emperor. But, having achieved supreme power, he appeared to have no clear idea of what he wanted to do with it! He has always been a puzzle to historians, one of whom dubbed him, "The sphinx without a secret". I think this mirrors Boris Johnson's situation today.

   Eventually, the Emperor Napoleon III blundered into a quite unnecessary war with Bismarck's Germany. He had left France without allies, was crushingly defeated, and ended his days in exile in England. Opponents of Boris Johnson might be asking themselves: where is today's equivalent of Bismarck?  

Danni Wyatt

 

I am a great fan of Danielle ("Danni") Wyatt, who has been for more than a decade a leading member of the England Women's cricket team in both the ODI and T20 formats 

She was born in April 1991 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and learnt her cricket at the nearby Whitmore club, where her father also played, and she began playing for Staffordshire Ladies in her early teens. Since then she has played for a variety of clubs in England, Australia and India. Her current English club is Southern Vipers, and for this summer's "100" tournament, Southern Brave.

She was selected for her England debut in March 2010, and has since been a regular member of both the ODI and T20 teams. For T20 internationals, she opens the batting with Tammy Beaumont, but for ODIs usually bats down at 6 or 7. She can occasionally bowl off-breaks. She is fast between the wickets, and her speed is also evident when fielding on the boundary, together with a very safe pair of hands and a strong throw.

 At only 5 feet 3 inches in height, Danni is small for a top-flight cricketer, but is exceptionally strong for her size. Excellent timing of the ball means that she has no problem in smashing sixes, particularly with off-side drives or pulls round to leg. When she is in good touch, she can score very fast and demolish any bowling. The "Times" cricket commentator once dubbed her "the diminutive dasher"!

Among her best scores for England are 124 against India and 110 against Pakistan. She was awarded her 200th England cap this summer.

Her nickname in the dressing room is "Waggy".

Update, April 2022: Danni scored a century to set up a win against South Africa in the semifinal of the Women's World Cup in New Zealand, but didn't make runs in the final against Australia, which England lost. She had an excellent season against Australia in 2023, scoring a half-century in her first full Test Match, and was the highest run-scorer in the Women's Hundred. She has now played in more T20 matches, and scored more runs therein, than any other English woman cricketer.

 

Poems: The Days

 The Days

The first day was golden with the radiance of pure light as the Sun rose. Creation began. But behind the radiance was the Anti-light, the false creation, which is the greatest sin.

The second day was glittering silver beneath the Moon; and it was a day of mysteries, of hidden things, and of the waters. And the sin of the second day was magic, and forbidden knowledge.

The third day was blood-red, and it was the day of Mars. A day of struggle and fight; a day of iron. The sin of the third day was violence, and blind rage.

The fourth day was black as the infinite void; but from the blackness rose swift Mercury, the Quicksilver, who made it a day of buying and selling, of coming and going, and of messages. The sin of the fourth day was greed.

On the fifth day the firmament was painted bright blue, and its lord was Jupiter. So great was he that some confused him with his Maker. And the sin of the fifth day was pride.

The sixth day was the shining green of verdigris. Here lay the naked form of Venus, who commanded it to be a day of lovemaking. And so the sin of the sixth day was lust.

The seventh day was rich imperial purple, robing ancient Saturn as he yawned on his leaden throne of unendurable weight. On this day all creatures rest from their labours. So the sin of the seventh day was idleness.

So the first week ends.

Afghanistan

As this map shows, Afghanistan is not a nation in any meaningful ethnic sense of the word.

 

Afghanistan has been called "the crossroads of Asia". Alexander the Great led his army through the Khyber pass, east of Kabul, on his way to India in 327 B.C. The region was converted to Islam in the later 7th century A.D. Genghis Khan destroyed Herat and other cities in 1222. Tamerlane overran all central Asia and advanced as far as Delhi at the end of the 14th century. Babur, coming originally from Samarkand, occupied Afghanistan and from there advanced through the Khyber pass into India where he founded the Mughal Empire in 1526. He was buried in Kabul. The glories of the Mughals never recovered from the sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah of Persia, who invaded over the Khyber in 1526, thereby inadvertantly clearing the ground for the later British domination of India.

As the British and Russian empires were expanding in the 19th century, Afghanistan was merely the territory left between them which neither managed to conquer. The British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839-41 was a complete disaster (and is the subject of the first of George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman" novels), and there was a later British intervention in 1878-80. Britain became increasingly alarmed at Russian advances in the 1860s into the Central Asian emirates which are now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the others, and feared that India might be directly threatened. Kipling's splendid novel "Kim" deals with a Russian plot to take over Afghanistan in the late 19th century. A treaty was signed in 1919 leaving Afghanistan uneasily neutral. 

This neutrality prevailed, more or less, until the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a pro-communist regime: an unwise action that sparked off a new intensification of the Cold War. The Afghan war was enormously expensive to the Russians in both casualties and money, and played a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade later. The Americans responded by sponsoring Islamic resistance movements, which in restrospect was equally unwise. The communist government was overthrown, but then after a civil war the Taleban took power and imposed a particularly strict form of Islam, leading eventually to the 2001 World Trade Centre bombing. 

   It looks as if the subsequent Western intervention has been no more successful in the long term than previous attempts. 

I found this poster when I was in the Soviet Union in 1984.

The best book I know on the subject is "Afghanistan" by Bijan Omrani and Matthew Leeming: a very detailed combination of history and guidebook. See also "The Places in Between" by Rory Stewart, the former Member of Parliament and cabinet minister: an account of his extraordinary walk across Afghanistan in 2002. 

At a more trivial level, the Khyber Pass provided an excellent opportunity for cockney rhyming slang. See the film "Carry on up the Khyber", made long before the coming of political correctness and falling very much into the "so-awful-that-it's-good" category. It features Kenneth Williams as a local potentate who bears, inevitably, the title of the "Kharzi".

Shrewsbury battle re-enactment

I recently attended a "re-enactment" of the battle of Shrewsbury (1403), held near the site of the battle a few miles north of Shrewsbury. The re-enactment itself was rather silly, but the great pains had clearly been taken with the reproduction armour, and the heraldry was magnificent.

   This are the rebel forces

In the centre the Percy coat of arms, a blue lion on gold, denotes the Earl of Worcester. To the right, with his back to us, is the leader of the rebels: Henry Percy, "Harry Hotspur", Worcester's nephew. He wears the Percy arms quartered with Lucy: three silver pikes, or "luces" on red (a good examply of "canting", or punning, arms), with overall a red three-pointed "label", indicating that he is the eldest son of his father, the Earl of Northumberland. To the left, the red heart on silver denotes their Scottish ally, Earl Douglas. This symbol commemorates how an earlier Douglas had vowed to take the heart of Robert the Bruce on pligrimage to the Holy Land. (In fact, he never got there, being killed in Spain on the way).  

Some of the rank-and-file archers wore on their jackets the very distinctive arms of the Visconti family, the Dukes of Milan: a serpent swallowing a child. They explained to me that they were English mercenaries recently returned from fighting in Italy!

There was a splendid warhorse on display, and also minstrels!

Not many of us are aware of how close British history was to being changed by the battle. The rebels were, of course, defeated; Worcester and other leading rebels were executed; Percy was killed and his body chopped up and exhibited in different parts of the country, by order of the King, Henry IV. But the Prince of Wales, later Henry V,narrowly escaped death when hit in the face by an arrow. A surgeon had to devise a special instrument to extract the arrow-head. This scene was also enacted: rather well, I thought. 

The battlefield church, built after the battle, was open for the occasion. It contains the coats of arms of many of those who fought for the King

This one belongs to a branch of the Corbet family, who lived nearby. It is another example of a "canting" coat of arms, a "corbie" being a raven or crow.   

All in all, an enjoyable day!

History: Europe at the end of the 16th century

 There are a number of things to note about this map. Starting in the east, we have the massive kingdom of Poland-Lithuania, (pale blue with a red border) and to the south of it the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire (purple), the most powerful state in Europe. The Turks had overrun the Balkans and attacked as far as Vienna, and in addition ruled Syria, the Near East and Egypt. These two huge states blocked the westward expansion of Russia (pale green) for another century, after which they both began to decline.

By contrast, Germany was then a chaotic mess of more than three hundred independent states, some of which were Protestant and some Catholic. They were all nominally subject to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was always a member of the Habsburg family (whose ancestral lands are shown in dark green). Within a few years Germany was to collapse into the appalling slaughter of the Thirty Years' War.

   Italy was also disunited, with the Popes ruling the centre and Naples and Sicily to the south being part of the Spanish empire (in orange). Spain also ruled what is now Belgium, but had recently lost control of the Protestant-dominated provinces to the north (pale green) which had become the Dutch Republic. The proud Spanish Empire was entering a long period of decline. By contrast France was smaller than today, but was about to embark on the "splendid century" which would see French frontiers expand to the Rhine and the Alps, and French culture dominate Europe.

  England and Scotland were shortly to be united under King James I (James VI of Scotland). Fifty years earlier, Henry VIII had given himself the title of "King of Ireland", but as the map shows, large areas of Ireland were not yet under English control.   

Literature: Orwell and Connolly at Eton

 

The author and critic Cyril Connolly, who was a pupil at Eton in the 1920s, wrote the following musings on the school's influence at the conclusion of his book, "Enemies of Promise":-

   "Were I to to deduce any system from my feelings onleaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and arrest their development."

George Orwell, who was Connolly's contemporary and friend at Eton, reacted to this with scorn in "Inside the Whale", his long essay on writing between the wars:-

   "When you read this passage, your natural impulse is to look for the misprint. Presumably there is a "not" left out, or something. But no, not a bit of it! He means it! And what is more, he is merely speaking the truth, in an inverted fashion. 'Cultured' middle-class life has reached such a depth of softness at which a public-school education - five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery - can actually be looked back upon as an eventful period".

Connolly went on to say, "... it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual". I doubt if Orwell would have disagreed with this!

Recent reads: "Cakes and Ale" by Somerset Maugham

I would describe this as almost a perfect novel. Not a great deal happens, but there are enough unexpected twists to keep the reader occupied, and the character-descriptions are splendid.

   The story: The narrator is Ashenden, a name that Maugham used in others of his stories. Edward Driffield, a famous writer (loosely based on Thomas Hardy) has recently died, a biography is planned, and Ashenden is approached for information, because they had met when Ashenden was a boy and Driffield was a struggling unknown author living in the same village. 

   Ashenden reflects on this, and also on how they met again several years later in London, when he was a medical student and Driffield was at long last beginning to achieve some recognition. But it quickly become clear that the biographer (a literary hack called Alroy Kear, who is mercilessly dissected) will be producing a fundamentally dishonest book, because he intends to leave out all the most controversial aspects of Driffield's life; particularly the strange case of his first wife, Rosie, a former barmaid.

   There are marvellous depictions, in a restrained but lethal manner, of the horrors of growing up in a village riven by social snobbery, the awful people hovering on the fringes of the London cultural scene, and the ridiculous tourists visiting Driffield's last home; now preserved as a shrine to his memory. 

   All in all; a wonderful novel, which I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone.  

Travel: Troy

 Troy lies in the north-west of modern Turkey, close to the Dardanelles straits leading through to the Black Sea. In ancient times this strategic position was even more important, because it used to stand on the shores of a large bay opening onto the straits, which has now silted up. On a clear day you can stand on the ramparts of Troy and see the memorials of the First World War Gallipoli campaign on the far side of the Dardanelles.

      Troy was famously excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the early 1870s. His methods were very crude by modern standards, but he amazed the world by announcing that he had discovered Homer's city, including the "jewels of Helen" which he photgraphed being worn by his wife.

    Much more careful and detailed excavation has been undertaken since then. Because of the vital strategic position of the site, it was discovered that there were no fewer than nine Troys, one on top of the other, dating from the early Bronze Age through to late Roman times. It was only from the end of the 5th century A.D., as the sea retreated, that the place was finally deserted.

The impressive ramparts shown below are part of the grandest of all the Troys, which florished in the 13the century B.C., and which the archaeologists have dubbed "Troy VI". They are part of the citadel, below which there was a walled town. Altogether there may have been up to 10,000 inhabitants, making it a very substantial city by Bronze Age standards.

Troy VI appears to have been destroyed in a massive earthquake around 1250 B.C., following which a much more ramshackle town, known as "Troy VIIA" was cobbled together in the ruins. There are clear signs that this looted and burnt about half a century later; a time of great chaos and destruction throughout the eastern Meditarranean in the later Bronze Age. It is possible that the story of the fall of Troy in Homer's "Iliad" is a combination of the memory of these two events. 

The famous wooden horse of Troy is not mentioned in the Iliad, and the full details of the story only appear in much later accounts of the Trojan War. Scholars contiue to debate on whether these reflect anything that actually happened.

This is the earliest known representation of the wooden horse, dating from about 670 B.C. It was discovered on the island of Mykonos, depicted on a vase.

 The object below is, of course, a modern construction, built outside the walls of Troy in the later 20th century for the sole purpose of being photographed by tourists! 

The "jewels of Helen" were sent to a museum in Berlin, from which they vanished at the end of the Second World War. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1990 that it was discovered that they had been plundered by the Red Army and taken to Moscow. They have now been returned to Berlin. It is now accepted that the jewels have nothing to do with the Homeric era, but date from a much earlier period.

England: Ancient trackways around Grinshill

 Grinshill is a ridge, a mile or so in length, running east to west across the flat plain of north Shropshire. The southern slope is steeper than the northern one. 

It is composed of Triassic limestone, varying in colour between grey and red, which was laid down in vast deserts some more than two hundred million years ago. This is an excellent building stone, and was quarried extensively from the thirteenth century for use in Shrewsbury, about eight miles away, but is also found in use as far away as London. 

   There are many abandoned quarries scattered around the hill.

The village of Grinshill lies to the south of the hill, and Clive to the north. Clive is much the older settlement, with aspects of its parish church showing that it dates back to Norman times.

Modern roads run around Grinshill at some distance from the slopes. Closer in, there are ancient trackways, hollowed out by many generations of travellers.

Travel: Venice

A grey and wet day in Venice, seen from the Campanile in St. Mark's Square.

 

Quiz: Monarchs

These monarchs are all the second of that name for their respective countries: e.g. "Ferdinand II" (which is not one of the answers!) Who are they? There are three English, three Russian, and one each from France, Spain, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. They are placed here in alphabetical order of their names.

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Annunciation

 March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary. This has always been a favourite subject with artists. This is a 16th century Flemish interpretation, by Joos van Cleve.

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