Translation of the Alexander Romance

The French Alexander Romance in Prose is a 10th-century translation by Leo the Arch-Priest into Latin of a 2nd century Greek text. A German edition for that translation is available from the Internet archive, edited by Alfons Hilka.

There has been much discussion how much the Alexander knowledge of Albrecht Altdorfer was influenced by the Romance and its descendents. After all, the inversion of the order of Alexandria | Darius in the Nuremberg Chronicle may be due to the Prose Alexander Romance, which has the same order and also assigns Olympias (who falls sick and exchanges letters with Alexander) a role that carries through the whole narrative.

If this is so, then this would most likely be in the recension by Johann Hartlieb, der Alexander-Roman von 1454 (Ernst Wilhelm Bredt, Albrecht Altdorfer, 1919), one of the "most-read books of early Modernity", in the words of Andersen Vinilandicus (Peter Lang, 2013). The work survives in a staggering 22 manuscripts and 18 (eighteen) print editions! At the same time, it is said that Aventin, who collaborated with Altdorfer on the painting for Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria, hated the book (Hirsch, Das Alexanderbuch Johann Hartliebs, Berlin 1908). That would make it less likely that Altdorfer would have used it, perhaps.

The Hanse in London

The Hanse operated the so-called Stalhof (the Steelyard) in London in the 15th and 16th century.
In addition to the information on Wikipedia, linked above, there is also a talk on Project Gutenberg, by Reinhold Pauli, on the Hansische Stahlhof in London, held in Bonn on March 11th, 1856, but published in a newspaper in Bremen.

Online Translations for the deeds of Alexander the Great

In my preparations for the talk in Zagreb, I used several online translations of the works of Alexander the Great.

• Plutarch's Life of Alexander, available here, translated by Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (part of the Lexundria project, which has a lot of interesting literature, for example the Muratorian Canon).
• Marcus Junianus Justinus' Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum, available here, with the Latin text and the English translation of Watson (1853) and the French by Arnaud-Lindet from 2003 (part of the Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum, including interesting people of the Middle Ages and modern times ... though with many broken links).

I also downloaded Arrian ($2.99) for the Kindle from the Delphi Classics people. In the end however, this all would have been less than helpful without two great books on Alexander the Great, both by two Canadians:

• Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander, translated by John Yardley, introduction and notes by Waldemar Heckel, in: Penguin Classics, London (Penguin Books), revised edition 2001 (translation), 2004 (bibliography).
• Waldemar Heckel, John C. Yardley, Alexander the Great: Historical Sources in Translation, Oxford (Blackwell Publishing) 2004.

Because of how Reinhart Koselleck interpreted Altdorfer's painting Alexander-Schlacht, I ended up also looking into Niccolo Machiavelli, and his works are largely available through the online library of the Liberty Fund (including the smaller writings in four volumes). 

TEI Markup for paintings

For my presentation in Zagreb, I was experimenting with the surface element in the TEI markup. The only thing that stumped me was how to tell the TEI document that multiple JPEGs represent the same information, possibly at different points of resolution.

Just like that this image

or this image

are both  part of this image

and some things are easier to see in the one and in the other.

Drawing cool Graphs Quickly

In the process of working out how to sketch the knowledge for my DH talk in Zagreb, I found a Graphviz website that allows one to experiment with the DOT material immediately.

WebGraphviz has a type-in box for the graph description and a display area below where a simple click of [Generate Graph] will output the results. I usually keep the DOT Language Guide close at hand in the adjacent tab. GraphViz supports such a rich set of output formats, but unfortunately, Google Slides (nor Blogger) will not handle SVGs correctly ... :P

Here a rather sizeable graph from my presentation for Zagreb.

Schedels Chronicle of Nuremberg

The World Chronice of Schedel is really a fascinating book. The Latin version is available online, from the Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft, with the help of the Munich Digitalization Center and the Bavarian State Library.

Here for example is the city of Regensburg, were Albrecht Altdorfer worked as a painter and city head of construction (Baumeister). Or the two-page world map (missing the Euphrates and Tigris ...).

And the German translation of the Schedel'sche Weltchronik is available on Google books.

Mozart, Seraglio and Interest in Turkish Customs

On the face of it, one would be tempted to think that the Western fascination with Turkish culture coincided with its dominance (Treaty of Passarowitz 1718; Treaty of Belgrade & Nis 1739).

Consider Mozart’s abduction from the Seraglio: 

It may have been [Emperor] Joseph [II] himself who suggested the subject of Mozart's new opera [The Abduction from the Seraglio]. The occasion of its premiere was to be the state visit in September [1781] by Grand Duke Paul Petrovich of Russia and his wife. The purpose of the visit -- to negotiate a secret agreement that would allow Austria and Russia to begin carving up the Ottoman Empire [Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792, with Austrian assistance) -- made the Turkish subject of Belmonte und Constanze especially appealing. According to Nicholas Till, it was "a story that would serve the emperor's propagandist campaign against the Turks." 

Since Mozart did not finish the opera on time, two pieces by Gluck made for the less diplomatically problematic substitute (cf. Mozart Project on KV-384).

But the truth of the matter is that earlier interest had already given us visual feedback.

Codex Vindobonensis 8262, for example, I Turchi, contains images from harem scenes, such as this one, or the Turkish illustrated book of manners from the University Library in Kassel, or the so-called Bremen Album by Lambert de Vos, the Turkish Costume Book (though both of the latter contain images from the Osman possession in Asia minor as well, such as Greek priests or Jewish doctors).

See also the Turkish dress fans' website.

The Hermanns Monument as Reflection of German Sentiments toward France

Not for nothing was "Hermann" on his lofty monument facing west, brandishing his enormous sword, 7m long, in the direction of France, while the bronze inscription on the base was cast from melted-down French cannon captured at the battle of Sedan in 1870.

In Colin .M. Wells, Alesia and Kalkriese compared and contrasted: local chauvinism, nationalistic fervor, and sober archeology, pp.674-608, (here p.678), citing Cl. Nicolet (p.342) in the volume that Wells was reviewing in the article: Michel Redde, Sigmar von Schnurbein (ed), Alesia et La Bataille du Teutoburg. Un parallele Critique des Sources, Beihefte der Francia 66, Ostfildern (Jan Thorbecke Verlag) 2008, 345pps, 73 figs.

Public Data from Students on NFL kneeling and protests from 2014

From our friends at Data World.

on Silence and Simplification

In Andrew Freyn's contribution to The Silent Morning, entitled `What a victory it might have been`: C. E. Montague and the First World War, pp.131-148, Freyn works with the pastiche method of approaches of analysis that makes historians so careless about contradictory positions.

He cites five different opinions, ranging from historians to composers like John Cage of 4'33" fame, to negate the position that silence is an absence of sound. However, he grapples nowhere with the assurance that these positions are not self-contradictory and in the end undercuts his own analysis by pointing out that Cage is trying to get the audience to listen to the ambient sound of itself, which shows conclusively that the "silence" that Cage is after is just another form of sound (albeit not the one that the patrons paid for, and not a "natural" sound, but one that Western music performers like Beethoven cultivated in their listeners, who had happily chatted through Haydn [see Greenberg's lectures on Beethoven, by the Teaching Company] or 19th century French music performances [see Bernier's Pleasure & Privilege, esp commentary on attending the opera).

Freyn is more successful in integrating the use of silence as a commemorative device into the concomitant silencing of other forms of celebration as well as other stories. He cites two observers for the second aspect who deserve to be quoted in full.

Jay WInter comments that 'every decision to commemorate is a decision to simplify and clarify a message by leaving out substantial parts of the story surrounding it' [citing Fn 11]; .... similarly, James V. Wertsch comments that commemorative performances have a 'tendency to eschew ambiguity and to present the past from a single committed perspective' [citing Fn12] (p.133)

[[RCK: The references are to Winter's paper Thinking about Silence in Ben-Ze'ev et al, A Social History of Silence in the 20th Century, Cambridge University Press 2010, p.20 and to Wertsch's monograph, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge University Press 2002,  p;42.]]

 And Freyn himself so aptly notes:

The officially sanctioned solemnity of Armistice commemorations [in Great Britain, RC] meant that alternative vibrant and boisterous celebrations were restricted, seen as unofficial and dissenting -- even if many of those who wanted to remember the war as a victory were those tho had worked hard to win it. (p.133)

Bibliography: Trudi TATE, Kate KENNEDY (eds), The Silent Morning: Culture and Memory after the Armistice, in series: Cultural History of Modern War,  Manchester (Manchester University Press) 2013.

A Knife as a Seal

From the collection of Durham Cathedral.

3366    n.d.
Lowick, Chapel of
Printed R.N.D. App. 135. See no. 2151 above, where Robert of St Martin uses a like sign in place of a seal. See also letter from the Rev. Dr Greenwell printed in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Newcastle , 2nd ser. vol. II, p. 95.
Size: -
Seal design: A knife with broken blade, the handle is inscribed on one side.
Inscription: signum de capella de lowic
and on the other side: de capella de lowic et de decimis de lowic totius curie et totius ville

Tally keeping at the English Exchequer

A sample was presented at the Society of Antiquaries that is part of an exchequer account.

Other forms of tallying were chirographs (a wavy cut through the word chirograph separated copies of the text) and indentures (wavy cuts on the top of the manuscript pages of the copies).

Of course, not just the king kept accounts; the Bursae of Durham, for example, is equally be worthy of study.

Medieval Source Materials on the Web

Via the Common Law materials, I found the general Medieval Sources on the web information, and from when Durham Cathedral's digitization project, which in turn brought me to an annotated book of Ruth.

Flying Witches

Even the Greek witches in Lukian of Samosata's satirical Dialogues of the Courtesans fly at night.
Who would have thought that?