Some works of Jean Bodin

 Jean Bodin, who is this these days perhaps best known for his musings on Historiography, engaged in problems of religion and tolerance as well. His only posthumously published Conference of the Seven Wise Men on the Hidden Secrets of Sublime Things (Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis) clearly belongs into this category. It's seven speakers represent the views that Bodin was familiar with (summary by ChatGPT 3.5):

Coronaeus - Represents traditional Catholicism.

Fridericus - A Lutheran who defends Protestantism.

Curtius - A Calvinist, representing the Reformed tradition.

Torres - A Jew, offering a Jewish perspective.

Senamus - A skeptic, embodying the voice of doubt and questioning.

Salomon Barcassius - A Muslim, representing Islamic thought.

Octavius Fagnola - A Deist, who argues for a natural religion devoid of specific dogma.

Some Notes on the City of Horn

 This is some links that have been sitting around for a long time.

The city of Horn was very important during the Protestant Reformation and Counter Reformation. There is a nice history of that city written by my former Church Law professor, Gustav Reingrabner, which one can purchase at the Rathaus or the local bookshop.

This Hungarian Website has a nice view of the city from the Austrian City Atlas. Of course, Horn is on the Schweickert map as well.

In this context, I also ran into this paper on avoiding or even working against the Black Plague in the Wachau of the 1680s.

Tudor Fertility and Expenses

 (Part of the Great Tab Cleanup)

• How Blood problems affected Henry VIII's plans
• Privy Purse accounts of Elizabeth of York, which show Elizabeth Denton on p.99 as recipient of money (arguably the woman who taught the bedroom arts to Henry VIII). [Formally, Nicholas H. Nicholas (eds) (1830), Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward IV, London (William Pickering)]

The suggestion comes from Philippa Jones (2016), The Other Tudors, p.28; p.52 (Kindle Edition), citing , p.99 in Nicholas' 1830 edition.

Meandering and the Asymmetry of Overdetermination

The meandering nature of historiographical reconstruction has occurred to anyone who has worked in that field at all. One starts out at a general topic, such as the sources of a historical painting or the origins of Mendelian experimentation, and finds oneself, a couple of units of effort later, in the middle of contemplating the household receipts and textual editions (not to mention X-rays of the painting under consideration) or computing the total number of pea plants that the Moravian monetary garden (plus glass house) might have held or the names and origin of Mendel's four assistants (mostly lay brothers).

How did one get there?

Perhaps the most straightforward suggestion is afforded by David Lewis and his observation on the asymmetry of overdetermination of actual worlds (1973). The observation here is the plurality of traces that causal events leave and the point is to allow the philosopher by comparison to establish the causal relationship with respect to the effects. 

At issue is not the correctness of Lewis' observation per se but the proposal that actions in the real world that are causal leave a plurality of traces that extend into the historical record in a bewildering variety of ways. (The image of ripples on a pond is usually exercised at this point in the discussion.) All the same, time is the great destroyer and as the spans increase and other ripples chase across the pond, the traces become effaced. The artist's studio has disappeared, and so have his tools, materials and assistants; the Mendelian fields and glasshouse, should they have survived at all, were preserved only due to the conservative nature of the institution where he experimented. The historian is thus faced with "temporal cluster bombing" that works counter to the very tracing of the effect chains the historian wishes to undertake. At the same time, if the event was "big" enough (the extinction of the dinosaurs by meteorite comes to mind) the large number of traces prevents the erasure of every single detail---too much shocked quartz, too much iridium, too little volcanic activity in the Deccan traps.

My mother still remembers where she was and what she was doing the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, even though she was then an Austrian teen. It would be difficult to erase all traces, to spill damnatio memoriae on all the causal lines, that reverberated through the global village of modern media when that US president died. Diaries, letters, mementos, not to mention an avalanche of conspiracy theories all take their origin in that event. 

It is this situation that is both the possibility of performing historiographical research over the ages and the impossibility of focusing the ontology of investigation up front, as the lack of readier-made traces and the ability to decide between competing interpretations will push the historian farther and farther down the causal chain to refute some of the interpretations (and herein lies the underdetermination of historical reconstruction, as Tucker pointed out) and strengthen the others (where the notion of strengthening may be related to Lewis' similarity metric, a point that needs further analysis). Here Lewis' points of world become relevant again. 

Life of Aventinus

In the first volume of the Collected Works of Aventinus (actually Johannes Turmair), there is a biographical sketch that provides interesting tid-bits that are worth noting.

Reading Notes

• Aventinus had contact to Conrad Celtis circle in Vienna and their Danubian society during his studying in Vienna.
• In 1516, Aventinus founded a similar society in Ingolstadt which included Bavarian chancellor Dr Leonhard von Eck, who was the "head and protector" (p.XV) of that association. However, the association was only active until 1520, and the authors blame the rabies theologica of the theologian Dr Eck in Ingolstadt for this (ibid).
• 1517, wie Herzog Ernst becoming the bishop of Passau, Aventinus was elevated to court historian for the Dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig (p.XVI).
• After two years of data collection (1517-1519) for his Historia Baiorum, Aventinus spent 1519 to 1521 in Abensberg, where his sister took care of him, to write the first draft, immediately followed by a second draft (p.XVIII). Occasionally he interrupted his work, for example, to meet with Chancellor von Eck in Regensburg (ibid).
• November 1522 he begins with the translation of the Historia into the vernacular (p.XIX)
• Aventinus makes another influential friend in the Cardinal and Archbishop of Salzburg, Matthaeus Lang, who keeps him at Salzburg for two months in the Spring of 1523 and will remain his friend even into the 1530s (p.XX).
• In 1524, the dukes raised his salary from 60fl, which he had received already for tutoring Ernst, to 100fl annually, provided he gave them control over the printing of the chronicle and would not accept offers from other dukes without notifying them (p.XXI).
• Aventinus managed to glide through the Peasant Revolt of 1525, which the dukes quickly battered down, and enjoy life in Abensberg in 1526, now with the official order to translate his work into German (p.XXII).
• In 1527, he began to frequent Regensburg, because there was no one in Abensberg that he could discuss matters with (ibid); the authors suggest it was the beginning of Aventinus being pulled into the question of the Reformation (p.XXIII).
• Unsurprisingly, as the Introduction of his work shows, he thinks of history as a moral and political effort (p.XXVI).
• In his moral crusade, his preferred enemies are the clericals, and especially the monks, and his warning against them extends even into Anti-Semitism: "Beware with equal care vis-a-vis a preacher, a Jew and a wolf." (Sigh ... :P) (p.XXIX).
• In his crusade against the church Aventinus also reveals a crusade for German Nationalism, even though he is employed by Bavarian dukes, for the German empire and the emperor (p.XXXI). "Deutschland ist nach seiner Ansicht in das Erbe des römischen imperium mundi eingetreten, "die vierte und letzte Monarchie der Daniel'schen Weissangung, an deren Fortbestand die Weltdauer geknüpft ist" (ibid).
• "Sonderinteressen zu verfolgen und eigene Politik zu treiben verurtheilt [sic] er stets als Unrecht und Untreue gegen die Gesamtheit." (p.XXXII) 
• For this reason, Aventinus criticizes the aristocracy for their focus on their special interests and advantages (p.XXXIII), leading him to demand public justice and free discourse (p.XXXIV).
• The three external enemies are the Pope, the French and the Turks (p.XXXV).
• For Aventinus, Religion is primarily about Justice, and he can praise the Romans and the Ancients for being just (p.XXXVII) --- including Alexander the Great.
• In the discussion of his historiographical achievements, the overly strong dependence on the forged Chaldean book of Berosos of Annio of Viterbo (Giovanni Nanni) is a black mark (p.XLI). His friend Beatus Rhenanus exposed the work as a forgery, but Aventinus either did not share his convictions or died before he could (p.XLII).
• The publication of his works was blocked by the two dukes (p.XLVI) since 1522, when they had forbidden the departure from the old faith, as supportive as they had been of reformatorical writings earlier, and there was just too much critical writing in Aventinus' books.
• Dr Eck of Ingolstadt got the dukes to execute tough punishments for the lapsed, which cost several anabaptists their life (ibid).
• 1528 was a troublesome year for Aventinus, the Turks were back in Hungary and Carinthia and were sending people into slavery (p.XLVII).
• Aventinus had friends in Regensburg, two of the cities' Stadtschreiber, as well as the Abbot Minzer, and there had been both the Jewish pogrom as well as the beginnings of the Reformation, both related to Dr Balthasar Huber, the preacher at the cathedral (p.XLVIII).
• But then (ibid) the preacher Nicolaus Georgius Fabri, a friend of Aventinus, was arrested in Landshut, where he was the chaplain of Duke Ludwig, and this struck fear into Aventinus, who fled to Regensburg. More preachers were imprisoned, 
• Aventinus himself was imprisoned on October 7th, 1528 (p.XLIX), but the Chancellor Leonhard von Eck quickly intervened to free him again, eleven days later, from jail, and Aventinus quickly returned to Regensburg (ibid).
• Aventinus had been an active Catholic during his time as tutor of Prince Ernst, and he prayed the breviary every day with him in 1513 (p.L).
• Aventinus knew too much history to believe in the indulgences and was too much a critic of the clergy and the monks, but he may not have ever left the Faith, comparable to Dr Konrad Peutinger and other supporters of Church reform (p.LI).
• During this time, he was sick and deeply discouraged and only found comfort in his work on the Germania Illustrata (p.LII).
• Aventinus tried to influence the matter by marrying Barbara Fröschmann, a Suebian girl from Niederrieden, December 1529 (p.LIII), but the expectation for this marriage as a source of calm in these confused times apparently did not materialize. However, the evidence for Aventinus being unhappy with his wife comes only from his biographers (p.LIV), and they had two children (two of which died quickly), and were able to buy a house in Regensburg for 150fl without selling the Abensberg estate. So clearly it was not a financial problem. And the inventory at his death (middle of the long footnote on p.LV-LVII) of old books, some from the 9th century, is impressive.
• In 1530, Aventinus was looking for a new position, and Philip Melanchthon suggested to him to try his friend Matthaeus Lang in Salzburg (p.LVII), instead of going to Saxony or even Wittenberg.
• His old friend Chancellor Dr von Eck helped him out and hired him as the tutor for his son Oswald at Ingolstadt (p.LVIII), a task he kept up until Christmas 1533, when he caught cold on his way back to Regensburg (ibid) and died January 9th, 1534.
• The publication of his main works was suppressed for many years after his death (p.LIX): the German Chronicle's Book I was printed in Nuremberg in 1541, and the Bavarian Chronicle in 1566 in Frankfurt am Main. 

Discussion

• When the authors write: "Wie unverständig es war, seine Mahnworte zu verachten, zeigte die schon im Jahre 1529 erfolgte Belagerung Wiens durch die Türken." (p.XXXVI) then this skips the fact that the pamphlet against the Turks was reworked in 1529.

Aventinus on why God lets the Turks defeat the Christians -- Part 1 and 2

Among his smaller writings is a pamphlet in which Johannes Aventinus (Turmeyr) reports on his musing about why God allows for the Turks to defeat the Christians and what the Christians can do in the face of so much suffering.

Aventinus notes that his thinking began with the death of Ludwig, King of Hungary and Bohemia, on the battlefield of Mohacs (though he cites the event, not the locale) [172] but that the context of publication is the Turkish emperor besieging Vienna in 1529. Aventinus complains that he had warned people in high places of the impending dangers but had been ignored due to the unpopularity of his message (depicting the truth as a coarse farmer's wife that cannot bribe and speak after people's wishes) [172]. Similarly, the emperors, Friedrich II, Henry VII, Sigismund and Maximillian had written against the problems with the estates and the popes, but no one seems to read them [173]. Aventinus could have ignored these warnings as well, but his friends E.W. (Ernst and Wilhelm, the dukes of Bavaria?) pressed him, given how the present danger of the Turks in Austria makes the matter urgent ("the water is reaching the mouth"), and so he composed the pamphlet in four parts [173]. The first will explain the causes, the second the indicators for worst parts to come, the third what the Ancients---Christians, Jews and Pagans had done---and the fourth proposes reforms that will prevent this from happening in the future [174].

Christ alone is the throne of grace, powerful, self-ruling lord in heaven, hell and on earth, the eternal, just, natural pope and emperor, our doctor, salvation and justice; .... [174]

Part I 

Aventinus [175] discusses the great abuses of the masters, of the Church and of the world, that lead to this calamity. Because God is merciful, He would not be punishing Christianity if there was not a reason [175]. Concilia and Diets have not figured out why the Turks have grown so strong [175];  the Knights of St-John wrote to the emperor when Rhodos was under attack, that the Turkish Sultan was not afraid of the Empire, much less the Germans, because they are divide, focused on physical pleasures, cannot tell top from bottom and practice no justice [176]. And since, as Aristotle argued, all things in nature are naturally good [177], it must be the government that is the problem. Aventinus reminds his readers that even the pagans know that the love of money, avarice and the own advantage is a source of injustice [177]. The rapacity of the bureaucracies and the knavery of the judges amplifies this and was the death of the Roman empire [177]. Even worse than the unfair and impatient prince is the money fool ("geltnarr"), who only focuses on increasing his profit while showing neither mercy nor understanding for the lower orders [178]. Even the pagans handle this situation of the poor being oppressed by the rich better [179], how the office holders steal from the rulers even:

The office holders grow rich; the rulers rot away together with the lands and their people. [180]

Vox populi vox Dei is here taken to mean that the protest of the poor is the accusation of God [180]. Aventinus includes the hanseatic organizations in these, and how the money-fools press the last bit of bloods from everyone else [180], worse than any tyrant in the history of the world. They think themselves to be good Christians but are not even good pagans [181]. Since bringing life is the hard part, not bringing death, God cannot be react or He would stop being God [181].

If you punish the heretics, why do you not punish the bishops, pastors and the monks? [181]

Aventinus now refers to Maximillian's pamphlet against the German estates, calling himself a king of kings, because all of the rules of Germany want to be their own master and do not suffer the emperor [182]; the money fools take it from everyone and no one pursues unity. This is the core of the problem (though coin, toll and customs association could be mentioned as well, since they weigh down the people and anger God) [182].

But the Christian and the Jewish authors teach, that such abuse has its root in the wrong worship of and service to God [183]. God is infuriated and he uses one people to punish another:

Always one people has to punish another, eliminate and exterminate them [183]

The one form of this blasphemy is to exhibit outwardly proper religious behavior and long prayers while stealing from the widows and stiffing the poor [183]. This is especially galling in the case of the barfeeted monks [183], who sell their prayers and will end up like the stupid virgins, without any [184]. Aventinus sees the mendicant orders as the source of much of this, and compares the light of their churches to the darkness of their hearts [184]. Mendicant orders are like whore houses and equally forbidden by God [184]. They take and never give and the preaching orders are no better [185]. And the female orders are worse than the Amazons attacking the Greeks ever were; did StPaul and StJerome not say that the women should be quiet in church and not sing loudly? [186] And the auxiliary bishops (Weihbischof) the same, who pay for the bishopric of a far-off land that the Turk now controls, swear to go there and preach but never mean that, perjuring themselves? [187] This was the kind of thing that the reformation of Emperor Sigismund was planning to fix [187]. Aventinus compares the pastors unfavorably to the Good Shepherd, who are unwilling to sacrifice anything for their sheep.

They take leave of absence, eat the sin and drink the evil of mankind, preach nothing, do not earn a farthing, place vicars like themselves over the poor, don't inquire into the salvation of the poor people. [187]

The religious lords were supposed to be poor but now they are rich:

It was forbidden that bishops, prelates and clergy own any worldly good, no churches nor feudal estates, to pull toward them, had to get by on the Tenth. ... Now they own cities, markets and castles, and do not want to do anything for it. [188]

The once who have to support this are the poor, and Aventinus again points to Emperor Sigismund's reformation [188]. Now, with the Turks near Vienna again and threatening Bavaria, people still refuse to see the signs and recognize that God is getting ready to punish them for their sins [188].

The other blasphemy [189] is the way in which both clergy and laymen live openly in violation of the laws of God [189]---but especially the clergy, who will not marry but practice whoring, will not be honorable but are traitors and knaves. Again Aventinus refers to Emperor Sigismund's attempts of reform in the face of such simony that put them into imperial banishment in the empire of God [189]. For anyone who wants to live in agreement with the word of God, they are the worst traitors [190]. If their deeds happen without intent, they lack diligence, if they happen on purpose, they are knaves of the worst kind [191]. Adultery, weakening the virgins and abusing the widows, those are worse crimes than thievery in the eyes of God, but the only thieving that is punished is that of the poor, and the highers ones simply add it to their pile [191]. David was punished for his adultery, and Troy destroyed over adultery [192]. It would be better to have no order at all than one that is not enforced [192]. Even if by now all have fallen short, the only way to remedy the matter is to start at the head, because once the head is cured, the whole body will already be doing better [193]. A concilium needs to take place [193], as Pope Hadrian allowed at the last Diet, and as Emperor Maximilian I had demanded in his writings against Pope Julian [193].

 But the Pope fears a free concilium of the church like the devil fears holy water .... [194]

And Constanz and Basel have shown them that this is where popes are removed from office [194]. In the face of all these pointless consultations, the Turks say [195]:

The Christians consult much and have many diets, in the mean time I conquer land and people. [195]  

When they meet in Hungary, the Turk invades Friaul and beats the Venetians; they meet in Worms and the Turk wins Greek-Weissenburg; they meet in Nuremberg and the Turks take Rhodos; they meet in Speyer and the Turk invades Hungary and kills the king [195].

Nobody wanted to come and help [the King of Hungary, RCK], however much he kept writing for help; they [Herzog Ernst of Bavaria, RCK] had to help the Bishop of Salzburg against his own poor people at the same time instead. [195]

That year, they met in Speyer again, and the Turk invaded Austria and besieged Vienna, an no one knows how the story will end [195].

Part II

Aventinus now turns to other signs of coming disaster [196]. Aventinus now enumerate learned men who have prophesied that the Turks would come up to Cologne, that the Papacy will suffer and eventually be destroy, and that the Roman Empire before the Judgement Day will return to Asia [196],

The sundown will be suppressed again, the sunrise will rule again. [197]

Equally, Ezechiel had prophesied that the peoples Gog and Magog would come and cover the faithful [197]. 

Now many interpret Gog and Magog as meaning the Turks and the Saracene Belief [i.e. Islam, RCK]. [197]

Aventinus reminds them that at the Diet of Speyer, Philip Melanchthon had published a book that warns about how the Turks will fulfill the prophecies of Daniel, and things would have been better if the powerful had listened to him [197]. Also there were many signs in the heavens, but people only make fun of them [197]. As King David warned in his psalms, the godless do not recognize the anger of God [198]. Did God not embarrass the pope and have him called the antichrist in the streets? [198] Does anyone still fear his banishments?

I see no one who still fears him or gives much [for his opinion, RCK], except for those, that benefit from it, if they did not anymore either, they'd be his worst enemies. [198]

But Rome was sacked by the German Landsknechts [198], and the powerful French king embarrassed [1525 at Pavia, RCK], and now they write stupid pamphlets [199].

If the heads do this, there is no need to ask nor wonder, why the Turks are coming: they must punish the evil, as the scourge and rod commanded by God. [199]

The Franks and the Suebians have been attacked by their own farmers [199]. Even CharlesV, the powerful emperor, sees his siblings in danger, and the death of his brother-in-law Ludwig, king of Bohemia and Hungary [during the battle of Mohacs, 1526, RCK] [200]. Aventinus sides with Luther against Georg of Saxony and the Emser Testament, complains, that the lords do not understand Greek but want to help the clergy with their knavery [201]. God is ready to punish them, after several century of difficulties with the Turks [the crusades? RCK] [201].

(continued in next post)

Aventinus' simile for the big wall

When Aventinus describes the stone blocks that Alexander used to fill in the moat around the city of Tyre during its investure, Aventinus thinks of Regensburg and its old city wall:

Then Alexander thought of an unbelievable thing, had no one for that, who could have suggested this: mobilized land and people, let them bring there big trees, that is with their branches still, the same big stones, square mined pieces (just as they are in Regensburg at the old wall) || from an old broken city nearby, sunk them in the sea, banked up from the land to the city, so that he would be able to move dry and straight from the land toward the city with the might of his army. (own translation)

Da unterstuend sich Alexander eines ungleublichen dings, het niemant darfür, das es geratten solt: pot land und leuten auf, lies zuehin pringen groß päum also ganz mit esten, dergleichen gros stainene vierecket außgehauen stuk (wie zu Regenspurg an den alten mauern sein) || von einer alten zerprochen stat daselbs, versenkts in das mer, macht vom land pis in die stat ein beschüt, das er truckens und ebens fues auf dem land mit herskraft für die stat mocht ziehen.

(Bavarian Chronicle, Bk I, Cap 158; p.347 and p.348 in the Academy edition)

Aventinus complains about the Turks in Alexander Depiction

I missed this on the first reading of Chapters 153 and 158, but when Aventinus gives the context for the Battle against Darius (Book I, 158 of the Bavarian Chronicle), he complains in Chapter 157 about how the Alexandrian Empire had been converted to Christianity by St Paul and then lost to the Turks (Aventinus began the translation "at Abensberg on Saturday evenings in the year 1526").

Nach obgenanter schlacht [i.e. mit den kaiserischen hauptleuten, RCK] viel zu im von den Persiern das ganz clain Asia, so vom nidergang gegen Constantinopel und Kriechen über ligt, an mitternach an das mer, darein die Thonau felt, von süd an das mer, darin gegenüber Rhodis und Cypern ligen, stöst; und von osten schaidet's von gros Armenien der wasserflues Euphrates und das pirg, so man den Taurn und Aman nent. Hat grosse mechtige geweltige (ân die grossen insel Cypern, so auch ein künigreich ist, Rhodis und ander vil mêr) künigreich: Pontus, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, clain Armenien, Phrygia, Mysia (pêde, gros und clain), Troia, Meonia, Lycaonia, Aeolia, Jonia, Caria, Lydia, Lycia, Isauria, Pisidia, Pamphilia, Cilicia. Die land hat s. Pauls alle pekert zum glauben und alda prediget; ietzo hat der Türk alles in, haist die gros Türkei. 

My own translation:

After the aforementioned battle [with the imperial diadoches, RCK] fell to him from the Persians all of Asia Minor, vom the lowlands toward Constaninople across from the Greeks, toward Midnight [i.e. North, RCK] from the sea into which the Danube empties, toward the south to the sea in which Rhodos and Cyprus lie; and from the east it separates from Greater Armenia the waterflowing Euphrates and the Mountains, which are called Taurus or Aman. It has mighty powerful (in the large island of Cyprus, which is also a kingdom, in Rhodes and in many others) kingdoms: Pontus, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Armenia Minor, Phrygia, Mysia (both, the Greater and the Lesser one), Troy, Meonia, Lycaonia, Aeloia, Jonia, Caria, Lydia, Lycia, Isauria, Pisidia, Pamphilia, Cilicia. These lands had St Paul convert all to the [Christian, RCK] Faith and preached all over there; now the Turks control it all, now called Turkey Maior.

Applying Peirce to Image Interpretation --- Part Two

If we look again at our four categories --- NONE, ALL, UNIQUE and SHARED --- we immediately realize that they are all grappling with a disjunction that is the enumeration of our sources. Recall that we said that Altdorfer is facing the following situation (in the single source case):

Rufus v Arrian v Justin v Schedel v Harlieb v Aventinus

(where v is the usual vel of classical logic, inclusive or): a big disjunction of choices.

Thus, if we see 32k as the number of battle participants on the flag of the Macedonian infantry, we know that it is either Justin or Schedel or Aventinus, but not Rufus, Arrian or Hartlieb.

The problem is that this representation is logically incomplete. What is missing is the precondition that these are in fact all of the possible sources on the Issos battle that Altdorfer could have consulted. So, the more correct logical form would be something akin to (now in sentential representation):

(and  (sourceUsedInCW Altdorfer-Alexanderschlacht-1528 ?X)
  (memberOf ?X (TheSet Rufus Arrian ... Aventinus))
  (not 
     (thereExists ?Y
        (sourceUsedInCW Altdorfer-Alexanderschlacht-1528 ?Y)
        (not (memberOf ?Y (TheSet Rufus Arrian ... Aventinus))))))

Since this construction is so awkward, we usually have syntactic sugar to make this more palatable.

(candidateSourceUsedInCW Altdorfer-Alexanderschlacht-1528 Rufus)

...

(candidateSourceUsedInCW Altdorfer-Alexanderschlacht-1528 Aventinus)

And then some meta-predicate that makes the same point

(completeExtentAsserted candidateSourceUsedInCW)

... most likely in a suitably restricted microtheory context.

While this is inferential successful and will allow us to conclude NONE in the case of the 12k killed Persian foot, or UNIQUE in the case Oxarthes and the Frauenzimmer, it is also historically false. We have in fact no way to know that there are no other historical sources that were available to Altdorfer at that time. In fact, any day a chance find in the Regensburg library, comparable to the one that recently uncovered the Quintus Rufus edition that Aventinus apparently used (cf Wagner-Jehle, Albrecht Altdorfer: Kunst als Zweite Natur, in: Regensburger Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, Bd 17, Regensburg 2012), might reveal another source.

This could directly affect our UNIQUE or NONE queries, or turn an ALL into a SHARED. It might also upend our source dependency analysis in the case of a former SHARED query. 

This is where truth maintenance comes into play. We must at all times be prepared to take this enumerated set extents and re-validate them against the latest state if historical research, and modify our claims accordingly. The specific transformations are as follows (if there is any change, rather than no change):

• NONE into UNIQUE if the new source contains the feature
• UNIQUE into SHARED if the new source contains the feature
• ALL into SHARED if the new source does not contain the feature

Only SHARED would continue as SHARED, albeit potentially influencing the dependency graph. For example, in a situation before Cord Meckseper's Iconography Paper, discussed in Part One, where only Justin's Epitome and Aventinus' Bavarian Chronicle might be in consideration as source for the 32k Macedonian foot, one might be tempted to think that Aventinus used Justin; but the insertion of Schedel's World Chronicle makes opens up new possibilities here.

Applying Peirce to Image Interpretation --- Part One

The basic notion of Charles Sanders Peirce's, that the positing of an abduced structure of some sort (e.g. a Schankian script in a Davidsonian representation world) can organize a set of disparate pieces into an explanation, is sound. The problem is how to play that through for the specific case of, say, Albrecht Altdorfer's Alexanderschlacht.

The start of the story must be the flags and the labels, because they give specifics. We also need to hold the inscription aside, because there is a strong suspicion that it is not by Altdorfer himself, but later (possibly by Jean De Pay in 1658, whose restauration receipt is already mentioned by Franz von Reber's Catalogue of the Old Pinakothek's collection of 1900 in the 8th edition, though Buchner in the 1938 Katalog for the 400th anniversary exhibition in Munich seems first to suggest that this included a reworking of that inscription).

There is a list of possible sources that Altdorfer could have used for obtaining the details of the battle. That list includes Arrianus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Justin's Epitome of Trogus, Aventinus, the Alexander Romance of Johannes Hartlieb, Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, and Plutarch. (For some of Aventinus' views on this matter, see this post here.)

Per CSP's recommendation, we can now construct alternate worlds of various forms. The basic idea would be that Altdorfer used exactly one source. For example, as Cord Meckseper did in his article on the iconography of the battle (Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, XXIII, 3/4, 1968, 178-185), one might assume that Schedel's Weltchronik might suffice.

The point is to expand what »suffice« might mean in terms of a strategy of mechanical interpretation. We assume that the narrative (it is not very long in Schedel) is summarized in a suitable Davidsonian event representation. This instantiation then identifies actors, actions, matériel and similar.
We also need a similar instantiation of the content of the painting itself, as an event, describing the various discernibles. Here, we can simplify the problem by delineating (e.g. with TEI standard bounding boxes) and describing at the action level (moving, turning, etc.) all those entities that any of the art historic works we have considered have identified, i.e. the superset of the interpretation constituents. Recall that we wish to model the argumentation, not automate the argumentation.

But if we have the description of the picture, and the description of the events as reported in the various sources, what then is the abduction doing for us? It is the mapping between these components, a representational correspondence. The picture has a golden-armored man riding a white horse. The story has Alexander leading a charge (say, not all sources go into that detail). The abduced mapping then says that the man on the white horse is Alexander (and by one step of inference that leads us beyond the sources, the horse is Bukephalos).

Consider the battle flag for a moment, which consist of the following pieces of information:

• the army to which the troops are attached (Greek/Macedonian or Persian, often mentioned pars pro toto via the commanders Alexander and Darius III)
• the type of troops we are talking about (here, mostly foot vs horse, i.e. infantry vs cavalry)
• the number of men present at the beginning
• the cardinalities of the categories at the end of the battle
• killed (presumably this includes missing in action, in modern parlance)
• captured (e.g. 40k Persians in Justin and Schedel)
• escaped (1k horse w/ Darius in Quintus Curtius Rufus, 4k in Arrian)

Here we are matching not against actors or roles in the script, we are matching against event statistics, so to speak, or statistics of sub-events (e.g. the troop numbers at the beginning and at the end of the battle). The flags visually represent the battle statistics (which are abstractions and therefore not visible per se).

In all of these representational mappings, we can run into four situations:

• NONE: there is something in the image that is in none of the sources (the scythes on the fleeing chariot, the chariot driver felled by the arrow, the boats on the sea), 
• ALL: there is something in the image that is in all of the sources (Alexander, Darius)
• UNIQUE: there is something in the image that is only one of the sources (the women, Oxarthes)
• SHARED: there is something that is in some, but not all of sources (the 32,000 Macedonian foot in Aventinus, Justin's Epitome of Trogus and Schedel's Weltchronik)

We have different reactions to these situations, then, as they give us different information about the question of which sources were used.

• NONE means that Altdorfer invented the matter himself
• ALL means that we cannot distinguish between the different source theories based on this piece of information
• UNIQUE means that the specific source was definitely used

SHARED has a special status, as it is often an indication of the genealogy of the sources themselves. For example, Altdorfer was not the only one working from sources, both Aventinus and Schedel had to use ancient reports to underpin their reconstructions. We may not be able to separate out Justin from Trogus, since Trogus did not survive the ravages of time as an independent source. But since Justin  (200-400 AD) is temporally before Schedel (1493) and Aventinus (1526), it is likely that Schedel used Justin (in the particular case of the 32k Macedonian foot). There are other cases were Schedel agrees with Justin, such as the number of 40k captured Persians.

The problem is trickier in the case of Aventinus, whose Bavarian Chronicle was published in 1526 when Aventinus was already living in Regensburg. Since Schedel predates Aventinus by over 30 years, and Aventinus only discusses Quintus Curtius Rufus as well as Arrian (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.337), as well as disparaging Hartliebs Romance. So perhaps Aventinus used Schedel and not Justin; unfortunately he mentions neither.

One more point about the NONE category, because Alexander's horse Bukephalos falls into it. None of the source I have looked at specifically mention that Alexander was riding Bukephalos at the battle of Issos. But Bukephalos is not invented in the same way that the chariot driver pierced by the arrow is, and not in the same way that the scythes on the carriage are. So we will have to return to the problem of this category at a later point.

But before that, we have to look at the problem of dealing with the open-ended disjunctions.

Aventinus on Alexander

The Bavarian Chronicles of Aventinus, one of the texts that Albrecht Altdorfer used for his Alexander-Schlacht, one way or another, was published in German in 1526. At this point, Aventinus was already living in Regensburg, having fled there from the anger of the Bavarian duke with assistance of the Bavarian chancellor.

The Digital Library of the Munich Center for Digitalisation of the Bavarian State Library has the scans of the Bavarian Chronicle, based on the edition of Vol IV of the Sämtliche Werke, edited by Sigmund von Riezler and Matthias von Lexer.

For the discussion of Alexander, the important parts are in Book I and range from Chapter 153 to 159.

The important points are as follows:

• Aventinus gives Arrianus and Quintus Curtius Rufus as the main sources, mentioning the Patrons of these editions as Emperor Sigmund for Arrianus and Duke Ernst of Bavaria for the Rufus edition that Erasmus of Rotterdam had overseen (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.337)
• Aventinus disparages Johannes Harlieb's rendition of the Alexander romance, though its patrons had been the Bavarian Duke Albrecht and his wife Anna of Braunschweig, criticizing its adding and deleting as well as its lack of Latin skill (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.337)
• Aventinus gives the number of 32,000 foot soldiers and 4,000 men cavalry both in his overview (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.337) as well as in his description of Alexander defeating the satraps of Darius Bk I, Cpt 157, p.346)
• The role of Alexander in the prophecy of Daniel regarding the four empires is both given at the summary beginning (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.336) as well as reiterated at the end of his biographical sketch (Bk I, Cpt 153, p.340).
• The battle with Darios at Issos is described in Cpt 158 as the First Battle (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.346-347).
• Aventinus only gives 10,000 horse for Darios, not 100,000, as do many others (Rufus' numbers add to 62k horse, Justin gives 100k, which Schedel probably copied from there), though he agrees with the 300,000 Persian foot that Schedel gave in his Weltchronik (250k if you sum Rufus, 400k in Justin) (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.347).
• Aventinus does not describe the women at the battle, nor how many men Darius flees with, nor how many were killed, but has Darius escape to Babylon (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.347).
• Aventinus reports the sack of the camp, the "Wagenburg" as he puts it (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.347).
• Aventinus does report the capture of the women and family of Darius (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.347).
• "Captured also Dareios' mother, house wife, son, daughters, the whole women's quarters, maintained it well until his end." (Bk I, Cpt 158 pp.347)
• The "Other Battle" with Dareios at Arbela (Gaugemala) is recounted in Bk I, Cpt 159, pp.350ff. 
• Aventinus reports Alexander's becoming sick and then recovering ((Bk I, Cpt 159 pp.350), then wins the battle and Darios is killed during the retreat, while Alexander takes Babylon (Bk I, Cpt 159 p.352).

Among the more curious points are:

• Aventinus reports that Alexander fought German tribes ("Teutsche") on his northern border of Macedonia, including some Bavarians, who apparently were scared of having the sky fall on their heads only (Bk I Cpt 154-157 pp342-345).
• In reference to Rufus, Aventinus claims that 4k Suebians (with Suabia running all the way down to Poland and Hungary) were at the battle ((Bk I, Cpt 159 p.351).

Because the number of Darios horse was so low, I cross-checked them against an edition from 1580 printed in Regensburg, but the number was the same.

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.

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.

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 Cox - Knox controversy at Frankfurt

During the reign of Queen Mary, Richard Cox and John Knox both had to hang out in Europe. They eventually got into each others hair with the problem of how to accept the common book of prayers into their doctrinal issues (see also Richard T. Hughes, C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America 1650-1875, Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 1988, esp. pp.7-14; for a quick summary of the story, see here.)

These troubles were written up after the fact by someone, possibly William Whittingham, though some have argued against that, and published.

A Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort,... (an older version, tough to read: A brieff discours of the troubles begonne at Franckfort in Germany, Anno Domini 1554)

Some of the quotes therein, especially this one, shows the continuity of concern between the Reformation and the Restoration.

For what greater treasure, or sweeter comfort, can a Christian man desire than to have a Church wherein he may serve GOD in purity of faith and integrity of life; … (p.26)

Calvin on Participation

Based on Nathan Barci's paper on Participation in Saint Thomas Aquinatus and Calvin, it appears that the following section of Calvin's Institutiones and of his replique Bondage and Liberation of Will, which focuses on salvation, are necessary to understand his participatory theology.

• Calvin's Interpretation of the Imago Dei in Institutiones 2.1.1 shows his idea of [soteriological] participation
• See Institutiones 2.12.1 and 2.12.6 for Calvin's argument against Osiander and his rejection of the ontological union of the Divine and the Human in the incarnation as anything but accidental
• The spiritual union between the Spirit and the Believer is found in Institutiones 3.11, 9 and Institutiones 3.1
• Calvin's definition of Faith in Institutiones 3.2.7, which is itself grounded in the dynamic between God-knowledge and self-knowledge that opens the Institutiones 1.1.1
• the acceptance of the gift of Faith is the reciprocating action or response to the gift and cashes out as repentance, which requires the indwelling work of the Spirit and the participation in the person of Christ; cf. Institutiones 3.2.24
• To explicate the way that Christ and the believer interact, Calvin is dependent on the vine-branch metaphor (Joh 15) in Institutiones 4.1.2-4

At one point Barci argues:

This assent, and the works which follow from faith, can properly be said to be ours: though they do not derive from us and cannot arise apart from the indwelling Spirit uniting us to Christ, they are proper to the heart of flesh, oriented in love to the Father, which is itself proper to created humanity. (p.13)

While I appreciate Barci's exposition of these topics, I disagree with his conclusion that a return to Neoplatonic considerations of the type Aquinas had assumed would be any help to Reformation theology, not even at the price of ecumenical progress.

When did Husband start to mean spouse?

As Daniel Walker Howe observes in What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States) (p. 34). Oxford University Press 2007.

So many and varied were the aspects of farm labor that unmarried farmers were exceedingly rare; to operate a farm household took both a man and woman. And so the word “husband,” originally meaning “farmer,” came to mean “married man.”

That statement is a bit timeless in the way it is cast here. When exactly is that transition to be placed?

One way to approach that problem is to see how the word is used in various early Bible editions. In Tynsdale's New Testament from 1525, for example, there are 17 occurrences of "husband" in the sense of spouse (9 times "husband", and 16 times "husbande", with John 4:18 exhibiting both spellings). The NT part of the Wycliff Bible from 1395 spells the word "hosebonde" (30 times) or "hosebondis"  (11 times)---which is the earliest English Bible translation that is easily accessible.

Switching to literature then, if we look at Chaucer's Canterbury Tale, for example the Prologue of the Wife of Bath, which probably dates from 1396, we find also:

For, lordynges, sithI twelf yeer was of age \\
Thonked be God, that is eterne on lyve \\
Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve
(vv4ff)

Similarly, in the metric Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, which was written between 1260 and 1300, the phrase is also attested (vv.11,300-11,303).

Euere lokede þis burgeis · wan hii were vorþ idriue ·*
Prestles hom was wel wo · þat hii nere issriue ·*
Roberd of caumpedene · þat hosebonde was on ·*
Vor he was a lute clerc · he ssrof hom echon ·*.

Given that we are now back in Middle English, I think the statement as made is misleading; the change in the meaning of the word had happened at least 500 years before the start of the era covered in Howe's book.