Georgian Britain: the highs and lows of a transformative age | HistoryExtra - "There was a liberal strand of opinion as well as a sort of acquisitive commercial strand. But a local strand thinking, our well this is our chance to do good in the empire, or, initially, our settlements are what became to be called the empire, can be a force for good. And they tend to view the Indians as a backward society, who, whose ways you know, who bring them literacy and education, a greater role for women. So there was a eventually there was a liberal strand of support for what was going on. And the sort of thing that they stopped, which I'm sure, we would all wish to stop today, just as they wished to stop then was Sati, when the the widow would throw, immolate herself and on the burial pyre to die, as was because there was no no pension and no family savings. So it was a way of saving for the family. But it was horrible for the woman, needless to say. So they did stop that, for example, they stopped Sati. So there was a liberal strand of reform. And so one of the things I emphasize, it's a changing package of feelings all the time as you go through, a changing package of whether Britain is taking wealth from India or investing in India, but a lot of investment goes into India, is a continuous dynamic all the time and differing responses from Indians, some of them welcomed what was happening and some worked with the missionaries and were keen to develop the schools and bring education to people."
Vichy France: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra - "The question of public opinion and support for Pétain continues to be a point of debate. And I would say that at the beginning of the war, Vichy did have support, many people were relieved that the fighting was over and Pétain himself, as you mentioned before, he was a war hero. He was someone who was revered. He was a grandfatherly figure. Here was this, this war hero, this person who is very trusted, and if he's telling you that, that this war should be over, and that we should return to normal, and he's going to protect us from the death and the destruction that we saw in the First World War, a lot of people feel very relieved by this. They're, they're glad that the fighting is over. They're glad that Pétain, right, the victor of Verdun, he has our best interests at heart. He's going to save us. And so there is this kind of, at the beginning, a sense of relief and support for Vichy. I would say though, overall, though, when we kind of look more closely, about 2% of the French population, were actively and strongly committed to collaboration. People who believed in the Nazi cause, people who are working for the government, people who think that this is the right direction for France. At the other end of the spectrum, you've probably got about a similar number, about 2% of people who are active in the resistance. People who are actively fighting against the Nazis, who joined resistance organizations, who take up arms or are printing newspapers. So we've got 2% collaborationist, about 2% active resistance, but the majority of people fall somewhere in between, they're just trying to get by, they're just trying to live their lives and survive in these in these harsh conditions. The the laws are changing, it's hard to get food, there's 1.8 million prisoners of war, so many homes, are without fathers, or brothers or sons. People who would have been working in the factories or working on the land...
The Germans actually forcibly and physically take Petain and Laval who was the head of the government, and they are taken first to another place in France, and then they are taken to Germany, to a castle in the false hope that that they would be kind of brought back into power in the future… he's actually quite angry with the Germans for taking him out of, out of France, and he refuses to perform any of his duties as as head of state... Growing up in the US, and when I was at school, we were always taught… the list of the Allies. And we had the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France, France was always on our list of people who were on the Allied side, we didn't learn about Vichy France, we didn't learn about collaboration, we just learned kind of about the outcome at the at the end of the war. And you see that reinforced after the war as well. In the division of Germany into zones after the war, right, you had the French zone and the British zone and the American zone and the Soviet zone… the leaders were brought to trial after the war. But they are not tried before international courts, like you had with the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders. Instead, the French leaders are tried before the French High Court, and they are being tried for for treason… Petain had actually been offered asylum in Switzerland. And it was kind of hoped that he would, he would stay ,there he could be tried in in absentia. Petain really wanted to provide his account of the warriors, how he had sacrificed how he had been a great leader, and how he had protected France and so he returns to France, and he will be put on trial. His trial will begin in July of 1945. And his defense strategy really was to claim that Vichy had acted as a shield, that Vichy had protected the French from the worst of Nazi demands. Through collaboration, by collaborating they had been able to protect France and Petain’s defense also claimed that he had been playing a double game throughout the war. And that while he had been collaborating with the Nazis, he was also in contact with the British. This is not true, none of this was was convincing, and Petain was found guilty of treason and was condemned to death. However, due to his age, we have to remember that he was 84 at the beginning of the war, so this is this is four years later, the court recommended then that his sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. And Charles de Gaulle does accept this thing… Laval is found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. But before he was to be executed, he swallowed a cyanide pill. But they wanted to make sure that he was actually executed. His stomach was pumped repeatedly. And he was actually dragged basically half dead to his execution... Sentences did become kind of more lenient, the further away from the war the trial was. And we'll actually see kind of a resurgence of of these trials in the mid 1990s, when people who had been kind of very leniently sentenced after the war, were retried in the 90s, for crimes against humanity, especially for their role in the deportation of Jews from France...
Immediately after the war, there is this myth of resistance, that that dominates public memory. And it's really coming from De Gaulle, where he's come back into France, he's, he's the head of the Provisional Government, and he talks about France as a nation of resistors. And so all, it's a way to kind of cover up all of those divisions and to prevent that kind of civil war and all of those reprisals that you see at the end of the war, but it lasts for a very long time. And it's not really until the 1970s, that the first cracks in this myth start to appear. And then you kind of get a swing in the opposite direction from everybody being a resistor, you get this almost opposite idea that everybody was, was a collaborator. And there will be several scandals that bring Vichy back into the public eye, especially in the 80s, it was revealed that French President Francois Mitterrand had worked for Vichy before, before joining the resistance... it's not until 1995 that the French president publicly acknowledged French complicity in the Holocaust"
Christmas feasts, episode 1: Medieval & Tudor revelry | HistoryExtra - "‘All of the tenets of the Catholic Church was still in force, which meant that an awful lot of the year was a fast day, if you were in the Medieval or early Tudor era of fasting. It didn't, it hadn't, it was sort of supposed to mean abstinence, but it had come to mean fish days. So it had come to mean that you couldn't eat animal products at all. So no dairy, no animal oils, no lard and things like that, that were quite important. Obviously no meat either. So you've got a lot of things like almond milks or other nut milks, you've got isinglass being used instead of gelatin, which is the gallbladder of sturgeon. Do not ask me who first discovered that was jelly, and you have a lot of fish. So in reality, for those who were rich, there was certainly no abstinence, there was just amazing fish feasts. For the poor, it was things like stock fish, which were very hard and nasty, and they did lack protein. But the point about Christmas was Advent was a whole period of fast. So from the first of December through to either the evening of the 24th, or the morning of the 25th, depending on who you read and who was doing it, you were on these fast days. So if you're wealthy, it's endless sturgeon, porpoise, you know, put a dolphin in there. What else, beavers’ tails, because they weren't actually meats, because they kind of were scaly, lot of seabirds, because again, they're on the sea. So they're definitely not meat, right? So you know, things that we would potentially go, actually, I don't really want to eat a seagull, but by the time you gilded it, and you've roasted it, and you've stuffed it with fruit, and you've covered it with beautiful spice sources, to be honest, you know, you can't really taste the seagull anymore. So there's all of that for the rich. And then for the poor is this awful diet of stockfish and pease pudding. But I mean, to be honest, the diet of the poor is awful anyway. But you can see why after kind of 24 days, just endless that you get to Christmas, and you've got the full 12 days, the one that we sing about today. So the 12 days really were in the medieval era, a massive excuse for a party every single day named after a different saint, different customs, all sorts of kind of cool stuff, social upheaval, but a really, really big emphasis on eating and drinking...
One of the real characteristics of this era, at least until Henry the Eighth started to stamp it out, was the sort of topsy turvy society. So in the medieval era, a lot of churches would elect a boy bishop and nunneries would elect a girl abbess, and they would kind of rule the roost for the day. It goes back really probably to Roman Saturnalia celebrations, where sometimes a slave would be elected to be the head of the household or even given his or her freedom. And so this is this kind of danger about Christmas, really, that is quite subversive, and it's sort of where panto comes from to a small extent in this idea of, you know, people cross dressing and a lot of fun being had and the normal rules not applying. Henry the Eighth wasn't very fond of a lot of that, because obviously, second son, not the greatest claim to the throne, Tudors a bit of an upstart, so he did start to stamp down on some of those things, and they gradually kind of dwindled, but even say you had Lords of Misrule, appointed, certainly at court and at big houses all the way through to the 17th century. And their role was to preside over the partying aspect and organize festivities. And there was a lot of dressing up, and a lot of dancing. And it does sound like quite a lot of fun, to be honest.’"
Christmas feasts, episode 2: Georgian elegance | HistoryExtra - "‘And we're going to play Snapdragon because nothing says Christmas like a massive bowl, full of currants with brandy, and it's set on fire, where we will have to reach in and pull out a currant because that is pretty cool. And you know what? Even the kids can join in.’...
‘Christmas pudding, Christmas cake - none of that exists. But there are foods which I would say that pretty much every table has on at Christmas. So the big ones are beef and plum pudding. And they're going to be either end of the table at the second course. So you're going to have a massive sirloin of beef because we are wealthy and we can afford it and at the other end is going to be a huge plum pudding almost the same size of the beef. And we'll probably have boiled that in a cloth because it is Christmas and while molds are in and plum puddings are big news, I think the traditional cannonball shape, it's the one you see on all the satires, and to do that you're gonna make your plum pudding mixture, which is very similar to a modern day Christmas pudding mixture but with less, a lot less sugar, and it's normally firmer, and you pile it all into pudding cloth and you squeeze it round and it forms an amazing ball and then you boil that in the world's biggest saucepan or indeed copper as such as you would get in a laundry, and it comes out and you have this sort of cannonball shaped putting, although, realistically, it's more of a squat oval, trust me.’
‘And so that wasn't a desert as it would be today, it was served with the beef.’
‘Yes, so desert in the Georgian period is quite specific and it evolved out of the banqueting course that we talked about in the last episode, in the Tudor episode, the banqueting course for the Tudors was all about sugarcraft and sort of palate cleansing, really. And that evolved over the next 200 years or so to be something that was still about cleansing your palate, and it was usually for the Georgians, ice cream, a little bit of sugar stuff. So maybe some sculpture, nuts, very, very lots of fresh fruit, especially in December, because you could show off the skill of your gardeners with your fresh fruit. But the idea of dessert was it wasn't a course as such. I mean, it was but it wasn't, it wasn't gonna fill you up. You don’t want to eat dessert and then go oh god, I can’t eat. So dessert was light, and all of the dishes that we today would call dessert, or we would lump under the generic heading of pudding. They were all in the second course. And puddings were very specific. They were actual puddings, they were not cakes, or brownies, or gateau or whatever. They were puddings and puddings, boiled in a pudding mold, mainly. although you could bake them and they were also sausages but let's not go into the definition of puddings because we'll be here forever… The plum pudding is a lot like chutney I suppose, if you think about the rich flavors that we would associate with chutney, so dried fruit, spices, obviously chutneys have vinegar in but they also have a lot of sugar in. So they've got that sort of sweet-savory note, and that's what a good plum pudding with beef would have. It, the beef complements the plum pudding and vice versa. And they were absolutely emblematic of of England in particular. So, if you look at satires in the Georgian era, you will often find the plum pudding used to stand in for Britain. There's a very famous Gillray satire called the plum pudding in danger, where Napoleon is carving up the plum pudding, which is a map of the globe and they're really really sunk into the English psyche. And those are feast foods. So coronation feasts, birthday feasts, coming of age feasts, you name it, if it's a feast, beef and plum pudding...
Roasting at that point meant putting something in front of a fire. So you could roast in heavily inverted commas, potatoes, but actually they're baked potatoes’"
Christmas feasts, episode 4: WW2 rationing & postwar absurdity | History Extra - "‘People did eat a lot of vegetables. By the end of the war, the nation was healthier than it had ever been before. Because the rich had their sugar and meat and dairy intake restricted. And the poor were guaranteed a certain level of meat and other bits and pieces. So, you know, and also everybody ate loads and loads and loads of fruit and vegetables, which is brilliant. But it rebounded massively in the 1950s when our sugar consumption went through the roof, and we ate more per capita than we've ever eaten before or since. Amd people didn't like vegetables very much. And they just wanted a steak because that was what they couldn't get hold of during the war. So yeah, I've really loved to be able to tell you that vegetable cookery was amazing. Really, really wasn't'...
‘A Christmas staple is leftovers. Not necessarily in the Second World War but what have been some of the most useful recipes for rustling up some tasty less leftovers in the past?’
‘Well, I always have a real problem with the idea of leftovers because it's somehow quite pejorative. And people think of leftovers as something which are kind of sloppy seconds. And the, even the concept is relatively modern. So you don't really get the word leftovers even until quite late on in the 20th century and, and it's very much kind of post fridge development. Once you've got a fridge and you can put things in plastic containers and leave them to die, then you get leftovers. Previously, you had cold meat cookery. And it was, again, the emphasis was on the meat because that was the expensive bit or you had sort of recipes to use previously cooked ingredients. And that was the light in which they were seen. So you didn't have leftover potato, you had a really conveniently ready cooked set of starchy things to put into a pudding or a curry or whatever. And I think one of my favorite recipes for using leftovers is a vegetable curry actually from 1901. And it's narrated by Katharine Mellish. And she uses sort of small amounts of pre cooked vegetables… it's really easy as well because you just chuck everything into a pan with loose desiccated coconut. You use cucumber and apple as a base, which is the only kind of must do and the cucumber and apple are fried off. And then you use just plain curry powder and you can chuck in cream... And the apple and the cucumber, give it a fruitiness... it’s very much an Anglo Indian curry. But it is excellent and it is very versatile... this is a really really useful recipe for using up bits of vegetables and actually it does come into its own at Christmas where people are so full that they might leave just a minuscule amount of whatever it is’"
Tutankhamun: the mystery of Nefertiti | HistoryExtra - "'It's a shame that we focus on the beauty. Quite often when I talk about Nefertiti, it's the thing that people want to know about. They'll ask about her beauty routines and her makeup and so on rather than what she did, which is a great shame. It's caused us to focus on her in a way, which is good in some ways, but I think also it's almost given her a disproportionate importance as well. To think that a lot of our emphasis on Nefertiti is due to the bust and without that bust would we be so happy to accept her in her role as we interpret it? I don't know, it's a very difficult question, it's an interesting one' Actually if you look at the literature before and after the discovery of the bust, before the bust is discovered, Nefertiti is a footnote. After the bust is discovered, she's a superstar'"
The Black Death: origins & spread | HistoryExtra - "‘This one kind of millet is so great. You can feed, feed a cup of it in the morning to a soldier, and he will be good for the rest of the day. Also, you can brew beer with it, it was that one detail. I mean, it really was that one detail that all the other pieces of the puzzle fell into place.’
‘So you're provisioning an army, you're transporting huge sacks of grain who loves huge sacks of grain? Rodents. Are those rats? Are those another kind of rodent? I have no idea, at this point. Archaeologically, rodents are very hard to establish in the material record because they're so small and their bones are fragile’..
‘Developments like this could rewrite what we think we know about the spread and extent of the Black Death across the globe.’
‘Our traditional narrative of the Black Death tells a story of a focus of plague around the Black Sea, and then moving into the Mediterranean and from there into Europe, into North Africa. So Middle East, Europe, North Africa. That's part of what had always troubled me about the Black Death narrative is, if you look at the map, there's no explanation about why the edges of the map are where they are, is. So if it's coming out of, let's say, the Caucasus, so the mountains that separate the Black Sea from the Caspian Sea, why doesn't it also move eastward? Why do we not have narratives about the Black Death in central Eurasia? Why do not have narratives about the Black Death in in China, Tibet or India? We still can't answer those questions. But what is clear is that because of prodding, in part, by me, historians of China are now going back and looking more closely at the records...
There's clear evidence for the presence of plague in Iraq, in Syria, and possibly also in Egypt, in the 13th century. So almost 100 years before our regular narrative of the Black Death starts, plague has already moved across central Eurasia… what happens in the 14th century is different than anything I have documented in in the 13th century, and that nobody can explain that yet. Because what I, what I have documented for the 13th century is sporadic plague outbreaks… it disappears. And again, that's not surprising that it disappears, because again, it's not a human disease. So that's, then what is still puzzling about the 14th century is, why is there a systematic spread of plague. And the tentative argument that I can give right now is, number one, grain supplies are clearly involved in the 14th century as well.’
‘This helps us to rethink some of the key moments in the traditional stories that are told about the spread of the Black Death. And one of those moments is the siege of Caffa.’
‘There's an old story, it actually is comes from the 14th century, claiming that Mongols were besieging a city of Caffa.’
‘According to this old story, the Mongols were marred by plague during military campaigns in the 1340s. Gabriel de Mussis claims that while they were besieging the Genoese run port city of Caffa, they catapulted plague ridden corpses into the city, I guess you could see it as an early form of biological warfare. The story goes that the residents of Caffa were soon after afflicted by disease, and many then fled to Europe carrying of course, the Black Death… Monica has a different take on events.’
‘So this was a, a merchant establishment of the Genoese. Both Genoa and Venice in Italy, had set up regular trade trade infrastructures going between Italy and the Black Sea. And the big thing they're importing is grain. What Barker was able to establish is that the siege happened, a couple of sieges happened. And there was no outbreak of plague, associated with the siege itself. It was only a year later, because after the seas there was, there were embargos. So this is like, we're not going to trade any grain and you can't, you can't sell your grain to these people. So there's this, there's this kind of economic war going on. And it's only economic. And then in 1347, the the the embargoes get lifted. And then we start seeing plague moving because the the grain shipments have started again. So it's those ships carrying the grain back to Italy, which is, is starving. It's a complicated story, but but again, the pieces fit in terms of, of the mechanics. Now the question is, which nobody can explain right now is, why all of a sudden, were so many grain supplies contaminated, with plague? What was moving it around? So is there just kind of a flurry of rodents? Or is there a new kind of flea that's involved in the transmission? We have absolutely no information about that right now.’"
The Black Death: living through the plague | HistoryExtra - "‘It's easy to imagine just how terrifying these tales of desolation in far off lands would be. I think we often have a vision of the medieval world as insular and isolated. But when we look at the spread of the news of plague in the 14th century, we can actually see that extensive networks of communication were really crucial in spreading news of what was happening elsewhere.’
‘It's merchants It's also clerics. It's by letters. For instance, one bit of news that that really rather startling is notions from these chroniclers in Eastern Europe, who through their network their ecclesiastic networks have already heard of the plague in in the winter of 1348 that has already struck Avignon, and through the connections with the papacy in Avignon, so they know about this.’
‘And before long medieval communities recognize the scope of this pandemic as something much, much bigger than a localized outbreak.’"
The Black Death: medieval medical thinking | HistoryExtra - "‘These ideas in which the movements of planets and the Zodiac have an influence on air, which then have an influence on bodily health seem a bit left field. But Elmer suggests that if you dig a little deeper, they're not so strange after all.’
‘On the one hand, these ideas are quite alien to us, let's say. On the other hand, I think we have a full recognition of things like the effect of the seasons on our health. And we're, we have a heightened understanding of that right now with COVID. I mean, we've seen now over the space of two years, that the incidence of the virus is worse during the winter months. So those winter months align with certain signs of the zodiac so you can see that these ways of thinking are not totally alien. There is medical thinking that looks at the effects of the moon on the menstrual cycle and things like that. So, you know, I think really, we can understand that medieval people took full account of the environment, and that environment for them extended into the heavens.’"
The Black Death: death, sin & spirituality | HistoryExtra - "'This point about the flagellants not actually being that popular in England, is a really interesting one.They’ve become one of the most iconic images of the Black Death. But as Helen says, it's important to remember that not everyone subscribed to such an extreme response.'…
‘It might be that people actually didn't like how freely this group of people were moving. Um, it could be that that was actually quite unsettling to have people entering a place when there is such a virulent epidemic. And that is, you know, all encompassing. So it could be that that's the reason that they found them particularly unsettling. They didn't know what they carried. Maybe it was the very visceral projection of sin that people found unsettling or uncomfortable. I think that they were considered to be this very strange, very macabre and quite harrowing snapshot of the general pervading mood in the wake of the Black Death.’
‘And those higher up also shared this idea that the flagellants extreme response was not necessarily in keeping with the rest of the church. In 1350, King Philip of France issued an edict to suppress the flagellants, condemning them as a sect, quote, conceived in detriment of the Christian faith against the commandments of our Savior Jesus Christ. And as a great peril to the souls of the said people. Heinrich Hereford expressed a similar disdain for the flagellants that he encountered. Just as persistent burrs often grow on the harness [sp?] he wrote. So these unlearned and stupid people, unfortunately and stubbornly usurp even the preacher’s office with their penitential whips. Concerning religious and clerical matters, they do not think or speak wisely. Heinrich of Herford also recounts a really revealing story in which two Dominican friars meet some flagellants in a field outside Meissen. He recounts how the preachers become, quote, so exasperated by their arguments that they wish to kill them, leading to a confrontation. The more agile preacher managed to run away from the flagellants, but the other was stoned to death by them. But in some parts of Europe, the flagellants did receive a somewhat warmer welcome’...
'I think it's true that like, soon, an entire lifetime, a medieval person would see the same amount of images that we see in one day. So you can imagine how people would react to that thinking, that that was their reality. So you're really living in this sort of age of paranoia and fear...
Another change in commemoration that we see just at the end of the Black Death, and even in the sort of just after it and you see it earliest in these brasses, but then later on, when the you know, the population had risen again, you start seeing it in tombs as well, is this, there's this lovely gesture of hand clasping in couples and this is something you might be more familiar with, which is a real trend in the second half of the 14th century, you don't really see it at all before the 14th century, and it's specifically in England that you see it. So a couple are literally shown holding hands, they've got their their hands clasped on their tomb... was it relative to the importance of unity through marriages, you know, fulfilling a contractual obligation, and that was seen as an important thing. But it also could be read as a gesture of love and respect'"
The Black Death: how the pandemic transformed societies | HistoryExtra - "‘For ordinary people, for workers, for agricultural laborers, for tradesmen, this is certainly a time when life is better. And actually, one of the ways that this plays out really interestingly, is through the parish. So often, when we talk about the Black Death, we don't think about the parish and the impact that it had. But because people have more money, and because of the development of the doctrine of Purgatory, where people were trying to offset sin during their lifetimes, they start to pour enormous amounts of money into their parish church. And some of the most stunning medieval churches that survive today are from that sort of one to 200 year period after the Black Death. And it's not really the, the gentry, the nobility that are investing, it's ordinary people. And so that can really be seen as an indicator of improvements in standards of living, in wages, in surplus wealth. I mean, some historians do argue that really, for ordinary people, they have purchasing power that's not rivaled, until, you know, after the Second World War. So for ordinary people who make up the majority of the population, I would definitely say that this is this is a better time to be alive than previously.’
‘But of course, as always, there's a catch.’…
‘In the quarter century after the Black Death, the 1350s, 1360s, there's high taxation, the government is intervening in the labor market in a way that it's never done before. It's trying to regulate the commodities market in a way it's never done before. And that's causing huge tension. Tax per head is three to four times greater, and you're terrified, you're terrified about, is it, is it coming back? And and is this divine retribution. Is it the end of the world'"
Plague doctors: Separating medical myths from facts - "You’ve seen them before: mysterious figures, clad from head to toe in oiled leather, wearing goggles and beaked masks. The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and the Grim Reaper, and has come to represent both the terrors of the Black Death (opens in new tab) and the foreignness of medieval medicine. However, the beak mask costume first appeared much later than the middle ages, some three centuries after the Black Death first struck in the 1340s. There may have been a few doctors in the 17th and 18th centuries who wore the outfit, including the iconic beak mask, but most medieval and early modern physicians who studied and treated plague (opens in new tab) patients did not. According to Michel Tibayrenc's book "Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), the first mention of the famous plague doctor costume is found in a mid-17th century work written by Charles de Lorme, a royal physician in the service of King Louis XIII of France... The plague doctor getup, and especially the beaked mask, has become one of the most popular costumes in the "Carnevale," or Carnival of Venice in Italy. In fact, some historians have argued that the beaked plague doctor was nothing but a fictional and comedic character at first, and that the theatrical version inspired genuine doctors to use the costume during the outbreaks of 1656 and 1720."
Medieval masterclass 1: Imperium 410-750 | HistoryExtra - "‘It becomes increasingly hard to find memorable, let alone successful Roman emperors, who or rather emperors who are memorable for their competence rather than their absolute ridiculousness. It becomes ever harder to find those as we move from the third, fourth, and move into third, fourth, fifth centuries’...
‘You would contend that the Islamic caliphs could be described as the inheritors of Rome’...
‘You take one look at the map and say that's the closest thing that will that's that that's pretty close to the Roman Empire... the sheer territorial conquests of the early caliphs, and their rise in military power and confidence, up to the middle of the eighth century, is absolutely astonishing. As is and what's comparable with Rome, I think as much as the extent of the conquests, is the imprint, the historical imprint that the first Islamic caliphates left on the world, which we can still feel today, because if you look at this map, if we take away, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Hispania, you know, Iberian Peninsula. Most, if not all, of the rest of the map is still predominantly Islamic territory, you know, these are predominantly predominantly Islamic countries. So in terms of religion alone, the imprint of this, this astonishing new faith Empire is still profoundly seen in the world today, as is the language, you know. Putting aside Persia, Islam, was a faith bound up in language in a way that Christianity wasn't in its early stages. And it isn't today.’"
Medieval masterclass 3: Rebirth 1216-1347 | HistoryExtra - "‘The trope, the myth about the Mongol Empire was that a woman could walk naked with a gold vase on her head from one end to the other and not be molested or robbed or mistreated in any way because of the fear of the inhabitants of the Mongol Empire held for the wrath of the Khans’"
Medieval masterclass 4: Revolution 1348-1527 | HistoryExtra - "‘I was very pleased to learn in your book that, that we know that the Renaissance began on the 26th of April 1326. That's right, yeah?’
‘Is there, does this involve a mountain? Petrarch going up his mountain? It's fun, isn't it? Yeah. So the, Jacob Burckhardt, writing a long time ago, can’t remember exactly when he wrote, this, claimed that the Renaissance had begun on the the this exact day in 1326 when the great poet Petrarch climbed a mountain. And he went up the mountain with his brother, very dangerous mountain to go up. And he looked out at the scene and considers the world that was below him and had poetic thoughts about it. And to Burckhardt, this was, you could pinpoint, Burckhardt thought nobody, no medieval person would ever have done this, they wouldn't have climbed the mountain just for the sake of climbing the mountain, just because it was there. To use was it Mallory's phrase, or whatever it is, that that just wouldn't have occurred. And so and so in Burckhardt definition, the, what underpins the Renaissance is the pursuit of, of beauty and art and knowledge as as a high spiritual end in itself and as a route to the divine. And that the divine thereby can be, is found within the individual and their artistic impulses and responses, and to Burckhardt, that's the difference. Now, I think that there may be something to be said, for some parts of that argument. Certainly, I mean, it may, but it may not be an argument of differentiation, and it may be just an argument of characterization. We may just simply be saying, what is it about? What's going on in the roots of art and the 15th century art and literature? Well, it's an internalization. Okay, it's not the outward contemplation of, in the Christian tradition, Christ. And, and, you know, the saints and whatever. It's the, it's the route to the divine being turned inwards... It wasn't the case that nobody had challenged the authority of the institutional church until Luther… they were persecuted and killed as heretics and the the institutional power of the Catholic Church, which had reached its high watermark, and had had it's the sort of the high bar for its ambition set in 1215, the fourth Lateran Council by Pope Innocent the Third, that remained broadly, broadly unchallenged. What separates, what in that instance, the medieval from the early modern, is the fact that that after Luther, that's no longer the case. Its its criticism of the church has been, is totally absorbed into international politics, and where you stand on, it's no, it's not like the Great Schism at the end of the 14th century, or the 15th century where you just have two rival Popes or sometimes three rival Popes and and countries line up according to which one they want, because those Pope's don't fundamentally disagree on gigantic, deep issues of theology, it's a question of who gets to actually be the Pope. What's different about the Reformation is that there are people saying there shouldn't even be a Pope. And that is to say, that’s bound into international politics, is bound into social and cultural identities, it's bound into civil wars, it's bound into the rights of the individual. If you think about the long struggle for Catholic emancipation in England, for example, you know, hundreds of years. Your, your position on the issues originally raised by Martin Luther becomes, becomes a marker of identity and a marker of your civil liberties. So that and that's just not the case in the Middle Ages.’"
