Status Updates From Sleepwalking into a New Wor...

j’ai adoré les pages sur le caca

The families also spent a lot of money in Rome to show off their position... In the case of the Frangipane of Innocent II's time, on a leopard, which we know about because it 'strangled' an unfortunate woman in their household.

:(

In 1138 Anacletus died, and Innocent II took over the city with no real rival in sight, with full international support, and with revenge on his mind."

HAHA

"Hildebrand / Gregory VII was the last heir of the ancien régime, the Carolingian and post-Carolingian papacy, represented most recently by the Tuscolani."

I've never heard this framing before, and I love it.

The forested coastal dunes of Pisa itself were jealously guarded by the cathedral canons, who extracted rents from (among others) the city's galley-men, when they needed wood for ship-building, reinforced by violent 'silvani,' or forest-wardens.

Stealing this for a novel someday.

"The Constitutum usus proudly states that the Pisans had mostly lived by Roman law 'for a long time,' a statement which, as earlier documentary sources show, was totally false.