Jan-Maat > Recent Status Updates

... C'est stupide, je te confonds toujours avec ce pauvre Charles. Cela tient à ce que tes articles ressemblent bigrement aux siens. Tout le monde s'y trompe.

Presumably because the same woman was doing most of the writing for bith of them?

C'etait un de ces hommes politiques à plusieurs faces, sans conviction, sans grands moyens, sans audace et sans connaissances sérieuses, avocat de province, joli homme de chef-lieu, gardant un équilibre de finaud entre tous les partis extrêmes, sorte de jésuite républicain et de champignon libéral de nature douteuse, comme il en pousse par centaines sur le fumier populaire du suffrage universel.

Duroy murmura: - J'adore les environs de Paris, j'ai des souvenirs de fritures qui sont les meilleurs demin existence.

Il balbutia

Verb- balbutier, this is Duroy's leitmotif and it is something he does every half dozen or so pages. According to the internet dictionary, to speak with hesitation and sits in juxtaposition to his appearance and manner (blond, decisive) also to his adopted profession (journalist).

Forestier voulut acheter deux vases pour les poser sur sa bibliothèque.

Why? I thought this guy was dying and in his last couple of days? Wealthy people are crazy.

-...la vie est une côte. Tant qu'on monte, on regarde le sommet, et on se sent heurex; mais, lorsqu'on arrive en haut, on aperçoit tout d'un coup la descente, et la fin, qui est la mort. Ça va lentement quand on monte, mais ça va vite quand on descend. Àvotr âge, on est joyeux. On espère tant de choses... Au mien, on n'attend plus rien...que la mort.

Well that gives a structure to the story ;) interesting placement

Il sonnait à sa porte, à deux heures et demie...
- oui, madame est là, mais je ne sais pas si elle est levée...

Not much sign of morning people in this novel

-te voila! À cette heure-ci! Que me voulais-tu?
- c'est que...c'est que...je ne peux pas arriver à faire mon article...

Always a nice juxtaposition of Duroy's inarticulacy with his becoming a journalist

-etre amoureux comme les autres, ce n'est pas être amoureux.
Je haussai les épaules, un peu embarrassé.

Describing the displays at the Ashmolean museum, Oxford, she relates again how the 'prince of the lilies' or 'priest-king fresco' was assembled out of fragments from three (different?) frescos. This for her illustrates that Minoan civilsation is a reconstruction rather than something that was discovered

The absence of fortifications does not mean, the author hastens to tell us, that the Minoans were hippies.

I don't know,
"If you are going to Knossos Palace,
You'd better wear some flowers in your hair..."

Aged 21 Catherine had a vision that she was marrying Jesus Christ. At the wedding were: the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and Saint Dominic. King David provided the music. The wedding ring was made out of Jesus's foreskin (a popular relic).

After her death, aged 33 - naturally, the Basilica of St. Domenic (where she prayed regularly) kept Catherine of Siena's head and one of her fingers as relics. It does not say who got the rest of her fingers.

According to her biographer, young Catherine desparately wanted to join the third order of the Dominicans. One barrier stood in her way - she was too good looking, but then a miracle occurred, God intervened and struck her down with acne. Hideously ugly, she was now able to take holy orders.

Catherine of Siena was the youngest of 24 children!

Story of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish boy who at age 6 in 1858 eas removed by police from his family home and brought up as a Catholic, he eventually became a priest. He had been secretly baptised as a baby by a catholic servant who was frightened that the boy was going to die. This was a huge international cause celebre - there were even reports about it in the New York Herald.
Somehow this links to Catherine of Siena

The chapter on Germany begins with Lola Montes, the mistress of a King of Bavaria. I had her mixed up with Eliza Lynch who was the wife of the Dictator of Paraguay (similar place to Bavaria, but the beer tradition isn't as rich and their waterfalls are bigger).
Though both women were born in Ireland and baptised with the name Eliza. Still, odd to mix them up.

Interesting reading this after Femina. Here the saint Maria of Oignies starved herself to death. In Femina we read that starving yourself to death (the endura) was a feature of Cathar practice, however since in Femina Ramirez commited herself to real existence of "catharism" she can't draw the link and see this as part of religious practice that might be judged as heretical or holy depending on the context.

Ramírez thinks that Laskarina Bouboulina, a leader in the Greek war of Independence probably had read Anna Komene's Alexiad. This seems a bit unlikely to me even if she did name one of her ships Agamemnon.

Ramirez relates following Ladero-Quesada (1975) that the war to conquer Grenada cost 450 million maravedis, which was cinanced by borrowing from Spain's Jews. In 1492, the war is over and the Jews were given the choice of exile or conversion to avoid repaying the loans.
A good cynical story but maybe too neat and tidy?

isabella of Castile travelled a great deal around her kingdom, in some years more than 1500 kilometres.
A contrast with her great grandson king Philip II who rarely moved from his palace, but that maybe was only possible because of great-grandma's work, going around, showing her face, giving justice...

Analysis of bones of 634 people buried in a plague pit from the black death in London suggests that 71% were white europeans and 29% were not, the equivalent figures from the 2021 census were 60 and 40 percent.

At the end of the chapter about King Jadwiga of Poland I see that this book makes sense if you forget the title and the introduction and take it as an attempt to get close to a double handful of medieval women, then it works.

hildegard van bingen details how to perform abortions - the church did not
Have a negative view of abortion until the renaissance. Up until then abortion of a male feotus up to 15 weeks, or a female up to 30 weeks was not an issue since the soul had not attached itself in the body until then (female bodys are cold and wet so the soul take longer to anchor)

The Riesencodex of Hildegard van Bingen weighs 15 kilos with a surface if 45x30 cm. The kind of book that you need a wheelbarrow to help you move it about.

In old money thats about 30ibs and a foot and a half by just over a foot.

Comparison of a scene from the Bayeux tapestry and the column of marcus Aurelius in Rome. Both show a woman leading a child away from violence, holding it with her right hand. For sure Anglo-saxons visited rome and may have seen that column. This is a needlessly obscure reference - I think all of us have seen a parent pulling,leading or dragging a child in this way, + every other detail in the 2 scenes is different

The author discusses graves found in the town of Birka, telling us that sets of scales were found in 32% of the women's graves and 28% of the men's. She seems to think that this is a significant difference.

It is nice reading that Offa of Mercia's widow Cynethryth became abbess at Cookham, a place which previously I had associated only with the painter Stanley Spencer.

The final combat, oh gods of literature! What a sorry anticlimax, and all the tiresome chapters of blather, banter, and bolderdash I had to endure my eay through just for this shabby, flabby excuse of a duel, ah walter Scot, shame on uou

I must order the hall for his judgement-seat.
What! Said Bois-Guilbert, so soon?
Ay, replied the Preceptor, trial moves rapidly on when the judgehas determined the sentence beforehand.