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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Hatty
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Mention of the Wulfila Bible brings to mind the role of Isaac Voss(ius). Strangely enough he turned up in connection with 'Dicuil', the Irish monk who authored a book on astronomy, De Mensura Orbis Terrae, because according to Wiki

The geography manuscript was known to Marcus Welser, Isaac Vossius, Claudius Salmasius, Jean Hardouin, and Johann Daniel Schöpflin ...

Voss, a Dutchman, was a collector and scholar and librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden who somehow acquired the Wulfila Bible. Most sources simply assume the queen gave it unprompted to her former librarian.
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Mick Harper
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1517 Review Part Two

Luther was voicing his concerns about the current teachings and practices concerning ‘indulgences’ (by means of which the length of time a deceased person’s soul spent in purgatory could be shortened) and he enclosed with the letter a treatise he had written on indulgences

This does not ring true. Luther knew the stakes so why risk the stake by telling all ahead of time to the chief stakeholder?

together with a list of ninety-five theses (points for discussion), asking that the Archbishop ‘examine my disputation theses, so that he may understand how dubious a thing this opinion about indulgences is, an opinion that those preachers disseminate with such complete certainty’.

Nah. I’m a writer. You don’t write a treatise and a list of ninety-five theses, then bundle them up with a covering letter. They’re different ... um ... markets.

The sheet of parchment containing those now iconic theses was not preserved along with his letter, so we have no idea if the list was hand-written or printed.

Four forgery red flags in this sentence. See how many you can spot.

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Hatty
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1. 'now iconic'

2. 'not preserved'

3. 'we have no idea'

4. 'hand-written or printed'

Was the letter written on parchment and has it been dated?
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Mick Harper
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Not bad. But not mine.
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Mick Harper
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1517 Review Part Three

The sheet of parchment containing those now iconic theses was not preserved along with his letter, so we have no idea if the list was hand-written or printed.

1. You can’t fit ninety-five theses on a single parchment (we know that because it took several on the church door).
2. What has happened to the ‘treatise’? Careful ignoral? If so, by whom? Moira? Peter Marshall? Sweden?
3. What’s all this about printing? Is Luther sending a covering letter, all very deferential, but oh by the way, bish, I’ve already had them printed so yah boo sucks to you.
4. This is just about the most important (legally, religiously, politically, financially) manuscript (and/or first edition) in human history (or near offer). How careless of somebody to lose it.

Or how convenient for a forger writing the only bit of the bundle that is not in the public record ie not the treatise, not the theses, just Luther’s personal and private letter to his bishop.

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aurelius



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Of course Wiki/academia get around your point 3) thus:

It was customary when proposing a disputation to have the theses printed by the university press and publicly posted.[39]... In Wittenberg, the university statutes demand that theses be posted on every church door in the city,

and

... the Theses were well-known among the Wittenberg intellectual elite soon after Luther sent them to Albert.[40]

The Theses were copied and distributed to interested parties soon after Luther sent the letter to Archbishop Albert.[44] The Latin Theses were printed in a four-page pamphlet in Basel, and as placards in Leipzig and Nuremberg.[44][1] In all, several hundred copies of the Latin Theses were printed in Germany in 1517.
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Mick Harper
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1517 Review Part Four

What we DO know is that they became – in the words of Peter Marshall – ‘one of history’s least likely best sellers’.

I hate to break it to Pete'n'Moyes but every best seller is 'the least likely best seller', that’s why they're so damned hard to produce. Otherwise everybody would be doing it. It's why every author that does hit the jackpot reproduces the formula next time out. Or ceases to be a best-seller. On the other hand, forgers are always churning out best sellers. Vermeer? Ooh, suits you, sir.

As the touchpaper for a religious revolution, the story is a little lacking in narrative drive: a priest writes a letter to his Archbishop attaching a treatise and a list of discussion points. All hell breaks loose.

Yes, I was thinking that. Luther being one of the most successful revolutionaries of all time you would think he would avoid such elementary mistakes. But then again, in 1517, he was new at the game, wasn't he?

The version of events favoured by popular history features a hammer, a church door and, for greater dramatic effect, a supporting cast of astonished/disgusted/shocked (delete whichever is not applicable) onlookers who can all read Latin fluently and immediately grasp the significance of what they are seeing.

To be fair, by academic histories too but, hey, I'm a revisionist historian myself, I'm all ears to hear what really happened.

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Mick Harper
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Much obliged, Aurelius. Is the statement

The Theses were copied and distributed to interested parties soon after Luther sent the letter to Archbishop Albert

made because of the existence of the letter or is there independent corroboration?
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Wile E. Coyote


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M=N he mailed them to the door.

No?


Seriously though, this looks like a argument over wealth and land not theology, or freedom....Luther wants to stop the sale of indulgences, because he wanted to replace this with another more favorable trade (exchange) or.... much more likely as Luther was highly conservative he wants to defend or go back to earlier practice eg the profitable local pilgrimage to relics trade. If you can buy salvation at the end why do you need a pilgrimage? .

Just my view.
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Mick Harper
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We would prefer evidence over opinion

Seriously though, this looks like a argument over wealth and land not theology, or freedom....

Promising. Protestant states did benefit from taking over (Catholic) church property. The theology did only change at the margins. Protestant states were not noticeably freer than Catholic ones.

Luther wants to stop the sale of indulgences, because he wanted to replace this with another more favorable trade (exchange) or.... much more likely as Luther was highly conservative he wants to defend or go back to earlier practice eg the profitable local pilgrimage to relics trade.

Although this is technically not the case it is true that Protestant states benefited from not having to send money to Rome. But it is arguable whether staying out of the Magic Circle was profitable, the defence bills for a start went through the roof.

If you can buy salvation at the end why do you need a pilgrimage?

I'm not quite sure what you're driving at but there is a contradiction at the heart of Lutheranism. If faith alone gets you into heaven why bother with anything else? Calvinism increased the contradiction by saying 'Forget faith, entry to heaven is pre-determined' so you don't even have to not bother. And yet Protestants did bother. Far more than medieval Catholics ever did.
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Mick Harper
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1517 Review Part Five

Peter Marshall’s intention in writing 1517 is not, however, to debunk the potent myth surrounding the posting of the Theses

I should explain what academics mean when they ‘debunk’ i.e. when they claim to be writing revisionist history. The usual ten-step guide:

1. Somebody writes a history
2. Academics teach that history
3. The laity believe the history
4. Academics hate being on a par with the laity
5. Somebody writes a 'revised' history
6. Academics seize avidly on the revised history
7. Academics teach the revised history
8. The laity believe the revised history
9. Academics hate being on a par with the laity
10. Steps five through nine are repeated.


The only difficult bit is Steps One and Five which really does require a talented historian to come up with something new enough to dish the laity but not so different as to jeopardise their faith in academics (who after all believed something else just the other day). Our Pete is debunking a myth so potent that the ‘no actual nailing of theses on doors’ featured in a PBS Luther bio the other night and you can’t get more orthodox than PBS. But historians always claim to be debunking stuff that either nobody believes any more or they believe it only because they dimly remember it from school. This is true of me by the way. Your Homer nodded badly there. Moira nods right back

but rather to analyse what we actually know happened and then examine the way in which subsequent generations and cultures have interpreted, manipulated and/or distorted events to suit their own narratives – and why.

Whenever you read this sort of thing, always mentally add the phrase 'and replace it with interpreted, manipulated and/or distorted events to suit my own narrative'.

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Mick Harper
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1517 Review Part Six

He begins by dedicating two chapters to a concise explanation of what indulgences were, the events surrounding the posting of the Theses (referred to resoundingly in German as the Thesenanschlag) and the immediate aftermath of the publication – however it came about – of those theses.

OK, that’s standard/revisionist history. Do I get a whiff of impatience from our Moira? I think I do...

He then leads us through the following months, years, decades and centuries, and the stages by which a largely imaginary event took centre stage in the story of Luther

This may be standard/revisionist history but it is presumably new historiography.

and the revolution he never intended to initiate.

Now that would be our kind of revisionism. And I don’t believe a word of it. At the risk of drawing immodest parallels I am in the same line of work as Luther so I can assure Peter and Moira that he knew exactly what he was doing, when he was doing it, why he was doing it and was ecstatic when it came to pass. Sorry, but I trust psychological insight over the written record in this instance. Luther was not, like Peter and Moira, an academic scribbler.

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Mick Harper
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In view of our interest in all things Tironensian can anyone throw any light on this cryptic twitter by Kate Wiles

Anglo-Saxonists: have you ever seen Tironian et (or <7>) transcribed as 'to' before, or am I looking at a transcription error here?
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Hatty
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'7' (meaning 'and') seems to have been the most useful symbol in the Tironian shorthand system. Why something supposed to have been widely used would be wrongly transcribed is surprising.

Meanwhile someone blogging about Tiro's shorthand legacy writes

Keith Houston's wonderful Shady Characters delves into the history of the Tironian et (and its cousin the ampersand). He writes that the mark “prospered in the blackletter manuscripts of the Middle Ages” while the rest of Tiro’s system “fared poorly”:

Medieval shorthand in general found itself subject to a curious linguistic witch hunt. The secrecy and cypherlike nature of both traditional runic writing and shorthand did not coexist well with the distrust of witchcraft and magic prevalent in those times, and Tiro’s system was further stigmatized as a result. Briefly revived in the twelfth century, and later inspiring a series of copycat notations in English and other languages, the notae Tironianae were nevertheless a spent force.

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/the-tironian-et-in-galway-ireland/

The blogger lists 96 variations of the Tironian 7. They differ so much that one might wonder how this shorthand system lasted so long or if it even existed prior to the twelfth century.
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Mick Harper
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Well nailed, said the jelly on the wall.
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