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Grit, Not Glamour.

December 28, 2014 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

“In first place and still champion is…!” How seemingly glamorous—to be a champion!

Yet, “first” can also imply “pioneer,” and pioneers’ lives are rarely glamorous. Nor are many pioneers famous for their efforts. Indeed, their work is often forgotten. For example, while millions of United States citizens revere the First Amendment to the Constitution few understand the amendment, as part of the Bill of Rights, wasn’t adopted until 1791, four years after the original Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Few understand debates about ratification were often fierce and that only patient negotiation ensured passage; few now know names of the representatives who debated, negotiated, and voted. And few have read more than snippets by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosophers who influenced Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. And these days only history buffs knowledgably discuss Martin Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses,” which helped spark the Reformation and ultimately fed the flames culminating in late eighteenth-century revolutionary fervor.

Martin Luther, though, was hardly Christian history’s first important theological dissident. All Europeans did not in the year A.D. 500 kneel down to uniformly acknowledge papal power and stay there until Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in A.D. 1517. Islam emerged in the early seventh century and spread deeply into Spain and even parts of France by the early eighth century, and its further spread was halted only by Charles Martel’s army in 732. Jews lived in various parts of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and were often subject to discrimination, special taxes, and violent “pogroms.” Witchcraft in various forms survived into the Middle Ages and was sometimes harshly suppressed.

And, beginning in the early twelfth century, various dissident Christian movements represented nascent discontent with papal theocracy. These dissident movements played a critically important role in world history. They were not merely politicalized contests for the papacy, as was the Western Schism (1378-1418), when as many as three claimants vied for papal status. Rather, I refer to theologically divergent Christian groups such as the Waldensians, Almaricians, Hussites, Taborites, Beguines, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Wycliffites, and many others. Some, like the Cathari of southwestern France, diverged so significantly from mainstream Catholic tenets they established their own clergy and were deemed heretics—prompting the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1244) in southwestern France, which yielded the Inquisition.

Apart from the undercurrent of discontent with papal authority, pioneering scholars, monks, and sometimes kings worked to translate ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts—and more recent Arabic texts—found in monasteries and Arabic libraries. King Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284), in particular, sponsored numerous such translations and helped make north-central Spain the most literate region of Christian Europe during the high Middle Ages. Toledo was a hotbed of translation, and Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187) was a particularly prolific translator. Before him Adelard of Bath (1080-1152) traveled widely in Europe and Asia Minor to rescue and translate manuscripts, including Euclid’s Geometry. Raymond of Toledo, Hermannus Alemannus, and many other scholars merit mention and acknowledgment. Concurrently, troubadours helped popularize chivalric ideals through poetry, song, and performance, and some troubadours were political activists and satirists.

Many medieval thinkers and artists risked their lives to seek manuscripts and propagate their views. Some posed the first serious challenges to papal theocracy since the fifth century A.D. To be sure, their views varied, and historians sometimes present divergent accounts of their efforts, as first-hand physical evidence can be skimpy. Nevertheless, their story is remarkable—and essential to understanding world and American history. They were pioneers, although few today can distinguish the Reformation from the Renaissance, much less list which scholars helped translate Greek and Arabic texts into Latin or Castilian. Without these pioneers’ efforts, though, we might not have our First Amendment. And dare I ask: do we still have our First Amendment? Let us remember the courage of the first medieval dissidents and fearlessly assert our views. The freedom allowing such assertion is our country’s first and finest principle.

 

 

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2015: Firsts.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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