Comment: The Vatican has come a long way since the days of Pope Stephen VI, who famously put the rotting corpse of his predecessor on trial then had his body dragged through the streets and tossed into the Tiber river. Stephen was probably crazy but comparing him to the timid and nauseatingly woke Pope Francis just shows how feeble the church has become over the last thousand years or so. I'm sure that Francis talking about how sad he is about Hagia Sofia is really going to impress the Turks. The pope can't do anything to change the situation, of course, but it's hard to believe that this is the same Catholic church that launched the crusades.
Or maybe it is. This isn't the first time that the Vatican has thrown Hagia Sophia to the wolves:
"... this is the second time in the history of Hagia Sophia that a global appeal has been made for its protection, and unfortunately Rome prefers not to get involved. As it did in 1453 when, despite Byzantine appeals for help, the army never arrived from the West, allowing Mehmed II to eventually conquer Constantinople and, of course, Hagia Sophia, which he converted into a mosque." Source: Orthodox Times.
"Today, 560 years later, unfortunately, history repeats itself."
"Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, which was nearly totally lost to fire in April 2019, will be rebuilt as it was, the French government says, defying the calls of modernist architects to seize the opportunity to give the medieval masterpiece a glass and steel overhaul." Source: Breitbart.
"The French government has condoned a 3,000-page report by the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture calling for a full and faithful rebuild of Notre Dame cathedral, in a move which French newspaper Le Mondenotes will annoy 'the concrete lobby and iron lovers'."
Comment: This is good news for a change, but there's still no word on what caused the fire in the first place. The last I heard, investigators were saying that the conflagration was probably set off by either a cigarette or an electrical fault, but that was just guesswork as far as I can tell. I'm not sure they even know where the fire started.
Note: Catherine of Alexandria probably never existed:
"Donald Attwater (English Catholic author, 1892-1977) dismisses what he calls the 'legend' of Saint Catherine, arguing for a lack of any 'positive evidence that she ever existed outside the mind of some Greek writer who first composed what he intended to be simply an edifying romance.' Harold Davis writes that 'assiduous research has failed to identify Catherine with any historical personage' and has theorized that Catherine was an invention inspired to provide a counterpart to the story of the slightly later pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350–370 – 415 CE)." (Wikipedia)
According to the UNESCO World Heritage List, "The [Greek Orthodox] monastery of St Catherine stands at the foot of Mount Horeb where, the Old Testament records, Moses received the Tablets of the Law. The mountain is known and revered by Muslims as Jebel Musa. The entire area is sacred to three world religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism." The monastery is controlled by "the autonomous Church of Sinai."
Even though St. Catherine's was named after a (probably) fictitious saint, this is still a remarkable and very old institution:
"Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library [next video], possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus."
The incredible library filmed on a potato.
Note: The manuscript shown in the video above is the Ashtiname of Muhammed, "also known as the Covenant or Testament (Testamentum) of Muhammad (the Islamic Prophet) ... a document which is a charter or writ ratified by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad granting protection and other privileges to the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, given to the Christian monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery. It is sealed with an imprint representing Muhammad's hand."
The manuscript may be inauthentic. According to Wikipedia, "Since the 19th century, several aspects of the Ashtiname, notably the list of witnesses, have been questioned by scholars. There are similarities to other documents granted to other religious communities in the Near East. One example is Muhammad's alleged letter to the Christians of Najran, which first came to light in 878 in a monastery in Iraq and whose text is preserved in the Chronicle of Seert." It doesn't really matter, though, because even if the Ashtiname is a forgery -- something I don't think anyone is claiming -- it's still a priceless artifact from the period.
Recently renovated, the library at St. Catherine's was re-opened in 2017.
The manuscripts and books in the monastery's library go way back:
"When Egeria visited the Sinai in 383-384, she wrote approvingly of the way the monks read to her the scriptural accounts concerning the various events that had taken place there. Thus we can speak of manuscripts at Sinai in the fourth century. It is written of Saint John Climacus that, while living as a hermit, he spent much time in prayer and in the copying of books. This is evidence of manuscript production at Sinai in the sixth century. The library at the Holy Monastery of Sinai is thus the inheritor of texts and of traditions that date to the earliest years of a monastic presence in the Sinai. In earlier times, manuscripts were kept in three different places: in the north wall of the monastery, in the vicinity of the church, and in a central location where the texts were accessible." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
Research has also revealed that some of the manuscripts in the library contain "hidden manuscripts" which were erased in order to reuse the parchment they were written on.
"The Sinai manuscripts comprise the oldest and most important Christian monastic library collection. Of its 3,300 manuscripts, two-thirds are in Greek. The rest are principally in Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic, through there are other manuscripts in Polish, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Armenian, Latin, and Persian. The New Finds correspond to these languages, and are stored adjacent to the library. The library also contains an important archive, containing letters, account books, charters, and other documents." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
"...The most famous manuscript is the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus, of which the monastery retains twelve pages and some twenty-four fragments."
Comment: I'm not a Christian, but St. Catherine's and its library are priceless historical treasures which must be protected at all costs. The monastery has already been the target of at least one attempted terrorist attack back in 2015 and as far as I can tell the Islamic State vermin are still waging a sporadic insurgency in the Sinai. I hate to say it, but if the situation deteriorates the Church of Sinai (which controls the monastery) should consider moving the library to a safer location, preferably somewhere out of the country.
"This is the first of a series of three articles challenging the conventional historical framework of the Mediterranean world from the Roman Empire to the Crusades. It is a collective contribution to an old debate that has gained new momentum in recent decades in the fringe of the academic world, mostly in Germany, Russia, and France. Some working hypotheses will be made along the way, and the final article will suggest a global solution in the form of a paradigm shift based on hard archeological evidence." Source: UNZ Review.
Comment: This long, detailed article argues that much of what we know about Roman history is fake. According to the author, the works of Tacitus and other Roman writers such as Cicero, Lucretius, Vitruvius, and Quintilian may be forgeries written by a Renaissance scholar named Poggio Bracciolini. An early humanist who worked for several Popes, Bracciolini "was responsible for rediscovering and recovering many classicalLatin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries." (Wikipedia)
According to this argument, Bracciolini didn't rediscover these ancient manuscripts; he wrote them himself and then passed them off as authentic in order to cash in on the lucrative antiquities market (some popes, for instance, were offering large sums for Classical manuscripts).
If this is true, then almost everything we know about Roman history is fiction written during the Renaissance when, according to conventional history, the Classical authors were rediscovered. The letters of Pliny the Younger may have been forged. The Satyricon may be a fake. The source material that Gibbon used for The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire may have been a forgery. The histories of Julius Caesar may be forgeries as well. In fact, Caesar himself may never have existed:
"The mystery surrounding Julius Caesar is of course of great consequence, since on him rests the historiography of Imperial Rome. If Julius Caesar is a fiction, then so is much of Imperial Rome. Note that, on the coins attributed to his era, the first emperor is simply named Augustus Caesar, which is not a name, but a title that could be applied to any emperor."
Constantine the Great may not have existed, either, in which case everything we know about the founding and nature of the Byzantine Empire is wrong.
This argument doesn't just involve literary forgeries, however. The authenticity of the Roman art and statuary on display in modern museums is called into question. So are the Roman ruins found all over the Mediterranean world. Basically the entire Roman world we're so familiar with is a literary and artistic creation invented during a much later period:
"With those whose curiosity surpasses their skepticism, we shall now argue that Imperial Rome is actually, for a large part, a fictitious mirror image of Constantinople, a fantasy that started emerging in the eleventh century in the context of the cultural war waged by the papacy against the Byzantine empire, and solidified in the fifteenth century, in the context of the plunder of Byzantine culture that is known as the Renaissance. This, of course, will raise many objections, some of which will be addressed here, others in further articles."
Conclusion: This is an interesting article, well worth reading if you're into fringe ideas, but it's probably safe to assume that it's a load of rubbish. The details could be right or wrong -- who knows? I don't have the specialized knowledge required to say definitively that any particular ancient manuscript or statue is authentic. History is full of examples of forged documents and artwork, so the basic argument isn't completely outlandish, at least in theory; but it's hard to believe that everything we know about ancient Rome is fiction. To say the least. I mean, if that's true -- if Imperial Rome is just a medieval fantasy -- then we might as well just give up on the idea of "History" altogether.
The Shroud of Turin is probably a medieval forgery. Radiocarbon 14 tests performed back in 1988 dated the shroud to AD 1260–1390, but as usual these results have been called into question. For example, in 2013 USA Today announced that "new scientific tests on the Shroud of Turin, which went on display Saturday in a special TV appearance introduced by the Pope, dates the cloth to ancient times, challenging earlier experiments dating it only to the Middle Ages."
Video from 2009. Closed-captions helpful.
When it comes to the dating of the shroud, all I can say is good luck trying to sort all this stuff out. If you aren't an expert on radiocarbon dating, you don't have a prayer of figuring out which tests, if any, were accurate, and the fact that the experts themselves can't agree would seem to call into question the value of radiocarbon dating in this particular case.
There are other ways to test the shroud's authenticity. For instance, if it could be shown that the "body of Jesus" had been painted on the fabric, that would prove that the shroud is a forgery. Some experts have argued that this could be the case, but to my knowledge no traces of pigment have been discovered so far. As pointed out in the top video, the fabric itself has been darkened through some unknown process.
The people who believe that the shroud is authentic think that the image was created by exposure to Jesus's body and/or blood. These believers can be divided into two general camps:
As far as I know, the Catholic Church hasn't actually come out and said that the shroud is authentic. But they haven't said that it's inauthentic, either. If you ask me, they're trying to cover themselves with their true believers while distancing themselves enough so that they won't lose credibility if somebody does manage to prove that the shroud is a fake.
The news anchor in the next video (2009) claims that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has been called into question because the shroud material doesn't match the material used in another shroud discovered in a Jerusalem tomb. This is an obviously spurious argument. After all, there's no reason why different fabrics couldn't have been used for burial shrouds back then.
Fortunately for those of us who want to get to the truth of the matter, it doesn't make any difference when or how the image on the shroud was created. Even if it's "authentic," i.e., even if the shroud dates back to the first century AD and the image was left on the fabric by contact with a human body, there's absolutely no way that anyone could ever prove that it was Jesus's body. After all, we don't know what he looked like. There are no written descriptions and nobody had cameras back then. The truth is that the image on the shroud, if it's for real, could have been left there by almost anyone.
It's a fake though. You can take that to the bank.
"A Viking Age excavation in East Iceland is revealing a more nuanced history of the settlement of Iceland, involving seasonal settlements, wealthy longhouses, and walrus hunting long before the island was settled permanently. The site, known as Stöð and located in Stöðvarfjörður fjord [next video], shows human presence in Iceland decades before AD 874, the accepted date for when Iceland was permanently settled." Source: Archaeology News Network.
The modern village Stöðvarfjörður with views of the fjord.
Note: "According to both Landnámabók and Íslendingabók, monks known as the Papar lived in Iceland before Scandinavian settlers arrived, possibly members of a Hiberno-Scottish mission. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of a cabin in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula. Carbon dating indicates that it was abandoned sometime between 770 and 880. In 2016, archeologists uncovered a longhouse in Stöðvarfjörður that has been dated to as early as 800." (Wikipedia)
"Swedish Viking explorer Garðar Svavarsson was the first to circumnavigate Iceland in 870 and establish that it was an island. He stayed over winter and built a house in Húsavík. Garðar departed the following summer but one of his men, Náttfari, decided to stay behind with two slaves. Náttfari settled in what is now known as Náttfaravík and he and his slaves became the first permanent residents of Iceland."
"Henry's food was prepared, in a private kitchen, under the direction of the Privy Master Cook, John Bricket." Source: Historic Royal Palaces.
"The King ate in his private rooms, away from the crowds but on more formal occasions he sat alone at a high covered table in his Presence Chamber, under the canopy of state. He chose from a huge buffet, sampling whatever took his fancy. Dishes included game, roasted or served in pies, lamb, venison and swan.
"For banquets, more unusual items, such as conger eel [see below] and porpoise could be on the menu. Sweet dishes were often served along with savoury.
"Only the King was given a fork, with which he ate sweet preserves. Forks were used to serve, cook and carve, but eating with them didn’t become popular until the 17th century."
Comment: I love the term "presence chamber." Technically the outer room of the privy chamber, a private "apartment" the king maintained at his various royal residences, the presence chamber was the place where ordinary mortals were granted the privilege of entering into the awesome presence of the king himself. At times, they had the extra honor of viewing the majestic king stuffing his face with the endless stream of food that came out of the royal kitchens.
In his youth, Henry VIII was an athlete, but as he grew older he turned into a seriously grotesque chubster who was apparently so fat he couldn't even walk around on his own:
"Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout." (Wikipedia)
Henry ate a lot, true, but that isn't the primary reason he got so fat. Everyone at court ate like he did back then (more or less). Furthermore, everyone in Tudor England was drunk all the time (see 0:29 in the top video). Henry probably started to turn into a blimp when leg injuries forced him to become more sedentary:
"Even by modern standards, and certainly by those of the ordinary man or woman in 16th-century England, Henry ate a good deal. That was what his social group, the high nobility, did. When the noble entertained, food was often served in large quantities as part of the display of generosity or 'magnificence' incumbent upon them, and as proof of their high social status." Source: Zocalo Public Square.
"...His diet was highly calorific, but until his late 30s, Henry’s relentlessly active lifestyle burned most of them off almost as fast he absorbed them. In his early 20s, the king had a 32-inch waist and 40-inch chest. His athletic build at 29 can be judged fairly accurately from a made-to-measure suit of armour he wore at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the meeting held in June 1520 with his great rival Francis I of France.
Henry suffered various injuries over the years from jousting and hunting accidents. He also developed leg ulcers which seriously hampered his mobility but had no effect on his ability to cram food into his increasingly bloated pie-hole:
"Henry was clearly often disabled, unable to move without intense pain. Exercising in the way he had done as a young man proved impossible, although he continued to ride and to hunt for some years. His appetite was, nevertheless, undiminished. He quickly gained weight, which could then not be worked off. An unhealthy cycle was set in place."
If I could eat like Henry VIII I'm not sure I could resist it, either. Just looking at the food in the top video makes me hungry, but then again I get hungry watching instructional videos about how to slaughter and butcher hogs. Venison, lamb, sweet preserves, game pies -- it sounds delicious and I don't think I would feel particularly guilty about chowing down on a porpoise or a swan. Eels sound nasty, though, or they did until I watched the next video.
This looked great until he pureed it into a disgusting mess.
Despite his prodigious intake, Henry VIII may have been malnourished. This seems hard to believe considering the amount of food the court put away:
"Tudor cuisine was lavish. An ambassador to Henry VIII’s court is quoted as saying, '…the wealth and civilization of the world are here; and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.'" Source: Picture Britain.
The Tudors consumed a huge number of game animals, most of which I can't even identify:
"First of all, there was a lot of meat going on during this era. Just listen to this account of game found in one household’s larder: 'cranys, redshankes, fesauntes, sholardes, pacokes, knottes, bustardes, great byreds, hearonsewys, bytterns, reys, kyrlewes, wegions, dotrells, ternes, smale byrdes.' Henry’s daughter Elizabeth clearly had a taste for meat; her court went through 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 760 calves, and 1,870 pigs in a single year. In addition to vast amounts of meat, there were also delicious confections such as trifles, fools, whitepot (a baked dish of cream, eggs, and currants), clotted cream, and leach. Needless to say, this kind of cooking was hardly conducive to trim waistlines."
Most of the game animals with weird medieval names are birds, I think. The byttern or bittern looks especially plump and tasty.
The problem with a diet like this is that it consisted mostly of meat, breads and lots of alcohol (water was apparently considered to be unhealthy and the nobility avoided vegetables because they were thought to be "peasant food."). The lack of vitamin C and other nutrients in the royal diet could cause diseases like scurvy. The early symptoms of scurvy, in particular, include "weakness, feeling tired and sore arms and legs" (Wikipedia) which would have aggravated the effects of Henry's injuries and made it even harder for him to burn more calories than he consumed. And the result of that can be dramatic.
"Israeli archaeologists have published a 360-degree analysis of a rural, affluent Christian town in the Galilee that was most likely destroyed by Persian invaders in 613 CE." Source: Times of Israel.
"Unearthed in 2007 in a salvage excavation before roadworks near Shlomi and Kibbutz Hanita, the remains of the Byzantine settlement at Pi Mazuva are located in modern Israel’s northwest corner on the border with Lebanon. The finds include Christian iconography, a large house and a colorful, high-quality, partially preserved mosaic floor."
Note: "According to the researchers, there were about 140 Christian settlements in the region during this era, including 63 churches or monasteries. Another 13 settlements had a mixed population. Many of these Christian sites in the Galilee were destroyed in the Persian invasion."
Next video shows the remains of a 5th-century Byzantine church discovered near Jerusalem (in 2015?).
"The ruined church and monastic buildings that still stand on the island today are not Anglo-Saxon; they are the remains of the new priory built on the island in the late 11th century by the monks of Durham. So where is the original monastery? And what happened to it after the attack?" Source: DigVentures.
"All that is known to survive are some carved stone monuments of Anglo-Saxon date, which were found by archaeologists clearing away some of the collapsed rubble from the priory ruins in the late 19th and early 20th century."
Note: "... a major ... geophysical survey funded by National Geographic was carried out by Durham University in September 2012. This has shown that there is limited archaeological evidence for the monastic boundary that had previously been postulated, but an alternative boundary has been identified, which is associated with an area of possible industrial activity. It also identified a probably infirmary cloister associated with the later priory and a possible structure aligned on the two standing churches." Source: Durham University.
"'Striving to escape death, [the Danes] entered [a] sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make a refuge and defense for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the [building’s] timbers and burnt [it] down.'" Source: Smithsonian (2010).
Note: This is a great article about an archaeological discovery which confirmed that Danes were the victims of the St. Brice’s Day massacre in the Kingdom of England in 1002 AD. The massacre has been described as "one of the most heinous acts of mass murder in English history." The quote in the first paragraph is from an account written by King Aethelred the Unready (966? - 1016 AD), Lord of the Mercians, who ordered the killing.