FinermanWorks

October 23, 425:  Valentinian III Becomes Emperor of What’s Left of the Roman Empire

He was six years old and would show consistent immaturity in the remaining 30 years of his reign. The Western Roman Empire was disintegrating while he was throwing a tantrum. At the start of his reign, he ruled over Iberia, Gaul and Italia. By the end, he still had Italia but tenuous patches of the rest. His idea of conquests was other men’s wives. Of course, Valentinian was assassinated but–surprisingly–not by any of the husbands.

His incompetence and debauchery were not unique; yet his name denotes a rare distinction among Roman Emperors. He was related to Valentinian I and Valentinan II; in fact, he was the fourth generation of a ruling dynasty.

We all know the stereotype of the Italian male. He can impregnate a woman with just a leer. That may have been true of the Renaissance Popes but not the Roman Emperors. During orgies they evidently were at the buffet table. The imperial sterility probably encouraged assassination. It is easier to seize the throne stepping over one body than an entire dynasty. Of course, the successful usurper was usually just as impotent. Were the Roman baths a little too warm?

However, Valentinian’s family was the second-longest ruling clan on the imperial throne: 91 years. Ironically, the most successful dynasty was the first: Augustus and the kids. They lasted 95 years, and if Nero hadn’t kicked to death his pregnant wife….

And let’s observe the other historic events of this week:

October 25:  The Battle of Agincourt http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/26/historical-and-rhetorical-revisions/

October 27:  The Calvinist Cookbook  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/27/the-calvinist-cookbook-2/

October 28:  Marching on Rome  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/28/marching-on-rome/

John Galliano Named New President of Libya. 

Country to be Renamed Islam Dior

The interim government explained, “This way we won’t have to change our Anti-Semitism or the presidential wardrobe.

ABC Cancels ‘Charlie’s Angels’

Gadhafi Killed in Capture Attempt

No, it was not a coincidence.  Col. Gadhafi was the only known viewer of the remake of Charlie’s Angels and was hoping to appear on the show.  He had left repeated messages for Aaron Spelling at the Hillcrest Country Club.   Mistaking Col. Gadhafi’s pleas for another of Shecky Greene’s pranks, the Club staff played along and never mentioned Mr. Spelling’s funeral.

Learning of the show’s cancellation, the Colonel lost further reason for living and decided to go out in a barrage of bullets, the way “Charlie’s Angels” should have ended.

In a related story, the network stunned by the failure of “Charlie’s Angels” has announced that it will remake “My Little Margie”.  With the assistance of computer graphics and animatronics, Gale Storm will be available.

October 16, 1555:  The Mary Tudor Cookbook

On this day in 1555, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley inspired two-thirds of a nursery rhyme. They were not intentionally whimsical; Bishops are not supposed to be frivolous, Protestant ones seldom are, and being burned at the stake is never fun. As if they needed further martyrdom, they were Cambridge graduates being publicly executed at Oxford.

What had Latimer and Ridley done to earn their kindling? Both men had been vociferously Protestant at a time when the monarch was just as dogmatically Catholic. Latimer had been too Protestant for Henry VIII–and had a few cautionary “timeouts” in the Tower of London; so just imagine the reaction of Queen Mary, the pinup girl of the Counter-Reformation. Worse for Latimer, he had supported the failed Protestant coup to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. So Latimer was already condemned for treason, but Mary preferred to execute him for heresy. Guess which crime had a more painful sentence.

Ridley had risen to royal favor in the 1530s defending the King’s ecclesiastical supremacy, which included the divine right to dump the first wife. For some reason, Queen Mary resented her mother being declared a whore and she being demoted to “bastard.” When the erstwhile bastard became queen in 1553, Ridley went in person to Mary to apologize for any past misunderstandings. But “Spanish whore” is a difficult term to misinterpret; it is rarely synonymous with “martyred saint”, which is how Mary referred to her mother.  If Ridley received any mercy from the vindictive queen, it was his being transferred from the stressful job of Bishop of London to the salubrious simplicity of the Tower.  Latimer was also vacationing there.

After a year in the Tower, the two were sent to Oxford where an inquisition of impeccably Catholic judges awaited them. Latimer and Ridley knew they were condemned; no one ever beats a heresy charge. However, you can grovel your way out of the most permanent sentence. The men simply had to recant every tenet of Protestantism, fully confess their errors and fervently embrace Holy Mother Church. In return for their humiliation and conversion, they probably would have gotten off with a few years in prison. But Latimer and Ridley would not bend, instead debating every religious point with their accusers. Unfortunately, the Inquisition was not known as an ecumenical good sport.

The men were burned alive in a public square. It was said that Latimer’s last words were, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

No, that is not the nursery rhyme… or even two thirds of it. The remaining inspiration was Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was burned alive at Oxford some five months later. Mary showed considerable restraint in not lighting the pyre herself. She really, really, really hated him. Everything about him seemed damning. When he still was supposed to be a Catholic priest, he had been married. He had risen at the recommendation of the Boleyn family, and he had endeared himself to Henry VIII by being the chief advocate for the first divorce. As if to further aggravate Mary, Cranmer did not even prove to be loyal to his Protestant convictions. When confronted by the Oxford tribunal, he recanted. Given his groveling and Church etiquette, his life should have been spared. But Mary had made her feelings known to the judges. (“Do you enjoy your tenured niche at Oxford or would you prefer being a chaplain at a leper colony in Wales?”) So, when Cranmer was condemned to death, he recanted his recantation.

And, with his death, the wags and wits of the time memorialized the three executions with a nursery rhyme. And you know it, this story of heretical bishops destroyed by an irate queen. Heretics are figuratively blind, so you could say “three blind mitres, three blind mitres…”

Or something similar.

And let’s remember the other historic events of this week:

October 17:  A Scottish Bargain  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/17/a-scottish-bargain-2/

October 18:  Edict of Nantes  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/18/huguenot-2/

October 19:  the Battle of Zama  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/19/bc-comics-2/

October 20:  More Byzantine Gossip  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/20/another-of-my-byzantine-tales/

October 21:  Moulin Rogue  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/21/moulin-rogue-2/  or Trafalgar http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/21/the-glorious-annals-of-the-french-navy-2/

October 22:  The Wrong Exorcism  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/10/22/the-wrong-exorcism/

October 14, 1066:  Normandy’s Duke William the Bastard improves his nickname.  Furthermore, the imposition of Norwegian-accented French spares the English language from having umlauts and sounding like a summer stock production of “The Student Prince”.

Every word has a story. We might assume that the English language emerged fully developed from a business lunch between William Shakespeare and Noah Webster. In fact, language evolves. Words migrate from one culture to another, and their meanings mutate and deviate over time. French is based on Latin slang, and English is a complete linguistic hodgepodge: the ripe fermentation of barbaric German, Norwegian-accented French, second-hand Greek and punchlines in Yiddish. Our language is an ongoing odyssey.

Two thousand years ago, there was no England or an English language. Britain and the Germanic dialect of the Angle-Saxons had yet to meet. The language of Roman Britain would have sounded like a Welshman singing Verdi. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Angle and Saxons, not wanting to miss out on the fall of the Roman Empire, invaded Britain and imposed themselves and their Germanic language on the Romanised-Celtic populace. The linguistic consequence is called Old English and would sound like a Welshman gargling.

Of course, as everyone should know, in 1066 the Normans conquered England and grafted their smorgasbord French onto English. That hybrid is called Middle English. Its vocabulary was a scramble of French and German, and the language still had that Germanic tendency to elongate words by pronouncing each and every letter as a s-y-l-l-a-b-l-e. Perhaps the Bubonic Plague gave people the incentive to speak quickly; for whatever reason, five hundred years ago, Modern-recognizable-English had evolved. If thou met William Shakespeare, thou could understandeth him. However, his accent might sound like an audition for The Beverly Hillbillies, and he would be just as dumbfounded by the alien syntax from your mouth.

And the evolution continues. Right, dude?

Hello, I’m Charlie Rose, and I welcome you to Dartmouth College.  Please ignore the fluid on the floor.  For the first hour, it probably is just spilt beer.

Tonight we host five presidential candidates, and we are still hoping that someone will let Herman Cain into the hall.  Questions will come from the audience and, in accordance with Dartmouth rules, the candidates will also be required to chug a cup of Big Green punch for each question.  The last candidate standing wins.  Governor Romney, will you have problems with the drinking of alcohol.

Romney:  No, Frank Luntz told me that I am Episcopalian tonight.

Rose:  Our first question comes from Dartmouth senior Bobo Wadsworth IV.

Bobo:  Are you all committed to a pro-life stance or will any of you give me a break about that Colby coed?

Rick Perry:  You know that we need white babies.  But you seem to be good stock.  So she should pay you!

Newt Gingrich:  You know that it was the Liberals who invented promiscuity.  And does she have a roommate?

Michele Bachmann:  My husband can cure you of these wanton desires for women.

Ron Paul:  As a libertarian, I think that your child should be born and then abandoned.  Let the market decide.

Romney:  Your pioneering spirit is what made America great!  The drive, the courage, the vision that animated Christopher Columbus and Daniel Boone, you showed on that roadtrip to Colby Junior College.

Rose:  Our next question is from sophomore Binky Wadsworth IV.

Binky:  What did you name your polo pony?

Perry:  We only had a mule, son, but we named him Dixie Jesus.

Gingrich:  I never could fit on a horse.

Paul:  We let the horse decide.  I gave him a choice of two Ayn Rand novels and the works of Friedrich von Hayek.  He wouldn’t eat any of them.  So we respected his right to anonymity.

Bachmann: My husband chose Wild Oscar.  Will someone explain that to me?

Romney:  I have had 47 polo ponies, and a focus group picks their names.

Rose:  Our next question is from Freshman Buffy Wadsworth IV.

Buffy:  This is for a term paper.  What was America’s involvement in the Seven Years War?

Romney:  Our French and Indian War was an extension of the international conflict between France and England.

Perry:  Oooh, aren’t you smart!  See, I told ya’ll that he was the same as Obama.

Romney:  I mean that is just one opinion but we can’t be sure.

Perry:  I don’t like Seven Years Wars but we had to fight Hitler and the Islamic terrorists.

Gingrich:  Louis XV was your typical European socialist, but Frederick the Great was our beleaguered democratic ally.

Paul:  If we abolished the State Department, we could just ignore foreign countries.  Email can do anything an ambassador can.

Rose:  Where is Congresswoman Bachmann?

Romney:  She went home with the senior stud.

Rose:  No one will blame her.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic dates of this week: 

October 10:  Tours de Farce  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/10/tours-de-farce-2/

October 12:  Dubious Italians  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/12/dubious-italians/ and

The Further Misadventures of King John    http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/12/monday-miscellany-2/

October 14:  Hastings Makes Wastings  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/14/hastings-makes-wastings-3/

October 15:  L’Affaire and Balanced http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/15/laffaire-and-balanced-2/

October 9, 1003:  Leif Ericson Lands in North America and Earns a Holiday in Minnesota

The Vikings are notorious for this vices, but they apparently possessed one fatal virtue: hygiene. Whether it was their fondness for saunas or the antiseptic cold of Greenland, the Vikings’ cleanliness ruined their chance to colonize North America. Starting with Leif Ericson in 1000, the Norse attempted to settle “Vinland.” Of course, the original inhabitants objected but the Vikings were never shy about other people’s property. Beyond their extrovert personalities, the Norse also had the tactical advantages of iron and steel armaments. The native American arsenal was still in the stone age. Nonetheless, the sheer number of the natives (Skraeling was the Viking name for them) made the prospect of slaughtering them rather demoralizing. And the Vikings’ damn hygiene eliminated the most effective weapon for depopulation: disease.

The Norse had nothing to infect their opponents, not a single small pox to share. Even their livestock was healthy. The “Skraelings” would have had no resistance to European germs; measles would have been a fatal plague. The Vikings then could have had Vinland to themselves. Just imagine how history would have changed: North America could have been one vast Minnesota. But the Vikings were too clean to succeed.

The Skraelings had a 500-year reprieve before they were introduced to the Spanish, French, English and small pox.

The Historical Significance of October 7th:

Today is Karen Finerman’s birthday.  I suppose that you are more inclined to pity anyone married to me; worse, God seems to agree.  He scheduled Yom Kippur today.  So much for the birthday cake….

Of slightly less historical importance, this is also the anniversary of battle of Lepanto.  In 1571 Venice was ruefully learning that crime doesn’t pay for more than three centuries.  All that valuable Byzantine territory that Venice had seized in the Fourth Crusade was now being reclaimed by the new empire in Constantinople.  The Ottomans had begun their conquest of Cyprus, so the Venetians begged help from the Pope, who begged help from the Spanish, who never refused any charity that involved killing non-Catholics.

The Spanish, the Venetians, along with the Genoese, amassed a fleet of some 200 ships, and the Pope provided a nifty name for the alliance:  the Holy League.  Emboldened by God’s’ product placement, this fleet embarked for western Greece where an equally large Turkish fleet was awaiting it.  The Turks, sailing oar-powered ships, and armed with archers and catapults, were more than ready to fight the battle of Actium.  The Latino gang came to the rumble with muskets and cannons.

Guess who won?  Yes, Christendom was saved from the Turks…except

1.  The loss of the Turkish fleet did not seriously impede the conquest of Cyprus.  The Turks completed the conquest of the island by 1573. Sultan Selim II compared his lost fleet at Lepanto to a singed beard:  “It will grow back.”

2.  Half of Christendom was actually rooting for the Turks.  Who would the Protestants prefer?  Philip II wanted to burn them alive.  Selim would have been content with the infidel tax.  But the Ottoman Fan Club was not solely comprised of Protestants.  Just scan the roster of the Holy League, and you should notice a major omission.  Mais oui, the French were pro-Turkish as well.  I am not suggesting that Catherine de Medici was belly-dancing in the Louvre; France just hated the Hapsburgs more than it liked Catholicism.  In fact, the French and the Turks had an alliance dating back to the 1520s and would last until 1798, when Napoleon was tactless enough to invade Egypt.  (He was surprised that the Turks seemed to mind his attack on their richest province.)

With the Spanish triumph at Lepanto, Philip II was more devout and unbearable than ever.  Deprived of the distracting Turkish threat, an intimidated France now would comply with Spain’s prejudices.  The next year’s St. Bartholomew’s Day would be memorable for the Huguenots.  Philip also resumed his crusade to make the Dutch into votive candles.

But the Dutch successfully resisted, with the none too covert aid of a large Protestant island to the West.  (Confronted with Spanish protests, the island’s sovereign averred her innocence, lying in superb iambic pentameter.)  Exasperated, Philip decided to conquer that island and amassed an invasion fleet–with many of the same ships that triumphed at Lepanto.  He did not quite anticipate two problems, however.  The English were better sailors than the Turks, and the North Sea is much rougher than the Mediterranean.

So the battle of Lepanto had no real lasting effect unless you were a Turkish widow or a Protestant cinder.  Otherwise, it amounted only to 17 years of Spain’s obnoxious supremacy.

Although most of the time I can pass for a precocious 14 year old, I will confess to a few hints that I might be somewhat older.  For instance, I recently saw a headline announcing some news about Franco.  Of course, I first thought of Francisco rather than James.  The two are not easily confused…but perhaps they should be.  In fairness, the Spanish Civil War would have been much more congenial if James had been leading the Fascists…

Our Franco:  All right, Ern.  If I can drink these three bottles of Amontillado in 30 minutes–and keep ‘em down–you give me Madrid and rewrite “The Sun Also Rises” to make Gertrude Stein the babe.

Mr. Hemingway:  And if you can’t?

Our Franco:  My army surrenders and I’ll let you punch me in the mouth every time I call you Ern.

And I dare say the Academy Awards would have been more interesting if the other Franco had been the host…

Anne Hathaway:  The nominees for best director are…

Their Franco:  Not allowed to be a Freemason or a Jew.

Anne:  You are joking?  You would be disqualifying half of the Academy’s membership.

Their Franco:  But at least I am not turning them over to Mel Gibson.  You know what he’d do.

Anne:  So the nominees won’t be Darren Aronofsky, the Coen Brothers or David Russell.  We still have Tom Hooper of “The King’s Speech”…

Their Franco:  Is there a Senora Hooper?

Anne:  Ah, no.  He went to Oxford…Our only nominee is David Fincher of “The Social Network” and he has been married!

Their Franco:  I don’t approve of divorce.  This year’s winner for best director is Leo McCarey for “Going My Way”.

I am planning to have my bar mitzvah next year.  (Most of you suspect that I am only 12; half of the time, my wife does.)  Forty-seven years ago, I dropped out of Hebrew school–and if you knew my classmates at the time, you wouldn’t blame me.  It was a Yiddish production of “Lord of the Flies.”

Fortunately, my family was not shocked by my rebellious irreverence; in my secular home, ancient incantations seemed less important than ethnic identity.  So I was trained to know the Jewish member of every film cast…Leslie Howard in “Gone With the Wind”, Erland Josephson in “Cries and Whispers”, half of Claire Trevor in “Stagecoach.”  At least it was good preparation for Jeopardy.

My wife Karen had a more conventional upbringing than I did, equal parts Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth.  Years of Sunday school made her literate in Hebrew; however, at the time, her synagogue did not offer bat mitzvahs.  So the nice Jewish girl and the renegade Jewish boy were equally unmitzvahed.  No one would mistake us for Patrick and Deirdre, but we felt a desire to a fulfill our commitment to 4000 years of history, tradition and idiosyncrasy.  So the two of us enrolled in an adult bar mitzvah program.

The class began with a dozen aspiring candidates.  But the challenge and frequent absurdity of Hebrew (21 letters, half of which are k, along with 350 vowels) took a toll.  Half of the class dropped out; one lady found the gutteral exertions threatened her botox.  But Karen and I persevered.  I now have a command of Hebrew that qualifies me to be a village idiot anywhere in Israel.  And this week, in preparation for the actual ceremony,  we received our assigned chapters in the Torah.

The Torah is actually the first five books of the Bible.  We know that Genesis and Exodus have everything you’d want in a movie.  Leviticus actually can be quite funny:  imagine a temper tantrum by Jackie Mason.  Deuteronomy really is outtakes from Exodus; it would have been the added features in the special DVD of “The Ten Commandments.”  But then there is Numbers–apparently the root word of numb.  It is basically a census of how many warriors in each tribe and how many sheep each person contributed to the Israelite Bond Dinner.

So, what is the purpose of Numbers?  I believe that it was the first CPA examination.  Nothing in the book would pass a serious audit.  According to the tally, the ancient Israelites had an army of 603,550 men.  Really?  With that size army, why stop at conquering Canaan?  Take Egypt, Troy and Babylon, too.   Persia and Rome, at their height of power, never commanded half so large a force.  But Joshua did?  Either Bernie Madoff is 3000 years old, or he was following in the family business.

And, if you had any doubts, Karen and I have been assigned to read from Numbers.   Maybe we should have bribed the Rabbi.

From the archives, more of my biblical ruminations:

http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/04/13/save-a-saturday-in-2035/

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this week:

September 4:  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/04/national-paranoia-dayalmost/

September 6:  http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2010/10/06/victorian-venereality/