The End of An Era: Don Quijote and the End of an Era

By Kathryn A. Kopple

For years now, I’ve contemplated writing a paper on Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Whenever I come into contact with musicals, movies, and documentaries attempting the great work, I find myself gritting my teeth (there are exceptions, of course). Sad but true, Don Quijote has lost much in translation; a masterpiece that many have loved—perhaps too much.  The quest for the unattainable, the image of a gaunt knight tilting at windmills, the faithful sidekick, the rustic setting has made the book fodder for romantics everywhere.  To understand the Quijote, really understand it, the reader must snap out of it. Dream the impossible dream?  I can hear don Miguel laughing—and no doubt he would take great pleasure in breaking wind for added measure. In fact, he did as much—in two hefty volumes—in which we are treated to a narrative of Spain and her subjects diminishing place in the world.

        

Before we sally forth, I insist on a brief digression.  Since the theme of the month is “The End of an Era,” it is appropriate to point out that the Quijote is an epochal work.  To satisfy historians (who, at times, enjoy squabbling over origins), Cervantes has been credited (in a miserly fashion) with introducing the first Renaissance novel to Spain.  A more generous assessment would categorize the Quijote as the first European novel. Spain had long been one of the gateways to Europe, despite its later reputation as repressive and insular; the country was no stranger to innovation.  Indeed, the reactionary politics of its Renaissance rulers were a response to former days, when Spain was not a unified country, but a plurality of kingdoms—and cultures:  Roman, Moorish, Jewish and Christian.

Cervantes was born fifty-five years after 1492.  In Spanish hagiography, 1492 is referred to as the Year of Miracles.  Isabel I and Fernando II of Castile and Aragón brought down the last of the Moorish kingdoms in the south with the fall of Granada—ending an era that had endured some eight hundred years. In 1492, the humanist scholar Antonio de Nebrija finished compiling the first Spanish grammar. He persuaded the queen that his work should be known the world over—for if Spain were to become a great empire, its occupied territories had to be united under one language:  Castilian.  It is said that Columbus, who set sail in 1492, in an attempt to discover a faster route to the East, would take Nebrija’s grammar with him.  Columbus, as we know, never made it to the Indies: instead he made his first landing on an island in the Bahamas he named San Salvador.

After the deaths of Isabel and Fernando, the crown eventually passed to Charles V.  He was the son of Philip the Fair, Archduke of Burgundy and Juana of Castile (also known as “la Loca”).  As the heir of three of Europe's leading dynasties (the Hapsburg Monarchy, the Archdukes of Burgundy, and the crowns of Castile, Aragon, and Leon), he was one of the most powerful figures of his times. In 1519, Charles became Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria, as well as the first king of Spain. From that point forward, a substantial part of Europe and Spain’s American and Asian colonies came under his rule.

During Cervantes’s early years, the country had gone through a series of upheavals. Charles’s new subjects refused to accept a foreign monarch—one who knew not a word of their native language—as their ruler. The emperor did what he could to appease the rebellious Spaniards, including providing a Spanish heir.  Still, the country teetered on disaster. A vigorous campaigner against the Protestant Reformation, Charles had all but managed to crush Spain financially.  The colonies in the Americas made Spain richer, but its new-found wealth resulted in staggering inflation. To make matters worse, much of the treasure that flowed into the peninsula from the west went to maintaining Charles’s military campaigns.  When he ran out of money, he sought loans.  Spain suffered under the dual curse of debt and inflation—a situation that would only grow worse when Charles’s son, Philip II, took over the throne.  Like his father, Philip vigorously defended the Catholic cause and entangled himself in numerous European conflicts.  Despite Spain’s mounting debts, he continued to expend large sums of money on the famed Spanish Armada, a venture that led to disaster when the fleet was defeated by the English in 1588.

For Cervantes, who had fought (many say, heroically, as he was seriously wounded) against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto, Philip II’s inability to govern Spain effectively was a bitter pill. Philip built himself an impressive palace and was a patron of the arts; he also plied the old trick of trying to unite the country by scapegoating conversos, and the Moors in particular.  His desire to be an absolute monarch caused him to remain aloof from his subjects. Consequently, Spain became poor, somber, backwards, and superstitious.

Philip’s repressive Catholicism, fueled by the Reformation on the continent and England, ran counter to Cervantes’s values. In the Quijote, as in other works, the author sends up heroic images of Spain, the jewel of Europe, and the last strong-hold of Catholic idealism. A student of Erasmus—who argued for religious toleration, free will, and was a strong proponent of reason—the author of the Quijote could not stand by and watch his beloved Spain rot under the rule of Rotterdam. He sought to do away with the puppet show, and gave us a masterwork in which the reader is given a choice between religious dogma and reason. Theology and satire are not necessarily enemies, as the Quijote reminds us—and certainly it is in the ability to command both spheres that Cervantes’s genius proves itself to be as profound as it is enduring.   

Kathryn A.Kopple is the author of Little Velásquez, a novel set in 15^th century Spain.

The End of An Era: The 12-Year Old Girl Who Started a 100-Years War

By Colin Falconer

You cannot blame a hundred years war on a 12 year old girl.

But you could perhaps blame William the Conqueror. When he took over the English throne in 1066 he retained possession of the Duchy of Normandy in France. Under feudal law, this meant that he and all future English kings owed homage to the king of France for their lands on the other side of the Channel.

The situation was always going to be a stone in the shoe of both monarchs.

Two hundred and fifty years later, Isabella’s marriage to Edward II of England was an effort to resolve the problem. Instead, it made it much worse.

Born in 1295, Isabella was the only surviving daughter of the wonderfully named Philippe the Handsome of France. At 3 years old, she was already being proposed as the bride for the King of England’s eldest son, Edward, to smooth negotiations for the Anglo-French truce of 1299.

Phillipe was not just a pretty face - he was thinking ahead; his own dynasty was secure - after all, he had three healthy sons. And if his daughter married England’s son, then his grandson would be King of England one day.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Edward was ten years older than his bride when they married. He was the youngest of fifteen children and his mother had died when he was 6. He had endured a miserable childhood and his father, the formidable Longshanks, had taken little interest in him.

But with exquisite irony, Edward was the only son to survive.

He lived in his father’s shadow then and always would. For despite his strapping good looks he just wasn’t king material. In fact he has been described by some historians as one of the most unsuccessful kings ever to rule England.

He was certainly outfoxed by Isabella. In 1325, she left England to conduct delicate negotiations with France over Gascony. She returned with a mercenary army and threw him off the throne.

By then her father was dead and two of her brothers soon after him. Some blamed the curse laid at her father’s door by Templar Grand Master Jaques Molay when Phillip burned him alive outside Notre Dame cathedral.  When her other brother Charles died as well in 1328 there was no clear successor to the throne of France. All three had died without a male heir.

Isabella transferred her claim to the throne to her eldest son, Edward, and actively encouraged him to pursue it as the closest living male relative of the late King Charles and the only surviving male descendant of the senior line of her father’s Capetian dynasty. By the English interpretation of feudal law, it made Edward III the legitimate heir to the throne of France.

But the French didn’t see things this way. Under France’s Salic law, males descended through the female line were disqualified from the succession. Besides, the French didn’t want an English king. So they crowned the dead king’s cousin, Charles of Valois, as their new monarch.

Though Isabella’s reign as regent of England was short - her son removed her and executed her lover when he was just eighteen - she continued to have great influence at court and kept up a healthy correspondence with all of Europe’s leading figures. She persuaded Edward to pursue his claims with full vigour. In 1337 Edward refused to pay homage to the French king for his lands in Aquitaine - so the French confiscated them. In modern parlance hostilities escalated from there.

The dispute led to the Hundred Years War - although the name is actually a later invention of historians, as it was actually three separate wars divided by periods of truce. From it grew the legends of Joan of Arc, Agincourt and the Black Prince.

The war had consequences Isabella could not have foreseen for her beloved France. The country was devastated by the war - it lost half its population - and spurred the growth of nationalism on both sides. It also brought about the fall of the French language in England, which had served as the language of the nobility and trade from the time of the Norman Conquest.

Yet it had all started with a marriage that was supposed to bring a lasting peace.

It was inevitable really, from that day in 1066 when Harold caught the arrow in his eye. Or was it Jacques de Molay’s curse?

It was only ironic that a woman who so prided herself on being a daughter of France so much should bear the son who started the war that brought her country to its knees.

ISABELLA, Braveheart of France, available now from Amazon US and Amazon UK

And also available as POD from Cool Gus publishing.

Colin Falconer’s blog page

Colin Falconer on Twitter

 

The End of an Era: Apollo 17

by Heather Domin

I suspect many people would be disinclined to consider 1972 “history” just yet, but for space buffs that year marks the end of an extraordinary era: on December 13, 1972, astronaut Gene Cernan of Apollo 17 became the last man to walk on the moon. In the 40 years since that day, despite three decades of orbital flight and two space stations, no one has ventured back to walk in the footsteps of Apollo.

Apollo 17 awaiting launch

Only ten years separate the formation of Project Mercury in 1958 and the first Apollo moon landing in 1969 – it took a single decade to go from tracking flight with a plastic spaceship on a wall to sending TV broadcasts from the surface of the moon. And yet within six months of Neil Armstrong’s one small step, public interest in lunar exploration waned; the near-disaster of Apollo 13 rekindled it briefly (and rather morbidly), but after that it faded again. Having achieved Kennedy's goal and beaten the Russians to the moon, the US government saw no reason to keep exploring, and funding evaporated. NASA had planned missions up to Apollo 20, to be followed by several programs including a mission to Mars; but lack of budget cut them off at 17, and they ended up building Skylab out of a defunct Saturn rocket.

Apollo 17 blasted off in December 1972 with the knowledge that it would be the final Apollo landing. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt lived on the moon for three days, the longest of any mission, collecting as much information and material as they could (and getting in a brief musical number while they were at it). On December 13, as Cernan prepared to enter the LM for the final time, he expressed his hope that their visit would not be the last:

...as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record: that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. 

Gene Cernan chilling on the moon

Forty years later, we have yet to return. The 70s had Skylab, the 80s had the Space Shuttle, the 90s had the Hubble telescope, and the 2000s had the Mars Rover, but nothing has quite matched the collective exhilaration and pure giddy speed of the race to the moon. Despite the countless innovations it spawned (memory foam, scratch-resistant lenses, solar power, cochlear implants, CAT scanners, insulin pumps, smoke detectors, the list goes on), today NASA languishes on the financial and cultural back burner. Will we ever experience another Space Race, or was it a unique period of history that can never be recaptured? Is an opponent to race against really a requirement? (When China starts up their planned moon missions, I predict America will suddenly become interested again.) Or will all nations work together to explore the many worlds outside our own?

Only twelve human beings have walked on the moon, during three short years over two generations ago. Of those twelve, four have passed away, and the youngest of those remaining is 77. Inevitably we will lose these men to history, and with each loss the gap they leave behind grows wider. We can only hope their historic journey will be taken up again one day, beginning a new era when men and women from Planet Earth will return to the moon, then to Mars, and beyond.

---

Heather Domin is the author of The Soldier of Raetia, set in Augustan Rome, and Allegiance, set in 1922 Dublin – neither of which have anything to do with outer space, but it's a topic she has loved since she watched her first Shuttle launch on TV in kindergarten.

The End of an Era: Meaning & Solace in Pre-Christian Society

The search for meaning and solace in the dangerous world before the birth of Christ

By John Issitt

Conditions of life until the 20^th century were pretty raw and sadly, they continue to be so for many people. Fighting, pestilence, lack of food and the abuses of others were the conditions most people were born into. If you were lucky and strong enough to survive childhood you could count your blessing. Then the perils of childbirth for women and the demands of war for men, were just two of the imminent dangers that brought mortality to front of your mind. Unless you were very lucky, living into your fifth decade was unlikely.

In the face of such hardship we could easily be tempted into Thomas Hobbes’s famous dictum ‘life is nasty, brutish and short’. But people, by and large, can’t live with such meaningless pessimism. They look for, ache for, solace and a feeling of belonging to something that orientates their life. Whether it is fate, the play of the Gods or the spirits of nature, people need to locate themselves in relation to their experience. Our logic-orientated brains have sought reasons – some kind of rational account of what, why and how.

The story of reason that we in the Christian west tell ourselves is that from around the 5^th century BC from the pre-Socratics and then the trio of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, reason was born in ancient Greece from which the civilized world emerged. Despite serious omissions in the story (for example China, India and Persia) this lineage interlaced with more ancient scriptural accounts is the one we imbibe through our culture and is traced through the history of philosophy and ideas taught in our universities. Very, very crudely, reason passes through Rome, onwards through Christ, gets lost in the ‘Dark Ages’ emerges in the Renaissance, gets reworked through the Reformation, Descartes and Newton before arriving at the ages of Enlightenment, Revolution and Modernity. Phew!

The story of reason demands a lifetime of scholarship but reason itself is also severely limited in helping us deal with life. Reason alone never delivers what the human spirit needs and as Mahatma Gandhi famously put it ‘Reason given the status of omnipotence becomes a monster.’ In the centuries between Socrates and Christ, reason was worked and used in three of our most enduring philosophies. Again very, very crudely: Scepticism – the belief that real knowledge of things is impossible, Epicureanism – that the world is made of the mere fortuitous combination of atoms, and Stoicism – that happiness can only be obtained by submission to natural law.

All three are components of the intellectual resources we operate with today – you can find them in the everyday talk of folk. But can you see how they each attempt to deliver a reasoned account of the human condition, but are each insufficient in helping us to live our lives. They are at best partial accounts and do not answer our internal ache to find meaning. As people in the centuries before Christ and Christendom faced their hardships, such philosophies would not have helped them much.

The intellectual conditions before Christ lacked what the Christ story provided – a way of finding meaning in adverse conditions. Maybe that is why Christianity took such an enduring grip on us.

John Issitt is the author of Agents of Reason.
Website: http://www.agentsofreason.co.uk/,
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The End of an Era: How the Battle of Hastings Changed England

By Lisa J. Yarde

In the early hours of the morning on Saturday, October 14 in 1066, English warriors and their king Harold Godwinson might not have imagined how the outcome of one battle would affect history. They were fighting for their survival and that of their families. Surely, they intended to deal with their Norman foes under Duke William as decisively as the rout of the Norwegians under Harald Hardrada and King Harold's own traitorous brother Tostig, just 19 days earlier at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. One day at a site now occupied by Battle Abbey changed almost everything. In the aftermath, the English language altered, riddled with French influences instead of just Germanic. The political landscape became more centralized and Norman nobles replaced the aristocracy as landholders. At Hastings, the two opposing sides had similar goals in the eradication of the other, but also held common ties. Harold Godwinson was an Anglo-Danish king, and William’s ancestors were Scandinavia raiders who had invaded northern France and carved out a fiefdom in Normandy.  

For six centuries before the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon people had dominated England and imposed their Germanic way of life on the Britons who survived the decline of Roman rule. The people we think of as Anglo-Saxons were an amalgamation of Angles from the Jutland Peninsula, which is part of Germany and Denmark, and the Saxons of modern-day northwest Germany. From the mid-fifth century, their settlements dotted the eastern and southern coastline. They founded various kingdoms, some of which would survive as the English counties of today, including Sussex, Essex, and Wessex. Smaller consolidated regions, such as the union of Bernicia and Deira, emerged stronger as the kingdom of Northumbria. Others rose in prominence and wealth, like Mercia under the reign of Offa in the eighth century. Both Northumbria and Mercia swiftly declined by the ninth century and came under central administration from the surviving kingdom of Wessex.

Anglo-Saxon society emerged with distinct duties and rights. A slave or theow labored for his lord, but had opportunities to earn money and could legally buy his own freedom. In the early years many slaves came from Wales; another term for slave, wealh, evolved into ‘Welsh’ meaning ‘foreigner’ in the Anglo-Saxon language. In the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the wife of King Hrothgar of the Danes bears the name Wealhtheow. When average citizens, the ceorls, were not working the fields or bound by a trade, they gave service as part of the fyrd, local levies. Some obtained a portion of land from their lords, which the ceorls’ families worked for themselves. Noblemen called gesiths up through the seventh century merged with thegns by the ninth century. Under tenth-century Danish influence, their number included professional warriors or huscarls. The noblemen were the military companions and commanders of the king or their lord. Ealdormen or eorls after the tenth-century gained their appointments from the king, charged by him with the administration of large territories. The regions often derived from the old kingdoms, such as the earldoms of Northumbria and Mercia. Ealdormen had a duty to call up the fyrd in the king’s name for the various wars often embroiling England. Upper class Anglo-Saxon warriors took their horses into battle, but fought on foot.

Each of the classes had an assigned wergild, the value of their lives should any undue harm befall them. Anyone who caused injury or death to a slave or freeman had to pay the wergild, as recompense for having deprived the lord or the victim’s family. A nobleman’s wergild was six times that of a freeman. Payment staved off blood feuds, for no one exacted vengeance quite like Anglo-Saxons left without compensation for their losses. Retribution flowed from public affronts to honor and murder, as generations sought to avenge personal slights. A prime example is the slaughter of Earl Uhtred the Bold of Northumbria and his men in 1016, after which Uthtred’s son Ealdred killed his father’s murderer Thurband. The death of Ealdred occurred at the hands of Thurband’s son Carl. This particular blood feud lasted three generations, almost sixty years until Waltheof, Ealdred’s grandson, killed most of Carl’s sons and grandsons. The concept of loyalty until death was also entrenched in Anglo-Saxon society. A deserter who left his lord became nithing. Anyone could kill him without having to pay wergild.

Marriage became a contractual arrangement between the bridegroom and the bride’s family, but with some deference to the woman in allowing her to choose or reject a suitor. Prospective husbands offered a bride price to the family, but as part of the marriage settlement, brides also received the morgengifu or morning-gift after the consummation of the union. In the form of land or money, the morning-gift became the personal property of wives until their deaths, reverting to their families if they died without children. In various period, Anglo-Saxon kings offered protections to widows against forced remarriage or veiling in nunneries. Women endured the dominion of their husbands, but held property rights. They existed as separate legal entities from their spouses. Their wergild did not change based on marriage. If a pregnant woman suffered harm, her wergild and that of her unborn child (about half the father’s value) ensured appropriate recompense. Under Alfred the Great of Wessex, the wergild paid to a lord for the rape of a slave was five shillings, a rate that doubled if the victim was a free woman under his dominion. Life for women and men revolved around the hall, a hub of all social activity where slaves and servants toiled at feasts, women brewed and baked, and men feasted while listening to poems about epic battles.   

Perhaps the greatest threat the Anglo-Saxons faced in the six hundred years before Hastings came from the Norwegian and Danish Vikings. On June 8, 793, Norsemen attacked an abbey on the island of Lindisfarne and ushered in the so-called Viking Age. More Scandinavians arrived in the next century, intent on settling England rather than just raiding. Alfred the Great’s wars with Guthrum the Dane drew to a stalemate and led to the creation of the Danelaw, with its capital at York. Scandinavians influenced the culture of England, including the language. In 991 after an English defeat at the Battle of Maldon, King Aethelred the Unready paid Danegeld, tribute intended to halt the raiders. After a temporary respite, Cnut invaded Wessex in 1015, joined by the faithless Ealdorman Eadric Streona of Mercia. After a siege of London, Cnut claimed all the land north of the Thames River by treaty in October 1016, while King Aethelred’s eventual successor Edmund II held the remainder until his death six weeks later.

When Cnut married Edmund’s stepmother Emma in 1017, the act ushered in Norman influence at court, which would affect events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. Emma was the daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy, Duke William’s great-grandfather. Emma’s children with King Aethelred included Edward the Confessor, who spent years of exile in his mother’s birthplace. In 1043, he returned as England’s monarch, joined by several Norman nobles and clergymen, including Ralph of Mantes, the Earl of Hereford, and Abbot Robert of Jumieges who would become the archbishop of Canterbury. King Edward married Edith, sister of Harold Godwinson, but they had no children. Edward’s indecision regarding a successor endangered England’s future. The Normans based their invasion of England on the idea that King Edward and later Harold Godwinson had promised Duke William the kingdom, while ignoring the claims of Edward’s nephew by the half blood, Edgar, son of Edmund II. Upon Edward’s death, Harold Godwinson took the throne with the agreement of the witan, the king’s council. Harold’s reign lasted only 10 contentious months and ended at the Battle of Hastings. With papal support of his plans, William landed on the southern coast of the country. His mounted knights ravaged the land and its people before they faced off on horseback against Harold and a battle weary force, which had rushed south from Stamford Bridge. The majority of Harold’s nobles and huscarls died with their ruler, often considered as the last Anglo-Saxon king.

Afterward, the Normans swept away aside the institutions of England as they had effectively destroyed its defenders. They replaced at least 90% of the English aristocracy as William dispensed English lands to his loyal followers. Rebellion ensued, for which William’s men meted out terrible punishments including the harrying of the North. An analysis of entries in the Domesday Book reveals many northern villages as “laid waste” to describe the devastation. By this time, Normans held eleven of the fifteen bishoprics in the country. Castles dotted the landscape, physical symbols of Norman authority, and the Normans rebuilt almost every major Anglo-Saxon cathedral or abbey in stone. Huge tracts of territory became royal forests. William and most of his eventual successors were often absent from England, more concerned with their interests in Normandy and France. Norman French replaced the vernacular language at court and in poetic verse, Latin became the official language of government administration and the curia regis took the place of the witan, bound to the king by defined feudal rules where they held tenancies from him. 

Villeins, the lowest class of freemen, became tenants tied to the land who had no redress against their lords. Perhaps the greatest alteration for the average Englishman lay in whether the name and language of his lord as well as the designation of his location had changed. An earlier ancestor in Anglo-Saxon times might have regarded the effects of the conquest as a minimal impact on the drudgery of  daily existence. Anglo-Saxon society was no more egalitarian than the Normans who claimed England in 1066, especially for the poor.   

Lisa J. Yarde writes fiction inspired by the medieval period. She is the author of historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, The Burning Candle, based on the life of Isabel de Vermandois, and On Falcon's Wings, chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers. Lisa has also written three novels in a six-part series set in Moorish Spain, Sultana,  Sultana’s Legacy and Sultana: Two Sisters, where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family.