A meditation on preserving information for the next few thousand years.
This site has some interesting essays on the practice of Christianity in Roman Africa. Of course, anytime you talk about Christianity in Roman Africa, James O'Donnell should come to mind.
You never know when you'll need... The Anglo-Saxon Computer Dictionary! Part of Dr. Carl Berkhout's webpage.
Which reminds me of a sci-fi story in a mid-1970s Analog magazine in which a thousand-year-old piece of pottery was discovered to contain a phonograph-like recording of Anglo-Saxon speech captured accidentally as the potter spun the item and scratched a line in the wet clay.
UPDATE: the story is Time Shards by Gregory Benford. Good stuff!
Vide, as Mr. Core says, and don't miss The Lincoln Log, "A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln."
Apologies to Mr. Riddle ;^)
Quinnipiac University in Connecticut (no, I'd never heard of it, either) has digitized some original sources on the Irish Famine. They also have some digitized sources on Connecticut history, in case you're into that sort of thing.
Here's a site devoted to "Old Ironsides", once commanded by one of my (deep breath) great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers, Isaac Hull.
The fourth-century basilica of Arles, mother of many saints, has been rediscovered.
One hundred and forty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe
Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations
Using Primary Sources on the Web
Ancient Rome from the Earliest Times Down to 476 A.D.
A History of Rome, by Robert F. Pennell
How on earth did the Romans build an empire without coffee?
A thought experiment: if we found ourselves in a new Dark Ages, what of American civilization would be worth preserving, and how would it be preserved? What would our descendants 1000 years hence be grateful to receive from us as they began to rebuild a civilization?
Might be interesting in a historical novel sort of way to consider the smell of a town at various times in its history.
From The Mission of St. Benedict:
St. Benedict's direct object indeed in setting his monks to manual labour was neither social usefulness nor poetry, but penance; still his work was both the one and the other. The above-cited authors enlarge upon its use, and I in what I am writing may be allowed to dwell upon its poetry; we may contemplate both its utility to man and its service to God in the aspect of its poetry. How romantic then, as well as useful, how lively as well as serious, is their history, with its episodes of personal adventure and prowess, its pictures of squatter, hunter, farmer, civil engineer, and evangelist united in the same individual, with its supernatural colouring of heroic virtue and miracle! When St. Columban first came into Burgundy with his twelve young monks, he placed himself in a vast wilderness, and made them set about cultivating the soil. At first they all suffered from hunger, and were compelled to live on the barks of trees and wild herbs. On one occasion they were for five days in this condition. St. Gall, one of them, betook himself to a Swiss forest, fearful from the multitude of wild beasts; and then, choosing the neighbourhood of a mountain stream, he made a cross of twigs, and hung some relics on it, and laid the foundation of his celebrated abbey. St. Ronan came from Ireland to Cornwall, and chose a wood, full of wild beasts, for his hermitage, near the Lizard. The monks of St. Dubritius, the founder of the Welsh Schools, also sought the woods, and there they worked hard at manufactures, agriculture, and road making. St. Sequanus placed himself where "the trees almost touched the clouds." He and his companions, when they first explored it, asked themselves how they could penetrate into it, when they saw a winding footpath, so narrow and full of briars that it was with difficulty that one foot followed another. With much labour and with torn clothes they succeeded in gaining its depths, and stooping their heads into the darkness at their feet, they perceived a cavern, shrouded by the thick interlacing branches of the trees, and blocked up with stones and underwood. "This," says the monastic account, "was the cavern of robbers, and the resort of evil spirits." Sequanus fell on his knees, prayed, made the sign of the Cross over the abyss, and built his cell there. Such was the first foundation of the celebrated abbey called after him in Burgundy.
From The Mission of St. Benedict:
As the physical universe is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation, so the course of the social and political world, and of that great religious organization called the Catholic Church, is found to proceed for the most part from the presence or action of definite persons, places, events, and institutions, as the visible cause of the whole. There has been but one Judaea, one Greece, one Rome; one Homer, one Cicero; one Caesar, one Constantine, one Charlemagne. And so, as regards Revelation, there has been one St. John the Divine, one Doctor of the Nations. Dogma runs along the line of Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas. The conversion of the heathen is ascribed, after the Apostles, to champions of the truth so few, that we may almost count them, such as Martin, Patrick, Augustine, Boniface. Then there is St. Antony, the father of monachism; St. Jerome, the interpreter of Scripture; St. Chrysostom, the great preacher.Education follows the same law: it has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. It has had three periods:-the ancient, the medieval, and the modern; and there are three Religious Orders in those periods respectively, which succeed, one the other, on its public stage, and represent the teaching given by the Catholic Church during the time of their ascendancy. The first period is that long series of centuries, during which society was breaking or had broken up, and then slowly attempted its own re-construction; the second may be called the period of re-construction; and the third dates from the Reformation, when that peculiar movement of mind commenced, the issue of which is still to come. Now, St. Benedict has had the training of the ancient intellect, St. Dominic of the medieval; and St. Ignatius of the modern. And in saying this, I am in no degree disrespectful to the Augustinians, Carmelites, Franciscans, and other great religious families, which might be named, or to the holy Patriarchs who founded them; for I am not reviewing the whole history of Christianity, but selecting a particular aspect of it.
Cardinal Newman on SS Benedict and Dominic. Benedict marks the retreat of Western civilization and Dominic its resurgence:
We read in history of great commanders, who, when an overwhelming force was directed against them on the plain, and success was for the time impossible, submitted to necessity, and, with plans afterwards to be developed, retired up the mountain passes in their rear, where nature had provided a safe halting-place for brave men who could not advance, and would not turn in flight. There, behind the lofty crag, the treacherous morass, and the thick wood, they nursed their confidence of victory, and waited patiently for an issue, which was not less certain because it was delayed. On came the haughty foe, with cries of defiance; and when at length he thought he had them at his mercy, he found that first he must do battle with the adamantine rocks, which sternly rose up in defence of fugitives who had invoked their aid. Then he stood for a while irresolute, till the difficulties of his position ended his deliberation, and forced upon him a retreat in his turn, while the lately besieged hosts were once more in motion, and pressed upon the baffled foe, who had neither plan of campaign nor base of operations to fall back upon.Such is the history of Christian civilization. It gave way before the barbarians of the north and the fanatics of the south; it fled into the wilderness with its own books and those of the old social system which it was succeeding. It obeyed the direction given it in the beginning,-when persecuted in one place, to flee away to another; and then at length the hour of retribution came, and it advanced into the territories from which it had retired. St. Benedict is the historical emblem of its retreat, and St. Dominic of its return.
And then Hilaire Belloc takes up the same idea in, I think, The Crisis of Civilization.
From Christopher Dawson's The Crisis of Western Education:
The last achievement of classical culture in Italy was the plan of monastic studies which Cassiodorus, the Roman aristocrat and ex-consul, laid down in his monastery at Vivarium in the second half of the sixth century, and the same tradition is represented half a century later by St. Isidore of Seville, whose encyclopedic works had an enormous influence on medieval education.
The standard biography of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, born c. 490, d. c. 585, is James J. O'Donnell's Cassiodorus, which Prof. O'Donnell has kindly placed online in its entirety. Cassiodorus and Saint Benedict, born c. 480, d. c. 547, were contemporaries.
Church historian Philip Schaff attributes to the example of Cassiodorus and his monastery the typical Benedictine mission of the preservation of knowledge and culture.
If you like Mirabilis, you'll love this:
EXPLORATOR is a weekly newsletter representing the fruits of the labours of 'media research division' of The Atrium. Various on-line news and magazine sources are scoured for news of the ancient world (broadly construed: practically anything relating to archaeology or history prior to about 1700 or so is fair game) and every Sunday they are delivered to your mailbox free of charge!Past issues of Explorator are available on the web at:
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A promising website devoted to early 18th century America.
A number of articles here at Vanderbilt, and a vast collection of theology bibliographies here, including some for Augustine and the Latin West.
Here's a website devoted to Montanism and its heresiarch, Montanus; you'll find lots of online resources there, including John de Soyres' 1877 book Montanism and the Primitive Church.
As you might expect, the Tertullian Project devotes a page to Montanism.
Did you know that 1,155 years ago a Muslim army attacked Rome, sacked St. Peter's and St. Paul's basilicas, and desecrated the tombs of the Apostles? From the Carroll History Database:
AUGUST 846 A. D.??: Death of Pope Sergius II [ Sources ]
10th: Urgent letter from Marquis Adelbert of Tuscany warning Pope Sergius II of the approach of a Muslim fleet of 73 ships with 11,000 soldiers [ Sources ]
26th: Muslims plunder St. Peter's, taking away the stone of the altar over St. Peter's bones, and also plunder St. Paul's Outside the Walls, after defeating a Roman army [ Sources ]
Spotted in Christopher Dawson's The Making of Europe. The Forever War, anyone? Hmm... that might be an interesting device to teach history.
It appears that March has been designated by the keepers of the secular liturgy as Women's Herstory Month, hot on the heels of Black History Month, formerly known as February.
and their Northern counterparts: Northern slaveholding plantations
Interesting stuff on the Feriale Duranum, and the liturgical life of the Roman army:
he Feriale Duranum is just one copy, dating from the reign of Severus Alexander, of the contemporary version of a calendar that must have been distributed to every camp and garrison ever since Augustus took in hand the reform of military service and its associated religious observances. In contrast to the private practices of troops, which are what the inscriptions reflect by and large, this list of festivals provides an overview of the official cult of Roman units at every level of command throughout the empire. Where such rites will have taken place is not in evidence in the papyrus itself but there is no good reason to doubt that official ceremonies will have been performed at headquarters in the courtyard of the praetorium or within the military chapel, perhaps also at the local Caesareum wherever one existed, as in Egypt for example.
Apropos of today's Gospel, here is Cardinal Newman's description of Jerusalem in 326 A. D.
I just found this "ejournal": The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe
From Forbes F. Y. I:
If you felt a twinge of dread at the thought of taking your vacation this summer, you might have found comfort in a lively new book called Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists. Humans have been having an awful time on vacation for more than 2,000 years.
The roads Saint Augustine used to travel around his diocese; part of James O'Donnell's excellent Augustine website.
An atlas depicting history by periods History is an uninterrupted string of insignificant events among which prominent facts sometimes emerge: wars, conquests, revolutions etc. It becomes possible to evaluate the influence of these important movements in the course of time, by comparing them to less determining periods, to "control years" in some way. The Periodical historical Atlas, describes the political status of the European continent at fixed intervals. It therefore represents a list of reference points and permits an appreciation of the real range of important items on the continuation of political changes. Henceforth, stress is put on the precise drawing of territories at one exact instant defined by an arbitrary periodicity, that is the first day of each centennial year.
