The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 19

Empire-of-the-Month Club

As in the Old World, the Americas saw an ebb and flow of dominant cultures, although there were fewer of them competing simultaneously.

In South America, the Chimu used advanced irrigation techniques to build an impressive empire along the coast of Peru. By the end of the fourteenth century, however, they would give way to an even more impressive group known as the Inca.

In Mexico, the Toltec nation built an imposing capital at Tula, near the Central Valley of Mexico. The Toltec empire was based on stealing or extorting loot from neighboring groups, which is not a particularly sound basis for an economy. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Toltecs were out of business and being replaced by the new kids on the block, the Aztecs. The Aztecs parlayed their success as mercenaries for other groups into a formidable society that came to dominate Central Mexico until the coming of the Europeans in the early sixteenth century.

GOODBYE, CAHOKIA.

The Mississippians' ability to grow maize let them settle down in a city at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers, on a fertile floodplain called the American Bottom. Called Cahokia, the city probably covered about six square miles and had a population of as much as thirty thousand people at its peak.It featured a fifty-acre earthen plaza, surrounded by a wooden stockade with a series of watchtowers. More than one hundred earthen mounds dotted the city, on top of which were various domiciles, religious centers, and astronomical sites. The largest, later dubbed Monk's Mound, was a thousand feet long, seven hundred to eight hundred feet wide, and a hundred feet high.Cahokia's trading routes extended as far west as the Rockies and as far east as the Atlantic. At its peak, the city was probably the largest in North America (until it was surpa.s.sed by Philadelphia in about 1800).By 1300, however, Cahokia was abandoned. Scholars are not completely certain why, although theories range from political instability to the depletion and/or pollution of the area's natural resources such as woodlands and waterways.

In North America, a group known as the Mississippians took advantage of fertile lands and good location in what is now the American Midwest to become proficient farmers and traders. They did well until the mid-thirteenth century, when environmental stresses caused by rapacious land practices may have caught up with them and ended their run.

In the less hospitable Southwest, a group known as the Anasazi built incredible edifices into the sides of cliffs. They also adopted clever methods of farming and irrigation that enabled them to support populations in excess of what the local environment could ultimately support. As in the case of the Mississippians, the local environment won, and the Anasazi pretty much faded away in the 1200s.

WEAVING A TALE.

The history of William the Conqueror's fight for the crown was recorded in a novel way: a 230-foot-long, 20-inch-wide embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry is made up of hundreds of scenes joined in a linear sequence, and is believed to have been commissioned by William's half-brother. And since the winners generally write history, the account is heavily slanted toward William's version of things.

Royalty Watch He Came, He Saw, He Conquered England When Edward the Confessor cashed in his chips in January 1066, after twenty-three years as king of England, he left no obvious heir. But that didn't mean there were no candidates for the post. In fact, there were at least three: Harold G.o.dwinson, Edward's brother-in-law; William, Duke of Normandy; and Harald Hardrada, the king of Norway.The trio of claimants quickly embraced the generally accepted eleventh-century way of settling such disputes: they went to war. Hardrada and Harold slugged it out first, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York. Harold won, slaughtered most of Hardrada's troops, and paused to catch his breath.As it turned out, he didn't have long to rest. A couple of days after the fight at Stamford Bridge, William, Duke of Normandy, landed his army on the southern end of England, near the town of Hastings. Harold rushed south, and on October 14, the two armies collided.It was a tough all-day battle, but in the end William's archers and cavalry prevailed. Harold was killed, and William continued his trek toward London. He was crowned king of England on Christmas Day in 1066.The Queen Machine She was one of the most powerful women of the twelfth century-and she lasted about four fifths of it. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the queen consort of France, and then of England. Three of her sons (Richard I, John Lackland, and Henry III) became kings of England, and two daughters married and/or bore kings and emperors. She went on a Crusade, and helped encourage good manners and troubadours.Plus, she lived to be eighty-two, which was pretty remarkable for anyone in the twelfth century, let alone someone as busy as she was.Eleanor was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, a large and independent duchy in southwestern France. This made her a very eligible fifteen-year-old when her dad died and left her as his heir. And that explains why she was married to the French king Louis VII in 1137.Four years later, Eleanor volunteered about a thousand of her va.s.sals to fight in the Second Crusade-and threw in herself and three hundred women to go along. Although the women didn't do any actual fighting, Eleanor did get to Constantinople and Antioch, and discomfited the Crusade's male leaders enough to get women officially banned from future efforts. (In fact, there were rumors that Eleanor had a dalliance in Antioch with her uncle Raymond, who was a prince there.)In 1152, Eleanor and Louis wheedled their way out of their loveless marriage by persuading Church officials to dissolve it on the grounds they were distant cousins. But Eleanor wasn't alone long. Less than two months later, she married King Henry II of England, giving the two of them control of all of England and much of France.How could anything fortunate, I ask, emerge from their copulations?-Twelfth-century writer Gerald of Wales, raising a rhetorical query about the union of Eleanor and Henry II, since she was rumored to have slept with her father-in-law, too When not having kids by Henry (eight of them), Eleanor pretty much ran her own kingdom in Aquitaine. Her court at Poitiers became a haven for troubadours and poets and a fountain of etiquette and courtly manners.But when her sons rebelled against Henry and she sided with her progeny, Henry had her placed under house arrest-for sixteen years. In 1189, Henry died; Richard ascended to the throne, freed his mother, and put her in charge of England while he went off on the Third Crusade.When Richard was held for ransom, Eleanor raised the dough. And when Richard died, she helped her second son, John, hold on to the throne. She also arranged the marriage of a granddaughter to a grandson of her first husband, Louis VII. All in all, she was one busy mom until she retired to an abbey in France, where she died in 1204 and was buried. And even at that, she outlived all but two of her children.

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WHO'S UP, WHO'S DOWN Chimu: UP UP One of the more successful of the pre-Colombian societies in South America, the Chimu often go unmentioned in history books because they had already fallen when Europeans got to the New World. But for most of the Middle Ages, they were definitely up.An agricultural society, the Chimu rose to prominence in the Moche River Valley in Northern Peru. Their major a.s.set in putting together an empire was a knack for irrigation in an area that was and basically still is a desert. The Chimu linked rivers and built ca.n.a.ls as long as fifty miles. Their water system allowed them to grow enough food to sustain a sizeable population. The Chimu capital city was Chan Chan, on the northern coast of Peru. At its peak, the forty-square-mile city had a population of more than fifty thousand, ensconced behind adobe and brick walls that were as much as ten feet thick at their base and thirty feet high.While the social structure was strictly divided along cla.s.s lines, the Chimu did extend equal legal rights to females and treated their elderly fairly well: If you could make it to the age of sixty, you didn't have to pay taxes or serve in the military. Of course, if you committed a crime, a common punishment was to be burned alive.Beginning in about 1000 CE, the Chimu began expanding their sphere of influence up and down the Peruvian coast. By 1400, they controlled as much as six hundred miles of the coast. But their biggest a.s.set-their irrigation system-was also a liability when the rival Inca nation attacked the Chimu in the 1460s. The Inca disrupted the water supply enough to bring down the Chimu, and inherit their mantle as the area's top dog.Mongols: UP AND ALL OVER UP AND ALL OVER If the Mongols had a motto, it might have been "Have weapon, will travel."They started out as a nomadic group of, well, nomads in the eastern part of Central Asia. The Mongols were loyal almost exclusively to their close relatives, so it was difficult for them to organize themselves on a larger scale, despite their prowess in battle.

The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.-Genghis Khan

That all began to change in the last half of the twelfth century, with the rise of a man named Temujin. Pushed around and poor as a youth, Temujin rose to power by combining extraordinary courage in battle with an uncanny knack for Mongol-style diplomacy. This consisted mainly of forming alliances and then betraying them if something better came along.

A "DIVINE WIND" TODAY KEEPS MONGOLS AWAY Although the Mongols had conquered a big piece of Europe and Asia by 1274, they still had a yen for more, and turned their attention to the island nation of j.a.pan.In the fall of 1274, Kublai Khan packed up a force of about forty thousand Mongol and Korean fighters on nine hundred s.h.i.+ps to invade. After initial success, a fierce storm blew in and destroyed part of the fleet. Demoralized, Kublai's forces withdrew.They tried again in 1281. This time Kublai put together two armies totaling 140,000 men in more than 4,000 s.h.i.+ps. Once again, the invaders did pretty well against the outnumbered defenders. And once again, a major typhoon blew in, smas.h.i.+ng much of the Mongol-Korean fleet over a two-day period. The storm forced the biggest part of the invading army to beat a hasty retreat, and the part that was left behind was either slaughtered or captured.Although Kublai wanted to try yet again, he died before he could get a third invasion off the ground, and the j.a.panese would remain unconquered until the middle of the twentieth century, at the end of World War II.And the typhoons that proved so valuable in fighting off Kublai's armies? They were called kamikazes ("divine winds"), and they helped convince the j.a.panese people that they were protected by the G.o.ds.

By 1206, Temujin had united the Mongol tribes into a single confederation, and they had designated him "Genghis Kahn," or "universal ruler." Genghis quickly put together a relatively small but lightning-quick army of superbly skilled mounted archers who could travel up to sixty miles a day to surprise opposing armies.The Mongols had a pretty simple game plan: They were magnanimous to those who surrendered without a fight, and slaughtered those who chose battle. Under Genghis, they conquered Central Asia, Northern China, and Persia.Nor did they slow down after his death in 1227, adding most of modern-day Russia and the rest of China. The Mongol Empire got so big, in fact, that it was divided into four regional empires, each with its own khan.The Mongols weren't great administrators, but they were smart enough to absorb bright bureaucrats from the people they conquered. They were also savvy enough to do the same with skilled artisans, even transferring them around to various parts of the empire where they were needed. They were relatively tolerant when it came to religion, and encouraged trade.By the mid-fourteenth century, the Mongol empire had pretty much run out of steam, plagued by a lack of great leaders-and by the plague. The empire's last big gasp came in the form of a nomadic Turk named Tamerlane, who molded himself after the great Genghis. In the last half of the century, Tamerlane's armies conquered much of Afghanistan, Persia, and India. He died in 1405, and not long afterward, the Mongol Empire (actually empires) collapsed for good.Crusaders: DOWN DOWN The eighteenth-century Scottish historian-philosopher David Hume called the Crusades "the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation." That's a tough statement to argue with.From a medieval Christian's perspective, Pope Urban II launched the Crusades in 1095 with a n.o.ble cause: to liberate the Holy Land from pilgrim-hara.s.sing Seljuk Turks.European Christians responded with enthusiasm, and the First Crusaders actually succeeded in taking Jerusalem in 1099. They celebrated with a wholesale slaughter of the city's occupants. While most of the Crusaders went home, the ones who stayed behind built ma.s.sive castles and set up mini-kingdoms around the area.In 1146, several European leaders launched the Second Crusade, ostensibly designed to reverse the losses of several Christian cities in the Holy Land. The Crusaders burned and looted their way to Constantinople, stumbled across Asia Minor, and then made it to Damascus, where they were routed and lost most of their army.

FOUR GOOFY THINGS ABOUT THE CRUSADES.

1. Peter the Hermit. A French priest who got hara.s.sed when he tried to visit the Holy Land and helped recruit volunteers for "the Peasants' Crusade," part of the First Crusade in 1096, Peter the Hermit lost 25 percent of his force on the way. Most of the rest were killed or captured by the Turks while he was elsewhere. Peter tried to desert when he and his Crusaders were caught in a Muslim siege of the city of Antioch, then talked the besieged Crusaders into attacking the besiegers, who promptly slaughtered them. After the Crusaders took Jerusalem, Peter went back to Europe. A French priest who got hara.s.sed when he tried to visit the Holy Land and helped recruit volunteers for "the Peasants' Crusade," part of the First Crusade in 1096, Peter the Hermit lost 25 percent of his force on the way. Most of the rest were killed or captured by the Turks while he was elsewhere. Peter tried to desert when he and his Crusaders were caught in a Muslim siege of the city of Antioch, then talked the besieged Crusaders into attacking the besiegers, who promptly slaughtered them. After the Crusaders took Jerusalem, Peter went back to Europe.

2. Walter the Penniless. A French knight who wasn't actually broke, Walter got his name when later historians mistook his French surname Sans Avoir, as "without means" instead of as a reference to the Avoir Valley. Anyway, he coled the Peasants' Crusade with Peter, and was in charge when most of the Crusaders got wiped out. That included Walter. A French knight who wasn't actually broke, Walter got his name when later historians mistook his French surname Sans Avoir, as "without means" instead of as a reference to the Avoir Valley. Anyway, he coled the Peasants' Crusade with Peter, and was in charge when most of the Crusaders got wiped out. That included Walter.

3. The Goose Crusade. According to Jewish historians, a fanatical group of German peasants decided in 1096 that a goose had been "blessed by G.o.d." They followed it around for a while, and along the way attacked and killed any Jews they encountered. According to Jewish historians, a fanatical group of German peasants decided in 1096 that a goose had been "blessed by G.o.d." They followed it around for a while, and along the way attacked and killed any Jews they encountered.

4. The Children's Crusade. Sometime in 1212, large groups of poor people wandered around France and Germany, and the word got around that thousands of children were marching to the Holy Land. It was probably more aimless shuffling of homeless people than a crusade, but a bunch of kids apparently did show up in Ma.r.s.eille to seek pa.s.sage to the Holy Land. Most of then ended up being sold into slavery in North Africa. Sometime in 1212, large groups of poor people wandered around France and Germany, and the word got around that thousands of children were marching to the Holy Land. It was probably more aimless shuffling of homeless people than a crusade, but a bunch of kids apparently did show up in Ma.r.s.eille to seek pa.s.sage to the Holy Land. Most of then ended up being sold into slavery in North Africa.

In 1187, the Muslim armies under Saladin retook Jerusalem, which triggered the Third Crusade. This one was notable for pitting Saladin against the English king Richard I, the Lionhearted. The battle basically ended in a draw, with the Muslims agreeing to reopen the Holy City to Christian pilgrims.Not content with a record of 1-1-1, Pope Innocent III launched a Fourth Crusade in 1198. It was a disgraceful event, marked mainly by the ma.s.s slaughter of thousands of innocent Jews along the way and the sacking of Constantinople, which wasn't even Muslim but, rather, Eastern Orthodox.A few more halfhearted or imbecilic tries were made, but by 1291, the last Christian stronghold in the region had fallen, and the Great Crusades, which had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, finally fizzled out.London: MOVING ON UP MOVING ON UP All world-cla.s.s cities have a setback or two from time to time. One of London's came in 13481349, when the Black Death may have taken more than 25 percent of the city's population.

WONDER FOOD.

White bread was the most desirable of medieval breads because it was the most finely ground and the least likely to have dirt and other stuff in it.

But the city made a lot of progress during the Middle Ages. First, William the Conqueror made it the capital for Norman kings and built the first version of the Tower of London. Between 1050 and 1300, quays were built along the Thames River to expand the waterfront and increase the city's importance as a trading center. In 1176, construction of a stone bridge over the Thames began and was completed just thirty years later. An impressive building called Westminster Abbey was rebuilt between 1245 and 1269.In 1085, the city had a population of about ten thousand. By 1200, it was up to thirty thousand and just one hundred years later it was up to eighty thousand. The city grew up in two parts: Westminster, where the government stuff was, and the City of London, which was the center of commerce. The parts gradually grew together.Naturally there were a few problems besides the plague. In 1087, a major fire burned down a big part of the city. In its aftermath, some of the wooden buildings were replaced by stone walls and tile roofs instead of straw. But the city's narrow, twisting streets and crowded conditions made fire a constant threat. And there was something of an air pollution problem because of the burning of a whole bunch of low-grade coal.But business opportunities abounded, fueled by the one hundred trade guilds that were important political contributors, and which therefore had a lot of clout when it came to running the city. And as of the twenty-first century, the city is still one of the world's greatest.Church-State Relations: DOWN DOWN One of the most dominant aspects of medieval politics, particularly in Europe, was the touchy relations.h.i.+p between Church and State. As political systems and nation-states became more sophisticated, their rulers became more openly secular in their political dealings.This put a strain on what was still a symbiotic partners.h.i.+p between the secular politicians and the Church: The lay rulers needed the Church's imprimatur to legitimize their activities, and the Church needed the lay rulers' military resources to back their ecclesiastical activities.A cla.s.sic clash of the two interests came in the late eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII told Henry IV, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (which was basically Germany, Austria, and part of northern Italy), to stop appointing bishops and other Church officials on his own. These appointments were an important tool for Henry and other rulers, since they helped them ensure local religious leaders' support when they wanted to do stuff.Henry retaliated by getting his bishops to call for the pope to step down; and Gregory retaliated by excommunicating Henry in 1077. When subordinate princes threatened to revolt, the emperor was forced to apologize to the pontiff-by kneeling in the snow outside the castle where the pope was staying and kissing the papal toe.That's pretty humiliating for an emperor, and Henry eventually withdrew his apology-and was excommunicated again. This time, he marched on Rome and seized the city; Gregory hired a Norman leader named Robert "the Resourceful" Guiscard to drive Henry out, and Guiscard and an army comprised mainly of Saracen fighters did so.Then Guiscard's forces spent a few days sacking the city before escorting the pope back in.The dispute over Church appointments lasted beyond the lives of both Gregory and Henry. In 1122, an agreement called the Concordat of Worms (yes, really) basically called it a draw, and the issue was allowed to die.But the uneasy relations.h.i.+p between Church and State continued to be, well, uneasy. By the end of the thirteenth century, a council of princes, and not the pope, was choosing the emperor. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Church itself had become so divided that in 1378 two popes were elected, one in France and one in Rome. Not until 1417 did the two factions reunite.

Let another a.s.sume the seat of St. Peter, one who will not practice violence under the cloak of religion, but will teach St. Peter's wholesome doctrine. I, Henry, king by the grace of G.o.d, together with all our bishops, say unto thee "come down, come down, to be d.a.m.ned throughout all eternity!"-Emperor Henry IV, in a 1077 letter to Pope Gregory VII, after Gregory ordered the emperor to stop appointing church officials on his own

Medieval Lit 101 Poetry: Taking a Stanza Taking a Stanza It's some of the best-known poetry in the world and perhaps the Eastern verse that is most appreciated in the West: comprising more than one thousand four-line poems, or quatrains, that have rhyming first, second, and fourth lines.They're known as the Rubiyat Rubiyat (Arabic for "quatrain") (Arabic for "quatrain") of Omar Khayyam. of Omar Khayyam. And for most of the time during and after his life, Omar Khayyam himself was known as perhaps the most accomplished scientist of medieval Turkey-not as a poet. And for most of the time during and after his life, Omar Khayyam himself was known as perhaps the most accomplished scientist of medieval Turkey-not as a poet.Born in Persia in 1044, Khayyam was the kind of guy who spent his time doing stuff like designing calendars, calculating the exact length of the solar year, and coming up with geometric methods to solve cubic equations. He died in 1132.In 1859, a British historian named Edward Fitzgerald translated and published some of what was believed to be poetry written by the famous scientist. The verses became famous around the world. An example:A book of verses underneath the bough,A jug of wine, a loaf of bread-and thouBeside me singing in the wilderness-Oh, Wilderness were paradise enow!

Since Fitzgerald's day, however, there has been considerable controversy as to whether the poems were correctly translated and whether Khayyam wrote all-or even any-of the quatrains, particularly since there are no contemporary accounts of the scientist ever picking up a quill and placating his muse.But you have to admit, it sounds cooler than calling them The Rubiyat of Anonymous The Rubiyat of Anonymous.Prose: Never Letter Go Never Letter Go She was young, beautiful and intelligent. He was charismatic, brilliant-and twenty years her senior. And their love was pa.s.sionate, tragic-and made for some pretty hot reading. Like this:G.o.d is my witness that if Augustus, emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honor me with marriage and conferred all the earth upon me to possess forever, it would be dearer and more honorable to me to be called not his empress but your wh.o.r.e.

Pierre Abelard was the son of a n.o.ble Breton family. Born in 1079, he had started his own school in Paris by the time he was twenty-two. At thirty-six, he was named master of the prestigious cathedral school at Notre Dame.Heloise, who was born in about 1100, caught Abelard's eye, and he finagled an appointment as her tutor. He also persuaded her uncle and guardian, a church official named Fulbert, to allow him to move into the house to better teach the girl.So Abelard moved in, and yada yada yada. When Uncle Fulbert found out, he evicted Abelard, but the couple kept meeting secretly. Heloise got pregnant, and the couple ran away. Then they got married, much against Heloise's desires, to appease her uncle.But when Heloise took a break in a convent, Uncle Fulbert thought Abelard had deserted her. In revenge, Fulbert and a couple of buddies broke into Abelard's room and castrated him.Then things really went downhill. Heloise spent the rest of her life in convents. Abelard eventually went back to writing and teaching. But he had made a lot of enemies, was accused of treason, and had to burn a book he had written. Then he was found guilty of heresy, and had to take refuge in a friendly monastery. He died a few years later.While their active love life was relatively short, Heloise and Abelard became immortalized in the annals of romance because of letters between the two, particularly those written by Heloise. Another example:I have endeavoured to please you even at the expense of my virtue, and therefore deserve the pains I feel. As soon as I was persuaded of your love I delayed scarce a moment in yielding to your protestations; to be beloved by Abelard was in my esteem so great a glory, and I so impatiently desired it, not to believe in it immediately. I aimed at nothing but convincing you of my utmost pa.s.sion. I made no use of those defences of disdain and honour; those enemies of pleasure which tyrannise over our s.e.x made in me but a weak and unprofitable resistance. I sacrificed all to my love.

A little wordy maybe, but still pretty hot stuff.

LOVE CHILD.

Heloise named their son (who was eventually adopted by Heloise's sister) Astrolabe, after the ancient astronomical device that's sort of like a computer for solving time/sun/star problems. Nowadays, it would be sort of like naming your kid "GPS."

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SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE...

Starry Sky Surprise "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's supernova!" Okay, maybe that's not exactly what people all over the world yelled the morning of July 5, 1054, but it's pretty certain a whole lot of them yelled something as they witnessed the death of a giant star, six times brighter than Venus, in the morning sky. The Chinese called it "the guest star," and described it as being reddish-white in color and surrounded by pointed rays in all directions.The explosion from the star, which had burned up its energy, collapsed in on itself, and finally burst from the pressure, was so bright it could be seen all over the world. It was also bright enough to be seen with the naked eye in the daytime for as much as a month after it was first observed, and for up to two years at night.In addition to Chinese astronomical records, the phenomenon shows up in j.a.panese and Arab doc.u.ments. It apparently was also noted by Anasazi Indians in what is now New Mexico and Arizona, and commemorated in petroglyphs. While Europeans almost certainly saw the supernova, they either were too scared or too unimpressed to write about it. There may be a vague reference to it in records kept by Irish monks, but that appears to be it.More than six hundred years later, scientists using the recently invented telescope began observing the star's remnants-a cloudy ma.s.s of gas and dust about seven thousand light years from Earth. In 1774, it was named the Crab Nebula, because someone thought it looked like a crustacean-proving the adage that it's all in the eye of the beholder.Flying b.u.t.tresses It seemed like a pretty good place for a cathedral. After all, there had been two earlier churches on the site, and a temple dedicated to the Roman G.o.d Jupiter. So, in 1163, Pope Alexander III laid the foundation stone for the Notre Dame de Paris ("Our Lady of Paris") Cathedral.The edifice was one of the first cathedrals to embrace the Gothic style of architecture, and its construction took up much of the Gothic period. It was one of the first buildings to use "flying b.u.t.tresses," external supports that allow designers to include giant windows and openings while not weakening the walls.

MAKING A WITHDRAWAL.

In 1307, the French king Philip IV charged the Knights Templar, a military and chivalric order, with witchcraft. The head of the order was eventually executed and the order disbanded. Philip seized most of the a.s.sets of the knights' sizeable banking operation. (By the way, Philip's nickname was "the Fair.")

The cathedral, which covers an area a little bigger than an American football field, was built in stages: The apse, or section behind the altar, and choir area were finished in 1182; the nave, or central approach to the altar, in 1196; and the two big towers at the front of the church, in 1250. Of course there were also the finis.h.i.+ng touches-which took until 1345.Once it was done, the cathedral went through some pretty hard times in the following four or five centuries, and was smashed up pretty badly during the French Revolution. Napoleon, who used the site to crown himself emperor in 1804, is credited with saving it from destruction. In 1939, the cathedral's fabulous stained-gla.s.s windows were removed to protect them from German bombers. They were put back after the war.Poetic Inspiration Countless schoolkids have had to learn stanzas from the nineteenth-century poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called "Kubla Khan." You know, the one that starts:In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.

Learning the lines probably would have been more bearable if students had been given background on who the heck Coleridge was writing about: Kublai Khan, who completed the conquest of China for the Mongols, founded a dynasty, and befriended a European adventurer.Born in 1215, Kublai Khan was a grandson of the legendary conqueror Genghis Khan. In his thirties, he succeeded his older brother Mangu as khan after Mangu died-and after Kublai won a three-year civil war with another brother.By 1279, Khan had defeated the Song Dynasty in China, conquered all of the country, and begun what would become the Yuan Dynasty.As ruler, Khan relied on both Mongol and Chinese advisers. His administration developed regular mail service, improved irrigation systems, expanded the empire's highways, nationalized currency, welcomed foreign trade, and was religiously tolerant.

ONE LONG BUSINESS TRIP.

The Italian adventurers-traders the Polos left Venice for Mongol-ruled China in 1271, and didn't get back to Venice until 1295. Legend has it that their surviving relatives didn't recognize them.

But he also divided the populace into a strict cla.s.s system according to ethnic background and forbade marriage between the different groups. The economic benefits of his government's policies were concentrated in the hands of a relative few, and his largely unsuccessful military adventures in j.a.pan and Southeast Asia were a huge drain on the economy.Fortunately for his popular historic image, Kublai did befriend a family of travelers from Vienna named Polo, who reached his court in 1271. One of the visitors, a young man named Marco, became a close friend of the khan and served for years as Kublai's personal emissary to various parts of the empire.When Marco Polo returned to Europe and wrote about his experiences, his highly flattering portrayal of Kublai cemented the Eastern potentate's place in the Western imagination.Kublai's last years were problem-plagued. His wife, who had sort of nagged him into many of his successes, died in 1281, and he suffered greatly from gout. He died in 1294, at the age of seventy-eight, the last of the great Mongol khans.Sweet Dreams Early Arab doc.u.ments allude to the inhalation of various substances to sedate patients for surgery. But the idea was introduced to Western medicine in the late twelfth century by a Bolognese army surgeon named Hugh of Lucca. Hugh also found that wine made an effective wound cleanser.Hugh's son Theodoric was an even bigger promoter of the use of "soporific sponges" as an anesthetic. The sponge was soaked in a combination of opium, mandragora, hemlock juice, and other elements.Theodoric was also big on keeping wounds clean and free of pus. He must have kept his own wounds pus-free. He lived to be about ninety.Clearing Things Up The idea of using a device to see better certainly didn't originate in the Middle Ages. The Chinese had used flat pieces of gla.s.s to reduce glare, although these didn't serve to correct vision. The Roman emperor Nero is said to have used an emerald to view gladiatorial games, although he probably did it for the novelty of the color and not to see better.Arabic scientists did a lot of early work in optical studies, and European monks developed "reading stones" made of thin pieces of transparent beryl or quartz. But prior to the late thirteenth century, reading aids were one-eye-at-a-time affairs.Sometime in the 1280s, in the Italian town of Pisa, a gla.s.sblower or gla.s.sblowers came up with the idea of using a curved lens for each eye to enhance reading and close work. Historians have identified at least two likely candidates-Alessandro Spina and/or Salvino Armato-as possible inventors of spectacles.Whoever was responsible for them, gla.s.ses caught on quickly. In 1289, an Italian writer named Sandro of Popozo noted that the recent invention was "for the benefit of poor aged people (including himself) whose sight has become weak." By 1326, they were widely available. Italians called them "lentils," because they sort of looked like the seed-hence the English word lens. lens.Early gla.s.ses were held on with cords or straps, since the idea of rigid metal arms that hooked over the ears didn't come along until the eighteenth century. They also weren't of much help to the nearsighted, since lenses to correct myopia didn't come along until the fifteenth century, and were pretty expensive.Still, the use of spectacles to correct farsightedness was a big boon to reading-which in turn was a big boon to writing and book production, which of course encouraged more reading, which...well, you get the idea.Forks!

While there's some evidence that people in the Middle East were using forks around the beginning of the eleventh century, they may have used them more for pinning down meat so they could cut it than for conveying the bite-size chunks to their mouths. But by the eleventh century, the fork was being used as a food purveyor in the Byzantine Empire.A Byzantine princess reportedly introduced a two-tine model in Tuscany, where the clergy roundly condemned it: G.o.d-provided food should enter the mouth only via G.o.d-provided fingers. Despite the Church's opposition, the fork caught on pretty quickly in Italy. But it was slow going elsewhere in Europe. In England, for example, a 1307 inventory of the royal cutlery tallied thousands of knives, hundreds of spoons-but only seven forks, six of them silver and one of them gold.In fact, using forks didn't become common in much of Europe until the eighteenth century-and even then they were sometimes used to spear food, shake off the excess sauce, and then steer the food past the lips with the fingers.Maybe that means all those ten-month-old kids who eat with their hands aren't being childish-they're just emulating Europeans of the Middle Ages.

Refrain from falling upon the dish like a swine while eating, snorting disgustingly and smacking the lips.-From a thirteenth-century Italian text on etiquette

The Ace of Polo Sticks Like so many of man's most important inventions, the precise origin of playing cards is uncertain. And like so many inventions-whether their origins are certain or uncertain-many historians think the inventors of playing cards were the Chinese.There are a number of theories on how cards spread from China. One theory has Marco Polo bringing them back to Europe in the late thirteenth century from the court of Kublai Khan. Others claim they were imported from India or the Middle East by returning Crusaders and/or Gypsies. But the best bet is they came from the Islamic dynasty of the Mamelukes of Egypt in the 1370s.Early decks were hand-painted and very expensive. But advances in woodcut techniques allowed ma.s.s production in the fourteenth century. While the Mamelukes' fifty-two-card deck had suits of swords, polo sticks, cups, and coins, it was the French who gave us the modern quartet of spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, in the fifteenth century.And the joker? Americans added him to the deck, in the eighteenth century.AND THANKS, BUT NO THANKS, FOR...

Black Death [image]

The bacteria were on the flea, which was on the rat, which was on the s.h.i.+p or in the wagon.At least that's the prevailing theory on how an epidemic disease swept through much of the world in the mid-fourteenth century. Popularized in Western literature as "the Black Death," the disease is widely believed to have been either a combination of various forms of plague-bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic-or a close relative of them.Whatever it was, it was pretty nasty stuff. It's safe to reckon that as many as twenty-five million of the European population of about eighty million were killed by the disease between 1347 and 1351, and it's entirely plausible that the death rate was even higher. In many regions, as much as two thirds of the populace was wiped out. Worldwide, the death toll might have topped seventy-five million.The disease was not only horrifically proficient, but persistent. In England, for example, there were thirty-one outbreaks between 1348 and 1485.Although reports of plague epidemics first popped up in China and the East in the 1330s, it probably didn't reach Europe until 1347, when a virtual ghost fleet of Genovese trading s.h.i.+ps reached the Italian port of Messina with most of their crew dead or dying. The plague got to England by 1348 and Russia and Scandinavia by 1351.There was no cure, although the usual methods of leeches, bleeding, sweating, and herbs were tried.It not only spread quickly across populations, but also progressed with frightening speed in individuals: a sudden high fever was followed within days by terrifying, painful black swellings in the armpits and groin (lymph nodes overwhelmed by the bacteria) that sometimes burst, emitting a mixture of blood and foul-smelling pus. Death usually came within five days, and sometimes less than one; the Italian writer Boccaccio claims that some victims "ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise."

Dead bodies filled every corner. Most of them were treated in the same manner by the survivors, who were more concerned to get rid of their rotting bodies than moved by charity towards the dead. With the aid of porters, if they could get them, they carted the bodies out of the houses and laid them at the door; where every morning quant.i.ties of the dead might be seen.-Giovanni Boccaccio, the famous Italian writer who lived through the Black Death as it ravaged the city of Florence in 1348

The Black Death had ramifications on European-and world-history far beyond its staggering death toll. The plummeting population meant there was more stuff for fewer people, which made for generally greater wealth. Fewer workers meant that labor was more valuable, and some historians point to that factor as leading to the demise of feudalism and the beginnings of capitalism. It also may have contributed to increased interest in developing labor-saving technology.Human nature being what it is, survivors looked for scapegoats. The most popular target was the Jews. They had already been periodically expelled from various European countries so their possessions could be confiscated. The plague gave their persecutors another excuse.One of the hardest-hit segments of the population was the clergy, since they were often called to the sides of the dead and dying. This weakened the Church's influence, as did the Church's inability to do anything to thwart the spread of the disease.In fact, there was probably no aspect of the human condition not affected by the Black Death. That included fighting: In 1346, Tartars who had besieged the Christian-held city of Caffa in the Crimea loaded their catapults with the bodies of plague victims and lobbed them into the city.It worked. Panicked Italian merchants inside Caffa abandoned the city and fled-on rat-infested s.h.i.+ps-to Europe.Lethal Efficiency Although most battles in the Middle Ages were still the hand-to-hand variety, military types were always looking for ways to kill effectively from a safe distance (safe for their side, anyway).One such weapon was the longbow, which was usually as long as the archer was tall and was made of yew. A trained longbowman could loose as many as nine arrows a minute, and the weapon had an effective range of as much as two hundred yards.The longbow became particularly a.s.sociated with English archers, who could release almost continuous volleys of arrows at an enemy and inflict a lot of damage before the infantries or cavalries engaged.One trouble with the longbow, however, was that there was a fairly long learning curve. That's probably the biggest reason it was superseded in popularity by the crossbow.Although versions of the crossbow had been used in East Asia as early as 2000 BCE, it started showing up in Europe about the tenth century. It was pretty simple to operate, so it was a favorite among military leaders fighting with conscripted or raw armies.The crossbow remained the most ubiquitous missile-firing weapon of most armies well into the fifteenth century, when the firearm gradually replaced it. And we all know where that led.Deal or Ordeal The justice system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages was a curious mix of silly and stupid. A member of the upper cla.s.ses who was charged with a crime could stand "trial by oath," which consisted of the accused swearing he didn't do it, and getting other people to say he didn't do it.Lesser citizens weren't so lucky: They faced a trial by ordeal. The idea was that G.o.d would intervene in cases where the defendant was innocent. So the accused might be forced to carry a piece of red-hot metal in his hand for a specified distance, or lift a stone out of a pot of boiling water. If his hand became infected within three days, he was declared guilty, and usually executed.

If anyone shall have stolen 5 s.h.i.+llings, or its equivalent, he shall be hung with a rope; if less, he shall be flayed with whips, and his hair pulled out by a pincers.-One of the laws promulgated by Frederick I, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, between 1152 and 1157

Another method was to tie up the defendant and throw him into a lake, pond, or river. If he floated, he was guilty. If he sank, he was innocent. Of course he also sometimes drowned.In some cases, especially in civil disputes, the matter could be settled through combat between the disputants. The winner was, well, the winner. But money talked even in trials by combat, because partic.i.p.ants could hire a champion to fight for them.Perhaps ironically, the Church wasn't crazy about a justice system based on divine intervention. By the mid-thirteenth century, members of the clergy were forbidden to take part in trials by ordeal. The Church's stand helped push trials by ordeal into disrepute, and they all but died out by the beginning of the fourteenth century.Joust for Fun Nothing captures the popular image of the Middle Ages more than the joust: two knights in full armor galloping full bore at each other with long wooden poles. Sort of like hockey, only with horses.While events similar to medieval jousting probably began not long after someone first climbed on a horse's back, the first rules for jousting that we know of were written down in 1066, by a French knight named Geoffroi de Purelli. Whether they were enforced is unclear, since de Purelli was killed in the very tournament for which he had written the rules.

DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK HEAVY?.