Janna Coomans - Dievenland (De Bezige Bij, 2025) ****

Net als Marta van der Laak met "Heksenjacht" is onderzoekster Janna Coomans in rechterlijke archieven gaan zoeken naar teksten die te maken hadden met kleine rechtszaken van gewone mensen in onze Lage Landen, maar vooral gefocust op die van Kampen en Deventer. Haar focus is niet om de misdaad in kaart te brengen, wel om aan de hand van teksten te achterhalen hoe de mensen toen leefden, waarom ze deze misdaden begingen en hoe de gemeenschap hierop reageerde. 

Er was veel bittere armoede onder de bevolking in die tijd, met mensen die volledig afhingen van landheren om voldoende werk en inkomsten te hebben, maar van zodra er tegenslag was, waar een groot deel van de bevolking mee geconfronteerd werd, hingen ze af van werk als dagloner, hun diensten aanbiedend op boerderijen, dorpen en steden. Als er geen werk was, was diefstal bijna de enige manier om  in leven te blijven. 

Coomans toont aan dat voor diefstal uit lijfsbehoud een vaak mildere straf werd gegeven dan bij de bijna professionele dieven die heel het grondgebied en ook in Duitsland aan de slag waren, en die zowal goederen als dieren stalen en die veel verder doorverkochten aan de hen gekende helers. 

Maar voor de meesten ging het echt om overleven, zoals de ondertitel suggereert. 

Een aanrader voor wie belangstelling heeft over de rand van onze samenleving in de Middeleeuwen.

Paul Christiaan Smis - Historische Verhalen (Historische Verhalen, 2018)

Ik was eerlijk gezegd wat ontgoocheld in dit boek. Ik had gehoopt en verwacht om echte verhalen uit de Middeleeuwen geserveerd te krijgen, maar het is eigenlijk fictie tegen een historische achtergrond. Die is wel correct en goed weergegeven, wat de verhalen plausibel maakt maar niet realistischer. 

De diepmenselijke noden of de spanning die nodig is om tot een krachtig verhaal te komen, ontbreken nu eenmaal. Smis is onvoldoende stilist of fictie-auteur om de personages echt tot leven te brengen. 

Interessant, maar niet echt een aanrader. 

 

Ugo Janssens - De Heidenen (Lannoo, 2009) ***

Het is een gigantisch werk om exact te weten hoe onze voorouders leefden in de eerste eeuwen van onze jaartelling, maar toch heeft Ugo Janssens dit kunnen realiseren, ondanks het gebrekkig en fragmentarisch bronnenmateriaal en archeologische vondsten. Het is ook niet altijd eenvoudig omdat de volkeren in onze contreien zelf verschilden: kelten, galliërs en franken waren allen Germanen, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat ze dezelfde goden en rituelen hadden. 

Het boek beschrijft in de mate van het mogelijke deze verschillen, maar ook de kerstening ten tijde vanaf de vierde eeuw, en dan finaal onder de Franken. 

Een mooie inleiding voor wie belangstelling heeft voor de geschiedenis van onze contreien: helder, overzichtelijk, en leerrijk. 

André De Vries - Brussels (Interlink, 2003) ***

In mijn reeks van Brussel-boeken, was dit het eerste, maar misschien het minst goede. Het is duidelijk geschreven voor buitenlandse toeristen, maar bevat toch interessante weetjes over de stad. 

Wat mij vooral stoort is de stereotypering van de Brusselaar, gebaseerd op historische perspectieven en oordelen van buitenaf, maar die in geen velden of wegen klopt met de realiteit van vandaag. 

Een goede inleiding voor wie Brussel niet kent. 

Maartje van der Laak - Heksenjacht (Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, 2025) ****

Nederlands-Belgisch onderzoeker Maartje van de Laak heeft diep in de archieven van de Lage Landen gegraven om deze vreselijke periode uit onze geschiedenis op te diepen en weer tot leven te brengen. Dat is dan bijna letterlijk, door alle vrouwen - en ook mannen - die vals werden beschuldigd van omgang met de duivel opnieuw bij naam te noemen, hun context uit te leggen en ook de oordelen van de rechters weer te geven. Dit waren tijden van collectieve waanzin, bijgeloof, onverdraagzaamheid, armoede, tegenspoed en absolute wreedheid, met foltering tot er bekentenissen volgden en andere heksen werden verklikt. Door dit laatste vermenigvuldigde het aantal vrouwen dat ondervraagd en gefolterd en uiteindelijk werd verbrand. 

Eind 15e Eeuw werde de Heksenhamer gepubliceerd, de Maleus Maleficarum, die een handleiding bood om heksenpraktijken te herkennen, en die wereldse rechtbanken de argumentatie gaf om onschuldige vrouwen te bestraffen, vaak tot de dood. 

Van der Laak heeft hier duidelijk met hart en ziek aan gewerkt, en het resultaat mag er zeker zijn. Op het eind van het boek geeft ze een lange lijst, acht bladzijden lang, van alle vrouwen van wie ze informatie heeft kunnen opzoeken en die slachtoffer waren van de heksenjacht. Ze betreurt dat de beeldvorming nog altijd tot de stereotypering behoort in onze tijd, en dat in sommige steden en dorpen nog altijd folkoristische herdenkingen zijn van heksenverbrandingen. 

Gelukkig heeft ze het ook over de enkelingen die tegen de stroom durfden inzwemmen en de heksenjacht aan de kaak stelden, en die feiten en onderzoek belangrijker vonden dan valse beschuldigingen en bekentenissen onder foltering. 

Een praktijk om te testen of vrouwen heksen waren, was ze in het water te gooien om na te gaan of ze bleven drijven. Als ze zonken en verdronken, waren het geen heksen. Als ze boven water konden blijven, waren het wel heksen en werden ze verbrand. Ik had dit al gezien in Monty Python en dacht dat dit een grap was, maar blijkbaar was dit bittere realiteit in de late Middeleeuwen. Onze samenleving is er in onze contreien toch wat geëvolueerd, maar op vele plekken in de wereld is dit nog schering en inslag. 

De Geschiedenis van Brussel in Oude Kaarten (Lannoo, 2025)

Een prachtige uitgave van Lannoo met de evolutie van Brussel doorheen de tijd. Veel weten we niet van Brussel van voor de 10e eeuw, en de eerste kaarten dateren slechts uit de zestiende eeuw, maar uiteraard hebben geschiedkundigen de groei van de stad retrospectief in kaart kunnen brengen, figuurlijk dan vooral.

Naast de vele kaarten, is er ook een heel heldere en interessante uitleg van Brusselse geschiedkundigen. Het is opvallend hoe groen en landelijk onze hoofdstad nog was in de 19e eeuw, en hoe de expansie en verstedelijking is toegenomen in de laatste honderd jaar. 

Het is haast niet voor te stellen dat bvb Anderlecht en Molenbeek buiten de stad lagen of dat op de oevers van de Zenne de lakens te drogen lagen op gemeenschappelijke weiden. 

Een koffietafelboek om in een keer uit te lezen of om vaak in te bladeren. 

Jason Roberts - Every Living Thing (Riverrun, 2024) *****

It's no surprise that this excellent book received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and the 2025 PEN America Literary Science Award.

The author juxtaposes the lives of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus and French naturalist George-Louis de Buffon, two men who happened to be born in 1707 and competed to write the catalogue of all living things. The Bible mentions 120 animal species, so both authors tried to list animals, plants and other living things. Linnaeus sets his taxonomy in rigorous categories, static or never-chaning in his opinion, whereas Buffon has a more evolutionary perspective, and in this sense a precursor to scientists of the 19th Century like Wallace and Darwin.

Next to the rivalry itself, Roberts also goes into the right level of detail to give the public and especially the official reaction of the church against the work of both men. 

"Acclaim, however, was far from universal. The same Journal of Trévoux that praised the Histoire as a masterstroke against Linnaeus later published a critique angrily taking issue with Buffon's assertion "that it is possible to descend by almost imperceptible gradations from the most perfect of creatures to the most formless matter." The theological implications, it argued, were disturbing: If life was a continuum, there could be no clear leap between ensouled beings and those without souls. so happily placed as to serve as the imperceptible passage from one to the other" (p. 144-145)

Linnaeus also classified human beings according to race with caucasians at the top of the hierarchy and black people at the bottom, a justification for institutionalised racism for many years to come, whereas Buffon also had different opinions. 

"Buffon had his working definition. The essence of species lay in reproduction, the ability of one generation to propagate another. He logically applied this measure to humanity: Since all ethnic groups seemed clearly capable of interbreeding with one another, they comprised a single species. "The dissimilarities are merely external, the alterations of nature but superficial," he concluded. "The Asian, European, and Negro all reproduce with equal ease with the American. There can be no greater proof that they are the issue of a single and identical stock than the facility with which they consolidate to the common stock". In sum, reproduction was proof that 

'there was originally but one species, which, after being multiplied and diffused over the whole surface of the earth, underwent diverse changes from the influence of the climate, food, mode of living, epidemical distempers, and the intermixture of individuals ... that at first these alterations were less conspicuous, and confined to individuals; that afterwards, from continued action, they formed specific varieties; that these varieties have been perpetuated from generation to generation" (p.183-184)

It is fascinating to see how reason, logic and science manage to revolutionise ancient thinking and stereotypes, how observation and deductive reasoning could overcome ignorance, and even anticipate scientific insights that we only achieved two centuries later. Buffon's 'moule intérieur' or internal matrix is nothing else than our genetic code. 

"Just as species passed from existence, he concluded that they must come into existence as well, throughout the expanse of time. In 1753, the fourth volume of Histoire Naturelle had contained Buffon's observation that while humans and horses were greatly dissimilar from each other in outward appearances, the horse's hoof contained the same inventory of bones as the human hand. This was a "hidden resemblance" that evaded Linnaeus's systematics entirely, and which to Buffon "seems to indicate that in creating these animals the supreme Being wished to employ one idea, and to vary it at the same time in all possible ways."

Buffon thought that these resemblances were more than coincidences. If his postulated shaping internal matrix (moule intérieur) could account for individual variations within species, might it not also be responsible for even larger, inheritable changes? Such changes might accumulate, to the degree that they added up to an entirely new species.(p. 198)

He was also visionary enough to see that humanity was able to create much and advance technologically, but also that our own destruction and environmental damage was a possible consequence: 

"In The Epochs of Nature, the 1774 essay both included in Histoire Naturelle and published as a stand-alone volume, Buffon had argued that human-driven environmental change had proceeded to the point that it represented the "seventh and last epoch, when the power of man has assisted that of Nature." This power, he concluded, was not universally positive. "The most despicable condition of the human species is not that of the savage," he wrote,

but that of those nations that are a quarter policed, which have always been the real curse of human nature, and which civilized peoples still have trouble to contain today. They have, as we have said, ravaged the first happy land, they tore out the seeds of contentment ... Cast your eyes on the annals of all the peoples, you will count there twenty centuries of desolation for a few years of peace and repose". (p.353)

Jason Roberts has not only written a wonderful overview of the biological classification of nature in line with the great encyclopedists of the 18th century, but he has positioned it by showing two entirely different approaches to the subject by two fascinating characters, adding tremendous amounts of facts and events that make this a very readible and entertaining read. 

It's not only about two men with differing views, it's about the approach to science in general, and how evidence, facts, methodology and logic are the way forward. 

Brilliant! 

Philipp Blom - Nature's Mutiny (Picador, 2019) ****

From the end of the 16th to the mid-18th Century, the world was impacted by a Little Ice Age, for reasons still unknown. The consequences for people, nature and society were heavy: harvests did not yield any food, floods were frozen, hampering supplies, people were starving. We know this period from the many paintings of snow-covered landscapes and people ice-skating on frozen rivers. 

In this excellent historical review, German historian Philipp Blom analyses the deep impact of this moment of climate change on society, on its economy and as a consequence also on philosophy and science. 

Because of the lack of resources, the rich and powerful could no longer just grab land and levy taxes on the poor, because there was nothing to grab anymore. People in power had to think differently, on how to use the scarce resources in a much more efficient way than before: 

"For the first time in Western history, scholars and administrators began to think methodically about the structures and possibilities of  their  society and its economy without relying on biblical injunctions, their logical arguments by the doctors of the Church, or even the comparatively liberating philosophy of classical antiquity. Instead, they began to form their theories out of perceived current earthly needs such as money for the soldiers, for instance and on the immedi­ate material givens: geographical, demographic, and economic real­ities. They were leaving the Middle Ages behind and preparing the ground for what would eventually be called the Enlightenment." (p. 131)

That does not mean that wealth distribution was already on the agenda. Some thinkers were

"The wealthy merchant Mun clearly saw wealth as a danger to weak characters, and his therapy was equally unambiguous: 'As plenty and power doe make a nation vicious and improvident, so penury and want doe make a people wise and industrious." Wealth, it seemed, was good only in the hands of a small number of people who were born into it, or whose exceptional personal qualities enabled them to use it well." (p. 134)

Blom gives insights in the many influential thinkers of that time, most of which are known (Hobbes, Descartes, Giordano Bruno, ...), although some new and interesting figures come up, such as the Italian materialist Luciano Vanini, or the French priest and eccentric Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) who strongly believed in observation through the senses instead of dogma and abstract thinking. 

"But if all knowledge comes from the senses, what about know­ing things that do not reveal themselves to our senses? Impossible, judged the priest, taking sides in this debate. Nothing can be known without sensory experience, not even God. Especially not God. Descartes' attempt to prove, through logic, the existence of a being beyond sensory perception, crumbled under the beam of Gassen­di's analysis. You can believe whatever you like, the priest implied, but you can only know something if you can or could experience it through your physical perception." (p. 168)

 Leading some pages later to the observation that "Nothing is certain, we have no access to a transcendental truth. We are alone" (p. 173).

The book is extremely well written, and as you might have understood, more about philosophy and the way learned people started looking at nature, than about the science of the Little Ice Age as a natural phenomenon. 

The book is relevant for today's political context as well. Democracy and science are always the first victims of autocracy, religious zealotry and power-hungry tycoons; 

"Liberal democracy is not, as many of Hegel's latter-day disciples would have us believe, a necessary consequence of historical prog­ress. Instead, it is a largely accidental, contingent, and vulnerable historical experiment with an open outcome, revealed by recent developments to be in present danger of being subverted, ignored, left to atrophy, or eliminated completely. Democracy was born out ideas first broadly debated during the Little Ice Age. It could eas­ily die or be hollowed out to a mere façade during our own era of climate change, as living conditions for ordinary people become harsher and the very rich take more power for themselves." (p. 283)

I am only afraid that this message will only be read and understood by people who are already convinced, while the ones who actually need to hear it, rarely read anything longer than a post on social media. 

Snezana Lawrence - A Little History of Mathematics (Yale, 2025) ****

In one of the first chapters of this book, the story is told about Greeks in the 5th Century BC who consulted the oracle of Delphi to appease the god Apollo after the plague rampaged across the country. The oracle said that "in order to assuage the god, they should double the size of Apollo's altar, an ornate then-foot-high cube. That didn't sound very difficult to do. Double the cube? How hard could it be? (...). This problem, known as the Delian problem, 'rested on how to find the cube root of 2, and was eventually proven - not until the 19th Century - to be an impossible task using only Euclydian tools of geometry available in the fifth century". (p. 31). 

This little example illustrates the book well. It's a historical overview of new challenges and solutions in mathematics from the earliest ages to today. Math was definitely not my thing in school, and I only realised that integrals could be used to calculate volumes when on the exam we had to calculate the volume of a flat tyre. I never knew what it was actually used for. In retrospect, a lot of math could have been made more attractive by using some of the challenges in this book. It requires some basic knowledge of math, but not exceptionally so. 

The example also demonstrates the weird thing that is relatively unique to mathematics: on a very abstract form, there are many riddles that have no other apparent function or relationship with reality other than keep very smart minds busy for centuries, yet other times, the link with reality becomes obviously clear, and most of our current technology would not be possible without it. 

Lawrence takes us step by step through the creative processes of mathematical geniuses who solved ancient and new problems with sometimes completely creative approaches, opening new vistas for other scientists to go even a step further. This includes the amazingly long time it took to have a symbol for zero or for the equation, things which are so obvious today. 

Maybe in stark contrast to other sciences, discoveries in math have usually been the result of the stubborn passion of individuals to find solutions for mind-boggling problems. I have used the approach of Kepler in some of my presentations: to make people understand that the earth is revolving around the moon, he forced his audiences to imagine they were looking at the earth from the moon, which gave a totally different perspective on how the planets rotated. This sudden change in perspective clarified everything. 

From the early use of numbers to calculating in 24 dimensions, her story is accessible as it is fascinating. Her explanations and examples are sufficiently well explained for non-mathematicians to also enjoy the book, even if many will have trouble understanding how you can work in 4 or 5 dimensions, let alone in 24, but yes, today's math is capable of that. 

Peter Frankopan - Earth Transformed - An Untold Story (Bloomsbury, 2024) *****

The words that come to mind when reading this book are colossal, gargantuan, massive, monumental, gigantic, not only because the physical characteristic of its 660 pages, but also because of its incredible and erudite picture of the history of our world that is described here, viewed from the perspective of the interaction of our environment with historical events. 

Peter Frankopan is a British historian and writer. He is a professor of global history at Worcester College, Oxford, and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He is also author of the best-selling "The Silk Roads". 

I identified over fifty passages in the book that I intended to refer to in my review, but this is simply too much. 

The book starts at the real beginning, around 4.5 billion years ago, takes us over the origin of our species, prehistory, and then through history to our currrent times with a view to the future. The geography is our entire world, with impact and interaction between environment and people in every geography: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, plagues, and other calamities that shaped nations, beliefs and cultures. 

"as societies become larger in size and more specialised in their work, rulers and priests become the interpreters of everything from natural disaster to environmental challenges, from_ resource surpluses to shortfalls, from military defeats to premature deaths, helping explain punishments or bounties that were being administered by unseen gods. Environmental and natural calamities in particular were closely linked to 'moralising gods' who, out of anger or simply from boredom, handed out punishments for transgressions and apparent lack of respect. It is striking, though perhaps not surprising, that regions that were vulnerable to changes in weather conditions - above all droughts, but also floods and storms - developed cosmological systems based on 'moralising gods' who used such events to punish, show their displeasure and teach lessons" (p. 87)

Next to influencing the development of religions of course, the destruction of nature by man has also been something of all times, even if the recent developments are possibly more devastating. Frankopan gives many examples, but I'll just list some from Ancient Europe. 

"deforestation had seriously depleted wood supplies in many regions. The forests in what is now Tuscany had been cut down and exhausted, wrote Strabo around 2,000 years ago, to provide wood both for ships and for houses in and around Rome, including over-the-top villas that were of'Persian magnificence' - a nod to opulence, excess and bad taste. Pliny the Elder, writing not long afterwards, noted sadly that too many people undermine nature with the sole purpose of self-enrichment; it should hardly come as a surprise, therefore, that the earth should occasionally show its displeasure, through disasters such as earthquakes. Rather than content themselves with the bounteous food and natural wealth that the world provides, humans were too busy being overwhelmed by avarice to stop overexploiting its resources" (p. 192)

Despite the endless list of destruction and calamities, the author remains optimistic about man's capabilities of behavioural change and good stewardship, but then with a number of conditions that need to be fulfilled. 

"Some climate sceptics point out - rightly - that forecasts that look into the future can be highly speculative, and they also seek to dampen alarm by noting, again quite correctly, that economic growth, new technologies and adaptation may alleviate the problems that lie ahead and, in some cases, may even s.olve them. 8 That too, however, requires faith and confidence; moreover, what history in general and this book in particular show is that there have been a great many times in the past when societies, peoples and cultures have proved unable to adapt. Indeed, in some respects, the human story of progress is about batons being repeatedly dropped and picked up by others. 

The question, then, is not so much whether to adapt, but how, where and when to do so. And in that sense it is certainly true that there is plenty of good news, much to celebrate and reasons to be optimistic." (p. 643). 

As you can expect, this is a really important book, not only because of its perspectives on our history, but also as great background knowledge that should help us to become more environmentally conscious and especially for politicians to finally act in a meaningful way. This book was of course written before the current Trump administration, which decided to step out of the Paris Agreement, and claiming that global warming is a hoax, promoting "beautiful, clean coal" instead of renewable energy. I hope this short-sightedness will stop soon, yet with the probability that Donald Trump reads this book are zero, prospects become worse. 

Often when reading, I deplored the fact that the sources of all the references are missing in the book. At the end, he explains that there is a dedicated website that contains the 200 pages with his source material. The QR code below leads the reader to the source material. 

Vincenzo De Meulenaere - Coudenberg (Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, 2025) ****

In "Coudenberg" brengt geschiedkundige Vincenzo De Meulenaere het kasteel van Coudenberg weer tot leven. Op de "mons frigidus" zoals de heuvel in het oude Brussel ooit heette, werd in de tiende eeuw een versterking (castrum) gebouwd, die gaandeweg uitgroeide tot het koninklijk paleis voor vele koningen uit onze geschiedenis, om dan te worden vernietigd door een grote brand in de nacht van 3 op 4 februari 1731. De oorzaak hiervan is onbekend, maar het betekende het einde van het paleis, dat nog lang als een ruïne bleef bestaan tot het uiteindelijk in 1774 met de grond gelijk werd gemaakt. 

Vandaag zijn enkele ruïnes van dat paleis nog te bezichtigen onder het Koningsplein in Brussel. Het Koninklijk Paleis staat eigenlijk op dezelfde plek vandaag. Het Coudenbergpaleis heeft een gigantische geschiedenis gekend, en ongeveer al wie ooit macht had in Europa, van de vroege middeleeuwen tot de 18e Eeuw heeft er zijn intrek genomen of is er te gast geweest. Het is de verdienste van De Meulenaere om dit op een heel overzichtelijke en frisse manier weer tot leven te roepen, met veel aandacht voor anecdotes en zin voor detail. Het zijn vaak dezelfde hoofdfiguren als in "De Boergondiërs" van Bart Van Loo, maar hier geconcentreerd op een enkele plek. 

Als Brusselaar vind ik het fantastisch dat hier zoveel aandacht aan wordt geschonken, maar ik denk dat elke Belg verrast zal zijn dat een dergelijk paleis volledig verdwenen is. Ik heb ook in Tervuren gewoond, waar ook een gigantisch kasteel stond aan de vijvers, maar dat ook totaal is verdwenen, en ongeveer in dezelfde periode ook uitgroeide van een kasteel tot een paleis. 

De Meulenaere schrijft met veel liefde en belangstelling voor zijn onderwerp, wat het lezen ook de moeite waard maakt. Op het eind van het boek worden nog enkele kleurplaten weergegeven van schilderijen over het paleis en zijn protagonisten op verschillende tijdstippen. Van mij hadden dat er gerust veel meer mogen zijn, omdat het visuele natuurlijk ook zijn aantrekkingskracht heeft, maar ik weet dat het niet altijd eenvoudig is om reproductierechten te krijgen voor publicaties. 

Wie van onze vaderlandse geschiedenis houdt en van onze hoofdstad moet dit boek zeker lezen. Een aanrader. 

Michael Taylor - Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion (Bodley Head, 2024) ****½

What a wonderful treat of a book. It describes the discovery of "impossible monsters", the skeletons of dinosaurs and other reptiles in the cliffs of Lyme Regis in Dorset, Southwest England, first by the 12-year old Mary Anning. The ongoing discoveries of other skeletons created a completely different view on ancient animals and on the age of the earth, questioning biblical stories in which these strange animals never even featured. But the book is not about the animals themselves, but how they became the subject of intense debates with the Church and scientists who claimed that the earth was only 6,000 years old. 

Not much later Darwin developed his theory of evolution of the species which added even more fuel to the heated discussions. 

The book gives a wonderful overview of the debates that ensued between religion and science, the opposing views, the discrediting of scientific evidence by religious dogma, but also the whole public debate, including the reports of the actual meetings of the Royal Society of Science in which the topics were debated. 

Michael Taylor was born in 1988 and graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD. He is also the author of "The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery". The discoveries of Mary Anning have been made into a worthwhile movie, called "Ammonite" with Kate Winslet in the leading role. 

The discoveries of ancient animals and Darwin's theory of evolution found fertile ground in the now formal questioning of the actual reality of the Bible stories: 

"In 'The Essence of Christianity' (1841), Ludwig Feuerbach developed an anthropological approach to religion, which he described as merely 'the dream of the human mind'. Here, the God of justice represented human ideals of justice, and the God of love was the perfection of human ideals of love; it followed that Christ the miracle-worker was 'nothing else than a product and reflex of the supernatural human mind'. In 'The Life of Jesus' (1835) David Strauss had meanwhile looked at the gospels, striving to separate historical evi­dence from mythology. Though he did not deny that Christ had lived, Strauss decried the New Testament's 'false facts and impossible conse­quences which no eye-witness could have related'. Fatally, in his view, 'there was [for a long time] no written account of the life of Jesus', so that 'oral narratives alone were transmitted'; such tales had become 'tinged with the marvellous', growing into 'historical myth[s]'. For Strauss, these stories 'like all other legends were fashioned by degree', only in time acquiring 'a fixed form in our written Gospels' (p. 133)

The discoveries shoock the very foundations of religious belief, of the concept of right and wrong: 

"And what of the Lord Himself? (conservative priest) Richard Froude despaired at the 'goodness' of a god who had chosen to bless 'arbitrarily, for no merit of their own, as an eastern despot chooses his favourites, one small section of mankind, leaving all the world besides to devil-worship and lies'. Just why were the chosen people chosen? And how could Sutherland believe the Lord to be 'all-merciful, all-good' when He was 'jealous, passionate, capricious, [ and] revengeful, punishing children for their fathers' sin', tempting men 'into blindness and folly' when He knew they would fall, and punishing them eternally in a 'hell prison-house'? This god was not divine. He was 'a fiend' (p. 135)

The broadening of the number of scientists and other amateur scientists to deal with the information and the data, led to even further destruction of the foundations of religious belief: 

"Here, he (William Parker Foulke, an American lawyer) compared 'the modified bird Archaeopteryx' with 'the ordinary Dinosauria' in which class, in con­tradiction of Wagner, he placed the Compsognathus. There were differences to be sure, but Cope remarked upon 'the union of the tibia and fibula [of the Compsognathus] with the first series of tarsal bones, a feature formerly supposed to belong to the class Aves [ that is, birds] alone'. He also looked at 'the transverse direction of the pubes', the hip-bones, and again observed 'an approach to the birds'. After describing other 'bird-like features' such as the number and nature of its vertebrae, Cope suggested that the Compsognathus stood 'inter­mediate between the position in most reptiles and in birds' (p. 249)

"All this was proof, he concluded, that 'the facts of palaeontology . . . are not opposed to the doctrine of evolution, but, on the contrary ... enable us to form a conception of the manner in which birds may have been evolved from reptiles'. The 'fowl that may fly above the earth', sup­posedly created by the Lord on the fifth day of the first week, had in fact evolved from the sixth day's creatures 'that creepeth upon the earth'. The book of Genesis lay in ruins, the dinosaurs had tri­umphed, and even Richard Owen recognised the quality and force of the bulldog's performance. (p. 251)

"John William Draper (American chemist, professor at New York University) moved from the library at Alexandria to the 'pillared halls of Persepolis', from the Arabian schools of mathematics to the courts of the Inquisition, and from Renaissance universities to the learned societies of London. There was no question of his favour: 'The history of Science', he declared, 'is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expan­sive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other'. Of that 'traditionary faith' he was unsparing, describing the development of Catholicism as an 'intellectual night' which settled on Europe, .during which spiritual affairs passed from the control of classical philoso­phers 'into the hands of ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics, parasites, eunuchs, and slaves'. At last, however, that night was lifting, and civi­lised society had recognised the truth: 'that Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being abso­lutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice - it cannot have both'. (p. 286). 

Taylor's erudition is a pleasure to read, as is the fluency of his writing style. Highly recommended reading. 

Irene Vallejo - Papyrus (Hodder, 2023) ****½

I love books that give a broad, sweeping overview of everything there is to know about a subject, an encyclopaedic vision through history and the boundaries of our knowledge. This is such a book, and even more interesting, it's a book about books, about writing, about the importance of the physical aspects of human writing: clay tablets, parchment, paper, but even more so about what they achieved in terms of sharing stories, ideas and values. Irene Vallejo is a Spanish classical philologist with degrees from the universities of Zaragoza in Spain and Florence in Italy. 

Her passion is clear from the very start. She writes with incredible erudition, but with equal personal joy and personal experience of her relationship with texts and writing. 

 "After all the agonies of doubt, after exhausting every possible delay and excuse, one hot July afternoon, I face the void of the blank page. I've decided to open with the image of some enigmatic hunters stalking their prey. I identify with them. I appreciate their patience, their stoicism, the time they have taken, their steadiness, the adrena­line of the search. For years I have worked as an academic, consulting sources, keeping records, trying to get to know the historical mate­rial. But when it comes down to it, I'm so amazed by the true and recorded history I discover that it seeps into my dreams and acquires, without my volition, the shape of a story. I'm tempted to step into the skin of those who traveled the roads of an ancient, violent, tumultu­ous Europe in pursuit of books. What if I start by telling the story of their journey? It might work, but how can I keep the skeleton of facts distinct beneath the muscle and blood of imagination?  

The initial idea seems to me as fantastical as the journey in search of King Solomon's mines or the Lost Ark, but historical documents show that in the megalomaniacal minds of the kings of Egypt, it was truly possible. It might have been the last and only time - there, in the third century BC - that the dream of gathering all the books in the world, without exception, in a universal library, could become a reality. Today it seems like the plot of a fascinating, abstract story by Borges - or perhaps his great erotic fantasy." (p. XV)

She starts in ancient times, with the endeavour of Alexander The Great to conquer the known world, to create his own city of Alexandria in Egypt, with the largest collection of written material from all the places in his realm. He opened up the world to create a kind of proto-globalism where all cultures could meet and mingle, if not in person, then at least in their written forms. She draws a fantastic picture of how scrolls were written, how they were traded and collected, how they were catalogued and copied. It's a fascinating journey, one that we are of course by and large aware of, but she adds so many snippets of concrete examples and information that it make for fascinating reading. As in this example of the last Egyptian scribes, "who witnessed the shipwreck of their civilization". In 380 CE, Christianity became the compulsory state religion, and pagan cults were prohibited in the Roman Empire. 

"(In the) Temple of Isis on the island of Philae, to the south of the first cataract of the Nile, (...) a group of priests took refuge, men who were repositories of the secrets of their sophisticated writing system and who had been forbidden from sharing their knowledge. One of them, Esmet-Akhom, engraved on the walls of the temple the last hieroglyphic inscription ever written, which ends with the words "for all time and eternity." Some years later, the emperor Justinian I resorted to military force to close the temple where the priests of Isis were holding out, taking the rebels as prisoners. Egypt buried its old gods, with whom it had lived for thousands of years. And, along with its gods, its objects of worship, and the language itself. In just one generation, everything disappeared. It has taken fourteen centu­ries to rediscover the key to that language. (p.53)

Or in this example on the origin of poetry, which makes sense and appears quite obvious once you think about it: 

"In their effort to endure, denizens of the oral world realized that rhythmic language was easiest to remember, and on the wings of this discovery, poetry was born. During recitation, the melody helps the speaker repeat each line without alteration, since it is when the music is broken that the sequence falters. All of us were made to learn poems in school. Years later, after forgetting so many other things, we find we can still remember these poems with extraordi­nary clarity" (p. 81)

I also liked this example to please and annoy my friends in medical practice: 

"What kind of education did those Greeks receive? They were steeped in culture in all its variety. Unlike us, they weren't remotely interested in specialization. They looked down their noses at knowl­edge of a technical nature. They weren't obsessed with employ­ment; after all, they had slaves to work for them. Those who could avoided anything as degrading as having a trade. Leisure was more refined - in other words, it involved cultivating the mind, fostering friendships, making conversation, and leading a contemplative life. Only medicine, an unquestionable social necessity, demanded its own particular kind of training. As a result, doctors suffered from an overt cultural inferiority complex. All of them, from Hippocrates to Galen, repeated the mantra in their texts that a doctor is also a philosopher. They wished to avoid being confined to their field and tried to show themselves to be cultured, slipping the occasional quote by a key poet into their writings." (p. 179) 

She also gives a reflection on her own academic research, and the book format gives her also the opportunity to write about herself, about her own experiences, sometimes funny, sometimes deeply personal. 

As a PhD student she went to the Oxford Library to do some research, but she is confronted with the obligation to "take the oath": 

"A bald man behind a desk interrogated me with­out making eye contact. I answered all his questions, justified my presence, and showed him the papers he asked for with somewhat intimidating politeness. There was a long silence while he entered my information into his vast database, and then, hands still on his keyboard, in a startling swerve in time, he suddenly stepped into the Middle Ages and informed me pompously that the time had come for me to take the oath. He handed me a small stack of laminated cards that showed, each in a different language, the words I would have to say. I did so. I swore to obey the rules. Not to steal, damage, or deface a single book. Not to set fire to the library or help cause a blaze and watch with diabolical pleasure as the roaring flames engulfed its treasures, reducing them to ash." (p. 44)

 Or this even more personal reflection, which again lifts the book out of the academic space into a more personal environment, the perspective that is obviously excluded from any scientific research and publications: 

"Violence among children and teenagers is protected by a barrier of murky silence. For years I took comfort in not having been the class snitch, the tattletale, the coward. Not to have stooped that low. Misplaced pride and shame made me fol­low the rule that certain stories aren't told. Wanting to be a writer was a belated rebellion against that law. The stories that go untold are exactly the ones you must tell. I decided to become the snitch I was so afraid to be. The roots of writing are often dark. This is my darkness, the darkness that nurtures this book, and perhaps nur­tures everything I write. (p.226)

But of course the main message is the power of literature, of writing, of books in all their forms, how they made ideas accessible to anyone around the world, to start sharing common values and a common culture, or at least to value that they're might be other perspectives to look at the same reality: 

"In a time when the vast majority of Greeks scarcely set foot outside their native village, Herodotus was a tireless traveler. He enlisted on merchant ships, moved in slow caravans, struck up con­versation with many people, and visited a great number of cities in the Persian Empire, to give an account of the war with knowledge of the terrain and a range of perspectives. When he met the enemy in his daily life, he offered a different and more precise vision than any other writer. In the words of Jacques Lacarriere, Herodotus strove to topple his Greek countrymen's prejudices, teaching them that "the line between civilization and barbarism is never a geographic bor­der between countries, but a moral border within every people, and beyond that, within each individual." It's curious to note, so many centuries after Herodotus wrote his work, that the earliest history book begins in a ferociously modern way. There are wars between East and West, kidnappings, mutual accusations, differing versions of the same events, and alternative facts".  (p.162)

It is an ode to knowledge, to intellectual curiosity and debate ...

"In its ambiguous state as a Greek city outside of Greece and the seed of Europe beyond the bounds of Europe, Alexandria came to see itself from the outside. During the Library's greatest era and following in Alexander's wake, the Stoic philosophers were bold enough to teach for the first time that all people belonged to a com­munity without borders and were obliged to accept humanity wher­ever and under whichever circumstances they encountered it. We should remember the Greek capital of the Nile delta as the place where this effervescence was born, where the languages and tradi­tions of others began to matter, and where the world and knowledge were understood to be a shared territory. In these aspirations we find a precursor to the great European dream of universal citizenship. Writing, books, and libraries were the technologies that made this utopia possible". (p.232)

... and of course the incredible value of the freedom of speech: 

"Days before The Satanic Verses appeared in bookstores, during the publicity campaign, an Indian journalist asked Rushdie, off the record, whether he was aware of the row that was coming. The writ­er's response was unequivocal: 'It is a funny view of the world to think that a book can cause riots." 

If we look back at the general history of book destruction, we'll see that in fact, the funny view of the world - the oasis, the strange paradise, the Shangri-La, the forest of Lothlorien - is freedom of expression. Over the centuries, the written word has been stubbornly persecuted, and the times when bookstores receive only peaceful visitors who do not wave flags or wag fingers, break windows or set things on fire, or give themselves over to the primitive zeal for prohibition, are in fact the unusual ones. " (p. 294)

The scientific study of writing and books becomes a personal story as well as a humanistic manifesto. At times it is not easy to follow the logic or the thread of her narrative, because so many pieces of information are provided. It is this wealth that makes the book so entertaining and a pleasure to read. 

Highly recommended!

Abbott Kahler - Eden Undone (Harper Collins, 2024) **½

When buying books on Amazon, they often give "recommendations based on your past choices", and this book popped up, with the amazing subtitle "A True Story of Sex, Murder and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II", which appealed to my boyish nature. 

I will refrain from doing semantic exercises on the description "A True Story" as initiated by the movie Fargo. What happened then is not a story. It is true. A German physician and his patient move to Floreana in 1930, one of the Galápagos Islands with the sole intent of creating their own paradise, their own eden, far from the madness and obligations of society. Dr. Friedrich Ritter also has the high aspirations to write his own philosophical treatise about how to live in this world. He describes their new paradise in a series of newspaper articles, which of course leads to other people sharing his idea. They are followed by another German couple who are looking for a place where their ill and almost blind son, still a boy, can hope to benefit from a good environment. Next comes an Austrian-French sex-obsessed Baroness with two 'male slaves' and an Ecuadorian translator. The baroness is a true narcissist, self-obsessed, manipulative, dictatorial, charming if need be, seductive and commanding. 

Because the media attention they create, they also generate the interest of the very rich Americans, who come to visit with their cruise ships to see for themselves how these Europeans have eked out a living in the harsh environment of the Galapagos. 

Needless to say that this Eden soon becomes a nightmare for all involved, with the truth becoming a commodity as rare as luxury goods. Human nature comes to the fore even among the most principled people, leading to theft, hypocrisy, gossip, shifting alliances, hate, death and murder. 

Kahler brings it like a documentary, extensively using excerpts from letters and articles, and literally including all events that took place, which gives possibly a very distorted view of the actual boring life these people must have had on the island, with the exception of the conflicts that were documented. The book has also no literary ambition to bring more than just a report. It's a missed opportunity with this kind of material to work from. 

It's a fascinating microcosm of humanity, isolated and reduced to a handful of people. It could have been staged for a play, to reduce the madness of our kind on one tiny location, with high hopes and lofty aspirations leading to a predictable catastrophy within a very short time span. It's a mirror to all of us, and if a fiction author had developed a plot such as this one, the reader would say it's possibly too programmatic, too artificial to be credible. 

In this sense it really is a story. But then a true one. 

Sarah Bakewell - Humanly Possible (Penguin, 2023) *****

When reading the short description of the book's content, I was hesitant. I am already convinced of the value of its contents. Second, I have read already so much on the subject that I wondered whether it would convey anything new. The reality of reading proved me wrong. Even if you consider yourself a 'humanist', and maybe because you are, you should read this book. It is extremely well-documented and extremely well-written. Bakewell starts the book with the 'credo' of humanism, as penned by Robert G. Ingersoll in the 19th Century: 

Happiness is the only good. 

The time to be happy is now. 

The place to be happy is here. 

The way to be happy is to make others so. 

Even if I was well aware or vaguely aware of the content of the thinkers and authors that she describes in this book, the real novelty is how these thoughts were received in society and how they evolved to become part of broader political and philosophical thinking. 

Her journey starts in the early 14th Century with the writings of Petrarch and Boccacio ("When his father contemplated training him for the church as 'a good way to get rich' it turned out he had no liking or aptitude for that either"). Both authors raided libraries to re-discover the ancient Latin authors, revived them, wrote about them. Bakewell mentioned that Bocaccio at one stage considered abandoning his literary endeavours because "a monk, Pietro Petroni of Sienna, warned him in 1632 that he would imminently die if he did not get rid of all the non-Christian books in his library and stop writing books himself. This had been revealed to him in a vision". Luckily, Petrarch used smarter arguments to convince him of the opposite: 'ignorance is not the path to virtue". He advocated for knowledge and learning, of a healthy abundance in words and ideas. 

We take it for granted today that we have immediate access to the works of Cicero, Epicurus, Terentius and Democritus, but that is of course not the case. Very few scholars even spoke Greek, so they had no way of understanding or valuing whatever Greek texts still existed in hidden libraries across Italy or elsewhere. The geneaology goes further: Poggio rediscovered Lucretius' "On The Nature of Things". Printing was invented and became a great power to share old and new ideas about broader groups of people. Lorenzo Valla is the next in line. 

"His name was Lorenzo Valla, and his 1440 treatise On the Donation of Constantine is one of the great humanist achievements. It combines a precise scholarly assault with the high rhetorical techniques learned from the ancients, served up with a sauce of hot chutzpah. All these assets were necessary to Valla, because he was daring to attack one of the church's central modern claims: its justification for having complete power over all of western Europe. It could be a short step from that to questioning its other claims to authority, too, including the authority it held over peo­ple's minds. Valla seems to have been a man who had no fear and could never be persuaded to keep quiet. He traveled all over Italy, working for a series of patrons and supporters-at this point he was living in Naples-but he made enemies everywhere as well. The poet Maffeo Vegio had already warned him to seek advice before writing things that would hurt people's feelings, and generally to restrain his "intellectual violence." (p.87)

It takes courage to have intellectual curiosity, to be open to ideas that challenge beliefs and established authority: "Dispute and contradiction, not veneration and obedience, are the essence of intellectual life. And crucially, Valla did not merely tell people they were wrong, he gave the reasons why they were wrong" (p.93). 

On Vesalius: 

"He blamed both himself and other anatomists for having been too Galen-reliant: "I shall say noth­ing more about these others; instead I shall marvel more at my own stu­pidity and blind faith in the writings of Galen and other anatomists." He ends the section by urging students to rely on their own careful examina­tions, taking no one's word for anything, not even his own. This was a good warning, since Vesalius himself did not get every­thing right. One error was that he failed to identify the clitoris cor­rectly, misdescribing it as part of the labia. It took another Padua anatomist, Realdo Colombo, to correct him. Realdo even knew what it was for, which implies that he had noticed it in contexts other than the dissection table. He named it ''amor Veneris, vel dulcedo" ("love of Venus, or thing of pleasure"), gave details of its role in women's sexual experiences, and remarked, "It cannot be said how astonished I am that so many famous anatomists had not even an inkling of such a lovely thing, perfected with such art for the sake of such utility." (p. 130)

On education and Erasmus schooling in a monastery: 

Instead, the effect on Erasmus was to implant in him a lifelong aver­sion to cruelty or intimidation of any kind. He would have agreed with a remark made centuries later by E. M. Forster in describing the miseries of his own public-school education: "The worst trick it ever played me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible." That was another reason Erasmus took a poor view of his schooling: the unworldliness and irrelevance to real life of the monks' attitudes. It was a common humanist complaint to say that such institutions were old-fashioned, pedantic, and out of touch with reality. For Erasmus, as for Agricola, and later for Forster, a young mind needs to be liberated from meaningless, useless systems of knowledge as taught by unenlight­ened masters of an outmoded stamp who themselves have no idea how to live." (p. 142) 

Other luminaries who are part of the genealogy: Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Andreas Vesalius, Desiderius Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Diderot, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Paine, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, Jeremy Bentham, Frederick Douglas ("There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him"), Oscar Wilde, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm von Humboldt ("The State that enforces a particular belief is denying people the right to be fully human"), Matthew Arnold. Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Ernest Renan, Auguste Comte, Bertrand Russell, ...

Bakewell is also very conscious of the value of humanism to all humans and not only to the male part of it. 

"Pericles (told) Athenian free men in 430 BCE that they are excel­lent because they are harmonious, responsible, and politically active - only to add that this does not apply to women, whose only virtue is never to be mentioned by anyone at all. That continued to be the norm for millennia: instead of the mainstream of human excellence, women were offered a rivulet of negative side virtues: modesty, silence, placidity, innocence, chastity. Each of these is characterized by the absence of some positive quality (confidence, eloquence, active responsibility, experience, and - well, I'll leave it to you to decide what the virtuous opposite of chastity is, but whatever we call it, it is surely more fun)." (p.203) 

There

"Connections, communications, moral and intellectual links of all kinds, as well as the recognition of difference and the questioning of ar­bitrary rules: these all go to form the web of humanity. They enable each of us to live a fulfilling life on Earth, in whichever cultural context we are at home, and also to try to understand each other the best we can. They are more likely to encourage an ethics of worldly flourishing, in contrast with belief systems that picture each frustrated soul waiting hopefully for a correction of fortunes in the afterlife. The modern humanist will always prefer to say, with Robert G. Ingersoll, that the place to be happy is here, in this world, and the way to be happy is to try to make others so.  The old Golden Rule, associated with several religions as well as with secular morality, has much to offer here: "Do as you would be done by." Or, in the more modest, reversed form that is more hospitable to diver­sity: Don't do something to others if you wouldn't like it yourself. It is not perfect, but a good rule of the humanist thumb is to say that, if you don't like being told to stay silent and invisible, or being enslaved and abused, or being unable to get into buildings because no one thought to install a ramp, or being considered less than human, then the chances are that other people are not fond of it, either. Or, as Kongzi said: "The Master's way consists of doing one's best to fulfill one's humanity and treating others with an awareness that they, too, are alive with humanity." (p 218, 219)

This book is a great overview of humanist thought: inquisitive, inclusive, caring, ethical, motivated by a happiness for all, in diversity of thought and the right of each individual to personal freedom and fullfilment and happiness. For me this overview is the absolute hope and despair of humanity. Hope because it offers a clear perspective and a way of thinking, despair because over the centuries of expanded thinking on the subject, we have not moved significantly further at a global level. Our technology has advanced exponentially over the last two centuries, mainstreaming it across the globe, yet humanist thinking has despite its obvious value and benefits barely created strong understanding and use in most of the world. 

Bakewell is an excellent guide, erudite and entertaining and truly committed. 

Not to be missed. 

Noel B. Gerson - Queen of Caprice - A Biography of Kristina of Sweden (Sapere, 1962) ***½

I am sure that all Swedes know the story of Kristina of Sweden, who was queen from 1632 when she was 16 years old till 1654, when she abdicated after having converted to catholicism. She was a unique personality, controversial, smart, curious, headstrong, and sometimes incredibly selfish and even childish. Hence this biography's title: "Queen of Caprice", and that seems an apt description. So many elements of her character were in conflict with each other, that it is easy to qualify her as a tragic figure, but on the other hand she has always been master of her own destiny with a privilege that few other people had. Today we would categorise her as "highly gifted", a situation which was both a blessing and a curse. And that makes her biography so interesting to read. 

Here are some nice excerpts which describe some aspects of her personality. She did everything to make Stockholm the Athens of the North, by inviting scientists from around Europe to Sweden to teach and to experiment and to share ideas. 

"Professor Stiernhielm brought the microscope and the burning glass home from his travels, and in his classroom he demonstrated their marvels. He showed his students a flea under the microscope, and in a dramatic demonstration of the power of the glass, burned the long beard of a peasant. He was arrested, thrown into prison, and tried before a provincial court. The peasant declared that he was a sorcerer, and a pastor who had been present when the flea had been exhibited under the microscope, testified that the professor was an atheist. Stiernhielm was sentenced to burn at the stake. The case was called to Kristina's attention, and she hastily reversed the order, restored the professor to his former position and rebuked the court. But a few months later, Stiernhielm's life again was threatened. He made the statement in a lecture that Hebrew was an older language than Swedish, and this startling pronouncement so infuriated his students that they rioted. A detachment of royal cavalry saved the professor's life and escorted him to Stockholm, where Kristina expressed her opinion in terms that no one could misunderstand: she made Stiernhielm a noble and expelled the rioters from the university." (p. 82)

Despite her being very catholic, and asking any support possible from the Vatican to help her with her situation, she was still - as usual - very critical of the Church at the same time/ 

 In one of her letters: "In all candor, however, I am compelled to observe that the Church must certainly be governed by the Holy Spirit, for since I have been in Rome I have seen four popes, and I swear that not one of them had common sense" (p. 263)

 She was also a social non-conformist, and even when young she enjoyed horse-riding and sword-fighting for which male clothing was more comfortable. She did not care about what other people thought or said about this. If she wanted to wear trousers, she would wear trousers. At the same time she was very conscious of her femininity. She also liked to be confrontational and expose hypocrisy. 

"A new law caused her to revolt. The Pope issued a stern decree in which he said that the dress of ladies was shocking and extravagant; even those who could afford to buy costly gowns should find other, worthier ways to spend their money, and he deplored current styles, which featured low-cut dresses and bare arms. Kristina made no protest, but invited the Pope to call on her at his convenience. When he arrived at her palace, she received him in a shapeless, ragged, long-sleeved dress that she had bought from a peasant woman. She had expanded her court in recent years to include several ladies, and all of them made their obeisances similarly attired." (p. 276)

She was an unusual character with an unusual personality. This makes her biography interesting and fun reading. The book is well written and nicely documented with diary notes and correspondence by the queen herself or by her long-time servant Mathilde. It offers plenty of anecdotes about her interaction with the highest nobility and royalty of Europe, while at the same time about her almost boyish sense of rebellion. You marvel at her single-mindedness, her broad-mindedness, her cultural and scientific curiosity and the constant counterforces in her that undermine most of her grand scale endeavours. 

John Glassie - A Man Of Misconceptions (Riverhead Books, 2012) ****

Several years ago I read Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès novel "Là Où Les Tigres Sont Chez Eux" in which he extensively mentions the 17th Century polymath and jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who was as much a scientist as he was a fantast and con man. For one or the other reason I stumbled upon a biography of the man, which is easy to recommend for anyone interested in the history of science or religion. 

To the man's credit, he was interested in everything, and his arrogant self-confidence made him also belief he was the best at everything, from math over astronomy and physics to medicine and linguistics, and of course also astrology and alchemy. He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman college. He wrote extensive books on many subjects. Some of his contributions were valuable, but for many of them he got away with them because nobody else had any knowledge on the subject. 

His books were read by scientists and philosophers such as Leibniz, Descartes and Christiaan Huygens. Descartes sent the books back with the following comment: "The Jesuit is quite boastful; he is more of a charlatan than a scholar". Leibniz was then much younger and absolutely fascinated by Kircher's writings, even if he already asked for some evidence for the claims made by the Jesuit. 

The Jesuits were at that time among the world leaders in science education and development, and Kircher's role is best placed in this context. 

"Clavius envisioned an elite corps of mathematician priests "distributed in various nations and kingdoms like sparkling gems," serving as "a source of great fear to all enemies" and as "an incredible incitement to make young people flock to us from all the parts of the world." Many of his proposals were put in place. And so while he was rigorously and rather inflex­ibly educated in Aristotelian and Thomist doctrines, Kircher also received private instruction in the very discipline that was beginning to undermine them." (p.34)

Although already at that time, the role of the jesuits was often mocked, and Kircher clearly did not match the description of the ideal jesuit: 

"Recall that for the Jesuits, the path toward Christ was predicated on an effort to achieve humility. It's unclear how well or how often Kircher took a good look at his apparent lack in that regard. But given that hypocrisy is almost requisitely present in human beings, and common among religious, political, and philosophical practices, he surely wasn't the only vain or selfinterested member of the Society of Jesus. As the satirizing sermon by a monk from another order in Rome went, the Jesuits "are the best Men that Live on the Earth. They are as Modest as Angels. They never open their eyes to cast a Look upon the Ladies at Church. They are such great Lovers of Restraint, that you never see them in the Streets. They are so in Love with Poverty, that they Despise and trample upon all the Riches in the World. They never come near Dying Persons or Widows, to importune them to be Remember' d in their last Wills .... They never go among Courts, or mind State Affairs."  (p.209)

Kircher claimed that he could decipher hieroglyphs, and because nobody else had any clue, he was believed in this matter. When a heavy fallen obelisk was found, Kircher even gave the translation of the side that had not been revealed yet because it was still lying on the ground. 

""They in turn marveled at my boldness," Kircher claimed, "and perhaps my lack of temerity, but several decreed that the truth of the matter must be determined by the original on the obelisk itself' After the obelisk had finally been rolled, they compared Kircher's scheme with the newly revealed side. "And when they had discovered that soundly and without error all of my markings were composed as on the original," he recalled, "they were utterly stupefied, those same men who were formerly mocking my interpretations as merely pure conjecture." This left "certain individuals saying that this knowledge had been inspired by the power of God, while several, not without calumny, even asserted that the knowledge had been acquired by some illicit pact with a demon. Some, finally, judged that this type of knowledge, attained by many years of study, was able to be acquired by the strength of a singular intellect." (p.204)

Kircher collected automata and made some himself, such as this wonderful tool that could do almost anything: 

"What is known about Kircher's device comes from an instruc­tional guide he wrote titled Specula Melitensis (Maltese Observatory), which, as one historian says, mostly conveyed Kircher's "enthusiastic capacity for fatiguing detail." The apparatus had "the form and figure of an observatory," or watchtower, hence its name, and it evidently employed the Llullian discs. Beyond that, it's hard to say precisely what this instrument looked like or how it worked. A "universal chronoscope" was on "the first cubical side." A "cosmographic mir­ror" was on the second. A "physico-mathematical mirror" was on the third, and the fourth cubical side was used for "medical-mathematical" purposes. The top of the structure was a pyramid. In all, the device had one hundred twenty-five functions. Among other things, it could be used to determine: 

• the "amount of dusk"
• the "flux and reflux of the seas"
• the astrological houses of the planets
• the signs of disease and "simple medicines for healing"
• the best times to go fishing and to give birth" (p.90)

He was fascinated by everything, often boastful, less competent and scientific than he presented himself, but like with Leibniz, his unbridled interest in everything, and his incredibly productive output on so many topics raised the interest among other, possibly better scientists, to also start investigating the same topics with more success. 

"Peiresc put it very mildly when he said that Kircher's ambitions were "a little grander than the ordinary goals of his colleagues." This led to a lack of restraint as well as other problems, including a certain flexibility with the truth. But for Kircher there were greater truths and lesser ones; there were different measures of truth, metaphors, and-multiple meanings, things for which fact-based modern science has no place. Progress required another kind of split, between the literal and the literary. But that was not a split Kircher ever would have been able to abide. And it makes sense that as his scientific reputation diminished, his work continued to capture and to fuel the creative imagination. (p. 269)

This biography is well-documented, well-written and offers a fascinating view on the century when science was still in its early infancy. That some did not make great inventions such as Kircher, is inevitable. His broad interests, his assured self-confidence and his deliberate fabrications make this a wonderful read. 

Bart Van Loo - De Bourgondiërs (De Bezige Bij, 2022) ****

Wat een klepper! Al die bekende namen uit onze geschiedenislessen, zoals Filips De Goede, Karel De Stoute, Maria van Bourgondië, Filips De Schone komen in dit ongelooflijk goed gedocumenteerd boek weer tot leven, en uiteraard veel menselijker en beter gekaderd dan ooit op school mogelijk was geweest. Voor mij was die sterke verwevenheid tussen Vlaanderen en de Lage Landen enerzijds, en het huis van Bourgondië anderzijds nieuw, en zeker het feit dat vele van deze heersers zich in Vlaanderen ophielden, of hier opgroeiden en zelfs soms onze taal spraken. 

Wat ik wel wist, maar niet in deze mate, was de grote rivaliteit tussen de steden Gent en Brugge die elkaar naar de kroon staken als rijkste plekken van Europa. Ook het politiek opportunisme van de Bourgondiërs om bondgenootschappen te sluiten met wie het hen op dat moment het best uitkwam - Frankrijk, Engeland, de Habsburgers - en hiervoor soms duizenden mensenlevens vergooiden in oorlogen en veldslagen om dan plots hun kap te draaien en weer bevriend te worden met de vijand, ongeacht de horror die de gewone mens hiervoor moest ondergaan. Hetzelfde geldt voor hun feesten. Het kon niet groot en uitbundig en rijk en extreem genoeg zijn. Van Loo geeft tot in het kleinste detail een overzicht van alle gerechten, gerechtsculpturen en vertier dat bij deze zwelgpartijen voor honderden genodigden plaatsvonden, niet voor het genot zelf, maar vooral om rijkdom en macht te tonen aan de buitenwereld. 

Van Loo geeft ook een heel knap beeld van de kwaliteit van onze Vlaamse en Hollandse kunstenaars van die tijd en de meesterwerken die ze op vraag van de Bourgondiërs maakten, uiteraard schilderijen in de eerste plaats, maar ook graftombes, beeldhouwwerken en andere wandtapijten met sterke tips waar je die kan gaan bezoeken. 

Het is een meesterlijk boek, goed geschreven, grondig gedocumenteerd, met veel oog voor de menselijke kant van de zaak en met een duidelijk perspectief naar de context van vandaag. Het enige euvel is mijn eigen geheugen dat worstelt om al die stortvloed aan informatie te blijven bewaren. Het is veel, heel veel, maar gelukkig kan ik altijd terug grijpen naar dit exemplaar. 

Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat u er evenveel leesplezier en kennisverrijking aan zal hebben als ik. 

Joren Vermeersch - Vlaanderens Waanzinnigste Eeuw 1297-1385 (Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, 2023) ***½

Wat een heerlijk boek. Wat een plezier om een dergelijk vlot geschreven geschiedenisboek te kunnen lezen, over een periode in onze Vlaamse geschiedenis die ons helpt om ook onze situatie van vandaag in perspectief te zien. 

Vermeersch 'vertelt' deze waanzinnigste eeuw vanuit de fictionele perspectieven van mensen uit die tijd, visserskinderen, burgers, arbeiders, soldaten, wat het verhaal een stuk realistischer en laagdrempeliger maakt. Deze verhaaltechnische ingreep doet overigens niets af aan de geschiedkundige waarde van dit heel goed gedocumenteerde boek. Het nadeel is wel dat wanneer sommige situaties worden beschreven, we niet meer precies weten of dit nu effectief zo is gebeurd, dan wel dat Vermeersch hier zelf een brug legt naar onze moderne tijden. 

Om een voorbeeld te geven. Op blz 270 schrijft hij: "

"Op 10 maart 1325 had d'Auxonne een bijeenkomst belegd van de grafelijke raad in Oudenaarde, om de rekeningen van het voorgaande fiscale jaar te bespreken. Pas toen drong de ernst van de budgettaire noodtoestand tot Louis door. In 1324 werd er een krater geslagen van exact 5.185 pond. Dat kwam neer op een begrotingstekort van liefst 37%. Gualterotti zetelde op dat moment amper twee jaar als grafelijk ontvanger in de raad, maar had in die periode al bijna achtduizend pond aan Louis geleend. Elke nieuwe lening vergde het verpanden van een nieuwe reeks grafelijke belastingen en tollen. Als de schuld niet tijdig werd vereffend, zou Gualterotti ze vele jaren lang voor zijn persoonlijke gewin mogen innen.   

'Die gewiekste aasgier was goed op weg om heel Vlaanderen uit te kleden,' sakkerde Louis in de marge van die vergadering. Maar d'Auxonne wuifde zijn mokken daarover argeloos weg: 'Maak u toch geen zorgen, Monseigneur. Eens de laatste rebel aan de hoogste boom hangt, zullen we heel Vlaanderen doen bloeden en boeten. Dan kopen we alle verpande tollen en belastingen makkelijk terug. U zal het zien: de staatsschuld is er vanzelf gekomen en ze zal ook vanzelf weer weggaan.' "

Dat laatste citaat lijkt verdacht veel op wat PS Minister Guy Mathot zei over onze Belgische situatie in de jaren '80: "Le problème des déficits budgétaires est arrivé de lui-même, il partira de lui même". Verwees Mathot naar d'Auxonne? Of heeft Vermeersch het citaat van Mathot naar de 14e Eeuw verplaatst? Of is het zuiver toeval? De paragrafen tonen wel aan dat toen zeker de grote financiers, zoals hier uit Italië, een zeer grote politieke macht hadden achter de schermen, met name de Compagnia dei Bardi en de Compagnia dei Peruzzi, zelfs nog tientallen jaren later. 

Vermeersch schetst de machtsverhoudingen tussen alle betrokken partijen zeer goed: de Fransen, de Franse graaf, de Kerk, de burgemeesters van de vijandige steden Brugge en Gent, de gegoede burgerij die over veel geld en macht beschikte, de arbeidersgilden die onder elkaar dan nog naijver toonden. Ondanks de onwaarschijnlijke rijkdom van Vlaanderen, of misschien precies door die immense rijkdom, lag iedereen met iedereen overhoop, wat een ongelooflijke opportuniteit was voor de bevolking om zelf op te staan en een vorm van democratisch zelfbestuur te kiezen. 

"Maar in Vlaanderen was de geest uit de fles. Aangestoken door revolutionaire koorts riskeerden jonge mannen en vrouwen de gesel en de galg om de revolutie te prediken. Er brak een nieuwe tijd aan waarin het volk zelf zou heersen en afrekenen met zijn vroegere meesters, zo orakelden zij. Het zou rivieren van bloed vergen om die geest terug in de fles te krijgen. Daar was Louis van overtuigd. En met hem alle hoge edelen in de grafelijke raad. 

Want het vuur van de opstand - of moeten we zeggen het gif -had ondertussen ook de grate steden aangetast. In februari was ook in Brugge, het kloppende hart van de Europese handel, de revolutie uitgebroken. Opgezweept door heetgebakerde textielarbeiders, had de volkspartij er de rijke poorterij uit het stadsbestuur gekegeld. Voortaan regeerden de ambachten er helemaal alleen. Sujetten met radicale anti-Franse en anti-adellijke overtuigingen voerden er nu het hoge woord." (blz 278)

 Vermeersch vermeldt dat deze "gevaarlijke ideeën uit Vlaanderen over vrijheid, gelijkheid en broederschap begonnen namelijk de geesten te besmetten in naburige vorstendommen" (bls 315). Ook hier neem ik aan dat deze leuze van de Franse revolutie van 1789 eerder een dichterlijke vrijheid is dan dat het Vlaamse volk die zo expliciet uitte in die tijd, om aan te geven dat de zaden van deze revolutie al veel vroeger al werden gezaaid. 

Hij belicht de grote rivaliteit tussen de steden, de ondankbare situatie van de boeren- en arbeidersklassen, de hardvochtigheid van wie macht had, en de absolute gruwel van geweld, folteringen, verkrachtingen, moord. 

Ik denk en ik hoop dat vele geschiedenisleerkrachten dit boek zullen gebruiken bij hun lessen. Ik ben verre van een nationalist (integendeel zelfs), maar het is wel belangrijk dat ook jongeren onze geschiedenis kennen, en uiteraard ook alle Vlamingen. Het is niet allemaal zo zwart-wit als vaak wordt gesteld. Ik heb veel nieuwe zaken geleerd in dit boek, en ook genoten van de vertelstijl. 

Een aanrader!