Behind closed doors to no one but the crew, a last minute run-through:  swirling, singing bodies sweeping the stage — sound & light checks — final instructions — then from technical director Troy, “All right, everyone, break a leg!”

A half-hour later the opening performance of Pippin is underway, and the audience settles in for what will prove a strangely unsettling entertainment.  And if that sounds oxymoronic, it is no more than the truth.  Pippin is entertainment:  song, dance and humor, all in generous quantities and brightly delivered  through the irrepressable choreography of Liz Rossi.  Vibrant performances by Reggie Jose, Daniel Crowley, and Dani Da Vito in particular, as Leading Player, Pippin and Fastrada, are notable for effortless energy and flair, while a solid performance by Marc Cornes as Charlemagne provides the strong central pillar around which all else revolves.

But Pippin is entertainment with many a dark turn — a sparkling confectionary hiding a bitter heart.   Set and costumes are, for the most part, minimal and amusing, bordering on cartoon.  Historical references, though present, have less to do with history than with the human condition itself, viewed sardonically through a mock-heroic lens.   

Still, there are scenes which, perhaps because of their minimalism, are unexpectedly evocative — the rising of newly-slain soldiers from a battlefield at night, engaging Pippin in a wierd dialogue on the nature of Valhalla and fate, and the darkened interior of a candle-lit cathedral, perfect setting for an episode of prayer and patricide.

Director Jeffrey Ingman has become known for giving old plays an original twist , for bringing out essential elements previously overlooked, and his Pippin is no exception.  It is a puzzle, a paradox — a tale of delight and despair, eroticism and envy, fantasy and fate – a musical “comedy” that raises difficult questions,  inspires you to dance and makes you laugh, however uneasily.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pippin continues December 3rd, 4th & 5th at 7:30 p.m. in the Wallman Hall Theatre, with an additional matinee performance (2 p.m.) on December 6th.

On November 29:

800 Charlemagne arrived in Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

1832  Louisa May Alcott, American novelist, was born.

1849  Sir John Ambrose Fleming, British physicist, was born.

1893 Elizabeth Yates became the first woman in the British Empire to win a mayoral election when she became Mayor of Onehunga.

1893 Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, was founded by Zhang Zhidong.

1898  C. S. Lewis, Irish writer, was born.

1910 The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system was issued to Ernest Sirrine.

1913  Fédération Internationale d’Escrime, the international organizing body of competitive fencing was founded in Paris, France.

 1917  Merle Travis, American singer/guitarist, was born.

1929  U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1932 Jacques Chirac, French President, was born.

1933 John Mayall, British blues musician, was born.

1944 The first surgery on a human to correct blue baby syndrome was performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

1945 The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

1961 Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission – Enos, a chimpanzee, was launched into space.

 

 Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

Albert Einstein aime et recommande le libre !

Albert Einstein entrain d'expliquer comment il a créé une macro vim pour la bombe atomique

Le sapin de Noël du geek, il y'a qu'en ASRALL qu'on voit ça !

Même le switch CISCO a droit à une belle décoration !

Décorations du sol au plafond, même le projecteur n'y échappe pas !

Même les stations de travail deviennent des objets de décoration !

Voilà, la prochaine fois je vais essayer de faire une petite vidéo de la salle quand Seb lance des musiques de noël sur son serveur distant.

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. –John Kenneth Galbraith, former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in Money: Whence it came, where it went (1975).

J.K. GALBRAITH’S STATEMENT THAT COMPLEXITY is used by modern economics to confuse the truth about money is a fact. Simply put, bankers replaced money with credit and debt in order to profit by the indebting of others. It’s why bankers are now so rich. It is also why others are now so poor.

Understanding money is not rocket science. Modern currencies are a fraud, a fraud that has escaped detection much as did Bernard Madoff’s ponzi-scheme. Bernard Madoff’s scheme was based on the fraud that investor’s money was, in fact, invested. The fraud of modern economics, however, is that money isn’t actually money—and they don’t want you to know it.

MERRY OLD ENGLAND: THE MOTHER OF MODERN MONETARY FRAUD
From the time of Charlemagne until the 12th century, the silver currency of England was made from the highest purity silver available. Unfortunately there were drawbacks to minting currency of fine silver, notably the level of wear it suffered, and the ease with which coins could be “clipped”, or trimmed, by those dealing in the currency.

In the 12th century a new standard for English coinage was established by Henry II — the Sterling Silver standard of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. This was a harder-wearing alloy, yet it was still a rather high grade of silver. It went some way towards discouraging the practice of “clipping”, though this practice was further discouraged and largely eliminated with the introduction of the milled edge we see on coins today. By 1696 the currency had been seriously weakened by an increase in clipping during the Nine Years’ War to the extent that it was decided to recall and replace all hammered silver coinage in circulation.

CLIPPING CURRENCY BIG TIME:
THE INTRODUCTION OF PAPER BANKNOTES
The real clipping of money began in 1694 when the Bank of England was allowed to issue its paper banknotes to circulate alongside silver coins. Over the next three hundred years, the bankers’ debt-based notes would replace gold and silver; and, as a consequence, the entire world would eventually become in debt to the bankers.

The triumph of private bankers in replacing money with banknotes was to be universal as all nations would eventually succumb to the banker’s easy credit and inevitable debt. Today, the central ingredient of money is not gold or silver but confidence, confidence in banknotes no longer backed or convertible to anything of value. Modern economics is a highly successful confidence game run by bankers. The following is from the Bank of England’s own website emphasizing its considerable efforts to maintain the necessary confidence in its on-going con game:

The Bank of England has been issuing banknotes for over 300 years …Gaining and maintaining public confidence in the currency is a key role of the Bank of England and one which is essential to the proper functioning of the economy. [bold mine]

THE BANKER’S CON GAME
The long-running and lucrative confidence game, however, is about to end. Its breakdown is now underway as constantly compounding consumer, business and government debt can no longer be carried and/or paid for by existing or future productivity, especially as economies are contracting, not expanding, and collective debt levels are skyrocketing to levels which can never be repaid.

We borrowed against tomorrow and tomorrow is here. The collapse of economies such as the US, the UK, and Japan etc, will eventually render the bankers’ IOUs and government currencies worthless; and when this happens, the three hundred year stranglehold of bankers over human endeavor will be over.

GOLD MAKES A RUN
Two powerful forces, paper money and gold, are now locked in mortal combat. The combatants, however, are proxies for far more fundamental forces. Paper money is a proxy for private banking and government power—and gold is a proxy for freedom. –Moving Through The Maelstrom, Monthly Commentary, November 2009

The complete breakdown of the global economy was necessary for people to understand what is happening. Economic elites had banished all inquiry into monetary issues that did not conform to their special interests. Keynes and Friedman were popularized not because they were right, but because their theories suited those in power. Truth was ignored. Today, its revenge is here. Popular theories supporting paper money will soon give way to economic realities exposing their failings.

Against the formidable opposition of central banks and Western governments, the price of gold has more than quadrupled in ten years. The forward selling of unmined gold by large gold mining companies in collusion with central bank gold leasing did much to constrain gold’s advance but the power of its intractable rise should be seen in the light of that opposition.

Currently, the fall of the US dollar is currently pushing gold to new highs. Tomorrow it will be the fall of the pound, the euro or the yen that will do so. The fraud of paper money is being exposed and it is only a matter of time until the global edifice of credit and debt it supports will collapse.

In The Great Wave (Oxford University Press 1996), Professor David Hackett Fisher, an economic historian, tells of the great waves that periodically destroy existing epochs to make way for the new and better eras that follow.

Such waves, Professor Fisher found, always culminate in total economic collapse. We are nearing the end of what Fisher believes is perhaps history’s greatest wave; and yet, the economy is still standing (though currently quite wobbly). Since great waves last from 80 to 120 years and this wave began in 1896, it means an economic collapse is imminent.

It does seem to be a possibility, doesn’t it?

THANKSGIVING AND THANKFULNESS
For those invested in gold and silver, their recent rise is cause for thanksgiving. But our thanksgiving for gold and silver’s rise must be tempered with what the rise of gold and silver signifies. Gold and silver are barometers of monetary turmoil and economic distress; and the higher they rise, the more severe and closer the collapse will be. For the few who saw the collapse coming, it will be a vindication that the truth can and will triumph, that monetary fraud no matter how ubiquitous or long-standing cannot last forever, that gold and silver are money and that paper currencies are not.

Professor Antal Fekete said the day gold and silver explode upwards will be a sad day for humanity. He is right. The explosive ascent of gold and silver will be caused by the global collapse of paper assets and paper money. Suffering and loss will be the experience of most.

Although that day will be one of tragedy, it will also make way for the new and better world that is to come. Give thanks for that. Life is a miracle and we are a part of it. It is not done with us yet. That much is obvious. Buy gold, buy silver, have faith.

This is something we definitely need to keep an eye on, for it might very well mean that the kingdom out of which the Antichrist will rise (the Revived Holy Roman Empire)  is being established right before or eyes. For those who think we are not quite in the Endtimes yet, and not really that close to the Lord’s Second Coming, better think again!

Emilio Rojas’ “The Natural” mixtape has finally dropped after much delay.  This is by far one of the best anticipated mixtapes of the year.  Did I mention who co-signed this mixtape???  DJ Green Lantern!  That’s right, world-renown DJ Green Lantern co-signed this shit!  It also features amazing product from heavyweights including Boi-1da, 6th Sense, M-Phazes, and more.

DOWNLOAD LINK: MediaFire

Puisque vous disposez maintenant d’un cahier de texte en ligne, le site évolue.

Des liens internet ou des références aux pages de ce site sont directement indiqués dans le cahier de texte. Vous pouvez donc les consulter en fonction des séances de cours.

Nous continuerons à rédiger quelques articles ponctuels, mais nous vous invitons à vous reporter directement au cahier de texte.

https://www.viescolaire.net

Je lis en ce moment – entre autres – le livre de Jean Sévillia, Historiquement correct. Je ne m’y connais pas énormément en histoire, mais j’adore ça, et ce livre est d’autant plus intéressant qu’il s’attache, chaque chapitre, à remettre les pendules à l’heure à propos d’une période historique qui fait l’objet de ce qui a donné son titre à ce livre : l’historiquement correct, c’est-à-dire une façon de voir le passé à la lumière du présent et surtout de le juger selon nos valeurs d’aujourd’hui. Ce qui est, selon Sévillia, l’erreur que doit absolument éviter l’historien. J’ai donc eu envie de partager un peu ce que j’en ai retenu, mais le mieux, c’est encore de le lire vous-mêmes !

La féodalité

Dans le premier chapitre, Jean Sévillia s’attaque à cette période très mal jugée qu’est le Moyen Âge. En effet, nous voyons généralement l’époque médiévale comme un monde obscurantiste et répressif, pratiquement barbare. Aux civilisations grecques et égyptienne le raffinement et la culture, au Moyen Âge les donjons et salles de tortures. Or, l’historien fait remarque que ce sont pourtant les premières, et non le second, qui reposaient sur l’esclavage.

L’historienne Régine Pernoud distingue quatre périodes : la première s’étend de la chute de l’empire romain à l’avènement des Carolingiens. La deuxième recouvre les deux cents ans de l’Empire carolingiens. La troisième serait l’âge féodal, du milieu du Xe siècle à la fin du XIIIe siècle. La quatrième, enfin, se compose des XIVe et XVe siècle.

Barbare médiéval

Du latin medius, le mot moyen signifie « au milieu », ce qui fait du Moyen Âge une période intermédiaire. Un intermède qui aura quand même duré plus de 1000 ans et qui recouvre des périodes très différentes et n’est pas nécessairement synonyme de stagnation. Les textes anciens sont connus, certains clercs maîtrisent aussi bien le latin que le grec, l’hébreu ou l’arabe, des cathédrales sont construites, l’architecture est recherchée, l’art, en particulier religieux, est prolixe.

« Barbare, les cathédrales gothiques d’Amiens, l’Ange au sourire de Notre-Dame de Reims, les vitraux de la Sainte-Chapelle, les chants grégoriens, les moines concevant la gamme, le rythme et l’harmonie, posant ainsi les bases de la musique occidentale, les clercs qui, au XIII^e siècle, fondent les grandes universités européennes, les astronomes et les médecins qui, en dépit d’une technique limitée, approfondissent l’apport des Grecs et des Arabes, préparant l’essor scientifique du monde moderne ? »

Barbare, le Moyen Âge ?

La situation de la femme

D’une manière générale, le Moyen Âge protège la femme, tenue pour faible et fragile. Il n’y a cependant aucune parité. Mais à la fin du XIII^e siècle, à Paris, on trouve des femmes médecins, maîtresses d’école, apothicaires, teinturières ou religieuses. Les progrès du libre choix du conjoint accompagnent la diffusion du christianisme, qui se bat pour limiter les annulations de mariage et la répudiation (coutume romaine et germanique), ce qui améliore la condition féminine.

Le mythe de la controverse au sein de l’Eglise pour savoir si les femmes avaient ou non une âme serait le fruit d’une méprise : « au synode de Mâcon, en 486, un prélat aurait soutenu « qu’on ne devait pas comprendre les femmes sous le nom d’hommes », utilisant le mot homo (être humain) avec le sens restrictif du latin vir (individu de sexe mâle). » C’est loin d’un débat qui aurait duré des siècles. Comment, dans ce cas, l’Eglise aurait-elle pu vénérer la Vierge Marie et sanctifier des femmes ?

L’organisation féodale

La féodalité, explique l’auteur, est un mode organisationnel tellement éloigné du nôtre, qu’il nous devient presque impossible de le comprendre. Sans être anarchique, cette société était pourtant loin d’être uniforme. Il en trace le genèse : après la chute de l’empire romain et les invasions barbares, certains hommes se sont, de fait, imposés sur un certain territoire et sont restés des pouvoirs locaux, de telle sorte que Charlemagne, en restaurant la puissance impériale, a du les reconnaître.

Jean Sévillia revient ainsi sur quelques mythes : le droit de cuissage, selon lequel le seigneur avait le droit de partager le lit d’une femme qui allait se marier, avant le mariage et le mari, n’a jamais existé. Il s’agissait en fait d’une taxe que les serfs devaient payer pour s’unir. De même, le droit de ravage, qui permet au seigneur de laisser ses chevaux ravager les champs des serfs, ou le droit de prélassement, autorisant le seigneur à faire éventrer deux serfs afin de se réchauffer les pieds dans leurs entrailles…

Le principe de vassalité nous reste cependant inintelligible : c’est un contrat d’homme à homme, qui implique le serf qui promet loyauté à son suzerain en échange de sa protection. Mais si le serf est un servant, ce n’est pas pour autant un esclave. Sa condition n’est pas aisée, mais il n’est absolument pas une chose dont le seigneur peut disposer à son gré. Il ne peut être expulsé de la terre qu’il travaille et a droit à une partie de son fruit. Il peut se marier librement et transmettre sa terre et ses biens à sa descendance. Certains hommes choisissaient volontairement le servage. Ce système disparaîtra progressivement, notamment sous l’impulsion du roi et de l’Eglise qui encourage à l’affranchissement. « A la mort de Saint Louis, écrit Jean Sévillia, le servage a pratiquement disparu en France. »

Les hommes médiévaux n’étaient pas non plus si enclins à la guerre que le mythe le prétend. Non seulement les vassaux du roi sont réticent à se battre, activité coûteuse et dangereuse, mais l’Eglise cherche aussi à maintenir un semblant de paix. Pendant la guerre de cent ans, les batailles les plus meurtrières concernent un millier d’homme. Etrange, remarque Jean Sévillia, que les hommes du XXe siècle, « dont les guerres ont provoqué des hécatombes », fassent référence au Moyen Âge comme à une époque violente.

Peu à peu, les capétiens instituent l’Etat, dont la légitimité est de moins en moins contestée et qui s’affirment aussi en face des autorités extérieures que sont l’empereur et le pape. Une communauté politique se met en place, et avec elle le sentiment national.

« Le Moyen Âge, c’est le moment où s’esquisse une aventure française qui dure depuis mille ans. L’ignorer, et caricaturer l’époque médiévale en règne de l’obscurantisme, c’est mutiler sa propre histoire. »

.Il y a sûrement beaucoup de raccourcis dans ce résumé, mais la place, le temps et la science me manque ! Les commentaires sont à la disposition de ceux qui veulent faire des rectifications !

I ran out of time yesterday so I couldn’t finish whatever I was talking about.  Anyways.  My birthday was yesterday!  And at first I thought it was going to be a terrible birthday despite the fact I am in Germany because I hadn’t met anyone, and how can you have a party without people?  But just as I had resigned myself to a night of blahness I met two Candians staying in my dorm room, and shortly thereafter three Spaniards (from Galicia first and foremost and Spain secondly though, they told me.)  For the second time in three days my Spanish skills were put to the test since only one of them had even the smallest amount of English.

The Canadians were meeting up with friends for dinner, so while they went to a beer hall I stayed at the hostel bar and talked to the Spaniards for a few hours.  Almost everyone I’ve met has wanted to talk about American politics with me.  Everyone is so happy that Obama is President, and I mean everyone.  I haven’t talked to one person who doesn’t think he is bringing America into a new and better era.  And everyone wants to talk about it with me.  ‘It’s ok to be American again,’ I got told more than once.

Politics and world opinion aside, most Europeans I’ve met would like to travel to the US but are afraid of getting shot.  I was told that there are two guns for every person in the States.  I don’t know if this is true but Europeans take it seriously.  It’s interesting to see the prejudgments that other cultures have about us.  California is the capital of America.  Everyone knows everything about California.  Everyone wants to go to San Fransisco.  And New York.  California and New York is America, for better or worse.

Anywho, when the Canadians got back from their scary beer hall experience (a whole pig leg!!)  we went out to a bar with three Brits.  We drank Kölsch, the beer of Cologne. It comes in these little narrow glasses, which at first I didn’t understand but I soon figured out the advantages to this.  First of all they’re cheap.  Secondly you can drink all your beer before it gets warm, which is good because warm German beer is just not that appetizing.  Thirdly, when you take a photograph of your table covered in Kölsch beer glasses it looks impressive but does not necessarily mean bad things are going to happen later on in the night.

Did you know that among the Brits was Richard the Lionhearted, King of England?  I don’t know when that happened but Richard finally revealed to us that he was royalty and for the rest of the night it stuck.  I met the King of England!

Later on a few very drunk but friendly German university students joined our party and we had a lot of fun trying to communicate.  That seems to be all you do when travelling, try to find ways to talk to people in a group when they all speak different languages with varying degrees of success.  No matter how well it technically works out, it’s a lot of fun.  The Germans were funny.

That was an excellent birthday although since we didn’t get back to our dorm until about 4 or 5 am, I’m kind of tired today.  I still took a day trip to Aachen to see the cathedral where Charlemagne was buried.

The cathedral itself was way more impressive than the Köln Dom although it was a lot smaller.  There was an interesting Byzantine influence.  But the best part were the holy relics.  I saw enough splinters of the Holy Cross to make about two of them.  I saw an actual real fragment of the crown of thorns, I saw Charlemagne’s femur bone AND his right arm bones.  I saw a chunk of hair from St. Peter, and all kinds of other fascinating things.  These Catholics really are one for scavenging bits.  As soon as Charlemagne was canonized, 400 years or something after his death, they dug him up and scattered his poor bones far and wide so everyone could look at them and feel properly religious.  I find that in kind of bad taste.

And now I am off to go find a hostel for Berlin for the weekend.  I’m really excited about going there, everyone who I’ve talked to raves about the city so I hope it lives up to expectations.

Prost!

In The Charlemagne Pursuit (New York:  Ballantine Books-Random House, 2008), as in The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry included a lot of politics, which I didn’t enjoy very much.  It was fascinating, though, how he tied together a first civilization, Charlemagne, the Nazis, submarines, and Antarctica.

In his “Writer’s Note” (505-09), Berry lists some books that might be interesting:

• Gerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill, The Voynich Manuscript
• Christopher Knight and Alan Butler, Civilization One

Berry’s latest book, The Paris Vendetta, is due out December 1.  I’m number 19 of 35 people who have requested it from the Jefferson County Public Library.

Dale T. Irvin & Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement, Vol 1: Earliest Christianity to 1453.  Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2006, pp. 234-41.

Charlemagne (reigned from 768-814 C.E.)

Forcing entire peoples to either undergo Christian baptism or face execution and establishing capital punishment for worship of any traditional gods, failing to baptize one’s children, cremating the dead, or even eating meat during Lent, Charlemagne’s rule was excessively brutal (at one point he had four thousand Saxon prisoners of war executed) and was the first full-scale use of military force and violence to compel peoples to convert to Christianity. 

Ruling from his capital Aachen (in modern Belgium), at the height of Charlemagne’s power, he ruled the majority of modern France, Germany, Austria, and Hungary (all the way to the Balkans) and eventually took on many of the trappings of Roman imperial identity.  Even the Islamic caliph Harun al-Rashid (best remembered for his role in “1001 Arabian Nights”) responded to news of Charlemagne’s enthronement by sending a gift! 

The rule of Charlemagne ushered a period known as the Carolingian Renaissance in the West in which Charlemagne encouraged schools and a steady flow of Latin texts into his capital, invited the best theologians in the West to come to his capital, and issued a series of General Directives intended to address a number of social reforms (for example, the legal status of marriage put an end to polygamy even in the aristocracy and forbade priests to marry, he enforced the exclusive use of the Rule of Benedict, secured the caliph’s permission to build a monastery in Jerusalem, endorsed and forced the filioque phrase to be used in the Latin versions of the Nicene Creed recited in the churches to the displeasure of the Pope Leo III, etc.).

Charlemagne’s legacy lived on beyond his kingdom and long after the Carolingian line of kings (which came to an end in 911 C.E.) and set a precedent, one that Christian rulers would emulate in the centuries to come.

1.

64 C.E.—The Burning of Rome—When Nero blamed Christians for the burning of Rome in 64 C.E., he incited the first imperial persecution of Christians and set the tone for imperial relations with Christians for future Roman Emperors.  The Neronian Persecutions were followed by four major waves of imperial persecution (under Septimius Severus’s reign from 193-211 C.E., under the reign of Decius beginning in 250 C.E., under the emperor Valerian beginning in 258 C.E., and under the reign of Diocletian beginning in 303 C.E).  Ironically, such persecution aided church growth after the waves died down because of the courage that Christians showed in the face of violence. 

2.

70 C.E.—The Fall of Jerusalem—The fall of Jerusalem—especially the destruction of the Jewish Temple—that ended the First Jewish-Roman War would drastically alter Judaism by removing one of its two pillars (Temple & Torah).  This event would be seen as a vindication for Christians because many of them interpreted the event as punishment on the Jews for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah in according with prophecies attributed to Jesus by early gospel writers. 

3.

313 C.E.—The Edict of Milan—Following Constantine’s vision before the decisive battle of his campaign in 312 C.E. against Maxentius (who controlled Italy and North Africa after the division of the empire by Diocletian known as the tetrarchy or “rule of four”), Constantine decided to join forces with Licinius (the emperor in the east).  Together they issued the Edict of Milan in 313 C.E., granting freedom of religious practice to Christians and ending the early waves of imperial persecution but also marking the beginning of imperial intervention into the controversies of the Christian church.   

4.

325 C.E.—The Council of Nicaea—In response to Arian’s teaching that the Son was not eternal (a teaching received from Lucian, bishop of Antioch, who was executed under the emperor Constantine in 324 C.E.)—“there was a time when the Son was not”—a council was called to meet in Nicaea (a summer resort near the emperor’s court in Nicomedia) and presided over by the emperor Constantine.  Arius’ teachings were decisively condemned and Constantine himself is credited for introducing the word homoousios (“same substance”) to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, and followed Tertullian who first used the term trinitas for God and described it as three persons of one substance.  The view of God endorsed by this council would be considered by many as the touchstone orthodox Christian doctrine and lead to centuries of persecutions between followers of Arius and followers of the Nicene Creed.        

5.

367 C.E.—Deciding the Canon—After Christians had over two hundred years to respond to the challenge of Marcion’s proposed canon (144 C.E.), Athanasius writes a letter in which he commends a certain list of books to be the authoritative body of literature for Christians.  Not only was Athanasius’ letter the first time the word “canon” is applied to such a list, but his proposed list eventually became accepted by most Christians and remains today the widely accepted content of the Christian canon—the New Testament.

6.

451 C.E.—The Council of Chalcedon—Questions left unanswered by the Council of Nicaea about how the human Jesus could also be considered God led to the condemnation of Apollinaris (forerunner of one-nature Monophysitism) by the Council of Constantinople in 381 and Nestorius (who supposedly separated the two natures of Christ) at the council of Ephesus in 431.  This controversy culminated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E. where Eutyches (exponent of Monophysitism) was also condemned and the explanation of Leo’s Tome, which posited Christ’s having two united natures (divine and human, each of whose characteristics were distinct), was endorsed.  The decision of the council would become known as “The Chalcedonian Definition,” and the relationship of Christ’s natures as delineated by this council would be called a hypostatic union.  This decision would lead to centuries of persecution for non-Chalcedonian Christians.

7.

589 C.E.—The Third Council of Toledo—After many years of pressure from Catholic Franks on the Arian Visigoth kings of Spain, when the Visigoth king, Reccared, converted to the Catholic faith in 587 C.E. he called together the Third Council of Toledo of 589 C.E. in which anathemas were pronounced against Arianism afresh.  Unfortunately, however, while reaffirming the Nicene Creed, the council took the liberty to endorse the view that the Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son (a view later strongly endorsed by theologian Isidore of Seville in the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633 C.E.).  Since by inserting this word filioque (“and the Son”) the Western church had tampered with the Nicene creed and endorsed a view not shared by the Eastern churches without an ecumenical council, this fueled the already existing tensions between the Eastern and Western churches culminating in The Great Schism of 1054.

8.

610 C.E.—The Rise of Islam—610 C.E. would mark the year that Muhammad would begin to receive direct revelations from the angel Gabriel who told him to “recite” the very words (Qur’an means “to recite”) that would comprise the Qur’an.  The result of Muhammad’s preaching a message of submission (Islam means “to submit”) to only one God (Allah means “God”), along with an organized military force that reduced Christians to the humble status of dhimmi communities, eventually led to a succession of Islamic Dynasties ruled by Caliph’s (“deputies” or “successors”) encompassing nearly half of the previously Christian world by the year 750 C.E., stretching from the Indus River in the East to Spain in the West.   

9.

800 C.E.—The Coronation of Charlemagne—Following the example of his grandfather Charles Martel and his father Pepin who formed alliances with the pope’s of Rome, by the time Charlemagne went to Rome to strengthen connections with the Pope he had (by his success against the Saxon’s to his north and east, the Spanish to his west, and the Lombards to his south) become the ruler of much of Europe.  The crowning of Charlemagne as the new Augustus (evoking the majesty of the old Roman Empire) on Christmas day of 800 C.E. by Pope Leo III illustrates how the wake of the expansion of Islam turned the attention of the popes from the East to the North for political alliance (realizing that the emperor in the East could not necessarily secure Europe against Islam), signaled the papal willingness to give up on the ideals of a Mediterranean centered Empire and look for a similar Empire in the North, and helped lay the foundations for shaping the vitality of Christian existence in Europe for almost 800 years that would become known as “Christendom.”     

10.

1054 C.E.—The Great Schism —When the Normans took Leo IX captive for seeking alliance with the Eastern Emperor and Leo sent three envoys to Constantinople led by Cardinal Humbert to pursue negotiations, the fierce debate between these envoys and the Eastern theologians over longstanding political, cultural, and theological differences led Humbert to charge the Greeks with an assortment of heresies and draw up a bull of excommunication against Patriarch Cerularius.  The patriarch responded by excommunicating the papal legates, illustrating the great distance that had developed in the Latin and Greek traditions over the past seven centuries that would be intensified by this mutual excommunication and even moreso by the sack of Constantinople by western crusaders in 1204.

Sources Used

Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, second ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007.  

Dale T. Irvin & Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement, Vol. 1: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006.

Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing, 1996. 

Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation.  New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984. 

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY: No wonder the Dark Ages were so dark—they didn’t really exist. The years between 614  and 911 never happened, yet due to some suspicious mathematical manipulation, they have been included in the Western calendar. To cover up the time shift, three centuries of fictional events and nonexistent figures like Charlemagne have been squeezed into the historical record. Reset your watches: We’re actually living in the early 1700s.

Mother Jones

Pour illustrer les premiers cours de géographie, vous pouvez vous reporter aux articles de l’année dernière qui sont très complets et reprennent la plupart des diaporamas visionnés en cours. Il suffit de cliquer sur la “catégorie” géographie à droite de cette page pour y avoir accès.

Le nouveauté c’est ce site qui vous présente des cartes en anamorphose du monde et vous permet de mesurer clairement les écarts de développement. En voici le lien : http://www.worldmapper.org/animations/income_animation.html

Voici aussi la carte du peuplement selon le même principe :

Last night was the second meeting of the small group.  We discussed the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.  Some good thoughts were shared and expressed, which I hope to give you along the way this week.  But to keep things short, I’ll just start with my notes in this post and move on to the fruit of the night later.

As I worked through my notes, we discussed various questions pertaining to church history and Arianism and why Arius was a heretic — that sort of thing.  Things that came up along the way were baptism, the Donation of Constantine, the Resurrection of the Dead, Mozilla being a charity, etc.   Being here in person is clearly the preferable way to encounter this stuff.

The Nicene Creed

The origins of the Nicene Creed lie in the early fourth century.  An Alexandrian priest named Arius said, responding to his bishop Alexander who saw Jesus as having being begotten of the Father before all ages, “En pote hote ouk en.”  “There was when he was not.”  This became the slogan of his party who were termed “Arians.”  (Since he was only a priest, some of the Arian bishops didn’t like this, but when you’re a heretic, you don’t choose your label.)

Arianism is not traditional Christology, whatever certain Archbishops of Canterbury might tell you.*  In Arianism, Jesus, the Word, was considered to be other than the Father and lesser than the Father for a few reasons, including the verse in Proverbs in which Divine Wisdom says that it was created by Father first.  Many ancient theologians interpreted “Divine Wisdom” to be the same as “the Word” of John 1.  Therefore, by Arius’ reckoning, Jesus was a created being, as in Colossians he is called, “the firstborn of all creation.”  Besides this, Arianism tried to follow a certain amount of Aristotelian logic.  Jesus is called the Son or the Word, whereas the Father is called the Father or God.  A difference in name, as with apple and tree, necessitates a difference in essence or nature.  Therefore, Jesus’ essence is not the same as that of God the Father.  They do not share a “substance” but are two entirely different beings.  Jesus the Word, because he is always following the Father’s will, is allowed to be called “divine” and “God”.

One of the major problems with Arianism is the fact that every Sunday, they, along with everyone else, would worship Jesus.  If Jesus is not God, you cannot worship him.  As well, Arianism runs counter to the plain sense of John 1.  If “the Word was God,” the Word wasn’t other than God.  The Word wasn’t a lesser being.  The Word was God.  This is what it means.  Nicene orthodoxy takes that verse at its face value and uses it to interpret Proverbs, not the other way around.  The Proverbs verses aren’t necessarily about Jesus in a prophetic sense anyway.  Wisdom may simply be a type of the Word.  Typology is important to keep in mind.

To have Arius running around saying all that stuff would not do.  A council was called in Antioch which condemned him.  This wasn’t quite enough — Arius kept at it, so a general council, a council of the whole inhabited world was called.  The word for this is “ecumenical”; thus you will hear church historians and the Eastern Orthodox talking about the “ecumenical councils,” of which there were eight.  This council met in Nicaea, which is in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) near the Bosporus, opening on June 19, 325.  The Emperor Constantine convened the council, believing that it was important for the security and fabric of his newly united Empire that the Church also be united.  Bishops came from all over the East, from Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Libya, Greece, Armenia, Cyprus.  From the West, Orosius of Cordoba, Spain, came as did delegates from Silvester, Bishop of Rome.

The bishops met for several days, arguing about the doctrines professed by Arius and believing that a document should be produced to which bishops would have to subscribe if they were to avoid excommunication and anathematisation.  They also discussed various other matters, from how to consecrate bishops to ordaining castrated men.  The creed to which all had to subscribe was based upon the baptismal formula of Caesaria with a few alterations and was as we have it, with the following differences.  It ends with, “And the Holy Spirit,” then launches into:

And those that say ‘There was when he was not,’ and, ‘Before he was begotten he was not,’ and that, ‘He came into being from what-is-not,’ or those that allege, that the Son of God is ‘Of another substance or essence’ or ‘created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable,’ these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.

The specifically anti-Arian statements are bundled together:

Begotten of the Father before all worlds; God, of God; Light, of Light; Very God, of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father;

Since the Arians called Jesus “God” without believing him to actually be God, the most important statements are the first and last.  Jesus was “begotten of the Father before all worlds,” as opposed to the Arian assertion that he was created within time.  And he is “of one substance with the Father,” as opposed to the Arian idea that Jesus is a different, lesser being than God the Father.  The Greek word is, “homoousios”, the Latin, “consubstantialis.”  (I object to the modern translation that says, “of one being with the Father,” because it obscures the theological debates of the creed’s origin and does not make it very clear in what way Jesus and the Father are one, whereas “of one substance” is a proper translation of the theological idea that Jesus and the Father share an essence; furthermore, “of one being” allows for the ancient heresy of Sabellianism.)

The bits about the Holy Spirit come from at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381 to combat people who say that the Holy Spirit isn’t God but is something like an angel or who say that he isn’t his own person.  From that point forward, the creed was only ever affirmed at Church Councils and no ecumenical council has meddled with it.

At a synod in Spain, to battle a heresy which I believe was called Priscillianism, they added one little Latin word to the creed, filioque.  Thus, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  Charlemagne liked the Spanish usage and sought to unify the liturgy of the whole Frankish Empire, so they used filioque although the Pope was not in favour.  He believed in dual procession of the Holy Spirit; but you don’t mess with the creed without asking.  Eventually, later popes got on board with this idea, and it is in the Nicene Creed as said in the Church of Rome to this day.

The Eastern Orthodox don’t like this (see T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1st ed., pp. 218-223).  In part, they don’t like it because no ecumenical council agreed to it.  In part, they don’t like it because most of them don’t believe in a dual procession of the Holy Spirit.  In part, they don’t like it because it was done in the West (OK, that last one may be harsh, but I’m always amazed at the strongly eastern flavour of so-called “ecumenical” councils, esp. the last one which dealt with a specifically eastern issue, and at which no western bishops were present).

The Apostles’ Creed

The Apostles’ Creed is the baptismal formula of the Church of Rome.  The legend, however, is that the 12 Apostles were all sitting around one day and thinking, “What do we believe?  What should the new disciples agree to at baptism?”  Each of them contributed a different bit and, hey, presto! The Apostles’ Creed!  This creed is the basis for the Anglican baptismal rites; modern ones work it into a series of questions, whereas the BCP (1962)** has the parents or one to be baptised recite it in full.  You can see its basis in the baptismal rite found in the 3^rd-century Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus as well.

When we see these two creeds side by side, we see why I prefer the Nicene.  It is fuller, more complete.  Part of this fullness comes from its origins in the Arian controversy, but not all, such as the statement that God is the creator of the visible and the invisible.

*See Robert W. Jenson, “With No Qualifications: The Christological Maximalism of the Christian East,” in Ancient & Postmodern Christianity.  He doesn’t deal with Williams but he does deal with Arius.  The whole essay is available on google books.

**1662 the priest recites it and they agree to believe it.

At last the truth can be revealed. Why was I writing a paper about nuns all of a sudden? Why hadn’t it been in the sidebar as my next due paper? What was all the foreshadowing in that earlier post about? Now it can be told.

Very recently Professor Rosamond McKitterick had a significant birthday and, seeing this coming from some way off, various of her students had had the idea of a birthday conference. This, and its title which forms the subject header, was largely the brainchild of Richard Pollard, who also designed the monogram you see above and generally did the bulk of the donkey-work while the rest of us who were in one way or another participating kept quiet, tried not to tell ask anyone for help that wouldn’t be able to do similarly and, in the case of David McKitterick, her husband, made sure she kept the relevant weekend free without explaining why. And duly at 14:00 on September 12th she was escorted into Trinity College in Cambridge and found a gathering of about forty of her fellows, erstwhile and current students there basically to say thanks. As the person in that gathering with, I think, the longest hair other than Rosamond herself, and possibly one or two of the younger women, I feel myself uniquely qualified to say, “there was a whole lot of love in that room, man”. She’s had an awful lot of students and a lot of them have gone on to be important themselves. Some of us still hoping, also. But, well, it’s a conference. With due discretion and all that, obviously I’m still gonna blog it, if only to list the names…

Rosamond McKitterick, Professor of Medieval History and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

The folder I have my notes stashed in has the monogram on the front. It contains a short biography of Rosamond, the programme, a map and contact details (all very well to hand out on arrival, but surely only useful before! this is my only criticism of the organisation) and a full or as-near-full-as-possible bibliography of Rosamond’s work, which registers (deep breath) six monographs, another co-written, six volumes of essays that she edited, another that she co-edited, and two volumes of collected papers, and eighty-two articles and chapters (not including stuff in the volumes she edited), one alone of which was co-written. If you don’t know Rosamond’s work, this may give you an idea that she is an important scholar in quantity as well as quality. Then, on the specially-printed notepaper (why yes, they did get some funding since you ask…), we have notes on the following papers.

Keynote Address

• Janet Nelson, “New Approaches to Carolingian Reform, or 1969, 1971, 1977 and All That”. The keynote address, which placed Rosamond in the context of her teaching by Walter Ullmann, something that Jinty also went through, and drawing the roots of Rosamond’s first work into the many branches it now has, full of shared remembrance and intriguing background that could have been supplied by no-one else.

Session 1. The Reformatio monastica karolina

• Marios Costambeys, “Paul the Deacon, Rome and the Carolingian Reforms”. Argued that Paul the Deacon’s conception of Rome deliberately ignores its Christian and recent Imperial heritage, referring to it in terms of its earliest history to place both its history and the new Frankish rule in inarguable and uncontested Antiquity.
• Rutger Kramer, “The Cloister in the Rye: Saint-Seine and the early years of Benedict of Aniane”. More or less as title except that that was the only terrible pun involved, a critical reading of the Vita Benedicti Anianensis pondering whether Benedict was in fact at first one of Carloman’s party not Charlemagne’s and how far his initial monastic conversion might have been a political retreat, then moving into questions of how his initial drive for asceticism apparently transformed to a desire for uniformity ‘that we can believe in’.
• Sven Meeder, “Unity and Uniformity in the Carolingian Reform Efforts”. Argued that the Carolingian ideal of unity should not be mistaken for uniformity and that it was always ready to accept a good deal of diversity to which its own efforts only added. Arguable, but probably not with the Oxford English Dictionary definitions used; Susan Reynolds would have been unable to stay quiet in questions had she been there.

Some critical questions here especially for the latter two papers, and perhaps most notable among them James Palmer asking if, in fact, Carolingian reform could ever have succeeded adequately for its proponents or whether a perception of failure was built in. Sven responded, I think wisely, that the ultimate aim was to make the kingdom favoured by God and so the proof would be seen in events. It’s an interesting cycle of paranoia that this kind of drive might have set up, however. I think we see something similar with Æthelred the Unready’s vain attempts to prescribe extra piety when the Danes just keep coming in his autumn years.

Session 2. Reform from without, reforms to without

• Benedict Coffin, “The Carolingian Reformation in the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Churches”. Drawing out even more similarities between Carolingian and English reform movements as well as a few crucial differences, not least that in England it was primarily Benedictine not royal.
• Jonathan Jarrett, “Nuns, Signatures and Literacy in late-Carolingian Catalonia”. You basically saw a chunk of this paper already, and I had to leave a lot of detail out, but it went OK and did everything I hoped for. Completely overwhelmed however by…
• Julia M. H. Smith, “Wrapped, Tied and Labelled: importing Jerusalem, recycling Rome in the early Middle Ages”, exploring the contents of the altar in the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran in Rome, which transpires to have been installed by Leo III and to have contained, in 1906 when it was last opened, a mind-boggling assortment of Holy Land soil, branches, twigs, etc. from significant places there, as well as martyr relics probably from the other patriarchal sees, replacing Rome’s pagan history with a new one imported from Jerusalem and elsewhere. The illustrations were fascinating and it was a really interesting paper.

Behind those grilles is the box installed by Leo III

The evening was rounded off, well, for me at least, with a pre-dinner paper given by Yitzhak Hen. I won’t attempt to describe that here except to say that what I’ve written about his work here before may have failed to take his sense of humour into account. Then, there was a wine reception and a dinner, but I, with my usual mismatch of engagements, ran into London for one of the best gigs I’ve been to for a long time. But I was back the next day, aching of neck and back and short of sleep, and I will describe that later.

Nous avons commencé les cours d’ASRALL cette semaine, nous somme assez nombreux cette année (29 étudiants) mais heureusement le nombre de machines est suffisant. Les membres de la promotion sont sympathique, il y à une excellente ambiance et surtout un cadre de travail super agréable et très motivant.

Salle ASRALL

Au fond de notre salle se trouve un ensemble de PC en libre service, nos jouets ! On peut s'en servir pour différents tests et expérimentations

A droite ma station de travail (XFCE - Debian Testing pour la plus grande joie de mon binôme) et à gauche mon laptop (KDE4 - Archlinux). Sur nos laptops ont peut soit se connecter via wifi soit via ethernet

Ici mon ami Seb entrain de s'adonner aux macro sous Emacs (équipé d'un MacBook qui tourne sous Debian/XFCE ^^)

Voilà… j’espère publier de nouvelles photos très prochainement, notamment, celles du serveur que je compte déployer dès demain sur une des machines qui se trouvent au fond de la salle. J’hésite toujours sur le choix d’un OS/Distrib mais je crois que je vais essayer FreeBSD.