Plague Doctor’s Costume

The plague doctor’s costume was the clothing worn by a plague doctor to protect him from airborne diseases. The costume consisted of an ankle length overcoat and a bird-like beak mask often filled with sweet or strong smelling substances (commonly lavender), along with gloves, boots, a brim hat and an outer over-clothing garment.

Description

Fourteenth century plague doctors who wore a bird-like mask were referred to as “beak doctors”. Straps held the beak in front of the doctor’s nose. The mask had glass openings for the eyes and a curved beak was shaped like a bird’s. The mask had two small nose holes and was a type of respirator. The mask they wore had a protruded beak which contained aromatic items.

The beak could hold dried flowers (including roses and carnations), herbs (including mint), spices, camphor or a vinegar sponge. The purpose of the mask was to keep away bad smells, which were thought to be the principal cause of the disease in the miasma theory of infection, before it was disproven by germ theory. Doctors believed the herbs would counter the “evil” smells of the plague and prevent them from becoming infected.

The beak doctor costume worn by the plague doctors had a wide brimmed leather hood to indicate their profession. They used wooden canes to point out areas needing attention and to examine the patients without touching them. The canes were also used to keep people away, to remove clothing from plague victims without having to touch them, and to take a patient’s pulse.

History

Charles de Lorme adopted in 1619 the idea of a full head-to-toe protective garment, modeled after a soldier’s armour. This consisted of not only the bird-like mask, but of a long leather (Moroccan or Levantine) or waxed-canvas gown which was from the neck to the ankle. The over-clothing garment, as well as leggings, gloves, boots, and a hat, were made of waxed leather. The garment was impregnated with similar fragrant items as the beak mask.

This popular seventeenth century poem describes the plague doctor’s costume.

As may be seen on picture here,

In Rome the doctors do appear,

When to their patients they are called,

In places by the plague appalled,

Their hats and cloaks, of fashion new,

Are made of oilcloth, dark of hue,

Their caps with glasses are designed,

Their bills with antidotes all lined,

That foulsome air may do no harm,

Nor cause the doctor man alarm,

The staff in hand must serve to show

Their noble trade where’er they go.

The Genevese physician Jean-Jacques Manget, in his 1721 work Treatise on the Plague written just after the Great Plague of Marseille, describes the costume worn by plague doctors atNijmegen in 1636-1637. The costume forms the frontispiece of Manget’s 1721 work. The plague doctors of Nijmegen also wore beaked masks. Their robes, leggings, hats, and gloves were made of morocco leather.

This costume was also worn by plague doctors during the Plague of 1656, which killed 145,000 people in Rome and 300,000 in Naples. The overcoat was sometimes made of levant morocco. The costume terrified people because it was a sign of imminent death. Plague doctors wore these protective costumes per their agreements when they attended their plague patients.

Culture

The costume is also associated with a commedia dell’arte character called Il Medico della Peste. The character’s very popular mask is associated with the early-17th century French doctor Charles de Lorme. He adopted the “beak mask” together with other sanitary precautions while treating plague victims. The Venetian mask was normally white, consisting of a hollow beak and round eye-holes covered with clear glass. The “doctor of plague” (Medico Della Peste) is referred to as the “Plague Doctor” or “Beak Doctor”.

 

Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley  (sometimes “Edmund,” November 8, 1656 – January 14, 1742) was an English astronomer who is best known for having predicted the return of the comet that bears his name. It was Halley’s influence that caused Isaac Newton to publish his universal theory of gravitation in the Principia. Halley was among the first to map the Earth’s magnetic field, and his astronomical observations contributed to knowledge of the moon’s motions, and of the stars of the southern hemisphere.

Biography

Halley was born at Haggerston, London, the son of Edmond Halley, a wealthy soap-maker. As a child, he was very interested in mathematics. He studied at St Paul’s School, and then, in 1673, after having already achieved competence in plane and spherical geometry, navigation, and astronomy, entered Queen’s College, Oxford. In 1875, while still an undergraduate, he published an important paper lending mathematical support to Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. A year later, observations of sunspots allowed him to calculate the rate at which the sun rotates about its axis.

Journey to the southern hemisphere

On leaving the Oxford in 1676, he visited St. Helena, an island south of the equator in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with the intention of studying stars from the southern hemisphere. He returned to England in November 1678. In the following year, based on his two years of observations, he published Catalogus Stellarum Australium, which included details of 341 southern stars. He was awarded his Master of Arts degree at Oxford by order of the king and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. The Royal Astronomer at the time, John Flamsteed, dubbed Halley “the Southern Tycho” for his accomplishment.

In 1680, he toured continental Europe with a personal friend, the writer Robert Nelson, and made the acquaintance of many scientists including the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini.

Halley and Newton

Halley married Mary Tooke in 1682 and settled in Islington, where he established an observatory for his own researches. He spent most of his time observing the Moon for the purposes of developing a method to determine longitude at sea, but was also interested in the problems of gravity. One problem that attracted his attention was the proof of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. He believed that the planetary motions suggested that the attractive force between the Sun and the planets diminishes in proportion to the square of their distances, but could not demonstrate it rigorously. After approaching several astronomers of note, he went to the Cambridge to discuss this with Isaac Newton, only to find that Newton had solved the problem but published nothing. Halley convinced him to write the Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis (1687), which was published at Halley’s expense.

In 1690, Halley built a diving bell, in which device the atmosphere was replenished by way of weighted barrels of air sent down from the surface. In a demonstration, Halley and five companions dived to 60 feet in the River Thames, and remained there for over one and a half hours. Halley’s bell was of little use for practical salvage work, as it was very heavy, but he did make improvements to his bell over time, later extending his underwater exposure time to over four hours.

In 1691, Halley applied for the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, but was not successful, either because, as some commentators suppose, his religious convictions were not sufficiently conservative, or, as others conjecture, because of Flamsteed’s opposition to his appointment.

Demographics

In 1693, he published an article on life annuities, which featured an analysis of age-at-death taken from the records of Breslau, a Polish-German town known for keeping meticulous records. This allowed the British government to sell life annuities (a form of life insurance) at an appropriate price based on the age of the purchaser. Halley’s work strongly influenced the development of actuarial science. The construction of the life-table for Breslau, which followed more primitive work by John Graunt, is now seen as a major event in the history of demography.

When the British decided to recoin their debased silver currency, Halley was appointed comptroller of the mint at Chester, one of five in the country, a position he held for two years. In this way he was able to assist Isaac Newton, who had accepted the senior position of Warden of the Mint in 1696.

In 1698 he received a commission as captain of HMS Paramore Pink to make extensive observations on the conditions of terrestrial magnetism. A mutinous crew necessitated his return to England, but he soon set out again. His journeys over the Atlantic spanned a period of two years, and extended from 52 degrees north to 52 degrees south. The results were published in a General Chart of the Variation of the Compass (1701). This was the first such chart to be published and represented the first appearance of isogonic, or Halleyan, lines that represent locations on the globe where the deviations of a compass from magnetic north are the same.

The next couple of years he spent observing tides and mapping the English channel at the request of the British government. He performed a similar task for the empress of Germany.

Halley’s comet

In November 1703, he was appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford University, and received an honorary degree of doctor of laws in 1710. In 1705, applying historical astronomy methods, he published Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae, which stated his belief that the comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682 related to the same comet, which he predicted would return in 1758. When it did, it became generally known as Halley’s Comet.

Halley was also engaged at this time in the translation of the works from Arabic of the famous Greek geometer Apollonius. He assumed the post of Secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1713. During this period, his careful observations of the moon led him to make a far more accurate prediction of the 1815 eclipse of the sun than other astronomers at the time.

In 1716 Halley suggested a method of high-precision measurement of the distance between the Earth and the Sun by timing the transit of Venus. In doing so he was following the method described by James Gregory in Optica Promota. In 1718 he discovered the proper motion of the “fixed” stars—the angular distance by which their positions change over great spans of time—by comparing his astrometric measurements with those of the Greeks.

Later life

In 1720, Halley succeeded John Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal, and the next year, in order to more fully devote his time to astronomical observations, he resigned his post as secretary of the Royal Society. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1729. Two years later, he published his study on the determination of longitude at sea using the position of the Moon.

The British crown awarded him half pay for his services as captain during his excursions in the Atlantic, allowing him a more comfortable life in his later years. He continued his meticulous observations of the Moon through his 80s. A paralytic condition that affected his hand spread over the years, until he was almost immobilized. It was apparently this condition that took his life at the age of 86. He was buried at St. Margaret’s Church in Lee, in southeast London.

Legacy

Halley’s name will remain in the public mind in connection with the comet whose return he accurately predicted. Halley was held in great esteem by his contemporaries and by the generation of scientists that followed him. But more than any of his own discoveries, he may be most remembered as the one who prodded Isaac Newton into publishing the Principia, a work that many consider the greatest monument to man’s scientific accomplishment.

Newton, having already made a name for himself in science through his earlier discoveries, could never have attained the high reputation that has lasted for centuries without publication of his theory of universal gravitation. Halley will forever be known as the far-sighted individual who made that possible.

 

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (January 4, 1643 – March 31, 1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, inventor, and natural philosopher, who is generally regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential scientists in history.

In his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton enunciated his law of universal gravitation and three laws of motion. He thus laid the groundwork for classical mechanics, also known as Newtonian mechanics, which held sway in the physical sciences until the advent of quantum mechanics around the beginning of the twentieth century. By deriving Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from this system, he was the first to show that the motions of bodies on Earth and celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws. The unifying and predictive power of his laws was integral to the scientific revolution and advancement of the heliocentric model of the solar system.

Among other scientific work, Newton realized that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors and further argued that light consists of corpuscles (particles). He enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum, and he developed a law describing the rate of cooling of objects when exposed to air. Furthermore, he studied the speed of sound in air and voiced a theory of the origin of stars.

Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz share the credit for playing major roles in the development of calculus in the Western world. This area of mathematics has since proved of enormous value for the advancement of science and technology. Newton also made contributions to other areas of mathematics, having derived the binomial theorem in its entirety.

In addition to his monumental work in mathematics and science, Newton was a devout Christian, although a somewhat unorthodox and non-Trinitarian one. He claimed to study the Bible every day, and he wrote more on religion than he did on science. He thought that his scientific investigations were a way to bring to light the Creator’s work and the principles used by the Creator in ordering the physical universe.

Biography

Early years

Newton was born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth (at Woolsthorpe Manor), a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. As he was born prematurely, no one expected him to live. His mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, is reported to have said that his body at that time could have fit inside a quart mug (Bell 1937). His father, Isaac, had died three months before Newton’s birth. When Newton was two, his mother went to live with her new husband, leaving her son in the care of his grandmother.

After beginning his education at village schools, Newton attended the King’s School in Grantham (Grantham Grammar School) from the age of 12. His signature remains preserved on a windowsill at Grantham. By October 1659, he had been removed from school and brought back to Woolsthorpe, where his mother attempted to make a farmer of him. Later reports of his contemporaries indicate that he was thoroughly unhappy with the work. It appears that Henry Stokes, master at the King’s School, persuaded Newton’s mother to send him back to school to complete his education. This he did at age 18, achieving an admirable final report. His teacher’s praise was effusive:

His genius now begins to mount upwards apace and shine out with more strength. He excels particularly in making verses. In everything he undertakes, he discovers an application equal to the pregnancy of his parts and exceeds even the most sanguine expectations I have conceived of him.

In June 1661, he matriculated to Trinity College, Cambridge. At that time, the college’s teachings were based on those of Aristotle, but Newton preferred to read the more advanced ideas of modern philosophers such as Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler. In 1665, he discovered the binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that would later become calculus. A manuscript of his, dated May 28, 1665, is the earliest evidence of his invention of fluxions (derivatives in differential calculus). Soon after Newton obtained his degree in 1665, the University closed down as a precaution against the Great Plague. For the next 18 months, Newton worked at home on calculus, optics, and a theory of gravitation.

The only account of a romantic relationship in Newton’s life is connected to his time at Grantham. According to Eric Temple Bell (1937) and H. Eves:

At Grantham, he lodged with the local apothecary, William Clarke, and eventually became engaged to the apothecary’s stepdaughter, Anne Storer, before going off to Cambridge University at age 19. As Newton became engrossed in his studies, the romance cooled and Miss Storer married someone else. It is said he kept a warm memory of this love, but Newton had no other recorded “sweethearts” and never married.

Middle years

Mathematical research

Newton became a fellow of Trinity College in 1669. In the same year, he circulated his findings in De Analysi per Aequationes Numeri Terminorum Infinitas (On Analysis by Infinite Series), and later in De methodis serierum et fluxionum (On the Methods of Series and Fluxions), whose title gave rise to the “method of fluxions.”

Newton is generally credited with the binomial theorem, an essential step toward the development of modern analysis. It is now also recognized that Newton and Leibniz (the German polymath) developed calculus independently of each other, but for years a bitter dispute raged over who was to be given priority and whether Leibniz had stolen from Newton (see below).

Newton made substantial contributions toward our understanding of polynomials (such as the discovery of “Newton’s identities”) and the theory of finite differences. He discovered “Newton’s methods” (a root-finding algorithm) and new formulae for the value of pi. He was the first to use fractional indices, to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to diophantine equations, and to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. He also approximated partial sums of harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler’s summation formula).

He was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics in 1669. At that time, any fellow of Cambridge or Oxford had to be an ordained Anglican priest. The terms of the Lucasian professorship, however, required that the holder not be active in the church (presumably to have more time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton’s religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.

Mathematician and mathematical physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) described Newton as “the greatest genius that ever existed and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.”

In July 1992, the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences was opened at Cambridge University. The Institute is regarded as the United Kingdom’s national institute for mathematical research.

The dispute over who first developed calculus

As with many areas of mathematics, calculus was developed through years of work by a number of different people. In particular, it was conceived and significantly developed by Indian mathematicians such as Bhaskara (1114–1185), Madhava of Sangamagrama (1340–1425), and members of the Kerala School founded by Madhava.

In the Western world, the two who contributed the most to the development of calculus were Newton and Leibniz. They worked independently and used different notations. Although Newton worked out his method some years before Leibniz, he published almost nothing about it until 1687 and did not give a full account until 1704. Newton did, however, correspond extensively with Leibniz. Meanwhile, Leibniz discovered his version of calculus in Paris between 1673 and 1676. He published his first account of differential calculus in 1684 and integral calculus in 1686.

It appears that Newton went further in exploring the applications of calculus; moreover, his focus was on limits and concrete reality, while that of Leibniz was on the infinite and abstract. Leibniz’s notation and “differential method” were universally adopted on the Continent, and after 1820 or so, in the British Empire. Newton claimed he had been reluctant to publish his work on the subject because he feared being mocked for it. Today, credit is given to both men, but there was a period when a nasty controversy pitted English mathematicians against those on the European continent, over who should be regarded as the originator of calculus.

Starting in 1699, some members of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism, especially because letters of correspondence between Newton and Leibniz often discussed mathematics. The dispute broke out in full force in 1711. Thus began the bitter calculus priority dispute, which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter’s death in 1716, and continued for about a hundred years more. In 1715, just a year before Leibniz’s death, the British Royal Society handed down its verdict, crediting Newton with the discovery of calculus and concluding that Leibniz was guilty of plagiarism. Newton and his associates even tried to get ambassadors in the diplomatic corps in London to review old letters and papers in the hope of gaining support for the Royal Society’s findings. It later became known that these accusations were false, but Leibniz had already died.

This dispute, although it centered on questions of plagiarism and priority of discovery of calculus, also involved issues of national pride and allegiance. In fact, England did not agree to recognize the work of mathematicians from other countries until 1820. It is thought that this state of affairs may have retarded the progress of British mathematics by at least a century.

Optics

From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period, he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colors, and that a lens and second prism could recompose the multicolored spectrum into white light. He concluded that the spectrum of colors is inherent in the white light and not added by the prism (as Roger Bacon had claimed in the thirteenth century).

By separating out a colored beam and shining it on various objects, Newton showed that the colored light does not change its properties. He noted that regardless of whether a beam of colored light was reflected, scattered, or transmitted, it stayed the same color. Thus the colors we observe are the result of how objects interact with the incident, already-colored light, not the result of objects generating the color. Many of his findings in this field were criticized by later theorists, the most well-known being Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who postulated his own color theories.

From this work, Newton concluded that any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colors, and he therefore invented a reflecting telescope (today known as a Newtonian telescope) to bypass that problem. By grinding his own mirrors and using “Newton’s rings” to judge the optical quality of his telescope, he was able to produce an instrument superior to the refracting telescope, due primarily to the wider diameter of the mirror. (Only later, as glasses with a variety of refractive properties became available, did achromatic lenses for refractors become feasible.) In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes On Colour, which he later expanded into his Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticized some of Newton’s ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. The two men remained enemies until Hooke’s death.

Newton argued that light is composed of particles, which he called corpuscles, but he also associated them with waves to explain the diffraction of light (Opticks Bk. II, Props. XII-XX). Later physicists favored a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for diffraction. Today’s quantum mechanics introduces the concept of “wave-particle duality,” according to which light is made up of photons that have characteristics of both waves and particles.

Newton is believed to have been the first to explain precisely the formation of the rainbow from water droplets dispersed in the atmosphere in a rain shower. Figure 15 of Part II of Book One of Opticks shows a perfect illustration of how this occurs.

In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. Newton was in contact with Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, on alchemy, and now his interest in the subject revived. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. In the opinion of John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton’s writings on alchemy, “Newton was not the first of the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians.”

As Newton lived at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science, his interest in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science ⁴. Some have suggested that had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity.

In 1704, Newton wrote Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. The book is also known for the first exposure of the idea of the interchangeability of mass and energy: “Gross bodies and light are convertible into one another….” Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe (Opticks, 8th Query).

Gravity and motion

In 1679, Newton returned to his work on gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets, with reference to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, and consulting with Hooke and John Flamsteed on the subject. He published his results in De Motu Corporum (1684). This contained the beginnings of the laws of motion.

The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (now known as the Principia) was published on July 5, 1687, with encouragement and financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that were not to be improved upon for more than 200 years. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the force that would become known as gravity and defined the law of universal gravitation. Although his concept of gravity was revised by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, it represents an enormous step in the development of human understanding of the universe. In Principia, Newton also presented the first analytical determination, based on Boyle’s law, of the speed of sound in air.

Newton’s three laws of motion can be stated as follows:

1. First Law (the Law of Inertia): An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by a net external force.
2. Second Law: In mathematical terms, F = ma, or force equals mass times acceleration. In other words, the acceleration produced by a net force on an object is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force and inversely proportional to the mass. In the MKS system of measurement, mass is given in kilograms; acceleration, in meters per second squared; and force, in Newtons (named in his honor).
3. Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognized. He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, with whom he formed a strong friendship that lasted until 1693. The end of this friendship led Newton to a nervous breakdown.

Later life

In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Henry More’s belief in the infinity of the universe and rejection of Cartesian dualism may have influenced Newton’s religious ideas. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published. Later works—The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728) and Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)—were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to alchemy (see above)

Newton was a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and again in 1701, but his only recorded comments were to complain about a cold draft in the chamber and request that the window be closed.

In 1696, Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint, a position he obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, First Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England’s Great Recoinage, somewhat treading on the toes of Master Lucas (and finagling Edmond Halley into the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch). Newton became Master of the Mint upon Lucas’ death in 1699. These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, exercising his power to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701. Ironically, it was his work at the Mint, rather than his contributions to science, that earned him a knighthood from Queen Anne in 1705.

Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed’s star catalog.

Newton died in London in 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt, served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London. He was her “very loving uncle,” according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox.

Religious views

The law of gravity became Newton’s best-known discovery. He, however, warned against using it to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock. He said that gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion, and that God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.

His scientific accomplishments notwithstanding, the Bible was Newton’s greatest passion. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture and alchemy than to science. Newton claimed to have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired and that he studied the Bible daily. Newton himself wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Newton also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at April 3, 33 C.E., which is now the accepted traditional date. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to find hidden messages within the Bible. Despite his focus on theology and alchemy, he investigated biblical passages using the scientific method—observing, hypothesizing, and testing his theories. To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned.

Newton rejected the church’s doctrine of the Trinity and probably endorsed the Arian viewpoint that Jesus was the divine Son of God, created by God (and thus not equal to God). T.C. Pfizenmaier argues, however, that Newton more likely held the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity, rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants  In his own day, he was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal Society and in the court of Charles II).

Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism (doctrine that all matter has life) implicit in the thought of Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed universe could be and needed to be understood by an active reason, but this universe, to be perfect and ordained, had to be regular.

Newton’s effects on religious thought

Robert Boyle’s mechanical concept of the universe provided a foundation for attacks that were made against pre-Enlightenment “magical thinking” and the mystical elements of Christianity. Newton gave completion to Boyle’s ideas through mathematical proofs and was highly successful in popularizing them. Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God who designs along rational and universal principles. These principles were available for all people to discover, allowing us to pursue our aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect ourselves with our rational powers. The perceived ability of Newtonians to explain the world, both physical and social, through logical calculations alone is the crucial concept that led to disenchantment with traditional Christianity.

The mechanical philosophy of Newton and Robert Boyle was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the belief systems of pantheists (who considered God as immanent in or equivalent to the universe) and enthusiasts (who claimed to feel God’s intense presence). It was also accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians (who took the position that God values the moral condition of a person’s soul more than the individual’s doctrinal beliefs). The clarity of scientific principles was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of the enthusiasts and the threat of atheism At the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton’s discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a “natural religion,” in which an understanding of God is derived from a rational analysis of nature rather than from revelation or tradition.

Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. The unforeseen theological consequence of his concept of God, as Leibniz pointed out, was that God was entirely removed from the world’s affairs, since the need for intervention would only evidence some imperfection in God’s creation, something impossible for a perfect and omnipotent creator. Leibniz’s theodicy cleared God from the responsibility for “l’origine du mal” (the origin of evil) by removing God from participation in his creation. The understanding of the world was brought down to the level of simple human reason, and humans, as Odo Marquard argued, became responsible for the correction and elimination of evil.

On the other hand, latitudinarian and Newtonian ideas were taken to an extreme by the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the concept of a mechanical universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish.

Effects on Enlightenment thought

Enlightenment philosophers chose a short list of scientific predecessors—mainly Galileo, Boyle, and Newton—as their guides for applying the singular concept of Nature and Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.

Newton’s concept of the universe based on natural and rationally understandable laws became seeds for Enlightenment ideology. Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of natural law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied natural concepts of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists critiqued how the current social order fit history into natural models of progress.

Newton and the counterfeiters

As warden of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was treason, punishable by death. Despite this, convictions of the most flagrant criminals could be maddeningly impossible to achieve. Newton, however, proved equal to the task.

He assembled facts and proved his theories with the same brilliance in law that he had shown in science. He gathered much of that evidence himself, disguised, while he spent time at bars and taverns. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton was made a justice of the peace, and, between June 1698 and Christmas 1699, conducted some 200 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects. Newton won his convictions and in February 1699, he had ten prisoners waiting to be executed.

Newton’s greatest triumph as the king’s attorney was against William Chaloner, a rogue with a deviously intelligent mind. Chaloner set up phony conspiracies of Catholics, and then turned in the hapless conspirators whom he entrapped. Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman. Accusing the mint of providing tools to counterfeiters, he proposed that he be allowed to inspect the mint’s processes to find ways to improve them. He petitioned parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not be counterfeited. All the time, he struck false coins—or so Newton eventually proved to a court of competent jurisdiction. On March 23, 1699, Chaloner was hung, drawn and quartered.

Newton’s apple

A popular story claims that Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation by the fall of an apple from a tree. Cartoons have gone on to suggest the apple actually hit his head and that its impact made him aware of the force of gravity. There is no basis to that interpretation, but the story of the apple may have something to it. John Conduitt, Newton’s assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton’s niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton’s life:

In the year 1666, he retired again from Cambridge … to his mother in Lincolnshire, & while he was musing in a garden, it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon thought he to himself & that if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a-calculating what would be the effect of that superposition… (Keesing 1998)

The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the Moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon’s orbital period and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions and hence named it universal gravitation.

A contemporary writer, William Stukeley, recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on April 15, 1726. According to that account, Newton recalled “when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth’s centre.” In similar terms, Voltaire wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), “Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.” These accounts are variations of Newton’s own tale about sitting by a window in his home (Woolsthorpe Manor) and watching an apple fall from a tree.

 

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns first inaugurated and sanctioned by the papacy that were undertaken between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Originally, the Crusades were Christian Holy Wars to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims, then to defend Christian-held Jerusalem, but some were directed against other targets, such as the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France, the Fourth Crusade which conquered Orthodox Christian Constantinople, and Crusades targeting Jews, non-conformist Christians, and un-Christianized populations living in Europe. Initially, the Crusades had the blessing of both the Western (Catholic) Church under the Pope and of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Byzantine Emperor. However, the Emperors withdrew their support as their own subjects became targets of Crusading efforts to root out what they saw as Christian heresy or paganism. Killing Muslims, Jews, or heretics was regarded as an act of merit, rewarded by paradise, and forced conversion was also widespread, although many chose death to renunciation of faith.

Few contemporary Muslim accounts exist of the crusades, which were regarded as minor “skirmishes” inflicting “pinpricks on the fringes of the Islamic world” (Fletcher: 84). Crusader principalities were sometimes even regarded as strategically useful, providing a buffer zone between the rival sultanates of Egypt and Damascus. In contrast, the Crusades had profound and lasting effect on medieval Europe. From the Christian perspective until recent times, the Crusades were seen as wars of liberation, not aggression, aimed at restoring Christian sovereignty over the Holy Land. The Crusades initially elevated the authority of the papacy as the authoritative spiritual and temporal power in Europe prior to the emergence of nation-states. Yet with the descent of the Crusades into indiscriminate slaughter of innocents and aggression against fellow Christians, the moral authority of the papacy and unity of Christendom in Europe suffered.

The Crusades also engendered an appreciation of advanced Muslim culture among parochial western Christians. Similarly, the Muslim ruler Saladin greatly respected the English king, Richard Cœur de Lion and chivalric conventions were often upheld on the battlefield following victory or defeat. In the twentieth century, the term “crusade” was revived by some Muslims as a description of what they regard as a Christian-Jewish campaign to destroy the Muslim world. Attacks on Muslim states by majority-Christian Western powers in the early twenty-first century have been compared to the Crusades. Both are depicted as wars of aggression. However, irrespective of how they were perceived by either side at the time they occurred, the Crusades represent today a deeply regrettable historical episode undermining the role of religion as a force for peace, which continues to create barriers to Christian-Muslim understanding and friendship.

Historical background

The origins of the crusades lie in developments in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the Byzantine Empire in the east. The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire in the later ninth century, combined with the relative stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization of the Vikings, Slavs, and Magyars, meant that there was an entire class of warriors who now had very little to do but fight amongst themselves and terrorize the peasant population. The Church tried to stem this violence with the Peace and Truce of God movements, which was somewhat successful, but trained warriors always sought an outlet for their violence. The Peace and Truce of God movement assembled knights in the sight of holy relics, before which clergy exhorted them to keep the peace or to face divine wrath, or even excommunication. Excommunication, at a time when it was almost universally held that the Church controlled spiritual destiny, was a fearful weapon. One later outlet was the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian knights and some mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Muslim Moors. Although much of the Reconquista predated the invention of the Crusader concept, later myths, such as the chronicles of El Cid, retroactively transformed him and other heroes into Crusaders, even though they had not been bound by the Crusader oath and had sometimes served Muslim as well as Christian rulers. Certainly, they had not all shared the hostility and animosity towards Islam that many Crusaders expressed.

The Crusades were in part an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late eleventh century among the lay public. This was due in part to the Investiture Controversy, which had started around 1075, and was still on-going during the First Crusade. This was a dispute between the secular rulers and the Papacy about who had the right to appoint church officials. A lot of money was tied up with Church property and governance so kings could sell bishoprics to the highest bidder. Even laymen were appointed to church benefits. At the root of the conflict was the issue of supremacy—was the Church above the state, or were the secular rulers above the Church. The Pope claims absolute spiritual and temporal authority, based on the so-called Donation of Constantine but many kings believed that they ruled by divine right, that they did not derive their authority from the Pope. Christendom had been greatly affected by the Investiture Controversy; as both sides tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs. This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating Just War in order to retake the Holy Land, which included Jerusalem (where Christians believe that the death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven of Jesus took place) and Antioch (the first Christian city), from the Muslims. Antioch became the first conquest. All of this eventually manifested in the overwhelming popular support for the First Crusade, and the religious vitality of the twelfth century.

This background in the Christian West must be matched with that in the Muslim East. Muslim presence in the Holy Land goes back to the initial Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. This did not interfere much with pilgrimage to Christian holy sites or the security of monasteries and Christian communities in the Holy Land of Christendom, and western Europeans were not much concerned with the loss of far-away Jerusalem when, in the ensuing decades and centuries, they were themselves faced with invasions by Muslims and other hostile non-Christians such as the Vikings and Magyars. However, the Muslim armies’ successes were putting strong pressure on the Byzantine Empire.

A turning point in western attitudes towards the east came in the year 1009, when the Fatimid caliph of Cairo, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed. Previous Fatimid rulers had appointed Christians to high posts and co-operated with them. Hakim reversed this policy and persecuted them. From 1000, he is considered to have been mentally unstable. This was also a time when Christian thought was that, after a thousand years, Jesus would return, and many Jews were also expecting the Messiah. Hakim is said to have claimed to be “the divine incarnation expected one thousand years after Jesus.” One day he forced Christians to convert and destroyed their churches, the next day he “authorized” them “to return to their religion.” In 1039 Hakim’s successor permitted the Byzantine Empire to rebuild the Holy Sepulchre. Pilgrimages were allowed to the Holy Lands before and after the Sepulchre was rebuilt, but for a time pilgrims were captured and some of the clergy were killed. The Muslim conquerors eventually realized that the wealth of Jerusalem came from the pilgrims; with this realization the persecution of pilgrims stopped. However, the damage was already done, and the violence of the Seljuk Turks became part of the concern that spread the passion for the Crusades later in the century.

Historical context

The immediate cause of the First Crusade was Alexius I’s appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire had been defeated, and this defeat led to the loss of all but the coast lands of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Although the East-West Schism was brewing between the Catholic Western church and the Greek Orthodox Eastern church, Alexius I expected some help from a fellow Christian. However, the response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.

When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country and Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish Toledo to the Kingdom of León in 1085, was a major victory, but the turning points of the Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of the Muslim emirs was an essential factor, and the Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens or libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by infidels, where the Christian fighters felt they could afford to wreak havoc. All these factors were soon to be replayed in the fighting grounds of the East. Spanish historians have traditionally seen the Reconquista as the molding force in the Castilian character, with its sense that the highest good was to die fighting for the Christian cause of one’s country. Ironically, when the Moors first invaded Spain a Christian nobleman, Count Julian, had helped them defeat the Visigoth King, Roderick (who had raped his daughter).

While the Reconquista was the most prominent example of Christian war against Muslim conquests, it is not the only such example. The Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard had conquered the “toe of Italy,” Calabria, in 1057, and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of Sicily. The maritime states of Pisa, Genoa, and Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in Majorca and Sardinia, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids. Much earlier, of course, the Christian homelands of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, and so on had been conquered by Muslim armies. This long history of losing territories to a religious enemy, as well as a powerful pincer movement on all of Western Europe, created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine emperor Alexius I’s call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands, starting at the most important one of all, Jerusalem itself.

The papacy of Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had resolved the question in favor of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Actions against Arians and other heretics offered historical precedents in a society where violence against unbelievers, and indeed against other Christians, was acceptable and common. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Gregory’s intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service of Christ in The City of God, and a Christian “just war” might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself. The northerners would be cemented to Rome and their troublesome knights could see the only kind of action that suited them. Previous attempts by the church to stem such violence, such as the concept of the “Peace of God,” were not as successful as hoped. To the south of Rome, Normans were showing how such energies might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and Byzantines (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the Levant would provide leverage in resolving the Papacy’s claims of supremacy over the Patriarch of Constantinople, which had resulted in the Great Schism of 1054, a rift that might yet be resolved through the force of Frankish arms.

In the Byzantine homelands, the Eastern Emperor’s weakness was revealed by the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which reduced the Empire’s Asian territory to a region in western Anatolia and around Constantinople. A sure sign of Byzantine desperation was the appeal of Alexius I Comnenus to his enemy the Pope for aid. But Gregory was occupied with the Investiture Controversy and could not call on the German emperor and the crusade never took shape.

For Gregory’s more moderate successor Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be found in Urban’s own homeland among the northern French.

On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of “schismatic” Orthodox Christians of the east. The violence against the Orthodox Christians culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, in which most of the Crusading armies took part despite the fact that originally the Crusades had been a joint venture with the Emperor. Members of the first Crusade had been obliged (although some avoided this) to pledge allegiance to the Byzantine Emperor, who, technically, had sovereignty over the principalities they acquired in what was known as Outremer (Across the Seas).

The thirteenth century crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291, and after the extermination of the Occitan Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.

The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre they took control of the island of Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century were driven to Malta. These last crusaders were finally unseated by Napoleon in 1798.

The major crusades

A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades yields nine during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, as well as other smaller crusades that are mostly contemporaneous and unnumbered. There were frequent “minor” crusades throughout this period, not only in Palestine but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe, against not only Muslims, but also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs. Such “crusades” continued into the sixteenth century, until the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation when the political and religious climate of Europe was significantly different than that of the Middle Ages.

The first Crusade was organized after Byzantine emperor Alexius I called for help defending his empire against the Seljuks. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, a war which would count as full penance. Crusader armies managed to defeat two substantial Turkish forces at Dorylaeum and at Antioch, finally marching to Jerusalem with only a fraction of their original forces. In 1099, they took Jerusalem by assault and massacred the population. As a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The first Crusader to govern the city was Godfrey de Bouillion. He did not style himself “king” on the basis that no man should wear a crown in the city where Jesus had “worn thorns,” but his successors did not hesitate to take the royal title (Howarth: 41). Following this crusade there was a second, unsuccessful wave of crusaders, the Crusade of 1101. Before the official army set out, Peter the Hermit took up the call and assembled an undisciplined peoples’ army that started its mission by attacking Jews at home, then set off for Jerusalem. On the way, they burnt houses and churches, killing almost indiscriminately. A few reached and briefly took the city of Nicea but this Peoples’ Crusade collapsed after six months.

After a period of relative peace, in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the Holy Land, Bernard of Clairvaux preached a new crusade when the town of Edessa was conquered by the Turks. French and German armies under Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, marched to Asia Minor in 1147, but failed to accomplish any major successes, and indeed endangered the survival of the Crusader states with a foolish attack on Damascus. By 1149, both leaders had returned to their countries without any result. King Baldwin of Jerusalem (1177-1186) entered several peace treaties with Saladin. Even the notorious Assassins tried to ally themselves with the Christians against Egypt (Howarth: 128). Internal rivalry emerged within Outremer between supporters of King Baldwin, who favored peace with their Muslim neighbors and supporters of such men as Reynald de Chatillon, who opposed any truces with “infidels” and saw war as the Christian duty. Saladin was happy to enter temporary truces with the Christians, who formed a buffer between himself and his Seljuk rivals further North.

Muslims recapture Jerusalem

In 1187, Saladin recaptured Jerusalem. He acted with great clemency to the inhabitants of the city. In response Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe’s most important leaders: Philip II of France, Richard I of England, and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick drowned in Cilicia in 1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the English and the French. Philip left in 1191, after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims. The Crusader army headed down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near Arsuf and were in sight of Jerusalem. However, the inability of the Crusaders to thrive in the locale due to inadequate food and water resulted in an empty victory. They withdrew without capturing a city they knew they could not defend. Richard left the following year after establishing a 5-year truce between Saladin and what was left of Outremer. On Richard’s way home, his ship was wrecked and he ended up in Austria. In Austria his enemy, Duke Leopold, captured him, delivered him to Frederick’s son Henry VI and Richard was held for, literally, a king’s ransom. By 1197, Henry felt himself ready for a Crusade, but he died in the same year of malaria.

Jerusalem having fallen back into Muslim hands a decade earlier, the Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202, by Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. The Venetians, under Doge Enrico Dandolo, gained control of this crusade and diverted it, first to the Christian city of Zara, then to Constantinople where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on the throne. After a series of misunderstandings and outbreaks of violence, the city was sacked in 1204.

The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209, to eliminate the heretical Cathars of southern France. It was a decades-long struggle that had as much to do with the concerns of northern France to extend its control southwards as it did with heresy. In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of southern France were exterminated.

The Children’s Crusade of 1212 appears to have been initiated by the prophetic visions of a boy called Stephen of Cloyes. According to uncertain evidence an outburst of enthusiasm led a gathering of children in France and Germany to march to the Holy Land to deliver Jerusalem. Although not sanctioned by Pope Innocent III, the child Crusaders undertook the long journey. Tragically, the children ultimately were either sold as slaves or died of hunger, disease, and exhaustion during the journey.

In 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran formulated yet another plan for the recovery of the Holy Land. A crusading force from Hungary, Austria, and Bavaria achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta in Egypt in 1219, but under the urgent insistence of the papal legate, Pelagius, they proceeded to a foolhardy attack on Cairo, and an inundation of the Nile compelled them to choose between surrender and destruction.

In 1228, Emperor Frederick II set sail from Brindisi for Syria, though laden with the papal excommunication. Through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem being delivered to the Crusaders for a period of ten years. This was the first major crusade not initiated by the Papacy, a trend that was to continue for the rest of the century. Francis of Assissi had negotiated a similar treaty during the fifth crusades but Pelagius had rejected this, refusing to deal with infidels. Ironically, an excommunicated Christian was now King of Jerusalem.

The papal interests represented by the Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in 1243, and in the following year a Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter stormed Jerusalem. Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem, in 1187, had done, Louis IX of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254, leaving from the newly constructed port of Aigues-Mortes in southern France. It was a failure and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the Crusader kingdom in Acre. In the midst of this crusade was the first Shepherds’ Crusade in 1251.

The eighth Crusade was organized by Louis IX in 1270, again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the Crusader states in Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth.

The future Edward I of England undertook another expedition in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. He accomplished very little in Syria and retired the following year after a truce. With the fall of Principality of Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291) the last traces of the Christian rule in Syria disappeared.

Crusades in Baltic and Central Europe

The Crusades in the Baltic Sea area and in Central Europe were efforts by (mostly German) Christians to subjugate and convert the peoples of these areas to Christianity. These Crusades ranged from the twelfth century, contemporaneous with the Second Crusade, to the sixteenth century.

Between 1232 and 1234, there was a crusade against the Stedingers. This crusade was special, because the Stedingers were no heathens or heretics, but fellow Roman Catholics. They were free Frisian farmers who resented attempts of the count of Oldenburg and the archbishop of Bremen-Hamburg to make an end to their freedoms. The archbishop excommunicated them and the Pope declared a crusade in 1232. The Stedingers were defeated in 1234.

Crusades legacy

The Crusades had an enormous influence on the European Middle Ages. The campaigns have traditionally been regarded as heroic adventures, though the mass enthusiasm of common people was largely expended in the First Crusade, from which so few of their class returned. Today, the “Saracen” adversary is crystallized in the lone figure of Saladin; his adversary Richard the Lionheart is, in the English-speaking world, the archetypal crusader king, while Frederick Barbarossa and Louis IX fill the same symbolic niche in German and French culture. Even in contemporary areas, the crusades and their leaders were romanticized in popular literature; the Chanson d’Antioche was a chanson de geste dealing with the First Crusade, and the Song of Roland, dealing with the era of the similarly romanticized Charlemagne, was directly influenced by the experience of the crusades, going so far as to replace Charlemagne’s historic Basque opponents with Muslims. A popular theme for troubadours was the knight winning the love of his lady by going on crusade in the east.

Although Europe had been exposed to Islamic culture for centuries through contacts in Iberian Peninsula and Sicily, much Islamic thought, such as science, medicine, and architecture, was transferred to the west during the crusades. The military experiences of the crusades also had their effects in Europe. The need to raise, transport and supply large armies led to a flourishing of trade throughout Europe. Roads largely unused since the days of Rome saw significant increases in traffic as local merchants began to expand their horizons. This was not only because the Crusades “prepared” Europe for travel, but rather that many wanted to travel after being reacquainted with the products of the Middle East. This also contributed to the Renaissance in Italy, as various Italian city-states had important and profitable trading colonies in the crusader states, both in the Holy Land and later in captured Byzantine territory. Despite the ultimate defeat in the Middle East, the Crusaders regained the Iberian Peninsula permanently and slowed down the military expansion of Islam.

The impact of the Crusades on the western Church, the institution of the papacy, and a unified Christian Europe is among the campaigns’ most important legacies. During the era of the primitive church, many Christians had been pacifist, referring to Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Augustine of Hippo and others later provided theological rationale for just wars, that violence was not intrinsically evil if used with a good intent (Ridley-Smith, 2005: xxx). It was also argued that what Jesus willed for the world was a “political system” ruled by him through the Church, which would require defense. Likewise, God had issued directives for violence and warfare repeatedly in the Old Testament.

The Crusades, thus, were preeminently religiously motivated, first conceived and inaugurated under a papal authority, prior to the establishment of autonomous nation-states in western Europe. The initial rationale, reclaiming Jerusalem from an antagonistic Muslim occupation that reversed traditional access and tolerance of Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land had a degree of justification. But the original campaign to regain sovereignty for Christian pilgrims soon descended into religious warfare lasting for two and a half centuries. The widespread pillaging, rape, and murder of not only Muslims but other vulnerable minorities, ostensibly with papal sanction, severely undermined the moral authority of the papacy. By the fourteenth century the old concept of a unified Christendom was fragmented; the development of centralized secular bureaucracies (the foundation of the modern nation-state) in France, England, Burgundy, Portugal, Castile, and Aragon advanced increasingly independent of papal oversight; and humanistic intellectual pursuits took root that would flower in the Italian Renaissance.

The Crusades impact on Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Jews

The crusades had import but localized effects upon the Islamic world, where the equivalents of “Franks” and “Crusaders” remained expressions of disdain. Muslims traditionally celebrate Saladin, the Kurdish warrior, as a hero against the Crusaders. In the twenty-first century, some in the Arab world, such as the Arab independence movement and Pan-Islamism movement, continue to call Western involvement in the Middle East a “crusade.” The Crusades are now widely regarded by the Islamic world as cruel and savage onslaughts by European Christians, although at the time they appear to have been seen as less significant since they occurred during internal rivalry between competing dynasties, and their principalities at times served a useful function as a buffer-zone between those dynasties.

Like Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Christians also see the Crusades, particularly the sack of Constantinople in 1204, as attacks by the barbarian West. Many relics and artifacts taken from Constantinople are still in Roman Catholic hands, in the Vatican and elsewhere. Countries of Central Europe, despite the fact that formally they also belonged to Western Christianity, were the most skeptical about the idea of Crusades. Many cities in Hungary were sacked by passing bands of Crusaders. Later on, Poland and Hungary were themselves subject to conquest from the Crusaders (see Teutonic Order), and therefore championed the notion that non-Christians have the right to live in peace and have property rights to their lands.

The Crusaders’ atrocities against Jews in the German and Hungarian towns, later also in those of France and England, and in the massacres of non-combatants in Palestine and Syria have become a significant part of the history of anti-Semitism, although no Crusade was ever officially declared against Jews. It was sometimes said that in comparison with Muslims, Jews were more worthy of extermination since they had “killed God’s son.” These attacks left behind centuries of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III and formed the turning-point in medieval anti-Semitism

 

Bluenose

Bluenose was a Canadian fishing and racing schooner from Nova Scotia built in 1921. She was later commemorated by a replica Bluenose II built in 1963. A celebrated racing ship and hard-working fishing vessel, Bluenose became a provincial icon for Nova Scotia as well as important Canadian symbol in the 1930s. The name “bluenose” originated as a nickname for Nova Scotians from as early as the late 18th century.

Career

Designed by William Roué and built by Smith and Rhuland, Bluenose was launched at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on March 26, 1921, and christened by Audrey Marie Smith. She was built to be a racing ship and fishing vessel. This was in response to the defeat of the Nova Scotian Fishing Schooner Delawana by the Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing schooner Esperanto in 1920. That race was sponsored by the Halifax Herald newspaper.

After a season fishing on the Grand Banks, Bluenose defeated Elsie (out of Gloucester), returning the International Fishermen’s Trophy to Nova Scotia. In 1930, off Gloucester, Massachusetts, she was defeated 2-0 in the inaugural Sir Thomas Lipton International Fishing Challenge Cup by perhaps her most celebrated competitor, the Gertrude L. Thebaud.^[2] However, over the next 17 years of racing, no challenger, American or Canadian, could wrest the International Fishermen’s Trophy from her.

It is notable that she was no mere racing ship, but also a general fishing craft that was worked hard throughout her lifetime. She fished scallops and other kinds of seafood, and at least once won competitions for largest catches of the season and similar awards.

Fishing schooners became obsolete after World War II, and despite efforts to keep her in Nova Scotia, the Bluenose was sold to work as a freighter in the West Indies. Laden with bananas, she foundered on a Haitian reef and was lost on January 28, 1946. There has been claims that while searching for Morgan’s HMS Oxford, debris from the Bluenose was discovered off Isle a’Vache on the south coast of Haiti by the Caribbean Marine Institute during June 2005. Still there is no proof No one has ever found as much as a splinter of the wreckage.

Fame and commemoration

Bluenose, under full sail, is portrayed on the 1929 Canadian Bluenose postage stamp 50 cent issue. The Bluenose has been featured on a 1982 60-cent stamp that commemorated the International Philatelic Youth Exhibition. The Bluenose is featured on a 1988 37-cent issue that celebrated Bluenose skipper Angus Walters.

The Bluenose also appears on the current Nova Scotia licence plate. The fishing schooner on the Canadian dime, added in 1937 at the height of fame for Bluenose, was actually based on a composite image of Bluenose and two other schooners, but has for years been commonly known as the Bluenose. In 2002, the government of Canada declared the depiction on the dime to be the Bluenose.

Bluenose and her captain, Angus J. Walters of Lunenburg, were inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1955, making her the first and only non-human CSHF inductee until 1960, when she was joined by Canadian Hydroplane Champion Miss Supertest III. That same year another honour was bestowed upon the famous sailing ship when a new Canadian National Railways passenger-vehicle ferry for the inaugural Yarmouth-Bar Harbor service was launched as the M/V Bluenose.

Bluenose II

In 1963 a replica of Bluenose was built at Lunenburg using the original Bluenose plans and named Bluenose II. Built for the Olands Brewery as a promotional yacht, the replica was later acquired in 1971 by the province of Nova Scotia for one Canadian dollar,Or, more fittingly, ten dimes,as a sailing ambassador and continues to sail every summer based out of Lunenburg. As of 2011, Bluenose II is undergoing a complete refit with very few original Bluenose II parts being reused.

Bluenose IV

In 2007, Joan Roué, the great-granddaughter of the designer William Roué, started raising funds to build a new Bluenose. She cited the need for a new ambassador for Nova Scotia and Canada, listing the particulars at a Bluenose IV website. The name Bluenose III is owned by the province of Nova Scotia, and Ms. Roué could not reach an agreement for its use on the new schooner so Ms. Roué and North Atlantic Enterprises are proceeding anyway, however, under the name Bluenose IV. An agreement was reached with Snyder’s Shipyard to build the new replica when fundraising was completed. However as of 2009, Joan Roué had not succeeded in raising the required funds.

In the media

In 1977, The Houghton Weavers, a folk group from Lancashire, England, recorded a song titled Blue Nose. They described the song as “A well known sea shanty telling of one of the famous sailing ships on the jamaican rum run”. The song featured on the album “Gone are the days”.

Canadian Irish folk group The Irish Rovers released a tribute to the Bluenose on their 1979 album Tall Ships and Salty Dogs.

Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers honours both ships in his song “Bluenose”, found on his albums Turnaround, released in 1978, and Home In Halifax, released posthumously in 1994. – Michael Stanbury – Bluenose is another musical rendition of the racing history of the bluenose. A sailing ship called Bluenose appears in the 1990s children’s television program, Theodore Tugboat. The children’s television series TUGS features a character named Bluenose, who may be named after the schooner.

The ship is also prominently mentioned in the Circle-Vision 360° film O Canada! in the Canadian pavilion at Epcot in Walt Disney World in Florida.

 

Sir Charles Tupper

Sir Charles Tupper, 1st Baronet,  (July 2, 1821 – October 30, 1915) was a Canadian father of Confederation: as the Premier of Nova Scotia from 1864 to 1867, he led Nova Scotia into Confederation. He later went on to serve as the sixth Prime Minister of Canada, sworn in to office on May 1, 1896, seven days after parliament had been dissolved. He would go on to lose the June 23 election, resigning on July 8, 1896. His 69-day term as prime minister is currently the shortest in Canadian history. At age 74, in May 1896, he was also the oldest person to serve as Prime Minister of Canada.

Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1821, Tupper was trained as a physician and practiced medicine periodically throughout his political career (and served as the first president of the Canadian Medical Association). He entered Nova Scotian politics in 1855 as a protege of James William Johnston. During Johnston’s tenure as premier of Nova Scotia in 1857–59 and 1863–64, Tupper served as provincial secretary. Tupper replaced Johnston as premier in 1864. As premier, Tupper established public education in Nova Scotia. He also worked to expand Nova Scotia’s railway network in order to promote industry.

By 1860, Tupper supported a union of all the colonies of British North America. Believing that immediate union of all the colonies was impossible, in 1864, he proposed a Maritime Union. However, representatives of the Province of Canada asked to be allowed to attend the meeting in Charlottetown scheduled to discuss Maritime Union in order to present a proposal for a wider union, and the Charlottetown Conference thus became the first of the three conferences that secured Canadian Confederation. Tupper also represented Nova Scotia at the other two conferences, the Quebec Conference (1864) and the London Conference of 1866. In Nova Scotia, Tupper organized a Confederation Party to combat the activities of the Anti-Confederation Party organized by Joseph Howe and successfully led Nova Scotia into Confederation.

Following the passage of the British North America Act in 1867, Tupper resigned as premier of Nova Scotia and began a career in federal politics. He held multiple cabinet positions under Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, including President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada (1870–72), Minister of Inland Revenue (1872–73), Minister of Customs (1873–74), Minister of Public Works (1878–79), and Minister of Railways and Canals (1879–84). Initially groomed as Macdonald’s successor, Tupper had a falling out with Macdonald, and by the early 1880s, he asked Macdonald to appoint him as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Tupper took up his post in London in 1883, and would remain High Commissioner until 1895, although in 1887–88, he served as Minister of Finance without relinquishing the High Commissionership.

In 1895, the government of Sir Mackenzie Bowell floundered over the Manitoba Schools Question; as a result, several leading members of the Conservative Party of Canada demanded the return of Tupper to serve as prime minister. Tupper accepted this invitation and returned to Canada, becoming prime minister in May 1896. An election was called, just before he was sworn in as prime minister, which his party subsequently lost to Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals. Tupper served as Leader of the Opposition from July 1896 until 1900, at which point he returned to London, where he lived until his death in 1915.

Early life, 1821–1855

Tupper was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia to Charles Tupper, Sr. and Miriam Lowe Lockhart Buckner. His father was the co-pastor of the local Baptist church. Beginning in 1837, at age 16, Tupper attended the Horton Academy in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he learned Latin, Greek, and some French. After graduating in 1839, he spent some time in New Brunswick working as a teacher, before moving to Windsor, Nova Scotia to spend 1839–40 studying medicine with Dr. Ebenezer Fitch Harding. Borrowing money, he then moved to Scotland to study at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh at the University of Edinburgh: he received his MD in 1843. During his time in Edinburgh, Tupper’s commitment to his Baptist faith faltered, and he drank Scotch whisky for the first time.

Returning to Nova Scotia, in 1846, he broke off an engagement that he had contracted with the daughter of a wealthy Halifax merchant when he was 17 years old and instead married Frances Morse (1826–1912), the granddaughter of Col. Joseph Morse, one of the founders of Amherst, Nova Scotia. The Tuppers had three sons (Orin Stewart, Charles Hibbert, and William Johnston) and three daughters (Emma, Elizabeth Stewart (Lilly), and Sophy Almon). The Tupper children were raised in Frances’ Anglican denomination and John and Frances regularly worshipped in an Anglican church, though on the campaign trail, Tupper often found time to visit Baptist meetinghouses.

Tupper set himself up as a physician in Amherst, Nova Scotia and opened a drugstore.

Early years in Nova Scotia politics, 1855–1864

The leader of the Conservative Party of Nova Scotia, James William Johnston, a fellow Baptist and family friend of the Tuppers, encouraged Charles Tupper to enter politics. As such, in 1855, Tupper ran against the prominent Liberal politician Joseph Howe for the Cumberland County seat in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. Joseph Howe would be a frequent political opponent of Tupper the years to come.

Although Tupper won his seat, the 1855 election was an overall disaster for the Nova Scotia Conservatives, with the Liberals, led by William Young, winning a large majority. Young consequently became Premier of Nova Scotia.

At a caucus meeting in January 1856, Tupper recommended a new direction for the Conservative party: they should begin actively courting Nova Scotia’s Roman Catholic minority and should eagerly embrace railroad construction. Having just led his party into a disastrous election campaign, Johnston decided to basically cede control of the party to Tupper, though Johnston remained the party’s leader. In the course of 1856, Tupper led Conservative attacks on the government, leading to Joseph Howe dubbing Tupper “the wicked wasp of Cumberland.” In early 1857, Tupper succeeded in convincing a number of Roman Catholic Liberal members to cross the floor to join the Conservatives, reducing Young’s government to the status of a minority government. As a result, Young was forced to resign in February 1857, and the Conservatives formed a government with Johnston as premier. Tupper became the provincial secretary.

In Tupper’s first speech to the House of Assembly as provincial secretary, he set forth an ambitious plan of railroad construction. Thus, Tupper had embarked on the major theme of his political life: that Nova Scotians (and later Canadians) should downplay their ethnic and religious differences, and instead focus on developing the land’s natural resources. He argued that with Nova Scotia’s “inexhaustible mines”, it could become “a vast manufacturing mart” for the east coast of North America. He quickly persuaded Johnston to end the General Mining Association’s monopoly over Nova Scotia minerals.

In June 1857, Tupper initiated discussions with New Brunswick and the Province of Canada about an intercolonial railway. He traveled to London in 1858 to attempt to secure imperial backing for this project. During these discussions, Tupper found that the Canadians were more interested in discussing federal union, while the British (with the Earl of Derby in his second term as Prime Minister) were too absorbed in their own immediate interests. As such, nothing came of the 1858 discussions for an intercolonial railway.

An election was held in May 1859, with sectarian conflict playing a large role, with the Catholics largely supporting the Conservatives and the Protestants now shifting towards the Liberals. Tupper barely managed to retain his seat. The Conservatives were barely re-elected and lost a confidence vote later that year. Johnston asked the Governor of Nova Scotia, Lord Mulgrave, for a dissolution, but Mulgrave refused and invited William Young to form a government. Tupper was outraged and petitioned the British government, asking them to recall Mulgrave.

For the next three years, Tupper was ferocious in his denunciations of the Liberal government, first Young, and then Joseph Howe, who took over from Young later in 1860. This came to a head in 1863 when the Liberals introduced legislation to restrict the Nova Scotia franchise, a move which Johnston and Tupper successfully blocked.

Tupper continued practicing medicine throughout this period. He established a successful medical practice in Halifax, rising to become the city medical officer. In 1863, he was elected president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia.

In the June 1863 election, the Conservatives campaigned on a platform of railroad construction and expanded access to public education. The Conservatives won a huge majority, with 44 of the House of Assembly’s 55 seats. Johnston resumed his duties as premier and Tupper again became provincial secretary. As a further sign of the Conservatives’ commitment to non-sectarianism, in 1863, after a 20-year hiatus, Dalhousie College was re-opened as a non-denominational institution of higher learning.

In May 1864, Johnston retired from politics, accepting an appointment as a judge, and Tupper was chosen as his successor as premier of Nova Scotia.

Premier of Nova Scotia, 1864–1867

Tupper introduced ambitious education legislation in 1864 creating a system of state-subsidized common schools. The next year, he introduced a bill providing for compulsory local taxation to fund these schools. Although these public schools were non-denominational (whch resulted in Protestants sharply criticizing Tupper), they did include a program of Christian education. However, many Protestants, particularly fellow Baptists, felt that Tupper had sold them out. In an attempt to regain their trust, he appointed Baptist educator Theodore Harding Rand as Nova Scotia’s first superintendent of education. This in turn aroused concern among Catholics, led by Archbishop Thomas-Louis Connolly, who demanded state-funded Catholic schools. Tupper reached a compromise with Archbishop Connolly whereby Catholic-run schools could receive public funding, so long as they provided their religious instruction after hours.

Making good on his promise for expanded railroad construction, in 1864, Tupper appointed Sandford Fleming as the chief engineer of the Nova Scotia Railway in order to expand the line from Truro to Pictou Landing. He would later (Jan. 1866) award Fleming the contract to complete the line after local contractors proved too slow. Though this decision was controversial, it did result in the line from being successfully completed by May 1867. A second proposed line, from Annapolis Royal to Windsor initially faltered, but was eventually completed by 1869 by the privately owned Windsor & Annapolis Railway.

Tupper’s role in securing Canadian Confederation

In the run-up to the 1859 Nova Scotia election, Tupper had been unwilling to commit to the idea of a union with the other British North American colonies. By 1860, however, he had reconsidered his position. Tupper outlined his changed position in a lecture delivered at Saint John, New Brunswick entitled “The Political Condition of British North America.” The title of the lecture was an homage to Lord Durham’s 1838 Report on the Affairs of British North America and served as an assessment of the condition of British North America in the two decades following Lord Durham’s famous report. Although Tupper was interested in the potential economic consequences of a union with the other colonies, the bulk of his lecture addressed the place of British North America within the wider British Empire. Having been convinced by his 1858 trip to London that British politicians were unwilling to pay attention to a small colony like Nova Scotia, Tupper argued that Nova Scotia and the other Maritime colonies “could never hope to occupy a position of influence or importance except in connection with their larger sister Canada.” As such, Tupper proposed to create a “British America”, which “stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would in a few years exhibit to the world a great and powerful organization, with British Institutions, British sympathies, and British feelings, bound indissolubly to the throne of England.”

Charlottetown Conference, September 1864

With the commencement of the American Civil War in 1861, Tupper worried that a victorious North would turn northward and conquer the British North American provinces. This caused him to redouble his commitment to union, which he now saw as essential to protecting the British colonies against American aggression. Since he thought that full union among the British North American colonies would be unachievable for many years, on March 28, 1864, Tupper instead proposed a Maritime Union which would unite the Maritime provinces in advance of a projected future union with the Province of Canada. A conference to discuss the proposed union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island was scheduled to be held in Charlottetown in September 1864.

Tupper was pleasantly surprised when the Premier of the Province of Canada, John A. Macdonald, asked to be allowed to attend the Charlottetown Conference. The Conference, which was co-chaired by Tupper and New Brunswick Premier Samuel Leonard Tilley, welcomed the Canadian delegation and asked them to join the conference. The conference proved to be a smashing success, and resulted in an agreement-in-principle to form a union of the four colonies.

Quebec Conference, October 1864

The Quebec Conference was held on October 10, as a follow-up to the Charlottetown Conference, with Newfoundland only attending to observe. Tupper headed the Nova Scotia delegation to the Quebec Conference. He supported a legislative union of the colonies (which would mean that there would be only one legislature for the united colonies). However, the French Canadian delegates to the conference, notably George-Étienne Cartier and Hector-Louis Langevin, strongly opposed the idea of a legislative union. As such, Tupper threw his weight behind Macdonald’s proposal for a federal union, which would see each colony retain its own legislature, with a central legislature in charge of common interests. Tupper argued in favour of a strong central government as a second best to a pure legislative union. However, Tupper felt that the local legislatures should retain the ability to levy duties on their natural resources.

Concerned that a united legislature would be dominated by the Province of Canada, Tupper pushed for regional representation in the upper house of the confederated colonies (a goal which would be achieved in the makeup of the Senate of Canada).

On the topic of which level of government would control customs in the union, Tupper ultimately agreed to accept the formula by which the federal government controlled customs in exchange for an annual subsidy of 80 cents a year for each Nova Scotian. This deal was ultimately not good for Nova Scotia, which had historically received most of its government revenue from customs, and as a result, Nova Scotia entered Confederation with a deficit.

Aftermath of the Quebec Conference

Although Tupper had given up much at the Quebec Conference, he thought that he would be able to convince Nova Scotians that the deal he negotiated was in sum good for Nova Scotia. He was therefore surprised when the deal he had negotiated at Quebec was roundly criticized by Nova Scotians: the Opposition Leader Adams George Archibald was the only member of the Liberal caucus to support Confederation. Former premier Joseph Howe now organized an Anti-Confederation Party and anti-Confederation sentiments were so strong that Tupper decided to postpone a vote of the legislature on the question of Confederation for a full year. Tupper now organized supporters of Confederation into a Confederation Party to push for the union.

Finally, in April 1866, Tupper secured a motion of the Nova Scotia legislature in favour of union by promising that he would renegotiate the Seventy-two Resolutions at the upcoming conference in London Conference.

London Conference, 1866

Joseph Howe had begun a pamphlet campaign in the UK to attempt to turn British public opinion against the proposed union. As such, when Tupper arrived in the UK, he immediately initiated a campaign of pamphlets and letters to the editor designed to refute Howe’s assertions.

Although Tupper did attempt to renegotiate the 72 Resolutions as he had promised, he was ineffective in securing any major changes. The only major change agreed to at the London Conference was one that arguably did not benefit Nova Scotia – responsibility for the fisheries, which was going to be a joint federal-provincial responsibility under the Quebec agreement, became solely a federal concern.

The final push for Confederation

Following the passage of the British North America Act in the wake of the London Conference, Tupper returned to Nova Scotia to undertake preparations for the union. The union came into effect on July 1, 1867, and on July 4, Tupper turned over responsibility for the government of Nova Scotia to Hiram Blanchard.

In honour of the role he played in securing Confederation, Tupper was made a Companion in The Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 1867. As such, he was now entitled to use the postnomial letters “CB”.

 Career in the Parliament of Canada, 1867–1884

Fighting the Anti-Confederates, 1867–1869

The first elections for the new Canadian House of Commons were held in August–September 1867. Tupper ran as a member for the new federal riding of Cumberland and won his seat. However, Tupper was the only pro-Confederation candidate to win a seat from Nova Scotia in the 1st Canadian Parliament, with Joseph Howe and the Anti-Confederates winning every other seat.

As an ally of Sir John A. Macdonald and the Liberal-Conservative Party, it was widely believed that Tupper would have a place in the first Cabinet of Canada. However, when Macdonald ran into difficulties in organizing this cabinet, Tupper stepped aside in favour of Edward Kenny. Instead, Tupper set up a medical practice in Ottawa and was elected as the first president of the new Canadian Medical Association, a position he held until 1870.

In November 1867, in provincial elections in Nova Scotia, the pro-Confederation Hiram Blanchard was defeated by the leader of the Anti-Confederation Party, William Annand. Given the unpopularity of Confederation within Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe traveled to London in 1868 to attempt to persuade the British government (headed by the earl of Derby, and then after February 1868 by Benjamin Disraeli) to allow Nova Scotia to secede from Confederation. Tupper followed Howe to London where he successfully lobbied British politicians against allowing Nova Scotia to secede.

Following his victory in London, Tupper proposed a reconciliation with Howe: in exchange for Howe’s agreeing to stop fighting against the union, Tupper and Howe would be allies in the fight to protect Nova Scotia’s interests within Confederation. Howe agreed to Tupper’s proposal and in January 1869 entered the Canadian cabinet as President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada.

With the outbreak of the Red River Rebellion in 1869, Tupper was distressed to find that his daughter Emma’s husband was being held hostage by Louis Riel and the rebels. He rushed to the northwest to rescue his son-in-law.

President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, 1870–1872

When Howe’s health declined the next year, Tupper finally entered the 1st Canadian Ministry by becoming Privy Council president in June 1870.

The next year was dominated by a dispute with the U.S. regarding American access to the Atlantic fisheries. Tupper thought that the British should restrict American access to these fisheries so that they could negotiate from a position of strength. When Prime Minister Macdonald traveled to represent Canada’s interests at the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Washington (1871), Tupper served as Macdonald’s liaison with the federal cabinet.

Minister of Inland Revenue, 1872–1873

On July 2, 1872, Tupper’s service as Privy Council president ended and he became Minister of Inland Revenue.

Tupper led the Nova Scotia campaign for the Liberal-Conservative party during the Canadian federal election of 1872. His efforts paid off when Nova Scotia returned not a single Anti-Confederate Member of Parliament to the 2nd Canadian Parliament, and 20 of Nova Scotia’s 21 MPs were Liberal-Conservatives. (The Liberal-Conservative Party changed its name to the Conservative Party in 1873.)

Minister of Customs, 1873–1874

In February 1873, Tupper was shifted from Inland Revenue to become Minister of Customs, and in this position he was successful in having British weights and measures adopted as the uniform standard for the united colonies.

He would not hold this post for long, however, as Macdonald’s government was rocked by the Pacific Scandal throughout 1873. In November 1873, the 1st Canadian Ministry was forced to resign and was replaced by the 2nd Canadian Ministry headed by Liberal Alexander Mackenzie.

Years in Opposition, 1874–1878

Tupper had not been involved in the Pacific Scandal, but he nevertheless continued to support Macdonald and his Conservative colleagues both before and after the 1874 election. The 1874 election was disastrous for the Conservatives, and in Nova Scotia, Tupper was one of only two Conservative MPs returned to the 3rd Canadian Parliament.

Though Macdonald stayed on as Conservative leader, Tupper now assumed a more prominent role in the Conservative Party and was widely seen as Macdonald’s heir apparent. He led Conservative attacks on the Mackenzie government throughout the 3rd Parliament. The Mackenzie government attempted to negotiate a new free trade agreement with the United States to replace the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty which the U.S. had abrogated in 1864. When Mackenzie proved unable to achieve reciprocity, Tupper began shifting towards protectionism and became a proponent of the National Policy which became a part of the Conservative platform in 1876. The sincerity of Tupper’s conversion to the protectionist cause was doubted at the time, however: according to one apocryphal story, when Tupper came to the 1876 debate on Finance Minister Richard John Cartwright’s budget, he was prepared to advocate free trade if Cartwright had announced that the Liberals had shifted their position and were now supporting protectionism.

Tupper was also deeply critical of Mackenzie’s approach to railways, arguing that the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which would link British Columbia (which entered Confederation in 1871) with the rest of Canada, should be a stronger government priority than it was for Mackenzie. This position also became an integral part of the Conservative platform.

As on previous occasions when he was not in cabinet, Tupper was active in practicing medicine during the 1874–78 stint in Opposition, though he was dedicating less and less of his time to medicine during this period.

Tupper was a councillor of the Oxford Military College in Cowley and Oxford Oxfordshire from 1876–1896.

Minister of Public Works, 1878–1879

During the 1878 election Tupper again led the Conservative campaign in Nova Scotia. The Conservatives under Macdonald won a resounding majority in the election, in the process capturing 16 of Nova Scotia’s 21 seats in the 4th Canadian Parliament.

With the formation of the 3rd Canadian Ministry in October 1878, Tupper became Minister of Public Works. His top priority was completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which he saw as “an Imperial Highway across the Continent of America entirely on British soil.” This marked a shift in Tupper’s position: although he had long argued that completion of the railway should be a major government priority, while Tupper was in Opposition, he argued that the railway should be privately constructed; he now argued that the railway ought to be completed as a public work, partly because he believed that the private sector could not complete the railroad given the recession which gripped the country throughout the 1870s.

Minister of Railways and Canals, 1879–1884

In May 1879, Macdonald decided that completion of the railway was such a priority that he created a new ministry to focus just on railways and canals, and Tupper became Canada’s first Minister of Railways and Canals.

Tupper’s motto as Minister of Railways and Canals was “Develop our resources.” He stated “I have always supposed that the great object, in every country, and especially in a new country, was to draw as [many] capitalists into it as possible.”

Tupper traveled to London in summer 1879 to attempt to persuade the British government (then headed by the earl of Beaconsfield in his second term as prime minister) to guarantee a bond sale to be used to construct the railway. He was not successful, though he did manage to purchase 50,000 tons of steel rails at a bargain price. Tupper’s old friend Sandford Fleming oversaw the railway construction, but his inability to keep costs down led to political controversy, and Tupper was forced to remove Fleming as Chief Engineer in May 1880.

1879 also saw Tupper made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, and thus entitled to use the postnominal letters “KCMG”.

In 1880, George Stephen approached Tupper on behalf of a syndicate and asked to be allowed to take over construction of the railway. Convinced that Stephen’s syndicate was up to the task, Tupper convinced the cabinet to back the plan at a meeting in June 1880 and, together with Macdonald, negotiated a contract with the syndicate in October. The syndicate successfully created the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in February 1881 and assumed construction of the railway shortly thereafter.

In the next years, Tupper would be a vocal supporter of the CPR during its competition with the Grand Trunk Railway. In December 1883, he worked out a rescue plan for the CPR after it faced financial difficulties and persuaded his party and Parliament to accept the plan.

In addition to his support for completion of the CPR, Tupper also actively managed the existing railways in the colonies. Shortly after becoming minister in 1879, he forced the Intercolonial Railway to lower its freight rates, which had been a major grievance of Maritime business interests. He then forced the Grand Trunk Railway to sell its Rivière-du-Loup line to the Intercolonial Railway to complete a link between Halifax and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Furthermore, he refused to give the CPR running rights over the Intercolonial Railway, though he did convince the CPR to build the Short Line from Halifax to Saint John.

In terms of canals, Tupper’s time as Minister of Railways and Canals is notable for large expenditures on widening the Welland Canal and deepening the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Deterioration of relationship with Macdonald and appointment as High Commissioner

A rift developed between Tupper and Macdonald in 1879 over Sandford Fleming, whom Tupper supported but whom Macdonald wanted removed as Chief Engineer of the CPR. This rift was partially healed and Tupper and Macdonald managed to work together during the negotiations with George Stephen’s syndicate in 1880, but the men were no longer close, and Tupper no longer seemed to be Macdonald’s heir apparent. By early 1881, Tupper had determined that he should leave the cabinet. In March 1881, he asked Macdonald to appoint him as Canada’s High Commissioner in London. Macdonald initially refused, and Alexander Tilloch Galt retained the High Commissioner’s post.

During the 1882 election, Tupper campaigned only in Nova Scotia (he normally campaigned throughout the country): he was again successful, with the Conservatives winning 14 of Nova Scotia’s 21 seats in the 5th Canadian Parliament. The 1882 election was personally significant for Tupper because it saw his son, Charles Hibbert Tupper, elected as MP for Pictou.

Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, 1883–1895

Early years as High Commissioner, 1883–1887

Tupper remained committed to leaving Ottawa, however, and in May 1883, he moved to London to become unpaid High Commissioner, though he did not surrender his ministerial position at the time. Soon, however, he was facing criticism that the two posts were incompatible, and in May 1884, he resigned from cabinet and the House of Commons and became full-time paid High Commissioner.

During his time as High Commissioner, Tupper sought to vigorously defend Canada’s rights. Thus, although he was not a full plenipotentiary, he represented Canada at a Paris conference in 1883, where he openly disagreed with the British delegation; and in 1884 was allowed to conduct negotiations for a Canadian commercial treaty with Spain.

Tupper was concerned with promoting immigration to Canada and made several tours of various countries in Europe to encourage immigrants to move to Canada. A report in 1883 acknowledges the work of Sir Charles Tupper:

As directing emigration from the United Kingdom and also the Continent, his work has been greatly valuable; and especially in reference to the arrangements made by him on the Continent and in Ireland. The High Commissioner for Canada, Sir Charles Tupper, has been aided during the past year by the same Emigration Agents of the Department in the United Kingdom as in 1882, namely, Mr. John Dyke, Liverpool; Mr. Thomas Grahame, Glasgow; Mr. Charles Foy, Belfast; Mr. Thomas Connolly, Dublin, and Mr. J.W. Down, Bristol. On the European Continent, Dr. Otto Hahn, of Reutlingen, has continued to act as Agent in Germany.

In 1883, Tupper convinced William Ewart Gladstone’s government to exempt Canadian cattle from the general British ban on importing American cattle by demonstrating that Canadian cattle was free of disease.

His other duties as High Commissioner included: putting Canadian exporters in contact with British importers; negotiating loans for the Canadian government and the CPR; helping to organize the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886; arranging for a subsidy for the mail ship from Vancouver, British Columbia to the Orient; and lobbying on behalf of a British-Pacific cable along the lines of the transatlantic telegraph cable and for a faster transatlantic steam ship.

Tupper was also present at the founding meeting of the Imperial Federation League in July 1884, where he argued against a resolution which said that the only options open to the British Empire were Imperial Federation or disintegration. Tupper believed that a form of limited federation was possible and desirable.

Interlude as Minister of Finance, 1887–1888

1884 saw the election of Liberal William Stevens Fielding as Premier of Nova Scotia after Fielding campaigned on a platform of leading Nova Scotia out of Confederation. As such, throughout 1886, Macdonald begged Tupper to return to Canada to fight the Anti-Confederates. In January 1887, Tupper returned to Canada to rejoin the 3rd Canadian Ministry as Minister of Finance of Canada, all the while retaining his post as High Commissioner.

During the 1887 federal election, Tupper again presented the pro-Confederation argument to the people of Nova Scotia, and again the Conservatives won 14 of Nova Scotia’s 21 seats in the 6th Canadian Parliament.

During his year as finance minister, Tupper retained the government’s commitment to protectionism, even extending it to the iron and steel industry. By this point, Tupper was convinced that Canada was ready to move on to its second stage of industrial development. In part, he held out the prospect of the development of a great iron industry as an inducement to keep Nova Scotia from seceding.

Tupper’s unique position of being both Minister of Finance and High Commissioner to London served him well in an emerging crisis in American-Canadian relations: in 1885, the U.S. abrogated the fisheries clause of the Treaty of Washington (1871), and the Canadian government retaliated against American fishermen with a narrow reading of the Treaty of 1818. Acting as High Commissioner, Tupper pressured the British government (then led by Lord Salisbury) to stand firm in defending Canada’s rights. The result was the appointment of a Joint Commission in 1887, with Tupper serving as one of the three British commissioners to negotiate with the Americans. Salisbury selected Joseph Chamberlain as one of the British commissioners. John Thompson served as the British delegation’s legal counsel. During the negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard complained that “Mr. Chamberlain has yielded the control of the negotiations over to Sir Charles Tupper, who subjects the questions to the demands of Canadian politics.” The result of the negotiations was a treaty (the Treaty of Washington of 1888) that made such concessions to Canada that it was ultimately rejected by the American Senate in February 1888. However, although the treaty was rejected, the Commission had managed to temporarily resolve the dispute.

Following the conclusion of these negotiations, Tupper decided to return to London to become High-Commissioner full-time. Macdonald attempted to persuade Tupper to stay in Ottawa: during the political crisis surrounding the 1885 North-West Rebellion, Macdonald had pledged to nominate Sir Hector-Louis Langevin as his successor; Macdonald now told Tupper that he would break this promise and nominate Tupper as his successor. Tupper was not convinced, however, and resigned as Minister of Finance on May 23, 1888, and moved back to London.

Later years as High Commissioner, 1888–1895

For Tupper’s work on the Joint Commission, Joseph Chamberlain arranged for Tupper to become a baronet of the United Kingdom, and the Tupper Baronetcy was created on September 13, 1888.

In 1889, tensions were high between the U.S. and Canada when the U.S. banned Canadians from engaging in the seal hunt in the Bering Sea as part of the ongoing Bering Sea Dispute between the U.S. and Britain. Tupper traveled to Washington, D.C. to represent Canadian interests during the negotiations and was something of an embarrassment to the British diplomats.

When, in 1890, the provincial secretary of Newfoundland, Robert Bond, negotiated a fisheries treaty with the U.S. that Tupper felt was not in Canada’s interest, Tupper successfully persuaded the British government (then under Lord Salisbury’s second term) to reject the treaty.

As noted above, Tupper remained an active politician during his time as High Commissioner, which was controversial because diplomats are traditionally expected to be nonpartisan. (Tupper’s successor as High Commissioner, Donald Smith would succeed in turning the High Commissioner’s office into a nonpartisan office.) As such, Tupper returned to Canada to campaign on behalf of the Conservatives’ National Policy during the 1891 election.

Tupper continued to be active in the Imperial Federation League, though after 1887, the League was split over the issue of regular colonial contribution to imperial defense. As a result, the League was ultimately dissolved in 1893, for which some people blamed Tupper.

With respect to the British Empire, Tupper advocated a system of mutual preferential trading. In a series of articles in Nineteenth Century in 1891 and 1892, Tupper denounced the position that Canada should unilaterally reduce its tariff on British goods. Rather, he argued that any such tariff reduction should only come as part of a wider trade agreement in which tariffs on Canadian goods would also be reduced at the same time.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s death in 1891 opened the possibility of Tupper replacing him as prime minister of Canada, but Tupper enjoyed life in London and decided against returning to Canada. He recommended that his son support Sir John Thompson’s prime ministerial bid.

Tupper becomes prime minister, 1895–1896

Sir John Thompson died suddenly in office in December 1894. Many observers expected the Governor General of Canada, Lord Aberdeen, to invite Tupper to return to Canada to become prime minister. However, Lord Aberdeen disliked Tupper and instead invited Sir Mackenzie Bowell to replace Thompson as prime minister.

The greatest challenge facing Bowell as prime minister was the Manitoba Schools Question. The Conservative Party was bitterly divided as to how to handle the Manitoba Schools Question, and as a result, on January 4, 1896, seven cabinet ministers resigned, demanding the return of Tupper. As a result, Bowell and Aberdeen were forced to invite Tupper to join the 6th Canadian Ministry and on January 15 Tupper became Secretary of State for Canada, with the understanding that he would become prime minister following the dissolution of the 7th Canadian Parliament.

Returning to Canada, Tupper was elected to the 7th Canadian Parliament as member for Cape Breton during a by-election held on February 4, 1896. At this point, Tupper was the de facto prime minister, though legally Bowell was still prime minister.

Tupper’s position on the Manitoba Schools Act was that French Catholics in Manitoba had been promised the right to separate state-funded French-language Catholic schools in the Manitoba Act of 1870. Thus, even though he personally opposed French-language Catholic schools in Manitoba, he believed that the government should stand by its promise and therefore oppose Dalton McCarthy’s Manitoba Schools Act. He maintained this position even after the Manitoba Schools Act was upheld by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

In 1895, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had also ruled that the Canadian federal government could pass remedial legislation to overrule the Manitoba Schools Act. Thus, in February 1896, Tupper introduced this remedial legislation in the House of Commons. The bill was filibustered by a combination of extreme Protestants led by McCarthy and Liberals led by Wilfrid Laurier. This filibuster resulted in Tupper abandoning the bill and asking for a dissolution.

Prime Minister of Canada, May–July 1896

Parliament was dissolved on April 24, 1896, and the 7th Canadian Ministry with Tupper as prime minister was sworn in on May 1 making him, with John Turner and Kim Campbell, the only Prime Ministers to never sit in Parliament as Prime Minister. Tupper remains the oldest person ever to become Canadian prime minister, at 74.

Throughout the 1896 election campaign, Tupper argued that the real issue of the election was the future of Canadian industry, and insisted that Conservatives needed to unite to defeat the Patrons of Industry. However, the Conservatives were so bitterly divided over the Manitoba Schools Question that wherever he spoke, he was faced with a barrage of criticism, most notably at a two-hour address he gave at Massey Hall in Toronto, which was constantly interrupted by the crowd.

Wilfrid Laurier, on the other hand, modified the traditional Liberal stance on free trade and embraced aspects of the National Policy.

In the end, the Conservatives won the most votes in the 1896 election (48.2% of the votes, in comparison to 41.4% for the Liberals). However, they captured only about half of the seats in English Canada, while Laurier’s Liberals won a landslide victory in Quebec, where Tupper’s reputation as an ardent imperialist was a major handicap. Tupper’s inability to persuade Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau to return to active politics as his Quebec lieutenant was the nail in the coffin for the Conservatives’ campaign in Quebec.

Although Laurier had clearly won the election on June 24, Tupper initially refused to cede power, insisting that Laurier would be unable to form a government despite the Liberal Party having won 55% of the seats in the House of Commons. However, when Tupper attempted to make appointments as prime minister, Lord Aberdeen stepped in, dismissing Tupper and inviting Laurier to form a government. Tupper maintained that Lord Aberdeen’s actions were unconstitutional.

Tupper’s 68 days is the shortest term of all prime ministers. His government never faced a Parliament.

Leader of the Opposition, 1896–1900

As Leader of the Opposition during the 8th Canadian Parliament, Tupper attempted to regain the loyalty of those Conservatives who had deserted the party over the Manitoba Schools Question. He played up loyalty to the British Empire. Tupper strongly supported Canadian participation in the Second Boer War, which broke out in 1899, and criticized Laurier for not doing enough to support Britain in the war.

The 1900 election saw the Conservatives pick up 17 Ontario seats in the 9th Canadian Parliament. This was a small consolation, however, as Laurier and the Liberals won a definitive majority and had a clear mandate for a second term. What was worse for Tupper, for the first time ever, was the fact he had failed to carry his own seat, losing the Cape Breton seat to Liberal Alexander Johnston. In November 1900, two weeks after the election, Tupper stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Leader of the Opposition – the caucus chose as his successor fellow Nova Scotian Robert Laird Borden.

Later years, 1901–1915

Following his defeat in the 1900 election, Tupper and his wife settled with their daughter Emma in Bexleyheath in southeast London. He continued to make frequent trips to Canada to visit his sons Charles Hibbert Tupper and William Johnston Tupper, both of whom were Canadian politicians.

On November 9, 1907, Tupper became a member of the British Privy Council. He was also promoted to the rank of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, which made him entitled to use the postnominal letters “GCMG”.

Tupper remained interested in imperial politics, and particularly with promoting Canada’s place within the British Empire. He sat on the executive committee of the British Empire League and advocated closer economic ties between Canada and Britain, while continuing to oppose Imperial Federation and requests for Canada to make a direct contribution to imperial defense costs (though he supported Borden’s decision to voluntarily make an emergency contribution of dreadnoughts to the Royal Navy in 1912).

In his retirement, Tupper wrote his memoirs, entitled Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada, which were published in 1914. He also gave a series of interviews to journalist W. A. Harkin which formed the basis of a second book published in 1914, entitled Political Reminiscences of the Right Honourable Sir Charles Tupper.

Tupper’s wife, Lady Tupper died in May 1912. His eldest son Orin died in April 1915 . On October 30, 1915, in Bexleyheath, Tupper died of heart failure. He was the last of the original Fathers of Confederation to die, and had lived the longest life of any Canadian prime minister, at 94 years, four months.  His body was returned to Canada on board the HMS Blenheim (the same vessel that had carried the body of Tupper’s colleague, Sir John Thompson to Halifax when Thompson died in England in 1894) and he was buried in St. John’s Cemetery, Halifax in Halifax following a state funeral with a mile-long procession.

Legacy

Tupper will be most remembered as a Father of Confederation, and his long career as a federal cabinet minister, rather than his brief time as Prime Minister. As the Premier of Nova Scotia from 1864 to 1867, he led Nova Scotia into Confederation and persuaded Joseph Howe to join the new federal government, bringing an end to the anti-Confederation movement in Nova Scotia.

In their 1999 study of the Canadian Prime Ministers through Jean Chrétien, J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer included the results of a survey of Canadian historians ranking the Prime Ministers. Tupper ranked #16 out of the 20 up to that time, due to his extremely short tenure in which he was unable to accomplish anything of significance. Historians noted that despite Tupper’s elderly age, he showed a determination and spirit during his brief time as Prime Minister that almost beat Laurier in the 1896 election

 

Gwanggaeto the Great of Goguryeo

Gwanggaeto the Great of Goguryeo (374-413, r. 391-413) was the nineteenth monarch of Goguryeo, the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. His full posthumous name roughly means “Very Greatest King, Broad Expander of Territory, bringer of Peace and Security, buried in Gukgangsang.” Under Gwanggaeto, Goguryeo once again became a major power of Northeast Asia, as it had been earlier, during the second century CE. Many consider this loose unification under Goguryeo to have been the first and only true unification of the Three Kingdoms.

Today, King Gwanggaeto the Great is regarded by Koreans as one of their greatest historical heros, and is one of only is one of two rulers, along with King Sejong who were given the title Great after their name. His legacy of greatly expanding the territory of Korea during his reign gave his people great confidence, hope and strength.

At the time of Gwanggaeto’s birth, Goguryeo was not as powerful as it once had been. Just prior to his birth, Baekje’s King Geunchogo had soundly defeated Goguryeo, capturing its second-largest fortress of Pyongyang and slaying Goguryeo’s King Gogukwon. Goguryeo’s King Sosurim, who succeeded Gogukwon upon the latter’s death in 371, kept his foreign policy as isolationist as possible so as to rebuild a state gravely weakened by the Baekje invasion of 371. Gogukyang, who succeeded Sosurim, maintained a similar policy, opting to focus on the rehabilitation and remobilization of Goguryeo forces.

After defeating Goguryeo in 371, Baekje had become a dominant power in East Asia, with an area of influence not limited to the Korean Peninsula alone. Baekje forces under King Geunchogo seized several coastal cities of China, notably in Liaoxi and Shandong, to retain its superiority over Goguryeo and a variety of southern Chinese dynasties, which had arisen within the context of extended civil wars caused by the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 C.E. and the concomitant invasions of foreign tribes, including but not limited to the Xiongnu and Xianbei (Wu Hu). Baekje and Geunchogo’s leadership also seems to have established good relations with parts of Japan.

Thus, Goguryeo, surrounded by a powerful Baekje’s forces to its south and west, found it most effective to avoid conflict with Baekje, while at the same time cultivating constructive relations with the Xienpei and Yuyeon in China, in order to defend itself from future invasions, and even the possible destruction of its state.

Goguryo under Gwanggaeto

Rebuilding the military

Gwanggaeto took the throne when his father, King Gogukyang, died in 391. His name, King Gwanggaeto is sometimes abbreviated to Hotaewang or Taewang. Immediately upon being crowned king of Goguryeo, Gwanggaeto selected Yeongnak (Eternal Rejoicing) as his era name and granted himself the title Emperor, which was tantamount to proclaiming that he had equal status to the rulers of China and the king of Baekje. He was called Emperor Yeongnak the Great during his reign. He started his reign by beginning to rebuild and retrain Goguryeo’s cavalry units and naval fleet, and they were put into action the following year, 392, against Baekje.

Reclaiming Baekje territory

In 392, with Gwanggaeto in personal command, Goguryeo attacked Baekje with 50,000 cavalry, taking 10–walled cities along the two countries’ mutual border. This offensive infuriated Baekje’s King Asin, who planned a counter-attack against Gwanggaeto; however he was forced to abandon his plan when Goguryeo defeated his invasion force in 393. King Asin again attacked Goguryeo in 394, and was again defeated. After several heavy defeats, Baekje began to crumble politically and Asin’s abilities as a leader came under doubt. Asin lost to Goguryeo again in 395, and he was eventually pushed back to a front along the Han River, where Wiryeseong, then Baekje’s capital city was located in the southern part of modern day Seoul.

In the following year, Gwanggaeto led his huge fleet in an assault on Wiryesong, approaching by sea and river. Asin was expecting a ground invasion and was caught with his defenses down. Gwanggaeto’s forces burnt about 58 walled fortresses under Baekje control, and defeated the forces of King Asin. Asin surrendered to Gwanggaeto, even handing over his brother to Goguryeo as a prisonor as a condition for maintaining his own rule over Baekje. Gwanggaeto had finally gained superiority over its longtime rival Baekje on the Korean peninsula.

Conquest of the North

In 395, during a campaign against Baekje, the king himself led forces that attacked and conquered Biryu, a small nation located in central Manchuria. Its exact location is not known but it was not very far from the Songhua River.

In 400, Later Yan, founded by the Murong clan of the Xianbei in present-day Liaoning province, attacked Goguryeo. Gwanggaeto responded swiftly, recovering most of the territory seized by the Xianbei and driving most of them from Goguryeo. Then in 402, he decided to launch an attack on Later Yan on its home territory, determined to protect his Empire from further threat. In the same year Gwanggaeto defeated the Xienpei, seizing some of their border fortresses. In 404, he invaded Liaodong and took the entire Liaodong Peninsula.

The Xianbei did not watch idly as Goguryeo forces took over their lands. In 405, forces of the Later Yan crossed the Liao River, and attacked Goguryeo but were defeated by Gwanggaeto. The Murong Xianbei invaded once again the following year, but yet again the Goguryeo king was able to repel them. Gwanggaeto led several more campaigns against Xianbei as well as against Khitan tribes in Inner Mongolia, which he brought under his control. In 408, the king sent a peace delegate to Gao Yun, then emperor of Later Yan/Northern Yan, to broker a settlement between the two dynasties, because Gao Yun descended from the Goguryeo royal house as well. Goguryeo control over the Liaoning region remained strong until the Tang Dynasty seized the area as a part of its war against Goguryeo in the late sixth century.

In 410, Gwanggaeto began his conquest of the Buyeo (state). The Buyeo state was no match for the great cavalry units of Goguryeo, and it suffered a series of defeat, finally surrendering to Goguryeo after King Gwanggaeto conquered sixty-four walled cities and more than 1,400 villages. Gwanggaeto also attacked several Malgal and Ainu tribes further north, bringing them under Goguryeo domination.

Southeastern campaigns

In 400, Silla, another Korean kingdom in the southeast of the peninsula, requested Goguryeo assistance to defend against an alliance of Japanese army, the Baekje kingdom to the west, and the Gaya confederacy to the southwest. In the same year, King Gwanggaeto responded with 50,000 troops, defeated both Japanese and Gaya cavalry units, and made both Silla and Gaya submit to his authority. In 401, he returned King Silseong to Silla, to establish peaceful relationship with the kingdom while he continued the conquest of the north, but Goguryeo forces remained and continued to influence Silla.

Death and legacy

King Gwanggaeto died of disease in 413, at the age of 39. Although Gwanggaeto ruled for only 22 years and died fairly young, his conquests are said to mark the high tide of Korean history. Except for the period of 200 years beginning with his son and successor, King Jangsu, and the later kingdom of Balhae, Korea never before or since ruled such a vast territory. There is evidence that Goguryeo’s maximum extent lay even further west, in present-day Mongolia, bordered by the Rouran and Göktürks. Gwanggaeto is also given credit for establishing the reign titles that were recorded for the first time in Korean history, a symbolic gesture elevating Goguryeo monarchs as equals to their Chinese counterparts.

Upon King Gwanggaeto’s death at 39 years of age in 413, Goguryeo controlled all territory between the Amur and Han Rivers (two thirds of modern Korea, as well as Manchuria, parts of the Russian Maritime province and Inner Mongolia). In addition, in 399, Silla appealed to Goguryeo for protection from raids from Baekje. Gwanggaeto captured the Baekje capital in present-day Seoul and made Baekje its vassal.

Today, King Gwanggaeto the Great is one of two rulers of Korea who were given the title “Great” after their name (the other one being King Sejong the Great of Joseon, who created the Korean alphabet). He is regarded by Koreans as one of the greatest heroes of their history, and is often taken as a potent symbol of Korean nationalism. Recently, the People’s Republic of China launched a program of attempting to claim the history of Goguryeo as part of Chinese history, which has resulted in popular opposition from Koreans.

Gwanggaeto’s accomplishments are recorded on the Gwanggaeto Stele, located at the site of his tomb in Ji’an along the present-day Chinese-North Korean border. The Gwanggaeto Stele, an enormous six-meter monument erected by Gwanggaeto’s son King Jangsu in 414, was rediscovered in Manchuria in 1875 by a Chinese scholar. It is the largest engraved stele in the world. Although the stele gives us a great amount of information of his reign, it has also caused a some historical controversy, because of several references to Japan contained in its text. Some characters in the text of the stele are not clear, leaving the text open to more than one interpretation. The references to Japan can be read as follows:

• in 391 Japan crossed sea and defeated Baekje and Silla and made them subjects.
• in 399 allied armies of Baekje and Japan invaded into Silla. Silla asked Goguryeo for help.
• in 400 Goguryeo expelled Japan from Silla to southern Korea.
• in 404 Japan lost the battle against Goguryeo in the southern Lelang (Pyongyang).

Korean scholars dispute this reading, denying the possibility of Japan’s presence on the Korean Peninsula in the fourth century. For example, written histories of both the Silla and Baekje kingdoms contain no mention of Japanese control of any part of the Korean peninsula in 391. Rather, Baekje accounts read that Japan obeyed the commands of the King of Baekje. Some Korean scholars claim the the Gwanggaeto Stele was deliberately altered by the Japanese army to provide a historical justification for Japan’s later occupation of Korea. Korean scholars claim that the passage should be interpreted as:

• in 391 Goguryeo crossed sea and defeated Baekje and Silla and made them subjects.

Another interpretation of the passage regarding 391 is that it refers to Japanese troups in Korea not as conquerers, but as military troops in the service of Baekje. Goguryeo, not respecting Baekje’s use of Japanese troops, states that Baekje is under the control of the Japanese, because Baekje was not strong enough to stand their own ground without Japanese help, making them subject to the assistance of the Japanese.

Due to the different interpretations of history made by scholars from different countries, it has proved impossible at this point for Korean and Japanese scholars to strike a concensus regarding the events of the Goguryeo period. This disagreement has delayed progress in developing common history textbooks to be used in Korea, Japan, and China.

A further legacy of Gwanggaeto is the ITF Taekwon-Do Tul (form) named for him that was created by General Choi Honghi and his colleague, Nam Taehi. To quote the significance of the form, as introduced by the ITF Taekwon-do:

KWANG-GAE (Gwang-gaeto) is named after the famous Kwang-Gae-Toh-Wang, the 19th King of the Koguryo Dynasty, who regained all the lost territories including the greater part of Manchuria. The diagram represents the expansion and recovery of lost territory. The 39 movements refer to the first two figures of 391 C.E., the year he came to the throne.

The pattern is performed as part of the testing syllabus for the level of 1st Degree black belt by the three former branches of the original ITF in addition to independent Taekwon-Do schools that regard themselves as ‘traditional’ ITF Style.

 

Abel Janszoon Tasman

Abel Janszoon Tasman  (1603–1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC (United East India Company). His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands. His navigator François Visscher, and his merchant Isaack Gilsemans mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific Islands.

First pacific voyage

Abel Tasman was born in 1603 in Lutjegast, Batavia; four years later he was back in Amsterdam. Tasman signed on for another ten years and took his wife along to Batavia. In 1639 Tasman was sent as second in command of an exploring expedition in the north Pacific under Matthijs Quast. His fleet included the ships Engel and Gracht and reached Fort Zeelandia (Dutch Formosa) and Deshima. In 1642 he signed a friendly trading treaty with the Sultan of Palembang, Sumatra  offering military protection for pepper.

In August 1642, the Council of the Indies, consisting of Antonie van Diemen, Cornelis van der Lijn, Joan Maetsuycker, Justus Schouten, Salomon Sweers, Cornelis Witsen, and Pieter Boreel in Batavia despatched Abel Tasman and Franchoijs Visscher on a voyage of which one of the objects was to obtain knowledge of “all the totally unknown provinces of Beach”.

Beach, and Terra Australis

Beach appeared on maps of the time, notably that of Abraham Ortelius of 1570 and that of Jan Huygen van Linschoten of 1596, as the northernmost part of the southern continent, the Terra Australis, along with Locach. According to Marco Polo, Locach was a kingdom where gold was “so plentiful that no none who did not see it could believe it”. Beach was in fact a mistranscription of Locach. Locach was Marco Polo’s name for the southern Thai kingdom of Lavo, or Lop Buri, the “city of Lavo”, (ลพบร, after Lavo, the son of Rama in Hindu mythology). In Chinese (Cantonese), Lavo was pronounced “Lo-huk” (羅斛), from which Marco Polo took his rendition of the name. In the German cursive script, “Locach” and “Beach” look similar, and in the 1532 edition of Marco Polo’s Travels his Locach was changed to Boëach, later shortened to Beach. They seem to have drawn on the map of the world published in Florence in 1489 by Henricus Martellus, in which provincia boëach appears as the southern neighbour of provincia ciamba. Book III of Marco Polo’s Il Milione described his journey by sea from China to India by way of Champa (= Southern Vietnam), Java (which he called Java Major), Locach and Sumatra (called Java Minor). After a chapter describing the kingdom of Champa there follows a chapter describing Java (which he did not visit himself). The narrative then resumes, describing the route southward from Champa toward Sumatra, but by a slip of the pen the name “Java” was substituted for “Champa” as the point of departure, locating Sumatra 1,300 miles to the south of Java instead of Champa. Locach, located between Champa and Sumatra, was likewise mis-placed far to the south of Java, by some geographers on or near an extension of the Terra Australis. As explained by Sir Henry Yule, the editor of an English edition of Marco Polo’s Travels: “Some geographers of the 16th century, following the old editions which carried the travellers south-east of Java to the land of “Boeach” (or Locac), introduced in their maps a continent in that situation”. Gerard Mercator did just that on his 1541 globe, placing Beach provincia aurifera (“Beach the gold-bearing province”) in the northernmost part of the Terra Australis in accordance with the faulty text of Marco Polo’s Travels. It remained in this location on his world map of 1569, with the amplified description, quoting Marco Polo, Beach provincia aurifera quam pauci ex alienis regionibus adeunt propter gentis inhumanitatem (“Beach the gold-bearing province, wither few go from other countries because of the inhumanity of its people”) with Lucach regnum shown somewhat to its south west. Following Mercator, Abraham Ortelius also showed BEACH and LVCACH in these locations on his world map of 1571. Likewise, Linschoten’s very popular 1596 map of the East Indies showed BEACH projecting from the map’s southern edge, leading (or mis-leading) Visscher and Tasman in their voyage of 1642 to seek Beach with its plentiful gold in a location to the south of the Solomon Islands somewhere between Staten Land near Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. Confirmation that land existed where the maps showed Beach to be had come from Dirk Hartog’s landing in October 1616 on its west coast, which he called Eendrachtsland after the name of his ship. Abel Tasman endured a very rough journey from Tasmania to New Zealand. In one of his diary entries Tasman credits his compass, claiming it was the only thing that kept him alive.

Mauritius

In accordance with Visscher’s directions, Tasman sailed first to Mauritius and arrived on 5 September 1642. The reason for this was the crew could be fed well on the island; there was plenty of fresh water and timber to repair the ships. Tasman got the assistance of the governor Adriaan van der Stel. Because of the prevailing winds Mauritius was chosen as a turning point. After a four week stay on the island both ships left on 8 October. After one month it started to snow and hail; Tasman changed course more north. Part of the western shore of the continent was already known to the Dutch, but no one had gone as far as Pieter Nuyts.

Tasmania

On 24 November 1642 Abel Tasman sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour. He named his discovery Van Diemen’s Land after Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Proceeding south he skirted the southern end of Tasmania and turned north-east, Tasman then tried to work his two ships into Adventure Bay on the east coast of South Bruny Island where he was blown out to sea by a storm, this area he named Storm Bay. Two days later Tasman anchored to the North of Cape Frederick Hendrick just North of the Forestier Peninsula. Tasman then landed in Blackman Bay – in the larger Marion Bay. The next day, an attempt was made to land in North Bay; however, because the sea was too rough the carpenter swam through the surf and planted the Dutch flag in North Bay. Tasman then claimed formal possession of the land on 3 December 1642.

New Zealand

After some exploration, Tasman had intended to proceed in a northerly direction but as the wind was unfavourable he steered east. On 13 December they sighted land on the north-west coast of the South Island, New Zealand, becoming the first Europeans to do so. Tasman named it Staten Landt on the assumption that it was connected to an island (Staten Island, Argentina) at the south of the tip of South America. Proceeding north and then east, he stopped to gather water, but one of his boats was attacked by Māori in waka (canoes) and four of his men and several Māori were killed. Archeological research has shown the Dutch had tried to land at a major agricultural area, which the Māori may have been trying to protect. Tasman named the bay Murderers’ Bay (now known as Golden Bay) and sailed north, but mistook Cook Strait for a bight (naming it Zeehaen’s Bight). Two names he gave to New Zealand landmarks still endure, Cape Maria van Diemen and Three Kings Islands, but Cabo Pieter Boreels is now known as Cape Egmont.

The return voyage

On route back to Batavia, Tasman came across the Tongan archipelago on 20 January 1643. While passing the Fiji Islands Tasman’s ships came close to being wrecked on the dangerous reefs of the north-eastern part of the Fiji group. He charted the eastern tip of Vanua Levu and Cikobia before making his way back into the open sea. He eventually turned north-west to New Guinea, and arrived at Batavia on 15 June 1643.

Second Pacific voyage

With three ships on his second voyage (Limmen, Zeemeeuw and the tender Braek) in 1644, he followed the south coast of New Guinea eastwards. He missed the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia, and continued his voyage along the Australian coast. He mapped the north coast of Australia making observations on the land, called New Holland, and its people.

From the point of view of the Dutch East India Company Tasman’s explorations were a disappointment: he had neither found a promising area for trade nor a useful new shipping route. Although received modestly, the company was upset to a degree that Tasman failed didn’t fully explore the lands he found, and decided that a more “persistent explorer” should be chosen for any future expeditions. For over a century, until the era of James Cook, Tasmania and New Zealand were not visited by Europeans – mainland Australia was visited, but usually only by accident.

Later life

On 2 November 1644 Abel Tasman was appointed a member of the Council of Justice at Batavia. He went to Sumatra in 1646, and in August 1647 to Siam (now Thailand) with letters from the company to the King. In May 1648 he was in charge of an expedition sent to Manila to try to intercept and loot the Spanish silver ships coming from America, but he had no success and returned to Batavia in January 1649. In November 1649 he was charged and found guilty of having in the previous year hanged one of his men without trial, was suspended from his office of commander, fined, and made to pay compensation to the relatives of the sailor. On 5 January 1651 he was formally reinstated in his rank and spent his remaining years at Batavia. He was in good circumstances, being one of the larger landowners in the town. He died at Batavia in October 1659 and was survived by his second wife and a daughter by his first wife. The poor in Lutjegast received the small amount of only 25 guilders

 

Bazaar

A bazaar is a permanent merchandizing area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold. Originating from ancient Islamic civilizations, the bazaar is the precursor for the modern day supermarket, flea-market, and shopping mall, and has had a great influence on the economic development and centralization in modern cities around the world.

The bazaar first appeared along the important trade routes. The constant flow of foreign and exotic goods, along with travelers, gave rise to systems of haggling and trade within the cities themselves. Special areas of cities were eventually designated as areas of trade, and the first bazaars were established. Bazaars rapidly became areas not just for the trading of goods, but were often the social, religious, and financial centers of cities. With their continuing connection to the religious aspects of life through the presence of mosques in the close vicinity, and their attraction to tourists, bazaars have retained more of a historical and local identity than the Western mall. The bazaar has a long history and has served all segments of society well; it continues to develop and modernize externally, retaining its internal character and purpose, it maintains its place in modern society.

Etymology

The word bazaar derives from the Persian word bāzār, the etymology of which goes back to the Pahlavi word baha-char (بهاچار) meaning “the place of prices”. During the time of the Crusades, when Europe and the Middle East had their first major encounters and cultural dissemination took place, the word was assimilated into Italian as bazzara, before being transferred to English in its current form, bazaar. While currently the word is most often used to denote outdoor shopping areas, particularly those of Islamic origins, the word is sometimes used loosely to refer to such places and events as flea markets or swap-meets.

History

The bazaar first appeared in the Middle East, around the fourth century. At the time, the area was often at the axis of many important trade routes, which helped establish cities and ports. A constant flow of foreign and exotic goods, along with travelers, gave rise to systems of haggling and trade within the cities themselves. Special areas of cities were eventually designated as areas of trade, and the first bazaars were established. A strong economy has always been an Islamic ideal, so the bazaars were incorporated and actively fostered when the Islamic conquest swept over the region.

Bazaars became areas not just for the trading of goods, but were often the social, religious, and financial centers of cities. Mosques and coffee shops were often incorporated into established bazaars, as were forms of street entertainment. The idea of a bazaar was carried along trade routes, to east in areas of modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and certain areas in South-East Asia, North to modern day Turkey, Hungary and sporadically into areas of Central Asia. However, the major world bazaars continued to be found in Middle Eastern states, as they still are today.

Famous Examples

The Old Bazaar in Cairo

Khan el-Khalili (Arabic: خان الخليلي) is a major souq in the Old City of Cairo. The souq dates back to 1382, when Emir Djaharks el-Khalili built a large caravanserai (خان khan in Arabic) in Cairo under the Burji Mamluk Sultan Barquq; the eponymous khan is still extant.

The souq is noted for selling good-quality clothing, cloth, spices, souvenirs, and traditional jewelry and perfumes at reasonable prices. Imitation Western perfumes are also produced, but tend to be of inferior quality. In addition to shops, there are several Arabic coffeehouses (مقهى maqha or قهوة qahwah, depending on dialect), restaurants, and street food vendors distributed throughout the market. The coffeeshops are generally small and quite traditional, serving Turkish coffee and usually offering shisha. The Al-Hussein Mosque is also in Khan El-Khalili; Al-Azhar University and its mosque are not far away.

The market was a target for terrorism during the spate of attacks in Cairo in April 2005. The suicide attack in the market, on April 7, took 21 lives (eleven Egyptians, two French tourists, one American, and seven foreigners of unidentified origin). It was the first attack in the series; this attack scared away tourists from Egypt in general and Khan El-Khalili in particular for some time.

Tehran’s Grand Bazaar

Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, is the world’s largest bazaar situated in the capital of Iran, Tehran. Throughout its history, the Grand bazaar has played host to banks and financiers, mosques and guest houses.

Traditionally, the Tehran bazaar was split into corridors, each specializing in different types of goods, including copper, carpets, paper, spices, and precious metals, as well as small traders selling all types of goods. Today, modern goods are available as well, in addition to the many traditional corridor traders that still survive. Despite relying heavily on this historical legacy, much of the bazaar itself was constructed fairly recently. The oldest remaining buildings, walls and passages in the bazaar today very rarely exceed 400 years, with many being constructed or rebuilt within the last 200 years. In this sense, the current grand bazaar is one of the newest in the Middle East.

The bazaar is viewed as a force of conservatism in Iranian society, providing strong links between the clergy and the middle class traders. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 received strong backing from these forces. As one of the most important bazaars in the country, the Tehran Grand Bazaar was a center of pro-revolutionary feeling and finance.

The Grand bazaar is still an important place of commerce for Tehranis, Iranians, traveling merchants and – increasingly – tourists. However, much of the trade and finance in the city has moved to the north of the city, leaving the bazaar somewhat decreased in importance. Still, in addition to the traditional goods on sale, the market for watches and local jewelry is apparently growing, most likely for the benefits of tourists. As is in keeping with the market spirit, tourists are encouraged to haggle. The bazaar sees the peak of its business at midday and between 5 and 7 in the evening.

Bazaar of Tabriz, Iran

The Bazaar of Tabriz, located in the center of the city of Tabriz, Iran, is one of the oldest and largest bazaars in the Middle East. It is said that it is the largest closed one-roofed structure in the world. It consists of some sub-bazaars in various fields, including Amir Bazaar (for gold and jewelry), a shoe bazaar, Mozzafarieh (carpet bazaar) and many other subdivisions for special matters. In modern times in which numerous modern shops and malls have been established, the Bazaar remains as the economic heart of Tabriz. It is also used for the celebration of special ceremonies (especially Ashura).

Like other middle-eastern bazaars, there are a numbers of mosques constructed behind the bazaar. Jome Mosque is the most notable of these.

The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

The Grand Bazaar (or Covered Bazaar, Turkish: Kapalıçarşı “Covered Bazaar”) in Istanbul is one of the largest covered markets in the world with more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops, and has between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. It is well known for its jewelry, pottery, spice, and carpet shops. Many of the stalls in the bazaar are grouped by type of goods, with special areas for leather coats, gold jewelry and the like. The bazaar contains two bedestens (domed masonry structures built for storage and safe keeping), the first of which was constructed between 1455 and 1461 by the order of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.

The bazaar was vastly enlarged in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and in 1894 underwent a major restoration following an earthquake. The Grand Bazaar has four main gates situated at the ends of its two major streets which intersect near the southwestern corner of the bazaar. One street combines the Bayezid II Mosque and Bayezid Square with Nuruosmaniye Mosque.

 

Excalibur

Excalibur, or Caliburn, is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. In Welsh, the sword is called Caledfwlch.

The best known version of the story of the sword depicts the wizard Merlin thrusting the as yet unnamed sword into a huge stone, saying that the throne will be claimed by the one who was able to withdraw it. Young Arthur would later prove to be the one to do it. The second story has Arthur obtaining the sword named as Excalibur at a magical lake, where it is given to him by the mysterious Lady of the Lake. Beginning with Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the story, the Sword in the Stone and Excalibur became identified as the same weapon.

The sword, made by an elf of Avalon, was later stolen by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay, at which time its magical healing scabbard was lost, although Arthur recovered the sword itself. In the battle of Camlann, Arthur was mortally wounded. As he lay dying, he told his companion Sir Bedivere (Griflet) to return the sword to the lake. When Bedivere did so, an arm rose from the lake to catch the sword, brandishing it three time before it disappeared beneath the waters.

Various stories of a sword like Excalibur exist in Welsh and other legends as well. In recent times, Excalibur and its name have become widespread in popular culture, and used in fiction and films.

The Sword in the Stone

The first surviving account of Arthur’s kingly sword is the “Sword in the Stone” legend, originally appearing in Robert de Boron’s French poem, Merlin (late twelfth century). In this, which would become the most famous version of the story of how Arthur came to obtain the sword, the wizard Merlin has placed the sword into a huge stone, declaring that only the true heir of Uther Pendragon could reclaim it. Several warriors attempt the task, but it can only be withdrawn by “the true king,” the divinely appointed king and true heir to the throne. In the midst of a national crisis, the young Arthur withdraws the sword and soon becomes king.

In this version of the story, the sword is not named, but it came to be identified with Excalibur in Sir Thomas Malory’s later account.

The Lady in the Lake

The second version comes from the later Suite du Merlin, part of the Post-Vulgate Cycle of French Arthurian literature of the early thirteenth century, which—like the legend of the Sword in the Stone—was taken up by Malory in his famous English-language version. Here, Arthur receives the sword from the Lady of the Lake after breaking his earlier sword in a fight with King Pellinore. The Lady of the Lake calls the sword “Excalibur,” as to say, “cut-steel,” and Arthur takes it from a hand rising out of the lake.

In the Suite du Merlin following the Battle of Bedegraine, Arthur agreed to a peace treaty with King Lot along with the other rebel kings. At this time, Arthur met King Lot’s wife, Morgause, and fell in love and slept with her her, resulting in the birth of a child, Mordred. However, Arthur had unknowingly committed incest because Morgause was actually his half-sister. He did not discover this fact until Merlin later rebuked him for his succumbing to lust. Merlin prophesied that Mordred would one day mortally wound his father, destroy his knights, and bring about the downfall of his kingdom.

Arthur also had a half-sister, Morgan le Fay, a sorceress, who loathed her sibling and used a wide range of powers to attack him many times. Arthurian mythology occasionally states that it was Morgan le Fay who seduced Arthur, producing the evil Mordred. However, it is more traditional for Morgause, another sister, to be Mordred’s mother. In these classics, Mordred frequently appears as her pawn, helping to bring about the end of Camelot. Morgan le Fay is described as stealing Excalibur’s magical scabbard, thus reducing Arthur to a vulnerable mortal during battle.

As Arthur lies dying at the end of the saga, he tells Sir Bedivere (Sir Griflet in some versions) to return his sword to the lake by throwing it into the water. Bedivere is reluctant to throw away such a precious artifact, so twice he only pretends to do so. Each time, Arthur asks him to describe what he saw. When Bedivere tells him the sword simply fell into the water, Arthur scolds him harshly. Finally, Bedivere throws Excalibur into the lake. Before the sword strikes the water’s surface, a hand reaches up to grasp it and pulls it under. Arthur then leaves on a death barge with three queens to the magical island of Avalon, from where he will one day return to rule in Britain’s darkest hour.

Malory records both versions of the legend in his Le Morte d’Arthur, and confusingly calls both swords Excalibur. In a recent version of the story presented in the film Excalibur, the divergent legends are reconciled as which Arthur draws the sword from the stone and later breaks it, and the Lady of the Lake then repairs it and returns it to him.

Related accounts

Though not yet called Excalibur, Arthur’s magical sword is also known from earlier accounts as well. In Welsh legend, Arthur’s sword is known as Caledfwlch. In the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen, it is one of Arthur’s most valuable possessions and is used by Arthur’s warrior Llenlleawg the Irishman to kill the Irish king Diwrnach while stealing his magical cauldron. Caledfwlch itself is thought to derive from the legendary Irish weapon Caladbolg, the lightning sword of Fergus mac Roich. Caladbolg was also known for its incredible power and was carried by some of Ireland’s greatest heroes.

Arthur’s sword is described vividly in The Dream of Rhonabwy one of the tales associated with the later collection of Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion:

Then they heard Cadwr Earl of Cornwall being summoned, and saw him rise with Arthur’s sword in his hand, with a design of two serpents on the golden hilt; when the sword was unsheathed what was seen from the mouths of the two serpents was like two flames of fire, so dreadful that it was not easy for anyone to look. At that the host settled and the commotion subsided, and the earl returned to his tent.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (mid twelfth century) is the first non-Welsh source to speak of the sword. Geoffrey relates that the sword was forged in Avalon and Latinizes the name “Caledfwlch” to Caliburn or Caliburnus. When his influential pseudo-history made it to Continental Europe, writers altered the name further until it became Excalibur. The legend was expanded upon in the Vulgate Cycle, also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, and in the Post-Vulgate Cycle, which emerged in its wake. The Post-Vulgate authors apparently added a new account of Arthur’s early days, including a new origin for Excalibur, in the form of the story of the Sword in the Stone.

The story of the Sword in the Stone, meanwhile, is paralleled in the Norse Legend of Sigurd, who draws his father Sigmund’s sword out of a tree where it is embedded.

In several early French works such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the Story of the Grail and the Vulgate Lancelot Proper section, Excalibur is used by Gawain, Arthur’s nephew and one of his best knights. This is in contrast to later versions, where Excalibur belongs solely to the king. In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Arthur is said to have two legendary swords, the second one being Clarent, stolen by the evil Mordred. In these version, Arthur receives his fatal blow from Clarent.

Attributes

In many versions, Excalibur’s blade was engraved with words on opposite sides. On one side were the words “take me up,” and on the other side “cast me away” (or similar words). This prefigures its return into the water. In addition, when Excalibur was first drawn, Arthur’s enemies were blinded by its blade, which was as bright as 30 torches. Excalibur’s scabbard was said to have powers of its own. Injuries from losses of blood, for example, would not kill the bearer. In some versions, wounds received by one wearing the scabbard did not bleed at all. The scabbard is stolen by Morgan le Fay and thrown into a lake, never to be found again.

Nineteenth century poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, described the sword in full Romantic detail in his poem “Morte d’Arthur,” later rewritten as “The Passing of Arthur,” one of the Idylls of the King:

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,

And o’er him, drawing it, the winter moon,

Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth

And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:

For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,

Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work

Of subtlest jewellery.

Forms and etymologies

A number of theories exist as to the etymological origins of the name Excalibur and its relationship to other legendary swords. The name Excalibur came from Old French Excalibor, which in turn derived from Caliburn, used in Geoffrey of Monmouth (Latin Caliburnus). “Caliburnus” meanwhile, seems to be derived from the Latin chalybs “steel,” which is in turn may be derived from Chalybes, the name of an Anatolian ironworking tribe. In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Excalibur is said to mean “cut-steel,” which some have interpreted to mean “steel-cutter.” There are also variant spellings such as Escalibor and Excaliber.

Another theory holds that Caliburn[us] comes from Caledfwlch, the Welsh name for the sword first mentioned in the Mabinogion, a collection of prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts. This may be cognate with Caladbolg (“hard-belly,” that is, “voracious”), a legendary Irish sword. Still another theory is related by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer in his Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which holds that the name Excalibur was originally derived from the Latin phrase Ex calce liberatus, “liberated from the stone.”

In her book The Ancient Secret, Lady Flavia Anderson postulates that “Excalibur” has a Greek origin, Ex-Kylie-Pyr or “out of a cup—fire.” This corresponds to her thesis that the Holy Grail refers to those items used to draw down the Sun in order to make fire. Excalibur, she believed, was a “brand of light” (“brand” is another word for “sword”) and associated with Aaron’s Rod. Just as only Aaron could make his rod “flower,” so only Arthur could pull Excalibur from the stone.