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Evangelus—The 6th-Century Lawyer Who Allegedly Tried To Buy His Own Seaside Town

By
thehistorianshut
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As told by the historian, Procopius (c. 6th century), an interesting lawyer named Evangelus conducted his business from a headquarters in Caesarea during the reign of Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565). Procopius, himself a native of Caesarea and a fellow member of the lawyer’s profession, might have known Evangelus personally, but the historian did not elaborate on this point. Whatever the case, Procopius was evidently in a position where he could keep himself informed of Evangelus’ business practices.

Evangelus, according to his admiring colleague’s description, was something of a King Midas—anything he touched turned into proverbial gold. Procopius wrote, “The wind of Fortune had blown so favorably for him that he acquired property of many kinds and had become the owner of much land” (The Secret History, section 30). A network of scattered properties and farms, however, was not the end to Evangelus’ ambitions; his dream, according to Procopius, was to buy a whole seaside town. After amassing his fortune, Evangelus reportedly started setting in motion a plan to achieve his dream.

He began diligently buying up all the land in the vicinity of a coastal village called Porphyreon, applying all the pressure he could muster with his law background and his wealth to convince the local landowners to sell their property. Evangelus evidently succeeded in his task, eventually gaining control of the whole village in exchange for payments of gold. Alas, his state of complete fulfillment would not last long. According to Procopius, when Emperor Justinian learned of the lawyer’s growing monopolistic grasp over Porphyreon, he decided to intervene. Evangelus’ seaside endeavor was crushed when Justinian’s officials sequestered the village and forcibly purchased the land back from the lawyer. Unfortunately, the payment that Evangelus received from the state was said to have been far less than what he had collectively paid the original landowners of Porphyreon in his original bid to gain control of the village, making the odd incident one of the few financial losses in his career.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (15th-century illustration of Plato, labeled BL Harley 3482, f. 4 from the collection of The British Library, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

 

Sources:

  • The Secret History by Procopius, translated by G. A. Williamson and Peter Sarris. New York: Penguin Classics, 1966, 2007.

Examination Of A Witch, Painted By Tompkins Harrison Matteson (c. 1813–1884)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This painting was created by the American artist, Tompkins Harrison Matteson (c. 1813–1884), and is housed within the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. It is a fitting location for a painting themed on witchcraft, as colonial Salem was the location of the most famous witch trials in the history of North America.  One such witchcraft trial is depicted in Matteson’s painting, and the woman with the exposed back is the suspected witch in this scene. The crowd in the courtroom looks on at a mole, birthmark, or other skin blemish on the woman’s back, which they believe is a so-called ‘Witches’ Mark.’ King James of Scotland and England, in his Daemonologie, wrote that Satan gave witches “his mark upon some secret place of their body, which remains sore [and] unhealed until his next meeting with them, and thereafter [the mark is] ever insensible, howsoever it be nipped or pricked in any way, as is daily proved” (Daemonologie, Book 2, chapter 2). With this in mind, Inquisitors would poke and prod at these skin blemishes, and were highly suspicious of any pain tolerance or lack of sensation that they discovered.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

  • The Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers (Dover Publications, 1971).

The Bhagavad Gita

By
thehistorianshut
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The Bhagavad Gita (c. 2nd century BCE-2nd century CE)

“All beginnings
are surrounded
by error, as fire
is surrounded by smoke.”

  • This quote is from discourse/chapter 18, verse 48 of the Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu scripture included in book 6 of the epic poem, the Mahabharata). The translation used here is by Laurie L. Patton (Penguin Classic, 2014).

The Pigpen Punishment of Master Yuan Gu

By
thehistorianshut
-

Empress Dou, wife of Emperor Wen (r. 180-157 BCE) and mother of Emperor Jing (r.  157-141 BCE), was a powerful woman who greatly influenced the imperial court of the early Han Dynasty. Although she did not overtly steer politics, she knew how to support ministers she liked and how to undermine the careers of those with whom she disagreed. The key to earning the empress’ help or hindrance was the philosophy that each minister professed. Personally, Empress Dou was a devout supporter of Daoism, and she encouraged members of the court to study the teachings of Daoist thinkers, such as Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. Courtiers who shared her views could count on the empress’ backing, whereas ministers who followed different schools of thought had to face the possibility of palace intrigue or even unfiltered hostility in public from the empress.

Experiencing the brunt of the empress’ wrath were members of the court that followed the teachings of Confucius, as Confucian scholars were increasingly becoming a threat to the Daoist grip on government. In her efforts to keep the rival philosophy in check, Empress Dou was known to have used her influence to cajole the government into starting investigations against several Confucian scholars, and these intrigues on several occasions turned deadly.  A certain Master Yuan Gu was one such Confucian scholar who drew the ire of Empress Dou, but he, fortunately, was somewhat protected by a friendship he had cultivated with the empress’ son, Emperor Jing. Encouraged by the emperor’s support, Master Yuan Gu was known to talk back to the empress dowager more than was likely proper. This behavior ultimately had consequences, eventually landing Master Yuan Gu in an absurd situation involving a pigpen.

The origin of Master Yuan Gu’s peculiar pigpen episode was said to have begun when Empress Dowager Dou directly asked the scholar for his opinion on the Daoist teachings of Lao Tzu. It was a direct question and he gave her a direct answer. According to the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, Yuan Gu bluntly replied by saying Lao Tzu’s work was, “The sayings of a menial, nothing more!” (Shi Ji 121). Empress Dowager Dou was infuriated by this insult against her favorite wiseman, and therefore she decided to seek revenge against the mouthy scholar. As the story goes, the empress dowager stomped her way over to her son, Emperor Jing, and demanded that Master Yuan Gu be punished. She apparently had a specific punishment in mind—her demand was that the scholar to be tossed into a pigpen full of angry boars.

Emperor Jing was said to have been sympathetic with his friend, Master Yuan Gu, but he could not simply disregard a direct request from his influential mother.  Caught in this dilemma, the emperor decided to play both sides. On the one hand, he fulfilled his mother’s wishes by indeed sentencing Master Yuan Gu to be locked in a pigpen. Nevertheless, the emperor arranged for only a single pig to be placed in the pen, and he also equipped the scholar with a sharp knife to use against the animal. Master Yuan Gu still had to fight the creature, but he emerged victorious from his odd battle and rejoined the court with the emperor’s blessing. After this incident, Master Yuan Gu apparently learned to guard his words with more care, and consequently had no further notable fights with the empress. He reportedly went on to live past the age of ninety years old, dying sometime during the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BCE).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Section of Along the River During the Qingming Festival Season (Qing Court Version), by 5 Qing court artists—Chen Mei, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong, and Cheng Zhidao—and was completed in 1736, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

 

Sources:

Illustration Of A Changeling, Painted By Martino di Bartolomeo (c. 1389–1434)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This peculiar illustration, painted by the Italian artist Martino di Bartolomeo (c. 1389–1434) for The Legend of St. Stephen, depicts the planting of a feared monster into the home of a couple that recently had a child. The scene of the diabolical crime is shown occurring in the lower half of the panting. There, a demon can be seen zipping across the room with the help of some fiery back-end propulsion. With its speed and stealth, the fiendish devil made a cruel swap—it kidnapped the couple’s saintly baby and left behind a devil-horned changeling. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, two witch-hunting Inquisitors from the Dominican Order, reported the latest folklore and theories about changelings in their 15th-century text, The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches):

“Another terrible thing which God permits to happen to men is when their own children are taken away from women, and strange children are put in their place by devils. And these children, which are commonly called changelings, or in the German tongue Wechselkinder, are of three kinds…But all three kinds have this in common, that though they are very heavy, they are always ailing and do not grow, and cannot receive enough milk to satisfy them, and are often reported to have vanished away” (Malleus Maleficarum, part 2, question 2, chapter 8).

Such is the scene that Martino di Bartolomeo painted. Unfortunately, the Malleus Maleficarum’s description of how to spot a changeling did little to assure worrisome parents. After all, few babies spare their parents from frequent crying. In this illustration, the changeling’s nature is easily betrayed by its devilish horns, yet in the usual folklore and legends about these supernatural imposters, changelings were much more difficult to identify, making the creatures all the more fearful to skeptical and doubting parents.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

  • The Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers (Dover Publications, 1971).

Hesiod

By
thehistorianshut
-

Hesiod (c. 8th century BCE)

“A man fashions ill for himself who fashions ill for another,
and the ill design is most ill for the designer.”

  • From Hesiod’s Works and Days (approximately line 266), translated by M. L. West (Oxford World Classics, 1988, 1999, 2008).

The Tale Of A Bold, Zealous, And Crazy Servant From Bigorra

By
thehistorianshut
-

Sometime prior to the year 580, a servant from the region of Bigorra in southern France suddenly disappeared from his post to start a new life as a traveler. Before this new phase, he had been employed in some way or other by the church, and his time around the clergymen had an impact on him. Instead of traveling for the mere sake of travel, this man apparently set out to gather holy relics and dreamed of becoming something of an itinerant preacher.

Although he had ambition and drive, he apparently was far from qualified from actually becoming a priest. He seemed to know virtually no Latin, making it impossible for him to read the religious texts of that time, and, similarly, he would not be able to communicate with the Gallo-Roman population that had not yet fully assimilated into Frankish rule. Yet, his zeal and unyielding determination drew admirers, causing the self-made itinerant preacher to actually become a moderately wealthy man through donations to his cause.

Thankfully for us, this odd fellow eventually wandered into the vicinity of Tours, where he made quite an impression on the local bishop, Gregory of Tours (c. 539-594), who happened to also be a historian. Gregory, in his Ten Books of Histories, also known as the History of the Franks, recorded everything we know about the peculiar roaming man. Our unnamed wandering protagonist reportedly arrived in Tours around 580, and according to Bishop Gregory, the man had by this time fully adopted the persona of a traveling holyman. Gregory of Tours described the odd figure’s entrance into town:

“He came dressed in a short-sleeve tunic, with a mantle of fine muslin on top, and he carried a cross from which hung a number of phials, containing or so people said, holy oil. He gave it out that he had come from Spain and that he had in his possession relics of the two most blessed martyrs, Felix and Vincent the deacon. He turned up at Saint Martin’s church in Tours just as night was falling and I was having my supper” (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, IX.6).

As it was so late, Gregory put off meeting with the fellow until morning. This decision angered the newly-arrived wanderer, whose character was quite headstrong. The traveler complied, however, and agreed to wait until morning to have his conversation with the bishop. Yet, the self-made itinerate holyman left that night with a literal interpretation of the agreement. At the crack of dawn, he was once more ready to meet with the bishop, and he became annoyed when he subsequently realized that Gregory was sleeping in past daybreak. The traveler’s bold next move was recorded by Gregory, who wrote, “At first light the man rose from his bed and, without waiting for me to appear, arrived with his cross and marched straight into my cell. I was quite dumbfounded and flabbergasted at his impudence” (History of the Franks, IX.6). After criticizing the bishop for making him wait, the wanderer then reportedly broke into Gregory’s private chapel, said three prayers or sermons (which the bishop did not understand due to them not being in Latin), and then promptly set out on the road for Paris.

Bishop Gregory, too, was soon be drawn to Paris on ecclesiastical business. When he arrived in the city, Gregory soon learned that the entertaining self-proclaimed holyman had once again become a nuisance to the clergy. Most significantly, the wanderer had run afoul of a certain Bishop Ragnemod, who ultimately decided to use force against the quirky traveler. Gregory of Tours wrote:

“Ragnemod realized that he was an imposter and had him locked up in a cell. His stock in trade was examined. He carried with him a bag filled with the roots of various plants; in it, too, were moles’ teeth, the bones of mice, bears’ claws and bear’s fat. The Bishop had all this thrown into the river, for he recognized it as witchcraft. The man’s cross was taken away from him and Bishop Ragnemod ordered that he should be expelled from the Paris region. The only result was that the fellow made a new cross and began to carry on with the same practices as before. He was seized by the archdeacon, who had him chained up and then committed him to prison” (History of the Franks, IX.6).

Such was the state of things when Gregory of Tours arrived in Paris. Yet, unbeknownst to him, the saga of the strange wanderer was still incomplete. As the story goes, the imprisoned oddball eventually broke out of his chains and cell, escaping back into the city. As he was having a bad day, the fugitive apparently swiped a few containers of wine before searching out a place to hide. For a sanctuary, the man chose Saint Julian’s church, where he took a seat on the cold floor and drank himself into a stupor. Unbelievably, Gregory of Tours was at that time staying in the nearby church-house of Saint Julian’s, and, driven by the urge to say a nightly prayer, he ran right into the peculiar wanderer. Gregory of Tours wrote of the incident:

“Just about this time I had occasion to come to Paris myself and I was put up in the church-house of Saint Julian the martyr. The very next night this poor wretch broke out of his prison and, with his chains wrapped around him, made his way to Saint Julian’s church, where he collapsed on the stone floor on the exact spot where I was due to stand. Exhausted and sodden with wine, he fell asleep where he lay. In the middle of the night I got up to say my prayers to God, quite unaware of what had happened. There I found him sleeping” (History of the Franks, IX.6).

As the story goes, prison and drunkenness had made the odd traveler smell terrible. The stench was so bad that Gregory did not enter the church until the unconscious man inside was relocated (with the aid of four or five helpful bystanders) to a corner, and the spot where he was laying was thoroughly washed and perfumed. Yet, once the section of flooring was cleaned, Bishop Gregory held a small service for himself and his companions—including singing—during all of which, the unconscious man remained completely unresponsive.

In the end, the bishops present around Paris at that time convened to decide what to do with the curious wanderer. Gregory of Tours handed the man back over to Bishop Ragnemod, but also voiced his opinion that the fellow should eventually be pardoned. During these discussions, another bishop from southern France suddenly became very interested in discovering the identity of the traveler. The bishop’s name was Amelius, and he oversaw the bishopric of Bigorra. Amelius eventually went to speak with the man and the interview ultimately turned into a happy reunion. As told by Gregory of Tours, “Amelius, Bishop of Bigorra, looked him up and down and recognized him as one of his own servants who had run away. He forgave him all that he had done and took him back home with him” (History of the Franks, IX.6). So ends the tale of the peculiar wanderer. Gregory of Tours heard no more news or gossip about the fellow after he was brought back into the employ of Bishop Amelius.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Medieval manuscript illustration labeled BL Royal 10 D VIII, f. 82v, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

 

Sources:

  • The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, translated by Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.

Lagertha, by Morris Meredith Williams (1881-1973)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This illustration, created by Morris Meredith Williams in 1913, features the legendary warrior-woman Lagertha in the foreground of a battle. The alleged deeds of this shield-maiden were mentioned by the 12th-century Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus. In his Gesta Danorum, he introduced the character of Lagertha as “a skilled amazon, who though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All marveled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman” (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, book 9). Her adventure soon became intertwined with that of the famous Viking warlord, Ragnar Lodbrok. They were said to have married, but the relationship between the two did not last. Perhaps the separation was a fortunate move for Ragnar, as the next man that Lagertha became involved with met a gruesome end. Saxo Grammaticus continued Lagertha’s colorful tale, writing that she “murdered her husband in the night with a spear-head, which she had hid in her gown. Then she usurped the whole of his name and sovereignty; for this most presumptuous dame thought it pleasanter to rule without her husband than to share the throne with him” (Gesta Danorum, book 9). Such was the fearsome and ambitious character of the woman that Morris Meredith Williams featured in his artwork.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

  • The Danish History by Saxo Grammaticus, translated by Oliver Elton (Norroena Society, 1905) and edited for reprint by Douglas B. Killings (2012).

Margery Kempe

By
thehistorianshut
-

Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1439+)

“It is a pity that money should succeed before truth.”

  • The Book of Margery Kempe (Book 1, chapter 25), dictated by Margery Kempe, and translated to modern English by B. A. Windeatt. New York, Penguin Classics, 2000.

The Trial Of Patriarch Paul Of Alexandria For Allegedly Torturing One Of His Priests To Death

By
thehistorianshut
-

One of the major obstacles in the path of Emperor Justinian’s (r. 527-565) ambition of rebuilding a happy and united Roman Empire was the religious differences that existed between his different provinces. Notably, the emperor’s reconquest of Italy seemingly became a catalyst for a new wave of animosity between the eastern and western Christian communities. At the core of this ecclesiastical issue was the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which had ruled that Jesus was both divine and human in nature. The council, in effect, rejected the Monophysite/Miaphysite Christian sect, which believed that Jesus was fully divine. Skipping ahead again to Justinian’s reign, around a century after the council, the debate over the conclusions from Chalcedon was still very much alive. In particular, Egypt and Syria had strong Monophysite communities, and even Justinian’s own wife, Empress Theodora, was an admirer and defender of the sect. Justinian tried to force a compromise between the eastern and western churches, but his heavy-handed attempts at trying to bridge the gap only widened the divide.

Despite Justinian’s attempts at reconciliation, he personally favored the theology of the west, much to his wife’s annoyance. As such, when a pro-Chalcedon clergyman named Paul became Patriarch of Alexandria, in the heart of Monophysite-dominated Egypt, the emperor allegedly instructed an imperial governor of the region, named Rhodon, to assist the patriarch in his endeavor to make Egypt comply with the council. This alliance between Patriarch Paul and Rhodon, however, would turn out to be a mistake. Before long, the campaign of the patriarch and the governor shifted from debate to pure persecution. An ugly event soon became the infamous pinnacle to their partnership—as told by the contemporaneous historian, Procopius, a certain dissident priest named Psoes was arrested in Alexandria and was tortured to death by the patriarch and the governor.

Psoes’ torture and killing was said to have caused outrage in both the eastern and western churches. Pope Vigilius and Emperor Justinian both were said to have sent agents to investigate what was happening in Alexandria. Rome’s clergymen and Justinian’s investigators, suffice it to say, were not impressed. On the church’s side, a synod was convened that removed Patriarch Paul from power. As for the governor, Rhodon was relieved of his post and allegedly faced execution when he returned to the capital.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Anathematization of Nestorius at the Third Ecumenical Council. A fresco by the artist, Dionsysius, c. 1502, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

 

Sources:

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