Dreams of Venice Repeated in Sacred Rituals…and No Cheat Codes: Edward Muir’s Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice

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Academic Book, Assassin's Creed 2, Carnival, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, Doge, Edward Muir, European History, history, Marco Babarigo, Marriage of the Sea, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Renaissance, Renaissance History, Republic of Venice, Rituals, Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, St. Mark, The Most Serene Republic of Venice, The Sensa, Venice, Venice History

I promise it’s not because of Blue this time, or at least not entirely.  It was because I got to shoot the Doge, during Carnival, on his own boat, while he was giving a speech, while wearing a gold mask.  Assassin’s Creed II was the shit dude.

My regular reader may have observed (assuming they actually care about my intellectual movements, or at least enough to give the first few paragraphs a glance) that lately I’ve been reading more and more history.  Part of this largely because, as ever, I’ve been watching more and more of Overly Sarcastic Productions as well as Shadiversity and Suibhne.  These channels have been not just a joy to discover, they’ve been a great personal solace as I think more and more about my future and what I want to do with my life and my time.  This is, namely, that I want to spend what time I’ve got enjoying my actual passions and one of my unending passions has been history.  That…and the Assassin’s Creed franchise.  I was about eighteen or nineteen when the series came out, and oddly enough I wasn’t even that interested when the trailers for it first appeared.  I was far more interested in, and I admit this to my great shame, Modern Warfare 3.

Mistakes were made.  I see that now.

My sister received Assassin’s Creed II for Christmas that year and started playing the game once I was done fighting Uber-nationalists in a Russian Gulag or some shit.   In no time I started to notice that killing Brazilians with automatic rifles wasn’t anywhere near as cool as scaling the Santa Maria del Fiore, meeting Lorenzo de Medici and Leonardo da Vinci, killing people with hidden blades and brooms, collecting every Renaissance painting ever made, hunting down the Pazzi one by one and murdering the shit out of them, fighting the goddamn pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia, a.k.a. the Spaniard) in an underground bunker beneath the Sistine Chapel that was built by gods, and then, of course, there was Venice.

I could spend hours talking about Assassin’s Creed II (and Brotherhood, and Revelations, and Odyssey which I got from Christmas this year care of my wife who I will love until the day I die) and trying to explain why the game left such a philosophical and intellectual impact upon my life, but honestly the only reason that mattered was that it was just a damn good game.  And in between the assassination contracts I managed to ingest a great amount of actual history.  It was in Venice though that most of the game took place, and after watching OSP’s four-part series on the Republic of Venice(for the tenth time I think), and rekindling my love of history, and reflecting on the Assassin’s Creed game which helped further solidify my love of history, it made sense that my sister gave me one of the books she read in graduate school which just happened to be about Venice.

Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice by Edward Muir is a book that, honestly, I didn’t think I was going to review while I was reading it.  The book is academic to a level that is almost painful, and there are numerous instances throughout where almost half of a page is dedicated to footnotes alone.  If the reader is not fluent in English, French, Italian, and Latin they’re sure to be stumped by the neat constant use of all of these languages with, conveniently, no footnotes to explain what words or expressions he’s attempting to communicate.  And finally, if the reader has absolutely no knowledge of the history of La Serenissima de Republica de Venetzia, or, The Most Serene Republic of Venice then the near constant references to doges, oligarchs, merchants, and notable individuals is sure to leave you either annoyed or stumped.

With all that said, this book was a fucking blast and I enjoyed it till the end.

Part of what makes Muir’s book so enjoyable to read is his observation of the Ritual in Venetian society and how rituals helped create a sense of identity.  In his Introduction as he sets up his argument he lays out the seven parts of his book and explores each of the aims:

In numerous medieval and Renaissance examples, legal and “constitutional” precepts and precedents found expression in ceremony long before they were written down in formal codes; and Venice, it seems, was indeed no stranger to the habit of ceremonial law.  Sixth, the historian of civic ritual investigates how ceremonies may reveal the citizen’s own sense of their city’s relations with the outside world, relations that the Venetians saw by and large in imperial terms. […]. In Venice, one finds that the legally defined social classes, the patrimonial family, age groups, and women all shared varying degrees of ritual recognition that marked their place in the political and social organization of the city.  (6-7).

Yeah, just a forewarning, most of these quotes are going to be painfully academic.  This quote alone demonstrates Muir to be concerned more with the construction of an argument than a narrative and that in itself implies that he’s writing mostly for a handful of academics.  And while I will admit freely that I’ve grown to despise academic writing, especially after finishing graduate school, Muir’s book was still enjoyable to read because of the way he made Rituals seem like something important and relevant.

Being a citizen of the United States I recognize this.  Growing up in East Texas the Fourth of July was always an obligatory event, rather than a passive one.  It was required that you go out and blow shit up or watch people blowing shit up regardless if you suffered from allergies like I did.  Watching fireworks, listening to people singing the Star Spangled Banner, or watching War movies on TV were events which were supposed to create a sense of American identity, or else national Pride.  And while I found far more patriotism in the act of living my life the way I wanted to , as well as my freedom of expression (David Bowie Electric Tiger pimp surprises) for a great number of people the ritual is the means of finding a sense of one’s self politically, emotionally, and for some, religiously.

Muir’s book then tackles some of the rituals of Venice such as the Marriage the Sea, The Feast of Mary’s, and the Coronation of the Doge in order to understand how politics and religion helped establish the notion of La Serrenissima, or the “serenty” of the Republic of Venice.  Venice as a city, and as a government, still stands as the longest running single government in human history spanning from 697 CE to 1797 CE, a time of almost 1100 years surpassing any civilization in human history.  What’s inspiring, or at least fascinating is that part of this lasting success was the merging of religious and political ritual to create this sense of identity as the “serene” republic.”

Muir notes:

According to fifteenth-century Venice humanist, Giovanni Caldiera, the cardinal virtues—Faith, Hope, and Charity—underlay the republican virtues; so obedience to the state was metaphorically obedience to the will of God.  Thus, in Venice patriotism equaled piety.  The Venetians conception of themselves as a chosen people in consequence, was always revealed in their attachment to certain sacred institutions. (16).

He continued this point later down the page noting:

Belief in Venice-as-the-chosen-city and adherence to the historical institutions of the republic enabled the Venetians to withstand the tremendous forces for changes, including the temptations of millenarian enthusiasm, that ravaged the rest of Italy during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  (16).

And finally he adds more more point on the following page:

For the Venetians, “liberty” was a matter not of personal freedom, but rather of political independence from other powers.  (17).

The history of Italy during the Renaissance, is quite possibly one of the most fascinating topics to cover in history because there was simply so much chaos, warfare, political manipulations, and internal strife coupled with an explosion of academic, technological, and cultural innovation.  Legions of mercenaries were scattered across the peninsula hired and fired freely as they for or against any city state that might hire them, and while the blood flowed men like Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci created paintings that would infer in society’s collected consciousness for centuries.  And in the midst of all this turmoil, Venice somehow managed to stay above the fray, or at least, managed to maintain some level of, wait for it, serenity that the rest of the country could only aspire to.  Muir tries to show then that it was because of the rituals, and their underlying rhetoric that Venetians were somehow ordained by divine grace that they were able to channel their efforts and psychology into maintaining a republic.

The Marriage of the Sea best represents this idea.  Without taking too much time, the ceremony would involve the Doge of Venice, the political and spiritual leader of the Republic, sailing out to the opening of the Adriatic on a massive and ornate sailing barge.  There would be music and prayers and pomp and circumstance, but the main event would involve the Doge reaching the spot where the lagoon of Venice met the Adriatic and, after uttering psalms and prayers, the Doge would drop a gold ring into the sea signifying that Venice was “married” to the seas.  This ritual, which for the record still continues to this day almost three centuries after the republic ended (meanwhile I can’t even find ten minutes to do a few push-ups), was supposed to imply Venice’s “mastery” of the sea, which in turn would explain their economic and political prosperity.

Muir dedicates a significant portion of his book to this ritual, largely because it was so psychologically significant to the Venetians.  He says in one passage:

The marriage of the sea was a Venetian version of a spring fertility festival.  The usual goals of agrarian fertility rites—safegaurding the fecundity of women and crops—were transformed by the Venetian rites to serve maritime and Mercantile needs: the rites ensured the safety of sailors at sea, expressed political and commercial hegemony, established fair trade for the crowds, and invoked through a mystical marriage, continued prosperity.  At the moment of their occurrence such fertility rites characteristically contribute to social cohesion and unanimity within the community.  (131).

By “marrying” the sea Venice in effect created a narrative where they were effectively in control of it, and therefore if they had any sort of success it was because of this ritual.  Though on the note of control the feminist in me immediately demands I provide the next quote which Muir provides on the next page:

The Sensa also deprived the sea of its frightening demeanor by feminizing it.  The men who said abroad could most easily imagine the sea as a female archetype: unpredictable, fickle, sometimes violent, other times passive; but assuredly she could mastered by the resolute male.  (132-33).

Muir completes this charming metaphor by providing the following analysis:

The Sensa revealed two profound psychological habits of belief: that natural forces could be comprehended by personifying them, and that through understanding these forces one could better control them, or at least predict their influences.  And in symbolizing sexual conquest the processional movement took full advantage the female metaphor.  Through the marriage each year at the beginning of the sailing season and through the subsequent voyages that consummated the union the sea was deprived of her mystery; men now “knew” her.  (133).

Misogyny is always fascinating to read about largely because one gets a sense to what limits men were, and still are, willing to go to in order to perpetuate bullshit.  The implied misogyny of this ritual aside however, Muir is able to demonstrate that this ritual helped complete a sense of Venetian identity.  For centuries Venice was a maritime power-house and no-one could actually dispute that fact.  Using a thalassocracy, a system of government and rule mostly executed through naval power rather than territorial claims, Venice was able to establish a powerful military and economic system which kept them rich and prosperous.  Whatever opinion the reader might have about Venice they have to acknowledge that this ritual helped the citizens of the Republic believe that they were exceptional which in turn helped them execute this vision.

But at this point my contester feels compelled to speak up.  So what?  So what about Muir’s book?  It’s a long, dry, academic book about a bunch of rituals that are irrelevant.  Venice isn’t a republic anymore, in fact they’ve become nothing but a tourist attraction.  What relevance does a bunch of old rituals have to my life.

Well, if I may correct my contester, the book isn’t long, it’s only 305 pages.  To put it in perspective, while I’m writing this review I’m also reading Grant by Ron Chernow, a book which is 940 pages, and 48 hours long in terms of the audiobook.

As for the relevance this is a fair point.  Like I said before, Muir is writing Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice for academics.  He’s writing for people who study Venice, and study the time period of the Renaissance.  This book is clearly designed for a small audience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant.  While the topic may seem specific to a set of conditions, Muir’s book is largely about a larger theme: the practice of rituals in human history.  While he centers his study in Venice he’s able to demonstrate that rituals are just a part of human behavior and then tries to show how these rituals translated into political, religious, and civic success.

Human beings like symbols, and we craft rhetoric and narratives from those symbols.  Whether it’s the various religions human beings practice, the modes of politics that we participate in, or simply the millions of stories that we create and read and watch every year, human beings like stories that make us feel connected to one another because the can inform us about what the purpose of meaning of our existence is.  Muir’s book tries top understand the narratives the Venetians of La Serrenissima told themselves through these religious and political rituals, and how that translated into a success that lasted for, literally, a thousand years.

It’s an incredible testament to the fact that human beings like rituals, because even if they may seem ridiculous or offensive in hindsight, their power over those who participated in them allowed said individuals to feel connected to a larger idea.  Venice as a government, as an idea, and as an institution are due entirely because of the narratives Venetians crafted for themselves, and so as I look to Muir’s book I do recognize that, while it may not be entirely approachable as a book, as a history it’s incredibly relevant.  Good history should be about observing trends in behavior, and so the history of Venice is about recognizing the potential of the self, and the capacity for human beings to work together and create something incredible.

It’s nowhere near as enjoyable as shooting the Doge on his own boat during Carnival, but it is its own joy to read a book, find the name Marco Babarigo, and remark to yourself, “Hey I killed that guy.” 

Though I might recommend you say that internally as you co-workers are likely to look up from their lunches at you and begin to wonder if it was such a good idea to invite you out for a drink later after work.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice were cited from the paperback Princeton University Press edition.

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’m gonna leave the soundtrack to Assassin’s Creed II here, because, well, because you just deserve it.  I really haven’t experienced a game with such an incredible soundtrack before.  Hope you enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iriiZOeInDg

 

***Writer’s Note***

I’m going to leave a few links to articles and encyclopedia entires and videos about La Serenissima in case the reader is interested.  Enjoy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Republic_of_Venice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktq3iK2r_Ek

And, because I’m a man obsessed, I’ve included links to all the videos Blue of Overly Sarcastic Productions has done over the Republic of Venice.  If you decide to watch, maybe you’ll understand or appreciate them as much as I do…Appreciate them I said!  Ahem.  Please enjoy.

Part 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86PybilU7k0

Part 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byMleAJ5kRs

Part 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4da1S6moF2Q

Part 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9bM56g_a0

Operation Odysseus video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cHK4xzAhzE

 

****Writer’s Note****

I’m going to remind my reader that, since this writing I’ve begun a podcast series entitled “Jammer Talks About” and Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice just happened to be the fourth book I discussed.  You can find a link to the podcast in the “Jammer’s Podcasts” link at the top of the page, or you can follow the link below.  Hope you enjoy:

 

*****Writer’s Note*****

Finally I want to give a little bit more street crew to Dr. Edward Muir, who’s the real focus of this essay anyway.  I’ve found his Professor page for Northeastern University and I’ve posted it below.  It includes his credentials, awards, publication history, Circulum Vitae, etc.  Definitely look him up because the man is a great writer, a wonderful scholar, and, if it hasn’t been made apperent, his book is definitely worth your time.

https://www.history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/edward-muir.html

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Spartans, What is your Profession? And Don’t say Dance Instructor Again!: Thermopylae, Bradford, and Recent Historical Developments on YouTube

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300 Spartans, Ancient Greece, Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Churchillian, Ernle Bradford, Fallout 4, Greece, Herodotus, history, Hot Gates, Leonidas, Michael Fassbender, myth, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Persia, Persian Wars, Plataea, Salamis, Thermopylae, Thermopylae: The Battle for the West, Xerxes

It probably has something to do with Assassin’s Creed, though in fact, it might actually have something to do with YouTube.

Part of my job is working regularly in the Local History room at the public library I work at, and this entails a lot of time that is, simply put isolation.  The room very rarely receives visitors, and if it does many of them rarely require much assistance.  In fact, many people simply enter the room, grab some books off the shelf, and spend a few minutes or a few hours doing their research in relative quiet.  This is fine for me as I usually have somewhere around eight or ten tasks to perform that usually involve excel spreadsheets or the electronic card catalog.  And if I’m not doing that then I’m typically re-shelving books and microfilm boxes.  What this amounts to is long periods of isolation that would be ungodly boring were it not for YouTube.

I resisted as long as I could, but I’ve observed as of late that most of my internet time is watching videos on YouTube, but because I’m a nerd I don’t YouTube (is that a verb? Fuck it, I’m making it one, someone call OED) like most people probably do, so I wind up finding channels and videos about ancient Greeks, the Ottoman Empire, Medieval Weaponry, or TED Talks.  While this has lead me to some excellent books that I’ll hopefully have time one day to review, it’s also lead me to arguably my favorite channel on the internet, which has, in turn, rekindled a deep passion for history: Overly Sarcastic Productions.  

It’s a young man  and woman (everybody is starting to feel young to me, or at least younger than me) named Red and Blue who in turn make video “lectures” about history, the classics of literature, the various tropes of narrative arcs, and every now and then historical accuracy reviews of video games (I’m still waiting for Assassin’s Creed II, one day, one day).  It’s fair to say I’ve become fairly obsessed with this channel, having watched several of the videos multiple times, and I don’t apologize for this because it has, in turn, lead me to pick up books and at the end of the day as long as reading is taking place is that really so bad?

I finished 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West, having pretty much devoured the book in under a week.  And in my mania to hop into another classic book I observed the stack of history books in my office and found one that has a bit of an embarrassing history for me.  Thermopylae: The Battle for the West by Ernle Bradford, is a book I had literally started and stopped five different times.  I don’t like stopping books, it feels like a cop-out to me, but I have embraced the philosophy that if you’re not enjoying something you should stop doing it.  When it comes to a book I’ve started and stopped multiple times, however, there’s a bit of ego there.  The book was beating me, and damn it I wanted to win this time, and I wanted to learn about a battle I’d seen and read so much about, but only ever in quasi-mythic terms.

I grabbed my paperback copy with the Hoplite flanked on both sides by spears and set to work, finishing it in about a week and a half.  I beat the damn book, and the satisfaction was only slightly better than the book itself.

Bradford’s book is pretty dated having been published in the year 1980.  The writing style itself is not terrible, in fact, often Bradford demonstrates his ability as a historian and author by being able to craft a functional and interesting narrative as he lays out the facts of the Greco-Persian war while trying to steadily establish the larger cultural lesson of such a conflict.  There were beautiful sentences in this book that actually left me laughing, smiling, and reaching for my mechanical pencil so that I could underline them later either for this inevitable review or else so that I could simply go back later and read them.  Bradford is a great writer, but he’s not always a great historian in this book.

For starters, his book has no real list of sources apart from a very simple bibliography in the back filled with a few “up-to-date” sources and many works of classical antiquity.  There’s also the issue that Bradford only has a few actual chapters dedicated to the Battle of Thermopylae, and I know I sound whiny and pedantic as I write this but titles really do matter.  A title is a way to communicate goals, themes, and purpose behind the text and I expected going into this book a focus on the Battle itself.  Instead, Bradford attempts to cover the entire war covering Thermopylae, but also the battles of Salamis, Artemisium, and Platea.  This isn’t bad, but when I finished Thermopylae and discovered I had another 100 pages to read I was confused and slightly annoyed.  Granted, Bradford does say at the start in Preface that he wanted to balance the text with a larger narrative of the Persians as well Greeks but it just worked on me.

And finally, two more things needs be said.  The first is that Bradford uses the adjective “Churchillian” twice in this book and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing he also employs the deplorable adjective “oriental” to describe the Persians and other Asian society and peoples.  I understand that the man was living in a different time with a different set of cultural mores, and it’s a bad policy to judge someone with a contemporary hindsight and set of values, but it just became a bit galling when the man is using the word to describe the quality of an unashamed imperialist and then using a now racially insensitive term to describe Middle Easterners. 

It just, it just started to make me groan.

Though I suppose at this point my reader is probably wondering what the ultimate significance of this book actually is or why I’m bothering with it.

Like I said before in the 1453 review I want to just start reviewing history books period, but also to see whether or not they still have a lasting cultural value, which, if my regular reader has been paying attention, has ultimately been the goal of this blog since day one.  Thermopylae is a book which attempts to narrate one of the most mythic battles in all of human history, and that estimation is not too bold.  Even if a person knows nothing of ancient Greece or classical history, they probably at least know the general story of the “300 Spartans.”  Much like a fairy tale, the origins of Superman, or the plot line of Footloose, Western civilization has digested the story of King Leonidas and his men and it has become the kind of mass knowledge that “everybody just knows.”  Bradford then tries in his book to balance the story then, by narrating not just about King Leonidas and his men, but also about King Xerxes, Themistocles, and the alliance of Greek city-states that eventually repelled the Persians and brought about a kind of national consciousness to the cities of Greece.

Looking at one passage, Bradford is able to demonstrate Xerxes ability as a strategist as well as describe the powerful players of this conflict

Xerxes and his advisors knew that, if it was intolerable to send heralds to Sparta, it was equally pointless to send them to Athens.  The essential core of Greece which had to be destroyed was composed of these two small, even so dissimilar, city-states.  The one was the military muscle of Greece and the other provided by far the greater part of its Naval Arm.  Many of the other Greeks had already “medised’, as the term was: they had, that is to say, shown their willingness to co-operate with the Persians.  This was hardly surprising, since to many an intelligent citizen, whether of an Aegean island, or of a city on the mainland, it must have seemed more than clear that, even if all the Greeks were united(which was far from true), they would stand no chance against the massive army and navy that was coming against them out of the East.  (32).

Bradford’s writing can be a bit clunky in this passage, but it’s important to see how he is setting up his final assessment of what the lasting significance of this war would be.  The end-results of the conflict with Persia created a lasting sense of identity among the Greeks.  It might be difficult for a contemporary reader to understand this conflict since we are so used to the concept of nationalism and national identity, but ancient Greece was largely a collection of city-states: independent towns that acted, in essence, as their own county and nation.  Because of this, conflict between cities such as Thebes, Athens, Sparta, and Corinth wasn’t entirely unheard of, and was, actually, pretty damn common-place.  To a citizen of the United States, this probably is not that unheard of.  Being from Texas I tend to recognize that there really isn’t anything like a Texan.  The manners and customs of my state wouldn’t hold water in New York, nor would they hold in Oregan, Hawaii, or Delaware.  Each of these states tends to, whether they realize it or not, have their own sort of regional identity which is eventually assumed by the larger national collective.

But now I’m starting to sound painfully academic so let me shoot straight.

Bradford is attempting to demonstrate to his reader how the threat from Persia was not just a threat to a collection of individual city-states, it ultimately threatened the entire Greek identity which thus allowed for the recognition by these cities that they might just be one people after all.

He says in a later passage, noting the difficulty faced by the leader of the Greek defense Themistocles:

Part of Themistocles strategy was inevitably dictated by the very natural Athenian suspicion that the Spartans might let them down, might rely on the defense of the Isthmus, might (for whatever given reason) procrastinate and turn up late—as they had done at Marathon.  If the worst came to the worst, the Spartans might come to the conclusion that they could stay secure in the Peloponnese.  They and the other allies had to be convinced that, on this occasion, it was all or nothing for every state which had declared to hold their ground against the might of the invader.  For the first time in their history, the Greeks had to co-operate with one another.  In only one respect did the Athenians have an advantage over the Spartans.  If Attica fell and Athens was overrun, they would—even if worsted in a sea battle—still have some ships left.  The survivors could ‘do a Dunkirk’ and (after collecting women and children from Troezen), they could abandon Greece, sail south and then west across the Ionian Sea, and plant a new colony in Sicily or Italy.  The Spartans, with their small fleet, were condemned to fight on the land—with no escape.  (90).

Alright, I’ll admit it, I only included the latter part of that quote to point out that Bradford was clearly once again falling back upon his English conservatism (or perhaps romanticism?) but in my defense that “Dunkirk” reference was too easy to pass up, and Dunkirk was, for the record a really amazing movie.

At this point though my reader is probably ready to object.  So what?  So what if the ancient Greeks hated each other and it took a potential invader from Asia to unite them?  I work a crappy retail gig at Target and I only get so many hours in the day to play video games and watch Game of Thrones.  What relevance does this war, or this old and possibly outdated book have to my life?

This is a fair point, and as usual, I don’t have an immediate rebuttal to it.  Reading a book about the 5th century Persian Wars is something you really, really have to want to do and the sad fact is many people simply don’t.  They’d rather do their jobs and then enjoy their free time watching arguably great fantasy series on HBO and/or playing Fallout 4 (seriously how great is Liberty Prime? #advictorium, #fucktheinstitute). This decision is not something I’m faulting anyone for.  I work a full-time gig and by the end of the day, I don’t always feel like writing, in fact often I putter away my time watching YouTube and straightening books in my office before it’s time for bed.

What I would say to my reader, is that while this book may not have any sort of immediate relevance, great history is about observing the trends of humanity in the past and finding some sort of lesson from it.  While Bradford’s book has become dated, he is enormously successful in demonstrating to his reader the significance of Xerxes effort to expand his borders into Europe and the effect this had on the Greek population who had, up to that time,  seen each other as separate peoples rather than an ethnic or political people overall.

As Bradford points out in an early passage in the book:

The invasion of Greece made the turbulent, brilliant people of this mountainous and largely inhospitable land aware that they shared one thing in common: a believe in the individual human being’s right to dissent, to think his own way, and not to acknowledge any man as a ‘monarch of all I survey’. (23).

There is a great wealth of information in Thermopylae: The Battle for the West that I haven’t, and like any great history book Bradford packs his pages with small anecdotes and facts that will hopefully encourage his reader to continue reading.  Whether it’s the implication that King Leonidas might have arranged for the murder of a relative who could have inherited the throne, the one Spartan who returned to his home city to be cast as a coward, or the burning and destruction of the Acropolis in Athens, this book contains a wealth of fascinating historical information, but listing them all out would only be pedantic and I’m sure my reader would like me to wrap up so they can get back to playing Fallout (fun fact the Science Bobblehead is located in Vault 75, which is also the place where you help Cait complete part of her character arc, which is great, but then she judges you if you ever take Jet in front of her again).

Bradford’s book is very much of its time (again the “Churchillian” adjective just makes me laugh every time) but I still believe there is a great amount of relevance to it, and not just because I spent a week and a half reading it and I want to make sure it wasn’t wasted time.  History is about finding and creating narratives from the events of the past, and so even the most poorly constructed histories are efforts to find meaning.  Bradford found a tremendous meaning in the Battle of Thermopylae, and the rest of the Persian Wars.  

It was a conflict in which a group of disjointed people found a collective whole in themselves that hadn’t existed before.  This isn’t to say that there was thereafter no more conflict in Greece, in fact, it’s fair and accurate to say that the history of Greece pretty much is just conflict among themselves until Roman occupation and even after that.  But for a moment the Greeks found an advantage in unity and overcoming their idiosyncrasies for the greater good of their society and way of life, and damn it, I think that’s inspiring.  The best examples of humanity are when people work together to create something great and find inspiration in their ideas and exchanges.  Thermopylae was a chance for a band of Greeks to work together to help the larger armies of the country fight the future battles that would inevitably lead to the defeat of Xerxes and his army.

And Bradford has a quote in his preface that really says it best:

The last stand of King Leonidas and the Spartans was told as a golden story in my youth.  Since then it would seem to have been downgraded, perhaps because their military outlook and stubborn courage have made them unattractive to a hedonistic society.  Without courage, Man is nothing.  Without the Battle of Thermopylae, that pass held against all odds, there would never have followed Artemisium, Salamis, and Platea.  Distasteful though it may have been to later historians, preoccupied with Athens, it was very largely the generalship of the Spartan Pausanias that made victory of Platea possible.  (14).

Bradford’s sentiments here, at least in my estimation, haven’t changed all that much.  The 300 Spartans is a story that is told regularly in schools now almost as a kind of myth/fact.  It’s a story that has become increasingly relevant to contemporary society because it’s become a sort of fairy-tale about the might of individual courage and integrity.  People see in the story of the Hot Gates a life-lesson about holding true to one’s principles and not allowing “outside” influence to sway one from your original stance.  This in itself demonstrates the lasting importance of books like Thermopylae: The Battle for the West because it allows us to ask the question how we see the conflicts of the past and how we construct meaning from them.

The only point I’ll say about this is that I feel Bradford was definitely not a soothsayer because he believes the Spartans have been “downgraded” because the Spartan warriors were “unattractive.”  Clearly, the man never saw Zack Snyder coming down the pike because those leather panties have inspired legions of memes and erections that aren’t going away any-time soon.

Athens might have had an incredible tactician leading them at the battle of Salamis, but they didn’t have Michael Fassbender wearing just a leather speedo and a smile.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Thermopylae: The Battle for the West were quoted from the paperback Da Capo edition.

 

**Writer’s Note**

In case you haven’t noticed I used one or two images from the new Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in this review.  My wife bought it for me for Christmas and I don’t think I’m anywhere near finishing my golden idol of her.  This game is the fucking SHIT dude.  I’ve met Euripedes, Perikles, Alcibades, Sokrates.  I’ve scaled the Parthenon, statues of Zeus, Temples of Apollo.  I’ve played as motherfucking, god-damn Leonidas and…Well, I am a happy man.

Oh yeah, I forgot, YOU GET TO MEET GODDAMN HERODOTUS!!!!

 

***Writer’s Note***

I wrote something similar in the description section of my YouTube-Podcast for this book, but I thought I would repeat it here.  I know that I write a spirited defense of Bradford here, but, honestly, I really don’t think that this book is good history and that’s largely because Bradford only has a bibliography and not a very substantial one at that.  This book, while a pretty approachable and enjoyable read, just doesn’t use enough sources and doesn’t cite the sources that are used properly enough to be considered a “good” history.  Bradford’s book is sentiment and mythologization, and while these are not necessarily weaknesses as a narrative, they do hurt it as a functional historial text.

The man wrote a good book, but he needed at least two or three flipping footnotes.

Canon-Fire in 1453, and the Obnoxious Quality of Janissaries in Assassin’s Creed

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1453, 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West, Alien Covenant, Artillery, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Blue, Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, Fall of Constantinople, Greek Fire, Gun Powder, history, Janissaries, Mehmed II, millenarianism, Orban, Orban Supergun, Ottoman Empire, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Philosophy, religion, Roger Crowley, Roman Empire, Rome, Shadiversity, Stronghold Crusader

There are, really, two facts in life.  The first is that one’s personal integrity should always be maintained in the face of exterior pressure and outside influences.  And the second is that without a doubt the most obnoxious fighters in the Assassin’s Creed franchise are the Janissaries. 

Seriously, like these guys are awful.

You’re always fighting four dudes at once, and they always manage to block your attacks and receive no damage, meanwhile while some punk dagger-guard grabs you from behind the Jannisary always takes a step back and retrieves his pistol and before you can shake them off he shoots you and you don’t just lose one health square, you lose like eight, and of course you haven’t healed because you’re lost in the heat of the moment and so you die right there and you have to start ALL the way back at the entrance of the Hagia Sophia, and it was one of those obnoxious fuck-for-fuck stalking missions and at that point you just have to rage quit and drown your sorrows in coffee and Oreos.

None of which explains why I began Roger Crowley’s book 1453: the Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West.  Well, it might explain it a little.

I am a man of many moods, my emotions contain multitudes, and this, in turn, can create some lasting conflict with my day-to-day goals vs. long-term ambitions (one day I WILL control the Balkans, and on that day all of France will tremble, tremble I say).  But while I make plans for bloody conquest and/or senility in a retirement home, I’ve been trying to focus more on the present and what I can make that time into.  As of this writing, most of my efforts are spent cataloging books for the Library, specifically the Local History room and while I spend my days learning the difference between a publication field number and a contents field number, I’m usually plugged into history vlogs and podcasts on Youtube: specifically Overly Sarcastic Productions and Shadiversity.

I cannot begin to convey how much I adore both of these channels, and how much happiness they have brought me.  Whether it’s learning about the manufacture and use of the Katana on Shadiversity or listening for the fourth time the four-part Venice series (that’s four times four, that’s like, 16 Deadpool references) this constant exposure to history has rekindled my passion for History as a subject and so I’ve turned back to several of the dusty history books on my shelves which I’ve been putting off for too long, one of which happened to be Crowley’s 1453.  I picked this book up again shortly after Blue released the Ottoman Empire video.

Crowley’s 1453 covers the siege of the city of Constantinople by Mehmet II, the then emperor of the Ottoman Empire, and tries to understand how this particular battle represented not just the beginning of a new modern period, but also the death of the ancient world and one of the most decisive conflicts between the religion of Christianity and Islam.  Needless to say, this book has a lot to accomplish in its mere 260 pages, and I have a lot to accomplish in trying to write a significant review of it.  The first part is to clarify something so my reader has reasonable expectations going forward.

History is part of the humanities and so it’s important to note one’s biases up front so the reader can have a balanced expectation or your argument: I am an atheist, and I’m not fond of religion as an institution or as a practical working philosophy.  Still, despite the fact that I don’t like religion I cannot deny that it is a fundamental part of the history of humanity and trying to ignore it influences is like trying to avoid the fact that I only thought I could dance in high school, it would just be embarrassing.  The second caveat I had to provide is the fact that I am not a historian, I am a history enthusiast.  I love history, I love reading history, I love listening to podcasts about history, I love talking to historians and other history enthusiasts about history, but I cannot say that I am an authority on the subject.  This is important because as much as I would love to say I am an authority, making such a claim would be not only dubious, it would disrespectful to actual historians who have worked towards the degree as well as contributing substantial research to the field.  Historians are amazing people who perform a vital function in our society and so it’s important to give them the respect that they’ve earned and deserve and not to take credit for their work as pass it off as your own.

All right, with this boyscout bullshit out of the way, I can continue.  And before you ask, yes I was a boy scout, I made it to Tenderfoot thank you very much.

Crowley’s book tackles not just the actual siege of Constantinople, which btw is today known as Istanbul in case you didn’t know, but the larger conflict that Constantinople represented which was, largely, the clash between Islam and Christianity.  Since Constantinople had been changed from its origin of Byzantium (I know the names get confusing, just listen to this song and you’ll get the whole story) the city had come to represent a bastion of Christian resolve in the face of the overwhelming political and military might of the new religion.  As the Muslim empires attempted again and again to attack the city Constantinople remained seemingly impenetrable and Crowley offers a keen insight into it:

Byzantium has proved the most obdurate of enemies, and Constantinople itself remains for Muslims both a scar and a source of deep longing.  Many martyrs had perished at its walls, including the Prophet’s standard-bearer Ayyub in 669.  Their deaths designated the city as a holy place for Islam and imparted a messianic significance to the project for its capture.  The sieges left a rich legacy of myth and folklore that was handed down the centuries.  It included among the Hadith, the body of sayings attributed to Muhammad, prophecies that foretold a cycle of defeat, death, and final victory for the warriors of the faith: […].  It was to be a long-range struggle.  (15).

Crowley begins 1453 by observing that, to many Muslims, Constantinople was known as the Red Apple (immediately making me wonder whether or not Wes Anderson used that for his Grand Budapest Hotel painting bit, but that’s for another essay).  As the previous passage explains well the city was a seen as a kind of jewel, an opportunity to achieve greatness not only for the actual political and economic benefits the city would bring; Constantinople was a chance to prove the might of Islam.  What’s fantastic about Crowley’s book is the way he uses this clash against religion to great effect.

Reading about the state of Constantinople the city was, not in ruins, but clearly, a dying institution as most of the city had never really recovered after the looting which occurred in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and many civilians were held by deep superstitions and millenarian sentiments.  Millenarian for the record is a philosophy in which the world is coming to an end.  Constantine XI, the then monarch of the city, as Crowley writes him, is the last of a long line of kings who saw themselves as the actual Roman Emperors, and so the rising threat of Ottoman Expansion was not just a military threat, it was also a psychological one.

And speaking of fun psychological threats one of the most incredible passages in the book describes Orban gun.  The Ottomans were impressive warriors and one of the first empires to really employ gun-powder as an effective military weapon, their cannons being the stuff of nightmares to the Europeans.  When Mehmet II made to sack Constantinople, he hired the best cannon maker in the empire and Orban, to his credit and lasting legacy, did not disappoint.  Crowley describes the monstrous weapon that brought even Constantinople’s walls to its knees:

They[Ottomans] fired stone balls that ranged from 200 pounds up to a colossal 1500 pounds, in the case of Orban’s monster gun.  […]. Mehmet probably had about sixty-nine cannons in total, a huge artillery force by the standards of the day, that were supported at various points by other, more antique technologies for hurling stones, such as the trebuchet, a counterweighted traction catapult.  The trebuchet had been enormously influential in the Muslim capture of crusader castles three hundred years earlier.  Now it looks merely like a device from another age.  (112).

Now the teenage boy who played Stronghold Crusader literally almost every day after high school (that is when I wasn’t watching Lord of the Rings over and over again) would love to go in depth into the fun military history that is the use of the trebuchet, but my reader is used to more personal analysis than this and besides there’s always YouTube.  Crowley’s point with the cannons is to provide some explanation as to how the siege took place, but he’s also really great at showing that the use of such a colossal gun wasn’t just for military purposes, it also had a real effect upon the sieged peoples:

The psychological effects of artillery bombardment on the defenders were initially even more severe than its material consequences.  The noise and vibration of the massed guns, the clouds of smoke, the shattering impact of stone on stone dismayed seasoned defenders.  To the civilian population, it was a glimpse of the coming apocalypse and a retribution for sin.  It sounded, according to one Ottoman chronicler, “like the awful resurrection blast.”  People ran out of their houses beating their chests, crossing themselves and shouting, “Kyrie Eleison!  What is going to happen now?”  Women fainted in the streets.  The churches were thronged with people “voicing petitions and prayers, wailing and exclaiming: ‘Lord, Lord! We moved far away from You.  All that fell upon us and Your Holy City was accomplished through righteous and true judgments for our sins.”  (115).

I suppose though at this point I have to address my regular contester.  So what?  What does this matter to me?  This battle took place over 565 years ago, and the Ottoman Empire disbanded following World War I.  Not only is this not relevant to me today, but it also shouldn’t be relevant to anybody period.  People should be far more concerned about things like ISIS, and whether or not people use the word irregardless synonymously with regardless.

As always my contester is a buzz-kill, and only half right: people who use the word irregardless are monsters, but according to the OED, they are simply using a non-standard form of a perfectly normal word.  There’s only so much you can do for people.  As for the lasting relevance of 1453 as a relevant document, I’m afraid they’ve missed the point.  Again, as I stated before, I simply wanted to write about this book because I am a history enthusiast and wanted to write about how great I thought the book was.  But at the same time, at least in my experience, the best historians and historical writers manage to craft some sort of relevant moral or intellectual lesson through a historical narrative.

History is the study of humanity, the trends that govern human behavior in terms of politics, economics, warfare, culture, and philosophy and how they can change (or as is often the case not change) over time.  Looking at 1453 what became terribly relevant to the text was how Crowley observed the battle of Constantinople was not just some random accident, there were a series of political, social, and religious events which created a slow decline of the Byzantine empire and the rise of the Ottoman empire.  The fact of the matter is that civilizations change, whether it be because of technological developments, cultural ideologies, or new ideas of governmental action. The Byzantine empire attempted and failed to expand their territory, or consolidate their power in a manful way, and after the capital was sacked by Crusaders in 1204, it was impossible to come back in a significant way.  Crowley tries to show his reader that the Ottoman Empire, and by extension Islam, succeeded in becoming a significant new power because they embraced new technologies and possessed a spirit to succeed that the Byzantines just couldn’t match.

And while the immediate relevance may not be terribly clear, this is a lesson that recurs throughout history.  The key to success is not by hiding behind walls and past glories, it’s by pushing forward, developing new innovation, rallying people with a powerful and functional ideology, and remembering that Mehmet II was a badass, bisexual conqueror who could not be denied his glory.

And as for the city of Constantinople, it suffered unimaginable ruin.  I could probably continue all day citing passage after passage of this incredible book, but that would just become pedantic and besides I have a stack of books about the Ottoman Empire I need to read and so I can always return for reference. 

I suppose in the final summation I can only say that I adored Crowley’s book because every page was like listening to a dynamic and charismatic story-teller.  Whether it was Constantine XI making patrols around the walls, Mehmet II literally taking apart his navy and dragging it upriver to surprise his enemy, or the endless descriptions of the people of Constantinople who saw their way of life being destroyed, I couldn’t stop reading this book.  And like any great storyteller, Crowley leaves his reader with a haunting passage that I can’t help but end on:

There is one other powerful protagonist of the spring of 1453 still to be discovered within the modern city—the cannon themselves.  They lie scattered across Istanbul, snoozing beside walls and in museum courtyards—primitive hooped tubes largely unaffected by five hundred years of weather—sometimes accompanied by the perfectly spherical granite or marble balls that they fired.  Of Orban’s supergun there is now no trace—it was probably melted down in the Ottoman gun foundry at Tophane, followed sometime later by the giant equestrian statue of Justinian.  Mehmet took the statue down on the advice of his astrologers, but it appears to have lain in the square for a long time before finally being hauled off to the smelting house.  The French scholar Piere Gilles saw some portions of the leg of Justinian, which exceeded my height, and his nose, which was over nine inches long.  I dared not publicly measure the horse’s legs and the on the ground but privately measured one of the hoofs and found it to be nine inches in height.”  It was a last glimpse of the great emperor—and of the outsize grandeur of Byzantium—before the furnace consumed them.  (259-60).

There was an idea and a vision that was Rome, or so the movies and pulp fiction romances tell me.  And it’s both chilling and deeply fascinating to observe that the last lingering glory of that vision became yet another in a long line of really bad Ozymandias rip-offs.  Although I suppose at least this rip-off would give humanity the pistols of Janissaries that kill you in an arguably underrated Assassin’s Creed video game, while Ridley Scott’s just gave us Alien Covenant. 

There are greater tragedies I suppose, but it still hurts damn it.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from 1453: : The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West were quoted from the paperback Hyperion edition.