Author: Roger Pearse

St Valentine – his “Passio” (BHL 8460) now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

St Valentine’s Day is February 14.  But who was St Valentine?  Well, he was bishop of Terni, or Interamna.  His (fictional) “Life” or “Passio” is now online in English.  This has the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina (BHL) number 8460.  The work probably dates from the 6th century AD.  It’s fairly short, and it has – sadly – nothing to do with romance.  The romantic connection with St Valentine’s Day goes back no further than Chaucer.

I’ve also included the Latin text and a short introduction.  As usual, the material is placed in the public domain – use it as you like.

Here it is:

I’ve also placed the files at Archive.org here.

There is another Life of a saint Valentine on 14th Feb – a “St Valentine of Rome”, who was a priest.  He might be the same chap, actually.  The Life is not so well attested, or widely known.  I might look at translating this next.

Update (15/07/2019): Via this site I learn that an Italian translation does exist of BHL 8460: E. d’Angelo, Terni Medievale: La Città, la Chiesa, i Santi, l’Agiografia, Spoleto (2015), p.243-7.  But this I have not seen.  I have updated the files and re-uploaded them.

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Still working on the translation of the “Life” of St Valentine of Terni

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The two pages of the medieval Life of St Valentine have taken me rather more time to translate than I had realised.  But we’re getting there!

When I decided to make this translation, I first located the text in the Acta Sanctorum (AASS) volume for February 14.  I was preparing to transcribe this, but I was then was directed to an online transcribed version.

I split the text into sentences, sometimes phrases, and interleaved it with the output from Google Translate for those same phrases.  Google Translate is not that good for Latin, but it often picks up when the text is that of scripture, and generally offers some vocabulary.  This works best for short bits of Latin, which is another reason why I proceeded as I did.

Having created this file in Word, I proceeded to work through it, translating each bit, and looking up words in QuickLatin or other tools.

On getting to the end of the first pass – a few knotty bits aside – I had intended to revise.  But in fact I then obtained a copy of the modern critical text by D’Angelo.  I could hardly ignore this, so I scanned this to create an electronic version.  Then I coloured it red, and interleaved it into my working document, placing D’Angelo first, the AASS next, and my draft translation after that.  This gave me something like this:

It was, inevitably, tedious to go through the whole thing comparing three lines at each point.  But I have just reached the end of this.

My principle, naturally, was to use the modern text wherever possible.  I found, in fact, very few differences, and almost none that made any significant difference to the meaning.  A couple of examples appear above, but these were rare.  This validated D’Angelo’s remark that the AASS text was basically sound.

I did modify D’Angelo in a couple of ways.

Firstly he used strange medieval spellings, like “nichil” for “nihil” and “michi” for “mihi”.  He admits that the spelling of the author’s copy is not recoverable, so I could see no reason to preserve the corruptions of the copyists.  His policy led him, in fact, to give the name “Ephebus” in two different spellings, which is simply confusing.  These features would merely be a barrier to any seeking to read the Latin.  I normalised the text, therefore.

Secondly he followed the modern practice of replacing “v” with “u”.  This fad came in during the early 20th century, and was justified on the grounds that no such letter ever existed in lower case Latin.  But this is the same issue.  Roman books were written in capitals, without word division or punctuation.  There were no lower case letters.  There is no obvious reason to reproduce this today.  We do not reproduce the incompetent spellings and renderings of the age of Shakespear or even Jane Austen in our modern editions, because to do so is to interpose a barrier between the text and the reader.  The old approach is of interest to specialist scholars, but to nobody else.  My purpose is always to encourage the general reader to look at the text.  Such a reader has no interest in the oddities that we have discussed.  So once again I restored a more normal spelling.

The process of reading through the whole translation again was useful in improving it.  It was burdensome to do, but it did produce real improvements.  We have to allow for the fact that translators get tired, and make mistakes; and a second pass will pick these up.

The translation document at the moment is as shown above.  The next stage is to produce a proper word document, and read through it all again, looking for bugs.  We’re not too far away, I feel.

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Ignorant musings about saints

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I was thinking about saints.  As a protestant I know very little about them, and how the institution works.  That makes me admirably suited to make some ignorant remarks on the subject.

What sparked my interest was the question of whether there was a patron saint of cats.  There seems to be a popular idea around that it is an obscure lady named Gertrude of Nivelle.  But … it seems to be a confection of time and imagination and the internet.  In fact I wonder if the cult of various saints might arise in a rather similar way, by popular tradition, invention, imagination.  Certainly the saints’ lives in medieval literature arise in this way – they are a form of folkstory, like the ballads of Robin Hood, not history.  So the creation of a cult by a gradual process is not a modern thing.

So… is it valid?  What does it mean, if it just appears over time?  One could say that perhaps this is an example of the work of God, to reveal an idea to the people.  But does anybody say that?

This led me to think about saints that actually probably never existed.  Their cult grew up over time, in a more or less popular, or even superstitious way.  But then in modern times the investigations by people like the Bollandists reveal that Saint Rastus – or whoever – never actually lived.  We could say this of St George; if he lived, he certainly was not responsible for a line of the various hagiographic stories, which themselves were condemned as “silly” in the Decretum Gelasianum in late antiquity.

St George is a good example of another phenomenon.  He gets adopted as the patron saint of England during the crusades.  So … how does this work?  How does anybody know that the saint, if he existed, and is in heaven, has the slightest interest in England?  How is this real?  Can patron saints just be created?  Or is it the case that, in reality, the distinction is an earthly one: that any saint may be prayed to about anything, but that for convenience the church, official or otherwise, suggests that people pray to this saint or that for specific things?

I have no answers on this, but suggestions of things to read would be welcomed.  It is, after all, rather embarrassing to produce material about the saints while having so little understanding of the subject!

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A good portrait of Constantius II?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been googling online, and I have been unable to locate a good likeness of Constantius II, who succeeded his father Constantine, murdered all his cousins, then his brothers and left only a nephew, Julian the Apostate, to succeed him.  His reign is described vividly by Ammianus Marcellinus, and the church remembered him as an Arian.

Long ago I placed online the Chronography of 354, a magnificent collection of documents illustrated by a famous artist and presented to a nobleman in that year.  The original is lost, but copies have reached us.  One of the illustrations is of “our emperors”, Constantius and his nephew, the luckless Gallus.

Since then the Barberini manuscript (Vatican barberini latini 2154B) of the Chronography has come online.  Here’s the portrait of Constantius from it, online here:

Constantius II in 354 AD. From Ms. Vatican Barb. lat. 2154 B, folio 13.

It is a splendid portrait, isn’t it?  What a face!

But I was surprised to discover that the illustrations were monochrome.  The printed version was monochrome but I had always assumed that was just to make it possible to print.

Another manuscript of the Chronography is also online,  in Vienna, here.  But this does not include the portraits of the emperors, although it does include other illustrations.

I wanted to see if other representations matched the one above.  The first item that I found was a bust of a young prince, almost 3 feet tall, and identified as either Constantius II or possibly his brother Constans.  It’s at the Capitoline Museum in Rome, inv. MC2882:

Colossal head of Constantius II or possibly Constans. Musei Capitolini, Roma, inv. MC2882.

The Last Statues database catalogues this as LSA-561, and gives a reference to a catalogue, sadly offline.[1]  I must say the portrait is not obviously similar to that of the Chronography.

Another portrait at Wikipedia is this:

Presumed bust of emperor Constantius II (317 – 361), son and successor of Constantine the Great. Temporary exhibition in Colosseum (aug.2013), Rome, Italy.

I don’t know anything else about this, but I can see that the nose seems to be restored, and much else; so I fear this is not a likeness.  There is also a widely miscaptioned picture of Theodosius II under the name of Constantius.

The next item I found on Tumblr:

Emperor Constantius II (?). Second third of IV century AD. Bust is modern. Marble. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Inv. Cp 6399 / Ma 1021

The head is ancient but the darker bust material is modern.  But again is this Constantius?

Also on Tumblr, was this silver bowl from the Bosporan kingdom, i.e. the Crimea.  I think that it is from Kerch, and is probably held in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.[2]

Bowl: the triumph of Constantius II. Place of origin: Eastern Mediterranean. Date: A.D. 4th century. Archaeological site: Bosporan Necropolis, vault on the Gordikov estate.

The long face is very like that of the Chronography.

Here’s another item, the Missorium of Kerch, preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in Russia.  Wikipedia has a monochrome image here.

The Missorium of Kerch is a ceremonial dish depicting the Emp. Constantius II on horseback, leading a soldier and being crowned by Victory.

This also depicts a long-faced Constantius.  So I think we may treat the depiction in the Chronography as fairly accurate.  Not bad for a renaissance copy of a Carolingian copy of an ancient book!

UPDATE: A commenter points out that the two dishes look suspiciously similar, allowing for photography differences.  There are 3 dishes; but are all these photos of the same item?!

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  1. [1]Fittschen, K. and P. Zanker, Katalog der Porträts in den Capitolischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom, Band I, Mainz 1985, 156-7, no. 125, pl. 156 ↩
  2. [2]This I infer from a snippet view of a book on Google Books: Bernard Samuel Myers, Encyclopedia of world art, – Volume 9 – Page xcvi: “Two dishes found at Kerch (Leningrad, The Hermitage) refer to an anniversary of Constantius in 343. The style of these dishes … The third, and most splendid, piece of this type is the Missorium of Theodosius I (II, PL. 487), which celebrates …”↩

Tutorial: How to download the LIDAR datasets from the UK Environment Agency website

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Lidar is a technique for displaying the shape of the ground using pulses of laser light.  The results have been widely used to discover Roman monuments, as they can process them to omit modern buildings, trees, etc.  I have been interested in this ever since I discovered some Lidar images of the seabed showing the submerged ruins of the Roman fort of Walton Castle at Felixstowe.

Most of the United Kingdom has been surveyed using Lidar, and the resulting datasets are now freely available for download on the Environment Agency / DEFRA website.  If you can download them, then you can pull them into a tool like QGIS, and turn the data into images.   But this website is not well organised.  I have never been able to work out how to download anything!

Partly this is because I used my Android mobile much of the time.  Just don’t.  You won’t be able to get it to work.  Instead go to your trusty PC and open your browser.  I did all this in Chrome.

[Update: 19 March 2024: The website has changed, so I have updated these instructions.]

1. Go to the Defra Home page, and search for LIDAR

Go to https://environment.data.gov.uk/, ignore all of it and put LIDAR in the search box.  The next page gives you more options to search:

  • Change the search term to “LIDAR Composite” (without quotes)
  • Change “Organisation” to “Environment Agency”
  • Change “Sort by” to “Alphabetical A-Z”
  • Change “Results per page” to 100.

You currently (March 2024) get 14 results, which look like this.  (Click on the image for a larger image) (You can get more results if you omit “composite” but none looked useful).

If you scroll down, you will find “LIDAR Composite … DSM – 1m” and “LIDAR Composite … DSM – 2m”, and LIDAR Cmposite … DTM – 1 m” etc.

The LIDAR Composite DTM and DSM materials are what you want, taken at various resolutions.  DSM is the raw data.  DTM removes surface objects like trees and houses.

2. Click on LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model (DTM) – 1m

This takes you to a waffle page.  At the bottom are various links:

The “WMS” links do not work – any of them.  On enquiry I was told that:

You need to open the WMS/WFS links within the GIS software in order for the data to load, please refer to the following FAQ:

https://support.environment.data.gov.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/360000921077-Why-do-I-get-a-Query-Parameters-must-include-Request-error-

Apparently “WMS” is is a way to get the datasets from the GIS tool directly.  Not what I have in mind here at the moment.

The one you want is the “Download the Survey Data” which I have highlighted in red.

3.  Click on “Open The Link”

This takes you to https://environment.data.gov.uk/survey, which after a pause builds the following inscrutable screen:

Ignore the “Download” box for now!

The bit you will need is the square.  But… NOT YET!  It is, in fact, a tool to draw an area on the map.  We’ll use it in a moment.

4.  First, zoom into the area that you want to look at

This bit is fairly obvious.  Use the “+” icon to zoom, and drag the map around.  Once you get far enough in, a grid will appear with references on it. If you know the reference, you can enter it in the search box, although I notice this sometimes does not work.

I’m using the area off Felixstowe, so I get to this.

Until you are zoomed in, you can’t do anything.  You can only download datasets for small areas, you see.  But this is probably enough.

5.  Draw a polygon on the map of the area for which you want Lidar

Now at last you can click on the “Draw polygon” button!  So long as you stay over the map, it is surrounded by a grey area with a yellow border.   If you move off to another window, it cancels this, tho!  But now you can draw.  (This frankly can be pretty tricky too.)

  • Hover over the map at one corner of wherever you want to draw, and click.  A small white circle should appear.  If it doesn’t, look back at the “Draw polygon” icon – it’s probably lost focus.
  • Now move the mouse.  Click again, and you’ll get another white circle, and a blue line back to the last corner.  Here’s a screen grab, (although the cursor went everywhere!)

  • Repeat until your area is right, and then click back on your first circle to close the area.  At that point the “Get available tiles” button on the popup will return to a normal green colour, and you can use it.

It will now look like this:

Note my polygon on the map.

Now, at last, you have something you can download. So click on the “Get Available Tiles”.  You will now get a new menu:

What this lists is the various different types of dataset.  In fact it lists the lot, of all sizes and resolutions.  Whatever you choose, you get the link in blue at the bottom.

But there is more.  Notice how the scroll bar to the right shows that the window is scrollable?  If you scroll down you get this!

The link is to a zip file.  In Chrome, just click on it to download to the Downloads folder; in IE, right-click and choose “Save target as” in the usual way.  Either way you will end up with a lidar_composite_dtm-2022-1-TM33nw.zip file on your PC.

In my case, clicking “Download all” had the same effect.

[Note: I have not updated the following notes since 2019, so I don’t know if these work.  I believe the bit above is what causes people trouble!]

6.  Unzip the dataset

How you use the dataset is a different question, but I will give you what I found out.

First, you need to unzip the dataset.  I use 7Zip on my PC, and right-click, 7-Zip, and extract to folder.  So…

That created a folder Bathy-Coastal-Multibeam-2013-TM33nw in that directory.

I’m more interested in the DTM 1 meter stuff, so I get a download of LIDAR-DTM-1M-TM33nw.zip, and unpack it to a folder LIDAR-DTM-1M-TM33nw.

Inside the new folder are a bunch of .asc files.  These together make up the dataset.

Next, you need a GIS tool to view this stuff.

7. Import into QGIS

I found this very hard to do, but here’s some notes on what I did.  I worked it out based on this tutorial for an older version: http://geophyswithsnuffler.blogspot.com/2015/11/processing-uk-environment-agency-lidar.html

First, I installed the latest version of QGIS from the download site, which for me was 3.4.5.  Look for the “long term stable release” stuff, and ignore the rest.  This installed fine, and created a folder on my desktop, labelled QGIS 3.4, and an icon, “GRASS GIS 7.6.0”.  Now … do NOT try to start that icon.  Instead drag it into the folder, and forget about it.

Next open the folder, and double-click on the QGIS Desktop icon, again ignoring the GRASS thing.  This will open something you can work with.

Next, create a project by Project -> New.  Then do Project -> Save, and choose a name for your QGZ file – I used my own name.

Next, you need to import the dataset.  Raster -> Miscellaneous -> Merge brings up a daft dialog box headed “Merge”.

Click on the “…”, and you get another daft dialog box headed “Multiple Selection”.  Click on “Add”, and browse into the folder LIDAR-DTM-1M-TM33nw.

Select all the files in the folder, and hit “Open”.  They will all appear in the “Multiple Selection” box.

Now hit “OK”.  You’ll be back at the Merge dialog box.

You’ll want to save the resulting .tif file, so under “Merged” there is “Save to temporary file” – hit the “…” next to that and choose “Save to file”, and then pick a name.

Your “Merge” dialog will now look like this:

Don’t twiddle anything else.

Now hit Run, and go and make a cup of coffee.  It takes a while.

When it finishes, it will pop up “Algorithm ‘Merge’ finished”, and look like this:

Hit “close” to get rid of the dialog box.  You now have some results.

You can use the mouse to drag it around, and zoom in.  The results are likely to look… disappointing.

On the left side is a box “Layers”.  If you right-click on “Merged”, and choose “Properties”, you get stuff that you can play with.  Select “Symbology”, and you can change the “Render type”.  You can change it to “Hillshade” (whatever that is), and hit “Apply” and you get more details:

But that’s as far as I could get.

However, it IS more than I knew before.

Bibliography

Some links that I found useful:

  • http://apps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/151365.aspx – overview of the datasets
  • https://www.gislounge.com/what-is-a-shapefile/ – the datasets are “shape files”
  • https://www.gislounge.com/shapefile-viewers/ – possible viewers
  • https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map – Easily the best way to  view Lidar.  Only works on Chrome tho.  Based on the 1m DSM data.  Actually better than anything I got from this!

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Underwater archaeology beneath the pyramids of the Black Pharaohs

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A simply amazing story has appeared in National Geographic magazine this month (July 2, 2019, by Kristin Romey).  It’s online here.

An expedition is investigating the burial chambers under some of the pyramids of Nuri in Sudan.  Rising ground-water means that these are drowned in water, and so inaccessible.  Indeed some may never have been accessible since ancient times.  The expedition website is http://www.nuripyramids.org/.

Dive beneath the pyramids of Egypt’s black pharaohs

Somewhere below the surface of the kiddie-pool sized patch of brown water is the entrance to the 2,300-year-old tomb of a pharaoh named Nastasen. If I crane my neck back far enough, I can just make out the eastern flank of his pyramid rising nearly three stories above me.

It’s a sweltering morning in the desert of northern Sudan, the land of Nubia in the time of the pharaohs. Sweat drips into the dive mask hung around my neck as I negotiate my way down a narrow, ancient staircase cut deep into the bedrock. Waterproof flashlights clank from each wrist, and a 20-pound weight belt is slung commando-style across my chest. An emergency container of air, no bigger than a can of hairspray, is secured uncomfortably in the small of my back.

At the bottom of the stairs, archaeologist and National Geographic grantee Pearce Paul Creasman is standing chest-deep in the muddy water. “It’s really deep today,” he warns. “There’s not going to be any headroom in the first chamber.”

It’s a fascinating article, and some gorgeous photographs.  Apparently there is a TV programme too: “Black Pharaohs: Sunken Treasures”, to be broadcast today in the US.

The article ends:

On our final dive, Creasman and I float silently in water in the back chamber of the tomb, hovering above what may very well be Nastasen’s undisturbed sarcophagus. We talk about the team’s goal for 2020: to excavate the pharaoh’s 2,300-year-old submerged royal burial chambers. It’s an audacious aim and a huge logistical challenge, but Creasman is optimistic.

“I think we finally have the technology to be able to tell the story of Nuri, to fill in the blanks of what happened here,” he says. “It’s a remarkable point in history that so few know about. It’s a story that deserves to be told.”

Read it all.

(Note that the article is easier to understand if you first look at the map of where they are diving, in the middle of the page!)

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A 1987 plan for the ruins of the Roman fort of “Walton Castle”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Walton Castle is the local name for the remains of a Roman fort, now submerged beneath the waves offshore at Felixstowe in Suffolk, Britain.  Resources for study of this monument are limited, and I have discussed them in other posts.

One interesting article appeared in, of all things, a popular magazine.  Such an item is, of course, not usually held by research libraries so can be very hard to locate.  The item is Julian K. Hagar, “A New Plan for Walton Castle”, Popular Archaeology Today, vol. 8, no. 1 (February 1987), p.22-25.   Fortunately today I was able to find a copy.  In view of the difficulty of locating it, I will make a scan of the article available here:

Hagar’s analysis of the sketchy evidence is deeply convincing.  He points out that by 1623, the earliest date at which we have  knowledge of the site, the eastern side of the ruins must already be long gone.  The cliff did not erode quickly, and indeed has only eroded another 50 metres in the last 200 years.

A sketch from 1623, reproduced in the Victoria County History of Suffolk, shows the west side of the fort more or less complete.  The wall was perhaps 180 metres long, if we assume the measurements given in 1754 were copied from an earlier, now lost, account.  Hagar suggests that this view is taken from the land-ward side, that the sea can be seen through the “gate”, and that we should disregard “cliffs” in the foreground as artistic license.

On this basis, he proposes this map for the castle in 1623:

By 1722 much of the remains had fallen into the sea, and the length of the west wall was only about 100 metres.

 

By 1750 it was all gone.

The highest point remaining, in the water, today, is still the ruin of the south-west corner tower and a fragment of each of the adjacent walls.  This tends to favour Hagar’s theory.

Another point in favour of Hagar’s reconstruction is the north alignment that he gives the ruins, which does indeed seem to be the case.  It is unfortunate that I was unable to locate the manuscript of the 1969 survey, which would have clarified this point.

But on the other hand, there are two obvious problems with Hagar’s plans.

The first is that the beach does not today run NW-SE as he shows it.  It probably never did.  It might have run N-S, but today it certainly runs SW-NE.  The northern end of the ruins is therefore closer today to the beach, not the southern end.

The only feature of the landscape that would permit more erosion at the N end is the presence of “the Dip”, the shallow valley carved by the stream that runs into the sea at that end, which is still there today.  But this seems doubtful.

The second point leads us in the same direction.  If we agree with Hagar that the 1623 drawing was made from the landward side – for how else could it be drawn? – then the drawing shows quite a bit of masonry on the north side.  This is equally obvious in what is probably the original of the drawing:

The map at the foot of the drawing is of the same period.  Hagar is probably right to treat the east wall as an artist’s guess; and to suppose that the “corner towers” drawn at that end were in reality bastion towers, mid-way along the wall.  The fort, then, was square, just like other Roman forts of the Saxon Shore.

But in Hagar’s favour, we can see that within the map are some ruins at the SW corner, possibly the remains of a demolished medieval castle keep mentioned in the sources.  These must have been visible in 1623 or they wouldn’t be noted.

I would therefore suggest that perhaps the beach in 1623 did indeed run North-South, and preserved more of the North wall than Hagar allows.  Perhaps the north side eroded faster – who can tell?  But the hypothesis that half of the wall fell first does indeed seem to be correct.

It is very unfortunate that the survey undertaken by Jeff Errington and his divers in 1969 cannot be located.  Jeff told me that his divers did indeed locate the gateway area on the sea-bed.  I have written again to the Ipswich Museum team to see if anything can be done to locate the survey manuscript.  At present the material is unclassified and therefore researchers are not permitted to access it.

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Two ancient Latin versions of the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Thanks to a kind correspondent here, I have become aware that the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia is preserved in two Latin versions.  These are given in Hans-Georg Opitz, Urkunden zur Geschichte des arianischen Streites (Documents on the history of the Arian dispute), in Athanasius Werke, III, pt. 1, 1934.  He gives an edition of the letter as “Urk. 1” (Doc. 1).  The text can be found at Archive.org here.

On the first page he lists the two Latin versions, rather gnomically as “Cand. Migne L. 8, 1035.” and “Col. Rev. Ben. 26, 93”.  His needless brevity has cost me an hour of my life, and doubtless others the same, so I thought it worth indicating where these might be found.

“Cand.” is Candidus Arianus, whose letter to Marius Victorinus quotes the letter of Arius.  “Migne L” means the Patrologia Latina, vol. 8, col. 1035, and it may be found online here.

“Col.” is manuscript 54 of the cathedral of Cologne, of the end of the 8th century.  It was published by D. de Bruyne, “Une ancienne version latine inédite d’une lettre d’Arius“, in: Revue Bénédictine 26 (1909) 93-95.  This isn’t online, so I attach it at the end.

The Candidus text in the PL is of course a pre-critical text.  But there is no question as to what it says, on col. 1037: “ante tempora et aeones plenus deus, unigenitus, et immutabilis” – “before ages and ages fully God, only-begotten and immutable”.

The Cologne ms reads:

Here’s the edition of both in Optiz:

Both say plainly “plenus deus”, fully God.

Since the De Bruyne article is out of copyright but inaccessible, I’ve uploaded it here:

My thanks to the correspondent who sent it to me!

Updated July 1 2019 to add the De Bruyne article material.

 

 

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Ibn Khaldun, taxation, and Boris Johnson

Posted on by Roger Pearse

During a TV interview yesterday, a politician suddenly referred to a 14th century Arabic writer.  Via Twitter:

When asked about his spending plans and plans to cut taxes, Boris Johnson responds “as the great Tunisian scholar and sage Ibn Khaldun pointed out as early as the 14th century, there are plenty of taxes that you can cut which will actually increase your revenues”.

The interviewer was a certain Sophie Ridge on Sky News, and the politician was Boris Johnson, currently hoping to become British Prime Minister.

Naturally my first thought was to wonder whether Ibn Khaldun did say anything like this.

There is an old English translation which is abridged: Abd Ar Rahman bin Muhammed ibn Khaldun: The Muqaddimah, tr. Franz Rosenthal.  In book 1, chapters 36-7, headed read as follows.[1]  A reprint can be found at Amazon US here, or UK: The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton Classics).

36. Taxation and the reason for low and high (tax revenues).

It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

The reason for this is that when the dynasty follows the ways (sunan) of the religion, it imposes only such taxes as are stipulated by the religious law, such as charity taxes, the land tax, and the poll tax. They mean small assessments, because, as everyone knows, the charity tax on property is low. The same applies to the charity tax on grain and cattle, and also to the poll tax, the land tax, and all other taxes required by the religious law. They have fixed limits that cannot be overstepped.

When the dynasty follows the ways of group feeling and (political) superiority, it necessarily has at first a desert attitude, as has been mentioned before.  The desert attitude requires kindness, reverence, humility, respect for the property of other people, and disinclination to appropriate it, except in rare instances.  Therefore, the individual imposts and assessments, which together constitute the tax revenue, are low. When tax assessments and imposts upon the subjects are low, the latter have the energy and desire to do things. Cultural enterprises grow and increase, because the low taxes bring satisfaction. When cultural enterprises grow, the number of individual imposts and assessments mounts. In consequence, the tax revenue, which is the sum total of (the individual assessments), increases.

When the dynasty continues in power and their rulers follow each other in succession, they become sophisticated. The Bedouin attitude and simplicity lose their significance, and the Bedouin qualities of moderation and restraint disappear.  Royal authority with its tyranny, and sedentary culture that stimulates sophistication, make their appearance. The people of the dynasty then acquire qualities of character related to cleverness. Their customs and needs become more varied because of the prosperity and luxury in which they are immersed. As a result, the individual imposts and assessments upon the subjects, agricultural laborers, farmers, and all the other taxpayers, increase. Every individual impost and assessment is greatly increased, in order to obtain a higher tax revenue. Customs duties are placed upon articles of commerce and (levied) at the city gates, as we shall mention later on.  Then, gradual increases in the amount of the assessments succeed each other regularly, in correspondence with the gradual increase in the luxury customs and many needs of the dynasty and the spending required in connection with them.  Eventually, the taxes will weigh heavily upon the subjects and overburden them.  Heavy taxes become an obligation and tradition, because the increases took place gradually, and no one knows specifically who increased them or levied them. They lie upon the subjects like an obligation and tradition.

The assessments increase beyond the limits of equity. The result is that the interest of the subjects in cultural enterprises disappears, since when they compare expenditures and taxes with their income and gain and see the little profit they make, they lose all hope. Therefore, many of them refrain from all cultural activity.  The result is that the total tax revenue goes down, as (the number of) the individual assessments goes down. Often, when the decrease is noticed, the amounts of individual imposts are increased. This is considered a means of compensating for the decrease. Finally, individual imposts and assessments reach their limit. It would be of no avail to increase them further.  The costs of all cultural enterprise are now too high, the taxes are too heavy, and the profits anticipated fail to materialize. Thus, the total revenue continues to decrease, while the amounts of individual imposts and assessments continue to increase, because it is believed that such an increase will compensate (for the drop in revenue)in the end. Finally, civilization is destroyed, because the incentive for cultural activity is gone. It is the dynasty that suffers from the situation, because it (is the dynasty that) profits from cultural activity.

If (the reader) understands this, he will realize that the strongest incentive for cultural activity is to lower as much as possible the amounts of individual imposts levied upon persons capable of undertaking cultural enterprises. In this manner, such persons will be psychologically disposed to undertake them, because they can be confident of making a profit from them.

God owns all things.

37. In the later (years) of dynasties, customs duties are levied.

It should be known that at the beginning, dynasties maintain the Bedouin attitude, as we have stated. Therefore, they have few needs, since luxury and the habits that go with it do not (yet) exist. Expenses and expenditures are small. At that time, revenue from taxes pays for much more than the necessary expenditures, and there is a large surplus.

The dynasty, then, soon starts to adopt the luxury and luxury customs of sedentary culture, and follows the course that had been taken by previous dynasties.  The result is that the expenses of the people of the dynasty grow. Especially do the expenses of the ruler mount excessively, on account of his expenditures for his entourage and the great number of allowances he has to grant. The (available) revenue from taxes cannot pay for all that. Therefore, the dynasty must increase its revenues, because the militia needs (ever) larger allowances and the ruler needs (ever) more money to meet his expenditures.  At first, the amounts of individual imposts and assessments are increased, as we have stated. Then, as expenses and needs increase under the influence of the gradual growth of luxury customs and additional allowances for the militia, the dynasty is affected by senility. Its people are too weak to collect the taxes from the provinces and remote areas. Thus, the revenue from taxes decreases, while the habits (requiring money) increase. As they increase, salaries and allowances to the soldiers also increase. Therefore, the ruler must invent new kinds of taxes. He levies them on commerce. He imposes taxes of a certain amount on prices realized in the markets and on the various (imported) goods at the city gates.  (The ruler) is, after all, forced to this because people have become spoiled by generous allowances, and because of the growing numbers of soldiers and militiamen. In the later (years) of the dynasty, (taxation) may become excessive. Business falls off, because all hopes (of profit) are destroyed, permitting the dissolution of civilization and reflecting upon (the status of) the dynasty. This(situation) becomes more and more aggravated, until (the dynasty) disintegrates.

Much of this sort happened in the Eastern cities during the later days of the ‘Abbasid and ‘Ubaydid(-Fatimid) dynasties. Taxes were levied even upon pilgrims making the pilgrimage. Salah-ad-din Ibn Ayyub abolished all such institutions and replaced them with good works. The same also happened in Spain at the time of the reyes de ta’ifas. Yusuf b. Tashfin, the Almoravid amir, put an end to it. The same has also been happening in the cities of the Jarid in Ifrigiyah, ever since their chiefs gained control over them.

God “is kind to His servants.”

Interesting indeed.

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  1. [1]These are on p.352 of the PDF that I found online, derived from material at http://muslimphilosophy.org/philosophers, where the Arabic text may also be found.↩

The New Jerusalem like a bride in Rev. 21:2 and Christ as bridegroom

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting enquiry on Twitter here:

Who is the very first commentator to apply to Rev 21:2 (the New Jerusalem) the analogy of Christ as bridegroom to his Church? I’m looking for the very beginnings of this tradition and a nice juicy source on its dissemination.

Let’s have Revelation 21:2 first:

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

Probably the answer to this question is to consult some database of patristic references to scripture, like BIBLINDEX.  Unfortunately this is very laborious to use.

Another alternative is to look at the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) series.  There is a volume on Revelation, and this has quotations on Rev. 21:2.

The very interesting introduction (p.xx) informs us of commentaries in the west from the “commentary of Victorinus of Petovium through those of Tyconius, Primasius, Apringius, Caesarius of Arles, the Venerable Bede,” and later medieval writers.  Victorinus died ca. 304.  In the east “no Greek commentary of the Revelation appears before the sixth century (Oecumenius and Andrew of Caesarea), and that after the commentary of Arerhas (c. 900), who largely works over the commentary of Andrew of Caesarea, no additional commentary of significance arises…”.

On p.364 we find the material on Rev. 21:2.  Three of these refer to the matter at hand.

It begins with Primasius:

By the testimony of the Truth this is the “city set on a hill.” Also Isaiah says, “The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills.”‘ [Isaiah says this] either because of the height of its righteousness, of which we read, ‘Your righteousness is like the mountains of God,” or because both the apostles and the prophets are called mountains. However, being more excellent than all others, the Lord Christ towers as a mountain above the heights of mountains, and from his fullness, it says, we receive grace for grace. Fittingly he says [that the city comes] down our of heaven from God, for [the church’s] beauty will then be seen more fully, when through the Spirit, by whom her bridegroom is believed to have been conceived and born, she has merited to bear the heavenly image. Therefore, it is this very bride that is this city. – Commentary on the Apocalypse 21.9-10.”

Next, Caesarius of Arles:

By the mountain he refers to Christ It is the church, the city established on the mountain, that is the bride of the Lamb. The city is then established on the mountain when on the shoulders of the Shepherd it is called back like a sheep to its own sheepfold. For were the church one and the city coming down from heaven another, there would be two brides, which is simply not possible. He has called this city the “bride” of the Lamb, and therefore it is clear that it is the church itself that is going to be described. – Exposition on the Apocalypse 21.10, Homily 19.

Finally Andrew of Caesarea:

That he was “carried away in the Spirit” indicates that through the Spirit he was elevated in his mind from earthly things to the contemplation of heavenly realities. The image of the “great mountain” indicates the sublime and transcendent life of the saints, in which the wife of the Lamb, the Jerusalem above, will be made beautiful and glorified by God. – Commentary on the Apocalypse 11.10-11.

The Venerable Bede is worth quoting also:

After the destruction of Babylon, the holy city, which is the bride of the Lamb, is seen located on a mountain. The stone which was cut out of the mountain without hands broke the image of the world’s glory into small pieces, and it grew into a great mountain and filled the whole world. Explanation oh the Apocalypse 21.10.

In truth the link between the New Jerusalem and the Church and Christ as the bridegroom is pretty obvious in the biblical text.

Now Primasius is supposed to be based on Tyconius and Augustine, De civitate Dei, 20.7-17.  The latter is online in English here but I could not see any discussion of our point.

Tyconius has been reconstructed from Primasius recently, and an English translation of the reconstruction exists.  Tyconius, Exposition of the Apocalypse, in: Fathers of the Church 134, (2017) p.181, is as follows:

Chapter Twenty-One

[1] And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth have gone away. And the sea is no more. [2] And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. [3] And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. [4] And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be death, and there will no longer be pain. The first things have passed away.

He calls this “Jerusalem” the church, by recapitulating from the passion of Christ up to the day on which she rises and, having triumphed with Christ, she is crowned in glory. He mixes each time together, now the present, now the future, and declares more fully when she is taken with great glory by Christ and is separated from every incursion of evil people.

How this relates to the text of Primasius is not obvious, but not our concern here.

So our winner is … Tyconius!

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