Historical - Blog Posts
So we’ve been watching this series called How We Won The War and they’re currently doing a section about female ATA pilots during WW2 and holy shit look how badass they are They were the first women allowed into, let alone fly, an RAF aircraft. Their male peers were of they opinion that they should “go back to the kitchen” so only let them fly shitty archaic planes with open cockpits that nearly caused them to freeze to death one winter. They tried to make them wear skirts and stockings during winter but they were like “haha no” and wore proper flight gear instead. They flew in terrible weather with poor visibility, no radio and no electronic navigational equipment. Though not permitted to fly into combat zones they were still frequently under fire. Over time their contribution to the air force was recognised and the ATA was the first government organisation to give equal pay for equal work regardless of gender.
Are you looking at the world’s first computer programmer?
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the world’s first computer programmer.
If the last name Byron sounds familiar, here’s why,
Ada was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron (with Anne Isabella Milbanke, 11th Baroness Wentworth). [Text & Image Source: Wikipedia]
If you didn’t know, now you know.
I am not a woman of feminine frivolity or fear, but I direct these letters to you for the advantage of my whole kingdom; when you receive them accept me and the whole kingdom of Lombardy. I shall give you so many cities, castles, renowned palaces, and infinite gold and silver; over all these you will have an illustrious name if you make yourself dear to me. Do not consider me bold that I approach you first. It is permitted as much to the virile as to the feminine sex to desire a legitimate spouse. Nor does it matter if a man or a woman make the first move in love as long it involves an indissoluble marriage. Which can not be except by the consent of both. Fare well.
~ Matilda of Canossa's marriage proposal for purely political reasons to Guelph V of Bavaria, her second husband.
1089 A.D.
temenuga:
In 1808, Napoleon, running out of scenic holiday destinations to invade, somehow totally forgot about his neighbor to the south, Spain. So that year he dispatched his troops, kicking off the Peninsular War. Only 20 years old and working as a barmaid in the town of Valdepenas, Juana Galan was not expecting a surge of French soldiers to come storming through her village. But on June 6, that’s exactly what happened. At that time, most of the men were fighting Napoleon’s forces elsewhere in the nation. Juana, unfazed by things like rifles and Frenchmen and French riflemen, began organizing the women in her village to form a trap for the approaching army. When the army arrived, Juana and her friends were ready. They dumped boiling water and oil on the French troops, which by all accounts will instantly take the fight out of pretty much anyone. Then Juana, armed with only a batan, beat back the heavily armed French cavalry with her squad of village women, almost none of whom were armed with guns. The French retreated, giving up on capturing not just Juana’s town but the entire province of La Mancha, leading to ultimate Spanish victory. Today, she is seen in Spain as a national hero, a symbol of resistance, strength, patriotism, feminism and hitting shit with a stick. (x)
Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.
Sappho (via theancientworld)
pipercarter:
Empire Line (2005) series by British photographer Gavin Fernandes.
Fernandes describes the series in British Asian Style: Fashion & Textiles / Past and Present:
By subverting representations of British “memsahibs” and their indigenous Indian servants, and through the interaction of period British costume and native Indian dress, Empire Line explores the politics of clothing and its relationship with class and caste in 19th-century colonial India.
Though so rooted in colonial imagery, I love how Fernandes’s work also speaks to the complex and often problematic cultural exchanges of the contemporary fashion industry.
The funeral monument of Countess Matilda di Canossa, Pope Gregory VII's great champion against the Emperor Henry VI. The monument was conceived by Bernini who began it in 1633. The statue of Matilda is by Andrea Bolgi (1605-1656). The central bas-relief which shows Henry IV kneeling before Gregory VII on January 28th, 1077 after waiting or three days and three nights to be received, is the work of Stefano Speranza. The two cherubs supporting the inscription are by Andrea Bolgi (on the right) and Luigi Bernini, the brother of Gian Lorenzo (on the left).
For more than 600 years, following King Odoacer's overthrow of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476 when he officially became the King of Italy - no army based in Italy had ever defeated the German invaders.
That is until Matilde Di Canossa accomplished what seemed like an impossible undertaking. Among her many great accomplishments, her defeat of the Holy Roman Emperor - Henry IV - was a major turning point for the Catholic Church, for Western Europe and for Italy. It earned her the honorific "Madonna of War" or as she is also known, "Gran Contessa" and "Gran Duchessa" - The Grand Countess and the Grand Duchess. For indeed, she held legal claim over both titles and more.
awesomestuffwomendid:
Crushed the armies of the Holy Roman Empire who tried to attack the Vatican from 1080 to 1095 (Matilda of Tuscany)
nothing-terribly-new:
Matilda of Canossa gets her epithet from the name of her family fortress. It’s a rare badass indeed who can claim that they’re named after a castle, but if anybody in Medieval Europe is worthy of that distinction, it’s probably Matilda. For 60 years, this hardcore warrior woman kicked asses in Northern Italy, providing the main military defense force for none other than the Roman Popes, single-handedly taking on any challenges to the Papacy. She’s now one of the few women from the Middle Ages known for her prowess in combat, and her role as the Pope’s personal badass isn’t the sort of honor that got handed out to any douchebag with a castle. She was tough, nobody fucked with her, and – more importantly – as long as she was around nobody fucked with the Pope without thinking twice about it first.
Whole history.
nativeskins:
Many Native Americans welcomed African Americans into their villages. Even as slaves many African Americans became part of a family group, and many intermarried with Native Americans - thus many later became classified as Black Indians
locaantiqua:
Atrium Vestae (Vestal Virgin’s Home) - Rome, Italy
christinemarieparker:
A.D. Hope
A.U.C. 334: about this date, For a sexual misdemeanour which she denied, The vestal virgin Postumia was tried; Livy records it among affairs of state.
They let her off: it seems she was perfectly pure; The charge arose because some thought her talk Too witty for a young girl, her eyes, her walk Too lively, her clothes too smart to be demure.
The Pontifex Maximus, summing up the case, Warned her in future to abstain from jokes, To wear less modish and more pious frocks. She left the court reprieved, but in disgrace.
Read More
Advice to Young Ladies
cheshicat:
Courtyard of the Vestal Virgins
The Virgins were chosen as young girls. They had to be free of defects, physically & mentally, have 2 living parents, and had to be daughters of citizens of Rome. The Virgins had a highly sacred and important job. Awarded many privileges, the Virgins were also given great responsibility and failure to live up to their job could mean a punishment as severe as death
harvestheart:
Vestal Virgins
The priestesses of the goddess Vesta were known as the Vestal Virgins. They were responsible for maintaining the sacred fire within the Temple of Vesta on the Forum Romanum. Other duties included performing rituals in regards to the Goddess Vesta, and baking the sacred salt cake to be used at numerous ceremonies in the year. They were the only female priests within the roman religious system. The head of the college of Vesta was called the Virgo Vestalis Maxima, and she was under the direct authority of the Pontifex Maximus.
The college of Vesta had 18 members, though 6 were considered actual Vestal Virgins at any given time. They were selected from distinguished patrician families at an age from three to ten, and such appointments were considered a top honor for any family to receive. They each served thirty years, the first ten years as novices, then ten years as actual vestal virgins, and finally ten years as supervisors responsible for training the novices. After the thirty years of duty they were released from their duties and could then maintain a private life, including the right to marry. For men, arranging a marriage with a former vestal virgin was highly prestigious, regardless of age or the ability to have children.
The vestals vowed to live in chastity for the thirty years their tenure lasted. In return they were allowed many privileges not given to ordinary Roman women. As one example, the vestals were not subject to the pater potestas of their fathers. Essentially they were allowed to handle their own properties and engage in legal contracts, they were allowed to travel around the city in a carriage and they had special seats in the front row at the various games, where, in contrast women were normally relegated to the back seats. They were considered inviolable and sacred and their blood could not be spilt without fear of terrible repercussion from the gods. So sacred and divine-like were these priestesses, that if a person sentenced to death met a vestal virgin on his way to the execution, he would be automatically pardoned. Of course, special care would be taken to prevent or to make sure this would happen, depending on the circumstances.
While enjoying many benefits, including a rather luxurious life in the House of Vestal Virgins, punishment for breaking the rules were severe. The punishment for breaking the vow of chastity was death by burial alive as this was the adopted to kill a vestal without shedding her blood. Such executions would take place in the “Evil Fields”, or Campus Sceleratus, just outside the Servian Wall. Their lover would be flogged to death on the Comitium. While these executions took place several times, it was obviously a rare event that carried all sorts of negative omens with it.
While the Pontifex Maximus continues to the present day as an office of the higher order in the Catholic Church, the order of the vestals was disbanded in 394 AD, when non-Christian cults were banned by Theodosius. The Church, wisely trying to keep the general population with a sense of familiarity, readily adopted the use of convents and position of nuns that held many of the same rules and customs as the Vestals.
http://www.unrv.com/culture/vestal-virgins.php
Two-sided amulet. On the front, the Raising of Lazarus. On the reverse are three lines of Greek magic words.
Jerusalem, Bible Lands Museum. Soft gray stone, 33 mm.
Magic amulets with Christian imagery were produced by an unusual workshop operating in 5th-century Palestine. Most of the amulets were crudely cut from very soft stones that could be easily carved with a sharp tool rather than with the drills used by experienced gem cutters. All were pierced to be worn suspended. The amulets generally draw on popular Christian imagery, including the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Raising of Lazarus, and Jesus with the apostles
Although some of the inscriptions on the amulets are in Greek, other inscriptions are badly blundered or in a pseudo-script, sometimes imitating Hebrew. The amulet makers appear to have had a superficial knowledge of both pagan and Jewish magic but were evidently serving Christian clients.
Ceiling Mosaic - Christus helios, the mosaic of Sol in Mausoleum M, which is interpreted as Christ-Sol (Christ as the Sun).
Detail of vault mosaic in the Mausoleum of the Julii. From the necropolis under St. Peter's Mid-3rd century Grotte Vaticane, Rome.
Mosaic of the Vatican grottoes under St. Peter's Basilica, on the ceiling of the tomb of the Julii (Pope Julius I). Representation of Christ as the sun-god Helios or Sol Invictus riding in his chariot. Dated to the 3rd century AD.
"Early Christian and pagan beliefs are combined in this third century mosaic of Christ as a sun-god. The triumphant Christ/god, with rays shooting from his head, is pulled aloft by two rearing horses in his chariot. The Dionysian vines in the background become the vines of Christ."
Title: Christ as Sol Invictus Late 3rd century
It is probably the dirty story of history: that Catherine the Great (1727-1796), the lusty ruler of Russia, was so wild with sexual desire that one day she was screwing a horse when the harness broke and killed her. It's simply not true. Catherine liked officers of the Imperial Horse Guard, not the horses. Yes, Catherine also liked sex - one of her favorite toasts was "God grant us our desires and grant them quickly." This ruler of a vast empire had a dozen documented lovers (really, male mistresses) over her thirty-four years in power. But she had them one after another. This level of sexual consumption would hardly rate a footnote for most male monarchs; in fact, their virility might have been questioned. What was unusual about Catherine was how organized she was in selecting her lovers. She had a lady-in-waiting sample the man's prowess in bed and then she had a British doctor examine him for diseases. The young officer would soon be given 100,000 rubles and a country estate. No doubt what roiled foreign diplomats was that this woman, who was pretty when young, grew stout and gray, and at age sixty-two was still taking the likes of twenty-one-year-old Platon Zuboff to bed. That bred jealousies and rumormongering, and tales of horses. Actually, Catherine was one of the greatest and toughest female monarchs of all time: this German-born princess plotted the death of her dotty husband, Czar Peter III, she expanded the borders of Russia, crushed rebellions, built gorgeous palaces, and was a generous patron of the arts, corresponding personally with Voltaire and Diderot. How did she die? Catherine suffered a stroke on her way to the water closet and died on a straw mat three days later, with eyewitnesses there.
- "Catherine the Great and the Horse" from An Underground Education by Richard Zacks
girlsasboys:
Catherine the Great, on her favorite horse, clad in trousers.
treasuredthings:
statue of Sophie Auguste Friederike (Catherine the Great)
hey when you make posts, i just want you to know, thou/thee/thy/thine/ye are like he/you(object)/your/yours/you(subject) okay? "thou art wearing shoes," "i will wear shoes for thee," okay?
you say thine if the next word starts with a vowel and thy if the next word starts with a consonant and they both mean "your" so "thine own shoes," "thy shoes," okay?
and ye means you and refers to the subject of a sentence, "ye members of the brotherhood of shoes," okay? you need this information to create better knight yaoi. i'm personally more interested in nun yuri but we are a community
Did you know that beetle wings used to be sewn onto dresses? Like, hundreds of them on each dress? It's equally creepy and beautiful.
oh my stars, anyone have pictures?
look at the republican calendar and see which animal/plant/item is associated with your birthday ok. if you're born january 14 you get the day of the cat
