Recently in History Category

A "truth and reconciliation" commission in South Korea reveals that in the 1950s, government forces killed thousands of innocent people who were swept up in searches for Communist sympathizers, while US authorities ultimately in command looked the other way.

It is painful to find out about these crimes, but their dispassionate revelation aids the "purification of memory" for which Pope John Paul II called so many times: a step in making peace between peoples.

How much do we need such reconciliation within our country?

I'm going to be out of town when this arrives in Boston, but some of you will have a chance to see The Singing Revolution earlier. It sounds like an inspiring movie about the role of song in Estonia's deliverance from Communism.

It's not a miracle, but it is a sweet way to express our nostalgia for the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II.

Pope John Paul II visited the US on October 1, 1979, starting here in Boston. Post your recollections of the visit in the comments.

Update: for the "young adult" readers who don't remember the occasion (Hi, John!), here's a post from five years ago with my recollections.

85 years ago, the atheistic Soviet state confiscated the bells of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, and offered them for sale as scrap bronze. An American industrialist bought the bells and gave them to Harvard to prevent their destruction; since then they have hung in the tower of Lowell House, ringing to celebrate football victories and commencements. Soon they will go back to Russia and ring for the glory of God.

More at Harvard Gazette.

A couple of years ago, BBC Radio 4's history series "In Our Time" presented a very worthwhile discussion on an important period of Church history: the founding of the great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. You can read about the program and replay it (41 minutes) at Radio 4's website.

Considering how shallow some BBC treatment of religion is, the show's producers deserve credit for presenting something so informative, non-polemical, and respectful of the audience.

LiveScience has some handy pieces on-line debunking myths about the practice of justice in the Middle Ages: Medieval Justice Not So Medieval and 10 Biggest Myths about medieval torture.

While we're setting things straight, researchers have apparently confirmed that the Spanish weren't making it all up when they reported that Aztec and Maya societies engaged in human sacrifice.

A 1988 essay by Jeffrey Hart (professor of English, Dartmouth) about the rise of empiricism and the demotion of philosophical knowledge addresses a myth about the Middle Ages:

This great success story has some humorous and little known features. As customarily recounted, the story features enlightenment and progress winning the day against medieval superstition. In fact, the medieval period was relatively rational. Its folklore and fairy tales, its giants and dragons, were known to be fictions. It was the Renaissance that was riddled with superstition. Bacon and the empirical thrust indeed made their way against Aristotle and the medieval Schoolmen, but also against a world in which the French royalty was guided by Nostradamus, there was likely to be an alchemist or an astrologer in the next apartment, and audiences flocked to plays about Faust or Prospero, or plays in which the opening featured witches or commands from a ghost. The Renaissance did recover Homer and Virgil, but also the underground occult wrirtings of the ancient world as well.

The appeal of magic both black and white during the Renaissance clearly reflects a will-to-control analogous to that of the new empiricism. Faust flew through the air long before the Wright brothers did, and Nostradamus claimed to be predicting the major events of the next 7000 years -- and he was taken seriously.

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was a Catholic convert, author, and priest who, among other things, helped G.K. Chesterton make his conversion to the Faith. Knox's extensive literary output ranged from apologetics and poetry to scholarship and detective fiction. As one observer suggested, his epitaph could have been "R.I.P. Ronald Knox, translator of the Holy Bible and author of
'The Viaduct Murder.'"

On January 16, 1926, he unintentionally stirred up panic across Britain with his own tongue-in-cheek BBC broadcast. He sent up the conventions of radio news by announcing that a mob in London had stormed the National Gallery, attacked the Houses of Parliament, blown up the Clock Tower, and lynched a minor government minister, all at the instigation of "Mr. Poppleberry, secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues".

One moment, please. The British Broadcasting Company regrets that one item in the news has been inaccurately given. The correction now follows. It was stated in our news bulletin that the Minister of Traffic had been hanged from a lamp-post in the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Subsequent and more accurate reports show that it was not a lamp-post, but a tramway post, which was used for this purpose.

A look back at the spoof and its aftermath is available at the Radio 4 website, along with an audio reconstruction of the brief program based on an original transcript.

Armed with spears and shields, an army of Frankish foot-soldiers led by Charles "the Hammer" defeated a superior force of invading Muslim cavalry in the Battle of Tours, this day in 732.

Steuben's painting depicts a gentle Mother and a sleeping Child as the very vanguard of the defenders.