A Poul Anderson fan must think of an Ythrian when looking at a falcon. This one seems to have arms and hands.
In 1245beta, when Everard of the Time Patrol hawks with the Emperor Frederick:
the sun casts yellow beams and blue shadows;
the warm air is full of earth odors;
the city gleams - like Ys - while bells peal.
Four senses in three sentences.
Frederick has written a book on falconry and Everard has given him a falcon from the Patrol's pre-Indian North American ranch as well as relating sagas which Frederick likens to another whole universe.
I meant to continue about Emberverse falconry but am interrupted.
20 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I actually thought at one time of looking for an English translation of Frederick II's book or manual of falconry. Because I had an interest in scholarly or literary minded rulers who wrote their own books. Such as Marcus Aurelius' MEDITATIONS, the Emperor Maurice's STRATEGIKON, Julius Caesar's CONQUEST OF GAUL and CIVIL WARS, etc.
Sean
Sean,
Henry VIII: DEFENSE OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS.
Paul.
Though the DEFENSE was almost certainly ghostwritten.
Henry VIII is an interesting case of a man with immense natural talents of mind and body who never learned the self-control to use them properly.
His daughter Elizabeth resembled him closely physically and in temperament -- they both had terrifying tempers, for instance, and like him Elizabeth was naturally athletic and one of the finest dancers in England -- but she learned self-control in a very hard school, with the headsman's axe always in the background if she gave her sister Mary the slightest excuse.
Henry wasn't exactly a bad king, but he was an impulsive and overambitious one, who wasted a lot of lives and money because he couldn't restrain his impulse to smash any challenge right away.
(A set of marriage negotiations gone wrong are the reason there's virtually no building between the Border and Edinburgh that predates his "rough wooing" of Scotland.)
Elizabeth could be coldly ruthless -- ask the Irish -- but she was also cautious, prudent, always accumulating all the facts she could through the superb spy network she built up, and acting with cool self-control, never doing anything that couldn't be undone until she felt she had to. Then she struck like a thunderbolt. She was a superbly effective counter-puncher.
Look at the way she deliberately and systematically bled the Habsburg empire dry in the Netherlands, always giving just enough aid to keep that endless war going without costing her or England too much, and keeping just short of outright war with Spain until England was ready.
And the rigorously logical way she played to England's strength -- her sailors, or to be more blunt her pirates -- while avoiding tackling the superior Spanish army head-on.
Unlike her father, she didn't feel in the least compelled to "prove her manhood".
And unlike her dad -- and against her natural inclinations -- she was endlessly patient.
She and Philip of Spain played a "long game" of chess all over Europe and the wider Atlantic world for three decades, and despite the advantages all being on his side, she won... and laid the foundations of a world dominated by English-speakers, which would have seemed a ludicrous fantasy when she was born.
Didn't know that. Thought he wrote it.
The Church of England, for which I have a semi-patriotic affection, is 4 religions:
Anglo-Catholic;
Evangelical;
middle of the road;
liberal/modernist.
When I visit Liverpool, I meditate in the Anglican Cathedral and tell people that "I support the national church, not the Roman church."
The English-speaking world is down to the first Elizabeth? The world just got a whole heap weirder.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling,
Paul, I should have remembered THE DEFENSE OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS, attributed to Henry VIII. I recall that work being discussed by Catholic writers like Fr. Philip Hughes and George H. Tavard (in HOLY WRIT OR HOLY CHURCH: THE CRISIS OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION).
And I support an INTERNATIONAL, universal Church, which I hold to be TRUE for all times and places. Not a small, narrow, limited NATIONAL church founded on rebellion and schism, like the Anglicans.
Mr. Stirling: Oh, I knew the DEFENSE OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS has been attributed to authors other than Henry VIII. Such as St. Thomas More. But I thought it was generally conceded Henry VIII was at least partly the author of that work.
Sean
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree with your characterization of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. As a Catholic of at least part Irish descent I regard them as two of the three most evil and disastrous rulers of British history (the third being Oliver Cromwell). After all, it was Henry and Elizabeth who dragged a reluctant England out of the Catholic communion into schism and heresy. And the brutality of Elizabeth toward the Irish began the permanent alienation and estrangement of the two peoples from each other. An England which had remained Catholic would probably have treated Ireland more or less the way France treated Brittany. Some strains and stresses, but nothing FATALLY alienating.
And I cannot overlook how Elizabeth I forcibly dragged England into Protestantism. And authorized the Penal Laws persecuting Catholics. Nor do I think it was NECESSARY, she would still have ruled as queen if she had accepted the Marian Restoration. Doing so in fact would have prevented those thirty years of an expensive Cold War with Philip II of Spain. Elizabeth I was a clever and shrewd woman, but it was her persecution of English and Irish Catholics which exposed her to attack by Spain.
I used to know an ex Major of the 82nd Airborne who thought Spain could have conquered England if Philip II had followed a multi phase strategy. The first phase would have been the Armada seizing the island of Wight, off the south coast of England, to use as a base for invading England. Next, after large Spanish forces had concentrated on Wight, would come the invasion of England proper. Given the wretched and backward state of the English "military" at the time, Major Humphrey believed the Spanish army would have soon crushed all opposition (all Elizabeth really had was her small personal bodyguard and the moribund shire levies).
Sean
Not entirely, but she was a necessary (though not sufficient) condition.
When she came to the throne, no English sailor had gone much further than Spain or the Baltic.
By the time she died, English ships had ripped Spanish commerce to shreds, the first English traders had reached India, and circumnavigated the world.
And English shipbuilders and navigational instrument-makers had become the most advanced in the world -- only the Dutch were serious rivals.
(England had also become the European country that supplied the most cannon -- English guns were cheaper and better than anyone else's, not least because they specialized in cast-iron rather than the easier but less durable bronze guns.)
Sean: most English people who paid any attention to the matter were already Protestants by conviction at the time Elizabeth came to the throne. "Bloody" Mary had thoroughly alienated everyone, both theologically and by truckling to Spain, something which all English people hated regardless of religion. They were already a violently xenophobic and nationalist people.
The second largest religious group in England were indifferentist, and didn't much care whether the English church aligned with Rome or not, until it became a "national" issue with Spain's ostentatious patronage of the Catholic faction.
Elizabeth was actually rather moderate by comparison with most English Protestants of the time, and probably the reason the English didn't go full-bore Calvinist, which most educated men there at the time wanted. Like her father, she was theologically fairly conservative, but determined for political reasons that the English church should answer to her and nobody else -- beyond that, she had no desire to "make windows into men's souls", as she put it.
As to tolerance, there was simply nothing to chose in Reformation-era Europe; both Catholics and Protestants persecuted each other mercilessly whenever they got the chance, and each considered the other demonic and Satanist.
Again, Elizabeth was rather moderate by the standards of the day; she left English Catholics more or less alone as long as they kept their heads down and didn't get involved with England's foreign enemies. "Occasional conformity" was fine with her, in those circumstances.
The Church made this very difficult for the English Catholics by demanding her death and overthrow, sending agents into England to engage in assassination plots, and wholeheartedly aligning with Spain, the one power virtually all of the English already hated and loathed.
Protestants were rather less consistent and thorough about the persecution thing -- Catholics survived in larger numbers in Protestant countries than vice versa.
Likewise, Ireland had to be under London's control as long as foreign enemies like Spain (and later France) threatened Britain.
The Irish (most of whom at the time were only nominally Christian at all, in theologicaly terms) did themselves no favors by continually trying to involve outside powers and use them against England; the real wonder is the English didn't just kill them all, a policy which was seriously considered a couple of times.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And I don't think England remaining Catholic would have prevented the English from making these advances. I still regard Elizabeth I COLDLY.
Sean
Dear Mr. Stirling,
While I agree with you in what you said about the English being nationalist and anti Spanish, I don't agree they were mostly Protestant by the time Mary I died. Writers like Fr Philip Hughes in his massive three volume THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND and the more recent THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS by Eamon Duffy have convincingly shown that most of the English were still Catholic by conviction. I still argue that the police state terrorism of the Penal Laws were what provoked some English Catholics into plots against Elizabeth.
I do agree that Pius V's attempted deposition of Elizabeth I was a bad mistake. but that happened only 12 YEARS after she had been harassing and persecuting the Catholics. Which also contradicts that oft quoted line about not making windows in men's souls. And I absolutely disagree with her claim to rightfully control the Church.
I do agree that both Protestants and Catholics were guilty of persecuting each other. No argument there.
As for the Irish, when they had to make a choice between Catholicism and Protestantism, most still made the difficult and right choice and rejected the latter. So when push came to shove they were not THAT indifferent.
And the English Protestants could have avoided the troubles caused by Irish rebels inviting in outside powers by simply not oppressing them! Before Elizabeth I's time the "union" of Ireland and England was very loose, lax, and nominal. The brutal forcing of a centralized Protestant and expropriating regime in Ireland was what alienated the Irish. I would note that as England was Catholic there was no fear of outside powers meddling in Ireland. Which is suggestive!
Sean
Kaor, Sean!
I don't claim to know how many Englishmen at the time of Elizabeth's coronation sincerely believed in what, and how many were willing to go along with whatever the current monarch commanded. As to Ireland, I seem to recall from my readings of history and biography that Mary and Philip were involved in expelling the Irish population from some part of Ireland, and colonizing it, and that Henry VIII had done his bit to oppress the Irish. Elizabeth didn't start it all. I also recall coming across the suggestion that Ireland might have had an enthusiastic Reformstion if England had remained Catholic. How much can we know?
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I largely agree. Also, Henry VIII had suffered several concussions jousting in his youth, and it may be that these changed his personality for the worse.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
Of course I agree with you that English oppressing of Ireland didn't start or was limited to only Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, or Oliver Cromwell. No argument there.
But I do continue to believe, from works such as Philip Hughes THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND and Eamon Duffy's THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS that Protestants were only a minority of the English when Mary I died.
Regards! Sean
Kaor, Nicholas!
I dunno, I've read in Scarisbrick's biography of Henry VIII that up till age 35, and despite having a physically active life almost as strenuous as that of Teddy Roosevelt's, the king was robustly healthy and vigorous. So whatever concussions had 15 years or so before then should not have affected Henry that much.
I have seen speculations that syphilitic dementia during the last 15 years of Henry's life might account for his violently zigzagging and erratic policies. But we would need to get a sample from Henry's remains to determine if he had syphilis!
Regards! Sean
All I can say is "Wow" to all that historical discussion.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm glad you don't mind a discussion which strayed so far from falconry! (Smiles)
I first noticed, I think, Duffy's THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS the last time I was in the UK, in 1996. It interested me but I did not then purchase a copy because it was a large and massive book for a traveler to carry around. I obtained my copy afterwards, in the US.
I did some quick googling of STRIPPING last night and, in the main, the assertions of facts in that book are accepted as true. Needless to say, people will still debate the INTERPRETATIONS of those facts.
Sean
Everybody,
Very busy today. Explain later. Plenty to blog about like Poul Anderson's take on the Elizabethan Age.
Paul.
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