History Blog

Rome is a city of churches, and we have visited a lot of them – some for their beautiful architecture (St. Ivo designed by B0rromini), some for the works of art displayed in them (St. Augustino with a painting of Caravaggio), and some for their historical significance (St. Paul outside the Walls, thought to be built over the grave of that great apostle).  Our stay is only half over and my computer’s collection of photos has exactly 50 subfolders, 1 for each of the churches we’ve visited!

I noticed that almost all the churches we’ve visited so far are named after saints, except Gesu, the Baroque Jesuit church named for Jesus himself.  Most of you have heard of St. Peter’s, and Saint Mary (Maggiore), and St. John (Lateran), but Rome is filled with just as many churches named in honor of local, and at times rather obscure, saints.  St Agnes and St. Cecilia are the two most famous local female martyrs from the early church; St. Lawrence and St. Clement perhaps the two most famous male saints.  But few people even in Rome know much about St. Vito, St. Nero, St. Achilles, St. Susanna, or St. Pudenziana.  This past Sunday we visited two churches dedicated to two of the strangest saints around – St. Bibiana (or Vivian), and St. Eusebius.

The Church of Santa Bibiana is a little architectural gem, abutting the modern (and quite ugly) central train station in Rome.  The church is about half a mile down the southern side of the station, so few tourists ever see it.  It may have been first built in the mid-fifth century, but after several medieval face-lifts, the present design dates to the early seventeenth century and was one of the first jobs done by the young architect Lorenzo Bernini.  On the interior walls are a beautiful set of frescoes from the same century by Pietro da Cortona illustrating the life of St. Bibiana. Above the altar is a breathtaking marble statue of the saint carved by Bernini, and under the altar is an alabaster urn containing her remains (or relics), found under the altar of the previous church during its seventeenth century renovations.

Bernini's Church of St. Bibiana

But who was St. Bibiana?  The early medieval stories center on one Christian family in Rome in the mid-fourth century.  Bibiana’s father Flavian, her mother Dafrosa, and her sister Demetria all suffered in various ways for refusing to deny their faith, and Bibiana was executed – all during the time of Julian the Apostate.  Julian was emperor from 361-363, and he tried to turn the empire back to paganism 50 years after Constantine had made Christianity legal. However he died before he got his program off the ground, and there is no record of any overt persecution of Christians in Rome during Julian’s time, much less any martyrdoms!  The legends about Bibiana were made up about a century later.  To us it seems strange that people would invent a saint for whom to dedicate their church, rather than merely choose the name of a well-documented one.  My theory is that the land for the church was donated by someone, and that the story was created to give that particular spot meaning.  According to the legend, the church occupies the spot where Bibiana’s house once stood.

Just  as unhistorical, and even stranger, is the story of St. Eusebius of Rome.  He was supposedly a priest in the mid-fourth century at the time of Emperor Constantius II (who ruled just before Julian the Apostate).  Being a son of Constantine, Constantius was a Christian, but he was surrounded by spiritual advisors who were supporters of the heresy of Arianism.  As a result, he exiled many orthodox bishops, including the bishop of Rome, Liberius.  However, the rigors of exile made Liberius give in to the emperors demands, so he was allowed to return, but with a tarnished reputation.

Enter our priest Eusebius.  According to the story, being a faithful orthodox man, Eusebius refused to accept the tainted Liberius’s authority and ministerial acts, so he continued to have his own congregational meetings.  This made Constantius and Liberius so mad that they had him imprisoned in a four foot square room in his house, where, after seven months, he died as a martyr.

While this story does reflect the confusion in Rome caused by the “fall” of bishop Liberius, all evidence is that this story was concocted a century or so later, again to create a new saint for a new building.  At that time, some people still remembered the story of Liberius, the pope who caved in to the Arians, and so this story made him one of the villains.  So Eusebius was martyred by a pope, and Bibiana was martyred by an Emperor who did not reign long enough to persecute Christians.  Who says truth is stranger than fiction!

Interior of the Church of St. Eusebius

Rome is one of the great cities of the world, and you can hear many languages on the streets. Since our Western civilization is shared by numerous European and American countries, one cannot be a true scholar in the humanities without knowing and using other languages. Since I am a historian of Greece and Rome by training, I am spending much of my sabbatical time studying texts in Latin and Greek. But since I must also read what other scholars are saying about these texts, I also read a lot of German, French and Italian. I also attend lectures and conferences and go on tours in which the presentations have been in German, French and Italian. Being able to use these languages not only enriches my scholarship, but opens new opportunities for learning and interacting with other scholars.

When we arrived in Rome in late January, Italian still felt like a “foreign” language for me, but I am happy to report that I am progressing well in both reading and speaking this beautiful language. Our WLC library has a wonderful book entitled From Italian to English which is a step-by-step guide to reading Italian. By working through that book, and reading Italian books and journal articles every day, I am starting to gain more confidence in my reading abilities.

The internet, however, is also helpful. With new luggage restrictions, I decided not even to bring along an Italian dictionary. Instead, since I have internet access in our apartment and in most of the libraries, when I come across a word or form I don’t know, I look it up on wordreference.com, a wonderful website with dictionaries in most major European languages. Their Italian-to-English dictionary is especially good.

In previous trips to Rome, usually for only two weeks at a time, I was too busy in the libraries to learn much spoken Italian. But speaking the language, even if only in an elementary way, was important for this trip. By doing so, we are accepted by our neighbors as more than just casual tourists. The people in restaurants explain what the local dishes are, not just haul out the pizza menu as they do for the other “foreigners.” We are able to read the explanations on signs in museums, and understand some of what the Italian tour guides are saying. I am able to speak better with Italian scholars, many of whom can understand some English, although few have confidence in speaking it.

Most days it takes me 30 to 60 minutes to ride the bus to one of the libraries for my study. On the way I am listening to my Italian lessons on my MP3 player. I strongly recommend the Pimsleur Italian series (also in the WLC library). Each of the 3 levels has 30 lessons, each 30 minutes long. You only have to listen and repeat or answer the questions; no books necessary. I am half way through the second level and am starting to feel comfortable ordering in the restaurant, asking questions in the supermarket, and making small talk with the attendants at the library.

Now when I overhear conversations, or someone talks to me, I am usually able to get the gist of what is being said. For some reason it feels especially good when someone asks Come sta? (How are you?) to not just give the generic answer “Sto bene” (I’m fine), but to give a good Midwestern answer – Non che male – “Not bad.”

Rome is the home of a large number of international scholarly academies. In my first month here I have attended lectures at the American, British, and French academies, and met and interacted with scholars from the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish institutes. These organizations have libraries open to visiting scholars, offer public lectures and seminars, give tours of historical sites, and often run archaeological projects in Rome and the surrounding areas. So while “sabbatical” has the root meaning of “rest,” there are so many activities going on in Rome that rest is usually not part of the weekly agenda. The past week I have fit two especially interesting events into my calendar.

The first was a four-day conference put on by the Görres Institut, a German scholarly group located inside the Vatican. The conference was entitled “Petrus in Rom” – Peter in Rome. Except for one local Italian archaeologist, all the speakers were Germans, and all spoke about various aspects of the question as to whether St. Peter ever visited Rome, died here and was buried here. Excavations carried out under the Vatican during the 1940s discovered what appears to be his tomb, but questions remain – even for Catholic scholars. Interestingly, two of the papers were given by German evangelicals, one a Lutheran. If that surprised me, it surprised them even more to find a conservative American Lutheran in the audience. One, Rainer Riesner, wrote an outstanding book on the early life of Paul that has been translated into English and which I can recommend to everyone.

After four days of lectures in German, it was nice to move across the Janiculum Hill to the American Academy for a series of 5 lectures in English. Prof. Kathleen Coleman of Harvard is giving the annual Jerome Lectures, and her topic is the funerary monument of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, discovered in Rome in 1871. Q.S.M. died when just 11, but his impressive monument declares he had already made his mark as a poet, competing successfully in a public competition composing extemporaneous Greek poetry! In fact the monument has 43 lines of one of his poems on the subject “What words Zeus might use when reproving Helios” (for allowing his son Phaethon to drive his sun-chariot which ends up crashing into the sea, killing Phaethon).

The tomb as it would have looked in its original setting

In addition the tombstone has two shorter poetic epigrams as well. In the lectures, Prof. Coleman is discussing the educational system that can produce a prodigy like Q.S.M., ancient poetic contests, why the parents would erect a monument like this, the pressures of ancient childhood, etc. On Saturday she led an outing to visit the spot where the monument was found (and where a reproduction now stands), and to see the monument itself in the Museum Montemartini, an old power plant that now provides a unique setting for several hundred ancient sculptures that formerly sat in storage at the Capitoline Museum.

In one of his epigrams, Maximus laments that “illness and exhaustion destroyed me; for neither morning or night did I turn my heart away from the Muses,” i.e. studying the liberal arts. It sounded just like my WLC students. So let me end by sending you all greetings and warning you, as I so often do, not to study too hard, at least not until midterms!

The youthful poet surrounded by his poems

While an ancient historian loves to spend his time in old libraries and climbing around ancient Roman ruins and underneath early churches, there are other sights to be seen in the Eternal City. Although not exactly “modern,” the two palaces we visited this weekend are still in use, although both are 500 years old. So these visits took us back to the beauty and opulance of the Renaissance and the depravity which made the Reformation necessary. However their modern uses taught us some modern Italian history as well. Even though our guides only spoke Italian, we did enough homework to vouch for most of what follows.

Palazzo Madama in 17th Century

On Saturday we visited the Palazzo Madama, originally the home of the powerful Crescenzi family. Piero, the brother of Pope Leo X (the Medici pope who excommunicated Luther) became its owner when he married into the family. Its name, however, comes from its later mistress, “Madame” Margaret of Austria, also known as Margaret of Parma. She was the illegitimate daughter of Charles V (the Holy Roman Emperor who outlawed Luther at the Diet of Worms); she was married off to an illegitimate son of another Medici, and the couple was set up to live here.

The print  to the right shows what the Palazzo looked like in the 17th century, and it hasn’t changed much on the outside. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside due to its modern use. In the 18th century Pope Benedict XIV purchased the building and made it one of the principal palaces of the Papal States for the next century. When the fledgling Republic of Rome was formed in the 19th century, it first became the residence of the governor of Rome and later the headquarters for the Ministry of Finance. Since 1871, however, it has been the seat of the Italian Senate. One of the two courtyards in the center of the building was roofed over to create the main meeting chamber for the 315 senators who represent the various districts of Italy yet today

Our Sunday visit took us to the Palazzo Spada, today the seat of the Council of State which functions something like our supreme court. It was built by a cardinal in the mid 16th century, and later became the residence of a Cardinal Spada. We were able to visit the rooms where the council works, most still with their 16th and 17th century decor, as well as the cardinal’s four-room art gallery, now one of the most famous small collections in Italy. My wife loved intricately frescoed ceilings, while I admire the cardinal’s wonderful collection of Roman sculptures, including a colossal statue, for several centuries thought to be the statue of Pompey that stood in Pompey’s portico and in whose shadow Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March. Even though it probably is a century too young to match that story, it still is impressive.

Our favorite part of the Spada, however, is the magnificently clever and beautiful garden “Perspective” of the great Borromini. The cardinal had some unused space at the side of the building looking out at the bare wall of the neighboring palazzo, and so he asked the artist to create a beautiful view for him. Borromini created a narrow corridor lined with columns and with a beautiful statue and some ornamental plants at the far end. When the viewer stands at the end and looks down, it appears that the corridor is about 40 yards long and ends in a colossal statue. In fact, the corridor is only 10 yards deep, and the statue is only three feet high! By lowering the ceiling, raising the floor, placing the columns closer and closer together,and controlling the light, the effect fools the eye completely. Professor Gjerdset’s art class should try this out on the WLC “nun run!”

Borromini's Perspective, from my perspective

This semester I have the double privilege of being on sabbatical and being in Rome! Having arrived on Jan. 20, my wife and I will spend about 3 months here. I am working on the second volume of my study of the popes of the fourth century, this one centering on Pope Liberius (bishop of Rome from 352-366).

The first week wast spent getting settled and getting the proper permission to use various libraries. We are living in the shadow of St. John Lateran, and so I began by using the library at the Pontifical LAteran University. I have also spent several mornings at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, the national library of Italy. There I checked two seventeenth-century printed books that contained references for two different projects.  Look forward to further updates on this particular issue!

Most of my time, however, has been spent at the the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.  This is a small institution that gives degrees in the study of the earliest Christian churches and the catacombs.  Its library is a treasure house of material on all aspects of early Christianity, especially in Rome — architecture, liturgy, history, and inscriptions.  I have met the director, Prof. Fabrizio Bisconti, one of the world’s leading experts in Christian iconography.  I have also met the institute’s secretary, Dr. Olof Brandt, an expert in early Christian architecture.  It is so wonderful to be able to consult such experts at the same time as one is reading the published material on any given problem.

My first volume, now awaiting publication, is on Bishop Julius I (bishop from 337-352).  Excavations in the 1970s found what might be his burial place, in the Catacomb of Calepodeus and Callistus, on the far side of the Tiber River.  Unfortunately,Prof. Bisconti informed me that this particular catacomb can not currently be visited due to its poor state of preservation.

I was more lucky with my second attempt — to see if anything is left of the Basilica Liberiana — a church built by Bishop Liberius on the site of what is now the famous basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, just one block from the Institute of Christian Archaeology!  Last Sunday I was able to join a guided tour underneath the present basilica.  There I was able to see and take pictures of a first century Roman domus (upper class urban villa) that was located there.  But there was no sign of the earlier church.  I had read that most scholars have felt that the church of Liberius must have been located somewhere else nearby.  But my new friend, Prof. Brandt said that he believes that the present church is really just an expanded and refurbished version of the original church.  I hope to spend an hour with Prof. Brandt over a capucino in the coming week to hear more about his theory.

There are many great career opportunities open to history majors who are not interested in teaching.  Many of these careers fall under the category of “public history.”  Among other things, public history includes museum work, living history, documentary editing, historical societies, genealogy, archival work, etc. 

 Interested in public history as a career or in further training for a public history career in graduate school?  Visit www.publichistory.org.

Dear WLC History Students,            

You are invited to join Phi Alpha Theta, the international honor society for history.  Phi Alpha Theta is one of the country’s oldest academic societies, and membership is considered an honor among history students and those in the profession.  Aside from the distinction of belonging to a prestigious honor society, there are many practical benefits to joining Phi Alpha Theta: 

• The opportunity to present research papers at regional and national conferences.    Undergraduate students are encouraged to submit presentation proposals for national and regional conferences.  Regional conferences are usually held in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota or Wisconsin annually.  Only members may fully participate in these conferences.
• Phi Alpha Theta offers many undergraduate scholarships and cash paper prizes (up to $1,000) each year in many different areas of history.  Only members may compete for these prizes.
• Your membership fee grants you lifetime membership in Phi Alpha Theta, along with a one-year subscription to The Historian, which is the society’s academic journal.  Students may submit articles to the journal, but papers would have to meet very high standards for publication.

 Phi Alpha Theta presents excellent opportunities that no other organization offers for undergraduate history students to gain important experience in the historical profession.  If you are serious about the study of history, are interested in becoming a history teacher, or are considering graduate school, and I highly encourage you to consider membership. Details about Phi Alpha Theta (including prizes, conferences, and scholarships) can be found at http://www.phialphatheta.org or you may contact me directly with any questions. The deadline to join this academic year is MARCH 31, 2009.  Membership requirements are as follows:·        

Undergraduate students must complete at least 12 semester hours in History (4 courses) with a GPA of at least 3.0 or better overall.  Membership is not limited to History majors.·        

One time dues are $40.  Checks must be made payable to Aaron Palmer, NOT Phi Alpha Theta.  Fee includes membership certificate, membership card, and journal / newsletter subscriptions.I hope to have the privilege of welcoming you to Phi Alpha Theta soon!

Prof. Aaron Palmer
aaron.palmer@wlc.edu
x8561

HIS 355 (Topics in World History):  Witchcraft and Culture in the Atlantic World

Spring 2009
Tuesday, 6:30-9:15pm
Prof. Aaron Palmer 

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII wrote: 

“It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother’s womb, and also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of trees, nay men and women, beasts of burden, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture-land, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burden, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives their husbands; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to very many.” 

Here the Pope outlined the very grave, perceived threat posed by witchcraft in Europe and justified the Inquisition’s hunt for these terrifying enemies of God.  The Catholic Church took the threat of witchcraft very seriously, but what of average persons in the Atlantic World?

Witchcraft, magic, the supernatural, and the Devil were believed to be physically present, everyday realities in Europe and the Atlantic world.  They were integral parts of popular culture and religious beliefs.  Witchcraft presents a fascinating opportunity to explore both the popular culture and the intellectual mental universe of the early modern Atlantic world.  By looking beyond Europe to Atlantic societies in the Americas, witchcraft also offers an opportunity to study exchanges between European, Indian, and African beliefs and cultures. 

Thus, this new course will explore the following questions:

• What did average people actually believe about magic and witchcraft in early modern Europe?
• How did witchcraft beliefs fit into the popular culture of the time?  Was witchcraft really practiced? 
• What was “popular culture” in this era, and what can we learn about it by studying witchcraft?
• How did European beliefs merge with and influence (and vice versa) Indian and African beliefs in the “New World” after 1492?
• How did the Church look at witchcraft?  Did intellectual views differ from the popular, and why?
• How was witchcraft defined as criminal?  How were witches hunted and prosecuted?  Why were women more often the victims of witch hunts and accusations than men?
• What about witchcraft beliefs and occult practices in today’s culture?  How should a Christian approach these things?

The course will be heavy on discussion of these questions.  There will be no exams (take home or in-class).  Rather, the work will focus on responding to assigned reading in discussion and through short essays / book reviews. 

Major course reading will focus on Salem (a book of your own selection from our library’s resources); witchcraft in Latin America and Brazil; early modern popular culture; and the European witch hunt. 

Salem provides our major case study.  Hence, the major course project will put students directly in touch with the most famous witchcraft episode of them all.  Using the most complete set of primary records ever complied for the Salem trials, you will look at and interpret the case of one of the nineteen men and women who were executed during the witch hysteria.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like more information or have any questions about the course!

Prof. Aaron Palmer
aaron.palmer@wlc.edu

I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, just a half hour south of Green Bay, so you could say that football is in my blood. I attended my first Packer’s game at Lambeau Field when I was about seven years old. I’ve sat through every kind of weather imaginable there, including a game where it was -9 at kickoff.

I don’t think that younger fans fully appreciate a season like the Packers have had this year. They have not been 13-3 since 1998 (or when our freshmen were about eight years old), but the Packers have only had one really bad year in the last decade. I grew up in the years of Bart Starr (the coach), Forrest Gregg (the coach again) and the offensive genius Lindy Infante. Those were years of hopeless futility in Green Bay. All of that changed with Mike Holmgren, Ron Wolf, and Brett Favre. It did not happen overnight, but it did happen. I’m still amazed that the Packers are a good team. Appreciate these days Packers fans. It might not (and it has not) always be this way.

Now, why am I writing about the Packers in a history blog? Well, this has been a historic year in a lot of ways. Brett Favre broke just about every individual record for a quarterback, and he’s not missed a start since 1992! To put that into perspective, I was a junior in high school when Brett started his first game! I just think we should take a moment sometimes—between the beer and brats while we watch games—to appreciate how lucky we are to be fans at THIS moment in Packers history. Like Marv Levy used to say, “Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?” (See that…I did work history into this entry somehow)!

Merry Christmas!

So sorry about not posting anything for awhile, we were having some problems with a system, but we are up and running once again. Just in time for the break.

Very pleased with the last semester, man, we had some great courses fulled with some great students. Now, it is on to planning for the spring semester.

Once again, I will be teaching HIS101. My other courses are Modern America. Latin America and then the Senior Thesis course. All of them are good courses.

Modern America goes from 1945-Present. We get to look at the Fifties and then the really bad Sixties, I am a firm believer that the Sixties really damaged this country in many ways and do not buy into the idea of the “Youth just trying to make the world a better place” stuff. This time I will also be using a book called 102 minutes that deals with the attacks on the towers on 911.

Latin America is a wide rangin course that goes from pre-Columbus Native Empires like the Aztecs and Incas to the present. This course is usually a real eye opener for students. In this course each student picks a country to focus on for a paper.

The Senior Thesis course is one of my favorites. Here we really sit down and learn about what makes history tick. We discuss historians and argue interpretations. We have big projects and the battle of the Little Big Horn to discover who was at fault for the loss. In this course the students do most of the talking and really learn what it means to be a historian.

Outside of that, three of our professors, Aaron Palmer, Patrick Steele and myself will be presenting papers at the Missouri Valley Historical Conference in Omaha this March. Next time, I will talk more about that.

See ya

Beck