Peter Frankopan
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Peter's blog

I blog from time to time about things that catch my eye and particularly about links between the past and present.

Peter's Blog

Giant basements and ivory Towers - The medieval answer

3/13/2015

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There was plenty of coverage of 'Iceberg house' of pharamaceutical tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli and his English wife this week. People have been up in arms for a while about immense basements being dug under their properties in central London for a while - so much so, in fact, that Kensington and Chelsea have imposed a blanket ban on planning applications.

Some do not like the disruption caused by massive building works (not surprisingly); some fear the effects of subsidence and damage to their own properties; others are up in arms at how the new space will be used.

In the case of the Bertarellis, who want to build two vast floors below ground, the Westminster planning spokesman noted that 'concern has been raised by residents that the use of the basements has not been specified'. This suggests the neighbours are a classic collection of Nosy Parkers, whose noses (ho-ho) are put out by the fact that the Bertarellis have dared to keep secrets. You can hear them huffing about it from here: just who do they think they are ?
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Easier, perhaps, to buy a bigger house ?
The main problem with these deep basements though is one that would have been familiar to residents of medieval Italy.

In the 11th century, the issue was not building too deep - but building too tall. The rich competed with each other to be bigger and better, racing to out do each other.

This was disastrous for the common good, since it accentuated social inequality and emphasised the gap between the rich and the poor. Worse, it prompted unsavoury behaviour amongst the wealthy, whose competitiveness quickly became obvious for all to see - and deeply unattractive.

In Pisa in 1090, therefore, the city's bishop Daimbert (later Patriarch of Jerusalem) issued a ban on the height of towers that citizens were allowed to build. From now on, no one was allowed to build above a set height. The time of celebrating excess was at an end: people should live together as as community, rather than set apart because of the means at their disposal.

And in the great way that such directives were signed off in the Middle Ages, the bishop made sure his ruling was not challenged. Anyone who disobeyed, he declared, was 'inflated with the pride of the devil'. Failure to comply would result in 'excommunication and damnation'.

Something tells me that planning officials aren't allowed to talk like that. But it's certainly one way of doing it: Old School.

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A Byzantine Author - and why historians need international women's day

3/9/2015

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I haven't blogged for a while because I've been finishing off my Magnum Opus - a new history of the world, from antiquity to the present day. It's now all done and I'm very pleased with it. It will come out later in the year, so do please keep an eye out for it !

Finishing the book off has brought me back to the Byzantine Empire and a something I've been writing about The Alexiad. The text, written in the mid-12th century,
is not only a Byzantine gem, but a jewel of medieval literature. It covers a crucial period in the history of the Mediterranean, providing invaluable material about the first major Turkish conquests in Asia Minor, providing a context for political crisis in Constantinople on the eve of the First Crusade, as well as a unique viewpoint of the Crusade itself.

Despite its obvious importance, The Alexiad has been much neglected - regularly dismissed as unreliable and biased. The reason? Because it was written by a woman.

Edward Gibbon discarded the text, written by Anna Komnene, out of hand, saying that 'it betrays on every page the vanity of a female author'; modern historians are equally emphatic. The history, in the words of the doyen of modern Crusade studies whom I am too polite to name, cannot be taken seriously because it 'was written by an old lady living in a convent.' (I kid you not).
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Such comments are not only idiotic; they are ridiculous. For one thing, the author of the text had access to extensive source material - including letters from imperial archives as well as state documents, some of which are cited in full. The author was an eye-witness of many of the events she describes, and knew many of the protagonists who appear in a lengthy account personally. This all makes her history considerably more reliable (and interesting) than the many thuggish Latin accounts that were written around the same time - who relied on hearsay, gossip and innuendo, rather than high-grade material. And, incidentally, they were all old men who lived in monasteries - unlike Anna, who lived at the imperial court in Constantinople.

The Alexiad has long suffered because of the fact that its author was a woman; historians of the Crusades barely if ever stop to question basic questions about the structure of the text; or consider its audience, reception or transmission; or to really ask what the primary motivation of the text was (which is NOT that of a besotted daughter, praising her father, the Emperor).

So, to mark International Women's Day, what better than to flick open a text that is unfamiliar to many - and yet is the first narrative history in a European language written by a woman.

And what a history it is: elegantly written, beautifully cadenced and full of surprises at every turn. Its opening line captures with perfect irony the problem of gender and history - one reason, perhaps why these were supposedly the last words of another great woman who can be commemorated today - Catherine the Great.

'Time, which flies irresistibly and perpetually, sweeps up and carried away with it everything that has seen the light of day and plunges it into utter darkness - whether such deeds are of no significance whatsoever, or if they are mighty and worthy of commemoration.'

History shrouds all in its mists, as Anna Komnene understood. Perhaps some of her more modern colleagues might occasionally remember that.
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    I'm trying out micro-blogging -short bits of things I think are interesting every now and again. I'm on twitter too if you prefer doses of 140 characters

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