5 ms·

It's kind of thrilling to see the narrative historical detail still available to us at a 500-year remove. There's so much we don't know about Europe in these ag

by girzel 9y ago

It's kind of thrilling to see the narrative historical detail still available to us at a 500-year remove. There's so much we don't know about Europe in these ages, but we do know that at 3pm on March 11, 1550, the laborer John Rusey tripped over a cart-rut in the road and landed on his own knife, stabbing himself to a depth of 2 inches and dying there. It's almost like you were there...

benbreen 9y ago
I absolutely love that feeling. The thrill of parting the veil between our time and another and looking into some dead person's eyes and really seeing them as a fellow human. Another favorite is the diary of Samuel Pepys. It's just so touching human and specific. Like when the Great Fire of London breaks out and he desperately tries to save the parmesan cheese he bought on his vacation in Italy: The fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese... Mrs. Turner and her husband supped with my wife and I at night, in the office; upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or any thing, in a sad manner, but were merry. Only now and then walking into the garden, and saw how horridly the sky looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put us out of our wits; and, indeed, it was extremely dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us; and the whole heaven on fire. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/04/ http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/04/
ekianjo 9y ago
If you love this human perspective from other Eras, I highly recommend La Cite Antique (The Ancient City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cit%C3%A9_antique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cit%C3%A9_antique) which takes you back how the everyday life of Roman citizens was like. Much better than movies of dull History books.
- mrec 9y ago
  Jérôme Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome is another, slightly more modern, book in this vein. Fascinating and very accessible.
peteretep 9y ago
I think this is one reason costume dramas are so popular
roel_v 9y ago
There are many archives across Europe with boxes upon boxes of old documents, 100's of years old, that nobody simply has had time to look at. If it weren't for a 'History of the Law in the Southern Netherlands' course I took as part of my law degree (and frankly, I took it because the schedule fit better around my job than other courses), I would never even have known about the archive near me. The professor took us there one day, we signed in, got given some latex gloves and were each handed a box of documents from the medieval archives of the city (by one of the librarians). They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it. Anyway, to get to your point: yes it's awesome reading these old accounts of seemingly mundane things, so many years ago, sometimes references places or houses that still exist. I don't think I could ever be a historian and do it for years on end, but just sniffing around a bit (and in a repurposed medieval church, with the complete surroundings just breathing that 'The name of the Rose' feeling, in my case) is, in a way, intellectually exhilarating (who would have thought anyone would ever describe reading 500 year old court cases 'exhilarating'...).
- isolli 9y ago
  I wonder if someone plans to digitize these documents. That would open them to everyone, and even to data mining...
- cr1895 9y ago
  > They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it. That sounds like a really interesting course! How difficult was it to parse the old Dutch?
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Quite difficult TBH. Not only the different spelling, but also that there were lots of different words than we use now for the same thing, and cases where the old word looked like a weird form of something of today but then turned out to be very different; and then all the linguistic embellishment. Instead of saying "x and y happened on date z" (as you would read in today's court transcripts), it would say "and so then it happened that, upon so many days after Easter, when the moon was full, also indicated as the year of the lord so and so and this month, that the horrible event of which we are talking about today too place, where first x was said by person bla", ... - on and on and on. I wonder how they got anything done those days. If you're into this sort of thing (and know Dutch), a really fun read is "Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen", a Dutch cook book from around 1510. Annotated (translated) version available at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.pdf http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.... . Illustrates the issues above very well.

by girzel 9y ago

benbreen 9y ago

I absolutely love that feeling. The thrill of parting the veil between our time and another and looking into some dead person's eyes and really seeing them as a fellow human. Another favorite is the diary of Samuel Pepys. It's just so touching human and specific. Like when the Great Fire of London breaks out and he desperately tries to save the parmesan cheese he bought on his vacation in Italy: The fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese... Mrs. Turner and her husband supped with my wife and I at night, in the office; upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or any thing, in a sad manner, but were merry. Only now and then walking into the garden, and saw how horridly the sky looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put us out of our wits; and, indeed, it was extremely dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us; and the whole heaven on fire. http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/04/ http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/04/

ekianjo 9y ago

If you love this human perspective from other Eras, I highly recommend La Cite Antique (The Ancient City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cit%C3%A9_antique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cit%C3%A9_antique) which takes you back how the everyday life of Roman citizens was like. Much better than movies of dull History books.

mrec 9y ago
Jérôme Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome is another, slightly more modern, book in this vein. Fascinating and very accessible.

peteretep 9y ago

I think this is one reason costume dramas are so popular

roel_v 9y ago

There are many archives across Europe with boxes upon boxes of old documents, 100's of years old, that nobody simply has had time to look at. If it weren't for a 'History of the Law in the Southern Netherlands' course I took as part of my law degree (and frankly, I took it because the schedule fit better around my job than other courses), I would never even have known about the archive near me. The professor took us there one day, we signed in, got given some latex gloves and were each handed a box of documents from the medieval archives of the city (by one of the librarians). They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it. Anyway, to get to your point: yes it's awesome reading these old accounts of seemingly mundane things, so many years ago, sometimes references places or houses that still exist. I don't think I could ever be a historian and do it for years on end, but just sniffing around a bit (and in a repurposed medieval church, with the complete surroundings just breathing that 'The name of the Rose' feeling, in my case) is, in a way, intellectually exhilarating (who would have thought anyone would ever describe reading 500 year old court cases 'exhilarating'...).

isolli 9y ago
I wonder if someone plans to digitize these documents. That would open them to everyone, and even to data mining...
cr1895 9y ago
> They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it. That sounds like a really interesting course! How difficult was it to parse the old Dutch?
- roel_v 9y ago
  Quite difficult TBH. Not only the different spelling, but also that there were lots of different words than we use now for the same thing, and cases where the old word looked like a weird form of something of today but then turned out to be very different; and then all the linguistic embellishment. Instead of saying "x and y happened on date z" (as you would read in today's court transcripts), it would say "and so then it happened that, upon so many days after Easter, when the moon was full, also indicated as the year of the lord so and so and this month, that the horrible event of which we are talking about today too place, where first x was said by person bla", ... - on and on and on. I wonder how they got anything done those days. If you're into this sort of thing (and know Dutch), a really fun read is "Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen", a Dutch cook book from around 1510. Annotated (translated) version available at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.pdf http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.... . Illustrates the issues above very well.