I don’t have a lot to add to my recruitment post from 2 years ago. Though if you really want to be swamped with info, you can browse through my Kalamazoo page.

The professionals will be there or not based on their respective situations. I’m posting to encourage interested amateurs to attend. As I’ve always said, you don’t need to know Latin or Greek and nobody will notice if you go to a session or a wine hour and avoid getting into an in-depth discussion about something. And they’ll sell anyone books.

There are plenty of reasons to not attend (though I’m drawing a blank at the moment). But the fact that you may not be a professional medievalist isn’t one of them.

This is my soft sell. You want the hard one, e-mail me. I can get on a roll about this.

It also provided me with a bit of an impetus to get back to work cataloging all of my sources, something which I’d planned to have finished months ago. Not sure if I’ll post it like I did with my hagiography sources but I’ll give it a shot. It will make a nice test on whether I can post tables in WP.

Instead I’m going to point out something which pops up all the time in sources, throughout the Medieval period (and I imagine before and after as well) which is a commonality to the way people talk about things today (professional historians or folks who’ve read a fair amount can quit reading now if you like). I informally title this, Kids These Days (consider this to be accompanied by a deep sigh). In Norman (2000), Libanius’ Oration 62 (using Norman’s numbering system) is titled, “Against Critics of His Educational System.” The title is pretty self-explanatory. Some individual or group accused Libanius of being a poor teacher of rhetoric and he sets out to defend himself.

I’m going to focus on this statement, “Instead I will proceed to the crux of this disastrous business. You see, parents no longer threaten their children or bar them from the table or the baths if they are negligent, nor yet do they punish them so, or threaten that they will expel them, disinherit them, leave their inheritance to someone else. They can’t approve but they dare not blame. They have changed position with them, so that the sons wear angry looks and the parents cower before them. Students get this licence and sleep, snore, drink, and get drunk, and hold high revelry, and make it plain to the teachers that, unless they put up with any and everything, they will go off to someone else and their fathers won’t stop them. And the wretched parents, as Andromache did, connive at their sons’ desires.” 1

Yup, those kids – they aren’t like they used to be. And it’s all their parents’ fault. This, along with wistful recollections of “the good old days” come up all the time in the sources. The reason I like this is it displays a commonality of attitudes and opinions from over 1500 years ago with those of today. Now Medievals and Ancients thought differently from us; I’m certain of it. The experiences which formed them as individuals and as groups were profoundly different from the experiences of those of us living today in western culture. They viewed the world through another lens, one which resulted in different thought processes, responses to stimuli, etc., etc., from us. (I have a draft of an entire post on this). However with all the differences between their world and ours, some common themes exist, including complaining about the younger(next) generation.

I’m pretty early on with Libanius. I’ve read A.F. Norman’s (2000) Translated Texts for Historians book and am currently finishing Cribiore’s The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch. I still have the four Loebs to go through but this has been interesting reading so far and if time allows, I’m planning to discuss him in a bit more depth once I finish. He has some interesting and somewhat surprising opinions on corporal punishment of students, less surprising yet disturbing comments on women, and overall there’s his bitterness. I’ll wait to expand on it later but he comes across as someone who is either unable or unwilling to change with the times. There are interesting contrasts to draw between Libanius and someone like Themistius. Both were classically trained pagans and as Roman culture changed Themistius thrived and Libanius complained.

On to the semi-randomness. I found this anecdote humorous anyway. Once I finish reading Libanius I plan to move on to Symmachus. I have a book of his letters translated by Salzman and Roberts (2011). The other English language translation of his material that I’ve been able to find is his Relationes (uncertain if this a complete or partial collection) by Barrow (1973). It seems that used copies of this are going for upwards of $200. Fortunately, Purdue libraries has a copy and in checking the catalog, I found that it’s available to check out. Ordinarily I would have expected this to be housed in the Humanities, Social Science and Education Library (HSSE – commonly pronounced “hissy”). Instead it’s in the Hicks Library Repository.

The repository is interesting. Basically, these books aren’t on shelves where you find one and take it to circulation to check out. Instead they’re stored in some fashion (I’ve never been back there) and to check them out you go to the repository desk, fill out a request card and the librarian gets it for you. I don’t think anyone will find it surprising that these books tend to be those not checked out very often.

Poor Symmachus – if he only knew. I had a meeting on campus yesterday and after it ended I headed to the lower level of Hicks, filled out the card, the librarian took it, and entered the information in the computer.

Librarian: “I’m sorry. This is available but we don’t have it here.” Uh-oh, modern technology (in this case the online catalog) has betrayed me again.
Me: “Where is it, HSSE?” (I was mentally wondering about parking availability near another library – HSSE is close though – and how well my leg would hold up if this meant extensive walking)
Librarian: “We have a repository for the repository for books which are checked out very infrequently. If you submit a request we’ll get it and send you an e-mail when it arrives.”

I found this funny. Ol’ Symmachus evidently doesn’t get much play. I’m not mad at all – I have four more volumes of Libanius to get through and am back on campus in about three weeks so I’ll request it a couple of days ahead of time. I’ve always believed that when it comes to the amount of his material translated into English, Symmachus is woefully underrepresented, at least when compared to how often he’s mentioned in modern books. The Salzman and Roberts volume is a step in redressing this, but this repository for the repository thing may help explain the reason for it.

Beyond that, I apologize for not posting much lately. I’m still working through my post-op backlog of work. I’ve also been working back through my old posts and fixing links in WordPress so they aim readers to WP, not Blogger. I’m back to August, 2010 and once I finish I’m going to close the Blogger site, except for a redirect post. And I’m about 1500 words into my Cameron review which I need to finish.

1 Libanius, Or. 62.24-5.

Barrow, Reginald Haynes, ed., Prefect and Emperor: The Relationes of Symmachus, A.D. 384. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1973). ISBN: 978-0198144434.

Cribiore, Raffaella, The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (2007). ISBN: 978-0-691-12824-5.

Norman, A.F., trans & ed., Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2000). ISBN: 9-780853-235958.

Salzman, Michele Renee and Roberts, Michael, The Letters of Symmachus: Book 1. Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature (2011). ISBN: 9-781589-835979.

Reblogged from Blogenspiel:

If you are reading this blog, this piece might be of interest. I heard about it via Steve Muhlberger. Given the extortionate prices of OUP’s books already — or extortionate compared to my salary, at least — this is especially outrageous. I love some of OUP’s textbooks. I really love the John Arnold Very Short Introduction to History. I’m less willing to use OUP, and now really have no wish to publish with them (not that it’s likely) if this is what they are up to. We get little enough direct remuneration …

This is disturbing. Not that Oxford is going to be asking me to publish anything. What’s troubling is that I’ve seen terms which state that a press retains academic rights while still leaving the author with something. I like OUP books (among other things, for the most part they still have real genuine footnotes at the bottom of pages) and am going to have to figure out what this does for my purchasing habits. The kicker is, I’m not sure how different this is from what they already have – the terms I’ve received already stipulate press rights to publication in print and digital form but at least they leave you something, such as the ability to copy your own work to use in a class or program (this may still constitute fair use or do these terms specifically sign that away too?).

As usual, I expect registration will be up on February 1 and also as usual, I expect to register within a day or two of being able to. I could subject all of you to yet another round of my geekery about this conference but instead I’ll simply say that even if you’re just getting started in learning about the Middle Ages, I think you should consider attending. It’s relatively inexpensive and the sessions provide a wide range of subject matter. For myself, I’m psyched that the first two Society for Late Antiquity Sessions are right in my wheelhouse as far as what I’m reading now.

If you really want to subject yourself to my previously referenced geekery, take a look at my Kalamazoo page.

Initially I thought I might wait a bit before registering but my hip surgery recuperation has gone far better than I expected. I may not be able to walk to sessions from Valley (though I might – hard to say) but I’m pretty confident that I can make my way from my car to any sessions and wander through the book exhibit without much trouble.

I’ve been reading some 4th century stuff which I’m discovering covers an area I’m really not all that interested in. This is not the first time this has happened. More than 10 years ago, when I started to really get into Medieval History, I realized I wasn’t that interested in warfare. This was a surprise. If you’d asked me right when I was getting started I’d have probably told you that learning about folks sticking each other with sharp, pointy objects and how they went about it would be high on my list. It hasn’t been, even though I realize that this is a very important aspect of history (and continues to be today, though the methods have changed – we are one violent species).

Up to the last month I’d have told you that the evolution of thought is something I’m very interested in. I still think so, but there’s a level of detail at which this does not seem to be true. 1

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma I: Conversion and Apostasy, 373-388 C.E., by Jason David BeDuhn. This book discusses Augustine’s early life, his time as a Manichean, and his conversion to Christianity. In large part, it analyzes Augustine’s story, based on his The Confessions and other early writings to examine what was going on inside Augustine’s head during this period. How did he think about himself? Realizing that The Confessions was written about ten years after his conversion, how does Augustine’s view of himself compare with what was likely happening internally? What do these writings tell us about Augustine’s development of “self?”

Guess what – I’m not buying Volume II when it comes out. There appears to be a whole branch devoted to discovering what Augustine thought of himself and really picking apart his conversion. This is fine. He’s one of the most important figures in the development of Western thought so figuring out how this thought came about and how his personal development impacted it is useful. But I also found out that it’s not something I’m interested in, not to the point of wanting to read 300-plus page books devoted to a subset of the topic. I suppose there could be a discussion of whether this is really history rather than one of the “ologies” (psychology, sociology, etc.) but I’ll leave that to others – those are intermingled with history anyway, as is anthropology.

I have always been interested in how our current Western European society developed its thinking and how this can be traced back to ancient Greece. I’ve read a lot of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato (in translation of course). I’ve read a fair amount of books discussing this in relatively (I now realize) general terms. However right now I’m reading Kevin Corrigan’s Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century. This is an extremely detailed examination of Evagorius Ponticus and Gregory of Nyssa and how their writings reflect a Greek classical origin. I’m fighting through this and recognizing that at this level of detail, picking through Evagrius’ Praktikos concept by concept and looking for its origin in Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, goes deeper than I want to go.

The funny thing is, I find the source material very interesting. But the analysis of this material (which is detailed and seems quite well done), at least to this level, has been boring me. I’m reading this in 5 page or so blocks, not a good way to get through something.

Let me provide an example from the introduction (you know – where general concepts are, uh, introduced) of Chapter 6, “Gregory and the Fall of Intellect”:

“The formulaic phomen, “we say,” indicates agreement among members of a school and what is agreed upon is a problem of interpretation in Plato’s Republic and Symposium. The Republic posits the good as the supreme mathêma, beyond both intellect and being. The Symposium, by contrast, in Diotima’s ladder of ascent, posits the beautiful as the goal of desire and vision. Are the two equivalent? The question remains open in Plato. But in Plotinus, the “beautiful” is ambiguous, indicating the beauty of intellect secondarily and that of the Good beyond it primarily (cf. EnneadI 6, 6-7; V 5, 12; and VI 7, 31-3), though this has been debated.” (103)

There are other aspects of medieval history where I love attention to detail but reading page after page of this makes my head want to explode. I believe (though I’m really not qualified to assess it) that Corrigan knows his stuff. But what I want to read would be something more along the lines of, “Gregory’s concept of beauty could be summarized as the mind as a mirror designed to reflect beauty and the body as a further reflective element, capable of receiving and sustaining the beauty of the mind. This concept can be traced to Plotinus, however its origin can be found in the writings of Plato.” Then give me footnotes (Corrigan footnotes the above anyway).

This is not to say that books such as this are not useful or even important. It’s just at a level of detail beyond what I want to explore (for now anyway – who knows where I’ll be a couple of years, or even months, down the road). This is the benefit of my doing this as a hobby. I can choose not to dive so deeply as Corrigan would take me. I love my real job but there are pieces of it which are quite tedious. Just yesterday I viewed a 2 hour webinar designed to introduce a FEMA technical guide (755 pages) on earthquake safety which I’ll need to mine for information on a publication I’m working on. These federal technical folks know their stuff but are not noted for giving the most thrilling presentation. But I’m being paid to do this and I will.

I’ll finish Corrigan. I have this stubborn thing which happens whenever I open a book and the only two times I’ve closed a book without finishing was over disgust at the crappy level of information provided, certainly not because it’s overly informative. I’m sure I’m going continue to gobble up source material, in particular Neoplatonist sources. But it reminds me that I do this as a hobby and my level of knowledge will never reach that of professionals (overall anyway). I can set aside critical areas because I choose not to investigate them thoroughly. It’s a flawed approach to true knowledge but for certain areas of history, it’s an approach I’m choosing to take.

1 Understanding that Medieval (and Ancient) folks thought differently from us (moderns) is a fundamental concept which I think should be one of the first things anyone interested in either period should explore. The best general survey on this which I’ve read is; Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1992). ISBN: 0-226-48231-6. For those familiar with this book, the level of detail I want to explore is somewhere between it and Corrigan.

BeDuhn, Jason David, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma I: Conversion and Apostasy, 373-388 C.E.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2010). ISBN: 978-0-8122-4210-2.

Corrigan, Kevin, Evagirus and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing (2009). ISBN: 978-0-7546-1685-6.

As I began looking into my Christianity reading project I decided to begin by reading a bit more on Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, then work backwards. I’m now thinking this is the wrong approach. The primary impacts of these three are on what came after rather than their output reflecting what came before. My very rough idea of these impacts could be summed up as; Augustine impacting future doctrine; Ambrose impacting Church organization and the role of the bishop and; Jerome impacting asceticism. I am certain that the previous sentence is an extreme oversimplification however I also think there’s some truth at its core. In many ways Jerome may be the most interesting as he was something of a contemporary fringe figure who gained importance as time went on. I’m afraid that once I start reading him I’ll find myself following up with all the stuff I have on asceticism, monasticism, desert fathers, etc. This is fine but it’s not the “start at the beginning of the 5th century and work backwards” method I originally had planned.

I’ve read a bit on each of these and have more on my shelves. The question I’m asking myself at the moment is how much of their source material; their writings, letters, sermons, etc., should I read? For Jerome and Ambrose this may not be that big of a deal. There’s a good amount of source material out there but not so much that I can’t go through a fairly high percentage of it. Augustine is another issue. I’ve read his Confessions and City of God. The first seven volumes of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series consists of his material. This is several thousand pages. How much of this do I need to read? (I don’t expect an answer here) I imagine that On Christian Doctrine, his various works on will and grace, and his stuff against the Donatists will be on my list. What about On the Soul, On Patience, On Virginity, etc.? I’ll figure it out. Hopefully I won’t figure wrongly.

Kudos to my friends who are getting smarter (see footnote 1 for details). This year several of my gifts have been cards for booksellers. Yesterday I used a couple of them to order some Symmachus and Libanius. I have two more which I’m going to hold off on using for a bit but at this moment I’m looking at Macrobius’ Saturnalia and Emperor Julian. I have to come up with some pretty distinct thank-you’s so they remember this for next year. Or maybe I just need to schedule major surgery every year around Christmas.

As most folks familiar with Medieval History are probably aware, there are some popular concepts out there about religion and religious change which, once you really look at the evidence, don’t hold up. Among these are characterizations of the evolution of Western Europe to a Christian society being one of a violent, militant process just short of (or for some people equaling) a “convert or be killed” period. I run across this all the time and in most places, such as open discussion groups on Usenet, I just avoid the conversation. The amount of work required to change people’s minds would be monumental and in many cases, people engaged in the discussions have no interest in their minds being changed. They’re just looking for a place where they can pronounce their opinions.

I’ve always looked at the Christianization process which occurred from the early 4th century through the 6th century to be a fairly gradual process largely lacking in the sort of violent forced conversion these folks like to promote. This does not mean there weren’t pressures, incentives and penalties involved. However these were largely along the lines of Christians being named to most high government posts or Christian places of worship receiving taxation benefits.

So when I give my very rough, general overview statements of the process I say something along the lines of, “By and large the conversion to Christianity was achieved with relatively little bloodshed. Justinian’s 6th century forced conversion is a significant exception and individuals such as Cyril of Alexandria and Ambrose of Milan took a more aggressive approach but these were mostly exceptions, rather than the rule.”

This brings me to Ambrose. In reading overviews of the late 4th century, three events regarding Ambrose have stood out for me. First, he went toe-to-toe with Symmachus regarding restoring the Altar of Victory in the Senate House. Second, in violation of Roman Law that one Church in each city would be reserved for other Christian sects, he did not allow a Church in Milan to be used by Arians. 1 Third, when a Catholic Bishop led a mob in the destruction of a Jewish Synagogue, he singlehandedly prevented that synagogue from being rebuilt and paid for by the Catholics.

These three events had me mentally classifying Ambrose as outside the norm; a more aggressive, almost militant opponent of non-Christian religions, to the extent where he would defy Roman leaders and incite mobs to pressure the Empire and Emperors to ignore the law. In essence, I looked at Ambrose as something of a zealot, determined to have his way in everything without much regard for anyone else.

I recently finished reading Neil McLynn’s, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. I now have a different opinion of Ambrose and his role. As always (I’m unable to think of an exception) historical events and characters are more complex once I learn more about them. With Ambrose, the nuances become quite interesting. 2

When it comes to Ambrose a great deal of what we know about him comes from Ambrose himself. Towards the end of his life he published or organized writings and collections of writings recounting his role in various events. I recently read an essay by Michael Proulx discussing how Ambrose basically fabricated a role for himself as the protector of Valentinian during the usurpation by Magnus Maximus.

So I was already somewhat aware of how Ambrose engaged in self-promotion and later revisions of his roles. McLynn took this to a whole new level. For each of the above events he discusses how the event actually transpired when considering various aspects and players, and contrasts this with Ambrose’s later portrayal of them. I’ll try to briefly summarize McLynn for each of these.

Symmachus and the Altar of Victory. Prior to reading McLynn, my (admittedly crude) understanding of this issue was that in 384, while Prefect of Rome, Symmachus had requested that the Altar be restored and Ambrose went toe-to-toe with him, writing a detailed response to Symmachus’ request and pressuring Valentinian II into denying it.

This is far from what actually happened. Symmachus’ request was heard and denied before Ambrose had much to say on the matter. The Imperial Court denied it fairly quickly, for a variety of reasons. As McLynn says, “… there was never a debate on the subject [of the Altar of Victory] at all. Symmachus’ relatio was short-circuited in the imperial consistory, and Ambrose’s detailed rebuttal of the urban prefect’s arguments was compiled after the question had been settled. The issue has been transmitted to posterity in a framework devised by Ambrose …” (264)

Use of a Milanese Church by Arians. I have no idea how to briefly summarize this. In essence, my prior opinion had been that Valentinian and in particular his mother Justina wanted a Milan church to be diverted from Catholic to Arian control. Instead, this event was over a much more limited issue (though Ambrose’s later portrayal would be highly influential in the Church-ruler dynamic). Valentinian, an Arian, wanted to celebrate Easter in a Milan Church, not take over a Church entirely. Ambrose argued that this constituted an invasion of one of his churches and organized popular resistance to its use for this purpose. The combination of public pressure and arguments resulted in Valentinian (likely) celebrating Easter with the Imperial Court in a makeshift church. There is likely more truth to my prior perception of this than for the other two instances but there are some important distinctions. First, Valentinian wanted the Church for a single day. Second, this ended up being much more of a demonstration of the Valentinian government’s lack of power. Their government was based in Milan but Ambrose and the Church had been there much longer. Finally, Ambrose himself, while arguing against this use of his Church, did not directly oppose Valentinian so much as organize mass opposition. He certainly managed the event but he was careful to position himself so as not to be looked at as the ringleader.

Destruction of the Jewish Synagogue at Callinicum. In 388 a local bishop led a mob which plundered and destroyed a Jewish Synagogue. Initially, Theodosius’ ordered that the synagogue be rebuilt and the costs of doing so paid for by the bishop. Ambrose took this incident on directly and, over a period of time, eventually got the Emperor to drop the entire matter. The interesting item here is that, based on McLynn, Theodosius appears to have ended up on top in this conflict. “The loser in this unhappy affair was Ambrose. Theodosius had been forced to concede clemency in a case he felt deserved exemplary punishment; but such concessions were an occupational hazard of the imperial office. As compensation, moreover, he could enjoy the gratitude and admiration which he had no doubt inspired among the Christians of Milan.” (308) McLynn also relates that Ambrose later wrote a revised version of the event which placed him as the victor at the emperor’s expense. Ambrose would not regain his influence with Theodosius until the massacre at Thessalonica two years later. 3

Does Ambrose still fit in my original characterization as a zealot? Maybe – but less so than I had once believed, which was based largely on the way he portrayed himself. He was an ardent defender of the Church, more so than many contemporary bishops. More than anything, he seems to be a man who excelled in two areas. First was an understanding of the political realities of the day and how to influence the imperial court and emperors. Second, and something which this post does not cover, he was able to inspire tremendous loyalty in the residents of Milan. His congregations went to great lengths to support and defend him. McLynn does not cover this in any depth but on a personal level, Ambrose must have possessed characteristics which inspired people to follow him.

For me this is fun. My opinion of Ambrose has changed, somewhat. More than a zealot, he was also a man who understood the imperial government and how to influence events. Zealotry may still be present, but it included an ample mix of ability and intelligence. This was not a man engaged in blind passions but in measured, concerted, detailed actions to defend his rights and those of the Church.

1 To be honest, I’m not certain this was a law so much as a policy of toleration but this is my original impression so I’m going with it. I need to look into it further. A brief search while writing this post didn’t give me anything.

2 I am unaware of anything more recent which substantially refutes McLynn however as this book was published in 1994 there may be something out there. If there is, I’d appreciate folks letting me know.

3 The Thessalonica event is also an interesting revision, which I’ve left out because it didn’t play into my initial Ambrose perception. This has come to be viewed as Ambrose denying Theodosius access to the Church until he engaged in an act of public penance. McLynn characterizes this as much more of a cooperative venture where Ambrose and Theodosius were able to develop a solution whereby the emperor was able to defuse a public relations disaster and regain his popular standing.

McLynn, Neil B., Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (1994). ISBN: 978-0-52008-461-6.

Proulx, Michael, “Patres Orphanorum’: Ambrose of Milan and the Construction of the Role of the Bishop,” in Frakes, Robert M., Digeser, Elizabeth DePalma and Stephens, Justin, eds., The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium and the Early Islamic World, pp. 75-97. New York: Tauris Academic Studies (2010). ISBN: 978-1-84885-409-3.

I’m currently in the middle of putting together a review of Alan Cameron’s The Last Pagans of Rome. If you’ve been reading this blog a while you know I have a tendency to overwrite. This review is testing my limits. It’s a thousand-page book with loads of information and containing some interesting methods of argument which I can’t figure out how to explore without going into a fair amount of depth. I believe that, for the first time, I simply will be unable to say what I want to about it in a simple review but will need to resort to a review essay. This is an entirely different level of analysis, one which I expect will get me into the 2500-3000 word range. It’s coming, I’ll have a lot to say, and I suspect some of it will (hopefully) inspire debate.

In the meantime, I’m going to do something of a 2011 blog review. This will be very different from last year’s which was not exclusively blog-oriented. This year I’m going to focus on stats. The main reason for this is that once I completely switch over to WordPress, I’ll lose my Blogger stats and this will provide me with a record which I’ll be able to recall more easily than something stuffed in my files. I’m also something of a stats geek – in our office I’m one of the two people who ends up putting data tables together and doing analysis, which is fine if I get enough lead time.

I try to avoid posting about my personal/professional life here as I try to keep those separate from my medieval hobby (at least professional – personal’s obviously integrated but who wants to know about, for example, my current exercise routine to get over hip surgery?). I think I’ve been pretty successful. However this past year my professional life had a pretty large impact on my posting habits so I need to touch on a bit of that.

I was involved in two substantial projects in 2011 which resulted in extended stretches where I didn’t come close to posting once a week. One of those was a national project where I was Purdue’s rep collaborating with Auburn University and the University of Tennessee. The project itself didn’t take up my time so much as various other state-level activities related to this project which I became involved with. I was also selected by Purdue to participate in a National Leadership Program which took me out of the state for about 25 days last year. The first project is continuing but the second ended in late September. My putting up six posts over the three months from July-September is a direct result of the final few months of this second project. Other things may come up this year but I will be surprised if they require that kind of time commitment. I made 75 posts this year, identical to my number of posts from 2010. This was actually pretty good when I think of how much time I spent away from home but I still have hopes of getting to around 100 per year. 1

For the year, I had a total of 25,330 pageviews on my blog. This comes to a touch under 70 per day, a substantial increase over last year’s 40-50. This doesn’t come close to some other blogs but it’s OK for me. Gratifyingly, these numbers increased as the year went on. Through April the monthly pageviews ranged from 1,234 to 1,641. Beginning in May they went up, ranging from 1,583 in July to 3,634 in December. My daily high was 211 pageviews on December 10. I don’t have a date for this (it was too depressing to look for) but back in April there was a day when I had just 9. This traffic increase both encouraged and discouraged me from moving to WordPress. It discouraged because with my readership getting to around 120 views/day I hate to take a chance on losing/alienating those readers. However it also gave me something of a “now or never” perspective, which ended up winning out. 2

Within these numbers are some interesting phenomena. Until December, August had the most site traffic, about 100 hits/day. This seemed strange considering it was in the middle of my six posts in three months stretch. However August and early September were absolutely dominated by people reading my review of A World Lit Only by Fire (WLOBF). Based on the search terms used, in particular, “A World Lit Only by Fire Sparknotes,” it appears that high school AP students were looking for help either with essays or exams. Happily, my high November and December numbers were not heavily William Manchester-generated. And at least it wasn’t a University search for “Gregory of Tours Cliff Notes” which was also a common term.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to WLOBF being the number one traffic generator, much as I wish it were otherwise. In 2011, of the top ten search terms used, nine of them were some variant; “A World Lit Only by Fire Summary,” “A World Lit Only by Fire Review,” “A World Lit Only by Fire Sparknotes,” etc. The only interloper among the top ten search terms was “Medieval History Geek.” In fact, 26 of the top 31 search terms were WLOBF related. It isn’t until the 32nd most popular that other terms become prevalent.

It will be no surprise that WLOBF was my most visited post in 2011; 5,747 views, or about 22.7%. This was much higher in August (56.5%) and much lower in other months – for December it was 200 views, less than 6% (though still highest, barely).

One of the other ways WLOBF skewed my stats is in something called “bounce rate.” This is when someone visited my blog, saw one page and left, never to return. Over 80% of my WLOBF page viewers came to that page, looked at it briefly, then went elsewhere. If this post is removed from the stats, the average visitor to my site looked at a touch over 3 pages per visit. Add these in and it’s just over 2. Evidently, most HS AP students didn’t find what they needed in my review.

This appears to be a good place to start to close this. From a numbers perspective, my top ten pages visited in 2011 were my home page first and WLOBF second.

The other 8 posts (not pages – both my Kalamazoo and Book Review pages received a lot of traffic) most frequently visited were, in order:

• 3 – Empires and Barbarians Part 1


• 4 – My WLOBF follow-up suggesting some Manchester alternatives. This does raise my hopes that some good may have come from that review.


• 5 – Part 2 of my Empires and Barbarians review. Man I was a long time getting this out there. Hope it did some good.


• 6 – Day 3 of my 2011 ICMS/Kalamazoo summaries.


• 7 – My post about depictions of the Middle Ages in the movies.


• 8 – My Teotihuacan visit post. Not medieval, really. My pictures seem to have popped up in Google image searches quite a bit.


• 9 – My review of Steven Walton’s Wind & Water in the Middle Ages.


• 10 – The Problem With Paganism. To be clear, this is a problem I have with the use of the term, not paganism itself. I received a lot of visits/referrals from a couple of Pagan websites which picked this post up. I didn’t get yelled at for it so I guess I didn’t offend anyone too badly.

Several of these were posts written in 2010. I'm not going to subdivide posts by year.

Finally, I thought I'd throw in my top five favorite posts for the year – posts I enjoyed putting together and which I thought were reasonably well done and contained some useful information.



• 1 – My post about Queen/Saint Radegund and her portrayal in contemporary sources.


• 2 – My post about Hydatius and how he viewed the events of the fifth century.


• 3 – My post about the Alamanni and how they were portrayed in Roman Sources. I debated including this because in some ways I think I was nibbling at the edges of the core of this – and to really do the topic justice would have required a much longer post.


• 4 – My review of Steven Walton’s Wind & Water in the Middle Ages. I’m obviously not objective but I think this was one of my better reviews of the year.


• 5 – Using historical events to predict the future. I think a misconception exists among some people that we can draw specific parallels between the progression of ancient and medieval societies, and societies today. We CAN learn from history but I think folks who take it to this level of specificity are getting carried away.



I’ll end this post here with a thank you. Thank you to everyone who’s visited my blog. Thank you to those of you who have offered words of assistance and encouragement. Thank you even to High School AP students – did you please learn something? Anything? I hope this blog has been useful and helpful to people and that you’ll continue to read it as I move things over to WordPress.

All the best for a happy, healthy and successful 2012.

1 For these 75 posts I’m including just one from WordPress, my Embarrassing Moments post. The WP posts asking blog migration questions are not included in this number.

2 I am not including the couple of hundred WordPress Pageviews I’ve had since I started moving the blog.


]]> http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/medieval-history-geek-2011-year-in-review/feed/ 9 cemanuel62 http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/those-embarrassing-amateur-moments/ http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/those-embarrassing-amateur-moments/#comments Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:11:29 +0000 Curt Emanuel http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/?p=286 ]]> I’m going to file this in my Amateur Tips page.

I was going through my book review page and updating the links so the destinations would be on WordPress and not Blogger. I came across a couple of embarrassing errors on my part and decided this would be worth posting about to, hopefully, help other non-professionals. This post is applicable for fields other than history.

As an amateur there are a ton of things I don’t know. For the most part, I think I know I don’t know stuff, but sometimes I forget about my lack of knowledge and in a few cases this lack of knowledge makes me feel like an absolute idiot.

The motivation for this is Gillian Clark. A couple of months ago I posted some comments on Hagith Sivan’s Galla Placidia: The Last Roman Empress. During that discussion I referred to Dr. Sivan as male and a commenter kindly told me that Dr. Sivan is female. As I was updating my book review links my Romans, Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World review included a discussion of an essay by Gillian Clark where I again mistakenly referred to Dr. Clark as male. Uh-oh. I probably shouldn’t admit this because I never used a personal pronoun for this review but I did a web search and discovered that Beate Dignas is also a woman.

Pretty embarrassing, right? I’m going to need to read through all my reviews and make sure I haven’t made this mistake elsewhere.

This is not the only embarrassing thing I’ve ever done related to history. Now I don’t get embarrassed about just not knowing stuff, usually. However there are specific examples which are a bit more glaring than others:

Personal Names of Professionals: Sometimes I don’t know how to pronounce them. I get to exactly one medieval conference each year. I am not involved in medieval history department meetings, conference calls about history projects, discussions about organizing programs or conferences or, beyond this blog, much of any medieval history discussion. I do not know how to pronounce people’s names. I can’t recall this being a problem too often but it has happened. Just from a quick scan of my book reviews, I do not know, for sure, how to pronounce the last names of Roger Bagnall, Stephen Pollington or Bernadette Filotas. I have a pronunciation in my brain which I would use if forced, but I do not know if it’s correct. A side bit of advice; when introducing speakers or a panel at a conference always ask them how to pronounce their names. I continue to be astonished how often this doesn’t happen.

Pronunciation of Contemporary Historical Figures: Several years ago at Kalamazoo I attended several sessions which prominently featured Augustine of Hippo. To that point I knew (see, there was no question of this – I knew it) that his name was pronounced “aw-gus-TEEN”, with the third syllable emphasized. Imagine my surprise when speaker after speaker pronounced it “aw-GUS-tin.” (Sorry – I’m using caps rather than accents as would be proper). Now Augustine’s sort of an important person in history, right? And I didn’t know how to pronounce his name. I will note that one speaker did use my prior pronunciation so apparently this isn’t quite a slam dunk but the majority of folks used the second.

Pronunciation of Terms: Every now and then a term will come up, generally one used in a specific historical context, where I’ll find out I’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly. Sometimes it will be a Latin term, sometimes just common usage. A nice example (two actually) is that for both Merovingian and Carolingian I was using a hard g, similar to how you’d pronounce “linguist,” rather than a soft g as in “fringe.” I spent my first Kalamazoo, for the most part, pronouncing this incorrectly. Nobody laughed at or made fun of me or, to the best of my knowledge, decided not to talk to me because of it. Though again, I’m not sure this pronunciation is quite a slam dunk.

What’s my advice for other amateurs about this?

DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT!

While you may suffer momentary embarrassment, most professionals a) won’t remember it ten minutes later and b) won’t make a big deal about it. The fact that you may not know something should not keep you from talking to people about this stuff.

Now there are a few historians who I suspect would make a big deal about it. A couple of years ago at Kalamazoo I was perusing some books (shocking, I know) and a well known Early Medieval Historian (EMH) and a colleague were near me. The colleague picked up a book and asked, “What about this?” The EMH responded dismissively, “That’s just some popular thing.”

Now I’ve run across this person before so it wasn’t just this overheard conversation but I know this person does everything for his career based as if his entire professional existence is contained within his select field. He does not think educating the public at large is important and the only people whose opinion he cares about are other professional historians.

Now peer review, respect, interaction, etc. is important in any field, academic or not. However any academic has a responsibility to the world at large. Or at least I hope we do – otherwise what the heck are we doing this for? Particularly if we’re getting paid.

This individual might not be particularly forgiving over a slip-up. My guess is he’d think my blog is complete garbage. My advice is that if you run across someone with this mindset, don’t worry about it. At all.

In essence, if you go to a conference or have an opportunity to interact with a professional in some other way, don’t let this potentially embarrassing stuff limit you. It’s not a big deal, and the people whose opinions matter, by and large, won’t think it’s that important. There is a limit to this – being ignorant and trying to come across as knowledgeable will, rightfully, irritate people. And they’ll figure it out in a hurry. I think it’s important for non-professionals to understand how much time and effort a professional has put into his or her career. We’re talking, likely, over ten years of higher education, publishing a dissertation and all of the work that goes into remaining current in a field which changes fairly rapidly. That’s a big difference from myself, who’s interested in history and spends a fair amount of his spare time learning about it. History is important to me but it is far more important (I suspect) to someone whose career is based on it.

My preference is to be upfront to avoid misunderstandings. At Kalamazoo, whenever anyone asks me what my field is, I reply, “I’m very likely the least intelligent person here. I’m a complete amateur and this is what I do on vacation.” Feel free to use it. Some day I really want to answer, “Agronomy, Farm Management and Agrosecurity,” just to see what comes from that.

As an example of how I believe most professionals view the less knowledgeable, let me offer this as an example. I was at a National No-Till Farming Conference a few years ago and was seated next to a young lady who I later found out was a first-time attendee and was working one of the vendor booths. She didn’t know a lot but wanted to learn more, simply from the standpoint of being better able to communicate with people at future conferences. I ended up walking her through several basic concepts during the week. One in particular which I recall was related to no-till drills. She did not need to know specific settings for depth gauges, the types of press wheels to use in specific situations or whether to have wavy, fluted or smooth coulters (this all varies depending on manufacturer anyway). However she did need to know that you would set up and equip your no-till drill differently if you were planting in April in Minnesota on Clay soils vs in June in Tennessee on a sandy loam and, in general terms, why. I know I was able to help her out and it helped me out too.

In my experience most historians are no different. Keep in mind sometimes they’re busy, they may be in the middle of working on a project, at a conference they’ll attend a bookseller’s reception in hopes of getting published, not for free wine, etc. But they also have better things to do than worry about an embarrassing slip-up. Be up front about your inexperience, relax, and interact. I don’t know of a better way to learn.


]]> http://medievalhistorygeek.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/those-embarrassing-amateur-moments/feed/ 2 cemanuel62