Warrior Daddy: Taking My Son Back from the Clutches of Neurotypicality

(Abba used to be able to take Kalman to proper Asperger events like a Renaissance Faire. Will neurotypicality soon cause Kalman to prefer SpongeBob SquarePants? Not if this Daddy Warrior can help it.)

For his first year of life, my son, Kalman, was the perfect Asperger child. He would monologue in his perfect James Earl Jones voice. When not monomaniacally hunting the kitty, he could be found sitting in a corner examining heretical or otherwise banned books. As a Daddy Warrior, I knew in my gut that vaccines cause neurotypicality. Far more people, who have been vaccinated, have turned out to be neurotypical than Asperger so the evidence is clearly indisputable. That being said, I allowed myself to be conned by an agent of Big Medicine into allowing my son to receive the MMR vaccines. He offered me a lollipop so how could I resist? I knew something was wrong when my son cried upon receiving his shots. Clearly, my son had been given a boo-boo, which is always bad. My nightmare was just beginning. Almost immediately, Kalman began showing an interest in other people. He even began smiling for no obvious reason. There is no doubt about it. My son has become neurotypical.  

Daddy Warriors naturally love their babies. Because it is natural, our love, unlike boo-boos, must always be a good thing. We are not like doctors, who accept bribes from pharmaceutical companies to allow our darlings to be harmed. Therefore, we know best which century's medical practices should be inflicted on our kids. We are also blessed with a perfect understanding of cause and effect as well as an unbiased memory. This allows us to compare our children's behavior from arbitrary before and after points.

This Daddy Warrior is ready to fight for his Kalman like an inquisitor fighting for the soul of an unfortunate heretic. (Neurotypicals cannot appreciate Monty Python and, therefore, never expect the Spanish Inquisition.) I propose a gluten diet, consisting of gluten and to raise Kalman in a sensory deprivation box until he is eighteen. When Kalman crawls out and blinks up at the sun, he will certainly be an Asperger.  If living in a box could save Thais from being a prostitute, it can save my son from the infinitely worse fate of irrationally not becoming what I want him to be. My love makes me wise, wonderful, and selfless. I love my son too much to allow him to live as a neurotypical and not appreciate dark and dry humor.

 

Final History 111 Spring 2011

My final was scheduled for Shavuot so I decided to simply give an online final. I just sent it out to my students. Here it is.




Pick three of the following essay questions and write 2-3 page responses. Each question is worth 50 points. Feel free to make use of your notes and do research online or in books. Your work, though, has to be your own. I will be on the lookout for plagiarism. I strongly advise everyone not to talk to their classmates about the final as this will likely cause your essays to sound too much alike. When you are finished, please email your finals to chinn.26@osu.edu. You have until Thursday midnight to finish.




You have been hired to write a screenplay about either the battle of Thermopylae, Robin Hood or pirates. Please write a summary of your proposed screenplay in order to hook a skeptical, but historically illiterate film producer into providing $100 million dollars for the making of this movie. What historical liberties do you plan on taking? Defend your decisions in terms of “narrative thinking.”




Describe life in the Middle Ages as it related to government and law enforcement. Why was life in the Middle Ages so violent despite the fact that almost everyone, at least on paper, was a Christian? What role did nationalism play in people’s minds? Give specific examples.



Does religion make people intolerant of others and hostile to democracy? Give examples from ancient Rome, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. In each of these cases, consider the role played by the specific content of their religious beliefs in the type of decisions made.




The study of history requires a great degree of skepticism. Is this skepticism absolute? What is the ironic conclusion of absolute skepticism? Is there a difference between claiming, as a historical fact, that Persia invaded Greece twice in the fifth century BCE and Mohammed spoke to the angel Gabriel?


What is “Occam’s Razor?” Why is this concept so important in one’s day to day life? What role does Occam’s Razor play in the study of history? Give an example.



What were some of the major technological innovations in warfare from antiquity up until the eighteenth century? How did some of these innovations advance the cause of democracy; how did some of them hinder democracy? What does it mean to have a “citizen’s army?” Why is it so important for the formation and maintenance of democracy?






Bonus: “Everything I needed to know in history (and life for that matter) I learned from watching Monty Python.” Defend this proposition with practical examples from the wisdom of this great British comedy team. (5 pts.)

Alice in Pretentious Artsy Self-Satisfied Modern Bigotry Land (Part I)

This afternoon I went on a belated birthday outing with my friend Lionel Spiegel to go see Alice in Wonderland. I should have been more cautious; the last time I went to the movies with him we ended up nearly laughing through Transformers wiping Israel off the map. (Since both of these were my choices, he should probably start questioning my judgment when it comes to going to movies in the future.) A number of loosely assorted observations related to the film.

We went to the Regal movie theater in downtown Silver Spring. The projector crashed right by the opening credits and had to be restarted. This resulted in the movie starting about forty minutes late. To the credit of the movie people, they offered everyone a free movie pass as an apology for the inconvenience. This is the second time I have watched a conventional movie in 3-D and so far I am not impressed. The glasses gave a shaded taint to the screen. Maybe this was a problem with how the film was shot, the theater's lighting or the glasses themselves, but I had a difficult time seeing the screen. I ended up watching a fair amount of the film without the glasses even though the screen obviously was blurry without them. The other problem with the glasses is that they are quite uncomfortable for anything more than a few minutes. When using them I found myself holding them up in front of my face instead of letting them sit on my nose. Maybe it would be a good idea if they produced opera style glasses for 3-D movies. The fact that I did not have a comfortable time may very well have influenced how I took in the actual content of the film.

The film is less an adaption of the Lewis Carroll novel as it is a sequel along the lines of the excellent Robin Williams Hook film, where a grown-up Peter Pan has to go back to Neverland to save his children from Captain Hook. Alice opens with a stereotypical display of stuffy narrow-minded hypocritical Victorians as a grown-up Alice is faced with the prospect of an arranged marriage with a nobleman, worthy of going for the Monty Python upper-class twit of the year award, in the hopes of saving her family fortune. Someone needs to give the writers a history lesson. In the nineteenth century, bankrupt aristocrats were marrying the offspring of traders and industrialists in the hopes of saving their family fortunes, not the other way around. (Tim Burton actually got this right in his earlier wonderful cartoon Corpse Bride, featuring two of the stars of this film. He even was courteous enough, in Corpse Bride, to allow for the existence of a loving arranged marriage.)

I had an idea, which Lionel thinks should be called the Chinn rule. Historical cultures should be given the same treatment as present-day ethnic groups in terms of protection from negative stereotypes. A film in which a young black woman struggles to overcome the violent brutish and ignorant black culture around her, where all the women are on welfare and on drugs and all the men are on drugs and in jail would be quickly tagged as racist. A film about a modern Arab girl that is only about her escaping a brutish culture of arranged marriages and honor killings would also be racist. (Such depictions of Arabs are still the norm, but that is a separate story. On this topic I must say that either this season of 24 is even more horrible in its treatment of Muslims than usual or I am becoming more "tolerant," God help me.) It was okay for Charles Dickens to use comical stereotypes for the nineteenth century. He was part of that time period. This is like blacks and the N-word. Blacks are allowed to use it; if you are not black you have no business saying that word.

Let us be honest, people use negative stereotypes of past cultures for the same disgusting and immoral reason as they go after present day cultures; putting other people down makes people feel better about themselves. Watching stupid intolerant Victorians make fools of themselves makes me, living in the comfort of the twenty-first century, feel intelligent and, more importantly, really tolerant just like being able to cluck my tongue at illiterate black criminals makes me, as a white person, feel civilized and sophisticated. The hypocrisy of prejudicially being able to tag others as intolerant is just sickening. At least blacks are still alive and can knock the living day lights out of bigots (not that I encourage violence) like they deserve. The Victorians, aside from sending the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, have no one, but historians like me to defend them.


(To be continued …)

Wine According to John Cleese

I often make the analogy between the sort of beginner lectures in history that I have taught these past few years and an introduction to wine tasting. I am not much of an expert on wine, but if I were to ever be put in charge of a wine tasting class I would center the curriculum on making the case for wine. If students come away with one thing it should be an understanding of why your basic five dollar bottle of Manischewitz or Kedem Cream Malaga is grape flavored cough syrup and not actual wine and that it is worthwhile ten or twenty dollars to purchase a basic Merlot or a Chardonnay wine.



Similarly with history, if my students, whether or not any of them become professional historians or even amateur enthusiasts, understand one thing it should be what a professional historian is and does and how this is different from the History Channel or Rabbi Berel Wein. My students may never actually practice history, but the will know what real history looks like and they will hopefully be willing to invest the extra time and money when confronted with a historical issue. This is important for the cause of reason and truth and also so that people like me can have jobs.

Previously I used Monty Python to teach us a lesson about historical thinking. Here John Cleese comes to serve as our Maimonides with his "Wine for the Confused" program. Gentiles seem to approach wine somewhat differently. Cleese has to defend himself more against the top to bottom attack and not the bottom up.

Method Thinking or How Not to Play Sports

I was never particularly good at sports. The only thing that I did even somewhat well was playing defense in street hockey. That is a position that does not require much in the way of skill but a willingness to throw your body around, put yourself in the way of people and the ball, take a hit and hit back. I never had much in the way of talent, to this day I have remarkably poor hand and eye coordination, but I always played with a lot of heart and did my best. As such, I took it as a personal offense to see kids who were not trying and who even just sat there staring off into space with their hands in their pockets. In sports, there are no guarantees to win. There is certainly no way to always stop your opponent from scoring. Your opponent will score and will win games. A team that can win two-thirds of their games over a season is an elite team. That being said there are ways to maximize the chances of winning. It does not take any great sports wisdom to understand that to succeed, whether at soccer or at other sports, one needs to play with all of one’s heart, do one’s utmost to get in the way of the opposition and stop them from scoring and on the flip side to go after the ball and try to score for oneself. This may not be enough to win, but it is better than the alternative of staring off into space with one’s hands pocketed. Staring off into space with one’s hands pocketed is not an “alternative” style of playing, it is not playing at all, not even if you come up with clever philosophical arguments to prove that your opponent’s goals are nothing artificial intellectual constructs.

As a historian, I engage in method thinking. I know that I do not have a sure path to being right. In fact, I will be wrong quite often. That being said I know that the historical method allows one to maximize the chances of being right about past historical events and that it is far superior to any of the alternatives to such an extent that the alternatives cannot be seen as playing the game at all. As a historian I know to rely on written documents, particularly internal documents such as private letters and diaries. I know to be suspicious of the memory of individuals and to show no faith in oral traditions. Either you have written texts or you go home. I know how to critically interrogate texts, to look for contradictions, biases and narrative constructions. This allows me not only to spot a falsehood but also to form hypotheses that are remarkably close to the truth. Cherry-picking sources to find things that one wants to hear or employing radical skepticism to throw out all source readings, leaving one to believe whatever one wants, does not. Such a method may sometimes get things right, even some things that the historical method gets wrong. In the long run, though, it cannot compete. Furthermore, even when the historical method makes a “mistake” it still has the internal mechanism to eventually correct itself. The “alternatives” have no such mechanism.

As a follower of the historical method, I am not afraid to be wrong and accept that I will quite often be wrong. I am not omniscient; the study of history often forces me to make guesses based on incomplete evidence to almost no evidence. As a person, I have my biases and will misread sources. While I may be biased and flawed and the sources I work with are certainly that, the historical method has no such weaknesses. I will, therefore, rely wholeheartedly on the historical method, win or lose. I would rather be wrong following the historical method than be right following an “alternative.”

My Escapades around Oxford (No I Have Not Been at the Center of Any International Intrigue)

I have fallen head over heels in love with the city of Oxford. Heaven should look like it. Oxford may not be a beautiful city in the conventional sense, but it is old, historic and the academic city that every other academic city wishes it could be. In other words, my kind of town.

While walking about I ran into a former professor of mine, James Bracken. I was really surprised when he introduced me to his friend from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota (If only Gustavus had been Norwegian and not Swedish we could have had the perfect Garrison Keillor Minnesota stereotype.). Dr. Bracken actually managed to remember the paper I wrote on Christian Hebraism for his History of the Book class. We promptly did the sacred letters, O-H, to demonstrate Ohio State’s kinyan, ownership, of this land. (We did not have the manpower to perform the I-O, but I am sure Coach Woody Hayes up above understands.)

Oxford, like Columbus, has a Broad and a High Street. So I think this makes it a very ripe target for my brand of academic imperialism.

A few posts back, I discussed Terry Eagleton and his Marxist beliefs. If anyone has any doubts about that, Eagleton is listed as a speaker at an upcoming Marxist rally.

I walked into a Borders here at Oxford. It is good to feel some of the pleasures of home. Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight vampires are clearly a hit in this country as well.

I got this picture of myself next to posters for the upcoming performances of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and Roald Dahl’s BFG. Between Shakespeare at his worst and Dahl at his best, I think I am going to go with Dahl.

I managed to befriend some of the workers at the theater pub. They were Dahl fans as well and believed in the continued relevance of Dahl in saving the world. We also got to talking about Disney and Monty Python. There was a girl in the group; she was intrigued by the fact that I was an American. She had not spoken to any Americans since the election and wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama. That was a tricky one for me as I am part of the small minority of my peer group that does not support Obama, making me a very poor sample. I started dancing around the issue, explaining that I liked Obama as a person, but I had problems with many of his policies. In the end, I told her point-blank that I was a Republican, who voted for McCain, though one who is not happy with the party, mainly because it had been taken over by the Christian right. I furthermore explained that I was a Libertarian and elaborated on what that meant. She seemed satisfied with my response. In my experience, most people become very open to Libertarianism once you explain to them what it is. Libertarianism has a lot to offer, particularly if you are a well-educated person, working hard to make ends meet, who enjoys the occasional beer and hand-rolled cigarette.

Sitting around in the Oriental Studies library, I came across an essay by David S. Katz, “Edmund Gayton’s Anti-Jewish Poem Addressed to Manasseh Ben Israel, 1656.” [JQR 71(1980-81)] This essay deals with a series of rumors, circulated by royalists, while the issue of Jewish readmission into England was being debated, that the Jews were negotiating with Oliver Cromwell’s government to buy St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bodleian Library, the main library at Oxford. Apparently, the Jews offered 500,000 pounds but Cromwell wanted 700,000-800,000 pounds. I showed this to the librarian and he got a good laugh.

Now, this is a plot that I could go for. So here it is for all you members of the Elders of Zion. I am not interested in taking over banks or Hollywood; what I want is the Bodleian Library. Well, the Bodleian and the rest of Oxford. The Bodleian can be my castle and the rest of greater Oxford can be my personal feudal kingdom, which would give me the Yarnton Manor as a summer/plague retreat.

Transformers Wipes Israel off the Map

Yesterday I went with my good friend Lionel Spiegel to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I will not comment on the movie itself other than to say that it was of Mystery Science Theater 3000 quality. Lionel and I were laughing our heads off the entire movie and not in a good way; for one thing, we were probably being a nuisance to everyone around us. What really caught my attention was how the movie deals with Israel and the Middle East. As with much of what is wrong with how Israel gets reported on in the media, this is a sin of omission rather than commission. The final battle between the Autobots, along with their mostly American allies, and the Decepticons, led by the Fallen (a Monty Python worthy evil villain), takes place around an Egyptian Pyramid, along the border with Jordan. For those of you not familiar with the geography of the Middle East, here is a map of the area in question.

As you can see, while Egypt is very close to Jordan, there is a little resort town called Elat separating Egypt from Jordan. I have been to Elat; it is a beautiful place, perfect for anyone with a sense of political humor. From Elat, you can look out and see Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all while remaining firmly in the State of Israel. For some strange reason, Michael Bay failed to notice that Israel lies between Egypt and Jordan. (This is all the worse as Steven Spielberg is listed as a producer. One would have hoped that he would have jumped on such a mistake.)

This removal of Israel becomes even more ridiculous when the humans put out a call for help to the Egyptian military, whose country they are in, and the Jordanians and several Jordanian helicopters take part in the battle, mainly by getting blown out of the sky. Last I checked the Middle East superpower in the air is Israel, not Jordan. Why couldn’t we have Israel jets shooting it out with the Decepticons to save the world? This could have even been a good opportunity to stick in a peace process message by having Israel fight alongside the Muslim countries of Egypt and Jordan. Particularly since, even in real life, Israel is at peace with both of these countries.

A Dastardly Plot to Get Me a Bride

As those who know me personally and those reading between the lines of my blog posts know, my recent attempts to get married have failed. Many months invested in wooing a girl have come to naught and I am now back to square one. An anecdote, I recently read, gives me hope of an alternative.

The prospective groom, ignorant of Hebrew, asked his friend to repeat the ritual formula (harei ‘ath mekuddesheth li = behold, you are sanctified unto me) at the ceremony. The friend did so and, taking advantage of the situation (and the young lady), claimed the woman as his legal wife. The community was dumbfounded, yet the woman remained his wife for many years and bore him a family. (Steven Bowman, the Jews of Byzantium pg. 123)

The gears turn in my brain and my fingers twirl in a Monty Burns sort of way. Excellent!


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All kidding aside, this story of a guy stealing his friend’s bride from under the wedding canopy is an example of where it may be appropriate to apply the Natalie Zemon Davis principle of history. While men are likely to portray women as passive figures in events, one cannot take this at face value. Davis' book, The Return of Martin Guerre, is about a man, Martin Guerre, who disappeared and abandoned his wife for twelve years. Eight years into his absence another man came and claimed to be Martin Guerre. This man, at least initially, was accepted by the family and by the wife, who bore him a daughter, as Martin Guerre. (Keep in mind that this story happened in sixteenth-century France. There were no photographs or dental records to go by.) Eventually, some people in the family started to question whether this man was who he claimed to be and took him to court. During the court case, all of a sudden, the real Martin Guerre came back. The imposter was executed and Martin Guerre resumed his position as husband and even became the father of the daughter of the fake him. The wife in the story seems to be a completely passive figure. She gets abandoned by her husband. She gets taken in by the imposter and, in the end, she gets taken back by her husband. Davis tries to argue that, in fact, the wife was more proactive than the sources, written by men, might suggest. Davis speculates that the wife was in on the imposture’s scheme and even helped him pull it off by providing him with the necessary information. While I think that Davis, feeling the need to push her feminist ideology, overstates her case, this book does raise valid methodological issues, which historians, no matter what their politics, need to consider.

As in the Martin Guerre story, the girl in our story seems to be completely passive. She is about to be married off to one man, but all of a sudden someone pulls this trick and claims her instead and she seems to go along with it. The fact that this girl, as far as we can tell, did not fight the issue is telling. She could have claimed that she did not attend to marry the friend. If that failed she could have fought for a divorce. She chose not to pursue these options. The fact that she made a choice makes her an active participant. Maybe she really wanted to marry the friend but was being pushed to marry the other person. So when she accepted she did so with the full intention of marrying the friend. She might have even been in on the scheme.

Military Fiction: A Call for Help

In our book club, we are finishing up Brave New World. It has taken us a lot longer than it should have as there were some delays. For our next book, we are doing Twilight, which has me jumping for joy. I have wanted to do Twilight for a while now but did not think I would get it, considering that the book club was mostly guys. I gave it to the chair of the book club and she fell in love with it and decided to push for it. It helped that two girls recently joined us, giving us more balance in terms of gender. While I am looking forward to several weeks of Twilight I am concerned about how it will play out with certain members of the group. One of the problems with choosing books is that we not only have a wide range of reading interests but also of reading ability. For example, there are two people in the group, one of whom has since left for college, besides for me who have very strong backgrounds in science fiction and fantasy. We had a habit of going off on side tangents which no one else in the group understands. To add to this, all three of us can quote long sections of Monty Python at each other, much to the annoyance of everyone else. The ongoing process has been the chair leaning on me to lean on them to keep them in line and to keep the conversation to things that other people can understand and follow. As for reading ability. I am working on a Ph.D. in history. There is another person in the group who is a Ph.D. student in English. The chair just got her Ph.D. But then we have people in the group for whom reading books is a struggle. One such person has little interest in reading anything except for novels about modern warfare. He is particularly fond of Tom Clancy. This is life in a group full of people with Asperger Syndrome.

It is about our Tom Clancy fan that I am writing. He is dead set on us reading a Tom Clancy novel or at least something along those lines. I and others in the group have no interest in reading Tom Clancy. Besides for the fact that Clancy’s books tend to be full of right-wing cold war paranoia, they are also too long to work well for us. Every time we have voted on a book this person has dutifully posted a Clancy or something along those same lines and every time he has been voted down, much to his great frustration. I would like to help him out here so I am turning to you, my readers. Can anyone recommend a novel about modern warfare (World War II to the present) that is not Tom Clancy or a Tom Clancy clone? It should have plenty of action, but still have useful discussion material and be less than five hundred pages.

I welcome any and all suggestions.

And Now For Something Completely Different: An Asperger with a British Sense of Humor

I co-chair a book club geared to those with Asperger Syndrome or otherwise on the high end of the autism spectrum. We meet every Thursday night at eight P.M at the Barnes and Noble on the Ohio State campus. This past week we finished Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I had read Good Omens once before, but, like most books by either Gaiman or Pratchett, it was worth reading a second time. Good Omens is a hilarious romp through the apocalypse featuring an angel and a demon who conspire together to save humanity from the forces of both Heaven and Hell. This is top of the line British humor, my favorite kind. British humor, though, is not something that can be appreciated by everyone. The reactions of the group were mixed. As I see it, British humor reflects on different elements of the Asperger mindset and, depending on the person and circumstance, can either work very well for those with Asperger Syndrome or can utterly fail.

British humor, as exemplified by Monty Python, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, entails manic insanity mixed with running gag references that span the cultural gambit and is usually quite dark. (For example Douglas Adams has the Earth blown to bits by aliens, building an interstellar freeway, in the first few chapters of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.) Good Omens deals with the world coming to an end next Saturday afternoon. Heaven and Hell are preparing for a final showdown in which, no matter who wins, humanity will lose. Unfortunately, due to an error on the part of a satanic nun, the anti-Christ has gone missing. Out to save the day are the unlikely pair of Aziraphale and Crowly; an angel and a demon who are in fact good friends and who rather like the Earth as it is. To those of you who are befuddled by this, not to worry; things only get more absurd as the book moves along. What keeps this all afloat is the fact that Good Omens is a satire on Paradise Lost and Revelations. It also makes fun of the Screwtape Letters, Star Wars, Doctor Who, televangelists, seventeenth century prophecies, witch-hunts, and James Bond just to name a few things.

British humor inundates the audience with strings of information, but revels in absolute absurdity. People with Asperger Syndrome are particularly suited to handling strings of information but are ill equipped to handle things that make no sense. British humor can be effective for such people if they have the necessary background to understand the references and if they can get past the fact that nothing makes any sense. One can then revel in how a given piece of British humor spits out information and how it follows its own innate logic off a cliff into perfectly “logical” absurdity. If the person with Asperger Syndrome does not pick up on the references, though, everything will backfire. All that would be left is a something that is all over the place and utterly overwhelming; in other words the sort of thing that those with Asperger Syndrome are woefully ill equipped to deal with.

The traditional assumption is that people with Asperger Syndrome have, in general, a difficult time dealing with humor. Humor is not logical and requires a certain flexibility in how one understands things. While this is particularly true in regards to British humor, British humor, because of how it uses strings of information, can, under the right circumstances, work very well for those with Asperger Syndrome.

Our next book is going to be Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This book also fits into the model of British humor. We shall see how the group deals with this one.

Terry Jones at Ohio State

Yesterday Terry Jones came to speak at Ohio State. For those who are not familiar with him, Terry Jones was a member of Monty Python, without question the greatest comedy group of all time. Jones had a particular talent for playing cranky old ladies. Here are my notes on the lecture. Any mistakes are my fault.

Translating Richard II
Introduction: We would like to welcome Terry Jones. In his youth he made fun of the great age of chivalry. It appears that he is now reformed. He is a serious scholar in his own right he wrote two books on Chaucer, Chaucer’s Knight and Who Murdered Chaucer. Chaucer’s patron was Richard II.
Terry Jones: One of the big problems about talking about Richard II is that most people do not know who he was. He is not Richard I. He did not murder Muslims and denigrate England. He is not Richard III. I googled Richard II and was asked if I meant Richard III. Richard II and Richard III have something in common in that they were the victims of spin.
So who was Richard II? Richard II ruled from 1377-99. He was overthrown and murdered. Shakespeare wrote a play about him. He portrayed him as ineffectual and mad. Historians have tended to portray him as a tyrant. He put his own people in power. He abolished legislation to curb his household expenses. Most have been a very rich court. He censored foreign correspondence. Made people pay bribes for pardons.
Now Richard thought of himself as a defender of the people. He and the king of France were the most valiant knights in all of Europe. What is the difference between a tyrant and a king? The Middle-Ages was full of books of rules for princes. They all stem from Aristotle. According to Aristotle kingship looks to the common interest. Tyranny looks to the interest of a single person. We can see this view of kingship in Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. Nothing to do with how much power you had. Machiavelli is the exception to this rule. He wrote a book of rules for tyrants not princes. He was a very naughty boy. (Brian’s mother’s voice as in “He is not the Messiah. He is a very naughty boy.”) Aristotle believed that theoretically a king was the best. Aquinas was writing for Hugh of Cyprus. It would not have been appropriate for Aquinas to say that middle class was the best form of rule.
Concentration of power was seen as a good thing. The king was the good father of the nation. Being the father meant submission and obedience. From this perspective we can understand Richard’s actions. They were about submission to the king. Once you submit to the king you can have mercy. Even the peasants were echoing the ideas of the court. It seems that Richard had a lot of support from that quarter. You cannot equate the rulers of the 14th century with modern day tyrants.
The aim of good government was peace. We can see this in such writers as Giles of Rome and Bartolus of Sassoferrato. In 1381 Richard II attempted to negotiate a peace treaty with France. In the period of 1377-81 quarter of a million pounds were spent on the military. Richard recognized that the war was bleeding him dry and wanted to end it. This put him in conflict with the military hawks of his day, Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel. Imagine if Jimmy Carter had Rumsfeld and Cheney as his advisors.
A truce was eventually achieved in 1396. Richard II married Isabelle, the seven year old daughter of the king of France. He was willing to put his sex life on hold.
According to Dante, as long as you have barons fighting at home you cannot have power rule.
Arundel was a pretty nasty piece of work. Richard attacked Arundel in parliament because Arundel attacked him. We see a constant pattern of calculated insults all through his reign. Arundel missed the funeral of Ann and then said he had to go. Richard struck him.
Richard was scared of Gloucester, his uncle. Gloucester also was a traitor. He worked against Richard’s attempts at peace. He would only accept an “honorable” peace which meant France giving England everything they wanted.
Not only were Gloucester and his allies plotting against the peace with France. They also violently rebelled. They demanded the right to investigate Richard’s household. 1387 they rebelled. This led to the Battle of Radcot Bridge. They killed many of Richard’s supporters. In 1388 we have the Merciless Parliament. In 1397 when Richard arrested these people he was taking out the ringleaders of 1388. Arundel was executed, Gloucester was exiled. Richard was very brave in personally going out to arrest his uncle.
Was Richard a megalomaniac as Henry IV claimed? It was claimed that Richard wasted money. He may have been a spoiled brat. Considering his upbringing he probably was. He had to act as he did. That was the fashion of royal courts. He had to keep up appearances. His first father in law was the Holy Roman Emperor. We cannot say he was vain. According to John of Salisbury, the king is God on earth. According to Thomas Aquinas, the king is the soul of the body. It was disingenuous for Walshingham in his chronicles to attack Richard. He knew that kings were expected.
Archbiship Thomas Arundel was sacked by Richard but came back into power under Henry IV. He gave a speech to parliament saying that now a man is going to be in power. This has been the spin for the past six hundred years.
If you compare Richard’s tomb to that of Henry IV you will see that Richard’s is much plainer.
Was Richard really so extravagant? He spent only 12,000 pounds during the 1386-89 period. He put up a lot of taxes such as the Wool tax in 1398. These taxes though were linked t o pardons for past rebellions.
Richard II has been accused of having poor counsel. The truth is that Richard chose intelligent people. He put in older people, expert men. The problem was that these people were not great nobles. They had middle class backgrounds. One was the son of a butcher another was the son of a merchant.
Was Richard II really unpopular? You have to keep in mind that Henry IV was a usurper. He murdered his own cousin. He wanted to make himself out as well respected. So he hired new scribes to write chronicles and he got the old ones to revise what they had written. Adam of Usk’s Chronicle was written in 1401. Dieulacres was a new scribe. Kirkstall worked for Richard II but he changes his tune once Henry took power. Letter Book H has several pages taken out. We can easily imagine what they contained. Henry tired to recruit Christine of Piza for his propaganda machine by arresting her son and blackmailing her. Christine refused to go along with this. You can see the revision of texts in the Vox Clamantis by John Gower. You can see Arundel’s hand. Gower liked Richard in the Confessions. He later though changed the dedication to Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV). But Henry was not yet the Duke of Lancaster in 1392.
Richard let people off who rebelled against him with simple fines. The peasants seemed to have liked him. During his campaign against Scotland Richard refused to take his men further because he knew his men did not have enough supplies. In doing this he went against John of Gaunt. People of London did not come to Henry’s side until Richard was caught. Six weeks. We have the example of Jencio the squire who refused to take off his badge of support for Richard and was jailed for this. Richard knighted the future Henry V. Henry V hated his father and was close to Richard. Even after Richard was captured and was clearly finished, people held on hope that he would somehow come back to power.
As to the issue of censorship. It was Henry IV who went after heresy in 1401. Thomas Arundel took the lead in this. Arundel made it a crime to read or even think anything heretical. He even had people quizzed as to their beliefs on a monthly basis.
After the speech I got the chance to say hello to Terry Jones. He, very nicely, autographed the inside sheet of my Holy Grail DVD.