403
Shylock is savouring revenge on Antonio for years of disgusting mistreatment, but the judge warns him to temper his demands.
In The Merchant of Venice, Antonio has helped his friend Bassanio by borrowing from a Jewish moneylender named Shylock. Antonio has always treated Shylock with disgusting scorn, so when he defaults on his bond Shylock goes gleefully to court to enforce the grisly penalty agreed: a pound of flesh — unaware that Bassanio’s wife Portia has pulled some strings and will judge the case herself, in disguise of course.
Posted May 11 2021
404
Sensing that the Great Fire of Rome in 64 (though entertaining) was damaging his public image, the Emperor Nero looked around for someone to blame.
In 64, a terrible fire swept Rome, and in little over a week two thirds of the city had been destroyed. The whole spectacle had been watched with fascination by the Emperor Nero, from a place of safety of course, strumming on his harp as he sang an epic lay of his own about the Fall of Troy. There were those who said that the whole catastrophe had been Nero’s idea of performance art.
Posted May 10 2021
405
Following the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, King Henry V instructed the Church of York to recognise the contribution of one of her eighth-century bishops.
Anyone who has watched William Shakespeare’s play Henry V knows that England’s unlikely victory at Agincourt on October 25th, 1415, came on the feast day of St Crispin and St Crispianus. What is less well known is that it was also a feast of St John of Beverley in Yorkshire, and that owing to a remarkable miracle the King himself instructed the Church of York to keep the day ever after with especial magnificence.
Posted May 8 2021
406
According to an ancient tradition, the Roman authorities banished St John the Divine to the island of Patmos because they were quite unable to kill him.
In the Revelation of St John, the ‘beloved disciple’ tells us that he spent some time on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. A tradition going back to Tertullian (155-220) says that John was banished there in 92 after frustrating the State’s attempt to execute him for his Christian beliefs. Pioneering English printer William Caxton translated the tale for his edition of The Golden Legend, published in 1483-84.
Posted May 8 2021
407
If only the primitive Christians had filled in the right forms and said that one man’s god is as good as another’s, they wouldn’t have had to die.
After telling the tale of St John’s banishment to the island of Patmos in 92, Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa (?1228-1298) and compiler of The Golden Legend, hazarded some guesses as to why the Roman Empire persecuted Christianity so pitilessly. The English translation below was made by William Caxton, pioneer of printing, in about 1483.
Posted May 8 2021
408
In 1607, settler Captain John Smith was captured by the Algonquin near the English colony at Jamestown, and watched his captors’ ceremonies with rising anxiety.
In 1607, English settlers founded a colony called Virginia on the east coast of North America, and established Jamestown in honour of King James I (r. 1603-1625). Settler John Smith (1580-1631), telling the story of the colony, recorded that in December that year he was captured by the Algonquin and would have been summarily executed, but for the intervention of a young girl.
Posted May 7 2021