Richard Cribb
He does monologues
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2003
- Messages
- 4,291
I know very well who he is, even if he looks more constipated on this image than certain others...Plotinus said:
Researchable PM-based history quiz
- Thread starter Plotinus
- Start date
Rambuchan said:Yeah, that's the one I recognised at first. Strange how The Artist Formerly Known As Prince pops up in two different quizes at the same time eh?
Oooops. Damn it, my edit button is broken. Sorry for giving the question away Plot.
Dear me - you're trying to sabotage everyone else's answers, aren't you! Don't listen to him, folks... next he'll try to tell you that the first one isn't Brian Blessed.
Rambuchan
The Funky President
It isn't Brian Blessed?! Oh shucks. Well I'll have to revise things and get back to you tmrw.Plotinus said:
Also - Doc are you going to enter for this or not? I want to know if my place in the 1 week old hall of fame is guaranteed or not. I simply can't bear this torture.
Doc Tsiolkovski
Deity
Just submitted.
But I bet Luce only waits until all of us have, and than easily doubles our combined score
.New entries and supplementary ones abound. Updated scores:
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
Doc Tsiolkovski 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Adso scorches into the lead! But it's still close and there's everything to play for...
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
Doc Tsiolkovski 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Adso scorches into the lead! But it's still close and there's everything to play for...
Rambuchan
The Funky President
WTH!? when did all this happen? 
Rambuchan
The Funky President
I mean the scoreboard tripled! I was happily leading with a very non-commital entry and fully expecting to walk away with it. Now the whole thing has opened up and my lead has been torn to peices. Oh woe is I.bed_head7 said:All of what?
EDIT - Are all the new entrants first time players of the PM quizzes? Being fairly new myself I don't recognise the names as those of previous participants. It's good to see more people taking part btw
Definitely good to see more people playing! Here's a revised score sheet:
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Doc Tsiolkovski 15
The good doctor takes the lead. Here's a hint for you all on question eight (no-one has yet identified all four people): there is a strong clue in one of those pictures.
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Doc Tsiolkovski 15
The good doctor takes the lead. Here's a hint for you all on question eight (no-one has yet identified all four people): there is a strong clue in one of those pictures.
Rambuchan
The Funky President
Well congrats to the good Doctor today then. 
I guess I'm defeated on this quiz.
I guess I'm defeated on this quiz.
Defeated? Never! Where's your fighting spirit?
Meanwhile, the clue to number eight was enough for Doc to work it out, gaining a point for identifying all four gentlemen and another for the link between them. Hence -
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Doc Tsiolkovski 17
Meanwhile, the clue to number eight was enough for Doc to work it out, gaining a point for identifying all four gentlemen and another for the link between them. Hence -
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Rambuchan 9
bed_head7 11
Adso de Fimnu 13
Doc Tsiolkovski 17
Oryctolagus
Warlord
Plotinus said:
What is the question here?
greekguy
Missed the Boat
Rambuchan said:EDIT - Are all the new entrants first time players of the PM quizzes? Being fairly new myself I don't recognise the names as those of previous participants. It's good to see more people taking part btw
i did a few of the PM quizes in the old thread that got closed down. i haven't done any of the ones in the new thread because i don't like the picture quizes very much. this one only had a few pictures...so i gave it a shot. also, the "research allowed" part was very attractive.
Oryctolagus said:
You need to work out who "he" is.
[EDIT] Adso got in some late supplementary answers, with the following effect:
vikingruler 1
greekguy 5
Oryctolagus 7
Rambuchan 9
bed_head7 11
Doc Tsiolkovski 17
Adso de Fimnu 18
So Adso slips into the lead. Can he maintain it?
Rambuchan
The Funky President
Cool to have you and the others around. When's this expire again Plot?greekguy said:i did a few of the PM quizes in the old thread that got closed down. i haven't done any of the ones in the new thread because i don't like the picture quizes very much. this one only had a few pictures...so i gave it a shot. also, the "research allowed" part was very attractive.
It expires right now! And here are the answers, in unnecessary detail.
(1) Which great reformer and philosopher, credited with igniting a renaissance in his own country, published his first book in Persian in 1803?
Ram Mohan Roy, one of the most significant figures in modern Indian culture.
The great-grandfather of the constructive partnership of Christianity and Hinduism was Ram Mohan Roy, who was born in Bengal in 1777 to a noble family (indeed, he could call himself a Rajah). Roy was highly educated and studied both Indian and Western languages and ancient texts, publishing a number of important translations and commentaries. Roys research led him to conclude that the basic ideas of most religions were essentially the same, revolving around a belief in God. Such a belief is innate to all people and the history of different religions is simply a history of how people have added to or otherwise obscured this belief. Instead, religion should aim to get back to its roots through the exercise of reason, since no-one should believe anything that is contrary to what can be demonstrated. Roy thus had a lot in common with the Deists of Enlightenment Europe indeed, his first book, published in 1803 and written in Persian, was entitled A gift to Deists. As a result, he came to question the then-prevalent interpretations of Hindu texts, and in particular what he regarded as the corrupt or degenerate perversions of Hindu religion. These were both cultic practices such as the use of idols in temples and social evils such as sati, the very practice which the British authorities were also trying to stamp out at the same time.
Roy wanted to escape what he regarded as the irrational claims to exclusivity of the different religions. It was in this spirit that he published The precepts of Jesus: the guide to peace and happiness in 1820, in which he praised the moral teachings of the New Testament. But Roys insistence on the basic agreement of Christianity and Hinduism on monotheism, and his attempt to examine Christian ethics apart from Christian doctrines such as the incarnation, led to controversy with missionaries in India. Roy argued that Jesus had taught that living a moral life is the way to salvation, something that angered some missionaries. And in 1821 he helped to set up the Calcutta Unitarian Committee to help promulgate Unitarianism, understood as the theological and moral teachings which bridged religions rather than divided them. The orthodox churches, in Roys view, had abandoned the worship of the true Creator for irrational rites and unworthy doctrines, such as the belief that God requires blood before he can exercise his mercy, or the division of God into Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Roys work, which included founding new schools, helped to spark what is sometimes called the Indian Renaissance in Bengal, and his sympathetic but critical engagement with Christianity from a reforming Hindu perspective left an important intellectual legacy. That legacy was fostered by the society he founded in 1828, the Brahmo Sabha, dedicated to the worship of the one true God. This society was later renamed the Brahmo Samaj, and under the influence of the philosopher Devendranath Tagore its members adopted the simple precepts to worship only God and to live virtuously.
(2) Who told the world in 1927 that they hadnt heard anything yet?
Al Jolson, in the film The Jazz Singer. Jolson plays the part of Jakie Rabinowitz (or Jack Robin), the son of a Jewish cantor, who defies his father to become a jazz singer. Contrary to popular belief, this film was not the first film with sound. There had been attempts to match sound to pictures before, and The Jazz Singer was actually mostly a silent film. But it was the first film to be widely seen that featured sound. In the famous sequence, Jolson suddenly says the following words:
Wait a minute, wait a minute, you aint heard nothin yet! Wait a minute, I tell ya! You aint heard nothin! You wanna hear Toot, Toot, Tootsie? All right, hold on, hold on. [Walks back to one of the band members.] Lou, listen. Play Toot, Toot, Tootsie, three chorus, you understand. In the third chorus, I whistle. Now give it to em hard and heavy, go right ahead.
And then he sings, and the movies would never be the same again.
(3) This object is valued at nearly half a million US dollars. What empire does it come from?
From China. It is a jade water buffalo from the Ming dynasty.
(4) What was this used for?
This is a fumie, which means picture to stamp on. By the early sixteenth century, the Jesuit missions in Japan had had great success, with some 300,000 Catholics now in the country. But there was still great resentment towards the Christians by some, including many local lords. Christians found themselves banished, or forbidden to preach, in various provinces. In 1614, Tokugawa Iyeyasu reversed his previous edict and ordered all missionaries out of the country, stating:
The Kiri****an band have come to Japan, not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities, but also longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow true doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country and obtain possession of the land. This is the germ of great disaster, and must be crushed.
Once again, this order was not enforced owing to more important political and dynastic struggles. But in 1616, Iyeyasu was succeeded by Tokugawa Hidetada, who was even more determined to put down Christianity. Under him, systematic searches for missionaries were carried out, especially in Nagasaki, where the Jesuits had had most success. Hidetadas son, Tokugawa Iyemitsu, who reigned from 1623 to 1651, completed the clampdown. There were more searches for missionaries still in the country, and all foreign ships were closely searched for hidden missionaries before they could dock. The mass burnings and beheadings continued, and the crowds, sometimes of thousands, who had gathered to watch the early ones and pray for the martyrs slowly dwindled. It is unknown quite how many people died in these extraordinarily merciless persecutions, though it was certainly thousands. Recognising that they could not realistically kill every single Christian in Japan, the authorities tortured many thousands more into renouncing their faith. They were forced to stamp or spit on icons of Christ, known as fumie, and many chose to do so when told that the alternative was for their friends to be executed. Many thousands of Christians perhaps hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes or lost their possessions.
Fumie were initially simple crosses or pictures of Jesus or Mary. But soon they were custom made, generally as bronze crucifixes or plaques. They were made at Nagasaki and sent out to local governors to test suspected Christians with. They remained in use throughout the Tokugawa period until 1858.
(5) Which US state became burned over in the 1830s?
New York state, the centre of Christian revivals from the 1820s. A key figure here was a Presbyterian minister named Charles Grandison Finney who preached in upstate New York. Finney was an original and compelling preacher, who transferred the style of the camp meetings of the rural South to a more urban environment, hiring halls and other venues for week-long meetings. A lawyer by training, Finney recognised the importance of rhetoric and emotional appeal in making a case: his sermons were marked by powerful reasoning and direct appeal to the listener, and his innovations included the appointment of ministers of music to ensure that the music at his services was as effective as possible. The revival spread throughout upstate New York, until Finney moved to New York City itself before accepting a teaching post in Ohio in 1835. That year saw the publication of his Lectures on Revivals of Religion, which defended his methods and was extremely influential. The effect of the revivals upon New York state and the surrounding area was intense: it was sometimes known as the burned-over district, an expression that evoked the speed and fury of a forest fire as well as its devastation.
(6) A certain man was known as the Columbus of subterranean Rome. Who was he and what did he do?
Antonio Bosio, born in 1576 in Malta, and died in 1629. When he was two, an underground cemetery was discovered in Rome. Most people thought it was a one-off, but Bosio was convinced there was more to be found. He studied an enormous number of books from antiquity to try to uncover the secrets that lay beneath the city, and when he found a lead, he would travel to the place indicated, search carefully for some long-lost stairway or tunnel, and enter. Bosios discoveries were incredible. Long tunnels, vast galleries, innumerable crypts. Virtually no-one know of his work, though, until three years after his death, when his Roma sotteranea was published, describing what he had found.
What had he found? The catacombs, which were used between the second century AD and the seventh. The catacombs were primarily places to bury the dead, and they were used by pagans, Jews, and Christians alike. But by the third century, the Christian burials were outnumbering the others. This was partly because the Christians, who believed in the future resurrection of the dead, did not practise cremation as pagans often did. Moreover, most Christians were still fairly poor. They could not afford normal burial plots, and so a lack of space led them to resort to digging caves instead. The early burials here are correspondingly simple: the dead are wrapped in white cloths and laid directly in the niches carved from the rock, without coffins, just as Jesus himself had been.
It is often thought that the catacombs were used for more than this. The Christians held services there, and even used them as hiding places during times of persecution. In fact, this romantic image is probably false. The catacombs do contain rooms with benches, suggesting some kind of use beyond simply burying people, and it is likely that services, including the Eucharist, were occasionally held there. But we shouldnt think of a scared community retreating en masse into the caves to escape the authorities, like Londoners hiding in bomb shelters during the Second World War.
However, there was a sense that the catacombs were a holy place. If they were founded out of financial pressure, they developed out of religious motives. They became extremely extensive. Most catacombs began with a stairway dug down to a depth of perhaps forty feet or more, which would then open out into the narrow galleries, with the niches on either side. Other passages would lead out from these galleries, leading to more, and stairs would lead down to deeper levels sometimes a total of three or four. The catacombs contained literally millions of bodies, and it has been estimated that if all the passages were laid out in a straight line, they would extend further than the length of Italy. Most of this was dug by the Christians themselves, working by lamplight, carrying the rock and soil to the surface in bags. In the catacombs the dead all lay as if in a vast dormitory. For that was, of course, what it was to the Christians, who believed that they would all rise together at Jesus return. The use of the catacombs, remote from the city, where all the dead lay together, reaffirmed the Christians sense of themselves as a community set apart, whose members were all in it together. Little wonder that rooms were set aside for holding services or remembering the dead for the Christians, like most Romans of this time, probably shared meals to remember the dead.
The catacombs also offer the first extensive collection of Christian art, for the Christians painted images onto the walls of the tombs and the chambers, just as the pagans and Jews did in their catacombs. A number of images are especially prominent. Jesus occurs frequently, as you would expect; he is generally represented as a young, beardless Roman. His youth is not only historically accurate (Jesus was probably in his early 30s when he died) but testifies to the youthfulness of the faith Jesus is, as it were, a young god, come to replace the old Roman cults. Jesus is often portrayed as a healer, laying his hands or a staff on the sick and the dying. This contrasts with traditional Roman religion, where Asclepius (the Roman god of healing) is never seen to touch people in this way. Thus, Jesus, in these images, is much closer to the people than the old Roman gods. Jesus is also portrayed as the Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep on his shoulders, to represent the way he carries the believers soul.
(1) Which great reformer and philosopher, credited with igniting a renaissance in his own country, published his first book in Persian in 1803?
Ram Mohan Roy, one of the most significant figures in modern Indian culture.
The great-grandfather of the constructive partnership of Christianity and Hinduism was Ram Mohan Roy, who was born in Bengal in 1777 to a noble family (indeed, he could call himself a Rajah). Roy was highly educated and studied both Indian and Western languages and ancient texts, publishing a number of important translations and commentaries. Roys research led him to conclude that the basic ideas of most religions were essentially the same, revolving around a belief in God. Such a belief is innate to all people and the history of different religions is simply a history of how people have added to or otherwise obscured this belief. Instead, religion should aim to get back to its roots through the exercise of reason, since no-one should believe anything that is contrary to what can be demonstrated. Roy thus had a lot in common with the Deists of Enlightenment Europe indeed, his first book, published in 1803 and written in Persian, was entitled A gift to Deists. As a result, he came to question the then-prevalent interpretations of Hindu texts, and in particular what he regarded as the corrupt or degenerate perversions of Hindu religion. These were both cultic practices such as the use of idols in temples and social evils such as sati, the very practice which the British authorities were also trying to stamp out at the same time.
Roy wanted to escape what he regarded as the irrational claims to exclusivity of the different religions. It was in this spirit that he published The precepts of Jesus: the guide to peace and happiness in 1820, in which he praised the moral teachings of the New Testament. But Roys insistence on the basic agreement of Christianity and Hinduism on monotheism, and his attempt to examine Christian ethics apart from Christian doctrines such as the incarnation, led to controversy with missionaries in India. Roy argued that Jesus had taught that living a moral life is the way to salvation, something that angered some missionaries. And in 1821 he helped to set up the Calcutta Unitarian Committee to help promulgate Unitarianism, understood as the theological and moral teachings which bridged religions rather than divided them. The orthodox churches, in Roys view, had abandoned the worship of the true Creator for irrational rites and unworthy doctrines, such as the belief that God requires blood before he can exercise his mercy, or the division of God into Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Roys work, which included founding new schools, helped to spark what is sometimes called the Indian Renaissance in Bengal, and his sympathetic but critical engagement with Christianity from a reforming Hindu perspective left an important intellectual legacy. That legacy was fostered by the society he founded in 1828, the Brahmo Sabha, dedicated to the worship of the one true God. This society was later renamed the Brahmo Samaj, and under the influence of the philosopher Devendranath Tagore its members adopted the simple precepts to worship only God and to live virtuously.
(2) Who told the world in 1927 that they hadnt heard anything yet?
Al Jolson, in the film The Jazz Singer. Jolson plays the part of Jakie Rabinowitz (or Jack Robin), the son of a Jewish cantor, who defies his father to become a jazz singer. Contrary to popular belief, this film was not the first film with sound. There had been attempts to match sound to pictures before, and The Jazz Singer was actually mostly a silent film. But it was the first film to be widely seen that featured sound. In the famous sequence, Jolson suddenly says the following words:
Wait a minute, wait a minute, you aint heard nothin yet! Wait a minute, I tell ya! You aint heard nothin! You wanna hear Toot, Toot, Tootsie? All right, hold on, hold on. [Walks back to one of the band members.] Lou, listen. Play Toot, Toot, Tootsie, three chorus, you understand. In the third chorus, I whistle. Now give it to em hard and heavy, go right ahead.
And then he sings, and the movies would never be the same again.
(3) This object is valued at nearly half a million US dollars. What empire does it come from?
From China. It is a jade water buffalo from the Ming dynasty.
(4) What was this used for?
This is a fumie, which means picture to stamp on. By the early sixteenth century, the Jesuit missions in Japan had had great success, with some 300,000 Catholics now in the country. But there was still great resentment towards the Christians by some, including many local lords. Christians found themselves banished, or forbidden to preach, in various provinces. In 1614, Tokugawa Iyeyasu reversed his previous edict and ordered all missionaries out of the country, stating:
The Kiri****an band have come to Japan, not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities, but also longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow true doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country and obtain possession of the land. This is the germ of great disaster, and must be crushed.
Once again, this order was not enforced owing to more important political and dynastic struggles. But in 1616, Iyeyasu was succeeded by Tokugawa Hidetada, who was even more determined to put down Christianity. Under him, systematic searches for missionaries were carried out, especially in Nagasaki, where the Jesuits had had most success. Hidetadas son, Tokugawa Iyemitsu, who reigned from 1623 to 1651, completed the clampdown. There were more searches for missionaries still in the country, and all foreign ships were closely searched for hidden missionaries before they could dock. The mass burnings and beheadings continued, and the crowds, sometimes of thousands, who had gathered to watch the early ones and pray for the martyrs slowly dwindled. It is unknown quite how many people died in these extraordinarily merciless persecutions, though it was certainly thousands. Recognising that they could not realistically kill every single Christian in Japan, the authorities tortured many thousands more into renouncing their faith. They were forced to stamp or spit on icons of Christ, known as fumie, and many chose to do so when told that the alternative was for their friends to be executed. Many thousands of Christians perhaps hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes or lost their possessions.
Fumie were initially simple crosses or pictures of Jesus or Mary. But soon they were custom made, generally as bronze crucifixes or plaques. They were made at Nagasaki and sent out to local governors to test suspected Christians with. They remained in use throughout the Tokugawa period until 1858.
(5) Which US state became burned over in the 1830s?
New York state, the centre of Christian revivals from the 1820s. A key figure here was a Presbyterian minister named Charles Grandison Finney who preached in upstate New York. Finney was an original and compelling preacher, who transferred the style of the camp meetings of the rural South to a more urban environment, hiring halls and other venues for week-long meetings. A lawyer by training, Finney recognised the importance of rhetoric and emotional appeal in making a case: his sermons were marked by powerful reasoning and direct appeal to the listener, and his innovations included the appointment of ministers of music to ensure that the music at his services was as effective as possible. The revival spread throughout upstate New York, until Finney moved to New York City itself before accepting a teaching post in Ohio in 1835. That year saw the publication of his Lectures on Revivals of Religion, which defended his methods and was extremely influential. The effect of the revivals upon New York state and the surrounding area was intense: it was sometimes known as the burned-over district, an expression that evoked the speed and fury of a forest fire as well as its devastation.
(6) A certain man was known as the Columbus of subterranean Rome. Who was he and what did he do?
Antonio Bosio, born in 1576 in Malta, and died in 1629. When he was two, an underground cemetery was discovered in Rome. Most people thought it was a one-off, but Bosio was convinced there was more to be found. He studied an enormous number of books from antiquity to try to uncover the secrets that lay beneath the city, and when he found a lead, he would travel to the place indicated, search carefully for some long-lost stairway or tunnel, and enter. Bosios discoveries were incredible. Long tunnels, vast galleries, innumerable crypts. Virtually no-one know of his work, though, until three years after his death, when his Roma sotteranea was published, describing what he had found.
What had he found? The catacombs, which were used between the second century AD and the seventh. The catacombs were primarily places to bury the dead, and they were used by pagans, Jews, and Christians alike. But by the third century, the Christian burials were outnumbering the others. This was partly because the Christians, who believed in the future resurrection of the dead, did not practise cremation as pagans often did. Moreover, most Christians were still fairly poor. They could not afford normal burial plots, and so a lack of space led them to resort to digging caves instead. The early burials here are correspondingly simple: the dead are wrapped in white cloths and laid directly in the niches carved from the rock, without coffins, just as Jesus himself had been.
It is often thought that the catacombs were used for more than this. The Christians held services there, and even used them as hiding places during times of persecution. In fact, this romantic image is probably false. The catacombs do contain rooms with benches, suggesting some kind of use beyond simply burying people, and it is likely that services, including the Eucharist, were occasionally held there. But we shouldnt think of a scared community retreating en masse into the caves to escape the authorities, like Londoners hiding in bomb shelters during the Second World War.
However, there was a sense that the catacombs were a holy place. If they were founded out of financial pressure, they developed out of religious motives. They became extremely extensive. Most catacombs began with a stairway dug down to a depth of perhaps forty feet or more, which would then open out into the narrow galleries, with the niches on either side. Other passages would lead out from these galleries, leading to more, and stairs would lead down to deeper levels sometimes a total of three or four. The catacombs contained literally millions of bodies, and it has been estimated that if all the passages were laid out in a straight line, they would extend further than the length of Italy. Most of this was dug by the Christians themselves, working by lamplight, carrying the rock and soil to the surface in bags. In the catacombs the dead all lay as if in a vast dormitory. For that was, of course, what it was to the Christians, who believed that they would all rise together at Jesus return. The use of the catacombs, remote from the city, where all the dead lay together, reaffirmed the Christians sense of themselves as a community set apart, whose members were all in it together. Little wonder that rooms were set aside for holding services or remembering the dead for the Christians, like most Romans of this time, probably shared meals to remember the dead.
The catacombs also offer the first extensive collection of Christian art, for the Christians painted images onto the walls of the tombs and the chambers, just as the pagans and Jews did in their catacombs. A number of images are especially prominent. Jesus occurs frequently, as you would expect; he is generally represented as a young, beardless Roman. His youth is not only historically accurate (Jesus was probably in his early 30s when he died) but testifies to the youthfulness of the faith Jesus is, as it were, a young god, come to replace the old Roman cults. Jesus is often portrayed as a healer, laying his hands or a staff on the sick and the dying. This contrasts with traditional Roman religion, where Asclepius (the Roman god of healing) is never seen to touch people in this way. Thus, Jesus, in these images, is much closer to the people than the old Roman gods. Jesus is also portrayed as the Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep on his shoulders, to represent the way he carries the believers soul.
(7) This form of writing
Hes considered the father
Tried to live lightly
The question is of course a haiku, a poem of three lines, where the first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five again. The person generally regarded as the father of this form of verse is Matsuo Munefusa, better known as Basho. Basho was born into a noble samurai family in 1644, but he became a wondering poet, eventually settling in Edo, where he wrote poetry in a hut made of plantain leaves (basho means plantain). He simplified and popularised the haiku form, which had been developing already, and aimed to use it to express Zen Buddhism and the insights of meditation. Poetry, in Bashos view, should help the reader on the path to enlightenment. Here is one of his haiku, written towards the end of his life:
Kono michi ya
Yuku hito nashi ni
Aki no kure.
Which has been translated as
All along this road
Not a single soul only
Autumn evening.
(8) What do all these people have in common?
They all had sight in only one eye.
The first picture is Hannibal Barca. In the spring of 217 BC, having crossed the Alps and defeated P. Cornelius Scipio at the River Tricinus and Sempronius Longus at the River Trebbia, Hannibal marched towards another victory at Lake Trasimeno. On the way, he suffered an eye infection, and lost the sight in one eye.
The second picture is Robert Johnson, the most important musician of the twentieth century. Johnson is generally considered the greatest blues singer of all time his greatness lies partly in the fact that he absorbed the music of earlier figures such as Son House, Skip James, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and many others and brilliantly combined them into a new style that was at once traditional and new. He brought a new, almost arthouse sophistication to the Delta blues, which had previously been typically rather rough. And his legend was made complete when he died in mysterious circumstances in 1938, at the age of about 27 poisoned by a jealous lover, some said, or the victim of a voodoo curse, according to others. The location of his grave is unknown. In later years, when Johnsons music was rediscovered in the 1960s, surviving contemporaries (including Son House) insisted that Johnson had acquired his extraordinary gift for the guitar by making a pact with the devil his soul for the music. The blues was, after all, considered the devils music, and Johnsons complaint that he had a hellhound on his trail, that he was sinking down at the crossroads, and his violent early death all seemed to confirm it. At least, so it was said.
It is a little-known fact that Robert Johnson suffered from a cataract, making him blind in one eye.
The third picture is Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the exchequer and a near-certainty to become the next prime minister when Tony Blair decides hes had enough. Brown lost an eye playing rugby as a young man.
The fourth picture is Jan Zizka, the brilliant general of the Hussites. Zizka was born in 1370 and became a mercenary, a career in which he lost an eye. But after the death of Jan Hus (executed for heresy by the Council of Constance in 1415) he joined the Hussites and formed an army known as the Taborites, because they were based at Tabor. Most of them were peasants, but Jan Zizka was a brilliant military commander indeed, one of the greatest geniuses at guerrilla warfare of all time. Zizka had his forces train with the hoes and rakes they were used to wielding, rather than try to find real weapons, which they couldnt afford anyway. He recognised that such implements could be deadly when used with skill, and he also used the farm carts and wagons that his troops usually drove almost as mobile fortresses. The Hussites would park their carts in a circle, like US frontiersmen, and fight from them. Zizka developed other tricks too famously putting all the horses shoes on backwards, so that the enemy could not track them and he was the first military commander to use artillery in field battles, rather than simply to attack fortresses as had been done before. Throughout the 1420s, the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, launched a series of crusades against the Hussites, all of which were repelled by Zizka and his ragtag forces. Zizka always commanded his troops in person, even though in 1521 he lost his other eye and was therefore completely blind.
Zizka died in 1424, but the Hussites continued to be a fearsome military force: in 1437, one opposing army turned tail and fled simply at the sound of their battle song. Most of the pictures of Jan Zizka like this one portray him at the start of his Hussite career, when he still had one eye.
(9) The doctrine of Three Selves originated in Clapham and is big today in China. What are the three selves?
Nothing to do with Buddhism or Taoism! In fact it came from the Londoner Henry Venn, born in 1796 to a notable Evangelical family. His father, John Venn, was a leader of the Clapham Sect of London Evangelicals who combined spiritual concern with social action, seeking to preach the Gospel to free people from sin whilst also campaigning for the abolition of slavery. Henry Venn was a fierce advocate, in particular, for the rights of Africans, and had a strong sense of their abilities: unlike many in his day, he believed that Africans were just as intelligent and capable as Europeans. In 1841, Venn became secretary of the Church Missionary Society and sought to put his principles into action. He formulated the Three Selves principle: the churches founded by the society overseas should become self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating. This meant that a priority of missionaries should be to train local clergy to run the churches themselves, so that they could be independent of Europeans and launch missions of their own. Moreover, the churches that were founded should not be carbon copies of European churches: Venn had no interest in transplantation, the attempt to impose European culture upon other peoples together with European religions. Thus, although the CMS existed to send missions, those missions should ideally be temporary and end with euthanasia, a good death, because they were no longer needed. He likened the mission to the scaffolding, essential to the building of the church, but removed at its completion. Venn even dared to contemplate something very controversial: native bishops even black bishops an idea also vigorously supported by the Evangelical preacher Hugh Stowell, who denounced racist attitudes wherever he found them. Thus, the CMS rejected the idea, popular with many Anglicans, of the missionary bishop, an Englishman sent out to be bishop of the area being evangelised. In his thinking, Venn was typical of many involved in nineteenth-century mission, at least in the first half of the century. His American counterpart was Rufus Anderson, secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission, and he had much the same viewpoint.
In the twentieth century, especially beginning in the 1920s, there was a strong indigenising movement in Chinese Christianity which tried to break the ties with foreign churches as much as possible. When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, this attempt was stepped up. The new government officially tolerated Christianity regarding it as something that would die out of its own accord and many Protestant leaders hoped to cooperate with it to some degree. A meeting of the National Christian Council in 1949 concluded that the indigenising movement should be stepped up, with all efforts made to ensure that all Chinese churches were as free from dependence upon foreign churches as possible. This view was strongly endorsed by the government, and negotiations between government officials and church leaders produced, in 1950, a document known as the Chinese Christian Manifesto. The document was drawn up by Wu Yao-tsung, or Y.T. Wu, a leading Christian intellectual, and it was ratified by about half the Protestant churches in China.
Wu had studied at New York where he had converted to Christianity after reading the Sermon on the Mount. He had been on the editorial team of Life magazine in the 1920s, and he had a deep concern not only to make Christianity relevant within a Chinese philosophical context but to take a leading role in social welfare. Wu was very sympathetic to Marxism, and felt that Christianity in China had somehow failed to realise its true nature as a movement to help the poor and dispossessed: instead, he believed, it had become a tool of foreign imperialism and oppression. Instead, the religion needed to respond to the Communist challenge by getting back to its roots as represented by Jesus teachings. Thus, his Manifesto was a strong denunciation of imperialism (especially American imperialism), and promised that
The Christian churches and groups of China shall use all means at our disposal to foster within our congregations the spirit of a patriotic people and a sense of personal pride and accomplishment In terms of social activities we will carry out social services geared to the people and emphasising anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-bureaucratic capitalistic education, labour production, revolutionary consciousness, literary activities, and improvements in literacy, health and infant care.
Wus Manifesto was an important influence on the san-tzu movement, or Three Selves, that appeared in its wake. The movement sought to make all Chinese churches self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating, and Wu himself was its guiding light. At the same time, many churches organised denunciation meetings, at which imperialist that is, foreign elements were denounced. Anyone could be a victim of such a denunciation. T.C. Chao, a theological ally of Y.T. Wu, was denounced and lost his university post. More well known was the case of Wang Ming-tao, whose independent Protestant church in Beijing was self-supporting, but who believed that the Three Selves Movement and associated elements were too theologically liberal, and that Christians should not meddle in politics. The 1950s saw him denounced more than once, arrested (on political charges, of course), released and re-arrested, wrecking his health in the process, and finally left in a cell for twenty-two years before his eventual release in 1979. Meanwhile, the Three Selves Movement Committee, under Y.T Wu as its chairman, took over the management of most of these churches. This actually meant the closing of many churches, because ministers were increasingly required to spend more time in productive labour; congregations were therefore combined and met at a smaller number of bigger churches with fewer ministers. The ministers who remained were required to preach about the struggle of good and evil in the physical world and the role of hard work and patriotism in this struggle. References to other-worldly things, such as the return of Christ and the end of the world, were discouraged.
Today, the Three-Selves Movement underpins the Christian Council of China, the official, united Protestant church of China. There are some 12,000 Protestant churches under its aegis, with 15 million believers. But no-one knows quite how many unofficial, illegal house churches survive, of Christians who reject the CCC and its collaboration with the Chinese government and its typically liberal theology. In fact, right now these illegal Christians are suffering increased persecution as the Chinese authorities try to clamp down on unofficial religious activity.
Hes considered the father
Tried to live lightly
The question is of course a haiku, a poem of three lines, where the first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five again. The person generally regarded as the father of this form of verse is Matsuo Munefusa, better known as Basho. Basho was born into a noble samurai family in 1644, but he became a wondering poet, eventually settling in Edo, where he wrote poetry in a hut made of plantain leaves (basho means plantain). He simplified and popularised the haiku form, which had been developing already, and aimed to use it to express Zen Buddhism and the insights of meditation. Poetry, in Bashos view, should help the reader on the path to enlightenment. Here is one of his haiku, written towards the end of his life:
Kono michi ya
Yuku hito nashi ni
Aki no kure.
Which has been translated as
All along this road
Not a single soul only
Autumn evening.
(8) What do all these people have in common?
They all had sight in only one eye.
The first picture is Hannibal Barca. In the spring of 217 BC, having crossed the Alps and defeated P. Cornelius Scipio at the River Tricinus and Sempronius Longus at the River Trebbia, Hannibal marched towards another victory at Lake Trasimeno. On the way, he suffered an eye infection, and lost the sight in one eye.
The second picture is Robert Johnson, the most important musician of the twentieth century. Johnson is generally considered the greatest blues singer of all time his greatness lies partly in the fact that he absorbed the music of earlier figures such as Son House, Skip James, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and many others and brilliantly combined them into a new style that was at once traditional and new. He brought a new, almost arthouse sophistication to the Delta blues, which had previously been typically rather rough. And his legend was made complete when he died in mysterious circumstances in 1938, at the age of about 27 poisoned by a jealous lover, some said, or the victim of a voodoo curse, according to others. The location of his grave is unknown. In later years, when Johnsons music was rediscovered in the 1960s, surviving contemporaries (including Son House) insisted that Johnson had acquired his extraordinary gift for the guitar by making a pact with the devil his soul for the music. The blues was, after all, considered the devils music, and Johnsons complaint that he had a hellhound on his trail, that he was sinking down at the crossroads, and his violent early death all seemed to confirm it. At least, so it was said.
It is a little-known fact that Robert Johnson suffered from a cataract, making him blind in one eye.
The third picture is Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the exchequer and a near-certainty to become the next prime minister when Tony Blair decides hes had enough. Brown lost an eye playing rugby as a young man.
The fourth picture is Jan Zizka, the brilliant general of the Hussites. Zizka was born in 1370 and became a mercenary, a career in which he lost an eye. But after the death of Jan Hus (executed for heresy by the Council of Constance in 1415) he joined the Hussites and formed an army known as the Taborites, because they were based at Tabor. Most of them were peasants, but Jan Zizka was a brilliant military commander indeed, one of the greatest geniuses at guerrilla warfare of all time. Zizka had his forces train with the hoes and rakes they were used to wielding, rather than try to find real weapons, which they couldnt afford anyway. He recognised that such implements could be deadly when used with skill, and he also used the farm carts and wagons that his troops usually drove almost as mobile fortresses. The Hussites would park their carts in a circle, like US frontiersmen, and fight from them. Zizka developed other tricks too famously putting all the horses shoes on backwards, so that the enemy could not track them and he was the first military commander to use artillery in field battles, rather than simply to attack fortresses as had been done before. Throughout the 1420s, the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, launched a series of crusades against the Hussites, all of which were repelled by Zizka and his ragtag forces. Zizka always commanded his troops in person, even though in 1521 he lost his other eye and was therefore completely blind.
Zizka died in 1424, but the Hussites continued to be a fearsome military force: in 1437, one opposing army turned tail and fled simply at the sound of their battle song. Most of the pictures of Jan Zizka like this one portray him at the start of his Hussite career, when he still had one eye.
(9) The doctrine of Three Selves originated in Clapham and is big today in China. What are the three selves?
Nothing to do with Buddhism or Taoism! In fact it came from the Londoner Henry Venn, born in 1796 to a notable Evangelical family. His father, John Venn, was a leader of the Clapham Sect of London Evangelicals who combined spiritual concern with social action, seeking to preach the Gospel to free people from sin whilst also campaigning for the abolition of slavery. Henry Venn was a fierce advocate, in particular, for the rights of Africans, and had a strong sense of their abilities: unlike many in his day, he believed that Africans were just as intelligent and capable as Europeans. In 1841, Venn became secretary of the Church Missionary Society and sought to put his principles into action. He formulated the Three Selves principle: the churches founded by the society overseas should become self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating. This meant that a priority of missionaries should be to train local clergy to run the churches themselves, so that they could be independent of Europeans and launch missions of their own. Moreover, the churches that were founded should not be carbon copies of European churches: Venn had no interest in transplantation, the attempt to impose European culture upon other peoples together with European religions. Thus, although the CMS existed to send missions, those missions should ideally be temporary and end with euthanasia, a good death, because they were no longer needed. He likened the mission to the scaffolding, essential to the building of the church, but removed at its completion. Venn even dared to contemplate something very controversial: native bishops even black bishops an idea also vigorously supported by the Evangelical preacher Hugh Stowell, who denounced racist attitudes wherever he found them. Thus, the CMS rejected the idea, popular with many Anglicans, of the missionary bishop, an Englishman sent out to be bishop of the area being evangelised. In his thinking, Venn was typical of many involved in nineteenth-century mission, at least in the first half of the century. His American counterpart was Rufus Anderson, secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission, and he had much the same viewpoint.
In the twentieth century, especially beginning in the 1920s, there was a strong indigenising movement in Chinese Christianity which tried to break the ties with foreign churches as much as possible. When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, this attempt was stepped up. The new government officially tolerated Christianity regarding it as something that would die out of its own accord and many Protestant leaders hoped to cooperate with it to some degree. A meeting of the National Christian Council in 1949 concluded that the indigenising movement should be stepped up, with all efforts made to ensure that all Chinese churches were as free from dependence upon foreign churches as possible. This view was strongly endorsed by the government, and negotiations between government officials and church leaders produced, in 1950, a document known as the Chinese Christian Manifesto. The document was drawn up by Wu Yao-tsung, or Y.T. Wu, a leading Christian intellectual, and it was ratified by about half the Protestant churches in China.
Wu had studied at New York where he had converted to Christianity after reading the Sermon on the Mount. He had been on the editorial team of Life magazine in the 1920s, and he had a deep concern not only to make Christianity relevant within a Chinese philosophical context but to take a leading role in social welfare. Wu was very sympathetic to Marxism, and felt that Christianity in China had somehow failed to realise its true nature as a movement to help the poor and dispossessed: instead, he believed, it had become a tool of foreign imperialism and oppression. Instead, the religion needed to respond to the Communist challenge by getting back to its roots as represented by Jesus teachings. Thus, his Manifesto was a strong denunciation of imperialism (especially American imperialism), and promised that
The Christian churches and groups of China shall use all means at our disposal to foster within our congregations the spirit of a patriotic people and a sense of personal pride and accomplishment In terms of social activities we will carry out social services geared to the people and emphasising anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-bureaucratic capitalistic education, labour production, revolutionary consciousness, literary activities, and improvements in literacy, health and infant care.
Wus Manifesto was an important influence on the san-tzu movement, or Three Selves, that appeared in its wake. The movement sought to make all Chinese churches self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating, and Wu himself was its guiding light. At the same time, many churches organised denunciation meetings, at which imperialist that is, foreign elements were denounced. Anyone could be a victim of such a denunciation. T.C. Chao, a theological ally of Y.T. Wu, was denounced and lost his university post. More well known was the case of Wang Ming-tao, whose independent Protestant church in Beijing was self-supporting, but who believed that the Three Selves Movement and associated elements were too theologically liberal, and that Christians should not meddle in politics. The 1950s saw him denounced more than once, arrested (on political charges, of course), released and re-arrested, wrecking his health in the process, and finally left in a cell for twenty-two years before his eventual release in 1979. Meanwhile, the Three Selves Movement Committee, under Y.T Wu as its chairman, took over the management of most of these churches. This actually meant the closing of many churches, because ministers were increasingly required to spend more time in productive labour; congregations were therefore combined and met at a smaller number of bigger churches with fewer ministers. The ministers who remained were required to preach about the struggle of good and evil in the physical world and the role of hard work and patriotism in this struggle. References to other-worldly things, such as the return of Christ and the end of the world, were discouraged.
Today, the Three-Selves Movement underpins the Christian Council of China, the official, united Protestant church of China. There are some 12,000 Protestant churches under its aegis, with 15 million believers. But no-one knows quite how many unofficial, illegal house churches survive, of Christians who reject the CCC and its collaboration with the Chinese government and its typically liberal theology. In fact, right now these illegal Christians are suffering increased persecution as the Chinese authorities try to clamp down on unofficial religious activity.
(10) Which American soldier, known for his ability to escape, was confined for 30 days and fined $90 after being absent without leave from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina?
At that time he was just a drifter spending some time in the military, but five years later Terrence Steven McQueen would start studying acting and drop his first name!
(11) I saw a whole load of these in the British Museum the other day. What kingdom did the British nick them from?
They are from Benin, in modern-day Nigeria. In the sixteenth century, the mighty kingdom of Benin, having conquered its neighbours and built an empire on the West African coast, developed advanced bronze and copper casting techniques, and began to produce the famous bronze statues, busts, and plaques. It was under Oba (king) Esigie, who ruled from 1504 to 1550, that Portuguese trade was developed and the most famous bronze casts created. These were an extensive series of bas-reliefs, made to adorn the Obas palace. They depict the whole world of sixteenth-century Benin court life, especially the military, and in their breadth and extent have been likened to the Bayeux Tapestry.
Why do the British have them now? The answer concerns James Phillips, who became acting consul general of the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1897. Phillips believed that the Oba, who was theoretically subject to the protectorate, was obstructing British trading interests in the region. So, acting against the orders of Whitehall, and against the request of the Oba himself, who asked him not to enter Benin City during a period of religious rituals, Phillips set off with his team to overthrow the Oba. They were ambushed by a group of Beninite warriors and, unable to retrieve their revolvers from their baggage, were killed.
The British naturally regarded this as an illegal attack on British interests, and a Punitive Expedition was sent out, with the usual result. The Maxim guns wiped out the forces of Benin, Benin City was burned, the Oba was deposed and exiled, and vast amounts of art treasures were looted in reparations for the cost of the war. Today, Obas sit once again on the ancient throne in Benin City, for the line was restored and still rules as a tribal governor within Nigeria, although the Obas today have no real power. The fact that the treasures looted in 1897 are still mostly in the British Museum is a bone of contention between Britain and Nigeria, like many other such disputes, and there is a long-running campaign to have them returned. In the meantime, the Nigerian government spends large sums on buying the treasures of Benin whenever they appear for auction.
(12) Which famous figure of Southeast Asia claims to live in the House of Sin?
Jaime Sin, who became archbishop of Manila in 1974 and a cardinal in 1976. Cardinal Sin was a major opponent of the Marcos regime. In 1986, Corazon Aquino, the widow of a murdered opposition leader, won the popular vote in the presidential election, but the national assembly declared Marcos the winner. The people took to the streets in protest, and Sin took a leading role, making radio broadcasts urging people to particular locations to block the troops from preventing the coup. Such blocking, Sin insisted, should be done non-violently, and his intervention helped to prevent loss of life as the troops were held back and Aquino successfully took the presidency. Cardinal Sin was not only aware of the incongruity of his name in English but was quite amused by it, and would greet visitors to his home with the words, Welcome to the house of Sin.
Cardinal Sin died on 21 June 2005, making this an unexpectedly timely question.
(13) He was a king who gave up his throne to his brother in order to sail into the unknown with 2,000 ships. He was never heard of again, but some believe he found a new land and his descendants are still there. Who was he?
Mansa Abubakri II of Mali, the brother of the more famous Mansa Musa.
In 1311, Abubakari II launched a mighty expedition to see if, like the great river Niger, the Atlantic Ocean had a further bank. First he sent 200 ships, laden with supplies, west beyond the horizon. A single ship returned, telling of a current in the middle of the sea - like a river - that sucked the other ships west. Abubakari decided not only to send 2,000 more ships after the first lot, full of men and supplies, but to lead this second expedition himself. He abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Musa, sailed west with his men, and was never heard of again.
What did Abubakari find? According to some theories, he successfully landed in America. The evidence for this includes the fact that Christopher Columbus himself wrote of black-skinned American natives selling him spears which, when analysed, were found to contain the same alloys, in the same proportions, as African spears.
The theory is most associated with the Malian historian Gaoussou Diawara, and has been alternately embraced and denounced by other historians. In particular, many historians refuse to take into account the tales still told in modern West Africa by the griots, or oral poets and historians. Many of their stories about Mansa Abubakari II are only now being told, because for many years the griots regarded his abdication and quest for adventure as a shameful act of betrayal against his own kingdom.
(14) Medieval and Renaissance artists loved to paint saints. But it wasnt known what most saints actually looked like. So a system of symbols developed to let you know which saint was depicted. For example, Sebastian was generally shown holding an arrow, since he had been killed by arrows, and Peter was generally shown holding keys, since Jesus was said to have given him the keys of heaven. Can you work out who all the saints are in the following pictures?
I like playing this game in art galleries. All right, maybe its just me.
Most people thought number one was Mark, because of the lion. In fact, a lion can also be shown with hermit saints as a symbol of solitude or with martyrs (such as Ignatius of Antioch, traditionally thought to have been killed by lions). The saint who is normally shown with a lion is Jerome, because of the legend that, like Androcles, he befriended a lion by pulling a thorn out of its paw. You can tell that this saint is indeed Jerome because he is dressed in red as a cardinal, which is how Jerome is traditionally represented. In fact there were no such things as cardinals in Jeromes time he was only a priest and a hermit but the other ancient Doctors of the Church all had important ecclesiastical positions, so artists wanted to give Jerome one as well. He was secretary to Pope Damasus I before becoming a hermit, so since he was an important figure in the Popes retinue it was thought appropriate to show him as a cardinal. This picture is a little unusual in showing him as a relatively young man, presumably while he was still in Rome. It is more usual to show Jerome as an aged ascetic with a long beard.
The Papal crown and staff in the top right of the second picture indicates that this is a Pope. The pen and book show that it is one known for writing. That ought to suggest Gregory the Great, like Jerome a Doctor of the Church and one of the most read and loved authors in the Middle Ages. This is confirmed by the dove by his head. Gregory is traditionally represented as listening to a dove, which is the Holy Spirit whispering to him as he writes for Gregorys works were so important they were believed to have been divinely inspired. In this picture, though, Gregory seems rather annoyed to be distracted by the bird.
The third one is of course Catherine of Alexandria, with the wheel on which she was put to death. Most martyrs are traditionally represented as holding the thing that killed them, rather grotesquely.
(15) Which prophet wore nothing but a white robe, carried nothing but a bamboo cross and a bowl, and was accompanied by no-one but his three wives?
The very extraordinary William Wade Harris, a Grebo one of the indigenous peoples of Liberia who had been brought up as a Methodist but converted to the Church of England. He had tried to organise a revolution to turn Liberia over to the British crown; upon its failure he had been thrown into prison. Here, every night, he had a vision of the Archangel Gabriel, who instilled in him an unshakeable faith in himself as the divinely appointed Prophet of Africa. He gained a new sense of his African identity, and gave up the European-style clothes he had worn before and his American shoes. Instead, upon his release in 1913, Harris crossed the border into Ivory Coast to preach. He was barefoot, dressed in a white cloak, and he carried a six-foot cross made of bamboo.
Harris was one of the most remarkable preachers in African history. Like a latter-day John Wesley, he spoke to crowds thousands strong, imploring them to turn away from idols to God. Harris message was uncompromising, and he had no time for accommodation to traditional African religions. Instead, all fetishes were to be burned upon the great bonfires that he lit. The people responded in their hordes: some 100,000 people were converted in little more than a year. Many were baptised by Harris himself with a small bowl he carried for the purpose; many more were baptised when the clouds opened and Harris cried out the Trinitarian formula, using the rain itself as the sacrament. Whole villages were converted at a stroke and, even more remarkably, the Christian communities that were founded in this way proved surprisingly durable. Harris message was fairly simple, revolving around the need to turn to Jesus, who he believed would return imminently; he did not much mind which church people joined, provided they joined one. Church attendances swelled dramatically even the Catholic churches found huge numbers of new recruits.
In 1915, the French authorities in Ivory Coast had had enough of this extraordinary but potentially volatile phenomenon, and they expelled Harris back to Liberia. He here stayed until his death in 1929 still preaching, but never with the same impact.
(16) Which sixteenth-century figure was influenced by Thomas Mores Utopia to create a perfect society in Mexico?
Vasco de Quiroga, a Spanish priest who came to Mexico in 1531, already in his sixties. First he helped to reform the administration of Mexico following the deposition and imprisonment of a particularly brutal Conquistador who had been running it, and then in 1537 he was made bishop of Michoacán. Influenced by the famous novel Utopia by Sir Thomas More, which described a perfect fictional society of equality and happiness, de Quiroga determined to bring about a similar society in Michoacán. He set up communities for the native Mexicans around Lake Pátzcuaro which revolved around education, with schools in arts, industry and politics, as well as in Christian religion. Churches and hospitals were built, and the whole district was run as a sort of amalgam of Mores Utopia where no-one had private property and everyone worked for the good of society and the primitive church of Acts, where all possessions were pooled for the good of all. Over it all presided the elderly bishop, beloved of his people, nicknamed Tata Vasco that is, Father Vasco. Most remarkable of all, the ideals de Quiroga had instilled into his utopian society endured long after his death in 1565. The Pátzcuaro area remains a centre of art and industry in Mexico to this day, and many of the regional specialities that de Quiroga encouraged are still the same.
At that time he was just a drifter spending some time in the military, but five years later Terrence Steven McQueen would start studying acting and drop his first name!
(11) I saw a whole load of these in the British Museum the other day. What kingdom did the British nick them from?
They are from Benin, in modern-day Nigeria. In the sixteenth century, the mighty kingdom of Benin, having conquered its neighbours and built an empire on the West African coast, developed advanced bronze and copper casting techniques, and began to produce the famous bronze statues, busts, and plaques. It was under Oba (king) Esigie, who ruled from 1504 to 1550, that Portuguese trade was developed and the most famous bronze casts created. These were an extensive series of bas-reliefs, made to adorn the Obas palace. They depict the whole world of sixteenth-century Benin court life, especially the military, and in their breadth and extent have been likened to the Bayeux Tapestry.
Why do the British have them now? The answer concerns James Phillips, who became acting consul general of the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1897. Phillips believed that the Oba, who was theoretically subject to the protectorate, was obstructing British trading interests in the region. So, acting against the orders of Whitehall, and against the request of the Oba himself, who asked him not to enter Benin City during a period of religious rituals, Phillips set off with his team to overthrow the Oba. They were ambushed by a group of Beninite warriors and, unable to retrieve their revolvers from their baggage, were killed.
The British naturally regarded this as an illegal attack on British interests, and a Punitive Expedition was sent out, with the usual result. The Maxim guns wiped out the forces of Benin, Benin City was burned, the Oba was deposed and exiled, and vast amounts of art treasures were looted in reparations for the cost of the war. Today, Obas sit once again on the ancient throne in Benin City, for the line was restored and still rules as a tribal governor within Nigeria, although the Obas today have no real power. The fact that the treasures looted in 1897 are still mostly in the British Museum is a bone of contention between Britain and Nigeria, like many other such disputes, and there is a long-running campaign to have them returned. In the meantime, the Nigerian government spends large sums on buying the treasures of Benin whenever they appear for auction.
(12) Which famous figure of Southeast Asia claims to live in the House of Sin?
Jaime Sin, who became archbishop of Manila in 1974 and a cardinal in 1976. Cardinal Sin was a major opponent of the Marcos regime. In 1986, Corazon Aquino, the widow of a murdered opposition leader, won the popular vote in the presidential election, but the national assembly declared Marcos the winner. The people took to the streets in protest, and Sin took a leading role, making radio broadcasts urging people to particular locations to block the troops from preventing the coup. Such blocking, Sin insisted, should be done non-violently, and his intervention helped to prevent loss of life as the troops were held back and Aquino successfully took the presidency. Cardinal Sin was not only aware of the incongruity of his name in English but was quite amused by it, and would greet visitors to his home with the words, Welcome to the house of Sin.
Cardinal Sin died on 21 June 2005, making this an unexpectedly timely question.
(13) He was a king who gave up his throne to his brother in order to sail into the unknown with 2,000 ships. He was never heard of again, but some believe he found a new land and his descendants are still there. Who was he?
Mansa Abubakri II of Mali, the brother of the more famous Mansa Musa.
In 1311, Abubakari II launched a mighty expedition to see if, like the great river Niger, the Atlantic Ocean had a further bank. First he sent 200 ships, laden with supplies, west beyond the horizon. A single ship returned, telling of a current in the middle of the sea - like a river - that sucked the other ships west. Abubakari decided not only to send 2,000 more ships after the first lot, full of men and supplies, but to lead this second expedition himself. He abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Musa, sailed west with his men, and was never heard of again.
What did Abubakari find? According to some theories, he successfully landed in America. The evidence for this includes the fact that Christopher Columbus himself wrote of black-skinned American natives selling him spears which, when analysed, were found to contain the same alloys, in the same proportions, as African spears.
The theory is most associated with the Malian historian Gaoussou Diawara, and has been alternately embraced and denounced by other historians. In particular, many historians refuse to take into account the tales still told in modern West Africa by the griots, or oral poets and historians. Many of their stories about Mansa Abubakari II are only now being told, because for many years the griots regarded his abdication and quest for adventure as a shameful act of betrayal against his own kingdom.
(14) Medieval and Renaissance artists loved to paint saints. But it wasnt known what most saints actually looked like. So a system of symbols developed to let you know which saint was depicted. For example, Sebastian was generally shown holding an arrow, since he had been killed by arrows, and Peter was generally shown holding keys, since Jesus was said to have given him the keys of heaven. Can you work out who all the saints are in the following pictures?
I like playing this game in art galleries. All right, maybe its just me.
Most people thought number one was Mark, because of the lion. In fact, a lion can also be shown with hermit saints as a symbol of solitude or with martyrs (such as Ignatius of Antioch, traditionally thought to have been killed by lions). The saint who is normally shown with a lion is Jerome, because of the legend that, like Androcles, he befriended a lion by pulling a thorn out of its paw. You can tell that this saint is indeed Jerome because he is dressed in red as a cardinal, which is how Jerome is traditionally represented. In fact there were no such things as cardinals in Jeromes time he was only a priest and a hermit but the other ancient Doctors of the Church all had important ecclesiastical positions, so artists wanted to give Jerome one as well. He was secretary to Pope Damasus I before becoming a hermit, so since he was an important figure in the Popes retinue it was thought appropriate to show him as a cardinal. This picture is a little unusual in showing him as a relatively young man, presumably while he was still in Rome. It is more usual to show Jerome as an aged ascetic with a long beard.
The Papal crown and staff in the top right of the second picture indicates that this is a Pope. The pen and book show that it is one known for writing. That ought to suggest Gregory the Great, like Jerome a Doctor of the Church and one of the most read and loved authors in the Middle Ages. This is confirmed by the dove by his head. Gregory is traditionally represented as listening to a dove, which is the Holy Spirit whispering to him as he writes for Gregorys works were so important they were believed to have been divinely inspired. In this picture, though, Gregory seems rather annoyed to be distracted by the bird.
The third one is of course Catherine of Alexandria, with the wheel on which she was put to death. Most martyrs are traditionally represented as holding the thing that killed them, rather grotesquely.
(15) Which prophet wore nothing but a white robe, carried nothing but a bamboo cross and a bowl, and was accompanied by no-one but his three wives?
The very extraordinary William Wade Harris, a Grebo one of the indigenous peoples of Liberia who had been brought up as a Methodist but converted to the Church of England. He had tried to organise a revolution to turn Liberia over to the British crown; upon its failure he had been thrown into prison. Here, every night, he had a vision of the Archangel Gabriel, who instilled in him an unshakeable faith in himself as the divinely appointed Prophet of Africa. He gained a new sense of his African identity, and gave up the European-style clothes he had worn before and his American shoes. Instead, upon his release in 1913, Harris crossed the border into Ivory Coast to preach. He was barefoot, dressed in a white cloak, and he carried a six-foot cross made of bamboo.
Harris was one of the most remarkable preachers in African history. Like a latter-day John Wesley, he spoke to crowds thousands strong, imploring them to turn away from idols to God. Harris message was uncompromising, and he had no time for accommodation to traditional African religions. Instead, all fetishes were to be burned upon the great bonfires that he lit. The people responded in their hordes: some 100,000 people were converted in little more than a year. Many were baptised by Harris himself with a small bowl he carried for the purpose; many more were baptised when the clouds opened and Harris cried out the Trinitarian formula, using the rain itself as the sacrament. Whole villages were converted at a stroke and, even more remarkably, the Christian communities that were founded in this way proved surprisingly durable. Harris message was fairly simple, revolving around the need to turn to Jesus, who he believed would return imminently; he did not much mind which church people joined, provided they joined one. Church attendances swelled dramatically even the Catholic churches found huge numbers of new recruits.
In 1915, the French authorities in Ivory Coast had had enough of this extraordinary but potentially volatile phenomenon, and they expelled Harris back to Liberia. He here stayed until his death in 1929 still preaching, but never with the same impact.
(16) Which sixteenth-century figure was influenced by Thomas Mores Utopia to create a perfect society in Mexico?
Vasco de Quiroga, a Spanish priest who came to Mexico in 1531, already in his sixties. First he helped to reform the administration of Mexico following the deposition and imprisonment of a particularly brutal Conquistador who had been running it, and then in 1537 he was made bishop of Michoacán. Influenced by the famous novel Utopia by Sir Thomas More, which described a perfect fictional society of equality and happiness, de Quiroga determined to bring about a similar society in Michoacán. He set up communities for the native Mexicans around Lake Pátzcuaro which revolved around education, with schools in arts, industry and politics, as well as in Christian religion. Churches and hospitals were built, and the whole district was run as a sort of amalgam of Mores Utopia where no-one had private property and everyone worked for the good of society and the primitive church of Acts, where all possessions were pooled for the good of all. Over it all presided the elderly bishop, beloved of his people, nicknamed Tata Vasco that is, Father Vasco. Most remarkable of all, the ideals de Quiroga had instilled into his utopian society endured long after his death in 1565. The Pátzcuaro area remains a centre of art and industry in Mexico to this day, and many of the regional specialities that de Quiroga encouraged are still the same.
Rambuchan
The Funky President
Now THAT was an answer sheet Plot old boy! Many thanks for the supreme effort on the quiz. Now we just have to hope that Adso de Fimnu doesn't bust our balls too much
