Difference between revisions of "Chapter 22: 215-227"

Latest revision as of 14:38, 6 June 2016

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Father Boscovich

Roger Joseph Boscovich (Ruđer Josip Bošković or Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich; 18 May 1711 – 13 February 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, Jesuit, and according to some a polymath from Ragusa (today Dubrovnik), who lived for a time in France, England and some Italian states. He is famous for his atomic theory and made many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon... Note: like Maskelyne, there is a lunar crater named after him. From WIKI

Loyolan Image... Stiletto-Waver... which distinguishes El Autentico
Saint Ignatius of Loyola (Basque: Loiolako Inazio, Eneko Loiolakoa, Spanish: Ignacio de Loyola), (1491 – July 31, 1556) was a Spanish knight, who became a hermit and priest, founding the Society of Jesus and becoming its first Superior General. Ignatius and the Jesuits became major figures in the Counter-Reformation, where the Catholic Church worked to reform itself from within and countered the theology of Protestantism. After his death he was beatified and then on March 12, 1622, was canonized. The feast day of Ignatius is celebrated on July 31 — he is the patron saint of soldiers, the Society of Jesus, the Basque Country, the provinces of Guipúzcoa and Biscay, among other things. From WIKI. Think of an upside down stilleto knife, viz. a cross.

Hob Headless
A hobgoblin. More info on this particular one in history, here

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Haggis
n. A Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings and boiled in the stomach of the slaughtered animal.

William Emerson a Wizard
William Emerson (14 May 1701 - 20 May 1782), English mathematician, was born at Hurworth, near Darlington... He had a small estate in Weardale called Castle Gate situated not far from Eastgate where he would repair to work throughout the Summer on projects as disparate as stonemasonry and watchmaking. Unsuccessful as a teacher, he devoted himself entirely to studious retirement. Possessed of remarkable energy and forthrightness of speech, Emerson published many works which are singularly free from errata. From WIKI.

[I know that Emerson has already been noted, but for flow of use, wanted to annotate again here, it being the first time the reader "sees" Emerson]

Dr. Mesmer
Franz Anton Mesmer (born Friedrich Anton Mesmer; May 23, 1734 – March 5, 1815) was a German physician and astrologist, who discovered what he called magnétisme animal (animal magnetism) and other spiritual forces often grouped together as mesmerism. The evolution of Mesmer's ideas and practices led Scottish surgeon James Braid to develop hypnosis in 1842. Mesmer's name is the root of the English verb "mesmerize". From WIKI.

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Ley-Lines
Anachronism: The concept of ley lines was first proposed by Alfred Watkins. On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire, and went riding a horse near some hills in the vicinity of Bredwardine, when he noted that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. He was studying a map when he noticed places in alignment. "The whole thing came to me in a flash", he later told his son. From WIKI

Palatine Residence at Bishop Auckland
Now known as the Auckland Castle, it dates to 1183. Location here.

Bisley Church
Not to be confused with the Bisley in Surrey, or the church there associated with St. John the Baptist. Mason is from Gloucestershire county, where there is also a Bisley.

This Bisley church here is the same one where Mason references Pearse falling into the well on Page 114. More information about the history of that church here.

"switched corpes"
A reference to the theory that Queen Elizabeth I died at the age of 10 in Bisley, only to have her body hidden and replaced with a young boy from the town, known as the Bisley Boy. Bram Stoker endorsed and promoted the story in his book Famous Imposters

"each night the stones were removed and transported in a right line, through the air, at brisk speed, to the church's present site"
Pynchon probably took this from a speech given by the president of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society in 1880. That speech contains a telling of how the saying about Pearse came about, just before the tale of the church being moved:

Whatever meets our enquiring attention as a relic of old time, however insignificant it may be, if it is a construction, however quaint and odd, or, if it is a story, however absurd it may sound, it may, perhaps, upon investigation, repay some trouble or even, possibly, merit the distinction of being inserted in the pages of our journal.

As an illustration of my meaning, I may mention that I heard, long ago, a tradition attaching to my parish church of Bisley which seemed to be one of those old wives' tales to which it was unnecessary to attach any sense or importance. It was to the effect that the church was originally not intended to have been built where it now stands, but at a spot nearly two miles off. However, the builders were entirely frustrated in their intentions, for every night the devil, or some agency, removed all the building materials and deposited them afresh in another place, until at last the architect, yielding to inexorable necessity, built the church on the spot thus indicated, which is where it now stands. Now, when the church was restored a few years back we found that this story had a meaning and an origin, for the place where tradition said the church was to have been built is the spot where a Roman villa formerly stood, and in the course of the repairs portions of the materials of that villa were found in the church walls, including the altars of the Penates removed from the Roman shrines.

Here, then, was a tradition which had been handed on regularly from mouth to mouth for between fifteen and sixteen hundred years, and to which the nineteenth century has been able to assign a fair and reasonable interpretation : viz., that the Romans' gods had supplied the materials for the Christian temple.

"draw a line straight from the Barrow near Great Badminton we call the Giant's Caves, to the Long Barrow near The Camp, and you'll observe it passes directly over Bisley"
Here is a Google map illustrating such a line exists. Coordinates come from The Modern Antiquarian website.

Great Badminton
Badminton House is a large country house in Gloucestershire, England, and has been the principal seat of the Dukes of Beaufort since the late 17th century, when the family moved from Raglan Castle, which had been ruined in the English Civil War. From WIKI

Giant's Caves
Pictures and coordinates of this burrow here and a map and pictures here.

Long Barrow near The Camp
A long barrow is a prehistoric monument dating to the early Neolithic period. They are rectangular or trapezoidal earth mounds traditionally interpreted as collective tombs. Long barrows are also typical for several Celtic, Slavic, and Baltic cultures of Northern Europe of the 1st millennium AD. From WIKI. More information about the Long Barrow Mason is referencing is available here. Wiki entry on The Camp, a hamlet near Gloucestershire here.

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Wearside
Northeast England region including Hurworth. Refers to cities on the River Wear.

Roman Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = (palin "again" + psao "I scrape"), and meant "scraped (clean and used) again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice. From WIKI. Also appears in GR.

Brigantum
Isurium Brigantum was a town in the Roman province of Britannia. Today it is known as Aldborough, in North Yorkshire, England. From WIKI.

Mithras
The Mithraic Mysteries or Mysteries of Mithras (also Mithraism) was a mystery religion which became popular among the military in the Roman Empire, from the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Information on the cult is based mainly on interpretations of monuments. These depict Mithras as born from a rock and sacrificing a bull. His worshippers had a complex system of 7 grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Little else is known for certain. From WIKI.

Chaldrons
A chaldron (also chauldron or chalder) was a dry English measure of volume, not a weight, mostly used for coal; the word itself is an obsolete spelling of cauldron. It was used from the 13th century until 1963 when it was abolished by the Weights and Measures Act.

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Euler
Leonhard Paul Euler (15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist who spent most of his life in Russia and Germany. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy. The asteroid 2002 Euler was named in his honor. He was a devout Christian (and believer in biblical inerrancy) who wrote apologetics and argued forcefully against the prominent atheists of his time. From WIKI.

The first book he publish'd was upon Fluxions.
Newton's name for the form of differential calculus he developed was the "Method of Fluxions", see [1].

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Dodman
The 'inventor' of ley lines, Alfred Watkins (see above, p.218 re: Ley-Lines), thought that in the words "dodman" and the builder's "hod" there was a survival of an ancient British term for a surveyor. Watkins felt that the name came about because the snail's two horns resembled a surveyor's two surveying rods. Watkins also supported this idea with an etymology from 'doddering ' along and 'dodge' (akin, in his mind, to the series of actions a surveyor would carry out in moving his rod back and forth until it accurately lined up with another one as a backsight or foresight) and the Welsh verb 'dodi' meaning to lay or place. He thus decided that The Long Man of Wilmington was an image of an ancient surveyor. From WIKI.

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St. Omer
City in Northwest France, home to a Jesuit college and prep school. history here.

De Litteraria Expeditions et Soforthia
A reference to Christopher Maire and Roger Boscovitch's book, De Litteraria Expeditione Per Pontificiam Ditionem Ad Dimetiendos Duos Meridiani Gradus (A report on the expedition to measure through the dominions of the Pope two degrees of the meridian). The 'et Soforthia' is an elaborate et cetera, an acknowledgement of the rest of the long title.

Rome to Rimini
The Via Flaminia was a Roman road leading from Rome to Ariminum (Rimini), and was the most important route to the north. It was constructed by Gaius Flaminius during his censorship (220 BC)... The importance of the ancient Via Flaminia is twofold: during the period of Roman expansion in the 3rd century BC and 2nd century BC, the Flaminia became, with the cheaper sea route, a main axis of transportation by which wheat from the Po valley supplied Rome and central Italy; during the period of Roman decline, the Flaminia was the main road leading into the heartland of Italy: it was taken by Julius Caesar at the beginning of the civil war, but also by various barbarian hordes, Byzantine generals, etc. A number of major battles were therefore fought on or near the Via Flaminia, for example at Sentinum (near the modern Sassoferrato) and near Tadinum (the modern Gualdo Tadino). In the early Middle Ages, the road, controlled by the Eastern Empire, was a civilizing influence, and accounted for much of what historians call the "Byzantine corridor". From WIKI

Father Boscovich's long poem of the Tale at first Hand, that he wrote, as you went...?
Dixon may be sarcastic here, as at least one review says the poem stinks. From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

During his stay in England he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He soon after paid this society the compliment of dedicating to it his Latin poem, entitled De Solis et Lunae Defectibus (London, 1764). This prolix composition, one of a class which at that time was much in vogue—metrical epitomes of the facts of science—contains in about five thousand lines, illustrated by voluminous notes, a compendium of astronomy. It was for the most part written on horseback, during the author's rides in the country while engaged in his meridian measurements. The book is characterized by G. B. J. Delambre as " uninstructive to an astronomer and unintelligible to any one else."

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mio caro Ruggiero
my dear Roger (Italian)

Ragusa
Republic of Ragusa - present-day Dubrovnik, Croatia. See WIKI.

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Maria Theresa... our last Protector
Maria Theresa (13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands, and Parma. By marriage, she was Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Duchess of Lorraine, German Queen and Holy Roman Empress. From WIKI.

Though originally the Jesuits' "protector", it wouldnt be for long: Her relationship with the Jesuits was of complex nature. Members of this order educated her, served as her confessors and supervised the religious education of her eldest son. The Jesuits were powerful and influential in the early years of Maria Theresa's reign. However, the queen's ministers managed to convince her that they pose danger to her monarchical authority. Not without much hesitation and regret, she issued a decree which removed them from all the institutions of the monarchy and carried it out thoroughly. She forbade the publication of Pope Clement XIII's bull which was in favour of the Jesuits and promptly confiscated their property when Pope Clement XIV suppressed the order.

Bourbons
The French royal family that ruled from 1589, were ousted in the revolution, restored after Napoleon's abdication, and finally removed in the July revolution of 1830. A cadet branch, the House of Orléans, ruled for a further 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was overthrown. MORE AT WIKIPEDIA

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Calvert
Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (February 6, 1731–September 4, 1771) was an English nobleman and last in the line of Barons Baltimore. When his father died in 1751, he inherited the Proprietary Governorship of the Province of Maryland. The province was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain. From WIKI.

Raby Castle
A castle built by John Neville starting about 1367. Purchased from the Crown by Sir Henry Vane the Elder in 1626. From WIKI.

Tale of Sir Henry Vane the younger
Sir Henry Vane (1613 – June 14, 1662), son of Henry Vane the Elder, served as a statesman and Member of Parliament in a career spanning England and Massachusetts. A constant theme of his life was religious tolerance. He was a leading Parliamentarian during the English Civil War. Vane served on the Council of State during the Interregnum, but refused to take the oath which expressed approval of the king's execution. At the Restoration in 1660, after much debate in Parliament, he was exempted from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act. In 1662, he was tried for high treason, found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill. From WIKI.

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Jacobites
Jacobitism was (and, to a limited extent, remains) the political movement dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The movement took its name from the Latin form Jacobus of the name of King James II and VII. From WIKI.

Cromwell
Richard Cromwell (4 October 1626 – 12 July 1712) was the third son of Oliver Cromwell, and was the second Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, for just under nine months, from 3 September 1658 until 25 May 1659. Cromwell's enemies dubbed him Tumbledown Dick or Queen Dick for his indecisive character. From WIKI

Restoration
The English Restoration, often shortened to the Restoration, began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Commonwealth of England that followed the English Civil War... The Protectorate, which had preceded the English Restoration and followed the Commonwealth, might have continued if Oliver Cromwell's son Richard had been capable of carrying on his father's policies. Richard Cromwell's main weakness was that he did not have the confidence of the army. After seven months the army removed him and on 6 May 1659 it reinstalled the Rump Parliament. From WIKI.

William of Orange
William III (14 November 1650 – 8 March 1702) was a sovereign Prince of Orange by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland, and as William II over Scotland. He is informally known in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy". A member of the House of Orange-Nassau, William won the English, Scottish and Irish crowns following the Glorious Revolution, in which his uncle and father-in-law James II was deposed. In England, Scotland and Ireland, William ruled jointly with his wife, Mary II, until her death on 28 December 1694. From WIKI.

Hanovers
The House of Hanover (the Hanoverians) is a Germanic royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. It succeeded the House of Stuart as monarchs of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714 and held that office until the death of Victoria in 1901. From WIKI

Stuart Charters
The practice in Stuart charters of specifying by name the members of the governing body and holders of special offices opened the way to a "purging" of the hostile spirits when new charters were required. There were also rather vaguely worded clauses authorizing the dismissal of officers for misconduct, though as a rule the appointments were for life. When under the Stuarts and under the Commonwealth political and religious feeling ran high in the boroughs, use was made of these clauses both by the majority on the council and by the central government to mould the character of the council by a drastic "purging." Another means of control first used under the Commonwealth was afforded by the various acts of parliament, which subjected all holders of municipal office to the test of an oath. Under the Commonwealth there was no improvement in the methods used by the central government to control the boroughs. From WIKI.

Pym
John Pym (1584 – 8 December 1643) was an English parliamentarian, leader of the Long Parliament and a prominent critic of James I and then Charles I. From WIKI

Regarding the convo they are having here: Sir Henry Vane Jr. was instrumental in the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford. He passed to John Pym some copied notes of his father's, of a Privy Council meeting. He claimed that these demonstrated that Strafford had an intention to use the Irish Army to subjugate England. The evidence, when examined, turned out to be second-hand, ambiguous, and hotly disputed. From WIKI

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Jansenists
Jansenism was a branch of Catholic thought (condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1655) that arose in the frame of the Counter-Reformation and the aftermath of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). It emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. Originating in the writings of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Otto Jansen, Jansenism formed a distinct movement within the Catholic Church from the 16th to 18th centuries, and found its most important stronghold in the Parisian convent of Port-Royal, haven of many important theologians and writers (Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal, Jean Racine, etc.).

The term itself was coined by its Jesuit opponents, who accused them of being close to Calvinists, as Jansenists identified themselves as rigorous followers of Augustinism. Several propositions supported by Jansenists, in particular concerning the relationship between human's free will and "efficacious grace", were condemned by the Pope, and the movement thus deemed heretical. From WIKI.

Ramillies Wig
See this LINK for a pic of our boy David Garrick wearing a Ramillies wig.

Annotation Index