The Legend of Lady Godiva

To the north the citizens of Coventry, in the central England, were for centuries treated to a solemn reenactment of Lady Godiva’s ride through the town. Today tourists visit this site more out of respect for the myth than for historical accuracy, rarely asking whether this event happened at all

And who is Lady Godiva? According to the story, she was the matriarch of Coventry who rode naked through the town to save it from paying taxes. There are indeed records of a Godiva who married Leofric, the 11^th century erl of Mercia. Leofric was required by King Edward the Confessor to raise the large tax from his populace in Coventry, and the distraught citizenry turned to the earl’s wife for help. Godiva begged her husband to lower the levies, and he responded by saying that he would do so after she rode through the town naked on a horse –probably a medieval version of “fat chance”.

Yet so dedicated was Godiva to the towns people that she took up her husband’s challenge, mounting  a horse and riding through town unclothed, her body cloaked by her flowing hair and the townsfolk staying respectfully indoors. Leofirc had little choice by to keep his word.

It is a moving legend, combining civic virtue with the slightest hint of prurient fascination. And it may very well be true. The story is first referred to in the chronicles of  13^th century historian, Roger of Wendover, who relied on documentation since vanished. But there are plenty of historical records of a Godiva, who throughout their life showed an impressive dedication to the people of Coventry. She founded a Benedictine monastery in the city in 1043, which through her generosity became one of the richest in the land. Up until the 17^th century, Coventry also boasted a number of tax exemptions, which some claim to have derived from Leofric’s concession.

This is not to say that the legend has not evolved through time. In the early 18^th century, the tale included a tailor named Tom, who peeked through the shutters of his home at the naked Godiva and was struck blind – the origin of the phrase “peeping Tom”.

The Mystery of Stigmatization Part II

According to Brother Elias, the minister general of the young order, the stigmata took the form of nail punctures son both hands and feet. Thomas of Celano, the author of the first official biography of St Francis, spoke of nails running right through his body, formed by extensions of the flesh. The Franciscans have long emphasized the uniqueness of St. Francis’s stigmata, and the Catholic Church has responded cautiously.

Nevertheless, there have been other incidents of stigmatization since St. Francis. To date, 320 have been noted, most of them women. In the middle ages, the most celebrated cases were Elisabeth of Spallbeck, who died in 1274; a Dominican monk named Gauthier of Strasbourg and Catherine of Siena who wrote down her visions and ecstasies in the so called Dialogo, The Book of Divine Providence. In the modern times, the most famous cases have been those of Therese Neumann from Germany’s Rhineland region, and an Italian Franciscan monk by the name of Father Pio (1887-1968).

Virtually all cases of stigmatization share certain features. Wounds appear at regular intervals on specific days, mainly Fridays, and above all on Good Friday. The wounds do not become infected, but remain open and do not respond to medical treatment. Scientists and experts have advanced a number of explanations for stigmatization. Some see it as a fraud, while others regard it as the effect of hysterical neuroses. In spite of its reservations, the Catholic Church admits that God might make use of an individual predisposition towards stigmatization.

The Mystery of Stigmatization Part I

In one of the most bizarre phenomena ever recorded, hundreds of devout Christians have reported that the wounds suffered by Christ have spontaneously appeared on their bodies. It is still unclear whether these wounds, or stigmata, are self inflicted, or if they really come from god.

When we say that a person bears the stigma of guilt or failure, we really mean that the person has been marked by a particular experience. In the purely physical sense, a stigma is mark or brand that is cut or burned onto the skin. There are many cultures that use stigmatization, or scarring to decorate the body, to signify membership in a tribe or social group or to designate slaves or criminals. In the Christian religion, stigmatization has a specific meaning: if refers to bleeding wounds that regularly appear in the same places- the head and feet, sides and forehead and the shoulders and back. The origin of these signs is connected to an ecstatic experience of the passion of Christ, and the wounds correspond to those suffered by Jesus Christ when he has beaten and nailed to the cross.

 In his letter to the Galatians, contained in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote that he bore the stigmata of Christ on his body. He was referring to the wounds that he had suffered in his mission to spread the word of Christ.

The first proven case of spontaneous stigmatization was that of St Francis of Assisi founder of the Franciscan order of monks. In mid September, 1224, the saint went into solitude at Mount Laverna near Arezzo in Tuscany to fast and pray. In a vision, he saw a crucified angel. Deeply moved, he began to meditate on Passion of Christ, and noticed how the marks of the crucifixion appeared on his skin. For the rest of his life, he tried to hide the wounds from his brothers, but many were able to observe them at the moment of his death, as he lay naked on the ground.

Is Print Dead? or Just Dying? Part II.

The rise of computers does have its detractors. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard argues that the internet may, by its excess of information, do little to solve the problem of information glut. “Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies.” Baudrillard says.  “In other words, it has an infinite capacity to process data and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.”

Those who make the argument that the digital medium will never trump the written word also point out the inherent unreliability of electronic hookups, faulty computer equipment and information that is scattered across several servers. Pen on paper is more concrete, solid, trust worthy. “To err is human,” said a participant in a BBC radio program in 1982, “but to really foul things up requires a computer.”

Still, many people argue for the great advantages of the digital medium over the printed work: the ability to follow links quickly in a fashion that more closely resembles the associative nature of the human brain; the power to share information in the fields of medicine and science and the capacity to pinpoint information in several minutes that might have taken days or weeks in the stacks of a library.

 For those feeling a little nostalgic about the days when you could curl up by the fire with book in hand will be with e book in hand. It is hard to tell whether a class room in the year 2100 will consist of students who need only come to class with stylus and e book in hand. It is also likely that people will still read books on paper in another 100 years for the sense of authenticity that only a book with dog eared pages and a history of individual readers can confer. Then again,   some point out that the printed book is the text’s container, not its essence. Moreover, e books will cost little, never go out of print, and always be at the ready online.

Is Print Dead? or Just Dying? Part I.

As our society moves further and further into the digital age, will it mean the end of the printed word? Future antiquarians sorting the effects of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, trying to determine how the printed word of ink and paper came to be largely replaced by pixilated letters  on glowing screens, might stumble with interest upon an article by Vannevar Bush in the  July 1945 edition of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. the article titled “As we may think, “ spoke of the increasing difficulty for anyone who attempted to fain information in a way  Bush insisted that humans needed a new way to thread through the abundance of information available a method that would not use a paper and ink.

He proposed a machine called a’ memex,’ which could create links of associations that the used could follow as his or her interests see fit. “Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear; ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them ..,”

Here, almost 30 years before its launch, lies the idea behind the World Wide Web, which now includes almost 100 million people around the globe in its virtual community. People not only can conduct research online but send mail to each other, chat with instant messaging services, and create web communities that are no longer bound by physical geography.

Will the names of Vannevar and Licklider (“who wrote a 1968 paper  proposing an “ intergalactic computer network”) be as revered in the 24^th or 25^th century as Johannes Gutenberg- the German inventor who opened the way for the democratization of knowledge with the 1436 creation of the moveable type printing press is to us today?  Will computer networks, with their speed and their vast resources of information and video, make pen and ink, books and paper obsolete?

What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.IV

 And who made up this massive labor force? The Greek historian Herodotus put the number of workers at 100000 men, replaced every three months for a period of 20 years, though this is probably an exaggeration. An ancient barracks found nearby housed around 4000 men, and there were most likely several barracks in the area. The workers were not slaves and the work was not coerced, casting doubt on the biblical stories of cruel taskmasters brandishing whips. An inscription on the tomb of one pharaoh boasts that he never struck a worker hard enough to knock him down.

In fact, prisoners of war performed much of the heavy work, while peasants did much of the skilled labor. Paid in food, the peasants worked during the flood season, when farming was impossible. The pyramids can be said to have granted these workers certain immortality just as they have the pharaohs buried within.

In recent times, scientific research has shown that the orientation of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau- Cheops, Chefren and Mykerinos corresponds exactly to the stars in the constellation known as Orion’s Belt. In ancient Egypt, Orion’s Belt symbolized the god Osiris, the most important of the Egyptian gods.

In recent years, a German engineer, Rudolf Gantenbrink, probed the secrets of some of the narrowest passages as yet unreachable by human explorers with the help of a remote controlled robot camera. Gantenbrink discovered an enormous door at the end of a shaft. But he was never able to find out what lies hidden behind the door.

What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.III

In the 20^th century, one widely held theory held that the pyramids were carried to earth by aliens, and dropped into their current positions by UFOs. And yet the real story behind their creation which took place over a period of about 30 years is no less impressive, if less fantastic. 

The building process began with the hewing of the rocks, which were removed from quarries some as far as 600 miles away in Aswan. Most historians think the rocks were probably floated on rafts down the Nile in flood season, even though there is no archeological evidence of rafts large enough to float rocks of such enormous size. At the site of the pyramid, workers would first establish a level building surface by flooding the area with water, cutting a system of channels, and then digging until the water was level. A perimeter was then established and cut to the appropriate level, with the occasional large chunk of rock preserved.

A massive stone causeway was built on the banks of the Nile, facilitation the unloading process. The stones were dragged on wooden sledges resting on rollers for the half mile to the building site. Here, a team of masons and stonecutters worked at the rocks, smoothing them and preparing them for use.

Once ready, the huge stones were rolled into position, a process complicated by the fact that the wheel did not arrive in Egypt for another 800 years. Some scholars have suggested that the Egyptians built enormous tamps, lengthened as the building progressed, but with a constant slope; others have suggested a spiral tamp that snaked its way up the pyramid. The stone would be pushed to the tip of the ramp, and then placed on a bed of liquids mortars. It was then left to set. The ramps would be dismantled when the workers reached the top of the pyramid, as masons worked their way downward and smoothed the stones.