History below the fold

my podcast feeds are full of great stuff this morning.

HistoryOfEngland podcast discusses the wool trade in the UK, and links to this paper.

why is it important? Because it shows the result of the Cistercians who introduced it (the Cistercians were a "reform" monastery who rejected the wealth of the Benedictines so tended to move to marginal land...but sheep thrived on marginal land so they got rich, as did many middle class people who copied their lead. This was one of the subplots in Follet's novel/miniseries The Pillars of Earth).

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I also get the daily prayer as a podcast: Today is the day of Gregory the Great, a educated Roman who fled to a monastery in the troubles of the late 500's and ended up as Pope instead.
If you think you have problems, consider how he sees his job.

I am forced to consider the affairs of the Church and of the monasteries. I must weigh the lives and acts of individuals. I am responsible for the concerns of our citizens. I must worry about the invasions of roving bands of barbarians, and beware of the wolves who lie in wait for my flock. I must become an administrator lest the religious go in want. I must put up with certain robbers without losing patience and at times I must deal with them in all charity.

Heh...sounds like the Philippines, where the big shots that our bishops have to "put up with" are robbers, I mean honest men who just want ten percent of the contract as a gift.

So the next time you think the modern world has problems, consider all the trouble Gregory had to put up with, from the Plague of Justinian (540) to the invasion of the Lombards...and had to take care of the refugees and poor. (From wikipedia:)

In 590, Gregory could wait for Constantinople no longer. He organized the resources of the church into an administration for general relief. In doing so he evidenced a talent for and intuitive understanding of the principles of accounting, which was not to be invented for centuries...Gregory began by aggressively requiring his churchmen to seek out and relieve needy persons and reprimanded them if they did not....The church now owned between 1,300 and 1,800 square miles (3,400 and 4,700 km²) of revenue-generating farmland divided into large sections called patrimonia. It produced goods of all kinds, which were sold, but Gregory intervened and had the goods shipped to Rome for distribution...Distributions to qualified persons were monthly. However, a certain proportion of the population lived in the streets or were too ill or infirm to pick up their monthly food supply. To them Gregory sent out a small army of charitable persons, mainly monks, every morning with prepared food.

the bad news is that he did the job so well that the locals no longer looked to Constantinople for help or civil leaders so the Popes ended up running civil affairs during the "Dark ages", which eventually led to wealth and the Borgia popes (and the reformation).
If you never heard about Gregory, it is because the Borgias were a better story for our jaded world.

On the other hand, blame Gregory for the fact that most Catholics in the US and Europe support the organized "welfare state" rather than mere almsgiving to beggers (which often misses the very poor who don't or can't beg)...

oh yes: And Gregory send Augustine of Canterbury to try to convert the warlike AngloSaxons who had taken over a distant Island of Brittania...

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Librivox has "short non fiction" essays for your listening pleasure:
the selection today includes:

From Travels In Alaska by John Muir – 00:17:52
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 8.5MB]

Why I Believe in Poverty by Edward Bok – 00:11:09
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 5.3MB]

Slang; from Historic China and Other Sketches by Herbert A. Giles (1845-1935) – 00:10:54
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 5.2MB]

Thrilling Story by Titanic's Surviving Wireless Man by Harold Bride – 00:18:27
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 8.8MB]

Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane by Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary-Burke) – 00:12:53
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 6.1MB]

The Humour of Homer by Samuel Butler – 01:06:07

Source: E-text

[mp3@64kbps - 31.7MB]

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and Librivox also has the poem "Address to certain goldfishes" by Coleridge

I presume he is talking about medium sized gold fish in a garden pond, not the giant koi we have in our fountain:

Address to Certain Golfishes

RESTLESS forms of living light

Quivering on your lucid wings,

Cheating still the curious sight

With a thousand shadowings;

Various as the tints of even,

Gorgeous as the hues of heaven,

Reflected on you native streams

In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams!

Harmless warriors, clad in mail

Of silver breastplate, golden scale; --

Mail of Nature's own bestowing,

With peaceful radiance, mildly glowing --

Fleet are ye as fleetest galley

Or pirate rover sent from Sallee;

Keener than the Tartar's arrow,

Sport ye in your sea so narrow. 

 

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Coleridge obviously needed to get a life...
he was so ditzy that even his wife left him quickly, and he turned to his friend Wordsworth and opium for companionship, therefore writing poems like "The ancient mariner" that have plagued schoolchilden for the next 200 years.