December 2010 – Page 5 – The History Blog

Vandals chop down Glastonbury Holy Thorn tree

December 11, 2010

Ancient, Medieval, Modern(ish), Treasures

The Glastonbury Holy Thorn tree, said to be descended from the miraculous hawthorn planted by Joseph of Arimathea 2000 years ago after reaching landfall in England, has been hacked down to a 6-foot stump. Vandals cut off all the branches under cover of darkness Thursday night, leaving behind only the stump festooned with the prayers of pilgrims.

Authorities speculate that the violence might have been done in reaction to Wednesday’s annual cutting ceremony in which a budding sprig is cut from another Glastonbury Holy Thorn relative on the nearby grounds of the Church of St. John and presented to the Queen to adorn her Christmas table. The timing is certainly a notable coincidence. Another theory going around is that it was an act of vengeance against Edward James, the recently indicted major shareholder of the Crown Currency Exchange, a company which went under in October leaving 8,000 creditors short £16 million ($25 million). Inter-denominational conflict is also a possibility.

According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy man who gave his tomb to hold the body of Christ crucified, landed on the coast of England a mile or so away. He and his party trudged to the hill then rested on the spot thereafter dubbed Weary-all-Hill (now Wearyall Hill) in honor of their eponymous weariness. St. Joseph thrust his staff, a dried hawthorn branch that once belonged to Jesus, into the ground and the staff miraculously grew into a tree. It also miraculously blooms twice a year, once in the spring along with every other tree, and once at Christmas. That’s the miraculous bit.

Interestingly, trees grown from seeds and planted cuttings of the Holy Thorn do not bloom twice a year; only grafted ones, and there are several of those grafts dotting the landscape in and around Glastonbury.

A major pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages, the tree was seen as a symbol of Popish superstition and cut down and burned by Cromwell’s Puritan troops during the English Civil War, but in secret the faithful kept its roots and propagated cuttings therefrom ensuring that the tree would continue to live on in its descendants. The current Wearyall Hill tree was planted from one of those heritage pieces in the early ’50s.

Police are going door to door and interviewing potential witnesses. The spot is a popular one for runners and dog walkers so there’s a chance someone might have seen something probative in the wee hours. Meanwhile, Katherine Gorbing, the director of Glastonbury Abbey, holds out hope that the tree will grow back from the large remaining stump.

Hawthorns are sturdy, and this wouldn’t be the first time the Wearyall Holy Thorn recovered from a vicious sawing. According to an 18th century history of Glastonbury, the tree had a double trunk in Queen Elizabeth’s time. A devout Puritan took offense at the tree and sawed off the larger of its trunks. He was prevented from getting to the second one by an unfortunate, some say miraculous, sawing accident which severely cut his leg and, when a bark chip flew up, put out one of his eyes. The hewn trunk, now on the ground and connected to the roots by only a tiny segment of bark, continued to bloom for 30 years as did the intact trunk.

Flag from Custer’s Last Stand sells for $2,210,500

December 10, 2010

Modern(ish), Treasures

The Foley-Culbertson guidon, one of only two 7th Cavalry battle flags known to have survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, just sold at a Sotheby’s New York auction for $2,210,500, including buyer’s premium. The hammer price was $1.9 million, less than the pre-sale estimate (for a change), which valued the extremely rare and historically significant flag at $2-5 million. It was purchased by an American collector. No news on who the buyer is or whether he’ll be willing to loan it for public display.

The flag was discovered on June 28, 1876, three days after the disastrous battle, under the body of Corporal John Foley, the standard bearer of Captain Thomas Custer’s Company C, by burial detail soldier Sergeant Ferdinand Culbertson. (Thomas Custer was General George Armstrong Custer’s younger brother, and a highly decorated Civil War veteran who was awarded two Medals of Honor for having captured Confederate flags in battle {insert eerie music here}. He is one of only 19 soldiers and sailors to have received two Medals of Honor.)

Culbertson kept it for four years, after which he gave it to friends of his, Sgt. James Fowler and his wife Rose. In 1895 the Detroit Museum of Art bought the guidon from Rose Fowler, now a widow, for $54. At that time the DMA had an eclectic mission of preserving and presenting American history and art, but today the Detroit Institute of Art, as it is now known, has a more narrow focus on being exclusively an art museum. In order to help fulfill their mission, they decided to sell some of the artifacts they’ve been keeping in storage for decades. This flag is the prize piece.

Unlike the record-breaking Revolutionary War battle flag that sold for $12.3 million in 2006, the Culbertson guidon bears many scars from the battle and its aftermath. There are bloodstains, tears and holes, plus cutouts, including a large missing rectangle under the blue ground with the stars that was snipped out by soldiers in the 7th Cavalry burial detail. Interesting factoid about those stars: there are 35 on the flag, even though there were 37 states in the Union in 1876. That’s because it was Civil War surplus. They had so many of those 35-star flags left over after the war that they kept using them until 1883, when there were 38 states in the union.

It’s in great condition compared to the only other surviving flag from the Little Bighorn, however. The Keogh guidon, currently owned by the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, is so fragile that curators describe it as “nearly dust” and is far too delicate to be on display. It was captured by an Indian warrior at Little Bighorn and then captured back by Captain Anson Mills at the Battle of Slim Buttes (September 9-10, 1876). It was found with a pair of gauntlets belonging to Captain Myles Keogh, commander of Company I, 7th Cavalry, hence the name.

Mills loaned the flag to the Museum of the Military Services Institution on Governors Island in New York harbour, but they inexplicably allowed it to be infested with moths, so when Mills got the guidon back it was almost destroyed. The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is currently working on an extensive conservation project to try to arrest the damage.

Sotheby’s Vice Chairman David Redden talks about the history of the Foley-Culbertson guidon and the battle in this video. There’s also an online Flash version of the fascinating auction catalog here.

Curse tablet found in Lebanon

December 9, 2010

Ancient, Treasures

A team of archaeologists from Kyoto University have found a lead tablet inscribed with a curse written in Greek. It dates to between the 2nd and 4th century A.D.

The 6-cm-wide, 14.7-cm-long plate, discovered near the entrance of an underground grave, is adorned with ancient Greek text that reads “May the unjust be removed from them” and “May signs of a gag and shame, and disgrace be given to them,” along with the names of four people, the team said Tuesday.

The article describes the curse as “invoking the spirits of the dead,” but curse tablets were fairly widespread in the ancient world and don’t always invoke a specific power, be it a spirit of the dead or another deity. There’s nothing in the text as presented in the article that indicated the spirits of the dead were particularly involved.

Perhaps it’s the locus of the find that underlies the assumption. Buried curses are thought to have been placed close to the gods of the underground to draw their power. The location of the curse was certainly connected to the curse itself. Most of the defixiones (the Latin term for ancient curses) found in Britain, for instance, were discovered near health spas, in the same places where prayers for good health were left. The spa giveth and the spa taketh away, to coin a phrase.

Interestingly, many of the extant Greek curses are over legal matters.

Most of the curses are what we call binding spells: they aim at binding or inhibiting the performance of a rival. A lot of them have to do with legal cases. They say things like, “Bind the tongue and the thoughts of so-and-so, who is about to testify against me on Monday.” We have some that are aimed at rival musicians or actors, and a couple that seem to be connected with athletics. We have some that run something like this, “Bind Helen, so that she is unsuccessful when she flirts or makes love with Demetrius.” But the great majority of them seem to be connected with lawsuits. This actually corroborates evidence from other sources suggesting that the Greeks thought Athenians were abnormally enamored of lawsuits–much as many Americans today think that New Yorkers are especially litigious.

Viking silver thieves arrested, loot recovered

December 8, 2010

Looting, Medieval, Social policy, Treasures

Five men have been arrested on the Swedish island of Gotland for having stolen 1,000 Viking-era silver coins. The entire hoard from which the looters helped themselves to 1,000 coins was over twice that size: 2,000 German, English and Danish coins from the 1060s.

Gotland, a large island in the middle of the Baltic off the southeast coast of Sweden, is replete with Viking hoards. Sadly, it is also replete with looters who illegally dig up whatever treasures they can find, then sell them online or through shady dealers. Since there is so much ground to cover and the weather rarely cooperates to keep looted sites in CSI condition, not only do thieves often get away with it, but the thefts themselves are not discovered.

It was a fortuitous chain of circumstance that brought these scofflaws to justice.

Part of a crucifix from the 11th century was found in the ground where the looters dug. Several days later, an email was discovered by chance with a photo of a part of a crucifix.

A comparison of the find and the image showed that the parts belonged together and that the crucifix came from the hiding place in the field in Gandarve.

“The person who had sent the email was suspected of having attempted to sell the crucifix and he led us on to another person with ties to Gotland,” said prosecutor Mats Wihlborg.

During a raid on a property on Gotland, investigators came across three people with metal detectors, shovels and backpacks. After examining computers and GPS equipment, they also found links between the defendants and two other places where the looters had struck on Gotland.

The looters will be charged with preparation of aggravated crime against relics and aggravated crime against relics. The charges carry a potential sentence of four years in prison. Three of the defendants are thought to be the ringleaders responsible for multiple thefts. The prosecutor is delighted. He noted that it’s extremely rare for cases to actually reach the point of prosecution, and especially not of a full-on looting ring.

Looters are not just hobbyists who stumbled on a treasure and decided to keep it or even sell it on the down low. They are organized, experienced and well-versed in the geography of the island. They often operate at night to avoid detection, and they’re damn good at it. That’s why these arrests are so important to the Gotland authorities.

Imperial Chinese robes on display at V&A

December 7, 2010

Modern(ish), Museums, Treasures

An exhibit displaying unbelievably gorgeous Chinese imperial robes opens today at the Victoria & Albert museum in London. Most of these textiles have never left China, and many of them haven’t ever been displayed in the Forbidden City either.

They once adorned only members of the imperial families of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and have been preserved over the centuries in a condition so sterling that it frankly beggars belief. That’s why they’ve so rarely been shown in public, because even after the Forbidden City became a museum in 1925, there were no public galleries that could provide the proper conditions required to conserve these fragile textiles.

They remained in the Forbidden City stores for hundreds of years, treated as sacred and carefully tended even as the wars both Opium and World, rebellions both Boxer and Taiping, and the dissolution of the entire imperial system exploded around them. As soon as the emperor, empress, concubines and their children died, their clothing was taken to the stores, never to be worn again, never exposed to sunlight and the various effluvia of humanity. The collection is so enormous that it is has taken almost a century since the opening of the Forbidden City to catalog all the pieces. That’s 5 generations of curators dedicated to the task.

The exhibition includes a wedding gown made in 1889 when Yehe Nara Jingen married the emperor Guangxu, which took three years to make. It is richly embroidered with dragons and phoenix, on red silk, the colour for weddings: the last boy emperor Pu Yi recalled that when he married in 1922, two years before he was expelled from the Forbidden City, the bridal chamber “looked like a melted red wax candle”.

The garments followed a strict hierarchy: bright yellow for the emperor, apricot yellow for his sons, Siberian sable only for the imperial family, pale blue for moon ceremonies, padded robes embroidered with narrow rows of gold to look like metal armour for travelling with an entourage of 3,000 people, 6,000 horses and 1,000 boats. Ordinary Chinese people could never have afforded the sumptuous dragon embroideries, but were in any case forbidden by law to use them.

The robes are accompanied by accessories, of course, as fashion demands. There are slippers, shoes, helmets and headdresses. The women’s shoes on the left were known as “flower pot shoes” because of the shape of the heel. Manchu women did not bind their feet, so the shoes are normal sized. That heel is something else, right? Lady Gaga, eat your heart out, you amateur.

Please do yourself a favor and browse the V&A website on the exhibit. There are many pictures, all of which are the kind of beautiful that make you audibly exclaim as you browse. Also, check out the curator’s blog for all kinds of fascinating detail about the exhibit, the garments and their conservation.