Historiansplaining: A Historian Tells You Why Everything You Know Is Wrong

The Voynich Manuscript -- often called the "world's most mysterious book" -- consists of 116 leaves of parchment covered in outlandish botanical and astrological drawings and thousands of lines of undeciphered text in an unknown language. A century after images of the codex were first published, still not one line has been decoded. What could it say? And more importantly from the historical perspective, who created it and why? This is the most balanced and impartial consideration of the evidence that you will find. In this first part, we consider the physical features and visual content of the book. In the second part, we examine the mysterious text, and evidence as to its provenance and chain of ownership: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-voynich-manuscript-the-worlds-most-mysterious-book-a-historians-view-pt-2 Please become a patron to hear all the Myths of the Month – www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Carlo Ginzburg, "The Night Battles" and "Ecstasies: Deciperhing

What did Shakespeare mean when he wrote that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”? Why do we call independent countries “states” endowed with “sovereignty”? Why do historians and philosophers speak of “state formation” and clashes between “church and state”? How did these concepts come about, and what do they mean in international law and political theory? The answer runs from absolutist royal courts through the French Revolution and the Weimar republic of Germany; after centuries of struggle and democratization, the concept of “the state” has formed to fill the vacuum left behind by the Crown. Please become a patron to hear all the Myths of the Month – www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Christiansborg, the parliamentary palace of Denmark. Recent NPR segment in which I am quoted – https://www.npr.org/2021/01/26/960631333/covid-19-deaths-draw-comparisons-to-other-tragic-death-tolls Introductory episode of “God Save America,” on religion in the US – https://soundcloud.com/godsaveamerica/0-i

Unlocked for the public after one year for patrons only: --Made of willow wicker on a wood frame --Made ca. 1620, most likely in the Netherlands --Allegedly brought on the Mayflower; held by the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass. This rocking cradle was reportedly stowed on the Mayflower in anticipation of the birth of Peregrine White, the first English child born in New England, who came into the world as the ship was temporarily anchored in Provincetown Harbor. Passed down for centuries in the wealthy, powerful, and embattled White and Winslow families, the cradle reflects both the Pilgrims' unprecedented ambition to create a self-perpatuating European society in exile, and their strict child-rearing practices that sought to shape the infant into a miniature adult. Please become a patron to hear all lectures on the History of the United States in 100 Objects! ---- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did a chain of sparsely populated islands, stalked by earthquakes, hurricanes, and deadly tropical diseases, become the most powerful and prosperous colonies on earth? We trace how bands of adventurers, including pirates and Crusader knights, took advantage of Spain's fragile hold on the Caribbean islands, superior seafaring skills, and the growing slave trade, to build unlikely new societies, while the Irish and African laborers that they forced into service adapted or struck out for freedom. Image: 17th-century drawing of Tortuga, while it was ruled by the "Brethren of the Coast." please become a patron! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Inaugural episode of "God Save America," on religion in the United States: https://soundcloud.com/godsaveamerica/0-introduction

What to make of this wonderful year? I venture into a little punditry, and give a clip from my patron-only lecture on the enigmatic alchemical physician's chair that belonged to John Winthrop Junior, the "magus of Connecticut." please become a patron! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did the early church hammer out a shared set of practices and teachings out of the welter of confusion and bitter contestation among Montanists, Docetists, Donatists, Paulines, Gnostics, and Ebionites? Why did it take 300 years just for the church to settle on the "creed" that most of us now understand as the core of the faith? please become a patron! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 image: earliest known manuscript of the Didache suggested reading: E. Glenn Hinson, "The Early Church" for context: --on composition of the New Testament texts: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/who-wrote-the-bible-new-testament --on the historical Jesus: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-historical-jesus

How did a small movement of Jewish fanatics, devastated by the ignominious demise of their leader, rise to become the official state religion of the Roman empire, Armenia, Georgia, and Ethiopia? We trace the dramatic rise of the new faith through three centuries of preaching, prophesy, and persecution. image: fresco of a woman at the 3rd-century house-church of Dura-Europos please become a patron! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 suggested reading: E. Glenn Hinson, "The Early Church" for context: --on composition of the New Testament texts: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/who-wrote-the-bible-new-testament --on the historical Jesus: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-historical-jesus

Teaser sample of "Myth of the Month 14: Astrology." Become a Patron at any level to hear the complete Myths of the Month: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44717945 Description: Why do we divide history into epochs separated by "revolutions"? Astrology. How did Magellan chart his course around the globe? Astrology. How did Ronald Reagan schedule his acts of state? Astrology. We trace how the highest of the occult arts evolved from interpreting omens in ancient Babylonia, to containing medieval epidemics, to providing fodder for middle-brow magazines. Whether you are a believer or not, astrology is the secret rhythm of our lives. Suggested further reading: Benson Bobrick, "The Fated Sky"; Nicholas Campion, "The Great Year," Julie Beck, "The New Age of Astrology," The Atlantic magazine; Elijah Wolfson, "Your Zodiac Sign, Your Health," The Atlantic magazine; Sonia Saraiya, "Seeing Stars," Vanity Fair magazine. Image: Horoscope (birth chart) cast for Iskandar Sultan, grandson of Tamerlane, born 1384

When we speak of "absolutism," most of us think immediately of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and his splendrous court at Versailles. But those glittering images cover over a centuries-long struggle by the Bourbon dynasty to consolidate power by forging quiet strategic alliances with the lower and middle classes against the nobility, building up a precarious potemkin village that would soon collapse under financial strain, throwing all of Europe into confusion. Please become a patron to hear the upcoming Myth of the Month: Astrology -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Louis XIV as Jupiter, vanquisher of the Fronde, Charles Poerson, 1650s.

How did a series of brutally conquered states and forced labor camps evolve over 200 years into a flourishing empire of trade, art, and culture? How did this new civilization manage land, money, and the status distinctions of ancestry and color? Why did Spanish America, one of the biggest imperial domains ever seen on earth, fail to benefit the mother country? And how did a cloistered nun in Mexico City come to be known as the first intellectual leading light of the Americas? Please become a patron to hear the upcoming Myth of the Month: Astrology -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Depiction of John the Evangelist in feather art, Mexico, 1500s, held by National Museum of Art, Mexico City Suggested further reading: D.A. Brading, "The First America"; John Elliott, "Empires of the Atlantic World"

--Made of cast iron, probably in the Netherlands, ca. 1650 --found at the Schuyler Flatts, Colonie, New York --held by the New York State Museum A mysterious fragment of an iron fireback found near the hearth of an old manor house in what was New Netherlands shows how we have misunderstood the Dutch -- a people who strove for stability, domesticity, and traditional social hierarchy to link their far-flung colonies with the homeland. Image courtesy of the state of New York. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous "History of the United States in 100 Objects" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

What happened to England in the power vacuum left in the wake of the execution of Charles I? Why were the Puritans, so pious in morals and strict in governance, unable to create a lasting Commonwealth? And why did the return of the monarchy unleash a wave of lewd hedonism that is shocking even more than three centuries later? The explosion of empire, the slave trade, religious toleration, the modern metropolis of London, the enshrinement of theater as the English national art form, the two-party system, and the consitutional balance of power still in place in both Britain and the United States -- all of these have their roots in the tumultuous years from 1650 to 1685; if there is any period of English history that you must know in order to understand the present, it is this one. My Patreon – please support to hear the next Myth of the Month! – www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did a set of seven fractious kingdoms unite into a new kingdom, known as "England," while under almost constant attack by Viking berserkers from across the North Sea? Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the recent examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: The Ormside bowl, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon silver bowl found in the grave of a Viking warrior, photographed by JMiall Music: A 1914 Edison Records wax-cylinder recording of "Rule, Britannia," provided by the University of California Santa Barbara Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

Why do we have uniformed officers called "police" who do things (like patrolling streets and investigating missing persons) that we call "policing"? We trace the evolution of law enforcement over the past two hundred years in response to urban growth, immigration, and labor unrest, and the struggles over who controls the police and their activities. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the recent examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Further Reading: Roger Lane, "Urban Police and Crime in Nineteenth-Century America," Crime and Justice, Vol. 2 (1980), pp. 1-43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1147411?seq=1 Image: Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge inspects state militiamen during the Boston police strike of 1919

Why did the US government support and supply substantial aid to a left-wing revolutionary government in Bolivia in the 1950s, at the same time that it was undermining or overthrowing similar regimes in other nations? What does this striking but forgotten incident reveal about American ambitions in Latin America? And what light does it shed on the strife engulfing Bolivia today, after yet another elected leader has been forced out of power? We discuss and find context with Oliver Rhoads Murphey, whose dissertation seeks to solve the puzzle of American involvement in the heart of Andean South America. Read "A Bond that will Permanently Endure: The Eisenhower administration, the Bolivian revolution and Latin American leftist nationalism" -- https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D87D30RB Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the recent examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Unlocked for the public after 1 year: -Ceramic chalice, decorated in Jemez black-on-white style, with crosses -made in pueblo of Giusewa, between 1598 and the 1630s -found in the ruins of the Spanish mission at Giusewa, 1937 A simple pottery chalice, probably made by a local indigenous woman, reveals the early stages of interaction between Spanish missionaries and the ancient Pueblo civilization -- an intermingling that would lead to conflict, and eventually, a massive revolt that some have called "the first American Revolution." Image courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Laboratory of Anthropology Suggested further reading: Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, edited by Robert W. Preucel, especially Matthew Liebman, "Signs of Power and Resistance: The (Re)Creation of Christian Imagery and Identities in the Pueblo Revolt Era”; Ramon Gutierrez, "When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away" Please support this podcast and hear all lectures,

Why does the earliest known picture of King Arthur show him riding on a goat and charging towards a deadly cat-monster? How has the tale of King Arthur and his knights evolved since it first emerged from Celtic folklore? We consider the shaping of the Arthur story from the songs of mysterious Welsh and Breton bards to the high medieval romances of French courtier-poets. Proceed to part 2 here: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/myth-of-the-month-12-king-arthur-pt-2-the-rise-and-fall-of-camelot Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the "historical" King Arthur -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Nicholas J. Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend"

After one year on Patreon for patrons only, Myth of the Month #8 becomes open to the public: The notion that there is a coherent society that can be called "the West" or "Western Civilization" -- running from Greco-Roman antiquity to modern North America -- originated during the upheaval of World War I, thanks to an eccentric German history teacher named Oswald Spengler. We consider whether any common thread or trait can be said to unite "the West," and why different nations like Egypt or Poland get tossed in or out of the basket of "the West" at different times. Finally, we consider why the idea of "the West" is often linked to conspiracy theories involving Jews, Marxists, post-modernists, or Jewish-Marxist-banker-Freemason-postmodernists. (Yes, I make an oblique reference here to Jordan Peterson.) The recent debate involving Douglas Murray, "What Is Killing Western Civilization?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZqKKFn3Hk Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examina

Romans, Brythons, Picts, Angles, Gaels, Saxons, and Jutes -- how did this kaleidoscopic welter of contending tribes crystallize into the medieval Christian kingdoms we know as England and Scotland? We consider the most tumultuous and mysterious period in British history, following the Roman withdrawal, as locals and Germanic migrants sought to assert power and maintain stability. Despite the great uncertainty, Britons mastered new knowledge, developed a poetic tradition, and passed on an enduring obsession with the sacred power of water. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the King Arthur cycle -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Cover image: 6th-century Anglo-Saxon inlaid gold disk brooch, found in gravesite in Kent. Image courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In this first installment on the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20, we consider the staggering scope and deep reach of the viral disease that swept the world three times, infecting one third of humankind and killing more people than the World War that nonetheless overshadowed it in the public mind. The second installment will consider the lingering impacts of the pandemic, its enduring mysteries, and the possible reasons it has been forgotten. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- https://www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Laura Spinney, "Pale Rider"; Alfred Crosby, "America's Forgotten Pandemic." image: Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1919