Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXI

[Vinyadan]

[QUOTE=Galloglaich;21164355]I'm just a little dubious that it was actually higher in the Iron Age than the medieval.

I guess it depends on what you call medieval and what you call iron age. Middle Ages post barbarian invasions and plague = 1/2 population of what was available before these happenings during the iron age. Illness, contraction of economy, big regions thriving on specialized cultures unable to feed their now isolated populations, seas and rivers become unsafe, the invaders grab what they can...

But not this part, the medieval period is full of contrary examples. It can work that way, interregnums were often very bloody, the decline of Rome seems to have led to at least a temporary population decline across Europe. But there are many cases of the opposite. Northern Italy after the eviction of Imperial authority in the 12th Century is probably the best and most obvious case I can think of, but a lot of the history of the Holy Roman Empire is also like that too (notwithtanding a couple of bloody interregnums there as well), and many other regional examples all around Europe. A lot of times when the central authority was either defeated or severely weakened that's when the locals started to really thrive. The Renaissance essentially took place in places which we would today call 'failed states'.

There is a large difference between an interdependent empire breaking down because of invasion or civil war with the consequent build up of a new system which needs a fully different economy and an already economically autonomous area gaining independence on its own (the communes).
Could you explain this failed states thing in relation to the Renaissance?

[Galloglaich]

I guess it depends on what you call medieval and what you call iron age. Middle Ages post barbarian invasions and plague = 1/2 population of what was available before these happenings during the iron age. Illness, contraction of economy, big regions thriving on specialized cultures unable to feed their now isolated populations, seas and rivers become unsafe, the invaders grab what they can...



There is a large difference between an interdependent empire breaking down because of invasion or civil war with the consequent build up of a new system which needs a fully different economy and an already economically autonomous area gaining independence on its own (the communes).
Could you explain this failed states thing in relation to the Renaissance?

quite simply I mean that this is where the Renaissance comes from



an extremely fragmented polity, if you look at it as a whole or even as regional zones. Northern Italy, Flanders, Rhineland, southern Germany etc. - these areas were what I would call 'failed states' , and yet they were thriving. There are two different kinds I guess.

I agree with you and with Kiero though that it very much depends on what kind of social organization is beneath the ostensible State.

The question of what was the size of the population in say, 1,500 BC vs 500 BC vs 500 AD vs 1500 AD, is an interesting one. I know there was quite a big dip after the Black Death. But it didn't last that long, I think the population was back up after about a 100 years.

I agree it's theoretically possible there were more people in the world in the time of Alexander or Julius Caesar than the time of Machiavelli or Durer, but I'm dubious because we obviously lack evidence. Not ruling it out though, I do think more of history goes in kind of odd ups and downs, spirals and loops than in direct progressions.

G

[Tobtor]

When I said leisure, I wasn't suggesting they had nothing but free time, rather they weren't engaged on their farms from dawn til dusk, and could be away from them to conduct business in town, without having a meaningful impact on the running of them, where they could train.

To be fair: nearly no farmer in northern Europe worked from dawn to dusk...

Farming routines have plenty of natural lulls etc. A good example is again Viking age Iceland: the farmers could take time out to visit neighbours and stay there for weeks feasting, board games and sports are were common (one ball game might be like irish hurling), evenings could be spend telling sagas (a tradition not stopping before the invention of the radio by the way), people went to thingvellir for weeks for the assembly (which included sporting events), bathing in hot springs were common, a large farm without a hot spring would have built a bathing house, training in swimming, archery and other weapon proficiency was common and so on. I am not saying that it in any way can be measured to let say greek games or theatres or the large cities etc, just that the idea of working from dawn to dusk was something practised anywere (without slavery and/or the hardest serfdom) was something "normal" people did anywhere is wrong.

And Iceland is the poor part of the Viking world....

Skeletal remains of Viking Age people (or Iron Age or Bronze Age) suggest just as high a living standard in the north as in the south.

That said; I agree some of the 'ancient' world powers like Persia, Greek and Rome gathered really a lot of soldiers, and built amazing buildings etc. And I agree some of the armies are very large and that they could field many troops in one spot. However I must also agree with Martin Greywolf that I find it hard to believe that for instance a Roman legion was always at full power (or even normally at full power). This is something rarely achieved in more modern militaries (see from the 17th-20th century). I think they were good if they managed 80-90% of the 'suggested' number of men (which would still make two or three legions plus support troops a vast army).

I also agree with Martin that the historical accounts is a dangerous tool for estimating army sizes (though the one available). It is the same sources that have 300.000 Goths travelling around in 6.000 ships, loosing 50.000men in a single event, and who afterwards still poses a threat, and other such stuff.

But it doesn't really matter for my overall point: no matter exactly how large the armies were (20.000 on both sides or 200.000 on both sides), the Celtic and Germanic armies kept being a threat to to southern much more populated areas. Thus we must assume they had at least nearly as large armies, and the sources tells us that they caused trouble for many years at a time (so not just seasonal raiding), and the Romans felt the need to position 13 (?) legions along the northern border on a semi permanent basis.

I originally contested this sentence from Venyadan

All large battles I can think of during the Ancient World were made possible by powerful authorities residing in a city, be it a Pharaoh, a Hittite King, Troy, Agamemnon, Athens, Sparta, Rome, Sardis, one of the four capitals of Media...

Well all the large battles you can think of must be all the ones those power wrote about.... (and we are ignoring the ones with germanic, celtic, and other barbarian people). However, there could indeed be other large scale battles we never hear about. The Tollensee seem one of these, they estimate 4-5.000 men, but that base don that 20% died during the battle, if the number is lower/higher that of course changes it.

In the period after the Roman defeat in Northern Germany (the Varus Battle), we see a series of weapondeposits in Scandinvia, some with thousand of men participating (or rather thousands DYING). Multiple battles with thousands dying... that sounds like some large wars was fought.

One suggested reason is that we now that Romans had allied themselves with some of the germanic tribes, and after the Varus battle it was time to settle some scores, and inter germanic wars broke out but the Romans never noticed them.

We have a few very rich graves with Roman drinking vessels from Southern Denmark from the period, such as the Hoby grave:


He might be one of the chieftains allied with the Romans, and who after the Varus battle needed to defend himself, but aperently the defending side did win several victories (though the number of defeats are unknown).

We cant know for sure how large these battles were, we can only get minimum numbers, which for some sites is way above 1.000, but that is at 100% loss rate. As multiple batlles often seem to occur with a short period (such as just after the Varus battle, again around 200 between 'Norwegian' and Jutlandish warriors, and again in the 4th/5th century AD with attacks coming from Sweden), the armies are likely bigger (otherwise you cant sustain multiple losses of 1.000 men). Yes there is far from 1.000 to 20.000 of a Roman consular army, but the 1.000 is the number of dead and captured enemies... I have a really hard time thinking they had multiple battles with 100% death and captured enemies...

[Tobtor]

A quick bit of digging turned up the Roman warm period covering the middle Hellenistic/early Roman era, which made the Mediterranean able to support a lot more food than during cold periods.

I am generally cautious about equalling warm periods with growth on a uniform basis: draughts are just as much a problem as too much cold weather... (think of how parts of California is these days...). Even cold and rainy Denmark droughts is occasional a problem on some soil types. Instead I think we should use this formula: Stable weather is good, changes is bad. Grass etc grows faster when there is enough rain, thus wet a May-Juli is needed for a good harvest of hay for anmials for instance, so if you are big on animal husbandry its going to hurt you with no rain in June-Juli for example. In Denmark late frost can kill of pears, but at the same time traditional proverbs have it that May should be cold for a good harvest of cereal and so on.

Slow changes allow you to adapt, but just four or five really bad years can ruin the economy of even relatively stable societies. Unfortunately ancient climate reconstructions have primarily focussed on major shifts, not short term events (only now are they beginning to focus on that).

[Mike_G]

quite simply I mean that this is where the Renaissance comes from




G

Wow.

I've been in bathrooms bigger than some of those fiefdoms.

"Lord of All the Lands From the Edge of the Bureau All the Way to the Dark Spot on the Rug"
kinda places.

[Carl]

Wow.

I've been in bathrooms bigger than some of those fiefdoms.

"Lord of All the Lands From the Edge of the Bureau All the Way to the Dark Spot on the Rug"
kinda places.

LOL.

As an aside i should point out that there's no strict requirement for there to have been a lower world population in roman times and kiero's point to be a fair one, if the balance of population favoured greater concentrations in and around the mediterranean comparative to later years you could see a rise in world and even across european population without the mediterranean powers necessarily seeing great change.

[cobaltstarfire]

Wow.

I've been in bathrooms bigger than some of those fiefdoms.

"Lord of All the Lands From the Edge of the Bureau All the Way to the Dark Spot on the Rug"
kinda places.

Yeah...I'm not even sure I can really see some of those political units *squints*

I feel like I have questions about this map and what's going on (socially, agriculturally, and defensively), but my head has been real fuzzy lately. I'm sure some/most of the answers are probably already in the conversation...

[Kiero]

LOL.

As an aside i should point out that there's no strict requirement for there to have been a lower world population in roman times and kiero's point to be a fair one, if the balance of population favoured greater concentrations in and around the mediterranean comparative to later years you could see a rise in world and even across european population without the mediterranean powers necessarily seeing great change.

Good point, you could have a lower total population, with much greater concentration of the people there were around the Mediterranean. As an example, if the various peoples of north Africa were tending towards settling rather than a nomadic lifestyle in this period, due to the successes of states like Carthage, then that would give them a greater pool of manpower to draw upon, even without any sort of artificial increase in overall population.

Then with a collapse of central authorities, people disperse, meaning any one of the newer, smaller states has fewer people to draw upon. I saw an estimate that a census carried out by Augustus showed there were 4 million people in Italy in the last century BC. The population of Sicily at the time was around a million. These are serious concentrations of population.

Makedonia apparently had four million at the time of the wars of the Diadochi (no doubt in decline, given how much effort the Successors went to in order to attract Makedonians to settle in colonies their new kingdoms). Which is several times the population of mainland Greece, so another factor in Philip's favour.

[Xuc Xac]

So got a question here. How would you fight with this weapon?

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What does my opponent have?

[Tobtor]

Good point, you could have a lower total population, with much greater concentration of the people there were around the Mediterranean. As an example, if the various peoples of north Africa were tending towards settling rather than a nomadic lifestyle in this period, due to the successes of states like Carthage, then that would give them a greater pool of manpower to draw upon, even without any sort of artificial increase in overall population.

Then with a collapse of central authorities, people disperse, meaning any one of the newer, smaller states has fewer people to draw upon. I saw an estimate that a census carried out by Augustus showed there were 4 million people in Italy in the last century BC. The population of Sicily at the time was around a million. These are serious concentrations of population.

Makedonia apparently had four million at the time of the wars of the Diadochi (no doubt in decline, given how much effort the Successors went to in order to attract Makedonians to settle in colonies their new kingdoms). Which is several times the population of mainland Greece, so another factor in Philip's favour.

Estimates on population of italy around 1300 is about 10-13 millions according to wikipedia, and that fits with Numbers for other areas I have sen. It would be lower in 1400 (the plagues) but High by 1500. So at least italy seem to have had a higer population than during the Augustus period.

[Blackhawk748]

What does my opponent have?

A typical lightsaber or is a stormtrooper, so no melee weapon.

[Vinyadan]

quite simply I mean that this is where the Renaissance comes from

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an extremely fragmented polity, if you look at it as a whole or even as regional zones. Northern Italy, Flanders, Rhineland, southern Germany etc. - these areas were what I would call 'failed states' , and yet they were thriving. There are two different kinds I guess.

A failed state is one which cannot control its own country, places like Yemen and Somalia (and some say Belgium, but I think that's just mean). If you want you can say that the HRE was, when it came to controlling northern Italy and some other areas, a failed state, but the Italian communes, as polities, surely weren't failed states. That's like saying that the many Spanish speaking states in the Americas are failed states because Spain couldn't hold on on them.

The Renaissance "happened" first in the Italian states, with a precedent in Petrarch and his new view of history, with an excellent pagan past for the first time seen as better than the Christian middle ages because of a new interest in man rather than God as agent in history. It was born in Florence, with the development of Latin Humanism, which brought about people like Alberti, Ficino, Brunelleschi, Pico della Mirandola... all of them living decidedly earlier than humanists or Renaissance artists anywhere else. After an expansion towards Venice, Rome, Northern Italy and Naples (where most intellectuals were actually Catalan), it reached Hungary under Matthias Corvinus. The very important personalities and developments of the northern Reinassance were born somewhat later (when Erasmus was born, Brunelleschi would have been about 90, Ficino was 33) and the Northern Reinassance only took off at the very end of the XV century, while the English Reinassance begun even later.
I say this to say that failed states really did not contribute, although a single, large, supranational entity or quasi-state (the HRE) was the place in which the most important things happened.

Anyway, seeing that there actually is historiography which handles the Italian communes as part of the HRE after the peace of Konstanz was a surprise to me. It seems to me like if Hellenistic historiography handled the English kings as kings of France, or the king of France as lord of Normandy during the 100 years war.

To me, the laser on a stick is a lightsaber meant for non force users. It is designed to be used as both lethal and non lethal weapon, and has a taser at one hand. If it goes well, you use it to brain people, otherwise you use it to cut people to pieces. I don't really see it as a naginata as I remember people fighting with naginatas in tournaments, more like a halberd. It could be a good formation weapon.

[Galloglaich]

Wow.

I've been in bathrooms bigger than some of those fiefdoms.

"Lord of All the Lands From the Edge of the Bureau All the Way to the Dark Spot on the Rug"
kinda places.

Exactly. And yet those tiny little towns of like 20,000 people were making architecture like this:

Spoiler: Strasbourg

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Spoiler: Krakow

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Spoiler: Prague

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Spoiler: Bruges

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Hard to explain it based on the way we are taught to understand the world today. But the medieval period worked from a different kind of logic than the Classical, Early Modern, or Modern eras.

It's hard to even imagine how a giant city of 10 million people or more today, could afford to build one of those magnificent town halls or catehdrals, let alone a whole town like that. In spite of our technology, we couldn't even put that together today I don't think (with a few exceptions - Barcelona for example)

G

[Galloglaich]

A failed state is one which cannot control its own country, places like Yemen and Somalia (and some say Belgium, but I think that's just mean). If you want you can say that the HRE was, when it came to controlling northern Italy and some other areas, a failed state, but the Italian communes, as polities, surely weren't failed states. That's like saying that the many Spanish speaking states in the Americas are failed states because Spain couldn't hold on on them.

The Renaissance "happened" first in the Italian states, with a precedent in Petrarch and his new view of history, with an excellent pagan past for the first time seen as better than the Christian middle ages because of a new interest in man rather than God as agent in history. It was born in Florence, with the development of Latin Humanism, which brought about people like Alberti, Ficino, Brunelleschi, Pico della Mirandola... all of them living decidedly earlier than humanists or Renaissance artists anywhere else. After an expansion towards Venice, Rome, Northern Italy and Naples (where most intellectuals were actually Catalan), it reached Hungary under Matthias Corvinus. The very important personalities and developments of the northern Reinassance were born somewhat later (when Erasmus was born, Brunelleschi would have been about 90, Ficino was 33) and the Northern Reinassance only took off at the very end of the XV century, while the English Reinassance begun even later.
I say this to say that failed states really did not contribute, although a single, large, supranational entity or quasi-state (the HRE) was the place in which the most important things happened.

Anyway, seeing that there actually is historiography which handles the Italian communes as part of the HRE after the peace of Konstanz was a surprise to me. It seems to me like if Hellenistic historiography handled the English kings as kings of France, or the king of France as lord of Normandy during the 100 years war.

To me, the laser on a stick is a lightsaber meant for non force users. It is designed to be used as both lethal and non lethal weapon, and has a taser at one hand. If it goes well, you use it to brain people, otherwise you use it to cut people to pieces. I don't really see it as a naginata as I remember people fighting with naginatas in tournaments, more like a halberd. It could be a good formation weapon.

You are really confused about a lot of this. It did start in Italy, you are correct about that. But it was not because of Boccaccio. His main role was as one of the 'Three Fountains' of Italian literature, and not for his work in Latin, but because of his work in promoting and elevating the Italian vernacular dialects as literary languages. Same with Petrarch and Dante.

Much more importantly, you are extremely confused about the "Northern Renaissance", though this isn't surprising or unusual.

You skipped Flanders , which was hand in glove with Italy and was in full swing Renaissance mode already in the 14th Century. Italian Scholars like Boccaccio and Petrarch traveled to Flanders. The explosion of literary artistic and technological development in Italy, Flanders, Catalonia, Bohemia, and many parts of Germany actually started before the era of Boccacio, the 'First Renaissance' was in the 13th Century, then it started again in the late 14th in all the same places - sparked by the developments in Florence, but not limited to them by any means.

It happened in many places, and for many reasons, not just cultural reasons (ala Scholasticism or Humanism which came later), some of them economic, some technological, some military, and not in the order you laid out. It sounds like you know a bit more about Italy than in the "Ultramontaine" regions.

G

[Galloglaich]

A failed state is one which cannot control its own country, places like Yemen and Somalia (and some say Belgium, but I think that's just mean). If you want you can say that the HRE was, when it came to controlling northern Italy and some other areas, a failed state, but the Italian communes, as polities, surely weren't failed states. That's like saying that the many Spanish speaking states in the Americas are failed states because Spain couldn't hold on on them.

What I actually mean, is in the Belgian sense, or something like between the Belgian and the Somali sense since there was a lot of violence going on and wars and so on.

Basically Belgium and Somalia (or Syria) circa 2016 are two extremes of what a 'failed state' can mean.

Yes individual Italian city-states (Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan, Brescia, Siena, Bologna) or Northern Free Cities (Bruges, Ghent, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Lubeck, Hamburg, Prague, Krakow, Danzig) more or less had control over their own city limits and immediate surrounding territories, (more on that in a second) but there was no effective king of northern Italy, there was no effective State of Northern Italy, nor was there a Rhineland State or a Southern Germany State or a northern Germany state or even a Flanders State (though the Valois Dukes of Burgundy tried)

All of those areas were constantly beset by wars, traveling the roads between those polities was dangerous, risky business. Typically done in heavily armed caravans.

And yet travel they did, and trade, and circulate journeymen and merchants and artists. Technology spread like wildfire. The printing press exploded in 50 years, from one operating press to 1000 of them, printing 8,000,000 documents by 1500.

They were thriving. They were extremely prosperous. They were producing art and architecture we would be hard pressed to match today. Yet by todays standards we would also call these areas 'failed states' - if we are honest about it. I know it's a provocative statement, but I believe it is the correct way to describe it.


There are failed states like Belgium, today, where they produce wonderful beer and chocolate and seem to live pretty well, and then places like Albania, which aren't doing so great, and places like Syria which are virtually hell on earth. There are reasons for the differences, and it's not entirely due to wealth.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

The whole "we couldn't build it today" thing... as far as I'm concerned, it's more a matter of having neither the need nor the desire, than it is anything about capability.

We could build near-perfectly symmetrical piles of stone bigger than the pyramids... but why would we?

[Carl]

The whole "we couldn't build it today" thing... as far as I'm concerned, it's more a matter of having neither the need nor the desire, than it is anything about capability.

We could build near-perfectly symmetrical piles of stone bigger than the pyramids... but why would we?

You managed to completely miss his point. Where physically able to build a lot of that stuff, but we could never afford to do so. From an economics PoV it wouldn't work.

[Galloglaich]

You managed to completely miss his point. Where physically able to build a lot of that stuff, but we could never afford to do so. From an economics PoV it wouldn't work.

Exactly. And it's not like there isn't a demand. Places like Bruges, or Prague or Venice draw millions of tourists every year. Rents are very high for shops and residences. That kind of beauty has inherent value. We do build modern cities explicitly with the intent of drawing people in to visit. But instead of this

Spoiler: Venice

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the best we can do is more like this

Spoiler: Vegas

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I guess to me the more interesting question though is more what Carl pointed out. Why is it that in spite of our much larger population today and much greater wealth, automation, robots, lasers computers and all the other things that make work so much easier today, we really couldn't afford to build with that kind of quality.


I think that is a question you will never ask yourself unless you experience these places first hand. I spent a lot of my childhood in old parts of Europe and again as a young man in the Army in Germany, and I would marvel at what they made centuries before. I couldn't square it with the Monty Python thing, or with the kind of cheap architecture (private / individual and public) we usually settle for today.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

You managed to completely miss his point. Where physically able to build a lot of that stuff, but we could never afford to do so. From an economics PoV it wouldn't work.

Again, a matter of priorities.

Somehow, it's been economically possible to build all of these.

And these.

And these.

And these.

And as pointed out below... none of them (that I noticed) took 100+ years to build.

[Beleriphon]

It's hard to even imagine how a giant city of 10 million people or more today, could afford to build one of those magnificent town halls or catehdrals, let alone a whole town like that. In spite of our technology, we couldn't even put that together today I don't think (with a few exceptions - Barcelona for example)

G

I think you're looking at two issues with Cathedrals: supply and demand. Actually building a cathedral today isn't that hard from a construction standpoint, I mean they're really just warehouses with a fancy innards. As it stands there's a sufficient supply of cathedrals for most places, and there isn't the demand from people, the church, or governments to build them so they don't get built.

Magnificent town halls are a different ball of wax altogether. The Los Angeles city government building is pretty spectacular, and all kinds of crazy skyscrapers get built all of the time. The Burj Khalifa is a pretty amazing structure (at over nearly half a mile in height), its bigger, more impressive, and way harder to build than a medieval cathedral and it took less than a 182 years to finish construction.

[Galloglaich]

Estimates on population of italy around 1300 is about 10-13 millions according to wikipedia, and that fits with Numbers for other areas I have sen. It would be lower in 1400 (the plagues) but High by 1500. So at least italy seem to have had a higer population than during the Augustus period.

So by estimates - and admittedly, that's all they are is estimates, 5 million in the Classical period in Italy and 10-13 million in the high medieval. Probably more like 8-10 million in the 15th Century due to the die off from the plague back around 1350.

But still twice as many people there as during Classical times. Which is about what I would have expected.

medieval society was much more efficient than Greek or even Roman when it came to things like food production. One medieval watermill could grind more grain than 50 Roman slaves, according to Jean Gimpel. Medieval society was much more mechanized and much more efficient in general.

If you think about it a bit, their main existential enemy during the medieval period, the Ottoman Empire, was a lot like the Roman Empire and in some ways could be thought of as it's direct descendant. It was a more slave based economy, definitely a strong State like the Roman Empire, very ruthlessly authoritarian. Had very large armies and controlled a huge territory.

And yet the medieval city-states like Genoa and Venice, small kingdoms like Poland, Hungary and Spain, and non-State entities like the Knights Hospitaliers etc. held them off pretty effectively, in spite of a chronic lack of cooperation or sustained unity.

(in fact France actively helped the Ottomans quite a bit in the 16th Century ,even allowing their fleet to anchor in Toulon and helping them to sack Nice, rather shockingly... but that's realpolitik for you)

G

[Galloglaich]

I think you're looking at two issues with Cathedrals: supply and demand. Actually building a cathedral today isn't that hard from a construction standpoint, I mean they're really just warehouses with a fancy innards. As it stands there's a sufficient supply of cathedrals for most places, and there isn't the demand from people, the church, or governments to build them so they don't get built.

I think you are missing my point almost entirely, I wasn't just talking about Cathedrals, they are simply the easiest and most obvious example to point out. When it comes to Venice or Bruges or really any of those towns, it's really not the Cathedral that is the most important thing. Stasbourg well yes maybe due to the incredible size of the thing, but the city itself would still be a UNESCO World Heritage site without it.

Magnificent town halls are a different ball of wax altogether. The Los Angeles city government building is pretty spectacular, and all kinds of crazy skyscrapers get built all of the time. The Burj Khalifa is a pretty amazing structure (at over nearly half a mile in height), its bigger, more impressive, and way harder to build than a medieval cathedral and it took less than a 182 years to finish construction.

I've been to the LA City hall and I've been to the Bruges one, (and many other similar from the same era) and there is simply no comparison. Nor did the Bruges hall take 182 years to finish...

Burj Khalifa is amazing, but mainly just due to it's height. To me, that is far closer to your description of 'just a big box' than any old Cathedral I've ever been in. I mean I've never seen it up close but I have been in some enormous skyscrapers. There is a nice view but not all that much else to really inspire you. I'm not religious - but Notre Dame blows away the Empire State building in terms of the mark it leaves on you. In fact you can see some big modern skyscrapers in Paris on the same day that you look at the old stuff... for me Isle de la Cite is a lot more impressive (and draws a lot more tourist dollars) than all the skyscrapers in Chicago even if you stacked them one on top of the other.


I know a lot of us simply aren't going to agree on this issue, so all I can say is, let those who have eyes see the truth.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

Honestly, I'm looking at these structures from the standpoint of engineering, architecture, art, and construction techniques. There's no awe or reverence that comes from any of them, for me -- ancient, medieval, renaissance, industrial, modern, whatever.

The cathedrals, etc, are remarkable human achievements, born of ingenuity and hard work. I'm not saying otherwise. But if we had a reason, now, today, we could build the same sorts of buildings.

[Kiero]

So by estimates - and admittedly, that's all they are is estimates, 5 million in the Classical period in Italy and 10-13 million in the high medieval. Probably more like 8-10 million in the 15th Century due to the die off from the plague back around 1350.

But still twice as many people there as during Classical times. Which is about what I would have expected.

medieval society was much more efficient than Greek or even Roman when it came to things like food production. One medieval watermill could grind more grain than 50 Roman slaves, according to Jean Gimpel. Medieval society was much more mechanized and much more efficient in general.

If you think about it a bit, their main existential enemy during the medieval period, the Ottoman Empire, was a lot like the Roman Empire and in some ways could be thought of as it's direct descendant. It was a more slave based economy, definitely a strong State like the Roman Empire, very ruthlessly authoritarian. Had very large armies and controlled a huge territory.

And yet the medieval city-states like Genoa and Venice, small kingdoms like Poland, Hungary and Spain, and non-State entities like the Knights Hospitaliers etc. held them off pretty effectively, in spite of a chronic lack of cooperation or sustained unity.

(in fact France actively helped the Ottomans quite a bit in the 16th Century ,even allowing their fleet to anchor in Toulon and helping them to sack Nice, rather shockingly... but that's realpolitik for you)

G

Efficiency wasn't a goal for classical, slave-based economies, simply put. Not only did you have the issue of comprehension I mentioned before (most rulers were aristocrats, who understood taxes, rents, appreciation in land value and making profit from sales of produce), but using slavery removes the incentive to maximise output from a given amount of labour. When there's always more slaves who can be acquired, there's little immediate value in getting the maximum return from the ones you have. Furthermore, there's the fear in the back of slaveholder's minds - if capital becomes a lot more efficient, requiring less labour, what are you going to do with all those idle slaves? Or more accurately, what are they doing to do with all that time on their hands, and reduced prospects of buying their own freedom through work?

When you have virtually unlimited, cheap labour, there's no reason to seek the hugely profitable gains that can be made through good investment and use of capital. We now know that real economic gains come through efficient application of capital, but they didn't. And the people with the expertise in that area, generally of the mercantile class, were beneath the dignity of the people in charge to engage.

[Galloglaich]

Honestly, I'm looking at these structures from the standpoint of engineering, architecture, art, and construction techniques. There's no awe or reverence that comes from any of them, for me -- ancient, medieval, renaissance, industrial, modern, whatever.

The cathedrals, etc, are remarkable human achievements, born of ingenuity and hard work. I'm not saying otherwise. But if we had a reason, now, today, we could build the same sorts of buildings.

Well, I could sneer and say "you sound like somebody who has never stood in one of these places", but let's skip that, and just point out - the intangible qualities of these places that do inspire awe in millions of people, putting aside religion for a moment, since that complicates things and is controversial in a way we don't need to get into here... but taking into consideration places like Venice and Bruges and Florence where the focus isn't necessarily just on a big church, the value is quantifiable, in terms of tourist dollars. Tens, hundreds of millions of tourist dollars. By comparing it to Las Vegas (or Disneyland etc.) I was trying to point out, we do make places just for the intangible value that they provide to people, for fun in other words. Because it generates income.

Even the Cathedrals... you could look at these almost as temples to art and technology, and civic pride, as much as they were religious. Many of the most famous ones were finished during times when the bishop or archbishop had already been banned from the city. Quite a few reigned over towns which were no longer Catholic shortly after being completed, or even before they were completed, but they still finished them and the locals are still very proud of them. And they certainly draw tourists by the millions today even though many of them are no longer used as religious centers.

The real point is, I find it interesting to contrast the economic capabilities of various social structures.


In 1450, a town with 20,000 people in it could build the kinds of things I linked upthread. I don't believe any town in the US with that population could build anything approaching one of these places. They would not have that much expertise in a city that size for one thing, in spite of the fact that such expertise is indeed in demand. Things just work differently today. Even in a city with 10 or 100 times that population, I doubt they would have enough expertise, and they couldn't afford the budget.

In ancient Rome, the economy was tuned for slave labor. In medieval Strasbourg or Krakow or Florence, it was tuned for skilled labor. In say, modern Indianapolis, I'm not certain what it's tuned for. Consumption I guess.

G

[Mike_G]

I think you are missing my point almost entirely, I wasn't just talking about Cathedrals, they are simply the easiest and most obvious example to point out. When it comes to Venice or Bruges or really any of those towns, it's really not the Cathedral that is the most important thing. Stasbourg well yes maybe due to the incredible size of the thing, but the city itself would still be a UNESCO World Heritage site without it.



I've been to the LA City hall and I've been to the Bruges one, (and many other similar from the same era) and there is simply no comparison. Nor did the Bruges hall take 182 years to finish...

Burj Khalifa is amazing, but mainly just due to it's height. To me, that is far closer to your description of 'just a big box' than any old Cathedral I've ever been in. I mean I've never seen it up close but I have been in some enormous skyscrapers. There is a nice view but not all that much else to really inspire you. I'm not religious - but Notre Dame blows away the Empire State building in terms of the mark it leaves on you. In fact you can see some big modern skyscrapers in Paris on the same day that you look at the old stuff... for me Isle de la Cite is a lot more impressive (and draws a lot more tourist dollars) than all the skyscrapers in Chicago even if you stacked them one on top of the other.


I know a lot of us simply aren't going to agree on this issue, so all I can say is, let those who have eyes see the truth.

G

I think the difference is craftsmanship and detail.

If you look at the Big Dig in Boston, it's more impressive in terms of tons of earth moved, concrete poured, etc than any Roman road. But it was done in a few years, and done in a very utilitarian fashion. There are no Triumphs carved into the sides of the Zakim Bridge.

I think a lot of this is a difference in mindset. We don't have young boys enter an apprenticeship as a stonemason and basically grow up perfecting techniques of carving and fitting stones. Now the focus is on efficiency and scale, not painstaking detail.

I'm not sure we could assemble enough actual artisans to build a cathedral with the level of detail that the medieval ones have. We could build a church bigger and faster and stronger. But I don't see use spending the time and money and sweat to replicate the gargoyles.

[Tiktakkat]

If you think about it a bit, their main existential enemy during the medieval period, the Ottoman Empire, was a lot like the Roman Empire and in some ways could be thought of as it's direct descendant. It was a more slave based economy, definitely a strong State like the Roman Empire, very ruthlessly authoritarian. Had very large armies and controlled a huge territory.

I don't see how you can possibly describe the Holy Roman Empire as a "failed state", while contrasting the Ottoman Empire with the Roman Empire (and the Byzantine Empire) as a "strong state".

Certainly you can find 30-50 year periods where a strong ruler and his immediate heirs kept the civil wars and splintering off of random satellites/clients/what have you to a minimum, or even reversed it for a bit, in the history of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires, but you can find the same in the history of the Holy Roman Empire as well (going back of course to the Carolingians and Merovingians.)
Likewise the Holy Roman Emperors were as ruthlessly authoritarian as they could get away, much like the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Emperors. And they had very large armies and controlled a huge territory - as theoretically as the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Emperors. This is compounded once you get the Hapsburgs inheriting Spain. (And then split, a much more relevant parallel to the Roman and Byzantine Empires.)

If you go as minor as Belgium, then the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires were all woefully failed states, and what you need to consider is how a failed state can not merely stagger on for centuries, but do so in a way as to be a Great Power, or at least a fully functional facsimile thereof.

And yet the medieval city-states like Genoa and Venice, small kingdoms like Poland, Hungary and Spain, and non-State entities like the Knights Hospitaliers etc. held them off pretty effectively, in spite of a chronic lack of cooperation or sustained unity.

(in fact France actively helped the Ottomans quite a bit in the 16th Century ,even allowing their fleet to anchor in Toulon and helping them to sack Nice, rather shockingly... but that's realpolitik for you)

G

[/QUOTE]

Hardly surprising.
Odaenathus of Palmyra held off the Sassanian Persian Empire, yet Palmyra disappeared under the Romans a few decades later, much as kingdoms that resisted the Ottomans held out then disappeared or were absorbed by the Hapsburgs, Capetians/Bourbons, or Romanovs.

[Galloglaich]

I'm not sure we could assemble enough actual artisans to build a cathedral with the level of detail that the medieval ones have. We could build a church bigger and faster and stronger. But I don't see use spending the time and money and sweat to replicate the gargoyles.

I agree. I wonder about the stronger part. One of the impressive things about the medieval cathedrals when you are standing there looking at them (or at an impressive town hall like at Bruges or Siena or Gdansk) is that they lasted 5 centuries. I wonder how many modern buildings will last that long. Let alone as long as say, the Roman Colliseum or the Hagia Sophia or the Parthenon...

G

[Galloglaich]

I don't see how you can possibly describe the Holy Roman Empire as a "failed state", while contrasting the Ottoman Empire with the Roman Empire (and the Byzantine Empire) as a "strong state".

Let me explain. I don't see the Roman Empire (or late Republic) tolerating open disobedience to the emperor for years, or decades on end from cities or local princes. But during the medieval period, strong Emperors were very much the exception. The rule was Emperors who lacked the strength to even collect taxes in most cases, let alone obedience in things like diplomacy or war.

The Roman Empire, especially in it's declining centuries, certainly suffered from brutal interregnums and an unruly military, as did the Ottomans and most similar Empires, but during the active reign of a typical Emperor you could call what was going on a State, in the modern sense of the word. Maybe not a fantastically efficient State, but a state with the same weights and measures, a clear top down chain of command, and fairly predictable level of routine adherence to Imperial demands

In the medieval period, the Holy Roman Empire was almost never even close to unified. I'm mainly an expert on the 15th Century, and I can tell you with certainty that during that entire Century there was never an Emperor sufficiently powerful to unify the entire HRE. Most of the period was spent with one the largest areas within the 'Empire' (Bohemia) under heretical religion which technically, the Emperor had banned, the entire region of Switzerland openly defying the Emperor and often fighting on behalf of France, entities within the Empire including princes, towns, town-leagues and prince-prelates (bishops and archbishops etc.) openly at war with one another, and the Emperor unable to leave his own home territories on the fringe of the Empire and himself at one point captured by the citizens of a town and held captive.

I don't imagine Emperor Nero or even Claudius tolerating being held captive by say, Cremona and handed over to his brother and (if he survived being put into the hands of a family member) allowing the citizens of that city to survive. In the HRE, when a stronger Emperor did attempt to assert his Imperial prerogatives, like Maximillian did in his attempt to reign in the Swiss, they got embarrassed.

In short, I'd refer to Voltaire when he described the Holy Roman Empire is "Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire"

I don't mean to be rude but you come across knowledgeable about the Classical world but less so about the later medieval.

G

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, I could sneer and say "you sound like somebody who has never stood in one of these places", but let's skip that, and just point out -

It would be more accurate to say that "awe" is very weak part of my emotional spectrum...

I agree. I wonder about the stronger part. One of the impressive things about the medieval cathedrals when you are standing there looking at them (or at an impressive town hall like at Bruges or Siena or Gdansk) is that they lasted 5 centuries. I wonder how many modern buildings will last that long. Let alone as long as say, the Roman Colliseum or the Hagia Sophia or the Parthenon...

That part I do largely agree with.

Regardless of whether we could or should build things that will last the test of time... in most cases, we're not.