Once again I’m behind the curve, because the first I heard of this baffling use of the word medieval was today when a friend forwarded me a link to the Times Online story: Lamy takes charge at ‘medieval’ WTO.

Apparently, Pascal Lamy, the man who’s going to be taking the reins of the World Trade Organization as director general, once called the WTO “a medieval organisation,”* and people who remember this quote hold it against him.

But what do they think he meant by it? I suppose the WTO is like the medieval church, in that it’s a transnational force that can inflict punishment on the leaders of a nation. The WTO’s tariff threat against a nation is the closest thing in the modern era to threatening a king (and by extension all his subjects) with excommunication. Or maybe he means that it’s like a medieval guild, in that the member states have given up some individual autonomy in order to create a centralized policing body with more bargaining power.

Yeah, yeah–of course he means ‘medieval’ in the ‘general perjorative adjective meaning barbaric’ kind of way. But even on that count, I doubt his quote makes much sense. I’m going to dig deeper and find out just what context he said it in. Stay tuned.

*He was sure to pronounce organization with an s, because he knew he’d be quoted by the British media.

Quick, my legions of loyal readers, set your TiVo’s on stun (though it is you who will be stunned!):

On Monday, May 23, Good Morning America, a journalistic paragon of unchallenged credentials, is going to clear up the Da Vinci Code mess once and for all. And they’re doing it with not one, not two, but three anchors, scattered across Europe. Robin Roberts in Paris at St. Sulpice, David Wright in Milan in front of the Last Supper, Bill Weir in London at the Temple Church–if ABC News can’t get to the bottom of the greatest mystery of our time through the Herculean effort of flying pretty faces out to stand in front of famous architecture, then my faith in humanity is literally going to die the metaphorical death that happens every time a child learns there’s no Shrove Tuesday Trout and that rainbows are really created by slaughtering the peaceful talking dolphins of planet Cute VII.

According to said website:

[The Da Vinci Code references] an alternative interpretation of “The Last Supper” that has Mary Magdalene — not St. John — sitting to the right of Jesus in the painting. You can follow along from home as “GMA” investigates the clues laid out in the book to find out the real truth behind the “The da Vinci Code.”

As I mentioned in a previous post, noted Arthurian Norris J. Lacy has already done a much better job than I can at debunking da Brown, but I’ll quote my favorite bit here, relating to the appearance of “St. John” in the painting:

A centerpiece of Brown’s theory is the contention that Mary Magdalene is depicted next to Jesus in Leonardo’s Last Supper. Since there are thirteen figures in the painting (Jesus and twelve others), that leaves us wondering who was absent that day. The answer is surely, ‘no one’: John was traditionally shown as a young and delicate person. And whereas Brown sees him/her with breasts, I am unable to locate them, certainly not in the customary place.

All that’s left to me is to wonder at ABCNews’ insistence on putting quotations around the name of “the Last Supper”. I understand that the AP stylebook never uses italics, because they can’t be sent over a wire, but this is the Internet! If they wanted, they could put it in flashing polka-dotted letters. More confusing is the use of quotation marks in the companion story, “The Mysteries of ‘Jesus, Mary, and Da Vinci‘ ” Is “Jesus, Mary, and Da Vinci” a book (or short story or who knows, since they don’t use italics!) whose mysteries they’re looking into? I’d also wanted to criticize GMA for capitalizing the ‘da’ in Da Vinci, which is apparently supposed to be capitalized, and that would have shown my own ignorance and made me look bad. But thankfully, they managed to both capitalize it and not capitalize it in the same story and did my job for me. Everyone does my job for me.

Vacate the edges of your seats, here comes the report you’ve all been waiting for: my Kingdom of Heaven review, which is probably grossly inaccurate, since I’m working by memory on an unmemorable film.

Kingdom of Heaven is an epic adventure about a common man who finds himself thrust into a decades-long war, a stranger in a strange land*, he serves a doomed king, falls in love with an exotic and forbidden queen, and rises into knighthood. Ultimately, he must protect the people of Jerusalem from overwhelming forces – while striving to keep a fragile peace. From Ridley Scott, the —

Oops. That’s not my review. That’s the official synopsis from the movie’s website, kingdomofheavenmovie.com, not my review. Incidentally, I find it amazing that kingdomofheaven.com was available to be bought up by a cheap internet advertiser by the time the movie came out. I was expecting some religious fundamentalism when I typed it in, but all I got was a chance to buy movie tickets–or the domain name, which is for sale, too. But anyway… (Oh yeah, SPOILER WARNING! [for those who still haven’t had a chance to study the Crusades])

The movie begins with some reading. “It is the year 1186,” which is momentarily confusing, until you realize that they’re just using the present tense dramatically. The crusaders have captured Jerusalem, blah blah blah. When the picture arrives, we get to see a crossroads, where a woman is being buried by creepy, thieving grave-tenders. The camera then zooms in on Orlando Bloom, He-Who-Is-So-Dreamy-Amen, who has once again been cast as a blacksmith, and who is not at the crossroads, but rather doing his blacksmithy thing. Why does Hollywood love blacksmiths so much, and why do they think He-Of-The-Gracefully-Flowing-Locks makes a good one? Even when he’s cut, he’s only slightly built. Wouldn’t a blacksmith be an amazing hoss? Yet he’s been a blacksmith in not one, but two summer movies, including Pirates of the Carribean.

It’s snowing the most amazing fake snow I’ve ever seen, amazing in that it looks absolutely nothing like snow. It’s like feathers or ashes or something. And then Qui-Gon Jinn rides up with some knights, looking for his son, his bastard son, who is, of course, Orlando McHottie. The blacksmith doesn’t want to leave his blacksmith’s shop, so the knight goes on. Enter the priest who was at the grave to mock our hero, telling him his (Orlando’s) wife (the chick being buried in the opener) is walking around headless in hell, because she was a suicide. Orlando de Hot sees the priest is wearing his wife’s crucifix, which is an amazingly dumb thing to do if you’re a priest who’s planning on going and taunting her widower, but this is one dumb priest, and so Orlando** kills him with the sword he’s been forging. This causes his entire home to burn down, so he decides to go on crusade with his daddy for forgiveness.

It’s a tearful reunion with lots of swordplay, but it’s cut short by an ambush, about two dozen men who’ve come to kill our hero because he killed a priest who, though he was sleazy, probably didn’t deserve to be stabbed and set on fire. Qui-Gon Jinn refuses to give over his son, so the arrows start flying from everywhere, leaving me thinking, ‘are massed arrows really the best strategy to be using in a forest?’ But Ridley Scott is obsessed with arrows, so arrows it is. The crusaders lose two men, but kill everyone else, though Qui-Gon is injured. Luckily, he’s not chopped in half, so he gets to be around later to knight Orlando.

Orlando does get knighted, and he acquires a rival in the person of Guy of somewhere-or-other, a snooty French Templar who’s in line for the throne of Jerusalem. We know Guy is a bad person, because he’s rude and French and talks about God a lot. In fact, anytime anyone talks about God a lot in the movie, they’re bad. Orlando, who is struggling with religious doubt brought on by the death of his wife and child, is good, but not really very good at making you understand that he’s struggling with religious doubt unless he says outright, “I’m struggling with religious doubt,” but he does say it, so don’t worry. Then his dad dies, and they all decide to go see his lands in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, there’s a weird plot device shipwreck. On the one hand, this is good. It shows that in the middle ages sailing on the sea wasn’t at all like taking a Carnival cruise, except for the sporadic outbreaks of dysentery. On the other hand, it’s only there so that Orlando can be the only survivor, and so that he can subsequently wander around in the desert and pull a thorn out of a lion’s paw. That is to say, it is so that he can save the life of an Arab who will later prove to be a great benefit to him, because Ridley Scott loves cliches almost about as much as he loves arrows.

Orlando finds civilization, regains his lands, and brings water to the desert. No, really. When he gets to his father’s lands, it’s all dry and dusty. After he personally starts digging for water with them, they find it and everything turns green. Apparently, no one thought to dig a well before Orlando showed up.

Then the resident hottie, Lady Sibylla, sister of the King of Jerusalem and wife of Guy of Jerkland shows up and throws herself at him. Really, it’s like she’s from the sex delivery service. Meanwhile, the evil Knights Templar, taking a break from hiding treasure in America and covering up the da Vinci Code, stir up trouble, eventually causing Saladin and the Muslims to raise an army to attack. It’s one of the conceits of the movie that the Muslims really didn’t want to fight, and they were provoked into it, which is lame, since Saladin spent nearly twenty years riding around telling everyone, ‘hey, I’m going to conquer Jerusalem again’.

Orlando rides out to face the infidels before the crusaders have gotten their act together, in one of those fights against overwhelming odds that you hear so much about these days. Unfortunately, his rag tag bunch of misfits doesn’t have a plan that’s so crazy it just might work, and he’s beaten. This is a good thing, though, because it allows the Arab he saved to save him, and it shows that he’s heroically dedicated to keeping “the people” safe. For reasons I don’t understand, “the people” would have been slaughtered by the Muslim army if he hadn’t attacked it and delayed it for all of ten minutes. Apparently, “the people” have no clue when they ought to get out of the way of an army.

The King of Jerusalem, a leper who wears this crazy Destro mask, manages to negotiate peace one last time before he dies. He tries to get Orlando to marry his sister (from the sex delivery service), but he won’t, because that would mean killing Guy. Apparently, it’s OK to kill priests who insult your wife, but not OK to kill clearly evil bastards before they take the throne. He has selective wussy modern movie morality, which clearly states ‘Thou Shalt Only Take Principled Stands When it is Dramatically Necessary That Thou Dost So’.

Guy takes the throne and leads an army to kill the Muslims. But apparently, Guy never learned about water, like Orlando, He-Who-Brings-Water-(And Hotness)-To-The-Desert, so the crusaders fight while thirsty and get killed. Now the Muslims and Saladin turn on Jerusalem, and it’s up to Orlando to defend the city for about an hour and a half of movie. Let me sum it up like this: arrows, fire, and heroic speeches. For any scene, pick two of the three elements and mix them together. Every time there’s a heroic speech, the movie grinds to a halt, because Orlando, God bless him, can’t summon up masculine swagger to save his perfectly tousled head. It’s like watching a kitten dressed up like George C. Scott’s Patton. Sure, the big flag is behind him, but everything he says falls flat–especially the part where he tells the defenders of Jerusalem that their holy sites don’t matter and that all religions are essentially crap. I think perhaps crusaders, even reluctant ones who are only there because they killed a priest who insulted their dead suicide wives, probably didn’t shout those things to big mobs with weapons, even if they might have secretly believed them. Call me crazy.

This is the big problem with the movie, and it only gets worse when the Archbishop of Jerusalem instructs people, fearing they’re all about to be captured, to ‘covert to the heathen faith and repent later’. This is supposed to show that he’s a craven fake, but not five minutes ago when Orlando was telling us, ‘all religions are bunk,’ we were supposed to see him as a champion of “the people” and a crack theological thinker.

After lots of fighting, Orlando manages to negotiate a truce that allows the crusaders and all the Christians to flee the city and head back to Christian lands. He hooks up with the queen, too. Then they live happily ever after in his old burnt down blacksmith’s shack, but not after he refuses the call of crusader leader Richard the Lion Heart, who shows up at his shack so that he can do just that.

An end placard tells us that they fought more crusades, and that even today there is conflict between Christian and Muslim in the holy land. In case you’ve never seen the news. Thank you, Ridley Scott.

So, did I like the movie? Sure. But it was just your standard summer movie, a package of cliches playing themselves out to a booming orchestral score and lots of bloodshed. It wasn’t a good movie, and it was a pretty crap medieval movie, but it had its moments. Obviously, it’s full of crap history, but nowhere near as much crap history as that King Arthur movie that I still haven’t gotten around to talking about.

*I propose a 15-year moratorium on the phrase “stranger in a strange land.” Who’s with me?
**Thinking up funny nicknames is taxing.

I should have mentioned this earlier (and don’t worry, I’ll mess with the date stamps on my blog to make it seem like I did), but I’ve been waiting for Kingdom of Heaven for some time. My first semester as a medieval grad student at Yale, I received this letter from the medieval departmental secretary:

Dear Paul and Robyn,

My name is [EDITED]. I’m a graduate student at the Divinity School. Prior to this, I worked as a story editor for the filmmaker, Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator).

Ridley is preparing a new, epic film that takes place during the first Crusade. However, he’s concerned about embarking on a project that may be considered inaccurate or insensitive. Thus, he’s seeking a scholarly stamp-of-approval.

Is there anyone in your department, or perhaps another department, who specializes in the Crusades and who may be interested in reading the screenplay?

Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Sincerely,
[EDITED]

So, if only I had managed to finish my degree and get an appointment to teach at Yale in one month, it could have been me stamping the film with approval.

Apparently, some time between then and now he decided to change the story from the first Crusade to right before the third.

Sometimes, being a medievalist is rough work, and today is one of those days. I’m going to go see Kingdom of Heaven, not because I want to, but because The Man will take away my medievalist license if I don’t. Since They already revoked my poetic license, I can’t afford that.

I’ve already read the reviews, and the reviews are altogether not as pretty as Orlando Bloom allegedly is. (Personally, I don’t see the appeal, but then I’m not a thirteen year old girl.*) Most of the critics’ problems with the movie fall into the ‘it’s not historically accurate enough’ category, which, as a medievalist, I’m supposed to agree with. I did start a blog to nitpick media, after all, and a movie is a medium.

Surely it’ll be wrong. Any movie based on a historical event is going to be fundamentally wrong–because history is complicated and movies are not, and movies have themes and history doesn’t. The Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor in order to demonstrate man’s inhumanity to man, or that a ragtag band of misfits really can make a difference in this world, or that true love can last even in the face of a world gone mad. But you could make pretty good movies based on those themes that happen to take place in and around 1941.

I hear Ridley Scott’s theme is that religious tolerance is the solution to conflicts of religious ideals, which isn’t much of a medieval theme (the work of Dr. Maria Rosa Menocal notwithstanding), but since this movie wasn’t made for the court of a medieval monarch, it’s OK that it’s not going to be thematically medieval. But it is a pretty crap theme, medieval or not, because so often religious conflicts are on areas where there can’t be any meaningful compromise. The medieval conflict over control of Jerusalem is the perfect opportunity to explore that theme, but from what I hear Ridley Scott isn’t interested in that. I can stop saying ‘I hear’ once I see the film, in T-minus 2 hours.

I’m less interested in the authenticity question than in the plagiarism question, anyway. James Reston, Jr. is threatening prosecution, because he says the movie is basically a precis of the first 100 pages of his 2001 book Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade. I own the book but have never read it, and usually I’m skeptical about such claims. But in this case, without having read the book or seen the movie, I’m inclined to believe the guy. If he’d said the movie was a ripoff of the entire book, I wouldn’t believe him, but 100 pages I can believe. No one in Hollywood reads more than 100 pages into a book.

From the table of contents, it appears that the second chapter of his book is called “The Kingdom of Heaven,” but I hope his suit has more to it than that. And I hope Reston paid royalties to God, or at least to Matthew, for his own use of the phrase.

*As a point of grammar, I have no clue where to put the hyphen in that phrase. If I say thirteen-year old girl, am I describing someone who has been an old girl for thirteen years?

In an article on GPS Tracking for pedophiles, Slate’s William Saletan describes the practice of outfitting released sex offenders with tracking bracelets as “high-tech medievalism.”

I leave it to you, my throngs of loyal readers, to decide just what the middle ages and pedophilia have to do with each other.

The use of the word “medievalism” cracks me up, though. As someone who studies the middle ages, I’m called a medievalist. Both the historical study of the middle ages and the over-romanticization of the middle ages (eating big turkey legs at Rennfests) are described by the word “medievalism”. If there were an article in front of the word medievalism, like ‘a medievalism’ or ‘the medievalism’ or ‘this medievalism’ then the word would refer either to something properly medieval (like, say, the Beowulf manuscript or the practice of building cathedrals), or to something faux-medieval (like the Lord of the Rings).

Saletan wants us to read the phrase as: “a high tech way of getting medieval on their sex-offending asses” or “a high tech means of carrying out an attitude towards criminals that would be appropriate to the middle ages”. But all I see is, “a high tech study of the middle ages”–by which he must mean something like, oh, my blog.

PS: Check out the high-tech medievalism now on the blog’s header. It’s an image of a man laying eggs, from the marginalia of Yale MS 229.

According to Jenny Rees of the Western Mail and Nathan Bevan of Wales on Sunday:

THE remains of a medieval castle have been closed after reports of it being used for sex romps and drinking.

The ruins in question: the ruins of Newcastle Castle on Newcastle Hill in Bridgend, Wales.

But apparently sex and booze in medieval castle sites is a trend in the making. Signs banning booze from the grounds of Flint Castle have been hastily posted in response to a completely different group of boozing teenaged medieval architecture enthusiasts. The problem’s so bad there, they’re planning on putting up CCTV cameras.

I wish I could say that I was properly outraged, but all I can think is 1) at least someone is enjoying the castle sites and 2) isn’t it hilarious that the place is in ruins, but some people still insist on calling it Newcastle Castle?

The end of the world is nigh. Again.

According to Reuters reporter Phil Stewart, people on the internet who have read a book published in 1595, supposedly attributed to the 12th century Irish archbishop St. Malachy, who was told in a vision from God… the world’s going to end at the end of Benedict XVI’s successor’s reign.

Now that you’re hearing this from me, you’re receiving a holy vision only five degrees separated from the big man with the beard. It’s almost like this blog has just sanctified you.

Since you don’t want to be bothered reading the actual article, let me sum it up for you.* St. Malachy wrote a series of Latin descriptions of the final 112 popes, starting with Celestine II, who succeeded the Innocent II, who was pope at the time of the prophecy. For those of you keeping track at home, John Paul II was 110 and the newly elected pope is 111. The fact that no mention of this prophecy was made before the 1595 publishing of it ought not trouble you too much, if you really want to believe the world is coming to an end sometime in the next thirty years or so, or whenenever the next pope ends his rule, because the predictions are so eerily prescient that they just have to be the truth.

For example:

–Nicholas IV, the 30th of the popes (193 overall) is called “A woodpecker among fodder” by St. Malachy. Few people realize this, but in medieval bestiaries, the woodpecker was known for being able to remove any nail or spike or metal object from a tree, bedevilling anyone who wanted to nail or spike their tree.** Under Nicholas IV’s reign, the crusader city of Acre in Palestine was lost, and Acre was known as the key of Palestine. And what is a key, but a metal object? Moreover, the subsequent crusades that tried to re-take Acre reduced many a crusader to naught but fodder.****

–Felix V (anti-pope***, 53 on Malachy’s list), is called “The lover of the cross,” which is self-explanatory, really, since he had nine children, all born to two-pieces of wood nailed together perpendicularly.

–Alexander V (Malachy’s 49, also an anti-pope), is Flagellum Solis, conventionally translated as “scourge of the sun,” but any fool can see that “Flagellum” describes the long prehensile tail his mother had amputated on the day he was taken to church for the first time, which was, you guessed it, Sunday.

Not convinced yet? Pope Benedict XVI (267/111) is called “the glory of the olive”. (Or possibly “a glory to the olive.” Watch me work that 1st declension female olivae.) If any man ever resembled an olive, I think it’s the former Cardinal Ratzinger.

Pope Benedict XVI (Artist’s representation)

*Actually, the article doesn’t contain most of this information. I looked it up on JSTOR and at the Wikipedia.
** Like you do. I know, it drives me nuts, especially since I’m a founting member of NAWPSA, the North American Wood Pecker Spike Association.
***If anti-popes and popes come into contact, the resulting release of energy far surpasses even the most powerful modern nuclear warhead.
****I made all this up for what we in the biz call ‘comedic effect.’ “A woodpecker among fodder” refers to the ivory-billed woodpecker found recently to be all not extinct and stuff.

I wonder how soon it’ll be before we reach the point where books debunking The Da Vinci Code have sold more copies than The Da Vinci Code itself. Dan Brown’s book has become the new default question someone asks on finding out that I’m a medievalist-in-training. “Oh, wow,” they gasp. “That’s so interesting. I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code. I just love medieval stuff.” There’s no good way to respond to that, nor is there a good way to respond when they continue with, “I mean, I never knew Jesus got married!”

But nowNorris J. Lacy, a famous, respectable Arthurian* has published an article on The Da Vinci Code. It’s available for free from the same folks who bring you the journal Arthuriana.

Add to the list of tasks I’ll never get around to doing my planned parody of The Da Vinci Code, Duh Milton Bradley Code, the story of a world famous Scrabble player who tracks down the clues hidden by Milton Bradley in all of their famous games. From Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk, it’ll be a thrilling chase. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, immediately go to your bookstore and buy it! The reviews just write themselves. If only the book would. I’d be a modestly rich man once the Tom Hanks movie comes out.

*Respectable and famous are almost mutally exclusive terms with Arthurians, so this is a big deal indeed.