Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World

Giovanni Fontana was a 15th-century Italian engineer and inventor. His designs included everything from systems for retrieving sunken ships and automating the defence of fortifications to measuring time and producing music. He created locks, clocks, and magic lanterns. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on BlueSky @a-devon.bsky.social, Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Fontana, Giovanni. Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris... Digitized at https://codicon.digitale-sammlungen.de/inventiconCod.icon.%20242.html Gilbert, Bennett. “The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420,” Public Domain Review. 2018. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dreams-of-an-inventor-in-1420/ Grafton, Anthony. “The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth-Century Machine,” in Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life, edited by Jessica Riskin. University of Chicago Press, 2007. Grafton, Anthony. Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe. Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 2005. Grafton, Anthony. Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa. Harvard University Press, 2023. Rossi, Cesare and Russo, Flavio. Ancient Engineers' Inventions: Precursors of the Present. Springer, 2016. Sparavigna, A.C. “Giovanni de la Fontana, Engineer and Magician.” Cornell University Library, 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late-summer of 1914, a city burns and its university library with it. Unusually for this podcast, the story takes us into WWI, but there are medieval connections to the story of Louvain (Leuven) and what happened when the German army came to town. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on BlueSky @a-devon.bsky.social, Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Bazydlo, Angela. “Manuscript lost in WWI fire turns up in Clark Archives.” https://clarknow.clarku.edu/2021/08/30/manuscript-lost-in-wwi-fire-turns-up-in-clark-archives/ Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Battles, Matthew. “Knowledge on Fire.” The American Scholar 72, no. 3 (2003): 35–51. Bouwman, André. “Book burning in Louvain, 1914.” https://www.leidenspecialcollectionsblog.nl/articles/book-burning-in-louvain-1914 Delannoy, Paul. “The Library at the University of Louvain,” The Nineteenth Century, Vol. LXXVII - No. 59, p. 1061 May 1915. Derez, Mark. “The Flames of Louvain: a Library as a Cultural Icon and a Political Vehicle,” What do we lose when we lose a library? Proceedings of the conference held at the KU Leuven 9-11 September 2015. Gusejnova, Dina. “Librarians as Agents of German Foreign Policy and the Cultural Consequences of the First World War.” The Historical Journal 66, no. 4 (2023): 864–86. Kipling, Rudyard. “In Aid of Recruiting.” https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/readers-guide/rg_speeches_29.htm Kramer, Alan. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. Oxford University Press, 2008. Matin, A. Michael. “‘The Hun is at the Gate!’: Historicizing Kipling's Militaristic Rhetoric, From the Imperial Periphery to the National Center: Part Two: The French, Russian, and German Threats to Great Britain.” Studies in the Novel 31, no. 4 (1999): 432–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533357. Ovenden, Richard. Burning the Books. Harvard University Press, 2020. Ovenden, Richard. “One of Europe’s Great Libraries Didn’t Stand a Chance… In Either of the World Wars.” https://lithub.com/one-of-europes-great-libraries-didnt-stand-a-chance-in-either-of-the-world-wars/    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Fernao Mendes Pinto story reaches its conclusion, and he finally reaches Portugal once more. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on BlueSky @a-devon.bsky.social, Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Hart, Thomas R. “Style and Substance in the Peregrination.” Portuguese Studies 2 (1986). Hart, Thomas R. “True or False: Problems of the ‘Peregrination.’” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997). Rubiés, Joan Pau. “Real and Imaginary Dialogues in the Jesuit Mission of Sixteenth-Century Japan.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, no. 2/3 (2012). Rubiés, Joan Pau. “The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese India.” Portuguese Studies 10 (1994). Spence, Jonathan D. The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds. W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The story of Fernao Mendes Pinto intersects with that of the Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier, and takes him back to Japan. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on BlueSky @a-devon.bsky.social, Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. App, Urs. “St. Francis Xavier’s Discovery of Japanese Buddhism: A Chapter in the European Discovery of Buddhism (Part 1: Before the Arrival in Japan, 1547-1549).” The Eastern Buddhist 30, no. 1 (1997). Rubiés, Joan Pau. “Real and Imaginary Dialogues in the Jesuit Mission of Sixteenth-Century Japan.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, no. 2/3 (2012). Willis, Clive. “Captain Jorge Álvares and Father Luís Fróis S.J.: Two Early Portuguese Descriptions of Japan and the Japanese.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 22, no. 2 (2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first Europeans wash up on Japanese shores, bringing the musket as they do so, and Pinto would have you believe that he is with them. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on BlueSky @a-devon.bsky.social, Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Cooper, Michael. The Southern Barbarians: The First Europeans in Japan. Kodansha, 1971. Lidin, Olof G. Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europe in Japan. Routledge, 2003. Perrin, Noel. Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879. David R. Godine, 1979. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pinto's story continues, and the Portuguese traveller makes his way across China as a prisoner, describing some its towns, cities, and countryside as he goes. His China, which he may not have actually visited himself, is dotted with the remnants of previous Portuguese actions, an envoy's gravestone and the remnants of failed embassies. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Hart, Thomas R. “Style and Substance in the Peregrination.” Portuguese Studies 2 (1986): 49–55.  Hart, Thomas R. “True or False: Problems of the ‘Peregrination.’” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 35–42. Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese India." Portuguese Studies 10 (1994): 24–43. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our Portuguese adventurer resumes his piratical ways and runs into trouble on the coast of China. He and de Faria find silver in abundance, but also shipwreck, poverty, and leeches. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Hart, Thomas R. “Style and Substance in the Peregrination.” Portuguese Studies 2 (1986): 49–55.  Hart, Thomas R. “True or False: Problems of the ‘Peregrination.’” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 35–42. Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese India." Portuguese Studies 10 (1994): 24–43. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not a Christmas episode, but a winter one: winter in various Old English sources and winter now. Happy New Year and thanks for listening! If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Clare, John. Major Works. Oxford University Press, 2004. Gopnik, Adam. Winter: Five Windows on the Season. House of Anansi, 2011. Hostetter, Aaron K. Translation of "Andreas" - https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/andreas/ Hostetter, Aaron K. Translation of "The Menologium" - https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-menologium/ McKennitt, Loreena. To Drive the Cold Winter Away. Quinlan Road, 1987.  Parker, Eleanor. Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year. Reaktion Books, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pinto and his colleagues embark on a quest for revenge against a certain pirate, and in the process indulge in quite a bit of piracy themselves along the coasts of Champa and Hainan. Ships are seized, silks are stolen, and brains are squeezed out. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Source: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fernao Mendes Pinto recovers from shipwreck and captivity, neither his first nor his last, and returns to the story of the Aceh Sultanate. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Aceh Sultanate: State, Society, Religion and Trade (2 vols.): The Dutch Sources, 1636-1661, edited by Takeshi Ito. Brill, 2015. Göksoy, İsmail Hakkı. "Ottoman-Aceh relations as documented in Turkish sources," in Mapping the Acehnese Past, edited by R. Michael Feener, Patrick Daly, and Anthony Reed. Brill, 2011. Pinto, Paulo Jorge De Sousa. The Portuguese and the Straits of Melaka, 1575-1619: Power, Trade and Diplomacy. NUS Press, 2012. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From William of Newburgh's 12th-century chronicle, "History of English Affairs," these stories aren't really about Halloween, but they do feel a little Halloween-ish. There's no Michael Myers, zombies, or vampires, but there are strange portents in the sky, toads locked in stone, faerie banquets, green children, and a good number of demons. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. 3 Things: At Stanford's Arcade, an article on heavenly portents and fire from the sky during the Little Ice Age. At Medievalists.net, an article on the history of monsters, monstrosity, and dehumanization. On the British Library's medieval manuscripts blog, charms against evil from their collection. Sources: The Church Historians of England, translated by Joseph Stevenson. Seeley's, 1856.  Watkins, C.S.. History and the Supernatural in Medieval England. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The story of the 16th-century Portuguese traveller, writer, soldier, envoy, and so much more, takes us to Malaysia, to the city of Malacca (Melaka), and to diplomatic missions among nearby rulers. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Second Viceroy of India, translated by Walter de Gray Birch. Hakluyt, 1875. Boxer, C.R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825. Carcanet, 1991. Diffie, Bailey Wallys. Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580. University of Minnesota Press, 1977. Newitt, Malyn. A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400–1668. Routledge, 2004. Paine, Lincoln. The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World. Knopf Doubleday, 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pinto visits the "Land of Prester John," faces trouble on the Red Sea, and brushes up against the 1538 Siege of Diu. He takes part in combat along the Indian coast, grumbles as to his lot in life, and is whisked about by boat to Massawa, Mokha, Qeshm, Chaul, Goa, Honnavar, and Diu, before heading further east. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. Casale, Giancarlo. The Ottoman Age of Exploration. Oxford University Press, 2010. Pearson, N.M. The Portuguese in India. Cambridge University Press, 2006. 3 Things: Article on ambergris, a substance which makes fairly frequent appearances on this podcast. Podcast episode on “The Ottoman Red Sea.” Article on the Ottoman coffee crackdown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fernão Mendes Pinto, respected by many of his contemporaries for the expertise knowledge which he'd gained through his travels, absolutely synonymous for others with lies and exaggerations.  From humble beginnings and vaguely unfortunate events in his early life, Pinto would find a place for himself in the 16th-century world of colonial Portugal, would write himself into it if necessary. He was, he said, “13 times a prisoner and 17 a slave.” As Rebecca Catz writes, he served as a “soldier, merchant, pirate, ambassador, missionary, doctor—the list is not complete.” He ran afoul of pirates, was shipwrecked, and robbed royal tombs. The characters in his story included a saint, an Indonesian ruler, the mother of Prester John, a Japanese lord, and someone who may or may not have been the Dalai Lama. He claimed to be among the very first Europeans to set foot in Japan, but then he claimed to be a lot of things. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. 3 Things: Article on the history of the mango and a Portuguese connection. Article about the discovery of a shipwreck, thought to have come from Vasco da Gama’s armada. The story of the rhino of Lisbon. Sources: The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989. The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: A Documentary History, edited by Malyn Newitt. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pearson, N.M. The Portuguese in India. Cambridge University Press, 2006.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With all the medieval travel featured on the podcast—the trips across the Mediterranean, the Asian Steppe, and the Indian Ocean—of course we focus on the travellers themselves, the people actually making those trips, but whether they were merchants, envoys, or otherwise, they often left people behind, family that they were separated from for years at a time. This episode is about those separations, the difficulties they caused, and what people did (or did not do) about them. We start with a letter from a merchant in Palermo, Sicily, move to one from an India trader in Aden, and finish with a pair of Rabbinic responses regarding a married couple in Egypt. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. 3 Things: Article by Heather Dalton on the travels of a cockatoo to 13th-century Sicily. Article by Minjie Su about four medieval love stories. Blog post about the correspondence of a "happy family" in 2nd-century Egypt. Sources: Goitein, S.D. Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton University Press, 1973. Hofmeester, Karin. “Jewish Ethics and Women’s Work in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Arab-Islamic World.” International Review of Social History 56 (2011): 141–64. Melammed, Reneé Levine. “He Said, She Said: A Woman Teacher in Twelfth-Century Cairo.” AJS Review 22, no. 1 (1997): 19–35. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is not the story of an individual but rather of a collected body of sacred and secular writings, or rather bodies of writings. It’s a story of scripture, court records, correspondence, literature, scholarly studies, and more, of human life as it has left its echoes in writing. This is the story of the Cairo Geniza, an incredible collection of historical documents, from medieval manuscripts to modern divorces. It's about how that collection, brought from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt, has reached us, and some of the figures involved. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. 3 Things: The photography of the Scottish twins, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson A short Cambridge University Library video on the conservation of Geniza fragments and the painstaking work involved "From Cairo to Kolkata, Traces of a Vibrant Jewish Past" by Michael David Lukas Sources: Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society, Volume III: The Family. University of California Press, 1978.  Hoffman, Adina & Cole, Peter. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. Shocken Books, 2011.  Jefferson, Rebecca. The Cairo Genizah and the Age of Discovery in Egypt: The History and Provenance of a Jewish Archive. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. Jefferson, Rebecca. "Deconstructing ‘the Cairo Genizah’: A Fresh Look at Genizah Manuscript Discoveries in Cairo before 1897." The Jewish Quarterly Review 108, no. 4 (2018): 422–48. Lewis, Agnes Smith. Eastern Pilgrims: The Travels of Three Ladies. Hurst and Blackett, 1870. Outhwaite, Ben. "A Hoard of Hebrew MSS," Limn issue 6, The Total Archive. Reif, Stefan. A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection. Routledge, 2013. Princeton Geniza Project. https://geniza.princeton.edu/en/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode takes us to medieval Egypt, to old Cairo in the 11th and 12th century, to Fustat, to the Fatimid Caliphate during the period of the First Crusade, and to the life of a medieval woman named Wuhsha al-dallala who stands out in her time for strength, independence, and wild financial success (through lending and investment in trading ventures, including one to Gujarat, India). Her history comes to us through the fragments of the Cairo Geniza, in legal documents, and in a will. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Abramson, Henry. "Wuhsha the Broker Jewish Women in the Medieval Economy." December 6th, 2012, lecture. Frenkel, Miriam. "Charity in Jewish Society of the Medieval Mediterranean World." In Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, edited by Miriam Frenkel & Yaacov Lev. Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society, Volume III: The Family. University of California Press, 1978.  Goitein, S. D. “A Jewish Business Woman of the Eleventh Century.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 57 (1967): 225–42. Goitein, S. D. & Friedman, Mordechai Akiva. India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Brill, 2008. Hoffman, Adina & Cole, Peter. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. Knopf, 2011. Zinger, Oded. Women, gender and law: Marital disputes according to documents of the Cairo Geniza. Princeton University, 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The story of the legendary first kings of the Britons, complete with prophecy, a divine appearance, and a number of origin myths behind the names of Tours, Cornwall, New Troy, and Britain itself. For this episode, we go to Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicles for Britain's mythical Trojan origins, following Brutus of Troy as he receives visions from the goddess Diana and voyages to an Albion still inhabited by giants. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Armitage, David. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2000. Geoffrey of Monmouth. History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Aaron Thompson. In parentheses Publications Medieval Latin Series, 1999. Gillingham, John. The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values. Boydell Press, 2000. Jeffs, Amy. Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain. riverrun, 2021. Lavezzo, Kathy. Imagining a Medieval English Nation. University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Spence, John. Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles. York Medieval Press, 2013. Valerie I. J. Flint. “The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and Its Purpose. A Suggestion.” Speculum 54, no. 3 (1979): 447–68. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we step outside the usual medieval travel subject matter on the podcast for a look into William Shakespeare's historical source for the story of Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and of course, King of Scotland, or at least of Alba. That story takes us to a 16th-century man named Reginald Wolfe, to Holinshed's Chronicles, and to the 11th-century doings of some familiar figures, of Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, Malcolm, and the rest. There are some familiar scenes, such as at Dunsinane Castle, but there are also unfamiliar elements like the murder of King Duffe, from which Shakespeare did a little borrowing. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Holinshed, Raphael. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. J. Johnson, et al., 1808. The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, edited by Felicity Heal, Ian W. Archer, & Paulina Kewes. Oxford University Press, 2013. McLuskie, Kathleen. Macbeth. Northcote House, 2009. Patterson, Annabel. Reading Holinshed's Chronicles. University of Chicago Press, 1994. Plomer, Henry Robert. A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1900. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth, edited by Sandra Clark & Pamela Mason. Bloomsbury, 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is the final episode of a narrative series on the Icelandic saga of a famed outlaw. The Grettir Saga concludes without Grettir the Strong. His half-brother Thorstein finds freedom and romance in Constantinople before the story takes one last turn, a religious one that will take us to Norway and then Rome. If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here. I'm on Twitter @circus_human, Instagram @humancircuspod, and I have some things on Redbubble. Sources: Grettir's Saga, translated by Jesse Byock. Oxford University Press, 2009. Grettir's Saga, translated by Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson. University of Toronto Press, 1974. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices