Tag: #AtoZChallenge

Posted on

2023 A to Z Challenge: The Silk Road

For the 2023 A to Z challenge, I picked the Silk Road, my current research area. Twenty-six posts on everything from camels to Qara Qorum, with the Chinese explorers Zhang Qian & Zheng He thrown in for good measure. You can scroll through the posts via the Next button at the bottom, or search April 2023 on the sidebar menu.

Picture from Corbis/Getty Images

I had a ton of fun the last three years writing about the Olympics, Accounting, and the Renaissance. Even though April is always so busy with the taxes and the side gigs and now studying so much… I can’t help it. I want to write about letters X, Q, and J.

Most of these will be short little snippets. Lots of towns, lots of medieval trade goods. Not chronological, but if you’re interested, you’ll pick up a lot of facts and ambience. Can you smell the spices on the desert breezes? Can you hear the wind rustling over the sand and the snort of the camels as they jostle for the well water?

Get ready to journey…

Posted on

Z is for Zweihänder

Zweihänder swords, photo from blackfencer.com.

What shall we choose for the Renaissance “Z”? Zacco, the King of Cyprus (James II) who controlled the sugar industry until the Venetians took it? Bartelomeo Zorzi, a Venetian alum merchant, who negotiated with the pope over the mines discovered at Tolfa? (Alum was a key ingredient in textile dying.) Both of those are economic stories, about controlling resources, which was an underlying motivation for many of the skirmishes of the age.

But there were wars for control of territory, belief systems, and ruling classes. So how about ending a month of Renaissance history by looking forward to the next wave. The Reformation and the rise of the Hapsburg dynasty. We go to Germany.

The Landsknechte warriors, etched by Daniel Hofer 1530. Photo from wikipedia
Continue reading “Z is for Zweihänder”
Posted on

Y is for York

Queen Elizabeth of York, painter unknown, which is typical. Photo from wikimedia.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this summer sun of York…

Opening of Shakespeare’s Richard III

Meanwhile in the north… not all of the Renaissance happened in Italy.

Elizabeth of York was glorious summer, indeed. She was the daughter, sister, niece, wife, and mother to kings–and queens. As Alison Weir says, in her fabulous biography of this fascinating linchpin of history:

Elizabeth of York’s role in history was crucial, although in a less chauvinistic age, it would, by right, have been more so.

Alison Weir, Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World

In other words, if she’d been more of Penthesilea type, a bit more Eleanor of the Aquitaine and a bit less Jane Bennett, then maybe she’d have been Queen Elizabeth I. Or, maybe she’d have been thrown in the tower with her brothers. Hard to say.

Continue reading “Y is for York”