So the crisis with ISIS in the Middle East has been getting a lot of publicity over the past year or so, and the wounds were opened up this week as they brutally burned a young Jordanian pilot to death. These people are, quite frankly, unimaginably brutal. I know I'm not alone when I say those sorts of things make me physically sick to read about.
The medievalist within me has recently had me comparing the acts of terror in the Middle East to a different kind "Middle"... the Middle Ages.
Groups of people have been committing murder as far back as Cain and Able go, but for some reason there's a romantic association with violence in the Middle Ages.

From a historical perspective, the brutal events occurring in the Middle East give people today an absolutely exceptional window into the past. It may be an unwelcome and unsettling window to the past, but for historical purposes it is exceptional. And mind you, I don't mean to belittle any of the modern events in the Middle East or elsewhere by making comparisons out of them.

I think it's safe to say any red-blooded American (or normal human, for that matter) abhors the acts of ISIS in the Middle East. I sure do. We often think to ourselves "What kind of person would do such a thing? They must be monsters!" Yeah, well, they are.

But don't speak too soon. Who would do things like that? Your ancestors. Your great great (x20) grandfather would do such a thing. In fact, I'll argue that things were more brutal in the Middle Ages. Nowadays we're just so detached from those times that it is discussed without any care.

In October of 782 AD, the Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, brutally murdered (most contemporaries agree it was by beheading) over 4,500 Saxon prisoners in one day. 4,500 men beheaded in one day. And you thought ISIS was the most brutal group in history.

The massacre in October of 782 is just one of countless examples of extreme brutality in history. It has existed since the dawn of humanity. But, if you're willing to use your imagination for a minute or two, and think about the feelings of dread, sorrow and sickness that befell you when you read the ISIS beheading or burning headlines and when you saw the pictures, you can have a raw glimpse into how some events unfolded in the Middle Ages in Europe and across the world. You can not just read about, but also feel how the people of the world felt when swift brutality came to town...whether it was at the heels of Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, or the Emperor of Japan.
When we think about the context of historical events, I think it's incredibly important to analyze your sources and take every detail from the primary sources. Most of the time it involves putting yourself in the shoes of the subjects, and the widely publicized brutal events in the Middle East give us the opportunity to potentially feel what it was like to be a Muslim in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, or to be a Saxon in the days of Charlemagne.

When you get the chance, take a couple to minutes to put today's events into the context of history, and then do the reverse - think of historical events as if they happened today, complete with widespread global media, social networks and the internet. It's pretty fascinating to think about.



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It has been pretty snowy recently, so here's some pictures of the (not-so-fun) snow. There's also a picture of a pretty cool/weird snow sculpture my roommate and I saw in the town square (the New Haven Green).

Also, at work this week I came across a couple neat things. First, this is telegraph to one of our professors in the 1800s from the Prince of Wales in the UK. I had never seen what a telegraph message looked like (obviously someone transcribed the message onto paper), so I thought it was cool. Also, this is an acceptance letter from that same guy that would become a professor at Yale someday. It's his acceptance letter to Yale in the 1800s. The funny thing is, room and board is only $3.50 per term.