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learnedaxted thoughts
some really good fighting tonight, though driving stick afterwards was slightly less fun with a throbbing biceps
i must be reading too much warren ellis and garth ennis when something like dv8 seems merely quirky
if e. e. cummings lived in a world of html markup what sort of art would he create? would it look like todd klein?
reading the sheriff of nottingham, wherein a character muses that perhaps, like gaul, all men are divided in three parts. one which fights, one which works, and one which prays. i can't find any sources that interpret caesar to mean that, but it's a notion surprisingly like the minbari
lyevsha and i were talking about waveland again this evening. it was such a surreal perspective changing thing. i need to do more of that
some really good fighting tonight, though driving stick afterwards was slightly less fun with a throbbing biceps
i must be reading too much warren ellis and garth ennis when something like dv8 seems merely quirky
if e. e. cummings lived in a world of html markup what sort of art would he create? would it look like todd klein?
reading the sheriff of nottingham, wherein a character muses that perhaps, like gaul, all men are divided in three parts. one which fights, one which works, and one which prays. i can't find any sources that interpret caesar to mean that, but it's a notion surprisingly like the minbari
lyevsha and i were talking about waveland again this evening. it was such a surreal perspective changing thing. i need to do more of that
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 12:28 pm (UTC)as you know, those are the traditional Three Estates of medieval social/political thinking: the clergy (first estate), nobility (second estate, where "nobility"="warrior", not that effete idea of nobility that came to exist later), and the third estate, which is everyone else who has to pay taxes and work for a living.
sorry I missed the practice (again, sigh).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 01:07 pm (UTC)not a big deal about the practice - you'll be seeing us fight on sunday, if nothing else.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 01:55 pm (UTC)It's pervasive in the Middle Ages and I'm afraid I don't really know where the idea started. One of the earliest sources is Aelfric, a Benedictine writing around 1000.
This division of the estates is not fundamentally based on wealth, as we think of social classes today, although naturally the clerical and warrior classes as a whole acquired a good deal of it. One of the tensions of the later middle ages/early modern era is the rise of a wealthy third estate -- merchants, bankers, and the like, taking on the airs of the second estate (while less astute members of the second estate might find themselves land rich and money poor).
The estates are somewhat porous -- obviously, the church doesn't reproduce itself and takes its members from the other estates (at the top levels, usually from the 2nd estate). And the second estate had more mobility, both up and down, than people think.
The understanding of what it means to be "noble" underwent a great deal of change over the span of a thousand years or so. The fundamental idea in the early to middle ages is that nobility is a function of valor -- it the class of those who fight. They (and their horses, hounds, grooms, men-at-arms, etc etc) are supported by the laboring classes, the third estate. That it is a warrior class is indisputable. In France, the nobility paid no personal taxes, since they were expected to pay in blood and their personal treasure. England broke down the association between nobility and military service earlier than the French, but in France, even parvenu nobility (wealthy merchants and magistrates who wormed their way into the nobility through the civil service) would put their sons into military service so that they could prove that they lived "nobly." Sometimes, in the countryside, a local nobleman would not be hugely better off financially than a very prosperous peasant, but this distinction that he fought and owed military service was a privilege that made all the difference.(Not everyone valued that "privilege" as much as others).
In Italy, the erosion of the line between 2nd and 3rd estates was more advanced than elsewhere -- we have bankers ruling Florence, for example, and wealth is more of a leveller. But even if the Medici were vastly more wealthy than most French nobility, that didn't prevent the French from despising queens Catherine (and later Maria) de' Medici as jumped up shopkeepers, without true noble lineage.
The 16th c. saw a lote of debat on the nature of nobility. Its standard definition was, as mentioned previously, nobility = valor (in war). It was only in the 16th & 17th c. that we see the emergence of the idea that nobility is "blood", in the sense of an inherited, ancient blood line. Previously, it was what you DID, and later it became what you ARE. Of course, it was just as dysfunctional a social belief as the old one, since many nobles came up through the magisterial ranks (the "noblesse de la robe") and had to manufacture their ancient blood lines (or marry into one with less money).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 05:44 am (UTC)BTW, the term "estates" isn't popularly applied to the different classes of society until the French Revolution, well out of period.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 12:06 pm (UTC)well, it is in texts that I read of the 16th c. The French kings had been calling the Estates General (a meeting of representatives of the various estates) for some time.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 01:14 pm (UTC)