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Ooh, this looks very interesting.s__herzog posted:Books on the table: ...speaking of interesting, that's certainly a set of books for a Prior to give out to a rando artist. I can only assume he made a good use of the Key of Solomon to get some demonic time travel help, to obtain the Heptameron in 1518. (apologies for accidental spoilers if there's actual time travel in this game) I know occult bullshit is high fashion at this time, and no one (of notable standing) was actually getting inquisitioned for it (yet), but that was still a startling book list to see just casually mentioned.
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Feb 26, 2023 13:29
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The Picatrix, Key of Solomon, the Heptameron… Prior Ferenc keeps giving me all of these books to read.
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:48 |
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idonotlikepeas posted:The book in question is probably not the short story collection from 1558, but the grimoire theoretically written by Pietro d'Abano, who was killed by the Inquisition in 1316. I think the authorship of that is disputed, but this isn't my area, so I wouldn't be able to say for sure. That makes slightly more sense than time travel, but now I really want to meet Ferenc and ask some pointed questions. Who dumps on a hired artist a "Theory of Magic 101" tome and 2 instruction manuals on summoning methods? I really don't like where the combo of "new abbot bothers his tenants about folk traditions", "scriptorium overseer is into occult bullshit" and "we're on the verge of inquisitorial resurgence targeting the HRE" is going. Or I wouldn't like it if I lived in the area, I guess.
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Feb 26, 2023 21:53
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anilEhilated posted:Also, for a totally uninteresting tidbit: Saint Grobian's legacy lives on in at least parts of what used to be the HRE. In Czech, the word "grobián" means a rude person and while somewhat archaic, it stuck around for at least as long as my grandmother did. The "grob" root (meaning coarse, uneven or rude) is shared between Germanic and Slavic languages (not sure if one of the language families stole it from the other, or if it's traceable to PIE origins). But the "grobián" form does seem to be a direct transliteration of Grobian, and it spread outside of HRE territory, given Russian "грубиян".
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Feb 27, 2023 17:52
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s__herzog posted:I appreciate any amount of extra information people want to add to the glosses or other parts of the setting, so I feel less pressure to go back and pick on every little detail myself. In which case, s__herzog posted:Peter Abelard Pierre Abelard was 35ish when he hosed a 15-17 year old girl, and after a series of unfortunate events turned that affair into a life-long source of self-flaggelation. Of these 2, Heloïse, who did not ask for anything past the actual "having sex with a celebrity" bit, is the much more interesting person, and is likely the source for some of the ideas that end up being recorded as Abelard's philosophy. We know of them primarily because of their letters, in which she repeatedly tells him off for wallowing in guilt over their affair, and then refuses to engage on the subject anymore and switches to stumping him with theology questions. Dude hosed her, got her pregnant, married her (in secret) and then absconded to become a monk, thus forcing her to become cloistered herself, and she still helped him with his homework for decades, while taking none of his poo poo. Heloïse! ...to be fair to Abelard, Heloïse might've been ok with the secrecy of marriage, he became a monk after being horrifically assaulted (and castrated), and being a nun was the only way for a woman to have an academic career at the time, so she was probably fine with the outcome. He's still a whiny dickweed about it all, especially in comparison to how she writes about the whole thing. As I understand it, Abelard's writings are mostly skipped today in favour of Aquinas, and Heloïse isn't generally considered to be a philosopher in her own right - yet Heloïse was the one that wrote about love, marriage and relationships in ways that late 20th century feminists would appreciate. They are more well known as a sordid tragedy of a love affair, so maybe the moral of the story is to destroy your letters where you argue about who forced sex upon whom, if you want people to remember you did some philosophy at some point.
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Feb 28, 2023 19:34
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Viola the Mad posted:Yeah so I read the first update of this LP and immediately bought the game on Steam. It is Good. Same. s__herzog posted:I just added this to the post (in a spoiler tag since the foreshadowing surely wasn't meant to be picked up by the majority of the audience). If a person has read (or seen the movie adaptation of) The Name of the Rose, the first 5 minutes of this game have all the necessary elements to be reminded of it, no matter one's ability to read Latin. The end of an era, a dying art, a sequestered library, some implied occult bullshit, a background theological schism, petty and suspicious monastic shenanigans... When you call it foreshadowing, do you mean the aesthetic vibes, or are you promising us a dead body in the sheep enclosure and murderous librarians afoot?
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Mar 1, 2023 21:15
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BassMug posted:Part of the tension I was expressing there, though, was that snubbing the local nobility could also get you killed, or have heaps of trouble visited on you and yours. Pious or actively needling the abbot like we were, you’re being squashed between two much more powerful people who can really screw you over. Heck, even declining the whole deal would still be snubbing a powerful person. I'm fairly certain there was a lot less random and wanton peasant and/or burgher murder in history than some TV shows want us to believe. Andreas is outside of direct control of either the abbot or the baron, but the abbot is his current employer, they are on the abbey's land, and the heresy thing will reach you wherever you go, if the abbot writes enough letters to the appropriate authorities (provided you're not a noble, or, ideally, a king). On the other hand, being precisely socially correct would be a source of reasonable protection even from your direct feudal lord: being boring and unnoticeable always was a good way to not get screwed over by the powerful, and moderately reasonable people, which the baron so far appears to be, would be at worst annoyed at the loss of engaging entertainment and move on.
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Mar 12, 2023 16:22
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:48 |
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I wonder how much an assumption of food scarcity is correct for this area and this time period. As far as I know our modern ideas about European history often drastically overestimate food scarcity (at least for Middle Ages), so I'm leery of assuming "feed a guest a couple times a week" would be a burden for a stable farming community in 1500s. The Black Death's population reduction was barely a century ago, Europe isn't feeding enormous modern period armies yet, and having trouble with financial stability and taxes is a separate issue from "being able to eat well" for a farmer, so long as no one comes and forcibly takes your food stores away for repayment (which I suspect is less of a risk when there's no wars going on, and doubly so if your landlord is a monastery). I also doubt we're supposed to think the village is on the verge of destitution and lives entirely off their land: Gertners aren't doing so hot right now, and yet Clara's food stores include almonds. Unless I'm really, really confused about the climate of the Alps, almonds would have to be an import from Italy, Spain or French Région Sud.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:54
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