Category: Late Middle

1250-1500

Locus’ focus

“The whole municipal district of Fuentes de Ebro found itself invaded by a terrible plague of locusts which covered all the irrigated and dry fields so that as far as the eye could see appeared to be dyed brown, since you couldn’t see the earth”

Neither lobster nor locust: <a href=http://www.ub.es/geohum/inventari/fitxes/invt037.htm>Mariscal's prawn</a>

The fire and the precipice

The following curious passage brought back memories of a quiet Tuesday several years ago: The sixty Catalans imprisoned in Adrianople, after the murder of Caesar [German adventurer, Roger de Flor, leader of the Pyrenean mercenaries known as the Almogávares], on hearing the rumour of the defeat of the young emperor [Michael Palaeologos, who had Roger…

Catalan women are fat and ugly, say the Greeks

Here are a couple of fragments from Antoni Rubió i Lluch’s L’Expedició catalana a l’Orient vista pels grecs (The Catalan Expedition to the Orient as seen by the Greeks (1883, 2004 edition translated from Spanish into Catalan)). This is Rubió i Lluch quoting Epaminondas Stamatiades: Is it necessary after all that we have said that…

Caganers, nation, faith

“Shit, operating as the preeminent figure of self-alienation …, becomes a symbolic medium for questioning the place of the autonomous individual in new postcolonial societies.”

A northern barbarian goes native.

More mad shepherds

“Their travel preparations involved the slaughter of Jews and of non-ecstatic clerics, as well as the usual catalogue of rape and robbery.”

Sommige van mijn beste vrienden…

John Chappell heeft een goede polemiek (2003/06/09) over de uitspraken van een van de kandidatvoorzitters van Barça. Meneer Llauradó heeft de leden namelijk geadviseerd om niet te stemmen op de frontrunner, Bassat, omdat diens tweede achternaam Coen is. Racisme in deze behoorlijk conservatieve maatschappij wordt als salon- en straatfähig beschouwd, en de relatie tussen de…