Category: History

All Hallow’s Eve

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Thanks to my friend Jim De Piante for putting together this fact list about All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween):

  1. Halloween is an English language contraction for All Hallows Evening.
  2. It literally means the Eve, or Holy Vigil of All Hallows Day, or All Saints Day.
  3. The term came into being in the very earliest form of the English language.
  4. When the word “Halloween” came into being, the term All Saints Day did not yet exist.
  5. In English, at the time, the term was “All Hallows” day.
  6. The term “Halloween” was in use by 1300.
  7. This was approximately 300 years before Protestantism.
  8. This was 200 years before Columbus sailed.
  9. This was 500 years before there was a country called the United States.
  10. There is no way the term is Protestant or American.
  11. The Church has always encouraged secular observances of holy times.
  12. We are not restricted to only do explicitly holy things to observe holy times.
  13. What other people do that is a perversion of a holy time does not change the inherent holiness of the holy time.
  14. Begging treats has various pedigrees. Yes, there were soul cakes, but there were other Catholic customs as well wherein children went to their neighbors homes to beg treats.
  15. There is no association between Halloween and Samhain other than coincidental.
  16. There is no association between Halloween and any pagan feast other than coincidental.
  17. The fact that pagans do a thing does not illegitimate anyone else doing it.
  18. There is very little about Halloween that is
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Baldwin IV: A Leper on the Throne, A Lion in the Field

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Neat stuff from @MedievalScholar on Twitter:

King Baldwin IV. One of Jerusalem’s most remarkable rulers. Faced with insurmountable odds from childhood, Baldwin defied expectations and became one of the most significant rulers of his time. A Thread: The Leper King

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Note that unfortunately, despite looking very very cool. No, Baldwin IV did not wear a silver mask as depicted in the movie “Kingdom of Heaven.”

There are no contemporary sources that support the idea of Baldwin wearing a facial covering, especially one depicted in the movie.

Baldwin IV was born in Jerusalem in 1161 to King Amalric I and Queen Agnes.

Baldwin would be diagnosed with the devastating disease leprosy at the age of nine. A disease that would ravage his body, but not his spirit.

At a young age, Baldwin would be educated and tutored by William of Tyre. He would note that the young Baldwin displayed insensitivity to pain when his arm was pinched or even bitten. As a result, leprosy was suspected.

Baldwin would become King of Jerusalem on July 11th, 1174 after the sudden death of his father Amalric I due to dysentery. He would be crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Under normal circumstances, the coronations of Medieval rulers would take place on Sundays.

However Baldwin would be coronated on July 15th, 1174 as it was the 75th anniversary of the seizure of Jerusalem in the First Crusade.

At the age of 13, Baldwin was too young to rule on his own, so

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THE BATTLE OF FORT PILLOW LEGACY

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Only two weeks after the battle, a U.S. Congressional inquiry could not conclusively determine exactly what happened. Both sides failed to control the action, and only Forrest’s direct, personal intervention to stop the shooting saved many of the Union defenders left standing on the beach. Not satisfied with the Congressional inquiry, Union General William T. Sherman convened a not-so-impartial inquiry. He openly stated that he would try and convict General Forrest. However, Sherman’s inquiry also ended without substantive evidence to find Forrest culpable.

The stain that his lopsided Fort Pillow victory was a premeditated “massacre” remained with Forrest for the rest of his life. Northern newspapers publishing obituaries after his October 29, 1877 death, while acknowledging Forrest’s genius as a cavalry commander, nonetheless resurrected the “Fort Pillow Massacre” charges. The New York Times’ obituary even claimed that, during Forrest’s post-Civil War life, “his principal occupation seems to have been to try to explain away the Fort Pillow affair.” Northern newspapers criticizing Forrest’s effort “to explain away the Fort Pillow affair,” however, seem especially disingenuous since the sensationalist accounts by the partisan Northern press bears a large share of the burden for creating and perpetuating the “massacre” claim in the first place. Forrest always disputed claims that his Fort Pillow victory was a “massacre.” Any fair-minded judgment as to whether it was truly the racism-inspired, premeditated massacre claimed by the Northern press and Union leaders at the time must also take into consideration the inevitable confusion of desperate, hand-to-hand combat and … Read the rest