cables ← the digital glebe

Giordano Bruno: a Spy in London 1583-85 8

Dec

2010

Giordano Bruno [born 1548] was an Italian philosopher, memory specialist & recusant Dominican, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in Rome, in the year 1600. He was born in Nola, in Campania, the son of Giovanni Bruno, a soldier. In 1565 he took the name Giordano on becoming a Dominican friar at ...

The Fugger Newsletters: Renaissance Cables Part 3 4

Dec

2010

A merchant at his bureau. 16th Century. Previously unpublished on the Internet, a selection of secret ‘Cables’ follow. _____________ “Auto de fé” in Seville From Seville, 13th May 1569. The Auto de fé of which I have already written took place here today. Seventy persons were brought forth, of which have been burned two Burgundians, ...

The Fugger Newsletters: Renaissance Cables Part 2 7

Dec

2010

Detail from ‘The Ambassadors’ Hans Holbein the Younger. It is unfashionable these days to see History as a glittering record of wars [heroic & unheroic], of royal deeds & misdeeds, of Courts & Court intrigues; this view of History has given way to somewhat dry investigations of social impacts, it has surrendered to ‘TV-lite edu-tainment’ ...

The Fugger Newsletters: Renaissance Cables 18

Nov

2010

What with all the Cablegate hysteria in the MSM right now, I took out my rather nice 1924 Bodley Head edition of the selection of archives from the Fugger Newsletters. They are, in style and content, the forerunners of what we find on the Web today: An idiosyncratic description of events around the world that ...