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North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
Why did the ancient Chinese associate north with power? What led early Muslims to pray to the south? And what role did winds have to play in our understanding of directions? Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the history of the four points of the compass
Writing in his philosophical work the New Organon in 1620, the English scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously identified China’s three great inventions, “which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” Much has been written about the historical impact of printing and gunpowder. But there’s been far less emphasis on the magnet, and how (using lodestones to magnetise iron needles) it enabled the ‘obscure’ invention of the magnetic compass during the Han dynasty in the third century BC. This technology enabled China and, subsequently, other societies to navigate and orientate themselves according to the four points of the compass: north, east, south and west. We tend to think about these directions and the art of navigation as a consequence of the invention of the compass, but this is not in fact the case. The ancient history of direction and its relationship to the magnetic compass is altogether more surprising. How ancient civilisations understood east and west Thousands of years before the discovery of the compass, early human societies observed the sun rising in the direction we now call ‘east’ and watched it setting in the direction now known as ‘west’. East to west was probably the earliest prime axis that people understood by simply watching the sun’s path across the sky. The worship of the sun, or heliolatry, characterised ancient Egyptian worship of solar gods: Horus (the rising sun), Ra (the noon sun) and Osiris (the dying or setting sun). Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history This initial east-west solar axis was gradually followed by the understanding of another axis. This one ran vertically from north to south, and could be identified by observing the sun and stars. At noon the sun is always due south in the northern hemisphere and due north in the southern hemisphere. Living in the northern hemisphere, you can also look up at the stars and find north according to Polaris, the North or Pole Star. If you live in the southern hemisphere, that direction is identified by Polaris Australis, the South Star. The four cardinal directions By combining the two axes – east-west horizontally and north-south vertically – ancient societies created the basic framework for what we now call the four cardinal directions. The word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin cardinalis, which can mean something (or someone) of fundamental importance. That’s why, in the Roman Catholic church, it refers to a priest ranking beneath only the pope. The names for these four directions were inspired by the human body: our front and back, left and right, even top and bottom. In many ancient languages, ‘front’ and ‘back’ are synonymous with east and west. In Hebrew, east – qedem or mizrach – also means ‘forward’ or ‘front’, while ‘west’ – achor – is a synonym for ‘behind’. In ancient Chinese, the pictograph for north, bĕi, represents two people back to back. The dark and cold north is synonymous with the ‘back’ of the body, while the ‘front’ looks southwards (nán), in the direction of light and warmth. The earliest surviving record that we know of that names the four cardinal directions was inscribed on a clay tablet during the first great Mesopotamian empire, the Akkadian dynasty (c2350–2150 BC). It is a rudimentary topographical map known as the ‘Gasur map’, showing an agricultural estate. At the top left is IM-kur, ‘east’; at the bottom left is IM-mar-tu, ‘west’; and to the centre left IM-mir, ‘north’. The prefix ‘IM’ refers to winds, not astronomical observations. Other Mesopotamian texts describe four principal winds forming a diagonal cross, equivalent to the modern directions of north-west, north-east, south-east and south-west. When the cuneiform text on the map is read from top to bottom, IM-mir, the direction from which the regular north-western winds blow, is the prime orientation. What this shows is that the farmers cultivating the land more than 4,000 years ago understood the four cardinal directions in terms of wind direction and changeable climatic conditions. Why? Because they were crucial for the cultivation of crops and could mean the difference between feast and famine. The importance of the winds Ancient Greek philosophy and science inherited the Mesopotamian preoccupation with winds. Mythical personifications of the four directions as gods first appear in the ancient works of Homer (c800 BC). His celebrated epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, both mention four deities representing cardinal winds. Boreas, the north wind, is possibly an archaic variant of ‘mountains’ or ‘roaring’. Notos, the south wind, derives from ‘moist’. Eurus, the east wind, comes from the ‘brightness’ of sunrise. The western wind of Zephyrus stems from the ‘gloom’ of sunset. Later Greek philosophers offered a more naturalistic account of direction. Aristotle’s Meteorology (c350 BC) includes the earliest known geometrical diagram of cardinal directions according to wind systems, depicting eight principal winds in his conception of the Earth. Listen | Roderick Beaton picks out the key moments in 4,000 years to explore how the Greeks changed the world The Romans adopted many of the Greek terms for directions based on winds, and introduced some new Latin words. North came first, named borealis or septentriones, a reference to the ‘seven stars’ of Ursa Major (which appears to rotate around the northern star, Polaris). South was given several new terms, including australis (‘harsh’ or ‘sharp’ – thanks to the harsh heat and hot, sharp winds) or meridionalis (from ‘midday’). West was occidentalis (‘falling’ or ‘passing away’) and east was orientalis (‘rising’ or ‘originating’, as in the sun). So, when we speak of being ‘disoriented’, we are literally saying we are unable to find the east. The role of Judaism and Christianity These ideas and terms were accepted until the ninth century, when a radical change took place that changed the names of the cardinal directions. This happened under Charlemagne (748–814), emperor of much of the northern part of Europe. In attempting to unify the continent, Charlemagne initiated many political, economic and educational reforms. This included abandoning winds as a means of classifying directions and renaming the four directions using proto-Germanic words, derived from Indo-European roots. Nord (north) came from the proto-Indo-European term, nórto-s – ‘lower’, or to the ‘left’ (of the rising sun looking east). Est (east) drew on the Indo-European austo-s – ‘light’ or ‘shine’ (as in the morning). Sund (south) derived from an archaic term for the sun, sú-n-to-s, referring to the south as the direction of the midday sun. Oëst (west) took its name from the proto-Indo-European uestos with its many meanings of the evening, including red (as in the setting sun). Versions of these words are now recognisable in most modern European vernacular languages. The impact of these evolving ideas of the cardinal directions underpinned early theological belief across various cultures. Jewish and Christian theology revered the east as the prime cardinal direction of worship and celebration. The story begins in Genesis: God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). The messiah’s second coming is predicted as arriving from the east, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27). Mizrach, or east, thus became the Jewish direction of prayer. Early Christianity expanded the Jewish mizrach by developing the Latin term Ad orientem – ‘to the east’ – to understand east as its sacred direction. The idea can be seen on medieval Christian maps, such as the mappa mundi housed in Hereford Cathedral. Here the cardinal directions are represented on its outer ring from the top, moving clockwise, from oriens (east), meridiens (south), occidens (west) to septentrio (north). The Garden of Eden is shown at the top, then time flows downwards through images of Old Testament empires, the birth of Christ and the rise of Rome, with Jerusalem at the centre. It ends at the westernmost point of Gibraltar at the bottom of the map. The differences of early Islamic maps Where east sat at the top of early Christian maps for theological reasons, on many early Islamic maps south was the prime direction. This was because most of the societies that first converted to Islam lived directly north of Mecca. As a result, believers prayed due south, a practice that oriented their world maps accordingly. On a map dated 1297 (copied from the 10th-century geographer Muhammad al-Istakhri), the world is oriented with south at the top. Africa is a claw extending deep into the Indian Ocean, and the vertical bar running from top right downwards is the Nile, flowing into the Mediterranean with three islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. Europe is shown below, including Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). The map’s finest detail lies at the heart of the Muslim empire, whose various administrative districts are demarcated in red. Arabia sits in the centre of the map with the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Why China put north at the top While east and south defined the theological directions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in China north sat at the top of their world maps, hundreds of years before Europe adopted such a convention. In Chinese belief, the emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, the earthly manifestation of the supreme deity inhabiting the Pole Star. The emperor looked ‘down’ south on his subjects from an elevated position on high in the north, while they looked ‘up’ northwards to him. ‘South’ (nan) was expressed in its pictograph as a liana plant, evoking the luxuriant vegetation of the south as viewed from the drier, colder northern latitudes. But north remained the direction from which imperial power and authority emanated. Read more | Has China always been the world’s greatest superpower? For centuries, China was a global leader in the technology of navigation – and it was only in the 12th century that the magnetic compass started to appear in the Mediterranean for use in navigation. How these compasses moved west is still unclear. But they were decisive in enabling Christian navigators to develop sailing charts known as ‘portolans’ to navigate across, first, the Mediterranean, and then the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Maps of European exploration Yet though their explorations were facilitated by a Chinese technology, Europe an explorers didn’t initially follow the Chinese convention of placing north at the top of their maps. Eight years after Christopher Columbus’s momentous voyage to the Americas in 1492–93, Juan de la Cosa, owner of Columbus’s flagship, La Santa María, drew a map showing the new ‘discoveries’ in the west. The writing on the map suggests that it should be oriented with west at the top – one of the few world maps to ever privilege ‘west’ as its cardinal direction. The west briefly became the cardinal direction – until European scholars, who tended to revere the classics, chose to mimic the ancient Greek practice of placing north at the top. Juan de la Cosa’s map also features a ‘compass rose’ in the middle of the Atlantic, a symbol of the key role that the instrument was to play in the coming centuries. Soon, with the European age of discovery gathering momentum, the magnetic compass would well and truly triumph. Many of us may have naturally assumed that the compass gave us the words we use for the cardinal directions – north and south, east and west. Yet, as the long and colourful history of our relationship with orientation and navigation proves, it was the other way round. This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Trade, religion and diversity: how Tudor London became a global city
During the reigns of the Tudor monarchs of the 16th century, London opened its doors to a diverse cast of newcomers, from Moroccan ambassadors to Native American chiefs. Jerry Brotton reveals what drove people to head to England, and how foreign visitors both shaped, and were shaped by, the Tudor capital
On 2 October 1586, a rather unusual baptism took place at St Katharine’s Church next to the Tower of London. The person being baptised, known as “Chinano the Turk”, was a 40-year-old native of the Mediterranean island of Euboea – and the first known male Muslim convert to Protestantism. The celebrant at the conversion of Chinano – probably a clumsy Anglicisation of the Turkish name Sinan – was Welsh minister Meredith Hanmer. Earlier that day, he had preached a sermon entitled “The Baptising of a Turke”, informing the congregation that Chinano had been taken captive as a galley slave by the Spanish, then shipped to Cartagena in what’s now Colombia. There he was “liberated” by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, along with another hundred Turks, and brought back to London. Hanmer announced that Chinano had “renounced Mahomet” and “desired he might be received as one of the faithful Christians, and be baptised”. What happened to Chinano and those other Turks is unknown, because they disappear from the historical record. The “other” Tudors The brief appearance of such people gives us an insight into the global world in which Tudor London played its part, and the sheer variety of people from outside England who ended up living, working, marrying, having children and dying in the city. Some were religious exiles, refugees or enslaved people, but there were also visiting diplomats, explorers, physicians and chieftains from all corners of the world: Italy and Portugal, Morocco and Russia, Turkey, central Asia and the “New World” – the Americas. Some were Muslims, others Jews; some converted from one religion to another; others believed in gods from Africa and the Americas that were unknown to the Tudors. Living alongside white, Christian Londoners, their DNA has long since dispersed, passed down through subsequent generations. Read more | The poet, the gardener and the witch: forgotten voices of Tudor England The reasons these people came to London were twofold: money and geography. As an international port facing Europe, London had long been a financial centre and a magnet for European merchants and financiers from as far afield as the Baltic, the Italian peninsula and the Aegean. From the time of Henry VIII, the city’s growth was aided by mercantilist policies that drove the export of the country’s greatest asset – woollen cloth – and limited imports. New industry was encouraged, with monopolies granted and skilled overseas workers supported. London’s population soared as a result, quadrupling from approximately 50,000 in 1520 to around 200,000 in 1600. The City – defined by the old Roman city walls, today encompassing the financial district centred around Bank and Liverpool Street – spilled out into the “Liberties”. These areas, extending beyond the walls and testing the limits of City governance, comprised many often seedier yet vibrant districts in which many foreigners – known to Tudor Londoners collectively as “strangers” or “aliens” – settled, enticed by the laxer prescriptions against “strangers” and the cheap prices. Religion in Tudor London The Tudor break from Rome and the Catholic church in the 1530s, culminating in the official excommunication of Henry VIII’s Protestant daughter, Elizabeth I, in 1570, was a theological Brexit that forced London to look beyond Europe for its economic prosperity. As the city went global, its merchants, factors and sailors travelled to the Muslim kingdoms in north Africa and the Ottoman domains in Asia and the Middle East, to Persia and India, even to the New World. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/12.-Trumpeters-after-joustcmyk-f3ca103-e1682339389188.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A section of the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll with a black trumpeter, likely to be John Blanke, who performed in Henry VIII’s court (Photo by College of Arms / Westminster Tournament Roll)" title="A section of the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll with a black trumpeter, likely to be John Blanke, who performed in Henry VIII’s court (Photo by College of Arms / Westminster Tournament Roll)" /> And such connections went both ways, with an influx of “strangers” and “aliens” arriving in England from abroad. London’s Tudor court also looked to Europe for skilled physicians, musicians and artists. It was probably in 1501 that the black African trumpeter John Blanke arrived in England from Spain, in the entourage of Henry VIII’s future wife, Catherine of Aragon. Blanke appears, playing the trumpet and wearing a turban, in the Westminster Tournament Roll (above)– a long, lavishly illustrated document depicting the events staged to celebrate the birth of Catherine and Henry’s first living son, also Henry, in 1511. (The baby died just weeks later.) Blanke was not enslaved but, rather, a skilled musician welcomed into the ranks of the Tudor court’s elite. Around this time, he successfully petitioned the king for a pay rise – from 8 to 16 pence a day – claiming that “his wage now and as yet is not sufficient to maintain and keep him to do your grace like service as other your trumpeters do”. Read more | Black faces of Tudor England He was clearly confident in his talents and in his ability to win the ear of the music-loving king. When Blanke married, in 1512, Henry paid for his wedding outfit. We must assume that Blanke converted, to allow him to take Christian marriage vows, and that he probably married a white Englishwoman, though we can’t be sure – as with Chinano and his fellow Turks, Blanke disappears from the record just a few years later. London: the 16th-century city that never slept Five districts that offer a flavour of the vibrant, often dangerous, Tudor capital Smithfield: tournaments and traitors Smithfield is the site of London’s oldest market, which has operated here since the Middle Ages and is still trading today. During Tudor times the area was home to St Bartholomew’s Hospital and key livery companies including the Haberdashers. It was a venue for popular festivals and tournaments including the annual St Bartholomew’s Day celebrations, but also for the public executions of heretics and traitors. The area attracted a diverse variety of residents, including Jewish physicians. Clerkenwell: ale and ill repute The Knights Hospitallers of St John originally had their headquarters at Clerkenwell Priory. This area lay outside the City walls, and became notorious for its alehouses, bowling alleys and dicing houses. Turnbull Street (now Turnmill Street near Farringdon Station) was regarded as one of the most disreputable thoroughfares in London, infamous for its thieves and brothels – as mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. Southwark: sex and stages Today home to Shakespeare’s Globe theatre and Tate Modern gallery, in Tudor times Southwark was an infamous liberty – an outlying district of the City of London – under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Winchester. Brothels and bear-baiting pits flourished here; local sex workers were known as “Winchester Geese”. Shakespeare himself lived and worked here, and it was the site of many of the first large open-air theatres. Londoners would cross the bridge or take water taxis to experience this dangerous yet exciting area south of the river – and it’s still a popular destination for tourists and locals. Austin Friars: Dutch denizens This district, north-east of the current site of the Bank of England, took its name from an Augustinian friary founded in the 13th century. Some years after its dissolution in 1538, Edward VI invited religious and economic migrants from Germany and the Low Countries to settle there and use the friary’s church, which became known as the “Dutch Church”. By 1600, the area’s Dutch community numbered more than 5,000, and Austin Friars was also home to many other European and African settlers. Bishopsgate: crossing boundaries As its name suggests, this area – now on the edge of the City and bordering London’s East End – was the site of one of the ancient Roman city gates, and as a result during Tudor times straddled London’s civic jurisdictions. Bishopgate’s four churches were all dedicated to Botolph, the patron saint of boundaries, travel and trade. Sited just outside the City walls yet close to the river, the district drew migrants from abroad, many of whom settled and worked here, and were also converted and buried in its churches. The rise of foreign trade New arrivals were not always welcomed with open arms. In 1517, the Evil May Day Riots erupted in London when about a thousand apprentices turned on “strangers” including French and Flemish artisans and Italian merchants in Lombard Street. This fracas exposed a faultline in London’s economy: skilled workers from abroad were needed to bolster trade but, at times of famine, disease or social tensions, outsiders were vilified and attacked – as has, sadly, so often been the case throughout the centuries. International trade and the rise of joint stock companies brought to London others from even farther afield. In 1560, the Muscovy Company agent Anthony Jenkinson returned to England from trading in Russia and central Asia, where he met the woman he called “my wench, Aura Soltana”. Reflecting one of the more disturbing aspects of Tudor trade, Jenkinson appears to have bought this unfortunate woman in Astrakhan, in the Volga Delta. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/2E3M9MWsml-ff2d937-e1682339273540.jpg" width="620" height="415" alt="Portrait of an Unknown Woman, c1590–1600, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. This may depict Aura Soltana, the “Tartar girl” gifted to Elizabeth I (Photo by Jimlop collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Portrait of an Unknown Woman, c1590–1600, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. This may depict Aura Soltana, the “Tartar girl” gifted to Elizabeth I (Photo by Jimlop collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Indeed, he boasted that he “could have bought many goodly Tartar children… a boy or a wench for a loaf of bread worth six pence in England”. On his return to London, Jenkinson gifted the young woman to Elizabeth I, whose court records gave Aura the classically inspired name “Ippolyta the Tartarian”. Other records from that year note that she was christened – presumably another conversion – and given gold jewellery by the queen, who referred to her as a “dear and well beloved” servant. Records also survive of Elizabeth giving Ippolyta clothes of silk, velvet and satin, and suggest that the young woman introduced her to the Spanish fashion for leather shoes. Read more | Tudor women: what was life like? Lives of ordinary settlers Many who settled in Tudor London had no connection with the court at all, instead leading relatively humble lives as skilled workers. One such was Reasonable Blackman, a silk weaver working in Southwark in the 1580s, who may have made costumes for the Bankside playhouses where plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were performed. Probably born in west Africa, he came to London via the Low Countries, where he had learned his craft. We know even more about a woman named Mary Fillis, because parish records from St Botolph’s Aldgate, just east of the city centre, record her baptism in 1597 and her background in fascinating detail. These records note that Fillis was “about the age of 20 years and having been in England for the space of 12 or 13 years, and as she was not Christened, and now being become servant with one Millicent Porter a seamstress dwelling in East Smithfield, and now taking some hold of faith in Jesus Christ, was desirous to become a Christian”. Born in Morocco in 1577, and presumably of Islamic heritage, she had first come to London to work as a servant in St Olave’s parish, in the Hart Street household of a merchant named John Barker, who had links to the Barbary Company that traded in Morocco. By the late 1590s, the parish records note, she was working as a seamstress with Millicent Porter. As a skilled worker, and someone who may have wanted to marry and have children, Fillis needed to convert – which she duly did, just like at least 60 other black and/or Muslim women whose stories are found in local records. Tudor exploration The 1580s in particular were a time of great social mobility, when “aliens” came into London from across the globe as Elizabethan foreign and commercial policy reacted to the political threat from Catholic Spain. The decade saw voyages to Virginia in the New World, the establishment of a diplomatic and trade embassy with the Ottomans in Constantinople (now Istanbul), agents scattered across the Mediterranean, and further incursions into north Africa and central Asia. Read more | David Ingram: the Tudor sailor who hiked across pre-colonial America In 1584, two Croatan Native American elders travelled to London with returning English colonists from the Roanoke colony in what’s now North Carolina. Their arrival in the city caused a minor sensation. Walter Ralegh, who had financed the voyage, hosted the two men in Durham House on the Strand. During their visit, one of them – Manteo, a senior member of the tribe that lived in the region of Roanoke – worked with the scientist Thomas Hariot, who learned his Algonquian language. The Native Americans were presented at court, and helped Ralegh attract further financial investment in the ill-fated colony. Manteo returned to Roanoke, where he became the first Native American to be baptised into the Church of England in 1587. In 1603, later Croatan visitors to London provided rowing demonstrations, paddling their canoes along the Thames. A new life in a new town Conversions to Protestantism weren’t restricted to people regarded by the Tudors as “pagans”. Jews who were baptised were labelled “Marranos”, “conversos” or “New Christians”, supporting their status as “denizens” – residents with most of the rights of citizens. England’s entire Jewish population had been expelled in 1290 on the orders of Edward I, and would not be readmitted until 1656 – officially, at least. But evidence survives of a community of at least 100 Portuguese Jewish physicians and merchants living in London. These included Roderigo Lopez, a skilled physician and Portuguese converso of Jewish heritage. Lopez had fled his home country after facing accusations by the Portuguese Inquisition of secretly practising Judaism, and settled in London in 1559, shortly after Elizabeth’s accession. Read more | The persecution of Jews in medieval England He converted to Anglicanism, married the daughter of a London grocer and lived in Holborn, where he is described in its 1571 census of “aliens” as “Dr Lopez, Portingale, householder, denizen [who] came into this realm about 12 years past to get his living by physic”. Lopez was admitted as a fellow to the College of Physicians, and appointed physician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. In 1581, he rose to become physician to Elizabeth I. Unfortunately, Lopez became a pawn in courtly political intrigue, and was accused of trying to poison the queen as part of a Spanish plot. Before his execution at Tyburn in June 1594, he protested that he “loved the queen as well as Jesus Christ”, a desperate yet probably sincere affirmation of his loyalty to church and crown. The crowd responded with derision as they watched him being hanged, drawn and quartered. Today, most historians believe there was no evidence to convict Lopez: just a few years later the Spanish ambassador acknowledged as much. There was only one document at Lopez’s trial that mentioned his Jewish heritage, and historians are split about how far antisemitism played a part in the case against him. Finding a common enemy Although Lopez met a tragic end, other well-connected “strangers” who operated within the upper echelons of the Tudor court fared far better. In the summer of 1600, Mohammed al-Annuri, also known as Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, arrived in London to negotiate an Anglo-Moroccan alliance against a common enemy: Catholic Spain. He did so on the orders of his Moroccan ruler, Moulay Ahmed al-Mansur, and spent six months living on the Strand as an honoured guest of the Barbary Company, alongside an entourage of 16 other Muslims. Read more | The reluctant ambassador: the life and times of Tudor diplomat Sir Thomas Chaloner Contemporary reports observed that they were “strangely attired” and “killed all their own meat within their house” (presumably to ensure it was halal). The diarist John Chamberlain wrote that it was “no small honour to us that nations so far remote, and every way different, should meet here to admire the glory and magnificence of our queen”. Al-Annuri had his portrait painted, watched Elizabeth’s Accession Day Tilts at Whitehall in November 1600, and met the queen at Nonsuch Palace and Oatlands Palace for the diplomatic negotiations that would unite English Protestants and Moroccan Muslims. Ultimately the plan failed, and al-Annuri returned to Morocco in 1601 – but he was certainly not the first nor the last cosmopolitan figure to spend extended periods of time in Tudor London. Growing scholarship These stories of Tudor London and its diverse citizenry from around the world continue to grow in number, as historians from a diverse range of backgrounds approach the city’s manuscript records in new ways, identifying traces of what I have called “the other Tudors”. Many such figures have already been identified in the Tudor archive: more than 500 have been pinpointed as living in London during the years between 1500 and 1670, at various times welcomed, assimilated, rejected and attacked. These are stories of the Tudors for our own uncertain times – the age of the Black Lives Matter movement, when xenophobia rubs shoulders with cosmopolitanism. In identifying these people, historians enhance and deepen our understanding of the Tudor period, and what it means for English national culture today. This article was first published in the May 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
A whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
To mark HistoryExtra’s 1500th episode, Jerry Brotton takes us on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
To mark HistoryExtra’s 1500th episode, Jerry Brotton takes Ellie Cawthorne on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500, from the powerful dynasties of Eurasia and the rich culture of Ming dynasty China to the melting pot of Constantinople. They discuss the shifting balance of power in Africa at the start of the 16th century, explore the origins of European slavery and colonialism, and reveal how the Americas stood on the precipice of a great transformation.
Why we should remember the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent
Sultan Suleiman I was not just a military campaigner, expanding the empire to its greatest ever reach. He was also a talented linguist and patron of the arts, says Jerry Brotton
Who was Suleiman the Magnificent? Five hundred years ago, Sultan Suleiman I (reigned 1520–66) ascended to the throne. Although he was the longest-reigning and arguably greatest of all Ottoman sultans, his time on the throne began under the long shadow cast by his father, Selim ‘the Grim’. On 30 September 1520, the 26-year-old Suleiman landed at Üsküdar on the Asian side of the Bosporus, having learned of the sudden death of his father just eight days earlier. Selim’s death was kept secret as the Janissaries, his elite infantry and household troops, were notoriously volatile when it came to political succession. The next day Suleiman crossed the strait and headed to the Topkapı palace, where he met the political and religious leaders of the imperial divan (or council) who swore their allegiance to him. He then followed his father’s funeral cortege through the streets of Istanbul, before returning to the Topkapı to complete his accession as the 10th Ottoman sultan. How did Suleiman become sultan? The Ottoman tradition of coronation was very different to its western counterparts. Its equivalent was cülus (from the Arabic ‘to sit on the throne’), which involved largely private ceremonies within the Topkapı palace followed by a public march through the city. For Suleiman, this involved measuring himself against the brief but devastating legacy of his father’s rule. In defeating the Safavids and Mamluks and controlling the holy cities of Mecca, Cairo and Jerusalem, Selim left his son as ‘Inheritor of the Great Caliphate’. Read more | The Ottoman empire: everything you wanted to know How did he gain the title of Suleiman the Magnificent? It seemed like an impossible legacy to emulate. Yet, during Suleiman I's 46-year reign, he extended the empire to its greatest ever reach, stretching from the gates of Vienna to the Persian Gulf – gaining him the European sobriquet ‘the Magnificent’ – while codifying and standardising legal processes across the empire, which is why Turks know him as ‘the Lawgiver’ (or ‘Kânûnî). Suleiman was a tireless military campaigner, responsible for pushing Ottoman forces deep into Europe, north Africa and the Indian Ocean. But he was also a gifted linguist who spoke five languages, and a patron of the arts, commissioning the architect Sinan to build much of the skyline that still dominates Istanbul, including his final resting place, the monumental Süleymaniye Mosque. The legacy of Suleiman the magnificent Suleiman left a greater legacy on the physical and religious landscape of Europe and the Middle East than any other Ottoman sultan. His European campaigns created a lasting mark on countries like Hungary and the Balkan states, while the mythical idealisation of him as the strong man of Ottoman history is now being appropriated by some of Turkey’s more authoritarian political figures. Read more | “Suleyman was just as bellicose as his father, if not as gratuitously cruel” Jerry Brotton is author of This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (Penguin, 2016) This article first appeared in the September 2020 issue of BBC History Magazine
15 minutes of fame | Jerry Brotton chooses Marie Tharp
As part of our series exploring lost or lesser-known figures from history who deserve their 15 minutes of fame, Dave Musgrove interviews Jerry Brotton about the life of Marie Tharp
Who was Marie Tharp? Born in Michigan in 1920, Marie Tharp was an influential mapmaker and geologist. According to historian Jerry Brotton, Tharp is probably the most important woman in the mapmaking industry in the 20th century. She was effectively responsible for the discovery of tectonic plate shift and development of the theory of continental drift – a seemingly heretical theory at the time, which we now accept as absolute truth. Marie Tharp’s life Working in a traditionally male-dominated field, Tharp made a name for herself following the Second World War, when she began working at Columbia University, at the famous Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Alongside her colleague, Bruce Heezen, Tharp crunched the data from sonar readings from US military ships in the Atlantic. Due to the misogynistic nature of society at the time, Brotton explains, Tharp was not allowed on the boats herself, but Heezen fed her the data from his explorations, and from this, Tharp proposed the idea that the continents and ocean floor were ceaselessly moving. Her argument was rejected by most in the field at the time, including Heezen. When she began to map plate shifts in the Atlantic, Heezen allegedly erased all her work. Read more | 7 maps that changed history Despite this setback, Tharp continued mapping her data and developing her theories, proving irrefutably that tectonic plate shift existed. By the late 1950s, Tharp had persuaded Heezen that her theory was correct, and together, they developed precise scientific maps of the ocean floors – called physiographic maps – which were published under Heezen’s name only. In the 1960s, Tharp was finally allowed out on boats herself, where she could be in the thick of data collection alongside her male counterparts. However, her name did not start appearing on her maps until the early 1970s. A key moment in Tharp’s career was the creation of the World Ocean Floor Map in 1977, Jerry explains. Still working out of Columbia University, Tharp had created a map of all the different ocean floors with Heezen. Tragically, Heezen died before the map’s publication, but in 1977, the National Geographic sponsored the map, naming it the Heezen-Tharp map. More from Jerry Brotton | Ptolemy: the father of modern geography Though still overshadowed by Heezen’s name, Tharp’s work with this map was highly impactful and she finally began to receive recognition for her influence. In the latter stages of her career, she was recognised by the US Library of Congress and awarded a medal for her services to the geological and geographical field. However, despite this, Brotton explains, she has still not received the public recognition she deserves for her work. Why does Marie Tharp deserve her 15 minutes of fame? Marie Tharp deserves her 15 minutes of fame, says Brotton, because she was undefeatable in her work. “She faced so much misogyny throughout her career,” he says, “but continued to work tirelessly on her geological theories and mapmaking, contributing highly influential thoughts to the field.” Tharp was never working for her own self-aggrandisement, Brotton says. “She accepted that she couldn’t control the misogyny she faced, but she could control her work, and with this focus on the need for us to understand the world we live in, she contributed some of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century.” Jerry Brotton is an expert in the history of mapmaking and professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. His books include A History of the World in Twelve Maps (Penguin, 2012) Listen to the full interview and find more episodes in our 15 minutes of fame podcast series Article compiled by Isabel King
15 minutes of fame: Marie Tharp, ground-breaking cartographer
Jerry Brotton considers the life and legacy of geologist and cartographer Marie Tharp, uncovering her major role in mapping the ocean’s floor
It’s the HistoryExtra podcast’s 15th birthday! To celebrate, we’ve asked 15 historians to nominate a figure from history they think deserves their ‘15 minutes of fame’. In this episode, Professor Jerry Brotton nominates Marie Tharp. Speaking with Dave Musgrove, he dives into the life of the pioneering geologist and ocean cartographer, and explores her remarkable legacy. Browse more episodes about figures from history who deserve 15 minutes of fame
Benvenuto Cellini: how the 'bad boy' sculptor and goldsmith gives us a fresh perspective on the Renaissance
Jerry Brotton tells the sensational story of Benvenuto Cellini, a master goldsmith and sculptor who revelled in violence, sodomy and murder
Goldsmith, sculptor, poet, soldier, musician, murderer, necromancer, priest and lover – of men and women. The incredible life and times of Benvenuto Cellini, one of the Italian Renaissance’s most extraordinary but now neglected figures, provides a unique perspective on the period. Yet what his surviving art and writings reveal is less an idyllic “golden age” of harmony and beauty, and more a period defined by political turbulence, religious conflict and vicious artistic rivalries. Although Cellini is now largely overlooked as an artist in favour of his immediate predecessors Leonardo da Vinci (whose position he inherited in France) and Michelangelo (whom he revered), he left behind one of the first – and certainly most dramatic and intimate – autobiographies ever written by an artist. My Life (simply entitled Vita in the original Italian) is a grandiose, scandalous and boastful account of 16th-century art and society. It is largely based on life in Cellini’s native Florence, but it also spans his career spent living and working in the Italian cities of Rome, Venice, Mantua, Ferrara and Siena, as well as Paris and Fontainebleau in France. The book is a compelling historical document and offers fascinating insights into the period. But no historian takes an autobiography at face value – and rightly so, in this case. By comparing Cellini’s My Life to the surviving historical records, it seems that his autobiography contains a lot of fact, but also quite a bit of fiction – seemingly to adhere to traditions in writing at the time. Cellini’s autobiography vividly records his fights with his rivals – he killed at least three – while he was also creating some of the greatest sculptures and designs in gold and silver of his day. He survived warfare, imprisonment, poisoning, syphilis and the loss of many of his family to the plague, which was an everyday threat. He befriended kings, popes and the Medici rulers of Florence, who all forgave him his sins to ensure he made art for them. “You should know,” said Pope Paul III, “that men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, need not be subject to the law.” Cellini participated in some of the most significant turning points in the Renaissance in its greatest cities; his violent and passionate life makes the volatile painter Caravaggio look like a choirboy. Turbulent times For Cellini, fantasy and reality blurred from the very beginning. His autobiography claims that he was born in Florence “on the night of All Saints’ Day at exactly half past four in the year 1500”. He was actually born on 3 November, but in trying to create an aura of importance for himself as a great artist, he wanted to share his birth with an auspicious saint’s day. The world into which Cellini was born was already changing politically and artistically. The 15th-century Italian peninsula was never a unified state but rather a series of small republics and principalities primarily ruled by tyrannical condottieri, military “contractors” or mercenaries. These powerful figures gave rise to great art, as they commissioned artists to create fantastic pieces for them in city states including Florence, Ferrara, Mantua and Milan. But the Italian Wars, beginning with the French invasion of 1494, changed the political balance of these creatively feuding cities, bringing French and Spanish imperial power into the region, and with it a change in artistic production. Cellini grew up working for the patrons of many of these factions, and it would shape his art. Initially his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a musician working at the Florentine Medici court. Despite becoming an accomplished player of the recorder and cornetto, Cellini, like many aspiring artists before him, chose to train as a goldsmith. As a teenager he worked in Siena, Bologna and Pisa before gaining admission into the prestigious Florentine goldsmiths’ guild. In 1523 the first of many accusations of outlawed sexual practices and violence were levelled against him. He was accused of sodomy with Domenico di Giuliano da Ripa, and he also became embroiled in a blood feud with the Guasconti family, admitting that “being somewhat hot-blooded by nature”, he “attacked them like a raging bull” and stabbed one of them – for which he was sentenced to death in absentia, having already gone on the run. Cellini fled to Rome and established his own goldsmith’s business there. He exploited his Medici connections to obtain the patronage of Giulio de’ Medici, who was appointed Pope Clement VII in 1523. But the wider geopolitics surrounding the Italian peninsula would quickly engulf him. In 1527 mutinous troops from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s imperial army invaded Rome. The subsequent sack of the city saw an orgy of looting and violence in which up to 25,000 civilians died. The Holy Roman Empire: what was it, and what was it's relationship to the Pope? Cellini organised the pope’s defences at the Castel Sant’Angelo, doing by his own reckoning “a better job of firing artillery than of being a goldsmith” and even claiming to have shot dead the imperial force’s commander, Charles III, Duke of Bourbon. But even in the midst of warfare Cellini was able to aestheticise his experience and profit from it. While “contemplating this unbelievable spectacle and conflagration” he was ordered by the pope to hide his jewels by “extracting them all from the gold in which they were set”. He was also instructed to take the gold to “melt it down in as much secrecy as [he] could” before he and the pope fled the city. Returning to Florence, Cellini found a city that was almost a stranger to him. The Florentines had taken advantage of the turmoil in Rome to banish the Medici and proclaim a republic, and a plague that had swept through the region was ravaging the city’s inhabitants. A contemporary observer described the epidemic’s impact on Florence: “The neat and beautiful streets which used to be bursting with rich and noble citizens are now stinking… The shops are locked, the businesses closed… The piazzas and markets, where the citizens used to be in the habit of gathering frequently, are now made into communal graves.” The fear of plague, coupled with the exodus from Rome caused by its invasion, led artists to move across Italy, avoiding outbreaks of the disease and obtaining patronage where they could. Cellini was no different, and the spectre of plague forced him to travel and work in Mantua, Venice, Naples and even Paris, still labouring primarily as a goldsmith. By 1529 the reinstalled pope required Cellini’s skills in rebuilding Rome, appointing him to the prestigious role of head of the Papal Mint designing coinage. But the artist’s temper soon reared its head again. His brother was murdered, leading Cellini to confront the killer and try “to cut off his head cleanly” before stabbing him so deeply that he could not remove the blade. Despite Cellini’s arrest, once again he evaded justice for his crimes. The pope told him that he should apply himself to his work and remain silent. However, keeping his head down proved almost impossible. As he recounted in My Life, he fell for a serving woman and, in an attempt to bewitch her, enlisted the help of a priest and necromancer to conjure devils in the Roman Colosseum. The ceremony involved a 12-year-old virgin servant of Cellini’s who watched as “several legions of devils appeared, until the Colosseum was completely filled”. Tall tales and half-truths This incident is one of the many moments in My Life when Cellini’s artistic licence got the better of his reportage. His autobiography drew on earlier Italian writers and artists who understood the need to self-consciously concoct events that evoked terribilità – awesome and terrifying moments in art and life that shock and amaze the audience or reader. If the devils were not real, then did Cellini conspire with a necromancer? Possibly. Shortly after describing this scene, Cellini writes that he attacked and wounded a notary before fleeing to Naples. Did it really happen, or was it another classic rhetorical move, a description of fantastical and confrontational acts, known as meraviglioso? What was certainly not invented was Cellini’s need for patronage. It was his lifeline, and with the death of Pope Clement VII in September 1534, he seems to have realised that his days of papal support were numbered under Pope Paul III, a member of the Farnese family with little interest in backing Medici supporters in Rome. Cellini stabbed and killed another rival goldsmith, Pompeo de’ Capitaneis – this time an event recorded in official documents – and he was exiled once again. Eventually the pope absolved him, but anti-Florentine factions within the papacy took against the headstrong goldsmith. Hearing that the French king Francis I was searching for artists to help transform his royal palace of Fontainebleau, Cellini headed to Paris. Unhappy with the indifferent reception he received, Cellini made the fateful decision to return to Rome in 1537. Cellini’s nemesis, the pope’s son, Pier Luigi Farnese, immediately imprisoned him in the Castel Sant’Angelo he had defended in 1527. The artist was charged with stealing papal jewellery during the sack. In one of the most graphic and harrowing accounts of imprisonment written in this period, Cellini describes attempts to poison him with ground diamonds and believing he would “end my miserable life” by finding “the means of killing myself”. Instead, he read the Bible and seemingly had a miraculous conversion, including hallucinatory visions of Christ in which he was “seized by that Invisible Being and carried away as if by a wind”. As papal machinations swirled around him, powerful patrons such as Cardinal Ippolito d’Este Cellini, a clergyman from Ferrara, finally secured his release. Holy smoke, antipopes and power struggles: a guide to popes and the papacy However, it seems that Cellini’s account of his ecstatic religious conversion while imprisoned was merely another example of him adhering to the established literary technique of writing his life as a story of earthly sin leading to glorious redemption. The reality was more mundane and violent. Having obtained his freedom, Cellini decided to return to France and the patronage of Francis I. But after leaving Florence he went to Siena, where he killed a postmaster – hardly the contrite actions of a zealous convert. The years Cellini spent in Paris and Fontainebleau working for the French king were some of his happiest and most productive. He began working on larger sculptural projects at the urging of Francis I, who was keen to show his patronage of the arts rivalled that of the pope and his great adversary, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Cellini made the extraordinary Salt Cellar, which also appears to have been designed to support Francis’s desire to break into the Asian spice market – the cellar contained pepper as well as salt. He also worked on larger, classically inspired sculptures, but as ever, trouble was lying in wait. One of his models fell pregnant with his child – a pattern that would play out again and again in his later years – and she gave birth to his first daughter. Cellini quarrelled openly with Francis I’s mistress and was accused yet again of sodomy, though this time with a woman. It was time to move on once more. He returned to Florence in 1545 with the prospect of a powerful new patron: Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Making his masterpiece Cosimo had reasserted Medici control in Florence and was eager to commission Cellini to fashion a piece of large public art to celebrate Medici power over the city. He asked Cellini to create a sculpture of Perseus slaying Medusa, a classical story that he felt represented the masculine Medici asserting their will over the “feminine”, malevolent republican ideals that had characterised the city’s recent rule. For nearly a decade Cellini worked on the Perseus. Ambitiously, he wanted to cast it in bronze in one piece to outshine da Vinci – who had tried and failed to make a similar bronze statue – and Michelangelo’s marble David, whose statue stood in the same square where Cosimo wished to display the Perseus. Over the next nine years Cellini worked intensely on the Perseus alongside other smaller statues, while still living in a dysfunctional domestic world and quarrelling incessantly with friends, lovers, artistic rivals and even Cosimo. He had a son by another of his models and fought relentlessly with fellow artist Baccio Bandinelli. In one extraordinary scene, Bandinelli accused Cellini of being a “dirty sodomite” in front of Cosimo, after Cellini had ridiculed him for making a statue of Hercules that looked like a sack of melons. But the Perseus loomed large. In one of My Life’s great climactic moments Cellini describes the casting of the statue. Lying ill in bed with a fever, he is told that the process is going wrong. With a storm raging and fire threatening to burn down the studio, Cellini leaps into action and saves the casting by throwing English pewter into the furnace. “I saw,” he wrote, “that we had brought a corpse back to life.” On 27 April 1554 the statue was triumphantly unveiled in the Loggia dei Lanzi, standing opposite Michelangelo’s David. The public were astonished; Cosimo was delighted. Perseus is shown holding up the severed head of Medusa, whose look turns those who meet her gaze to stone. Cellini positioned the head so it looked straight at Michelangelo’s statue – made of stone, in contrast to his bronze. The point was clear: he had turned Michelangelo to stone and eclipsed his great master. A tattered reputation But just as Cellini finally secured the fame and critical adulation he craved, he blew it. In 1556 he attacked and seriously injured yet another rival goldsmith. He was arrested and thrown in jail. Released on bail, just months later in 1557 he was accused once more of sodomy. This time the court records show that the charge came from an apprentice, “with whom he had had carnal intercourse very many times and committed the crime of sodomy, sleeping in the same bed with him as though he were a wife”. Perhaps the seriousness of the charges meant that Cellini omitted both accusations in his autobiography, but the court records reveal he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Cosimo commuted the sentence to a period of house arrest, but Cellini’s reputation never fully recovered. He was tainted with the charge of sodomy, and younger artists were eager to take his place. Ironically, however, the cost of the charges to his artistic reputation inspired the writing of his autobiography. In 1558, as commissions dried up, he began dictating My Life to a studio assistant, perhaps as a way of defending his actions and restoring his reputation. He married his servant, but fathered children by models and servants. He turned ostentatiously to religion, working on a life-sized marble crucifix, but Cosimo was rather indifferent to it. Cellini was damaged goods, and there were younger, more exciting sculptors available. Cellini withdrew into domestic life, but it remained turbulent and grew increasingly eccentric. He took religious vows but renounced them after a couple of years, presumably finding the life of a priest less exciting than he had hoped. As his influence at the Medici court waned, Cellini still quarrelled with anyone he could. Unsurprisingly another rival, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari, all but wrote Cellini out of his influential Lives of the Artists, which would negatively affect his reputation forever more. Cellini took further refuge in writing, working on treatises about sculpture and goldsmithing. He was appointed to the prestigious Florentine Academy of Design but seemed to use it as a way of fighting even more with other artists, one of whom labelled him “that hopeless lunatic”. Cellini died on 13 February 1571 and was buried two days later in great pomp and splendour in the church of the Santissima Annunziata, with all the ceremony the state could accord him. The funeral oration praised the fine disposition of Cellini’s incomparably virtuous life, in one of the many great ironies of this most extraordinary of Renaissance artists. Three of Cellini's greatest works... Perseus with the Head of Medusa Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1554) is Cellini’s masterpiece. It was commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici to represent his family’s rule over Florence and was also designed to stand in the same square as Michelangelo’s David. Nearly a decade in the making and standing over three metres tall, the casting in bronze was an epic achievement. Perseus is shown slaying Medusa, with cast bronze mimicking her blood, in a political image of male dominance. Crucifix Cellini’s life-size Crucifix (1556–62) is his last great artwork. Having mastered gold and bronze, his crucifix took on the medium favoured by Michelangelo: marble. Based on his vision of Christ while in jail in 1539, it could represent Cellini’s turn to religion late in life. But he sold it to an underwhelmed Cosimo, who gave it to the Spanish king Philip II. It has remained in the Escorial Palace near Madrid ever since. The Salt Cellar The Salt Cellar (or Saliera) was made in 1543 for King Francis I during Cellini’s time in France. Dubbed the “Mona Lisa of sculpture”, it is one of the most iconic and outrageous objects of the Renaissance. It depicts a woman personified as Earth next to a temple for the pepper, and a man representing the Sea beside a ship containing salt. Hand-sculpted in rolled gold, it was unrivalled in its craftsmanship. Cellini legacy's: why did he fade into obscurity? The manuscript of Cellini’s autobiography, My Life, was largely forgotten following his death, possibly due to its criticism of his Medici patrons, and certainly because many of his artworks had either been destroyed or fallen out of fashion. It was first published in Italian in 1728, followed by an unreliable English version in 1771. A significant shift in appreciation of Cellini came when Goethe translated and published his autobiography in 1796–97, claiming: “I see the whole century far more distinctly through the eyes of this confused individual.” Goethe’s translation sparked a wholesale reassessment of Cellini’s personal and artistic reputation under the Romantic movement. Lord Byron, always quick to identify with a fellow reprobate, described Cellini in his poetic drama The Deformed Transformed (published in 1824) as “A famous artizan, a cunning sculptor; Also a dealer in the sword and dagger.” Increasingly Cellini and his writing came to encapsulate Italian life and culture in the Renaissance. The French composer Hector Berlioz was “greatly struck by certain episodes” from the autobiography, which he drew on (somewhat inaccurately) in composing his first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, which premiered to a largely hostile reception in 1838. Berlioz’s opera climaxed with the dramatic casting of the Perseus, as the ultimate symbol of the romantic artist triumphing over adversity in creating art. The Victorians were even more enthusiastic about Cellini. Painters like John Singer Sargent copied his statues, while writers in the aesthetic movement such as Walter Pater discreetly celebrated him as a pro-gay icon. John Addington Symonds translated My Life in 1887, writing that Cellini “was reckless in the indulgence of his sensual appetites… He was not free from the darker lusts which deformed Florentine society in that epoch.” He condemned Cellini for enjoying “killing live men quite as much as casting bronze statues”, but still concluded that the autobiography was “the first book which a student of the Italian Renaissance should handle”. Oscar Wilde adored Cellini as an amoral aesthete, describing My Life as an “autobiography in which the supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his splendour and his shame”. In the 20th century, Cellini’s volatile life continued to spark interest. In 1924 Edwin Justus Mayer’s Broadway play about Cellini, The Firebrand, spawned various imitations. Hollywood came calling in 1934, with The Affairs of Cellini, a swashbuckling romp starring Fredric March as the romantic lead dressed in tights who spends more time chasing ladies than making art. By 1945 Mayer’s play attracted the attention of Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weil. Their operetta, The Firebrand of Florence, received the same lukewarm reception as Berlioz’s opera. The last 50 years have seen Cellini anthologised in collections of gay writing, while figures like Terry Gilliam tried repeatedly to make films about him. Otherwise there has been an unfair waning of interest in Cellini – perhaps because his autobiography is just too sensational, and his art suffers unnecessarily in comparison to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Jerry Brotton is professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, and spoke about Cellini on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. His radio series on Cellini, Blood and Bronze, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and is now available to stream. This content first appeared in the April 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
Cellini: the “supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance”
Jerry Brotton describes the astonishing life and career of the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini – a story of murder, plague, imprisonment and even necromancy
Professor Jerry Brotton describes the astonishing life and career of the 16th-century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini, whose biography shines a light on the dark heart of the Renaissance and features murder, plague, imprisonment and even necromancy.
The Renaissance: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Professor Jerry Brotton responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries about the Renaissance era
Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, responds to listener questions and popular internet search queries about the Renaissance. He tackles everyday life in the era and explains why it saw such an explosion of ground-breaking art and culture.
The battle of Lepanto: when Ottoman forces clashed with Christians
On 7 October 1571, Ottoman forces clashed with the Holy League's fleet in a huge naval battle in the Mediterranean. Writing for BBC World Histories in 2017, Jerry Brotton looks at both sides of an encounter that shifted the balance of sea power in the region
The battle of Lepanto was one of the greatest conflicts in pre-modern history, pitting Ottoman naval forces against the ships of the Christian Holy League in the Gulf of Patras off western Greece. The clash, involving an estimated 500 ships and 100,000 combatants, was the largest such battle since ancient times and the last great naval conflict dominated by armed rowing vessels. The background to the battle was a region becoming increasingly dominated by the Ottomans. That empire was engaged in a relentless programme of expansion across the Mediterranean, in stark contrast to the disunity that characterised their papal, Spanish and Venetian adversaries. With the accession of Sultan Selim II in 1566, Ottoman designs on north Africa and Christian strongholds such as Malta and Cyprus threatened to transform the Mediterranean basin into one vast Turkish naval port. When in the summer of 1570 the Ottomans declared war on Venice and invaded Cyprus, Pope Pius V, Philip II of Spain and the Venetians agreed to put aside their differences and combine forces in the form of a Holy League. They hastily assembled a vast Christian armada of more than 200 ships, 40,000 sailors and 20,000 troops led by Philip II’s half-brother Don John of Austria. In the summer of 1571, the fleet set sail to lift the siege of Cyprus. When Don John learned of the fall of Famagusta on that island he headed for Lepanto, where the Ottoman fleet of 300 ships lay at anchor. Savage combat On the morning of 7 October the two sides engaged each other in an epic battle that quickly descended into savage hand-to-hand combat as both sides boarded each other’s galleys. Around 4pm, as the smoke of war began to lift, it became clear that the Ottomans had been outgunned and defeated, losing by some estimates nearly 200 of their ships, along with 15,000 soldiers and sailors. For a brief moment, Christendom forgot its divisions and united in celebration of its victory over the seemingly invincible Turks. Across Europe the news was greeted with an extraordinary outpouring of delight, relief and what one commentator, the Venetian Pietro Buccio, described as a “marvellous and glorious Christian victory against the infidels”. In contrast, Selim II quoted a verse from the Qur’an: “But it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you,” and swore to avenge the defeat by rebuilding his fleet and intensifying his attacks on Christian forces across the Mediterranean basin. Europe’s holy war: how the Reformation convulsed a continent Crusaders: did they fight for God or gold? For the Christians – and for subsequent western historians – defeating the Ottomans represented the first great victory over an apparently invincible navy, and marked the beginning of the decline of Muslim influence in the Mediterranean. The French historian Fernand Braudel described it as “the end of a genuine inferiority complex on the part of Christendom and a no less real Turkish supremacy”. For the Ottomans it was an act of God – a significant but not insurmountable defeat in a wider and largely successful geopolitical strategy of dominating the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa. The Ottoman experience In 1499 the Greek port of Nafpaktos, better known by its Venetian name of Lepanto, fell to the Ottomans. From that point they effectively controlled the eastern Mediterranean, part of a larger geopolitical strategy that saw them conquer most of the region as well as north Africa, including Egypt (1517), Algiers (1529) and Tripoli (1551). Lepanto became part of the multi-confessional, polyglot empire, a liva (district) in the Ottoman administrative system. Beys and kadis (chieftains and legal authorities) recruited local Greek sailors, oarsmen and soldiers conscripted into the timariot cavalry in return for tax exemptions. In early 1571 Bosnian spies informed Sultan Selim II that a Christian fleet was being assembled to break the Ottoman siege of Famagusta in Cyprus. An imperial decree set the religious tone for Selim’s response: “When news about the infidels’ intention to attack became known by everybody, here the ulema (religious scholars) and all the Muslim community found it most proper and necessary to find and immediately attack the infidels’ fleet in order to save the honour of our religion and state, and to protect the land of the Caliphate, and when the Muslims submitted their petition to the feet of my throne I found it good and incontestable.” The armada sets sail Selim ordered his fleet to sail from Istanbul in April 1571, appointing Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, a former janissary (elite warrior) as its admiral. Ottoman chroniclers gave divergent estimates of the fleet’s size, ranging from 170 to 300 vessels, powered by up to 35,000 oarsmen – many of them captured Christians – and carrying more than 40,000 sailors and soldiers. 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Ottoman Empire The Great Siege of Malta, 1565: the crusaders’ last stand The fleet headed towards Crete, where they believed the Christian navy lay, and were joined by Uluç Ali Pasha, the beylerbey (duke-governor) of Algiers. But, as autumn drew in, provisions ran low, and many of the Albanian, Bosnian and Greek soldiers deserted the Ottoman fleet. One chronicler wrote that the “fleet cruised for a long time on the sea. No one appeared. The Ottomans believed that the Christians lacked the courage to meet them. The winter approached. The corsairs and beys of the coastal provinces asked the Porte [government] for permission to return home. Thus the army disintegrated.” When the Christian navy was finally sighted off Lepanto in early October, the Ottoman force was not only unprepared but severely depleted in manpower and resources. That was crucial: the Ottomans relied for victory on vastly superior troop numbers and the accuracy of the composite bow fired from their galleys by experienced archers. They also had arquebuses and the heavier musket – but they discovered to their cost at Lepanto that their Christian enemies possessed more than twice as many guns. Almost immediately dissension broke out among the Ottoman commanders. Uluç Ali Pasha advised an engagement in open sea away from the coast. Fearful for his life if he disobeyed the sultan’s command to engage the enemy, Müezzinzade Ali Pasha ignored the advice, believing that the Christian fleet was much smaller than it really was. Shortly after noon on 7 October, he ordered his fleet to attack. As the first Ottoman galleys crashed into the Christian ships, up to 40 others ran aground – perhaps accidentally, or in a deliberate act to escape fighting. The superior Christian firepower prevailed. Ottoman accounts described how “men succumbed to a hail of bullets” and “the noble fleet was surrounded by a thick smoke which covered the sky”. After hours of hand-to-hand combat, Müezzinzade Ali Pasha was struck by a bullet and fell; his head was cut off (reputedly by a Spanish soldier) and displayed to the dismayed Ottoman troops. The Ottoman rout was complete, and of their high command only Uluç Ali Pasha escaped. Ottoman analysis Unsurprisingly, Ottoman sources were muted in their reactions to the battle. Most blamed the unnecessarily long campaign, exhaustion and desertion, as well as the disastrous leadership of Müezzinzade Ali Pasha (which, as he was appointed by Selim, was the nearest anyone came to criticising the sultan). Selim’s response, a terse imperial decree dated 28 October 1571, attributed the defeat to God: “Now a battle can be won or lost. It was destined to happen this way according to God’s will.” The Templars on trial: a very muted inquisition A big day in history: The day Pope Urban II exhorted Christians to go on crusade The defeat was a military setback, but by the summer of 1573 Turkish shipyards had rebuilt the fleet, and the following summer the Ottomans retook Tunis, which had been seized by Don Jon in 1573. When asked about the battle by the Venetian ambassador, Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pasha responded: “Our courage has not faded away after the battle of Lepanto; there is a discrepancy between your losses and ours. We ceded from you a land [Cyprus] … [and] thus cut off one of your arms. You defeated our fleet, which meant nothing more than shaving our beard. A missing arm cannot be replaced but a shaved beard grows thicker.” The Holy League experience On 20 May 1571 Pope Pius V met with representatives of Venice and Spain in Rome. The result was the formation of a Holy League – an alliance of Catholic states aiming to break Ottoman dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. Agreeing the alliance had been a lengthy and tortuous process. Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Christian countries had failed to unite against their common enemy. Venice was keen to protect its commercial relations with the sultans, the Spanish were eager to protect their north African interests, and the papacy was preoccupied with the more immediate threat of Lutheranism. Though the Ottoman invasion of Cyprus proved the need for unity, squabbles continued: the Spanish insisted that the Habsburg Don John of Austria – “a young man who desired glory” – must command the league’s fleet, and that its main objective should be Tunis (held by Uluç Ali Pasha since 1569), not Cyprus. But by cajoling and threatening, the pope’s “assertiveness overcame all difficulties”, and in July 1571 the papal fleet set sail for Sicily. There they were joined by the rest of the league, amassing “208 galleys, 6 galleases [large oared warships] and 23 ships besides the small vessels carrying a good many troops” estimated at 20,000, a remarkable and somewhat unlikely coalition of Italians, Spaniards and even Germans. Internal squabbles National rivalries threatened to scupper the league almost before the fleet sailed towards Corfu. Fights broke out between the Spanish and the Italians, while both looked down on the ‘barbaric’ Germans. Don John favoured an offensive campaign while his cautious lieutenants advised a more defensive approach, grumbling that they were operating “without any order, nay in utter confusion”. Intelligence was also conflicted. One of Don John’s advisers told him that his own soldiers were largely inexperienced, though “I do not think the enemy’s men can be very good, or better than ours”. However, “as for the number and quality of the ships in the Ottoman fleet, the reports are so various that I cannot judge very well if it is smaller or greater than ours”. When the two fleets finally met on the morning of 7 October, the Holy League possessed two decisive advantages. It outgunned the Ottomans by more than two to one, and in its vanguard were six great Venetian galleases – floating fortresses too high to be boarded, bristling with artillery. As they rowed towards the Ottoman galleys and opened fire, “even the Turks began to fear”, reported Don John’s advisor. Their opening salvos sank several galleys and scattered the Ottoman formation. Priests evoked Christ and urged the Christian soldiers “to fight against the enemies of his most holy name, and inflamed and moved by these exhortations they all became one body, one will, one desire with no heed nor thought of death”. The Spanish Armada: England’s lucky escape 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose Under fire from the galleases “the sea was wholly covered with men, yard-arms, oars, casks, barrels and various kinds of armaments, an incredible thing that only six galleases should have caused such great destruction, for they had not [previously] been tried in the forefront of a naval battle”. Both sides quickly became “constrained to do battle with short arms in hand-to-hand combat”, all “fighting in the cruellest fashion”, wrote the advisor. Finally Don John’s galley rammed Müezzinzade Ali Pasha’s flagship and, after intense fighting, the admiral fell. When Uluç Ali Pasha’s squadron fled, the battle was at an end, “and with God’s own resolution”, wrote one Venetian, by mid-afternoon the enemy had been completely shattered, subdued and conquered, in “the greatest and most famous naval battle which has ever taken place from the time of Caesar Augustus until now”. Aftermath of the battle News of the victory quickly spread across Europe. Festivities, church masses, pamphlets, paintings and poems celebrated the event. While the Ottomans had ignored the rise of printing, European presses were able to circulate news of the victory at a hitherto unimaginable speed and scale. Nevertheless, Christian reports of the Ottomans’ demise after their defeat at Lepanto were greatly exaggerated, and the Holy League rapidly disintegrated. First Pius died in May 1572, then Venice, eager to re-establish commercial relations with the Ottomans, signed a peace treaty in March 1573 acknowledging Selim’s sovereignty over Cyprus. Others also sought alliances with the Ottomans. In 1579 Elizabeth I established formal diplomatic relations with Selim’s successor, Sultan Murad III. Both English and Ottoman rulers were keen to exploit divisions among an increasingly fractured Christendom that found little unity in the aftermath of Lepanto. This article was taken from issue 2 of BBC World Histories Magazine, first published in February 2017