#chronicons

[dreamconsumer]

King Harald Bluetooth (d. 985/986).

[ardenrosegarden]

um, sure. why not.

[chriselison]

Today I'm checking out a brand new game and my very first roguelike - Chronicon: Survivors! I quickly come to the conclusion I'm not very good at these sorts of games :) In this series I am going through all my unplayed games on Steam and diving in completely blind!

[pietroalviti]

Il Chronicon di Ceccano, torna a S. Giovanni un antico manoscritto del 500, venerdì 21 giugno, ore 18,30 nella Collegiata

E’ stato ritrovato di recente e sarà donato alla Collegiata di S. Giovanni Battista di Ceccano: si tratta di una copia manoscritta del Chronicon, compilata da uno degli arcipreti dell’antica chiesa madre di Ceccano, probabilmente agli inizi del ‘500. La Cronaca di Fossanova, o Annales Ceccanenses, èil più importante documento della storia dei secoli XII e XIII. Fu redatta da Benedetto da Ceccano,…

[agentmanatee]

Wells said. Anyone who points fingers and acts like 5B was a reason that everyone should hate their least favorite character completely misses the point of the conflicts in this storyline. We have to remember that everyone jumped straight from high-stress traumatic event to high-stress traumatic event to high-stress traumatic event with absolutely no chance to just breathe. The team minus Fitz only had a chance for a meal between escaping the Framework/defeating AIDA and jumping to post-apocalyptic future where humanity has been enslaved by the Kree. Meanwhile, Fitz watched the people closest to him disappear from his view and was immediately arrested and held in a prison ran by a tyrant who turned out to be the last head of Hydra; in isolation to boot, which really messes up a person. Shortly after escape from his perspective, he's in the same post-apocalyptic future watching his friends pushed into death matches and fleeing the Kree with them. Once everyone's back to the present, their on a mission to figure out how to save the world, Yoyo loses her arms, a fear dimension starts leaking into the real world, and they learn that Coulson is dying. Daisy's terrified that she's the one who will destroy the world, and they don't even know how it happens. She's even more afraid of losing Coulson. EVERYONE is broken at this point, and they're reacting to their trauma more than anything.

If you look at symptoms of PTSD and acute traumatic stress, you can see the character ls show them. They're reactions are more extreme than in the past because they are beyond stressed. They're decision making is compromised (ie, 5x14, Daisy and May prioritizing saving Coulson over saving the world against his wishes, Jemma and her acid experiment, etc).

They're written like real people and responding to their situations like real people would do. Even if you wouldn't do what they did in their situation, their choices are so understandable. I did a couple of posts about the overarching themes of 5B awhile back exploring both the Trolley Problem and how their flaws are the flipside to their strengths. That was a stressful time for fandom.

ETA: They did the wrong things for the right reasons. Afterall, the road to hell is paved in good intentions.

i see a lot of talk going around about how the team were terrible to daisy after 5x14 and one person even said that it was basically a darvo situation, and i want to add my opinion to the pile, cause i disagree with that a lot. i also generally have a problem with how people tend to defend their favourite to the absolute while villainizing almost every other character in this discourse. they all deserve equal amounts of empathy.

lets get a few disclaimers out of the way first: from my perspective, what happened wasnt anyones fault, they were all victims in this situation. fitz cant be blamed for having a psychic split, daisy had every right and more to react the way that she did, thats not even a discussion. it was also just absolutely the right decision, fitz wasnt trustworthy anymore after that. he absolutely did care about what he did though, he mentioned how he was scared by how he still thought he did the right thing at least twice. thats not the same thing as being horrified at what he did exactly, but the reasons for his split didnt go away just because it happened, and this is about as close as you can get in this situation i think. i also think his whole " i didnt have a choice" shtick was more about him trying to make sense of what happened rather than trying to deflect blame, because he generally lacks empathy for other people a bit and getting defensive and not considering whether that is appropriate right now is perfectly in character for him (still terrible on his part despite all that though, and this is probably where the darvo thing comes from as far as it concerns him). now:

the way i see the aftermath of that episode is that with everything still happening, coulson gone and possibly (definitley, its hydra) being tortured for intel, the end of the world still fast approaching, and daisy still being convinced its somehow gonna be her fault (especially after having her powers restored), none of them could allow themselves to break right now. and crucially: noone blamed daisy for the way she reacted or attacked her for it. may thought she wasnt ready for coulsons job after literally just being tortured, and she was right about that, that was way too much pressure to put on her after that (despite that, i still think daisy did a good job, but she shouldnt have had to). mack agreed with daisy fully. simmons was definitley not okay anymore after what happened and acted increasingly irrationally. she just watched her husband torture her best friend while being held at gunpoint by a robot he programmed, after which daisy had no time to talk to her and fitz was locked in a cell and disillusioned about who he was. she was essentially alone to deal with the situation.

it doesnt excuse what she did, but i also dont think she wouldve acted the way she did if she was fully sane at that point. i mean, she risked swallowing literal acid because she thought she was invincible due to knowing she makes it past the worlds destruction. before this, she was very, starkly different. those are not the actions of someone whos secretly a sociopath like many regularly accuse her of being, theyre the actions of someone who has been pushed completely past their breaking point. as for yoyo, she lost her goddamn arms and was absolutely convinced that daisys path was going to lead to the entire worlds destruction. and that was what she was mad at daisy about.

this was the entire tragedy of that situation: its not a question of fault. they all acted terribly towards each other, and they all had good reasons for it, even if they were being unfair or vicious. it just happened.

so they all pushed what fitz did aside for the moment to focus on the mission, but its literally the main factor of what drove the team apart for the rest of the season, because daisy was focused on her interpretation of the prophecy and wasnt gonna trust fitz or anything he said anymore, simmons and yoyo were convinced he was right and felt daisy wasnt listening to them, and then they managed to scrape themselves back together as a team, just barely, and saved the world, losing both coulson and fitz in the process. in my headcanon the team patched up most of their differences after 5x22, based on how it ended, flashbacks and mentions from season 6 as well as the team being friendly with each other again, and the fact that this show isnt the kind to just ignore events like this, if things are radically different between seasons its safe to assume that stuff happened off screen, not that the writers were lazy. losing two members of their shared family probably also provided them with some perspective and reminded them of how much they all mean to one another.

and this hit all of them very hard, and they all dealt with it in their own way without involving the others. all of them, not just daisy. mack focused on his job 100%, may and elena helped him, simmons went to space to find fitz and daisy came with her because everything reminded her of coulson and theyre each others best friend. when they all came back together, they had managed to somewhat move on from what happened and probably werent to keen on bringing it up again. i mean we saw how sarge had them all bent out of shape because he had coulsons face. they were not over it. nevermind the fact that they had another alien invasion on their hands at the time.

[paganimagevault]

Hungarian captains from the 9th-10th C. CE: Kund (the Fourth Captain), Lehel (the Fifth Captain), Bulcsú (the Sixth Captain), Örs (the Seventh Captain) from the Chronicon Pictum (Page 26), manuscript dated to 14th C. CE.

"943 CE: Allied with the Kievan Rus, a Hungarian army attacks the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos buys peace, and accepts to pay a yearly tribute to the Hungarians."

-taken from Wikipedia

[xphaiea]

The bats have taken wing in Prodigiorvm ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557 • via oneletter words.com

[tiffanysabrinatattoo]

Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, quae praeter naturae ordinem, et in superioribus et his inferioribus mundi regionibus, ab exordio mundi usque ad haec nostra tempora acciderunt. (1557) Conrad Lycosthenes

[wonder-worker]

"[Marozia] was the daughter of the Roman aristocrat Theophylact and of his wife Theodora, a “shameless harlot”, as Liudprand calls her, who taught the “exercise of Venus” to her two daughters. Theophylact controlled the Roman nobility and was able to influence papal elections. Women played a very significant role in the rise of his family. At the beginning of the tenth century his daughter Maria, better known as Marozia, made her appearance on the political scene. Liudprand’s portrait of this lady, her sister and her mother, who controlled Roman politics through their sexual relationships, has become so famous that it has led to the creation of the term “pornocracy”. After having an affair with Pope Sergius III at a very young age, Marozia married three times. Her first husband was Alberic of Spoleto, by whom she had a son, Alberic. Around 926-927 she married Guy of Tuscany, Hugh’s brother. Theophylact and Theodora both died around 915, leaving Rome in the hands of Marozia. This did not please everyone. A conflict arose in the 910s between Marozia – later supported by her second husband Guy - and Pope John X. The pope had established an alliance with King Hugh of Provence, who threatened Marozia’s interests in Rome and in the nearby territories. The dispute divided Romans into two factions, but Marozia managed to get rid of the Pope and his powerful brother, the marchio Peter. At this point she made sure that her young son John - whom she had had from her relationship with Sergius III - was elected pope. After the death of Guy, Marozia started to negotiate a political alliance with Hugh, which culminated with the marriage; however it is not certain whether the union was lawful.

According to Liudprand, the marriage was an aberration for several reasons. Marozia tried to become queen by selling the city of Rome as if it was her own property; she did not have the necessary qualities to be a queen. The union between an effeminatus king - because he was not able to control his sexual desire - and a woman that was nothing more than a “shameless harlot” could not end well. Hugh had to leave the city because of a revolt against him led by Alberic II, Marozia’s son, who felt threatened by the king’s arrival and by his arrogance.

[...] Further evidence on Marozia and her infamous attempt to become a queen is offered by a late tenth-century text, composed between 972 and 1000, the Chronicon of Benedict, a monk of Sant’Andrea in Soratte (near Ponzano, Latium). This text is mainly the history of the monastery, but also reports Roman political events. Benedict shows a patchy knowledge of the history of Carolingian Europe, and seems not to know many contemporary authors. Nonetheless, he is a precious source for Roman politics, in which he was particularly interested as he greatly admired Alberic II – Marozia’s son - who had patronized his monastery. Because he deals with Roman politics, Benedict has something to say about Theophylact’s family. Even if he is less aggressive than Liudprand – he does not mention the infamous affair between Marozia and the Pope - he is not very partial to Marozia either. He introduces her when mentioning her relationship with her first husband, the margrave of Spoleto, Alberic. According to Benedict the union was not a lawful marriage, but rather a “wicked affair”. Benedict never mentions Marozia’s name. He introduces her as “the daughter of Theophylact”, adding the cryptic sentence “whose name survives” This passage presents significant implications. It is possible that the manuscript’s copyist committed a mistake, omitting the word “non”. In this case, Benedict would have implied that he did not actually know Marozia’s name. However, it is also possible that the sentence was not a mistake, and that Benedict omitted Marozia’s name on purpose, and decided to make his audience aware of that. Marozia’s name was well known in Europe: Liudprand was familiar with these events and even the West Frankish writer Flodoard of Rheims mentions her, reporting that by 933 Marozia was kept prisoner by her son. Therefore it seems quite unlikely that Benedict, who was familiar with Roman political events, had never heard her name.

Even if one assumes that Benedict’s omission was a way to deny visibility to a very controversial lady, he did not avoid recognizing her political influence. He mentioned the conflict that had arisen in the 910s between Marozia and John X. He also defines Marozia as “domna senatrix”, acknowledging her part in Roman politics. However, Benedict sees her success as a political catastrophe: “Rome was subjected to the powerful hand of a woman”. Benedict quotes Isaiah’s prophecy, which foresees the punishment of Jerusalem’s inhabitants for their sins: “And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them”. According to Benedict Rome has become a new Jerusalem, in which moral and political decay has produced the distortion of the natural system. This perspective is shared by Liudprand. In his account of the diplomatic mission to Byzantium, the Relatio de Legatione Costantinopolitana, Liudprand reports a dialogue between himself and the Byzantine emperor. In this conversation Nicephoros accuses Liudprand’s patron, Otto I, of having taken “Rome by force” and killed many noble people. In his answer, Liudprand refers to the same biblical quotation: “My Lord did not invade the Roman city by force or in a tyrannical way, but rather he freed it from the yoke of the tyrant, or tyrants. Were not effeminates lording it over Rome, and, what is more serious and sordid, were not whores doing the same?”

Benedict’s version of Marozia’s story is somewhat different from that of Liudprand. Benedict attributes the marriage between Marozia and Hugh to political reasons rather than to Marozia’s sexual appetite. Hugh needed support in Rome in order to become emperor, and Marozia needed external allies as opposition against her was growing. Benedict presents Marozia as the initiator of the negotiations that led to the wedding, and although he does not express an explicit opinion about these facts, he seems to imply that this is an aberration. Benedict and Liudprand share a view according to which female power – or power held by unmanly men - means tyranny. Both their accounts show Marozia’s failure as a wife and a mother, as she puts her sexual appetite and her personal ambition above the interests of her own son. Her shameful behaviour is allowed by the lack of male authority. However, their opinion of Hugh is slightly different. According to Liudprand, Hugh was ruined by his sexual incontinence, whereas Benedict considered him as an evil man, who plotted to blind Alberic, the true hero of the narrative. Moreover, Benedict implicitly condemned the Roman nobility that allowed a woman to take control.

Most importantly, unlike Liudprand Benedict acknowledges Marozia as a queen, as he calls her regina twice; thus presenting her as Hugh’s lawful wife. However, the title does not seem to imply any political prerogatives, at least not through her marriage with Hugh. Benedict only acknowledged Marozia’s influence in Rome, but he portrayed it in a negative way. In other words, according to Benedict power and femininity are ill-suited. His idea recalls that expressed by another Carolingian text, the Annals of Lorsch, which use the same words (“femineum imperium”) to identify and condemn female authority. In describing Charlemagne’s coronation the annalist states that at the time “the name of the emperor was lacking among the Greeks, who were subject to the female imperial rule of Irene”. This does not seem to be the case for Liudprand. He prefers to underline the moral aspect of this degeneration: Roman disorder has to do with the power held by immoral women, meretrices, rather than with female power itself. These differences also reflect the diverse understanding of the two authors with regard to queenship."

-Roberta Cimino, Italian Queens in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (PHD Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014)

[tinyfolktale]

Here is a lil info I achived by reading a few books I bought in Scotland.

Around AD 900, chroniclers on both sides of the Irish Sea reported that a drowned giant woman had been washed ashore in Scotland. She was 195 feet (59.5 metres) tall, with a body as white as a swan, and her hair was 18 feet (5.5 metres) long.

In Annals of Ulster - 891AD

" The Sea threw up a woman in Scotland. She was a hundred and ninety-five feet in height; her hair was seventeen feet long; the finger of her hand was seven feet long, and her nose seven feet. She was all as white as swan’s down."

Chronicon Scotorum - 900 AD - copied from the Annals of Tigernach

"A great woman was cast ashore by the sea in Scotland; her length 192 feet; there were six feet between her two breasts; the length of her hair was 15 feet; the length of a finger on her hand was six feet; the length of her nose was 7 feet. As white as swan’s down or the foam of the wave was every part of her."

Similar descriptions can be found in Annals of Innisfallen (906 AD) and in The Annals of the Four Masters (891AD)

One of the funniest thing about this is the fact that given her proprtions she would have a pretty cool pixie hair cut. lol XD

Source "Scotland a Very Peculiar History" by Fiona Macdonald

[chriselison]

New video on YouTube! Today I'm checking out Chronicon, a cool little indie Action RPG!

[thefirstknife]

I think it was really fitting that Calus, who has been obsessed with chasing grandeur (or at least the illusion of it) should have such an inglorious death, and yet in death he was somehow more impressive than in life.

Absolutely same. Calus is a fascinating character who was really an utter loser his whole life, but due to extraordinary circumstances, achieved such power and status. Deeply recommending Caiatl's portion of the Lightfall Collector's Edition book, as that really goes in depth about Calus before he became the guy we know now. And if you can stomach it, The Chronicon, which details a sharp shift in Calus' behaviour after he met the Black Fleet and the Witness, which worried even his closest advisors.

Now that we have his end, the full scope of his life is incredibly fascinating. A guy who kept chasing pleasure, easy life, hedonism and luxury ended being a tool to a higher being he pledged himself to, thinking that this higher power would see him as an equal and grant him everything he seeks.

One of my favourite visual cues in Lightfall's cinematics with Calus is the focus on his empty chalice. The first thing he does as he emerges from the Disicplenator cube, is take an object and turn it into a chalice. He walks forward, looking at the chalice and then at Tormentors by his side, trying to arouse some sort of celebration or cheering. But he is met with silence and an empty chalice.

He keeps looking at the chalice as if expecting it to be filled. Expecting his newfound power to give him all the pleasure and hedonism he sought, so he could party and celebrate until the end of the universe when he would become the last thing alive, as per his wishes expressed in the Chronicon.

But it stays empty. No matter how many times he looks and waits, it's empty. His throne is lavish and gold, he controls an army in service of the most powerful being in the universe, he has everything at his disposal, but the throne room is silent and his cup empty. No celebrations, no cheering, no party, no lavish dinners, no friends, no advisors, no servants.

There is nothing in service to the Witness. You are nothing to the Witness. You are an empty shell with no choices or wishes or belongings or friends. It's an empty life, devoid of meaning and joy. Calus' chalice would never have been filled as long as he served. He would never have a celebration or cheers or friends ever again.

You can see how he gets mad when the Witness suggests that he failed. How can he fail when he is doing everything required of him and has been doing so for untold centuries? And never gets anything in return? After the Witness beats him into submission again, the first thing he does is crush the empty chalice he's been gripping so tightly and throws it away. The illusion of grandeur shattered. He realises it won't fill and that he will not have anything and he dedicates himself fully to the Witness. Anything else and he will be destroyed.

And even at the end, he still swears on the Witness for power and importance. In the final fight, he still yells at us "I am a disciple!" as if he's trying to convince himself more than us. And he dies alone, hated and despised by everyone that ever knew him and abandoned by the Witness he swore his life to long before Lightfall and long before our fight at the end of Haunted and long before the Leviathan raid.

He swore himself to the Witness at the Black Edge, at the end of the universe, where he was sent to die in exile. Everything he did from that point onward was for the Witness. And it abandoned him in the blink of an eye. He died with his chalice empty, chasing the promise that it would be full forever. He could've had that had he been a better person, a better father, a better husband, a better emperor. But instead he chose a path that led to emptiness and nothingness and he has no one to blame but himself. A fitting end for one such as he.

[zerogate]

In a 2006 review of recent developments in the historiography of the Crusades, Norman Housley wrote:

Although there is much that is contested in the history of crusading, one advance that has been made in the course of the last half century would probably be disputed by nobody: that the crusades played a central rather than a peripheral role in the development of medieval Europe.

“There can be no doubt,” Housley adds, “that crusading was one of the features of medieval life that gave Catholic Europe its remarkable rate of growth. This established an inherent dynamism that characterized the central Middle Ages.”

One of the most remarkable aspects of this impulse is its sudden manifestation. “It was not the culmination of an evolution, but the almost spontaneous outpouring of a prodigious power of collective animation,” wrote French historian Paul Alphandéry around 1930. We can pinpoint the day (27 November 1095) when the call fell like the Holy Spirit on a crowd, before being preached by an army of missionaries.

The First Crusade (1095-97) was a success, celebrated in what can be regarded as the earliest propaganda campaign of global scale. The First Crusade became for Westerners what the Trojan War was for ancient Greeks. Christopher Tyerman writes:

The scale and rapid production of histories of the First Crusade by eyewitnesses and others eager to interpret the startling events didactically finds no parallel in medieval historiography. Within a dozen years of Jerusalem’s capture, at least four full eyewitness accounts, three major western histories and part of the great Lorraine version by Albert of Aachen were being circulated along with a bevy of other accounts, more or less derivative, imaginative or polemic. While originating in monasteries and cathedrals, these texts reflected and excited secular interests, for example in local heroes or national pride. Most of the histories sculpted stirring tales of faith, bravery, suffering, danger, tenacity and triumph. The theologians distilled the message of God’s immanence and Christian duty; the no less artful eyewitnesses provided accessible tales of miracles and butchery. One of the very earliest, the Gesta Francorum, included elaborate scenes with stereotype exotic Orientals declaiming extravagant, bombastic nonsense much in the style of the verse chanson de geste. Naturalistic representation, especially of the enemy, did not feature.

The epic stories of the First Crusade had such a lasting impact that, when a Second Crusade was preached in 1145, the response was, again, overwhelming. “I opened my mouth, I spoke, and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity,” Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to the pope. “Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive.”

[...]

The Crusade was a new religion. Guibert de Nogent, one of the most enthusiastic chronicler of the First Crusade, remarked that before, knight could only attain salvation by giving up their way of life and become monks, but “God has instituted in our time holy wars, so that the order of knights and the crowd running in their wake … might find a new way of gaining salvation.” The Crusade, declared a fourteenth-century master of the Hospitaliers, became “the nearest route to Paradise.” Welsh priest Adam of Usk went further in his Chronicon (early fifteenth century):

Any man who will not set off at once for the land where God lived and died, any man who will not take the Holy Land’s cross will have but little chance of going to heaven.

-- Laurent Guyénot, The Crusade is Over

[chronivore]

Bats, from Prodigiorvm ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557

[paganimagevault]

Attila and the Huns from the Chronicon Pictum (page 7) 1358 CE

"They, having set forth from the island, riding through the sand and flow of the Tisza, crossed at the harbour of Beuldu, and, riding on, they encamped beside the Kórógy river, and all the Székelys, who were previously the peoples of King Attila, having heard of Usubuu’s fame, came to make peace and of their own will gave their sons as hostages along with divers gifts and they undertook to fight in the vanguard of Usubuu’s army, and they forthwith sent the sons of the Székelys to Duke Árpád, and, together with the Székelys before them, began to ride against Menumorout."

— Anonymus, Gesta Hungarorum

[tiffanysabrinatattoo]

Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, quae praeter naturae ordinem, et in superioribus et his inferioribus mundi regionibus, ab exordio mundi usque ad haec nostra tempora acciderunt. (1557) Conrad Lycosthenes