Palermo

"next stop: Toledo" I wrote, eagerly anticipating the continuation of the Michael Scot trail. Melrose was great fun but it yielded only memories of legends of Scot, the medieval astrologer, astronomer, 'wizard' of legend. Getting nearer to the real man would mean mainland Europe. We don't really know where in Scotland he came from and his first unambiguous appearance in documented history is in Toledo (well, actually Bologna, in 1215, but he was there in the party of the Bishop of Toldeo). For a variety of reasons that next step has taken more than a year but Toledo still awaits; we went to Sicily.

Michael Scot's enduring fame certainly owes a lot to his association with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily, King of Germany, King of Jerusalem. Scot joined Frederick's Court sometime between 1220 and 1224 and spent the rest of his life with him, dying in 1235 (probably). Frederick was, apparently a remarkable man, intellectual, tolerant, bold, ruler of a huge swathe of Europe, favoured even by fate - at least at first; '...one of a small band of medieval rulers who possesses modern admirers,' as Abulafia notes (if you doubt us, Abulafia and me, just take a look not only at this tweet in which Frederick is depicted as 'literal coolest dude ever', but also at the thousands of likes and the many responses). Stupor mundi, he was called, 'wonder of the world'. The hyperbolic sense of epoch-making ubermensch has hardly lessened since.

He would always have been noted in scholarly circles but his role as Frederick's Court Astrologer brought Michael Scot and his esoteric knowledge to the eyes of the wider world. According to Kantorowicz, 'The shuddering awe which Frederick II inspired was shared by his Court Astrologer, whom people called a "second Apollo".' Dante placed both men in the appropriate circles of his Inferno, possibly boosting Scot's fame for many more centuries than might otherwise have been the case. Grasping Frederick's story is thus essential to understanding Michael's. Books and articles discussing Frederick are often useful sources for Michael. A visit to Palermo, Frederick's childhood home, capital of his Kingdom of Sicily, home at least some of the time to his Court, seemed like a great way to get closer to the latter stages of Michael's life and times.

Here is The Court of the Emperor Frederick II in Palermo as represented in 1865 by German painter Arthur von Ramberg; a vision perhaps tailored to Frederick's place in the German national origin myth. The great Emperor, noble of mien, receives some awed Muslim visitors. I was intrigued by the turbanned gentlemen conferring surreptitiously at upper right: Court Astrologers and Philosophers?

This picture was pretty much all of my Palermo-specific preparation. I think I wanted to let the city itself lead me deeper into the times and tales of Frederick and Michael. If nothing else, being there led me to read more. I found a vigorous city of great character languishing in many layers of history.

This is Palermo Cathedral. It was built in 1185 on top of a mosque that had been built on top of an earlier Christian church and was modified and augmented several times in succeeding centuries. It is one of the major buildings of the Arab-Norman architecture that emerged in Sicily in the 12th century as the conquering Norman invaders employed Arabic styles and craftsmen, indulging in the 'enthusiastic but often inelegant juxtaposition of ideas and practices derived from several cultures' (Abulafia). Palermo Cathedral is impressive if not 'elegant' but its present-day appearance owes a lot to additions and alterations on top of the Normans' characteristic eclecticism. Its fundamental Arab-Norman identity points to the cultural melting pot Sicily must have been at this time, similarly to Toledo; the right sort of place for Michael's own cross-cultural activity.

Despite the stories we don't know where or how Michael Scot died, or where he was buried. How strange, then, to stand in Palermo Cathedral just a couple of feet from Frederick's sarcophagus, from the mortal remains of the man who, 800 or so years ago, added Michael to his court, came to value his teaching and counsel, incidentally brought him to enduring prominence; sat, possibly no further away than I was from the sarcophagus, asking Michael for astrological counsel on some course of action or posing questions like, 'on what does the Earth rest?'

In the 12th century Palazzo dei Normanni (Norman Palace) we saw the beautiful, famous Capella Palatina with its blend of Norman, Arabic and Byzantine form and decoration, but also the royal apartments: ancient wood paneling, high ceilings, decorated again with Byzantine style mosaics. The palace was built not by Frederick but by his grandfather, Roger II, but he would have lived there and used it as headquarters when he was in Palermo. What trusted advisers would have been admitted to the Emperor's own, private apartments?

The great architectural attractions of Palermo were mostly built by Frederick's predecessors in the 12th century. He himself left fewer buildings to posterity. He spent much time away from Sicily and probably had less money to spend. The Castello Maniace in Syracuse is one of the few buildings of his that remains so of course we had to visit it, when we found ourselves on that side of the island. While the H P Lovecraft fan in me likes the idea of a "castle of the maniacs" this is not the meaning of the name - its name comes from the Byzantine general who originally established a fort on the island of Ortigia, perfectly placed for the defence of Syracuse. No trace of that original castle remains and what we see now is something like the building constructed on Frederick's orders between 1232 and 1240, plus some modifications in the years since. A planned second storey was never added.

Everywhere we went in Sicily we saw towns marked by or reconstructed after the earthquake of 1693. The Maniace Castle also suffered an explosion in 1704, in a room being used as an armory. The repairs after the 1693 earthquake were recent enough that the associated documents still exist, incidentally revealing more detail of the original building despite its great temporal remove. The outstanding feature of the castle is doubtless its vaulted Great Hall whose function is quite mysterious, within a military, defensive structure. Frederick may have spent time here but Michael was dead before it was completed. Is it fanciful to suggest that its incorporation of classical motifs into something Gothic mirrors the introduction of classical thinkers to medieval philosophy?

Palermo's great medieval buildings are world-famous, in great condition, very busy as tourist attractions (I might write a separate post on that topic) but the medieval city does not really persist. Perhaps one begins to get some sense of it in the Kalsa district, towards the Piazza Marina, a grand square standing where Palermo's medieval harbour has long since silted up. Frederick spent years at a time away from Palermo taking his Court with him, astrologers, animals and all so it would be wrong to imagine Michael making himself a happy home there. Nonetheless Palermo rubbed my nose in Frederick's times and the environment he grew up in, with all its geopolitical superstructure and, most importantly of all, human depth and complexity. In coming a little bit closer to Frederick's world, so that it starts to feel less cartoon-like, I feel I've also come a little bit closer to the world in which Michael Scot functioned; a fine consequence of a couple of weeks' holiday.

William Blake

The Michael Scot trail continues to lead in all sorts of amusing directions. I believe Scot's prominence in history, beyond academic treatises on medieval science, stems largely from his visibility in Dante's Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy in turn gained quite beautiful illustrations at the hands of William Blake though sadly this project was left unfinished when Blake died. So when my wife and I found ourselves planning a trip south of the border a stop in Cambridge for William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum seemed obligatory. It would have been even without Scot.

The exhibition was a revelation, illuminating the radical humanitarianism underlying his visionary art. It sent me back to this long-neglected book where I lingered over the tale of little Tom Dacre who is sold to be a chimney sweep by his father when his mother dies. His life is miserable but he has a wonderful visionary dream of liberation in which an angel tells him that if he's a good boy, 'He'd have God for his father and never want joy.' The next morning:

And so Tom awake; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

Blake would improve Tom's material lot but he's already in a better place spiritually.

Our world is very different from Blake's and most of us nowadays do not share his religious belief. In the world we've created for ourselves, doing your duty is no defence against great harm, maybe cast aside in some global restructuring exercise or suddenly finding ourselves guilty of some unimagined bureaucratic sin. Why should people buy into structures where you can do your duty and come to harm nonetheless?

K-Pop

I was fascinated by this account from the BBC: How jealous 'super fans' try to dictate their idols' private lives. Fans of the K-Pop group aespa are outraged to discover that singer Karina has a boyfriend. Karina has compounded the offence by apologising publicly rather than on a private, fans-only forum. She's only a girl in a band. Can't she have a personal life like everybody else?

A bizarre tale but it's the background that holds the attention, the personal involvement of the fans in the capitalistic project of the band.

"Fans put in labour to ensure the group's success. They consider the idol a product. And if you want to see the product on the stage for a long time, the artistes, the fans, and the management will all have to put in hard work."

We learn of "fan labour": streaming their idols' music, even at night while sleeping, to move them up the charts; studying the voting rules of the several fan polls; dividing their voting efforts to get their group as far up the rankings as they can; responding to negative comments in online forums.

Karina is not 'like everybody else'. She is a component of a corporate entity, filling a role that precludes a personal life. Her reality has to be that perceived by the corporate organism, not the human one she grew up with; just as other human components of such organisms need to abandon their human moral values to fulfil their functions. The striking K-Pop innovation is to transform the super fans from consumers to constituents. They also must embrace the reality perceived by the corporation, 'put in hard work' alongside artistes and management to help it optimise its position in the landscape it perceives, of money, charts, prizes. They don't need it for insight, balm, enlightenment, support... they need it to succeed. Its success, on its own terms, is their success. What a wheeze!

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Karina image: 티비텐, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Green banks

Greenbank Garden is a National Trust for Scotland property on the very south edge of Glasgow, actually in East Renfrewshire council area. It's a couple of miles from my house and I pass there quite often on walks; a liminal territory, suburbs shading into farmland. The house and garden both date from the 18th century but it's the garden that's the real draw, lavishly stocked and creatively laid out. Also there's a café!

No doubt Greenbank's garden sees thousands of visitors each year. It would probably lose a fame contest, however, to Green Bank, West Virginia, USA. The Green Bank Observatory has operated since the late 1950s and has played host to several large instruments, including now the Robert C Byrd Telescope, the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.

In the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), astronomers look for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilisations, perhaps incidental to the normal conduct of their business, perhaps sent out deliberately to say, "we're here!" to anybody who might be listening (for a sense of this work, see the film Contact, science fiction of course but realistic in its depiction of SETI research). Green Bank has been central to these efforts: in Project Ozma (1960), Project Phoenix (1995-1998) and currently in Breakthrough Listen. The chances of success are small but the implications would be enormous, comparable in importance to the Copernican revolution. SETI inevitably catches people's imaginations far beyond the professional community so Green Bank is a pretty famous place.

Meandering past I wondered if there is any connection between the two 'green bank's? Greenbank Garden has played no role in SETI or indeed any science other than horticulture. I'm sure Green Bank Observatory's grounds are well maintained but I doubt the shrubs and grass attract visitors.

Many Scottish place names have been reused in the former colonies. Could Green Bank be one of them? The name is mundane, likely to occur independently to many people for local, topographical reasons. There are several 'Greenbank's across central Scotland. In West Virginia we learn that the name was given in Civil War times, 'from a little green bank on J Pierce Woodell's land beside the stream.' Nonetheless we can look a little closer.

The phone snapshot at left is very poor but possibly gives some sense of how atmospheric Greenbank House is at the end of the day. It was built in 1763 by Robert Allason. Mr Allason started out as a baker in Port Glasgow but diversified to become rich from transatlantic trade. His half-brother William established a store in Falmouth, Virginia. Robert sourced goods for William's store which were exchanged for tobacco, a valuable commodity on this side of the Atlantic. The Allasons had farmed for generations at Flenders, just south of what is now Clarkston. We might imagine some degree of pride and satisfaction when Robert was able to buy Flenders Farm and other parcels of land and build Greenbank House. After the American Wars of Independence he went bankrupt, however, and he had been forced to sell Greenbank by 1784.

From an excellent Inverclyde local history blog we learn that William Allason travelled 'extensively' in Virginia before establishing the store in Falmouth. It does then seem possible that William passed through the very country that would come to be called by almost the same name as his brother's mansion in Scotland. Could he have bequeathed the name? That doesn't seem likely. The account referenced above places the naming of Green Bank a century later. So all we probably have is the most ethereal of resonances, feet that knew one Greenbank treading the earth of the other. Perhaps, in an obscure way, a barely perceptible trace of the sort that will eventually reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The Allasons traded also in the Caribbean and owned property there. I've seen Robert Allason described as a 'slave trader' and he definitely profited from plantations where slaves carried out the work. Yuck. But look also at the full address of Green Bank Observatory. It's in 'Pocahontas County, West Virginia'. Both green banks also bump us against the brutality of colonialism.

Ending on a milder note, here's my wife Margaret in the beautiful woodlands surrounding Greenbank, after a working day.