JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

At the end of Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches, the 21st century witch Diana and her 1,500-year-old lover the vampire/ex-Crusader/geneticist Matthew travel back to the year 1590 to seek out the mysterious book that’s caused them so much trouble in 2009. What better way to solve the mystery than to find the book before hostile witches, daemons and vampires get to it?

We were so charmed by A Discovery of Witches that right after we speed-read it we rushed to the bookstore in search of its sequel, Shadow of Night. By chapter one the spell was broken, and by chapter two we had done what Dorothy Parker recommends for certain books: hurl it across the room with great force. How did our fascination end so fast?

A Discovery of Witches had a whimsical nerdiness that distracted us from its main flaws, breathless prose and meandering to the point of randomness. This whimsical nerdiness, expressed in amusing historical detail, long passages about the correct way to prepare tea, and annotations on Darwin’s Origin of Species pertaining to vampires, daemons and witches, is gone from the sequel. It has been replaced with a self-conscious nerdiness that feels defensive, viz. “This isn’t just another tale of vampire lust, it’s an entertainment by a scholar of Elizabethan history and science.” It is crammed with so much exposition, so many digressions, and unnecessary historical cameo appearances that our soul left our body and traveled to the publishing house in 2011 to bludgeon its negligent editor with the 584-page trade paperback. Pass!

Watch Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, Alex Gibney’s (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Taxi to the Dark Side) deeply disturbing documentary about how the church deals with sex abuse cases. Gibney points out that from 2001, every case of clerical sex abuse around the world was reported to the Grand Inquisitor (which had previously supervised the Inquisition). The Grand Inquisitor was Cardinal Ratzinger. The documentary premiered on television days before the papal abdication.

It sounds like a novel by Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown, and it’s supposed to. Any time something unexpected occurs in an institution as averse to change as the Roman Catholic Church, we bring out the conspiracy theories. Surely this cannot be as simple as the Vatican announcement that Benedict XVI was stepping down due to his age and declining strength. The fact that popes have resigned in the past—most recently 600 years ago—does not make it any less shocking. Nobody remembers what happened in 1415, but everyone knows that popes die in office.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

No one expects the pope’s resignation! His chief weapon was surprise.

First time in 600 years that has happened. We didn’t know they were allowed to do that.

The relics of Celestine V after the church roof fell in an earthquake

As news reports have pointed out, the first pontiff to abdicate was Celestine V in 1294. (They’ve also noted that Benedict visited Celestine’s tomb twice.) He was succeeded by Boniface VIII. Boniface then had him imprisoned, which was rather rude. Dante Alighieri loathed Boniface and hated Celestine for paving the way for his papacy. So Celestine got a cameo in the Inferno, where Dante consigned all his political enemies:

When some among them I had recognised,
I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.
(Inferno Canto III)

Vatican history is fascinating, with its schisms, scandals and Crusades, Borgia and Medici, its apocryphal Pope Joan, Inquisition, its political dealings, its financial holdings, its beyond-spectacular art collection. Interesting how this pope is abdicating for medical reasons when his predecessor died in office after a long illness. We kind of like (can’t bring ourselves to like outright) how he acknowledged the need for “strength of mind”—making thinking as important as suffering. Under the circumstances, that’s almost liberal.

* * * * *

Two friends begin their illustrious careers at the same time, their paths diverge, one turns into Vader and the other tries to overthrow him.

Star Wars, or Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Küng?

Catholic theologian preaches revolution to end church’s authoritarian rule

The complete skeleton showing the curved spine of Richard III, who was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Photograph: EPA

Not just the identity of the man in the car park with the twisted spine, but the appalling last moments and humiliating treatment of the naked body of Richard III in the hours after his death have been revealed at an extraordinary press conference at Leicester University.

There were cheers when Richard Buckley, lead archaeologist on the hunt for the king’s body, finally announced that the university team was convinced “beyond reasonable doubt” that it had found the last Plantagenet king, bent by scoliosis of the spine, and twisted further to fit into a hastily dug hole in Grey Friars church, which was slightly too small to hold his body.

Read Richard III: DNA confirms twisted bones belong to king.

We couldn’t find videos of Looking for Richard, Al Pacino’s excellent documentary on Richard III. We’ve always felt bad for Richard of York a.k.a. Crookback—sure he did horrible things, but they all did, and he was doubtless a victim of Tudor propaganda. Game of Thrones connection: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series was inspired by the Wars of the Roses in which the Houses of York and Lancaster fought for the throne of England. York, Stark, Lancaster, Lannister.

* * * * *
amypond pointed us to the episode of Terry Jones’s Medieval Lives featuring the three King Richards. Terry Jones is our favorite Python-comedian-author-historian.

The English translations of Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo by Soledad Lacson-Locsin were published by Bookmark in 1996, the centenary of Jose Rizal’s execution. Mrs. Lacson-Locsin was an educator, translator, and writer who published in Spanish and English. Former Manila mayor Arsenio Lacson was her brother, and Business World publisher Raul Locsin was her son.

We especially enjoy how Lacson-Locsin rendered this letter from Doña Victorina de De Espadaña to Linares. Read it aloud!

Padre Damaso appears in the first chapter, and he is already, indubitably, an asshole. His voice is “…that of a man who believes everything he utters is sacrosanct and cannot be improved upon”, although his laughter makes him seem more agreeable, “even to the extent that one feels bound to forgive him his sockless feet and a pair of hairy legs…” Samakatwid, inokray siya ni Pareng Pepe mula ulo hanggang paa. Damaso confirms our first impression by declaring that the indios (Only the Spanish born in the Philippines were called Filipinos at the time) are lazy, ignorant, vicious and ungrateful.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

We’ve made inquiries as to availability of the Lacson-Locsin Noli and Fili. Hang in there.

* * * * *
Reader ambulantfeather says the LL translations are almost always available at National Bookstores. Thanks. The books are not listed on their website.

It’s too easy to make fun of El Presidente: General Emilio Aguinaldo Story and the First Philippine Republic. This historical movie may not be as bad as Carlo J. Caparas’s Tirad Pass: The Last Stand of General Gregorio del Pilar, but from hereon we shall be leery of any movie title containing a colon.

Jeorge “E.R.” Estregan acquits himself in the role of Aguinaldo, though it helps that he is a sea of calm in a storm of overacting. Baron Geisler’s cartoonish Spanish officer (kilay acting) looks set to seize the bad acting award despite fierce competition from John Regala’s Spanish friar (bangs acting), and from William Martinez’s revolutionary general who seems to be possessed by Enchong Dee’s beard from The Strangers (balbas acting). And then Christopher de Leon’s Antonio Luna rides in to show them how it’s done (bigote acting).

In the spirit of authenticity much of the dialogue is in phonetic Spanish, delivered haltingly and with an eyebrow raised, contravida style. The photography is in a washed-out blue that gives the actors a corpse-like pallor, and slow motion is overused in the big battle scenes. So far, so MMFF—and then we heard the comments from several people in the audience.

“Salbahe pala si Andres Bonifacio.”

Continue reading at InterAksyon.com.

* * * * *
From reader giancarlo:

The question of bonifacio’s treachery is still a controversial and history being something of a blackhole where light does not escape I believe that to portray Bonifacio as a traitor although a little harsh is defensible.

I have great respect for you and more so to our revolutionary heroes but I’d rather see them as they are and not as historical figures who can do no evil.

* * * * *

Do not confuse heroes with saints.

The records show that Bonifacio had a foul temper and was a lousy military leader. He did insult the Magdalo troops; in the first place he shouldn’t have horned in on Aguinaldo’s territory (ambisyoso, impertinente, walang modo).

That doesn’t make him a traitor. That makes him a crap politician.

To establish treason you’d have to prove he was plotting to overthrow the revolutionary government or sell out to the Spanish. What is certain is that after the election, both sides spread rumors that the other was out to get them.

What is certain is that elections have always made Pinoys nuts.

Go to primary sources. But not Artemio Ricarte. We’re very fond of him but, umm, he referred to himself in the third person (El Vibora!).

The Nick Joaquin essay referred to is Why Fell the Supremo? Nick Joaquin calls Bonifacio ambitious and arrogant, but “traitor” does not come up. As for his plotting: “In Naic, he was surprised by Aguinaldo himself in the act of plotting with Mariano Noriel and Pio del Pilar, two generals of Aguinaldo’s army.”

Those two generals were taken back into Aguinaldo’s army as if nothing had happened. It was Noriel who signed Bonifacio’s death warrant.

P.S. Bonifacio “The Great Plebeian” was not technically a plebeian. He was upwardly mobile. He spoke some Spanish. Many of the writings attributed to him are probably fake. He had many cedulas under different names, so we’re not sure which one he tore, or exactly when and where.

Also, Apolinario Mabini was paralyzed not from syphilis but from polio. The VD story was black propaganda from the Aguinaldo camp. We could never understand the honorific, “Sublime Paralytic”. Sublime, maybe, paralyzed, certainly, but put the two together and it sounds like he was brilliant at being paralyzed.