Dear Folk,
On this date July 27, seven sleepers awoke, lots of lightly-armed Gottlanders were put to sleep, a Scottish king who "doth murder sleep" was defeated, and a gift from the New World arrived in jolly old England.
There are many stories about folks falling asleep and being revived years and years later. Rip van Winkle comes to mind. Strangely enough today is the feast day of seven guys like that: The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The origin of the story seems to be a Symeon Metaphrastes who wrote down stories about the lives of saints. Variants abound. Here is the story in short form. Trust me, this is short compared with some.
Ephesus is an ancient town in what is now Turkey. Emperor Decius (249 -251 CE) hated Christians. He came to Ephesus to whomp up on them. He found seven studly, noble youths and told them get right with Roman gods or die. No more tuna casserole at the Lutheran potlucks for them. Decius said, "Think it over and I will be right back."
I guess you probably want to know their names. Right? Just so happens I’ve got them. Ready? According to Symeon they were: Maximillian, Jamblichos, Martin, John, Dionysios, Exakostodianos, and Antoninos (or Max, Jam, Marty, Johnboy, Dion, Kosty, and Tony.) Goodfellas, all. So what are they going to do? Give up? Hey, they wouldn’t be saint material if they did. But you already knew that. No, they gave their skateboards and CD collections to poor folk, kept a few coins for phone calls and coffee, and then climbed up to a cave on Mount Anchilos to say their prayers. Decius came back looking for his answer. The boys were just saying the last of their prayers up in the cave when Decius arrived
Lo and behold, the boys were asleep! How discourteous to not be awake for their own funerals. Well Decius said, "Let’s just let them sleep awhile longer. It isn’t a school day, after all." He had his men roll some big stones over the cave to seal it up. They were buried alive. After Decius skeedaddled, some unsung Christian came by and wrote the boys’ names and their story on the entrance. Hey, they were big rocks!
Years went past, like in a movie when you see the calendar pages being ripped off pretty quickly. The country became Christian. About 400 CE, a rich landowner named Adolios had the cave rezoned and opened it up as a cattle pen. The boys, getting nuzzled by cows, woke up and woke up hungry. They sent Dion down into town to score some Big Macs and fries (super-sized). When Dion got to town he was amazed by all the crosses he saw up on the buildings. Furthermore, the folks down at the burger places were not much on accepting money coined a couple hundred years ago. What was up?
Sooner or later the church folk go involved; a bishop and quite a few hangers-on trucked up to the cave with Dion to see for themselves. Even the Emperor (now a Christian dude), Theodosius, was sent for. Everyone heard out the boys, got really happy when they find out that the body can be resurrected (well, in a few special cases) which made the bishop right in a long argument he had been having. The boys immediately died (guess no one thought to bring a bagel or anything) praising God. Theodosius wanted to build them a golden tomb, really he did, but the sleepers appeared to him in a dream and told him to just put them in the ground in the cattle stall. Cool! Cost savings in funeral plans. The cave is now adorned with precious stones, a great church built over it, and every year the feast of the Seven Sleepers is kept on July 27.
Macbeth was an actual King of Scotland not just a Shakespeareancharacter. He lived 1005-57 CE. In 1040 Macbeth becameking. His motherhad been a daughter of Kenneth II and Macbeth used this bloodline to remove Duncan I and declare himself as king. Sometimes removing kings does take a tad of steel. Forgive him, he is now food for worms. Scotland prospered under Macbeth (not quite the picture we had, right?) and he visited Rome in 1050. The remains of Macbeth's hill top fortress Dunsinane lies just east of Strathearn. In 1054 Malcolm III invaded with an English army and defeated Macbeth at the Battle of Dunsinane on July 27, 1054. In 1057 Macbeth was finally murdered by Malcolm.
Macbeth’s son Lulach became king. Malcolm murdered him in 1058. Malcolm then finally became king of Scotland. He reigned until 1093 when he was killed daring an invasion of England and was succeeded by his brother Donald Bane. Happy bunch of folks wearing crowns, right?
On July 27, 1361, the Baltic Island of Gottland stood braced forinvasion. Well, they were as braced as they could be. King Waldemar (IV) Atterdag of Denmark, at war with Sweden, had landed with a large army of well-equipped German mercenaries and Danish royal troops, and they were making for the island’s largest town, the prosperous Hanseatic port of Visby. More about the Hanseatic League on a later date.
The Swedish defenders, largely made up of a poorly armed peasant militia, included in their ranks old men, young boys and the lame. A small number were armed in mail shirts, while even fewer were armed in antiquated coat of plates armour. Outside of the city walls, the defenders formed their battle lines and awaited the Danish charge. In some stories this would be the part where I would tell you about the defenders having better ground or clever archers. Sorry, this is not one of those stories.
The battle opened -- like most of the later Middle Ages battles did -- with a murderous shower of crossbow bolts, which played havoc amongst the lightly armed islanders. That was followed by an equally bloody hand-to-hand combat that left over 2,000 dead on the field. Most all of the dead were the Visby homeboys. The corpses were unceremoniously heaped into five large common graves, several of which were excavated by the Swedish archaeologist Bengt Thordemann in the early part of the twentieth century. The 1,185 bodies recovered testified to horrible effectiveness of medieval weaponry: skulls pierced through by crossbow bolts, bones crushed and holed by blows of the axe and mace, and even one unfortunate defender who seems to have had both of his legs hacked off with a single blow of an axe or greatsword. Yuck!
Medievalists today use the armour carefully excavated to recreate very early coats of plate. There are several sites which detail the patterns. Visby these days celebrates medieval days (sort of a large Renfaire) in early August. I think they are over being mad at the Danes. I understand that it is just a wonderful time. I’d like to head to Sweden and check it out sometime.
BTW on this day in 1586 Sir Walter Raleigh brought back the first tobacco to England from Virginia. All you nicotine-fiends out there, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
What have we learned from all of this? The good guys don’t always win? Shakespeare sure twisted history to suit his purposes? Tobacco seems like a fair trade for all the great things we did for the Native Americans? By the time some guys get back with the food, you could starve to death? The boys should have sent out for pizza (maybe not since they stopped with that 30 minutes or less guarantee)? My take on things? We peasants and other folk should have up-to-date weaponry to defend ourselves from invaders of all sorts. I do love the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution – it covers broadswords, too.