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New York Times
06-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Brooklyn Allergist's Office That Was Once Home to a Spy
It's not every day that a Brooklyn allergy doctor is alerted by his receptionist that a stranger is standing in his waiting room claiming that a Cuban-born spy named Sanchez once lived in the building. But it happened to Dr. Norman Horace Greeley a few weeks ago in his home office at 140 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights. 'I thought he might've been a nut case,' Dr. Greeley recalled, 'and basically I turned him away.' But the visitor, the historian John Harris, tried one last bid to get a tour of the 1850s townhouse: He left the doctor a copy of his book, 'The Last Slave Ships,' along with a hastily scrawled note intimating that a famous ancestor of the doctor was linked to Emilio Sanchez y Dolz, the 19th-century spy whose biography Mr. Harris is writing for Yale University Press. Though Mr. Harris had arrived on the building's doorstep knowing nothing of its current occupant, he had immediately been intrigued by Dr. Greeley's name and by a portrait in the waiting room of Horace Greeley, who was the renowned founding editor of The New-York Tribune and an 1872 presidential candidate. 'It was mysterious and tantalizing,' Mr. Harris said of the portrait. 'I'm working with an obscure figure' — Mr. Sanchez — 'who deserves to be as famous as Greeley, and here he is connected to' Greeley himself, 'a much greater figure from the period.' Five minutes later, as Mr. Harris sat on the steps of a church across the street, Dr. Greeley called him, bursting with curiosity. He was indeed a descendant of the Tribune editor, he told Mr. Harris, and the house had been continuously occupied by Greeleys since the early 1900s. What's more, one of the doctor's sons, Matthew Greeley, was shooting a short-form documentary about the famously antislavery family patriarch. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
29-06-2025
- Telegraph
The ‘magical' African heretic who defied the Inquisition
'Thank God for the Inquisition!' is not a phrase that would have tripped off the lips of many of its victims; but modern historians have the right to say it. From the 16th century to the 18th, the Spanish, Portuguese and Roman Inquisitions generated millions of pages that can be mined for information not only about the mortal sins people committed, but about the ordinary lives they led. In writing his well-researched study The Heretic of Cacheu, Toby Green, a renowned historian of West Africa, has especial reason to be grateful. Conditions in the small Portuguese trading-posts on the African coast that serviced the Atlantic slave trade are not otherwise well documented, but one Inquisition trial from 1665-8, conducted in Lisbon, sheds extraordinary light upon them. Green has previously co-edited the trial documents; now he uses them, and another cache of papers from the Inquisition in Peru (the business records of a former slave trafficker in West Africa), to weave together a marvellously detailed account of life on the edge of what is now Guinea-Bissau. The person who was hauled off to Lisbon was Crispina Peres, one of the most prominent people in the town of Cacheu. The daughter of a Portuguese father and an African mother, she was married to the town's former 'captain-general' – a man of similar background, with the added twist that his Portuguese ancestors had originally been Jewish. What made her so prominent, though, was not her marriage but the fact that she was the most successful merchant in town. Crispina's success was built on a large network of relatives and contacts; it also bred many enemies, who piled on to denounce her when the opportunity arose. The accusations concerned her use of African religious practices: sacrificing animals to ensure a safe and profitable voyage; using amulets and shrines; resorting to traditional healers and diviners; and employing magic to stop her husband from pursuing his sex life outside the home. Crispina was an independent-minded woman, but that was not unusual. As Green shows, many traders were female, and many households were women-led; a younger man would marry such a woman and move to her house. The men were often away on distant journeys, which were punctuated by binge-drinking; back in Cacheu, it was the women who ran the show, managing the warehouses and negotiating the deals. And in acquiring the products that came from the interior – raw cotton, kola nuts, honey, wax – they dealt with networks of people speaking multiple languages. Green knocks old myths on the head: that Africans typically had a 'subsistence economy', for example, or lived static lives. He also highlights just how global the material world of these people already was, as they bought and sold Chinese porcelain, silver items from Peru, English and Dutch cloth, wine from Madeira and rum from the Caribbean. And he conjures up with wonderful vividness the sights and sounds of the streets and harbour of this distant world: looms clacking, coopers hammering, and the terrible jangle of chained slaves led to the ships on which many would die. But what about the Inquisition trial itself, the basis of the book? Here Green's judgement seems more questionable: he treats the whole episode as a case of the punitive use of imperial power for political purposes. Crispina's life and household represented a different world, and the Inquisitors 'felt threatened by it'. Their concern with her use of African amulets and so on had an ulterior purpose: 'If the dominance of African religions could be challenged, then so too could perhaps these 'unchristian' gender norms and the associated economic empowerment of women.' Her resort to traditional healers, Green argues, implied that 'African political power and knowledge remained primary'. By weakening this, 'the political and ideological independence of Africa itself could be contested.' So the whole trial was political, designed 'to bring Cacheu more firmly into the grip of empire'. The aim was to assert 'Portuguese primacy' and 'Portuguese control' in a 'colonial struggle', both against rival European powers (Holland, England) and against hostile elements in the African hinterland. These grand claims about the Inquisitors' real motives are not backed up at all clearly by the trial documents. Nor do they square with some basic aspects of the Inquisition's nature. It dealt with a narrow range of sins relating to the Christian religion: heresy, apostasy, abuse of the sacraments, and so on. It was hardly adapted to be a tool of imperial control in a territory where, as, Green says, the 'vast majority' were not Christians, and were therefore completely outside its jurisdiction. Nor, indeed, was it much used as one, given that Crispina's trial and one other – a dissolute priest tried for soliciting sex in the confessional – were the only two significant trials from this broad area in the 17th century, and there were only five trials of people from the entire Upper Guinea coastline from 1536 to 1800. This was a Church institution, devoted to preserving the purity of religious life. The judges at its Lisbon tribunal had little concern with gender relations: they could not try adultery or fornication, for example. Green supposes that their concern with African religious practices was just a means towards other ends; yet it was a central part of their job to suppress heresy, idolatry and necromancy. Catholic priests inside the Ottoman Empire were similarly keen to stop their flocks from using Islamic talismans, without the slightest implication of doing so to reinforce European imperial power, which was non-existent there. The relevant power-struggle in Cacheu was not between empires, but between Crispina and her individual rivals, whose denunciations started the whole process. Although the Inquisition didn't come up to modern judicial standards, it was in fact unusually impartial and principled, compared with the criminal justice of the time. And lenient too: readers will be glad to know that after finding Crispina guilty, the judges let her off with just a warning and a penance, and sent her home again.
Fox News
10-06-2025
- Science
- Fox News
Archaeologist uncovers Viking secrets during epic three-year journey at sea
A graduate student in Sweden has been learning about Vikings through an unusual method: He's done it by sailing like one. Archaeologist Greer Jarrett, a doctoral student at Lund University, has navigated over 3,000 miles along historical Viking trade routes in the Arctic Ocean. With the help of his team, the academic has sailed the seas with a reconstructed sailing boat that would have been used by Vikings 1,200 years ago. So what has his research uncovered so far? Among other things, Jarrett has identified four possible Viking harbors along the coast of Norway. Jarrett's research suggests that Vikings ventured farther from Scandinavia than previously thought and used decentralized port networks during their journeys, according to a press release published by Lund University. "In his latest study, he has found evidence of a decentralized network of ports, located on islands and peninsulas, which probably played a central role in trade and travel in the Viking era," the statement added. Due to the type of boats Vikings used, Jarrett said that they likely used small, easily accessible harbors quite often. "With this type of boat, it has to be easy to get in and out of the harbor in all possible wind conditions. There must be several routes in and out." The archaeologist also noted that, while Viking historians know where trade journeys generally started and ended, knowledge about the more informal stops is scant. Jarrett said his research is focused on "what happened on the journeys between these major trading centers." "My hypothesis is that this decentralized network of ports, located on small islands and peninsulas, was central to making trade efficient during the Viking Age," he explained. "Our hands really suffered. At that point, I realized just how crucial it is to have a good crew." He also ran into a few challenges during his three-year journey. In one instance, while 15 miles out to sea, the boat's mast spar broke and sent the mainsail toppling down. "We had to lash two oars together to hold the sail, and hope that it would hold," the student recalled. "We made it back to the harbor safely, but then we had to spend several days repairing the boat before we could sail again." "On another trip, a minke whale suddenly surfaced and flapped its huge tail fin just meters from the boat." Underwater currents and downslope winds also made it difficult for him to navigate near land. Jarrett needed to develop "mental maps" to figure out where to go, as the Vikings did. But he was also pleasantly surprised by other aspects of the journey. Jarrett found that the primitive boats are stable, even without a deep keel, the release indicated. He was also pleasantly surprised by other aspects of the journey. The archaeologist also learned how important relationships were during these voyages, where Vikings had to rely on one another to sail and survive. "You need a boat that can withstand all kinds of weather conditions," he said. "But if you don't have a crew that can cooperate and put up with each other for long periods, these journeys would probably be impossible." "The cold in [Norway's] Lofoten Islands was a challenge," Jarrett said. "Our hands really suffered. At that point, I realized just how crucial it is to have a good crew." The Viking Era lasted from roughly 800 A.D. to 1050 A.D. Remnants of the period are still being found across Europe. Last year, two curious metal detectorists found a 1,000-year-old Viking "wallet." More recently, Swedish archaeologists announced the discovery of an "unusual" Viking-era coffin in April.
Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
The Big Picture
10 of 11 A row has broken out between scholars after an expert claimed to have discovered an extra penis on the Bayeux Tapestry. Dr Christopher Monk, a medieval scholar and expert on Anglo- Saxon nudity, believes the genitalia of the figure on the right was restitched with black
