The Great Schism of the West: Stubbornness

Basically everyone in the world knows who the Pope is.  He lives in the Vatican City and preaches to the entire population of Roman Catholics on Earth.  He's been there for a while.  However, not every country was so keen on this at one point.

Back in the day (the fifteenth century), the Church was a pretty big part of everyday life.  Back then, there were no denominations of Christianty: if you were a Christian, you were a Catholic.  Most, if not all, countries incorportated religion into their laws.  This often meant paying a sum of your income to the Church every year (called tithes).  The Church also did some other questionable things, such as selling indulgences to people, which basically said that if you paid a certain amount of money, you would get time off your sentence in purgatory.

The other countries of Europe (aka not Rome) started to become a little uneasy with the tithes.  They noticed that everything, not just the churches, in Rome was getting nicer.  They soon put two and two together and realized that all of this money that was going to Rome was from their citizens.  They could be benefitting from the profit.  They weren't very happy.  But, because they didn't want to anger God, they couldn't tell the pope he was wrong due to ex cathedra (literally speaking from the seat of Peter {in the Bible, Jesus promised Peter that it was impossible for the Pope to say something false or incorrect while seated on his papal throne]).

How did the other countries combat this theft?  By nominating their own Pope, of course!  There was still a Pope in the Church, but other countries elected a Pope from the French city of Avignon.  Some of the countries were obviously not too thrilled about this, but enough countries backed him up that the disagreeing countries couldn't really do anything about it.  So, for a number of years, there were two Popes.

Eventually, the Romans decided that enough was enough and elected another person to take the place of both Popes.  However, when he got to the Vatican, the other two popes refused to acknowledge him as Pope, everyone claimed that they were the rightful Pope, and basically excommunicated each other.  So now there were three Popes and no solution in sight.

Eventually, the Council of Constance was called by one of the Popes and they got two of the Popes to agree to resign but sadly had to excommunicate the third.  They then elected a new pope, the Orthodox Church decided to split from the Catholic Church (because it was an independent Church who don't need no Pope), and, as they say, the rest is history.

This event definitely shows that human beings are and have been stubborn, a prime example being the Pope that had to be excommunicated. If people really want something, they'll stick with it, no matter what it takes.

Hortensia: Exclusion

Staying in the ancient world, this week I will be talking about a different ancient empire: the Roman Empire.  Most people think of gladiators and Caesar when they think of the Roman Empire, but, believe it or not, women did exist in the Roman Empire!  However, since it was before the 1800s, women didn't really have any rights at all.  Some women were mad about this.  One of these women was Hortensia the Orator.

Hortensia was the daughter of Quintus Hortensius, a famous Roman speaker who had a rivalry with Marcus Tillius Cicero (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Cicero probably prevailed in the aforementioned rivalry).  That's pretty much the only thing historians know about her life outside of speaking.  Due to her father's status, she most likely grew up in a wealthy household with a very scholarly upbringing.

In 42 BC, the Roman Empire, led by Octavius and Marc Antony, was at war (shocking, I know) with Caesar's assassins.  The main method of funding the war was to loot the murdered wealthy particians' houses.  However, when this did not prove to be enough dough, the second triumvirate resorted to taxing the wealthiest women in the empire.  Needless to say, the women were pretty pissed off about having to pay for a war they didn't want (and probably didn't care about).  And, with a Reverend Jonathan Mayhew-esque mindset, were pretty peeved about having to pay taxes to a government that wouldn't allow them to hold public offices, especially since this government was fighting with itself.  The ladies were not having it.  They elected Hortensia to talk some sense into the men.

Hortensia appeared before the Second Triumvirate and delivered a very powerful and effective speech.  She talked about how the women were already deprived of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, and now the government wanted to take their money and property.  Basically a big "shame on you" spiel.

The Second Triumvirate was so angry about the women challenging them.  They tried unsuccessfully to kick the women out of the Roman Forum.  When that didn't work, they reduced the number of women taxed from 1400 to 400 and collected the rest from men.  As they say, the rest is history.

One trait that is definitely present in this situation is exclusion.  The women were excluded from participating in pretty much any government activity, but were made to pay for the wars it waged, and they weren't happy about it.  It's a classic case of "No Taxation Without Representation".  Obviously humanity hasn't learned to outgrow that in thousands of years, since pretty much the exact same situation occured in the British Colonies in 1773.

Agnodice of Athens: Paranoia

Going along with the Greek theme from the last post, today I'm going to be talking about ancient Greece again.  This time, the post will be revolving around one person.

As a young woman, I've grown up my whole life surrounded by a support system telling me I can do and be whatever I want.  If you're a young woman, chances are you've probably heard the same spiel.  Women can be doctors, lawyers, and engineers.  It's no secret that it hasn't always been that way.  However, women have been practicing medicine for centuries in Greece, and it's all thanks to one woman.

In the 4th century BCE, a lot of women were undergoing painful childbirths and many died.  Women were allowed to study gynecology for a period of time, but then the leaders of Athens discovered they were performing abortions.  Women were immediately banned from practicing midwifery.

Agnodice of Athens left to study gynecology in Egypt (specifically Alexandria), where it was perfectly legal for a woman to be involved in medical affairs, and was even quite frequent and almost important.  The law against women practicing midwifery in Athens wasn't cutting it for Agnodice.  She pulled a Mulan and cut her hair and wore men's clothing to perform the job of her dreams.

Women loved Agnodice because frankly they were not comfortable with men touching them during childbirth.  Eventually, the other physicians realized they weren't getting any employment.  They came to the brilliant conclusion that Agnodice was seducing the women and they were faking pain to be with her (him?).

A group of angry husbands and male physicians brought her to court where they condemned her for seduction.  When they wouldn't listen to her, Agnodice lifted her tunic to clearly reveal that she was not, in fact, a man, and therefore could not be seducing everyone's wives.  The men then tried to punish her for lying, to which the women of the town angrily came to her defense.  Because, you know, without Agnodice, many of them would probably be dead.  The men reluctantly agreed to drop the charges and change the law.

The message of this historical tale is that people are paranoid and often jump to ridiculous conclusions because of the paranoia.  Clearly illustrated in this tale, when the women preferred Agnodice over the rest of them, the answer could not possibly have been that Agnodice was perhaps just good at her (his?) job, no, she (he?) MUST have been sleeping with all of them!  Natural selection has obviously not taken out this trait yet (perhaps thanks to the medical work of Agnodice?), as people today still come to the most ridiculous conclusions, like thinking your best friend hates you when she doesn't text you back or that all technology would crash on January 1, 2000.

The Trojan War: Pride

One of the oldest stories that has survived to 2016 is the story of the fall of Troy, but more specifically, the Trojan horse. Everyone knows the story.  The Greeks snuck into the city in a giant wooden horse and defeated the Trojans.  There's a little more to the story than that, though.

I'll start off with some context.  Queen Helen of Sparta eloped (or was abducted, historians debate over this) with Prince Paris of Troy.  (It should be noted that Cassandra, princess of Troy, had visions all the time of Paris bringing tragedy to the city literally since he was born, but nobody ever listened to her)  Menelaus, Helen's husband, was furious and asked his brother, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, to invade Troy.  Agamemnon, a hot-head who was itching to go to war with Troy, readily agreed and brought along impressive fighters such as Odysseus and Achilles.  He also sacrificed his seven-year-old daughter to the Gods to secure a victory, but I digress.

The Trojan War had been going on for ten years with no visible end in sight.  The Greeks devised a plan to take the city by surprise.  Epeius, a Greek carpenter and boxer, constructed the horse.  They then pretended to leave the war and sail back across the Aegean Sea.  They actually sailed to an island close to Troy called Tenedos.  The Greeks left behind a soldier named Sinon who was pretending to be a misfit soldier left behind by the other Greeks.  He explained to the Trojans that the horse was in fact a gift for the goddess Athena and it wasn't a surrender token for the Trojans.  The Trojans decided that they were the winners and didn't have to listen to what the loser Greeks told them, so they rolled the horse into the city as a trophy.  At night, the Greek soldiers climbed out of the horse and unlocked the city gates to let the rest of the Greek army into Troy.  As they say, the rest is history.

One human trait that is undoubtedly displayed in this tale is pride.  The Trojans were exceedingly prideful when they thought they won the war.  This is ultimately what led to the downfall of Troy.  Pride is a trait that humans still exhibit today, which one can see in modern day examples such as people getting into fights over their favorite sports team (perhaps the Pitt-Penn State rivalry?) or when someone says offensive things about another person, nationality or area of the world in defense of their own country.  Obviously these modern day examples of pride aren't as devastating as costing your city a war, but they are still very present in our society today.