lisbon

It’s easy enough to get down on the 21st century and think about how much better it might have been in the past. However, a few pages of the right history book can quickly change your mind. As I always say each time I sit down in the dentist’s chair, “It could be worse. I could have a toothache in Constantinople in 832 A.D.” (Okay, I don’t really think that, but it’s something similar.)

After reading The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 by Chris Wickham, I decided to keep up my history kick with The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 by Nicholas Shrady. (I should point out that this had nothing to with Haiti. I’d hate to be lumped in with those people who seem to wallow in a natural disaster with an ugly mix of trauma and fascination. My interest was historical and tied closely to my love of Voltaire’s Candide.)

Short version of a longer thought: This century sucks at times but it’s a lot better than the past! In the good ol’ days you get fascinating documents like the Romanus Pontifex of 1455 whereby Pope Nicholas V gave Portugal the right to:

to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery

Ouch! Add to this slavery a lot of greed, a lot of anti-Semitism, dynastic politics, and the  Inquisition and you begin to understand Voltaire’s gloomy conclusion to An Inquiry into the Maxim Whatever Is, Is Right:

What is necessary, o mortals?
Mortals it is necessary to suffer
To submit in silence, adore and die.

So here’s to 2010, where at least the dentist has Novocaine!