Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It seems to be very fashionable these days in a sort of postcolonial self-deprecation to portray the "barbarous West" relative to the glories of the Islamic world as if at the time of the First Crusade. But the fact is, Islamic intellectual progression in almost all fields had been stagnant since the 13th Century while Europe leaped ahead-... yes, even during the High Middle Ages ("Renaissance" is a term which has meaning in art history, but in little else).

I would suggest there was very little "leaping" in regards to intellectual progression in the West in the 13th or 14th century. Any leaping that was done was to escape being bludgeoned by mercenary armies, leaping from buildings infected by plague, or leaping from fiefs owned by various lords and abbots and running to hide in the relative freedom of the nearest city. Intellectually, academia was stratified in the rigid confines of monasteries and the monks' adherence to scholasticism. In literature and humanism, you had Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, Froissart and Boccaccio (with Christine di Pisan the lone outlier of female writing) in a two-hundred year time span.

When you state "'Renaissance' is a term which has meaning in art history, but in little else", I would definitely disagree. The Renaissance was not merely a few Italian artists painting some portraits and sculpting a bust or two, which would certainly be a wretchedly naive outlook on the period, but rather a humanist and secular intellectual explosion.

With the printing presses of Gutenberg, Caxton and Aldus Manutius established in the mid-to-late 15th century, and, in addition, the influx of Greek scholars fleeing to Italy because of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, I would say the intellectual ferment was just as grand as the artistic masterpieces of the era; in fact, the arts of the time were fed by the same thirst for antiquities that fueled humanism and science: Humanists Lorenzo Valla, Pico Mirandola, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Thomas More, Rabelais and Montaigne; the birth of capitalism under the Medici and Fuggers; the sciences with Nicholas of Cusa, Da Vinci (he painted okay too), Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, and later, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo; the architecture of Brunelleschi, Palladio, Bramante -- not to mention the explorations of Magellan, Columbus, Vespucci. It was a time of far more than just art.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

As for dating the Enlightenment? I would say for a round number the nine decades from 1637, the publication of Descartes' Theory of Geometry and Discourse on Method, to 1727, the death of Newton. Although there were still ripples in the 18th-century pond, no real waves appeared until the Scottish Renaissance at the end of the century. One might push back as far as 1609 (Kepler), since he advanced a mathematical astronomy (which also, happily, was essentially correct for the first time).

French historians usually place the Enlightenment between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the French Revolution. Others go all the way back to the publishing of Copernicus' work, and still others want to include the remarkable Americans like Franklin and Jefferson and their Constitution. Whatever, it is arbitrary and subjective.

P.S. In any case, I apologize for going so far afield and dealing in such extraneous debate, and returning to Sauron, I still feel he or Morgoth didn't invent the plague; they were either agents for spreading it, or took an evil delight in taking credit for it. Particularly since Tolkien inferred that Sauron, at least, could not control it from decimating his own minions.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Any leaping that was done was to escape being bludgeoned by mercenary armies, leaping from buildings infected by plague, or leaping from fiefs owned by various lords and abbots and running to hide in the relative freedom of the nearest city. Intellectually, academia was stratified in the rigid confines of monasteries and the monks' adherence to scholasticism.

Oh, dear. Yes, that's the cliched version available from a pop-culture vendor near you. Actually, the degree of serfdom, war, plague, famine and instability was no worse and at times rather better than in the tumultuous 16th century, an age of chaos and incessant wars punctuated by pestilence, tyranny and starvation. Compared to the filth and squalor of Elizabethan London, Edward I's London was a clean (if smaller) place with functioning sewers and well-frequented public baths.

Never mind that scholasticism was hardly an unfruitful or straitjacketed endeavor, and it's something akin to Lewis' "chronological snobbery" to deny the intellect of men like Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus; the era 1100-1400 also saw Gothic architecture, the windmill, the mouldboard plow, the horse-collar, glass windows, Francis Bacon, the chimney, the hammer-mill, liquor, the astrolabe, the blast furnace, Peter Abelard, the wheelbarrow, the university, Albertus Magnus, trade guilds, crop rotation, eyeglasses, Giotto, the artesian well, the navigational quadrant and carrack that made Columbus & co possible, polyphonic harmony, the mechanical clock, lager beer and Parliament arise in Europe. Oh, and Protestantism too if one counts Wycliffe and Hus (not to mention Francis, Dominic and a whole new version of Catholicism, sadly squelched by the Avignon popes).

In other words, not at all stagnant, and hardly the Monty Python "plague village."

I think it's rather a hidden premise to take the position that intellectual life only counts if it's "humanist;" I would say rather that it became the fashion for authors and poets, like artists and architects, to emulate Classical models. Not unrelated, however, is the fact that the late 15th to early 17th century was also notable as an age of handwaving mystical woo-woo from alchemy to numerology to astrology, and, of course, witch-hunts (not really a medieval phenomenon). You see, the rigorous logic of the scholastic age made it far more an "age of reason" than the anything goes, wildly undisciplined Renaissance.

French historians usually place the Enlightenment between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the French Revolution.

Well they would, wouldn't they?

Frankly,* the French contributed little between Descartes, Pascal and Fermat (all dead by 1715) and Lavoisier (executed in the Terror). Voltaire was merely the Oscar Wilde of rococo Paris, and Rousseau a charlatan whose influence has been wholly pernicious. "Reason" was just a buzzword, a fad for the fashionable (and put firmly in its place at century's end by Hume and Kant).

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*Pun intended. Forgive me.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Oh, dear. Yes, that's the cliched version available from a pop-culture vendor near you. Actually, the degree of serfdom, war, plague, famine and instability was no worse and at times rather better than in the tumultuous 16th century, an age of chaos and incessant wars punctuated by pestilence, tyranny and starvation. Compared to the filth and squalor of Elizabethan London, Edward I's London was a clean (if smaller) place with functioning sewers and well-frequented public baths.

I will have to simply disagree with your assessment and forgo any flippant remarks, however necessary I would consider them; in fact, regarding the 14th century, I would say you haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. The French historian Michelet commented, "No epoch was more naturally mad." Every credible historian I've ever read has described the century as an unmitigated disaster economically, physically and spiritually -- one of the worst centuries Europe has ever struggled through until the mass slaughters of WWI and WWII in the 20th century.

A Little Ice Age descended upon Europe in the 14th century (that was to last until circa 1700), driving out settlements in Greenland, Iceland and Northern Scandinavia, and reducing growing seasons throughout Europe. By 1315, rains had become so torrential that crops failures were the norm and famines commenced. Oh yes, and the Black Death, the single greatest pandemic, wiped out a quarter to a third of the population, with intermittent bouts of the plague recurring throughout the remaining decades of the century. In towns of the Holy Roman Empire, France and Spain the great Jewish pogroms commenced: 900 burned alive in Strasbourg, and in Cologne over 1000 butchered (many burned to death in a synagogue) as the most appalling examples.

The peasant uprisings and the brutal reprisals that followed in France (the Pastoureaux and the Jacquerie), in Italy (the Ciompi), in Flanders (several Weavers Revolts) and in England (Wat Tyler's Rebellion), were all part and parcel of the desperation of the underclass, criminally overtaxed and underpaid with wages legally kept at pre-Plague levels in England (I refer you to The Ordinance of Laborers in 1349 and Statute of Laborers 1351). The Hundred Years War commenced before the Black Death and outlasted the century, and in its train mercenary armies destroyed France and overran Italy. Assassinations, poisonings, ransoms and murder were career moves for criminal entrepreneurs.

The abandonment of Rome for Avignon and the resultant Papal Schism rent the fabric of Christianity and led to the eventual Reformation with profligate sales of indulgences and selling of benefices outraging reformers and Papal taxation angering the Lords. Even a future pope, Robert of Geneva (nicknamed 'the Butcher' by the Italians who hated him) massacred almost the whole city of Cesena (about 5000 people). And, of course, there was the destruction of the Templars, a new Turkish invasion of the Balkans, Hungary and the besieging of Constantinople (and the Turks under Caliph Bajazet in turn crushed by Tamerlane's Mongol-Turkic invasion). The Danse Macabre and gruesome memento mori festooned Europe by the time the 14th century ended - death ruled.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Never mind that scholasticism was hardly an unfruitful or straitjacketed endeavor, and it's something akin to Lewis' "chronological snobbery" to deny the intellect of men like Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus; the era 1100-1400 also saw Gothic architecture, the windmill, the mouldboard plow, the horse-collar, glass windows, Francis Bacon, the chimney, the hammer-mill, liquor, the astrolabe, the blast furnace, Peter Abelard, the wheelbarrow, the university, Albertus Magnus, trade guilds, crop rotation, eyeglasses, Giotto, the artesian well, the navigational quadrant and carrack that made Columbus & co possible, polyphonic harmony, the mechanical clock, lager beer and Parliament arise in Europe. Oh, and Protestantism too if one counts Wycliffe and Hus (not to mention Francis, Dominic and a whole new version of Catholicism, sadly squelched by the Avignon popes).

Francis Bacon? He died in the 17th century. Perhaps you mean Roger the alchemist?
The windmill, invented in China.
Moldboard plow, also a Chinese invention.
Horse Collar? Chinese.
Glass windows? A Roman invention, and most European windows in the 14th Century were made of flattened horn, not glass.
Hammer Mill? 4th Century China.
The astrolabe? The Greeks have the rights to inventing it, and Medieval Muslim astronomers perfected it. Next.
The wheelbarrow? 100 A.D. China.
Blast furnace? Yawn. Extant in China 100 A.D.
Crop rotation? Two field rotation was being used since 6000 BC in the Middle-east, three field rotation around the time of Charlemagne in Europe.
Artesian wells? Imported from China according to the sources I drilled into.
The mariner's quadrant? Rudimentary quadrants were introduced by the Greeks, and, again, improved by medieval Muslims.
Mechanical clocks? China, circa 723 A.D.
Chimneys? They've been around since Roman times. The first in England was in 1185.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I think it's rather a hidden premise to take the position that intellectual life only counts if it's "humanist;" I would say rather that it became the fashion for authors and poets, like artists and architects, to emulate Classical models. Not unrelated, however, is the fact that the late 15th to early 17th century was also notable as an age of handwaving mystical woo-woo from alchemy to numerology to astrology, and, of course, witch-hunts (not really a medieval phenomenon). You see, the rigorous logic of the scholastic age made it far more an "age of reason" than the anything goes, wildly undisciplined Renaissance.

I would suggest that astrology was far more en vogue in 13th and 14th century. After all, Dante placed Bonati in Malbolge, the eighth circle of Hell, for practicing such divination, and Chaucer's work is littered with astrological references. Charles V of France wouldn't have a bowel movement without the stars aligning properly over his garderobe. Your dear portly Aquinas made a futile attempt to reconcile astrology and Christianity. But to be fair, Elizabeth I had a court astrologer and Brahe, Kepler and Galileo were all court astrologers. As a fad it lasted several centuries.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Oh, yes, the 14th Century was calamitous, no question about it; but that's after the proto "renaissance" of the 13th-- and, really, the 16th was hardly better. Religious wars and schisms? Sectarian persecution? Mass invasions with attendant slaughters? Epidemics? Famines? The 1500s produced great art, but would have s*cked to live in.

But I find your particular responses interesting, to say the least.

Here goes:

The windmill, invented in China.
The Chinese by about 1300 or so had got from the Persians the panemone, a simple, ungeared vertical-axis windmill, of very limited power and utility The horizontal-axis rotating tower or post-mill, capable of pumping water and grinding grain in useful quantities, developed in the late 12th century in NW France and/or Flanders
Moldboard plow, also a Chinese invention.
Nope. The Chinese invented the iron ploughshare, but the turnplough arose in post-Roman or early Saxon Britain ca. 600
Horse Collar? Chinese.
While the Chinese had developed it by the sixth century, its development in Europe (first, it seems, in Scandinavia) was apparently independent, since it was unknown in the Middle East
Hammer Mill? 4th Century China.
Again, independently invented in medieval Europe
Blast furnace? Yawn. Extant in China 100 A.D.
A bloomery is not a blast furnace. Switzerland ca 1150-1200
Crop rotation? Two field rotation was being used since 6000 BC in the Middle-east, three field rotation around the time of Charlemagne in Europe.
Okay, so ca 800 is a little earlier than my period
Artesian wells? Imported from China according to the sources I drilled into.
Interesting how any technology of the sort might have been imported from China in the early 1100's, when they appeared in Artois (hence the name)
The mariner's quadrant? Rudimentary quadrants were introduced by the Greeks, and, again, improved by medieval Muslims.
A cross-staff is not even remotely a quadrant
Mechanical clocks? China, circa 723 A.D.
Hybrid water-clock with mechanical elements; the Chinese developed the escapement (sill powered by water) around 1100; Europe was little if any behind and using weights.
Chimneys? They've been around since Roman times. The first in England was in 1185.
Roman wall-tubes were not "chimneys;" northern Europe, probably England. 1185 is the date of the oldest surviving chimney, not the first.

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While there is no doubt that ca 1400 China was the most advanced civilization on the planet, that was about to change, in large part because of the Ming revolt. The Polos were lucky to visit when they did! Ming China became reactionary, inward looking, philosophically stagnant (no deviation from Confucianism was tolerated) while at the same time attaining even higher glories in art, architecture, textiles, ceramics and literature (and ever more elaborate etiquette). The tragic exemplar of this trend, which continued largely unabated for 600 years, was the senseless disbandment of the Great Fleet in 1424.

But the extent to which China directly influenced Europe during this period is rather more tenuous; after all there was no direct contact other than the Polos and a handful of missionaries (who rarely came back). Certain things like gunpowder and the trebuchet made their way along the Silk Road (or more likely army-to-army) to Byzantium, but nothing as mundane and non-violent as a plough or a well.

The Islamic world, in the meantime, was going nowhere. Its Abbasid glories were behind it as its own calamitous century saw the Mongol devastation and then the Black Death; what came out was either po-faced Asharist puritanism, or the perfumed, gilded and essentially ornamental sybarism of the Ottomans. From roughly 1300 onward Europe had a greater number of significant scholars than the Islamic world, a trend which would only accelerate with time.

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What I'm trying to get across in all this is that while the period 1430 or so onward saw a huge shift in style and technique in art, architecture and to a lesser extent poetry, European intellectual and technological development in other fields represented rather a continuous development from ca 1100 right through the Middle Ages; one can't really point to any huge acceleration of invention or revolution in thought in Medici Florence, but rather a continuing evolution which saw, e.g., the first masonry dome since the Romans parked atop a Gothic cathedral-- and that represented Brunelleschi at the 'dawn of the Renaissance' figuring out how to execute Neri's engineering concept from the 1360s.

[Galadriel55]

Where did the Enlightenment/Renaissance debate come from? It doesn't seem that relevant to the subject, other than specific examples of war tactics, and bottom line, who cares what time period they were technically from, it's the specific examples that matter. Certainly the perception of the plagues in ME could have followed the general view of the spread of diseases before the role of microorganisms was established (and Enlightenment or not, there are still people today who refuse to do some treatments for unscientific, even superstitious reasons. Heck, I refuse to take pills for very unscientific reasons, and I pay my tuition to learn how they work, among other things). It's not what happened in each real-world history period that matters, or where the boundaries lie between periods. Middle-earth history draws ideas in part from real-world history, in part from real-world legends and myths, which makes these topics relevant, but shouldn't make them the subject matter of the discussion.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

P.S. In any case, I apologize for going so far afield and dealing in such extraneous debate, and returning to Sauron, I still feel he or Morgoth didn't invent the plague; they were either agents for spreading it, or took an evil delight in taking credit for it. Particularly since Tolkien inferred that Sauron, at least, could not control it from decimating his own minions.

Certainly. I do not think that Sauron or Morgoth purposefully (or accidentally, for that matter) created the plague. Perhaps I'm taking this too much like a Pandora's box, but it seems to me that once the perfection of the world was ruined, it was ruined with all the ruin known to man at once. It's just that you can't have all the bad stuff happening simultaneously, it happens bit by bit, and it can be controlled and directed. And we know from the horse's mouth that neither one could really create. However, I still believe that the plagues could have been a ripple of the Dark Lords' mood mirrored in nature. Either way, they were not a conscious creation, but just a use of something already present. I might only disagree with you on whether the use of conscious or not, but that's just a matter of personal preference.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Where did the Enlightenment/Renaissance debate come from?

Yes, could some more be done to link this back to Professor Tolkien's work and the Great Plague of the Third Age? Given that much of Professor Tolkien's writing harks back to an early medieval and somewhat "unRomanised" Germanic culture (or at least an idealisation of it) it seems to me that that would be the era to focus on.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

However, I still believe that the plagues could have been a ripple of the Dark Lords' mood mirrored in nature. Either way, they were not a conscious creation, but just a use of something already present. I might only disagree with you on whether the use of conscious or not, but that's just a matter of personal preference.

This is a good point which could be compared to the scene in Book 4 of The Lord of the Rings in which the brooding of Sauron appears to influence the weather:
"The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed to spread its great wings over the Emyn Muil; upon which the dark thought of Sauron brooded for a while. Thence it turned, smiting the Vale of Anduin with hail and lightning, and casting its shadow upon Minas Tirith with threat of war. Then, lowering in the mountains, and gathering its great spires, it rolled on slowly over Gondor and the skirts of Rohan, until far away the Riders on the plain saw its black towers moving behind the sun, as they rode into the West."
This also refers back to your "pathetic fallacy" concept very neatly
That being said I could imagine that while Sauron may not have been the originator of the plague, he may have, again, "encouraged" it to be transmitted westwards. There's something particularly horrifying about the image of an enemy who hated the Dúnedain so much that he encouraged mass migrations, diseases and so on in an effort to destroy them over three thousand years and more.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

There was also the pestilence which Morgoth sent into Hithlum, which killed Turin's sister Lalith among many others. Of course Morgoth was a Vala; but then, he too couldn't "create," only corrupt.

[Nerwen]

So, while the original question posed in this thread was about Sauron's biological warfare strategy, the 2016 uh, renaissance* concerns the nature of "plague" in Middle-earth? Well, I'd say there isn't a single answer- as others have mentioned, these are presented as writings by people who would tend to see disease in terms of magic; l think it's ultimately up to the reader whether or not to look through the lens of modern science for the "real" version of events.





*runs for cover.

[Ivriniel]

how did the Dark Lords stop the pestilence annihilating the Orcs? when I read the stuff about plague in materials, I always hazarded that the plagues were not so much contrived, but a natural consequence of the lack of hygiene in Orc warrens.

I imagine that numbers of both friends and foes dropped significantly, although, the Dark Lords probably knew Orcs multiplied more quickly than Numenoreans.

We never heard if plague affected the Elves. I don't think it did.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

how did the Dark Lords stop the pestilence annihilating the Orcs? when I read the stuff about plague in materials, I always hazarded that the plagues were not so much contrived, but a natural consequence of the lack of hygiene in Orc warrens.

I imagine that numbers of both friends and foes dropped significantly, although, the Dark Lords probably knew Orcs multiplied more quickly than Numenoreans.

We never heard if plague affected the Elves. I don't think it did.

If the Orcs were 'corrupted' Elves, they should have at least some measure of an Elf's innate disease immunity. Even if that resistance was diluted, perhaps it provided enough protection that Morgoth (and Sauron) weren't overly concerned about casualties in their own forces.