A H eBooks
eBooks di A H editi da Perennial Press di Formato Mobipocket
Juniperro Serra. E-book. Formato Mobipocket A.H. Fitch - Perennial Press, 2016 -
The best and most interesting method of obtaining historical information is the biographical. This is equally true whether the reader is studying a particular period relating to his own country or is taking a broad survey of universal history. Biography, especially when supplemented by extracts from original sources, leaves upon the mind a more definite impression than any other form of historical writing, with the one great exception of autobiography, of which unfortunately there is too little. When, therefore, I desired certain information relating to the central and dominant figure in California during the early period of Spanish occupation, I turned to Francisco Palou's biography of Fray Junipero Serra. This work, together with his Noticias de la Nueva California, is today the standard history of Spanish California, and constitutes the source from which every historian of that state draws his facts for the years 1769 to 1785. While Palou's account of his friend's life and labors on the Pacific coast is of great interest to the student of California history, it is perhaps not too much to say that his book makes but dry reading for the average person. There can be little doubt that the admiration and love Palou entertained for Junipero induced him to chronicle his life with the sole view of procuring for him recognition in the church as one of her saints; hence the prominence accorded the religious aspect of Junipero's life, the detailed narration of miraculous happenings in his career, etc., which detract for the general reader from the historical interest of the book. Although every work on California since Palou's days necessarily contains references to Fray Junipero Serra, no other biography of him has been written. It was to supply this lack, and also because Palou's biography has to my knowledge never been translated [Since this was written, a translation of Palou's Vida has been published], that I undertook to write the present work, not, however, without many misgivings as to my ability to do justice to the subject. The national, and not merely local, interest of Junipero, as the preserver to Spain (and thereby indirectly to the United States) of the Pacific coast, from San Francisco to San Diego, becomes evident to all who read the history of California. Just in so far as our importance as a nation is affected by our coast line, does the nation owe a debt to Junipero Serra. Even Mr. Hubert Bancroft, who in his invaluable History of California but faintly disguises his dislike of the friar, says: "It did not require Palou's eulogistic pen to prove him a great and remarkable man."
Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Achille Luchaire - Perennial Press, 2016 -
"THE world is ill; it grows so old that it relapses into infancy. Common report has it that Antichrist has been born at Babylon and that the day of judgment is at hand." In writing these lines, Rigord, the monk of Saint-Denis, was ignorant of the fact that other monks had expressed the same sentiment in all preceding centuries. Why this discouragement and these sinister predictions? Because the popes of his day were short-lived and succeeded each other with a strange rapidity; because Saladin had taken Jerusalem in 1188, that most fateful of all years,—"those born in it had only twenty-two, instead of thirty-two teeth"; finally, because natural calamities and scourges from heaven and earth, one after another, fell upon men and made them despair of their future. Earthquakes, especially, dismayed them. Anjou was shaken in 1207; Normandy, in 1214; Gascony, in 1223. The tremor of March 3, 1206, was felt at the same time in Burgundy and Limousin. According to the monk of Saint-Martial, the shocks came in the middle of the night. Monks, saying their offices in the choir, took to flight, and laymen leaped from their beds; it was observed that even the birds trembled with fear and that water-courses were more boisterous than usual; and, to appease an irate Heaven, an extraordinary procession was arranged at Limoges. Within forty-three years (1180-1223) fourteen cyclones ran riot with frightful ravages. Harvests and vineyards were destroyed, houses demolished, roofs carried away, belfries and towers beaten down, and turrets overthrown. The storm of Dun-le-Roi, in 1206, crushed a noblewoman with her two children beneath its ruins. That of 1221 lasted eight days and killed forty persons in the vicinity of Paris and Beauvais. While mass was being celebrated in the château of Pierrefouds, lightning struck it; the officiating priest and twenty-four assistants were grievously wounded; five were killed. The chalice containing the Host was reduced to powder; but, lo! the Host itself remained untouched...