#briefly mentioning marie campbell | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silent-era-of-cinema · 3 years

Text

Colleen Moore (born Kathleen Morrison; August 19, 1899 – January 25, 1988) was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era. Moore became one of the most fashionable (and highly-paid) stars of the era and helped popularize the bobbed haircut.

A huge star in her day, approximately half of Moore's films are now considered lost, including her first talking picture from 1929. What was perhaps her most celebrated film, Flaming Youth (1923), is now mostly lost as well, with only one reel surviving.

Moore took a brief hiatus from acting between 1929 and 1933, just as sound was being added to motion pictures. After the hiatus, her four sound pictures released in 1933 and 1934 were not financial successes. Moore then retired permanently from screen acting.

After her film career, Moore maintained her wealth through astute investments, becoming a partner of Merrill Lynch. She later wrote a "how-to" book about investing in the stock market.

Moore also nurtured a passion for dollhouses throughout her life and helped design and curate The Colleen Moore Dollhouse, which has been a featured exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois since the early 1950s. The dollhouse, measuring 9 square feet (0.84 m2), was estimated in 1985 to be worth of $7 million, and it is seen by 1.5 million people annually.

Moore was born Kathleen Morrison on August 19, 1899, (according to the bulk of the official records;[4] the date which she insisted was correct in her autobiography, Silent Star, was 1902)[5] in Port Huron, Michigan,[6] Moore was the eldest child of Charles R. and Agnes Kelly Morrison. The family remained in Port Huron during the early years of Moore's life, at first living with her grandmother Mary Kelly (often spelled Kelley) and then with at least one of Moore's aunts.

By 1905, the family moved to Hillsdale, Michigan, where they remained for over two years. They relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, by 1908. They are listed at three different addresses during their stay in Atlanta (From the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library city directories): 301 Capitol Avenue −1908; 41 Linden Avenue – 1909; 240 N. Jackson Street – 1910. They then lived briefly — probably less than a year — in Warren, Pennsylvania, and by 1911, they had settled in Tampa, Florida.

At age 15 she was taking her first step in Hollywood. Her uncle arranged a screen test with director D.W. Griffith. She wanted to be a second Lillian Gish but instead, she found herself playing heroines in Westerns with stars such as Tom Mix.

Two of Moore's great passions were dolls and movies; each would play a great role in her later life. She and her brother began their own stock company, reputedly performing on a stage created from a piano packing crate. Her aunts, who doted on her, indulged her other great passion and often bought her miniature furniture on their many trips, with which she furnished the first of a succession of dollhouses. Moore's family summered in Chicago, where Moore enjoyed baseball and the company of her Aunt Lib (Elizabeth, who changed her name to "Liberty", Lib for short) and Lib's husband Walter Howey. Howey was the managing editor of the Chicago Examiner and an important newspaper editor in the publishing empire of William Randolph Hearst, and was the inspiration for Walter Burns, the fictional Chicago newspaper editor in the play and the film, The Front Page.

Early years

Essanay Studios was within walking distance of the Northwestern L, which ran right past the Howey residence. (They occupied at least two residences between 1910 and 1916: 4161 Sheridan and 4942 Sheridan.) In interviews later in her silent film career, Moore claimed she had appeared in the background of several Essanay films, usually as a face in a crowd. One story has it she had gotten into the Essanay studios and waited in line to be an extra with Helen Ferguson: in an interview with Kevin Brownlow many years later, Ferguson told a story that substantially confirmed many details of the claim, though it is not certain if she was referring to Moore's stints as a background extra (if she really was one) or to her film test there prior to her departure for Hollywood in November 1917. Film producer D.W. Griffith was in debt to Howey, who had helped him to get both The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance through the Chicago censorship board.

"I was being sent to Hollywood - not because anybody out there thought I was any good, but simply to pay off a favor".

The contract to Griffith's Triangle-Fine Arts was conditional on passing a film test to ensure that her heterochromia (she had one brown eye, one blue eye) would not be a distraction in close-up shots. Her eyes passed the test, so she left for Hollywood with her grandmother and her mother as chaperones. Moore made her first credited film appearance in 1917 in The Bad Boy for Triangle Fine Arts, and for the next few years appeared in small, supporting roles gradually attracting the attention of the public.

The Bad Boy was released on February 18, and featured Robert Harron, Richard Cummings, Josephine Crowell, and Mildred Harris (who would later become Charles Chaplin's first wife). Two months later, it was followed by An Old-Fashioned Young Man, again with Robert Harron. Moore’s third film was Hands Up! filmed in part in the vicinity of the Seven Oaks (a popular location for productions that required dramatic vistas). This was her first true western. The film’s scenario was written by Wilfred Lucas from a story by Al Jennings, the famous outlaw who had been freed from jail by presidential pardon by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. Monte Blue was in the cast and noticed Moore could not mount her horse, though horseback riding was required for the part (during casting for the part she neglected to mention she did not know how to ride). Blue gave her a quick lesson essentially consisting of how to mount the horse and how to hold on.

On May 3, 1917, the Chicago Daily Tribune said: "Colleen Moore contributes some remarkable bits of acting. She is very sweet as she goes trustingly to her bandit hero, and, O, so pitiful, when finally realizing the character of the man, she goes into a hysteria of terror, and, shrieking 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!' beats futilely on a bolted door, a panic-stricken little human animal, who had not known before that there was aught but kindness in the world." About the time her first six-month contract was extended an additional six months, she requested and received a five weeks release to do a film for Universal's Bluebird division, released under the name The Savage. This was her fourth film, and she was only needed for two weeks. Upon her return to the Fine Arts lot, she spent several weeks trying to get her to pay for the three weeks she had been available for work for Triangle (finally getting her pay in December of that year).

Soon after, the Triangle Company went bust, and while her contract was honored, she found herself scrambling to find her next job. With a reel of her performance in Hands Up! under her arm, Colin Campbell arranged for her to get a contract with Selig Polyscope. She was very likely at work on A Hoosier Romance before The Savage was released in November. After A Hoosier Romance, she went to work on Little Orphant Annie. Both films were based upon poems by James Whitcomb Riley, and both proved to be very popular. It was her first real taste of popularity.

Little Orphant Annie was released in December. The Chicago Daily Tribune wrote of Moore, "She was a lovely and unspoiled child the last time I saw her. Let’s hope commendation hasn’t turned her head." Despite her good notices, her luck took a turn for the worse when Selig Polyscope went bust. Once again Moore found herself unemployed, but she had begun to make a name for herself by 1919. She had a series of films lined up. She went to Flagstaff, Arizona for location work on The Wilderness Trail, another western, this time with Tom Mix. Her mother went along as a chaperone. Moore wrote that while she had a crush on Mix, he only had eyes for her mother. The Wilderness Trail was a Fox Film Corporation production, and while it had started production earlier, it would not be released until after The Busher, which was released on May 18. The Busher was an H. Ince Productions-Famous Players-Lasky production; it was a baseball film wherein the hero was played by John Gilbert. The Wilderness Trail followed on July 6, another Fox film. A few weeks later, The Man in the Moonlight, a Universal Film Manufacturing Company film was released on July 28. The Egg Crate Wallop was a Famous Players-Lasky production released by Paramount Pictures on September 28.

The next stage of her career was with the Christie Film Company, a move she made when she decided she needed comic training. While with Christie, she made Her Bridal Nightmare, A Roman Scandal, and So Long Letty. At the same time as she was working on these films, she worked on The Devil's Claim with Sessue Hayakawa, in which she played a Persian woman, When Dawn Came, and His Nibs (1921) with Chic Sale. All the while, Marshall Neilan had been attempting to get Moore released from her contract so she could work for him. He was successful and made Dinty with Moore, releasing near the end of 1920, followed by When Dawn Came.

For all his efforts to win Moore away from Christie, it seems Neilan loaned Moore to other studios most of the time. He loaned her out to King Vidor for The Sky Pilot, released in May 1921, yet another Western. After working on The Sky Pilot on location in the snows of Truckee, she was off to Catalina Island for work on The Lotus Eater with John Barrymore. In October 1921, His Nibs was released, her only film to be released that year besides The Sky Pilot. In His Nibs, Moore actually appeared in a film within the film; the framing film was a comedy vehicle for Chic Sales. The film it framed was a spoof on films of the time. 1922 proved to be an eventful year for Moore as she was named a WAMPAS Baby Star during a "frolic" at the Ambassador Hotel which became an annual event, in recognition of her growing popularity.[13] In early 1922, Come On Over was released, made from a Rupert Hughes story and directed by Alfred E. Green. Hughes directed Moore himself in The Wallflower, released that same year. In addition, Neilan introduced her to John McCormick, a publicist who had had his eye on Moore ever since he had first seen her photograph. He had prodded Marshall into an introduction. The two hit it off, and before long they were engaged. By the end of that year, three more of her films were released: Forsaking All Others, The Ninety and Nine, and Broken Chains.

Look Your Best and The Nth Commandment were released in early 1923, followed by two Cosmopolitan Productions, The Nth Commandment and Through the Dark. By this time, Moore had publicly confirmed her engagement to McCormick, a fact that she had been coy about to the press previously. Before mid-year, she had signed a contract with First National Pictures, and her first two films were slated to be The Huntress and Flaming Youth. Slippy McGee came out in June, followed by Broken Hearts of Broadway.

Moore and John McCormick married while Flaming Youth was still in production, and just before the release of The Savage. When it was finally released in 1923, Flaming Youth, in which she starred opposite actor Milton Sills, was a hit. The controversial story put Moore in focus as a flapper, but after Clara Bow took the stage in Black Oxen in December, she gradually lost her momentum. In spring 1924 she made a good but unsuccessful effort to top Bow in The Perfect Flapper, and soon after she dismissed the whole flapper vogue; "No more flappers...people are tired of soda-pop love affairs." Decades later Moore stated Bow was her "chief rival."

Through the Dark, originally shot under the name Daughter of Mother McGinn, was released during the height of the Flaming Youth furor in January 1924. Three weeks later, Painted People was released. After that, she was to star in Counterfeit. The film went through a number of title changes before being released as Flirting with Love in August. In October, First National purchased the rights to Sally for Moore's next film. It would be a challenge, as Sally was a musical comedy. In December, First National purchased the rights to Desert Flower and in so doing had mapped out Moore's schedule for 1925: Sally would be filmed first, followed by The Desert Flower.

By the late 1920s, she had accomplished dramatic roles in films such as So Big, where Moore aged through a stretch of decades, and was also well received in light comedies such as Irene. An overseas tour was planned to coincide with the release of So Big in Europe, and Moore saw the tour as her first real opportunity to spend time with her husband, John McCormick. Both she and John McCormick were dedicated to their careers, and their hectic schedules had kept them from spending any quality time together. Moore wanted a family; it was one of her goals.

Plans for the trip were put in jeopardy when she injured her neck during the filming of The Desert Flower. Her injury forced the production to shut down while Moore spent six weeks in a body cast in bed. Once out of the cast, she completed the film and left for Europe on a triumphal tour. When she returned, she negotiated a new contract with First National. Her films had been great hits, so her terms were very generous. Her first film upon her return to the States was We Moderns, set in England with location work done in London during the tour. It was a comedy, essentially a retelling of Flaming Youth from an English perspective. This was followed by Irene (another musical in the style of the very popular Sally) and Ella Cinders, a straight comedy that featured a cameo appearance by comedian Harry Langdon. It Must Be Love was a romantic comedy with dramatic undertones, and it was followed by Twinkletoes, a dramatic film that featured Moore as a young dancer in London's Limehouse district during the previous century. Orchids and Ermine was released in 1927, filmed in part in New York, a thinly veiled Cinderella story.

In 1927, Moore split from her studio after her husband suddenly quit. It is rumored that John McCormick was about to be fired for his drinking and that she left as a means of leveraging her husband back into a position at First National. It worked, and McCormick found himself as Moore's sole producer. Moore's popularity allowed her productions to become very large and lavish. Lilac Time was one of the bigger productions of the era, a World War I drama. A million dollar film, it made back every penny spent within months. Prior to its release, Warner Bros. had taken control of First National and were less than interested in maintaining the terms of her contract until the numbers started to roll in for Lilac Time. The film was such a hit that Moore managed to retain generous terms in her next contract and her husband as her producer.

In 1928, inspired by her father and with help from her former set designer, a dollhouse was constructed by her father, which was 9 square feet with the tallest tower 12 feet high. The interior of The Colleen Moore Dollhouse, designed by Harold Grieve, features miniature bear skin rugs and detailed furniture and art. Moore's dollhouse has been a featured exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois since October 30, 1949, where according to the museum, it is seen by 1.5 million people each year and would be worth $7 million. Moore continued working on it and contributing artifacts to it until her death.

This dollhouse was the eighth one Moore owned. The first dollhouse, she wrote in her autobiography Silent Star (1968), evolved from a cabinet that held her collection of miniature furniture. It was supposedly built from a cigar box. Kitty Lorgnette wrote in the Saturday, August 13, 1938 edition of The Evening News (Tampa) that the first dollhouse was purchased by Oraleze O'Brien (Mrs. Frank J. Knight) in 1916 when Moore (then Kathleen) left Tampa. Oraleze was too big for dollhouses, however, and she sold it again after her cat had kittens in it, and from there she lost track of it. The third house was possibly given to the daughter of Moore's good friend, author Adela Rogers St. Johns. The fourth survives and remains on display in the living room of a relative.

With the advent of talking pictures in 1929, Moore took a hiatus from acting. After divorcing McCormick in 1930, Moore married prominent New York-based stockbroker Albert Parker Scott in 1932. The couple lived at that time in a lavish home at 345 St. Pierre Road in Bel Air, where they hosted parties for and were supporters of the U.S. Olympic team, especially the yachting team, during the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles.

In 1934, Moore, by then divorced from Albert Parker Scott, returned to work in Hollywood. She appeared in three films, none of which was successful, and Moore retired. Her last film was a version of The Scarlet Letter in 1934. She later married the widower Homer Hargrave and raised his children (she never had children of her own) from a previous marriage, with whom she maintained a lifelong close relationship. Throughout her life she also maintained close friendships with other colleagues from the silent film era, such as King Vidor and Mary Pickford.

In the 1960s, Moore formed a television production company with King Vidor with whom she had worked in the 1920s. She also published two books in the late 1960s, her autobiography Silent Star: Colleen Moore Talks About Her Hollywood (1968) and How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market (1969). She also figures prominently alongside King Vidor in Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's book, A Cast of Killers, which recounts Vidor's attempt to make a film of and solve the murder of William Desmond Taylor. In that book, she is recalled as having been a successful real estate broker in Chicago and partner in the investment firm Merrill Lynch after her film career.

Many of Moore's films deteriorated, but not due to her own neglect, after she had sent them to be preserved at the Museum of Modern Art. Some time later, Warner Brothers asked for their nitrate materials to be returned to them. Moore's earlier First National films were also sent, since Warners later acquired First National. Upon their arrival, the custodian at MOMA, not seeing the films on the manifest, put them to one side and never went back to them. Many years later, Moore inquired about her collection and MOMA found the films languishing unprotected. When the films were examined, they had decomposed past the point of preservation. Heartbroken, she tried in vain to retrieve any prints she could from several sources without much success. In 1956, the material from WB and FN was sold to Associated Artists Productions, later to MGM/UA and then, Turner Entertainment.

At the height of her fame, Moore was earning $12,500 per week. She was an astute investor, and through her investments, remained wealthy for the rest of her life. In her later years she would frequently attend film festivals, and was a popular interview subject always willing to discuss her Hollywood career. She was a participant in the documentary series Hollywood (1980), providing her recollections of Hollywood's silent film era.

Moore was married four times. Her first marriage was to John McCormick of First National Studios. They married in 1923 and divorced in 1930. In 1932, Moore married stockbroker Albert P. Scott. This union ended in divorce in 1934. Moore's third marriage was to Homer Hargrave, whom she married in 1936; he provided funding for her dollhouse and she adopted his son, Homer Hargrave, Jr and his daughter, Judy Hargrave. They remained married until Hargrave's death in 1965. In 1982, Moore married her final husband, builder Paul Magenot. They were married until Moore's death in 1988.

On January 25, 1988, Moore died from cancer in Paso Robles, California, aged 88. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Colleen Moore has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1551 Vine Street.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of her: "I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, Colleen Moore was the torch. What little things we are to have caused all that trouble."

#colleen moore #silent era #silent hollywood #silent movie stars #1910s movies #1920s hollywood #golden age of hollywood #classic movie stars #classic hollywood #1930s hollywood #flapper #roaring 20s

22 notes · View notes

epros · 3 years

Text

btw i wrote more idv fics title: after midnight character(s): eli clark, luca balsa ship(s): gen, preslash eli/luca word count: 932 summary: late one night, eli helps luca out. it's the start of something inevitable. read here on ao3. prequel to patiently unreel you. title: when you see me seeing you character(s): luca balsa, naib subedar (aesop carl, andrew kreiss, and ann are mentioned) ship(s): gen, preslash luca/naib word count: 1,597 summary: luca finds out why nobody likes decoding with naib. read here on ao3. also a prequel to patiently unreel you, linked above. title: your smoke builds a plume character(s): luca balsa, eli clark, naib subedar, norton campbell, demi bourbon. ensemble cast (many others are mentioned/briefly appear). ship(s): luca/eli, hints of luca/naib and naib/eli???? you know what the fuck is going on word count: 11,640 summary: luca balsa and navigating the aftermath of sleeping with a taken man - who one of your friends may or may not also be in love with. read here on ao3. a sequel to all of the previous fics, taking place following patiently unreel you. title: the heart left behind in spring character(s): nathaniel obermeyer (original character), victor grantz ship(s): nathaniel/victor. its his poet ex. im feeding only myself word count: 5,382 summary: nathaniel obermeyer doesn't care about his own safety or reputation, but he does care about the mother he is only just recently learning to know and love. so he makes a choice. happy birthday, victor; here is one final present. read here on ao3. annnd last but not least: title: winter tumbles down on me even as i hold autumn dearly in my arms character(s): naib subedar, luca balsa, norton campbell. ensemble cast (many others appear/are mentioned) ship(s): norton/luca/naib, bg ships including tracy/margaretha, michiko/mary, andrew/eli, aesop/edgar. word count: 3,085 (chapter 1/?) summary: finding lucas balzac should have been a simple job. of course, nothing in naib's life can ever be simple, can it? read here on ao3.

#idv #identity v #luca balsa #eli clark #naib subedar #victor grantz #my writing

1 note · View note

weavingthetapestry · 5 years

Photo

Historical Objects: The Trinity Altarpiece

(Click image for better view. Inside panels are on the right, outside on left. Source- wikimedia commons)

The Trinity Altarpiece is one of the most remarkable objects to have survived from mediaeval Scotland. Produced by Hugo van der Goes in the 1470s, this triptych would have occupied pride of place on the high altar of Trinity Collegiate Kirk in Edinburgh. Though the centre panel is now lost, the wings survive including depictions of the Holy Trinity, angels and saints. Perhaps of more interest are the contemporary historical figures depicted: on the outside of the left-hand panel is pictured the provost of Trinity kirk, Edward Bonkil; on the inside left-hand panel King James III (r.1460-1488), accompanied by a boy who may be the future James IV; and on the inside right-hand panel James III’s queen Margaret of Denmark. A precious survival from a country where only a small percentage of mediaeval art survived the iconoclasm of the Reformation, and centuries of Anglo-Scottish, religious, and civil wars, the Trinity Altarpiece gives a rare glimpse into the vibrant cultural networks of a small European kingdom and the interests of its elites.

This impressive piece was probably created by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes, who was born in the mid-fifteenth century in the great city of Ghent, then a major European centre. Goes was first mentioned in 1467, the same year he was admitted to the painters’ guild of Ghent. Over the next decade he frequently undertook painting work (both practical and artistic) in Ghent and further afield. He served as both juror and dean of the painters’ guild during the mid-1470s, but by 1478 had retired to the Roode Klooster near Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life. In later years one of his fellow novices at the Roode Klooster, Gaspar Ofhuys, wrote an account of Goes’ time there, which provides a valuable insight into his life and character. Goes often received visitors, including Maximilian, Archduke of Austria and other notable figures. He was also occasionally allowed to leave the monastery to undertake commissions and travel to some of the region’s cities. While returning from one such trip to Cologne, however, he suffered a fit of madness and attempted suicide. He briefly recovered only to die shortly afterwards, in 1482, tormented towards the end of his life by the thought of not finishing his art. Nevertheless he is now recognised as one of the most significant and talented Flemish painters of his time, despite his short career- and the difficulty of identifying his work.

Most identifications of Hugo van der Goes’ paintings rest on similarities with the Portinari Altarpiece, the only work confidently attributed to him. Thus many of his purported works- which include the ‘Lamentation of Christ’ (now in Vienna), the ‘Adoration of the Kings’ (or the Monforte Altarpiece, now in Berlin), and others which only survive in copies made by his followers- cannot be certainly attributed, though as yet there is no real reason to doubt the Trinity Altarpiece. In any case the Trinity panels are clearly of the highest quality and represent an important contribution to Northern Renaissance art. Moreover, their existence sheds light on the networks of artistic patronage in mediaeval Europe and the links of one particular Scottish churchman and his royal patrons.

(The Portinari Altarpiece, also by Hugo van der Goes. The centre panel flanked by the inside of two wings gives some idea of how the Trinity Altarpiece would have looked when open, before the centre panel was lost. Source Wikimedia Commons)

While they are now appreciated primarily for their artistic value, these mediaeval altarpieces also had a practical purpose. As portable religious items they helped direct the spiritual devotions of their owners, while they also had worldly usefulness, prominently displaying the patron’s political, spiritual, and social networks. In triptychs, patrons and their family members were usually represented on the inside wings, like the royal figures in the Trinity Altarpiece. Here the king and queen of Scots- James III and Margaret of Denmark- are portrayed in rich costume, accompanied by Saints Andrew and George, and a young boy who probably represents their eldest son, James, Duke of Rothesay. Despite the prominence of the royal family however, the Altarpiece may owe its origin to a very different individual. When a triptych was not in use, the inner wings would usually close over a larger centre panel (the Trinity Altarpiece’s appears to have been lost) and the outside panels were often decorated with less showy ‘grisaille’ paintings. In the Trinity Altarpiece, however, these outer panels tell us even more about the work’s provenance. Portrayed on the left outer wing is the Holy Trinity (father, son, and holy spirit) and, on the right wing, kneeling in supplication before the Trinity, a churchman whose coat of arms identifies him as Edward Bonkil, first provost of Trinity Collegiate Church in Edinburgh- the man who probably commissioned this expensive work of art.

Trinity College Kirk, which stood beneath Calton Hill, was founded in 1460 as the pet project of Mary of Guelders, queen consort to James II of Scotland (1437-1460). Mary was not just the daughter of Arnold, Duke of Guelders but also the great-niece of Philip the Good, the powerful Duke of Burgundy, and as Mary was raised at her uncle’s court her marriage to James II strengthened Scotland’s traditional commercial and cultural ties with the Low Countries. A formidable woman, Mary headed the government after her husband’s premature death in 1460, as regent for her young son James III. She also had some reputation as a builder (her other major project was Ravenscraig Castle, the first castle in Scotland built specifically to withstand artillery fire, and she contributed to works elsewhere too). Though work on the church may have begun in her husband’s lifetime, it was chiefly Mary’s project and from 1460 onwards she took a keen interest in the foundation. Besides paying for its endowment and construction, she may have personally contributed to the creation of the college rules, stipulating that all the canons and boys should be capable of reading and singing in plain chant and descant, laying the foundations of Trinity’s reputation as a prestigious choral institution. Following her early death in 1463, she was also buried in the church, probably near the high altar, where the altarpiece likely stood and it has been theorised that the missing middle panel could have included a representation of the queen dowager herself, drawing attention to the church’s royal associations. However the altarpiece was painted after her death, and indeed the responsibility for commissioning this costly piece of art may not have lain with the royal family at all, although Mary’s son James III and his queen feature prominently on its inner panels. It has been argued by Lorne Campbell that we should instead look to the provost of Trinity, Edward Bonkil, portrayed on the right-hand outer panel of the altarpiece.

(Bottom left- Trinity College Kirk, as it appeared in the nineteenth century. Source- Wikimedia Commons)

Edward Bonkil had been a close servant of the late Mary of Guelders, having been personally promoted to the position of provost of her lavish foundation. After the dowager’s death, however, he seems to have gradually fallen out of favour at court and it is suggested by Campbell that he may have commissioned the altarpiece partly with a view to currying favour with the young James III. Whether this is accurate or not, it seems highly probable that Bonkil was the main driving force behind the commission- not only does he occupy a privileged position on the outer wing of the altarpiece, but his features are much more detailed and exact than those of the royal family, suggesting that they were painted from life. As a member of a prominent Edinburgh merchant family, and having possibly served on embassies to Guelders and Burgundy, Bonkil had close connections with the Low Countries. Moreover he is not recorded in Scotland between 1473 and 1476, around the time that the altarpiece may have been painted, and so he could have travelled to Flanders personally to sit for the artist. Though it did not bring him renewed royal favour, if the altarpiece was commissioned by Bonkil it not only secured his legacy but has provided us with a rare and invaluable glimpse into the tastes and cultural connections of late mediaeval Scotland’s clerical elite.

Much of the altarpiece, including the likeness of Bonkil, is believed to have been painted in Flanders by Goes, and certain sections are even adapted from other works by Flemish artists, such as the ‘Madonna in the Church’ by Jan Van Eyck, which forms the backdrop to Bonkil’s panel, and a lost work by Robert Campin which influenced the representation of the Trinity. The faces of King James III and Queen Margaret however, may have been painted over by an unknown artist upon the altarpiece’s arrival in Scotland, to lend them some realism, though they are not of such high quality as the depiction of Bonkil. The portrayal of the young Duke of Rothesay- the future James IV- is probably even less true to life, as portrayals of children in late mediaeval art were more often symbolic than realistic and it is probable that Rothesay was an infant at most at the time of the painting’s creation. His appearance may allow us to tentatively date the work however, as he was born in 1473 and described as James III’s ‘only son’ until 1478-9, and neither of his younger brothers are portrayed in the painting. This place the period of production in the mid-1470s- a rare survival then, from an otherwise shadowy period in late mediaeval Scottish history.

(Edward Bonkil, Provost of Trinity Collegiate Church, who probably commissioned the altarpiece. Source- wikimedia commons)

Despite having been painted almost a century and a half earlier however, the panels from the Trinity Altarpiece were only recorded in written sources for the first time in 1617, when they were included in an inventory taken of the possessions of Anne of Denmark, queen of James VI of Scotland (James III’s great-great grandson and by now James I of England also). The inventory of Queen Anne’s belongings was taken at the royal residence of Oatlands in Surrey, and it has been suggested that the Trinity Altarpiece was brought south after her husband’s last visit to Scotland earlier in 1617. It was to remain in England for many years thereafter, passing into the hands of Anne’s son, Charles I, by 1624, when it was erroneously described as a work by Jan van Eyck. The altarpiece was auctioned off during the Civil War but was reclaimed by the royal family after the Restoration, after which it was displayed in various English royal palaces, including Kensington and Hampton Court. In 1857, it returned to Scotland for the first time in over two hundred years when it was briefly transferred to Holyrood Palace during the reign of Queen Victoria. Over the next few decades it was shuffled around on several occasions, but was often on public display at Holyrood until 1912, when it was first briefly loaned to the National Gallery of Scotland, due to fears over its safety in the face of militant suffragette activity. In 1931, it again returned to the National Gallery, in whose care it remains today.

If anyone has a spare half an hour in Edinburgh some day, I highly recommend visiting the galleries, if only to see the Altarpiece. Flemish art of this period is both fascinating and beautiful and the Galleries are very fortunate to own a piece of such high calibre as the Trinity Altarpiece. As well as this, the culture of mediaeval Scotland has left few traces in the modern day: even the impressive Trinity Collegiate Church, the original home of the altarpiece, was largely demolished in the Victorian period to make way for Waverley Station, while many other pieces of art, books, buildings, music and historical sources have been lost to the ravages of war, iconoclasm, and time. The survival of such a beautiful and costly work as the Trinity Altarpiece, therefore, stands testament to a fascinating and complex past, as culturally vibrant as that of any other corner of mediaeval Europe, and just waiting to be uncovered.

(Source - Wikimedia commons)

Selected Bibliography:

“Charters and documents relating to the Collegiate Church and Hospital of the Holy Trinity, and the Trinity Hospital, Edinburgh, A.D. 1460-1661″, ed. J.D. Marwick

“Rotuli scaccarii regum Scotorum: the Exchequer Rolls of Scoltand”, eds. John Stuart and George Burnett, volumes 6, 7, & 8

“Hugo van der Goes and the Trinity Panels in Edinburgh”, C. Thompson and L. Campbell

“Hugo van der Goes’s Altarpiece for Trinity College in Edinburgh and Mary of Guelders, Queen of Scotland”, T. Tolley

“She is But a Woman: Queenship in Scotland, 1424-1463″, Fiona Downie

National Galleries of Scotland

25 notes · View notes

tippitv · 5 years

Text

Supernatural TippiTV Recap: 14-13 “Lebanon”

Okay before we get started. This is a long one and while I think it's pretty funny if I do say so myself, there's also a lot of me just... frickin ranting about John Winchester and rushed plots. If you loved this episode and don't want to see someone snarking about it, this might not be the recap for you.

On the other hand if you're like me and come from the TWoP tradition of snarking about the things we love most, then come on in!

THEN!

Two children talk about how their dad is on a hunting trip and hasn't been home in a while.

Oh wait... holy crap it's Sam and Dean. It took a sec to recognize them without the gravelly voices and almost 14 years of soul-crushing despair.

We also get a reminder of very recent episodes, including the one where Mary learns about the time John threw young Dean's food away because it reminded him of her. It's important to remember what an abusive, hardened asshole John Winchester was... so that we can forget it! Forget it all!

[insert video of recapper letting out a Klingon scream]

NOW!

Sam and Dean mosey on into a pawn shop that I'm positive is in the US because they never leave the US but there's a sign that says the shop buys "jewellery" which is how they spell it in places that also spell "flavor" with a u. Dean flashes a big wad of cash to get the broker to show them "the good stuff."

By this, he means the magical goods, although the secret room looks like a high school drama department prop closet.

Dean says they're looking for the skull of a woman who was executed during the Salem witch trials. While the broker goes looking for it, Sam picks up a teddy bear from, you know, a shelf full of cursed and magical items because it's not as if stuffed animals have ever been dangerous. <cue ironic flashback>

Luckily he's warned away from it before he can unleash some kind of... Pooh demon... probably.

Anyway, it turns out having the skull proves that the broker killed a friend of theirs or something... Honestly, very little of this is going to have any bearing on anything. Long story short, fisticuffs ensue and Dean shoots the broker while he's expositing to Sam. "They always talk too much," Dean says.

Sam and Dean decide to take a bunch of magical items home with them. Although... what if they rightfully belong to other peop---ah screw it.

Okay now... here comes a long, boring subplot about teenagers back in Lebanon, Kansas. The main thing that's pertinent to the show is that Sam and Dean have a certain reputation around town. And no wonder! They park right in front these teenagers and start talking about shit they would never want anyone to hear.

They head into the world's skimpiest liquor store and the owner addresses them as "the Campbell brothers." Say whaaaat? Have they been using their mom's maiden name for a while and I just missed it? I mean, I guess it makes sense because... Actually, I don't remember how much stuff is still in their world about the infamous Winchesters. Like I legit can't remember if Charlie or someone erased their FBI/police records or if it was just some fanon someone told me about.

Also, nothing says "real liquor store" like shelves of bottles turned so that their name brands don't show.

Anyway, Sam stage-whispers to Dean about an ancient Chinese pearl that grants "what your heart desires."

The plan is to get Michael out of his head, but they notice someone is driving off with the Impala. They run out to confront one of the teenagers about it. He confesses that a girl named Max is the culprit, so that we can spend several minutes on this subplot instead of the much more emotional and important main plot.

I mean, we go from the post office to a pizza joint to an old house on the edge of town to catch up to the Impala. Max has apparently brought all that lethal “secret” stuff inside for a party. The camera lingers on that teddy bear again as if it's going to be important to the plot later.

Max, the car thief, has a crush on a girl and ISTG I was prepared to be mad if she died. Like I don't even want this whole subplot at all but I'd be puh-hissed if they had queer characters on just to kill one. Luckily I was wrong and neither of them die. However, the dialog is killing me. "I'm sooo excited for pizza." Tell me you can't imagine Lumpy Space Princess saying that.

Apparently the ghost of John Wayne Gacy (sigh) was waiting for the kids to go in search of pizza before oozing out of a cigar box the Winchesters brought from the pawn shop.

Why is his ghost dressed as a clown? I mean yes I know Gacy was a children's party clown, but it's not like he died in that outfit. Aren't ghosts supposed to be wearing what they died in? OH GOD WHY DO I CARE.

The Winchesters show up and scoot everyone out of the house, but not before at least one kid sees the ghost. Sam zeroes in on the cigar box and Dean points out how Sam's love of serial killers and hatred of clowns are in conflict.

Of course, some of the kids come back in just as the ghost goes up in flames. Sam and Dean decide to just... tell them the whole truth instead of just lying. Like..."Yo, one of the things you stole was secret holographic tech and you could face prison time if you talk about it." See? Easy peasy. Instead, they just trust the kids to never talk about ghosts being real and meeting actual ghost hunters.

I briefly wondered if this was some kind of back door pilot for teen hunters, but I haven't heard anything about that. Granted I didn't actually look that hard.

Once back at the bunker, Sam finds the magic pearl but it's kinda... chalky and medicinal looking. It looks like something Goop would sell to stick up your hoohaw.

Dean decides there's no time to wait because we've already spent too long on teenagers playing hooky. Like, even Sam doesn't really know how to use it. "I guess you just concentrate on what your heart desires," he says, scrunching his face uncertainly. I mean what if this had happened

The music swells dramatically. The lights flicker off dramatically. A shadowy figure approaches... dramatically. Fisticuffs ensue! It's a nice callback to Dean and Sam fighting in the dark in the pilot episode because ta da! It's actually John Winchester! Which we all knew because this was foretold in promotions.

The lights come up, showing... just a whole lot of things for me to process.

Now, at first, things don't seem that weird. We've seen people come back from the dead so many times, it's basically as surprising as buying socks at this point. Except! John isn't back from the dead at all! He's traveled through time! He eventually tells us he's from the year TWO THOUSAND AND THREE. TWO ZERO ZERO THREE.

He's both three years younger than the last time the bros saw him AND 13 years older, because for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and all the rest of us mortals, time has marched on. Consequently, John Winchester looks like he got stuck in a wormhole for a good while.

Now, kudos to John for recognizing his sons, especially Sam, who looked a little something like this the last time they saw each other.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Palo Alto?" he asks Sam. "And also not a middle-aged man?" he doesn't ask, but I bet he was thinkin' it.

It's just... sigh. I might as well get it all out now. I get what they were going for here. It's the 300th episode and they wanted to have John show up. But because everything is so rushed, they just gloss over anything remotely realistic to the characters. John is all softness and awe the instant the lights go up, instead of bristling and suspicious. Why wouldn't he think it was a djinn or some other creature's doing? "Well we don't have time for him to be as flinty and wary as John would have been in 2003, because we need to get to the part where he spends quality time with his family!" YES EXACTLY. The show is three hundred episodes old now and it deserves more than this speedy treatment put together seemingly for the concomitant promotional opportunity.

Anyway they have a Sit-n-Chat to catch John up on what they've been doing, including the living situation there at the bunker which includes an angel and the son of Lucifer. Goodness only knows what John is picturing.

Now that I think about it, the brothers should be hella wary too. I mean, what if the pearl is cursed? What if John is actually some shambling interdimensional beast masquerading as John? What if the whole thing is just a hallucination brought on by nefarious moon herbs in Paltrow's pookie pearl? They just uncharacteristically seem to rely on the pawn broker's ledger.

Fine! Fine! I’ll drop it.

They talk about how they met John's dad via time travel, too, but don't mention that's why John never saw him again after childhood. They talk about the Men of Letters, finally killing old Yellow Eyes, saving the world... Then just when they're about to tell him that Mary's back from the dead, she actually shows up and starts calling to her sons. What a coincidence! John is pained.

It seems like they didn't tell her, either? Did they just tell her to come over for a surprise or did she just happen to be on her way there anyway? Anyway John and Mary start in on a smoochy reunion so Sam and Dean quietly leave the room.

Sam's like, "How'd this happen?" And Dean's like, "We spent too much time on the teenager subplot instead of looking into this potentially dangerous thing, is how!"

For some reason, John is perusing the library alone instead of... um... making up for lost time with his hot wife. Sam goes to talk to him and finds out Mary's off writing a shopping list for Dean so she can make that emotionally important casserole again. This leads John to admit he fucked up with his kids. Sam is reluctant to blame John because he's had almost 13 years to get over it.

I hate that everyone's acting their little hearts out and all I can think is how painfully contrived the episode is. Whatever problems I have with the writing and the premise, I don't have a problem with the job the actors are doing. Okay, okay, I'm really letting go of it this time.

John rubs Sam's shoulder and tearfully says, "Son, I am so sorry." The cellos of sadness play sadly. "I'm sorry, too," says Sam. "You did your best, Dad. You fought for us, you loved us... that's enough."

It's one thing to decide you're going to move past the shitty, shitty things someone did because you're in the midst of the enormity of what's going on RIGHT NOW. But it's another thing for the show to minimize the past. John did NOT do his best. For fuck's sake, he left a little boy in charge of an even littler boy! Dean knew his Dad was possessed because his REAL dad would never be proud of him! When Dean stole food to feed Sam, John abandoned him to face the consequences!

God damn it I guess I'm not going to let it go, after all!

Anyway, Sam and Dean head into town for groceries and time paradoxes. The liquor store owner no longer recognizes Dean, which is the surest sign that something is Very Wrong. Dean is flabbergasted. "It's me! Dean Campbell! I come in here like... always!"

As Sam heads back to the car, he sees a wanted poster for his bro. It's the old Blue Steel one except I think Sam used to be on it too? He's not anymore. He heads back to the car to tell Dean, but Dean's already been a-googlin' on his phone.

He plays back a video of Sam as a turtleneck-wearing lawyer espousing a raw food diet with plenty of kale. Good lord how much raw food does someone the size of Sam have to eat to fulfill his daily caloric needs?

They kind of hand-wave how these new versions of themselves exist at the same time as the OG versions. "Our timeline is changing to this new one!" Sam says. He says they need to put things back the way they were or they'll be stuck. It's nice of the timeline to work slowly enough that they can figure this out.

Somewhere nearby, the angel Zachariah appears. Castiel moseys up beside him and he's brought some old friends.

They decide to head into the nearest pizza place. The teenagers are there because not even a paradox will get rid of this subplot. "Can I help you?" asks the waitress. I think the usual question would be, "Can I get you a table for two?" but whatever. Zachariah asks her who's been messing with time. "We sensed a disturbance in the, well, let's call it the Force," he says. Naturally, she's very confused, and even more confused when he says they're from Heaven.

He says he'll have Castiel murder everyone if they don't tell him what's going on. To emphasize this, Castiel whips out his angel mojo.

Sam and Dean see the bright light from across the street and come running in. Sam's like, "Zachariah?!" and Dean's like, "Cas?!" and Cas is like, "Is that with one S or two, and also who are you?"

Zachariah exposits that Heaven had big plans for the Winchesters but then their dad suddenly disappeared in 2003. Why wouldn't the angels assume the disappearance and the time event are connected? Why'd they have to just start asking questions in a random pizzeria? Fisticuffs ensue!

Zachariah force-chokes Sam while asking him for an explanation. Why do villains always try to make people talk while they're choking? Pick one or the other! But this gives Sam a chance to surprise Zachariah with an angel blade in the heart. Oh, Zachariah. Destined to die by Winchester in every version.

Meanwhile, Dean and Castiel are still tussling even though I'm pretty sure Castiel could kill them both pretty quick. Sam joins in for a bit, but gets flung into a table. If there's a table around, someone's getting flung into it. Then he goes back to strangling Dean instead of finishing off Sam, giving Sam a chance to make one of those angel-vanquishing sigils with his own blood.

They go back home. Dean explains the whole paradox thing to John. If he doesn't return to 2003, Dean will live the same life but alone, Mary will never have come back to life, and Sam will devastate kale crops like a moose-sized locust.

John agrees to go back. "Me versus your mom, that's not even a choice." That's... a weird way to phrase that dilemma. At the same time, Sam is delivering the news to Mary. He says "the lore is pretty clear" that if they destroy the pearl, everything goes back the way it was. What lore? They knew jack squat about it before they used it. Mary has some questions.

John tells Dean he's proud of him and I slightly expect Dean to whip a gun out on him. "I never meant for this.... I guess I hoped that eventually you get yourself a normal life..a family..."

WHAT.

WHAAAAAT.

He did nothing to prepare them for a normal life! Leaving your kids in motel rooms, never letting them settle down in one school, issuing ultimatums when Sam wanted to go to college? Man, Dean should've been like, "Nah, that was your other son, Adam, who got to live a normal life... at least until a ghoul ate him and his body was used by an archangel." But Dean is nicer than me, I guess. "I have a family," he says.

They decide to eat dinner even though who knows when the timeline is going to snap into place permanently. Oh my God they even take the time to wash the dishes after. They have a nice chat and again, everyone's acting their little hearts out and I'm trying not to be distracted. Dean tells Sam he doesn't want to change the past. "I'm good with who I am. I'm good with who you are." Please let that stick with no reversions to self-loathing and I'll retroactively like this episode more.

They cut to this shot and for a second I thought it was Sam and Dean holding hands at the sink.

Of course it's John and Mary. Sad piano plays sadly. John's not going to remember anything, but the rest of them will. Oh man what if John got Mary pregnant during his visit. Sam and Dean were out shopping for a while. I wish I hadn't thought that, but now that I have, you all have to be witness to my horrible brain's meanderings.

John reiterates that he's proud of them. So this time Sam pulls a gun on him! No, he doesn't. They all hug and cry genuine tears before John goes back to holding hands with Mary. Sam reluctantly smashes the pearl to bits. Seems like Dean would have to be the one to smash it since he's the one who made the wish, but it works and John slowly fades out of the present.

Everything goes back to normal, including the teenagers remembering and loudly discussing the existence of monsters in public.

Castiel returns to the bunker in his newer, homelier coat and less erotically tousled hair. "What happened?" he asks. The response in my brain:

Back in 2003, John wakes up in the Impala to the sound of his flip phone ringing. Smart phones are great and all but man I miss the battery life of my flip. It's the Dean of the day calling to check on him. John, although he's not supposed to remember anything from the future, seems to have experienced it as some kind of dream. He seems nicer, too. This will probably have no bearing on the timeline, though... right?

I mean, is that 2019 casserole still in his stomach? Did the wine turn back into grapes? Probably not but these are the kinds of things I think about.

Sigh.

I feel the episode does a disservice to its main characters. I've already ranted more than enough so I'll just pick one example:

If Sam had gone on to live a normal life, he would've become a cold-hearted douchebag who tells people that hobbies and families are a waste of time. Like, ha ha yes it's amusing that Sam is the leaf-munching Steve Jobs of law, but what's the meaning here? Are we saying that wanting to get an education for himself means he's a selfish asshole? Like this is the alternative to the codependent relationship with Dean that formed because of their father? Argh.

The John apologia is just so clunky and unnecessary. John could've said, "I should've done more than teach you to hunt monsters... prepared you for a normal life so you could have a family." Then Dean ccould say, "Being able to kill monsters kept us alive long enough so that we figured out things for ourselves. And we do have a family." Bam! It lets John be rueful without rewriting the past or having Dean swallow all the years of hurt and it even acknowledges that knowing how to hunt isn't a bad thing.

Thank you for sticking with the recap to the end! I do still intend to recap past episodes but things have been kind of stressful. Just staying afloat has been a chore some days.

For updates and info you can check here: https://www.gofundme.com/winter-rent-and-dog-care

I also have a virtual tip jar of sorts here: https://www.paypal.me/tippiblevins

#spn snark #supernatural #spn recap #tippitv #recaps #lebanon

104 notes · View notes

library-mermaid-blog · 7 years

Note

I'm in a reading rut! Do you have any recommendations? Books like The Raven Cycle series, maybe? ❤️❤️❤️

@prettyygirlx Hi!! Do I EVER haha, sorry that I had to let this sit for a few days until I had time to actually answer fully! I’ll divide these as book recs from one character each, with associated themes! As a note, I’ll include non-YA books that are nevertheless thematically similar bc as we know TRC is a witticism-riddled YA romp with decidedly darker themes….we have been blessed. For ease of bookmarking, I’ll include a summary from goodreads + a link, and I’ll comment briefly on why I recommend it for fans of TRC, too!

Book Recommendations Based on The Raven Cycle:

• • • BLUE SARGENT’S REC: • • • — The Basic Eight by Daniel HandlerFlannery Culp wants you to know the whole story of her spectacularly awful senior year. Tyrants, perverts, tragic crushes, gossip, cruel jokes, and the hallucinatory effects of absinthe – Flannery and the seven other friends in the Basic Eight have suffered through it all. But now, on tabloid television, they’re calling Flannery a murderer, which is a total lie. It’s true that high school can be so stressful sometimes. And it’s true that sometimes a girl just has to kill someone. But Flannery wants you to know that she’s not a murderer at all – she’s a murderess.REC BC: First of all, Daniel Handler, also known as Lemony Snicket. And I’m not biased bc he wrote a series about children who share my last name; he’s just a truly enjoyable writer to hear from. A smart, dark book with an unreliable narrator and plenty of high school fun. Heathers meets The Secret History (also on this list).• • • HENRY CHENG’S REC: • • • — Six of Crows Duology by Leigh BardugoSix dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…Kaz’s crew are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.REC BC: Similar sense of humor and camaraderie with our titular Band of Snarky Weirdos, themes of the search for a home and a meaningful purpose in the world, and how to communicate that with others. Not to mention that Wylan Van Eck Is My Golden Son, and in my head…I play a supercut of Blue Sargent and Noah Czerny and Henry Cheng and Kuwei Yul-Bo’s Fabulous Four friendship.• • • ADAM PARRISH’S REC: • • • — A Great and Terrible Beauty (+ Gemma Doyle Trilogy) by Libba BrayA Great and Terrible Beauty is a curl-up-under-the-covers kind of book … a vast canvas of rustling skirts and dancing shadows and things that go bump in the night. It’s a vividly drawn portrait of the Victorian age, a time of strict morality and barely repressed sensuality, when girls were groomed for lives as rich men’s wives … and the story of a girl who saw another way.REC BC: Mysterious and Unknowable AF, Adam Parrish would devour the hell out of this book tbh. This is an eternal favorite of mine, not just for its rich setting and amazingly creepy scenes, but for the relationships, characterization, and abject hilarity that Bray somehow manages to fit seamlessly into a novel about death and gas-lit darkness. In true Parrish tradition, this series is about carving your own destiny, the influence of power and sacrifice, things that go bump in the forest, and mysterious surly men who want you to join them on a vision quest for totally platonic reasons.• • • PRESIDENT CELLPHONE RICHARD CAMPBELL GANSEY III’s REC: • • • — The King Must Die by Mary Renault“Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge.” In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. (Theseus is) a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness—but also one steered by implacable prophecy.REC BC: Mary Renault is famous for her historical fictions and retellings of myths. Her Theseus novels are elegant explorations of how a man becomes a legend, how a legend becomes a myth, and beyond and before all of that, Death. This is not a lighthearted adventure book, but it is a truly gratifying novel to read.• • • NOAH CZERNY’S REC: • • • — The Secret History by Donna TarttUnder the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.REC BC: This book always makes lists with TRC for a reason. It is deeply settled into ‘purple prose’ (aka long descriptions are given precedence over snappy action) but I personally believe that it is even more rewarding for that. The experience of reading this book is paramount to the plot itself, IMHO. You’ll find yourself writing down quotes every few pages, for sure.

• • • RONAN LYNCH’S REC • • • 1. Stare for way too long and give him a tin of organic shea butter from your dreams. 2. Become a farmer3. Profit.60% of the time it works every time.jk but rlly• • • RONAN LYNCH’S REC • • • — The Diviners Series by Libba BrayEvie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far.REC BC: We all know Ronan Lynch reads turn of the century girl power YA in his spare time, c’mon. And we all know Ronan and Adam are picking out their books together. No but really, I love Libba Bray. I included her twice for a reason, she’s hilarious and she’s great at her job. The Diviners features an oddball cast of characters with supernatural secrets (we all know how Ronan Lynch feels about these,) centering on Evie, who was recently kicked out of her hometown for being a little too much…herself. I really hope that you find something you love, either in these or using these as a jumping-off point! I’m about to start The Foxhole Court which I know is also adored by TRC fans, so if you haven’t checked that out, I can’t personally recommend it yet bc I only rec things I’ve read, but go for it!

#prettyygirlx #book recommendations #books #the raven cycle #YA lit #Libba Bray #rxcs #txxt #long post #text #Maggie Stiefvater #The Secret History #Donna Tartt #Daniel Handler #Lemony Snicket #Six of Crows #Leigh Bardugo

417 notes · View notes

newingtonnow · 4 years

Text

Looking Back: Tempest Tossed, the Story of Isabella Beecher Hooker

By Susan Campbell for the Shoreline Times

She co-wrote Connecticut’s first property law for women. She campaigned against slavery at a time when genteel Hartford society did not do such things. She wrote thoughtful, creative magazine pieces, testified before the US Congress and Hartford’s legislators, and politicked and cajoled for votes for women. Yet Isabella Beecher Hooker does not inhabit many historical records. She is mentioned only briefly, and often accompanied by the dismissive qualifier, “eccentric.”

Portrait of Isabella Beecher – Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

Isabella Beecher Hooker was the younger half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her family raised her to be a “Fabulous Beecher”—to believe that she had a destiny to fulfill. She reluctantly married a man who became her fiercest editor and strongest supporter. She had children with whom she was never quite comfortable, and kept a series of revealing journals the family kept from the public for fear that they might reinforce the belief that she suffered from mental illness. Her own family members actually started the rumors of mentally impairment when she refused to side with them in defending her famous and respected half-brother, the minister Henry Ward Beecher, when he stood accused of adultery.

Isabella Beecher’s Formative Years

Isabella Beecher was born February 22, 1822, in Litchfield, then home to a progressive girls’ school, a well-known law school, and a popular church led by her father, the Rev. Lyman Beecher. The reverend first came to national prominence in the early 1800s preaching on Long Island, then moved on to Litchfield, Boston, and Ohio. Along the way, he married three wives, and buried two of them. Isabella was the product of his second marriage, to Harriet Porter Beecher, a woman of wealth who was in no way prepared to be the wife of a minister of much influence and small means, as well as the mother of eight children mourning the death of their mother, Lyman’s first wife, Roxanna.

Upon her marriage, Harriet Porter mostly retired to her bedroom. She died when Isabella was a teenager. Isabella lived with various older siblings before moving to Hartford to live more or less permanently with her sister Mary Beecher Perkins, and her husband, Hartford attorney Thomas Perkins. There, John Hooker, a scion of Connecticut history, noticed her. He was an enthusiastic suitor, but Isabella did not have any interest in marrying. She knew that the marriage contract was the last legal document a woman ever signed, and Isabella wanted none of that.

John proved persistent, however, and the couple wed after a two-year courtship conducted mostly by letters. Beecher was a brilliant and dedicated activist who committed to the abolitionist movement whole-heartedly and then, as had so many suffragists of her time, moved her attention to the enfranchisement of women.

Early in her adult life, she tamped down her intellect to focus on what the world told her was most important—her children. Her frustration began to build, however, when she realized that the focus of her attention would eventually grow up and leave her with a large Hartford house and too much time on her hands. She reached out to Elizabeth Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott and other suffragists, and earned their trust, as well as their occasional dismay, as she did not always fall in-line with them, either.

Convention program of the First International Woman Suffrage Conference and the 34th Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, DC, 1902, where Isabella Beecher Hooker is listed as the President of the Connecticut chapter – Library of Congress, American Memory

Beecher went on to found the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, and help keep the national suffrage movement afloat for years by making significant contributions to it. In 1870, she and John wrote the law for their state legislator to introduce that granted property rights to women and they petitioned the Connecticut legislature for seven years until it finally passed.

The Beecher Scandal

When her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, stood accused of adultery by one of his parishioners, the Beecher family circled the wagons. Not Isabella, however. She knew his accuser and the newspaper publisher who broke the story. She believed—and history proved her right—that her brother was guilty. She asked him to repent, and then helpfully offered to preach at his Brooklyn, New York, church while he got right with God. He refused her offer, and though he stayed in touch through lovely letters, the rift never healed for some of her other family members, who promptly started rumors that Isabella did not possess a fit mind.

Her sister Harriet even wrote a satirical novel about the suffrage movement in which a thinly disguised Isabella appears as a naïve scatterbrain. People who wanted Henry Ward’s sex scandal to just go away were angry that Isabella was so outspoken about it. She never completely escaped the accusations of mental impairment, though she kept pushing.

Full-length portrait of Isabella Beecher Hooker – Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Sewall Collection

Isabella was also a spiritualist. She believed that the veil separating the living and the dead was quite thin, and that the living and dead had the ability to correspond. She took great comfort in that belief, as did so many mourners reeling from losses inflicted during the Civil War. Some of the bold-faced names of the day dabbled in spirituality, including neighbor Mark Twain, who made public fun of spiritualism even though a spiritualist healed his wife when she was younger. But Isabella never dabbled. She was all in.

John preceded Isabella in death in 1901, and toward the end of her life she spent more and more time in her bedroom, awaiting word from John’s spirit. There were occasional forays into public, and she continued to lend her name to the Connecticut suffrage cause (in which she insisted the new generation be given a leadership role) but she suffered a stroke in January 1907, lingered a few days and then died—her legacy of establishing voting rights for women unfinished.

Susan Campbell is author of Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker (Wesleyan University Press: 2014) and is the Robert C. Vance Chair for Journalism and Mass Communication at Central Connecticut State University. She is also a trustee at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Museum and a writing instructor at the Mark Twain House and Museum.

from Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project https://connecticuthistory.org/looking-back-tempest-tossed-the-story-of-isabella-beecher-hooker/

#History

0 notes

rheanimalsachikokassielynn · 6 years

Text

Major Essay 1

Rheanne Harkness

Professor Timothy Greenup

English 112

25 October 2017

All Sides of the Characterization Spectrum: Evolution Verses Devolution

In the event that the average college student has taken even the most basic literature course, he or she should at least be somewhat familiar with and be able to tell the difference between three-dimensional characters, two-dimensional characters, and stock characters across a variety of different narratives - graphic novels being no exception. Three-dimensional characters (or “round characters”) may be traditionally thought of as the most important asset that a work of fiction has other than an engaging plot, atmosphere, or tone. After all, they by default, end up being portrayed as the most like real people, and as such, have the best chance of connecting with the reader on a deeper, more personal level, and audience identification can often be an essential part of what makes a story truly impactful to those who read it. No matter how much water this way of looking at round characters happens to hold though, that doesn’t mean readers of a particular work should entirely dismiss the roles stock and/or two-dimensional (or “flat characters”) play in strengthening its content as a whole - even if those roles are seemingly limited to serving as stepping stones that guide a potential round character as he or she goes through change. This begs the question: If both the flat and stock characters in a simple, straightforward comic like “Batman: Year One” only exist to help round characters in their development, are these same types of characters tailored to that same purpose in the more complex and formally depicted graphic novel that is “From Hell”?

To begin answering this question, there must be some semblance of comparison between the two pieces’ main characters and how interactions with other less imposing characters affect their motivations in the long run. In “Batman: Year One”, almost, if not every other character that Jim Gordon has ties to (particularly the few female characters) can be considered as more of a catalyst for change in his character than anything else. Take Gordon’s wife, Barbara for instance, throughout the comic, the reader never gets to learn much about her apart from the fact that she’s the supportive, pregnant housewife of his. Because Barbara is kept at arm’s length from so much of her husband’s troubles within the force until the very end of the comic and we only hear brief mention of the couple’s marital problems from Gordon’s perspective, Barbara represents nothing more than a stereotype, and thusly cannot be described as anything more than a stock character. But both her and Gordon’s unborn child are important nonetheless since Gordon’s desire to protect them is established as the driving force of his character from page one onwards. Sargent Essen is a representation of the “Femme Fatale” stereotype that’s seen so often in Film Noir; and again, the only bit of backstory we get from her is told to the reader from Gordon’s perspective in a single panel. She gives Gordon internal conflict to work through that works in tandem with the external conflicts he’s already facing. Three-dimensional characters are expected to have moments of weakness in their convictions. So, by having Essen as the vehicle through which Gordon deals with that weakness by having him torn between two places, (his obligation to his family and his newfound feelings for her) it makes the reader want to keep following him on his “Hero’s Journey” as well as call into question just how far he’s willing to go in order to do what’s right, as he himself isn’t so sure anymore - much like an actual human being might feel in the same situation.

If Lieutenant Gordon is the most prominent three-dimensional character from Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One”, the most prominent round character from Alan Moore’s “From Hell” would be Doctor William Gull. Gull by contrast, doesn’t let other characters define who he is as one could argue for Gordon, (unless of course, the historical figures that Gull reveres so much - like William Blake and Nicholas Hawksmoor, are taken into account). It is seemingly established just how deep-seated Gull’s lack of empathy towards his fellow man really is from the first moment we see him purely out of plot convenience without any residual reason for it that wouldn’t have to be inferred by the readers on their own. To this effect, the essence of Gull’s character could simply be chopped up to his profession, in that many doctors do experience a loss of empathy while experimenting on human bodies for medical benefit; on top of which, he’d taken to dissecting animals (as is elaborately showcased in several disjointed panels with a mouse on the grounds of Beaumont Rectory) out of mere curiosity long before becoming a doctor in his adult life (Campbell Ch 2 p 6).

This aspect of Gull’s identity is significant and does give the audience some insight as to why he might and would eventually take on the “Jack the Ripper” persona. However, I don’t think that just being an emotionally detached doctor is enough to account for every facet of Gull’s character as much it sets the groundwork for those facets overall. Considering Gull’s long-dead heroes to be actual characters doesn’t feel terribly practical. So, it’s probably safe to assume that Gull has been shaped as a person by what he’s been exposed to more than who he’s been exposed to. The only time Gull lets others influence his actions at all is when they come into conflict with what he believes or stands for - like the whole reason he is committing these murders in Whitechapel to begin with. Gull is a firm proponent of the notion that men are superior to women, so the closer he gets to disposing of all these filthy prostitutes and by extension, fulfilling what he feels to be his divine purpose in life and throughout history, the more savage and less methodical the killings themselves become. It’s only when Gull briefly travels to the future a second time (in a purely non-character-driven plot point) and is so disillusioned by what he finds that he begins to lose heart with what he’s done. Up until then, though, Gull knew exactly who he was and what he wanted. Any other character who observed him (round, flat, or stock) could only do just that, observe and offer nothing (even unconsciously) that could sway him of his convictions whatsoever.

Conversely, what puts a major rift between “Batman: Year One” and “From Hell” in terms of how the protagonists can be thought of as round would be that Gull does not evolve as a character so much as he has devolved by the time his role in the story finally reaches its end. Nowhere does this erosion become more apparent than directly after Gull travels to what would have been the present day at the time this novel was written. More specifically, at the point where Gull takes the heart of the women who may or may not have been Mary Kelly out of the fireplace hearth and watches it burn on the tip of his surgical knife, a look of wistful melancholia has dawned his face, as if to say that only for a moment, even he realizes how empty and fruitless his endeavors toward any sort of divinity through murder truly were on principal. Although, of course, Gull would never dare admit it to anyone - least of all himself (Campbell Ch 10 p 29). This single panel image is made all the more telling when one pairs it with what Gull declares to Netley across a middle row of panels a few pages later as most of his face is eerily covered in shadow, but with an air of resignation about it: “I‘m finished. I have been climbing...all my life, toward a single peak. Now I have reached it. I have stood and felt the wind. I have seen all the world beneath me. Now there is only descent. Only the valley. Would that I had died there...in that light above the cloud line.” (Moore and Campbell Ch 10 p 33).

The icing on the cake and its effectiveness at cementing just how far Gull has fallen afterwards is really dependent upon whether or not one believes that he truly did come close to ascending to Godhood just before death in an insane asylum at the apex of chapter twelve. Being that Alan Moore leaves the answer widely open to interpretation, I personally would pose the argument that his apparent journey through time and space was merely a series of fragmented illusions that play out similarly to the concept of a person’s life flashing before their eyes as they’re about to die. Only in Gull’s case, his life wasn’t flashing before his eyes, but rather his abstract ambitions and ideas of what moving on to a higher plane of existence might be like were. If there is indeed a grain of truth in Gull’s last words to Netley the night he killed “Mary Kelly”, then the image of a poor old man mumbling incoherently within the walls of an asylum and never moving past his unhealthy obsession with achieving historical/spiritual greatness fits much more consistently with someone who both literally and figuratively has nowhere left to go but down.

Ultimately, I feel that the secondary characters in “From Hell” did not aid in developing Doctor Gull as a character in the way that they did for Jim Gordon in “Batman: Year One”. This is because, unlike Gordon, Gull never really forged any deeply personal relationships with others that were impactful enough to dictate his actions. His life experiences as a self-righteous doctor as well as a time traveler deprived him of the ability to genuinely empathize with the people around him. Thus, those experiences were consequently the only thing left to propel him through his journey and eventual derailment that awaits Gull at the end of the story. Every action of Gordon’s by contrast was performed for the sake of the people he cared about. Regardless of how uninteresting these flat and stock characters may have been to the audience, it’s no wonder that their existence as Gordon’s driving motivation made for such a relatable protagonist who we want to see rise above the challenges his environment has set for him by the time his story concludes. As far as Gull is concerned, he isn’t meant to be a relatable protagonist as much as the complete opposite. So, if the flat and stock characters aid him at all, it’s to mirror the audience members’ impressions of him (which are mostly rooted in fear, intimidation, curiosity, respect, and annoyance). I suppose in this way, if some characters need not be three-dimensional to be effective, one could also say that they need not be at the forefront of the round character’s main concerns for he or she to go through intended changes set in place by the author of the story either - still being just as effective, but in a different way!

Works Cited

Hamilton, Sharon. “Characterization.” Essential Literary Terms, Second Edition. Norton, 2017, p. 136.

Miller, Frank and David Mazzucchelli. Batman: Year One. DC Comics, 2005.

Moore, Alan and Eddie Campbell. From Hell. Top Shelf Productions, 2014.

#Rheanne Harkness #English 112 Final #Digital Portfolio #Major Essays

1 note · View note

fyeahanneboleyn · 7 years

Photo

tl;dr: I just found one of my favorite written portrayals of Anne Boleyn, and it came out in the 1940s.

Last month I read Margaret Campbell Barnes’ My Lady of Cleves, which was a really good read (and the only novel about AOC I’ve come across!). One of the intriguing things about it is that even years after her death, Anne Boleyn is still very much there. She’s a vibrant, laughing ghost in the minds of those who have outlived her: Henry can never quite push her from his mind, the men around him recall all too well the turmoil of her brief reign, and for this new Anne, wife number four, “Nan Boleyn” is an object of both sympathy and terror. I was fascinated by these elusive glimpses of Anne, so of course when I found out Barnes had written a novel all about her I had to get it. And it didn’t disappoint!

Barnes’ Anne grabs you immediately and she never lets go. She is so difficult and complicated and nuanced; I felt like I was reading about a person, something bizarrely absent from so many novels about her. Do you want an Anne with initiative, one who ekes out as much agency from her situation as she possibly can? Here is an Anne for you! Do you want an Anne who is intensely devoted to both her faith and her family? An Anne who, despite her initial disappointment in Elizabeth’s sex, immediately defends her to Henry nonetheless? An Anne whose sharp temper makes her cruel in times of stress, but who genuinely strives to be a better person - sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing, like an actual human being? There’s an Anne here for every taste, including for those who acknowledge her flaws.

As for the other characters, there’s a lovely, loyal George Boleyn here, and a Thomas Boleyn who isn’t a total dick, and a warm stepmother named Jocunda (whose existence is...kind of weird, but the “go-to” research was different at the time so fine). Jane Parker has moments of not being awful (low bar, but still)! Anne is surrounded by female friends, from Jocunda to Margaret Wyatt and Arabella Savile and even, briefly, Jane Seymour. And Henry is a dominating presence, which is refreshing after the Henry-shaped pile of mush from A King’s Obsession; he’s charming and hot-tempered and cruel and charismatic by turns. You can see why he’s worthy of both love and loathing. His and Anne’s courtship, though it starts out completely one-sided on his part, is as tempestuous as you would expect from two such massive personalities, and the disintegration of their marriage is nothing less than explosive.

One of the really cool things about Brief Gaudy Hour is that, as I read, different portrayals of Anne kept popping into my head. There were witty bits of dialogue that recalled Natalie Dormer or Genevieve Bujold, sharp rejoinders that reminded me of Claire Foy and Natalie Portman, dignified moments that made me think of Claire Cooper or Emma Connell. It was as if the Annes that have come since, even when they focused on different facets of her character, could almost all trace some fictional ancestry back to this portrayal.

Obviously there were frustrating moments; with a figure as enigmatic and hotly debated as Anne you’re never going to get everything “right”, especially when you’re writing in the 40s. Jane Parker, while not the completely loathsome person of some portrayals, still doesn’t get the treatment she deserves (although it’s probably the least terrible version of her I’ve seen recently). I can definitely see Anne’s relationship with Harry Percy here being divisive - on the one hand it allows her to be a teenager and to exercise her sexual agency, which I personally liked, but it is very goopy and arguably makes somewhat stickier territory out of the later charges against her. There were also times when Anne’s nastiness was played up more than it needed to be (see the Circe masque, or almost any time she mentions his daughter Mary to Henry).

But all said, I really loved this book. I loved this portrayal of Anne. It was exhilarating, it was complex, and it made her feel real. I slowed down my reading towards the end because I found myself hoping that maybe, just this once, the story would end differently.

It didn’t. But Barnes told it well and with compassion, and that was a pretty great consolation prize.

#Anne Boleyn #Brief Gaudy Hour #Margaret Campbell Barnes #book review

14 notes · View notes

goconservativechristian · 4 years

Text

Demons: Ancient Superstition or Historical Reality?by Wayne Jackson, M.A.

As one begins a perusal of the New Testament, he encounters an unusual phenomenon known as “demon possession.” The first Gospel writer recorded these words: “And the report of him [Jesus] went forth into all Syria: and they brought unto him all that were sick, holden with divers diseases and torments, possessed with demons, and epileptic, and palsied; and he healed them” (Matthew 4:24, ASV). From this point on, there are numerous references to “demons” or “demon possession” in the New Testament. [NOTE: “Devils,” as found in the KJV, is an incorrect rendition. The Greek word for devil is

diabolos

. Other terms,

diamon

(found once) and

dimonion

(63 times), are transliterated as “demon(s)” in the ASV. There is only one devil, but there are many demons.]Critics of the Bible, of course, allege that this is an example of the sort of gross superstition that characterizes the ancient volume. The following quote represents a typical atheistic approach to this matter:

Mark 5:1-13 relates an incredible story wherein Jesus casts out the “devils” from an unfortunate man. He then causes the devils to enter, instead, a herd of swine, and the swine, thus bedeviled, race over a cliff, fall into the sea and drown. Fundamentalists would have us believe that this is a true story. That tells us a lot about fundamentalists. Belief in demons and fairies and goblins and dragons ended, for most people, ages ago, and is remembered only in some Fairy Tales. Such primeval superstitions should be left behind, in our colorful past, where they belong (Hayes, 1996, pp. 129-130).

Even religious modernists are prone to dismiss the biblical accounts of demon possession. William Barclay wrote:

We need not argue whether demons were realities or not. One thing certain is that in the time of Jesus people believed in them with terrified intensity. If a man believes he is ill, he will be ill. If a man believed that he was demon-possessed, then, illusion or no, he was definitely ill in mind and body (1976, p. 26).

The Scottish scholar went on to concede that Jesus may have believed in demons, but that “He did not come into this world to give men medical knowledge, and there is no reason to think that his medical knowledge would be any more advanced than that of the people of his day” (p. 27).To suggest that such a comment is a reflection upon the deity of Christ is an understatement. The New Testament does not represent Jesus merely as believing in demons, but depicts Him actually speaking to these beings, and being spoken to by them. He even commanded demons to do certain things. Either these evil spirits were a reality, or else the biblical record is entirely wrong. There is no other way to view the matter.This sort of

a priori

dismissal of the historical record is typical of unbelief. The skeptic, and even those religionists who have been influenced by the rationalistic mode of thought, repudiate anything that is not consistent with current human experience. But such an ideology simply is not an intelligent basis upon which to establish conclusions. There is validity in the credibility of historical testimony. The reality of demon activity, therefore, is not to be determined upon the basis of twentieth-century experiences; rather, it is grounded in whether or not the New Testament documents are credible.While I do not have the space to explore this matter in depth, I would like to make this observation. In 1846, Simon Greenleaf, Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University, produced a work titled

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice.

Greenleaf was the greatest authority in the history of legal procedure on what constitutes evidence. His massive three-volume set,

A Treatise on the Law of Evidence

(1842-53), is, to this very day, a standard on the topic of evidence. Greenleaf argued in

The Testimony

—with dramatic authority—that the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John passed the strictest tests of authenticity, and thus may be regarded as dependable (1903, pp. 1-54). And without controversy is the fact that these writers described cases of demonic activity during the ministry of Jesus.

THE ORIGIN OF DEMONS

The etymology of the term “demon” is rather obscure, but some have suggested that it comes from a Greek root meaning “to know,” hence probably means “a knowing one” (Vine, 1991, p. 203). Vincent noted that Plato derived the term from

daemon

, signifying “knowing” or “wise” (1972, p. 92). Ancient Greek writers suggested that the genesis of the term is to be found in the fact that these entities were considered to be “intelligent beings” (McClintock and Strong, 1968, 2:639). I will not concern myself with a detailed discussion of how demons were perceived in the ancient world, except to say that they were seen as evil spirits “somewhere between the human and the divine” (Arndt and Gingrich, 1967, p. 168).Unlike the speculative literature of antiquity, the New Testament makes no attempt to explain the origin of demons or to describe any materialized features (cf. Reese, 1992, 2:141). This appears to be significant; the restraint, I believe, is a subtle evidence of the divine inspiration of the narratives (see Jackson, 1996). Scholars, however, have speculated as to the origin of demons. I will consider briefly some of the prevalent ideas.(1) Some claim that demons were the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamic race of men who lived upon the Earth in a “gap period” that allegedly fits between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. There are two things wrong with that notion: (a) There is absolutely no evidence that there ever was a historical “gap” between the first two verses of Genesis (see Fields, 1976). (b) There were no people before Adam. He came directly from God (Luke 3:38), and was the “first” man (1 Corinthians 15:45).(2) Others trace the origin of demons to a supposed cohabitation between angels and certain women of the pre-Flood world (Genesis 6:1-6). This theory is negated by the fact that Christ taught that angels are sexless beings, incapable of such unions (Matthew 22:30; see also Kaiser, 1992, pp. 33-38).(3) It has been argued that first-century demons may be identified with the fallen angels mentioned in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6, some of whom, consistent with the divine plan, were permitted to leave temporarily that sphere of confinement for the purpose of inhabiting certain people. Charles Hodge argued this theory (1960, p. 643), which probably is the most popular idea regarding this matter.(4) Another view is that demons were the spirits of wicked dead men who were allowed by God to leave the Hadean realm to accommodate the implementation of the divine plan of redemption. Josephus claimed that demons were the “spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them” (

Wars

7.6.3). Alexander Campbell delivered a lecture in Nashville, Tennessee on March 10, 1841, in which he, in rather persuasive fashion, argued the case that the “demons” of the ancient world were the spirits of the dead. The printed form of that presentation is well worth studying (Campbell, n.d., pp. 379-402).In the final analysis, no dogmatic conclusion can be drawn with reference to the origin of demons. That they existed admits of no doubt to anyone who takes the Bible seriously; as to their origin, the Scriptures are silent.

THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF DEMONS

The

nature

of demons is spelled out explicitly in the New Testament. They were “spirit” beings. This, of course, creates a problem for the skeptic, who denies that there is anything beyond the material. But consider the testimony of Matthew. “And when evening was come, they brought unto him [Christ] many possessed with

demons

: and he cast out the

spirits

with a word” (8:16). Note that the terms “demons” and “spirits” are used interchangeably. Since it is known also that “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39), one must conclude that demons were not physical beings.As spirit entities, demons could exercise both volition (“I will return...”) and locomotion (“Then goeth he...”) (Matthew 12:44-45). Moreover, they could assimilate factual information. A demon once spoke to Christ and said: “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34; cf. Mark 1:24). Too, they possessed a religious sensitivity. “Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well, the demons also believe and shudder” (James 2:19). “Shudder” suggests to “be struck with extreme fear, to be horrified” (Thayer, 1958, p. 658). The fact is, they tremble in prospect of their ultimate doom (see Matthew 8:29).As to their character, demons are depicted as “unclean” and “evil.” In describing the vile nature of the Jewish nation of His day, the Lord gave an illustration regarding a man who was possessed of an “unclean” spirit (Matthew 12:43); the spirit left the man, but eventually re-entered the gentleman, taking with him other spirits “more evil” than himself (vs. 45). This passage reveals the “unclean” (Greek

akathartos

—“not pure”) or “evil” (

kakos

—that which not only is morally malignant, but injurious as well; cf. Vine, 1991, p. 272) disposition of demons. From this text it is observed also that there were degrees of vileness (“more evil”) in demons.

THE EFFECTS OF DEMON POSSESSION

The physical and/or mental effects occurring in certain individuals as a consequence of being possessed by a demon or demons (more than one could indwell a person; Mary Magdalene had once been inhabited by seven demons—Luke 8:2) were varied. Some demoniacs were afflicted with blindness and/or the inability to speak (Matthew 9:32; 12:22). Some thus possessed might be prone to violent convulsions. A case recorded by all three synoptic writers tells of a young man who was “epileptic.” He suffered grievously, frequently falling into the fire or into water (Matthew 17:15). He was dashed to the ground and bruised badly (Mark 9:18; Luke 9:39); he foamed at the mouth, ground his teeth, and “pineth away” (Mark 9:18). This final descriptive may suggest that the boy’s body became rigid so that he was incapable of motion (Arndt and Gingrich, 1967, p. 550). A demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee had excessive strength. He often had been bound with chains and fetters, but he had broken these restraints into pieces, and no one had the power to tame him (cf. also Acts 19:16). Further, he was characterized by both emotional illness and antisocial behavior (e.g., he wore no clothes—Luke 8:27), but when Christ purged the demon from the poor fellow he was observed “clothed, and in his

right mind

” (Mark 5:15).It is important to distinguish between cause and effect in these cases. The cause was that of demon possession; the effects were physical and/or emotional maladies. The Scriptures never confuse the two. In other words, “demon possession” was not just an ancient, unenlightened attempt to explain physical and/or mental problems. Rather, a clear distinction is made between being inhabited by an unclean spirit and being sick. Demon possession could produce illness, but not all illness was attributed to the indwelling of evil spirits. Note the distinction that is drawn in the following passage. “And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him [Jesus] all that were sick, and them that were possessed with demons” (Mark 1:32). The double use of the definite article (

tous

), together with the conjunction, reveals that two distinct classes are under consideration—those who were merely sick, and those who were demon possessed and may or may not have had attending problems. Lenski has commented: “Two classes are markedly distinguished; those suffering from ordinary diseases and those possessed with demons. The distinction shows that the latter cannot be classed with the former in spite of modern attempts in that direction” (1964, p. 84).

THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN ALLOWING DEMON POSSESSION

The New Testament clearly indicates that demons were under the control of divine authority. Jesus, for example, could command them to leave a person (Matthew 8:16), or even to keep quiet (Mark 1:34). The demons that tormented the man in the country of the Gerasenes could not enter the nearby swine herd except by the Lord’s concession (Mark 5:13-14). Since it is the case that demons could do nothing except by divine permission, the intriguing question is:

Why

did God allow these malevolent beings to enter into people?The truth of the matter is, the Bible does not give a specific answer to this question—as much as our curiosity wants to be fed. I believe, though, that a reasonable case can be built to help shed some light on the subject.If the mission of Jesus Christ, as the divine Son of God, was to be effective, the Lord’s absolute authority had to be established. No stone could be left unturned. Accordingly, we see the Savior demonstrating His authority in a variety of ways. (1) Christ exhibited power over diseases and physical ailments (Matthew 9:20-22; John 4:46-54; 9:1-41). (2) The Lord exerted His authority over material objects (Matthew 14:15-21; 17:24-27; John 2:1-11; 21:1-14). (3) Jesus showed that He could control the elements of nature (Matthew 8:23-27). (4) The Master even suspended the force of gravity with reference to His own body when He walked upon the waters of the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:22-23). (5) The Lord released certain ones who had been captured by death (Matthew 9:18-26; John 11:1-45). (6) Finally, it is not unreasonable to assume that, just as the Savior had displayed His marvelous power in all these realms, it likewise was appropriate that He be able to demonstrate His authority in the

spirit

sphere as well. Satan is not in

full

control! In fact, note this interesting passage. When the seventy disciples returned from an evangelistic trip (Luke 10:1), they joyfully proclaimed to Christ: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in thy name.” Jesus responded: “I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:17-18). The significance of that statement is this: the disciples’ power over demons, under the aegis of Christ’s name (authority), was but a

preview

of the ultimate and complete fall of the devil. One scholar has expressed the matter in the following way.

Jesus viewed the triumph of these [disciples] as being symptomatic of ever so many other victories over Satan throughout the course of the new dispensation, triumphs accomplished through the work of thousands of other missionaries. He was looking far into the future (cf. Matt. 24:14). He saw the ultimate discomfiture of the ugly dragon and all his minions (Hendriksen, 1978, p. 581).

Consider another reference. Christ said: “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you. Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man?, and then he will spoil his house” (Matthew 12:28-29; Luke 11:20-22). The Savior’s argument is: I have cast out demons, the servants of Satan. I could not have done so if I were not stronger than he is. My power thus is superior to his.These passages, I believe, help us to understand the purpose of demon possession in the first century. It established the

comprehensive

and

supreme

authority of the Son of God.Why demons entered

particular

individuals is not explained in the Scriptures. Unger speculated that “in the great majority of cases possession is doubtless traced to yielding voluntarily to temptation and to sin...” (1952, p. 95). However, in the instance of the epileptic boy, the lad had been tormented “from childhood” (Mark 9:21), which suggests, at the very least, that personal sin was not necessarily a causative factor in demon possession.

CASES IN THE GOSPEL RECORDS

OF JESUS’ EXPELLING DEMONS

The demoniac in the synagogue (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33-36).

The Gerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39).

The Syrophoenician girl (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30).

The epileptic boy (Matthew 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43).

The mute demoniac (Matthew 9:32-34).

The blind/mute demoniac (Matthew 12:22ff.; Luke 11:15).

A CONTRAST WITH PAGANISM

It is worthwhile to make this brief observation. The ancient world abounded with superstition relative to demons (where the genuine exists, the counterfeit will be as well). But there is a vast chasm between the accounts of demons in the New Testament and that of the pagan world and, in fact, even among some of the Hebrew nation. For instance, as mentioned earlier, there are no accounts in the New Testament of any visual descriptions of demons. Such characterizations, however, were common in the heathen world. A bronze statue from ancient Babylon contains the image of the demon Pazuzu. The figure has the wings and feet of an eagle, a human body with claws for hands, and a misshapen head (Aune, 1979, 1:920). Josephus tells of a demon expulsion whereby the exorcist “put a ring which had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils...” (

Antiquities

8.2.5). The New Testament contains no such absurd concoctions.

DEMON POSSESSION TODAY?

Do evil spirits enter into human bodies and afflict people today? I confidently affirm they do not. Unfortunately, though, some modern writers have argued that demon activity is still a part of Earth’s environment. Charles Ryrie contended that certain “fallen angels” are “still free to roam the earth as demons carrying out Satan’s designs” (1959, p. 296). Merrill Unger, a respected scholar, subtitled his book,

Biblical Demonology,

“A Study of the Spiritual Forces Behind the Present World Unrest.” Several years ago a book titled

UFOs, Satan and Evolution

enjoyed a limited circulation in the evangelical community. Therein the author claimed that hundreds of UFO visits to Earth represented an invasion of demons. He cited one “example” where a demon raped a woman (an interesting feat for a spirit!). The fact that a prominent creationist wrote the Foreword for this literary fiasco remains an inexplicable mystery.The position that demon possession does

not

exist today can be argued from a twofold base. First, a thoughtful study of the details associated with the so-called modern examples of demon habitation reveals that these cases bear no resemblance to the genuine examples of spirit possession described in the New Testament. The contrast is dramatic. Second, a consideration of certain data set forth in the New Testament leads only to the conclusion that demon possession was a first-century experience; it was allowed for a very specific reason, and the divine concession was suspended near the end of the apostolic era.

THE MODERN EXORCISM MANIA

When the movie,

The Exorcist

(based upon William Blatty’s novel of the same name), made its appearance in December 1973, a wave of mystical excitement that has been dubbed “the exorcism frenzy,” swept the nation. (By the time the movie had been out for 5 weeks, Blatty’s book had sold 9 million copies.) Scores of people began to surmise that they were possessed of evil spirits—or that they knew someone else who was! Numerous articles regarding these alleged experiences appeared in mainline newspapers and magazines. A careful consideration of the details involved in these alleged episodes highlights some startling contrasts to the New Testament (cf. Woodward, 1974). Reflect upon the following differences.(1) The “exorcisms” of today are performed almost invariably in dark, secluded environments, only to be publicized later. When Jesus cast out demons, the episodes were public, and therefore subject to critical examination (cf. Luke 4:31-37).(2) The Lord could expel evil spirits with but a word, and the effect was immediate (Luke 4:36; Matthew 17:18). The Jesuit Priest who supposedly “exorcised” a demon from the youngster who served as the subject of Blatty’s book,

The Exorcist,

confessed that it took him two months of preparation (fasting on bread and water), and twenty ritual ceremonies to purge the child.(3) The demoniacs of the New Testament era were afflicted, either physically or mentally, by a malfunction of what were otherwise normal human traits. Those cases involved no grotesque details. However, according to Roman Catholic priest Luigi Novagese (the official exorcist for the papal diocese in Rome), “A man’s skin turned white like paper, his teeth became transparent, his eyes bulged with balls of flame and fire issued from his mouth.” One priest claimed that a demon took a bite out of his sandwich. The February 11, 1974 issue of

Newsweek

magazine carried a photo of the burglarized delicacy, displaying perfect, human-like teeth prints! (I wonder—do demons get cavities?)(4) Modern demoniacs frequently are described as uttering “fierce curses” and “bursts of blasphemy.” In the New Testament record, demons always were very respectful of deity (Mark 1:24; 3:11). There is not a solitary case of a demon blaspheming either God or Christ in the biblical narratives.(5) Two cases of demon possession in the New Testament reveal that the unclean spirits could empower their hosts with supernatural strength (Mark 5:1-20; cf. Acts 19:13-16). The demoniac described in Mark 5 could not be bound even with a “chain.” A respected university professor posed this interesting query: “If we have demon-possessed people today, why in my travels in over forty countries of the world have I never seen a person who is so strong that you can’t bind him with chains (cf. Mk. 5:3)?” (Edwards, 1996, p. 135).(6) The ability to cast out demons in the first century was given in order to confirm the truth of the Gospel message (Mark 16:17-20). Modern “exorcists” preach everything but the Gospel.

A REASONABLE ARGUMENT

A powerful case can be made for the proposition that demon possession was not allowed to continue beyond the apostolic age—i.e., the era of miracles.I first must mention that when the prophet Zechariah foretold the coming of the Messianic dispensation, and the blessings that would accompany the spread of the Gospel, he suggested that the Lord would “cause the prophets and the

unclean spirit

to pass out of the land” (13:1-2). Some feel that the expression “unclean spirit” may hint of, or at least include, the cessation of demonic activity. Hailey sees this as a prediction of the eventual termination of prophetic activity (on the part of God’s people) and the curtailing of the power of unclean spirits.

Likewise, unclean spirits, the antithesis of the prophets, would cease. In the conquest of Christ over Satan and his forces, unclean spirits have ceased to control men as they did in the time of the ministry of Christ and the apostles... (1972, p. 392).

While this is not a common view of Zechariah’s prophecy, and certainly not one upon which an entire case could be built, it is not without possibility. A firmer proposition can be argued as follows.With the close of the first century, the age of the supernatural came to a close. God is not empowering men to operate in a miraculous fashion today. This is evinced in the following way:(1) Nothing duplicating the miracles of the first century is apparent today. No one can walk upon water, raise the dead, calm a raging storm, turn water into wine, instantly heal an amputated ear, extract tax money from a fish’s mouth, etc. Miracles are self-authenticating phenomena that cannot be denied, even by hostile critics (cf. John 11:47; Acts 4:14-16); clearly, they are not occurring today.(2) The purpose of supernatural gifts was to confirm the authenticity of divine revelation being received from heaven (Mark 16:9-20; Hebrews 2:1-4). Since the revelatory process was completed when the last New Testament book was written, miracles no longer are needed, hence, have ceased. They were like the scaffolding that is removed once the building is finished.(3) The New Testament explicitly argues that the day was on the horizon when miracles would cease. Paul defended that position both in Ephesians 4:8-16 and in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. During the early days of the apostolic era, divine revelation had been “in part,” i.e., piece-by-piece. The apostle said, however, that when “the perfect” or “the complete” arrived, the partial revelation, which came by means of the various “gifts” (e.g., supernatural knowledge and prophecy), would cease (1 Corinthians 13:8ff.). Prominent Greek scholar, W.E. Vine, summarized the matter well.

With the completion of Apostolic testimony and the completion of the Scriptures of truth (“the faith once for all delivered to the saints”, Jude, 3, R.V.), “that which is perfect” had come, and the temporary gifts were done away. For the Scriptures provided by the Spirit of God were “perfect”. Nothing was to be added to them, nothing taken from them. This interpretation is in keeping with the context (1951, p. 184).

Elsewhere this writer has discussed the theme of miracles and their duration in much greater detail (Jackson, 1990, pp. 114-124).Here is a crucial point. If it is the case that miraculous powers have been removed from the church’s possession, including the ability to cast out demons (Mark 16:17-20), does it stand to reason that God would allow demons to supernaturally assault people today, thus granting Satan an

undue advantage

over the human family? How would this square with the promise that “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4)? In other words, if the gift of expelling demons no longer is extant, is it not a reasonable conclusion that demon possession is obsolete as well?

CONCLUSION

Certainly Satan exerts great influence today. However, as God does not work miraculously in this age, but influences through his Word and through the events of providence, so also, the devil wields his power indirectly, and non-miraculously, through various media. Current cases that are being associated with demon possession doubtless are the results of psychosomatic problems, hysteria, self-induced hypnosis, deception, delusion, and the like. They have natural, though perhaps not always well understood, causes.

REFERENCES

Arndt, William F. and F. Wilbur Gingrich (1967),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago).Aune, D.E. (1979), “Demonology,”

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), revised edition.Barclay, William (1976),

And He Had Compassion—The Healing Miracles of Jesus

(Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press).Campbell, Alexander (no date.),

Popular Lectures and Addresses

(Nashville, TN: Harbinger Book Club).Edwards, Earl (1996), “Powers of Darkness—Demon Possession,”

Settled in Heaven

, ed. David Lipe (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman University).Fields, Weston W. (1976),

Unformed and Unfilled

(Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed).Greenleaf, Simon (1903 edition),

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice

(Newark, NJ: Soney & Sage).Hailey, Homer (1972),

A Commentary on the Minor Prophets

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hayes, Judith (1996),

In God We Trust: But Which One?

(Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation).Hendriksen, William (1978),

An Exposition of the Gospel of Luke

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hodge, Charles (1960 edition),

Systematic Theology

(London: James Clarke).Jackson, Wayne (1990), “Miracles,”

Giving a Reason for Our Hope

, ed. Winford Claiborne, (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman College).Jackson, Wayne (1996), “The Silence of the Scriptures: An Argument for Inspiration,”

Reason & Revelation,

16:17-22, March.Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (1992),

More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).Lenski, R.C.H. (1964),

The Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg).McClintock, John and James Strong, eds. (1968 reprint),

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Reese, David G. (1992), “Demons,”

The Anchor Bible Dictionary

, ed.

David Noel Freedman, (New York: Doubleday).Ryrie, Charles C. (1959),

Biblical Theology of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: Moody).Thayer, J.H. (1958 edition),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark).Unger, Merrill F. (1952),

Biblical Demonology

(Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press).Vincent, Marvin (1972 edition),

Word Studies in the New Testament

(Wilmington, DE: Associated Publishers and Authors).Vine, W.E. (1951),

First Corinthians—Local Church Problems

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).Vine, W.E. (1991),

Amplified Expository Dictionary of New Testament

Words

(Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers).Woodward, Kenneth L. (1974), “The Exorcism Frenzy,”

Newsweek,

83:60-66.

We are happy to grant permission for items in the "Doctrinal Matters" section to be reproduced in part or in their entirety, as long as the following stipulations are observed: (1) Apologetics Press must be designated as the original publisher; (2) the specific Apologetics Press Web site URL must be noted; (3) the author’s name must remain attached to the materials; (4) textual alterations of any kind are strictly forbidden; (5) Some illustrations (e.g., photographs, charts, graphics, etc.) are not the intellectual property of Apologetics Press and as such cannot be reproduced from our site without consent from the person or organization that maintains those intellectual rights; (6) serialization of written material (e.g., running an article in several parts) is permitted, as long as the whole of the material is made available, without editing, in a reasonable length of time; (7) articles, excepting brief quotations, may not be offered for sale or included in items offered for sale; and (8) articles may be reproduced in electronic form for posting on Web sites pending they are not edited or altered from their original content and that credit is given to Apologetics Press, including the web location from which the articles were taken.

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

#READ MORE AT. steve-finnell.blogspot.com

0 notes

stevefinnellp-blog · 5 years

Text

Demons: Ancient Superstition or Historical Reality?by Wayne Jackson, M.A.

diabolos

. Other terms,

diamon

(found once) and

dimonion

Even religious modernists are prone to dismiss the biblical accounts of demon possession. William Barclay wrote:

a priori

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice.

Greenleaf was the greatest authority in the history of legal procedure on what constitutes evidence. His massive three-volume set,

A Treatise on the Law of Evidence

(1842-53), is, to this very day, a standard on the topic of evidence. Greenleaf argued in

The Testimony

THE ORIGIN OF DEMONS

daemon

Wars

THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF DEMONS

The

nature

demons

: and he cast out the

spirits

akathartos

—“not pure”) or “evil” (

kakos

THE EFFECTS OF DEMON POSSESSION

right mind

tous

THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN ALLOWING DEMON POSSESSION

Why

spirit

sphere as well. Satan is not in

full

preview

of the ultimate and complete fall of the devil. One scholar has expressed the matter in the following way.

comprehensive

and

supreme

authority of the Son of God.Why demons entered

particular

CASES IN THE GOSPEL RECORDS

OF JESUS’ EXPELLING DEMONS

The demoniac in the synagogue (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33-36).

The Gerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39).

The Syrophoenician girl (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30).

The epileptic boy (Matthew 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43).

The mute demoniac (Matthew 9:32-34).

The blind/mute demoniac (Matthew 12:22ff.; Luke 11:15).

A CONTRAST WITH PAGANISM

Antiquities

8.2.5). The New Testament contains no such absurd concoctions.

DEMON POSSESSION TODAY?

Biblical Demonology,

“A Study of the Spiritual Forces Behind the Present World Unrest.” Several years ago a book titled

UFOs, Satan and Evolution

not

THE MODERN EXORCISM MANIA

When the movie,

The Exorcist

The Exorcist,

Newsweek

A REASONABLE ARGUMENT

unclean spirit

undue advantage

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Arndt, William F. and F. Wilbur Gingrich (1967),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago).Aune, D.E. (1979), “Demonology,”

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), revised edition.Barclay, William (1976),

And He Had Compassion—The Healing Miracles of Jesus

(Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press).Campbell, Alexander (no date.),

Popular Lectures and Addresses

(Nashville, TN: Harbinger Book Club).Edwards, Earl (1996), “Powers of Darkness—Demon Possession,”

Settled in Heaven

, ed. David Lipe (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman University).Fields, Weston W. (1976),

Unformed and Unfilled

(Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed).Greenleaf, Simon (1903 edition),

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice

(Newark, NJ: Soney & Sage).Hailey, Homer (1972),

A Commentary on the Minor Prophets

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hayes, Judith (1996),

In God We Trust: But Which One?

(Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation).Hendriksen, William (1978),

An Exposition of the Gospel of Luke

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hodge, Charles (1960 edition),

Systematic Theology

(London: James Clarke).Jackson, Wayne (1990), “Miracles,”

Giving a Reason for Our Hope

, ed. Winford Claiborne, (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman College).Jackson, Wayne (1996), “The Silence of the Scriptures: An Argument for Inspiration,”

Reason & Revelation,

16:17-22, March.Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (1992),

More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).Lenski, R.C.H. (1964),

The Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg).McClintock, John and James Strong, eds. (1968 reprint),

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Reese, David G. (1992), “Demons,”

The Anchor Bible Dictionary

, ed.

David Noel Freedman, (New York: Doubleday).Ryrie, Charles C. (1959),

Biblical Theology of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: Moody).Thayer, J.H. (1958 edition),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark).Unger, Merrill F. (1952),

Biblical Demonology

(Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press).Vincent, Marvin (1972 edition),

Word Studies in the New Testament

(Wilmington, DE: Associated Publishers and Authors).Vine, W.E. (1951),

First Corinthians—Local Church Problems

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).Vine, W.E. (1991),

Amplified Expository Dictionary of New Testament

Words

(Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers).Woodward, Kenneth L. (1974), “The Exorcism Frenzy,”

Newsweek,

83:60-66.

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes

stevefinnell-blog · 5 years

Text

Demons: Ancient Superstition or Historical Reality?by Wayne Jackson, M.A.

diabolos

. Other terms,

diamon

(found once) and

dimonion

Even religious modernists are prone to dismiss the biblical accounts of demon possession. William Barclay wrote:

a priori

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice.

Greenleaf was the greatest authority in the history of legal procedure on what constitutes evidence. His massive three-volume set,

A Treatise on the Law of Evidence

(1842-53), is, to this very day, a standard on the topic of evidence. Greenleaf argued in

The Testimony

THE ORIGIN OF DEMONS

daemon

Wars

THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF DEMONS

The

nature

demons

: and he cast out the

spirits

akathartos

—“not pure”) or “evil” (

kakos

THE EFFECTS OF DEMON POSSESSION

right mind

tous

THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN ALLOWING DEMON POSSESSION

Why

spirit

sphere as well. Satan is not in

full

preview

of the ultimate and complete fall of the devil. One scholar has expressed the matter in the following way.

comprehensive

and

supreme

authority of the Son of God.Why demons entered

particular

CASES IN THE GOSPEL RECORDS

OF JESUS’ EXPELLING DEMONS

The demoniac in the synagogue (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33-36).

The Gerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39).

The Syrophoenician girl (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30).

The epileptic boy (Matthew 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43).

The mute demoniac (Matthew 9:32-34).

The blind/mute demoniac (Matthew 12:22ff.; Luke 11:15).

A CONTRAST WITH PAGANISM

Antiquities

8.2.5). The New Testament contains no such absurd concoctions.

DEMON POSSESSION TODAY?

Biblical Demonology,

“A Study of the Spiritual Forces Behind the Present World Unrest.” Several years ago a book titled

UFOs, Satan and Evolution

not

THE MODERN EXORCISM MANIA

When the movie,

The Exorcist

The Exorcist,

Newsweek

A REASONABLE ARGUMENT

unclean spirit

undue advantage

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Arndt, William F. and F. Wilbur Gingrich (1967),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago).Aune, D.E. (1979), “Demonology,”

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), revised edition.Barclay, William (1976),

And He Had Compassion—The Healing Miracles of Jesus

(Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press).Campbell, Alexander (no date.),

Popular Lectures and Addresses

(Nashville, TN: Harbinger Book Club).Edwards, Earl (1996), “Powers of Darkness—Demon Possession,”

Settled in Heaven

, ed. David Lipe (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman University).Fields, Weston W. (1976),

Unformed and Unfilled

(Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed).Greenleaf, Simon (1903 edition),

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice

(Newark, NJ: Soney & Sage).Hailey, Homer (1972),

A Commentary on the Minor Prophets

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hayes, Judith (1996),

In God We Trust: But Which One?

(Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation).Hendriksen, William (1978),

An Exposition of the Gospel of Luke

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hodge, Charles (1960 edition),

Systematic Theology

(London: James Clarke).Jackson, Wayne (1990), “Miracles,”

Giving a Reason for Our Hope

, ed. Winford Claiborne, (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman College).Jackson, Wayne (1996), “The Silence of the Scriptures: An Argument for Inspiration,”

Reason & Revelation,

16:17-22, March.Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (1992),

More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).Lenski, R.C.H. (1964),

The Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg).McClintock, John and James Strong, eds. (1968 reprint),

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Reese, David G. (1992), “Demons,”

The Anchor Bible Dictionary

, ed.

David Noel Freedman, (New York: Doubleday).Ryrie, Charles C. (1959),

Biblical Theology of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: Moody).Thayer, J.H. (1958 edition),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark).Unger, Merrill F. (1952),

Biblical Demonology

(Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press).Vincent, Marvin (1972 edition),

Word Studies in the New Testament

(Wilmington, DE: Associated Publishers and Authors).Vine, W.E. (1951),

First Corinthians—Local Church Problems

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).Vine, W.E. (1991),

Amplified Expository Dictionary of New Testament

Words

(Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers).Woodward, Kenneth L. (1974), “The Exorcism Frenzy,”

Newsweek,

83:60-66.

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

0 notes

megaonewayjesuslove-blog · 5 years

Text

Demons: Ancient Superstition or Historical Reality?by Wayne Jackson, M.A.

diabolos

. Other terms,

diamon

(found once) and

dimonion

Even religious modernists are prone to dismiss the biblical accounts of demon possession. William Barclay wrote:

a priori

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice.

Greenleaf was the greatest authority in the history of legal procedure on what constitutes evidence. His massive three-volume set,

A Treatise on the Law of Evidence

(1842-53), is, to this very day, a standard on the topic of evidence. Greenleaf argued in

The Testimony

THE ORIGIN OF DEMONS

daemon

Wars

THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF DEMONS

The

nature

demons

: and he cast out the

spirits

akathartos

��“not pure”) or “evil” (

kakos

THE EFFECTS OF DEMON POSSESSION

right mind

tous

THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN ALLOWING DEMON POSSESSION

Why

spirit

sphere as well. Satan is not in

full

preview

of the ultimate and complete fall of the devil. One scholar has expressed the matter in the following way.

comprehensive

and

supreme

authority of the Son of God.Why demons entered

particular

CASES IN THE GOSPEL RECORDS

OF JESUS’ EXPELLING DEMONS

The demoniac in the synagogue (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33-36).

The Gerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39).

The Syrophoenician girl (Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30).

The epileptic boy (Matthew 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43).

The mute demoniac (Matthew 9:32-34).

The blind/mute demoniac (Matthew 12:22ff.; Luke 11:15).

A CONTRAST WITH PAGANISM

Antiquities

8.2.5). The New Testament contains no such absurd concoctions.

DEMON POSSESSION TODAY?

Biblical Demonology,

“A Study of the Spiritual Forces Behind the Present World Unrest.” Several years ago a book titled

UFOs, Satan and Evolution

not

THE MODERN EXORCISM MANIA

When the movie,

The Exorcist

The Exorcist,

Newsweek

A REASONABLE ARGUMENT

unclean spirit

undue advantage

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Arndt, William F. and F. Wilbur Gingrich (1967),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago).Aune, D.E. (1979), “Demonology,”

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), revised edition.Barclay, William (1976),

And He Had Compassion—The Healing Miracles of Jesus

(Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press).Campbell, Alexander (no date.),

Popular Lectures and Addresses

(Nashville, TN: Harbinger Book Club).Edwards, Earl (1996), “Powers of Darkness—Demon Possession,”

Settled in Heaven

, ed. David Lipe (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman University).Fields, Weston W. (1976),

Unformed and Unfilled

(Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed).Greenleaf, Simon (1903 edition),

The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice

(Newark, NJ: Soney & Sage).Hailey, Homer (1972),

A Commentary on the Minor Prophets

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hayes, Judith (1996),

In God We Trust: But Which One?

(Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation).Hendriksen, William (1978),

An Exposition of the Gospel of Luke

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Hodge, Charles (1960 edition),

Systematic Theology

(London: James Clarke).Jackson, Wayne (1990), “Miracles,”

Giving a Reason for Our Hope

, ed. Winford Claiborne, (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman College).Jackson, Wayne (1996), “The Silence of the Scriptures: An Argument for Inspiration,”

Reason & Revelation,

16:17-22, March.Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. (1992),

More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).Lenski, R.C.H. (1964),

The Interpretation of Mark’s Gospel

(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg).McClintock, John and James Strong, eds. (1968 reprint),

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).Reese, David G. (1992), “Demons,”

The Anchor Bible Dictionary

, ed.

David Noel Freedman, (New York: Doubleday).Ryrie, Charles C. (1959),

Biblical Theology of the New Testament

(Chicago, IL: Moody).Thayer, J.H. (1958 edition),

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

(Edinburgh, Scotland: T. & T. Clark).Unger, Merrill F. (1952),

Biblical Demonology

(Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press).Vincent, Marvin (1972 edition),

Word Studies in the New Testament

(Wilmington, DE: Associated Publishers and Authors).Vine, W.E. (1951),

First Corinthians—Local Church Problems

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).Vine, W.E. (1991),

Amplified Expository Dictionary of New Testament

Words

(Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers).Woodward, Kenneth L. (1974), “The Exorcism Frenzy,”

Newsweek,

83:60-66.

For catalog, samples, or further information, contact:

Apologetics Press

230 Landmark Drive

Montgomery, Alabama 36117

U.S.A.

Phone (334) 272-8558

http://www.apologeticspress.org

#READ MORE at. steve-finnell.blogspot.com

0 notes

weavingthetapestry · 6 years

Text

Isobel Bruce, Queen of Norway (c.1272-1358)

It may come as a surprise to some that the infamous King Robert I was not the first Bruce to wear a crown. That distinction goes instead to one of his many sisters, Isobel, who, in 1293, became Queen of Norway as the wife of King Eirik II, long before her brother got anywhere near the throne.

Isobel Bruce was the daughter of Marjorie, Countess of Carrick, and her second husband Robert Bruce, 6th Lord of Annandale. Some Norwegian historians place Isobel's birth c.1280, but I’m more inclined to agree with other sources that she was the eldest daughter and closer in age to her brother Robert, who was born in 1274. We have almost no certain information about Isobel’s youth, though we can perhaps theorise about her early social surroundings. Bruce ambitions and experiences- especially for Isobel’s generation- were shaped by many diverse political and cultural contexts. The family had a stake in the largely Gaelic world of Irish Sea politics, from Ulster to Carrick; in English-speaking territories as different as Annandale and Essex; and as part of a French-speaking elite among the English and Scottish nobility, with both continental and insular ambitions. The Bruces were also a large family, Isobel having five brothers (Robert, Niall, Edward, Thomas and Alexander) and at least as many sisters (including Christian, Mary, and Matilda). The antiquated assertion that she was married before the Norwegian match (explaining how Thomas Randolph might be nephew to King Robert) seems extremely unlikely however, and it is more probable one of her parents had another daughter named Isobel who was Randolph's mother.

(The lighthouse here is perched on top of what little is left of Turnberry Castle, seat of Isobel’s mother as countess of Carrick, and one of the childhood homes of the Bruce children, maybe even the birthplace of her brother Robert I. It is situated on the Ayrshire coastline, with Ailsa Craig out to sea. Not my picture)

However, despite the lack of information about her early life, Isobel Bruce’s importance increased in the 1290s- as did her family’s importance more generally. King Alexander III of Scotland had died in 1286, his only living descendant being his granddaughter Margaret of Norway, daughter of Eirik II of Norway by his first wife Margaret of Scotland. But in 1290 the Maid of Norway also died, which provoked a competition for the throne commonly called the Great Cause. I won't go into detail here, but briefly the two main contenders were John Balliol and Isobel’s grandfather Robert Bruce, 'the Competitor’. Eventually, Balliol's case triumphed but this didn't extinguish Bruce ambitions regarding the throne. And it was during the final stages of the Great Cause in 1292- not long before her mother’s death in that same year- that the prospect of Isobel marrying the king of Norway initially surfaced.

Eirik II of Norway had been one of the claimants for the Scottish throne, attempting to inherit through Norse reversionary law as the father of the dead Maid of Norway, though probably the Norwegians never had any serious hope of this claim succeeding, and instead used it as an opportunity to wring political and financial concessions from the Scottish and English crowns. Eirik Magnusson was roughly twenty-four years old in 1292, he had been a widower since the age of fifteen, and the late Margaret of Norway had been his only known child (his brother Duke Håkon however was the more viable heir). Aside from these obvious reasons though, it is a little unclear why he married Isobel Bruce the next year. It is possible that the plans had been made in advance of the decision in favour of Balliol’s claim to the Scottish throne in November 1292, and could have represented the Norwegians’ allying themselves with the Bruce claim as another claimant Florence, Count of Holland had. Alternatively, if the plans were made after Balliol’s claim had won out, the Norwegian king may have been strengthening his relations with the Bruces as powerful magnates who were deeply opposed to the new king of Scots, and in doing so strengthened his relationship with Edward I of England. However given that in 1295 Norway entered into a treaty with France- who had also made a treaty with King John of Scotland which would eventually lead to his deposition by Edward I- promising aid against England, it is very difficult to pin down the exact political strategy which Isobel Bruce’s marriage represented. Nonetheless on 28th September 1293*, Isobel and her father Robert Bruce- named as Earl of Carrick though he had resigned the earldom the previous year to his son- received a safe-conduct from Edward I of England to travel to Norway by Christmas that year, and Isobel and Eirik II were likely married in Bergen soon afterward.

Though sources are sparse for Isobel’s marriage, an inventory of some of her belongings does exist, providing rare evidence of a thirteenth century queen’s trousseau. An indenture dated 25th September 1293, preserved in the English archives, lists certain items to be delivered to Audun Hugleiksson (one of Eirik II’s most trusted advisors) and Weyland de Stiklaw in Bergen before Michaelmas, by Henry de Stiklaw, ‘Master’ Nigel Campbell, Lucas de Tany, and Ralph de Arden. The items were for ‘the most serene lady’ the Queen of Norway, and evidently formed part of an expensive trousseau. Among other furnishings and clothing are listed robes of scarlet and miniver, with tunics and supertunics to form four or more outfits, furred cloaks and hoods, coverlets and bed hangings in cloth of gold and miniver (one bearing the arms of France), various cushions and curtains for two couches, and silk to make a cushion for the Queen’s regalia. The list is topped off with 24 silver plates, 12 cups, 24 salt cellars, basins and pitchers and the like, not to mention two small crowns. For a young bride such possessions served as an expression of status as she travelled far from home, and while they were not as extravagant as the more famous trousseau of Isabella of France, they were still rich pickings for the daughter of an earl, calculated to impress as far as her father could afford...

(Eirik Magnusson, king of Norway. In Norwegian history he is known as ‘priest-hater’ and is remembered for his wars with Denmark and for being dominated by his barons. In Scottish history, he is remembered as having two Scottish queens and especially for being the father of the Maid of Norway. Picture from Wikimedia commons.)

After Isobel’s wedding we lack sources again. Little is known about her life as queen consort, excepting the birth of her daughter in 1297. Ingebjørg Eiriksdatter, likely named for her paternal grandmother, was the only one of Eirik II's two known children to survive him; her half-sister, the unfortunate Margaret, had of course died long before Ingebjørg was born. Thus when Eirik himself died in 1299 the crown passed to his younger brother Duke Håkon, and Isobel, consort for only six years, was left a widow with an infant daughter.

Despite the insecurity that could come with widowhood, Isobel was not in any hurry to remarry. She remained on good terms with King Håkon and the new queen, Eufemia of Rügen, and attended important state occasions. Nevertheless, the winds of change were blowing in Norway. Håkon V’s rule was quite different to his late brother's, and he wasted little time disposing of certain former royal councillors, notably imprisoning and executing Audun Hugleiksson by the dishonourable method of hanging. Håkon also favoured Oslo, and during his reign the city began to outstrip Bergen as a centre of royal power. While Norway under Håkon would have more of an eastern outlook, however, Isobel remained in the west for most of her widowhood, playing an important role in the spiritual life of Bergen.

She still had her daughter’s future to think about however, and in 1300 this may have resulted in a plan to marry Ingebjørg to Jon Magnusson, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, though as this betrothal is only recorded in the Icelandic Annals it is difficult to assess its context. Earl Jon was, by each earldom respectively, subject to Norway and Scotland, and his status was defined by this dual allegiance. During the Wars of Independence, he may have inclined towards the Bruce camp, but this is ultimately unclear. But he was still just as much a Norwegian magnate, and perhaps this convenient position between the two kingdoms was what influenced Isobel's choice. Despite the fact that the prospective bride was only three and the earl much older, these plans may also have been put in place to safeguard her daughter’s future given her uncertain inheritance: Barbara E. Crawford believes that the proposed match, “seems to have been a desperate attempt to find a protector for the fatherless child”. The marriage was not to be, however, as Earl Jon died soon after.

This may not have been the end of Isobel’s interests in Orkney however, as a royal official previously strongly associated with her rose to power there soon afterwards. Weyland de Striklaw, who we already met briefly receiving delivery of the goods for Isobel’s trousseau, had once been a canon of Dunkeld and maybe even Alexander III’s chamberlain, but from the 1290s onward he and his brother Henry were more associated with the Bruces. It seems that he may also have had strong personal feelings on the political situation in Scotland, as in 1297 it was recorded that he had been banished by the English regime in Scotland for failing to obey their government. In any case he found employment in the service of the Norwegian Crown, probably as a result of his association with Isobel (then queen consort) whose patronage may partly account for his prominence in Norwegian royal documents during the last years of the reign of Eirik II and the early years of King Haakon’s rule. Fortune favoured him further after the death of Jon, Earl of Orkney, when he somehow managed to become guardian to the earl’s successor, Magnus, and gained control of administration in Orkney and later Caithness. We have little evidence of Isobel and Weyland’s direct cooperation in this affair, but it seems plausible that, given his earlier association with the queen it was partially her influence that helped him secure his position in Orkney, and could be taken as evidence of Isobel’s discreet political activity after her husband’s death.

(A much later depiction- with anachronistic kilts- of Isabella’s sister Mary Bruce imprisoned in a cage outside Roxburgh)

Meanwhile, since Isobel's departure in 1293, Scotland had plunged into the first phase of a bitter and prolonged war, both with England and internally. John Balliol had been deposed by Edward I but rebellions still occurred and others claimed the Scottish throne, most notably Isobel’s brother, Robert. In 1306, he had himself crowned king at Scone, but the first year of his ‘reign’ did not go well and he was forced to flee into the west. It is probable that he took refuge in the Western Isles, and also in the islands of Ireland, though some historians have argued that he could perhaps have gone to Orkney or perhaps even Norway. Certainly the ladies of his court, before being captured and handed over to the English, appear to have been heading to the safety of Orkney, where they would then be able to seek protection in the name of the queen dowager. Instead they remained in English captivity until after 1314. Two of the ladies- Isobel's sister, Mary and Isabella, Countess of Buchan- were quite literally imprisoned in ‘cages’ suspended outside the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick. Another of Isobel’s sisters, Christian, endured a slightly less extreme imprisonment at Sixhills nunnery in Lincolnshire, while her sister-in-law, Robert’s queen Elizabeth de Burgh, was held under house arrest. Young Marjorie Bruce, Isobel’s niece had also originally been intended for a cage but was instead transferred to a convent. Isobel’s brother Niall, who had defended Kildrummy Castle while the women escaped north, was executed by the degrading method of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, while two more of her brothers, Thomas and Alexander, were hanged following a failed invasion of Galloway the following year.

Isobel’s feelings about these family tragedies are unknown, though she might at least have been relieved not to be in Scotland. Even so, she did not forget her kin across the sea and would work to muster troops and funds to send to Scotland in support of her brother's claim. She may also have been a positive influence on the proceedings at Inverness in 1312, where the Scots under her brother Robert I confirmed the Treaty of Perth, which had transferred the Western Isles to Scotland in 1266, with the Norwegians. This event is notable for being the first major diplomatic settlement achieved by Robert the Bruce and it is entirely plausible that his sister played a role as a mediator, though we unfortunately again we lack evidence. She is known to have communicated with Christian (who proved a redoubtable woman in her own right), after her sister's release in 1314, and several decades later the two ladies interceded with their nephew David II on behalf of at least one Norwegian merchant. In the end, of course, their brother Robert did become king of Scots in more than name, enjoying an unparalleled ascendancy in his final years. However Isobel’s only other surviving brother, Edward, was not quite so fortunate in his bid to become High King of Ireland, being killed in battle in 1318 and his corpse quartered. Isobel herself never returned to Scotland; nevertheless, she seems to have kept abreast of affairs there, and was certainly contact with the court of her nephew King David, while she maintained at least some some Scottish servants.

(Bergenhus fortress- this would have been the site of the major royal residence in Bergen during Isobel’s day. The hall on the left was built in the mid-thirteenth century during the reign of her husband’s grandfather Håkon IV- the same king famous in Scotland for his involvement in the Battle of Largs. The tower on the right incorporates the only other surviving mediaeval bit of the fortress, ‘the keep by the sea’, built in the 1270s by Magnus VI, and rebuilt into its present form in the sixteenth century by then governor Erik Rosenkrantz, employing Scottish workmen. Photo from wikimedia commons).

Meanwhile Isobel was busy in Norway. She continued to use her position as queen dowager to influence political affairs and remained on good terms with both Håkon V and, much later, his successor Magnus VII. The latter king was the son of Isobel’s niece, another Ingebjørg, one of the two daughters of King Håkon. In 1312, in a double wedding in Oslo, Isobel’s daughter Ingebjørg and her cousin of the same name married two younger brothers of the king of Sweden. Ingebjørg Håkonsdatter married the elder of the two, Erik the Duke of Södermanland (and other territories), while Ingebjørg Eiriksdatter married Valdemar, Duke of Finland, Uppland, and Öland. Isobel was present at the wedding and probably had a hand in organising the match, but her daughter’s marriage would not last long. The two Swedish princes had long been mistrusted by their elder brother King Birger, and eventually, in 1317, they were arrested at a banquet at Nyköping Castle and held in the dungeons until their suspicious deaths there sometime after January 1318, having possibly been starved to death. Their widows, the Duchesses Ingebjørg, did not simply roll over and accept this, however, and became the leaders of their husbands’ supporters, who in 1318 sent King Birger into exile in Denmark and crowned Magnus, the son of Ingebjørg Håkonsdatter, king of Sweden, while he succeeded his grandfather Håkon V as king of Norway in 1319. The regency was held by Magnus’ mother and grandmother, and Ingebjørg Eiriksdatter also held a seat on the regency council, though it is difficult to ascertain how much influence she actually wielded. We also have no evidence of her relationship with her mother Isobel, which again is very frustrating, but it is likely that Isobel followed the events in Sweden closely, and she would have been even more interested after Magnus VII became king of Norway too, as she remained on friendly terms with the new king.

Most notably, Isobel was heavily involved in the promotion of religious activity in Bergen. In 1305, she attended the consecration of Arne Sigurdsson as bishop of Bergen, an important public occasion at which King Hakon and Queen Eufemia were also present. Whether she was also present in 1301 for the execution of the ‘false Margaret’- a woman who had claimed to be the late Maid of Norway and who inspired a small martyr cult- is unknown, though her strong association with both Bergen and Orkney would have meant that she was well acquainted with the details. In 1324 Bishop Arne’s brother and successor, Audfinn Sigurdsson gifted her several religious houses in Holmen, in return for her donations and patronage of the Church in Bergen. She continued to be associated with the bishops of Bergen in other ways- for example, in 1339, when Isobel and Bishop Haakon Erlingsson successfully interceded with King Magnus on behalf of a prisoner, and the two seem to have worked together politically on other occasions. Religious patronage was often an important part of queenship, but surviving records indicate that Isobel was particularly active in Bergen during her widowhood, and had a strong relationship with the city’s bishops.

(Above: the first folio from an Old French version of William of Tyre’s “Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum”, which belonged to Isobel Bruce, and the ex libris announcing her ownership is in red ink across the top of the page. Below: one of the illuminations from the Ms. See here for more of the book.)

Although the church in Bergen where she was buried no longer stands, one particularly fascinating object associated with Isobel has luckily survived the centuries- a manuscript known as Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. Lat. 1963, which contains an Old French translation of William of Tyre’s “Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum”. This was a crusading chronicle and history of the kingdom of Jerusalem written in the twelfth century, originally in Latin, whose Old French translation became particularly popular in western Europe in the thirteenth century. The version which survives in Pal. Lat. 1963, however, is particularly interesting as it is the only work in French known to have been in Norway in its time period, and furthermore the manuscript itself appears to have been made in the middle east, probably in Antioch, thus raising many questions as to how it ended up in Norway (various Scottish, English, French, Norwegian, and ecclesiastical routes have been theorised, see the article in sources for more). We can be certain that it belonged to Isobel at some point however, as on the first and last folios, the words “Liber Domine Isabelle, Dei gratia Regina Norwegie” are clearly printed in red.

It is unclear what conclusions we can draw about her literary interests from her possession of this book, though Isobel might have had many reasons to be interested in William of Tyre’s chronicle- her father and grandfather are both supposed to have gone on crusade, while it was famously her brother Robert Bruce’s ambition to lead a crusade himself, thus Isobel came from a family with a strong interest in crusade and it is not impossible that this interest was shared by daughters as well as sons. The Norwegians also had their own crusading tradition, most notably during the First Crusade, which is the conflict primarily dealt with in William of Tyre’s history. Even if we cannot be sure that the subject matter reflects Isobel’s personal interests, an indication that at least one of the book’s readers had an interest in Scottish affairs is evident from a piece of thirteenth century marginalia on folio 78vb. Written in French, this is inserted next to a passage which gives a list of various kings (including of England and France) who were on the throne when Jerusalem was captured in the First Crusade in 1099, and adds, ‘et en escoce le bon Roy David le p’mier de ce nom’ (loosely, ‘and in Scotland the good king David the first of this name’). In fact David I did not succeed to the Scottish throne until 1124, but despite this mistake it is interesting that at some point someone reading the manuscript- whether Isobel or perhaps someone associated with her- felt it important to add some Scottish context to the events of this very precious book. (It is also worth noting that the Bruces derived their claim to the throne through their descent from David I’s youngest grandson, while Isobel’s nephew was to become David II). It is unclear if Isobel owned any more books- though given her spirituality and rank it’s entirely possible- and was never famed as a literary patron as her contemporary Queen Eufemia was, but the fact that this book survives offers a fascinating glimpse into the life and interests of an otherwise very shadowy queen.

Isobel lived a long life and she never remarried. Her daughter appears to have predeceased her, and though some sources indicate Ingebjørg may have had children, when she died in Sweden in 1357, Isobel was named as her heir under reversionary law. Around about the same time (1356/7) her similarly long-lived sister Christian died and was interred in Dunfermline, where Robert I was also buried. Isobel herself probably died in 1358, in Bergen. She was possibly in her eighties by then, and had outlived her husband by nearly sixty years. Though we know little about her, and her activity is often shadowy, it seems that she quite ably wielded influence as a queen, particularly as dowager, and her patronage may have been of importance to the careers of men like Weyland de Stiklaw, though often this influence and patronage was exercised discreetly. Her contribution to the histories of Scotland and Norway may have been small, and certainly less adventurous than that of her brother, but nonetheless her career throws up some interesting perspectives on the cultural links of Norway and Scotland, the role of women and queens, and the history of the Bruce dynasty.

*The calendar says the safe-conduct was issued in 1292, but I agree with Barrow that it’s probably misplaced and refers to the following year.

Selected references:

Regesta Norvegica- here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (calendared not originals)

Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, Vol. II

“Islandske Annaler Indtil 1578″, Gustav Storm.

“North Sea Kingdoms, North Sea Bureaucrat: A Royal Official Who Transcended National Boundaries”, Barbara E. Crawford in the Scottish Historical Review, 1990

“A Manuscript of the Old French William of Tyre (Pal. Lat. 1963) in Norway”, by Bjorn Bandlien

“Norwegian Foreign Policy and the Maid of Norway”, Knut Helle in the Scottish Historical Review, 1990

“Robert Bruce: King of Scots”, G.W.S. Barrow

I should also mention that Isabella Bruce has a chapter in “Eufemia: Oslos middelalderdronning” (ed.) Bjorn Bandlien, but the nearest library copy is in London so I was not able to consult it. However if I ever do get the chance I will update any of this as necessary. There were some other books I consulted as well but the above were the major sources.

59 notes · View notes

amadnessofmuses · 7 years

Text

Of Golden Wings

The first time a human laid eyes on an angel was almost exactly a hundred and five years ago.

It wasn’t a momentous occasion and there was little to no fanfare involved. It was simply a brief flash of wings across the ground, illuminated by the lightening that happened to streak across the sky at that precise moment. Had it not been for the feather that had come loose and fallen to the very same ground no one in their right mind would have believed the drunken rambles of Richard Campbell and what he’d seen that night.

As a matter of fact the incident had been so minor that it took five years for Campbell to get much traction at all but oh when he did…

The first angel he’d caught had been the turning point, the pivotal moment when the war between humans and angels had really begun. That was the day that would be marked in history, the day everyone remembered as the starting point.

The humans history wouldn’t know that angel’s name but every angel in the host would remember it— Inias.

Michael often thought of Inias and what he must have felt the day he was captured by the creations Father had ordered them to watch over and protect. Surely he had fought back; Michael thought he personally would have. Then again before that day they hadn’t thought they had anything to fear from the humans, only the demons that sometimes prowled among them.

And speaking of demons—

The day Richard Campbell caught himself an angel and carved off its wings was the day the war between Heaven and Hell ended and a new one began. It was funny how one door closing truly did open another and how sometimes those opened doors brought not only Hell but Heaven to Earth.

Richard Campbell had secured his name in history that day and in doing so had landed himself chief among all the humans, leader of the war on these winged creatures who fought beside the beasts of Hell. The soldiers lining up to become a part of his army were named hunters, their mission to kill any and all angels and demons had been clear from the beginning and had stayed clear even as the world around them had advanced.

Looking back now it was easy to see that advancement had come not from human intellect but from the grace Campbell had his men harvesting from the angel wings.

It had left the greater part of the human race happily turning a blind eye to the war that had seated itself among their day to say life.

Eventually Campbell had a child, a son. His title had passed on, and then again, until finally Mary had been born. She married a Winchester and when the demons came for her, her husband had taken on the title of chief protector of the human race.

John Winchester had changed everything and Michael hated him possibly more than he hated any other human in all of creation and existence. The man had taken a war that was almost over and turned it on its end showing a ruthless kind of fighting, a kind of fighting and bloodshed that no one had seen since the dark ages long before this war was even so much a thought.

For the first time the angels were losing, Hell was falling back, and the peace they’d been so close to achieving was out of sight.

Michael still couldn’t believe the words he had heard coming from Kingston’s mouth or the events that had unfolded over the past week. Even the word chaotic didn’t seem enough to explain all that had been going on.

Lucifer had been captured.

In his gut there was still a twisting sinking feeling that came with those words. His closest brother was now locked away somewhere deep in the Winchester’s castle, warding blocking any angel from entering with their grace intact and usable. Michael hated the thought of it.

What he hated even more was that Father was bargaining with them, with the humans, with Winchester himself. The human had got it in his mind that harvesting their grace wasn’t enough; no he wanted an entire mixed race, a whole species of nephilim so that the angels could no longer claim they were above them—and he wasn’t giving them Lucifer back until they agreed.

It was disgusting, the sort of false peace that could only result in later wars down the road and yet even as he’d allowed himself to think that Father had agreed.

The joke was on the humans.

It was a bitter thought that crossed Michael’s mind as a tall lithe female with a heavy accent worked jewels and decorations onto his wings ensuring he would look, as she put it, dazzling enough, for the oldest prince of humans.

They had been expecting Anna when Father had promised them Heaven’s oldest unsoiled omega but instead they’d gotten him. It was a well hidden secret among the angels (or it had been before now) that Michael, despite his first born status and rank of general, was in fact an omega and as such he had refused to let Anna do this even if it meant handing himself over to the humans for however long it took.

A hum of approval pulled Michael from his thoughts and he glanced up to see the woman, he recalled mention of her name being Bella, looking him over in awe. The jewels on his shoulders felt heavy and his back ached with the effort of keeping them still while she’d been working.

Without his grace he had no protection against the ache settling in them and his shoulders, a pain he knew was only going to get worse as the night went on.

It had felt like the feast and celebration lasted forever before he was finally carted off to Dean’s room, the ornate golden cage he was being kept in unceremoniously pushed through the dark hallways of a castle that felt dated and depressing. How the humans could stand living there was beyond him.

Finally he was settled into a room, a large sheet being draped over the cage like he was one of those song birds the humans were fond of keeping as pets. It was pure misery. Pulling his legs against his chest he tried to shift his wings only to end up growling in frustration when he they continued to hurt. Instead he stayed still, listening and waiting for something to happen.

It was only when he heard the door open and footsteps heading his way that fear began to grip him.

The best thing about being a Winchester wasn’t that he got to fight all the time, even if that was pretty fucking great nor that he could use magic whenever he wanted or that angels and demons were real in his world and he got to gank them, it was the parties. It was the huge feasts after a battle filled with food and beer and company and music. They were the reason to be who he was and he loved it.

It was amazing to have been out on the battle field for months living off scraps and in the mud and in cheap crappy places only to come home and be able to just sit around and drink and eat until he couldn’t move. He loved to flirt with the girls and hang out with his fellow hunters, sharing tails of the battles they had been in until the late hours of the night until no one could move and the fighting was so liquored down you couldn’t even remember it. It was the best part of battle and one of the things he looked forward to the most.

This feast however had to be the worst in the history of feasts he had ever had. He was a soldier, he was a fighter, it was what he had been raised to be so when the idea of having him breed some Omega Angel and run around with some half angel half human hybrid child started to ride around on whispers he had begged his father to put an end to it. It was one of the man’s dumbest ideas, coupled by the fact that he had gone through with it against his wishes and now here he was, sitting at the head of the room watching as they brought him in.

As if things hadn’t been bad enough, he was now stuck breeding up a male omega. He wasn’t even tipsy when they brought him in, John’s orders, get it over and done with, the quicker the better. He guessed his father’s thoughts were if he was sober it would be easier to get it up, actually he didn’t want to think about his father’s thoughts on the subject, John had made t clear he looked down on male / male partnerships years ago. He had been hiding his own pension for it for just as long. That wasn’t going to be the problem, the problem was that he was being given someone to mate that he was sure was never asked if they wanted to, he knew he wasn’t and he sure as hell didn’t want to.

Dean watched as they brought t the cage in, the crowds of hunters and family and friends and workers spreading around it. It was huge and gold and the ugliest thing he had ever seen. He wondered if it came from Heaven or if John had it made, either way he hated it though prolly not as much as the angel inside it did. He let his eyes scan over him briefly as he was brought before him, naked and decorated, wings spread and covered in jewels. It was demeaning, as if his wings hadn’t been pretty enough on their own and he was sure that was what John had in mind.

“Put him in my room when everyone is done looking,” he ordered, feeling bad for the poor angel that was going to be forced to just sit there being looked at all night.

“I know he wasn’t what you expected son but make the best of it,” Johns voice was close to his ear, his hand tight on his shoulder letting him know just what was at stake with this.

“Yeah,” Dean said getting up from the table to the congratulations and cheers from the crowds around him.

There was an old adage from a time long before his that all is fair in love and war. He didn’t think that was true. It wasn’t fair that he wasn’t getting to do the one thing he loved right now and it wasn’t fair to make this angel who had gone un-captured in the war, who had survived as long as they had been fighting into what this was. They may have been humans and they may have been at war but this was just barbaric.

Dean made his way from the hall and into the kitchen stealing a bottle of whiskey and disappearing down to the garage. The place was huge and filled with people yet the halls he roamed were empty, just how he liked them most nights.

~*~

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he felt like going to his room, the whiskey starting to wear off as he pushed himself out of the back of his car where he had been hiding. He hoped the night hadn’t been too rough on the angel.

He wasn’t shocked to see the huge cage in his room when he finally got there, covered in a large black silk sheet. He hoped he wasn’t suffering too much in there really. Dean changed out of his tux and into a pair of warn jeans and a black t-shirt before walking over to the cage.

“I’m gonna take the sheet of it that’s okay,” he said softly reaching out to gently pull it down, having kept the lights low in the room so he wasn’t forced out of the dark and into the bright so fast. He knew the guy would be without his grace and he didn’t know how used to it he would be.

“Hey,” he greeted dropping the sheet on his bed. “I’m Dean,” he offered unsure of what to do next.

The gentle words caught him off guard but Michael refused to allow himself to think any differently than he had been. These were still the humans who had killed countless of his siblings and for what? Michael still didn’t know. Closing his eyes he watched the color behind his eyelids brighten and let his eyes adjust before slowly opening them in the low light.

Dean.

The introduction hadn’t necessarily been needed. Michael knew who the human was and already he held a certain amount of disdain for the man. As John oldest son he was the leader of many of the hunters armies, a general in the war against Heaven. His name was as well known as Michael’s was and though he knew there would be a day when they crossed paths Michael hated for it to be now, while he was at a clear disadvantage.

“Michael,” he allowed the name to fall from his lips without a second thought. There could be more than one angel named Michael, the humans didn’t know it was considered sacred among them. With Father having started creating again it was possible

Behind him his wings shifted, itching and aching, while he sat unable to do anything for them. The urge to ask Dean to help him was there but he didn’t want to already reply on the human for any level of needs.

Dean haphazardly folded the sheet into something half resembling a ball and a square at the same time before giving up and tossing it on the foot of the bed that sat not too far away. The thing was his room was pretty big but this huge ass cage took up most of it. He didn’t even think he would be able to get to the corner of his weapons if he wanted to without having to shift the damn thing to the side. How they John expected him to live like this he really didn’t know.

“Michael?” He asked sure that he heard the angels name wrong since he had been bitching in his mind. There was no way this was Michael. As far as he knew there was one Michael in Heaven and that was Michael Michael and there was no way God had sent him down here for this. It was insane to think. Surely if he had this was some kind of ruse to free Lucifer.

“Like Michael the first archangel Michael?” he asked stepping a little closer to the cage. The spell they had on the cage and the collar around the angel’s neck would keep him from using his grace but that didn’t mean that he was harmless. He had heard the stories told of the angel, the fights and the wars he had won. He had heard about the legendary battle between him and Lucifer from way back when just after the second Archangels fall. If there was one thing he knew it was his angel history and lore. It had been something he had been learning since he was old enough to think, John and Samuel had drilled it into his head.

“Are you just here to save Lucifer?” He asked curiously as he circled around the cage looking at the angel’s wings in awe. If he was Michael, he would need to get him out of the cage soon. He wasn’t being treated right for being who he was and his standing. They had treated him horribly if he was Michael and he felt terrible for it. He would expect more respect if he went to Heaven as the Prince of Humans not matter what the reason.

The human knew his angels; Michael would give him credit for that.

If he hadn’t been so annoyed, tired, and in pain he might have tried t form some sort of cover story against being the Michael Dean was jumping to conclusion of him being. As it was he didn’t have the energy to deny it and he thought that perhaps he would be safe admitting it here to this one human where he hadn’t felt safe saying it elsewhere.

“Precisely that Michael,” he answered back, his tone bored to mask the agitation at the pain in his wings.

He had to remind himself that it wasn’t this human’s doings. Gabriel had said the human princes had been against the agreement between their Father and his, much as himself and Gabriel had been. He was hoping that that intel stood up now that he was here with one of them.

“I am here because Father promised the oldest of our omega’s to you,” he explained. “Seeing as I’m the oldest—”

His words finished on a shrug that only exacerbated the pain in his wing and pulled a low displeased hiss from him. Having them out with no grace truly was a torture all of its own variety.

“I know what your kind think of mine Dean,” he added trying to cover his momentary slip of weakness. “Contrary to that I couldn’t send my sister in here to face whatever weird breeding Father agreed to. So yes, in a way I suppose I’m here to free Lucifer. His freedom is part of the peace agreement as I understand it.”

Michael wondered where they were keeping his brother now. Was he in a cage similar to this? Was he being tortured daily for the secrets of Heaven and Hell alike? It was a thought he didn’t wish to dwell on for long.

Dean could feel his stomach jump up into his throat. They had all made a mistake. God had sent his most trusted angel, he had sent his first angel and this was how they had treated him. It was despicable at best and he hated that it had happened. That he or someone hadn’t looked into who was here before this had all been completed. Then again he wasn’t sure that it would have been any better than what had happened if John had known, he was actually willing to bet it would have been worse. Maybe he could reason that with the angel.

Stepping away from the cage, he grabbed the key to it from his desk and made quick work of unlocking the door. An apology fell from his lips as he did so, grace or no grace he knew what the angel was capable of. He knew who he was and had seen the remnants of battle fields after he had been there. Dean knew well the scorched earth that lay smoldering in his wake, the bodies of the fallen, unrecognizable through all the ash. He didn’t know how they hadn’t met in battle before now but somehow they hadn’t. He almost would have preferred that they had. At least he would have treated Michael with the respect he deserved of his station.

“I am sorry for this Michael,” he offered. “On behalf of the humans, you should never have been treated this way,” he offered as he reached through the bars of the cage, unlocking the shackles that held the angels wings out behind him. It wasn’t that any of them should have been treated like this or for the reason they were here but this was even more in poor taste and he was sure he hated his orders even more now. It was one thing to have to knock up a lower ranked omega angel but Michael, they Archangel Michael, it was rude and degrading to both of them.

Once he had the angel undone he moved to his dressed rummaging around for some clothing for him and then coming back. “Do you need a hand getting out?” He asked, feeling almost half bad for doing so. He was angel surly he could help himself, however if you asked him he thought the angel looked in pain and he couldn’t blame him.

The angel didn’t need his grace to know that Dean was genuine in his concerns and apology. There was a certain respect among warriors and Dean had always been known for having it. It was a rare trait in human hunters, most of which only killed out of a desire to sate their bloodlust of exact revenge for countless unknown ancestors. Dean was one of the rare humans who had every right to hate angels on behalf of his family and yet the respect he exhibited did nothing but make him righteous in the Prince of Heaven’s eyes.

Still he was weary of him and around him.

“I’m fine,” he answered gritting his teeth once more as he dipped his shoulders trying to work them out from between the bars.

It was slow going and admittedly painful and again Michael hated how weak he was appearing to the human. He was the Prince of Heaven, leader of their armies, he was a feared soldier, a terrifying weapon who left battlefields in ruin—and here he was an stuck omega in a gilded cage served up for the Prince of Humans. Michael felt like the laughing stock of all angel kind and he’d never hated himself more than in that moment.

Had he had his grace it would be lashing out now, fire licking at his arms as he struggled to get free and against his own self-deprecating thoughts.

After what felt like minutes he still, wings still caught in the golden trap and twisted painfully.

“I—could you please help me,” he asked, jaw clenching at his own verbal request for the humans help. This would no doubt be held over his head for years to come but Michael knew it was likely to be the first of many humiliating situations here at the mercy of the humans.

Dean watched as the angel struggled to get his wings from the cage. It was only just big enough to show case them and the angel, not to move around in and he had known he would have issues getting out on his own. He could only imagine how it would feel in there. He had been in the same possession for hours and without his grace it was bound to suck. Could angel’s limbs go numb when they didn’t have their grace? Would that even be something that the angel had felt before? Dean felt a surge of anger over his family’s involvement in this all over again. There were rules to war and there were rules to treaties and none of this was following those rules. For that simple fact alone God could have called the truce off. Reaching out he offered the angel a hand, allowing him to lean on his shoulder as he helped him maneuver out of the cage in the small door way that was left to him. It wasn’t easy and he could see the pain on the angels face as he moved his wings around trying to get them out. Finally when it didn’t seem to be working Dean knew he needed to help more, reaching up he moved the angels wings an apology on his lips for the pain he knew it would cause him as he worked them through the door. He knew well the pain that came with moving sour over used muscles, how they didn’t want to work no matter how much you begged your mind to make them. He was a warrior, he was a hunter, he knew the pain of battle and a tired body. When he finally had Michael out, he helped him over to the bed so he could lie out. He was sure the angel needed it.

When he had Michael there he stepped back giving the angel space. There was no need to crowd him, what he did need to do was to get the jewels off of his wings. Grabbing his phone he sent a quick text to the servants asking them to bring up a couple of bowls and some warm soapy water thinking that it would help him, along with some pain reliever. He didn’t even know if the angel would partake but he wanted to offer. “I’m sorry for this Michael, we should have met under completely different circumstances and you should have been treated better. I have the servants bringing up some pain killers and some water to help get your wings cleaned.”

He couldn’t even communicate his disgust over this situation and had half a mind to remove the grace stealing collar from the angel as well so he could heal himself up. He knew however if he did there was no stopping Michael from stealing his brother back and in turn put his own in danger, it was a risk he couldn’t take.

There had been battles where Michael had been wounded. Scars of gold ran along his body, healed from his grace and from Raphael’s gentle hands. Pain was no stranger to him, as a soldier it couldn’t be. Yet everything about this situation was more painful than he could have imagined. It was a different kind of pain, one he had never felt before.

It spread out from his wings, moved through his back and shoulders, and down through his limbs. They tingled, everything did, and Michael found himself leaning heavily against the human until he was moved over to the bed where he happily collapsed, his wings laying heavily and almost painfully against his back.

“Different circumstances? Such as the battlefield Dean? Even you know we would have destroyed each other had we met there.”

Michael wasn’t one to believe in fate or that this was for the best, he didn’t even believe it was meant to happen. There was no denying however that at least here they wouldn’t kill each other, no so long as his grace was restrained.

“Pain killers? I’m not a human, I’ll live without them.”

As painful as it was Michael refused to let himself become one of them. Pain killers were too human and he’d seen what they did to people, how vulnerable they made them. That wasn’t something Michael wished to partake in, not now and not ever.

Shifting on the bed he looked up at the human deciding he needed to not lay down for this. Strength was needed here if he wanted to hold Dean’s respect in place.

“They’re glued. That was the orders she was given—to make sure they wouldn’t come off during the ceremony or during our first time together.”

The words threatened to stick in his throat as he spoke and he made no move to hide the disgust that weighed them down. If Dean was allowed to air his discontent and disgust for the situation then he was allowed to as well he reasoned.

Dean hated Michael’s words, the reminder that he was human and could depend on things like pain killers while the angel thought he was above them. He wondered if Michael new that was part of the reason that the humans hated them. He doubted it. He didn’t think that angels ever thought about why this was being done. He did however. He had spent years being fed the propaganda, years studying angels and meeting angels. He had met and killed more angels than anyone else.

He held the record amongst the humans for it too, even more than his own father did. A fact John liked to remind him over and over again was because he didn’t go in to battle. Dean had a hunch if he did he would be killed. That was the difference between Kings and Knights and he was more a Knight than he ever was a Prince. If Michael thought they would have destroyed each other in battle that was fine with him. He would have preferred it. It was something he wanted not something he was being forced in to doing despite his speaking out against it.

“They will be here if you change your mind,” he offered as he walked over to the door, opening it for the servants that had come up.

“Get this out of here,” he ordered gesturing to the cage as he took the soapy water from them and moved it closer to the bed.

When they were gone he shut the door behind them again before turning his attention to Michael. “Look, I’m sorry that you are here. I am sorry that they treated you like this but don’t make the mistake that I like angels. I just don’t like the situation we are in,” he explained as he moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Do you want me to try and get your wings cleaned up?” He asked. He was sure Adam would have something that could get the glue off, it was just a question as to whether Michael wanted it done or not. It was no skin of his back either way.

Somehow in the past few minutes he had done or said something that had offended the human. It hadn’t been Michael intention to do so and though he didn’t necessarily feel bad over it he did fear for himself just slightly. In this situation he was rather helpless, a fact that had kept him from taking the painkillers even, and an angry warrior human like Dean would not bode well.

Muscle memory would allow him to put up a fight but he was already sore and without his grace he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to hold his own against the man.

“I insulted you—that wasn’t my intention and I’m sorry. If it was what I said before I didn’t mean to indicate that being an angel makes me better than needing the painkillers. Trust me when I say we have our own methods and versions of them. I simply meant I’ve seen the side effects, I don’t wish to make myself that vulnerable around you or any of your kind.”

Michael hoped that explained why he’d said what he had. It was in fact the truth and he even allowed his words to carry a softness he hadn’t had before, the comfort of the bed under him helping to lull him into something of an easier mood.

“I would like, please. The decorations don’t feel the best on them.”

Please, thank you—they weren’t words Michael was used to littering through his sentences but he knew from experience that the human race appreciated when they would be used.

Dean hated the fact that his mood was so bad he had made the angel feel like he needed to apologize for something he hadn’t even really meant in the first place.

“It’s my bad dude, I just…”

Dean paused as he shifted on the bed to sit behind the angel, the bucket of water between his wings so he could start and work the stupid rocks off the dude. They were dumb and he was sure he would have hated them on any angel that had come with him. He still thought it was insulting and what his father had meant by it. Angel’s wings were beautiful on their own and didn’t need covered in stupid human garbage.

“I just hate this whole thing. My second favorite part of the battles is the parties afterward; I get to drink and have fun and just relax but this time you were there along with all this mounting pressure to … do the thing we have to do. I hate that this is even expected of me or you… I just wish…”

Dean paused again not sure what he wished. That Michael wasn’t here, that the angel’s hadn’t said yes, that he wasn’t a prince, that there was some other way less gross way. He didn’t know how to say it however and instead let the silence stretch out between them as he worked on some of the chains and charms that were dangled from the angel’s wings. Michael was right, they were not easy to get off and he felt like maybe he was doing more harm to the feathers under them they had been at all.

“I will need something different than this, this water sucks. Bella has these on really good but I am sure we can still get these off, I just need to get some stuff for them or we can soak them in water longer.”

It was two different offers and Dean wasn’t sure if the angel would even choose. He didn’t even really know if he wanted these off or not. He was at least able to get all the dumb chains that connected them off of him and some of the heavy charms. All that was left was the glued on jewels and gems. He just personally didn’t like the way they seemed to stick some of his feathers together.

The human didn’t seem to be able to articulate his disgust for the situation anymore than Michael was able to. He hated Gad for putting him in this situation, for agreeing to it for any of their angels. It was disgusting but at least he could take some measure of comfort in the fact that his human companion felt the same way.

In truth Michael respected Dean, the stories he had heard of him, the carnage he had seen caused by him on the battlefield. This human was a warrior, a good one, and that was something that Michael could admire about him. Neither of them were cut out for this sort of lewd peace transaction and they both knew it.

“She used something she called super glue—I’m not sure what it is but she said it was a rare adhesive from the olden days. That I should count myself lucky to have it used on me, I don’t think that was a very accurate assessment though however if it is I’m sorry for being less than thrilled over it.”

The last thing Michael wanted was to insult the human again by taking little happiness in the adhesive holding various gems to his wings. It was uncomfortable and he had to refrained from twitching his wings in an attempt to get them off.

“I would like to keep trying to remove them—if you think you know something that can. And Dean, I understand how you feel. I’m not happy with this either, with any of it, and you have my apologies for ruining your party. I can stay in here if you’d like to return to it. I understand traditions are important, they are to angels as well.”

Dean snorted at the comment about the super glue. That was just like Bella to tell him it was special. He guessed top her it was. She liked things and stuff and trading them for other stuff and things.

“Bella is a trader, well she’s a thief too but she likes stuff. Any kind of stuff she thinks she can get and will be worth trading for other worthwhile things. I just think she is a greedy hoarder. It’s just fucking super glue.”

The last part was added with a bit of a growl. More than the situation he was in he hated Bella.

“And ah, thanks for the offer but I am good here, if I go down there I am just gonna have to talk about… ah. That thing we have to do and haven’t done.”

He continued picking at a few of the jewels watching as the glue chipped away from the backs of them, seemingly not liking the jewels as much as it did the feathers.

“Why don’t you get dressed and we can head down to the bath house. I’ll have the servants clean out the water and put in fresh so we can wash these off. It should hurt less.”

Dean picked up the bucket of water and climbed off the bed, setting it outside the door and shooting a quick message to the servants with what he needed as well as his younger brother Adam asking him if he had any kind of super glue remover. He was sure even if the jewels came off he would still have to deal with the traces of glue later but he had a feeling the bath would hurt less. Not that Michael had made any indication that it hurt now but he could only imagine what having someone else picking super glued jewels from his hair would feel like. Michael was a warrior and an Angel, he wouldn’t show pain if he could help it, as a warrior he knew that but it didn’t mean he couldn’t try to make it more bearable.

The woman had seemed pretty petty, the kind of human Michael would have disregarded near immediately. It was rare that he had time for humans in this war they were fighting but the greedy ones were sometimes the worst, the ones who felt like you owed them something just for standing in their presence, as if they were still Father’s favorite creation.

They weren’t and they hadn’t been for some time now.

Sitting up Michael tenderly stretched out his wings, the muscles aching under the lack of grace. It was a reminder he was thankful for however given the clothing situation and Dean’s comment on getting dressed. The angel had just been about to attempt using his grace to fetch clothing, the painful tug of tired muscles being the only thing stopping him.

Slowly he pulled himself from the comfort of Dean’s bed and moved to the indicated clothing, put there he assumed for when after they were done with their task. It wasn’t anything much, a light tunic that could fit around the structure of his wings and fell to just above his knees. It was a dated outfit, from a point and time in the human’s history that hadn’t been seen in some time now, but Michael was hardly one to complain. At least it was something to cover himself with.

His arm hurt from shifting around, from trying to pull the clothing around his wings. This task was always much easier with his grace. In fact it felt near impossible without it and without being able to conceal his wings.

With a growl he threw the thing onto the floor and glared over in Dean’s general direction, but not at him. He was wise enough to know not to push the human.

“Would you mind helping me? It appears clothing is more complicated than I anticipated.”

His jaw was tense, the words heavy and painful to say for Michael. He was the Prince of Heaven, the eldest angel in all of creation—he didn’t need help and yet apparently he did.

Dean watched as the angel struggled with his wings and the tunic that had been set out before finally getting pissed and dropping it to the floor. He couldn’t blame him he would have as well if he had been in his shoes. Actually Michael was handling this whole thing with a lot more grace than he would have been. He would have been fighting mad had the rolls been reversed.

“Here let’s make this easier.”

Walking over to his dresser he pulled out a pair of soft sweat pants and handed them to the angel. They had a draw string in them so he could make them fit if they were too big on him. It had to be better than a dress or whatever anyways. Next he pulled out an old t-shirt he had, the material was warn and soft. Grabbing his knife from his pocket, he looked Michael over for a second before cutting two slices up the back. He could slide it on over his head and then he could help him get it around his wings, tucking it in would keep the material together and keep him covered while allowing his wings room to move. It wasn’t the best outfit but it was better than the other one and way better than nothing.

“Put this on and then turn around and I can make sure you’re covered.”

He stepped behind Michael when the angel was finally ready and gently tucked the shirt into the waistband of the sweat pants making sure he was all covered. It didn’t actually look to bad.

“How’s that feel?”

The clothing Dean picked for him was better than what had been left for him. It went on easier and was far more comfortable than the other itchy material felt like it was going to be. Finally fully covered he felt ten thousand times better too. It took the slight edge of annoyance off of everything.

“Much better…thank you Dean.”

It wasn’t lost on him that the human had gone out of his way to accommodate him. Once more he realized just how much this situation was affecting Dean as well as it was himself. The human, in this instance, was just as innocent as he was and anything they could do to make things easier on themselves they should.

With a little difficulty Michael managed to tuck his wings against his back. His movements were a little jerky, the tenseness in his wings still causing some pain there. Without his grace he wasn’t too sure of his movements either which posed a whole new set of issues. It was an adjustment to say the least.

The knock on the door started him, his wings moving back out from his back defensively as his feathers fluffed.

“What do they want?”

It was practically a growl from his lips and he knew if he wasn’t collared his grace would be flaring in warning against the intrusion.

“Dean—Dean it’s me. I’ve got the stuff you asked for.”

Dean tried to hold back a laugh as he watched michael’s wings puffed up behind him when someone knocked on the door. He wasn’t as successful as he would have liked and ended up having to cover up the snicker with a cough and his hand to his mouth.

“it’s just my little brother; he hasn’t even been to battle yet.”

He wanted to let michael know that adam truly meant them no harm; he didn’t even think the kid would want to hurt him. He did his lessons and he was good at them but he didn’t think the kid would ever want to fight. He thought he would end up at least like sammy and do it because he had to and not because he wanted to. Hell maybe adam would never have to make the decision like sam did if everything between him and michael went the way that it was supposed to.

“come here; adam this is michael, michael this is my little brother adam, i promise he won’t hurt you, he has the stuff i asked for to help get that shit off your wings.”

Dean pulled adam in to stand in front of him, hands on his shoulders as he introduced the pair. He knew this wasn’t going to be the happiest of introductions for michael. He doubted that he would want anyone meeting him like this and he got that but adam was different. Actually he wasn’t sure if adam had seen an angel in person yet or not. They didn’t exactly line up to be looked at or seen by humans and he didn’t think the kid had ventured down stairs to see the captives either. It wasn’t something he could see him doing.

“we are going to go down to the bathing room to get the rest of the junk off his wings, you wanna come or you gonna do something with abel tonight?”

That was usually where you could find adam, wherever abel was, which knowing abel could be anywhere on the grounds. That was how dean knew adam would be able to get him the glue remover he needed. Abel was one of those kids that got into everything. He helped everyone at their jobs, the knights, the blacksmiths, bella, the cooks, if it was done in the castle, abel and adam prolly knew how.

“Hi Michael, nice to meet you.”

Adam was grinning up at him from where he leaned back against Dean. Unlike most of the humans he wasn’t eyeing Michael like he was the scum of all creation and he didn’t seem afraid to meet his eye either. All in all Michael was impressed and refreshed by the young humans attitude and mumbled a quick greeting too.

“I’m going to go with Abel. We’re helping out in the kitchens tonight since there was a big feast. We owed Ellen a favor and she called it in tonight.”

Looking up at Dean he offered a huge smile before pulling away from him.

“Enjoy your bath though, the water’s really warm today because it’s been used a lot.”

Another grin and the kid was out the door leaving them along once more.

“He wasn’t so bad.”

Michael said softly once the door was shut behind Adam. In fact had he not known he was Dean’s brother and therefore a Prince as well he’d never have guessed it from the way he acted. It gave him a small hope for humanity still. If the younger generation weren’t as bad then maybe this thing with him and Dean could end the war.

Shifting his wings he tucked them against his back once more with a content sigh as the pain in them eased just a bit.

“Yeah he’s not terrible for a human.”

He said it teasingly as he went to the closet to grab some towels, thinking they may need quite a few for his wings, the goo be gone in his pocket for safe keeping. He grabbed the towel and tossed them over his shoulder and turned to the door tugging it open.

“So just to keep down any questions.”

He paused not wanting to give the next orders, in fact he didn’t want to give Michael any orders even if he was the Alpha and in charge here. At least he had been told he was and should do so. John had been sure to let him know how firm of a hand he should take with , well Anna but he assumed the same went for Michael as well.

“Okay, If we run into people, everyone out there is gonna think we’ve done it so walk behind me and don’t talk to anyone unless I tell you their okay. I don’t really need King John coming down here to give us a lesson in how to handle you and I am sure you don’t either.”

He knew was he was alluding to and he hoped Michael did too. He also hoped that he knew he wasn’t given the order because he could but because he was trying to keep him safe. He knew if John thought that he could not handle this he would pass him to someone else. He also knew that whoever John passed him to would not be as nice as he had been. A prince or the humans and lead of their army or not he was the best option for Michael around here.

Michael’s wings bristled at the thought of anyone feeling the need to show Dean how to control him. He was an angel, the leader of Heaven’s armies, they’d humiliated him enough already without adding to it. The thought was a terrifying one and it had him easily falling in to step behind Dean as they headed out into the halls of the castle.

It was bad enough that they would eventually have to do something. This treaty uniting the humans and the angels couldn’t be accomplished through the small talk he and Dean had made so far. In fact the knowledge of that weighed heavily enough on Michael’s mind that he was finding he could often think of little else.

Dean was being nice and accommodating now but he worried what would change when it came time for other things.

Looking down and simply following behind Dean left him out of focus on his surroundings enough he collided directly in to another human, almost knocking himself off balance and having to grab the wall for support.

“Sorry.”

The word was sharp and annoyed, the mere fact he was having to apologize grating on every nerve in his body.

“Hey it’s ok—I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing or where I was going. My bad—hey Dean. Where are you two off to?”

Sam grinned at Dean, taking a quick step back from the angel. Grace bound or not they could still be dangerous as he well knew.

Dean hadn’t expected to literally run into Sammy in the halls. He thought he would be off bothering his girlfriend or whoever it was he kep disappearing off to see at all hours these last couple of weeks. Whoever it was he sure had been spending a bunch of tie there, he was actually sure he hadn’t fully seen Sammy around for awhile now. He knew Dad was happy of it and rumours were spreading through the castle like Michael’s fire (it was weird to have the angel that the saying was made after standing right near him) about him and some chick named Lucy that he was seeing.

“We’re heading to the bath to get this shit Bella plastered his wings with washed off.”

The answer was quick and easy leaving him time to flash Sam a grin.

“What about you, comin’ back from Lucy’s rooms?”

He was teasing and he couldn’t help himself, big brother privilege. While he left Sammy a few seconds to come up with his answer and get flustered over the question he looked over at Michael and grin.

“Michael this is Sammy, my other brother, Sammy this is Michael. Lucy is his supposed girlfriend that the whole castle is talking about. Even King John’s getting in on the rumors, I heard him and Bobby gossiping about it yesterday.”

The last part was more for Sam’s benefit than Michael’s but it was still true. He’d walked into John’s chambers and over heard him and Bobby, his right hand talking about how they hoped Sammy had met someone and how Bobby should get his eyes and ears on it to see who it was and invite her to dinner. Maybe he should worn Sammy about the part too, it only seemed fair, so that he could put it off as long as possible, move from the kingdom maybe, change his and her name, anything to get away from John and the idea that he may be getting grand kids from both his sons soon. The thought made his stomach roll.

Michael wasn’t stupid. At the realization that this man was the other Winchester prince he stepped closer to Dean. Sam was a warrior too, more well known for taking on Lucifer’s demons more than anything else and Michael knew much like Dean he wasn’t to be messed with when his grace was cut off from him. Dean, however, he knew wasn’t going to take advantage of that at the moment. Sam might be different however.

“I didn’t know so many people were talking about it—yeah just coming back though. John’s down that hall so you might wanna take the longer back way down if you’re looking not to bump in to him.”

Sam glanced at Michael and then back to Dean as he talked and the angel easily noted that the two humans seemed to share more in what they didn’t say than the words themselves. It reminded him of his own brother. Somewhere here Lucifer was being kept hostage and he wondered if either human prince had managed to torture him yet.

The thought sent a brief swell of anger through him that he tried to force down for the sake of being polite in the situation. It seemed doing so would get him out of this faster and with less harm.

“Come on Sammy, you haven’t been to the library in like two weeks, your books are getting jealous dude. Everyone knows you’re doing something or someone.”

He gave his brother a wink before turning around to look at Michael, chin nodding so that he knew they were gonna go another way. He didn’t want to run into Jon, not even a little bit.

“Thanks for the tip Sammy, the last thing I was is to see him. I don’t want to answer those questions.”

He left unsaid that he didn’t want him looking at Michael. Michael was pretty, very pretty and as much as John talked against men being with men he was almost sure that he would try and make an exception for the angel.

“You coming with or you heading to your room?”

He asked it with a smirk as they walked in the direction where he knew John wouldn’t be; in fact he assumed he would sneak back out to see Lucy, he had every night this week. At least every time he had gone looking for him he had been gone.

“Whatever Dean. Nah, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. I’m pretty tired so I’ll just head to bed I think.”

With a quick wave and grin Sam was gone, lanky form disappearing down towards his room before any further questions could trail him.

When he was gone Michael stepped a bit back from Dean not wishing to crowd him now that it was just them. Neither Sam nor Adam had seemed terrible, despite the rumors he’d heard of Sam. The middle Winchester was fierce on the battlefield and the demons feared him much in the way the angels feared Dean. To Michael’s knowledge Lucifer and Sam had yet to meet on the field in a fight but he was sure it would end the same way he and Dean would have, in blood.

“He doesn’t seem as frightening as the rumors and stories make him out to be.”

Looking back towards Dean he gave him a considering look. Dean looked stronger, but then he’d had a few years more experience than the other had.

Dean couldn’t help the laugh that tumbled from his lips when Michael mentioned that Sam didn’t look as scary as the rumors painted him out to be. It was funny because so many people thought that. More demons than Dean could count had come at Sam thinking the same thing and ended up flashing with their lights out on the end of his knife. Sammy was a beast when it came to demons and battle and Dean was actually sure that the rumors and stories were played down.

“Don’t worry Goldie, he’s bad ass enough.”

He offered it with a small laugh as he led them down the hall.

“You haven’t seen him with a demon blade in his hand or the spells he knows. The rumors that he can pull a demons soul from its vessel and make it puke it up onto the floor before snuffing it out. All true.”

He was proud of his brother, his brother was a demon killer and one of the best there was and the fact that Michael didn’t think that he looked scary was hilarious to him. He guided them around the corner and out into the bath house, still chuckling over the comment.

“Did you think that about me too?”

He posed the question as he walked them around to his favorite side of the bath, motioning the few stragglers that had stayed in there out. He wanted Michael to have privacy while he cleaned off his wings. He didn’t need to fight with his own kind over an angel tonight. He wasn’t sure that would go over well.

For the demons that must have been terrifying indeed. In fact it was something Michael would rather not go through himself and he briefly wondered if the pair of humans were aware that the same could be done for angels. It was a fact he was going to keep to himself on the off chance they didn’t yet know it.

Being here and having a relative peace for the time being with the humans was no reason to give them secrets that could harm him or his siblings.

“I’ve never thought that about you, not even in the beginning.”

From the moment Dean had been allowed to fight in battles he had proven his worth. Michael had never been allotted the chance to underestimate Dean Winchester. The first battle Dean fought still stood out in Michael mind as if it hadn’t been years ago. So many of his angels had been slain in that battle, in fact it was one of the first that Zachariah had been forced to pull his troops from. The eldest angel could remember the rage he’d felt that day knowing the humans had gotten the upper hand on them—and that was when rumors of their prince had begun.

“You have always been a fierce opponent for the angels. To fight you in battle always would have been an honor.”

There was truth to his words. Dean was a warrior and to fight against him would have been nothing short of an honor. He hoped the human felt the same way of him but sometimes humans were odd in their feelings and emotions so perhaps it wasn’t returned.

The presences of other people in the room caused Michael to tense, his eyes staying on them as they made their way from the bathing area as others rushed out to replace the water for him and Dean. He stayed close to the human, his wings pressed tightly against his back to make himself smaller and less of a target for anyone looking to come against him.

When everyone, the servants included, were gone from the room Michael relaxed once more content for the time being that if Dean was planning on hurting him it would have happened already.

Dean waited until everyone was gone from the room, watching to make sure that they were completely gone and not hanging around the door ways. Michael looked uncomfortable with having them there and he couldn’t blame him for it. He was an angel without power and while he would still be formidable with a sword or even in hand to hand combat he could understand why he didn’t want to go against any one or have anyone going against him. He could really only think about how he would want to be treated if this situation had been reversed. If he had been forced to Heaven in a cage, how would he have wanted Michael to treat him?

Stepping away from the angel he walked over to the entryways, pulling the large doors shut and bolting them closed. He didn’t think he had ever actually seen the doors closed there, even when he used the bath he sent people away instead of closing the doors, being a prince made it easy and no one dared come around. The fact was some of these people had never seen an angel in person, even when Michael had been wheeled in to great hall in his gilded cage there was staff and people that had not seen them and he could not swear that their curiosity wouldn’t get the better of them and send them to the shadows to get a peek.

“There now no one should even be able to look in. Sorry about all the people, I promise the longer you are here the less they will stop looking; half of them just haven’t seen an angel before. I know it doesn’t excuse it but.”

He trailed off with a small shrug as he made his way back over from the door to the bath, tugging his shirt off as he went and dropping it to the ground.

“Alright, let’s get your wings cleaned up and see if we can get that shit off.”

Stepping out of his boots, he pulled the glue remove from his pocket that he had gotten from Adam and set it on the edge of the bath before pulling his jeans and boxers off. The water was warm as he stepped in and he was glad that it was fresh for Michael. He knew the angel would prolly like that better than having been in the water everyone had been in for a little while. He took a few steps down in to the water rinsing off as he made his way over to a collection of soaps and stuff on the other side.

“What smell do you like better, flowers or vanilla?”

There wasn’t much of a choice in what would match the orangey smell of the glue remover but he thought these two would be better than anything else there was. If he could even use this on his feathers.

The staring was weird and unsettling, something Michael wasn’t sure he would get used to. It was silly, a fact he could recognize, because many of the angels stared at him in Heaven. It was a different kind of staring here though. The human gazes on him as they were forced from the room made his skin crawl, his wings pressing protectively to his back even as Dean moved to bolt the doors in to place so they were completely alone.

“Thank you.”

The words were a soft mumble from his lips and the angel shifted his weight as he stood there watching.

“Flowers.”

He doubted they would smell anything like the garden but he wasn’t the most fond of sweet smelling things and vanilla would only serve to remind him of Gabriel. Right now Michael wasn’t too keen on thinking about his family, only their overall safety. If he thought too much about them on an individual basis he wouldn’t be able to be here and got through with this.

Stripping himself of his clothing, a feat made much easier now, he waded into the water. It was hard to will himself into relaxing enough that his wings would fan out but he managed. The warmth of the water was inviting enough against the aching muscles that just a moment of relaxing had them fanning out in the water behind him.

Dean grabbed his shampoo and the flower smelling one for Michael and turned around pausing almost instantly. He had known that the angel’s wings would be huge and in fact he had seen them in the cage but neither time compared to what Michael had going on in the water. His wings were huge, bigger than any angels he had seen before, the gold reflecting just below the surface. He was almost glad he had met Michael here first instead of in battle. He was sure if he had these things out he would have been dumbfounded and prolly killed. Some warrior he would have shown himself as, some sad little prince.

“Wow.”

The word was soft as he made his way over closer to the angel, letting his fingers come out intent on brushing over a few feathers before he paused. He wouldn’t want Michael just reaching out and touching him even in the situation they were in. Instead he pulled his hand back and moved behind the angel so that when he was ready he could clean his wings.

“Let me know when you are ready, no rush.”

It looked like the angel might actually be enjoying the water and relaxing some, which he was totally okay with letting him do while he watched his gold feathers moving under the surface of the water.

The human prince looked a little awestruck over his wings, something Michael promised himself he wasn’t going to tease him over. He knew they could be a little intimidating when first seen spread out to their full span and he had been keeping them tucked fairly close to himself ever since arriving here. It only made sense that Dean would find them fascinating, most humans and angels alike did.

“I’m ready. It’s really more uncomfortable having stuff on them than you’re imagine.”

It was a rare show of weakness to admit that the gems and decorations were bothering him but he felt he owed Dean that much. Besides the human was offering to help him and Michael needed that help currently so he might as well take it.

“We decorate them in Heaven and our other realms but not with glue. The items are much lighter and easier on them.”

He felt that it was most likely where the humans had gotten the idea to do so. They must have heard of their customs and had decided to do the same but only much worse. In a lot of ways it was just sad but Michael as trying not to dwell on it too much.

Settling a little deeper in the way Michael shifted his wings, spreading them out a bit more so they were easier to clean off for Dean.

Reaching out Dean poured some of the glue remove onto his fingers and started on trying to remove some of the dumb stones.

“Yeah well Bella is an idiot and they only went to her because she is a thief and they knew she would have the most amount of dumb junk to put on you. Any idiot should know not to use super glue on feathers.”

If he sounded pissed it was because he was. It would have been as if he had gone to Heaven and they had glued stuff to him. She should have known better and he had half a mind to cash in on the fact that Michael was gifted to him and there for his property. She could at least get a few nights in jail for defacing his property, not to mention people would prolly loot her house. It might be worth it.

“I know it prolly don’t mean much, but I am sorry for how you were treated here. I know it’s a shitty situation but they didn’t have to make it shittier for you.”

He wouldn’t tell them about how they had brought his brother in. In fact he thought maybe he should send someone to check on him and make sure he was being treated with the same respect. He would have wanted Sammy treated the same as him even if he had been a prisoner. As he mulled it over he continued grooming his wings, fingers working to push the glue remover around the jewels, putting them in a small pile when they finally came off.

The human was talking and saying things to him but the feeling of fingers shifting through his wings combined with the smell of orange hitting the air from whatever Dean was using on him was lulling Michael into a relaxed state. The water was warm, soothing, and each pass of Dean’s fingers through his wings had them relaxing a tad more.

Vaguely he was aware of the smell of the garden in the air and he knew his oil glands were trying to help groom him, offering up wing oil that would help soothe the feathers and remove all traces of the gems and trinkets from them.

“They feel better.”

Even just the few that had come off so far felt better and he knew when they were all gone that he would rejoice in the feeling of freedom and weightlessness it brought him.

Dean continued to work, even when it seemed like Michael was zoning out on him. That was fine with him. He didn’t have much more to say following what he had said. He did like that Michael felt comfortable enough around him to let him do this for him at least. It was actually an honor. He knew most angels hated humans from what they were doing to them and this war and it spoke volumes to him about what kind of angel Michael was. He could see why he was there leader. The fact that he wasn’t holding this against him was nice. He had been worried he was going to have to do a ton of sucking up to the angel, which he knew he still would but at least it seemed like Michael would accept it.

Reaching out he moved to pour some more of the glue remover into his fingers, dropping a few more jewels on the side of the tub when it slipped from them dropping on the pile of jewels. He wasn’t sure why his fingers were so slick the goo remover wasn’t that way. Looking back at Michael’s wings he noticed that they looked shinier and smelt different from the glue. They were sweeter and less fake, more like the gardens would smell in the spring and after the rain.

He let his fingers run through the feathers collecting the oil on them before sliding them down to one of the jewels, watching as it easily came off. The feathers look like they liked it too. They looked softer and shinier and happy to have themselves cleaned. His only worry was some of the loose ones that he was running into that looked like they were gonna fall out. He was worried about hurting the angel however.

“Does this hurt?”

The words were soft as he gently removed one of the loose feathers and set it to the side, fingers rubbing where it had been. He thought it might itch a little, like when you pulled one hair from your head and felt the need to rub it.

Under Dean’s fingers Michael’s wings twitched, the feeling of the loose feather being pulled away causing the action. It didn’t hurt, it didn’t really itch either so much as just feeling good. The feeling was a difficult one to explain and Michael wracked his brain for a way to explain that the human might understand it.

“It doesn’t. It…it feels similar to hair falling away I suppose.”

The analogy might not be the best but Michael wasn’t well verses in human feeling enough to equate it to anything else.

Shifting under Dean’s hands his wings twitches again causing some of the jewels that were slicked with wing oil to fall away with ease. The feathers themselves moved slightly, puffing up and away from the wing structure allowing his natural oils to move deeper through them. He knew he was falling dangerously close to this being grooming and that he should put an end to it but at the same time his wings needed the attention enough he was willing to let it keep going.

“In Heaven this is what is used to clean our wings. It’s what is best for them, I didn’t know if it would work against what was used to hold the gems on them or I’d have told you.”

He wasn’t sure how much trouble it had been for Dean’s brother to get the glue remover or if it had even been any trouble at all. With any luck it wasn’t and the human wouldn’t be annoyed at his bodies response to cleaning.

Dean was glad for the oil from the wings and that it was working because it was working better than the stuff that Adam had brought him. It just made it super easy and the gems almost just slid off as he past his fingers over the feathers with the oil on them. Not to mention how good the stuff smelled. He wondered if he should find it weird that he was using some kind of oil that Michael clearly made from his body.

“It’s cool. I like this stuff better anyways, it’s faster and doesn’t seem to be drying out your feathers.”

Working the last of the jewels off, he opened his hand and dumped them on the side of the bath before letting his hand smooth over the wings once more, smoothing out any feathers that looked to be out of place.

“All done.”

He dipped his hands in the water to rinse them off as he watched Michael. His wings looked ever better like this than they had in the cage and all decorated. The color was beautiful against the dark of the tub and he thought that had they just let Michael walk in instead of putting him in a cage he would have been much more impressed. It made him half wonder how his brother was being treated in the dungeon. He hadn’t really thought about when he had been brought in. Sammy and his demon eaters had done it, he hadn’t been involved. He did make a mental note to ask the kid next time he saw him.

He let himself relax back in the bath then, sinking down in the warm water eyes still on Michael. Now that he was looking at him, he wasn’t bad looking, in fact he was actually pretty hot, he was lean and fit and muscles he had worked for in battle were defined and he found himself staring a little.

“If you want privacy I can leave you alone.”

He wasn’t sure why he was offering, the fact was he shouldn’t have been a thing. Michael was technically a prisoner and here for one purpose but fuck if he wasn’t hot and smelt good. He wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything either but it was on his mind.

Having his wings clear and free of the decorations that had been weighing them down left Michael feeling a little more relaxed and free. They were still heavy and his back still ached under the feeling of them, his body not used to carrying them without the assistance of his grace. It was an improvement though and the second Dean mentioned they were done Michael was shifting to dip them in the water.

Looking over his shoulder he caught sight of Dean, pondered his words, and shook his head. The human was fine where he was, he was fine watching. They both knew what was required of them in this situation and therefore becoming familiar with each other only made sense.

Spreading out his wings Michael ruffled them, feathers shaking water from them and extra oil as they fell in to place. Grooming himself wasn’t always the prettiest of affairs and though Dean had done an excellent job for being his first time there were still things Michael needed to fix. Again looking over his shoulder he attempted to fix a few things, his body twisting and turning, water splashing everywhere as he did.

When he fixed what was needed he settled down, turning to face Dean as he sunk down into the water to take some stress off of the wings and his back.

“I’m sure that sort of display was what they were hoping to avoid with the cage.”

Looking down he felt his face heat up and could only sit there as it happened knowing he didn’t have the grace to control it.

Dean watched Michael as he moved and splashed around in the bath moving his wings every which way as he tried to get them clean and sorted. He wondered what it would be like to have them as he watched, reaching out to collect the few feathers that floated his way setting them to the side with the others.

“I think the cage was just cause they are dicks.”

He offered it with a grin so Michael knew he didn’t need to be embarrassed over it. He didn’t mind what he was doing, he was an angel they were prone to doing weird things or at least weird to people without wings.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

He knew it would be weird but it was what they were supposed to do. It was a thing that had to happen no matter how much they both hated it. They had to make a kid in order to save the dudes brother and seal this peace treaty. In his opinion it was better to just do it and get it under way. It was a question about how angels worked in that regards that he was having issues with.

“This whole kid thing. How does that work? I mean. I heard rumors of how it works, that you have to be in heat or something. Is that true? Sorry if that is too personal.”

#muse: Dean #Of Golden Wings

0 notes