'The day of the murder, Josce breakfasted (gentaculavit) at Olympias’s home. The jurors skirted around the issue of why Josce was present in Olympias’s domicile at such an early hour. One cannot help but speculate whether the “abominable mixing” which seems to have kept Pope Innocent III up at night dreaming of ways to prevent inter-religious coitus, may have been to blame.[11] Apparently, discord broke out between Josce and Olympias before they had even finished their breakfast. Josce then withdrew, and was immediately killed, although the record does not disclose the identities of the perpetrators'.
The murder appears to have been a crime of passion, not uncommon in that era?
The question of prostitution is not explicitly mentioned in the article, but as far as I can tell from it, the dispute could equally have been over payment for services rendered.
Two men were also accused of Josce’s murder. The author opines that those two may have killed Josce after being enraged at seeing an affluent Jewish man sleeping around with a Christian woman.
The form gentaculavit implies it’s a 3rd person singular perfect indicative of a regular 1st conjugation Late Latin verb gentaculare “to eat breakfast”. Knowing that, it’s clearly derived from this Late Latin noun:
gentaculum “breakfast” (alternate spelling of ientaculum/jentaculum). That form ultimately comes from the adjective ieiunus (alternate spelling jejunus) “fasting”.
The adjective is a standard word in Classical Latin, but the noun and verb above are not. They are probably later developments or Vulgar Latin (spoken by the common people) that was not preserved in Classical texts. The standard word for breakfast in Classical Latin would be prandium.
You're right that it's not every holiday, but just to be accurate Shabbat is not, strictly legally speaking, a holiday. It is "fixed" from creation, not dependent on the declaration of the new moon and not categorized as a Yom Tov at all (though it does share laws in common, on the surface, with Holidays).
Also, a counterpoint: Shabbat is referred to in the text of Kiddush as a "remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt". There are various approaches to explain why this is (it's more obvious for the other holidays mentioned, but less so for Shabbat), but Maimonides' approach is:
"This difference can easily be explained. In the former, the cause of the honor and distinction of the day is given: "Therefore the Lord blessed the day of the Sabbath and sanctified it", and the cause for this is, "For in six days," etc. But the fact that G-d has given us the law of the Sabbath and commanded us to keep it, as the consequence of our having been slaves; for then our work did not depend on our will, nor could we choose the time for it; and we could not rest. Thus God commanded us to abstain from work on the Sabbath, and to rest, for two purposes; namely, (1) That we might confirm the true theory, that of the Creation, which at once and clearly leads to the theory of the existence of God. (2) That we might remember how kind God has been in freeing us from the burden of the Egyptians."
Given that my primary experience is with Judaism, I don't really have a point of reference. Although based on the few Christian holidays I know from living in America, it certainly feels that Jews spend more time remembering persecution than other groups, but that could be because we spend a lot of time remembering the fairly recent persecution of the holocaust.
How did you reach that conclusion? This was about racism in the thirteenth century. I would love to read more about these links.
What is your purpose into bringing the Labour party into this discussion? Seems like you are trying to paint the Labour party as anti-semitic. Is it because of foreign-policy positions with respect to Israel?
The Labour party have been embroiled in anti semitism controversy for the last few years.
It largely stems from their leader's former links to Hamas and Palestinian movements, and then the party's cack-handed response to the controversy.
Eg. Being very slow to discipline known antisemites within the party, watering down the Working Definition of Antisemitism, senior figures being members of Facebook groups containing antisemtic content, etc.
Actually the introduction of the article was about a little more than that. More like a « history of anti-semitism in england ». Which resonates for anyone that has been following the recent stories about current’s labour party indeed.
It's a Prisoner's Dilemma[0] situation. Even if one arbitrary group is inclined to behave in a unbiased way, they know that they stand a lot to lose if the other groups take advantage of the situation. The other groups knows this as well. It takes a lot of trust on all sides for the "prisoners" to cooperate and be better off for it. The group with the weakest cohesion loses, unless they all weaken at the same time. And too many interests benefit from keeping everyone tribal and mistrusting.
Your explanation begs the question. Racism is at its core, based in the idea that superficial characteristics somehow convey deeper information. Your explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.
> Your explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.
It is, because in a society that has racism as status quo, you can be sure that these superficial characteristics are shared between you and your immediate, as well as extended family - people who you can rely to be in your group.
What? Extended family is a tighter group than any group based on physical resemblance.
My argument isn't much changed if you recast it as the generalization from family to "race" being incorrect, because races aren't actually coherent groups in the same way that many (extended) families are.
My point is that the generalization from a real in group of people that look like you (extended family) to the group of people that look like you, is not really a useful thing to do, it mistakes the superficial information (similar appearance) for useful information.
Is this normal for re-posts on HN? First time I've seen the date something was posted change upon clicking the comments, however I'm pretty new to this space so it may be a glitch in the matrix that is known.
The quiet malleability of data on this site is disturbing. Titles, article links, and timestamps are all changed without notice on a regular basis. Older discussions become disorienting as their subjects are silently memory-holed and replaced. Users are shadowbanned and throttled for undesirable ideas. There is no written policy for any of this and you feel like you're crazy until you hear rumors from someone who talked to someone who emailed the internet hall monitors.
What is the full list of moderator actions that promote, remove, or change content on Hacker News which are not listed in the FAQ? Why are these actions not listed? Why is there no indicator when an instance of one of these actions has occurred?
We don't maintain an encyclopedia of HN moderation for a bunch of reasons. One is that such a compendium would only be of interest to a small subset of users, and they are just the kind who would never be satisfied by it. There's a certain sort of moderation discussion in which, no matter how patiently you answer objections, your answers are never accepted and only spawn new objections. To engage is to participate in a denial-of-service on yourself, dancing ever faster to a piper who will never stop. It doesn't take long to learn what a mistake that is. It sucks energy, razes morale, and never works.
The vast majority of HN users aren't like that. They find the site interesting, are grateful that we maintain it, and respond with happiness when we answer their questions. That's the population we're excited to serve.
So our approach is to operate by the principles outlined in the site guidelines, spend most of our resources trying to make HN more interesting (or at least stave off its decline), and answer specific questions when they come up. Not because of sinister secrets, just because of basic resource management: it's the best use of our limited resources and the best way to manage the effects on ourselves so we don't burn out quite so quickly.
It's fairly clear that the community is happy with this approach, because if it weren't, we'd be hearing about nothing else. Then there's the grousing sort of commenter who makes dark insinuations about moderator manipulation. There are actually fewer of those than it seems, because they tend to cycle through various accounts over the years. I think they have a role to play, too, and am happy to engage up to a point—but only as long as it feels like the discussion is useful for the general audience too.
The murder appears to have been a crime of passion, not uncommon in that era?