O grande campeão é o leite. A cada ano, cerca de 479 milhões de toneladas desse produto vão parar em copos e pratos espalhados pelo mundo. A quantidade de alimentos consumidos no planeta é calculada e divulgada anualmente pela FAO, a Organização das Nações Unidas para Agricultura e Alimentação. O ano em que nos baseamos para fazer nossa lista é 2001, o último disponível até agora. No caso do leite, o total inclui queijos, iogurtes, coalhadas e outros derivados - só a manteiga fica de fora. O segundo lugar vai para o trigo, a principal matéria-prima de pães e massas alimentícias. "Praticamente todo o trigo do mundo segue para o consumo humano, quase sempre processado como farinha. No Brasil, cerca de 50% da farinha é usada para fabricar pães e outros 20% para fazer macarrão", afirma o engenheiro químico Rogério Germani, da Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa) Agroindústria de Alimentos, do Rio de Janeiro (RJ). Na seqüência da lista aparecem o arroz e a batata.

The United States Mint was created on Apr. 2, 1792, by an act of Congress, which established the U.S. national coinage system. In 1799 the mint became an independent agency reporting directly to the president. It was made a statutory bureau of the Treasury Department in 1873, with a director appointed by the president. The mint manufactures and ships all U.S. coins for circulation to Federal Reserve banks and branches, which in turn issue coins to the public and business community through depository institu tions. The mint also safeguards the Treasury Department’s stored gold and silver, as well as other monetary assets.

The composition of dimes, quarters, and half dollars, traditionally produced from silver, was changed by the Coinage Act of 1965, which mandated that these coins from then on be minted from a cupronickel-clad alloy and reduced the silver content of the half dollar to 40%. In 1970, legislative action mandated that the half dollar and a dollar coin be minted from the same alloy. Mint headquarters are in Washington, DC. Mint production facilities are in Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, and West Point, NY. In addition, the mint is responsible for the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, KY.

The mint offers free public tours and operates sales centers at the U.S. mints in Denver and Philadelphia.

History of the Dollar Coin.

The Eisenhower dollar was minted 1971 through 1978, when legislation called for the minting of the smaller Susan B. Anthony dollar coin. The Anthony dollar, minted through 1981, marked the first time that a woman other than a mythical figure appeared on a generally circulated U.S. coin. It was replaced in 2000 by the Golden Dollar Coin. Golden in color, with a smooth edge and wide border, the obverse depicts Sacagawea (a Shoshone woman who helped guide explorers Lewis and Clark) and her infant son. The reverse shows an American eagle and 17 stars, one for each of the states at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition. In 2007, the mint began issuing a series of Golden Dollar Coins featuring U.S. presidents. Each includes the president’s name, likeness, and years of service. Four will be issued each year in the order in which the pres idents served. Presidents serving non-consecutive terms (Grover Cleveland) will be honored twice. According to the current schedule, coins will be minted through 2016 and only presidents deceased more than two years will be honored. The reverse features the Statue of Liberty. The mint mark, “e Pluribus Unum,” and “In God We Trust,” are edge-incused.

Bureau of Engraving and Printing

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing manufactures the financial and other securities of the United States. It designs and prints a variety of products, including Federal Reserve notes (bills in various denominations), Treasury securities, identification cards, naturalization certificates, and other special security documents. Denominations of the various types of printings produced by the bureau range from a 1/5-cent wine stamp to a $100,000,000 International Monetary Fund special note. Among its products are all hand-engraved invitations issued by the White House.

The first general circulation of paper money by the federal government dates back to 1861, prior to the establishment of the bureau, when, to finance the Civil War, Congress authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue non-interest-bearing demand notes, nicknamed “greenbacks” because of their color. A portrait of Pres. Abraham Lincoln appeared on the face of the first $10 notes. By 1862, the design of U.S. currency incorporated fine-line engraving, intricate geometric lathe work patterns, a Treasury seal, and engraved signatures to aid in counterfeit deterrence. All U.S. currency issued since 1861 remain valid and redeemable at full face value.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing began operations by 1862, originally separating and sealing bank notes that were printed by private companies. In 1877, the bureau became the sole producer of U.S. currency. In 1894, it also began producing postage stamps. On June 10, 2005, the bureau printed its last stamps, a roll of 37-cent flag stamps; stamps are now produced by private printers.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the Federal Reserve as the nation’s central bank, and provided for currency called Federal Reserve notes. The first notes, issued the following year, were $10 notes bearing a portrait of Pres. Andrew Jackson. In 1929, the look of U.S. currency was standardized. The national motto, “In God We Trust,” was added to paper money in 1957.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing currently operates two facilities, one in Washington, DC, opened in 1914, and one in Fort Worth, TX, which began operations in 1991.

Denominations of U.S. Currency

Since 1969 the largest denomination of U.S. currency that has been issued is the $100 bill. As larger-denomination bills reach the Federal Reserve Bank, they are removed from circulation. Because some discontinued currency is expected to be in the hands of holders for many years, the description of the various denominations below is continued:

$1 Washington. Back: Great Seal of U.S.
$2 Jefferson. Back: Signers of Declaration
$5 Lincoln. Back: Lincoln Memorial
$10 Hamilton. Back: U.S. Treasury
$20 Jackson. Back: White House
$50 Grant. Back: U.S. Capitol
$100 Franklin. Back: Independence Hall
$500 McKinley. Back: Ornate denominational marking
$1,000 Cleveland. Back:  Ornate denominational marking
$5,000 Madison. Back: Washington Resigning as Army Commander
$10,000 Salmon Chase. Back: Embarkation of the Pilgrims
$100,000 Wilson. Back: Ornate denominational marking (For use only in transactions between Federal Reserve System and Treasury Department).


U.S. Currency Designs

The U.S. Dept. of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the U.S. Secret Service unveiled a new design for the $100 note Apr. 21, 2010. A number of new security and anti-counterfeiting features are included in the redesign, which was initially scheduled for release in Feb. 2011 (a delay was announced Oct. 1, 2010). Upon the issue date of the new currency, older $100 notes will remain legal tender and do not need to be exchanged for new currency.

New security features incorporated in the redesigned $100 note include a blue 3-D security ribbon and the image of a bell in an inkwell on the front of the note. The security ribbon contains images of bells and numeral “100”s that change from one to the other as the note is tilted. The bell in the copper-colored inkwell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted. Three security features were retained from the 1996 design: the watermark portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the security thread, and the color-changing “100” numeral.

In addition to the inkwell, phrases from the Declaration of Independence and an image of the quill used to sign it appear to the right of the Franklin portrait. The back of the note features a new illustration of the rear of Independence Hall. The Franklin portrait and Independence Hall illustrations are both larger than on the older design and are no longer encapsulated in oval frames.

The new $100 bill is considered the last denomination of the major currency redesign that the Treasury launched in 2003: on Oct. 9, 2003, the U.S. Treasury introduced a new $20 note, using background colors for the first ime since 1905. The notes have a security thread running vertically up one side, with “USA TWENTY” and a small U.S. flag; the thread glows green under UV light. Other security features include color-shifting ink in the number “20” in the lower right corner on the note’s face. A new $50 note with similar security features was released Sept. 28, 2004, followed by a $10 note on Mar. 2, 2006, and a $5 note Mar. 13, 2008.

Sources: United States Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing, U.S. Dept. of the Treasury (in "The World Almanac"). Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

For throughout the region up to Romuald’s time the custom of simony was so widespread that hardly anyone knew this heresy to be a sin. Peter Damiani, Life of Romuald, Chapter xxxv 

At the beginning of the twelfth century the Cistercian order represented all that was most admired in the monastic movement. One of the great historians of the period, Orderic Vitalis of the Norman abbey of St Evroul, describes how it began. In the 1080s, in one of the most famous acts of ‘reform’, Robert, abbot of the traditional (‘Black Monk’) monastery of Molesmes, in Burgundy, ‘examined the Rule of St Benedict very carefully and studied the writings of other holy fathers’. The Rule, believed to have been laid down by Benedict in the sixth century for the monks of Monte Cassino, and founded on their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the abbot and the Rule itself, had become the basis of monastic life everywhere in Latin Christendom. Robert, however, concluded that ‘we have many customs which are not laid down there, and we have carelessly overlooked a number of its precepts.’

"We do not work with our hands, he told his assembled brethren, as we read that the holy fathers did. We receive abundant food and clothing from the tithes and oblations of churches, and by casuistry or force take for ourselves the tithes which belong to the priests. In this way we are gorged with the blood of men and are participators in sin".

When his fellow monks, declining to accept his interpretation, refused to give up what Robert regarded as unsanctioned practices, he left Molesmes with the few who agreed with him to form the community that became the new foundation of Cîteaux.

Robert’s description of tithes reflected both a long-standing religious attitude to property and a realistic view of how it was acquired. Monastic writers were eager to praise those who refrained from abusing power in the pursuit of wealth. Bezo, a minor lord from Cucciago, near Milan, for example, and his wife, Beza, detested greed (rapacitas) so heartily that they would not allow their retainers to ride down other people’s standing corn. Destroying peasants’ crops was a notorious means of driving them into poverty, and so into servitude. Another was stealing their livestock, a practice strenuously denounced by the peace councils.

When the hermit Romuald of Ravenna (d. 1027) cursed the bailiff of a ‘proud and greedy count’ who refused to return the cow he had stolen from an old woman, causing him to choke to death on its meat, Romuald was resisting, or avenging, an attempt to usurp the old woman’s land. This was a miracle much in demand from early eleventh-century saints. Its subversive potential is clearly intimated in a posthumous miracle of Romuald’s, when another old woman whose cow was being driven off rushed to his tomb, with an offering of two hens, to implore his help. ‘Wonderful news. Hardly had the bailiff left the woman’s house than he was struck by an arrow. He let the cow go on the spot, and on reaching home died instantly.’ We need not be told where the arrow came from to see that the prestige of the saint is here endorsing what the bailiff, or his lord, would have described as an act of rebellion. The contrast with Ralph of Caen’s treatment of the Norman peasants who complained of the same kind of oppression is obvious.

These connections between the gathering currents of religious reform and accelerating social change emerge especially plainly in the lives of the hermit preachers of early eleventh-century Italy, men such as Romuald, John Gualberti and Dominic of Sora. Among them the mightiest voice was that of the biographer of Romuald quoted above. He was the youngest of several sons of a nobleman of Ravenna. ‘How shameful’, one of his brothers had greeted Peter’s birth, in 1007. ‘There are so many of us that this house will hardly hold us – so many heirs for so small an inheritance.’ That brother spoke for his generation. The concentration of property in the hands of a single heir, often the eldest son, was a widely and ruthlessly pursued family strategy, and the reason for many savage and desperate feuds. The traditional alternative of dividing it between all the children (partible inheritance) might also be productive of bitterness and division, as this story shows, if the property was not large enough to sustain the consequent fragmentation.

Fortunately for Peter, orphaned when he was two years old, he had another, kinder brother, Damian, who rescued him from a desperately cruel childhood and whose name he took as he would have a father’s. For fifteen years he was educated, and then became a teacher, in the schools of northern Italy. In 1035 he abandoned the schools and the world to devote himself to the monastic life at Fonte Avellano, at a remote spot in the Apennines, near Gubbio, becoming prior a few years later. Fonte Avellano was a monastery of the new style, in which the monks, imitating the desert fathers of old, sought salvation through the most extreme humiliation of the flesh. They lived almost as hermits, some near the church, two to a cell, others alone on the mountainside, their continuing ascent into greater solitude and harsher conditions symbolising their progress in the spiritual life. They devoted themselves to prayer, reading and chanting, coming together only for worship on Sundays and great feast days. They went barefoot in all seasons and restricted their diet to water, bread and salt, supplemented on three days of the week by a few herbs or vegetables.

For Damiani only such a pattern of life contained the possibility of union with God and of defeating the two great forces of sin by which, in his eyes, the world was ruled: sex and power. In two remarkable books he described how they dominated the church. The Book of Gomorrah assailed the sexual laxity of clerks and monks in terms so frank and vivid that until late in the twentieth century it was considered impossible to edit or translate it in full, even for scholarly purposes. The Book of Graft* discussed the evils that arose from payment for ordination, for office in the church and for the sacraments. In these works, as in all Damiani’s voluminous writings, sexual indulgence and the improper conferring of the sacraments, especially that of ordination, were excoriated as vices which disabled the church and surrendered the world to the devil.

It is easy to dismiss the horror of sexual desire – and especially same-sexual desire – so obsessively expressed by Damiani and many of his contemporaries as ‘medieval’ superstition. But eleventh-century Europe was no different from almost every other known society in understanding its customs regarding who could do what with whom, and on what conditions, as fundamental to its organisation and social structure. The turmoil of its social relations, at every level, was naturally expressed and indirectly discussed in its impassioned debates about sex and the agonising efforts necessary to control it. Count Gerald of Aurillac, the saintly layman whose Life had been written by Odo of Cluny around 920, was saved by a miracle when a serf’s daughter by whose clear skin he was ‘tortured, allured and consumed as though by a blind fire’ became hideous in his eyes, just when he had arranged with her parents to have her placed at his disposal. To preserve himself from further temptation he ordered her father to give her away in marriage, gave her her liberty and presented her with a smallholding. Dominic Loricatus, whose biography Damiani wrote, discharged his guilt for the payment his socially ambitious father had made to have him ordained priest while still a child, by wearing instead of a hair shirt next his skin the coat of chain mail (lorica) from which he took his name and becoming a virtuoso in the art of flagellation, said to inflict on himself 300,000 lashes in a six-day period.

The relentless competition for control over land and those who worked it, common everywhere in Europe, was intensified in Lombardy and Tuscany by the rising profits of increasing local and long-distance commerce and the revenues from markets and tolls associated with it. Both in the countryside and in the cities, which by the end of the tenth century were growing rapidly, the terrifying force of change was embodied in the man of power and wealth who was constrained by no law in the pursuit of his own advantage – or, it goes without saying, of sexual gratification. It was in contrast to such a man that Bezo and Beza of Cucciago, ‘although they could freely threaten their neighbours in every way, and could be constrained by none of them if they didn’t want to be’, voluntarily submitted themselves to ‘every decent custom’; in contrast to him that John Gualberti, in embracing the religious life, renounced ‘landed honours and false riches’. These are references to the power of the seignurial ban, the pretext of delegated – but long since usurped – royal authority to exact services and seize animals and goods that provided the theoretical justification of these practices. Gualberti, who as the son of a noble had been born to such power, demonstrated his renunciation in saintly fashion when, seeing a fine herd of cattle grazing in an Apennine meadow, he called on Paul, his patron saint, to give him one of them for the poor.

"At his words one immediately fell dead, and he ordered its body to be cut up and distributed among the poor. When it was eaten, he took another by praying in the same way, and a third, and a fourth".

At this point the unfortunate herdsmen tried to save their flock by driving it off to another part of the mountain, to be told sharply that they might evade Gualberti that way, but not St Paul. To make himself clear Gualberti took another beast, followed by a sixth, a seventh, an eighth and a ninth. The herdsmen plucked up their courage and told the saint that he would do better to go back to his monastery than deprive poor men of their animals. He took the point, promised to do them no more harm and kept his word, thenceforth confining his charity to the distribution of such animals as came to him by way of gift.

What makes this an example of Gualberti’s holiness is not his power to take the cattle but his magnanimity in forgoing it. These stories show how immediately the universal touchstones of holiness – chastity, the renunciation of property, extreme bodily asceticism, devotion to prayer and spiritual exercises – appealed to people who were troubled by rapidly increasing disparities of wealth and power. The miracles of these Italian holy men, demanded and acknowledged by popular acclamation, cast them in the roles of ideal lordship, settling disputes, feeding the hungry, protecting the weak and punishing the wicked and the oppressor. The holy men themselves tended to come from families that expected or aspired to exercise lordly powers, but were not so grand as to do so securely, or to be immune from the turns of fortune and the whims of the great. They knew both the temptations of avarice and the anxieties of the poor. Gualberti and others like him abjured the ambitions of lordship in its worldly form but now exercised its prerogatives in a nobler cause, in the service of a greater and more potent lord, and often in quite explicit opposition to the customs and behaviour of their brothers who had remained in the world. This did not mean that their ideas and values were embraced only by the poor. The eleventh century was not the last time in European history when the most passionate and radical critics of privilege and its abuses included some of those who had been born to it.

One such was Bezo’s and Beza’s son Ariald, educated as a clerk, who on 10 May 1057 launched a public attack on the clergy of Milan, gathered for the solemn translation of the relics of one of the city’s many saints. Not only did they live in concubinage, as everybody knew, he said, but they were so deeply involved in the heresy of simony that none of them, from the highest to the lowest, had been admitted to any degree of holy orders or held any office in the church unless he had bought it as he might have bought a cow. He urged the people to stay away from their churches, which were as filthy as stables, and to refuse their sacraments, which were no better than dog turds. He started a riot, and many of the clergy were seized by the crowd and forced, under threat of death, to swear oaths of celibacy.

Ariald’s sermon began a period of nineteen years during which, if the Patarenes (as his followers were derisively called by their enemies, after the lowliest workers in the cloth trade) did not rule Milan themselves, they made it ungovernable by the archbishop and the nobles. The city had been restless since the bloody suppression of a rising against Archbishop Aribert II some years before his death in 1045. Aribert’s successor, Guido da Velate, was objectionable to traditionalists as neither nobly born nor a member of the higher clergy of the city, and despised by reformers as ‘an illiterate man, living in concubinage, a simoniac without any shame’. Ariald had begun to preach reform in the villages around before moving into the city itself. His closest associates were Landolf Cotta, a notary from one of the ruling families, and Landolf’s brother Erlembald. Some said they had been put up to it by a priest from another aristocratic family, Anselm of Baggio, of whom Archbishop Guido rid himself by commending him to the imperial court, where he made a good enough impression to be appointed bishop of Lucca; in 1062 he became Pope Alexander II. Among Ariald’s lay supporters were Benedetto Rozzo, who had founded the church that the Patarenes took over as a base for their worship and operations, and Nazarius, both members of an influential group of citizens who had the hereditary privilege of striking coin, and so had been well placed to take advantage of the rapid growth of Milan’s markets and the dizzy rise in land prices over the previous half-century or so. For Ariald’s biographer, Andrew of Strumi, the movement divided not so much classes as families: ‘One household was entirely faithful, the next entirely faithless; in a third the mother believed with one son while the father disbelieved with another. The whole city was thrown into disorder by this confusion and strife.’

Ariald formed around him a community of priests who had renounced the service of the archbishop, and of laymen and women. Abjuring all possessions, they lived chastely under a common rule – so their community became known as the Canonica – in a cloister that they built beside the church that Nazarius had given them. From this base Aribert organised what amounted to an alternative clergy for the city, preaching and conducting services for people who flocked from the nearby towns and villages. Every day, surrounded by his followers, he left the Canonica to visit Milan’s many shrines, praying and chanting at each, and in the process creating and consolidating a close identification between his movement and the community of the city, openly and successfully challenging the authority of the archbishop and clergy, whose legitimacy he continually disparaged.

Ariald is readily recognisable as a product of the currents of reform that flowed in early eleventh-century Europe. He was a zealous and educated devotee of the apostolic life – his sermons used the neoplatonist language that had been heard at Orléans and Monforte – who had found the condition and practices of the church at odds with what his reading had led him to believe it should be. To his followers he was a saint. He became a martyr in 1067, when he was murdered by the servants of a niece of Guido da Velate. His horribly mutilated body was dumped in Lake Como, to be recovered by his followers and borne in solemn procession back to the city for burial. From the beginning it was as heretics, not merely as sinners, that he had denounced the Milanese clergy. ‘They deserve to be overthrown’, he said, in the sermon that launched the rising, ‘because every kind of pollution, including the simoniac heresy, is rife among the priests and deacons and the rest of the clergy; they are all Nicolaitists and simoniacs.’

The clergy of Milan accepted neither this valuation nor Ariald’s authority to pronounce it. To them he was a heretic in his turn, and the founder of a heretical sect. Their see had been founded in the fourth century by St Ambrose, one of the greatest of the chuch fathers, and they firmly maintained that Ambrose had established the customs attacked by the Patarenes, including their right to marry and to observe distinctive liturgical observances, such as a three-day feast before Pentecost. In insisting on the authority of their patron saint, the Milanese clergy were not simply rationalising privilege. The bishoprics of Italy and Gaul had been established under the Roman empire, and their bishops spoke directly as the successors of their founding saints and martyrs. Their authority as such was not understood to be diminished by the acknowledged primacy of the bishop of Rome. In the eleventh century the burgeoning cults of their patron saints fostered and symbolised the vigour and independence of the emerging cities, among which Milan itself was the richest and most powerful. This became increasingly a source of tension after 1046, when popes began to convene councils that claimed general authority and to send representatives (legates) acting in their name to enforce their decrees and intervene in local disputes. The Milanese clergy responded that the Ambrosian church was not subject to Roman laws, or to the authority of the Roman bishop. They were not, historically speaking, strictly correct, but their view was deeply rooted and widely shared in their time.

The conditions that identified Milan so closely with the sin of simony had been formally established in 987. In that year the archbishop distributed the extensive and wealthy lands of his church as fiefs among a number of the leading families of the region, whose heads became known as the capitanei (‘captains’). Thenceforth the offices of the church and the benefices that went with them, from canonries of the cathedral downwards, were disposed of to the families and followers of these lords. What seems to have made the practice especially unacceptable was not only the sense that was growing everywhere in Europe that the church, its ministers and its services ought to be disentangled from the sordid and undignified structures of secular power but also the fact that here in Lombardy, most of all in Milan, money was now flowing in ever greater quantity and ever more visible streams as a great commercial revival got under way. The return that was made for appointment to a position in the church, or for a baptism or a funeral, was increasingly likely to be a bag of coins rather than a share of the annual vintage or a gift of livestock or produce, such as the two hens the widow brought to Romuald when she sought his help against the rapacious count. The offices of the church of Milan, it began to be said, were available for purchase on a fixed tariff. The cost would be recovered from the profits of the ecclesiastical duties attached to them, including the administration of the sacraments.

The sin named after Simon Magus had not always been as easy to recognise as to condemn. His offence had been that, seeking to buy from the apostles their power to confer the Holy Spirit, he ‘offered them money, saying “Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said unto him, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money”’ (Acts of the Apostles 8: 18–20). In the early middle ages money was not much used from day to day. Goods and services were generally exchanged in kind, and the services of the church, like any others, were expected to be reciprocated. Additionally, Christians had had from the earliest times a religious duty to devote a tenth of all their revenues and produce to the support of the church and the poor. In the eighth century the Carolingian kings made this a civic obligation, which meant that everybody had to pay, and  therefore to be attached to a particular church, and that collection was enforced, in principle, by royal authority. Churches and monasteries were supported by endowments of land from which, like any other landlord, they took the profits both from direct cultivation by slaves or serfs and from the rents and services of tenants. Since the bishopric was usually among the largest landholders of its region and the holdings of other churches and monasteries were often substantial, these were very considerable and dependable sources of income, and therefore also of power. Control over them became ever more desirable and rivalry among the followers correspondingly intense in the tenth century, as the ability of the kings to reward, and therefore to restrain, their followers declined. All land came to be treated for practical purposes as family land, whose revenues could be divided, distributed and redistributed to support the retinues and secure the alliances necessary for survival in a fiercely competitive world.

Rulers were not indifferent to the dangers that these facts held for religion and learning. In 909 the duke of Aquitaine founded at Cluny, in Burgundy, a monastery whose security as a haven of prayer for the redemption of his soul and those of all its friends and patrons was to be assured by the paradoxical device of granting it immunity from the powers of ducal officers – who would have used those powers to annexe its land and income for their own use. Later in the century the pope was persuaded to grant it the same exemption from the authority of the bishop of Mâcon. The formula was repeated all over Europe. Many new monasteries were founded in imitation of Cluny, and many old ones placed under the authority of its abbot, who became the head of a chain of monasteries – what would later become known as an order – that spread through Burgundy and the Auvergne, then into northern Italy and beyond.

Similar developments were associated with Gorze in the Rhineland, Brogne in Flanders, St Victor in Marseille and Winchester in England.

Reform was not always a peaceful process. When Odo of Cluny was entrusted with the reform of Fleury – which subsequently became itself a centre of reform – there were threats that the monks would kill him rather than submit to his authority. They did not go so far, but when he began ‘to persuade them to give up eating meat, to live sparingly and to possess nothing of their own’, they gave away the property of the monastery to their relations rather than return it to the common holding, and tried to exhaust their supply of fish so that Odo would be forced to let them eat meat again.

In the middle decades of the eleventh century the currents of reform which had flowed occasionally and intermittently came together in a raging torrent that swept the old world away. It was precipitated not only by social tensions of the kind that were so divisive in Milan but also by the scandals of the Roman papacy. In Rome, as in other cities, the bishopric was the object of intense rivalry between the leading families. Its special standing lent them high visibility and occasionally attracted outside intervention, as on the famous occasions in 800, when Charlemagne had come to rescue Pope Leo III from deposition and found himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor, and in 961, when Otto I secured the same reward for a similar service to Pope John XII. The intervention of Henry III came after Benedict IX was expelled from the city to be replaced by Sylvester III, and then restored, to resign shortly afterwards, in May 1045, in favour of a reformer, John Gratian, who assumed the pontificate as Gregory VI. Such sensational events were naturally accompanied by scandalous accusations.

Bonizo of Sutri, for example, a committed reformer writing some forty years later, claimed that Benedict, ‘after committing many squalid adulteries and murders with his own hands’, gave up the papacy because he wanted to marry his cousin the daughter of Gerald de Saxo, who demanded this price for her so that he could place his own man on the papal throne as Sylvester III. However all that may have been, the accession of Gregory VI, Benedict’s godfather and a high official of the papal court, was received with rejoicing by Italian reformers, Peter Damiani among them, in whose eyes he had done a fine thing in persuading Benedict to stand down for a second time.

The emperor took a different view. Benedict’s resignation had been expensive. To procure it John Gratian, a wealthy man, had paid him off with a very large sum of money. It was generally acknowledged that he had done so to secure the abdication of his universally despised predecessor rather than to buy the office for himself, but the distinction was too fine to save him from the accusation of simony. Henry, anxious to be crowned by an undisputed pope, summoned synods at Sutri and Rome in 1046, which – Benedict IX and Sylvester III having revived their claims – deposed all three. In their place the emperor appointed a German bishop, who was killed within a year by the foul air of the Roman marshes, and then another, who lasted for two months. With a persistence worthy of Gualberti, Henry sent in his kinsman Bishop Bruno of Toul, who was made, in every sense, of sterner stuff. In his five years (1049–54) as Leo IX, he inaugurated a transformation of the papacy that turned out, when the dust eventually settled (if it ever has), to have been a decisive moment in European history.

One of Leo’s first acts was to hold a synod in Rome at which simony was outlawed and several bishops found guilty of it deposed. Among them was the bishop of Sutri, who had intended to brazen it out with the help of false witnesses but suffered a fatal stroke as he was on the point of doing so. ‘All who heard of it were so terrified’, says Leo’s biographer, ‘that no one thereafter attempted to escape ignominy by taking a false oath in the presence of the pope.’ The lesson was driven home at the consecration of the new basilica of St Remigius at Reims a few months later, when Leo placed the relics of the saint on the high altar and demanded that every bishop and abbot present should stand up, one at a time, and swear before them that he had paid no money for his office. The archbishop of Besançon was struck dumb as he was about to embark on the defence of a notorious simoniac, Bishop Hugh of Langres, and recovered his speech only with the aid of Leo’s fervent prayers on his behalf.

These were two of a dozen synods in Italy, Germany and France in which Leo, making the solemn progress of a monarch through his dominions, placed the war against simony at the top of the church’s agenda. In doing so he also served notice that papal leadership would henceforth be exercised much more vigorously and directly than through the letters and decrees that had sufficed even the most active of his predecessors. Not many of his successors travelled as often and widely as he had done, except when compelled by their political misfortunes, but from now on they were represented increasingly frequently, and often very effectively, by legates whom they appointed to act in their name and with their authority. What immediately ensured that Leo’s policies and influence would outlast his brief pontificate, however, was the cadre of committed and talented reformers whom he brought to Rome as cardinals, many of them from his native Rhineland and several of them future popes. Among them were: Humbert, a monk from Moyenmoutier in Leo’s former diocese of Toul, who became a formidable polemicist of reform and the hammer of everything that he saw as heresy or the source of heresy, above all the simoniacs and the Greeks; Peter Damiani, wrenched from his mountainside to wage his battle against the flesh on a wider front; and Hildebrand, nephew and devoted admirer of Gregory VI, who had followed his uncle into exile but now returned to become ever more influential, and an ever more uncompromising proponent of papal supremacy.

The new men in Rome soon became closely allied with the Milanese Patarenes. In 1057 Ariald and Landulf Cotta were excommunicated by Archbishop Guido da Velate for their assault on his authority and his clergy. They appealed to the pope, who sent as legates to deal with the dispute the bishop of Lucca, their old ally Anselm of Baggio, and Cardinal Hildebrand. In 1059 Anselm was dispatched again, this time with Peter Damiani, who imposed a settlement in line with the argument of his Book of Graft. The clergy of Milan were required to give up simony and marriage, and to do penance for their sins, but on those conditions were permitted to retain their offices. It was  a compromise that in the short run satisfied nobody, but which in the longer term avoided an error that might easily have been fatal to the authority of the Roman church. If the Patarenes had had their way the argument of Cardinal Humbert’s thunderous Books against the Simoniacs (1058) would have been applied, and the orders of the Milanese clergy declared invalid on the ground that, as simoniacs, they were heretics and had been ordained by heretics. This would have raised inescapably the question whether anybody remained in the Latin church who had been validly ordained. Damiani had acted on the crucial distinction that Augustine of Hippo had made in his writings against
the Donatist church of north Africa. The ordination conferred by a bishop known to be a heretic could not be accepted as valid. But sacraments, including ordination, received in good faith even from a sinful minister were valid in God’s eyes. As Augustine had put it, ‘Let it be God’s merit in giving and my faith in receiving: for me two things in this are certain, God’s goodness and my own faith. But if you [the priest] intervene how can I know anything for certain?’ The priest was the conduit of God’s grace. That a conduit should be correctly connected to its source is essential; its inner cleanliness, though much to be desired, is not. Failure to insist on this principle would have created insuperable difficulties for the church. As many heretics would point out in the centuries to come, an authority transmitted from the time of the apostles must inevitably have passed through a succession of mortal sinners.

Despite this settlement, the Patarenes did not abandon their struggle against ‘the captains and the lesser vassels, the sellers of churches and their kindred and the kinsmen of their concubines’. Nor did they lose their supporters in Rome in consequence. Indeed, when Anselm of Baggio became Pope Alexander II, in 1061, he appointed Erlembald as his personal representative in Milan, presenting him with a ‘banner of St Peter’ to proclaim the office. With that impetus, and it was said with funds provided by Hildebrand, the Patarene movement spread to other cities in Lombardy and Tuscany. At Brescia, when the bishop, a reformer, read out the papal decree against simony, ‘he was beaten by the clergy and almost killed’, but there, as in Cremona and Piacenza, married and simoniac priests were driven out of the churches, and their services boycotted. In Florence a similar campaign, led by John Gualberti and his monks of Vallombrosa, triumphed when an enormous crowd watched a monk named Peter, from that day known as Petrus Igneus, walk unscathed through the flames to prove their charges of simony and concubinage against the bishop and his clergy. As it turned out, these were early battles in a war that would rage through Italy for decades to come.

By R.I. Moore in "The War of Heresy- Faith and Power in Medieval Europe", Profile Books, UK, 2012, excerpts chapter 5. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Toda criança aprende que a mentira é um feio pecado. Mas os mesmos adultos que lhe ensinam essa verdade mentem mais do que aceitam confessar. Viver sem mentir parece tão difícil como viver sem respirar.

Ninguém gosta de admitir esta dura verdade: todos mentem. Seja para agradar a alguém, escapulir de uma encrenca, ser o herói de alguma aventura nunca vivida, levar vantagem na vida. Com suas pernas curtas, a mentira caminha no passo do homem desde que o mundo é mundo — e não dá o menor sinal de perder o fôlego, muito pelo contrário. Todos temos um pouco — ou muito — de Pinocchio. Há milhares de anos, como se estivesse conformado com o fato de que viver sem pregar uma mentirinha e tão impossÍvel como viver sem respirar, o filósofo chinês Confúcio (551-479 a. C. ) recomendava que se apelasse para esse antiqüíssimo recurso apenas quando a verdade prejudicasse uma família ou a nação. É um conselho maroto, como sabem os chefes de clãs e dirigentes políticos para quem nunca foi difícil fazer o que pregava o venerando sábio.

Aristóteles (384-322 a.C), o pensador grego, só aceitava duas maneiras de mentir: diminuindo ou aumentando uma verdade. O teólogo Santo Agostinho, no século IV, resolveu complicar o assunto descrevendo seis tipos diferentes de mentira: a que prejudica alguém, mas é útil a outro; a que prejudica sem beneficiar ninguém; a que se comete pelo prazer de mentir; a que se conta para divertir alguém; a que leva ao erro religioso; e. finalmente, a que ele considerava a "boa" mentira, que salva a vida de uma pessoa. Para as modernas ciências do comportamento, porém seja qual for a história falsa, a realidade é uma só: mentira é aquilo que se queria que fosse verdade.

O ato de mentir, contudo, é menos ou mais tolerado conforme os valores de cada povo e cada época. E até numa mesma sociedade podem coexistir graus diferentes de aceitação (ou repúdio) da mentira, de acordo com as expectativas que cada grupo social pode ter em relação aos demais. Os povos antigos, de maneira geral, condenavam a mentira, mas podiam mudar de idéia a partir do contato com outras culturas. Por exemplo, os povos da velha Índia tinham o preceito de só mentir para salvar um hóspede. No mais, os budistas pregavam que mentir equivalia a matar dez homens. Em tempos recentes, com a chegada dos colonizadores ingleses, a mentira passou a ser aceita com naturalidade pelos indianos, que a ela recorriam até para salvar a própria pele.

Mas, ontem ou hoje, na Índia ou no Brasil, segundo os psicólogos, existe um período da vida em que sempre se mente: a infância. Nela, a mentira é um modo de satisfazer, para si mesmo ou perante os outros, uma necessidade ou alcançar um desejo. Por exemplo, o garoto que diz que seu pai, uma pessoa modesta, é um "grande homem" quer que isso seja verdade. É parte do desenvolvimento psíquico de cada um fazer da mentira uma espécie de varinha mágica. Também existem as mentiras por motivos óbvios, em que o pequeno mentiroso sacrifica  verdade para proteger-se da esperada punição por um mau desempenho na escola ou uma travessura que custou a vida de um valioso vaso em casa. A criança mente ainda para extravasar agressividade ou vingar-se de alguém: por exemplo, acusa o irmão de uma falta imaginária para vê-lo castigado e assim aplacar o próprio ciúme. Tudo isso, com mais refinamento, os adultos também fazem. Há, porém, uma diferença. "Não existe uma idade exata para parar de mentir. Mas quando se deixa de viver mentindo é sinal de que já se está maduro", acredita a psicóloga paulista Maria Helena de Brito Izzo, que há vinte anos trabalha com crianças.

Se a mentira é tão comum, por que todo pai vira uma fera quando flagra o filho mentindo? "Porque esse mesmo pai, embora também minta na sua vida, não deixa de dar o devido valor à verdade", responde Maria Helena. "Ele quer que o filho faça o certo pelo mesmo motivo que deseja vê-lo o melhor em tudo." A repressão familiar à mentira faz bem: sem ela, explica a psicóloga, não se aprende a lutar pelas coisas que se quer usando meios legítimos, nem se assume o que se faz— enfim, não se cresce. No final das contas, o adulto que mente constantemente é uma criança que só cresceu por fora. Pois então a mentira é prova de que algo vai mal na cabeça do cidadão — e precisa ser tratado.

Por isso mesmo, a mentira é uma das principais manifestações analisadas no divã do psicoterapeuta: os assuntos sobre os quais a pessoa mente fornecem ótimas pistas sobre as áreas mais problemáticas de seu temperamento, aquilo que ela não enfrenta ou quer esconder — de si mesma, para começo de conversa. Não menos importante, porém, é a influência da sociedade. Assim como a censura da família é fundamental para conduzir a criança ao bom caminho da verdade, a forma como a sociedade pune a mentira também é. "Num país como o Brasil, em que a impunidade corre solta, mesmo um adulto pode não ver mal algum em mentir", observa a psicóloga Maria Helena. Ai a mentira muda de figura. Já não se trata da necessidade compulsiva de enganar, típica da pessoa imatura, nem das pequenas inverdades que todos contam, seja por piedade, como dizer a um doente que sua aparência está ótima, seja para poupar-se de uma chateacão, ao mandar dizer que não se está em casa no momento de atender um telefonema.

Quando a mentira passa a fazer parte rotineira do jogo social — uma técnica de ataque e defesa na competição entre as pessoas por mais riqueza, prestigio ou poder, e ainda na guerrilha entre governados e governantes —, é claro sinal de que o pais onde isso acontece não vai bem das pernas. O pior é quando as pessoas mentem e já nem ficam vermelhas — ao contrário, até invocam justificativas para as rasteiras que praticam, como o contribuinte que lesa o físco porque se diz lesado pelo governo que não cumpre o que promete. A mentira envergonhada ainda é uma prova de que se sabe distinguir o certo do errado: assim como a hipocrisia é a homenagem do vício à virtude, ela é uma demonstração indireta do respeito pela verdade. Mesmo o mais descarado dos mentirosos, porém, se entrega — só não o nota quem não quer ou não presta suficiente atenção.

Descontadas as mudanças imperceptíveis diretamente, aquelas captadas somente pelo detector de mentira, o corpo mostra um grande número de sinais de que a verdade está passando longe naquela hora. Sabe-se, por exemplo, que é mais fácil mentir com o rosto do que com as pernas e os pés. Isso mesmo: cientistas descobriram que, pelo fato de todos conhecerem as próprias expressões faciais, de tanto vê-las no espelho, é mais simples controlá-las no momento de mentir. Mas é quase impossível disciplinar pernas e pés — que à sua maneira também "falam", e às vezes bem alto, durante uma conversação. O mentiroso bate os pés, cruza e descruza as pernas. É por isso que em negociações complicadas as pessoas ficam inconscientemente mais à vontade sentadas a mesas que escondem a metade inferior do corpo.

Numa das mais bem trabalhadas pesquisas sobre a mentira e o organismo, cientistas americanos pediram a um grupo de estudantes de enfermagem — uma profissão cujos praticantes são de certo modo treinados para mentir — que dissessem ora a verdade, ora a mentira sobre alguns filmes a que haviam assistido. Enquanto as enfermeiras falavam, uma câmara oculta tratava de flagrar os sinais mentirosos. Um deles é o ato de esconder as mãos, que normalmente se movimentam numa conversação para dar força a uma idéia. Sem perceber o que está fazendo, o mentiroso tende a tirar as mãos de cena, afundando-as nos bolsos, por exemplo, para evitar que desmintam a mentira que sai da boca.

As enfermeiras da pesquisa americana aumentaram a freqüência de autocontatos com o rosto, enquanto mentiam sobre os filmes. Ou seja, começaram a passar a mão pela face, alisar os cabelos, apoiar a mão no queixo. Mas dois gestos se destacaram: o de encobrir parcialmente a boca — nem que apenas por um momento — e o de tocar o nariz. O primeiro, segundo os psicólogos, traduz uma vontade de amordaçar-se, porque ninguém se sente totalmente à vontade ao contar mentiras. Tende a ser um gesto rápido porque exprime um conflito: uma parte do mentiroso não quer amordaçar-se coisa nenhuma — e sim continuar com a sua mentira. Já o toque no nariz tem duas explicações: a primeira seria basicamente a impossibilidade de cobrir a boca — portanto, encontra-se apoio no nariz, que está convenientemente próximo; a segunda explicação refere-se a certas mudanças fisiológicas, nos momentos de tensão, que aumentam a sensibilidade da mucosa nasal. Assim, ao mentir, o nariz coça, embora possa ser uma sensação tão suave que mal se perceba.

Finalmente, as enfermeiras mentirosas se mexiam mais nas cadeiras, como crianças que querem escapar de algum lugar. Na verdade, o que todos querem é escapar desse desconforto psicológico que é enganar o próximo, mesmo quando não se o ama. As crianças podem dizer "sou mentiroso e sou feliz; mais mentiroso é quem me diz". Mas não é verdade: mentira raramente rima com felicidade. Principalmente quando a pessoa se vê forçada a esconder de seu parceiro a realidade. Nas relações amorosas, diz o psicoterapeuta paulista Jacob Pinheiro Goldberg, a mentira costuma ser confundida com a fantasia, pois ambos os processos servem à mesma finalidade: suavizar as situações de tensão.

"Mas, na mentira", explica Goldberg, "existe a intenção de iludir o outro em causa própria, e isso implica lesões e mutilações para o relacionamento. Já a fantasia serve muitas vezes para sustentar a qualidade da relação." A mentira no jogo amoroso também sofre a influência dos costumes da sociedade em que vivem os amantes. Quanto mais tabus houver maior será a tendência para a hipocrisia e o fingimento. Poucas coisas são tão complicadas como o conflito entre a verdade e a mentira numa relação afetiva, e os rios de tinta já gastos pelos psicólogos para explicar a questão não conseguem cobrir suficientemente toda a gama de emoções envolvidas nessas situações.

Há quem vive para mentir e há quem mente para viver — como os que ganha honestamente o pão de cada dia graças ao fingimento, em tempo parcial ou integral. É o caso, por exemplo, dos atores, que fingem ser personagens; dos médicos, que ostentam nas horas mais graves uma calma fictícia; dos diplomatas, que por dever do ofício blefam à mesa de negociações. Os publicitários, cansados de levar a fama de vender mentiras bem embaladas, resolveram há oito anos criar o Conselho Nacional de Auto-Regulamentação Publicitária (Conar), justamente para vigiar anúncios caídos na tentação de vender gato por lebre.

Pois bem: só nos últimos cinco meses do ano passado, o Conselho suspendeu sete campanhas publicitárias por causa das chamadas mensagens enganosas. Isso sem contar as campanhas que sofreram pequenas correções porque não explicavam direito o que estavam vendendo. "O problema desses tempos de crise", comenta Álvaro Moura, do Conar, "é que aumenta o número de produtos, como manuais fantásticos para ter sucesso, figas ecruzes milagrosas, receitas para ganhar na loteria. Está na cara que é mentira. Mas, no desespero, o brasileiro pode acabar acreditando."

As pesquisas indicam que os brasileiros menos acreditados pela população são os políticos. É uma revelação inquietante, sem dúvida, mas não é verdade que isso acontece só no Brasil — e só nos dias de hoje. Afinal, quatro séculos antes de Cristo, na Grécia Antiga, Platão ensinava que "a mentira enfeia a alma, mas é perdoável quando atende a interesses de Estado". Depois, no Renascimento, o italiano Maquiavel escreveria que todos vêem o que o político parece, mas poucos sabem o que ele é realmente. E assim ninguém tanto quanto o político profissional é uma aparência — ainda que a aparência engane.

A mentira se infiltra na História que se aprende nos livros didáticos — e cada país há de ter sua cota de maus tratos à verdade dos acontecimentos históricos. Dom Pedro I, por exemplo, jamais teria bradado "Independência ou morte" às margens do Ipiranga, ao receber a carta que o intimava a voltar a Portugal; teria reagido soltando uns sonoros palavrões. Guardadas as diferenças de tempo, lugar e pessoa, não se tem provas de que Nero tenha mandado incendiar Roma em 64 d.C., mas não há quem não tenha sido ensinado a acreditar em sua culpa. Nos Estados Unidos, quando se ensina às crianças as virtudes da verdade, é inevitável o exemplo de George Washington: aos 6 anos, confessou ter derrubado a cerejeira favorita do pai, dizendo "não posso mentir". Na verdade, nenhuma de suas biografias confirma o episódio.

O nazista Joseph Goebbels, famigerado ministro da Propaganda de Hitler, entrou para a História, entre muitas outras coisas, como tendo dito que "a mentira repetida diversas vezes se torna uma verdade". Nunca se provou que ele tivesse de fato dito isso, pelo menos com essas palavras. Mas tanto já se repetiu a frase que ninguém dirá ser mentira.

Mentirosos de mentira
De tanto inventar histórias para distrair seus amigos, o alemão Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, barão de Munchhausen (1720-1797), que serviu como mercenário no exército russo na guerra contra os turcos em 1740, acabou entrando para a História como um grande mentiroso, graças ao livro, por sinal publicado anonimamente em 1785, do escritor alemão Rudolph Erich Raspe (1737-1794). De volta dos campos de batalha, o barão contou, por exemplo, como se safara de um pantano onde caíra: puxando a si mesmo pelos cabelos. Em outra peripécia, salvou-se da morte cavalgando balas de canhão disparadas pelo inimigo. Entre uma aventura e outra, ainda achou tempo para ir à Lua — duas vezes.

Mas não há literatura que não tenha seus campeões da mentira — real ou imaginária. O escritor francês Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) celebrizou-se graças às aventuras mentirosas de seu personagem Tartarin de Tarascon, um burguês baixinho, com certa tendência à obesidade, que se imaginava um valente herói e saía contando peripécias nunca vividas. No Brasil, o mentiroso Macunaíma, de Mário de Andrade, nem fez questão de se fingir de herói: covarde como só ele e sem nenhum caráter, Macunaíma mentia o tempo inteiro para se safar de qualquer problema — dizer a verdade, aliás, lhe dava preguiça.

O mentiroso mais conhecido do mundo da ficção foi sem dúvida Pinocchio, o boneco de madeira criado em 1878 pelo escritor italiano Carlo Collodi. Numa tentativa de educá-lo, a fada madrinha de Pinocchio fez com que cada vez que ele mentisse o nariz crescesse. Antes que virasse um Cirano, o boneco acabou desistindo de sua vida de mentiras. Foi, talvez, o único mentiroso da literatura a optar pela verdade — pela boa e simples razão de que a verdade Ihe trazia mais vantagens do que a mentira.

Quando os animais mentem

A mentira, na natureza, é uma arma de sobrevivência. Muitas vezes, na luta contra o predador, a presa só tem chance de escapar se souber mentir bem. E o caso dos camaleões, que, graças à pigmentação especial da pele, se confundem com o ambiente. Ou de certos caranguejos, que vivem com a carapaça coberta por algas ou esponjas. Os insetos são especialistas em se fingir de cortiça ou de gravetos no tronco de árvores. Essas e muitas outras formas de mentira atendem por um único e verdadeiro nome científito - mimetismo.

O fenômeno foi estudado pela primeira vez pelo naturalista inglês Henry Walter Bates (1825-1892), que observou o comportamento das borboletas no vale do rio Amazonas. Ele descobriu uma família de borboletas que conseguia escapar dos pássaros tornando-se parecida na forma e na cor com outra família. cujo sabor não agradava às aves. As borboletas apetitosas tratavam de voar misturadas às outras. Hoje se sabe que os animais memorizam certos padrões de aparência quando associam determinada presa a um gosto nauseante ou à dor. Portanto, mentiroso competente é aquele que consegue assumir uma aparência pouco atrativa para o predador.

Existem, porém, casos de automimetismo: animais que imitam outros da própria espécie. Os zangões, por exemplo, quando estão prestes a ser atacados, voam e zumbem como abelhas, que, como bem sabem os atacantes, têm ferrões para se defender-se a mentira pega, os zangões se salvam. Nem sempre, contudo, é a presa o mentiroso. Isso acontece no caso clássico do lobo em pele de cordeiro, ou seja, o animal que finge ser manso, se aproxima calmamente de outro com ar de quem não quer nada e sai ganhando uma refeição.

Retrato de um mentiroso

Enquanto a boca mente com a maior desenvoltura, a mente se perde entre o que conhece como verdade e o que está sendo afirmado mentirosamente como verdade. Durante esse pequeno curto-circuito, ocorrem mudanças fisiológicas comuns a todo e qualquer mentiroso: a respiração se interrompe por um segundo e depois volta num ritmo acelerado; o coração também passa a bater rápido e a transpiração aumenta. Como nada disso pode ser percebido diretamente, existe o poligrafo, ou detector de mentira, um aparelho que em contato com o peito, o pescoço e as pontas dos dedos registra em gráficos aquelas manifestações fisiológicas.

Certamente, todos os sintomas citados aparecem no mentiroso. A polêmica, porém, surge ao se levantar a possibilidade de que qualquer pessoa em estado de ansiedade — com problemas familiares, por exemplo — pode apresentar as mesmíssimas características. No Brasil, apenas a polícia de São Paulo usa o detector de mentira. Segundo o delegado Nelson Silveira Guimarães, "apesar da confiança que temos no exame, ele não é considerado prova judicial, mas apenas um indicio que pode influênciar a opinião do juiz". O detector de mentira, diz Guimarães, só não é ainda mais usado porque apenas um em cada dez suspeitos consente em submeter-se ao aparelho. Além disso, enquanto nos Estados Unidos cerca de 10 mil policiais sabem manipular o detector, no Brasil não há mais de uma dúzia de funcionários habilitados.

Texto de Lúcia Helena de Oliveira publicado na revista "Super Interessante" edição 7, abril de 1988. Adaptado e ilustrado para ser postado por Leopoldo Costa.

The earliest domestication of plants may have been in the Near East’s “Fertile Crescent,” an area that stretches from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and curves around like a quarter moon to the Persian Gulf.

For nearly two centuries, explorers and scientists from different parts of the world have traversed this area in search of the origins of civilization and agriculture. Einkorn and emmer wheat, barley, and lentils, goats and sheep all purportedly originated here between five thousand and ten thousand years ago. Religious texts, legends, and archaeological discoveries document the antiquities of Sumer, Ur, Babylon, and other thriving cultural centers. This part of the Near East housed a literal treasure trove of artifacts, bones, and seeds that were used to substantiate the cultural evolution theory.

This archaeological evidence has helped to form a consensus that has become the basis of today’s textbooks on ancient history, prehistory, and culture.

The most thoroughly researched area of the world for the advent of civilization, the Fertile Crescent, is held today as the model to which all other such research sites throughout the world are compared. The Fertile Crescent, goes the theory, is where it all began—agriculture, civilization, all of it. Indeed, this “cradle of civilization” idea is so entrenched a part of historical orthodoxy that its axiomatic status has served to discredit those pieces of evidence that seem to challenge it.

This sort of fitting fact to theory is not new in scientific methodology. Archaeological and anthropological researchers commonly revise initial testing results for findings; this is a normal part of scientific procedure whenever deemed necessary.

For example, South and Central America are still termed “New World” countries, the underlying assumption being that their development must postdate that in the Near East. However, increasing amounts of controversial data are being found both in the Americas and in parts of Asia. Such evidence is tested with a variety of technologies, including accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), which is in essence an upgraded form of radiocarbon dating.

AMS can accurately date samples as small as a single grain while detecting and reducing errors from fossil displacement. This can be especially useful when a sample (say, of bone or seed) has a different date than that of the strata in which it is found. However, even with the latest technology, much of the plant remains found are so severely carbonized or decomposed that they make it extremely difficult to determine whether a sample is wild or domestic.

Carbonized seed remains are a common source of agricultural evidence. The process of carbonization
occurs when organic compounds are subjected to high temperatures and converted into charcoal. While this process does preserve remains for reliable analysis as to composition, it also causes morphological changes that can make it difficult to distinguish wild varieties from their domestic counterparts. Among grass seeds, there is also the problem of trying to determine the relationship, if any, between the wild grasses (emmer, einkorn, and barley) of ten thousand years ago to those of the present. Wild stands still grow throughout the Fertile Crescent and beyond.

The Independent Location Theory

While ancient plant remains have been extensively studied in the Near East, such is not the case in the “New World.” Plant domestication research in Mexico and South America currently involves about a half dozen cave sites.

In Mexico, samples of squash seeds and beans dating around 7000 to 9000 BP (“before present,” meaning before the radiocarbon baseline of 1950¹) have been found in the deepest strata in some of these caves. Domestic squash seeds found in a cave at Oaxaca, for example, were dated at 9790 BP—the oldest date of any domestic plant species found in the New World.

Testing was based on dating a charcoal sample found next to the seeds; because of the extreme antiquity of the date, the age of the seeds was immediately cast into question. It was suggested that the seed samples had somehow been displaced downward from the upper level of the cave, or that the charcoal sample had somehow been displaced upward from the deeper layer². Both explanations are possible—yet one cannot help but wonder why experts feel compelled to resort to such elaborate reasoning when the discoveries occur in a location so far removed from the established Near East cradle.

Furthermore, the Mexican sites are not alone in this. The people of other ancient civilizations from the Peruvian highlands, China’s Yangtze River valley, and parts of Egypt, India, and Papua New Guinea all may also have domesticated plants dating back as far as those of the Fertile Crescent. However, the excavations for evidence of agriculture at these locations are still in their infancy and cannot yet be compared to the extensive findings in the Fertile Crescent.

Another part of the world with a long history of agriculture is Southern Asia, where a wide variety of annual and perennial forms of “wild” or “free-living” rice survives today without human intervention. Not too many years ago, domestic rice was thought to have a history going back between one thousand to two thousand years; current findings have pushed its origin back much further. The recent discovery in the central Korean village of Sorori of a handful of rice dating back fifteen thousand years strongly suggests that an agricultural practice here coincided with or even preceded that of the Fertile Crescent—which is still nevertheless viewed by many researchers as the site of agriculture’s origin.

"The age [of the Sororian rice] challenges the accepted view that rice cultivation originated in China about 12,000 years ago... The region in central Korea where the grains were found is one of the most important sites for understanding the development of Stone Age man in Asia."³

After thousands of years of cultivation, it is difficult to establish the identity of the original wild progenitor of domestic rice. Researchers struggle with whether present “free-living” rice is truly wild, a cultivated escapee, or something in between: cross-pollination, genetic exchange, expanding landscapes, and shrinking natural habitats have distorted genetic qualities between wild and domestic species. “Weedy” forms of rice have also evolved over time, escaping into unmanaged natural habitats, flourishing at the edges of agricultural landscapes and exchanging genetic material with both wild and cultivated varieties.

Even as they wrestle with the problem of potential multiple domestication sites, researchers are also faced with this paradox of the origins of agriculture: Why did hunter-gathers begin domestication of plants in areas with ample resources of wild foods? Thus, experts today still cannot state conclusively where plants were first domesticated and agriculture began—and the very hypothesis that it began because of hunter-gatherers’ need for a new food source is under challenge as well.

Notes

1. A Dictionary of Quaternary Acronyms and Abbreviations, www.scirpus.ca/cgi-bin/dictqaa.cgi?option=b May 5, 2004. 

2. Bruce D. Smith, The Emergence of Agriculture (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1999), 165. 

3. David Whitehouse, “World’s ‘Oldest’ Rice Found,” British Broadcasting Corporation News (BBC), October 21, 2003.



By Steve Gagné in "Food Energetics", Healing Arts Press, USA, 2008, excerpts chapter 37. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Na Quaresma – período de 40 dias que começa na Quarta-Feira de Cinzas e termina às vésperas da Páscoa, festa da ressurreição de Jesus Cristo – os fiéis católicos e ortodoxos se submetem ao jejum e à abstinência de carne, sobretudo na Sexta-Feira Santa. O jejum quaresmal já foi mais rigoroso. No passado, limitava-se a uma refeição por dia, à base de verduras, legumes, frutas, pão, azeite e água. A comida era servida quando o sol se punha e eliminava a carne. Com o passar do tempo, a penitência ficou mais rigorosa.

Os dias de abstinência de carne passaram a ser diferenciados dos de jejum. Além disso, a exclusão desse alimento ultrapassou a Quaresma. Os dias sem carne ocupavam quase a metade do ano. Eram três na semana, ou seja, quarta-feira, sexta-feira e sábado. Segundo católicos e ortodoxos, a privação do consumo de carne faz que eles se sintam mais unidos a Jesus. Portanto, a penitência se relaciona com o corpo de Cristo.

O médico, especialista em alimentação e ensaísta gastronômico espanhol L. Jacinto García, no livro Comer como Dios Manda (Barcelona, 1999), sustenta que esse comportamento se originou em tempos pré-cristãos. Uma das mais antigas crenças da humanidade consiste em acreditar que o alimento nos transmite não só propriedades nutritivas como também qualidades espirituais. “De acordo com esse princípio, a carne é capaz de gerar vigor e força em quem come; pelo contrário, o peixe nos traz frialdade e temperança, enquanto os vegetais provocam passividade e mansidão”, diz Jacinto García.

O homem medieval pensava assim. Julgava que a carne lhe transmitia força, coragem e fogosidade assemelhadas à natureza animal. Jacinto García acrescenta que só outro alimento rivalizava com ela na sua capacidade de também exaltar o desejo sexual: o vinho.

São Bernardo (1090–1153), organizador e propagador da Ordem Cisterciense, avalizou a convicção: “Abstenho-me do vinho porque nele se encontra a luxúria; abstenho-me de carnes porque (…) alimentam igualmente os vícios da carne”. Os atuais espíritas vão além. Seus médiuns evitam comer carne nos dias de sessão. Acreditam que a “energia vital do animal dificulta a comunicação entre os vivos e os mortos”.

Mas a carne não é o único alimento ao qual a humanidade creditou um “espírito”. O filósofo alemão Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), autor da frase “o homem é aquilo que come”, atribuiu o fracasso da revolução popular de 1848 no seu país ao consumo excessivo de batatas. “O sangue da batata não é bom para fazer revoluções.”

Entretanto, poucas pessoas demonstraram maior receio ao “espírito” de um alimento do que Filipe III (1578–1621), rei de Espanha e de Portugal (como Filipe II). Foram tantas as cautelas tomadas nas negociações pré-nupciais de sua filha, a infanta católica Maria Ana de Áustria, prometida em casamento ao protestante príncipe de Gales, futuro Carlos I, rei da Inglaterra e Escócia, que as bodas acabaram malogradas. Primeiro, Filipe III exigiu que o noivo renunciasse à religião anglicana. Depois, que os futuros filhos de Maria Ana de Áustria tivessem amas de leite católicas. Uma ama de leite protestante poderia transmitir aos netos de Filipe III a própria fé religiosa. Simplesmente dando de mamar.

Texto de Dias Lopes publicado no suplemento "Paladar" do "Estado de São Paulo" de 21 de fevereiro de 2013 com o título de "Tentações da Carne". Adaptado e ilustrado para ser postado por Leopoldo Costa.

Rulers of all kinds, but especially hereditary monarchs, have instinctively recognized the cohesive power of ceremony and display, the capacity of public ritual to generate popular support. The ancient Egyptians were masters of royal ceremony, and from an early period. An elaborately decorated stone mace head, found alongside the Narmer Palette at Nekhen, shows an earlier king (known to us as Scorpion) performing an irrigation ceremony. The king uses a hoe to open a dike while an attendant, stooping before the royal presence, holds a basket ready to receive the clod of earth. Fan bearers, standard-bearers, and dancing women add to the sense of occasion. In this vivid tableau from the dawn of history, we get a flavor of early royal ceremonies: ritually charged events that emphasized the king’s role as guarantor of prosperity and stability.

Another mace head from the same cache records a different, though equally resonant, ceremony. This time the presiding king is Narmer, enthroned on an elevated dais under an awning, wearing the red crown and carrying the crooklike scepter. Beside the dais stands the customary pair of fan bearers, accompanied by the king’s sandal bearer and chief minister. Behind them are men wielding big sticks—even a sacral monarchy needed security. The ceremony, too, has a militaristic flavor, its main act being the parade of captured booty and enemy prisoners before the royal throne. In a stark analogy, three captive antelope inside a walled enclosure are shown next to the parade ground. The ideological connection between warfare and hunting, between the unruly forces of nature and the king’s opponents, remained potent through Egyptian history.

A recent reexamination of the early town at Nekhen, including the place where Narmer’s palette and mace head were discovered, offers a further, tantalizing insight into the practice of early kingship. The area hitherto identified as a temple to the local falcon god Horus may not have been a temple at all, but instead an arena for royal ceremony. According to this interpretation, the mound in the center of the walled enclosure may have been a raised dais for the king’s formal appearances. The open ground in front of the mound could have been used for rituals like a parade of prisoners. If so, the Narmer mace head may picture the actual scene at such an event. Certainly, the objects found at Nekhen seem to reflect a cult of monarchy. Decorated ivories from the Main Deposit depict large mace heads erected on poles in an enclosure, so perhaps the Narmer and Scorpion mace heads were originally used to identify and demarcate a royal arena. Looking beyond Nekhen to the rest of Egypt, buildings previously identified as shrines may be reinterpreted in the same way, as centers of the royal cult. Certainly, the king and his deeds dominate the written and artistic record of the early dynasties, with other deities playing only supporting roles. The question of where the gods are in early Egyptian culture may have an unsettling answer: in early Egypt, the kings were the gods. Monarchy was not just an integral part of religion; the two were synonymous.

This would remain the dominant theme of pharaonic civilization until the very end, but it had a dark side. Looking again at the Narmer and Scorpion mace heads, the objects themselves—setting aside their decoration—tell us something about the character of Egyptian monarchy. Mace heads were symbols of authority from prehistoric times, for obvious reasons—a person wielding a mace was met with respect and obedience. The fact that mace heads were adopted as symbols of kingly power speaks volumes about the nature of royal authority in ancient Egypt. The scenes on the Narmer Palette are a further reminder of the brutality that underpinned Egyptian kingship. On one side of the palette, the king is shown with a mace, ready to smite his enemy. On the other side, Narmer has not only defeated his adversaries, but dealt them utter humiliation. He is shown inspecting rows of decapitated bodies that have suffered the added indignity of having their genitals cut off. The victims’ heads and penises are placed between their legs; only one of the dead has been allowed to retain his manhood. Uncomfortable as it may be, we must assume that the ancient Egyptians of Narmer’s time routinely humiliated their defeated enemies in this way.

At the pinnacle of Egyptian society, the king embodied this ruthless streak. While on the one hand he was keen to portray himself as the unifier of the country, a divine presence on earth who maintained created order, royal iconography also made it abundantly clear that defending creation meant meting out destruction to the king’s enemies, be they from outside or inside his realm. Narmer and his predecessors had won power by violent means, and they would not hesitate to use violence to retain power. The visual propaganda employed to promote the monarchy—the king as a lion, a giant scorpion, a fierce catfish, a wild bull, or a mace-wielding superhero—was unashamedly brutal. It was both a promise and a warning.

In this context, one of the most jarring scenes from early Egypt is the band of decoration around the top of the Scorpion mace head. The tableau consists of a series of royal standards, each symbolizing a different aspect of the king’s authority. But they are not just standards; they are also gallows. From each one hangs a crested bird with a rope around its neck. In hieroglyphic writing, the lapwing (“rekhyt” in ancient Egyptian) symbolized the common people, as opposed to the small circle of royal relatives (pat) who wielded power. On the Scorpion mace head, the common people have been hanged on the gibbets of royal power. It is a message that would be repeated later in Egyptian history. For example, the base of a statue of King Netjerikhet (also known as King Djoser), builder of the first pyramid, is decorated with archery bows (denoting foreigners) and also lapwings—so that the king could trample underfoot his subjects as well as his enemies. Egyptologists have recoiled at the underlying symbolism of such scenes, but it is inescapable. Autocratic regimes live and die by force, and ancient Egypt was no exception.

The most chilling example of this tendency can be seen in the tombs of Egypt’s early rulers. At Nubt, an elite burial dating to around 3500 contained more than the expected array of grave goods. Around the walls of the tomb, the excavators found a series of human long bones, and in the center a collection of skulls. The dismembered bodies of several individuals had clearly been interred with the tomb owner. At Nekhen, bodies in the predynastic cemetery show frequent evidence of scalping and decapitation. At nearby Adaima, two individuals had had their throats slit before being decapitated. The archaeologist who found them thought they might have been early examples of self-sacrifice, loyal retainers killing themselves in order to accompany their master to the grave.

But the First Dynasty royal tombs at Abdju suggest a different, more sinister, explanation.

Under Narmer’s successors of the First Dynasty, the royal tomb itself was accompanied by a series of subsidiary graves for members of the court. In one case, the king’s afterlife companions were all in the prime of life when they died, with an average age of twenty-five years or younger. In another royal tomb from the end of the First Dynasty, a single roof covered the servants’ graves as well as the king’s chamber. Both examples provide unequivocal evidence for the sacrifice of retainers, since it is impossible that an entire retinue would conveniently die at the same time as its monarch. However, this could have been self-sacrifice: perhaps the bonds of loyalty were so strong that servants willingly took their own lives when their master died. Recently, however, closer inspection of the subsidiary graves has swept away this explanation , for the bodies show evidence of death by strangulation. The conclusion is as grim as it is shocking: Egypt’s early kings had the power of life and death over their subjects and did not hesitate to use it to demonstrate their own authority. To be a member of the common people meant a life of subjugation; to be a member of the king’s inner circle meant a life of fear. Neither can have been particularly pleasant.

Retainer sacrifice peaked at a relatively early stage: the tomb of Djer, third king of the First Dynasty (circa 2900), was surrounded by 318 subsidiary burials. It seems as if Egypt’s rulers, having acquired absolute power, were eager to try it out. Those buried around the king, to serve him faithfully in the afterlife, included his pets alongside his human attendants. The fact that the same mortuary provision was considered appropriate for both dogs and concubines speaks volumes about the status of royal servants at the early Egyptian court. After the reigns of Djer and his successor Djet, the practice of retainer sacrifice seems to have declined before stopping abruptly at the end of the First Dynasty. But one cannot help wondering if it was economic rather than ideological reticence that put an end to the practice. After all, eliminating an entire entourage at the end of each reign was hugely wasteful of talent, and the ancient Egyptians were nothing if not practical.

Human sacrifice is also depicted on labels from the royal tombs. Some of these dockets, which were originally attached to jars and boxes of supplies, are inscribed with scenes of royal activities. Two such labels, evidently commemorating the same event, show a man kneeling down with his arms tied behind his back. In front of him, on the floor, there is a large basin. Its purpose is gruesomely clear, for another man stands over the victim with a long knife, ready to plunge it into his chest. There is no written text to shed further light on this scene, but there can be little doubt that it involved the ritual killing of a human prisoner as part of a ceremony of kingship.

By means of the objects buried within it and the servants interred around it, the royal tomb was designed to enable the king to continue presiding at royal ceremonies for all eternity. As such, the tomb was the essential guarantor of kingship and, from the rise of ancient Egypt until the demise of the pharaohs, the most important construction project of each reign. The preparation of the king’s burial must have absorbed huge effort and expenditure, in labor, materials, and human life. It is often argued that the people of Egypt made the investment willingly, as their side of a contract that guaranteed the prosperity and survival of the country. Of course the person advancing that ideology was the king himself. It was in the monarchy’s own interests to promote its role in national unification. In reality, the king’s motivation was self-interest.

The First Dynasty royal cemetery at Abdju, with its hierarchy of the king’s tomb surrounded by the burials of his retainers, was simply a concrete manifestation of Egyptian society—a state totally dominated and controlled by one man. The creation and implementation of this ideology helped to fashion pharaonic civilization, but at a price. With the rise of ancient Egypt, the relentless march of state control had begun in earnest.

By Toby Wilkinson in "The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt", Random House, USA, 2010, excerpts chapter 2. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

The Early Middle High German term ê (modern German Ehe, "marriage") meant "law" and referred to the Old Testament. Only after 1000 did the term acquire other meanings, and only since the thirteenth century have those meanings included the political, social, and sexual bond between man and woman. Nevertheless, scholarship on early Germanic law identifies three forms of marriage practiced during the rise and fall of the Frankish empire (ca. 485–ca. 900): Muntehe, Kebsehe, and Friedelehe. Because women were thought to be unable to live independently in the world and thus to require guardianship, a marital union required the transfer of guardianship rights (Latin mundium, hence Muntehe) between a suitor and the woman's father or other male guardian. This exchange took place in two public transactions: the betrothal, in which the suitor negotiated over the gift, or dower, he would make to the bride's family (by the twelfth century, the dower is settled on the bride); and the wedding banquet, during which the bride's kin ceremoniously handed her over to her new husband and then led her in a procession to her new home.

After the marriage was consummated, the groom gave his new wife the Morgengabe (morning gift), an acknowledgment of her legitimacy. Options beyond the Muntehe included the Kebsehe, in which free men could take a concubine from among their servants or slaves, and the Friedelehe, a relationship established on mutual agreement but that involved no exchange of guardianship rights. Historians suggest that couples favored the Friedelehe when a woman's different social position presented obstacles to her joining the man's family, and they debate about whether this arrangement offered women a degree of (financial) independence. These three customs were not universal throughout the empire, however, which at its height covered what is now France, Germany, and northern Italy. Indeed, rather than reflecting uniformity, the legal sources reveal the conflicts arising from practices that varied considerably among different social strata and by region.

In the twelfth century, Christian theologians turned their attention to this diversity as part of their efforts after the Gregorian reforms to involve themselves in the lives of the laity. This attention produced the doctrine of Konsensehe, a marriage made valid only if and after both parties consent to it. Hoping this requirement would combat both marriages by abduction and those made purely for political purposes, the church rejected Friedelehe and Kebsehe as forms of concubinage, brought the Muntehe ceremony to the steps of the church, and made marriage into a Christian sacrament.

In defining this new sacrament, theologians debated the relative importance of consent versus sexual consummation. While biblical authorities like Paul claimed that the marriage union both protected individuals from carnal sin and mirrored the mystery of God's union with humanity, twelfth-century scholars cited Mary and Joseph's chaste marriage as a model, concluding that consent was the defining essence. With the rise of mendicant piety among men and women in the thirteenth century, this doctrine engendered alternative forms of spiritual marriage: husbands and wives living together in chastity, and women religious becoming the brides of Christ.

Avowing not only the exclusivity of the marriage bond, but also its longevity, the church sought also to discourage polygamy, multiple marriages, and divorce. However, while divorce was forbidden, a marriage could be declared invalid in cases of incest, if one person were already married, if either partner had not consented, if the marriage remained unconsummated because of impotence, or if a Christian had married a Jew or heathen (Jewish marriage laws also forbade such intermarriages). In cases of adultery or other scurrilous crimes, partners could request separations, though men were more successful in such cases than women. Generally, canon law prohibited remarriage as long as the former spouse lived. Given high death rates, however, multiple marriages, especially among the nobility, were common.

In the world of literature, an ideal marriage involved not only consent but also love, particularly in Hartmann von Aue's Iwein and Erec, and in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. In Gottfried's Tristan, however, the deep love felt by Tristan and Isolde occurs outside the arranged and very political marriage between Isolde and King Mark. Marriages "arranged" through deception lead to massive death and ruin in the Nibelungenlied. Divorce or separation is less common in Middle High German literature, although one thinks of Gahmuret, in Parzival, who leaves his first wife, the exotic Belecâne, because she is a heathen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Bouchard, Constance Brittain. "Strong of Body, Brave and Noble:" Chivalry and Society in Medieval France. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998. 

Brundage, James A. Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages. Aldershot, Great Britain: Variorum, 1993. 

Bumke, Joachim. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California, Press, 1991. 

Duby, Georges. Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans. Jane Dunnett. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. 

Elliott, Dyan. Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. 

McNamara, Jo-Ann, and Suzanne F.Wemple. "Marriage and Divorce in the Frankish Kingdom." In Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976, pp. 95–124. 

Tallan, Cheryl. "Opportunities for Medieval Northern European Jewish Widows in the Public and Domestic Spheres." In Upon My Husband's Death: Widows in the Literature and Histories of Medieval Europe, ed. Louise Mirrer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 115–127.

By Sara S.Poor in "Medieval Germany - An Encyclopedia",John M. Jeep (editor), Garland Publishing, New York,2001. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Slavery was practiced throughout Germany in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In those territories, west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, that were accustomed to the Roman system, there were large numbers of slaves who worked the fields of big plantations. Slavery was also common to the north and east, among the Saxons, Bavarians, and Franks, and among the Lombards after they moved into Noricum and northern Italy. Significant portions of the Lombard law codes of the seventh and eighth centuries concern either unfree Germans or household slaves of Roman descent.

Although it is often presumed that slavery disappeared outside the former territories of the Roman Empire, in fact it continued in German lands throughout the ninth and tenth centuries. Most slaves came from the eastern borders—Slavs captured in raids and sold at markets in Prague and throughout Bohemia. There was an important slave trade in southern Germany as well, especially among Jewish merchants. Trade routes ran through Alpine passes to the Mediterranean, from the Elbe toward the valley of the Rhine, and along the Meuse and Moselle Rivers toward Verdun, where captives were castrated and sold as eunuchs.

But by the late twelfth century slavery had for all intents and purposes come to an end in Germany. As the wars against the Slavs slowed and the number of Christian converts rose, slavery ceased to fulfill the function it did in the ancient world. The word servus took on a new meaning and a new legal definition as slaves were gradually transformed into serfs, an arrangement much better suited to the seigniorial system.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Bloch, Marc. Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages, trans. William R.Beer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. 
Bosl, Karl. "Freiheit und Unfreiheit. Zur Entwicklung der Unterschichten in Deutschland und Frankreich," in Frühformen der Gesellschaften im mittelalterlichen Europa. Ausgewählte Beiträge zu einer Strukturanalyse der mittelalterlichen Welt. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1964, pp. 180–203. 
Nehlsen, Hermann. Sklavenrecht zwischen Antike und Mittelalter: Germanisches und römisches Recht in den germanischen Rechtsaufzeichnungen. Göttingen: Muterschmidt, 1972. 
Verlinden, Charles. L'Esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale. 2 vols. Bruges: Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, 1955, 1977. 

By David R.Blanks in "Medieval Germany - An Encyclopedia",John M. Jeep (editor), Garland Publishing, New York,2001. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Do your favorite things in the world include fish, seaweed, and sex? Do you love sushi but wish it could be a little rawer?
Then find a restaurant that offers nyotaimori. Literally translated as “female body presentation,” nyotaimori is colloquially known as “naked sushi”: raw fish served on a nude woman.

After stripping down and shaving off all extraneous body hair, young, nubile models wash themselves in unscented soap, lie down on a table, and allow chefs to cover them in sushi, seaweed, and a few strategically placed flowers. Wheeled into a banquet room, they then spend several hours staring blankly at the c chopsticks. In places with particularly strict hygiene laws—not to mention interesting interpretations of what qualifies as sexy—the models are covered in saran wrap.

To an outsider, nyotaimori might just seem like an example of sitophila—the desire to eat foods off another person’s body. But fans insist it’s actually a matter of taste; by sitting for a half hour on a woman’s bare stomach, they explain, your tuna roll is heated to body temperature. According to their logic, this allows its flavors to expand and prevents the unpleasant shock that comes when the fish is too cold. One could argue that since belly buttons are not the most efficient chafers—that’s why God invented heat lamps—the true appeal is less about temperature than titillation. Fair enough, say its fans. Fewer people means a better view.

Nyotaimori, which started in Japan, has been banned in China for “insult[ing] people’s moral quality.” So instead the phenomenon spread east. Nyotaimori bars can be found in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and, yes, Minneapolis. Some American bars also offer nantaimori: sushi served on a naked man.

But despite its questionable morals and hygiene, nyotaimori is not the grossest Japanese food custom out there. That honor goes to wakame sake. Translated as seaweed sake, it’s a delicacy where a naked, supine model clamps her thighs together to form a triangular cup. Sake is poured down her body and into the indentation. As it fills, the woman’s pubic hair begins to gently undulate in the warm sake, similar—say the poets—to seaweed swaying in the ocean. Then a drunk businessman leans down and slurps it out of her crotch. Delicious.

By Catherine Price in "101 Places Not To See Before You Die", Harper Collins, Australia, 2010, excerps chapter 25. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Here’s a bit of cocktail trivia for you: a vomitorium is not actually a room where ancient Romans went to barf.

I know. You don’t want to believe me—thanks to a misunderstanding popularized in many sixth-grade history classes, most people assume that a vomitorium is a room where Romans threw up after particularly heavy meals. This would seem to be a natural extension of other weird things the Romans did, like wear togas and speak Latin. But it’s less strange to use an inflected language than it is to build a vomit room in your house. The Romans were no strangers to gluttony, but they didn’t designate specific chambers to capture the results.

Instead, a vomitorium is an architectural term for a passageway in a theater that opens into a tier of seats. Think of the entrances in a typical sports stadium — you know, the tunnels that pop you out into the stands? Those are vomitoria. The name does share its root with vomit—both words come from the Latin verb vomere (to throw up, spew). And, depending on the event, they may very well contain nauseated fans. But the name vomitorium itself refers to the passages’ ability to quickly move spectators into the stadium. Or, more graphically, to puke them out when the show is over.

By Catherine Price in "101 Places Not To See Before You Die", Harper Collins, Australia, 2010, excerps chapter 52. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Requintado e com menos poderes, o diabo sobrevive às previsões de que ele não resistiria ao avanço da ciência e reacende no século XXl velhos dilemas da condição humana
Ninguém jamais recebeu tantos nomes. Nenhum ser excitou tanto a imaginação humana ao longo dos séculos. Num mundo dominado pela tecnologia, com .educação e informação em larga escala, imaginou-se que não haveria mais lugar para ele. Engano. No alvorecer do terceiro milênio ei-lo aí, vivo e atuante, ainda que transformado e sem os superpoderes de outrora. Ele — Asmodeu, Belzebu, Azazel, Belial, entre os muitos nomes com os quais os antigos hebreus o rotularam. Ou Iblis, como dizem os muçulmanos. Ou Arimã, como o chamavam os seguidores de Zoroastro, na Pérsia. Ou simplesmente, como bem o sabem os brasileiros temerosos de mencionar-lhe o nome, o Rabudo, o Tinhoso, o Beiçudo, o Pai da Mentira, o Cão. Amigo leitor, eis Satanás, o Demo, o Diabo, a mais intrigante das figuras que povoam o imaginário humano.

O Diabo chega ao século XXI deitado sobre a fama arrecadada ao longo do tempo. É verdade que ele não aparece mais em murais com a aparência grotesca de um bode alado, coroado de enormes chifres, com rabo de dragão e olhos nas asas, na barriga e no traseiro. E que há muito seu nome foi retirado do Pai Nosso, a principal oração cristã. Também já não é acusado em toda parte de estar por trás das doenças, das hecatombes, das tragédias cotidianas. O Diabo teve que ceder aos progressos da ciência, à liberdade de pensamento e ao avanço da razão sobre a superstição. Mas é inegável que, mesmo reduzido à idéia original que o criou, ele continua influente em nossos dias, qualquer que seja a classe social, o nível cultural ou a nacionalidade das pessoas. Não é exagero dizer que, de certa forma, o velho e mau Satã tem sido revalorizado nos últimos tempos.

Nos Estados Unidos, maior centro tecnológico do mundo, o número de exorcistas autorizados pela Igreja Católica cresceu mais de dez vezes nos últimos dois anos. Antes, o país tinha apenas um. Na França, no mesmo período, os exorcistas saltaram de 15 para 120. Em todo o mundo desenvolvido, o Demônio e os seus sequazes continuam a girar a roda da fortuna na literatura e no cinema. Nas nações ricas ou nas pobres, Satã não pára de estimular debates e, principalmente, facilitar as manipulações do jogo político — satanizar o adversário sempre foi uma boa arma em qualquer disputa.

Entre fundamentalistas islâmicos, Iblis ganhou as cores da bandeira dos Estados Unidos, país rotulado como o “Grande Satã”. Foi contra o Diabo, em última instância, que os terroristas liderados por Osama Bin Laden lançaram os aviões que derrubaram as torres gêmeas de Nova York, em setembro de 2001. E foi a mão do Demônio que, para muitos americanos, guiou os comparsas de Bin Laden naquele dia. Era para impedir a ação subversiva do Demo, por meio da liberação dos costumes, que, no Afeganistão, os talibãs impunham às mulheres o sufoco das burqas, o véu que cobre todo o rosto. Da Europa cosmopolita aos grotões da África, Belzebu prosseguiu inspirando violências. E, como não poderia deixar de ser numa sociedade marcada pelo sincretismo, Belial encontrou no Brasil um campo vasto para suas armações.

“O Diabo é a origem das doenças, da miséria, dos desastres e de todos os problemas que afligem o homem desde que ele iniciou sua vida na Terra”, afirma o fundador e bispo da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, Edir Macedo, em seu livro Orixás, Caboclos e Guias — Deuses ou Demônios?, uma das 26 obras nas quais Macedo tenta convencer a humanidade de que Satã existe e exerce poder quase absoluto sobre as pessoas. Sua Igreja, uma das que mais crescem no segmento neopentecostal, vertente protestante surgida nos anos 70, começou apoiada nos pobres — os que mais se sensibilizam com os exorcismos espetaculares realizados em seus templos —, mas logo penetrou a classe média, desiludida com os meios convencionais de solução de seus problemas existenciais e de saúde. Após 25 anos de atuação, já é possível ver nos cultos da Igreja Universal alguns novos-ricos preocupados em garantir a manutenção da sua prosperidade. O que busca a multidão que não se importa de engordar o caixa da Igreja do bispo Edir com doações generosas? A garantia de que Azazel, aprisionado pelas orações dos pastores, não mais atrapalhará seus negócios, sua saúde, seus desejos.

A Igreja Católica, que, até meados do século XX, oferecia ao mundo o retrato mais terrível do Tinhoso, decidiu retocá-lo numa adaptação aos novos tempos. Que ninguém se engane: o Demônio católico, ainda que despido da sua aparência grotesca, e mitigado pelo racionalismo ocidental, não emagreceu a ponto de virar um mero símbolo — a não ser para alguns poucos revisionistas. O Vaticano exorta os fiéis a considerá-lo “a causa do mal”, cuja presença estaria evidente desde a crença de que a felicidade está no dinheiro, no poder e na concupiscência carnal até o relativismo que induz o homem a não atender “à vontade de Deus”. Satã tornou-se, para os católicos, sutil e requintado, mas ainda poderoso a ponto de apossar-se dos homens, como esclarece o documento oficial De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus (“De todos os Gêneros de Exorcismos e Súplicas”), de 1999. Em sua argumentação, o papa João Paulo II retoma, nesse documento,a idéia sintetizada pelo poeta francês Charles Baudelaire, no século XIX, em seu verso “o mais belo estratagema do Diabo é nos persuadir de que ele não existe”. O papa não tem dúvida: o Demo trabalha de modo que “o mal que ele inculca desde o começo se desenvolva no próprio homem, nos sistemas e nas relações inter-humanas entre as classes sociais e as nações”.


Historicamente, Satã, do jeito como o visualizamos hoje no Ocidente — um ser que concentra em si a maldade absoluta — é resultado de uma longa gestação psicológica na qual os arquétipos (imagens psíquicas do inconsciente coletivo que, na concepção do psicólogo suíço Carl Jung, estruturam modos de compreensão comuns aos indivíduos de uma comunidade) do mal foram ganhando formas concretas tanto a partir de sincretismo — por meio da mistura da idéia do mal que há nas diversas religiões — quanto de processos de transferência — em que a pessoa descarrega num mito, numa figura externa, todo o mal que enxerga dentro de si. Assim, o Tinhoso fica responsável por tudo aquilo que consideramos ruim ou maléfico: o ódio, a raiva, o medo. Enquanto o seu oposto, Deus, personifica tudo o que consideramos bom ou benéfico: perdão, compaixão, solidariedade.

O Demônio fascina a humanidade e é uma peça necessária, sem a qual nenhuma sociedade humana jamais conseguiu viver, porque ele nos ajuda a identificar — e a exorcizar — nossos impulsos primários. É demoníaco tudo aquilo que lembra ao homem que ele é um animal: a excreção, o vômito, a violência, a doença, a morte, o aspecto grotesco do sexo. Ao lado disso, é divino tudo aquilo que dá ao homem a impressão de que ele pode colocar-se acima dos outros animais: o amor, a inteligência, a renúncia aos instintos básicos, o aspecto sublime do sexo. A função do Diabo como válvula de escape está muito clara, por exemplo, no Novo Testamento, base da doutrina cristã, em que há mais citações do mal que do bem. Mais referências a Satã que a Deus. “No Cristianismo a presença do mal é essencial como em nenhuma outra religião”, diz o filósofo Roberto Romano, da Universidade de Campinas (Unicamp).

A primeira representação do Rabudo teria surgido no século VI a.C., na Pérsia. O profeta Zoroastro descreveu a figura de Arimã, o “príncipe das trevas” em seu conflito com Mazda, o “príncipe da luz”. Eram essas duas divindades, que expressam a polaridade existente no universo e dentro da própria alma humana, que regiam o mundo de Zoroastro. Durante o cativeiro na Babilônia, os hebreus tiveram contato com o masdeísmo persa, religião que divinizava os seres naturais. Segundo alguns historiadores, isso foi fundamental para a concepção do que viria a ser o Satã do Judaísmo e do Cristianismo. Na antiga língua hebraica, Satanás quer dizer acusador, caluniador, aquele que põe obstáculos. E foi assim, sem a face aterrorizante que ganharia mais tarde, que o Diabo estreou no Velho Testamento. Agia como um colaborador de Jeová, o Deus judaico-cristão, para testar a lealdade ou castigar os seus escolhidos. Jeová, por exemplo, determinou a Satã que precipitasse o desobediente rei Saul no poço da depressão.

Sob a mesma autorização divina, o Satã infligiu perdas e sofrimentos ao rico e fiel Jó, no desenrolar de uma aposta na qual Jeová jogou todas as fichas na lealdade do seu servo. Na mesma linha dos deuses pagãos, ambivalentes, Jeová expressava paixões contraditórias, semelhantes às do homem, e distribuía com exclusividade tanto o bem quanto o mal. “Os hebreus primitivos não tinham necessidade de corporificar uma entidade maligna”, afirma Carlos Roberto Figueiredo Nogueira, doutor em História Medieval pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP), no livro O Diabo no Imaginário Cristão. “Para eles Jeová era um deus tribal e, como tal, superior aos deuses das populações vizinhas, que se colocavam assim como seus adversários e como expressões naturais da maldade.” Não sur- preende, portanto, que, ao ganhar contornos de entidade, o Diabo tenha recebido nomes como Belzebu, um deus filisteu, e Asmodeu, deus da tempestade na mitologia persa. Ou seja: as divindades, boas ou más, das sociedades que ficaram para trás na história, foram incorporadas ao imaginário da cultura hegemônica, no caso específico, a tradição hebraica, como figuras agentes do mal.

A influência persa, segundo Carlos Nogueira, forneceu o pano de fundo dualista do judaísmo, a dicotomia entre bem e mal que até hoje define a religiosidade ocidental, por meio da assimilação da crença em espíritos benéficos e maléficos — os gênios da religião de Zoroastro. Os anjos, antes vistos como símbolos da manifestação divina, foram transformados em entidades autônomas, enquadradas numa hierarquia celestial. A construção dessa estrutura tornou possível uma das mais majestosas passagens da literatura popular judaica: a revolta e a queda de Lúcifer (“o portador da luz”), o serafim mais belo e mais próximo de Deus. Ele foi expulso do céu e metamorfoseado no Demônio após se deixar dominar pela soberba.

A mudança de perspectiva teológica fica mais evidente a partir do século II a.C., com o desenvolvimento, à margem da tradição judaica erudita, de uma literatura apocalíptica sobre o demoníaco. No Livro dos Jubileus, escrito entre 135 e 105 a.C., e que faz parte dos livros apócrifos (sem autenticidade comprovada), são mencionados os espíritos malignos acorrentados no “lugar da condenação”. No Testamento dos Doze Patriarcas, escrito entre 109 e 106 a.C. (também apócrifo), pela primeira vez Satã aparece personalizado na figura de Belial.

As crenças populares acerca do Diabo chegaram a ser assimiladas pela elite judaica, razão pela qual muitos rabinos acusaram Jesus de promover os seus milagres “sob o poder de Belzebu”. Com o tempo, os rabinos perderam interesse nessas versões e Satã voltou a ser uma figura menor no Judaísmo. Ao contrário, os cristãos não apenas introduziram em sua doutrina os elementos da literatura escatológica (sobre o final dos tempos), como também ampliaram-lhe os limites concedendo grandes poderes ao Demônio. Os Evangelhos, os Atos dos Apóstolos, as Epístolas de Paulo e o Apocalipse do apóstolo João, textos cristãos que compõem o Novo Testamento, são pródigos em referências à luta de Satã contra Deus, retomando a história inicial de Lúcifer e seus aliados — nada menos que um terço dos anjos — na batalha celestial ocorrida nos primórdios da criação. A corporificação do Diabo cristão consumiu pelo menos 400 anos de debates e só veio a consolidar-se no século VII, com a ajuda da arte cristã. Até então, o Demônio não tinha rosto definido. É quando a figura monstruosa e assustadora de Satanás se multiplica nos vitrais, nas colunas e nos tetos dos templos, é mostrada em murais nas ruas, assume a imaginação de clérigos e do povo e abre caminho para as práticas mais obscuras da Idade Média, cujo ápice é a Inquisição.

A lenta construção da imagem do Diabo é compreensível. Nos três primeiros séculos, os cristãos, membros de uma seita perseguida, não precisavam imaginar uma face para Satã, já que a conheciam sob a forma dos gladiadores e leões que os trucidavam nas arenas romanas. No século IV, quando o Império Romano curvou-se ao Cristianismo, a euforia se alastrou entre os fiéis, que viam na expansão da doutrina de Jesus sinais do enfraquecimento do anticristo e sua iminente derrota final. Mas, logo, a persistência de conflitos, desigualdades e paixões depois desse marco arrefeceu o otimismo e sedimentou a crença de que a força de Satanás era maior do que se imaginara. O mal continuava a existir num mundo dominado por Cristo. Sinal de que o Demônio estava disposto a continuar disputando com Deus a hegemonia da alma humana, por meio das tentações e do pecado. Precaver-se contra suas manhas tornou-se uma obsessão.

Na Idade Média, entre as seitas fundamentalistas, via-se o Diabo e seus auxiliares por toda parte. Imaginavam-se pactos entre homens e Satã, em troca de fortuna, conhecimento e poder — tema cujo paradigma é a história de Johannes Faustus, de Heidelberg (1480-1540), retratado mais tarde, em 1833, no Doutor Fausto, drama do escritor alemão Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, que conta a história do sábio que compactua com o Demo para conquistar conhecimento, poder e mulheres. Acreditava-se que, enquanto dormiam, moças podiam ser possuídas por demônios chamados de íncubos, enquanto homens eram atacados por demônios súcubos, travestidos de mulheres. Eremitas do deserto se diziam tentados por seres infernais com apelos luxuriantes.

O sexo tornou-se a armadilha predileta de Satã para conduzir os homens à perdição, o que justifica uma das mais conhecidas representações iconográficas do Demo — aquela em que ele aparece com patas de bode, olhos oblíquos e chifres, tomados por empréstimo à imagem de Pã, divindade greco-romana que se divertia em orgias. O aspecto violento do sexo, invariavelmente associado ao Demônio, era sublinhado nas imagens por enormes falos — uma representação possivelmente absorvida de outras culturas.

Ainda na Idade Média, o Diabo era apontado como a causa de quase todos os males. Os médicos, para livrar a própria pele, afirmavam que a simples impossibilidade de diagnosticar a enfermidade era em si um sinal de que se estava diante de um caso de possessão demoníaca. Satã podia entrar no corpo, segundo a crença popular, através dos orifícios, razão pela qual nos países anglo-saxônicos até hoje saúda-se o espirro, então visto como a expulsão de um demônio, com a frase “Deus o abençoe”. O Tinhoso também costumava ocultar-se sob mil disfarces. Que o diga o papa Gregório Magno, em cujos Diálogos está registrado o caso de uma freira endemoniada porque colhera alface na horta do convento sem a devida oração — Belzebu espreitara-lhe, escondido nas folhas da planta.

A histeria coletiva e o uso político desses temores nos bastidores da vida religiosa levaram milhares de pessoas a arder nas fogueiras da Inquisição, o jeito “piedoso” estabelecido pela Igreja para salvar a alma daqueles que, supostamente, tivessem se deixado ludibriar pelo Demo.

Com o tempo, as imagens e a nomenclatura demoníaca, sempre relacionadas aos deuses que guerrearam contra Jeová e às divindades e tradições pagãs abominadas pelos cristãos (a palavra demônio deriva do grego daimon, que significa simplesmente “espírito”), foram enriquecidas conforme os adversários definidos pelo Catolicismo. No período das Cruzadas, a figura de Satã ganhou pele morena e barbicha, que o identificavam com os árabes. Com a chegada dos primeiros missionários ao Oriente, logo Sita e Rama, deidades do hinduísmo, se tornaram codinomes do Diabo. O que isso quer dizer é mais ou menos óbvio. “Significa que Satanás é o inimigo, é aquele que não concorda conosco”, diz Elaine Pagels, professora de História da Religião na Universidade de Princeton, Estados Unidos. Para a especialista, autora do livro As Origens de Satanás, esse adversário sequer precisa ser alguém distante e estranho.

Na maioria das vezes é um inimigo íntimo, o companheiro que trai, o colega que odiamos, o irmão que nos abandona — ou o herético que afronta os dogmas com idéias próprias.

O começo da era moderna na Europa seria marcado por um enorme medo do Demônio, momento psicológico retratado nos versos da Divina Comédia, escritos no século XIV pelo italiano Dante Alighieri, e na iconografia do inferno da arte renascentista: demônios desenrolando os intestinos dos invejosos e enterrando ferros em brasa nas vaginas de mulheres levianas, pântanos fumegantes onde animais supliciam os pecadores. O surgimento da imprensa e as reformas religiosas conferiram a Satã difusão mais ampla. A didática do medo na catequese cristã parecia propor, como lembra Carlos Nogueira, “um prazer estético com o mal”.

Belial mostrou-se à vontade mesmo após a Revolução Francesa e a conseqüente separação entre Igreja e Estado, no século XVIII. A Igreja enxergou forças demoníacas no saber científico. Mas, fora do círculo religioso, sua imagem começou a sofrer uma mutação radical. O romantismo, movimento que revolucionou as artes a partir do final do século XIX e que pregou a subjetividade, em rebelião contra o autoritarismo católico, transformou Satã num símbolo do espírito livre, do progresso e da revolta contra o obscurantismo medieval — um aliado do homem condenado pela moral cristã ao sofrimento. Em Fausto, de Goethe, a visão do demoníaco reflete não apenas as forças do mal, mas também o problema do conhecimento e o desejo do homem de dominar a natureza.

O Diabo entrou no século XX já com a imagem que fazemos dele hoje: como um personagem menos influente, apesar de continuar inspirando medo. Seus atributos mitológicos estão estáveis e sua popularidade é crescente, com a proliferação de seitas que o reverenciam. Pagou um preço alto por essa secularização sob a forma de perda parcial do respeito e do pânico que sua figura sempre inspirou. Para alguns estudiosos da sociedade, isso não é um bom sinal. “Trata-se de uma situação perigosa, pois significa que o mundo moderno está perdendo o senso do mal”, diz Jeffrey Burton Russel, professor de História da Religião na Universidade da Califórnia, Estados Unidos. “E sem o senso do mal, e sem temer o mal, a civilização pode desagregar-se e ir, sem trocadilho, direto para o inferno.”

Mas, então, dá para deduzir que Satanás, enfraquecido pelo racionalismo da vida moderna, está aposentado? Dá para afirmar que precisamos que ele volte a atuar? Não é bem assim. Como afirma o título desta reportagem, o Diabo está vivo. E desafia os que achavam que não haveria mais lugar para ele num mundo regido pela ciência e pelo senso de que o homem está acima da superstição, das crenças, do bem — Deus — e do mal — o Diabo. Ao contrário disso, a julgar pelo cotidiano do homem moderno, o Tinhoso continua na ativa. Na política e na religião, a satanização continua em alta. Do confronto entre os americanos e os fundamentalistas islâmicos às disputas do mercado. No bandido que afirma que só cometeu o crime porque estava possuído pelo Demo. Em todos esses lugares, ele está. Personificando o opositor. Livrando o homem da culpa de carregar uma porção de mal em seu coração.

Facilitando o arremesso sobre o outro de toda a responsabilidade por situações que nos desagradam. Em todos esses planos, e em muitos outros do comportamento humano, o Beiçudo continua imbatível.

Catolicismo
Após as mudanças iniciadas no Concílio Vaticano II, há cinco décadas, o Diabo perdeu as feições físicas monstruosas que apavoravam os fiéis e passou a ser encarado como “a causa do mal”, cuja ação entre os homens é de natureza essencialmente moral. Mas a Igreja continua a vê-lo como uma entidade que concentra o mal absoluto, inapelável. Algumas curiosidades bizarras sobre o Pai da Mentira na fé católica: o número 666, que costuma identificar a “Besta”, o anticristo (o grande disfarce de Satã para enganar os crentes e dominar o mundo), estava escrito na testa do horripilante animal alado, personagem das visões do apóstolo João que deram origem ao último livro do Novo Testamento: o Apocalipse. Já o cheiro de enxofre foi atribuído ao Demo por se tratar de uma essência horrível e irritante. Na Idade Média, acreditava-se que o inferno era não apenas um lugar quente, abafado e “animado” por danações horrendas. Havia também pântanos fumegantes, onde as almas dos pecadores ardiam em soluções de enxofre.

Evangelismo
Para a maioria das denominações evangélicas, Satanás tem individualidade e atua como o grande inimigo do Evangelho de Jesus e seus seguidores. Os neopentecostais, que surgiram a partir da década de 70, superestimam os seus poderes e fazem do combate ao Demônio o foco de suas atividades. Segmentos modernizantes, como algumas igrejas batistas nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil, já admitem que o mal reside nas entranhas do homem, como a sombra junguiana, e contestam a existência do Maligno.

Judaísmo
Não aceita a corporificação do Diabo. Satanás seria o grande adversário, o pérfido acusador, o ardiloso comerciante do mal que, conforme a tradição judaica, é usado por Deus para testar o homem. O bem e o mal procedem ambos de impulsos humanos.

Islamismo
O Diabo na fé islâmica é individual e corporificado. O Demo tem praticamente as mesmas atribuições do seu sinistro similar na fé católica.

Espiritismo
A doutrina de Allan Kardec (místico francês que formulou as bases doutrinárias do Espiritismo no século XIX), popularizada no Brasil, não admite a existência do mal absoluto nem a sua individualização em Satanás. O mal, visto como uma contingência da experiência evolutiva e das vivências terrenas de cada indivíduo, cede ao bem à medida que os espíritos se depuram através de sucessivas reencarnações.

Budismo
Os budistas não personificam Deus e muito menos o Diabo, um conceito inexistente na doutrina religiosa do Budismo. O mal é resultado da mente inquieta ante a ilusão do eu e das formas do mundo material. Pensamentos e atos podem gerar o carma que prende o homem à longa fieira das reencarnações. O exercício cotidiano, permanente e humilde, da compaixão e do desapego o liberam desse círculo.


A imaginação criativa na Idade Média não se limitou a conceber uma figura horripilante para Satanás. Imaginou toda uma estrutura para o inferno. E o Diabo teve que delegar poderes a auxiliares, às vezes confundidos com o próprio chefe, como Pazuzu, que estrelou o filme O Exorcista.

A seguir, o organograma do Inferno:

Belial
É considerado o demônio da arrogância e da loucura. Há quem o veja como a besta do Apocalipse

Nergal
Demônio sumeriano que, no inferno cristão, assumiu o comando da polícia

Asmodeu
Demônio hebreu da ira e da luxúria

Astaroth
Ex-querubim, é tido como o tesoureiro do inferno

Diabo
O rei, o chefão. Trata-se de Lúcifer, o ex-arcanjo preferido de Deus, expulso do céu por causa do seu orgulho e ambição

Baalberith
Demônio do assassinato e da blasfêmia, era líder dos querubins celestes. Tornou-se secretário de Lúcifer

Belzebu
O príncipe dos demônios. Ao lado de Leviatã, estimula o orgulho e a heresia entre os homens

Abramalech
Responsável pelo guarda-roupa de Lúcifer, espécie de mordomo

Pazuzu
O rei dos espíritos malignos

Na Divina Comédia, Dante Alighieri estipulou uma ordenação do inferno em nove círculos, de acordo com a gravidade de cada pecado

Limbo
Onde ficam as almas de crianças mortas sem batismo e figuras do paganismo, como Homero e Platão

Círculo Segundo
Uma ventania incessante arrasta os lascivos e luxuriosos

Círculo Terceiro
Os glutões são fustigados pela chuva e dilacerados por Cérbero, o cão do inferno

Círculo Quarto
Gastadores compulsivos e unhas-de-fome são obrigados a rolar enormes pedras

Círculo Quinto
Os esquentadinhos e iracundos quase se afogam no Éstige, o rio do inferno

Círculo Sexto
Sepulcros inflamados servem de moradia eterna para os heréticos

Círculo Sétimo
O Minotauro vigia o local onde assassinos, suicidas e escroques violentos submergem em sangue fervente

Círculo Oitavo
Rufiões, fraudadores, sedutores e cínicos são açoitados e imersos em fezes

Círculo Nono
Traidores de amigos, irmãos e da pátria habitam o último círculo

Texto de Jomar Morais publicado na revista "Super Interessante" n° 174 de maio de 2002. Adaptado e  Ilustrado para ser postado por Leopoldo Costa.

 Each of the food entries in the nutrition counter has information in the following categories: food name, portion size, calories, total fat, good fats, bad fats, fiber, sugar, beta-carotene, calcium, vitamin C, and B vitamins. Let’s look at each of these categories more closely.

Portion Size

This is the standard amount of food suggested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the food industry. Always check the serving size: it may be smaller or larger than you think.

Calories

This is the amount of energy provided by one serving of a food or beverage. You can use this value to help you plan your meals if you are trying to lose weight or restrict your total daily caloric intake.

Total Fat

The figure in the total fat category is the sum of saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and trans fats. We break down these four types of fat into two subcategories (bad fats and good fats) in other columns. Overall, your daily fat intake should be 20 to 25 percent of your total daily calories. Based on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet, that translates as 2,000 calories × 20% (or 25%) = 400 (or 500) ÷ 9 (calories per gram of fat) = 44 (or 50) grams, which = 396 (or 450) calories. You can use this column to find foods that are low in total fat. Generally, such foods include fruits, vegetables, grains, cereals, soy foods, fish, some poultry, and low-fat dairy. Highly refined or processed foods, meats, whole-milk dairy, baked goods, and snack foods typically have higher total fat (and usually high bad  fat) content.

Good Fats 

he “Good Fats” category includes the known values of monounsaturated and/or omega-3 fatty acids in the food or beverage. These are the healthy fats that benefit the heart, help lower cholesterol, and protect against insulin resistance. This value can help you choose foods that provide these advantages. Your intake of good fats should be 10 to 15 percent of your total daily calories. Based on the 2,000-calories-per-day model, your good fat intake should be 200 to 300 calories, as follows: 2,000 calories × 10% (or 15%) = 200 (or 300) ÷ 9 (number of calories in a gram of fat) = 22 (or 33) grams.

Bad Fats

This category contains the sum of saturated and trans fats in the food and beverages in the counter. These are the artery-clogging, heart-stopping fats, and the ones that you want to limit in your diet. Foods typically high in saturated fat include meats, butter, tropical oils, full-fat dairy products, margarine, and some processed foods. Trans fats are found in margarine, many processed foods such as snacks and crackers, packaged dinners, and fast foods.

Saturated and trans fat together should not exceed 10 percent of your total caloric intake per day. Given the standard 2,000 calories-per-day model, your daily intake of bad fats should not be more than 200 calories (2,000 calories × 10% = 200 ÷ 9 (number of calories in a gram of fat), or 22 grams. A quick look at the “Bad Fats” category will give you immediate information on the bad fat content of the foods and beverages you are considering and help you make healthier choices.

Fiber

This no-calorie nutrient plays many important roles in an anti-aging diet; for example, it helps reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels, fight obesity, prevent constipation, reduce risk of intestinal problems, including colon cancer, stabilize glucose levels, and remove toxins from the body. If you are between the ages of 19 and 50, you should strive to get 38 grams of fiber daily if you are male, and 25 grams if you are female. If you are older than 50, the National Academy of Sciences, Food and Nutrition Board recommends 30 grams for men and 21 grams for women.

You can scan the fiber column to find foods that contain a good fiber content (at least 2.5 to 3 grams per serving). Foods that typically fall into this range or higher include fruits and vegetables, cereals, grains, nuts, seeds, and some soy-based foods.

Sugar 

Sugar refers to simple sugars, the ones that are especially harmful because they cause a rapid rise in blood glucose levels and lead to insulin resistance, both of which increase your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and many other serious medical conditions. High intake of simple sugars can also lead to weight gain.

Keep in mind that the “Sugars” category includes both naturally occurring sugars (like those found in fruit, fruit juices, milk, and some vegetables) as well as those that are added to foods and beverages. You can find added sugars on the ingredient lists on food packages.

You can use the “Sugars” category to help you limit the amount of added simple sugars in your diet and to ensure you get enough of the good sugars (complex carbs). When looking at foods that often have added sugars, such as breakfast cereals and cookies, you can scan the “Sugars” category for those that contain low amounts (between 0 and 5 grams of total sugars).

Beta-carotene

Beta-carotene is the most studied of the more than 600 different types of carotenoids that have been identified in plants. Carotenoids are pigments that give fruits and vegetables their color, and beta-carotene is an especially potent carotenoid. The role of beta-carotene in nature is to protect dark green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables from the damage caused by solar radiation, and it is believed it also helps protect the human body as well. The colors give you a clue as to the fruits and vegetables that contain high levels of this antioxidant, and they include yellow squash, cantaloupe, peaches, apricots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and green leafy vegetables.

Calcium 

As you know, calcium is critical for strong bones, and an insufficient amount of calcium in the diet significantly increases the risk of osteoporosis and with it, an increased risk of fractures from falls. Therefore you should make every effort to make sure you are getting enough calcium in your diet (l,000mg for men and women age 19 to 50 years; l,200mg for older adults). You can use the nutrition counter to help you identify the foods that are rich sources of this mineral. Some of those sources include dairy products, canned sardines, green leafy vegetables, yogurt, and soybeans.

Vitamin C 

This potent antioxidant is an important member of the arsenal you should assemble in your fight against free radical damage and aging. Vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid) is water soluble and is found in all body fluids. Because the body cannot store this antioxidant, it’s very important to replenish your supply daily. When you use the nutrition counter, you will see that the best sources of vitamin C are fruits and fruit juices, vegetables and vegetable juices, and products that are enriched with vitamin C, including cereals.

In the nutrition counter, the vitamin C content per serving is given in DV. The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI, formerly RDA) is 75 mg for women and 90 mg for men; for smokers, 110mg for women and 130 mg for men.

B vitamins

The B vitamins are essential to help preserve and maintain optimal function of the central nervous system and the production of neurotransmitters, which are critical for brain function because they carry signals from cell to cell. Generally, B vitamins help fight the signs and symptoms of an aging brain: for example, slowing of reflexes, difficulty recalling names or words, increasing bouts of forgetfulness and confusion, and episodes of mental “fog.” B vitamins also play a critical role in the breakdown of carbohydrates into glucose (to provide energy), and in the maintenance of muscle tone in the gastrointestinal tract.

The vitamins that make up what is commonly called the “vitamin B complex” include thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine (B6), biotin (B7), folic acid (B9), and cobalamin (B12). Each of these vitamins has distinct characteristics, but they also have many similar properties and are found in many of the same common foods. At one time, this fact led researchers to consider them as one substance. For the sake of simplicity, we treat the B vitamins as a single entry for each food or beverage item and rate the vitamin B content as “0” for none or insignificant; “+” for a moderate amount, and “++” for a high amount.

Because the B vitamins are water soluble, they do not stay in the body very long (except for B12) and therefore need to be replenished regularly, preferably daily. You can use the information in this column to help you identify foods and beverages that contain these essential vitamins.

The information in the Anti-Aging Nutrition Counter was compiled from many sources, including but not limited to organizations within the United States government (Food and Drug Administration, National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database), individual food labels, food manufacturers, fast-food restaurants, and various Internet sources, including Nutritiondata.com. It’s especially important to note that fast-food restaurants are constantly making adjustments to their menus, and so you may wish to ask about specific items to see if their nutritional content has changed.

This nutrition counter provides you with a wealth of information you need and can readily use to fight aging with every spoonful you take. Bring this book along with you to the supermarket, restaurants, farmers’ markets—anywhere food is sold!

ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS 

Here are the abbreviations and symbols you will see in the nutrition counter.
cont = container
g = gram
mcg = microgram
mg = milligram
mL = milliliters
Na = not available; the product may contain this substance but the manufacturer or company does not list this information on the label
oz = ounce
pc(s) = piece(s)
pkg = package
serv = serving
tbs = tablespoon
tsp = teaspoon
w = with
w/o = without percentage
DV = percent Daily Value, the recommended intake of a nutrient based on a 2,000 calorie diet
0 = none, zero, or an insignificant amount of B vitamins (<10 b="" more="" nbsp="" of="" or="" p="" two="" vitamins="">+ = moderate amount of B vitamins (at least 10% of two or more B vitamins)
++ = high amount of B vitamins
* = the figure given is an estimate and based on similar, generic food items for which levels have been provided by the FDA.
We provide this information because food manufacturers typically do not reveal beta carotene and B vitamin content on their labels. The specific brand-name food may contain the same or different amount of the nutrients.



By Deborah Mitchell in "Foods That Combat Aging ", Harper Collins, USA, 2008, excerpts chapter 4. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.









10>

A utopia cristã de um mundo de justiça, paz e simplicidade foi semeada nos sertões nordestinos do Brasil como ânimo em meio ao sofrimento imposto às populações por tantos anos. Experiências comunitárias como a de Canudos foram reprimidas com violência sem medida, deixaram marcas que merecem ser resgatadas. Este artigo traz à tona uma memória desafiadora de um presente que ainda vive o passado.

Neste final de século início de milênio, quando se comemora a morte das utopias e se pagam trinta mil dólares para Fukuyama anunciar o fim da história, é hora de se falar um pouco da “mais gigantesca utopia que apareceu na história”, segundo Gramsci, a religião católica.

Não a Igreja da hierarquia sacerdotal, mas o sistema de crenças, a ideologia universalizada nestes quase dois mil anos desde a era dos mártires e, mais especificamente, a forma sui generis como o seu conteúdo utópico foi interpretado e vivido pelos sertanejos do Nordeste a partir do século XIX.
     
Enquanto a hierarquia da Igreja e os seguidores de altas camadas sociais tendem a remeter para outra vida as promessas de igualdade, justiça e harmonia entre os homens num viés metafísico, os católicos pobres, analfabetos, principalmente os trabalhadores braçais, têm uma postura prática, utilitária, procurando materializar o transcendental na solução de seus problemas de existência. Em outras palavras, a relação dessas camadas com as crenças religiosas se faz práxis, por meio do senso comum, como regras de conduta social, intervenção de força maior em seu benefício numa sociedade que as exclui e, em situação limite, a materialização da utopia.
     
Utopia nesta perspectiva deixa de significar algo irrealizável, para ser, na linguagem de Mannheim, o momento em que os homens vão além da crítica ao status quo e se organizam para implantar um sistema alternativo, um projeto de devir.
     
Como materialização da utopia cristã aparecem Canudos e Caldeirão, para os sertanejos duas cidades santas, em oposição ao mundo que os destrói pela fome, miséria, violência e prostituição – “mundo do pecado, obra de Satanás”.

“Fim de mundo” no Nordeste

As populações isoladas nos distantes e esturricados sertões nordestinos, durante quatrocentos anos, tiveram na mensagem dos evangelhos e nos mandamentos da lei de Deus os principais códigos organizadores da vida social, o sistema ético a embasar e sacralizar a forte assimetria de uma estrutura rigidamente hierarquizada.
     
Para elas o século XIX foi como um cataclismo abalando as bases mais profundas da sociedade, todas as camadas sociais participando ativamente daquele “fim de mundo” iniciado com a Revolução de 1817, fragmentando-as na Guerra do Mata-Galego, Confederação do Equador, Cabanada, Questão Religiosa do Segundo Império, Quebra-Quilo e Canudos.
     
D. Vital, bispo de Olinda, tomou a decisão que rachou o monolítico bloco ideológico Igreja–Estado, legitimador da coesão do mando e da submissão dos dominados. Após quatrocentos anos de sacralização da autoridade, o povo analfabeto e religioso é convocado dos púlpitos a se engajar na cruzada condenatória de um “governo maçom” e de padres “pedreiros livres, afastados da lei de Deus”.
     
Estava rompida a fé na divindade do poder, exposta aos crentes pobres a fragilidade dos poderosos (sacerdotes e governantes), desmistificadas afirmações centenariamente ensinadas de que o mundo se organizava segundo a vontade divina.
     
A repressão governamental desencadeada contra os primeiros movimentos espalhou terror, desolação, mutismo e o isolamento da fuga por quase trinta anos.

Viver as promessas de Deus na Terra

A partir de meados do século, o sertão foi convulsionado pela pregação de um missionário que exprobava a riqueza como fonte do mal, convocando os pobres a se unirem, sob a Palavra de Deus, para mudar as condições de abandono e injustiça a que os relegavam os poderosos.
     
A chegada do Padre Mestre Ibiapina é a boa-nova que sacode o isolamento das fazendas, arrastando de centenas de léguas distantes milhares de pessoas que vêm ouvir a pregação de um Evangelho que fala de trabalho, cooperação, caridade, oração e harmonia entre os homens como uma vida santa, único caminho para a salvação. O missionário é o ex-deputado das cortes, ex-juiz de direito, ex-advogado dos sertanejos pobres, Dr. José Antônio Maria de Ibiapina, filho de Francisco Pereira Ibiapina – revolucionário fuzilado na Confederação do Equador e irmão de Raimundo Alexandre Pereira Ibiapina, assassinado pela repressão imperial na prisão de Fernando de Noronha.
     
Como deputado atua na oposição. Como juiz se demite da magistratura em Quixeramobim quando o governo do Ceará acoberta a fuga dos Araújos, grupo poderoso que ele havia condenado à prisão. Os fugitivos assassinaram dois membros da família Mendes Maciel, sertanejos pobres, mas honrados, sob proteção judicial por estarem ameaçados. Advogado dos pobres, aos 47 anos de idade se desilude da justiça dos homens e sem freqüentar seminário recebe o presbiterato no Recife.
     
Recusando os cargos de vigário-geral e professor do seminário, parte ao encontro dos desvalidos no sertão de cinco estados. Sua missão é evangelizadora e civilizadora. Resgatando o antigo costume do mutirão, direciona seu apostolado no sentido de organizar o povo para a resolução dos problemas mais agudos como falta de hospitais, açudes, escolas, orfanatos e cemitérios, preenchendo o vazio deixado pelo absenteísmo do Estado.
     
Voltado para o soerguimento das baixas camadas sociais, na escravidão que considerava o trabalhador infame, Ibiapina ressalta a importância do trabalho para a libertação e dignidade do homem, apontando os exemplos de José e Jesus carpinteiros na Galiléia. Alfabetiza centenas de rapazes e moças e, para divulgar as novas concepções do catolicismo, cria a Irmandade dos Beatos regida pelas Regras, conjunto de regulamentos a serem seguidos por quantos “quisessem viver as promessas de Deus na Terra”.
     
A pé e a cavalo percorre os caminhos mais ásperos animando o povo que, aos milhares, percorrem centenas de léguas para esperá-lo onde estivesse marcada uma santa missão. Cerca de seis mil pessoas se organizam em Barbalha (sul do Ceará) e em um mês constroem uma Casa de Caridade (hospital, orfanato e escola), um açude e um cemitério enquanto se impregnam da mensagem do Padre Mestre, perdoam inimigos e voltam para casa decididos a viverem “aquele céu na terra”.

Um peregrino conselheiro

Ressalte-se que esse verdadeiro movimento de massas ocorreu no sertão brasileiro do século XIX, sem estradas e qualquer meio de propaganda, a não ser o entusiasmo dos crentes transmitindo de boca em boca o milagre que é a bondade do Padre Ibiapina.
     
Enfrentando a epidemia do cólera, constrói com seu povo lazaretos onde se entrega ao tratamento dos doentes, à preparação de beatos e beatas com noções de enfermagem, campanhas para arrecadação de recursos, consolo dos aflitos, confissão e extrema-unção dos moribundos e incentivo aos piedosos para que lhes dêem enterro cristão, em cemitérios isolados, para lutar contra a disseminação da peste. Muitos padres aderiram a sua cruzada, como Jerônimo Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, Graciano Gomes de Sá Leitão e João Marrocos, mortos nos lazaretos tratando dos milhares de infectados.
     
Ibiapina orientava pessoalmente a construção dos prédios das Casas de Caridade, ensinando a necessidade de espaço e ventilação dos cômodos, higiene e a plantação de árvores frutíferas em todos os quintais, enquanto valorizava os hábitos mais salutares da cultura sertaneja. Expulso do Ceará pelo bispo D. Luís dos Santos, recebe a notícia do fechamento das Casas de Caridade, com os beatos proibidos de atuarem naquela diocese.

(Sobre o personagem, ler: A terra mãe de Deus – Um estudo do movimento religioso de Juazeiro do Norte, Rio, Ed. Francisco Alves, 1988.)

Texto de Luitgarde Oliveira Cavalcante Barros publicado na revista "Tempo e Presença" periódico de circulação bimestral do CEDI (Centro Ecumênico de Documentação e Informação),Rio de Janeiro, nº 283, pp.14-16. Adaptado e ilustrado para ser postado por Leopoldo Costa.  

Novos chefs da Escandinávia alcançam o topo da gastronomia mundial 
Cozinhas que emplacaram globalmente podem ser condensadas em poucas imagens. O Japão é sushi; a Itália, pizza e pasta; os EUA, hambúrguer; a Índia, curry.

E os escandinavos comem o quê? Poucos sabem. Eles próprios, até há pouco, só achavam bacana cozinhar à francesa ou à italiana, relegando seus pratos regionais às refeições caseiras.

Foi preciso que um chef de enormes talento e carisma, René Redzepi, forçasse o pêndulo na direção oposta, recusando-se a trabalhar com importados e servindo no Noma, em Copenhague, ingredientes locais, muitas vezes selvagens ou artesanais.

Quando o restaurante atingiu o posto de melhor do mundo, no ranking promovido pela revista inglesa "Restaurant", Redzepi, de apenas 35 anos, tornou-se uma celebridade.

Em 2010, atraiu à região milhares de jornalistas e turistas gourmets, transformando a imagem da capital da Dinamarca.

Inspirada por seu sucesso, uma nova geração de chefs escandinavos ou formados no Noma vêm abrindo restaurantes excelentes, alçando a Escandinávia ao topo da lista de destinos gastronômicos mundiais.

Ao colocar em evidência ingredientes antes desvalorizados, como ovas de peixe, tubérculos e ervas selvagens, apresentados sem disfarces, Redzepi forjou uma nova linguagem que, quando não influencia, inspira outros chefs a se arriscar em empreitadas com estampa autoral.

Novidades como o Gaston e o Flying Elk, em Estocolmo, na Suécia, e o Amass, também em Copenhague, vão aquecer ainda mais suas cenas gastronômicas.

Já em Nova York e Londres, ex-cozinheiros do Noma semeiam o novo evangelho nórdico.

Em São Paulo, no entanto, é mais difícil replicar a moderna tendência, como identifica o crítico da Folha Josimar Melo.

O NOVO NÓRDICO 

Em 2004, Redzepi divulgou um manifesto em prol de um estilo de cozinha batizado de "new nordic" (novo nórdico), que valoriza ingredientes escandinavos como queijo e manteiga artesanais, ervas selvagens e tubérculos.

Mal sabia ele que sua ousadia e originalidade lhe renderiam o posto de número um do mundo. O prêmio e a fama do chef tornaram quase impossível conseguir uma reserva no Noma (a cada ano mais de um milhão de pessoas disputam 20 mil lugares), mas, além disso, trouxeram consequências muito maiores.

"O maior impacto foi que passamos a nos orgulhar de nossas origens", diz Bo Bech, chef-proprietário do premiado restaurante Geist em Copenhague. "Vejo não só um 'efeito Noma' como um 'efeito Escandinávia'. Chefs não se sentem mais obrigados a viajar para a Europa para deslanchar suas carreiras. Não têm medo de colocar nada mais do que uma cenoura no prato. Sabem fazer clientes degustá-la como se fosse a primeira cenoura de suas vidas."

Quando não é uma cenoura, são chips de beterraba, um torresmo ou uma única vieira, servida na concha. Embora utilizem-se técnicas modernas na nova cozinha nórdica (cocção a vácuo, desidratação em baixas temperatura etc.), raramente notam-se no resultado final.

Texto de Alexandra Forbes publicado no suplemento "Comida" da "Folha de S. Paulo" de 27 de fevereiro de 2013. Adaptado e ilustrado para ser postado por Leopoldo Costa.

Les Français voient le rire comme un moyen efficace de rester en bonne santé. D'après un sondage réalisé par l'Ifop pour GlaxoSmithKline, rendu public jeudi 28 février, une grande majorité des Français (94%) estime que le fait de rire a un impact positif sur leur santé psychique.
D'après les sondés, rire aurait également une influence positive sur leur niveau de stress (93%), sur la santé du coeur (84%), sur la qualité du sommeil (78%), et sur les douleurs ressenties au quotidien (74%).

Aux yeux des Français, les enfants représentent une source de joie de vivre (94%). Pour près de la moitié d'entre eux (49%), c'est même le sentiment de joie le plus important.

D'une façon plus générale, la famille est directement associée au bonheur. Plus d'un tiers des personnes interrogées (34%) affirment ainsi que faire un bon repas entre amis ou en famille est la plus grande source de joie de vivre. D'autres privilégient les balades dans la nature (12%), ou les relations intimes (11%).

Ce sondage a été réalisé dans le cadre de l'opération "Eclats de rire", organisée par Aquafresh. Le public est convié à se connecter sur la page Facebook de cette opération, à enregistrer leur rire grâce à un vidéomaton, et à le partager avec leurs proches. Dix centimes d'euros sont reversés à l'association Le Rire Médecin pour chaque vidéo postée. Grâce à ces fonds, l'association pourra financer des milliers de visites d'enfants hospitalisés.

L'étude a été réalisée en ligne par l'Ifop pour GlaxoSmithKline, entre le 10 et le 12 novembre derniers, auprès d'un échantillon de 1.002 personnes, représentatif de la population française âgée de 18 ans et plus.

Dans "Le Parisen" (La Parisienne), Paris, 28 février, 2013.  Édité et adapté pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa.

* Los juegos deben ser consensuados y libres por los dos miembros de la pareja.
* Según los expertos, es tan sólo un elemento más de estimulación.

La literatura erótica está de moda. Tras el fenómeno de la trilogía '50 sombras' se están sucediendo con cierto éxito un sinfín de títulos con contenido de alto voltaje. Es más, los expertos no dudan en recomendar entre sus hábitos de lectura esta literatura erótica. Aunque también, hay quien dice que no hay nada más erótico que una buena conversación...

El último libro de Natasha Janina Valdez, 'Travesuras eróticas', no es una novela ni un cuento, sino un manual donde enseña cómo poder disfrutar del sexo sin complejos, rompiendo la monotonía o la rutina de cada pareja. Esta conocida y reputada terapeuta de EEUU dirige su propio programa de radio, participa en espacios televisivos como 'The Howard Stern Show', colabora con distintas publicaciones y ha vendido más de 10.000 ejemplares de sus DVD sobre educación sexual. Por fuera, en la portada y en la cinta que envuelve a algunos libros puede leerse: "El libro que la protagonista de 50 sombras de Grey debería haber leído". Esta experta apuesta por introducir el erotismo dentro de la pareja pero con muchas más opciones que las que proponen los libros como Grey.

Opciones que no tienen que ser complicadas. Apuesta por introducir "cosas tan sencillas como ver una película erótica o darse un baño en pareja". Porque asegura que en el sexo siempre hay algo nuevo por descubrir.

Una forma de estimulación

Dar rienda a la fantasía e introducir algunos juegos nuevos, según explica, ayudan a revitalizar la relación y a afianzar la conexión con la persona que quieres. Implantar ingredientes tales como la creatividad, la sensibilidad y el compromiso con la intimidad.

Pero los juegos eróticos no se tratan sólo de moda, sino de "una forma más, como otra cualquiera, de estimular el deseo sexual", asegura Miren Larrazabal, presidenta de la Federación Española de Sociedades de Sexología (FEES) y autora del reciente libro 'Sexo para torpes' . Los juegos eróticos con un matiz transgresor, mantiene la experta, ayudan a romper con la rutina y con los estereotipos, a estimular el deseo, la creatividad y la imaginación. "Son inductores del deseo", insiste.

Pero a pesar de todo, avisa que esto sólo ha de hacerse si es un pacto consensuado entre la pareja. Si los dos quieren. "No hacerlo porque sí, porque a veces no hace falta, es sólo una opción más, una ayuda".

Hay muchos estudios sobre los beneficios del sexo, tanto a nivel físico como psicológico, pero sobre todo, insiste, es un factor de vida sana, siempre y cuando la sexualidad constituya los cuatro pilares básicos: libre, responsable, segura y placentera. Porque "no debemos olvidarnos que es algo lúdico".

Lo fundamental, explica, es que la pareja sea cómplice y compañera durante sus relaciones y que el sexo sea integral, holístico y no tan genitalizado. Con juegos o sin juegos. Todo debe ser, insiste, consensuado y libre por parte de ambos y los juegos eróticos deben introducirse de forma gradual si nunca se han utilizado. "El sexo es lúdico y, por tanto, requiere imaginación, pero lo más importante es que que las parejas descubran cosas nuevas y exploren más allá, dentro de su sexualidad", concluye.

Por Beatriz G. Portalatín publicado en "El Mundo" Madrid, 01-03-2013. Adaptado y ilustrado por Leopoldo Costa para ese sitio.

The use of our first tools assured human survival, and the appearance of stone knives marks the beginning of the archaeological record. Since they can be used for cutting, slashing, spearing and pricking, knives have many uses in feeding and defending humankind. For millennia, knives were essential for hunting and butchering animals. The first stone tools were thought to be the ‘Oldowan’ tools found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by Louis Leakey in the 1930s. They were made by the extinct hominid Homo erectus between 1.7 and 2.4 million years ago. However, tools of a similar type were found in the Gona fossil fields in Ethiopia in the 1970s, and they have been dated to 2,600,000 BCE. The discoveries provided strong evidence that toolmaking, once thought to be a skill special to the Homo genus, began long before its emergence, perhaps by half a million years. (Homo sapiens, the only surviving hominid, originated in Africa only around 200,000 years ago, and reached full behavioural modernity only 50,000 years ago.)

It is a reasonable assumption that the tools were made by more primitive members of the human lineage, the Australopithecines, the only hominids known to have existed at that time. These stone tools generally consisted of sharp flakes battered off a stone core, but early hominids also carried out more sophisticated flaking and reshaping to sharpen and straighten their blades. Because of its role as humankind’s first tool, many cultures have attached spiritual and religious significance to the knife. To produce an Oldowan tool, a roughly spherical hammerstone was struck on the edge, or striking platform, of a suitable core rock, to make a ‘conchoidal fracture’ with sharp edges useful for various purposes. Originally made of rock, flint or obsidian (a naturally occurring volcanic glass), knives evolved in construction. Stone knives would later be lashed onto a bone or wooden handle to make them easier to use.

By Terry Breverton in "Breverton's Encyclopedia of Inventions", Quercus Publishing UK, 2012 excerpts chapter 1. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Kaffa resembled a medieval version of the American frontier railhead, the last European city before the border with the vast Mongol khanates that spread all the way east to China. Around 1266, the Horde-the Mongol empire of northwestern Asia and eastern Europe-sold the city's site to the Genoese, who valued its location on the Crimean Peninsula at the western terminus of the Silk Road. From Kaffa's harves,merchants shipped slaves to Egypt and the luxuries of the Orient to Italy, France, and even the Atlantic ports of northern Europe.

The Mongols, observing Kaffa's prosperity under the Italians, suffered from seller's regret. They could not resist ravaging it, and an epic tugof-war over this newly valuable piece of real estate ensued. The Horde's khan, Toqtai, found his pretext for plunder in the enslavement and exportation of his Turkic brothers and sisters. In 1307 he arrested the Italian residents in his capital at Sarai, some seven hundred miles east of Kaffa; later that same year, the Horde besieged Kaffa itself. The Italians resisted until 1308, when they burned and abandoned the city. After the Mongols had completed their pillage, the Genoese rebuilt it.

Just east of Kaffa, and thus more exposed to the Horde, was the Venetian slave-buying outpost of Tana. When it was bombarded in 1343, the Italians there fled west to Kaffa and presented Kipchak, the local Turkic ally of the Horde, with an even fatter opportunity. Over the next three years, Kipchak intermittently besieged Kaffa with his fearsome catapults. He failed. After the disaster of 1308, the Genoese had strengthened the city's maritime lifeline through the Bosphorus and had reinforced its ramparts with a set of two massive concentric walls.

Unbeknownst to either side, a doomsday weapon had just arrived from the East to inflict defeat on both sides. Initially, it devastated the attackers and provided blessed relief to the Italians huddled in Kaffa. But soon enough, it killed the defenders too, and then sailed silently south on Genoese galleys to visit ashen ruin, first on Europe and next on the realm of the Prophet.

The plague bacillus, Yersinia pestis, like many human pathogens, spends most of its time in an "animal reservoir," a population of chronically infected rodents. During the medieval period, the ground squirrels and marmots of the Himalayan foothills, the Asian steppes, and the Great Lakes region of Africa served this function for the bacillus. Probably the most important of these animals was the tarabagan, a burrowing animal that most resembles an obese squirrel, grows to two feet in length, weighs up to eighteen pounds, and hibernates in winter.

For millennia, the local inhabitants of the steppe kept their distance from infected rodents, easily identified by their sluggish behavior. Occasionally, however, this cultural barrier to infection broke down, most often when outsiders unfamiliar with local custom hunted the diseased animals. When this occurred, the black death seared the land.'

We owe our modern appreciation of the origins and historical effects of infectious disease to the great historian William H. McNeill of the University of Chicago. Sometime around 1955, while reviewing the defeat of the Aztecs by Hernan Cortes in 1521, he puzzled over how a population of millions, many of them fierce and ruthless fighters, could have been defeated by a force of only six hundred Spaniards. True, the horses, guns, and steel swords of the Europeans conferred a great advantage, but McNeill sensed that something else must have been going on.

In fact, the Aztecs had defeated Cortes the year before at the capital city of Tenochtitlan and forced the Spanish to retreat-the infamous noche triste. Four months later, a smallpox epidemic swept through the Aztec nation. When McNeill came across mention of the death from smallpox of the victorious Aztec commander, the steel trap of his mind snapped shut: in an instant, he grasped the role of disease in the Spanish conquest of America and opened up a new dimension in our understanding of world history.

McNeill realized that what had happened both in Tenochtitlan and in Europe two centuries earlier were identical phenomena-the catastrophic introduction of a new disease into a population lacking immunity to it. He elucidated the mechanics of these collisions of civilizations, in which trade often provided the primary motive force.

As is all too clear today, commerce and travel (as well as the increased population densities of the modem world) can spread pathogens, both novel and well-established, among continents with frightening speed. In many ways, the situation in the ancient and premodern world was even more dangerous. Back then, the world was an epidemiologic tinderbox consisting of several completely separate geographic "disease pools." The populations within each pool were reasonably resistant to its organisms, but not to those from other pools; an organism that had been benignly endemic in one nation for millennia could visit apocalypse several hundred miles away. As world commerce blossomed between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, the world's existing disease pools mixed together, with disastrous results. The good news is that today, relatively little further mixing of existing organisms can occur; pandemics result only when an organism from a nonhuman host, such as the HIV virus, mutates and acquires the ability to infect humans. This is a much higher bar than in the pre-Columbian era, when a merchant, sailor, or rodent from a neighboring disease pool could touch off a deadly epidemic.

McNeill seized on an episode, which began in 1859, when British settlers introduced rabbits into Australia, desiring to alleviate their homesickness for the English countryside and to have a familiar animal to hunt and eat. These adorable animals, unfortunately, found no predators in their new home. They multiplied, as rabbits are wont to do, stripped the continent of its scant and fragile pasturage, and threatened the nascent sheep industry. Fences, poisons, traps, and rifles proved of little use in keeping down the population of a creature that can reproduce just six months after it is born. The situation cried out for a more imaginative remedy.

In 1950, the Australians introduced the myxoma virus, uniquely lethal to rabbits, into their wild population, which had no prior exposure, and therefore limited resistance, to it. The situation was thus analogous to the Mexican and European experience with smallpox and plague. The ensuing years saw a rabbit holocaust which reduced their numbers by 80 percent; the death rate among infected rabbits was 99.8 percent.

Just at the point when the rabbit was about to disappear from Australia, natural selection kicked in, favoring those strains of rabbits most resistant to the disease. Further, this process worked equally well from the perspective of the virus. It did the myxoma organism no good to kill its host so rapidly; over time, it became less deadly, so that it lived longer and multiplied more effectively. By 1957, only one-fourth of infected rabbits succumbed. The one-sided relationship between a highly fatal disease and a completely defenseless host had changed into a standoff between a less virulent pathogen and a more resistant population.

The same process occurs when humans are exposed to new infections. At first, mortality is high, but natural selection results in both a more resistant population and a less lethal pathogen. This process of "disease equilibration," in which pathogen and host adapt to each other, seems to take about five or six generations-several years in the case of rabbits, and about 100 to 150 years in people. In the human population, such diseases as measles and chicken pox, which were once killers of adults, now affect mainly those who have not yet built up immunity to them, i.e., children. It is also no coincidence that these diseases arose originally from domesticated animals living in intimate proximity to humans: smallpox from cowpox, influenza from hogs, and measles from canine distemper or rinderpest.

Plague presents a somewhat more complex case. While the disease has certainly not reached a similar equilibrium in humans-it is nearly as deadly now as it was when it tore through the Old World in the fourteenth century-this matters little to the organism, for whom human infection constitutes a mere sideshow. From the perspective of the plague bacillus, the only hosts that matter are ground rodents such as the tarabagan, millions of which are to this day infected all around the globe. The disease proves rapidly fatal to the creatures as well, but the degree of isolation among these burrowing animals is high enough to slow down colony-to-colony transmission. Only among gerbils in the southwest Asian deserts is plague infection believed to be indolent enough to allow chronic, low-grade infection of individual animals. Scientists do not know for sure where the original reservoir population of infected underground rodents first arose; the best guess is somewhere in the Himalayan region of south China.

If humans, marmots, and ground squirrels were the only hosts of plague, then people would be protected from it by distance; however, two other animals are involved in this deadly disease chain. The first is the flea, whose bite transmits the bacillus from mammal to mammal. Fleas are unable to travel the miles between people and remote underground rodent populations; the second animal, the black rat, provides the essential "bridge" between ground rodent and civilization and allows the ground-animal reservoir to lap on human shores. The bacillus is just as lethal to the flea and the rat as it is to people. All that remains is for the rat to die; the infected fleas then abandon the dead rodent, and, just before they too succumb, span the final few feet to an unlucky human.

A particular species of flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis, became the crucial link in the chain of death. This unattractive insect has two characteristics that make it particularly well adapted to this role. First, the black rat is its host of choice. Whereas tarabagans seldom come into close contact with humans, the black rat is a so-called "commensal" animal. This term refers to the black rat's adaptation to close proximity to human habitation by feeding off garbage and discarded food scraps. The black rat also cohabits with tarabagans. This allows Xenopsylla, and the plague bacillus along with it, to hop from tarabagan to black rat. Xenopsylla leaves the rat only under duress, when the rat dies, freeing the flea to transmit the bacillus one final, spectacular step, to humans. Xenopsylla's second deadly characteristic is that, uniquely among fleas, its digestive system is highly sensitive to the bacillus, which creates intestinal blockage and regurgitation of large amounts of infected material into the rodents and humans it bites.'

On the death of the rat, Xenopsylla can also find refuge in horses and camels, which become veritable flea hotels.' Both beasts of burden, as well as a large number of other mammal and bird species, are highly susceptible to the disease. concerned, Xenopsylla, the black rat, and man are two-bit players, unfortunate innocent bystanders. The organism's primary mission is to maintain itself in its reservoir population of ground rodents. Worse, successful settled agriculture results in dense, specialized cities, which in turn attract the commensal black rat, specifically adapted to the urban environment.

The black rat fills its deadly role brilliantly; it not only prefers close company to humans, but is also a world-class climber. Around the time when the Romans and the Han Chinese were in the ascendant, the species began to range far and wide along the Silk Road and the maritime monsoon routes. At some point early in the Common Era, the black rat gained passage to Europe via the mooring ropes of the dhows and Greek vessels plying the monsoon routes.

The term "plague" itself causes much confusion. Almost certainly, none of the outbreaks recorded in ancient sources were the work of Yersinia pestis. Sumerian sources mention epidemics as far back as 2000 BC, and the first books of the Old Testament, written between 1000 and 500 BC, described divine retribution in the form of outbreaks among the populations of the Fertile Crescent. Modern translators fell on the word "plague" to describe these episodes, but the Bible and other ancient sources rarely gave enough clinical detail to identify the responsible bacteria or viruses.

On only a few occasions did ancient observers provide enough such detail to identify the source of a specific outbreak. The very first passage in Hippocrates's Of the Epidemics, written around 400 BC, clearly details an outbreak of mumps (painless swelling about the ears, hoarseness, cough) on the island of Thasos. Nowhere in his works is found a description suggestive of Yersinia pestis infection.6 The great historian of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, described perhaps the most famous epidemic of ancient history, the Athenian plague of 430 BC, which killed about one-fourth of the empire's army; its causative organism cannot be identified from the text with any accuracy.'

Outbreaks of infectious diseases regularly savaged Rome-both the republic and the empire, most famously in about AD 166, when Marcus Aurelius's legions brought back a pathogen from Mesopotamia. Contemporaneous accounts tell of the deaths of up to one-third of the inhabitants of the capital and the destruction of entire armies. Another outbreak struck Rome in the mid-third century and killed as many as five thousand people per day." Once again, precise descriptions of these Roman pestilences are lacking; the best evidence suggests that these were the first European invasions of smallpox and measles from their origins in the stockyards and dwellings of the Fertile Crescent.

The clinical features of the plague caused by Yersenia-swelling in the groin and armpit, high fever, a black hemorrhagic rash, and rapid demise-are distinctive enough that had it occurred in the ancient world before AD 500, we should have record of it. This is even more true of the pneumonic form of the disease, in which airborne person-to-person transmission of the bacillus from coughing can by nightfall devastate entire urban quarters that at sunrise had appeared unaffected.

Around the beginning of the Common Era, infected fleas or rodents somehow made the journey from the disease's probable ancient reservoir in the Himalayan foothills to India's Malabar Coast, where infected black rats scampered over mooring ropes onto westbound trading ships. The winter monsoon blew these vessels across the Indian Ocean to Ale xandria (or alternatively, to intermediate ports such as the island of Socotra or Aden) quickly enough for the rats to survive and reestablish the disease on disembarkation. In AD 541, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, the first convincing descriptions emerge of Yersinia pestis infection-the Black Death (so called because of the widespread hemorrhagic rash) emerged. The historian Procopius recorded that the "plague of Justinian" first appeared (at least to Western observers) in Egypt, just a s would be expected from the maritime supply lines of the Eastern Empire, which ran through the ancient Red Sea route (the easier "Sinbad's Way" through the Gulf being blocked by Byzantium's archrival, the Persian Empire).")

Procopius observed the outbreak firsthand: "About the same time [the winter of 541-542] there was a Plague, which almost consumed mankind." Procopius clearly described the buboes-painful, inflamed swellings of the lymph glands, "not only in the groin (called the Bubo), but in the armpits, under the ear, and in other parts," that are the disease's signature. The lack of person-to-person transmission perplexed him:

"No physician, nor other, caught the disease by touching the sick or dead bodies, many strangely continuing free [of the disease] though they buried [the dead], and many catching it, they knew not how, and dying instantly."

This first epidemic was transmitted from human to human by fleas, a path that proved less rapidly fatal than the person-to-person pneumonic route that affected Europe in the fourteenth century. Wave after wave of pestilence swept through the Eastern Empire at intervals of five to ten years following the initial outbreak and thus affected the young, who had not yet acquired immunity, disproportionately. About one-fourth of Constantinople's population died in AD 541-542-Procopius recorded peak death rates in the city of about ten thousand per day-and by the year 700 its population had fallen by half. Before the epidemic, Justinian seemed poised to reunify the empire; it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that Yersinia pestis was primarily responsible for dashing those hopes. The epidemic helped plunge Europe into the Dark Ages and provided a geopolitical vacuum into which the early adherents of Islam, protected from the disease by the desert climate (which is unfriendly to the black rat) and by a lack of large cities, could expand. The plague also aided the Muslims farther east; Procopius recorded its devastation in Persia, suggesting that succeeding waves of the pestilence may have abetted the historic Muslim triumph over that empire at Ctesiphon (in modem-day Iraq) in AD 636.

By the time the plague finally burned itself out in the Eastern Empire, its trade with the Orient had reached low ebb. In AD 622, the same year as the last wave of plague at Constantinople, the Quraish expelled Muhammad and his followers from Mecca and precipitated their hegira to Medina. Within eight years, the Prophet's armies would control all of Arabia and close Bab el Mandeb to Western shipping for more than a millennium; over the next several generations, they would deny Westerners the Silk Road as well. The armies of Islam deprived Europe of the relatively open access to Asia it had enjoyed since nearly the beginning of the Common Era. The silver lining of this stinging defeat was that that this isolation would protect Europeans from Asia's reservoirs of plague for the next seven centuries.

The hot, dry, and largely uninhabited Arabian Peninsula offered some protection against the disease, but the next venue of Muslim conquest, the densely populated Fertile Crescent, proved an ideal breeding ground for it. By AD 639, the plague raged through Syria, devastated the civilian population, and killed as many as twenty-five thousand Muslim soldiers. Caliph Omar, the Prophet's second successor, attempted to recall his great military commander Abu Ubaydah from Syria in an effort to save his life concealed his purpose by telling his general that he was needed for urgent consultation, Abu Ubaydah saw through the ruse and, unwilling to thwart the will of Allah, remained in Syria. He soon succumbed to the disease, as did numerous succeeding Arab commanders.

The plague may even be responsible for the schism in Islam. After Abu Ubaydah's death, another general, Muawiyah ibn AN Sufyan, overthrew Caliph Ali (the fourth successor of the Prophet, and also his cousin and son-in-law), cleaving Muslims forever into Sunni and Shiite camps. Had Omar been successful in saving the capable Abu Ubaydah from the plague, it is possible that Islam would not have suffered this tragic split.

However much the "plague of Justinian" afflicted the newly triumphant warriors of Islam, it caused far greater damage to their Byzantine and Persian enemies. According to the historian Josiah Russell, "Neither Charlemagne, nor Harun, nor the great Isaurian and Macedonian dynasties could break the pattern set up by the flea, the rat, and the bacillus." To the sword of Ali and the wealth of Khadijah must be added the Black Death, which killed the young religion's enemies-the Byzantines and Persians-with far greater regularity than it killed Arabs.

Within a few generations of the plague of Justinian, the bacillus had also spread eastward from India to China's seaports. Convincing Chinese descriptions of the disease appear by the early seventh century, and although confirmatory demographic data are few and far between, it seems likely that the plague devastated the Tang at least as much as it did Byzantium. One observer reported that in AD 762 half of the province of Shantung succumbed; between AD 2 and 742, the Chinese population appears to have decreased by about one-fourth."

Then, nothing. The last wave of the plague engulfed Constantinople in AD 622 and the periphery of the empire in 767. After those dates, no further convincing descriptions of the Black Death in Christendom are found until the deadly invasion of the fourteenth century.

Why, then, did the plague not reach Europe until the middle of the first millennium, having been endemic among Asian ground rodents for thousands of years? Why did the next epidemic not occur for another eight hundred years? And why, finally, was the plague of Justinian confined largely to the Eastern Empire in Europe, whereas the later medieval epidemic engulfed all of the Continent?

First and foremost, plague is a disease of trade. Infected humans live no more than several days, infected rats no more than several weeks, and infected fleas no more than several months. In order to transport the bacillus to the next caravanserai or port, the human, rodent, and insect hosts must pass quickly across the seas and steppes.

While the plague of Justinian did strike scattered cities in northern Europe, it did not ravage the whole Continent for two reasons. First, in Europe the disease was conveyed primarily over Mediterranean routes, and the way west and north was blocked by the Goths, Vandals, and Huns. Second, by the sixth and seventh centuries, the essential intermediate host, the black rat, had not yet expanded much beyond the Mediterranean littoral, and certainly not yet to the continent's Atlantic ports. The saving grace of the plague of Justinian was that the organism did not gain a foothold in Europe's population of ground rodents. In the fourteenth century, the Continent would not be so lucky. The centuries-long exclusion of European traders from Asia-the "Muslim quarantine"ended with the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century; the reopening of overland trade by the heirs of Genghis Kahn would in time loose the plague's fury on a Europe now much more vulnerable to the disease.

During the sixth century, the scourge emerged from the seas; in the fourteenth, it came overland. Political unification under the khans reopened the Silk Road, and along with the precious goods of China came the rats and fleas that infected the besiegers at Kaffa. Our understanding of exactly how the Mongols and their allies became infected is incomplete. McNeill believes that the steppe warriors acquired the disease in its ancient home among the ground rodents of the southern Chinese and Burmese Himalayan foothills when they invaded that region from the north in 1252.

In 1331, the first reports appeared of the plague's return to China. Almost immediately, the disease began barreling down the Silk Road, now running smoothly under Mongol rule. The infected fleas hitched rides westward, here in the manes of warhorses, there in the hair of camels, and elsewhere on black rats nestled in cargoes and in saddlebags. Just as the long-distance goods trade was indirect, with silks and spices changing hands along the way, so too did the bacillus pause many times before continuing the next leg of the journey.

McNeill believed that the caravanserais provided the essential link in the transmission of the disease and furnished sustenance not only to the camel and the trader, but also to the bacillus. At each caravanserai along the way, the plague devastated the workers, owners, and guests, and sped the progress of the outbreak by scattering the survivors in all directions and establishing the disease in the local ground rodent population. In 1338, seven years after the Chinese outbreak of 1331, an epidemic may have torn through a trading post near Lake Issyk-Kul (in what is today Kyrgyzstan), about halfway along the Silk Road. By 1345 the disease enveloped Astrakhan on the northern Caspian coast, and shortly thereafter, Kaffa.

In 1346, the bacillus reached Kipchak's troops at Kaffa, and they seemed to suffer a particularly malignant form of divine wrath. According to the chronicler of the plague Gabriele de' Mussi, "The Tartars died as soon as the signs of the disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humors, followed by a putrid fever.

The ferocity of the epidemic among Kaffa's attackers quickly forced them to abandon their siege, but before they did, they unleashed history's most devastating bioterrorism attack. Again, de' Mussi:

"The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city.... the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army."

The attack may have been an act of inspired desperation, or, as the world's most expert catapult engineers, the "Tartars" (Mongols and their allies) may simply have found their machines the most efficient mecha nism available for removing corpses. By the thousands, Kaffa's defenders soon suffered the same fate, and within a few months, the Black Death tore through Europe and the Middle East.



By William J. Bernstein in "A Splendid Exchange - How Trade Shaped the World",Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2008, excerpts chapter 6. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.