The EPOCH Editorial Team
Historians are famously prone to falling down rabbit holes. Anyone with a particular specialism, or even a favourite period, will invariably relish the opportunity to share obscure stories and little-known facts about their historical topic of choice. Uncovering these histories is a consequence of spending time engaging with the past in depth and they are as important as any other. They offer an opportunity to go beyond grand sweeping narratives and familiar stories and allow us to instead indulge in unravelling the threads of historical tangents, providing new perspectives on the past and an insight into times beyond our own.
This is what makes history interesting. To find a historical niche, whether a forgotten story that ought to be told, or a famous tale to be unwrapped in more depth, is to translate the past into interpretable terms. These stories help us make history interesting, relatable, and exciting. We invite you to join our Editorial Board, including a keen contingent of our new Associate Editors, in exploring some of their favourite niche histories. The result is a unique journey through history that takes us from Ancient Rome and medieval Lithuania to Second World War Kent and Cold War Latin America, via fourteenth century Cumbria and a not-so-festive Christmas in early modern London. Spanning a broad range of eras, topics, and themes, these niche histories provide both a fascinating insight into the work of historians and a flavour of the kind of topics you might find across the EPOCH archive.
The St Bees Man
Edward Moore
The St. Bees Man is considered to be one of the best-preserved bodies from the medieval period, dating from around the end of the fourteenth-century. Found in 1981 in St. Bees, Cumbria, during excavations of the ruins of the chancel aisle of St Bees Priory, the body was wrapped in linen and sealed within a lead coffin. The body was so remarkably preserved that organ structures, skin and even liquid blood were found during the autopsy of the body. Questions around the identity of the St Bees Man began almost immediately, but he has most confidently been identified as Anthony de Lucy, who held a portion of the Egremont estates, which carried with it the patronage of St. Bees Priory.
De Lucy’s activities before his death are fairly well-known, as he participated in the Northern Crusades in the 1360s. However, the details surrounding his death are somewhat unclear. A fifteenth-century family roll states that he died in the Holy Land, but it is uncertain whether this assumption was made simply because he was on a crusade or if he actually passed away in Palestine rather than Lithuania. The circumstances of his preservation are particularly unique. Regardless of whether he died in the Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean, his body was meticulously prepared for transport over a great distance before burial. The burial shroud was sealed with pitch to keep air out and then wrapped in lead to prevent moisture from entering. This careful preparation of the body is the primary reason for its preservation. One of the biggest remaining questions about the St Bees Man is the exact cause of his death.
Further Reading
‘The Knight of Saint Bees', Medieval Dead, Yesterday, 2015 <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0CL6NSPJB/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r> [Last Accessed 14/11/2024].
McAndrew, Ian, Doug Sim, and St Bees Parish Council, 'St Bees Man', St Bees Parish Council, (2024) <https://stbees.org.uk/home/village/st-bees-man/> [Accessed 14th November 2024].
Cleopatra’s Pearls
Aimée Wilkinson
The Pantheon in Rome once housed a grand statue of the mother of the city, Venus. Though we do not know the fate of the goddess statue, Pliny the Elder tells us in Book XI of his Natural History, that she was decorated with a then-infamous pair of pearl earrings which further connected her to the victory of Rome. Gifted to her from Augustus, her earrings were once one of the two largest pearls ‘in the whole of history’ and were heirlooms passed down the line of ‘Kings of the East’ to Queen Cleopatra.
One night the queen was relaxing in her lavish palace in Alexandria with her lover, Mark Antony. He was admiring the grandeur of their evening when she claimed she would usually spend ten million sesterces on ‘a single banquet’, to which he laughed and bet her that it was not possible. The following night Cleopatra was adamant about proving her claim and even extended the bet to say that she could spend that amount on her dinner alone. She ordered her servants to bring her a vessel of vinegar, took off one of her pearl earrings and dropped it in, causing it to melt and then swallowed it. Afraid that she would impose a similar fate on the other pearl, Lucius Plancus placed his hand on it and declared that Antony had lost.
Following Cleopatra’s death and Rome’s capture of Egypt, Augustus came to possess the remaining pearl and it became a symbol of Roman power and victory. He showcased it in his triumphal parade in 29 BC alongside a sculpture of Cleopatra on a bier, accentuating his victory over her and Mark Antony. Augustus then had the pearl reshaped into two earrings which he gifted to Venus in 25 BC, as a symbol of victory and of control over Egypt, placing their ancestral jewels in the house of his divine family.
Further Reading
Pliny, Natural History, XI.
Marleen B Flory, ‘Pearls for Venus’, Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, 1988-12, Vol.37 (4), p.498-504
Baltic Crusades
Jimyeong-Kim Jin
The Crusades are a widely known historical event during the medieval period. However, the term 'crusade' is most commonly associated with twelfth-century crusades to Jerusalem and the Middle East; it is easy to disregard that in mainland Europe, there were crusading efforts to expand Christendom into the east of Europe. For instance, the Baltic crusade against pagans in Lithuania and Lativa.
During the second half of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century, Germany’s border kept expanding toward East Europe, pushing Slavs further back into the East. German merchants played an important role in this expansion by sailing regularly to the ports and harbours on the east coast of the Baltic Sea, trading with native people such as Livonians, Lithuanians, and Estonians. German interest in this area soon turned into an interest in the conversion of non-Christian native people. Soon, German armies, missionaries and colonists arrived and a full-scale conquest and conversion operation started in the Baltic coastal plains, known as the Baltic Crusades.
Most primary sources recording this history come from the German side, primarily written by missionaries who participated in the Crusades. A key example is the Livonian Chronicle of Henry, authored by a Roman Catholic missionary. Since the Catholic Church sponsored much of the warfare, these sources focus on justifying the missions and highlighting the religious rationale behind the campaigns. Consequently, they often present a partial view, emphasising the moral and religious motives for expansion while overlooking the complex interactions and impacts on native people.
Further Reading
Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi, and Carsten Selch Jensen, Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (Routledge, 2016)
Henry of Livonia, James A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1961)
B.W. Reynolds, The Prehistory of the Crusades: Missionary War and the Baltic Crusades (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Manuscript Manicules
Vincent Kennedy
The ubiquity of gesturing to direct attentions with a finger point needs no introduction to the world of spoken rhetoric. It is something we do every day, whether we are showing something to a friend, giving directions to a stranger, or perhaps less commonly for most of us, leading an army. Since the gesture is so easily understood, its presence in medieval and early modern manuscripts as a common piece of marginalia comes packaged with its meaning. Some digital collections such as Folger Shakespeare Library even have a ‘Manicules’ tag that lets you search for manuscripts containing them.
The earliest recorded manuscript to feature maniculae is the 1086 Domesday Book, although the hands themselves may not have been added in the eleventh century. From that date up until the nineteenth century, they can be found literally ‘pointing’ out passages for various reasons: sometimes a scribe would use them to link a commentary to a scribed passage; at other times, a curious reader would draw them in, a habit which may seem taboo to courteous book-lovers today; later, when print became the norm, the pointing hand was given a new use as an advertising tool, appearing on playbills and the like before it fell out of fashion.
Of all common marginalia, the pointing hand has a significant and uniquely individualistic history. They may be more complex than a simple arrow, for the purposes of annotation, but the embedded understanding that they direct attention underlies their suitability for such a role. Always look where they are pointing.
Further Reading
Paul McPharlin, Roman Numerals, Typographic Leaves and Pointing Hands; Some Notes on Their Origin, History and Contemporary Use (Typophiles, 1942)
Christmas Locked Away
Angelina Andreeva
In the early morning of 25 December 1657, John Evelyn and his family committed the crime of celebrating Christmas. Interregnum England saw few religious celebrations after a number of key holidays, like Christmas and Easter, were banned from being commemorated. After years without a proper Christmas, Evelyn, a devout Anglican, took comfort in secret Christmas services provided by priests either in their private lodgings or in the town houses of those who requested them. As Evelyn’s diary shows, this was a common practice amongst Londoners during the Protectorate.
In 1657, Evelyn, his family, and other ‘persons of quality’ were attending a service in the chapel of Exeter House on the Strand. Just as they were about to receive the Sacrament, the service was interrupted by armed soldiers who arrested everyone involved in breaking the law. While some of the attendees were ‘carried away’ immediately, Evelyn was lucky enough to be forced to stay in Exeter House, where he and other guests were locked up in separate rooms awaiting interrogation. Evelyn remarked, with noticeable satisfaction, that while waiting for the colonels to arrive from Whitehall, he was invited to dine with the master of the house and the said people ‘of quality’.
From his account of the interrogation, it is evident that the authorities were specifically concerned about whether he and others had prayed for Charles Stuart during the service, and while they were left unsatisfied with his deliberately vague answer that they had prayed ‘for all Christian kings, princes, and governors’, in the end they found no grounds for his detention. Interestingly, after this ordeal, Evelyn, other guests, and the church leader, Peter Gunning, did not simply leave the house, but resumed the service where it had been interrupted — receiving the Sacrament. They proceeded with this even when the soldiers pointed their muskets at them as if, in Evelyn words, ‘they would have shot us at the altar’. Nevertheless, the service was properly finished and no shots were fired, likely due to the soldiers’ confusion, as the diarist later assumed.
Evelyn frustratingly reported that he did not return home until the evening of the next day, having spent two days locked away simply for celebrating Christmas.
Further Reading
Caroline Boswell, Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England, (Boydell Press, 2017)
The Many Masks of Claude Cahun
Laura Noller
The name Claude Cahun generally conjures images like the one above, stark black-and-white photographs of an androgynous, heavily made-up and costumed figure. Certainly, Cahun (1894-1954) is most famous for her – and we use the pronoun ‘her’, reflecting the language Cahun used about herself, despite her many expressions of gender neutrality – surrealist photography. However, the costumes and masks were as present in her personal life as in her art. In her autobiography Aveux non avenus, she wrote ‘Behind this mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.’
Indeed, ‘Claude Cahun’ itself was a pseudonym; behind it stood Lucy Schwob, a wealthy French woman, half-Jewish in origin. At fifteen, she met Suzanne Malherbe (1892-1972), the French seventeen-year-old who would become her step-sister, but also her lesbian lover and life partner. Shortly after, she adopted her pseudonym, with Malherbe taking the pseudonym ‘Marcel Moore’, and began to pursue their art together until, in 1937, the rise of fascism in Europe drove them to emigrate to the British Channel Island of Jersey. Yet, fascism found them there too, as in 1940 the Channel Islands were occupied by Nazi forces.
Despite her contemporaneously transgressive gender presentation and sexuality, the couple’s reclusive lifestyle prevented them from experiencing much initial persecution. However, as ardent communists, the women dreamed of inspiring the German troops to mutiny against the Nazi regime. They did so dressed in yet more costumes and masks, described by local historian Molly Bihet as having ‘varied their appearance and clothes to an astonishing degree, and although the Germans must have been on the lookout for them, they were never caught’ as they created and distributed anti-Nazi literature to the troops. One of these documents survives in the Jersey Archives, rallying the troops by telling them ‘our officers, fearing capture here as they did at Stalingrad and Tunis, are counting on your corpse to protect their escape.’ This document is signed ‘der Soldaten ohne Namen’ - the soldiers without a name.
The couple were eventually discovered, arrested, and sentenced to death, but the Bailiff of Jersey appealed for mercy on their behalf. A letter in the Jersey Archives revealed that he pleaded the ‘repugnance… of a sentence of death on women’ and suggested that they were people of no influence on the Island. Their sentences were commuted and shortly after, in May 1945, the Island was liberated. Yet again, a mask - this time one of weak, uninfluential femininity – had come to define Cahun’s story. However, with the rediscovery of her artistic work in the post-war years, the many masks of Claude Cahun are being brought to the attention of gradually wider audiences.
Further Reading
Jeffrey H. Jackson, Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis (Algonquin Books, 2020)
The Smallest Armoured Train in History
Alex Pomeroy
How could the 15-inch gauge Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) in Kent contribute to the coastal defence of Great Britain in the anxious months following the Fall of France in 1940?
The line, which opened on July 16th, 1927, was the product of two locomotive-mad racing drivers: Captain “Jack" Howey and Count Louis Zborowski. Sadly, the Count was killed in a racing accident before the line opened, but his little railway spent the years before the war ferrying passengers between Hythe and Dungeness, the UK’s only desert. Then, the smallest public railway in the world (in terms of track gauge), the RH&DR, was requisitioned by the War Department in 1940 for coastal defence, as the line runs within sight of the strait of Dover.
Defending this valuable coastline was, to quote the May 1944 edition of Popular Science, a ‘miniature armoured train [behind] a puffing pint-sized locomotive’. The ‘armoured train’ was little more than armour-plated cladding with a selection of Lewis guns and Boys anti-tank rifles for defensive armament, though these were not easily come by then. Famously, the crews of the armoured train claimed to have shot down three Luftwaffe aircraft, though it has been argued that the diminutive size of the railway confused one pilot into believing he was at a higher altitude, causing his late attempt to pull out of his dive!
The RH&DR was latterly utilised to move vital material to build PLUTO (Pipeline Under The Ocean) to fuel the Allied armies after the D-Day landings before being returned to Captain Howey following the return of peace. Today, the railway remains an immensely popular attraction and, though comical in hindsight, its little armoured train perfectly demonstrates the desperate measures required in the defence of Britain during the dark months of 1940-41.
Further Reading
Film footage of the armoured train in action can be freely viewed within the Imperial War Museum’s archives by accessing the following link: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060029168
Communism in the Cosmos
Jude Rowley
Fraternising with communist aliens, encouraging a nuclear war, and communicating with dolphins: As niche histories go, it rarely gets more obscure than Posadism. This Cold War Trotskyist sect had all but faded from history until internet memes brought an unlikely revival of its long-forgotten past in the late-2010s.
Though lending itself to satirising, it remains a historical phenomenon that captures the absurdity of the era that spawned it. Named after J. Posadas, the nom de guerre of an eccentric Argentine former professional footballer, Posadism briefly occupied a leading position in Latin American Trotskyism but became progressively bizarre as the Cold War turned increasingly intractable from the 1960s onwards.
It is almost universally accepted that nuclear war and its consequences would be bleak. What if, however, complete civilisational devastation had a silver lining? This was the starting point for Posadists, who speculated at the height of the Cold War that the inevitable nuclear apocalypse might also destroy capitalism and leave behind a clean slate on which the new order could be built.
Humans could not build this alone, however, and global revolution was too moderate a demand. Instead, with a confidence instilled by early Soviet success in the 1960s space race, Posadists concluded that any extraterrestrial species capable of interplanetary travel would need a centrally planned economy: In other words, if there are aliens, they must be communists. Thus, once capitalism had been reduced to dust in the atomic inferno, all that remained for the surviving Posadist vanguard to do was flag down a passing craft and invite the cosmic comrades to build a model of their advanced society on the clean canvas of a ravaged Earth.
The suggestion that humans could prepare for such close encounters by harnessing the psychic abilities of dolphins to elevate themselves to a higher stage of symbiotic living, inspired by the esoteric birthing experiments of Soviet amateur obstetrician Igor Charkovsky, took Posadism to a new level of absurdity before Posadas’ death in 1981. However, it remains a snapshot of a particular moment in history that could only have been produced in the age of nuclear dread, science fiction, and the space race. Through an unlikely resurgence in left-wing memes of the late 2010s, it was given a second life by the next generation to hope for socialism while anticipating barbarism. Out of irony rather than ideological zeal, when things started getting bleaker on Earth, they too looked to the stars.
Further Reading
J. Posadas, ‘Flying Saucers, the Process of Matter and Energy, Science, the Revolutionary and Working-Class Struggle and the Socialist Future of Mankind’ (1968)
A.M. Gittlitz, I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism (Pluto Press, 2020)