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Oh this takes me back! My grandmother (Oma) spun her own wool all the time. One of the memories I have of her as a child is her at the spinning wheel - and the oily wool smell. I've made a UI element for Innkeep that kind of references her (an 'old mother time' type thing).



It looks like you are an expert at this! Lovely looking thread.

Hello and welcome! I suspect everybody here is a bit weird. 

You're welcome! I think at this point I will settle in to making a lot more simple notebooks to give as gifts and things.

Before I can advance to 'real' books ill need some bricks and laminated board to act as a makeshift press. And time.. maybe in a few months.

I managed to do more binding today. 

I wanted to tackle the next tutorial in the series by Four Keys Book Arts, which is for making a multi-signature book without needing glue.

You can bind these with card stock too, but as it happened, I had the perfect leather cover already. I previously received a journal from my publisher Mythwright, modelled on a guest book type object in Innkeep.

I ended up half filling it with gamedev to-do lists and other related scribbles. Then much of that shifted online to spreadsheets and txt file build notes.



Now I think it would be perfect for a grail journal / zibaldoni type book for narrative design, to help me get creative. So why not rebind it? It already had the same exposed spine structure as what i needed (although the binding originally used was a bit different, meaning the thread was too short for me to recycle for this method.)


First step was to deconstruct the old journal.



Then I prepared some fresh signatures. The sketch pad paper i used for this was a little thicker than the paper originally in the journal, so I reduced the number of sheets in each signature from 10 to 9 to compensate.


The thread I was using would also be quite thick. I'd stitch it with a bigger needle to match. Still it felt more suitable than my small thread for this bulky journal.


I also waxed the thread using a regular tea candle. Bees wax would be nice in future. First time doing this, but it definitely felt like it helped.

With my cradle I pierced all the signatures. Four holes instead of five this time.  The placement also needed to match the existing holes in the leather cover.



Then it was time to stitch them together. The process was more involved this time. I couple of mistakes were made where I realised id forgotten to do a loop / link at the top or bottom properly. This required a bit of back tracking each time.




The view from the bottom. The top and bottom holes are each used twice, with the thread doing a kind of figure 8.


The spine. 


The 'deckled' side edge. I quite like how this turned out. The original signatures had been cut straight but this rougher look fits the binding better i think.


Ready for use. Looking forward to scribbling innkeep narrative stuff in here!

Thank you! Then go for it! I am not at all arty by natural inclination. Just following the tutorials and learning as I go.

I got some binding supplies in the post a few days ago, so this weekend I found a bit of time between baby care to do an initial couple of projects. First, I made a book binding cradle using some hardboard I grabbed at a craft store. I followed this tutorial by Four Keys Book Arts.



Then I proceeded on to making a pocket notebook following this tutorial on the same channel.



First step was to cut some old A4 printing paper in half, so I could fold it into a 'signature', keeping it 'long grain' when eventually folded.



Then I could use my new cradle and awl to punch some holes. An add number is good. You can see here I have a little guide, but it's not really necessary.



Sewing using a binders needle! I used unwaxed cotton perle. My good (and more expensive) linen flax I'm saving for proper books that I want to last. It's a pretty simple process for a single signature. Only takes a minute or two.



Finishing off with a few knots.



All finished! Not shown here is the trimming I did with a knife to straighten the edges, using a steel ruler as a guide.






Here's how the spine looks.



I'll make a few of these I think. Some for myself for short term note taking, and some to give away as gifts. Fun initial foray into the world of binding. 

[the Crusades]

Another entry. This time I'm going to focus on the Crusades. This is largely from a dedicated section, but there are other related bits and pieces from later sections in here too, which makes sense because the period of the crusades is quite long and overlaps with so much else that is going on:

• I wasn't aware there were so many of these as distinct moments. Wikipedia lists nine major ones. But it seems there is disagreement on how many there really where. Some might argue that two 'crusades' should actually be understood as an ongoing larger one, for example. I believe the major ones were declared / launched by the Catholic church, but it seems as though this is not required by historians as a condition on something constituting a 'crusade'. Moreover, if I understand correctly, each 'crusade' was not always directed at a specific target (like recapturing the Holy Land). Sometimes it could be closer to a kind of church sanctioned open season on non-Christians in broader regions. This makes the history of the crusades a bit messy.

• Koenigsberger mentions that it was Christian Spain / Iberia where the initial concept of a religious (Christian) crusade developed, speculating that the inspiration might have come from that of the Muslim 'Jihad'. I don't see a reference to this in the Wiki on Crusades, and I wonder what consensus has formed on this since then.
• The first major pogroms against Jewish peoples in Europe occurred as a result of / as part of a crusade. I was not aware of the connection between these two, but it makes sense.
• Koenigsberger notes that the capture of the holy lands would likely not have been successful if it were not the case that the Turkish princes were fighting among themselves over the remains of the Seljuq empire.
• Apparently at its peak there were around 100,000 Latin speaking people living in the Holy Lands as a kind of quasi-colonial outpost that lasted nearly a century.
• It was interesting to see the contrast between the violence done by the crusaders who successfully captured the Holy Lands, and the restraint of Saladin when he retook them a hundred years or so later. Koenigsberger mentions the regard Saladin enjoyed in Europe for this 'chivalrous' behavior, and how Dante (as a mark of respect) has the muslim Saladin occupying purgatory in his Divine Comedy. "I saw great Saladi, aloof, alone."
• Connected to the above, I think it is another one of those historical moments where the factual barbarism of Europeans contrasts sharply with modern European / Western myth making / self-aggrandisement of itself as civilised vs. the barbarian other. 
• I wonder how the history of the world might have differed had Saladin or a Saladin not occurred. With enough time, would a new culture have developed in the east, similarly to how the Germanic tribes created new cultures through marriage and time in the west? Or was this always precluded by religious differences? The Germanic tribes Christianized after all, which made cultural blending far more simple.
• Koenigsberger mentions that one of the positive outcomes for Europe was that having a lot of surplus 'quarrelsome' young men go to the Holy Lands to live / die made everything generally more peaceful in the west. Which is kind of amusing. How much of war and violence in micro-scale or macro-scale is an outcome of / powered by the energies or 'will to power' of young men in general (and here by men I don't mean to be reductive in speaking of some 'biological' concept, hormones, or whatever, nor to exclude the biological, but being inclusive here of the political / cultural institution of men.)
• There is some mention of Catharism, and how the Church's fight against it spiralled out into a great deal of violence in the Albigensian Crusade. This is a very interesting (read, terrible) bit of history I wasn't familiar with. For example, the massacring of the the entire population of the city of Béziers. In reading of such stories as this and the massacres in the Holy Lands, I wonder more broadly about the nature of massacres. Of the above point about the violent capacities of (young?) men, and the nature of evil. The massacres of civilians by the Romans. Of more modern such events, and so on. It seems like a recurring theme over the course of human history, but given with different variations.  Of course, this event was not new in terms of violence being directed against innocent people in the name of Christianity. But what does appear to be new here is the way this directed, 'religious' violence was now occurring within the Christian west, against the Cathars, Jews, and other 'heretics', where once it was targeted at Pagans on the frontiers. Here Koenigsberger notes that we see the beginnings of the dark period of the Inquisition. I'm also wondering about parallels with the modern concept of Imperial Boomerang, where once violence is sanctioned on outsiders, it eventually 'comes home'. Hmm.. (Above, I say 'religious'. I don't want to imply that literally 'religion' itself (however we define this) is the cause of this violence. I really am not a fan of this line of argument that we saw in recent decades among prominent atheists. This is a different subject, but to begin with what we categorise as 'religious' is very difficult, particularly in a time of history such as this, where 'worldly' and 'religious' concerns and understandings are intertwined as they are.
• Catharism itself is really interesting too (I feel like I am saying that -everything- is interesting, but there is so much in history that stimulates the intellect isn't there. When one is in the right mood and looking for connections / growing one's understanding.)
  
  

  By reputation, Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. 
  
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism
  
   

  I unknowingly learned a little bit about Cathar-like beliefs when playing The Seance of Blake Manor a few months ago (incidentally, a great game that I thoroughly recommend.) Relevant spoilers for a character in the game:
  
  
  Spoilers for The Seance of Blake Manor

  There is a Catholic priest character, named Lorcan Sinnot. It is revealed (or, rather, it can be revealed, if the player succeeds with this quest line) that he is actually a 'gnostic' who believes all of humanity is "trapped in the Black Iron Prison." This is actually a Cathar belief. The wiki calls Catharism 'pseudo-Gnostic', so certainly it is also the reverse, in that Cathar beliefs have a 'gnostic' character. Still, from my cursory look at it, I believe this specific idea of humanity being trapped in a prison created by an evil one seems to be specifically a Cathar-version of Gnostic thinking. Again, interesting! I do now want to learn more about Gnosticism, and the Cathar heresy
  
  
  Similarly, there is the heretic with gnostic beliefs in Pentiment, Vacslav.
  
• Another thing the crusades helped to foster was the growing dominance of the Italian city states over trade in the Mediterranean. Although simply walking to the Holy Lands was possible, it was difficult. Many died on the way over, and this did lead in at least one case to the outright collapse of an army. There was also Constantinople to contend with. An alternative was to take boats over and arrive much more speedily. Then once established the colonies there were supplies to deliver, wealth to extract, and soldiers, pilgrims and settlers who wanted to come and go. This meant an increased need for shipping, and Italy primarily fulfilled that need. This was an impetus for certain related financial / economic developments that we can discuss in the next post that would have significant ramifications for the course of European history (proto-capitalism, mathematical-rationalism).
• What else? Hmm.. I think lastly, I learned about the Crusaders (in Crusader #4) sacking the city of Constantinople (1204).  Koenigsberger has mentioned this in parting, but I haven't reached the part of the book where he deals with this properly yet. Still it seems worth mentioning here. He has noted that this action contributed to the eventual ability of the Ottomans (Turks) to subsequently end the Byzantine empire and strike further into Europe / the Balkans. It's ironic that it was the western Christians who ultimately brought about the end of the Eastern empire, which had functioned for so long as a bulwark against non-Christian forces pushing into the continent from the east. Another bit of history I was not familiar with.
• EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention another part of this story: the formation of the knightly 'holy orders' such as the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers (the Order of St John). Incidentally, we have a national 'priory' of St John here in Australia which provides ambulance services in various states, including here in Western Australia. One of those bits of history that jumped out at me after reading about the Hospitallers. Apparently the Order of St John was constituted in 1888, and does indeed trace itself back to the Hospitallers.

[The Transition to the High Middle Ages]

My last post was a bit too darn long to put together, so I'm going to try and make the next few nice and short.

The Transition to the High Middle Ages

Koenigsberger outlines how the situation gradually changes in the western kingdoms. A few key points:

Agricultural advances.

• Iron tools help with the development of the iron plough, which is used in lands with darker, heavier soil. Such  plough require 6-8 oxen to pull though, and this is a reason for the distinctive long but narrow 'medieval' fields. They require less turning for the oxen. In places like Italy though, with their easier to till soil, wooden ploughs were still used, and the old square shaped fields remained common.
• Iron tools also helped with the spread of windmills. Watermills were a relatively old technology, but the newer and more sophisticated invention of windmills allowed for mechanised grain milling to be conducted in more places, such as flat lands like Flanders / Netherlands regions. Of course, as Jubal and I have experience with in the game Vintage Story, this mechanical power could also be used in smithing!
• The 3 field fallow system spread. Gradually farmers learned that you could grow things like beans to put nitrogen back into the soil, so rather than 2 fallow years and 1 productive year, you could have 2 productive years, and 1 fallow year. This meant quite a bit increase in how much food you could get out of the soil. Although Koenigsberger also notes that this technique did tend to exhaust the soil faster. It was still effective, but not as huge an improvement as we might think. It depended more on the quality of the soil.
• Expansion into more areas also allowed for an increase in food supply. A famous example would be the work of the Dutch and the dyke system later, but clearing of forests, draining of marshes etc. were part of this process. The limits of expansion were beginning to be felt by the 13th century though.

Economic advances

• The spread of silver coinage (more silver mines) made it easier for people to trade, and therefore specialise in different things. You see more people who might still be small farmers, but also they produce things like boots or clothing and sell them in their shop. I believe this is what Manor Lords tries to show with the way 'burghers' were still in many cases still farming their own food out the back too, given the long strips of land that were used.
• An extra level of specialisation begins to emerge. Architects, sculptors, scribes, teachers. These people were often itinerant, because there is not enough demand in any one place to support them long term. So while the common people were relatively less likely to roam about (with the exception of pilgrimages, which gradually became more popular), there was a class of international people who worked around the continent. These people often knew each other, and used Latin as a living language. This helps to set the scene for the coming renaissance movements.

Urbanism

• Agricultural advances mean a greater population, and specialisation and trade help foster the return of urban areas. Places like London, Paris, Bruges, Milan and Florence start to turn into little cities. (By the 14th century Paris apparently boasted around 80,000 people, with London at around 30,000 I think.)
• Cities started to develop their own laws, independent of the feudal system. This is something I didn't really appreciate before. It makes sense, in that merchants and other 'citizens' of cities needed a certain relative freedom from those older obligations (including things like trial by combat!) in order to be able to do their business. In places like Italy, this progresses to the point of cities really becoming their own 'city states'. I get the impression that while this was more of an Italy thing, still the relative legal independence of cities was something that was found to some degree throughout Europe. This is also where we see the development of fraternities or brotherhoods of different sorts, trade unions, guilds and so on. A different kind of bond between people could exist in this spaces than the feudal bonds of liege and subject.
• The (although still modest) growth in wealth allowed for the building of great castles, monasteries, churches and cathedrals (warfare and worship of God were high social priorities for spending any surplus wealth). The itinerant specialist builders mentioned above developed their skills, and constructed the great "Romanesque" (pre-Gothic) buildings. These are dominant in the 11th and 12 centuries. This is a pan-European style, the first to emerge it seems following the collapse of the Western Empire. This speaks to the international / itinerant nature of the specialist builders of this time.

I know some conservators etc who may have more detailed advice on this: I've never done book binding myself, I have made paper but never whole books

Oh would like to have a crack at making paper. I did once visit a Japanese paper producer in the hills near Kyoto while doing some translating for a Hong Kong magazine that was visiting different makers. The texture on that stuff is phenomenal. I got a sheet that I was able to transform into a crude lamp shade.

Coincidentally, I did a short book binding workshop a few weeks ago at the Coventry Book Fair, which was very enjoyable and involved no specialist tools or equipment.

We made little notebooks out of:

• Pretty paper for the covers (apparently wallpaper cutoffs make for good covers but any relatively thick paper, not card, will do)
• Plain or lined paper as you like for the pages
• String to bind them

The only equipment we needed was a hole punch and pritt stick glue, but the pages and covers etc were already cut to size so I imagine a guillotine or similar would also be very useful for cutting multiple pages accurately

That sounds like fun! Yes it seems pretty accessible as hobbies go really. I'm going to keep an eye out in thrift stores for materials I can salvage, like old books and things (extracting heavy card from ancient coffee table books and such).

Many thanks! Very educational points.

['Restoring the Empire']

I've managed to get a bit more reading done. Currently in the middle of the 1000-1200 period. I'll try and give another rough account of what Koenigsberger outlines, or at least, of the things that stood out to me as particularly important. I'm going to write this off the top of my head, and while I re-read sections there's going to be some degree of vagueness for which I apologise! Anyway, while last time I looked at his account of the fall of Rome and the immediate aftermath, this time my focus is on his account of the "Early Middle Ages" (although I note he doesn't use this term, and his cut off for the major book section on this period is from 700-1000, while typically this term typically designates more the period of 500-1000 it seems). Anyway...

First off, I'll admit I've struggled to come to grips with just how dense things get with the various kingdoms and peoples. There's a lot of political fluctuation, and it seems like a kind of transitory period. The period following the collapse of the Western Empire was one of tribal 'migration', where warrior groups would move into a region, displace the old elites to different extents, and then gradually form new blended cultures with new identities. For example, the Franks in Gaul blending with the Gallo-Romans. The degree to which they succeeded in doing so varied, with more success in places like England and France, where geographically there was less pressure from neighbours, giving them more time to 'work things out' internally.

Outside of Italy, these new western kingdoms / cultures were less urban. There is no longer an urban elite managing vast territories via a central bureaucracy (although this is maintained in the Byzantine Empire). Literacy declines. Records become scarcer. And technologically there is in a sense a 'decline' in the west, with a loss of knowledge about the past, and a loss of the capacity to create the kinds of artistic and architectural achievements that still remained in the environment as a visual reminder of what once existed.

'Restoring the Empire'

Still, something Koenigsberger stresses here that I found interesting was the psychological / cultural impact on the development of Europe that was provided by this 'lost golden past'. He speaks not of a single renaissance, 'The' (Italian) renaissance that I was familiar with already, but of a series of renaissances, of which the famous one was the greatest. There was a general sense among educated peoples that there was a past to look back to, to recover, a culture that could be longed for or emulated. For Koenigsberger this (among an number of other factors) was a driving force for the future 'dynamic' character he ascribes to European history.

This 'great past' included the political project of an 'Empire'. There's a kind of mental step here I've found I needed to make, because from a modern perspective we have our conceptual categories that help us make sense of things, such as 'the Roman Empire' and the 'Byzantine Empire', but of course the way peoples thought of themselves was somewhat different. For example, the Byzantines thought of themselves not as the 'Byzantines', nor as the 'Eastern Roman Empire', but as the Roman Empire, the inheritors of that past. Even though linguistically if I understand correctly their elites were Greek speakers, with their 'Greek' Christian tradition diverging from the Latin Christian tradition centred in Rome that would become the Catholic church. But back to the Byzantines later. What I mean is that the idea of 'recovering the past' for these early European western kingdoms included a 'recovery of Empire', a uniting of the land under one Emperor or peoples.

The above for me feels very important. And I think it speaks to what Jubal was saying about the self-identities of the 'German' tribes. Who in many cases came to feel or understood themselves as 'Roman'. I think this points to the way that the idea of 'Roman' or 'Eternal Rome' transcended any ethnic identity, and was more broadly understood as a kind of universal touchstone of culture. This touchstone was shared by different peoples through their Roman cultural heritage (i.e. again the Franks in taking over Gaul did not wipe away all that existed before, but intermarried with the Gallo-Romans, taking up elements of old Roman culture). There is also the linguistic connection, with Latin being the lingua-franca of the educated western elites, and perhaps most importantly a religious connection, with Rome later forming the hub of Christianity, with the growing power of the 'Bishop of Rome' (who would gradually become politically independent of the patriarch and Emperor of Byzantium - although not in the period we are discussing).

So, we see different attempts throughout European history at 'restoring the Empire' (renovatio imperii), and indeed within the complex system of feudal titles that becomes established, the rank of 'Emperor' - if I understand correctly - lingers on as a kind of latent possibility, a formal title that people could claim the right to via birth and military achievements. The 'Holy Roman Empire' is something I still know next to nothing about really, but I feel I have some context now for understanding why a German Empire would claim this title for itself. Similarly, I believe Napoleon's crowning of himself as 'Emperor' was standing in this tradition (I think Koenigsberger mentions this). He may have effectively been 'Emperor of the French Empire', but what we was harking back to / claiming the glory of was 'Emperor of Europe', inheritor of the glory of Rome.

This goes beyond the scope of our discussion, but this also helps for me as a piece of the puzzle of modern European fascism and how the Italians / Germans conceived of their 'role in history'. The 'glory of Rome' was a touchstone for the development of Europe, a dynamic force that contributed to many cultural efforts, but it was also a potential justification for dominating other nations on the continent.

Anyway, back to the Byzantine Empire for a moment. It seems it had an important role to play in preserving this Roman cultural touchstone not only in continuing to exist (and trade / communicate / politic) with the west, but in its 6th century attempt at reclaiming / re-establishing the Empire, particularly the Italian peninsula.

/Side note
Incidentally, this this initial attempt at "renovatio imperii" was undertaken by Justinian I (482-565), i.e. Justinian "The Great". This was the same Justinian who ordered the construction of the still extant Hagia Sophia, and who famously ordered the re-writing of Roman law (the Corpus Juris Civilis). Koenigsberger claims that alongside the bible itself this was one of the most important texts in shaping the future development of European civilisation. I feel like this is one of those pivotal figures who I would benefit from reading more about, for example in the form of a good biography.
/Side Note

Justinian's attempt was only temporarily (and partially) successful, but (in Koenigsberge's view) it had a very important impact in that it helped smooth out the transition, in effect retaining a degree of cultural continuity between the imperial and post-imperial periods in the west, even if that was primarily in Italy and Rome. He mentions for example that Byzantine's time holding on to Rome helped with the early formation of what would become the Papacy / Catholic church. For example, and this is my own simplification / guess here really, but I imagine the love of rules and regulations we see in Catholic tradition has a certain 'Byzantine' flavour to it, given they were preservers of Roman style codified laws and central administration.

The perhaps ironic thing about this role of the Byzantine Empire however is that while it helped preserve a link in the west to the Roman past, it's own relatively strong connection to that past was in some ways a hindrance. Koenigsberger argues that over the following centuries a reason it lacked the relative cultural 'dynamism' of Western Europe (and I cannot form an opinion on this claim, but perhaps Jubal can chime in here) was that relatively it lacked this sense of a 'lost past'. It still largely had access to the texts of the ancient world, alongside many of the artistic and architectural techniques. It still culturally viewed itself as 'the Roman Empire', so there was nothing it viewed as 'lost' that it could aspire to and try to surpass, even if in reality it was slowly declining and losing that past in various ways. The more pronounced loss of that past in the west conversely fostered a desire to try and reclaim it, which spurred many great efforts. This was an interesting claim I thought. I wonder how this is evaluated today.

The New Kingdoms and their Elites

Anyway, back to the western continent. Koenigsberger speaks of this time (the Early Middle Ages, although he doesn't use this term) as a period where politically the kings would maintain their power by way of largesse. There was little thought yet to building long term institutions (for example, via legal systems). Rather, it is a time of personalities and blood ties. The old tribal culture of 'warrior loyalty' here is the seed that would develop into the more formalised forms of feudal relations that characterise the later 'middle ages'. But that loyalty was a fickle thing. It had to be purchased, via gifts of treasure and land. This meant that wealth gathered via periods of conquest was gradually dispersed in order to maintain power. This dynamic meant that kingdoms couldn't really remain very stable. Empires would rise, but then fall.

Still, through this process we are seeing a kind of ongoing 'development'. There is some kind of dialectic here. For example, we see the rise of small regional powers (and associated titles and such) that might align with one leader or king, and now with another. And so while the lines of the map might change drastically over time, this was increasingly a different kind of change when compared with the wholesale displacement of old elites by new elites when the Germanic tribes were migrating (although this wholesale displacement still happened, with for example the Normans basically supplanting the old Anglo-Saxon elites when they invaded England in 1066).

In other words, this is a time when a new kind of 'noble' elite is emerging. An elite who are intermarrying across sometimes large distances, establishing lineages / heraldry, and are increasingly operating at a level of remove from the common people. I think the 'international' nature of this nobility is hard for us to wrap our heads around when we think in terms of modern states of more recent centuries.

To take an example from a later period, Mary Queen of Scotts was betrothed in 1542 at age 6 to 'Dauphin' (heir apparent) of France, and effectively raised there until she was married to him at 17, becoming 'Queen Consort' of France in 1559 until his death the next year in 1560. She returned to Scotland in 1561. While in France she was apparently taught French, Italian, Latin, Spanish and Greek (along Scots). The elites of the early medieval period were not at all this cosmopolitan, but the early seeds were there.

This is a time of an emerging plurality of power centres, something Koenigsberger lists as another important contributor to the 'dynamism' of European history (alongside the gradual separation of Church and state). Yet the rulers of those power centres were linked, via their shared Roman cultural history and identity towards which they still aspired, as well as via their Christian faith.

A few other related points about this period:

- Trade at this time was still quite restricted. It was often more a matter of exchange of goods, with coins still not in high circulation (although of course this would depend on the region and if we are talking 700AD vs 1000AD). Gradually this would shift as silver mines opened up, especially in Germany, but initially it was mostly a barter economy. Trade was carried out often via the great rivers of Europe, or via special caravans, and Jewish peoples played a special role here. A connected point, but in the early medieval period we still also have limited specialisation when it comes to different craft skills.

- The above simple economic structure makes sense too when we consider that outside of Italy there were few urban areas with more than a few thousand people in them (unlike the great cities of Constantinople, or Damascus in the east).
Overall, the population was still very sparse. One of the reasons I mentioned in a previous post was due to limited agricultural surplus (iron tools to make ploughs for denser soils for example). But Koenigsberger mentions a few other contributing factors.

• The climate was still coming out of a relatively cooler period. As northern and western Europe warmed, harvests gradually increased, and this contributed to a growing population.
• Larger intergenerational family structures slowed down the process of people forming new families and moving into new regions (something that the Church helped to change with its emphasis on the 'atomic family' and dislike of concubinage.)
• The persistence of slavery. Slaves had to be provided for, and were less likely to have children. Over time this institution waned, partially due to the Church, and partially because it was ultimately more economical to have serfs / peasants who provided for themselves but gave a tithe. This would help increase the birth rate.

The Role of the Church

While we are speaking of the Church. Something I should briefly mention is that the Church at this time is still quite different to what it would become in the middle ages. For example:

• There is initially still a love of hoarding treasures that glorify God (culturally this feels like a string link with Pagan cultures). Of course, that continues later too, particularly in Italy, but it would later exist in a tension alongside movements promoting simplicity and restraint. This early wealth hoarding contributed towards making churches and cathedrals a target for Viking raids. However, and this is kind of interesting, there was at least here some 'gathering up' of wealth, that could later then be 'spent' as capital on various works. Even if it was stolen by the Vikings, it could eventually find its way back to circulation on the continent. This can be contrasted with the great burials of tribal chiefs in the past, where the treasures were effectively 'lost' for future use. The Church discouraged this, which arguably indirectly helped future economic development, much like its promotion of atomic families and dislike of slavery.
• Church positions were by political appointment still at this time. This was something that put a limit on the possible influence of Rome, as members of the Church would have split loyalties. Wresting absolute control over Church positions was a key step later in the rise of the Church's independence and power relative to the different monarchies of Europe.

I haven't bothered to mention the role of the Church in maintaining literacy and access to ancient literature, as this is of course very well known. Although it is worth emphasising that it was a complicated relationship. There was often a deal of antipathy towards 'pagan' literature, depending on the place and time.


The Muslim World

Of course, the Latin western kingdoms and the Greek speaking 'Roman' Byzantine Empire were not the only inheritors of the once united Ancient world. Koenigsberger does give quite a bit of attention to the Arabic world in this period too. Although his primary interest is in the way in which this growing force contributed to the development of Europe. A few interesting things I learned here...

• What apparently paved the way for the meteoric rise of the Muslim world at this time (with its golden age starting around 800 AD) was a conflict between Persia and the Byzantine Empire over the Eastern Mediterranean. Although the Byzantine ultimately prevailed (withstanding a great siege in 626 thanks to its mighty defences), the war weakened both powers greatly. This created a void into which the Arab-Islamic invasions later that century (particularly in the 630s to the 660s).
• The Muslim world also saw itself as the rightful inheritor of the culture of Rome. It incorporated Christian religious teachings alongside the literature and learning of the ancient world.
• The expansion of the Muslim world effectively meant it included all the great urban centres of the ancient world (with the exception of Constantinople itself). We traditionally thought of Byzantine as a hold-out of Roman culture, but of course the Muslim world was too. We have urban, cultured, literate classes preserving and developing ancient learning as a living tradition, while in the west this was something often only glimpsed at and yearned for.
• Still, the religious divide was considerable (and here I refer as much to the 'perception' of difference as any actual difference). This helped to limit cultural exchange during this time, despite the Muslim and Christian worlds sharing many fundamentally similar cultural elements.

So, alongside learning more about Byzantine and people like Justinian I, I think something I'd like to read about more would be the Muslim world in this period. Particularly with a focus on Arabic philosophy, mathematics, and other learning.



The Church and the Greek / Latin Divide

Finally, Koenigsberger spends some time discussing the growing divide between the Churches of the east (Constantinople) and west (Rome). The Pope (the Bishop of Rome) for quite some time did acknowledge the ultimate authority of the Patriarch of Byzantium, although this was more a formality in many respects. I believe this points in part to the manner in which Christianity had become fused with the 'Empire'. We think today of the heart of Christianity as Rome. But at this time Constantinople represented the peak of political, cultural and economic influence. Still, there were key differences that grew with respects to doctrine, and this was connected also to a growing linguistic Greek / Latin divide. A major point of divergence was the Byzantine attack on religious icons (an 'iconoclasm), which occurred twice.  Once around the mid 800s, and again in the early 900s. This would contribute to what would eventually become a permanent split between the Catholic and Orthodox Christian world.



OK, that's about it for now! Let me know if you have any thoughts or corrections!

I've been diving into a bit of book binding youtube lately. It looks like it could be quite a relaxing little craft hobby. Now I've got a baby I've been thinking a bit about activities we can do together when she is older, and I think we could have a lot of fun doing some arts and crafts (painting, drawing, collage, etc.) Being able to make notebooks and such together could be fun too. I'm picturing making books that we then can fill out with things, like little 'diaries' that start out with pasted pictures and scrawls and progress to writing practice and clipped-out art from stuff we find.

Here's some nice channels I've found so far.

Four Keys Book Arts (some amazing videos here on medieval binding too).

Bitter Melon Bindary (nice introductory videos)

Ido Agassi

Book Care Studio
DAS Book Binding


Finally, I think the reddit page on book binding is quite inspiring! 

I'm at the stage now of accumulating some basic tools, with a few remaining things on their way in the post. I'm not sure how much time I'll have for this hobby at the moment (maybe just a few hours a month to start with!) but I'll post my creations here.

Is there anybody else here who has some experience binding?  Maybe you have some resources you'd like to share? Or pictures of your creations?

My reading continues. A few scattered thoughts from my phone while I sit with the goblin.

In reading about these various big picture developments - movements of people, invasions and battles, the rise and fall of dynasties - I feel the relative lack of an accompanying sociology or anthropology. To be fair, Koenigsberger is quite good I think in discussing economic and political developments. He mentions things too like childhood mortality and agricultural developments. He is not just dryly rattling off dates and battles. And I suppose he was simply working within the genre of "history" as traditionally understood, especially in the 80s. 

I recall from my undergraduate minor in history that since then there have been pushes to expand on this genre (i.e. histories of workers, histories of women), or to approach from a materialist / Marxist frame. I suppose there must be a good deal of sociological-history too by now. That's something id be interested in.

For example, Koenigsberger doesn't discuss patriarchy really at all. Only indirectly when it comes to subjects such as the Frankish tradition of apportioning land to the kings sons.

I guess I want to understand better some of the basic realities of organised human life that serve as motive forces for traditional big picture accounts of "history", while not reducing said history to mere epiphenomenon.

Yeah, I love the historical maps in older books One of the other big challenges of this stuff is mapping, because it inherently privileges seeing things as if they were post-Westphalian nation states. Theoderic in Italy (this being 526 so the year of his death) is for example directly receiving legitimation and recognition from Constantinople: contemporaries might genuinely have not all agreed if you were to ask them if the Roman Empire ruled in Italy. But we sort it into a "Kingdom of the Ostrogoths" etc because we don't have a good way of showing "well this ruler is sort of independent and sort of not and part of the point here is to come up with legitimacy systems that you prove by making sure they don't come into tension with one another".

Yes that makes a lot of sense. Easier to show in a computer game or something dynamic (Crusader Kings?) than in a static map like this. 

Incidentally, and going back to your earlier point about the difficulty of even distinguishing between "Romans" and "barbarians" at a certain point (within Italy more specifically I mean, and during the era of the fall of the Western Empire.) It seems what we are kind of looking at the relative weakening of the meaning of this distinction over time. But this surely can be considered from multiple axis. It is not just the barbarians understanding themselves (or becoming) "Roman", with what is "Roman" staying fixed. Rather, the concept of what is "Roman" also changing / being enlarged? Perhaps even undergoing some form of "barbarianization" in turn? I imagine that shared Christian beliefs would also have helped to soften this distinction.