Soviet vs. Romanian Gymnastic Rivalry

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 185-186:

The rivalry between the Romanian and the Soviet schools of gymnastics began in earnest in the mid-1970s. It was to last for decades and proved to be one of the fiercest clashes in the history of sport. It was often lacking in fair play, with some results being decided before tournaments even began, but the gymnasts from the two countries knew nothing of these behind-the-scenes machinations and in every contest, they gave their very best to win on each apparatus. Communist jargon held that the Soviet experiment was the prime factor in developing the creative spirit of the working class. In gymnastics this was by no means an empty slogan. The Soviets were genuine pioneers, bold innovators. In every major competition, the Soviet gymnasts stood out for their acrobatics and exceptional grace. In the decades immediately after the war, the Romanians watched Soviet women’s gymnastics with admiration and tried to learn from it as much as they could during educational trips and exchanges organised as part of the two countries’ bilateral relations. They took part in competitions held in the U.S.S.R. and maintained links with trainers there, not only because they said it was a pride to learn the secrets of the sport from ‘the big brother to the East’, but because the Soviets genuinely were the best.

In 1973, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation took a decision that showed collaboration between the two countries had become closer than ever, hiring Soviet trainer Aleksandr Bogdazarov as manager of the women’s national squad. Bogdazarov was given the task of training the team for the 1974 World Championships in Varna and supervised four groups of Romanian trainers: Ioan Pătru, Gheorghe Condovici, Gheorghe Gorgoi, Atanasia Albu, Norbert Kuhn, and Elena Leuşteanu, alongside whom worked choreographer Géza Pozsár and pianist Carol Stabişevshi. Bogdazarov’s results were not spectacular, but by 1976, the Romanian team had risen two places in the ranking, compared with the 1972 Munich Olympics.

From 1975, the comradely spirit between Romania and the U.S.S.R. began to deteriorate. It was in 1975 that Nadia Comăneci first made an international name for herself, winning the Champions Trophy in London. The Soviets saw that their supremacy was in danger. Mircea Bibire, a gymnastics trainer in Oneşti and a longstanding informer, confessed to a Securitate officer in late April, after returning from a trip to the U.S.S.R., that the young gymnast from Romania had caught the Russians’ attention: ‘On return from the U.S.S.R., prof. Bibire Mircea recounted to me the enormous interest that the Soviet specialists have in gymnast Nadia Comăneci from Gh. Gh. Dej [Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej = Oneşti]. He even found it suspect that they were obsessed with knowing as much about her as possible and he confessed his fear that they might undertake “unsporting” measures against her in question, who threatens their supremacy in women’s gymnastics. He signalled to me that the sanitary assistant who takes care of the gymnast’s food is of Russian ethnicity and he is afraid that they might act via her to ruin the gymnast’s form.’

New Spy Network for Nadia

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 138-139:

The Securitate adapted to the new situation, deploying a new ‘network to influence, protect and defend gymnast Nadia Comăneci,’ as it is named in the archive documents, and simultaneously conducting surveillance and covert recording. As Géza Pozsár was no longer part of Nadia’s entourage, his reports from the first part of 1978 make only intermittent references to her. As a result, the secret police sought other solutions, and the measures they took starting from December 1977 entailed total monitoring: recording equipment in the gymnasts’ rooms at the 23 August National Sport Hotel, background checks on all the members of the team that had been assembled, talks ‘with a view to softening them up, in order to discover and prevent any action that might injure Nadia Comăneci’, alerting Section 5 of the Militia to provide additional security and protection measures in the area of the sports centre, and the instruction of the ‘three intelligence sources within the team of trainers and medics.’ Although Department One’s report gives us to understand that there were already three informers tasked with monitoring Nadia Comăneci, in reality the number seems to have been higher.

Even if the documents show that the trainers were kept under surveillance, it was also true that they had already collaborated with the secret police, albeit not all to the same extent. In February 1978, Iosif Hidi was an ‘operational connection’. He presented Captain Nicolae Ilie reports that he signed with his real name, followed by his title, ‘I.E.F.S. head’. Gheorghe Condovici was recruited as an informer in 1966 and was given the code name ‘Iosifescu Dragoş’ but in the archives it has not been possible to find any reports he may have written on Nadia, which suggests that for unknown reasons the Securitate did not use him as a source. But Atanasia Albu, alias ‘Monica’, was a secret police collaborator so devoted that the Securitate probably regarded her as more valuable even than Géza Pozsár.

Carmen Dumitru, who was esteemed by gymnasts and trainers alike for the skill with which she practiced as a physician, was an ‘official source’. She was not recruited as an informer by the usual procedure, but when information was required of her, she provided it. A specialist in cardiology and sports medicine, Carmen Dumitru treated members of a number of Romanian national squads, but the Securitate was interested in obtaining from her information about Nadia Comăneci’s evolving state of health in particular. In the same period, the Securitate also drew upon another informed, codenamed ‘Lili’, who was probably a nurse at the sports complex’s medical office, but whose identity remains unknown. From her reports it may be concluded that she was instructed to win Nadia’s confidence, and for a few months, she succeeded. Pianist Corneliu Grigore, who signed his reports under the pseudonym ‘Lazarovici Traian’, was recruited as an informer while doing his military service. Those who knew him describe him as a very good pianist, in love with what he did, a serious-minded and generous man, but overly timorous and lacking in courage. As an informer he filed only sporadic reports on the members of the national squad. As the intelligence machinery still included Nicolae Vieru and Mrs Mili – who continued their careers as informers ‘Vlad’ and ‘Lia Muri’ – the Securitate remained a presence in both Nadia’s professional and personal life.

The freedom Nadia hoped to enjoy in Bucharest was limited, as she was not allowed to go anywhere unaccompanied or without giving her reasons and planned route in advance. Her daily schedule and trips were known in advance by Securitate officers. When she did manage to slip outside the sports complex without permission, the authorities would enter red alert. An army of Militia and Securitate officers would set out in search of her, while top officials from the Party and N.C.P.E.S. went to the 23 August Centre anxiously to wait for the officers to bring her back or for her to return by herself. It was said that in such situations, even the borders were closed, to prevent her being taken out of the country against her will in the event that she had been kidnapped. Nadia lived out her life in the sports complex, which, no matter how comfortable it might have been, was too small and suffocating a world for a curious, developing adolescent.

Romania's Minority Gymnasts

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 66-67, 69-70:

There was no law forbidding persons from Romania’s ethnic minorities from holding positions of responsibility, but it wasn’t encouraged. From 1952 onwards, Gheorghiu-Dej set about Romanianising the central apparatus of the Party, inspired by the anti-Semitic purges that had taken place in the Soviet Union, but it was Nicolae Ceauşescu who imposed an emphasis on nation and state in the political discourse. By 1975, the nationalist discourse was flourishing, promoted in various forms. The media and cultural outlets saturated the public with works that claimed that Romania was a cradle of civilisation, that the Romanian people had a heroic past stretching from Burebista to the emergence of the Communist Party, a discourse that went hand in hand with a reserved attitude towards minorities, which by now were referred to as ‘foreign elements’ and who were denied any significant part in the country’s history.

Therefore, in 1975, the Securitate was trying to gain a clear picture of the Oneşti staff and to recruit as many of them as possible, and each new informer that joined the network was pressured to write reports on his or her colleagues and the working atmosphere. The following year, by which time the number of agents had increased, and the volume of information had likewise burgeoned in consequence, it was as if the objectives on which the secret police thought they should concentrate also came into clearer focus, and the most important of these proved to be Béla Károlyi.

Although in the meantime he had achieved significant successes and had himself been recruited as an informer, Béla Károlyi became a target of systematic surveillance, for a number of reasons. His collaboration with the Securitate left a lot to be desired and it became increasingly obvious that he was going to be dropped as an agent. The Securitate officers in Oneşti and Bucharest, respectively Vasile Miriţă and Nicolae Ilie, didn’t like him, due to his arrogance and even defiance. Agent ‘Nelu’, who wrote a number of reports about Károlyi during this period, signalled that he was saving up money and intended ultimately not to return to the country from abroad. He informed the Securitate that Károlyi sometimes alluded to the fact that Hungarians were discriminated against in Romania and was in the habit of making tendentious remarks about national leaders. But above all else, he reported that Károlyi was abusive towards the gymnasts he trained.

...

At the beginning of 1976, the relationship between Károlyi and the Securitate deteriorated further, and he was accused of a number of faults, including ‘a nationalist-chauvinist position.’ ...

During the Montréal Olympics, one of the Securitate officers in the Romanian delegation claimed that Károlyi ‘pressured Romanian judge Liţă Emilia, demanding that she ask the other judges in the uneven parallel bars brigade to award higher marks to a Hungarian gymnast so that she could win the silver medal instead of Teodora Ungureanu. I mention that Károlyi Béla exerted this pressure because he is friendly with the trainer of the Hungarian team, the gymnast in question being his wife. The Romanian judge categorically refused to do so, replying that Teodora Ungureanu was clearly superior to the Hungarian gymnast.’

The Securitate continued to make a great deal of the fact that the Károlyi’s were more Hungarian than Romanian and might even be secretly involved in what it termed ‘hostile actions’. In December 1977, by which time a surveillance file on ‘Katona’ [= Béla] had been opened, a study draw up by Department One stated that during his frequent trips abroad ‘he might be contacted and lured into disloyal actions by reactionary elements hostile to our country. To this can be added the fact that being a citizen of Hungarian nationality the target might be in the sights of hostile elements inside the country, as well as among reactionary Hungarian emigrants.’

Did Béla Károlyi harbour nationalist prejudices? Even if only privately, did he proclaim Hungarian superiority over Romanians? Károlyi was too pragmatic to be a ‘nationalist-chauvinist’, and we believe the Securitate’s accusation to have been ungrounded. Károlyi was enough of an opportunist to favour gymnastic talent regardless of ethnic background, and his preference for working with Hungarian gymnasts and trainers was only natural; any ethnic Romanian in Hungary would have done the same.

However, when the Károlyis later had serious conflicts with the Romanian Gymnastics Federation and frequently claimed they were marginalised because of their Hungarian ethnicity, such a position was also at odds with the truth. Ethnic insults were flung from both sides. During telephone calls recorded by the Securitate, Romanians whose relationship with the Károlyis was tense used to claim that Béla ignored all contrary opinions because he was a bozgor [an ethnic slur for a Hungarian], while in 1976 Béla was recorded stating his agreement with the opinion that ‘it’s still the Hungarians who have to do the Romanians’ jobs for them.’

Romania's Gymnastic Nest of Spies

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 58-59, 98-99:

At the beginning of the 1970s, when sporting achievement was barely getting underway in Oneşti, the secret police did not find it necessary to make any intelligence checks on the nucleus of teachers, trainers and gymnasts that was beginning to form. They had little reason to do so. The local authorities didn’t even pay very much attention to the disagreements that arose, given that Béla Károlyi was often at odds with the other technicians. It was thought to be only natural, as Károlyi was known to be both ambitious and difficult to get along with. Moreover, in a small town like Oneşti, it would have quickly come to light if the atmosphere within the squad was ‘unjust’, as they used to say.

Many of those who became informers were also members of the Communist Party. For this reason, they weren’t assigned ‘network’ files, as informers’ files were termed. After 1968, there weren’t any files at all on those Party members who collaborated with the secret police, since Nicolae Ceauşescu wanted the Party to control the Securitate, rather than the other way around. Whenever the Securitate was faced with an operational situation in which they needed the collaboration of a Party member, they had to request the permission of the local Party bosses. Once permission was granted, the person in question would assist the Securitate for a limited time period, but without undergoing the usual recruitment procedure and therefore without having a network file opened on him or her. Nevertheless, the names of informers and Communist Party collaborators were recorded in a separate database, which has yet to be located in the archives, and the Securitate officers were referred to in various ways: ‘official person’, ‘official liaison’, ‘operational liaison’, and sometimes ‘official source’ or simply ‘source’.

It should be said from the outset that the most significant informers, recruited not only to carry out comprehensive surveillance in Oneşti, but also to gather information and engage in operations to influence and control Romanian gymnastics, were leading figures in the sport. Maria Simionescu, for example, ‘the first lady of Romanian gymnastics’, was also held in high esteem by the Securitate, proving to be a valuable collaborator under the code name ‘Lia Muri’. Likewise, Nicolae Vieru, the general secretary of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, in his sober and conscientious style, collaborated with the secret police right up to its final days, in December 1989, hiding behind the code name ‘Vlad’.

In the Securitate documents identified to date there are no details about the period when they became collaborators, how they were recruited, or whether or not they were subjected to pressure or blackmail. But ‘Vlad’ and ‘Lia Muri’ left deep traces. In the voluminous ‘Sport’ dossier their earliest reports and briefing notes date from 1974–75. Incontrovertible proof of their collaboration can be found in their personnel files, in which the officers of Department One record at an unstated date that they are ‘source / 161 NI’, which clearly demonstrates their status.

Nevertheless, thanks to Securitate officer Nicolae Ilie, who for many years was her liaison and sometimes annotated her reports, we know that in November 1974 Mili Simionescu was already a ’trustworthy person’ and had undergone a fresh recruitment process. At the time, Ilie noted, ‘Simionescu Maria is a Party member. She was the informer to our organs and was let go in 1973, when she became a p.m. [Party member] (…) Permission from the Party organs will be requested to use the aforementioned Simionescu Maria as a source to inform the Securitate organs.’ In February 1975, Ilie made a further note, at the end of one of his agent’s reports: ‘permission has been sought from the Party organs to make use of her,’ and by March she was a ‘candidate’. After which, she became a ‘source’.

As far as Nicolae Vieru is concerned, he seems to have broached his collaboration with the Securitate more cautiously, at least in the initial phase. It was only later, in the 1980s, that he agreed to a code name and ‘source’ status, as his first reports are signed in his own name and presented as professional documents. Undoubtedly, his recruitment to the network of informers was a major success, since Vieru, after his appointment as secretary general of the federation, became one of the most influential people in the sport, contributing to every major decision regulating gymnastics and lives of gymnasts and their trainers until the mid-2000s. Those who knew him sustain even today that his achievements were remarkable. The Securitate sometimes noted in their reports that he had ‘ascendency’, by which was meant he enjoyed authority and influence, that he was esteemed or feared by his colleagues, an assessment that was wholly accurate. If we look at Romanian gymnastics as one big family, then it might be said that Vieru was the paterfamilias, even if he was subordinate to a number of people with political backing who served in the management of the federation or on the National Council for Physical Education and Sport up until 1989. He was also influential internationally, not only because he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation and deputy chairman of the organisation over the course of a number of mandates, but also, above all, because he managed to develop a significant circle of relations and because he had a good reputation with foreign partners, be they sportsmen, trainers, journalists, or businessmen representing global concerns.

...[UPDATE]

After the team’s glorious homecoming from Montréal, the Securitate intensified its surveillance measures, with Nadia becoming a top priority. The secret police drew up a family tree, identifying her parents’ relatives in order to examine their backgrounds, the family telephone was bugged, and friends of the family were also thoroughly checked. In the archive documents can even be found a diabolical plan on the part of the Bacău Securitate, mooted in November 1977, to monitor the relationship between Nadia Comăneci and Teodora Ungureanu: the Oneşti Securitate was ordered to recruit informers not only among the lycée’s teaching staff, but also among the gymnasts’ classmates, who were minors, aged just sixteen: ‘categorise and study the girls in the class in question, and select from among them those appropriate for inclusion in the network.’ While Béla and Marta Károlyi were under surveillance because they were deemed disloyal to Romania and abusive in their relationship with the gymnasts they trained, Nadia Comăneci and her parents were monitored to protect them from Károlyi’s actions and to prevent any reactions on their part that might have damaged the image of the Communist régime.

In the second half of 1976 Nadia Comăneci and Teodora Ungureanu began to make it more and more obvious that they wished to break off their relationship with their coaches. But Károlyi made no concessions to them as a means of defusing the situation. At the seaside, where he had obtained official permission to take the gymnasts on a short holiday, Károlyi tried to stamp out what ‘Nelu’ claims he viewed as a ‘star-like attitude’ and subjected the girls to the usual spartan schedule: ‘Very little food and limited physical training. (…) Gabor refused to follow this regimen and was kicked out of the team. The source found on the pupil a notebook in which she complained about the highly strict working regimen and in which she described the insulting words that Béla Károlyi addressed to the gymnasts before the Olympics, as well as the unkept promise to give them two weeks off after Montréal.’

Because she had been keeping a diary recording his abuses and encouraged the other girls to insubordination, Károlyi had Georgeta Gabor removed from the squad. He did so in a dishonourable manner, claiming not only that she ‘instigated the girls not to work’ – making Nadia and Teodora give written statements in support of this – but also that ‘she admired those who left the country’ and ‘provided no moral guarantees regarding her behaviour abroad,’ which was hard to imagine in a fifteen-year-old who had spent almost all her life in a gym. For this reason, Gabor was placed in the situation of having to discuss the matter with a Militia officer but the Securitate knew the truth, as is apparent from a report filed by the Bacău County Inspectorate on 22 October 1976: ‘from investigations it transpired that the real reason was the discovery by Béla Károlyi of notebooks in which Gabor wrote down her impressions of daily training sessions and the position of the two trainers.’

Nadia kept a similar diary.

I don't think I've ever read a biographical work so heavily dependent on secret police reports. It makes me wish I could see the Securitate reports about my Fulbright research year in Romania in 1983-84. I wonder what my code name was. I know we were watched very closely. So were my Chinese and East German classmates.

Cold War Gymnastics

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 46-48:

More than two decades later, in 2001, Nellie Kim was to recall the Montréal Games and her clash with Nadia Comăneci in an interview with Jean-Christophe Klotz, the presenter of Les Grands Duels du Sport on the Franco-German Arte channel. Even after so many years the disappointment Kim had felt at the time obviously still rankled when she said that while Nadia was a great gymnast and almost perfect, she was by no means superior to anybody in the Soviet team. ‘I can’t say that she was better than we were. Her routines were as difficult as those of Turishcheva, Korbut and myself. On a few apparatuses she was better than Turishcheva and Korbut, but on others, not quite. But the press turned her into the “goddess of gymnastics”,’ she said, suggesting that it was not so much Nadia’s performance that had counted, but the influence of Western journalists, who deliberately exaggerated her prowess.

Kim’s opinion is only partly justified. Given that the Cold War was still at its height, Western journalists must have felt a bias towards anybody able to rock the myth of Soviet sporting invincibility. This had been the case of Olympic, World and European champion Věra Čáslavská, who at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics was done an injustice by the judges: the Czechoslovak gymnast had been forced to share the top of the podium with Larisa Petrik of the U.S.S.R. and had bowed her head and turned it to the right when the Soviet national anthem was played. Čáslavská was protesting not at the unfairness of the scoring to which she had fallen victim during the competition, but at the fact that her country had fallen victim to an invasion by the Soviet army just weeks before.

And the Western journalists loved her for it. But four years later, they also fell in love with little Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut at the Munich Olympics, recognising even then the decisive rôle she was to play in gymnastics. They dubbed her ‘the darling of Munich’, so captivating was her performance, which gives us to believe that regardless of political circumstances or personal sympathies, the international press was still able to preserve its objectivity in the face of obvious talent.

By the time of the 1976 Montréal Olympics, Romania had indeed gained its own separate image internationally, as Czechoslovakia had in 1968. The country was part of the Communist bloc, but a number of past political gestures on the part of Nicolae Ceauşescu had created the impression that Romania distanced itself from and sometimes even defied Moscow, an impression that was also bolstered by Bucharest’s closer and closer ties with Washington and other Western capitals. Which is why the sympathy towards Nadia Comăneci on the part of both press and public could be viewed as all the more genuine.

But political circumstances could have no influence on how Nadia’s performance was judged, where technique and artistic elements that were all that counted, and journalists could not award points in place of the judges. It was the fullness of Nadia’s performance that was her secret, and it distinguished her from the Soviets, as Cathy Rigby remarked in her commentary for ABC: ‘Oh look at that amplitude!’ Nadia controlled her body in a way that stood out, without any tremor to betray hesitation, and with the ambition to control her balance to the utmost degree. She was fast, but at the same time elegant and certain, which made some of her movements seem unreal. The elements in the routines that won her scores of ten were achieved with flawless poise, seamlessly combined, in a style that Nadia was to make uniquely her own.

The International Gymnastics Federation’s scoring code for the uneven parallel bars now includes the Comăneci Salto and Comăneci Dismount, named after the moves Nadia pioneered at Montréal. In the first, ‘the gymnast begins in a support position on the high bar. She casts away from the bar and performs a straddled front somersault and regrasps the same bar’ – an element deemed to be of an extremely high level of difficulty. In the second, the ‘gymnast begins in a handstand on the high bar and then pikes her feet onto the bar and does a sole circle swing around the bar. She then releases the bar first with her feet and then with her hands as she performs a half-twist immediately into a back somersault dismount.’ Such moves are only a few of those that were to inspire future generations of gymnasts, leading them to tackle elements of increasing complexity and even risk. In Munich in 1972, Olga Korbut had done the same thing. Likewise, Japanese gymnast Mitsuo Tsukahara revolutionised gymnastics with the spectacular vault that now bears his name. To this day, each generation of gymnasts takes inspiration from the daring of their predecessors.

The impact around the world of Nadia Comăneci’s achievements at Montréal was remarkable. The popularity of the sport suddenly increased, and Nadia became an inspiration not only for younger gymnasts and even those of her generation, but also for countless little girls who dreamed of becoming like her. Some of those little girls went on to become champions, such as Mary Lou Retton, who watched Nadia at Montréal on television and was electrified by her refinement and natural grace.

Who First Discovered Nadia Comaneci?

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 29-30:

On 30 September 1976, after Miriţă and his colleagues finished their investigation, the head of the Securitate from Bacău and the heads of Department One of the Securitate in Bucharest received the report from Oneşti, from which, for the time being, we shall quote only the conclusions as to who discovered Nadia Comăneci and when, since the document stretches for eleven pages and includes ‘a number of unusual aspects’ relating to the lives and professional careers of the Károlyis:

We report the following:

In 1965, in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej Municipality, under the supervision of teacher-trainer Duncan Marcel, a female gymnastics sports nucleus came into being, which operated within the Flame Sporting Association. Subsequently, at the beginning of 1966, gymnast Nadia Comăneci was selected by Duncan.

In the same period, husband and wife Maria and Gheorghe Simionescu, specialist teachers, were assigned to the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej Municipality, who together with teacher Duncan Marcel made their contribution to training and laying the foundations of competition gymnastics.

The first competition gymnastics group began its activity in 1968 at the Flame Sporting Association, female gymnastics section, run by trainer Duncan Marcel until 1969, of which, among others, Nadia Comăneci and Georgeta Gabor were part.

Husband and wife Marta and Béla Károlyi were assigned to the Gheorghe Gheorghe-Dej Municipality during the course of 1968, respectively to the General Culture Lycée No. 1 and the Sports School.

In 1969, when the Female Gymnastics Lycée was established, teacher Marta Károlyi was selected and assigned to this school, where she took over the small group that had been trained by Duncan Marcel, and together with teacher Munteanu Valerică from Bucharest they worked with the group until 1972.

In 1972, when teacher Munteanu Valerică was recalled to the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, Károlyi Béla was appointed to replace him, having theretofore worked in the handball department of the local sports school. This competition gymnastics group, whose members included Nadia Comăneci, Teodora Ungureanu, Gabor Georgeta and others, was taken over with a view to continuation of training by the Károlyis under the supervision of federal gymnastics trainer Maria Simionescu and her husband Gheorghe Simionescu, who at the time was director of the lycée. This group, which included the best gymnasts, took part in national and international competitions, including the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Canada.

Duncan Marcel operated within the Municipality until 1969, when he left with his whole family, initially going to Galaţi, and at present he is in Israel (legal emigrant).

Husband and wife Maria and Gheorghe Simionescu are at present in Bucharest, the first a federal trainer and international gymnastics referee, and the second a gymnastics teacher at a lycée in Bucharest. Munteanu Valerică is also in Bucharest, teaching at a sports school.

Building Romania's New Gymnastic Training Camp

From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 21-22:

Taking inspiration from the methods of Soviet gymnastics, which at the time dominated the sport internationally, Maria Simionescu understood that a handful of trainers and just a few girls who loved gymnastics were not enough to win medals. What was needed was a new vision, as well as a team of devoted trainers, each of them specialising in a separate apparatus and willing constantly to better their achievements; a large number of gifted gymnasts, selected at an early age and enrolled in an intensive training programme; doctors; psychologists; physiotherapists; choreographers; musicians. In other words, an entire human infrastructure. But this was impossible to create without the physical infrastructure of a modern sports hall and a school to provide the young gymnasts with all the educational comfort they needed, without their parents feeling they had abandoned them far from home. It was a two-track enterprise. Trainers would be lured with the promise that the project would be up and running within the shortest possible time, while the investors would be eager to complete it in the shortest possible time given the great expectations of all those with a stake in its success.

With the support of Valerian Ghineţ, the town’s mayor, and Andrei Erdely, the director of the Oneşti Industrial Constructions Trust, work on the gymnastics facility was completed at the end of 1967 and it was inaugurated in 1968. A year later, in September 1969, the Physical Education Lycée opened its doors. The school’s first headmaster was Gheorghe Simionescu, Mrs Mili’s husband. Mayor Ghineţ, who was also head of the local branch of the Romanian Communist Party, continued to be generous and allocated twenty-six one-room flats for gymnasts and five flats for the trainers who had settled in the town. The town council also provided the trainers with medical services – the gym had been built in the centre of town, next to the hospital – and meal tickets at the town’s best restaurant, where they had a room set aside specially for them, as well as other perks significant for the time. In Oneşti [renamed Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej from 1965 to 1990], a small town which, at the beginning of the 1950s, had only one P.E. teacher, Romania’s first experimental gymnastics school began its work in earnest. The rudimentary huts located in the town’s industrial district where the young gymnasts had once practised were now a thing of the past.

In the meantime, changes had taken place in Bucharest which had a positive influence on the development of the new sports centre in Oneşti. In July 1967 a national sports conference was held. It was decided that the Union of Physical Education and Sport should be replaced by a newly founded National Council for Physical Education and Sport, which was the nationwide body supervising development in the sector. At the same time, general meetings of all the federations were held and they adopted new statutes and, above all, new managers. Elena Poparad was elected chairwoman of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, and Nicolae Vieru secretary general.

The political context was also changing at the time, including the aberrant propagandistic discourse that had surrounded sport. In the 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, the drive to develop sport for the masses was extolled, as well as the exceptional merits and superiority of athletes from the Communist bloc. The new sport, which followed Soviet training methods, was treated as infallible, based as it was on Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and it was polyvalent, simultaneously constructing socialism and fighting for peace and friendship between nations – sport and peace were inseparable notions, since only if there was world peace could sports competitions be held. On the other side of the sporting Iron Curtain were ‘imperialist’ athletes, trained to become ‘cannon fodder’ for the West’s armies. In the eyes of the Communist bloc, Western athletes were either opportunists out for their own personal gain, or they were ruthlessly exploited by their countries’ capitalist régimes.

In Romania, Communist propaganda was to use sport as a weapon in the decades that followed, particularly after notable sporting achievements started to be made in the 1960s. But the discourse also become more nuanced. Taking advantage of sporting achievements, the régime was able to promote itself both domestically and internationally, claiming that such successes were based on a new type of thinking developed by Romania’s communist system. Soviet sport was now no longer a model to be copied, but part of the competition.

As part of this wave of changes, the Oneşti centre acquired greater importance, but continued to be viewed with reserve from Bucharest, sooner as a one-off experiment. The experiment might be a success, but what if it failed? Who would take the responsibility? Moreover, there were already other clubs – some of them with a long tradition – which laid claim to gymnastics, such as Dinamo Bucharest. Dinamo was Romania’s strongest club, since it was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which meant its athletes had the privilege of being able to compete internationally. The heads of gymnastics in Bucharest therefore deemed a degree of caution appropriate, allowing the local authorities in Oneşti the satisfaction of providing the Flame club a large amount of support, as well as responsibility to match.

Roles of English Print Media in 1640s

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 144-146:

The Protestation Oath [of allegiance to the King and Church of England] had now been printed and was being circulated around the country, and people in their thousands were swearing to it. Tonnage and Poundage [import/export duties] was soon abolished. So, too, was Star Chamber, the Councils of Wales and North, and the hated [ecclesiastical] court of High Commission. In the summer, Ship Money would be annulled, and knighthood fines declared illegal. Step by step, the apparatus of Charles’s Personal Rule was being picked apart.

Pamphlets were streaming off the presses, as an excited and literate capital tried to make sense of what had been happening down the road at Westminster. There are just over 600 surviving titles per year for the 1630s, and this figure had risen slightly, to 848 for 1640. In 1641, there are 2,042. It was an astonishing explosion of print. Henry Burton, who had experienced brutal censorship first-hand, recalled how ‘many mouths were stopped, many shut up’, but ‘Parliament hath opened their mouths…it has opened the prisons.’ Or, in the lavishly biblical allusion of another Puritan author, ‘the stone that made the stoppage of the well of Haran is now removed and the flocks of Laban may drink freely’. The works of Prynne, Burton, Leighton were now freely available.

Print helped bring a great flowering of new religious groups especially in and around London. In July, the Venetian ambassador reported drily that there seemed ‘as many religions as there were persons’. Even in the Parliamentary pulpit at St Margaret’s, in the small church under Westminster Abbey, radicals told of tearing down Babylon, building up Zion and the planting of a new heaven and a new earth. That summer, Burton declared that the Church of England had become anti-Christian, and advocated the creation of independent congregations, in which people gathered with no direction from above, to worship together as they pleased. Sometimes, so the reports went, groups met on the dark peripheries of the capital: Hackney Marsh and the hills around Hampstead and Highgate. Other congregations gathered in suburban houses, and by the end of the year there was even one led by the radical leather-seller Praisegod Barebone that met in his house on the Strand.

Religious enthusiasts from humble backgrounds, so-called ‘mechanic’ preachers, were giving sermons in public. One of Henry Burton’s followers, Katherine Chidley, scandalised readers by arguing that true ministers could be ‘tailors, felt-makers, button-makers, tent-makers, shepherds or ploughmen’. The press made the most of it all, and in the journalists’ insatiable desire for sensation, they contributed to a wider sense that old certainties were collapsing. While many stories about weird and worrisome radicals were undoubtedly written for laughs, more nervous readers still trembled at the lurid horror. There were reports of naked Adamites, of Anabaptists and Brownists, even Muslims and ‘Bacchanalian’ pagans, not to mention those worshipping the planetary deities of Saturn and Jupiter. One tract laughed at a mechanic preacher who spoke ‘like a Lancashire bagpipe’ so (fortunately) ‘the people could scarce understand any word’. Another delighted and horrified its readers in equal measure with its cast of concocted female radicals: ‘Agnes Anabaptist, Kate Catabaptist, Frank [< Frances] Footbaptist, Penelope Punk, Merald Makebate, Ruth Rakehell, Tabitha Tattle, Pru Prattle, and that poor silly, simple, senseless, sinless, shameless, naked wretch, Alice the Adamite’.

Parliament Challenges Charles I

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 131-132:

Charles’s military preparations stopped. If he had been planning a coup against Parliament, then it had been outflanked. With his chief adviser under guard, the king was drastically weakened.

Now that [Thomas Wentworth, Earl of] Strafford was out of the way, and on the 25th had been moved to the Tower through a jeering crowd, Parliament could turn to business. Top of the agenda was the staging of huge public rehabilitations for those who had suffered during the king’s Personal Rule.

On the 16th, Bishop John Williams was released from the Tower by the Lords. Even before that, after an emotional speech by a rather scruffy East Anglian MP called Oliver Cromwell, orders had been made for the release of Alexander Leighton and a spirited young polemicist named John Lilburne – imprisoned in 1638 for importing ‘scandalous’ books from the Netherlands. The biggest celebration, though, came on the 28th, when – on a crisp sunny Saturday – Henry Burton and William Prynne returned from imprisonment to the capital. Church bells chimed amid a chorus of cheers as the men processed slowly through town. There were so many followers, throwing flowers and herbs from their gardens, that it took the procession a reported three hours to pass Charing Cross.

Now, as winter approached, the work of unpicking Charles’s government could begin. ‘[T]here was never, I dare say, so busy a time in England,’ wrote one correspondent. Soon, though, Londoners staged a stunning intervention which threatened to disturb the whole project. On 11 December, braving the icy cold, a delegation of some 1,500 citizens crowded into Westminster Hall bringing with them a printed petition, signed by 10,000. It blamed the bishops for everything from problems in the cloth industry, to ‘whoredoms and adulteries’, to the ‘swarming of lascivious, idle and unprofitable books’. It asked not just for reform of religious abuses, but that the episcopacy itself be abolished, ‘with all its dependencies, roots and branches’. Here was the potential for a complete radicalisation of the reform agenda. More to the point, the sight of so many ordinary Londoners, petitioning publicly for the uprooting of the ecclesiastical order was staggering.

For now, Parliament carried on, confining itself to attacking the worst excesses of Archbishop Laud. Just five days after the London petition, the Canons of 1640 were declared illegal; Laud himself was impeached two days after that, and detained. The most far-reaching proposal in Parliament, though, was not a religious one. It came in the last week of December when, on Christmas Eve, the Devonian MP William Strode introduced a bill mandating annual Parliaments: if passed, it would ensure Parliament’s permanent sitting. The gauntlet had been thrown.

How Charles I Alienated Scotland

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 109-110:

By 1637 the outcry over the Book of Sports had calmed. In fact, that year had started with a victory for Charles. In February he had written to his 12 judges of the Common Law to shore up the legal case behind Ship Money. He asked two questions, clearly expecting a positive answer. The first question was whether, when the ‘good and safety of the kingdom’ required it, could he demand ships from his people. The second was whether it was he, as king, who was to decide what constituted a threat to that ‘good and safety’. Two of the judges were uncertain, but eventually all 12 fell behind the king and gave him the answer he wanted.

But then, in spring, the government committed a needless and damaging blunder. It was decided to make an example of three of the most clamorous Puritan writers. One was William Prynne, whose confinement in the Tower had done nothing to stall his literary career. The other two were the physician John Bastwick and Henry Burton, former clerk of the closet to Princes Henry and Charles, now a radical and thoroughly disgruntled Puritan. In early 1637, they were tried before Star Chamber for seditious libel and sentenced to pillorying, whipping and having their ears – in Prynne’s case the remaining parts of his ears – cut off. The three were then to be detained in far-flung corners of the realm: Jersey (Prynne), the Isles of Scilly (Bastwick) and Lancaster (Burton). The punishments were harsh, and their infliction on members of the social elite particularly offensive. More to the point, the men behaved like martyrs. Three times, shocked crowds watched as the blood poured down from the pillory, and the victims were cheered and garlanded as they progressed to their places of imprisonment. Far from instilling fear and respect, the government had managed to make themselves look like vicious tyrants.

What brought the king’s peace to a juddering halt, though, was not the prosecution of Prynne, Burton and Bastwick, but events in Scotland. Charles was born a Scot, but he’d left as a toddler and was seen there as thoroughly Anglicised. He didn’t help his reputation much in 1625 when he pushed a radical plan, known as the ‘Revocation’, to reclaim all lands granted by the Scottish crown since 1540, plus any properties owned by the pre-Reformation Kirk. It was a serious threat to the Scottish nobility, who had been the main beneficiaries of the land transfers, although the following year it was announced that they’d at least be adequately compensated. Charles had then waited nearly eight years before coming to Scotland to be crowned as their king, and when he did so – in 1633 – it had been a disaster. The Scottish Kirk maintained a much stronger Presbyterian tradition than the Church of England. In 1618, James had pushed back against this, bolstering the power of the Scottish bishops and trying to enforce such traditional practices as kneeling at communion and the celebration of Christmas and Easter. Charles wanted to go further. He wanted to draw Scotland closer to conformity with England and its now increasingly ceremonialist Church. It was a project that quickly provoked serious disquiet.

Forcing English Church Decorum, 1630s

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 103-104:

[T]he most significant of [King] Charles [I]’s campaigns to bring order to his English realm was in the field of religion. Charles was personally devout, but religion was also intertwined with his wider project for social order. Charles wanted ‘peace and quiet’ in his Church just as he did in society as a whole. He wanted a ministry that was ‘peaceable, orderly, and conformable’, and subjects who would ‘demean themselves with all Christian reverence and devout obedience’. He didn’t want debate. Predestination, in particular, shouldn’t be ‘meddled withal’, since it was ‘too high for the people’s understanding’. His own preference was for a rich liturgy, with strong emphasis on the ‘beauty of holiness’ so beloved of the ceremonialists. Critically, these were not to be days of latitude. Direction from the top, from the king, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the episcopacy, were to be followed. The Book of Common Prayer and the canons of 1604 were to be enforced in full. Parishioners would stand for the Creed and the Gloria Patri, kneel at the sacrament and bow at the name of Jesus. Those who, like Londoner and aspiring poet John Milton, preferred a ‘homely and yeomanly religion’ without a ‘deluge of ceremonies’, were deeply worried.

Charles promoted ceremonialists and Arminians. By the middle of the 1630s, Charles had created what was effectively an anti-Calvinist church establishment, particularly among his bishops, and not least when Richard Neile became Archbishop of York in 1631 and William Laud, finally, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633 on the death of Abbot. The losers were men like John Williams, the Calvinist Bishop of Lincoln and sometime Lord Keeper. He fell out with Laud, was pursued in the courts and found himself fined by Star Chamber and imprisoned in the Tower.

The Church itself was suffering under long-standing economic problems, partly caused by inflation. Most visible were its crumbling buildings: indeed, much of Charles’s campaign for the beauty of holiness was really about stamping out the ugliness of neglect. The great London cathedral of St Paul’s was a case in point. Its spire had fallen down after a fire in 1561, and it was so overgrown with stalls and hawkers that it resembled a marketplace as much as a house of God. So unlike a church was it that one old Warwickshire farmer who was visiting London accidentally (‘in a beastly manner’) defiled St Paul’s ‘with his excrements’. He claimed that he did this ‘merely through ignorance & necessity being not able to go any further through his weakness & age’, and he found his explanation was accepted and was let off with a fine.

Charles and Laud’s aim was to bring back order and dignity to the Church. It was a programme that had real rationale, though some ministers took it to extremes, such as an Essex vicar who refused communion to menstruating women or those who had had sex the previous night, all in the name of decorum.

Culture of Puritans

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 17-18:

The culture of Puritans, so their detractors thought, could be dangerously irreverent towards accepted hierarchies and social norms. Personal conversions were all very well, but they came from individual moments of revelation rather than participation in communal worship and ritual. And was it not suspiciously egalitarian for these people to go from place to place in search of sermons, critiquing them based on their own reading of Scripture, picking and choosing which preachers they listened to? Why not accept the minister they had been provided with in their own parish? Puritans believed that all members of the church were essentially equal, linked by their own personal conversion experience rather than deference to any worldly authority. They thought that ministers should be chosen by their congregations (though as one was at pains to point out, this meant that the ‘chief fathers, ancients and governors of the parish’ should do the choosing rather than the ‘multitude’). If they accepted bishops at all – and not all of them did – they certainly did not accept that their position existed by divine sanction. To some, indeed, the Puritan suspicion of earthly hierarchies represented a dangerous, even a revolutionary, ideology. Just like Catholics, so one sceptic alleged, ‘Puritans will have the King but an honourable member, not a chief governor in the churches of his own dominions.’

A key goal for Puritans was to reform society more widely, to stamp out practices they felt were damaging to the commonwealth and offensive to God. Calvin himself had turned Geneva into a morally pure commonwealth by using secular authorities to crush sin. Puritans wanted to do the same in England. It would, they hoped, become a new Jerusalem, a shining city on a hill rid of vices such as illicit sex, excessive drinking and swearing. They wanted people to pray, read Scripture and give willingly to support the poor. A particular bugbear was therefore traditional festivities and pastimes, especially sport on the Sabbath but also festival days. Pancake day, Morris dancing, wrestling after church and, of course, rushbearings like that at Cartmel were all ‘heathenish’: the ‘storehouse and nursery,’ wrote one cynic, ‘of bastardy’. Traditional celebrations were both disorderly, and they had Catholic connotations, such as the marking of saints’ days. They may have been exceedingly popular, especially with younger folk, but they were an affront to God, and often themselves brought drunkenness and illicit sex.

Naturally this was a campaign which ensured Puritans were seen by their enemies simply as wretched miseries: cantankerous prigs who instead of socialising sat ‘moping always at their books’. The Puritan, someone quipped, was a person who loved God ‘with all his soul, but hates his neighbour with all his heart’. Puritans were therefore disruptive in ways that transcended fine points of theology. They went about telling people the things they enjoyed were offensive to God and they caused bad blood between neighbours. They put communities on edge, created cultural conflict that burrowed deep into society.

King James I vs. Parliament

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 42-45:

From the 1530s, therefore, the royal household moved out of the Palace of Westminster and settled in a short distance north in the Palace of Whitehall. It meant they were physically separated from the law and from Parliament, for the first time.

Meanwhile, Parliament had evolved into a regular, if not permanent, fixture of the political landscape. Within the great complex of yards, buildings and cloisters that made up the Palace of Westminster, the House of Commons sat in the large chapel of St Stephen. Members of the Commons – of whom by the middle of the seventeenth century, there were well over 500 – were elected to represent the English people, although ‘election’ was a rather complex concept. In the majority of cases, the successful candidate was decided before the election day, and simply presented to voters who dutifully assented: selected rather than elected. In a minority of constituencies, albeit a growing one, there was a formal contest. In such cases, the electorate really mattered. Some 90 Members of Parliament, known as ‘knights of the shire’, represented counties, where voters comprised all freeholders whose land was worth more than 40 shillings (£2) a year. The vast majority of MPs, though, were burgesses or citizens, representing boroughs and cities respectively, and here the franchise might range from all male residents of the town in question to a tiny number of landowners.

All told, however, and partly because elections were only one part of a consultative process which included lobbying and petitioning MPs, the Commons existed as a powerful voice for ordinary Englishmen and (to a point) women, especially those of the literate gentry and middling sort. Parliament was therefore of real significance. Indeed, English government was held to be balanced, between monarchy, aristocracy (broadly represented by the House of Lords) and democracy (represented by the House of Commons).

Yet these were not equally poised. Parliament only sat at the behest of the monarch, and existed to pass laws and grant taxes, not to have any direct control of the actual government. Absolutists, meanwhile, believed that, in times of necessity, the king could override the law (and Parliament). Neither was the Common Law the only system in play. The church courts, for example, administered canon law, while there were also courts of ‘equity’ which based judgements not on precedent but on conscience. Star Chamber, meanwhile, was a criminal court whose jurisdiction came entirely from the royal prerogative. Such institutions could, in the wrong hands, act as bulwarks to royal power, even to royal tyranny. One maxim, drawn from the Roman scholar Cicero, had it that salus populi suprema lex esto: the health of the people was the supreme law. Taken to its logical end, this meant that, if necessity demanded it, the king could tax his English subjects without getting consent from Parliament. He could even imprison them without recourse to the Common Law. Ultimately the king might have an absolute right to his subjects’ property, if he needed it.

And James did need it. One of the first things that will have impressed him as he came to England will have been its wealth. On his way south he stopped at Newcastle, its stone buildings home to a growing and extremely lucrative trade shipping locally mined coal to London. From there he visited the great cathedrals of Durham and York, passing through the verdant arable fields of eastern England, skirting around East Anglia, the great breadbasket of the country. He passed thriving market towns, great new prodigy houses built by the landed rich, and hunted on great deer parks shaded by leafy oaks. As he travelled, aristocrats, townspeople, landed gentry and the dons of Cambridge University all came out to see him in their finest clothes. When he reached London he was welcomed by the richest men of the City. James could be forgiven for thinking, as he did, that it was just like Christmas.

The trouble was, while England was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, its monarchy remained chronically short of money. When James came to the throne, finance was being badly affected by population growth. Because it caused inflation, rising population increased the cost of basic government functions, most importantly warfare and defence. War was becoming more expensive anyway, thanks to the growing size of armies, to gunpowder weapons, elaborate fortifications and to the increased need for great warships with three enormous masts and broadside-mounted copper and iron cannons. In 1603, England was at war with Spain and in Ireland. Both conflicts James brought hastily to a close, but while this was a major saving, it was offset by the cost of his family and entourage, which was much larger than that of his unmarried predecessor. James also had the rather unfortunate habit of paying off his courtiers’ debts for them. Worst of all was in 1606, when he blew an astonishing £44,000 by paying off the debts of two Scots and an Englishman of the royal bedchamber. The consequence was to make much needed financial reform politically very difficult. People blamed the parlous state of the royal coffers not on long-term structural issues like inflation, but on the king’s own profligacy.

Rise of the English Yeomanry

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 35-37:

The yeomanry (not to be confused with the military uses of the term) were a class of affluent countryfolk with good farms and decent landholdings, but below the level of the gentry. They had a reputation for honesty, plain-speaking and credit. ‘The yeoman wears russet clothes, but makes golden payment, having tin in his buttons and silver in his pocket’, it was said. He was the ‘main man’ on juries and though he seldom went far, ‘his credit stretches further than his travel’. The yeomanry thought of themselves, not completely without good reason, as the backbone of rural society.

In previous peasant uprisings, like those of Wat Tyler (1381), Jack Cade (1450) and Robert Kett (1549), many yeomen had joined forces with their poorer neighbours to oppose the very rich. But this group was now becoming very prosperous. Yeomen were able to benefit from the rising prices, rising land values and falling wages that came with population growth. In other words, they did well out of exactly the things that were harming their poorer neighbours like John Reynolds. Between the mid-sixteenth century and the second quarter of the seventeenth, yeomen saw their wealth rise fourteenfold. They were rebuilding their houses and investing in their farms, thousands of which still survive today.

Of course, in theory, England remained a strictly hierarchical society, with a ‘great chain of being’ from the king down through the 60 or so temporal lords, the rest of the nobility, the roughly 15,000 members of landowning gentry (accounting, with their families, for about 2 per cent of the population, but owning 50 per cent of the land), to the farmers, tradespeople and labourers who made up the rest of society. This had never been entirely static, but the changes of the sixteenth century were notably destabilising. The rise of the yeomanry was part of a more general improvement in the position of those in the middle of the hierarchy, whom historians call the ‘middling sort’. This included many small-town traders and manufacturers – like, say, Shakespeare’s father John, who died in 1601, a prosperous glovemaker at Stratford, living in the impressive rebuilt timbered town house on Henry Street.

Shakespeare himself would ascend from his ‘middling’ background and, as he became rich later in life through landholding, grain trading and a successful literary career, would purchase the coat of arms that allowed him to present as a gentleman. In this, he was like many members of the rising middle sort, buying their way into the next rung of the landed class. Indeed, many of gentry were doing very well, too. On average, their wealth increased sevenfold between about the 1550s and 1620s. Like the yeomen, they were able benefit from rising food and land prices.

These newly wealthy classes enjoyed richer lives. They bought more consumer goods, invested in businesses and farms and rebuilt their houses. Curtains, chimneys, glass windows, furniture and fashionable clothes all became markers of the newfound status of the gentry and middling sort. Reading and book ownership became much more common. Spurred by this growing wealth and by the ballooning of the population of London, ready markets developed for almanacs, pamphlets, polemics, plays, penny ballads, true crime, foreign treatises and books about everything from how to run an efficient farm to how to play chess, or even how to be a dutiful wife. Most of all, there was a torrent of books about faith: how to be a good Protestant, and on the finer points of the liturgy, not to mention Bibles, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, England’s Book of Common Prayer and catechisms.

There were more schools now than ever before, and more children of the gentry and yeomanry attended Oxford and Cambridge or the Inns of Court. The Inns, in which young men learned the basics of the legal trade, were in fact more socially prestigious than the universities. And London offered just as much of a lively student experience as old Oxford and Cambridge. Students at the Inns could sample the delights of the City, its drinking holes and theatres.

Wordcatcher Tales: Hempe, Skimmington

From The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf Doubleday, 2023), Kindle pp. 12-14:

A change of leadership is always disorientating, but a change of ruling dynasty was all the more so. In March 1603, the last Tudor ruler of England, Queen Elizabeth I, died at Richmond Palace, the grand seat built by her grandfather Henry VII, on the winding banks of the Thames in the tree-shaded landscape of northern Surrey. With the country in a state of high alert, and watches placed on the coastal towns, the plan to bring in a peaceful succession was put into play. A messenger was sent north to Holyrood in Edinburgh, to King James VI of the Scots. Within a few days, the wily and coarse James was on his way south, following a grand procession down the eastern side of England as the great and good of his new southern realm flocked to give allegiance.

In Elizabeth’s reign, a prophecy had circulated widely: ‘When Hempe is spun, England’s done.’ ‘Hempe’ was an acronym for the Tudor monarchs since the break with Rome: Henry, Edward, Mary and Philip (II of Spain, Mary’s husband), and Elizabeth. Prophecies were taken seriously, as signs of God’s plan, and the belief was that once Elizabeth died, England would collapse into anarchy. But the peaceful accession of James allowed a more benign conclusion: now England and Scotland were under the same ruler. England was done: long live Britain.

There were other signs, though, that the older, more apocalyptic prophecy might still be the true one. Intellectuals and commentators of the day pored over cosmic events to assess whether the universe lay unbalanced and whether God’s wrath was imminent. What they saw did not bring comfort. They looked at England and saw a land full of witches: ‘They abound in all places,’ fretted the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Edmund Anderson. People tried to divine signs of the future in meteorological phenomena like unusual tempests, and strange biological prodigies, such as ‘monstrous’ human births, and saw warnings from God. For, as it was said, ‘God doth premonish before he doth punish.’ There were blazing stars in the heavens, which were sure to be signs of cosmic disturbance. Comets, such as those of 1577 and 1580, foretold trouble, and most worrying of all, there were great new stars that shone bright enough to be seen in the daytime. One had appeared in 1572 and another would shine in 1604. No one remembered anything like this ever before.

The Cartmel wedding was a joke about the collapse of the universe. It was about the uprooting of the social order and the world turned upside down. Specifically, it was celebrating the fact that the world was about to be set the right way up again. Momus was a character who symbolised disorder; his expulsion brought balance.

Raucous processions like this, in which humour was made out of the world turned topsy-turvy, were part of the culture of the age. The most famous kind of procession was the charivari, what in England was called the ‘riding’, or ‘skimmington’. Here, some poor local folk would have offended the parish, perhaps two were living together unmarried, or perhaps a wife dominated her husband. The skimmington, which took its name from a kind of wooden ladle with which a wife might beat her henpecked spouse, was a way of ritually humiliating such transgressors. A procession of villagers would pass through the streets, banging pots and pans and making horn gestures with their fingers, symbolising cuckoldry, and leading an effigy of the couple seated backwards on an ass. The disorder, the noise and the inversion of the expected order all symbolised the way in which the subject of the skimmington had turned the world upside down. It betokens a world where the fabric of order is seen as fragile, where small deviations from social norms could take on a cosmic significance.

What Jane Thornborough organised at Cartmel was a skimmington against Protestantism. Momus, who was widely known from the bestselling Aesop’s Fables, was the Greek god of satire. He represented a world turned upside down. He, the discordant music and the transgressive wedding were saying something straightforward enough: Protestantism had overturned the natural order, it had turned things topsy-turvy. After the procession had left the church (very symbolic), a mock-proclamation announced the end of Momus’s time. The Protestants were being cast out of Cartmel church, fittingly enough a former priory. Their unnatural religion would reign here no more, and the old order could return. Such were the hopes of Catholics like Jane Thornborough when James I came to the English throne.

Denmark Dumps the Nicobars, 1868

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle p. 337:

Although Tranquebar and Serampore were sold in 1845, the colonial experience in Asia was not quite over. The Nicobar archipelago was not included in the sale. However, due to malaria, these islands were uninhabitable, and a last Danish colonization attempt was abandoned in 1848. Thereafter, there was no Danish connection with these islands. The islands were subsequently used as bases for pirates: therefore the British envoy approached the Danish government in 1868 with a request that it, as the holder of sovereignty, would intervene against the pirates and restore law and order, or alternatively hand over the sovereignty to Great Britain. The Danish government astonished the British envoy by not demanding any payment at all for such a transfer. After 1864, Denmark was not willing to risk anything.

Denmark Becomes a Nation-State

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 330-332:

The cession of the duchies [Schleswig, Holstein, Lauenburg] in 1864 meant that Denmark now became a nation-state. A nation-state is defined as a state where there is one common culture, one common language, one common history, etc. There were certainly still other nationalities within the Danish empire, namely Icelanders, Faroese, and Greenlanders along with the nationally and ethnically diverse population of the West Indies. However, the relationship cannot be compared at all with the Danish-German united monarchy. When tallied both separately and together the above-mentioned groups represented such a small proportion of the inhabitants of the empire, whereas those that were German-affiliated had made up a third of the inhabitants in the united monarchy. On the other hand, this did not mean that all Danes lived in Denmark. There were around 200,000 Danish-minded southern Jutlanders in Schleswig, who after 1864, became German citizens against their will.

For Prussia, 1864 had been a stepping-stone in a longer process towards a united Germany under Prussian rule. This goal was met in 1870 when Germany became a unified, centralized empire. This put the Danish state in a completely new historical situation. Previously it had been a medium-sized European state, and while Germany had been an empire or later a confederacy, it was relatively decentralized and consisted of many different and both large, medium, and small states. The Danish empire had been larger than many of these German states. Now the balance of power was markedly different: Denmark had in 1814 and even more so in 1864 become a smaller state, while Germany had become the continent's largest power. Denmark's position was thereby extremely vulnerable and threatened. For Denmark, there was nothing to do but pursue a policy of neutrality, but in practice take extensive account of its overpowering neighbor. During World War I in 1914–1918, Denmark managed to remain neutral by adapting to its great neighbor to the south.

Internally in Denmark, 1864 represented a trauma that had an effect on Danish politics and the general way of thinking for a very long time. Together with Germany's unification in 1870, widespread concern was raised about the extent to which it would ultimately be possible to preserve Denmark as an independent state.

The nation-state of Denmark was the successor to a much larger empire. Copenhagen remained the capital. It was a legacy of the far greater empire that this smaller state should be organized as a highly centralized state with all of its important institutions gathered in the capital rather than following a federal state structure with considerable independent, regional decision-making power. When virtually all nationwide institutions and organizations of importance were also located in Copenhagen after 1849, and that Copenhagen is by far the largest city in Denmark, was a result of Copenhagen’s status in the empire transferring to the smaller state of Denmark's capital. It can thus be compared to an overcoat that is several sizes large. The historian Steen Bo Frandsen has written on these conditions: “The construction of a national economy placed Northern Jutland in the role of supplier of raw materials and of people for Copenhagen's expansion. Denmark was designed entirely on the capital's premises and Copenhagen became, if possible, even more than ever the Danish state … Everything of importance was located in Copenhagen. Industrialization strengthened the city's dominance” (Frandsen 1996, 566).

A new constitution was adopted in 1866.

Rise of Nationalism in the Danish Empire

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 272-274:

It appears that distinctive Norwegian and German (Holstein) identities can be traced during this period. Furthermore, an unmistakable Danish identity arose in the second half of the eighteenth century. The government in Copenhagen at the time of Frederik V was, as before, dominated by many foreign-born who had entered the service of the Danish king. The majority of the members of the King's Council as well as the heads of the administration and at the court were born outside the Danish king's kingdoms and countries, especially in Germany. Often they did not speak Danish at all. This internationally oriented aristocratic elite, which formed the leadership of the state, pursued an ambitious and cosmopolitan cultural policy. This included convening foreign-born cultural personalities to hold illustrious positions in Denmark (i.e. the educator Basedow and the poet Klopstock). Furthermore, it awarded civilian and military posts as well as business privileges to foreign-born protégés. This international orientation had been the case for a long time, but it was increasingly perceived by the growing middle class, especially in Copenhagen, as an omission and oversight of local talent. The middle class was growing, and as it became more involved in foreign trade, it gained increased weight in society during the flourishing trade period, particularly in opposition to the great aristocratic landowners. After the middle of the eighteenth century, the middle class began to cultivate the Danish language, culture, and history as a protest against the internationally oriented aristocratic state leadership. The German-born Struensee, who in his short reign from 1770 to 1772 introduced radical reforms, which, however, had been ill-prepared and revealed his lack of knowledge of Danish conditions and traditions, just as his relationship with Queen Caroline Mathilde had aroused public indignation. His actions further fueled the development of nationalism. Unlike Struensee, his successors, Frederik V’s Dowager Queen Juliana Maria, her son, the king’s half-brother, Prince Frederick and her closely connected statesman, Ove Høegh-Guldberg, understood that they had to appeal to public opinion and to win the favor of the frustrated urban middle class.

Immediately after coming to power, they made Danish the administrative language for Denmark and Norway rather than German, and the following year Danish was made the command language in the army and in 1775 Danish was made a formal subject in the grammar schools. The crown jewel of their efforts was the Naturalization Act of 1776, which stated that only those who were born within the Danish king’s kingdoms and countries, i.e. the empire, could in the future hold public offices. This law seems to have been met with spontaneous enthusiasm in Copenhagen and other cities across the country. How should this Danish identity be interpreted? The question is whether the Danish-German national antagonisms that tore apart the entire Danish state in the nineteenth century can be traced as far back as the eighteenth century. Perhaps in the eighteenth century it was first and foremost a matter of contradictions between an aristocratic and internationally oriented upper class and a more domestically oriented bourgeoisie (middle class), whose importance in social and economic was growing. Germans made up approximately a fifth of the capital's population, a representation of the fact that Copenhagen was the center of the entire empire and not just the kingdom of Denmark. Yet, the Naturalization Act was not aimed against these people since it was applying to everyone in the empire and was aimed at foreign-born, in practice Germans, but—significantly—not at German-speaking Danish citizens from the duchies or Copenhagen. In 1790, however, a heated debate unfolded: the so-called “German feud.” The German-speaking fellow citizens and their alleged dominant position were conceptualized as a threat. The feud, however, ceased again, presumably because other problems on the political agenda took precedence, such as agricultural reforms. These national identities ultimately led to the dissolution of the empire, but the question is whether secession from the empire was an idea that originated in the eighteenth century or, whether the dispute at that point solely concerned the distribution of rights, duties, burdens, and privileges between the various nationalities within a perennial empire. There was not necessarily anyone at the time who thought nor desired that these schisms would eventually lead to dissolution, although in hindsight it may certainly seem the case. The development towards an identification with those whose nationality, language, culture, and country one shares, rather than identification by status and as a subject in a particular territory under a particular prince, and where the language was secondary, was an expression of the unitary state. Here, as in the conglomerate state, the empire was not held together by the subjects’ duty of obedience to their prince, but by the loyalty of the citizens to their fatherland, state, and nationality (Feldbæk 1992).

Iceland's Dark 18th Century

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 260-262:

While the eighteenth century in Denmark and Norway was considered a period of peace, progress and prosperity as reflected in expressions such as “the flourishing trade period” in Danish history and “the golden age” in Norwegian history, Iceland’s eighteenth century became a dark time. All land in Iceland was owned either by the crown, the church, or an elite mainly consisting of civil servants leasing it to the peasants: in other words, an agricultural system that did not differ much from that known in the Kingdom of Denmark. The country was characterized by social and occupational stagnation, which the trade monopoly that Iceland was subject to greatly contributed. When Bishop Ludvig Harboe 1741–1745 resided on the island, attributes of the unitary state were increasingly introduced. His work led i.e. efforts to increase the population’s literacy, but also with increased social control, i.e. restrictions on people’s right to move. But by the middle of the eighteenth century, factories were set up by Icelandic initiative, but with financial and other support from the royal power in Copenhagen, to promote Iceland's economic and social development. These were mainly wool processing factories. However, there were many initial difficulties: deliveries did not occur, deficits necessitated large subsidies from Copenhagen, until the factories were for a time transferred to a private trading company headquartered in Copenhagen, before taken over by the state. Nevertheless, this initiative was of great importance for the modernization of Icelandic society. A factory was built near Reykjavik, and around this a settlement grew, which in 1786, when it had approx. 300 inhabitants, received a municipal charter. Iceland had thus gained its first city. The central government in Copenhagen intervened again in the early 1770s and sought to secure the social and legal rights of the peasant population vis-à-vis Iceland’s elite landowners. It was also a result of these efforts that in 1774 the state took over the monopoly of trade from a private company. 12 years later in 1786, the monopoly was abolished, trade was now free, but admittedly only to the king's subjects. But between 1774 and 1786 something terrible also happened in Iceland. In 1783, the island was hit by a volcanic eruption that has been characterized as “one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recent millennia of Earth's history.” (Thorsteinsson 1985, 190). Large areas were flooded by lava, toxic ash rained down over most of the island and the sky was covered with volcanic mists. All this, together with violent earthquakes, destroyed the vegetation and thus Iceland’s agriculture in the following years. It is estimated that approx. 20% of the population died as a result of these natural disasters, and a smallpox epidemic in 1785 deepened the crisis. All the previous decades’ attempts to commercially develop Iceland were now in ruins. It was in that context that the trade monopoly was abolished. The following decades saw the sale of land to tenant farmers, an action that was also done in the Kingdom of Denmark. This, too, can be seen as an attempt to bring the social and occupational structures within the Danish empire closer together, although there were undeniably large differences and the basic conditions were highly disparate. The old Althing (unicameral legislature in Iceland) was moved from the historic Tingvellir to Reykjavik in 1798, and in the year 1800 the Althing was abolished in favor of a national court and judicially trained judges. Thereby, a century-old institution had been erased. Both the move and the abolition two years later were justified with practicalities. Reykjavik was considered easier to reach than Tingvellir, and the replacement with a national court can be seen as an expression of bureaucratization and another attempt to streamline the systems throughout the different parts of the empire. Iceland in the eighteenth century came to witness first-hand the intrusive unitary state, but compared to other parts of the empire there were hardly other places where the opportunity for growth of the unitary state was greater.

Denmark's "Long Peace" in 1700s

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle p. 240:

During the short 200 years from 1536 to 1720, the Danish empire experienced a considerable weakening and serious land divisions. From being a medium-sized European power, enjoying supremacy over Sweden, the dominant power in the Baltic Sea and Northern Germany as well as in the North Sea, Denmark’s positions in the Baltic Sea region and in Northern Germany were overtaken by Sweden. Moreover, the more vital interests of Britain and the Netherlands in the trade and shipping in the Baltic Sea meant that the conditions became internationalized, and both the Danish Empire and Sweden had to submit to the dictates of super powers. This is also seen in the Danish empire's failure to recapture the Scanian territories or its numerous futile attempts to solve the Gottorp problem, although this was otherwise Denmark’s primary security priority. The prolonged conflict that the empire engaged with Sweden led to extensive efforts to strengthen the Danish empire inward and outward through the introduction of the tax and military state, of an active and multifaceted business policy and of royal absolutism in 1660. But all in all, both the empire and Sweden (despite conquests from Denmark and Norway) were in the long term weakened by their continuous rivalry. Perhaps the efforts to maintain the position of power that the Danish Empire still had in 1536 were simply too great a burden: the empire was thinly spread geographically, had relatively small resources, and a small population. Perhaps this was an inevitable situation, because the trade and shipping on the Baltic Sea were so vital to the larger naval forces. At the very least, by 1720 both the Danish Empire and Sweden had been transformed into actors (albeit not puppets) in an international system in which Britain and Russia set the bar.

Danish Empire Shrinks, 1536-1720

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle p. 240:

During the short 200 years from 1536 to 1720, the Danish empire experienced a considerable weakening and serious land divisions. From being a medium-sized European power, enjoying supremacy over Sweden, the dominant power in the Baltic Sea and Northern Germany as well as in the North Sea, Denmark’s positions in the Baltic Sea region and in Northern Germany were overtaken by Sweden. Moreover, the more vital interests of Britain and the Netherlands in the trade and shipping in the Baltic Sea meant that the conditions became internationalized, and both the Danish Empire and Sweden had to submit to the dictates of super powers. This is also seen in the Danish empire's failure to recapture the Scanian territories or its numerous futile attempts to solve the Gottorp problem, although this was otherwise Denmark’s primary security priority. The prolonged conflict that the empire engaged with Sweden led to extensive efforts to strengthen the Danish empire inward and outward through the introduction of the tax and military state, of an active and multifaceted business policy and of royal absolutism in 1660. But all in all, both the empire and Sweden (despite conquests from Denmark and Norway) were in the long term weakened by their continuous rivalry. Perhaps the efforts to maintain the position of power that the Danish Empire still had in 1536 were simply too great a burden: the empire was thinly spread geographically, had relatively small resources, and a small population. Perhaps this was an inevitable situation, because the trade and shipping on the Baltic Sea were so vital to the larger naval forces. At the very least, by 1720 both the Danish Empire and Sweden had been transformed into actors (albeit not puppets) in an international system in which Britain and Russia set the bar.

Farflung Danish Trading Posts

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 201-203:

Thus, in the conglomerate state, there were large differences between the various state entities, as well as within each territory. But the regime seems not to have found an issue with this, let alone display any desire to unify and harmonize conditions. Only at one point did the government actively intervene and seek to create uniform conditions: in the political and religious spheres of the Lutheran Reformation. In the duchies [Schleswig and Holstein], especially in Schleswig, the Reformation movement had grown in strength as early as the 1520s, through the support and promotion by Frederick I, and especially his son, the later Christian III. The Reformation Movement was supported by several local priests as well as members of the nobility and the town's citizens. The movement spread to the kingdom in the 1520s. In some parts it was met with great enthusiasm among the priests and other sections of the population (Viborg, Copenhagen, Malmø), but other parts were untouched (Ribe) by the movement. After Christian's victory in the Count's Feud in 1536, the Reformation was officially completed. The organization of the old church was purged, the bishops imprisoned, monasteries and church property were expropriated by the Crown, but the clergy in the ministry remained, now as Lutheran clergymen. In 1537, the church ordinance was issued, which was the legal basis for the new Evangelical-Lutheran State Church.

Thus, both in the duchies and in the Kingdom of Denmark, the Reformation was carried out with a top-down approach, but it was done with considerable assistance from large sections of the clergy and the lay population. The introduction of the Reformation in other parts of the empire was a different case. The Danish church ordinance of 1537 was extended to Norway that year, which had come under Danish control. The Catholic priests remained in their positions, while new bishops and eventually also new Lutheran clergymen—virtually all Danish-born—joined.

In the Faroe Islands, the Lagting—the parliament—recognized Christian III in 1535, and when the bishop objected to the new church ordinance, he was dismissed and replaced by a Lutheran. In 1557 the Faroe Islands ceased to be a separate diocese and were placed under the Diocese of Bjørgvin in Norway. It was far more elaborate and dramatic when the Lutheran Reformation was introduced in Iceland. In an attempt to bring ecclesiastical lands to the crown, one of the king's prominent officials was assassinated in 1538. In 1541, an armed expedition was sent to Iceland, which imprisoned one of the two Icelandic Catholic bishops and enabled the Reformation to gradually actualize. But in 1549, the second Catholic bishop succeeded in reintroducing Catholicism by a coup, imprisoning his Lutheran colleague and banishing a prominent representative of the king. In 1551, therefore, a significant military expedition was sent from Denmark to Iceland, but when it arrived, everything was in chaos. The Catholic bishop had clashed with the local Icelandic grandee, who had seized and executed him. Order was now restored and the reformation introduced—even in Iceland.

Denmark's Top-Down Reformation

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 201-203:

Thus, in the conglomerate state, there were large differences between the various state entities, as well as within each territory. But the regime seems not to have found an issue with this, let alone display any desire to unify and harmonize conditions. Only at one point did the government actively intervene and seek to create uniform conditions: in the political and religious spheres of the Lutheran Reformation. In the duchies [Schleswig and Holstein], especially in Schleswig, the Reformation movement had grown in strength as early as the 1520s, through the support and promotion by Frederick I, and especially his son, the later Christian III. The Reformation Movement was supported by several local priests as well as members of the nobility and the town's citizens. The movement spread to the kingdom in the 1520s. In some parts it was met with great enthusiasm among the priests and other sections of the population (Viborg, Copenhagen, Malmø), but other parts were untouched (Ribe) by the movement. After Christian's victory in the Count's Feud in 1536, the Reformation was officially completed. The organization of the old church was purged, the bishops imprisoned, monasteries and church property were expropriated by the Crown, but the clergy in the ministry remained, now as Lutheran clergymen. In 1537, the church ordinance was issued, which was the legal basis for the new Evangelical-Lutheran State Church.

Thus, both in the duchies and in the Kingdom of Denmark, the Reformation was carried out with a top-down approach, but it was done with considerable assistance from large sections of the clergy and the lay population. The introduction of the Reformation in other parts of the empire was a different case. The Danish church ordinance of 1537 was extended to Norway that year, which had come under Danish control. The Catholic priests remained in their positions, while new bishops and eventually also new Lutheran clergymen—virtually all Danish-born—joined.

In the Faroe Islands, the Lagting—the parliament—recognized Christian III in 1535, and when the bishop objected to the new church ordinance, he was dismissed and replaced by a Lutheran. In 1557 the Faroe Islands ceased to be a separate diocese and were placed under the Diocese of Bjørgvin in Norway. It was far more elaborate and dramatic when the Lutheran Reformation was introduced in Iceland. In an attempt to bring ecclesiastical lands to the crown, one of the king's prominent officials was assassinated in 1538. In 1541, an armed expedition was sent to Iceland, which imprisoned one of the two Icelandic Catholic bishops and enabled the Reformation to gradually actualize. But in 1549, the second Catholic bishop succeeded in reintroducing Catholicism by a coup, imprisoning his Lutheran colleague and banishing a prominent representative of the king. In 1551, therefore, a significant military expedition was sent from Denmark to Iceland, but when it arrived, everything was in chaos. The Catholic bishop had clashed with the local Icelandic grandee, who had seized and executed him. Order was now restored and the reformation introduced—even in Iceland.

Early Danish Explorers

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 183-184:

In Europe, the fifteenth century was the period of the great explorers. This led, among other things, to a collaboration between Portugal and the Danish Empire to find a route to India (Jensen 2007). The Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator had written to Christopher of Bavaria about the project, and a Danish nobleman Vallarte arrived in Portugal in 1448 and participated with the Portuguese Order of Christ in a long expedition south of Africa to Cape Verde, where he lived the rest of his life in captivity of the local tribal chief, who turned out not to be Christian, as the expedition had expected. In 1461, King Afonso V of Portugal wrote to Christian I and warmly recommended Christian’s herald Lolland. Heralds could function almost as ambassadors and were often named after provinces or landscapes (i.e. Lolland). Lolland had participated in the Portuguese crusades and voyages of discovery to North Africa, and Afonso was so impressed by his bravery that the king knighted him when he returned to Portugal. These connections between Denmark and Portugal were later expanded. Around 1471, when Christian presented his grand crusade plan to the imperial diet in Regensburg, an expedition to the north embarked, led by well-known captains Didrik Pining of Denmark, Hans Pothorst of Iceland, and João Vaz Corte-Real and Alvaro Martins Homem from Portugal. They reached Greenland, where they erected a large memorial on one of the more recognizable mountains. From there, they proceeded to America and reached Newfoundland, which was known among Portuguese fishermen as “terra do bachalau,” the land of the stock fish. The goal was to find the northwest passage to India. This was reattempted later. In 1519, Christian II equipped a new expedition under the leadership of the notorious pirate and admiral Søren Norby: prior to this, he had wrought papal bulls that authorized the raid as a true crusade. The goal was to win Greenland back from the pagans, which would only be the beginning. At the time of Christian II it was believed that Greenland was the outermost peninsula of the great Asian continent, and if one could lead a crusade there, one would be able to confront the Muslims with a two-front war. At the same time, Christian's army would land in the Far East near where the legendary Christian priest-king Prester John was supposed to live in a giant kingdom ready to support Christian Western Europe in the fight against Islam. During the fifteenth century, it was said that Prester John was descended from Holger the Dane, hero to Charlemagne, and thus King Christian's distant ancestor. The Danish empire was so large that it included not only huge areas of the north with diverse peoples, but also a bridgehead to Asia. However, the Great Crusade to Greenland and Asia never commenced, because Christian II became preoccupied with problems in Sweden [trying to maintain the Kalmar Union].