A bejeweled prayer book has been identified as belonging to Thomas Cromwell | Hacker News Reader

A bejeweled prayer book has been identified as belonging to Thomas Cromwell

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90 pointspepys69 comments

There's a reasonable amount of confusion in the comments between Thomas and Oliver Cromwell.

Thomas Cromwell (1485 - 1540), who this article is about, was a relatively cosmopolitan man and chief minister to Henry VIII before being beheaded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658) was a puritan Christian anti-monarchist who had Charles I executed after the English Civil War and ruled as Lord Protector afterwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell

(I am not a historian and encourage you to read the Wikipedia articles rather than relying on my very brief summaries!)

Oliver Cromwell was also beheaded, posthumously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell%27s_head

That’s quite the read. Hanged, lost head, etc.

Thank you.

He was one interesting dude. He could speak Italian which was a really exceptional thing to do. England is on the edge of Europe, quite provincial, not in great power. To go to Italy was to put yourself right in the centre of European culture. Especially Florence, where Cromwell ended up, was the epicentre of civilisation and culture.

So he learned Italian and came back to England in his twenties; extremely well educated, not just speaking Italian but a bit of German a bit of Spanish, fluent French and also reading Latin, which was crucial at that period. But Italian ended up being his passport into the eventual public life.

the English Wikipedia article is not shy about some of those "Italian" influences ! He was eventually executed for political reasons, as the article says.

That’s the origin of the famous quote where Thomas More said of Cromwell that he was so clever and resourceful that if you locked him in prison and came back a few weeks later he’d be living like a king and all his jailers would owe him money.

What would the modern day's equivalent of Florence be?

The internet it has eliminated the notion of location.

That sounds good but it is not true. The distribution of income is not uniform on the face of Earth and that is not due to sheer choice. The places where people with lower incomes live are not always the places where they would prefer to live.

Location still matters for many reasons, infrastructure, safety, public health, climate, and industry-specific agglomeration effects being among them.

None of those are culture or intellectual pursuits all of those are local societal issues. I thought the question was regarding cultural developmet. Renaissance type things not code of Hamarabi type things.

If on can find infrastructure, safety, public health, climate, industry, and the internet one can be in a Renaissance environment.

Florence was a financial and trading center of Europe during the Renaissance when Thomas Cromwell travelled there. That economic power and probably that cosmopolitan atmosphere were what lay the ground for cultural development, specifically for the resurgence in arts and in scientific thinking.

Even with the internet we see that artistic and scientific output is uneven across the world. There are places where ideas thrive more than in others. For example, if you contribute to the research frontier in physics, chemistry, or computer science, you are very likely to be located in one of the few centers of thinking in your field.

I don’t see anything that obviates the internet as the leading cultural development exchange of our time. These centers use to be located along trade routes. This is no longer the case. Any group of people can gather anywhere in the world and create whatever.

The idea of a renaissance period happening in Europe in the 1400s-1500s only came about starting in the 19th century, so to find a modern equivalent we’ll have to wait a few hundred years for future historians to judge. Who knows what pop culture from today will stand the test of time.

The SF Bay Area

I think you are way overestimating 1600s florence and underestimating 1600s england.

> England is on the edge of Europe, quite provincial, not in great power.

We are talking 1600s england, not 600s england. During Cromwell's time, england was easily a major european power settling colonies in the new world. Far more powerful and far more important that italian city-states like florence.

> To go to Italy was to put yourself right in the centre of European culture

By the time cromwell was born, the italian renaissance was a distant memory. Shakespeare was the one advancing european culture, not dante.

> Especially Florence, where Cromwell ended up, was the epicentre of civilisation and culture.

No. The epicenter of civilization and culture moved west and north of florence by cromwell's time. Spain, France, Netherlands, England, etc were the new drivers of european civilization. Not florence, not italy.

> not just speaking Italian but a bit of German a bit of Spanish, fluent French and also reading Latin,

Pretty much what most educated europeans could do.

Thomas Cromwell was active in English high politics during the 1530's to 1540's. I believe England was just beginning to become a European power at that time. Maybe you are thinking of Oliver Cromwell?

I think they are. Though while being a bit strong, they’re not entirely wrong.

Henry VIII’s England was a major world power, not as huge as it would become under his daughter Elizabeth, but in the list of world powers.

Italy… was not, tho it still held significant cultural sway. It was midway through the renaissance at that time. That is likely what the original poster was referring to (and is right, if a bit over enthusiastic).

The big guns were really Spain & France, and then England & the Netherlands challenging from behind.

It wouldn’t be until Elizabeth that the “British Empire” would really start to be a dominant power, and she laid the foundation for the expansion to come.

The way Wolf Hall tells the story, he also learned about bookkeeping/banking in Italy which combined with his (later?) legal training let him run rings around the other powerful public figures of the time.

Wolf Hall is worth reading for many reasons but one of the interesting/unusual aspects of the novel is that its kindof answering 'what would happen if a smart fairly ruthless person with fairly modern legal/administative/finance skills was sent back in time 500 years'

none of which is especially unusual for clergymen or aristocracy of the period.

For an interesting read, check out Cromwell's letter to Henry VIII from the Tower of London while he was awaiting execution:

https://carolineangus.com/thomas-cromwells-letters/thomas-cr...

The Wolf Hall book series is a great read also, albeit much much longer.

Seconded.

I really struggled reading the first one though, then I listened to the other two on audible and they were great.

Well worth it if you can get them from Audible or Overdrive.

I'm thankful the article does identify it as a Book of Hours, which contains the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as Divine Office): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_the_Hours

You will see this Book of Hours depicted in many, many portraits and sacred art across the centuries. For example, the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin often depicts Mary in prayer, and she is holding a Book of Hours (which is sort of an adaptation of a Jewish psalter, but sacred art actually loves anachronisms, so it's common to show Biblical Jews with a book of Christian Prayer instead.)

The Liturgy of the Hours is still required daily of all clergy and religious. The Anglicans are especially fond of public celebrations, such as Evensong, which can be quite beautiful and rather brief, compared to Eucharistic liturgies.

A common misconception is that the book depicted with these figures is a Bible. Certainly, many of them could have owned a Bible, but that's a book they'd have on their shelf, not constantly in their hand and at their side throughout the day, every day of the week.

Wolf Hall, the TV series, is a masterpiece. Supposedly a second series was ordered and I can't wait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series)

Sorry, I just could not get past casting Mark Rylance as Cromwell. In the books, he, Cromwell, is described as a thug and a street brawler, albeit a clever and ambitious one. As much as I like Rylance I can’t see him in a pub brawl.

I came to be an avid Wolf Hall fan (first TV then book) precisely because Rylance had made an impact on me playing a homeless alcoholic boxer years before in The Grass Arena, and I watched it originally solely because of him.

Everything that I know about Thomas Cromwell, I know from Hilary Mantel's excellent book Wolf Hall, and from the sequels.

And the TV show.

I haven't seen those, not sure how well they could capture the books.

They are surprisingly excellent (and I say that as someone who loves the books and usually hates adaptations) not least because the cast (in particular Mark Rylance) are fantastic.

As an aside, for anyone who gets the chance to see Mark Rylance in theatre in particular I would say take it if you possibly can. I’ve seen him a few times and he has been absolutely staggeringly good every time.

Wolf Hall is about the best TV I've seen ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall_(TV_series)

"I, Claudius" and "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" are in the same league.

My recollection of the books is a bit rusty, but I think he also spoke Welsh (his brother-in-law's family was Welsh) and maybe Dutch as well? The Netherlands were the main market for English wool, and were the nursery of early English Protestantism (like Cromwell himself).

In the books that is correct. In actual history, I do not know.

It is regrettable that Mantel did not survive to see this artifact.

This is a great place to note how stellar WOLF HALL and its sequels are. They make his life really accessible, even if it is a fictionalized account of real events.

Of course it's worth mentioning that he's also depicted prominently in "A Man for all Seasons" of which "Wolf Hall" was created as a foil.

I think Wolf Hall is rather over rated. It sort of projects quite a bit of modern sensibilities into people living in those times. It is also very sparse, in the sense it doesn't catch very much of the mannerisms of speech etc or even the physical details, flavour of of the times of things.

Counteranecdote: I'm pretty sensitive to anachronisms in historical depictions, and thought Wolf Hall was pretty darned good about situating itself in what felt like a reasonable facsimile of the 16th century. I mean, we can't know what people thought, or how. But, I don't recall any red flags offhand.

Man that rendering of Hans Holbein the Younger's portrait of Thomas Cromwell is god-awful.

I saw it in person as a kid in the Frick Collection in NY hanging opposite Holbein's portrait of Thomas More and they completely changed how I looked at art. In person the portraits look downright photorealistic and when you get close to them, the detail is staggering, down to the stubble on More's face.

The photo in TFA looks nothing like I remember it. I wouldn't be surprised if RGB were inadequate in representing the colors, especially with proper museum lighting.

Holbein was a master, head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries. Kunstmuseum Basel has the largest collection of his paintings and it's on my bucket list.

My fascination goes to the way the content of the book is shared. Normally the unwashed masses would only be allowed to see a picture of the cover with a comment about the binding. Today it is different, we get selfies that show us, be it at unreadable distance, the inside of the book. I feel like I've seen an exposed ankle in the Victorian age, improperly exposed to something.

I read it as Bejeweled Player Book first, and got confused.

that would have been Henry VIII’s book

Brendan Behan had a few things to say about Cromwell's legacy, including this classy piece of doggerel

"Don't speak of your Protestant minister, Nor of his church without meaning or faith, For the foundation stone of his temple Was the bollocks of Henry VIII"

Behan may have been talking about Oliver Cromwell, who I think figured much larger as an object of execration among the Irish. But, hey, my surname looks Dutch, so don't ask me.

My recollection of Borstal Boy was that the doggerel you quote was an ad-hoc translation from Irish.

Given the reference to Henry VIII's bollocks, it is certainly Thomas, not Oliver.

Thomas Cromwell oversaw the founding of the Anglican Church, partly to satisfy Henry's need for a legitimate male heir.

Ah, but I don't think the rhymes Behan translated had anything in particular do with either Cromwell, save (remotely) by way of TC's agency in the new church.

I believe he was making a mischievous translation of a Gaelic text. So I think it's worth mentioning that, although I'm not too familiar with Irish Gaelic, in Scottish Gaelic the word "clach" means "stone" but is also the common word for "testicle".

If it's the same in Irish it may be a bit of bilingual punnery.

It is basically the same word in Irish. Slightly different spelling and pronunciation but essentially the same.

This is cromulent.

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