Today, the 31st October, is of course All Hallows Eve, more commonly known as Halloween, the first day of Hallowtide. I’m marking the occasion with three videos – one about Hallowtide and how it was celebrated in Tudor times, one about superstition and witchcraft in the Tudor period, and another about an event that took place on Halloween in 1517, something that was the catalyst of the English Reformation.
I do hope you enjoy these videos:
You can find out all about the Tudor & Stuart Witchcraft & Medicine tour at https://www.britishhistorytours.com/history-tours/tudor-witchcraft-medicine and you can find out more about the Essex witches in my video – https://youtu.be/hpmkvJyc6x8
and
You can read Luther’s 95 Theses at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html
Very interesting I love hearing and reading about the origin of old customs, and I recall the video a few years back when you made soul cakes Claire, they did look delicious, really Halloween is nothing about vampires witches and demons, but just about honouring the dead and helping them pass into the light, if they are lost in the wilderness, or as you say purgatory, the children calling from door to door must be the origin of the trick or treat which they do today, I had just got home from shopping and were met by ghouls and pumpkins and all sorts up my road, I gave them some sweets I didn’t need and they were happy, at least I hope they were!
A very interesting couple of talks. The origins of some of the things people do at this time of year are very deep and part of lives. Today things can go a bit too far and people get carried away at times, but for the most part it is all good humour. Mischief night, something imported from America is used as an excuse by a loud minority to commit acts of vandalism and you may have seen videos of the culprits caught on camera in social media. This is a very disappointing trend but again it is a small minority. Louts are louts at any time of the year and because they are under the mistaken impression that they will not be prosecuted, they choose this night to cause problems. However, they will be prosecuted and severely. This spoils things for the majority of families who just want to dress up and have some honest fun and is a real shame as the kids around here are lovely and their costumes are quite imaginative.
I don’t know about soul cakes, that is the real heart of the religious practice of honouring the dead, the Church Triumphant, our loved ones in the afterlife, the saints and the Church Militants pray for the faithful here on Earth. Giving a soul cake fulfilled the obligation to feed the poor and the prayers of those to whom they were given for their souls fulfilled the obligation of Christians to pray for one another. We light candles today still to offer a prayer for loved ones, we write their names in books of remembrance, we put their names in envelopes to be prayed for during November, we lay flowers at their graves or the place they died, we ask for a Mass to be said and we pray as a community. In many countries the Day of the Dead is remembered by whole communities gathering in the cemetery and holding feasts and picnics and prayers and rejoicing or talking with their relatives. Ancestor worship is still central to other Oriental cultures. It is their way of being thankful for the gifts and wisdom and life passed on by those who went before, a deep sign of respect. In these cultures the older members are respected and honoured for their wisdom and experience. Celtic people saw the three worlds of below, here and above as interwoven. Travellers spoke of finding themselves visiting the other realms and returning on those journeys. The veil of the underworld was opened on this night and the spirits came forth and could take others back with them. Fire and light marked the transition of the seasons, water the passage between realms, sacrifice was made in rivers, bogs and wells as transition points. Deep water ravines in South America marked the entrance to the world of the gods of the other world and sacrifice was made at these sacred pools of deep water. Here water was stored for the community. Fire was made to cleanse and purify buildings, animals and people and to send the spirits back on their way.
It has become a night associated with witches and demons because it was believed local Sabbats were held on this night and in fact covens did meet and do meet, although not to engage in the diabolical activities they were accused of but to honour nature and elect new members and leaders. It was a time associated with darkness and it marks the colder and darker days of the year. Our ancestors took the belief in magic and witchcraft very seriously because it was one side of the coin by which they understood the world. Religious faith was the other side of the coin. Natural magic, the gifts from the natural world, herbs and healing was seen as part of God’s gifts for the world and mixed with popular religious practice and was called upon as protection against evil and doom and prayers and chants mixed and charms and relics used in life passages such as childbirth because it was all the same thing. Magic used to curse, to cause illness, death, the failure of the crops, storms, misfortune or other harm was sorcery and feared and condemned as being from the Evil One. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which because innocent healers, mostly women, were accused of witchcraft if they accidentally killed the unfortunate patient who died because the illness could not be cured and malfrica was charged as murder in such cases. Several verses in the Hebrew Bible condemned sorcery with death as the punishment and this was how it was treated in sixteenth century Europe. It was real, feared and part of their lives. However, many people who were intellectual, educated, good healers and had much potential as well as outcasts of society ended up being accused of witchcraft and either burned to death or hanged if in England.
Crazes could lead to hundreds of people being arrested, questioned, very weird evidence was presented, people made all sorts of ridiculous claims and the witch was subjected to the question until they confessed, deprived of sleep and seeing shadows who people claimed were their familiars. Communities could be deceived into a terrible frenzy through threats by overly enthusiastic preachers and they were often themselves afraid of being accused as witches. Madness was another reason for outbreaks, jealousy, land grabs, rivalries and the deception of self imagination. The numbers of people killed varied but in England it was between 400 and 1000 and historians believe around 60,000 people were killed in Europe over 300 years. The last person executed in England was in the first decade of the 1700s. The last person punished under Witchcraft Acts in England was a medium in 1942 who was imprisoned when she claimed to see ships being destroyed in the Atlantic. She served eight years for selling secrets but claimed to be a genuine medium. The Act was repealed soon afterwards. It was a very strange time but we keep the traditions alive in a continuation of the celebrations of All Hallows Eve or Halloween.
Goodnight. Sleep Tight! Don’t Let them Gouls give you a fright.
Wow that was a really enlightening post Bq, thank you! Such a lot I did not know, really I think this Halloween is really over the top, it’s only one day consumerism has taken hold, and I was in M&S today, and saw fang shaped crisps of all things! Think they were about £2, don’t think they sold much at least not to families who are on a budget, tomorrow they will be reduced along with all the other Halloween inspired food, to think now we are in November and Christmas is creeping up on us, it seems to have flown by, goodnight don’t let the bed bugs bite.
Thanks, Christine, like most feast themed food the supermarkets always go potty and a lot of the stuff really doesn’t sell. The themed chocolate sells, but some of the flavours of crisps and prices and the kids even don’t want them. We just had KitKat and Penguins and the kids loved them. Supermarkets maybe could sell soul cakes next year. Chestnuts and some Autumn themed natural food covered in chocolate and honey and cinnamon. The Christmas food has been in the shops since August. What’s next? General Election wine? Brexit sausages? Advent beef? I know it all sounds weird but the shops do lose the plot at times. Oh well, now the Autumn is here I can ditch the salad for beefbuger and chips. Thanks again.
Hey did you read in the papers the other day that…shock horror…Brexit is being blamed for ruining our Christmas dinners due to lack of pigs in blankets? Pfffttt….
i gave the kids the rest of the sweets out of a Cadbury heroes tub, in September Tescos do a special offer two for £7, that includes quality street and celebrations I often get half dozen, for presents at Christmas, actually iv become very disappointed with Cadburys their choc isn’t as good as it used to be, when I was younger it tasted better the selection in the chocolate boxes like milk tray and roses were larger and had nicer varieties, also the roses were individually shaped, now they are all the same and their creme eggs are different to, i e mailed Cadburys about it but had no reply, I said ever since Kraft took you over your chocs have gone downhill, it was the same with Terry’s of York, their chocs were really huge and they used to come in lovely selection boxes at Christmas, all decorated with lovely pastoral scenes, then they were taken over and they changed, i also e mailed Mcvities about their Tunis cakes because we used to love them at Christmas and they stopped producing them, mind you they were very polite and e mailed me back straight away unlike Cadburys, they said they have no plans to make them in the future iv tried other brands but their not the same, I must have quite a reputation now ha! I had two lots of children knocking last night, I was running around back forwards and forwards to the fridge, I don’t usually open the door but as I had just arrived home i saw them with mum and dad in tow, I actually feel for the parents when the children are tiny as I’m sure they would rather be in the warm instead of trailing the streets, it was pretty cold last night, as for the general election oh my! We have had three and now a December one, who would have thought that we would have come to this after three years of bickering and plotting by those determined to stop the electorates vote, we have a speaker the obnoxious John Bercow who is supposed to be impartial yet did his best to wreck the very genuine attempts of two prime ministers to deliver Brexit, we had a referendum in what is supposed to be a democratic country, but the mps many now realise only think of themselves and feathering their own nest, than the people they are supposed to represent, the most honourable title is a joke, there is nothing honourable about mps anymore, i have never known a December election yet there was one in 1929, these past three years have been dreadful with the very hysteria that the leave vote resulted in, who would ever have thought it, like some lady they interviewed in the street a few weeks ago, I am slowly losing the will to live.
Well our Tudor forebears would have blamed the Lady Anne, so in that respect, Jane, we haven’t moved on very far. We still read rubbish in the media and listen to rumours and mumble and grumble and look for the most ridiculous things to blame, ha. Believe me there was plenty of bacon and sausage in Asda the other day.
Christmas will be just as good as ever.
I agree, Christine, not to get into politics, but the sooner we get on with it, the sooner we can move on. Good grief what did we do before the EU? We are British, we are quite capable of finding something else to grumble about afterwards. Perhaps Brexit is the modern witchcraft, after all it seems to be having the same effect on our powers of doing things and thinking. We really do talk a load of rubbish sometimes. Anne Boleyn, witches, Brexit, yeap people have always blamed someone or something for the slightest disturbance in their otherwise mundane lives. Maybe they should join the AB files and talk about something more important and interesting.
The snowflakes moan about everything, who cares about pigs in blankets, I’d say it’s a small price to pay for becoming a one true nation again, and let’s not forget now we are not far away from rememberance Sunday, it is something our ancestors fought to keep for so long.
If Luther did put them on the notice board he was actually inviting his students to debate them and this was part of his reasons for sending them in a letter to the Bishops. He wasn’t even trying to cause trouble at this point but his work took on a life of their own. I don’t believe he was correct but he had certainly given it some thought and the sale of indulgences was an abuse of the original theological belief about them, the remittance not of sins or confession but of temporal penance. They could be gained via prayer or doing something religious or something to help someone in life. There were many ways. They also remitted the time a person spent in purgatory but that was a different kind of indulgence and unfortunately thanks to Luther they have become misunderstood. The problem he had encountered was a very earthly one rather than a religious one. These guys were going about Germany and elsewhere and were telling people to purchase a pardon or indulgence and use it as a get out of everything card and were claiming this gave salvation, which was contrary to Church teaching and people were being sucked in and accepted this because they were very persuasive. Of course ordinary people were affected the most as usual and Luther, among others was horrified. The purpose was to pay to rebuild the out of date Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, so it was being used really as a form of holy taxation. This was not the intention of indulgences. This was a clear violation. However, when Martin Luther got going, he began to find fault in many more things beyond the scope of his original attack. He began to find fault with the papacy and the office itself, the foundation of the Church, salvation, the very nature of the sacramental life and many other things. He had some valid points but then his works became much wider read and spread and his words were splitting opinion across the areas of Germany that already had a wide variety of spiritual practices. Luther had opened up debate alright, not among intellectual classes as he had originally intended but among the general public. Trouble brewed on the horizon and the authorities were very concerned. Shall we just say the rest is history, the Diet of Worms, his eventual excommunication, the Princes taking sides, the doctrines which changed his life and many others, the German Bible, the many works he wrote, including an unfortunate attack on the Jews, the dreadful wars which resulted from an initial desire to restore control in a dangerous and explosive outbreaks of rage, the violence of the Peasants War and a new Creed in most of Germany. Today Luther is regarded in more balanced terms than his enemies and his supporters could possibly have imagined 502_years ago. He was described in the most awful language by Thomas More and King Henry Viii and later Popes almost as if he were not human. He was hero worshipped by his followers but he disagreed with some fellow reformers and he did not approve of stripping Churches of their beautiful treasures and religious objects. He also believed in the Real Presence of the Sacrament, that is the Body and Blood of Christ transformed from the bread and the wine. German preachers who took his words abroad often preached a much simpler form of Christianity and practice than Luther and it was that stricter form that took root in Switzerland, Scotland and London. Today much of what he wrote has been unexamined by both Protestant and Catholic scholars and the debate is just as vibrant as it was 502_years ago but with a great deal of more insight and restraint. There are literally hundreds of books on and by Luther and they cater for everyone. Luther and the other reformers didn’t do much for Henry Viii despite his finding a way out of his first marriage by reading parts of William Tyndale who was no doubt influenced by them to a certain extent as he translated his New Testament while in areas under their authority. They disapproved of his divorce or annulment as unbiblical. The pro Luther/anti Luther polemic was a vibrant after his death as it was during his lifetime and the Defence of the Seven Sacraments by King Henry Viii, also still in print was as popular among Catholics as the 95 Thesis was supporters of Martin Luther. Numerous events marked his 500th Anniversary around Europe and beyond two years ago and his influence is appreciated even if many disagree with the terrible Reformation which followed. That reforms were needed we can now accept because the Council of Trent removed the abuses that began a Protestant revolt in Germany and split the Christian Church, an event which had various causes depending on each country and Trent took the Church back to preaching and her roots. In England it was an English Reformation with German influence which was enforced upon her people from the top down, although some popular reforms took hold in some areas among both intellectual and middle classes. In Scotland it was the firebrand preaching of moral and social and holy living that took the greatest hold under John Knox and in Switzerland it was the pure and moral stance of Calvin and Zwingli which made the place both a sanctuary for English reformers and a closed community to Catholic resistance. We have to see Luther as the root and stem of much of what influenced the Reformation, although some say it began before his Thesis was published. The Reforms diverged greatly from Luther and each other but probably wouldn’t have found expression within his catalyst. Luther himself would probably have refused to take credit, brash and abrasive though he often was. He was shocked to find his work had gone viral on his return home in the 1520s. I can’t recommend one biography because there are so many to choose from and every school of thought is different. However, Eric Metaxis and Lindal Roper and Peter Stanford are the most modern scholarship on Luther and his works and there are several videos on the Tudor Society Website from his 500 years. So forget Halloween, Happy Martin Luther discovering instead.
Ha ha if your leg fell off they would blame it on Brexit!
Anne herself was said to have had Lutheran leanings I believe? It was a time of great religious turmoil and with the Kings great matter, the ordinary people were blaming Anne for just about everything, the sweat was probably blamed on her to for all knew the King was thinking of putting Katherine away, it must be a sign of gods wrath, he was displeased with Englands King, the women’s hatred of her grew so fierce one day a mob gathered and they tried to march on the house where she was being entertained up the Thames, she had to slip out the back way, it must have been frightening for her as no doubt they would have tried to tear her limb from limb.
Hi, Christine, many people think of Anne as having Lutheran leanings but in fact although she probably admired him, Anne was mostly influenced by the French reformers and had one in her household called Nicholas Bourbon, who later wrote in praise of her after her execution. That said she certainly had associated members of her household who were involved in smuggling German Lutheran works into the country during the 1520s and its no coincidence that the reformers were allowed a more lenient role during her time as Henry’s lover. She didn’t organize it but through agents, some religious works found their way into the procession of her and her friends. The famous Tyndale works came to her via a forbidden copy being taken from her ladies and Anne is said to have somehow gotten it back and shown it to Henry with passages marked. However, her religious influence is evidenced by translations of French works personally translated for her, two by her brother, George. Her connection to Margaret of Navarre, sister of King Francis, who although Catholic, promoted reformed ideals and works, also pointed to a more traditional faith, influenced by French reforms and New Testament teaching.
No you are right, the ordinary people didn’t like Anne at all and on one occasion a group of women shouted at Henry to get back to his wife. As Queen Anne did attempt to make herself more agreeable to ordinary people and a group of letters from women of all classes show that people saw her in the traditional role of intercessor and helper and many wrote to thank her. Anne showed herself to be astute, however, turning down people she felt were immoral or inappropriate for appointments. Anne and Henry spent a number of years walking a tightrope in public because they knew the people loved Katherine and blamed everything on Anne, the weather included. She was even accused in the public imagination of poisoning a very important man, Bishop John Fisher, who became slightly ill at a dinner party along with some of his guests. Unfortunately, three people died who also ate the broth and the cook, the unfortunate Roose was arrested and boiled alive. The Boleyn name was murmured about but no accusations made directly and no evidence of any involvement either. Of course the death of John Fisher would have removed a big obstacle to Anne and Henry, but his illness was an accident. While Henry saw his marriage to Katherine as cursed and that God had withheld His Blessing, the people saw the problems the country was facing as being because of Henry’s relationship with Anne and any misfortune like the sweat was seen as a divine punishment, this time because Henry was sinning with Anne. That Anne and Henry were actually refraining from sex would certainly not have been believed. Katherine of Aragon was very popular as was Henry and Anne was seen as an interloper, not that Henry had chosen her as his future wife. It was the disgruntled anger of his people which made Henry see the danger of not taking steps to protect his marriage to Anne Boleyn and which played a part in the legislation introduced in 1534 to protect the succession of their children alone, along with a new treason act. Before then it wasn’t treason to shout : “Get back to your wife” or to complain about Henry’s marriage. That changed with his marriage to Anne Boleyn because Henry refused to allow any further opposition and to ensure everyone accepted him as Supreme Head of the Church and Anne as his only legitimate wife. It went even further. Words and associated thought was now treason. Slander against the King and Queen was slanderous. Speaking against the legitimate succession was treason and numerous minor offences became treason. The people continued to mumble, however, and hundreds of reports were sent to Cromwell who was wise enough to know the difference between moaning and groaning and the real thing. Henry’s increased paranoia, especially after his accidents made things a lot worse and the people centred their anger on Henry and his officials. Anne was the focal point for all discontent before her marriage, simply because she was overturning the status quo and replaced a well beloved Queen. Mob rule can be a frightening thing.
Thanks Bq, yes I have heard Nicholas Bourbon was in her household, he must have been a brave man to have praised her after her execution, thus inviting the wrath of the King, she was it is true influenced by the French reformers having grown up there it is easy to understand why, but I think Anne possibly had a flexible mind she was open to new ideas and she probably along with others, enjoyed discussing the Lutheran as well as the new reformist teachings, especially as Bourbon was in her household, I would love to see the letters that people wrote to her for help, and her replies, sadly whilst the numerous love letters Henry wrote to her have survived, there are very few of hers that have, there are two she wrote to Wolsley, one thanking him for her help over the divorce, the second one was criticism since she saw him as a failure, she also wrote a letter to a beloved friend of hers, while being mistress of the King particurlaly the only official mistress of the king, meant she was in a powerful position, promises can be extracted between the sheets, there was the case of Eleanor Carey, the relative of her brother in law, but Wolsley interfered with that which angered Anne a good deal, it is true after their marriage Henry really toughened his stance over criticism of Anne, she was now his queen and sion to be the mother of his son, in fairness to him we can see another King would have acted the same, the utmost respect had to be for the sovereign’s consort, and she for her part had to act above reproach, she was the mother of the heir to the throne, no scandal must ever touch her, the people grumbled but there was little they could do, and many tongues and ears were cut off, to give her credit Anne did try to ingratiate herself with her new subjects, especially with the lower end of society, wether out of a genuine desire to help the poor and needy or to garner love and respect we do not know, but she and her ladies put down their silk materials and elaborate adornments and began to stitch clothes for them, we do not know if she took or arranged parcels of food for them, but she also involved herself in numerous charities, and as we have seen many wrote to her asking her for help over many matters, she probably received more pleas for help than Cromwell, in fact throughout history queens have involved themselves in charitable causes, often founding monasteries and colleges and bequeathing large sums of money in their will, Mary Tudor used to visit the poor and sick with warm clothing medicines and baskets of food, their pity when they saw the humble dwellings they lived in compared to the luxeriousness of their own houses, must have moved them to pity, they did see how the other half lived and realised how fortunate they were, sleeping in feather beds dining off gold and silver plate, cushioned chairs and big roaring fires in the winter, the spaciousness of their many palaces and castles they resided in from time to time, the fine clothes and jewels they wore, and then the poor, those who survived on pottage a boiled stew made mostly of vegetables, no tapestries or carpets to warm their houses and delight the eye, it must have been an eye opener and this is a characteristic i love about Queen Mary Tudor, she had the common touch and the people loved her, she visited them in their humble dwellings herself and tried to help them, she did not turn her nose up in distaste and send one of her servants, but went herself, Catherine Howard also moved to pity by Margaret Pole when in the Tower, sent food and warm blankets to her, it shows a caring nature, a need to help those less fortunate than themselves.
Being Catholic with some Jewish blood, Martin Luther is not exactly a pin up boy of mine. Not because of his justified criticism of the Catholic church, but because his outbursts against the Jew were used as justification for pogroms and the Nazi holocaust..
I m glad Speaker Bercow has gone, he was an obnoxious man when I knew him at college and hasn’t improved since.
This is very true, Jane, his works on the Jews, which I had the misfortune of having to read at University, among other earlier Christian authorities, are very Anti-Semitic and not distant from the views of his time. The fact that Jewish money lenders could lawfully make interest on loans and had the protection of local rulers was one of a number of sources of resentment dating back to before the violence of the First Crusade, during which numbers of Jewish people in Germany had been slaughtered by mobs, which is why many later rulers protected them from the time of Frederick II who was enlightened and tolerant. Works like those of Luther, while not encouraging violence and murder, continued to dehumanize Jewish communities and his writing was one abused by later Nazi scholars and justified to unleash the Holocaust. Even the term Nazi scholars makes my skin crawl, but the sad truth is that from the late nineteenth century and during the 1920s and 1930s, long before Hitler even came to power, academics and archaeologists wrote papers on eugenics and racial purity and anti semetic history was studied to put the white “Christian” Arian race mythology forward as superior to everyone else. The fact that most Germanic people are actually Arian because they came from the areas around Iran and Russia had nothing to do with anything and the actual Indo European and Arian people are nothing to do with white supremacist ideas. In fact most would originally have been Asian or Persian in looks and only looking more Germanic after settling in Hungary, Denmark and the Steppes and then moving North 1000 years later during the early Roman periods. This was partly due to integration with national Gaulic tribes. This of course didn’t stop Germany’s history being completely rewritten and pick and mix texts being preserved to justify the evil which followed, everything else being destroyed or hidden and one was Luther’s treatise on the Jews. This is a terrible indictment against another wise popular and academic man who changed Europe for the next 500 years. This and his later regretted invitation to Charles V to deal harshly with the peasants involved in revolution against their lords in 1525,_known as the Peasants War, during which it is estimated some 25,000 people or more died horrible deaths, are contradictions and stains on his character which scholars have real difficulties in reconciling with a self confessed man of God. Perhaps we never will because they came from a time of violent war and thought and accepted ideas that are completely alien to modern ears and really have no place, especially when they are completely at odds with traditional Christian idealism and belief. The Nazis were evil men and women who twisted ideas from previous generations to form their own identity and ideological theories and they truly believed Jewish people were not human and should be exterminated. This doesn’t have its origins in Lutheran teaching. In fact the Lutherans stood against Nazi rule and formed a Confessing Church to defy Hitler. George Elser was one man who tried to kill Hitler in 1939 and he was a Lutheran. Karl Barth was a pastor who wrote against Hilter and Dietrich Bonhoeffer was involved in a high profile plot to kill Hitler and executed. His works are very popular today as spiritual guidelines. 100,000 to 200,000 Catholic pastors and priests left the Catholic Church in Germany to join the Confessing Church which was mostly Lutheran. Despite his reputation for remaining silent during this time Pope Pius actually helped several thousand people escape persecution through the Vatican and it’s networking of underground safe houses. This was as much a shameful period for the Church as it was a heroic one as many Catholics also died in concentration camps. Maximillian Kolbe died voluntarily in place of a Jewish father who was about to be shot because 16 people escaped from Auschwitz and Edith Stein is a German Catholic nurse who was shot by the Nazis for helping Americans and Canadian and British soldiers escape. The Nazis took some aspects of belief from the ancient world and some Christian symbols, mythology and science and completely distorted them to make their own institutions including a National Nazi Church in 1933. This didn’t honour the Cross or the Bible and Himnler even came up with some form of White Jesus figure who wasn’t anything like the Jesus of Scripture or anyone recognisable. All this added to their power and sustainability. The nation was sucked in by the economic miracle and the hypnotic propaganda and if they didn’t take part, shamefully gave passive consent to the inhumane treatment of Jewish and other ethnic communities, firstly pushing them into ghettos and then their removal to “work camps” which we now know were in fact the death camps of the Holocaust. It is little wonder that anti Semitic language and ideas are reviled and even though they still rise in places, in Germany such groups are outlawed, the Holocaust is remembered to make sure it isn’t repeated and in Germany denying it is a criminal offence. Germany as a nation had to live with her shameful history for generations and is acutely aware of it. She has taken greater steps than any other during her recovery and rehabilitation to make certain this horrible massacre of 6 million people never happened again. I doubt Luther and others would have given his consent to such evil, but his works certainly need to come with a warning of deep caution when studying them and such ideas put down when spouted as they are today. However, I have to stand with Tom Holland who has come out against calls in America yesterday to not use the term Anglo Saxon because it is now used as a hate term to justify the evil and moronic white supremacist notions of a small minority of white males. This group of people incorrectly call themselves true Anglo Saxons and therefore the original English national people. What about the Celtic people? What about the pre Celtic British people whose roots are from Eastern Europe and Africa? Most of those using this term do so to promote racial hatred and violence. Not only are they evil and moronic, they probably have very little Saxon or Angle blood in them as the term, first used by Alfred the Great, described a wide selection of Germanic people who settled in England between the fifth and eighth centuries, mostly peaceful settlements and who married local people. An historic term should not be dismissed because it has been wrongly acquired by a minority of morons who have no real place in the human race in order to promote their sick ideas which are similar to Nazi ideology. The term Anglo Saxon is an ancient and genuine racial and cultural classification which describes a people with their own language, arts, crafts, original backgrounds and who settled here and enriched our British culture. Telling academics not to use it in a historic setting is ridiculous. These people should be forced not to use and abuse it, not the rest of us and we should deal with them head on, without giving in to them. Incorrect use of language and identity by a loud minority can only be tackled by denouncing them as racist and banning hate speech. Education of people of the right way to treat fellow humanity and the right history of our people and cultural mix as a nation is how to put the message right, not political correctness that actually confused history and ethical origins even more.
I watched Dead Famous DNA and the subject was Eva Braun, after testing they discovered she had Jewish ancestors, it’s a great pity Hitler never knew imagine the fury ha!
He reminds me of a toad I can imagine him being obnoxious as a kid to.