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< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Seville</h1>
"It's an adventurer's paradise, and it's more exciting on every road and every street corner than anywhere else."
This is the Spanish masterpiece "Don. A quote from Quixote describing Seville. As a shipping gateway between the Iberian Peninsula and the New World, Seville in the 16th and 17th centuries became the most dynamic first-tier city in Spain and even In Europe because of its monopoly on trade.
The Spanish drama "The Black Death" is set in Seville at the end of the sixteenth century, and the degree of restoration shows the renaissance and the appearance of the Spanish big cities during the public health emergency.
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With the arrival of the wealth of the New World, the city quickly gathered a group of dignitaries and dignitaries, as well as trade and diplomatic envoys from all over Europe. The city continued to expand, and the need for mansions, churches and other infrastructure for the noble and wealthy brought jobs to many merchants, construction workers, lumberjacks, quarries, carvers, ceramic workers, goldsmiths, and painters.
Plaza de España in the center of Seville
At the same time, the wealthy city attracted landless peasants, beggars, and criminals because of its relatively generous ecclesiastical philanthropy. Between 1530 and 1600, the population of Seville soared from about 50,000 to 150,000, becoming the most populous city in Spain at the time and one of the three largest cities in Europe.
Here you can see artisans, merchants, sailors, soldiers, African slaves, Muslims and immigrants preparing to make a living in the New World. People flock from all over Spain, Portugal, Flanders, Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in search of opportunities to make a fortune, but most people tend to find nothing but poverty and chaos.
The city is shining with wealth from the American continent, while the people at the bottom still live in the streets and alleys, with little health protection, and plague and famine can kill them at any time.
On the streets of Seville, well-dressed aristocratic and wealthy merchants often go hand in hand with orphans who gang up to commit crimes to survive. On one side are the inquisitions arresting infidels, and on the other side are the dirty streets full of beggars, scoundrels, and prostitutes, where religious fanaticism and debauchery coexist.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2</h1>
From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the Black Death was like the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all of Europe, and under the repeated ravages of the epidemic, from London to Vienna, from Marseille to Moscow, tens of millions of people died. To know that at that time in Europe, the city with a population of 100,000 was already considered a metropolis, and you can imagine how high the fatality rate of the Black Death was.
In the face of the epidemic, Spain naturally cannot be left alone. The play begins with a large outbreak of plague in Seville at the end of the sixteenth century. Those who had become infected were placed in shacks outside the city for quarantine.
At that time, it was widely considered an effective protective tool, which was a bird's beak mask. The snout resembles a bird's beak with small holes to facilitate breathing, and the cloth bag inside the beak is filled with spices and herbs to insulate it from droplets and odors. It was accompanied by a waxed robe and leather trousers, gloves and shoes to protect the body, similar to today's protective clothing. But these are difficult for ordinary people to get.
From a professional point of view, medical workers hope to lock down the city as soon as possible.
But Seville was a port trade hub, and the wealth the Spanish Empire had seized from the New World was constantly diverted through Seville to other regions. One-fifth of the real money went into the king's vault, and the rest of the large amount passed in Spain and was remitted to the bankers' families in Genoa and Germany to repay the imperial loans. Along with the arrival of gold and silver are exotic specialties: cocoa, potatoes, tomatoes, pineapples, peppers and so on.
The blockade of the city means that the entry and exit of shipping will be completely stopped, the outside gold, silver and materials will not come in, and the material basis on which the trading city depends will no longer exist. So where does the cost of dealing with the plague and the subsequent unrest caused by food shortages come from?
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The Municipal Council of the Governor of Seville, the Senator of the City, and the Councillors of the City administers the main public administration matters of the city. Crises of all kinds, large and small, have tested the decision-making and implementation capacity of municipal councils: plagues, harvest failures, famines, riots, the genuine naturalization of the Morriscos (Spanish Muslims and their descendants who converted to Christianity).
At the moment of the plague, the municipal council is still wavering from side to side about whether to lock down the city or not.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >4</h1>
Against this backdrop, the male protagonist Mateo risks his life to rush from Toledo to Seville, fulfilling his promise to the deceased and taking the only son of his dead best friend out of the city. Because of the plague and the possibility of locking down the city, Mateo's risks are not small, not to mention that he has been hiding from the Inquisition, and returning to Seville is nothing less than throwing himself into the net.
Mateo has a real archetype of the character, and he was the first priest to translate the Bible into Spanish, Cassio doro. morality. Leonard. The priest, who practiced in a monastery outside Seville, came into contact with Lutheran teachings by chance and became a proponent of the Reformation. The Inquisition investigated him on suspicion of Protestant tendencies, and Rayner fled to Geneva and later to London as a Protestant refugee.
Reluctantly, the British extradited him to Spain for trial out of diplomatic pressure, but fortunately there was no danger, although he was sentenced to pagan leader, his writings were also banned, and his punishment for burning only needed to burn a statue instead.
After that, Reina left Spain again, went to the European continent, and during his exile began translating the Bible into Spanish, which was finally published in Switzerland in 1569. Because the cover image is a bear that steals bees, it is called the "bear version of the Bible".
The cover of the bear version of the Bible also appears in the play
The Bear Bible was the first complete Spanish Bible, and it was only when many people participated in the translation that it was finally completed, and Rayner was the first to start the work. Translating the Bible was not easy at that time, requiring reference to Hebrew, Greek, and Latin religious books. Moreover, this Spanish Bible, which is a blossoming incense outside the wall, was not lifted until more than two hundred years later, and was allowed to be printed and distributed in Spain.
Renner later settled in Frankfurt for more than twenty years, where he officially converted to Lutheran and eventually died as a citizen of Frankfurt. While in Frankfurt, he worked as a silk merchant to support his family, and the status of a silk merchant was installed in the play on the hero's dead best friend Herman.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >5. Female painter</h1>
In the play, after the death of the silk merchant Herman, he left behind an illegitimate son, Valerio, whose will was to entrust the illegitimate son to Mateo to take him out of the city.
Herman's widow, Theresa, was a female painter of aristocratic origins. At that time, women learned to paint, not so that they could compete with men to make a living with this skill, but to make them better perform the duties of wives and mothers.
Due to gender limitations, they were unable to systematically learn human anatomy in the same way as the male painters of the same period. As aristocratic women at that time, even painting nudes was not allowed, so the female painters in the play could only secretly pay for prostitutes to paint at home.
Compared with the male painters of the same period, women were restricted in the process of learning to paint, leaving them at the starting line. In the face of large-scale religious or historical works with multiple figures, which often require richer experience in human body painting, female painters can only look at the world, so the works that have been handed down are mostly small still lifes, self-portraits and individual portraits. But all this has not stopped women from stepping into the palace of painting art.
Named after the Renaissance Spanish female court painter Sofonisba. Anguísola, for example, was admired in Italy for his distinctive style of painting by Michelangelo. Because of her talent and loyalty, after the death of her benefactor Queen of Spain, Elizabeth of Valois, King Philip II, the nearly 40-year-old female painter, was given to a Sicily nobleman, who also paid a large dowry for Anguesola. Not only that, but the Spanish royal family also gave her a fixed pension every year. You see, as long as there is a good craft, the blind date introducer is not the seven aunts and eight aunts, but the most powerful king in Europe.
A self-portrait of the court painter Anguesola and her portrait of the Queen of Spain, Elizabeth of Valois
The legendary woman, known in Europe for her paintings, remarried in her fifties after the death of her husband, and lived to the age of 93. Because of his friendship with the royal family, fame and wealth, and no children, Anguesola has been teaching up-and-coming artists to paint for the rest of his life. Her achievements have undoubtedly inspired more women to pursue careers in the arts.
Compared with the female painter, eugenia, the prostitute who acts as a model in the play, is at the bottom of the food chain.
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Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Spain was relatively tolerant of the sex industry, and it was surprising to me that local and even churches at all levels of Spain were involved in brothels. After the two kings Isabella and Fernando regained their lost territory, they even used the right to run brothels as a means of rewarding the princes.
With the soaring population of Seville and the effects of the plague famine, the number of widows, abandoned women, orphans, and single mothers continued to grow. If you can't get into or don't want to go into a monastery, you can't rely on marriage to fill your stomach, and society doesn't provide other opportunities for a living, then selling yourself for food and clothing is a choice that these women have no choice.
The Church's attitude toward prostitutes was initially ambiguous, but the rapid expansion of the city of Seville, the influx of a large population, the large number of single young men, and the absence of sailors, mercenaries, and dignitaries who needed to seek excitement would pose a great challenge to the social order if not released.
The Church believes that without prostitutes appeasing men who are eager to do so, women in good families may be seduced or violated, and single men may also turn to male-male affection because they lack access to sexual desire, which will lead to other more serious crimes or social scandals. The existence of the ancient profession of prostitutes is conducive to the maintenance of social order and traditional family ethics.
As a result, the prostitutes run by local governments and churches became a spectacle of Seville. The female painter mentioned above was accompanied by a housekeeper, where she spent money to order a young lady to come out and paint as a model at home.
The government and the church do not intervene directly in running the business, but regularly send people to inspect and collect taxes. The owners of prostitutes often employ pimps to supervise prostitutes not to run out to pick up private jobs, to stay in the museum to pick up customers honestly, to provide them with food and clothing, and third to protect them from kidnapping or violence. But all these "services" or "protections" that provide accommodation and food are simply because these women count as "fixed assets" of prostitution, tools for making money. When prostitutes are old and sick, they are often sent away and left to fend for themselves.
The economic exploitation of prostitutes by pimps is very severe, and prostitutes are often fined for "breaking the rules" in one way or another, and the food and clothing provided by brothels is never free, and must be deducted from the income of the prostitute's skin and meat business. Although the Church and the authorities have repeatedly stated that pimps may not prevent prostitutes from entering the monastery from liang, in practice it is impossible to prohibit pimps from holding prostitutes in their hands for "debt reasons".
It was not until the early seventeenth century that Spain declared the industry illegal, and a large number of brothels were forced to close. But there are also external reasons, syphilis is said to have appeared in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century and spread quickly, and it was the fear of the spread of this venereal disease that prompted the official and the church to issue an injunction.
In the play, the brothels run by the seville municipality and the church have several types of people in real history: Jews, Muslims, married men and clergy. Jews and Muslims are absolutely not allowed to have sex with Christian women, or they will be punished by death. And the Church's decree prohibiting married men or clergy from prostitution has never been seriously enforced.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >7. Religious Court</h1>
Suppose that during this period, Jews entered brothels under the jurisdiction of the Church and prostituted themselves, and slept with Christian women, who should be in charge of this and who has the right to impose the death penalty? That, of course, was the Inquisition.
Shortly before the two kings Isabella and Fernando captured Granada from the Muslims and regained all of Spain, the first Inquisition was established in Seville. In the three hundred years since the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, about 3,000-5,000 of the 150,000 indicted have been executed, accounting for about 2.7% of all cases. Compared to the witch hunts in Scotland, France and Germany, where the number of executions was between 40,000 and 60,000, the death penalty rate in the Spanish Inquisition was much smaller.
Another Spanish drama, Isabella I, restores the god of the oil paintings that conquered Granada
The probability of this death sentence is beyond my original imagination, and I am under the impression that the Spanish Inquisition is known for its cruelty and bloodshed. The source of this stereotype was caused by the fact that from the sixteenth century onwards, Spain's rival countries, such as England, the Netherlands and Germany, spared no effort to smear Spain and Catholicism in propaganda wars. Rich Spain is portrayed as an evil place of darkness and ignorance, a propaganda tactic known as Spain's "black legend."
Protestant propaganda against the Spanish Inquisition made the "Black Legend" a great success, but it cannot be said that the Black Legend has no basis in reality. Some of the accusations are not entirely smear, such as the persecution of minorities.
Between 1567 and 1616, 71 men were burned at the stake in Seville for same-sex sexual acts. It is worth noting, however, that attitudes toward gay men vary from region to region of Spain, with Castile as an example, where same-sex sexuality is only investigated when it is related to pagan beliefs, and simple homosexuality is often left out. But in Aragon, the investigations launched against gay men have been much harsher.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >8. </h1>
At the end of the sixteenth century, the plague of seville, which was so large, shook the deep-seated position of the Catholic Church, as people began to question why the omnipotent God watched them struggle in the mire and remain indifferent. It is customary to blame the scourge on minorities: Jews, pagans, lepers, homosexuals. From top to bottom, it is believed that when these sins of heresy are cleansed, the plague will naturally disappear.
But those celebrating the end of the Black Death did not know that more than half a century later, an even more intense epidemic swept across Spain from Seville. The worst plague in centuries on the Iberian Peninsula is known as the Great Plague of Seville (1647–1652).
Compared with the plague that killed about 8% at the end of the sixteenth century, the later Great Plague of Seville caused the rich port city to lose nearly half of its population in just a few years.
All this, in fact, at the end of the first season, through the mouth of the doctor, laid the groundwork.
Finally, it will be revealed that one of the filming locations of "The Black Death", the Royal Palace of Seville, was also selected by the Game of Thrones crew, and appeared in the Game of Thrones series as the royal garden of the Dorne family.
As for the characters in the play, what kind of bizarre and dangerous they have experienced, and whether they have escaped in the end, please watch the play by yourself.
I can only say that the details are really very conscientious, from the plot to the characters and the costumes.
END
The image comes from the Internet
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