They Changed Their World and Ours 3 Quiz

Answer: Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was born in Dublin, Ireland. After eventually, moving to England, he was elected to the House of Commons, where he served as a member of the Whig Party from 1765 until 1794. Burke was a staunch defender of the monarchy and believed that political virtue was derived from tradition and moral authority while democracy would result in nothing more than mob rule. He believed that people, when being honest with themselves, desired to be ruled and guided and that private property was the basis of successful and healthy social structure. In his book "Reflections on the Revolution in France", Burke denounced the French Revolution for its wanton destruction of life and for its utopian visions which he felt were doomed to lead to worse institutions. In fact, long before the twentieth century, he very precociously anticipated the horrors of such movements as fascism and communist dictatorships. His support for the American Revolution and a greater leniency toward Britain's other colonies and possessions was due to his distaste for the British government's harsh and stubborn policies toward other people and their property. In other words, in general, he did not support revolution--until people's rights were trampled upon and disregarded. Despite his sympathies for the Americans, however, he was never able to eliminate his view of them as "savage men".

Edmund Burke wrote several philosophically significant texts, such as "A Vindication of Natural Society" and "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", both published in 1756. The latter is a rather lengthy book that focuses on everything from cloudy skies to the symptoms of love, one of which he described as "breath drawn slowly, with now and then a los sigh". In 1770, he published "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents", and it is from this text that we find the following words: "[W]hen bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemtible struggle". This is the closest one gets to any written statement that conveys the idea from the popular quotation, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". In other words, there is no written record one may use to verify that Burke ever wrote or said these exact words.

Answer: Klemens von Metternich

Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) was born in Koblenz, Germany, and at one point in his youth could speak French much better than Germany due to his living so close to Germany's border with France. Due to his service to the Austrian Empire (he had established a detente with France by negotiating the marriaged between Napoleon and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise) he was awarded the title of Prince of Austria in 1813. He then negotiated Austria's joining the Allies in the War of the Sixth Coalition, which ultimately sent Napoleon into exile. He served as Chancellor of State for the Austrian Empire from 1821 to 1848, when he was forced to resign. After a brief stay in London, England, he returned to Austria and served as an advisor to Franz Joseph. However, so strong was his influence on the shape, policies, and politics of Europe that the years from 1815 to 1848 have been named the "Metternich Age". For a man who seemed to possess little to offer the leaders of Europe, he did manage to bring stability to an entire continent ravaged by war and revolution.

Some have criticized Metternich, for he did not support democracies in Europe. He referred to democracy as a "decomposing principle" and once offered a dire warning to a visiting Harvard professor that the American experiment could not "end in a quiet, ripe old age". Metternich was also known for his mastery of espionage and intrigue, and he was a well-known admirer of Machiavelli. Many were so suspicious of him that when he died, a diplomat remarked, "I wonder what he meant by that ["that" referring to his death]". Interestingly, Henry Kissinger, who was an admirer of Metternich and wrote significantly of him in his dissertation, received a collection of Metternich's writings as a gift from Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who was President of the French Republic from 1974 to 1981.

Answer: Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard (1882-1945) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a child and teenager, he was fascinated with science and technology and an avid reader of science fiction. His father encouraged him with gifts like a telescope, a microscope, and a subscription to scientific magazines. Goddard also loved the outdoors, and, out of all of his interests, he was drawn primarily to flight--not only did he make detailed observations of birds but he also experimented frequently with kites and balloons (at one point attempting to make a balloon out of aluminium).

Eventually, his devotion to such studies and experimentation led to his two significant inventions that became crucial to developing space flight: the multi-stage rocket and the liquid-fuel propelled rocket, both patented in 1914. Over his lifetime, he owned 214 patents, including one for what would essentially become the bazooka used by the U.S. military, and his ideas contributed to the development of not only space flight but atmospheric study and the development of ballistic missiles. As seems to be always the case with genius, Goddard was tremendously ridiculed during much of his career by other professionals and the press for his ideas about flight. Some felt that not only was mechanical flight most likely impossible but that, even if something could be created to fly, it could not be accurately and intelligently steered or guided. Goddard proved all of them wrong with his methods of steerable thrust, three-axis control, and gyroscopes.

His writings are also highly regarded. His "A Method of Reaching High Altitudes", published in 1919, is considered one of the most important texts about rocketry from the twentieth century.

Answer: Heinrich (Henry) IV

Heinrich (Henry) IV, King of the Germans, King of Italy and Burgundy, King of the Romans, and Holy Roman Emperor (1050-1106) was one of the most powerful individuals in Europe during the eleventh century. He and his armies were frequently engaged in civil wars and border wars throughout his reign so that he might maintain control over the Holy Roman Empire as well as increase the size of its area of control.

During the councils of 1074-75, Pope Gregory VII successfully pushed forth his agenda to reclaim the church's authority to invest ecclesiastical offices. This act seemed a deliberate attempt to simultaneously weaken the Holy Roman Empire, despite Henry IV's loyal adherence to papal decrees and church policies. The results of the decisions made at these councils tremendously affected Germany as many of the bishops were also owners of huge parcels of land under the feudal system, land that was tied to the bishop's diocese. Thus, Henry IV lost nearly half of the land under his dominion and weakened the unity of what did remain under his control. Henry responded by calling together his own synod, the Synod of Worms, which deposed Gregory VII as Pope. Gregory responded in turn by excommunicating Henry and all those in power who sided with him. Henry then marched an army into Italy, and the Pope sought refuge in his castle at Canossa. Rather than press his advantage militarily, Henry approached the castle on foot and famously stood in the snow for three days, penitently begging the Pope's forgiveness. The motivation behind this action remains a mystery, but many believe that he was truly worried about his having been excommunicated and that he felt the fastest, most efficient way to maintain his power was to humble himself before the Pope rather than start a war. However, Henry never adhered to whatever agreement he made with Pope Gregory VII, and the result was several battles that led to Henry's invasion of Rome a couple of different times and to his eventually deposing Gregory once again and replacing him with Antipope Clement III. Eventually, Gregory died and a later Pope, Paschal II, re-excommunicated Henry. More importantly, back in Germany a few factions had developed against Henry, and he had to expend a great amount of time and resources battling revolt. Most disheartening was that his own son Henry V rose up against him, claiming that he was the true King of Germany and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire as his father had been excommunicated. He was able to gather a worrisome number of adherents to his claim. Meanwhile, Henry IV had been captured, imprisoned, and forced by Paschal II to surrender his crown and repent of his error of having declared Clement the Pope. However, Henry IV eventually escaped, rallied a signifant number of soldiers, and defeated his son and his forces in a great battle near Vise in Lorraine of France. Unfortunately, Henry IV died a few days after his victory due to an illness.

To say this seems strange, but it appears that Henry IV ended up causing the greatest impact on Europe by leaving the earth. At his death, there remained no one who was strong and stubborn enough to continue to fight against what the Roman Catholic Church wanted.

Answer: Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi (Amerighi) da Caravaggio (1573-1610) is one of the most influential Italian artists. His groundbreaking use of light and shadow--chiaroscuro--and his depiction of classical, Biblical, and saintly subjects as human (both physically and emotionally) instead of divine had a tremendous impact on painters of his own time as well as the time to come. In fact, his style became so well known that it has its own name--Caravaggisti. Rubens, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet all are indebted to Caravaggio.

Of course, what contributes to Caravaggio's memorable reputation is not only his artistic genius but his disposition. Many of his colleagues during his time referred to him as crazy, and his volatile character led to overly sensitive responses to critics and violent outbursts. He was known to have participated in a great number of violent brawls and to have killed someone during one of them. He was also known to be rather paranoid as he frequently fled from one place to another, claiming that his "enemies" were pursuing him, and at one point he began sleeping fully clothed and with weapons. Of course, some of his fear was truly warranted as his face was disfigured by a band of thugs who captured him in Naples and cut up his face with knives before he escaped them. Still, much of the time, his behavior was irrational, and many scholars today argue that both his violence and paranoia are consistent with lead poisoning. The remains found in what is believed to have been his grave are filled with abnormal amounts of lead, and the paints of that time were highly composed of lead salts. He also died early--at the age of 38--and while some argue that he was murdered, just as many argue that he seems to have died from some mysterious illness, which again could have been lead poisoning.

Caravaggio's choices for depicting important Christian figures in art viewed by a very Christian public were often quite controversial. His depiction of Mary, the mother of Christ, in "Death of a Virgin" as a bloated body laid out in a not so glorious manner made her appear very human, and, of course, many officials were outraged when they learned that Caravaggio used a drowned prostitute for the model. However, this is certianly not the only painting to create controversy. His "Conversion on the way to Damascus" depicts the Apostle on his back on the ground at the bottom of the painting while Paul's horse takes up much of the painting's space as well as a majority of the lighted area of the canvas. One outraged church official directly asked Caravaggio why he gave so much attention to the horse while Saint Paul lay disrespectfully on the ground. The official accused Caravaggio of treating the horse as if the horse were God. Caravaggio responded, "But he stands in God's light".

Answer: Moliere

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673) took the name Moliere around the time of his imprisonment for failure to pay his debts in 1645. This name change was done most likely to save his family from embarassment, not only from the stigma of his entering into bankruptcy and having gone to jail but also because actors were not considered respectable individuals (interestingly, they were not allowed to buried in hallowed ground).

Moliere's significance is due to his creating a style of comedy that juxtaposed the normal against the abnormal through characters who represented the eccentricities of human nature, and he did all of this with a masterful use of a written language as well. "The Imaginary Invalid", which premiered in 1673, provides a good example of an eccentric character--Argan, who is a hypochondriac who fears both death and doctors. "The Misanthrope", which premiered in 1666, is often considered Moliere's masterpiece and revolves around Alceste, an antisocial character who hates all of humanity including himself but then finds himself madly in love with a woman whose behavior he cannot abide.

Of course, much of the drama he wrote and staged created a great amount of controversy and challenged the standards of what was acceptable to his society. "Tartuffe", which premiered in 1664, was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in France because of the play's attack on religious hypocrisy. In fact, the Archbishop of Paris at the time thrreatened to excommunicate anyone who performed in the play as well as anyone who watched or read it! "Dom Juan" (spelling is correct), which premiered in 1665 and was based on the legends of Don Juan, lasted for fifteen performances before it was banned from the stage because of its glorification of a libertine. On a different note, a critic once accused Moliere of being a plagiarist of material from a number of plays spanning from the classical age to the modern one. Moliere responded, "I claim my property wherever I happen to find it".

Moliere died from complications of tuberculosis only hours after acting in a performance of "The Imaginary Invalid". During the performance, Moliere collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing, and after a brief rest insisted that he finish acting his role. Immediately following the play, he suffered a worse haemorrhage and was taken home, where he died. Because, as stated earlier, he was not allowed burial in hallowed ground, he was buried in a plot reserved for infants who had not been baptized. Perhaps, this represented the greatest of the hypocrisies he was constantly ridiculing in his plays; he was wildly popular among commoners and nobles alike, yet in death he was treated as an untouchable.

Answer: Joseph-Marie Jacquard

Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) did not invent the loom itself. This machine was created by the Egyptians around 4,000 years before Jacquard. However, after all of this time, weaving cloth into various patterns still required the work of several hands, particularly if one were in the business of factory production. Many had tried to create a loom that could perform the job of weaving at a much faster rate, and a man by the name of Jacques Vaucanson managed to do just that in 1728. There was a huge complication, however, as the machine was so enormous it was too impractical to use.

Then Jacquard entered the scene. He had been a weaver himself early on and then became interested in mechanics as he began experimenting with the invention of different kinds of looms. In 1804, he found poor Vaucanson's machine on display as a curiosity in a museum, but he was inspired by it to go home and begin thinking in a different way. He then devised and a system of movable perforated cards that would regulate and guide the cloth patterns, and he added the apparatus to a smaller loom. The jacquard or jacquard loom soon began to replace a great number of workers in the factories as the machine required only one operator. Many Lyonnais silk workers grew angry that they were now jobless and dumped several of Jacquard's inventions into the Rhone, but they were not enough to fight the changing tide. By 1812, there were eleven thousand jacquard looms in operation throughout France, and Joseph-Marie Jacquard found himself a very wealthy man. Obviously, a great social change we now refer to as the Industrial Revolution was beginning to occur throughout Europe and eventually much of the rest of the world.

Answer: Mehmed II

Mehmed II "The Conqueror" (1432-1481) broke whatever control the Christians believed they still had over southeastern Europe and struck fear into the hearts of the remainder of Europe that perhaps a Muslim onslaught was well on its way, particularly after he turned the great church of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Of course, this invasion did not completely occur, but Mehmed II certainly enlarged his territory. At the height of his power, he controlled not only most of what is considered modern-day Turkey but much of what consists of modern-day Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia.

Romania, or Wallachia as the area was then called, was a particular hot spot for Mehmed II. Vlad Tepes (Dracula) and his brother Radu had been prisoners of Mehmend's father Murad II for four years, and when they were released, Vlad now possessed a bitter hatred for all things Turkish. He reconquered Wallachia for his own, and when Mehmed sent envoys to him to demand an expensive tribute, Vlad had them all killed by having their turbans, which they refused to take off for anyone but Allah, nailed to their heads. When Mehmed sent a force to barter for peace, Vlad's forces ambushed them and impaled nearly all of them, thus earning his name "The Impaler". With more forces, he marched through Bulgaria scorching the land and killing what he numbered to be nearly 29,000 Turks. Forced to deal with Vlad, Mehmed sent greater numbers of soldiers and met with startling defeats until Vlad was betrayed by one of his most trusted allies and he lost control of Wallachia.

Mehmed II was known to be as brutal as Vlad. For example, Mehmed once asked one of his ministers to deliver one of his minister's sons to him for sexual pleasure. When the minister refused, Mehmed had the minister and his two sons decapitated and their heads brought before him at a banquet.

Answer: Peter Abelard

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was born in Le Pallet, just outside of Nantes in Brittany, France. He excelled in the study of liberal arts, particularly in the study of dialectics, and his pursuit of learning eventually brought him to Paris, where he quickly rose to fame due to his powerful and convincing arguments heard by many through Ableard's teaching and his participation in debates. However, his ideas being contradictory to those of the current established standards, he was forced to create his own school for a while.

While in Paris, he also began a passionate romance with Heloise d'Argenteuil, which has become quite legendary. When her uncle and guardian discovered the relationship, he forbade Heloise to see Abelard ever again. Nevertheless, they continued to meet in secret until Heloise became pregnant and was ushered off by Abelard to Brittany to stay with his family, where she bore a son she named Astrolabe (yes, after the instrument). Meanwhile, Abelard and Heloise were married in an attempt to calm her uncle's rage. However, after her uncle began announcing the legality of their marriage to society, Heloise denied she was married, perhaps to spite her uncle. Abelard then sent her to a nunnery for protection from her uncle, but the uncle misinterpreted this move to be an attempt of Abelard's to rid himself of Heloise. Thus, the uncle sent a group of thugs to castrate Abelard, and they were successful. In despair, Abelard pleaded with Heloise to commit herself fully to becoming a nun while he himself became a monk at the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

However, he could not keep away from study for long, and he published a few works such as "Sic et Non" and " Theologia 'Summi Boni'". Abelard eventually entered into conflict with St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who worried that Abelard's scholastic approach to faith and God would ultimately be detrimental to the Christian faith and mankind's belief in God. St. Bernard believed that the validity of Christianity rested on belief alone, not rational evidence. St. Bernard brought his concerns before Pope Innocent II, who excommunicated Abelard and all who followed him, imposed perpetual silence on Abelard, and ordered him to be forced to live the rest of his days confined to a monastery. However, Peter the Venerable of Cluny arranged a peace between Abelard and Bernard and convinced the pope to lift the excommunication and all other punishments by volunteering to keep the elderly Abelard with him at Cluny for the rest of Abelard's life, which turned out to be quite short at that point.

Answer: James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941) was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland; however, in college he refused to play a part in the nationalist movement supported by his fellow students and eventually left Ireland, returning rarely and living most of his life elsewhere. Nevertheless, he entitled his first major work, published in 1914, "Dubliners" and rarely wrote about anything else but Dublin. "Dubliners" is a collection of short stories but has its greatest effect when the book is read as a whole and the stories are read in order. In this manner, the book illustrates Joyce's attempt to present an understanding of Ireland and life in general through epiphanous moments from childhood through adulthood. Some of the most well-known stories from the collection are "Araby", "Counterparts", and "The Dead". Joyce attended Jesuit schools as a child and seemed to be headed toward the priesthood for a career until he grew disillusioned with Christianity. "Araby" captures that disillusionment with descriptions of yellowing pages of a dead priest's papers and romance fiction as well as a scene of the young boy fantasizing of carrying a chalice through the throngs of dirty commoners.

The serialization of "Ulysses" in the American magazine "The Little Review" was temporarily halted while the U. S. Post Office brought charges of obscenity against the book in a U. S. district court. Despite the prosecution's showing references to sexual acts such as masturbation, the judge sided with "Ulysses", and the ban was lifted.

"Finnegan's Wake", published in 1939, remains one of the most difficult books from the twentieth century, and it took Joyce seventeen years to compose it. Because of its idiosyncratic language consisting of several words Joyce created as well as its free dream associations, stream-of-consciousness, and obscure literary allusions, it remains one of the most unread books of that time.