Peter the Venerable and the First Latin…

Istria, the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea, located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner, had been pillaged after the fall of the Western Roman Empire by the Goths, the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Avars.

Annexed to the Lombard Kingdom in 751, it was subsequently annexed to the Frankish kingdom by Pippin III in 789.

Frankish commander Eric of Friuli had been killed in 799 on the border between Dalmatian Croatia and Carolingian Empire in the Siege of Trsat, a Croatian victory.

The Placitum of Riziano of 804 was held in the Parish of Risanum, or Rižan, which was a meeting between the representatives of Istrian towns and castles and the deputies of Charlemagne and his son Pepin.

The report about this judicial diet illustrates the changes accompanying the transfer of power from the Eastern Roman Empire to the Carolingian Empire and the discontent of the local residents. (Oto Luthar, ed. (2008). The land between: a history of Slovenia. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. p. 100.)

Istria afterward has been successively controlled by the dukes of Carantania, Bavaria and by the patriarch of Aquileia.

The medieval Croatian kingdom had held only the far eastern part of Istria (the border is near the river Raša), but in the late eleventh century had lost it to the Holy Roman Empire.

The coastal areas and cities of Istria in the ninth century had come under Venetian influence, and in 1267 many coastal towns are formally incorporated with the Venetian state.

The city of Trieste, located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, had developed into a free commune at the end of the twelfth century.

The burghers of Trieste, after two centuries of war against the nearby major power, the Republic of Venice (who had occupied Trieste briefly from 1369 to 1372), petition Leopold III von Habsburg, Duke of Austria, to become part of his domains.

The agreement of cessation is signed in October 1382, at the St. Bartholomew's church in the village of Šiška (apud Sisciam), today one of the city quarters of Ljubljana.

The citizens, however, will maintain a certain degree of autonomy well until the seventeenth century.

Enea Silvio de'Piccolomini, after studying at the universities of Siena and Florence, had settled in the former city as a teacher, but in 1431 had accepted the post of secretary to Domenico Capranica, bishop of Fermo, then on his way to the Council of Basel (1431–39).

Capranica had been protesting against the new Pope Eugene IV's refusal of a cardinalate for him, which had been designated by Pope Martin V. Arriving at Basel after enduring a stormy voyage to Genoa and then a trip across the Alps, Enea had successively served Capranica, who ran short of money, and then other masters.

He had been sent by Cardinal Albergati, Eugenius IV's legate at the council, on a secret mission to Scotland in 1435, the object of which is variously related, even by himself.

He had visited England as well as Scotland, had undergone many perils and vicissitudes in both countries, and has left a valuable account of each.

The journey to Scotland had proved so tempestuous that Piccolomini swore that he would walk barefoot to the nearest shrine of Our Lady from their landing port.

This proved to be Dunbar; the nearest shrine was ten miles distant at Whitekirk.

The journey through the ice and snow had left Aeneas afflicted with pain in his legs for the rest of his life.

It is only once he arrived in Newcastle that he had felt he had returned to a civilized part of the world and the inhabitable face of the Earth, Scotland and the far north of England being "wild, bare and never visited by the sun in winter".

In Scotland, he had fathered his second natural child, the other one having been born in Strasbourg.

Upon his return to Basel, Enea had sided actively with the council in its conflict with the Pope, and, although still a layman, had eventually obtained a share in the direction of its affairs.

He had supported the creation of the Antipope Felix V (Amadeus, Duke of Savoy) and had participated in his coronation.

Enea then withdrew to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Emperor Frederick III court in Vienna.

Crowned imperial poet laureate in 1442, he has obtained the patronage of the emperor's chancellor, Kaspar Schlick.

Some identify the love adventure at Siena that Enea related in his romance The Tale of the Two Lovers with an escapade of the chancellor.

Enea’s character had hitherto been that of an easy and democratic-minded man of the world with no pretense to strictness in morals or consistency in politics.

He now begins to be more regular in the former respect, and in the latter had adopted a decided line by making his peace between the Empire and Rome.

Being sent on a mission to Rome in 1445, with the ostensible object of inducing Pope Eugene to convoke a new council, he had been absolved from ecclesiastical censures and returned to Germany under an engagement to assist the Pope.

This he did most effectually by the diplomatic dexterity with which he had smoothed away differences between the papal court of Rome and the German imperial electors.

He plays a leading role in concluding a compromise in 1447 by which the dying Pope Eugene accepts the reconciliation tendered by the German princes.

As a result, the council and the antipope are left without support.

He had already taken orders, and one of the first acts of Pope Eugene's successor, Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455), is to make him Bishop of Trieste.

Asher Lämmlein, a German born Jew who appears in Istria, near Venice, in 1502 and, encouraged by the works of Isaac Abrabanel, proclaims himself a forerunner of the Jewish Messiah, declares that if the Jews show great repentance and charity, the Messiah will not fail to appear in six months.

He gains a troop of adherents who spread his prophesies though Italy and Germany, and his message meets with such acceptance that the year becomse known as the "year of penance."

Existing institutions are willfully destroyed in the belief of coming redemption and a return to Jerusalem.

However, Lämmlein dies or suddenly disappears and the extravagant hopes of his followers come to an end.

A second assault by a Tyrolean force several weeks later is an even greater failure; Alviano not only routs the Imperial army but also seizes Trieste and Fiume, forcing Maximilian to conclude a truce with Venice.

...Istria, and ...

Stendhal introduces social realism to the French novel in his brilliant 1830 masterpiece, The Red and the Black, whose major theme is the individual against society, and whose title refers to the choices open to his protagonist: army or church, radicalism or reaction, courage or hypocrisy.

Having returned to government service after the July Revolution, he is appointed to a minor consular position in Trieste.

Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma, written in fifty-two days and published in 1839, is set in Italy, which he considers a more sincere and passionate country than Restoration France.

An aside in this novel, referring to a character who contemplates suicide after being jilted, speaks about his attitude towards his home country: "To make this course of action clear to my French readers, I must explain that in Italy, a country very far away from us, people are still driven to despair by love."

Drawing from the Napoleonic Era and the Italian Renaissance to create a fanciful setting for his reexamination of the theme of the individual against society, Stendahl tells the story of an Italian nobleman in the Napoleonic era.

Later admired by Balzac, Tolstoy, André Gide and Henry James, and eventually adapted for opera, film and television, the novel is inspired by an inauthentic Italian account of the dissolute youth of Alessandro Farnese.

Stendahl, born Henri Marie Beyle, the son of a doctrinaire, unimaginitive, well-to-do Grenoble lawyer that he grew up resenting, had entered the Polytechnic Institute in Paris in 1799.

Trained by his maternal grandfather in rationalism and emotionally close to his aunt following the death of his adored mother at seven years of age, the seventeen-year-old Beyle had dreamed of writing plays rather than attending classes.

The military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire were a revelation to Beyle.

He had been named an auditor with the Conseil d'État on August 3, 1810, and thereafter took part in the French administration and in the Napoleonic wars in Italy.

He had traveled extensively in Germany and had been part of Napoleon's army in the 1812 invasion of Russia.

Stendhal had witnessed the burning of Moscow from just outside the city.

Appointed Commissioner of War Supplies and sent to Smolensk to prepare provisions for the returning army, he had crossed the Berezina River by finding a usable ford rather than the overwhelmed pontoon bridge, which probably saved his life and those of his companions.

Stendhal had arrived in Paris in 1813, largely unaware of the general fiasco that the retreat had become.

Stendhal had become known, during the Russian campaign, for keeping his wits about him, and maintaining his "sang-froid and clear-headedness."

He also maintained his daily routine, shaving each day during the retreat from Moscow.

After the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, he left for Italy, where he has settled in Milan.

He forms a particular attachment to Italy, where he will spend much of the remainder of his career, serving as French consul at Trieste and Civitavecchia.

Stendhal's Memoirs of a Tourist, published in 1838, further contributes to the development of the cult of the self in literature.

Robert Whitehead equips the torpedo with a servomotor in 1876 to assure a predetermined path through the water.

Richard Francis Burton's best-known book is perhaps his translation of The Kama Sutra.

In fact, it is untrue that he was the translator, since the original manuscript was in ancient Sanskrit which he cannot read.

However, he had collaborated with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot on the work and provides translations from other manuscripts of later translations.

The Kama Shastra Society had first printed the book in 1883 and numerous editions of the Burton translation are in print to this day.

His English translation from a French edition of the Arabic erotic guide The Perfumed Garden is printed in 1886 as The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui: A Manual of Arabian Erotology.

Burton is awarded a knighthood (KCMG) by Queen Victoria on February 5, 1886 .

He has written a number of travel books in this period that have not been particularly well received.

His best-known contributions to literature are those considered risqué or even pornographic at the time and which are published under the auspices of the Kama Shastra society.

These books include The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883) (popularly known as the Kama Sutra), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) (more commonly known in English as The Arabian Nights because of Andrew Lang's abridged collection), The Perfumed Garden of the Shaykh Nefzawi (1886) and The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night (sixteen volumes 1886–1898).

Burton had long had an interest in sexuality and some erotic literature.

However, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 had resulted in many jail sentences for publishers, with prosecutions being brought by the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

Burton refers to the society and those who shared its views as Mrs. Grundy.

A way around this was the private circulation of books among the members of a society.

For this reason Burton, together with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, had created the Kama Shastra Society to print and circulate books that would be illegal to publish in public.

Burton has mastered at least twenty-five languages—or forty, if distinct dialects are counted.

One of the most celebrated of all his books is his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night in ten volumes, (1885) with six further volumes being added later.

The volumes are printed by the Kama Shastra Society in a subscribers-only edition of one thousand with a guarantee that there will never be a larger printing of the books in this form.

The stories collected are often sexual in content and are considered pornography at the time of publication.

In particular, the Terminal Essay in volume ten of the Nights contain a fourteen thousand word essay entitled "Pederasty" (Volume 10, section IV, D).

Burton postulates that male homosexuality is prevalent in an area of the southern latitudes named by him the "Sotadic zone".

Rumors about Burton's own sexuality are already circulating and are further incited by this work.