The Fortnightly Flag
21 November 2017
St Columbanus' Day
Columbanus died on Sunday, 23 November 615 AD so this week is his saint's day. The monasteries celebrated the death of a founder-saint rather than his/her date of birth as this was the date they were, in the words of the Salvation Army, "promoted to glory".
Been there Seen it Done it Got the T-shirt
Gender fluidity is much in the news although I think we need to be careful to distinguish between gender fluidity in a social context which is quite common and the biological state of being transgender which is very rare.
I have written about the subject in a social and political context in a stage play, a biography of sorts of another saint's life, that of the Byzantine Empress and Emperor Irene.
She was well-named. Eirene is Greek for 'peace'. She became Empress when she married Leo IV who, possibly as a result of a brain tumour, embarked on a regime of strict iconoclasm with predictably dire consequences for freedom of thought and worship. When he died of his illness Irene took over as Regent for their young son. When she took over the reins of power she did not relinquish them until shortly before her own death twenty years later.
The play was briefly titled 'The Empty Throne' because the Pope insisted that the imperial throne was vacant because it only had a woman sitting on it. In a manner of speaking he was right because women were ineligible for the position of Emperor. Irene had at this time been successfully ruling the empire for twenty years, the first woman to rule the Roman Empire, east or west, in her own right. Sadly what she thought of the Pope's comment is not recorded.
The title was used recently by Bernard Cornwell so I have reverted to my original title 'Irene Basileus' which is how Irene styled herself and demonstrates how gender fluidity works in politics. Basileus is the masculine form of the Greek word for emperor so she called herself Emperor Irene to indicate she was no longer the consort but held executive power.
I was not only interested in Irene's official change of sex but also that of her partner, Stauracius who also broke the mould of gender restrictions. Stauracius was a palace eunuch. Eunuchs were regarded as a 'third sex' and formed the equivalent of the civil service being held to exhibit less competitive traits than the testosterone-filled (and therefore more dangerous) elements in the army.
The palace eunuchs were not slaves necessarily. Many came from aristocratic families who saw a good career in the administration for their younger sons. Stauracius came from such a background. These androgynous young men in their fine silk robes were the models for angels in many mediaeval paintings.
Crucially for Irene, although like her Stauracius was ineligible to be Emperor (because he was regarded as being disabled - any physical disability ruled you out), he was able to act as commander-in-chief and lead the army, the one thing as a woman she couldn't do. Stauracius was her general as well as her principal adviser.
In the end he rebelled against her because she was contemplating a marriage alliance with Charlemagne which would have reunited the eastern and western Roman empires. He died on the eve of battle but, despite this last disagreement, Irene had him buried in the church where all the emperors were laid to Rest acknowledging that he had effectively been her co-emperor so it is a love story of sorts although not a conventional one.
Also in the news is a warning from the Prime Minister to the Russian Government telling them to desist from cyber attacks on UK technology.
In 1983 I published a book called The Xanadu Program under the pseudonym Richard Carroll. This was before computer technology had become ubiquitous. There were no computers in the office, no laptops or mobile phones. When the hero needs to make a phone call he has to find a call box. He is a new kind of policeman, a cyber security expert.
This was one of the first detective stories to feature computer crime although the old-fashioned baddies are pretty clueless about the new technology. The hero explains to the equally clueless police officer: "Satellite communications make on-line computing possible on a global scale...All you need is a PhD in Pure Mathematics, a course in software design and a telephone. The Russians are already at it. The best mathematicians can work out how to penetrate a computer up to Cray-1 level and they don't even have to leave Vladivostok.'
Forgive me for saying it but I told you so.
