Henry VIII's Bible

The Times has a fascinating article about an edition of the Bible that I'd not heard of before:

In July 1535 the industrious London stationer Thomas Berthelet, who also served as “King’s Printer” to Henry VIII, published a selective text of the Latin Old and New Testaments, in the Vulgate version of St Jerome: this seems to have been, perhaps surprisingly, the very first bible to have been printed in the British Isles.
[Snip]
Berthelet’s isolated novelty, a stout but handy small quarto, laid out in double columns, is titled Sacrae Bibliae Tomus Primus (ie, the first volume – only – of the Holy Bible); it consists of the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges, Psalms, Proverbs and the Sapientia or Wisdom of Solomon (a late Greek text now consigned to the Apocrypha), plus the entire New Testament, including Revelation. A preface addressed to the devout reader, headed “Pio Lectori”, apologizes none too humbly for the apparent eccentricity of leaving out more than half the canonical Old Testament, and promises to collect all the omissions in a supplementary volume, which either never appeared or (far less likely) has perished.
[Snip]
One might assume at first that the writer of such a preface, who begins by routinely puffing the product – the Scriptures – as “true riches” valuable beyond any worldly goods, but also takes specific credit for its selection, arrangement and issue, was the publisher Berthelet himself, [...] However, a second look reveals that the author, hence the conceiver or designer of this idiosyncratic recension and its robust apologist, was not Thomas Berthelet, nor any of his corresponding or in-house scholars or “correctors of the press”, but his own royal patron, Henry VIII.
[Snip]
You know well”, the prefacer declares,
how our Lord God, whose words or scriptures we are discussing, ordered that when a king sat on the throne of his kingdom, he should write for himself the law of God, and having it with him, should read it every day of his life, so that he should thus learn to fear the Lord his God, and guard His words."
This is a reference to Deuteronomy 17:18–19, employed to justify (as only a king could) the present reordering and selection of scriptural materials, offered to the pious but perhaps obstinate reader who found any “departure, however slight, from ancient practice or established form . . . an offence to religious scruple”.

French want Boney III Back

From the Telegraph:

He was the last emperor and the first president of France but for 120 years the Emperor Napoleon III's remains have lain in England.
Now the French want them back. Tomorrow Christian Estrosi, the secretary of state for overseas territories, will arrive in Britain to request the return of the remains of the exiled emperor and his wife, Empress Eugénie, which lie in a crypt in St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire.
Mr Estrosi said: "This trip will be for me an occasion to send a clear message to the British - to thank them for all they did for the imperial couple in exile but also to remind them that we have some rights over them."
But Father Cuthbert, the Benedictine monk who heads the abbey, is unlikely to agree to Mr Estrosi's request to return the remains of Napoleon III, who sought refuge in England with his family and a few faithful followers after his defeat in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870.
The monk said he hoped the minister was coming to ask forgiveness for having left the monastery so long without news or support.

Bravo Fr Cuthbert!

Mad King Ludwig Murdered?

From the Telegraph:

A century-old mystery surrounding the fate of the “Mad King” who built Bavaria’s celebrated fairytale castles has taken a new twist after an historian claimed that he was murdered.
The allegation comes from an art expert turned sleuth who claims that contemporary portraits of Ludwig II prove that far from killing himself in a fit of melancholy, he was assassinated to put an end his extravagant spending.
Ludwig’s body was found on June 13, 1886, in the knee-deep waters of a lake not far from Neuschwanstein Castle, his most fanciful creation, whose soaring towers and turrets now draw tourists from all over the world.
After a cursory investigation, the death was declared suicide by drowning - a verdict fiercely protected by his successors, who have forbidden any modern scientific examination of his remains.
But art historian Siegfried Wichmann now claims that he can prove that Ludwig was murdered, after an investigation that has taken up half his life and has drawn upon his own wartime experience. “I can say that, professionally, I have never been wrong in all my career,” said Mr Wichmann, who is the leading authority on Bavarian paintings from the late 19th century.
[snip]
A secret Bavarian society known as the Guglmänner, whose members dress in capes and hoods and claim to be guardians of the German monarchy, has long questioned the official version of his death. But the calls for Ludwig’s body to be exhumed and given a modern autopsy have now grown louder. Last month, Detlev Utermöhle, a Bavarian banker, made a sworn statement claiming that he had seen the coat Ludwig was wearing on the day of his death, and that it contained two bullet holes.

Strange history theory of the day...

In the Telegraph:

One of the so-called Princes in the Tower allegedly murdered by Richard III actually survived and ended life as a bricklayer, according to an historian.
David Baldwin, who lectures at the University of Leicester, believes that Edward, the elder prince, died of natural causes and that Richard, the younger Prince, was secretly sent to live with his mother.
After their father, King Edward IV, died, the princes - aged 12 and nine - were placed in the Tower of London in 1483 for their own protection by their uncle, Richard III.
He then had them declared illegitimate and claimed the throne.
The skeletons of two children discovered in the Tower in 1674 fuelled the belief that Richard III had them murdered. But in his book, The Lost Prince: The Survival of Richard of York, Mr Baldwin argues that after Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth, the prince was taken to St John's Abbey in Colchester, where he worked as a bricklayer.
There, he kept his identity a secret for fear of reprisals from Henry VII and he died in 1550.
"There are several pieces of circumstantial evidence to suggest they were not killed," said Mr Baldwin.
"When Henry VII became king, he visited Colchester no less than four times during his reign, which he didn't do for other regions.
"The impression is that there was something going on there behind the scenes."

Napoleonic Campaign

From the Telegraph:

Mr Napoleon - great-great-grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome, King of Westphalia - is standing for parliament in Fontainebleau and environs. A pro-European, he's campaigning under the centrist banner of presidential candidate François Bayrou.
If Mr Bayrou, head of the Union for French Democracy, wins the French presidency - a prospect no longer improbable - Mr Napoleon stands a good chance of being elected on his coat tails, ousting the current Right-wing UMP deputy Didier Julia, in power since 1967.
If so, Mr Napoleon could well find himself thrust to the forefront of French politics - if only because of his attention-grabbing name.
(snip)
Incredibly, Mr Napoleon is also 1,120th in line to the British throne, thanks to the marriage in 1807 between Jerome Bonaparte and German princess Katherine of Wurttemberg.
(snip)
Charles grew up resenting his ultra-conservative father, Prince Louis, who all his life dreamt of an Imperial restoration. In the late 1960s Charles was a student radical in Paris, eventually earning a PhD in economics from the Sorbonne. The author of serious books about his illustrious family, he openly identifies with the "rebels" of the Bonaparte dynasty.
His divorce from distant cousin HRH Beatrice de Bourbon and remarriage to a commoner provoked his late father to disinherit him as head of the Imperial House a decade ago. Mr Napoleon claims the real reason for the short-lived succession crisis was Prince Louis' disapproval of his "republican and democratic" values.
Five years ago he moved to Corsica - birthplace of Napoleon I - and forged a political alliance with leftists to take control of Ajaccio's city council. Astonishingly, Mr Napoleon's enemy in that battle was the right-wing Bonapartist party, which he dismisses as a "corrupt clan".

Savoy Showdown...

The royalists among my readership will be interested in the following story from the Telegraph:

While the titles and honours of the Italian royal family have not legally been recognised since 1946, when the republic was founded, Prince Victor Emmanuel, 70, has ruled over the House of Savoy since the death of his father, Umberto II, in 1983.
However, his cousin Amedeo, 63, the 5th Duke D'Aosta, strenuously maintains it is he, not Victor Emmanuel, who is the true heir to the defunct monarchy.
Last summer, Amedeo declared that he had changed his name to Savoy and would assume power. However, his attempt to seize control will be fiercely fought by Victor Emmanuel in a closed hearing at a court in Arezzo at an undisclosed date this month.
Victor Emmanuel has said Amedeo's membership of the dynasty has now been cancelled, "because of his gravely injurious behaviour towards the honour of our royal person." In addition, he denounced Amedeo and his son Aimone to the court for usurping the name of Savoy and the position of family head.
(snip)
Amedeo believes his cousin gave up the right to call himself Umberto II's heir when he married a Swiss biscuit heiress and champion water-skier without his father's permission in 1971.
To back up his claim, he has produced letters between Umberto and Victor Emmanuel, in which the last king warned his son about the consequences of marriage without his express permission.
"It could bring about the loss of all your rights to succeed as Head of the House of Savoy and your claim to the throne of Italy, reducing you to the status of a private citizen," wrote Umberto. When Umberto heard that Victor Emmanuel had married Marina Doria secretly in Las Vegas, he wrote again in panic, reminding him "word for word" of what he had said.
(snip)
His sister, Princess Maria Gabriella, has switched her allegiance and is backing Amedeo's claim. "My father asked to be buried along with the royal seal, and that was his way of showing that the dynasty ended with him," she said.

Oh, and it seems as though a portrait of Lady Jane Grey has been discovered.