Buzzards, Hawks and Ravens

(Account of Six Friend’s Life in the “Dark” Age)

by

Ruwen Rouhs

ruwenrouhs@hotmail.de

Preamble

Hi, boys and girls (are there any girls around anyway???)! You probably will wonder why the main character of this account and the narrator hold the same name. That’s quite simple. Ruwen, whose fate is featured below, was my grandfather, actually my great-great-grand-father. Using two times the preposition “great” is not enough. I have to use the term “great” about twenty-five times to end up in the period Ruwen was living, in the 14th century. Originally his name was not Ruwen, but Reuwen, a Hebrew name, meaning “behold, a son”. But he was careless in his letters and just scribbled Ruwen. This name stuck.

The next paragraphs deal with some basic information about the spiritual, social and geopolitical situation of the period Ruwen lived in. If you think it boring, just go ahead and start with Chapter One. But reading these few lines will help you to comprehend the characters and their fate.

*.*.*

Rudolf von Niwenburg

Ruwen was born on the verge of the 14th century, either in 1299 or 1300, under the rule of Albrecht I of Hapsburg, the son of the famous Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg and during the reign of the most controversial Pope Boniface VIII. This pope is more to my taste than Benedict XVI, a conservative thrown into turmoil of a faster and faster changing world.

Boniface, the founder of a university in the Holy City of Rome, had an extraordinarily sharp mind and his insight was superior even to that of many of today’s people, like Creationlists or the Intelligent Engineers.

Some of his convictions were revolutionary not only for his times. To list just four:

” The Christian religion is the spawn of human mind like the faith of Jews and of Muslims.”
 

“The Virgin Mary was not more of a virgin as my own mother, because they both gave birth to a son.”
 

“There is no resurrection of men, like there is no resurrection of my horse that perished yesterday.”
 

“There is not something like Dooms Day because the world will exist forever and the Dooms Day for a man is his death. But the visible world will exist forever.”
 

And in respect of love he believed firmly:
 

“Carnal knowledge and satisfaction of sexual needs is as much a crime as to wash one’s hands.”

Do you think his contemporaries respected his insights? Guess what they called him. They called him ANTICHRIST and attempted to burn his already decayed body to ashes.

*.*.*

Ruwen spent his childhood and youth in the part of Europe where nowadays Germany borders France in the west and Switzerland in the south. In the 14th century the Holy Roman Empire encompassed the region between Denmark in the north, the Papal State in Northern Italy in the south and even Sicily far in the south. This included the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine and Burgundy and stretched down to Marseille at the Mediterranean Sea. Situated in the East, bordering Poland and Hungary were Brandenburg, Bohemia, Moravia and Austria.

This Holy Roman Empire was not a centralized state like France or England. It was a quilt of about hundred independent states governed by local rulers like kings, dukes, margraves, counts, archbishops, bishops, abbots and of free imperial cities. The crown of the German King and the Emperor of the Roman Empire were not handed down from father to son. On the contrary, every Emperor was elected by a group of electors. The most important were the seven Prince Electors, the Archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the King of Bohemia.

This pioneering pre-democratic constitution of the Holy Roman Empire had a drawback. It resulted in a permanent fight for supremacy between different rulers and parties, even in bloody struggles for influence, peoples and land. You can compare it to the “Darfurization”, “Chechenyazation” or “Iraquization” of today’s conflicts, including the incinerations of villages, killing of able-bodied men, raping of women and virgins and abducting small innocent boys to become ruthless child soldiers. This constitution however also gave a chance for personal freedom of individuals.

*.*.*

Now what do you think, boys and girls? Was this Dark Age as dark as your teachers and preachers and lecturers told you? Do not believe in everything they are teaching you. Do not trust me too much either! However I assure you, I will try my best to tell you the true story of Ruwen and his friends; of Ruwen and Bastian, of Beritt and Anzo and of Jannes and Thimus, at least as the story was passed down to me over the last 700 years.

Now to another peculiarity of this story! The English used below is not the English a well educated college postgraduate of Oxford or Cambridge uses. It’s just the lingua franca of today, simply: I am using MPCPE (My Personal Computer Pidgin English).

Now let me start the account with Ruwen’s boyhood.

AUTHOR NOTE

The Common Buzzard, Buteo buteo, is living on small mammals, mainly, but also on small birds, lizards, frogs and insects. Occasionally he is feeding on carrion. He is not a carrion eater as the vulture. In Europe members of the genus Buteo are called buzzards and not hawks in America. In Europe the term hawk is used for members of the genus Falco, exclusively, like for example the Hobby (Falco subbuteo) or the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus). In the common language the term raven refers to members of the genus Corvidae, to Corvus corone and Corvus frugilegus, the crows, as wells as Corvus corax, the real raven.

I would like to express a special thank to Anthony and Paul for doing a great job by correcting all the wrong expressions, But my especial thanks go to B. who has revised the language used by a non native English writer.

Comments, reviews, questions and complaints are welcomed. Please send them to ruwenrouhs@hotmail.de or use the feedback form. And I would like to add, thanks for reading.

Copyright Notice - Copyright © April 2007

The author copyrights this story and retains all rights. This work may not be duplicated in any form – physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise – without the author's expressed permission. All applicable copyright laws apply.

Ruwen Rouhs