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The Main Room of the Morgan Library in Manhattan
Today I visited the Morgan Library which was created to house the extensive collection of the finance titan J.P. Morgan. The building was extraordinary (it was originally created to house the one-of-a-kind J.P. Morgan) and the collection even more so. There were Mozart scores written by the hand of the master, a Gutenberg bible, and original copies (or manuscripts) of the most important books of the ages. Among these treasures of human thought the library also had a small collection of jewelry and valuables from the world of classical antiquity. I noticed these cicada brooches among the collection and thought to share them with you.
Four Cicada Brooches from the Eastern Germanic Goths (ca. 380 AD to 600 AD) silver, copper, and iron
The brooches were made by Germanic Goths living along the Danube and on the shores of the Black Sea during the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The cicada shape may have been an allusion to the rebirth of the soul (for the Goths were early converts to Christianity—albeit Arian Christianity). The Goths of this time were pushed from their original homelands by the great hordes of Attila and they were everywhere on the borders of the Roman world. The Goths themselves seem to have even thought of themselves as Romans themselves, although the authorities in Constantinople sometimes saw it differently and periodically embarked on programs or reconquest.
Cordovan Penny-loafers
As is usual in New York’s wet cold winters, my favorite everyday shoes have disintegrated. They were a pair of old fashioned cordovan penny-loafers and, as I discarded them, I wondered why the lovely maroon/burgundy color is called cordovan. It turns out that the simple question has a complicated answer which winds back to late antiquity when the city of Corduba was the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior (in fact the city was initially named Kartuba by the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca). When the Roman empire broke into pieces, Hispanica Ulterior was overrun by Vandals who were subsequently defeated and replaced by Visigoths (a sequence of internecine conquests and reconquests which lasted from the 5th through the 7th centuries).
Visigoth Brooches from Southwest Spain ca. 6th century AD (in the Walters Art Museum)
The Visigoths were a branch of the Germanic tribe of Gothic people who converted to Arian Christianity (remember the heretic Arius from the story of St. Nikolaos—his theological survived in the Viisgoth kingdoms of Western Europe). The Visigoths were evidently great leatherworkers/cobblers, and they reputedly created the original cordovan leather. This did not initially refer to the color but was a special sort of extremely tough leather which was made from the flat muscle (“the shell”) of a horse’s rump. Cordovan leather was especially suited to boot toes, straps, and archery equipment—all of which had to be especially tough and thick.
Columns of the Great Mosque of Cordoba (now the Cathedral of Cordoba)
Corduba was captured by new invaders in AD 711 and became part of the Umayyad Caliphate which was run from Dasmascus, however the region broke away and became an independent emirate in AD 766. This state (named al-Andalus) subsequently grew into a powerful caliphate itself. During the 10th century, Cordoba, then known as Qurṭubah, was one of the largest and most cultured cities on Earth.
The Flag of Córdoba
In 1236, King Ferdinand III of Castile captured Qurtubah and renamed it Córdoba. Although the city declined in the Renaissance era it evidently remained famous for its leatherworks. The English first began to use the word “cordovan” to describe the oxblood color of cordovan-style leather goods in the 1920s.
Anyway, so that’s the history behind the name of the color of the shoes I just threw away. I guess they were named by Hamilcar Barca…
Hamilcar Crushing the Roman Navy and…wearing a Cordovan Color undertunic
ferrebeekeeper 