Word: barbarians
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...King Arthur ever existed, he was hardly the Lerner & Loewe hero who ruled so romantically over the fabled Camelot. He was more likely a quarrelsome and ruthless local chieftain who badgered monks, stole their cattle, and led a hardy band of early English Christians in clobbering barbarian invaders at the battle of Mount Badon in A.D. 517. Still, avid Arthurians yearn to prove either version-and it now looks as though some hard archaeological evidence is at hand in a hilly pasture at Cadbury Castle, 100 miles southwest of London...
...greatest beauty aid of all-soap -was an invention of the barbarian Gauls, who made it from goat's tallow and beech ashes. Though the Greeks and Romans praised cleanliness, neither used soap. As late as 1853, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone condemned soap as "most injurious both to the comfort and health of the people." Fortunately, some prejudices come out in the wash...
...imported scholarly monks and artisans from Italy, Spain, Ireland and England to convert Aachen into St. Augustine's Civitas Dei, the divine city, in the barbarian heartland of Europe. He encouraged one monk, Alcuin, to make script more readable; Carolingian minuscule is still the foundation for the text type used in present-day printing. He built an octagonal chapel that still stands in Aachen, along the lines of the mosaic-coated San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. He even stole marble columns from Ravenna to make his church more authentic...
Cartooning the Gospels. Before Charlemagne, the barbarian art of Europe was a welter of interlace−a primitive, restless filling of space that spread tendrilous patterns across armor, manuscripts and utensils. The worldly, warring Emperor, who inspired the epic Song of Roland, brought back the three-dimensional image of man. Carved in ivory book covers, illuminated on paper (see opposite page), the human form struggled through spaghetti-like barbarian curlicues and unearthly Eastern symbolism. Carolingian images of Christ are distinguishable from Eastern icons by the absence of a beard, the presence of youthful muscles...
...that his greed was all for the good. In his youth, cruelly confined by his enemies to a doughnut-shaped yoke, the future Khan keeps his eye upon the whole of Asia, plus adjacent territories. He dreams idealistically not of sacking, plundering, pillaging and rape, but of a large barbarian Camelot in which every man will be a Mongol or a Mongol's brother. Opposed to progress is the evil Jamuga (as usual, Stephen Boyd), whose notion of sharing is to have his way with Genghis' ravishing wife (Françoise Dorl...