Jude Seal's Notebook

Content Warning: Racism, Violence, Murder, Genocide.   This is the story of Johann Wilhelm ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann.  You’ve probably never heard of him.  He was a famous Sinti Romani boxer in the 1920s.  The reason that, particularly in the English speaking world, he is not particularly well known is because of the events described in this post.  Part of the goal in writing this is to draw more attention both to Trollmann himself, and also to the suffering undergone by the Roma including the Sinti during the genocide carried about by the Nazis and their allies.  It is a story of pain, suffering, and defiance, and both the story and the man deserve to be remembered. Johann Wilhelm 'Rukeli' Trollmann as an amateur boxer in 1928 Johann Trollmann was born on 27 December 1907, at Wilsche near Gifhorn in what was then the German Empire.   In the 1920s he rose to fame as a skilled boxer, known for his technique, hand speed, and movement.   He was ...

Four important perspectives on the theology of miracles - Augustine of Hippo, Caesarius of Heisterbach, Thomas Aquinas, and Fredericus Mercurius (known in vernacular literature as Freddie Mercury) In the 1989 single ‘The Miracle’ from the album of the same name, Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the legendary rock band Queen sings - “Every drop of rain that falls In Sahara Desert says it all It's a miracle All God's creations great and small The Golden Gate and the Taj Mahal That's a miracle…” - Queen, The Miracle . While there’s no precise record of his taste in music, it is a sentiment that Augustine of Hippo could quite possibly have approved of.  As Benedicta Ward explains in Miracles and the Medieval Mind for Augustine the only miracle was the miracle of Creation – in that it was a revelation of the mysterious creative power of God (Ward, p. 3).  Natural everyday occurrences from rainfall to child birth were all miracles contained within this singular miracle...

At the IMC Leeds 2018 the traditional session on medieval animals turned to the topic of bears.  Much was made of their significance of bears in the cultures of northern European nations.  Little was remarked upon of the existence of bears in the Central Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East – primarily the Syrian Brown Bear ( Ursus Arctos Syriacus ).  In response to a question stemming from her paper Irina Metzler remarked on the legal restrictions which were placed on people described as ‘those who keep bears’ – with the implication that this speaks to individual people rather than a particular group of people.  I would suggest an alternative possibility, which may stem from a confusion over a single term – Ursari.