Italy: Woman Killed Opposing Arranged Marriage

From AFP:

A Pakistani woman has died in Italy after her husband beat her with a brick for opposing the arranged marriage of her daughter, triggering a wave of outrage among Italian politicians on Monday.

The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butt, was hospitalised with a cranial traumatism and a broken arm after her 19-year-old brother beat her with a stick in the courtyard of their building in Novi, near the northern city of Modena.

According to Modena prosecutors' initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butt, a 53-year-old construction worker, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother Umair attacked his sister.

"The victim did not want her daughter to have an unhappy relationship like the one that had been forced on her," said deputy Modena prosecutor Lucia Musti, who is in charge of the investigation.

"The mother and the daughter were on the same side and this could be called a 'cultural' homicide because in addition to domestic violence there is the issue of the traditions that may have motivated the crime," Musti said.

The family's three other children have been taken in by Italian social services.

The Italian political class reacted with indignation at the incident which was highly similar to the cases of a girl of Pakistani origin in 2006 and a Moroccan girl in 2009 who wanted to lead Western lives with Italian boyfriends.

Lecture: Circumscribed by her Sex: Women and Religion in the High Middle Ages

From St Augustine.com:

Flagler College's Community Lecture Series takes place at 10 a.m. Tuesday with a program by John D. Young, assistant professor in the liberal studies department. Young's talk will be "Circumscribed by her Sex: Women and Religion in the High Middle Ages."


Young's research interests lie in the cultural and religious history of the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on Jewish-Christian relations, ecclesiastical politics, and religious communities.

Lectures begin at 10 a.m. in the Flagler Room at Flagler College, 74 King St. Reservations are required as space is limited. The lecture will last approximately one hour and will be followed by a coffee and pastry reception. Call 819-6282.

Review: She Wolves - The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

From the Financial Times:

Shakespeare dubbed Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, the “she-wolf of France”, a title that Helen Castor applies to four women who grasped regal power in England between the 12th and 16th centuries: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Margaret of Anjou and Isabella of France.

Castor, however, gives their medieval stories a Tudor frame, opening with the dilemma of the dying Edward VI confronted by the fact that all the contenders for the throne are women, and concluding with the dramas of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, the triumphant Mary and the resolute Elizabeth I.

Through the tales of her heroines Castor traces the background to this indictment, before showing how it was negotiated by Mary and Elizabeth Tudor. She skilfully combines this analysis with driving narratives, using vivid details from contemporary chronicles to bring those distant days alive. She Wolves makes one gasp at the brutality of medieval power struggles – and at the strength and vitality of the women who sought to wield royal power.

Laura Francatelli: Titanic Story Published

From BBC News:

A woman's account of escaping the sinking Titanic in 1912 has been published for the first time.

Laura Francatelli from London said she heard an "awful rumbling" as the liner went down and "then came screams and cries" from 1,500 drowning passengers.

Her account was recorded in a signed affidavit for the official British inquiry into the disaster.

The historic document is expected to sell for up to £15,000 when it is auctioned in Wiltshire on 16 October.

Miss Francatelli, who was 31 at the time, was travelling with baronet Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lady Lucy Christiana, as his secretary.

The account describes how they boarded one of the last lifeboats containing just five passengers and seven crew, admitting they did not consider going back for survivors.

Historic Highland Women

From BBC News:

The lives of women in Highlands high society in the 18th and 19th centuries are to be explored in a lecture by historian Dr Stana Nenadic.

Her talk, in Dornoch, draws on research of letters, memoirs and poetry written by the wives and daughters of lairds and noblemen.

The lecture will be dedicated to the late historian and feminist Sue Innes.

It forms part of the 10th annual Women's History Scotland event, hosted by Dornoch's UHI Centre for History.

Dr Nenadic's free public lecture next Friday will be followed by a conference on Saturday called The Women in/on the Land (Scape): Gender, Space and Environment in Women's and Gender History.

It will also be held in Dornoch.

Black Death: New Theory

From Discovery News:

Anthropologists said on Friday they had confirmed long-running suspicions that a germ called Yersinia pestis caused the plague that wiped out an estimated third of Europe's population in the Middle Ages.

Teeth and bones sampled from 76 skeletons found in "plague pits" in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and sequenced for DNA intrusion are conclusive evidence that Y. pestis was to blame, they said.

Y. pestis has been in the dock for more than a century as the source of so-called Black Death, which gripped Europe in successive outbreaks from the 14th to the 18th century.

But scientific data to convict the bacterium have until now been sketchy or debatable.

As a result, a clutch of rival theories have blossomed, including the contention that an Ebola-style virus or the anthrax germ were to blame.

Entry From Cavendish Family Manuscript

An entry from the Cavendish Family as reproduced in Guthrie's Peerage of 1763:

Elizabeth Hardwick, also known as Bess of Hardwick, was godmother to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and her husband was one of the gaolors of mary Queen of Scots.

Marriage Dispensation Granted to Robert Stewart

Reproduced from Andrew Stuart's "Genealogy of the Stewarts" (1798) - sourced from Papal Archives - and published in Origines Genealogicae, the marriage dispensation granted to Robert Stewart (King Robert II of Scotland) when he married Euphemia of Ross in 1352.

4000 Years of Choice

From Women's Rights - Change Org:

The imagery that springs to mind when we think about abortion is typically pretty bleak. Coat hangers, screaming protesters, and other symbols of struggle and tragedy have come to be associated with the evolution of reproductive rights.

4000 Years for Choice works to transform this narrative from cautionary and solemn to “personal, positive, and powerful,” with colorful posters celebrating various milestones in the age-old effort to prevent and terminate pregnancies. And for those who mistakenly think that controlling reproduction is strictly a modern issue relevant only in this post-Roe v. Wade era, the 4000 Years for Choice timeline, which begins around 3000 BCE, provides a thoroughly enlightening history of abortion and contraception. Artist and creator Heather Ault says the three goals of the project are to produce broader symbols of choice, illustrate the natural role of reproductive control in all previous societies, and celebrate and reclaim the women’s health clinics around which much of the modern abortion debate is centered.