Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 May 20

= May 20 =

Name of 1624 papal bull?
According to the article at Urban VIII:

Pope Urban VIII issued a 1624 papal bull that made the use of tobacco in holy places punishable by excommunication; Pope Benedict XIII repealed the ban one hundred years later.

What was this bull called? Can I find its text, or an image of a copy, anywhere? It is not listed at List of papal bulls. HLHJ (talk) 00:41, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * One was for sale a few years ago here. DuncanHill (talk) 00:49, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not seeing it in List of papal bulls. The obvious title, had the Pope known, would have been Bull Durham. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:05, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Should be Cum ecclesiae, but the date was 30 January 1642, not 1624. - Nunh-huh 01:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * To be pedantic, I don't think it's a "bull", which is a specific kind of papal document. In general usage everyone always seems to call everything issued by a pope a "bull"...our List of papal bulls also suffers from this problem. Cum ecclesiae appears to be just a plain old papal letter. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Is there an "official" list somewhere? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure...the Vatican website has lists of papal documents divided by pope but it only goes back to Leo XIII, which is not very far in papal terms. But the definition of "bull" and "letter" (and the more recent "encyclical" have changed over time, and initially a "bulla" is just the seal attached to the document, so something might be called a "bull" that is not exactly a bull in the modern sense. I haven't found a particular list but I'm sure there is one. I would be surprised if some dusty old 19th century German historian didn't make a list of them. There's probably something useful in the sources of our own List of papal bulls article, but our list itself is unreliable. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:36, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Aslan Verlag
Hi there, I have seen some books which are printed in the early 1900s from a publisher called Aslan and the place of print is - as the book says - in Grenzach-Wyhlen. I asked the government of Grenzach-Wyhlen (Germany) if they can tell me anything about the publisher Aslan, for example in which street he was based or when did he closed his publishing house, or when he started his business but the government told me, they have neither any information about this company neither ever registered any publisher called Aslan or Aslan Verlag in Grenzach-Wyhlen. Can somebody help me and find out anything about the publisher Aslan? It sounds a bit strange that the government of a city has no information about a publisher of over 100 books (when I google for "Aslan grenzlach-wyhlen" I am finding many references to books published by this comapny). Thanks! --Saegen zeugen des sofas jehovas (talk) 03:51, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It is strange that a book printed in the early 1900s would use a town name that did not come into use until 1975: before that those were two separate towns (each significant enough to have their own railway station), and I would expect a printing works to be in one or the other. Wymspen (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm finding works published in the 1990s by this publisher. They all appear to be by one Mehmet Aslan. DuncanHill (talk) 12:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Could it be that some of the books are "re-prints" (ie books that were originally published in the early 1900s, by another publisher, and subsequently re-published by a modern company)? I also note that there is an Aslan Publishing Co. in the US (named after the CS Lewis character)... but that seems unrelated to this query. Blueboar (talk) 14:51, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No, they include references to works published in the 1980s and 90s. DuncanHill (talk) 15:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In this one there is an address in Grenzach-Wyhlen for Mehmet Aslan. (bottom of page 4). DuncanHill (talk) 15:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Why was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania so preposterously underpopulated?
Such a vast territory only had at most 3 million people according to Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The article refers to several devastating wars but it's not like devastating wars aren't a routine part of the pre-modern world. There must have been periods of stability in order for such a large area to be held together. So why was this place so underpopulated throughout its existence?

Muzzleflash (talk) 08:54, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That number is not particularly low compared to other contemporary regions; cf: List of countries by population in 1700. Note that the world population in 1750 was about 790M. —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2018 modified: 2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 06:03, 21 May 2018 (UTC)  (UTC)2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You also have to take into consideration the physical geography of the Grand Duchy... and ask whether it could have supported a larger population? The answer to that is "no".  Much of historic Lithuania (comprising parts of modern Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) was either step-land or swamp... not really conducive to farming (and thus supporting large population centers) given the technology of the time. Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Geography of Lithuania might be helpful in that regard (map shows mostly wetland and highland). —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 15:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * See also List of countries by population in 1000 and Medieval demography. Alansplodge (talk) 19:12, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Geography of Belarus and Geography of Ukraine are actually more helpful in this regard. Much of the duchy's territory was known as the Wild Fields and was very sparsely inhabited for reasons listed in the article. --Ghirla-трёп- 12:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Muzzleflash -- I'm not sure where the 3 million figure comes from, but the eastern territories which were part of Poland-Lithuania during the late middle ages included large areas which were vulnerable to incursions of successive waves of steppe horse-nomads, from the Huns to (most destructively) the Mongols. The balance of military power didn't decisively shift from horse-nomads to settled agriculturalist communities until the 16th century. (Much of Russian history during the 16th and 17th centuries was concerned with mopping up various remnant "Hordes"/Khanates or political structures based on historic horse-nomad conquests, and opening up such areas to peasant settlement.) AnonMoos (talk) 21:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC)