{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1129",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1129,
    "subject": "\"Severus, bishop of Milevis\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-04T21:16:46+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-04T21:16:46+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0019-0048@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jon Camfield",
        "address": "griffjon at mail.utexas.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-04T21:16:46+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Severus, bishop of Milevis\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "While reading through some Augustine, I came across this tidbit.  While it\nseems to have little direct connection, Bathanarius does serve a similar\npurpose as Baldanders, showing Severus 'strange' technology (that at a\ndifferent time is seen as unimpressive) yet offering no explanations.\n\nBut anyway, the text:\n\n\"Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about this stone [lodestone] from\nmy brother in the episcopate, Severus bishop of Milevis.  He told me that\nBathanarius, once count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him,\nproduced a magnet, and held it under a silver plate on which he placed a\nbit of iron; then as he moved his hand with the magnet underneath the\nplate, the iron upon the plate moved about accordingly.  The intervening\nsilver was not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved\nbackwards and forwards below it, no matter how quickly, so was the iron\nattracted above.  I have related what I have myself witnessedl I have\nrelated related what I was told by one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes.\n Let me further say what I have read about this magnet.  When a diamond is\nlaid near it, it does not lift iron; or if it has already lifted it, as\nsoon as the diamond approaches, it drops it.  These stones come from India.\n But if we cease to admire them because they are now familiar, how much\nless must they admire them who procure them very easily and send them to\nus?  Perhaps they are held as cheap as we hold lime, which, because it is\ncommon, we think nothing of, though it has the strange property of burning\nwhen water, which is wont to quench fire, is poured on it, and of remaining\ncool when mixed with oil, which ordinarily feeds fire.\"\n\n(City of God, XXI, 4-5; Trans. Dods)\n\nThis 'sounds' like Severian speaking, to my mind, and many parallels can be\ndrawn, though some of which might be nothing more than pure academe-- the\napproach of the diamond causing the echnology to fail (Sev fighting with\nBaldanders), the rare stones which are in truth very common in other parts,\nnot to mention the 'burning in water' connection ('bullets of power' of the\nshore-people at Diuturna)\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------\nJon Camfield      \"GriffJon\"  \t|Webmaster, Plan II Honors Program:\nGriffJon at mail.utexas.edu   \t| www.dla.utexas.edu/~plan2\nHomepage, Gallery, Resume:\t|Channel Manager, Undernet #Poetry\n ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~griffjon \t| www.tripod.com/~ircpoetry\n------------------------------------------------------------------\n\"The most incomprehensible fact about nature is that it is comprehensible\"\n-- Albert Einstein"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}