Marino Faliero, the Beheaded Doge

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We mentioned this in a listener Male segment not long ago, but we did finally take that trip to Italy that we originally planned all the way back in and then had to postpone repeatedly because of the COVID nineteen pandemic. So the trip was to Rome and parts of Tuscany, and then I stayed a few extra days to go to Venice, and of course through all of that saw all kinds of things that could become podcast episodes. One of them was in the Doges Palace in Venice, which was both the Doges residents and the seat of the Venetian government until the fall of the Venetian Republic in seventeen. So in that palace, the chamber of the Great Council is the largest chamber. It's built to a comminate a council that sometimes had more than two thousand members, and it's just a truly striking room. A lot of the rooms in the palace are apart from its size, which is very large. The walls and the ceiling are adorned with artwork depicting scenes from Venetian history and allegorical representations of the republic. And then all around the room, in a row just below the ceiling our portraits of seventies six doges. Each of them has a banner noting what his major accomplishments were, except for one, the fifty five Doge of Venice, is instead represented by a black banner that says, in Latin, here is the place of Marino Faliero, decapitated for his crimes. So the audio tour that we were listening to said he had been executed for treason, So of course I had to find out what's that story there. And we're gonna start with just a bit of background about the Republic of Venice and how the office of doe evolved. Although people had settled already on various islands in the northwestern Adriatic Sea, what we know as Venice today started to coalesce around the end of the seventh century. Early on, the ruler of Venice was known by the Latin title Dukes that's d u x, which eventually morphed into doge, which was used in Venice and some other parts of what's now Italy. Yeah, and in Italian that final e is pronounced a little bit more, but in English we say it doze. Sometimes does is translated as duke. That also traces back to that same Latin origin. But in most places duke is a hereditary title, and although there were some attempts early on to make the office of doze a hereditary one, in the end in Venice it explicitly was not. Historically, dukes have also been sovereign rulers of duchies, which was also a different set up from the role of doge. The first doj of Venice is generally recognized as Paolo Luccio, anafesto, who was elected in the year six nineties seven. But at that point Venice was not a sovereign nation. It was part of the Eastern Roman Empire under the command of the exarch of Ravenna. Under the Eastern Roman Empire, the office of doze started out primarily as a military role. Even as the role of doze expanded out beyond something involving mostly military stuff, there was still some power wrangling going on between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. So, for example, in the eighth century Emperor Leo the Third banned the use of religious icons and ordered their destruction. This policy of iconoclasm was deeply controversial, and it was reviled by many of the Venetian clergy. So the clergy elected their own doge, or so a patdo Sometimes he's described as the first true doge of Venice because he was the first one to be elected without the Byzantine Empire's involvement. But Leo did not recognize Venice as independent. After this election, he offered the dose the Byzantine title of Hippatos, which he accepted, so that made him at least nominally part of the imperial courts, not just does on his own off by himself. These sorts of power struggles continued until the late ninth century, when Venice established itself as an independent republic governed by a popularly elected doge, although its relationship with the Byzantine Empire was often fraught. From there, Venice quickly grew into a major maritime power. In many ways, it had to be almost every basic necessity had to be brought in from elsewhere. Venice used its maritime power to conquer additional territory and as leverage when negotiating trading agreements with other nations and empires. By the eleventh century, Venice had become a major trading center, moving huge amounts of things like luxury goods, spices, wood, and precious metals. Although at some points slavery and slave trading were banned under Venetian law, Venice also participated in slave trafficking and there were enslaved workers within the Venetian Republic. During this approximate period, the office of Doge had become incredibly powerful, but in the late twelfth century, the Venetian government started formally trying to limit that power. The process of electing a new doge shifted from a popular vote to a nomination process that was carried out only among the ducal counselors. The government also started delegating the doges decision making power to other government bodies. So there was the Great Council, which had sometimes as many as two thousand members. The doge effectively reported to the Minor Council, which was made up of six ducal counselors. They kind of oversaw all of his asians. Then there was the Council of forty or Quarantina, which acted as a supreme court. In addition to limiting the DOJ's power, these changes also put more power into the hands of the Venetian nobility. By this point, Venice was extremely wealthy, powerful, and renowned for its shipbuilding, both for the quality of the ships themselves and the speed at which they could be built. In the twelfth century, Venice built a fleet for the Fourth Crusade, which is of course its own entire story, but briefly. Pope Innocent the Third called for this crusade to try to bring Jerusalem under Christian control. French and German forces were supposed to meet in Venice, bringing the money with them to pay for the fleet, but many departed from their own ports instead. Doge Enrico Dandolo persuaded the Crusaders to settle this debt by attacking the Catholic city of Zara, which had been part of the Republic before rebelling in eleven eighties six. The Fourth Crusade then went on to capture the city of Constantinople, and Thomas Morrissini of Venice became the first Latin patriarch of Constantinople. Although this really expanded Venice's power and wealth, and influence. Venice itself was becoming increasingly divided. Political power had become really concentrated into a small group of noble families, and most of those families had a long history in Venice. But Venice had also become home to an increasingly wealthy class of merchants and artisans, and many of them were newcomers to the area. They were pushing for their own representation and involvement in the government. This class became known as the Popolo, and the Venetian government work to try to curtail their influence. So they did things like kept the trade guilds divided from one another so that the more wealthy trades people couldn't easily come together and push for change. And as the popolo tried to find a way into the Venetian government, the nobility locked down its power membership, and the Major Council eventually became hereditary by law limiting members to men from fewer than two hundred families. Just to be clear here, even though popolo means people, this was still a pretty specific and limited group of Venetian people who were trying to get a place in the government. This was about skilled trades people and artisans and merchants and other people who had amassed some wealth, so they were not really including poor people or laborers or enslaved people. In all of this. Meanwhile, the office of doge was becoming less and less powerful. Enrico Dandolo had been the first to swear a promission a dugalle, or oath of office that formally and publicly outlined his power. A committee revised that oath for each incoming doge, sometimes tailoring it in response to actions taken by the previous doge. In the face of all this, the early fourteenth century saw a way of popular uprisings and conspiracies in Venice, as people tried to get the Major Council to open up new members and generally just tried to have a bigger voice in the government. This included an attempt to overthrow the doge in thirteen ten. After that, the Venetian government established the Council of Ten, which was an elected body, again elected within that group of nobility, whose duties included things like maintaining a secret police and investigating suspected conspiracies and treason. To add to all of that, Venice was at war with Genoa, part of a series of wars that stretched from twelve fifty six to one. In the first half of the fourteenth century, Venice also faced a series of earthquakes and the Black Death, which killed as much as a third of the Venetian population. All of this that we've been talking about was going on just before Marino Faliero's election as doge. We'll get to that after a quick sponsor break. Marino Falierro was born in Venice, and various sources give his birth year as twelve seventy four, twelve seventy nine, and twelve eighty five. You'll also see his name spelled in a few different ways today. When I was doing the research for this, I saw it most often as Marino Falierro, but in Venetian dialect it was Marine falier The Latin inscription that we mentioned up at the top of the show used the name Malini Faletri. However, the name is spelled though. This was a prominent family. They had a long history in Venice, including other doges in the family. Vitale Falierro was the thirty second dose from ten eight four to ten ninety five, and then, as we said, this office was not hereditary but different people in the same family could be elected, and Vitalis son Or de la Phoe was elected to be the thirty fourth Doze and was in office from eleven o two to eleven seventeen. Marino Falierro married twice, first to Thomasina Contarini and then after her death, to a Lucia Gradenigo. Although we do not have much information about either of them, they were both from prestigious families. Aluccio was much younger than Marino when they married, but she was still probably in her forties. Some fictionalized depictions of all of this depict Alucia as extremely young, pretty, and unfaithful, but there's really not much to back that up in the historical record. Marino Falierro had a mostly distinguished career before being elected Doge, including commanding Venice's fleet in the Black Sea. In addition to that, he was elected to the Council of ten at various points. Starting in thirteen fifteen, he served as provincial governor of both Chiogi and Treviso. Chiog is in the south of Venice on the Adriatic Sea, and Viso is north of Venice and a little bit farther inland. He was also named counts of Valdemarino in the Marches of Treviso, and in thirteen fifty three he was knighted by Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fourth in Vienna. In addition to all of that, Falieto served as a diplomat. For much of the fourteenth century, the papacy was headquartered in Avignon rather than in Rome, and Salietto traveled to Avignon at various points to negotiate with the Pope on behalf of Venice. On one diplomatic mission, he negotiated for Venice to be allowed to trade with Muslim ports in Egypt and Syria, something the Pope agreed to, providing that Venice's exports did not include iron ship timbers or enslaved people. When Salietto was elected Doge, he was again in Avignon, petitioning for the Pope to intervene in Venice's ongoing war with Genoa. It seems like Falierro was pretty well respected in all of these roles, but he was also reported to have a quick and sometimes even violent temper. This included slapping a bishop who was late bringing the sacrament to an official event Marine Sanudo, the younger, who lived about two centuries after Falierro and wrote a book called The Lives of the Doges, said that he read about this in an earlier chronicle. He described it this way, quote Marino Falierro was so very proud and wrathful that he buffeted the bishop and almost struck him to the ground. As we said earlier, when Falietro was elected Doge, he was in Avignon petitioning for the pope to intervene in Venice's war with Genoa. Venice had won a series of critical battles, leading Genoa to sign a treaty with Milan for its own protection. The Archbishop of Milan sent poet and intellectual Francesco Petrarca, better known as Petrarch, to negotiate a piece with Venice. Petrarch was friends with the current Doge, Andrea Dandolo, but since it looked like Venice was winning the war, Dondolo refused to negotiate. Does did not work out well for Dondolo. Naval forces from Genoa and Milan made their way into the Adriatic Sea, attacking Venetian ports and getting perilously close to Venice. Proper was at that point that the Doge became personally involved in the fighting and he contracted an illness and died. The Great Council seems to have thought Falietro was the perfect choice for Dondolo's successor. That was thanks to his experience as both a diplomat and as a naval commander. The election of Doge was carried out among forty one men, and thirty five of them voted for Faleiro on September eleventh, fifty four. After that election, the Great Council sent a delegation of twelve men to Avignan to inform Falero of his election and to make sure he had safe passage back to Venice, because again, this war was still going on. Valiero got back to Venice in October, and there's some superstitions around his arrival. Normally, an official barge would formally dock alongside the Docious Palace, but a thick fog surrounded the city that day and it made that tradition unsafe, so Falierro had to be roaded to shore aboard a smaller tinder, and that tinder missed the normal docking place and wound up at a spot just to the west of the palace called the Molo. There are two pillars at this spot, marking the entrance to the Piazzetta, or the little plaza adjacent to the larger plaza of St. Mark. Those still stand today, one topped with the winged lion of Saint Mark, and the other was St. Theodore standing on a crocodile. Executions were sometimes carried out between those two pillars, so a lot of people thought it was bad luck to walk between them, but Salieto did that again. In the words of Marine Snudo the younger quote Messer Marino Faliero, the Duke was about to land in this city on the fifth day of October four a thick as came on and darkened the air, and he was enforced to land on the place of St. Mark, between the two columns, on the spot where evil doers are put to death, and all thought that this was the worst of tokens. Falietto's predecessor had been popular as doge, at least until the war shifted in the weeks just before his death. This is impressive considering that his time as doge included a devastating earthquake and the Black Death. In spite of all the restrictions on his office, Andrea Dondolo had managed to reform the Venetian legal code and to write a history of Venice. Falieto may have hoped for a legacy that was equally impressive, but the revised oath of office he was given didn't leave him much autonomy at all. He couldn't even receive returning diplomats without counselors and members of the Karantina there to observe. In early November of thirteen fifty four, Venice was defeated at the Battle of Sepenzia, also called the Battle of Porto long. This was a catastrophic and humiliating loss, with Venice losing at least thirty ships and five thousand men being killed or taken prisoner. Although the shipyards of Venice could build new ships at just an astounding rate, this wasn't a loss that could easily be recovered from Valierro had no choice but to sign a peace treaty with Genoa a few months later. This, of course, led to a lot of bitterness. The animosity between Venice and Genoa was deep, and it had been going on for decades plus. The defeat at Sapienza had followed some serious tactical errors on Venice's part, so people started to question Falieriro's decision making and that of the nobles who had been in command during the battle. Valierro seems to have tried to mediate between the established leadership of the nobility and the increasingly discontented popolo. He commissioned new ships, and he put them under the command of some commoners who had disting wish themselves at sea. While this made some of the popolo happy, the nobility, of course saw it as a threat. There were also ongoing disputes between the older members of the Council of forty and the younger ones, who the older members saw as rude and brazen. All of this seems to have fed into a conspiracy, and we're going to get into that after we pause for a sponsor break. All of those tensions between the nobility and the popolo seemed to have come to a head in early The festival of Carnival just before Lent, included things like bullfighting and mask balls. It's not clear whether it was actually called Carnival yet, but it was what evolved into that celebration. So during a banquet that the Doge hosted at the palace, a young noble named Michael A Staino behaved indiscreetly with a woman. In some accounts, this woman was Falierro's wife, but most likely it was really with a young woman who was one of the Dogares's attendants. It's possible that it was Christina Falierro, who was the wife of the Doges's nephew. That nephew was also named Marino Falierro, so if that's the case, it would explain some of this confusion. Whatever Stano did, the Doge found it offensive enough that he had him removed from the palace. Of course, Stano was also insulted, and after everyone had left, he got back into the palace and scrawled some graffiti on the dog's chair in the council room. Exactly what he wrote it doesn't show up in accounts until much later, but it is usually noted as something like Marin falier the husband of the fair wife. Others kiss her, but he keeps her so. Falierro, having found this, ordered the Arsenalatti to investigate. These were workers from Venice's shipyard and Arsenal, who also that as the dog's personal bodyguard and They determined that Steano had written this graffiti, and he was brought before the Council of forty to stand trial. The council felt like he was young and in love, and they were lenient with him since all of this was also happening during Carnival. He was to be quote kept in close confinement or imprisoned for two months, and then afterward he would be banished from Venice for a year. Valiero, though, did not think this was nearly enough. He wanted Stano to be hanged or banished for life for writing some graffiti right, writing some graffiti and possibly taking some liberties. Yet meanwhile, these tensions between young nobles and old in between commoners and nobility were playing out in other parts of Venice as well. A commoner named Bertucci Isarello had been placed in command of a Venetian ship, and he got into a dispute with Giovanna Dondolo, paymaster of the Venetian Navy and a member of the same family that had produced the previous doge, as well as three others, and during this dispute, Dondolo reportedly slapped Isarello in the face, and another man named Gisello who was a foreman at the Arsenal, had also been slapped by Great Council member Marco Barbaro, who had been wearing a ring that cut Gisello's face. Gisello went to the Doze to complain about both incidents, a lot of slapping going on and the general perception that nobles had become very eager to slap commoners around. So the Doze brought in another commoner who was a stonemason or maybe a sculptor, named Philippo Calendario, who was working on renovations at the palace, And then, together with some other commoners and some of the arsenal Atti, and possibly Falierra's nephew, they started planning a q. Calindario and his accomplices would recruit twenty men each. Those men would recruit another forty, and on April fifty five, they would start spreading rumors that Genoa was about to attack Venice, directly hoping to cause a panic. In response to those rumors, Balieiro would summon the Great Council. Once the Great Council had convened, the Arsenalotti would seal the exits to the Council chamber, and they and those eight hundred recruited men would kill as many of the nobles as they could Marin Sinnuto's account of what was to happen was slightly different. In his version, these eight hundred men would go make trouble all around Venice, attacking people and causing enough mayhem that the dose would ring the bells of St. Mark That would summon the nobility to the main square, where they would then be surrounded by the eight hundred men and cut down where they stood. After all this planned bloodshed was over, Falierro would appear on the balcony of the palace to speak to the people and say that all of this islends had been carried out in defense of his own life. He would call for calm and asked the Popolo to recognize him as Prince of Venice. This whole plan would red Venice of its nobility. It would install Faliero as sovereign, and then he would not have to follow all those rules and deal with all that oversight that had been put in place to restrict the power of the doge. This plot was uncovered just before it was supposed to be carried out. A furrier named Beltraumo Berga Mosco visited the home of one of his wealthier customers, a man named Nicola Leoni. Burga Mosco suggested Leoni should stay home the next day, and at that Leone became suspicious, and when he pressed Burga Mosco for details, Burga Mosco told him the whole plan, including naming names. Leone detained Burgamosco at his home, but since Burga Mosco had not said anything about the Doge being involved, Leonie's next step was to go warn him. So when Leoni talked to the Doge, Falierro seemed to just brush this whole thing off. He already knew about it, probably didn't want him to let Leoni knew he knew, So Leoni went to the Council of Ten, which again was responsible for investigating things like treason. The Council of Ten already suspected the disaffected members of the arsenal Ati might be plotting against the nobility, so the council sent some men back to Leoni's home to question Burga Moscow further, and then they started arresting the people that had already been implicated, including Bertucci Izarello and Philippo Callendario. The Council of ten also summoned about seven thousand loyal men to the Piazzetta and stationed cavalry officers all around the city. Issarello and Callendario both confessed to the plot and were sentenced to hang, and they both implicated the doge. The Doge was arrested and jailed at the prison in the palace. In addition to Issarello and Landario, at least nine other co conspirators were identified and hanged, and these hangings were public from the beams of the palace. When questioned, Marino Faliero confessed to his role in this planned coup, and he was sentenced to a ritual execution, and that execution happened. He was taken to the top of the same staircase where he had given his oath of office. He was formally stripped of all of his insignias and the corner ducale, or the horn like hat that was traditionally worn by the doge. Then he was beheaded with a sword, with his head and his body both thrown down the stairs. That was handled before nobility. But then the palace doors were opened so the common people could come and look at the remains Although there were other Doges who were deposed or imprisoned or charged with some kind of wrongdoing, Falieriro was the only one to be executed for treason. Here is how Marin Sonuto the Younger described it quote on Fry Day, the sixteenth day of April, judgment was also given in the aforesaid Council of Ten, that my Lord Marino Falierro, the Duke, should have his head cut off, and that the execution should be done on the landing place of the stone staircase, where the dukes take their oath when they first entered the palace on the following day, the seventeenth of April, the doors of the palace being shut. The Duke had his head cut off about the hour of noon, and the cap of a state was taken from the Duke's head before he came downstairs. When the execution was over, it is said that one of the Council of Ten went to the columns of the palace over against the place of Saint Mark, and that he showed the bloody sword unto the people, crying out with a loud voice. The terrible doom hath fallen upon the trader, and the doors were opened, and the people all rushed in to see the corpse of the duke who had been beheaded. Petrarch visited Venice not long after all this, and wrote his own account of what happened as well. Quote the most famous place to which his forerunners had often brought home in triumphal procession, the gladdyst Honors. He dragged in servile fashion by a concourse of people, and stripped of the insignia of a doge, fell down a headless corpse, and stained with his blood. The doors of the church, the entrance of his palace, and the marble stairs often made glorious by solemn beats or the spoils of enemies. We can only speculate why Falieriro decided to carry out this coup, and then why he confessed to it. Petrarch summed it up this way quote, as regards the unhappy man, I am both compassionate and indignant, honored as he was. I know not what he could have desired at the end of a long life. His misfortune is aggravated by the fact that, according to the tradition of public judgment, he will be held to have been not only miserable, but mad and to have, for so many years obtained by vain acts and undeserved reputation for wisdom. Those who are for a time doges I would warn to study the mirror set before their eyes, that they may see in it that they are leaders, not lords nate, not even leaders, but honored servants of the state. Historians and commentators have put forth several interpretations of what Faliro did, like maybe Falierro was manipulating the popelo to try to become the supreme ruler of Venice, to put himself in charge without all those rules, or maybe the popolo had manipulated him to try to improve their station in Venetian politics. Faliero was at least seventy when all this happened, and a few commentators have kind of written the whole thing off as a sign of age related dementia or some other mental instability, or suggested that it was really a warped way to try to get revenge against the council for their lenient treatment of Michael A stain No. Stain No, by the way, was self elected dose in fourteen hundred, so that worked out. Uh. There's also speculation about what drove the nobility's response to this coup. The Doges, questioning and execution were carried out extremely quickly. So there's been some suggestion that the nobility we're using all of this as a pretense to solidify their own power and keep the Doges power in check. In addition to being executed, Faliero was subject to domnadio memorial or condemnation of memory. In thirteen sixty six, the Council of Ten decreed that Faliero's portrait in the Palace would be painted over with azurite paint with the inscription quote hic s locus marini filetri decapitati pro criminibus so the black banner and the inscription that are there in the Great Council Chamber today among the paintings of all the Doges. Those were actually put there a lot later, because the chamber was almost completely destroyed by fire in fifteen seventy seven. The role of doge continued to evolve in Venice after all of this. In general, the outside world often perceived the doge as the most powerful person of a country that was so powerful and influential that its currency, the dook it was widely used in international trade. But although the Doge was the highest ranking official in the Venetian government. The office's power was really limited until the end of the republic. Venice's power and influence started to wane in the fifteenth century, and various European powers united in opposition to Venice as the League of Cambra in fifteen o eight. The Republic of Venice fell in seventeen ninety seven, which is a whole other story involving Napoleon Bonaparte, but part of Napoleon's rationale was that he wanted to destroy the Venetian oligarchy and democratize its government. After the fall of the republic, the Venetian archives became more accessible to people from other parts of Europe, and the story of this coup in Faliero's by heading became a source of fascination for various writers and artists. It is a dramatic story on its own, but it also played into perceptions of Venice as stealthy, conniving, and licentious, with a secretive government that kept its population under tight surveillance. That is pretty contrary to Venice's myths about itself as La Satnissima or the most serene, a place that was blessed by St. Mark and home to a unique republic that lasted more than a thousand years. Yeah, as a absolute outsider to all of this, it's so interesting to me how like the perception of Venice and other parts of Europe historically is so different from like Venice's mythologizing of itself. Uh, they are almost opposite. So in terms of all of this writing and artwork, in eighteen twenty one, George Gordon Lord Byron wrote a play in verse called Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice and Historical Tragedy in five acts. Although Iron said pretty openly that he was inspired to write this by a trip he took to Venice, there were critics at the time who interpreted it instead as a response to the Napoleonic Wars or to the Cato Street Conspiracy, which took place a year before this play was published. We have an episode on the Cato Street Conspiracy in the archives and we will put that out in just a bit as a Saturday classic. Gitano Donizetti's opera Marino Falierro debut in eighteen thirty five, and then Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a verse drama called Marino Falierro. In eighteen eighty five. There were also works of art. In eighty seven, Eugen Delacroix finished a painting called the Execution of Marino Falierro, which seems to have drawn from both Byron's play and historical accounts of the execution, which Byron printed as an appendix. Francesco Hayez painted the Last Moments of do Jemrin Falierro in eighteen sixty seven. Spot is everything that I learned about this, besides the couple of sentences that were in the audio tour at the Doges Palace and we were in Venice. One of the things that's stricky to pin down about all of this is which parts of the palace are as they were when this happened, which are not many of them because there were a lot of fires and things like that, fires and earthquakes and things that destroyed parts of it. So sometimes you'll see like this happened at the Great Staircase, and I think the Great Staircase as it stands now, the Giant Staircase is what people call it, Like I think that is a newly built structure that was after all of this, so so much slapping. Yeah, there's a lot of slapping that happens in the story. Uh. And then I have other stuff, same as when we went to Paris. We will I'm sure spread out our our Italy inspired episodes so that it doesn't become all Italy all the time around the podcast for do you have a little bit of listener mail I do. This is from Kathy and this is actually about an episode that Holly researched, which was the one about accidental and mentions. We talked about the microwave and Kathy wrote, thank you for making life interesting and for highlighting the interesting in life. I feel like I could email a comment after every episode, but after listening to the recent Happy Accident show, I am compelled to share about one of the most amazing women I've ever known, my aunt and godmother, Audrey. Audrey was born in nine and was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of eight. Her medical care involved train trips from your rural Pennsylvania to Cleveland, where she entered the early ranks of those being treated with insulin. While she received a medal from the Joscelyn Clinic for living fifty years on insulin, those were not easy years As a young woman, Audrey learned a degree as a dietitian and worked for local hospitals. She loved to cook, She loved people, she loved. Her health declined with time, necessitating a move to a warmer climate and community with better accessibility, which she found in Tucson, Arizona. By the early seventies, Audi's eyesight had the clans significantly. One foot had been amputated, as well as one leg below the knee, and arthritis had crippled her hands enter the microwave. While her disease and time may have ravaged her body, her spirit and wit were fully intact. This happy accident that we call the microwave allowed Audrey to safely return to one of her favorite activities food. The microwave could be placed at the perfect height. Gone were the days of trying to maneuver the stove and oven from her wheelchair. Audrey set to work, learning everything she could about microwave cooking and once again shared those loving results of family and friends. For us, the microwave maybe the quickest route to a hot lunch, but for Audrey, the microwave reopened a closed door, providing a welcome pathway to independence. And joy. My oldest daughter is named for her, and it is my hope that we can all live life with such tenacity and love. Thank you for in julging me this moment to remember her. Kathy, Kathy, thank you so much for this email number one. I love it. Uh. We talked about microwaves being a lot more affordable in that episode, but we didn't really talk about them being more accessible. And I also wanted to read this because it reminds me of my mom who similarly when we were kids, Mom made every single thing we ate, it seemed like from scratch um and then as she developed a disability, was less able to do that until she found ways to make the kitchen more accessible to her. And at one point she even wrote a cookbook um of all the things that she had done to try to make cooking easier and faster so that she could still do it. Uh. So thanks for you know, sharing that story with us and also given me a minute to just think about my mom, who sometimes I still pull out that cookbook. Some of the recipes and them are things that it's honestly tough to get in Green Is for now, just because the types of things that are in stores now are sometimes a little bit different than they were in the nineties, so you cannot, for example, find the kind of canned ham that my mom used in a ham recipe that she made anymore. Uh. But yeah, it's a cool thing to be able to make make kitchens more accessible. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at i heart radio dot com. We're also all over social media at miss in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio app and anywhere else you like to get podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Two