Invasion of the flying monks

[Fiji]

saw this documentary on medieval life yesterday (BBC2 oh how I love thee)

apparently, there was a monk in the 11th century who strapped a rudimentary delta wing to his back and jumped of the abby.

He flew 200 yards and crashlanded breaking both legs.
After the accident he told the abbot that his error was not to include a tail in the contraption.
But the abbot forbade him to carry out any further experiments.

now, WI the abbot had loved the idea.
the monk adds a tail, jumps again, has some control over the flight but still crashlands because the whole thing has gotten to heavy.
While recovering from a few broken ribs and whatnot, he works on trying to find lighter materials.

let's have our monk survive a few more attempts before God pulls the plug on him.

let's have some other nutcase monk carry on the creative suicide attempts and by 1100, we have a rudimentary working hang glider (SP?) capable of flying a mile or more after jumping from a height of (let's say) 60 feet.

effects on history?

 

[Straha]

this could lead to either a stronger feudalism or the earlier collapse of feudalism. The way to get the stronger feudalism is to have the lrods use the gliders as ways to enforce order. The earlier collapse thing could be caused by an increase of travel to and from cities

 

[Alayta]

i expected the earlier callapse due to the lords falling down.

I dont think that the glider itself would change a lot. But if people see that flying devices can be build, even if god has not given wings to mankind-that would change a lot. People would start science much earlier. Maybe all that alchemistic branch of knowledge seeking could have been spared.

 

[Straha]

i expected the earlier callapse due to the lords falling down.

I dont think that the glider itself would change a lot. But if people see that flying devices can be build, even if god has not given wings to mankind-that would change a lot. People would start science much earlier. Maybe all that alchemistic branch of knowledge seeking could have been spared.

that would be another factor in the earlier collapse.

 

[Grey Wolf]

I could see a sort of Cathar-like cult, the Flying Monks

I could see handgliding becoming a religious-only activity. OTL the Pope banned crossbows as 'un-Christian'. People didn't listen to him much in the longer run. So, people won't listen to the Pope much when he says flying is only for God's men. After all, as a King Philippe IV of France once wrote to the Pope :
"Your venerable stupidness may know, that we are nobody's vassal in temporal matters"

So, the flying man breaks out in the general populace. I don't think it will be much to do with lords and peasants, rather with religious orders on the one hand, and artisans, craft guilds and the urban populace on the other

It could certainly make the Thirty Years War interesting, if it ever gets that far

Grey Wolf

 

[carlton_bach]

How useful are the damned things actually going to be? Hang gliders without a power source are short-range even under the best of conditions. They aren't exactly noted for freight capacity, either, and their weapons loadout is rather limited. As to speed - if you don't mind where you're going, you can be quite fast, but not as fast as a chain of lights or flag signals.

So, what (other than wowing people at fairgrounds and giving thrillseeking gentlefolk an opportunity to do something new) would they be good for?

 

[Grey Wolf]

How useful are the damned things actually going to be? Hang gliders without a power source are short-range even under the best of conditions. They aren't exactly noted for freight capacity, either, and their weapons loadout is rather limited. As to speed - if you don't mind where you're going, you can be quite fast, but not as fast as a chain of lights or flag signals.

So, what (other than wowing people at fairgrounds and giving thrillseeking gentlefolk an opportunity to do something new) would they be good for?

Naval assault ? A kind of cavalry of the air ? Most naval battles in this period took place in shallow waters and involved boarding as the main action. Imagine a couple of hundred handgliding warrior monks landing on the ships in the heat of the action !

Scouting I could see

Also some form of unmanned defensive manoevre from a city or citadel under siege

Or the opposite - suicide storm troopers covered in flaming pitch launched from massive siege towers ?

Grey Wolf

 

[LordKalvan]

I wonder if you could launch a hand glider from a catapult. It would really change the style of warfare

 

[Faeelin]

How useful are the damned things actually going to be? Hang gliders without a power source are short-range even under the best of conditions. They aren't exactly noted for freight capacity, either, and their weapons loadout is rather limited. As to speed - if you don't mind where you're going, you can be quite fast, but not as fast as a chain of lights or flag signals.

So, what (other than wowing people at fairgrounds and giving thrillseeking gentlefolk an opportunity to do something new) would they be good for?

Ah, but what happens when Roger Bacon attaches rockets to them?

Soon the English army in the Hundred years war will be joined by... Victory Weapons!

Can The Capetians survive the onslaught of the rocket gliders on Paris?

Will the Duc D' Berry's secret research on lighter than air ships let King Jean sail over the Channel?

Can Leonardo Da Vinci send a man to the moon?

After Kublai Khan turns the rocket gliders into kamikazes to use against his foes (including Japan, of course), will anything stop him from making a bid for global supremacy by taking over Sumatra?

 

[Alayta]

Evrybody is thinking of military use??? this is surprising to me.
Surly you can use it for cartogrphic puposes. You can impress native peaole in africa and america instead of using glass stuff. You can sell a flight (feel like god today-only 12 Dublonas)
And many more things, that my monorail brain can´t think of, but an expert in some stuff would iimmediately think of!!!!!

 

[NapoleonXIV]

I think the Chinese had Kites or Kite trains capable of lifting people in medieval times. Due to the rather high risk associated the idea never really got...uh...developed.

 

[Alayta]

Thats true!! i saw a picture of it in a museum for airblabla. They used sandsacks to prevent geting lost in the air. They did it for fun!! The tibetians, as i read in the biography of a monk, did it for spiritual reasons. (But I am not sure about the sanity of this guy. He claimed to have "the eye" due to his trepanation)

 

[Justin Pickard]

My thoughts;

The Christian Church suffers a severe shortage of monks due to a veritable plague of flying accidents in the late 11th century and is dramatically weakened, losing influence in the early 12th century. A pagan-christian cult devoted to flight emerges and, combining with folk beliefs and newfound reverence for the powers of human artifice, sparks of a MUCH earlier scientific revolution (for the products of which think less advanced Leonardo DaVinci, but weirder).