When Poets Collide?

Did the greatest English poet of the 14th century and the greatest French poet of the 14th century meet, thanks to the Hundred Years War?

Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377) was a classical composer and poet—in fact, one of the last poets who also composed music—and a part of the ars nova ["new technique"] movement which embraced polyphony. His name suggests that he was born in Machault, east of Rheims in France, but it is clear that he spent most of his life in Rheims. Unlike many non-royal figures of his age, his popularity has ensured that we possess a remarkable amount of biographical information about him.

As a young man, he was a secretary to the ing of Bohemia, John I. He was named a canon of Verdun, then Arras, then Rheims; by 1340 he had given up the other positions and was a canon of Rheims only. As a canon, attached to the cathedral in Rheims and living without private wealth, he could devote himself to composing poetry and music. In all, we have about 400 pieces in various forms.

He lost his first patron, King John of Bohemia, when John died at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 during the Hundred Years War. Machaut found support from John's daughter. When she died during the Black  Death, he found support from her sons, Jean de Berry and CharlesV, Duke of Normandy.

In the next phase of the Hundred Years War, Geoffrey Chaucer (likely still a teenager at the time) was in the retinue of Prince Lionel as a valet. During the siege of Rheims in early 1360, Rheims rallied and captured the besiegers. Chaucer was taken prisoner. This would not have involved being thrown in dungeons and experiencing deprivation. The practice at the time was to capture as many high-ranking opponents as possible in order to gain money from ransoms. (Chaucer was ransomed for £16 in March.) The English would have likely experienced a mild form of "house arrest" which would have allowed them a certain amount of freedom. Chaucer would have had ample opportunity to visit Machaut.

Did he? We cannot be sure. Chaucer's poetry rarely offers attribution for his influences, but he was certainly intimately familiar with Machaut's work. Scholars have found numerous influences in Chaucer's writing. Chaucer scholar James I. Wimsatt has referred to "Guillaume de Machaut, who among fourteenth-century French poets exerted by far the most important influence on Chaucer."[link] Even long before he himself began writing, he was in a court that valued and supported the arts and poetry. Machaut was enormously popular in his own lifetime, and it seems inconceivable that Machaut would not have been sought out by several of the English who would have appreciated his reputation.

For a sample of his musical composition:

Sir Richard Stury

King Edward and his knights counting their dead
after the Battle of Crécy, Hundred Years War

Sir Richard Stury (c.1330-1395) was a member of a family that served the kings of England for generations. Stury, during the 1359-60 campaign of the Hundred Years War, was captured along with Geoffrey Chaucer by the French and held at Reims. Where Chaucer, as a valet in Prince Lionel's contingent, had been ransomed for £16, Stury, as a knight in the employ of the king, was worth £50.

He was a chamber knight and a councilor to Edward III. He was also, like many of his fellow chamber knights, a lover of poetry. His will included an expensive copy of the Romance of the Rose.

He and Chaucer were well-acquainted. Their paths would have crossed frequently in London, and they were put together on an embassy in 1377 and a commission in 1390 to look into repairing the dikes and drains of the Thames.

Stury had a reputation for being a Lollard, a follower of the teachings of John Wycliffe. The popularity of this stance waxed and waned over the years, sometimes putting him in opposition to powerful forces in society.

Father of Arab Astrology

Abu Ma'shar, from his Introduction to Astronomy

Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Geoffrey Chaucer—well-known names from the Middle Ages denoting a Dominican scientist, a university scholar and administrator, and a courtier and poet. One thing they had in common, besides a love of learning, was their attention to the art of astrology. And through their interest in astrology, they were all influenced by a 9th century Arab known in the West as Albumasar. His full name was Abu Ma'shar Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Balkhi (787-886), and he was one of the most respected figures in the history of astrology.

Abu Ma'shar was of particular interest to Western Europe because he was a source for knowledge of and commentary on Aristotle when his writings reached Europe in the 12th century, brought back by the Crusaders. He offered so much more, however. His work blends knowledge of Greek science with Islamic doctrine, Persian chronology, Mesopotamian astrology, and hermetic traditions from Anatolia. He presented a unified approach to the knowledge of several cultures that lent weight to his work.

For instance, he uses the Biblical Flood as the focal point of his astrological tables. He calculates it at midnight on Thursday to Friday, 17-18 February 3101 BC. This date was not arbitrary, nor was it an indication that Abu Ma'shar believed in a short-lived Earth. He chooses the date because it is the start of the Hindu Kali Yuga (the "age of vice"; the last of four phases the world will go through). His knowledge and acceptance of Hindu chronology and its "Great Year" (composed of 360,000 years) is further shown when he calculated a grand conjunction of planets in 183,101 BC, and again in 176,899 BCE.

The Middle Ages loved "unified theories" that could reconcile different traditions to enhance understanding. Abu Ma'shar argued for the superiority of his chronological calculations because he made the year out to be 365.259 days long. Why was he so enamored of this number? Because "259" he explained was the minimum number of days for human gestation (8.6 months). It was obvious to him that he was onto something!

Unlike the hostility experienced by astrology from the University of Paris and others, who felt it was a way to contravene God's plan, or to know what should remain unknowable, Abu Ma'shar was able to give his astrology a veneer of respectability by acknowledging Islamic religious doctrine.

The Great Vowel Shift

Why it happened, and why it happened the way it did, are still hotly contested. Also, there are no images for it that don't themselves require an essay to explain, so this post could make a dull subject even duller. Let's begin.

Starting about 1350, pronunciation of English started to change. Not all pronunciation; mostly the long vowels that were stressed in the word. Pronunciation of vowel sounds depends on the relative positioning of the tongue and lips and palate (remember, I am simplifying). To put it another way: how your mouth forms the space in which the sound resonates determines pronunciation of the vowel sound. What happened during the Great Vowel Shift is that the pronunciation of those vowels moved upwards and backwards in the speaker's throat.

What did this sound like? Without teaching you the International Phonetic Alphabet*, we will try a few examples. The Modern English name would have been pronounced by Chaucer to sound like "na-ma" and by Shakespeare as "neem"; Modern English root would have been "ro-ta" to Chaucer and "rowt" to Shakespeare.

There were exceptions. For instance, "ea" took a different path, depending on the consonants around it. It was long, but it shortened when followed by consonants such as "d" and "th"; so we have "ea" sound like short "e" when "ea" shows up in Modern English dead, head, breath and wealth instead (<—there it is again) of sounding "longer" as in great and break.

Consonants stayed the same, although "silent letters" did develop later. Chaucer would have pronounced "knife" something like "ka-nife"; that is, both consonants would have been pronounced; it was later that we got lazy and stopped bothering with the "k" in "knife" and "knowledge."

(Okay, here's a picture)

So why did it happen? The most common theory is that social mobility after the Black Death brought people from all over England together in the London area where changes were caused by people organically blending the many dialects. There may also have been an attempt to distance England culturally from France. 1359-60 saw a major military conflict between the two, and in 1362 the law courts of London decided to switch from French to English. The original pronunciation of the long vowels was very "continental." The GVS took pronunciation further away from that similarity with the continent (remember that much of the English vocabulary at this time had come in with the Norman Invasion).

The sad part is that England had become a literate culture before the GVS was done. Printing was standardizing spelling even as pronunciation was going through its evolution. Therefore, the pronunciation of words moved well beyond their original spelling, creating issues for schoolchildren and non-native speakers for centuries to come.

*Which, to be honest, would require me to learn it first.

The First Female Professor of Medicine

The medical school in Salerno had on its staff the first well-known female physician and professor of medicine. Sadly, we know nothing of her personal life, not even her dates: her existence at Salerno in the 11th or 12th centuries is inferred from the handful of texts she wrote or contributed to. Fortunately, her texts were considered important enough that they were preserved and copied, translated and distributed throughout Europe.

Trotula

Her name was Trotula (listen here for pronunciation), and we find it on several texts. The best-known is the three works collectively known as La Trotula.

• Conditions of Women—based on the Latin translation of an Arabic work, with additions of several Latin-based passages that had been around for awhile.
• Treatments for Women—"a disorganized collection of empirical cures with only a thin theoretical overlay."*
• Women's Cosmetics—a head-to-toe listing of ways to beautify all aspects of a woman's appearance, with no medicinal applications.

Although there are conditions that make no sense to modern medicine (such as a "wandering womb"), there are also techniques that we would consider very sound, such as using opium on the patient during childbirth (defying church tradition that women should suffer; see Genesis 3:16), and using silk thread to repair tears that occur in childbirth.

Some scholars have attributed these works to a man, perhaps through simple chauvinism, but also because it is believed that the frank addressing of gynecological topics would be too indelicate for a female author of the era. The author of La Trotula, however, self-identifies in the texts as a woman, and the analysis of history is always turning up surprises that challenge modern notions of medieval sensibilities. Also, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the book of wicked wives read by the Wife's husband Jankyn includes the name "Trotula." However little we may know of her now, it seems she developed a reputation that preserved her name for at least a couple centuries after her prime.

*Quotation from The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, by Monica Green.

Updates

My research (or just day-to-day life) sometimes bring me details that I wish I'd known when I wrote a certain blog post, or that I think are interesting tidbits that tie into posts. Occasionally, I will throw these updates together with links to the originals.

May 19
The Domus Conversorum, the "House of Converts" in London for Jews who converted to Christianity (or else be banished from England). A picture of what is on the modern site is here. (The photographer's caption is a little misleading.)
Also, there was a building called "Domus Conversorum" in Oxford, and for awhile it was thought that Oxford (which had a large Jewish population pre-Expulsion) had its own Converts' Inn. It is accepted now, however, that the property was called thus because the rents from it went to supporting the Domus in London.

July 2, 3, and 5
John Wycliffe was a fascinating character for many reasons, but I may have been remiss in "finishing him off" by not giving you the whole story (one of this blog's followers commented on this on Facebook).
Wycliffe died 31 December, 1384, after suffering a stroke a few days earlier while saying Mass. It wasn't until 4 May 1415 that the Council of Constance declared him a heretic (prior to this, only some of his writings were proscribed). His books were to be gathered and destroyed. The Church—never one to do things by halves when defending the faith was involved—exhumed his body in 1428, burned it, and scattered the ashes in the nearby River Swift near Lutterworth.

July 21
Update on the Greenland/Medieval Warm Period topic
Just this week it was reported that satellites have seen a sudden and massive melting of the ice on Greenland. The specific/immediate cause is unknown. This may make archaeological digs for Erik the Red's settlements easier to examine. The report is here.

(Also, I want to say "hi" to any visitors from reddit.com. Yesterday saw a large influx of visitors from that site to yesterday's post on vocabulary first found in Chaucer's writings. Thanks for visiting anc creating a pleasant spike in my site traffic!)

Words from Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342-1400) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) are both credited with increasing English vocabulary. There is no proof that either of them actually invented the words we find in their works. All we can say for certain is that the words appeared for the first time in their works; it is likely that many of these words were in common use on the streets of London.

While Shakespeare is usually the first to come to mind when the subject of contributions to the English language comes up, Chaucer actually gets credit for having more words we know now appear in his works first. Of course, since he had a two-century head start on Shakespeare, maybe it isn't a fair contest.

Chaucer gets the credit if you can:

check the galaxy called Milky Way
bear a corrosive test
observe an oriental Persian
foster a superlative rumour
clasp a dagger
be victorious
varnish a convertible
muse on femininity
amble the equator
preen, murmur, vomit, fart, strangle, commit, retain, oppress, create a mystery, or replenish material.

John of Gaddesden

With us there was a doctor of physic;
In all this world was none like him to pick
For talk of medicine and surgery;
For he was grounded in astronomy. —Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Doctor, from the Ellesmere MS.

John of Gaddesden (c.1280-1361) was a "Doctor of Physik" who was quite well-known in his day, so much so that modern scholars looking to find analogs for the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have suggested he is the likeliest candidate for Chaucer's "doctor of physic." As a fan of both Chaucer and historical detail, I'm going to weigh in and say . . . maybe.

Who was Gaddesden, and why was he considered the model for Chaucer's pilgrim? For one thing, he had written Rosa medicinæ (The rose of medicine; sometimes called the Rosa Anglicæ), a compendium of medical information called so because it was in five parts, like the five sepals of a rose. In it, he quotes numerous authorities from the past; Chaucer's list of authorities with whom his doctor is familiar lines up nicely with Gaddesden's sources. Also, Gaddesden had a reputation for charging high fees, and Chaucer makes it clear that his doctor loved gold.

To be honest, however, Gaddesden's book was quoting the same authorities that anyone would quote when compiling a book on medicine. It was completely unoriginal. Even his title seems derivative, probably based on Lilium medicinæ (the Lily of medicine) by Bernard Gordon, produced at Montpellier in 1303. Gordon, a Scotsman, was one of the teachers of Guy de Chauliac. Chauliac, in turn, taught Gaddesden. What did Chauliac think of his student's work? Not much; he said of it:

Last of all arose the scentless rose of England, in which, on its being sent to me, I hoped to find the odor of sweet originality, but instead of that I encountered only the fictions of Hispanus, of Gilbert, and of Theodoric.

Those who write about Gaddesden being Chaucer's doctor usually justify it also be calling them "contemporaries." Let's look at the timeline: the Canterbury Tales probably wasn't started until 1387. Even if the Prologue were the first thing he wrote—highly unlikely—this was a quarter century after Gaddesden's death; a death that would have taken place when Chaucer was about 20 years old and had been connected to the household of Prince Lionel, the second son of King Edward III, only for a few years. Gaddesden seems to have been attached to the household of Edward, the Black Prince, who would have spent much of Gaddesden's later years on the continent while Chaucer was in England.

They could have crossed paths, but probably not significantly, and Gaddesden would have been long out of the public eye and consciousness when Chaucer came into his own as a poet. For Chaucer to write up a physician who quoted historical authorities, knew astrology, and loved gold probably just meant that he had met typical physicians.