Hildegard of Bingen, MD

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179) has been discussed here before, and many know her as a nun and composer of devotional music. Her compositions have been adapted by numerous musical and spiritual groups. Among her writings, however, were also works about the natural world and medicine.

Two works in particular date to the 1150s. Physica ["Physics," or "The Physical World"] is her attempt to explain the whole world from the elements (the four: earth, air, fire, water) to all animals and plants, and even metals and stones, both ordinary and precious gems. One theme that runs through this work is the Genesis-based idea that Man has been given dominion over all the Earth. Everything on Earth has been put there by God, and therefore everything has value, and therefore Man can benefit from everything God put on Earth, from nourishment found in plants and animals to the material value of gems.

The other book was Causæ et Curæ ["Causes and Cures"]. In it, she lists 47 different diseases. Whereas in Physica she listed 200 herbs and other plants, in Causæ et Curæ she describes over 300 plants that are useful for medical use. She might not have had personal experience of all these, since she would have had access to standard texts from such as Pliny and Galen and Isidore of Seville. She wouldn't be the first or last to borrow from Pliny and the others.

She would not, however, give medicines the final say in the treatment of illness:

Hildegard gave physical events, moral truths, and spiritual experiences equal weight. Healing was both medical and miraculous, and God’s will was an important element in her remedies. “These remedies come from God and will either heal people or they must die, for God does not wish them to be healed,” she wrote. [source]

It wasn't just up to God and the herbals. She also believed in using rituals bordering on the magical as part of the healing process. She claimed betony leaves placed next to the bed would reduce bad dreams. Sadness could be countered by mandrake: mandrake she believed was made from the same earth that made Adam. If a sad man dug up a mandrake root, washed it in a fountain for 24 hours, then took it to bed, he could alleviate his depression after reciting: “God, who madest man from the dust of the earth without grief, I now place next me that earth which has never transgressed in order that my clay may feel that peace just as Thou didst create it.” [source] And marshmallow (the plant, not the sweet confection made from it) could counteract evil magic!

Marco Polo's Co-author

Page from Chapter CXXIII

Everyone is familiar with the story of Marco Polo, who traveled to the Far East, had amazing adventures, and returned home to be put in prison in Genoa because of local wars. In prison, he wrote a book of his travels, telling of things that were marvels to Western Europe.

What most people don't know is that Polo was not in prison alone. A fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa, was an author, without whose help what we call The Travels of Marco Polo might never have come to be.

We know little of the 13th century Rustichello. He was a native of Pisa, and might have wound up in a Genoese prison after the 1284 Battle of Meloria. He would have been there a long time when Polo was imprisoned in 1298 after the Battle of Curzola.

Rustichello had previously written a romance, called alternately Compilatione ["The Compilation"] or Roman de Roi Artus ["The Romance of King Arthur"]. It was a French version of a work in the possession of King Edward I of England. Rustichello must have had access to it while Edward passed through Italy in the early 1270s on his way to the Eighth Crusade.

But what was his involvement in Marco Polo's tale? Was he simply the scribe? According to some who read the book and Rustichello's other writings:

Everyone who studies Marco Polo acknowledges that Rustichello’s fiction-writing techniques and habits show up in the book, but critics writing in English tend to stop with a very few observations that are repeated faithfully from one study to another. [source]

He is also likely the reason that the original version was written in French, the language of romance literature, rather than Italian or Latin. The original title was Divisament dou monde ["Description of the world"]; an Italian edition was also called Il Milione ["The Million"}, but we do not know if that was intended to denote a million new things, or a million lies.

Doctor Illuminatus

A brilliant scholar and fervent theologian/philosopher did such a good job at achieving his aims that the Church realized they had to suppress his work!

Ramon Llull was born in Majorca in the 1230s and probably was a courtier at the court of King James II of Aragon. He had a vision at the age of 30; while about to write a love letter, he turned and saw Christ on a cross hanging in the air. This image appeared to him five times, inspiring him to the religious life with very specific goals, one of which was to convert the Muslims to Christianity.

He did not intend simply to travel eastward and preach to the Muslim world; he had a more reasoned plan than that. He would counter their religion with logical and philosophical arguments that were so clear as to compel them to abandon their faith for his. His first task was to counter their great scholar, Averroes, and his first step was showing that theology and philosophy could be reconciled.

The Arab world had found comfort in separating the two, explaining that what was true in philosophy could be false in theology. Averroes himself had relied on this distinction to avoid persecution for his heretical idea about the non-existence of a unique soul that survives death. Llull decided to prove the Arab world wrong by reconciling philosophy and theology, raising the Christian West to an intellectually superior status that the East would have to fall in line with. He allied the natural and there supernatural, arguing that divine truths needed to be approached with reason guided by faith. Likewise, faith needs reason, lest it be misguided by personal desires or emotions. Llull had created a machine, the Ars Magna ["Great Art"], which would affirm the truth of propositions by lining up geometrically shaped pieces when levers and cranks were used. The machine was a three-dimensional representation of his "Llullian Circle" that could demonstrate all the possible truths of his system.

Llull's followers called themselves Llullists and spread the glory of his writings.* He met John Duns Scotus in 1297, who gave him his nickname of "Doctor Illuminatus" for the illumination he brought to the faith. His followers gained such influence in Spain that they were able to endow chairs at the Universities of Barcelona and Valencia.

Lullian Circle [source]

We know that he was stoned to death by the Muslim inhabitants of the town of Bougie on a mission to North Africa. Documents by Ramon Llull exist that can be dated to December 1315, but he was probably dead shortly after.

Despite his fame and religious zeal during his lifetime, and his martyrdom, he has never been considered for canonization by the Roman Catholic Church. The Church realized that his ideas were too radical. Sixty years after Llull's death, Pope Gregory XI (1327 - 1378) condemned his work, as did Pope Paul IV (1476 - 1559) a century after Gregory. Linking the natural and supernatural together was not going to work for the Church as a whole, despite the efforts of the "Illuminated Doctor." There were too many things that relied on faith for the Church to insist that, without reason, they would not pertain.

Centuries after Llull's death, some of his other writings were discovered that made his name prominent in the field of "election theory," but we'll save that for another time.

*He is considered to be the first major writer in the Catalan language.

The Templars' Bad Luck Day

(This one may meander a little; just hang on.)

A few days after William Tell shot the apple from his son's head in 1307, another significant event took place on the other side of the Alps. On the 22nd of November, Pope Clement V issued a papal bull requesting that all countries in Europe arrest the Knights of the Temple and confiscate their property.

Clement had not always been an enemy of the Templars, but their purpose was fading. They existed, along with the Hospitallers, to escort pilgrims and maintain some security in the Holy Land, but European possessions in the Holy Land had all been re-taken by non-Christians. These Orders maintained their wealth and property in Europe, although the reason much of it had been awarded to them was now gone. A couple years earlier, in 1305, Clement had suggested that the Templar Knights and the Hospitaller Knights merge, since there seemed little reason for two such Orders under the circumstances. He invited the Grand Masters of each Order (Jacques de Molay for the Templars, Fulk de Villaret for the Hospitallers) to the Vatican to discuss it, but neither would agree to the merger.

This alone wasn't enough to turn Clement against the Templars, but he had some pressure. The King of France, Philip IV, owed the Templars a great deal of money, and decided that arresting all the Templars in France on charges of impropriety and confiscating their property would be a way to square his debts. Philip had taken action on October 13. It was a Friday. Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake, and it was downhill from there for the Templars. (Clement gave all their European possessions—that were not confiscated by Philip—to the Hospitallers.)

...and this has given rise to one theory about why "Friday the 13th" is considered an unlucky day. In fact, this is the theory that friends tell to me most often, since I am known to have an interest in the Middle Ages. Someone has also put forward the idea that the day has been considered bad luck since Chaucer, because the line "and on a Friday fell all this misfortune" appears in The Nun's Priest's Tale of The Canterbury Tales. (That is not an indication that Friday itself was unlucky; Chaucer often inserted small bits of info that make the tale seem more personal.) As I did with the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie," however, let me splash some cold water on this theory.*

References to an actual unlucky day being a Friday the 13th of the month don't appear prior to the 20th century. A Boston stock promoter (and some say manipulator), Thomas Lawson (1857 - 1925) wrote a book about an unscrupulous stock broker who creates a panic on Wall Street to take advantage of the situation. The book is called Friday the Thirteenth, and he chooses that day because on Wall Street it is "Bear Saints Day" (whatever that is), not because it is inherently unlucky. "Friday the 13th" becomes a popular superstition after this book, according to one writer. Searching Google's Ngram viewer (which scans texts that Google has entered into its electronic database) for the phrase "Friday the 13" shows a steady rise of references to the term after 1905. There are earlier references as well, but if you search for "Friday the 12" or "Friday the 10" you will find similar results. There is no hard evidence I can find that "Friday the 13th" dominated the cultural consciousness prior to our Modern Era.

The Plague and Social Change

The climax of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381

On the heels of the recent news article about how victims of the Bubonic Plague still exist in significant numbers today, we have this article on how the Plague in the 14th century wrought huge changes on the fabric of society.

The radical shift in the numbers of the workforce and in the population of consumers threw off the balance that a stable society requires. Some goods were in great demand, there being fewer laborers to make things. Some consumer goods were in great supply, there being fewer consumers.

What the article above, from medievalists.net (a website I strongly recommend ), has just covered this week, DailyMedieval looked at back when the Occupy movement was first going strong in the United States.

The first installment briefly explained the philosophy behind the Peasants' Revolt.
The second explained some of the other factors that ruled up the lower classes.
Part three described the prominent characters that spurred on the movement.
Part four described the destruction caused in London by the Revolt.
Part five explains how the Revolt was quelled; the illustration above shows the "death" of the movement when its leader was killed during a parlay.

The Return of the Bubonic Plague

After the first catastrophic outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in 1348-50, Europe continued to suffer about every decade. The Plague returned, although without so devastating effect. Because people were familiar with the symptoms, they knew to avoid those who had it, and isolated the sick or themselves. Also, the Plague had already taken the weakest of the population, and so those remaining had a better chance of resisting.

Reappearances of the Bubonic Plague came in 1361-2, 1369, 1379-83, 1389-93, 1575-77, 2013.

2013? Yes. If you are reading this in December 2013, know that there are 20 confirmed cases of the Plague in Madagascar, as reported by the BBC. This is not a surprise, considering Madagascar had 60 confirmed cases in 2012. In fact, between 2000 and 2009 there were over 20,000 cases reported, with about 7% resulting in death! The illness is most prevalent in areas of reduced sanitation; these conditions occur in many parts of the world—even First World countries—and (as mentioned in the BBC article linked to above) Madagascar's prisons are a breeding ground for the disease. Madagascar accounts for a large percentage of total cases; it is not the top of the list, however—a list that includes the United States. Read more here.

To read about the Bubonic Plague as discussed in DailyMedieval, see my four-part series:

• Part 1 (an abbreviated timeline)
• Part 2 (a little about how it was spread)
• Part 3 (straightening out a nursery rhyme misconception)
• Part 4 (a touching first-hand response to the initial outbreak)

You might also be interested in

• How the Plague affected the economy of the 14th century
• How the Plague affected the Church

St. Leoba

[source]

This blog has mentioned before that St. Boniface called for help from women as well as men when he attempted to christianize Germany. One of those women was a nun—later a saint, due to several miracles—named Leoba.

Actually, her very existence was a miracle. Her parents were old and barren, but her mother one night had a dream in which she was told she would bear "a beloved child of Christ.". The woman vowed that she would give her daughter over to the Church. Her biographer, Rudolf of Fulda, tells us:

Shortly after the woman had made this vow she conceived and bore a daughter, whom she called Thrutgeba, surnamed Leoba because she was beloved, for this is what Leoba means. And when the child had grown up her mother consecrated her and handed her over to Mother Tetta to be taught the sacred sciences. [Life of Leoba, Abbess of Bischofsheim, by Rudolf of Fulda]

Leoba's exemplary behavior made her a natural fit for Boniface's mission to Germany (also, her mother and Boniface were cousins). A dream of Leoba's, that she would have great influence and accomplish many things, prompted her to join the mission.

Boniface established Leoba as the abbess of a convent in Tauberbischofsheim. (Tauberbischofsheim is the capital of the Main-Tauber district; its first mention in history is in St. Leoba's biography.) He gave her jurisdiction over all the nuns of the mission, and when he later left for Frisia, he gave her his cowl to indicate that she was his steward while he was gone. (He never returned, being martyred in Frisia.)

Later, she was given an estate by Charlemagne near Mainz, where she retired with several nuns. After she died, on 28 September 782, miracles were attributed to her intercession. When her relics were translated 50 years later as a result of her canonization, and placed behind the altar of a church in Fulda, Rudolf was given the task of recording her life. Rudolf says he witnessed some of her miracles himself: a man from Spain had terrible twitching in his limbs that was cured after lying prostrate before Boniface's shrine. Her explained that he had a vision of a woman who presented him to Boniface for his blessing, after which he woke up and had no more twitching. (Why this is a miracle of the woman and not of Boniface, I cannot say.) In another case, however, a man who had been bound by iron rings had them come off while praying before Leoba's shrine.

Lutefisk!

Today is an important day in Sweden: Anna's Day, celebrating all people named Anna. It is also the traditional day to start preparation of lutefisk in Sweden and Finland, so that it is ready for the traditional meal on Christmas Eve.

It is made from cod, soaked in cold water, changed daily, for five or six days, then left in cold water with lye for two days. The fish swells and takes on a gelatinous consistency. This stage also raises its pH value to 11-12, making it very caustic and downright dangerous to eat. In order to make it edible, it must be soaked in cold water for another week, changing the water daily to flush out the lye.

Why do this? The origin of the process is uncertain (see below), but the lye would make the fish unappetizing to wild animals; perhaps it was done to allow large amounts of fish to be left hanging on drying racks out in the cold air. It certainly helps preserve the fish. Treating food to make it more alkaline is also used in the preservation/preparation of corn into hominy.

Lutefisk has a history that stretches back centuries. Scholarly research claims it is first mentioned in the late 18th century; a cookbook from 1845 describes the preparation of the lye used to make lutefisk by combining limestone and birch ash in water. Historians, however, have found a reference to lutefisk by a Swedish archbishop in 1555, and that a letter from King Gustav I (1496 - 1560) mentions it in 1540.

Folklorists suggest an even earlier reference: when Vikings raided Ireland, St. Patrick had his followers make them an offering of fish—spoiled fish. The Vikings seemed not to mind, so Patrick had his people pour lye on the fish, hoping to poison the Vikings. The Vikings, against all expectation, found the fish tasty and demanded the recipe.

But let honesty prevail: the major Viking raids in Ireland happened a few hundred years after Patrick.  Still, lutefisk was probably around prior to King Gustav. The "Vikings enjoy something we think is vile" was probably an old joke at the expense of Vikings. I suppose the tale could be partially true, but Patrick was not likely to be the instigator.

So go buy some whitefish (cod or ling), start soaking it in cold water, and get some birch ash ready!

The Jalāli Calendar

Syrian Astrolabe

Yesterday I mentioned that Omar Khayyam spent some of his time working on calendar reform. This was not the same calendar reform being done in the Christian world, however. The Persian calendar was—and still is—far more accurate than the Gregorian calendar.

Originally, the Persian calendar was lunar, following the 28-day cycle of the Moon. Since the year does not fit into an equal number of lunar cycles, however, the lunar calendar creates "seasonal drift" without a lot of alterations. This calendar was begun over 1000 years BCE. Khayyam was one of several scholars using astronomical observations to create a revised version. It was approved on 15 March 1079 by the Seljuk Sultan, Malik Shah I.

Khayyam and his team calculated the length of the year to be 365.24219858156 days; modern science puts it at 365.2422464 days. Some aspects of the new calendar:

• The year started within a day of March 21st, the vernal equinox
• Months were based on when the sun transited to a new sign of the zodiac, not 12:00AM
• Months could last from 29-32 days, and
• Months could change their length from year to year

That 4th point is because of the 2nd point. Months weren't given arbitrary numbers of days as in the West. The Jalāli calendar depended on strict astronomical data, not cultural numerical choices. Therefore, the 6th month of the year might have 30 days one year and 31 days the next, depending on when the sun passed across the line in the sky that separated the zodiacal signs. It also means that seasonal drift—the tendency of seasons to start and end on widely varying dates over time—never exceeded one day. Leap years were unnecessary.

Eventually, the varying length of the months was considered a liability. The calendar—still used in Iran and Afghanistan—was changed in 1925 in order to have a more regular look and to save the hassle of applying the results of constant astronomical observation.

Omar Khayyam, Mathematician

First page of "Cubic equation and
intersection of conic sections"

A book of verses underneath the bough

A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness

And wilderness is paradise now.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859, made Khayyam the most famous Persian poet in the 19th century. Few people realize that Khayyam did not need Fitzgerald to be famous. Centuries earlier, he was one of the most influential thinkers produced by the Middle East.

Born in Nishapur on the 18th of May in 1048, he spent part of his youth in Balkh, which would produce Rumi 80 years after Khayyam's death. He studied under the well-known scholars Mansuri and Nishapuri. He put his education to work: as an adult, he was either teaching algebra and geometry, studying the stars, working on calendar reform, acting as a court advisor, or learning medicine. He taught the works of Avicenna.

The Tomb

He was best known in his lifetime and afterward for his mathematical writing, especially on algebra. Many of the principles of algebra that made their way to Europe came from Khayyam's Treatise on Demonstration of Problems on Algebra (1070).

One of his claims was that the solution of cubic equations cannot be solved by a ruler and compass. He said it required the use of conic sections, and announced his intention to write a paper that lays out the "fourteen forms with all their branches and cases." He never got around to it, and 750 years would have to pass before someone produced the proof of Khayyam's claim.

Omar Khayyam died on 4 December 1131 at the age of 83, and was buried in what is now the Khayyam Garden in Nishapur. A  mausoleum was built in 1963 to house his remains.

Nithard, the "Bastard" Historian

Nithard, as Abbot of St. Riquier

Charlemagne, looking around for suitable political marriages, chose a likely source of a bride for his son, Charles. He suggested to King Offa of Mercia (c.730 - 26 July 796) that one of Offa's daughters marry into the Frankish royal family. This would have made a very nice connection, and might ultimately bring part of England under Frankish rule in the future. Offa suggested an additional proposal: marrying his son, Ecgfrith, to Charlemagne's daughter Bertha.

Charlemagne was so insulted by the idea that he broke off ties to England and refused to allow English ships to land at Frankish ports. Charlemagne was very wary of the idea of allowing his daughters to marry, lest they produce potential heirs to the throne that created future problems. He had no plans to marry any of them off.

The daughters, however, were not isolated, and two of them seem to have found "arrangements" that suited them. Rotrud bore a son, Louis, to Rorigon the Count of Maine. Bertha had a relationship with Angilbert (later an abbot, and even later a saint!) that produced two sons, one of whom was Nithard.

We don't know much about Nithard's upbringing. He was well-educated, as all Carolingian children with connections to the Court would be, but whether it was at the palace school or under his father at the Abbey of St. Riquier isn't known. He was made abbot of St. Riquier like his father, and aided his cousin Charles the Bald in the conflicts that occupied the descendants of Charlemagne.

We remember Nithard now for his historical works. He wrote four books on the history of the Carolingian empire after Louis the Pious. His Historiae or De dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici pii ["History" or "On the Dissension of the Sons of Louis the Pious"] provides an excellent firsthand account of the conflicts—not always accurate or unbiased, but detailed in ways only an eyewitness to the events could produce.

So far as we can tell, he died of wounds received during a battle in June 844. When Angilbert was exhumed in the 11th century, and his body found to be uncorrupted (lending aid to the idea of his canonization), Nithard's body was found with him.

Abbot Angilbert

Abbot Angilbert (c.760 - 18 February 814)was mentioned as Charlemagne's envoy to Pope Leo III here, but there is much more to his story.

St. Riquier

Born into a noble family, he was raised at Aachen and was first a pupil and then a friend of Alcuin. His learning and ability to write verse earned him the nickname "Homer." He was apparently extremely close to the royal family: Charlemagne had his children educated along with others. This intimacy would surface later in a surprising way.

He assisted the court in secular administration, but by 790 had been named Abbot of St. Riquier in northern France as well as the governor of Ponthieu. Angilbert spent a great deal of money improving the abbey. He was also a frequent ambassador to the papacy. The first time was to Pope Adrian I, when he delivered Charlemagne's views on the iconoclasm controversy. Later he delivered gifts and assurances of support to Pope Leo III.

Despite his religious status, and there being no record of an official wedding, he had a relationship with the daughter of Charlemagne, Bertha, with whom he had two children. There may have been no wedding, and Bertha and Angilbert escaped the charge of adultery by virtue of their relationship to Charlemagne. A biographer in the 12th century claimed that, prior to his death, Angilbert did great penance for the impropriety of his "marriage." This allowed him to be made a saint, despite the questionable actions of his life.

A fragment of an epic poem about court life, which also details the meeting between Charlemagne and Pope Leo III when the pope fled to Paderborn to escape his enemies in Rome, is sometimes ascribed to Angilbert. Angilbert would have been in a position to witness all that the poem discusses, and he apparently possessed the literary gifts that would have enabled him to produce the poem. Authorship cannot be proven, however.

He died a few weeks after Charlemagne. Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son and successor, mindful of the potential for family members to challenge his rule, exiled his sisters to various convents. One of Bertha and Angilbert's sons, however, remained active as a Cariolingian historian.

The Deal with Charlemagne

Charlemagne is no stranger in this blog, and most people learned in school of his Christmas Day coronation. The truth is, as I mentioned in that post, that Pope Leo who did the crowning on 25 December really owed Charlemagne for quite a lot—including probably the fact that he was still on the Throne of Peter, and alive.

He became Pope Leo III very quickly after his predecessor's death; in fact, he was elected the same day Pope Adrian I (c.700 - 25 December 795) was buried. Presumably, the haste was because the Romans wanted to get their man in the position before the word got out to the Franks who might have had their own choice in mind.

Leo tried to get ahead of any opposition by immediately writing to Charlemagne, including tokens of respect and requesting diplomatic representatives, and placing Charlemagne in the position of the Pope's defender. Charlemagne considered himself a great friend to the Church as well as a great proponent of education, and responded favorably to what amounted to flattery. Charlemagne sent gifts to Leo, delivered by one of his favorite Carolingian ambassadors, Abbot Angilbert, along with a contingent of soldiers.

These soldiers were very important a little later. Leo had enemies among the Romans, who spread terrible rumors about his life of sin (he was accused of adultery and perjury). In April of 799 he was attacked and beaten severely. He escaped to St. Peter's, and was thereafter escorted by Charlemagne's men to preserve his safety, going to Paderborn in northern Germany to be received by Charlemagne.

Charlemagne's men escorted the pope back to Rome, and Charlemagne himself went there in November of 800, arbitrating a council with Leo and his adversaries on 1 December 800. Leo took an oath of purgation (the Middle Ages held great stock in the accused or his friends proclaiming his trustworthiness); Charlemagne found in Leo's favor, and his adversaries were exiled.

A few weeks later, Charlemagne, while attending mass on Christmas Day, had the crown of the Holy Roman Emperors placed on his head by Pope Leo. Supposedly, this was a surprise to Charlemagne, but does anyone think this had not been discussed while Leo and the king met in Paderborn?

Cooking the Bird

There are several collections of medieval recipes in existence, both in printed form and online; this blog has referenced them before. A new one may be making its way into the world soon. And by "new" I mean one that is very old.

Earlier this year, a researcher at Cambridge* discovered, while looking at a 12th century manuscript on medicines from Durham Cathedral, what she realized was a series of recipes that were culinary, not medicinal. The manuscript was produced about 1140, making these recipes the earliest known in Medieval England, predating any others previously discovered by about 150 years.

One of the recipes might be worth trying for Thanksgiving:

For “hen in winter’: heat garlic, pepper and sage with water.

This terseness is typical of medieval recipes. My linking of it with Thanksgiving is explained by the following:

The recipes are for sauces to accompany mutton, chicken, duck, pork and beef. There’s even a seasonal version of the chicken recipe, charmingly called “hen in winter”. We believe this recipe is simply a seasonal variation, using ingredients available in the colder months and specifying “hen” rather than “chicken”, meaning it was an older bird as it would be by that time of year. The sauces typically feature parsley, sage, pepper, garlic, mustard and coriander which I suspect may give them a middle eastern, Lebanese feel when we recreate them. According to the text, one of the recipes comes from the Poitou region of what is now modern central western France. This proves international travellers to Durham brought recipes with them. [source]

The Blackfriars Restaurant in Newcastle attempted to recreate the sauces and dishes in April 2013. Ultimately, an analysis of the manuscript and the refined recipes themselves will be published, giving us more insight into the medieval diet, cultural practices, and perhaps even international communication and trade.

*Professor Faith Wallis of McGill University, for the record.

A Medieval Thanksgiving

In a document of 1051, the former Queen of Poland, Richeza, grants to her nephew, the palatine count Henry I, the possession of Cochem Castle. This is the first reference to Cochem Castle, which is believed to have been built about the year 1000.

Rising over 300 feet above the Moselle River, it was built with 12-foot thick walls enclosing an original 17x17-foot square keep in the Romanesque style. There is evidence of rebuilding/expansion around 1056, presumably by count Henry. King Konrad III (1093-1152) took control of the castle from the palatinate counts (who asserted extensive control locally), turning it into a castle under the rule of the king. The castle continued to change hands, however, finally ending up occupied by Louis XIV, the Sun King, in 1688. French troops destroyed the town and the castle with explosives in 1689. It lay in ruins until 1868, when it was purchased by a businessman who began rebuilding it in the neo-Gothic style as a summer residence.

Now, however, it is owned by the town of Cochem and managed as a tourist attraction by Reichsburg Cochem Ltd. Besides tours, one of the chief attractions is the restaurant, open daily until 6:00pm. They also offer a Medieval Feast, a four-hour event in which you eat with your hands and are entertained by jesters. These dinners are offered on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Which means that the feast hall is available on Thursday nights, especially in late November, when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. If you are American military personnel stationed in Germany, you can take part in a USO-organized Medieval Thanksgiving Dinner at Cochem Castle. For $99/person, you get transportation to the castle with a USO guide, a tour of the castle, the aforementioned Medieval Feast, plenty of food, two drinks, entertainment, and a knighting ceremony at the climax of the evening.

By the time you read this, it will be too late to join (maybe), but you can always start planning for the future.

Christian Buddha

The Middle Ages loved stories about saints finding God. Here is one of them, that was repeated through the centuries:

Many inhabitants of India had been converted by the Apostle St. Thomas and were leading Christian lives. In the third or fourth century King Abenner (Avenier) persecuted the Church. The astrologers had foretold that his son Josaphat would one day become a Christian. To prevent this the prince was kept in close confinement. But, in spite of all precautions, Barlaam, a hermit of Senaar, met him and brought him to the true Faith. Abenner tried his best to pervert Josaphat, but, not succeeding, he shared the government with him. Later Abenner himself became a Christian, and, abdicating the throne, became a hermit. Josaphat governed alone for a time, then resigned, went into the desert, found his former teacher Barlaam, and with him spent his remaining years in holiness. Years after their death, the bodies were brought to India and their grave became renowned by miracles. [source]

Typical hagiographical story of the creation of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat. Never officially canonized, they were nonetheless embraced by the Roman list of martyrs (with a feast day of 27 November) and the Eastern Orthodox church with a feast day of 26 August (Greeks) or 19 November (Russians).

The story of Josaphat turning from the life of a prince to the life of an ascetic mirrors that of Buddha. On the other hand, it mirrors the stories of several Christian saints, so the identification with Buddha seems a little presumptuous. On the other hand, Josaphat is a curious name: it sounds like Joseph, which seems biblical; it took centuries before a scholar realized it really derived from Arabic Yūdasaf, which is derived from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva, "Enlightened One." A monk named Euthymios of Athos translated it into Greek in the early 11th century, his work was translated into Latin in 1048, and the story spread from there with the names transformed to Barlaam and Josaphat.

Also, there are details of the story—like Barlaam showing Josaphat a vision of the pit of Hell that awaited him if he did not become a Christian—that are lifted directly from the story of Buddha.

The King That Almost Was

I mentioned here that, after the Battle of Hastings, another claimant to the throne of England had to flee to Scotland in the face of William of Normandy's success. There, Edward's sister Margaret married King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland, and Edward gave up the dream of his line ruling England.

There was, however, a chance for the throne to pass back to his family, after all.

William of Normandy divided his rule by giving Normandy to his eldest son, Robert Curthose, and England to a younger son, William Rufus. When William Rufus was killed in a hunting accident in 1100, the youngest son, Henry, became Henry I of England. In 1105, prompted by his older brother Robert's poor performance, Henry invaded Normandy, succeeding in claiming Normandy for his own within a year.

Henry was not just a good soldier; he was a decent politician. He chose to placate his Anglo-Saxon subjects by marrying a "local" girl, Matilda of Scotland. (There was a small snag, in that she was believed to be a nun, but that was settled eventually.) Matilda was the daughter of Malcolm Canmore and St. Margaret of Scotland, and therefore the granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, a previous Anglo-Saxon king. Marrying her and having heirs would put a combined Norman-Saxon king on the throne. That king was William Adelin ("Adelin" was a form of Ætheling, the Anglo-Saxon word for "prince" or "noble"). He was born in 1103, and while in his teens was called rex designatus [King designate].

Then came the night of 25 November, when William Adelin and his brothers made some bad decisions while in command of the White Ship on their way back to England from Normandy. Henry lost all his sons in the disaster. Henry's attempt to place his daughter on the throne led to a period called The Anarchy, after which the throne was taken by the very un-Saxon (and reportedly unpleasant) Stephen of Blois.

The Second Pope

Clement being thrown into the sea,
by Bernardino Fungal of Siena (1460-1516)

If Clement truly was the second pope, following Peter (there are conflicting lists from the Classical Era), then he is too early for a Medieval blog, but he is connected to the previous post.

Clement was pope about 92-99 CE, during which time he penned one of the earliest known Christian documents outside of the New Testament, a letter to the Corinthians called the First Epistle of Clement, in which he advises them, among other things, that the recent removal from office of some presbyters was inappropriate, since they had not committed any moral offenses. He also suggests they consider the letter of Paul to the Corinthians. Paul mentions a companion named Clement in his letter to the Philippians (4:3); this may be the same Clement.

Clement was banished by Emperor Trajan to the Crimea. He continued to minister, organizing prayer and services among the inhabitants, establishing dozens of churches, and generally bringing Christianity to the country. A miracle is attributed to him at this time: slaking the thirst of 2000 men. Hearing this, Trajan had him thrown into the sea with an iron anchor tied to him.

One would expect that to be the final word on Clement and his martyrdom, but once each year the tide recedes so far that a chapel is revealed with the martyr's bones inside. This story, however, is not heard of until a few hundred years after Clement's death. (The story is known to Gregory of Tours.)

For this, he was named patron saint of sailors. Vikings embraced the story of someone who watched over sailors, which led to establishing churches and parishes of St. Clement as part of Viking settlements in England.

Viking Urban Renewal

When we think of the Viking invasions of England, we usually think of the destruction of villages and people's lives. This is understandable, since the Vikings were coming for land and plunder, not to make friends. Ironically, however, the Vikings were responsible for a significant expansion of urban centers in England at the end of the 9th century and beginning of the 10th.

Archaeological excavations of prominent towns in England show that many of them experienced a  surge in growth during the above-mentioned half-century span. York, Cambridge, Stamford, Lincoln and Norwich are just a few of the cities that show the features that characterize this expansion:

They came to form separate urban nuclei of a distinctive but hitherto unrecognized topographical type, which show common characteristics: they usually developed as linear settlements on low-lying ground along existing routeways leading to earlier centres, many of them at bridging points of major rivers. All of them occupied areas with easy access to river and estuarine navigation. [Jeremy Haslam, Early Medieval Towns in Britain, 2010, Shire Publications]

The assumed catalyst for this change from the British settlements to the more robust Viking towns is the opportunities for trade opened up by the new Viking inhabitants. The Vikings had more advanced ships, capable of longer trips, and they traded not only with Europe and the Scandinavian markets, but also with Asian markets.

There is an additional curious feature shared by many of these settlements. Many of them include churches dedicated to St. Clement. This is no coincidence, but that's a story for another day.

Deer Park

Deer park at Kentchurch Court, UK

A royal prerogative in many eras and cultures was to be able to hunt where and when the ruler wished. From at least Anglo-Saxon times forward, England had deer parks for the convenience of the ruling class.

Deer parks were often constructed with a bank topped with a pale, or fence. Inside the bank was a ditch, unenticing to deer. Rather than "corral" the deer, large parks were built in already forested areas where deer were likely to be, and deer leaps were constructed. A deer leap was a gentle ramp that led from outside the park over the bank and down a narrower ramp to the park. The ditch in that area would be much deeper, and the likelihood of deer wandering out again was slim.

The area inside was landscaped to make it suitable for deer and yet still attractive to garden-loving people. Trees were trimmed to make the deer more visible, and yet still give them a place to flee so that the hunt was not boring. Parks could be many miles in circumference—Woodstock, north of Oxford, was seven miles around—or small enough to be visible all at once.

Not all parks were for the use of the king. Other nobles with sufficient land could establish them, but only after being granted a royal license "to empark." This might be done less for sport than for ensuring a steady supply of venison. Because of the number of parks, deer could usually be hunted only by the nobility. Venison, therefore, became essentially a dish for the table of nobility, not a meat one could find at market.

Deer parks took effort to maintain, however, and this probably led to their demise. Henry III's bailiff, for instance, in 1251 had "to remove the bodies of dead beasts and swine which are rotting in the park"—a time-consuming task, given the area to be covered in the several deer parks owned by the king. There was also the trimming of trees to be done, and maintaining the pale. The fact that the deer were hemmed in sometimes led to starvation, especially in winter when they could not range for food. Few deer parks exist today, unless they have been revived by an interest in history.

...or ecology: at least one scholar sees value in studying deer parks now, saying

Where deer parks survive, and even this is rare, they do so as a unique landscape separated in time and function from their origins. They reflect the landscapes of the time and place they were emparked and the changes in economic function and ecology over a long lifespan. ["The Ecology and Economics of Medieval Deer Parks," Ian D. Rotherham, Landscape Archaeology and Ecology, 2007]

The Walking Dead

Orderic Vitalis (1075-c.1142) has been mentioned here and here for his history writing. The 13 books of his Historia ecclesiastica ["Ecclesiastical history"] told many tales of his time that had nothing to do with the Church. One of his anecdotes is truly outré.

While discussing some of the travails of William Rufus, he interjects a tale of a priest of Lisieux that took place on 1 January 1091. The priest, heading home at night from visiting a sick man, heard a loud noise coming along the moonlit road, as of an army. He decided to flee toward some trees in a field to hide himself, but as he ran toward them*

he was stopped by a man of enormous stature, armed with a massive club, who, raising his weapon above his head, shouted to him, "Stand! Take not a step further!" The priest, frozen with terror, stood motionless, leaning on his staff.

The giant stands by his side and awaits the arrival of the crowd making the noise.

a great crowd of people came by on foot, carrying on their heads and shoulders, sheep, clothes, furniture, and moveables of all descriptions, such as robbers are in the habit of pillaging. All were making great lamentations and urging one another to hasten their steps. Among them the priest recognized a number of his neighbours who had lately died, and heard them bewailing the excruciating sufferings with which they were tormented for their evil deeds. They were followed by a troop of corpse-bearers, who were joined by the giant already mentioned.

But there was more after this:

Then followed a crowd of women who seemed to the priest to be innumerable. They were mounted on horseback, riding in female fashion, with women's saddles which were stuck with red-hot nails. The wind often lifted them a cubit from their saddles, and then let them drop again on the sharp points. Their haunches thus punctured with the burning nails, and suffering horrible torments from the wounds and the scorching heat, the women pitiably ejaculated, woe! woe! and made open confession of the sins for which they were punished, undergoing in this manner fire and stench and unutterable tortures for the obscene allurements and filthy delights to which they had abandoned themselves when living among men.

He then sees a knight on horseback, who stops to speak to him, revealing himself as the priest's brother, and says:

"You deserve to die, and to be dragged with us to partake of the torments we suffer, because you have rashly laid hands on things which belong to our reprobate crew; no other living man ever dared to make such an attempt. But the mass you sang to-day has saved you from perishing. It is also permitted me thus to appear to you, and unfold to you my wretched condition. After I had conferred with you in Normandy, I took leave of you and crossed over to England, where, by the Creator's order, my life ended, and I have undergone intense suffering for the grievous sins with which I was burdened."

There is more (I have placed the whole story here). After this experience, the priest falls ill, but recovers to live another 15 years.

Orderic claims that he was told this tale directly by the priest who experienced it.


*Excerpts all from The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, trans. Thomas Forester, 1956.

Medieval Benghazi

The port at Benghazi, where it all began

Benghazi has been much in the news lately. As with any part of the Eastern Hemisphere, it has been around long enough to have medieval history.

Hundreds of years BCE (sources vary regarding the date of its founding), a city called Euesperides was founded by the Greeks on the coast of the Mediterranean. It was likely named in honor of the Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus who tended a peaceful garden in the extreme West. Coins from Euesperides dating as far back as 480 BCE have been found, with Delphi on one side and the silphium plant on the other. Silphium, valued as a spice and a medicine, was a major export; today, however, we have no idea what plant species it was.

Herodotus mentions it in his History when the satrap of Egypt sends a force to conquer the Cyreneans there. The Greek historian Thucydides mentions it being besieged by "Libyans"; the town was saved that time by a fleet led by a Spartan general who arrived by accident due to unpredictable winds. One of their kings, Arcesilaus IV, competed in the Pythian Games* in 414 BCE.

Euesperides moved in the mid 3rd century BCE—presumably because of the silting up of the lagoon its ships used—and was renamed Berenice (for the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene. Ancient Berenice was located under what is now the center of the modern city.) The city later came under Roman rule and existed for several centuries, but dwindled to a small settlement. St. Anthony the Great may have traveled through there on his way to be a hermit in the desert.

In the 13th century, the location became a stopping place for Genoese merchants who wished to trade with the interior. (Remember, the Genoese were spreading out all over the mediterranean, even as far as Monaco.) By the 1500s, it was appearing on maps as Marsa ibn Ghazi. I have not discovered who the "sons of Ghazi" were for whom it is now named, but Ghazi is a Muslim title of respect, so it may have a non-specific origin.

Benghazi has been through many changes of name, and its long history is fraught with conflict and attempts—some successful—for regime change.

*The Olympian Games were not the only "world-wide" athletic competitions in the Classical World.

William Tell: The True Story

...and by "true story" I mean "the myth."

Today is the anniversary of William Tell's famous feat in which he shot an arrow through an apple on his son's head with a crossbow bolt. It happened in 1307, and here's the whole story.

In 1307, the new advocate of the Swiss town of Altdorf was an arrogant man named Gessler. He had a hat set on a pole in the town square, and all who passed were supposed to bow to the hat as a sign of respect for Gessler. One day, Wilhelm Tell and his son came into town and passed the hat without paying their respects, for which they were arrested. Gessler said they would be released if Tell—who was famous for his strength, his mountain-climbing skill, and his archery skill—could shoot an apple off his son's head. Tell drew two crossbow bolts from his quiver, and split the apple on the attempt.

Gessler asked him "Why the second arrow?" Tell admitted that, if he had missed and killed his son, the second arrow would have gone right into Gessler. Gessler had Tell re-arrested and sent to prison at Küssnacht castle. On the way there, the ship carrying him became endangered in a storm on Lake Lucerne, and Tell was unbound by the crew to help row to safety. Tell escaped the boat at a rocky site even now called Tellsplatte [German: "Tell's slab"]. Tell proceeded to Küssnacht and waited for Gessler, whom he killed with an arrow. His defiance helped inspire the rebellion that led to the Swiss Confederacy. He later fought for Switzerland in the Battle of Morgarten (1315). He died in 1354.

All this early-14th century detail comes from a history of Switzerland written about 1570 (and not published until a couple centuries later) by historian Ægidius (Giles) Tschudi, who is known to have been less than accurate in discussing his own career and family. William Tell's name is mentioned as early as 1475, but without all the detail offered by Tschudi, whose source for the story is unknown.

It also needs pointing out that the idea of a heroic archer who defies authority is seen earlier in England (Robin Hood, who supposedly harried Prince/King John in the late 12th century) and the Danish Palnatoki, who is forced in to the same contest by King Harald Bluetooth. Palnatoki also pulls more than one arrow from his quiver, intending to kill Harald if Palnatoki's son dies.

The legend of William Tell has inspired plays, operas, art and anecdotes, but his historicity is extremely doubtful.

The Alchemist

Albertus Magnus and a hermaphrodite
from Symbola aureæ mensæ

We haven't talked about Albertus Magnus since his birthday last year. We really should address the subject for which he is usually known by people who don't know anything else about him: alchemy. Unfortunately, the evidence that he knew any alchemy comes from legends and documents that accrued to his reputation after his death. In fact, his own words are interpreted to deny the possibility of producing something by magic. He wrote ars non potest dare formam substantialem [Latin: "Art alone is not able to make a substantial form"]. Later generations, amazed by his vast knowledge, attributed many writings on alchemy to him. In the absence of any other authorial data, they are now attributed to "pseudo-Albertus Magnus."

There is, for instance, a legend that he managed to transform simple metal into gold, using the Philosopher's Stone. Supposedly, he gave the Stone to his pupil, Thomas Aquinas, prior to Magnus' death. The legend fails to take into account that Aquinas died six years before Magnus. The legend further states that Aquinas destroyed the Stone, fearing a connection with less-than-divine powers. This is recorded in a 1617 work on alchemy called Symbola aureæ mensæ [Latin: "Symbols of the golden table"], by Michael Maier. It is also said that he changed the weather of a winter day to a warm spring day with flowers blooming so that a party could be held outside.

He is also credited (supposedly according to eyewitnesses) with having created an automaton in his laboratory that could speak and perform menial tasks.

As for writings that we can firmly attribute to him, there is little there about alchemy. His De mineralibus [Latin: "Concerning minerals"] alludes to the occult power found in stones, but never explains what those powers might be. His chemical experiments seem to have led to the discovery of arsenic and silver nitrate.

His commentaries on Aristotle, and his ability to blend Aristotelian logic with Christianity, as well as his various (legitimate) experiments, gained him such a reputation for intelligence that it is not surprising that future authors would assume he achieved magical results.

Hysteria

from a Latin copy of Gynæcology by Soranus of Ephesus

Hysteria describes two different states: exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, and as a psychological disorder in which psychological stress can manifest physical symptoms. The word is derived from the Greek word for uterus, ὑστέρα [hystera]. Hysteria was once assumed to be solely a female medical problem.

It seems to have started with Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 BCE), who maintained that men and women had entirely different bodies: men's humors were hot and dry by nature, women's were wet and cold. Women also had different processes, such as menstruation. Hippocrates did not pass judgment on these differences; they merely needed to be addressed by the practitioner of medicine.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE), however, had other ideas. He postulated that processes like menstruation could be harmful to men, who should avoid women during that time. He also felt men's bodies were perfect and women's were flawed. Women were irrational and unbalanced—literally "unbalanced," because he believed that the uterus "wandered" in the body.

By the time medieval medicine came along, the authority of Aristotle made it clear: over-emotional women were suffering from being unbalanced because of their womb. Hysteria could be treated by removing the source of the unbalance, and the hysterectomy was "born." (Sorry.) Unfortunately, as summarized in this abstract:

The procedure was performed by Soranus of Ephesus 120 years after the birth of Christ, and the many reports of its use in the middle ages were nearly always for the extirpation of an inverted uterus and the patients rarely survived. [source]

The procedure wasn't considered remotely safe until antiseptic techniques began in the 19th century. Even so, it wasn't until the 20th century that diagnoses of hysteria declined, possibly because the general public came to understand that "hysteria" was too easily used as a label for anxiety.

Iconoclasm

The word "iconoclast" today usually denotes someone who challenges tradition, but the origin of the word was in the religiously and politically charged world of Constantinople in the Early Middle Ages.

To be honest, "iconoclast" (a destroyer of religious images belonging to his own culture) and its opposite, "iconodule" or "iconophile," were terms created much later by historians to describe the iconomachia (war of icons) of the late 8th and early 9th centuries in the Byzantine Empire.

Each side had its arguments, of course. The iconoclasts invoked the third of Moses 10 Commandments against "making graven images." They argued that any proper image had to be made from the same substance as the original, and therefore wood and stone were not appropriate to portray flesh. The only substance available to represent Christ was the Eucharist, which had been decreed to be Christ's flesh. Also, images were incapable of representing Christ's divinity as well as his humanity. Images had been condemned in churches by the Synod of Elvira in 305, because they might distract people from the true reason for being in church.

The iconodules had their own reasons. Once God incarnated as Jesus, representations of the divine on Earth became justified. God did tell Moses to add cherubim to the Ark. Although idols might be false, icons represented important real people and things. Also, there were miracles associated with icons, attesting to divine approval.

There were two periods, called the First Iconoclasm—from 726-787, begun by Emperor Leo III when he replaced an image of Christ with a cross at the entrance to the palace—and the Second Iconoclasm—in 814-842, when Emperor Leo V thought his military failures were the result of displeasing God. Leo III's major opponent was the venerable St. John of Damascus. Leo V had to contend with the prolific pen of St. Theodore of Stoudios.

Iconoclasm was largely an Eastern Christian conflict. Western Christianity never became seriously concerned with it, to the delight of art historians.

The First Abolitionist

St. Theodore of Stoudios (759-11 November 826 CE) was a highly educated member of a well-connected family in Constantinople. His father and uncle were public officials who controlled a large part of the finances in the reign of Constantine V (741-755). He was probably in line for a very nice civil service position, but his uncle's influence changed his fate.

The uncle, Platon, left civil service during the reign of Constantine's successor, Leo IV (775-780), and entered a monastery in Bithynia (east of Constantinople, on the shore of the Black Sea). Upon the death of Leo, Platon persuaded his sister's entire family to take monastic vows. They all returned with him to Bithynia, and established the Sakkudion Monastery on the family estate.

The family did not exactly stay away from politics, however. Leo was succeeded by Constantine VI (776-797), who decided to put aside his first wife and marry her lady-in-waiting. In the absence of evidence that the first wife was an adulterer, this was not easy for anyone to swallow. The Patriarch Tarasios eventually consented to the divorce, but he refused to perform the second wedding (as was customary for a ruler), leaving it to a priest named Joseph of the Hagia Sophia.

Despite the fact that the new wife was a cousin of Theodore, he objected to the whole affair and called for the excommunication of Joseph and everyone who received sacraments from him, which would necessarily include Constantine and his new wife. He had no authority to enforce this, so no actions were taken. The emperor tried to make peace with his new wife's relatives; they refused; Constantine sent troops to the monastery to disperse the community and send Theodore and other monks to exile in Thessalonika. A year later, however, Constantine was deposed and his mother became the Empress Irene. She undid many of her wayward son's actions, including lifting the exile on the monks of the Sakkudion Monastery and imprisoning Joseph.

When an Arab attack in Bithynia forced the monks of Sakkudion to flee to Constantinople, Empress Irene offered Theodore the leadership of the defunct Stoudios monastery. He set about restoring the library and scriptorium, and redecorating the church. (Theodore was opposed to the strong Byzantine element of iconoclasm that forbade images.) He also started writing letters; lots of letters, which he sent to fellow monks near and far. In one of them he makes the first known statement against slavery. Writing to one Nicolas, he says:

Do not obtain any slave nor use in your private service or in that of the monastery over which you preside, or in the fields, man who was made in the image of God. For such an indulgence is only for those who live in the world. For you should yourself be as a servant to the brethren like-minded with you, at least in intention, even if in outward appearance you are reckoned to be master and teacher. [source]

It is interesting that he seems to condemn slavery because it is a "worldly" activity, not necessarily because it is inherently "bad." But it was a start.

Making Parchment

The term parchment is often applied to any animal skin used for writing on, but historically it was used for sheep or goat skin. Cow or calf skin was also used, but was turned into vellum. Very fine vellum came from very young calves, or even still-born calves. These pages were smaller than the pages that could be made from adult animals.

Although vellum is from the same word as calf, Latin vitellus, parchment has nothing to do with the material. It derives from Pergamum, where it is said parchment was invented during a dearth of the export of papyrus out of Alexandria.* According to Pliny (27-79 BCE), this was under King Eumenes; he does not distinguish, however, if this was Eumenes I (263-241 BCE) or Eumenes II (197-158 BCE).

The person who turned animal skins into parchment in the Middle Ages was called a parchmenter. The parchmenter needed to pick skins carefully. The hair of the animal was a consideration, since the skin below would match it. Black-furred animals would yield darker parchment, less suitable for writing on.

Making parchment in the Middle Ages was fairly straightforward. The skin was placed in cold water for at least a day to clean off any blood and dirt. A lime solution was next, to eliminate the hair. For a week, the skins would be stirred with long wooden poles a few times each day. After the lime bath, they would be stretched on a wooden frame, with thread or leather thongs attached through numerous holes around the edge to ensure that it stretched and dried flat. The skin would be scraped with a curved blade to remove any remaining hair. The occasional oval hole seen in parchments was not the result of bookworms. Imperfections from tick bites in the living animal produced holes in the skins that would expand during the stretching and drying process.

Scraping the parchment was an ongoing process. By the 12th century, scraping skins to tissue thinness was common. Extensive rubbing with chalk and pumice helped produce a smooth surface that would take ink without spreading through the imperfections in the surface.

After the treatment, it was removed from the frame. It was soft and supple enough to roll up until needed, when it was cut into sheets that were usually sold by the dozen.

*Supposedly, Alexandria was using so much of the papyrus reed that it was being over-harvested; they simply could not afford to export any.

More About Books

We know that books were rare prior to the development of the movable type printing press, but they weren't unknown. They could be a status symbol, and so those who could afford them had books made (which usually meant copied from existing works) for their private libraries. The post-medieval Robert Cotton liked collecting books, including manuscripts from the generations prior to his.

How rare were books? Who had them? What would constitute "a lot" of books?

We know of about 76,000 wills that survive from the 14th and 15th centuries. You expect wills to be made by people who had items of value that were worth disbursing to specific people. An examination of one-tenth of these wills reveals that only 388 mention books. Presumably, books would be mentioned specifically, given the care and expense they represented. But there were books around, so who had them? Here's one case of a private library.

The Chaucer scholar Derek Brewer tells us about William Ravenstone, a schoolmaster at the Almonry* Cathedral School of St. Paul's in London. Ravenstone had 84 books, which was an extraordinary number for a private library. He had Latin books on grammar, poetry, mathematics, music, and various Roman authors. In 1358, his will left them all to the school (where some argue the students would have access to them).

Thirty years before the Ravenstone collection was left to the school, it received the collection of a previous almoner, William Tolleshunt. His library included books on logic, grammar, natural history, medicine, civil and canon law, and theology.

Winchester College in 1446 and Eton College's charter written in 1440 (Eton opened in 1443) established libraries. At Eton (as at other libraries of the time), the books were chained to desks so that they could be read but not taken away.

Each college required only a single room to house all their books.

*An almonry was a place where alms were given out to the poor; those who worked there distributing alms were called "almoners."

Medieval Meteors

Woodcut showing meteorite coming to Ensisheim.

Today is the anniversary of the first meteorite the exact date of whose fall to Earth has been recorded. It was in 1492, around noon, when a young boy heard an explosion and observed a rock fall from the sky, burying itself in a wheat field outside the town of Ensisheim in what is now France (but was then Austria). The sound of the explosion was heard up to 150 kilometers away. Townspeople came to investigate and found a 127-kilogram triangular rock in a pit a meter deep. They retrieved it from its trench and immediately started chipping pieces from it, until a local authority stopped them, ordering the rock to be delivered to the steps of the local church and preserved pending an investigation.

But that was far from the first meteor or meteorite recorded.* The Journal for the History of Astronomy in 1978 published "Meteors, Meteor Showers and Meteorites in the Middle Ages: From European Medieval Sources." The article lists every meteoritic phenomenon it could find by carefully scouring historical texts, and includes items such as:

453 or 454 — Tres magni lapides (three big stones). Three meteorites fell in Thrace 

518 — Alius ignis . . . instar scintillarum (another fire sparklike). A meteor. Date uncertain. Theophanis Chronographia 

557 — Discursus stellarum (moving stars). A shower lasting the whole night that caused terror. Date uncertain. G. Cedrenus

There are several pages of entries. Meteoric phenomena could be seen as good or evil, often depending upon their proximity to events in the lives of the observers.

As for the Ensisheim Meteor, it currently resides in the Ensisheim museum and is toasted every year by The Brotherhood of Saint-Georges of the Guardians of the Meteorite of Ensisheim. Maximilian I (1459-1519), son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, visited the rock shortly after its fall and declared it a wonder from Heaven. He took some chips for himself and a friend. After years of people taking parts of it away, the rock is now roughly spherical and has been reduced to about 56 kilograms. I guess everyone wanted to have their little piece of Heaven.

*A meteor (first coined in the 16th century, from a Greek word meaning "lofty") is a rocky object that streaks through the atmosphere, heating up via friction and creating a streak of light; a meteorite is a meteor that reaches the ground. A small percentage of meteorites are composed of nickel and iron.