The Name Glastonbury

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, that has been inhabited since Neolithic times. A recent post discussed the discovery of early medieval glass-making furnaces at the site of the now ruined Glastonbury Abbey. This prompted some to point out to me that Glastonbury "must have been known" for glass production—it is "right there in the name." Let us address that.

Remains of the nave of Glastonbury Abbey

In his book The Flowering Hawthorn, Hugh Ross Williamson tells the story of St. Collen. Collen was a 7th century hermit who took up residence at what is now Glastonbury. Williamson relates how the saint encountered Gwyn, King of the Fairies, in a magical glass castle on Glastonbury Tor. Rejecting the fairies' offer of food and drink, he cast holy water on them, causing all to vanish. Numerous versions of this story exist, but Williamson's 1962 book is the only version that introduces glass as the material involved. As a source for the site's name, this is not reliable.

William of Malmesbury refers to its earliest name as Ynys Witrin, which some translate as "Isle of Glass" based on the fact that English "vitreous" comes from Latin "vitrum" meaning "glass." "Isle of Glass" would more properly be Ynys Gwydr, however. "Witrin" is a puzzle, but no serious scholar thinks it is from Latin for "glass." (The "Isle" makes sense because, in earlier times, higher sea levels turned some hilly areas into islands.) Malmesbury does suggest that the place was named for someone named Glast. Since the first recording of the name is Glestingaburg, the place of Glestinga. No one knows exactly to what Glestinga refers.

But it's not about glass.

Glass and Recycling

In 1977-79, a shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey was investigated. It was determined to have sunk about 1025. The ship's hold contained three tons of broken glass and chunks of glass. (This amount of glass would make about 12,000 Coke bottles.)

Jesse Tree at York Minster (1150-70); some of the oldest
stained glass of the Middle Ages

Glass requires extreme heat applied to a mixture of silica, soda, and lime. Silica was derived from sand; soda happens to reduce the temperature at which glass can form; lime makes the glass "chemically stable." Impurities—by accident or design—added color to the glass.

We know little about how glass-making came about; records do not explain the technique, but anecdotal mentions tell us a little. Pliny's Natural History tells us that the best sand for glass comes from the mouth of the Belus River near Akko, Israel. The shells in that sand provide the lime needed to make the glass stable. William of Tyre (1130-1186) and Jacques de Vitry (1170-1240) around 1200 both mention the same source. It is thought that the ancients did not understand why that source was the best, chemically, that they did not understand that the shells contained necessary lime.

In England, the Glastonbury Abbey Project has discovered evidence of a stone structure on the site of Glastonbury Abbey dating to c.700. They have also found evidence of early Roman and Saxon activity from before the Abbey's founding. Remains of glass-making furnaces have been uncovered, showing archaeologists that Saxons were recycling Roman glass brought from Europe. The Glastonbury site was possibly the first Saxon glass-making factory in England.

The remarkable thing about glass is that it is recyclable, like metals. Although it took a lot of energy to process, every bit of broken material (unlike wood or stone or pottery) could be re-smelted and re-cast. It is possible that the glass in windows like the example above was even older than our estimates, having been re-used from earlier glass objects that broke or had outlived their usefulness.

The Biggest Guild

A 1568 German woodcut showing a shoe shop

Which guilds were the biggest? Not the most powerful, but those with the most members? Let's look at a sampling. The tax lists for Paris in 1292 list the numbers of members of 130 guilds. Here are some of the largest:

21 - woodcarvers
21 - glove makers
22 - hay merchants
24 - harness makers
24 - rugmakers
24 - sculptors
24 - innkeepers
26 - rope makers
27 - locksmiths
29 - doctors
34 - blacksmiths
35 - spice merchants
37 - beer sellers
41 - fish merchants
42 - meat butchers
43 - laundresses
51 - chicken butchers
54 - hat makers
56 - wine sellers
58 - scabbard makers
62 - bakers
70 - coopers
70 - mercers
86 - weavers
95 - carpenters
104 - masons
106 - pastry cooks
121 - old clothes dealers
130 - restaurateurs
131 - jewelers
151 - barbers
197 - tailors
214 - furriers

...and the guild with the largest number of tradesmen in it:

366 - shoemakers

Why so many shoemakers? These days, we think of shoes as something with sturdy rubber soles, sealed to canvas or nylon or leather. What we have today is considered very durable; when they wear out, we dash to a store where the shelves are lined floor to ceiling with clearly marked lengths and widths of mass-produced footwear. Not so in the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, and the centuries before, footwear was "bespoke"; that is, designed specifically for the foot it was supposed to enclose. A shoemaker would take your measurement, discuss materials and binding, and then set to work crafting shoes that would fit your feet, and not the feet of your neighbor or family member.

These shoes were not necessarily fitted with hard soles, either; in many cases, they are essentially slippers made of leather, and with every step they would scuff thinner and thinner. The leather used had to be soft and supple to fit snugly around your feet; it was mostly from goatskin or sheepskin, as opposed to the tougher cow leather used for saddlery, for instance. In fact, one term for a shoemaker, cordwainer, comes from Cordovan, because Cordoba in southern Spain was a source of goatskin commonly used for shoes.

Another note on terminology: These were not cobblers, but shoemakers. A cobbler did not make shoes: he repaired them.

Guilds for Women

Women weaving

Guilds in the Middle Ages seemed to exist for every conceivable occupation (except, perhaps, midwifery). What about women? Were guilds open to them as much as to men?

Although women were accepted as members and sometimes founded guilds, they seldom held office, just as it was rare for a woman to serve as churchwarden of the parish church, a reflection on women's subordination in the medieval world. [Women in England in the Middle Ages, by Jennifer Ward, p.186]

Women were able to participate in numerous trades in the Middle Ages, sometimes supporting their husband's business, often being in business for themselves. The Paris tax registers for the early 14th century list several craftswomen whose craft was different from their husbands. Women were often brewers and bakers; more often than not, women ran the local food service businesses.

That does not mean, however, that women were relegated to domestic trades. In early 15th century Wurzburg, for instance, records show over 300 building site workers were women. records of medieval women in jobs include:

brewer, laundress, barrel and crate maker, soap boiler, candle maker, book binder, doll painter, butcher, keeper of town keys, tax collector, shepherd, musician, rope maker, banker, money lender, inn keeper, spice seller, pie seller, woad trader, wine merchant, steel merchant, copper importer, currency exchanger, pawn shop owner, lake and river fisherwoman, baker, oil presser, builder, mason, plasterer, cartwright, wood turner, clay and lime worker, glazier, ore miner, silver miner, book illuminator, scribe, teacher, office manager, clerk, court assessor, customs officer, porter, tower guard, prison caretaker, surgeon and midwife. [link]

Almost the only occupation in which we do not find the presence of women is that of blacksmith, whereas the textile industry was well represented.

A Bit About Guilds

Guilds, companies of folk who follow the same occupation, are associated with the Middle Ages. They actually existed in the Roman Empire. Called collegia, they were authorized by the government, who used the structure to impose taxes on their professions. When Rome fell, collegia disappeared for six centuries, reappearing in Western Europe as guilds. (In the Eastern Empire, collegia survived the Fall of Rome; they were also a structure for the government to produce revenue by taxing craftsmen.)

Medieval Guild of Tailors [source]

The medieval guilds seem to have developed independently, rather than being an import from Byzantium. The development of towns around 1000—with their concentrations of population, coalescing of workers with similar skills, and need for local government—enabled merchants to evolve from traveling peddlers to stationary shopkeepers.

By banding together, members of a guild could support each other socially and financially against outsiders. A guild could set prices, and prevent foreigners from conducting business in their locale. Guild members joining town councils gained even more power for their colleagues.

To ensure quality, guilds created a system of apprenticeship. A master, an established and accomplished craftsman, would accept apprentices who lived with him and learned his trade in exchange for bed and board. A family might pay a lot of money to a master to have a son become his apprentice. After several years, a suitably trained apprentice would find another master with which to intern, finally getting paid for his work. At this stage he was called a journeyman. After proving his mastery of the craft, he could become a master himself, and could set up his own shop and accept apprentices of his own.

Guilds also gave back to society. All professions had some patron saint, and guilds would often fund a chapel dedicated to their patron saint.

After the Reformation, the rise of strong national governments removed some of the local autonomy that allowed guilds to control so much of their towns. Also, merchants began to develop international connections, mega-corporations that overshadowed the effect of a local guild.

The Templars, Absolved

Everyone knows about the Templars, or Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Their avowed goal was to protect travelers to the Holy Land. For almost two centuries they offered protection en route to sites in the Holy Land and, as a trustworthy order with members in several countries, became wealthy by being a reliable way to transfer money from one country to another.

The Chinon Parchment

Although endorsed by the Church, King Philip IV of France engineered their downfall in France and arrested and tortured a number of them in 1307, confiscating their property in the process. This was very handy for Philip, since he was greatly in financial debt to them. Through use of the Inquisition, they were linked with heresy, accused of consorting with the devil, etc. The Templars' very secret initiation rite made it easy to fabricate lies about what they did.

In 1312, Philip persuaded Pope Clement V to disband the Templars for good, so that no one stood in Philip's way when he executed their Grandmaster, Jacques de Molay. The Templars went out in disgrace for political reasons, vilified for non-Christian practices, after having been one of the most respected groups in Christendom.

The Vatican Secret Archives (Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum) contain all the documents of the popes, as opposed to official and public documents. They are "secret" in that they are technically a private library and one cannot simply walk in and check out a book. Popes can give access, however, and recent popes have done so. In 2001, historian and paleographer Barbara Frale discovered a document now known as the Chinon Parchment.

It turns out that Clement wanted to interview the heads of the Order, but their imprisonment and torture made it impossible for them to travel to Avignon to meet him, so he sent his legates to meet with them at Chinon, questioning them about their beliefs. This meeting at Chinon took place in August 1308, as related and notarized in the Chinon Parchment. Even though Clement suppressed the Templars a few years after, due to pressure from Philip, the Chinon Parchment tells us that the pope granted them forgiveness and absolution for their sins and restored to them the right to receive the sacraments.

The Art of the Deal

One of the very first posts on this blog years ago was about the collapse of the powerful Florentine banking corporation, the Bardi. One of he reasons often given for that collapse is the default by England's kings on repayment of loans used to fight their wars. The head of the London office for the Bardi was Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, whose job in 1347 was to deal with the results of the Bardi bankruptcy.

Still in (Italian) print!

Pegolotti (who flourished from 1310 to 1347) did something else, however, that would outlast him and the Bardi. He wrote a book, the Pratica della mercatura [Italian: "Mercantile practice"], that was a guidebook for years to come on international trade.

What is so valuable about the book? For a start, it has a glossary of all the terms used at the time in the field of mercantilism and taxes. It also contains a list of the 20 (!) languages it is good to have knowledge of if one wishes to be a successful merchant, everything from English and "Saracen" (Arabic) to several dialects of the Italian peninsula.

It lists several trading routes, everywhere from England to Persia to "Gattaio" (Cathay=China), and the stages one goes through to get to your destination. He also explains the business practices and customs of each of these places, to aid the merchant in successful dealing.

We also learn from Pegolotti what goods were to be had from each country, and where to go to find them. He lists, for instance, many monasteries in England and Scotland as sources of wool. Along with the goods, he explains the local systems of weights and measures, the local currency, and the formulæ needed to convert between them and one's own system.

Among the lists and tables included, we learn an enormous amount of detail about the 14th century:

• Lengths of cloth
• Fineness of gold and silver coin
• Spices and their packing
• Compound interest tables
• Valuation of pearls and precious stones
• Buying and selling grain
• Shipping
• Calendar tables
• Fineness of gold and silver
• Types and qualities of spices and other trade goods

No original manuscript exists, but the book remained in use, initially for its utility in international trade dealings, and now because of its historical value. The earliest copy we have is from over a century later, in 1472. An 18th century historian included the Pratica in a multi-volume history of Florentine finance. There is a 1936 edition that can still be found.

The Siege of Montségur

The Cathars, mentioned yesterday, were a largely peaceful group that attempted to lead lives of Christian simplicity, rejecting the material world as much as possible. Their beliefs challenged official Church doctrine, and the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade were chief instruments in suppressing them. They were not completely successful, however.

The remains of a later structure on Montségur

In May 1243, over 200 Cathars took refuge in a stone chateau on a peak called Montségur in southern France, surrounded by French military. Montségur wasn't a last resort of fleeing Cathars, however: it had been granted to them as the headquarters of their Cathar Church by its sympathetic owner, the Occitan nobleman Raymond de Péreille. (For his trouble, he was interrogated by the Inquisition after the Siege concluded.)

The Siege took nine months. The usual tactic is to outlast the besieged while their food and water runs out. Montségur was well-provisioned, however, and sympathetic locals snuck in with supplies. Also, the Cathars were accustomed to deprivation, so emergency rations were no hardship for them. For these reasons, the 10,000 royal troops waited in vain until the decision was made to attack. After much difficulty, a position was established on the eastern side of the peak, where a catapult was constructed. The bombardment enabled the attackers to take control of the chateau's defensive gateway, the barbican, and therefore move the catapult closer in order to do more damage to the walls and interior.

The besieged were given two weeks to depart safely, on the condition that they renounced Catharism. Death by burning was the alternative. The Cathars spent the two weeks fasting and praying in preparation for departing from a world they considered sinful anyway. On 16 March, 1244, over 200 of them marched downhill to the pyre that had been prepared and of their own volition climbed onto the stacks of wood. The place is now known as Prats de Cremats [Occitan: "Field of the Burned"].

Catharism survived in southern France, but not in any organized fashion. The presence of the Inquisition caused many Cathars to emigrate to more hospitable regions, such as Spain and Italy.

Catharism

The Cathar symbol

The Cathars were a heretical sect that first appeared in historical records of Europe about 1143. In truth, the term was used earlier: the first Council of Nicaea in 325 discussed allowing "Cathars" to convert to the approved Christianity, and the 8th century St. John Damascene's book on heresies mentions Cathars, but the group of which we know more in the Middle Ages was probably not related to those earlier groups.

The confusion would come from the name itself. "Cathar" comes from the Greek katharoi, meaning "the pure ones." The later medieval Cathars were a dualist movement: they believed that there were two opposing forces of equal power, good and evil. The good was represented by a single God (no Trinity for them!) and the spiritual side of life; the material world was the result of a god of evil, Satan. They therefore rejected (as much as possible) the material world., since it was all tainted with sin by its connection to Satan. One aspect of the material world that they rejected was sex and its partner, marriage, as this blog discussed here.

Groups of Cathars flourished in the 12th century in the Rhineland, France, and northern Italian cities. Their lifestyle was a radical departure from the norm, but it was not objectionable to many. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the strongest voices in Christianity of his day) said of them:

If you question the heretic about his faith, nothing is more Christian; if about his daily converse, nothing more blameless; and what he says he proves by his actions ... As regards his life and conduct, he cheats no one, pushes ahead of no one, does violence to no one. Moreover, his cheeks are pale with fasting; he does not eat the bread of idleness; he labours with his hands and thus makes his living. Women  are leaving their husbands, men are putting aside their wives, and they all flock to those heretics! Clerics and priests, the youthful and the adult among them, are leaving their congregations and churches.... [Sermon 65]

They were ascetic Christians living the Christian life, harming no one. They rejected, however, the trappings of Roman Catholicism. Pope Innocent III tried to bring them back "into the fold" by sending missionaries to preach to them. One of these, Pierre de Castelnau, was murdered on 15 January, 1208, during one such attempt, supposedly by Count Raymond of Toulouse, whom he was accusing of being too lenient with the Cathars. After this act, Innocent abandoned his attempts to win over the Cathars, and instead decided to wipe them out with the action known as the Albigensian Crusade.

Midwives

When Guy de Chauliac mentioned midwives in his great work on surgery, it was only a mention: he declined to express details because the field was dominated by women; men were not even allowed into the room when a woman was giving birth. In fact, "One Henne Vanden Damme, for having hid behind a staircase to eavesdrop upon his wife, she being in labour of childbirth, which thing doth not befit a man, for the said eavesdropping was fined 15 livres." [source]

Later in the Middle Ages, there was regulation of midwifery, but midwives, unlike doctors, were not associated with any formal training. In fact, some of the early manuals produced on midwifery—by the rare individuals in the profession who were literate—do not even demonstrate current medical knowledge. Midwives never formed into guilds, as other professions did with regularity. So far as we know, the qualifications for becoming a midwife were gained from on-the-job experience. Even Trotula, the famous female doctor and professor of medicine, discussed many female conditions but not the subject of childbirth.

According to Joseph and Frances Gies:

During labor the midwife rubs her patient's belly with ointment to ease her travail and bring it to a quicker conclusion. She encourages the patient with comforting words. If the labor is difficult, sympathetic magic is invoked. The patient's hair is loosened and all the pins removed. Servants open all the doors, drawers, and cupboards in the house and untie all the knots.
...
When the baby is born, the midwife ties the umbilical cord and cuts it at four fingers' length. She washes the baby and rubs him all over with salt, then gently cleanses his palate and gums with honey, to give him an appetite. [Life in a Medieval City, pp.60-1]

Some historians have noted that the regulation of midwifery started generally around the same time as persecutions for witchcraft. This is, of course, not true in all countries, but it would be difficult to miss the similarity between two different practices of trying to place controls on a segment of society that was in a position of potential harm, either through neglect (on the part of midwives) or design (on the part of witches).

The Pact of Umar

Copy of the Pact [source]

The Pact of Umar is a document that outlines rights and restrictions for Christians living in Muslim-held territory. Its true origin is uncertain, and different versions exist. Some of the points gleaned from the various versions follow:

• The ruler would provide security for the Christian believers who follow the rules of the pact.
• Prohibition against building new churches, places of worship, monasteries, monks or a new cell.
• Prohibition against hanging a cross on the Churches.
• Muslims should be allowed to enter Churches (for shelter) in any time, both in day and night.
• Prohibition of Christians and Jews against raising their voices at prayer times.
• Prohibition against teaching non-Muslim children the Qur'an.
• Palm Sunday and Easter parades were banned.
• Funerals should be conducted quietly.
• Prohibition against burying non-Muslim dead near Muslims.
• Prohibition against telling a lie about Muslims.
• Prohibition against adopting a Muslim title of honor.
• Prohibition against engraving Arabic inscriptions on signet seals.
• Prohibition against non-Muslims to lead, govern or employ Muslims.
• The worship places of non-Muslims must be lower in elevation than the lowest mosque in town.
• The houses of non-Muslims must not be taller in elevation than the houses of Muslims.

It could have been worse: there could have been no Pact at all.

There is a legend that it was negotiated by Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem until his death on 11 March 638. After Arab armies conquered Jerusalem in 637, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab came to Jerusalem; he and Sophronius (a Syrian Arab by descent) toured the city together. When the time came for Umar to pray, they were near a Christian church. Sophronius suggested to Umar that he enter the church to pray. Umar (supposedly) declined, because future Arabs might take it as a precedent and want to replace the church with a mosque. Sophronius was moved by the ruler's graciousness, and gave him the keys to the church, which remain in the hands of an Arab family to this day. (For a more historically accurate accounting of the keys, see here.)

Many scholars prefer to believe that the Pact is of later origin, and was retroactively ascribed the Umar because he was the first Arab ruler of Jerusalem. Another possible source is Caliph Umar II (no relation)

Ballista, Catapult, Trebuchet...

...Onager, Mangonel, Springald, Polybolos—all words for devices that propelled heavy objects toward an enemy; not to mention Cheiroballista, Manuballista, Carroballista, and Couillard.

[source]

Ever since early man learned that hitting someone in the head with a rock was an efficient way to win an argument, he probably started thinking "Hmmm. If only I could hit him without getting too close."

The invention of the catapult [Latin "catapulta" from Greek "kata"=down and "pallo"=to hurl] is credited to the ancient Greeks—as this blog has mentioned previously—although a similar device is described even earlier in the Old Testament:

And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men, to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal. And his name spread far abroad; for he was marvellously helped, till he was strong. [King James Bible, 2 Chronicles 26:15]

Not all catapults are alike. The various names for such devices distinguish different types of them. For instance, the onager [Greek: "wild ass"] was so named because when fired it "bucked and kicked" like a donkey. The trebuchet used a counterweight to provide the thrusting power, rather than the tension of pulling the arm back, as in the standard catapult. The couillard was a French modification on the trebuchet; it used a two-part counterweight, each half swinging to the side of the central arm. The most famous trebuchet was probably one called Warwolf, used by Edward I in 1304 to bring down a section of the walls of Stirling Castle.

The manuballista [Latin: "hand thrower"] was exactly what it sounds like: a hand-operated throwing device, such as used by young boys through the ages and pictured above. The cheiroballista [Greek: "hand thrower'] is considered to be the same device, even though descriptions are not included in the references. The carroballista? A catapult mounted on a carro, a cart, for easy transport.

The springald was essentially a crossbow: smaller, and therefore less tension and less damage, used best against individuals in closer quarters. It first appears in a Byzantine manuscript of the 11th century.

Most of these devices threw a single mass in order to cause great damage to a defensive wall. Occasionally, however, you might want smaller damage but over a wider area. That is when you used the polybolos [Greek: "many thrower"]. Equivalent to a gatling gun rather than a shotgun, the polybolos could fire repeatedly: Philo of Byzantium (c.280-c.220 BCE) describes the mechanism that could fire bolt after bolt—eleven per minute!—once you loaded it up.

If you wish to build your own device, consider this store.

The @

We note with sadness the passing of Ray Tomlinson on 7 March 2016, whose name and history are unknown to the general populace but whose innovation is used hundreds of millions of times each day by folk on every continent. Ray Tomlinson, while working as an engineer in Boston, in 1971 was tasked with figuring out uses for the new ARPANET.  He invented a way to send a message from one computer to another; today we call it email. While figuring how to keep, in a line of text, the recipient separate from the address, he chose the @ on his keyboard, since it was used for little else. One article eulogizing Tomlinson said that the @ would probably have fallen out of use and off of keyboard layouts if not for him.

Of course, it was used before Tomlinson to designate a rate, such as "1 apple @25¢."

But...where did it come from?

To the left we see it in a record of a shipment of wheat from Castile to Aragon in 1448. There it was an abbreviation of Spanish arroba, meaning "a quarter" and being equivalent to 25 pounds of weight.

One theory holds that its use in other countries derived from a monastic scribal abbreviation to save space, reducing Latin ad [at, toward, by, about] to an a with a lower-case d curving around it. This would save ink and expensive parchment.

The earliest manuscript in which we find it, however, is a real puzzle. In a 1345 Bulgarian copy of the Greek Manasses Chronicle, a history written by Constantine Manasses (c.1130-c.1187), we find the word "Amen" written as "@men." Why it would be used for an upper-case "a" is unknown. Clearly, the symbol was a known figure that the audience was expected to understand.

In English we call it the "at" sign or symbol, but other languages have different names for it. French, Spanish and Portuguese call it arroba or arobase, a unit of weight (already mentioned). But other countries have more colorful names. Norwegians see a "pig's tale"; Hungarians see a "worm"; it is a "duckling" in Greek and a "rose" in Turkish.

A Day Late, A Dollar Short

Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi (940 - 1020) was a Persian poet, creator of the longest single-author epic poem in the world. The poem in question, the Shahnameh [Persian: "Book of Kings"] is the national epic of Iran.

Tomb of Ferdowsi [link]

The reason for its length might not have been only because of the grandeur of the subject matter. The legend of Ferdowsi is that he was offered one gold piece per couplet by the Sultan. This sounds like a set-up to a story, but it is not as ludicrous as you might think. The Sultan, Mahmud of Ghazni (971 - 1030), was known for numerous plundering expeditions into India, whence he gained the wealth to promote culture back home. He built a library, a museum, and a university.

Ferdowsi asked that the payment come as a lump sum when the work was finished and in the hands of the Sultan. Shahnameh was completed on 8 March 1010. When the Sultan would have paid, the courtier assigned to deliver the 60,000 gold pieces decided to deliver silver pieces instead. The poet was enjoying a bath house when the money was delivered, and was so insulted by what he thought was the Sultan's reneging on their deal that he gave the money away to the bath house staff. The courtier told the Sultan that Ferdowsi had insulted him by giving away his payment, so Mahmud threatened execution. The poet fled into exile and wrote a satirical poem about Mahmud.

Eventually, Sultan Mahmud learned of the deception perpetrated by his courtier on the poet, and banished the courtier (or maybe executed him; we are not sure). Many years later, Ferdowsi wished to return to his home, the city of Tus. Sultan Mahmud assembled 60,000 gold pieces and sent them to Tus. As the servants bearing the long-awaited payment entered the gates of Tus, the funeral procession of Ferdowsi was departing. He had died of heart failure the day before.

The Forgotten Vegetable

In The Forme of Cury cookbook from Richard II's court, there is a recipe for "Rapes in Potage," "rapes" meaning turnips. Let me offer my translation of the recipe:

Take turnips and wash them, cut them into squares, parboil them. Take them out of the water, put them into broth and continue cooking. Mince onions and toss them with saffron and salt; add them to the pot. Sprinkle with sweet powder and serve. You can also do this [the author adds] with parsnips and skirrets.

From an 1885 German book

Turnips and parsnips we understand, but "skirrets" are mostly a mystery to modern cooks, despite a few attempts to create a revival.

The plant itself came from China, but traveled westward via trade to Europe. It became known in Germany as Zuckerwurzel ["sugar root"], and Hildegard of Bingen addressed its effects and medicinal properties in her treatise, Physica. The Dutch and Danish also call it "sugar root."

The Forme of Cury not only mentions them as a substitute for turnips, but also has a recipe for skirret fritters. In England, it was called skirwhit or skirwort which mean "white root." The whiteness and sweetness of the roots seem to be their chief attribute, praised by cooks through the ages.

The plant itself is hardy, resistant to cold and pests, and prefers moist soil—making it ideal for the English climate. The roots are best if dug up and eaten when the plant goes dormant in winter, making them a good source of food during the coldest months.

Modern attempts to work with skirret seem to disagree with the cooks of Richard II. The gardeners of Hampton Court have added this forgotten vegetable to their stock, and find that it is delicate enough that even parboiling ruins the flavor. Food historian Marc Meltonville says "Celebrate it on its own. Eat it raw or cube it up and fry it in butter with a little garlic, in an iron pan if possible." [link]

If you wish to try your hand at a long-lost root vegetable, you can order from here or here.

Noting the Bern

The Smithfield Decretals have been mentioned recently. They are a book of decrees drawn from 1,971 letters from Pope Gregory IX, with glosses (detailed commentaries) and lavish illustrations. About 700 copies of these decretals exist—most of them created after the advent of mass printing technology; this particular one was made in France in about 1300, but found in Smithfield in the UK, hence its name. It is thought that the owner in England had the illustrations added in about 1340.

Apes fighting as knights, from page 75

Thanks to the British Library's plan to digitize all of its manuscripts, you can actually flip through the pages if you go here. You will see all the illustrations, including depictions of daily life as well as fanciful portrayals of animals acting like humans.

But those are just the side show. The reason 700 copies exist of the writings are because of the importance of the papal letters, and the explicating of the important statements within. The editor of the decretals was one Bernard of Botone (d.1263), also called Bernard of Parma because of his birthplace. He studied at the University of Bologna, where (according to his gravestone) he became Chancellor in his later years. An expert at canon law, he was an ideal commentator for the decrees.

Bernard drew from multiple sources for the commentaries. Many medieval manuscripts give no hint as to authorship, or editor-ship. In the case of the Decretals, however, attribution is always given to the other authors and commentators whom he quoted. Whenever the notes and commentaries were his own, he signed with a simple "Bern" at the end.

The whole thing is finished; give the guy who wrote it a drink.

Bernard died in 1263, and the copies that exist were all made years later. In the case of the Smithfield decretals copy, we do not know who the copyist was, nor who the illustrators were. The copyist, however, did leave a "personal stamp" on the manuscript. On the very last page, after the last line, he added the following:

The whole thing is finished; give the guy who wrote it a drink.

Yoda's Medieval Manuscript

Yesterday mentioned the Smithfield Decretals, a detailed work on ecclesiastical law. It was produced in the 14th century, full of important decisions gleaned from the papal decrees of Pope Gregory IX, additional material like the explanation of how to celebrate the feast day of St. Matthias, and curious illuminations.

One of these illuminations is of particular interest to fans of Star Wars, because it seems to be an early illustration of Jedi Grandmaster Yoda.

The similarity was first noted by Julian Harrison, curator of pre-1600 manuscripts at the British Library and pointed out in his Medieval Manuscripts Blog. The figure has the grayish-green complexion, the large pointed ears, and the ridged forehead of Yoda's race. Also, the hands, like Yoda's, or not five-fingered. He also wears a long robe.

What are the chances that a specimen from a long-lived race in a galaxy far, far away could travel to Earth and be portrayed in a 14th century manuscript?

The figure perches atop a passage on Samson and Delilah. Although not likely to have been intended as a portrait of Goliath, it may simply be there to evoke the idea of monstrous creatures, such as Goliath would have seemed. Some have suggested that the figure may represent the Devil, tempting Delilah to cut Samson's hair. Or it is just a random figure from the fertile mind of a bored monk. This is a manuscript that includes archer rabbits hunting greyhounds and battling monkeys dressed in armor, after all.

The Leap Saint

Following on the heels of yesterday's discussion of Leap Day, I thought we should give some attention to the poor saint whose feast day happened to fall on a day that only appeared in the calendar every four years.

Matthias, from the workshop of the
Italian painter Simone Martini (c.1284-1344)

St. Matthias was not a medieval saint. He was one of the Apostles, and is thought to have died in 80 CE. That is the only quantitative piece of data that is agreed upon. He died in either Jerusalem or Judea or Colchis. Chosen by lot to replace Judas, he was called either Matthias (Acts 1:24-25) or Zacchaeus (by Clement of Alexandria), or Tolmai (by Eusebius), or Barnabas (by literature ascribed to Pope Clement I); and a 19th century German scholar thinks he is the Nathanael in the Gospel of John.

One thing that is not in dispute, however, is that his feast day was 24 February. To modern readers, that does not ring any bells. In the Classical Era and the Middle Ages, however, this put him in an unusual spot in the calendar: Leap Day.

That's right: Leap Day used to be 24 February, which you can read about here. The unusual thing about 24 February being the extra day in a Leap Year wasn't so much that it was not placed at the end of the month, but that—it being an "extra" day of the year—it was treated as a "bonus" and was simply repeated; that is, 24 February appeared twice in a row in Leap Years.

Does that mean that the feast day of St. Matthias was celebrated twice? Yes. The Smithfield Decretals, an expansive book on ecclesiastical law, explains:

A standard solar year has 365 days and six hours, so in four years’ time these hours make 24 extra hours, which must be added as a new day to every fourth year. This additional day is what we call “double-sixth-day”, because, although it is counted as an addition, it stands under the same number as the previous day in the calendar, so that the two days are regarded as one and the same. The extra day is inserted in the calendar after 24 February (six days before the first day of March) so that we celebrate the memory of St Matthias the Apostle (24 February) on the next day, too. [link]

Lucky Matthias! Little is known about him, but he gets to be venerated two days in a row! Well, not anymore. The Church of England has kept him at 24 February, but in 1969 the Roman Catholic Calendar moved him to 14 May so that he could be celebrated outside of Lent and on a post-Easter day that would be closer to what would have been the day of his choosing.

The Leap Day That Wasn't

Bernard of Botone (d.1266) gloss on Leap Day

Most of you know that Julius Caesar in the 1st century BCE wanted to fix the fact that solstices and equinoxes were "sliding" from their original locations in the calendar, due to the fact that Earth's orbit around the Sun did not take place in an even 365 days. The extra six hours meant that, every four years, the calendar was "off" by an entire day. "Everyone knows" that the extra day was added to the end of February, creating February 29th every four years.

Except it wasn't.

Truth is, it just wasn't that simple. The standard Roman year at the time of Julius was 355 days. A "intercalary month" was added every three years or so to even things out and restore some normalcy to the spacing of festivals. The new year started on 1 March, and so the "extra month," which was called Mercedonius, was inserted prior to 1 March.

But that would throw things off even more—adding that month made those years 377-8 days long. So that the year would not get too long, they shortened February to just a little over three weeks. A year that needed Mercedonius had a February that ended on the 23rd. Why the 23rd? because that was Terminalia, the festival of Terminus, god of boundaries, and therefore a fitting end to the month.

Julius realized that this was a mess of overcorrecting for the astronomical inequality, and so he demanded that his scholars figure out what the calendar needed. They shifted some months, rewarded him for his wisdom by naming the seventh month after him, and told him the calendar could be kept stable by adding a single day every 4th year.

But where to add it?

Well, since inserting a correction in February was already a common practice, why not there? Excellent! So it was added—right after the day after Terminalia. There was no interest, however, in giving this new day its own identity—after all, it was only going to be around every four years, so who would count on it? Therefore, instead of calling it 24 February, they called it bis septum [Latin: "twice sixth"] because 24 February would have been the sixth day before the Kalends of March, so they would simply have 24th February repeated.

Therefore, even after the Leap Day was introduced into February, there was no 29 February until the Middle Ages, with the widespread European adoption of a sequential system of numbering, rather than counting forward and backward from the Ides and Kalends of the Roman system.

Paper-Thin

One of the questions we have about the numerous books that were created in the Middle Ages is: how did they turn animal skins into parchment of exceeding thinness?

Skin stretched to make parchment [source]

Simple answer? We don't know.

The pages are so uniformly thin—thinner than one would expect from calf skin—that theories have been put forth to find other sources. One of the most popular has been that the pages are from the much thinner calf uterine tissue. This would require an enormous number of female calves to be raised and slaughtered for book pages.

Others have suggested hides from other animals, such as rabbits. This, too, would suggest an enormous breeding program to produce the number of paper-thin pages  used in all the illuminated manuscripts we have, which of course is only a fraction of what would have been produced.

The obvious solution to the mystery is to determine the genetics of the parchment, but since that would require destroying part of a valuable antique—several parts, to test several pages—no one was eager to pursue that method. Science has provided a non-destructive method, however, with the aid of an old-fashioned PVC eraser. It turns out that rubbing a PVC eraser gently across the page creates an electrostatic charge that lifts proteins from the surface of the parchment. These proteins can then be examined for their genetic content.

The research, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), involved scientists and scholars from France, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the USA and the UK. They analysed 72 pocket Bibles originating in France, England and Italy, and 293 further parchment samples from the 13th century. The parchment samples ranged in thickness from 0.03 -- 0.28mm. [source]

It turns out that the parchments are made from several different animals, and there is no evidence of uterine skin. Unfortunately, this leaves us with the original question: How did they produce such thin parchment? Clearly, parchmenters had techniques centuries ago that we have not yet re-discovered.

The "First Christmas"

We have looked at some of the possible reasons for dating Christ's birth to December 25th, but how early was that dating settled upon?

Month of December; the figure is playing
dice on a table, which was only allowed
during festivals.

Eastern churches (especially Egypt) liked to celebrate on 6 January, but usually because that was the day of the Epiphany, when the Magi showed up and acknowledged the baby's special significance. The church at Constantinople accepted 25 December for the Nativity in 379, and Antioch followed in 386. Alexandria and the rest of Egypt accepted the December date in 431.

The official choice of date did not come before the  practice of celebrating it, however. There is a document called the Chronography of 354 that offers a clue. The Chronography was made for a wealthy Roman, Valentines, by one of the best-known scribes of the day, Furius Dionysius Filocalus (for that reason, copies of the manuscript through the ages have sometimes been called the Calendar of Filocalus).

The Chronography is an illustrated calendar and almanac in several parts. Its 16 sections contain, among other bits of information, pictures of cities, pictures and important dates of emperors, the planets and the zodiac, calculated dates for Easter from 312 to 411 CE, and an error-prone catalogue of early popes.

Section six is a straightforward calendar, with each month and day listed, along with their important events.  Here is listed, on 25 December, "N INVICTI"; it stands for Dies Natalis Solis Invictus, the "Day of Birth of the Unconquered Sun," a reference to Mithras. (Note: The Saturnalia festival is, of course, mentioned, but that ran from the 17th to 23rd, so early persecuted Christians using it to mask Christmas, when Christmas was listed as the 25th, seems like a hypothesis that has outlived its usefulness.)

Section 12 is what interests us. It is a list of the feast days of martyrs. The very first entry is:

VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae

This means "On the 8th Kalends of January, birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea"

The 8th Kalends of January is 25 December. So a generation before the early churches started declaring 25 December  the day of Christ's birth, it was already being celebrated as such by Christians.

Sol Invictus

Was December 25th the default date for Christmas because of a Roman Saturnalia or because of deliberate copying with Mithraism?

Connected with the Winter Solstice was Mithraism, an early competitor to Christianity. Mithras, a favorite of Roman soldiers, was connected to the Sun, which, because it returned every December 25th, was called Sol Invictus [Latin: "Unconquered Sun"]. Mithras' was celebrated on December 25th, called Dies Natalis Solis Invictus [Latin: "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun"].

Mithras being born from
a rock, 2nd century

The first few centuries of the Common Era debated over the divinity of Christ and the extent to which Christ was God and/or human. By the 4th century, the divinity had been largely agreed upon, but since Christ became human, it was important to pick a date of birth. December 25th was settled upon.

A persistent idea that the iconography of Christ was based on Mithras is interesting, but inconsistent, as the picture here suggests. True, both religions involved a communal meal (Mass, the Last Supper), and a sacrifice, but Christ was not said to be born from a rock bearing a sword and torch, nor did he perform Mithras' other great feat, killing a bull.

And association of Christianity with the Sun did not require "imitation" of Mithraism. After all, Constantine converted when he saw the sign of the Cross over the Sun at Milvian Bridge, and the book of Malachi mentions the "sun of righteousness," associated with Jesus. Early churches were oriented toward the Sun, and some early Christian graves in the Roman catacombs have sun imagery on them, from before the Church settled on the Winter Solstice-related date for the Nativity.

One theory says that the persecuted Christians celebrated on the 25th to conceal their subversive worshipping among the pagan Roman festivities. By the time the 25th of December had been chosen by Christianity, however, Constantine had made Christianity an official religion in the Roman Empire. Also,

...while the winter solstice on or around December 25 was well established in the Roman imperial calendar, there is no evidence that a religious celebration of Sol on that day antedated the celebration of Christmas. [S.E.Hijmans, The Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome]

Also, the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel told Mary that she had conceived, is on March 25th. (Note: March 25th for many cultures was the start of the New Year, since it marks the point after the Vernal Equinox when days become longer than nights.) Putting the birth of Christ nine months after the Annunciation just made sense, a theory accepted by the Church of England Liturgical Commission.

So how early was Christmas celebrated on December 25th? Tomorrow we will look at the earliest known reference.

Sun Stands Still

Sunrise on the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge

Sol stitium [Latin: "sun standing still"] is the origin of the Modern English solstice. It describes the day when the sun—which during the course of the year changes the position on the horizon where it rises and sets—seems to "stand still" because its forward movement seems not to have changed from the previous day. In the days to follow, its course seems to reverse, and whereas it seemed to rise (or set) further and further south (or north) each day, it now seems to be coming back.

To early peoples, who (in the Northern Hemisphere) noticed the days getting shorter as the sun moved south on the horizon, it was good to know that the trend would reverse and the days would get longer again. They did not know that the reason was the tilt of the Earth's axis and the fact that it was pointed away from the Sun. All they knew was that the nights got longer.

Memory told them that the same thing happened last year, and the Sun always paused for a day, and then returned. To the naked eye, it was not always easy to be certain that the Sun was returning and the days were lengthening; four days was a sufficient span to be certain. Therefore, although the 21st of the month (by the reckoning of people who used the ancestor of our current calendar) was the Solstice, it was the 25th of the month that was celebrated as a certainty of the return of the Sun.

Some cultures designed ways to be certain that they had reached the "darkest part" of the year. The arrangement of rocks on Salisbury Plain that we call Stonehenge was apparently designed (among other reasons) to mark the Solstice.

The day that they were certain the Sun was "returning" was a time for feasting. With winter established, livestock were slaughtered because they could not be easily fed during the next few months; fresh meat was now plentiful and it was a time for a mid-winter feast before hunkering down to wait out the harsh cold months until planting should begin.

The Demonization of Cats

Here is a description of a medieval cult:

At length, when the novice has come forward, [he] is met by a man of wondrous pallor, who has black eyes and is so emaciated [and] thin that since his flesh has been wasted, seems to have remaining only skin drawn over [his] bone. The novice kisses him and feels cold, [like] ice, and after the kiss the memory of the [C]atholic faith totally disappears from his heart. Afterwards, they sit down to a meal and when they have arisen from it, the certain statue, which is usual in a sect of this kind, a black cat descends backwards, with its tail erect. First the novice, next the master, then each one of the order who are worthy and perfect, kiss the cat on its buttocks. Then each [returns] to his place and, speaking certain responses, they incline their heads toward to cat. 

This is from a papal bull called Vox in Rama ["A Voice in Ramah"], issued by Pope Gregory IX somewhere from 1232 to 1234, condemning a German heresy. There is more, outlining the practices of this form of devil worship, requiring German authorities to root out and stop this practice, and kicking off a demonization of cats that caused them—especially black cats—to be killed in large numbers. This destruction of cats, and the subsequent increase in rodents population, enhanced the spread of the Black Death a little over a century later.

...and it is all very likely untrue.

Let us start with the Black Death: killing all the black cats—or even more cats—in Western Europe would not stop the spread of the Plague in India, China, Constantinople, etc. The earliest text we have of Vox in Rama is from an 1883 collection printed in Germany of Latin texts. It is possible that Gregory sent a letter to Germany that got collected here, but it does not sound like a typical papal bull. If his injunctions were applied at all, they may have been applied only locally in a very few areas.

Some even question whether it is a late forgery: Gregory was very erudite, and a lawyer. This document is very unlike any of his writings. It seems like a document created later to support a theory of devil worship.

This was not necessary to stain the reputation of cats, however. The 12th century English author Walter Map had already associated cats with witches who take feline form in De nugis curialium [Latin: "The trifles of courtiers"]. He relates many supernatural folktales.

Maybe the independent nature of cats bothered people, who felt that creatures were created by God to be subservient to man. Maybe the fact that Muslims liked cats—Muhammad speaks well of them—made cats seem pagan and suspicious. Some combination of circumstances singled out cats for vilification. We will probably never know for certain the underlying reason.

The Talmud Compromise

Although Pope Gregory IX felt it his duty to protect the Jews, he had issues with their Talmud, the collection of Jewish laws and practices. Was it harmful and heretical, or simply a way of life that was different?

A converted Jew had presented to Gregory 35 places in the Talmud that he considered blasphemous to Christianity. This led to the Disputation of Paris (about which I really should write a post soon). After the Disputation, a tribunal was assembled to decide whether the Talmud was dangerous to Christianity. One of the men involved, Odo of Châteauroux (c.1190 - 25 January 1273), was chancellor of the University of Paris. The decision of Odo and the tribunal was that the Talmud was heretical and should be burned.

Burning the Talmud

In 1242, 24 cartloads of copies of the Talmud and other Hebrew books were burned at a ceremony in Paris. Skip forward to 1243, however, and Pope Innocent IV was on the throne of Peter. At first, he continued the policy of Gregory, and Talmuds were gathered to be destroyed. He began to question, however, whether this policy was not in opposition to the Church's traditional stance of tolerance for Jews.

In 1247, the pope listened to complaints brought to him by some Jews, and he asked Odo to take a second look, but this time to try to see it through the eyes of the Jewish rabbis. Was the Talmud truly heretical and a danger to Christianity, or merely misguided and could be treated simply as an error-prone text and studied as such, the way philosophy would be treated. He thought that the Talmud might prove harmless, and that the confiscated copies might be returned.

Odo was having none of it, and he condemned the Talmud again, in May 1248. Innocent listened carefully, and also listened to the rabbis who claimed that they could not understand the Bible if they did not have their Talmud, which was so intertwined with the Old Testament. Against the objections of Odo and others, Pope Innocent decreed that the Talmud should not be burned, merely censured as erroneous insofar as Christianity is concerned. He decreed that the Talmuds in possession should be returned to their owners.

The popes after Innocent continued this policy.

Popes and the Talmud

The Talmud [late Hebrew talmūd, "instruction"] is the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law. It includes the Mishnah (exegetical material embodying the oral tradition of Jewish law) and the Gemara (rabbinical commentaries on the Mishnah). The Talmud had a rocky existence in Christian Europe, even at the hands of one of the popes who was most supportive of the Jews, Gregory IX.

Talmud from 13th-14th centuries

Pope Gregory IX (c.1145 - 1241) was responsible for the Decretals (a codification of canon law that some say was designed to establish his authority over the Church) and the Papal Inquisition (and let us not forget his part in the demonization of cats). This centralization of power of the papacy seemed to inspire him to be the guardian of all God's children, however. He was steadfast in his protection of persecuted Jews, so long as they were not guilty of what he considered to be sins.

In 1233, for instance, Jews in France complained to Gregory that they were being mistreated. He declare that any imprisoned Jews were to be set free and not injured in their person or their property, so long as they agreed to forsake usury (the practice of charging high rates of interest, considered to be sinful due to the Bible).

In the 1234 Decretals, Gregory declared the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum. That is, the Jews were in perpetual political servitude until Judgment Day, making them officially second-class citizens in the Empire. As abhorrent as this was, it also made Gregory treat them as a group that needed his protection, so that in 1235 he re-affirmed an earlier papal bull, Sicut Judeis ["and thus, to the Jews"], which declared their right to enjoy lawful liberty.

1236 was a busy year for Gregory. He presented a list of charges against Emperor Frederick II concerning offenses against the Jews. In September he wrote to several bishops of France, requiring them to make sure that Crusaders who had killed and robbed Jews make full restitution. He also wrote to King Louis IX of France concerning the same.

Gregory had a serious problem, however, with the Talmud. He had to determine if it fell into the category of "heresy." His conclusion was harsh, but fortunately not universally accepted. We will look at that tomorrow.

The Oath of Purgation

The post Charlemagne and the Popes mentioned Pope Leo III taking an Oath of Purgation to "prove" his innocence of accusations made against him. It seems strange to a modern audience that simply swearing that you are innocent is enough to exonerate you, but the Middle Ages believed that God who sees the sparrow fall observes your deeds and will treat you accordingly if you lie. Therefore, swearing an oath puts yourself firmly into God's hands for judgment, and no one in his right mind would do that if he were actually guilty.

Detail from The Oath of Leo III by Raphael, 1516

There were two levels of purgation [from Latin purgare "to cleanse" by way of Old French  purgacion]. Vulgar Purgation was the clearing of one's name through ordeals such as trial by fire or water. You can read about those here.

The other form was Canonical Purgation, the act of clearing your name by swearing your innocence in the presence of reliable witnesses who would state their trust in your statement. (The number of witnesses was frequently required to be 12, like the Twelve Apostles.)

The Canonical Oath of Purgation is made with the hand on the Bible:

I, __________, now under process before the Session of the Congregation of C for the sin of _, alleged to have been committed by me: For ending said process, and giving satisfaction to all, do declare, before God and this session, that I am innocent and free of the said sin of charged against me. And I hereby call the great God, the judge and avenger of all falsehood, to be witness, and judge against me in this matter if I be guilty. And this I do by taking his blessed name in my mouth, and swearing by him who is the searcher of the heart, and that in sincerity, according to the truth of the matter and my own innocence, as I shall answer at the great day of judgment, when I stand before him to answer for all that I have done in the flesh, and as I would partake of his glory in heaven after this life is at an end.

These days, we don't allow the accused to declare his innocence without proof. Purgation is still used in minor cases. If charged with contempt of court, for instance, the accused may "purge himself of such contempt, by swearing that in doing the act charged, he did not intend to commit a contempt." [source]

The Gentle Prison

We saw here how Charlemagne captured his ex-father-in-law, King Desiderius of the Lombards, and imprisoned him in the Benedictine Abbey of Corbie. Sticking your political enemies away in a monastery was an efficient and humane way to eliminate them from the scene. Monasteries were often remote; the monastic life was carefully regulated, and so someone trying to leave would be discovered quickly; it was not as harsh as a dungeon; your enemies were given plenty of time to contemplate their sin of being your enemy.

In the turmoil that followed the dividing up of the kingdom by Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious, Louis' grandson Charles failed in his attempt to gain some power and was imprisoned at Corbie. He escaped, however, and was made Archbishop of Mainz by Louis the German, showing that imprisonment in a monastery did not mean you were a convict with complete loss of rights or privileges in the eyes of the world.

Corbie, in Picardy, was particularly favored by Charlemagne because his family had close ties to it. Shortly after Desiderius was sent there, Charlemagne's cousin Saint Adalard became its abbot. Corbie was a desirable position, because it was granted freedom from the jurisdiction of local bishops.

One of Corbie's most prominent features—not surprising given its Carolingian patronage, was an extensive library. This library not only had numerous writings by the early Church Fathers, but also many classical texts and non-religious texts. The geometry of Euclid, as transmitted to the Middle Ages by the works of Boethius, was of great interest to scholars at Corbie. A 9th century monk at Corbie, Headboard, wrote extracts from Cicero, microbus, and Martianus Capella.

Carolingian minuscule

This love of scholarship extended for centuries: a 17th century monk of Corbie, Jean Mabillon, is considered the father of paleography, no doubt after studying the centuries of developing styles of scripts. The distinctive script called Carolingian minuscule was developed at Corbie about the time that Saint Adalard was abbot.

This remarkable center of learning did not survive until modern times, alas. In the 17th century, 400 manuscripts were sent to a monastery in Paris and later sold to a Russian diplomat. During the French Revolution the remaining 300 manuscripts at Corbie were sent to Amiens. About 200 manuscripts from Corbie are known to exist today. The monastery itself was damaged extensively during World War I, but has been rebuilt.

Charlemagne's Father-in-Law

Desiderius, from a 15th century miniature

I mentioned here how Charlemagne fought and defeated Desiderius, King of the Lombards, and sent him to live out his days in a monastery. What I left out was that Desiderius was Charlemagne's father-in-law.

Was his father-in-law, that is.  Charlemagne married Desiderius' eldest daughter, Desiderata, in 770. Marrying her was a political move, forging an alliance between the Lombards and the Franks. The marriage was annulled in 771, however, and she was sent back to her father.

The political alliances of Desiderius were all over the map, so to speak. When he was named King of the Lombards upon the death of his predecessor, King Aistulf, Aistulf's predecessor, his brother Rachis, who had been in a monastery, left it and tried to take the throne. Desiderius defeated him with the help of Pope Stephen II, after promising that he would give lands to the pope. The pope went for this, since Aistulf had made raids against papal lands. Desiderius, however, was not very forthcoming about handing control of the territories over to the papacy, so by the time Pope Stephen III came along, he was opposed to Charlemagne's marriage to Desiderata, and pushed for the annulment.

Desiderius later tried, like Aistulf, to encroach on papal-controlled lands around Rome, and this time Pope Adrian I called on Charlemagne's aid. It was expedient for Charlemagne to take up the request, since it allowed him to do a favor for the pope and annex Lombardy.

There was another "family connection" between Charlemagne and Desiderius. In 774, Charlemagne's brother Carloman died. Carloman's wife, Gerberga, might have expected her sons to inherit his territory, but Charlemagne simply absorbed it into his own. Gerber fled with her sons to Pavia (and later, Verona) and took refuge with Desiderius. Desiderius, unhappy with the treatment of his daughter by Charlemagne, took in the refugees. This contributed to Charlemagne's willingness to besiege Pavia in aid of Pope Adrian. The family was likely sent to monasteries, just like Desiderius, who was surely sorry that he ever got mixed up with the Frankish royal family.