St. Columbanus

Recent posts about the differences between Irish Christianity and other practices in the early medieval church are due largely to the work of Saint Columbanus. From his birth in West Leinster, Ireland in 543 to his death on 21 November, 615 in Bobbio, Italy, he traveled widely.

A handsome man in his youth, filled with temptations of the flesh, he took advice from a religious woman who was living as a hermit. She told him:

Twelve years ago I fled from the world, and shut myself up in this cell. Hast thou forgotten Samson, David and Solomon, all led astray by the love of women? There is no safety for thee, young man, except in flight.

Over the protestations of his mother, he went to Lough Erne to Abbot Sinell, and afterward to Bangor to Abbot St. Comgall where he developed the Rule of St. Columbanus, a more strict set of rules than the widely used Rule of St. Benedict. During this time, he strongly promoted aspects and practices of christianity like private confession and strict penance, etc.

When he was 40, he had the inspiration to preach in foreign lands. Assembling 12 companions, he set sail, stopping a short time in England, then went to France about 585. Their modesty, patience, and humility stood out in a country that was suffering from a dearth of religious people after being ravaged by barbarian invasions.

Her managed to perform many miracles (so his chronicler tells us):

• Made a blind man see
• Caused a bear to abandon a cave so Columbanus could live there
• Escaped a pack of wolves
• Cured sick monks so they could work at harvest time
• ...and more

He passed away peacefully in his hermit's cave.

Some of his original 12 followers were interesting characters in themselves. I'll tell you about them next.

British vs. Irish Christianity

The previous post discussed some aspects of Celtic Christianity found in the British Isles that differed from the "mainstream" Rome-based Christianity. There were "local" differences between practices in Ireland and England as well.

Monasteries in Ireland adhered to a much stricter rule than the typical Rule of St. Benedict. Fasting and corporal punishment were more common in Ireland than British monasteries or elsewhere. By the 9th century, most monasteries were conforming to the Benedictine style.

Baptism was also different in Ireland, although we do not have a clear description of it. Bede claims that Augustine of Canterbury found the Irish baptismal rite to be "incomplete" compared to the Roman custom, although what was left out is not explained.

One of the biggest differences was the practice of "Judaizing": observing Jewish rites instead of the newly developing Christian versions. One of the biggest examples was, of course, the observance of Easter on a date more closely conforming to the Jewish Passover. This was one of the main points of contention at the Synod of Whitby. Adhering more closely to laws found in the Old Testament could be a problem. In the mid-8th century, an Irish preacher named Clement Scotus was condemned for heresy, partially because he promoted Old Testament laws such as requiring a man to marry the widow of his brother. Paul's Letter to the Romans in the New Testament made clear that Christians were absolved from following the old law through Christ's sacrifice. Rejecting the Old Testament's list of injunctions and rules was therefore an important part of distinguishing Christianity from Judaism.

Much of what was different about Irish Christianity was inspired by the preaching of Columbanus, and we should talk about him next.

Celtic Christianity

We have discussed the Synod of Whitby in 664, which debated whether Roman-based or Iona-based Christianity should prevail. "Celtic Christianity" might be a better term for what was being followed in the British isles, since it was a collection of practices that was found among the Celtic-speaking peoples of the early Middle Ages. We've discussed the Easter date controversy, but there were other differences: how monks should be tonsured, how the sacrament of penance should be performed, etc.

The typical method of tonsure to denote your status as a monk is seen in artwork, and clearly represented the crown of thorns: it shaved a circle at the top of the head and below the ears, leaving a ring. We do not have artwork from the time depicting the Irish tonsure, but it appeared to run from ear to ear over the head, rather than around.

Regarding penance, the Irish form was a private matter: the penitent Christian confessed to a priest in private and was given a form of penance to undergo privately. This does not seem strange to modern Roman Catholics, whose churches have confessionals: a small room for the penitent with a grill connecting it to a small room where the priest sits, so that the two can speak with anonymity. On the continent, early Christian penance was a public affair, with those wishing to participate appearing in sackcloth and confessing as a group.

Another practice that found expression in Britain and Ireland was the idea that one must travel away from one's home as part of the religious life. This peregrinatio pro Christo [Latin: "exile for Christ"] became popular later when St. Augustine of Hippo claimed one should be an exile in this world while awaiting the Kingdom of God.

The term "Celtic Christianity" is a convenient one, and should not be construed as evidence that there was a formal set of rules for all of the Celtic world as opposed to the Roman world. Ireland had some of its own preferences. Britain, like the rest of the world, placed religious authority with the bishop of a diocese. In Ireland in the early Middle Ages, the abbot of a monastery was considered a more significant authority than the bishop.

I'll talk about some additional divergence between the early Irish and British churches next.

The Date of Easter

Easter is the "floatiest" of floating holidays in the Western calendar. The 7th century saw a very serious debate over how the date should be determined. The debate was between the Ionan and the Roman traditions. The Ionan tradition is so-called because it was promoted by the Irish monks on the Isle of Iona.

According to John 19:14, Pilate presents Jesus to the Jews on the "day of the preparation of Passover."  Early Christianity probably celebrated Easter based on Passover, which is always the 14th of the lunar month of Nisan. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter should be divorced from the Jewish calendar and celebrated on a Sunday. An 84-year lunar-solar cycle was used to calculate the date for awhile.

Developing an accurate calendar based on the actual length of the year was an ongoing problem until the Gregorian Calendar, and the date of Easter was calculated in several different ways for centuries, resulting in different dates being used by different Christian factions. There was a time in Northumbria when the king and queen actually celebrated Easter separately.

Eventually, the differences became too important an issue to allow to exist, and the Synod of Whitby was conferred in 664 to resolve the issues. The strongest voice for the Roman tradition was Wilfrid, who argued:

1. it was the practice in Rome, where the apostles SS. Peter and Paul had "lived, taught, suffered, and are buried";
2. it was the universal practice of the Church, even as far as Egypt;
3. the customs of the apostle John were particular to the needs of his community and his age and, since then, the Council of Nicaea had established a different practice;
4. Columba had done the best he could considering his knowledge, and thus his irregular practice is excusable, the Ionan monks at present did not have the excuse of ignorance; and
5. whatever the case, no one has authority over Peter (and thus his successors, the Bishops of Rome).

Both sides agreed that Jesus had "given Peter the keys"; after that, both sides had to agree that Rome should lead the way.

How exactly do we calculate Easter? It's simple: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If the equinox takes place on 21 March, and is a full moon and a Saturday, then Sunday the 22nd is Easter. This actually happened in 1818, but won't happen again until 2285. If the full moon falls on the day prior to a March 22nd vernal equinox, and 28 days later the full moon falls on Sunday, then Easter is the following Sunday. In 1943, this happened, and Easter happened at its latest possible date, 25 April. This will happen again in 2038.

The Frankpledge

The oath of frankpledge (mentioned here) was a promise of mutual aid between members of a community, used throughout several centuries of the English Middle Ages. When I say "members of a community" I really mean male members over a certain age, exempting clergy and knights, who owed allegiance to different authorities.

Pursuing a sheep stealer

Early Anglo-Saxon society had a practice known as frith-borh ["peace pledge"]. The borh was a way for certain individuals to take responsibility for those under their care, assuring that they would be turned in for crimes or appear before the court if accused. A master was responsible for his slaves, or a person for his family members, or a lord for those living on his land. This was a very informal system of appointing responsibility.

A little later came the Anglo-Saxon custom of tithing, which meant a "thing of 10." Ten men would agree to be a tithing, which existed primarily to agree that they would promise to surrender to the authorities one of their group who broke the law. It was a voluntary grouping, and only local men were eligible. To be eligible, you had to possess property that could be forfeit if you were deemed guilty of something. Women, children, slaves, people passing through—none of these needed to join a tithing since they had no property that could be confiscated if they neglected their duty.

It was not until the reign of King Henry I (c.1068 – 1 December 1135) that the frankpledge gets mentioned in his codified laws. It was originally an informal method of creating civic obligation. Unlike the London Wardmote of a later date, the frankpledge was administered by a sheriff on his bi-annual tourney around the country. At this time he was to be paid a token penny, but also he took the opportunity to fine infractions of the law. The potential for corruption was great enough that the Magna Carta included limitations on the sheriff's exploitation of frankpledge.

The Black Death (1348-50) disrupted the use of frankpledge by reducing the numbers of the oath-taking groups through death and re-location in the pursuit of jobs. Although it survived in the 1400s, a growing national structure of constables and justices of the peace took on more and more responsibility for maintaining order. There is still a holdover of the tithing and frankpledge in the Riot Act of 1886 in England, which indirectly levies damage costs on the local population after damages from rioting.

The Oath of Frankpledge shown here comes from the Liber Albus, the White Book of the laws of London, which was discussed here.

Anonymous IV at Notre Dame

[Mindful of the tragedy at Notre Dame of Paris on 15 April, 2015, I re-present this post from 2012.]

In the post on the Las Huelgas Codex I mentioned that many of the pieces in the codex were new to scholars, but some were familiar. Where else had they been seen?

Notre Dame Cathedral

The collection of recorded polyphonic music produced by composers working at Notre Dame Cathedral from c.1160-c.1250 is referred to as the Notre Dame School of Polyphony. A majority of medieval polyphonic music up to this time was committed to parchment by the Notre Dame School.

This does not man, sadly, that we can set a manuscript in front of a modern musician and have the notes played as they were intended to be heard. Differences in musical notation and rhythm make it close to impossible to know precisely how these pieces were performed centuries ago. For us to make an attempt is only feasible because of analyses of music written by a handful of people. Franco of Cologne was one, John of Garland another (best estimates are that he was keeper of a bookshop in Paris who edited two treatises on music), and the later writing of the industrious student known only as Anonymous IV.*

The "Alleluia nativitatis" by Pérotin

Thanks to Anonymous IV, we have contemporary definitions of what is meant by organum (a plainchant melody with one voice added to enhance harmony), discantus ("singing apart"; a liturgical style of organum with a tenor plainchant and a second voice that moves in "contrary motion"), the rules for consonance and dissonance, and other terms and rules of polyphony.

One "ironic" result of the writing of Anonymous IV is that. through him, we know the names of two composers who would otherwise have been lost to obscurity. He writes about Léonin and Pérotin with such detail and feeling that, although Anonymous would have lived several decades after they lived and composed, they were presumably so famous that their reputations lived on in the school. Léonin and Pérotin are some of the earliest names of artists that we can actually link to their works.

As much as we have been given by the treatise of Anonymous IV, his own identity and details of his life are unknown. Two partial copies of his work survive at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, England; one is from the 13th century, and one from the 14th. Clearly, his work was considered important enough to copy and preserve—but not his name. He was likely an English student who was at Notre Dame for a time in the late 13th century. Thanks to his interests, we understand more about the development of medieval polyphonic music than we otherwise would have.

*His name is the inspiration for a modern female a capella group.

Dick Whittington and His Cat

Dick Whittington buying his cat

A popular figure from English folk tales is Dick Whittington. He is based on Lord Mayor of London Richard Whittington (c.1354-1423), who started as a wealthy mercer, became a money-lender who helped the King, was elected to several positions, and donated a great deal of money to good causes.

More than 150 years after his time, his name started getting used for ballads, a play, and numerous stories of the "rags to riches" variety. There are different versions of his story, but we can present the main elements:

A poor orphan, Dick Whittington, seeks his fortune in London. Falling asleep on a stoop of a wealthy family, he is given a place to sleep and work as a scullion, cleaning the kitchen. He lives in a rat-infested garret, which is made safe because he has a cat (which he bought for a penny that he earned from shining shoes). Eventually, glad of a room but resentful that he is not paid money for his work, he leaves the house. During his journey, he hears the "London Bells" ringing, and they seem to be telling him to "Turn again, Whittington" and tell him he will become mayor. He returns to the house.

Skipping over a bit (a great deal, actually), there is a situation overrun by rats and mice. Dick's cat turns out to be exemplary at dealing with the rodent problem, and he is subsequently offered a great deal of money for the cat. Whittington becomes rich, marries his master's daughter (Alice Fitzwarren, which was the name of the real Whittington's wife), joins his new father-in-law in business, and is later elected mayor of London three times. (He was actually mayor four times, but once was when the king appointed him.)

The folk tale of a man with a useful cat is not unique to England. Two Italian versions are known. A German version is known from the 13th century. A 14th century Persian chronicle tells the same story of a widow's son who made his fortune because of his cat's hunting ability. Although the motif is found much earlier than the English version, the Aarne-Thompson classification system calls it the "Whittington's cat" motif.

Mayor Richard Whittington

One of the most prominent mayors of the City of London in the Middle Ages (and perhaps of all other eras) was Richard Whittington. He was born sometime in the 1350s into a well-to-do family, but as a younger son would not have expected to inherit anything substantial; he was therefore sent to London to learn to be a mercer (a merchant who deals in cloth). Fortunately, he was good at the trade, and by 1388 he was selling to the royal court. He used his growing wealth to become a moneylender, rather than buy property. This ingratiated him to many prominent people; King Richard II was borrowing from him in 1397.

By that time he had been a councilman, an alderman, and a sheriff as well as a powerful member of the Mercers' Company. In 1397, Mayor Adam Bamme died. London and the King were in the middle of a serious dispute: asserting mismanagement, King Richard had appropriated London's real estate. Richard forced London to accept Whittington as mayor. Richard owed Whittington money, and could simply default on the loan. If Whittington wanted his money, he would work with Richard to resolve the dispute. Within days, they struck a deal by which London would receive back all its real estate and right to self-government in exchange for £10,000. That was in June; in October, the citizens elected Whittington mayor in his own right.

In all, he was elected mayor 4 times (though not consecutively). When Richard II was deposed in 1399, Whittington's situation did not suffer: he also had business dealings with Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, and so he remained on good terms with the (new) King. He also loaned large sums to Henry V, and continued to be successful, as a member of parliament representing London, and even as a judge in usury trials in 1421! Henry V also appointed him supervisor of the funds for rebuilding Westminster Abbey.

He was a magnanimous figure. Money from him helped to rebuild the Guildhall (used as town hall for centuries). He financed drainage systems for parts of London, a ward for unmarried mothers at a hospital, the rebuilding of his ward's church, and "Whittington's Longhouse," a public toilet that seated 128 and was situated so that high tide in the River Thames would flush it out. His will left £7000 to rebuild Newgate Prison, repair St. Bartholomew's Hospital, install public drinking fountains, and more.

Historians know him well, but schoolchildren in England know the name for things he never did, and we will look at that next.

John Carpenter's White Book

The Liber Albus or White Book was the first compilation of the laws of the City of London. It was assembled in 1419 by one John Carpenter, the Town Clerk of London, with whom it is so closely identified that a statue of Carpenter in the City of London School for Boys shows him holding the book!

The earliest firm date for Carpenter is 18 December 1378 when he was baptized in Hereford Cathedral. Later information says he was 45 in 1417, when he became Town Clerk of London, which would mean he was born about 1372. Records frequently list him as John Carpenter the younger, to distinguish him from two other men of that name who were active at that time. Oddly (to modern sensibilities), one of the other John Carpenters was his older brother, to whom he left much property when John the younger died in 1442.

The White Book was completed in 1419, the first time all of English Common Law (at least, as it pertained to the City of London) was compiled in a single document. A large part of it is given over to the regulation of the food trade and civic order. One scholar discusses how the document was put together with a specific agenda; Carpenter and the mayor who ordered the work were aiming to establish the City of London as the recipient of "ancient and sacrosanct privilege" not enjoyed by the rest of England. (This may have been partially because the King seized London's real estate in 1392, claiming that the City had been mismanaged.)

The mayor who ordered the work was Richard Whittington, one of the more prominent mayors of that century. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, you may be recalling the English folk tale Dick Whittington and His Cat. Yes, this is that Dick Whittington! And he—if you did not suspect already—deserves his own entry next.

Local Government, Part 2

A modern Aleconner [link]

We know that, in medieval London, an alderman held an assembly called a Wardmote every other year, at which attendance by every male in the ward over a certain age (with some exceptions) was required. The purpose of these meetings was manifold.

One major occurrence was to administer the "Oath of Frankpledge"; this was an oath that imposed upon each attendee an obligation to civic duty. (Knights and some others were exempt, since they owed allegiance to different authority.) The oath:

You shall swear, that you shall be good and true unto the King of England and to his heirs, Kings, and the King's peace shall you keep; and to the officers of the City you shall be obedient, and at all times that should be needful, you shall be ready to help the officers in arresting misdoers, and those disobedient to the King's peace, as well denizens as strangers.  And you shall be ready, at the warnings of the Constables and Beadles, to make the watches and other charges for the safeguard of the peace, and all the points in this Wardmote shown, according to your power, you shall well and lawfully keep. And if you know any evil coven within the Ward of the City, you shall withstand the same or unto your Alderman make it known. So God you help, and the Saints.

Regarding the line "as well denizens as strangers": A "citizen" was a native; a "denizen" was a foreigner residing locally; a "stranger" was someone present without a fixed local address. The potentially disruptive behavior of strangers (who of course had no oath of obligation to the municipality) was a constant concern. Since visitors had to stay somewhere, innkeepers were made responsible for the actions of their temporary tenants. In 1384, in London, innkeepers were required to answer for the customers' actions if the customers stayed longer than a single day and night. A guest whose behavior required the attention of the authorities could cost the innkeeper a fine of £100.

After the oath came the elections. Various positions needed to be filled by the male citizens. The Beadle [Old English bydel: "a person who makes a proclamation] was responsible for disseminating information orally in a society without Twitter or newspapers. He was the first "social medium." Also elected for a two-year term were aleconners, whose enviable job was to test bread, ale, and beer for quality. Scavengers had the less enviable task of finding and removing trash from public spaces.

These practices helped to maintain order in a large city such as London, by dividing it up into Wards of a more manageable size and putting responsibility into the hands of people who were neighbors of those they policed and served. Although written laws and contracts were used at this time, the verbal contract of the frankpledge served to bind the men to their obligations. The frankpledge quoted above comes from the Liber Albus, the White Book. We should talk about that next.

Local Government, Part 1

A village meeting.

What was the level of communication between the typical medieval citizen and the authorities? What role did the citizenry play in legislation?

Municipalities in the Middle Ages were much smaller than what we usually have now. Considering that 95% of the population was agrarian and needed land for sustainability, there might be only a few dozen families in a couple square miles, looking to each other for trade and the mutual benefit that comes from knowing all your neighbors. Everyone, or representatives of families, could easily spread the word to gather at the village square to discuss matters that applied to the entire community.

What happens in a town the size of London, however? Estimates for the middle of the 14th century (post-Plague) put London at 25,000 to no more than 50,000. How do you keep that large a population involved by "scaling up" the village model of meeting in the square?

Well, you break it down into villages, or rather, "wards."

London was divided into 24 wards, 12 on each side of the Walbrook. (The Walbrook is/was a river that flowed north to south and emptied into the Thames. It is one of the "lost rivers" of London. Yeah, I'll explain that some day.) A 25th was added in 1394 due to post-Plague growing population.

Each ward had an elected official, the alderman. Every other year, the alderman was required to hold a "ward mote" (from the Anglo-Saxon moot = assembly) of the residents of the ward. Well, not all residents. Everyone over the age of 15 was required to attend, including servants. Unless you were a woman (your husband or father would represent you), or a knight (your allegiance was to the king, not the ward), or his squire (you do what your knight tells you), or a clerk (university students were not yet trusted to be useful members of society), or an apprentice (the master you were apprenticed to would handle it, thanks).

For convenience, meetings were held in the principal church in the ward. A beadle would call the roll—two rolls, actually, to separate freemen from servants—to make sure everyone was there who was required. Those absent were fined four pence.

What was on the agenda? We will look at that next.

Population Density

In the Middle Ages, how many people lived in how much space? An economist who writes about cotton, migration and other topics (and has written a piece on why Westeros has gone millennia without an Industrial Revolution) has compiled data on what we know about populations in medieval countries and tried to produce estimates of population density.

The first point he makes is that sustainable population in 800CE is not the same as that of 1000 or 1300. Conditions change all the time in a society that does not have control over disease or natural disaster. He cites a widespread previous figure of 30-120 people per square mile and rejects it. Taking the total area of a country and our best knowledge of that country's population, the math works out to far fewer people.

Therefore, he offers figures such as France with about 68/square mile in 1300, Italy with between 60 and 95 folk per square mile, England and Wales with 11-30, Scotland with somewhere between 4 and 8, and Sweden and Norway with 1-4. This, of course, neglects wide swaths of a country that might be uninhabitable.

Also, what about the tendency of people to cluster together for mutual benefit? Well, in the many villages that dot the land, populations of a few hundred dominate. In fact, it looks like self-sufficiency in a typical medieval village averages about 300 people. (Incidentally, this is the same figure a 2010 government study determined the average person has in the "personal network": the number of people you know well enough to say you "know" them. link) Also, a country that is 95% agrarian needs space for crops and livestock, and so population density is still fairly low.

But what about urbanization? Let's look at London.

Best estimates for London in 1000 CE are 5000-10,000; three centuries later it is ten times that number. That changes radically because of the Plague, however, and in 1350 the population has dropped by half, say 25,000-50,000. This presents enormous challenges for governance. How do legislative decisions get made and disseminated when you cannot get the whole village in one place?

We will look at that next time.

Albert of Saxony & Impetus

After the previous post on impetus, I wanted to introduce you to Albert of Saxony, who took Avicenna's idea a step further.

Albert of Saxony (c.1320 - 8 July 1390) was the son of a German farmer who became a bishop of Halberstadt after studying at the University of Prague, the University of Paris, and the Sorbonne. He went to Pope Urban V as an envoy of Austria to negotiate the founding of the University of Vienna, whose rector he became in 1353.

A pupil of Jean Buridan in his youth, he was influenced by Buridan's teachings on logic and physics. He worked out his own theory of impetus, based on his predecessors and adding the third or "final" stage of a moving object. Prior to this, it was accepted that
1. the initial force causes the object to move in a straight line (A-B)
2. the object deviates from its path as impetus fades (B)

To this theory, Albert added the third stage:
3. the impetus or force which causes the initial movement is spent, and gravity draws the object downward vertically (C), where it stops (D).

Modern physics would describe this progression as an example of inertia. It seems obvious to us, but these ideas and their descriptions had to start somewhere!

The careful, methodical way in which he laid out his thoughts, and his commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, made him more widely read in the Middle Ages than Buridan. The widespread distribution of his works spread the ideas of the University of Paris throughout Italy and central Europe.

The Theory of Impetus

1582 woodcut demonstrating
impetus with artillery

Impetus is the force or energy with which a body started to move. The term itself entered the English language in the 17th century, but the concept was studied long before that.

Aristotle thought that, for an object in motion to continue to move, it must have a continuous force behind it. John Philoponus in the 6th century thought rather that the initial force was necessary and did not need anything else, but that the initial force would therefore be only temporary; hence an object in motion's observed tendency to slow and stop. Avicenna in the 11th century agreed with him, calling the phenomenon "projectile motion."

In the 12th century, an Islamic philosopher, Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi, recognized (finally!) that the motive force diminishes with distance from the mover.

Jean Buridan, writing in French in the 14th century, called this force "impetus" (from Latin impetere, "to assail"), and even expressed it mathematically: impetus = weight x velocity. Even he, however, treated impetus as if it were momentum. Modern physics distinguishes the two thusly: impetus is the initial force behind a moving object, momentum is "the quantity of motion of a moving body." It seems universally understood by anyone who has ever thrown a ball that Aristotle's option of a continuous motivating force is simply quaint.

Buridan understood that there was resistance (such as the air) that caused the impetus to fade. There was a case, however, in which impetus did not have resistance. God, when putting the celestial spheres in motion, did so in a way that created infinite impetus so that they would (obviously!) never stop moving.

To which the medieval world replied: Thank Heavens.

Birth of a Medievalist

This is a slightly different tack for DailyMedieval, but many fans of his fiction are unaware of his career as a medievalist.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (3 January 1892 - 2 September 1973) graduated college with a specialty in Old Norse before he went not fight in World War I. After the war, his first job was working for the Oxford English Dictionary, reviewing the history and etymology of Germanic words. He became an expert in Old Norse, Old English, Middle English, Old Icelandic, Gothic, and Medieval Welsh. He also taught himself some Finnish.

Later, at the University of Leeds, he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and a translation of the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that is still in print.

One of his most significant additions to medieval studies was his long essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Delivered as a lecture in 1936, it argued for the beauty of the poem as Early English literature. Up to this point, Beowulf had been used largely as a primer on the language of Old English/Anglo-Saxon, and picked apart for its references to places and names that could be matched to historical facts.

He describes the attitude toward the poem with a parable:

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material.

His essay created an atmosphere in which Beowulf could be seen as a poem worthy of being treated as a poem, not as an old document to be studied simply for clues to language and criticized as a dish-mosh of paganism and Christianity, mingled stories of heroism and monsters, history and myth.

Ultima Thule

A 1537 rendition of Thule

On New Year's Eve 2018, a NASA probe transmitted pictures of Ultima Thule, an object 4 billion miles from Earth. "Ultima Thule" is not your typical astronomical naming convention.

Ultima Thule, or the "ultimate Thule," was first described about 300BCE by a Greek explorer named Pytheas. It was supposedly about six days north of Britain, a place so far from the natural world that land and sea and air were no longer separate substances, but instead formed a strange mixture in which one could not survive.

A thousand years after Pytheas, Isidore of Seville (mentioned here, also involving astronomy) explained Ultima Thule as being so far north that there was no daylight beyond it, making the sea cold and sluggish.

As stories of explorers (verified or not) appeared, Thule was identified and re-identified with lands farther and farther from mainland Europe. St. Brendan's voyages suggested new lands that historians thought might refer to Thule. The later Middle Ages decided it must refer to Iceland or Greenland. In early modern times, Norway became the candidate to explain early stories of a land that far north.

In the 20th century, the idea of Thule was co-opted by certain German writers and politicians as the legendary origin of the Aryan race. Fortunately, the 21st century has given it a new connotation.

Why a Boar's Head?

From a feast at the University of Rochester

Most readers of this blog will be familiar with the Boar's Head Carol.

The version we use most often today (there are slight variations, including a version for serving poultry) was recorded in a book of Christmas carols printed in 1521. It has been a popular carol—and a Yuletide event—ever since.

At least one scholar links it to a Norse tradition brought to England with the Anglo-Saxons. Sacrificing a boar to Freyr, a Norse god amenable to mortals, was supposed to bring peace and prosperity in the new year.

There's another origin for the choice of a boar, which has a slight hint in a line in the carol itself. In a book about Christmas carols printed in 1868, we can read the following:

Where an amusing tradition formerly current in Oxford concerning the boar's head custom, which represented that usage as a commemoration of an act of valour performed by a student of the college, who, while walking in the neighbouring forest of Shotover and reading Aristotle, was suddenly attacked by a wild boar. The furious beast came open-mouthed upon the youth, who, however, very courageously, and with a happy presence of mind, thrust the volume he was reading down the boar's throat, crying, "Græcum est," [Latin: "compliments of the Greeks"] and fairly choked the savage with the sage.  [Husk, William Henry. Songs of the Nativity Being Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern]

I have included translations of the Latin lines below. The final one refers to Queen's College in Oxford. Husk was the librarian at Queen's College.

The boar's head in hand bear I,
Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary.
And I pray you, my masters, be merry
Quot estis in convivio [You who all feast in harmony]

CHORUS
Caput apri defero [The boar's head bear I]
Reddens laudes Domino [Singing praise to God]

The boar's head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land,
Which thus bedeck'd with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico. [serve with a song]

CHORUS

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss;
Which on this day to be servèd is
In Reginensi atrio. [in the Queen's hall]

Was THIS Robin Hood?

Statue in Nottingham

We have established that the first mention of Robin Hood is in the 1370s. And in the mid 1400s, someone places him in 1283 living in "English Woods." In the legends as they developed later, Robin (along with a band of men) lives in Sherwood Forest, is opposed to an authoritarian king, and is opposed by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Supposedly, he is living in the time of Bad King John, and is saved from prison when Richard Lionheart returns from Crusade.

Was there anyone who acted in the manner we ascribe to the legendary Robin Hood, who lived about that time? Let me tell you about Roger Godberd. What we know about him starts with the Second Barons War.

The Second Barons war (1264-67) was all about curtailing Henry III's grasp as he requested more and more financing from his vassals. One of the chief battles was the Battle of Evesham in 1265, led by Henry's son, the future King Edward I. In it, one of the leaders of the barons, Simon de Montfort, was killed in that battle.

Roger Godberd was in the forces of de Montfort, and was declared by the Crown to be an outlaw after Evesham. He went on the run, settling in 1265 in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. It was said that he was able to call on a hundred men to support him. He managed to elude the king's forces for four years.

A common Robin Hood story is of his capture at an abbey, and subsequent escape with the help of his men. Godberd was captured at Rufford Abbey by Reginald de Grey, the Sheriff of Nottingham. He escaped when a local knight named Richard Foliot came to his aid.

Godberd was eventually imprisoned and tried at the Tower of London. He was pardoned by none other than the man who led the forces at the Battle of Evesham. Now King Edward I, he pardoned Roger upon Edward's return from the 8th Crusade.

Robin Hood and the Monk

Although most depictions of Robin Hood place him in England when Richard Lionheart was away on Crusade and King John was messing up the country (the 1190s), there are no mentions of him in any literature until significantly later. The earliest is in Piers Plowman in the 1370s, and then only with a reference to the "rhymes of Robin Hood."

About 1420, Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland mentions "Lytil John and Robyne Hude" living in the "Yngol Wood" (English woods) in his entry for the year 1283.

What these rhymes/stories were at the time we can only guess. The oldest tale we have, "Robin Hood and the Monk," is from about 1450. In it, a devout Robin wants to go to Mass in Nottingham, and is warned by Much the Miller's son that he should take 12 men with him for safety. He only takes Little John. Along the way they make a wager. Robin loses, refuses to honor the wager, and Little join leaves him alone. While praying at St. Mary's in Nottingham, the sheriff is called on him by a monk that Robin robbed on some earlier date.

Once Robin's men find out, they decide to rescue him. They find the monk, riding with a page. Little John kills the Monk and Much kills the page. The monk had letters for the king, which Little John and Much deliver, explaining that the monk died along the way. The king tells them to bring Robin to him.

Little John and Much deliver this message to the sheriff, explaining the monk's absence by saying the king made him an abbot. They enter the prison, kill the jailer, and free Robin, who pledges loyalty to Little John for being so good after Robin was so dishonest to him. Little John agrees to keep the previous arrangement of leadership. The king, learning of all this, is upset that he was hoodwinked, but decides to drop it.

We do not see any signs here of Robin being particularly good. But the story had adventure and plot turns, so it was fun to tell. It's a long time later when characters like Maid Marian and Friar Tuck get added, as well as the idea that he stole from the rich to give to the poor.

Andrew Wyntoun, Scot

When Robert Burns published his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), no one knew that it would become such a success that the reading public would be eager to lap up anything old and Scottish. But 1790 saw the publication of the Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, by Andrew Wyntoun.

Wyntoun (c.1350-c.1425) was an Augustinian canon of St. Sers Inch, a religious house  of Loch Leven, as well as a poet. The Chronicle is very pro-Scotland, especially regarding Edward I and his treatment of William Wallace and Scotland.

The Chronicle starts in the distant past (Alexander the Great, ancient Britons) and ends in 1420. It contains a number of "firsts": it is the earliest extant document in the Scottish dialect; it has the first use of the word "Catholic"; also, it contains the first mention in print of Robin Hood that ties him to a particular time (1283) and an area just south of the Scottish border in Carlisle. Tales of an outlaw who hides out in the woods and harasses the English king were of interest to the Scots, especially after William Wallace et alia did the same after Dunbar and Falkirk. It also includes the earliest version of MacBeth and the three witches.

Rabies

Rabies, from the Latin rabies which means "madness," has been noticed for a long time. The Codex of Eshnunna (c.1930BCE), found on two cuneiform tablets and pre-dating the Code of Hammurabi, declares the owner of a dog who shows signs of rabies is to be fined if the dog bites someone. Aristotle in 300 BCE described rabies as a disease that can be transmitted from a dog to the dog's victim. Excess salivation was a sign that a dog owner should take care to prevent the dog from biting someone. Rabies was known to Avicenna, who explained its symptoms, method of transmission, and treatment.

Treatment almost always failed until the modern era. There were reported cases of people surviving before modern methods of treatment, but not until Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux developed their vaccine in 1885 was there an effective way to prevent the spread.

But the Middle Ages had a solution: St. Hubert's Key.

St. Hubert, or Hubertus, was the patron saint of hunters and hunting, and therefore of hunting dogs, and therefore of rabid dogs. St. Hubert's Key was an example of a sacramental, which is the church's word for an amulet or talisman. Whereas an amulet or talisman were supposed to have magical properties, a sacramental's effectiveness depended on the faith of the user.

St. Hubert's Key was a piece of iron: either a nail or a cross or cone. They were given out by the monks of the Benedictine abbey where Hubert's remains were, as tokens to go to folk who could not make the pilgrimage to the abbey. These items were hung on the wall of your house for protection against disease.

How did this cure rabies? The piece of iron would be heated and placed on the site of the bite by a priest. The practice is recorded in the 1870s in the Ardennes region (where Hubert was active while alive) of branding a dog with St. Hubert’s Key to guard him from rabies.

Patron Saint of Hunting

...and of mathematicians, and opticians, and metalworkers, and more.

Saint Hubertus' conversion from materialism to piety was first discussed here. After he died, on 30 May 727, his bones moved around a bit. He was buried in the church of St. Peter in Liège, but his bones were exhumed so they could be interred in a Benedictine abbey (now named St. Hubert's Abbey) in the Ardennes region. The Ardennes was important to him—his nickname was the Apostle of the Ardennes—because he originally loved to hunt game there. After his conversion he "hunted" folk in the region to be convert them to Christianity. He would not destroy their "idolatrous" sites, but give the converted the opportunity to destroy the sites themselves as proof of their new love for Christianity.

His coffin became a focal point for pilgrimages, until it disappeared during the Reformation. Just as his physical remains were disappearing from view, however, his spiritual reputation was building. Because he was of royal birth, he was considered one of the Four Holy Marshals in the Rhineland. (That's for another day.) Several military orders were founded in his name. In the Church of England, at least two churches were dedicated to him. There is a St. Hubertus brand of alcohol, and the image of the stag with the cross between his antlers is their logo.

Although he is most commonly referred to as the patron saint of hunters, he is also given patronage for an amazing and varied number of other areas. Here is the full list:

against dog bite	furriers	opticians
against hydrophobia	hunters, huntsmen, & hunting	precision instrument makers
against mad dogs	forest workers	metal workers, smelters
against rabies	trappers	Liege, Belgium
archers	machinists	Saint-Hubert, Belgium
dogs	mathematicians

I cannot find an explanation for the link to optics, but I can tell you a story about him that involves metal and connects to some of his prominent patronage areas. I'll get to that next.

Saint Hubertus

Saint Hubertus (c.656 - 30 May 727), also called the Apostle of the Ardennes, was said to be the eldest son of Duke Bertrand of Aquitaine. He was a well-liked young man who found fame and position wherever he went, ultimately being named "grand-master of the household" at the court of Austrasia at Metz, marrying the daughter of a count. His wife, Floribanne, died in childbirth, causing Hubertus to withdraw from public life out of grief. He went to the forests of Ardennes and lived by hunting.

Then, on the morning of a Good Friday, when the faithful were thinking of spiritual matters, Hubertus went out to hunt. Spotting a magnificent stag, he started pursuit, but the animal turned to face him. Hubertus beheld a cross suspended between its antlers. A voice spoke: "Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell!"

This anecdote was linked to Hubertus in the 15th century. It is connected at a much earlier time to the legend of St. Eustace from the 2nd century. (The historicity of Eustace was eventually challenged, but there was no sense letting a good conversion anecdote go, so it got attached to the life of a known hunter.)

Later reports embellished the story, especially in Germany, where it is said that the deer lectured Hubertus on responsible hunting, with rules still taught in Germany today:

Only shoot when you can be sure of a quick and painless death
Choose older stags, past their prime
Never kill a doe with fawns

Hubertus found Bishop Lambert in Maastricht, who became his spiritual mentor. This is when Hubertus left the position of Duke of Aquitaine to his younger brother, Odo, as well as the guardianship of his son. Hubert later replaced Lambert as Bishop of Maastricht. He became famous for his preaching and piety.

As is often the case, however, men become even more prominent long after their death, which was the case with Hubertus. I'll discuss that next, and maybe discuss his odd connection to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Odo the Great

The Umayyad Caliphate at the time of Odo

This blog has mentioned several men named Odo in the past, but never "the Great." He was born in southwest Gaul and became the Duke of Aquitaine as early as 679, or maybe 688, or even 692, but for certain by 700.

Gaul was a land mass, not a country: in that space were numerous areas ruled by different men. Odo was at odds with the political entity we normally think of as ruling Gaul at this time: the forces under Charles "the Hammer" Martel, who was the powerful "Mayor of the Palace" of the Merovingians and whose grandson would be known as Charlemagne and unite much of Gaul under his rule.

Martel's claim to fame (or one of them) was preventing the Muslim invasion of Europe, especially at the battle of Tours in 733. But Odo had already made some progress in that area. Odo's territory was just north of what is now Spain, bordering the Caliphate of the Umayyads. On 9 June 721, Odo defeated a Muslim army under Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani at the Battle of Toulouse. He then married his daughter to a Muslim lord, Uthman ibn Naissa, making an alliance with the area that would become Catalonia. This seemed like a smart move.

Charles Martel didn't really hold with the idea of making friends with Muslims, however. Moreover, his goal was to possess more territory. He invaded Aquitaine in 731, and while Odo was being defeated by Charles, on his other border Odo's ally Uthman ibn Naissa was being attacked by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, who defeated Uthman and sent Odo's daughter to a harem in Damascus. As Abdul Rahman advanced, Odo engaged him and was defeated. He had no choice but to turn to Charles Martel for assistance, which was offered on the condition that Aquitaine swear fealty to Charles. So Charles wins at the Battle of Tours, and Odo fell into historical obscurity. In 735 or so he abdicated as Duke of Aquitane; we think he went to a monastery.

Odo was not the eldest son of the Duke of Aquitaine, and got the position when his older brother abandoned his rights to it. That brother was named Hubertus; I'll tell you about him next.

Medieval Advertising

These days, we are assailed by advertising, and we possess technology that allows us to find what we need merely by asking the right question into a hand-held device. (I wonder that anyone in their teen years knows what it's like to use the yellow pages, or if they are even aware of what the phrase "yellow pages" means to the older generation.)

Centuries ago, signs or symbols indicated certain places of business. When most of your population cannot read, you needed to find the right image to represent your profession, such as the mortar and pestle for an apothecary, a boot for a cobbler, scissors for a tailor, etc.

It might not be a painted sign. Roman custom was to hang vine leaves to indicate a tavern where wine was served. This custom was brought to Britain, but in the absence of grapevines they used holly. A bush of holly was a common indication that wine was served within. If you made and sold beer, you would hang a long pole outside, indicating what you stirred ale with. Leaves on a pole let the traveler know that both beer and wine were available.

Of course, where there is food and drink, there should be quality control.

In 1389, King Richard II of England, decreed that landlords must put signs outside their inns, so that inspectors could identify and visit them; there is a record from 1393 of a publican being prosecuted for not having a sign. [source]

Of course, not all advertising was static. A 13th century poet, Guillaume de la Villeneuve, wrote the poem "Les Crieries de Paris" [Street cries of Paris]. Here's a sample of how he felt about merchants advertising their wares or services:

Although they will not stop screaming
Through Paris until the night.
Do not think it tires them
For they will never stop.
Listen to what is being shouted at daybreak:
"Lords, go to the baths
And in the ovens without delay,
The baths are hot, I'm not lying!"
Then you will hear the sound [of]
Those who shout fresh herrings.
"At the tide, the others shout,
In sage and white herring, fresh salted,
I would like to sell my herrings."

The introduction of mass printing and cheap paper meant signs and flyers could circulate more easily, eliminating the need for criers.

Mincemeat

With the holiday season upon us, folk are preparing to consume mincemeat pies at the conclusion of their meal. Growing up, I was told it was a dessert made from ground up fruit and spices and not to think of it as meat, and I was never tempted by it. Imagine my surprise, years later, to discover:
1. "meat" wasn't a euphemism
2. it's not a dessert, but a main dish
3. I loved it

Numbers one and three might not be a surprise or noteworthy, but number two was worth looking into. King Henry V had a mincemeat pie as a main dish for his coronation feast, and Henry VIII apparently preferred it as his Christmas supper. Its creation goes back further, however.

You might say it originated by accident. Crusaders returning home in the 12th century brought with them spices not found in western Europe before. These were tested as preservatives for meat, or ways to add flavor to dried meat. (The notion that spices were used to cover up the small of rotten meat should be dispelled. No one would eat rotten meat, and we had learned ways to preserve the meat of slaughtered animals long before this, through smoking/drying or salting.)

Cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were the three chief spices used in the Yule dish, representing the gifts  brought by the Magi. These were added to minced (finely chopped) meat, often beef or beef tongue or lamb, as well as beef suet (the hard white fat from around the kidneys and loins). Early recipes add citrus peel and sugar, or dried and chopped apples.

Early pies were baked in an oblong shape, to represent the manger at the Nativity. Over time, the addition of sugar made them sweeter, and they began to migrate to the dessert course. At that point, they morphed into the traditional round pie shape, and then into tarts that could be easily picked up and eaten by hand.

Borromean Rings

You've seen them. Lots of times. Three circles interlinked. You find them in jewelry, and in the label of Ballantine beer. They may be used as a symbol of the Trinity, or the logo of the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians.

The name of the design comes from its use in the coat of arms of the Borromeo family. The family owns three islands in Lake Maggiore, and might have designed the rings to represent those. In any case, the design is used frequently in the Baroque palazzo and gardens built by Vitaliano Borromeo (1620-1690).

But the design goes back hundreds of years before Borromeo. We find its equivalent also in three triangles called "Odin's Triangle" or the valknut (Old Norse valr = "slain warriors" + knut = "knot"). The valknut was carved in stone pillars as far back as the 7th century.

One curious fact about the Rings is that, although we call them "interlinked" or "interwoven," they sort of aren't. In the above illustration, place your hand over the red as much as you can, and you'll see that the blue and green aren't linked. It's the same with any other two colors: no two are linked except by a third that runs through them. In this way, it is similar to a three-strand braid. Braid three ribbons together, and when you pull one out, the other two completely disengage.

And for a treat: how about some Borromean Onion Rings?

Eyeglasses

Back here we spoke about the manufacture of glass, but when and where did glass come to be used for enhancing and correcting vision?

Ptolemy (c.100-170CE) wrote in his Optics about glass shaped so that it enlarged an image. His ideas were expanded on by the "Father of Modern Optics," Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, whose Book of Optics (c.1021) spread through Europe at (coincidentally?) about the same time that we get records of "reading stones."

A reading stone is a glob of transparent substance, flattened on the bottom but with a curved top, making it in essence a convex lens. It was (still IS, actually) meant to be placed on and slid along a line of text, causing the letters below to expand and be more easily read. I call it a "substance" because it wasn't necessarily glass. Early ones were ground from quartz, and they can be had today in glass or plastic.

Several lens-shaped items of quartz have been found in Viking graves on Gotland in Sweden, some mounted in silver. They date to the 11th or 12th centuries. They might be reading stones, although several are not shaped to be good at focusing.

But when were lenses put into a frame for enhancing vision? In 1301, in Venice, there were guild regulations governing the sale of eyeglasses. The Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa delivered a sermon in February 1306 in which he said:

It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses, which make for good vision... And it is so short a time that this new art, never before extant, was discovered. ... I saw the one who first discovered and practiced it, and I talked to him.

 So far as we can trace, then, eyeglasses were first made in Italy around 1290.

Advent

We are now in the Christian season of Advent, from the Latin adventus, meaning "coming." It comprises the four Sundays leading to Christmas Day, leading you to think it was started as preparation for the coming off the Nativity. Good guess, but that's not how it began.

First let us talk about the timing. We are not sure when it was first established, but probably in the 4th century Christians in Spain and Gaul began a period of penance and fasting starting on 11 November, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours (c.316/336-397). They were preparing for the baptism of new christians, which would take place on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. The activity spread, and Roman Christians in the 6th century started associating it with the coming of Christ's birth on 25 December.

These days, Advent begins on the Sunday nearest 30 November, the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, and only lasts four Sundays. It is therefore a "floating holiday" like Easter, and can start any day from 27 November to 3 December. The change seems to have come about by the 9th century: Pope Nicholas I mentions the shortened span in a letter to the Bulgarians. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates from 15 November until Christmas.

The Advent wreath, like so many traditions involving evergreens, began in northern Europe. The wheel-shaped greens represented the cycles of the year and the promise of life after winter. The candles represented the warmth of hope in the returning Son/sun. Three purple candles represent hope, peace, and love, and are lit on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Sundays. The pink candle, representing joy, is lit on the 3rd Sunday. Purple was not a cheap color to produce, and dyeing candles with a royal color indicated the significance of Christ the King's birth.

(The Advent calendar? That was concocted in Germany in the 1800s.)

Merino Sheep

The previous post on the Mesta mentioned the kings of Castile giving shepherds rights-of-way that overrode those of other landowners in order to get their sheep to good pasture. There aren't many shepherds or large flocks around these days, and so you might not realize the important stake the kings had in sheep, especially Merino sheep. Those flocks were owned by royalty.

Sheep provided wool, and Merinos were champions at it. Their wool was an incredibly valuable export because of its spinning count, or S value. The S value describes how fine the strands of wool are. The finer the strands, the more yards of fiber you can spin from it. One pound of merino wool, with an S value of 62, could produce 34,720 yards of yarn. (A "hank" is 560 yards.) Merino wool was much finer than other breeds, and produced not only softer wool, but more of it. Finer strands also enabled it to be more easily interwoven with other fibers.

They were bred in southwestern Spain in the 12th century, and there are careful records of attempts to breed them to be even more useful. The original herds might have been brought by Berbers early on, but English breeds were introduced to help develop the Merino, as described in the entry on "Wool" in The New American Cyclopaedia (1858).

Spain held a monopoly on the finest wool in the world through the 16th century. In fact, export of living Merino sheep was a crime in Spain, punishable by death, through the 17th century! The monopoly started to wane when some were sent to Sweden in 1723, and then in 1765 when King Charles III of Spain (1716-1788) sent some to his cousin in Saxony to start a private flock. Merinos started trickling out to other countries, and Spain soon lost its pre-eminence in the world of fine wool.

But the Merino is still king.

The Mesta

Merino Ram, bred in Medieval Spain

Consider the Iberian Peninsula in the early Middle Ages: the Moors controlled the southern part, and Christians held the northern regions bordering France. The border between them was far from firm, and there was a "buffer zone" that was frequently contested. It was therefore too risky for any group to settle there permanently, not knowing whether you might become surrounded by hostile foreigners.

It was suitable, however, for nomadic people, such as shepherds. Hundreds of square kilometers were open to anyone passing through, and if you had hundreds or thousands of sheep, and needed a place for them to graze, well... .

In 1212, Alfonso VIII of Castile, mentioned before because he founded the abbey whence comes the music of Las Huelgas, led a group of Christian leaders to push the Moors south, reclaiming a large part of the peninsula and making it safe for settlement. Folk started moving into what was previously a "no man's land," setting up farms and communities.

This meant clashing with the enormous number of sheep and their herders. Something had to be done, and by the late 1200s, Castile had struck an agreement that produced the most powerful agricultural union in Medieval Europe, the Mesta.

Its full name is Honrado Concejo de la Mesta ["Honorable Council of the Mesta"]. "Mesta" comes from Latin animalia mixta ["mixed animals"] because the enormous herd of sheep which you are guarding might not all belong to the same owner. Driving the sheep from location to location in search of pastureland would result in herds getting mixed together.

The Mesta had rights that persist to this day: the right to drive their sheep along certain pathways regardless of land ownership. These were called cañadas ["road along which livestock is driven"] or cañadas reales ["royal ways"; because they were established by the kings of Castile]. They still exist, and some roads through Madrid are designated as such. Sheep are not usually driven through the streets of Madrid, but nothing prohibits the practice.

Incidentally, mesta is also the root of mestengo ["ownerless beast"], where we get the word "mustang."