Rushbearing

The churches mentioned in this blog have been well-known Anglo-Saxon, Norman, or Gothic edifices, but there were numerous small churches in villages and hamlets, and many of them had something in common: dirt floors.

Not plain dirt: they would be packed down so they were smooth and level. But they were dirt; stone floors were expensive, and wooden planks were also an extravagance in many cases. There was a way to make the compacted earthen floor a little more palatable, and that was through the uses of rushes.

Rushes came from several plants, a common one being the Acorus calamus called "Sweet Flag" (and a dozen other names). It had medical uses according to Dioscorides, but its use to cover floors derived from its sweet aroma. People would use rushes for the floors at home (and I'll talk about that tomorrow), but the use of rushes in churches turned into a festival in its own right that is still celebrated in towns in England today (although the need for rushes on the floor is long past).

Rushbearing was the event when fresh rushes were brought to the church. It developed into a fall celebration, involving the whole town collecting and parading the rushes to the church to be strewn on the floors. Records from the 16th century show that church bells were rung on the day, and wine, ale, and cakes were provided to those bearing the rushes. Townspeople would also dress up in costumes during the celebration:

...some of them putting on womens aparrell, other some of them putting on longe haire & visardes, and others arminge them with the furnyture of souldiers, and being there thus armed and disguysed did that day goe from the Churche, and so went up and downe the towne showinge themselves. [Wilson, Richard; Dutton, Richard; Findlay, Alison (2003). Region, religion and patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare]

The Puritans outlawed rushbearing festivals because of the absence of decorum and presence of drinking, but in 1617 the "Declaration of Sports" by James I listed rushbearing as one of the pursuits allowed on Sundays and Holy Days.

Sometimes the rushes were carried by townsfolk, sometimes they were brought on a rushcart. Often the festival would take place on the Sunday closest to the feast day of the saint for whom the church was named. In many cases, it was simply a harvest festival, connected with collecting rushes before the cold weather wiped them out.

No churches nowadays need rushes on the floors, but many towns still have (or have revived) the festival. If you want to see how one town celebrates it, check out https://rushbearing.com/, where the town of Sowerby Bridge has surpassed all others by owning the web domain!

But what about non-church use of rushes for floors? Huts and cottages would have surely had earthen floors. And what about castles? Did stone floors need rushes? Were people in the Middle Ages trampling on plants in their own homes? Let's figure this out together ... next time.

The King of Poisons...

...and the Poison of Kings are two nicknames given to arsenic.

As early as the Bronze Age, the mineral arsenic was added to bronze to make it harder, although isolating it chemically and understanding it as an element was not recorded until 815CE by Jābir ibn Hayyān. Albertus Magnus (pictured) isolated the element arsenic from arsenic trisulfide by heating it with soap in 1250.

Non-pure forms of arsenic were known much earlier. Dioscorides during Nero's reign described arsenic as a poison in the 1st century, noting its odorless and tasteless and colorless properties, making it ideal to mix with food or drink. Arsenic poisoning's side effects were similar to food poisoning, so immediate detection was unlikely. A sufficiently large dose, however, produced violent cramping, diarrhea, vomiting, and death.

You could also use smaller doses on a victim over time, leading to headaches, mental and physical fatigue, confusion, hair loss, and paralysis. The preferred form of arsenic was white arsenic, arsenic trioxide, whose fatal dose was the size of a pea.

Arsenic compounds exist everywhere: in groundwater and (as a result) in trace amounts in plants. Organic arsenic compounds can be found in low levels in seafood. Lettuce, kale, mustard, and turnip greens store arsenic in their leaves. Beets, turnips, carrots radishes, and potatoes store arsenic mostly in their skins. There is also arsenic in the plants of tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, peas, beans, corn, melons, and strawberries, but not the parts that we eat. (Apple seeds contain. cyanide, but that's another story.)

The Borgias of Italy—including Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI in 1492, and his son Cesare and daughter Lucrezia—were known for their use of arsenic for political and financial advancement. They would take advantage of legal loopholes to appropriate the estates of certain men after killing them with arsenic-laced wine.

In fact, poisoning became so common that Italian court documents show plenty of cases in which we find the details of the poisoning:

The poisoner made appointments and had set prices, the client named the victim and a contract was made, and the poisoner was paid when the job was done. [link]

There was also a woman named Giulia Toffana around this time who made arsenic-laced cosmetics, so the victims could be induced to poison themselves.

If you suspected you had been poisoned, what would you do? Probably go to an apothecary to buy a cure. We'll talk about medieval apothecaries next time.

So Many Poisons

We talked a little about the history of poison here, but now it's time to look at what Medieval Europe had at hand for killing enemies. Fortunately, there were many toxic substances available for dispatching an unwanted person: aconite, arsenic, datura, hemlock, henbane, and mandrake were a few.

Hemlock, made famous by the execution of Socrates, was no relation to the conifer. It comes from a plant in the carrot family found in Europe and North Africa. Every part—leaves, seeds, roots—is toxic when ingested. The toxicity remains up to three years after the plant is dead and dried, making it easy to import from its native land. It was less popular in the Middle Ages than in Classical Greece.

Aconite (monkshood, wolf's-bane, blue rocket, et alia) is common all over the Northern Hemisphere. It contains an alkaloid toxin called aconitine, which can "lead to diarrhea, convulsions, ventricular arrhythmia and death." A sufficient dose causes death within two to six hours.

Datura (jimsonweed, thornapples, devil's trumpets, moonflower) is extremely poisonous but was used by many North American tribes for its psychoactive properties. It is found all over the world (the illustration is the Western Hemisphere's datura inoxia), and Indian Thuggee practitioners used it routinely on victims in their sacrifices to the Hindu goddess Kali.

Henbane was used as an anesthetic, especially when combined with mandrake, deadly nightshade, and datura. Pliny said its use was similar to taking wine and therefore "offensive to the understanding."

Mandrake has long been used for magical rituals because of the branching root that vaguely resembles a human body, and because of the hallucinogenic alkaloids. Many in the 21st century likely heard of it for the first time because of the Harry Potter books and films.

Of course, these substances were available from any apothecary, or were cultivated and prepared by an individual without raising suspicion, because in small doses they were medicinal. Hemlock was used as a sedative and for swollen joints. Aconite in very small doses was thought to improve circulation. Dioscorides recommended henbane as a sedative.

I have deliberately skipped over arsenic, because it has such a long and glorious history that I felt it deserved its own entry, so please join me tomorrow for that.

Scrofula and Magic

Scrofula, characterized by swellings on the neck, is caused when someone inhales air contaminated with mycobacterium. The bacteria infect the lymph nodes in the neck. In the Middle Ages it was called "The King's Evil" because of the belief that the Royal Touch could cure it. The word scrofula itself is a diminutive of the Latin scrōfa, "breeding sow," presumably because pigs were subject to the disease.

Treatment did not have to rely on the Royal Touch. Figwort was recommended because of the "doctrine of signatures."

The doctrine of signatures dates from antiquity; Galen and Dioscorides, who were sources of medical knowledge used for centuries afterward, describe the disease. It claims that herbs resembling parts of the body can be used to treat ailments of that body part. Figwort, when dug up, showed tubercles that resembled the swellings of the lymph nodes. Therefore, figwort was used to treat swellings such as scrofula.

Paracelsus (mentioned here) in the 1400s explained this thinking as "Nature marks each growth ... according to its curative benefit." A 17th century botanist, William Coles, justified the doctrine of signatures theologically, believing that God made 'Herbes for the use of men, and hath given them particular Signatures, whereby a man may read ... the use of them."

But back to figwort. When the urge came to carefully catalogue the natural world with scientific names, figwort became scrofularia nodosa because of its previous reputation regarding scrofula.

The Royal Touch was more than just a touch and for more than just scrofula. We'll look at some other diseases tomorrow.

Medieval Cannabis

Cannabis sativa from the 6th-century
De Materia Medica of Dioscorides

I was contemplating a post about Easter, which takes place this Sunday. Since Easter takes place on the date 4/20, however, and since "4/20" is a counter-culture reference for smoking marijuana, I started wondering about the use of marijuana in history, specifically (of course) in the Middle Ages.

One website tells us that:

... cannabis use was reintroduced into Europe after the Dark Ages, when the Knights Templar, founded by Hugh de Payns (“of the Pagans”) around the beginning of the twelfth century, became involved in a trade of goods and knowledge with the hashish ingesting Isma’ilis. [Source]

Another explains its uses:

In the Middle Ages cannabis was used for its psychoactive effects as well as commercially. Its use as a mind-altering drug was widespread in Egypt and seems to date from around the 13th century. In medieval Europe cannabis appears to have been employed as a folk medicine, particularly for the treatment of toothache and rheumatism, and in childbirth. [Source]

Dioscorides in his De Materia Medica [Concerning Medical Materials] describes and illustrates cannabis sativa:

Kannabis; is a plant of much use in this life for the twisting of very strong ropes, it has leaves like to the Ash, of a bad scent, long stalks, empty, a round seed, which being eaten of reduces sexual activity, but being juiced when it is green is good for the pains of the ears. [Book III]

Here we recognize the lethargy that accompanies cannabis use.

Use of the plant for its fibers seems to have been very important to the Medieval and Renaissance eras. Henry VIII decreed in 1533 that "for every sixty acres of arable land a farmer owned, a quarter acre was to be sown with hemp." (Henry wanted to make sure he had plenty of source material for the rope that was vital to a strong naval effort.) A BBC report in 2001 presented the claim that pipes dug up in the backyard of Shakespeare's Stratford home had the remains of burned cannabis seeds. The investigation was in response to a reading of Sonnet 76 which mentions "invention in a noted weed." (Note: the pipes could not be traced definitively to Shakespeare's time at that address.)

Knowledge of cannabis was certainly available to the Middle Ages, but there is no evidence that it was used in a manner similar to its contemporary recreational use.

Marshmallow

Yes, marshmallow. (Maybe Halloween has put me in mind of sweets.)

Althaea officinalia (the "marsh mallow") is a perennial that grows wild in salty marshes. Egyptians discovered that the root contained a sweet sap that could be used to sweeten cakes. The delicacy was reserved for Pharaohs.

The Greco-Roman world embraced the substance in mallows and believed it had medicinal value. The 1st century Dioscorides (cribbing from Pliny) wrote:

boiled in ... wine or chopped on its own, it works against wounds, tumors of the parotid gland[*], swellings in the glands of the neck, abcesses, inflamed breasts, inflammations of the anus, bruises, swellings, tensions of the sinews ... It works also against dysentery, blood loss and diarrhoea. [Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-century Greece, p.264]

Medieval Europe, willing to try anything suggested by the Classical world, discovered how sweet the mallow concoctions were and started using them as a sweet treat—with the bonus of them being healthful. An Italian cookbook of the 1400s—De Honesta Voluptuate et Valetudine [On Right Pleasure and Good Health], by Bartolomeo Platina—suggested several ways to season the substance. Medieval monks grew the mallow for its sweetness and medical properties. Herbalists turned it into treatments for sore throats and coughs, indigestion and toothache.

The marshmallow sap was used for liquids in the Middle Ages; it was 19th century French confectioners who whipped it into a solid candy by mixing it with egg whites and corn syrup. Nowadays it can be made without any recourse to the mallow plant. My personal favorite recipe is here (you would be surprised how easy it is to make, and how sticky it is to work with after it has "set"). If you would rather make it from actual marshmallow root, go here.

*The "parotid gland" is a salivary gland in the back of the mouth.