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.)

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.

Anglo-Saxon Riddles

As best we can determine, Symposius was a 4th- or 5th-century author of the Ænigmata, a collection of 100 Latin riddles. The oldest known collection of riddles, they have influenced other riddle-makers through the ages, such as Aldhelm.

Why are we talking about Latin riddles in a post titled "Anglo-Saxon Riddles"? Because without Symposius we might have a more difficult time guessing at some of the Riddles of the Exeter Book. Consider Exeter Book Riddle #61:

#61
A creature came     where many men
sat at council     with wise hearts.
It had one eye     and its ears were two;
it had two feet     and twelve hundred heads,
a back and a belly     and two hands,
arms and shoulders,     one neck,
and two sides.     Say what I’m called.

This might have been more difficult if we did not have Symposius' example #94:

#XCIV
Cernere iam fas est, quod vix tibi credere fas est;
Unus inest oculus, capitum sed milia multa;
Quidquid habet vendit, quod non habet unde parabit?

Now may you see, though not believe, I fear,
One eye and many thousand heads are here,
Whate'er he has, he sells. Whence comes what don't appear?

The answer is the same for both, and I will give it to you in footnotes, along with the answers to the rest. Enjoy.

#18
My garment is darkish.     Bright decorations,
red and radiant,     I have on my raiment.
I mislead the stupid     and stimulate the foolish
toward unwise ways.     Others I restrain
from profitable paths.     But I know not at all
that they, maddened,     robbed of their senses,
astray in their actions     —that they praise to all men
my wicked ways.     Woe to them then
when the Most High holds out     his dearest of gifts
if they do not desist     first from their folly.

#57
I war oft against wave     and fight against wind,
do battle with both,     when I reach to the ground,
covered by the waters.     The land is strange to me.
I am strong in the strife     if I stay at rest.
If I fail at that,     they are stronger than I
and forthwith they wrench me     and put me to rout.
They would carry away     what I ought to defend.
I withstand them then     if my tail endures
and the stones hold me fast.     Ask what my name is. 

#31
I saw a thing     in the dwellings of men
that feeds the cattle;     has many teeth.
The beak is useful to it;     it goes downwards,
ravages faithfully;     pulls homewards;
hunts along walls;     reaches for roots.
Always it finds them,     those which are not fast;
lets them, the beautiful,     when they are fast,
stand in quiet     in their proper places,
brightly shining,     growing, blooming.

*Symposius #94 and Exeter #61: a one-eyed garlic seller
Exeter #18: wine
#57: anchor
#31: rake

Source for Symposius
Source for Exeter riddles

The Haruspex Stone

The inexpertly carved stone

The city of Bath in England has been an important location for human beings for millenia. The spring there produces 240,000 gallons of 114° (Fahrenheit) water every day. This phenomenon amazed our ancestors; they attributed it to divine forces, most notably the goddess Sulis. When the Romans came, they named the place Aquæ Sulis [Latin: The waters of Sulis], and equated Sulis to Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. The Romans used the spring for an elaborate system of channels and pumps and rooms for bathing, both for relaxation and for health.

In 1965, beneath the Grand Pump Room of the Roman complex, at the level of a Roman-era temple to Sulis Minerva, the stone pictured here was discovered. The inscription reads "DEAE SVLI L MARCIVS MEMOR HARVSP DD" and stands for "To the goddess Sul, Lucius Marcus, a grateful Haruspex, donated out of his devotion."

The presence of a Haruspex in Bath raised eyebrows. A Haruspex [Latin (roughly): entrail observer] was one who predicted the future by examining the guts of animals (as well as other natural phenomena). This was a very old practice, known to Romans and before them the Etruscans. Its presence can be established in the East prior to Greco-Roman times as well. Haruspices (the plural) were not common—only 60 existed at a time—and practiced an art that, like astrology, not everyone believed in but that they might turn to for special occasions. The presence of a Haruspex in Bath in a location so far from Rome suggests how significant Bath/Aquæ Sulis was to the locals at that time.

Curiously, the inscription has been "edited." "MEMOR" is actually carved as "MEMR" with the "O" added above the second M. "HAR" is centered on its line, with "VSP" in smaller letters crammed afterward, throwing off the symmetry of the inscription. The "MEMOR" looks like a necessary edit after the carver's accidental omission of the "O." "HAR" might have needed the addition because the rarity of the position meant the abbreviation wasn't familiar to people who didn't know that "HAR" meant a Haruspex. Another theory is that the carver simply was not very literate, and that Lucius Marcus had to have him edit the stone after the initial carving.

A Carolingian Mother

Bernard of Septimania, whose fate interweaves the recent posts on Carolingian civil wars, married Dhuoda on 24 June 824. She bore him two sons: William on 29 November 826, and Bernard II on 22 March 841. Although she traveled with her husband for a few years, she spent most of the years between births in Uzés in what is now southern France. What little we know about her comes from details in the Liber Manualis (Book of instruction) which she wrote for her elder son. There are, however, assumptions we can make that are fairly safe and will serve to flesh out her background.

Liber Manualis, MS at Nîmes [source]

For one thing, it is likely that she came from a noble family, and that she and Bernard met through court connections. It was probably not simply a marriage of political convenience, since he not only bothered to have her with him for at least a few years, but also trusted her to run his estates from Uzés near Nîmes and visited her when he could—certainly in summer of 840, around the time of the death of Emperor Louis the Pious, just before Bernard ran off and got involved (disastrously for him) in the chaos fomented by Louis' remaining sons.

She would have seen her elder son very little, and her second son was taken from her by her husband before he was baptized or named. This separation, and concern for the shifting politics and her husband's risky involvement, may be what prompted her to write to William, to help him to steer clear of personal and professional dangers. She gives him practical advice for living, not just spiritual advice for the care of his soul.

We also know that Dhuoda learned Latin. This is not unusual, especially considering the emphasis Charlemagne put on education for all children. True, her Latin is far from polished, but she clearly knows the Bible as well as secular authors, and she manages to come across with both humor and gravity in 73 chapters. Her writing provides a unique glimpse into attitudes toward family structures. Unlike the Mirrors for Princes, her manual is highly specific: it focuses on her as a wife and mother caring and advising her son and only her son; she never suggests that this is a general purpose guide for anyone else. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "it is a treatise on Christian virtues, revealing the author's remarkable qualities of heart and mind, her intense affection for her sons and her husband."

Her position as his mother makes her uniquely suited to instruct him. As she says in the opening (I have added the italics):

You will be able to discover fully what rules you must fulfill for my sake. My son, you will have teachers who instruct you in many more useful lessons than I do but they do not have equal status with me or have hearts burning in their breasts as I, your mother, do, my firstborn child.

She tells us in the Liber that it was started 30 November 841 and finished 2 February 843. She speaks of herself as being weak and near death, and the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that her death, probably shortly after completing the manuscript, spared her the news of her husband's execution by Charles the Bald in 844.

Tomorrow we shall look at some of her advice from the Liber.

Criminal Intent

When Henry I (1068-1135) was king of England, the rule of the law was simple: someone had to pay for a crime. The philosophy was "who sins unwittingly shall knowingly make amends." This was a few decades into Norman rule in England, but it mirrored the previous Anglo-Saxon law as well: someone had to be responsible if a wrong had been committed. In fact, the law under King Cnut (985-1035) demanded that even an infant who broke a cup was guilty as if he were an adult acting deliberately. (Remember the importance of the wergild to pre-Norman England.) At least Henry's law allowed the very young and the insane to be considered innocent, being not in their right minds. Accidental injury was still injury, however, until a legal expert came forward who tried to change that.

Henry Bracton (1210-1268) was a jurist who worked hard to codify and update English law, using the well-developed Roman legal system as his guide. His four-volume De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ (On the Laws and Customs of England) informed much of English law afterward, even though he didn't finish it (I'll explain why shortly). He had a lot to say about the practice of seeking Sanctuary in a church, about "writs of appeal," and murder fines and dying intestate. But what we are looking at today is the concept of mens rea.

Mens rea, Latin for "guilty mind," was considered by Bracton to be a necessary element of a crime, as opposed to just an actus reus (guilty act). Just as Bracton insisted that stealing required an intent to steal, so the attitude of the law to killing must reflect the agent's intent to kill:

the crime of homicide, be it either accidental or voluntary, does not permit of suffering the same penalty, because on one case the full penalty must be exacted and in the other there should have been mercy. [De Legibus]

This was a significant change, and made a harsh law more reasonable. The fact that a felony in modern jurisprudence requires intent starts with Bracton's move away from a strictly "mathematical," eye-for-an-eye approach to punishment.

A page from De Legibus

So why didn't he finish it? Bracton rose far in his career: from being a justice at the age of 35 to being a member of what became the King's Court. But by 1257, something prompted him to quit his position not long before the summoning of the Mad Parliament by Henry III and the unrest that led to the Provisions of Oxford. By quitting, he had to turn in all of his papers, court cases, notes and copies of the law that he had been drawing on to write De Legibus. The timing is suspicious, especially considering the personal cost to him and his life's work. One wonders if he wanted to avoid taking sides, or, if he already had taken a side, who he was afraid of angering most: the king or the Barons.

Whatever the case, he walked away from law and courts for years, becoming a rector in a couple places, then an archdeacon, and finally the chancellor of Exeter Cathedral, in the nave of which he is buried. But in the last year of his life he was drawn into one more court case which, depending upon his reasons for leaving the law just before the second great conflict between a king of England and the Barons, might have been awkward for him. At the end of yesterday's post, the Dictum of Kenilworth  was mentioned, allowing the rebels to make a case to reclaim their estates from their king. Henry Bracton was appointed to the committee that heard their cases and decided the outcome, giving him one last chance to practice law—on behalf of people who had been his colleagues on the King's Court.

The Bull

When Philip IV of France convinced Pope Clement V that his campaign against the corruption of the Templars needed to be extended to all Templars everywhere, Clement issued a papal bull to spread the word.

The papal bull had become commonplace by the 13th century. We know they existed as far back as the 6th century, because the lead seal itself exists, even though the message itself does not. We don't have any original bulls from earlier than 819. At that time, they were still being written on fragile papyrus. Once they switched to vellum (calf skin) or parchment aroun the 1th century, the survival rate of documents increased dramatically.

Why was it called a "bull"? The term comes from the Latin verb bullire (to bubble). Bulls were a lump of material, wrapped around a ribbon attached to a document and stamped with official seals/markings, indicating their authenticity. They were originally clay, but lead became more common—and, occasionally, gold: Byzantine emperors liked to issue golden bulls.

In the case of the popes of Rome, one side of the flat leaden bull would bear the image of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The "SPASPE" seen in te image above stands for Saint PEter and Saint PAul. The other side would bear the name of the issuing pope.

Bulls also have odd names, because they are called after the first few words of the statement, which does not always indicate their content, as I previously explained in the footnote here. Bulls were also not always commands or "new laws." Clearly, the pope had no way to enforce a bull, as when he issued the one about the Templars that was ignored by Edward II of England. Other notable pulls that weren't necessarily embraced: Exsurge Domine (15 June 1520) demanded that Martin Luther retract 41 of his 95 Theses against the Roman Catholic Church, and Sublimis dei (29 May 1537) forbidding the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Frederick II

Frederick II of Sicily (1194-1250) has crossed the path of this blog more than once, but has not yet been featured.

He declared the Edict of Salerno, separating physicians and pharmacists.
Frederick was interested in math and science, and was friendly to and supportive of Fibonacci.
He promised to go on the Fifth Crusade, mentioned here, but never participated; he was blamed for its failures by Christians all over Europe as well as Pope Honorius III (who had been Frederick's tutor while young).

From the time he was declared Holy Roman Emperor in 1220 until his death 30 years later, he was a tremendous influence on science and culture, but a difficulty for popes and religion—odd, considering he willingly took the title Holy Roman Emperor. Although Pope Innocent III was his guardian growing up, Frederick often said blasphemous things, supposedly mocking Moses and Jesus and Mohammed for being frauds. His public attitude toward religion was unusual for his era and position, and Dante's Inferno places him in the circle of hell reserved for heretics.

He was, however, also possessed of a rationalism that was unusual for his era. He hired Arabs/Muslims as soldiers and personal guards; he hired Jewish scholars to be at his court. He pointed out the unfairness of trials by ordeal, because the stronger man would always win regardless of guilt or innocence. He hired the mathematician and scholar Michael Scot (of whom Honorius III thought very highly) to, among other things, make new translations of Aristotle and Arabian works into Latin. Michael Scot's translation of Aristotle was done with the help of Hermannus Alemannus ("Herman the German").

He had three wives and several mistresses. His third wife was Isabella of England, the daughter of King John Lackland. It was a political marriage, taken on because marrying an English princess would make his political opponents lose support from England. Once Isabella arrived in Sicily, she was sent to live in seclusion in Padua with only two of her English retainers.

Although Frederick had a profound and positive impact on laws and science, his personal manner made him many enemies and detractors. The Hohenstaufen lineage, which had included Frederick Barbarossa, lost power after Frederick II's death.

The Groma

[We had so much fun with the Jacob's Staff (well, I did), that I hope you don't mind talking so soon about another tool for more measurement.]

Roman roads, the grid system for Roman camps, sections of Hadrian's Wall—how did they get their lines so straight? They used a groma. The groma had several parts:

• The Upright: a long pole with a metal point on the bottom for driving it into the ground.
• The Rostro: an arm that extended horizontally from the top, then angled upward, designed to swivel where it attached to the Upright.
• The Groma: a cross of four equal-length arms, with its center at the top-point of the Rostro. From the end of each arm, an equal length plumb line descended.
• The Marker Peg: a plumb line that descended from the center of the Groma's cross-piece all the way to the ground.

The Upright would be stationed so that the Marker Peg fell to what you wished to be the center of your surveying. From there, you could swivel the Rostro so that each arm extended to the cardinal points of the compass. Once the four plumb lines ceased swaying, you could send your assistant toward the horizon (standard distance was 125 paces). By getting behind the groma and sighting so that two opposite plumb lines were aligned, you could, with a wave of your hand, guide your pole-carrying assistant laterally until his vertical pole aligned with the plumb lines. You now had a straight line of hundreds of feet between two points, exactly along the direction you wanted.

Who used the groma? Land surveyors, or as they were called in Latin, Agrimensores (from ager, "field" and mensura, "measure). Which brings me to the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum ("The Work of Roman Surveyors"), considered the earliest scientific or technical manuscript that exists, from a time (the 5th-6th centuries) when most documents were about religion or literature (or politics). The page seen here is from the section on laying out a house as opposed to a settlement. One picture is of the house, and one is of the property lines around it.

A 1554 edition of the Corpus added illustrations to the text with grid-lines to show the accuracy of the process. A few examples of its pages and illustrations can be seen here. And if you are interested in robots, you might get a chuckle from this after today's post.

Defenestration

After Jan Hus was executed for heresy in 1415 (Jan Hus has been discussed here and here), his followers, called Hussites, continued to protest vehemently for the reform of the Church. A very popular Hussite priest of the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, Jan Zelivsky, led a procession to the Town Hall in Prague that gathered a large number of citizens. The protest was about the inequality between peasants and the nobility, and about the perceived corruption of the Church that had been successfully preached by Wycliffe. Preachers such as Zelivsky urged people to take up arms to combat their oppression.

After the procession reached Charles Square in the city, someone threw a stone at Zelivsky from a window of the Town Hall. This act caused his followers to enter the building en masse, seize the judge, the burgomaster (the Mayor of Prague), and thirteen members of the town council, and throw them all out a window. Those that did not die in the fall were finished off by the crowd.

This was called the Defenestration of Prague, from the Latin defenestrare, "to throw out a window."* Over a century later, it would be re-named "The First Defenestration of Prague," because the act was so useful that it became a pastime.

Later depiction of a Prague defenestration.

The Catholic Encyclopedia would have you believe that this event so disturbed King Wenceslas IV that he died shortly after due to shock. Perhaps someone should update that page. Wenceslas died over two weeks later, after suffering a heart attack while hunting in the woods around his castle. He had been sympathetic to non-conformists and to the idea of reform, and had been a supporter of Jan Hus. The Defenestration surely would not have pleased him, but a king in his 50s who had seen what Wenceslas had been through was used to controversy. Sadly, his death along with the Prague violence helped kick off the Hussite Wars.

The Defenestration of Prague took place 593 years ago today, in 1419. Consider how you might honor the event as you go through your day!


*Let us pause and reflect on the utility of Latin, to already have a word for this act! It was needed at least for the Latin Bible, so that Jezebel could be defenestrated in 2 Kings 9:33.

Leechbooks

A leechbook was a collection of remedies, called so because a physician or surgeon was called a "leech." Bald's Leechbook is a very early (9th century) example.

It contains the only known plastic surgery procedure in an Anglo-Saxon text:

For hare lip, pound mastic very small, add the white of an egg, and mingle as thou dost vermilion, cut with a knife the false edges of the lip, sew fast with silk, then smear without and within with the salve, ere the silk rot. If it draw together, arrange it with the hand; anoint again soon.

We don't know if this is just theory, or if it were actually put into practice with the desired results.

Bald was not the author, and not likely a medical man. A Latin colophon at the end states:

Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit
"Bald owns this book which he ordered Cild to compile."

Cild may have been someone with medical experience as well as being the organizer of the book, or he may have simply been a copyist who brought together various sources for Bald. Two doctors are mentioned in the book, Dun and Oxa, but we don't know much else about them.

The leechbook is organized into two volumes, dealing respectively with external (such as skin, teeth, or ear) and internal (such as upset stomach, jaundice, or vomiting blood) problems. The surgery is in part one. This organization is different from many other leechbooks and collections of knowledge, which often gather together every bit of lore known to the author without much regard for categorization. Another collection is a late 10th/early 11th century manuscript named Lacnunga (Anglo-Saxon for "Remedies") by its 19th century editor. It uses Anglo-Saxon and Latin to list medical knowledge, remedies (some the same as in Bald's), prayers, charms and incantations, and some Old Irish poetical prayers for health.

Both are found in the British Library. A 19th century searchable edition of Bald's can be found here.

Compurgators

The ultimate character witness

Throughout several centuries and many countries, establishing your innocence or trustworthiness in a court of law could be done by the use of compurgators. The word comes from Latin com (with) + purgare (cleanse; hence the modern word "purge").

If you were accused of wrongdoing, you would gather compurgators to appear for you in court. Ideally, you would find 12 of the most respected members of the community who would be willing to stand there and say that they believe you when you say you are innocent. Mind you, if you were found standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in your hand, compurgators were not likely to save you. This worked well when you were accused of cheating on a debt or stealing a spoon and hard evidence did not exist against you...unless you had friends who were determined to protect you.


The opportunities for abuse of such a system were rampant.

Henry II, or instance, in 1164 made sure that compurgation would not be allowed in felonies; he did not like the fact that a cleric (priest) might literally get away with murder in an ecclesiastical court by merely being defrocked, while the royal courts would use capital punishment for capital crimes. The use of compurgation in any way as a defense in England was eliminated from the court system in 1833.

The Black Death, Part 2 (of 4)

Hype aside, what do we know?

The Middle Ages called what was happening "The Great Pestilence."

The "Black Death" was a term coined in the 1600s to refer to the the grimness of the event.

The "Bubonic Plague" came into currency around 1885-1890 because of the swellings/bruises that resulted from infection. The Latin for bruise is "bubo, bubonis."

Yersinia pestis, isolated in the 1880s by bacteriologists Alexandre Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato (who were working independently; you can guess who "published first"), loves to breed in the digestive tract of the flea. Because its prolific duplication prevents the flea from being able to digest blood, the flea travels from host to host, biting furiously in an attempt to avoid starving. This causes bacteria to spill out and into the bloodstream of the mammal. Here's a pictorial view.

If you would like a more detailed graphic of how it works (and understand biochemistry more than I do), click here.

A dozen or so cases of Bubonic Plague are diagnosed and treated each year in the United States. The victims invariably (unless they exist solely for an episode of House) live in areas of poor sanitation.

The Handkerchief

Richard II (1367-1400) had all of the elegance and none of the political savvy or military skill required of a king of England in the 14th century. He was given to--and ridiculed for--extravagances and fastidiousness that shocked many of his contemporaries. In an attempt to curb his excesses, he was put under the regency of a council called the Lords Appellant. Richard decided to negotiate a peace with France and devote his energies and finances to overthrowing the Lords Appellant. (Imagine what Congress would have done if, at the height of the Cold War, Lyndon Johnson had declared "I'm going to make peace with Russia and focus on controlling the GOP.") The Merciless Parliament of 1388 was called to curb him. During the process, Parliament convicted most of Richard's advisors of treason. The charges against them include lists of extravagances such as richly decorated garments and household furnishings.

At a time when such excesses were worthy of condemnation, something like the following line--a description of an order from the king's tailor, Walter Rauf--would surely make heads turn and eyes roll:

parvis peciis factis ad liberandum domino regi ad portandum in manu suo pro naso suo tergendo et mundando

"small pieces made for giving to the lord king to carry in his hand for wiping and cleaning his nose"

Why does this stand out?

Prior to this, the sleeve was the primary receptacle for the things for which we now use handkerchiefs or tissues. Stella Mary Newton, in her Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince,  does not find any evidence of handkerchief use in the courts of Europe. This seems to counter the theory that Richard picked up this "foppish" practice from France.* We know the Romans used a piece of cloth called a sudarium for wiping sweat, but that is not likely where Richard got the idea, since there is no evidence that the sudarium survived as a custom in Europe. So maybe Richard did invent the pocket handkerchief.

For more details, see Margaret Roe Designs, who also covers the Roman use of the sudarium.

*Richard was raised in France, where his father, Edward the Black Prince, held much land thanks to Edward III's successes in the Hundred Years War. In fact, it's pretty certain that Richard never bothered to learn English.