The Men Helping the Jews, Part 2

Yesterday's post mentioned three witnesses to King Henry III's charter that established the Domus Conversorum. Hubert de Burgh has been discussed before, but Mauclerc and des Roches have not. All three served in positions under Henry's father, King John.

Thirty years before this 1232 charter, Mauclerc showed up as a clerk in Normandy, then having his own church. A year later, however, he is in England and holding a prebend (a portion of the revenue of a church) in Exeter.

He collected taxes for John, who also sent him to Rome as an envoy to Pope Innocent III. Loyal to John, one of his jobs in Rome was to make sure Innocent did not give support to any English barons who might turn to the pope for help against the king. In 1223 he was elevated to be bishop of Carlisle.

As bishop of Carlisle, he came into a very handsome property, Rose Castle (the illustration is recent, but at the time it was likely wooden). Henry's grandfather, Henry II, had confiscated Rose Castle from a man who irritated him. It was still a royal possession, and Henry III handed it off to Mauclerc in 1230.

Mauclerc was part of the embassy in 1225 to arrange marriage between Henry and the daughter of the Duke of Austria. (That marriage did not happen.) In 1228 he was named the royal Treasurer for life, but in 1233 he was expelled from that office and replaced with Peter des Rivaux, the nephew of Peter des Roches. He was the first warden of the Domus Conversorum.

Peter des Roches' influence on the king that caused Mauclerc's removal from office would be reversed when des Roches himself fell from grace, and Mauclerc returned to the king's court. In June 1246 he resigned the bishopric and retired to Oxford, joining a Dominican community there. He died in October 1248 in Oxford, His will left his personal property to Carlisle and to the Dominicans.

Tomorrow we'll look at the other witness to the Domus Conversorum charter, Peter des Roches.

The Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library in Oxford is actually not from the Middle Ages. It was founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545 - 1613), an English diplomat and scholar. What he accomplished, however, was the salvation of what had existed in the Middle Ages.

The first library at Oxford was a collection of books left by Bishop Thomas Cobham of Worcester (died 1327). Those books were chained to tables for research, not for lending.

Between 1435 and 1437, the brother of King Henry V, Humphrey, 1st Duke of Gloucester, donated 281 manuscripts. The space where Cobham's books were stored was too small to accommodate the influx of material. A room above the Divinity School was built (finished in 1488) to store them all. That space is still known as Duke Humfrey's [sic] Library.

The Reformation (1550) saw the ruin of the library (not the building) in order to destroy any vestige of Roman Catholicism. Some books were removed by sympathetic people and hidden to keep them safe. The furniture was removed in 1556. Only three books from the original collection are there now. One was re-acquired only in the last few years.

Thomas Bodley began the restoring of Duke Humfrey's in 1598. Over the next decades, two wings were added, the east wing (Arts End) and west wing (Selden End), creating an "H" shape. It contains collections of art, maps, music, theology, and Western manuscripts.

Now there are five buildings that comprise the Bodleian, with off-site storage near Swindon. Its catalog includes over 13,000,000 items, the second largest collection in England after the British Library. It is one of a handful of "legal deposit" libraries (the British Library is another) to which a copy of all published works must be given.

Although he had access to wealth through his wife and father, Bodley recognized that donations would be needed to maintain the library, and he created the idea of a Benefactors' Book that would record every donation and be kept on display. In it we can see that Sir Walter Raleigh donated £50 in 1603, and Francis Bacon donated a copy of his book  The Advancement of Learning in 1605.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of the medieval works that exist inside the Bodleian.

David of Oxford

Asher of Lincoln had a son, David, who married a local woman, Muriel, and at some point moved to Oxford, where he lived in a house on St. Aldate's (now site of the Oxford Town Hall), where Oxford Jews congregated their homes. (The illustration is by an 18th-century artist, Jonathan Skelton.)

David was one of the wealthiest Anglo-Jewish financiers of the 13th century. He was one of six wealthy Jews engaged by King Henry III to collect the tallage, the special tax the Crown often imposed on Jews to raise funds quickly for royal projects.

The Close Rolls in England were an administrative record of every letter and order issued with the authority of the Crown behind it. There is an entry from Winchester for 27 August, 1242:

For David of Oxford: The King to Masters Moses of London, Aaron of Canterbury, and Jacob of [Oxford], Jews, greeting. We do hereby forbid you to hold henceforth any plea concerning David Jew of Oxford and Muriel who was wife of the same; nor under any circumstances are you to distrain him either to take or to keep that wife or any other. Know for certainly that if you do otherwise, you will incur grave punishment therefore.

In short, the king forbade anyone (and those three in particular) from acting with any authority on the current issue of David and Muriel "who was wife of the same." Note the italics. David divorced Muriel, presumably because they were childless and he wanted a son to whom he could leave his fortune. Jewish law forbade divorcing a wife without her consent. Muriel (we assume) did not consent, and appealed for help.

She appealed to her family in Lincoln. Peytevin the Great, who had his own synagogue, appealed to the beth din (rabbinical court) in France (the rabbis of France were considered very authoritative). The word from France seemed to be that David acted improperly and must take Muriel back. An ad hoc beth din was assembled in Oxford of three men to ratify this decision and present it to David. We know who these men were because of another entry in the Close Rolls on the same date. I share the relevant part here:

... Moreover, Peytevin of Lincoln, Muriel who was the wife of David of Oxford, Benedict f. (son of) Peytevin of Lincoln, Vaalyn', and Moses de Barbun', Jews, are to appear before the aforesaid Archbishop and others of the King's council on the octave of St Michael, wheresoever they shall be in England, to show cause why they sent to France to the Jews of France to hold a chapter on the Jews of England. And the said justices are enjoined not to permit David of Oxford to be constrained to take or to keep any wife save of his own desire.

David, seeing the decision to overturn his divorce, obviously turned to the authority that could override the English Jews and give David what he wanted, the man who relied on David for ready money, King Henry III.

Tomorrow I'll tell you how it turned out, what happened to Muriel, and why David's second wife was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Moses of Oxford

Moses of Oxford was one of the most prominent scholars and legal minds in Anglo-Jewry of the 13th century. Born in Oxford to a four-generation family of rabbis, he married into another prominent family. He had five children.

Two of his children—Elijah Menachem of London and Berachiah of Lincoln—became rabbis in England. Another son, Jacob, sold a property to Walton de Merton that became part of Merton College. Another son, Hagin, became treasurer for Richard of Cornwall and was chief rabbi of England until his death in 1280.

Moses was referred to in some documents as abir ha-olam ("the mighty one of the world"), attesting to his reputation as a scholar. One of his writings was Darchei ha-Nikud ve-ha-Neginot ("The Ways of Vowels and Accents") on the proper way to chant the Torah.

His legal decisions often disagreed with others, showing the differences that could develop between communities of Jews in different geographical locations. Moses felt it was okay to eat on Shabbat between the afternoon and evening prayer, while the tradition in France was to eat before the afternoon prayer and not after. Another question raised was whether it was permissible to allow an apostate to divorce without the wife's knowledge. Isaac be Peretz of Northampton said it was not permissible. Moses said it was fine, since a wife would benefit from no longer being married to an apostate.

Speaking of divorce, there was a particular divorce case at the time that has actually been studied quite extensively by modern historians and scholars. I keep running across it in my research, and it's time to see how it turned out and what the fuss was about. Tomorrow we'll visit David of Oxford and Muriel and Licoricia. See you then.

The Jews in Oxford

Just as London had a Jewish presence after the arrival of William and the Norman French, Oxford started to see a significant Jewish population about 10 years after the 1066 conquest. Living mostly around what was called the Great Jewry in the southern part of the city (now St. Aldate's), they held many important positions.

Their synagogue came later. An English Jew, Copin of Worcester, bought a building that belonged to a nearby priory for the purposes of making a synagogue. Extant no longer, the building was originally taken over by Balliol College.

After 1190 and the disaster at Clifford's Tower, King Richard allowed Jews to have a cemetery outside of London. It was established in Oxford, but had to be moved in 1231 when Henry III gave the land to St. John the Baptist Hospital. The place it was moved to is now the Oxford University Botanic Garden, and only a plaque remains there to acknowledge the cemetery. (The illustration shows the first plaque, placed in 1931. A more informative plaque was created later and can be seen here.)

Besides being moneylenders, Jews in Oxford were also landlords. Up to 10% of early student housing is estimated to have been owned by Jews. Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall were owned by Jews and rented to students.

Jews were not allowed to attend any of the Oxford colleges; that was reserved for Christians. But scholars consulted with Jews, one of whom was Moses of Oxford. Tomorrow we'll learn more about him.

The Oxford Massacre

One site of the St. Brice's Day Massacre in 1002 seems to have been Oxford. Æthelred called it in a 1004 charter "a most just extermination" of Danes, because of the rumor that they intended to kill him and all his council and take over the entire island, not just the part known as the Danelaw.

The sad part of the situation in Oxford was that the Danes there saw it coming and decided to take advantage of sanctuary. Sanctuary allowed anyone to take refuge in a church. Sanctuary had a time limit of 40 days, but in that time the refugee could get aid from outside to create a defense on their behalf against the persecutors.

The Danes in Oxford went to St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral), which Æthelred's charter tells:

For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defense for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs;

This should have been recognized as a safe haven for them,

...but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me.

Were the Danes all stuck inside while it burned? Or did they flee and meet the angry mob outside?

In 2008, an archaeological dig found the remains of 37 people who had been massacred. So far as could be determined, they were all male, between the ages of 16 and 25, and some had scars suggestive of previous injuries such as would be incurred by warriors. There were, however, newer injuries all over the bodies that did not have time to heal, as if attacked by a crowd from all sides. Radiocarbon dating suggests they all died between 960 and 1020 CE.

This was not the only site of aggression against Danes, but the king's decree and stories about St. Brice's Day may have been the impetus for what Sweyn Forkbeard did next. Let's get back to him.

War Comes to Oxford

By the early 1260s, Oxford had become a place where scholars went to teach and learn. Violence was not unknown, as conflicts between students and townspeople were common. Town vs. Gown is not only a common phrase to express this conflict, it was the very first post in this blog.

Oxford became a center for another conflict, however, at the same time that the colleges of Balliol and Merton were beginning. This conflict was a little more widespread and is called the Second Barons War.

The First Barons War was a rebellion against King John and led to the Magna Carta in 1215. John's son Henry III had his own troubles with the barons who were always looking for ways to increase their own power and reduce the king's authority. Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester, in April 1263 called fellow barons to meet him at Oxford where they discussed rebellion against Henry's policies.

Oxford was a significant meeting place, because a few years earlier it was the site of the Provisions of Oxford, a series of reforms forced on Henry in 1258 in exchange for the barons agreeing to shore up the royal treasury (Henry had depleted it fighting in Sicily on behalf of the pope). The barons and their armies marched on London and trapped Henry in the Tower, taking him prisoner. Montfort took over the government, but his authority did not last long and Henry escaped.

Henry reached out to Louis IX of France to arbitrate. Simon de Montfort agreed to this. Louis declared the Provisions of Oxford annulled in January 1264. Henry prepared for the inevitable breakdown of negotiations and took his forces to Oxford (more centrally located than London) and made it his military headquarters. On 12 March in 1264 he suspended all teaching until Michaelmas (29 September).

Montfort, wishing to make sure he had funds to fight a war, did what many medieval nobles did: he made sure people would have money and be grateful to give it to him by eliminating their cash debts. He did this by attacks against Jews, the moneylenders, and therefore ensuring that debts would not have to be repaid. Let us go into some of the specific atrocities tomorrow.

John Balliol and Balliol College

John I Balliol (died 25 October 1268) was an English nobleman. He married Dervorguilla of Galloway, whose extensive lands (inherited from her family) made her (and by extension, him) very wealthy. He was asked by Henry III of England to take a role as protector of the young Alexander III, King of Scotland. He supported Henry when the Barons were rebelling, and was captured by them at the Battle of Lewes, but escaped and rejoined Henry later.

Balliol and Dervorguilla had many children. Among them was John, who became King of Scotland (though not for long). Their daughter Eleanor married John II Comyn, head of the most powerful family in Scotland, who supported the younger John's ascension to the throne.

The Balliol family had long disputed certain lands in the village of Sadberge in Durham from which the Bishops of Durham believed they were owed the rents. This came to a head between John Balliol and Bishop of Durham Walter of Kirkham in 1260, when (so the legend says) Balliol abducted the bishop. Balliol's penance was to provide funds for the education of young men. In 1263 he rented a house in the suburbs of Oxford to accommodate poor students.

A royal writ in 1266 mentions the institution in Oxford as dependent on Balliol's financial support. After his death, Dervorguilla made several donations that maintained and expanded the "House of the Scholars of Balliol." It was given a set of statutes in 1282.

There were originally 16 students who received eight pence per week to live on. A century later, its headmaster was John Wycliffe, translator into English of the Bible and a church reformer. In the 1400s, Bishop of Ely William Gray donated (gathered from his travels) the single largest collection of medieval manuscripts in England.

Balliol College is the oldest continuously run college in the English-speaking world. Or is it? Despite the story of its founding, there are two other colleges who claim they are the oldest in Oxford. Let's compare their claims tomorrow and ask the question: what makes a start date official?

Henry's College Years

Henry V (16 September 1386 - 31 August 1422) was King of England from 1413 until his death.

For a time, in his youth, he was at Queens College in Oxford. There are no records saying he was enrolled (he would have been very young at the time, considering that he was away from Oxford by the time he was sixteen, fighting the Battle of Shrewsbury), but there is other evidence to examine.

For one, his uncle Henry Beaufort was chancellor there from 1397-99. A resident of Oxford named John Rouse affirms in a history that Henry studied there "under the guardianship of his uncle Henry Beaufort, then Chancellor of Oxford."

As king, Henry supported Queens College's rights in a dispute with Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel. After this, Henry made sure that Queens would not be bothered by Canterbury, and instead put it under the protection of the Archbishop of York.

It is also recorded that he learned to appreciate literature and music while at Queens. Prior to Queens he had learned the harp, the recorder, and the flute. While campaigning in 1421 in France he even had a harp delivered to him. As king he granted pensions to musical composers. He is even known to have set to music two parts of the Mass, the Gloria and the Sanctus. Note the illustration and the words in red in the upper-left corner: "Roy Henry." The music is "highly skillful" and was possibly done with help from a professional composer. You can hear the selections at this link.

In a first for an English king, he learned to write in the Middle English vernacular.

Most people's knowledge of Henry is based on Shakespeare's plays. If they remember anything about the plays, it is probably the larger-than-life character of Falstaff. Falstaff was based on a real friend of Henry, Sir John Oldcastle. And yes, Henry had to change his attitude toward Oldcastle radically from when he was a prince. The colorful Sir John Oldcastle and his fate is a good tale for next time.

Richard Rolle

Richard Rolle (c.1300 - 30 September 1349) was born to a North Yorkshire farming family. He showed promise as a young man and was sponsored by the Archdeacon of Durham to attend Oxford to study philosophy. He gravitated more toward theology and biblical studies, but left Oxford while still in his teens to become a hermit.

At first he tried to live simply near his family's home, but became worried that they would disapprove and try to "reclaim" him. One day he encountered a former fellow Oxford student, John Dalton, who was willing to set him up in a cell with the necessary provisions.

A few years after leaving Oxford, while living an ascetic life on Dalton's property, he had his first mystical experience. He expressed the feeling of mystical experience as calor, canor, and dulcor. Calor was a feeling of heat. Canor was an experience of sound. Dulcor was a sweetness that accompanied both the feelings of calor and canor. A combination of these feelings was with him always after that, about which he says "I did not think anything like it or anything so holy could be received in this life."

Having attained this level of mystic expression, he left Dalton's cell and started to travel. We know he spent time in Hampole, sharing his experience with a Cistercian convent. He also visited Margaret Kirkby, whom he had set on the path to the anchorite life. He was able to cure her seizures by his presence.

He stayed near the Hampole convent for the rest of his life. He died there in 1349, possibly having succumbed to the Black Death, although by fall of that year the worst of the plague was over. He was originally buried in the convent cemetery, but later moved to his own chapel space because of the attention his grave drew: visitors and supplicants came to pray and make offerings; miracles were claimed to result.

In the 1380s, canonization proceedings were begun; many of the details of his life (other than details he included in his many writings) came from recording the anecdotes from people who knew him or had heard of him during the process of preparing a biography as part of the canonization process. The process was never completed, however, so he never became Saint Richard Rolle, although the Church of England commemmorates him on 20 January. In the Episcopal Church in the USA, he is commemorated on 28 September along with the mystics Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton.

His writings were so popular that over 450 manuscripts survive that were produced between 1390 and 1500. His writings were more popular than Chaucer. We can look at some of them next.

Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus"

Roger Bacon was born about 1219 into a wealthy family in England. He attended classes at Oxford University, where he learned a love of science from masters such as Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. About 1240 he joined the Franciscans, which might have stifled his interests. There was a prohibition on the order against publishing without special permission from the superiors. This was in place because of a work published previously that was considered heretical.

Bacon looked for support and patronage from the papal legate to England, telling him that educational reform was needed. This was one Gui Foucois, although in England he was known as Cardinal Guy de Foulques. The cardinal was not interested in providing financial aid, but was interested in his work and ideas. Unfortunately, without money, Bacon could not afford the writing materials and scientific equipment to produce what he wanted to send.

Then, in 1265, the situation changed. Guy de Foulques was elected Pope Clement IV. Another request to the new pope returned the same result: Clement wanted the information, but would not send money. Bacon could only assemble a shorter work than he wanted to. The result was the Opus Majus or Opus Maius (Latin: "Greater Work"). Its seven sections (which included some of his earlier writings along with new materials) are:

•The Four General Causes of Human Ignorance (believing in an unreliable source,  sticking to custom, ignorance shared by others, pretending to knowledge)
•The Affinity of Philosophy with Theology (concludes that Holy Scripture is the foundation of all sciences)
•On the Usefulness of Grammar (a study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic)
•The Usefulness of Mathematics in Physics (in this section he proposes changes to fix the Julian calendar)
•On the Science of Perspective (the anatomy of the eye and brain; light, vision, reflection and refraction, etc.)
•On Experimental Knowledge (a review of alchemy, gunpowder, and hypothesizes microscopes, telescopes, eyeglasses, machines that fly, and ships driven be steam)
•A Philosophy of Morality (philosophy and ethics)

It was sent to Clement in late 1267 or early 1268; however, Clement died in 1268. We do not know if he even had opportunity to read what he had requested.

"The Science of Perspective" was about optics. In that section, he discussed the anatomy of the eye, and how light is affected by distance, reflection and refraction. He also goes into mirrors and lenses. Most of this knowledge of optics came from Alhazen's Book of Optics, previously discussed here, and Robert Grosseteste's work on optics based on Al-Kindi, of whom I have never written before; I think there's my next topic.

For more on Bacon, use the search feature in the blog.

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]

The Saint of Mystic, Connecticut

Off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut is Enders Island. Only 11 acres in size, it is named for Dr. Thomas B. Enders, who purchased it in 1918 from the Sisters of Charity and used it as a private estate. In 1954, his wife gave it to the Society of St. Edmund.

Edmund Rich (1175 - 1240), who became St. Edmund, was born on the feast day of St. Edmund the Martyr (20 November), and therefore was named for that saint. His father was a wealthy merchant, hence the surname "Rich" sometimes attached to Edmund. He studied in England and France, and lectured on Rhetoric and Arithmetic at Oxford. It was said that he studied so long at night that he was known to nod off during lectures.

Some time in the early 1200s he was ordained, earned his doctorate in divinity, and started lecturing on theology. By 1222 he was made a parish vicar in Wiltshire, and eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury as a compromise candidate after Pope Gregory IX had refused to confirm three previous appointees. The confirmation was a surprise, since Edmund championed ecclesiastical independence from Rome. But Edmund also was opposed to foreigners taking important offices in England, so he took the job to avoid the chance of the pope putting an outsider in that chair.

Edmund was a powerful preacher and a strong politician. He fought Henry on his excesses against the Church. He also fought against the Pope, who wanted the Church in England firmly under papal control. On a 1240 trip to Rome, Edmund became ill at the Cistercian Pontigny Abbey and headed back to England, but died after 50 miles. The body was taken back to Pontigny. Within a year of his death, miracles were allegedly taking place at his grave, miraculous healings that motivated full canonization in only six years. His feast day is 16 November.

Although his body was left at Pontigny Abbey, relics were granted to other locations. One of his arms  made it to North America: it is in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Assumption at St. Edmund's Retreat on Enders Island in Connecticut.

A Sultan's Observatory

The Ulugh Beg Observatory Museum, built in 1970

Ulugh Beg is the more familiar name of Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay bin Shāhrukh (22 March 1394 - 27 October 1449). "Ulugh Beg" is more of a nickname, meaning "Great Ruler."

He was a grandson of Tamerlane who became sultan in Samarkand while still a teenager. He decided to turn Samarkand into an intellectual center, building a university and inviting scholars to take up residence.

He also built the Ulugh Beg Observatory in 1420, where some of the finest Islamic astronomers worked and studied, but only those whom Ulugh personally approved. The picture here is a modern structure on the site of the original, which was destroyed by religious fanatics in 1449. An excavation uncovered its primary feature—a giant sextant:

The so-called "sextant" obviously would have extended well above the ground (as the drawing shows) and likely was closer to being a quadrant. As Krisciunas points out in his interesting discussion of the instrument, it "was by far the largest meridian instrument ever built." Fragments of the curved measuring track have survived with markings for around 20 degrees; this is about the highest point that observations likely would have been made. The "sextant" would have been used to measure the angle of elevation of major heavenly bodies, especially at the time of the winter and summer solstices. Light

from the given body, passing through a controlled opening, would have shone on the curved track, which is marked very precisely with degrees and minutes. "It could achieve a resolution of several seconds of arc--on the order of a six-hundredth of a degree, or the diameter of an American penny at a distance of more than half a kilometer" (Krisciunas). It is not clear whether more than the sun and moon could have been measured in this fashion, since planets, for example, would not have cast sufficient light. [link]

Building a giant permanent astronomical instrument was a unique idea at the time—remember that this was 200 years prior to the invention of a telescope. He created a catalog of over 1018 stars, discovering and correcting many inaccuracies in the star tables created by Ptolemy. Copies of these star charts are on display at the Ulugh Beg Observatory Museum; the originals are in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Academic Regalia

Because medieval universities were often designed as breeding grounds for educated clerics, clerical robes were a standard form of dress. As time went on, however, simple black robes were not sufficient to distinguish the various levels of student, and an elaborate system of colors and styles developed to account for various levels of achievement, various schools of study, and even for different universities. Much of what we consider proper academic style now is derived from the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

There are three major parts of the regalia: gowns, hoods, and caps. Basic features are described below, but understand that each institution can modify the styles for its own use.*

Gowns come primarily in three varieties. The baccalaureate (bachelor's degree) gown is plain, with open sleeves. The master's degree gown has a long sleeve with a slit at the elbow for the arm to extend through; the rest of the sleeve hangs down and is enclosed (for storing handkerchiefs?). The doctoral gown has long voluminous sleeves with three velvet chevrons or bars encircling them.

Hoods are likewise a distinguishing feature for the three levels of academic achievement, with bachelors wearing the plainest hoods, about three feet long, with the narrowest velvet band (of about 3") that goes around the throat. Masters have a 3.5" band with a 3-4 foot hood whose inside lining is of the university's colors. Doctors have a longer and wider hood with a 4" band around the throat.

The hood is also where color can distinguish the school of study. Time has provided color schemes for everything from Accounting (Drab) to Nursing (Apricot) to Veterinary Science (Gray). See an extensive list of subjects and colors here.

The mortarboard is carried when indoors and worn outdoors. Women used to be required/allowed to wear them indoors. The tassel is worn over the left quarter; some graduation ceremonies make a point of starting with the tassel over the right, and switching it after the conferring of degrees. Tassels are black, but doctoral tassels can be gold.

*This is a very basic description of the differences in academic regalia, inspired by the 150th Commencement at Bard College this past weekend.

Regrating

A medieval market [source]

The post on the laws of Maldon mentioned this:

10. On market day no man shall regrate, nor sell meat, fish or other foodstuffs until the hour of prime, when the bell is rung.

A regrator was someone who purchased goods in a market for re-selling later for the purpose of making a profit.

Regrating made sense for the time: a vendor couldn't or didn't always travel around. A public market was in a fixed place and time of day so that people could find it. But what about those who couldn't make it to the market? A regrator who bought up fresh fish or bread in the morning could be the only source of fish when the fisherman or baker went back home in the afternoon.

Some communities considered this unfair to the merchant (brewer, baker, etc.) who produced the original wares. The Middle Ages therefore had many laws to protect those who brought their wares to market from having their business undermined by others. For example, regrators, when allowed by the town, were forbidden to sell at a higher price than the original price.

The assizes (court) had very strict rules about as well as against regrating. In Oxford, for instance, several regrators were actually licensed. Consider the Oxford culture: half of the town population were students—younger, unsupervised after classes were done, staying up late in the Halls. The demand for late food and drink was strong, and those who took on the job of regrators enabled bakers and brewers and others to enjoy their post-market lives and not be bothered at odd times by university students. (And the town took a fee from the regrator shops.) Remember the tradition of reresoper from this post.

In a world without 24-hour diners and fast-food joints with late-night drive-throughs, regrators could be a "necessary evil."

St. Scholastica, Weather Witch

Today is her feast day, as well as the anniversary of the St. Scholastica's Day Riot in Oxford. She was the twin sister of Saint Benedict, but made quite the name for herself. Like her brother, most of what we know about her came from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I (mentioned here).

She was born in Italy (c.480 - 10 February 542), and devoted herself to God in her youth. She founded a monastery for women about five miles from Monte Cassino, where her more famous brother had a community.

The communities were "gender-specific," so when the siblings wanted to meet they chose a neutral location. During one of these visits, she wanted her brother to stay overnight, but he was loath to spend a night away from his monastery. Chapter 33 of the Dialogues tells the tale of what happened next:

At that time, the sky was so clear that no cloud was to be seen. The Nun, hearing this denial of her brother, joined her hands together, laid them on the table, bowed her head on her hands, and prayed to almighty God. 

Lifting her head from the table, there fell suddenly such a tempest of lightning and thundering, and such abundance of rain, that neither venerable Benedict, nor his monks that were with him, could put their heads out of doors. The holy Nun, having rested her head on her hands, poured forth such a flood of tears on the table, that she transformed the clear air to a watery sky. 

After the end of her devotions, that storm of rain followed; her prayer and the rain so met together, that as she lifted up her head from the table, the thunder began.  So it was that in one and the very same instant that she lifted up her head, she brought down the rain.

The man of God, seeing that he could not, in the midst of such thunder and lightning and great abundance of rain return to his Abbey, began to be heavy and to complain to his sister, saying: "God forgive you, what have you done?" She answered him, "I desired you to stay, and you would not hear me; I have desired it of our good Lord, and he has granted my petition. Therefore if you can now depart, in God's name return to your monastery, and leave me here alone." [link]

The next day he departed; three days later she died. Benedict had her body brought to Monte Cassino and laid in his own tomb.

Scholastica is the patron saint of nuns, and is invoked during storms.

Deer Park

Deer park at Kentchurch Court, UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chaucer's Enemy

William Thorpe before Arundel, 1407; a case of heresy

Yesterday's post discussed Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and suggested that he was Chaucer's enemy. Let's discuss that assertion.*

England had become more liberal under Richard II. John Wycliffe had pushed for a more people-oriented approach to Christianity that focused far less respect on the hierarchy of the Church—the hierarchy of which Arundel had reached the pinnacle in England, as Archbishop of Canterbury. Wycliffe had even started producing parts of the Bible in English, accessible to more people. The followers of Wycliffe, called "Lollards," were considered heretical by many, and especially by Arundel. Prior to his exile, he had tried to curb that hotbed of Lollardy, Oxford, and had been rebuffed and insulted by its chancellor. Now, restored as archbishop under Henry IV, Arundel had a freer hand to pursue his goal of asserting harsher control over the moral fiber of the realm.

One of his targets, by necessity, would have been the popular poet whose freely circulated works showed numerous signs of Lollardy. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales constantly mocked the hierarchy of church officials, displaying their worldliness and corruption. The pilgrim who seems to have Chaucer's greatest respect is the antithesis of the worldly Arundel:

The Parson may be poor but he is rich in holy thought and works. He's a learned man—a clerk—and he truly teaches Christ's Gospel. He's benign and diligent and patient in adversity. He is loathe to excommunicate folk because they can't pay their tithes ... and he would rather give them from his own income and property. [Who Murdered Chaucer, p. 219]

But would Arundel's dislike of these portraits turn into action? Well, it was during the reign of Henry IV (in 1401, in fact) that England started burning heretics, and a few years after that (1407) Arundel made knowledge of the Bible by non-clergy a sign of heresy. He was controlling, heavy-handed, vengeful when it came to Oxford and Lollardy and of anything that attacked or mocked the hierarchy of the church.

Jones et alia assert that Arundel's need to change the tone in England may have been the guiding force behind Chaucer's difficulties at the end of his life (Henry IV officially confirmed Chaucer's annuity, but records show that the payments weren't actually forthcoming) and the obscurity with which he was treated when he died—although praised by fellow-poets during his life, there is no public notice taken of his death. Chaucer might have seen the writing on the wall; hence the Retraction he wrote for the Tales in which he asks forgiveness for his vulgar stories and prays for God's mercy, in a tone very different from everything else he has written.

*I give full credit for this theory to the authors of Who Murdered Chaucer, discussed in a previous post.

"Grammar" "School"—Part 1 of 2

When we think of the history of schools, we imagine an unbroken line of buildings and teachers and groups of pupils sitting on chairs or benches or stools, and our imagination stretches back through a more and more primitive setting. That is, we think of the medieval school as visually similar to the modern classroom, but with less technology, simpler furniture, etc.

An understandable image, but not accurate.

For instance, classes at Oxford 700 years ago would not be recognizable to us. The master would probably be visiting his pupils in a room rented by them, or at his house. Furniture would not be present—no one was going to own that many chairs or stools, or even benches. They would stand together and talk.

We need to alter slightly our use of the word "school" for this context. Nowadays we use it to refer to the location or building. Just as "home is where the heart is," however, "school" was simply the gathering itself of a master and a pupil or pupils. The word school, from the Greek schola, ultimately relates back to "leisure." School (as the Greeks would say of arts in a civilization) is only possible when there is the time to cease toil and discuss higher aspirations. Early references to "school" (such as in Bede) make clear to us that it is not clear that a building is involved, just an intent to provide instruction.

Now what about "grammar"? I attended grammar school, and still use the phrase, although there was very little grammar involved. Why do we call them that? We'l look at that in Part 2.