![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/414ltBfqNtL._SL200_.jpg) - [[∙Melvil Decimal System (DDC)]] - [[9 - History and Geography]] - [[90 - History]] - [[909 - World history]] ## Notes > A troubadour is different to a minstrel. They first appeared in southern France in the 1100s. ‘Troubadour’ meant a discoverer of something new – literally the ‘finder’ of something that had not been known before. p47 *** > When someone is knighted and bow in front of the King/Queen and get a sword on their shoulder this is a submissive act. They are offering up their neck to be cut if need be by their superior. The touching of the sword of shoulder was originally meant as a ‘light blow’. p148 ## Highlights > The idea that there was a 'middle time' that separated that modern world from antiquity first appears in a letter from a Renaissance bishop in [[1469]]. [[Giovanni Andrea]], like many of his contemporaries, was so besotted with the splendours of ancient Greece and Rome that he thought the classical world was the only basis for civilization. He took pride in the fact that his own world was returning to its values, and was therefore at pains to distinguish it from the media tempesta (middle time) that bleak interlude between then and 'now' when the world was deep in dirt and ignorance. (Page 6) *** > At least half, and perhaps three-quarters, of the male aristocracy of England perished between [[1066]] and [[1070]]. Their families were dispossessed, and many of their widows and daughters fled to nunneries to avoid being forced into marriage with [[William the Conqueror]]'s followers. London burned, and many other towns were partly demolished. The agricultural economy was laid waste over huge areas, and in the North repression left nothing but famine, reducing people to cannibalism. > > This was a moment of irrevocable change; the [[Norman Conquest]] would not be undone. England was permanently removed from the Scandinavian orbit and bound to France. There were some who tried to reverse this. [[Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria]], was executed in [[1076]] for supporting Danish plots to drive William out. He failed; the clock would not be turned back. (Page 7) *** > Having established, for the sake of convenience, that our '[[Middle Ages]]' (which never existed as an entity) was the period from [[1066]] to [[1536]], we have to recognize that we are talking about 470 years. (Page 9) ^7687f2 *** > Of all the changes between [[1066]] and [[1536]] perhaps the least significant was the size of [[population]]. There were about two million people in England 1066 and about three million in [[1535]]. There had been four million to five million in [[Roman Britain]], and about [[1300]] the population rose to some six million, but famine, disease (including the [[Black Death]]) and the changing patterns of families' working lives halved this by [[1450]], and recovery was slow. (Page 10) *** > But who the two million or three million people of our period were, and where and how they lived, changed very greatly. Snapshots of the kingdom at each of those two dates, [[1066]] and [[1536]], show two utterly different worlds. > > In the middle of the [[1000s]] barely 10 per cent of the population lived in towns. A community qualified as a 'town' in [[Domesday Book]] if it had more than 2000 inhabitants, and there were only 18 such communities. Even [[London]] was tiny - perhaps no bigger than present-day [[Sittingbourne]]. > > England was an entirely agricultural country, and its bishops were based in villages. > > It was also a society in which wealth was concentrated in the hands of even fewer people than it is today. Analysis of the Domesday survey reveals that about 10 per cent of the island's inhabitants were slaves people who were bought and sold and who could not own property. The labouring classes above them (cottars, bordars, villeins), who made up 75 per cent of the population, were unfree, obliged to perform service on lords' lands. The Norman invasion made the divisions in English society even more pronounced than they had been. > > There was virtually no literacy outside the Church, and such books as were produced were laboriously hand-copied in monasteries. The ruling class had neither language nor culture in common with those below them. The country lived under a form of martial law, in which whole communities were held responsible if a member of the occupying power was killed. > > By the early sixteenth century, however, this was all ancient history. Slavery was long gone, villeinage had, for practical purposes, disappeared and the land was worked by free farmers who paid rent. Towns were now significant urban centres, with their own charters and independent oligarchic democracies. The towns were already old, and many people saw the corporations that ran them as ossified defenders of ancient privileges, blocking industrial initiative. > > For there were, indeed, new industrial developments that were already making England prosperous, but they were to be found in the countryside or in unofficial, unincorporated towns. > > London had become a major city, and its population was dominated by artisans, tradesmen and educated professionals involved with the court and the law. About 60 per cent of its citizens could read, and there was a ready market for printed books. (Page 10) *** > BEING A PEASANT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES must qualify as one of the worst jobs in history - but then we're only guessing because the peasants didn't leave much record of their lives. Except once, in the summer of 1381, when they left an indelible mark on the history of England. > > It was quite astonishing. From out of nowhere, it seemed, tens of thousands of 'peasants' converged on London. Two large armed bodies of commoners and persons of the lowest grade from Kent and Essex" burst through the gates of the City of London and wreaked havoc. They demolished the home of John of Gaunt and some buildings around the priory of the Hospital of St John. The next day, the rebels in London burst into the fortress-palace of the Tower. They dragged out the prior of the hospital, who was the Royal Treasurer, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chancellor and a couple of other notables and beheaded them on Tower Hill. > > It was the first and last large-scale popular uprising in English history. (Page 15) *** > Froissart had no sympathy with the insurrection, and did not think peasants had anything to complain about. In fact, he said their lives had become too easy - the trouble was 'all because of the ease and riches of the common people'. Nonetheless, his description helps to reinforce the stereotype of peasant life as being nasty, brutish and short. > > A 'village' was where the lord of the manor kept his villeins - men who were bound either to the land itself or to personal service, and who lived with their wives and children in wretched cottage hovels. They worked partly for themselves but for up to three days a week for their lord (and gave him a share of their produce) and also had to give a tenth of their crop - a tithe - to the Church. > > Illiterate, uncouth, little more than an animal, the medieval peasant cuts a wretched figure in our imagination. Froissart's belief that it was dangerous to allow this savage, servile underclass too much scope for troublemaking makes a grotesque kind of sense. > > But much of what used to be assumed about 'peasants' is completely untrue. So untrue, in fact, that even the title 'Peasants' Revolt' is now no longer used by professional historians, who have lost confidence in Froissart's description. Froissart, it turns out, was not a very reliable social commentator. (Page 16) *** > The rising was not the mindless insurrection of brutalized semi-slaves. It was highly organized and carefully prepared. For a start, many areas of the country rose virtually simultaneously, which indicates that peasants had the capacity for organization a much larger scale than the purely local. Then there is the interesting chronicle report that, in order to maintain coastal defences against the French, the rebels in Kent decreed that: ‘none who dwelt near the sea in any place for the space of twelve leagues, should come out with them, but should remain to defend the coasts of the sea from public enemies …’ > > Moreover, the rebels' selection of targets in London demonstrates that the violence there was deliberate and specific. The first target, John of Gaunt, had thwarted the Commons' impeachments of unpopular members of the court, and was suspected of trying to make himself king. The first demands made by the Kentish rebels did not even mention serfdom or villeinage. They demanded allegiance to the king and the Commons; that there should be no king named John (i.e. John of Gaunt); that there should be no tax but the traditional levy of one-fifteenth of movable wealth; and that everyone should be ready to revolt when called upon. > > On 14 June the rebels met Richard II at Mile End just outside the city of London. There they presented demands which included the handing over of 'traitors'; the end of serfdom; the right to hire themselves out at fair wages; and the right to rent land at a cheap rate. Peasant issues had become part of the matter, but they were not there to begin with. > > By the third day the agenda had developed further, and was now revolutionary. To the end of serfdom their leader, Wat Tyler, now added the abolition of outlawry; the repeal of all laws except the 'law of Winchester' (traditional common law); the complete abolition of nobility in Church and state but for one king and one archbishop; and the confiscation and division of Church land. > > The targets of the rebels' destruction were places where records were stored: abbeys, priories, lawyers' houses and the like. Thomas Walsingham, whose chronicle contains much malice and invention, describes what happened in a way that brings to mind the 'Year Zero' of the Khmer Rouge in of truth Cambodia, and which must have contained at least a kernel of truth: > > > They strove to burn all old records; and they butchered anyone who might know or be able to commit to memory the contents of old or new documents. It was dangerous enough to be known as a clerk, but especially dangerous if an ink-pot should be found at one's elbow: such men scarcely or ever escaped from the hands of the rebels. - “Historia Anglicana” > > But this was not a general attack on literacy. It was specifically legal records that were destroyed and others, in many places, were left intact. Some, at least, of the rebels could read. > > So if peasants were not illiterate members of a dirty, uncouth, barbarous, rural 'lumpen proletariat', who were they? (Page 17) *** In fact, the manor court had the power to fine the lord, and would do so. The records of one in Laxton in Nottinghamshire show it fined the lord for leaving soil on the common land. The peasants of Albury in Hertfordshire went so far as to petition parliament in 1321 over oppression by their lord, Sir John Patemore, who had imprisoned them and seized their cattle. Some villages came close to being totally selfgoverning political entities run by the peasants for the peasants. Villeins resisted authority by quietly ignoring regulations, and manipulated the system by exploiting their influence as officials and bending laws in their own favour. Take the village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, afforded legendary status by the exploits of its inhabitants. In about 1200 King John proposed building a hunting lodge near the city of Nottingham. The residents of Gotham realized the implications of this he would pass through the village on the way to his lodge, making it a king's highway and thus making them liable to new taxes. So what did they do? The entire village pretended to be mad. It is said that the villagers built a fence around a cuckoo bush to prevent the cuckoo escaping, tried to drown an eel, set about pulling the moon out of a pond with a rake and rolled cheeses down a hill to make them round. Since madness was considered contagious the idea of a whole village of lunatics was perfectly feasible, and apparently the ploy worked. Villeins were not mindless and helpless, but actually ran the country. The barons who were their masters had to respect their traditions and ways of doing things, and it was normal for the lord of the manor to demonstrate this respect by laying on feasts for them twice a year wet and dry boon. Does anyone's landlord now treat them to a slap-up dinner twice a year? (Page 21) The manorial system developed during a period when England was getting warmer and wetter. This meant many years of good harvests (which we can see today in the evidence of tree rings) interrupted by rain-driven famines, with all the horrors described above. This is the framework within which the medieval peasant saw his life, and the prospects of an afterlife. But famine became rarer, and the economics of farming improved steadily in the centuries after the Conquest. In the thirteenth century the rise in temperature was reversed, and the tempests of the previous 200 years declined. Vineyards, an important part of the English economy for two centuries, disappeared completely by 1300 and the growing season shortened, but winters became milder and summers drier. From 1220 to 1315 there was no famine in England. This coincided with improvements in agricultural technology (primarily faster ploughing as horse teams replaced oxen in favourable areas) and the growth of markets and towns. The result was a golden age for the peasant, and a spectacular rise in the population, from 2.5 million to approaching 6 million by 1315. Wasteland was taken into cultivation, marginal land was converted into manorial farms and the standard of living rose. (Page 27) *** People were not starving. In fact, their diet was pretty healthy. Today, we are urged to stop eating fast foods with all the nutrition of cardboard and to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. This is actually a return to the peasant dieta diet that was despised by the nobility. They regarded fruit and veg as poor man's food, believing that greens weren't good for you and that fruit gave you dysentery – the bloody flux. Peasant bread was much healthier than our white, steambaked, sliced bread: it was brown, like a good wholemeal loaf. Peas and beans were sometimes added, which made it even more nutritious. In the fields people ate a kind of medieval pot noodle, a paste of dried vegetables, beans and bread to which they added ale to turn it into an instant meal. Eel pasties were another favourite, and preserved foods such as bacon, cheese and sausages were special treats. Even for the poorest, the countryside was a larder teeming with wild life. Rivers were full of fish - there were even plenty of salmon in the Thames - and peasants had elaborate nets and traps to catch songbirds, eels and rabbits. (Page 28) *** A common illusion about the medieval period is that society consisted of rigid feudal orders, and that if you were born a serf you would die a serf. This is not quite true. For ambitious women there was always the possibility of making a good marriage or becoming a rich man's mistress, and there were many ways for men to change their status - living in a town as a guild member for a year and a day, joining the army or Church, or, of course, entering a life of crime. But it was also possible for a poor boy to rise in a secular profession. The most astonishing example of this is the career of William of Wykeham, the child of a peasant family who took his name from the village where he was born in 1324. He was educated at the local cathedral school at the expense of the lord of the manor (a not uncommon arrangement), who then took him on as his own secretary. The lord, Uvedale, was governor of Winchester Castle and passed the young man on to the bishop of Winchester. In the small world of English government William was noticed by Edward III, and when he was in his early twenties the king took him into service. He was obviously clever and careful, had an interest in and talent for construction and design, and could be trusted as a manager. In his early thirties he was clerk of the king's works in two manors, and was made surveyor of Windsor Castle. It seems to have been his idea that Edward should express his Arthurian fantasies by rebuilding the castle, and from then on his rise was irresistible. By 1364 William had been made keeper of the privy seal and was so powerful that, according to Froissart, he 'reigned in England, and without him they did nothing'. He was the ultimate self-made man, and fully understood the significance of education. He founded a free school, to offer 70 boys from poorer, rural backgrounds - peasants - a proper education, and also a university college to which they could go when they were ready. Both have survived to this day: Winchester College and New College, Oxford. William's own motto, 'manners mayketh man', became the motto of both institutions; 'manners' means not simply politeness, but being a capable and reliable member of society. This was a peasant attitude rather than an aristocratic one. William of Wykeham would have been unique in any age. However, by the mid-fourteenth century most peasants knew their ABC, could sound out, and therefore recognize, their names and were familiar with the English equivalents of perhaps 10 or 20 Latin words. This allowed them to locate and recognize references to their land in court rolls, and to be aware of and talk about the contents of charters. (Page 31) *** Having spread across Europe from the east, it [the Black Death] arrived at Weymouth in June 1348. In less than a year the whole country was stricken. No-one could have understood what was happening. Once a person was infected large, foul-smelling swellings developed in their groin, neck and armpits. Death followed within two or three days. The disease killed more than a third of the people and by 1350 the population of England was half what it had been in 1315. Villages shrank in size or were simply abandoned. The land was covered in images of death. Church walls were painted with depictions of the 'Three Living and the Three Dead' and scenes of the 'Dance of Death'. The effect of the Black Death was immediately catastrophic for everyone; curiously, those peasants who survived it found their lives immeasurably improved. Labour became scarce and more valuable than abundant land. Landless people were able to take over abandoned holdings, and those who could handle more land simply took it. Wages roughly doubled, while the fall in the population led to something like a halving of the price of wheat. (Page 33) *** When the Normans arrived at Senlac they were presented with a discouraging sight. They were geared up to face an army like their own, with archers in front, then the infantry, and perhaps cavalry behind. Instead they saw a long wall of wooden shields that would be impervious to their arrows. Even worse, there were no Anglo-Saxon archers to shoot back at them - Normans did not carry many arrows and relied on picking up their enemy's spent ones after the first barrage. (Page 37) *** The direction they were apparently heading in was well illustrated in 1212, when Randulf, Earl of Chester, was besieged by the Welsh in his castle of Rhuddlan in Flintshire. He sent an appeal for help to Roger de Lacy, justiciar and constable of Chester, affectionately known in the local dungeons as 'Roger of Hell'. Roger, casting around for the most effective, vicious and altogether intimidating relief force he could find, realized that Chester was full of jongleurs who had come for the annual fair. He gathered them up and marched them off under his son-in-law Dutton. The Welsh, seeing this fearsome body of determined musicians, singers and prestidigitators bearing down on them ready to launch into an immediate performance of their terrifying arts, fled. Who but Roger of Hell would have been so ruthless? The event gave rise to the old English oath, now sadly forgotten but well worth reviving if someone would like to make a start: “Roger, and by all the fiddlers of Chester!'” (Page 42) *** This rag-tag army were wandering minstrels, not bound to a lord and wearing his livery. A minstrel without a livery was a bit like a band without a record contract. Livery indicated that a minstrel had both status and a regular income, and made it easier for him to be accepted in the right castles and earn a decent reward. But he still needed a full range of entertainment skills. One thirteenth-century poem defines a true minstrel as one who can 'speak and rhyme well, be witty, know the story of Troy, balance apples on the point of knives, juggle, jump through hoops, play the citole, mandora, harp, fiddle, and psaltery'. He is further advised, for good measure, to learn the arts of imitating birds, putting performing asses and dogs through their paces and operating marionettes. (Page 42) *** And the entertainment demanded by early medieval monarchs was reassuringly downmarket. For example, Henry II's favourite minstrel was Roland Le Pettour. The king rewarded him with 30 acres of land for his masterwork, described as 'a leap, a whistle and a fart'. Roland's great musical talent, it seems, was that he could fart tunes. The land was solemnly passed down from father to son for many generations, on the condition that the incumbent turn up at court each Christmas Day to perform the leap, the whistle and the fart! Another act that was apparently popular with English royalty was a version of putting your head in a lion's mouth, although this one involved a minstrel who spread honey on his member and then brought in a performing bear. What happened next isn't actually explained, but whatever it was probably doesn't figure in Winnie-the-Pooh (Page 42) *** Henry I gave Rahere a licence to build a church and hospital on land to the east of the market; most of it was marsh but there was a firmer piece of rising ground used for public executions, and Rahere had the gallows moved so that he could construct a large priory and, nearby, a hospital. A charter of 1147 defines the purpose of St Bartholomew's Hospital as to provide shelter and care for the poor, the sick, the homeless and orphans. The site was consecrated by the end of 1129 and Rahere became the first prior. Crowds of pilgrims, the sick and people who had been cured in the hospital gathered at the church on St Bartholomew's feast day, and in 1133 Rahere was given a royal charter which licensed a three-day St Bartholomew's Fair, one curious feature of which was that no outlaw or criminal became enduring features of London life, and the choir of the could be arrested while attending it. The hospital and fair priory is one of the few medieval structures still standing in London. Rahere himself, like Dick Whittington, became a mythologized figure of poor-boy-made-good. (Page 44) *** The fortunes of English minstrels probably reached their zenith during the reign of Edward II, who was a minstrel fanatic. His father was away a lot and the nurse who brought him up was a minstrel, which may explain why he was so fond of them. So fond, in fact, that the treasury rolls showing the expenditure for his coronation list 154 musicians. They also show that on the anniversary of the death of his lover, Piers Gaveston, Edward cheered himself up by travelling to France and being entertained by Bernard the Fool and 54 naked dancers. Edward seems to have been in the habit of throwing money at anyone who made him laugh- and it evidently didn't take much to make him laugh. Jack of St Albans was paid 50 shillings because he danced before the king on a table and made him laugh very greatly'. And he awarded the princely sum of 20 shillings to one of his cooks 'because he rode before the King... and often fell from his horse, at which the King laughed very greatly'. The barons tried to restrict Edward's extravagant entertainment budget by creating exact job descriptions for every member of the household. This meant an end to multitasking minstrels - now they had to be either jugglers or flute players or whatever, and their numbers were to be strictly limited: ‘There shall be trumpeters and 2 other minstrels, and sometimes more and sometimes less, who shall play before the king and it shall please him’ (Page 45) *** The barons were not the only people who were trying to limit the number of minstrels. The minstrels themselves were trying to protect their profession and to make it more exclusive. Fraternities or guilds of musicians seem to have been formed in London at least as early as 1350. One of their main objectives was the exclusion of 'foreign' musicians (those who were not Londoners). Another was to stop amateurs from performing in taverns, inns and at weddings. The route to minstrelsy was now through apprenticeship, and the guilds in London, York, Beverley and Canterbury were careful to restrict the number of trainees. If this seems to be an industry under threat attempting to protect itself, that is about right. The English music and storytelling business was taking a new turn, evidenced by the appearance in the fourteenth century of a new vernacular literature in the form of romantic poetry. The poems were mostly translations of French romances. (Page 45) *** The accused was required either to produce a set number of people, 'oath-helpers', who would swear his innocence on oath or to pay the cash price associated with the offence. The value of a man's oath depended on his social status. This weighting also determined the number of oaths an accused man needed to clear himself in court and the size of the payment, if one was made in recompense for his offence. Every life had a cash value (the wergild, or 'man price'). An aristocrat's (thegn's) life, and his oath, were worth six times that of a common man (1200 shillings as against 200). Anglo-Saxon law codes read like modern insurance policies. For example, the list of compensation payments set out in the laws of Ethelbert, King of Kent from 560 to 616, include: If an ear be struck off, twelve shillings. If the other ear hear not, twenty-five shillings. If an ear be pierced, three shillings. If an ear be mutilated, six shillings. If an eye be (struck) out, fifty shillings. If the mouth or an eye be injured, twelve shillings. If the nose be pierced, nine shillings. If the nose be otherwise mutilated, for each six shillings. Let him who breaks the chin-bone pay for it with twenty shillings. For each of the four front teeth, six shillings; for the tooth which stands next to them four shillings; for that which stands next to that, three shillings; and then afterwards, for each a shilling. (Page 68) *** Outlaws were men and women who had decided to hide rather than face trial. (Actually, women could not be outlawed but became 'waifs', which was much the same.) Such a person was part of no community and so was regarded with deep fear. Outlaws had no oath value and therefore no price could be attached to their lives. They could be killed with impunity. It was an offence to feed, shelter or communicate with them. It would take real desperation for a man or woman to choose to live outside society, to voluntarily forfeit all their goods, to become a 'wolf's head' who could be legally slain by anyone. It would be an unlikely step unless they were without hope of finding oath-helpers and were terrified of the ordeal - in other words, were already virtually excluded from society. But in 1066 this elaborate structure suffered a shattering blow when William the Conqueror and his Normans took over England (Page 69) *** By the mid-thirteenth century the travelling judges of the general eyre were so overwhelmed with work that they only visited each county every seven years. If an accused person could not find guarantors for his court appearance (the equivalent of bail), he could be held in gaol for a very long time which could prove to be a death sentence in itself. The problem was eased by establishing a more regular circuit of judges: the assize court, which tried cases twice a year. The function of the royal court had changed. It was no longer an extraordinary tribunal, a court for great men, for great causes, for matters that concerned the king; it had become an ordinary tribunal for the whole realm (Page 74) *** In the mid-thirteenth century many poor people refused to attend their trials and were therefore labelled 'outlaws'. The wealthy could handle the legal system by paying bribes - it was said they were hanged by the purse, as a poor man would be hanged by the neck. The literate had their own way of escape by pleading 'benefit of clergy' - anyone who could read a line of scripture in Latin was taken to be in holy orders, and was therefore entitled to be turned over to an ecclesiastical court where the severest sentences were usually degradation and the imposition of penances. But a poor man who knew no Latin, and was disliked by his neighbours, needed to hide from a system that would kill him for sure. And then he would hide as a robber. (Page 78) *** One alternative was to run like hell for the nearest church and claim sanctuary. Almost any religious building could offer immunity from arrest for 40 days; one or two select establisheven offer perpetual sanctuary. The whole system of sanctuary may seem extraordinary to us. Why on earth should the Church be prepared to harbour thieves and murderers and protect them from the law? Actually the same thought struck a lot of people at the time. In 1402 the Commons complained that the sanctuary associated with the London church and college of St Martins le Grand, just north of St Paul's near Aldersgate, was being abused by 'murderers, traitors and disturbers of the King's peace' who 'hide out by day and at night go forth to commit their murders, treasons, larcenies, robberies and felonies'. And a century later a Venetian traveller, visiting England in the time of Henry VII, recorded his amazement that so many villains were permitted to conduct organized criminal activities under the shelter of the Church. The idea of sanctuary dates back to ancient times, and was vigorously defended by Saxon kings. It may be that in the days of vendetta, when law was a matter to be settled by individual families, the church could offer a cooling-off period during which some accommodation could be arrived at. However, as the law developed such considerations began to appear outdated. But for much of the Middle Ages, sanctuary was a hotly disputed subject. In some places the area of sanctuary around a given religious building was enormous - the boundaries being clearly marked by special 'sanctuary posts'. For instance, around both Hexham Abbey and Beverley Minster, crosses were erected in a radius of one mile to indicate the area of sanctuary. To qualify for a permanent position as a Sanctuaryman in Beverley, the accused had to make a full confession of his crime, which was then duly recorded in a register that was kept in the Minster and which still exists. The Beverley records show that the most common perpetrators of crimes of violence were butchers, while the most frequent debtors were builders. Plus ça change … Most sanctuaries, however, could only offer a short-term solution to the average criminal's woes. If he refused to leave at the end of the forty days, he was as good as dead. Any layman who even communicated with him after the forty days were up would be hanged. When he finally emerged, he would be immediately seized and executed on the spot, unless he swore on the Gospels to 'abjure the realm'. In which case he would be issued with a crude sackcloth garment, without a belt, and a wooden cross to carry and he would have to make for the nearest port. There he would have to take the first ship out of England, and for every day he failed to find a passage, he would have to wade into the sea up to his knees. It's probably the only time that paddling has been used as a form of punishment. If the criminal could not leave within forty days due to bad weather, then, in theory, they could seek new sanctuary in another local church and start the whole business all over again. However, there is no record of this ever happening. The majority of them just threw away their wooden crosses on a lonely stretch of road and melted away into the woods to take up a new identity or join the many bands of outlaws that plagued the country (Page 78) *** All the while Lanfranc, an Italian archbishop in the service of a Norman warlord, wrote letters about 'we English' and 'our island'. It was presumably in the role of proprietor that he stripped the English Church of its valuables, sending its great works of art and books to France, Normandy and Rome, and melting down its gold and silver. (Page 94) *** Moreover, according to the Rule of St Benedict, monks were supposed to do all their own chores and not employ servants. But the Cistercians had a genius for interpreting the Rule. They simply invented a new class of monks, whom they called 'lay brothers'. These were usually illiterate peasants who worked as servants. Sometimes they were the very peasants the Cistercians had turned off the land they now occupied. In every respect lay brothers were second-class citizens. They weren't really monks at all - it was a convenient fiction. They weren't allowed to eat 'choir'- monks, or pray with the choir with the other monks, or even mix with the choir monks. They were there simply to do the menial chores the choir monks ought to have been doing but wanted to avoid. In Fountains Abbey, for example, a wall kept the lay brothers and monks separate. (Page 103) *** TURNING FAITH INTO MONEY Abbeys simply could not help but become huge financial machines. Abbeys never married and never died, so that their land never came onto the market, and were outside the medieval merry-go-round of land redistribution through violent death and confiscation of estates. There were occasional exceptions, such as Rievaulx being plundered by the Scots after they defeated Edward II's army in 1322, but such misfortunes were rare. Given the natural processes that poured money towards abbeys like rain running down gulleys, it took some kind of special genius for an abbot to run into financial trouble, but it tendency to happened with impressive frequency. There was a spend ever more lavishly, to invest ever more grandly, and to finance these noble activities by borrowing money against future income, for example, selling wool from their sheep years in advance at a discount. It was a form of gambling, of course, but with God on their side what could go wrong? Sheep murrain for a start. In the 1280s, Rievaulx was unable to deliver the wool it had pre-sold and was driven into the medieval equivalent of bankruptcy. It was taken into Royal protection, under the supervision of the Bishop of Durham. With forward contracts concentrating their minds, many abbots became more concerned with the activities of the large numbers of lay brothers than anything else. They became in effect Managing Directors who tended to regard the 'choir monks' as rather a burden on the place, even if they were from more socially acceptable families. They needed to find ways to improve their cash flow, and that was the attraction of the pilgrim business. In the eleventh century, sinners were instructed that a visit to a particular church, and the bestowal of pious gifts upon it, would mean they would be let off their penance. The number of qualifying churches steadily grew until there were thousands of pilgrimage churches. And the reward changed, in the thirteenth century, from a remission of penance to a release from God's punishment, whether in this life or in purgatory. In the fourteenth century pilgrim indulgencies were extended even further, negating guilt itself and giving the opportunity of acquiring an indulgence for the souls of those already in purgatory. What's more, if you decided not to take the pilgrimage you could achieve the same result by paying the Church the money you would have spent if you had gone. The Holy Grail of the tourist trade had been found: 'Don't bother to visit, just send your money!" The system meant that abbeys, cathedrals and churches were in competition with each other to attract the most pilgrims, and there were several ways of doing this. The first was to offer indulgences and pardons for pilgrims. Some churches ran bargains of the month'. The monastery at Shene, in Surrey, for example, offered the following in the fifteenth century: > ITEM: On the Feast of St John the Baptist whoever comes to the monastery and devoutly says a Pater-noster shall have ninety days of pardon… > ITEM: Whoever comes to the said monastery on the Feast of St Paul the Apostle, says one Pater-noster and one Ave Maria, shall have one hundred days of pardon… > ITEM: On the Feast of Mary Magdalene whoever comes to the said monastery shall have one hundred days of pardon granted by Bishop Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury ... > ITEM: On the feast of St Thomas the Apostle and in the Feast of St Michael the Archangel they shall have three years and forty days of pardon… But the chief way to attract holy tourism was to possess a famous relic. This could be anything from an object belonging to a saint, or touched by them, to a bit of their skeleton. Such an object was regarded as a contact point between earth and heaven that radiated miraculous power. Churches and abbeys did everything possible to get hold of sacred relics for people to visit. Saints' relics were a sufficiently important source of revenue for Anselm, Lanfranc's successor as archbishop of Canterbury, to reinstate the English saints; they were, after all, far more likely to draw a good crowd. A new shrine was constructed for Cuthbert at Durham, and his remains were restored there. At Canterbury, St Thomas Becket's tomb in the cathedral was also to become a major draw more particularly, the saint's head. You could see where the sword had split his skull in two! Visitors could also marvel at the sight of 'Aaron's rod', some of the stone upon which the Lord stood just before He ascended into heaven', 'some of the Lord's table on which the Last Supper was eaten', and even 'some of the very clay out of which God fashioned Adam'. There was also some of the Virgin Mary's knitting - well, weaving to be exact. (Page 103) *** THE HYPOCRISY OF MONKS Fortunately for the consciences of the monastic community, monks of all orders proved to have a genius for finding a variety of ways of living within the letter of Benedict's Rule, while leaving it dead on the cloister pavement. For example, no well-to-do monk wanted to sleep in a cold dormitory with all the other monks, so, since the infirmary was the only place where a fire was allowed, monks with money began to move in there, establishing individual 'bachelor pads' - each a private room with its own fireplace, and with a bedroom above complete with en-suite lavatory. Benedict had prohibited 'eating the flesh of four-footed animals', but an exception was made for the sick. So meat was available in the infirmary or misericord ('compassionate heart') where dietary regulations were suspended for the infirm or elderly. And guess what? Pretty soon the brothers gave up eating in the refectory and ate in the misericord instead. Monkish logic. Another snag about eating meals under Benedict's Rule was that the monks were not allowed to talk while dining. But they could sign if they wanted something like the salt. (Benedict actually says they can communicate sonitu signi- by sound of a sign'.) So they compiled an entire sign language. They would also whistle to each other. Gerald of Wales describes a visit to Christ Church, Canterbury, in the twelfth century, during which he was appalled at the way the monks behaved during meals. It was, he claimed, 'more appropriate to jesters ... all of them gesticulating with fingers, hands and arms, and whistling to one another in lieu of speaking'. The same signs were used in monasteries all over Europe a sort of dumb Esperanto. So whatever country a monk found himself eating in he could always convey exactly what he wanted to a fellow monk. Most of the signs were about foodwhich isn't surprising because in a monastery there was an awful lot of food to talk about *** (Page 107) *** DINING WITH MONKS Benedict had in mind a frugal diet for monks. He advised only two cooked dishes at a meal, and one pound of bread per monk per day. However, most monks took this advice with a pinch of salt - and a lot more. Food was of absorbing interest to medieval monks. For example, one chapter meeting of the monks of Westminster was preoccupied with the question of whether a particular dish should include four herrings or five. At Bury St Edmunds, the thirteenth-century book of rules and customs records an important discussion about how long a pike should be for the Feast of Relics. It was eventually decided that it should be 22 inches long from head to tail. Every week contained at least one feast day on which the unfortunate monks would have to deal with something like 16 dishes. But even on a normal working day the menu available to them was one that most lay folk could only have dreamt about. The records for Westminster Abbey, for example, show that on a typical day beef, boiled mutton, roast pork and roast mutton were served at dinner in the misericord, while meat fritters and deer entrails were served in the refectory. Later, at supper, there was tongue and mutton with sauce One historian, Barbara Harvey, has calculated that the daily allowance for the monks of Westminster could have been as MONK much as 7000 calories over twice the daily requirement of an average man today. Of course, it is not inevitable that they ate all this - what they left would be given to servants or the poor at the monastery door. But monks were habitually made fun of in literature as being fat, and now the archaeological evidence seems to be bearing out the caricature. Excavation of the medieval hospital and priory of St Mary Spital in London has produced the bones of thousands of monks and their patients. It is clear that the monks were taller than the lay people (suggesting they were better nourished all their lives) and had much worse teeth (indicating a sweeter diet). Monks were equally serious about drink. In his Rule, Benedict admits to some misgivings about recommending how much anyone ought to drink, but bearing in mind 'the standards of the weak' he recommends a hemina (half a pint) of wine a day. Mark you it was only a recommendation, and the monks treated it with caution. Recent studies have shown that alcohol seems to have accounted for something like 19 per cent of monks' energy intake (it provides 5 per cent of ours). Gluttony was not the only sin monks fell prey to. Records brothel in Westminster called the for 1447 note a 'Maidenshead', which was much frequented by Benedictines. With up to £12 pocket money a year, the monks could afford to go there. And churchmen did not just use brothels; they owned them. The bishop of Winchester was the owner of one of the brothels in Borough High Street in London - the girls were known affectionately as 'Winchester geese'. (Page 108) *** Perhaps it's not surprising, in an enterprise involving comparatively large quantities of gold, that some practitioners were in the business of extracting as much of it as they could for themselves. In The Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer's alchemist's assistant calls alchemy 'this cursed craft': > This cursed craft - whoever tries it on > Will never make a thing to live upon > For all the cash on it that he forks out > He'll lose; of that I have no doubt. – CHAUCER, The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 830-3 The assistant goes on to tell how a fraudulent alchemist tricks a priest into believing there is a process that turns mercury into silver, and cons £40 (a fortune) out of him for the secret. Of course, it does not work and the priest never sees the alchemist again. Chaucer was clearly writing with first-hand knowledge of these charlatans. There must have been plenty of them. One of the earliest was Artephius, who appeared in the twelfth century claiming he was 1025 years old. So old, he claimed in a book, that he was now ready to reveal the secret of the elixir of life. (Page 121) *** It's certainly not - and was never intended to be - a chart to be followed by travellers. More than likely, a mappa mundi would have been a conversation piece in a rich man's house. A fashionable - and expensive – ornament to prompt after-dinner discussion. For journeys people needed not maps but travel itineraries, and that is what they had. The most famous of the English ones was drawn by Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, in the thirteenth century. It shows the roads of England, and towns and villages and the time it takes to walk between them. The word 'journey' comes from the walking times on itineraries of this kind; ‘journée' referred to a day's travel. (Page 129) *** RICHARD OF WALLINGFORD'S CLOCK Everywhere we look in the Middle Ages we find churchmen experimenting and testing, exploring new boundaries of knowledge. Of course, much of this wasn't pure 'blue skies' research. Just like a lot of modern science there were often economic or political imperatives behind the pursuit of knowledge. Take Richard of Wallingford, who became abbot of St Albans in 1327. He undertook one of the most ambitious engineering projects of his day for reasons that were more to do with the exercise of power than with pure research. It was said that Richard had neglected theology as a student at Oxford, preferring to concentrate on mathematics and astronomy; but he was particularly interested in astrology. According to his fellow monks, he predicted by astrological means the old abbot's death and his own election to the post. Richard was clearly attracted to science that had practical applications. The abbey of St Albans had been built in the early twelfth century, and for many years dominated the commercial life of not just the town but also the surrounding district. In recent years, however, its grip had been allowed to slip. In 1323 some pillars in the south nave had collapsed, bringing down the roof and wall. To add to the monks' woes, the townspeople and tenants had rebelled against the abbey, demanding a charter of rights with representation in Parliament and an end to being forced to have their grain ground (at what they considered exorbitant cost) in the abbey's mills. The old abbot, Hugh was a sick man, and conceded the charter and gave up imposing the abbey's monopoly on milling. As a result the abbey lost control of the town, and was broke. Richard set about restoring its fortunes with a degree of ruthlessness. He confiscated the hand flour-mills the townsfolk were now using to grind their corn and had them set into the abbey floor. From then on they were once again forced to use the abbey's mill and of course pay for the privilege. At one stroke Richard had made the abbey solvent. But instead of using the money to rebuild the collapsed nave, he decided he would make something that would dominate the commercial life of St Albans. He decided to build a clock. The Church had originally established what were called 'canonical hours'. These marked the times for praying and there were only four such hours during daylight and four for the night. The intervals between the hours varied according to the season. In summer the daylight ones were long and the night-time ones were short, and vice versa in winter. This was time as physically experienced on earth. Economic growth had brought pressure from merchants and employees for more accurate timekeeping. It appears that by the thirteenth century the intervals between canonical hours no longer varied according to the seasons monasteries had moved over to fixed lengths. One of the effects of this change was that None - the hour for prayers originally said at the ninth hour of the day (mid-afternoon) was displaced to midday, giving the English language the word 'noon'. However, laypeople were beginning to use time as measured by astronomers, who divided a day into 24 equal and unvarying hours. By the fourteenth century the Church found that its monopoly on time was being appropriated by townspeople who began to erect clocks on public buildings and in city squares. Control of timekeeping was passing from the Church to the merchant classes. Richard intended to keep the Church in control - in St Albans anyway. And as he was more concerned with the life of the town than the life of the abbey, his clock used the lay system - not the canonical hours. It did not just give the time, but linked it into the whole of the cosmos; on the clock could be seen the phases of the moon and the times of eclipses. The clock used the same geared mechanism as the muchhated abbey mill, showing that the mill was linked to the mechanisms of the heavens. By chiming every hour, instead of just for prayers, it took control of the working day of the town. From now on, it was the Church that would issue the time for town council meetings, for the opening and closing of markets, for the start and the end of each and every day of work.* Richard's aim seems to have been to demonstrate the intellectual and technical superiority of the Church, and its scientific understanding, over mere commercial tradesmen. You could say his purpose was political. And yet he would doubtless have claimed it was religious. He was making God's universe visible. We assume that science and religion are poles apart. But for the philosophers of the Middle Ages 'science' would have no meaning unless it led to an understanding of God. This learning. Even medicine. (Page 132) *** We like to believe in the idea of progress- and it helps to think that we know more than people did in the past. But, arguably, we have a strange form of medicine which seems to extend human life while creating its own wreckage. Hospitals actually cause disease while curing it. In 1997 the Lancet published a study* showing that just under 20 per cent of hospital patients in the United Kingdom experience some adverse event because of being in hospital. It found that the likelihood of this increased by 6 per cent for each day of hospitalization. Hospital-acquired infections alone kill nearly twice as many people in the UK as die on the roads (Page 137)