Archives: May 2010

21 May 2010, Comments (4)

The Man Who Believed He Was King of France: A True Medieval Tale

Author: Ann Scott

Synopsis
A story replete with shady merchants, scoundrels, hungry mercenaries, scheming nobles, and maneuvering cardinals, The Man Who Believed He Was King of France proves the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction—or at least as entertaining. The setting of this improbable but beguiling tale is 1354 and the Hundred Years’ War being waged for control of France.

Seeing an opportunity for political and material gain, the demagogic dictator of Rome tells Giannino di Guccio that he is in fact the lost heir to Louis X, allegedly switched at birth with the son of a Tuscan merchant. Once convinced of his birthright, Giannino claims for himself the name Jean I, king of France, and sets out on a brave—if ultimately ruinous—quest that leads him across Europe to prove his identity.

With the skill of a crime scene detective, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri digs up evidence in the historical record to follow the story of a life so incredible that it was long considered a literary invention of the Italian Renaissance. From Italy to Hungry, then through Germany and France, the would-be king’s unique combination of guile and earnestness seems to command the aid of lords and soldiers, the indulgence of inn-keepers and merchants, and the collusion of priests and rogues along the way.

The apparent absurdity of the tale allows Carpegna Falconieri to analyze late-medieval society, exploring questions of essence and appearance, being and belief, at a time when the divine right of kings confronted the rise of mercantile culture. Giannino’s life represents a moment in which truth, lies, history, and memory combine to make us wonder where reality leaves off and fiction begins.

19 May 2010, Comments (0)

The Cathedral Stirs to the Sounds of Monks at Worship

Author: Ann Scott

Non-instrumental. This favorite album of background sounds has several tracks that offer an aural reproduction of noises from medieval daily life.
(Partial track below. Allow a moment for player to load.)


In the Near Distance the Cathedral Stirs to the Sounds of Lamenting Monks:

19 May 2010, Comments (0)

Chicken Husbandry in Late-Medieval England: c.1250-1400

Author: Ann Scott
1580s Oil on canvas Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Chicken Vendors

Chicken Husbandry in Late-Medieval Eastern England: c. 1250-1400
Paper by Philip Slaven, Yale University

ABSTRACT
Philip Slavin of Yale University, offers a unique paper on the place of the chicken within the changing environment of late-medieval England. First, Slavin’s paper examines the seigniorial sector of chicken farming, in terms of size of stocks, patterns of disposal and scale of consumption. It then explores the patchy data regarding the peasant sector. The study shows that overall patterns differed between the pre- and post-Black Death periods. After the pestilence, chicken husbandry started shifting from the demesne to the peasant sector of agriculture. The post-1350 changes reflect larger processes, which occurred in late-medieval society, economy and environment.

INTRODUCTION
The present paper explores the place and importance of the chicken within the shifting context of late-medieval English agriculture, society and environment, between c.1250 and 1400. It shows how the history of chicken husbandry reflects larger processes and phenomena connected to this context. During this period, England experienced a long series of profound changes and shocks, which transformed its society, economy and environment.

Read Slavin’s paper:  http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/front/medias/publication/23772_35_56_HD_N.pdf

18 May 2010, Comments (0)

Medieval Pipe Organs Large and Small

Author: Ann Scott

Early medieval organs did not have keys or stops, but were controlled by a slider mechanism.

Pipe organs were an important instrument in medieval cathedrals for use at mass, as well as at coronations and other state events. Early medieval organs had no keys or stops and all the pipes sounded simultaneously. Foot pedals pressed the air through the pipes and was controlled by a slider mechanism (see image at left). Medieval Englishmen were especially fond of organs and relatively large instruments could be found in England’s sixteen cathedrals, as well as in some of the grander churches and for the benefit of the royals. By the high Middle Ages, organ-makers began fitting their Gothic organs with some keys and stops.

Small chamber organs also became popular, as did portable organs that could be easily transported to seasonal aristocratic residences. The Renaissance brought change and complexity to the instruments as their popularity and numbers increased across Europe.

- Ann Scott -

17 May 2010, Comments (1)

The History of the British Coal Industry

Author: Ann Scott

For additional information on medieval British coal and coal mining, see the comprehensive  book by John Hatcher, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol. I, Before 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Click Here for Content on Google Books

This is the first volume which completes the definitive five-volume History of the British Coal Industry. Well before 1700 Britain had become heavily dependent upon coal for its fuel, and coal mining had taken its place among the nation’s staple industries. Hatcher traces the production and trade of coal from the intermittent small-scale activity which prevailed in the Middle Ages to the rapid expansion and rising importance which characterized the early modern era. Thoroughly grounded in a formidable range of sources, the book explores the economics and management of mining, the productivity and progress of technology. Hatcher examines the owners and operators of collieries and the sources of mining capital, as well as the colliers themselves, their working conditions, and earnings. He argues that the spectacular growth of coal output in this period was achieved more through evolutionary than revolutionary processes.

16 May 2010, Comments (0)

English Coal and Medieval Urban Fuel Crisis

Author: Ann Scott

Coal Pits

Archeological evidence suggests that ancient Britons were harvesting coal even before the Roman occupation.[1] England’s avant-garde use of coal resulted from its easy accessibility in natural outcroppings. When the demand for coal surpassed this convenient supply, miners expanded their industry to hole mining and quarrying.

Metal smiths used coal with charcoal in the production of wrought iron, but its use naturally expanded to domestic fuel. Coal was first used in English monasteries for cooking and heat. Extant written records appear from the ninth century, first documenting that the Abbey of Peterborough received a delivery of twelve cartloads “of fossil or pit-coal.”[2]

The population of the large English cities reached record highs in the fourteenth century (before the arrival of the Great Plague) and wood consumption for building timber and cooking and heating fuel reached unprecedented levels. Forests began to vanish at an alarming rate. Both readily available and relatively inexpensive, coal emerged as the popular solution to this urban fuel crisis.

Upon entering one of England’s largest cities such as York or London during the winter months, you would find the sooty, acrid stench of coal almost unbearable. The unique smell comes from coal smoke’s production of ferrous ferric oxide, particles of magnetic iron oxide similar to those produced by meteorites burning as they enter earth’s atmosphere. Congested urban coal smoke would aggravate your eyes and lungs with a burning sensation, and you would feel the particles of this medieval air pollution clinging to your skin—that is, until you became accustomed to it.

England’s insatiable coal consumption left an indelible print on the landscape. The countryside was pocked with abandoned pit mines, many of which collapsed and filled with water. Medieval wayfarers, therefore, would be wise beware these hazardous holes!

- Ann Scott -

[1] “Industry Through the Ages.” A Study of the Development of Flint, Flintshire, North Wales,
http://www.fflint.co.uk/industry.html (accessed 12 May 2010).
[2] “Industry Through the Ages.”

15 May 2010, Comments (0)

The Middle English Literary Tradition

Author: Ann Scott


By the fourteenth century, England remained culturally deferential to France and spiritually dependent on Rome. Since the Norman invasion, most non-Latin texts available in England were in either Old French or Anglo-Norman. Since literature written in Middle English was a relatively new development, there were far fewer vernacular books available in England than common French books in France. Accordingly, the contributions of English authors writing in their native tongue became significant not only to their readers but also for the national pride of the country itself, as England gave birth to its own literary tradition.

- Ann Scott -

13 May 2010, Comments (7)

Monasteries: The Land and Community

Author: Ann Scott

Tres Riches Heures (March 1410)

Monasteries become one of the most important institutions in Europe and played a fundamental role in the evolving transformation of land and community structures in the West. The land-monastery relationship aided the development of small-town Christianity as it existed throughout Middle Ages. Monastic communities often patterned themselves after fortified, Antique Roman villas, functioning as socio-economic units.

Wealthy citizens often donated cultivated lands for monastic use, along with the laborers and dwellings attached to the land. A codependent relationship emerged between these agricultural communities and the monasteries whose lands they worked, further contributing to the centralization of small space and the familiar visual landscape of the Middle Ages.

- Ann Scott -

12 May 2010, Comments (4)

SUBVERSIVE IMAGES OF WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE: A SELECTIVE READING

Author: Ann Scott

SUBVERSIVE IMAGES OF WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE:
A SELECTIVE READING

http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/bitstream/10361/481/1/Sheikh.F.Shams.pdf

A Woman Beating a Man with a Distaff. (BL) Add. 42130 f.60, c.1325-1335

Sheikh Shams offers an insightful look into the lives of women as they are portrayed in medieval English literature. Her article appeared in the  BRAC University Journal, vol. V, no. 2, 2008, pp. 105-111. Shams abstract and short excerpt from her introduction appear below.

ABSTRACT:  It is commonly assumed that medieval society is hostile to women’s power. Women are continuously contained and constrained by the patriarchal norms of medieval Europe to strengthen the heroic ideals of masculinity, while maintaining the ideals of the domestic private sphere.

This study shows that even within the domestic private sphere, women exert considerable amount of power to influence men’s actions. In fact, what we see are models of powerful women capable of damaging the heroic ideals of men. Hence there is a tendency to control women’s power. This essay explores how far this tendency to control is actually successful. If not then we are witnessing a tension between dominant patriarchal ideology and the subversive images of women. The resistance that women characters in medieval literatures pose to the hegemonic ideology is a matter of particular interest of this paper. At the same time, the nature of their containment and appropriation is also something that this paper wishes to examine.

INTRODUCTION: In many instances of medieval English writing, we observe women characters that shatter our preconceived notion about the behaviour of medieval womanhood. For our pre-conceived notion is based on the conventional assumption attacked by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski’s edited work, Women and Power in the Middle Ages: “[m]edieval society with its wars, territorial struggles, and violence, seems particularly hostile to the exercise of female initiative and power” (1). But, in contrast what we see in these writings are women characters who instead of being passively confined to the domestic and private sphere, participate in adventures along with men, control men’s courtly behaviour, and even in extreme cases take arms when they need to retaliate. Even within the domestic private sphere, women exert considerable amount of power to influence men’s actions. In a nutshell, what we see are models of powerful women capable of causing damage to the heroic ideals of men, as the heroic ideals require feminization and repression of women.

Grace Armstrong in her essay “Women of Power: Chretien de Troyes’s Female Clerks” refers to the theological justification of women’s repression:“she is a powerful and dangerous foe of man; her sexuality must be firmly controlled if she is not to betray him or make him lose his soul” (31). This explains why “medieval society . . . seems particularly hostile to the exercise of female initiative and power” (Erler & Kowaleski 1). Consequently, there exists a tendency to control women’s power. The question that arises from this assumption is worth pursuing: how far is this tendency to control women’s power actually successful. If not, then what we are witnessing is reduced (castrated) masculinity; hence a subversion of heroic ideals, as masculinity is one of the important bases of heroic ideals.

In other terms, how ‘manly’ are the men portrayed in these works? Do we see a complete undoing of heroic ideals, or a readjustment and negotiation? The answers to these questions—yes or no—will certainly lead us to a larger historical question: whether these women represent the actual historical womanhood of the time, which I wish to address in this paper. At the same time we need to recognize the importance of genre in creating these anomalous portrayals of women.

Sheikh F. Shams
Center for Languages
BRAC University

http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/bitstream/10361/481/1/Sheikh.F.Shams.pdf

12 May 2010, Comments (0)

Peasants and Serfs: Freemen or Villeins?

Author: Ann Scott


Within the medieval European peasant culture, people differentiated between themselves based on their own social and economic status. Most peasants were serfs; but not all surfs were equal. The villeins and freemen described below represent the most common type of surfs.

Freemen
Freemen rented their land from a lord, as tenant farmers. In most other ways they were independent from any responsibilities of servitude. Freemen made up around one tenth of the serf population in England, while there were far fewer freemen on the continent.

Villeins
Villeins also rented homes and sometimes property, but their houses were generally very small one-room buildings and the land they were allowed to use was often of inferior quality to their lord’s agricultural fields. Villeins were the most numerous type of European serfs. Legally tied to the land, they literally belonged to the lord’s estate and could not move away without their lord’s permission—which was seldom given.  Villeins had to work their lord’s lands for a time percentage of each year, and were allowed to work their own in their remaining time. Ultimately, however, their own crops and possessions still technically belonged to the lord.

The economic loyalty of the lord’s villeins was especially important to his estate. Typical requirements included that they buy all their grain from the lord (generally at very inflated prices). More frustrating still, they were usually also required to have this grain ground in the lord’s mill, again at much higher prices than they would have to pay in town.

Social economics, too, played a close and personal role for velleins. They could not marry without their lord’s permission, and accordingly often could not marry whom they chose. If a young woman wanted to marry a man from another estate (and if the lord gave her permission), her parents who remained behind had to pay a heavy fee for the lord’s long-term loss of the girl’s reproductive potential for his labor force. Additionally, a widowed woman on the lord’s estate had to remarry within a short period of time for the same reasons. If she could not find someone willing to marry her, then the lord would assign her a husband.

Despite all these constraints, a villein’s status was still considered much better than landless and homeless peasants who constantly wandered in search of work and often remained unemployed and incapable of providing for their families.

- Ann Scott -

11 May 2010, Comments (0)

Walking Through the Palace Cloisters

Author: Ann Scott

Non-instrumental. This favorite album of background sounds has several tracks that offer an aural reproduction of noises from medieval daily life. (Partial track below. Allow a moment for player to load.)

Opening a large wooden door, you walk into the palace cloisters where a barrel-maker and craftsmen attend to their work. A wagon of goods is unloaded:

Tags

14th Century 1300s Augustine's City of God Benedict's Rule Benedictine Monasticism Cenobitic Monasticism Christian Philosophy Constantine I Daily Life in the Middle Ages English LIterature Fall of the Roman Empire Medieval England Medieval Sounds polytheism Saint Augustine's Confessions Saint Benedict’s Rule St. Augustine's City of God Theodosius I