The Raven's Head

by Karen Maitland

  On 21 May 1216 Louis, known as the Lion, landed on the Isle of Thanet, entered London and was proclaimed king by the English barons, though he was never actually crowned. A few weeks later, he took Winchester and soon had half of England under his rule. But in October 1216, before Louis could secure the throne, King John died and many of the English barons abandoned the Lion’s cause to support the claim of John’s nine-year-old son, Henry III. The regent, William Marshal, rallied support for the boy-king, beating the French army at Lincoln on 20 May 1217. Louis’s ships were then defeated in battle off Sandwich on 24 August 1217, by the British fleet, led by Eustace the Monk. Louis was forced to renounce his claim to the English throne in exchange for ten thousand marks.

  Louis finally acceded to the French throne on 14 June 1223, but reigned only for three years. He continued to wage war on the Angevins and wrested Poitou and Saintonge from them. He constantly quarrelled with his own nobles, such as the powerful Count of Champagne, over issues such as prohibiting Jews from moneylending, which had provided a good income to the count through the imposition of taxes. Louis, like King John, always feared treachery among his nobles and with good reason. But in the end, he died from dysentery on 8 November 1226.

  Supernatural Tales – Some readers may find it hard to believe that people would invent or believe a supernatural story that explained a family’s history, but it was not uncommon in the Middle Ages. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rumours circulated from time to time that several of the noble houses of Europe, including that of Godfrey of Bouillon, Knight Commander of Jerusalem, were of rather dubious lineage. Godfrey was extremely wealthy: he had gained many spoils from his conquest of the Holy Land and had been lavishly rewarded with lands and riches by the Pope and other crowned heads of Europe for having recovered the Holy City for Christendom. He was held up as a shining example of all knightly virtues, for only a man of noble birth could exhibit such valour and courage. The only trouble was, it was rumoured that Godfrey was not, in fact, of noble birth.

  If these rumours had taken hold, they would have undermined the whole of the feudal system, since feudalism was based on the idea that only those of noble birth could become rulers and leaders. At the pinnacle of the nobility was the king, who was divinely appointed and ruled by virtue of his royal bloodline. Serf or noble, God Himself had ordained your place in society. If the common people had grasped the idea that anyone could rise up through the ranks, they might have started to rebel. These wealthy families realised that the social consequences would be disastrous for them if it was proved they were not of noble birth. They stood to lose their power, wealth and, not least, their positions in the royal courts, so several such families, including Godfrey’s, whose ancestry was in doubt, employed troubadours or scribes to invent a story that told of a mysterious event or supernatural ancestor to explain why their noble line could not be traced through the heraldic records.

  In Godfrey’s case, the story was invented that he was the grandson of the mysterious Swan Knight. It proved so successful that several other families claimed this tale as a means of explaining away their lack of lineage. Another supernatural ancestor who appears in several noble family histories is Melusina, the beautiful bride, who in secret would change into a terrifying mermaid or water sprite with a serpent’s tail, and whose image appears in their heraldic devices.

  A glance at some of today’s tabloid newspapers, ‘true life’ or gossip magazines may remind us that even in the twenty-first century we are still willing to believe the most far-fetched and outrageous things about people, especially celebrities, who are, after all, our modern nobility.

  Alchemy – Alchemy, known as the royal art, dates back at least as far as the fourth century BCE when it was developed in Egypt by the ancient Greeks. The European alchemists of the Middle Ages inherited their traditions from the writings of the ancient Greeks, which had been translated into Arabic, then brought into Spain and southern Italy.

  During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practice and teaching of alchemy spread throughout Europe as Christians learned more about Muslim science, which was far more advanced than that of the West. Christian and Islamic students studied together at universities such as Pamplona, Palermo, Toledo, Barcelona and Segovia; great influential works of philosophy and alchemy were translated for the Church in the 1100s by scholars such as Adelard of Bath, Robert of Chester and Gerard of Cremona.

  This brought about the first major flourishing of Western medieval alchemy, led by scholars such as Albertus Magnus (1193–1280), Roger Bacon (1214–92) and Raymond Lully (1235–1316), who were all devout Catholics. A number of the prominent alchemists were also highly skilled hypnotists, among them Michael Scot, a court astrologer for the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. He is believed to have learned the art of hypnotism from the Sufis.

  Later, famous alchemists include Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Christina of Sweden, King Charles II of England and Sir Isaac Newton.

  The Western medieval alchemists combined Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle, who believed in prima materia, the chaos or primal material from which everything was created and to which everything ultimately returned when it decayed.

  They also believed that the four elements, earth, fire, air and water, each possessed two of the four qualities: hot or cold and fluid or dry. Fire is hot and dry, while air is hot and fluid. One quality predominates in each element, so in fire it is heat, while in air it is fluidity. One element can be transmuted into the other through the medium of the quality they both share. So fire can become air through the medium of heat, but fire can also become earth through the medium of dryness, because earth is cold and dry. Also, by taking the quality of heat from the element fire and fluidity from the element water, you can combine these two elements to produce a third element, which is air – hot and fluid.

  Since the alchemists believed that everything in the world, animate and inanimate, was composed of the four elements, they thought that if the proportions of the elements in a substance could be changed through the various processes of burning, calcination, solution, evaporation, distillation, sublimation and crystallisation, it would be possible to produce a different substance. Thus lead could be transmuted into gold.

  Alchemy has two sides, the physical and the mystical. The physical goal was the search for the stone, elixir or tincture, which could transmute base metals into precious metals, prolong life and restore health by changing the balance of the body. But this quest became symbolic of the mystical side of alchemy, which meant transforming the base soul of man, his nature and corrupt body into the pure, incorruptible spirit that could not die.

  Alchemy was a dangerous practice. Many of the chemical experiments its proponents attempted could go horribly wrong, leading to explosions or fires, and neighbours, fearing their own properties would be set ablaze, especially when houses were made of wood or thatch, often attacked those they suspected of practising it. Another hazard was that thieves, and indeed kings and even bishops, believing the alchemists had succeeded in producing gold, would murder them in order to steal it or torture them into revealing their secrets.

  The opportunities for fraud in alchemy were great. Many wealthy investors were duped into financing experiments in the hope of obtaining a limitless supply of gold or the elixir that would give them eternal life. So from time to time, the art was banned by kings or popes in order to stamp out fraud and often because alchemists were suspected of using the dark arts or were guilty of the capital crime of heresy.

  For all these reasons, medieval alchemists were advised to carry out their experiments in secret in isolated locations and the methods and formulations were often couched in an elaborate symbolic code, while the pieces of apparatus, such as the glass flask known as the griffin’s egg, also acquired mystical symbolism of their own.

  The various stages of the chemical processes of alchemy and the mystical quest were also depicted symbolically. Nigredo,the black death, in which al
chemists reduced matter to its original earth-like state, was symbolised by the raven’s head. Albedo, the whitening, which involved cleansing, is depicted by a king drowning or sweating in a bath of blood or by a pelican tearing at its breast, or by a white rose. Citrinitas, yellow death, is symbolised by a sower casting golden grain into the earth. The climax, rubedo, which produces the philosopher’s stone through chemical union, is represented by the marriage of king and queen, often shown as the wedding of the sun and moon, or by the starry lion or by the ouroboros.

  Langley and the White Canons – The Order of Regular Canons, known as Premonstratensian or White Canons, was founded in 1120 by St Norbert at Prémontré, near Laon, France. White Canons, sometimes called Norbertines, are not monks but ordained priests who carry out priestly duties of celebrating Mass, administering the sacraments, preaching, teaching, hearing confessions and ministering to the laity, while living together in a religious community under the rule of an abbot. They follow the rule of St Augustine, but with more austere disciplines than many other Augustinian orders. Their habit – a long white robe and hood with a tall white cap – gave rise to the name White Canons.

  The order came to England around 1143, establishing its first abbey at Newsham, near Brocklesby in Lincolnshire, and by the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, they had thirty-five abbeys in England.

  The Premonstratensian abbey at Langley in Norfolk was founded in 1195 and was dedicated to the Honour of the Blessed Virgin. It flourished until its dissolution in 1536. The land for the abbey was given by Sir Robert FitzRoger Helke, who was lord of Langley through his marriage to Margaret, daughter of William de Cheyney. Sir Robert was sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, in 1192–3. The abbey acquired a great many properties, including the manor of Langley and eighteen others. Its wealth continued to grow, and by 1291, it had property and lands in sixty-two Norfolk and thirteen Suffolk parishes, with an annual income of £178 5s. ¾d. But in 1334, the abbot complained to the pope that the income from the abbey’s market was being badly affected by river and sea floods. And though their fortunes rose and fell through the centuries, by the time they were dissolved in 1536, the house was reported by the commissioners to be in debt to the amount of £120 16s. 8d.

  Langley Abbey was surrounded by a wet ditch, or moat, the remains of which are still clearly visible today. The moat was probably built less for defence and more to drain the water from the low-lying land, irrigate the gardens and protect against flooding from the nearby river and marshland. Excavations of the ruins have revealed a cruciform-aisled church, sacristy, chapter house, dorter, vault, warming house, frater and cellarium, with a vaulted undercroft, stables and gatehouse. The remains of a furnace were also found. The stable and cellarium are still in use today, though at the time of writing the site is in private ownership and not generally open to the public, except for functions.

  In the 1920s, Norwich Museum housed two medieval lead jars with lids, which were discovered in the ruins of Langley Abbey in 1816. They were believed to have contained human viscera.

  Throughout its history, the abbey was beset by scandal, and abbots were repeatedly replaced only for their successors to find themselves accused of serious offences. We shall never know if the abbey itself exercised some kind of malevolent and corrupting influence on those who became abbots there or if the canons invented tales of their superiors’ misconduct out of revenge against abbots who tried to discipline them.

  On several occasions a group of canons and lay brothers had to be removed from the abbey for ‘evil living’ and ‘incontinence’. In 1306, the abbot and one canon were charged with falsely claiming that some men owed money to the abbey when in fact they knew it had already been paid. In 1478, discipline had become so bad that the canons were punished with bread and water for forty days, forbidden to lock their cell doors or take recreation outside the grounds. In 1482, the abbot had to be removed for undisclosed grave offences and the canons were forbidden to frequent the town taverns. While their behaviour improved slightly under the new abbot, there were still complaints that the canons were out all night hunting and fishing, and ignored the periods of silence. Even the abbot himself had to be sternly warned not to associate with women.

  One of the most bizarre incidents took place in 1491, when one of the White Canons, Thomas Ludham, whose behaviour was described as instigante diabolo, ‘instigated by the devil’, got into an argument with a Carmelite friar and hacked off the friar’s hand, for which Ludham was sentenced to life imprisonment in a carcer in Sudbury.

  Glossary

  Aqua regia – King’s water or nitro-hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive red or yellow acid solution. It was given the name aqua regia because it can dissolve the ‘royal’ metals, gold and platinum. The mixture is formed by freshly mixing concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It was used to etch gold.

  It was once believed that aqua regia was invented by the alchemist Maria Prophetissa or Maria the Jewess who lived around the first century BCE, and whose name lives on in the bain marie, which we now use for cooking, but which she invented for chemical experiments in her laboratory. Most people now believe aqua regia was in use earlier.

  In the Middle Ages, gold was often contaminated with copper, and this would have turned the acid green; in alchemy the process was symbolised by the image of the sun being devoured by the green dragon.

  Averer – a beggar who was fit and healthy, but pretended to be sick or maimed to gain sympathy from passers-by or to obtain alms from the Church. Common tricks included sticking on fake boils made from wax or foul tumours fashioned from animal offal, or pretending to be blind or lame.

  Cletch – a dialect word that comes from old Norse, meaning a family of young children or chickens, from which the word clutch is derived.

  Coffin of lampreys – a coffin was a popular baking method in which the meat was cooked inside a round pastry case, which was designed to set hard as a container in which food was served, but the pastry itself was not eaten. The method was to cut living lampreys and let them bleed, then die in their own blood. The blood was added to cinnamon, pepper, salt, wine and bread soaked in vinegar and cooked until it was a thick gravy. The cleaned lampreys were laid in the coffin in the gravy and covered with pastry. A hole was made in the top, down which the cook blew to raise the lid to a dome. The lampreys were baked in the coffin. The gravy was then removed and recooked with ginger and more wine and the whole thing returned to the coffin to be served hot as ‘meat for a lord’.

  Comfrey cast – broken limbs were set with casts in Europe from at least the time of the ancient Greeks onwards. To make a cast, a linen or woollen cloth was wrapped round the limb, then soaked in one of several different pastes so that it would set hard. These pastes often included grated comfrey root, which was known to aid healing, but would also include egg white, flour and fat or clay. Since the casts could not bear weight and broke easily, patients were usually confined to bed for many weeks until the bone had healed.

  Cooper – a person who makes round casks and barrels of various sizes, shaped with a bouge, bilge, or bulge in the middle. The casks are made from wooden staves bound with hoops or bands. Barrel refers to a particular size of cask. The term ‘cooper’ may come from the Dutch kūpa, meaning a basket, wood or tub, or from the Latin cupa meaning a vat.

  Corrodies – the pension scheme of the Middle Ages. A lay-person would pay a lump sum of money or sign over a parcel of land to a religious house. In return, the monks or nuns would undertake to care for that person when they became aged or infirm, either by housing them in special lodgings within the monastery, or by delivering meals, fuel, clothing and medical treatment to them in their own homes.

  Employers would often reward a faithful servant by buying a corrody for them or even promising a corrody in lieu of proper wages. Better-off individuals, such as merchants, would buy one for themselves and their spouses when they were in their prime, as an insurance against their old age.
Of course, the corrodian would gamble on living long enough to get back far more than the sum they had originally paid, while the religious houses prayed the corrodians would die quickly, so they could make a profit. Religious houses often used corrodies to raise easy money, only to find themselves crippled by the cost of providing for dozens of elderly people some years later.

  Councy – birds such as chickens, partridge and duck were often served in councy, which was a spicy egg sauce. It was an easier dish to prepare than stuffing, tinting and dressing the bird in its feathers, therefore recommended for the less artistic cooks. The bird was roasted, then cut into pieces and put into stock, which had been thickened with egg yolks and breadcrumbs and flavoured with cloves, saffron, pepper, cinnamon and ginger. The dish was edged with the chopped whites of hardboiled eggs and crowned with the whole egg yolks.

  Dorter – otherwise known as a dormitorium. It was the communal sleeping place of the monks in an abbey or monastery or of the boys being taught in the religious house. In the early Middle Ages, the dorter was a long room in which the monks slept in individual beds, with candles burning constantly through the night to prevent any impropriety and to help them to rise quickly for the midnight offices. Later, the monks’ dorter became separated into open cubicles with a walkway down the middle.

  Dragon’s blood – the name was given to various substances, including gold chloride, but in the Middle Ages it most commonly referred to the red resin that can be obtained from one of several different trees – Dracaena cinnabari found in Socotra, Dracaena draco from the Canary Islands and the palm Daemonorops from Malaysia.