The Proud Sinner

by Priscilla Royal

  “God might find that an inadequate penance.” Eleanor smiled at her monk. “Although I will defer to those far wiser than I, it is possible that harder penance might be found for a man who has risen to the position where many serve his commands, where he has the luxury of private chambers, and where his life may be presumed austere but is far more luxurious than that of our Lord who ministered to the poor. After all, is not the intent of penance to cleanse our souls? And are we not allowed to purge our sins because God is merciful?” She suggested her monk continue.

  Thomas leaned forward. “Consider this,” he said to the young woman standing by the table. “Which do you think is the harder act of atonement for the crimes that have just been committed? The first is a quick hanging, even after confession but with little opportunity to ponder the full impiety of the sins committed.” He waited to let her contemplate that option.

  Gracia had lowered her gaze so her thoughts were unreadable. She tilted her head in reflection. “Give me the other choice if you will, Brother.”

  “Abbot Ancell might be striped of his rank and sent to a poor monastery where he must live like any simple monk, following the orders of others and obeying the rule of silence, eating food that is hard to chew, sleeping with only a thin blanket on straw in a dormitory, and performing hard labor as his other brothers do.”

  Gracia looked up with twinkling eyes. “I much prefer that to hanging him, Brother.”

  He gently shook a finger at her. “Remember that the punishment is intended to save his soul, my child.”

  “As it should if he is contrite and sees the depth of his arrogance,” she replied with a more serious expression.

  What her monk had described was the penalty Eleanor hoped would be Ancell’s punishment. Without the testimony of Ned and his cousin, the abbot might still escape with little more than a rebuke. Yet he had confessed his crimes not just to her, when he held her captive, but later in front of Prior Andrew and Brother Thomas. She was confident he would continue to boast. Although he had originally hoped to escape detection, he now insisted that he had been God’s hammer against the wicked. Such twisting of facts was typical of rampant pride.

  The men he had murdered may not have been innocents, but Ancell had no right to execute them and assume God willed it. As for overweening ambition, from which they all suffered, the sudden death of the papal envoy and the loss of the chance for a bishopric should have made some ponder the frailty of their worldly desires. Eleanor suspected Odo would not be deterred, but Didier might. One lethally covetous servant was bad enough. How many more might surround a bishop who had an ever-growing brood?

  Brother Thomas and Sister Anne looked at Gracia, then at each other.

  “I must go to the hospital,” the sub-infirmarian said.

  “And I to consult with Prior Andrew,” Thomas said. “Brother Beorn seeks advice about the young lay brother who showed such skill and courage in dealing with the abbots after my return was delayed.”

  Gracia brightened. “Brother Anthony? Oh, he is a clever youth!”

  Eleanor tried not to gasp.

  “He is that,” Thomas replied as he handed her his empty cup. “Prior Andrew may find a use for such a man.”

  Glowing with joy, Gracia followed the two religious to the outer chamber door.

  Eleanor ran a hand over her eyes. The time had come, and she was numb with foreboding.

  If Gracia wished to leave Tyndal Priory for the world and a husband, the prioress would never let her see tears. The young woman’s evident joy over the mention of the lay brother suggested strongly that she had found the companionship of men pleasing. Not that Eleanor failed to do so, but she had been determined to take vows from a far earlier age, and her fondness for most of the sons of Adam was chaste.

  Well, most. The thought of the handsome Brother Thomas made her face grow hot. Lust for the monk and pride were her greatest sins, and she asked God once again to give her more strength in banishing them than either Abbot Didier or Ancell had shown.

  “Are you ill, my lady?” Gracia was standing by the chair where the prioress still sat.

  “I am sitting too close to the fire. That is all, my child.” Eleanor stood and walked to the window overlooking priory land. The soft white mounds were dotted by blackened trees with limbs like clawed hands rising heavenward. Her heart ached, and she wanted to weep.

  But she realized that Gracia had just slipped up behind her. I shall regain control of myself, she vowed, for my wishes may not be the same as God’s.

  Thy will be done, she silently prayed.

  “May I beseech a favor, my lady?” The maid’s tone was soft but resolute.

  Eleanor forced her expression into one of calm gentleness and faced the child who had become a woman even though she had never grown much taller. “Always,” she murmured. The look she presented Gracia was filled with maternal love.

  The young woman knelt and folded her hands prayerfully. “I have thought about this for over a year, my lady, and now beg to be admitted to Tyndal Priory where I long to take vows. I am a flawed creature and the world may tempt with its delights and comforts, but I have found greater pleasures here. Both you and Brother Thomas, by your words and examples, have taught me that no earthly joy can ever match the fulfillment of serving God.”

  Throwing aside all attempts to rein in her emotions, Eleanor fell to her knees, embraced Gracia, and freely wept.

  “Of course, you have my permission!”

  ***

  Outside in the silence of a bitter cold and snow-burdened world, a bird called out, proclaiming to all that it had found the courage to survive.

  Brother Thomas heard it and felt optimism slip into his heart. It was only a bit of hope, but the feeling was a balm and just enough to chase away the melancholy he had been suffering.

  As he entered the monk’s cloister on his way to Prior Andrew’s chambers, Thomas decided how best to reply to Master Durant’s last and very painful missive. He vowed not to part from the man. Somehow he and the wine merchant must find a way to love each other without offending God, and he swore to promise Durant just that.

  No lightning bolt struck him. The peace he felt grew. The words he would use to the man he loved began to flow into his heart.

  Author’s Notes

  The period between the end of the last war with the Welsh in late 1277 and the beginning of the next in 1282 was a comparatively quiet one. King Edward used the time to resolve his debt problems as well as build stronger bonds with his barons and the Church. In this, he proved he had learned a lesson from his father’s bad decisions.

  Parliaments were regularly held, allowing grievances to be heard and addressed before they festered beyond solving. This succeeded in keeping his barons reasonably quiescent.

  But on the Church side, Archbishop Pecham, with his passion for reform on such issues as pluralism, was a thorn in the king’s side. Pluralism was a practice especially favored by the king to reward his clerks with multiple church benefices for services rendered. But the two men remained friendly, and concessions were made on both sides. In 1280, Pecham even allowed the king to collect a tax on the clergy, a grant Edward had been trying to obtain since the beginning of his reign.

  Now in his forties, Edward enjoyed time with his queen in their favored pursuits of hunting, pilgrimages (a tour of East Anglia in 1281 could have impacted a certain fictional priory), visiting with their children more than they previously had, renovating castles (a bath was built in Leeds Castle), and redesigning gardens with fountains or plantings to remind the queen of Castile. All this came to a dramatic end in March 1282.

  That, however, is for another book.

  To the best of my knowledge, there was no special papal representative (as opposed to the usual resident one) visiting or dying in England during the winter of 1281/82. The premise that one might have been sent with the par
ticular goal of urging the king and his nobles to donate money, soldiers, and themselves to snatch Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims is reasonable. Such visits were frequent in Christian Europe.

  Most of the crusades were pretty much failures for Christians, but that didn’t stop the West from pouring money and blood into the efforts. The king, a former crusader himself, longed to return to Outremer and encouraged the effort, although he was too busy with the Welsh and the Scots to go back personally. The concept that abbots of important abbeys might want to meet with the envoy to prove their ability to get money for the cause, while preening or offering bribes for the next available bishopric, is also plausible.

  In this book, Prioress Eleanor mentions that Pope Martin IV was known to have his faults. Popes may be popes, but no one dealing with the intricacies of power, secular or religious, was unaware that politics was played in the Church as well as the king’s court.

  And politics made the atmosphere toxic at the time in Rome. Part of the problem lay in the lack of stability. Pope Martin IV was the sixth occupant of the throne of Saint Peter during a twelve-year period. He rested firmly in the pocket of Charles of Sicily to whom he essentially handed over the papal State. Martin IV was often described as excessively mild-mannered, a terrible businessman, lacking in political judgment, and utterly obedient to Charles. (The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century by Steven Runciman not only describes the problems but also gives the background to Dante’s Divine Comedy.) Apparently, this pope’s number was even wrong, thanks to errors in the thirteenth-century papal lists. He was really Martin II, but since he himself only lasted four years (and appropriately died a few weeks after Charles of Sicily), this little discrepancy was probably never considered important.

  Let me assure you that the discussion in Chapter Thirty-six is not a thinly disguised authorial rant (heaven forfend!) to end the death penalty in modern-day America. It was a common stance of the Church for its clerics at that time. If the reader wants the other point of view, listen to Crowner Ralf who passionately believes in capital punishment for all murderers, clerical or secular. His opinion is scattered throughout all my books.

  The term penitentiary was a Church concept, suggesting a place to serve penance for sins, after which the sinner (AKA criminal) was deemed to have cleansed himself of his sins and could be released as a full societal participant. We retain this concept with our modern penal system, at least in part.

  Church history certainly provides enough examples of those deemed heretics, or otherwise offensive, suffering grisly executions after a Church trial. The actual mutilations, burnings, or quarterings were usually given to the seculars to perform. There remained a general prohibition against clericals performing executions.

  Brother Thomas mentions that King Alfonso X of Castile and LeÓn (Queen Eleanor’s half-brother) had his brother, Don Fadrique, strangled and Don Simon Ruiz de los Cameros burned at the stake for homosexuality. This was one belief, current at the time.

  There is much debate over why these death sentences were given without any trial and carried out so swiftly. The myriad claims include allegations that the two men were involved in treason, an assassination attempt, were caught in bed together, perhaps guilty of a religious heresy, or that Alfonso was suffering the effects of a major health issue (possibly maxillary cancer) that eventually killed him. It is interesting to note that King Alfonso’s respected and apparently beloved wife also fled from him at this time, an unusual act for a medieval queen. There were stories that the king’s ill health had affected his behavior and temper, often causing him to become violent and erratic.

  In any case, the quick arrests and almost immediate executions are odd. Alfonso X, like Edward I, was a strong believer in the rule of law. Yet Don Fadrique and Don Simon were put to death without any trial or even an explanation. People do not always live up to their vaunted reputations (see my Land of Shadows on Edward I), but this was a significant departure and involved a family member whom the king apparently loved.

  The Chronicle of Alfonso X, written some sixty years after the king’s death, says only that the executions occurred because Alfonso X “found out some matters.” The king himself never gave any reasons, another strange element in this sad tale. Since I do not have the requisite background in this area to offer a reasoned argument in defense of any firm conclusion, I will not offer one. H. Salvador Martinez has discussed all the issues in his biography of this fascinating king: Alfonso X, the Learned.

  Brother Thomas is, however, justified in fearing that these executions might be part of a growing pattern of which he was quite aware. Legal punishments for sodomy, male homosexuality in particular, were rapidly becoming more lethal.

  I have often mentioned that medieval medicine, especially in Muslim countries, was far more effective than we moderns often assume. In this book, I have chosen to point out one of those instances when a treatment was horrific.

  Eda suffers from stuttering. Like any caring parents, her father and mother wanted a cure. Not only did they wish this because they loved their child but also because she would have found it difficult to find a man willing to marry her.

  In Eda’s situation, one of the several treatments suggested for stuttering was to place a red-hot iron on the lips. It doesn’t take much to imagine what that felt like or why a parent might decide the cure was worse than the remedy and stop it. Lest we get too smug about the assumed insensitivity of a parent even contemplating the application of such a thing, we might recall that we are still faced today with a host of medical options that are less than pleasant for a child or an adult. Do we not frequently choose what we’re told is the most effective, despite the side effects, because we would rather obtain a cure? Eda’s parents were in the same situation.

  Many in the Middle Ages with severe health and physical issues died early in life, if they even survived birth, but society generally did not greet with welcoming arms those deemed disabled. Some saw the conditions as a sign that God had cursed the child or the parents for a sin they committed, while others concluded that the suffering experienced on earth by the child must substantially shorten time in Purgatory. Although a few might choose to call the burden a blessing, society as a whole still mocked and shunned the afflicted. We are little different today, although we have at least temporarily succeeded in demanding accommodations and passing laws so more of us may function productively and get around more easily.

  For one who could not speak, was forbidden to speak, or chose not to speak, a form of sign or gesturing language was used in the Middle Ages. Monastics used established non-verbal signals during meals and other obligatory periods of silence. Eda is described as using a few mentioned in the two books I added to the bibliography. But gesturing language with seculars was also common. As one example, a twelfth-century canon consulted a respected wise man, both deaf and mute, for his opinion on which schoolmaster of two was the best. The wise man’s response was in a form of sign language. My favorite of his opinions was putting his hands to his mouth and blowing, thus suggesting that one of the masters was nothing but a windbag.

  Medieval sign language used by monastics and other individually developed ways of expressing oneself through gestures are not the same as modern methods used by those who are hearing impaired. For one thing, medieval signs were far less complex. In the monasteries, there was as much fear of garrulous hands as gossipy mouths. Professed monks might have a larger sign vocabulary, but novices were not trusted to be disciplined enough to know more than the basics such as “pass the salt,” “where is the garderobe,” “the abbot is behind you,” and “would you please repeat that.”

  I think most of us have gotten far beyond the belief that medieval manners and dining were like those bone-tossing, beer-guzzling, and leg of mutton-chomping scenes shown in the Charles Laughton film, The Private Life of Henry VIII.

  Manners wer
e strict. The hands of diners and those handling or serving meals were washed before, during, and after meals. Food and cups were communal, but napkins were used to wipe the cup after use, and etiquette was clear on the proper sharing of platters (fishing around for favorite parts, as Odo does, was uncouth). Some prohibitions may seem pretty basic to us (putting a partially eaten piece of food back on the communal platter was not a good thing), but how often are we shocked today by folks talking while eating with their mouths open, another pretty obvious breach of table manners.

  One did not lick one’s fingers. Greasy hands were washed before the next bit of food was touched. A diner used three fingers to pick up a small portion of food and never belched in the face of his neighbor. Bread was used to clean utensils and often to soak up soup or gravies, but a different bit of bread must be used for each sopping.

  Utensils and dishes were limited. Hands were the primary tool. Almost everyone had a dining knife for cutting and spearing food. Spoons were provided by the host and used for liquids. Forks were rare (and only for serving) or nonexistent. Bowls were used for liquids. Trenchers (usually stale bread but sometimes wooden in more affluent halls) were plates. Platters or dishes were mostly used for serving. A salt cellar, often very elaborate, was on the table, which would have been covered with white tablecloths in Tyndal Priory or anywhere the gentry was served. Spoons and cups were valuable and often “mistakenly removed” by diners. I read that the doors at one papal court were always locked after a meal until all the utensils were retrieved and counted.

  Prioress Eleanor is one of the few heads of a prosperous religious house who adheres to the Benedictine Rule on diet. Of all the rules set forth by Saint Benedict, the prohibition against eating red meat was probably the most frequently ignored. Abbot Odo said it well enough when he suggested her food was all too Lenten. Sister Matilda, with her prioress’ blessing, uses spices and other legitimate culinary tricks to make mushroom tarts, cabbage chowders, and roasted vegetables a pleasure to eat. Probably quite healthy, too, since no one at Tyndal, so far, has suffered a heart attack.