What is the value of a human life? Does it have to be epic to be meaningful?
* * *
We don’t know for sure how many people died from the Plague outbreak of 1347–1351, but safe estimates arrive at approximately half the population of Europe. For centuries, everyone was tightly interwoven within the hierarchy of the manorial system. Yes, kings and lords wielded power over their vassals, and social mobility was rare, but there was a certain cohesion within local communities. Barring catastrophic personal choices, and natural disasters and famines that caused everyone to suffer, people had a measure of assurance that meant their basic needs would be met, through work, or charity in some cases.
In the aftermath of the Plague, however, when every other person was dropping dead, labor became scarce, and workers were in demand. People began to leave their villages, to set their own prices and put a monetary value upon their skills. The fact that the nobility had died at the same rate as the peasantry was a huge leveler. One’s birth or status mattered less than one’s abilities. The manorial system eventually unraveled. Greater emphasis was placed on the individual, and people could move up—or down—the class ladder.
The legacy of the new era that followed is surely morally mixed, but the Plague, and the adaptability of its survivors, was directly responsible for the world we know today, because people could, and were forced to, take societal and intellectual risks. The Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the development of empirical science and medicine—in short, the birth of the modern world—all owe their origins in large part to the catastrophe of the Plague. These changes were almost as rapid and far-reaching as the impact of technology today.
The nature of human life is essentially “nasty, brutish and short,” and that’s been the case for the vast majority of people, men and women, throughout history, until only the last hundred years or so. Most people suffered unimaginably from disease, poverty and loss. Most people led lives of utter obscurity.
But it doesn’t mean their lives weren’t meaningful or important. In fact, even with all our options today, we are in the throes of what philosophers have dubbed “the meaning crisis.” We have more ability to connect with each other than ever before, but we don’t know who we are, why we’re here, or what our lives are even for. And that extends into a deep suspicion of others. If our own lives feel meaningless, then the lives of our neighbors do, too—except to serve as Likers of Posts.
Surely existence means more than that, and always has. But do we unconsciously see medieval people as less important, less evolved, because the vast majority of their lives were private and obscure? Do we see medieval women as exceptionally oppressed and devoid of choices? Wasn’t it possible for them to have rich lives—inner lives, connections with family and friends—without being widely known, without having their names publicly written down? Did no one truly live until our generation?
A Cloud of Outrageous Blue is, in many ways, a book about history itself. History is only the story of human beings making choices, and of how those choices intersect. We’re all making choices in real time, even as teenagers, that will impact the future for generations. But not because of what we post online or the status we achieve—rather, by how we think and act out what we believe, about our place in our families, towns, countries and the world.
What would our blue-toothed nun say about us, across the span of time? Might she, in fact, judge us as having too many options, too much leisure, and thinking too highly of ourselves?
This woman lived, as many did, a hidden life with little influence. She loved the people within her own small community, with the daily monotony of a monastic schedule. She painted her pictures not to make a name for herself, but as an act of private devotion and service to whoever would read her books. We don’t know her name, and yet her body was full of gemstones. She lived, and died, and the treasure within her was absorbed back into the soil.
Yet here we are today, talking about how she’s blown open our understanding of medieval women, their lives and choices, the trust placed in their capable hands. Who knows how much we today are affected by millions of people like her—by all the small choices that make up one life?
* * *
As an author and artist, a family member and friend, I’m trying to retrain my mind to think this way. I’m an outward-facing extrovert with big dreams, yet I’m recommitting to the small, the personal, the human-scale, not just the epic, public, and world-changing. I’m trying to go deep rather than wide—to be a better neighbor, whoever my “neighbor” might be. The more I focus on who and what are right in front of me, the more peace I feel, and the less anxiety about things outside of my control.
Every generation has its challenges. In A Cloud of Outrageous Blue, Edyth discovers that her uniqueness is precisely what is needed to answer the call of her generation’s crisis. Because of her gifts of perception, she’s able to find a miraculous cure for the Plague. But not everyone accepts it. Only dozens partake of it. And because Edyth’s life is hidden, difficult and short, access to the cure is ultimately limited because of suspicion, fear and offense. Yet her decision to say yes—to her gifts and calling, to sacrificial love for her friends, to hope—opens doors for the future, for rediscovery.
The past is the gift we’ve been given. The future is ours to give.
* “Medieval Women’s Early Involvement in Manuscript Production Suggested by Lapis Lazuli Identification in Dental Calculus,” (with A. Radini, M. Tromp, A. Beach, E. Tong, C. Speller, M. McCormick, J. V. Dudgeon, M. J. Collins, F. Rühli, R. Kröger, and C. Warinner), Science Advances 5 (1), January 2019.
Acknowledgments
The fourteenth century isn’t an easy time to research. Source material is rich in some areas, obscure in others—particularly the lives of the peasantry, which constituted the vast majority of people until surprisingly recent times. So besides several ridiculously high stacks of books littering my house, I really depended on people who helped me to envision and embody Edyth’s sensory experiences as much as possible.
I’m grateful for the librarians who enabled me to handle many ancient manuscripts at the British Library. Thanks to the Weald & Downland Living Museum and to the Hospital of St. Cross in Winchester, where I found my imagination made physically manifest.
A little closer to home, I’m always keen to lose myself in medieval art and space at the Cloisters, and pore over rare manuscripts at the Morgan Library. I’m very thankful to Father Vladimir Aleandro at Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in Southbury, Connecticut, for the hours-long tour he gave me of his sanctuary, where I felt the tangible holiness of a powerfully consecrated place, which was vital to capturing Edyth’s multi-sensory experience.
A Cloud of Outrageous Blue is a book about many things, but one of those is perception: how we perceive the world, and how it perceives us. I wanted to explore a time in which perception was loaded with significance, both positive and negative. Synesthetes—people whose senses overlap, seeing sound as color or tasting words, for example—provide a fascinating glimpse into a kind of magic that most of us don’t get to experience. Thanks to Molly Skaggs, Niki Tulk, Mikayla Butchart and Julia Denos, for letting me peer into your beautiful brains.
Thanks to Gary Moorehead for sleuthing, and for being one of the first to catch the vision for this book. Diane Calvert graciously loaned me her five-hundred-year-old home in Noyers-sur-Serein, France, for several months, where I learned the true necessity of a proper fire in the French winter and acquired a taste for very aged chèvre. But I digress. Since she’s an accomplished manuscript illuminator and expert on medieval pigments, Diane’s thorough reading of this story helped with many of the finer aspects of the craft.
My editor, Karen Greenberg, art directors Trish Parcell, Stephanie Moss and Alison Impey, and the whole team at Knopf Books for Young Readers and Random House Children’s Books have
given me a beautiful gift in being able to realize these illustrated novels. It’s no small feat. I could not do what I do without my agent and friend, Lori Kilkelly, and I mean that.
I’m grateful to my readers: Dr. Mary Patterson, Bekah Sankey, Grace Andrej-czek and Stephen Roach. Ray Hughes gave depth to my understanding of the UK’s holy wells, and Corinne Sekinger-Clarke to the way land holds and reveals millennia of memory. You can’t have those conversations with just anyone, you know. Orthodox icon carver Jonathan Pageau took time to help me with the subtle symbolism in this book. I’m sure I’ve missed the mark, but his guidance has been a gift.
Lea Fulton (also the model for Gerta in my first book, What the Night Sings) and Joshua Ramey modeled beautifully for the illustrations. And I’ve got to sing the praises of Dr. Alison I. Beach and the entire team who discovered the medieval German nun with lapis lazuli in her teeth. Knowing history, without revisionism, is critical to understanding ourselves as we live our own history in real time.
My grandmother Margaret and my mother, Eileen Margaret, are the namesakes for the prioress in this book, because with grace and a light hand, they’ve always done their level best to help me steer things in the right direction. So did my beloved graduate professor, Carl Titolo, whose memory, and wide-eyed pursuit of impermanent beauty, I honor with this book.
“The last shall be first,” so the final thanks go to my dearest friends, Noelle Rhodes and Cassie Saquing, who have held up my weary arms in the sometimes long and lonely battle that was the creation of this book. And if I could give a blessing to the world, it would be for every parent to have kids of such quality as my two teenagers, and every person a life partner like my husband, Ben Stamper. Their tireless love—and their loyalty to me and to this messy art project called “family”—is truly holy.
BEN STAMPER
Born in Germany and raised in New York City, VESPER STAMPER has been an illustrator for over twenty years and now also writes and illustrates novels of historical fiction. Her debut illustrated YA novel, What the Night Sings, was a National Book Award nominee, a Morris Award finalist, a Golden Kite Honor Book, and a Sydney Taylor Book Award winner. She lives with her husband, filmmaker Ben Stamper, and her two children in the Northeast.
VESPERILLUSTRATION.COM
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