by Ian Mortimer
The word which best sums up the medieval attitude to the Devil, miracles, and everything in between is “superstition.” People do not understand the laws of physics, the nature of matter, or even how the human body functions. Hence they do not see limitations on how the world operates. Their sense of normality is thus somewhat precarious. Anything can happen. In their minds, sorcery really does work, and all sorts of supernatural forces are suspected to have dreadful power. Astrology is used for everything from determining when to take medicine to when to take in the washing. Alchemy might well result in lead and iron being turned into gold. And as for the possibilities of witchcraft and magic, these are limited only by the onlooker’s imagination; they have nothing to do with the witch’s or magician’s actual abilities.
At one end of the magical spectrum, the supernatural can be employed for day-to-day purposes. If you lose a valuable item and believe it to have been stolen, you might consult a magician or a witch. You are only likely to get into trouble if an innocent party is named as the culprit; then you or the magician may be accused of slander. Note that it is the slander, not the magic itself, which is unlawful; plain magic without heresy is normally tolerated. However, at the other end of the spectrum is heretical magic, and this is far more serious. In 1324 Dame Alice Kyteler, an Irish gentlewoman, and her companions are accused of renouncing Christ, making sacrifices of living chickens to demons, cursing their husbands, and creating unguents from the intestines of the chickens they had sacrificed, “with certain loathly worms and various herbs, and dead men’s nails . . . and garments of children that died unbaptised, and many other detestable ingredients, boiled together over an oak-fire in the skull of a beheaded thief”18 Although heretics are not normally burnt in fourteenth-century England—the practice only becomes a legally defined penalty in 1401—these accusations happen to be made in Ireland. The authorities take advantage of the opportunity to burn several of Dame Alice’s accomplices alive.
Some aspects of this general credulousness are not considered heretical or superstitious at all, but are articles of religious faith, like John the Baptist’s three heads. Consider the work of pardoners. People are mindful of their sins, for which they will be judged at the Day of Atonement. Hence they pay pardoners to grant them indulgences. A plenary indulgence—written on a scrap of vellum—clears away all your sinfulness; thus it is the most expensive. Less costly are the specific indulgences, clearing your conscience of a particular crime (say adultery), or the temporary indulgences, allowing you to forget about sins committed in a certain period of time (over the course of a month, for example). The whole strange business is one of blind faith and cynicism at the same time. You will be shocked by the immorality of pardoners selling indulgences cheaply when business is slow. Many people do regard the practice as wholly despicable, but many others believe that they can pay for forgiveness as well as pray for it. When you think about it, a pardoner selling the promise of spiritual salvation is not very different from a physician selling the promise of physical relief. Considering the standards of medieval medicine, the physician is far more likely to hurt you than the pardoner.
Perhaps the stranger aspect of this credulousness and superstition is the widespread belief in prophecy. The political prophecies of medieval England are an extraordinary phenomenon. For several centuries writers have produced mystical texts which purport to describe the political vicissitudes of the future. They take a number of forms: ‘Adam Davy’s Five Dreams,” written about 1308, is a sequence of mystical visions about Edward II, which contain a reference to him visiting Rome. The “Prophecy of the Six Kings,” first written about 1313, tells the story of the six kings to follow King John and states that Edward III will reconquer all the lands held by his ancestors. The “Holy Oil of St. Thomas” explains the origins and mystical power of some oil brought to England by the duke of Brabant for the coronation of Edward II in 1308. These prophecies all have huge resonance. People believe them. And they have good reason, for they tend to come true, in some form or other. Edward II probably does go to “Rome” in a sense, when he goes to see the pope, at Avignon. Edward III does become a warrior who reclaims all his ancestral lands, defeats the Spanish in battle, and fights at the gates of Paris, as the “Prophecy of the Six Kings” predicts. Political prophecies thus have this self-fulfilling element, and people accordingly place trust in them. So when Henry IV becomes king, one of the first things he arranges is to be anointed with the Holy Oil of St. Thomas. The prophecy indicates that he will become a successful holy warrior.
There are rationalists and scientists in medieval society, but you will find their writings even more outlandish than the prophecies. The most extraordinary and famous example of this is a passage in the works of the great thirteenth-century scientist and philosopher Roger Bacon. In a text in which he tries to show how so many supposedly magical things are really quite normal, he writes:
Ships may be made to move without oars or rowers, so that large vessels might be driven on the sea or on a river by a single man, and more swiftly than if they were strongly manned. Chariots can be built which can move without any draught animal at incalculable speed . . . Flying machines might be made in the middle of which a man might sit, turning a certain mechanism whereby artfully built wings might beat the air, in the manner of a bird in flight. Another instrument could be made which, although small, will lift or lower weights of almost infinite greatness . . . Again, instruments might be made for walking in the sea, or in rivers, even to the very bottom, without bodily danger . . . And very many things of this sort might be made: bridges which cross rivers without pier or prop whatsoever, and unheard-of machines and engines.
It is not exactly what you expect of a Franciscan friar living in superstitious medieval England. We might even wonder whether some other time traveler has told Bacon about modern ships, cars, airplanes, cranes, diving suits, and suspension bridges. But think about this passage, as you pour scorn on the credulousness of the people. It is from the same belief that anything is possible that the greatest discoveries are made. “What others strive to see dimly and blindly, like bats in twilight, he gazes at in the full light of day, because he is a master of experiment,” says Bacon, praising a contemporary19. The same could be said of Bacon himself: when anything is possible, experiment is essential. As for his flying machine and diving suit—if Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings come to mind, it is not surprising. Roger Bacon’s name appears in Leonardo’s notebooks.
4
Basic Essentials
Walk into any of the churches and chapels up and down the country, and you will see that many of the walls are painted with scenes from the Bible. But it will take you a moment or two to realize they are biblical scenes, for the figures are not wearing clothing from the time of Christ. All of the people in every single one of these images of the Holy Land look as if they have just stepped out of medieval England. The Romans are dressed in medieval clothes. Christ and the disciples are similarly medieval in appearance. If there are pictures of boats or soldiers, then these too are medieval. There is simply no understanding of cultural development in medieval England, no understanding that people in different ages look and act differently, and no sense of Ancient Rome or Roman Palestine being culturally different. The irony of this for the visitor to the fourteenth century can hardly be missed, because it is precisely these cultural differences which you will find most striking—bewildering even.
This does not just apply to clothes. Languages, the date, working hours—almost everything about daily life in the fourteenth century is different from the modern world. Normally such cultural differences are given a low priority in traditional history books. But for this very reason it is necessary to describe a few of the most basic aspects of daily life. You need to know how to tell the time, when and where you may buy and sell goods, why some people pay tolls and others do not, and how to behave politely. Attention to these details should help you avoid being late for an engagement, placed in the
town pillory, robbed, or regarded as just plain mad.
Languages
In the modern world, languages only change gradually. Pick up a book in your national tongue from a century before you were born and you will have little or no difficulty reading it, even if it sounds old-fashioned. Things are quite different in the fourteenth century. Whole sections of society are giving up speaking one language (French) and starting to speak another (English). This is extraordinary in itself; but even more surprisingly it is not those at the bottom of the social spectrum who are relinquishing their native language but those at the top. Although the aristocracy of England have been French speakers since the arrival of the Normans in 1066, and even though Robert of Gloucester noted as recently as the late thirteenth century that “unless a man knows French, people think little of him,” linguistically everything changes over the course of the fourteenth century.
Why is this? The simple answer is that Robert of Gloucester’s dictum—that only French speakers command respect—becomes obsolete. In 1300 it is true: if you cannot speak French, you cannot command much respect outside your local community. The king speaks French and so do his lords, knights, clerks, chaplains, and servants. All the official classes speak French. Very few high-ranking members of society are fluent in English. Nobody commissions any literature in English, and what little English verse is written almost entirely takes the form of protest poetry, directed against the clergy and nobility, or is religious in purpose. But by 1350 noblemen are increasingly having their sons taught English. The change is largely due to the nationalist outlook of King Edward III, who speaks English, expresses a pride in the language, and even has his own mottoes emblazoned in it. In 1362 he decrees that pleas in court can be made in the English language—before then you can only plead in French—and in so doing he publicly declares his support for English as the “tongue of the nation.” In that same year his chancellor opens Parliament with a speech in English. By the end of the century, most aristocrats and prelates speak English as well as French. Edward III’s own son has many books in English, including one of the earliest translations of the Bible, and his grandson, Edward of York, translates Gaston Phoebus’s famous book on hunting into English. When Henry IV claims the throne in 1399, he does so in English, in Parliament, in front of all the lords and bishops. Later Henry writes to his chancellor (the archbishop of Canterbury) in English, and in 1409 he even writes his will in English. These two men, Edward III and Henry IV, do more than any other lords before them to make English the language of the official classes, reversing the disdain with which the court had viewed it for the previous three hundred years.
Of course, there are exceptions. You will come across a number of people even in the 1390s whose English is not fluent. A number of old-fashioned knights and ladies cannot be bothered to learn a new language, preferring to stick to their Anglo-French (which remains the dominant language at court). In Cornwall, the majority of the population do not speak English or French, maintaining their ancient Celtic tongue (Cornish). Obviously, if you stray over the border into the principality of Wales, you will come across communities where only Welsh is spoken. Even in England itself, the language is remarkable for the range and variety of its many accents and dialects. A man from Northumberland has great difficulty understanding a man from Devon. It is not unknown for some southern English speakers to mistake the language of their northern cousins for French, so strange do their accents sound when traveling to south-coast ports.
Geography and social class are not the only factors governing the choice of language. Very often you will find clerks writing in a different tongue than the one they speak. English itself is rarely written down. If you do give evidence in English in court after 1362, what you say will be translated and be written down in Latin. 1 Financial accounts similarly are written in the cod Latin of the Exchequer. Speaking in one language and writing in another sounds frighteningly complicated but in fact it does have some advantages. As Anglo-French is spoken by so many of the official classes, it acts as a standard means of communication across the whole country. Similarly French provides English administrators with an easy means to communicate with the men of Gascony. Latin has an even more valuable role, for it employs standardized spelling. There is no such thing as standardized spelling in French. Nor in English, which still employs two Saxon letters not in the modern alphabet: yogh (written as” 3“ and pronounced “gh”) and thorn (written as “p” and pronounced “th”). Although few people habitually use Latin in conversation, it is very convenient to have a standardized means of communication which extends across the whole of Christendom, from the Canary Islands to Lithuania, and from Iceland to Jerusalem.
If you find yourself speaking English with the locals do not be surprised if their language gets a little rough around the edges. Just as fourteenth-century place names are direct descriptions of localities (for instance: “Shitbrook Street,” “Pissing Alley”), so daily speech is equally straightforward and ribald. In telling his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes how one ardent lover pursued the married woman whom he fancied and “caught her by the cunt.” At another point in the same work, Chaucer has his host declare to him, “Your shithouse rhyming isn’t worth a turd.” Daily language is direct and to the point. So if someone slaps you on the back in a hearty way and exclaims, “Your breeches and your very balls be blessed!” do not take it amiss. It is a compliment.
Dates
When does a new year begin? January 1? Not always. Although aristocrats do give one another New Year presents on January 1, medieval English people count the year of grace (the year of the Lord) as starting on Lady Day, March 25. Curious, you might think. But it gets “curiouser and curiouser.” There are many ways of dating the beginning of the year, and several of them are in use simultaneously. In addition to January 1 and March 25 there is a third day on which to begin a new year, namely Michaelmas (September 29), which is used by the Exchequer. It is also adopted by the chronicler Adam Murimuth, whose work is widely copied, adopted, and adapted, complete with its odd dates.
Medieval dating systems become even more complicated for international travelers. The day on which New Year’s Day gifts are exchanged in England for the historical year 1367 falls in 1366 in Florence and Venice, but in 1367 in the Italian port of Pisa, where the year begins on the previous March 25. If you sail from England on January 1, 1366, and land at Pisa in mid-February, there it will be 1367 already. Travel on to Venice, and arrive before the end of February, and you will be back in 1366. Leave after March 1 and Anno Domini will be 1367. Ride into Florence and you will be back in 1366 again. Return to your boat at Pisa on or after March 25 and it will be 1368. Sail on to Provence and you will find yourself back in 1367. Stop in Portugal or Castile on the return journey—where the date is still reckoned from the advent of the Romans—and it will be 1405. The Spanish Era (as the dating system beginning in 38 BC is called) is still in use in Portugal (until 1422) and Castile (until 1384).2
In reality, only a few English people actually use Anno Domini. Instead, most use a far more complicated system: the regnal year. This takes the form of the first/second/third year of the reign of the king. Under this system, the new year actually begins on the anniversary of the king’s accession. The year AD 1388 might begin on March 25 but most English people will refer to that day as March 25 in “the eleventh year of King Richard II” (as Richard came to the throne on June 22, 1377). So far so good. The complications arise from the year being set on this secular cycle and the days of the year being set to an ecclesiastical one, based in part on a moveable feast (Easter). Hence March 23, 1388, is “the Monday before the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the eleventh year of the reign of King Richard II after the Conquest.” Not exactly snappy. It is also a system prone to error. Replace “Annunciation” with “Assumption” and you get a totally different date in a different year (August 12, 1387). The fourteenthcentury way of recording the date might sound poetic, but t
hat is the only thing in its favor.
Measuring Time
Telling the time has its complications. These arise not so much from a split system as from the complexity of an old sun-based system giving way slowly to the “hour of the clock.” Before Edward III introduces the first mechanical clocks to his palaces in the 1350s and 1360s, there are none in England—with the exception of an experimental one devised by an enterprising abbot of St. Albans, Richard of Wallingford. People tell the time by assessing the hour as a fraction of the day, starting at daybreak. As the day and night are split into equal halves regardless of the season, it follows that the daytime “hour” (a twelfth of the daylight) is longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.
Thus the way to work out the time in the fourteenth century is to assess the proportion of the sky which the sun has crossed. This can be done with a sundial or by looking at the angle of shadows cast, by a tall object. In the introduction to “The Sergeant-at-Law’s Tale” Chaucer gives a good description of both methods. “Our host saw that the bright sun had traversed a quarter part, plus roughly half-an-hour, of the arc it covers from sunrise to sunset.” A quarter of the twelve hours represented by the sun’s arc is three hours after dawn; so, if you add the half hour mentioned, the time turns out to be between half-past nine and ten o’clock. Chaucer’s narrator confirms this by noting that the length of each tree’s shadow is equal to its height, implying the sun is at forty-five degrees in altitude, which he knows is the equivalent of about ten o’clock in April. Normally you would use a brass astrolabe for measuring the angle of the sun, if you know how. Most well-to-do people have one. 3