More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Their hilltop controlled passage through the valley of the Ailette to the greater valley of the Oise.
Their hilltop controlled passage through the valley of the Ailette to the greater valley of the Oise.
Abbot Suger.
Abbot Suger.
He seized manors from convents, tortured prisoners (reportedly hanging men up by their testicles until these tore off from the weight of the body), personally cut the throats of thirty rebellious bourgeois, transformed his castles into “a nest of dragons and a cave of thieves,” and was excommunicated by the Church, which ungirdled him—in absentia—of the knightly belt and ordered the anathema to be read against him every Sunday in every parish in Picardy. King Louis VI assembled a force for war upon Thomas and succeeded in divesting him of stolen lands and castles.
He [Thomas] seized manors from convents, tortured prisoners (reportedly hanging men up by their testicles until these tore off from the weight of the body), personally cut the throats of thirty rebellious bourgeois, transformed his castles into “a nest of dragons and a cave of thieves,” and was excommunicated by the Church, which ungirdled him—in absentia—of the knightly belt and ordered the anathema to be read against him every Sunday in every parish in Picardy. King Louis VI assembled a force for war upon Thomas and succeeded in divesting him of stolen lands and castles.
Thomas de Marie
Thomas de Marie
Those 200 years were the High Middle Ages, a period that brought into use the compass and mechanical clock, the spinning wheel and treadle loom, the windmill and watermill; a period when Marco Polo traveled to China and Thomas Aquinas set himself to organize knowledge, when universities were established at Paris, Bologna, Padua, and Naples, Oxford and Cambridge, Salamanca and Valladolid, Montpellier and Toulouse; when Giotto painted human feeling, Roger Bacon delved into experimental science, Dante framed his great design of human fate and wrote it in the vernacular; a period when religion was
...more
Those 200 [1100’s & 1200’s] years were the High Middle Ages, a period that brought into use the compass and mechanical clock, the spinning wheel and treadle loom, the windmill and watermill; a period when Marco Polo traveled to China and Thomas Aquinas set himself to organize knowledge, when universities were established at Paris, Bologna, Padua, and Naples, Oxford and Cambridge, Salamanca and Valladolid, Montpellier and Toulouse; when Giotto painted human feeling, Roger Bacon delved into experimental science, Dante framed his great design of human fate and wrote it in the vernacular; a period when religion was expressed both in the gentle preaching of St. Francis and in the cruelty of the Inquisition, when the Albigensian Crusade in the name of faith drenched southern France in blood and massacre while the soaring cathedrals rose arch upon arch, triumphs of creativity, technology, and faith. They were not built by slave labor. Though limited serfdom existed, the rights and duties of serfs were fixed by custom and legal memory, and the work of medieval society, unlike that of the ancient world, was done by its own members.
Albigensian Crusade,
Albigensian Crusade,
Enguerrand IV
Enguerrand IV
Enguerrand VII,
Enguerrand VII,
criers
criers
The clergy considered that this expenditure drained money from the Church, and so condemned it on the moral ground that extravagance and luxury were in themselves wicked and harmful to virtue.
The clergy considered that this expenditure drained money from the Church, and so condemned it on the moral ground that extravagance and luxury were in themselves wicked and harmful to virtue.
In this favored land of the Western world, the Coucy inheritance in 1335 was as rich as it was ancient. Watered by the Ailette, the Coucys’ land was called the vallée d’or (golden valley) because of its resources in timber, vineyards, grain crops, and a profusion of fish in the streams. The magnificent forest of St. Gobain covered more than 7,000 acres of primeval oak and beech, ash and birch, willow, alder and quivering aspen, wild cherry and pine. The home of deer, wolves, wild boar, heron, and every other bird, it was a paradise for the hunt. From taxes and land rents and feudal dues of
...more
In this favored land of the Western world, the Coucy inheritance in 1335 was as rich as it was ancient. Watered by the Ailette, the Coucys’ land was called the vallée d’or (golden valley) because of its resources in timber, vineyards, grain crops, and a profusion of fish in the streams. The magnificent forest of St. Gobain covered more than 7,000 acres of primeval oak and beech, ash and birch, willow, alder and quivering aspen, wild cherry and pine. The home of deer, wolves, wild boar, heron, and every other bird, it was a paradise for the hunt. From taxes and land rents and feudal dues of various kinds increasingly converted to money, from tolls on bridges and fees for use of the lord’s flour mill, wine press, and bread ovens, the annual revenue of an estate the size of Coucy would have been in the range of 5,000 to 6,000 livres.
The Baltic Sea froze over twice, in 1303 and 1306–07; years followed of unseasonable cold, storms and rains, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. Contemporaries could not know it was the
The Baltic Sea froze over twice, in 1303 and 1306–07; years followed of unseasonable cold, storms and rains, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea.
Acts of man no less than change in the climate marked the 14th century as born to woe. In the first twenty years, four ominous events followed one after another: the assault on the Pope by the King of France; the removal of the Papacy to Avignon; the suppression of the Templars; and the rising of the Pastoureaux. The most fateful was an assault on Boniface VIII by agents of Philip IV, King of France, surnamed the Fair.
Acts of man no less than change in the climate marked the 14th century as born to woe. In the first twenty years, four ominous events followed one after another: the assault on the Pope by the King of France; the removal of the Papacy to Avignon; the suppression of the Templars; and the rising of the Pastoureaux. The most fateful was an assault on Boniface VIII by agents of Philip IV, King of France, surnamed the Fair.
Despite formidable hostilities brought to bear on him by Philip the Fair, Boniface asserted in a second Bull, Unam Sanctam, in 1302, the most absolute statement of papal supremacy ever made: “It
Despite formidable hostilities brought to bear on him by Philip the Fair, Boniface asserted in a second Bull, Unam Sanctam, in 1302, the most absolute statement of papal supremacy ever made: “It
necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff.”
“It is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff.” Boniface Papal Bull 1303
As an integral part of life, religion was both subjected to burlesque and unharmed by it. In the annual Feast of Fools at Christmastime, every rite and article of the Church no matter how sacred was celebrated in mockery. A dominus festi, or lord of the revels, was elected from the inferior clergy—the curés, subdeacons, vicars, and choir clerks, mostly ill-educated, ill-paid, and ill-disciplined—whose day it was to turn everything topsy-turvy. They installed their lord as Pope or Bishop or Abbot of Fools in a ceremony of head-shaving accompanied by bawdy talk and lewd acts; dressed him in
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Pastoureaux
Philip the Fair in 1307 turned on the Templars
Philip the Fair in 1307 turned on the Templars
Medieval illustrations show people in every other human activity—making love and dying, sleeping and eating, in bed and in the bath, praying, hunting, dancing, plowing, in games and in combat, trading, traveling, reading and writing—yet so rarely with children as to raise the question: Why not?
Children: Medieval illustrations show people in every other human activity—making love and dying, sleeping and eating, in bed and in the bath, praying, hunting, dancing, plowing, in games and in combat, trading, traveling, reading and writing—yet so rarely with children as to raise the question: Why not?
Books of advice on child-rearing were rare. There were books—that is, bound manuscripts—of etiquette, housewifery, deportment, home remedies, even phrase books of foreign vocabularies. A reader could find advice on washing hands and cleaning nails before a banquet, on eating fennel and anise in case of bad breath, on not spitting or picking teeth with a knife, not wiping hands on sleeves, or nose and eyes on the tablecloth. A woman could learn how to make ink, poison for rats, sand for hourglasses; how to make hippocras or spiced wine, the favorite medieval drink; how to care for pet birds in cages and get them to breed; how to obtain character references for servants and make sure they extinguished their bed candles with fingers or breath, “not with their shirts”; how to grow peas and graft roses; how to rid the house of flies; how to remove grease stains with chicken feathers steeped in hot water; how to keep a husband happy by ensuring him a smokeless fire in winter and a bed free of fleas in summer. A young married woman would be advised on fasting and alms-giving and saying prayers at the sound of the matins bell “before going to sleep again,” and on walking with dignity and modesty in public, not “in ribald wise with roving eyes and neck stretched forth like a stag in flight, looking this way and that like unto a runaway horse.”
But she would find few books for mothers with advice on breastfeeding, swaddling, bathing, weaning, solid-feeding, and other complexities of infant care, although these might seem to have been of more moment for survival of the race than breeding birds in cages or even keeping husbands comfortable. When breast-feeding was mentioned, it was generally advocated—by one 13th century encyclopedist, Bartholomew of England in his Book on the Nature of Things—for its emotional value. In the process the mother “loves her own child most tenderly, embraces and kisses it, nurses and cares for it most solicitously.” A physician of the same period, Aldobrandino of Siena, who practiced in France, advised frequent cleaning and changing and two baths a day, weaning on porridge made of bread with honey and milk, ample playtime and unforced teaching at school, with time for sleep and diversion. But how widely his humane teaching was known or followed it is impossible to say.
On the whole, babies and young children appear to have been left to survive or die without great concern in the first five or six years. What psychological effect this may have had on character, and possibly on history, can only be conjectured. Possibly the relative emotional blankness of a medieval infancy may account for the casual attitude toward life and suffering of the medieval man.
I’m not so sure about this.
Children did, however, have toys: dolls and doll carriages harnessed to mice, wooden knights and weapons, little animals of baked clay, windmills, balls, battledores and shuttlecocks, stilts and seesaws and merry-go-rounds. Little boys were like little boys of any time, “living without thought or care,”
Children did, however, have toys: dolls and doll carriages harnessed to mice, wooden knights and weapons, little animals of baked clay, windmills, balls, battledores and shuttlecocks, stilts and seesaws and merry-go-rounds. Little boys were like little boys of any time, “living without thought or care,”
according to Bartholomew of England, “loving only to play, fearing no danger more than being beaten with a rod, always hungry and hence disposed to infirmities from being overfed, wanting everything they see, quick to laughter and as quick to tears, resisting their mothers’ efforts to wash and comb them, and no sooner clean but dirty again.”
About half the population, it has been estimated, was under twenty-one, and about one third under fourteen.
About half the population, it has been estimated, was under twenty-one, and about one third under fourteen.
From age eight to fourteen the noble’s son was sent as a page to the castle of a neighboring lord, in the same way that boys of lower orders went at seven or eight to another family as apprentices or servants. Personal service was not considered degrading: a page or even a squire as a grown man assisted his lord to bathe and dress, took care of his clothes, waited on him at table while sharing noble status. In return for free labor, the lord provided a free school for the sons of his peers.
At fourteen or fifteen, when he became a squire, the training for combat intensified. He learned to pierce the swinging dummy of the quintain with a lance, wield the sword and a variety of other murderous weapons, and know the rules of heraldry and jousting. As squire he led his lord’s war-horse to battle and held it when the fighting was on foot.
At fourteen or fifteen, when he became a squire, the training for combat intensified. He learned to pierce the swinging dummy of the quintain with a lance, wield the sword and a variety of other murderous weapons, and know the rules of heraldry and jousting. As squire he led his lord’s war-horse to battle and held it when the fighting was on foot.
Women of noble estate were frequently more accomplished in Latin and other school learning than the men, for though girls did not leave home at seven like boys, their education was encouraged by the Church so that they might be better instructed in the faith and more fitted for the religious life in a nunnery, should their parents wish to dedicate them, with suitable endowment, to the Church. Besides reading and writing in French and Latin, they were taught music, astronomy, and some medicine and first aid.
The last of the Coucys entered a world in which movement was limited to the speed of man or horse, news and public announcements were communicated by the human voice, and light ended for most people with the setting of the sun. At dusk, horns were blown or bells rung to sound curfew or “cover fires,” after which work was prohibited because a workman could not see to perform creditably. The rich could prolong time by torchlight and candles, but for others night was as dark as nature intended, and stillness surrounded a traveler after dark. “Birds, wild beasts and men without any noise did take
...more
Monkeys were common pets. Beggars were ubiquitous, most of them crippled, blind, diseased, deformed, or disguised as such. The legless dragged themselves along by means of wooden stumps strapped to their hands.
Monkeys were common pets. Beggars were ubiquitous, most of them crippled, blind, diseased, deformed, or disguised as such. The legless dragged themselves along by means of wooden stumps strapped to their hands.
Doctors were admired, lawyers universally hated and mistrusted. Steam was unharnessed, syphilis not yet introduced, leprosy still extant, gunpowder coming into use, though not yet effectively. Potatoes, tea, coffee, and tobacco were unknown; hot spiced wine was the favorite drink
Doctors were admired, lawyers universally hated and mistrusted. Steam was unharnessed, syphilis not yet introduced, leprosy still extant, gunpowder coming into use, though not yet effectively. Potatoes, tea, coffee, and tobacco were unknown; hot spiced wine was the favorite drink - commoners drank beer and cider.
Men of the non-clerical classes had abandoned the gown for divided legs clad in tights. They were generally clean-shaven, although chin beards and mustaches came in and out of fashion. Knights and courtiers had adopted a fashion of excessively long pointed shoes called poulaines—which often had to be tied up around the calf to enable the wearer to walk—and excessively short tunics which, according to one chronicler’s complaint, revealed the buttocks and “other parts of the body that should be hidden,” exciting the mockery of the common people.
Men of the non-clerical classes had abandoned the gown for divided legs clad in tights. They were generally clean-shaven, although chin beards and mustaches came in and out of fashion. Knights and courtiers had adopted a fashion of excessively long pointed shoes called poulaines—which often had to be tied up around the calf to enable the wearer to walk—and excessively short tunics which, according to one chronicler’s complaint, revealed the buttocks and “other parts of the body that should be hidden,” exciting the mockery of the common people.
Time, calendar, and history were reckoned by the Christian scheme. Creation of the world was dated 4,484 years before the founding of Rome, and modern history from the birth of Christ. Historical events thereafter were chronicled by papal reigns beginning with St. Peter’s, which was fixed at A.D. 42–67. Current events were recorded in relation to religious holidays and saints’
The year began in March—the month, according to Chaucer, “in which the world began, when God first made man.” Officially it began at Easter, and because this was a movable feast falling anywhere within a period of thirty days, historical dating was imprecise.
Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime. The reckoning of time was based on the movements of sun and stars, nature’s timekeepers, which were familiar and carefully observed. About the time Enguerrand VII was born, the mechanical clock was coming into use on t...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
People lived close to the inexplicable. The flickering lights of marsh gas could only be fairies or goblins; fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. In the terrible trembling and fissures of an earthquake or the setting afire of a tree by lightning, the supernatural was close at hand. Storms were omens, death by heart attack or other seizures could be the work of demons. Magic was present in the world: demons, fairies, sorcerers, ghosts, and ghouls touched and manipulated hum...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The influence of the planets could explain anything otherwise unaccounted for. Astronomy was the noblest science, and astrology, after God, the greatest determinant of affairs.
The influence of the planets could explain anything otherwise unaccounted for. Astronomy was the noblest science, and astrology, after God, the greatest determinant of affairs.
Mental depression and anxiety were recognized as an illness, although the symptoms of depression, despair or melancholy, and lethargy were considered by the Church the sin of accidia or sloth.
Mental depression and anxiety were recognized as an illness, although the symptoms of depression, despair or melancholy, and lethargy were considered by the Church the sin of accidia or sloth.
Travel, “the mother of tidings,” brought news of the world to castle and village, town and countryside. The rutted roads, always either too dusty or too muddy, carried an endless flow of pilgrims and peddlers, merchants with their packtrains, bishops making visitations, tax-collectors and royal officials, friars and pardoners, wandering scholars, jongleurs and preachers, messengers and couriers who wove the network of communications from city to city. Great nobles like the Coucys, bankers, prelates, abbeys, courts of justice, town governments, kings and their councils employed their own
...more
Travel, “the mother of tidings,” brought news of the world to castle and village, town and countryside. The rutted roads, always either too dusty or too muddy, carried an endless flow of pilgrims and peddlers, merchants with their packtrains, bishops making visitations, tax-collectors and royal officials, friars and pardoners, wandering scholars, jongleurs and preachers, messengers and couriers who wove the network of communications from city to city. Great nobles like the Coucys, bankers, prelates, abbeys, courts of justice, town governments, kings and their councils employed their own messengers.
An average day’s journey on horseback was about 30 to 40 miles, though it varied widely, depending on circumstance. A messenger on horseback, without riding at night, could cover 40 to 50 miles a day and about half as much on foot.
An average day’s journey on horseback was about 30 to 40 miles, though it varied widely, depending on circumstance. A messenger on horseback, without riding at night, could cover 40 to 50 miles a day and about half as much on foot.
Visually, people pictured the universe held in God’s arms with man at its center. It was understood that the moon was the nearest planet, with no light of its own; that an eclipse was the passage of the moon between the earth and the sun; that rain was moisture drawn by the sun from the earth which condensed into clouds and fell back as rain; that the shorter the time between thunder and lightning, the nearer the source.
Visually, people pictured the universe held in God’s arms with man at its center. It was understood that the moon was the nearest planet, with no light of its own; that an eclipse was the passage of the moon between the earth and the sun; that rain was moisture drawn by the sun from the earth which condensed into clouds and fell back as rain; that the shorter the time between thunder and lightning, the nearer the source.
forests so high they touch the clouds, horned pygmies who move in herds and grow old in seven years, brahmins who kill themselves on funeral pyres, men with dogs’ heads and six toes, “cyclopeans” with only one eye and one foot who move as fast as the wind, the “monoceros” which can be caught only when it sleeps in the lap of a virgin, Amazons whose tears are of silver, panthers who practice the caesarean operation with their own claws, trees whose leaves supply wool, snakes 300 feet long, snakes with precious stones for eyes, snakes who so love music that for prudence they stop up one ear with
...more
forests so high they touch the clouds, horned pygmies who move in herds and grow old in seven years, brahmins who kill themselves on funeral pyres, men with dogs’ heads and six toes, “cyclopeans” with only one eye and one foot who move as fast as the wind, the “monoceros” which can be caught only when it sleeps in the lap of a virgin, Amazons whose tears are of silver, panthers who practice the caesarean operation with their own claws, trees whose leaves supply wool, snakes 300 feet long, snakes with precious stones for eyes, snakes who so love music that for prudence they stop up one ear with their tail. The Garden of Eden
all the explanations, the earth and its phenomena were full of mysteries: What happens to fire when it goes out? Why are there different colors of skin among men? Why do the sun’s rays darken a man’s skin but bleach white linen? How can the earth, which is weighty, be suspended in air? How do souls make their way to the next world? Where lies the soul? What causes madness? Medieval people felt surrounded by puzzles, yet because God was there they were willing to acknowledge that causes are hidden, that man cannot know why all things are as they are; “they are as God pleases.”
all the explanations, the earth and its phenomena were full of mysteries: What happens to fire when it goes out? Why are there different colors of skin among men? Why do the sun’s rays darken a man’s skin but bleach white linen? How can the earth, which is weighty, be suspended in air? How do souls make their way to the next world? Where lies the soul? What causes madness? Medieval people felt surrounded by puzzles, yet because God was there they were willing to acknowledge that causes are hidden, that man cannot know why all things are as they are; “they are as God pleases.”
That did not silence the one unending question: Why does God allow evil, illness, and poverty? Why did He not make man incapable of sin? Why did He not assure him of Paradise? The answer, never wholly satisfying, was that God owed the Devil his scope. According to St. Augustine, the fount of authority, all men were under the Devil’s power by virtue of original sin; hence the necessity of the Church and salvation.
That did not silence the one unending question: Why does God allow evil, illness, and poverty? Why did He not make man incapable of sin? Why did He not assure him of Paradise? The answer, never wholly satisfying, was that God owed the Devil his scope. According to St. Augustine, the fount of authority, all men were under the Devil’s power by virtue of original sin; hence the necessity of the Church and salvation.
Education, so far as it would have reached Enguerrand, was based on the seven “liberal arts”: Grammar, the foundation of science; Logic, which differentiates the true from the false; Rhetoric, the source of law; Arithmetic, the foundation of order because “without numbers there is nothing”; Geometry, the science of measurement; Astronomy, the most noble of the sciences because it is connected with Divinity and Theology; and lastly Music. Medicine, though not one of the liberal arts, was analogous to Music because its object was the harmony of the human body.
Contemporary writers rapidly found an audience. In Dante’s lifetime his verse was chanted by blacksmiths and mule-drivers; fifty years later in 1373 the growth of reading caused the Signoria of Florence, at the petition of citizens, to offer a year’s course of public lectures on Dante’s work for which the sum of 100 gold florins was raised to pay the lecturer, who was to speak every day except holy days.
Contemporary writers rapidly found an audience. In Dante’s lifetime his verse was chanted by blacksmiths and mule-drivers; fifty years later in 1373 the growth of reading caused the Signoria of Florence, at the petition of citizens, to offer a year’s course of public lectures on Dante’s work for which the sum of 100 gold florins was raised to pay the lecturer, who was to speak every day except holy days.
A saint’s relic was usually embedded in the hilt of the knight’s sword so that upon clasping it as he took his oath, he caused the vow to be registered in Heaven.
biographer of Don Pero Niño, the “Unconquered Knight” of the late 14th century. “They expose themselves to every peril; they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked; today enough to eat and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or a butt, bad quarters, the shelter of a tent or branches, a bad bed, poor sleep with their armor still on their backs, burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot off. ‘Ware! Who goes there? To arms! To arms!’ With the first drowsiness, an alarm; at dawn, the trumpet. ‘To horse! To horse!
...more
Edward III was fifteen years old when he ascended the throne in 1327, 25 when he embarked on war with France, and 34 at the time of the second attempt in 1346.
Edward III was fifteen years old when he ascended the throne in 1327, 25 when he embarked on war with France, and 34 at the time of the second attempt in 1346.
IN OCTOBER 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first
...more
