MARCH MADNESS

In Art history land, March is the month of midterms. Which is awful, so between setting up art shows, writing my thesis, and staring blankly at the Madonna of the Stairs by Michelangelo, I've... well been crocheting a table cloth.

But medieval people didn't crochet. Crochet is a net-making technique that had been used in Scandinavia for centuries, and was only introduced into western Europe in the late 18th century, and WABOOM, everyone thought it was the cats meow in the twentieth century.

And now, here i am, making a pineapple table cloth.

So what did medieval people do in March? Well, remember march was alot nicer back then due to the wonderful medieval warming period. They grew all sorts of things we wouldn't imagine growing them, like vineyards in england! Who knew? Yeah, they did.

Anyway, the medieval people loved to depict the labors of the months. Why? Because they liked scenes of everyday life. And probably because they could point and ask people why they were standing around in march.

So, because I should be sleeping/studying/doing something productive, I leave you with the month of March from the tres riches heures du duc de Berry!

  Crap. March looked yucky back then too.

Saintly Sunday: St. Thomas a'Becket

So, those of you who actually read Pillars of the Earth and didn't just watch the TV show, know all about St. Thomas. And, essentially, what happened in the book happened in real life. But, for those of you who haven't read one of the best books ever, get to it.  Oprah got this one right. 

So Thomas was a very religious fellow who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. He did some nice plus things there for a while, and then eventually, stirred up a ruckus about Henry II who tried to limit the power of the church, like all rulers who want the power do. Then, Henry, was really pissed at him, so he refused to have his coronation ceremony in Canterbury, where it is supposed to take place. 

Then, Thomas started excommunicating people left and right who pissed him off. And we know how that goes, everyone gets angry. 

So, Henry, whether he meant to or not, sent some knights to Canterbury to deal with Thomas. 

They came unarmed, leaving their arms outside the church, and told Thomas he had to go with them to Henry to answer for what he did. But, Thomas didn’t want to do that, obviously, and said no. The knights got angry, as large brutes do, and ran out for their arms. 

About this time, Thomas and the rest of his churchmen were heading out to start Vespers, their nightly prayers. By the time the Knights got back, they were on the steps leading to the church. 

And now the fun part begins, the knights start hacking at Thomas left and right, injuring other clergymen in the process, and all the while, they keep walking into the church, so by the time they hack at Thomas’s head and his brains spill all over the floor they are in the cathedral. And that’s a BIG No No! The knights ran away, and the monks preyed and prepared the Archbishop’s body for burial. 

Everyone who heard about this was upset, one just doesn’t kill an archbishop in a church. It isn’t done. I mean, you watched Hunchback of Notre Dame right??? Well, do it!!!! 

Anyways, he was seen as a martyr straight away and canonized shortly afterward. He didn’t really do any cool things in his life, and wasn’t too miraculous in his death, but a HUGE cult of St. Thomas developed, which probably escalated him to martyrdom.

This reliquary casket shows three knights stabbing Thomas above an altar while two monks watch on. On the top half of the casket they show his burial preparations.

This one shows about the same image, except Thomas is turned to the viewer and the monks aren’t there. And, well he is being stabbed in the neck too. Which is great.

And there is this one, which is similar to the last except there are four knights and they seem to be dancing a jig while trying to kill him.

These things were VERY popular.  And there are many more.

This one has lost some of the coloring in the figures, but again we’ve got Thomas being slashed at the head by the knights. 

Whats even more interesting is these are all Limoges Enamel pieces, produced in southern France. They were the primer casket creators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thomas didn’t die until 1170. So, these things were being made within 100 years of his death, when the memory of his martyrdom was still fresh! Which is kinda strange for medieval saints, it usually takes about 500 years to gain any glory. 

There is also this pleasant manuscript

Thomas is the one behind the altar, but it looks like the friendly monk is going to get some sword action too.

It is also amusing to note that in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, the pilgrims were in fact traveling to Canterbury to visit Thomas’ shrine. Everyone wanted to see this guy, and I suppose he did do some miracles there every once in a while.

Phillip I and forward thinking marriage

I am reading the Lady, the Knight, and the Priest, which is a book about medieval marriage and it starts out with the most hilarious story of Philip I.

Note: Philip is the grandfather of Louis VIII who was Eleanor of Aquitaine's first husband.

Philip married his first wife, Berthe when they were relatively young. And they were married for a long time, 20 years, and she only produced one son, Louis VI (Abbot Suger's childhood friend). Philip was afraid he wasn't going to have an heir, and all hell would break loose and France would be broken apart (ie: what happened with Eleanor).

So, he decided to put Berthe in a castle in the middle of no where, a castle that technically belonged to her anyway, and essentially forget about her.

Then he decided he would marry Berttrade. But there were a few hitches, the first, Berthe was still alive and he was still married to her, and second, Berttrade was married to his vassal the Duke of Anjou.

Naturally, he married her anyway, and apparently, the only one who cared was the bishop of Chartres.

In the meantime, Philip I was in the middle of planning the first crusade, and when he called his vassals, and bishops, and knights to him, Bishop Chartres didn't show up. This was against every law there ever was, and everyone had a fit! So the bishop went to Rome to hang out with the Pope.

At the time there was a "prepare everyone's souls for the end of days" kinda thing going on with the clergy, so the Pope listened to the Bishop Chartres and his feelings about Philip's concubinage, and such, and they decided to excommunicate Philip.

This was a problem. If Philip, the king of France was excommunicated that means that all of his vassals and everyone else gets excommunicated too. Finally, after years of being married to a married woman while being married to someone else, people started paying attention.

Philip said it didn't matter, he didn't really care, and his sons were legitimate. His marriage was blessed by the bishop of Reims who crowned them.

So, everyone went on for a while, continued to be excommunicated, and Berthe died, Berttrade had three kids, and people started lobbying that the excommunication be removed. But, there was still the hang up that she was married to the Duke of Anjou.

The Duke of Anjou, apparently didn't really care. He was rumored to be quite the skirt chaser, and had four wives before Berttrade. In reality, he was probably the worst person in this situation. But, because he needed some cleansing of his soul, when approached by Bishop Chartres, everything was in line for him to make some startling accusations, and annoy everyone.

By this time Philip was old, and he was starting to worry about the afterlife and hell. The knowledge that he had sinned, or at least that others thought he sinned, weighed heavy on his mind. So, he renounced his relationship to Bertrade publicly, but their children were still legitimate, and they still lived as a married couple, it was only a formality.

The moral of the story is first, having the wife of another wasn't such a big deal back then. No one really took notice until their personal souls were in danger. And even then, it wasn't enough to make Philip think what he was doing was wrong.

Secondly, Bishop Chartres, just wanted to cause problems. He probably had a fight with Philip about something else, and wanted to get him back, and thought this was the best way to do it. And from a modern perspective on medieval times, it certainly sounds like they were doing wrong, but in reality, no one really thought they were.

Could it be that medieval people were more open about marriage than people today?

Medieval Cuisine

When we think of people living in castles, we often imagine them eating beef roast and huge drum sticks with massive sides of potatoes, with beautiful herby aromas and a few vegetable dishes dishes but it was actually quite different.

The notion of potatoes as the main starch is a relatively modern one. Potatoes were not native to Europe and grew only in the New World until travelers brought them back in the 1500s. The main starch in Europe was wheat in the form of bread, cakes, and pastries. It is also important to note that pasta is a far eastern dish. Remember in elementary school when they told you Marco Polo brought back spaghetti on his voyages east, well he did. Pasta is not an Italian thing, and neither is pizza as we think of it.

Pizza wouldn't be the same without Tomatoes, neither would Spaghetti for that matter. Tomatoes too come from the new world and were bred and perfected by the native peoples. But, tomatoes are members of the Nightshade family, so Europeans, knowing nightshade is deadly poisonous, stayed away from it at first, and still tend to avoid eating them raw. This developed the many great tomato sauces, pastes, and other dishes that we know and love today.

So, neither spaghetti or spaghetti sauce is actually Italian.

Medieval peoples diets were based mainly on hunting. Hunting scenes are very popular in tapestries and ivories, as well as manuscripts.

Many medieval people developed a love of fauna such as Frederick II who wrote a book all about birds.

Meat was probably the most diverse field of cuisine. There was of course the domesticated animals, like cattle, pigs, and fowl, but there were all kinds of animals to hunt, like deer, duck, geese, other fowl, foxes, squirels, and probably a few that have gone extinct since then. If they can find it in the forest, they ate it.

But, hunting was largely reserved for the nobility. The more common folk raised animals, like fowl and chickens that originated in India, but were all over Europe after 500 BC. They were bred for cock fighting initially, not eating or for their eggs, that was just an added bonus.

Common people lived on a more vegetable and starch diet. They grew veggies in their gardens and small plot fields, and grew grains in larger fields, as well as peas, beans, and other legumes. They would sell and trade these at market.

The feudal system is pretty easy to understand. The common folk would grow the food, and give a small percentage in exchange for the protection of their liege. Sometimes the ruler would put on feasts after a big hunt and invite some of the common people to eat, and of course they and the servants could eat the left overs. This way, the nobility had a relatively well rounded diet. 

But, it was rather flavorless. Most of the herbs we use today in cooking have new world roots, and the only spice Europeans had in good supply was pepper. Pepper came from the far east on the silk routs, and was in high demand, because the Europeans did like some flavor. But, only the richest could afford this spice and it was very expensive.

It is easy to see why Europeans were so excited when they found the new world. The new world was full of new starches, like corn and potatoes, and yummy veggies like squash and tomatoes. And also the flavors. Medieval Europeans did not have access to Sugar, coffee, or chocolate, all things we take for granted today. And you can take one look at decorative design in the 1700s and know how much they loved Pineapples.

Food can tell you a lot about a place, we just have to remember its not always been this way. Spaghetti in Italy and Potatoes in Ireland, are new things, and have no relation to their medieval identity.

Sadly, Eleanor of Aquitaine never ate duck with mandarin oranges, and Abbot Suger never had a candy cane.

ELEANOR!

Eleanor of Aquitain: 2 Husbands, 10 children, 1 divorce, countless lovers, Queen of France, Queen of England, Duchess of Aquitain. And the creator of COURTLY LOVE!

Eleanor was one of the greatest women in history. She was a lover of literature, arts, crusades, ruling, making her children look good, and most of all a lover of love.

She married her first husband, Louis VII king of France, when she was relatively young, uniting the realm of the franks with Aquitaine, making French boarders similar looking how they look today. Her and Louis had two children, two daughters, and went on a less than successful crusade together. After that, she decided she had enough of him and they got a divorce. (This may or may not have to do with Rumors she was sleeping with her Uncle).

In the divorce settlement, Louis got the kids, and Eleanor, well she got to keep Aquitaine. As in, most of France:

(Map from Historical Atlas by William Shepard) 

All that purple stuff now belongs to her and her second husband, (who was nine years younger than her and happened to be her third cousin) Henry II King of France! Yeah, who said Medieval Women couldn't have property and rights and stuff... Not Eleanor.Who said you can't marry your cousin??? Not Eleanor!!!

She had a happy marriage with Henry, they had eight kids. Then, when she got sick of him, she decided her son should be king of England, and she was imprisoned for that. But, Henry let her out, and she went back to her home town of Poitier, to do whatever she wanted, and she wanted to do some crazy stuff. (Not with her Uncle this time).

Her and her daughter Marie of Tours created the first courts of love, where troubadours told stories, sang songs, and put on plays. She wrote the rules of love with Andreas Capellanus. And this gave birth to the Courtly Love phenomenon.

The idea of courtly love is essentially that you should have a secret affair with a man, and said man should do whatever you want, whenever you want it, and anything and everything for you no matter the cost. One should give gifts, secret meetings, kisses, but not consummate the relationship.

This is where we get beautiful art objects like this casket:

(Casket in British Museum)

This went on for a while until Henry II died and her son Richard the Lionheart became king. In between her widdow hood and her death Eleanor had the joy of settiling all kinds of disputes between her children and grandchildren and their spouses. At this point she had family everywhere, Castile, England, France, Saxony, Brittany, and Sicily!

Imagine the issues.

Eleanor lived so she outlived all but her youngest son and her daughter Eleanor of Castille. And she was buried beside her husband at Fontevraud Abbey with a beautiful tomb effigy. 

This is also a reminder that ALLmost all sculpture in midieval times were beautifully painted. Her clothes have beautiful little designs on them. One can only imagine the beautiful textiles she might have worn, but that is a topic for another day.