Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc is the only Catholic saint who was originally declared a heretic and burned at the stake by the Catholic church.

She was certainly a remarkable person by any criteria.  She was a village girl, born in Domrémy in Lorraine (France) around 1412.  By this time, the fifteenth century, people had last names; hers was d'Arc (so she has nothing to do with Noah's Ark, some student exams to the contrary).  From girlhood, she had visions of saints who spoke to her.

There is no question that she heard voices.  In the Middle Ages, the question was whether these were the voices of saints or angels.  Angels were decided on definitively in the early twentieth century, when she was declared a saint, but for many historians the question has been which psychological condition she suffered from.  Different eras seek different explanations.

At the age of 17, under the inspiration of the angelic voices (as she certainly considered them), she set off to meet with Charles VII.  He was living in exile, not yet crowned, because the Hundred Years War was going on, and the English held northern France, including Reims, where French kings were traditionally crowned.  She managed to persuade him that the saints wanted him crowned, and he provided her with armor and knights and sent her off to Orléans, which was held by the English.

Here, to everyone's surprise except perhaps her own, she inspired a great victory.  (You can still buy Jeanne d'Arc refrigerator magnets in the gift shop of Orléans cathedral.)  With this victory, it was now possible for Charles to cross the Loire into northern France, and Joan got him to Reims and got him crowned.

She continued to have success against the English, enough that Charles may have become jealous of her reputation.  When she was captured in battle, he made no attempt to ransom her.  The English tried her for heresy, based in part on the voices and in part on a charge of cross-dressing, found her guilty (no surprise), and had her burned at the stake in 1431.  She was still only nineteen.  (How many of us have led victorious armies in our teens, defying all gender expectations?  It would be good to skip the part about being burned at the stake, however.)

The French never believed she had been a heretic, and in the following years, inspired in part by her example, they finally drove the English out of France and ended the war.  The pope was persuaded to reopen the case in the 1450s and declared that it had not been a fair trial, although she was not officially made a saint until 1920.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

For more on medieval saints and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

The late medieval Capetians

The Capetian dynasty ruled France from 987 until the French Revolution, when Louis XVI went to the guillotine in 1793 under the name of Citizen Louis Capet.  He was officially part of the Bourbon dynasty, which had succeeded the Valois dynasty, but they were male-line Capetians all the time, just descended from younger brothers.

As I discussed in an earlier post, the Capetian dynasty succeeded the Carolingian dynasty in France--the most famous Carolingian of course was Charlemagne, who had been crowned Roman emperor in 800.  Hugh Capet was not strictly speaking the first king of his family, because both his great-uncle Odo and his grandfather Robert I had been kings (succeeded for a few years by the final hurrah of the Carolingians), but from 987 on there was an unbroken line of kings descended directly from Hugh.

The most famous medieval Capetian king was probably Louis IX, or Saint Louis, after whom the American city is named (pictured above).  He determinedly sought peace and justice in his kingdom, trying to impose what we would call chivalrous behavior on his knights (things like not killing someone without giving them a chance to fight back, or, best of all, not even killing them a little bit).  He went on Crusade twice, though both excursions were disasters.

On the first of his Crusades, they decided to set up a base camp in Egypt, then attack the Holy Land from there.  Instead he was captured and held for ransom.  On the second, they decided that Egypt was too dangerous to go right in, so they decided to set up a base camp in Libya from which to attack Egypt--with predictable results. When the old king and one of his sons were killed, the surviving French boiled him up so that they could get his bones to take home for burial.

His son, Philip IV, got Saint Louis declared a saint.  Philip also is responsible for starting the Avignon papacy by completely intimidating the popes (see more here).  He disbanded the Templars, in the hope of getting their treasure, but unfortunately for him they had no treasure.  Philip IV is called "the Fair" for his blond hair, not his personality.

The story goes that as the head of the Templars was dying under torture, he cursed Philip, that he would not have sons to succeed.  As Philip had three sons, he laughed this off.  But all three died in quick succession after their father, leading both to the Valois dynasty and to the Hundred Years War.  After a great deal of unpleasantness--the Hundred Years War actually lasted over a century--Joan of Arc inspired the French to finally defeat the English.

At this point, the French kings started down the road toward absolutism.  Louis XI (1461-1483) trusted no one, and filled his court with intrigue and spies.  He was known as "the Spider."  He was also intensely religious and always had at least a few dozen bits of saints' relics pinned to his clothing, for protection.  Although true absolutism really only came about in the seventeenth century, with Louis XIV, the trend was there.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

Conflict resolution

In an earlier post, I discussed medieval violence.  There was certainly plenty of violence then (as now!), but there were also plenty of ways to defuse conflicts before they became violent.

It used to be thought that, in an era without the courthouses, police forces, and clear law codes we take for granted now, then anarchy was the only possibility.  This was far from the case in the Middle Ages, in large part because everybody agreed on (or at least gave lip service to) the ideal of peace.

If two men (say, in a drunken brawl) leaped at each other, their friends were supposed to grab them and pull them back, not egg them on.  Hot-headed violence was deplored in all the epics and romances, not celebrated.  (Our own movies and TV shows glorify violence a lot more than did medieval literature.)  Local authorities, whether landlord, sheriff, count, or even king, were expected to act as peacemakers.

A quarrel would be brought before a court, not anything like our judicial courts, but the court of a powerful man (or sometimes woman).  Both sides would present their positions.  Long discussion would ensue.  Both sides would bring forth witnesses, oath-helpers, and material evidence.  More discussion would ensue.  The judge would not end up ruling definitively for one or the other, but rather act more as a mediator, trying to reach some sort of agreement.  The only way one party would get a summary judgment against them would be if they failed to show up.

Sometimes one party or the other would volunteer to undergo trial by ordeal.  The other side, realizing no one would volunteer to do something so painful unless completely convinced they were right, would often yield at this point, leaving the other side the winner.  If someone were accused of major crimes, and everyone knew they were guilty, a good defense would be to suddenly become penitent and head off to Rome or Jerusalem on pilgrimage.  By the time one came back, with luck things would have blown over.

If one had a quarrel with a church, or even a quarrel that involved such sacraments as marriage or oaths, one side or the other could stop the proceedings cold by appealing to the pope, from the early twelfth century on.  Both sides would then go to Rome, get in line to await judgment (a line often years long), and usually end up settling it between themselves anyway.  (By the later Middle Ages, popes started just referring most cases back to the local bishops, so appealing to Rome was much less useful.)

Churches would try to forestall quarrels over pious donations by getting all relatives of the donor to agree ahead of time.  This was much easier than the alternative, trying to persuade one's saints to blast the malefactors.  Threats of such saintly blasting, however, could be quite persuasive.

Castles also acted, by their very presence, to forestall violence.  Although one now thinks of castles as centers of fighting, most would not be attacked for centuries.  Their very presence sent a clear message, Don't even think of it.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015
For more on medieval society, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available from Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Medieval Literacy

Anyone reading this blog has probably been able to read for so long that the memory of first figuring out that those marks on the paper meant words and sounds is, at best, dim.  We take reading for granted, but it was certainly not the case before more-or-less universal education and affordable books and libraries.

Being able to read was restricted to the upper levels of medieval society:  not just the churchmen and churchwomen, but aristocrats and merchants.  Although late antiquity/the Merovingian era had been a literate age, as most transactions were recorded in writing and stored away in municipal archives.  Yet when urban civilization collapsed in the early Middle Ages, being able to read became much less useful.

Interestingly, in the late Middle Ages/Renaissance period, anyone who could afford it sent their sons to school and recorded all sorts of events and activities in writing.  Notaries flourished, and their records are a treasure-trove for modern historians.

In between the early and the late Middle Ages, reading was a much more widespread skill than writing.  We tend to think of them as going together, but plenty of medieval people who could puzzle their way through the Latin of a charter would have been hard-pressed actually to produce one.  Charlemagne, who read Latin and who could speak Old French and Old German (neither was really a written language yet), could not write.  He had taken it up too late and lacked the fine muscle control needed for a stylus or quill pen.  His biographer told the charming story of the emperor waking up at night and practicing with a stylus on a wax tablet, in case he suddenly got the knack.

Children in well-to-do households got their first education from their mothers.  Boys would generally graduate to a teacher or tutor (often in someone else's house, if for example they entered a monastery or were training for knighthood or were an apprentice in a guild).  Girls generally stuck with Mom unless, as sometimes happened, they entered a nunnery as a day pupil.

Being able to read Latin was necessary because Latin was the language of learning and of law, as well of course as the language of Christianity.  By the twelfth century one was also taught the vernacular--Old French, Old German, Old Italian, and so on.  This was the language of literature, of stories, of epics and romances (on which see more here).

The well-to-do could and did learn to write the vernacular, both to keep track of things and to compose stories and songs to entertain others.  The epics and romances were meant to be read out loud (most were written in verse), to wile away long winter evenings.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

For more on reading and writing in the Middle Ages, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available from Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Pawning

Medieval cities, like modern cities, had pawn shops, places where people could deposit something of value and get ready cash for it, even if not what it was actually worth.  The pawnbroker would agree that the person depositing their "pledge" had a certain amount of time to come and buy it back.  The danger then, as now, was that if one was a little slow, someone else might come in and buy it before one could get back and redeem it.

Officially in the Middle Ages one could not loan at interest.  This was called usury and is formally forbidden in the Bible.  We now use the term "usury" to mean high interest rates, but it was assumed then that any interest was usurious.  The Bible provides a loophole--one is not supposed to charge interest to one's "brother," but Jews and Christians did not consider each other brothers, so Jews could be bankers and charge interest on loans.  (See more on medieval Jews here.)

In medieval pawning, officially there was no interest, and the pawnbroker made money from selling goods that were not redeemed in time--and getting more from the buyer than he had advanced to the person who had deposited the pledge.

The Italian banking houses also were involved in pawning; Lombard Street in London is named for the medieval pawnbrokers who operated there.  (See more on medieval banking here.)  The symbol of a pawn shop was three gold balls, which also became the coat of arms of the Medici family in Florence, a banking family that survived the Renaissance with their wealth intact, largely because (unlike other banking houses) they had the sense not to lend money to either the French or English kings during the Hundred Years War.

Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of pawnbrokers, and the story is that the gold balls represent the three bags of gold he gave to a poor man's three daughters as dowries.

But if one needed to raise a lot of money all at once, pawning some jewelry would not be enough.  During the twelfth century, the heyday of the Crusades, those preparing to go to the East would pawn their land.  Here the principal pawnbrokers were, interestingly enough, not bankers (either Jewish or Italian) but Cistercian monks.  They would receive the land in pawn (pignus in Latin), giving the Crusader a sum of money that was substantial but still less than he would have gotten for selling it outright.

No interest was charged.  The monks got the income and produce of the land as long as they held it.  The Crusader generally specified that this usufruct was to be considered a gift for his soul.  He usually was (understandably) worried about his soul, heading off to war, and might make a gift to the same monks who were advancing him money.

If the Crusader made it home alive, he could redeem his land; he generally had six years in which to do so.  But if he never made it home, or arrived home sick and broke (as commonly happened), then the monks kept the land.  They might offer the Crusader extra prayers.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

Medieval babies

Some historians who really ought to have known better used to say that parents in the Middle Ages did not love their children.  This is of course totally false--they loved them, cared for them, and mourned them if they died.

The reasons advanced for why they didn't love them were that medieval children were expected to take on adult roles sooner than they do in our society (not sure how this works for the argument), and that since infant mortality was higher than it is now, parents "must" have become indifferent to losing children.  No, they just were sad a lot.

Human infants, born totally helpless, are much more vulnerable when young than, say, baby cows and horses, which can walk almost from birth.  They have to be held carefully, nursed, and kept warm and dry.  Any mother, having suffered through nine months of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth, would not be indifferent to the new baby.

Medieval childbirth was overseen by midwives, not doctors.  Although their success rate did not match that of the modern West, they did have better luck than did nineteenth-century doctors, who used chloroform enthusiastically and often came straight to a birthing from attending someone with a nasty disease.  Medieval women also gave birth sitting up or at most reclining, having the help of gravity to ease the baby along, rather than lying on their backs with their feet in the air, the twentieth-century practice.

A new baby needs to start feeding very soon; childbirth, being squeezed through a too-narrow passage, is as tough on the baby as the mother.  (Cesarian birth was not possible without modern surgical techniques and was only resorted to when the mother was dying anyway, to try to save the child.)  Sometimes now a baby is so exhausted that she does not drink properly.  Or sometimes the mother does not produce enough milk.  These days the answer is easy--hitch the baby up to an IV feed until she gets a little strength back, and then give her baby formula.  Neither of these were possible in the Middle Ages.

A child who did not drink properly was going to fade away very quickly.  So was a baby who caught the kind of disease that modern antibiotics now clears right up, or that can be prevented with modern vaccinations.  The first year or so was an especially dangerous time.

Peasant women nursed their babies for longer than modern babies are nursed, generally for a good two years.  Without pureed baby food that comes in little jars, they wanted to make sure the children would be ready for chewy solid food.  Nursing also provided a partial form of birth control.  Well-to-do urban mothers and aristocratic women, however, often employed wet nurses.

A wet nurse would be someone with an infant of her own, who had been nursing for a while so that the mother clearly had an excellent supply of milk.  She could make a good income from fostering a noble woman's baby on the other breast.  Many aristocratic infants spent the first two years of their lives with their nurses, only returning to their birth family when they were ready for solid food.

Continue the story with medieval seven-year-olds.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

For more on medieval families and children,  see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

The Bible in the Middle Ages

As I noted in my previous post, the western medieval Bible was in Latin, having been translated from the Greek by Saint Jerome around the year 400 so that people in the western Roman Empire could more easily read it.  This meant that, throughout the Middle Ages, Latin remained both the language of government (following the Roman model) and the language of religion.

It also meant that the Latin church and the Greek Orthodox church, which continued to read the Bible in Greek, decided that the other guys did not understand the Bible properly at all.

There never was a single "original" Bible from which all others were copied.  The different sections, or books as they are called, presumably each had an original version when they were first written, but different congregations over time adopted slightly different collections of books and put them together slightly differently.

Add to this the fact that, a thousand years and more before the printing press, everything was hand-copied and thus never precisely alike, and it's easy to see why there was variation.  This worried medieval people.  Because the Bible was supposed to be God's word, they didn't think that a lot of variety was appropriate.

Around the year 800 Alcuin, the head of the school at Charlemagne's court, decided to prepare a definitive Bible.  He and those working with him looked at all the oldest Bibles they could find, comparing them line by line, trying to determine when there was a variant which was the "real" reading. This is the approach modern scholars still take when trying to determine the original or most accurate version of a text.

Then Alcuin had the whole Bible carefully copied out in the "corrected" form, using a new, tidy type of handwriting, called Caroline miniscule.  It looks a whole lot like modern printing, for the excellent reason that modern printing is based on it.  Other churches around Charlemagne's empire were urged to come, look at the Alcuin Bible, and make careful copies of their own of this definitive text.

The Bible in the Middle Ages, like now, was an extremely popular book, with an enormous number of copies made.  Because it is so long, it never existed in a single volume, but rather would be broken up into several volumes.  A volume just of the Psalms, or just of the Gospels, was very common.

Anyone learning Latin (which had separated itself off from Old French, Old Italian, etc. by the ninth century) would do so in large part by studying the Bible.  This meant that Jerome's vocabulary and syntax became the standard for medieval Latin.  Churchmen essentially memorized large parts of the Bible.  Monks would sing their way through the whole Psalter in a week or so, then start over.  Biblical turns of phrase peppered their writings, not necessarily direct quotes but references to biblical ideas.

At the schools and developing universities, the Bible was a major source of study.  No one read the Bible literally, or at least not just literally.  There was far too much in it, from Jewish dietary laws to Jesus's suggestion that his followers needed to give up all their possessions and wander barefoot around the Sea of Galilee, that people who considered themselves good Christians did not adhere to.

Rather, the Bible was to be read at four levels, literally to start, then morally (seeing what sort of message was conveyed), allegorically (so that the love poems that make up the Song of Solomon were interpreted as meaning Christ's love for His church), and anagogically, the last meaning that the Old Testament prefigured the New, so that Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac was considered to refer to God's sacrifice of His only son.

Many, many people wrote Bible commentaries.  In the twelfth century, "glossed" Bibles became common, where the Bible text was written in large letters in the center of the page, and commentary on each verse was written in the margins, or even between the lines, in a much smaller hand.  Often there would be strips of commentary down the side, here is what Augustine had to say, here's what Jerome said, here's what Bede said, and so on.  These glosses became fairly standardized, but again, no two volumes were exactly the same.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015