Count Scar

 "Count Scar" is back in print!

 

Okay, let's back up a bit.  Have you ever tried to write something jointly with someone else? My husband and I did. The book was "Count Scar" (and we followed it up with a sequel, "Heretic Wind."). How you ask did we do it without straining our marriage?

Actually it worked well.  We each wrote one of the book's two main characters, alternating viewpoints. We had to consult of course on what was going to happen next, and had to go back sometimes to make sure the continuity worked, but overall each person's chapter belonged to that person (including sometimes setting up a surprise twist at chapter's end for the other person to deal with).

The two characters are Galoran, a scarred soldier who unexpectedly inherits a county and a castle when a distant cousin dies under mysterious circumstances, and Melchior, a priest trained in the highly dangerous magical arts, who has dark family secrets to hide.  It's set in an alternate version of southern France at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the era of the Albigensian Crusade.  The two characters don't entirely understand or trust each other, but they have to work together when it becomes clear that heretics, far from being defeated in the Crusade, are planning an assault on the castle in the opening salvo of a magical attack that could destroy everyone.

In spite of the magic, the book is fairly close to being set in an accurate version of the real Middle Ages.  Interestingly, "Count Scar" (and its sequel) and the three retellings of medieval tales which I've published all take place in something I'd recognize as the real social world of the Middle Ages.  (The medieval tales-retold are "Ashes of Heaven," "The Sign of the Rose," and "The Knight of the Short Nose."). None are historical fiction because none of the characters are real figures, but the settings are about as real as I can get.

"Count Scar" was originally published in mass-market paperback some thirty years ago and has long been out of print, though it's been available as an ebook on all major ebook platforms and as part of a print omnibus along with the sequel.  But we decided to bring it out again as a free-standing paperback, new cover but same content, for everyone who likes holding a book in their hands but is tired of  dog-eared pages falling out of an old paperback.  And also for those who've never read it but would enjoy it!

Here's the listing on Amazon.  It is also available to be ordered through any bookstore, or will be shortly.  Happy reading!

© C. Dale Brittain 2026 

Forest Primeval

 Europe and North America don't have a lot of old growth forest anymore, for the simple reason that humans have cut it down.  It is said that at the time of the American Revolution, a squirrel could travel from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic without once getting down from the trees.  That squirrel would be in trouble now.

In Ohio, when the settlers arrived one of their first acts was to start cutting down the forests. Oaks hundreds of years old were chopped down and burned in big bonfires, not even saved for building materials or household cooking and heating, because the amount of wood appeared unlimited (spoiler alert, it wasn't).  It was said the bonfire flames could be seen for miles.

There are a few patches of primeval forest left in North America, but the biggest stretch is the boreal forest at the northern edge of Canada, now suffering from wildfires.  Western Europe has very little real forest, outside of some in northern Sweden and Norway, which is why it was considered miraculous when enough big oaks were found (mostly in eastern Europe) to rebuild the roof beams in Notre Dame the way they had been built in the twelfth century.

The early Middle Ages had had some fairly major forests, due in part to the reforestation of what had been cropland under the late Roman Empire, during the major population decline of the sixth and seventh centuries. "Second growth" forest can become "old growth" forest, given a few centuries undisturbed.  Forests were considered scary places, the land of bandits and wolves.  But as Europe's population grew, so did land clearance.

Already in the first half of the twelfth century, Abbot Suger of St.-Denis considered it miraculous when he found enough big timbers for his own church rebuilding in his immediate region (not having to send off to eastern Europe, as was the case with Notre Dame nine centuries later).

The Europeans in medieval times were a bit more cautious about clearing forests than were their descendants in. eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ohio.  In spite of the forest advances of the early Middle Ages, there were still a lot more people needing open land for their crops and their flocks than there were in North America before the arrival of white people.  Trees were too valuable just to burn in bonfires.

Trees were used for building and for firewood in the home, and it was recognized that wild animals (like deer and rabbits) and some wild foods (like mushrooms or wild fruits and nuts) needed forested land if they were going to produce human food without human labor.  From the late twelfth century on, there were a constant stream of negotiated agreements about who could and couldn't cut down trees or carry fallen wood away.  Forests needed to be managed.  (Though not raked.)

England and Iceland especially were deforested during the Middle Ages.  In both places there was a lot of raising of sheep, who will eat almost any plant down to the ground, making it hard for woodlands to spread.  Especially since both of these are on islands, the ocean itself slowed down the spread of seeds.  Interestingly, there are probably more trees in western Europe (including England) now than there were in the late Middle Ages.  Modern agricultural methods (and fertilizer) have reduced the amount of open land per person required to raise food, and heating and building are primarily done with materials other than wood.

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval social history and how it still affects us today, see my new ebook, Still Medieval After All These Years, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms. Also available in paperback. 

 

Langres

 The city of Langres, located on the Burgundy-Champagne border, was an important city in Roman Gaul and a major bishopric during the Middle Ages, even though it's become a rather quiet provincial town in recent centuries, with a current population under 10,000.

 

It's located quite dramatically at the top of a steep hill, overlooking the countryside, and still has its Roman walls.  Traffic has to drive in and out through some of its Roman gates. The gates pictured above are the best preserved of the Roman gates and thus are closed to traffic.

 

The Romans liked Langres for its strategic location, and a number of Roman roads met there. The strategic location meant that Langres continued to be important militarily up through the nineteenth century.

Like most bishoprics in what is now France, Langres dates its Christianization and first bishop to the third century.  Autun was probably the original diocese covering what is now Burgundy, and other dioceses were carved out of it between the third and fifth centuries (Langres, Auxerre, Nevers, Mâcon, and Chalon-sur-Saône).

The bishops were important counselors to the Carolingian kings in the ninth century and continued to be major political players.  During the twelfth century the Capetian kings granted the bishops the right to hold Langres and its region directly from the crown, rather than having either the duke of Burgundy or the count of Champagne be in authority over their territory. The bishops liked to say they were dukes in their own right.

 The diocese of Langres was one of the most central in the early spread of the Cistercian order. A number of houses were founded on the Langres plateau.  Unlike the monastery of Cluny, which always tried to exempt itself from the authority of its local bishop (Mâcon), the Cistercians always got along well with their bishops—some of whom were Cistercians themselves.

During the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, a son of Langres, Denis Diderot, established the first "Encyclopedia," volumes that purported to cover all of human knowledge, in the hope that educating the populace by whatever means possible would lead to a more rational and happier and prosperous population.

 The city of Langres commemorates Diderot (who also rates a statue and a central square named for him) with a park bench made to look like an encyclopedia volume.

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval social history and how it still affects us today, see my new ebook, Still Medieval After All These Years, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms. Also available in paperback. 

 

Still Medieval After All These YearsAs

As I announced back in March, I've been working on a new book, and now it's out!  It's called "Still Medieval After All These Years," and it started life with this blog.

 The book's purpose is to discuss some aspects of medieval society I never got to in my first so-called blog book, "Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages."

 

Specifically, I have much more to same about peasants, their status and opportunities, and about food and beverage.  (Did you know lasagna is probably a Norman dish? Introduced by them into Italy? No tomato sauce, though.). Then I go on to discuss how medieval buildings were built, how medieval people kept healthy, and a lot on the medieval church and religion.

But the newest aspect is a focus on how much modern society owes to the Middle Ages, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  Even though we've decided we are "modern," the medieval keeps tempting us, including (strangely enough) notions that somehow life was better then and that we should be able to use the Middle Ages as a model for a racially and religiously pure society.  (Um, that's not going to work.) 

(I also talk about medieval-themed fantasy fiction. That aspect is fine.)

Anyway, the book is now available on Amazon, both as an ebook and a paperback.  Here's the paperback link.  It's also on Barnes & Noble as an ebook and will shortly be available on all major ebook platforms, and it can be ordered through any bookstore. 

The ebook has color pictures if you read on a computer or tablet, black and white on a Kindle or as a paperback.  They're all my photos, so you get in effect a travelogue as well as social history. Hope you enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2026 

Marginalia

Medieval manuscripts, pre-printing press, naturally were all hand written and hand illustrated. Sometimes someone with artistic ability would just take an initial letter and make it fancy.

 

But often, for a high-class book, there would be actual illustrations. Most of these illustrations were something to do with the text itself. So the initial letter of one of the prophetic books of the Bible (like Isaiah for example) might include both the letter itself and a picture of a prophet with his long beard.

This wasn't enough for some illuminators (as they were called, the artists illustrating a book). They would do their appropriate illustrations, but then they would add things in the margins that might have nothing to do with the actual text. Although they would usually refrain if illuminating an actual Bible, other books were not off-limits to marginalia.

These marginal illustrations were often witty, sometimes bawdy.  They might be a commentary on the society of their time. Rabbits frequently featured, portrayed for example as suited up in armor and jousting with other rabbits. Strange hybrid creatures sometimes appeared. Sometimes they were subtle or not so subtle digs at those in authority.

 

In the above image, a fox, wearing a bishop's mitre and carrying a bishop's staff, is preaching to his flock, quite literally a flock of birds, geese, swans, and other fowl that, presumably, the fox has intentions of eating. The birds seem quite attentive. There's a Dutch proverb that goes something like, "Watch your chickens when the fox preaches the gospel." A good warning indeed.

(The images above are, respectively, the second cartulary of Montier-en-Der from the thirteenth century, Archives de la Haute-Marne, 7 H 2; and from the fourteenth century, British Library Royal MS 10 E IV.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on various aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see the ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback! 

 

Healthy meat

 The current belief (for most anyway) is that meat isn't really part of a healthy diet. We're told about societies where people routinely live past 100, and how they all eat dried beans, garlic, ancient grains, kale, and olives (or something like that).  In the US beef tallow and full-fat dairy products are experiencing a bit of a resurgence, but the overall consensus is that red meat is not healthy.

The Middle Ages thought about things differently.  For them, red meat was both a luxury and a health food.  Most people, most of the time, ate a basically vegetarian diet, a lot of bread (whole wheat for the most part), whatever vegetables were in season, dried beans and lentils, with the occasional egg or piece of cheese to round it out.  The wealthy added in red meat when they could get it, but other than the annual pork-fest (eat a whole lot of fresh pork at pig roundup time in November, salt and smoke the rest and try to make it stretch out for six months), peasants ate red meat very rarely.

(Those skeptical about the wonders of the whole-grain and kale diet might point out that medieval people rarely made it out of their 50s, but we're not going to talk about that now.) 

Monks ate a vegetarian diet all the time (as did even the wealthy on Fridays and during Lent, though fish was OK then), with one exception.  If they were sick, they needed beef broth! Everyone knew that a sick person needed something strong and nourishing, and beef broth did the trick.  Abbots would look with deep suspicion at monks who "got sick" with remarkable frequency, needing to spend time in the infirmary receiving sustenance.

Beef broth of course comes from boiling beef, with probably a few spices, some honey, and some onions to give it a little extra, if being eaten by someone not entirely ill.  (No potatoes for stew of course, as potatoes are New World, and no carrots, as carrots were not yet domesticated.  Maybe some turnips.). All medieval doctors agreed that boiling meat was better for you than roasting it, even though a lot of people preferred the roast-meat flavor (I certainly do).

An interesting work on nutrition written (and rewritten) during the Middle Ages was  "De observatione ciborum," or as we might translate the title, "Comments on Food."  It was originally written in the sixth century by a physician named Anthimus, in exile from Byzantium (where he was doubtless known as Anthimos). He came both to the court of the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great and to the Frankish royal court to serve the Merovingians.

He believed that if you ate the proper foods (including meat), and in the proper way (no gobbling or stuffing oneself), one would not need medicine.  (Sounds sort of New Age-y.  Everything old is new.) He listed several dishes that would (supposedly) help one recover from such ailments as dysentery or a fever.

Given that medicine at the time relied heavily on theories of humours, with blood-letting a big feature, and that the many powders and tinctures doctors might suggest had most definitely not been tested against a placebo, maybe one really would do better with some nice beef broth.

Anthimus is noted today not only for his healthy-living tips but some of his comments on typical behavior of the Franks.  For example, he said that they considered raw bacon a great delicacy.  (Not entirely clear if it was smoked and salted but just not fried, or if it was plain raw pork belly.  I think I won't be a Frank.)

Anthimus's work was copied and expanded in subsequent centuries.  It reappeared at the Carolingian royal court, where again it discussed a particular kind of diet as uniquely Frankish, an aspect of cultural identity.  It continued to be used and quoted at the courts of the powerful through at least the twelfth century.  We are what we eat, and the idea of building healthy living on a proper diet has a very long history.

Abby Riehl of Purdue University is making an extensive study of Anthimus and his work.

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval health and disease and other aspects of medieval history, see my book Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available everywhere in paperback

 

 

Medieval Monsters

 Medieval people talked a lot about monsters. Their "bestiaries," books that discussed the supposed nature of different animals (such as that dogs were very faithful, or that lions feared white roosters), also included such monsters as the manticore, a creature with a human face, the body of a lion (usually red), and the tail and stinger of a scorpion. It ate human flesh (note the leg in the monster's mouth).

 

Depictions of manticores in the 13th century often gave them features similar to the features found in images depicting Jews. Faces would have a big hooked nose and a scruffy beard, and the manticore might wear a so-called Phrygian cap, a conical cap with a peak that tipped forward. Thus the artist could make a cruel antisemitic statement while also drawing a monstrous beast. (Julia DeBardeleben has been studying such "Jewish" manticore images.)

(Interestingly, the Phrygian cap was used in ancient Rome to identify freed slaves and during the French Revolution to designate citizens revolting against tyranny. But in the Middle Ages it meant Jews. It had many uses.)

As this example illustrates, medieval monsters were often hybrids. They had body parts of several different kinds of creatures. Deformed features could also count as monstrous, which was rather hard on disabled people.

There were plenty of stories about Wild Men, monsters who were humanoid but large and hairy, one might even say like today's Bigfoot.   These monsters could be rumored to live in some distant, wild place, or be metaphors for what people are not supposed to be like.

Lacking rationality made you into a Wild Man. Jews (again) could be characterized as monstrous because they apparently couldn't grasp the perfectly logical (or at least logical to medieval theologians) arguments why Christianity was right and Judaism wrong.  (It is of course striking that medieval people assumed that your reasoning ability would lead you to the Correct view of religion, unless your brain was deformed.)

Monsters were not always scary. Sometimes they were just the strange creatures supposedly found in distant lands, like the upside-down people on the underside of the planet, with huge toes to cling to the earth so they wouldn't fall off, or the men with heads like dogs believed to live in India (Columbus looked unsuccessfully for them when he reached the Americas).

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval ideas about animals and religion as well as other aspects of medieval history, see my book Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.