Beards

 

 In the Middle Ages, beards were mostly worn by old men.  Venerable old men were described as having long white beards; in the epic Song of Roland, for example, Charlemagne is described like this.  The length of the beard indicated age and wisdom.  Hermits also would typically have beards.  The image below is of a reliquary at Aachen containing part of Charlemagne's skull; you will notice he is shown with a beard.

But young or middle-aged men did not have beards, nor did monks, those who tried to follow an austere religious life in a group (the monastery) rather than individually as hermits.

This meant that they had to shave.  They didn't have modern safety razors, much less Norelco electrics, and certainly no shaving cream in a handy aerosol can.  Water or, with luck, soap and water got the beard ready, then a sharp knife was used to cut the bristles, ideally not cutting any skin or blood vessels in the process.  One could shave oneself, but in the towns and aristocratic courts one was usually shaved by a barber.

Barbers also functioned as surgeons.  They had lots of sharp blades around the place, so they would do any amputations that seemed necessary.  They were also skilled in figuring out how to stop bleeding.  Alternately, they knew how to cut someone carefully and precisely if they needed to be "bled," getting rid of the bad humors, to allow someone to heal more readily (before you mock bleeding, recall that it continued into the nineteenth century).  After a battle, the barber-surgeons went out to check on the wounded and see if they could be saved.

Getting back to beards, the "clean shaven" look was not exactly what we would call clean-shaven.  In certain circles today the two-day-growth look has become popular (you can buy trimmers to keep your beard constantly at that length), and medieval men would have fitted right in.  No one bothered to shave every day.  Young men, however, were normally depicted with smooth cheeks, often rosy.  Because they were also depicted with shoulder-length hair, it might at first glance be hard to tell the men from the women in many a medieval illustration--but in fact it's easy, because men wore knee length tunics, women floor-length dresses.

It has been suggested that young men didn't wear beards because they would catch in their helmets.  This seems unlikely, because peasants and townsmen too were always depicted as beardless until they became old and venerable.  Also, until the late Middle Ages a helmet just covered the crown, back of the head, and top half of the face.

In the monastery, monks not only shaved their beards but also the top of their heads, the so-called tonsure.  The effect was something like male pattern baldness, except the rim of hair went across the front of the head too (unless the monk actually had male pattern baldness).

The monks were thus distinguished from the rest of society at a glance if they tried to run away from the monastery.

Monasteries normally shaved everybody, face and head, on Saturday to be ready for Sunday.  Saturday was also the time for the weekly bath.  They might also be bled at the same time if they were feeling too frisky.  The barbers at the monastery had a long and busy day.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

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

A Bad Spell in Yurt

 Thirty years ago this summer, I published my first fantasy novel, A Bad Spell in Yurt.  I've been writing stories since I was in kindergarten, and I'd already published two scholarly books and a number of articles, but this was very exciting.  Fiction uses a different part of the brain than scholarship.

Yurt went on to be a national Science fiction/fantasy best-seller and is still my perennial best-seller.  Originally it was published as a mass-market (small size) paperback by Baen, a New York SF specialty publisher.  Its excellent sales meant that Baen was happy to publish the next four books in the series, as well as a couple of non-series books.  I had originally rejected the idea of a series, because the story was (and is) complete in itself, but my husband talked me into it.  I'm glad he did, because Daimbert, the wizard hero, is an excellent character and had lots more adventures ahead of him.  Also, fantasy readers like series.

In spite of Yurt's success, Baen became bored with me when each book did not sell more than the last one (their plan).  So I ended up publishing the sixth book in the series, Is This Apocalypse Necessary? the boffo finale, with a small press (Wooster Book Company).

Fast forward ten years.  The Yurt books were all out of print, so I started bringing them out as ebooks, first on Amazon for their Kindles, then at the other major ebook platforms, iTunes (now renamed iBooks), Nook (for Barnes & Noble), and Kobo.  A gratifyingly large number of new fans appeared!  Because a lot of them, including me, still prefer to read a physical book rather than read on a screen, I started bringing the books out in new editions in trade paperback (large size), mostly in omnibus volumes with more than one book per volume.

In addition, I decided that Daimbert had had a few other adventures I'd never written about, so I wrote three novellas (The Lost Girls and the Kobold, Below the Wizards' Tower, and A Long Way 'Til November) that took place in between the adventures in the six novels.  (They are also available in an omnibus volume of their own, called Third Time's a Charm).

Now I've taken the next step, and in honor of its thirtieth anniversary, I've brought the original Bad Spell out in hardcover!  It's what's sometimes called library binding, sturdy covers with the cover image printed on them, the same great Tom Kidd illustration that's been with the book from the beginning, rather than a monochrome cloth cover with a paper dustjacket.  Here's the link on Amazon.

And here's the opening to whet your appetite:

 

I was not a very good wizard.  But it was not a very big kingdom.  I assumed I was the only person to answer their ad, for in a short time I had a letter back from the king's constable, saying the job was mine if I still wanted it, and that I should report to take up the post of Royal Wizard in six weeks.

It took most of the six weeks to grow in my beard, and then I dyed it grey to make myself look older.  Two days before leaving for my kingdom, I went down to the emporium to buy a suitable wardrobe.

Of course at the emporium they knew all about us young wizards from the wizards' school.  They looked at us dubiously, took our money into the next room to make sure it stayed money even when we weren't there, and tended to count the items on the display racks in a rather conspicuous way.  But I knew the manager of the clothing department—he'd even helped me once pick out a Christmas present for my grandmother, which I think endeared me to him as much as to her.

 © C. Dale Brittain 2021

Oak trees

 It's been two years today since Notre Dame burned.  How can a stone building burn? you ask.  Well, limestone (such as the church is made out of) will burn when hot enough (it's burned as one of the ingredients in cement), but the real problem at Notre Dame was the roof beams.  The roof itself was lead (and the fire spewed the whole area around with toxic lead dust), but the beams were 900 year old oaks.  After 900 years, as you can imagine, the wood had gotten very dry, and once it started burning it was very hard to put out.

After two years, the building itself is stabilized, the walls aren't going anywhere, and most of the interior decoration, which came through surprisingly well, was rescued.  The biggest damage, besides the roof itself, was to the stone vaulting (ceiling) at the point where the transept (the crossing) crossed the nave (the long central aisle of the church).  In the nineteenth century a spire was erected there, and when it crashed down it took out the vaulting.

Right now efforts are underway to repair the roof, which they are planning to put back more or less as it was.  They are even planning to replace the spire, but I could have told them that was a bad idea (they didn't ask me).  The challenge is getting enough oaks.  They actually have an excellent idea of how the beams worked, because modern timber framers have closely studied all old wood-framed structures, as they sought to revive what had almost become a lost art, and Notre Dame was one of the best examples.

Oak trees, as you doubtless know, are fairly slow growing but produce good, strong wood, and they were appreciated for beams throughout the Middle Ages.  The problem was giving the trees long enough to grow.  Burning wood was the principal way to keep warm, and oak makes a nice, hot fire.  Everyone building something, from a church to a castle to a little house, wanted nice oak beams.  It was considered miraculous in the early twelfth century, a generation before Notre Dame was built, that Abbot Suger was able to find enough oaks big enough for his new church's beams.  And then you have the problem that when people want to plant new fields, forests are the enemy, to be chopped down.

Sad but true: two centuries ago, when Ohio was being cleared for agriculture, they chopped down thousands of oaks and burned them in bonfires that could be seen for miles.

In England in the early modern period, some forward-looking people realized that some of their new halls and churches might need new beams at some points and created oak groves especially for the purpose.  When beetles got into the beams two or three centuries later, the oaks were ready.

Medieval people recognized the value of woodlands around the same time they were being cut down, just as happened in the US centuries later.  Oak woods had been important, even sacred, going back to the Gauls, before the Romans arrived.  It is even believed that the word druid is related to the Celtic word der, meaning an oak grove.

Medieval peasants wanted oak woods because pigs were fattened on the fallen acorns; indeed, woods might be described by how many pigs they would support.  Ships were built from oak planks; the Vikings had fairly untouched Scandinavian forests to draw on for their ships.  Oak galls provided one of the ingredients for medieval ink.  Oak bark was used in tanning leather.

Carpenters drew distinctions between different trees, depending on whether they grew on a hill or a flat area, among other trees or by themselves, on stony or sandy soil, even whether they were on a north or south facing slope.  These things influenced the grain and the strength of the wood.

Europe's modern woodlands are much more thoroughly managed than are American woods.  Those rebuilding Notre Dame are starting to assemble enough big oaks.  Some of the managed woods routinely cut down the oldest trees to allow younger trees to grow up.  Some of these culled oaks are destined for Notre Dame.  The challenge is going to be finding enough of them, especially since the French prefer French oaks, or at least European oaks, not Chinese or North American ones.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

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

Prince Philip

 Prince Philip has just died, a central part of the British monarchy for almost the last seventy-five years.  The modern British monarchy has retained many aspects of the medieval monarchy, and Philip is an indication of how much is different and yet the same.

There was only one medieval English ruling queen with a husband who was decidedly not the king, and that was Mathilda.  It shows how unusual Queen Elizabeth II is, Philip's widowed queen, that Mathilda doesn't even make it into the official list of kings and queens of England.  She was the only legitimate surviving offspring of King Henry I of England, and when he died in 1135 he designated her as his heir.  Mathilda liked to call herself The Empress, because she had been briefly married to the German emperor (Heinrich V, gotta keep all these royal men named Henry straight), though he had died ten years earlier.

The English barons however did not want Mathilda to rule over them.  In part they weren't sure about a woman, but the real issue was her current husband, Count Geoffrey of Anjou.  The counts of Anjou had been enemies of the dukes of Normandy since well before the Norman Conquest of 1066 (on which see more here).  The Norman aristocrats of the early twelfth century were not about to have some Angevin lording over them, and they turned instead to Mathilda's cousin Stephen.  (He's the one in the official lists.)  For nearly the next twenty years, the Stephen-Mathilda wars were on.

They ended in 1154, when Stephen died childless, and in dying designated Henry II his heir as king of England.  Henry II was son of Mathilda and Geoffrey of Anjou, both now dead.  The barons accepted him, having ended up with an Angevin after all.  But you can see why the question of a ruling queen's husband continued to be an issue for the British monarchy.  Queen Elizabeth I, back in the sixteenth century, never married, both because she liked to dangle the chance of matrimony to keep men properly obedient and because she knew that if she actually chose a husband, he would immediately become a flashpoint of resistance.

Philip did not cause any such problems for Queen Elizabeth II.  He did however continue the tradition that royalty was supposed to marry royalty.  Philip was born in Greece, the son of the younger brother of the king of Greece, a family that was actually an offshoot of the royal house of Denmark.  The Greek kings had been put into power in the nineteenth century by other European countries, which had decided that Greece needed a monarchy and Denmark was a good place to get one.  (Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire, centered in Turkey, for centuries but had declared its independence.  Their nineteenth- and twentieth-century political history is messy, but Greece is now a republic, with a president, a prime minister, and a parliament.)

Philip grew up in Britain and renounced his non-British titles as an adult, but his royal ancestry made him a suitable match for Princess Elizabeth, heiress to the throne.  They had known each other for several years and were in love in 1947 when they married, doubtless an improvement over the arrangements for some medieval royalty, who met their new spouse on their wedding day.  They were third cousins, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, which was fine in the twentieth century, although from the ninth century to the thirteenth you would have needed at least two more "great"s in there.

Philip, born in Greece, was perhaps named for Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, well back BC.  But his name had first been established in the European royal lineages in the eleventh century.  The French king Henri I (another Henry! they were all distant cousins, all descended from Henry "the Fowler," king of Germany in the early tenth century) had married a Russian princess, one of the few princesses around to whom he was not too closely related (they doubtless met on their wedding day).  Their son and heir, Philip I of France (1060-1108), took a name not found before in the French royal family but which was apparently inspired by Philip of Macedonia.  (The Russians liked to think they were Greek, only better--Russian orthodoxy is a variant of Greek orthodoxy.)  Most French kings for the rest of the Middle Ages were named Philip if they were not named Louis, indicating the name's success.

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II continued the long-established tradition of naming royal children with royal names.  Their oldest, Prince Charles, is Charles Philip Arthur George, named (in succession) for Charlemagne, for his own father, for King Arthur of legend, and for Elizabeth's father, King George VI.  The next two boys were named Andrew, for Prince Philip's father, and Edward, for Elizabeth's uncle, King Edward VIII.  (Not clear who Princess Anne was named for, but unlike her mother she stood little chance of inheriting the throne.)

Prince Charles did not meet Princess Diana on their wedding day, but it was still an arranged marriage, between the British heir and a young woman with royal ancestry.  She seems to have been in love, but doubts have been raised about Charles.  Their two sons, William and Harry (real name Henry, another one!), have royal names going back to William the Conqueror of 1066 and his son Henry I (Mathilda's father, we've doubled back around to her).  Here's a (much later) picture of William the Conqueror.

 

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have named their son Archie Harrison.  There are no men named Archie in the royal ancestry.  Looks like they want to make it as explicit as possible that they don't want to be part of the royal "firm."

© C. Dale Brittain 2021
For more on medieval political and social history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.

The Customs of Lorris

 As I have discussed earlier, medieval peasants were neither passive nor helpless creatures.  After all, they outnumbered the rest of the population by a considerable amount, and if they didn't grow the food, the lord would have to be out there himself behind the plow, or else the food didn't get grown.  Peasants were thus a valuable commodity, and at least some lords figured out that making them happy was usually preferable to beating and threatening.  Medieval peasants lived in conditions those of us in the twenty-first century West would find intolerable, but that didn't mean they could do nothing to help themselves.  There was plenty they could do short of revolting.

One of the most notable examples of peasant initiative in improving their position was the Customs of Lorris.  This was a blueprint for how a village might be organized, with the obligations of the peasants spelled out.  It started, as the name implies, in the village of Lorris, early in the twelfth century.  (Lorris is east of Olrleans in central France, in the Loire valley.  This is the bell tower on its medieval church.)

The local lord had granted a series of privileges to his peasants in what was called a "charter of liberty" or a "franchise," and he asked King Louis VI to confirm it, which he did.  The lord's purpose was to make the villagers happy, to attract new villagers to a territory that was being economically developed, and to get a steady revenue stream without having to hassle and badger the villagers of Lorris.  These Customs were then reaffirmed in the following generations by subsequent kings, and they were widely copied all over northern France.

From the peasants' point of view, the principal advantage was regular, predictable obligations, instead of arbitrary or capricious demands.  Each peasant family received a house in the village and sufficient land in the surrounding territory to raise their crops, and the family paid 6 pennies a year for this.  They had no labor dues, no unexpected demands for goods or services.  They could not be expected to join a military expedition unless it took them no more than a day away from home.  No tolls would be charged on peasants heading out of the village to take their crops to market.  The only extra tidbit the king threw in was that the village would have to provide food for the king and queen for up to two weeks a year if they stayed in Lorris.

But most of the Customs granted the peasants autonomy.  Every family in the village paid the same rent, which was unusual in the twelfth century, when there was a patchwork of different obligations, probably a further indication that Lorris was a newly planned and laid out settlement.  Families were free to sell their houses and land if they wished and leave; clearly the lord of Lorris did not anticipate that many would want to.  Fines for various infractions were clearly specified, and it was stressed that no one would be imprisoned unless accused of a crime.

Overall, the Customs gave the villagers of Lorris, and the other villages where they were adopted, identity as citizens of a particular place, rather than just dependents of one lord or another.  Every indication is that they paid good money to their lord in return for the grant of these Customs.  Although the Customs in the form we now have them do not spell out the negotiations that led them to taking the form they now have, but there must have been considerable discussion for the lord to know what the peasants would agree to and what obligations they were willing to undertake.  The autonomy, the ability to determine ahead of time how much they were expected to produce, was from their point of view worth it.

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

For more on medieval peasants, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.