Medieval hair

Any trip to the drug store will demonstrate that people today spend a lot of effort on their hair.  Shampoos, conditioners, straighteners, products that are supposed to add curl, products that are supposed to add body, fill the racks.

Medieval people too were concerned about their hair.  Both hair and beards were markers of status and position.  If one did not wear one's hair in the latest, most fashionable style, everyone noticed.

Beards were for old, venerable men.  The Song of Roland from around 1100, for example, depicts Charlemagne as having a long white beard.  Young men, however, rarely grew beards.  A knight would not have a beard, because it could get stuck in his chain mail.  Both younger and older men normally grew their hair to a little above shoulder length, although the Normans were reputed to shave the backs of their heads.  Curly hair was considered very attractive, and the unkind accused elegant men of using curling irons--and thus being feminized.

Indeed, if one looks at a medieval illustration, it may initially be difficult to tell the young men and young women apart, as both have rosy, beardless faces.  The real clue (aside from the fact that women's outfits were ankle length, rather than knee length) is that women's hair was typically covered in illustrations.

The Old Testament talks about women covering their hair, and medieval people took this seriously--as the modern Amish still do.  A well-bred matron would not go out in public without her wimple, sort of a hood that covered her hair as well as her neck (traditional nuns still wear them).  Unmarried girls, however, would show their hair, which was supposed to be golden and curly for true beauty (a sentiment with which modern movies seem to agree).  Often a maiden would wear a chaplet or wreath of flowers to set off her hair, which would be at least shoulder-length.

Entering religion, as a priest, monk, or nun, entailed a radical change in one's hair.  Nuns had all their hair cut off.  A runaway nun would thus be very easy to identify.  A monk would receive a tonsure, where the crown of his head was shaved, leaving only a circle of hair.

The image here is a rather fanciful portrait of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and shows his tonsure.  Again, a runaway monk would be easy to spot.  The style is reminiscent of male pattern baldness, which it may have been intended to suggest, and required that the monks have the tops of their heads shaved weekly.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on medieval adornment, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

The holy greyhound

In an earlier post I noted that the well-educated in the Middle Ages were usually the most intensely religious.  Ordinary people would also consider themselves good Christians, but they would not get hung up on fine points of theology.

From the twelfth century on, the elite and ordinary people probably differed most markedly on how to decide if someone was a saint.  This was the period in which, for the organized church, becoming a saint was a regular process, requiring well-documented post-mortem miracles.  But an awful lot of people still figured that they knew a saint when they saw one.

This can be seen most clearly with the holy greyhound, Saint Guinefort.  The story was that some parents had left their baby in its cradle while running errands, leaving the faithful dog (Guinefort) to guard it.  (Sounds like the beginning of a good urban legend, doesn't it.)  Coming back a few hours later, they found the cradle empty and the dog's mouth all bloody.  Horrified, they immediately chopped off the dog's head.  Only then did they notice the body of the dead wolf/snake/boar (choose one), killed by the faithful dog, or find the perfectly intact baby in the corner, where it had been thrown during the fight between Guinefort and the terrible monster.  Sorrowfully, the parents buried the brave dog.

From then on, Guinefort became a healer of children in his region.  Parents would bring sick babies to his tomb, hoping for a miracle.  A further refinement was that Guinefort would restore changelings.  That is, many a parent decided that a colicky, whiny, failing to thrive, unloveable child was not their real baby.  They would bring it to Guinefort's tomb and go away for a short while.  When they returned, the saint would have persuaded the elves/fairies/demons to take back the ersatz child and restore the real baby.

This of course sounds very weird to us.  But it was all according to normal medieval views of saints, except for the detail of Guinefort being a greyhound instead of a person.  Little offerings were still being made at his tomb into the twentieth century.

It is worth noting that no one was declared a heretic for honoring Saint Guinefort.  The organized church had far better things to do than to worry about the religious experiences of peasants, as long as they more or less kept in line.  They did however try to persuade the followers of Guinefort that they were mistaken, that Guinefort was really a person, not a dog, since dogs did not have immortal souls.  This had no effect whatsoever.  (See more here on dogs in the Middle Ages.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

Epics and romance

As I have discussed elsewhere in the context of chivalry, how medieval knights and nobles would have liked to imagine themselves was presented in their own time in epics and romances.

These forms of literature began in the late eleventh or twelfth century (epics slightly earlier),  and were equivalent in some ways to what we now think of as fantasy:  larger than life characters having great adventures, with a serious admixture of the marvelous.  Then, this was literature, not just a genre.

The distinction between the two forms of literature (epic and romance) is really a modern one, because the categories were not entirely separate.  As a group, epics focused much more on battles and glorious deeds.  Wars, fights to the death, loyalty, and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds featured heavily.  The "Song of Roland" is probably the best known epic today, but there were plenty of others.

The "William of Orange" epics were very popular, based, as was "Roland," on some real figures of the ninth century who had been turned into legend--and who were depicted with twelfth-century armor and weapons and living in twelfth-century castles.  Although epics tended to be male-centered, in most of the "William of Orange"stories women played a major role, often being the only ones in sight with their heads on straight.

Romances, on the other hand, always featured women.  Although we now think of a romance as a love story, where the couple ends up happily ever after, a medieval romance was a story that did not focus almost exclusively on fighting.  (The modern French word roman, meaning novel, comes from "romance.")  The best known of these are the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes.  He essentially invented what we think of as King Arthur, including the love triangle with Lancelot, the quest of the Holy Grail, and the like.

As well as glorifying knights and nobles, epics and romances also critiqued them.  In "Roland," the hero (Roland) is undoubtedly brave and true, but his excessive pride loses the king half his army.  In "William of Orange," William would have been destroyed multiple times if not for women coming in to save the day.  Chrétien de Troyes condemned adultery even while introducing Lancelot's adulterous affair with Guinevere.  And in the "Romance of the Rose" the lovers enjoying themselves with fornication are clearly going to hell.

Medieval authors were subtle.  On the one hand, their stories were exciting and fun to read or hear.  On the other hand, the authors worked in all sorts of criticism of the aristocracy, if anyone was paying attention.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

For more on medieval life, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Romans and Anglo-Saxons

Britain was a part of the Roman Empire from the first century BC on.  Not only was the native Celtic population conquered by the Roman legions, but the conquerors settled down and established Roman culture.  Cities were quickly established with forum and amphitheater and temples and baths, like the Roman provincial capitals on the Continent.  Roman foods that had never been seen before in Britain were imported.

A lot of the imports were driven by the needs of the army.  Although Britain was a fairly small part of the Empire in terms of square mileage, it originally garrisoned a great many soldiers as a frontier territory, with unconquered people still there in Cornwall and Wales and wild Picts up in Scotland.  Hadrian's Wall (built under the emperor Hadrian) stretched across what is now northern England, designed to keep Picts out.

Wine and olive oil were imported for the armies--and adopted by the wealthy locals, who started adopting Roman ways.  Apples and pears, dill and coriander, chickens and pigeons, cabbages and daffodils were established and eaten in Britain for the first time.  (Yes, daffodils were eaten.)  The legions built straight, paved roads to travel on and worshipped warrior gods at Roman-style temples.

By the third century AD the wealthy of the original local population had thoroughly adopted Roman culture.  They built large, comfortable villas with mosaic tile floors and heated baths.  Even now, digging in much of England will turn up a lot of flat Roman bricks.  Even after the size of the stationed armies began to decline, as troops were needed off on the eastern frontier, and as imports dropped proportionately, the wealthy had local potteries produce tableware that looked a lot like what had once come in from the Continent.  These Romanized Celts, however, turned back to beer and butter once wine and olive oil stopped arriving on Roman ships.

The fourth century saw a two major change.  The Empire became Christianized, starting in the time of the emperor Constantine.  Roman Britain also became Christian, and the old pagan religions, a mix of local deities and imported Roman gods, moved to the margins.  By the middle of the fifth century Britain was so thoroughly Christianized that it even developed its own Christian heresy, Pelagianism, which essentially denied original sin and said that humans could avoid sin and create their own salvation without receiving (undeserved) grace.

Then, in the later fifth century most of the remaining Roman legions pulled out, to go fight in Persia or along the Danube.  As they left, the Angles and Saxons showed up.  These were Germanic peoples from what is now northern Germany (Saxony), who came across the North Sea and conquered, destroying much of Roman culture.  If school textbooks still talk about the Roman Empire "falling" to Germanic peoples, it is because this actually did happen in Britain, even if not in most of the rest of the Empire, where the Germanic people tended to settle down and become Roman (as in Gaul/France and Spain).

Last-ditch fighting by the Romanized, Christianized population was led by a war-leader (dux) named Arcturus.  He even was temporarily successful, enough that he became the King Arthur of much later legend (on which see more here).  But shortly after 500 the Angles and Saxons triumphed.  England is named for the Angles.  At least some of the Christianized population fled to the margins, although others just accepted their new rulers.

For about a century Britain was cut off from the Continent.  This time is called the Dark Ages by the British, because so little is known about it.  But starting around  the year 600 missionaries from Rome and missionaries from Ireland and Scotland began seeking to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon kings, who had divided the island into a number of small kingdoms.  The missionaries' efforts were helped by the fact that a lot of these kings had married Christian princesses from the Continent.

By 700, Anglo Saxon England had developed literacy (in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon), written law codes, and a sturdy Christianity.  Yet its culture remained quite distinct from that of the Continent, where Roman culture persisted much more strongly, until the Norman Conquest of 1066.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

Medieval poverty

By modern standards, everyone was dirt poor in the Middle Ages.  Even the wealthiest lacked the "things" that everyone but the truly homeless now take for granted:  electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating and air conditioning, telephones, washing machines, automobiles.  There were no TVs or movies, no radios or CD players, no subways or buses, no supermarkets.

Nonetheless, there were always gradations of wealth, with some people considered very rich.  Their wealth was based more on the power to command than on their bank accounts, but those considered rich did have much nicer clothing (and more outfits), better houses and furniture, and on average better food than those considered poor.  Everyone, as is the case now, would have liked to be rich.

During the early Middle Ages especially, wealth was rare.  During this time holiness and wealth were often equated.  God was referred to as the King of Kings, and He was worshipped in churches that might, by later standards, be cramped and dark, but on the inside there was plenty of precious metal on the vessels and silken hangings on the walls.  Bishops lived like princes, which was considered entirely appropriate.

It was clearly understood by everyone that helping the poor was a good Christian duty.  There were however so many poor people that those with wealth essentially gave up.  When most of the population was trying to scratch out a subsistence living, it was hard to know where to start.

But with the economic upturn of the twelfth century, it actually became possible to climb out of poverty.  Merchants could make enough money to rival the nobility in their possessions and lifestyle.  Some peasants became wealthy enough to hire other peasants to do their farm chores for them.  Young men tired of trying to farm unsuitable ground could move to the rapidly growing cities to "make their fortunes" (or at least get a little ahead).

At this time, holiness became defined not with wealth but with poverty, in particular voluntary poverty. Monks had always lived more simply than bishops, but now the new monastic orders sought to give up all personal possessions and live austere lives:  vegetarian diets, undecorated churches, hard manual labor.  The King of Kings became instead the itinerant preacher of the New Testament, begging for a living.  The new monastic orders liked to point out that they were much humbler and poorer than bishops or older monasteries, and hence holier, even though (as they recognized themselves) it was hard to avoid being proud of how humble they were.

Older monastic orders, although not adopting poverty quite so radically, still sought to assure that their monks had only collective property, not individual property.  All of them continued gifts to the poor.  For example, any food left after the monks had eaten was distributed to beggars.  Some monasteries had a group of official poor people living outside the gates, to whom such alms were given and whose feet would be washed on Maundy Thursday.

Today no one voluntarily chooses to be poor (though you might think so, based on the punitive nature of some supposedly anti-poverty programs).  But voluntary poverty was greatly admired in the High Middle Ages (see more here).  The most extreme example was the thirteenth-century Saint Francis (whose name the current pope took), who urged his followers to live by wandering and begging, not even keeping an apple overnight to eat the next day--eat it if you're hungry, but otherwise give it away.  The Franciscan order, unable to maintain this rigor after his death, ended up living essentially like austere monks.

Poverty as a real threat, not just something to be avoided--or chosen--came back in the fourteenth century.  Europe was becoming over-populated, at the same time as the climate was worsening.  Famines broke out on a scale not seen for several centuries, and desperate bands of hungry people might roam the countryside, looking for food.

It was at this time that the distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor was first made.  Now donors wanted to know if the poor they were asked to help really deserved it, were honest, hard-working people who had suffered disasters, or if they were shiftless bums (and probably drunks) who got what was coming to them.  This is a distinction the modern world still makes.

The fourteenth century was also the time of the Black Death and the outbreak of the Hundred Years War.  It was also the beginning of the Renaissance.  A bad time all around.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on medieval poverty  and other aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see the ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon.

Winter Wonderland

To the modern person in the West, winter is both a difficult time and a delight.  Snow can be beautiful as it coats the trees.

(This is actually a color picture, although you might not know it.)

Snuggling inside where it's warm, or engaging in vigorous outdoor activities like skiing, sledding, skating, or building a snowman are happy events.  But they are happy because we have a warm place to go (plus hot chocolate).  We would think of them differently if inside were as cold as outside.

Medieval people certainly saw the beauty in snow-bedecked branches and appreciated being inside where it was warm, but when open fires and animal heat were the only sources of heat (as discussed more here), it was hard to keep the temperature up.

But they had advantages we do not have.  In the modern world, you are expected to get to work, almost certainly by driving.  A snowstorm has to be pretty severe to shut everything down.  So drivers have to make their way along slippery roads, hoping they don't end up in a pileup or in a ditch, assuming they don't just get mired in a drift.  Snowplow drivers have to keep plowing and salting to try to keep businesses open and cars moving.  (Thought to ponder:  How do the snowplow drivers get to work, given that no one will have plowed?)

Medieval people would have traveled by foot or horseback in snowy weather, or, more sensibly, just stayed home.  In Scandinavia, people would ski to get places (cross-country, not downhill).  For much of the population, winter was a time when there was little work to do, other than taking care of the animals, so it actually was possible to stay in bed when modern people would be out scraping ice off their cars and hoping they had enough tire tread.

A real concern for people in the Middle Ages was that the food not run out.  In the modern world fresh vegetables and meat are available year round.  In the medieval world, even for the aristocracy, there was always a question whether the grain for flour (for bread) would last until the next harvest.  Dried beans or lentils, onions, and the occasional piece of sausage might lose their appeal but they were better than not eating.  One could always look forward to the first dandelion greens.

Modern "snowbirds" who go south to avoid winter weather miss the beauty of snow.  Many medieval people would have liked to join them.

A final thought.  In the song "Winter Wonderland," there's a line, "Later on, we'll conspire, as we dream by the fire."  Would perspire make more sense?

© C. Dale Brittain 2016 

For more on medieval life, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Medieval bathing

In the West in the twenty-first century, we take bathing for granted.  You step into the shower, turn a knob, and hot water appears.  There's an apparently unlimited amount, and it's all drinkable, so if you get thirsty during the shower you just open your mouth.  (It is hot, not a tall cool drink.)

We have no idea how lucky we are.  Until extremely recently, bathing was complicated and time-consuming.  Medieval people, like modern people, preferred to be clean and fresh-smelling, but it was a much bigger challenge to get there.  One will sometimes hear that "medieval people did not bathe," but this is simply not true.  (It's marginally true for the late Middle Ages, see below.)

Think about the effort of bringing water from the fountain or well and heating it up over a wood fire--for which you would have had to lug the wood.  The water could have been used instead for drinking or making soup, and the wood could have been used instead for heating or cooking, but you just used it to warm up your bathwater.  A big tub of warm water would be shared by multiple bathers.  This is no different from the US before the early twentieth century; the Laura Ingalls Wilder books talk about the whole family sharing a tub, taking turns from oldest to youngest.

Medieval people had soap, made from fat and lye, which would indeed get you clean, but it would never be mistaken for a floral-scented "body wash."  In monasteries, the Rule the monks followed anticipated a bath Saturday evening, in preparation for Sunday, and for much of the population the weekly bath was the norm.  The aristocracy would bathe more frequently if they could.

Hot spring were prized.  There are hot springs at Aachen, Charlemagne's capital, producing enough hot water for what we would call a swimming pool.  Charlemagne loved to swim and encouraged others to join him in the bath.

The Romans, who had also liked being clean, had built baths across their empire, fed by springs, with fire pits underneath.  These baths continued to be used in the Middle Ages.  Indeed, most medieval towns had municipal baths, where for a few pennies townspeople could come and get clean, though they would be sharing their water with everybody else.

Medieval bath houses were also commercial centers, where you could meet people for business deals, and buy food or trinkets.  They also sometimes were connected to the municipal brothel in the late Middle Ages, which is why there is still a British slang term, "stews," meaning a house of ill-repute (click here for more on medieval brothels).

In the late Middle Ages, after the bath houses were closed out of (justifiable) fear that they would spread the Black Death, aristocrats prided themselves on not bathing.  A sponge bath and hand-washing were about the limit.  Queen Isabelle (of Ferdinand and Isabelle fame) said proudly that she'd had two baths in her life, when she was born and the day before she married Ferdinand, and that she expected to have a third when she had died and was being laid out.  But peasants, getting dirty and sweaty every day, kept right on bathing.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on medieval life, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.