Monthly Round-up

A November true to form, cold and windy. What did the internet bless us with this month?

A new geeky twitter account for you, Archbishop Walter de Grey. "Archbishop of York and former chancellor to King John. 800 years behind the times. Per manum"
https://twitter.com/AbpGray?lang=en

A guide to medieval sources from the Bodleian:
http://www.medievalhistories.com/guide-to-medieval-sources/

Some PhD writing tips (bit niche, but what can I say - I'm biased at the moment)
http://amberdavis.nl/tag/write-a-phd-almost-painlessly/

Book on medieval swear words (why wouldn't you be interested?)
http://www.medievalists.net/2013/11/08/by-gods-bones-medieval-swear-words/?utm_content=buffer48719&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Medieval Christmas market, 11-13th December, King's Lynn:
www.kingslynnchristmas.co.uk

Letter written on birchbark:
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/birchbark-message-reveals-story-of-medieval-traveler-151106
  

And finally, look how happy the skeleton on the far right looks?

De Lisle Psalter, England, BL MS Arundel MS 83 II, f. 127 r.

 

Pilgrim Badges, a short introduction

A spotlight on pilgrim souvenirs today. Much like today, the medieval pilgrim picked up items to remind them of a journey undertaken. This tradition is most famously seen through the scallop shells worn by pilgrims who had visited the shrine of St James at Compostela and the shell later became a general emblem of pilgrims. 

Beyond shells, small images depicting the saint may be cast (usually in cheap lead) and then worn with a pin or fastened onto clothing. In addition to pins, shrines also branched out into ampullae which were essentially small metal flasks which may be filled with oil or water. 

Pilgrim “souvenirs” first appeared after the death of Thomas Becket in 1170. Miracles involving his blood soon followed and the cult of miracles around his body began. 

Thomas’s relics ended up across Europe in reliquaries but the less wealthy also wanted them so the Canterbury metalworkers responded by moulding portable containers decorated with images and inscriptions.

Ampullae were produced at Canterbury during the 12^th-13^th c. and were adopted elsewhere. They proved particularly popular with sites linked with water such as the Benedictine Abbey at Vendôme with its “Holy tear of Christ” and the sanctuary at Boulogne-sur-mer which had a statue of the Virgin Mary which appeared from the sea in an unmanned boat. 

The primary difference between these two forms of souvenir is that badges are items that have come into contact with the holy place of pilgrimage, while ampullae contained physical material from the place and therefore a fraction of its (for want of a better word) “power”.

A little bit of show and tell now, here is a pilgrim badge I happened to get my paws on. This is a 14th century medieval pilgrim badge, decorated with the head of John the Baptist within a raised border of relief rings and dots. Fastenings for pin fixing on reverse. Found near Grantham in Lincolnshire.

Similar examples can be found near Kings Lynn (top, 14th century, P.A.S.: NMS-E40D22), Bury St Edmunds (middle left, 14th century, Kunera: 15299),  London (middle right, 14th Century, Kunera: 10001), near Middelburg (bottom left, 15th century, Kunera: 16458) and Thérouanne (bottom right, 16th century,  Kunera: 10821). 

The cult of St John the Baptist began in the 13th century when Walon de Sarton whilst on crusade claimed a portion of John’s skull during the sack of Constantinople in 1204. The relic was gifted to the bishop of Amiens in 1206 and placed in the cathedral where it was exhibited on a silver dish, later embellished with gems and replaced by a gold dish.

The iconography of these items allows us to not only determine where an item is likely to have originated (Amiens), but also the destinations of pilgrims after they left the shrine; revealing pan-European routes of communication. With this item for example, its stylistically similar counterparts show that pilgrims from Amiens were travelling/returning to the Netherlands and Eastern England. 

A small piece of information, but one that feeds into a bigger picture of how the medieval world was communicating. 

I wonder what our discarded and lost items would say about us today?

Notes

Thanks are due to Lloyd de Beer, a colleague from the BAA who helped me in identifying the badge in the first place.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/departments/staff/prehistory_and_europe/lloyd_de_beer.aspx

Image: A dog dressed as a pilgrim, BL Royal 10 E IV, f. 57v

Anderson, W.” Blessing the fields? A study of late-medieval ampullae from England and Wales”, Medieval Archaeology (2010), vol. 54, pp. 1-14 

Garcia, M. “Medieval Medicine, Magic, and Water: The dilemma of deliberate deposition of pilgrim signs”, Peregrinations (2005), vol. 1, issue 3

Kunera database:

http://www.kunera.nl/

PAS (Portable Antiquities Scheme):

https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/206392

Martinmas

So, along with Remembrance Day, the 11^th of November is also the feast day of St Martin.

In medieval England, St Martin’s day, or Martinmas, was the day in which welcome was officially welcomed in and marked the end of the harvest in many areas. 

The first two weeks of November were traditionally a time for slaughtering livestock for winter and tasting the wine made in the summer. Indeed, when a prize cow was killed at this time, the cow was called the “Martlemas” and there are references to such an ox in Henry IV Part 2, scene II.

 

Along with beef, this festival is associated with pork products which in Yorkshire, were referred to rather charmingly as “pig cheer”. 

In honour of the occasion, I thought I’d share a recipe of fifteenth century recipe for beef stew:

“Beef y-Stywyd. Take fayre beef of þe rybbys of þe fore quarterys, an smyte in fayre pecys, an wasche þe beef in-to a fayre potte; þan take þe water þat þe beef was soþin yn, an strayne it þorw a straynowr, an sethe þe same water and beef in a potte, an let hem boyle to-gederys; þan take canel, clowes, maces, graynys of parise, quibibes, and oynons y-mynced, perceli, an sawge, an caste þer-to, an let hem boyle to-gederys; an þan take a lof of brede, an stepe it with brothe an venegre, an þan draw it þorw a straynoure, and let it be stylle; an whan it is nere y-now, caste þe lycour þer-to, but nowt to moche, an þan let boyle onys, an cast safroun þer-to a quantyte; þan take salt an venegre, and cast þer-to, an loke þat it be poynaunt y-now, & serue forth.

Stewed Beef. Take fair beef of the ribs of the fore quarters, and smite in fair pieces, and wash the beef into a fair pot; then take the water that the beef was washed in, and strain it through a strainer, and boil the same water and beef in a pot, and let them boil together; then take cinnamon, cloves, mace, grains of paradise, cubebs, and minced onions, parsley, and sage, and cast there-to, and let it boil together; then take a loaf of bread, an steep it with broth and vinegar, and then draw it through a strainer, and let it be still; and when it is nearly done, add the liquid there-to, but not to much, and then let boil once, and add saffron there-to a quantity; then take salt and vinegar, and add there-to, and look that it taste poynaunt enough, & serve forth.”

Follow the link in the notes for a recipe you can actually try!

Notes

Modern recipe courtesy of:

http://www.godecookery.com/mtrans/mtrans29.htm

Austin, T., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS. 4016, with extracts from Ashmole MS. 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS 55. (London, N. Trübner & Co.: 1888)

Guest blog - Saint Guinefort,The Holy Greyhound

I have the pleasure of introducing a blog written by a colleague of mine Katie Philips who works on the patronage and perceptions of leprosy in thirteenth-century England and France.

In the course of my research into French leper-houses, which were mostly founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, I have been surprised by the range of saints to whom these were dedicated.

Probably the most surprising saint, however, was Saint Guinefort. Guinefort was a French greyhound, who was first recorded in the thirteenth century. Having saved a child’s life, a cult developed around Guinefort, and he became recognised as a patron of sick children.

By Eldanis, http://www.deviantart.com/art/Saint-Guinefort-502088643

It is unlikely that the dog’s name was actually Guinefort; apparently the word guigner is a patois word in France which can mean ‘to wag’, and fort translates as ‘strongly’, so whatever his real name, he was obviously a very happy hound. The name may also come from the Greek name Christopher – who, confusingly, is sometimes depicted with a dog’s head in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

I was particularly curious about the leper-house I had found with the same name, as it was located around 300 miles away from Guinefort’s native town, and I wondered if such a cult would have spread that far, but it appears there was a human Saint Guinefort too. Although not recorded until much later, he is believed to have lived during the fourth century. An Irishman who travelled to Milan, he was persecuted for preaching, and sentenced to execution.

But his executors, instead of beheading him, decided to fill him with arrows so that he ‘resembled a hedgehog’. He didn’t die – he dragged himself to Pavia, where numerous blind persons, invalids and lepers were reputed to have been healed.

This parallels the persecution of Saint Sebastian, and both developed reputations as protectors against the plague, along with Saint Roch and Saint Anthony (who is also associated with ergotism, but that’s another story).

Saint Roch showing off his plague spot

British Library, MS Egerton 2125, f.209v

Evidently the reports of the human Guinefort healing leprosy would have made him an attractive protector and intercessor saint for the poor lepers, and this is probably the reason the name was chosen. A hospital dedication, like a church dedication, would have to be confirmed with a consecration service to a recognised saint, and the dog was unfortunately not officially canonised by the papacy.

But we’d obviously all prefer to believe that Saint Guinefort the Holy Greyhound was uppermost in the patrons’ minds when they chose the name.

Notes

More on Katie: https://reading.academia.edu/KatiePhillips

 

Étienne de Bourbon, De Superstitione, Internet Medieval Source Book, [URL:  http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/guinefort.asp]

Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound (trans. Martin Thom), (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press) 1983.