Monday, May 28, 2018

Peace and Truce of God

Today is Memorial Day, when we remember those who are no longer with us, and honor veterans.  These days, with an all-volunteer army, veterans are mostly middle class or lower class, not from the ranks of the wealthy or well-connected.  In the Middle Ages, in contrast, the fighters were from the elite, the aristocracy.

What do we want our soldiers to fight for?  Peace.  (Seems ironic, but that's how it appears to work.)  Everybody wants peace (though you might not know it from some video games), peace to raise food and raise their families.  The big thing that Old Testament prophets expected from the Messiah was an era of peace.  In the 1950s, American postmarks said, "Pray for peace."

Medieval people also wanted peace.  The peace they were concerned about was not so much an end to war between nations (at least until you get to the Hundred Years' War) but rather an end to local fighting and brigandage.

Right at the end of the tenth century, at exactly the same time as castles and knights first appeared in France, French bishops started what is called the Peace of God movement.  The coincidence of these three (castles, knights, and Peace of God) was not accidental.  Western Europe had managed to recover from the Vikings and other disasters, and now it faced new challenges to peace.  Knights, fighters on horseback, could work serious damage on the countryside, then retreat behind castle walls where no one could catch them.

The bishops realized they could not physically overcome the knights.  So they did what seemed like the best alternative--shaming the knights to give up hurting people.  The bishops held what they called peace councils, inviting everyone from a region to attend, bringing along the relics of all the local churches.  Here they persuaded the attending knights to swear great oaths not to harm the harmless--people in the church, peasants, women, merchants.  Since in promising not to harm those who couldn't fight back, the knights realized they could still fight each other (more fun anyway), they agreed.

It was not of course a perfect solution.  But it did decrease the overall level of violence and made the regional counts, in their capacity as judges, much more likely to be extremely stern with knights who broke their oaths.  For the entire eleventh century, repeated peace councils were held.  During this period of (relative) peace, castles proliferated.  If you think about it, you need a peaceful period to build a castle.

Emboldened by their success, around 1050 the bishops began the Truce of God.  Here councils sought to get knights to swear they wouldn't even attack each other except at certain times:  not Lent, not Advent, not Sunday, not Friday (and probably not Saturday, as between Friday and Sunday).  Monday through Thursday were good.

The Truce was a lot less successful, but it was a nice try.  With the beginning of the Crusade movement around 1100, churchmen encouraged knights not to kill each other at all, not even a little bit, but to restrict their violence to Muslims.  The twelfth century was a period in which it was clear (in theory anyway) that Christians really weren't supposed to kill Christians.  By the late thirteenth century they'd pretty much abandoned this notion, but it was a nice idea.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

For more about  war, peace, knights, and so much more, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Peasant Revolts

 There's an old, rather tasteless joke:  "The peasants are revolting!"  "Yes, I agree, they smell like cows."  This blog post isn't about the joke.  Rather, it's about fourteenth-century peasant reactions to oppression.

There had been very little of what we would call class consciousness for most of the Middle Ages; that is, people on a manor or in a village or city had thought of themselves as a unit, but they didn’t think of those living on the next manor or in the next village or city as being inherently similar to them.  This changed in the fourteenth century.

Now, for the first time, peasants in one area began to think they had more in common with peasants in another area than they did with the rich and powerful close to whom they lived.  And they were intensely angry at the rich and powerful.

The result was not just the kind of rebellion that had occurred intermittently, when for example peasants on a particular manor felt they were being treated grossly unfairly and fought back.  This was widespread revolution, where peasants across large territories decided they needed to work together.

The elites had brought it on themselves.  In response to crop failures and a decreased number of farm workers after the outbreak of the Black Death, landlords attempted to crack down, enforcing rents and labor dues and making new demands, such as freezing wages for day laborers.  Taxes were also being imposed throughout England to pay for the war with France.  The peasants, not surprisingly, were not about to put up with this treatment.  Questions began to be asked:  What gave the powerful the right to be powerful?

It had long been assumed theologically that a hierarchical social organization on earth mirrored that of Heaven (God, archangels, regular angels, and so on), and that divisions of power and wealth were a sad necessity due to humanity’s sinful nature, the only way to keep all that sinning in check.  But now some people started saying openly that such divisions of power and wealth were themselves sinful.

In England, where the revolts became the fiercest, a popular little ditty went around, “When Adam dug and Eve span [past tense of to spin], Who was then a gentleman?”

The biggest revolt started in in 1381 in southeast England, led by a firebrand named Wat Tyler and by a radical cleric, John Ball.  Peasants, villagers, and townspeople joined together, burning manorial rolls and court records.  They reached London, convinced that King Richard II (seen below, a teenager at the time) would sympathize with them if he only knew what was going on.

Initially the young king negotiated with the revolutionaries, though one must wonder how sincere he was.  Wat Tyler’s group killed a number of leading figures, including the archbishop of Canterbury, then supposedly used his head as a football.  Having had enough, the crown cracked down, and the rebellion was brutally crushed, and its leaders killed.

Although no further peasants’ rebellion was as big, there continued to be smaller ones.  They were all put down, but in response concessions were quietly made, as those in charge realized that maybe the rebels did have a point.  There were no more attempts to impose taxes on peasants to pay for the war.  By the late fifteenth century, English peasants were much better off than they had been earlier.

Note:  I believe in non-violence.  But one does indeed need to stand up to oppression.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

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

Thursday, May 17, 2018


One of the loveliest medieval villages in France is Conques.  It was a major stop on the pilgrimage route from Vézelay to Santiago.  Efforts have been made to link the town's name to the cockle shell that was the emblem of pilgrims.  The medieval bridge at the bottom of the village's hill is still called the "Romey" bridge because pilgrims (locally called Romeys, even though they were going to Spain rather than Rome) headed (and head) across it.  (In fact, cars still use it.)

There are a lot of tourists and modern pilgrims in Conques, but once the tour buses leave it is still a stunning place.  The village is dominated by the old abbey church. The monks had the bones of Saint Foy ("Saint Faith"), supposedly a girl who was martyred by the pagan Roman governor because she wouldn't give up her Christian faith.

In fact, unlike most French churches, Conques still has the relics of their saint.  She was hidden during the French Revolution and is now in a little museum.  The golden reliquary is in the shape of a seated person, with a head that appears to be that of a man from Late Antiquity.  It is encrusted with semi-precious stones.

The monastery of Conques claimed to have been founded by Charlemagne (unlikely, as Charlemagne founded no monasteries), and "proved" it by carving Charlemagne on the front of their church.  They also had a curious silver object (probably really from around the year 1100) that I would say looks like the letter V, but they called "Charlemagne's A."  According to the monks, Charlemagne listed the 24 best monasteries in his empire (the medieval alphabet had 24 letters, not 26, because I and J were the same letter, as were U and V) and gave them each a silver letter to show it.  Conques naturally got the A, as best of all.  When asked why, if Charlemagne had been handing out letters, no one else seemed to have them, the monks responded by saying that other houses were too embarrassed to admit that were (for example) way down at X or Y, or even worse, not even on the 24-best list at all.

The monks had Foy's bones because, they said, the (other) church that had had them since Late Antiquity didn't respect her properly.  The monks sent one of their number who pretended to join that church, stole the relics, and miraculously wasn't spotted as he fled (because of course she wanted to leave).

Because Foy was martyred as a girl, twelfth-century accounts say she still is playful and likes to play tricks on people who might not be properly reverent.  Her particular focus is eyes--she will blind evil-doers and restore the sight of those blinded by evil-doers.  If someone came to Conques to seek healing without bringing any of the jewels she expected in return, she might do something like make their hand swell the next time they wore the withheld rings.

Foy also was subversive (a truculent teenager?).  Any noble lord or high official in the church who did something that harmed a poor person was in trouble.  Even her own monks did not get off scot-free, according to twelfth-century accounts.  When they started locking up the church at night to keep out the pilgrims (fearing they would steal the golden reliquary), she broke the locks to let the pilgrims in.

Conques is definitely worth a visit.  Be sure not to miss the treasury/museum with Foy's reliquary.  I knew she was looking after me when my retina detachment surgery was scheduled for a Catholic hospital and the nurses made  me remove my rings before the surgery.  I didn't dare tell Foy I didn't believe in her until after I was healed (fortunately I got both my rings and my vision back). 

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

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

Monday, May 7, 2018

Mystery plays

In the late Middle Ages, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, townspeople often watched plays.  Some were bawdy, some were religious.  In an era centuries before TV or movies, they were all highly entertaining.

There had been plenty of plays in the ancient world.  The Greeks had written them for religious festivals, retelling old legends or tales of the gods, sometimes as comedy, more frequently as tragedy.  The Romans had continued in the Greek tradition, although everyone now agrees their weren’t nearly as good (the Romans of course would have disagreed).

Plays disappeared in the early Middle Ages, but they started up again in the tenth century when a woman started writing them, Hrotsvitha of the German nunnery of Gandersheim.  Hrotsvitha wrote both poems and plays, as well as some historical works (such as how Gandersheim was founded).  Some of her plays were comedies, written in imitation of Roman playwrights (especially Terence), but most were religious.

These plays retold Bible stories or else presented moral stories, such as a young woman, who wanted to preserve her virginity for Christ, arranging for her would-be suitor to decide to become a monk himself.  Scholars debate whether Hrotsvitha’s plays were performed during her lifetime, but there is no reason to think that they were not, other than the assumption that nuns never did anything interesting.

For the next few centuries, there are infrequent mentions of modest plays, usually taking place in monasteries.  For example, on Easter morning a few monks might put on white veils, to suggest they were women, and act out going to Christ’s tomb and being told by an angel, “He is risen.” 

Sometimes these dramas would be acted for the congregation as well as the monks; if very popular they might even have to be moved outside, which bothered the bishops.

But in the late Middle Ages so-called mystery plays appeared, much more public events.  They were not “mysteries” in the sense of a whodunnit, but rather in the sense of revealing a great and marvelous religious event.  They were put on by guilds of players.  The English mystery plays are the best known, but they were found throughout Europe.

These plays might be put on over a period of days during great religious festivals.  They would retell a well known Bible story, such as the fall of Adam and Eve, or the life of Mary Magdalene.  They were written in the vernacular, so that everyone could understand them, and were generally in verse.  The plays added a human dimension to the basic biblical account.  For example, in the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham has been told by God to sacrifice his son, young Isaac becomes understandably upset when he figures out what his father is planning (don’t worry, the story ends happily when an angel shows up with a sheep to be sacrificed instead).

Mystery plays were ended in England during the Protestant Reformation as “too Catholic,” but one must assume Shakespeare was influenced by them.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

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

Thursday, May 3, 2018


Today I want to talk about a monastery that, unlike the ones I've been discussing recently, never became the head of a monastic order.  But it was and is an extremely significant one:  the Burgundian monastery of Vézelay.

It was a Benedictine monastery for men for most of the Middle Ages, but it began, interestingly enough, as a nunnery.  Count Girard and his wife, named Bertha, decided in 858 to found two monastic houses in Burgundy, one for men (Pouthières) and one for women (Vézelay).  The couple was buried at Pouthières (which you don't need to worry about, because it always stayed small and obscure).  The nuns at Vézelay soon decided life in a rural monastery was too scary and moved to town, being replaced permanently by monks.

By the eleventh century Vézelay was associated with the highly esteemed monastery of Cluny, but it always retained its own abbot, unlike many other houses in Cluny's order.  It really gained attention when it started asserting that it had the bones of Mary Magdalene.  Supposedly the "three Marys" (the Virgin, the Magdalene, and Mary sister of Martha) had all gotten in a boat after the Resurrection and headed west through the Mediterranean.  They got as far as the mouth of the Rhône, along the Riviera, and Mary Magdalene hopped out.

Though she died there in Provence, the monks of Vézelay wanted everyone to know, she was not happy with how she was treated by Provençal locals and appeared in a vision to the monks, asking to be moved to their monastery.  They were happy to oblige.  The house became a great pilgrimage center, both a place to revere the relics of Mary Magdalene and to begin the long pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain.

The church, built in the first half of the twelfth century, is considered one of the glories of Romanesque architecture.  One of its interesting features is that it is lined up along the axis of the sun, so that on the summer solstice light coming in the high side windows shines right along the church's central aisle, making a path of light.

In the image above, you can see that the choir end of the church, the part at the far end where the altar would have been, is just slightly crooked from the orientation of the nave (the main part of the church).  This is because the choir end was built first, and then the architect realized he needed a slightly different angle for the light-down-the-aisle effect.

At the winter solstice, the light instead would illuminate the capitals, the carvings of Bible scenes at the tops of the pillars.  Vézelay is noted for its striking capitals, as in the scene above showing the death of the rich man in the Dives and Lazarus story.

Vézelay was also the place where the Second Crusade was preached.  The Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux persuaded King Louis VII to go on what turned out to be a disastrous effort to retake part of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem that had recently been retaken by the Muslims.  Pilgrims still flock to Vézelay's hill today, though few seem inclined to take off for the Holy Land.  (Many however head for Spain.  I hear there's a bus.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

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