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Friday the thirteenth, 1307

On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templars and sixty of his senior knights in Paris. Thousands of others were arrested elsewhere in the country. After employing torture techniques to compel the Templars to "confess" to wrongdoing, most were eventually executed and sympathizers of the Templars condemned Friday the 13th as an evil day. -- Infoplease

June 13, 2008 at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bad to the bone

 
Significant mercury levels found in the bones of medieval people indicate likely use in treatment of leprosy and other diseases, Spectroscopy Now reports

June 03, 2008 at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"And don't pick your nose!"

A verse from Caxton's Book of Curtesye, printed at Westminster circa 1477.

Kembe your hede, & loke you kepe yt clene;
your eres twayn suffre not fowle to be;
In your wysage loke no spote be sene;
purge your nose; lett no man in yt se
The vile matter; yt ys none honeste;
Ne with your bare hond no fylth from yt feche,
for that ys fowle, & an vncurtoys teche.

It says:

Comb your head and look you keep it clean;
Both your ears suffer not foul to be;
On your face be sure no spot is seen;
Purge your nose; let no man in it see
Vile matter; it is not honorable;
Nor with your bare hand no filth from it fetch,
For that is foul, and a discourteous fault.

June 02, 2008 at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Henry the leper

 
Henry IV (Part Two, for the Shakespeareans amongst us) suffered from a particularly nasty skin disease that his contemporaries thought was leprosy. According to Peter McNiven in the English Historical Review of October 1985:

The most detailed account [of Henry's "leprosy"] is that of Thomas Gascoigne in his Loci e Libro Veritatum. On 8 June 1405, Henry had ordered the beheading of Archbishop Richard Scrope of York after the latter's unsuccessful rebellion in alliance with the earl of Northumberland. At the moment of the execution, according to Gascoigne, the king was on his way from York to Ripon when he was suddenly stricken with "horrible leprosy of the worst sort." He was compelled to break his journey seven miles from York at the village of Green Hammerson, where he was tormented by a "horrible fear" in the night which made him waken his servants with shouts of "Traitors! Traitors! You have thrown fire over me!" His attendants soothed him with strong wine and on the following day he managed to reach Ripon, where he remained incapacitated for a week. An "eye-witness" told Gascoigne that on the eighth day after Scrope's execution, he saw "great leprous pustules" projecting like teats from the king's face and hands. (pp. 747-8)

Obviously this does not describe Hanson's Disease as we know it, but "leprosy" in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was a rather vague umbrella term for skin afflictions that made people cringe and were otherwise unnamed. Henry's complaint has been variously identified as erysipelas, syphilis, and psoriasis.

He doesn't look too bad in his picture though . . . And according to Alison Weir in Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses, when he was exhumed in 1831 his face was well preserved and tended to indicate that the contemporary descriptions were somewhat overwrought (although he could have just gotten over the worst of the effects when he died of a stroke.)

June 01, 2008 at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

John Arderne, medieval proctologist

John Arderne was a fourteenth century surgeon with the enviable title, Father of Proctology. Arderne specialized in the surgical treatment of anal fistula (fistula in ano), a "condition where a large, painful lump appears between the base of the spine  and the anus" (Wikipedia), which he was able to excise in a dramatic, dangerous, and surprisingly successful procedure. A manuscript describing Arderne's method   -- with pictures! -- is featured in the Glasgow Special Collections Library

May 30, 2008 at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"Medieval" chastity belts never existed

 

According to BBC's h2g2 (and basically all historians of the period):

There are, in fact, no genuine chastity belts dating from medieval times: all known 'medieval' chastity belts have been produced in the first half of the 19th Century. These fake-medieval chastity belts are too heavy and the workmanship is too crude, even for medieval standards. The oldest design for a chastity belt that can be taken seriously dates from the 16th Century - but it's just a design, with no real working models believed to have ever been constructed. The concept of a chastity belt itself is a lot older, but it was usually used in poems in a metaphorical sense. According to Dr Eric John Dingwall, who wrote a deeper study on the subject in 1931, 'the chastity belt probably made its first appearance in ordinary use among the Italians of the period of the Renaissance or perhaps somewhat later.'

Most of the 'medieval' chastity belts on display in museums have been tested to confirm their actual age. As a result, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (Nürnberg), the  Musée Cluny (officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge, or the Middle Age Museum) in Paris and The British Museum in London have all either removed the chastity belts from their medieval displays or corrected the date.

 

May 28, 2008 at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Late Gothic sketchbook

 

Glorious illuminations at BibliOdyssey:

Stephen Schreiber's late gothic pattern book was produced in Urach in the (now) state of Baden-Württemberg in South-West Germany in 1494. It was dedicated to Count Eberhard (Eberhard the bearded, later first Duke) of Württemberg.

The parchment manuscript appears to be a manual of templates and/or a practice book containing partially completed sketches, painted and calligraphy initals, stylised floral decorative motifs, plant foliage tendrils, fantastic beast border drolleries, together with some gold and silver illumination work.

May 19, 2008 at 06:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Viking sword hilt found


An elaborate Viking sword hilt was found on the Isle of Man by two gentlemen with a metal detector. Here's how 24-Hour Museum describes the pommel (top part):

Rather like a set of knuckles, the pommel (the top part of the sword) design is divided into 5 parts, or lobes, each with intricately carved designs. In between the lobes are sets of finely twisted silver wires – a technique seen a few times on artefacts from the Isle.

A vertical piece, the grip, would have attached these two fragments. The bottom part is called the cross-guard.

May 07, 2008 at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The princess and the barbarian

 
No, it was not a love affair. The Byzantine princess, Anna Comnena (1083-1153), was a sophisticated, astute, and highly educated woman, a historian whose work is still considered so reliable that it is often cited as one of the most definitive sources for the era of the First Crusade. The barbarian was Bohemond (1058-1111), one of the Norman leaders (there was no single leader -- the First Crusade was the ultimate example of decisions made by a committee, often a committee of lunatics). Here is how Anna described Bohemond at a meeting with her father, the Emperor Alexios I (1048-1118), which she witnessed:

Now the man was such as, to put it briefly, had   never before been seen in the land of the Romans [i.e., the Byzantines] be he either of the barbarians or of the   Greeks (for he was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and his reputation was terrifying).   Let me describe the barbarian's appearance more particularly -he was so tall in stature   that he overtopped the tallest by nearly one cubit, narrow in the waist and loins, with   broad shoulders and a deep chest and powerful arms. And in the whole build of the body he   was neither too slender nor overweighted with flesh, but perfectly proportioned and, one   might say, built in conformity with the canon of Polycleitus. He had powerful hands and   stood firmly on his feet, and his neck and back were well compacted. An accurate observer   would notice that he stooped slightly, but this was not from any weakness of the vertebrae   of his spine but he had probably had this posture slightly from birth. His skin all over   his body was very white, and in his face the white was tempered with red. His hair was   yellowish, but did not hang down to his waist like that of the other barbarians; for the   man was not inordinately vain of his hair, but had it cut short to the ears. Whether his   beard was reddish, or any other colour I cannot say, for the razor had passed over it very   closely and left a surface smoother than chalk, most likely it too was reddish. His blue   eyes indicated both a high spirit and dignity; and his nose and nostrils breathed in the   air freely; his chest corresponded to his nostrils and by his nostrils . . . the breadth   of his chest. For by his nostrils nature had given free passage for the high spirit which   bubbled up from his heart. A certain charm hung about this man but was partly marred by a general air of the horrible. For in the whole of his body the entire man shewed implacable and savage both in his size and glance, methinks, and even his laughter sounded to others   like snorting. He was so made in mind and body that both courage and passion reared their   crests within him and both inclined to war. His wit was manifold and crafty and able to   find a way of escape (lit. " handle ") in every emergency. In conversation he   was well informed, and the answers he gave were quite irrefutable. This man who was of   such a size and such a character was inferior to the Emperor alone in fortune and   eloquence and in other gifts of nature. -- From the Alexiad by Anna Comnena

Better on-the-spot reporting you could not find if you sent CNN back in a time machine with a satellite dish and a horde of producers. If you want to see history happen, read Anna Comnena.

May 04, 2008 at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The funeral cart of St. Arigius


This wall painting from the Chapel Saint-Erige, located in the south of France, depicts the saint (also known as Arigius) being borne in procession by an ox yoked with a bear. The paintings in Saint-Erige are dated October 1451. Saint Arigius himself lived in the sixth century. He was a bishop who was acquainted with Gregory the Great. According to the chapel website:

As bishop of Gap, Erige was coming back from Rome where he had met pope Gregory the Great, when he was attacked by bandits in a place called "Colla Longa" on the other side of the Tinée.

The legend says his horse miraculously cleared the five hundred metres deep valley at one bound and found itself on the plateau of Auron, at the very spot where the chapel has been built.

 

April 30, 2008 at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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