Scribal Terror

How to make (chain)mail

 
Steven Till explains the process

Scott Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard characterizes the process in a nutshell: "Imagine knitting with a die, hammer, and shears." The photo is a detail of the Bayeux haubert. The resolution isn't that great, but I wanted to show the interlocking links.

Medieval skepticism toward witchcraft

 

The attitude of the Church toward witchcraft in the Middle Ages was highly skeptical, as shown in  the Canon Episcopi, written around 900 AD. The gist of the document is that women who believe themselves to be witches are deluded. When the source refers to the "practice of sorcery," it means the heretical belief that one can perform magic, not the actual ability to perform it:

Bishops and their officials must labor with all their strength to uproot thoroughly from their parishes the pernicious art of sorcery and malefice invented by the devil, and if they find a man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject them foully disgraced from the parishes. For the Apostle says, "A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition avoid." Those are held captive by the Devil who, leaving their creator, seek the aid of the Devil. And so Holy Church must be cleansed of this pest. "It is also not to be omitted that some unconstrained women, perverted by Satan, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that, in the dead of night, they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana, with a countless horde of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to fly over vast tracts of country, and to obey her commands as their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on other nights. "But it were well if they alone perished in their infidelity and did not draw so many others into the pit of their faithlessness. For an innumberable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true and, so believing, wander from the right faith and relapse into pagan errors when they think that there is any divinity or power except the one God. "Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every way false, and that such phantasms are sent by the devil who deludes them in dreams. Thus Satan himself, who transforms himself into an angel of light, when he has captured the mind of a miserable woman and has subjected her to himself by infidelity and incredulity, immediately changes himself into the likeness of different personages and deluding the mind which he holds captive and exhibiting things, both joyful and sorrowful, and persons, both known and unknown, and leads her faithless mind through devious ways. And while the spirit alone endures this, she thinks these things happen not in the spirit but in the body. "Who is there that is not led out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much sleeping that he had never seen waking? "Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all these things that are done in the spirit are done in the body, when the Prophet Ezekiel saw visions of God in spirit and not in body, and the Apostle John saw and heard the mysteries of the Apocalypse in spirit and not in body, as he himself says "I was rapt in Spirit". And Paul does not dare to say that he was rapt in his body. "It is therefore to be publically proclaimed to all that whoever believes in such things, or similar things, loses the Faith, and he who has not the right faith of God is not of God, but of him in whom he believes, that is the devil. For of our Lord it is written, "All things were made by Him." Whoever therefore believes that anything can be made, or that any creature can be changed to better or worse, or transformed into another species or likeness, except by God Himself who made everything and through whom all things were made, is beyond a doubt an infidel."

The woodcut I used to illustrate this article is from the Cornell Witchcraft Collection: Ulrich Molitor's  De Lamiis et Phitonicis Mulieribus [About Demons and Witches], 1493. It's much more of a "Renaissance" image than a medieval one. It was not until the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 that witch fever really took hold of the educated European imagination. Previously, educated people thought that witches were deluded people who thought they could perform magic, but by the 16th century magic seemed to be a matter of substance rather than simply illusion.

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

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

"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.

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

"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.

 

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.

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.

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.