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While the education in Medieval Times was only for those who were upper class, education itself focused on learning Latin (since this was the most common language among merchants). Also, there were no textbooks in Medieval England as they were extremely expensive (just like college textbooks) and the only two colleges that men could go to (sorry ladies) was Oxford and Cambridge. CP

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Every lesson taught at a grammar school was taught in Latin and the teaching centered around ensuring the boys were able to recite new information from memory, regardless of whether or not they had understood that information.

Sadly, books were incredibly expensive in medieval England so this was not an option. By the year 1500, there were grammar schools in most of England's larger towns, with one of the oldest located in Maidstone, Kent.

Each schools was incredibly small, with many only provided a single room for all of boys attending and their teacher. This teacher would come from a religious background and would focus on teaching the older boys, who would then be tasked with teaching the younger.

Days varied in length depending on the seasons, with lessons beginning at sunrise and ending at sunset. There was also a culture of discipline in the classrooms and mistakes could be punished with a birch to ensure they were not made again.

If boys succeeded in grammar school they could then be sent to university. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were both founded during medieval times and were renowned for their teaching, so they were common choices for those who could afford further education.

Sadly for peasants, the ability of their sons to gain an education was down to the lord of the manor, who would have to grant permission. In cases where peasants were not given permission, they would face a large fine. Historians have suggested this could have been a way of ensuring peasants remained in their place and were no threat to the Feudal System.

There were very few girls at normal school, with wealthy families either home schooling their daughters or schooling them at another nobleman's home, at home or abroad. Regardless of their place of learning, daughters of the nobility were all taught the same - how to run a household, how to ensure their husband was looked after and, if they were lucky, how to play an instrument and sing.

See also: Medieval Studies

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Every lesson taught at a grammar school was taught in Latin and the teaching centered around ensuring the boys were able to recite new information from memory, regardless of whether or not they had understood that information. Sadly, books were incredibly expensive in medieval England so this was not an option.

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Eels as Currency- Weird (Good? Bad? Ugly?...)

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Eels as Currency- Weird (Good? Bad? Ugly?...)

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Eels were seen as a widely accepted and even valuable form of payment! It was common for tenants to pay their rent with extensive numbers of eels. They were also seen as an ideal food to consume for sustenance throughout the period of Lent, as Catholics were allowed to eat fish while avoiding other meats, so as not to encourage "carnal desires". (ED)

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Heritage Images/Getty Images

Catholics were expected to practice abstinence - refrain from sex - during Lent. Meat was thought to excite people's libidos, so they had to abstain from meat as well. Fish, and especially eels, however, were not believed to encourage carnal desires, and so were fine to eat. Because eels only develop sex organs at the end of their life, they were thought to be asexual and therefore an ideal Lenten dish.

The eels weren't just a valuable source of food, however. They became their own de facto currency, and landlords who received eels as payment could turn around and use them to pay for purchases. For example, monks at the Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire traded 4,000 eels in exchange for access to the limestone quarries at Peterborough Abbey, according to History Extra.

Throughout the 13th century, eel payments continued to drive the economy, but after the Black Death, eels rents gave way to other forms of payment. Meat became more readily available as a greater number of people converted farmland into pastures, and demand for eels dropped. Eel payments steadily declined until around 1500, when the practice disappeared almost entirely.

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This Is How Eels Powered The Economy In Medieval England

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Heritage Images/Getty Images Catholics were expected to practice abstinence - refrain from sex - during Lent. Meat was thought to excite people's libidos, so they had to abstain from meat as well. Fish, and especially eels, however, were not believed to encourage carnal desires, and so were fine to eat.

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There are some dog breeds that date back to the Dark Ages, including the Mastiff, Greyhounds, and the Irish Wolfhound. These dogs were with either the purpose of being a tiedog (roaming and protecting property at night, tied during the day) or as sighthounds (used in a plethora of hunting sports). RG

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Greyhounds, alaunts, spaniels, mastiffs, and hounds from Livre de la chasse.
Paris, France, ca. 1406-1407, MS M.1044 fol. 28v

Excerpt from Hounds of Muckle Speed by Cynthia Cameron
"Up with ye -- ye big beast."Morag looked down at the large dog peacefully sprawled across the hearth. Gareth was fully absorbed in the gnawing of a bone and didn't show the slightest interest in moving from his favorite spot. "Come now ye great wiry-haired giant, let me to the hearth,"she nudged the hound with her foot as she spoke. "The master will be wanting after his breakfast."Morag managed to wedge herself up to the fire while still attempting to push the big dog away with her foot. "He'll be needing his strength for the hunt." Gareth stopped chewing, looked up at her as if to consider, then returned his interest to the bone, oblivious to Morag's continued grumbling. "Then again, I suppose the real hunter could use a better breakfast too."She fished a kipper from the pan and dangled it from its tail a moment before tossing it backwards across the room. "Aye, that's better."Morag stepped back into the now open space just as Rory MacPherson entered the room wrapped in the muted colors of hunting tartan, quiver slung across his back and bow in hand. Gareth rose and looked at him expectantly. "Mornin', your lairdship."Morag set a plate of kippers and bannocks on the table. "Morning, Morag. A fine day it tis, but even finer for the feast this eve!"A handful of bannocks vanished into the recesses of his plaid. "Come hound of muckle speed,"he tossed the waiting dog a kipper. "Awa for the chase."
Sighthounds

In historic times ownership of rare sighthounds (dogs that hunt by sight rather than scent) was restricted to persons of rank or nobility and hunting dogs were highly valued. While possession of sighthounds today is not restricted, it is enjoyed by a limited number of enthusiasts. Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more frequent to see these dogs in their historic roles at re-creation events. Not only does it add flavor to the event, but such accompaniment can add rich authenticity and accuracy to the persona itself. Hounds of present have survived with their aristocratic character and traits intact and their physical norms only slightly altered from earlier standards. The sighthound's heritage is a colorful picture of medieval life which, due to their exclusive status, brought some breeds near to extinction. Heraldry and tapestries abound with Greyhound-type dogs. One of the panels of the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold accompanied by a pack of hounds varying in size.

The border of the Bayeux Tapestry contains many breeds of dogs, some of which appear to be Greyhounds, Deerhounds, Wolfhounds and Mastiffs. What follows is a brief history of the nobleman's best friend--dogs prized by kings, princes and nobility for their great speed and endurance and respected for their beauty, grace and dignity.

Sighthounds or gazehounds are some of the most ancient breeds in the world. For thousands of years man relied on their superior hunting skills. Throughout history royal houses from many lands have been linked with sighthounds. While its origins are not positive, the Greyhound is thought to date back over 4000 years to ancient Egypt--a favorite of the pharaohs and predecessor of other sighthound breeds. Explorers from Greece brought Greyhounds from the Middle East. Alexander the Great is said to have kept one. Their popularity grew in Greece and from there the dogs spread across Europe.

A lord and lady hunting with a greyhound. Pierpont Morgan
Library, MS m131.

Greyhounds

The name Greyhound is thought to be derived from the Saxon word "grei"which means beautiful. During the Dark Ages Greyhounds were saved from near extinction by priests who bred the dogs for noblemen. In 1014 possession of a Greyhound became an exclusive right of the nobility, put into law by King Canute. Well-stocked royal forests were the hunting grounds for these hounds and their masters. Forest laws introduced in 1016 made hunting and poaching forbidden to all people other than those connected with royal estates. Throughout the Renaissance Greyhounds were a favorite of royalty--prized by Queen Elizabeth--and the most common dog used in heraldry. Coursing, the chasing of a live hare, has taken place for at least 2000 years, but it was not until Tudor times that it became popular in England. Coursing was a pastime that turned into a sport and has continued into the present century.

Irish Wolfhounds

The origin of the Irish Wolfhound, the national dog of Ireland, is believed to date back prior to the Christian era. The first reference to the breed was in 391 BC when several Irish Wolfhounds were taken to Rome and, "all Romans viewed them in wonder."Ancestors of the present day breed were used by Irish kings and nobles for pursuit of elk, wolf and wild boar. In his autobiography, Saint Patrick tells how he looked after his master's Wolfhounds until he was able to escape slavery by jumping onto a ship transporting Wolfhounds to wealthy buyers in France.

Detail of a miniature of King Garamantes, being rescued by
his dogs; from the Rochester Bestiary, England (Rochester?),
c. 1230, Royal MS 12 F. xiii, f. 30v.

With the speed inherited from their Greyhound ancestors, together with larger size and greater strength which was developed from living in a harsher climate, the Irish Wolfhound was able to overpower its prey or to hold it at bay until the hunter arrived to seal its fate. Wolfhounds primarily defeated their game by breaking its spine with their jaws. The Irish Wolfhound is elegant, gentle and trusting, but when the occasion arises it can be intimidating and swift--qualities echoed in an ancient Irish king's motto, "gentle when stroked, fierce when provoked."So prized were these dogs that their ownership was limited to nobility. The thirteenth century monument at Beddglert Priory in Wales is a good example of how highly regarded and valued a good hound was. It is believed to have been erected by Welsh prince, Llewellen Fawr, in tribute to his beloved and favorite wolfhound, Faithful Gelert, a gift given to him by his father-in-law, King John.

The fourteenth through sixteenth centuries English monarchs requested these dogs, referred to as "large greyhounds, rough greyhounds or wolfdogs"and described as, "like powerful shaggy greyhounds, but a good deal larger" be sent from Ireland to England. In 1658, Oliver Cromwell ordered a ban on the export of these hounds from the British Isles, as their numbers were on the decline and they were needed in England to keep the wolf population under control. But, with the disappearance of the wolf from the British Isles in the eighteenth century, the breed suffered a drastic decline and became almost extinct.

In 1862, Captain George Graham, a Scotsman, began re-establishing the Wolfhound by crossing a few survivors of the breed with the Scottish Deerhound and other breeds, including the Great Dane and probably the Borzoi. Later, in 1902, he was asked on behalf of the Irish Wolfhound Club, founded after he and a few other enthusiasts successfully rescued the breed, to choose an Irish Wolfhound which could be presented to the Irish Guards as their mascot. Today an Irish Wolfhound is still the mascot of the Irish Guards and is seen on parade with the regiment every year on Saint Patrick's Day.

Fernhill's Kendra, champion
Scottish Deerhound

Scottish Deerhounds

Gentle and dignified, the Scottish Deerhound still portrays the power, speed and strength of its ancestors. Affectionate, and loyal, and always eager to please, the Royal Dog of Scotland, Highland Greyhound, Rough Greyhound and Scottish Deerhound are the names by which this aristocratic and ancient hound were known in the past. Like many older breeds, it's history is not easy to define. There is no doubt the breed resembles the Greyhound, whose ancestors are thought to have been brought to Britain by Phoenician traders in the second century B.C. Whether or not dogs had long or short coats at that time is not known. If similar to other breeds who were taken to colder harsher climates, they would, out of necessity, have developed thick coats. A surviving manuscript from the sixteenth century notes, "some are of a greater sorte, some of a lesser; some are smoothe skynned and some curled, the bigger therefore are appointed to hunt bigger beasties."Most certainly the description is of Greyhounds and the Wolfhounds and Deerhounds evolved from them. At one time Deerhounds were thought to be identical with the "Irish Wolfdog"and, in the course of centuries, bred to a type better suited to hunt deer or to a descendant of the hounds of the Picts.

From the earliest times sighthounds were used for deer coursing. The Deerhound is quiet and dignified, keen and alert. While not aggressive, it has great persistence and indomitable courage when necessary, all desirable traits; but, most valued was the combination of speed and strength necessary to cope with Scottish deer weighing up to 250 pounds. Hounds were hunted singly or in pairs.

Owing to their outstanding ability, Deerhounds had few equals and were highly esteemed. This meant that only Highland Chieftains and the aristocracy who owned large deer-forests kept these hounds--anyone in a lesser position was not permitted to do so. Deerhounds were so highly coveted, that a noble lord condemned to death might purchase his reprieve with a pair.

Harold hunting with deerhounds and wolfhounds in the 11th century, Bayeaux tapestry.
The largest are depicted as nearly as tall as the stag.

As the larger beasts of the chase became extinct or rare in England and southern Scotland, the smaller, more delicate Greyhound took the place of the larger Deerhound coursing rabbit and smaller game. In the highlands of Scotland, the stag remained numerous in the wild and became the last stronghold of the Deerhound. Highland Chieftains assumed exclusive ownership which was enforced to such an extent that it was rare to find a good specimen south of the River Forth. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the prejudice of King George II's Hanoverian government sought to demolish the clan system (including clans loyal to the crown) by diminishing the hierarchy of the clan and inserting their own rule. With the collapse of the clan system and the invention of the sporting rifle came the decline of the breed--so much so that a visitor to Gordon Castle in 1769 had good reason to be excited when he said he saw, "a true Scottish Greyhound is of large size, strong, deep chested, and covered with a very long rough hair."

In 1825, Duncan and Archibald McNeil undertook the restoration of the breed. Along with Lord Colonsay, the Menzies family and other Highland owners, the Deerhounds, although somewhat smaller in size, were saved from extinction and regained their former perfection as "Royal Dog of Scotland."Centuries of acting as guard and hunting companion to its master has given the Deerhound, and its Irish cousin the Wolfhound, a desire for human companionship, eagerness to please, excellent temperament and a gentle dignity. Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Sir Walter Scott were all devoted owners of Deerhounds, demonstrating that the breed was gaining in popularity as the century drew to a close. Sir Walter Scott described them as, "The most perfect creature of Heaven."

Mastiffs hunting a stag from
Livre de La Chasse by Gaston Phoebus

Mastiffs

The Mastiff is not a sighthound, but carries an impressive history romanticized throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It is one of the few breeds, probably including the Greyhound, that can be traced to a time when nations from the East dominated the world. They are large, powerful dogs which possess the qualities of courage and grandeur yet can be gentle and affectionate. The term "mastiff"describes a group of giant varieties of dog rather than a single breed. Supposedly originating in Asia, the Tibetan Mastiff is thought to be the most direct descendant of the prototype. Next would be today's Old English Mastiff disputed by some to be the main root from which come the other Mastiff groups. Surviving art and literature record how active, massive dogs lived centuries before the Christian era. Drawings on Egyptian monuments of typical Mastiffs date to about 3000 BCE. In Chinese literature the earliest reference is about 1121 BCE. Many nations from the Middle East and the Orient--Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Tibet and China--employed Mastiff type dogs in significant numbers for their fighting and hunting qualities. Large numbers of these dogs were kept for hunting various types of big game, mainly wild boar and lions. Besides being used by armies to protect their encampments and their livestock against predators, some armies, especially the Greeks and Romans, trained the dogs for battle and for defense purposes. They were also used for fighting in the Roman arenas against gladiators and defenseless prisoners. Guarding comes naturally to the Mastiff. In the Orient, Mastiffs guarded palaces, monasteries, temples and any property of value.

Records indicate that Mastiffs, or dogs closely resembling the breed, were already established in Britain when the Roman Legions invaded in 43ad. Although they may have been indigenous, it seems more likely the dogs were brought to Britain either by the Celts or by the Phoenicians, known traders of livestock.

In the British Isles, due to their size and strength, Mastiff activities were the same as they had been for centuries. While the Mastiff was always considered a fighting dog, it was as a tiedog (tied by day, loose at night) that it earned its keep. During Anglo-Saxon times the keeping of Mastiffs was compulsory for the peasant. For each two villeins (villagers) there was to be kept at least one Mastiff. By this means wolves and game animals were kept under control and the manor profitable.

That the Mastiff was so numerous in England is evidenced in the English language itself. The ancient word in Anglo-Saxon and kindred languages for a canine is similar to "hound."The modern word "dog"means a mastiff-type dog in all languages except English. In 1066, when the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons, Norman-French became the official language and "dogues"(or Mastiffs) were so plentiful that people came to call all canines by that name. The Mastiff was also known by another name, the Alaunt, an Italian-French word, deriving from the Alani or people of Albania, where the dogs were highly regarded in ancient times. In the "Knight's Tale" Chaucer describes the Mastiff's majesty of size and power:

"About his char ther wenten white Alaunts
Twenty and mo,
as gret as any stere
To hunten at the leon ore the dere."

Forest laws introduced to preserve the monarch's deer in 1016 were not entirely successful. Poachers were punished severely. During the reign of King John, "all Mastiffs found poaching in the Crown Forests" were ordered to be destroyed. Mastiffs were also used in the sport of bear and bull baiting, popular in the Roman arenas, and introduced to Britain with the arrival of the Legions. This pursuit was very popular in the Tudor dynasty and continued in one form or another until finally banned in 1835 by Queen Victoria. Mastiffs were employed within the English armies through the times of Henry VIII. Due to social changes and improved weapons of the seventeenth century, the fine qualities of these dogs were no longer required and there was a gradual decline. By 1946 the breed had been reduced to less than ten that were safeguarded in the United States after the outbreak of World War II. Luckily, since then the breed has been reestablished.

Adopting a pet

Today these rare dogs are being carefully bred to preserve their noble heritage and the best traits of the breed and seen most frequently in the show ring, but also on the hearth as loyal companions; living gems of history to be treasured. The good news is ownership is now open to those of us "lower than the rank of earl"and information is readily available on the different breeds. If you think one of these stately hounds is for you make sure you, look at all the angles before making your decision. First, know something about the breed before you bring it home. Determine if owning a hound is in the best interests of the dog. Do you have the time, space and finances to keep an animal? Dogs require exercise, space and affection to keep them physically and mentally happy. Health care is essential and can be costly. Puppies grow up to be dogs and live for many years. Training requires diligence and patience. While dogs are a huge responsibility they can payoff in a rewarding friendship and allow you to bring a living piece of history to your daily life.


About the Author

Cynthia Cameron is a freelance writer and dog breeder residing in Tucson.

Resources

Greyhound Pets of America
800-366-1472

Arizona Greyhound Rescue
520-647-7572

For quality breeders,
call your local kennel club
American Kennel Club

Further Reading

Medieval Hunting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_hunting

Nothin' but a hounddog
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/02/nothin-but-a-hound-dog.html

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Greyhounds, alaunts, spaniels, mastiffs, and hounds from Livre de la chasse. Paris, France, ca. 1406-1407, MS M.1044 fol. 28v Excerpt from Hounds of Muckle Speed by Cynthia Cameron "Up with ye -- ye big beast."Morag looked down at the large dog peacefully sprawled across the hearth.

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Witchcraft became popular in England in 15th century. There was an ironic generalization that witch were characterized as  old-women, invariably poor, has distinct physical appearance. Many unfortunate women had to gone through appalling torture due to this poor stigmatization.

-RK

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Are the lyrical poets or musician, popular in France during 11th to 13th century. The main characters of secular music in medieval era. Traveled across Europe to sing songs about chivalry (Knights conduct) or courty love. Members of the group included knights and nobles who joined the Crusades (some type of war).

-RK

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Hats of many different varieties were worn during the middle ages! Although hats of fine materials were considered status symbols for the nobility, serfs were also able to participate in the hat wearing fun and typically wore hats made of straw or other cheap material.

mm

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The reality of living in a medieval castle was that they were dark, damp, smelly, crowded, and there was always something that the castle servants and workers needed to do for their lords and ladies. (MJ)

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Bards were a class of musicians who played musical instruments and songs to celebrate victories and religion of the people. (MJ)

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The word Bard was used chiefly to signify a Celtic musician or poet. Although several equivalent words were used to denote musicians and poets in other cultures as well. Medieval bards have greatly influenced the history, music and culture of the Celts and were chiefly responsible for the rise of secular music in the middle ages.

Medieval Bard - Definition and Description

Bard is a word derived from the Celtic words Gaelic baird or Cymric bardh. It was after the Renaissance period that the word 'bard' was adopted. In the 16th century, a bard represented great and serious poets comparable to the likes of William Shakespeare. In Lowland Scotland however, the word bard was used to describe a class of beggars and wanderers.

Medieval Bards were primarily professional singers and musicians. Some of them were also poets who were descendants of the ancient Celtic people. They mainly composed verses and poems in honour of the Kings and soldiers' heroic accomplishments during the medieval era.

Medieval Bards were considered to be of a distinct class and were given hereditary privileges, especially during the middle ages. According to historians, there were three different types of medieval bard. The first sang songs of praises and victories, the second one sang about the laws of the nation, while the third kind of medieval bard sang about family histories as well as poetic genealogies.

Daily Life of a Medieval Bard

Medieval bards maintained high esteem throughout Ireland and Wales. Throughout the middle ages, kings and chieftains acquired services from medieval bards and bestowed gifts to them in exchange of their services. On some occasions, monasteries also maintained bards to serve them as genealogists and historians as early medieval literature was not yet written down.

Medieval Bards were generally considered as repository of stories, songs, poetry of the people, legends and songs. They were honoured and often awarded certain diplomatic freedoms. During the middle ages, Medieval bards travelled from place to place to bringing news from the king's court. Because of their education and oral tradition, and because it was very expensive to acquire the services of scribes, most medieval bards were commonly relied upon. Bards were considered the only reliable source of information at this time.

There were two classes of medieval bards: the bard Teulu who was part of the king's official household, and the pencerdd who were the heads of the bardic fraternity in the area. During the 12th and 13th century, having bards as part of the king's household were no longer practised, thus greatly affecting their position in society especially after the end of native rule.

Medieval Bard - The Society of Bards

Medieval bards were categorized into various grades. Some of them were even required to undergo lengthy apprenticeships where they acquired various skills, before they could serve professionally. Medieval Bards eventually were recognised highly. They formed a society that had hereditary rights and privileges such as tax exemptions and were not required to render military services. They were treated with utmost respect. Their special duties included celebrating victories of the people, singing hymns of praises, giving religious and poetic expressions as well as the national sentiments of the people. Medieval bards were very influential during the medieval era because of these rights and privileges.

Welsh Medieval Bards

Medieval bards were sources for encouragement for the people especially in facing hardships during the Dark Ages. However, their encouragement was later regarded as rebellious and degenerate. As a result, several laws were enacted against them. The society of Medieval bards was first regulated by the laws formulated by Hywell Dha in Wales, which was revised by Gruffydd ap Conan later on. The laws represented them as immoral and a proclamation known as the Commission of the Caerwys Eisteddfod complained of 'vargraunt and idle persons naming theim selfes mynstrelles Rithmers and Barthes'. In some Celtic areas, the term bard carried a derogatory meaning. Nonetheless, house bards still continued in other Celtic countries until the 19th century.

The Medieval Bard - Famous Medieval Celtic Bards

Since bards were no longer appointed by kings to their household, some nobilities became troubadours and trouveres. In fact, some princes from Wales had become bards during the 12th and 13th century. Most of the really poetic trouveres and troubadours were influenced by the 14th century Welsh bards.

Here are some of the most famous Medieval Bards:

Taliesin was a 6th century Welsh bard known for writing the book of Taliesin

Dafydd ap Gwilym a 14th century Welsh poet was regarded as the greatest Welsh poet of all time

Iolo Goch famous for "The Labourer" and known as the master of the Cywydd

Medieval Bards - Replaced by the Troubadours and Minstrels

Since medieval bards were regulated and subjected to various laws, they were eventually replaced by Troubadours and Minstrels who became famous during the middle ages. Minstrels were mostly servants whose services were obtained primarily as travelling musicians. They performed songs that told stories about distant places, historical events and imaginary events. Most minstrels created their own stories and tales, and they often memorized and embellished the works of other musicians or poets.

Meanwhile, troubadours were medieval composers who performed old Occitan lyric poetry between 11th and mid-13th century. The word troubadour was derived from trobador, a 12th-century Occitan word. Troubadours performed epic poetry called chanson de geste, which dealt with stories of chivalry and courtly love. Troubadours also travelled to various countries, including distant and far lands during the time of the Crusades.

Medieval Bard - The Romantic Arthurian Legend

If there was anything in common among bards, minstrels and troubadours, it was their shared fondness toward retelling stories of courtly love and chivalry. Most of these stories and tales were transferred to book form and conveyed in the romantic adventures of King Arthur. Because of this, love, chivalry and the Arthurian Legends became an essential part of medieval literature.

Medieval Bard Summary

Medieval bards were basically Celtic musicians. However, the term can also be used to refer to epic singers of non-Celtic origin. These are the aoidoi of the Homerics and other bards from the Eastern and Western parts of Asia. Primarily, bards sung narratives, poems telling the tales of great heroes from the past. Some of these epic singers were also poets, composers and instrumentalists. The multi-faceted nature of bards can be traced back to ancient Celtic cultures. Today, singers, musicians, poets and even story-tellers can be considered modern day bards. These are the people who perform to capture the audience's imagination, creating the illusion of magic and eloquent grandeur.

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The word Bard was used chiefly to signify a Celtic musician or poet. Although several equivalent words were used to denote musicians and poets in other cultures as well. Medieval bards have greatly influenced the history, music and culture of the Celts and were chiefly responsible for the rise of secular music in the middle ages.

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Roast hedgehog, "singing chicken", and even literal garbage were all part of medieval meals. The lower class had to endure some weird foods, but the rich sometimes purposely ate some of these oddities.
~SMMC

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In Medieval times, food was medicine, religion and status. And in Medieval feasts, an art-form

The Medieval poor mostly ate pottage - basically cabbage soup with some barley or oats. Their bread was made from barley.

They did get to drink beer with every meal, even "small beer" at breakfast.

The beer, though? Also made from barley.

Meanwhile, the nobility and the rich would eat anything that moved: eels, swans, porpoises, peacocks, snails, and assorted other animals.

They enjoyed expensive spices like Saffron and Cardamon while salt was often too pricey for poor people.

Medieval banquets often featured showy dishes called 'subtleties'. These are recipes meant to shock and entertain as much as nourish.

They included live eel pie, animals spliced together, dead animals made to look alive and live animals made to look dead.

Here is some of the weirdest Medieval food.

12.

The medieval recipe for Roast Hedgehog is :

Obtain a hedgehog and cut its throat. Then, it needs to be gutted and either wrapped in pastry or roasted.

Simples.

If eating hedgehog seems strange to you, imagine a dose of hedgehog!

The prickly creature was recommended for medical conditions, from throat inflammation to leprosy.

For quinsy (throat inflammation) :

"Take a fat cat and flay it well, clean and draw out the guts. Take the grease of a hedgehog and the fat of a bear and resins and fenugreek and sage and gum of honeysuckle and virgin wax. All this crumble small and stuff the cat within as you would a goose. Roast it all and gather the grease and anoint him [the patient] with it."

Das Kockbuch des Meisters Eberhard, a 15th century cookbook, recommends hedgehog for lepers :

The meat of a hedgehog is good for lepers. Those who dry its intestines and grind them to a powder and eat a little of that are made to piss, even if they can not do so otherwise.

If your hedgehog refuses to co-operate in the roasting :

Note that if the hedgehog refuses to unroll, put it in hot water, and then it will straighten itself.

11.

If you could afford it, meat was replaced at Lent by an extraordinary array of seafood, including seal and porpoise (dolphin).

Porpoise was apparently a favorite of Katharine of Aragon.

In fact, it was listed as a royal fish, not to be eaten by members of the lower classes unless special permission was granted.

In 1526, a fast meal served to Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon included 'soup, herring, cod, lampreys, pike, salmon, whiting, haddock, plaice, bream, porpoise, seal, carp, trout, crabs, lobsters, custard, tart, fritters and fruit'.

And this was just the first course!

The Forme of Cury is one of the oldest known English cookery manuscripts and was written by King Richard II's cooks around 1399.

It contains 196 recipes, one of which is for porpoise furmenty: a type of sweet, spicy wheat porridge.

"Take clene whete and bete it small in a morter and fanne out clene the dust. Waisthe it and boile it tyl it be tendre. Take the mylk of Almonds & boile them. Take up the porpays out of the Furmente & leshe hem in a dishe with hot water."

Translation: boil some wheat with almond milk and lob a porpoise in it.

10.

The recipe for Garbage goes like this :

Take faire Garbage chikenes hedes, ffete, lyvers, And gysers and wassh hem clene. caste hem into a faire potte. And caste fressh broth of Beef, pouder of Pep, Canell, Clowes, Maces, Parsely and Sauge myced small. then take brede stepe hit in the same brothe. Drawe hit thorgh a streynour cast thereto And lete boyle ynowe. caste thereto pouder ginger, vergeous, salt, And a littul Saffereon And serve hit forthe.

Translation :

Take good giblets (garbage): chickens' heads, feet, livers, and gizzards, and wash them clean. Throw them into a nice pot, and add fresh beef broth, powdered pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mace, parsley and sage chopped small. Then take bread, steep it in the same broth, draw it through a strainer, add and let boil till done. Add powdered ginger, verjuice (sour grape or apple juice), salt, and a little saffron, and serve it forth.

Simply put, it's a stew made from broth, chicken heads and feet, livers and gizzards, and spices.

It may be the worst-named medieval dish but it's apparently quite tasty .

9.

Ever wondered about the lack of alcohol in chicken soup?

If so, you should definitely check out cock ale: a type of 17th-century beer flavored with a skinned cockerel and various spices.

To make this rather rude-sounding beer:

Take eight Gallons of Ale; take a Cock and boil him well; then take four pounds of Raisins of the Sun well stoned, two or three Nutmegs, three or four flakes of Mace, half a pound of Dates; beat these all in a Mortar, and put to them two quarts of the best Sack; and when the Ale hath done working, put these in, and stop it close six or seven days, and then bottle it, and a month after you may drink it.

The drink's medicinal qualities were advertised in John Nott's Cooks and Confectioner's Dictionary, which claims it's

"good against a Consumption, and to restore a decay'd Nature."

8.

In 14th century England, roasted swan with a sauce called Chaudon was considered a delicacy.

The cookbook Utilis Coquinario describes the proper way to "prepare a swan" and make a Chadon sauce.

It consists of minced, boiled swan innards mixed with bread and powdered ginger, colored with blood.

For to prepare a swan. Take & undo him & wash him, & do on a spit & lard him fair & roast him well; & dismember him on the best manner & make a fair carving, & the sauce thereto shall be made in this manner, & it is called: Chaudon. Take the issue of the swan & wash it well, & scour the guts well with salt, & boil the issue all together til it be enough, & then take it up and wash it well & hew it small, & take bread & powder of ginger & of galingale & grind together & temper it with the broth, & color it with the blood. And when it is boiled & ground & strained, salt it, & boil it well together in a small pot & season it with a little vinegar.

If you want to really show off, you could make Reclothed Swan.

The swan is cooked and then reclothed in it skin, including its plumage.

Take it and split it between the shoulders, and cut it along the stomach: then take off the skin from the neck cut at the shoulders, holding the body by the feet; then put it on the spit, and skewer it and gild it. And when it is cooked, it must be reclothed in its skin, and let the neck be nice and straight or flat; and let it be eaten with yellow pepper.

7.

Not familiar with lampreys ? Picture this: a writhing eel with scaly gray skin, and a face like a suction cup ringed with row after row of full of sharp little teeth.

The best bit - it sucks the blood of larger fish.

The Romans not only considered lampreys a delicacy, those who could afford it also kept them in ponds as pets.

In medieval Europe, they continued to be eaten by the wealthy, especially on meatless days.

Fun fact : King Henry I of England was said to have died of eating lampreys excessively in 1135.

6.

Not content with real life animals, chefs also enjoyed splicing together bits of different creatures to make a beast they called a cockentrice.

The Cockentrice was a fanciful and imaginative banquet dish which combined a pig and a chicken into one "new" animal.

The idea being, to create a new kind of animal for eating that would not only feed hungry folk but amuse and amaze them as well.

Basically, the chef cooked a pig and chicken, cut them both in half, then attached the front half of the pig to the rear half of the chicken.

It was then stuffed, put it on a spit and roasted, gilded with egg yolks, saffron and occasionally gold leaf before being served to the king and queen as a 'ryal mete'.

In case this was too understated, there's a variation called the Helmeted Cock in which the bird rides the pig, while wearing the coats of arms that honored the lords present.

This marvel was apparently served as a side dish in between main courses!

5.

An even more dramatic special effect was when dinner was not only mounted and dressed but also made noises or breathed fire.

The 15th-century "Viviender" has a recipe for making a dead roasted chicken sing as if it was alive.

This is done by filling the tied neck of the bird with quicksilver and ground sulphur, and then reheating the animal.

It was more common to have a boar's head, swan, piglet or fish breath fire by combining cotton with alcohol and lighting it.

For really grand occasions cooks would assemble a range of edible wonders to from a complete allegorical scene, such as a "Castle of Love".

4.

Hand in hand with dishes that made animals look lifelike were dishes that made them look dead and cooked when in reality they were still alive.

One such bizarre creation was the live chicken that's made to look roasted.

First The bird was to be plucked alive in boiling water, then covered in a glaze that made it look like roast meat and finally put to sleep by tucking its head under one wing.

Then it was to be put on a platter with other roast meat.

The "Viviender" describes what is to happen next:

When it is about to be carved it will wake up and make off down the table upsetting jugs, goblets and whatnot.

An easier way of grossing out the diners was to serve live eels or birds in a covered dish trick.

The famous "four-and-twenty-blackbirds baked in a pie" fits into this category.

The live birds would be inserted into a pie immediately before serving.

When the top of the pie was cut open, the bird would escape to the amazement of the dinner party.

To be fair, the Italian cook Maetro Martino suggested adding a real pie in with the live birds.

3.

Sometimes dishes were made to look disgusting just prior to serving.

A recipe in a middle English cookbook called "Liber cur cocurum" (Book of Cookery) suggests making a meat or fish dish bloody by sprinkling dried hare's or kid's blood over it.

Another suggest covering dishes with "harp strings made of bowel" to make the food look as if it were full of worms.

In both cases, it's possible that the gruesome garnish was put on by someone intent on discrediting the cook.

Not as far-fetched as it may seem - there is a recipe in the same book describing how to get back at a cook.

For kitchen revenge medieval-style, throw soap in the cooking pot, which will make it constantly boil over.

2.

One dish, Rôti Sans Pareil, must be the direct ancestor of the modern turducken.

But the 3-Bird Turducken has nothing on This 17-Bird Royal Roast.

It comes from L'almanach des gourmands, an 1807 cookbook written by Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimond de la Reyniere, a man so outlandish he faked his own death to see who would attend his funeral.

His creation was called the rôti sans pareil-the roast without equal.

It was formed by stuffing 17 birds inside each other like Russian dolls! In order, they were:

1.

Cat lovers, maybe skip this one.

A medieval recipe calls for the cat to be decapitated and the head thrown out, as "eating the brains will cause him who eats them to lose his senses and judgment."

The recipe then calls for its body to be flayed, cleaned, and inexplicably be buried underground for a day and a night.

Then it was to be roasted with oil and garlic.

You will take a cat that is fat, and decapitate it. And after it is dead, cut off the head and throw it away because it is not for eating, for they say that eating the brains will cause him who eats them to lose his senses and judgment. Then flay it very cleanly, and open it and clean it well, and then wrap it in a cloth of clean linen. And bury it beneath the ground where it must be for a day and a night; and then take it out of there and set it to roast on a spit. And roast it over the fire. And when beginning to roast it, grease it with good garlic and oil. And when you finish greasing it, whip it well with a green twig , and this must be done before it is well-roasted, greasing it and whipping it. And when it is roasted, cut it as if it were a rabbit or a kid and put it on a big plate; and take garlic and oil blended with good broth in such a manner that it is well-thinned. And cast it over the cat. And you may eat of it because it is very good food.

We really, really don't wish to eat it.

Chiefs still recreate some of the weirdest Medieval food. Here's a bonus video. Hope you enjoy seeing a modern chef take on the Cockentrice.

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The Medieval poor mostly ate pottage - basically cabbage soup with some barley or oats. Their bread was made from barley. They did get to drink beer with every meal, even "small beer" at breakfast. The beer, though? Also made from barley.

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Soap Guilds (UGLY, but like as a preconception)

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Soap Guilds (UGLY, but like as a preconception)

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(on number 4) We often think of the Middle Ages as a stinky time, but as a matter of fact, most Medieval people used to take baths and use soap. In addition, soap was most widely used during the Middle Ages than the Classical and Baroque era, with soap makers even having their own guilds within larger cities and empires. Even the people of the lower social classes would bathe regularly up to their hips. The stereotype of the smelly Medieval Times is likely from the Plagues as well as select studies in later times of excessive bathing being unhealthy. DS

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Answer by Tim O'Neill, Medievalist, Skeptic and amateur Historian Introduction - Myths about the Middle Ages
There are many historical myths about the Medieval Period. This is partly due to the rise of Humanism in the early Modern Period and the Renaissance movement in art and architecture. Both these movements venerated the Classical world and considered the period which followed the Classical era as degenerate and barbaric. So Medieval Gothic architecture, now recognized as being both extremely beautiful and technically revolutionary, was denigrated and abandoned for styles that copied Greek and Roman architecture. The very term "Gothic" was originally applied to this Medieval style as a pejorative: it's a reference to the Gothic tribes that sacked Rome and was meant to mean "barbaric, primitive".

The other reason for many of the myths about the period is its association with the Catholic Church. In the English-speaking world these myths have their origin in a Protestant denigration of Catholicism and a corresponding disdain for the period in which the Catholic faith was dominant. In other European cultures, such as Germany and France, similar myths have their origin in the anti-clerical stance of many influential Enlightenment thinkers Here is a summary of a few of the myths and misconceptions about the Medieval period that have arisen as a result of these prejudices:
1. People thought the earth was flat and the Church taught this as a matter of doctrine.
In fact, the Church did not teach that the earth was flat at any time in the Middle Ages. Medieval scholars were well aware of the scientific arguments of the Greeks that proved the earth was round and could use scientific instruments, like the astrolabe, the accurately measure its circumference. The fact that the earth is a sphere was so well known, widely accepted and unremarkable that when Thomas Aquinas wanted to choose an objective fact that is not able to be disputed early in his Summa Theologica he chose the fact that the earth is round as his example.

And it was not only the learned who knew the shape of the earth - all evidence indicates that this was commonly understood by everyone. A symbol of the earthly power of kings, used in their coronations, was the orb: a golden sphere held in the king's left hand to represent the earth. That symbolism would not make sense if it was not understood that the earth was round. A collection of German sermons for parish priests from the Thirteenth Century also mentions, in passing, that the earth was "round like a apple" with the expectation that the peasants hearing the sermon already understood what this meant. And the popular Fourteenth Century English book of travelers' tales, The Tales of Sir John Mandeville, tells of a man who traveled so far east that he returned to his homeland from the west, while not explaining to its audience how this works.

The popular idea that Christopher Columbus discovered the earth was round and that his voyage was opposed by the Church is a modern myth created in 1828. The novelist Washington Irving was commissioned to write a biography of Columbus, with the brief that he depict Columbus as a radical thinker who turned his back on the superstitions of the old world. Unfortunately Irving found that Columbus was actually wildly wrong about the size of the earth and discovered America by pure chance. Since this did not make a very heroic story, he invented the idea that the Medieval Church taught the earth was flat and created this persistent myth when his book became a best-seller.

Collections of famous quotes found on the internet often include a supposed quote from Ferdinand Magellan which goes "The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church." Magellan never said this, not least because the Church did not say that the earth was flat. The first use of this "quote" goes back no further than 1873, when it was used in an essay by the American freethinker and agnostic Robert Green Ingersoll. He gives no citation for it and it is highly likely that Ingersoll himself simply invented it. Despite this, the Magellan "quote" can still be found in quote collections and on t-shirts and posters sold by atheist organisations.
2. The Medieval Church suppressed science and innovative thinking and burned scientists at the stake, setting back progress by hundreds of years.
The myth that the Church suppressed science and burned or repressed scientists is a central part of what historians of science refer to as "the Conflict Thesis". This persistent idea has its origins in the Enlightenment, but was fixed in the public consciousness by two popular works of the Nineteenth Century. John William Draper's A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896) were both highly popular and influential works which popularised the idea that the Medieval Church actively suppressed science. Twentieth Century historians of science have since heavily criticised the "White-Draper Thesis" and noted that much of White and Draper's evidence was wildly misinterpreted or, in several cases, totally invented.

Early Christianity in the later Roman era did initially have an issue with what some churchmen considered "pagan knowledge" - the scientific works of the Greeks and their Roman intellectual successors. Several preached that a Christian should avoid these works and rejected their knowledge as un-Biblical. The early Church Father Tertullian famously asked sarcastically "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" But this line of thinking was rejected by other prominent churchmen, with Clement of Alexandria proposing that just as God had given the Jews a special insight into spiritual matters, so he had given the Greeks a particular insight into things scientific. He argued that just as the Israelites carried off the gold of the Egyptians and put it to their own use, so Christians could and should use the wisdom of the pagan Greeks as a gift from God. Clement was later supported by the highly influential Augustine of Hippo and later Christian thinkers built on this idea, noting that if the cosmos was the product of a rational God then it could and should be apprehended rationally.

Natural philosophy, based largely on the works of Greek and Roman thinkers like Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, Archimedes and many others, therefore became a major part of the syllabuses of Medieval universities. Thanks to the preservation of these works by Arab scholars when they had been lost in the West after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Medieval scholars did not just study these texts and the works of the Arabs who added to them, but used them to make discoveries in their own right. Medieval scholars were particularly fascinated by the science of optics and invented eye glasses partly as a result of their studies using lenses to determine the nature of light and the physics of sight. The Fourteenth Century scientist Thomas Bradwardine and a group of other Oxford scholars called "the Merton Calculators" not only first formulated the Mean Speed Theorem but were also the first to use mathematics as a language to describe physics, laying the foundations of everything done in the science of physics ever since.

Far from being persecuted by the Church, all of the scientists of the Middle Ages were themselves churchmen. Jean Buridan de Bethune, Nicole d'Oresme, Albrecht of Saxony, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Bradwardine, Theodoric of Fribourg, Roger Bacon, Thierry of Chartres, Gerbert of Aurillac, William of Conches, John Philoponus, John Peckham, Duns Scotus, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, John Dumbleton and Nicholas of Cusa were not only not persecuted, suppressed or burned at the stake, but were honoured and renowned for their learning and wisdom.

Contrary to the myth and to the popular misconception, there is not one single example of anyone being burned at the stake for anything to do with science in the Middle Ages, nor is there any example of science being suppressed by the Medieval Church. The Galileo Affair came much later (Galileo was a contemporary of Descartes) and had far more to do with the politics of the Counter Reformation and the personalities involved than anything to do with the Church's attitude to science.
3. In the Middle Ages millions of women were burned by the Inquisition as witches and witch burnings were a common occurrence in Medieval times.
Actually, the "Witch Craze" was not a Medieval phenomenon at all. Its heyday was in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and was an almost exclusively early Modern affair. For most of the Middle Ages (ie the Fifth to Fifteenth Centuries) not only did the Church not bother pursuing so-called witches, but its teaching was actually that witches did not even exist.

Until around the Fourteenth Century the Church scolded people who believed in witches and rejected the whole idea as a silly peasant superstition. Various Medieval law codes, both canon and civil law, did not declare witchcraft to be forbidden, but rather declared belief in the existence of witches to be outlawed and/or sinful. One churchman was confronted with a village of people who genuinely believed the claims of a woman who claimed to be a witch and who said, amongst other things, that she could turn herself into a puff of smoke and leave a locked room through the keyhole. So to prove the foolishness of this belief he locked himself in a room with the woman and encouraged her to escape through the keyhole by beating her with a stick. The "witch" did not escape and the villagers got the idea.

Thinking about witches began to change in the Fourteenth Century, particularly in the wake of the Black Death of 1347-1350, after which Europeans became increasingly fearful of conspiracies by maleficent underground forces, mostly imaginary. Apart from blaming the Jews and fearing cells of heretics, the idea of covens of witches began to be taken more seriously by the Church. This came to a head in 1484 when Pope Innocent VIII published the bull Summis desiderantes, which effectively kicked off the Witch Craze which raged across Europe for the next 200 years.

Both Catholic and Protestant countries were caught up in the Witch mania once it got going. What is interesting is how the Craze seems to have followed the fault-lines of the Reformation: Catholic countries which had little major threat from Protestantism, such as Italy and Spain, saw very little witch-hunting while those in the front-line of the religious struggles of the time, like Germany and France, saw the most. This meant the two places where the Inquisition was most active were also the places where there was the least hysteria about witches. Contrary to the myths, the Inquisition was far more concerned with heretics and relapsed Jewish converts than any "witches".

In Protestant countries, witch-hunting flared when the status quo was under threat (such as in Salem, Massachusetts) or in times of social and religious turmoil (as in Jacobin England or under Oliver Cromwell's puritan regime). Despite wildly exaggerated claims of "millions of women" being executed for witchcraft, modern scholars estimate the actual death toll to be around 60-100,000 people over several centuries, with 20% of the victims being men.

Hollywood perpetuates the myth of "Medieval" witch hunting and few Hollywood movies set in the period can resist at least some mention of witches or someone being threatened by a sinister churchman for suspicion of witchcraft. This is despite the fact the craze was largely post-Medieval and for most of the Medieval period belief in witches was dismissed as superstitious nonsense.
4. The Middle Ages was a period of filth and squalor and people rarely washed and would have stunk and had rotten teeth.
In fact, Medieval people at all levels of society washed daily, enjoyed baths and valued cleanliness and hygiene. As in any period prior to modern hot running water, they would have been less clean than we are, but like our grandparents or great-grandparents, they were able to wash daily, stay clean, valued cleanliness and did not like people who were filthy or smelt.

Most people in the period stayed clean by washing daily using a basin of hot water. Soap first began to be used widely in the Middle Ages (the Romans and Greeks did not use soap) and soap makers had their own guilds in most larger Medieval towns and cities. Heating the water for a full bath was a time consuming process, so baths at home were less common, but even the lower strata of society enjoyed a hip bath when they could get one. The nobility raised baths to high levels of luxury, with bathing in large wooden tubs of scented water with seats lined with silk being not only a solitary pleasure, but something shared with sexual partners or even parties of friends, with wine and food on hand, much like a modern hot tub or jacuzzi.

Public bath-houses existed in most larger towns and hundreds of them thrived in larger cities. The south bank of the Thames was the location of hundreds of "stewes" (the origin of our word for the dish "stew") in which Medieval Londoners could soak in hot water, as well as chat, play chess and solicit whores. In Paris there were even more such baths and in Italy they were so numerous that some advertised themselves as being exclusively for women or purely for the aristocracy, so the nobles didn't find themselves sharing a tub with artisans or peasants.

The idea that people in the Middle Ages did not wash is based on a number of misconceptions and myths. Firstly, in the Sixteenth Century and again in the Eighteenth Century, ie after the Middle Ages, there were periods in which doctors claimed bathing was harmful and in which people avoided washing too regularly. People for whom "the Middle Ages" seems to mean "any time longer ago than the Nineteenth Century" have assumed this means these ideas were prevalent earlier as well. Secondly, Christian moralists and churchmen in the Middle Ages did warn against excessive bathing. This was because such moralists warned against excess in anything - eating, sex, hunting, dancing or even penance and religious devotion. To conclude that these warnings meant that no-one bathed is clearly nonsense. Finally, public baths were closely associated with prostitution. There is no doubt that many prostitutes plied their trade in the bath-houses of Medieval cities and the "stewes" of Medieval London and other cities stood close to the most notorious districts for brothels and whores. So moralists railed against public bath-houses as sinks of iniquity. To conclude this meant people therefore did not use the bath-houses is as silly as concluding they also did not visit the adjoining brothels.

The fact that Medieval literature celebrates the joys of a hot bath, the Medieval knighting ceremony includes a scented bath for the initiatory squire, ascetic hermits prided themselves on not bathing just as they prided themselves on not enjoying other common pleasures and soap makers and bath-house keepers did a roaring trade shows that Medieval people liked to keep clean. The idea that they had rotten teeth has also been shown to be nonsense by archaeology. In a period in which sugar was an expensive luxury and in which the average person's diet was rich in vegetables, seasonal fruit and calcium, Medieval teeth were actually excellent. It was only in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century that cheaper sugar from the West Indies flooded Europe and caused an epidemic of cavities and foul breath.

A Medieval French saying shows how fundamental washing was to the pleasures of a good life in the period:

Venari, ludere, lavari, bibere! Hoc est vivere!
(To hunt, to play, to bathe, to drink! This is to live!)
5. The Medieval period was a technological 'dark age' and there were few to no advances in technology until the Renaissance.
The Medieval period actually saw many advances in technology, several of which were amongst the most significant in human history. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the Fifth Century the effect on material culture and technology in Europe was devastating. Without the Empire to fund major engineering projects and large scale infrastructure, many of the skills and techniques involved in monumental buildings and complex technologies were forgotten and lost. The break down of long distance trade meant people became increasingly self-sufficient and produced what they needed locally. But this actually had a stimulating effect on the adoption and development of technology in the longer run. Technical advances that helped self-sufficient farming communities to be more productive became more widely adopted across Europe and this led to the development of the horse-collar, allowing more efficient haulage and plowing, the horse shoe, the mouldboard plough, allowing the cultivation of heavier northern European soils and a widespread adoption of water power in the form of water mills and tidal mills. The result of these developments was wide areas of Europe that had never been farmed in Roman times came under production for the first time and Europe became vastly more productive and, ultimately, richer than it had ever been.

The widespread adoption of water mills on a scale never seen in Roman times led not only to a wider range of uses for water power, but an increase in other forms of mechanisation. The windmill was a Medieval European innovation and both wind and water mills were not just used for grinding flour but also fuilling cloth, making leather and driving bellows and trip-hammers. These last two innovations led to the production of steel on a semi-industrial scale and, along with the Medieval invention of the blast furnace and development of cast iron, advanced Medieval metal technology well beyond that of the Romans...

By the second half of the Middle Ages (1000-1500 AD) the wind and water-powered agarian revolution of the previous few centuries made Christian Europe into a rich, populous and expanding power. Medieval people began to experiment with other uses of mechanisation. Noting that warm air moved up a chimney (which were another Medieval innovation), larger Medieval kitchens had fans installed in the chimney to automatically turn spits by use of a gearing system. Medieval monks noted that using a similar gearing system driven by a descending weight might be used to measure out an hour of time mechanically. In the Thirteenth Century the first mechanical clocks began to appear across Europe, a Medieval innovation that would revolutionise how humans saw time. Medieval clocks developed rapidly, with miniaturised table clocks appearing within a few decades of the instrument's invention. Medieval clocks could be vastly complex calculating devices. The immensely complicated astronomical clock built by Richard of Wallingford, abbot of St Albans, was so complex it took eight years to run through its full cycle of calculations and was the most intricate machine ever built up to that point.

The rise of universities in the Middle Ages also stimulated several technical innovations. Scholars studying works on optics by Greek and Arabic scientists did experiments on the nature of light using lenses and invented eye glasses in the process. Universities also provided a large market for books and encouraged methods of producing books more cheaply. Experiments with block printing eventually led to the invention of moveable type and finally another highly significant Medieval innovation: the printing press.

Medieval maritime technology meant that Europeans were able to sail to the Americas for the first time. Long distance maritime trade led to the development of increasingly larger vessels. though the older form of rudders - a large oar-style of rudder mounted on the side of the ship - limited how big a ship could be. In the later Twelth Century Medieval shipwrights invented the stern-mounted "pintle and gudgeon" rudder which allowed far larger ships to be developed and steered more effectively. The later Age of Exploration was made possible by this Medieval innovation.

So far from being a technological dark age, the Medieval period actually saw many important innovations in technology and several of them - eye glasses, the mechanical clock and the printing press - are amongst the most important inventions of all time.
6. Medieval warfare consisted of unorganised knights in massively heavy armour leading rabbles of peasants armed with pitchforks into battles that were chaotic brawls. This is why Europeans were usually beaten by their tactically superior Muslim enemies in the Crusades.
The Hollywood image of Medieval warfare as unskilled, disorganised chaos where knights bent on individual glory led armies of peasant levies has its origin largely in one book - Sir Charles Oman's The Art of Warfare in the Middle Ages (1885). This book began life as an undergraduate essay at Oxford but was later expanded and published as Oman's first book. It then became the most widely read book in English on the subject of Medieval warfare, largely because there really were not any others until several decades into the Twentieth Century, when more systematic modern study of the period began.

Oman's research suffered from many of the disadvantages of the time in which he wrote: a general prejudice against the Medieval period as "backward" and "inferior" to the Classical era, a lack of many sources which were yet to be published and a tendency to take sources at face value. As a result, Oman presented Medieval warfare as unskilled and without tactics or strategy and focused mainly on a quest for individual glory by the knights and nobles. But by the 1960s more modern historical methods and a wider range of sources and interpretations were being brought to bear on the subject, initially by European historians like Philippe Contamine and J.F. Verbruggen. These newer works revolutionised our understanding of Medieval warfare, showing that while many of our sources emphasised individual actions by knights and nobles, use of other sources painted a very different picture to Oman's.

In fact, the rise of the knightly elite in the Tenth Century meant Medieval Europe had a professional class of warriors who dedicated their lives to the arts of war. While individual glory and prowess was prized, this elite trained from early childhood and knew well that battles were won by organisation and tactics. Knights trained in group maneuvers and aristocrats trained in how to co-ordinate a number of these groups (often called conrois or "lances") into "battles" or "battalions" . This was done through combinations of trumpet signals, flag signals or visual and verbal commands.

The key to Medieval battlefield tactics was to position the core of the enemy's army - his infantry - so that its ranks were disrupted enough to be vulnerable to a killing blow: a charge by the knightly heavy infantry. This had to be timed precisely and done while maintaining your own army and not allowing your opponent's heavy cavalry a similar opportunity. Contrary to popular belief, Medieval armies were substantially infantry-based, with cavalry, including the elite knightly heavy cavalry, forming a sizeable minority.

The Hollywood image of Medieval infantry as a rabble of peasants armed with farm implements is also a myth. Infantry was often raised by levying men from the countryside, but the men who were selected were not untrained or ill-equipped. In lands where military obligation was required, there were always some men given time to train so as to be ready for war. The English longbowmen who won the day at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt were "peasant levies", but they were skilled, well-trained and efficient in the extreme. Italian city states set aside one day a week for citizens to drill and maneuver in unit formations and these units came to represent formidable forces. Finally, there were many men who chose warfare as a profession and nobles often took their vassals military obligations in cash and used this money to hire professional mercenary units and units of specialists in particular weapons or types of warfare (eg crossbowmen or siege engine experts).

Pitched battles were risky affairs that could easily go either way even if you had the enemy greatly outnumbered. As a result, open battle was actually very rare and most Medieval warfare consisted of strategic maneuver and, more often, sieges. Medieval architects raised the art of fortification to new heights and the great castles of the Crusaders such as Kerak and Krak de Chevaliers or Edward I's chain of massive castles in Wales were masterpieces of defensive engineering.

Along with the myths of Medieval armies as rabbles led by tactical idiots is the idea that the Crusaders were usually outclassed and defeated by a more tactically sophisticated Muslim enemy in the Middle East. Actually, a survey of the battles fought by Crusader armies shows that they won slightly more encounters than they lost, with both sides borrowing tactics and equipment from each other in what was generally an even struggle. It was a manpower shortage that led to the fall of the Crusader Kingdoms of Outremer, not inferior fighting skill.

Finally, there are the myths about Medieval armour. The common misconception is that Medieval armour was massively heavy, that knights had to be hoisted into the saddle by cranes and that once unhorsed a knight would be unable to stand up again. Of course, only an idiot would go into battle and risk his life in armour that encumbered movement in such a way. In fact Medieval plate armour weight only around 20 kgs (45 pounds), which is almost half what a modern infantry carries into battle today. Modern re-enactors like to demonstrate how agile a fully armoured man could be by doing acrobatics in full plate armour. Earlier full suits of mail were much heavier, but even in them a fit man was entirely agile.

Stephen J. Harris & B.L. Grigsby, Misconceptions about the Middle Ages (2008)
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (1991)
Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (1996)
James Hannam, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Lay the Foundations of Modern Science (2009)
Brian Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (2006)
Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (1989)
Ian Mortimer, The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (2008)
Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1976)
Lynn White jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962)
J. & F. Gies, Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages (1994)
Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (1984)
J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe from the Eighth Century to 1340 (1997)

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Answer by Tim O'Neill, Medievalist, Skeptic and amateur Historian Introduction - Myths about the Middle Ages There are many historical myths about the Medieval Period. This is partly due to the rise of Humanism in the early Modern Period and the Renaissance movement in art and architecture.

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The 'Fits of Medieval Time (Good for Rich, Bad for Poor)

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The 'Fits of Medieval Time (Good for Rich, Bad for Poor)

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During the Medieval Times, special materials (such as silk and fur), jewelery, and other ornate decorations were used to distinguish the wealthy from the poorer in class. While different clothing distinguished the different classes of people (such as cloaks, gloves, and footwear), common clothing consisted of a tunic in one solid color that was for both sexes. CP

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As in just about any other period of history, clothing in the Middle Ages was worn for necessity, comfort, and display. Bright colours and rich decorations made for a striking medieval wardrobe, at least among the wealthy, although there was a surprising similarity in clothes for different social classes and the sexes. More expensive items of clothing were generally distinguished not by their design but by their use of superior materials and the cut. Governments sometimes intervened in who should wear what and how much certain items were taxed while some members of the clergy, in particular, were frequently berated for looking rather too flashy and being indistinguishable from knights. Trends came and went, as today, with laces sometimes in vogue, pointed shoes became the done thing, and tunics were made ever shorter towards the end of the period when showing a little more leg was considered the height of fashion (and that was just the men).

Materials & Colours

Clothes were generally the same for all classes but with the important difference of extra decoration, more and finer materials used, and an improved cut for the wealthier. Additions of metal, jewels, and fur, or intricate embroidery also distinguished the wardrobe of the rich from that of the poor. Outer clothes were not so different between the sexes either except that those for men were shorter and the sleeves roomier. As all clothes were tailor-made, a good fit was guaranteed.

The taste for colours was the brighter the better, with crimson, blue, yellow, green & purple being popular choices in all types of clothes.

Clothing was usually made from wool, although silk and brocade items might be saved for special occasions. Outer clothing made from goat or even camel hair kept the rich warm in winter. Fur was an obvious way to improve insulation and provide decorative trimmings, the most common were rabbit, lambskin, beaver, fox, otter, squirrel, ermine, and sable (the latter three became a standard background design in medieval heraldry such was their common use). More decoration was achieved by adding tassels, fringes, feathers, and embroidered designs, while more expensive additions included precious metal stitching and buttons, pearls, and cabochons of glass or semi-precious stones. The taste for colours was the brighter the better, with crimson, blue, yellow, green and purple being the most popular choices in all types of clothes.

Underclothes

Nightwear was not much of a social indicator and did not take a whole lot of forethought as most people slept naked. After a quick wash with cold water in a basin the first thing to put on in the morning, at least for the wealthier members of society, were underclothes, usually made of linen - long-sleeved shirts and drawers for men (down to the knee or below and known as braies) and a long chemise for women.

Both sexes wore long-sleeved tunics which had either a low-cut neck or a slit down the front so they could be put on over the head and then tied at the neck, sometimes with a brooch. The tunic might go down to the knee or even the ankles in the case of more formal wear for the nobility. The longer versions were usually split up to the waist at the front and back. Most tunics were made in one colour, although they might have a different coloured lining. Decorative embroidery was most often added at the neck, cuffs and hem, less often on the upper arms or all over the garment. A 14th century CE fashion was the jupon or pourpoint, a tight tunic or jacket with padding. The jupon was fastened by buttons or laces all down the front and there were sometimes buttons running from the elbow to the wrist; sleeves sometimes reached down to the knuckles on these garments.

Outer clothes

On top of the first tunic, another tunic was worn but either without sleeves or with much baggier sleeves; it was also shorter at the waist than the undertunic. For colder weather, these top tunics were often lined with fur (then called a pelisson). A waist belt with decorative metal buckle was worn over the tunic and was the flashiest part of a man's wardrobe, very often with gold, silver, and jewelled additions.

Illustrations from the Middle Ages often show quite plain dresses with only a minimal decoration.

An alternative type of outer tunic was the tabard, cut like a poncho but with the sides closed by stitching or clasps. Heralds wore a version of the tabard with sleeves only covering the outer arms and the chest decorated with the coat of arms of the noble they represented. Once again, the 14th century CE saw a new fashion, that of the cote-hardie, a tight jacket with sleeves going only to the elbows, and buttons or laces from the neck right down to the waist (laces were especially fashionable in the 12th century CE). Tied with a belt, the part below the waist billowed out like a skirt, sometimes with a dagged hem. Over time hanging cuffs were added to the sleeves which became longer and a collar was added.

Noble women wore fine dresses, particularly at court and at such social events as the medieval tournament. In contrast to later more romantic paintings, illustrations from the Middle Ages often show quite plain dresses with only a minimal decoration. Typically of a single colour (sometimes with a different coloured lining), they are long, long-sleeved, high-cut, and close-fitting above a belted waist. Women's belts, almost ever-present in graves and illustrations, sometimes had chains hanging down (chatelaine) to which were attached small decorative objects (for working women these would have been small tools, useful for such tasks as weaving and embroidery). The most common extra decoration is a border at the cuffs and neckline. of the dress. Illustrations often show tall pointed or flat-topped hats being worn with veils hanging down, although not covering the face.

Men wore hose or long stockings of wool or linen which went up to the knee or just above it and which were secured to the belt of their drawers. Women's stockings were shorter and held up by a garter worn below the knee. Some stockings ended in a stirrup while those which fully enclosed the foot might have a leather sole added to them. Stockings might also be padded to create a fashionable pronounced point at the toes.

Cloaks & Mantles

For going out, a cloak or mantle was worn, which was typically made from a roughly circular or rectangular piece of cloth which might, too, be fur-lined. Here was another chance for a bit of jewellery as cloaks were fastened with either a chain or brooch at the neck. An alternative fastening was to pull one corner of the cloak through a hole in the other top corner and then tie a knot. A man might fasten his cloak at the left shoulder to allow his right arm to freely draw his sword. An alternative to the cloak was a great coat (garde-corps or herygourd) which stretched down to the shins or ankles and had wide sleeves gathered at the shoulder. Both cloaks and great coats might have a hood with some being fastened using a button. An entirely separate hood which also covered the shoulders was an alternative for headgear. An alternative outer garment from the 14th century CE was the houppelande, a long robe split down the sides from the waist down and with flared sleeves and a high collar.

Gloves, Hats & Footwear

Gloves were worn outdoors and might go almost up to the elbow. They also used fur lining and frequently had embroidered designs, typically a gold band. Hats were worn by everyone. At home, men wore a linen coif (close-fitting cap) which was tied under the chin and decorated with embroidered designs. Women meanwhile wore a wimple (a headdress which also covers the neck and sides of the face). Keeping on their indoor headgear, a cap or hood was worn as well when outdoors or, when travelling, a hat with a brim that could be turned up at either the back or front. Some hats had a soft and shapeless crown, others were round or had a flat top, and all types could easily be decorated with a couple of ostrich or peacock feathers. From the 14th century CE, hat bands came into fashion.

Boots, usually quite loose in fitting, were either high riding boots or low on the leg (bushkins). Shoes covering the ankle were worn out of doors, and soft slip-on slippers in one's private chambers. Shoes, made from cloth or leather, were closed via inner laces, a strap or buckle, which was another opportunity for decoration and personalisation. Footwear became increasingly pointed as the Middle Ages wore on, especially for men.

Maintenance

For the aristocracy, there was no worry over the maintenance of their wardrobe as that was done by their staff. The chamberlain was (before the role widened and became more important) responsible for his master's wardrobe which was kept folded in chests or on pegs ('perches') when not in use. Ladies had their ladies-in-waiting and maids to help them dress. Washing was done by laundresses who soaked the clothes, or at least the less delicate smalls, in tubs of water mixed with caustic soda and wood ashes, and then pounded them clean using wooden paddles.

Social Display & Control

As already mentioned, there was not such a distinction between the general style of clothes of different classes except in terms of cut and materials. Nevertheless, the distinction was a sharp one, and it was protected by the upper classes, especially when people tried to dress above their station for personal advancement. Various sumptuary laws were passed from the 13th century CE onwards which restricted the wearing of certain materials by the lower classes in order to maintain the class divisions of society. There were even limits put on the quantities of such expensive imported materials as furs and luxury cloths like silk for the same purpose. Another indicator of the relationship between clothing and social status is the fact that clothing was considered along with other items of a person's property to decide their tax obligation, but for the higher classes clothing was often left out, suggesting social display was regarded as a necessity for them and an unnecessary luxury for everyone else.

The clergy was one section of society that had more clothing restrictions than most: nuns could not wear expensive furs, and members of specific monastic orders had to wear a particular style of habit to make themselves easily identifiable. Neither could members of the secular clergy adopt certain wider fashions, notably the 13th-century CE shortening of tunics to show a little more leg or the use of too many colours in one outfit. Although there is evidence these rules were frequently ignored, the idea was to maintain the distinction between the clergy and other members of society, especially knights. There were even measures to distinguish between the faiths, and Jewish clergy, for example, had to wear two white tablets of linen or parchment on their chests from the mid-13th century CE.

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Access to clothing was also restricted in times of economic strife during wars like the Hundred Years War with France (1337-1453 CE), presumably to stop wasteful spending. At such times governments, in effect, rationed clothing so that, for example, priests might only be permitted one new robe per year and bishops three. The same rules applied to aristocratic ladies and knights who could only have one new change of outfit per year. For the staff in the employ of a local baron or castle-owner, there were differences in the cost, cloth, and colours of the clothes their lord provided them so that there were marked distinctions between such groups as the menial servants, squires, clerks, men-at-arms, and sergeants.

Clothing remained an important and easily communicated method to display rank and job title. On the battlefield, knights wore chain mail or plate armour with a dash of colour perhaps provided by a surcoat and plumed helmet, but they still had to look the part of society's ambassadors of chivalry even when at leisure. Particular robes were worn on special occasions by those with the privileged right to wear them. For example, members of particular knights orders such as the Order of the Garter could wear a fine dark blue robe with a gold collar-chain made up of knots and red roses encircled with garters. Clearly, then, there were subtle and not so subtle wardrobe distinctions, not only between certain classes but also within the same class in a continuous game of social display emphasising just who had the right and the means to wear what and when.

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As in just about any other period of history, clothing in the Middle Ages was worn for necessity, comfort, and display. Bright colours and rich decorations made for a striking medieval wardrobe, at...

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In the Middle Ages, dulcimers were quite different in performance than they are in the modern times, as well as different between countries. While in modern times we often use a plectrum, this mode of performance deemed the dulcimer as a psaltery rather. Instead, dulcimers were performed with a hammer and were much smaller than the Appalachian versions now much more popular in the United States. DS

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The dulcimer is a late medieval instrument which is very much like the psaltery. The significant difference is that the strings of the dulcimer were struck with little hammers rather than being plucked. The medieval dulcimer is thus more akin to the modern hammered-dulcimer (though quite a bit smaller) than it is to the popular Appalachian dulcimer.

https://artscimedia.case.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/146/2015/04/14233250/10.dulcimer_lute_bpharp.mp3

Dulcimer with lute and bray pin harp. Forse che si, forse che no: musique de danse du quattrocento. Ferrara Ensemble, dir. Crawford Young. Karl-Heinz Schickhaus, dulcimer. Fonti Musicali Atelier Danse fmd 182 (1989). Trk 15 Fortuna desperata (excerpt).

The dulcimer fell out of use in western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, but continued in use to modern times in eastern Europe as the cimbalom.

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The dulcimer is a late medieval instrument which is very much like the psaltery. The significant difference is that the strings of the dulcimer were struck with little hammers rather than being plucked. The medieval dulcimer is thus more akin to the modern hammered-dulcimer (though quite a bit smaller) than it is to the popular Appalachian dulcimer.

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Gregorian Chant Comes From Dove (Musical)

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Gregorian Chant Comes From Dove (Musical)

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Supposedly the standardizing elements came from a dove who whispered to Pope Gregory.

CG

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While the vast majority of random peasants were probably ugly, I could not find an image from Google of ugly medieval fashion. This is from 1400s Italy. It’s time to start dressing like this again. R

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Nuns during the midevil ages were advised to have only one cat after collected too many dogs, cats, and birds. They were also asked to not bring their pets into church with them. Generally, the relationship between animals and their keepers were often affectionate, however, dogs were commonly used to guard the home while cats hunted mice and other vermin. Some disagreed and viewed pet ownership as a waste of time and resources. -ND

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Medieval people kept pet dogs, cats and other animals. Here is some of the advice they gave about taking proper care of these animals.
Pets were a rarity in the medieval world - people in the Middle Ages did keep domestic animals like dogs and cats, but most of them served a purpose. Dogs would be used to guard homes or assist in the hunt, while cats were needed to catch mice and other vermin. Still, the relationship between these animals and their keepers was often an affectionate one.

The leading research on this topic can be found in Medieval Pets, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle, who notes that by the end of the Middle Ages we can find many examples of people keeping animals as their companions. The Italian poet Petrarch had several pet dogs, one of which he adopted when it was left at a house he way staying at. Meanwhile, the famous Renaissance woman Isabella d'Este (1474 - 1539) owned several cats, including one named Martino. When it died in 1510, the cat was given a proper burial along with a graveside sermon.

Many of the writings about pets from the later Middle Ages comes in the form of criticism that people should not keep them - that it was too frivolous and a waste of food that could have gone to the poor. Church officials found that monks and especially nuns were keeping dogs, cats and birds as pets - while they could not ban them entirely, they did plead with the monks and nuns not to keep too many and not to take them into church with them. Meanwhile the Ancrene Riwle, a guide for anchoresses, explains:
Unless need compels you, my dear sisters, and your director advises it, you must not keep any animal except a cat...Now if someone needs to keep one, let her see to it that it does not annoy anyone or do any harm to anybody, and that her thoughts are not taken up with it.
The 13th century scientist and philosopher Albertus Magnus wrote a book On Animals that details the characteristics of various creatures, and includes some helpful advice on their care. Dogs, for example, should not be fed the food right off the dinner plate or be petted constantly, if you want them to be effective guard dogs. Otherwise, these canines will "keep one eye on the door and one on the generous hand of the master." Meanwhile, the cat "loves to be lightly stroked by human hands and is playful, especially when it is young." Albertus advises that you should clip the ears of the felines so that night dew does not get into its ears , and that if you cut off the whiskers around their mouth "they lose their boldness."

At the end of the 14th century Gaston III, Comte de Foix (1331-1391) wrote a book about hunting called Livre de Chasse, which included a section on how he took care of the greyhounds he used in the hunt. Gaston explains that their kennels should be built of wood and at least a foot off the ground, with loft where the dog could be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It should also have fresh straw added to its floor each day and have a door that opens into a sunny yard, so that "the houndes may go withoute to play when them liketh for it is grete likyng for the houndes whan thei may goon in and out at their lust."

The servant in charge of the dogs would be kept very busy - they were to clean the kennels each morning and give fresh water twice a day. The hounds also needed to be taken out once or twice daily for walks and allowed to play "in a fair medow in the sun." Besides being fed bran bread, the dogs would also get some of the meat from the hunt. If a dog was sick, he would get better food, such as goat's milk, bean broth, chopped meat, or buttered eggs.

When training these dogs, Gaston explains that you need to reward them for good deeds and punish mistakes, but when talking to them you must always be truthful. He adds, "I speak to my hounds as I would a man...and they understand me and do as I wish better than any other man can make them do as I do, nor peradventure will anyone do it more when I am dead."

In the Islamic world, dogs were supposedly considered an unclean animal and should not be kept as a pet. That did not keep people from having them, although they were only supposed to be used for hunting, guarding or herding animals, and several books by Arab writers gives advice on how to take care of them. This includes that dogs should sleep close to their handlers (although not in the same bed) as it will make them friendlier, more obedient, and even make them smell more pleasant. The dog should also have a soft bed of their own to lie on, and have them avoid living closely with other dogs, as they can spread disease to the other animals.

During the fall and winter months, dogs should be fed only once a day, around sunset - otherwise the writers believe the dogs will not be fit enough when the hunt begins the next morning. However, during the much hotter spring and summer months, dogs were to be fed small portions several times a day. The food was usually meat soaked in a beef soup, but could also include bread and milk, and would be served tepid or cold so that dogs would not vomit it.

In the work Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam, Housni Alkhateeb Shehada noted that these Islamic writers, "emphasized that the dog is an animal that demands special attention, which includes stroking and combing its fur with pleasant caressing materials such as silk. The authors write that stroking with the hands, scratching, touching and suchlike basic actions that every dog handler has to perform in his daily care of the dog help to ensure the dog's good health."

Finally, Walker-Meikle explains that one of the best sources on medieval bird care comes from Le Ménagier de Paris, a guidebook that was written around 1393 by an elderly Parisian merchant for his new wife. In one section he details that caged birds need to have their water constantly replenished and adds:
Item, let carded wool and feathers be put in the aviary to make their nests. And thus have I see turtle-doves, linnets and goldfinches lay and rear their young. Item, you should also give them caterpillars, worms, flies, spiders, grasshoppers, butterflies, fresh hemp in leaf, moistened and soaked. Item, spiders, caterpillars and such like things which be soft to the little bird's beak, which is tender.
See also Medieval Pet Names

See also: Medieval Pets, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle
Resources
"Good Dog: Model Canines in Renaissance Manuscripts," by Marina Belozerskaya, Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, eds. J. Hamburger and A. Korteweg (Brepols, 2006)

"The Dogs of Yesteryear," by Beatrice Johnston, History Today, Vol.29:2 (1979)

Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam, by Housni Alkhateeb Shehada (Brill, 2012)

Medieval Cats, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle (British Library, 2011)

Medieval Dogs, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle (British Library, 2013)
Amazon.com Widgets
Medieval Pets, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle (Boydell and Brewer, 2012)

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Medieval people kept pet dogs, cats and other animals. Here is some of the advice they gave about taking proper care of these animals. Pets were a rarity in the medieval world - people in the Middle Ages did keep domestic animals like dogs and cats, but most of them served a purpose.

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Babies in Medieval Art were often drawn terribly and look like old men. This was often because they were depictions of Jesus in some form, and they didn't want them to look too realistic. BB

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To find the answer, I spoke to Matthew Averett, an art history professor at Creighton University who edited the anthology The Early Modern Child in Art and History. But really, just how ugly are these babies?

Ugly might be too weak a word for medieval babies

These babies look like horrifying tiny men with high cholesterol and strong opinions about housing association rules.

They're babies like this one from 1350:

Or this one from 1333:

These scary man-babies make one wonder how we went from ugly medieval depictions to the recognizably cherubic babies of the Renaissance and today. You can use the slider below to see just how much our idea of a "baby face" has changed:

So why were there so many ugly babies? The reasons turned out to say a lot about art, medieval culture, and even the way we think of children today.

Were medieval artists just bad at drawing?

These ugly babies were very intentional. Drawing a line between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is a useful tool when considering ugly babies and significantly more lovable ones. The two eras tend to show a difference in values.

"If we're thinking about children in a fundamentally different light, the painting will reflect the attitudes," Averett says.

"Style is chosen," he continues. "We might look at medieval art and go, 'These people don't look right.' But if your goal is to look like Picasso and you make a realistic painting, they'd say you didn't do it right, either." Though there were artistic innovations that came with the Renaissance, they aren't the reason babies became better-looking.

(Ugly baby note: Generally, people believe the Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in the 14th century and rippled outward from there. However, like any intellectual movement, that characterization is simultaneously overly broad and narrow: It's too broad in that it gives the impression that Renaissance values were everywhere, instantly, and it's too narrow in that it limits a mass movement to a single pocket of innovation. There were holes in the Renaissance - you might easily see an ugly baby in 1521, if the artist were committed to the style.)

We can break down the following two reasons for the man-babies of medieval art:

Most of those medieval babies were depictions of Jesus. The concept of the homuncular Jesus affected how children were portrayed.
Medieval portraits of children were usually commissioned by churches. And that made the range of subjects limited to Jesus and a few other biblical babies. Medieval concepts of Jesus were deeply influenced by the homunculus, which literally means little man. "There's the idea that Jesus was perfectly formed and unchanged," Averett says, "and if you combine that with Byzantine painting, it became a standard way to depict Jesus. In some of these images, it looks like he had male pattern baldness."

That homuncular, adult-looking Jesus became a convention for painting all children. Over time, it simply became the right way that people thought that they should paint babies.

Medieval artists were less interested in realism
This unrealistic depiction of Jesus reflects a broader approach to medieval art: They were less interested in realism or idealized forms than Renaissance artists were.

"The strangeness that we see in medieval art stems from a lack of interest in naturalism, and they veered more toward expressionistic conventions," Averett says.

In turn, this made most of the people in medieval art look similar. "The idea of artistic freedom to depict these people however you want would have been new. There were artistic conventions."

That style of painting kept babies looking like out-of-shape soccer dads, at least until the Renaissance happened.

How the Renaissance made babies beautiful again

So what changed to make babies cute again?

Non-religious art flourished - and people didn't want their own babies looking like creepy men
In the Middle Ages, "we see less art of the middle class or even the common people," Averett says.

Once the Renaissance happened, that began to change as Florence's middle class flourished, and people were able to afford portraits of their own children. As portraiture expanded, people wanted their babies to look like cute babies instead of ugly adult homunculi. That changed the norms for a lot of art, including, eventually, portrayals of Jesus.

Renaissance idealism changed art
"In the Renaissance," Averett says, "there's this new interest in observing nature and depicting things as they're actually seen" rather than the expressionist attitudes of earlier art. That included more realistic babies - and beautiful cherubs that picked the best features drawn from real people.

Children became viewed as innocents
Averett cautions against reading too much into the changing role of children in the Renaissance world - parents in the Middle Ages didn't love their kids any differently than Renaissance parents did. But during the Renaissance, a transformation of the idea of children was underway: from tiny adults to uniquely innocent creatures.

"We later have this idea of children being innocent," Averett notes. "If children are born without sin, they can't know things."

As adult attitudes toward children changed, so did adult portrayals of kids. Ugly babies (or beautiful ones) are a reflection of how a society thinks about their kids, about art, and about their goals as parents.

Why we still want our babies to be beautiful

With all those factors combined, babies became the cheek-pinchable figures we know today. And that's easy for modern viewers like us to understand, since we still have some post-Renaissance ideals about kids.

That's why, to our eyes, it's a good thing baby pictures changed. Because this is a face only a mother could love:

WATCH: How infants can learn to save their own lives

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Watch: Why babies in medieval paintings look like ugly old men

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To find the answer, I spoke to Matthew Averett, an art history professor at Creighton University who edited the anthology The Early Modern Child in Art and History . But really, just how ugly are these babies? These babies look like horrifying tiny men with high cholesterol and strong opinions about housing association rules.

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Pythagorian Tuning is far different from modern tuning systems as major 2nds and major 3rds are further apart while minors 2nds and 3rds are smaller. This style of tuning was common during the Medieval and Renaissance Periods. LF

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This string instrument was used mainly as a droning tool in musical groups; it's played by a hand crank and a set of keys, and it grew to popularity in Central Europe.
~SMMC

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Hurdy-Gurdy, The Medieval Instrument You Might Have Never Heard About

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A brief article on the hurdy-gurdy, a rather unknown and underrated medieval stringed instrument, its usage, and constituent elements.

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This blog post notes several reasons why babies in medieval art usually looked like mini-adults: 1) Most of the time, they were depicting Jesus (“perfect and unchanged”, in this case, meant He was born looking like an adult man), and 2) Realism was not really what they were looking for. - JMT

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Helena, Year 10, looks at the different influences on medieval and Renaissance art, and how this changed the portrayal of children and babies in art.
Last summer, I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which is full of amazing Italian art from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Whilst there, I found it amusing that all of the babies in earlier artwork look less like babies and more like old men, such as in Madonna and Child by Bonaventura Berlinghieri, painted between about 1260 and 1270. Or in Paolo Veneziano's Madonna With Child, painted in 1333. At first, I thought perhaps these artists had just never actually seen a baby, or couldn't paint them, however, these odd-looking babies were actually very intentional.

Most medieval babies were depictions of Jesus

In the medieval period, most portraits of children and babies were commissioned by the church, which greatly limited the range of subjects to Jesus and a few other babies in the Bible. At the time, portrayals of Jesus were heavily influenced by homunculus, which translates from Latin to mean 'little man'. They believed that Jesus was born perfect and unchanged, which was reflected in the artwork of the period, as he often is painted with similar features as a wise old man. Over time, this homuncular, adult-looking Jesus became the norm, and artists depicted all babies in the same way.

Medieval artists were less interested in realism

This unrealistic way of painting baby Jesus actually reflected a much wider trend in medieval art; unlike the Renaissance artists, they were far less interested in naturalism, and tended to lean more towards expressionistic conventions. This can be seen in both of the paintings above, as like Jesus, Madonna also does not look very realistic.

How the Renaissance changed medieval conventions

Non-religious art flourished

During the Renaissance, Florence's middle-class prospered, and art was used for more purposes than the decoration of churches. Unlike in the medieval period, where common or even middle-class people are rarely portrayed in art, during the Renaissance more people could afford to commission art and portraits. Therefore, as portraiture expanded, and people did not want their own children and babies to look like homunculi; realistic, cuter babies became more standard. Eventually, even Jesus began to be depicted as the more cherub-like baby we would recognise today.

Renaissance idealism changed

During the Renaissance period, artists became more interested in naturalistic and realistic painting styles, unlike the more expressionistic style used by the earlier Medieval artists. There was a new interest in observing from the natural world and this extended to include babies and children as well as adults.

Children were viewed as innocents

In this period, a transformation in the way children were viewed was underway. Instead of tiny adults, babies were thought to be born without sin or knowledge and were therefore innocent. This changing of adult attitudes was reflected in artwork, as babies began to look much cuter, younger and more realistic than before.

It's probably a good thing that post-Renaissance attitudes to children have prevailed, as I think we can all agree homunculi babies are not the prettiest!

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Why do babies in medieval art look like mini adults? -

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Helena, Year 10, looks at the different influences on medieval and Renaissance art, and how this changed the portrayal of children and babies in art. Last summer, I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which is full of amazing Italian art from the medieval and Renaissance periods.

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Medicinal practices during Medieval times were based on acquitted teachings from ancient Greek physicians, with a focus on the four humors and the body being affected by astrology. While there were hospitals to treat the ill and elderly, learning medicine was reserved for the Church. Lower class citizens would turn to "occult healing" by means of herbal remedies and demonic magics.  RG

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Torture was used in the medieval period as a way to extract confessions and punish criminals (sometimes prior to execution). Some forms of torture included: the thumbscrew (which worked by slowly crushing victims’ thumbs and toes) and the Les Potres d'angoisse or the "choke pear"(which was inserted into victims’ orifices and expanded).  ADW

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Here's a post for all of those days that you sit back and think, "The contemporary world is horrible." Yes, our own age is plagued by climate change, violence, inequality, and a host of other problems, but at least it's not plagued by an actual plague, right? Our world is by no means perfect, but a quick look at the trials and tribulations of the middle ages may make you feel a bit better. The Middle Ages, also known as the medieval period, lasted in Europe from the 5th to the 15th centuries, and many aspects of this time were rough, to put it mildly.

Scholars have noted that the Middle Ages have often gotten an undeserved bad rap: Sandwiched between the fall of Rome and the start of the Renaissance period, the medieval period tends to be portrayed as a dark era in human history in which nothing good or innovative happened, a waiting period for the brilliance of the Renaissance. As Tim O'Neill writes in Slate, " the Middle Ages" describes a very long period of history that saw a number of major transformations, as well as the invention of such things as "the mechanical clock, eyeglasses, effective gunpowder weapons, and the printing press." That said, there are still many aspects of the period that would make a contemporary person cringe, including devastating famines, disease, and a fondness for disturbingly creative torture devices. TL;DR: Be grateful that you live in the 21st century.

Read on for five awful aspects of the medieval period, and learn about just how dark the "Dark Ages" could be.

1. Torture

Torture was used in the medieval period as a way to extract confessions and punish criminals (sometimes prior to execution). People in this period were quite, er, creative about torture, coming up with relatively simple ways to cause pain, like the thumbscrew (which worked by slowly crushing victims' thumbs and toes), as well as more complicated ones, like the choke pear (pictured above), which was inserted into victims' orifices and expanded. I'll leave you to imagine the rest.

2. Extreme executions

The ingenuity that people brought toward torture in the medieval period was also extended to execution methods. While some criminals and traitors were killed in relatively quick, painless ways (with machines that resemble the guillotine, for example), others were subject to methods designed to create as much pain as possible and prolong the dying process. Hanging, drawing, and quartering, for instance, was a punishment reserved for those who had committed high treason. In this process, the victim was dragged by horse to the site of execution; he would then be hanged nearly (but not quite) to death, and then disemboweled while still alive. The victim would then be cut or pulled into four pieces, or "quartered."

3. The Black Death

The Black Death, one of the most destructive pandemics in human history, came to Europe in the mid-1340s. It is thought that the disease - a bacterial infection often referred to as the "bubonic plague" - came to Europe via merchant ships travelling from Asia. The disease was carried by fleas who rode on the rats that commonly infested ships. In the space of a few years, the Black Death killed more than 20 million people in Europe - nearly one third of the continent's total population.

The plague was extremely contagious and fast-acting. Victims would develop blood and pus-filled boils, as well as fever, vomiting, and other symptoms, and would usually die within a few days. People of the time had no idea what caused the disease or how it was transmitted; many saw it as proof of God's disapproval for the sins of man. Thousands of Jews were murdered in this period in an effort to rid towns and cities of heretics, and some Christians took to extreme acts of piety, like self-flagellation, to cleanse their souls and avoide the disease.

4. Insane medical practices

If you were unlucky enough to get the plague or any other illness during the medieval period, doctors were not much help, and in many cases only made things worse. Doctors of the period understood the human body in terms of the four humors (phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile) and believed that good health depended on a proper balance of these properties. They also relied heavily on astrology to explain physical ailments and illnesses, and turned toward both the medieval church and occult healing practices for aid. Common treatments for a variety of illness included bloodletting (pictured above) and cupping. Trepanning, a process in which a hole is drilled into a skull, was used to treat mental illness.

5. Famine

Europe was affected by a major famine between 1315 and 1317, though the effects lasted for nearly a decade afterward. The springs of 1315 and 1316 were unusually wet, resulting in much smaller harvests that normal. Many people starved to death or died of illnesses due to weakened immune systems caused by hunger. Millions of people - 10 to 15 percent of the total population - died from hunger or disease; there are even reports that many resorted to cannibalism, though these may be apocryphal.
Images: Wikimedia (5)

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5 Reasons That The Middle Ages Were Absolutely Terrifying, So Maybe We Should Complain About 2015 A Little Less

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Here's a post for all of those days that you sit back and think, "The contemporary world is horrible." Yes, our own age is plagued by climate change, violence, inequality, and a host of other problems, but at least it's not plagued by an actual...

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This rare folio of medieval music from the 11th-century  was discovered as part of the binding of an early book. DG

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Posted 09 November 2009

President of Ireland visits Franciscan archive tracing 1,000 years of Irish history

Images from the archive now available for public viewing online

Manuscripts, documents, and early books which have been in the possession of the Irish Franciscans (OFM) since the seventeenth century are now under the care of the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute at University College Dublin.

The manuscripts, which tell the story of Ireland and its identity over a thousand years, are undergoing conservation, cataloguing and digitisation by UCD archivists and historians dedicated to research in Irish history and civilisation.

To commemorate 800 years of the Franciscan Order, the manuscripts which are rarely seen by anyone outside of the Irish Franciscan Order, were viewed by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese at the UCD archives on 20 October 2009.

The priceless collection includes the only copy of the diary of the 1607 Flight of the Earls by Tadhg Ó Cianáin, historian to the Earls. On the 14th September 1607, a group of Ireland's noble elite left from Donegal to find refuge in Europe and seek assistance for their cause in Ireland. They would never return. This is the first diary written in Irish and gives an account of the many cities, dignitaries and important shrines visited by the earls as they progressed through France, Flanders, Switzerland and Italy.

"The collection is a national treasure. It contains significant historical documents relating to the history of the Irish people both at home and abroad," says Dr John McCafferty, Director of UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute.

"The archival materials tell us how notions of Irishness, which last to the present day, were created in the seventeenth century, and they also demonstrate the important contribution made by the Irish to European culture and thought."

The archival partnership between UCD and the Irish Franciscans is an innovative model of collaboration between a university and a religious order.

"For centuries the Irish Franciscans have been collecting and preserving documents and books which reflect their own history and that of the Irish people. Our colleges on the Continent made it possible for these treasures to be kept safe until now," says Fr Caoimhín Ó Laoide OFM, Minister Provincial, Irish Franciscans.

"In 1997 we entered into a partnership with University College Dublin to preserve the collection and make it available to others. We are delighted with the expertise of the UCD archivists in caring for the collection. The collection does not simply tell us about the past - it also gives us an understanding of who we are and where we want to go as a people."

The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese viewed the following materials in the Irish Franciscans' historical archive collection:

The Psalter of Caimín

The Psalter of Caimín: a unique fragment of an illuminated 12th century Irish manuscript from Co Clare saved by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, the Irish Franciscan who directed the compilation of the Annals of the Four Masters (originally entitled the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, a chronicle of Irish history from prehistory to 1616 AD). Ó Cléirigh was given the manuscript for safe-keeping by the family that had preserved it on the island of Inis Cealtra throughout the medieval period. He brought it to Louvain where it remained in the possession of the Irish Franciscans to the present day.

The diary of the 1607 Flight of the Earls by Tadhg Ó Cianáin

The diary of Tadhg Ó Cianáin, historian to the Earls: This is the only copy of the description of the 1607/1608 Flight of the Earls as they and their retinue travelled from Donegal to Rome. Written by their chronicler Tadhg Ó Cianáin it is the first diary written in Irish and gives a lively account of the many cities, dignitaries and important shrines visited by the earls as they progressed through France, Flanders, Switzerland and Italy.

A music manuscript

A very rare folio of medieval music: this page from an 11th-century Italian manuscript was discovered as part of the binding of an early book and is regarded as a very rare survival of musical notation by historians of music. It consists of two forms of notation for chant sung on the feast of St Laurence.

15th century illuminated Italian manuscript

A 15th-century illuminated Italian manuscript: This manuscript was owned by Waterford-born Luke Wadding OFM, founder of St Isidore's College Rome and the first Franciscan to chronicle the history of the Order. The beautiful opening illumination is a miniature of St Francis receiving the stigmata (wounds of Christ), a classical image of medieval times.

Papers from the Wadding archive: Luke Wadding was a towering figure in 17th-century Rome, linked to many of the powerful families who controlled the city and the Papacy. His archive is a treasure of papers which trace his career in Rome and his correspondence with all the important figures of Irish history during his lifetime. He is still so highly regarded that the main archive of the Franciscans in Rome was recently named 'The Wadding Archive' in his honour.

Signature page on the Annals of the Four Masters

Rare books: the Irish Franciscans encountered the hub of early printing presses when they settled in Flanders and as a result amassed a significant collection of books dating back to the sixteenth century. They also were the first to set up a printing press using an Irish font - it was established in Louvain in 1614. The thousands of rare books in the possession of the Irish Franciscans are of international significance (as is the whole archive) and its importance is only now being realized by scholars worldwide.

To view a selection of images from the Irish Franciscan Archive at the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute visit: www.isos.dias.ie

See also www.ucd.ie/mocleirigh

The 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Franciscan Order
The archive consists of thousands of manuscripts, documents and valuable early books which have been in the possession of the Irish Franciscans (OFM) since the seventeenth century. The President's visit marks the 800th anniversary of the Franciscan Order worldwide and the contribution of the Order to the cultural and historical heritage of Ireland. Her visit to the archive reflects her own personal interest in the history of the Irish diaspora as many of the records in the archive document the history of Irish exiles on the Continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Irish Franciscan colleges of Louvain (founded 1607), Rome (1625) and Prague (1631) not only functioned as educational centres for the Order but also acted as quasi-embassies assisting Irish people landing in Flanders, France, Spain and Italy in their travels and in joining the growing number of Irish regiments being formed on the Continent at the time.

Flight of the Earls
On the 14th September 1607, a group of Ireland's noble elite left from Donegal to find refuge in Europe and seek assistance for their cause in Ireland. They would never return. This episode in Irish history would become known as 'Imeacht na nIarlai' / the Flight of the Earls. It marked the end of an ancient Irish order that had survived over 1000 years and made way for the Plantation of Ulster. It was also a key event in the establishment of the Irish Diaspora around the world. The descendants of those involved in the event established themselves as leading figures in different fields of activity in their adopted countries.

One of the significant elements of the Irish Franciscan archive collection at University College Dublin is the only copy of the diary of the 1607 Flight of the Earls by Tadhg Ó Cianáin, historian to the Earls. It is the first diary written in Irish and gives an account of the many cities, dignitaries and important shrines visited by the earls as they progressed through France, Flanders, Switzerland and Italy.

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Posted 09 November 2009 President of Ireland visits Franciscan archive tracing 1,000 years of Irish history Images from the archive now available for public viewing online Manuscripts, documents, and early books which have been in the possession of the Irish Franciscans (OFM) since the seventeenth century are now under the care of the UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute at University College Dublin.

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She was a nun and a composer, who got canonized in 2012. She is remarkable for being one of the first Named composers. R

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hildegard
https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bingen/guides/discovering-great-composers-hildegard-von-bingen/

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Table of Contents

What was St. Hildegard's childhood like?

Why is St. Hildegard famous?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

St. Hildegard, also called Hildegard of Bingen or Hildegard von Bingen, byname Sibyl of the Rhine, (born 1098, Böckelheim, West Franconia [Germany]-died September 17, 1179, Rupertsberg, near Bingen; canonized May 10, 2012; feast day September 17), German abbess, visionary mystic, and composer.

Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by Jutta, an anchorite (religious recluse) and sister of the count of Spanheim. Hildegard was 15 years old when she began wearing the Benedictine habit and pursuing a religious life. She succeeded Jutta as prioress in 1136. Having experienced visions since she was a child, at age 43 she consulted her confessor, who in turn reported the matter to the archbishop of Mainz. A committee of theologians subsequently confirmed the authenticity of Hildegard's visions, and a monk was appointed to help her record them in writing. The finished work, Scivias (1141-52), consists of 26 visions that are prophetic and apocalyptic in form and in their treatment of such topics as the church, the relationship between God and humanity, and redemption. About 1147 Hildegard left Disibodenberg with several nuns to found a new convent at Rupertsberg, where she continued to exercise the gift of prophecy and to record her visions in writing.

A talented poet and composer, Hildegard collected 77 of her lyric poems, each with a musical setting composed by her, in Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum. Her numerous other writings included lives of saints; two treatises on medicine and natural history, reflecting a quality of scientific observation rare at that period; and extensive correspondence, in which are to be found further prophecies and allegorical treatises. She also for amusement contrived her own language. She traveled widely throughout Germany, evangelizing to large groups of people about her visions and religious insights.

Her earliest biographer proclaimed her a saint, and miracles were reported during her life and at her tomb. However, she was not formally canonized until 2012, when Pope Benedict XVI declared her to be a saint through the process of "equivalent canonization," a papal proclamation of canonization based on a standing tradition of popular veneration. Later that year Benedict proclaimed Hildegard a doctor of the church, one of only four women to have been so named. She is considered a patron saint of musicians and writers.

As one of the few prominent women in medieval church history, Hildegard became the subject of increasing interest in the latter half of the 20th century. Her writings were widely translated into English; several recordings of her music were made available; and works of fiction, including Barbara Lachman's The Journal of Hildegard of Bingen (1993) and Joan Ohanneson's Scarlet Music: A Life of Hildegard of Bingen (1997), were published.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Melissa Petruzzello.

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Saint Hildegard | Biography, Visions, Works, Feast Day, & Facts

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St. Hildegard, also called Hildegard of Bingen or Hildegard von Bingen, byname Sibyl of the Rhine, (born 1098, Böckelheim, West Franconia [Germany]-died September 17, 1179, Rupertsberg, near Bingen; canonized May 10, 2012; feast day September 17), German abbess, visionary mystic, and composer.

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All fruits and veggies were cooked, as they thought consuming them raw could lead to disease! As expected, there was a divide between the classes and only nobility regularly ate meat. There were many interesting food selections among all class diets, however.  (ED)

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If you've ever been to the restaurant Medieval Times or eaten at a Renaissance Faire, then you've been horribly misled about medieval diets. The real story of medieval foods and cooking is actually simultaneously a lot more disgusting and a lot more boring, depending on who was doing the eating. But there definitely weren't any turkey legs, okay?

So what did people eat in the Middle Ages? Bread, soup, meat, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. Does that sound boring? Well, they also ate porpoises and deer guts. How did people cook in medieval times? They cooked everything, any way they could, because they thought that even raw fruits and veggies were disease-ridden. Read on for some more interesting facts about the medieval diet of nobels and serfs. Huzzah!

Photo:

Medieval People Used Almond Milk

It may be a trendy "alt-milk" popular among vegetarians and vegans in the 21st century, but during medieval times, almond milk was prepared for pretty practical reasons. When the Church declared a fast day, for example, people couldn't eat meat or animal milk, so cooks turned to almond or walnut "milk" as an alternative, and even used it to make butter. It was also handy because it could be stored "with no danger of degeneration," unlike animal milk, which spoils quickly. Almond milk was such a common ingredient, in fact, that all existing cookbooks from the period call for it.

There Was 'Fast Food' in Medieval Times

Sure, knights weren't riding their horses up to little windows and buying cheap food after a long day of jousting or anything, but there was a form of "fast food" in the Middle Ages. There weren't any Big Macs (or White Castle burgers!) to be had, but people did enjoy meat pies, hotcakes, pancakes and wafers prepared "for immediate consumption." Medieval fast food joints, like modern ones, had pretty poor reputations. Researchers at Penn State say that "the common view of them was that they were dishonest and dirty" and that some made "meat pies from tainted rabbit, geese and offal" or tried to "pass beef pasties off as venison."

Peasants Ate a Ton of Bread and Grains

So this is like the opposite of paleo, right? Most people in medieval Europe ate 2-3 pounds of bread and grains per day, including up to a gallon of (low-alcohol) ale. Grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley were boiled into porridge, made into bread, and, alas, only occasionally paired with poultry, pork, or beef (medieval folk instead ate peas, lentils, and fish to get their protein fix). For the record, 2.5 pounds of rye bread is a whopping 3,000 calories and a gallon of ale is an additional 1,500calories... but considering that work days in the summer for a medieval peasant lasted as long as 12 hours, it was pretty easy to burn through all that bread.

Raw Fruit and Vegetables Were Not to Be Trusted

Eating exclusively raw food is a modern trend that would have confounded medieval folks. Researchers from The British Library Board say, in fact, "All fruit and vegetables were cooked - it was believed that raw fruit and vegetables caused disease." The Boke of Kervynge ("The Book of Carving") from 1500, for example, warned against salads and raw fruit in particular: "Beware of green sallettes and rawe fruytes for they wyll make your soverayne seke." ("Beware of green salads and raw fruits, for they will make your master sick.") Fresh herbs were fair game for medicine and cooking, but all other greenery needed the disease cooked out of it.

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What the Average Diet Was Like in Medieval Times

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If you've ever been to the restaurant Medieval Times or eaten at a Renaissance Faire, then you've been horribly misled about medieval diets. The real story of medieval foods and cooking is actually simultaneously a lot more disgusting and a lot more boring, depending on who was doing the eating....

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The bubonic plague decimated 1/3 of Europe's population in the 14th century. This is only one of several plagues that swept across Europe in the Middle Ages. The author of this article draws comparisons between Covid quarantine and Plague quarantine as well as the function of music. DG

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By Kimberly White

"Within a month of the outbreak, most of Milan's nobility had fled. Conditions deteriorated throughout the autumn on both the medical and civic fronts. ... The city's plague hospital quickly filled to capacity, and more temporary straw huts for the sick were needed than could be built. Increasingly draconian measures were enacted - such as the purging of infected homes, closure of non-essential shops, and a general quarantine - all of which further exacerbated the city's financial troubles."
Remi Chiu, "Singing on the Street and in the Home in Times of Pestilence: Lessons from the 1576-78 Plague of Milan," in Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy, ed. Maya Corry, Marco Faini, and Alessia Meneghin (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 28.

Sound eerily familiar?

Lieferinxe - St. Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken

This was Milan from 1576 to 1578, when plague entered the city's walls and killed approximately 15% of its population. Dr. Remi Chiu, a McGill alumnus (PhD Musicology, 2012), has devoted his research to exploring music and the plague in the Renaissance. In May 2020, I had the opportunity to interview Chiu to learn more about music practices during a pandemic. Despite the centuries that divide us, early modern Europeans' experience with the plague is similar in many ways to ours with COVID-19. Like much of the world's population in 2020, the Milanese struggled to find appropriate ways of practicing important rituals while reducing the risk posed by communal worship. Large-scale, devastating diseases like the plague were considered to be the work of God. In an effort to appease this punitive God, people participated in plague processions, which nevertheless posed tangible health dangers for the city's inhabitants by exacerbating plague transmission.

Chiu's research reveals music's essential role in the handling of the plague. Music was perceived, Chiu writes, as "an urgent and active curative with material consequences for the health and well-being of those assailed by the horrible disease." ¹ Carlo Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, chose to relocate the plague processions from the street and into people's homes, and, in doing so, music became the central focus. Bells would ring seven times a day, calling households to prayer. As the bells rung, people would sing litanies from their windows in a responsory manner, with some people singing and others responding. The call to sing regulated the long days of quarantine, uniting the populace in song.

Borromeo Processing with Holy Nail by Gian Battista della Rovere

Jump several centuries ahead to March 2020: as much of the world was confined to their homes to contain the spread of COVID-19, music was used once again to bring people together and to provide comfort. During some of the most intense and frightening periods of the confinement, people took to their balconies to sing songs, to play their instruments, or simply to bang pots and pans to show solidarity with health care and essential workers. Here in Montreal, led by singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright, people sang the songs of Leonard Cohen, the city's unofficial patron saint.

For centuries, music has been recognized by doctors as essential to our psychosomatic health. Doctors, scientists, and researchers today are helping to re-establish this psychosomatic bond by revealing the powerful effects that music can have on our mental and physical health. But music's healing reaches beyond the individual. "Social music making," Chiu remarks, "has the effect of fostering solidarity in the community." This was, in large part, the goal of the plague processions and the regular singing of litanies from windows during the Renaissance. The same spirit informs our music making during the COVID pandemic. "When you are making music today on your balconies with your friends and neighbours," Chiu continues, "everyone is following the same script, so to speak. So you have to really work together to achieve this communal aesthetic goal."

Milanese plague hospital

Living through the coronavirus pandemic has brought new insights to Chiu's understanding of plague music during the Renaissance. He observes how music and music making help to regulate our sense of time, and just how important that can be when you are having to live in isolation for weeks on end. In 16 th-century Milan, the public had an appointment to come to their window seven times a day to sing. Chiu draws a parallel with the scheduled flash mobs that occurred over the past few months. These flash mobs, he remarks, can be seen as an appointment to be social, giving people "temporal grounding in otherwise unmarked stretches of time."

While we are still in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, and much remains to be seen, Chiu offers some thoughts about the different ways in which music might be instrumentalized. In addition to using music for fundraising, he suspects that music about the coronavirus will also be used for political purposes, which will be interesting to observe with the upcoming presidential election in the United States. And, when the pandemic is all over, Chiu believes that music will memorialize this extraordinary moment in history and the lives of those who have been marked so deeply by this disease.

Want to learn more about Chiu's research and the connections to the current pandemic? You can listen to my interview with him here. His research has also been featured recently in the mainstream media, with an article in The Guardian and in a fascinating NPR interview with Erika Funke on her program ArtScene.

Dr. Remi Chiu specializes in Renaissance music and the history of medicine. A McGill alumnus, Dr. Chiu began exploring the role that music played in the culture of plague for his doctoral dissertation, " Music for the times of pestilence, 1420-1600" (2012). He is Associate Professor at Loyola University Maryland and has since published his book Plague and Music in the Renaissance with Cambridge University Press (2017). His anthology of plague music, which functions as a companion to his monograph, is forthcoming with A-R Editions this summer.

Remi Chiu, Plague and Music in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 5.

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Sounding solidarity: Music during a pandemic, from the plague to COVID-19

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By Kimberly White "Within a month of the outbreak, most of Milan's nobility had fled. Conditions deteriorated throughout the autumn on both the medical and civic fronts. ... The city's plague hospital quickly filled to capacity, and more temporary straw huts for the sick were needed than could be built.

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Medieval music notation was a simple form of notation, meant to be sight read, by those who were unable to read. I evolved into having red lines to show duration of notes, but ultimately was always simple. BB

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The flute seems to have disappeared from artwork depicting music-making, but made a comeback during the Middle Ages (especially in Germany). The medieval flute was essentially a tube with a stopped end, a tone hole, and six finger holes. - JMT

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The transverse flute dates back to ancient Rome (from which one bone specimen has survived), but it drops out of use in Europe until the llth or l2th century. Thereafter it enjoyed considerable popularity except, oddly, in the 15th century when it inexplicably disappears from paintings, only to re-emerge once and for all in the 16th century.

https://artscimedia.case.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/146/2017/10/27154458/11.flute_.mp3

Flute. A dance in the garden of mirth. Dufay Collective. William Lyons, flute. Chandos CHAN 9320 (1994). Trk 2 Estampie real (excerpt).

The medieval flute is simply a cylindrical tube stopped at one end, with a mouth-hole and six fingerholes. At its reappearance in the Middle Ages it seems to have been especially popular in Germany.

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The transverse flute dates back to ancient Rome (from which one bone specimen has survived), but it drops out of use in Europe until the llth or l2th century. Thereafter it enjoyed considerable popularity except, oddly, in the 15th century when it inexplicably disappears from paintings, only to re-emerge once and for all in the 16th century.

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Medieval Dispute Solved By Combat (UGLY)

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Medieval Dispute Solved By Combat (UGLY)

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Ugly in behavior, medieval disagreements or disputes were often settled in combat. However surprised you may be, husbands and wives sometimes settled divorce in the ring as well. It is said the husband was made to stand in a hole while the wife ran round him with sacks of rocks. This practice is called "trial by combat."

CG

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Bathrooms in medieval times were known as Garderobes or privy chambers. They often had long tunnels leading down to rivers or moats to get rid of the "waste." LF
https://allthatsinteresting.com/medieval-toilet

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Valentine's Day & Christmas were the most celebrated holidays 

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A large number of festivals were celebrated during the medieval period, including both religious and secular festivals. Most of the festivals marked a religious occasion while some were meant to celebrate the arrival of spring and other turn of seasons. ADW

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A large number of festivals were celebrated during the medieval period, including both religious and secular festivals. Most of the festivals marked a religious occasion while some were meant to celebrate the arrival of spring and other turn of seasons.

St. Valentine's Day

Among the most popular medieval festivals were Valentine's Day, Christmas Day, Easter and Halloween. At the occasion of the festivals, the rich and the poor alike usually took the day off and partook of the festivities.

St. Valentine's Day

St. Valentine's Day was the most important medieval festival in the month of February. The festival was celebrated on the 14th of February and all the festivities on the occasion had to be related to love.

It was believed in the medieval ages that February 14 marked the time when birds began to seek their mates and so the festival was also considered a natural occasion for love.

As part of the Valentine's Day celebrations, lovers would exchange notes and Love Lanterns was one of the most popular decorations. Fortune telling was also a popular activity at the occasion.

Christmas

Christmas was one of the most elaborate and highly anticipated festivals of the medieval period. Christmas celebrations began in the last week of December and continued until the fifth of January.

During this period, castles were richly decorated and tables were set for guests amidst well place ivy throughout the dining hall. Decorations involving green plants were usually meant as a prayer to seek a good harvest the next year.

It was a tradition in medieval Europe to do every activity twelve times during this period, reflecting the twelve days of Christmas celebrations. So a toast after a feast was typically made twelve times and everyone would strive to exchange at least twelve gifts with others.

Easter

The Easter celebrations in the medieval period took place after forty days of religious fasting and abstinence. As part of the Easter festivities, a castle's lord would typically serve his servants at a special feast.

Most people wore new clothes at the occasion and a part of Easter decorations were the Easter eggs. These eggs were hard-boiled and then painted in various colours. They were then hidden by the adults, to be found by the children who would then spend the day playing with them.

'Hock Monday' was celebrated as a part of Easter celebrations where young women would capture young men who would then have to ransom themselves. The money collected in this way went to the local church as a donation.

Halloween

Halloween was another popular festival during the medieval period. Celebrated in October just at the beginning of the winter, the festival typically involved activities related to ghosts and spirits, often in fun and entertainment ways.

A popular activity for the children at the occasion was to wear masks of different kinds and walk through the streets of the village or town. Many feasts and games specific to Halloween also took place at the time.

Notable among Halloween-related activities were fortune telling and Apply Bobbing.

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Medieval Festivals | Medieval Chronicles

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A large number of festivals were celebrated during the medieval period, including both religious and secular festivals. Most of the festivals marked a religious occasion while some were meant to celebrate the arrival of spring and other turn of seasons. Among the most popular medieval festivals were Valentine's Day, Christmas Day, Easter and Halloween.

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One blogger noticed that cats in Medieval manuscripts are ugly and compiled some images as evidence. DG

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Medieval Artists Were Really Bad At Drawing Cats

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It looks like the medieval painters never laid eyes on a cat.

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Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, c. 1400 (GOOD)

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Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, c. 1400 (GOOD)

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The Canterbury Tales is a somewhat novel piece of literature because Chaucer wrote it in a vernacular language, Middle English, rather than a highbrow language like Latin or French. The book is about a bunch of pilgrims traveling to the Canterbury cathedral who engage in storytelling contests. This article (see link below) talks about an app that an English professor created that lets you hear the tales read to you in Middle English. DG

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One of the many reasons Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century magnum opus is considered a groundbreaking collection of stories is because he chose to write it not in a highbrow language like Latin or French, but in the common tongue of the people: Middle English. Since colloquial English has changed quite a bit over the past seven centuries, The Canterbury Tales that you might have encountered in high school looks and sounds significantly different than it did when Chaucer first created it.

To give us a chance to hear The Canterbury Tales in its original, lyrical glory, an international team of researchers based at the University of Saskatchewan developed an app that reads it aloud in Middle English.

"We want the public, not just academics, to see the manuscript as Chaucer would have likely thought of it-as a performance that mixed drama and humor," University of Saskatchewan English professor Peter Robinson, who led the project, said in a press release.

The app includes a 45-minute narration of the "General Prologue," and the researchers have plans for at least two more apps, which will focus on "The Miller's Tale" and other stories. If you're not exactly well-versed in Middle English, don't worry-the app also contains a line-by-line modern translation of the text, so you can follow along as you listen.

Because Chaucer died before finishing The Canterbury Tales, scholars have pieced together more than 80 centuries-old manuscripts over the years to come up with different editions of his work, but there isn't one definitive text. The version of the "General Prologue" featured in this app is the Hengwrt manuscript, believed to be written by Chaucer's own scribe, Adam Pinkhurst.

Another important contributor to this endeavor was Monty Python member Terry Jones, a medievalist whose two books on Chaucer and translation of the "General Prologue" are featured in the app's introduction and notes. Jones passed away on January 21, 2020, and this was one of the last academic projects he worked on.

"His work and his passion for Chaucer was an inspiration to us," Robinson said. "We talked a lot about Chaucer and it was his idea that the Tales would be turned into a performance."

You can download the app for free on Google Play or iTunes, or check out the desktop version here.

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New App Lets You Hear Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Original 14th-Century English

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One of the many reasons Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century magnum opus is considered a groundbreaking collection of stories is because he chose to write it not in a highbrow language like Latin or French, but in the common tongue of the people: Middle English.