The Medieval Household by Geoff Egan – A Review

Published: 1998
Pages: 342

I don’t usually write a review until I’ve read all of a book, but I have to confess that this isn’t going to happen with The Medieval Household, or, indeed, with any of the other books in this series. I’ve read bits as I’ve needed them, but I’m not going to read all the details about the digs or the preservation techniques or the individual designations of the objects included in the book. It’s the objects themselves and their uses that interest me and there are lots of them.

The book’s subtitle is ‘Daily Living c. 1150 – c. 1450’ and this is what it delivers. Many artifacts have survived centuries of building works in London, both partial and intact, and they all have a tale to tell. Their stories contribute to our ideas about how people lived during this period. The Medieval Household is an illustrated catalogue of findings from archaeological digs in London between 1972 and 1983. The illustrations are mainly line drawings, but there are also lots of black and white photographs and a few colour plates. The introduction also has a few medieval paintings (in black and white) showing the interiors of medieval houses.

The chapters cover just about anything you might want to know about what a medieval household contained: Fixtures and Fittings, Furnishings, Security Equipment, Heating Equipment, Lighting Equipment, and Miscellaneous (kitchenware, tableware, storage and urinals). I have found the introductions to each section to be the most useful things in the book. They talk about how the objects were used and what type of object might be found in different kinds of households.

As with every book I’ve ever read about the Middle Ages, there are some surprises; there are photos of some amazing enamel glassware; there’s a drawing of a flesh hook used to retrieve meat from the stewpot; there are examples of very complicated locking mechanisms; and a broken wooden bowl that was sewn back together again. I have got to find a way to include this last in a novel.

The book goes into far more detail than I’ll ever need for a novel, or even for a blog post, but it’s fun to look at some of the objects and think about how they would have looked when new and to imagine someone using them every day. It’s not a book that I would recommend for someone with a passing interest in the Middle Ages, but, if you really want to get to the details of medieval life. this is definitely a book for you.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Opus Anglicanum by Tanya Bentham – A Review

Pages: 208
Published: 2021

Since my early teens I’ve been fascinated by textiles, although I realised only recently that it was a fascination. I taught myself to knit, crochet, cross-stitch, make clothes and make lace. Sadly, my needlework teacher at school was less than encouraging and, fifty years later, I still believe that I can’t do embroidery. When I bought this book, therefore, it was not with the idea of making any of the projects or even trying to sew in the style of Opus Anglicanum. I bought it to look at the pictures and to read about the techniques.

It is a beautiful book, designed to take a beginner in this style of embroidery to a fairly advanced point. There are eleven step by step projects, each introducing new techniques and getting progressively more difficult. Bentham works her pieces in shimmering silk thread and writes about how important the silk is and how it captures and reflects the light and the illustrations moslty capture this.

I haven’t read it from cover to cover, but I have looked at every picture and diagram on every page and they are worth looking at. Opus Anglicanum, as the name implies, originated in England. It was a style of embroidery that was prized all over Europe from the twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century. Tanya Bentham designs and teaches embroidery pieces based on originals from this period. Some of the designs in this book are more or less straight copies; others, such as the princess with a frog/ handsome prince in her hand or the woman taking a selfie, are adaptations.

There isn’t much history about Opus Anglicanum, but that’s because this is a practical book. Bentham’s enthusiasm for her subject shines through on every page. It was a brave decision by her publisher to allow her to write in her own chatty voice and I can see that this might annoy some readers. I’m not sure how much I would enjoy it if I were working through a whole project. She describes herself at one point as a mum chastising a teenager and there are notes throughout the book in which she says she is nagging the reader, because there’s something she doesn’t want them to forget.

I must repeat that I haven’t tried any of these projects, so I don’t know how useful the book is in teaching the necessary techniques. I can say that it looks as if it would set an embroiderer on the right path. The photographs are great and very clear. There are also complete lists of the supplies needed for each project, including the sizes and types of needles required.

Once you’ve finished the embroidery, there are instructions for what to do next, whether mounting it as a picture or turning it into an aumoniere (a medieval purse). There are templates for all the projects at the back of the book.

So, has this book made me want to try Opus Anglicanum? No. There are other embroidery styles I would rather try before Opus Anglicanum. It’s beautiful, but it’s not really me. Do I regret buying the book? No. I  love picking it up and looking at the pictures and reading a bit about the techniques.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases by Christopher Corédon and Ann Williams – A Review

Published: 2007
Pages: 320

If you’ve ever read the sources list at the bottom of my posts, you’ll probably have come across A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases by Christopher Corédon and Ann Williams. I use it a lot. As with all dictionaries, it’s not something you’d read from cover to cover, although I’m sure it would be fascinating. I’ve had it a few years now, so it’s probably time to review it.

As the blurb on the back says, it contains 3,400 terms. They range across the whole of the Middle Ages and there are legal terms, ecclesiastical terms and agricultural terms, as well as words and phrases in daily use. It also contains some Latin terms that were in general use, although I think this is its weak point, as I’ve occasionally looked up Latin terms and not found them. I do not, however, hold this against it, as the Latin terms used in everyday life by people who hadn’t studied Latin would probably fill a book on their own.

If you read a lot about the Middle Ages, fiction as well as non-fiction, you probably find that authors don’t always bother to define the terms they use. This is just the book to help you. Don’t know what a frankpledge is? This dictionary will tell you (or you could look at my post here). Not sure what sable, bend sinister, bar or recursant mean? As this book will explain, they’re all heraldic symbols. Creasing your brow over manchet? Look no further than this dictionary to discover that it’s both a type of bread and an heraldic symbol.

When I wrote about tithes last week, I consulted this dictionary to ensure that what I wrote about glebe lands was correct. It turned out that only half the story was in the book I was consulting and this book gave me the other half.

It has, however, earned my enmity by illustrating the word Wickham (a settlement connected with an old Roman vicus) with a village in Essex rather than the village in Hampshire which gave its name to William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester and chancellor of England in the fourteenth century and, therefore, much better known.

Flicking through the dictionary to write this post, I came across lots of interesting entries, some of which, I’m sure, will inspire future posts. For example, eremite. I hadn’t even thought about writing about hermits. Forest is another example. It doesn’t mean what you think it does and certainly explains why my local forest, the New Forest, is more heath than wood.

This is a very useful book for anyone with an interest in the Middle Ages.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel by Frances and Joseph Gies – A Review

Published: 1995
Pages: 368

Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel is one of a series of books written about the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies. Some of the others are about daily life in a village, a town and a castle. This one, however, has a much broader perspective. The subtitle is Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, but it’s more even than that.

The book opens with a survey of the technology that was available in Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages, mostly left by the Romans, and there’s also a visit to China to look at what was available there. The Chinese were more advanced technologically than the Romans in many areas and much of what the Romans left behind them was allowed to fall into disuse.

Eventually information started coming from China and, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the translations of works by Greek scientists arrived in Europe via the Muslim world. By then there had already been many advances in Europe, mostly to do with water in the form of improvements to ships and waterwheels. The book finishes in the fifteenth century with Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Gutenberg.

I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read by Frances and Joseph Gies and this one was no different. It’s a very good overview of medieval technology and it made me want to go away and find out more about a few things. Their books are easy to read and full of interesting facts. There are several black and white illustrations.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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The Friar of Carcassonne by Stephen O’Shea – A Review

Published: 2011
Pages: 280

Although most of the events related in The Friar of Carcassonne take place in the fourteenth century, their roots stretch back into the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the explosion of heresies in the Languedoc, an area of southern France. Stephen O’Shea has written about the origins of Catharism in the region in a separate book, The Perfect Heresy, and The Friar of Carcassonne is the story of a Franciscan who played an important role during its end.

Brother Bernard Délicieux, a Franciscan, took on the inquisition (very definitely lower case at that time) when no one else dared. There had been obvious abuses by the Dominican inquisitors in Carcassonne, a town in Languedoc, at the end of the thirteenth century. Some of the inquisitors, it turned out later, received financial benefits from identifying certain wealthy people as supporters of the heretics. Very little ‘evidence’ was required to condemn someone and many men spent decades incarcerated in terrible conditions, eventually dying in prison for supporting people they’d never heard of. This was the main incentive for Bernard to take on the inquisition.

O’Shea goes back in time at the beginning of the book in order to set the scene. By the end of the thirteenth century Catharism had begun to die out, but there was renewed persecution in the last two decades of the century. This resulted in unrest in a region that had only recently become part of the kingdom of France. Eventually what was going on there caused concern both to the pope and to the king of France.

Brother Bernard is presented as charismatic, intelligent and persuasive. O’Shea shows how he managed to gain the support of both highly-placed churchmen and counsellors of Philippe IV, king of France. He also shows how easily Bernard made enemies in equally high places, including kings and popes. Bernard, it turns out, could also be a bit of a rabble-rouser when he wanted and he wasn’t above lying to further his cause or to save his life.

Unusually for something that happened in a remote corner of the world to someone who wasn’t terribly important beyond that corner, the events are well-documented. The reasons for this become very clear as the tale progresses. O’Shea makes good use of these records in his presentation of the friar and his activities.

I enjoyed the book, but found it quite disjointed. Of necessity, O’Shea has to explain a lot of background before he can write about what Bernard did in a particular situation and why it was significant, and that breaks up the narrative, since it’s necessary in almost every chapter. There are also copious notes at the end of the book, citing sources for those who want to find out more. If you’re interested in the heresies that erupted in the twelfth century, you will probably want to read this book.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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The Middle Ages in 50 Objects by Elina Gerstman and Barbara H. Rosenwein – A Review

It’s another book review this week. The Middle Ages in 50 Objects is both a delight and a disappointment. The delight is in the illustrations. Some of the fifty objects are rather special and there is a full page photograph of each of them. The disappointment is in the text. Each item has a three page essay and these don’t always focus on the object. Many of them talk a bit about the item then go off at a tangent to talk about something (very) loosely connected with the object. Thus a painting of the flagellation of Christ leads to an extremely superficial look at the cult of flagellation during the Black Death, anti-Semitism, the Franciscans, Venice, the Fourth Crusade and trade in the Mediterranean.

When I bought the book, I didn’t realise that the objects were all in the Cleveland Museum of Art, so this should be viewed more as a catalogue than a book about medieval objects. ‘Medieval’ as a term is rather loosely used, as the books definition of medieval is a lot broader than most people would be happy with. Some of the objects date from the third century and some from the sixteenth century.

Although they’re all from one museum, the objects come from a variety of places and times. As well as items that you would expect to see from Europe, there are also Byzantine and Islamic objects from various periods.

The book is divided into four sections. The Holy And The Faithful is about religious artefacts, including a stunning twelfth-century reliquary. The Sinful And The Spectral is a bit of a hotchpotch of images of the Devil and evil sprits. Daily Life And Its Fictions includes coins, buttons, jugs and a lovely lion aquamanile. Death And Its Aftermath is another section that doesn’t really know what it’s about, but there are depictions of the Crucifixion and the death of the Virgin Mary as well as decorations from tombs.

Since the articles don’t go into any great depth, it’s a shame that there’s no bibliography to allow readers to follow up points that interest them. Whilst it’s probably better to see the book as an introduction to the Middle Ages, it’s a rather disjointed introduction and it doesn’t tell the reader where to go next. Some of the essays have quotes from writings that are, more or less, contemporaneous with the object and the sources are listed at the back of the book. It’s not always obvious, however, which source goes with which quotation.

Although I can’t say that I enjoyed the book with my whole heart, I did enjoy aspects of it. Some of the essays are quite enlightening about the objects depicted and some of them made me stop and think about how the objects had been made and used. The photographs of the objects are wonderful and some of the objects themselves are fascinating. My favourite section is definitely the one on daily life, since that’s the aspect of medieval history that really has my attention.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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A Brief History of the Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward – A Review

Pages: 296
Published: 1978

You will be able to tell from the number of pages that Desmond Seward’s A Brief History of the Hundred Years War really is brief. In his Trial by Battle, the first volume of his five volume history of the Hundred Years War, Jonathan Sumption takes 200 pages just to cover the causes of the war, so it’s fairly obvious that a book of this size isn’t going to help anyone understand why things happened. I still don’t really understand the political situation in France in the first half of the fifteenth century that allowed both sides in a civil war to ask for Henry V’s help, only for one side to assist him later in his goal to obtain the French crown. I do have a better idea of the battles and sieges of that period, though.

The book is a chronological telling of the events of the Hundred Years War, with the exception of the chapter in which Joan of Arc appears. As it must have seemed to the English and Burgundian armies at the time, she appears out of nowhere and Seward goes back in time to explain her arrival. In many ways this underlines Seward’s bias towards the French. Joan appeared as a kind of saviour figure outside the walls of Orleans, which was besieged by the English and the Burgundians.

I found this bias quite tiring, as the worst thing Seward (who was born in Paris) has to say about any French king, save Charles VII, is that he wasn’t a very good soldier (all of them except one) or that he had a taste for luxury. Charles VII, he says, was physically and mentally weak, and his confessors thought he was a heretic. Edward III, in comparison, was a womaniser who spent his senile last years drinking. Richard II became ‘insanely tyrannical’ and Henry V is compared to Napoleon and Hitler. English soldiers carried out atrocities, while French soldiers, presumably, behaved like perfect gentlemen. Seward also says that Roger Mortimer was ‘perhaps the nastiest man ever to rule England’. I’m fairly certain there would be more votes for John Lackland on that score.

The only Englishman for whom he has a good word is the Duke of Bedford, Henry V’s brother and regent for Henry VI in France, who ‘loved the French’. The French apparently loved him in return, but that’s possibly because there was order and, more or less, peace in the part of France that he controlled.

1978 was a long time ago and Seward includes a few things that contemporary historians would feel less able to be dogmatic about. He states confidently, for example, that Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella were lovers and that the queen was carrying his child. He’s also happy to write that Edward II was killed by a red hot poker and that Isabella spent the rest of her life after Mortimer’s fall as a prisoner. I suspect there are similar bald statements about the fifteenth century part of the war, but I know a lot less about what was going on then to be able to know.

As you can tell, the book doesn’t have a huge amount to recommend it, other than the brevity which is mostly the reason for for its faults. It is easy to read, which is a plus and it does include all the major battles and a few of the sieges in the war. If you want something that you can read in a couple of days that will give you an idea of what happened during the Hundred Years War, this might be the book for you. If you want to understand why and how things happened, I’d recommend saving your pennies for Jonathan Sumption’s more comprehensive history of the war.

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer by Derek Pearsall – A Review

Pages: 380
Published: 1992

More Chaucer this week. This time it’s the man himself rather than his work. The last time I wrote about his life on this blog (towards the end of 2018), Toutparmoi mentioned The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer by Derek Pearsall, so I bought a copy, and it has proven to be a good purchase. It was published almost thirty years ago, so there is a chance that some of what it contains has been superseded by more recent research.

The book’s subtitle is A Critical Biography and that’s the part that I found least pleasing. Pearsall ties what is known of Chaucer’s life to the supposed dates of his works. I say ‘supposed’, because no one really knows when he wrote which works. Some can be narrowed down to a decade or so, and The Book of the Duchess must have been written after the death of Blanche of Lancaster, the duchess it celebrates. There are some clues, but few of them clear cut.

Since I’ve only read one of Chaucer’s poems, these sections of the book meant nothing to me. The discussions about various interpretations of the actions of different characters, particularly in The Canterbury Tales, must be engaging if you’re familiar with them, but I’m not.

There are surprisingly few records of Chaucer’s life. Most of them are about annuities given to him, or expenses for clothing for special occasions while he was in service to various royal households. Some relate to court cases against him for debt and one for rape. This last raises all kinds of questions about Chaucer, but Pearsall offers no definitive answer, which is quite correct of him, given the impossibility of obtaining any of the facts, let alone all of them after more than six centuries.

Pearsall is very good at putting what is known (and sometimes what isn’t known) about Chaucer into context. There’s no information about Chaucer’s education, so Pearsall doesn’t jump to conclusions about his schooling, but describes the kind of education a boy of Chaucer’s class would have had. He does something similar at other points in the book.

The picture Pearsall paints of Chaucer is, of necessity, superficial. It’s also surprisingly unattractive. It’s hard to reconcile the (possible) rapist and constant debtor with the trusted servant of royalty and creator of some of the best poetry written in the Middle Ages.

I think Pearsall’s ideal reader is someone who has read all of Chaucer’s works, is interested in the fourteenth century in general and in Chaucer’s life in particular, in that order. Since I only fall into the last two categories, I don’t feel that I’ve reaped the full benefit of reading this book. Despite that, I’ve learned a lot from it.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Trial by Battle by Jonathan Sumption – A Review

Published: 1990
Pages: 672

Trial by Battle is the first volume in Jonathan Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War. It begins with the death of Charles IV, King of France, in 1328 and ends with the fall of Calais to Edward III in 1347.

Many pages and words are spent on examining the causes of the war. This is really useful, as its origins are more complex than shorter histories choose to say. It’s not simply that Edward III was making a claim for the French crown, or that he was defending a man who had taken refuge in his court, or that he wanted to recover lost territory in Aquitaine, although all of these (particularly the last) played a part. Sumption takes more than 200 pages to look at the political situations in England and France, their relative wealth and the characters of their kings. When the war finally starts, it makes some kind of sense.

I knew about some of the things that happened during this stage of the war, but Sumption shows how they relate to one another. Events that have always seemed unconnected are joined together by his vast knowledge and understanding of primary and secondary sources in different languages. Apparently he reads French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan and Latin. The bibliography alone takes up 14 pages.

As you would expect from a Law Lord, Lord Sumption is very decisive on the legal niceties of claims of kingship and repudiating treaties. He also has a very clear view on what Edward III intended to achieve when he declared himself king of France.

I have enjoyed reading Trial by Battle very much, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to someone who knew nothing about the Hundred Years War. It would probably help to have an overview of what happened during this period and to have some knowledge of who was involved first. I was very uncertain about who was doing what in the Low Countries, partly because some of the counts and princes owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor and some to the King of France and I wasn’t always sure which was which, but also because most of them changed sides, one or two of them more than once. If you already have some understanding of the early years of the Hundred Years War, but want more detail, this is probably the book for you.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Warfare in Medieval Manuscripts by Pamela Porter – A Review

This week I’ve read a short book about medieval warfare. It’s not entirely accurate to say that I’ve read it, though. Warfare in Medieval Manuscripts is more or less a picture book. That isn’t to denigrate it at all, as it’s full of wonderful pictures of warfare taken from manuscripts in the British Library. I don’t know how many illustrations there are, but probably more than three-quarters of the 128 pages have a colour picture showing one or more aspects of medieval warfare.

Given those proportions, the text isn’t as detailed as you might hope, but I did learn something that I’m saving up for a future post.

There are six chapters:

• The Art of War
• Knights, Chivalry and the Training for War
• Knightly Arms and Armour
• Armies and Battles
• Castles and Sieges
• Gunpowder and the Decline of Medieval Warfare

I don’t know that the chosen illustrations necessarily fall neatly into these categories, as there are cannon and handguns shown well before the chapter about gunpowder.

The illustrations themselves are wonderful. I had to get out a magnifying glass so that I could appreciate the detail more easily and there is a lot of detail to appreciate.

One thing that I found less pleasing about the book is that the pictures are labelled according to the point that Porter is using them to illustrate, rather than telling the reader which event they’re depicting. My favourite illustration, for example, is called “Weapons old and new are used side by side”. The British Library calls it “Siege of Troyes“. I  like it because it shows old and new weapons, but the picture speaks for itself. It shows cannon and pikes and crossbows and longbows. It’s that little bit more interesting when you know that it represents the siege of Troy.

That’s really the only fault I can find with the book. If you’re interested in contemporary depictions of medieval warfare, this is the book for you.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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