Medieval Times

if you like radical religious cults and sects World Turned Upside Down is required reading!

getting far from the middle ages, but I've been dipping into Richard Greaves's Deliver us from Evil, about the where the radical underground went after the Restoration. It's good, feels more coherent and more readable than Hill's Experience of Defeat.

Just watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for the first time in ages. AMAZING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qT-C-0ajI

"I told you, we're an Anarcho-Syndacalist Commune!" So so great! I did not get this joke when I was a kid.

Half this movie is fantasy ridiculousness, the other half extremely cutting historical satire.

I am almost done with "The Devil's Doctor", which has been a pretty amazing book. Right now I am near the end of Paracelsus's life, where he is sort of wandering around, getting banished from towns for madness, alchemy, or necromancy. He has spent his life as an iconoclast, which has turned many against him, making him even more bitter, wild, and ecstatic in his approach. Physical medicine during the medieval ages was so horrific -- often the cure was worse than the symptom -- that mental health was barely a concern. The mentally unstable were feared for being transmitters of diseases both real (the plague) and imaginary (demonic possession). Millenarians and Flagellants and other apocalyptic Christian cults traveled from town to town generally freaking out a populace that was dying off at a rate that would be extremely alarming to us today.

The peak of the activity was during the Black Death, then called the Great Death, which began around 1347. Spontaneously Flagellant groups arose across Northern and Central Europe in 1349, except in England. The German and Low Countries movement, the Brothers of the Cross, is particularly well documented - they wore white robes and marched across Germany in 33.5 day campaigns (each day referred to a year of Jesus's earthly life) of penance, only stopping in any one place for no more than a day. They established their camps in fields near towns and held their rituals twice a day. The ritual began with the reading of a letter, claimed to have been delivered by an angel and justifying the Flagellants' activities. Next the followers would fall to their knees and scourge themselves, gesturing with their free hands to indicate their sin and striking themselves rhythmically to songs, known as Geisslerlieder, until blood flowed. Sometimes the blood was soaked up in rags and treated as a holy relic.

In Germany they claimed they could resurrect emperor Frederick II, who would bring an age of social justice. Konrad Schmidt claimed to be Frederick and baptised himself in the blood of his followers. His Thuringian rebels left their worldly occupations and prayed preparing the Judgment Day for 1369. The Inquisition burnt him before he could go on with his plans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant

http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglitData/image/cpg848/1/020r.jpg

The Astronomia Magna contains the clearest expression of Paracelsus's views on astrology, the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and a good deal else. Here he writes on magical beliefs, occult sciences such as phrenology, physiognomy, and necromancy, as well as on geometry and meteorology. And he treats technology in a Baconian spirit, predicting techno-utopias where "pipes and crystals" will "carry the human voice over a distance of a hundred miles."
-- Philip Ball, The Devil's Doctor, p. 331

"As an outspoken critic of the Paracelsians, it is true, Sennert included Trithemius in a group of excessively enthusiastic magicians, also numbering Agrippa and Paracelsus in their number, who had allowed their high-flying imaginations to dominate over the kind of sober reason praised by Hippocrates and Galen as the proper standard of good mental health. Singled out by Sennert as a prime example of such enretrained flights of phantasy was Trithemius's Cabalistically based art of stegangraphy, through the operations of whichc, so it was claimed, "voices can be naturally heard from a distance of a hundred miles.""

-- Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology, pp. 198

Hey whaddaya know?

The Black Death seems to have fallen with, greater violence on Austria than on Germany, perhaps on account of its close contact with Italy. It devastated Vienna from Easter to Michaelmas of a.d. 1349, carrying off thirty thousand out of a population of less than one hundred thousand persons. The excited populace personified it as the Pest-Jungfrau, who had only to raise her hand to infect a victim. She was to be seen flying through the air in the form of a blue flame, and also proceeding out of the mouths of dead and dying. Some saw the plague poison descend in the form of a ball of fire. One such was seen hovering over the town, but a bishop exorcised it by prayer, so that it fell harmless to earth.

Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art, Raymond Crawfurd

Reading about sanitation back in medieval times..... dang... No indoor plumbing, except for maaaaybe if you were a king, and then you had to be pretty up on the absolute latest technology in order for that even. You had kings throwing their shit out the castle windows, and it would often just be caked all down the side of the castle walls. There are accounts of nobles having their shit carted and dumped out at the local water source, to the point of clogging it up, impeding the local village's access to water, and creating droughts. The oligarchy literally oppressing the peasant class with their shit.

Of course there were sewage ditches dug out and stuff, but these were not constructed by plumbing engineers, they were basically big holes in the ground, covered up w rotting wood. Rakers were the medieval equivalent of garbage men, raking away mud, shit, and dead bodies, etc. Some of them died by falling through the rotting wood and drowning in shit. Unbelievable.

Some of them died by falling through the rotting wood and drowning in shit. Unbelievable.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 14 May 2015 17:51

That still happens to some farmers.

Beer wasn't merely a festive libation. In many cases, it was the only way to remove pathogens from tainted water.

all the while the roman empire had public baths, plumbing and hot water

dark ages indeed

all the while the roman empire had public baths, plumbing and hot water

although the romans weren't big on draining or changing the water in the public baths, even after zillions of dirty plebeians had bathed in them.

ewwwwww really???

Never fails to amaze me that the Romans pioneered the use concrete 2500 years ago and everyone seemingly forgot about it until the 1700s.

*use of*

might've been partly a question of necessity - the teeming metropolises of the Roman empire at its height didn't really exist again in Europe until the 17th/18th century so perhaps the lack wasn't felt?

Roman concrete is still the best in the world as well, some of their ancient harbours have weathered thousands of years of erosion. It seems volcanic ash is the magic ingredient.

i think the actual secret of roman city planning was all those penis mobiles they had everywhere

& sacrifices made to the true gods

Read some thing the other day about how medieval cesspits would sometimes randomly catch fire because of the volatile chemical soup contained in them.

the river mersey also used to catch fire sometimes for the same reason

Roman concrete will outlast most modern concrete. Rusting rebar is the major weakness that dooms most modern architecture.

xp: Coal fly ash is a pretty good substitute for volcanic ash, and is currently all used in concrete. The problem for the longevity of modern structures is the use of embedded rebar to handle tensile stresses. Without maintenance, it rusts, and cracks the surrounding concrete, causing chunks of facades to fall to the streets below. You could construct buildings without rebar, but they would be more limited in height and (as I understand) more expensive.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Johnofgaunt.jpg

I am reading "1381: The Year of the Peasants' Revolt" and it is talking about the corrupt military industrial complex of 1378. Above is John of Gaunt, who was a rich and powerful warlord during the times of (thirteen-year-old) Richard II's reign. Gaunt was having difficulty raising money for his army due largely to the church and general public (both through taxes) not wanting to fund these destructive forces. One sticking point was that ships built for military use were co-opted by wealthy merchants for private use when not in war times. Parliament was held away from London due to riots and confrontations and was a sign of Gaunt's falling reputation. Then this happened (emphasis mine):

The failure of his most recent military expedition had not helped matters but it was the violation of the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey by his men which had provoked outrage in both Church and city. Gaunt had imprisoned two soldiers who had refused to surrender to him their hostage for a very valuable Aragonese ransom; in August 1378 they had escaped from the Tower and taken refuge in the abbey sanctuary, where they were pursued and one of them killed on the steps of the high altar during mass, together with a sacristan who had attempted to intervene on their behalf.

1381, pp. 121

Gaunt was not personally blamed for the incident but the guilty men were ex-communicated from the church. This further helped to sour the relationship between church and state/military. Several attempts at tax reform and underwhelming poll tax results led to the hiring of a doomed army for an expedition to Brittany. The realm could only afford half the desired army due to a lack of funds. The expedition was delayed in order to wait for the poll tax to be processed, then delayed again due to bad winds. The lingering and idle army reportedly pillaged and raped the local population, lead by Sir John Arundel, who sounds like the most violent and horrible pirate you could imagine. Their ensuing bad luck was seen as God's justice in action. Encountering harsh winter storms upon finally setting sail, not a single ship reached its destination.

Commanding a force with the purpose of bringing relief to the Duke of Brittany, Sir John was compelled to wait for stronger winds. During this wait he decided to take refuge in a nunnery, where his men "took no notice of the sanctity of the place and... violently assaulted and raped" those they found inside. Further to this Sir John "allowed his men to ransack the countryside as they liked and to impoverish the people". When the force eventually set out to sea, carrying with them goods stolen from a nearby church and under a pronouncement of excommunication from the wronged priests, the expedition was caught in a storm. Thomas Walsingham reports that during the panic of the storm, Sir John murdered those of his men who refused to make for shore for fear of being shipwrecked upon the rocks. Subsequently, after safely arriving on an island off the Irish coast, Sir John and his boat captain were swept back into the sea and drowned.

According to Thomas Walsingham's story, FitzAlan's men profaned a convent at or near Southampton, and abducted many of its occupants. The fleet was then pursued by a violent tempest, when the wretched nuns who had been carried off were thrown overboard to lighten the ships. The vessels were, however, wrecked on the Irish coast, near Scariff according to some authorities, but at Cape Clear Island according to others. Sir John Arundell, together with his esquires, and other men of high birth, were drowned, and twenty-five ships were lost with most of their crews. Froissart's account of the event differs essentially from Walsingham's, in the omission of the story of the desecration of the convent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_FitzAlan,_1st_Baron_Arundel

I bet there are some crazy restless ghosts around these areas. Haunted waters.

Just finished the book. Pretty incredible stuff.

The so-called Peasant's revolt wasn't a case of a bunch of illiterate dirt diggers attempting anarchy. It included many people that owned land, were skilled in trades, and knew how government worked. The revolt itself in the summer of 81 was heavily co-ordinated, with rebels tracking down crooked officials, court rolls, and legal documents, in order to obtain a somewhat "legitimate" change in the way things are done. They burned these documents in public ceremonies, imitating official practice, to drive that home. They also displayed the dismembered heads of their victims in public areas, again imitating official practice. Aside from burning legal documents they had new ones drawn up to guarantee their newly won freedoms.

The main goal seems to have been abolishing villeinage (common serfdom) itself, and crazy enough, they met with (14 year old) King Richard II at Mile End in person, and he gave his word that it would be done. The boy king also gave them official seals and banners, which they carried with them on their quest to root out traitors. The nobelmen and royal court later made him go back on his word, and there is some ambiguity as to whether he did so in the first place out of fear or because he genuinely wanted to help his people. There is evidence that he actually attempted to abolish villeinage again and was unable to, so who knows. During the revolt the rebel rallying cry emphasized allegiance to the king, and many of them thought they were acting with the king's blessings.

What led to the revolt was a number of factors. The Black Death had struck earlier in the century, killing off many landholders and leaving the survivors to consolidate resources. This worked out better for some (the church, noblemen, lords) than others (serfs, freemen), resulting in increased social stratification. There were a series of mis-managed wars that benefited not the commoners but the glory-seekers, war profiteers, mercenaries, The Realm, etc. Campaigns were mis-managed and taxes continued to be levied, at more and more unfair rates. A poll tax was enacted that was due from every person 14 or older. Tax collectors often abused their power and were targets of the rebels. It would be 600 years before another poll tax.

Interestingly we only know about the most famous rebels due to establishment propaganda written in order to defame them. Inspirational speeches from rebel martyrs at the gallows were invented by church officials in order to further the church's monopoly on spirituality. The rebellion was quickly suppressed and all gains granted by the king were revoked within months. The example of the rebels' religious heresy was used to justify hundreds of years of brutalization and oppression.

There are some amazing stories in here. One story has well-hated Chief Justice John Cavendish fleeing from rebels and coming upon a boat to make his escape when a woman named Katherine Gamen saw him coming and untied it, leaving him to the mercy of the mob. Another story has the corpses of rebels displayed hanging from a tree to serve as a warning to others. A good samaritan climbed the tree, cut them down, and gave them a proper burial. Official response was to force the townspeople to dig up the corpses and re-hang them. Insane.

It's basically Game of Thrones except it really happened.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rhsGySQ9L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/1381-Peasants-Revolt-Juliet-Barker/dp/0674368142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458350022

this is the book. highly recommended.

his brother sleep is even more annoying:

skeleton, england, 15th century pic.twitter.com/o9QJOQxayu

— weird medieval guys (@WeirdMedieval) July 2, 2022

I thought this was going to be about the chain theme restaurant, where they employees are currently unionizing!!! Have seen the slogan suggestion "Jousting for jobs!" at least once already. Here for it.

smirking death supports the medieval union

that 5th from bottom line looks like it reads "I shit you so glad"