Ladakh: Travelling in memory through time and space ~ by Lesley Downer

When does history begin? When does the present slide through a looking glass and emerge as ‘history’? Is yesterday ‘history’? When I was in Kathmandu back in the last century (1971, to be precise), I felt as if I had travelled through time as well as space. I was in the Middle Ages. 

Here is a story of a visit to Ladakh which felt like a journey through time. 

Ladakh's surreal landscape 1981 painted by me 

Ladakh 1981 

In 1981 I travelled through Kashmir and across Zoji la, a Himalayan pass 11,575 feet (3528 metres) high, to Ladakh, on the back of a motorbike. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle so cars, trucks and buses went one way in the morning and vehicles going the other way had to wait till afternoon. 

But that didn’t apply to motorbikes. We’d pull off the road when a line of vehicles approached and wait till they’d passed, then continue on our way. 

The journey can be done in two days but we took our time, clambering up cliffs to explore remote monasteries and camping in fields beside the rivers. Once we woke to find water rising around us and had to pack up fast; we’d forgotten that the fields are irrigated at night. 

Ladakh 2013

We were riding through an otherworldly landscape of dark mauve mountains, pale turquoise rocks and grey green scree, between orange and lilac and pink and dark maroon sand dunes and rocks and hills and mountains. 

At one point I scrambled up a pink hill to have a look at the view from the top. All around were more pink hills, as far as the eye could see. There was no landmark, no village, no little house, nothing to indicate where I had come from or where my friend Chris and his motorbike were, no indication of north or south or east or west. I was completely disoriented. 

I found Chris and the motorbike again and we carried on through more maroon and mauve hills. Eventually we started to see rivers fringed with bright green barley fields and groves of apricot trees.

We passed through little towns of white-washed houses with bundles of hay on the roof and lines of prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. There were stupas - ‘chortens’ in Ladakhi and Tibetan - on the outcrops, white-washed or carved out of the wine-coloured rock, some as big as houses, others small, stretching in long rows. 

The palace at Leh 1981

Leh 

Finally we got to Leh, a small frontier town of Ladakhi and Tibetan people, where the women wore long dusty black dresses and long pigtails and tall stove pipe hats and everyone wore huge beaming welcoming smiles. Wherever you went you saw the palace, a smaller version of the Potala in Lhasa, rising high above the town, deserted and crumbling, virtually a ruin. 

I settled into an inn run by John Page, an Englishman who was installing solar heating in Ladakhi homes. Leh is 11,562 feet (3524 metres) above sea level and dry with very strong sunshine and very cold winters, so solar heating made perfect sense. John’s girlfriend was Helena Norberg-Hodge, the only westerner who could speak Ladakhi, a dialect of Tibetan. 

Besides me there was a young British couple staying there called Zee and Theresa. Ladakhi food was unappetizing, mainly dry tsampa (barley meal) with a little bit of curry. So we took over the cooking, using a primus stove and charcoal burner, and used our ingenuity to turn out all sorts of delights. 

News of our cooking spread around and every night an unpredictable but large number of Ladakhi intellectuals - monks, poets, professors, students - would show up at meal time. We’d sit around talking, with Helena interpreting where necessary, into the night. 

The palace at Leh
with prayer flags 2013

In the daytime I’d walk out of town, climb the pink hillside and sit on a rock, watching the women scything the barley fields far below with the sound of their whistling drifting up through the thin clear air. It was magical. 

Walking through Leh’s alleys I drew and painted pictures. 

Thiksey 

I also hitchhiked out to see some of Ladakh’s beautiful white-painted monasteries, which crown virtually every hill. Thiksey’s temples, sub-temples, libraries, monks’ quarters and stupas rambled across an entire hill like a medieval castle. They were dilapidated but I could see that the lower buildings were white-washed and the higher ones were brick red or yellow ochre. 

Little house in Leh 1981

At the time I spoke a little Tibetan and was (and still am) fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism. I could recognise many of the sages and Buddhas and benevolent and fierce deities portrayed in the wall paintings and thangkas. So while other tourists strolled in, took a quick look round and strolled on, I would chat to the monks. 

Then they would invite me round the back for butter tea. Butter tea is the national drink. It’s an acquired taste; it’s helpful to imagine that you’re drinking soup. The key thing was to be as enthusiastic as possible, to drink with gusto and to be even more enthusiastic when offered another cup. 

So while other tourists ‘did’ several temples in a day, I ended up spending all day in just one. 

In the end I spent two months there. I ended up going back by bus, which was a lot more frightening than going by motorbike. 

Little house in Leh 2013

Back to the Future 2013 

I went again in 2013, over an even higher pass, Taglang la, 17,480 feet (5328 metres), the second highest motorable pass in the world. (Mount Everest is 29,031 feet (8848 metres). 

Ladakh had changed but not as much as I’d feared. There were roads, traffic, hotels, restaurants and rows of shops offering thangkas, Tibetan jewellery and Pashmina shawls as well as markets where Tibetan refugees sold handicrafts. 

The palace was still there, brooding over the city, now cleaned up and restored. There were steps and a footpath up the rocks, even a motor road. And the food had miraculously improved. 

I was happy to be back and looked for the places I had painted in 1981 and took photographs. 

All paintings and photos are mine. 

Lesley Downer is a Japanophile and inveterate traveller. She had two books out in 2024: The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) and her first ‘real’ book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, reissued by Eland. She is now working on a history of Tokyo and plotting ways to get back to both Japan and India. 

For more see www.lesleydowner.com

The Development of Medicine in 17th Century Italy

 Deborah Swift

My fourth book in the Giulia Tofana series, The Cameo Keeper, focuses on medicine and healing in the 17th Century, a time of significant transformation in Italian medicine. As Europe shifted from the Renaissance towards the era of scientific exploration, Italy became a key centre for medical thought and innovation, blending ancient traditions of healing and herbalism with new discoveries. The old medicine and the new were less-than-happy bedfellows, and the advent of printing meant that men’s version of remedial medicine was more often promoted in written texts than the women’s traditional remedies. Men’s thought was widely disseminated in printed books, whereas women’s cures were left in the kitchen notebooks.

The Old Tradition

At the dawn of the seventeenth century, Italian medicine was still deeply rooted in the classical theories inherited from Greek and Roman scholars such as Galen and Hippocrates. Universities such as Padua, Bologna, and Pisa were renowned for their medical faculties, teaching aspiring physicians from these ancient texts. In my novel, Jacopo has studied at Padua University, but he is now intent on a career in the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Medical education was still emphasising the balance of the four humours—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile—as the foundation of health and disease.

Above: Early Italian Pharmacy

Below: Anatomy Theatre

But in the new age of medicine anatomical dissection became increasingly important, with doctors such as Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Marcello Malpighi leading the field. Malpighi, celebrated as the "father of microscopical anatomy" for his pioneering use of the microscope, was able to observe capillaries, organs, and tissues, thus advancing the study of physiology.

Surgeons were often required to show off their skills in public demonstrations, and anatomy theatres were popular entertainment for the rich. Some of these were experiments on the dead, but there were also ‘trials’ on the living. These took the form of ‘competitions’ or ‘trials’ where those competing for a surgeon’s position would have to demonstrate their abilities before a hospital board.


The 17th century was also marked by recurrent outbreaks of plague. The outbreak in Rome in 1656 led to stringent quarantine measures – isolating affected neighbourhoods and the fumigation or burning of infected items. City states established boards of health, enhancing the management of infectious diseases. Quarantine hospitals on city outskirts became a hallmark of the new Italian public health strategy, and in Rome one of the quarantine hospitals that features in The Cameo Keeper is one run by monks, and isolated on an island in the middle of the Tiber.

Herbalism and Pharmacy

During this period, women’s role in healing changed. The old tradition of herbal remedies persisted, but influenced by the new science of chemistry, apothecaries began incorporating chemicals and metals into their preparations. Paracelsian ideas, which promoted chemical remedies over traditional humours-based treatments, began to gain ground. Italian pharmacists and physicians experimented with compounds such as antimony and mercury. (see picture below)

Although women were largely excluded from formal medical education, they played crucial roles as midwives, herbalists, and caregivers. Some women, especially in religious orders, managed hospital wards and contributed to nursing and patient care.

The common people still relied on the cheaper, more available care from the women in their households, and care in hospital depended on how much you could afford to pay.

The seventeenth century in Italy was a time of great experimentation, with the three kinds of treatment offered intersecting - herbalism, pharmaceuticals and surgery. For the first time, documentation existed because of the invention of printing and the ability to disseminate the results of experiments more widely.

The Cameo Keeper takes this experimentation as one of its themes and I thoroughly enjoyed researching the 'new' medicine of the era.

Spying during the Napoleonic Wars - by Rosemary Hayes

 

Researching for my second book in the 'Soldier Spy' trilogy, it’s been quite a journey to learn about the extent of spying, on both sides, during the Napoleonic Wars. Not only at a diplomatic level, through overseas embassies and through the Alien Office, in London, and highly placed double agents, but there were networks of ordinary people who passed on maps and documents, letters, money and even arms. Agents smuggled intelligence sewn into clothing or hidden in hollowed out walking sticks. Both sides employed complex codes and ciphers to protect their communications. Codebooks and cipher wheels were standard kit. One captured French codebook was worth its weight in gold to the British Intelligence Service. A British officer, George Scovell, a gifted linguist, famously cracked the French ‘Great Paris Cipher’ which was pivotal in the Peninsular War.

 

In Paris, there were underground networks of those spying for the British. Royalists, Bonapartist defectors and even double agents moved in secret, often under the noses of Joseph Fouché’s secret police (more of him later). Many were caught but a few key figures were never unmasked.

 

Both British and French agents used disguises, posing as merchants, priests, artists or diplomats. Some even used travelling theatre troupes as cover to move behind enemy lines. The more mundane the cover, the more convincing. Fishermen and smugglers took agents and documents to and fro across the Channel. One Jersey fisherman made nearly 200 trips across before he was caught and executed.

Women played an important role in Napoleonic espionage. Rachel Charlotte Biggs was an English writer and spy. Between 1802 and 1816, she repeatedly visited France and Napoleon controlled Europe. She corresponded with British politicians and reported her observations about military strength, industry and agriculture and the political state. Her extraordinary story is told in the novel ‘Georgian Heroine’. Another was a countess who allegedly passed secrets to the British via coded embroidery patterns. Femalespies came in many guises and used imaginative ways in which to move intelligence across borders, including hiding micro letters in hatpins! 

Fishermen’s wives and daughters also put themselves in danger by passing on information and giving shelter to royalist spies.

But among the many women spies, the one who really caught my attention was Arabella Williams, originally from Liverpool. Her handler was William Wickham. Wickham was a British diplomat who used his position in Bern as a cover to gather information and coordinate royalist organisations against France. Arabella became known as ‘le petit matelot’ – the little sailor – as she had acted as a courier passing papers between France and England for a number of years disguised as a sailor, without being caught. Arabella had her own property in France where she had lived for some years, which she also used as a safe house for other agents. One of her contacts was Abbé Ratel. Early in the war, Abbé Ratel organised a network of royalists to keep watch around the port of Boulogne and provide early warning of any invasion. Reports were sent to England through fishermen recruited by Ratel – who was reputed to have a very beautiful mistress.

Arabella was described as being petite, very pretty, lively and immensely busy. The group she belonged was extremely successful and despite the gendarmerie’s surveillance they managed to escape detection for many years. Sadly, I can find no portrait of Arabella though we do know that she was an English widow, the daughter of David Mallet, the poet and joint composer of ‘Rule Britannia’!

David Mallet

In France, all those spying for Britain or sympathetic to the royalist cause had to evade the clutches of Napoleon’s Minister of Police, the notorious Joseph Fouché. He was ruthless in his pursuit of British spies or those in France with royalist sympathies, torturing and executing them. He was dubbed ‘the most feared man in France’ and even Napoleon was quoted as saying ‘I fear Fouché more than all the armies of Europe’.

 

Fouché began his career as a maths teacher and evolved into a moderate and then radical legislator. He cultivated every political movement of the day. After preaching clemency for Louis XVI, Fouché voted to send the King to the guillotine. After writing "The first Communist Manifesto of Modern Times" he became a multi-millionaire. He led the brutal repression of an anti-revolutionary movement, earning him the nickname ‘The Butcher of Lyon’. After serving Robespierre, Fouché engineered his overthrow and rose to Minister of Police under the Directory, which he then helped to overthrow before putting his network of informants in Napoleon’s service. After turning against the Emperor, Fouché served the new King Louis XVIII – whose brother he had helped send to the guillotine. Thus, Fouché served the Revolution, the Directory, the First Empire and the Restoration. His face was said to resemble a weasel – and his less flattering portraits bear this out!

 

The threat from spies in France and those with royalist sympathies was very real. There were several attempts to assassinate Napoleon, the most famous being in Paris on the evening of December 24^th 1800. Almost certainly funded by the British, this very nearly succeeded when a cart exploded just after Napoleon’s carriage had passed, killing bystanders.

 

Malmaison, Empress Josephine’s country chateau, was the site of others, including the poisoned snuff put into a replica of Napoleon’s snuff box and placed on his desk there.

 

Although I have changed some of their dates and locations, many of the characters mentioned in my book ‘The King’s Agent’ are based on real people including ‘Le Petit Matelot’, Pipette, the fisherman’s wife, Abbé Ratel (disguised as Father Jacques) and, of course, the infamous Joseph Fouché.

 

‘The King’s Agent’ is the second novella in the ‘Soldier Spy’ trilogy, following the fortunes of the disgraced soldier, Captain Will Fraser and his wounded sergeant, Duncan Armstrong, recruited by the Alien Office to spy for King George’s government.

 

 

 

 

 

Would you like to learn some Ancient Greek? by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Following the bumper box office success of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey this summer, online searches for ‘Learn Ancient Greek’ have soared and students of all ages are signing up for classes offering entry to this magical language.

Reading Homer’s Odyssey in the original would be my number one reason for learning Ancient Greek. But a close second would be the joy of recognising Greek everywhere in the English language. Therefore in this blog, for fun, I shall share with you fifteen of my favourite Greek words, together with their English derivatives. You may be surprised by how much Ancient Greek you already know!

Each word is introduced by an illustration by Barbarann Lang. The Greek word is given first, followed by a transliteration, i.e. a simple conversion of the Greek letters to their English equivalents, and then the meaning. Underneath each entry I have included just a few English words which owe their etymology to the Greek - you can probably think of many more - and some of the English words have a brief note or explanation. 

Fifteen of my favourite Greek words

1.    ἀγορά (agora) market-place

agoraphobia (cf. φόβος ‘phobos’ = fear)

2.    βασιλεύς (basileus) king

basilica, basilicon, basilisk

basilicon = an ointment of various kinds, as being of sovereign virtue.

basilisk = a harmless crested lizard of tropical America (with a crownlike crest).

3.    δοῦλος (doulos) slave

douleia /dulia, doulocracy, dulosis

douleia /dulia = in the Roman Catholic religion this is an inferior veneration accorded to saints and angels, as opposed to ‘hyperdulia’ that is accorded to the Virgin Mary, and ‘latria’ accorded to God alone.

dulosis = enslavement practised by certain ants on other kinds of ants.

4.    εἰρήνη (eirene) peace

eirenic, eirenicon, Irene

eirenic = tending to create peace.

eirenicon = proposition for peace.

5.    ἐκκλησία (ecclesia) assembly

ecclesiastical, ecclesiology

ecclesiology = study of ecclesiastical traditions and of church architecture and decoration, study/knowledge of the church.

6.    Ζεύς Zeus

deification, deity (cf. ‘deus’ meaning ‘god’ in Latin)

7.    θεά (thea) goddess

atheist, Theobroma, theology, theomachy

theobroma = a genus (group) of flowering plants including the cocoa tree, ‘Theobroma cacao’, the beans of which are used to make chocolate. Theobroma means ‘food of the gods’.

8.    ἄγγελος (aggelos, pronounced ‘angelos’) messenger

angel, angel-cake, angelshark

angelshark = shark with winglike fins.

9.    λιμήν (limen) harbour

limen, liminal, liminality (cf. ‘limen’ meaning ‘threshold’ in Latin)

limen = threshold of consciousness (a term in psychology).

liminality = a literary term which means the use of location, especially the threshold of a doorway, to symbolise a significant moment, e.g. Medea, in the eponymous play by Euripides, makes her dramatic entrance onto stage with the following words, ‘ “Women of Corinth, I have come out of the house” ’ and proceeds to deliver possibly her most powerful speech.

10.    μάχη (mache) battle

logomachy, theomachy

logomachy = contention about words or in words.

Theomachy = a war among or against the gods in Greek mythology, such as the gigantomachy. Book 20 of Homer’s Iliad is traditionally known under the title Theomachia; it opens with a scene on Olympus in which Zeus permits the gods to take part in the battle.

11.    οὐρανός (ouranos) heaven

Urania, Uranus, uranic, uranium

Urania was the Muse of astronomy in Greek mythology. 

Uranus/Ouranos or 'Heaven’ = the father of Kronos , whose mother is ‘Ge’ (γῆ) or ‘Earth’. ‘Uranus’ is also the name given to a planet discovered in 1781.

uranic = of the palate, lit the roof of the mouth.

12.    πύλη (pyle) gate

Propylaia, pylon, pylorus

Propylaia = the monumental entrance, or gateway, to the Acropolis in Athens, built 437-432 BC.

pylorus = the opening, or gateway, from the stomach to the intestines.

13.    χείρ (cheir) hand

chirograph, chironomy, chiropractor, chiropodist, chiropteran, chiropterophilous

chirograph = a written, or signed, document.

chironomy = the art of gesticulation or mime.

Chiropteran = a member of the Chiroptera, an order of mammals comprising bats.

chiropterophilous = flowers which are pollinated by bats.

14.    κεφαλή (cephale) head

cephalalgia, cephalopod

cephalalgia = headache.

cephalopod = a member of the Cephalopoda, or molluscs. They are exclusively marine animals (including cuttlefish, squid, octopus, etc.) with a prominent head and their ’feet’ have become modified into arms or tentacles.

15.    ξίφος (xiphos) sword

Xiphias, xiphoid, xiphophyllous

Xiphias = the common swordfish genus (group).

xiphoid = sword-shaped

xiphophyllous = plants with sword-shaped leaves.

***********************************

If you have read this far, thank you! I hope you will agree that Ancient Greek is not a dead language, as often claimed, but indeed is very much alive and kicking. If you have enjoyed the Greek, you may also enjoy my recent publication, Pocket GCSE Greek Etymological Lexicon. This book is not just for GCSE students - it's for anyone who would like to learn some Ancient Greek and/or fun facts about Greek theatre, art, music, pottery, statues, temples, archaeology, philosophy, religion, literature, history, mythology and culture. If you are a Hellenophile, philologist or indeed etymologist, there is plenty for you too!

P.S. I shall be giving an online illustrated talk A Taste of Greek for The Hellenic and Roman Societies on Wednesday 18th November at 6pm, and again on Saturday 21st November at 11am. Whether you are a complete beginner or wish to brush up on existing knowledge, you will be very welcome! Please contact me for further details via my website: www.carolinetutor.co.uk

With many thanks to Barbarann Lang for her beautiful illustrations.

Pocket GCSE Greek Etymological Lexicon by Caroline K. Mackenzie is available from Bloomsbury

Bees and Brehon Law in Medieval Ireland by Kristin Gleeson

 

Brehon Bee Laws

What would happen if bees from your hive swarmed and then settled in a neighbour’s tree, or if you were stung badly by one of your neighbour’s bees? If you were living in Ireland in the 6^th century, the matter would be very clear. In the first case, your neighbour would be entitled half the yield of honey, and in the second case, you would be entitled to a sufficient amount of honey that matched the severity of the sting.

Old Irish style bee hive

Bees and the honey they produced were an important element in early Medieval Ireland and other parts of Europe. They were a significant source of nutrition for people who lived in a land that in many areas was often wet and difficult to farm. Honey also possessed an antiseptic quality that was important for internal healing, as well as external healing. And of course when fermented, it provided a drink that could make you forget how wet and difficult the land was to farm.

In Britain and the rest of Europe the hives were made of straw, coiled into the familiar cone shape and stitched together with thin branches of brambles/blackberries stripped of their leaves and thorns, called a ‘skep’ from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘skeppa’ meaning ‘basket.’ In winter they would put straw tents over the skeps to keep out the elements, called ‘hackles,’ if they weren’t in little stone nooks, or ‘boles,’ like those of the monks of Lindisfarne. In Ireland, however, where cattle grazed outdoors all year and little straw was harvested, I was told by local historians sedgegrass was used instead, well up until the last century. The hives were then thatched against the rain that fell all year round and kept against the south wall of the ‘lios’ or wall of the home area. 

Bees were kept not only on farms but also at religious communities in early Christian times. Monks (managh) and nuns (cailecha) tended the sick and injured among their community, as well people in the surrounding area. One such cailecha was Gobnait, a woman who settled in West Cork and established a convent, or community of women. She became so well known for her healing, with honey as her staple medicine, that her fame spread and eventually, after her death, she became the patron saint of bees.

6th century ruins possibly of St Gobnait's community

With bees such a vital part of the daily lives of medieval Irish people, it is no surprise that they featured in the Brehon laws. “Brehon” is an ancient Irish term for judge. Over the centuries the judges accumulated a series of laws which they passed down orally from one generation of judges to the next. To qualify to become any one of the various levels of judges and lawyers (which in all likelihood were offshoots of the poets (filidh) required that the person study at one of the nemed schools. It was a period of study that lasted a number of years in which they learned poetry as well as the laws.

Under the Brehon laws there were five paths to judgement: truth, duty, right, propriety and proper inquiries. These paths ensured that each case was considered carefully.  The choices were thrashed out beforehand by the respective lawyers in a process called airthacra, which was akin to hearing of legal arguments in modern court case.  Most disputes, however, were usually settled before they wound up in court.

During the early Christian period, from about the 5^th century to the 8^th century the laws and law cases were recorded by Christian clerics and ‘adjusted’ if it the laws didn’t fit the Christian outlook. Most of our knowledge of early Irish or Brehon law comes from these old Irish law texts, mainly composed in the 7th and 8th centuries. Some of these texts have survived in a complete form in later manuscripts (generally of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries), but many are to be found only in fragments. The best preserved collection of early Irish law texts is that of the Senchás Mar, "great tradition," which is likely to have been organized as a unit about A.D. 800. The texts in this collection are all anonymous, and it is not known where or by whom they were put together. However, most of the place-names and personal names cited in the texts relate to the northern Midlands and southern Ulster, so it is probable that the material derived from this area. It may have been assembled in a monastic law school, such as that at Slane, County Meath.

Much of the Brehon law is founded on the principle of restitution, rather than punishment, so often the judgments involved various types of compensation for any injury done. The cases and laws therefore encompassed much of what mattered in everyday life. The Senchás Mar originally consisted of 50 law texts broken up into three sections. There doesn’t seem to be a strict logic to the arrangements except that similar subjects are grouped together. For example, the law text relating to cats is followed by the law text relating to dogs. 

Ranking of lawyers & other professionals in Ireland

In the first third of the work there is a general discussion of legal topics and a description of St Patrick’s role in its codification. This essay is followed by laws on the formal seizure of another’s property to enforce legal claims against him. There is also a discussion on the acts regarding hostages, laws regarding the “free fief” and fosterage fees, as well as free clientship and base clientship which were two different classes in the highly stratified society that was Ireland. There were also other texts dealing with the laws of marriage and divorce, the arrangement of customary behaviour and the relationship of society to the church.

The surviving final third, like the first third, is not complete by any means. It does have evidence that suggests it may have contained laws on carpenters, coppersmiths and blacksmiths, sick maintenance as well as trapping deer. It also has medical legal texts “Judgments of Blood-lying” and “Judgements of Dian Cecht” (a legendary physician). 

Included in the middle section, the most complete section, are the judgments dealing with trespass by domestic animals, fencing obligations and other related topics. Here we can learn such interesting judgements such as if an animal is killed in a jointly owned herd and the culprit cannot be identified then a lot is cast across the whole herd. The animal on which it falls is held to be responsible. Whether or not that animal is punished is a mystery. Other interesting aspects discussed in this section include rules for bringing water for a mill across a neighbour’s land. Conflict in a situation like this is easily imaginable. A final section, which understandably gets full discussion is "Judgements Concerning Thefts."

It is in this middle section that the Bechbretha or “Bee Judgements” are found. They include a discussion of trespass by honey bees.  It’s there, for instance, we can learn that a person who is blinded by a bee gets a hive in recompense.  Or that there were penalties for a person who moves a hive not belonging to them. And most reasonably we can learn that if a person shakes or disturbs a hive and the bees should attack that person as a result, the owner was free from liability for any injuries that might result.

The Brehon laws stretched back centuries and through them we can understand the daily life of the ancient Irish. If the laws are anything to go by it shows a society that relied heavily on mediation and compensation, perhaps in attempt to avoid more violent acts of retribution, vengeance and punishment.

Bee laws and the Brehon lawyers of the time come into play in my novel, In Praise of the Bees a USA Today Bestseller set in 6th century Ireland.Buy or find out more here or go to my website

 

Veronica Franco and the Courtesans of Renaissance Venice by Kristin Gleeson

Renaissance Venice

 Travellers who visited in Venice in the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century never failed to marvel at the number of courtesans in the city. Thomas Coryat writing in 1608 was astonished to note that there were as many as twenty thousand courtesans operating in Venice and said that “many are esteemed so loose that they are said to open their quivers to every arrow.”

Venetian Courtesans

The courtesans often dressed in clothing that had revealing cleavage to the point even where the breasts were completely exposed. Travellers on occasion mistakenly thought these were the ordinary female citizens of Venice. But just as much as they might condemn the numbers and their behaviour, the travellers’ descriptions of Venetian daily life in which the courtesan featured prominently the city is praised as an example of civic and social harmony. Two myths lying side by side. 

Venice in fact was a vibrant and complex city then, filled with merchants profiting from expanded trade opportunities and proud of its republic standing. The government was organized around a multitude of magistracies and councils and ruled by a doge, elected by a closed patrician group, called the Great Council. 

The people were generally a sober lot and the women of their class and the nobility were seldom seen in public. When they did, they too were sombrely dressed, in dark colours.

Venetian widow

Venice was also crowded with people who worked at the shipyards, at the fisheries, the glassworks and other manufacturers in this blossoming commercial centre. Housing was difficult to find, even among the wealthier classes, and few had the luxury (at least in the 15^th and 16^th century) of owning their own palazzo. Most had apartments or rooms in buildings, and some of the poorer classes shared rooms.  These conditions among a booming commercial centre created intense rivalries among the young men of various trades. Such competition often gave rise to faction fighting- sometimes fought desperately over bridges like the Rialto. Enemies of any class could be despatched in a dark alley and tossed in the canal.

Poised between these two sides of Venice were the courtesans. There were two classes of courtesans that existed in Venice. The first, cortigna onesta, honest courtesan or intellectual courtesan and the cortigna lume, the lower class prostitutes who lived near and frequented the Rialto Bridge.

The women from the first class of courtesan, the honest courtesan, were often born into patrician or merchant family they were raised as educated and cultured women. But in a society that dictated exorbitant dowries that could often bankrupt a family, extra daughters were often given no opportunity to marry. They could go into a convent and become a nun, but that still required a dowry, though not as large. They could remain in the household an ageing spinster tending to family member, forever dependent and submissive perhaps to a new mistress of the household if it should pass to a brother and his wife. Or circumstances, like poverty from funding a dowry to an older sister, or failed commercial activities could encourage a young woman to consider the life of a courtesan. Often, in these situations, a courtesan could end up being the sole support of their family. 

Venetian Courtesan

Among the Venetian men generally, courtesans were seen as cultured women who provided entertainment for wealthy noblemen and merchants.  In Venice, a man wouldn’t be expected to marry until well into his thirties and courtesans could provide these young men pleasure and culture and hopefully disease free. An older man might take a courtesan as his mistress and enjoy a less inhibited sexual experience than he would from a wife who had most likely been raised in a convent-like atmosphere.

Successful courtesans could enjoy a luxurious life filled with parties and salons. They often moved in influential circles and had access to artists, poets, politicians and the thinkers of the day. In such circles a courtesan had the opportunity to wield influence if she was skilled enough to do so. Aside from the potential for power and influence the honest courtesan still faced the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, something that observed no class barriers.

One of the most celebrated and well known Venetian courtesans was Veronica Franco, born in 1546. Born to the courtesan, Paola Fracassa and the merchant, Francesco Franco she also had three brothers.  Her intellectual life began with sharing her brothers' education by private tutors in the family home and while still in her teens she married the physician Paola Fracassa. Probably an arranged marriage, it ended badly shortly afterwards and Veronica was forced to support herself.

Veronica Franco

Franco became a cortigiana onesta (honest courtesan) in the mid to late 1560s and soon became famed for the intellectual and culture entertainments she provided. She continued her education by frequenting literary gatherings of writers and painters in Venice during the 1570s and 1580s and mingled with politicians, poets, artists and thinkers. She captured the interest of Domenico Venier (1517-1582), a Venetian poet and the head of the most renowned vernacular literary academy in Venice, who became her reader and protector. A frequent visitor to his private literary salon at Ca' Venier (the Venier palace), Franco composed sonnets and capitoli in terza rima for exchange with male poets.

By her mid-twenties, Franco was requesting sonnets for publication from male poets for anthologies that she assembled to commemorate men of the Venetian elite. One such volume, the Rime di diversi eccellentissimi autori nella morte dell'Illustre Sign. Estor Marteninengo Conte di Malapaga, in honor of the Count Martinengo, was published in 1575; she was not only the editor but also included nine sonnets she herself had written.

In 1575, during the epidemic of plague that ravaged the city, Veronica Franco was forced to leave Venice and lost much of her wealth when her house and possessions were looted. On her return in 1577, she defended herself with dignity before the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft (a common complaint lodged against courtesans in those days). The charges were dropped. She died in 1591. 

Domestic Manuals and the Perception of Womanhood by Janet Few

 

For more than four hundred years, domestic manuals have done far more than offer women recipes and guidelines for running a household. They have also served to construct and reinforce gendered expectations of behaviour. A review of selected books of household management shows how they underpinned and lauded a woman’s key function in the domestic economy, whilst circumscribing roles and codes of behaviour that conformed to the norms of a patriarchal society.

 In 1615, the domestic manual The English Housewife, was first published. It outlined the expectations associated with that role.

“Our English housewife must be of chaste thought, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship. Full of good neighbourhood, wise in discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comfortable in her counsel, and generally skilful in all the worthy knowledges which do belong to her vocation.”

This was, not surprisingly, written by a man, Gervase Markham. His instructions and the tone is more instructional than advisory, beginning with the need for the ‘good housewife’ to be ‘upright and severe in religion’. Whilst the man is unequivocally the head of the household, the task of moral custodian is that of the women. Markham then writes of the need for her garments to be, ‘altogether without toyish garnishes, or the gloss of light colours, and as far from the vanity of new and fantastic fashions, as near to  the comely imitations of modest matrons; ’ she is being told how to dress.

The essential ‘worthy knowledges’, that Markham refers to, include the ability to treat the household for a variety of medical conditions. Interestingly, this lengthy section comes before those relating to cookery, distilling and preserving. Markham’s seventeenth century housewife is also clearly expected to be proficient in all aspects of spinning, weaving and the production of clothing for the family, as well as dairying, brewing and baking. What is lacking from Markham’s work, is any coverage of cleaning, child-rearing, or the managing of servants. Is this because, as a man, he is focussed on the aspects of household routine that impinge most closely upon him. He expects to be fed, clothed and physicked by his wife but the servants and children are emphatically not part of his sphere.

For a female perspective, let us consider Hannah Woolley’s Compleat Serving Maid, first published in 1677. Although, Woolley writes as if she is the addressing potential servants themselves, at this time, the adult female literacy rate is thought to have been ten to fifteen percent and the vast majority of those women would not have been of the servant class. It is more likely therefore that her manual would have been read by the employers of servants, rather than those seeking the various roles that she describes. Here the tone is still instructional but somehow gentler than Markham’s diktats. Having outlined the precise duties of various grades of servant, Woolley briefly mentions the finer points of laundering and creating ‘beautify waters’, before turning to physick. She too prioritises this over the many tasks associated with feeding the family.

Her suggested menus, for different times of the year, are very far removed from those that working families might have been likely to afford. In her appendices, she address penmanship and ‘arithmetick’, before giving advice about how to identify the best produce at market. The early modern woman was required to master diverse, key skills like pharmacology, culinary expertise and household management. The housewife’s position as a key player in the domestic economy was legitimised and her specialist domestic knowledge and skills were valued.

Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, published in 1727, specifically addresses, as the title suggests, ‘accomplished gentlewomen’. This concentrates on recipes, rather than other aspects of the housewife’s role. In a similar vein, The Experienced English Housekeeper, published by Elizabeth Raffald some four decades later, provides advice on pickling cockles, making a porcupine of the flat ribs of beef and making tansy fritters. Raffald was the former housekeeper to an aristocratic family. By this time, literacy rates were increasing and it would be expected that an upper servant, such as a housekeeper, would be able to read. Although this tome runs to over four hundred pages it is devoted entirely to recipes, conventionally the role of the cook rather than the housekeeper. There is no advice on the traditional responsibilities of the housekeeper, such as managing servants.

In contrast, by the time Isabella Beeton was editing The English Woman’s Domestic Magazine  in the 1850s and publishing her book of household management in 1861, the expectation was that women would be at the centre of domestic administration, commanding servants and tradesmen and overseeing the upbringing of the next generation. Mrs Beeton famously likened the mistress of the house to the ‘commander of an army’. Yet, this elevated status was accompanied by stricter behavioural constraints. The ideal perception of womanhood encompassed  an inflexible etiquette and moral  custodianship in a society that was uncompromisingly demarcated by social class.

Victorian values imposed a rigid strait-jacket for women striving for respectability and Mrs Beeton was there for the aspirational middle-class women, who were keen to reinforce their position in the social hierarchy. By providing women with the tools for successful household management and a blueprint for female agency and expertise, Mrs Beeton’s work might be regarded as elevating domesticity to a highly skilled, respected science. Yet, at the same time, that very agency became a vehicle for oppression, confining women to the restraining depiction of womanhood that was proscribed by the patriarchy.

Jane Ellen Panton published From Kitchen to Garret in 1895. In the aftermath of the industrial revolution, the forerunners of the conspicuous consumerism of the later twentieth century were apparent in embryonic form. Mrs Panton sets herself up as the moral arbiter of good taste as regards interior design and retail choices. Going from room to room, in the middle-class household, she defines what is necessary for good taste and refinement. Her emphasis is on creating and showcasing a home full of carefully curated possessions, chosen as much for their aesthetics as their practicality.

Interestingly, this volume is not specifically addressed to women and as the keeper of the purse strings, one would expect  the man of the house to have had the final veto on which house to rent or buy and how it should be furnished. In fact, Panton addresses both ‘Edwin’ and ‘Angelina’ throughout. Nonetheless, women are clearly expected to have a subservient role, ‘women’s true work’, she says, ‘is that of a helper’. ‘Angelina’  is cautioned not to, ‘plunge head-first among the bread-winners with pen or pencil  ……  the profession of wife and mother being quite as much as any one woman can manage satisfactorily.’

By the nineteenth, century, many of the domestic tasks of the early modern housewife had been outsourced. The home was no longer a hub of productivity, textile work or medical care; instead, it was a stage on which the family’s middle-class status could be displayed. The broader economic responsibilities of the seventeenth century housewife had been eroded; gender roles were no longer different but equally valued, as they had been in the early modern era. Femininity was increasingly characterised by the consumer choices that she made.

These manuals and works like them, served to engineer and delineate women’s role in society. They reinforced patriarchal ideals, upheld a strictly gendered division of work and restricted women to the domestic sphere. As these books of household management illustrate, womanhood is concept that was constructed, not merely physiologically derived. From distilling herbal remedies in the seventeenth century to dithering over wallpaper choices two hundred years later, books of household advice allowed women to claim authority, expertise and an arena of their own, albeit one fashioned by men.

Wellcome Library https://archive.org/details/b20392  

Image used under Creative Commons