The Nuclear Option: Love Spells and Curses in the Ancient World by Elisabeth Storrs

Popular culture is rife with examples of humankind’s fascination with magic whether malicious or benevolent. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a world-wide phenomenon which spawned countless TV series with fantastical elements. The Harry Potter books continue to introduce new generations of kids to the realm of wizards. Harry and his friends are schooled in the three unforgiveable curses: the Cruciatus Curse which causes the victim excruciating pain, the Imperius Curse which makes the victim totally obedient to the caster, and the Killing Curse, which instantly kills the victim.

These three dark charms are reminiscent of the types of curses levelled in Greco-Roman times. The practice of ‘Defixio’ involved using a ‘curse tablet’ Tabella Defixionis (Roman) or Katadesmos (Greek) to damn a victim or cast a love spell on a subject of desire. The tablets consisted of thin pieces of lead sheet upon which script was scratched. Often the defixiones were then folded, rolled or pierced with nails to contain the incantation. To empower them, you needed to place them underground. Many were buried in graves and tombs, thrown into wells or cisterns, or nailed to the walls of temples of Chthonic deities such as Demeter and Persephone. The fact so many examples of these tablets exist is due to the fact placing a lead tablet in the ground preserves it.

Defixio is derived from the word for ‘to pierce’ or ‘to bind’. The tablets were used to ask the gods to bind a victim to an act that either condemned them to misfortune or compelled them to do something against their will. These invocations fell into various categories such as hindering a competitor, thwarting an opposing litigant in a court case, or forcing someone to fall passionately in love or punish their unfaithfulness. There was also the extreme option of seeking your enemy’s torture, death and the downfall of their family line!

Here is an example of vicious curse against a competitor. ‘I implore you, spirit, whoever you are, and I command you to torment and kill the horses of the green and white teams from this hour on, from this day on, and to kill Clarus, Felix, Primulus, and Romanus, the charioteers.’ Tunisia C3rd CE

This imprecation is less malevolent, seeking a comedian’s routine to fall flat: ‘Sosio must never do better than the mime Eumolpos. He must not be able to play the role of a married woman in a fit of drunkenness on a young horse.’ Rauranum in western France C3rd CE.

The first examples of defixiones were discovered in the city of Selinus in Sicily. The majority of the twenty-two tablets were concerned with court cases. There are also examples of small effigies, sometimes referred to loosely as Voodoo dolls. Three such dolls were found in Athens at around the end of the C5th BCE. Each figurine lies within a casket with their hands lashed behind their back and their feet tied together. The curse scored into the casket implores the gods to bind the victim so they will perform poorly in court. The elaborate nature of these defixiones suggests the hand of a professional magician (paid by a wealthy client) compared to the more common DIY lead sheets found in their thousands in Athens.

Christopher A. Faraone, professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Chicago, posits there were an extraordinary number of curse tablets found in late Classical Athens because lead was a convenient by-product of the silver mines that contributed to the wealth of that city. As such, lead was a very cheap and reusable medium useful for business communications. After the silver mines were exhausted, however, the stockpile of lead was soon depleted. Curses were then written on wax and papyrus which did not survive burial underground.

Erotic curses could be adjusted for different situations such a ‘separation’ spell (known as a ‘Diakopai’) to drive away rivals by making them hideous to the subject of unrequited affection. An ‘Agogai’ curse sought to bind the person to the caster. Some were passion-inducing while others sought only to encourage affection. One example of a milder spell is ‘Bind Helen, so that she is unsuccessful when she flirts or makes love with Demetrius.’ In comparison, this incantation wishes harm on a rival and implies the lover could have been either male or female: ‘May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water. (May) she who obscenely devoured her (become) dumb, whether Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, A(u)gustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla (or) Jovina.’ (Aquae Sulis)

The use of magic in Classical Athens does not appear to be illegal. Athenians would most likely have seen it as a chthonic religious ritual connected with those gods who lived in the ground and were very closely connected with ghosts and the dead. The Ancient Romans were not so tolerant. Under the Law of the Twelve Tables (the first codified set of laws established in 451 BCE), the use of incantations to cause dishonour or disgrace attracted capital punishment. However, clearly the threat of death was insufficient to deter the use of defixiones given the number of curse tablets found across the Roman world over the centuries.

Defixiones seeking justice were useful where a crime was senseless and the perpetrator unknown to the victim. A number of curse tablets were discovered in digs in Roman Britain. One trove of 130 defixiones is known as the Bath Curse Tablets found at the site of Aquae Sulis. All bar one sought restitution of goods (evidently theft was rife in bathhouses).

Here’s an example of a bathhouse curse: ‘Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’s temple.’ Somerset 2nd -4th CE

And here is a nuclear option. ‘The human who stole Verio’s cloak or his things, who deprived him of his property, may he be bereft of his mind and memory, be it a woman or those who deprived Verio of his property, may the worms, cancer, and maggots penetrate his hands, head, feet, as well as his limbs and marrows.’ Frankfurt C1st CE

By the end of the Hellenistic period (circa 323 BCE), magical handbooks began to appear which continued to be used into Roman Imperial times which provide evidence magical practices were done by professionals. Different languages were used, and different gods were implored, including the Jewish Yahweh or the Egyptian gods. The increasing commerciality of the Defixio practice is evident given tablets could be prepared in advance, with a space left for a customer to insert the name of their victim.

'Bind the tongue and the thoughts of ____________, who is about to testify against me.'

Interestingly, the playwrights of Ancient Roman and Greek literature attribute the primary use of magic to women, but archaeological evidence shows men to be the principal practitioners. In a series of over 400 tablets found in Roman Britain, over two-thirds of those inscribing the curse/spell were males.

Learning about curse tablets inspired me to create two of my own as a major plot device in the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. In The Golden Dice, a soldier risks capital punishment by not only damning his rival to a grisly fate but also inscribing an enchantment to entice his lost love to return by ‘hammer [ing] both desire and curse into the brickwork with one long iron nail—to remain there forever potent and terrible, guarded by ghosts.’ If you want to know whether such defixiones were successful, you’ll need to read the trilogy.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Now she is obsessed with twisted Germanic history with her upcoming release, Fables & Lies, set in WW2 Berlin. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons as follows: 

-Magic curse written on a lead figurine in a lead box, found in the enclosure of Aristion, and dating 420-410 BCE Kerameikos Archaeological Museum (Athens). Photographer Giovanni Dall'Orto.

-Roman Curse Tablet, North Lincolnshire Museum. Photographer Martin Forema.

-Ancient roman lead tablet inscribed with a curse from the Baths of Diocletian in Rome – Photographer Bari' bin Farangi.

-Roman lead curse tablet Kent County Council. Photographer Andrew Richardson.

-Well in which lead scroll fragments were intentionally thrown for magical practices. C4th CE Israel. Photographer Mikey641.

Creating Characters out of history by Wendy Dunn

 

For fiction writers to write successful fiction, we must know the characters driving our stories like the back of our hands. No – more than that. We need to be able to embody our characters – feel what they are feeling, see the world through their eyes. We need to understand their motivations for every decision they make in the story we create. I often suspect one of the real causes of writer’s block is not understanding our characters well enough to narrate their story. This results in our stories reaching a stalemate when we cannot move forward. 

Creating three-dimensional characters is vital if we want to build the bridge of empathy between our characters and our reader. If we fail to make our readers feel for our characters, we fail in writing our stories. 

Character construction is the beating heart of writing fiction. I am especially aware of the importance of shaping character through engagement with historical context to write successful historical narratives. I craft character through appreciation that character/or identity is a product of the context of history, culture and gender. 

I want to show you in this column an example of a powerful and fun tool I use to get deep into my character’s motivations, and mindset. So, what's my tool? I interview the characters in my stories. Believe me, interviewing our characters is a great way to ‘hear’ their voice. I also learn a lot about my characters when I interview them. Every time I have used this tool, I have come away from the experience surprised by what my characters confide to me. I especially love how interviewing them reveals more about their backstories. It is also a great exercise to solve the problem of ‘writer’s block’. 

Let me now provide you with an example of one of my interviews. I gave voice to María de Salinas in All Manner of Things, the conclusion of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters, my Katherine of Aragon story. 

Of course, there was a time during the drafting process that I had to interview María to be better able to write her story… 

WJD: Thank you for giving me your time, María. Can you tell me why telling this story is important to you?

María: I need to tell it. I must tell it. I am dying. All the signs tell me my heart is failing. My ankles are swollen, and I can no longer wear any of my rings. Even a short walk leaves me breathless. I sit in this chair before you, feeling the pain of my heart. 

WJD: But you have studied the healing arts. Surely there are treatments you could use to help you.

María: Perhaps. But I do not believe so – and I have no desire to drag out my life for one day longer than it will take me to write my letter to my Catalina. 

You ask why telling this story is important to me. 

I need my daughter to understand that life gave me no other choice but to give her wardship to Suffolk. Do you think I would have given my only surviving child to others to care for if I had any choice in the matter? I was widowed and had only the queen’s support. When Will, my beloved husband died, the queen’s influence with the king, her husband, had waned to hardly anything at all. My daughter’s uncle was like a wolf at our door. He was determined to rob my daughter of her inheritance. I knew Suffolk as a friend, and I believed him a good man. As a duke, he had the necessary power to protect her. He promised to marry her to his son when they were of age. 

How was I to know it all would go wrong?

WJD: You are saying you’re estranged from your daughter?

María: Yes – since her wedding to Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. I had hard enough time understanding why Suffolk decided to marry my daughter only weeks after the death of his wife, Mary Tudor, the White Queen. As soon as I received his letter telling me of his plans, I left my residence in London and rode to his estate. I arrived the night before the wedding. My daughter began weeping as soon as I managed to get her alone. She was distraught – and confused. She had been raised to be the wife of Suffolk’s son – not the man she had been encouraged to call ‘Father’ since but a small child. She was grieving for the death of Mary Tudor, and grieving for the boy she believed would one day be her husband. She thought I had the power to talk Suffolk out of the marriage. I thought so too, but the man was crazed with grief. He had not only lost his wife, but his physicians had now told him his son had lung disease and was not likely to survive another winter. My daughter had been trained to be the duchess of Suffolk – and was of an age to give him sons. We began our talk still with some semblance of our long friendship in place, but by the end of our conversation we were close to enemies. Then I had to face Catalina again and tell her of my failure. If I had been left raw from my talk with Suffolk, Catalina’s words soon had me bleeding. I will never forget how she said she hated me and called me wicked. She hides this in public, but I know she has not forgiven me.

WJD: So you think telling your story will help you restore your relationship with your daughter?

María: It must restore our relationship. Catalina is all that is left to me in this world. She is all that is left of her father. I love her with all my heart. I cannot die knowing she hates me. 

WJD: So, by telling your story, what do you want her to understand?

María: I want her understand many things. I want her to understand that women make the best of the hand dealt to them in life. I want her to understand that all through my life I had tried to live the best life I could. I want her to understand that I am not a woman who would give up her child if she had any other option open to her. 

I want her to know that I believed Suffolk would keep her safe. He vowed to me he would keep her safe. I was not to know he would decide to marry her. He betrayed me, betrayed his son, and betrayed my daughter. I thought him my friend – but, like other men I have known in my life, he proved a man unworthy of all trust. 

There are other tools you can also use as a writer to help construct your characters. We can do profiles of our characters and include things like their age, height, ethnic heritage, likes and dislikes – and even their birthdate, which will give you their astrology sign. All these things help construct the point of view of our characters. Even a simple thing like height can be important to consider when building up a profile of your character. For example, Katherine of Aragon was no more than 160 cm or five-foot-tall, which means she was far, far shorter than her 1.88 metre or almost 6 foot 2-inch husband, and far shorter than many at the English court. That fact gives me a lot to think about when constructing her character. 

I want to leave you with one more quote from Kundera: 

“Indeed, two centuries of psychological realism have created some nearly inviolable standards: (1) A writer must give the maximum amount of information about a character: about his physical appearance, his way of speaking and behaving; (2) he must let the reader know a character's past, because that is where all the motives for his present behaviour are located; and (3) the character must have complete independence; that is to say, the author with his own considerations must disappear so as not to disturb the reader, who wants to give himself over to illusion and take fiction for reality” (Kundera 2003, p. 33).

Works Cited:

Kundera, M  2003, The Art of the Novel, Reprint Edition, Harper, Perennial Modern Classics, New York.

The Gifts of the Greeks: Democracy, Demosthenes and dick jokes? By L.J. Trafford

I have written four novels, three short stories and three nonfiction books about Ancient Rome. It was after completing the last of these, Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors that I was struck by a feeling of fatigue that I had never known. I looked at my bookcase brimming with books on ancient Rome and I could not be arsed to pick a single one off the shelf and have a flick through. This is most unusual behaviour for me, generally I can’t get through a day without picking up Pliny the Elder’s Natural Histories and seeing what Pliny’s take was on whatever the hot topic of the day is (see my previous History Girls article The Curious Roman for Pliny’s views on the hottest of topics). The stark fact was I was all Romaned out.
  

Fate then knocked or my door or rather pinged into my inbox, it was an email from my publisher – did I know of anyone who could write the Greek version of my book Sex & Sexuality in Ancient Rome? I didn’t, but I dutifully posted it on a couple of Facebook groups for historical fiction writers. Not a nibble. Which was when a small voice from deep within me piped up, ‘you could write it.’

My outer voice supposed I could, I had studied ancient Greece alongside ancient Rome so I had a reasonable understanding of ancient Greek society and history. It might actually be fun to revisit the ancient Greeks, to dig a little deeper than I had been able to do as an undergraduate back in the days of Britpop and Alcopops. Maybe I had been wrong to turn my back on them post university and concentrate only on Romans. Here was the chance to find out….



What I found out

Two years and 88k words later what I had found out is that, yeah sorry, I do prefer writing about Romans. Chiefly this is because I get Romans, I get how they think. Not that their culture is anything like ours; it’s not but I understand what underpins those differences. Ancient Greece on the other hand is a very strange place which still mystifies me even after having spent two years immersed in its people, its history and its culture.

 

Four men at a symposium. An 18th century copy of an original Greek vase design, Wellcome Collection.

I suspect that this is because unlike ancient Rome ancient Greece isn’t one homogenous mass with a singular centre of power. Ancient Greece was made up of hundreds of city states who were governed in very different ways, ranging from totalitarian military states, absolute monarchies, oligarchies all the way down to the world’s first democracies. These city states had differing laws, variations on religious beliefs and vast differences in culture. This makes them very hard to pin down and make generalized sweeping statements about what the ancient Greeks thought or did, your average Athenian man in the 5th century BCE is going to be wildly different in his views from the average Spartan man living only 150 miles away. This causes many headaches should you have happened to volunteer yourself to write a general history book on a very general subject, sex and sexuality and what the entirely generalized ancient Greeks thought about it, Ooops.


I don’t mind admitting that Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece was a difficult and cumbersome write. All of which is fitting for a group of city states who between them gave us the twelve labours of Heracles, one of which involved decapitating the Hydra of Lerna. The Hydra not only had nine heads that needed detaching from her neck by Heracles but also, just to make things unnecessarily complicated, for every head slashed off by the hero, the Hydra would grow two new heads. It’s also a collection of cultures from which sprung Odysseus, a man who took ten years to travel from Troy to Ithaca despite it only being a week’s sailing maximum.

Ancient Greece and the ancient Greeks are unnecessarily complicated, tricky and take unexpected routes when you least expect it. That is their charm, their twinkle and if I should never write about them again let me leave you with something that took me completely by surprise about the ancient Greeks. Those clever men with beards who brought us democracy, philosophy, tremendous works of art and the backbone of medicine also handed to us a far greater gift, one that I believe has enriched our culture immeasurably: the knob gag.



Is that a javelin in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

As the person who invented the, then Twitter now X, hashtag #phallusThursday I am not new to images from antiquity of male genitalia. There are very few I haven’t seen, mainly because people still send them to me over social media with the accompanying comment. ‘I saw this and thought of you.’ I am the go-to classical penis woman, which I am fine with.

 

Phallus pillars in front of the Sanctuary of Dionysos, Delos shot by Anna Apostolidou. Wikicomms

However, until I started writing my book I was unaware that the ancient Greeks not only perfected the art of depicting individual penises in very complicated group sex scenes on pots the size of gravy jugs but also the knob gag. As a child of the 70s/80s I grew up watching Carry On films and That’s Life, a magazine style TV show that devoted a whole segment each week to vegetables that had grown into amusingly rude shapes. I had a primordial soup of an upbringing that means I am pre-programmed to enjoy a good knob gag. Ancient Greek comedy is pleasingly bursting, or rather erupting with some tremendous knob gags.

The king of the Greek knob gag is undoubtedly the legend that is Aristophanes. Should anyone be of the misconception that Greek theatre was all heavy weight tales of incestuous marriages, patricide, suicide and gouging out your own eyes (and that’s all in just the one play) I would urge them to pick up a copy of any of Aristophanes’ plays and prepare to have your mind blown and your nipples shoot across the room.

The plot of any Aristophanes play lends itself to at least a dozen decent knob gags, in Lysistrata the women of Greece stage a sex strike to try and end the Peloponnesian War which is the set up for a series of gags revolving around that classic of the knob gag, the embarrassing erection.

‘[Enter the Spartan herald. He, too, has a giant erection, which he is trying to hide under his cloak.]

Spartan Herald: Where’s the Athenian Senate and the Prytanes? I come with fresh dispatches.

Cinesias [looking at the Herald’s erection Are you a man,or some phallic monster?

Spartan Herald: I’m a herald, by the twin gods. And my good man, I come from Sparta with a proposal, arrangements for a truce.

Cinesias: If that’s the case, why do you have a spear concealed in there?

Spartan Herald: I’m not concealing anything, by god.                

Cinesias:  Then why are you turning to one side? What’s that thing there, sticking from your cloak? Has your journey made your groin inflamed?

Spartan Herald: By old Castor, this man’s insane!

Cinesias: You rogue, you’ve got a hard on!

Spartan Herald; No I don’t, I tell you. Let’s have no more nonsense.

 Cinesias: [pointing to the herald’s erection] Then what’s that?

 Spartan Herald: It’s a Spartan herald’s stick.’

 

An assumingly shaped croissant

The Assembly Women sees the women of Athens take over the running of the city (the satirical point being that women couldn’t make any more of a mess of it then the then Athenian council) and institute a law that ’decreed that if a man desires to fuck a young woman, he may do so only after he fucks an old one. Further, should this young man refuse to obey by this statute, the older woman shall be authorised to drag the aforesaid young man by his cock, without any legal ramifications to her person or property!” ‘

In Women at the Festival, Mnesilochus disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate a mass protest by the women of the city. The scene where Mnesilochus’ deceit is uncovered by the women particularly stands out. 

‘Cleisthenes: Stand up straight. What do you keep pushing that thing down for?

First Woman: peering from behind
There's no mistaking it.

Cleisthenes: also peering from behind
Where has it gone to now?

First Woman: To the front.

Cleisthenes: from in front
No.

First Woman: from behind
Ah! it's behind now.


There are perhaps a few things I should mention about Greek comedy at this point, firstly the actors were all male thus all the female characters would have been performed by men. Secondly these male actors all wore costumes, comedy costumes. The images below depict comedic actors, note that thing hanging between their legs. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, it is a costume penis. Generally made from leather these were sewn onto leotard style outfits and they served as a useful prop. Read the scenes above but this time with the floppy, leather costume phallus in your head. You can picture the physical comedy of it better now, can’t you?
 

Comic actors. Terracotta calyx-krater (mixing bowl) attributed to the Dolon Painter, Fletcher Fund 1924, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 

Terracotta statuette of an actor, Rogers Fund 1913, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. 

The knob gag deserves to be included amongst all those great things ancient Greece bequeathed us. It is in the cradle of civilisation, snuggled somewhere between medicine and art, for without it our society would be very different. Would any of us want to live in a world where an amusingly phallic shaped vegetable or indeed croissant did not elicit a smile? Absolutely not.

L.J. Trafford writes books about Romans and now the Greeks! Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece will be published next year (probably).  You can find details of her other books here

Trading Standards 16th century style by Margaret Skea

 Trading Standards 16th century style.

Or… what’s in this meat pie? 

For those of us in Britain the cost of food has noticeably increased over the 18 months or so and has become a hot topic of conversation both privately and in the media. One of the largest price increases relates to beef. Shepherd’s Pie made with beef mince used to be considered an economical standby. Technically, of course, ‘Shepherd’s Pie’ should be made from lamb mince – the hint is in the name – but as beef was cheaper than lamb, most folk, in Scotland at least, weren’t bothered about the technicalities. 

However, beef, in any form, is fast becoming the most expensive meat, and it requires careful reading (often with a magnifying glass) to work out the (often small) beef content of many ready-meals. Some years ago there was a Europe-wide crisis when horse-meat DNA was found in many supposedly beef ready-meals, burgers etc; with Food Standards inspectors testing everything in sight in an attempt to discover the scale of the fraud. Perhaps unsurprisingly it spawned a host of jokes, including, given the coincidence in timing of Phillipa Langley’s discovery of the body of Richard III, my favourite. It was suitably historic: ‘After finding Richard III under a Leicester Car Park, scientists have found his horse in a Tesco burger.’

But is the mis-labelling and / or adulteration of food a new problem? 

Definitely not. The first records in Scotland of national standards for food date back to the reign of David I - 1124 - 1153. There were clearly problems then, as now. However, my interest in food regulations relates specifically to the 15th and 16th centuries, and how they impact on the characters in my Scottish trilogy. 

   

                                                                      David I of Scotland 

Nowadays we think the aim of food standards is purely to protect consumers. In the 16th century it was a little different. Consumers, yes, but also the interests of sellers and to prevent disorder. There were strict market regulations governing what could be sold, where and in what form. Some regulations came from the burghs themselves, others by statute - with correspondingly harsh penalties for breaching them.

                                       

Take bread, for example. Scotland, in common with most of Europe suffered from ‘bread riots’, with one significant difference – the rioters in Scotland were not the poor, desperate for reasonably priced food, but the bakers or ‘baxters’ themselves. They were protesting about price restrictions imposed by the burgh authorities, in response to regular Acts of Parliament. 

Most bread was made from wheat, though the poorest households probably made their own flat and fairly indigestible barley bannocks. The price and weight of bread was set, but fluctuated according to the price of wheat. Burgh records describe Bailies (those contracted to ensure compliance with regulations) taking flour ground from a firlot – roughly equivalent to an imperial bushel – to a baker and watching as the bread was baked. The resulting loaf was the standard against which all other loaves were measured. Any baker selling underweight bread risked, at best, a fine and confiscation of his stock, or at worst, his oven being broken and forfeiture of freeman status.

Freeman status was important, as often the sale of bread, and other regulated foodstuffs was restricted to those with burgess status.

‘Outlanders’ coming in from outside were sometimes given permission to trade, but only if they paid the burgh for the privilege. One unusual regulation was the '8 day rule' of 1526 - local residents without freeman status were only allowed to buy enough food for 8 days - to avoid them setting themselves up as small retailers.

Quality was also controlled – different grades of bread being classified as ‘white’ or ‘gray’ – not the most appealing of labels, but all was to be ‘good’ and ‘dry’, which probably meant well-fired and risen – nothing worse than a ‘soggy bottom’ as Prue Leith would say! 

While it is hard to imagine parliament today legislating for the size and price for a loaf;  the price of alcohol is the subject of current regulation. The same was true in the 16th century, with the price of malt and the quality of the ale determining the price. Tasters or ‘conners’ were appointed by the burghs on annual contracts, and having graded a brewer's ales, chalked set prices on the shutters or doors of his premises, so that they could be clearly seen. Anyone found to be over-charging could have the bottom knocked out of his brewing vessels. There is one significant difference between then and now - the modern debate relates to minimum pricing, the 16th century burgh authorities were concerned with imposing a maximum price.

Photo by Fabian Burghart on Unsplash

As now, horse was not a normal part of the 16th century Scottish diet – they were much too valuable to eat. There is however plenty of evidence of the consumption of beef, mutton, pork and goat in the burghs,

and of animals being over-wintered to maturity.  This was supplemented in coastal areas with salmon, herring and seawater fish. The main thrust of meat regulation was quality – for example the sale of meat from ‘longsought’ (lung-diseased) animals was banned - as was the sale of damaged, or badly butchered meat. 

Interestingly, there was no regulation of cheeses, butter, oatmeal or salt. 

There has been much recent discussion on the length of our food 'chain', with meat being shipped from all round the world before landing on a British table. Back then the food chain was, by regulation, extremely short – animals were to be slaughtered outside, in public view and most importantly, at the point of sale. One way of ensuring the customer knows what they are about to buy. 

This particular regulation helped in the prevention of dishonest practices designed to improve the appearance of meat - for example, blowing air into an entire carcass - which plumped it up.  The modern equivalent is likely the addition of water. Bleeding of animals immediately before slaughter was also prohibited, as it masked last minute feeding.

Not everyone was so well-protected. A rather shocking regulation stated that putrid pork or fish must be removed from sale, but not thrown out or destroyed. Instead it was given to lepers. 

But to come back to the meat pie in the sub-title. 

One of the most interesting restrictions on the activities of butchers, or ‘fleshers’ as they were known, is found in the Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland – prohibiting them from trading as pastry cooks. Was it an attempt to stop them from disguising poor-quality meat by putting it into pies? Perhaps. Which triggers the sobering thought – four hundred years on, little seems to have changed…

There are many sources available for further information; however, here is one article, for starters, for anyone who might be interested: 

March M S (1914) ‘The trade regulations of Edinburgh during the 15th and 16th centuries.’ Scot Geog Mag 30 (1914) pages 483-488

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of short stories, a biography, and five historical novels, including the 'Munro' trilogy set in the context of the 15th and 16th century clan feud called the Ayrshire Vendetta.  

NORWICH STORIES by Penny Dolan

As I walked round Norwich, three stories were in my head, all met through historical fiction, and all involving what was once seen as the second city of England.

Norwich stands a safe distance inland, on the banks of the Wensum with Yarmouth offering travel to London and across to the coast and estuaries of Northern Europe and beyond. Norfolk, when travel by land was hard and dangerous, had access to trade and markets, to exports and imports. The city was open, for better or otherwise, to wider cultural influences, knowledge and forces, and the prosperity eventually brought by the monastic wool trade.

Two structures dominate the city. One is religious: the mighty Norwich cathedral, with its tall, peregrine-housing spire and beautiful cathedral close. The other is the keep of Norwich Castle, high on the mound raised when the Conqueror took over the city, a symbol of might and right.

Ah, that cathedral, with its wide close and peaceful grounds!

However, my first historical character, although her story is ‘spiritual’, does not seem part of that great cathedral, though she would have heard its bell and those of Norwich’s many other churches.

Julian of Norwich was a 14th century anchorite, and the author of the first book written in English by a woman. After living through years of plague, bereavement and unrest, Dame Julian chose to be ‘entombed’ within a single sealed room, to live her life as if she was symbolically dead to the world, spending her time in prayers and devotion to Christ’s Passion. 

However, her solitude was not constant: people would seek out the small window to her cell, asking for advice, comfort and her prayers. ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ are Julian’s collected thoughts and meditations on the sixteen intense religious visions or ‘Shewings’ she had experienced earlier in her life. 

At that time, the act of writing, whether as a woman or in English rather than Latin, could have led to her persecution and death. Fortunately, her words were valued and preserved on scraps and smuggled fragments, and gathered together into a single volume later. For twenty three years, she lived alone in her cell with the help of a servant and, traditionally, a cat. Maybe the most loved of her sayings, and most used as a mantra, are these: 

‘All shall be well, and all shall be well 

and all manner of thing shall be well.’

Two recent novels, both quite original in style, relate to Julian’s life.

The first, ‘I Julian: The Fictional Biography of Julian of Norwich’ is by Claire Gilbert, Director of Westminster Abbey Institute.

This novel reads as a passionate reimagining of the life of the anchoress, written at a time when Claire Gilbert was suffering with cancer herself. Julian, on these pages, tries to find freedom in her chosen life, bricked up behind a wall, with only a squint to follow the mass in one direction and a a small window for her maid in the other. All the way through, the reader is reminded of the physical difficulties of that life and of the vulnerability that comes from being fixed in one spot.

At one point, her kindly, familiar priest dies quietly while resting during mass and is buried the next day. Immediately, when Julian is still in shock, ‘Robert Grylle becomes priest and stays for a long time and he could not be more different. Precise, vigilant, correct, cold and later dangerous.’ Later in the novel, an understanding confessor is suddenly replaced by a callow misogynistic youth, full of his own power as a cleric and keen to cause her pain.

This Julian needs the support of others, found in her relationship with the Abbess, of her maid Alice, of other women, by God (of course) and another too:
‘Sarah brings me Gyb, A sturdy black and white stray cat that has been pawing at my door for a week, she says. I concede he can stay for it is suggested in the Guide for Anchoresses, and we may have mice.’

Only later in the pages, after confessing to her ‘Shewings’, does Julian find release and freedom and that is through the very act of writing and remembering her Visions. Gilbert’s ‘I Julian’ reads like a thoughtful journey written from the heart.

In ‘Of The Great Pains, Have Mercy on my Little Pain’ by Victoria Mackenzie, the character of Dame Julian is seen through another’s eyes and intentions. This is a very different voice, unusually and not always comfortably told, which all adds - dare I say - to almost the fun within this account of a larger than life character. How would I behave if I met this woman? I wondered.

 

The main character in this short novel is that of Marjorie Kemp, a restless, garrulous woman from the nearby port of Kings Lynn. Burning with religious zeal, Marjorie feels continually driven to speak of her visions, at home, with neighbours and in the public street, to her family’s shame and annoyance, as well as the concern of the local clergy. 

Devoted to God, she expresses her faith by wearing a hair shirt, avoiding sex with her husband, and by suffering the mocking and ill treatment of neighbours. Now, perhaps, Marjorie would be given medication to calm and quieten her down. Eventually, in 1433, after years of seeking answers and of pilgrimages to Walsingham, Rome and the Holy Land, boisterous Marjorie sets off one last journey: to the nearby city of Norwich.

Desperate for help, she visits Dame Julian in her cell and finds a sense of kinship, understanding and an acceptance of her visions. and the freedom in using her voice and composing the first English autobiography written by a woman.

As an aside, and maybe a long shot, if any copies of this anthology are still obtainable. I must also suggest ‘All Shall Be Well’ a short story about Julian of Norwich written by Katherine Langrish, appeared in Daughters of Time, an anthology from The History Girls, collected by Mary Hoffman, and published in 2014.

And now for Norwich Castle and worldly power.

The City is dominated by the castle mound and keep. Begun in 1067 as a fortification, completed as a royal palace in 1121, used for administration and as a prison, the castle keep gradually fell into ruins. In the eighteenth century, new prison cells were constructed within the ruined walls. Then even the prison moved out of the city and a Museum and Art Gallery built alongside the keep.

However, this very year, the long-promised Castle Keep renovation was completed. Steel structures, walkways, lights and glass panels indicate lost parts of the building and the ‘new’ hall is decorated as experts say it would have been: painted with brightly colours and dressed with carved, gilded furniture and hangings. An authentic, if unexpected, experience of a twelfth century royal palace.

The streets of the old town twist and turn away from the castle, and there are many oddly named ways and ginnels. One strange name – Tombland – refers to the empty area of cobbled market in the centre of the city, and gives its name to my third choice of book, the last of the series of Shardlake novels. This huge novel is an adventure on an epic scale and where the keep and the prisons cells are very much in use.

Tombland by C. J. Sansom takes place in 1549: a very uncertain time. The old Tudor king, Henry VIII is dead. Edward VI, his eleven-year-old son, is on the throne; Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, has assumed the role of Protector and is waging war on Scotland, and radical preachers are stirring up the population.

The lawyer Matthew Shardlake, now out of favour in the court, is summoned secretly by Princess Elizabeth. She wants him to look into the accusation that her uncle, John Boleyn, now in Norwich prison, murdered his wife Edith. As the Summer Assizes will soon start, Boleyn and other prisoners will soon be executed. Elizabeth wants Shardlake to petition, secretly for a pardon, but when he visits the cells, the man seems curiously unwilling to help himself - and the princess does not want her name attached to any of this.

As Shardlake’s investigations lead him to Boleyn’s appallingly violent sons, to secretive merchants and trades-people, to a small religious sect, and with more murders, the mystery of the aunt’s death deepens.

However, there is a stronger and more significant thread in this novel. In their search for evidence and testimony, Shardlake, his assistant Nicholas and his friend Jack Barak are led into the path of the 1549 Peasants Rebellion, led by the charismatic Robert Kett.

During Henry’s reign, the old monastic estates had been bought up by rich gentry and merchants and enclosed for pasture land. These new sheep enclosures drove tenants from their traditional holdings, leaving families without plots or crops. Many hope that the young king will be merciful to the sufferings of his people.

Led by Robert Kett, his followers gather in growing numbers on Mouseland outside the city walls, soon causing skirmishes with local citizens. Shardlake and his men are questioned in the camp and, as the novel progresses, different sympathies emerge between the three. Kett, meanwhile, asks the literate Shardlake, still prisoner, to help by keeping a record of the property and weapons taken from any captured gentry so that none can say their possessions were stolen.

Although the twists of the plot weave between Norwich and Kett’s camp in the Tombland novel, the sense of the ill-fated rebellion is what sits most powerfully in the readers mind. At first, the 'rebels' are camping in the sunshine under Mouseland’s leafy trees but, as branch after branch is cut down for fuel or shelter, it is clear that more wood will be needed. Despite Ketts' careful and fair-minded administration, things go wrong, supplies start to run out and the people of Norwich have nothing more to give or sell to the rebels, and there are cold months ahead.

Seymour, the Protector, had grandly issued proclamations promising justice, but faith in the Protector and the young king starts fading fast and reports of mercenaries returning from the Scottish wars add to the turmoil and terror. What chance does Matthew Shardlake have of solving the mystery of the murder of Edith Boleyn and staying in Elizabeth’s favour? Or even escaping himself?

I have to say that Tombland is the kind of historic novel one can live in, and be thankful for your escape at the end. 

In addition, I was also thankful that C. J. Sansom had included so much information and notes on his research notes at the back of the book. Tudor fiction is so often entranced by the drama and glamour of the court and the adventures of famous gentry. I started to feel that Sansom wanted his readers to see life beyond the castle and palace walls, and make them think about the ordinary people.

Especially, in Tombland, those waiting and hoping for justice outside the city of Norwich.

Penny Dolan

Rambling through the past - is it a different place? - Sue Purkiss

 Ever since my first historical fiction book, Warrior King, which was about Alfred the Great, I've tussled with the question as to whether people in the past were basically pretty much the same as people in the present - apart, obviously, from not having smartphones. I think, when I was writing that - actually, come to think of it, people in the present didn't have smartphones then either - I felt that they probably were. So my Alfred was thoughtful and sensitive as well as being clever and brave; Cerys - my lovely silver-eyed Celt - was a freedom fighter as well as a semi-magical creature; Fleda (Alfred's daughter Aethelflaed, later to become the Lady of the Mercians and pretty much the definition of a warrior queen) was a determined, courageous, affectionate child. They were a nice lot, really. People you'd like to spend time with.

Some time after that, I considered writing a book about the young William the Conqueror. But the more I read, the more I decided that here was a very unpleasant character indeed. And his wife wasn't much better: her father didn't approve of William's suit, thinking that, being a bastard, he wasn't good enough. So William rode up to meet her as she was coming out of church and dragged her off her horse by her plaits. Apparently she thought this was great - what a guy! - and henceforth would have no other. As well as this, he was brutal in his treatment of the inhabitants of castles he besieged and captured - I don't remember the details, but they definitely involved cutting bits off people.

So I decided I really didn't want to spend any more time with him.

How nice it was, I thought, that things have progressed since then, and we don't behave like that any more. Hm...

The chained books

In the last couple of years, I've taken to volunteering at Wells Cathedral, mostly in the library, which was founded in 1424. It's a beautiful space, built above one side of the cloister. The arched wooden roof, the windows, and the carved heads which are portraits of contemporaries of the masons - all these are original, so almost six hundred years old. The books, some of which are chained (cf the library in the Unseen University of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books!), are mostly not as old as that: they've endured turbulent times, notably Henry VIII's Reformation, and the Civil War and its aftermath, and many were lost. But there are still some wonderful survivors:  notably an extraordinary polyglot bible (ie one written in five languages), an exquisitely illustrated Benedictine Rule, and a first edition of John Donne.

He looks a bit self-conscious, doesn't he? And look at his lovely big ears!

The annotation in red is in Archbishop Cranmer's own hand.

The original windows in the library, with Bishop Bubwith's crest.

I'm not that brilliant at remembering dates. But in quiet moments, when the past seems very close, I often wonder about the people who moved through the serene spaces of this most beautiful of cathedrals - those who built it, but also those who lived in the city and came here to worship. In those days, the magnificent West Front, with its layers of figures, saints, kings, angels, right up to the head man up at the top, would have been brightly coloured. Did the ordinary people - the tradesmen and women, the children, the pedlars, the beggars - did they come and stare at it and recognise the stories that it told? Were they allowed to wander round inside, and recognise their neighbours, carved in stone at the top of pillars - several with toothache, one stealing grapes, all with faces full of expression?

The West Front

One of the loveliest spaces in the cathedral - the staircase up to the chapterhouse, with its steps worn by centuries of footsteps.

Some local people...

There is little trace in the records of these people and what their lives were like. There's more of Bishop Nicholas Bubwith (1355-1427), who left money in his will for the building of the library. I think I have a sense of him. He was remarkable, but not in a showy sort of way. 

He was born in a little village in Yorkshire called Menthorpe, not long after the first major plague outbreak, which killed half the population and led to all sorts of unrest and turbulence. Little is known about his early life, but he entered royal service in the 1360s, and rose to become a significant figure - Lord Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal. Then in 1406 he became a bishop, first of London, then of Salisbury and finally of Wells. But he was still given responsibility by the King - by this time Henry IV - being sent as Ambassador to the Council of Constance, which was convened to sort out the mess the church had got itself into, with several would-be popes and considerable disagreements about doctrine.

But finally he came back to Wells, and busily set about sorting things out back home, improving education for the clergy (hence the library), regularising the cathedral's financial affairs, and looking round to see what needed to be done to improve the lot of the townspeople. In his will he left money to improve Somerset's roads (an ongoing endeavour!), to build almshouses, and for the poor back in Menthorpe.

So he survived life at court - and my guess is that this was because all three monarchs under whom he served recognised his value as someone who absolutely wasn't in it for himself; someone who was an effective administrator who spent his life trying to make things better for other people, not for himself.

So - we can look back at this period of British history, which was turbulent and must have been harsh in so many ways. But here we find also someone who was just getting on with things, doing the best he could, not just for himself but for other people too. Which is what, despite all the awful things that are happening in the world at the moment, most of us are trying to do.

At least, I hope so. 

PS - I am indebted to Austin Bennett, another volunteer at Wells, for his comprehensive notes on Bishop Bubwith.