Mary and Jesus as refugees by Janie Hampton

'Rest on the Flight into Egypt' by Bonifazio de Pitati (1487– 1553) 

Once Christmas Day is over, we tend to forget about the small family in a stable in Bethlehem, and what they did next. I’ve been wondering about Mary, and how she coped as a new young mother, in a strange town, with no home or family. We only know what the gospels of Luke and Matthew chose to write about the birth and first weeks of Jesus' life. Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin, but Joseph her ‘espoused’ learned that she was pregnant, and not by him. An angel told him not to worry, because ‘that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ So he agreed to marry her, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That’s all he has to say about the Nativity.

The Flight into Egypt by Battista Dossi and Dosso Dossi, c.1530, with two donkeys!

Luke gives much more detail. Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem for a Roman taxation census. While in Bethlehem, Mary ‘brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.’ Shepherds and wise men came to worship him, and when Jesus was eight days old he was circumcised according to Jewish law. Meanwhile Mary stayed indoors for 40 days until ‘the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished.’ Then they went to Jerusalem on their way north, where they offered a sacrifice of two turtledoves. After that Jesus ‘grew and waxed strong in spirit’ back at home in Nazareth.
Both accounts were written over 60 years after the events, and by men, so there is no mention of the things women might be interested in. How long was the labour? Did it start while they were travelling the 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem? The journey would have taken them at least four days on foot. As a carpenter, Joseph could well have owned a donkey for carrying his tools and timber. Christmas cards often depict Mary on a donkey out of sympathy for her predicament as a full-term primigravida, though she might have walked all the way.
As Joseph came originally from Bethlehem, he probably had relatives living there. Joseph’s mother, sister or an aunt may have accompanied Mary through her labour, cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta. Jesus was then ‘laid in a manger’ - a net or wooden box containing hay for cattle – a prickly place for a baby! A manger (from the French word ‘to eat’) can be attached to a wall, a practical way of keeping a new-born baby safe from dogs and draughts while Mary was sleeping.
Bethlehem is at a high altitude and it could have been very cold, so Mary would have kept her new baby close to her body most of the time. We don’t know if they stayed in the stable for the 40 days Mary had to wait for her purification, a time of post-partum bleeding, or lochia. Hopefully, Joseph’s female relatives provided Mary with the necessary cloths which she then washed, and hung up to dry?
Matthew next tells of wise men from the East who visited the new baby, and warned his parents to return home by a different route, as King Herod wanted to kill the baby. Sometime after they returned to Nazareth, Joseph was warned in a dream to take the child to safety in Egypt. They left immediately by night, becoming refugees.
Matthew’s account does not say when they had to flee to Egypt, but King Herod had ordered all boys under two years old to be slaughtered – indicating Jesus must have been about 20 months.

As the many depictions have imagined the holy refugees,
Jesus was probably still being breastfed.

They probably took the Via Maris – a well-trodden trade route along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that ran from Damascus to Memphis in Egypt. The journey from Nazareth to Abu Serghis, on the far side of the River Nile where tradition has it they settled, is about 500 miles. Google Map estimates this takes 150 hours to walk. So if the family kept up a pace of 8 hours a day, that would have taken them three weeks without breaks. Jesus would have been carried much of the way, breastfed every few hours; and Mary may well have had a menstrual period en route. Imagine her discomfort while walking or sitting on a donkey, with just cloth rags. There are many mediaeval and renaissance paintings of Mary breastfeeding Jesus. She is shown with a bounteous supply of milk and fullsome breasts, and Jesus is a well-fed chubby boy.

Giotto Bondone was one of many major artists who depicted the Flight from Egypt.

‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ became a common depiction in the life of Christ after the 14th century. As interest in landscape painting increased, the subject became even more popular and the figures were often shown in European scenery.  The paintings are lovely but the conditions would have been much harsher in AD 2, with the risk of bandits as well as desert conditions of starvation, heat and cold. Until recently few historians have thought about how women dealt with menstruation in ordinary life, let alone as refugees, or women in the Bible. What was it really like? To recapture this experience, we can look at female refugees fleeing from war now. The testimony of the two women in this film, made in a refugee camp in Malawi two months ago, gives us an insight. Alphonsine and Pendeza are both Christians, but almost certainly unaware that their unintended journeys across Africa were similar to Mary’s 2000 years ago. I hope that they, like she was, are able to return to their homes one day soon.

'From Rags to Cups - Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi. ' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9S3GU_6pM&feature=youtu.be 

Illustrated Bibles of my childhood, as depicted by Scott Orr circa 1930. 

All quotes are from the King James Bible, published in English in 1611.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENTS

Theresa Breslin

I’ve been searching in the attic trying to find research notebooks, photographs and primary source material relating specifically to World War One.

Being a professional librarian it should all have been boxed, filed and labelled - with perhaps even a card catalogue or, at the very least, an index file to help me navigate the tremendous amount of ‘stuff’ I collected when writing Remembrance. Sadly, no. After finishing a book that requires major commitment in time, energy and travel, I always find that I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. It requires a huge effort on my part to put the research in some kind of order and tie up the files. Sometimes I don’t want to even think about or discuss the subject. Fortunately that wears off, and, by the time publication date is approaching, and I’m semi-sane again, I’m quite willing to talk about themes, issues, whatever, to anyone who’ll listen. Perhaps it’s having a glossy-covered, crisp-paged, brand-new book in my hand - with my name on it - that gives me the kick start. I hope I never lose the slight feeling of surprise and the incredible joy that I experience when I open up the book and begin to read it.

My recent attic ‘finds’ were the photographs of Historical Re-enactments that I attended when researching a couple of my books: Remembrance and Spy for the Queen of Scots

I’ll come straight out and admit it right away. I’m a big fan of Historical Re-enactments…

I’ve never actually participated in a ‘Living History’ event but, speaking to those who do and listening to their stories, is almost as fascinating as watching the re-enactment itself. Reasons given ranged from : ‘ I like dressing up’, ‘you get to shoot at people without actually hurting them’, and ‘it’s a sort of respectable way to play games when you’re an adult’ to ‘I never feel more alive than when I’m doing this’ I love being connected with history and culture in this way’, and ‘it’s an essential part of my life’. A significant number of people said they did it because they could trace their ancestry back to those specific times – and a high proportion of these claimed to be direct descendants of royalty and nobility! In the case of World War One, very many men and women told me it gave them a real and very personal connection with their own family history. They’d traced their roots, and / or found family photographs and letters of relatives who’d fought and often died during the Great War.      

Most of the events I’ve attended have been slightly chaotic. The World War One re-enactments at Stirling Castle involved a lot of running about and shouting, interspersed with smoke bombs and officers bawling orders, which their troops cheerfully ignored. I’m not sure if this was intended to reflect the actual action of the Great War, but certainly the rainy weather gave a flavour of authenticity. And this made me pay attention to the rain capes of the soldiers, how they look and how they smell when wet.   

Our visual images of World War One are mainly black and white or sepia tinted. It’s startling to see the pristine cream-coloured puttees worn by the soldiers on parade. The aprons that the soldiers of the Highland regiments were obliged to wear over their kilts when working out of the front line look faintly ridiculous. I can touch the actual army uniform and feel the coarse cloth against my skin. NB – I did manage to get close to the one that was worn by Brad Pitt in one of his acting roles!

I try on the soft cap which was the soldiers’ headgear in the early part of the War. I turn it over in my hand, and I shudder as I recall seeing the size of artillery shells in the Imperial War Museum.

I know that girl munitions workers wore overalls of a distinctive blue and the shade was named by them as ’munitions blue’.

What did impress me was the knowledge of the participants. In addition to performing their set pieces, when ‘off duty’ they’d take time to chat and were an invaluable source of information. The Internet is a vast resource and one can find almost anything one is looking for. But often I don’t actually know what I am looking for. And often when I find it, I don’t recognise its true value. 

But I am a hoarder. 

When the maid of the household of Mary, Queen of Scots tells me that she collects strips of willow for her mistress to use to brush her teeth, I write that down. It may be months before I realise that it could be the way that a would-be assassin might try to poison her Grace. 

I watch the four Marys ‘dress’ their Queen’ and, almost unconsciously, I’m counting the number of pins it takes to secure the heavily embroidered sleeves to her dress.

The chap in charge of the horses lets me know that the stable boys had their heads shaved at regular intervals to prevent lice. Is that worth remembering? Why yes, because a shaved head completely changes a person’s appearance.  

When I come to the actual writing of the book I’m aware that some part of my brain has been weaving things together. And then suddenly there’s a spark! A connection is made.

Which leads to another.

And another.

And another…   

Images and Photographs Copyright:  © SCARPA

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LATEST BOOKS

Spy for the Queen of Scots 

The Traveller  (from dyslexia friendly publisher Barrington Stoke)

Divided City   Playscript now available.

Loch Leven Castle & Mary Queen of Scots: by Theresa Breslin

Sometimes in our minds historical figures are inextricably linked to particular places. In the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, among the many castles connected with her name Loch Leven is remembered as the place of her first imprisonment and subsequent exciting escape. Not long after her third, final, and disastrous marriage, Mary surrendered at Carberry Hill in June 1567 to the Scots Lords who had risen in rebellion against her rule. Despite being promised safe conduct to visit her infant son, she was taken at night to be imprisoned within the castle on Loch Leven, near Kinross. Her jailors were the dastardly Douglas family, implacable enemies of Mary’s current husband, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell

Mary had associations with Loch Leven earlier in her short reign as Queen of Scotland. One of her favourite pastimes was hawking and Loch Leven is a perennial stopover for migrating species of birds. She stayed there on several occasions with her second husband, Lord Henry Darnley, to take advantage of the hunting opportunities.

Located in modern day Perthshire, Loch Leven is a designated National Nature Reserve, one of the major sites in Europe for migratory birds. As the year ends, thousands upon thousands of birds, travelling from the Arctic Circle and northern Europe, paused to feed from the waters of the loch and the surrounding wetlands and fields. It’s a wonderful experience to see these enormous flocks of birds coming in to land, outlined against the glorious glow of a winter-red setting sun. It’s a cycle older than recorded history and when visiting the castle to research Spy for the Queen of Scots it struck me that this was a happening unchanged with the passage of time. I felt that I could block out the faint burr of the ferry boat engine and the chatter of picnicking families to see almost exactly what Mary and her companions would have seen centuries ago.  I could write a genuine witness account in as told by the main character, Jenny:

Suddenly there was a noise like the rustle of a thousand silken petticoats at a fabulous ball. Swinging and soaring above us, borne on the evening air, we heard the chittering of wild fowl as birds in their thousands came sweeping in.

‘Oh!’ I gasped in wonder.

Duncan too was gazing skyward. ‘At my home in Knoydart,’ he said, ‘there is a similar sight worth seeing in spring and late autumn. It is a stopping place for the wild geese as they travel their migration routes.’

All about us the birds came in to land on the river banks as the sun set.

‘It is quite wonderful,’ I breathed. Fiery red rays of light were slanting through the mountains. It was as though some untutored painter had released his palette upon the sky, as if God himself had dispersed a rainbow among the snow-crowned hilltops.

Another, less well known visit to the island by Mary was arranged so that she could debate with the Protestant preacher, John Knox, on the subject of whether those of a different religious persuasion, particularly Roman Catholics, should be allowed any type of religious freedom or civil rights.

Paintings of this show a timid Mary cowering away from Knox, whereas accounts from the time say that she gave him sound and strong arguments for religious tolerance. They can’t have parted on such bad terms for immediately afterwards Mary sought his advice on the marital problems of her illegitimate half-sister, Jean, and asked him to try to effect peace between her and her estranged husband.

But for the many tourists who visit the island it’s Queen Mary’s daring escape after almost a year of imprisonment that attracts them. What adds to the romance of the situation is that although the rebel Lord of the Castle was her willing jailor, some of the other males in the extensive Douglas family were won over to Mary’s cause and (as they saw it) the plight of a beautiful woman being treated unjustly. The most notable sympathiser was the young lad, Willie Douglas. On a pre-arranged evening Willie, while serving his uncle his dinner, dropped a napkin onto the castle keys which lay discarded on a table. When leaving the room the boy took away the serving dishes, and also the keys concealed inside the napkin. Beckoning to the Queen who was awaiting his signal at her window in the round tower he hurried across the courtyard and unlocked the main gate. Mary crouched in the bottom of the one boat Willie had left unchained and he rowed her across the loch to where the rest of her rescue party waited with horses.

When I visited the castle I had with me a young woman, scarcely out of her teens. As we left the castle jetty I thought of Mary, not much older than this girl, separated from her baby boy, recently miscarried of twins, making the same journey, shivering and in terror of life. I shivered too as the reality of historical events came sweeping over me like the shadow of the geese passing overhead.  

 

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Twitter: @theresabreslin1 

Spy for the Queen of Scots is nominated for the Carnegie Medal and an Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales  illustrated by Kate Leiper is nominated for the Greenaway Medal.

In conjunction with the Citizens Theatre and South Lanarkshire schools the Divided City musical will be produced at Hamilton Town House Theatre in February 2013 and in the Millennium Theatre in the City of Derry-Londonderry in March 2013