Gossip from the table of Thomas à Becket - by Katherine Langrish

Witty, urbane Walter Map was a clerk, courtier and man of letters at the court of King Henry II.  He was eventually made arch-deacon of Oxford, and died some time between 1208 and 1210.  During his lifetime he wrote many books - he's even reported to have had some share of authorship in the Arthurian romances - but the only one which has survived is De Nugis Curialium (Of Courtly Trifles), a brilliant mixture of memoir, gossip, stories and opinions – and one of the liveliest accounts of that lively era.

Walter Map himself describes De Nugis Curialium – with mock-deprecation – as ‘A whole forest and timber yard, I will not say of stories, but of jottings… I am but your huntsman, I bring you the game, it is for you to make dainty dishes out of it.’

Map is our source for the story of Wild Edric, for the story of King Herla, and for other wild and magical tales from the Welsh borders (I used him extensively in research for my 12th century historical fantasy Dark Angels), but he is also a brilliant raconteur with a pen dipped in acid and a happy way of letting all his prejudices rip.  He satirises the court.  He dislikes the Knights Templar.  He disapproves of the Cistercians and pokes fun at the over-the-top names of their abbeys:

Thus they ... spread into many establishments; and the names of these always contain some spice of the divine, as Godscot, Godsdale, Port Salvation, Scale-heaven, Wondervale, Lantern, Brightvale (Clairvaux).  From this last rose Bernard [St Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux] and began to shine among, or rather above, the rest, like Lucifer among the stars of night. A man of ready eloquence he was, and used to have carts driven round through the towns and castles, in which to carry off his converts to the cloister.  …And as for the miracles which were done by his means, why, they were written by Geoffrey of Auxerre: believe ye him.

How he jabs in the knife! - comparing Bernard to the bright evening star but also of course to Satan, whose pride Bernard rivals - revelling in the absurd hubris of 'carts full of converts' - and then that sly, dry comment at the end. 

Walter Map even treats us to his opinions on the practicality of underpants - sensible garments which all monks ought to wear, especially in strong winds.  He illustrates this with a story in which of course a 'white monk' - a Cistercian - is the comic victim:

The lord king, Henry the Second,  of late was riding as usual at the head of all the great concourse of his knights and clerks, and talking with Dom Remic, a distinguished monk and an honourable man.  There was a high wind, and lo! a white monk was making his way on foot along the street and looked round, and made haste to get out of the way.  He dashed his foot against a stone and was not being borne up by angels at the moment, and fell in front of the feet of the king's horse, and the wind blew his habit right over his neck, so that he was entirely exposed to the unwilling eyes of the lord king and Reric...

Our view of the Middle Ages is - inevitably - telescoped, simplified, partial.  We are unaware, or forgetful of, the politics and rivalries which divided what can seem, at this distance, a monolithic structure: the Mediaeval English Church. The lucky survival of Walter Map's 'Courtly Trifles' preserves at least some detail of the very modern bitchery that was in fact going on.  And here is Map, at the dinner table of  Archbishop Thomas à Becket, letting us in on a conversation in which some famous names are being dropped. 

I was once present at the table of the Blessed Thomas, then archbishop of Canterbury; next to him were sitting two white abbots who were telling of many wonders done by that man, I mean Bernard  – the occasion being that a letter of Bernard’s was being read about the condemnation of Master Peter Abelard, the Prince of the Nominalists, who went further astray in dialectic, by the way, than he did in theology.  The latter was the study of his heart; in the other he laboured against the grain…

Well, a letter was being read of Dom Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, to Pope Eugenius, who had been a monk of his – and no second monk of that Order has followed him in that see. In that letter it was said that Master Peter was as proud as Goliath, and Arnold of Brescia [a disciple of Abelard and preacher of apostolic poverty, executed 1155] was his standard bearer, with much more to the same vicious effect.  The two abbots seized the occasion to praise Bernard, and extolled him to the stars.

So John Planeta [one of Thomas à Becket's clerks], hearing what vexed and pained him, remarked, “I saw a miracle at Montpellier which made many men marvel.”

He was asked to relate it, and said he:  “That great man whom you so justly extol had a demoniac, bound, brought to him at Montpellier to be healed, and seated as he was on a great she-ass, he commanded the unclean spirit – the assembled crowd keeping silence – and finally said, “Loose the man and let him go.” But the madman, on feeling himself freed, began to throw stones at the abbot as hard as he could, chased him through the streets, and even when the people caught him, still kept his eyes on Bernard, though his hands were held.”

The archbishop was not pleased with the tale, and said threateningly to John, “These are your miracles, are they?”

“Well,” said John, “those who were present said it was a very memorable miracle, because the madman was kind and generous to every one, and only vicious to humbugs, and it still seems to me that it was a judgement on presumptuousness.” 

Is it just me, or can you too still hear the table erupt in unkind laughter? 

(The quotations in this post are from the translation by M.R.James, published by the Cymmrodorion Record Series, 1923)

Picture credits: 

Dining room scene from the Luttrell Psalter Wikimedia Commons http://www.silkewerk.com/wire2.htm

Clip from 'Janvier' from Les Tres Riche Heures du Duc de Berry

Snippets! by Katherine Langrish

I know we’ve all got plenty of these. All historical novelists must have. Fantastic snippets of material we’d LOVE to fit in to the book, anecdotes and incidents far too good not to use, but for which there turns out to be simply no room. But they often still provide invaluable insights into everyday life and attitudes.

Here are some of mine.

Gerald of Wales: Journey Through Wales, copyright British Library

Gerald of Wales, writing in about 1191 in his Description of Wales about hospitality in Welsh homes: he’d travelled through Wales with Archbishop Baldwin to raise support for the Third Crusade, and this account has all the immediacy of personal experience:

"In a Welsh house there are no tables, no tablecloths and no napkins. [Note how this means Gerald expected these items in an Anglo-Norman establishment.] Everyone behaves quite naturally, with no attempt at etiquette. You sit down in threes, not in pairs as elsewhere, and they put the food in front of you all together, on a single large trencher containing enough for three, resting on rushes and grass.

"Alongside one of the walls is placed a communal bed stuffed with rushes (and not all that many of them.) For sole covering there is a stiff harsh sheet, made locally and called in Welsh a brychan. They all go to bed together. They keep on the same clothes they have worn during the day, a thin cloak and tunic, which is all they have to keep the cold out. A fire is kept burning all night at their feet… and they get some warmth from the people sleeping next to them. When their underneath side begins to ache through the hardness of the bed and their uppermost side is frozen stiff with cold, they get up and sit by the fire, which soon warms them up and soothes away their aches and pains. Then they go back to bed again, turning over on their other side if they feel like it, so that a different part is frozen and another side bruised by the hard bed."

A page from the Peterborough Chronicle

Or this, from the Peterborough Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1095:

"In this year Easter was on 25 March, and then after Easter on the eve of St Ambrose’s day, which is 4th April, there were seen nearly all over this country nearly all night very many stars falling from the sky, not by ones or twos but so thickly that nobody could count them."

Or this, the opening of urbane clerk and courtier Walter Map’s description of the court of Henry II some time in the 1170’s:

A COMPARISON OF THE COURT WITH THE INFERNAL REGIONS:

" 'In time I exist and of time I speak,' says Augustine: and add, 'What time is, I know not.' In a like spirit of perplexity I may say that in the Court I exist and of the Court I speak, and what the Court is, God knows, I know not. I do know however that the Court is not Time: temporal indeed it is, changeable and various, stationary and wandering, never continuing in one stay. When I leave it, I know it perfectly: when I come back to I find nothing or but little of what I left there: I am become a stranger to it, and it to me.

"…Hell, it is said, is a penal place, and if I may presume so far I would rashly say that the Court is, not Hell, but a place of punishment. What torment has Hell which is not present here in an aggravated form? Have you read how Tantalus down there catches at streams which shun his lips? Here you may see many a one thirsting for goods of others which he fails to get…"

Later in his book the same Walter Map expresses an eloquent criticism of the Crusades and the crusading order of Knights Templar. We’re all so used to being told that medieval Christendom unanimously approved of the crusades, that to modern ears this may be quite surprising:

"Kings and princes came to think that the object of the Order was good and its way of life honourable, and by the help of popes and patriarchs, honoured them as the defenders of Christendom and loaded them with immense wealth. Now they do what they will and attain whatever they aim at. Nowhere save at Jerusalem are they in poverty; there they take the sword to protect Christendom, which Peter was forbidden to take to defend Christ. There Peter was taught to ensue peace by patience: who taught these to overcome force by violence I know not. They take the sword and perish by the sword. But, say they, all laws and all codes permit the repelling of force by force. Yet He renounced that law Who, when Peter struck a blow, would not call out the legions of angels. It does seem as though these had not chosen the better part…"

In this case I found a way to use Walter Map’s words: not directly, but as evidence that it was actually possible for a medieval man to question the attempt to ‘rescue’ the Holy Land by force. In my book ‘Dark Angels’ set in the early 1190’s, the eager young hero Wolf asks an old soldier, Rollo, to tell him about the siege of Acre.

The joviality died out of Rollo’s face. “Nothing to tell,” he mumbled. “The Saracens opened the gates and came out to surrender: two and half thousand of ‘em, maybe closer to four thousand with the women and children. Two bitter, bloody years they’d held out, and they came out in good order and gave themselves up.”


Wolf felt cheated. He’d wanted tales of gallantry and chivalry. “But there must have been some fighting,” he persisted.


“You want blood?” Rollo twisted round suddenly. “I’ll give you blood. Ask me what we did to the prisoners. Go on, ask! …We butchered them. Every single one of ‘em, men, women and children. The king ordered it and we did it.


“… Killing in battle’s one thing. Slaughtering prisoners - it can’t be right now, can it? In your heart of hearts you know it’s wrong. It would be a relief if someone said so. Seems to me I might have done something bad. Seems to me God might not want people climbing up to Heaven on a pile of corpses. But there’s the pope and the bishops and Holy Church all a-patting me on the back. What if they’re wrong? What if I’m going to Hell instead? What’s - I mean, what’s a man to think?” 




Gerald of Wales, The Description of Wales, trs Lewis Thorpe, Penguin
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, English Historical Documents 1042-1189, ed. David C Douglas, Eyre Methuen
Walter Map's De Nugis Curialum (Of Courtly Trifles) trs M R James, Cymmrodorion Records, 1923