Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (26 page)

Emelye in
The Knight’s Tale
is similarly captive within a garden, and its walls serve as a prison cell. She expresses the wish to follow the goddess Diana, to run freely through the woods, to hunt and remain chaste forever, but she is not given the choice to do so. Hotly pursued by Palamon and Arcite who fight in mortal combat for her hand, Emelye is instead given as a prize in the male game of war.

Throughout
The Canterbury Tales,
the garden becomes a place of imprisonment; the lovely grounds in
The Franklin’s Tale
and
The Shipman’s Tale
become places of sexual transaction and solicitation. In
The Merchant’s Tale
the garden becomes a place of sexual violence and adultery. Also
The Parlement of Foules
revisits this idea of feminine entrapment and the question is: why does Chaucer pick the garden, a place of peace and beauty, as the scene for feminine suffering?

In every way the woman and the literary garden are parallel; they are both fertile, they are both fragrant and decorative, and they are both controlled by a male gardener. Left to their own devices, they will go wild. In both art and literature, the garden wall sometimes encompasses an area so vast that the garden is more like a park. This is a metaphor for the wider boundaries placed upon medieval women, even those that seem to have escaped male rule.

Eve, the first female transgressor, was sent from the safe walls of Eden on a journey that was to lead her female children to other gardens. The Virgin Mary, made perfect by the idealisation of man, is painted within her wattle walled garden, a perfect flower of femininity, the fertile, unflawed mother of the perfect child. Wherever we look in medieval art we find women and gardens, walled gardens that secure and encumber the feminine tendency to stray from the path of moral rectitude.

Women must remain in the garden and those few that do escape into the world, perhaps to go on pilgrimage like the Wife of Bath, the Prioress, and the second nun, can only do so because they have managed to escape from the bounds of matrimony.

Even these empowered women, the female pilgrims, are subject to limitations upon their freedom. The nuns are answerable to the male authority of the church, and the lusty, unrepentant Wife of Bath must, unless she wishes to lose her independence by remarrying, remain chaste.

A medieval woman was monitored for signs of wildness just as a garden was, and this provided Chaucer with the perfect allegory. A garden, cultivated like May and Emelye, is a controlled environment where the gardener maintains constant vigilance in case his flourishing flower beds should run rampant and wild seeds take hold.

There is a wonderful example of a medieval garden at Tretower in Powys, and it is well worth a visit.

A Seer, a Prophet, or a Witch?

by Sandra Byrd

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams....

–Acts 2:17 (KJV)

F
ive women in the Bible are expressly stated as possessing the title of prophetess: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noahdiah, and Isaiah’s wife. Philip is mentioned in Acts as having four daughters who prophesied, which brings the number of known Biblical prophetesses to nine. There is no reason to believe that there weren’t thousands more, undocumented throughout history, then and now. According to religious tradition, women have often been powerful seers, and that is why I’ve included them in my novel
The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr
.

Hundreds of years before the renaissance, which would bring about improved education for women, Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) wrote medicinal texts and composed music. She also oversaw the illumination of many manuscripts and wrote lengthy theological treatises. But what she is best known for, and was beatified for, were her visions.

Hildegard said that she first saw “The Shade of the Living Light” at the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. In her forties she was instructed by God to write them down. She said:

I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition.... I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’

Spiritual gifting is not given for the edification of the person receiving it, but for the church at large. Hildegard wrote three volumes of her mystical visions, and then biblically exegeted them herself. Her theology was not, as one might expect, shunned by the church establishment of the time, but instead Pope Eugenius III gave her work his approval and she was published in Paris in 1513.

Several centuries later, Julian of Norwich continued Hildegard’s tradition as a seer, a mystic, and a writer. In her early thirties, Julian had a series of visions which she claimed came from Jesus Christ. In them, she felt His deep love and had a desire to transmit that He desired to be known as a God of joy and compassion and not duty and judgment. Her book,
Revelations of Divine Love
, is said to be the first book written in the English language by a woman. She was well known as a mystic and a spiritual director by both men and women. The message of love and joy that she delivered is still celebrated today; she has feast days in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions.

It had been for good cause that Hildegard and Julian kept their visions to themselves for a time. Visions were not widely accepted by society as a whole, and women in particular were often accused of witchcraft.

This risk was perhaps an even stronger danger in sixteenth and seventeenth century England when “witch hunts” were common. While there is no doubt that there was a real practice of witchcraft occurring in some places, the fear of it whipped up suspicion where no actual witchcraft was found. Henry VIII, after imprisoning Anne Boleyn, proclaimed to his illegitimate son, among others, that they were all lucky to have escaped Anne’s witchcraft. The evidence? So obviously bewitching him away from his “good” judgment.

In that century, the smallest sign, imagined or not, could be used to indict a “witch”. A gift handling herbs? Witchcraft. An unrestrained tongue? Witchcraft. Floating rather than sinking when placed in a body of water when accused of witchcraft and therefore tested? Guilty for sure. Women with “suspicious” spiritual gifts, including dreams and visions, had to be particularly careful. And yet they, like Hildegard and Julian before them, had been given just such a gift to share with others. And share they must.

One woman in the court of Queen Kateryn Parr is strongly believed to have had a gift of prophecy. Her name was Anne Calthorpe, the Countess of Sussex. One source possibly hinting at such a gift can be found at
Kathy Emerson’s terrific webpage of Tudor women
: Emerson says that Calthorpe,

was at court when Katherine Parr was queen and shared her evangelical beliefs. Along with other ladies at court, she was implicated in the heresy of Anne Askew. In 1549 she was examined by a commission ‘for errors in scripture’ and that ‘the Privy Council imprisoned two men, Hartlepoole and Clarke, for lewd prophesies and other slanderous matters’ touching the king and the council. Hartlepoole’s wife and the countess of Sussex were jailed as ‘a lesson to beware of sorcery.’

According to religious tradition women have often had very active prophetic gifts; we are mystical, engaging, and intuitive. I admire our sisters throughout history who actively, risk-takingly, used their intellectual and spiritual gifts with whatever power they had at hand.

Money Lending in the Middle Ages, or You Think Your Visa Card’s Rates
Are Bad?

by Katherine Ashe

“His lord answered and said unto him, ‘Thou wicked, slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.’”

–Matthew 25:26-27

T
hat is the Parable of the Talents, Jesus’ teaching regarding money lending. Granted, he was using this story as a parallel of what he expected of his followers in terms of making things of the spirit known and not hiding them. But he hardly would have used the example of usury if he opposed it—though he didn’t think it a proper activity in the Temple itself, obviously.

There is an impression abroad that money lending was forbidden to Christians during medieval times. It certainly was not. In fact, the principal bankers to the lordly class were the knightly Orders, the Hospitallers and the Templars, and the Church itself was not above acting as collection agent for even the worst of usurers.

Regarding the knightly Orders, this business of theirs came about naturally in the course of their leadership in crusades to the Holy Land. A lord, leaving home for a venture to the Middle East that would last several years in all likelihood, needed to be able to draw funds in Palestine. Secured by his rents back home, he took a loan, payable at the Templars’ or the Hospitallers’ headquarters at Acre.

The loan entailed interest, for the knightly bankers took risks: would or could the properties entailed actually be able to repay the debt? Like any anxious banker, the knights charged what interest the business could support, sometimes 20% to 30% per annum.

The lord, upon signing for the loan before leaving home, received a written receipt cashable for silver or gold coin at Acre. This was not the beginning of notations of debt standing in the place of actual money. For that one must look back to ancient Egypt and temple credits and debits for the faithfuls’ contributions to Ra, or taxes owed and paid to pharaoh. (See David Graeber’s
Debt: The First 5000 Years
for an intriguing summary of the subject by an instigator of “Shut Down Wall Street.”)

Apart from the Templars and Hospitallers, one could, in the 13th century, take a loan from the bankers in the French city of Cahors. Let’s have a look at one such debt.

In the year 1232, Ranulf, the Earl of Chester, died, leaving a note for a debt of 200 marks, owed him by his young cousin Simon de Montfort. The note went as payment of a debt Ranulf owed to Piers Mauclerc, the Count of Brittany, and Piers sold the debt for quick cash to a money lender of Cahors—though the interest rate with this banker was 60% per annum.

The Cahorsine banker did nothing to inform Montfort of his receipt of the debt and application of the 60% interest rate to it, but let it accumulate that monstrous interest for five years, at which point the debt amounted to 2,080 marks. Even then he did nothing to collect but instead, at considerable profit to himself, sold the interest-heavy debt to the Bishop of Soisson—and left him to collect the full amount.

The Bishop wrote to Montfort, informing him of the debt and demanding payment of 2,080 marks. Montfort, under the impression that this interest rate was ludicrous—and that Ranulf had lent him money interest free in the first place (he had already repaid most of what his cousin had lent)—refused to pay anything more than the originally owed 200 marks. At which the Bishop of Soisson excommunicated this debtor.

An excommunicated person was cast out of the company of fellow Christians and bound over to hell. Now that is debt-collection clout.

The antidote was to go on crusade, which Montfort did. And that not only lifted excommunications but cleared all debts as well.

That Jews did survive, and even prospered, under such living and working conditions as these in England during the Middle Ages is cause for awe, and deep respect for their business capabilities.

Sources

Ashe, Katherine.
Montfort the Early Years
1229 to 1243.
Wake Robin Press, 2010 (p. 120 and note, p. 307).

Bemont, C.
Simon de Montfort
. Translated by E. F. Jacob. 1930, (p. 60).

Calendar of Patent Rolls
, 1232-47 (p. 185).

Shirely.
Royal Letters
, Vol. II (p.16).

King Lear’s Town: A Little History of the City of Leicester

by Katherine Ashe

I
n
the so-called “dark” and “middle” ages, Leicester was not a happy place.

In 1173, by order of King Henry II, the city was besieged, razed, and depopulated as punishment for the support its earl, Robert “White-Hands,” had given Queen Eleanor (of Aquitaine) and her son, Richard the Lionheart. On Richard’s ascension to the throne, the Earl of Leicester was forgiven and rebuilt his hall. But the town recovered very slowly and sporadically, being still sparsely populated within its walls as late as 1722.

The situation was so bad that White Hands forgave any taxes the townspeople owed him. Of course, it was his fault they had suffered at all, so renouncing his taxes was the least he could do.

But Leicester had a prominent past. In the early Christian era, Leicester had been a major Roman town at the crossing of two of the most important of the Roman legions’ roads in Britain. Fine mosaic floors in costly Roman villas have been excavated near the city. Endearing objects may be seen in Leicester’s museum, such as a bowl inscribed from a centurion to his lady love.

Massive stone arches, perhaps a part of the Roman baths, still stand.

In the Middle Ages, those thick walls with their gaps served as the Jewish district, with shacks built against the walls, using the gaps as part of the shelter. Jews were not permitted to own land. But since no one owned the ancient stretch of wall and arches, the Jews remained there undisturbed—at least until the shameful incident of Simon de Montfort’s youth, when he evicted them from the city.

Montfort had no title, and no knights or henchmen at the time, so he probably didn’t accomplish that eviction single-handed. It’s most likely the people of Leicester joined in the rout, thus cancelling their debts to the Jews who were chiefly money-lenders. Similar attacks against Jews in London and elsewhere occurred and seem to have been motivated by a desire to not pay back loans, rather than for any religious reasons. Being a Jew in England in the 13th century was hazardous.

It may not be coincidence that when young Simon drove out the Jews of Leicester, his mentor, Fr. Robert Grosseteste, had just founded a refuge for homeless Jews, in London—later the site of the Public Record Office. However, the Jews Simon drove from the old Roman wall probably knew that the local priest (Dean of Lincoln Cathedral) was offering not just hospitality, but an attempt at conversion. They simply crossed the River Soar to Simon’s great-aunt’s house, where they found sympathetic shelter.