saint sebastian

Definitely the saint portrayed as the thirstiest, this captain of the Praetorian guard that prudently, sensibly hid his Christianity from Diocletian is venerated on this day in the Orthodox Church on the occasion of his martyrdom in 288, born around 256. Once his faith was revealed, the emperor (previously) ordered him lashed to a tree and shot with arrows. The firing squad departed, leaving Sebastian for dead, but he was able to miraculously recover—with the help of Saint Irene, widow of one of his previously martyred companions. Later Sebastian ambushed and berated Diocletian for his sinful ways and petitioned for better treatment for the Christian community. 

The emperor was first taken aback by such open and direct criticisms, especially from one who was supposed to be dead but soon regained his composure and ordered the saint to be cudgelled to death—probably not as pretty of a picture. Patron of the persecuted, archers and athletes, this Apollonian figure is also the protector of the plague stricken, due to a conflation with Hermes during medieval times, whom was said to deal diseased arrows from on high, and possibly because of his initial recovery which granted him a second martyrdom (called a sagittation and a fairly common theme) and that the wounds resembled the pox and buboes, whose appearance was alarming but not always a sign of certain death.

adelheid von burgund

Venerated on this day, on the occasion of her death in 999 (*931), the feast of Saint Adelaide (Adélaïde, see more on her namesakes) celebrates her involvement with palace intrigues and the complicated power struggle for Lombardy and Burgundy. A strategic first marriage saw Adelaide wed to Lothar II of Italy, producing a daughter, Emma who went on to become queen of Western France. Quite the soap opera to follow, Lothar was poisoned in 950 by rival for the throne Berengar II while visiting Turin.

Widowed Adelaide intended to rule in her murdered husband’s stead and her subjects seemed amenable to that arrangement but Berengar wanted to assert his legitimacy by arranging Adelaide’s marriage morganatic marriage to his son Aldabert. Adelaide wasn’t having this as it would mean forfeiting her territorial-holdings and so fled to Como to seek refuge in her stronghold there. Captured and imprisoned in Garda, a priest helped her escape to Canossa and sought sanctuary with Otto I, King of East Francia. The two eventually married and having secured dominion over a large swath of land with his wife’s contribution and a decisive victory against Hungarian incursions at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, extending his control all the way to the Elbe and thus established the Ottonian dynasty of The Holy and Roman Empire of the Germans, crowned emperor and empress (a significant break with tradition in acknowledgement of Adelaide’s standing and respect) by the pope in 962. After her husband died, Adelaide was regent to two generations of Ottos to follow, and once her grandson was able to rule in his own right, she devoted herself to acts of charity, founding and restoring religious communities. Their daughter Matilda was also a regent and first princess-abbess of Quedlinburg, the convent founded by her grandmother, also called Matilda, in 936. Because of her long, colourful court life, Adelaide is designated, among other things, patron and protector of in-laws, exiles, empresses and step-parents.

bring a pitchfork and a torch

Our thanks to Cory Doctorow for directing our attention to more bardcore musical stylings with this delightful Old English tribute to a safe-for-work Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B with Well-Armed Peasants, including some deserved swipes and disses at the shortcomings of the massively overrated Magna Carta and the necessity of revolt and revolution.  Much more to explore at Pluralistic at the link above, including some choice lyrics.

évêque de reims

Credited with prophesizing the invasion and saving a significant number of the city’s citizens—depending on one’s sources of either the Vandals in 407 or the Huns fifty years later—Bishop Nicasius (Nicaise) who established the first cathedral of Rheims lured the marauders to the church as the main repository of plunder, affording more people the chance to escape is venerated on this day. Along with some faithful companions, Nicasius was beheaded at the altar, his matyrdom grouping him with the cephalophores—head-bearers, praying as the ax came for him, reportedly from Psalm 119, finishing the verse after being decapitated and frightening the attackers into temporary retreat. Having earlier in his career, survived a bout of smallpox and attributing his recovery to piety and prayer, the Church made him patron and protector of the disease.

gummarus of lier

Cousin to Pepin the Short, Carolingian king of the Franks, and entrusted with responsibility over several offices of the royal court, the saint hailing from a town outside of Antwerp is venerated on this day, on the occasion of his peaceful death in 774 (*717).

Regrettably Pepin had arranged the marriage of Gummarus to a noble woman called Guinmarie, whose relationship was not the happiest and to make amends, Pepin allowed Gummarus to accompany the king and his retinue on several military campaigns. Looking forward to a quiet retirement, Gummarus built a hermitage in the woods at Nivesdunc, now consecrated as a chapel to Saint Peter with the city having grown around the site. Beatified after a number of miracles were attributed to his intercession, Gummarus was given the patronage over difficult marriages, courtiers, separated couples, lumberjacks and invoked against bone fractures (having been associated with miraculous mending a damaged tree) and with no explanation—glove makers (gantiers) and hernia sufferers.

aberdeen bestiary

Reminiscent of this project that examined how Western medieval scholars depicted the exotic elephant without a frame of reference, we rather enjoyed this growing dialogue, via Super Punch, of heroically bad portrayals of animals, started out by Danny Dutch presenting The Oyster.  This round guy looks more like a birb to us.  Scrolling through, we especially liked the owl, bees and bat with human features.

zwiebelzopf

Visiting a small harvest festival nearby held on Germany Unity Day, H and I looked for some autumn accents for the house and found several stalls selling traditional onion braids (Zwiebelzöpfe). 

Sometimes also incorporating garlic bulbs, the braids adorned craftily with dried wild flowers were not customarily only for decorative and storage, preservative purposes but moreover for the notion that the power of the talisman would stave off illness and harm from hearth and home. Right now we can all use all the help we can muster. Singly, onions were worn as amulets in medieval times to ward off the plague, and a New Year’s Eve custom (divination from onions is called cromniomancy—see also) in various regions, especially in the Erzgebirge, called for the dicing of an onion into twelve sections and sprinkling each bowl with salt to forecast the precipitation for each month of the year to come as the moisture drawn out of each section by the next morning would predict that month’s rainfall.

umbra viventis lucis

Venerated on this day, the occasion of her death in 1179 (*1098), as one of the most accomplished and prolific scholars of the Middle Ages, Hildegard von Bingen (see also, the saint and song-writer also being one of the most recorded artists in modern times), recognised for her mysticism, scientific curiosity, leadership and musical virtuosity as a Doctor of the Church.

In addition to her numerous treaties on theology, history and botany, Hildegard also invented a constructed, auxiliary language (previously) called Lingua Ignota—that is, the unknown language written in twenty-three stylised glyphs (see also) and translated mostly by the large lexical volume of her notes and the occasional Latin or German parallel gloss.
Albeit much of this interpretation is a matter of conjecture, it further was unclear if anyone else could read her writings and whether she intended the script to be a universal and ideal one or a secret, holy language.

the lesser apocalypse

Referred to as the above with the conviction it was punishment from God alternatively for the Ottomans’ perceived inhospitality toward the Eastern Christians or for the Turks tolerating them, a powerful earthquake, with its epicentre in the Sea of Marmara, and resulting tsunami devastated Constantinople on this day in 1509. Damage and death estimates vary widely but probably took ten thousand lives and destroyed homes and infrastructure, and reportedly Hagia Sophia (previously) withstood the quake virtually unscathed, only the plaster that had been used to cover the Byzantine mosaics was shaken off the walls, revealing the Christian imagery beneath. The month and a half of aftershocks that followed did not cause significant damage but delayed recovery efforts and rebuilding.

buchette del vino

In response to this new pestilence, some wineries and restaurants in the Tuscan region have unplugged extant architectural features called wine windows (see previously) installed during times of the plague to dispense their fare in a safer manner. Also used for the sake of convenience, the small, anonymous portals were a way for kitchens to be charitable with surplus food and drink without the individual seeking alms necessarily needing to reveal themselves to their benefactor.

sunday drive: grabfeld

The fertile region in the southern expanse of the Rhön mountains, referred to eponymously as dig- or ditch-field is so named according to local lore that a queen once lost a beloved ring here and ordered the entire land dug up (tilled) until it was found.
In gratitude for its recovery, she founded an estate that would eventually become Königshofen, one of the major market towns dating back to the eighth century.
We took a little tour of the neighbouring counties and first made our way to Bibra, a small settlement focused and informed by the dynasty of imperial knights that governed the duchy since the tenth century and constructed this castle at the town’s centre.
Retaining its original style as a Franconian royal court, Burg Bibra was destroyed during the Peasants’ Revolt and rebuild in the seventeen century true to form—its most recent faithful refurbishment earning a prize in 2002 amongst castle conservators and is presently used as a seminar centre with accommodations for guests.
The patronage of three important prince-electors in the family brought Bibra the church of Saint Leo (dedicated to the early pontiff, Leo the Great), decorated with the altar and sculpture from the school of Tilman Riemenschneider (previously) and is one of the finest examples of late Gothic architecture.

On the way to our next destination, we came across an open-air museum preserved in the former expansive border-zone, demilitarised for decades but with displays of the layers of fortifications and the intervening mine field to imagine.
As with the rest of this strip of terra nullis, it is now a nature preserve and a paradisiacal place for butterflies.

A few detours brought us to the community of Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke to see the gigantic Baroque palace Sternberg, the ancestral seat of a branch of the line of our old friends Count Poppo and the Hennebergs.
We marvelled at it from a distance and it was when we got a little closer, navigating the village directly behind the huge structure that we realised that we had in fact visited once before in May of 2012, noting the calendric symmetry of this construction finalised in 1669 with its four onion-domed turrets representing the seasons, twelve hearths standing for the months of the year, an astonishing and exact fifty-two doors for every week and three hundred sixty-five windows.  I wonder what the story behind that decorating statement was?
The palace is privately owned still and bears some resemblance to the palace of Aschaffenburg, Schloss Johannisburg—the residence of the archbishop of Mainz.
There were koi in the fountain and the watering trough and the Marian figure of one of the rows of homes that were at the rear of the castle was particularly striking for her iconic halo of stars.
Our final stop was a bit more secluded, though in the same community, Sulzdorf an der Lederhecke, as the last and also in private hands and occupied though by descendants of the former von Bibras. This well preserved palace on the water—Wasserschloss—is called Burg Brennhausen and guards the frontier between Grabfeld and the Haßbergen. The current baron is, according to the information board, a petroleum tycoon with a business in the US and divides his time between the palace and a home in Pasadena.

bailey and bergfried

Though this castle built on a rocky spur (Spornburg) dominating an adjacent valley of the Moselle, a tributary called the Ehrbach, that we visited on the way home had the feeling of an empty playground for adults the Ehrenburg was quite unexpectedly spectacular and has a rich, well connected history dating back to at least the twelfth century.
In part conserved through all the tumult by its first documented mention in a deed by Barbarossa referred to as a slighting (Schleifung), that is the intentional damage to a high profile property to reduce its strategic value—
probably not making the castle worth the taking as it would have been a liability to defend. In this milieu, the castle, a baronet, was involved with territorial feuds among the knightly gentry and the Church for control of trade and taxes, forming an alliance against Trier and Luxembourg with Eltz and other occupied castles in the area, finally surrendering claim on the castle with the extinction of the family line after a conflict with the Koblenz erupted and brought in those new disruptive inventions of gunpowder and the canon in the fifteenth century, making Ehrenburg less tenable.In normal times, the venue outside of the town of Brodenbach is host to many cultural events and medieval re-enactments.

itineris mosellæ or pilgrims in an unholy land

With trade and occupation lasting the duration of the late Empire, Roman culture left its imprint on the region including excavations of ancient wineries, the foundations of workshops and the remnants of defensive and civil engineering, a network of roads still trod to this day and the occasional tomb, like this pair of Römergräber perched above the vineyards of the village of Nehren (Villa Nogeria, a stylised version of the reconstructed graves are community’s coat of arms).
Prior to know- ing what the struc- tures were, the “heathen mounds” (see also here and here) were used as shelter from the elements for growers tending the grapes and memorials such as were often erected along trafficked areas so the departed would be remembered and carried with the living.
Afterwards, we returned to the city of Mayen and took in the spectacle of Schloss Bürresheim—another one of the few intact structures of this area and if it seems familiar, due to its well-preserved status it has made several cameo appearances in film, including the exterior, establishing shots of the fictional Schloss Brunwald where Doctor Jones and son are held captive in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Also a house divided and on the border between different land holdings, Bürresheim, taking its present appearance in the fifteenth century, was probably again preserved by dint of its joint ownership

kilian and his companions colmán and totnan

Martyred on this day according to tradition along with two of his associates for reproaching the Count, Hedan II of Thüringen, that his marriage to his brother’s widow was against Church doctrine and therefore would not be considered legitimate—angering the bride-to-be Geliana to the point where, in Hedan’s absence, she summoned this meddlesome priest, called
Apostle to the Franconians having sojourned from his native Ireland, and company to the market square of the city of Würzburg (see previously here, here, here and here) in 689. Three years prior, Kilian travelled from County Kerry to Rome to receive missionary instructions from Pope Conon, who dispatched his troupe to East Francia to convert Duke Gozbert and his subjects, whom still practised pagan rituals.

tituli

Friend of the Blog par excellence, Nag on the Lake, refers us to nice little application that allows one to remix the characters and style of the Bayeux Tapestry (see also) for retelling a modern saga with this clever historic construction kit. See more on the original embroidery and the tale it conveys at the source link above and share with us your stitched together yarns.

privilegium clericale

Vis-à-vis our last article touching on religious invocation and the law, we are directed to an engrossing dissection of the legal question whence cometh the benefit of clergy, dating back to the jurisprudence of the Middle Ages when those outlaws affiliated (apparently the degree of tenuousness was a question) with the Church were outside of the secular jurisdiction of the king and were eligible to stand trial in ecclesiastical courts and could expect a more lenient sentence.
This carve-out (a similar, parallel system applied to universities) proved particularly vexing for Henry II and his former friend and trusted advisor Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who put up resistance to the notion that those whom the king characterised as “criminous clerks” should be made to stand trial in civil court. Backlash from Becket’s assassination caused Henry to reverse his stance and extending this benefit to anyone professing Holy Orders, no matter how minor—a precedent lasting until reforms of the late 1820s through in the meantime some capital crimes were deemed “unclergyable” offenses, leading to the misapprehension of the phrase as meaning without absolution administered by a priest. In order to establish some threshold, the courts established a litmus test, requiring defendants to appear before the court tonsured or in some sort of recognised ecclesiastical dress—later to be replaced by a literacy test by reading from a Latin Bible. As the Benefit of the Clergy further devolved into the realm of a legal fiction, the loophole broadened to include claiming affiliation through recitation of a Bible verse—the favoured one for memorisation being Psalm 51—Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam, figuratively and literally saving one’s neck since condemned to hanging was the most common judgment in secular trials. Though spared from harsher sentences, the ability of the justice system to mete out punishment—even of a more commiserate nature, was severely eroded and new coping methods to maintain order beginning in the sixteenth century included banishment to North America and Australia.

townies

On the day in 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt that spread throughout Europe caused by levying higher taxed on a population significantly diminished by the Black Death yet having little leverage for higher wages over the scarcity of labourers, visited Cambridge with the mob under the leadership of the town mayor and one Margery Starre. The colleges of the University were ransacked with deeds and other legal documents destroyed as well as the library and archives set ablaze.
Starre raided the registrar‘s office and removed student ledgers and tossed them into a bonfire in Market Square, shouting what would become a rallying cry of the movement: “Away with the learning of clerks—away with it!”  Starre and her compatriots were not opposed to literacy and learning per se but rather to the system of oppression that charters and ecclesiastical jurisdiction represented, students and priestly professors alike aloof from the Cambridge‘s civil authorities. Starre—not much else is told of her story—was the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer’s character, the Wife of Bath—though expanding her conceit with the trope of the “loathly lady,” a medieval story-telling type (c.f., La Befana, Papageno’s Papagena or Princess Fiona) where a woman’s coarse nature is a curse to be broken by a hero that recognises her inner-beauty.  Starre was having none of that.

magna carta libertatum

On this day in 1215 in a meadow near Windsor, the Archbishop of Canterbury mediated a peace treaty between a contingency of rebellious barons and John, the unpopular king of England, signed and sealed with the promise of swift justice, a statutory limit on fealty to the Crown by the landed-gentry, a council for arbitration and restraining the monarch by rule of law.
As much as the document is romanticised and mythologised, neither party kept their ends of the bargain, leading to the decision to be overruled as moot and void by the pope in Rome, Innocent III, precipitating the First Barons’ War. John’s successor reissued the charter, albeit with some of its more radical provisions removed to win an uneasy peace and setting the precedent for subsequent monarchs to renew the deal at the start of their reigns until the Civil War and the execution of Charles. No correspondence is implied though certainly some would be willing to unyoke themselves from the tyranny of science—even if the disburdening of the tiresome proves ultimately uneconomic—but this anniversary greets England (again disunited, fortunately) approving the opening of non-essential retail. Most things don’t just end once we’re fatigued or told we’ve had enough and time to move on. I wish Lisa had been allowed to finish her mnemonic device—I wonder what the next verses would be.

hildegard von blingin’

More from our medieval songstress—inspired by the genuine article—and her merry minstrels, this time performing a medieval rendition of Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People. All ye bully-rooks with your buskin boots, best ye go, best ye go, faster than mine arrow!  For such a tragic and modern lament, hearing the message through these lyrics almost makes the subject seem even more immediate and accessible.  More to explore at the links above.

vox in rama

First dispatched to Emperor Friedrich II and his son King Heinrich of Germany on this day in 1233, with many other furnished courtesy-copies later, the papal decretal, A Voice in Ramah (a village in Palestine with several Biblical citations), issued by Gregory IX established an inquisition commission to combat heresy and Gnosticism (which the Church defined as devil worship), eventually precipitating the Bosnian Crusade.
The letters patent which carried the legal force of a bull, a public decree, included detailed descriptions of initiation rites and the satanic familiars enlisted to do their dark master’s bidding and increase the numbers of the congregation—specifically shape-shifting toads and black cats. Not only did the directive sew distrust among neighbours and led to violence and plunder, the zealous prejudice against felines is strongly believed to be amongst the chief driving forces of the spread of the plague throughout Europe, with no cats to keep the rodent population under control, the fleas they bore were more readily able to infect human populations.