The Holly and the Ivy: Medieval Allegory and the Natural World

The holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown,

Of all trees that are in the wood,

The holly bears the crown.

I've been leading the choir this year at King's Academy, the junior and senior high where I taught for five years before "retiring". It was a rather unexpected job offer--the teacher they had hired was involved in a very serious car accident right after school started in September. Since I already know the ropes, I offered to fill in for the position if I could find babysitting, and once the babysitting presented itself (thanks, mom!), I have been able to go in twice a week to rehearse the students for their Christmas program.

The headmistress had already picked out the theme for this year's Christmas concert. She wanted an Old English setting, with wassail and Yule logs and boar's heads with all the trimmings. It's been fun to run through the old carols--"Good King Wenceslas", "I Saw Three Ships", "Masters in This Hall," and others.

One of the songs we practiced this morning was "The Holly and the Ivy". If you Wikipedia this song, you'll read all about how the lyrics contain a blend of pagan and Christian elements. Maybe they do--or maybe it's the same thing that secularists try to say about all Christian holidays. What struck me today was how beautifully the song combines a study of the natural world with theology and poetry.

The holly bears a blossom,

As white as lily flow'r,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

To be our dear Saviour

In each of the verses, we see a characteristic of the holly plant, the observations of a budding botanist. And this then is juxtaposed with two lines about Mary giving birth to Jesus. You can't help but compare the two things.

The holly bears a berry,

As red as any blood,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

To do poor sinners good

There's an edge and a sharpness that often gets missed in nativity story retellings but shows up quite poignantly in this song. Why did Mary bear Jesus? To do poor sinners good with his blood--which happens to be as red as holly berries.

The holly bears a prickle,

As sharp as any thorn,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

On Christmas Day in the morn.

The holly bears a bark,

As bitter as the gall,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,

For to redeem us all.

The sweet Christmas Day story has a sharpness and a bitterness to it since it is the precursor to the cross. But with all the sharpness and the bitterness, it is still sweet, since it marks the day Christ came "for to redeem us all".

In a recent post on the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, I talked about the allegories in medieval bestiaries and how the medievals believed that animals had a wonderful capacity to reveal truths about this world and the world beyond it. This song is another example of the same thing--how the medievals looked at the natural world and saw it in relation to the creator. They looked at white blossoms, red berries, prickly leaves, and sour bark and saw a Christmas story waiting to be told.

Skipping Ahead to the Important Stuff: The Problem with Excerpted Sources

When researching for my novels, one temptation I face is to sample sources instead of reading them fully and to skim through them at warp speed till I find the parts that are relevant to my work. After all, who has time to read William of Malmesbury's whole Chronicle of the Kings of England when all you need is his bit about the Norman Conquest?

One important thing to remember, however, is that research isn't just about finding the facts put forward in a given source; research is about getting to know the historian. When we take the time to evaluate a primary source as a whole instead of picking through it like a flea market connoisseur, we better understand the thoughts of a person living during that time period. And surely that person (even if he only represents a segment of his society), has a better grasp on what facts, what anecdotes, what lists of information were valuable to the men of his era. Sometimes, the boring and bizarre bits that we would want to skip are actually the key to unlocking an understanding of the period.

One example of this is the convoluted Easter controversy in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. To the modern reader, this disagreement between the Celtic churches and Roman churches may seem like a molehill on the horizon of historical mountains. One might be attempted to gloss over the liturgical controversy and excerpt out the "important" bits about the politics and polity of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. But to Bede, this subject was of primary importance, and if we look at Bede as not just a scribbler of facts but also a window into his age, we learn what was important to the eighth century Britons.

Excerpts of primary sources can be excellent timesavers, but they can also be misleading. Excerpts give us the bits that the excerpter (is that a word?) thinks are important, not necessarily the bits that the author considered most essential. I'm all in favor of skipping ahead to the important stuff, but sometimes it takes a thorough reading of a work in its entirety to know what the important stuff is.

Hero or Caterpillar?--Value Judgments in History

For a historical novelist, reconciling sources can be one of the most time consuming processes of writing a novel. So often, one chronicler will say that there were 500 men in a battle while another chronicler claims that there were 10,000. Which chronicler is more trustworthy? Which story is more plausible? Can both stories be true?

Besides contradictory facts, another thing that must be reconciled is contradictory value statements. Every medieval chronicler was quick to weigh down his narrative with moral judgments on the characters and actions therein. These judgments must be assessed as assiduously as the basic facts of the narrative.

The character of Bohemond, one of the most important characters in my trilogy The Chronicles of Tancred, is a case in point.

Ralph of Caen, a Norman who came East after the First Crusade and served Bohemond in Antioch, described Bohemond thus:

There was in those days a hero of great stature.... This was Bohemond, the son of that distinguished soldier Robert surnamed Guiscard, who was a vigorous emulator of his father's daring.

This passage compares Bohemond to his father in a very complimentary manner. Bohemond is a hero and Robert Guiscard is distinguished. The words used show how favorably this historian thought of his subjects.

Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios, also wrote about Bohemond:

Bohemond resembled his father in all respects, in daring, strength, aristocratic and indomitable spirit. In short, Bohemond was the exact replica and living image of his father.... Bohemond was in fact like the acrid smoke which preceded the fire, the preliminary skirmish which comes before the great assault. Father and son you might liken to caterpillars and locusts, for what was left by Robert, his son fed on and devoured. 

Anna's account gives the same comparison as the one provided by Ralph of Caen, but the tone is very different. Bohemond is similar to his father, and this similarity is not necessarily a good thing. The similes Anna used to describe the two men (acrid smoke, caterpillars and locusts), make the reader dislike their daring and feel disgust at their indomitable spirit.

Both of these historians described Bohemond as a man similar to his father, but they each provided a different lens with which to view the men. They placed a value judgment on the given fact.

For the historical novelist, this kind of contradiction presents a whole new range of questions. Which value judgment should we accept? Is it possible to remain impartial, or must we take a side? Will we throw in our lot with the Byzantines, or raise our flag with the Normans? Was Bohemond a hero, or a caterpillar in disguise?

Bohemond's Mausoleum
in Canosa Di Puglia

Why Romance Is a Modern Phenomenon

Many people like to read the opening chapters of the Iliad as if it were a romance. Achilles falls in love with his war bride Briseis and is heartbroken when Agamemnon takes her from him. But, as my college literature professor pointed out, the text shows that Achilles is heartbroken about something else entirely. He's heartbroken because Agamemnon has made him look bad. The loss of Briseis is nothing compared to his own loss of face before his fellow Greeks.

The ancient world was obsessed with glory and the importance of being remembered by posterity. "My fame will be secure to all my sons," is the constant refrain spoken by Gilgamesh, one of the great heroes of Mesopotamia. But in our culture--where romantic love is celebrated in nearly every song, book, and movie--such a worldview is entirely alien. One has only to look at the 2004 film Troy starring Brad Pitt to see how the ideal of romantic love has been foisted on the ancient epic. Either the screenwriters were oblivious to the worldview of Homer's contemporaries or they recognized it and "fixed" it so that the story would appeal to moderns.

Katharina Von Bora
(Martin Luther's wife)

How did we get from here to there? When did romance become so important? A couple years ago I heard Rich Bledsoe give some lectures, and in one of his tangents he mentioned that the Reformation was instrumental in developing the idea of romantic love between husband and wife. Before that, marriage was seen as much more of a "business".

The Reformation put marriage at the center. I suspect that Luther’s marriage to Katie is one of the most important and central relationships in the history of the world. Beyond Luther and the Reformational emphasis on the centrality of marriage, C.S. Lewis makes the case that it was the Puritans who virtually “invented” or made normal the very idea of “companionate marriage.” Indeed, the affection and love between husband and wife in Puritan and Reformed households was quite remarkable. Jonathan Edwards' famous marriage is only one outstanding example.

Martin Luther

Bledsoe's assertion is one that I would like to explore further someday. The chivalric romances of the Middle Ages definitely placed importance on the love between a man and a woman, but most of the relationships sung by the troubadours tended to be outside marriage and adulterous in nature. The pages of nearly every novel set during the Middle Ages dwell upon the fact that marriage of that time period was generally not undertaken for the sake of love. Yet nowadays, it would be hard to find two people who married for some reason other than love.

Was it indeed the Reformation that began to normalize romantic love between husband and wife? When Martin Luther rescued his future wife from a convent in a fish barrel, was he beginning the great romance that would change the modern world forever?

Wikipedia: The Bane and Boon of Historical Research

Just like the word Google, the word Wikipedia has become a regular verb in our vocabulary. If I don't know about something, I'll go "Wikipedia" it. I'm as big a fan of Wikipedia as anyone, but I still cringe when I see a history student or a historical novelist cite Wikipedia as the source of their information.

Why is that? Have I imbibed the ivory tower snobbery of academia? Do I think all valid historical perspectives must be vetted by peer-reviewed journals?

Wikipedia is an excellent and (usually) accurate reference guide for finding out basic facts. It is a summary of readily available information on a given subject. But for someone doing historical research, it is more the starting blocks than the finish line. Just like any encyclopedia, it will acquaint you with basic dates, names, and events, and (hopefully) point you in the direction of books and articles that will give you a fuller discussion of the topic.

The trouble comes when people begin to see Wikipedia as the end and not the beginning of their research. If a history student's paper is simply a summary of Wikipedia's summary, he has presented nothing new to the world. He may have interacted with the viewpoints of a few historians, but only the ones deemed relevant by the anonymous writer of the page he viewed. He may have seen pieces of primary sources, but reading Wikipedia's excerpts is not substitute for understanding them in the context of the entire work . By basing a paper on Wikipedia, the student has shown his ability to read and condense an article. He has not shown any ability to research, analyze, or synthesize.

This same truth applies to the historical novelist. Although the research in a historical novel is subservient to the story and should not be included simply for its own sake, it is still the bones keeping the body of fiction from flopping about like a jellyfish. The historical novelist who only culls information from Wikipedia's paragraphs, is someone satisfied with a pelvis, a humerus, half a cranium, and a few vertebrae. It's not exactly the complete skeleton, but still enough to give some semblance of the human body. By neglecting to do deeper research, the author will be hard put to produce a book with any kind of depth.

Of course, it is not just the history student or the historical novelist who can use Wikipedia as the end-all and the be-all of research. Readers who are history enthusiasts sometimes fall into this trap as well. It's always mind-boggling when a reader informs the world that he fact checked a book by Wikipedia-ing it--and then assumes that whatever historical plot points didn't show up on Wikipedia were fabricated by the novelist.

I should certainly hope that there are things in my book that you won't find on Wikipedia! And many of those things I didn't make them up--I found them out by reading *gasp* source material! If you really want to fact check, I've appended a several page long bibliography at the end of each of my novels. You'll find books by eminent historians, translations of medieval chronicles, guides to period costume, but the one thing you won't find is a bibliography entry for Wikipedia. Did I ever use it for research? You bet! But I'm far too embarrassed to admit it....

Too Insignificant to Mention: The Argument of Silence in History

Whenever I'm immersed in studying a particular piece of history, it always seems to be of monumental importance and world-shattering impact. It's a little bit of a shock to hear someone discount it as boring, irrelevant, or not worth their time.

No, I'm not talking about reviewers. I'm talking about historians, and dead historians, at that. I've heard second-hand that most medieval Muslim historians didn't even mention the First Crusade since it was too insignificant to be worth their time.

My most recent research reading is The History of the Seljuq Turks: The Saljuq-nama of Zahir al-Din Nishpuri a translation of a twelfth-century Muslim history which I obtained through interlibrary loan. I sped through the founding of the Seljuk empire and was on the edge of my seat to get to the reign of Sultan Barkyaruq, the man who reigned during the Western invasion of the Holy Land. When I got there, I discovered that the reports I'd heard were correct: the Crusaders were not even mentioned.

The closest thing that could be a reference to the Crusade was the introduction to Barkyaruq's reign:
"In his time there occurred many difficult events, unpleasant happenings, upheavals and much agitation." Of course, this sentence could also be referring to the internecine struggles which plagued his reign as he fought a war of succession with the sons of his father's other wives.

When historians are silent about a subject, it's easy to put your own interpretation on the reason. In this case, the standard interpretation is "the Crusade wasn't important enough to be mentioned." In an empire that stretched from Asia Minor, through Iraq, through Persia, and all the way to India, it is plausible that happenings on the coast of the Mediterranean might be of minor importance compared to battles between brothers in Baghdad or Khorosan.

And yet, in other places of the work, the historian shows that he is not ignorant or indifferent to the Mediterranean area of the world. The chapters discussing the reigns of previous sultans jubilantly recount the Turkish conquest of Christian Asia Minor--a large part of which the Westerners recaptured in the First Crusade. The historian is very interested in the Turks' interactions with Byzantium, especially the part where Alp Arslan crushed the Eastern Roman Emperor at the Battle of Manzikert. Why then is he not interested in the Byzantine counter-offensive (as the Crusaders were often considered, since they had been called to the East by Emperor Alexios)?

Perhaps one reason that the medieval Muslim historians do not like to mention the First Crusade is because it is primarily a story of Muslim failure. It is a story of a ragtag band of Western knights who overcame tremendous odds to free the Holy Sepulcher and carve out five kingdoms in the Middle East. Perhaps it's not so much that the Crusade held too little significance, but that its significance was too tremendous and too terrible to be mentioned. Perhaps my argument from silence is as plausible as the current interpretation.

Memorial Day Musings

I write a lot of death scenes. Understandable, since my books center around wars in the Middle Ages. If you escaped the swords of the enemy, there was always plague or famine to do you in. In Road from the West, my protagonist's younger brother perished, along with thousands of unnamed Crusaders. In Flower of the Desert, the sequel I'm currently writing, I've already killed off three characters, fairly important ones, too.... No names, though. My lips are sealed. You'll have to wait until the book is released at the end of this year.

Monday was Memorial Day, a time to reflect on and honor those who died in the service of our country. While reflecting, I realized that--for all the dire death scenes in my fiction--I've never experienced death at close quarters. I've never had anyone near to me pass away. I'm sure that will change in the near future as time takes its toll on friends and relatives, but as of today, I've never experienced the pain, the grief, the loss of losing someone irrevocably.

For my husband, things are entirely different. He served as a sniper in the U.S. Army over in Mosul, Iraq. Several of his platoon members died following the call of duty, and two friends in particular: Adam Plumondore and Benjamin Morton. When we found out we were expecting twin boys, my husband decided to name them after his two friends, as a way to memorialize them.

Yesterday, the day after the Memorial Day crowds had come and gone, my husband took our two boys down to the Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon to visit the grave of Adam Plumondore. My sister-in-law Amy went along to take pictures, and she wrote a touching post about the outing on her photography blog. My husband doesn't talk about emotions much, or about friendship, or about his past life in the Army. But when I see how important things like yesterday's graveside visit are to him, I get a small picture of how the death of these close ones has affected him.

They say to write about what you know. Death, and especially the death of soldiers, isn't in the realm of my experience. But human experience can be learned from watching others. And when I see my husband take pains to remember and honor his lost friends, I can understand a little bit better how an eleventh century Norman, in a land not so far away from Mosul, Iraq, would cherish the memory of a brother lost on the field of battle.

If You Can't Spellcheck, Can You Be Trusted to Fact Check?

Several years ago when I was teaching junior high and high school, I had the privilege of developing the history program for the small, start-up school at which I worked. Finding curriculum that I liked was a frustrating experience. Most programs were too simplistic and incorporated barely any primary sources. I didn't want my high school students to just read and absorb a textbook account of past happenings. I wanted them to understand the process of uncovering history, how to glean information from the writings and artifacts of the people who lived during the period we were studying.

The lack of primary sources wasn't the only problem. Two of the curriculums that I looked at (the titles and authors of which shall remain nameless) made a big impression on me--and not in a good way. While scanning the pages, I noticed several typos in the chapters. One author confused the word "throne" with "thrown" and even made the egregious error of stating that the people "sang hims of praise."

I was a little appalled that an error this blatant could get into print, and especially into something that was being marketed as educational curriculum. It also made me think: if the author did not take the time to check his own spelling, what was the likelihood that he had checked his historical information? Were his chapters all based on one book he had read, ignoring the multitude of other sources available? Did he even look at the primary sources while performing his research, or was he merely regurgitating the popular view of history as told in (outdated?) secondary and tertiary sources?

In short, poor orthography leads one to suspect poor historiography. 

For self-published authors, the same rule applies. A poorly edited historical novel can lead one to suspect that the author doesn't really know her stuff. Who is going to trust an author's scholarship or stay immersed in a novel's storyline if the author clearly can't tell the difference between "then" and "than"? Editing: if you can't do it yourself, then find someone who can.

And now that I've rung such a peal over bad spelling, I suppose I'd better proof this post nine or ten times before I publish it. I wouldn't want to make the same misteak that I've just been complaning abowt. 

The Miracle in the Cave

Every once in a while, during the throes of research, you run across an anecdote in a primary source that you can't wait to use in your novel. In Ralph of Caen's book the Gesta Tancredi, there is one such anecdote burning a hole in my pocket...or should I say a hole in my keyboard? The setup is this: the First Crusaders are camped outside of Jerusalem, doing their best to take to take the city despite a dearth of men, food, and siege engines. Tancred, a young Norman marquis (and the hero of the trilogy I'm writing), is on patrol duty searching for wood to build siege towers. Take it away, Ralph!

Tancred, at this time, was suffering badly from dysentery. Although he could barely sit on a horse, he did not spare himself from riding. This sickness frequently forced him to dismount, to go far off, and to search for a hidden spot. Suffering for a long while in this manner and with feet tired out from the journey, he decided to give up this labor and to return ingloriously. But then the accustomed torment struck him. So he withdrew, and climbed down thinking to escape the eyes of his comrades. But when he looked back, he realized that he had not gotten away. Therefore, he searched even further for a hidden spot but again saw people wandering about everywhere. He changed his spot a third and then a fourth time. Finally, after a long walk under a rocky outcropping in a circle surrounded by tall trees, he found quiet.... After relieving himself and gaining back his strength, he noticed four pieces of wood on the opposite wall of the cave. One could not hope for anything more useful for the task at hand. For, it is said, that they were from the materials used by the king of Egypt in his conquest of Jerusalem. [The Egyptian Fatimids had just conquered Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks prior to the arrival of the First Crusaders.] When he saw them, so great was his joy, that he could not believe it or trust his eyes. He got up and went over to touch them and see them more closely. Thereupon, 'Hey, hey, comrades, hurry here,' he shouted. 'Here,' he repeated. 'God has given us more than we sought. We were seeking rough wood and we have found it prepared.'

Poor guy! Dysentery is no joke, and when you've got to go, you've got to go! It is so amusing to me how he finally goes into the cave to "relieve" himself (a la King Saul) and finds the very thing they have been searching for.

My current WIP, Flower of the Desert, culminates with the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders and the siege leading up to that event. I'm still working on the first part of the novel, however, and unless I jump ahead to the end, it'll be a while before Tancred gets to visit the cave outside Jerusalem. I suppose that part of the story will still be waiting for me when I get there though. That's the nice thing about history...it tends to stay the same.

Butt-Kicking Beauties: Fighting Females in History

When my husband and I go to the movies, his favorite part  is watching the previews before the feature film starts. Me? Not so much. I hate how many thirty-second horror previews I have to close my eyes (and plug my ears) through, and I always groan when I see spots for another action movie with a 110-lb super-chick beating up tough guys three times her size. "This is so unrealistic!" There are many areas in which women are equal to, or even superior to men. Physical strength does not happen to be one of them. "Why, oh why," I wonder, "do today's movie goers want to watch something this ridiculous?"

Well, it turns out that today's movie goers aren't the only ones who appreciate butt-kicking beauties.
Xena, warrior princess, may have made her debut in the twentieth century A. D., but she belongs to an ancient sisterhood of fighting females that go all the way back to the twentieth century B. C.

The Amazons executing their
(male) Greek prisoners 

The Amazons, of course, are the most famous members of this sisterhood, a tribe of women warriors who lived near the Black Sea. Homer mentions them briefly in the Iliad as "those who fight like men." Other Greek writers talk of Penthesilea, the Amazon queen who comes to Troy with the intention of killing Achilles. Fearlessly, Penthesilea slays many of the staunch Achaean warriors and fights a deadlock battle with Telamonian Ajax. But when it comes to Achilles? Well, the great, Greek hero is able to knock her over with one blow and kill her. To his credit, he feels bad about it afterwards.

Penthesilea's sister Hippolyta shows up in a plethora of Greek myths, many of them contradictory, but my favorite version of her story is the one retold by Mary Renault in The Bull from the Sea. Theseus, king of Athens, takes an excursion out to the Black Sea and runs into the fearsome Amazon tribe, led by Hippolyta, a beautiful queen who can ride, hunt, rule, and fight as well as any man. After defeating Hippolyta in single combat, Theseus marries her and brings her home to Athens...although there is not necessarily a happily ever after in store for them.

The Roman poet Virgil, familiar with the fighting female motif, includes the colorful character of Camilla in his epic, the Aeneid. As the princess of the Volsci, one of the neighboring tribes to the Latins, Camilla helps King Turnus fight against Aeneas and his band of invading Trojans. Virgil describes her as a phenomenal runner, though not so keen on the domestic arts:

Last came Camilla, of the Volscians bred,
leading her mail-clad, radiant chivalry;
a warrior-virgin, of Minerva's craft
of web and distaff, fit for woman's toil,
no follower she; but bared her virgin breast
to meet the brunt of battle, and her speed
left even the winds behind; for she would skim
an untouched harvest ere the sickle fell,
nor graze the quivering wheat-tops as she ran;
or o'er the mid-sea billows' swollen surge
so swiftly race, she wet not in the wave
her flying feet.

Camilla acquits herself as well as any Amazon would on the battlefield. But unfortunately, while she is distracted with all her kills, one of the Trojans manages to slay her with a sneak attack.

In the medieval and renaissance eras, this familiar character of the woman warrior was not forgotten. While doing research for my First Crusade trilogy, The Chronicles of Tancred, I ran across an Italian epic from the sixteenth century titled Jerusalem Delivered. The poet, Torquato Tasso, tells a highly fictionalized story of the heroes of the First Crusade, showing no scruples about inventing characters and events to embroider the tale.

Clorinda, the Muslim warrior-maiden, is one such fictional character. The description given her is strikingly like that of Camilla.

She scorned the arts these silly women use,
Another thought her nobler humor fed,
Her lofty hand would of itself refuse
To touch the dainty needle or nice thread,
She hated chambers, closets, secret news,
And in broad fields preserved her maidenhead....
While she was young, she used with tender hand
The foaming steed with froary bit to steer,
To tilt and tourney, wrestle in the sand,
To leave with speed Atlanta swift arear,
Through forests wild, and unfrequented land
To chase the lion, boar, or rugged bear....

Clorinda dies in Tancred's arms

Like the warrior princesses of Greek mythology, Clorinda enjoys a good deal of success against her masculine opponents, attracting the love and respect of Tancred, one of the Crusader lords and the hero of my trilogy. Tragedy, however, is not far off. During a night battle where the brave and beautiful Clorinda sets a Crusader siege tower on fire, she encounters Tancred unrecognized and loses her life to his sword. Tancred's grief over mistakenly killing Clorinda is even more profund than Achilles' sorrow over slaying Penthesilea, since the poet has taken the trouble to provide a pre-existing relationship between the two.



Unrealistic or not, it seems that societies throughout time have enjoyed the motif of the "women who fight like men." There is one marked difference, however, between the warrior women of the old world and the butt-kicking beauties of today's movies. In the ancient and medieval epics, the female fighter--despite her success against many lesser men on the battlefield--can never quite measure up to the prowess of the hero, often dying in her attempt to defeat him. In the modern version of the motif, the Lucy Lawless's, the Angelina Jolie's, and the Yvonne Strahovski's can actually hold their own against all comers, and even prevail.

A Meditation on Infant Mortality

The standard figure given for infant mortality in the Middle Ages is thirty percent, although some historians' numbers go as high as fifty. Thirty children out of every hundred, dying before their first birthday--a staggering amount of tiny graves.

* * * * *

At the beginning of this week, I was intending to do a Thanksgiving Day post about my son Adam, giving thanks that he has had no complications since his surgeries for biliary atresia in January. But on  Monday night, as my husband and I sat bleary-eyed in the emergency room at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, we realized that he was having his first complication.

He had registered a low grade fever off and on for the past five days and been exceptionally fussy. Maybe he's teething, I thought. (Isn't that every mother's rationale for unexplainable baby behavior?) Then, on Monday afternoon, I changed his diaper and discovered that his stool was white--an indication that his bile ducts might no longer be working. His doctors suggested taking him to the lab to get some blood work done. And so, instead of running to the grocery store to get eggnog, and allspice, and Thanksgiving Day hors d'oeuvres, we zipped down to the doctor's office and had Adam's blood drawn. It would take a day or more to get the results. I was worried, but David reminded me that there was nothing to be worried about...yet.

* * * * *

by Giotto

One popular misconception about the Middle Ages is that since so many of their children were certain to die, medieval parents refused to become attached to their offspring. In her article "The Medieval Child: An Unknown Phenomenon?", Sophie Oosterwijk refutes this notion. She points to the popularity of the Madonna and Child paintings, a clear representation of an affectionate mother. She also provides a wealth of other evidence that medieval parents were "fond of their children," despite the likelihood that they would lose "at least some of them to diseases or accidents."

Miracle reports and other types of documents attest to the lengths to which parents were prepared to go to obtain healing, rescue or salvation for their children, as well as to their grief when their efforts proved futile. The popularity of the theme of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents and its vivid depiction in medieval art and drama also suggest that medieval people viewed child death with anything but indifference.

It was not uncommon for a woman to bear ten children. It was not uncommon for nearly half of them to die in infancy. It was uncommon for the woman to feel no sorrow for their passing. She was still a mother, after all, and though she lived in a hard place and a hard time, that did not make her heart a heart of stone.

* * * * *

When Adam's fever spiked to above 100 degrees that night, I called the advice nurse. After reviewing his file with the doctor on call at Doernbecher, they instructed me to bring him in to the emergency room. "It could be nothing, or it could be really bad. With his history, we don't want to take any chances." 

The blood work we had done earlier was upgraded to "stat." We arrived at Doernbecher and waited in the emergency room for several hours for the blood work to be completed. When the lab delivered the results, the liver numbers were way higher than normal, giving evidence of a possible liver infection. The next step was an ultrasound to see if there was some sort of blockage in Adam's bile ducts. The ultrasound was inconclusive. Meanwhile, Adam's fever began to go down. While the doctors conferred into the wee hours of the night about whether they should admit Adam or send him home, David tried to get our scared and screaming boy to go to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, another doctor or nurse would come in to poke and prod him into resuming his screams.

I sat in the recliner, too exhausted, too uncomfortable, and too anxious to sleep. Were his bile ducts really blocked? Was the surgery that had seemed so successful no longer working?

* * * * *

Edward I and wife Eleanor

Oosterwijk gives this anecdote about King Edward I of England:

One example of the supposedly indifferent attitude of medieval parents towards their children is the chronicle description of Edward I's reaction while on crusade at hearing the news of the deaths of first his son John and then of his father, king Henry III of England. According to the chronicler, Edward grieved far more for his 64-year-old father than for his five-year-old son and, when asked to explain the reason, he replied that the loss of a child is easier to bear as one may have many more children, but that the loss of a father is irremediable. This has often been taken as the typical medieval response to the death of a child; indeed, Edward himself was due to experience such losses all too often, for only six of the (probably) fourteen children he had by his first wife Eleanor of Castile reached adulthood. 

However, what has often been overlooked is the fact that Edward's reaction, instead of being typical, was in fact seen as unusual even if proper and devout; the episode illustrates surprise at his behaviour both on the part of Charles of Anjou, who asked him to explain it, and on the part of the chronicler, who considered it significant enough to record. Although it may have been exemplary of Edward to mourn so much more for the death of his aged father (which actually made him the new king) than for his own little son, it seems at the same time to have been considered far from normal.

* * * * *

The doctors decided to put Adam on antibiotics in case his liver was infected. He would spend the night at the hospital and undergo more imaging in the morning to locate the assumed blockage. I drove home at 3am, hoping that my seven-months-pregnant body could get a few hours of sleep. David stayed at the hospital to deal with more doctors and more disruptions to Adam's sleep.

The Psalmist says that "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." And so it happened for us. By the time I got back to the hospital at 9am, Adam's fever had disappeared. The white bowel movement proved to be an anomaly. The head GI doctor told us that if there was some sort of sludge blocking his bile duct, it seemed to have gone away. Whatever had sent his liver numbers up in the lab tests was probably just a minor infection. They released us from the hospital at noon that day and we went home to sleep, sleep, sleep.

* * * * *

by Masaccio

Oosterwijk says:

Medieval reality might have been a far cry from our own twentieth-century idea of childhood as a joyous and carefree phase of life -- in itself rather a modern Western idealization-- but the medieval popularity of the Virgin and Child could only have worked if people recognized its fundamental truth: the bond of affection between mother and child. 

* * * * *

At the beginning of this week, I was intending to do a Thanksgiving Day post about my son Adam, giving thanks that he has had no complications since his surgeries for biliary atresia in January. At the end of this week, I can finally make my Thanksgiving Day post, and praise God that Adam's adventure at the hospital was short-lived and far less serious than it could have been.

The standard figure given for infant mortality in the Middle Ages is thirty percent. The infant mortality rate in today's United States is currently less than one percent. It is a blessed thing to be a mother in this country and in this century. It is truly a thing for which we can give thanks.

Same Name, Different Person

Suppose that you're in a conversation with a friend talking about a mutual acquaintance named "John." An outsider comes up, listens in for a few minutes, then says. "Oh, I know a John too. They're probably the same person." You both stop talking and stare at the newcomer flabbergasted. Does he really think there is only one person named John in the entire world? 

This naivety is not something you often encounter in conversation. But somehow, in the world of historical fiction, it is a conclusion that readers often jump to, especially if a character has a name that is unusual or unfamiliar to them. 

Tancred of Lecce

During my recent blog tour, countless people who heard that "Tancred" is the main character of my book Road from the West said, "Oh, Tancred! I read about him in Sharon Kay Penman's latest book Lionheart." Sorry as I am to sever this (possibly advantageous) to SKP's novel, my sense of historical accuracy has been begging me to exclaim, "No. You did not!" My Tancred was an obscure Italian marquis who eventually became Prince of Galilee and Duke of Antioch after the First Crusade. SKP's Tancred was a distant relative, called Tancred of Lecce, who ruled Sicily and lived nearly a century later during the time of the Third Crusade.

The name Tancred, although incredibly unusual to the modern ear, was a popular one in this Norman family. Their original Norman ancestor, a shadowy figure named Tancred de Hauteville, was born in Normandy shortly after the French king bestowed it on Rollo and the other Vikings. Tancred of Hauteville was renowned mostly for the deeds of his progeny, begetting twelve superlative sons from two successive wives. One of the chroniclers records that whenever William the Conqueror was feeling unmotivated to conquer, he would remember the doughty deeds of the family from Hauteville and stir up his spirit to attempt greater things. These sons of Tancred de Hauteville would eventually spread across Europe and establish princedoms for themselves in Italy, Sicily, and the East. 

Two of the sons to travel to the sunny south were Robert Guiscard (the "Fox) and Roger de Hauteville. While Robert focused his activities on driving the Byzantines out of Italy and then making an expedition toward Constantinople itself, Roger focused on driving the Muslims and Byzantines out of Sicily and setting up a kingdom there. It is from these two brothers that the two easily-confused Tancreds descend. 

Tancred and Erminia, by Nicolas Poussin

Robert Guiscard's daughter Emma married an obscure Italian marquis named Odo the Good, and from their union arose Tancred, the hero of my novel, a dedicated leader of the First Crusade. Roger set up a dynasty in Sicily leaving the throne to a tangled web of sons and grandsons until it was eventually seized by his (illegitimate) great-grandson Tancred of Lecce. 

Although it may be tempting to assume that every historical figure with the same name is the same person, a simple request for Wikipedia to "disambiguate" the name can keep you from being the "newcomer" to the conversation. A simple reference to a historical timeline can keep you from confusing the King of Sicily with the Prince of Galilee.

Boring the Readers to Tears

Some readers, who would rather jump off a bridge than read a nonfiction history book, will enthusiastically pick up a historical novel because, "It's not history--it's a story." Other readers have slightly more interest in history itself, but have selected the novel because they want to get a "feel" for a time period without being deluged with too many names and dates. Without being elitist, I think I can say that very few readers are as interested in the forests of historical minutiae as the author herself is. But that's why the author chose to become a writer of historical fiction--because she loves to uncover every last detail from her chosen period of study.

As a historical novelist, I must wrestle with how to convey this love of history to the readers. How do I include historical background, introduce historical characters, and portray historical details without boring the readers to tears? How do I relay the history in a realistic manner that fits seamlessly into the story, instead of simply giving an information "dump"?

Frequently, authors will use expositional characters to give the needed historical information to set up their plot. A character who is new to a particular setting is ideal for this kind of exposition since that character's ignorance is nearly as great as the reader's. I was noticing while reading Sharon Kay Penman's book Lionheart how she helps the reader "meet" several of the English peers through the character of Isabella Marshal (William Marshal's new wife). Isabella has never visited the court before, and so her husband must explain to her who all the important players are that surround King Richard's household.

A similar narrative device is to have one character explain events to another character who was absent when they took place. In Elizabeth Chadwick's book The Scarlet Lion (which, coincidentally, has many of the same historical personages as Lionheart), Isabella Marshal spends a great deal of time isolated on the family estates in England and Ireland. Whenever her husband William returns for a visit from the court, he brings her (and the readers) up to speed on all the political events of importance.

Lindsey Davis uses first person narration in her detective novels, and we get to hear the story through the mouth of the cheeky Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco. Falco's supposed audience is a provincial member of the Roman Empire who may not know the ins and outs of Roman government, geography, politics, etc. By condescending to explain these things to the bumbling provincials, Falco can also (realistically) describe the needed information for the ignorant reader.

By using a mixture of these narrative devices (and not overusing one of them), an author can create the necessary historical skeleton on which to hang the body of her story.  An author can craft a well-researched historical novel that reads nothing like a nonfiction book.  An author can share her love of history without boring the reader to tears.

* * * * *

What other narrative devices have you seen used effectively? Which ones have fallen flat?

Challenging a Millennium of Scholarship

I ran into an interesting article yesterday (via the Medieval News blog) touting a new nonfiction book by historian Peter Frankopan that will be "countering nearly a millennium of scholarship" about the First Crusade. In his new book, The First Crusade: the Call from the East, which is slated to come out in 2012, Dr. Frankopan argues that the focal point of the Crusade's origins was in the Byzantine Empire's desire to regain territory, not in Pope Urban's preaching. The Europeans who came to fight came as mercenaries for the Byzantine emperor Alexios. It was only later that Western propaganda turned the military action into a fight for Jerusalem.

The article (originally published in the newspaper The Australian) doesn't go into too much detail about Dr. Frankopan's new findings, but these paragraphs give a small picture of what his new book will propose:

For Dr Frankopan, the First Crusade was therefore not a religious war, but instead a "very specific, targeted military expedition against the cities of Nicaea and Antioch", two former Byzantine possessions that the crusader army swore an oath to hand over to Alexios. Jerusalem was just a carrot. 

The Crusade mythology that emerged from all this was a result of what happened next, Dr Frankopan claimed. Some of the Norman commanders refused to hand the newly conquered cities over to the Emperor. 

To justify this course of action, and a subsequent attempt to launch an expedition against Constantinople, they embarked on a propaganda war of "horrific vilification" against Alexios and his Empire. Urban successfully used the recapture of Jerusalem to cement the power of his papacy and Alexios was written out of the historical record.

I am very curious to read this book once it is released (my Amazon Wish List has been updated accordingly). Dr. Frankopan's claim is an interesting one, but it seems that he would have to discredit dozens of Western sources which attribute the Crusaders' original motivations to their desire to retake the Holy City. Perhaps Emperor Alexios thought he was getting an army of compliant mercenaries, but Urban, Bohemond, Godfrey, and Tancred thought otherwise....

The Forbidden Fruit Syndrome

It's been an interesting phenomenon how the genre of historical romance (or, dare I say the genre of historical erotica?) has been steadily encroaching on the field of historical fiction over the past several decades. It is rare to read through a new historical novel without running into explicit sex scenes, most of them involving premarital or extramarital sex. Many of the discussions in historical fiction book groups revolve around the questions of how much sex is appropriate. My informal assessment is that a few readers and authors prefer the scene to fade to black while most enjoy sex scenes as long as they are "helpful to developing the characters." It seems that for many book lovers of today's generation "historical" and "racy" are two adjectives that go particularly well together. Lately, I have been pondering why exactly this is the case.

Perhaps for those interested in a racier brand of literature, historical novels have something to offer that contemporary novels do not. That something is stricter social mores. In Regency romances, part of the "thrill" of a sexual encounter comes from the knowledge that the heroine will actually become compromised--whereas a heroine "hooking up" in today's world would be as normal as working nine to five. In Medieval novels, part of the appeal of fornication and adultery is the condemnation it will receive from the narrow-minded and monolithic Church--whereas such deeds in a contemporary novel would only provoke jealous high school friends or unsympathetic parents.

One of the key components of the courtly love paradigm developed in the twelfth century (a paradigm, incidentally, that endorsed adulterous behavior) is that in a true love story there must be some obstacle separating the man and the woman. The greater the obstacle, the greater the desirability and the attraction. A love that was forbidden (by parents, by religious authorities, by social standing, etc.) was the most exhilarating kind of love. In many ways, this paradigm lives on today. And although obstacles between lovers can be found in a contemporary setting (e.g. He owns a big bookstore that wants to put her little bookstore out of business, a la You've Got Mail), these contemporary hurdles seem fairly easy to jump when compared to obstacles like "utter ruin and disgrace in the eyes of society," or "excommunication and certain damnation."

For fans of racy reading, the openness, ease, and acceptability of modern affairs cause modern novels to lose a little luster, but the strict moral code of past eras makes infractions of it that much more enticing. The barriers society and religion placed before immorality translate into exciting obstacles to be overcome. The secrecy needed to conduct such behavior titillates readers and adds intricacy to a plot.  As one wise man put it, "Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." In an era where "everything is ok," it seems that novelists must return to a bygone age in order to find rules to break.

The Eagle Fails to Soar

"The book was way better!" That is usually my reaction after watching a film based on a book I have already read. It's not because the film is different than the book--I understand that changes must be made to accomodate a different medium--it's because the film is worse than the book. The screenplay writer looked at the original story and thought that he could make a better story using the same characters. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the screenplay writer was wrong.

The Eagle, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, is a movie that came out earlier this year. It is based on the book The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff. Since Sutcliff has been one of the biggest influences on my own historical fiction writing, my interest was definitely piqued by the preview, and I was exited to watch it while we were on vacation last week.

*SPOILER ALERT!* The first third of the movie follows the book almost exactly. Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing) introduces himself well as a faithful and stalwart Roman centurion, trying to make up for the dishonor that his father had brought upon the family. The Roman fort Marcus commands is very believable, as is the surprise attack by the marauding Britons. Wounded in the leg, Marcus is forced to retire from his military career and spends some time in the south of Britain with his Uncle Aquila (Donald Sutherland). While Marcus is still convalescing (and wondering what he is going to do with the rest of his life), he attends a gladiator fight where he saves the life of a young Briton named Esca (Bell). Aquila purchases Esca as Marcus' body slave, and Esca makes an oath to serve Marcus even though he hates everything Roman.

It is at this point that the plot of the movie radically diverges from the story in the book. Marcus decides to go north across Hadrian's Wall and find the eagle standard from his father's lost legion, bringing with him his deeply-embittered slave Esca as a guide. Instead of adopting some sort of plausible disguise so that he can search unnoticed in enemy territory, Marcus naively follows Esca around the north of Britain, hoping that the tribesmen will ignore his Roman haircut and his reliance on the Latin language. Eventually, he discovers that Esca has been pulling the wool over his eyes--the slave knows exactly where the lost legion lost itself because his tribe was there at the battle! Esca spouts some touching memories about the deaths of his family members, prey to the voracious appetite of Roman conquest. Marcus responds in typical Roman fashion by defending his nation's imperialism and brutally killing any tribesmen who stand in his way.

When Esca and Marcus encounter the Seal People (the keepers of the eagle standard), their tribal logic immediately deduces that Marcus is a Roman. Esca pretends that Marcus is his slave, and that he tricked him into coming north so that he could escape the clutches of Rome and return to his own people. The Seal People (whose looks and way of life would seem to place them in The Last of the Mohicans rather than the highlands of Scotland) greet Esca as a brother and heap abuse on Marcus, the despised representative of a hated race who--despite his civilized veneer--is just as savage as they are.

Marcus, afraid that Esca has betrayed him, behaves stupidly and earns many beatings. But one night, after a tribal ceremony where the eagle is displayed, Esca wakes the Roman and tells him that it is time to complete their mission. The two men steal the eagle and ride for the border pursued by hordes of angry Indians...ahem...Celtic tribesmen. When Marcus is unable to go any further, he finally trusts Esca enough to grant him his freedom. The Briton leaves his erstwhile master and dashes off to find a very unlikely source of help. The movie culminates with a fierce battle between the two men (plus auxiliaries) and the aggrieved tribesmen, which my husband described as "Roman biker gang vs. Native American Blue Man Group."

My main contention with this movie is that the screenwriter took a historically plausible adventure with a resourceful hero and turned it into an anachronistic rant against slavery and Roman conquest. In the book, Marcus and Esca become friends (in a believable way) while they are still at Uncle Aquila's home, and Marcus manumits his slave before the trip to the north. Esca, although a Briton, is from a completely different tribe than the ones that slew the lost legion. He has no conflicted loyalties on the trip. Marcus is a sympathetic character--not an unintelligent brute--who shows kindness to Esca and devises stratagems to find and steal the eagle. The book also includes a small romance between Marcus and Cottia, a young woman who lives nearby Uncle Aquila's home, which softens and adds dimension to Marcus' character.

Instead of following the plot of the book, the screenwriter clearly showed that he (or she?) had an ax to grind. The temptation to add a "relevant message"to historical fiction is one that can beset both novelists and screenwriters. Marcus must learn to hate his country and feel self-loathing by the end of the movie because that is what we would feel if our country went around killing and enslaving people. Some may see this as a profitable addition to the story. After all, since literature teaches by example, is it not right to imbue it with our own society's sense of morals?

Two posts I did earlier in the year have some bearing on this issue, one with Ian Mortimer's take on historical fiction and the other with Sharon Kay Penman's. In his History Today podcast, writer Ian Mortimer states that he is "not interested in enhancing people's understanding of the past. In fiction I'm using the past to demonstrate how we can say something that is true today and more meaningful for us today." Mortimer's kind of thinking would embrace the addition of "messages" into historical fiction, ones like the anti-slavery and anti-imperialism messages in The Eagle, because these are values that are generally held by us today.

Sharon Kay Penman, on the other hand, insists that historical fiction should scrupulously follow the mindsets of the past and avoid anachronistic messages that may appeal to our modern understanding. In a blog post titled "History vs. Fiction" she talks about the medieval view toward animals:

When daily life is so hard, few can spare sympathy for hungry dogs. This is especially true in a world in which people believe that God has given them dominion over the earth and all in it. So when one of my characters is moved by the plight of a suffering animal, he often is vaguely embarrassed by his Good Samaritan inclinations. When Justin de Quincy rescues a drowning dog in The Queen's Man, he does it after he "casts common sense to the winds," and he is motivated in some measure by the tearful entreaties of a small child. The life of a horse was worth a great deal and the life of a pet dog might have mattered to its owner. But the lives of animals in general had no intrinsic value and my characters cannot display the same outrage in the face of cruelty that we would. 

Ms. Penman avoids injecting her novels with the modern notion of animal rights because it would not be appropriate to the time. Her commitment to historical accuracy in her writings outweighs her modern sensibilities.

The Eagle could have been an excellent movie, if the story had stayed close to Sutcliff's original story, or if the plot had been historically appropriate. I do have the capacity to enjoy a movie even if the storyline differs from the book. All I ask is that any changes to the storyline make a story that is equal to or better than the original. In the case of historical fiction (whether book or film), I follow Ms. Penman's (or Ms. Sutcliff's) school of thought. Paint the people as they truly were, not as twenty-first century Americans in helmets. And since films so rarely fail to live up to this criterion, perhaps it is better to keep our favorite historical fiction novels away from the cinema all together. As Lindsey Davis said, when asked about a poorly made film adaptation of her Falco series: "I am not interested in having inferior versions!"

The Good Old Days of Patriarchy

A Typical Roman Family

If you've been following my reviews on Read Room, you'll know that I've been on a Lindsey Davis kick for the better part of this year, reading sequentially through her Falco detective series set in Ancient Rome. The books give a tongue in cheek portrayal of Roman life combined with exciting murder mysteries and family drama. Falco, the satirical narrator of the novels, often laments the fact that his sisters and wife don't respect his authority like women did back in the good old days. Instead of working at their looms in silence, his womenfolk interfere with his work, wander wherever they please, argue with his ideas, and generally dismiss his position as head of the family.

The children in the novels are no more respectful than the women toward Falco and the rest of their elders. Falco's nephew Larius runs away from home to become a painter despite his mother's protests. His brother Gaius refuses to babysit for Falco and Helena unless rewarded with a substantial bribe.  Every one of Falco's nephews and nieces echo their mothers' scornful opinions about their uncle's character and incompetence.

Although the Falco novels are rich with historical details from antiquity, they also have a contemporary feel to them since Lindsey Davis peppers them with British slang and humorous anachronisms. (For instance, in one mystery centered around a theater troupe, Falco pens the play The Spook Who Spoke, an early version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.) This causes one to wonder: how much of Falco's dysfunctional family is a product of historical research and how much is a product of our own contemporary society? Do the women and children of Lindsey Davis' Rome more accurately reflect the first century A. D. or the sitcom The Simpsons?

In an article titled "Family Values in Ancient Rome," Richard Saller of the University of Chicago provides an interesting look at Roman families during the early part of the Roman empire. He argues that many people have an evolutionary view of history. In the early part of recorded history they see a patriarchal family, "a large family unit dominated by a male elder who sternly wielded authority over women and children." The common view of history is that this patriarchal form of family government continued throughout the ancient world and even into the Middle Ages. As the centuries and millennia rolled by, however, patriarchy declined.

[P]aternal authority and control were weakened by the increasing independence of wives and children. Fathers were no longer able to use limitless force arbitrarily against family members. Wives and children were no longer the property of the paterfamilias, and came to enjoy the right to own and dispose of their own property. Children began to be allowed to choose a spouse, and those choices were more influenced by romantic love. As a result of this historical evolution, we now live in an age of the affectionate family, an age when women have more independence, financial and otherwise, and when children are loved and less apt to receive corporal punishment.

Some may think that the good old days of paternal authority were better. Some may be happy to live nowadays where women and children have more independence. But whichever preference they hold, most people would agree that this story of the evolution of the family is more or less historically accurate.

But Saller, as a professor specializing in Roman history, calls this story arc "grossly oversimplified" and says it "makes for dubious history."  Rather than lumping the whole ancient world together as sternly patriarchal, he shows how the Roman civilization has its own fluctuating history of family values.

The Romans had their own evolutionary story about family mores, and it had nothing do do with the invention of affection, which they took to be natural and eternal in the family. However, their story did contain elements of the decline of paternal authority and the stable family. Roman authors--all men--often lamented that in the late Republic wives no longer played the ideal role that they had fulfilled for centuries. According to the Roman writers of the first century BCE and first century CE, divorce became increasingly frequent after 200 BCE, initiated easily by the husband of the wife. In addition, wives had their own property, which they could sell, give away or bequeath as they liked. As a result, women became more liberated and less dependent on their husbands. In fact, by the late Republic a rich wife who could divorce and take her wealth with her had a real threat against her husband and could wield influence over him. The sense of independence also showed up in increasing sexual promiscuity and adultery....

Roman authors don't say much about daughters in general, but they wrote about the moral decline of sons. In the age of degeneracy, sons in their youth no longer obeyed their fathers the way they used to, they spent profligately on women and wine and they became increasingly sexually promiscuous. This moral degeneracy took an ugly turn in the social chaos of the civil wars that brought the Republic to an end after Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE: Roman authors reported that sons turned on their fathers during the violence. 

Just like some of us today, the Romans of the late Republic and early Empire looked back to the good old days when paternal authority was strong and respected. The writers--all men, as Saller points out--regretfully saw themselves in a period when family values had become lax, women had become headstrong, and sons had become rebellious.

Saller makes another interesting point when he notes that the very "earliest" Latin authors are "already deploring the moral decline of their own time." Plautus and Cato, writing in the second century B. C., satirize and complain of loose-living sons, indulgent fathers, and independent women. If the earliest works that we have are "already writing of the breakdown of the good, orderly family in which the paterfamilias maintained authority over his wife and children," how should that inform our historical understanding?

If there was ever a better age before the decline, it must have been in the prehistoric era. An alternative interpretation--one that I lean toward--is that the golden age before the moral decline never existed in reality but was a later invention by Roman authors who certainly had no reliable historical evidence for moral trends. That is to say, the narrative of moral decline of the family was based on a historical mirage of a better past, and it was no more than a mirage. It is fascinating that one of Plautus' comic characters, an unusually introspective father, is made to wonder out loud whether the sons of his day really are worse behaved or whether fathers just like to imagine that in their own youth they were more obedient and morally virtuous.

So, when Marcus Didius Falco complains that his womenfolk don't hold him in the proper esteem as paterfamilias, Lindsey Davis is not only channeling contemporary issues into her work, but also staying true to the historical milieu of the first century A. D. Falco's observations that families aren't like they were back in the good old days fit nicely with Cato's rants and show that Lindsey Davis has the Roman man's mindset down to a "T".

But do Cato's rants fit well with history as it actually was? Saller's article raises an important question: did the good old days of unbridled patriarchy ever really exist?

The Whole of the Human Experience

Earlier this week HistoryToday featured a podcast with Ian Mortimer, a historian known for his biographies of Sir Roger Mortimer, Edward III, Henry IV, and Henry V as well as his Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. Mortimer's most recent venture has taken him outside the world of nonfiction and into the realm of historical fiction. His new novel, Sacred Treason, is a mystery set during the reign of Elizabeth I and it is a far cry from his previous work. To keep his readers from becoming confused by the switch in genres, Mortimer has elected to publish his fictional works under the pseudonym James Forrester (his two middle names).

In the podcast, Mortimer discusses how he perceives history and historical fiction quite differently. For him, the goal of the historian is to study and reveal the past. The writer of historical fiction, on the other hand, tries to reveal general truths about humanity. "I'm not interested in fiction in enhancing people's understanding of the past. In fiction I'm using the past to demonstrate how we can say something that is true today and more meaningful for us today." Although he does strive for historical accuracy in his novel Sacred Treason, he says that is not the primary purpose of the book. "What I'm really doing is talking about life in all time, not just in the sixteenth century."

Mortimer notes that historians, for the most part, have lost the ability to impact society. "If you want to have historians really affecting the way people think about their position in the world they need to go beyond the academic frontiers, they need to take risks, they need to pioneer new forms of history and to discover--redefine--what history is." Perhaps a part of that redefinition is the burgeoning genre of historical fiction with its ability to transcend time, reveal truths about humanity as a whole, and create layers of meaning that academic histories lack.

Mortimer's view of historical fiction is an interesting one. He doesn't write to educate readers about a historical time period, per se, but instead uses his book as a "magnifying glass" for issues such as the importance of religion, fidelity to one's spouse, and loyalty to the state. I wonder whether readers share his goals. Do you pick up a historical novel in order to learn about a specific era? Or do you read it to learn about the whole of the human experience in a way that transcends time? Can a historical novel fulfill both of these goals equally?

Reconciling Differences

Working on the "Author's Note" for Road from the West. Here's an excerpt:


As in any historical endeavor, one of the joys of this project has been reconciling different--and differing--source material. The chroniclers of the First Crusade tend to disagree as much as the leaders themselves. Although these discrepancies can be time-consuming and frustrating, they are also eminently understandable since each eyewitness sees things with a unique perspective and each historian was attached to a different contingent of the Crusade. The case of the Armenian traitor Firuz is a prime example; here the historians give as many variations of the story as they do variants on his name.

The writer of the Gesta states that an emir named Pirus was convinced of Christianity by Bohemond and agreed to turn over his three towers to the Normans. Anna Comnena, the daughter of Emperor Alexios, avers that Bohemond persuaded the Armenian to betray his trust by means of "flagrant cajolery and a series of attractive guarantees." Fulcher of Chartres records that the traitor was a Turk, not an Armenian; he was incited to action by a dream wherein Christ commanded him to place the city in the hands of the Christians. Ralph of Caen returns to the Armenian identification and depicts the traitor as the father of a large family. When Cassian confiscated the grain that the man had stored up to feed his children, he determined to hand over the Tower of the Two Sisters to Bohemond out of desperation and revenge.

The Islamic chroniclers have their own details to add. The Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir calls the traitor an armor-maker named Ruzbih whom the Franks bribed with a fortune in money and lands. His countryman Ibn al-Qalanisi states that the betrayal was a cabal among several of the armor-makers who were unhappy about some ill-usage and confiscations at the hands of the governor. Steven Runciman, the premier historian of the Crusades, conflates several of these versions plus another rumor circulated later, that Firouz "had been hesitating right up till the evening before, when he discovered that his wife was compromised with one of his Turkish colleagues."

My version of Firuz's betrayal strives to do justice to as many of the accounts as I can while still creating a plausible story for the reader....

The Peasants are Revolting

I like reading books and articles that debunk historical myths--especially historical myths that paint the Middle Ages as dark and dumb as a fence post at night. Sharan Newman specializes in debunking popular but spurious versions of history. She has written books such as The Real History behind the Da Vinci Code and The Real History behind the Templars.

In a recent post on Ms. Newman's blog, she debunks the oft mentioned medieval horrors of chastity belts and "the lord's right." In case you're unsure what those are, the chastity belt is basically a metal belt (with lock and key) and a solid attachment between the legs that was supposed to prohibit a woman from having sexual intercourse. "The lord's right" is the infamous prima nocta of the movie Braveheart where the ruling noble gets to sleep with any peasant woman he desires on her wedding night.

Ms. Newman notes that both of these monstrosities are nineteenth century inventions regarding the Middle Ages that are rejected as fabrications by all serious historians. Nevertheless, they are still "fixed in the public imagination as prime examples of medieval cruelty and subjugation of women."

There is no manuscript or archaeological evidence for chastity belts or "the lord's right," but Ms. Newman builds an even more interesting case against them by showing that such things would be contrary to the very societal structure of Middle Ages.

But the real problem with the chastity belt and the lord's right, is that they presume women were property. In the nineteenth century, under law in many countries, women were treated as children, without reasoning capacity. Medieval women were not. Of course there were barriers in law. They couldn't be priests or war leaders (but don't tell Matilda of Tuscany) and, while women made most of the beer in Europe, they couldn't be official beer tasters. Go figure. But women could inherit, buy and sell property, and speak for themselves. And a lot of them did at all levels of society.

Now this First Night nonsense also assumes that peasants were slaves. Depending on the time and place, their lot wasn't great, but any lord saying that he would get to sleep with a bride from his village on the wedding night would not have lasted long. "The peasants are revolting" is not an idle phrase. A wonderful example is from the miracle stories of St. Cuthbert. It seems that a Scottish lord once decreed that all his female field hands work naked. In Scotland? According to the story, the next morning the lord was found dead "pecked to death by crows". Sure. It doesn't matter if the story is true; it makes clear what the twelfth century thought of high-handed noblemen and implies that peasants didn't take such things lying down (so to speak).

Prima nocta in the Middle Ages is clearly an invention of men like Mel Gibson--although to cut him some slack, it also features over and over again in the works of historical novelists. (Ken Follett comes to mind.) It not only didn't happen in the Middle Ages, it probably couldn't have happened in the Middle Ages. The sort of world where "the lord's right" could be exercised with impunity is the ancient Babylonian world of Gilgamesh--and even then men like Enkidu would stand up to say "This is wrong!"

Reading this blog post by Ms. Newman has made me curious to read more of her work. Her latest book is  titled The Real History of the End of the World where she "digs into end of the world theories and shows us that whether it's aliens, natural disaster, or the Rapture, our civilization has been there and done that." Sounds like a fun read!