Medieval Musings: State of the Art

Now I know that if I am going to discuss my take on some medieval art I need to be overt that I understand that Medieval art covers thousands of years and dozens of periods and styles. When I refer to medieval art for the purposes of my blog (and remember this is not an art blog!... once more...this is not an art blog!) I am referring to the very human looking examples to the right. What I have always been fascinated with in these illustrations is the strange sense of depth you still get in an otherwise cartoony or iconic style of representing things in a rather flat looking piece of work.

They have a quasi religious bend to most of them as well which appeals in a mixed innocent (we are beloved of God) and desperate (oh please come and save us from this terrible poverty and barbarian invasions) kind of way. And the costumes and armour and general attire on them are just great too.

I think the ones I like are "Byzantine" but don't quote me on that. I enjoy their simpleness yet somewhat clandestine iconography (remember that the church well and truly ruled the roost back then so it was ixnay on the questioning of the ristchay).

Medieval Musings: Agrarian Festivals

Who doesn't love a good festival. Medieval festivals were not mere parties, BBQs or even whole day celebrations such as weddings. These were week long extravaganzas that brought people from far and wide!

Medieval celebrations centered around specific feast days that had pagan origins and were based on ancient agrarian celebrations that marked when certain crops should be planted or harvested.

Wheat and rye were sown from Michaelmas (September 29) to Christmas. Spring crops would be planted from the end of Christmas through to Easter. Christmas, Easter and Pentecost would be celebrated with a feast of the Church. They were followed by a week of vacation. Visions of an Oktoberfest style celebration springs to mind but on a much larger scale.

There were many lesser celebrations as well such as:

- Candlemas (February 2),

- Hocktide (end of the Easter week),

- Mayday,

- the Rogation Days,

- Ascension (all in May),

- Midsummer or St. John's Day (June 24),

- the Lammas or Feast of St. Peter

These would all be marked with feasts and unique celebrations. Michaelmas marked the beginning of winter and the start of the fiscal year for merchants and tradesmen.

By November, feed was often too scarce to keep animals through the winter, and became known as the "blood month" when meat was smoked, salted and cured for consumption during the long winter ahead. The month began with All Hallows (later, All Saints) Day, followed by St. Martin's Day (November 11).

But medieval society awaited the dreariest time of the year to celebrate the grandest feast of all. The two-week period from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Day (January 6) transformed into the longest vacation for workers. The Lords of the manor or castle often gave bonuses of food, clothing, drink and firewood to ye olde servants. Houses were decked with holly and ivy (there's a song in there), and giant Yule logs were brought in and burned throughout the two-week celebration. New Year's took place during this time and added to the festivities, and "First Gifts" were often exchanged on this day.

"Plow Monday" took place the day after Epiphany, and freemen of the village would participate in a plow race, to begin cultivation of the town's common plot of land. Each man would try and furrow as many lines as possible, as he would be able to sow those lines during the coming year. Children would play the role of "Fool Plow" and go from house to house asking for pennies. Those who refused would find the ground in front of their door plowed up.

Easter, as Christmas, was a day for exchanging gifts. The castle lord would receive eggs from the villagers and in return, provide servants with dinner. May saw celebrations of love, especially on the 1st. Villagers would venture into the woods to cut wildflowers and other greenery for their homes to usher in May and hope for a fertile season.

Original and further information can be found here.

Bring back a life of festivities, common purpose and mutual exertion I say... especially if it also heralds the end of commercial corporate mass manufactured entertainment!

Hear Hear!

Medieval Musings: Common Ideas, Common Outcomes

"The principle of medieval trade was admittedly comradeship and justice while the principle of modern trade is avowedly competition and greed" G.K. Chesterton, 'William Cobbet', 1926

The theory (at least as far as is advertised) is that competition leads to higher quality and resonable pricing of goods. The opposite is what actually occurs, as evidenced by the rise of massive monopolies and super corporations that almost without restriction pursue their own corporate agendas across countries, peoples and cultures. They force small enterprises out of business and suck money and resources out of local communities and into the hands of shareholders. Sales and profits, not quality, service or human respect are the goals.

Merry old medieval England was imbued with a spirit of hospitality, charity and common enterprise. Workers gave 10% of their produce or earnings to the local monastery and the tithe was then used for local relief for the poor and needy. Communities looked after their own rather than delegate the task to a distant collection of bureaucrats. The notion of a 'brotherhood of man' was powerfully promoted and citizens were encouraged to love they neighbour as thyselves'. Guilds arose to manage work and trade in the mould of spirited creativity and high quality goods with complex agreed value systems specifically to engender free and fair anti-competitive trade. Members donated to a central coffer for feasts, guildhall maintenance and alms.

Medieval Musings: The City State

"For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars."

Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight', 1797

In ye olde days, before globalisation and industrialisation mass produced human experience and made every main street look and feel the same, there were the independent city states that flowed with the flavour of individuality. These weren't the mega cities you see today of 25,000,000 plus people but rather great big country towns of 50,000 to 100,000 souls.

From the 12th century on these great cities become self-governing democratic havens, free of intrusion from nobles. Multitudes of people fed up with the restrictions of feudal existence and "to the manor born effeteness" congolmerated to escape the rule of nobles and create an ideal working and creative community in which fairness and equality were the main driving principles. It was the adventure of cooperation at its most effective. They were centers of humanity bursting with schools, hospitals, baths, workshops (in the sense of the artisan working at his chosen trade not the toxic factories or human slave lines we know today) and wonderful community inspired architecture. Guilds controlled the fairness and expression of individual trade and cathedrals rose to celebrate the glory of god and the energy and abundance of the people. Walls were their own form of self enforced limitation to growth and over urbanisation.

These free cities existed all over the known world from the coasts of the Mediterranean to the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down the fjords of Scandinavia through Russia, Hungary, France and Spain. A mighty fraternity of spirit rose from the compost of feudalism.

I imagine a time not to far in the future where the same organic human spiritual emergence rises from the remains of capitalism and globalisation...