Knight - The Medieval Warrior’s Manual UNOFFICIAL
Michael Prestwich – Thames & Hudson
A stunningly beautiful little book that gives you the how, what, where, which, what of becoming a fully-fledged knight, so pay close attention and study carefully. It’s one of those little hard backs that you just want to hug. I picked it up in Foyles bookshop in London, one of my favourite places in the whole world.
If you belonged to the ruling classes and you were male it was more than likely that you would become a knight, and as such, suitable childhood pastimes were recommended, or not, as the case might be. Geoffroi de Charney had some insightful views on the subject, views I am not totally in disagreement with. De Charney was opposed to boys playing ball games. But then comes the bit I do disagree with; he regarded ball games as suitable only for girls and women.
For the lads though, tennis was an exception in the ball department. The most desirable pastime of all though was hunting because it provided excellent training for war.
But the tennis thing makes complete sense to me. Tennis matches are bouts of solo combat. You are entirely alone, drawing on everything you have been taught and using those skills as cleverly and effectively as you can. This is so unlike being on, say, a football team, where you are running with the pack.
Perhaps today’s tennis players would have been medieval knights while team players would have been their hunting prey?
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England - A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
Ian Mortimer – Bodley Head
I won’t be a spoil sport and tell you too much about health and hygiene or food and drink in the Middle Ages. Their idea of an appetiser would have sent me straight to the great white telephone, or its medieval equivalent. Fine dining it was not. And as for the jiggery pokery that passed for medicine, let’s just say, a short and brutal life would have been preferable. Here’s a little taster on women just to pique your interest.
In the 1300’s women were described only by their marital state, or lack of it. You could be a maiden, a wife, a nun or a widow. Her status depended on the man who supported her so, for the maiden that was her father. For the wife it was her husband. She was subject to his authority. She could not, apparently, resist his sexual advances. She could not borrow money, sell property or make a will without his consent. I think this started to change in the 1970’s? Not sure; ask yisser mammies. Anyway, back to the 1300’s, nuns were ‘brides of Christ’ and who am I to argue with that? The best thing to be was a widow or an old spinster because they were the only ones who had any degree of independence.
They really took the whole ‘Eve’ thing very seriously back then. Women were blamed for everything. Society believed the Aristotelian dictum that women are nothing more than ‘deformed men’. It stands to reason even in modern times doesn't it? As Joe Brand reminds us, it’s that darned penis that prevents men from doing so much. Once you discover that you are the owner of such an appendage it rules you out of following simple recipes, doing a ‘proper’ grocery shop or hovering the house. So, if the dinner is a disaster, the larder is bare or the visitors can write their names in the furniture it’s the woman’s fault because she does not have a penis.
But then, back in the 1300’s, if you were a man and you survived beyond sixty you were regarded as an embarrassment, no longer able to fulfill your dominant manly role. What would they have made of Silvio Berlusconi?
The Earliest Songbook in England – Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.17(1)
Performed by Gothic Voices and directed by Christopher Page, we’re talking seriously early music here. Some dude – one of the few lucky enough to be literate – so it was most probably a monk - transcribed an anthology of songs around 1200 – fifteen years before the signing of the Magna Carta. According to Christopher Page the book was discarded within a generation or so. It only survived because somebody decided to use the pages as flyleaves for another book. He accidentally did us a favour and the material remained hidden and safe for about six hundred years.
This recording is part of the Hyperion Helios series. You can see the catalogue at www.hyperion-records.co.uk.
Better still, you can sample each track on:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-earliest-songbook-in-england-mw0001378714
So what was happening around this time? In 1200 the Jews were expelled from England. In 1203 Philippe Auguste II of France threw the English out of Normandy. Cambridge University was founded in 1209. In 1200 the Anglo-Normans were still busy parceling out Ireland among themselves.
If you close your eyes you feel like you are on the set of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal while you listen to this – but don’t do that if you are driving!
Copyright Berni Dwan 2015
Michael Prestwich – Thames & Hudson
A stunningly beautiful little book that gives you the how, what, where, which, what of becoming a fully-fledged knight, so pay close attention and study carefully. It’s one of those little hard backs that you just want to hug. I picked it up in Foyles bookshop in London, one of my favourite places in the whole world.
If you belonged to the ruling classes and you were male it was more than likely that you would become a knight, and as such, suitable childhood pastimes were recommended, or not, as the case might be. Geoffroi de Charney had some insightful views on the subject, views I am not totally in disagreement with. De Charney was opposed to boys playing ball games. But then comes the bit I do disagree with; he regarded ball games as suitable only for girls and women.
For the lads though, tennis was an exception in the ball department. The most desirable pastime of all though was hunting because it provided excellent training for war.
But the tennis thing makes complete sense to me. Tennis matches are bouts of solo combat. You are entirely alone, drawing on everything you have been taught and using those skills as cleverly and effectively as you can. This is so unlike being on, say, a football team, where you are running with the pack.
Perhaps today’s tennis players would have been medieval knights while team players would have been their hunting prey?
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England - A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
Ian Mortimer – Bodley Head
I won’t be a spoil sport and tell you too much about health and hygiene or food and drink in the Middle Ages. Their idea of an appetiser would have sent me straight to the great white telephone, or its medieval equivalent. Fine dining it was not. And as for the jiggery pokery that passed for medicine, let’s just say, a short and brutal life would have been preferable. Here’s a little taster on women just to pique your interest.
In the 1300’s women were described only by their marital state, or lack of it. You could be a maiden, a wife, a nun or a widow. Her status depended on the man who supported her so, for the maiden that was her father. For the wife it was her husband. She was subject to his authority. She could not, apparently, resist his sexual advances. She could not borrow money, sell property or make a will without his consent. I think this started to change in the 1970’s? Not sure; ask yisser mammies. Anyway, back to the 1300’s, nuns were ‘brides of Christ’ and who am I to argue with that? The best thing to be was a widow or an old spinster because they were the only ones who had any degree of independence.
They really took the whole ‘Eve’ thing very seriously back then. Women were blamed for everything. Society believed the Aristotelian dictum that women are nothing more than ‘deformed men’. It stands to reason even in modern times doesn't it? As Joe Brand reminds us, it’s that darned penis that prevents men from doing so much. Once you discover that you are the owner of such an appendage it rules you out of following simple recipes, doing a ‘proper’ grocery shop or hovering the house. So, if the dinner is a disaster, the larder is bare or the visitors can write their names in the furniture it’s the woman’s fault because she does not have a penis.
But then, back in the 1300’s, if you were a man and you survived beyond sixty you were regarded as an embarrassment, no longer able to fulfill your dominant manly role. What would they have made of Silvio Berlusconi?
The Earliest Songbook in England – Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.17(1)
Performed by Gothic Voices and directed by Christopher Page, we’re talking seriously early music here. Some dude – one of the few lucky enough to be literate – so it was most probably a monk - transcribed an anthology of songs around 1200 – fifteen years before the signing of the Magna Carta. According to Christopher Page the book was discarded within a generation or so. It only survived because somebody decided to use the pages as flyleaves for another book. He accidentally did us a favour and the material remained hidden and safe for about six hundred years.
This recording is part of the Hyperion Helios series. You can see the catalogue at www.hyperion-records.co.uk.
Better still, you can sample each track on:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-earliest-songbook-in-england-mw0001378714
So what was happening around this time? In 1200 the Jews were expelled from England. In 1203 Philippe Auguste II of France threw the English out of Normandy. Cambridge University was founded in 1209. In 1200 the Anglo-Normans were still busy parceling out Ireland among themselves.
If you close your eyes you feel like you are on the set of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal while you listen to this – but don’t do that if you are driving!
Copyright Berni Dwan 2015
