Culture

To hell and back

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Visits to or visions of the afterlife are a common motif in western literature. Odysseus visited the land of the dead and saw his mother. Aeneas traveled to Dis to find his father, and learn of the future of the Romans. These exploits continued after Christ, but of course took on a Christian character. There are dozens of examples. If only someone would collect all these Christian visions into one book…

Out of the four dozen examples found by Eileen Gardiner, there are five that were relatively recent to the population of the eighth century. Two are related by Gregory of Tours in the sixth century, two came from Britain in the early eighth century via the Venerable Bede, and one is related by Boniface. There is a second vision in Boniface’s letters that Gardiner did not mention, which gives us a half-dozen fresh voyages to the nether regions for us to investigate.

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Roman roads

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While rivers have always played an important role in commerce and conquest, if you really want to get things done, you have to have roads. The Romans understood this better than anyone, and their road network is a testament to their foresight, energy, and engineering acumen.

Why discuss Roman roads in a website devoted to the eighth century? Because the roads were essential to Carolingian expansion and imperial development, just as they were to the Romans. Let’s consider an example.

In 734 Charles Martel was expanding his kingdom into Provence. One of the lordlings who offered resistance was chased from Marseilles into Avignon, at which point he made the unfortunate decision to ally himself with the Muslims of Septimania. Charles proceeded to lay siege to Avignon and defeated Frank and Arab alike. After defeating the occupiers Charles turned west and laid waste to a host of Muslim towns in Septimania, from Nimes to Narbonne. He then turned and besieged Avignon a second time, as the Muslims had made a second sortie and recaptured it. All of this was accomplished in the span of a single campaign season.

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Muslim funerals – in France

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We have spent some time looking at the Muslim presence in western Europe during the early medieval era, including a survey of the age, a review of Martel’s campaign in 727, as well as the ever-popular Battle of Poitiers. There are plenty of primary and secondary sources available for anyone who wants to know more. One point worth noting is that our information is almost exclusively textual, as the archaeological evidence is practically non-existent. Until now.

Excavations carried out in 2006 by the French rescue archaeology company INRAP1.Last seen excavating a well packed with bodies. in the city of Nimes revealed three Muslim burials. Recently eight of the investigators released a multi-disciplinary study in the journal PlosOne that opens a fresh chapter on the study of eighth century Muslims in France.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Last seen excavating a well packed with bodies.

Did early medieval medicine ever work?

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An unfortunate popular view of the “Dark Ages” is that life was nasty, brutish, and short. A scratch from a scythe was certain death, right? In a couple of earlier posts I looked at both disease and what might be called conventional medicine. While the saint’s lives are full of demonic possessions that look to us a lot like epilepsy, medical practitioners had a reasonable body of knowledge from which to draw. But what about medicine in the real world?

Wooden foot ringIt doesn’t take too much effort to find a few examples of practical medicine which allow us a view into a side of daily life that is often obscured by popular imagination and overlooked by the sources. A few years ago Austrian archaeologists excavated a sixth century Merovingian grave that revealed a medical surprise. The occupant, a middle aged man, had lived for a least a couple of years after somehow losing his foot and ankle, and had gotten around on a prosthetic foot! The artificial foot was made of wood and leather, with a base made of an iron ring of some sort. No, I don’t know what that vicious looking spike coming out of the ring was for.

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Monk’s lives, in words and a picture

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There are two outstanding documents that define the life of a Benedictine monk in the abstract. Both are purely theoretical, in that they do not deal with any particular instance or event, but rather prescribe what should be. One of these documents consists of words, while the other is a drawing.

The first is the Rule of Benedict, the collection of rules written down by St. Benedict himself in the 6th century. The Rule comprises 73 different chapters (or rules, I suppose) that cover a wide range of topics. Benedict describes the proper amount of food and drink for monks, how to welcome guests, correction of the young,1.Boys who don’t understand how severe a punishment excommunication is “should either be punished by means of severe fasting or chastised with harsh beatings to cure them.” In case you were wondering. Rule 30. “The times for singing Alleluia,” and many other matters.

The Rule, as you may have gathered, is a comprehensive list of dos and don’ts that regulate monastic living. Part of detailing life in the monastery inevitably requires some description of different roles that need to be fulfilled, as well as the inevitably hierarchy that evolves whenever groups of people come together and organize themselves.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Boys who don’t understand how severe a punishment excommunication is “should either be punished by means of severe fasting or chastised with harsh beatings to cure them.” In case you were wondering. Rule 30.