Originally posted 6th July 2024
Peter Abelard was the son of a knight born in around 1079 in Brittany, who went on to become one of the leading philosophers and theologian of his day and a colourful personality whose doomed romance with one of his students - the equally gifted scholar and writer Heloise, who he later married - led to his castration on the orders of her guardian. After that, he retired to a monastery and Heloise took vows as a nun, though the two continued a correspondence discussing theology and the problems of their relationship, as well as continuing to develop the philosophy often attributed to Abelard alone. She went on to become an abbess of a thriving convent while he returned to teaching despite accusations of heresy. They are now buried together in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Abelard’s philosophy, developed in uncited collaboration with Heloise, reflects a growing concern with individuals and the sale which was beginning to emerge in the 1100s, especially in spirituality but also in law; Abelard promulgated a view of morality that relied on a person’s intentions rather than the consequences of their actions; giving an example of two wealthy men who intend to establish shelters for the poor, only for one to be robbed before he can do so, meaning that only the other is able to follow through on the intention, he dismissed the idea that the one who wasn’t robbed is morally superior as a result as absurd.
This was also reflected in Abelard’s attitude to sin; he argued that God punishes sin according to a person’s intentions and their deeds are irrelevant; likewise, a sinner could repent of their sins in privacy and silence and that could be enough for pardon even without confession and a public penance, though these were still useful for human reconciliation. Similarly, he argued that Jesus’ death was a demonstration of God’s love which served as an example to humanity, rather than payment of a debt owed to God by humanity. The latter was the mainstream view at the time and Abelard was accused of heresy by none other than the great monastic reformer Bernard of Clairvaux. He and his supporters had to appeal directly to the Pope to defend himself and he died shortly after the Pope had declared he was allowed to teach again.
Originally posted 11th July 2024
The earliest reference in England to a game that might be an ancestor of football (other cultures had kicking-based ball games much earlier) is in the Historia Britonum by Nennius, which was written in the 800s. According to Nennius, when King Vortigern was in search of a boy who was the subject of a prophecy his messengers found the boy in question - Merlin - with some other boys who were playing “a game of ball”. A similar reference appears in 1174, in which at the Shrovetide festival - Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day - all the young men of London are described as going out to the fields for “the famous game of ball”. However, it is not clear what the rules of this game of ball might be; it could be something that would evolve into modern football, or it could be another ball game such as hockey or stool-ball.
Something that is more definitely an example of football comes, sadly, from a court report dated 15th September 1280 of an accidental death which occurred due to a collision during a game. Again, the game in question is just identified as “ball”, but football was certainly already a public nuisance in London in 1314 and the game in 1280 was clearly team-based and violent, matching the description of “the striking of great foot-balls in the fields of the public, from which many evils perchance may arise” in the proclamation banning the game in question from London.
By the time Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales, football was a common enough cultural touchstone that he could describe a knight knocked off his horse during a tournament as rolling along the ground like a football and the Laud Troy Book written at around the same time described severed heads rolling around “As men play at the football”. This was the case despite the fact that football had at this point officially been banned along with other sports and activities that distracted people from archery practice on Sunday: an edict that had probably been a relief to members of the clergy who had been trying to stop their parishioners using churchyards as sports fields for some time. However, football was not universally condemned by the Church; in 1321 Pope John XXII granted a dispensation for a priest who had accidentally killed a friend in a tackle gone wrong during a game of “ball”.
Originally posted 19th July 2024
Early definitions of a valid marriage in the middle ages required consent but defined it as being finalised when the man and woman in question had sex. However, this rapidly became untenable not only because sex could occur outside marriage but also because it raised awkward questions about whether Jesus’ parents were married; since the Catholic church at the time held that Mary remained a virgin all her life, if sex was necessary for marriage she and Joseph must never have married. Accordingly, some formal element was also required. Unfortunately, the introduction of a formal element also made it easier for parents and lords to override the wishes of the bride and groom. This resulted in a more complex doctrine of marriage introduced in the late 1100s by Pope Alexander III.
According to this doctrine, marriage could be contracted by consent without the need for a formal church ceremony, parental consent, or physical act provided the couple pledged themselves to each other in the present tense: “I marry you”. However, this led to further problems; it hinged entirely on the precise words used, possibly in private in an emotional moment. By the 1500s there were four schools of thought just on the phrase “I will have you as my wife”; if it was considered present, that was a valid marriage; otherwise it was only an engagement. In any case, while valid, such a marriage was irregular and couples were encouraged to solemnise their marriage after the fact at the church door in the usual way.
Formal marriages added a lot of publicity and other arrangements to the core act of exchanging vows, which even though most church liturgy was in Latin were always in the vernacular spoken by the couple. Banns were strongly encouraged after 1215 and the preparations for the marriage would include agreements on what property the bride would bring (her dowry) and what she would receive from her husband (her dower) - naturally, this stage was much more important among the nobility - and there might also be a formal betrothal ceremony with promises in the future tense that were not binding until consummated. The vows were exchanged in the church porch and the couple only then went to the altar to be blessed. Afterwards there was a celebration at which the bride’s father or the groom might throw a feast or - in poorer communities - neighbours might bring their own food and ale and possibly gifts to help the new couple set up home. Finally, the priest blessed the marriage bed, the guests put the couple into it, and then the door was closed.
Originally posted 26th July 2024
The Prittlewell princely burial was a high-status burial in the village of Prittlewell in south-east Essex, discovered during an archeological investigation of the future site of a road expansion on the site of a known Anglo-Saxon cemetery dating to around 500-700. The cemetery was discovered in 1923 and included a number of “warrior” graves: graves with swords, shields, and spears. In 1930, more graves were found, these ones including ornate jewellery and believed to be the graves of women while the others were graves of men. It’s been suggested that the cemetery was segregated by gender, but the most exciting find was an intact chamber grave which had probably originally been covered by a burial mound.
The burial was originally a rectangular hole lined with upright timbers, with a wooden roof. When this roof collapsed, the contents of the burial chamber were sealed in with everything close to its original positions; the large copper-alloy bowl that was the first major find was still on an iron hook attached to the remains of the planks of the wall. While, as at Sutton Hoo up the coast in Suffolk, the acid soil had dissolved the body, small metal items such as shoe buckles survived and suggest that the deceased was a man, laid with his feet towards the east. He was laid in a wooden structure - probably a coffin but possibly something more complex such as a bed - and surrounded with luxurious feasting gear. His body was also decorated with two small gold foil crosses which may have been attached to a veil or shroud and strongly suggest that he was Christian despite the pagan appearance of his heavily-decorated grave. Such crosses have not been seen anywhere else in Britain, though they were common in what is now Italy, south-west Germany, and northern Switzerland.
Comparisons with the Sutton Hoo burial are inevitable; there was even a pristine gold belt buckle, though the Pricklewell buckle was much less ornate than the Sutton Hoo buckle. Both burials contained a sword and shield befitting a politically-powerful warrior, an iron object that appears to have been some sort of standard, various cups and other vessels including a cauldron, and even a lyre and gaming pieces. Despite the similarities, the Prittlewell grave was not as rich as the Sutton Hoo grave, though it comes in second place among those we know about. In one more similarity with the Sutton Hoo burial, we can use the writing of Bede to make a guess at the identity of the occupant; we know the Prittlewell prince was a Christian leader of the East Saxons with links with Kent and this matches the description Bede gives of Sabert, who died in 616 leaving three non-Christian sons to succeed him and - Bede implies - was not buried alongside his uncle and overlord Ethelbert of Kent in the church Ethelbert built in London.