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Shedding Some Light on Those Beastly Dark Ages
I saw this story the other day, and sent the link to my stepdaughter and sister at approximately the same time as my stepdaughter sent the link to me and my sister, and only a moment or two before my sister sent the link to my stepdaughter and me. The circle of life. Connections. Not quite psychokinesis, but almost. I love it when that sort of thing happens among those I love.
It’s the story of an 11th-century nun at a small German monastery just south of what is now Frankfurt. The monastery was completely destroyed in a fire in the fourteenth century, but records remain, and the nearby cemetery has been excavated. Among the remains retrieved are those of a nun, aged somewhere between 45 and 60 when she died in approximately AD 1100.
What puzzled and fascinated scientists were the blue flecks in her teeth. (What puzzled and fascinated me is how she apparently had, well into middle age, managed to hold onto such a fine set of choppers at all, given what we think we know about the times in which she lived. But I digress.)
Blue flecks. Teeth.
Scientists, studying her teeth and the plaque that had accumulated on them (no Obamacare. No dental insurance. No regular six-month cleaning and polishing) noticed that it contained a number of brightly colored flecks that they couldn’t explain, but which they didn’t think could be ascribed to her diet (which is the thing they were actually researching). So they sent some scrapings off for X-ray spectroscopy and were shocked when the substance was identified as tiny bits of lapis lazuli, a rare, semi-precious stone mined, at the time that the nun lived, only in northeastern Afghanistan.
Why would a small German monastery have access to this rare and beautiful rock, and what could it possibly be used for?
As it turns out, that’s an easy question to answer. Lapis Lazuli is the source of ultramarine blue, a pigment used in only the most highly priced and decorative illuminated manuscripts, and only by the most experienced and expert of scribes. After all, you wouldn’t want to waste any, after its almost 3,000-mile journey on the Silk Road to your little cloister and into your tiny scriptorium.
All the evidence points to this unnamed nun being a skilled painter of manuscripts and one who worked at her calling for years (given the layers of plaque and the depth and number of colored flecks in her teeth). And this has turned at least more than one assumption about the soi-disant “Dark Ages” on its head.
First: Historians are beginning to rethink the network of connections and the depth and complexity of the trade routes at the time. After all, if a small, undistinguished, little monastery like this one had ultramarine blue pigment for its scribes to use, it must have had access to, and traded with, the folks selling it.
Second: You know all those stories you’re used to hearing of the monks saving Western Civilization by copying ancient texts, in the monastic libraries (about the only thing those “Dark Ages” ever seem to get any credit for)? And you know those illuminations, showing them, cloaked almost from head-to-toe in their religious habits, working away, writing, drawing and painting like mad? Saving Western Civilization? For us “ungrateful little twerps“? (One of the funniest scenes, from one of my favorite movies.)
Get ready for a gender-bending exercise, courtesy of a small 11th-century lady who, as was standard practice during her lifetime, and as part of her life’s work, used to moisten her paintbrush now and then by putting the end of it in her mouth and adding a little saliva to make the color flow.
Ready?
Some of those men were almost certainly women.
And the best part? No gruesome surgery or trans, or dis, figuration was required for them to live their dream and do the work they were born to do, hundreds of years before most people believed such a thing was even possible, or that such a thing could stand.
Just a bit more evidence that really, people haven’t changed much over the last millennium. And I’m glad.
I agree. Apparently, a number of them did fall down (of course, we don’t know much about them), but the ones that remained standing are utterly incredible.
I mentioned Worcester Cathedral in a previous comment. It’s my “hometown” cathedral, and I’m very fond of it, not least because it is large enough to be incredibly impressive, but small enough that it can be taken in and digested. It also escaped most of the depredations of that so-and-so Henry VIII, because his elder brother, Prince Arthur, is buried in the chantry. My favorite space is actually the crypt, which dates from the tenth century and which is marvelously cool and peaceful.
But my favorite church anywhere is the old church of St. Nicholas in Oddington, Gloucestershire. A holy place if ever there was one.
Cathedrals don’t just “remain standing”. Immense resources are expended over centuries to keep them maintained. If they were to be abandoned they’d start to deteriorate pretty quickly.
I don’t mean to minimize the achievements of those medieval architects and engineers, but rather to acknowledge the devotion of all the people over the centuries who keep them standing.
Whenever there’s discussion of ancient architecture, I find the original builders get a bit too much of the credit for the structures’ longevity.
Of course. As many of them have (deteriorated). Apparently, though, quite a few of them fell down without even that much encouragement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvais_Cathedral
^This one is infamous for it’s very precarious state. That it has stood so long is rather miraculous. Beautiful, but really dangerous too.
That one looks amazing!
It’s also amazing, as that article hints at, how much damage the Victorians did to old buildings in their fanciful “restorations”. Glad that one somehow escaped.
The general ignorance of the Middle Ages is astonishing. What they lacked in scientific development they made up in core values. Great piece She.
Thanks very much. It’s just a fascinating subject, I think. The pieces pretty much write themselves.
What I find most amazing about the Gothic cathedrals is that many of them took generations to build. How did people maintain their purpose for over 100 years? We could never do that.
It is absolutely lovely. In the woodlands, so peaceful. Here are a few pics from my last visit with my Dad, which was in 2007:
This last one is a piece of Stained Glass in Great Malvern Priory, another little gem of a church. It’s one of the oldest pieces of original stained glass in England, dating to about 1480:
The National Cathedral in Washington DC took 83 years to build (though like its medieval forebears, what was finished was put to use as they went along, even as work progressed elsewhere). It wasn’t “finished” until 1990.
So we can do that still, but don’t necessarily need to. @concretevol posted about one he helped build – took a lot less time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_National_Cathedral
Have you read Sarum, by Edward Rutherford? He’s not one of my favorite authors, and he can be pedantic and tedious (or so I think), but I did like this one book of his. Much of it is about the building of Salisbury Cathedral.
I love the National Cathedral!
Hah! I estimated it. The one @concretevol built, I mean. Not the other. It was one of our steps up to multi-million dollar jobs.
Yeah, I remember as soon as I stepped away from the keyboard that you work with him and knew all about it, far far more than me. Forgive me for, um, preaching to the choir?
I’ve only seen the blueprints, not the structure. Titus has seen more than I have. I keep meaning to go by and look at it.
You know, when I started reading your post and you referenced an 11th century nun from Germany who was artistic, I thought this was leading to St. Hildegard of Bingen. You want to read about a truly great woman of the Middle Ages look up St. Hildegard.
From Salisbury Cathedral.
In 1991, I was privileged to spend three weeks in Cambridge at a UCLA summer program. We stayed in Trinity Hall College, and I studied Medieval English Society with a professor from Gonville & Caius College. Universities and monasteries kept and transmitted knowledge during the medieval period, and we went on many field trips to surrounding sites. I wrote it up on my personal blog, where I posted many pictures.
One of the assigned readings for my class was the journals of one Jocelyn de Brakelond, a monk at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in Ely. I was fascinated at his stories of “palace intrigue” in the monastery, and I sure was reminded that human nature never changes. This is the gravestone of Abbot Samson, who was Jocelyn’s Abbot.
Yeah, literacy appears to have been a lot more common in the medieval and ancient world than used to be assumed. The discovery of the Viking kefli- wooden sticks with runic messages on them- had similarly quotidian contents, e.g. “Thorbjorn delivered five tuns of ale to Gunnar in return for ten bales of homespun wool” and “Hallfred, your wife is looking for you.”
Just lovely, thank you. And a beautiful post and photos you linked to, as well. Steeleye Span is one of my favorites too! I never saw them live, but I’ve seen Maddy Prior on her own in Cheltenham.
Here they are, from 2016 with the song that “made” them, on this side of the Atlantic, at least. Her bell-like timbre has largely gone, but I like this version. It has the voice of experience about it: “He’s a false, deludin’ young man, Let him go, farewell he!” You go, girl!
I didn’t know about those! Thanks. I love those little insights into the lives of real people. I’m worried about Hallfred, though. I wonder what happened to him. Hope he was OK and was returned to the the bosom of his loving (nagging?) wife. Maybe there’s a story in there somewhere . . .
A beautiful story, @she, in so many ways. Thanks so much!
I think the world’s oldest “Yo Mamma” joke was recently translated from cuneiform tablets.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/ancient-tablet-world-oldest-yo-mama-joke-sex-beer-humor-article-1.1015067
Drat. The Daily News is not currently available in the European Market they tell me.
Yes, a very interesting book and I thought of it while reading the OP. I’m not positive but I think I heard about the book from a Jonah Goldberg podcast or article. The sequel, “1493” is also good.
You guys are being too offhanded. No amount of maintenance will preserve a badly built building. Here’s the Amiens Cathedral, opened 1270.
Tell me that the building is not a miracle of construction.
Can anyone name three cathedrals that fell during or shortly after construction? I can’t. In France I can think only of Beauvais, but that was a partial collapse. But I don’t know the British cathedrals.
Disagree. I’m not being offhanded at all. Many of the cathedrals, churches, and other buildings, were, indeed, badly built. And some of them fell down because of it. Many of them were, as you say below, miracles of construction. I don’t find those two ideas mutually exclusive.
A google search on “medieval cathedrals that fell down” will provide some examples. I don’t think I was specifically referring to “British cathedrals.” No one here (that I’m aware of) is doubting the spectacular achievement of the cathedral builders.
She, I must protest your rebuttal. Nothing “badly built” survives from the 13th century.
Using your search terms, one learns that the wooden spire in Tewksbury cathedral fell 400 years after construction (bad building!), that the nave and transept at Malmsbury fell in a storm 380 years after construction (more bad building!), that Ely suffered a loss of the nave about 200 years after construction.
There is only one 400 year old church in the continental USA, Mission San Miguel in Santa Fe. Built in 1610 but rebuilt a century later.
So in my opinion, only the collapses of Ely and Beauvais can qualify as bad building.
My point about the British is that I don’t know their cathedrals, having never studied nor seen them. Reading about all of these English cathedrals has whetted my appetite, when can I go over and visit Canterbury, Salisbury, Ely, Lincoln? Life is too short…
I don’t think we’re that far apart on this . . . I think my first comment was something to the effect that a bunch of medieval churches did fall down, but that we probably don’t know much about them. Because they’re not here anymore. I have that sense because I read it, and it was told to me more than once in one or another Art History, or Ecclesiastical History course. So, I believe it to be true.
I am glad you’re a fan of British cathedrals, and I hope you can cross the pond sometime and visit some of them. Be sure to include some of the smaller ones (I’ve mentioned Worcester before), and perhaps a few abbeys (Bath Abbey is particularly nice, IMHO).
Shrewsbury Abbey church is nice too, but, but in the wake of Henry VIII’s dissolutions, much of that cathedral was torn down (as was most of the rest of the monastery), and what remains of that church is really just the nave and stubs of the transepts. The original choir, and the full transepts are long gone now (the choir now present was a later addition when the church was brought back into service).
Yes, it’s nice. I visited on a little ‘Cadfael’ trip a number of years ago. on the subject of ruins, Tintern Abbey is spectacular.