Medieval Mondays: Saint Lucy with her eyes on a plate

Perhaps it's because I wasn't raised Catholic, but I still do a double take at some of the images of saints. Take Saint Lucy, for instance, who is commonly portrayed holding a pair of eyes on a plate, as you can see in this Spanish painting from the late 15th or early 16th century.

They're actually her eyes, despite the fact that in this picture she has a pair of perfectly good ones in her head. Hey, she's a saint, she can do that sort of thing.

Saint Lucy or Lucia was a Christian martyr who lived from 283-304 and was killed during the great persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Diocletian. Like many Christian martyrs, she was killed after refusing to make sacrifices to the Imperial cult.

She was said to have been killed by a sword, but a much later tradition grew up that she had her eyes gouged out first. In another story, she took out her own eyes because they were so pretty they were attracting unwanted attention for this woman who taken a vow of chastity. Today Saint Lucy is venerated as the protector of good sight.

Medieval Mondays: Why Did Leprosy Disappear from Europe?

They are one of the enduring images of the Middle Ages. With their horrible open wounds and missing fingers, lepers caused fear and revulsion wherever they went. In some places, they still do. While leprosy is hard to catch, the simple medicine of the time didn't know this and had no cure. A disease so horrible, people thought, must be contagious.

It was also considered a judgement from God. In some areas, lepers were forced to stand in an open grave as a priest declared them dead. They were forbidden from living in towns or cities and had to wear bells in order to warn people of their presence.

Leprosy was widespread, with up to one in 30 people affected in some areas. But by the 16th century it was disappearing. Why?

A recent archaeological research project set out to answer this question. A team of archaeologists and biologists exhumed the bones of medieval lepers and sequenced the DNA of five strains of the leprosy bacteria. They found no significant difference between medieval leprosy and the strains still found today in Asia. The disease hadn't become any less virulent, so why did it die out?

It appears it was the victim of its own success. People have a genetic level of resistance to particular diseases. Those who were most susceptible died from it and didn't pass on their genes. Leprosy was one of the few grounds for divorce in medieval Europe. Only those individuals who had stronger resistance to leprosy remained, and thus the disease all but died out in Europe.

Medieval Mondays: St Catherine: the saint saved from the wheels

Hello again! As I mentioned before, I've been busy writing The Maze of Mist, my fantasy novel set in the same world as Roots Run Deep. Now that that's in edits, I can get back to blogging.

This fine alabaster carving from London's Victoria & Albert Museum was made in England in the 15th century. It shows angels releasing St Catherine from certain death on the spiked wheel, a particularly nasty form of medieval execution. According to legend the wheel shattered and the flying pieces killed her executioners and the people who had gathered around to watch.

Of course she ends up martyred when another group of executions behead her. This is a common element in saints' stories. The evildoers are punished, but since it's God's will that the saint be martyred, the saint eventually gets killed.

Small alabaster plaques like these were common in churches and private homes during this period. What's unusual with this image is that St. Catherine is shown half naked.

Medieval Mondays: Previous popes who have resigned, part two

Last week, I talked about the early popes who resigned, or at least are said to have resigned. The records are scarce for the early Papacy. In this second of my two-part post, we're on firmer ground in the Middle Ages.

The most colorful pope from the last post was Pope Benedict IX, who turned the Vatican into a giant block party and got bribed to resign in 1045. The guy who bribed him, who then became Pope Gregory VI, soon had to resign himself. While everyone appreciated his getting rid of Benedict, he had committed the sin of simony--paying for holy offices. So in 1046 he had to go.

For a time the Popes managed to keep their office until their death. There wasn't another resignation until Pope Celestine V in 1294. Celestine only spent five months on the throne of St. Peter before he decided the job wasn't for him, issued an edict saying it was OK for popes to resign, and left to live the life of a hermit.

His successor, Pope Boniface VIII, worried that he might change his mind and so he threw Celestine into prison, where the hermit-turned-pope-turned-hermit died ten months later. Celestine was later canonized and Boniface was lampooned by Dante in his Divine Comedy.

The next resignation came when Pope Gregory XII stepped down. This was a time of deep schism in the Church. Two rival popes had set themselves up at Avignon and Pisa. Both had considerable support. Kingdoms lined up to put their weight behind one pope or another. World War One looked like it would break out 500 years early.

The Church Council of Constance met in 1414 to avert disaster. Gregory and the pope from Pisa agreed to step down in 1415. The Avignon pope refused and was excommunicated. The Council then elected Pope Martin V.

From then on no pope has resigned, until this week.


Image of Pope (later Saint) Celestine courtesy Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Medieval Mondays: Previous Popes Who Have Resigned

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the Catholic world by announcing he would resign. The media were quick to note that this hasn't happened in centuries. Little information was given about other popes who resigned. Who were they, and why did they give up a position that's supposed to be ordained by God and last for life?

It's unclear who the first pope was who resigned. The records for the early popes are sparse and unreliable. It's said the first Pope to resign was Pontian, who served from 230-235. He was exiled and forced to work in a mine during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Maximinus Thrax and is said to have resigned so a new man could serve as pope in Rome. Pontian died in exile.

Pope Marcellinus (296-304?) may have resigned during the persecutions of Diocletian. Some sources say that under pressure, he offered up sacrifices to the pagan gods and then resigned in disgrace. Other sources deny this. Pope Liberius (352-366) may also have resigned in order to clarify the succession with a rival who claimed the papacy, but this is also disputed. Another dubious claim says that Pope John XVIII (1004-1009) resigned in order to live as a monk.

We're on firmer ground with Pope Benedict IX. He became pope in 1032 and led a dissolute life, conducting orgies in the Vatican and bumping off political rivals. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia calls him a disgrace. He was kicked out of Rome in 1036 but had powerful political allies and soon returned. In 1044 he was kicked out again, but returned the next year. More pressure was put on him and in 1045 he was bribed to resign. Benedict decided he liked the power that came with the Papacy and clawed his way back the next year.

The pressure on him proved too great, however, and he was driven out of the Lateran Palace by irate German troops. In 1049 he was excommunicated. His tomb in Grottaferrata Abbey, Italy, is shown in this Wikimedia Commons image.

Tune in next week to learn about the other Popes who have resigned!

Flying penises of the Middle Ages

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. It's a penis with wings from the British Museum. This little guy is a lead badge that would have been worn by pilgrims to medieval holy sites. They were so common back then that this particular item can't be dated with any precision. The most precise date the curators could come up with was 400-1500 AD.

There were many badges sold as mementos and good luck charms at pilgrimage sites back in the Middle Ages. Some were of eyes or legs to help with ailments to those particular body parts. These are still used in Mexico. The penis, however, was popular for giving luck and, of course, love and fertility.

This pewter phallus badge dates to the 15th century and sold for £190 ($300) at Timeline Auctions.

This one is a reproduction by Medieval Market of a Dutch flying penis dating to around 1375-1425.

Flying penises weren't always beneficial. At a witchcraft museum in Spain I saw a display telling how in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, women would often go to work as fruit pickers away from home. Sometimes they'd encounter a flying penis and become pregnant. Whether the guys back home really believed this story or not is another question.

Flying phalli have a long history. They were popular with the Romans. This bronze tintinabulum form the first century AD was a common garden wind chime. They were a good luck charm and protected the household from evil. This photo was taken by Darren Foreman in the British Museum.

It seems strange that the Catholic Church would allow such randy items at its holy spots, but the church was a bit strange at times. There were abortionist saints, carvings of naked women in church, and all sorts of other craziness. One researcher even made the controversial claim that the Catholic Church allowed gay marriage.

Medieval Mondays: Ottonian Ivory

One of my favorite artistic movements of the Middle Ages was the creation of ivory miniatures during the Ottonian Renaissance (c. 951 – 1024). Launched by the German Ottonian dynasty, this was a flowering of art and culture heavily influenced by the earlier Carolingian Renaissance and contemporary Byzantine artistic styles. The Ottonian kings ruled over much of Germany and Italy and called themselves the "Holy Roman Emperors", a title used by many rulers before and since.

The renaissance encompassed all forms of art but I've always been most impressed by the ivory miniatures ever since I first saw them in the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert in London. The photo above is of a diptych made in Trier at the end of 10th century. It shows two scenes: Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and The Doubting Thomas.

This is a situla, a bucket for holding holy water. It's carved with twelve scenes from the Passion of Christ arranged in two rows and was probably made around 980 for the visit of Emperor Otto II to Milan.

This also comes from Milan around 962-973 and was donated to Magdeburg Cathedral by Otto I. It depicts the Flagellation of Christ.

All images courtesy Wikipedia.

Christianity reached Vikings earlier than previously thought

A new excavation is pushing back the date for the introduction of Christianity among the Vikings.

Archaeologists working at Ribe Cathedral in Denmark have found Christian burials from the mid ninth century in the graveyard. They all faced east and had no grave goods in keeping with Christian tradition. Viking burials almost always included grave goods and generally did not face east.

Traditional history says that the Vikings in the area were converted after King Harold Blutooth was baptized in 963. On his famous Jellinge Runestone, shown here, the king boasted that he "made the Danes Christians”. Some historians have contended that he was only making official a slow process of conversion that had started long before. These graves seem to confirm that, and bring up the question of whether there's the foundations of an older church underneath the cathedral at Ribe.

Sorry for my recent silence, but I've been busyworking on the latest book in the Timeless Empire series. I've even put a word counter on the sidebar to keep me motivated! Book One, Hard Winter, is already available, and Book Two, At the Gates, is being prepared for publication. It should be availabe in the next two weeks.

Photo courtesy Sven Rosborn.

Medieval Mondays: Abortionist saints in Medieval Ireland

While abortion has been considered a sin by the Catholic Church for many centuries, the history of the Church's views on it aren't completely straightforward. A new article in the Journal of the the History of Sexuality tackles the unusual topic of saints who performed abortions.

Dr. Maeve B. Callan found references to four early medieval Irish saints who performed miraculous abortions. Callan writes, “these accounts celebrate saints who perform abortions, restore female fornicators to a virginal state, contemplate infanticide, and result from incest and other ‘illegitimate’ sexual unions. Moreover, the texts themselves generally reflect a remarkably permissive attitude toward these traditionally taboo acts, an attitude also found in Irish penitentials and law codes.”

All four saints--Ciarán of Saigir, Áed mac Bricc, Cainnech of Aghaboe, and Brigid of Kildare--lived in the fifth and sixth centuries but like other saints, tales of their deeds survived long after that.

Saint Ciarán helped out a nun who had been raped by the local king: “Ciarán, despising the enormity of such a crime and wishing to apply a cure, went to the house of sacrilege to seek the girl from there. . .Then the man of God, led by the zeal of justice, not wishing the serpent’s seed to quicken, pressed down on her womb with the sign of the cross and forced her womb to be emptied.”

The other saints' stories are similar. An interesting detail is that in later versions of this tale, Saint Ciarán only blessed the nun's womb. The act of pressing down on it (a primitive and dangerous abortion technique) was left out.

Callan hasn't found any evidence for abortionist saints in other medieval cultures. It would be interesting if other scholars probed deeper into the hagiographies of their regions to see if any similar stories exist.