Medieval Mondays: A Poisoner's Ring from Bulgaria

Archaeologists working in Bulgaria have found a 14th century ring that may have been used to slip poison into someone's drink, the Sofia Globe reports.

The ring, which was found at the fortress of Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea, is small and would have probably been worn on the little finger. It has a box-like decoration that's hollow and has a small hole on the side that would be covered up by the ring finger. All the wearer would have to do is spread his fingers and the contents of the box would spill out, supposedly into someone's drink.

Similar rings have been found elsewhere in Europe, especially Italy and Spain.

It's of a style generally worn by men. The archaeologists theorize that it played a part in the political intrigues of the day, when aristocrats vied for control of Bulgaria and even played a role in Byzantine and Venetian politics.

Last year a vampire skeleton was found in Bulgaria. Sounds like it was quite the place in the good old days!

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: Sunstone found in English shipwreck

In a previous post I talked about the Viking sunstone, a legendary crystal that could detect the location of the Sun on cloudy days. This, of course, would be a boon to navigation in the age before GPS.

Sunstones are mentioned in some Viking sagas and historians have theorized they were double-refracting crystals such as cordierite, tourmaline, or calcite, which are common in Scandinavia. These crystals only allow light through them that's polarized in certain directions and thus appear darker or lighter depending on the polarization of the light behind it. While the Sun may be blocked by clouds, it's still sending out a concentration of polarized light that can be detected by the crystal as it's moved around.

But that's only a theory. No sunstone has ever been found. . .until now.

A team of French archaeologists studying artifacts from a British ship that sunk in 1592 found a rectangular block of Iceland spar calcite crystal, a type known for its double-refracting properties. The wreck was near Alderney island in the English Channel.

You can see the sunstone in this picture, next to a pair of dividers that may have been used for navigation. Both items were found close together in the wreck.

It's interesting that the sunstone was found on a ship dating centuries after the Viking era. It looks like these things were more popular than anyone ever suspected.

Photo courtesy Alderney Society.

Medieval Mondays: Mons Meg, supergun of the Middle Ages

When we think of the Middle Ages we don't usually think of artillery, yet black powder cannons were around for most of that period. The first European cannon was depicted in a manuscript in 1327. Within a hundred years they were becoming commonplace.

They were a cumbersome and slow to load, so mostly were used for sieges. Soon, though, they began to be used on the battlefield and even on ships. In the 15th century there was an arms race to see who could build the biggest cannon. One of these giant cannons, called bombards, was Mons Meg, which you can see at Edinburgh Castle.

It was made in Burgundy in 1449, one of the centers for artillery production at the time, and was given as a gift to King James II of Scotland in 1457. It weighs more than 15,000 pounds, is 15 feet long, and fired stone balls 20 inches in diameter and weighing 400 pounds. It was supposedly made for James II to knock down castle walls. Records show that it had a range of more than two miles!

Like the typical big guns of the era, it was made from long iron bars fused together and strengthened with iron hoops. This was so much like making a barrel that the term "barrel" began to be used for the long tube of a gun.

Sadly, it no longer works. It was fired for the last time in 1680 by an English gunner. The Scots say it was blown up on purpose because the English were jealous of the Scots having such a huge gun. Ah yes, bombard envy!

This was also the era that saw the development of medieval firearms.

Photo by Phil McIntosh.

Medieval Mondays: The Globus Cruciger, proof that people knew the world was round before Columbus

There's a popular belief that people didn't know the world was round back in the Renaissance and that it took a brave explorer named Christopher Columbus to prove them wrong. Supposedly everyone warned Columbus not to sail out into the Atlantic because he'd fall off the world's edge.

Of course my readers are smart enough to know this isn't true, but the story has widespread appeal. Anyone who has studied history knows that the Classical Greeks had already proven that the world is round and that knowledge wasn't lost among the educated.

Proof of this can be found on many medieval coins and statues. A traditional mark of Imperial or royal power was the Globus Cruciger, a globe with a cross on top of it to show that the Christian God ruled over the world and that the ruler was his representative on Earth. The globe, of course, symbolized the Earth.

Yep, a globe!

The earliest use of the Globus Cruciger for a ruler is found on the coins of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, who ruled from 408 to 450 AD. You can see one above. The cross-and-globe was a popular symbol throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance and continues to be used in royal courts to this day. To the right you can see an illustration of Charles II of Hungary made in 1488, four years before Columbus made his first voyage.

So the idea that the world was round was plainly visible in the royal court and on many works of art and currency. Of course a lot of common, uneducated people back then probably did think the world was flat!

Photos from Wikimedia Commons.