Thinking Medieval

by Carol McGrath

It is always difficult for the writer of historical fiction to completely slip into the mind set of a particular era. The old adage applies- "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." Sometimes, the best that fiction writers can do is to be aware of the thinking that dominated a particular era and to create within an historical story a sideways glance to fool us into believing in the authenticity of the recreated world. Writers achieve this through meticulous research about day to day life such as clothing, homes, architecture, country, town, food , occupations and so on.

Inside the Kitchen of a Medieval Castle

For my first set of novels which have been set in medieval England, Denmark, Ireland and Russia I did, in fact, research how religion dominated contemporary thought. The Norman Conquest, for example, brought a significant wave of religious changes to England. Before the eleventh century, the English Church was a Royal Church. It was freer than the Continental Church. For example, there was a Bible in the Vernacular. Ordinary people could understand the Mass and Plain Song which was not always conducted or sung in Latin.

Southwall Minster

William the Conqueror sailed to England from Normandy with the Pope's banner fluttering amongst his pennants. In partnership with the Church, he had been able to claim support for what he 'sold' as a crusade against the perjurer King Harold. Harold had sworn to support William's claim to England's throne on relics gathered from all over Normandy. This event is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry and is recorded in many Norman Sources of the period. At the time the reforming Roman Church was  was increasing its control.  The Augustine Reforms were aimed at preventing priests from marrying and bishops from holding more than one see simultaneously, amongst other agendas. After the Norman Conquest, Cathedrals replaced old Minsters, just as castles represented secular control over the kingdom. There was the tightening of an already existent Feudal System.

Harold's Oath as depicted on The Bayeux Tapestry

The Church controlled peoples' thoughts. A duel interactive secular and non secular control meant that individuality of thought was suspect. People, of course, had personal conflicts. They cherished emotions such as love, jealousy, greed, joy, sorrow etc. None the less, the Church controlled their souls and, as a consequence, the way these emotions played out. Think of Heaven and Hell paintings in Medieval Churches. Consider reenactments of Biblical, particularly Apocryphal episodes that were dramatized for audiences from Church to market place. Simply, people believed in Divine Providence as the cause of human affairs.

Medieval Heaven and Hell Depiction

Society was organic. This was in itself Body Politic. By this, I mean that each member of society was meant to work in cooperation with all others, each performing its divinely appointed and fixed function that in turn contributed to the welfare of the whole. Antithetical movements were dangerous. Why did Robin Hood live as an outlaw? Why was Wat Tyler's rebellion ruthlessly quashed? Medieval thought process continued into the Tudor period despite movements such as Humanism which encouraged study and discussion of texts, despite the rise of the merchant middle class, despite the increase of literacy with the development of the printing press. Despite all these factors, the early Tudor monarchy fostered a sense of unity and common purpose.

Robin Hood, the rebellious thinker.

However, change was in the air. Men began to seek for policies that might create a new England. It was initially more of a literary than political movement. In fact, new concepts had emerged in literature between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. A social comment is apparent in Piers Plowman, a text which blended secular and religious problems into a single moral analysis pointing out society's ills. It is not the same as addressing these ills. There remained the sense that social problems were moral in origin. Landlords, tenants, churchmen would all suffer in proportion to their sins. If individuals acted towards each other as Christian precept would have them act, the conflicting situation would vanish. There was no real thought given to manipulating social problems such as poverty prior to the Elizabethan Age using governmental legislation.  The ideal remained that of an ordained society of rigid divisions dependent on the proper conduct of each person in his or her appointed place. Moreover, usury was a sin!

Thomas More educated his daughters, was a Humanist thinker but would not criticize the Church

Human nature outs. With huge profits to be made for merchants, particularly cloth merchants, with the printing of Bibles in the vernacular, with increased literacy, the dissolution of monasteries, enclosures of common land for profitable sheep farming, individualism emerges within society during the sixteenth century. In England, people are not quite controlled in the same way by the Church and State as they were in the era of Heaven and Hell paintings and reenactments of Biblical and Apocryphal episodes that were dramatized throughout the land on saint's feast days. Society begins to break free of the notion that the process of knowledge is only completed by one's elevation to a state of grace achievable only by each member of society performing its divinely appointed and fixed function for the welfare of the whole.

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Carol McGrath's The Betrothed Sister, to be released in September, is the third in Carol McGrath's acclaimed historical series, the Daughters of Hastings Trilogy.

Carol McGrath lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and family. She taught History until she took an MA in Creative Writing at The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast, followed by an MPhil in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her debut novel, The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066 entitled The Daughters of Hastings, was shortlisted for the RoNAS, 2014 in the historical category. The Swan-Daughter and The Betrothed Sister followed to complete this best-selling trilogy. Carol reviews for the HNS. She is the co-ordinator of the 2016 Conference in Oxford.  Find Carol on her website:

www.carolcmcgrath.co.uk.

Facebook: The Daughters of Hastings series

The Handfasted Wife
The Swan Daughter
The Betrothed Sister

Wilton Abbey and The Bayeux Tapestry

by Carol McGrath

There is a strong argument that panels of The Bayeux Tapestry may have been embroidered at Wilton Abbey. The Bayeux Tapestry is generally thought to have been the product of Canterbury where Bishop Odo, who was responsible for the new Church at Bayeux, had his headquarters. One of the most mysterious vignettes on the Tapestry supports the possibility of Wilton's connection with its construction, depending on its interpretation.

A Cleric and Elfgyva (just to the side Harold is pointing)

The inscription above this particular vignette has the title 'Where a Cleric and Elfgyva...' We ask: Who was this lady? Why was she included in the Tapestry?  There is a suggestion that Elfgyva was Harold's sister (M.W. Campbell, 1984, E.A. Freeman 1867-9), and that she was alive at the time of Harold's visit to Normandy in either 1064/5 and that she was well-known to a contemporary audience. She is mentioned in The Domesday Book along with other members of the Godwin family. Elfgyva is connected with lands held by the Abbess of Wilton Abbey. Now, why might this lady depicted on  the embroidery be Harold's sister?

• She was Abbess of Wilton from 1065-67, the time scale of the events depicted on the Tapestry.

Queen Edith is kneeling at her husband's death-bed.

• Queen Edith was strongly connected with Wilton and, interestingly, one of the other two vignettes which feature women depicts Edith Godwin, wife of Edward the Confessor rubbing his feet in the death-bed scene. She was also at the abbey during 1065 supervising building work of a new abbey church just as her husband was responsible for the new Westminster Abbey consecrated in January 1066. The third vignette of a woman fleeing a burning house before the battle could also be a Godwin woman, Edith Swan-Neck, King Harold's hand-fasted wife with his youngest son Ulf.

A House Is Burned

• Earl Godwin had his daughters educated at Wilton and Harold's youngest daughter was educated there during this period. There was a school for young noblewomen attached to the abbey.

Looking closely at the vignette--one wonders if Harold, who seems animated, is drawing attention to her and telling William something about her. The cleric draws attention to her eyes. Perhaps Harold is telling William and others present, including his brother, Wulfnoth and his nephew Hakon, hostages living at William's court about the miraculous healing of Harold's sister's eyes by St. Edith of Wilton Abbey. Now who could that priest be and why in the Tapestry border below the vignette is there naked male genitalia?  To understand how this connects with Harold's sister one can turn to Goscelin's story.

Saint Edith of Wilton

Goscelin was Chaplin to Elfgyva and he tells the story in 1080 of how St Edith who was the daughter of King Edgar and a woman, Wulfrith, whom he had seduced when visiting the abbey school. Wulfrith returned to the abbey with their baby daughter Edith and became a nun. Edith remained at Wilton all her life. The next king her half brother, Athelred II, built a chapel for her.

After she was interred there prayers were answered and miracles occurred. She quickly became a saint. Elfgyva was lighting a lamp in the chapel which overturned burning her. Her right eye became badly swollen. She lost her sight. However, while she slept she had a vision of St Edith making the sign of the cross over her and telling her all would be well. When she woke the swelling went down and she regained her strength. It is just possible that Harold is telling William this story. The gateway by which she stands is another clue. Goscelin gives details as he also gives details of Westminster Abbey, details that do appear for both on the Tapestry.

Holy Trinity Church Bosham, Harold's Church

The cleric is emerging down some stone steps at an entrance porch. Two double doors are depicted, with crosses set on them. The entrance to this chapel is also described in a fifteenth century poem just as it appears on the Tapestry. The cleric drawing attention to Elfgyva's eyes is surely Goscelin himself, her chaplain. She is standing in her own gateway at Wilton Abbey, just as the abbess of Wilton appears on her Anglo-Saxon seal.

As for the naked figure in the border there is a possible explanation there too, associated with St Edith's story and Wilton Abbey. She is the only woman named on the Tapestry therefore this was obviously an important scene for those making it. The embroiderers throughout convey realistically the typical Wilton chequer-board style of architecture. These are squares made of flint and stone!

It is also likely that Goscelin who was also chaplain to Queen Edith, composed the Vita Edwardii Regis. His description of Westminster Abbey is just as the abbey appears exactly half way through the Tapestry. Further reasons that the Tapestry may have been embroidered at least in part at Wilton are:

• Praise for Queen Edith's family. Harold is depicted nobly with hawk and hounds as he rides to Bosham.
• A team of embroiderers may have wanted to show a portion of the Tapestry showing Queen Edith's new building.
• Queen Edith was an expert embroiderer, one of the greatest in the land, seriously educated and religious and also she was pragmatic towards the Invasion. She was at Wilton during the 1070s.
• This adds weight to the argument--Muriel, a poetess and possibly Odo's sister, was a widow and lived as a nun at Wilton during the 1070s.
• Could the Tapestry be seen as a memorial to the dead, Norman and Saxon?
• Pragmatically, the Norman story takes up the second half of the work restoring the balance from it being Godwin orientated.
• The story of Elfgyva and her miraculous cure from blindness may foreshadow the death of Harold during which scene he is struck down by an arrow and then hacked to death. Foreshadowing Roland's death in the popular Song of Roland occurs early on in the poem with Charlemagne's vision. A contemporary audience, used to miracles and visions would have understood why Elfgyva and Goscelin were there. The embroiders are denoting the place where a cleric and Elfgyva are performing a miracle.
• So was the Tapestry embroidered at Wilton and is it, in fact, a memorial to the dead!

I would like to acknowledge Patricia Stephenson whom I heard give a paper on this topic at The British Museum. It is titled Where a Cleric and Elfgyva.

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Carol McGrath is the author of The Handfasted Wife, the story of Harold's common-law wife and a woman's perspective on the events of 1066. It is available as a paperback and for all e readers.