The Birth of Heraldry in the Middle Ages

By Rosanne E. Lortz

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that average readers see the entire span of the Middle Ages as a homogeneous mass of history. They assume that everything from the fall of Rome up until the Battle of Bosworth is filled with highborn damsels in flowing dresses and armored knights with lions rampant on their shields.

"The Accolade" by Edmund Blair-Leighton

The King Arthur legend has not helped matters. Arthur supposedly lived in the sixth century—that beginning of the Middle Ages which is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages—however, many of the legends and tales concerning him and his Round Table were invented during the High Middle Ages, six hundred years later.

Naturally, these tales took on the clothing and characteristics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rather than the realities of the sixth, further muddling up our ideas of what part of the Middle Ages looks like what. The complex system of knightly tournaments and symbolic heraldry in the Arthur legends makes us assume that such was the case through the whole of the Middle Ages.

My first novel, I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, is set during the fourteenth century, in the chivalric world that many associate with the whole of the Middle Ages. But when I began researching my second novel, Road from the West, a tale of the First Crusade set at the end of the eleventh century, I found myself having to expunge many of my “stock” medieval notions in order to be more authentic to the time period.

Two hundred and fifty years can effect radical changes. The differences between the eleventh century knight and the fourteenth century knight might not be quite as dramatic as the differences between the Lexington militiaman and the modern day Navy Seal, but they are there nonetheless.

One example of the difference is in the use of heraldry. In the fourteenth century world of the Black Prince, every character had an emblem on his shield, specific colors in his banner, and a motto he had adopted—many of these devices having been passed down from father to son. In the eleventh century, these defining characteristics of knighthood had not yet developed.

Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes:

Heraldry—the systematic use of hereditary devices—attained its maturity under the later Plantagenet kings. Symbols like the Roman eagle, the dragon of Wessex and the Viking raven had been known for centuries, but these belonged to peoples, not particular people.

At the time of the Norman Conquest, a mere thirty years before my setting of the First Crusade, we begin to see knights taking up specific symbols for themselves, but, according to Hallam, these “seem to have been personal rather than inherited.” 

Francois Velde writes:

The Bayeux tapestry provides a terminus a quo: no heraldry there. Combatants have designs on their shields, but the same design is seen on different individuals' shields (even on opposite sides of the battle) and the same individual uses different designs at different times.

In other words, the symbols adopted by eleventh century knights seem rather random, and certainly not something passed from father to son. It is not until the twelfth century when we see the Plantagenets taking the golden lions for their coat-of-arms and passing them down from father to son.

The nondescript knights of the Bayeux Tapestry

So why the change? Why do my knights of the First Crusade have no family crest to deal with, whereas my knights of the Hundred Years’ War are awash in stripes, blocks, chevrons, lions, dragons, and other heraldic beasts?

Velde says the change was

 …due to the evolution of military equipment from the late 11th to the mid-12th c, with fighters unrecognizable under their helmets (there is a nice illustration from the 11th century Bayeux tapestry showing William lifting his helmet so as to be recognized by his troops in battle). This led fighters to paint emblems on their shields. The question is then to establish a proper chronology of this emergence and of the transformation of these emblems into armory, i.e., constant use of one design by the same person and application of strict rules in the design itself.

Hallam agrees with this assessment. “Protected by an enveloping helm instead of the old open-faced Norman helmet, knights were unrecognizable in battle or tournament except by the devices emblazoned on shield, surcoat (or ‘coat-of-arms’) and horse trappings.” 

The greater protection afforded by the new helmets also afforded a virtual anonymity. To be recognizable, a knight must adopt a consistent symbol which others would associate with his name.

Velde (summarizing the work of heraldry expert Pastoureau), says that we can distinguish two phases in the birth of heraldry: “the transformation of decorative motifs painted on shields into permanent and individual emblems (1100-1140) and the transformation of the latter into hereditary emblems subjected to precise rules (1140-80).”

So, that red flag that my eleventh century Duke Bohemond flies from the towers of Antioch? A mere whim. No connection to his family heritage. Probably only hung there because he liked the color red.

Those three golden lions on my fourteenth century Black Prince’s shield? The established coat-of-arms of the Plantagenets, seen in an early form on Geoffrey of Anjou’s shield, seen again as a pair of lions on Henry II’s shield, and formalized to three lions in 1198.

Just one of the many differences that two-and-a-half centuries make in the complex period known as the Middle Ages….

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Greenwich Editions, 2002.

Velde, Francois. "Origins of Armory." Heraldica. http://www.heraldica.org/topics/origins.htm

English vs. French: The Hundred Years' War and Its Effect on Language

By Rosanne E. Lortz

“…we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

The St. Crispin’s Day speech, written by Shakespeare and placed in the mouth of King Henry V, contains some of the most stirring phrases in the English language. Yet, interestingly enough, that very language might not have been what spilled from Shakespeare’s pen had the Hundred Years’ War not been fought.

Before the war began in 1337, French—not English—was the language of literature and the language of the aristocracy in England. It does not take much digging around to unearth why. The Norman Conquest in 1066 established a monarchy and a ruling class who spoke French, and the later Plantagenet kings—Richard the Lionheart comes to mind—continued to spend as much (or more) time in their continental holdings as they did in England.

English, the language of the conquered Anglo-Saxons, existed of course, but only for menial, non-important purposes. Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes that:

Although in 14th century England everyone spoke some form of English, French was still the language of polite society, and used for less formal governmental business which was not transacted in Latin. The country gentry and middle class continued to use French for normal correspondence: there are almost no extant English letters before 1400. Proclamations in London were still made in French, which was also the language of the law….

So what changed? How did the language of English gain ascendancy over French? Hallam hypothesizes that, “the transformation was almost certainly a result of the surge of patriotism and nationalism associated with the Hundred Years’ War: the French language came to be associated with the enemy.”

During the same time period that the battles of Crecy and Poitiers were fought, schools began to use English in the classroom as a medium with which to teach Latin. And in 1363, a couple years after the treaty of Bretigny, “parliament was opened by a declaration of the summons in the native tongue,” something that had previously always been done in French. According to the philologist Oliver Farrar Emerson, “Soon English petitions to parliament, English wills, letters, and gild statutes appear.”

Because of the war with France, the language of English began to be used by all levels of English society for all manner of purposes. Books were the last hold out. But by the last quarter of the century, Geoffrey Chaucer showed that the vernacular could be a fitting vehicle for great literature, and English began to be used in that arena as well.

The change in language effected by the Hundred Years' War was radical. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, French was the accepted language of all formal discourse in England. By the end of the fourteenth century, Oxford University was forced to urge the learning of French “lest the Gallic tongue be utterly forgotten.”

Which leads us back to one of those interesting what-if’s in history: if not for the Hundred Years’ War and the animosity it created between French and English, would the Bard’s St. Crispin’s Day speech have been written entirely in French?

“…nous frères d’armes.”

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Emerson, Oliver Farrar. “English or French in the Time of Edward III.” Romanic Review 7.2 (April-June 1916): 127-143.

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2002.

"The Pope May Be French, but Jesus Is English!": England and the Avignon Papacy

by Rosanne E. Lortz

“The Pope may be French, but Jesus is English!” It’s a zinger that always brings a laugh in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale.

While most of this “period” film is the product of the screenwriter’s fertile imagination, this particular line is culled from the pages of history itself. It was a statement the exultant English made after the Black Prince trounced the French in the early part of the Hundred Years’ War, and it was what the English bitterly believed—and not without reason—all throughout the fourteenth century.

Battle of Crecy (1346) 

England’s connection with the papacy goes back to the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons by Pope Gregory I. Later, King Alfred, as a young child, went on a pilgrimage to Rome, asking the pope to intercede with God in prayer for the English as they battled the invading Vikings.

In the lay investiture controversy of the high Middle Ages, the popes supported the archbishops against the kings of England as Anselm clashed with the Conqueror’s sons and Thomas Becket battled Henry II. This controversy climaxed in the early thirteenth century, with King John capitulating to Pope Innocent III and even rendering him fealty for the country of England.

England, technically, now belonged to the pope, and in return for John’s allegiance, Pope Innocent helped his “vassal” against the French king Philip Augustus.

This concord between the pope and England did not last long, however, due to the close connection that formed between the see of Saint Peter and the throne of France. In 1309, Clement V, a Frenchman who had been elected pope, refused to go to Rome and moved the papal seat to Avignon. For the next 67 years, the pope ruled from that French city.

As might be expected, the pope’s favor was now heavily weighted toward the French, and much of the papal policy during this period was directly due to the French crown’s influence. In England there was a “manifestation of popular feeling” against the prejudiced papacy. Historian Henry Dwight Sedgwick writes that, “the English people believed, and so did the Prince of Wales with a vengeance, that [the papacy] used all its influence on behalf of France.”

In 1374, the Black Prince’s father, Edward III, called a council with all the bishops and lords of the realm to ask their advice on a certain matter. One contemporary chronicler describes the scene thus:

Then the Chancellor announced that the cause of the convocation was this: ‘The Pope has sent to our Lord the King a bull in which he writes that, as he is the lord of all temporalities through the vicarate of Christ, and also the spiritual and paramount lord of the Kingdom of England through the gift of King John, he commands the King to levy a tax to aid him against Florentine rebels and others, and not to delay sending it to him….

In plain and simple terms, the pope was trying to strong-arm money out of King Edward. The council had been called because the king wanted to know if he was theologically obliged to pay it.

The chronicler goes on to tell how the Archbishop and all the bishops of the realm agreed with the pope’s demand, citing the standard example of the two swords (as outlined in the papal bull “Unam Sanctam”). In a nutshell, the “two swords” doctrine used the Bible verse Luke 22:38 (“And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.”) as proof that all spiritual and earthly power had been given to the pope as Peter’s successor.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the possible author of the "two swords" doctrine

According to his churchmen, King Edward was obliged to pay the pope’s tax.  It was not the answer the king wanted. He did not want to give money to a lackey of the French king.

At this point, John Mardisle, a Franciscan friar and a master in theology whom the king had especially invited to the council (and perhaps conferred with beforehand?), stood up to challenge the prevailing opinion.

He quoted [Christ’s command to Peter]: ‘Put up thy sword unto the sheath,’ and showed that the swords did not signify such powers; for Christ did not possess temporal lordship, and did not pass it on to His disciples, but taught them to turn from it. This he proved by Holy Writ, by the Gospels, by the opinion of learned men…and by the decretals themselves he showed that the Pope admitted that he did not have universal lordship.

Such was the friar’s eloquence that he convinced all present (although, to be fair, the king and his lords were only too happy to be convinced) that the pope was overreaching his power when he demanded money.

The Archbishop, in somewhat of a huff that his opinion had been disregarded in favor of John Mardisle’s arguments, remarked snarkily that, “There has been good counsel in England without Friars.”

But the Black Prince, as much averse to the papal tax as his father, responded with equal acidity: “Because of your foolishness we were obliged to call them. Had we followed your counsel, we should have lost the Kingdom.”

On the next day, when the Archbishop and prelates of the realm were again asked by the king to give their opinion on the matter, the Archbishop—who seems to have still been in quite a snit—said that he did not know what to say. The Prince, according to the chronicler, responded, “Answer, you Jackass! It is your business to instruct all of us.” (The chronicler takes pains to excuse the prince’s rude behavior, for “when he was ill, the wild Plantagenet blood unloosed the customary restraint of his gentle manners.”)

And with the Black Prince berating him thus, “the Archbishop answered: ‘My voice is that the Pope is not lord here,’ and all the prelates accordingly said the same.”

With this victory, the prince, it seems, was not yet willing to let the subject alone. “What has become of the two swords?” he asked, rubbing salt in an open wound.

“My Lord, I am better instructed now than I was,” replied the cleric who had voiced the doctrine the previous day.

And so, thanks to the arguments of the Franciscan friar, King Edward refused to pay the tax to the pope with a clear conscience.

Papal Palace in Avignon, France

It was not long after this incident that the Avignon papacy came to an end, and Pope Gregory XI returned the seat of the papacy to Rome in 1376. With the pope no longer under the thumb of the French king, English antipathy toward the papacy abated.

The French, however, were loath to lose their influence over the highest churchman in the West. They backed a rival claimant to the papacy, and a second pope, known as the antipope again set up rule back at Avignon. This instigated what is known as the Great Schism with two different popes both claiming to be the true successor of Saint Peter.

The schism was over a political rather than a theological matter. The kings of Europe took sides, with England, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Scandinavian countries accepting the Roman pope, and France, Scotland, and the Spanish kingdoms siding with the usurper in Avignon. The matter was not fully resolved until 1418 at the Council of Constance where the rule of the Roman pope was upheld.

Once again, England was able to be on proper terms with the acknowledged head of the Western church…for another century, at least, until Henry VIII would behave with as much belligerence as the Black Prince, berating his bishops until they agreed that, “the Pope is not lord here.”

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boniface VIII. "Unam Sanctam, 1302." Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/b8-unam.asp

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. The Black Prince. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

Castles and Siege Ladders

by Scott Higginbotham

I walked the walls for a spell, clearing my head, wishing I could catch some rest.  It was obvious who had shot Howard Tyburn.  My wife was an amazing woman.  I laughed a little, wondering how else I would be surprised. 
Still, as I strolled, I chewed my nail, trying to concentrate.  The men manning the battlements had clustered on the eastern walls and east-facing towers, loosing a quick shot when Tyburn’s mercenaries came into range.  I stopped and rested my arms on a stone block, looking right and left. 
I was alone. 
But something was out place on this deserted stretch of wall. 
Ladders.
Six. 
And then seven. 
We had been fooled.

Your home has oftentimes been likened to your castle.  It’s a place of refuge during the storms, both literally and figuratively; it is meant to withstand the battering of the elements.  But what if your home is actually a castle?  The inside contains the hall, hearth, and heart – everything you hold dear is ensconced behind the walls. There is little difference when it comes to the things that matter, except for sheer size.

There are many ways for a besieger to get inside; however, not all are easy.  In fact, once a castle is buttoned up it becomes quite difficult.  The besieged have the distinct advantage of height from which to fire volleys of arrows, loose crossbow quarrels, drop heavy objects, or dump barrels of burning liquid.  A handful of soldiers can keep hundreds at bay with the strategic placement of towers and their adjoining wall walks.

But once a path to the battlements is secured, then the situation rapidly deteriorates.  That handful of defenders now flees from the hardened besiegers streaming onto the battlements.

Access can be gained by a siege tower, but if time is short then scaling ladders of various types can work just as well if there is a clear stretch of wall. Trees have to be felled, the straight pieces identified, the rungs made and fitted into the bored out holes on the rails. Getting close enough to the walls requires sheer bravery and heavy covering fire while two stout soldiers lug the ladder to the wall.  Sound easy?

Most of us envision a rickety set of poles with equally shoddy rungs secured with frayed rope. A handful of soldiers then scramble up the ladder, some falling to the left or right, some landing on their comrades below.  And just when a hearty soul’s kettle or open-faced helm approaches a merlon gap the ladder is effortlessly tipped backward, sending gear and men crashing to the ground.

Not so, if some thought is put toward the task.  The image below and on the right hand side depicts some ways of gaining access into a castle, ranging from scaling ladder to siege ladder, with a couple of other ingenious methods to boot.  Perhaps one method is a hasty means of escape!

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923

Siege ladders are cumbersome and are of more stout construction than your typical ladder – they have to withstand armored men tramping up the rungs and have to endure the rigors of warfare.  If fabricated and placed correctly, they are quite stable and are a quick and easy path up and over the walls.  Simply driving the ladder off the wall with a pole or halberd in the hands of a defender is not so simple.

If done correctly.

The ladder can be secured to the wall by driving the bottom poles into the ground, often aided by spikes driven into the wood.  Also, a rope passed through iron rings driven into the wood can be secured to a wooden wedge driven into the wall with a similar ring.  This is no easy task encased in mail or plate.  Speed, coupled with sheer numbers assaulting the walls, simultaneously, can even the odds of survival and success.  The odds of a defender picking you off lessens the quicker you are and whether or not you get lost in the crowd.

Climbing 15 or more feet into the air on a ladder, exposed to various missiles and heavy objects and firebrands requires a special breed, someone stout of heart. However, those that pull the short straw and have to scale the ladder don’t have to shoulder all the risks. Covering fire can keep alert defenders down long enough for a path over the wall to be made. Wooden mantlets are portable shields on wheels that can be quickly moved into a place to defend those going over. Designs and size vary, but they can provide a short window of opportunity.

This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less

Battles can turn on a silver penny.  Like the tide, there can be a quick, overwhelming rush that destroys, or it can rapidly recede into a rout. For any siege device or weapon to succeed, timing and strategy are paramount. Sun, clouds, fog, rain, and utter darkness can be leveraged by either besieger or besieged.

The key is staying two moves ahead.

Enjoy the video.  Much is packed into such a short clip!

~~~~~~~~~~~~   Scott Higginbotham is the author of A Soul’s Ransom, a novel set in the fourteenth century where William de Courtenay’s mettle is tested, weighed, and refined, and For a Thousand Generations where Edward Leaver navigates a world where his purpose is defined with an eye to the future.  His new release, A Matter of Honor, is a direct sequel to For a Thousand Generation.  It is within Edward Leaver's well-worn boots that Scott travels the muddy tracks of medieval England.