The Journey from Gaufridus to Shakespeare.

The earliest known plays in England were the Mystery plays.  Such plays consisted of biblical stories arranged in cycles around themes associated with major holy days.  The first records of the plays date from the early 14^th century, a century after the first spoken Mystery/Miracle plays are recorded in Germany and France.

The long development of such plays may have begun as early as the 4^th century with pageants presented in many major European cities.  These festival pageants included what, in England, came to be called “dumb shows”.  These followed the leaders of the city marching in procession, dressed in their public finery.  Variations of time and place apply.

During the 11^th century, France and Germany brought their dumb shows inside of churches and cathedrals to enact the Stations of the Cross and related scriptures during Lent services.  One or more of the priests would read an explicatory text in Latin while the dumb show was being performed.  The common members of the church — for whom such shows surely were primarily intended — being unable to understand Latin, the churches eventually convinced Rome to allow the texts to be read in the vulgar languages.

Claims have been made that one Geoffrey (Gaufridus), a Norman schoolmaster (Lector) at the school at Dunstable, England, actually wrote the first Mystery play in the country in 1110.  This is due, it would seem, to a hurried reading by Thomas Warton, the author of the famous History of English Poetry.[1]  Geoffrey is recorded, in fact,  as having made (“fecit”) an entertainment (“ludus”) commonly called a “Miracle” (quem “Miracula” vulgariter appellamus).[2]

The players wore choir copes for costumes.  After the Miracle, Geoffrey’s chambers caught fire and the copes and his books went up in  flames.  He joined the Order of St. Alban’s, which ran the school, because he was unable to reimburse the Abbot for the loss. Eventually, he himself became Abbot.

If Geoffrey was light-years ahead of most of his fellow scholars, however, the “making” would only have amounted to writing the exposition for a dumb show.  If he was only up with the latest trends (a thing rare in insular England), the “making” would have  amounted to writing staging directions, descriptions of the physical acts to be performed and identifying the marks to which the players were to proceed.

The first record of biblical pageants regularly being performed in England date from 1318. The characters still did not have spoken parts. They played their dumb shows on platforms pulled from crowd to crowd by horses.  These were necessarily very small.[3] Range of motion was strictly limited.

Soon text was being composed for the characters to speak.  The earliest known text would seem to date from around 1340.[4]  The texts make clear that the plays consisted of set speeches and long passages intended to describe the action that could not otherwise be portrayed.  They were in English.

English plays remained unchanged for nearly 200 years.  The Italians chaffed at having to act their plays on tiny platforms in churches, and, during the 15^th century, began building large outdoor wooden scaffolds — some three stories high — laid out to resemble church interiors.[5]  Free of holy spaces, they realized almost immediately that they were also free of the holy texts.  They were the first in Europe to perform modern secular plays.

In the meantime, the tiny English stage continued to be drawn by horses behind the authorities on festival days.  It took Henry VIII breaking from the Catholic church before secular plays began to be performed.

The new secular plays did not arise out of whole cloth, though.  At first the stages remained small and the scenes were limited to a small number of actors (most generally three).  As at the beginning of a Mystery play cycle, one dominant actor opened each play setting the scene for the audience.  Most scenes featured a main speaker briefly punctuated by another (or two).  They spoke in variations of rhymed seven-stress and ballad lines precluding natural speech.

The first step away from the Mystery plays was toward the ancient classics.  Still the stages were small — in most places a platform in a modest room.  Seneca, a classical playwright who also had to work with small stages, in his own day, became the next model for proceeding.  The opening speakers in Seneca’s plays spoke still longer monologues in order to set the scene.  The end of the monologue and appearance of a second speaker marked the beginning of the second scene.  All but the choruses of Seneca’s plays were written in unrhymed hexameters and promised much more natural speech once his model would become pervasive.

Even the 1566 play Gorboduc —  generally considered the first modern English play —, however, a brief and revolutionary first dialogue scene is followed by a series of set speeches by King Gorboduc and his senior counselors in order to set the scene.  This even though the play was acted at the Inns of Court which provided one of the few large stages of the time.  Still more, each act is dutifully preceded by a dumb show.  Centuries of tradition were not going to be ended without a protracted struggle regardless of improved logistics.

As I have pointed out in the appropriate appendix of my variorum edition of Ulysses and Agamemnon, Ulysses’ famous long set speech at the beginning of the play argues forcefully for 1584, the date it appears in the records of the Court of Elizabeth I, rather than 1599, the date its text was gathered into Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.  Actually, 1584 is a bit late for the practice.

---

[1] Warton, Thomas. The History of English Poetry Hazllit, ed. (1871)., II.216.

[2] Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani A.D. 793-1290 (1867), 73.  “Legit igitur apud Dunestapliam, expectans

scholam Sancti Albani, sibi repromissam ; ubi quemdam ludum de Sancta Katerina,—quem “ Miracula “ vulgariter appellamus,—fecit. Ad quæ decoranda, petiit a Dunstaple. Sacrista Sancti Albani, ut sibi capæ chorales accommodarentur, et obtinuit. Et fuit ludus ille de Sancta Katerina.”

[3] Davidson, Charles. Studies in the English Mystery Plays (1892), 93.  “It seems, then, that shortly after the confirmation of Corpus Christi in 1318 pageants of the Biblical story were introduced in conjunction with the banners of the crafts. These at first were mute mysteries expressed by action. In a short time, however, spoken drama, found also in isolated cases in France, became an established custom in England.”

[4] Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. 14 (1901), 63.  “The earliest MS. play extant is found in the British Museum, Harleian MSS. 2253, and dates from the early part of the reign of Edward III., circa 1340.”  Earlier texts may since have been found but I’ve yet to learn of them.

[5] Davidson, 76. “This stationary platform, often of great size and sometimes of three stories, with Hell beneath and Heaven above, and crowded with persons and paraphernalia, was a distinctive feature of the continental play. To this the English cycles presented a marked contrast. The gild plays of England changed the station of the continental stage into a movable pageant, or platform, and instead of calling the population of a city to the stage, rolled the platform through the streets in orderly succession from audience to audience.”

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• A Medieval Hodge-Podge. March 17, 2019. “The hogge pot had already existed for centuries, however. Many who fail to realize this have given spurious derivations to the name.”
• Henry VII’s Keeper of the Lions, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford.  May 5, 2019.  “The Park, which would seem to have hosted the first porcupine ever to inhabit English soil, was completely enclosed by a wall.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

A Brief History of the Castle Jakes.

Latrines at the
Castle of Marcoussis.

In this Series:

• A Brief History of the Castle Jakes.
• Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.

While our popular histories have no place for exploring the ins and outs of answering nature’s call in the Middle Ages, the subject keeps popping up in the historical records.  Over the centuries, a small group of intrepid detail-ists have gathered together a small collection of facts into their works.

Viollet le Duc, the great French architect, is the go-to guy, now for two centuries, on the subject of the castle jakes.  We learn from his Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture that Landsperg Castle,[1] on the Rhine, erected early in the 12^th century,[2] sported single toilets, strategically placed around the castle, in corbels hollow on the bottom.  The human waste fell down the castle wall to the ground below.   Undoubtedly, the area below the corbel was avoided by all.

The intact corbel that survived long enough for le Duc to study, had a long stone tail at the bottom.  We are informed that the stone was placed there in such latrines in order to block arrows from the bows of besieging forces from inflicting a rather embarrassing death-wound on one or another tenant’s exposed posterior.

What came before this design is a bit more difficult to determine.  No structural latrines tend to be in evidence.  Chambers pots in chambers and under stairwells are supported by circumstantial evidence.  Servants would have been tasked with emptying them in some appropriate place.

Le Duc chose the mid-14^th century Langley Castle, in Northumberland, for an example of the next stage of the castle jakes.  At Langley, instead of a single corbel, each successive floor projected out some four feet further than the floor below from a tower to the southwest.  The projections were built-out into latrines, each with a clear path to the ground.  In modern real estate terms, the castle featured a half-bath at the end of each floor.

The next stage is represented by the Castle of Marcoussis,[3] some 25 kilometers south of Versailles, built in 1409.  Marcoussis also featured stacked projections.  Each floor, however, had four discrete stalls defined by arches.  More still, the bottom of the latrine was not open to the  ground.  It was enclosed in a semi-circular tower housing flues from each level that dropped to a cesspit excavated in the basement.  In order to prevent fumes from the pit traveling upward into the latrines, an outermost flue rose to an upper window to provide ventilation.

Pierrefonds Castle[4] was being built at nearly the same time as Marcoussis.  Its latrine tower, and its enclosed flues, are detached from the main castle edifice, however, in order to suppress odors still more effectively.  The cesspit is ventilated by a vent directly out of the basement wall.

Colchester Castle, in England, also has a detached tower.  This makes it likely that the latrines were added in the 15^th century.  The surrounding walls, however, hold secrets of the castle’s Roman origins and it is not clear that it didn’t have a very different plumbing history than any other castle.  Were the latrines reconstructed from the materials of a totally destroyed Temple of Claudius?  Or did connection points to the cloaca beneath it allow for ancient amenities available only here in the entire country?  All other castles in England were built once and rarely if ever expanded.[5]  But none included Roman stones and stucco and had access to an existing Roman sewer.  This apparently added 15^th century tower appears to violate those rules entirely.

That said, none of these assignments of certain styles to certain centuries should imply that there was the least standardization.  Hampton Court, built in the 15^th century, featured a 14  seat Great House of Easement that discharged directly into the moat.  This likely because water was conveniently at hand and the throwback approach to the problem cost considerably less money.

Royalty and the highest nobility would not be caught dead at the Great House.  Instead they utilized chamber pots and richly upholstered stools, emptied by servants.  Some variation on this arrangement was surely practiced in each castle throughout Europe.

Windsor Castle was built quickly, in the 11^th century, on the plan of an existing Saxon wooden palisade. The dirt ground floors of the palisade remained dirt until the 18^th century when cesspools are also said to first have been installed.  The yards around it that were brought within the castle precincts also offered ground floors of dirt.  This made it preferable for pits to be dug in the ground and wooden (sometimes stone) enclosures to be built around them.

Entries in accounting roles make clear that many latrines around the Windsor complex were built over pits excavated in the ground.   A fifteenth century entry shows payment for cleaning the pit of a latrine.  In 1344, a Richard Munday was paid for building a wooden cover over a cesspit of some sort below the chambers of a Lord Vescey, indicating that sufficiently wealthy courtiers did improve their circumstances.

When upgrades were done to the  castle, in the 18^th century, enclosing elevated latrines, in the castle walls, was recorded.  Those latrines are said to have been there since time immemorial.  The resulting flues terminated below ground in 51 cesspools.[6]  Latrines, flues and cesspools were in turn removed during the reign of Queen Victoria.

---

[1] le Duc, Voillet.  Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe ... (1863), Vol. VI, pages 163-170.

[2] Incledon, Charles V. The Taunus; or, Doings and undoings, a tour (1837).  625.  “It is supposed to have been built about 1112 by a celebrated robber knight, and to have, after the death of the knight, (assassinated by one of his own retainers at the instigation of a powerful noble whose wife he had carried off and kept confined in his castle),…”

[3] le Duc, VI. 166-8.  Illustration @ 168.

[4] Le Duc, VI. 167-169.  Illustration @ 169.

[5] Structural modification to castles proper began to be practice more from the reign of Edward VI.  As will be seen, Windsor Castle defies this as all norms.

[6]  Rawlinson, Robert.  “Windsor Castle.  Report on the Sewerage, Water Supply,…” etc.  The Builder, Volume 21.  41-3 @ 42.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.  June 30, 2019.  “But why before the “Third Dormitory”?  And why was  the Third Dormitory built two stories up on stone column-and-arch stilts?”
• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• History of the Medieval Fork… or Lack Thereof. March 28, 2019. “The Italian and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate.”
• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.

Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.

NORMAN DRAWING OF THE PRIORY OF CHRIST CHURCH,
CANTERBURY, WITH ITS SYSTEM OF WATERWORKS.

In this Series:

• A Brief History of the Castle Jakes.
• Sleeping in the Jakes: Civilized Life in the Middle Ages.

The reputation of medieval monasteries has not always been a favorable one.  Even in the Middle Ages itself, stories were everywhere of such holy places given over to the lusts of the body before the fear of God.  When Henry VIII wished to dissolve the monasteries in England those stories were expanded into the popular lurid chronicle of the day providing a pretext for his actions.

That those tales were often exaggerations by persons jealous of the power of the Catholic Church should also be a commonplace but it is not.  When one has his opponent down is not the time to calm one’s emotions in an attempt to determine what is actually just to  do.  

Especially in Protestant regions, the Catholic Church is the embodiment on earth of Satan.  Its history is declared to be one of lust, greed, viciousness, paganism, reactionary brutality and much more.  To point out that the Catholic Church was not the enemy of true morals, science and progress, but imperfectly the opposite, is a solecism even now after centuries.

In 1067, the year after the Norman’s conquered England, most of the Saxon cathedral and grounds at Canterbury burned to ashes or ruins.  The year, then, marks a double transition from the Saxon to the Norman world.  William I appointed the famous Norman Bishop Lanfranc (previously Abbot of St. Étienne, in Caen) to what was left of the charred archiepiscopal seat.

Lanfranc was a famously conservative cleric.  With William I, he was better known, still, as the builder of most of the new construction of monasteries and churches in his Norman domains. He began rebuilding the Cathedral and Monastery of Christ Church along traditional Norman Benedictine lines using the most powerful tools known at the time: Christian self-control, a sense of handing off God’s designs (much grander than any single lifetime) from generation to generation, and the faith to postpone reward (as necessary) for hard work until after death.  Many of the most up-to-date details of the monastery were closely patterned on the Abby of St. Étienne the  construction of which he had managed himself.

Some 75 years later, Archbishop Theobald of Bec (also a Norman import) inherited the responsibility for a much more up-to-date and much wealthier Cathedral and monastery.  It was now his turn to work hard to bring value to God’s corporation[1].

As part of that, it was his responsibility to know the most recent technological advances of the moment and to assess their application to the monastery.  One particular addition to the civilized amenities of the monastery is today’s topic.

At some time between 1148 and 1161, Theobald acquired, as de  facto Abbot of Christ Church, the “concessisse in perpetuum”[2] to the waters of a small lake some three quarters of a mile from the monastery.  The finest Norman engineers were brought in and plans drawn to pipe the water from the lake in lead pipes to the monastery grounds.

The ground plan for running the water through the monastery shows a supreme grasp of the latest technology available at the time.  That technology was, after all, the product almost entirely of Catholic building projects.  Without the organized church most of Europe would still have been gathering in thatched buildings entirely without amenities and ignorant of public hygiene.

The water enters the grounds in its purest state into a cistern in the Infirmary Cloister between Infirmary and the Great Dormitory then to a cistern in the Great Cloister.  From these cisterns the water is dispersed for various uses throughout the grounds.  Waste water is poured into drainage sinks in the Christ Church and the Great Cloister and begins its course back toward the outside world.  Infirmary wastewater drains are not explicitly shown on copies from period drawings but other historical descriptions make it clear that it had multiple means of drainage.

Now that waste water has passed through all of the other buildings on the site, it is passed beneath the kitchens and a building labeled the “Third Dormitory”.  Anyone who has read firsthand accounts of medieval kitchens will know why it was all but last in line to drain into wastewater system.  The smell of kitchen waste was nauseatingly powerful much of the time.[3]  To run it under any other building would have made it uninhabitable.

But why before the “Third Dormitory”?  And why was  the Third Dormitory built two stories up on stone column-and-arch stilts?

Well, another name for the Third Dormitory was the Necessarium.  The necessary.  A.k.a. (in modern times) The Jakes.  The last stop of the wastewater course was along the length of a 50+ seat public latrine.  (So long, in fact, that it was commonly called a ”hall”.)  While the rest of England — including the nobility — being proper Christians, were defecating in any corner that might provide some tiny bit of privacy (or not), and down the discolored sides of castles walls, the monks of Christ Church were sitting on sedilia musing upon how to get that one verse of this week’s plain chant in the chapel just right.  It is true, however, at different points in the monastery’s history, one or more might be thinking instead of the hot little number called “the village grocer’s daughter” (or son) or the new prime beef he’d seen delivered that day.  In a phrase, some of them were living like it was 1999.

But why label it the “Third Dormitory,” it has been asked?  (By myself at first, as well.)  I suspect that the great antiquarian architect Robert Willis was right when he mused upon the duties of the

Circa, or watchman, namely, to examine all the sedilia at night, lest any monk should be asleep there, in which case he is enjoined not to disturb the sleeper rudely by touching him, but quietly to make some little noise or stir that may rouse him.[4]

Sleeping in the Jakes.  The result of eating filet mignon, drinking gallons of wine and lying with the village daughters (…or sons …or goats), one can only presume.  Those lustful, uncivilized monsters!

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[1] a.k.a. the Body of Christ.

[2] concession in perpetuity.  See Willis, Rev. Robert.  Architectural History of the Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church (1869).  Appendix II. 181.  “Sciatis nos dedisse et concessisse in perpetuum pro salute nostra et pro animabus omnium predecessorum nostrorum Dilectis filiis nostris priori et conventui ecclesie nostre in elemosinam et perpetuam possessionem Paulo…” etc.

[3] This and fire danger are why royal chambers were always located as far away from the palace kitchens as could be managed.

[4] Willis, Rev. Robert.  Architectural History of the Conventual Buildings of the Monastery of Christ Church (1869).  88.  Citing Lanfranc's ' Constitutions,' c. 1072; Wilkins' 'Concilia' t. 1, pp. 347, 348. "Circumitores monasterii, quos alio nomine 'Circas'… debet circumire lectos omnium, et omnia sedilia in necessariis, solicite considerans ne forte aliquis frater dormiens ibi remanserit, dehinc revertatur in monasterium," . . . . " vero cum dormientea

invenerit non eos quocunque modo tangat, sed modeste atque ordinate Bonitum tantummodo, quo excitentur, faciat."

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• History of the Medieval Fork… or Lack Thereof. March 28, 2019. “The Italian and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate.”
• Dietary Rules for Barnacles: Innocent III to Gordon Ramsey.  March 4, 2019.  “The Barnacle was a marvel of God, a confusion to those in authority in such matters.  Their people turned to them for clarification.”
• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.

The Chronic Medieval Affliction of Clipping

Eadgar's Pennies.

The aficionado of the English Middle Ages is probably quite familiar with money described as shillings, pence, groats and the like.  Coins, that is, valued by the weight of silver or gold in them.  The names, however, may not bring a realistic picture to mind.  Stephen Leake informs us, in general terms, how metals were coined in an oft-cited passage:

first, it was cast from the melting-pot into long bars; these bars were cut with shears into square pieces, of exact weights; then with the tongs and hammer they were forged into a round shape; after which they were blanched, that is, made white and refulgent by nealing or boiling, and afterwards stamped or impressed with a hammer, to make them perfect money.[1]

Forging small  blobs of metal into a round shape, it should be noted, is a very imperfect art in a process which must move along rapidly in order to provide large amounts of coin at a labor cost only a tiny fraction of the total face value of the coins being minted.

Coins, in fact, were irregular more-or-less round shapes.  The figure with which they were stamped was precisely in the center of the sort of round metal only slightly more often than it was to the right or left or top or bottom or partially off the edge of the coin.

What was more important was that the process assured that the weight of each coin was the weight ordered for the mint run.  That weight of silver gave the value to the coin.  It (and the fineness of the metal) was ordered by the king in consultation with parliament and other interested parties.  The details effected every person in the realm.  The merchants at home and abroad followed such matters closely.

Shortly before the Anglo-Saxon King Eadgar died, in 975, the antiquarian Rogers Ruding informs us, he “commanded new money to be made throughout all England”.[2]  His reason was one that would be common throughout the centuries to come.  Merchants — especially overseas merchants — had come to realize that the edges could be clipped off of irregularly shaped coins without being detected.  Those edges could be collected into pouches of silver dust (for there no gold coinage at  the time) and sold by weight.

How long the practice had been going on, historically, would seem to be impossible to determine.  That it was a major problem by the year 975 is clear.  Ruding tells us that the pennies in circulation had been reduced to less than half-weight.

Eadgar’s answer was intelligent and made the clipper’s job more difficult.  I am not aware of the method having been used before then but many examples of it exist from the coins of kings who followed him. Surviving pennies show that he bordered the coins with an inscription bounded by two circles, one  beaded on the outside edge and one a line at the inside of lettering.    There would certainly be no half-weight pennies.[3]

Still, this was not the end of the practice.  There were other coins less well designed.  Off-center coins could be clipped.  It was not generally to anyone’s advantage to surrender clipped coins they might have received.  Instead, they would hope to be able to use it themselves for payment and be rid of the problem.  Metal files could be used to carefully thin the outer boundary (the source of the word “chiseler”) yielding a fine silver dust that would still add meaningfully to a merchant’s profits.

Another means of preventing clipping informs us that the practice was still rampant.  That is strengthening or enforcing statues against it.  In 1205, and the years immediately following, the officers of King John were ordered to go throughout the realm to seek out and destroy clipped coins.  Penalties for such coins increased with each new outbreak but seem to have remained within range of attachment of the coins, chattel, and property of the offender and imprisonment.

In 1381, Parliament requested Royal experts submit suggestions as to how to reduce the capital flight being experienced from the realm.  Second on the list of suggestions returned by Richard Leyc, as representative, was to address clipping.

Article II. For the enfeebling of the gold coin by clipping, he knew no other remedy than that it should be universally weighed by those who took it[4]

The other experts uniformly agreed.  At least for gold (which was being coined by this time).

Of course, this answer could only apply to merchants.  It was not practical for individuals to check the coins provided them in a balance against the Royal standard weights occasionally provided for this purpose.

In 1415, in the reign of Henry V, clipping and filing were added to the currency crimes that fell into the category of treason and were addressable by hanging, drawing and quartering.  Most “chiselers” being located in European import/export markets, beyond the justice of the English king, and all being difficult to detect, there would not seem to have been many such prosecutions.  Henry also distributed standard weights to merchants in the realm.  Frustrating though the fact was, there was as yet little more to be done.

---

[1] Leake, Stephen Martin.  An Historical Account of English Money  (1793).  76.  Citing the Red Book of the Exchequer during the reign of Edward I.

[2] Ruding, Rogers.  Annals of the coinage of Great Britain and its dependencies..., Volume 1 (1840).  130.

[3] While this statement is generally true, there were so many variables to coining and coin clipping that the method was not uniformly effective.  The details are far too manifold to go into here.

[4] Ruding, 240.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.

Walking Back Margaret Paston's Famous Letter, Already?

Representative Medieval Woman
at Her Writing Table.

My recent piece “Margaret Paston’s Famous Letter” was only the beginning of my research in the matter of sugar in the medieval world.  It didn’t take long to realize that there was more available on the subject than my persistent search over some months (and general search over some years) had found — much more.

I had been leery to accept the common claim that a Venetian had received 100,000 crowns, in 1420, for inventing a higher quality process to make sugar product.  Still, for all I could not find a precise citation for the claim, it was to be found in nearly every history of sugar written in the past two centuries.  In my own rendition, I asserted that:

A very important obstacle was removed in 1420.  It was in this year that Venice learned to process sugar into blocks referred to by all as “sugar-loaves”.  The purity level was so high that the whole idea of sugar was changed.  The block form allowed much easier handling and prevented the common problem of infestation from insects.

But scholarship should not depend upon faith and I have since found myself embarrassed to have to admit, foremost, that sugar loaves had already existed for centuries.

Between the Octave of Epiphany[1] and the beginning of Pentecost, in 1290, servants of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, purchased “sugar loaves”[2] on three occasions.  According to MacPherson’s Annals of Commerce, so early as the year 1329, loaves of sugar were sold in Scotland at the price of 1s. 9 1/2 d.  No information is available on the purity or the granularity of the product.[3] 

Moreover, a few days of searching on this matter revealed that the 1420 claim flowed from a single source: Peter Heylyn’s Cosmographie.[4]   I have quoted Heylyn’s delightful work before but always careful to inform the reader that he cited no sources for any of his claims.  If he made a claim that could not be cross-checked, the only choice was to take his word for it.  Or not, for, while he generally proved to be right when he could be checked, he was by no means always so. 

But I had checked the 1420 claim after a fashion.  Circumstantial historical evidence does indeed show, time and again, that sugar was first consumed in quantity in England sometime in the mid-to-late 15^th century.  And, until Antwerp could wheedle the formula out of one or another Venetian merchant, in the mid-16^th century, Venice dominated refined sugar sales to all of Europe.  No other manufactory competed with Venice according to commercial records, for quality of product, and subsequent sales, unless it was Cyprus which the Venetians occupied at the time.

Far more to the point, in his Opera domini Joannis de Vigo in chyrurgia,[5] Lyon, 1521, the surgeon Giovanni da Vigo, was the first in history to describe drilling and filling teeth by way of treatment of cavities.  In 1548, Walter Hermann Ryff, of Strasburg, published his Useful Instruction on the Way to Keep Healthy, to Strengthen and Reinvigorate the Eyes and the Sight. With Further Instruction on the Way of Keeping the Mouth Fresh, the Teeth Clean, and the Gums Firm.[6]  While some limited portion of earlier anatomy books had made observations about the mouth and teeth, Ryff’s books were collections of practical knowledge from past and present.  A considerable portion of the text dealt with mouth, teeth, care and extractions.  The book was in German rather than Latin.

Vigo’s was the first of an explosion of books about practical dentistry.[7]  The tools of dental surgery were depicted and their operation explained.  By the end of the century, Peter van Foreest of Alkmaar’s, Complete Works in Four Volumes,[8] Antwerp, 1597, shows us that, during the late 16^th century, he was  strongly recommending patients avoid sweets and sugar in order to save themselves the pain of repeated dental surgery.

While sugar had been around for centuries, and available, at least from the 13^th century, to those in England willing to make arrangements for special shipment of small quantities and to pay an enormous price, rather than sweeten their food with honey, something clearly changed at around the end of the 15th century.  That something seems to have begun around 1420 in Venice.

First, of course, the price came down precipitously.  Secondly, the facts suggest, the refining of sugar may first have reached the point in Venice, during the 15^th century, at which the purity improved the experience and the method of granulation allowed for sugar loaves that would be able to be broken into grains, for cooking and sprinkling, rather than into chunks or heated into a syrup or cut into slabs.

Be all of this as it may, Margaret Paston has still left us the first record of sugar loaves that were able to be regularly purchased from merchant’s shelves.  It was an expensive luxury but a wealthy commoner could afford it.

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[1] See my “A Thousand Years of English Terms” for an explanation of octaves, etc.  https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-thousand-years-of-english-terms.html

[2] A Roll of the Household Expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford (1854).  John Webb, ed.  115-6.  “sucur~ pond [.liij. libr~],” “j paner~ ad sucur~” and “xxix libr~ sucur~ in duob~ panib~ .xvj.s. xj.d.” on trips to London.  Webb seems to think that the loaves were purchased in little Hereford and theorizes that sugar was common if it was sold in such an insignificant marketplace.  See note 115-6.

[3] East-India Sugar Papers Respecting the Culture and Manufacture of Sugar (1822).  III.95.n.  Citing MacPherson’s Annals of Commerce. “It appears by the Accounts of the Chamberlain of Scotland, published from the original in the Exchequer, by John Davidson, Esq., that so early as the year 1329, loaves of sugar were sold in Scotland at the price of 1s. 9 1/2d. (above an ounce of standard silver) by the pound. So Dr. Heylin is surely mistaken, at least in the date of the invention of sugar-baking.”

[4] The edition quoted is always shown as the “first edition” of 1624 the existence of which has proven impossible to verify.  "The boiling and baking of sugars as it is now used, is not above 200 years old; and the refining of it more new than that first found out by a Venetian in the days of our forefathers, who got 100,000 crowns by the invention; before which art of boiling and refining it, our ancestors made use of it rough as it came from the canes. But they most commonly used honey instead of it.”  The rest of the bibliographical world seems to think that the first edition was published in 1652.  No available edition, however, includes the quote that appears invariably in sugar history after sugar history.

[5] An English translation by Bartholomew Traheron entitled The moste Excellent Workes of Chirurgerye made and set forth by maister John Vigon, heed chirurgien of our tyme in Italie was published in London in 1543

[6] Nuetzlicher Bericht, wie man die Augen und das Gesicht schaerfen und gesund erhalten, die Zaehne frisch und fest erhalten soil. Wurzburg, 1548.

[7] Guerini, Vincenzo.  A History of Dentistry from the Most Ancient Times…  This excellent history has been my roadmap on the subject here.

[8] Alcmariani, opera omnia quatuor tomis digesta, Antwerp, 1597.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• A Medieval Hodge-Podge. March 17, 2019. “The hogge pot had already existed for centuries, however. Many who fail to realize this have given spurious derivations to the name.”
• The King's Esnecce.  January 13, 2019.  “It comes as no surprise, then, that when Maud’s son, Henry Plantagenet, Count or Duke of most of the western territories of France, and, by terms of the treaty, heir to Stephen, next rose to the throne as Henry II, he was quick to arrange for the safest possible means of transit across the channel.”
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.