Life in a Medieval City

by Frances Gies

  In the larger cities, garden space has been crowded out by housing. Now cities like Paris are clearing slum areas for use as city parks, like the Pré aux Clercs and the garden that Louis IX has created on one of the islands in the Seine.

  Crusades and pilgrimages have introduced new plants, such as the oleander and the pomegranate. Legend will claim that St.-Louis brought the ranunculus to France from the Holy Land, and Thibaut the Songwriter the red rose of Provins, the town’s emblem—although the rose that Thibaut brought was probably the pink Rose of Damascus, unusual in the Middle Ages in that it flowered more than once a season. Edmund of Lancaster, after marrying the widow of Thibaut’s nephew, will adopt the rose of Provins as the emblem of his own house, so that the red rose of Lancaster, ex-Provins, will eventually help provide a romantic name for the bloody English dynastic war.

  Monasteries, too, make their contributions to gardening, perpetuating strains of fruits and vegetables that might otherwise have been lost, or spreading new varieties and horticultural information when the monks go on pilgrimages.

  To be a woman in the thirteenth century is much like being a woman in any age. Women are somewhat oppressed and exploited, as always, but as in any age, social status is the really important thing, and a burgher’s wife is no serf. She is a person of dignity and worth, important in her family and respected in the community.

  Unmarried women can own property, and in the absence of male heirs they can also inherit. Women of all classes have rights in property by law and custom. Women can sue and be sued, make wills, make contracts, even plead their own cases in court. Women have been known to appear as their husbands’ attorneys. A “Portia” character is the heroine of a contemporary romance, The Hard Creditor.

  Well-to-do women know how to read and write and figure; some know a little Latin, or boast such ladylike accomplishments as embroidering and playing the lute. Girls receive instruction from private teachers, or board at convents. The convent of Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains has a school for girls dating back to the sixth century. Universities are closed to women, but they are equally closed to men except those who are being trained for the clergy, law, or medicine. Among the landed gentry, women are better educated than men. In the romance Galeran a boy and girl brought up together are given typically different schooling—the girl learning to embroider, read, write, speak Latin, play the harp, and sing; the boy, to hawk, hunt, shoot, ride, and play chess.

  Women work outside the home at an astonishing variety of crafts and professions. They may be teachers, midwives, laundresses, lacemakers, seamstresses, and even members of normally male trades and occupations4—weavers, fullers, barbers, carpenters, saddlers, tilers, and many others. Wives commonly work at their husbands’ crafts, and when a man dies his widow carries on the trade. Daughters not infrequently learn their father’s craft along with their brothers. In the countryside girls hire out as farm workers. The lady of the manor takes charge of the estate while her husband is off to war, Crusade, or pilgrimage, and wives run businesses while their husbands are away.

  Women do suffer from an inequity in respect to wages, which are lower than men’s for the same work. An English treatise on husbandry says, “If this is a manor where there is no dairy, it is always good to have a woman there at much less cost than a man.”

  Politically, women have no voice. They do not sit on the Town Council or in the courts, or serve as provosts or officials. Basically, this is because they do not bear arms. Yet women play political roles, often with distinction—Empress Matilda of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Blanche of France, Countess Jeanne of Flanders, Blanche of Champagne, and many more. Countess Marie, wife of Henry the Generous, was asked to arbitrate claims between the churches of St.-Etienne and St.-Loup, and with her brother-in-law, William of the White Hands, archbishop of Reims, to decide important cases, including the seigneury of Vertus. In war, or at least sieges, women often play the heroine.

  Women occupy positions of power and influence in the Church. The abbess of a convent such as Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains5 is invested with important executive responsibilities. Usually such posts are accorded to ladies of high rank, like Alix de Villehardouin, daughter of the marshal of Champagne. Abbesses are not afraid to assert their rights. A few years hence an abbess of Notre-Dame, Odette de Pougy, will defy the Pope’s excommunication and lead a party of armed men to defend what she regards as the rights of her abbey. This establishment owes its extraordinary prestige to its ancient origins, which are believed to date from the third century. The abbess actually enjoys rights over the bishop of Troyes. When a new bishop is installed, he must lead a procession to the abbey, mounted on a palfrey that is handed over, saddle included, to the abbess’s stable. Inside the convent, the bishop kneels and receives cross, mitre, and prayer book from the abbess’s hands. He recites an oath: “I…bishop of Troyes, swear to observe the rights, franchises, liberties, and privileges of this convent of Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains, with the help of God and his holy saints.” The bishop spends the night in the convent and is given as a gift the bed in which he has slept, with all its furnishings. Only the next day does his installation as bishop take place in the cathedral.

  Women achieve distinction outside the cloister, too. Marie de France is the most gifted woman poet of the Middle Ages, and “wise Héloise” the most noteworthy bluestocking, but there are many more. The contemporary scholar Albert the Great, debating whether the Virgin Mary knew the seven liberal arts, resolves the question affirmatively.

  The cult of Mary serves to elevate the image of women and to counterbalance the misogyny of ascetic preachers who bestow such epithets as “man’s confounder,” “mad beast,” “stinking rose,” “sad paradise,” “sweet venom,” “luscious sin,” and “bitter sweet,” while lingering over the attractions of the temptresses. The chivalric ideal also glorifies women. The Church recognizes the wife to be subject to her husband, as Paul recommended, but as his companion, not as mere mistress or servant. Married people are expected to treat each other with respect, and many husbands and wives never call each other anything but Sir and Madam.

  Wife-beating is common in an age when corporal punishment is the norm. But wives do not necessarily get the worst of it. A contemporary observer remarks that men rarely have the mastery of their wives, that nearly everywhere women dominate their husbands. One preacher complains that formerly wives were faithful to their husbands and peaceful as ewe lambs; now they are lionesses. Another tells the story of a storm at sea, when the sailors wished to throw into the sea anything that might overload the ship, and a certain husband handed over his wife, saying that there was no object of such intolerable weight. The expression “wearing the pants in the family” is already current, and henpecked husbands are a favorite theme of the fabliaux.

  Perhaps the most important point to note about the medieval housewife, in contrast to women of earlier times, is that she has a purse. She goes shopping, she gives alms, she pays fees, she hires labor; she may, if the occasion arises, buy privileges and pay bribes.

  She may do many other things with her money. Women make large gifts of land, money, and chattels to church institutions; found convents, monasteries, hospitals, orphanages, and asylums; buy benefices for their sons and places in convents for their daughters; engage in trading operations. They are denounced by priests for usury, pawnbroking, and price manipulations, and for their reckless expenditures for luxury goods. They may travel extensively, sometimes as far as the Holy Land.

  A woman of means is always a person to reckon with.

  Daughters of burghers, like daughters of knights, learn definite rules of conduct. A poet, Robert of Blois, has codified the behavior of women of the gentle class:

  En route to church or elsewhere, a lady must walk straight and not trot or run, or idle either. She must salute even the poor.

  She must let no one touch her on the breast except her husband. For that reason, she must not let anyone put a pin or a brooch on her bosom.

/>   No one should kiss her on the mouth except her husband. If she disobeys this injunction, neither loyalty, faith nor noble birth will avert the consequences.

  Women are criticized for the way they look at people, like a sparrowhawk ready to pounce on a swallow. Take care: glances are messengers of love; men are prompt to deceive themselves by them.

  If a man courts a lady, she must not boast of it. It is base to boast, and besides, if she takes a fancy later to love this person, the secret will be more difficult to keep.

  A lady shuns the fashionable décolletage, a sign of shamelessness.

  A lady does not accept gifts. For gifts which are given you in secret cost dear; one buys them with one’s honor. There are, however, honest gifts which it is proper to thank people for.

  Above all, a lady does not scold. Anger and high words are enough to distinguish a low woman from a lady. The man who injures you shames himself and not you; if it is a woman who scolds you, you will break her heart by refusing to answer her.

  Women must not swear, drink too much or eat too much.

  The lady who, when a great lord salutes her, remains silent with bowed head is badly brought up. A lady removes her hood before those whom she would honor. One may only remain with head bent when one has something to hide—if one has a yellow complexion, or is ugly. If you have an unattractive smile, however, hide it with your hand.

  Ladies with pale complexions should dine early. Good wine colors the face. If your breath is bad, hold it in church when you receive the blessing.

  Especially in church one must watch one’s countenance, for one is in the public eye, which notes evil and good. One must kneel courteously, pray and not laugh or talk too much.

  Rise at the moment of the Scripture, cross yourself at beginning and end. At the offering, hold yourself straight. Rise also, hands joined, at the elevation, then pray on your knees for all Christians. If you are ill or pregnant, you may read your psalter seated.

  If you have a good voice, sing boldly. In the company of people who ask you, and by yourself for your own pleasure, sing; but do not abuse their patience, so that people will say, as they sometimes do, “Good singers are often a bore.”

  Cut your fingernails frequently, down to the quick, for cleanliness’ sake. Cleanliness is better than beauty.

  In passing other people’s houses, refrain from glancing inside. To enter without knocking is indiscreet.

  One must know how to eat—not to talk or laugh too much at table, not to pick out the best pieces, not to eat too much as a guest, not to criticize the food, to wipe one’s mouth but not one’s nose on the cloth.6

  4.

  Childbirth and Children

  When they are washed of filth, they soon defile themselves again. When their mother washes and combs them, they kick and sprawl, and push with feet and hands, and resist with all their might. They always want to drink, unless they are out of bed, when they cry for meat. Always they cry, jangle and jape, except when they are asleep.

  —BARTHOLOMEW ANGLICUS

  The greatest hazard in the life of a woman of the thirteenth century is childbirth. If she survives the childbearing period, she stands a good chance of outliving her husband. There are no obstetrical instruments and no techniques for dealing with a breach presentation. Caesarian section is performed only when mother or child is dead, and then without antiseptics or anesthesia. If the pelvic opening is too small for the child’s head, nothing can be done.

  The baby’s chances of survival are poorer than the mother’s. Many die at birth, more during infancy. Birth defects are common, and generally attributed to supernatural causes. An eleventh-century king, Robert the Pious, was excommunicated for marrying a widow for whose child he had stood godfather. According to a chronicler, the pair was punished when their own child was born “with the head of a goose.” Chastened Robert hastily put his queen away in a convent.

  An old superstition holds that when twins are born the mother has had intercourse with two different men. In a popular romance, Galeran, the wife of a knight insults one of her husband’s vassals by telling him that everyone knows twins are the product of two fathers. Two years later the lady has cause to repent her words when she herself gives birth to twin girls. Michael Scot, astrologer to Frederick II, asserts that multiple births are entirely normal and may run as high as seven: three boys, three girls, and the “middle cell”—a hermaphrodite.

  Contemporary scientists agree that for a month each planet exerts its influence over the development of the child in the womb. Saturn bestows the virtue of discerning and reasoning, Jupiter magnanimity, Mars animosity and irascibility, the sun the power of learning, and so forth. When the influence of the stars is too strong, the child talks early, has discretion beyond his age, and dies young. Some say that if the hour of conception is known, the entire life of the child can be predicted. Michael Scot urges every woman to note the exact moment, to facilitate astrological forecasting. When his patron Frederick II married a third wife, sister of Henry III of England, he delayed consummation until the morning after the wedding, the moment astrology deemed favorable. Afterwards Frederick handed over his wife to the care of Saracen eunuchs and assured her that she was pregnant with a son, which information he also conveyed in a letter to the English king. Frederick’s confidence was justified. The next year a son was born.

  It is widely believed that the sex of a child can be foretold and even influenced. A drop of the mother’s milk or blood may be dropped into pure spring water; if it sinks, the child will be a boy, if it floats, a girl. Or if a pregnant woman, asked to hold out her hand, extends the right, the child will be a boy; if the left, a girl. A woman who wants to have a boy is supposed to sleep on her right side.

  When labor is imminent, the lying-in chamber is prepared for visiting and display—the best coverlets, fresh rushes on the floor, chairs and cushions. A cupboard exhibits the family’s finest possessions—gold and silver cups, enamelware, ivory, richly bound books. Dishes of sugared almonds and candied fruits are set out for the guests.

  Doctors do not attend women in childbirth. Men are excluded from the lying-in chamber. Midwives are therefore indispensable, so much so that when Louis IX decided to take his queen along on a Crusade, he also took a midwife, who assisted at two royal childbirths in the Orient.

  During labor the midwife rubs her patient’s belly with ointment to ease her travail and bring it to a quicker conclusion. She encourages the patient with comforting words. If the labor is difficult, sympathetic magic is invoked. The patient’s hair is loosened and all the pins are removed. Servants open all the doors, drawers, and cupboards in the house and untie all the knots. Jasper is a gemstone credited with childbirth-assisting powers, as well as the powers of preventing conception, checking menstrual flow, and reducing sexual desire. The dried blood of a crane and its right foot are also useful in labor, and one authority recommends water in which a murderer has washed his hands. In extreme cases there are incantations of magical words, whispered in the patient’s ear, but priests frown on this practice.

  When the baby is born, the midwife ties the umbilical cord and cuts it at four fingers’ length. She washes the baby and rubs him all over with salt, then gently cleanses his palate and gums with honey, to give him an appetite. She dries him with fine linen and wraps him so tightly in swaddling bands that he is almost completely immobilized and looks not unlike a little corpse in a winding sheet.

  He is shown to his father and the rest of the family, then placed in the wooden cradle next to his mother’s bed, in a dark corner where the light cannot injure his eyes. A servant rocks him, so that the fumes from the hot, moist humors of his body will mount to his brain and make him sleep. He remains securely bundled until he is old enough to sit up, lest his tender limbs be twisted out of shape. He is nursed, bathed, and changed every three hours, and rubbed with rose oil.

  Well-to-do women rarely nurse their own children. The wet nurse is chosen with care, for all manner of qual
ities may be imbibed with her milk. She must be of good character, have no physical defects, and be neither too fat nor too thin. Above all, she must be healthy, for corrupt milk is blamed for many of the maladies that afflict infants. She must watch her diet—eat white bread, good meat, rice, lettuce, almonds and hazelnuts, and drink good wine. She must rest and sleep well and use moderation in bathing and in working. If her milk fails, she eats peas and beans and gruel boiled in milk. She avoids onions, garlic, vinegar and highly seasoned foods. If the doctor prescribes medicine for the baby, it is administered to the nurse. As the baby grows bigger, she will chew his meat for him. She is often the recipient of presents to sweeten her disposition and milk.

  The baby is usually baptized the day he is born. Covered with a robe of silk and gold cloth, the little bundle is borne to church by one of his female relatives, while another holds the train of his mantle. The midwife carries the christening bonnet. Nurse, relatives, godparents, and friends follow. If the child is a boy, two godfathers and a godmother are chosen; if a girl, two godmothers and one godfather. The temptation to enlist as many important people as possible in the child’s behalf led to naming so many godparents that the Church has now restricted the allotment to three, who are expected to give handsome presents.

  The church door is decorated for the occasion, fresh straw spread on the floor, and the baptismal font covered with velvet and linen. The baby is undressed on a silk-cushioned table. The priest traces the sign of the cross on his forehead with holy oil, reciting the baptismal service. The godfather lifts him to the basin, and the priest plunges him into the water. The nurse dries and swaddles him, and the midwife ties on the christening cap to protect the holy oil on his forehead.