The wider effects of the ‘Little Ice Age’

I recently posted about research on the fifth century and the Hunnic invasions. and the case for seeing those events as originating in changes in the climate.

Now I have come upon an article looking at the effect of the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ on events of the seventeenth century. The limits assigned to the ‘Little Ice Age’ varies somewhat with different scholars, but it is generally agreed that the seventeenth century was not only very much in that era but was indeed its coldest period. This is epitomised in popular perception by the London Frost Fairs on the frozen Thames in that century and later, although the earliest recorded freezing of the river and the setting up of booths on the ice was in 695. The last frost fair was held in 1814. There is an introduction to them from Wikipedia at River Thames frost fairs

The wider effects of cooler temperatures on all aspects of life are summarised, and linked to the idea of a “General Crisis”, an idea developed and popularised by a number of historians over fifty years ago. 

The article from the iflscience website can be read at The 17th Century Was A Truly Terrible Time To Be A Human

That said if one uses the Thames as an indicator whilst this period was the heyday of the Frost Fairs the river had frozen over beforehand in 695, 1150, 1281, 1309, 1408, 1410, 1434 - showing greater frequency - and notably in 1515, 1536 and 1564, before the first Frost Fair in 1608. Which suggests both an underlying tendency by the slow moving river and that once a century events were becoming once a decade or more as the mean annual temperature dropped.

The frozen Thames and even more the Frost Fairs were, and are, an indicator of a wider climatic pattern. Although the Thames flows more swiftly now and there is no longer the significant blockage caused by the piers of Old London Bridge, who knows, maybe, just maybe, climate change could restore this feature to the life of the capital- but don’t tell the health and safety fanatics….

An Elizabethan shipwreck at Dungeness

Several online websites have reported on the discovery in a quarry at Dungeness of the significant remains of an Elizabethan ship. The oak timbers of which it was constructed were felled between 1558 and 1580. Where it was found is now somr distance from the sea but, as it well known, Dungeness has changed its profile significantly over the centuries. What was a beach in the late sixteenth century is thus now nearly a thousand feet inland.

There are articles about the discovery of the ship. One is from LiveScience at Quarry workers make 'unexpected' discovery of ship from Queen Elizabeth I's reign

A second is from Artnet at English Quarry Workers Have Struck Elizabethan-History-Lover's Gold With the Discovery of a Rare 16th-Century Ship

There is a third article about the discovery from the Financial Times at Elizabethan ship found in ‘remarkable condition’ in Kent quarry

Mothers and daughters

In our online exchange of Christmas greetings my friend Professor James Clark sent me the link to his faculty blog from the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies.

One of their recent posts struck me as both insightful and entertaining. It can be seen at Mothers and daughters: a snapshot from early Tudor England.

I will add a link to the blog, and to others, to the sidebar when the Eminence Grise and I find the time.

Lincolnshire - the Haxey Hood, Plough Jaggers and Hobby Horses

Yesterday being Epiphany was the day for the annual Haxey Hood. This is a contest with few discernible rules played by the villagers of Haxey and Westwoodside in the Isle of Axholme in the north west of Lincolnshire.It is said to commemorate the loss by Lady Mowbray, whose husband was the lord of Axholme, of her hood in the early fourteenth century. The traditional story of its origins and of yesterday’s resumption of the tradition after a lockdown induced gap for two years is recounted in a report from BBC News at Haxey Hood in triumphant post-Covid return

Whether the story of Lady Mowbray’s hood is the origin is doubtless lost in folk memory. It may be, at least in part, a rough and tumble game to mark the feast and to get the village lads fit after the Christmas break and ready for a return to agricultural labour.

Haxey is also the second best preserved surving example, after Laxton in Nottinghamshire, of open field agriculture.

I recently came upon an interesting online article  from 2018 bay Lincolnshire student about midwinter village customs such as Plough Jagging and mummers with hobby horses in the north of the county - the Parts of Lindsey - in the late nineteenth century. His work drew on the collection of the North Lincolnshire Museum. Lincolnshire is also blessed with the excellent resources of the Museum of Lincolnshire Life in Lincoln itself which preserves a great collection of material about rural life in the county.

The very worthwhile article can be seen at Lincolnshire’s Hobby Horses: A Mid-Winter Custom – Humanities & Heritage

I blogged recently about similar customs in other parts of the country in Christmas Past and in Christmas Mummers and Wren Day

In a similar vein BBC News website also reported on the Boxing Day Sword Dance at Grenoside on the edge of Sheffield which goes back at least two centuries in Sword dancers perform in Boxing day tradition

Thinking about it I wonder if my north Lincolnshire maternal ancestors took part in such frolics when they were living there in the nineteenth century.

St Leo the Great on the Epiphany

Here, courtesy of Divinum Officium is part of St Leo the Great’s second Epiphany Sermon, the fourth, fifth and sixth lections for Mattins:

Dearly beloved brethren, rejoice in the Lord; again I say, rejoice. But a few days are past since the solemnity of Christ's Birth, and now the glorious light of His Manifestation is breaking upon us. On that day the Virgin brought Him forth, and on this the world knew Him. The Word made Flesh was pleased to reveal Himself by degrees to those for whom He had come. When Jesus was born He was manifested indeed to the believing, but hidden from His enemies. Already indeed the heavens declared the glory of God, and their sound went out into all lands, when the Herald Angels appeared to tell to the shepherds the glad tidings of a Saviour's Birth; and now the guiding star leadeth the wise men to worship Him, that from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the Birth of the true King may be known abroad; that through those wise men the kingdoms of the east might learn the great truth, and the Roman empire remain no more in darkness.

The very cruelty of Herod, when he strove to crush at His birth this King Whom he alone feared, was made a blind means to carry out this dispensation of mercy. While the tyrant with horrid guilt sought to slay the little Child he did not know, amid an indiscriminate slaughter of innocents, his infamous act served to spread wider abroad the heaven-told news of the Birth of the Lord. Thus were these glad tidings loudly proclaimed, both by the novelty of their story, and the iniquity of their enemies. Then was the Saviour borne into Egypt, that nation, of a long time hardened in idolatry, might by the mysterious virtue which went out of Him, even when His presence was unknown, be prepared for the saving light so soon to dawn on them, and might receive the Truth as a wanderer even before they had banished.

Dearly beloved brethren, we recognize in the wise men who came to worship Christ, the first-fruits of that dispensation to the Gentiles wherein we also are called and enlightened. Let us then keep this Feast with grateful hearts, in thanksgiving for our blessed hope, whereof it doth commemorate the dawn. From that worship paid to the new-born Christ is to be dated the entry of us Gentiles upon our heirship of God and co-heirship with Christ. Since that joyful day the Scriptures which testify of Christ have lain open for us as well as for the Jews. Yea, their blindness rejected that Truth, Which, since that day, hath shed Its bright beams upon all nations. Let all observance, then, be paid to this most sacred day, whereon the Author of our salvation was made manifest, and as the wise men fell down and worshipped Him in the manger, so let us fall down and worship Him enthroned Almighty in heaven. As they also opened their treasures and presented unto Him mystic and symbolic gifts, so let us strive to open our hearts to Him, and offer Him from thence some worthy offering.

Old St Peter’s revisited

The funeral today of the Pope Emeritus on the steps of St Peter’s reminded thrviewer of thelong continuity of the Papacy and the way in whic it bound up with the historic churches of Rome. This is especially true of what are now termed the Papal - formerly Patriarchal -  basilicas. Ancient foundations adapted, renovated, restored in the case of St John Lateran and Sta Maria Maggiore, entirely reconstructed after a disastrous fire in the early nineteenth century in the case of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, but in the case of St Peter’s completely replaced from 1506 onwards. 

There are paintings and reconstructions of Old St Peter’s but for the vast majority who visit it there are the Roman remains underneath around the tomb of St Peter and then there is the Renaissance symbol of Papal claims above - of the intervening millenium or more there is little to see, and I imagine it needs hunting out.

A new exhibition about medieval Rome seek to correct this, drawing together a hundred and sixty surviving pieces from the medieval centuries of Roman history. There is a report about it from Art and object at Rome's Missing Medieval Past

Looking at the medieval mosaics that survive from Old St Peter’s and which it illustrates and are dated  to the end of the thirteenth century I was reminded of George Holmes’ very readable Rome, Florence and the Origins of the Renaissance which begins with a look at the last years of Papal Rome before the Avignon Papacy. In particular he draws attention to the artistic commissions associated with the Franciscan Pope Nicolas IV and the monumental statues commissioned by Pope Boniface VIII with their classical references. In particular he suggests artists were looking at uncovered paintings from the Imperial period and seeking to imitate or emulate them in the 1290s. Such resonances are surely there on the mosaics featured in this new exhibition.

Medieval moggies - and the Papacy?

It seems not too inappropriate on the day we say farewell to Pope Benedict XVI to allude to his great affection for cats. This was commemorated by the National Catholic Register in an article which includes the late Pushkin of the Birmingham Oratory and which can be seen at Benedict XVI: A Look Back at the Cat-Loving Pope’s Favorite Feline Friends

Recently there was an article on the website The Conversation about cats as pets and companions in the medieval period. It can be seen at Cats in the middle ages: what medieval manuscripts teach us about our ancestors' pets

I had the impression that other than as mousers - including, of course, the famous Welsh feline guardian of the native Prince’s  grain store - cats were rather despised in the medieval centuries or seen as potentially malign. Reading the article showed me that I was wrong in that, and indeed that pet cats could be seen as signifying domesticity.

Going back to where I started I suppose one can try to imagine various medieval and Renaissance Popes accompanied by cats - maybe Celestine V with one as a companion in his hermitage, the Avignon popes and some Renaissance popes with pampered pets, but perhaps more so a Blofeld like white cat to accompany the real toughies - Gregory VII, Innocent IV, Bonifave VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Paul IV…. Innocent III a discreet feline companion, a rescue stray for Urban VI ….a street cat to accompany the besieged Clement VII, something exotic like a Siamese for Julius III, an English tabby for Adrian IV ….

Progress on recreating two historic ships

The BBC News website reports that significant progress is being made on the building of a replica of the Sutton Hoo ship that is being undertaken, close to the site of the discovery of the ghost of the ship in the burial mound, at Woodbridge on the banks of the Deben in Suffolk. 

The article can be seen at Sutton Hoo replica build takes next step forward

Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph recently had an article about a French project to recreate and sail William the Conqueror’s flagship from 1066, La Mora, and, hopefully, for it to visit London in 2027, the milleniary of the King-Duke’s birth. The design of the ship comes in part from its depiction on the Bayeux Tapestry and also from knowledge about ships of that time. 

Don’t be put off by the Telegraph’s obsessive Eurosceptic headline* and read the report which can be seen at Norman conquest boat project could be dead in the water - because of EU red tape

* I do rather wonder, given their attitude, why the Daily Telegraph would wish to report on a story that might just suggest that this country has ever had a creative engagement with the rest of Europe.