It is easy to view medieval times as a dreary, colorless life of drudgery and hard work at best, and warfare, torture, and deadly plagues at worst.  A study of the holidays, however, spins the kaleidoscope and breathes color and joy into the picture, as well.  Our modern vacation and feasting doesn’t hold a flickering beeswax candle, much less a torch, to theirs!  Christmas, for instance, was two weeks of feasting and celebration.  Easter, Christmas, and Whitsunday (or Pentecost) were the three most important holy days of the year.

Feasting is an expression of joy, and to that end, it’s important to remember Easter is a religious feast celebrating the miraculous event of a man rising from the dead after a horrific crucifixion.  This event being the evidence that the long-awaited Messiah had walked among us, it is the very crux of the Christian faith, and therefore the most important day of the year, religiously.  A popular current view of the medieval Church is of a grim and stern overlord.  In contrast, however,  John Chrysostom’s Easter sermon, found at the Medieval Sourcebook, brims with joy and hope.

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

Like Christmas, Easter in the medieval world often involved plays, in this case depicting the angel at the empty tomb, and telling the Resurrection story. Similar to the Christmas creche, was the Easter sepulchre, dating back to at least the tenth century, and common all over Europe and Britain by the 16th Century.  They were displays of sorts.  They might be set in a small niche in a church or they might be extravagant wooden displays mounted atop tombs.  Still others were free-standing.  There might be brackets for candles, and carved depictions of angels or scenes of Christ’s Passion.

The ceremonies surrounding these sepulchres involved responsories being sung while placing a crucifix and consecrated host in the tomb on Good Friday, surrounding it with candles and incense, and having either minor clergy or the sexton and his assistants watch the ‘tomb’ until Easter morning.  At that time, the Host and crucifix were removed with much ceremony and processed around the church.

 The feasting and celebration, of course, is a big part of what comes down to us, hundreds of years later.  Maybe it is partly our fascination with what is so different from our time.  The Easter message, after all, has not changed in all this time.  Medieval and modern Easter sermons carry the same, eternal message: He is risen. Hallelujah.  But we can hardly conceive, in our hasty modern world, of celebrating as they did.

Of course, to the modern world, giving up chocolate for 40 days is typical of Lent.  To the medieval populace, with, metaphorically speaking, more churches and fewer grocery stores,  seasons and religious belief made for a very different Lenten experience.  The winter season offered little enough meat as it was.  Lent, however, was a time of fasting from meat, dairy, and eggs.  Fish might be the daily special for a full six weeks, with herring being particularly common–salted, says one site, and cooked with onions and cabbage.  Mmm, good!  Or, in the probably more accurate and less sarcastic words of one medieval boy: “Thou wyll not beleve how werey I am off fysshe, and how moch I desir that flesch wer cum in ageyn.”

A medieval Easter feast, then, featured all the things that had been missing for so long, whether due to religious stricture or lack of grocery stores: meat, eggs, greens.  More specifically, lamb, veal,  rabbit, herbs.  In case this wasn’t enough meat, a medieval master chef also prepared a variety of birds for the table: swan, peacock, partridge, pheasant, blackbirds, pigeon, woodcock, sparrows, curlew and capon.  A capon is a castrated rooster.

And the food was not just prepared for gastrointestinal delight, but to be aesthetic masterpieces.  The peacock, for instance, would be stuffed and sewn back together, and served in full feathered regalia with its neck propped up and tail feathers fanned behind it.  One article tells of a fanciful creature that might appear at the medieval table: the back of a pig joined to the front of a capon.  When combined with such things as the Unicorn tapestry, mysterious myths of strange creatures and events, and the rich symbolism rampant at the time, it is a unique look into the medieval mind,  perhaps full of mystery, romance, and possibilities beyond what they could see, to think of such things being created.  Or perhaps it just makes some people squirm!

For those with a sweet tooth, the tansy was a favorite.  It was something like a butter-fried pancake or omelette, flavored and colored with spinach, spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, and flavored with cream.  It vied with pain perdue (bread dipped in egg, fried, and topped with sugar, which sounds very like French toast), gilded marchpanes, and a form of gingerbread which involved honey, saffron and ginger baked into a biscuit.  And for a society that did not have our regular access to candy and chocolate of all sorts, nuts and fruits also would have been a wonderful treat bursting from the barren winter back into their diets.

Dining in medieval days, of course, was not just about fueling the body.  Without facebook, phones, or movies, feasts were a social and entertainment mega-event.  The feast proceeded over many courses, with jugglers, minstrels, acrobats, and other entertainment, along with the chance to meet and greet.

Like today, medieval families often marked the day with new clothes, yet another sign of new beginnings.  And of course, no Easter story is complete without mention of eggs.  Even in medieval times, they were an integral part of the day.  Children took eggs to church to be blessed, tenants brought eggs to their lords (a hen tithe so to speak), and kings dispensed gilded eggs to their underlings and favorites.  Records survive of the Countess of Leicester purchasing  eggs to distribute to her tenants in 1265.  The number ranges from 1,000 to nearly 4,000.  Edward I of England is said to have distributed 450 eggs, many covered in gold leaf, on his last Easter in 1307.  (It’s a safe assumption he didn’t share any with Robert the Bruce.)

And now, after a day of alternately writing and hunting for my boys’ Easter clothes, I am off to dye eggs–no gold plate here, I’m afraid–and buy a ham.  It doesn’t seem like much in comparison to a medieval Easter, but then, I have had plentiful meat these past few months, which they didn’t.  Still, maybe I can find feathers somewhere to stick in the ham, and call it a peacock. 

Happy Easter!

The Medallion has a fairytale quality, a story within a story in the style of Second Hand Lions, the Princess Bride, or Inkheart. Like The Princess Bride, it is set in a semi-fantasy, semi-Medieval world; this particular world is teeming with bandits, a mysterious medallion, a mischievous fairy trying hard to be less so, an enigmatic Lady, and wizards, moving in and out among the ordinary peasantry just trying to survive and make sense of the hardships of life. The story, as told by a mysterious old man, centers on two sisters torn apart by bandits in their youth. One sister finds a semblance of happiness and, eventually, a mysterious and great destiny waiting for her, while the other suffers greatly, but never gives up her dream of finding her sister.

The story opens with a narration in an almost fairy-tale style that promises something magical and mysterious to come, and sets the stage. The language is beautiful, with a rhythm and poetry that echoes the mysterious, dreamlike, fairy-tale beauty of the story itself. I found myself wanting to read slowly and savor every word and lush image, even as I wanted to race ahead and find out what happens.

What attracted me most to The Medallion was the lyric and poetic writing style. The book is worth reading for that alone, with descriptions as lush and beautiful as the Lady’s island. You can see the dew drops on each leaf, and feel the grass under your feet. But lovers of fantasy and medieval times will also love the setting, and the elements of adventure and romance, as Anwen and her sister Alana, separated years ago by an attack of bandits, spend years hoping to find one another even as their lives unwind.

The book ends with one mission accomplished, but the good feeling that there is plenty of story left in these characters, and plenty more adventures waiting for them and for their readers. I look forward to the sequel.

With roots going back so far that the origin of the word itself is no longer known, but it originated in deep winter celebrations of sun and fire, and moving from there into the Roman Saturnalia, a Baccnalian event if ever there was one.  The Reformation drove much of the Hogmanay celebrations underground until the 17th Century, and in recent years, they have become far more extravagant even than what most of the 20th Century knew. 

Hogmanay celebrations these days are large events, often held at castles.  They include music of all sorts, rock bands, pipe bands, drinking, revelry, lots of kissing– it is New Year’s Eve, after all–fire ceremonies, swinging fire balls, fireworks, and singing of Auld Lang Syne.  In smaller towns, Hogmanay may be celebrated with ceilidhs (dances).

One youtube clip shows “1000 Pipers” marching down the Royal Mile outside of Edinburgh Castle: 1000 Pipers

Be prepared: this is a lot of bagpipes!  And I’m saying that like it’s a good thing.  It’s quite a sight to see so many marching in their kilts and sporrans, all playing together.

Scottish History at Suite 101 explains the reasoning behind the “first footing” tradition of it being considered good luck for the first person to cross your door at midnight to be a tall, dark-haired man: in the days of the Viking attacks, you didn’t want to see shorter, blonde men.  They were often raiding, pillaging, and raping.

Interestingly, as I search for details on how Niall might have celebrated at Glenmirril, I find that, with the exception of a few sketchy paragraphs about old traditions, and no details as to just how old those traditions are, there is virtually nothing.  There is plenty about medieval Christmases, but no mention of Hogmanay in the same period.  As Niall lived just after the days of the Viking raids, he may have still been celebrating very much like their Yule, which is also thought to have been a strong influence on Scottish Hogmanay.  He lived long before the Reformation that drove it underground, so chances are high that he did in fact celebrate it.

Today’s question was another seemingly simple question: what might the chapel at Castle MacDougall look like?  In my initial draft, I called it ‘gothic.’  But then I decided I better check the years in which architecture was actually considered ‘gothic.’  It turns out the years are accurate: gothic architecture began in the 1100′s in France, and spread out to the rest of Europe, continuing into the 1500′s. 

But Europe is a broad term, and it turns out even gothic is a relatively broad term– if you want to be specific (or is that picky) about it.  I like to be, and found, in the process, that there is great regional variation in what the word means. 

A gothic cathedral in France, for example, would likely be built out of limestone, and feature a narrow transept, the crossarm which divides the long nave (where the pews are) from the choir.  Its eastern end– the choir– is likely to be polygonal with a ring of chapels (a ‘chevet.’)  The cathedrals of this time in France are more often found as ruins out in the country– because the prevalent order, the Cistercians, liked to build farther out.

A gothic cathedral in England, by contrast, may well be built of not only limestone, but red sandstone, dark green Purbeck marble, and timbered “hammer-beam” roofs.   Its transept is likely to have strongly projecting arms, compared to France’s rather narrow ones, its eastern end is going to be square, and the whole structure is probably going to be in a town, where England’s dominant order, the Benedictines, liked to build.

Typical of gothic church construction are pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses.  They exaggerate height and emphasize light.  I found this particularly interesting, as the word gothic, today, tends to have darker connotations.  Gothic fiction, for example, combines romance and horror.  A wikipedia article on gothic fiction says: The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations.  And: Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period. Gothic fiction features such ‘light’ themes as hauntings, madness, doubles, decay, death, mystery.  Where are you, Edgar Allen Poe!  The cast includes a variety of madmen, evil-doers, and creatures of the night such as werewolves, demons and vampires, who you would most likely not want as your neighbors.  (Then again, maybe you would.)  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction)

Gothic fashion is typically dark, even morbid.

The word gothic, as applied to the architecture itself, was originally an insult, meaning barbaric or rude.

And yet, with the word gothic having so many dark and negative connotations,  the hallmarks of gothic architecture are light and height.  Solid walls have been replaced with rows of roof-supporting columns that let light flow through the building.  Ceilings soar high, with clerestory windows that pour in light.  The height and vertical emphasis give a feeling of lifting to Heaven, or airiness and lightness (in the other sense of the word.)  I personally find gothic cathedrals to be incredibly beautiful.

Gothic Cathedral

…all of which brings us back to the chapel at Castle MacDougall. 

A castle chapel is not a cathedral.  What applies to Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries is not necessarily accurate for the west of Scotland in 1314.  And even if it does, could the thieving MacDougalls, the Darth Vader of the 14th century, really have a beautiful, light and airy chapel?  It would be an interesting contrast to the character of the MacDougall.  Maybe that’s exactly what he will have.  Then again, maybe not.

It’s been fun, but right now, I’m back at square one.  Next I’m going to research specific churches of the thirteenth and fourteenth century Highlands.  And we’ll see what MacDougall’s chapel looks like in my head in a few days.  At least I know what Amy finds there!

What do you think MacDougall’s chapel should look like?