Medieval History

Some personal stuff kept me from sharing my love of history. However, I plan to continue writing for this blog soon, as i never imagined i would have as many subscribers as i do.

Writing the Little Red Riding Hood, A History made me want to research the werewolf trials more.  Witch trials to me usually stir up images of early America in the 17^th century, and for some odd reason Winona Ryder. Oh well, I digress. What is less known, is the witch trials in America paled in comparison to what was already happening in Europe for a hundred years. Werewolf trials on the other hand, were something more concentrated in the Baltic countries, more notable Estonia.

Why Estonia? Well much like the witch trials of America, the trials in Europe were spawned by fear, superstition, and a deep seeded paranoia. This area of Europe already had a strong belief in werewolves before the trials ever took place, so it is only natural that they enter into the equation somehow. Much like most countries with a religion thrust upon them from an outside source, these Baltic peoples held onto their ‘Pagan’ origins tightly which led to a different dark paranoia than elsewhere in Europe or the Americas.

The Estonians didn’t understand demons, devils, and witches. However, they did understand werewolves. So the outcome? Werewolf trials!  In Estonia, around 100 trials were conducted between 1610-1650, and over 50 men and women were executed for sorcery.  About 40 of these trials men and women were accused for the damage of property and cattle  while in the form of a werewolf.  How did the authorities find out that these people were taking on the form of a wolf and causing this damage? Why, torture of course!

Torture was a popular form of confession throughout medieval Europe and well before. However, as we know today, people would and will confess to almost anything whilst being tortured. In this case these people admitted to hiding their wolves’ skin under a rock, and making a pact with the Devil. The Devil pact was something they may or may not have understood as the catalyst to any witch trial conviction. As werewolves they could ravage the countryside to their hearts content and not be convicted as a witch unless a pact was made with the Devil.

The latest werewolf trial on record in the area was 1696 when a flock of werewolves was believed to run wild in Vastemoisa under their leader Libbe Matz. These trials would fizz out as people began to become less paranoid, ignorant, and aware of the harm being caused to innocent people.

I will keep researching this topic, and see if there are any trial accounts that stand out from the rest. Thanks for reading!

Sources:

Jan Guillou, Häxornas försvarare (The defender of the witches), Piratförlaget 2002

Maia Madar “Estonia I: Werewolves and Poisioners”, 257-72 in Bengt Ankarloo, Gustav Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, Oxford

I am eager to read this book, part of me hopes it is a lot like Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. The book praises the rebels and the downtrodden, and without them the world would unmistakably be a very different place. It is the courage of the ‘rebels’ that produce change in any country in the world throughout history.

Review by Jackie Wullschlager

History belongs to the victors – or as Sir John Harington put it in 1618: “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? / For if it prosper none dare call it treason”. Rebels who fail tend not to build the monuments – castles, palaces, civic squares – that are our visible heritage. Yet, says David Horspool in this vivid, lucid chronicle, rebels have shaped England’s character as incontrovertibly and effectively as the monarchs and law-givers they challenged.
Beginning with the Norman conquest and closing with Arthur Scargill, Horspool argues in The English Rebel that England’s role as coloniser – of its own island, then its archipelago, eventually of a third of the world – shrouds the significance of the rebel tradition at home. Anglo-Saxon uprisings led by “woodsmen” who attacked Norman strongholds, then melted into forests and marshes, belong to a lineage running from the Robin Hood myth to today’s eco-warriors. Five centuries before America’s Bill of Rights, English barons forced King John to accept the Magna Carta, sowing the seeds of constitutional reform. Generations ahead of the French Revolution, the English executed Charles I in favour of a radical government.

Source Review Here.

The Engelskär wreck was discovered in 1996.  The wreck is lies only in 10 feet of water and is surprisingly unmolested. The exciting thing about this wreck is that the archeologists are finding several whole remains of medieval artifacts that are usually found elsewhere are but fragments of entire pieces they are extracting from this shipwreck.

“We have some wrong pre-conceptions about maritime history. In the Middle Ages, the sea was the superhighway along which people and a lot of goods travelled,” points out Research Director Stefan Wessman.

Source Article Here.

This morning Variety reports that Leonardo DiCaprio has bought the movie rights for Little Red Riding Hood and plans to make it into a “Gothic reimaging” of the fairy tale. It is said that David Leslie Johnson will be writing the script. What does this have to do with Medieval History? Not too much, only I thought this news is a great excuse to research and write about the origins of this popular story.

The most popular version of the story is the version from The Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. However, that is far too recent for my tastes, so let’s go back a bit. There were stories circulating Europe, France, and Italy as early as the 14th century, the most notable being La finta nonna (The False Grandmother). However, these early stories have their own uniqueness and differences from the tale we currently think of as Little Red Riding Hood. The antagonist, for example, can sometimes be an ogre or werewolf rather than an actual wolf. It is not a far stretch of the imagination to link a werewolf to the story. Speaking of werewolves, there was a werewolf trial in the 16^th century which is argued to be a possible source of our established Little Red Riding Hood tale.

In Catherine Orenstein’s, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, she links the story to the Trial of Peter Stumpp in 1590. Stumpp was accused and put on trial and accused of being a serial murderer and a cannibal. After much torture Stumpp confessed to having practiced black magic. He claimed the Devil had given him a magical belt, which enabled him to metamorphose into “The likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.” Does any of that sound a little familiar?  Stumpp was also said to have murdered and eaten several children and family members. The Stumpp’s trial till this day is known as one of the most lurid and famous werewolf trials in history. It is also notable that Little Red Riding Hood did not survive in the earliest tales of her story.

In most of these early fragments of the story, the girl is eaten by the wolf, however there are a few tales of her tricking the wolf and escaping.  Local woodcutters didn’t enter into the story until Charles Perrault wrote, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge in 1697. Even then, they were not to be the saviors of the innocent girl, but an obstacle the wolf must get past in order to get to the grandmothers house. In the story the wolf deceives the “attractive, well-bred young lady” into giving him the directions he needs to avoid the woodcutters and get to her grandma’s house. In Perrault’s story the girl is eaten by the wolf and the story ends. The moral that Perrault was trying to get across was that young nice ladies should not listen nor talk to strangers.

Who knows how DiCaprio will depict this story in his new ‘gothic’ film. I can only hope he isn’t jumping on the Twilight / Alice in Wonderland band wagon. God help me if the wolf in grandmother’s closing has chiseled abs and an enormous forehead.

Leaving off from Part 1 of The War of the Roses, Henry IV had supplanted Richard II and made himself King through both good administration and military prowess. Henry IV had a son, Henry V who kept the realm through the same means as his father. Henry V was best known for being a great soldier, and his military successes against France in the Hundred Years’ War. These traits gained him enormous popularity throughout medieval war history in europe, thus strengthening the Lancastrian hold on the throne.

Even though Henry V was successful on the battlefield, the Yorkists (Richard II’s Family) still had their eyes on the kingship. The most remembered attempt at the throne was the Southampton Plot lead by Richard, Earl of Cambridge and the 4th son of Edward III Edmund Langley.(Edmund may have felt he had a claim for the throne since he considered Henry’s crown illegitimate) Cambridge was executed in 1415 for treason.

When Henry the V died unexpectedly in 1422, his infant son, only 9 months old, Henry VI of England became King. For the next 13 years the realm was managed by Henry’s uncle John, Duke of Bedford. It can be argued that all was well between those years, and it was the death of John in 1435 that left the door open for bad advisors and mismanagement of government.

To be continued….

Sources:

Pollard, A.J. (1988). The Wars of the Roses. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.

Wagner, John A. (2001). Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses. ABC-Clio.

Take that Columbus! Honestly, any news that discredits Columbus in any amount is good news to me! This map was first discovered in the 1950’s bound to an authentic Medieval History of the Mongol invasions. First thoughts and tests lead scholars to believe that this map was a forgery, but recent tests prove otherwise.

“All the tests that we have done over the past five years — on the materials and other aspects — do not show any signs of forgery,” Larsen told Reuters.

The map shows Europe, western Asia and North Africa. Also, in the top left corner a small island called ‘Vinland Island’. The article goes on to state that the Norse placed Vinland to the west of Greenland and that until recently Vinland had been dismissed as real. However, in the 1960s Viking remains were found on the tip of Newfoundland.

If this map is indeed real, then it is just one of several more pieces of proof that some medieval Europeans knew of a substantial body of land off to the west that we know of as North America.

Source Article Here

I know this isn’t ‘medieval’ history in the traditional sense, but at least the time period is close. This news isn’t too crazy when you think of what the Aztecs and Mayans were doing at the same time. A body of a 20 year old Chimu female was found at the Chan Chan archeological complex who appeared to be buried alive. Her feet were amputated, and her positioning suggests she was struggling at fabric tied around her throat.

The archeologists of the site are convinced that the sacrifice was in response to the odd El Nino weather that was occurring during this time.

“This is the first time that evidence has been found that some people from the epoch were buried alive to prevent, in this case, the actions of El Niño from having effects on the city of mud,” the INC’s Cristobal Campana told the official Andina news agency.

Full Article Here.

500 years ago, on July 10th in the year 1509,  John Calvin was born in Noyon, Picardy, France.

John Calvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564), né Jean Cauvin, was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he suddenly broke from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1520s. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.

In that year, Calvin was invited by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel’s ideas, and both men were expelled. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back to lead its church. Following his return, he introduced new forms of church government and liturgy, despite the opposition of several powerful families in the city who tried to curb his authority. During this period, Michael Servetus, a Spaniard known for his heretical views, arrived in Geneva. He was denounced by Calvin and executed by the city council. Following an influx of supportive refugees and new elections to the city council, Calvin’s opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.

Source:
Source Here.

I am feeling a little sick today, so I felt this topic was fitting. I stumbled upon this great resource for contemporary study of the Plague. There is also a lot of great medieval information in general. Enjoy!

Visit the site here!