On This Day in History

On May 16, 1532 Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor of England. This was done because he could not condone either the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine or the marriage of Henry to Anny Boleyn.
Thomas More (1478 - 1535) was the leading anti-Protestant in England at the time of the Reformation. More spoke vehemently against Luther and his views. He held a number of offices in English politics as he worked his way up to being Lord Chancellor.
In 1530, however, he had refused to sign a letter asking the Papacy for an annulment of the marriage of Henry to Catherine. This put a serious wedge between the monarchy and More. The decision of the monarchy to terminate the Roman Catholic Church and institute the Church of England with the king as the head did not sit well with More. Whereupon, in 1531 he refused to take an oath demonstrating loyalty to the king as the Head of the Church of England.
In 1532, following several attempts, More was finally allowed to resign when it became clear that no reunion between the King and More was going to take place. The next year when More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England, Henry had More arrested on charges of accepting bribes and high treason, although no evidence existed for either crime.
In 1534 More appeared before a parliamentary commission and accepted that Parliament had the right to declare Anne the legitimate queen of England but refused to swear an oath himself to that effect. More's problem was not with the Act of Succession, but with the language in it that declared the Parliament had more right that the Pope to legislate in matters of religion.
More was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1535 he was brought to trial for denying the validity of the Act of Succession, which he did not do. More maintained he could not be convicted of denial of the Act if he did not actually deny the Act. He refused to answer questions related to the King's authority as Head of the Church or any of his opinions on the subject.
Nevertheless, the jury convicted him of the crime of high treason based on testimony of other witnesses. More was executed on July 6, 1535 by decapitation.
More was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1886.
A fantastic film version of his life and trial exists in the adaption of A Man for All Seasons.

The End of the War

Henry V invaded France in 1415, taking advantage of the volatile state of the French monarchy. The civil strife between the duke of Burgundy and the duke of Valois had sunk France into anarchy and left the question of national defense a real issue. Henry’s invasion was fast and deliberate. He captured much of Normandy and moved with great speed throughout France. However, he soon found himself low on supplies and cornered near the village of Agincourt. The French army engaged him there, and in a terrific battle, Henry emerged victorious with the French army in ruins. Henry followed up this victory by ransacking much of northern France and demanding peace with Charles VI.
The resulting peace treaty, the Treaty of Troyes (1420) disinherited the dauphin, Charles VII, from the throne and arranged the marriage of Henry V to Charles VI’s daughter Catherine. This effectively made Henry V the ruler of France. Because not all of the French nobles recognized Henry’s claim to the throne, he continues military campaigns in France until he died in 1422. Henry VI was immediately crowned king of France. Charles VI died the same year.
By 1428 the English were fighting in France again. The siege of Orléans began in that year but was not able to fully take the city. It is at this point that the events of the Hundred Years’ War become popular. In 1429 a peasant girl from Domrémy convinced the dauphin that God had sent her visions of French victory if she led the forces against the English. For some reason he allowed this to take place and her presence was, in fact, able to break the siege of Orleans and begin a surge of French military victories that opened Rheims and Paris again to the French. The dauphin was crowned Charles VII in Oct. 1422 amid great fanfare.
Joan was captured by the Burgundians, who were not happy at the resurgence of French monarchial power, and sold to the English in 1430. Joan was tried for heresy and condemned to be burned at the stake. She was an extremely popular figure in France and continued to be so after the war was over. In 1920 she was canonized as an official saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, at the time she was viewed as a heretic by most officials in the church. How much this has to do with her execution, as opposed to her surprising victories in turning the French tide of the war against the English, remains a matter of historical debate. All we can say is that Joan rallied the French to victory and changed the course of the war.
Not long after Joan was captured, the Burgundians made a separate peace with and returned to the French side of the war. This allowed a more unified defense of France from this point forward. From 1435 to the end of the war in 1453, France was able to mount sure resistance and recovered town after town that had been in English hands.
When the war was finally over, the English had lost nearly all of their holdings in France. When the final battle was fought at Castillon in 1453, the roles were decidedly reversed. The French fought a calm and deliberate battle, whereas the English were frantic and foolish in their maneuvering. When the dust settled nothing remained of the English territory in France but the city of Calais and an empty claim to the throne of France.
The significance of the war is more important than its actual course and battles. The Hundred Years’ War was an experiment in evolution. Military tactics, traditional understandings about chivalry and its place on the battlefield, politics and popular conceptions of monarchy and nobility all came under fire during the course of this 116 year conflict. In many ways it signals the final collapse of the medieval world and bridges the gap to the developments of the next century. Like a wave breaking on the shore, the medieval world collapsed under the pressure of its own weight and the Hundred Years’ War is the greatest effect that collapse has to present.
During the 1420’s and 1430’s Prince Henry began making annual voyages into the Atlantic Ocean that would change the shape of the world drastically. Less than fifty years after the war ended Christopher Columbus had landed on the Caribbean Islands of North America. Within a hundred years the Renaissance and the Reformation were sweeping across Europe. The medieval world gasped for life during the Hundred Years’ War and eventually gave up its spirit to renewal and reformation of its cardinal beliefs.

Conduct and Course of the Hundred Years' War (1337 - 1360)

Once underway, the Hundred Years’ War was conducted in a series of phases that were often interrupted by truce or other reason to stop hostilities. Edward III made the first strike, hoping to secure the Flemish lands. He invaded the region of Flanders with a naval campaign that shocked contemporaries, not because of the amount of ships he used, but at the way he won the battle. Jean Froissart records that upon reaching Sluys, Edward saw “such a huge number of ships that their masts resembled a forest.” Edward redeployed his ships so that his archers could have the greatest effect. The French had no experience with the relatively new innovation of English archery: the longbow. Standing about six feet tall and boasting arrows of three feet in length, the longbow could shoot accurately up to 200 yards, which was more powerful even than the crossbow. The English decimated the French in the fight and took the port of Sluys easily. This impressive first victory led to a truce in 1342. The English held the port of Sluys and had a decent foothold in Flanders.
The truce of 1342 was broken in 1345 by the French and the English prepared to fight again. This second phase lasted only a year but created havoc among the French. The English landed at Normandy and began a long march down the Seine toward Paris. Philip VI had been stung, but not defeated when he lost Flanders. He gathered a large force of men and followed the English army at a safe distance until they could find a place to fight. In the course of events, they were brought to the town of Crećy in August of 1346. Unfortunately for the French, the English got the better ground in the battle. The English chose the higher ground and simply waited for the French to begin the assault. When they did, it was an absolute slaughter. At the end of the battle more than 4,000 French knights lay dead. The English chose to capitalize on their victory by laying siege to the port city of Calais, the closest point between England and France. It took the English almost a year to subdue Calais, but when they did in 1347 a truce was forced. The truce lasted five years, and held off hostilities during the period of the Black Death in Europe.
After the Black Death abated, both English and French were still willing to fight. The truce signed in 1347 expired in 1351 with no continuance. When it did, two English armies were ready to move on French lands. They were held up only by Pope Innocent VI who desperately wanted to stop the fighting in Europe. When the treaty designed by the Pope fell through the Prince of Wales, known to history as the Black Prince, sailed to Bordeaux in 1355 and was ready to make war. Edward III was already prepared to cross the English Channel and fight in Normandy.
In 1350 Philip VI had died and had been succeeded by his son Jean II. Jean had alienated many of his nobles in the first year of his reign and could not count on them for support as much as he needed. In light of this, it is easier to understand how the Black Prince ravaged Aquitaine and other areas of France for the better part of a year. Known by the French as “the proudest man ever born of woman,” he raided towns, murdered peasants, and burned mills over a 250 mile stretch of French countryside. The fascinating thing is that the French nobility in the region did little to stop this disaster.
In 1355 Edward III was able to make his crossing, although he had to settle for the port of Calais rather than Normandy. Hoping to bring the coastal region of Brittany under his control, Edward fought his way south into France. As he did so, followed by a French army, it became clear that a major battle was at hand. When Edward and the Black Prince met and joined near Poitiers, the result was inevitable. The Battle of Poitiers remains one of the greatest losses the French have ever seen on their own soil. In the aftermath, not only was the King himself captured, but also “one fighting arch-bishop, 13 counts, 5 viscounts, 21 barons and bannerets, and some 2,000 knights, squires, and men-at-arms of the gentry.” The result was a France without a king and without a great part of its noble class.
King Jean II was eventually ransomed, after a third estate uprising known as the Jacquerie, for the price of three million écus , as well as complete cession of Aquitaine and Calais to English control. Jean II returned to France and the war stopped. Edward rescinded his claim to the throne of France.
However, after Jean II died in 1364 and Charles V ascended the throne, the war began to take shape once again. Charles was very unhappy about the settlement and began strategically retaking English possession in France and in 1369 declared the Treaty of Bretigny to have been broken by the English. Between 1369 and 1389 the English tried to reassert control over territory ceded to them by Bretigny and establish control over Brittany. The main battle of the period, the Battle of Auray ended well for the English but had no lasting effects. The dukes of Brittany reconciled with the French crown and in the course of the period Edward III, the Black Prince, and many of England’s best generals died. By 1389, the war had wound down to a stalemate and another truce was called. This truce lasted until 1415, but hardly meant a peaceful condition for either France or England. The medieval world continued to unravel around the great conflict.
England faced revolts from Scotland and Ireland under the brief reign of Henry IV (1399-1413) and was unable to make any serious moves in France. The reign of Henry IV is featured in two plays by Shakespeare (Henry IV Part One and Two) and mentioned in Richard II. Shakespeare characterized Henry’s reign as one of constant defense from plots, assassination attempts and rebellions. While Shakespeare obviously dramatizes the situation for his audience, this was not far from the truth. Henry IV was succeeded in 1413 by Henry V who was finally able to resume tactics in France.
France also faced internal problems. With the death of Charles V, his twelve-year old son became Charles VI and ruled from 1380 until 1422. However, very early in his reign madness was detected and the regency was assumed by the duke of Burgundy creating a civil war in France between the Burgundians and the Valois. The feud brought anarchy to France and led to the invasion by Henry V in 1415 AD that began the final and most harrowing portion of the war.

Background and Causes of the Hundred Years' War

Historian Barbara Tuchman has claimed that the fourteenth century was “calamitous,” by which she means that great calamity attended the years 1300 AD to 1450 AD. Of course, it is not so neat as that, but in general it is true that the world changed dramatically in that century. We have already witnessed one major aspect of that change: the Black Death. In the five years of the plague’s major activity, it wiped out more than 70 million people, roughly one-third of Europe’s population. The plague was not over in 1351. It returned from time to time, although with less disastrous effects. Another major event of Tuchman’s calamitous fourteenth century is the Hundred Years’ War.
The Hundred Years’ War was a massive conflict that began in 1337. It mostly involved the countries of England and France, but the region of Flanders was involved somewhat as well. With some respite while under various truces, France and England fought for 116 years, until 1453. The causes of the Hundred Year’s war are varied and form a major plank in understanding what would bring these two countries to fight for such a long period of time. In order to fully understand the causes, the background should be reviewed.
The French had long been concerned with the English feudal holdings in Aquitaine. For two hundred years French kings had been seeking ways to remove the English presence there. Since the days of King John Aquitaine had slowly been reduced in size and would never reach the expanse it had under the Angevin Empire (except during rare moments of the coming conflict). The French also permitted the subjects of Aquitaine to bring any complaints against their lord directly to the French crown. This was a violation of the English lord’s rights in practice, but one which the French subjects repeatedly took advantage of. It was a constant source of friction between the English and the French and had conflict written all over it.
Another major piece of background information is the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The relationship between papacy and monarchy had always been difficult as events like the Investiture controversy proved. The issue of church and state was a constant, some would say defining, problem during the Middle Ages. The period surrounding the Hundred Years’ War stands as the high point of the medieval world. Under the weight of so many conflicting relationships, the medieval world began to collapse in on itself and the Babylonian Captivity of the Church was but one effect of that collapse.
One of the defining struggles leading up to the Babylonian Captivity was the right to tax clergy members. Traditionally, the clergy were exempt from all local and state taxes. This did not mean they were not taxed; they were not taxed by secular authorities. Clergy were taxed by their superiors. Priests paid taxes (a portion of the tithe) to bishops, who paid taxes to arch-bishops, and so on until the papacy received its portion of ecclesiastical revenues. This system was so standardized that parishes and bishoprics were said to allow a certain income to the priest or bishop who oversaw it. Nonetheless, Philip IV wanted a share of the clerical coffers and insisted he had a right to it. This insistence prompted the Papal Bull called Clericis Laicos. This important letter, issued in 1296 AD proclaimed that no clergy “pay nothing under pretext of any obligation” to secular authorities.
Philip was not happy and the typical game of excommunication and force ensued. With such an unrepentant king on his hands, Boniface VIII issued another Papal Bull that made the most sweeping statement of any regarding papal authority. The Bull of Unam Sanctum claimed “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Te die had been cast. Even as Boniface prepared to excommunicate Philip IV, Philip prepared a physical response to the bull. Philip kidnapped Boniface and held him for three days at a castle in Anagni near Rome. Though he was released, the event had traumatic consequences for Boniface, who died about a month later.
Philip then saw to the election of a new pope who was French. Clement V mot only became, as most historians and theologians have viewed him, a puppet pope for the French king, but also moved the center of papal authority from Rome to the French city of Avignon. Six popes ruled the papacy from Avignon in France for about seventy years. This period has been called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church for a number of reasons. The humanist Petrarch (see chapter twenty-six) once called Avignon the “Babylon of the West.” Every office and permission for any crime or sin was able to be bought and sold in Avignon. The corruption already present in the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church took on heinous dimensions that were immortalized in works like Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy. Tuchman describes the general corruption of the church. “When bishops purchased benefices at the price of year’s income, they passed the cost down, so that corruption spread through the hierarchy from canons and priors to priesthood and cloistered clergy, down to mendicant friars and pardoners. It was at this level that the common people met the materialism of the Church, and none were more crass than the sellers of pardons.”
All of this was apparently done to satisfy the French kings lust for power and wealth. The Babylonian Captivity eroded, to a great extent, the last real power that the Roman Catholic Church possessed in Europe. As the years waned on, reformers became more and more numerous, facing the corruption of the papacy with doctrinal and practical changes. Within two hundred years Martin Luther would set the final nail in the coffin of the strangle hold Roman Catholicism had on the European mind.
A final piece of background information necessary to understand the causes of the Hundred Years’ War is the obliteration of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar had been formed as a multi-national organization for knights to participate in the crusades. After the crusading period they found themselves in possession of a great deal of wealth. This attracted the eyes of Philip IV of France. Using his puppet pope, Clement V, Philip had the Knights arraigned on charges of devil-worship, witchcraft and sorcery and other heretical beliefs and practices. The papacy confiscated all property and wealth and gave it to a rival organization, the Hospitallars of St. John, who very soon gave a large donation to Philip IV of France.
A final piece of background information review is the unique place that chivalry had in medieval society. Chivalry, as we have discussed, was an ideal that wedded Germanic warrior customs, Roman legal customs, and Christian ethics and morality into a complicated framework of behavior and duty for the medieval knight. We have already seen how the code of chivalry has developed from a mere attitude between two knights to a more complicated system of courtly love and romance. Chivalry deserves a place in the background of the Hundred Years’ War because it was the knights that fought the conflict. Their behavior, as captured by chroniclers like Jean Froissart, shows the darker side of chivalry that the external coverings of Christian morality over a diseased heart can never totally hide. Knights who were not converted men with their hope and trust in Christ could be fiendishly evil and perpetrators of inhuman suffering. Many knights in Europe were itching for a fight. They loved to perform at tournaments and gain popularity. The crusades had siphoned off some of this spirit, but they had been over now for a hundred years. Chivalry, at this time, meant that there were warriors who wanted a war.
With this background information in place, it is time to consider the causes of the Hundred Years’ War, that crowning event of the High Middle Ages that signaled the end of the medieval way of life. There are generally four causes of the Hundred Years’ War given by historical accounts. They come in no particular order, but some are weightier than others.
The first cause is typically listed as the English claims in Aquitaine. This contest mentioned earlier fueled a great conflict of interest that was bound to boil over eventually. The second cause is Anglo-Frankish competition over the region of Flanders. Flanders, on the northern border of France and sharing the English Channel was strategically located both for military matters and economic matters. The third cause is the very aspects of chivalry we have just mentioned. The fourth, and possibly most direct cause of the Hundred Years’ War, has to do with the succession to the French throne in 1328.
In 1328 Charles IV died without a male heir. He had three possible claimants to the throne. Philip IV’s daughter had married the king of England and their son, Edward III, had a possible claim to the throne. The other two claimants were sons of a brother and half-brother of the deceased king. Philip of Valois was the favored candidate and Philip of Evreux was unlikely to gain recognition. The dispute over the crown seemed settled on Philip of Valois until the control of Flanders came into question. Edward III used the dispute over the French crown to justify a full-scale invasion and the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337 AD.

Reactions to the Plague and Other Events

When examining the reactions of the Black Death in Europe, we must remember the amount of death involved. Europe’s population was reduced by over 70 million people in the space of five years. Reactions to this onslaught were varied and unpredictable. There was no enemy to fight against. There was no one to take vengeance upon for the disease. Europe was completely helpless in the face of this faceless killer that had no respect for class, station, birth, or religion. In light of this, it should not surprise us to find that reactions included explanations from religious experience, a denial of traditional mores and social customs, and scapegoating.
“See how England mourns, drenched in tears. The people stained by sin, quake with grief. Plague is killing men and beasts. Why? Because vices rule unchallenged here.”[1] Reactions like this were fueled by traditional understandings of God and the universe; medieval understandings. The people of the medieval world, more so than we, tended to think of every event as part of God’s unfolding plan for His universe. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic theology of the High and Later Middle Ages caused them to see themselves as perpetually under the divine wrath of God and that He was just looking for a good excuse to pour that wrath out on humanity. Religious interpretation of the plagues cause also sparked reactions like the flagellants: people who went about with whips (flagella) with which they “beat and whipped their bare skin until their bodies were bruised and swollen and blood rained down, spattering their walls nearby.”[2] They did this as an act of public penance for the sins that brought about the plague. As can be imagined, the amount of death present in Europe brought concerns about the end of the world. There was no lack of millennialism to account for the events surrounding the bubonic plague. There were rumors in 1349 that Antichrist had appeared and was even then a boy about ten years old.[3]
Many abandoned the traditional religious interpretation and the social structure established by Christianity in light of the plague. Looking around at the death around them and the powerlessness of established authority (ecclesiastical or secular) to control the plague, many began living for the moment, considering they could die at any moment. They completely gave themselves over to hedonism, forgetting that the trials of this life are used to purify the soul. They indulged in alcohol and sexual immorality.
Scientific reactions ranged from astrological explanations concerning the positions of all the planets at the time the plague broke out to theories about the content of the air being poisonous. Germ theory and basic sanitation to avoid infectious disease were a long way off at this point. We must admire these people for attempting an explanation even as we snicker at the absurd things they came up with.
Other reactions included flight from the heavily populated cities. The fourteenth-century writer Giovanni Boccacio captured much of this in his great work the Decameron. The Decameron is a frame narrative, like the Canterbury Tales, where a situation gives rise to the setting of the story. In Boccacio’s tale, ten people flee from Floerence to escape the ravages of the plague and tell stories to each other to pass the time. Once again, the reaction of flight is the setting of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Masque of the Red Death.
There were a host of social reactions as well. One of the most hateful was that of scapegoating. As already noted, there was no enemy with the plague. There was no person responsible for the death that each and every town in Europe felt. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, sins, daughters; all were affected by the death rampant between 1347 and 1351 ad. Human nature desires to blame someone or something for our misfortunes. We see this from the beginning of our sorry state, the Garden of Eden. As soon as God called Adam’s attention to his sin, Adam pointed to his scapegoat to avoid punishment himself. The medieval world was no different. They looked for any possible scapegoat to deliver them from their pain. Oftentimes the Jews were made the scapegoat of the anger flowing out of Europe. Pogroms, organized massacres of Jews, were frequent in towns and cities with Jewish populations. Many Christians still held Jews responsible for the death of Christ and the Jewish populations of Europe were often persecuted in various ways. At the time of the Black Death, they were made the scapegoat; beaten and killed as a way of venting anger or placing blame. Many Jews fled western Europe to eastern Europe and Russia at this time. This made for a large Jewish population in Russia, Poland, Prussia, and other developing countries there. An increase in witchcraft accusations and trials also seems to be due to the sense of helplessness many people felt in the face of the Black Death.
[1] From “On the Pestilence” anonymous English poem in Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death (New York: Manchester University Press, 1994), 126.
[2] From “Chronicon Henrici de Hervordia” The Black Death, 150.
[3] Robert E. Lerner, “The Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities, ” American Historical Review LXXXVI, 1981: 552.

The Black Death

The Bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death, broke out in Europe around 1347 in the port cities of Sicily and Merseilles. It came from Asia. It is thought that Mongol warriors brought it out of central China during their occupation of the region. The disease spread through rats and the fleas on them. It spread quickly to the port cities of Asia. Since trade was stronger now than it had been it easily spread to Europe. Once in Europe it spread quickly, devastating the population in European countries.
The Bubonic plague was a version of the bacterium Yersinia pestis and was carried by fleas and rats into the ships of merchants bound for European port cities. Its spread in Europe was vast and with amazing speed. The traditional dates of the Black Death, the name given to the plague by Europeans, are from 1347 – 1351 AD. It is often said that the Black Death wiped out one to two-thirds of the European population, or 70 million people. Such a massive reduction in the population of Europe cannot but have had radical consequences as we will see later.
The plague first arrived in Europe through the ports of Sicily and later Marseilles in 1347. The new trade networks that had been established since the end of the crusading period guaranteed that goods were being traded between Asia and Europe. The plague spread like wildfire. In the five years of the plagues main activity it spread throughout most of Europe. By June of 1348 the plague had penetrated deep into France and had consumed Italy and the Balkans. Spain was also affected on its Mediterranean coast. By December of 1348 the plague had spread to portions of England and had almost completely engulfed most of southern Europe. In the next six months it spread further into England and began to infiltrate Germany and Russia. By December of 1349 almost all of England was affected as well as the North Sea region. Throughout 1350 and 1351 the plague continued to spread into Russia and other northern lands. As we can see in the map, very little of Europe was spared the devastation of the plague. There are a few places that seemed little touched by the disease and death of the plague. It is unknown why this is the case, except that they were low population areas and had less contact with the broader European community than most other areas.
The Black Death is of three varieties. The bubonic plague, the pneumonic plague, and the septicemic plague, but all have the same bacteria and initial transmission. Distinctions are made to acknowledge the different ways the plague was spread from carrier to host. The bubonic plague was spread through the fleas on black rats from Asia. The bacteria multiplied in the fleas’ stomach, making it ravenous. It ate constantly, trying to satisfy its hunger, but eventually died of starvation because the bacteria consumed everything. Its eating, however, allowed the bacteria to transmit to new hosts: rats, cats, and humans. From there pneumonic and septicemic plague took over to transmit the bacteria among the human population of Europe. Pneumonic plague was spread through saliva coughed out of infected hosts. Septicemic plague was spread through contact with the infected blood of a host.
The close living conditions of medieval cities made the plague spread all the faster and the limited knowledge of physicians at the time did not help anything. Physicians knew nothing about the scientific causes of the spread of infectious disease. The field of medicine was still dominated by the Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates. Hippocrates, often called the father of modern medicine, thought that disease was caused by an imbalance in one of the four fluids, or humours, of the body. When this imbalance took place the humors must be brought back into balance. This was often done by bleeding or resting and waiting. Both of these methods of dealing with the plague in Europe proved disastrous. Bleeding brought others in contact with infected blood and waiting simply gave the disease more time to develop.
The symptoms of the black plague were obvious and quick. An infected person would develop large red blotches of infected blood and these would ooze pus and blood. The red blotches gave rise to the term Red Death in some literature dealing with the plague, notably the short story Masque of the Red Death by American writer Edgar Allen Poe.
The death rates for Europe during this period changed everything about society at the time. Most cities could not keep up with the death rate and mass graves were inaugurated to deal with the great amount of death. In the next section we will see how individual people and institutions dealt with the pandemic on social, ethical, and psychological levels.

Famine and Population

Many historians have commented that one of the most important factors in the history of any civilization is population. This would seem obvious once stated, but is often overlooked in historical accounts. When we say population is important, we mean the fact that there are people, not the more social issues of whether those people are of a particular class or not. Every civilization has to deal with the problem of either having too many people or not having enough. Sometimes God, in His providence, handles the issue for us. Beginning in 1347 ad, a plague ripped across Europe and devastated the population. We will take the story of that particular event up in a moment. There are other ways that population can be affected without reference to an apocalyptic plague.
The Bible tells us that life is a vapor, and that we are like flowers in a field. These images are meant to remind us of the fragility of life. As we consider the forces of history; the wars, the social changes, and the theology of various periods, we must remember that we are dealing with actual people, like you and I, not abstract characters in a play or novel. Population is nothing but a fancy word for thinking about how many people are in a given place at a given time. The reason population is so important is that, as we mentioned already, without it, there is no civilization.
The fragility of life is affected by weather and food. Weather can be too hot or too cold. Food can be plentiful or in low supply. These two broad factors are often influenced by each other or influence each other. Good weather may produce an abundant supply of food. An abundance of food means people eat better, are stronger, and are more productive. There is also more food to go around. Poor weather can have the opposite effect. A lack of food, often called a famine, will tend to be evidenced by falling population figures for a given time period or region.
Around the end of the thirteenth century (the 1200’s) Europe entered what historians and other scholars call a “little ice age.” A small shift in temperature patterns caused the growing season to be shorter, thus affecting food production. This “little ice age” also affected other weather conditions, causing storms and heavy rain for many areas. These events precipitated what has been called the Great Famine of 1315. It lasted for two years in northern Europe and killed as much as ten percent of the population there. Ten percent doesn’t sound like a high figure. However, prior to this change in conditions, Europe had been experiencing a growth in population. Population figures in countries are often expressed in millions. If there were one million people in Europe, we are talking about the death of 100,000 individuals. The population figures are actually much higher than that. Sometimes individual cities reported deaths of that magnitude. The pattern established in northern Europe continued in southern Europe. The 1330’s and 1340’s saw hunger become a real problem for many cities.
One reason why the change in harvest levels had such a dramatic effect in Europe was that by the 1300’s Europe had reached what some scholars refer to as “the upper limit of its population.”[1] This meant that given the agricultural and technological factors, no more people could be supported. Unless some factor changed, such as an increase in productive land or an advance in technology, the maximum population had been reached. With the changes in temperature that this “little ice age” brought about, the same amount of land was being farmed, but the production level had declined. This meant there was less food for a level population.
A common reaction to this was migration. Many cities grew in size about this time as people moved from the rural areas to the more urban areas. This took place on a grand scale and often accompanies a shift of this magnitude. All across history, severe changes resulting in famine have caused migrations to more populated areas. While this seems counterproductive to us, the idea was that a city has more opportunities to succeed than a small town. We see this paradigm played out in the classical and biblical world over and over again (cf. Ruth) and in more modern times as well. The American novelist, John Steinbeck, based The Grapes of Wrath, on the migration of people from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression of the 19930’s. This reaction to famine is not new, nor has it been replaced in our history.
Many cities saw increases of up to 18% in the years of the famines. This obviously meant that the rural areas saw a marked decrease in their population. Nonetheless, all this marks an overall decrease in population throughout Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Famine was a major contributor to this population decline. Famine led to malnutrition which caused higher infant death rates and lower births in general. However famine was not the only factor. The other major factor in the population decline on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was the bubonic plague, otherwise known as the Black Death.
[1] Jackson Spielvogel. Western Civilization, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999), 297.

Angels in the Architecture "The Font of Laughter"

How important is laughter to the Christian life? According to Wilson and Jones, it is central. Why, then, are so many Christians found to be dour, stern looking folks? Wilson and Jones suggest it may be because they do not understand Christianity.
We must state at the outset that Wilson and Jones are, as I am, reformed in their soteriology and therefore in their view of the Christian worldview. Much of this essay derives its chief argument from a reformed understanding of the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.
As Christians, we often think our total depravity or predestination are difficult things to be resigned to. You mean, I am really that bad? Huh. You mean to say I can't do anything to save myself? Huh. What a drag.
On the contrary, argue Wilson and Jones. What a cause for rejoicing. "Congratulations Mr. Sisk, you just survived a fall of three hundred feet because someone put this inflated thing-a-ma-bob under you." "I was that high up! Man, I'll spend the rest of my life being downcast about how high up I was and what would have happened to me."
Wrong! Spend the rest of your life rejoicing that the inflated thing-a-ma-bob was put under you for your salvation. Laugh about it for heaven's sake.
Laughter is the proper response to our salvation because of predestination and total depravity, not in spite of those things.

Angels in the Architecture "Where Righteousness and Mercy Kiss"

It has been awhile since I blogged a essay in Angels in the Architecture, but I'm going to try to get back into this. I am teaching through the book in my Humanities class right now, so I'm having to read the essays again.
In this essay, Doug Jones discusses the doctrine of Justification. No real shock there, since when do Protestants not talk about Justification? But Jones comes at this from a slightly different angle. Jones rehashes the issues separating Protestant Justification from Roman catholic Justification. He argues, however, that Roman Catholic Justification, aside from being Scripturally wrong, is philosophically wrong as well. Only the Protestant vision of Justification keeps God's attributes of Righteousness (Justice) and Mercy from warring against each other. Any system that elevates either of these two over the other makes for a lop-sided Justification and fails to do God justice, so-to-speak.
To simply forgive sin without punishment would indeed be merciful, but would leave justice unsatisfied. To punish sin wholly and immediately would be just, but would lack mercy. Roman Catholicism keeps these two at odds while the Protestant doctrine of Substitionary Atonement and Vicarious Sacrifice leading to Justification by Faith satisfies both requirements.
Why must God be just, you may ask? Because it is a self-proclaimed attribute of His holiness (cf. Neh. 9:32-33). Why must God then be merciful? God, Himself, declares this to be an attribute as well (cf. Ex. 34:6-7). Righteousness and Mercy must kiss for true Justification to happen. Only the Protestant vision of this Justification satisfies the demands of a holy and merciful God.

Angels in the Architecture "Te Deum"

Te Deum reads more like a commentary on Beowulf than an essay that fits in this collection; which is why it is one of the best in the book. Wilson, begins with an excellent statement about how limited our language is in describing God or His attributes. This is an excellent point to make, especially in our time. We have begun to assume some of the scientific mindset of our age and falsely believe that if we can name an attribute or doctrine we can fully comprehend that attribute or doctrine. Wilson draws us back to the truth of historical theology, something the medieval theologians and poets had a better grasp of than we moderns, that description is necessarily limited and does no justice to reality in the long run. Even the Westminster Divines understood this. While they took great pains to describe the nature and character of God:

There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. (WCF 2.1)

They understood they could not even begin to fully describe Him and that even the Scriptures were unclear in one way or another, being bound by human (created) language:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (WCF 1.7)

From this discussion on the limits of language, Wilson suggests that we might understand the character of God and His divine attributes a little better if we listened to the language of poetry. While poetry is often imprecise (a topic we will cover again in the essay on Poetic Knowledge) it expresses the truth in more understandable ways. Consider the language of hymns, which are essentially poetic. Not only poetry, but he suggests the poetry and language of the North Sea region will be helpful in thinking through our own limitations and needs in describing the goodness and glory of God.

It is Wilson’s hope that the language and culture of the Beowulf writer will remind us of the essential medieval qualities that will help us repent of our modernity in the arena of theology. A healthy dose of medieval protestant theology is what is needed in the modern world.

Angels in the Architecture "A Wine Dark Sea and Tumbling Sky"

Like many others, I first gave serious consideration to the holiness of God after reading R.C. Sproul’s book on the subject. I also watched a video series on the subject. I remember being struck by the comprehensiveness of that attribute. The idea that God’s holiness is so pervasive and so complete that not even the angelic creatures can “fully bear that sight” was unimaginable. This first real essay calls us back to a proper understanding of God’s holiness as “the manifestation of all His attributes in all their splendor.” What a great way to put that! But Wilson doesn’t just want an academic contemplation of God’s holiness. He wants a practical application of the doctrine. Specifically to our understanding of beauty.

In short, while beginning with God’s holiness, as I am becoming more and more convinced everything should, the chapter is really about a return to an objective, universal, and invariant doctrine of beauty. Wilson actually says that sound doctrine should include a love of the beautiful.

What is beauty? Where does it come from? In the throes of modernity we have come to accept as gospel truth the maxim “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What rubbish! And yet, it is difficult to get around the differing ideas of beauty and taste. How can I say that your love of green apples is doctrinally flawed while my love of red apples is orthodox? This isn’t really what the Bible teaches about beauty. When the Bible considers beauty it does so in contrast to the pagan notions of beauty. While we offer living sacrifices to God out of our gratitude for salvation, the pagans offered their babies to the fire and their daughters to prostitution. Which is more beautiful? While Bezalel fashioned the ark of the covenant and the implements for the worship of the living God, we have “artists” who stick a crucifix in a jar of urine and go on about their right of free speech to do it, and isn’t it clever?

While I need to think more about the standards of beauty to come to grips with what they say, I have no doubt that there are such standards. Wilson is right. Our sense of beauty, like our sense of truth is derivative, not originative. We live by presupposition. This must affect our aesthetic as well. I haven’t worked it all out, but I know it works. Wilson points to two basic responses we, as modern evangelicals, typically have to this.

“The modern evangelical either says that our aesthetic vision should be borrowed from the world, or … we must be content with no beauty at all.”

This is no way to live. Art is to reflect the glory of the living God as we are to reflect the glory of the living God. God is the first and greatest artist, and we (as well as creation) are His handiwork. We are some of the first pieces of art. Let us bask in the freedom this allows.

Angels in the Architecture - Introduction "Positively Medieval"

Wilson begins the book with an introductory essay and posits a medieval / modern antithesis. He admits it may be odd, but says it is important to flesh out the Christian worldview and “Christian medievalism” is the best way to flesh out that story. The essays that follow cover subjects ranging from predestination, lovemaking, feasting, and agrarianism.

The obvious question for Wilson and Jones is how to define modernity and medievalism? Modernity is the current shape of the world, with all its sterility and loneliness. Modernity is whatever rejects truth, beauty, and goodness. This is why postmodernism is simply the child or grandchild of modernity, according the Wilson and Jones. The rejection of these categories means little until we recognize what they replace them with. Rationalism and sentimentalism are the virtues that modernity puts in the place of truth, beauty, and goodness. Modernity is the Enlightenment lived out to the n^th degree. It is a world without feeling, only sentimentalism. It is world without love, only cold rationalism. Medievalism, on the other hand, is the fullness of truth, beauty, and goodness and all the things that go with them. Wilson says,

“The medieval period is the closest thing we have to a maturing Christian culture.”

This maturing culture was cut short in the 16^th century by none other than the Reformation and the Enlightenment. While the Reformation was cut of the same cloth as medievalism, neither survived the Enlightenment very well. The Reformation was a revolution of sorts and revolutions always call for some serious calls to be made. Shipwreck survivors must make some very serious decisions about life and death in the immediate wake of the wreck that do not necessarily reflect how they would live normally. But the situation determines the actions. This is not a call for or an endorsement of situational ethics. No one can do anything immoral in the wake of a shipwreck or plane crash and call it OK because of the wreck. The situation never justifies the choice, but it can reasonably inform the choice. Luther and Calvin and the others made some societal and cultural choices to distance themselves from Roman Catholicism so much that their descendents mistook the emergency decision for the proscribed norm and made it normative for the resulting group.

But the true test between medievalism and modernity is the appeal of the story. Which has a better tale to tell? Would you rather hear the tale sitting before a roaring fire in a Danish Mead Hall with a mug of dark brew or in a cold, sterile restaurant on 5^th Ave in New York while you daintily sip your trendy mixed drink? Would you rather hear the tale after a long hard day’s work in your fields or after a long shift in the cubicle? To ask the question is almost to have it answered. We consider the medieval story more valuable because it was so rich. Yeah, it was dirty and we can learn that lesson later.

The introduction tells us that the medieval story was taken over by Protestantism but then lost in the trenches of modernity. We can recover it and move forward. The rest of this book, the essays that follow are guides to what medieval Protestantism would look like.

Angels in the Architecture Foreword

George Grant wrote the foreword to this book and if anyone has listened to or seen his Modernity lectures through Gileskirk, many of the themes contained herein are going to sound familiar. This foreword is typical George Grant, which is always a good thing.

Grant begins with a statement concerning the oddity of naming the period between the fall of the western Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, or even medieval. The naming convention reflects pure Enlightenment thought concerning this time period. Read a little Voltaire and you can figure where the terminology came from. Interestingly it only came from those Enlightenment gurus who were hostile to Christianity. Artists like Van Eyk, Michelangelo and scientists like Newton and Bacon were not as harsh toward the previous thousand years or Christendom.

Grant makes a point, as do Wilson and Jones, of calling the period Christendom. It makes a difference. The dominant ideology in place during the thousand years between say AD 500 and AD 1500 was Christianity. This is reflected in its art, architecture, culture, feasting, economics, theology, politics, everything. It was not always reflected perfectly, we do live in a fallen world.

Looking at and considering what Christendom still has to say to Modernity is what the book is about. The rest of the essays reflect that theme in very remarkable ways.

Angels in the Architecture

I'm back. I am going to begin my summer (technically the students are still testing but I am not teaching anymore so ly time has opened up a little) by blogging through Angels in the Architecture by Douglas Wilson and Douglas Jones.
I read this when I was still a student and all these ideas about a reformed worldview and classical education were still in their idealistic infancy. However, I have picked this book back up again recently, eight years later, and realized its great worth. It is the kind of book you should read once a year, not once a decade. Who knows, I might even assign this book next time I teach Christendom, or Modernity.

Geoffrey of Monmouth Introduction

The following is the introduction essay I gave my students who read Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain last year in the Christendom year.

We have read a lot of history so far this year. By now you may even be sick and tired of history. You may be thinking, “Where is the fun reading?” You may be thinking, “If everything were like Beowulf was, I’d have a lot more fun.” That may be true, but life is not always about having fun. Most people will tell you that school is not supposed to be fun. I disagree with that statement and think that as you grow into a more mature student and believer, you will learn to have fun and enjoy the labor of schoolwork because it stretches you and gives you perspective on the world you inhabit. That being said, you are not going to like everything you do in school and you are often going to ask why you have to learn something you will have no use for in the future. The answer is simple; education is about 20% content. The rest is process or method. You are not learning about medieval history so that you will all be medieval scholars. You are learning about medieval history so that you will be able to think like a medieval. Thinking in this way will help you understand some of the choices they made and how it has affected our world in the twenty-first century. Remember the number one goal here is to bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a pure medievalist. He recognized his place in the medieval world and that included understanding the heritage the ancient world had passed on to him and his generation. We’ll speak more about this later. We only have a range of possibilities for Geoffrey’s life. We are pretty sure he spent several years at Oxford around 1130 – 1150 ad. That gives us a twelfth century location for him historically. He wrote in Latin and claims he translated the History of the Kings of Britain from a very old text the archdeacon of Oxford gave him.

The text we are reading is rarely treated as real history anymore. Modern historians are even more suspect of this text than they are of more ancient historians like Herodotus. You will remember that our friend Herodotus believed in flying snakes and all sorts of odd things. Well, Geoffrey takes the cake by believing in magic of all things. His stories of Merlin and Arthur form some of the backbone to the fantastic canon of Arthurian lore that exists in the world today. A lot of British in more rural areas of the country still believe deep down that Arthur will return as he promised. As well as believing in Merlin and sorcery, Geoffrey clearly states that the British are descended from Trojans. This belief that most nations can be traced to a select group of people, whether they be Greeks or Hebrews, stands opposite the modern belief in a plenitude of independent and culturally relevant ethnic groups. The idea that all mankind came from one family is as heretical to modern historians and sociologists as the denial of the Trinity is to orthodox believers.

If modern historians accepted this idea it might make them have to at least accept that some of the biblical stories about the world (like the Table of Nations in Gen. 11) could be true. They don’t want to do that. Modern historians stand in direct antithesis to the biblical narratives of the founding of the world. It only makes sense that they would stand in the same position to Geoffrey, even though he does not try to spiritualize the founding of Britain. In Geoffrey’s case, it is just too simple. Modern historians, especially since the Enlightenment, have tended to view a simple explanation as an unlikely explanation. There are always too many reasons why something happens to account for them all or to fully understand an event. While this can be true (or partially true) sometimes, it is not always the case. For instance, the Bible tells that the children of Israel lost a major battle to the inhabitants of the city of Ai simply because one man got greedy (cf. Josh 7). We are told that all of David’s troubles in the later part of his rule stemmed form the sin he committed with Bathsheba (cf. 2 Sam 12:10-12). We are told that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ad because of their lack of faith in Christ and rejection of Him as the Messiah (cf. Matt 23:37 – 24:44). Our world is full of simple explanations. Sometimes there can be a lot more to an explanation than there appears. Of course Absalom was a devious man who wanted his father’s throne and the power that came with it. Of course the Jews rebelled against the Romans and brought the destruction of their entire kingdom upon themselves. One must make a careful distinction between causes and explanations.

A cause of something is one of the hundreds of things that took place prior to any event that gave it momentum. An explanation is the summary of why something happened when and where it did. If someone is playing with a brick and it flies out of their hands and breaks a window we could give multiple causes for that event; and all of them might be true. However, to explain the event we would merely say that the person had been acting foolishly.

What then is the cause and explanation for the British people? Geoffrey of Monmouth is here to explain this to us. He will do so with a grand display of stories. He will tell us about the fall of Troy and the travels of Brutus. He will tell us about the reigns of Julius and Claudius Caesar. He will tell us of King Cole, or merry-old-soul fame as well as King Lear, of Shakespeare fame. He will tell us of Merlin, of Arthur, of Utherpendragon, and of Mordred and the undoing of Britain. If we let him, he will tell us such a fantastical story that we will hardly be able to believe the story of Britain could be so simple; which is, of course, why the book is not read much anymore.

Why will Geoffrey tell us all of this? What is his purpose in writing? He tells us himself that his agenda is different from Bede. Bede wrote about church history. Geoffrey purposes to write about the kings of Britain. He does this because he felt compelled to explain who the British are. Why would anyone care who the British are? From our vantage point in the twenty-first century we have a pretty good reason to care who the British are. If they didn’t exist how different would our world be? For the most obvious example, our country is the product of British colonialism. Were there no Britain, there would be no United States of America. That is pretty significant. Let’s answer a better question. Why did Geoffrey care who the British were? In his mind, they were all but gone. He finishes his history at the lowest ebb of British history (roughly 7^th century ad). It is at this point that the Saxons begin to take over the island. The British are reduced to small clans living in Wales. His interest in the British is therefore one of nostalgia. He sees a time far gone as the golden age of the island and wants others to view it this way as well.

This is similar to the way Charlemagne and Otto used the Pax Romana to conjure images of the glory and prosperity of Rome. It is also similar to the way many modern evangelicals look to the 1950’s as a kind of golden age in America before the turbulence of the 1960’s took away all the good, clean family values in the world. Is this a misguided approach? Is this foolishness? Not necessarily. There is great worth in viewing the past with nostalgia, so long as we do not neglect the service of the present. The past will go nowhere, the present moves on. Our understanding of the past can help us monitor and move within the present. However, to dwell on the past blindly without acting in the present is also foolishness. The past is to be learned from (Rom 15:4) not just looked at with awe and a desire to see the present return to the former glory of a bygone era. Herodotus understood this. At the close of the Histories Herodotus tries to make a very specific application of his tale to his own Athenian nation. He closes the narrative with an episode from the life of Cyrus, king of Persia (with whom he opened his tale) and makes the point that a wise ruler known when he has enough land. The application to the Athenians at the close of the Fifth century bc is that they should be cautious in their expansion. Herodotus saw clearly that Athenian expansion could lead to problems with other Greek states. Athens ignored Herodotus’ warning and by 431 bc they were engaged in war with Sparta that would destroy Athens as a world power in the Mediterranean Sea forever. J.R.R. Tolkien understood this as well. A major theme of the Lord of the Rings is the industrialism that made World War I (which Tolkien fought in) and World War II the most destructive events in the Twentieth century. Tolkien saw how dangerous this could be and tried to warn us that we were destroying something more with our machines and warfare than just cities. Our ability to see and understand this is a major part of the process of teaching and learning history. To put it bluntly, it is what we learn history for.

Thus we read Geoffrey of Monmouth.

On Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Are you hot-tempered? Do you flare up at the slightest offense and do everything in your power to maintain your honor, or someone else’s? If so, you are not alone. You have a lot of company in that particular Venn diagram. Among the people in that category would be King Arthur’s nephew Gawain. We met him reading Geoffrey of Monmouth and got a little sense of his hot-headedness there. If you remember, he was sent on the journey to meet envoys from Rome near the end of the book. He allowed himself to be provoked by the Romans and ended up cutting off the head of a Roman officer (an action he seems to repeat from time-to-time). His zeal for the honor of Arthur and Camelot led to the sacking of Rome by Arthur.

Geoffrey of Monmouth is not the only place we can hear stories of Gawain. In a lot of the medieval Arthur stories, Gawain is pictured quite often, and typically as a model of knighthood. This may strike us as odd; especially when we see the mess he gets himself into in the book we are about to read, but the medievals liked Gawain a lot and sung about him often. The stories that we are likely most familiar with about Arthur, those of Sir Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson, do not picture Gawain as the model of the knight. Rather they tend to picture him as a scoundrel and a traitor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight lets us see a little of the alternate tradition that pictured Gawain as a true hero.

We know that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in the fourteenth century but we do not know who wrote it. This may be because the author did not want to be known (out of a sense of humility) or because the name was accidentally lost. Oftentimes, tales told in the medieval world were more about preserving the deeds of the hero than the fame of the author. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was also a poem. It was written in a style known as alliterative poetry. We typically think of poetry as rhyming lines. Some poetry does rhyme, but by far most poetry in the world does not work like this. This can make poetry a little inaccessible to some people unless they read a lot of it. We are going to be reading a prose rendition of the poem. It preserves the story, but some details are necessarily lost. A very good verse translation exists by J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame).

Some of the features of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are worth examining a little by way of preview. Gawain is a knight and is bound by a code of chivalry. Chivalry essentially meant honorable conduct. It originally meant honorable conduct between warriors, but as Europe turned into what some scholars call Christendom (a concept we’ll deal with in a minute) this code of chivalrous behavior began to reflect the values of Christianity and the ethics it demanded of believers. This gives us a picture of Gawain in which honor, virtue, and truth are very important. Courtly romances, like Sir Gawain, often played up the situations that this code could bring into existence if all the aspects were not kept in their proper place.

A well-balanced worldview is like a clean room. Everything has a place and stays in its place. If it is left out of its place, the room is no longer clean and distortions are bound to occur (like leaving a school picture someone gave you out when everyone else’s is put neatly away, thus creating the distortion that you have feelings for this person when you do not). Courtly romances tended to capitalize on the distortions that could take place when honor or truth take a higher place than they deserved and at the expense of other components of the worldview. Sir Gawain shows us what can happen when honor is taken too far and at the expense of virtue or truthfulness.

Europe began as an influx of pagan Germanic tribes into Christian Roman territory. As time went on, many of these tribes converted to Christianity and began to establish legitimate kingdoms based, in part, on Christian teachings of morality and justice. By the time of Charlemagne (800 ad) most of Europe could have been called Christian. The invasions of the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries disrupted this general tendency, but even they were eventually won over by the power of the Gospel. Scholars often call this general saturation of European culture and society with Christianity, Christendom. Christendom means that the structure of society in Europe was Christian. The kings swore allegiance to the pope in many cases, and were often crowned by priests or had coronation ceremonies in churches. Sir Gawain gives us an accurate picture of the effect of Christendom on literature and folklore in Europe. The Church is always in the background of everything that is done. Masses are said every day, more than that in the castle Gawain stays at over Christmas. Lords often have their own private priests and chapels to have mass said in. Gawain visits the chapel often, as do most other characters in the story. Holy days and portions of the ecclesiastical calendar, like Michaelmas and All Hallows Day, are an essential part of how the passing of time is told in the story. We may object that masses are said but we must remember that Roman Catholicism was the only version of Christianity open to England, France and most of Western Europe at that time. The influence of Christianity in creating a Christian state, or Christendom, is monumental and this story exhibits it front and center in a very unapologetic way.

Finally we will notice that Sir Gawain takes a particular view of masculinity and femininity. The lord and his band go out hunting all day while the ladies remain at home and do feminine tasks. This may strike us as sexist or chauvinistic in our modern culture. Before we write Sir Gawain off, we should consider whether our notions are wrong. Medieval civilization attached some very definite roles to men and women that we have discarded for some poor reasons. Nonetheless, we do not have to accept the roles attached to the sexes in this story simply because they are medieval. As always, our standard should be Scripture and its teaching on the subject. We will find, for instance, that the picture of women as constantly trying to woo or be wooed by a knight, even if they are married, is a very unbiblical role.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a work of lasting beauty and creativity. It is short and fun to read. Enjoy!