The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [43]
A backward-looking world, illustrated by this eleventh-century reproduction of the cosmological interrelationships of the four ages of man, the four humours, seasons, compass points and elements. The material is simply a new arrangement of concepts unchanged in the previous thousand years.
Such temporal markers were important as they would often be needed to determine birthdays, of vital concern during the Middle Ages in regard to inheritance. In an oral life the acts of giving and taking were complicated by the need to have witnesses present. In 1153, for example, the gift of a salt-pan was made to the Priory of St Peter at Sele, in Sussex, ‘Many people seeing and hearing.’ The use of the oath to reinforce the legality of the event was, and still is, a means of reinforcing the testimony of an oral witness.
Even when, in late medieval times, documentation began to be introduced on a wide scale, the old habits died hard. Symbolic objects were still exchanged to represent a transaction. Knives were favourite symbols. The transaction would often be recorded on the knife haft, as in the case of a gift made in the middle of the twelfth century to the monks of Lindisfarne in northern England. The monks had been given the Chapelry of Lowick and the tithes due to it. On the knife haft is written sygnum de capella de lowic (rsquo;to represent the Chapel of Lowick’). But it was the knife, not the inscription, that symbolised the event and that served to jog the memory. The same reasoning lay behind the use of the personal seal on letters, and the wearing of a wedding ring.
Documents were often forged. In the Middle Ages, it was common to write undated texts. One out of three was false. Canterbury monks, concerned that the Primacy in England should not pass to their rivals in York, ‘found’ papal bulls dating from between the seventh and tenth centuries which supported their cause. The manuscripts had ‘turned up inside other books’. The monks admitted that they were ‘only copies, but nonetheless valid… rsquo;
The general laxity in the transmission of information affected many aspects of medieval life. Travel was more hazardous because of it. For the majority of those who were obliged to move about, journeys consisted of brief periods of security in the communities along the route, interspersed with hours or days of fear and danger in the forests. This was not primarily due to the presence of outlaws or wild animals lurking in the trackless woods that covered most of Europe at the time, but because the majority of travellers had only the haziest notion of where their destination lay.
The Great Seal of Richard the Lionheart of England. The symbol, rather than a signature, served to assure the illiterate of the authority and source of what was contained in the document.
Jacob Fugger, the German banker, dictates letters for transmission through his post-horse network. The files indicate correspondents as far apart as Cracow, Innsbruck and Lisbon.
There were no maps, and few roads. Travellers had a keen sense of direction which took account of the position of the sun and the stars, the flight of birds, the flow of water, the nature of the terrain, and so on. But even information gleaned from another traveller who had previously taken the same route was of limited value if he had travelled in a different season or under different conditions. Rivers changed course. Fords deepened. Bridges fell.
The safe way, indeed the only way, to travel was in groups. In the Middle Ages, a lone traveller was a rare figure. He was usually a courtier on the king’s business, trained to repeat long messages word for word. Such a message could not be forged