- Muhlberger's Early History has a very detailed report by Henrik Olsgaard from a Battle of Hastings reenactment, discussing what the reenactment says about the battle itself, with a particular focus on cavalry.
- The Naked Philologist has a post on what attacts teenage girls to become medieval nerds.
- In part of his series on Lloyd Alexander, Jeff Sypeck discusses The Arkadians.
- Scribal Terror has a post on medieval skepticism regarding witchcraft ...
- ... and another one responding to my query about cats & Plague, that also points us here. I'm now convinced that the "medieval Church killed cats because they thought they were evil and therefore caused the Plague" storyline is wrong, but I'm not sure what the truth is: Did they kill cats thinking (accurately) that they were Plague carriers, was there no cat-killing going on at all, or was there cat-killing that was misguided but ultimately fortunate? If cats can spread the Plague, it seems likely to me that it spread throughout Europe on the backs of rats, but spread into the human population through contact with domestic cats. One is more likely to cuddle one's (Plague-infected) cat than a rat, and cats (good ones, anyway) will come into more direct contact with rats than humans will. Perhaps the evidence is simply not available to come to any conclusion beyond seeing that the "evil cats" storyline has little evidence behind it.
- Steven Till discusses the making of mail armor. "Labor intensive" doesn't seem to cover it. Imagine knitting with a die, hammer, and shears.
- Early Medieval Art points us to an exhibition on medieval Byzantium this October in London.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
There's still time to get in on the July Feast. I'll be driving up to that, so if you're in this area and want to go, you can hitch a ride with me. Until then:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"If cats can spread the Plague, it seems likely to me that it spread throughout Europe on the backs of rats, but spread into the human population through contact with domestic cats. One is more likely to cuddle one's (Plague-infected) cat than a rat, and cats (good ones, anyway) will come into more direct contact with rats than humans will."
ReplyDeleteThis seems backwards to me. I mean, I should qualify this by saying I don't have a fraction of the historical knowledge that you do, but I had thought that the "domestication" of cats in the Medieval period really only entailed giving them the occasional warm place to sleep and not kicking them if you saw them around. I didn't think there was much in the way of cuddling going on. They were working animals, and they hunted for their own food around granaries and barns, much in the way that farm cats do today. Am I wrong in my conception of this? A single cat can kill an awful lot of rats in a day -- especially if they're logy from plague -- and even if they then develop the disease themselves, they're more likely to just go die alone somewhere than hop into a peasant's arms. If a cat kills 50 plague-carrying rats and then dies, that's 50 fewer creatures burrowing through walls and under beds looking for food crumbs (fleas can jump several feet, remember, and find humans mighty tasty), not to mention how many more rats could have been propagated subsequently. Those buggers breed fast. After a mass slaughter of cats, a population explosion of rats seems inevitable. More rats, more fleas, more plague. Am I missing something?
"I had thought that the 'domestication' of cats in the Medieval period really only entailed giving them the occasional warm place to sleep and not kicking them if you saw them around."
ReplyDeleteHow is this different than domesticated cats today, or at any other period in history?
My main point here is that I can't seem to find any documentary evidence of a pre-Plague cat slaughter, and certainly not a Europe-wide slaughter. Even if there were a cat-slaughter in, say, Florence, the effect on the cat/rat population in, say, England, would have been nil. Unless I see some evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to think it's just an urban legend.
In defense of your point, however, we are always near rats even today, especially in urban areas. Interestingly, though, Americans who catch the plague today tend to be involved with hunting and trapping in the Southwest, making me wonder if they aren't getting it from squirrels, which can also catch the Plague.
It's not really possible to resolve this, and the truth is probably a combination of the above. Some humans got it from rats, some from cats, and some from hunting game like squirrels, would be my guess.
I've tinkered in mailling myself. "labor intensive" does not even begin to describe it. I even took shortcuts with our modern privileges, like store-bought wire, and not using a die or rivets. Knitting is a good way to describe it, but mailling takes much longer.
ReplyDeleteI may not have finished my intend haubergeon, but my friends still think I am the geekiest of them all. To tell the truth, though, that project was a lot of fun, and I learned a good deal about the medieval while researching it. Everyone should at least try it, though I recommend a much smaller beginning project, like a bracer.