Middle Ages

The light is low but I know I should write this down. I have some parchment left and some ink. The feelings were overwhelming. I have to let it all out. I hope I had some brushes and paint with me instead, so I can really show how I feel. This was my first day in the castle as an assistant cook for the Baron. I am but a peasant who learned to read and write upon my insistence, with the help of the parish priest.

The Baron was able to taste my cooking when he visited the little pub I worked for with his men. His visits became frequent, and every time he asked for my special pork stew. It came to a point when I though that my recipes could not have been that good for him to be addicted to it. Apparantly, he was. One night, as he merrily cheered with his men, he whispered to me that he would like to hire me as a cook in the castle.

Back then, I thought the Baron desired me. To be his mistress? I do not believe I could fathom that. He appeared to be happy with his family. I did not see any reason for him to simply wander to loose skirts. Not that my skirts ever came loose. As tradition, I married at an early age. However, as fate would have me, it will not let me live a long life with my husband, who died of an illness. God, bless his soul.

Looking at the façade of the castle, I have often wondered how it was inside. Upon that first step, I prayed to God to bless the Baron for finding my stew such a gift. At first, I came with him because I thought that there were no where else for commoners to go to. So I grasped the opportunity even though I was unsure of when I agreed myself into.

The inside of the castle was definitely a dream for me. The carvings and the high ceilings got me dreamy eyed as I watched the meticulously crafted creations dance in the afternoon sunlight.

I also learned today, that the Baron was truly kind, and he wanted to have my stew on my first night in the household. The tapestries, furniture and the people working and living within the walls of this building were quite a surprise. Who would have thought that this day and age would have created such amiable people?

When given the chance to be more than one of the castle cooks, I shall ask one of the friends I made today to show me around. The Baron himself offered. He is such an unusual fellow. I denied it, of course, reasoning that I should have myself settled first for his dinner. By the jest alone, I believe he already anticipated the taste and the aroma. Really unusual.

Second Entry:

One of the Baron’s daughters, I learned, had a passion for painting pictures as well. But as far as I am aware of, painting is one of those crafts considered to be a menial job. I did not think that the Baron would allow his daughter to exert such effort for something they can order another to do. What are commoners for?

But when I stand by to observe my lady, I noticed that she enjoyed painting pictures, and her technique adorned the walls of the castle. So she was the artist behind all these. I have painted a few of my ideas, but being the commoner that I was, with rough clothes for daily wear, I did not dream of ever being the painter I can imagine myself as.

Third Entry:

My lady caught me looking at her canvasses stored in her make shift studio. The moment she walked in, I felt the blood drain from my face. I knelt down on both knees and hung my head for forgiveness. She did not say anything but walked to me until I could see the toes of her shoes right in front of my face. I really thought she would punish me. I had no right being in her studio in the first place.

But she gently placed her palm on top of my head and asked if I would like to try to paint a picture. I immediately told her that I am not deserving of ever touching their property. I said that I should be punished instead. But my lady bent to touch my rough and embarrassing hands and led me to a blank canvas. A paint brush was placed between my fingers and she motioned my to dip its tip on some paint she had redied. With her soft hand over mine, she motioned the brush to simply slide a soft slope down a canvas.

I almost felt how such a simple stroke across an empty space could change a lot in me. I used to paint by using the most inexpensive supplies because there was little money to even compensate food. But in the castle, no body was deprived of food. My lady even gave permission to use it. Eureka!

Fourth Entry:

Few days passed since my lady allowed me to use her brushes for the first time. I became more greatful to God who allowed my path to cross with the kind hearted Baron. To note my feelings, I painted a little piece for God. It was a token I thought that would please my Creator. I was not inspired but thankful. That was my driving force.

The Baron’s daughter praised my piece and I blushed. I never imagined that a noble person could have praised such a commoner as myself. Their family was definitely an odd combination of heart, spirit and brains. I thought nothing else could have surprised me.

 But there was! It seemed like a jest to me when she suddenly gained interest of my past. She asked if I had a family. There wasn’t much that I could remember. I was born to a poor family, and my parents died because of too much hard work and little food. I don’t know why my lady asked for details that I assume she would have known from the start.

Then she looked at me with such sad eyes, and I realized that her eyes weren’t that open to reality yet. I immediately tried to comfort her, when it seemed it should have been the other way around. She wiped her tears with a piece of linen square and asked me to continue with the story. With a whisper of pain at the reminder of beloved, I told her some of the things about my marriage. Like most of the girls of this period of time got married at such an early age. But I learned to love my husband anyway.

My lady shed more of her tears and I almost laughed at her face. She didn’t have to, really. She didn’t have to pity my story. But with the assistance of the linen square, she looked up at me with clear eyes and said that she thought as much when she looked at my drafts and little masterpieces.

She insisted that I painted with her by the gardens when she did. It made her feel assured that there are still those who shared her passion. At the end of every session, we would look at each others’ work and comment about the job done. Who would have thought that a commoner would ever experience the feeling of being equal with the noble families of this country? This family is definitely unusually kind.

Women were expected to be two things in the Middles Ages, they either live under the charge of a husband in the household or dedicated herself to the Church in a convent as a nun. However, something unfamiliar happened in the late 12th century in parts of Europe, especially the Lowlands, Germany and Italy.

Women who were called “beguines” gained prominence as they questioned those stereotyped concepts of being women and lived outside of those boundaries. During the Middle Ages, women who entered Beguinages (Beguine houses or convents) were not bound by permanent vows, in contrast to women who entered convents.

It would seem that these women responded spontaneously to the work of the Holy Spirit to live a simple communal life of prayer, to care for the poor, the sick, lepers and orphaned, to teach, make lace, garden and anything else which enables them to be economically free in their respective communities. They also read and taught the Scriptures in the vernacular. The beguines had a very special devotion to the Eucharist and to the Passion of Christ. The beguines were ordinary women who were in a certain world, but not really part of it.

They are pious women whose devotional ardor often surpassed that of cloistered nuns. Like them, they dedicated their lives to God in a disciplined lifestyle, but unlike them they did not professed religious vows. In sum, it was the lifestyle of the early beguines, a lifestyle founded on intense spirituality, which differentiated them on the one hand from other laywomen and on the other from nuns. Women could enter beguinages having already been married and they could leave the beguinages to marry. Some women even entered the beguinages with children.

Various debates exist with regards to their origins, but around 1150, groups of women, eventually called beguines, began living together for the purposes of economic self-sufficiency and a religious vocation. The attitudes of the clerics towards blossoming beguine movement were ambivalent at first. They deemed that these were groups of religious women who were dedicated to chastity and charity, which could not be condemned in any way. The fact that they existed and existed without men, except for priests and confessors to lead them, was suspect to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

For this and many other reasons, many beguines came to be known as heretics and were brutally persecuted. Though they were never an approved religious order, at one point they were granted special privileges and exemptions customary for approved orders. The Church, however, did not approve of their lack permanent vows. Women were not supposed to have that much freedom. What is particularly interesting about the Beguines was that, unlike most of those considered heretics, most of them considered themselves orthodox, but still beguines.

Some strongly identified themselves as such and while in court testified to that effect, demonstrating self-identification with the group. Yet, the group was diverse and is hard to define. This diversity was due in part to the geographical distribution as well as to the individual autonomy of each community. However, the beguines’ great devotion to the Eucharist emphasized the real presence of the incarnated Lord. At the height of the beguine movement the Feast of Corpus Christi was decreed by Pope Urban IV in 1264, and there is no doubt that the Eucharistic piety of the beguines attributed to the keeping of this feast.

Indeed, the beguines wanted to imitate their Lord and to live as the Spirit inspired them. The first beguines were not subject to a rule of life, neither did the beguine have to make a life-time commitment. She was free to leave or to marry. Such a way of life was very attractive to the devout woman, and it is not surprising that their numbers grew swiftly. It was a welcome alternative to the cloister or marriage, although for women to live without the protection of the convent or a husband was quite revolutionary in the early medieval period.

Undoubtedly, the beguines had become an important fragment not only in the history of women’s movement, but also the development of the Catholic faith. Origins of the Beguines Two important movements in the 12th century had their impact on those who became known as beguines. The Cistercian monk, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090- 1153), especially from his writings on The Song of Songs emphasized the importance of a personal relationship between the soul and the Lord. He allegorized this relationship as being similar to that of the bride and the heavenly Bridegroom.

This union between the beloved and the lover was a foundation upon which the feminist mystics, including beguines, developed an intimate spirituality with their Lord. Of course the receiving of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was the outward act of this union. Closely associated with this nuptial image of Bernard was the “reasonable mystic” and “learned lover” of his friend, William of St. Thierry (1085-1148), who happened to live in Liege, the birthplace of the beguine movement.

He appealed to the soul to know God in perfect love, which also appealed to these mystics (McNichols, 2002). Another factor contributing to the birth of the beguine movement was the vita apostolica, which St. Francis of Assisi had preached by returning to the ideals that our Lord had preached to His disciples: poverty, simplicity and a burning desire to preach the Gospel. The acceptance of this Franciscan preaching and mendicant order in 1215, even though no new orders were supposed to be have founded, gave inspiration to like-minded souls (McNichols, 2002).

In the early twelfth century a new order, Premonstratensains, was founded in Liege by Norbert of Xanten who allowed religious women to be “attached” and to do charity work in the world. However his successor reversed this role and all nuns were expelled from the order by the end of the century. In a way, these sisters were the forerunners of the beguines (McNichols, 2002). In addition, when the church structures were becoming increasingly inaccessible to women in the 13th century; where convents were overcrowded and entrance dowries were expensive; women’s orders were scarce and subject to male oversight.

At this time in Liege and Antwerp, on the peripheries of urban centers, self-supporting communities of women began to appear. They lived by the work of their hands, often caring for the poor, the sick and the dying, and carried on regular devotional practices. They sought “an unstructured, nonhierarchical spiritual life that was both active (in the sense of ministering to the needs of others) and contemplative (in the sense that meditation and visionary experience were highly valued and developed)” (Petroff 1994, p. 51-52). This was the seed of what would become the beguinages.

More elaborately, Walter Simons explained in the preface to Cities of Ladies Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 (2001) that the most widely held scholarly opinions about the origins of the beguines both have their source in medieval materials. James of Vitry’s second Sermon to Virgins, written sometime between 1229 and 1240, provides Joseph Greven with his argument that the beguines were “nuns manquees, women who became beguines because they could not be nuns” (p. x). Similarly a statement on the origins of the beguines made by a clerical committee who visited the beguinage of St.

Elizabeth of Ghent in 1328 became the basis for Karl Bucher’s argument that the beguine movement was the result of a “surplus of women” in the urban areas of the Southern Low Countries and other parts of northern Europe. As Simons summarized that the two materials of James of Vitry and the bishop’s men at Ghent agreed on several points: they argued that large numbers of young women of the best families, in their desire to live chastely, attempted to join a nunnery, but that many of them could not find a convent that would accept them: there were simply too many candidates.

The Ghent report added that women could not afford the entrance gift, the dos, required in most monasteries – an obstacle to their entry that James tactfully omitted. It further differed from James in its assessment of the primary motive that drove women to the convent: it was the inability to conclude a suitable marriage that prompted these women to the monastic life; when the latter proved impossible, they joined the beguinage (p. xi).

Seen from the perspective of the committee at Ghent, particularly as reread by Bucher and others, the beguines were driven primarily by economic and social forces and beguinages were “thus just female versions of guild organizations” (p. xi). Grundmann, as Simon noted, was the first to write about a “religious movement by women” (“religisen Frauenbewegung”) and to understand the specifically religious motivations behind the beguine life style, particularly their emphasis on poverty and labor in the pursuit of the apostolic life.

Grundmann goes on, however, to describe in detail the complex negotiations between the papal curia, the mendicant orders, and the women’s religious communities whereby the mendicants were eventually persuaded-sometimes pressured-into taking over the “care of souls” and often institutional responsibility for women’s houses (Grundmann’s most detailed examples of this process involve communities that became Dominican convents).

Implicit within the narrative of Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, then, lies the argument that orderly communities of beguines desired and ultimately succeeded in becoming more traditional convents, most often within the mendicant orders. Beguines were forced to give up ideals of individual poverty and self-support and to possess sufficient corporately owned property to maintain a community of enclosed nuns.

Hence ecclesial concerns for women’s chastity and religious propriety required that women’s religious ideals be transformed. As Grundmann argues, the result is the spiritualization of poverty within the writings of the thirteenth-century beguines and their heirs among both male and female Dominican authors. Without directly contesting Grundmann’s arguments, which for the most part pertain to Germany, Simons presents a significantly new picture of the development of beguine communities in the Southern Low Countries.

Simons divides the history of the movement into two periods: the first, from 1190-1230, saw the emergence of laywomen living alone or together in “loose communities without institutional attachments” (p. 36). The primary sources pertaining to this period are eleven hagiographies devoted to individual holy women involved with the movement from 1190-1250. Often written shortly after their death and in each case by male clerics or monks interested in promoting cults around the holy women, none of these women were ever canonized nor did they all maintain the beguine lifestyle.

In fact, as Simons points out, hagiographers from the period and region seemed particularly interested in women who moved from the beguinal milieu into more traditional forms of monastic life (p. 92). Groups of women outside convents, like the beguines, had to steer a narrow course in order to avoid “the shoals of anticlericalism and heresy that always threatened the spiritual creativity of women” (McNamara 1990, p. 237). The success and spread of the beguine movement would suggest it did answer a need felt among women for an independent expression of their own religious creativity.

It is also important to note that beguines fall under the more general designation of mulieres religiosae (religious women), an umbrella term which included nuns, recluses, and virgins living at home or in small groups. The appearance of the mulieres religiosae, who flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was a major religious development, possibly connected with factors like the Crusades, priestly celibacy and harsh physical labor, which resulted in women outnumbering men in Western Europe.

Religious motives, however, were perhaps even more important than socio-economic ones (DeGanck 1991, p. 2-3). Development of the Beguine Movement Scholars trace the development of the beguine movement through several stages, beginning with individual women (beguinae singulariter in saeculo manentes) living in towns but observing the evangelical principles as well as they could. These individuals eventually came together in the beguinages (congregationes beguinarum disciplinatarum) that are the main focus of this chapter.

Later, some of the communities took the form of cloistered communities (beguinae clausae); finally, some communities were reconstituted as autonomous parishes (Little 1978, p. 130). Around 1230, these loose communities of widows, virgins, and chaste wives began to acquire property, to draw up regulations governing the life of the group, and to present “themselves to the outside world as religious institutions, either in the form of small ‘convents,’ or as larger architectural complexes segregated in some manner from the surrounding urban community, the so-called court beguinages” (Simons 2001, p.

36). Simons therefore convincingly demonstrates that up to and through the Catholic Reformation the beguine movement in the Southern Low Countries remains a lay urban movement characterized by the preponderance of women from a range of social classes who participated within it (p. 91-117). In addition, Simons provides invaluable information about the beguines’ work in the textile industry (p. 85-87), with the sick and dying (76-80), and-perhaps most importantly for the study of spirituality-in teaching (p.

80-85). Grundmann’s early argument for the centrality of the beguines’ lay status to the development of vernacular religious literature here finds crucial support. Not only did the beguines themselves read and write in the vernacular, but they were also engaged in the education of girls and women who then in turn constituted an audience for vernacular religious writing. The development of the beguinages demonstrated an outgrowth of the lay religious awakening of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

It also reflected the social background of the era. Although much more positive than simply a stand against clerical mediocrity and Western feudalism, the growth of the beguinages did, nevertheless, provide alternatives to both. The beguinages represented a new way of giving religious significance to women’s ordinary lives (Bynum 1987, p. 17). It was characteristic of the beguinage to combine the vita contemplativa and appropriate devotional exercises with the practical solution of daily problems.

The beguines customarily engaged in weaving, spinning, carding, charitable activity, sewing, and the education of children. So religious impetus and economic factors were intertwined in a beguine’s life (McDonnell 1954, p. 146). Theologically, medieval women were faced with contradictory doctrines which placed them either on a pedestal or in a bottomless pit: the virgin or the temptress. In the Christian view of sacred history, the greatest source of blessing for humanity after Christ was his mother, Mary; the greatest source of grief was also a woman Eve, the mother of us all.

Clearly, Christian tradition saw women as both the greatest and the weakest (Power 1962, p. 401-403). Thus, the beguines were bound to change these by shaping their own religious experience in lay communities, where female charisms served as alternative to the male emphasis on the power of office, the beguines paralleled other women who were emerging from the feudal system and becoming economically independent through small crafts, shops, and businesses in new towns (Bynum 1987, p. 22).

Also, it has been suggested that the strength of the beguines lay in their unique combination of traditional spirituality with their freedom from the restrictions of the cloister, a combination which allowed them to experiment and break new ground. Beguines adopted a chaste way of life and dressed simply, but they were not separated from the world, nor were they bound to any ecclesiastical authority. To wit, The beguine movement differed substantially from all earlier important movements within the western church.

·Writers and thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries introduced the idea that they were part of a distinct era—the Renaissance. They looked at ancient Greek and Roman civilizations for models. They found the ideals of the ancient Greeks and Romans to be superior to those found in the feudal and religious literature of the Middle Ages.

·Burchhardt identified a difference between the medieval man, who was controlled by faith throughout his life, and the Renaissance man, who strove for the highest individual development. The medieval man is not an individual, but rather one in a group. The Renaissance man wanted to be unique, to stand out, to be different and to make an impression on others. This man was aware of the real world and was talented in many fields.

·In contrast, W. T. Waugh found little evidence of a distinct period. Rather, he saw continual intellectual activity throughout medieval Europe. If there was a renaissance, it began in 1000, during the Middle Ages, not with the humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Medieval scholars read the Greek and Roman classics. Therefore the humanists have exaggerated their importance. The “renaissance” was no more than the high point of the Middle Ages.

·Petrarch was a humanist who was concerned with things of this world—not heaven. He was a man of the Renaissance.

·Erasmus was critical both of the religious orders and the Church, who, he believed, were interested only in money and drink. In contrast, Erasmus viewed the secular rulers as knowledgeable leaders. He admired the English court and King Henry VIII, who, he hoped, would provide leadership.

·DaVinci, a complex man of the Renaissance, was interested in anatomy and the realistic portrayal of the human body. He was the ideal man of the Renaissance due to his many talents and interests.

·Kepler, an astronomer, used observation and mathematics to prove his thesis. He did not accept what he was told by the Church or the ancients. Instead, he proved his theories.

·There were many universities founded in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, leading to the conclusion that there were centers of learning established and thriving in Italy, France, and Great Britain throughout the Middle Ages.

The late middle ages were years filled with turmoil. Famine, plague, turmoil in religion, and a war lasting over one hundred years all happened within the same two centuries. Many feared that these ages were the apocalypse, as these signs were those of the four horseman predicted in religious scripture. Several people ran from urban surroundings in order to escape the chaos and disease spreading in the cities. The late middle ages were the ending of something old and the beginning of something that most hoped was better.

The decline of the middle ages was the result of famine and plague, decline of the papacy, and the hundred year’s war. The middle ages declined in part because of famine and plague. The famine started in the early 14th century when the climate in Europe changed to a colder and moister climate. These cooler temperatures and wetter seasons resulted in a failure of crops in large parts of Europe, causing the prices to skyrocket. Prices of grain rose from a shilling to twenty shillings in 1315. Those who could not afford the high prices of grain were doomed to starve.

Those who starved not only lacked food but had a weakened immune system because of a lack of nutrients. Almost three decades later while people were still starving, a disease washed up on the shores of Messina known as the bubonic plague. The symptoms of this sickness were described by Georges Chastellain as, “The pulse trembles and he pants. The bones are disjointed on all sides; there is not a tendon which does not stretch as to burst. ” Giovanni Boccaccio describes in the Decameron that bodies were piled outside houses and taken to large trenches, to where they were buried by the hundreds.

This plague spread throughout Europe and only rural unvisited communities were able to stay away from the plague. None could clearly identify the cause of this plague and as a result they turned to their own individual explanations. Many thought that the plague was sent from God as a form of punishment for sins that the people had committed. Some of these people went from town to town whipping themselves hoping that God would forgive them and the people around them. Others turned to a more worldly answer and punished the Jews for causing the plague.

Many Jews were tortured to confess that they had poisoned the water supply, and they were killed because of their supposed crime. Through the combination of the plague and famine medieval society started to collapse and the deterioration of the Middle Ages. During the middle ages the church was the center of the average person’s life. However in the 14th century the papacy started to decline and individuals lost respect for the church because of the conciliar movement, and attacks from intellectuals.

Intellectuals felt that the Pope was too worldly and did not care about Christianity as much as he cared about having the finest things. Ramón de Cornet criticized the pope in Avignon saying, “I see the pope his sacred trust betray, for while the rich his grace can gain always… He strives to gather wealth as best he may, forcing Christ’s people blindly to obey,” John Wycliffe proposed several ideas about how to make the church less worldly. Two of these were about keeping the sacred practices of the church in the church instead of letting them be abused outside of the church.

All those who promoted these ideas were both condemned and executed for heresy or they were smart enough to stay away from the church officials. This caused a split in the church as some agreed with the intellectuals and others did not, causing a weak and divided Roman Catholic Church. Finally the conciliar movement is the last reason that caused the decline of the papacy. The conciliar movement was an attempt to answer the question of if there should be a council that shares the authority of the pope or if there should be a singular pope that exercises power.

In Defensor Pacis Marsilius of Padua states that, “We now wish . . . to adduce the truths of the holy Scripture . . . which explicitly command or counsel that neither the Roman bishop called pope, nor any other bishop or priest, or deacon, has or ought to have any rulership or coercive judgment or jurisdiction over any priest or non-priest, ruler, community, group, or individual of whatever condition . . . .” This division caused many people to lose faith in the pope. The Conciliar movement, along with the attacks from intellectuals caused the decline of the church and the papacy.

The final event that contributed to the downfall of medieval society was the Hundred Years War. Starting in the mid-14th century, the Hundred Years War was fought between Britain and France and ended in the mid-15th century. The war started when the king of France died with no heirs. When selecting a king, some French nobles wanted an English king that did not want to centralize the government, while other French nobles wanted a French king to maintain national pride.

This sparked conflict over English controlled lands in France. The war lasted for many years and was mostly fought on French lands. Jean Froissart’s account of a sacking during the war stated, “for upwards of three thousand men, women and children were put to death that day. God have mercy on their souls! for they were veritable martyrs,” The English seemed to be winning in the war until Joan of Arc led the French army. The French started winning, and eventually led to the removal from the English in the French territory.

This led to a growth of nationalism in both countries as well as it started to cause the peasants to revolt. As Jean Froissart stated about the English Peasant Revolt, “they were too severely oppressed; that at the beginning of the world there were no slaves, and that no one ought to be treated as such, unless he had committed treason against his lord, as Lucifer had done against God: but they had done no such thing, for they were neither angels nor spirits, but men formed after the same likeness with their lords, who treated them as beasts.

This they would not longer bear, but had determined to be free, and if they laboured or did any other works for their lords, they would be paid for it. ” These revolts caused feudal society to collapse slowly, adding to the decline of the medieval society caused by the Hundred Year’s War. Overall the Hundred Year’s War, the decline of the papacy, and famine and plague, mainly contributed to the wane of medieval society.

Famine and plague was caused by cool and wet climate change as well as the spread disease throughout Europe. The decline of the papacy was the result of the attacks from intellectuals and the conciliar movement. And finally the Hundred Year’s War was the result of the selection of the French king and the argument over English lands in French territory. Medieval society declined for a number of reasons, but it never stopped suddenly. It was a gradual decline into another era filled with many facets and features.

Before modern technology, and the advent of cars, there were castles, catapults, and horse drawn carts. There were also kingdoms, and with kingdoms came kings, and with kings came politics, conflict, war, and regicide. The King, throughout history, and in modern times, was believed to be the sole ruler of a country, having the final word on all that happened within the bounds of their kingdom. This has indeed been true since Cain was cast out of his home, and he established the city of Chanoch, all the way to the ancient rulers of Babylon.

The rulers, emperors, and kings reigned with sovereignty, and their will was rarely questioned, even while some of them reigned fire and brimstone on their people, murdering them, and pillaging their homes. This was the power of a king, unquestioning loyalty from servants, guards, and massive amounts of infantrymen and calvary. Whether they ruled through terror, or did terrible things for the good of their country, was a matter of the personality bearing the crown.

There have been times in history, as noted in numerous books, where those who are held to be honorable have been forced to perform a seemingly distasteful act for the greater good, even if the true motives aren’t with the good of his people, such as Blancandrins, a knight as noted in the Song of Roland 2, who spoke these words: Stand honour bound, and do him fealty. Send hostages, should he demand surety, Ten or a score, our loyal oath to bind; Send him our sons, the first-born of our wives; — An he be slain, I’ll surely furnish mine.

Better by far they go, though doomed to die, Than that we lose honour and dignity, And be ourselves brought down to beggary. 3″ In the previous paragraph, an excerpt from a major literary work written in the time, we see that in those times, the welfare of a nation outweighed the welfare of a few simple farmers or peasants, which lies in great contrast to the world of today. This is not an indicator of evil as evil today is defined by laws and morals that have been put in place by modern men, or better men as some would believe.

However the morality in that time was a completely different story, and right or wrong simply cannot be applied. The general public would not mind such a sacrifice, as it is for the greater good, and a good king will do anything for his country, to ensure that everything and everyone manages to survive. A good king will maintain relations with foreign nations to bring in supplies, and trade. Such was demonstrated by Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, the king of France from the year 768, till he died in 814, and was widely regarded as The Father of Europe.

Throughout his reign, with his diplomacy toward other nations, and his generous treatment of foreigners4. It is not uncommon for a king, should he care about his people, to build great structures, and to give to the poor, as St. Louis of France did, noted if the Life of St. Louis: “… He began then to build and found hospitals or houses for poor people to lie in, edified minsters of religion, and gave yearly to other poor sufferers in divers places in the realm much money, pecunies or silver. He founded many convents of the order of friars preachers, and to many other

poor religious builded churches, cloisters, dortoirs, and other edifices convenable, gave for God largely alms to the blind, beguines, daughters of God, and releved the minster of many a poor nunnery.. 5” The king of a nation will be highly educated, his language, and articulation will be high above that of a normal peasant, and as such he will be seen as an extremely intelligent person, worthy of ruling a kingdom, though if he is a good king, he will concern himself more with the people, giving them food, clothing, and shelter, the basic necessities above all else.

He will also hold true to the religion of the land, ensuring that he follows the laws, and demands that others do as well. “… Whereof it befell that a citizen of Paris who loathly swearing had blasphemed Jesus Christ, against the act or statute royal, which Saint Louis by the counsel of the prelates and princes had ordained and made for the swearers and blasphemers, at the commandment of the said saint he was marked or tokened, at the lips of him with a hot

and burning iron, in sign of punition of his sin, and terror and dreadfulness to all others… 7” The role of a king can change greatly over the years, in times of peace caring for the people would be as simple as building structures, proving clothing, and making sure all are fed. In times of war the job becomes dangerous, as the king must see to it that the country is defended, and that all are safe, even if that means making sacrifices.

As fate would have it, the role of the king changed dramatically in France, around the time of Childeric III, of the Merovingian family among whom the French chose their kings for generations, when Childeric’s position was taken over by Pepin the Short, son of Charles Martel, who became Mayor of the Palace, making all the vital decisions of the king, who simply sat on the throne and made no real decisions, only saying what he was told to say, even to dignitaries and ambassadors who came from near and far to seek his counsel.

This lasted until the Roman Pontiff, Stephen II deposed Childeric, and Pepin took over the matters of the palace, both home and abroad7. These are the events that led up to the era of Charlemagne, a golden era for the European continent. This is but one example of the extreme measures one must go to, in order to ensure the safety of a kingdom, even at the risk of one’s own life. So what does all this mean? In short, the role of a king is more than being comfortable in the position, and simply ruling.

A king, being solely in charge of a nation, in most cases, must not only care for the people, he must also watch his back, and ensure everything is being done properly, lest someone steal the throne from him, and the title of “king” takes on an entirely new meaning. As new technology becomes available, in the areas of plumbing, food, aqua ducts, lighting, and especially architecture, the king should do his best, if possible, to make sure that it is available to his people in some form or another.

New architecture could mean safer buildings, or more stable foundations, which translates into fewer structural collapses, and therefore fewer deaths. After all, while a king may resolve to sacrifice men for the sake of peace, a king shouldn’t be eager to watch his citizens die needlessly! The role of the king is complicated, and our only means of understanding it, is the stories, and documents which have been passed down, to give us a glimpse into the past, but what we can ascertain, is that the role itself implied danger, and that the world survived such as it is now, is to be credited to those great men.