However, one area where the medical community did thrive and develop throughout the period was surgery. Surgeons in the Middle Ages were known as Butcher-Surgeons and they gained much of their knowledge on the battle field. As Theodoric Lucca wrote in the 13th century;

“Every day we see new instruments and new methods [of relieving wounded soldiers of arrows] being invented by clever and ingenious surgeons.”

The whole period was one of virtually constant war for most European kingdoms. Even during times of peace, border skirmishes were still commonplace, like for example on the English boarders. There,  the so called ‘Marcher Lords’ constantly had to defend against raiding parties of Scottish and Welsh tribes, who would employ hit-and-run tactics wounding as many English soldiers as they could before heading back to the safety of the hills. This constant fighting gave plenty of opportunity for the butcher-surgeons to practice their trade so it’s perhaps not surprising that they advanced so much in the period.

What the Surgeons of the Middle Ages Knew

The surgeons of the Middle Ages knew that using wine and other forms of alcohol was useful for limiting the possibility of infection and they knew that drugs and herbs such as mandrake root, hemlock and opium could be used as pain killers and anaesthetics.

Even though there were no universal health care systems in place, some operations were common knowledge and could be performed by most skilled surgeons. They included;

• Removal of facial ulcers
• Removal off unhealthy teeth
• Treatment of eye cataracts
• Removal of bladder stones

Probably the most celebrated surgeon of the middle ages was William of Saliceto who, in the 13th century, developed his own health care system by setting up a school dedicated to surgery. Some of the advancements he made were;

• Teaching that pus on a wound should be removed
• Replacing the cautery that burned away tissue with a knife
• Stitching together severed nerves

Butcher Surgeons and Demonic Possession

While surgeons of the Middle Ages were skilled, like the rest of medicine and science generally they were still heavily influenced by Christian doctrine. According to the Catholic Church for example, epilepsy and some mental disorders were caused by demonic possession and when an exorcism didn’t work, a butcher-surgeon might be called in. He would perform an operation known as ‘trephining,’ an example of which was described by the famed Muslim doctor Usama ibn Munqidh in 1175, he stated;

“They brought to me…..a woman who was feeble-minded [who I] put on diet to turn her humour wet.  Then a French doctor came and said, ‘This man knows nothing about [healing her]‘ He then examined the woman and said, “There is a devil in her head.” He therefore took a razor, made a deep cross-shaped cut on her head, peeled away the skin until the bone of the skull was exposed, and rubbed it with salt. The woman….died instantly”.

More on the subject of Medieval Medicine

Feudal Society existed in the Medieval period, during the 9th century. Feudalism was a social order consisting of several smaller communities under the organized under the local leadership of a Lord or King who made all decisions concerning the community and was responsible for the community’s military and the economy. What kept the communities functioning were a set of oaths, vows and obligations between the King or Lord and the vassals who served and worked under that leader.

The Vassal’s Place in Feudal Society

In feudal society, the Lords and Kings gained their power from the ownership of land and estates, known as manors. To protect their property, the Lords and Kings hired soldiers (a.k.a. knights) who, upon entering this military service, became the Lord’s vassals. The contract between the Lord and his vassals was marked by a ceremony, where the Lord granted the vassal a plot of farmland in exchange for an oath or vow to carry out specific jobs for the Lord.

The Vassal’s Duty to Loyalty

During the ceremony where the vassal pledges his allegiance to the Lord of the manor, the oath he gives recognizes the Lord’s authority as the land owner. He also vows to fight for the lord of the manor and provide him counsel on military, economic, and the community’s social issues. To provide military services and counsel to other Lords or Kings would have considered an act of treason. These oaths were taken very seriously, and as such, were held publicly – in a church whenever possible.

The Vassal’s Military Duties

The vassal’s main duty to the Lord was his obligation to military service, which included defending the Lord’s manor and estate lands against invaders and attacking other communities in order to seize another Lord’s property, thereby increasing the wealth and land holdings of the Lord to whom he had sworn his oath. Vassals were required to fight defensive battles whenever called upon and for as long as the defensive action took. For offensive battles, however, vassals were only obligated to fight for a particular time frame. In France, for instance, a vassal’s military service for offensive battles lasted a mere 40 days. Once the requisite service had been fulfilled, the vassal could refuse to continue his service for this particular offensive, or he could decide to stay in lieu of additional reimbursement in the form of money or more land.

The Vassal’s Duties in the Lord’s Manor

The vassal’s other duties included collecting taxes to help support the manor, attending the council of warriors, giving advice to the Lord on whatever issues needed attending to, and tender a portion of the food grown on the vassal’s farms to feed the Lord’s household and visitors.

References

The Old Guard: Lords, Vassals, and Fiefs

http://tog.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=202753&ForumID=952526&TabID=1711637&TopicID=5577016

The New World Encyclopedia: Feudalism

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Feudalism

Encyclopedia Britannica: Vassal

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623877/vassal

World History International: Feudalism, A General Overview by William Stubbs

http://history-world.org/feudalism.htm

Medieval Life and Times: Medieval Vassal

http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/medieval-vassal.htm

Encyclopedia.com, The Oxford Companion to British History: Vassal by John Cannon, 2002

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/vassal.aspx

European nations, as we know them, began to be formed in the 1300s. They were based on the idea of national soverignty. This meant that each nation was independent and had the right to govern itself.

Nations tried to keep peace by preventing any one nation from getting so much power that it was a threat to the other nations. This system is called a balance of power. When one nation showed signs of becoming too powerful, other nations would form an alliance against it.

You might have noticed that the tile in the first photo in part one seemed to be greyish in the middle. The lecturer said that this was often the case with the earlier floor tiles made in Worcester and was due to poor control of the firing process by which the clay is turned into hard tile. Reddish clay becomes a vibrant red through chemical oxidation, but if the flow of air inside the kiln is insufficient then the alternative chemical process of reduction can take place, resulting in a greyish tinge. Sometimes only part of a tile will be discoloured like this. The photograph below – a slant view of a similar tile – shows the discolouration more clearly.

Figure 1 – floor tile discoloured through poor firing (photo © BWOfficer, 2012)

The majority of medieval patterned tile floors were in churches or other ecclesiastical buildings, but some have been found in houses of the richer merchants or businessmen. Interestingly, several of the non-ecclesiastical floors seem to have a higher percentage of imperfect tiles and there are some where the patterns don’t match at all. That prompted a lively discussion during question time at the end of the lecture about whether businessmen with pretentions above their budget were buying rejects from batches made to floor the wealthy churches to floor their own houses.

The sides of medieval English floor tiles usually slope slightly, the tiles being broader at the top than at the bottom. This is so that they could be butted right up against each other to form a continuous pattern, without the mortar they were laid on squeezing up and messing the tile surface. Unlike modern tiles, there was no gap between them left to be filled with grout. The drawing below illustrates this.

Figure 2 – diagram showing how sloping tile edges allow hidden mortar gap (© BWOfficer, 2012)

You can see how the sloping edges would result in an upside-down-V-shaped gap for mortar to key into the sides of the tiles without leaving gaps in the top surface of the tiled floor.

The lecturer also ran through the different archaeological sites in Worcester where either tile kilns or dumps of tiles have been found. I was pleased to hear mention of the tile dump found at The Commandery, a monastic hospital which became a town house complex after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Part of this site was excavated around 10 years ago and was the first archaeological dig I was able to work on as a volunteer.

Continued in part three…

This concise tome clearly demonstrates what a nasty, not to mention a stinky bunch the Vicious Vikings actually were. Although medieval Europeans had not invented deodorant at that point, and very few of them bothered to have baths.

Terry Deary then depicts how the Vikings became of the most feared warriors and sea raiders in the entire Middle Ages. They were accomplished adventurers in their longboats, could tell a good yarn, and they were ‘very dangerous to know if you had something they wanted.’

Over all it is a great read, entertaining for adults as well as for children.

The tiles themselves were commonly around six inches square. The decorated ones might have a complete pattern, but more often were a part of a larger pattern of two by two, three by three, or even more tiles.

Although the focus of the talk I attended was on tiles found in archaeological digs, the tiles and their larger patterns can be seen in-situ still forming the floor in many English churches. Locally to me, the most notable ones are in Worcester Cathedral and Malvern Priory.

The photograph below shows one of the tiles displayed for us to examine and handle after the lecture. This particular one came from the 1998/99 excavation in Friar Street, Worcester, when the site was being redeveloped for the new Vue cinema.

Photo 1: 13th or 14th century medieval floor tile from Friar Street, Worcester dig

This tile is decorated with a beast within a circle with fleurs-des-lys at the corners of the tile, and is a stand-alone single-tile pattern.

The pattern was made by stamping the blank, un-fired tile with a carved wooden negative of the desired pattern. The impression was filled with watery clay (a slip) of a lighter colour. There were two ways to do this. In the first technique the impression was stamped first, then the slip poured on, allowed to dry and then cleaned away so that only the slip that had settled in the pattern remained to give the two-colour effect. The alternative was to coat the top of the blank tile with slip first, letting it dry before stamping it so that the slip was forced down into the impression at the same as it was made. Again, the tile was cleaned off so that only slip in the stamped pattern remained. The tile was then coated with glaze and fired.

Because they were mass produced, but from hand-made wooden pattern stamps, it is sometimes possible to identify which kiln the tiles flooring a certain building came from, at least if a dump of tiles damaged in firing (called wasters) is found beside the kiln containing tiles that exactly match those in a building. A desire to locate the source of the floor tiles in Worcester Cathedral has been one of the motivations in analysing the waster tiles from medieval tile kilns found in recent excavations in Worcester.

As well as differing in the details of the patterns, tiles from different manufacturers can differ in the fabric(the clay used for the tile itself) and in technical details of the manufacturing process such as the quality of firing and the depth of stamping of the pattern. It is noticeable that tiles from kilns near Malvern (identified by the fabric) have a deeper-stamped pattern (which therefore survives wear and damage better) then those from Worcester.

Photo 2: fragment of tile which formed part of larger pattern

Unlike the tile in the first photo, this one would have been laid as part of a pattern that spanned several tiles. Only half of the tile survives (and in a very damaged state) but it looks like the tile would have born a quarter circle pattern, with lettering inside, and therefore would have been part of a two-by-two tile pattern to make a full circle.

Continued in part two…

When the Jews were allowed to remain in a country, they were often forced to live in small, crowded areas called ghettos, and to wear special clothing. They were not allowed to vote, own land, or practice any profession. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several European kings filled their treasuries by taking things that belonged to the Jews.

For several centuries in Spain, colonies of Jews lived peacefully under the rule of Spanish Muslims or Moors. Many Spanish Jews were government officials, lawyers, bankers, doctors, and scholars. When the Muslims were driven from Spain in the thirteenth century, this peaceful period ended.

However history tells that this area remained ignored during 1642-1651 war. It looks very beautiful and the green landscape around the fort makes it more captivating. If you sit there and view the fort, you will feel reaching in the ancient times.

There is a water filled ditch around the fort, which has special routes for crossing it, by the help of which, you can enter the fort passing through the Main Gate. There is a beautiful palace inside the castle as well, which has six minarets.

Each minaret has its own specialty. The stones that are used in the Main Hall preparation, can not be seen any where else. It would not be wrong saying that Skipton is among few unique ancient relics in the world.

By Muhammad Irfan Zafar

Content Writer

The need of man to understand himself through his past, amply justifies the constant pursuit of the facts relevant to rebuild it, causes and factors that determined the steps, phases and rhythms that developed in human life.

However, the huge range of issues - temporal, spatial, anthropological, geographical, economic, political, social, etc. - that inform the past and the subjective situation of those who try to ordain them and expose them systematically creates difficulties sometimes insuperable.

Thus, pre-historic men, no writing, communicate orally only direct experience they need to survive and progress, when men of antiquity began to write, is still limited to the registration of facts deemed important by those who exert social influence absolute (princes and priests).

It is the era of chronic apologetic, when kings succeed and realize the facts of history, and mythology. This superficial view of history goes on during the Middle Ages with royal and ecclesiastical historiography.

The conditions for a critical position in relation to the past do not exist. However, since antiquity, some isolated individuals (Herodotus, Polybius, Pausanias) break the barrier of subjective bias and external data.

Study the geographical conditions that developed in the facts, seek political and social environment that determined by defining the former sources of history, geography, chronology, sociology (so embryonic Polybius).

Still do not understand the evolutionary process and the diversity of civilizations; America, Asia and Africa continents are largely unknown and historical frameworks are abstract and unilateral.

The  Middle  Ages  is  an  extension  of the ancient slave  society,  yet  understated. Only in the Renaissance, history reaches proportions objective, genealogy, numismatics, archeology and  linguistics  begin  to  be  considered  as  important  auxiliary. The combination of feelings, cultures and peoples through the discovery, commerce and science, help trace the historical process generally, the laws that govern it and the steps that form. Machiavelli, Vico and Montesquieu - albeit with a priori views - stand out among the great historians of the 15th century until the French Revolution.

The  great  social  changes,  political  and  scientific  of  the late  18th  and  19th  century,   foregrounds  historical  inquiry,  not  only as  knowledge  of  the  past,  but as attempt to  understand the future of  humanity  as  a  result  of  its  previous  history.

For the first time, we use objective sources, and with further study of the determinants of each process, overcome the old method of history horizontal (chronological listing military, political or diplomatic). The traditional division of history into ages (Antiquity, Middle, Modern and Contemporary) also entailed a large arbitrariness: emphasis on military events, the omission of historical changes that define   steps,  devaluation  of  the   influence  of  other  civilizations,  artificial separation  process  unit.

It covers a vertical history broader reality: economic history, social, cultural, etc.. The analysis, comparison and expertise are the reasons for large conceptions and historicalsummaries (Mommsen, Ranke). Born positivism (Comte) and materialism (Marx). In the 20th century, there are statistics, photography and audio-visual means. The great historical works of our time (L. Febvre, Toynbee, Bloch) are usually the result of teams of expertsunder the direction of a historian who summarizes and organizes the different elements.Today, the historical research is oriented in accordance with the philosophical currents that are discussed at the global level.

Voodoo followers believe in the existence of zombies, other terms of the undead. That said, according to their beliefs, people whose spirits are stolen by means of witchcraft, will be employed as slaves. Through the bite, the zombies can also make other people into their kind.

The existence of zombies has never been scientifically proven. In 2009, scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University to investigate the phenomenon of the spread of zombies with the assumptions of biology: in the form of a virus or plague.

However, assuming people in the Middle Ages is clearly different. Recently archaeologists found two skeletons from the early Middle Ages in Ireland – with a large stone stuck in their mouths. The archaeologists believe, the way it shows evidence of people’s fears, that body will bounce back as a zombie.

Skeleton found in several sessions during the 2005-2009 excavations at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key, by a team of archaeologists led by Chris Read from the Institute of Technology of Sligo, Ireland, and Thomas Finan of the University of St. Louis.

This project succeeded in lifting 137 framework, although the scientists believe, there are hundreds to thousands of others who still have not been lifted.

The way that deviates burial was found in two male skeleton. Both are buried in a different time, circa 700 AD.

One of the dead man believed to be aged between 40 to 60 years. Others, still young, about 20 to 30 years. Both were laid side by side, with a rock the size of a baseball stuffed into their mouths.

“One of them lay with his eyes looked up to the top. Driven in large black stone in his mouth,” said Chris Read. “Others, was found with his head turned sideways, terjejal stone in his mouth to make her neck twisted.”

The team of archaeologists suspect, they found a cemetery associated with the so-called “black death”. Stone crammed in the mouth that is proof he has done the ritual murder of a vampire.

Initially, suspicion had dawned, cramming rocks in the mouth that is the way society at that time to prevent the transmission of disease from the corpse. However, because the phenomenon does not appear in the folklore of Europe until the 1500s, archaeologists ruled out that theory. They then retreated back to the 8th century.

“In this case, the stone at the mouth of allegedly used to prevent the corpse rose from the grave,” said Chris Read.

Both bodies Irishman could have been considered a dangerous person – such as the enemy, murderer, rapist, or because of sudden death due to a strange disease or were killed. Residents at that time seemed to fear that they could bounce back and harm society.

Why are their mouths stuffed with stones?

“The mouth is believed to be the door to the soul as it leaves the body at death. Sometimes, the soul can come back, or evil spirits can enter the body through the mouth, and raised him,” he said.