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The complete title of Adam Gidwitz's new book is, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog. Set in the 13th century, Gidwitz starts his story in an inn. The narrator is trying to find all he can about the three children - and dog - that King Louis IX is hunting down.
Various customers tell the stories; first of Gwenforte, a loyal dog who is wrongly killed and then revered; then of Jeanne, a girl who suffers fits and can see the future. When Jeanne needs her loyal dog the most, Gwenforte comes back from the dead; then of William, a monk-in-training, bigger then anyone in the abbey, dark brown, the son of a Lord and a Saracen woman, and as strong as Samson; and last but not least, Jacob, who knows all about herbs but uses them with miraculous success. Jacob is a Jew. Through a tragedy, he loses his home.
The four must all leave their comfortable homes and eventually they come together. They perform miracles. They make enemies. They unite in a mission to save thousands of years of wisdom, threatened by bigotry. They face mortal danger, and very stinky cheese. Along the way, Gidwitz skillfully plays out legends and superstitions of the times, highlights social injustices and champions open minded thought and the acceptance of all people. What an adventure!
Teachers and curious readers will want to read Gidwitz's Author's Note. It explains his research, which parts are based on the things Gidwitz read, which he changed or fabricated and where he got his background material. There is also an Annotated Bibliography,
When a book strays into my thoughts while I am doing the laundry, or loading the dishwasher, I know it's a darn good book. Since I feared that Jeanne was actually Joan of Arc, I hesitated to finish this book. Whether she is, or not, this is a Darn Good Book. So, read it.
Also? The illustrations - oh, sorry, the Illuminations - are awesome.
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In this timeline, Peter Adamson, author of the History of Philosophy series, highlights ten underappreciated figures of the Islamic world, during and well beyond the medieval era.
Government advisers don’t regularly admit to handling doctored evidence. The extent to which the actions of recent governments may have depended on documents which had been ‘sexed up’ have—quite rightly—become matters for close scrutiny in recent decades. But the modern world has no monopoly over the spurious, the doubtful, and the falsified.
Not every scholar of medieval English has the privilege of translating a major poetic text, and fewer still have the chance to do it all over again, eighteen years later. My first edition of the Poetic Edda was published in 1996 and about two years ago, I was invited to think about a second edition, one which would expand the number of poems and which could be brought up to date in other ways. But what could have changed as far as this classic work was concerned in the meantime?
Well, unlike a single poem, such as Beowulf or Piers Plowman, the Poetic Edda is a collection of poems. Most of these are to be found in a single manuscript, known as the Codex Regius, kept in the Árnar Magnússonar Manuscript Institute in Reykjavík, Iceland. But, preserved in other Icelandic manuscripts, are a good number of further poems in the same kind of metre, which relate more stories of Norse gods and heroes. Four or five of these poems have always been considered part of the Poetic Edda and I translated them in the first edition. But now there was room for some more.
“Hervors død” by Peter Nicolai Arbo (Hervor was a shieldmaiden in the cycle of the magic sword Tyrfing, presented in Hervarar saga and of which parts are found in the Poetic Edda). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve added three more eddic poems which I think are interesting in different ways. The first of them is traditionally known as “The Waking of Angantyr.” It tells the story of a warrior-maiden Hervör, who dares to go alone to an eerie island, haunted by her undead father and his eleven brothers. Hervör wants her father’s magical sword Tyrfing, but Angantyr is determined not to give it to her. He’s quite surprised that a girl should dare to come to the uncanny place:
Young girl, I declare you are not like most men, hanging around by mounds at night with an engraved spear and in metal of the Goths [armour], a helmet and corslet before the hall-doors.
At first Angantyr pretends that he doesn’t have the sword, next, he warns (truthfully) that the sword bears a curse, but finally he hands it over to the triumphant Hervör. A bold and determined heroine and an undead corpse — this seemed like a good addition to the new translation. The other additions are “Groa’s Chant” and the “Sayings of Fiolsvinn,” two related poems. A young man called Svipdag has been cursed by his stepmother to go on a quest to find and woo the lovely Menglod, a task fraught with danger: “she has ordered me to go where she knows there’s no going,” Svipdag laments. Wisely, he first visits the grave of his dead mother for advice. Groa is indeed anxious to help and she sings a number of spells over Svipdag. If he crosses rivers or sea, if he’s chained up or assailed by frost, “may no corpse-cold come to ravage your flesh / nor bind your body in its joints.”
Groa chants spells for her son, from The Elder or Poetic Edda, translated by Olive Bray with illustrations by W. G. Collingwood (1908). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Groa’s last spell will help Svipdag if he must “bandy words with the spear-magnificent giant,” and this is exactly what happens. When the hero finally reaches Menglod’s hall, the watchman Fiolsvinn won’t let him in. Entrance is only permitted to the man who can fulfill a whole series of impossible tasks, set up in a circular fashion. Svipdag is about to despair, but wait! No man can come in unless he has carried out this task — or unless his name is Svipdag! And so when Svipdag reveals his name, he gains entry to the hall and is rapturously embraced by Menglod, who chides him lovingly, “A long time I’ve sat on Healing-rock / waiting day after day for you!”
What constitutes a medieval poem? One of the most important poems in the Poetic Edda, “The Seeress’s Prophecy” exists in three different versions in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. Very often editors have combined the texts of all three versions to try to recover what they think might have been the “original” form of the poem. But nowadays scholars tend to think that this is a pointless endeavor. After all, this poem probably existed in oral tradition for a hundred or more years before it was first written down and there was likely never a definitive version. Newer critical thinking argues that it is better to reproduce what actually appears in the medieval manuscripts than to try to find the lost original. And so I’ve provided two versions of this poem, one written down in 1270, and one which was written down about forty years later. In the earlier version, the death of Baldr the Beautiful ushers in the beginning of the end of the world: Ragnarök. Baldr’s mother Frigg had made everything on earth promise not to hurt him, but she did not bother with the mistletoe, for it was so little and frail. Wicked Loki shaped it into a dart and put it in the hands of Baldr’s blind brother Hod when all the gods were amusing themselves by throwing things at Baldr and watching them bounce harmlessly from him. Here Baldr lounges against a wall, while Loki guides the fumbling and hooded Hod:
The Death of Baldr, from The Elder or Poetic Edda, translated by Olive Bray with illustrations by W. G. Collingwood (1908). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
In the later version, preserved in the Hauksbók manuscript, which was compiled in the first decade of the fourteenth century, Baldr isn’t even mentioned; that seems to be a difference worth recording, and it suggests that the death of Baldr wasn’t necessarily connected to Ragnarök.
And perhaps most importantly, eighteen years ago talking about the reception of the Poetic Edda meant talking about Wagner, William Morris, and Tolkien. Nowadays the influence of these wonderful poems is felt much more widely, in popular culture as well as in the opera house. Hollywood has its Thor films; novelists such as Neil Gaiman in American Gods (2001), young adult authors such as Melvin Burgess and Joanne Harris, even Game of Thrones, with its dragons, ravens, shield-maidens, its endless winter, wolves and giants, have seized on eddic themes and motifs to capture the imaginations of new generations. I hope that this new version of the Poetic Edda, with its additions, updates, and revisions will also find new readers to thrill to these poems, which speak to us in comic, tragic, grandiose, crude, witty, profound, and commonsense tones.
The Realms of Animar is an enjoyable read, one that will appeal to teens who are fans of fantasy and science fiction.
Set in a world where people have two forms, one human and one animal, this is the story of Thane, a teenage boy whose life is suddenly turned upside down when his animal form unexpectedly transforms into something never seen before. Filled with inmmense power, he now holds the key to the future of Animar and to saving his people from struggle and oppression. But Fatalis, the evil force who plans to rule Animar, learns about Thane and creates an army to destroy him and anybody who gets in the way of his plan. In order to fight Fatalis, Thane seeks the help of other beings, the Avians and Aquans. In a twist of fate, the hunters and the hunted must get together to save their world.
Though the beginning was kind of slow, with a lot of information being presented by dialogue, I was intrigued with the story enough to keep reading. The author does a fairly good job in creating his medieval world — which, by the way, doesn't have dragons, elves or sorcery like so many other books in this genre nowadays — and dividing it into five realms: Herbivore, Carnic, Avian, Aquan and Reptilian. I enjoyed the action, battle scenes, and watching Thane grow into a brave, fearless warrior and hero. Though it has some violence, the language and other aspects make this book appropriate for the lower young adult crowd and even for middle graders. Recommended for readers 11 & up.
Pilgrimages, saints, shrines, indulgences and miracles were central to western medieval culture and religious experience. Yet, although much has been written, what has often been overlooked by historians is the economic underpinning of medieval religious beliefs and practices.
Pilgrimage itself was founded on an implicit contract between the pilgrim and the church. Those who embarked on a lengthy pilgrimage to one of the three great pilgrimage centres (Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostella) were making a costly commitment. Firstly, there was the devotional journey, which might involve an absence of a year or more, and the associated expenditure on transport, food, and lodging etcetera. Secondly, there were major risks in the form of shipwreck, disease, exhaustion and robbery. And, finally, there were the offerings to be made to the shrine of destination as well as the other shrines en route.
In return for their commitment, pilgrims were offered two primary benefits: the possibility of miraculous intervention by the saints whose shrines were venerated, and the prospect of indulgences (remission from purgatory) according to a fixed scale sanctioned by the Pope.
Saints worked their miracles through their bodily remains. Since the miraculous power of a saint’s relics was as much in the parts of a body as the whole, it became common to dismember the remains and distribute separate limbs. Similarly, the custodians of Beckett’s shrine at Canterbury were able to offer limitless ampoules of the martyr’s blood mixed with water – the efficacy of the holy solution being unaffected by dilution. This practice allowed the (theoretically limited) supply of saintly remains to meet the growing demand for relics throughout Christendom.
While miracles catered for pilgrims’ needs on earth, indulgences offered relief in the afterlife. According to early Christian doctrine the super-abundant merits of Christ and the saints created a “treasure” of superfluous merit, which, through the intermediation of the church, could be drawn upon to expiate the sins of the faithful. The church distributed this treasure to willing purchasers who had received absolution. Testators would often leave bequests for surrogate pilgrims to travel and make offerings on their behalf in the hope that indulgences would be granted to relieve their suffering in the next world. It appears that there was a pool of “stipendiary” pilgrims available for hire to meet the demand for surrogate pilgrimage from testators and those too ill to travel.
In addition, it seems that our medieval forebears were very much aware of what we describe today as “brand management”. Shrine managers targeted their clientele, promoted their advantages over competitors, and provided supporting evidence for miraculous claims with story collections.
Medieval pilgrimage shrines can also be viewed as a form of franchise business operating under the umbrella brand of the universal church: the local shrine managers marketed their patron saint and took in large-scale offerings that were recycled, in varying proportions, to the clergy, church building programmes and the poor. As franchiser, the Papacy exercised an important degree of control over the operation of franchisees and the use of its umbrella brand, while preventing competition from unauthorised sources. This was achieved through the papal monopoly on the creation of saints, the Pope’s discretionary powers relating to indulgences and, less successfully, through the validation of miracles and relics.
In this business model, the shrine was a profit centre and the shrine custodians (local ch
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Helen Cooper edited and abridged the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, which is arguably the definitive English version of the stories of King Arthur. Completed in 1467-70, it charts the tragic disintegration of the fellowship of the Round Table, destroyed from within by warring factions. It also recounts the life of King Arthur, the knightly exploits of Sir Lancelot du Lake, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawain, and the quest for the Holy Grail. In the original blog post below, Helen Cooper states the case for King Arthur being the most successful commercial brand in English Literature (even more so than Shakespeare) and explains what Malory did that was so remarkable.
King Arthur has some claim to be the most successful commercial brand in the history of English literature, ahead even of Shakespeare. He has certainly been famous for much longer: his reputation has been growing for some fifteen centuries, against Shakespeare’s mere four. The historical Arthur, if he ever existed, was most likely to have been the leader of a war-band trying to hold at bay the invading Saxons in the wake of the withdrawal of the Roman armies, perhaps early in the sixth century. His fame was preserved in oral traditions for the next few hundred years, and only occasionally reached the written record; but after a Norman-Welsh cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth, invented a full biography for him in the 1130s, stories about him have spawned and expanded, until by now we have a deluge of retellings, historical or unashamed fantasy, for adults and children; films, television series, and wargames; parodies at all levels, not least from the Monty Python team; a tourist industry, and consumer items from toy swords to T-shirts. There is even a fast-food shop in Tintagel named Excaliburgers.
Geoffrey wrote in Latin, and the story he invented remains just about plausible in historical terms: his Arthur is a great conqueror who unites Britain under his rule, overruns much of Europe and reaches the very gates of Rome. The first overtly fictional accounts of his court, not least the knights of the Round Table, were written in French. Magic begins to creep into these new stories, and so does love: there is no Lancelot in the historical tradition. For a long time, Arthurian material in English kept largely to the quasi-historical account as outlined by Geoffrey, and anyone who wanted a detailed acquaintance with the romance elaborations of the story still had to read them in French. It was not until the late fifteenth century that a Warwickshire knight, Sir Thomas Malory, distilled the full story of the Round Table into a single English version. The result, the Morte Darthur, is one of the great works of English literature, and it underlies, directly or indirectly, almost every version of the legend produced in the anglophone world since then. Greg Doran’s 2010 production of the Morte with the Royal Shakespeare Company is the latest of these, and its script, by Mike Poulton, is impressively (and exceptionally) faithful to its original.
The qualities that make Malory so remarkable are the same ones that have made most of his literary descendants want to change him. For him, actions speak not only more loudly than words but often instead of them. Causes are often missing and motives have to be deduced, in a way that sets the imagination buzzing. Morality is carried by a few adjectives: noble, worshipful, faithful, against recreant or cowardly. The love of Lancelot and Guinevere is good because it is faithful: ‘she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end’, as Malory puts it in one of his rare authorial interventions, cutting through all the questions about
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Animar and to saving his people from struggle and oppression. But Fatalis, the evil force who plans to rule Animar, learns about Thane and creates an army to destroy him and anybody who gets in the way of his plan. In order to fight Fatalis, Thane seeks the help of other beings, the Avians and Aquans. In a twist of fate, the hunters and the hunted must get together to save their world. ![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3839293315798994098-224
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