2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
I'm always in research mode, it seems. So with that in mind, let me pick up the nearest book and read the title:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World
By Thomas CahillAll righty.... let's open it up to page 123...looking for 5th sentence... and here we go (beware, he's wordy, but interesting!)
Sentence 1: They were as itinerant as Benedictine monasteries were stable, settling into one castle for a few months or even weeks, moving on to a hunting lodge perhaps, then on to another of the lord's castles, then crashing at the fortress of some lesser lord who was duty-bound to put up the greater lord's whole household, which could number a hundred or more--the lord and his knights, the lord's spouse and her ladies, his councillors and other officials, the steward, the butler, the cooks and kitchen staff, the chamberlain, the treasurer, the bodyguards and others designated to keep order, the clerks, servants, and grooms, a chaplain or two, the packhorses and oxen, carts and wagons.
Sentence 2: For a king's entourage there would be much additional paraphernalia to be stored (dramatic changes of clothing and jewelery, supplies of parchment and coin) and many additional figures to be housed: a high-ranking constable or marshal, a keeper of the king's seals, and "ushers, huntsmen, horn-blowers, watchmen, guards, archers, men-at-arms, cat-hunters, wolf-catchers, keepers of the hounds, keepers of the royal mews [stables for horses and hawks], keepers of the tents, the chamberlain of the candles, the bearer of the king's bed, the king's tailor, laundresses, including the king's personal washerwoman, and a ewerer, who dried his clothes and prepared the royal bath," in the words of Alison Weir, a biographer of medieval royalty.
Sentence 3: Mention of "the royal bath" gives us a clue as to why this large assembly had to keep journeying on.
Now... since I've probably either bored you to tears, or piqued your curiosity, I have to finish the paragraph so the "clue" pans out and makes sense.
The insoluble medieval problem in the face of such a company was sanitation. Plumbing was unknown; and the tradition of public bathing, though as much a part of the Greco-Roman heritage as plumbing had been, had perished beyond Byzantium. Because individual bathing in a copper basin in a drafty castle could lead so easily to chill, then to fever and death, kings and queens seldom bathed more than once a month, those with neither washerwoman nor ewerer at their command scarcely more than once or twice a year. Despite their silks and linens, their frequent changes of costume, their liberal burning of Arabian incense, the royals stank, as did their retinues. More than this, the chamber pot was the sole device for receiving human waste.* A small castle -- or even a large one -- might become downright uninhabitable after many weeks of residence by such a throng.
* Some later Norman keeps did have a closet off the lord's bedchamber containing a holed seat atop a descending shaft -- accessible at ground level to those whose honor it was to muck out and bury the lord's donations. But I have found no evidence of this improvement prior to the fifteenth century.
posted by Leslie Ann Dennis at 5:00 PM
