Not Meant To Be Mythic

I was in Venice the other day, strolling past the Basilica of St. Mark's - as one does - when I stopped in at the Doge's Palace.

The place is mind-blowing. Not just for the quality of the decoration, but for the sheer amount of insanely detailed murals that cover the walls, the ceiling, everything.

Also, stone filigree.

But despite the crazy magnificence, the stuff inside is...chilling. Because the Republic of Venice was *not* a democracy, because it invented mass production centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and because this gave Venice control of the Eastern Mediterranean for the next 400 years.

At the height of its power, Venice was able to produce an entire warship - from hull to sails to oarlocks - in a single day. [For other realms, a warship took months.] Venice had reserved forests on the mainland for timber, mines for iron, copper, and tin, and developed assembly lines Henry Ford would have envied to create hulls, sails, powder, and shot. Its rope-making was so efficient that it sold the excess to other maritime powers. It also locked up residents it considered to be vital to its commercial interests - like glassmakers and Jews. [Venice invented the ghetto as well as the assembly line.]

And it mass-produced the items that we fantasy writers think of as unique artisanal products: swords and armor. Take a look at the pommels of the swords in the Venetian armory. Look at the black-powder pistols. Look at the helmets. Mass-produced, all of it. No individual flourishes. Not created by some mythic craftsman, but by assembly lines. And all the more deadly for it.

Not a "helm" - a helmet. They all look like that.

See how all the pommels are the same? Those are VI swords...Venetian-issue.

Not pretty, but effective.

Medieval Recipe Day: Bread!

Bread was a big, big deal in the medieval European diet. The Europeans weren't alone in history, of course - Jesus was fond of it too ("Give us this day our daily bread") and for Jews, bread occupies a place just below wine as a ritual food - both are considered necessities for a Sabbath/holiday meal.

Nobility preferred tasty white breads made of highly sifted wheat; commoners made do with darker breads. Ironically, the peasants' breads were probably more nutritious, with a wider variety of grains and even legumes and other veggies baked in. (Imagine you're a poor housewife, and you have a double handful of last year's dried peas to get rid of. Add them to the grain that you hand the miller to be ground into flour and bake it into your bread...)

Unfortunately, because bread was *so* common and such a staple, and (maybe) because so much of it was baked by guild bakers, instead of in the home (heat sources big and hot enough to bake fine loaves weren't as common as they are today) there are relatively few bread recipes from that period.
In fact, one of the few types of bread made in the average commoner's home, instead of by a baker, involved putting the dough in an overturned pot in the embers of the fire lit on the flat rock that was the single source of heat for the entire hut. Unleavened oatcakes were another staple. We do know that there were a lot of varieties of bread. Honey was often used as a sweetener, and ale (perhaps as a fermenting agent?). A cross was often cut into the top of the loaf.

Here's a recipe for barley bread that was probably a big hit among the monks of the day.

Medieval Recipe Day: Let's Make a Cretone of New Peas!

What's a cretone, you ask? This is.

Take some new peas. (Baby peas, perhaps? I think the point is that they're sweet, small, and not yet too starchy.) 

Fritters. Not fried pea fritters, but still-

Cook them into mush. Drain the mush. And then - I love this part - fry it in lard.  I think we're talking the medieval equivalent of refried beans...or, it's a fritter!

Next, boil some milk for just a moment, and soak the bread in the milk. The original recipe specifies cow's milk, which tells us that things like goat milk and almond milk were a lot more popular then. I suspect that the "bread" that's mentioned is the fried-pea mush, which isn't mentioned by name again.

Now that that's done, here's the sizzle: Crush up ginger and saffron, steep them in the milk, and boil. Cook chickens in water, quarter them, fry them, and add them to the milk to boil. Then put it all to "the back of the fire" and thread in egg yolks.

Now, the most important bit:

If you actually try this at home, let me know how it turns out.

BTW - As is usually the case, this medieval recipe is brought to you by "Le Viandier" of Taillevent.

That Bastard, Conrad of Montferrat

In my research for TWS Book 2, Hero's Army, I keep coming up against this guy Conrad. The crazy thing is, he's actually dead by the time my protagonist Henry arrives in the Holy Land (or, as the Crusaders call it, l'Outremer - the overseas). But he's a really, really interesting case of tainted history.

See, if you read the old chestnuts of English historical fiction like Walter Scott, Conrad's always the baddie. Conniving, evil, wizened, ugly, sadistic, sexually... ahem... experimental... really, they can't find enough nasty things to say about the guy. But if you actually look at the events of his life, you run into some cognitive dissonance.

First of all, he's a hottie. The Byzantine chronicler Niketas Choniates described him as "of beautiful appearance, comely in life's springtime, exceptional and peerless in manly courage and intelligence, and in the flower of his body's strength." (Heck, I'm a straight male, and even I feel a little tingly.)

A little Clockpunk for your attention

io9.com has this excellent squib about a 16th Cent. knight's prosthetic, spring-driven metal hand. You know I'm going to use it in TWS.

Today's word is STYLITES

Can you say "stylites"?
Or, to be more explicit, saint-on-a-pole.
Very popular in the Byzantine Empire around the EMA (early Middle Ages).
Apparently, Indian fakirs aren't the only holy folk who feel the need to mortify the flesh, but it's an impulse that is utterly alien to me. Why would God desire self-inflicted pain from his creatures? How do you get so deep into your own belief system that this sounds like a good idea?

I don't mean to offend any rockin' stylites out there. I'm just asking.

Medieval Recipe Day!

Guillaume Tirol's recipe for Cassia Soup (c. 1395):

Cook chicken, beef, or other meat in wine or water. Quarter it and brown it.

Take dry, cooked, unpeeled almonds and plenty of cassia. Crush it, sieve it, and steep it in beef broth. 

Who knows about the past?

When we think of Medieval Art, we think of stuff like this:

Well, I do, anyway. Or I used to.


But if you go to the Cloisters, you'll see that maybe the real geniuses were the sculptors. Check it out after the jump.

Why I Love the Middle Ages

Went to the Cloisters today. Check it out.

So beautiful. More to come.

The Original Wild and Crazy Guys

So yesterday, I threw up a little Minka Kelly on the blog in a fan service-y, not-much-content kind of way. Not the worst sin in the world, but I think maybe it's time we go back to future. Well, the future if you're a citizen of Imperial Rome. If you're not, it's more like the past. I'm going to get all medieval on your asses with a new bit o' history that some of you may not know:

Goliard.

And of course, jerks with swords

Stained glass

Reliquaries

I've had some email from readers wondering what reliquaries look like. Here are a few. A lot of variation, as you can see.

Greetings from the Middle Ages

I'm at the Met's great medieval court. Henry the Rat would love all the tourists with conveniently accessible fanny packs.

What is a Soteltie?

It's a food that's been made to look like something else.
Fish prepared to look like a roast. A castle of cake, with battered battlements and glazed-honey gates. A meatloaf hedgehog. You get the idea.
When I was in film school - a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, FAR away - they ran a class in special effects where the term ended with a soteltie feast. As I recall, one fellow came in with ice-cream cones that were actually made of mashed potatoes and french fried potatoes...the cognitive dissonance was pretty intense.
Back in the medieval day, before wedding singers and stand-up comedians, sotelties were one of THE big entertainments at feasts. Because of the Church's fast day restrictions on eating, it became the custom to make permitted foods, like fish, look and taste like forbidden foods - like meat. That evolved into food sculpture. And then, as "entremets," to mean any entertainment between the courses of a meal.
In fact, you could make an argument that the return of drama to Western culture began when someone dressed up cod to look like beef stew...
Oh, here are some soteltie recipes. If they turn out well, let us know. If they turn out badly...we're completely not responsible.

AKA Alhazen

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham, ca 965 CE-1040 CE.

One of the great Medieval Islamic scholars, engineers and inventors. By the time The Wrong Sword takes place, he's a hundred years gone, but his work pops up now and again in TWS, Hero's Army, and City of Brass.

In The Wrong Sword, one of the goofier characters makes use of Alhazen's "camera obscura." In case you were wondering, it looks something like this:

A Guest Blog!

Today, our guest blogger is Peter Lukes, whose novel Perchance To Dream is now out. (Hurrah!) Peter is (among many other things) on the board of trustees of the Higgins Armory Museum, in Worcester, MA - a Mecca for those of us who are tourney enthusiasts, joust fans, or members of the sword-forging classes. 

First, I’d like to thank Ted for inviting me to guest-post on his little piece of the Internet.  Since Ted’s latest release, The Wrong Sword, is a medieval fantasy tale that includes a rather famous weapon, I thought I’d discuss one of my favorite places on earth that also happens to be a museum of medieval relics.

It’s called the Higgins Armory Museum, and it’s in Worcester, Massachusetts. Higgins Armory houses over 4,000 historic items, a collection that includes arms and armor dating from Ancient Greece and Rome to Medieval and Renaissance Europe, with additional pieces from Africa, the Middle East, India and Japan. It has hundreds of swords, staff weapons, lances, and even some of the earliest firearms. Most notably, Higgins has two dozen full suits of armor on display, along with fully mounted knights on horseback. If that isn't enough, there is also plenty of artwork from the age of chivalry.

Oh, Man of Many Names

Sometimes he's Henry. Sometimes it's Henri. At least once it's Aimerick. Just so you know, that's not me being sloppy. That's just the way names went back when. F'rinstance, William Marshall, Henry II's righthand man, was Guillaume le Maréchal on the south side of the English Channel. And in diplomatic missives and official seals, King John was Johannes Rex Anglorum.

And while we're on the subject, it was often more usual to celebrate your "name day" - the day dedicated to the patron saint after whom you were named - than it was to celebrate your birthday.

Street Food à la Bourgeois

You might have heard that my hometown is undergoing something of a street food renaissance. We've left funnel cake and Italian sausage far behind, and food trucks now serve Belgian waffles, Hong Kong dumplings, and pupusas from El Salvador.

That's gotten me to thinking about what street food might have been like back in the old Castle & King days. Was there even street food at all? My gut, which is never wrong, says "yes." Here's a recipe that might have made the grade on the King's High Street.

Crispels.

Take and make a foile of gode past as thynne as paper; 

kerue it out wyt a saucer & frye it in pile;

oþer in grece; 

and þe remnaunt, take hony clarified and flamme þerwith. 

Alye hem vp and serue hem forth.

or, in Modern English:

Crispels.
Take and make a sheet of good pastry as thin as paper;
carve it out with a saucer & fry it in oil;
or in grease;
and to finish them, take clarified honey and baste therewith.
Do them up and serve them forth.

(This one's from the Gode Cookery website, a great resource for medieval cuisine.)

You try your best, but then THESE guys come along-

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!"

They are the tops. Always. Forever.