Writing those two last posts made a big difference in how I'm working with my manuscript. The very act of writing about my problems for an audience helped me to articulate them far more clearly than I was articulating them to myself, even in my writing journal. I've written quite a lot in the past couple of days, and it is text that I feel much more confident about, in a voice that I think will work. The idea that someone (anyone!) is reading my ideas and my prose kept me honest, in a way.
There is an article in this week's "Week in Review" in The New York Times about a reporter (Brian Stelter) who has lost almost 75 lbs by tweeting about it. At first, his goal was 25 lbs in 25 weeks, and then he went for another 25 when he reached it, and another 25 after that (he says he'll get to 75 on September 3 -- the day the original 25 weeks was up). He writes that he wanted an "audience cheering him on." Eventually, his audience was comprised of 600 people -- most of whom he had not known before. He described one such woman as his "biggest fan," and when he finally did speak to her as he prepared the article, it came out that she had also lost 50 lbs. His success IS inspiring.
He also wanted the fact of having to make his every bite public to help keep him honest. "Eat and tweet." It's embarrassing to have to admit to an audience that you just ate three jelly doughnuts and a milkshake, so you don't do eat them. He found that it didn't quite work that way all the time (and he wasn't always honest) -- but 'fessing up to his transgressions made him less likely to transgress again (how very Catholic!). The pressure of the crowd...
I was especially interested in this article because I, too, have been trying to (and succeeding at) losing weight these past few months. I'm truly terrible about remembering my own weight and I can't remember where I started, but I think I've lost about 25 lbs -- I've had to buy clothing several sizes smaller. There's nothing like a scary visit with your cardiologist to make you mend your ways! I haven't done it by tweeting about it, but my method, such as it is, also involves being honest. I began using an iPhone app (MyCal Calorie and Nutrition Tracker, $.99) to track my daily food intake back in late April. I eventually switched to an iPad app called Calorie Counter for FatSecret (free!), but the principle is the same: you enter what you ate into the app, and it keeps track of the calories, fat content, fiber, sodium for you. In order to know how much you've eaten, you have to measure or weigh pretty much everything. No one but me reads my "food diary," but I have been quite honest about what goes in there, though to be really honest, I have to admit that I didn't keep track on nights when I went out in Barcelona, or when I've been at a potluck full of yummy food, or when I've invited people over for dinner... It would be difficult to do so, given that I don't often don't know what went into the food, but I also know that I surely ended up above my self-imposed limit and I just don't want to go there too spectacularly. The "plenary sessions" in Barcelona certainly wouldn't have helped!
My success with this method of losing weight is in fact identical to that described on the "Well" blog in The New York Times on July 16, 2010. The app helps me make better choices, because I often enter a meal before I eat it, modifying my overall menu so as to keep on track. The night I eat little more than a big tomato salad (my garden is producing ginormous tomatoes and it's hard to keep up), I can have a (carefully measured portion of) ice cream, for instance. When I've made a scrumptious pasta using olive oil and cheese, I can't. For me, it works. I heard about a woman who claimed this method stopped her from "magical thinking" ("it's only a little cookie and doesn't really count...") and that also sounds on target. YMMV, of course.
So how is all this related to writing and this blog? It's partly about the importance of being honest about your progress, though unlike Brian Stelter, I don't really feel I need the audience for that. When I was in the push to finish my dissertation, I was brutally honest with myself in my writing journal about how many words I had written on any given day. That worked. I won't be writing here about how many words I've written (or tweeting it!), though I think I might try to keep track again, to keep myself honest with myself. But perhaps it's also being honest in a more abstract manner: acknowledging the problems I'm having and trying to write through them. My progress this week seems to indicate that it may have worked. It certainly helped.
I have not written anything else here during that time, of course. And there's the trick: how to blog and write a book at the same time. Writing takes time, and time is limited.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Religious Revelations and the Historian
As I wrote about earlier, I have also been trying to write about the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations and the revelations themselves. Briefly, he tried to fast for forty days and forty nights like Jesus, but had to give up after ten days. On his return (and after eating), he had a revelation which he declared was the source of all his beliefs (God had "placed it in his heart"). Once again, the text is laconic, but there are many things "around" the text that can be ascertained with a high degree of certainty. On-site research (amusingly conducted among the old men and hunters at the Pouss'Café in Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet) has allowed me to identify the cave in which he fasted, for instance. Thanks to the Medieval Calendar Calculator, I can figure out when Ash Wednesday was that year and thus make an educated guess about the weather (keeping in mind the Julian/Gregorian problem, of course). Though the town itself has changed, the area near the cave is undeveloped. If I wanted to, I could retrace Limoux's steps from his cave back to town. It is possible to research the effects of prolonged fasting on the human body (and also on the human mind). But how does one tell the story of a religious revelation?
There are models, of course. Caroline Walker Bynum, for instance. Barbara Newman and Richard Kieckhefer. There are many others. I need to go back and reread their work and think about it. In the case of Limoux, I believe that the "revelations" he received were part of an actual psychiatric condition, and are composed at least in part of fragments of things he had known or seen before. The content of the revelation is the stuff of his deposition and much of my work so far has been in teasing out the threads of his thought. That part is easy (well...). But at the center of all of this, and its drama, is the moment of revelation itself. How to write about what I think could be characterized as a psychotic break? I can't get inside his head, of course, but I have the gist of what he told the bishop, and it's juicy stuff. And the rationality (of his irrationality) is in that moment of revelation.
Now this is putting me in an awkward situation. I have always told my students, for instance, that it is not productive to ask if Joan of Arc was schizophrenic. I have bristled at scholars who have dismissed my beloved Na Prous Boneta as psychotic. So why am I arguing for thinking about Limoux's revelations as psychotic delusions and/or hallucinations? My rationale, I think, is that I am not dismissing Limoux, but instead using the content of his delusions to understand him, his past, and the world around him. Nor do I wish to dismiss the genuinely religious character of his revelations (though he himself actually describes them as intellectual and philosophical). He believed these things passionately enough to go to the stake rather than deny them.
There are models, of course. Caroline Walker Bynum, for instance. Barbara Newman and Richard Kieckhefer. There are many others. I need to go back and reread their work and think about it. In the case of Limoux, I believe that the "revelations" he received were part of an actual psychiatric condition, and are composed at least in part of fragments of things he had known or seen before. The content of the revelation is the stuff of his deposition and much of my work so far has been in teasing out the threads of his thought. That part is easy (well...). But at the center of all of this, and its drama, is the moment of revelation itself. How to write about what I think could be characterized as a psychotic break? I can't get inside his head, of course, but I have the gist of what he told the bishop, and it's juicy stuff. And the rationality (of his irrationality) is in that moment of revelation.
Now this is putting me in an awkward situation. I have always told my students, for instance, that it is not productive to ask if Joan of Arc was schizophrenic. I have bristled at scholars who have dismissed my beloved Na Prous Boneta as psychotic. So why am I arguing for thinking about Limoux's revelations as psychotic delusions and/or hallucinations? My rationale, I think, is that I am not dismissing Limoux, but instead using the content of his delusions to understand him, his past, and the world around him. Nor do I wish to dismiss the genuinely religious character of his revelations (though he himself actually describes them as intellectual and philosophical). He believed these things passionately enough to go to the stake rather than deny them.
I've always been intrigued by the idea that Hildegard of Bingen suffered from migraines. I first encountered this in Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, but eventually I tracked down some other studies that make the claim. This migraine aura site summarizes some of the debate. I think the evidence, mostly from the paintings, is pretty compelling -- but I don't think that suggesting this "takes away" from Hildegard's originality or genuine spirituality. Limoux is similar. His mind may have cracked and lost touch with reality, but it is what his mind made of that that interests me.
I am reminded of something a student said once. When I asked what the class thought of the deposition of Na Prous Boneta (who claims to have given birth to the Holy Spirit, among other things), this student said "I believe her." The rest of the class turned to her in astonishment, and then she clarified: "I believe that she believed what she told them." And with that I heartily agreed: she believed what she told them. What do I think of Limoux? I believe him. "Diagnosing" him does nothing for him, but I think it could be productive for me, as the writer telling his story. Just as I can better tell the story of Limoux's cave by finding it and knowing things about its distance from the town and its surroundings, I think learning about other psychotic breaks can help me to describe what happened to him. That's why I was asking for books about psychotic breaks the other day on Facebook (I'm still looking, btw).
I don't think I'm being hypocritical -- am I?
Article on Hildegard and the migraine theory:
Podoll K, Robinson D. The migrainous nature of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2002; 10: 95-100.
Don't Make Stuff Up
Dear Reader, I am resurrecting this blog because writing is a lonely business, and I think the issues I am struggling with right now deserve a conversation. I hope you will engage in that conversation with me. 
She's right, of course. I'm a historian and I can't just make stuff up. Historians muster evidence (from documents, usually) and carefully show how that evidence supports their conclusions. If we made up our evidence, we would be violating the implicit contract we make with our readers who trust us to draw reasonable conclusions from texts and sources that actually exist. Making sh*t up is contrary to the standards of professional conduct for historians. Period.
As Monika Otter correctly noted, however, I was asking about history and fiction in a different way. I'm writing about a man (Limoux) known through only a single source, an inquisitorial deposition of about 3,000 words (in Latin). And I'm writing a whole book! I thought at first it was going to be an article, but it just kept expanding. This is one of the richest sources I have ever worked on, and it sends tentacles out in all kinds of directions, most of them fascinating. Those of you who have spoken with me about Limoux know that I refer to him frequently as "urine dude" - and that's only one direction. I now know a lot about urine, just to name only one of the strange topics I have recently been researching. Limoux has always reminded me of Menocchio...
So I've been reading around, thinking about this problem. David Hackett Fischer spoke at Middlebury a couple of years ago and made a case for historians to be better writers (well, that's not exactly what he said, but sort of...). He himself is a wonderfully vivid and compelling writer, whose Paul Revere's Ride, for instance, is a riveting, minute by minute, field by field history of that famous night. I loved the book from the minute my brother Robert loaned it to me -- in part because I grew up only a couple of miles from the meadow where the man himself was captured and thus knew the places Fischer was writing about, and in part because it was simply a very good read. It is full of detail (p. 107):
The medievalist, of course, has an even more intractable problem in writing like this. I don't have and will never have the range of primary source material that Fischer does. His deposition is all I have about him personally. I have a great deal more "around" him, you might say. I have been trying to write about two "scenes" this week: the first is the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations, and the second is the narrative of his interrogation. I'll write about the problems of the revelations in another post.
I'm struggling a lot with finding the narrative voice that will allow me to do this effectively. I am interested in exploring models besides David Hackett Fischer for how to write vivid, historically responsible prose. They don't have to be medieval. Suggestions are welcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't make stuff up." That's what my friend Amanda Seligman advised in a response to my Facebook status update about pondering the line between history and fiction. 
She's right, of course. I'm a historian and I can't just make stuff up. Historians muster evidence (from documents, usually) and carefully show how that evidence supports their conclusions. If we made up our evidence, we would be violating the implicit contract we make with our readers who trust us to draw reasonable conclusions from texts and sources that actually exist. Making sh*t up is contrary to the standards of professional conduct for historians. Period. As Monika Otter correctly noted, however, I was asking about history and fiction in a different way. I'm writing about a man (Limoux) known through only a single source, an inquisitorial deposition of about 3,000 words (in Latin). And I'm writing a whole book! I thought at first it was going to be an article, but it just kept expanding. This is one of the richest sources I have ever worked on, and it sends tentacles out in all kinds of directions, most of them fascinating. Those of you who have spoken with me about Limoux know that I refer to him frequently as "urine dude" - and that's only one direction. I now know a lot about urine, just to name only one of the strange topics I have recently been researching. Limoux has always reminded me of Menocchio...
So I've been reading around, thinking about this problem. David Hackett Fischer spoke at Middlebury a couple of years ago and made a case for historians to be better writers (well, that's not exactly what he said, but sort of...). He himself is a wonderfully vivid and compelling writer, whose Paul Revere's Ride, for instance, is a riveting, minute by minute, field by field history of that famous night. I loved the book from the minute my brother Robert loaned it to me -- in part because I grew up only a couple of miles from the meadow where the man himself was captured and thus knew the places Fischer was writing about, and in part because it was simply a very good read. It is full of detail (p. 107):
Suddenly the mood was shattered. It would have been the horse that noticed first, as horses often do. A rider as experienced as Paul Revere would instantly have seen the animal's head come up, and her ears prick forward, and her high-arched neck twist slightly from side to side as she came alert to danger. He would have felt a momentary break in the rhythm of the canter, a change in the tension of the reins, and a subtle shift of pressure beneath his seat.In the endnotes for this chapter ("The Warning: The Midnight Ride as Collective Effort") Fischer cites diaries, journals, letters, depositions, geneaological research, archival material, surviving artifacts, articles in Sky and Telescope and Astronomy, earlier histories both broad in scope (William Gordon, History of the Independence of the United States, 4 vols., London, 1788) and pointed (William W. Wheildon, History of Paul Revere's Signal Lanterns, Boston, 1878), as well as simple common sense ("It would have been dangerous to light the lanterns on the ground floor of the church, with British soldiers passing in the street, and impossible to light them at the top of a narrow ladder"). There is a lot of material out there about the night of April 18-19, 1775... The unusual moonshadow that evening is documentable astronomically. We know what the Regulars would have been wearing. We know how a good horse behaves (and we know that Deacon Larkin's horse Brown Beauty was a seriously good horse). But this passage goes a little further, I think, to good dramatic effect. It's decidely not fiction... but have the dramatization, the conjectures gone too far? The evidence is there, in his endnotes, but he wears his scholarship lightly.
Paul Revere searched the road ahead. Suddenly, he saw two horsemen in the distance, almost invisible, waiting silent and motionless in the moonshadow of a great tree by the edge of the highway. As Revere rode closer, he made out the blur of military cockades on their hats, and the bulge of heavy holsters at their hips.
Regulars!
He pulled sharply on his reins, and Deacon Larkin's horse responded instantly....
The medievalist, of course, has an even more intractable problem in writing like this. I don't have and will never have the range of primary source material that Fischer does. His deposition is all I have about him personally. I have a great deal more "around" him, you might say. I have been trying to write about two "scenes" this week: the first is the series of events that led Limoux to his revelations, and the second is the narrative of his interrogation. I'll write about the problems of the revelations in another post.
He was taken and questioned about this sacrament, and refusing to respond, and turning himself to other words, and stories, at first he was dismissed to go, having been called to appear and to swear on the Holy Gospel of God about these first things, and also about other serious things, he was again denounced and captured.This laconic text reveals that that at first his interrogators thought he was crazy and dismissed him, before calling him back after he was denounced again. I know inquisitorial procedure and I know the name of the bishop before whom he appeared. I have been to the tiny town (Alet-les-Bains) where the newly-formed diocese was based and know that the "cathedral" was really an abbey church. I can tell the story. But how can I describe the extraordinary impression he must have made without veering too far into conjecture, getting too close to fiction? I could turn it into a novel, if I were gifted that way. But I am a historian, not a novelist, and I want to be historically and archivally responsible, without boring the reader. Inquisitorial depositions were not written down in order to make good stories, and I know it is my job to squeeze them for every last drop of juice, to unpack them as fully as they can be unpacked.
I'm struggling a lot with finding the narrative voice that will allow me to do this effectively. I am interested in exploring models besides David Hackett Fischer for how to write vivid, historically responsible prose. They don't have to be medieval. Suggestions are welcome.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Blogging Norfolk, Part II (Burnhams, Villages, Towns and Friars)
So I'll start with the lovely villages of Burnham, situated west of Wells and Holkham and east of Brancaster, on the North Norfolk coast. Well, sort of -- you see, the coast has receded rather substantially, and now the Burnhams are rather further away from the coast than they used to be. But we'll get back to that. (As appropriate, I have included links to Simon Knott's absolutely wonderful "Norfolk Churches" website. I highly recommend visiting it, because he is clearly a connoisseur of medieval churches, and also takes terrific photos, much better than mine!)
Traditionally, it is said that there are seven Burnhams. When I first went to the Burnhams back in 1982, I first thought the seven referred to the villages you can find on the map. Thus, Burnham Market, Burnham Thorpe, Burnham Overy Town, Burnham Overy Staithe, Burnham Norton, Burnham Deepdale... and then I don't know what I thought the seventh one was. Later, I heard that the seven Burnhams referred instead to the parish churches: Burnham Sutton, Burnham Norton, Burnham Thorpe, Burnham Overy, Burnham Deepdale, Burnham Ulph and Burnham Westgate (St. Ethelbert's of Burnham Sutton is not extant, but there's at least some ruins at "St. Albert's corner" in Burnham Market, and Burnham Ulph church is now "Sutton cum Ulph"). I have now read other explanations, but my favorite is the churches. I suspect that even if there once were other meanings for the seven Burnhams, most people think of them as the parish churches.
Nowadays, the Burnhams are known for two things: 1) The Admiral Lord Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, where his dad was the rector, and 2) Burnham Market has become a chi-chi place for weekending celebrities. Go figure. We're not going to deal with either of those factoids, which just aren't medieval, are they?
Let's take a look at what Mapquest has to tell us instead. There are only 6 Burnhams listed on their map, and they are the hamlets, not the churches. So Burnham Overy Town and Burnham Overy Staithe both appear, while Burnhams Sutton, Ulph and Westgate do not. You can see the river Burn wending its winding way from beyond Burnham Thorpe to the sea -- and it is quite clear that the coast isn't even close anymore. Burnham Overy Staithe is still a staithe (harbor), but just barely, and it had clearly better be high tide when you head out to go looking for seals.
For a little moment, I'd like to think particularly about Burnham Overy Town and Staithe. Burnham Overy Town is the one that appears in Domesday Book, though it is merely called "Bruneham" there. Staithe is a much later creation -- how much later I'm not quite sure. The first question I know you're dying to ask has to do with that name: Burnham Overy?? What's up with that? No, this was not an early experiment in feminist utopianism -- Overy has to do with sheep. We can assume this was sheep country (Domesday says that "Godwin" used to have 180 sheep in Burnham Thorpe, for instance). In Domesday Book, the Burnhams were part of the Hundred of Brothercross (brudecros) -- named after the cross at Burnham Overy, the base of which appears in this photo. Crosses like this one were places of assembly in Anglo-Saxon time and later. The cross is usually described locally as the "market cross," and it would make sense that an ancient gathering place of a Hundred would become a market, especially since Burnham Overy was also the harbor. You'd hardly believe it now, since there are hardly any houses there, and the sea is so far away. But the church, St. Clement's, is a beautiful and lovely place, much larger than it seems at first, surrounded by the few houses that remain, and notably dedicated to the patron saint of mariners. There is also a medieval wall-painting of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, inside. Prosperity and population, however, followed the harbor, and when the Burn silted up enough to make navigation impossible this far inland, the harbor moved to Overy Staithe. The church remained where it was, but most of the people moved out. The market may have moved even earlier to what is now called "Burnham Market," though that name only officially dates from the establishment of the railroad. There is a long skinny green located about half way between the churches of Burnham Ulph and Burnham Westgate (both 12th-century), and this may have been purposefully left clear to serve as a market.
What happened to Overy Town also happened to Burnham Norton, situated slightly to the west. St. Margaret's is an enormous and obviously once wealthy church that sits high on a hilltop, visible inland from the Overy Staith-Deepdale road, surrounded by... well, nothing. No village whatsoever. There is, however, a sign for the village of Burnham Norton on the sea side of the same road. Clearly, the village moved as the sea did, and fishermen or others who made their living from the sea headed closer to their livelihood. My fingers were itching for an archeological dig around St. Margaret's. I want to dig there almost as much as I want to dig at Montaillou. Perhaps someday.
I'm not going to drag you through each of the Burnham hamlets or parish churches, lovely and fascinating though they are (though I do especially recommend a little jaunt to Burnham Thorpe, where you can have a pint and/or a meal at the Admiral Lord Nelson pub, under new management). From here, I'd actually like to examine two sets of ruins that will pose a rather interesting conundrum. Let's start with the Carmelite priory, where we are able to visit certain picturesque ruins across the street from the local primary school. This priory, like so many other mendicant convents, was founded in the thirteenth century, in 1241. Judging from the size of this gatehouse, and the size of the various bumpy ruins in the fields, this was a substantial place.
Since about 1970, it has been taken as a truism among medievalists that the mendicants established their priories in urban locations. In fact, Jacques le Goff has notably suggested that the easiest way to distinguish a "town" from a "village" is to find a mendicant convent.* We may not quite be able to tell what is urban and rural from our present vantage point, but the mendicants could, and did, and established their houses there. Better preaching, better begging. So what in the heck were the Carmelites doing building a convent in a crummy little village like Burnham Norton?
The plot thickens when we drive by a place labeled "Peterstone Priory Farm" on the road leading from Overy Staithe towards Holkham (this picture comes from an 1891 map from http://www.old-maps.co.uk/). As this map shows, Peterstone Farm is on the site of St. Peter's Priory or Hospital, an Augustinian foundation of the late twelfth century, commonly known as Peterstone Priory. More mendicants. Two mendicant priories within just a couple of miles?? And not simply was this one a priory, but also a hospital. Moreover, doing a little bit of digging (in the utterly fabulous Historical Atlas of Norfolk), I was able to ascertain that this particular priory was in fact the head of an "enigmatic" congregation of Augustinians, known as the "Order of Peterstone." Not quite sure what the "enigmatic" means here, but I'm guessing it means that we don't have much documentation about them! Nonetheless, it is clear that this priory was the head of the order, which comprised 6 houses (also included Walsingham, Wormegay, Beeston, Weybridge and Great Massingham).
The very same Historical Atlas of Norfolk (p. 66) also tells me that "The Burnhams" were "an important Middle Anglo-Saxon multiple-estate" with "a minster church and royal vill" (the authors of the atlas argue that "minster" churches were some kind of monastic foundation). They also tell us (p. 32) that metal-detectors have revealed the Burnhams to be what they call "productive sites," with finds from the Anglo-Saxon period. So, in Anglo-Saxon times, this was an "important" place -- and by the 13th century, it had two convents of friars. The only other places in Norfolk with more than a single convent of friars were Lynn, Norwich, Yarmouth and Thetford, all clearly towns now, and all clearly towns in the Middle Ages. So would Jacques Le Goff call this a town, and not merely a village? I have to say I think he might. But this town, unlike the others, didn't last.
One conclusion we can certainly draw by looking at the shifting sites and sizes of the Burnhams is that appearances can be very deceiving. And that is something we will see even more of once we get to Blakeney and the Glaven ports.
*There are two articles by Le Goff in Annales E.S.C. that are useful here: 1969 and 1970. But most recent books on medieval towns also discuss Le Goff's research.
Traditionally, it is said that there are seven Burnhams. When I first went to the Burnhams back in 1982, I first thought the seven referred to the villages you can find on the map. Thus, Burnham Market, Burnham Thorpe, Burnham Overy Town, Burnham Overy Staithe, Burnham Norton, Burnham Deepdale... and then I don't know what I thought the seventh one was. Later, I heard that the seven Burnhams referred instead to the parish churches: Burnham Sutton, Burnham Norton, Burnham Thorpe, Burnham Overy, Burnham Deepdale, Burnham Ulph and Burnham Westgate (St. Ethelbert's of Burnham Sutton is not extant, but there's at least some ruins at "St. Albert's corner" in Burnham Market, and Burnham Ulph church is now "Sutton cum Ulph"). I have now read other explanations, but my favorite is the churches. I suspect that even if there once were other meanings for the seven Burnhams, most people think of them as the parish churches.
Nowadays, the Burnhams are known for two things: 1) The Admiral Lord Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, where his dad was the rector, and 2) Burnham Market has become a chi-chi place for weekending celebrities. Go figure. We're not going to deal with either of those factoids, which just aren't medieval, are they?
Let's take a look at what Mapquest has to tell us instead. There are only 6 Burnhams listed on their map, and they are the hamlets, not the churches. So Burnham Overy Town and Burnham Overy Staithe both appear, while Burnhams Sutton, Ulph and Westgate do not. You can see the river Burn wending its winding way from beyond Burnham Thorpe to the sea -- and it is quite clear that the coast isn't even close anymore. Burnham Overy Staithe is still a staithe (harbor), but just barely, and it had clearly better be high tide when you head out to go looking for seals.
For a little moment, I'd like to think particularly about Burnham Overy Town and Staithe. Burnham Overy Town is the one that appears in Domesday Book, though it is merely called "Bruneham" there. Staithe is a much later creation -- how much later I'm not quite sure. The first question I know you're dying to ask has to do with that name: Burnham Overy?? What's up with that? No, this was not an early experiment in feminist utopianism -- Overy has to do with sheep. We can assume this was sheep country (Domesday says that "Godwin" used to have 180 sheep in Burnham Thorpe, for instance). In Domesday Book, the Burnhams were part of the Hundred of Brothercross (brudecros) -- named after the cross at Burnham Overy, the base of which appears in this photo. Crosses like this one were places of assembly in Anglo-Saxon time and later. The cross is usually described locally as the "market cross," and it would make sense that an ancient gathering place of a Hundred would become a market, especially since Burnham Overy was also the harbor. You'd hardly believe it now, since there are hardly any houses there, and the sea is so far away. But the church, St. Clement's, is a beautiful and lovely place, much larger than it seems at first, surrounded by the few houses that remain, and notably dedicated to the patron saint of mariners. There is also a medieval wall-painting of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, inside. Prosperity and population, however, followed the harbor, and when the Burn silted up enough to make navigation impossible this far inland, the harbor moved to Overy Staithe. The church remained where it was, but most of the people moved out. The market may have moved even earlier to what is now called "Burnham Market," though that name only officially dates from the establishment of the railroad. There is a long skinny green located about half way between the churches of Burnham Ulph and Burnham Westgate (both 12th-century), and this may have been purposefully left clear to serve as a market.What happened to Overy Town also happened to Burnham Norton, situated slightly to the west. St. Margaret's is an enormous and obviously once wealthy church that sits high on a hilltop, visible inland from the Overy Staith-Deepdale road, surrounded by... well, nothing. No village whatsoever. There is, however, a sign for the village of Burnham Norton on the sea side of the same road. Clearly, the village moved as the sea did, and fishermen or others who made their living from the sea headed closer to their livelihood. My fingers were itching for an archeological dig around St. Margaret's. I want to dig there almost as much as I want to dig at Montaillou. Perhaps someday.
I'm not going to drag you through each of the Burnham hamlets or parish churches, lovely and fascinating though they are (though I do especially recommend a little jaunt to Burnham Thorpe, where you can have a pint and/or a meal at the Admiral Lord Nelson pub, under new management). From here, I'd actually like to examine two sets of ruins that will pose a rather interesting conundrum. Let's start with the Carmelite priory, where we are able to visit certain picturesque ruins across the street from the local primary school. This priory, like so many other mendicant convents, was founded in the thirteenth century, in 1241. Judging from the size of this gatehouse, and the size of the various bumpy ruins in the fields, this was a substantial place.Since about 1970, it has been taken as a truism among medievalists that the mendicants established their priories in urban locations. In fact, Jacques le Goff has notably suggested that the easiest way to distinguish a "town" from a "village" is to find a mendicant convent.* We may not quite be able to tell what is urban and rural from our present vantage point, but the mendicants could, and did, and established their houses there. Better preaching, better begging. So what in the heck were the Carmelites doing building a convent in a crummy little village like Burnham Norton?
The plot thickens when we drive by a place labeled "Peterstone Priory Farm" on the road leading from Overy Staithe towards Holkham (this picture comes from an 1891 map from http://www.old-maps.co.uk/). As this map shows, Peterstone Farm is on the site of St. Peter's Priory or Hospital, an Augustinian foundation of the late twelfth century, commonly known as Peterstone Priory. More mendicants. Two mendicant priories within just a couple of miles?? And not simply was this one a priory, but also a hospital. Moreover, doing a little bit of digging (in the utterly fabulous Historical Atlas of Norfolk), I was able to ascertain that this particular priory was in fact the head of an "enigmatic" congregation of Augustinians, known as the "Order of Peterstone." Not quite sure what the "enigmatic" means here, but I'm guessing it means that we don't have much documentation about them! Nonetheless, it is clear that this priory was the head of the order, which comprised 6 houses (also included Walsingham, Wormegay, Beeston, Weybridge and Great Massingham).The very same Historical Atlas of Norfolk (p. 66) also tells me that "The Burnhams" were "an important Middle Anglo-Saxon multiple-estate" with "a minster church and royal vill" (the authors of the atlas argue that "minster" churches were some kind of monastic foundation). They also tell us (p. 32) that metal-detectors have revealed the Burnhams to be what they call "productive sites," with finds from the Anglo-Saxon period. So, in Anglo-Saxon times, this was an "important" place -- and by the 13th century, it had two convents of friars. The only other places in Norfolk with more than a single convent of friars were Lynn, Norwich, Yarmouth and Thetford, all clearly towns now, and all clearly towns in the Middle Ages. So would Jacques Le Goff call this a town, and not merely a village? I have to say I think he might. But this town, unlike the others, didn't last.
One conclusion we can certainly draw by looking at the shifting sites and sizes of the Burnhams is that appearances can be very deceiving. And that is something we will see even more of once we get to Blakeney and the Glaven ports.
*There are two articles by Le Goff in Annales E.S.C. that are useful here: 1969 and 1970. But most recent books on medieval towns also discuss Le Goff's research.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Blogging Norfolk, Part I (Introduction)
I spent several days last week in Norfolk, England. Besides eating and drinking and pushing stuck vehicles out of muddy fields (welcome to Mud Season, girls!), I actually did some research for my upcoming book.So what was it all about? Well, this book I'm trying to write is a general history of medieval heresy, and thus, will have a chapter on the Lollards. And since the overall thesis of the book has to do with the fine line between heresy and orthodoxy in the Middle Ages (how very Grundmann-esque), I will want to explore that issue -- and how better to do it than with Margery Kempe, from King's Lynn (formerly Bishop's Lynn), frequently accused of being a Lollard herself? The north of Norfolk was a Lollard hot spot -- and a completely fascinating place, to boot, what with some of the liveliest of English ports in the Glaven estuary: Blakeney, Cley, Wiveton, etc. Things are very different now, of course -- Blakeney is but a sleepy holiday village, primarily known for the seals on Blakeney Point.
But these three days wandering around North Norfolk allowed me to do a lot of thinking about change: changes in the land, in its use, and in the migration of populations. How we can identify these changes over the long haul. What remains, what disappears. How can geography help with history, and how can history help geography. A lot of this probably won't be very useful for my book. But I do think I can use it in the classroom. So while it's all fresh in my memory, I'm going to think aloud about it here. And I'll do it in a couple of parts:
Blogging Norfolk, Part II (Burnhams, Villages, Towns and Friars)
Blogging Norfolk, Part III (The Glaven Ports and the Evil Silt Monster)
Time to get to work!
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Do Bears Sh*t in the Woods?
Well, I can't really say. Yet. Though I'm certainly still looking. Of course, it's winter, and the bears around here probably aren't sh*tting at all -- though today, it's nearly 60° Fahrenheit, so I suspect many of them have woken up from their "winter" naps to go mosying around. If it weren't raining so hard (flood watch until 6 pm), I would, too. Maybe tomorrow there'll be poop.
You see, Stefano and I have been eagerly reading our new book, Donald and Lillian Stokes' Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior. We love this book. We've learned so much about red squirrel middens, voles, muskrats, beavers, and, of course and most especially, poop. There is the most amazing section on poop (which they genteelly call "scat" -- pp. 52-67). It even has life-size drawings so you can tell one kind of poop from another! Fascinating.
And I've been putting my newfound expertise to use while wandering through the Norris' sugarbush recently. At the bottom of the trail that leads into the "silent meadow," at the base of the ledges, there was quite a lot of interesting poop the other day. There was one that I naively thought might be bear -- well, it was large! certainly bigger than Astro's poop, which he thoughtfully deposited nearby for the sake of comparison. But when I got home, I compared what I had seen with the drawing -- and the next day, went back again to the poop just to check. Nope. Not bear. It wasn't bear because although it was full of hair, the ends of the poop were tapered, not flat.
So if not bear, what? Several animals have tapered poop, notably fox, bobcat, and coyote. The Stokes say that "the scats of bobcats are very similar in shape and size to those of the fox and coyote, so much so that it is impossible to identify them positively. You must use other clues." (p. 64) So I did. I decided it wasn't bobcat poop, first of all. Bobcat poop would probably be smaller, and moreover, bobcats like to poop "on some slightly elevated spot." We've seen what we now know to be bobcat poop on many trails -- generally on a rock in the middle. Bobcats are showoffs: "look at my poop!" There was actually a nice example of some showoff bobcat poop a little further up the trail. And bobcats do like ledges, according to the Stokes (p. 366), so this would be a good spot for them. In fact, when Astro and I bushwacked our way to the top of the ledges the other day, I think we may have heard a bobcat moving away from a sunny spot on a ledge beneath us.
But back to my poop. While it could have been either fox or coyote, I finally settled for coyote. "The best you can do is compare the diameters of the scats. Scats ¾ inch or more in diameter are probably coyote or one of its hybrids; scats less than 7/16 inch in diameter are probably fox." My mystery poop was closer to an inch in diameter, so I'm calling it coyote poop. Moreover, we've heard coyotes several times (fascinating yipping sounds in the night, sometimes very close!), but we've never seen foxes very close to here (alas!).
So do bears sh*t in the woods? Probably. The Stokes say they do. And since we've actually seen bears on the driveway, I suspect they even sh*t in our woods. But I'm afraid we'll have to wait to spring to find out for sure.
Addendum: Or perhaps not! Stefano spotted a story this morning in La Repubblica about a bear and her two cubs seen wandering across the ski slopes in the Alps. And here's the picture to prove it, with the size of Mama Bear's tracks indicated by this gentleman's cell phone (convincing proof, of course, that the photo was taken in Italy!):
You see, Stefano and I have been eagerly reading our new book, Donald and Lillian Stokes' Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior. We love this book. We've learned so much about red squirrel middens, voles, muskrats, beavers, and, of course and most especially, poop. There is the most amazing section on poop (which they genteelly call "scat" -- pp. 52-67). It even has life-size drawings so you can tell one kind of poop from another! Fascinating.
And I've been putting my newfound expertise to use while wandering through the Norris' sugarbush recently. At the bottom of the trail that leads into the "silent meadow," at the base of the ledges, there was quite a lot of interesting poop the other day. There was one that I naively thought might be bear -- well, it was large! certainly bigger than Astro's poop, which he thoughtfully deposited nearby for the sake of comparison. But when I got home, I compared what I had seen with the drawing -- and the next day, went back again to the poop just to check. Nope. Not bear. It wasn't bear because although it was full of hair, the ends of the poop were tapered, not flat.
So if not bear, what? Several animals have tapered poop, notably fox, bobcat, and coyote. The Stokes say that "the scats of bobcats are very similar in shape and size to those of the fox and coyote, so much so that it is impossible to identify them positively. You must use other clues." (p. 64) So I did. I decided it wasn't bobcat poop, first of all. Bobcat poop would probably be smaller, and moreover, bobcats like to poop "on some slightly elevated spot." We've seen what we now know to be bobcat poop on many trails -- generally on a rock in the middle. Bobcats are showoffs: "look at my poop!" There was actually a nice example of some showoff bobcat poop a little further up the trail. And bobcats do like ledges, according to the Stokes (p. 366), so this would be a good spot for them. In fact, when Astro and I bushwacked our way to the top of the ledges the other day, I think we may have heard a bobcat moving away from a sunny spot on a ledge beneath us.But back to my poop. While it could have been either fox or coyote, I finally settled for coyote. "The best you can do is compare the diameters of the scats. Scats ¾ inch or more in diameter are probably coyote or one of its hybrids; scats less than 7/16 inch in diameter are probably fox." My mystery poop was closer to an inch in diameter, so I'm calling it coyote poop. Moreover, we've heard coyotes several times (fascinating yipping sounds in the night, sometimes very close!), but we've never seen foxes very close to here (alas!).
So do bears sh*t in the woods? Probably. The Stokes say they do. And since we've actually seen bears on the driveway, I suspect they even sh*t in our woods. But I'm afraid we'll have to wait to spring to find out for sure.
Addendum: Or perhaps not! Stefano spotted a story this morning in La Repubblica about a bear and her two cubs seen wandering across the ski slopes in the Alps. And here's the picture to prove it, with the size of Mama Bear's tracks indicated by this gentleman's cell phone (convincing proof, of course, that the photo was taken in Italy!):
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Map Wars and Phantom Roads
When I was researching my post of November 29, I found myself on Google Maps. There was one nagging detail that I didn't report that time, which was that there was a distinct difference between the lay of the land as reported by my Delorme atlas, and Google Maps. On Delorme, Hayden Hill Road goes through, and on Google Maps, it doesn't (I kind of hid that fact by sending you to the "hybrid" map... sneaky sneaky!).
But this fact has really been irking me ever since. I really love Delorme maps, and I was upset that I had found a fault. Once upon a time, back before Delorme had published all 50 states, I refused to vacation in states that didn't yet have a Delorme map! (Vermont was not among them, in those days, but Virginia was). What Michelin maps have been to me for France, allowing me to cut cross country and discover new places, Delorme was for the US. Delorme was really crucial to this whole "new road" project. So how could Delorme have let me down?
So I've been haunting the map sites, and testing hypotheses out there on the road ever since. Google Maps, Mapquest, Yahoo, and the USGS maps that are available here. It's been absolutely fascinating, and I've learned that there appears to be no real consensus at all about which roads "go through," and which don't. At least not in this area: Starksboro, So. Starksboro, Hillsboro, Little Ireland and Hanksville are all connected by a relatively dense web of "roads" or "not-roads" or 4 WD tracks or simply trails, which sometimes have names, and sometimes don't, and sometimes go through, and sometimes don't.
Historically, I'm sure, they all "went through." You could take a horse or a donkey or a mule through on any of these roads. You could probably even take a cart, though I suspect a buggy might be pushing it (certainly wouldn't be a very comfy buggy ride). They were a means of communication among all these hill farms, bringing Little Ireland close to Hillsboro which was close to the farms on Big Hollow Road, and even Hanksville. In an era when no roads were paved at all, there may not have been that much difference between what is now route 116 and the rutted track that now leads past the Hillsboro cemetery. Now, however, it's like night and day.
But not quite like night and day, because the shadow of these roads endures on the ghostly virtual maps of Mapquest. I've found that the most accurate map (in terms of which roads are navigatable and which are not) is the USGS. Let's take a look at the USGS map for the approximate area of Hillsboro (we may zoom in on this later):
Look at the area where it says "Lewis Creek State Wildlife Mgmt Area." This is Hillsboro. You can see where the road that leads off from route 116 in the bottom left hand corner very quickly deteriorates into a "4WD" track -- not a road anymore. Though there are connections to roads leading south from Big Hollow Road (not labeled on the map, but it's the road that leads off from "Starksboro" at a steep upwards angle), they are clearly dotted lines (trails), not solid lines indicating actual roads.
Now, take a look at the next map, from Mapquest:
None of the roads are labeled at this scale, but you should be able to see the Hillsboro Road leading out from the bottom right corner (near the red star), and Big Hollow Road, leading out of Starksboro. Here, there is no indication that the Hillsboro Road is little more than a track, and there is a very clear indication of an actual road that leads through to Big Hollow Road. Moreover, you can follow the network up towards Hanksville in the upper right corner, and in the lower right, there are connections to yet another set of roads (which is the Ireland/Little Ireland network).
Let's try one more, this time, Google Maps, which is ultimately the most deceptive to those of us who travel by Subaru Forester. If you look carefully (and have excellent eyesight!), you can read the names of these phantom roads: Crowley Road (where the green arrow alights) going through to Brown Hill West, and Little Ireland Road (just on the bottom edge). Both hook up to the Hillsboro Road.
And yet, I must assure you, gentle reader, they do not, at least not with my car. I took a look at Brown Hill West yesterday, and there is a sign stating clearly that this is a Dead End, and that the road ends on private property. Though "Crowley Road" may exist in actual fact (and I have yet to check -- this will be my next "new road"!), I do not believe it goes through to Hillsboro.
Of course, all these "roads" are accessible and navigatible on foot, on horseback, by ATV and in season, by snowmobile. It is merely for the ordinary road vehicle that they are off limits and impassible. And yet, don't Mapquest and Google Maps provide driving directions? I tried for quite a while to force either the one or the other to take one of these "roads" in directions but had no luck. Though the roads appear on their maps, they apparently do not appear on their database of possible addresses.
Thus, I leave you with the Google Maps "hybrid" view of the same area. (to help you orient yourself, the green arrow is in the exact same position as before). You can see Big Hollow Road above, and you can relatively easily distinguish the cleared fields that run along various parts of Ireland and Little Ireland Roads. You can even just barely see Brown Hill West as it pulls away from Big Hollow Road. Crowley Road, however, is nothing more than the shadow of a line, gone like the farms that once pastured Merino sheep. But I'll bet you anything the apple trees are still there!
But this fact has really been irking me ever since. I really love Delorme maps, and I was upset that I had found a fault. Once upon a time, back before Delorme had published all 50 states, I refused to vacation in states that didn't yet have a Delorme map! (Vermont was not among them, in those days, but Virginia was). What Michelin maps have been to me for France, allowing me to cut cross country and discover new places, Delorme was for the US. Delorme was really crucial to this whole "new road" project. So how could Delorme have let me down?
So I've been haunting the map sites, and testing hypotheses out there on the road ever since. Google Maps, Mapquest, Yahoo, and the USGS maps that are available here. It's been absolutely fascinating, and I've learned that there appears to be no real consensus at all about which roads "go through," and which don't. At least not in this area: Starksboro, So. Starksboro, Hillsboro, Little Ireland and Hanksville are all connected by a relatively dense web of "roads" or "not-roads" or 4 WD tracks or simply trails, which sometimes have names, and sometimes don't, and sometimes go through, and sometimes don't.
Historically, I'm sure, they all "went through." You could take a horse or a donkey or a mule through on any of these roads. You could probably even take a cart, though I suspect a buggy might be pushing it (certainly wouldn't be a very comfy buggy ride). They were a means of communication among all these hill farms, bringing Little Ireland close to Hillsboro which was close to the farms on Big Hollow Road, and even Hanksville. In an era when no roads were paved at all, there may not have been that much difference between what is now route 116 and the rutted track that now leads past the Hillsboro cemetery. Now, however, it's like night and day.
But not quite like night and day, because the shadow of these roads endures on the ghostly virtual maps of Mapquest. I've found that the most accurate map (in terms of which roads are navigatable and which are not) is the USGS. Let's take a look at the USGS map for the approximate area of Hillsboro (we may zoom in on this later):
Look at the area where it says "Lewis Creek State Wildlife Mgmt Area." This is Hillsboro. You can see where the road that leads off from route 116 in the bottom left hand corner very quickly deteriorates into a "4WD" track -- not a road anymore. Though there are connections to roads leading south from Big Hollow Road (not labeled on the map, but it's the road that leads off from "Starksboro" at a steep upwards angle), they are clearly dotted lines (trails), not solid lines indicating actual roads.Now, take a look at the next map, from Mapquest:
None of the roads are labeled at this scale, but you should be able to see the Hillsboro Road leading out from the bottom right corner (near the red star), and Big Hollow Road, leading out of Starksboro. Here, there is no indication that the Hillsboro Road is little more than a track, and there is a very clear indication of an actual road that leads through to Big Hollow Road. Moreover, you can follow the network up towards Hanksville in the upper right corner, and in the lower right, there are connections to yet another set of roads (which is the Ireland/Little Ireland network).
Let's try one more, this time, Google Maps, which is ultimately the most deceptive to those of us who travel by Subaru Forester. If you look carefully (and have excellent eyesight!), you can read the names of these phantom roads: Crowley Road (where the green arrow alights) going through to Brown Hill West, and Little Ireland Road (just on the bottom edge). Both hook up to the Hillsboro Road.And yet, I must assure you, gentle reader, they do not, at least not with my car. I took a look at Brown Hill West yesterday, and there is a sign stating clearly that this is a Dead End, and that the road ends on private property. Though "Crowley Road" may exist in actual fact (and I have yet to check -- this will be my next "new road"!), I do not believe it goes through to Hillsboro.
Of course, all these "roads" are accessible and navigatible on foot, on horseback, by ATV and in season, by snowmobile. It is merely for the ordinary road vehicle that they are off limits and impassible. And yet, don't Mapquest and Google Maps provide driving directions? I tried for quite a while to force either the one or the other to take one of these "roads" in directions but had no luck. Though the roads appear on their maps, they apparently do not appear on their database of possible addresses.
Thus, I leave you with the Google Maps "hybrid" view of the same area. (to help you orient yourself, the green arrow is in the exact same position as before). You can see Big Hollow Road above, and you can relatively easily distinguish the cleared fields that run along various parts of Ireland and Little Ireland Roads. You can even just barely see Brown Hill West as it pulls away from Big Hollow Road. Crowley Road, however, is nothing more than the shadow of a line, gone like the farms that once pastured Merino sheep. But I'll bet you anything the apple trees are still there!
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