Magic and magic-makers in medieval courts

Magic played a strange and ambivalent role in medieval society. Wise-women and wizards were sometimes tolerated or revered or sometimes persecuted as witches, particularly if their 'magic' went wrong. Yet at the same time, priests could perform magic and utter charms as well as prayers to combat evil or demons.

All levels of medieval society believed in magic, including the courts. Magicians might be employed at European courts as entertainers, as alchemists, as healers or as diviners. In the later Tudor period we have John Dee, who served Elizabeth I as her astronomer and occultist, and the alchemist and astronomer Paracelsus. In myth we have Merlin, one of the most famous magicians of them all, who was on the edge first of Uther Pendragon's court and then of King Arthur's, and feared and respected in equal measure. In France in the 14th century, the astrologer Thomas of Pisano made figures out of wax to destroy the invading English by magic.

Astrologers, alchemists and magicians, promising gold, health and power, were often welcomed at court and given high status. Yet their places were always vulnerable. Jealous rivals could accuse them of using magic in an evil way, as happed to Mummolus, a shrewd military tactician of the sixth century AD, a time when Frankish Gaul was split into several kingdoms. Accused of witchcraft by Fredegund, queen to Chilperic I of Soissons, Mummolus was tortured and died of his wounds.

In 1441 Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, was accused of using ‘treasonable necromancy’ against King Henry VI in order to advance her husband. She was imprisoned for life, while the astrologers Thomas Southwell and Roger Bolingbroke, together with Margery Jourdemayne, ‘the Witch of Eye‘, were condemned to death. In the mid-1480s Richard III of England accused Elizabeth Woodville (previously married to a Lancastrian) of having bewitched his late brother Edward IV into marrying her.

Even the court of the medieval papacy was a place where members could be accused of magic - because magic-making was seen as a part of life and a way of gaining or keeping favours. In 1317 the bishop of Cahors was tried for using magic against Pope John XXII and trying to smuggle magical images into the papal palace in loaves of bread.

Lindsay Townsend

In an English Country Garden

From "The Naming of Names" by Anna Pavord

The English are famous for their obsession with gardening, and on days like the last few where the skies have been blue and the weather warm, there is nothing I like more than to sit in the garden an admire the flowers.

 But in truth this is a recent hobby, as in the past a flower garden was a luxury. In the Middle Ages in England most plants were grown as food, or for medical or herbal purposes. Most plant lore was passed literally from hand to mouth, or recorded by monks in monasteries until the advent of printed texts. The gardens planted by Romans in Britain had fallen into disuse, but the monks planted some of the flowers and herbs they had left behind – lavender, rosemary, hyssop, valerian, the lily, the pansy, cherry trees.Unfortunately much of the written material was lost in the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.

One of first influential printed books on plants was Gerard's Herball of 1597, and it was followed by Culpeper's Herbal, both of which emphasised flowers as medicine.

For a vey readable account of Culpeper's life I can highly recommend

The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom

by Benjamin Woolley.

By the 1570's tulip bulbs first reached Holland from Turkey, and decorative flowering plants became fashionable. But it was not until the seventeenth century that tulip mania really began to grip Europe. Merchants paid vast fortunes, the price of a mansion in the Hague, for the rarer variegated flowers. This frenzy of gambling on tulip bulbs is beautifully evoked in Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach. It was not until the 1920's though that scientists realised the pretty colours were in fact caused by a bug - a virus transmitted by aphids.

One of the early plant explorers in the seventeenth century was John Tradescant - his exploits both in England and what he called The New World are described in Philippa Gregory's superb books Virgin Earth and Earthly Joys.

The pilgrims in 17th century ships took plants and seeds with them on their long voyage from England to North America. They did not know if the plants they needed would grow where they were bound. All seeds and plants for the voyage were selected for their usefulness, and not for decoration. These were herbs for medicinal purposes, and dyeing, and crops for food.

To ensure the plants would survive the two month journey, the pilgrims made plant transporters out of natural materials. Baskets were made using willow, bramble, rose, ivy and other hedgerow plants.To transport cuttings, they made what appeared to be balls of earth but were in fact clay mixed with honey. Honey is renowned as an antiseptic so it stopped bacteria or mould from the damp conditions killing the plants. Seeds were also transported in dried gourds, and the tuberous plants were stored in ox bladders, to keep the roots damp.

Flowering plants for health included chervil and foxglove for dropsy, comfrey for backstrain and spitting blood(!) lovage for colic, and tansy to preserve the dead and treat fevers, worms, hysteria, flatulence and miscarriages. What a cure-all!

The garden flower most associated with English gardens is the Rose. According to myth it is red because it blushed with pleasure when Eve kissed it in the Garden of Eden. In terms of history it can be dated to between 60 and 25 million years ago -  astonishingly, fossilized stems with prickles and rose-like leaves can be traced back this far.

The Old English poem "Deor", which comes to us from the 10th century or earlier, contains a very early mention of a rose –

The stranger paused. He marvelled

At a heart-rooted pain.
The thorn ran deep, the bud
Spread a crimson stain.
He would not pluck it, for fear

The rose scattered like rain.


But in Britain very few roses were grown before the reign of Elizabeth I. From the 1500's with explorers bringing new plants from abroad, and the advent of better printing techniques to spread the word, rose-growing burgeoned in popularity until by 1729 Chinese roses were being grown in Kew Gardens.

How did people used to tend their precious plots? Before specialised equipment was invented, gourds or clay pots with holes in were used for watering the plants. Spouted pots called "watering cans" were first recorded in 1692, but we had to wait for a lawn sprinkler until 1871, when J.Lessler of Buffalo City, New York patented one.

"Lady's Slipper" orchid

But it is wild flowers that I love, and originally all our cultivated plants grew wild somewhere, and have had to be brought, sometimes at great cost, from the other side of the world.

Primary Sources

Primary sources, I feel, are a writer's best friend, especially a historical writer.
   I collect Victorian diaries and journals, written mainly by women who have arrived in Australia after leaving England, but also by women born in colonial Australia. These diaries give me an insight to how they lived and what was happening in the world around them at that time. From their personal entries, we can learn what was important to them, their daily routine, their views and opinions. They can also lift some of those myths we in the modern world tend to think as true.
   Diaries aren't the only primary source available to us. We have so many musuems and art galleries. I love studying paintings of the different eras and visting museums that have wonderful displays of every era.
We should be visiting our local or state libraries for books, letters, newspapers and articles written in the eras we write. Naturally this is difficult for those writing in the ancient periods, but those of us who write about the last few hundred years have sources available and we need to use them.
   If you are writing about the area where you live, join your local historical society, where as a member, you can study maps, paintings and photos are that district. Also the local councils will have documents and maps going back years.
   It is not always possible to visit your chosen setting, but if you can visit, make sure you don't simply go to the main attractions, like a castle, etc, but find the time to visit the graveyard of the local church, sit in a pew and study the stain glass windows, lay by the river and absorb the surroundings, listen to the birds sing, the insect buzz and imagine what it would be like in your period. Walk the back streets of the village or town, find the oldest parts and touch the walls of the buildings and think of nothing but how your characters would have lived. Would their footsteps have walked where yours have?

The photo is taken from a sketch done of Lower George St, Sydney, Australia 1828. Sketches and paintings like these give us the artist's view of those times and from studying it we can see a little of what life was like then.

I found this photo in a book, but the internet has many websites with great antique photos and paintings, some even for sale.

If you write in the Victorian or Edwardian era, you may even have photos of your own family and this is another source you have to look at their clothes, etc.

   I find it fascinating that we have so many choices to help us become better writers. I guess that is why research is never a chore for me. :o)