#kcd codex

— #general

— #characters

— #society

— #crafts

— #events

— #locations

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SOCIETY — 133/262 — Educated women

Medieval education unfortunately favoured men, as women were not allowed entry into universities and were generally not expected to be literate or pursue education, regardless of their wealth or lineage. However, there are a few exceptions known to us. One of them is Christine de Pisan (1364-1430), the first female author in the history of French literature, who wrote philosophical, political, legal, and even militarily oriented works and advocated for women's rights. Another example could be Maria Hebraea, a famous Jewish alchemist whose life is surrounded by legends, or another alchemist known as Cleopatra, who lived in Alexandria during the 3rd-4th century and allegedly could produce the philosopher's stone. Notable mention also goes to Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a Christian mystic, naturalist, physician, musical composer, and writer who was highly influential in her time and later cited author of works such as Ordo Virtutum (morality play) and Causae et Curae (medicine), among others. In later centuries, women's contributions to education and literature gradually increased, although the first admission of women to a university did not occur until 1836 in Zurich.

TRIVIA

— “Women were generally not expected to be literate or pursue education, regardless of their wealth or lineage.” That is not entirely true. While there was no obligation for noble girls to be educated, many of them still were, and moral and educational codes suggested at least a certain literacy for girls so that they could understand the most basic Latin prayers and fulfil their duties in taking part in courtly life and managing a household. The education was managed by nurses, then older noblewomen, tutors and priests, teaching the girls morals and conversational etiquette, often rudimentary medicine and of course reading and writing. Some researchers even argue that noble women might have had a higher literacy than noble men, ascribing this phenomenon to the popularity of adventure romance stories. “They were not allowed entry into universities”. While most universities did, in fact, open only to men, there were many scholastic options for girls too, with the most central one being convents. From the 7th century onwards, the church required all members of religious societies, regardless of their sex, to be literate in Latin, and so nuns would be educated in reading and writing, religion and morals, music and handicraft, in some convents even law, medicine and the Seven Liberal Arts – grammar, dialect, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Next to that, there were also public schools, Cathedral schools and court schools available to girls, with one of the first court schools being established by Charlemagne in the 8th century, creating a centre for teaching of reading, writing, and the liberal arts.

“In later centuries, women's contributions to education and literature gradually increased, although the first admission of women to a university did not occur until 1836 in Zurich.” No — in Spain and Italy, universities such as that of Salamanca, Salerno – in the 12th century, the only medical school in Europe teaching both men and women – or Bologna were in fact open for women. As early as 1239, the University of Bologna saw not its first female student, but its first female professor. After first studying philosophy, Bettisia Gozzadini went for another study in law, earning her a doctor's degree. It is assumed that she studied at the university and taught there afterwards. She became a home teacher, before being offered a professorship at Bologna, likely becoming the first (European) woman to teach at a university. Women were also always contributing to literature, as is evident in authors such as Hrotsvit, who, in the 10th century, became the first (known) German female writer, and the first to write dramatic texts since antiquity. However, due to a poor handling of authorship and preservation efforts – anonymous texts most often being ascribed to men, and centres of female studying such as convents historically facing more neglect – many examples remain unknown.

SOCIETY — 151/262 — Invective

Although the more educated or higher-born tried to keep invective and vulgarities out of their speech, swearing has been part of the vernacular since time immemorial. Profanity was not only verbal, but often appeared in written form in documents that sought to defame and humiliate those addressed. Some of the slurs arose by corrupting foreign-language expressions, others were derived from animals and their attributes. Often used as insults were onomatopoeic words (articulated noises) or metaphors, words derived from adjectives, attitudes towards work, criminal offences, political stances, professions, psychological malaise or people’s names. The worst kind of insult questioned the honour of the individual – such swearwords quite often led to court cases or duels. It was common practice that anyone not prepared to defend their honour would indeed lose it in the eyes of the public.

TRIVIA

— Medieval insults or "sins of the tongue" were a largely gendered speech. While a man's social reputation depended mostly on his honour and honesty, a woman's standing was reliant on her virtue and her compliance. The worst insults for a man were therefore those targeted at his integrity (being “false” or “a filthy liar”), while women were mostly sexually defamed (“shameful woman”, “whore”), or accused of gossip or “scolding”. Since all of these accusations could have serious consequences – if they were indeed seen as indicators for perjury or fornication for example – insults like these were often brought to court, leaving records for us to observe nowadays. Yet, not everything that we consider vulgar in modern times was viewed as obscene in the Middle Ages. In his 10th century Bible gloss, the priest Aldred the Scribe translates Matthew's “you shall not commit adultery” bluntly with “you shall not fuck another man's wife”, and in John Wyclif's 1380 translation, Moses threatens diseases onto “the part of the body by which turds are shat out”. And even personal insults would not always be prosecuted, as long as they served the general entertainment. Such was the case in the practice of flyting, a kind of verbal jousting, or the medieval equivalent of battle rap. Practiced between the 5th and the 16th centuries in northern Europe and on the British Isles, flyting was a public event in which nobles would invite contestants to their court to throw rhyming insults at each other's heads, while the audience's reaction would decide over the winner. A famous case of such a court flyting was “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie” that took place at King James IV's court in the early 16th century. A contest which did not only produce such colourful insults as “loathsome and lousy, as wet as a cress (…) your balls droop below your dress”, but also the first recorded mention of “shit” as an insult, in the line “you shit without a wit”.

SOCIETY — 171/262 — Paganism

Pagan traditions persisted in the Czech lands even after the adoption of Christianity, mainly in the form of folk customs and traditions. They included elements from Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic cultures, and the various influences mixed and increasingly adapted to Christianity over time. Some customs remained in their original form, such as folk superstitions and poems. Others disappeared completely under the pressure of the Christian church. Paganism in Slavic lands survived in the motifs of jewelry and object decoration, in folk healing, or in the form of festivals – the winter and summer solstices, carnival, Easter, Walpurgis Night, Midsummer, All Souls’ Day, Advent, and Christmas all mirror original pagan celebrations, but were renamed and their meanings adapted to Christianity.

TRIVIA

— Where pagan customs were tied to central aspects of everyday life, such as health, love life, care for livestock or the protection of the home, they could persevere for a long time. A good source for such customs can be found in normative literature for the freshly Christianised lands, such as codices, statutes or penitentials. An early example is the Nomocanon by the brothers Methodius and Cyril who, in the 9th century, hoped to missionise the Slavic lands by translating and adapting Byzantine ecclesiastical law using the Glagolitic alphabet that they themselves had developed to apply to the needs of Old Church Slavonic. In this canon they stipulate a punishment for all those who participated in the carols on the first day of January “as the pagans used to do”, and further for performing spells or visiting sorcerers. A similar warning of pagan sorcerers, seers, fortune tellers or enchanters can be found in the 12th century Opatovický Homilies, a collection of Latin sermons, that laments non-Christian customs prevalent among the people of its time, such as worshipping idols, trees and wells, or trusting in herbalists and other folk specialists.

Yet another 200 years later, in 1382, protocols of investigations of the archdeacon of Prague record the sightings of revenants, vampires, and a report about a spirit in a tailor's house in Kralovice, which taught the man about theft and other crimes. And a statute of the Prague Bishopric of 1384 tells priests to cease their services if the local parish still performed a ritual in which – during Lent of all times – they carried figurines resembling Death through the city to a river, accompanied by music and games, to toss the figurines into the water and “in their ignorance” declare how death could no longer harm them, since they had eradicated and banished it from their territory.

CHARACTERS — 94/262 — Jitka of Kunstadt

Future wife of our Hans Capon, the daughter of Erhart the Elder of Kunstadt and Jitka of Medritsch. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly how the marriage was arranged, but it is recorded that thanks to this marriage, Hans Capon expanded his domains in Moravia. He had a son named Hynce with Jitka, later nicknamed the “King of East Bohemia”, a tireless organiser of the Bohemian political scene and a predecessor of the Hussite king George of Podiebrad. Otherwise, all we know about Jitka of Kunstadt is that in 1408, Hans Capon granted her a dowry of 60,000 Prague groschen.

TRIVIA

— The betrothal of heirs of Kunštát to the heirs of Lipá followed a long tradition. The man who arranges the marriage in the game, Boček II of Poděbrad, was himself married to Anna Eliška of Lipá, a daughter of Jan Ptáček's guardian Jindřich of Lipá. And their grandson, Jiří of Poděbrad, the later Bohemian King, would marry his son Viktorin to Markéta Ptáček, Hynce Ptáček's daughter and Jan's granddaughter. Marriages were, in most cases, no contracts made between two loving individuals, but between families and lineages, in which each of them hoped for their child to profit from this union as best as possible. After all, “nullum sine dote fiat coniugium”, no marriage shall be without a marriage gift, was common medieval (church) law, and so one central part of this reciprocal profit was the dowry. Dowries would come in the form of the dos, the dowry itself, typically paid by the bride's family to the spouse, and the donatio propter nuptias (gift on account of marriage), the counter-dowry that the spouse's side gave to the bride. In early medieval times, the sum of both dos and donatio was about equally large, but over time this balance shifted, so that by the 13th century the counter-dowry was would not exceed half or even a quarter of the dowry. There could be multiple reasons for Jitka receiving a dowry from Jan Ptáček in 1408: Dowries could be regathered with the husband's death or the dissolution of the marriage, or in such cases where the husband had been found guilty of mismanaging it. The most probable explanation, however, might be that dowries were often paid on credit and therefore received in the form of instalments over several years. So Jan Ptáček might just have taken some time to pay off his.

SOCIETY — 174/262 — Prayers

The oldest prayers were dedicated to the Virgin Mary – e.g. Ave Maria (Hail Mary), the rosary, and many litanies. The original form of prayers were pagan formulations, which were adapted to the new doctrine upon the acceptance of Christianity. In addition to Marian prayers, the Our Father (the Lord’s Prayer) and the Credo (creed), and the Angelus were recited and even more frequently sung. Litanies were primarily dedicated to Christ, but also to other saints - the priest would chant and the people would respond with Kyrie eleison. Monks knew and used many more prayers related to the daily cycle. Hermits and others who devoted themselves to God and solitude recited the Holy Scriptures and psalms. During the liturgy, Latin was predominantly heard, but there were also prayers or songs in the vernacular, e.g. Lord, Have Mercy on Us or Saint Wenceslas.

TRIVIA

— In addition to the prayers recited during the liturgy and daily monastic cycles, various aids were developed to help keep count of repeated prayers. One of the earliest of these aids was the prayer rope, the predecessor of the rosary.

Some sources attribute the invention of the prayer rope to Pachomius the Great in the 4th century. It is said that he introduced it as a practical tool for illiterate monks, allowing them to keep track of a fixed number of prayers and prostrations performed in their cells. Before this, monks were sometimes described as counting prayers by dropping small pebbles into a bowl, though this method was cumbersome and impractical outside the cell. The use of a rope made it easier to "pray without ceasing" according to Christian practice.

Later monastic tradition holds that the Desert Fathers developed the knotted form of the rope, tying knots to count repeated invocations such as the Jesus Prayer or the recitation of the 150 psalms. The rope itself was typically made of wool, symbolizing the flock of Christ, and most commonly black in color as a sign of mourning for one’s sins. A tassel was sometimes attached to the cross, because according to some tradition, it was meant to wipe away the tears shed in repentance.

The number of knots varied. Ropes with 100 or 150 knots were common for extended cycles of prayer, while others contained 33 knots representing the years of Christ’s life. Hermits are sometimes said to have used ropes with as many as 300 or 500 knots, while smaller versions with only ten knots could even be worn on the finger as a ring. While Western Christianity later adopted the rosary, it is noted that the rosary was a result of gradual development of praying aids like the prayer rope, rather than an invention that got popularized overnight. While the repeated recitation of the Ave Maria had already become widespread in Europe by the 12th century, it is said that the rosary prayer was revealed to Dominic de Guzmán in an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1208 at Prouille.

SOCIETY — 131/262 — Dogs and cats

Throughout the Middle Ages, animals were viewed purely for their utility: this was no different for dogs and cats. Although animals, according to the Church, had souls, these souls were mortal and could not attain salvation, unlike human souls. Thus, animals were considered inferior beings, subordinate to humans. (A groundbreaking perspective can be seen in the Ottoman law of 1502, which regulates the use of draught animals and is arguably the first law against animal cruelty. A similar law in Europe appeared only in 1822.) The dog in this period served humans for hunting or guarding and could be trained. It is no wonder that, among other animals, dogs enjoyed certain privileges. Breeding and crossbreeding of dogs did occur in the Middle Ages, but not nearly to the extent seen a few centuries later, when various domestic, miniature, or narrowly specialized breeds began to emerge. Most medieval breeds were focused solely on hunting and guarding and looked similar to Henry's Mutt. The cat, on the other hand, did what it wanted, and perhaps for this reason, it was viewed negatively as an embodiment of the devil and was not very popular (as evidenced by surviving illuminations, where it often appears more like a demonic creature). Conversely, the situation was entirely different among Muslims. Christian travelers in Arab countries were amazed to find that cats were as beloved there as dogs were in Europe.

TRIVIA

— Medieval records show that pet owners in the Middle Ages were often just as infatuated with their animals as they are today. Dogs played a large role in courtly life. They would be present at the table during meetings and meals, the Duke of Orléans, Charles I, wrote poems to his favourite hound Briquet, and some French noblemen even had masses held for their dogs. Cats, too, are shown frequently in illuminations as companions, especially of monks and nuns in monasteries. The Irish law had a special code called Catslechta, Cat-sections, that listed the types of cats – herders, mousers, guard cats, kittens kept as playmates for children and simple pet cats – and their respective rights, and an Irish monk of the 9th century wrote a loving poem about his cat's playfulness and hunting nature. Some owners would take their pets with them wherever they went, including church. In 1339, the council of Pistoia in Italy issued a complaint for the Cathedral of San Zeno about barking dogs that would disturb the service, next to brawling boys, and prostitutes and other unlawful men and women doing business there. At least by the 16th century, the complaints must have become so plentiful that some churches employed special Dog Whippers, who were equipped with a whip or a long stick as well as a large set of tongs, so that they could get rid of any dog that interrupted mass with its loud barking or by attacking members of the congregation. Cats, on the other hand, would often be criticised for their irrelevance, as by the 14th century English preacher John Bromyard who called them useless overfed accessories of the rich that were benefitting while the poor were suffering.