Medieval Treasures, Part I

This past Christmas, while visiting the Washington DC area, I was blessed with an embarrassment of riches, a medieval two-fer. The first was like something out of a Tolkien dream, a priceless hoard of precious metals and ornaments from the Dark Ages, found lying beneath the earth; the second, a long-lost text from the 10th century whose story reads like a Gaston Leroux novel by way of Dan Brown.

Part I
Sic transit gloria Angli...

In July of 2009 [coincidentally right before I visited London for my first extended visit], an enormous hoard of gold and silver was dug up in Staffordshire, England. As it turned out the treasure dated back to the Anglo-Saxon era—a Sutton Hoo for the new millennium! I was dying to view the loot when I was actually over there, but the experts were still cleaning it up and had not put it on public display yet—I had to wait until the Brits brought it over here, to be exhibited at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC.

Thankfully they were open on Christmas Eve, since that was the only day I could go! Walking into the exhibit hall was like entering Smaug's cavern. I couldn't stop staring at these pieces.  They were breathtaking—incredibly detailed, dazzling and golden and captivating.  And mysterious. Who buried this collection and when? And why? Who was the man who displayed these pommel atop his sword, the warrior who had first worn that helmet plate, what do we know about their violent, cold, vivid world?

The defender of earls then

Commanded that eight steeds with bridles

Gold-plated, gleaming, be guided to hallward

Inside the building; on one of them stood then

An art-broidered saddle embellished with jewels

The Anglo-Saxons predated what we think of as England*--they were only two of a number of Germanic tribes that surged into the power vacuum that was the British isles after Shit Started Getting Real in the Roman Empire in the early 400s and onward [when the Romans pulled out of Britain because their empire was busy falling apart. You know how it is]. Everyone knows the date 1066, when William the Conqueror [or the Bastard, if you prefer--he answered to both names] won the Battle of Hastings**...but there was nearly 700 hundred years between the pullout of the Romans, and the appearance of the Normans [who were really Vikings just a few generations removed***]. What happened in the intervening years?

Well, an awful lot of fighting, mainly. The Germanic tribes--the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Frisians, all swept across the North Sea like a cold wind, all part of what the Germans call the Völkerwanderung, the Migration of Peoples, a long, long period from the 400s AD to roughly 900 or so, when seemingly every people in Europe was infected with restlessness and had to move, to go, to invade, to conquer.

Two of these tribe (the Visigoths and the Vandals) sacked Rome--in the same century! Before that Rome hadn't been sacked for 800 years but by the 5th century, things had deteriorated so badly in the Empire that a horde of illiterate long-haired tribesmen was able to bring down the Caput Mundi.

What were they seeking? What were they trying to accomplish? What caused so many kind of peoples, so many tribes and clans and kindred to pick up and move across the landmasses of Europe?

No one really knows.

Which brings us back to this glittering, alluring pile of gold, the perfect fancy for these turbulent, hungry times. As vast as the hoard was [the largest EVER from the Anglo-Saxon period!], it offered only a few, tantalizing clues as to its origins. For one thing almost all the objects were military in purpose--no coins, no combs or belts or jewelry, just things like hilt collars, scabbards, helmet plates. For another--most intriguingly--almost none of the pieces were intact; many of them were deliciously mangled and even torn.

"The Folded Cross."  This may have been held aloft into battle, as religious artifacts often were. 

His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment 

and with the desire of dwarves; 

and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, 

at the gold beyond price and count.

Like Bilbo, I too was dazzled, my heart was caught by these lovely, delicate, intricately worked objects, precious pieces over which some anonymous, long-dead artisan had worked, imagining his hands twisting the thin strands onto the plates, shaping and polishing the garnets, creating a thing of beauty to last the ages. 

A hilt collar--this would have decorated a sword handle.

Imagining some fierce Danish or Welsh fighter grappling with an enemy, their swords clashing and rending the gorgeous metalwork.

Notice the eagle's head on the left, and the scales on the other end.
The Anglo-Saxons loved visual jokes and puns such as this.

Imagining too how these riches ended up sleeping beneath the earth for over 1ooo years...Perhaps some enterprising Mercian warrior, lucky enough to be on the winning side [the typical Anglo-Saxon practice was for all the losers to be slaughtered], crept out under cover of darkness to strip the bodies and hurriedly buried his stash, hoping to retrieve it later.

Four bright jewels with gold-work embellished.

'Round the roof of the helmet a head-guarder outside

Braided with wires, with bosses was furnished,

That swords-for-the-battle fight-hardened might fail

Boldly to harm him... 

Perhaps the gold was buried in tribute--to an enemy, to a god, perhaps in thanksgiving to a battle won...

No one knows.  

*Although they gave us their name--Angle-land.  According to legend, Pope Gregory eyed a group of fair-haired, fair-skinned slaves in the Roman marketplace and wanted to know their origins.  Upon being told they were Angles, he quipped Non Angli, sed Angeli.  Oh, Gregory, you so funny...

**Which, by the way, was the very LAST successful invasion of the British Isles.  Take THAT, Philip II and Hitler!


*** Norseman --> Norman, just another variation on the Big Incestuous Melting Pot of Northern Europe.

Macbeth Redux (Hey, is that a dagger I see before m-oof!)

Loyal readers may recall my entry in January about the Scottish play and laws of war in the Middle Ages.  Our production closed two weeks ago and turned out quite well, all things considered.  This production was set in the '30s, with a more militaristic angle than is perhaps usually taken.  For most of the final week of rehearsal I was either away from the theater or helping out backstage, so I saw it all the way through for the first time only on opening night--and was treated to a most interesting...anachronism?  No, an egregious violation of the very laws of war I'm currently studying at Columbia!

Most people remember the last scene of Macbeth for the famous showdown between Mackers and his nemesis, Macduff:



          Macd. 

          Turne Hell-hound, turne.

          Macb.

          Of all men else I haue auoyded thee:
          But get thee backe, my soule is too much charg'd
          With blood of thine already.

Macbeth doesn't want to fight because he's already wiped out most of Macduff's family--though he has damned himself through his murderous deeds, he yet retains some vestiges of humanity.  This is important because Macbeth believes himself to be invulnerable: as he tells Macduff I beare a charmed Life, which must not yeeld/To one of woman borne.  BUT.  Macduff is about to reveal he himself was not in fact "borne"--his mother had an impromptu (and undoubtedly fatal, in the 11th century) Caesarean section (so-called because Julius Caesar was supposedly delivered that way--this is suspect, however) and hence Shit is About to Get Real.

In classic tragic style, Good defeats Evil:  Macduff kills Macbeth and displays his head to the other nobles and the Scottish army...

This one's for the groundlings.  For our production I suggested displaying Macbeth and Lady Macbeth hanging upside,
like Mussolini and Claretta Petacci at the end, but it's a little difficult logistically

...Malcolm is hailed as King and the State is made whole again.


But soft!--we have skipped over another death in Act V.  Before encountering Macduff, Macbeth runs into Young Siward, the son of the English commander who is helping out Malcolm.  Young Siward brandishes his weapon and challenges the Thane and is promptly killed by him, uttering the classic put down "Thou wast borne of woman."  This death is referenced later in the scene just before Macduff enters--Ross* tells Siward of his son's death, Siward mourns but at least his son died like a soldier, and so forth.  But our production added something--they dragged in a bound-and gagged Seyton, Macbeth's lieutenant, whom they'd captured near Young Siward's body (our production staged it so that Seyton carried off the body--the single most constant challenge of every Shakespearean tragedy is GETTING RID OF THE BODIES).  And Siward hauls off and stabs Seyton to death.  While Malcolm is standing right there!  My jaw literally fell open.  So the new regime executes bound prisoners of war?  Since we've established that Malcolm is morally superior to Macbeth, isn't this sort of...awkward?**


Obviously killing a bound POW is a violation of the laws of war--certainly for our culture and time, and for the '30s when our production is set.  And definitely for Shakespeare's time as well--Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part III has a rather lurid incident in which Lord Clifford murders his prisoner the Earl of Rutland in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Wakefield as the boy is begging for his life.  

This was seen as a Bad Thing by Shakespearean audiences.***

But the whole idea of laws of war, of regulating, through code and social expectation, how and when and whom to kill in warfare, is a dynamic construct.  In the actual Macbeth's time, the 11th century, laws of war were very much in a time of transition--the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as Asser's Life of King Alfred are depressingly rife with descriptions of Anglo-Viking battles in which everyone on the losing side is killed.  

Prisoners, fleeing soldiers, soldiers who surrendered--everyone.   But customs of war were starting to emerge around this time--how and why this happened is still being debated but after the Norman Invasion in 1066, the bloodletting seemed to have subsided for a little while (if for no other reason than because everyone was DEAD who might've caused any trouble).  The emergence of chivalry as a professional and caste code also had something to do with this.


*I feel kind of bad for Ross--all he seems to do is inform people of important plot updates!  He tells Macbeth he's been made Thane of Cawdor, he tells Macduff his family is dunzo...he's like the Billy Kostecki of the Scottish Play!

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter'd.
Oh, and Penny's knocked up.

**I mentioned this to the actor who played Malcolm and he said he always looked away during that moment.


***Shakespeare's source was Hall's Chronicle, which changed Rutland's age from the verified 17 to a boy of 12.