Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Calendar

Christians. There was no way to check Dionysius’s statement of when Je-

sus had been born, but it was based on church traditions and calendar sys-

tems. Although he did not recognize the need to name the year of Christ’s

birth the Year Zero, his tables made the ﬁ rst use of the concept of zero in a

Latin work. Calculation of Easter was based on a cycle of 19 years, and he

designated the beginning of each period as nulla, the Year Zero for each

cycle.

The English monk Bede studied Dionysius’s tables and extended them

into the eighth century following the Synod of Whitby. He wrote several

books on how to calculate time, and he also wrote The Ecclesiastical History

of the English People. He dated his work 731, according to the new Anno Do-

mini system of Dionysius. Bede’s book was more inﬂ uential than he might

have imagined. It was copied many times and came to the continent when

Charlemagne recruited the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin to found his school

and library. Through Bede’s history and Dionysius’s Easter tables, the

Anno Domini dating system spread.

During the Middle Ages, scholars began to notice that the Julian calendar

was not precise enough. Over the years, the new and full moons no longer

matched the Calends and Ides as they were supposed to. Every year there

were about 11 minutes unaccounted for. By the ninth century, astronomers

were noticing the discrepancy. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon could see

the problem clearly and criticized the Julian calendar. Pope Clement VI re-

ceived a report suggesting that four days should be dropped in 1349, but

the chaos of the plague of 1347–1348 buried this recommendation. In

1436, a Council at Basle received a report by Nicholas of Cusa that recom-

mended that they drop out one week between Easter and Pentecost. The

council felt it would be too confusing and that it would interfere with mer-

chants’ calculations of interest on loans. The corrected Gregorian calendar

was not adopted until 1582, and it was not until 1752 that days were de-

leted to correct the growing inaccuracy.

Europe’s two main minority cultures, the Jews and the Muslims, had

their own calendars. The Jewish calendar months were already in use during

the time of Moses and were based strictly on the moon’s cycle. Each month

began when the ﬁ rst sliver of moon could be seen following the dark new

moon. Every 19 years, the year had an extra month to catch up with the solar

year again. Christians who calculated Easter had to understand the Hebrew

calendar, since Passover’s calculation was based on moon phases in the

month of Nisan. The years had been numbered since ancient times; tradi-

tionally, Year One was the Creation. The Muslim calendar began with a Year

One when Mohammed ﬂ ed from Mecca to Medina. It used 12 months al-

ternating 29 and 30 days; like the Jewish months, each Muslim month be-

gan with the ﬁ rst crescent moon. The Arabic month names also referred

to seasons, but its names never became familiar in Europe apart from the

Castles

month that roughly corresponds to September— Ramadan —when Mus-

lims fast.

See also: Books, Holidays, Jews, Muslims, Saints.

Further Reading

Borst, Arno. The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Com-

puter. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993.

Duncan, David Ewing. Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and

Accurate Year. New York: Avon Books, 1998.

Henisch, Bridget Ann. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park: Pennsylvania

State University Press, 1999.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,

1998.

Richards, E. G. Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Candles. See Lights

Carts. See Wagons and Carts

Castles

A castle was the fortiﬁ ed private residence of a European lord. Fortiﬁ cation

was not a new idea. Ancient stone or earth forts had been built at strategic

points by the Roman army, and ancient cities had often been walled, but they

were not family residences. Modern forts are owned by national armies as

weapons storage and barracks, but European castles were owned by indi-

viduals. Medieval castles were truly residential homes, but they were at the

same time the most highly developed military bases in the world. Personal

comfort and safety balanced against each other, and, in each century and

place, either safety or comfort carried more weight in a building’s design.

A plain knight was too insigniﬁ cant to own a castle. He would have only

a manor house, with surrounding farmland and rented farms. This manor

house might be somewhat fortiﬁ ed, built of stone or including a defensive

tower, but it was not a castle. In order to have a castle, a knight needed an

aristocratic title that gave him governmental power in the region. A castle’s

owner might be a baron, an earl, a count, a duke, or a king, depending on the

use of title and rank in each part of Europe. The surrounding lands were

controlled by vassals who owed him service. Some castles were owned by a

king and were known as royal castles. Kings built castles, but they also re-

ceived them as payment for debts or as default inheritances for family lines

that ended with no heirs. They kept some of these castles, but they also

gave some to lords who supported the land’s defense.

Castles

Most castles were built during a time when the power of national govern-

ments was not great. Although the land close to a king’s residence could

count on his protection, regions farther away could not. Even if they owed

allegiance to the king, they had to depend on local strongholds for defense.

Regional lords were kings on their own lands and maintained the defense

of rivers, coasts, and towns. Some of these lords were nearly as powerful as

kings, and their degree of autonomy varied. The construction of an unau-

thorized castle might signal intent to rebel, so kings kept a careful watch on

these centers of power. In most of Europe, a king could license a castle’s

construction or order its destruction if he retained ﬁ rm legal control over

the region.

Castles were placed at strategic military points for defense or as forward

bases in a conquest. A castle might guard a river or mountain pass, or it might

be placed in a region in order to distribute military power. Each building site

was evaluated for how the land could help defend the castle. Most castles were

built near running water, and their foundations were on solid rock where

possible. Because castles were home to many knights, servants, and other

staff, as well as the family, a good food supply was a major consideration in

choosing where to build a castle that had a primarily residential purpose.

One function of a castle was to protect the peasantry and its economy, on

which the castle’s economy depended. If the region were under attack, the

peasants were supposed to bring all their animals and produce into the cas-

tle. This reduced the food supply for attackers, supplied the castle with more

food, and acted as payment for community protection. In times of peace,

peasants were often required to work on castle maintenance. They dug

ditches, cut wood, or did simple repairs. In some regions, they paid a tradi-

tional tax of one-twentieth of their produce in return for the passive protec-

tion of the region’s castle.

Castles were also administrative centers, where rents were paid and trials

held. Although castles are often known for their prisons, their use for im-

prisonment came later, when their military purpose was no longer important.

While a man might be held brieﬂ y for trial in a castle, his punishment was ei-

ther a ﬁ ne or a physical punishment such as ﬂ ogging or death. Castle design

rarely included rooms built specially for imprisonment.

When the lord of a castle was in residence, banners ﬂ ew from the turrets,

and shields might be displayed along the walls. No lord of a castle lived there

all the time. If he did not own other castles or manors, at the very least he

owed his overlord, the king, the duty of living at his court for a time. Castles

needed to be cleaned and the food restocked when a lord was away, so most

castles were half-empty much of the time.

Government was a personal affair in the Middle Ages, so the lord’s resi-

dence at his castle was just as important as his technical ownership of the

land. In each century, the deﬁ nition of good family living changed, but in

Castles

all times, the castle’s living style was the epitome of what the age consid-

ered good. In early times that prized communal living and public status, the

lord’s family ate in the hall on a raised platform. When a later age valued lux-

ury and privacy, the lord’s family apartments in the castle were modiﬁ ed to

give them the best luxury and privacy available. The castle family’s style of

living impressed the peasants and townsmen and increased the respect they

were owed. Feasts, tournaments, weddings, and other public displays were

an important part of castle life.

Castle Development

Early French castles, including those built by Norman French invaders in

England, were made of a motte and a bailey. The castle was built on an arti-

ﬁ cial hill, the motte. The builders dug a ditch and piled the dirt in the center

to form this mound. It was built carefully to be strong and included layers

of clay, stone, or timber. The castle itself was no more than a wooden fort

with a strong palisade of logs around it. The inner building was a wooden or

stone blockhouse or tower. The earliest term for this tower is donjon, a Nor-

man word derived from the Latin dominus, or “lord.” Later English writers

referred to the inner tower as a keep. The word donjon remained in com-

mon use when post-medieval castles were used as prisons, and it became the

word dungeon .

The bailey was the palisade wall around a larger cleared space at the foot

of the mound. The open space was called the ward. Some castles had two

baileys, inner and outer, for extra defense. Ditches might be ﬁ lled with wa-

ter or lined with spikes. Bridges or causeways connected the motte with the

bailey.

The entrance to a keep’s living quarters was on the second story so it

could be defended by removing the stair. The ﬁ rst ﬂ oor was a storehouse.

Large towers, even if built of timber, could be complex. The motte tower at

Ardres Castle, built in France around 1117, was three stories high. The top-

most story had small rooms for the lord’s children, for servants, and for

watchmen. The second story was the main living ﬂ oor and incorporated the

great hall as well as private rooms for the lord’s family, for the more impor-

tant servants, and for tending the sick. The castle had a two-level kitchen,

with the upper part on this main second story. The ground ﬂ oor was the

storehouse for all kinds of food—sacks of grain and casks of wine as well as

live animals. Stairs and corridors connected the three ﬂ oors to create a com-

munity under one roof.

These early castles were watchtowers as well as defensive structures. When

the duke of Normandy successfully invaded England in 1066, he immedi-

ately ordered a string of motte-and-bailey castles to control the countryside.

Some were built on hills, and even the modest elevation of a man-made

Castles

motte provided greater sight across the land. By keeping close watch from

an armed garrison, they were better able to put down rebellions.

The next development was to use more stone in building the donjon, or

keep. Stone keeps of the 11th and 12th centuries could be shell keeps or

tower keeps. A shell keep was round; its stone walls may have literally re-

placed the wooden palisade. An outer ring of stone rose from the edges of

the mound, and rooms were built on the inside, against the walls, with a

courtyard in the middle. A tower keep was square or rectangular, and it be-

came the dominant style until the Crusades changed the fashion again.

Some tower keeps were built on existing mottes, but many were built on

ﬂ at ground inside enclosures. The tower keep was a large, rectangular build-

ing, two or three stories high. The ﬁ rst story did not have windows so it

could be defended. The second story usually included a large hall and a

chapel, along with well-decorated rooms for the lord’s family. These rooms

had windows, but they were narrow windows with heavy shutters. The

keep’s building enclosed its well, and some large keeps had a shaft to the

well that went up to the top stories. Latrine chutes were built into the outer

walls. At the top of the keep, there were usually defensive structures such as

crenellations or towers, but otherwise the rectangular tower keep was just

a large blockhouse. The English castles at Norwich, Rising, Rochester, and

Dover are the best-preserved examples of 12th-century rectangular tower

keeps.

Castle technology improved rapidly when the First Crusade established

a Crusader kingdom in Palestine. The mixing of cultures, where Normans

mingled with Greeks and Turks, created new building techniques. They

copied some features of Middle Eastern fortiﬁ ed towns. Crusader-style

castles were built entirely of stone and were designed as complex ﬁ ghting

structures with an innovative concentric layout. These innovations in the

Middle East traveled home to Europe and helped the castle evolve into a

complex ﬁ ghting machine.

The best fortiﬁ ed of these 11th- and 12th-century castles included con-

centric rings of defensive walls, multiple sets of gates (sometimes with sur-

prise features like right-angled entrance passages), and towers designed to

provide cover for each other and for the gates. Each concentric ring of wall

had its own gate and battlements. Between these walls were other defensive

traps, such as cliffs, ditches, and moats.

Stone castles were constructed at ground level, not on an artiﬁ cial mound.

The outer bailey wall was made of stone, with cut stones covering a core of

rubble stone. It was designed as a ﬁ ghting structure, rather than just a wall.

The top of the wall had not just a parapet (a ledge wide enough to walk on),

but also crenellated battlements with solid merlons alternating with open

spaces—called crenels. The crenels were sometimes hung with hinged

wooden shutters to protect defenders as they reloaded their weapons. The

Castles

outer walls had large towers and smaller turrets to allow the defenders to

rain down arrows, stones, or quicklime on attackers. The outer gate was thick

and included many defensive features.

While the earliest stone castles had used rectangular tower keeps, newer

castles used rounded towers and keeps. Corners had proven too difﬁ cult to

defend against miners who dug under them and caused buildings to col-

lapse. Even simple 12th-century castles consisting of only a keep and a bai-

ley used forms of rounded construction. The lower section of every wall was

constructed thicker and angled outward to make it less vulnerable to bat-

tering rams. This thicker section was called the plinth.

Castles in transition from the older form to the Crusades-inﬂ uenced plan

were designed with not only a keep but also a hall and chapel separate from

the keep. Although the keep was now round, the hall was rectangular. If it

did not need to be the last place of defense, it could be planned as a better

place to live. The new halls were larger, and they had kitchens and other

outbuildings attached. There was often a separate chapel, and the buildings

usually formed a square around a courtyard. By the 13th century, the clus-

ter of buildings was designed as a uniﬁ ed, defensible castle, and the solitary

Rochester Castle is a perfect exemplar of the 12th-century style in which the castle

was built around a square keep. Castle life centered on a second-ﬂ oor great hall and

universal well shafts that ran from top to bottom. Although daily life was as full there

as anywhere, nobody could ever forget that they were living in a true fortress where

comfort and convenience were sacriﬁ ced to defense. (Light & Magic Photography/

Dreamstime.com)

Castles

keep gave way to multiple strong towers. They were planned with inner,

middle, and outer wards and baileys. Newly built castles were sited on hills,

cliffs, islands, and other inaccessible places.

Another innovation came in the form of improved ways for the castle’s

defenders to ﬁ re back at attackers. The earliest of these defensive holes were

simple arrow slits, adapted from ventilation holes, and wooden hoardings.

The hoard was a timber structure built out over the edge of a defensive wall

so defenders could walk on an elevated and covered walkway, looking down

on attackers. Holes in the ﬂ oor of the hoarding allowed them to drop things

on the attackers. Both of these defensive structures became more compli-

cated over time. Arrow slits were made in a cross shape, not a simple vertical

slit, and the stone was angled so the slit was much wider on the inside where

the archer stood to aim. Hoarding was replaced by machicolations, stone

structures on the outer side of a wall. Machicolation also allowed defenders

to look through holes straight down on the attackers and drop or ﬁ re de-

fensively on their heads and faces.

Gates were a point of weakness in a fortress, so they were heavily guarded.

In a castle with concentric rings of walls, each wall had a separate gate. The

back gate, called the postern, was often built in a less accessible place, and the

front gate was the hardest to attack. A gate’s foremost towers, the barbi-

cans, were heavily fortiﬁ ed. If the wall had a moat in front of it, the ﬁ rst de-

fense of the gate was its drawbridge. The outer end normally extended over

the moat, and the inner end was weighted and positioned over a pit so the

weight could drop into the pit and easily raise the outer end. The entrance

was guarded next by a portcullis, an iron gate that was raised and lowered

by ropes, pulleys, and weights. It was mounted in a gatehouse with thick

walls, and over the portcullis were “murder holes” to drop stones through.

The gatehouse was sometimes surrounded by ﬂ anking towers that jutted

out from the wall, permitting defenders to shoot at anyone attacking the

barbicans.

The later Middle Ages were a time of stronger central governments. Bar-

barian invasions were over, and in Spain, England, and France, kings had

conquered or absorbed formerly independent kingdoms and counties. Cas-

tles in the 14th and 15th centuries were built for comfort and style, although

always bearing in mind the need for defense. While our modern hind-

sight can see that the time of castles was ending, the castle builders did not

know this.

These newer castles had moats, walls, towers with crenellated parapets,

gatehouses, and even arrow slits. However, they also included glass win-

dows, and architects began to pass over the more intense defensive struc-

tures, such as ditches, spikes, and murder holes in the gatehouses. Walls were

thinner. The new castles were more comfortable inside, with more private

rooms, better sanitation, and better heating. Some were built of brick in-

Castles

stead of large stone blocks. The castle was becoming a mark of style, rather

than a defensive necessity.

Inside a Castle

The castle ward was an open place for work, and it often had several gar-

dens. There was always a well dug to the water table somewhere in the cas-

tle ward, and usually at least one well was inside the keep. Most castles also

had cisterns to collect rainwater. Stables and work sheds lined the walls.

The ﬂ oor plan was simple in early castles. The main room—the hall—was

used for feasts and the daily business of the castle. Nearby was a chapel. Not

far from the hall, some garderobes (latrines) had been built into the outer

walls; they were often reached by a small passage that turned once or twice

for privacy. As castles evolved from simple keeps to larger structures, im-

provements included servants’ passages between the separate kitchen and

the hall, stairs going to the private rooms on the second ﬂ oor, and passages

and stairs going down to storage rooms. When a room such as the hall or

chapel extended from ﬂ oor to ceiling, a gallery often ran the length of the

wall at the height of a second story. People could use these open walkways

to reach other upper rooms.

The walls were made of stone, and a second story was formed by timber

beams set into square holes in the outer stone wall. The second-story ﬂ oor

was wooden, but the ground ﬂ oor was beaten earth, stone, or plaster. Car-

pets were not put on the ﬂ oor; they were wall hangings only. Floors were

covered with rushes and herbs to collect and cover the litter. Windows did

not have glass, but they often had heavy shutters. Interior walls were often

whitewashed, and, in great castles, the lady’s room might have ﬂ owers

painted on the walls. During the 13th century, tapestries came into fashion

when Princess Eleanor of Castile brought Spanish carpets to England for her

walls and ﬂ oors.

Everyone ate in the main hall at long tables. The lord’s family ate on a

raised platform, called a dais. Most people slept in the hall, in the kitchen, or

in other open rooms. The castle family had a separate room just behind the

dais, separated by a curtain or wooden wall. In later castles, it moved to an

upper ﬂ oor and became not one room, but a suite of rooms.

Private rooms for the lord’s family were solars and oriels. A solar was an

upper-story bedroom. It was private, but it was also used by servants who

slept on the ﬂ oor or on cots. Depending on the size of the castle and the size

of the lord’s family, grown children did not necessarily have their own solars.

They slept in dormitory conditions with their siblings and servants. An oriel

was a small room, perhaps on a landing, often with a window. It was for any

private use by the lord’s family and led to the private sitting and drawing

rooms in the houses of later centuries.

Castles

The ﬁ replace was a castle innovation, beginning in the 11th century, ne-

cessitated by second stories over the main hall. The older central hearth had

to vent its smoke through a hole in the roof, which meant the hall had to

be open to the rafters. Subdividing a tower keep into stories required a new

system. The ﬁ replace was built into the wall so it radiated heat back into the

room more efﬁ ciently than the central hearth. Chimneys drew the smoke

through a channel in the stone wall, at an angle, to a loophole. During the

13th century, chimneys were built vertically to carry smoke to the roof.

Notable Castles

England had few castles before the Norman invasion of 1066. The vic-

torious Normans built castles to defend themselves against the rebellious

population of England. The most famous of William the Conqueror’s castles

was the square stone keep that is now known as the Tower of London. The

ﬁ rst Tower was probably a simple fortress made of earth and wood, but it

was replaced by the famous square block known as the White Tower for its

whitewashed walls that made it clearly visible at a distance. It was built as a

serious fortress; its outer walls were 15 feet thick at base. The entrance was

on the second story and led the visitor into the great hall, which was 92 feet

long. There were a smaller hall, a vaulted chapel, and some solars. In the cellar

were the well, the kitchen, and storage rooms. It was used as a normal resi-

dence by English kings through the 12th century, and then as a refuge in

times of unrest. It only became a prison after the end of the Middle Ages.

Château Gaillard was built on a cliff over the Seine River by England’s

King Richard I to guard his Norman territory. The castle took three years to

build and was ﬁ nished in 1198; it used all the newest Crusader engineering.

The inner bailey came to the edge of the cliff, with the donjon’s back to the

cliff. The donjon sat on its own rock projection, elevated, and it was round

with a triangular corner facing attackers. The middle bailey and outer bailey

moved out from this inner fortress in a line, with a moat all around them.

Their plinths were very thick, and the walls utilized the newly developed

technique of stone machicolations so defenders could attack battering rams

or miners. The moat enclosed the outer bailey so attackers had to cross

drawbridges into and out of the outer bailey. The castle was thought im-

pregnable, but by 1204, it had been captured.

Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, the largest and most powerful Crusader castle,

was sited on a rocky hill. Begun by Crusaders, its outer walls were com-

pleted by the Turks who captured it. It was laid out in an irregular shape of

walls that met at odd angles and towers of different heights, with inner

slopes and ditches to leave exposed any attackers who crossed the outer wall.

There was even a moat inside the outer bailey. Entrance to the fortress was

by means of a long, narrow ramp overlooked by towers. A unique feature of

Castles

the Krak des Chevaliers was its lack of a formal donjon, or keep. Within the

inner bailey, the buildings were laid out as residential, with a hall, chapel,

and outbuildings.

During the 13th century, King Edward I of England conquered much of

Wales and built a chain of castles to hold his conquest. The Welsh castles are

in some ways the most typical medieval castles, built at the height of castle

technology. Caernarvon Castle, on level ground, was surrounded by a wide

moat. Its layout had eight defensive towers, with a large great hall in the in-

ner bailey. It used the moat for defense; both main gates had drawbridges,

and a third entrance was a water gate on the river. Harlech Castle is closest

to a child’s conception of a castle. Built on a hill, it was laid out in a square,

with a round tower at each corner. Its inner bailey formed a central court-

yard with the great hall and other buildings against the walls.

Castle Construction

Castles were not built with peasant labor, although peasants owed

the landowners a certain amount of unpaid labor. Castles required skilled

Edward I built a string of castles in Wales to guard his newly conquered territory.

Castle technology was at its height, so the 13th-century Welsh castles, such as

Harlech Castle, are among the most classic, well-developed castles in the world. Most

are now in ruins. They were too expensive to maintain after their usefulness expired.

(Jeremy Voisey/iStockphoto)