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

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Lights

450

public meetings at night where steady light was needed. Some castle halls

had wall brackets for pitch torches; pine torches could burn at an upright

angle and sometimes burned fully upright.

A small, personal type of torch was the splint. Some kinds of wood burn

very well, such as birch and the heartwood of a pine. Thin sticks were dried

well and then used as wooden candles. They could be put into brackets or

carried between someone’s teeth while doing farm chores or housework

after dusk. Some had to be carried pointing downward in order for them

to burn.

Rushlights were another very ancient form of indoor lighting. The rush-

light is like a very thin, primitive candle. A rush is a marsh grass that was

cut in the fall at about 18 inches long. Dried, it was dipped once or twice

into melted fat so that the hollow tube would ﬁ ll with the fat, and then it

was dried again. To burn it, the peasant rested it against an iron bracket

that held it at an angle. It burned quickly; a full-length rushlight lasted no

more than 20 minutes.

When beeswax came into use for making candles, rushes were the ob-

vious choice for a wick. The earliest wax candles were probably made by

pouring wax onto the rush with a ladle and then rolling the candle on a

table as the wax cooled. By the 14th century, candle makers were using

pewter molds and were also dipping candles by tying the wick material

to a rod and dipping it repeatedly into liquid wax. Wax candles came

in all sizes during the Middle Ages. Some thick candles were called torches;

they may have had more than one wick. Candles for lighting a home,

and candles for dripping wax onto envelopes, were proportionately

smaller.

Beeswax candles were a luxury, and most people saw them only at

church. Candles were part of the worship service, and many monas-

teries and churches kept bees to supply their candle needs. Funerals

required candles, as did some baptism rituals; candles burned before

saints ’ shrines. Gifts to churches were often made in the form of bees-

wax. Manor houses and castles could also obtain wax candles, but they

were too expensive for common people. In wealthy houses, though, can-

dles could even be grouped together in a chandelier, a holder with room

for more than one candle. The word chandelier now refers to a hanging

light, but a medieval chandelier could be moved from room to room.

The evening meal was generally eaten in the dark during the winter, and

aristocratic households used candles on the dining tables so the food

could be seen.

Tallow candles were cheaper and could be used in practical situations. In

great houses, the cooks began to work before it was light and needed to use

candles in the kitchen. Some of these candles had lanterns to hold them.

Candles were always a ﬁ re hazard; many inquest records mention that a

Lights

451451

Medieval lanterns sheltered a candle from the wind. (Museum of London/ The

Bridgeman Art Library)

candle had been left burning in a room and had fallen and caught the room

on ﬁ re. It was not normal practice to leave a light burning at night. Candles

were not allowed in some stables, where they were a ﬁ re risk. Hospitals and

monastic inﬁ rmaries kept a candle burning at night.

Lights

452

Candles were held by candlesticks when they were not held simply in the

hand. Some candlesticks had a spike to set the candle on, which may be the

oldest kind. They could be used with any size candle. Newer candlesticks

had a socket that had to ﬁ t the candle, so they may have been in use only

after candle makers began using molds. There were also candle lanterns,

made of tin or copper, with large holes punched to allow the light to shine

out. They had hinged or sliding doors to place or remove the candle and a

pierced top to allow heat and smoke to escape.

One of the documented uses of candles was the candle clock invented

by King Alfred to time his hours of work and study. He ordered his crafts-

men to make six candles that would each burn for four hours and had them

marked off at regular intervals. He burned the candles before saints’ relics

in his possession, so they did double duty of timekeeping and devotion. To

keep the candles from burning at different rates due to drafts, he ordered a

lantern made with panes of thin, translucent horn. A clock lantern like this

was too expensive for any but the wealthiest to use.

Oil lamps gave a steady light and were used in many places, especially in

regions with access to good oil, such as olive oil. These lamps, like oil lamps

from antiquity, had a bowl to hold the oil and a spout to hold the wick. The

wick soaked up oil and allowed it to burn off at the spout. Lamp design did

not change for many centuries, so it is difﬁ cult to date the few lamps that

have been recovered. In Northern Europe, some were made of cast iron

and had an arm standing up as a bracket to hang on a wall peg. There were

also simple carved stone and pottery lamps. In the Mediterranean coun-

tries, they were usually ceramic, shaped as a bowl with a spout, and were

often decorated beautifully. The wick usually ﬂ oated in the oil, held by a

piece of cork. By the late Middle Ages, some oil lamps with ﬂ oating wicks

were made of clear glass. Ceramic and glass lamps were often hung from

the ceiling by chains or held on the wall by a bracket. Another late medieval

improvement was a bracket that held the wick in place, neither ﬂ oating

nor leaning out a spout.

Further Reading

Egan, Geoff. The Medieval Household: Daily Living c. 1150–c. 1450. Woodbridge,

UK: Boydell Press, 2010.

Eveleigh, David J. Candle Lighting. Princes Risborough, UK: Shire Publications,

2003.

Thwing, Leroy. Flickering Flames: A History of Domestic Lighting. Rutland, VT:

Charles E. Tuttle, 1962.

Woolgar, C. M. The Senses in Late Medieval England. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 2006.

Locks and Keys

453

Linen. See Cloth

Locks and Keys

The technology for locks and keys had existed since ancient times. The Ro-

mans took Egyptian and Greek lock traditions and developed them into

primitive forms of the tumbler-locks we use today. Roman locks were in-

stalled in doors and caskets, and they also came in the form of padlocks—

stand-alone locks with a locking loop of metal. They also developed the use

of wards, obstacles that block the entrance of a wrong key. Most Roman

locks were made of iron and have corroded over time, but their keys were

usually bronze, and many have been found.

Medieval European lock and key technology followed the same prin-

ciples. There were built-in locks in doors and in the lids of caskets, as well

as padlocks. Late medieval caskets that were intended as strongboxes for

valuables had hollow lids that held many locking mechanisms to make the

strongbox as difﬁ cult as possible to open. Several keys were needed to open

the box if it resisted brute force such as an ax. The most skilled black-

smiths made locks, and the profession grew into its own locksmiths’ guild.

Locks and keys were made of both iron and copper alloys such as brass and

bronze.

A generic lock has a barrel that encloses a mechanism and a plate that is

riveted or welded to the door, chest, or casket that holds the lock. Inside,

there is a mechanism to hold the clasp fast unless an object of the correct

size and shape is slid in to release it. The key is a shank with a ring to hold it

(called the bow) and a bit on the end. The bit has to be made with precision

to ﬁ t into the mechanism. The end of the shank, where the bit is attached,

is part of the precision shape and is often thinner; it is called the pin. Wards

are placed in the lock mechanism to stop most keys from entering, but the

proper key has grooves or clefts to evade the wards.

Many medieval locks were slide locks. A slide lock’s key does not turn

as a modern rotary key does; it ﬁ ts into a hole to release ﬂ at metal strip

springs. These metal pieces are shaped like the point of an arrow and are

somewhat ﬂ exible. The lock is snapped closed by pushing them into a tight-

ﬁ tting hole; they spring open so the hole cannot ﬁ t them out again. The

key is a lever (the shank) with a turned-up bit at the end, ﬁ tted and shaped

to slide into a hole in the spring strips. It can pull them tight again so they

will ﬁ t back out the same hole. This was a common type of lock and key all

over medieval Europe and has continued to be used in less developed places

into modern times. The bits of slide lock keys could be turned at an angle

to the shank. They were shaped differently, with a variety of holes, lines,

and wedges cut out of the bit.

Locks and Keys

454

Medieval locks also included rotary mechanisms. In this mechanism, a

spring holds a bolt in place, hidden inside a metal casing (the barrel). The

key needs to ﬁ t into a precision space so that it acts as a lever to move the

bolt back. A rotary key had a pin that extended beyond the bit; it ﬁ tted

into a hole that allowed the key to turn on an axle if its bit ﬁ t the mecha-

nism. It could also be hollow (a pipe key), so that it ﬁ t onto a pin inside

the mechanism, for the same reason. Rotary keys were shorter than slide

lock keys.

In some mechanisms, the key had to turn a full circle; this is called a

dead bolt, and the key is actually sliding the bolt. In other locks, the key

presses against a spring as it turns only a quarter turn, and this releases the

bolt. Dead bolt locks were widely used in the 11th and 12th centuries. In

England, Norman-era keys have been found with very elaborate, precision-

crafted bits.

Pipe keys were most often used for casket locks. Solid keys with an ex-

tended pin could be used to open a door from inside or outside, but a pipe

key only worked in one direction. Extra security was possible by making

the pipe key’s hollow not quite round and precisely ﬁ tting the mechanism

inside to this shape.

After the 13th century, locksmiths made more complicated locks with

better wards. Keys were more decorative. The bow, instead of a simple

The face plate of a door lock protected and hid the mechanism behind. It was easier

to make an elaborate plate than to design a lock that could not be picked. By the late

Middle Ages, locks had become reasonably sophisticated. (Dreamstime.com)

Locks and Keys

455

loop, was often a lozenge, trefoil, or kidney shape. Doors and caskets could

still be unlocked by a thief with patience and skill with a bent wire, so some

high-security doors and lids had more than one lock. Some complex locks

required more than one key, but it was easier to place multiple locks on

something. Sometimes there was a skeleton key that could open all the

locks, so the owner did not need to ﬁ ddle with so many keys. Of course,

this meant that a clever thief could imitate the skeleton key.

The ﬁ nal achievement of locksmiths in the 15th century was a very ex-

pensive lock, usually custom-made for royalty, in which there was no visible

keyhole. The owner knew of a place to press that made a spring pop open

a slide to reveal the hole, and sometimes there were more layers of similar

security. By the close of the Middle Ages, locks and keys at their best were

stronger than the wooden chests they guarded. Brute force, such as split-

ting the wood and smashing the lock with an ax, could still open strong-

boxes.

See also: Furniture, Iron, Lead and Copper.