Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World
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records, but they did not at fi rst record the family matters of private indi-
viduals. During the 13th century, increased trade with Italian merchants
brought the institution of public notary services to the north. At the fairs
of Champagne, notaries recorded sales and contracts. In England, notaries
existed but did not become as central, and guild clerks kept many contrac-
tual records.
Notaries made a living writing legal documents through dictation for
people who may not have been literate. They wrote the wills and contracts
into notebooks, so they served also as the record-keeping service. Most
wills were not recopied. Notaries served as practical lawyers for everyday
affairs; they knew what a document needed to include to make it complete
and legally enforceable. After 1200, Italian notaries wrote down the place
where the document was created (at the dying person’s home, for example)
and the approximate time of day. When clocks proliferated in the 14th and
15th centuries, notaries could write the hour.
Medieval people could expect to die at any time, since death in the form
of infectious disease or accident came suddenly. However, most made wills
when death could be imminent. This happened when they became sick or
were going on a journey. Anyone who went on pilgrimage had to make
a will fi rst. Wills are a major source of our knowledge about the lives and
possessions of people at the time. We can learn a great deal about their
family structures and what they owned, since most wills disposed of all the
things by name. At the same time, when someone died, the executor of his
will often made an inventory of all of his (or her) possessions. These inven-
tory lists are very complete and provide intimate details of the household’s
goods.
During the plague of 1347, notarial records in some Italian towns
lapsed. At fi rst, people attempted to call in notaries to make wills, and sur-
vivors attempted to have the normal procedure for executing the will en-
forced. However, so many people died so quickly that, at fi rst, the notaries
were overwhelmed with work, and then the process became chaotic. When
a family member went to fi nd a notary, the notary had died. When an ex-
ecutor tried to enforce a will, he found that the survivors and witnesses had
died. Some people died so quickly that they had no time to attend to le-
galities, and often whole families died. Burial wishes meant nothing, since
the towns were swamped with corpses to bury and resorted to mass graves
with minimal rites. The notarial notebooks in towns that tried to keep their
legal systems functioning paint a vivid picture of the rapid spread of the
plague’s chaos.
Notaries recorded other documents, after their primary business of cer-
tifying wills. They also recorded dowry and marriage contracts and ap-
prenticeship contracts. Sales and rental of land and houses, and sales and
purchases of other commodities like wine, cloth, and wool, were recorded
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with notaries. They witnessed the purchase of future crops and rights to use
the produce of land (usufruct). They also oversaw the appointment of legal
representatives for various reasons, such as guardianship, and witnessed
debt and its contracts for interest and repayment. Servants who contracted
with a master, merchants who agreed to transport goods, and even singers
who agreed to sing in a chapel needed legal agreements. Because so many
people needed a notary’s services, and because they came in random order
to the notary’s offi ce, a notary’s notebook is a wide-ranging record of the
types of people in a town.
Business and Church Records
Even before literacy and paper made written records easy, most busi-
nesses kept accounts. Italian corporations of the 13th century kept exten-
sive accounting books; their clerks developed the system of double-entry
accounting. They had shareholders, currency exchanges, loans, and inter-
national sales. When these records have been kept safe, they provide very
detailed information about travel and manufacture and can tell some about
family life.
Castles and courts kept household records of which craftsmen, mer-
chants, and entertainers they had paid. Although some records have been
lost, there were so many castles keeping records of salaries that a great deal
of our information about work and the economy has been derived from
these account books. The steward in charge of a major feast often recorded
all the food purchased, how many servants and cooks were employed for
the event, and how much each minstrel was tipped. A lady or queen’s
household accounts kept track of how much linen and silk thread had been
purchased and how many seamstresses had been hired to make a certain
winter gown.
The church kept its own records, especially in the late Middle Ages.
Early church records are more institutional than personal, such as trea-
tises on divorce or other legal cases. One of the richest veins are penitential
guides, books written for local priests to help them give appropriate pen-
ances for confessed sin. The books list possible sins in great detail. If a man
had sex with an unmarried or a married woman, his penance was a certain
amount—but if the woman was his sister or mother, it was greater. The
penitential books do not tell how common these sins were, but it rounds
out our picture of medieval society to know that someone felt certain sins
needed to be listed at all.
Saints’ exploits created many records of daily life. Every parish church or
monastery wanted to record the reported miracles worked by their saint’s
relics. When a visitor, monk, or workman (or even an animal) had an ill-
ness or an accident and was cured at the saint’s shrine, the event went into
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a record book. Taken together, these incidents explain what all these people,
horses, and dogs were doing during the day and what illness or accidents
were most common.
The Cathar Inquisition created volumes of interviews. The inquisitors
asked peasants, townsmen, and aristocrats detailed questions about their
lives and beliefs. We have a great deal of knowledge of the kinship struc-
tures, work, and values of Provençal peasants thanks to the Inquisition.
In the late Middle Ages, parishes began to record baptisms. We do not
have this information for the early Middle Ages. Baptismal records gave the
parents’ names, the godparents’ names, the infant’s christened name, and
the date. By comparing baptismal records with other local records, such as
court and tax rolls, historians can understand family structure and relation-
ships, as well as infant mortality.
Finally, the church provided an informal record by keeping texts of some
sermons. Even in the Middle Ages, a good preacher knew how to tie his
message to the listeners’ lives. Sermons could include analogies to the lives
of animals, stories of people’s lives, and warnings against the temptations
of the time. When a preacher warns against playing cards, we know that
playing cards have been imported and are gaining popularity.
Biographies and Literature
Medieval people sometimes wrote about their lives or others’ lives. They
wrote family genealogies, which were sometimes accurate and sometimes
legendary and amplifi ed by hearsay. A rare early memoir was written by a
Frankish lady named Dhuoda, who wrote advice and thoughts for her son
around 840. Some of her story is hard to comprehend because she did not
write for people of the future, but there is still much to glean about Frank-
ish lives, especially of women. The people most likely to write memoirs
were abbots and bishops. They were literate, and they sometimes felt they
had wisdom to share. The French abbot of Nogent, Guibert, wrote a bi-
ography in the 12th century. Guibert was an intelligent man who loved to
write; he wrote a history of the First Crusade, but his best-known work
was his autobiography. He wrote about his early family life, his parents’
characters, and the childhood events that shaped him. Margery Kempe, a
15th-century pilgrim, wrote the fi rst real autobiography in English, record-
ing her thoughts and feelings as she pursued her fanatical devotion to the
Holy Land and back.
The Middle Ages were a time when great men were admired and imi-
tated. There are contemporary biographies of saints, written by their dis-
ciples. Saint Hugh of Lincoln and Saint Peter Damian were among the
churchmen who inspired such respect and love that their lives were quickly
written. Most, if not all, of the monastic founders became the subjects
The most famous of Bede’s eighth-century books is his History of the English Church
and People . He included the history that he knew fi rsthand as well as legendary
history from a few centuries before. Only four manuscripts of the original Latin text
survive into modern times. This page is the cover of the eighth century book
preserved in the British Library. (HIP/Art Resource, NY)
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of contemporary biographers: Saint Bruno, Saint Francis, Saint Bernard,
and Saint Dominic. Church clerks also studied secular great men; a monk
named Asser wrote the biography of King Alfred shortly after the king’s
death. One of the most detailed records of the life and court of King
Louis IX (Saint Louis) was written by one of his knights, Jean de Joinville.
He knew the royal family and recorded private conversations with both
king and queen; he kept a journal on the king’s two Crusades. Biographies
covered not just the saints and kings, but also famous knights and generals
like England’s William the Marshal. Some monks and priests wrote detailed
histories, too, like the Frankish Gregory of Tours and the English Vener-
able Bede.
Paper mills brought down the price of keeping records. By the 14th and
15th centuries, people below the ranks of bishops and dukes were writing
letters. Italian merchants wrote letters to each other, and to those at home,
as they traveled. A rich vein of information about medieval England is pre-
served in the letters of several generations of the Paston family of Norfolk.
They wrote to each other as they traveled and as family members settled at
a distance. They explained marriage negotiations and child-raising prob-
lems, and they expressed personal feelings and opinions. Personal letters are
some of the few places where we get the direct voices of medieval women.
Le Menagier de Paris is a work that crosses between personal memoir,
letter, and literature. In this large work, sure to be cited in any historical
study of medieval life, an aging husband instructed his teenage bride in
household arts and behavior. No detail was too trivial for him. He told her
how to keep away ants and fl eas, how to care for potted plants, how to cre-
ate a good public reputation, how to roast chicken, and how to buy beef.
He wrote directly for her but seems to have considered it a gift to extend
beyond his death, so he wrote in a wide scope that would take in all the
needs of her lifetime. The book stands as one of the greatest monuments of
medieval record keeping.
Other writers created treatises and encyclopedias for publication. By the
end of the Middle Ages, there were books on farming, cooking, medicine,
animal care, and many crafts. There were advice books for women: how
to choose a spouse, how to take care of yourself as a widow, how to raise
babies. Knights wrote books on chivalry and how to win at tournaments;
hunters wrote about the customs of hunting. Much more is known about
the 14th and 15th centuries from these treatises.
See also: Books, Painting, Parchment and Paper, Weddings.
Further Reading
Andrea, Alfred J. The Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History. Boston: Hough-
ton Miffl in, 1997.
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DeWindt, Edwin Brezette. A Slice of Life: Selected Documents of Medieval English
Peasant Experience. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996.
Epstein, Steven. Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150–1250. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1984.
Gies, Joseph, and Frances Gies. Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages. New
York: Harper and Row, 1987.
Greco, Gina L., and Christine M. Rose. The Good Wife’s Guide (Le Menagier de
Paris): A Medieval Household Book. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2009.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Child-
hood in History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Martin, G., and Ann Williams, eds. Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. New
York: Penguin, 2003.
Reyerson, Kathryn L., and Debra A. Salata, eds. Medieval Notaries and Their Acts:
The 1327–1328 Register of Jean Holanie. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2004.
Thorley, John. Documents in Medieval Latin. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1998.
Relics
A relic was a physical memorial of a saint, a very holy deceased person with
special infl uence in heaven. Relics were most often bones, but they could
also be hair, teeth, clothing, objects the saint had used, or objects the saint
touched. They could even be objects that had come into contact with the
saint’s tomb, near the original relics.
The medieval church believed holiness was an ethereal but real sub-
stance. This sanctity originated from the saint’s soul, but it also remained
in the saint’s bones, hair, teeth, clothing, and other possessions. Sanctity
could be transferred from one relic to another, like magnetism.
The church believed each saint in heaven knew where his or her relics
were and wanted to make sure living people were honoring him or her ad-
equately. Since the saint had the power to grant prayer and work miracles, it
was wise to honor the saint and gain his or her favor. At least once a year, on
the saint’s day, the relics were taken out in a procession so everyone could
honor them. The relics also came out in times of national distress, such as
during an epidemic or a war. In a solemn procession around the church,
the bishop or priest walked with banners and reliquaries, while the people
walked behind with uncovered heads.
Relics were kept in highly decorated containers called reliquaries. Most
reliquaries were shaped like a box or a house. They were made of gold
or silver, where possible, and were covered with decorations. Some were
small, but many were very large. One unusual sort of reliquary from the late
Middle Ages was shaped like a bust of the saint whose relics it held. Most
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were carved from wood and were hollow inside; some portion hinged to
open. They were painted to look as lifelike as possible.
Seeing and venerating relics was the main object of medieval pilgrim-
ages. Pilgrims wanted to show penance or thank the saint for a prayer
granted. They often left images to represent their prayers at the saint’s
shrine, such as wax ships, wax crutches, wax animals, and wax bodies or in-
dividual crippled limbs. Wealthy pilgrims left silver images. Many pilgrims
left either coins or gifts of other kinds, such as animals or other farm pro-
duce; these gifts made up much of the income of each shrine. Relics helped
fi nance many cathedrals.
Although early Christians had revered the burial places of their patriarchs,
such as the Apostle Peter (later Saint Peter of Rome), the fad for relics began
with Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena. In 328, she led a pilgrimage
of discovery to the Holy Land with the intention of fi nding all the artifacts
and places of the Bible. Helena was willing to believe in anything the locals
told her, and she was not at all surprised when she found “the True Cross,”
still complete and bearing the sign Pontius Pilate had tacked onto it. She
also found the Crown of Thorns that Jesus had worn, and she went into the
Sinai Peninsula and “found” the mountain where Moses supposedly had re-
ceived the Ten Commandments. Emperor Constantine built the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher over the supposed place of Jesus’s tomb in Jerusalem,
and Helena placed the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns into it. These
relics had to be rescued when Muslims overran the city.
The medieval impulse to collect relics was very different from the mod-
ern idea of collecting and preserving artifacts. People believed that the rel-
ics and anything that touched them had mystical powers, and they wanted
to benefi t from these powers. If a relic could be divided, it was. It was better
to destroy a relic and put its power of sanctity in many places than to keep
it whole, as in a museum. If the relic could be embedded in gold or trans-
formed into another shape, they did that, too.
After its rescue from the Muslim invasion, the True Cross was split into
pieces, and part of it was encased in gold and jewels and set in a chapel
in Jerusalem. Another part went to Emperor Constantine. Its nails were
removed; two went into a statue of Constantine on a horse. Other nails
were said to be part of the Iron Crown of Lombardy or in as many as 30
churches across Europe. The silk that had wrapped the wood of the cross
became a relic on its own and was divided into small pieces for many recipi-
ents. The portion of the cross that remained in Jerusalem became a prize for
Christians and Muslims to capture and recapture over the years. When it fi -
nally came back to the Christians in 1221, it was sold to Venice for a large sum
of money. Later, it was pawned for money and, fi nally, sold to King Louis IX
of France, who laid it to rest with his other relics in a church. For years,
many churches believed that they owned a splinter of the True Cross.
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The Crown of Thorns had a similar treatment. It was kept in a monastery
in Jerusalem for many years, and it steadily lost thorns, as they were plucked
and given to kings or emperors. It went to Constantinople in 1063, and in
1261 it was sold by an emperor desperate for money to King Louis IX for
his relics chapel. King Louis IX removed all the thorns as gifts to monaster-
ies and churches around Europe. What remained of the crown went into a
reliquary in a chapel of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The most famous relic of the Middle Ages is the Shroud of Turin, whose
authenticity has been tested and questioned in modern times. The cloth,
which bears a strange image of a man lying down, has a mysterious history.
It may have been in Edessa, Turkey, in premedieval times, hidden in a box in
the city wall. Emperor Justinian built Hagia Sophia Cathedral to house the
shroud, and many Byzantine icon paintings of Jesus may be based on the
shroud’s image. The shroud was carried on devotional tours at times and
then was returned to Constantinople. In the 13th century, it disappeared
in the chaos of the Crusades. The shroud seems to have been purchased
by Geoffroy de Charny, a French knight, and his family gave it to Louis of
Savoy in the 15th century. From that time, it was housed in Turin.
Not only Jesus’s burial shroud, but also any other piece of clothing sup-
posedly belonging to Jesus or his mother became a valuable relic. Charle-
magne believed he had the swaddling cloths of baby Jesus at the chapel of
Aix La Chapelle in Aachen, his capital. Chartres Cathedral in Paris claimed
to have the tunic worn by Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. In 911,
when Vikings attacked Paris, the bishop displayed the tunic to the attackers
A proper house for a holy relic was
most often shaped like a church, the
house of God. In order to please the
saint, churches ordered reliquaries
that were extravagant works of art.
The Eltenberg Reliquary, dated
to the mid-12th century, is made of
copper covered with gold. It is
further decorated with enamel and
carved ivory. (Ann Ronan Pictures/
StockphotoPro)
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to make them abandon their siege. The relic later survived a fi re that de-
stroyed the old church, which convinced the people that Mary allowed the
fi re because she wanted a bigger cathedral for her tunic. The magnifi cent
Gothic cathedral of Chartres was the result.
The disciples of Jesus became the source of many valuable relics of the
Middle Ages. Christian tradition told what they had done in their lives and
where they had died, and, in some places, their bodies may actually have
been preserved. In other cases, it is highly unlikely that the bones revered
as certain apostles in the Middle Ages were anything but fakes. The most
important apostolic relics were those of Peter and James. Peter was buried
in Rome, and a church was built over the grave site. The location may be
authentic, since his followers began meeting at his grave soon after.
Tradition says that James (the brother of John) preached in Spain; he
then returned to Palestine and was beheaded by King Herod. His relics,
however, are in Compostela, Spain. A bishop at Compostela verifi ed the
bones of the saint, which were discovered along the coast of Spain in 813.
It is very unlikely that the bones are really those of the Apostle James, but
in the Middle Ages, they were never questioned. Santiago was diffi cult to
reach, situated as it was on the Atlantic coast of Spain. A traveler from En-
gland or France had to cross the Pyrenees mountains or go by ship to the
nearest port; either way, the traveler would be many days hiking through
northern Spain, which was rugged. A pilgrimage could take four months,
but it was still a very popular journey, and there were other relics shrines
along the way where a pilgrim could increase the value of his or her trip.
The evangelists, the men who wrote the Gospels, were also revered
saints. Mark’s body was in Alexandria, Egypt, where he had died after
founding a church. This is plausible, although the bones can’t be authen-
ticated. In the ninth century, two merchants from Venice bought the relic
and smuggled the body past the Muslim authorities by packing pork prod-
ucts in the top of the box. Luke, another Gospel writer, was claimed by
both Venice and Padua. Papal offi cials examined the bones and determined
that Venice’s bones were of a young man, so Padua’s relics were autho-
rized as authentic.
Early martyrs also left behind relics. Agatha, killed in third-century
Rome, was housed in reliquaries at Catalonia, Sicily. Agnes, a young girl,
was executed in Rome not long before Constantine declared the Christian
religion to be legal. Constantine’s daughter built a church over her grave
site, and her skull is kept at the Vatican.
Not all saints were ancient, nor were all bodies dismembered. Benedict,
the founder of the Western monastic tradition, remains buried at Monte
Cassino. Anthony, a Franciscan preacher in Padua, has a revered shrine in
Padua. Thomas à Beckett, the archbishop of Canterbury murdered at his
cathedral, remains buried in the cathedral.
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Other relics were too numerous to keep track of or authenticate. Vials of
saints’ tears or blood, and hair or bone shards from any number of disciples
or martyrs, circulated widely during the Middle Ages. Their authenticity
was never questioned. People also made their own relics by carrying cloth
to a saint’s tomb or collecting stone shards or dust.
Every church or monastery needed to claim it had relics. The monastery
at Peterborough, England, believed it had the right arm of Saint Oswald,
pieces of Jesus’s manger and swaddling cloths, one bone of a child slain by
Herod (in the “Slaughter of the Holy Innocents”), pieces of the miraculous
fi ve loaves, and relics of six apostles. Most cathedrals and abbeys had similar
claims. One had the right arm bone of Mary Magdalene, while another had
one of Saint Dunstan’s teeth.
Relics began to shape church architecture. Pilgrims did not value relics as
much if they were not housed in a grand way. They equated a noble build-
ing and gold trim with holiness. As a church obtained more relics, it had
to build a larger basilica or cathedral, which it funded with the donations
from pilgrims who came to see the relics.
Churches that held the relics had to be careful to protect them from
theft or damage. Pilgrims were known to riot if they were not given ad-
equate access. On the other hand, relics had to be stored in stone vaults
just to protect them from fi re, let alone theft. Where possible, stone vaults
were designed to permit pilgrims to come close, but not to touch. Some
churches with a large number of pilgrims displayed their relics in reliquaries
that hung from a beam across the ceiling. It was high enough that pilgrims
could not touch the relics, but they could see them.
Some churches were specially built to cope with crowds of pilgrims who
came to see relics. They built crypts, rooms where visitors could sit near
the relics. Some crypts, built underground so the relics were positioned
beneath the church’s altar, amounted to subterranean chapels with their
own altars. They were designed with arched vault roofs and pillar supports.
Canterbury Cathedral has an extensive crypt of this kind. As pilgrim crowds
grew, churches began storing relics in special chapels above ground, en-
circled by walkways called ambulatories. Pilgrims could walk the ambula-
tory, which kept crowds orderly and moving. Relics were often in a large
reliquary just behind the main altar. The typical Gothic fl oor plan of a cross
was part of this design, since the top of the cross was usually the ambula-
tory around the relics.
Even with all these precautions, relics were frequently stolen. Although
theft was a sin, even priests and monks did not feel guilty for stealing a relic
because they believed the saint wanted the relics to be moved, or else he or
she would have stopped them. The new owners could claim the old owners
had not properly venerated the relics. Theft of a relic proved that the saint
had chosen the new resting place.