Authors: C B Hanley
Whited Sepulchres (35 page)
Something a little more esoteric which confused a few readers was the mediaeval perception of time. We are used to our structured, scheduled days of twenty-four hours split with precision into minutes and seconds; to those in the early thirteenth century this would have been an alien concept. In a world with no clocks or watches they had no way of dividing time so precisely, so a day consisted of twelve hours which ran from sunrise to sunset, meaning that hours could indeed be longer or shorter depending on the time of year.
Sext
(‘the sixth hour’) was at noon; the day was further subdivided by
terce
(‘the third hour’) mid-morning, and
nones
(‘the ninth hour’) mid-afternoon. For any division smaller than that people would need to use other measures, for example ‘the time it takes to walk a mile’ or ‘the time it takes to say three paternosters’. Something you certainly wouldn’t hear, if you arrived in Conisbrough in June 1217, is anyone saying, ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes’!
And finally, I have been asked why Edwin and his fellow villagers weren’t out practising their archery on Sunday morning, as this is something often depicted in mediaeval-themed books or films. Bows and arrows were certainly in general use (although bows were not as large as the classic ‘longbow’, taller than a man, which developed later) and some of the villagers might have been out practising for recreational purposes, but the law making it compulsory for all men to equip themselves with a bow and arrows was not passed until 1252, and Sunday practice didn’t become compulsory until 1363. As Edwin isn’t terribly keen on anything involving weapons, I’ve let him off. For now.
Richard Almond,
Medieval Hunting
(Stroud: The History Press, 2011, orig. 2003)
Frances and Joseph Gies,
Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages
(New York: Harper and Row, 1987)
Roberta Gilchrist,
Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012)
George C. Homans,
English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century
(London: Norton, 1975, orig. Harvard University Press, 1941)
Ann Hyland,
The Horse in the Middle Ages
(Stroud: Sutton, 1999)
Wolfgang van Emden,
La Chanson de Roland: critical guides to French texts
(London: Grant & Cutler, 1995)
C.B. Hanley has a PhD in mediaeval studies from the University of Sheffield and is the author of
War and Combat 1150–1270: The Evidence from Old French Literature
, as well as the historical works of fiction
The Sins of the Father
and
The Bloody City
. She currently writes a number of scholarly articles on the period, as well as teaching on writing for academic publication, and also works as a copy-editor and proofreader.
First published in 2014
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL5 2QG
This ebook edition first published in 2014
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© C.B. Hanley, 2014
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EPUB ISBN
978 0 7509 5883 7
Original typesetting by The History Press
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
