Medieval graffiti: the lost voices of England’s churches in the Middle Ages

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From beasts and demons to Latin prayers for the dead, the walls of England's medieval churches and cathedrals are covered with inscriptions and doodles. But what do they tell us about the Middle Ages?
In his 2015 book, Medieval Graffiti, archaeologist and leading expert Matthew Champion explores the meaning behind the graffiti that has, until recently, been almost entirely overlooked. He draws on thousands of examples from surviving medieval churches across England.

Here, writing for History Extra, Champion explains the significance of medieval graffiti – the lost voices of the medieval church…

Today, graffiti is generally seen as both destructive and anti-social, and certainly not something that should be either welcomed or encouraged in our parish churches. However, that attitude is a relatively modern one. During the Middle Ages, graffiti appears to have been both accepted and acceptable, leaving many of our medieval churches and cathedrals quite literally covered with inscriptions.

Generally speaking, most of these inscriptions had been largely overlooked except by a very small handful of academics and scholars, and are still often described simply as the creations of ‘bored’ choirboys; paradoxically in many cases long before there actually were any choirboys to be found in the church. In recent years, however, new large-scale surveys of these early inscriptions have revived interest in medieval graffiti, and have seen it become the focus of intense academic study.

So the question must really be – why study graffiti in the first place? What can the scratches on the walls possibly tell us about the past that we cannot find elsewhere? The answer is actually a very straightforward one: if you walk in to just about any one of the thousands of surviving medieval churches scattered across the English countryside, you will undoubtedly see a wealth of features surviving from the Middle Ages – stained glass windows, the sheen of alabaster monuments and the dull glow of memorial brasses set in to the floor. However, almost without exception, all these survivals were created by or for the top five or 10 per cent of medieval society; the parish elite that could, quite simply, afford to have themselves memorialised.

Where, then, are the lower orders of medieval society? Where are the common folk who for generations worshipped within the church walls? Where are the memorials to the simple commoners who paid for, and in many cases actually helped construct, these monuments to their ‘betters’?

Well, these individuals do turn up occasionally within legal agreements, wills and manor court rolls. However, in most cases these documents are atypical. Put simply, they represent times when those individuals came into contact with the authority of either the civil administration or the church, and they most certainly do not represent those peoples’ everyday interactions with their church as either a building or an institution. Their voice has been muted and distorted by the conventions of the records themselves.

This, then, is what makes the study of early graffiti inscriptions both worthwhile and utterly fascinating. Unlike almost every other surviving record from the Middle Ages, the graffiti inscriptions have the potential to have been created by anyone and everyone; from the lord of the manor and parish priest all the way down the social scale to the very lowliest of commoner. They are, quite literally, the lost voices of the medieval church.

What, then, are these newly rediscovered voices actually telling us? Well, the most obvious point to make is that these early inscriptions are very different from most of the modern graffiti that blights our bus shelters, underpasses and public toilets (technically known as ‘latrinalia’). Putting aside street artists such as Banksy, modern graffiti tends to be largely territorial or memorial in nature; a simple ‘I was here’ or ‘this is mine/ours’. It would be wrong to argue that it is meaningless, but its meaning is a very long way away from the tens of thousands of early graffiti inscriptions that litter the walls of our medieval churches.

Recent research into English medieval graffiti inscriptions has shown that, while there are a number of inscriptions that might be nothing more than the doodlings of bored choirboys, the vast majority of the inscriptions appear to be devotional or religious in nature. They are, in the very simplest of terms, prayers made solid in stone.

In some cases the inscriptions are literally that – Latin prayers that wouldn’t be out of place in a traditional church service, etched deep into the stonework; prayers for the safe return of long overdue ships or for a good harvest, and prayers for the souls of a dear departed family member.

Others are less easy to decipher. Ritual protection marks, more commonly known as ‘Witch Marks’, designed to ward off demons and the ever-present ‘evil eye’, clustered around medieval fonts. Elaborate crosses cut deep into the arches of doorways in memory of vows undertaken, or asking for God’s blessing upon a new and perhaps hazardous undertaking. Medieval ships complete with crew members still sailing across the stonework after many long centuries, and images of demons pinned to the walls for evermore by deeply etched pentangles and ‘demon traps’.

The walls of our medieval churches are full of minute testaments to faith and belief that were once commonplace. They tell the stories of life, love, hope and fear within the English medieval parish; a record that depicts sudden death and the perils of the soul that, every day, faced our ancestors. Most of all, though, these scratched mementoes by the long dead tell us about people.

A single church, such as that of St Mary’s at Troston in Suffolk, can hold many hundreds of early inscriptions, ranging from the mundane to the seriously outlandish. On the tower arch sit elaborate compass-drawn designs dating back to the time when the church was first built and consecrated by the bishop. A little further up the stonework is the name ‘Johed Abthorp’ (John Abthorpe), lord of the manor in the second half of the 15th century.

On the opposite side of the arch, which is now badly decayed by centuries of wear and damp, are a long series of dates from the turbulent time of the Civil War. Just below them are the sadly defaced outlines of two medieval ships; prayers, perhaps, for safe voyages undertaken by local churchgoers. The eastern end of the church is covered in even more graffiti, while the north side of the chancel arch is so densely covered with inscriptions that it is difficult to identify individual designs. Only two or three things can be made out; a man in late medieval costume is shown with his hands raised in prayer, an outline of a medieval shoe and the elaborate medieval text inscription that simply reads ‘Deo’ (God).

On the south side of the chancel arch the graffiti takes a sinister bent. Just below a beautifully executed medieval coat-of-arms can be seen another outline of a medieval shoe. However, this time scrawled alongside it, and partly obscuring it, is a small head of a demon. Admittedly, demon imagery was common in the medieval church, with colourful and grotesque examples often found casting the souls of the damned down into the pit of hell on the surviving doom paintings that can still be seen above many chancel arches. However, the number of graffiti examples here is noteworthy.

Higher up the arch is a second demon inscription, this time shown in profile with a gaping mouth full of sharpened teeth and its tongue lolling out. Across the demon’s head is a pentangle, scored deeply into the stonework suggesting that it was gone over time and time again. The pentangle, originally a Christian symbol of protection, sits exactly within the confines of the demon’s head – quite literally pinning it to the wall and trapping the ‘evil’ within.

Such symbolism as that found at St Mary’s at Troston clearly had meaning for the individuals who created these images, and many of the more elaborate examples would have taken several hours to execute. The length of time taken to create these designs does rather suggest that they couldn’t have been carried out without the full knowledge of the local church itself ­– and with at least their tacit approval.

Some are clearly devotional in nature, such as the praying male figure, but we may never truly understand the reasons why the lord of the manor left his name inscribed in the tower arch. Was he simply recording his presence, or perhaps marking what he considered to be his territory? Was it John Abthorpe himself who carved the name into the stonework, or was it created by another person with a deeper, darker purpose?

I have come across a number of other inscriptions that are far less enigmatic, and whose meaning it is all too easy to understand. At Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire, for example, a tiny inscription in the north aisle reads simply ‘Hic est sedes margaratea vit an d(ecimo)’ (Here lies Margaret in her tenth year).

A few miles away at Kingston (Cambridgeshire), a discreet inscription appears to tell of an even more tragic tale. There, cut neatly into the stonework, are three names ­– Cateryn Maddyngley, Jane Maddyngley and Amee Maddyngley. Exactly how old they were we will probably never know, but the fact they don’t turn up as adults in the parish records rather suggests that all three were children or infants; all three related by blood. However, if the rest of the brief inscription is to be believed, the one thing we do know is that all three died in the same year – 1515. For most of England it wasn’t a particularly significant year, unless you happened to live in either London, the south-east or Cambridgeshire. In these areas, throughout the summer months, an old adversary returned: the Bubonic plague.

Although the plague was usually a little less deadly than the sweating sickness (which could see you hale and hearty at lunchtime but dead before supper), and had a higher recovery rate, this outbreak appears to have been particularly virulent. Cambridge University (and possibly Oxford) suspended all studies, and the courts and places of gathering were disbanded in an effort to stop its spread – but to little avail.

Part of the problem was that this outbreak came only a short time after the last major outbreak of the ‘sweats’ in 1507. As was typical of the period, the years immediately after a major epidemic usually saw an increased birth rate, as families and communities tried to make good the losses of the previous pestilence. However, in the case of the 1515 epidemic, all this meant was that when the plague began to ravage its way across England, the country had a far higher proportion of infants than it might ordinarily have – and it was these children that appear to have fallen victim to the disease in their hundreds and thousands.

Across the south east of England these infants were buried hastily in unmarked graves, with little or no time to memorialise or remember them. In London, the hasty funeral processions, made up of only a few souls, walked the deserted streets; and in Kingston, a small village in rural Cambridgeshire, a stolid tenant farmer quietly etched the names of his three dead children into the walls of the parish church…

That simple inscription may well be the only mark those three young individuals left on this planet. Sometimes, the writing on the walls can break your heart.

https://www.historyextra.com/period...ices-of-englands-churches-in-the-middle-ages/
 
What a horror it was...


Black_Death_in_Italy.jpg


Just one plague pit:
2_461.jpg
 
What a horror it was...

Yes, those sky high death rates were horrible indeed. Yet, strangely enough, in the long run, they turned out to be a boon for the underprivileged masses.

After the most severe attacks of the plague, plenty of farmland was lying fallow, for lack of manpower. The serfs who had long been held in virtual slavery by the nobility were badly needed everywhere to get enough farmwork done and feed the suvivors. Farmhands were in such high demand that they could claim (and did obtain) better conditions: "tax cuts", fewer days of collective chores for their lord, etc... They could even have their pick and choose to work where they were given the best deal. Some tenants saw their tenure suddenly extend to pretty vast areas of land that had formerly been assigned to their now-deceased neighbours. Tithe and salt tax and other levies went on as before, but, once subtracted, what was left of a peasant's income now gave him (comparatively) unprecedented prosperity.

The same happened in the towns, where the guilds were given more rights and privileges - some of those guilds even turning, over time, into a sort of "parallel aristocracy". Prices went up and anyone with a useful skill could make a decent living.

In France and the UK, the 100 years war and the devastations that followed (Les Grandes Compagnies - massive troops of demobilized soldiers who ravaged the countryside and ransomed people to ensure their own sustenance), plus, later on, the bloody Religious Wars, added their own toll to the epidemics, and had a similar impact, though on a lesser scale.
 
Yes, those sky high death rates were horrible indeed. Yet, strangely enough, in the long run, they turned out to be a boon for the underprivileged masses.

After the most severe attacks of the plague, plenty of farmland was lying fallow, for lack of manpower. The serfs who had long been held in virtual slavery by the nobility were badly needed everywhere to get enough farmwork done and feed the suvivors. Farmhands were in such high demand that they could claim (and did obtain) better conditions: "tax cuts", fewer days of collective chores for their lord, etc... They could even have their pick and choose to work where they were given the best deal. Some tenants saw their tenure suddenly extend to pretty vast areas of land that had formerly been assigned to their now-deceased neighbours. Tithe and salt tax and other levies went on as before, but, once subtracted, what was left of a peasant's income now gave him (comparatively) unprecedented prosperity.

The same happened in the towns, where the guilds were given more rights and privileges - some of those guilds even turning, over time, into a sort of "parallel aristocracy". Prices went up and anyone with a useful skill could make a decent living.

In France and the UK, the 100 years war and the devastations that followed (Les Grandes Compagnies - massive troops of demobilized soldiers who ravaged the countryside and ransomed people to ensure their own sustenance), plus, later on, the bloody Religious Wars, added their own toll to the epidemics, and had a similar impact, though on a lesser scale.

In addition to that, the evolution of warfare during this period help to facilitate social change, with gunpowder. No longer were the most skilled fighters, knights and noblemen, as anyone with a musket could take them down. Moreover, castles were far less effective, with the introduction of siege cannons.
 
Yes, those sky high death rates were horrible indeed. Yet, strangely enough, in the long run, they turned out to be a boon for the underprivileged masses.

After the most severe attacks of the plague, plenty of farmland was lying fallow, for lack of manpower. The serfs who had long been held in virtual slavery by the nobility were badly needed everywhere to get enough farmwork done and feed the suvivors. Farmhands were in such high demand that they could claim (and did obtain) better conditions: "tax cuts", fewer days of collective chores for their lord, etc... They could even have their pick and choose to work where they were given the best deal. Some tenants saw their tenure suddenly extend to pretty vast areas of land that had formerly been assigned to their now-deceased neighbours. Tithe and salt tax and other levies went on as before, but, once subtracted, what was left of a peasant's income now gave him (comparatively) unprecedented prosperity..

I've long been a bit suspicious about the long-term - not just one or two generations after the bulk of the plague - implications of this process of improvement of the peasants and bourgeoisie's bargaining power. Can we then assume that by 1550, when the population had recovered to its 1340 levels in most places, the life conditions and economic oppression was again much worse than it'd be in e.g. 1380-1400? Do we really have evidences for that (asking sincerely, I don't know)? Also, some of the narratives given by historians seem to me to presume that those consequences triggered really deep transformations in the long term for the common peasant, but somehow that doesn't fit with some of the recent data retrieved by scientists on skulls of individuals from the modern and medieval ages. For example, I was surprised to read about the results of a study a few years ago where they concluded that the early 14th century skulls of peasants were undoubtedly more well fed and healthy than the 17th century peasants of the same country (I don't remember where, but they were from Western Europe). So it doesn't look like the 1300s were that awful for the European peasants as a whole or, actually, it's more probably true that the Modern Era wasn't that better and more advanced for the common poor citizen than we had been taught.
 
I very much doubt the 14C was a period of prosperity for the peasants. The early decades (1300 - 1340) are reported to have been a period of calamitous weather conditions and extremely poor crops. Then, the plague struck. When it was gone, the bad weather hit again. Hence famine and revolts - well into the 1380s. (Note that I am describing what I know of my own country. It may not be true elsewhere)

By the way the same goes for the last years of the 17C. A "mini ice age" set in in the 1690s, with terrible, polar winters and insufficient harvests. Famines again. Heavy toll. Processions and Mass services (I mean, the religious service) to ward off the jinx.

From 1560 to 1600, the Wars of Religion led to much devastation - on and off. Hard times again.

Also, the impact of epidemics, famine, and military unrest on population density could but be short-lived : with 9 to 12 children per married couple (5 to 8 surviving their first two years), no matter how much land you owned, after two or three generations, you were back to your initial plot of land.

However, the concessions gained from the landowning gentry remained, with clearer contracts put in writing, and juristic pratices less biassed in favour of the powerful.
 
The contemporaneous accounts make fascinating reading. Far from all people turning more to God, many abandoned their belief in God and turned to hedonism and excess of all sorts. Love and loyalty also went out the window; doctors fled, wife abandoned husband, and husband wife. The underpinnings of both belief in God and belief in one's fellow human beings, of love and the bonds of love, were undermined. Not everyone became a flagellant.

The survivors behaved like people suffering from what today we would call post traumatic stress disorder. Who can wonder at it?

This is the type of art called "The Triumph of Death":

Bruegel.jpg


This is called "The Dance Macabre":
Danse-Macabre-Italian-fresco.jpg


This upheaval directly and indirectly led not only to the ultimate death of feudalism in the west but to the Renaissance.

At the same time it's true that war and famine and poor living conditions continued to afflict people.
 

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