This is a compilation of notes captured the earlier Accidental Heretics web site.

PEOPLE

Pèire at Work

Readers must be able to form their own pictures of characters.

However, Peire Leteric resembles this 90-year-old Catalan gentleman we met in Tortella, who showed us how to polish a wooden spoon with a bone tool. He was gut-shot in the civil war but went on to a joyous life after Franco.

What Chrètian Sang

Chrètian is a jongleur — a singer — not a troubadour (a writer of songs).

He’s among the secular singers, who began to appear at the turn of the millennium. The jongleurs’ role as entertainers flowered with the rise of the troubadour poets. The troubadours are nobles, the jongleurs are not.

Chrètian would have to sing for his supper — if he weren’t making his living wage principally with his sword. Although our Chrètian knows how to read, like all jongleurs he memorizes the odes and long epics, and might choose his own melody.

Chrètian, however, first learned to sing among the ancient Norman crusaders on Cyprus, and then learned trouvères’ songs about the Grail and Arthur’s Court while he and Tomás worked as mercenaries in Burgundy.

You can hear some best guesses at what the music Chrètian sang sounds like:

Music of the Crusades, Early Music Consort of London, Decca.

Music of the Troubadours, Ensemble Unicorn, Naxos.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, like I do, you can hear live voices:
Capella Romana
Medieval Women’s Choir

Another Entitled Woman Dressed as a Man?

To ask related and similar questions:

• Another fictional history written in the current English vernacular?
  Or did you not need a crib-sheet when you first read Chaucer, Beowulf — or most of Shakespeare, for that matter? Did you read Homer in archaic Greek? Songs of the troubadours in Provençal?
• Where’s the exciting historical fiction about laundry women and camp-followers — who held (per the historical) the only roles for “working class” women in the age of the Crusades?

Writers who use a historical backdrop for stories have certain limited choices:

• Follow the historical record closely while bringing the tensions and activities to life for modern readers, but moving beyond the strictures of biographers or academics. Robert Hughes does this for Rome.
• “Costume” every-day life with period social manners, politics, technology, and so on, while creating characters that modern readers can identify with. Many writers in historical romance for women or men take this tact, like Bernard Cornwell’s adventures.
• Investigate the historical gestalt with a time-traveling viewpoint character to tell the story. Diane Gabaldon does this in the Outlander series.

Accidental Heretics is principally a costume-drama, following a sympathetic character through the hazardous Languedoc landscape of 1210. So Isabella is sometimes in disguise. It would be wonderful if I could claim for her the great pants roles like Rosalind or Viola.  But Isabella is just a poor, backwoods widow, doing the best she can in bad circumstances. In leather leggings.

Credit: Art based on “Florine of Burgundy” in  Doré’s Illustration of The Crusaders.

PLACES

Organian Citadel or Heretics’ Shelter?

I showed a good friend the (1st edition) Bone-mend and Salt cover work by Lisa Tilton, and he immediately claimed it was the Organian Citadel from the Star Trek “Errand of Mercy” episode:

“Yep:  Season 1 – Episode 27 aired March 27, 1967. This is the one where Kirk et al. try to convince the Organians to side with the Federation because the Klingons are really really bad. I call this episode “Why the F are we in Vietnam?”  It is so blatantly about the Vietnam war.  In that context, the dialog between Kirk and the head Klingon dude really stands out. When Kirk and Spock beam down, there is a shot of an “ancient” buildings, and it’s obviously a stock shot of some castle. And if you are really into TV production trivia, look for the “alien” purple goat (have to watch one of the restored prints). First use of a new consumer product for the 60s youth: spray-on hair color.

But no, the Errands of Mercy footage is a stock shot of the Citadelle Laferrière in Haiti.

The cover of Bone-mend and Salt features a stock photo of Le Fort Saint Elme in Roussillon, protecting Port-Vendres. The overall structure was built in the mid-16th Century. However, the tower dates from the 9th Century, and therefore is much more likely to have sheltered heretics than the Organian citadel.

Read about Le Fort Saint Elme on the city’s web site at http://www.fortsaintelme.fr.
And learn more on Le Fort Saint Elme Facebook page.

Association des Parcs & Jardins du Languedoc-Roussillon:
See the APJLR web site for more Fort Saint Elme pictures.
I wouldn’t get any work done if these landscapes were the view out my stone-framed, arrow-loop of a window. And I can’t get much work done now, since I have to stop and look at these beautiful pictures on the Association des Parcs & Jardins du Languedoc-Roussillon site.

And here’s the Bing translator from my friends at Microsoft Research, so that you can dig into the details: http://www.bing.com/translator
February 2013

Geographical Synesthesia

When I saw this happen in the wild, it was a red-tail hawk and (likely) a garter snake:
“A booted eagle drifted upward on the morning breeze as Isabella paced along the parapets, wishing she too could soar over this edge of the Pyrenees, floating down over the Corbières hills. The eagle circled the upper garden in search of vermin, its claws out to strike; then it swooped to attack, missed, and rose to dive again. This time it caught its prey, and a sharp aieee echoed up from the garden. A viper in the eagle’s claws struggled to bite its captor as they soared up to a perch beyond the castle.”

Because I went to school in Southern Oregon, I hiked the Siskiyou Mountains for many years. And I continue to be charmed by how much those hills resemble the granite and limestone outcroppings in the Pyrenees foothills where the Accidental Heretics wended their way through adventure and catastrophe.

In the Siskiyous, the oak trees have differently shaped leaves and the sugar pines stand taller than what the adventurers find in the Languedoc. The shrubby undergrowth bakes in the sun at the same height, the granite soil crunches underfoot in the same way, the rain falls at the same time of year.

And, it seems, some Oregon vintners are finding some similar enough terroir and microclimates as Languedociens, though I personally prefer the southern Oregon aspirations to learn from the other side of the Pyrenees.

It’s your guess whether you smell manzanita or genévrier.

Credits: Aquila Pennata from Wikimedia Commons, offered under GNU v 1.2, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
Landscape copyright E.A. Pearson, per this site’s guidelines.

Favorite guides for writing about flora and fauna:

• Wild France: A Traveller’s Guide (Wild Guides)
• Wild Spain: A Traveller’s Guide (Wild Guides)
• A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe
  March 2013

Heretics at the Beach?
A Holiday in the Languedoc?

Last night, several readers told me they were packing Bone-mend and Salt to read on vacation. Two said they’d already read Bone-mend, and just downloaded Trebuchets in the Garden, eagerly anticipating the chance to read on the plane flight or first day in a beach chair.

So excited to hear that—because it’s why I wrote it. Over an earlier decade, I waited for the next installment of Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolò series, or a new Outlander title, so that I could be immersed in another world on the first few days of vacation. Nothing like a fat adventure to get work out of your mind so that you’re ready to play.

If you read any of Accidental Heretics while on vacation, please let me know if the book performed as it’s supposed: Mind now empty of work? Senses filled with the Languedoc countryside?
June 2013

Crossing La Mancha

In Crux Lunata, Book 3 of the Accidental Heretics series, each chapter is a place in the journey across Spain during the Reconquista efforts of 1212. I spent a week at the keyboard, crossing La Mancha with 200 men on a journey that included:

– Hideous travel conditions
– A raid by false “saracens”
– Quarterstaff battles and broken ribs
– A Lataste’s viper
– Grassland wildfire
– 3 separate apparitions of saints
– Branding of another bonfraire in la Confraria de la Crotz

At the end of that writing session, I felt parched and dust coated, and that I should shower to wash away the smell of horse and sheep and sweat.

Photo from CastillaLaMancha.org, under Creative Commons license.
July 2014

TECHNOLOGY

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters!

A boy appeared to carry their meager baggage up to the loft, where woven stick-and-reed walls separated a trio of tiny cells. As squire, Isabella had sole possession of the hauberks and other armor, which she wrestled up the ladder-like stairs alone.

What exactly did a 13thC roadside inn look like in the midst of the Corbières hills?

To describe things previously unknown to me, I need a good image. Although the Internets are full of castles of various ages, ordinary building are harder to locate. And searching on anything “13th century” related to the Languedoc usually requires browsing untranslated Catalan, Spanish, or French sites.

My best pictures come from visits to historical sites, where the archivists and preservationists have focused on methods and materials from the time. For the inn on the road to Fontfroide, I think of this barn, built 100 years after Tomás and Isabella passed through, and now under preservation at Santa Pau in Garrotxa, Catalunya.

Notice how the beams supporting the floor are suspended from the rafters.

My best search efforts often come from properties for rent or sale in the region—though these usually sport only the relic of a barn or mill. Typically, pictures to attract tenants don’t show the historical 13thC floor in the barn. If one appears, I have to save it locally, because (as you know) links rot on the web. And then I can’t share it here, without disrespecting others’ rights.

No one expected privacy, except the rich who could buy it. Therefore, like everyone else, Isabella had often listened to others’ ardors, because there was no choice. At the inn, the woven-reed wall between their two hired closets gave merely the illusion of privacy.

Here’s another view of the Santa Pau barn, from my own camera.

Text from the chapters “Pilgrims, Perfected” and “Eu Vos Amor” in PART FIVE: Nemesis in Leather of Bone-mend and Salt.

Toasted Lead and Iron Gall Ink

The British Library blog has an amazing post: Under the Microscope with the Lindisfarne Gospels, with breathtaking photos. Do those guys have the best job in the world? Yes!

No playing cards in Europe until ~1400?

My patient editor, a medieval history major, bugged me about the card game in Bone-mend and Salt:

“Your friend Chrétien — he’s teaching my men that Egyptian card game.”

“An anachronism?” Patient Editor queried.
No cards in Europe until almost 1400.

My editor is seldom wrong, but I argue the possibility:

Tomás and Chrètian studied in Cairo.
Fragments of cards are preserved in Egypt, possibly dating from the 12^th and 13^th Centuries. It appears that cards were invited in China, and likely introduced in Arabic lands through the Mamluks in Egypt.

So, yes, it took much longer for cards to be common enough in Europe to scandalize Dante. And Europe also needed papermaking for either card playing or vernacular texts to become common.

Learn more:
A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming by Catherine Perry Hargave, Dover Publications, 2012.

Credits: The Cardsharps by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, from Wikimedia Commons.

Codex versus Scroll: Form-factor Détente

I’ve avowed that I read faster and with greater concentration when thumbing instead of turning pages. I believe that my Kindle has kept me from being crushed to death when I’m reading a big fat adventure book in bed at 3 a.m.

However, some prefer the codex form-factor. If that’s you, all of the Accidental Heretics series is available in print.

TIME AND SEASONS

Time in Medieval Historicals: Ecclesiastical and Lunar Calendars

The first two books of the Accidental Heretics series take place in 1210. This creates a host of challenges for addressing time and date tracking issues. This post considers calendar issues and resources for writing historical fiction.

Adoption of the Gregorian calendar didn’t begin until 1582 and wasn’t universal until the first quarter of the 20^th Century. So, dates logically would follow a Julian calendar. I needed to know when Easter and other feast days occurred, and when phases of the moon occurred. I don’t care as a writer how accurate the selection might be, just that I could follow a consistent calendar for 1210, and that I could understand how people talked about and thought about the calendar of days.

For baseline understand of Church dating for feasts and seasons, I started with  John Wooley’s Ecclesiastical Calendar Conversion.  That article, and others, led to a common list of major feasts. Typically, you’ll see lists for fixed feast days such as:

Candlemas (February 2)
Lammas (August 1)
Michaelmas (September 29)

Other movable feasts or Holy Days such as Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Pentecost change based on a combination of solar and lunar calendar. For example, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Other dates count based on the ecclesiastical year, beginning with the first day of Advent, which is the fourth Sunday before Christmas.

As noted in Wooley’s article, the lists of saints’ feast days that you can typically find online (in English) are usually weighted towards English practices. So I had to dig further into the saints and feasts days that seemed most important in Catalan and Occitan cultures in this time period.  Further, in following mentions of saints’ feast days, I had to ensure that each particular saint had lived and been canonized before this period. (Dominic was wandering around still following the rule of the Benedictines and not yet a saint in 1210.)

So, for Accidental Heretics, I had a list of the feast days that would matter in the story, and then had to determine upon which day of the week these would fall. Several resources for finding a calendar for a selected year exist. However, here’s a key problem for basic research using the Internet:

Lots of medieval source material was first created in old Usenet days and then moved to the World Wide Web in the Nineties.
A huge portion of these resources are maintained by individuals based on their passion.  (We are very grateful to these pioneers.)
Links die.

Here are some resources (where links mostly work) for determining calendar dates:

• Calendars: A guide to locating events for each day of the year
  in the Virtual Middle School Library, created by Linda Bertland
• Calendar Zone – a master list for calendars
  Created by Janice McLean

My chief concern for moon phases in Accidental Heretics has been to ensure that dark and full moon phases appear at appropriate intervals (no light of the moon affecting night scenes more than once a lunar month!). For this, I used the set of Julian Calendars published on The Henry Foundation site, which provided me with a convenient PDF with phases of the moon and Julian day numbers for 1210. Alas, it has disappeared from the web.

Combining all the resources I found, days and dates didn’t always align. I can force reconciliation — because this is historical fiction, not scholarly history. But now to consider, how did people in 1210 talk about dates of the month in the Julian+Ecclesiastical system?

Reading texts from the time, you find statements like those that appear in Accidental Heretics:

… Fourth of the nones of April, the fourteenth year of the reign of Pedro II, King by the Grace of God of Aragón …

For this, you’ve heard of the ides from the Roman calendar:
— the 15th day of March, May, July, or October
— the 13th day of other months
(Thank you, Wm. Shakespeare, for ensuring we know to beware the Ides of March.)

Fewer of us learned the concept of nones: the 8th day before the ides of a month, which in the old Roman calendar would be:
— the 7th day of March, May, July, or October
— the 5th day of all the other months

From Wikipedia on Months in the Roman Calendar:

Nones implies ninth from the Latin novem, because, counting Ides as first, one day before is the second, and eight days before is the ninth

Are we sufficiently confused now?
If this is 1210 in southern Europe, what time is it? Clocks weren’t in wide use, and neither was the ringing of bells for ecclesiastic hours. Let’s talk “clock time” in a future article.

Credits: Calendar of Saints days from University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, photo by Petar Peev

Mardi Gras: Feast before Ashes and Scarcity

Mardi Gras seems even more of a medieval festival than Christmas. Few other holidays attract year-long attention to preparing for the celebration.

I’ve long held that the “party hearty before fasting” tradition has pre-refrigeration roots in agrarian community life. Meat you salted and preserved in caves and cellars has reached the end of its shelf-life. Other food packed away in straw won’t last until Easter. The animals are about to birth spring babies, so the cow hasn’t freshened and nothing can be butchered.

In that world, late-winter sparse times are inevitable, and both realists and optimists see value in coupling a hedonistic festival with subsequent spiritual fasting.

What to eat before the fasting begins:

A caçolet — perhaps without the duck or goose confit. Likely you won’t be merging the previous night’s caçolet with this night’s, perpetuating a single dish that’s been extended over decades (as legend tells it in the south of France).

Or a bolhabaissa, Marseille style. As Julia Child described it: “the Provençal soup base — garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel — and, of course, the fish — lean (non-oily), firm-fleshed, soft-fleshed, gelatinous, and shellfish.”

Then my grandma and your grandma can dance in the streets.

RESEARCH AND RESOURCES

Textual vs Wikipedia Research

The links here for quick info frequently go to Wikipedia, for simplicity and to ensure stable links long-term. However, research for Accidental Heretics relied on a host of academic and popular history texts.

First, to have the most fun and learn a lot quickly, see Hugh Nicklin’s The Lauragais Story from the South of France.

Second, to rant, the scholarly texts published on Amazon (and other hosts) that focus on this period in southern Europe are massively and insanely over-priced, especially for eBook formats. I recommend ordering such texts to borrow through your library until these authors come to their senses.

Here are some recommended starting points if you want to dig a little deeper into the period:

The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages by Malcolm Barber, Pearson Education Ltd., 2000.

A scholar’s deep examination of the rise and fall of Cathar dualism, with social and ecclesiastical analysis.

Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours by Frederic L. Cheyette. Cornell University Press, 2001.

A scholar’s review of the life of a viscountess and the extent and limits of her power and activities — a good look at the culture of Occitania, relying on close review of historical records.

Chasing the Heretics: A Modern Journey through the Medieval Languedoc by Rion Klawinksi. Hungry Mind Press, 1999.

I originally found this book while browsing at Powell’s in Portland, and it led me to place the Accidental Heretics in the Languedoc at the time of the initial French sorties into the south.

Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie. Vintage Books, 1978.

This is the title you’ll see as a standard reference for insight into the Cathar society. However, it relies on the recorded testimonies of “heretics” prosecuted by the Church, 100 years after the time of Accidental Heretics, when Cathars had been persecuted and isolated in the remote hills. I have doubts about what it tells us about what people believed and did during the generations when the “Good Christians” lived unmolested in the mainstream of Languedoc society.

The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars by Stephen O’Shea. Walker & Company, 2000.

This is a popular history that traces in very readable, non-academic terms the life and end-times of the Good Christians in the Languedoc. Key events in Accidental Heretics are based on Mr O’Shea’s viewpoint.

An Introduction to Old Occitan by William D. Paden. The Modern Language Association of America, 1998.

A linguist’s investigation and presentation on structure and usage in Old Occitan, using troubadour songs to resent the analysis.

Medieval Warfare Sourcebook by David Nicolle. Arms & Armour, 1997.
Plus a host of other useful and illustrated texts by David Nicolle on arms and armaments across the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

David Nicolle isn’t my only source for understanding battle dress and tactics across European and Mediterranean societies in medieval times. However, he and his illustrators are my favorite. Photos, text, and drawings combine for both information and inspiration.

Finally, if you are ready to dip into a scholarly examination of the Crusades and medieval heresies, start with Steven Runciman. Consider: