1. Jesus, we adore you.
2. The age of consent was thirteen for girls and fourteen for boys.
3. The customary usufruct of the deceased husband’s properties awarded to widows. In the Paris region this was half of the husband’s properties and in Normandy a third.
4. Meat was not eaten on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, feast days, or during Lent.
5. The dynastic name of Plantagenet was a nickname given to one of Edward’s ancestors, Geoffroy, Comte d’Anjou, who transformed his lands into moors, planting, among other things, broom (Fr. genêts) in order to be able to hunt.
6. Water closet.
7. Practice of offering female children to convents.
8. The origin of the words ‘saccharose’ (the chemical name for sugar) and ‘saccharine’.
9. Traditional word denoting beehives.
10. It was believed up until the end of the seventeenth century that the swarms surrounded a king and not a queen bee.
11. The Knights of Justice and Grace belonged to the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem.* A Knight of Justice must boast at least eight quarters of nobility in France and Italy and sixteen in Germany. The title Knight of Grace was bestowed on merit alone.
12. Friars were obliged to carry this when they travelled. Any friar unable to provide this pass when asked for it by a commander was summarily arrested and judged by the order.
13. Whosoever washes himself in the divine blood purifies his sins and acquires a beauty resembling that of the angels.
14. Unlike physics, surgeons, who were most often barbers, were looked down upon.
15. 12 June 1218.
16. The production of paper made of flax or hemp, although an invention of the Chinese, remained in the hands of the Muslims. In that capacity Christendom rejected it until the Italians invented a new method of fabrication towards the middle of the thirteenth century.
17. A non-cloistered nun responsible for the abbey’s relations with the outside world.
18. A nun who answered directly to the Abbess and the prioress. Her function was to take care of the abbey’s provisions and food stocks. She was authorised to buy and sell land and she collected tolls. She also took care of the barns, the mills, the breweries, the fish ponds and so on.
19. Place where visitors were received.
20. So be it. Have pity on us. Dreaded day when the universe will be reduced to ashes.
21. ‘But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken’ (Matthew 24:29).
22. The nun responsible for educating children and novices was the only one authorised to raise a hand to them or mete out punishment.
23. A sort of short, sleeveless jacket with a buttoned neck, often richly ornamented, which men of stature wore over their short tunics.
24. And thus appeared the sign of the Son of Man.
25. Metal refiners whose job it was to beat bars into sheets before selling them on to manufacturers.
26. Grey-squirrel fur was prized at the time. Two thousand of the small rodents were needed to line one man’s coat.
27. The sexual taboo between blood relations extended even to godparents.
28. Fine woollen or linen-and-wool garment worn over the chemise.
29. Probably a forerunner of the hurdy-gurdy.
30. Wind instrument akin to bagpipes.
31. Mellow-sounding string instrument.
32. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered later.
33. An apparatus for determining the positions of the planets in the system described by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy (second century BC). This fixed system, which was completely erroneous, was favoured by the Church and as such would remain in force during seventeen centuries.
34. Guy Faucoi ‘le Gros’ (in English ‘Guy Foulques the Fat’), Pope Clément IV (late twelfth century–1268). A former soldier and jurist.
35. Inserts depicting a scene often in bold colours.
36. Large initial letters at the beginning of each chapter or paragraph usually decorated with interlacing.
37. Stylised decorative ornaments of intertwined leaves and vegetation.
38. Pigments and binding agents used in the making of inks.
39. Men were subjected above all to the strappado (which consisted in causing the condemned man on the end of a rope to fall repeatedly with all his weight), water and fire; women were generally whipped.
40. Neither autopsy nor dissection was practised, for religious reasons. Medicine was therefore based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, professor of anatomy, and to a lesser extent those of Avicenna. Dissections began to be practised at the University of Montpellier in 1340.
41. Nun charged with keeping the accounts of the abbey’s revenues, with overseeing and paying the farrier, entertainers and vets.
42. Divine Justice. Ordeals of fire and water or verbal duels before a court (the latter unrelated to duels of honour that became widespread during the eleventh century) intended to prove innocence or guilt. Fell largely into disuse by the fifteenth century.
43. The universe of angels contained three hierarchies.
44. Built on top of a sixth-century baptistery, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois dates back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Of modest size during that era, it would later be enlarged.
45. Monastery where Galileo studied before going to Pisa to take up medicine.
46. Uranus and Neptune.
47. Pluto.
48. 25 December was originally a feast day of pagans and saturnal plurimillenarians who celebrated the winter solstice. The Church decided around AD 336 to celebrate it as Christ’s birthday.
49. Francisco Peña.*
50. Treatise for the Use of Inquisitors.
51. Francisco Peña.
52. Paris, 1290.
53. Otherwise known as ‘bastard hand’, it was used in the writing of deeds, letters, ledgers and any manuscript written in the vernacular.
54. Ballad by Marie de France.*
55. Chrétien de Troyes.*
56. Although these men did not take vows of poverty, chastity or obedience they enjoyed the privileges of the order in exchange for working on the land as craftsmen or servants at the commandery.
57. A piece of land given to a tenant farmer by a lord in exchange for rent and/or labour.
58. Preceptor was the name given in Latin texts for the commander.
59. Bread was an indication of social status. As such, a distinction was made between rich men’s bread, knights’ bread, equerries’ bread, menservants’ bread … poor men’s bread and famine bread.
60. Greetings O Queen, Mother of mercy; our life, our love and our hope.
61. A guild of wealthy merchants who sold fabric, clothing, objets and even gold work to the wealthy classes. They also dyed precious fabrics, like silk, which ordinary dyers did not deal in. Haberdasher became one of the most respected professions in the society of the time.
62. In 994, Raoul le Glabre described it as ‘an illness which attacks a limb and consumes it before separating it from the body’.
63. Due to lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD.
64. This direct link was not generally acknowledged until the seventeenth century.
65. Ergotamine is still used to treat migraine and headaches related to vasomotor function.
66. Haemorrhages due to fibroids.
67. Root vegetables (carrots, turnips, celeriac, etc.) were the food of peasants; the nobility ate only leaf vegetables.
68. A galliass or galleass was a heavy low-built vessel with sails and oars, larger than a galley, from where the word originates.
69. Granted in 1256 by Alexander IV and confirmed by Urban IV in 1264.
70. Those sentenced by a tribunal to pay money which was then distributed among the poor.
71. Aconite is no longer used to treat these symptoms, except in homoeopathy, owing to its extreme toxicity.
72. Malefactor who broke seals in order to change the wording on deeds.
73. Parchment. Hide prepared in Pergame. It remained in use after paper became more widespread and was used by the nobility for title deeds and official deeds until the sixteenth century.
74. Foxglove.
75. Hemlock, used for thousands of years to treat neuralgia.
76. Yew. Extremely toxic and used from ancient times onwards to coat arrow heads.
77. Species of flowering plant of the family Thymelaeaceae, once used as a purgative but which fell into disuse due to its toxicity.
78. It was equally used as an antiseptic and to bring on periods.
79. Latria: the worship given to God alone. Here it refers to the worship of the devil as though he were God.
80. Dulia: inferior type of veneration paid to saints. Here it refers to the act of praying to demons to intercede with the devil.
81. Poisoner.
82. Paris boasted approximately fifteen such establishments.
83. Winding frame.
84. Landlords employed criers to announce the price of the wine and sometimes the food they served in exchange for the right to drink there.
85. Listen to my prayer, O Lord, deliver my soul from fear of mine enemy.
86. The custom of ladies dressing their pet dogs to protect them from the cold began in the fourteenth century.
87. Plague. It is thought to have been rife, particularly in China, for three thousand years. In any case, the first known pandemic occurred in AD 540 on the shores of the Mediterranean where it also affected Gaul. The second pandemic, known as the black plague, lasted from 1346 to 1353. It started in India and killed 25 million people in Europe and probably as many in Asia.
88. Plants with antiseptic qualities that were used in the old days as well as lily, climbing ivy, bilberry and arnica.
89. Nuns or lay people in charge of opening and closing the doors to the enclosure or the buildings within the enclosure.
90. Wherein the word magnetism. The Greeks were familiar with magnets, which did not reach Europe until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.