The Greenlanders, Commentary pt. 1

Since it is a novel and fictitious, who knows what people talked about especially in a remote area like medieval Greenland. If there is one theme that runs through the novel, I would say it is the terrible things people do to each other when they are ignorant. There do not appear to have been any schools in Greenland.

One way the author has shown the lack of education in the Greenlanders is the discussion they have over the efficacy of the relic of Saint Olaf in the cathedral at Garðar. All they have is the last finger joint of the least finger on the hand of a saint, who is not as revered as St. Nicholas. The cathedral could not compare to the cathedrals of Europe being rather small and surrounded with turf for warmth but it was built of stone and the ruins can be seen today at Igaliku. (as Gardar is known today) Bishop Alf, who is a character in the novel, was the last bishop of Greenland.

One character, Einar, declares that St. Olaf was good for curing scrofula and other skin ills while others say he was good for curing madness. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time would know that I find mentions of scrofula highly amusing. It was the French and English kings who were said to be able to cure scrofula by touch, a power which they received from St. Marcoul at whose shrine people were said to be cured.

There is an excellent article on the history of the disease in The English Historical Review, published by the Oxford University Press called "The King's Evil" by Frank Barlow. In it, he writes that Marcoul could have been chosen because his name, broken down to mar cou, could be understood as 'bad neck'.

The church at Garðar was called St. Nicholas but, if it ever carried any saint's relics, I have not been able to find out. It should have had relics because any cathedral must carry them. As Garðar was the seat of the bishop of Greenland, St. Olaf would be a good choice in spite of the name, since his relics might be readily available to the archbishop. The name St. Nicholas was chosen because he was the patron saint of sailors This is an ironic choice because once Greenland became part of the kingdom of Norway only the king's ships could trade there. As the king only very rarely sent ships to Greenland, this contributed to their isolation and the degradation of the country as well as eliminating any new migrations to the land. The private ships that traded there had to out of necessity, having been blown off course trying to reach Iceland.

Anyway, in my long and rambling way, I wanted to point out this mention of scrofula and to wonder why nobody ever gets it any more. Not that I want anyone to have it.

Scrofula Pops Up in Another Unlikely Place

I have been reading and rereading the latest in the A Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin. It is not for the faint of heart as there are some truly cringe-worthy moments in the story. One of the most disgusting characters ever to appear in a novel would be the Bastard of the Dreadfort, Ramsay Snow, or as he has become Ramsay Bolton. The Boltons conspired with the hated Freys to massacre the unarmed Stark allies at a wedding, a deed for which almost everyone in the Seven Kingdoms looks down on them for.

Lord Wyman Manderly, who has thus far been dismissed as a craven and a fat fool, has turned out to be tougher than he appears and he is slowly eliminating Freys and Boltons. One of the Bolton men is discovered dead following the collapse of a stable. "The dead man was one of Ramsay's favorites, the squat, scrofulous, ill-favored man-at-arms called Yellow Dick. Whether his **** had actually been yellow was hard to determine, as someone had sliced it off and stuffed it into his mouth so forcefully they had broken three of his teeth. When the cooks found him outside the kitchens, buried up to his neck in a snowdrift, both **** and man were blue from cold."

Don't cry for him, he was a nasty piece of work. One can't help but cheer every time a Frey or Bolton dies. I was just delighted that he had scrofula because it was one of those diseases in the Middle Ages that the rightful king was thought to be able to cure by touching. It was part of how Joan of Arc proved Charles VII was the rightful king. It is seldom heard of anymore thanks to antibiotics but, although not fatal, it was very disfiguring.

Dr. Johnson and Scrofula

I spent the day yesterday comparing the latin text of Pliny's Natural History and an English text to see what is being translated as 'scrofula'. In every case, scrofula came from a form of 'struma' however, doing another word search, I found there were 67 instances of 'struma' in the text but only 19 were translated as scrofula. Now that could also be because the English word search doesn't give you the adjective when you are searching for the noun, but I am too lazy to look for every one of the 67 occurrences of the word. You will have to forgive me.

There is an interesting entry in the Cambridge History of Human Diseases on scrofula but there is no electronic version, that I can access remotely, so any discussion of that text will have to wait until I can get to a university library and have a look.

For the time being then, I will leave the discussion of scrofula with a comment on the fact that Samuel Johnson, he who wrote the dictionary, had scrofula as a child. At the age of two, he was taken to see Queen Anne who was the last English monarch to attempt the healing touch. It was abandoned shortly after as being too Catholic a practice. Queen Anne did give him a gold coin which he wore around his neck until he died in his old age.

It is assumed that he got scrofula from drinking infected cows' milk since that is how people commonly got it. It is something that people who think that 'raw milk' is superior to pasteurized milk want to consider. The gold coin that Queen Anne gave to Dr. Johnson has been preserved and is on display at the British Museum and you can see it online here.

There Is Always a Reason

I was curious as to why Mr. Harris chose scrofula as Vatinius' disfiguring ailment. Short of writing him a letter, and assuming he would reply, know why he chose that, or has notes that would help him figure out why, I must do my own detective work and make the best guess available.

I used the Perseus site to peruse texts that refer to Vatinius but most of the ones that interested me were not readily available in Latin on that site. Cicero made a very long speech in the Senate called In Vatinium against Vatinius where he makes reference to Vatinius being denied augership. He also refers to the disfigurement in his letters to Atticus and in one to Brutus. What word did he use in In Vatinium? "Ista quae sunt inflata" or those disgusting things which are swollen. The English translation at Perseus rendered 'ista' which is a pronoun into the word 'wen'.

Catullus came to my aid, good ole Catullus. He wrote a poem, now called 52 but at the time was called In Novium, in which there is a line calling Nonius 'a giant boil sitting on the curule chair'(my translation) and accusing Vatinius of perjury. Who is Nonius and what exactly is a struma anyway? So I looked in my pocket dictionary The New College Latin and English Dictionary. It also includes Late Latin and Neo Latin so it has been useful for some Medieval texts. In this dictionary, struma means 'tumor, swollen gland'; however just after this entry is strumosus which means scrofulous.

Not content with this, I got out the granddaddy of Latin dictionaries, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, because it has only classical Latin and some etymology plus where words occur in Latin texts. I love a good dictionary. I should have gone to this one first as nearly all the entries where struma occurs also contain the name Vatinius. There is nothing like being famous for all time for a giant boil on your neck.

The OLD defines struma as 'a swelling of the lymphatic glands'. Strumosis is 'afflicted with glandular swellings'. This requires now a look at the Oxford English Dictionary and, indeed, scrofulous comes from a Medieval Latin word 'scrofula' which means an enlarged lymph gland. Maybe struma is scrofula but there is more reason that one for enlarged lymph nodes. Scrofula is derived from scrofa, which the OED states is latin for 'breeding sow which were deemed subject to this disease'. Struma was equated with goiter, bronchocele or scrofula at the earliest in 1400 in Lefranc's Cicurgie. So whatever dictionary, if he was conducting his research in the original latin texts, he used may have been like my pocket dictionary - spoiled with Medieval Latin terms - or whatever translation he used of those texts had been spoiled with Medieval Latin terms.

The OLD lists In Vatinium 39 "si...strumae ab ore improbo demigrarunt et aliis iam se locis conlocarunt"(if those tumors migrate from your shameless face and now lodge themselves in other places), Letters to Atticus 2.9.2 "licet....Vatini strumam sacerdoti vestiant" (it is permitted that priests adorn the glandular swellings of Vatinius) and Celsus V.29.2"struma est tumor, in quo subter concreta quaedam ex pure et sanguine quasi glandulae oriuntur...nascuntur maxime in cervice, sed etiam in alis et inguinibus" ( A struma is a tumor, in which arises under certain curdling from pus and blood just like of a small gland.... it is borne mostly in the neck but also in other private parts.) Most English translations of these texts call struma 'scrofula'. Pliny's Natural History is full of references to scrofula including how to cure it with weasel's blood. So Harris is not wrong to say that Vatinius had scrofula but I wonder if later translators had been duly diligent in naming the disease or just followed what previous translators had done.

More of that Scrofula

I am sure it was a terrible disease and I should not be so amused at references to it in novels but I cannot help myself. In Robert Harris' novel Lustrum, the tribune Publius Vatinius was called the ugliest man in Rome. "He had contracted scrofula as a boy, and his face and neck were covered in pendulous purplish-blue lumps." (pg 360) After looking at Cicero's correspondance to Atticus about Vatinius, I have to say that Harris chose scrofula as his disfigurement because Vatinius had some mark and malformed legs that prevented him from being chosen as an auger but scrofula is not mentioned by anyone. Not Tacitus, or Pliny, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, Dio Cassus or anyone else who mentions Vatinius' name. However, while looking, I had a nice long look at the Perseus site which,

"The Perseus Project at Tufts University is the foremost Digital Library for the classical world, if not for the Humanities in general. In its collection of Greek and Roman materials, readers will find many of the canonical texts read today. The Greek collection approaches 8 million words and the Latin collection currently has 5.5 million. In addition, many English language dictionaries, other reference works, translations, and commentaries are included, so that anyone with an internet connection has access to the equivalent of a respectable College Classics library. The Perseus site is further enriched by intricate linking mechanisms among texts (resulting in more than 30 million links)."

It is a very good site for looking up references. http://perseus.uchicago.edu/

Scrofula Rears Its Ugly Head

I was reading Susan Townsend's novel Queen Camilla last night. I have been a big fan of her Adrian Mole novels. As usual, her novel is full of silliness and humor and on page 58 she has Lawrence Krill pen the following letter to Prince Charles:

"Sire,

I beg your indulgence, my liege, to have recognizance of my advice to thee. I have it in my gift to grant to you possession of a most wondrous particular: The Lost Crown of England. May my vitals be torn from my living belly if this be not true.

Write to me, do not tarry, my liege. All I ask as a reward is that you touch my scrofulous and most foul body to cure me of the King's Evil. 'Tis this unholy affliction that doth condemn me to endure such cruel incarceration in this most cursed place: The Asylum of Rampton.

May the Almighty anoint thee with blessings.

I am, sire, but a humble and unworthy petitioner,

Lawrence Krill"

The spirit of the Middle Ages lives on.

The Healing Hands of the King

In The Return of the King, Ioreth, looking at the fair face of Faramir says, "Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known."

While reading A Distant Mirror, which leads into the miracle of Joan of Arc being at the end of the Hundred Years War, I decided to get out my copy of Marina Warner's Joan of Arc to compare Warner's view of the events of the war to that of Tuchman. One of the commands issued by Joan's voices was that Charles VII must go to Rheims, which was in enemy hands at the time, to be crowned King of France and anointed with the special oil which was kept at Rheims for the anointing of kings since the days of Clovis. The oil was given to the Bishop Remigius by the Holy Spirit in the form of a white dove, according to Hincmar, the archbishop of Rheims in the 9th century.

After he had been crowned in a bare bones ceremony, he touched the relics of the martyr, St. Marcoul, and "through his intercession heal the scrofula, or king's evil, of his subjects. Scrofula is a disfiguring, incurable disease of the skin, and the only remedy in medieval times was believed to be the touch of the legitimate, God-appointed and God-pleasing king." This according to Warner's notes comes from the chronicle of Enguerrand Monstrelet. By healing people, Charles VII was confirming for himself and his people that he was the rightful king.

Edward the Confessor, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, was the first to have been credited this power by Osbert de Clare and all subsequent kings of England are also supposed to have had this power to heal the King's Evil, as scrofula was called.

So the hands of the king really were healing hands, if you believe.