Medieval Italian insults

Angry words.  Words intended to give offense, to hurt.  To damage, whether feelings or reputation.  We have no shortage of angry words in the world today, but I've recently run across a few things in the course of my research that set me to wondering if it has ever been any different.

Before there was Twitter, before there were flame wars and trolls, before today's toxic and polarized political climate, there was the lively, colorful Italian street (not to mention the Italian toxic and polarized political climate).  Let me share with you a partial list of insults recorded in the town of Savona, Italy, for just one year in the 14th century -- these being the insults that were prosecuted in a court of law, as tallied in Trevor Dean's book Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy.

• Filthy worm-head.
• You're lying in your throat, filthy, rotten woman.
• I hate you.
• Go on, rotten prattler. God give you ill-fortune. [Allegation of a conspicuous lack of personal hygiene, phrased bluntly], why do you come round here with your prattle?
• Go on, go and talk to your mates, the whores. You shouldn't be talking to good women.
• Ugly, rotten pimp.
• You're a devil and a piece of filth.
• Thief and rogue.
• Mad boy.
• Witch-whore.
• Ugly, shameful woman, you take men [crude description of a non-procreative sexual practice]
• Go and get f***ed.
• Rotten pimp, we shall chase you from your house.
• Rotten dog whore.
• Rotten donkey, ribald.
• Ugly, rotten whore.

Some involved threats, explicit or implicit, but those were not necessarily weighted more heavily in the courts than the ones that didn't:

• I hate you like a dog. I shall punch and kick you.
• By Christ's body, I shall have to hit you on the head. (This one manages to involve blasphemy as well; it was a separate crime.)
• Rotten pimp, we shall chase you from your house.
• I want to see you dragged through this town. 

The commonest were “I hate you” and “You're lying in your throat.” (Tu menti per la gola.)  That last one intrigues me, partly because I came across it in connection with researching my novel A Thing Done, and the phrase does appear in my book much as it does in the historical record.  Why, I wonder, is it worse to lie in one's throat than just to lie?  I haven't found an answer to that, but it does seem to me that while one could lie easily, glibly with one's mouth, to lie in one's throat suggests a deeper well of malice.

Dean points out that the Savona insults can be roughly divided into three categories:  sex, defecation, and rottenness.  In other towns, such practices as cursing someone with a disease were prevalent.  “Get dog-worm!” appears to have been something of a favorite.

In Todi and Bologna, gender differences showed up clearly: threat of injury, challenges, and imprecations of ill-fortune were made only by men and usually against other men. Women could only wish on men the inflection of violence by other men (like the “I want to see you dragged” remark, above).  Women were insulted via their sexuality or sexual decency, and men through their public roles or their “honesty, courage, and worth.”

Other cities, too, give us some colorful examples.  In Florence, on18 June 1375, the podestà accused  Filippa, daughter of Matteo, in the parish of Sant'Ambrogio, of having slandered Piero di Cianchino, who lived in the nearby parish of San Simone. She called him “filth, traitor, thief.” Piero said, “If you were a man instead of a woman, you would not be able to say these words to me.” Filippa, undeterred, told him “I am a woman, and I will shame you all the same.”  (The records do not show what Piero had done to provoke Filippa's ire.)  But Filippa, who had an interesting worldview, wasn't done yet. She went on:

“What a feast God and the mother who brought you into this world would have, had they given me the heart to have more men to kill than you could have over to dinner.”

Without explanation, the podestà's court cleared Filippa of all charges.  Perhaps he just didn't want to be next.

Filippa, perhaps?

And in Palermo, 1328, here's the Master of the Guard speaking to a nobleman.

“You're lying in your throat like a rotten, evil, ruffian, cuckold and traitor. Sir S**t. Cripple-legs. Mouth-stinking bastard. You're no knight....”  Then, just for good measure, he called the man's wife a “rotten bitch-harlot.”

Incidentally, I wonder if the frequency with which we see the word “rotten” appear has something to do with “mouth-stinking,” as above.  Rotten teeth mean bad breath, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the source of that particular insult, given the state of medieval dentistry.

Each city had its own way of prosecuting what we might think of as “crimes of insult.”  In Chiusi, for example, miscreants were fined by the insulting word. But how to count them?

We can study the case of Niccolò, who said to a married woman, “Dirty, deformed woman, provocative whore, I've had three children by you, you dirty, sick beggar. Your mother went begging and gave birth to children in the stables.”  There would seem to be a certain behavioral inconsistency here, but Niccolò seems unaware of it.

Then, as if that wasn't enough to make his point, he turned to her brother.  “Your sister's a whore, and her daughter. May your soul be accursed and your father's, may there be as many devils after his soul as he had dogs following him.” Over 60 words (none of them exactly friendly), but the authorities counted the diatribe as 8 insulting “words.” Six of the counted categories were bodily deformity, prostitution, disease, beggary, shameful parturition, and cursing the soul.”  The record is unclear about the others.

Modena criminalized only “cuckold” and “lying in one's throat”, or taunting someone with the killing of his male kinsman (as yet unavenged, presumably).

Cesena charged 10 lire for “traitor, false cuckold, pimp, robber, thief, goat, ribald, heretic, sodomite, whore, and pimp.”  “Get dog-worm” and “Go hang yourself” were considered everyday and therefore unimportant.

"Goat"?

In Fabriano we see a bit of class consciousness evoked with this insult:  “You've eaten farro soup.”  (Meaning: You've eaten coarse peasant food, so what does that make you?)

And speaking of class, it was not unusual for people to be fined more for insulting someone of higher status.

A historical example of an insult from Florence:  messer Corso Donati called his nemesis messer Vieri de Cerchi “the ass of Porta San Piero” “because he was a very good-looking man, but not very astute or articulate,” chronicler Dino Compagni tells us.  Corso frequently asked “Has the ass of Porta San Piero brayed yet today?”  And just to amplify the insult, he employed a jester named Scampolino to spread his words around as widely as possible.

And then there are the literary examples.  Franco Sacchetti, fourteenth century Florentine writer of short stories, favored “Get dog-worm!”  In his tales it was said by a lord to his buffoons, a peasant to a wolf, a husband to a wife, and a nobleman to his servant.

Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio, another Florentine and author of The Decameron, tells a tale of friendly insults between friends.  Messer Forese da Rabatta and the famous artist maestro Giotto di Bondone were riding together one day when they were caught in a rainstorm, which left both of them bedraggled. Forese, according to Boccaccio, hadn't looked too good to begin with: he was small, with a deformed body and a flat, pushed-in face, yet he was a wise and learned jurist. Giotto was an artist of great genius, but he may not have been a great beauty either.  There's a story of Giotto and Dante in which Dante asks Giotto how it is that the painter's work is so beautiful, but his children are so ugly, and Giotto supposedly replied, “I make my paintings during the day and my children at night.”

Be that as it may, after the rainstorm neither one was looking very good.  Forese said, “Giotto, what if we were to run into a stranger who had never seen you before, do you think he would believe you were the best painter in the world, as you really are?” And Giotto replied, “Sir, I think he would believe it if, after looking you over, he were to think you knew your ABCs!”

Dante's remark to Giotto (above) was far from his only foray into the colorful world of insults.  He engaged in a tenzone (a poetic exchange of insults) with Forese Donati, his friend (and the brother of Corso Donati, above), which some scholars still prefer not to believe could actually have been authored by the great poet.  In the exchange, the two poets accuse each other of sexual inadequacy, beggary, gluttony, thievery, and cowardice, not to mention hinting at even more scurrilous things.

Dante was not above the classic “insult the other guy's mother” ploy, either.  Forese's and Corso's mother, monna Tessa, must have been a redoubtable woman (see my blog post on her here), but Dante didn't hesitate to slam her in verse:

O Bicci junior, son of who knows who
(unless we ask monna Tessa)...

(“Bicci” was Forese's nickname.)

And he didn't let it rest there.  Later in the same poem, he writes of Simone Donati, Forese's and Corso's father:

...who is to you what Joseph was to Christ.

Hmm.

Dante encounters Forese in Purgatory

That's not the only surviving account of someone insulting Tessa.  The Lucchese writer Giovanni Sercambi, 1348-1424, wrote a collection of 155 short stories, one of which told a tale of monna Tessa.
 
For the details, please see my earlier blog post here, but the gist of it is this:  a man called Bisticcio called out to her the medieval equivalent of “Hey, Babe, how about it?” 

And Tessa calmly responded with the medieval equivalent of “Forget it.  You can't afford me.”

A good note to end on.  I hope you've enjoyed this little tour of insults in medieval Italy.

Images in this post are in the public domain, with the exception of the photo of Giotto's statue, which is licensed to Sailko via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Snapshot: Florence, 1338

In my last post I promised a look at Florence's medieval population figures, with at least a cursory glance at our sources for that information and the processes historians use to figure out how many people lived in a given place at a given time.

But before we go into generalities, I'd like to take a look at one specific -- and extraordinary -- source for Florence, circa 1338.

In 1338, the ravages of the Black Death are still ten years in the future, though other pestilences have recently wrought havoc on a smaller scale, as have natural disasters and food shortages.  Dante has been dead for 17 years.  Florence's extraordinary century of growth -- the 13th century -- is over, and Florence is now the dominant military and commercial power in Tuscany.  She is a wealthy city, and much of her wealth comes from the wool industry.  Her merchants and bankers are famous throughout the world.

And one proud Florentine, the chronicler Giovanni Villani, elected to give us a detailed portrait of his city, including numbers.  Lots of numbers.  There is, of course, no way to verify his every claim, but modern historians have generally been impressed with how closely his figures tally with those they've arrived at after much forensic work.   

Giovanni Villani

Villani was in a good position to give us this snapshot of his city in the year 1338.  Born into a prosperous merchant family, he was a banker and a public servant as well as a historian.  He was an agent, a shareholder, and eventually a partner in the famous Peruzzi banking company; a member and sometime officer of the powerful Arte di Calimala (wool-finishers guild); and he served his city as one of its  priors (the nine-member elected government) on several different occasions.  In addition to that, he was deputized in 1324 to oversee the rebuilding of the city's walls, and after the famine of 1328 he served as a magistrate in charge of provisioning the city and distributing grain to the citizens of Florence. He also served in the Florentine army.

He knew Florence, knew her physical properties, her politics, her business ventures, her military activities, her people.

Here are a few of the things he has told us about Florence in 1338:

First, based on the consumption of grain, he calculated that Florence had about 90,000 mouths to feed.   Modern scholars believe the total population to have been somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 at that time; however, Villani explicitly says that he did not include members of religious orders or foreigners (foreigners being non-citizens, and there would have been a lot of them because of the influx of people from the countryside during the recent famine, people who wanted to take advantage of Florence's grain provisions).  Allowing for those two categories, Villani's figures appear to be fairly accurate.

Distribution of grain

He tells us that about 25,000 men between the ages of 15 and 70 were capable of bearing arms, and in time of war they would be joined by another 80,000 men from the surrounding countryside (the contado).

Between 5,500 and 6,000 infant baptisms were performed in Florence's Baptistery that year.

Three views, old and new, of the Baptistery

Some 8,000 to 10,000 children, both boys and girls, were learning to read in elementary schools.  Six hundred boys were enrolled in higher level schools to learn grammar and logic.

The city housed 110 churches,  of which 57 were parish churches and the rest belonged to the various religious orders.

Over 200 workshops associated with the wool trade employed some 30,000 people, producing 70,000 to 80,000 bolts of cloth with a total value of more than one million two hundred thousand gold florins, a third of which was paid out as wages.

Florence had 80 banks, 600 notaries, 60 physicians and surgeons, and 100 apothecaries to serve its populace.

Apothecary

In a year the city went through enough grain and wine and meat animals to allow us to say that each individual in the city consumed, on average, 530 pounds of grain, 54 gallons of wine, and 88 pounds of meat, according to the calculations in Gene Brucker's book Florence: The Golden Age, 1138-1737. That meant a total of 4,000 cows and calves per year, as well as 60,000 geldings and sheep, 20,000 goats, and 30,000 pigs.

Brucker also has an interesting diagram that illustrates the population breakdown.  Out of 500 people representing a cross-section of the entire population of Florence, he tells us, the distribution includes the following:

• 1 moneylender or judge
• 2 priests
• 1 monk
• 3 nuns
• 60 scholars: 3 studying grammar, 7 studying the abacus, and 50 learning to read
• 3 notaries
• 1 doctor or apothecary
• 1 baker
• 139 (potential) soldiers
• 8 noblemen
• 2 merchants traveling outside the city
• 8 foreigners (visitors or soldiers) 
•  168 earning their living from the wool trade (one of whom actually owned a wool workshop)

There's more, but that should be enough to give you an overview of the bustling  metropolis of Florence in that long-ago year.  Next time I'd like to discuss a few of the potential pitfalls in trying to calculate population from the two main figures typically used for that purpose (grain consumption and baptisms), and also to find ways to visualize exactly how populous Florence was at various times in her history.

 Images in this post are in the public domain.

The Medieval Italian City

Herewith I want to start a new thrust to this blog.  For a long time I've described myself as interested in Italy in the middle ages, as Dantecentric, as someone who wants to understand what came before the Renaissance.  All of that is still true, but when I think about the settings I choose when I write, I've realized that they all have one thing in common.

All my work takes place in medieval cities.

True, they were crowded, dirty, noisy, chaotic, malodorous, pestilential, dangerous, and politically volatile.  But they were where the action was. They were teeming with life and color and creativity and passion and ambition – in short, with all things human.  When Florence's population quadrupled over the course of the thirteenth century, it wasn't the birthrate that did it – it was immigration from the hinterlands.  There were reasons all those people wanted to try their luck in the city.

I've read  some wonderful medieval stories set in rural areas, in villages (one that comes to mind is Ann Baer's Down the Commons: A Year in the Life of a Medieval Woman, which is somewhere between a rural setting and a village), in some noble guy's castle, on the road (a wonderful new “on the road” book is Lucy Pick's Pilgrimage, much of which unfolds along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela).  There's nothing wrong with any of that, much that's right, and much that I need to know and understand about those settings to be able to make sense of urban life.  But for me, it's all about the cities.

When we go to Italy you'll never find us in some agriturismo place, some picturesque villa out among the cypress trees.  Not that it wouldn't be fun to be there, but knowing me, I'd just keep heading into the nearest city anyway, so we might as well stay there.  And not just in the city, but smack dab in the middle of the historic center, as medieval and as urban as we can get.  And in an ancient and historic building, if at all possible (and if they can get internet signal through those thick walls...).

Sometimes at night, or in the rain or snow, or at sunrise, it's possible to glimpse the city as it was, if only briefly.  And for me, those moments are worth traveling for. 

Of course, once in a while things go awry.  This, for example, was supposed to be the most beautiful piazza in Italy:

Obviously our timing was a little off.

My first novel, A Thing Done, takes place in Florence in the early 13th century.  It unfolds in the palazzos, the towers, the churches, the narrow and winding streets of the middle ages.  The story it tells is drawn from the ancient chronicles (and fleshed out a bit), and it traces the development of a pivotal incident in the history of this extraordinary city.  Today's Florence is at once modern, baroque, and Renaissance; if you want to find the middle ages, they're still there, but you have to work at it.  And I have. 

Here is a tower that was the scene of a major event in my novel. 

Today it houses a jewelry store, and it's a fraction of its former height – the government of Florence, during the brief period when it was controlled by neither the Guelfs nor the Ghibellines but by the popolo, required the nobles to reduce the height of their formidable defensive towers, in an effort to contain the lawlessness and the sheer military might of those powerful families.  Thus, the vertiginously scary balcony which so terrified my protagonist is long gone, but the base of the tower remains.  (See here for more on medieval towers.)

And here is a church where another major scene takes place.  It's now a library.

Here are a few links to earlier blog posts in which I've discussed some aspects of medieval Florence:

Was There a Florence Before the Renaissance?

Exercising Your Imagination, Part 1 and Part 2

So - What's It About?

What Building Most Defines Medieval Florence?

My work in progress alternates between two cities, Assisi and Rome, in the same time period.  Assisi is still very medieval in its aspect, and it's easy to walk down those ancient streets and let your imagination wander.  You don't have to work very hard at all, in Assisi, to go medieval.  (See here, here, and here for a few pictures of this lovely city.)

Rome, on the other hand, presents some challenges.  It is now a big, noisy, aggressive, modern city.  I wouldn't even bother with it, except – well, it's Rome.  What can you say?  Stuff happened there.

Rome presents the tourist/researcher with some truly bizarre contradictions.  Like this one:

The traffic is fierce.  You take your life in your hands crossing a street.  It's not quite the worst I've seen.  (That would be Naples, where the traffic is so gonzo it's almost fun, in a suicidal sort of way.)  But it's plenty bad enough. In Rome, we discovered that the only way you can cross a street in relative safety is to attach yourself firmly to one of the following:

• a nun
• an old woman
• someone pushing a baby carriage

In fact, I'd only feel really safe in the company of an elderly nun pushing a baby carriage. 

Romans, thinking about crossing the street

And Rome keeps changing.  Giacoma, the main character in my WIP, lived in a fortified palace that incorporated the ancient ruin of the Septizonium.  Here's what would have been left for me to see if I had been in Rome in the 16th century:

And here's what's there now:

Despite the difficulties and frustrations, I do love learning about medieval Italian cities.  In my next post, I will be discussing population – specifically, the population of Florence.  This may, in fact, turn into two posts, one on how the population figures are derived (it's not as simple as glancing at a census), and a second on the actual figures, put into context, and on how they shifted over the medieval time period.  Hope you'll join me for this excursion into medieval demographics.

Images in this post are our own, or in the public domain.

Sturm: One of Charlemagne's Lieutenants in Spiritual Warfare (guest post by Kim Rendfeld)

I'm delighted to introduce guest blogger Kim Rendfeld, who has recently released her second novel set in Carolingian times. The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar (Fireship Press) has been garnering praise for its unusual setting, its depth of characterization, and for the author's meticulous research and vast knowledge of this time period. Reviewers have called it "...a sweeping story of family and hope," and described it as "...filled with rich detail, compelling characters, and a well-paced plot that keeps the pages turning to its very satisfying end" and "...absorbing from start to finish." I certainly found it so! Read my review here.

Here's the blurb:

Can love triumph over war?

772 AD: Charlemagne’s battles in Saxony have left Leova with nothing but her two children, Deorlaf and Sunwynn. Her beloved husband died in combat. Her faith lies shattered in the ashes of the Irminsul, the Pillar of Heaven. The relatives obligated to defend her and her family instead sell them into slavery.

In Francia, Leova is resolved to protect her son and daughter, even if it means sacrificing her honor. Her determination only grows stronger as Sunwynn blossoms into a beautiful young woman attracting the lust of a cruel master and Deorlaf becomes a headstrong man willing to brave starvation and demons to free his family. Yet Leova’s most difficult dilemma comes in the form of a Frankish friend, Hugh. He saves Deorlaf from a fanatical Saxon and is Sunwynn’s champion – but he is the warrior who slew Leova’s husband.

Set against a backdrop of historic events, including the destruction of the Irminsul, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar explores faith, friendship, and justice. This companion to Kim Rendfeld’s acclaimed The Cross and the Dragon tells the story of an ordinary family in extraordinary circumstances.

Now Kim brings us a post on Saint Sturm, a remarkable man living in turbulent times.

Kim Rendfeld

Sturm: One of Charlemagne's

Lieutenants in Spiritual Warfare

by Kim Rendfeld

When Charlemagne decided to invade Saxony in 772, he took spiritual warriors in addition to those guys with the spears and swords. Whether St. Sturm, the abbot of Fulda, was with Charles during those battles is not clear, but the king of the Franks put him in charge of the Christian mission in a large part of the conquered territory.

Charles’s wars against Saxony were different than those his ancestors had fought. It was the first time religion was part of the conflict. Perhaps, Charles wanted to protect Church interests. Perhaps he thought Saxons were more likely to keep their oaths if they put their souls on the line. Treaties were secured with vows that invoked deities. To Charles, only one was valid.

Whatever his reasons, Charles put his trust in Sturm, who had been a priest for about 40 years. He had grown up near Saxon territory in the monastery at Fritzlar, where he was an eager student. With the exception of a trip to Rome and two years in exile, he had lived in the region most of his life and had advised Charles on his relationship with the king’s first cousin Tassilo, the duke of Sturm’s native Bavaria.

The most influential person in Sturm’s life was St. Boniface, who had also tried to covert pagan peoples. At Boniface’s urging, Sturm and two companions spent nine years in forested wilderness seeking a suitable spot to start a new monastery. Medieval folk depended on the forest for survival, but it was also the home of predators, both beasts and evil spirits.

Boniface, then the archbishop of Mainz, had rejected their first choice, which Sturm’s hagiographer, Eigil, described as “a wild and uninhabited spot and [they] could see nothing except earth and sky and enormous trees.” The reason, ironically, was it was too close to pagan Saxons to be safe.

So Sturm tried again, and he finally found the right place on the Fulda River. His contemporaries probably saw it as the middle of nowhere. However, Boniface believed God had picked the place and successfully appealed to Frankish Mayor of the Palace Carloman to donate the land. Boniface later visited the site to give it his blessing.

The year was 744, when the Franks, under the rule of Carloman and his brother Pepin, were at war with the Saxons. Again. Despite the battles in Saxony, some of which involved Carloman and Pepin’s troublesome half-brother Grifo, the monastery at Fulda thrived, and Sturm visited Rome to better learned the Benedictine way of life.

Tangling over Relics

In 754, Boniface was martyred while trying to convert pagans in Frisia, and his body taken back to Francia. That was the beginning of Sturm’s political troubles.

When the relics reached Mainz, its archbishop, St. Lull, also a disciple of Boniface, wanted the martyr’s body to remain in his city. Sturm insisted that Boniface be taken to Fulda, a wish his mentor had expressed while still alive. Martyr’s relics were treasured in the Middle Ages, and they were attributed with miraculous powers. Pilgrims would flock to those relics, which meant alms for the church housing them.

St. Boniface baptizing a convert/Martyrdom of St. Boniface (11th c. image)

According to Eigil, Boniface himself weighed in by appearing to a deacon in a dream and asking why he wasn’t being taken to Fulda. Lull was not convinced until the deacon swore at the altar. The relics went to Fulda, but Lull retaliated in a distinctly medieval way.

Lull accused Sturm of disloyalty to Pepin, now king and sole ruler of Francia. Sturm made no effort to defend himself and placed his trust in God. Believing the accusers, Pepin sent Sturm and some companions to the Abbey of Jumièges, where they were treated well.

In the meantime, Lull had managed to get Fulda placed under his jurisdiction and appointed a new abbot, but the monks at Fulda refused to accept the bishop’s puppet. So Lull caved and let them elect one of their own. They choose a monk whom Sturm had mentored and, along with nuns in convents and the faithful at other churches, prayed for Sturm to be restored to Fulda.

The prayers worked. Pepin sent for Sturm and in a chapel told him he had forgotten what they were quarreling over. Sturm replied he wasn’t perfect but has never committed any crime against Pepin. To signify the reconciliation, the king pulled a thread from his own cloak and let it fall to the floor.

So Sturm went back to Fulda, and the monastery would claim Pepin as its sole protector, making it independent of Mainz.

Fulda (1850)

A New King and New Missions

When Pepin died in 768, he split the kingdom between sons Charles and Carloman (the Franks were fond of recycling names). Seeking divine favor and earthly alliances, Charles gave donations to Fulda. He also made Sturm an emissary between him and the duke of Bavaria.

Eigil says Sturm established friendly relations between the royal cousins for several years. Well, not exactly. In fairness to Sturm, even the most gifted diplomat would have difficulty with those two. Relations might have been good while Charles was married to a Lombard princess, the sister of Tassilo’s influential wife. When he assumed sole rule of Francia, Charles divorced the Lombard after only a year and then overthrew his ex-father-in-law. The duchess of Bavaria never forgave the Frankish king.

Sturm had other affairs to deal with when Charles invaded Saxony four years into his reign and destroyed the Irminsul, a pillar sacred to the Saxon peoples, the same way Boniface had felled a tree sacred to pagans. The message: My God is stronger than those devils you worship.

Sturm embraced his new mission. He preached to the Saxon converts and exhorted them to destroy pagan groves and temples and build churches instead.

But as soon as Charles was occupied elsewhere, pagan Saxons attacked Christian sites. Then Charles would send Frankish warriors to put down the rebellion. This cycle would repeat itself for decades.

While Charles was in Spain in 778, the Saxons devastated Christian holdings and killed indiscriminately all the way to the Rhine. When Charles got word, he sent soldiers to put down the rebellion, and the Saxons retreated. But the monks at Fulda feared an attack and fled with Boniface’s relics. They spent three days in tents in the forest until they learned that the locals had fended the Saxons off.

Charles still wanted Sturm to lead the Christian mission, but the aged man was ill. The king assigned the royal physician to attend to him. One day, the physician gave Sturm a potion to make him feel better, but the patient got worse and realized he was going to die. He asked his brothers for forgiveness and in turn forgave those who wronged him, including Lull.

Sturm died December 17, 779. The monks had no doubt that Sturm was going to heaven and would have a special relationship with God.

Sources:

Eigil’s Life of Sturm [http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/sturm.asp]

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Pierre Riché’s Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, translated by Jo Ann McNamara

Pierre Riché’s The Carolingians: The Family Who Forged Europe, translated by Michael Idomir Allen

Sturm makes a brief appearance in Kim Rendfeld’s latest release, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014 Fireship Press), a story of a Saxon mother and the lengths she will go to protect her children. To read the first chapters of Kim’s novels or learn more about her, visit kimrendfeld.com. You’re also welcome to visit her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Illustrations in this post are in the public domain.

The box liked it

My historical novel A Thing Done, set in Florence in 1216, is now on sale.  For the next month, more or less, we've dropped the price drastically for ebook versions on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes, and lowered the price on the paperback as well.  It's now going for $3.50 for Kindle, $2.50 for Nook, and $2.99 for iTunes ebook version.  (I have no idea why those prices are different.  I just work here.) 

If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it.

"Of course she recommends it," I hear you saying.  "She wrote it."

Once, when my husband brought home a DVD, I asked him why he had chosen that particular film.  His answer?  "Well, the box liked it."

The box always likes it.  But I don't always love things I've created, after the fact.  Some of them actually make me cringe.  It's like when my husband and I record music:  when we play it back, I hate it.  I hear everything that could have been better, everything that isn't quite good enough, everything that could have been played more elegantly.

But this book I still like.  I'm not saying it's perfect, but I liked writing it, I liked having written it, and - most amazing of all - I even liked reading it.  And I think you might, too.

Medievalists.net liked it (read their review here):  "I've read a lot of historical novels over the last few years but I have to say that hands down, this one is at the top of my list," wrote Sandra Alvarez.  It makes me happy to know that people who are familiar with the underlying history enjoy my book.

The Sharp Writ Book Awards liked it.  It shared the top prize in the fiction category with another book, so now it gets to wear a little gold ribbon, and I have a plaque sitting on my bookcase:

Lots of kind people have told me they enjoyed it, so I don't hesitate to recommend it now.  And doing so reminds me of some of the more memorable ups and downs in the saga of trying to sell copies of this book since it was published in October 2012.

Here's the blurb, as it appears on the book cover:

In 1216 the noble families of Florence hold great power, but they do not share it easily.  Tensions simmer just below the surface.  When a jester's prank-for-hire sets off a brawl, those tensions erupt violently, dividing Florence into hostile factions.  A marriage is brokered to make peace, but that fragile alliance crumbles under the pressure of a woman's interference, a scorned bride, and an outraged cry for revenge.

At the center of the conflict is Corrado, the Jester, whose prank began it and who is now pressed into unwilling service by both sides.  It will take all his wit and ingenuity to keep himself alive, to protect those dear to him, and to prevent the unbridled ambitions of the nobles from destroying the city in a brutal civil war.

Many different versions of this blurb exist, because one must try many different things to sell books.  There was the one where I tried it in question form:

Will Buondelmonte's reckless act set off a full-scale vendetta?  And if it does, will even the Jester's famous wit and ingenuity be enough to keep himself alive and protect those dear to him?

 (Answers:  Yep.  And no, not exactly.)

Pleeeeease buy this book!

Sometimes I added more description:

Sworn to secrecy, he [Corrado] watches in horror as the headstrong knight Buondelmonte violates every code of honor to possess the woman he wants, while another woman, rejected and enraged, schemes to destroy him.

I'll do anything to get you to buy this book

I did want to stress the importance of the role of women in this book, since the Jester is male.  So I added this paragraph:

This is Corrado's story, but it is also the story of three fiercely determined women in a society that allows them little initiative:  Selvaggia, the spurned bride; Gualdrada, the noblewoman who both tempts Buondelmonte and goads him; and Ghisola, Corrado's great-hearted friend.  From behind the scenes they will do what they must to achieve their goals - to avenge, to prevail, to survive.

Buy this book or the peacock gets it.

But these days you can't make your spiel longer.  You have to make it ever shorter and more succinct.  I learned that when I discovered Twitter.

You don't get a lot of room to work with on Twitter, and you have to save room for links and hashtags and so on.  If I want to call the book "prize-winning" it will cost me 13 characters.  If I write #buythisbookdammit, it will cost me 18.  And I absolutely refuse to write things like "U r gr8!"  I. Just. Won't.  It's all I can do to stop myself from leaving two spaces between sentences.  Left to my own devices, I'd probably tweet with footnotes.

When my son was very small, he was bouncing up and down in his crib when the bottom gave way, and he tumbled to the floor in a pile of mattress, blankets, and stuffed toys.  He was unhurt, but the whole thing was terribly exciting and he wanted to tell me about it.  Only problem was, he hadn't exactly figured out speaking in full sentences yet.  So he ran up to me and yelled, "Mommy!  Bed!  Down!  Uh-oh!  Wow!"

That kid would have been a natural, had Twitter existed back then.

No so his mom, however.  But I did manage a few I liked.  There was the Shakespeare pair:

"where civil blood makes civil hands unclean": Will could have been talking about A Thing Done.

"from ancient grudge break to new mutiny": The Bard could have said it about A Thing Done.

The book takes place over Easter in 1216, so I did some seasonal tweets on the appropriate days:

The history: Good Friday 1216, Florence - the calm before the storm.

The history: Holy Saturday 1216, Florence - a knight is running out of time.

The history: Easter 798 years ago, Florence - Vendetta. Ambush. Civil war.

I used the first line of the book:

It was a fool that began it, but it took a woman to turn it murderous. Florence, 798 years ago.

And my favorites:

A tale of vendetta, betrayal, a spurned woman, civil war, and juggling.

What happens when a knight can't take a joke?

I'm still considering this one:

Price slashed (Also some of the characters, come to think of it.)

After a while, one gets a bit burned out with this sort of thing, and one might even start to get a little silly around the edges.  (Ya think?)  Then you find yourself thinking up marketing ploys like the pictures above, and these:

Drumming up some support for this book

Ta-da!  Historical novel on sale, cheap!

You try dressing up like your main character:

You dress up your musical instrument like your main character:

Then things really went downhill, and I came up with these:

 

 If you've stayed with me this long, you'll realize that no matter what you think of my book, I'm a better writer than I am a saleswoman.  I'd pretty much have to be.  You should also, despite all the silliness, have a pretty good idea by now what the book is about.  I hope I've piqued your interest, and that you'll acquire the book, read it, and enjoy it. 

And if you'd like to read a bit more about it in a more serious vein before deciding, you could always take a look at my website, or at my author page on the website of my publisher, Fireship Press. 


Images of the gallery and of Putin and his colleagues come from a fun site called PhotoFunia.  Pulp covers are from Pulp-o-Mizer.

When a one-star review is in verse...

 

*....

 When a one-star review is in verse,

It somehow makes everything worse.

In their zeal to convince,

Critics make authors wince,

And whine, carp, bemoan, bitch, and curse.

The limericks have arrived!  My talented readers have sent in their contributions, as requested in my last post (find it here):  Give us your rude, your snarky, your obnoxious book reviews in limerick form.  They arrived in the Comments section, in email, by Facebook, and even by phone.  Some used the first line I provided ("There once was a one-star reviewer..."), while others started from scratch.

For your reading pleasure, here they are, with authors identified as they identified themselves to me.

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who cast titles into the sewer.
Authors cried foul!
With many a howl
But the one-stars came faster not fewer.     --Seri Good

I have the name of an edit-or,
that just might help this book sell more.
Till then it's a mess,
and I must confess,
I use it to hold open the door...     --Prue Batten

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who hungered each novel to skewer
And his only regret—
He could never beget
A rating of any stars fewer.     --Deb Atwood

This next one is not a limerick, but I felt that it nonetheless contained the very essence of limerick-ness, so it's included.

Your Novel's One-Star Review

The writing was awful, the characters worse--
I wanted to send them all off in a hearse.
The plotline was boring, the action scenes tame,
And far worse than that, all the romance was lame.
The spelling was quirky, the grammar awry,
Punctuation changed wildly with no reason why.
Perhaps it gets better, when all's said and done,
But I couldn't force myself past chapter one.     --Julia West

There once was a one-star reviewer
Who loved to drag books through the sewer,
Whose great joy in life
Was to generate strife,
And proclaim there was no one as truer!     --Kathryn Louise Wood

Your book was a waste of my time.
Why make the poor hero a mime?
Write a strong female lead,
With a magical steed,
Add some teenage angst – now that's sublime!     --Linda Wendt

And just to round things off, I've included a couple more by my alter ego, Sven Leonardo MacGeneric:

There's way too much grammar-abusing,
And the plot is absurdly confusing.
If you've got to sell dreck,
At least employ Spellcheck -
And besides, it's not even amusing.

It desperately needs a good edit
(Or maybe we ought to just shred it).
The writing's outrageous,
There's too many pages,
And if there's a sequel, I dread it.

And that's it.  Many thanks to my talented contributors (especially for getting me off the hook for coming up with a new post this week), and here's hoping that none of us will be the recipients of any such scurrilous reviews anytime soon.

Images are in the public domain by virtue of being reallyreallyreally old.

There once was a one-star reviewer...

 

Okay, faithful readers, it's time for a little audience participation.  I'd like for you to contemplate the idea I'm about to suggest, and then send me your own versions, either here on the blog or by email or on Facebook.  I will then compile whatever comes in and feature your masterpieces in a future post.

Here's what I want you to think about:  What would the world be like if people who wanted to put up one- or two-star reviews on Amazon were required to do it in the form of poetry? 

Intrigued by this idea, I did a little experimenting.  I played around with rondeaus, sonnets (Italian and otherwise), and even a bit of terza rima, which works a whole lot better in Italian than it does in English.  

But I have a sneaking suspicion that most Amazon reviewers wouldn't want to bother with the more complex forms.  Perhaps some of them would even prefer not to have to rhyme.  For those who can count to seventeen, they could always attempt haiku instead.  For example:

Book beckons. Great cover, good blurbs.

Too bad - it costs more than two dollars.

 But really, I think our form of choice for this exercise can only be the limerick.  What else, after all,  lends itself so perfectly to the art form of writing negative reviews?

With that in mind, here are a few to start you off.  First, we'll continue the "I want it cheap" theme suggested by the haiku above:

The worst of this publisher's vices

Is the way it insists on high prices.

But I know how to reach 'em -

This one-star will teach 'em!

Now that ought to trigger a crisis!

 And another one for the folks I think of as Dumpster-Divers-of-the-Mind:

I'm returning this e-book for credit.

(Never mind that I've already read it.)

I get bad heebie-jeebies

When novels aren't freebies.

So there. Now I've come out and said it.

Here's one that uses that kiss-of-death phrase that is the reviewer's equivalent of "I'm telling you this as a friend":

If you value your immortal soul,

Don't touch this with a fifteen-foot pole.

Though the author can shove it,

I wanted to love it,

So that proves I can't be a troll.

And there's always the "I'm an expert" review:

This book claims to be a historical,

But the research is quite sophomorical.

I'm a pro on this topic

(I watched the biopic!);

My opinion is thus categorical.

 Then, too, there's the "This isn't sexy enough" review:

Some have said that this novel is gripping,

But I'd rather have hot bodice-ripping.

Though it's surely complex,

There's just not enough sex,

And it needs quite a bit more unzipping.

And its companion, the "This is too sexy" review:

The language is way too explicit,

There are couplings both hot and illicit.

Decent folks are refusing

To keep on perusing

Such garbage. So we'll just dismiss it.

I come by this sort of silliness naturally.  Years ago, when I was active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, I created a poetic alter ego named Sven Leonardo MacGeneric, who expressed himself in doggerel  (and was, in fact, once named Doggerel Laureate for the local barony).  Here are a couple of examples from Sven's notorious output:

From a long narrative poem about Tristan and Isolde:

Now heroes are bold, and they're brave, and they're noble, 

But "bright" isn't always a prominent trait.

Though his lady wife lied,

Tristan still up and died.

When his love stepped ashore, he was lying in state.

Or this snippet from a poem entitled "On Watching the Children at a Tourney":

In a hamlet called Hamlin, a long time ago,

A piper appeared one fine day.

He tootled a tune, played it high, played it low,

And the kiddies, they all danced away.

Oh, who was that sinister, dangerous man?

And why did the wee ones heed him?

And why has he never come back again?

And where is he now, when we need him?

Anyway, send me your limericks - you can tackle the reviewers who complain about the packaging, the ones who couldn't be bothered to read the book, the ones who completely missed the point, or whatever you like.  Extra credit, too, for finishing the limerick started in the title to this post.  Bring 'em on!  I can't wait to read them.

Picture at the top of this post is licensed via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license to Mazeface, found in Wikimedia Commons Images.