Gone Medieval - Medieval New Year

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

In the medieval world, January 1 wasn’t actually New Year’s Day (that was March 25), but the anniversary of Jesus’s circumcision (according to the church). In fact, unlike many Christmas traditions, there’s very little in the way of New Years traditions we still do today that have medieval origins. Nevertheless, this was still a time of feasts, parties, and the medieval equivalent of the Black Friday sales (think less angry queues and more nobility buying themselves fancy swords and jewel encrusted model ships). In this special episode, Matt Lewis explains what medieval society got up to around this time of year, and why medieval new year was actually March 25. Don’t forget to leave us a rating and review while you're here!For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple storeMusic:Able - Joseph S Greenier, David John VanacoreWalk Tall - Johannes Bornlof Dreams of Tomorrow - Daniel James NolanGodsend - Johannes BornlofGalivant - Bradley Andrew Segal, Bong H. Jung, Chang Wooi KangReverse - Matthew Burnette Heath, Noel Arthur Goff, Kristen Lee AgeeWe Wish You A Merry Christmas - Kevin MacLeod / unknown (english christmas carol), Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsWorst - Brian Scott Carr, Kristen Lee AgeeVad Rost, Vad Ljuvlig Rost Jag Hor - Kurt Lyndon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode and a brand new year of gone medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. I hope you've enjoyed a wonderful Christmas as we spoke about last time in the Christmas episode. So much of what we associate closely with Christmas today comes from medieval traditions. The name of the season, the reason it falls where it does in the calendar, the idea of a huge set piece and meal, of Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, singing, playing games. Whether we knew it or not,

we've all gone medieval at Christmas if we've ever celebrated it. So what about New Year? Can we say the same for the 1st of January as we can for the 25th of December? Well, given my mission to prove that everything is medieval really, you better believe I'm going to try. The glaring issue to deal with, first of all, is the date. Various dates around the world are used to, and celebrate New Year. The 1st of January was the beginning of a new year under the Julian calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE. The Roman Empire's annual cycle used the date for a moment known as Calens, a term that continues in use throughout the medieval period. The Callens was a name for the first day of each month and the Calends of January marked the beginning of a new political

as well as calendar year. The empire's officials would take up their new offices from this date to serve throughout the year, so it really was about new beginnings. January is named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, doorways, duality, and various other things. Janus had two faces, one looking forward and one looking back, so that January was always a time of transition, reflection,

and hope. Medieval England most often celebrated New Year on a different date altogether though. From around the middle of the 12th century until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, New Year in England was celebrated on the 25th of March. This date was Lady Day or the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary, because the medieval period is always fond of a long name for something that could be short. Sometimes when talking about years, medieval chroniclers and official documentation would also talk in terms of the regnal years of the current king

and begin a new year on the anniversary of the present monarch's coronation. So it all gets complicated and it makes being certain of years in some medieval sources quite tricky sometimes. This episode will generally talk about New Year around the 1st of January, a date that was still celebrated, but we will give a nod to the 25th of March too. The Christmas season was a busy one in the medieval world, as we saw in the last episode. There was little or no work for those whose lives were governed by the seasons,

so it was a good period in which to celebrate the end of the deepening of winter and the beginning of spring's approach. The 28th of December was the Feast of the Holy Innocence. This commemorated King Herod's order to kill all children under two when he realised the Magi had tricked him and weren't coming back. It's one of the most shocking moments in the Bible, yet the medieval world found a way to turn it into a moment of fun as well as remembrance. Perhaps the thought of what happened was too much

and it was felt there needed to be some way of processing it. This was one moment in which the church seems to have participated and poking fun at itself. The tradition of appointing a boy bishop for the festive season was incredibly popular in England. Usually a boy was elected from the choir or sometimes a member of a school or a college that was attached to a cathedral.

The young lad would be appointed on the 6th of December, the feast of St Nicholas, and hold office until the 28th of December. The bishop would step down, recognising the notion that God had the power to take down even the mightiest. The boy would be invested with a bishop's robes, a mitre and a crozier, to show that the humble and the meek were exalted by God. It might have been nice if some bishops had remembered that kind of thing

at other times of the year too. The boy bishop, supported by his mates dressed as clerics, would oversee all the services during his reign except for the mass. I mean, was this just a bishop's way of getting most of December off work? Anyway, the tradition was hugely popular in England and spread throughout the parishes. It was eventually abolished in the 1540s by Henry VIII, grumpy old Tudor that he was, and then revived by Mary the First, only to be finally done away with by Elizabeth I. It continued in Germany, and it's still a tradition in Spain today.

The boy bishop cropped up in other tradition. too. The Feast of Fools was popular in France in the Middle Ages. Celebrated on or around the 1st of January, this too involved the election of a mock bishop or pope and the reversal of positions between high and low officials. By the 15th century, the church had become irritated by the perceived blasphemy and the poking of fun at the church represented by the Feast of Fools. In 1445, a group of theologians at the University of Paris wrote this to condemn it. Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of the office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels.

They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice. They run and leap through the men. the church without a blush at their own shame. I agree with the black pudding thing by the way, it can't stand the stuff, but this is close to seeking to outlaw fun, mainly because it was at the expense of the church. Since the Council of Basel in 1431, the church had been seeking to prohibit the feast and impose penalties on those who held one. This letter from Paris,

14 years later, demonstrates that they weren't having much luck, and it remained a widespread event until the 16th century. So we've made it to a medieval January 1st. What can we expect now? Well, presents for one thing. The 1st of January was considered much more of a gift-giving event than Christmas Day in the medieval world, when St Nicholas' Day was still celebrated on the 6th of December

and was reserved for giving presents to children. Some records of the wealthy nobility record them giving themselves presents at New Zealand. year. Louis of Orleans gave himself a beautiful sword and in 1404 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, bought himself a jewel-encrusted golden model ship. Before we judge them too harshly, it's not that dissimilar to rushing out into the New Year sales or indulging in a little Black Friday self-spoiling. There's even a record of a prank gift created by the Limburg brothers for Jean de Berri. When he tried to open the

stunningly bound book he'd been given, he found it was just a solid block of wood. I guess you had to be there. The church, ever keen to remind everyone of the real meaning of the season they hijacked for feasts and present giving, set January 1st as the anniversary of Jesus's circumcision. I remember my kids being equal parts amused and disgusted when they found that out. Maybe it was meant to put those indulging in a feast off their food. Anyway, moving on. The advantage for the average medieval reveller

is that during the shorter days of the cold winter, there was often little work to be done, which left more time for parties. It didn't have to end on the 2nd of January with a crushing hangover, genuine fear of what you might have done the night before and trying to crawl into work. You could relive all that over again.

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moderate light presence. It always wants to either swamp the place in trillion-dollar wars or it wants to have nothing at all to do with it. And in relation to a country like Afghanistan, both approaches are catastrophic. Join us on the history hit warfare podcast where we're on the front line of military history. The next big one was 12th night, or the feast of the epiphany, which falls on the 5th of January. That's the date now when all Christmas decorations should be taken down, or you have to leave them up all year to avoid bad luck. That's because the 5th of January, 12th night, was the medieval end of the Christmas period. It was the date on which the Magi, the three wise men, had arrived to give their gifts to Jesus, so it was another date on which gift giving might be considered

proper. There's a lot of these dates floating around, especially since we think today the greeting card industry has invented loads to make us give more cards and presents. It seems to have been a part of human nature for centuries. 12th Night would see more feasting and plenty of wasail to oil your wassailing. The forerunner of carol singing, wassailing was was an ancient tradition of going door to door and singing in return for a cup of hot, more and spiced cider called Wasail. So, your medieval carol singers would have been more prevalent on 12th night than in the run-up to Christmas Day.

It was a slightly cheeky way to get the Lord of the Manor to hand out more goodies without actually begging. I mean, he's getting a potentially lovely song in return, or else buying an end to it. Next time you sing, we wish you a Merry Christmas. Think about the words and their resemblance to wassailing an effort to extract something on the doorstep before you'll leave. The next big official day came on the 14th of January.

Now, I'm going to give this day its proper name, but you've got to promise not to laugh. You promise? Right, keep a straight face. How about heading to the Feast of the Ass? This was about donkeys, as I'm sure you very well know. It may have been an adaptation of the Roman pagan festival of servants. but it was used to celebrate the various appearances of donkeys in the stories of the Bible. In particular, it was used to commemorate the flight of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus into Egypt.

The celebrations would often see a girl carrying a baby or very young child riding a donkey through the streets of a town to church, where the donkey would stand beside the altar during the service. Although the Feast of the Ass wasn't considered as offensive as the Feast of Fools, it fell away in the late 15th century as efforts were made to ban both. On the 2nd of February, the church celebrated candle mass, or the feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ. Once Jesus' date of birth had been fixed at the 25th of December,

which you may recall from last week's Christmas, Christmas episode had little to do with Jesus' actual date of birth and more to do with the significance in the Roman and early medieval world of that particular date as the winter solstice. It allowed many other things to fall into place. Although 12th night officially ended the Christmas period, it was stretched out in reality until candle mass, which was the real close of festivities. Then there's the medieval English New Year of the 25th of March, the feast of the annunciation. Because Jesus's birthday had been pinned down to the 25th of December, the date on which the angel visited Mary to tell her that she would give birth to the Son of God was placed precisely nine months earlier on the 25th of March. That was an administrative and legal New Year's Day in England.

Incidentally, the reason that the UK's tax year runs from the 5th of April is medieval and related to New Year. The Gregorian calendar shifted the old Julian one by 11 days. So, in 1752, there must have been some confused people who thought they'd lost nearly a fortnight. So the 25th of March, Lady Day, moved 11 days to become the 5th of April. And this date has been retained ever since as the beginning. of the UK tax year. I nearly said, see everything's medieval really again, but I'm struck by how different this episode has been

from the Christmas one last week. I spent most of that telling you how virtually all the things we do at Christmas and associate with our Christmases today were essentially medieval and had barely changed for centuries. Medieval New Year feels very different from anything that we do. It's longer and it's puncture.

by far more moments of religious devotion and celebration than we indulge in today. Perhaps this is where we see the symptoms of a world that has changed, no longer hampered by shorter days or bound to the cycles of the seasons to work the land, for most of us, one day celebrating New Year, or recovering from the one night before celebrating it, is enough. Maybe it's all we can spare. We simply lack the time to prolong the festivities, and many of us are too detached from the religious reasons for doing so. If your Christmas is basically a medieval party,

New Year is a thoroughly modern affair. The question, I guess, is whether it's better now, or was it better in the Middle Ages? Oh yeah, there's one New Year tradition that we haven't mentioned yet, the dreaded New Year's resolution. So what will it be? Eat less, drink less, exercise more? In my case, finish writing a book.

Whatever it is, they're notoriously hard to stick to and tend to fall by the wayside before the medieval world would have even finished celebrating Christmas. They tend to be focused too on ourselves. There's a medieval version of the New Year's resolution that's tricky to pin down in the sources. By that, I mean it's debated whether it was a real thing or not, and if it was whether it was really related to New Year.

But the peacock vow supposedly required each night gathered at a New Year's feast to place a hand on a peacock, whether it was alive or dead and roasted is also a matter of much discussion, and swear to live by the ideals of chivalry for the forthcoming year. Charles Dickens wrote this about the tradition. The most celebrated of all the vows of chivalry were those that were called the vow of the peacock. These noble birds, for so they qualified them,

perfectly represented by the splendour and variety of their colours, the majesty of kings during the Middle Ages, when superbly arrayed, they held what was called tinnell or full court, corresponding with the drawing room of modern times. The flesh of the peacock, according to the old romances, was the peculiar diet of valiant knights and heart-stricken lovers, and its plumage was considered by the Provencel Ladies, the richest ornament with which they could deck the crowns they bestowed on the troubadours,

as rewards for the poetical talent displayed by them in singing the praises of love and valour. But it was on the day when a solemn vow was made that the peacock became the great object of admiration. And whether it appeared at the banquet given on these occasions, roasted or in its natural state, it always wore its full plumage and was brought in with great pomp and a bevy of ladies in a large vessel of gold or silver before all the assembled chivalry. It was presented to each in turn and each made his vow to the bird, after which it was set upon a table to be divided amongst all. present and the skill of the carver consisted in apportionment of a slice to everyone.

So here's my big medieval pitch for New Year. Instead of making a resolution to lose weight or drink a bit less, how about we consider something more outward looking? The peacock vow, real or not, speaks to a sense of chivalry, of social responsibility and of care for others. Maybe not every night lived up to this ideal or kept their peacock vow, just like most of us don't keep a New Year's resolution. I like the thought behind it, though. Chivalry was a code of brotherhood, loyalty and mutual support. It provided a way of expressing shared experiences and promising support and help to those who need it. We may not be blocking sword swings or paying ransoms for captured friends,

but we could be giving up our seats on a bus or a train, or give a hot drink and a friendly hello to a rough sleeper, or just be kinder to those we encounter every day. Maybe this idea could find its expression in checking in with our friends more often, just to make sure they're okay, and to let them know that if they aren't, it's all right and you're there to listen. So my campaign to reintroduce the peacock vow is now officially up and running. As soon as I can find a tame peacock,

I'll place my hands on it and swear to adhere to the ideals of chivalry, to be a nicer person, a better friend, and try to leave people happier than I've found them. Let me know if you'll be doing the same. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and let your friends and family know that you've gone medieval. If you'd like a little bit more medieval goodness in your life,

then you can subscribe to our medieval. Monday's newsletter, just follow the link below in the show notes. Anyway, I better let you go and get on with a brand new year. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit. Now, anyone know where I can find a peacock? I'm going to make this a thing.