Are you a good reference or a bad reference?
by Caleb Reynolds
Written for the AEthelmearc Sylvan Signal
An important question to ask one's self, when researching, is if your source material is good. There is nothing like doing your research, writing up your documentation, and entering your project into an A&S competition and then being told, by one of the judges, "Yeah, this was nice, but 'Fabulous Feasts' can't be trusted. Cosman made up a lot of what's in the book." Or discovering that your primary source was a "re-interpretation" of a translation that had little or nothing to do with the source material. Or that the book you are referencing is historical fiction. So, how can we tell what's good and what's bad?
The basic answer is a Catch-22 situation: the more you know, the easier it is to determine what's good and what's bad. It sounds like a trite answer, but it is true. If you know nothing about the life of England's Henry II other than what you watched in "The Lion in Winter" then you will be ill prepared to know the details about how he reformed England's legal system or how he managed taxes between his English and French subjects. Learning more about your subject matter will help. Try not to think about history as a timeline, where one thing happened before or after another thing. Think of history as an interconnected pattern, where things, events, people, facts, tie into one another. As you learn a given time period and place, your pattern will grow and soon you will see that new information will either slot into your mental pattern or stand out in sharp contrast. Whether Henry V used breech-loading cannon is a subject of debate; whether he used cannon at the Battle of Agincourt is not. We have sufficient evidence that no artillery was used at Agincourt, but there is some disagreement, among experts, as to what type of artillery was used against Harfleur as the only surviving cannon claimed to have been used, there, has dodgy providence. But any books or blog posts that mention mortar fire at Agincourt just don't fit into our pattern of knowledge about that battle.
The more you learn, the more robust your pattern of understanding becomes. As your pattern becomes more robust it will be easier to identify wrong or misleading information. Let us take, as an example, Robin Hood. Let us say that we are trying to find out if the Robin Hood of legend was based on a real person. Most people have a mental image of Robin Hood from the Errol Flynn movie (or the Disney version; we don't judge). Green tights and a longbow, fighting the evil Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. But if we have a good understanding of the reign of Richard I, then the most well known version of the Robin Hood story just doesn't fit into our pattern of understanding. While Richard was out on crusade and in prison, John was not allowed to step foot in England by orders of his mum, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Sir William Marshal. So, no Prince John holding court. Unpopular taxes oppressing the peasants? Well Richard's ransom was 150,000 Marks, or around 33 metric tonnes of silver, which was mostly paid for by the clergy, churches, and major land holders in England and in Richard's possessions in France. One quarter of their property's value was taxed. Scutage taxes were also increased: scutage was money offered to avoid military service. So, the bottom rungs of the Plantagenet empire might have had their taxes raised by their local lords, the bulk of the money came from rich landowners.
Green tights and leather jerkins? At the end of the 12th Century? No; tunics, breas and chauses. Friar Tuck? The first friar didn't reach England until 1220, four years after King John died. Maid Marion didn't appear in the stories until the end of the 13th Century with "Le Jeu de Robin et Marion" which was written in France. Longbows? In the 12th Century? Probably not, but a regional archery competition during the reign of Richard I as depicted in "The Adventures of Robin Hood", no. In fact, "A Gest of Robyn Hode", written sometime in the 15th Century, is set during the reign of Edward I when the English Longbow cult was in full swing. Aspects of "A Gest of Robyn Hode" form the basis of the modern, movie legend of Robin Hood, just changed from late 13th Century Barnsdale Forest to late 12th Century Sherwood Forest. No, the more we look into the oldest stories of Robin Hood the more we see that the Victorians and early Hollywood recast the stories to the reign of Richard I, probably because more people knew about Good Richard the Lionhearted and Bad John Lackland. On an unrelated note; every movie, cartoon, or TV show that set Robin Hood at any time other than the reigns of Richard and John was a financial disaster.
Which leads me to my next point: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. There are kooky conspiracy theories about many aspects of the middle ages; some even involve ancient aliens. Just search the interwebs for UFOs in medieval and renaissance paintings. But not all conspiracy theories are that far out there. There are plenty of them that are more down to Earth, but are perpetuated over and over again until they gain a life of their own. These include such myths that barely anyone could read or write in the middle ages. That everyone was always filthy. That "samurai" swords could cut through anything. That the ancient Greeks couldn't see the color blue. That people used spices to cover up the taste of rotten meat. That no one ever bathed. And, one of my favorites, that knights had to be hoisted into their saddles because their armor was so heavy. Most people think that Mark Twain was the originator of this myth, as people claim that he included it in his book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court". But no such scene exists in that book describing a knight being lifted onto a horse, although it does appear in the 1945 movie version. It was a popular joke in 19th Century humor, possibly first appearing in a joke article published in "Punch" magazine in 1844. Then appearing in E.B. White's "The Once and Future King" and in picture books of "Don Quixote". It was a cartoon trope for years before movies, TV shows, and animated cartoons started using it. Such a device might have existed at the end of the 16th Century to assist jousters to mount their horses while wearing heavily reinforced jousting armor, designed without articulation to withstand heavy lance contact. Such armor was not used outside of particular jousting tournaments, but there is public perception that that type of armor was the norm rather than the exception.
When examining a fact, we should be judging its weight. Not weight as in how much mass an object has, but weight of evidence. Where is the information coming from, who is the provider? When was this evidence provided and when did it first appear? What collaboration do we have with other evidence? If we can only date a piece of evidence to, say, the last ten years, why is that? Was it because a previously unknown manuscript was found in an attic? Was that new forensic techniques were developed? Or was it made up by someone? We know, now, that Richard III had scoliosis because his skeleton was only just found a few years ago. There are little to no contemporaneous accounts of this and one of the earliest mention of any spinal abnormalities is with Shakespeare's "Richard III", which might have been included as an obvious physical disqualification of the last Plantagenet king and pro-Tudor ass-kissing. Certainly, people close to Richard would have seen him undressed and would have noticed the curve in his spine, but I was only able to find one reliable source describing the curved back during Richard's life and during the reign of Henry VII. In 1491, six years after Richard's death, a York resident named John Payntour was accused of having referred to Richard as "a hypocrite, a crook and a crook back" during the course of a fist fight, although some sources use the word "crouch back". I have been unable to track down a scan of the actual court record to see what word was used.
That being said, the scientific evidence of the skeletal remains is rock solid and the physical descriptions of Richard, during his lifetime, are very weighty pieces of evidence. The statement that Richard was a hermaphrodite has zero weight, as it stems from a misinterpretation of a Polish description of Richard by Sir Niclas von Popplau, who wrote that Richard was "three fingers taller than I, but a bit slimmer and not as thickset as I am, and much more lightly built; he has quite slender arms and thighs, and also a great heart". Also, Richard was almost a full foot shorter than his brother, Edward. Somehow this turned into "evidence" that Richard was a hermaphrodite during the 19th Century, and was brought back up when someone described Richard's recently discovered bones as "slim and woman-like". There was also a recent novel written about this "fact" as well as a Magna in Japan.
That Christopher Columbus set sail on his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492 is of such weight that other events orbit around it: there is so much corroborating evidence that no one can propose a different year without looking foolish (or using a completely different calendar). That Columbus took with him a talking parrot named Miguel has zero weight: There is no contemporaneous evidence that he owned any kind of bird before he became rich and famous and the first appearance of Miguel the talking parrot was in a cartoon from the 1970s. The belief that Columbus was the only person who thought that the world was round is nuanced and will require its own article (which you can read here: https://aethelmearcgazette.com/2024/01/14/ask-another-laurel-its-flat-like-a-pizza/)
But mostly bad information is more grounded than aliens and involves bad translations, misunderstandings, and a desire to only see the past from a single view point. There is also the inertia of the little white lie. It is easier to teach kids that the middle ages were divided up into three groups of people: peasants, knights, and priests. In reality, there was so much more nuance in one's position in society. Knighthood wasn't universally inherited across all of Europe, not everyone who studied for priesthood became a priest, and peasant is a generic word to describe a multitude of legal statuses of people not of nobility. But, it's easier to say peasant than to explain the difference between a freeman, a villien, bondsman, and a serf. Language changes over the centuries, and some people tend to use modern definitions in period texts without knowing or acknowledging that the meaning of a particular word has changed. A calculator was once a person whose job was to add up numbers: literally paid to do calculations. Now, a calculator is a mechanical, electronic or software based device to do those calculations. 'Nice' used to mean silly or foolish. 'Bully' used to mean sweetheart. 'Artificial" used to mean something artistic. 'Apology' used to mean a formal defense against an accusation, usually one of heresy. And so on, and on.
Misinterpretation of the original meaning of words is a constant source of bad history. As is the lack of understanding of how much money is worth. Take for example what most Americans are taught in grade school about the early colonies: "Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24 of beads." Or, to quote an old Broadway song, "Old Peter Minuit had nothing to lose when he bought the isle of Manhattan / For twenty-six dollars and a bottle of booze, and they threw in the Bronx and Staten / Pete thought he had the best of the bargain, but the poor red man just grinned / And he grunted 'ugh!' for he knew poor Pete was skinned." What actually happened was that Peter Minnewit purchased around 2000 acres of Manhattan island for the Dutch West India Company from the Lenape people. In exchange for leaving the area, the Lenape would receive 60 guilders of trade goods. The conversion of 60 guilders to 24 dollars was made in 1844 by a New York journalist. A guilder in 1626 was a gold coin massing around 2.5 grams. 60 guilders was then around 150 grams or around 1/3 of a pound of gold: About $11,000 is today's money. According to the International Institute of Social History's Historical Prices and Wages Dataset, "314 guilders in the year 1660 was equivalent to 1.1 yearly wages of an unskilled worker [living in Amsterdam]. This roughly corresponds to 29,927 USD today [2013]." There is no surviving record of what kind of trade goods were provided, but it could have included steel knives and axes, food, alcohol, wool blankets, possibly horses or donkeys. Without this information, the "$24 of beads" statement reeks of racism: "Them indians sure were stupid to sell Manhattan for beads." And the depictions of this trade done on stage and screen, over the decades, tended to hype up this stereotype.
Finally, at least for this article, let us discuss repetition. Generally speaking, anytime you see the same sentence copied and pasted into multiple books, blogs and articles, with little to no citation or context you can be sure that it is wrong. I'm not talking about confirmable facts, I'm talking about vague statements that are presented to keep the reader from easily verifying the statement. It is one thing to not cite one's exact sources in a causal paper designed for quick and easy reading, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you are going to be quoting someone, or providing extraordinary information, you should do more than "one 16th Century source says bla bla bla." We need to provide some bread crumbs to help future researchers. If I wrote a paper about Celtic warriors and I said that Julius Caesar wrote that once a Gualish warrior made his first kill he was allowed to get a tramp stamp, then it would be up to me to put down my exact source. Without providing any way for my readers to do further research, I might as well cite Book 12 of "Things I Pulled Out of My Posterior."
In my years of research I have noticed that almost every topic I dig into returns some vague statement repeated over and over that drowns out any usable information as it floods search engines. They mostly follow the same format: a very specific fact, such as a date, followed by a vague factoid lacking in any detail that can be used to find out where it came from. I have seen it in researching ancient chemical warfare, with celtic warriors, with medieval omelets, with knight schools, with the spice trade, with cathedral construction, with the history of movable type. I have seen it in books and blog posts and magazine articles and YouTube videos and even in peer reviewed academic papers.
In the vague history of the Christmas tree, the following line can be found in both English and German in various references: "Now, the tree was moved into the guildhall. In 1579 we read in a chronicle from Bremen how a small tree decorated with “apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers” was erected in the guild-house for the benefit of the children of the guild members." After much searching I tracked down the origin of this line. This comes from p107 of the 1978 book "Das Weihnachtsfest. Eine Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte der Weihnachtszeit " [Christmas: A cultural and social history of Christmastide]. Unfortunately, the book does not say where this information comes from or even which guild hall. Bremen had seven different guilds with large guild halls in the 16th Century. The fact that the same sentence is copied and pasted without any further information, or any citation, is a red flag that the information is false.
In my research of table forks, I found that the following line shows up verbatim in books dating back to the late 19th Century, “Heylin in his “Cosmograph,” 1662, says: ‘The use of silver forks, which is by some of our spruce gallants taken up of late, came from China into Italy, and thence into England.’” I have recently found this exact sentence used in magazine and newspaper articles published within the last year. But, what is the complete context and where does it come from, exactly? This Heylin person, whoever he was, must have had strong evidence showing that forks come from China, right? Unfortunately not only is the statement wrong, but it is presented in a way to keep the reader from finding the original source. Fortunately, we live in the Age of the Internet and I can read books from anywhere from the comfort of my own home.
First of all, it does not come from “Cosmograph”. It actually comes from Peter Heylyn's "Cosmographie in Foure Books", published in 1666. The line is from Heylyn's section describing the people of China (page 182): "They are much given unto their bellies, and eat thrice a day, but then not immoderately: drink their drink hot, and eat their meat with two sticks of Ivory, Ebony, or the like, not touching their meat with their hands at all, and therefore no great foulers of Linnen. The use of Silver Forks with use by some of our spruce Gallants taken up of late, came from hence into Italy, and from hence into England. Their Marriages they celebrate most...." The book contains no further mentions of table forks, only forks in reference to rivers, heraldry, and ancient artwork. So, by hiding the exact source, and the exact page of that source, many people hide the fact that their source provides no information as to what proof backs up the claim that chop sticks somehow turned into table forks via Italy. Or, far more likely, the writer is showing off that they are too lazy to do any actual research and couldn't be bothered to do more than CTRL+C and CTRL+V.
I have read literally a hundred books, blogs, and articles stating "no one in the middle ages ate with a table fork except for Piers Galveston who owned two for the eating of green ginger." Or pears, depending on the source. None of the books, blogs, or articles provide any context as to who Piers Galveston was and why, if he was the only person in medieval Europe to own a table fork, isn't he credited with being the inventor of the fork. Piers actually owned more than two forks. Not only do we have a record that Piers bought two gilded forks for eating green ginger (candied ginger in a sweet, sticky sauce) and gave one of them to his BFF Edward II, but that in 1312, when he was arrested for treason, his baggage was inventoried and found to contain “three silver forks, for eating pears (trois furchestes dargent pur mangier poires)”
In researching the history of pretzels, I kept seeing the following line, "There is a story that in 1652 a settler named Jochem Becker was arrested for using good flour to make pretzels to sell to the Indians at a time when his white neighbors were eating bran flour." This exact sentence without any context, copied and pasted over and over. After some research, I found the court records regarding Jochem and it is a perfect example of sloppy research and lazy writing. Jochem was a baker in 17th century Beverwyck, which is near modern day Albany, NY. He was in court in 1652. And 1653. And 1654. And 1655. But his appearances do not appear to have anything to do with pretzels. No. He was called into court multiple times as both a witness for allegations against other people and for himself being rude, insulting, violent, as well as a cheat: He owed numerous people money or goods, and there is even a record that he tried to take possession of someone else's house, i.e.: grand theft abode. What does Jochem have to do with pretzels? Well, he was a baker, and in the same court records we find: "Ordinary Session, Tuesday, March 4, 1653. A petition was read from the respective bakers in Beverwyck, requesting mitigation of the ordinance concerning the baking of white bread, pretzel and cookies to be sold to the Indians. Resolved to refer the petitioners to the ordinance."
The following year the magistrates of the court wrote to their superiors that "the petitioners find and have daily experienced that the bakers do not act in good faith in the matter of baking bread for the burghers, but bolt the flour from the meal and sell it greatly to their profit to the savages for the baking of sweet cake, whit bread, cookies and pretzels, so that the burghers must buy and get largely bran for their money, and even then the bread is frequently found to be short of weight...."
Again, a perfect example of lazy research. Jochem's name was mentioned in court records that were on the same page as a mention of pretzels, but Jochem was not mentioned in relation to pretzels. Although, I imagine that he was one of the bakers who did short change the locals. Jochem was listed in the court records about 40 times over the course of a decade for being a violent, drunken madman who, among other crimes, shot someone's dog in 1654. The two court mentions of pretzels were easy enough to read, there was no reason to mention Jochem at all, if any of these authors did a few minutes of research instead of parroting the same out of context and erroneous sentence. On an unrelated note, someone should make a movie of someone hunting down Jochem as revenge for killing his dog. We could call it "John Beverwyck."
What can we do in regard to this epidemic of repeated misinformation? Well, in this age of blogs, we can take comfort in the thought that our works can reach a global audience if our publication gets picked up by a search engine. When we post our research, either on Wordpress, Blogspot, Academia, or whatever site we use to post our research projects, we should list the offending sentence so that other researchers might find our work while tracking down more information about that sentence. Once they find our work, we can include actual facts and citations. If anyone is searching for more information about Jochem Becker, they might find my blog post, which includes detailed information about Jochem, the two records relating to pretzels, and a link to the actual court records.
It is up to us, the amateur researchers, to break the cycle of crap information. If we spend the time trying to find more information related to one of these vague statements, we should use our results and findings to help the next group of researchers. If we find a manuscript image, or a period source that dispels the copy/pasted falsehood then it is our obligation to provide what we find to anyone who is seeking knowledge. Not to be melodramatic, but if we are going to complain that it is next to impossible to find good information because everyone and their pet dog can post anything they want online then we should do our best to provide good information, facts, and citations to counteract the nonsense. Hording knowledge is one of the cardinal sins of a researcher, if we discover information to counteract the misinformation, we owe it to the world, as well as ourselves, to shine a light on the truth.
