The statue of Our Lady venerated at the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery in mountains near Barcelona, Spain.
On 25 March 1522 a young soldier hung up his sword in front of a small statue. He crossed himself and looked at the dark features of a crowned woman and the child seated upon her knee, hand raised in benediction. Then he turned and limped away, his leg still weak from the cannonball that had wrecked it. He would wage war no more. The man was Ignatius of Loyola and he would go on to found the Jesuits. The statue was the Black Virgin of Montserrat, and she would go on to greet pilgrims by the million.
Black Madonnas – that is pictures or statues of Mary that depict her with dark skin – are widespread through the Catholic world and often come with a reputation for working miracles. Theories as to why Mary should be represented thus vary from the spurious (they’re really depictions of Isis and Horus) to the practical (centuries of candle smoke have stained them) but whatever the reason they always seem to evoke popular devotion.
La Moreneta, or ‘Little Dark One’ as the Virgin of Montserrat is usually called, is no exception. Pious enthusiasm dates the statue to St Luke in the first century, po-faced scepticism to the 12th. Whichever is true – and there is also evidence for the statue having been hidden from the Moors and then rediscovered in the ninth century – what is certain is how quickly the statue became a major centre of pilgrimage from the 12th century onwards. This was no doubt helped by the identification of the mountain as the site of the Holy Grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval romance Parsifal. But what really swung it was the miracles. And it certainly didn’t hurt that King Alfonse X ascribed miracles to Our Lady of Montserrat in his canticles, songs composed in honour of the Blessed Virgin that are still sung. For when all is said and done, one can gauge the popularity of shrines by their results: those that produce get the pilgrims, those that don’t fade into obscurity. By these standards the Little Dark One must still be doing the business: even today more than two million people visit each year.
Emma of Normandy (c.985 – 6 March 1052). Queen of England, Norway and Denmark.
In 1002, Emma, the daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, married Æthelred, soon to be known as the Unready. As queen of England, Emma produced two sons, Edward and Alfred. But when Æthelred fled the country in the face of Swein Forkbeard’s Viking invasion, Emma left too, taking her sons with her. But, in a telling commentary on her marriage, the queen made her own way to Normandy.
When Æthelred died, Edmund Ironside, his son from his first marriage, led the fight against a new Viking invasion led by Cnut, the son of Swein Forkbeard. But when Edmund died, leaving the crown to Cnut by default, the Dane nevertheless needed to shore up the legitimacy of his claim to the throne. What better way to do that than by marrying the queen?
So Emma married the son of the man who had deposed her own first husband. Even then, it was a tale that required a little spinning, and Emma made sure it would be spun in her favour.
Emma commissioned a monk to write her version of these events; by her telling, Cnut wooed her back to England and into marriage with gifts and promises. Given the political nature of such a match, Emma may not have had much of a choice in the matter. But power mattered to the queen and she was willing to make sacrifices to get and keep power: in this case, the children of her first marriage, Edward and Alfred.
Emma left the two boys behind in Normandy while she set about producing a new heir to the throne with Cnut. According to her book, the political marriage became a true partnership and contemporary records bear this out: Emma had far higher status as Cnut’s queen than she had ever enjoyed as Æthelred’s wife.
When Cnut died in 1035, the succession seemed clear: surely it would go to Harthacnut, his son with Emma. But Cnut had produced another son, Harold Harefoot, with his first wife and Harold Harefoot was on hand to claim the throne of England.
Harthacnut on the other hand, was abroad, trying to defend his claims to Norway and Denmark. Emma’s struggle on her son’s behalf was helped by Earl Godwin, an Englishman whom Cnut had raised to one of the highest ranks in the land. However, Harthacnut did not return to claim the throne and, fed up with trying to keep the throne warm for a disinterested prince, Earl Godwin defected to Harold Harefoot’s side.
At this point, Emma remembered that she had another two sons, just over the Channel, who also had claims on the throne. Edward tried, but his tentative invasion failed. Then it was Alfred’s turn. Earl Godwin met him, feasted the young prince and his followers, put them up for the night and then set upon them: Alfred’s men were variously sold into slavery, murdered, mutilated, blinded and scalped. Alfred himself was not killed but his eyes were put out, wounds from which he failed to recover.
With Earl Godwin on his side, Harold Harefoot became undisputed king and Emma went into exile again, seeking refuge not in Normandy – where presumably Edward might have had some pointed questions about his mother’s recent conduct – but in Flanders. Ever the survivor, Emma swiftly returned to favour when Harold Harefoot died and Harthacnut took belated control of England in 1040. Having reacquainted herself with Edward, Emma worked for his return to England in 1041. And return he did but, remarkably, he returned to act as co-king alongside his half brother, with Emma the third person of a ruling trinity. This arrangement was likely made to shore up Harthacnut’s increasingly unpopular reign.
Harthacnut died in 1042 and shortly afterwards Edward moved against his mother, appearing unexpectedly at her power base in Winchester and depriving Emma of her treasures. Edward, for one, had not forgotten what had happened to his younger brother, nor the way Emma had abandoned him in Normandy. Although Emma was allowed to retain her base in Winchester and Edward accepted her back into his court, her power had been broken.
Besides, there was another power behind Edward’s throne: Earl Godwin and his family. Despite Godwin’s role in his brother’s death, Edward married the earl’s daughter. From Winchester, Emma, that consummate player of the political game, must have thought the future set: a grandson of Earl Godwin would, in time, take the throne. But it did not work out like that.
Emma did not live to see the final tragic playing out of the events set in motion by her marriages to Æthelred and Cnut. She died in 1052, the wife and mother of kings, and one of the most fascinating women of her age.
King Æthelred the Unready (c.968 – 23 April 1016). Reigned 978-1013/1014 – 1016
‘The Unready’ nickname comes from the Old English, Unræd, and means not that he was unprepared but that he was ill-advised. It is a play on his Christian name, which means ‘noble counsel’. The people of England always preferred to place the blame for the calamities that befell them through Æthelred’s long reign on the men around the king rather than the king himself. Æthelred, ever one to pass the buck, was likely all too happy to allow his councillors to take the blame. He even managed to escape the blame for how he came to the throne in the first place.
On the death of his father, Edgar the Peaceful, in 975, Æthelred’s elder half brother, Edward, took the throne. Edward reigned for three years until he made the mistake of going to visit Æthelred, his half brother, and his step mother, Queen Ælfthryth, at Corfe Castle, their stronghold in Dorset. When Edward arrived, he was greeted respectfully by Æthelred’s men but then, before the king could dismount, they grabbed his arms, immobilising him, and stabbed Edward to death.
Æthelred was only ten, so he was not held responsible for Edward’s murder. With no other princes available, Æthelred became king, ruling first with the support of a council of leading men and his formidable mother.
The early years of Æthelred’s reign saw considerable reform and, indeed, if left in peace he might have gone down in history as a good king save for the circumstances of his taking the throne. But Æthelred was not to be left in peace.
After a hundred years of peace, the Vikings were back.
A major Viking fleet appeared in 991 and defeated an English army near Maldon. Showing that the English, even then, liked nothing better than glorifying a valiant defeat, the battle was commemorated in the Old English poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’, which tells how the liege men of Byrhtnoth decided to fight to the death alongside their fallen lord rather than flee the fight.
One defeat was enough. Æthelred paid off the Vikings. This first time, the cost of peace was 10,000 pounds. The Danes took the money and then returned for more next year and the year after. Second time round, the cost had risen to 22,000 pounds of gold and silver. The third time, it was 24,000 pounds. The fourth, 36,000 pounds. The fifth, 48,000 poounds.
Æthelred had inherited the most efficient tax-gathering government in Europe, and he set about milking the realm to pay off the Danes. But where others before him had paid Viking fleets to buy time, Æthelred and his advisers appeared to have no other strategy: Æthelred never once faced the Vikings in battle.
What he did do was enter an alliance with Duke Richard of Normandy to try to deny Viking fleets safe harbour across the Channel: to cement the alliance, the recently widowed Æthelred married the duke’s sister, Emma, starting the relationship with Normandy that would play out, two generations later, in the second conquest of England.
It was the second conquest, because by 1013, the English were a thoroughly demoralized people, ripe for invasion, and King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark duly obliged. Æthelred fled into exile. But then, on 3 February 1014, Swein Forkbeard, with the country beneath his whiskers, died of natural causes.
Æthelred returned, promising to rule better, but the murder of two earls by his favoured councilor, Eadric Streona, showed that nothing had changed. Swein’s son, Cnut, returned at the head of a new invasion fleet and Æthelred finally did something for his country: he died, leaving his son, Edmund Ironside to lead the fight against Cnut.
The son of Earl Godwin, Harold was the most powerful man in the land after his father’s death – more powerful than King Edward. While his sister was married to the king, Harold himself had no direct claim on the throne. Nevertheless, he claimed it when Edward died, there being no one in England powerful enough to oppose him. But, across the Channel, Duke William believed that Edward, who had grown up in Normandy, had promised the crown to him. Their rival claims would be settled on the most famous date in English history.
Edward grew up in exile in Normandy. Returning as king without a local power base, Edward needed help from Earl Godwin, the most powerful man in the land. In return, Godwin had his daughter marry Edward – despite Godwin’s part in the death of Edward’s brother, Alfred. In 1051, Edward expelled Godwin and his sons, and put his queen in a convent, but the Godwins returned next year with an army, forcing their reacceptance. The childless Edward made no public proclamation of who he wanted as heir, leaving the throne to be contested when he died in 1066, thus setting in motion the conflagration that would consume the House of Godwin later that year. It’s hard not to see it as Edward’s belated revenge upon a family that he hated but could not dispense with.
Eadwig caught in flagrante delicto by an unamused Abbot Dunstan.
Eadwig (c.940 – 959) famously excused himself from the banquet following his own coronation to exercise himself with a noblewoman – and her daughter. Abbot Dunstan was sent to bring Eadwig back and, apparently, had to use force to get the king from the women’s bed. The relationship between the king and the reforming abbot did not improve thereafter.
He wasn’t. But, during his reign, England was. So great was his mastery over the British Isles that Edgar summoned the kings of the realms surrounding England to his consecration and, taking the helm of a boat, had the royal oarsmen row him down the River Dee and back again. Edgar lived from c.944 to 8 July 975, ascending to the the throne on 1 October 959 when he was only 15 after his brother, Eadwig, died.
Edward the Elder as played by Timothy Innes in The Last Kingdom.
Edward (c.874 – 924) was the eldest son of Alfred the Great. As a young man, he helped Alfred defeat the final Viking invasion of his father’s reign and then, as king, he reconquered the Danelaw, with the help of his formidable sister, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. The Last Kingdom TV series portrays him as callow and foolish. In reality, he was a formidable and determined ruler.
The swordsmith Masamune forging a katana with his assitant.
The katana, a single-edged, curved blade, was the legendary sword of the samurai of Japan. Extraordinary legends have been attached to these blades, from the blood thirst of the Muramasa swords to the holy sword of Masamune, which would only harm that which was evil.
As the pattern-welded blade was rising to prominence and then being replaced by mass produced, inferior blades in Europe, a similar technology was rising in Japan. The technology was startlingly similar, yet very different. The tatara, a form of industrial smelting, was used to extract tamahagane steel and iron from the iron sands that are the main ore source in Japan.
Tamahagane is high quality steel, but the carbon content is variable. The bladesmith separated the steel into highest and lower carbon. The low carbon steel (shingane) was forged into a core and the higher carbon steel was forged into layers which were then sandwiched together around this forged core into a blade shape. The outer blade could be folded many times to form a laminated sword in which the impurities were spread evenly throughout the blade, much like in pattern-welded swords.
Between each forging the blade was coated in clay mixed with ash. This helped to draw out impurities from the steel as it was heated and burned off in the intense heat of the forge.
The skill in forging a katana lay in making certain that the soft core and laminated outer skin were correctly aligned and positioned in the finished blade. Like a pattern-welded blade this skill took a life time to master.
The katana was not heat treated in the same way as a European sword. The softness of the back of the blade was maintained by coating it in a thick layer of clay. The clay was thinned towards the blade edge. This kept the high heat that hardened the blade confined to the cutting edge, thus allowing the other parts of the blade to remain soft and springy.
Using clay could produce a blade without tempering, but usually a light temper was needed to reduce brittleness. The clay also created a beautiful wavy line down the blade (hamon). A perfect hamon was (and is) a sign of an excellent blade and acted as a mark of quality.
The forged blade was passed to the polisher who cleaned and polished the blades using decreasingly abrasive water stones. This polishing could take weeks and is itself a fine art.
The finished blade was then sent for a finely decorated handle and scabbard.
The finest Japanese swords were made by a group of skilled craftsmen. The bladesmith was a Master and directed a group of apprentices. The Master did little of the heavy work, but directed exactly. Often, he would tap the metal with a light hammer and the weight and location of the strike was duplicated by an apprentice with a larger hammer.
The master was there for his skill not his strength. Japanese Master bladesmiths achiveed mythological status and there are many folk tales that describe smiths meeting each other and holding a forging competition. For instance, Muramasa was supposed to have challenged Masamune to see who could make the better sword. Blades made, the two masters hung their swords in a stream. Muramasa’s sword sliced everything: fish, leaves, the air itself. But Masamune’s blade touched nothing. Thinking he had won, Muramasa jibed his master, until a watching monk explained that, while the first sword cut everything, the second, Masamune’s blade, was superior, since it discriminated, leaving untouched that which did not deserve to be harmed. Sadly, this wonderful tale is apocryphal: Muramasa and Masamune were separated by generations and never met.
The single most important aspect of a good sword was the material it was made from. It needed to be light and strong, flexible but not brittle, and capable of achieving a sharp edge and point.
Iron is soft and will not hold an edge well. Steel can be sharpened and will hold an edge, but the increase in hardness makes it much more brittle. The ideal trade off was a weapon that has a flexible iron core and a sharp steel edge welded on.
Step 2: Forging
The best swords are fusions of iron and steel and the only way to successfully put the two together is to forge them. The superheating of the metals creates thousands of tiny welds that unite them. An added bonus of forging is that any impurities in the metal are spread evenly around the blade, reducing the chances of failure through stress. This can cause the blade to bend or even snap – not good in the midst of battle. Bars of good grade iron were twisted in a regular pattern. This working further disaggregated any impurities. The bars were welded together to make a solid core and the steel edge was then welded on.
A channel was opened around the edge of the core and the steel was welded into this. Closing the channel locked the steel into place, making a strong bond.
Step 3: Annealing
Iron and steel were hammered into a blade shape and then heated until the metal ceased to be magnetic. This made the metal soft enough to work easily for shaping. It was essential to heat the blade along its entire length to get a uniform finish. The charcoal in the forge needed to be arranged so that the length of the blade was in maximum contact with the flames, to keep all of the blade at the same temperature. The sword had to be cooled very slowly: either the fire was allowed to cool, or the sword was buried in hot sand that retained heat.
Step 4: Grinding
A variety of methods were used to grind a blade, from water powered wheels down to sand on a piece of leather, although hand files, and stone wheels and hones were generally used. The blade was moved through a variety of grinds, the grit gradually getting finer until the desired shape was achieved.
The main point of grinding was to remove the material that could not be easily removed by forging.
The fuller was also finished at this stage, having been forged in earlier. A fuller is often described as a blood groove and is said to allow a sword to be pulled out easily, but this is not true. The fuller lightened the blade and increased its strength.
Step 5: Hardening
The sword was reheated to a dull orange, until non magnetic. It was essential not to overheat the point and edge as carbon can easily burn out of the steel. Knowing his forge was essential for the swordsmith.
The sword was then quenched in water. A thermal jacket formed around the blade from the steam, so movement was essential to allow for a better quench. This process aligned the crystalline structure in the iron and steel and promoted grain growth.
Step 6: Tempering
The blade was brittle after hardening, so it had to be reheated precisely. This was done using colour. Heated metal glows different colours depending on its temperature. For tempering, the swordsmith heated the blade until the edge was a straw colour and the centre, where more metal was, a deep purple. The blade was then allowed to cool slowly, thus allowing some flex back into the blade to ensure it did not snap in use.
Step 7: Completion
The blade was forged, but it looked a sorry state: dirty and blackened, so it had to be cleaned thoroughly. Abrasives were used to scour away the forge detritus. The blade was polished slowly, using gradually less coarse media. After a final sharpen, the blade was etched in a caustic medium to highlight the contrast between iron bands and steel. This created the patterning that pattern-welded sword are famous for.
The hilt of a fine sword was always on display, so jewelled, precious metal hilts with prestige materials such as exotic wood or ivory were used. The hilt was composite and the pommel and guards were adjusted to balance the blade for its owner. The scabbard was similarly made of fine wood, bound in leather and lined with sheepskin. The lanolin in the lining helped maintain the blade.
