Stuck in the Middle Ages With You
by Esmerelda Weatherwax (May 2011)
I understand why people call Islam mediaeval. It has not moved from a brutal period of ancient history in a brutal place and culture. It is old fashioned, primitive, unreasoning. The very opposite of modern and progressive. But the opposite of modern is not the Middle Ages.
As well as jury trial this was also the period which gave the world Habeas Corpus, the legal writ which is still in existence which demands that the body (in the beginning not necessarily alive) be produced of anybody imprisoned without due and proper legal reason. Add that to Magna Carta and what has Islam got to compare?
I have been consulting my student copy of Potters Historical Introduction to English Law and its Institutions. I am unable to resist quoting from an even more ancient student reference work.
Whan Cnut Cyng the Witan wold enfeoff
Of infangthief and outfangthief
Wonderlich were they enwraged
And wordwar waged
Sware Cnut great scot and lot
Swinge wold ich this illbegotten lot.
Wroth was Cnut and wrothword spake
Well wold he win at wopantake.
Fain wolde he brake frith and cracke heads
And than they shold worshippe his redes
Swinged Cnut Cyng with swung sword
Howled Witane helle but hearkened his word
Murie sang Cnut Cyng
Outfangthief is Damgudthyng
Mohamed told the woman to return when she had given birth to the child she was carrying. She returned with the baby and was told to wean him and return again. The third time she attended upon Mohammed he ordered his men to stone her to death for her sin.
I now know that she was Rabia of Basra, an 8th century Sufi and that she was not the only female Sufi of her time to speak with wisdom. But do they compare with Julian of Norwich, St Catherine of Siena, Christina of Markyate, St Hildegard of Bingen, St Hilda of Whitby, to name just a few off the top of my head? I would submit that they do not.
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine kept a cultured court. Other Queens like Maud the Empress and Isabella of France commanded armies in battle. The Scottish Lady Agnes Randolph, Countess of Moray, known as Black Agnes, successfully commanded Dunbar castle during the siege by the English. It is said that she dusted the battlements every morning to remove the damage done by the English catapults overnight.
Christine de Pizan was a scholar who supported her three children after her husband died by her writing and poetry. The Wife of Bath and the Prioress of Stratford atte Bow were fictional characters but I am sure they were rooted in reality not fantasy. The Middle Ages produced many capable and notable women whose intellect was in no way deficient, as the Koran insists.
It is sometimes said in response to criticism of Mohammed consummating his marriage to Aisha when he was aged 52 and she was only 9 that in the Middle Ages children were married at an equally young age. It is true that marriage negotiations began early and some children were contracted for dynastic or financial reasons very young. But these contracts were often only tentative while the children were so young. If a better offer came along the match might be re-negotiated. If the fathers of the two children found themselves at war 2 years later the match was definitely off. And these contracts made so young were always between children of roughly equal age.
The fate of the Princes in the Tower, the young King Edward V and his younger brother Prince Richard Duke of York has been a mystery for centuries. They disappeared (aged around 13 and 11 years) within the Tower of London sometime during 1485 while under the protection of their uncle who took the throne as King Richard III. Later that year Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field and historians have pondered ever since which of them murdered the two princes, when and how.
There was a good reason that small girls were married to small boys, leaving aside those few perverted individuals who will sin in any society. Men, be they kings, nobles, rich merchant or prosperous peasant need heirs. They could not afford to wait for a girl to grow up, no matter how rich her dowry. They could afford to wait while their sons grew apace with a likely heiress but for themselves they needed a woman who could bear legitimate children immediately. And in a monogamous society they could only have one wife. Such a wife might be much younger than them, Chaucer wrote of May and December, but a woman grown she had to be.
No manuscript of the Koran comes close to work like the early mediaeval Book of Kells or the later Luttrell Psalter. There is no Muslim equivalent to the Wilton Diptych or the work of Giotto, or the unknown artists who worked in stone, wood, glass and thread. As a side point of interest, the Wilton Diptych is dated 1395 and one of the angels is flying the red cross on white ground of St George.
To comment on this article, please click here.
If you enjoyed this piece and would like to read more by Esmerelda Weatherwax, please click here.
here.
Esmerelda Weatherwax is a regular contributor to the Iconoclast, our community blog. To view her entries please click here.