† “… a sheet of white silk …” The white flag was already the well-established signal of surrender, as it had been since the early anno Domini period. —C.C.
† “‘… exchanged for molten metal …’” Gibbon writes, “In the ancient and early medieval periods, it was not unusual for patients who suffered the kinds of disease under discussion, here, to suffer from the delusion that their blood had become some kind of ‘molten metal,’ absurd though the notion may seem to us.”
† “plainsong” Obviously, in this case, the word is being used in its most basic sense — that is, to describe a simple, unembellished melody, often heard in the countryside — and not to connote the more formalized and elaborate version developed by the Catholic Church; a distinction understood well enough during Gibbon’s time that he felt no need to explain it. —C.C.
‡ Weda The name of Gerolf Gledgesa’s daughter is of obscure origin, having only a surviving male counterpart, one that is associated with “wood,” although in what sense it is difficult to say. It may have been only a matter of pronunciation, for in German dialects of almost any age, it would have been — indeed, today would still be — pronounced “Vay-da,” an unusually pleasant-sounding (if, again, difficult to define) name for girls and women. —C.C.
† “‘… she feels no pain!’” This is, indeed, a common feature of the last stages of the gangrene that results from ergot poisoning, and one of its most pathetic symptoms, as both humans and animals who lack whole limbs attempt to behave as if they still possess them. —C.C.
† “thud” This is another of the words that are often mistakenly considered “modern” and onomatopoeic, but which in fact are medieval in origin; and it is the imagined need, on the part of many writers and translators, to come up with terms more genuinely “old” with an “e” (ye olde) that accounts for much of the stuffiness of modern renderings and/or imitations of what were already, by the eighth century, an athletic set of northern European languages. Indeed, in this case, “thud” is not even thought worthy of comment by Gibbon, familiar as he likely was with Middle English’s thudden and Old English’s thyddan, the parent terms of “thud.” —C.C.
† “‘… if he [Bede] yet lives …’” There is something strangely sad about the fact that Bede (whom, as was noted earlier, Caliphestros knew, from having spent time in Bede’s home, the Monastery of St. Paul near Wearmouth) had almost certainly died by the time that the events described in the Manuscript were taking place. From the many historical, cultural, religious, and scientific references mentioned, it is possible to place those events at circa A.D. 745; whereas “the Venerable Bede,” a man of faith who nevertheless did honest and solid work in the cause of scholarly history (and, it should be said, legend, as well), died some ten years earlier, in 735. Caliphestros evidently had great respect and affection for Bede; and his never learning of his friend’s death seems not only melancholy on its own merits, but a stark underscoring of just how isolated the “sorcerer” had been during his ten years in Davon Wood. —C.C.
† “‘a special beer’” The beverage that we today think of as simple beer could in fact only have started to be made in Europe, at this time, because the turn of the seventh and eighth centuries saw the first domestic cultivation of hops, although most sources say this was for medicinal purposes, and that hops were not used in beer until the eleventh century. Thus, Broken appears to have been ahead of the European world around it yet again; for, while other forms of beer had existed since ancient times, it is the use of such hops (which originally grew wild in the mountains) that gives “modern” beer the capacity — as Keera asserts — to drive young men “mad,” through their undeniably if mildly pseudo-narcotic effect. —C.C.
‡ and †† “woad” and “meadow bells” Woad (Isatis tintoria) is a plant that did indeed produce a popular blue dye (and as a result, is often confused with indigo). But it has recently been learned that, taken as a medicine, woad may contain twenty to thirty times the amount of glucobrassicin (a powerful cancer-preventing agent) that is found in broccoli, the modern vegetable most commonly cited in connection with preventing and fighting cancer. And scoring or bruising the leaves of woad can heighten its powers along these lines many times over (much as scoring opium poppy seed pods intensifies the amount and power of opium produced); thus, Keera’s claim that woad is effective against growths, “especially inside the body,” almost certainly refers to some power to inhibit or shrink tumors. What she calls “meadow bells,” meanwhile (by which informal name modern Germans still know Pulsitilla nigricans) was another herbal wonder drug, used for a long list of purposes and problems, ranging, as Keera says, from menstrual pain to the invigoration of the uterus during pregnancy to, most commonly and importantly, counteracting the causes of what were then simply dismissed as life-threatening “fevers.” It could and can also be used (according to which source one consults) to treat everything from hemorrhoids to tooth- and backaches. Was it a kind of Barbarian Age snake oil? It seems unlikely, since it is still used in various traditional medicines today, with effect; although the complete list of problems it is said to affect is implausible. —C.C.
† “‘Alchemy! … metals to gold … tiny men like vegetables …’” Heldo-Bah speaks of the ancient alchemical “arts,” as they were known by both their practitioners and their detractors: for even the most enlightened of its practitioners did not treat alchemy as a pure science. Like so many areas of learning during the Dark and Middle Ages (and not unlike certain fields of science today), alchemy became more famous — or infamous — for the more extreme and even nonsensical of its practices than it did for its very real, but less dramatic, contributions to science, medicine, and philosophy (and through philosophy, as Carl Jung later explained, to a kind of proto-psychiatry and psychology). Heldo-Bah names two of these more extreme activities, the attempt to turn base metals into gold (the most famous, of course, of alchemical efforts), as well as the peculiar desire of some practitioners to create a miniature human called a “homunculus,” basically by nurturing sperm (in which, it was thought, all of the elements that eventually became a human being resided) in some place other than a woman’s womb. Many but not all alchemists saw the womb as nothing more than a nutrient-rich, protected sack, one that could be imitated, preferably in the Earth, thereby removing what post-tribal medieval thinkers often called the “pernicious influence of the feminine” from the life produced.
What is worth noting about alchemy, for the purposes of understanding the importance of the Broken Manuscript, is that many alchemical undertakings became very valid advances in fields ranging from metallurgy to chemistry to common household applications such as cosmetics, dyes, glasswork, and ceramics. But its most important achievements were those centering on military chemistry: alchemists would eventually discover gunpowder, as well as that most mysterious and elusive weapon of all military history, Greek fire (about which the Broken Manuscript will soon have a great deal to say); and the effort to refine base metals — the pursuit behind the famous “lead into gold” legend — led to the creation of ever-stronger and more sophisticated forms of steel out of “base” iron ore and carbon. —C.C.