The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Indeed, the abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.

The monastery, as it appears in my story set in 1395, was originally built in the 12^th century and included the church and cloister, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, infirmary, cellarium, library, muniment room for storing robes, an inn for poor travellers and pilgrims, and the abbot’s house.  The major buildings are shown in the drawing above, which comes from the Corinium Museum in Cirencester.  The abbey church was originally built in the Norman style but was largely rebuilt in the 14^th century in the Gothic style and included an ambulatory being added around the quire.

The monastery was a community within a town.  Abbey grounds were surrounded by walls which had gates.  The monks slept in the dormitory, ate in the refectory, held meetings in the chapter house, and went into the church to pray and worship, all buildings within steps of each other facilitated by the cloister which connected them.

The Rule of Augustine was based on charity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the mutual duties of superiors and inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence, and reading during meals.  The physical layout of the monastery and its buildings were designed to facilitate the monks’ lifestyle based on the Rule.

Between twenty and forty monks, as well as lay-servants and lay-brothers, with the abbot in charge made up the population of the abbey.  Frequently the abbot was called away to the royal court, and this was the case at the time of my novel.  About that time, the Abbot of Cirencester was upgraded to being a mitred abbot which put him on a par with bishops.  His deputy who was in charge in the abbot’s absence was the prior, and my fictitious prior is a main character in my novel.

Individual monks oversaw various functions of abbey life.  The infirmarer oversaw the infirmary, the abbey’s version of a hospital or sick bay.  The cellarer was the monk in charge of provisions.  Keys are often associated with a cellarer because he needed access to the various storage facilities in the monastery as well as farms owned by the abbey.  The kitchener worked under the cellarer and managed the kitchen.  A chamberlain looked after day-to-day essentials of the monks.

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, set in 1395.  Historically the abbey played a major role in the town of Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.  Cirencester Abbey was founded by King Henry I in the early 12^th century and became the largest and wealthiest of the Augustinian abbeys in England.

The abbey church replaced a minster church which had been founded in the 9^th or 10^th centuries.  The new abbey church and monastery were started in 1117.  Serlo was named abbot and the Augustinian monks took possession in 1131.  The church building was not finished until 1176 when it was consecrated.

Under King Henry II, the manor or feudal lordship of Cirencester was transferred from the Crown to the abbey in 1189.  This gave the abbot considerable power over his manorial tenants in the town.  All townspeople had to do three days’ work a year in making the abbot’s hay and harvesting his grain.  Some tenants had to work a day a week on the abbot’s lands.  Others had to work specific periods on the abbey farms.  Tenants’ own grain had to be ground in the abbot’s mills which meant that the abbey and their millers benefited financially.

The abbot controlled the town market and owned considerable property around the marketplace.  Tenants could only buy and sell at the weekly markets provided they paid a tax to the abbot.  The abbey also controlled the parish church of which the abbot was rector.  Tenants found that they continually owed money to the abbot in matters of inheritance, death, and marriage.

In opposition to the extraordinary abbey control, the citizens or burgesses of Cirencester claimed that they had certain rights dating back to a royal charter they had been granted in 1133.  Every time they challenged the power of the abbey over town matters, the king ruled in favour of the abbey because the abbey declared that the town’s charter was a forgery. 

This constant frustration on the part of the burgesses went on for centuries, well beyond 1395 when my novel was set, so the domination of the abbey over the town and the tension it caused with the townspeople became an important element of my story.  I have set many scenes of my novel in and around the abbey grounds and have woven angry interactions between monks and townspeople into the story.

The picture at the top shows the Spital or Norman Gate to the abbey grounds.  This one gate and some of the abbey wall are the only structures above ground which have survived from the medieval abbey to the present day.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84

Cirencester is the setting for Templar’s Prophecy, the 4^th novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  As I discussed in my last posting, the Saxon village within the surviving Roman walls began with a handful but had grown to 350 people by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086.  Thereafter, the population grew more rapidly during the medieval period into an important wool town, possibly reaching 2500, though this was reduced by the appearance of the plague in the 14^th century.  In any event, the town was much smaller than Roman Corinium had been.  The medieval population lived only in the northern portion of what had been the Roman town and included homes for various classes: nobility, clergy, merchants, and peasants.

Cirencester is the largest of the towns in the Cotswolds which tourists love to visit today.  Cotswold wool was prized throughout Europe in medieval times, and Cirencester became important in the woollen trade by the 13^th and 14^th centuries, bringing European wool merchants to the town.  The woollen trade also introduced banking to its medieval economy, as shown above. The drawing portrays late 14^th century bankers handling accounts for merchants.

In Cirencester, wool was woven as well as fulled or cleaned and thickened before being dyed.  Dyer Street, where my heroine, Lady Apollonia, lives had been renamed Dyer in the middle of the 13^th century from Cheaping Street in recognition of this aspect of the wool business.  It is the wool trade which brought Apollonia to Cirencester after the death of her third husband.

Besides being an important centre for the medieval wool trade, Cirencester also served as a more general market town for the region.  Its Marketplace at the end of Dyer Street dealt in horses, cattle, goats, bean and pea meal, cheese, butter, fish, salt, alum, iron, lead, tin, brass, linen, and silk.  A charter had been granted to the town in 1086 to run a Sunday market, but in 1189 King Richard I sold his manor to Cirencester Abbey for 100 pounds’ sterling and changed the market to a Monday and Friday operation run by the abbey.

A minster church, founded in the 8^th or 9^th century, became the Augustinian abbey which plays a prominent role in my story, set in 1395.  For now, it must be said that the abbey had come to literally dominate the town after 1189.  King Richard’s actions in behalf of the abbey caused significant friction between the abbey and the townspeople as to who ran the town’s market.  This conflict increased through the years, and I tell of that tension in my story.

For more on Cirencester’s medieval history, click on
http://www.localhistories.org/cirencester.html or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester

The Romans had completely evacuated Britain by the early 5^th century.  The void that they left behind was filled in the next two centuries by several invading tribes from northern Europe, of whom some are known as Anglo-Saxons.  They may have raided Roman Britain in the 4^th century, but were probably invited to Britain after the Roman departure to help defend the native Romano-British population against other threats.  In any event, the tribes who settled in Britain also included Jutes and Frisians.

The valley of the River Thames was largely settled by the Saxons and this area included Cirencester and on eastward into the Cotswold hills.  The Saxons brought with them a different culture, language, ways of building, and styles of dress.  Place names in the Cotswolds and the area around Cirencester today are largely Saxon in origin rather than Roman or Celtic.  The Saxons left few written records, so much of what we know about their culture is based on excavations of their graves, some of which have contained extravagant jewels and gilt-bronze brooches.

Cirencester, the site of Templar’s Prophecy, the 4^th novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, ceased to be a town when the Romans abandoned Britain in the early 4^th century.  It is likely that a few native people continued to live within the Roman city walls and farmed in the surrounding region.  But after the Saxons invaded England, they won a great battle in 577, capturing Cirencester, Gloucester, and Bath, resulting in a Saxon village of wooden huts established within the old Roman walls of Corinium/Cirencester.  It was a far cry from the Roman town that had gone before but it represented the new tribal rulers of Britain.

The street pattern that developed in Saxon Cirencester deviated from the rectangular grid of the Romans.  It was Saxon lanes which set the pattern for the medieval streets in my story.  In 1395, Lady Apollonia resided on one of these, Dyer Street, which ran on the kind of angle which the Romans did not use.  As she would have walked north westward on Dyer Street from her house, it widened out to become the Marketplace, a medieval market area so wide that it is used as a car park in contemporary Cirencester.  This area, shown above in a picture taken from the parish church, also appears in my story.

The Saxon village grew slowly to 350 people by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086.  A minster church, founded around 807, became the Augustinian abbey which grew to dominate the town by the end of the 12^th century.  I will speak of the abbey’s history in later postings.

The fourth book, Templar’s Prophecy, in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is set in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in the year, 1395.  As with most of my books, I have set this one in a town that traces its history back to Roman times.  This Roman town was more important than most people might realise today.

The Celts occupied Britain when the Romans invaded, but Celtic society was not organised into towns.  As the Romans colonised Britain, they began with military installations on the frontier, and so it was at Corinium, the town we now call Cirencester.  A Roman fort was established within a year of the Roman invasion of the island.  As the Roman Legions marched westward and northward, they first moved their military forward and later began to establish more permanent settlements.

By the mid-70’s a.d., they began to build on a rectangular grid for streets that formed the town of Corinium, then known as Corinium Dobunorum for several centuries.  It grew by the 2^nd century to become the second largest town in Britain after Londinium.  The population is estimated to have been between 10,000 and 20,000, compared to 18,000 in modern day Cirencester.  The centre of the town was where the Roman Fosse Way, connecting Lincoln with Exeter, crossed Ermin Street and the roads connecting Londinium with Glevum or modern Gloucester.

Corinium was a major market town for the woollen trade in the surrounding area and was probably the administrative capital of Britannia Prima or much of what today is central England.  Its basilica and forum were built on the site of the Roman fort and were second in size only to those buildings in Londinium.  The amphitheatre, just outside the town and one of the largest in Britain, can still be seen today in the form of a grass-covered remnant as seen in the picture above.  It plays an important role in my story.  In the 14^th century, it was covered with more vegetation than we see today.

The Romans abandoned Britain in the early 5^th century, leading to a decline of Corinium’s fortunes which I will discuss in my next posting.

Beyond the amphitheatre, not much remains above ground from Roman Corinium.  Some sections of the Roman wall still exist, especially on the northeast quadrant of the ancient city.  Otherwise, the Corinium Museum in Cirencester is the best source of Roman remains.  Many galleries are devoted to display of objects from the ruins and their explanation.  For example, the museum has a fine collection of mosaics acquired from many archaeological digs in Cirencester.

For more on Corinium, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinium_Dobunnorum 
https://coriniummuseum.org/collections/the-roman-town-of-corinium/

The title of the fourth book, Templar’s Prophecy, in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is based on a mid-14^th century encounter in the prologue between an Englishman from Cirencester and a survivor of the Knights Templars.  Templars had ceased to exist as an organisation after 1312.  The meeting of the two men occurred in Nubia in Africa at a famous Christian pilgrimage site for healing, the Church of Saint Raphael, in Banganarti, Nubia.

You well might ask, “Where was Nubia?”  It was an ancient civilization that stretched along the Nile River from southern Egypt into Sudan on a modern map.  At one time, it was made up of three kingdoms as shown in the map above to the left.  Nobatia in the north stretched from just south of Aswan and the 1^st cataract of the Nile to just south of the 3^rd cataract.  Mukaria was next with its capital at Dongola, and just beyond that city was Banganarti.  Finally, the Kingdom of Alodia began between the 5^th and 6^th cataracts.

Unknown to many in the west, this area was Christian from the late fourth century until the mid-14^th century when it was conquered by Islam.  Makuria had become largely Christian by the end of the 6^th century.  Egypt was conquered by Islam in the 7^th century, cutting Nubia off from other Christian lands, but in 651 AD, efforts to extend Islam into Nubia were defeated.  Thereafter, a kind of peace between Christianity and Islam existed until the 13^th century.  In the medieval period, things began to change dramatically in Nubia, and Christianity collapsed completely in favour of Islam before the end of the 14^th century.

Yet, in the 14^th century, a man named Benesec travelled from southern France or northern Spain across the Mediterranean to Egypt and up the Nile to the Church of Saint Raphael in Banganarti.  How do we know that?  It is because he scratched a memento in Latin onto a wall of the church which reads, “When Benesec came to pay homage to Raphael.”  This was revealed in the 21^st century when Polish archaeologists began excavating a huge artificial mound covering a church.  The archaeologists exposed a series of churches in which the walls were decorated with many representations of Nubian kings under the protection of the Archangel Raphael, a guardian of human health.  There were also inscriptions similar to Benesecs, testifying to its being a site where pilgrims came from great distances for healing.  This marvellous human story inspired me to use Banganarti in the prologue of my book and in the main part of my story to name a grandson of the Templar survivor “Benesec Raphael de Farleigh.”

For more on Nubia, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia or on
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/history-ancient-nubia

NOTE: The blog which follows was posted yesterday, May 23, 2017.  Today I was notified that the a typographical error was discovered in an ISBN number inside the book.  This has stopped the distribution of the paperback version of Memento Mori through either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  It is still available through Lulu Press.

When the paperback version of Memento Mori is again available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble, I will re-post the information given below.

Meanwhile, the ebook distribution is not affected.

For the last two months, I have been posting articles on this blog related to Memento Mori, the third novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This story is set in Gloucester, England, in 1392.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Gloucester and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

The paperback can be ordered online
from Amazon by clicking
https://www.amazon.com/Memento-Mori-Ellen-Foster/dp/1300241594/

or from Barnes and Noble by clicking
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/memento-mori-ellen-foster/1113742062

or from Lulu Press on sale by clicking
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The ebook can be ordered online
from Amazon on sale for the Kindle by clicking
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or from Barnes and Noble for the Nook by clicking
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or from itunes for Apple devices by clicking
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or for Kobo devices by clicking
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Happy reading!

Memento Mori, the third of my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, begins with a journey by Laston, the squire of Lady Apollonia’s fourth son, Sir Alban.  Laston has returned to England bringing with him the heart of Alban who died of the plague while fighting with the Teutonic Knights against the Slavs.  Laston must continue his search for the Lady Apollonia because in Aust he learns that she is not there but is currently living in Gloucester.  The young squire wants to tell her what has happened to her son and to bring her the only part of Alban’s remains that he could return from the continent.

The most common form of the plague is the bubonic plague.  This disease apparently came out of Asia and swept across Europe in several waves in the 14^th century beginning in 1347 as shown in the map.  It killed an estimated 50 million people in Asia, Europe, and Africa.  Death often resulted in just a matter of days or even hours.  Although Alban died on the continent, England was not exempt from the pandemic which wiped out a third to a half of its population.  It is also possible that bubonic plague in the 14^th century was supplemented by some other form of infection which caused death even more quickly than bubonic plague.

It took most of Europe until the 18th century just to return to former levels of population and caused great economic consequences.  Common labourers became more valuable because of the shortage created by the pandemic.  The plague pandemic was so important to life in 14^th century England that I could not ignore a description of it in my series of mystery stories.

The plague was not well understood in medieval times.  The pandemic later came to be called the Black Death.  Sometimes victims developed gangrene, leading to skin dying and becoming black.  The disease seemed to hit towns and cities a little harder than rural areas, especially those furthest from trade routes.  Many victims exhibited buboes which were swollen lymph nodes in the armpits or groin.  There were varied theories, mostly wrong, about how the disease was transmitted and how it should be treated.

We now know that the disease is caused by Versinus Pestis, a bacterium carried by fleas often found on small animals such as rats.  There are medications today which can reduce the death rate to 10% of the population.

For more information on the plague, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death