The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

In recent posts, I have been emphasizing some aspects of the fourteenth century Roman Catholic Church which have appeared in my first novel, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  These have included the presence of clerics resident in the household of my heroine, Lady Apollonia of Aust, the decision of her son Thomas to become a priest, various real English monasteries that appear in the story, the appearance of John Wycliffe, the reformer who actually held the living of Aust, and the Lady’s personal decision as a widow to devote her life to the church as a vowess.  The medieval parish church in Axbridge, Somerset, where I placed Apollonia’s son Father Thomas, is shown above.

This post will speak to more general characteristics of the church in medieval life because it was inevitable that the Church must be part of any stories set in the fourteenth century.

First, the medieval Roman Catholic Church was a major temporal power which had great wealth and controlled a significant amount of the land in the Kingdom of England.  This may be hard to understand when we consider the relatively small Vatican State (110 acres in Italy) under its control today.  The medieval church owned property throughout Europe amounting to a third of all land, but it was not all controlled centrally by the pope as much of it was distributed between countless dioceses and monastic institutions.  Although the church expected individuals to contribute a tenth of their incomes in tithes to its coffers, this church property itself was generally tax-exempt.  A monastic church tithe barn in Glastonbury, Somerset, built for holding these tithes, is shown below on the left.

While the Church enjoyed a religious monopoly, it did not tolerate challenges, dissent, or protest.  People and movements which did not agree with Church doctrine current at the time had been branded as heretical since the earliest days.  Such church sponsored programs as the crusade against the Cathars in southern France or the declaration that John Wycliffe, who appears in my book, was condemned as a heretic were expressions of church power.

The church in the middle ages was an important part of the everyday life of most people, regardless of class.  Worship services were attended regularly, and women especially were known to attend church three to five times daily for prayer in addition to weekly confession and mass.  Lady Apollonia and many in her affinity maintained their prayer routine whenever possible.  A private chapel within Aust Manor was used daily.

Heaven, hell, and purgatory were truly threatening possibilities to most medieval people.  Purgatory was a temporary state where an individual who died might go as punishment for one’s sins and as a place of purification before going to heaven.  Many feared that they would have to spend a long period in purgatory or might be sent to hell having committed a mortal sin, and such fears led to one of the great abuses committed by the medieval church:  the sale of indulgences.

An indulgence is the full or partial remission of the temporal punishment mentioned above and could be granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner had confessed and received absolution.  The Church’s abuse was the sale of counterfeit indulgences by dishonest clerics for their own gain.  In the epilogue of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, I introduce a character, the Pardoner Brandon Landow, who is based upon Geoffrey Chaucer’s character in the Canterbury Tales.  Landow plays a significant role in all my later novels.

Two aspects of the medieval church that appear briefly in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof also play a larger role in other of my novels.  These are the significance of pilgrimage and relics.  For now, I will just say that in this the first book, Apollonia considers going on pilgrimage when she is a teenage widow and that she becomes involved with phony relics in the epilogue.  There will be more information about all these topics in future blog posts concerning my other novels.

Effigy of the Cloven Hoof introduces modern readers to a new religious concept: that of a mature medieval woman becoming a vowess in her later years.  The following paragraph from the story tells of Lady Apollonia’s announcement to her brother, Ferdinand, of her intentions.  A vowess was a widow who had vowed chastity or devotion to a religious life while remaining in the world.  The drawing above pictures Apollonia in the period of her life when she was a vowess.

“It was in the year of 1395 that Lady Apollonia announced to her brother, Ferdinand, her intention to live celibate. She had, with the counsel of her chaplain and the Abbess of Lacock, decided to follow the rule of the devotio moderna, become a vowess, and give the rest of her life to a discipline of work, charity, and contemplation. “I can not renounce the world, Ferdinand,” she quietly confessed to him, “but I feel alienated by it.” The colours of mourning would continue to be her habit of dress and though never cloistered, she chose to spend her remaining years as a bride of Christ.”

Devotio Moderna or Modern Devotion is defined in the Glossary at the end of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof as a religious movement of the late Middle Ages, stressing meditation and emphasizing the inner life of the individual.  Having been widowed three times and the mother of five sons, Lady Apollonia took vows both for chastity and for devotion to a religious life while being allowed to remain in the world.

As a vowess, the Lady, who had acquired considerable wealth and property from her deceased husbands, would be protected by the church.  Hence, she pronounced her vows of chastity in the presence of the Bishop of Worcester and, in effect, became a bride of Christ.  That act, recognized by the Church, offered her protection from any unwanted late in life marriage while allowing her to remain in charge pf her faithful affinity in Aust.

Lady Apollonia in her widowhood was enabled to continue to manage the affairs of the lands and businesses that she inherited from her husbands.  These included the manor and lands at Colerene Leat, inherited from her first husband, Geoffrey Montacute; the various woollen businesses developed over the years by her second husband, Edward Aust, in Aust, Corsham, Exeter, and other places; and the businesses of furrier, pelterer, and others of her third husband, Richard Windemere, in Gloucester, Cirencester, Wiltshire and beyond.  The building, shown above on the left, is in Cirencester on Dyer Street.  It was my inspiration for Windemere House where Lady Apollonia was residing in Templar’s Prophecy.

Lady Apollonia of Aust became a very wealthy woman who was a well-educated and capable manager as well as a caring leader of her personal affinity.  She was beloved by all those who served her and benefitted from her goodness, but at the same time, she would have been a desirable target for egregious male suitors if she had not been protected by the Church as a vowess.

An element of real church history appears in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  As I mentioned in my posting of February 24, 2020, the reformer John Wycliffe served as the Prebend of Aust for thirteen years which corresponded to the time when Lady Apollonia and her second husband, Edward Aust, would have been raising their five sons in their manor just across the road from the parish church which is shown in the picture above.  That earlier posting explained that John Wycliffe (1330?-1384), as Prebend of Aust, had the living or income of the Aust church.  He, as an Oxford scholar, would have been largely absent from Aust, hiring a prelate to perform clerical duties, but I could not resist writing this real-life character into my story.

In my fictional account, Lady Apollonia and her family met Wycliffe in Aust when her boys were young, and one of them, Thomas, spent time with the scholar, helping with his dog.  Thomas, who went on to become a priest in Axbridge, Somerset, later in life reveals to his mother the influence Wycliffe had in his decision as a young man to enter the priesthood.  This revelation was news to Lady Apollonia when she heard it in 1400.

I emphasized Wycliffe’s contribution of the first translation of the Bible into the English of his day in my posting of February 24.  He believed in making the Bible available in the vernacular language because of his belief in the importance of the scriptures to our personal faith.  He personally translated the four gospels into English from the Latin Vulgate and may have translated the whole New Testament.  A drawing depicting the great man is shown on the left.  His associates completed the task of translating the Bible from the Latin of the Vulgate into English, completing the Old Testament by the year of his death in 1384.  Modifications by his assistant, John Purvey, appeared in 1388 and 1395.

In that earlier posting, I did not point out that Wycliffe’s overall role as a reformer of the medieval church happened more than a century before Martin Luther, but that reforming role was a significant contribution, in addition to his translation of the Bible.

The wealth and corruption of the Roman church were of great concern to Wycliffe.  He attacked the privileged status of the clergy as well as the luxury and pomp of local bishops and their land-owning lordships.  It is hard for us to realize the enormous wealth of many of the English churches and monasteries at the time of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.

Wycliffe’s writings in Latin greatly influenced the philosophy and teachings of the Czech reformer John Hus a couple of generations later.  Wycliffe’s followers became known as Lollards and reference to these followers appear from time to time in several of my novels.  The body of Wycliffe himself was dug up a half century after his death and burned as that of a heretic.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the church in western Europe and the British Isles in 1400, the year in which Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, the first novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries, is set.  Therefore, there are many ways in which the significance of the Roman Catholic Church is portrayed through the characters’ lives in my novels.

The 15^th century Church was critical in the life of my heroine, the Lady Apollonia, and throughout her household, known as her affinity.  Two members of her household were clerics: her almoner, Brother William, and her chaplain, Friar Francis.  She calls on these churchmen to play important roles to help her deal with calamities at the beginning of the story.  Then, the Lady and other members of her affinity retreat to the refuge of her household chapel in Aust Manor to help them cope with problems already arising in the Prologue of the book.

The third of Apollonia’s five sons, Thomas, became a priest and served as the rector of the parish church in Axbridge, Somerset.  Father Thomas appears occasionally through all my novels except for Plague of as Green Man, set in 1380, when Thomas was only ten years of age.  He served for many years as a parish priest there including when the real parish church of Axbridge was built to its present form at the beginning of the 15^th century.  A picture of that church is shown above.  It was while The Lady was visiting Father Thomas in Axbridge that he introduced his mother to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which I mentioned in my previous posting.

The importance of monastic institutions of the church to medieval life is readily apparent in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  One of the bodies discovered in the early chaos of the story is a nobleman who is taken to nearby Kingswood Abbey for safe keeping after Lady Apollonia tentatively identifies him as someone whose family might wish to do her or her affinity harm.  The ruins of the gatehouse to Kingswood Abbey are shown on the left.  In my story, this Cistercian abbey provided refuge for Lady Apollonia until her she was reassured that she could safely return to her home in the village of Aust.

The next monastery to appear in this story is Laycock Abbey in Wiltshire, a nunnery of the Augustinian order.  Lady Apollonia occasionally retreated to this abbey during her first marriage which is described in a flashback in the story.  After the trauma of the death of her first husband, Geoffrey Montecute, it was natural that she would retreat to this favored nunnery as she sought to deal with the challenges of widowhood and the personal guilt she was struggling with.  It is during this stay in Lacock Abbey when Apollonia is introduced to the writings of Mother Julian of Norwich whom I mentioned in my last posting.  These Seeings of Mother Julian were most helpful to Lady Apollonia in regaining balance in life.

When Lady Apollonia makes a trip to Somerset in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, she stays in monastic guest accommodations.  One of these is Stogursey Priory in the village of Stogursey, about half-way between Axbridge where Lady Apollonia’s son Thomas was the parish priest, and Dunster, her last stop on the trip to Cliffbarton.  Stogursey Priory was donated as a cell to the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at Lonlay, France.  Her next stop on her way was in Dunster where, in 1346, Cleeve Abbey had built a nunnery never inhabited by nuns but was used as a guest house.  I have used this guest house as Apollonia’s last stop before her destination of Cliffbarton and her first stop on the way home to Aust.

It can be seen what an important role monasteries played in 1400, but in my next post, I will discuss other ways in which the church was central to life in the Middle Ages and in my stories about Lady Apollonia of Aust.

My last post discussed the fact that Effigy of the Cloven Hoof was set in 1400, a time when the language spoken in England was Middle English.  The English language has evolved over the past 600 years to what we speak today.  Although I do not attempt to write in Middle English, there are terms which I use in my stories which are either unknown today or have meanings unfamiliar to the modern reader.  This can create a problem, so each of my books contains a glossary explaining their meanings in the 14^th century.

I have selected some of the glossary words from Effigy of the Cloven Hoof to give you a sample of definitions which may not be familiar.  It is my hope that the words in the glossary help my readers get into the time and place of my stories.

Early in the book, I use the word “affinity”.  It is defined in the glossary as “the medieval concept of a loyal household, of individuals who wore the livery or heraldic badge of one’s lord and gave full allegiance and acceptance of his rule.”

Brother William, Lady Apollonia’s almoner, appears in my first book and is an important character throughout the series.  “Almoner” is defined in the glossary as “a person whose function is to manage the distribution of alms in behalf of a noble person.”

Many modern readers may not be familiar with the term “Effigy” used in the title of my first book.  The glossary defines “effigy” as an “image sculpted on a tomb.”  The title also includes the phrase, “Cloven Hoof.”  This is defined as “a symbol of or the figurative indication of Satan’s evil temptation.”

One of the most puzzling terms I use for modern readers is “courtesy”.  The glossary defines it as follows: “In the understanding of those followers of Julian of Norwich from about 1400, “courtesy” is not meant to be understood as good manners or polite behavior.  Courtesy means loving respect for one another, implying not only indulgence of another but goodness granted freely regardless of another’s sinful behavior.  Mother Julian describes God as our ‘Courteous Lord.’”

Horses were an important means of transportation in my stories.  The large warhorses used by knights are defined as “destriers” in the glossary.  A destrier is represented in the picture shown at the top.  A “palfrey”, such as ridden by the Lady Apollonia, is defined as a saddle horse, not a war horse, and is pictured on the left in a medieval drawing.

Some readers ask what the term “garderobe” might mean.  It was a “medieval privy often built into the walls of a castle or manor house.”

“Liege” may not be familiar to modern readers.  It refers to a “feudal vassal who grants service or allegiance to a feudal lord.”

Throughout my books I have written about Lady Apollonia attending “Opus Dei” services when visiting monasteries.  This Latin phrase is defined in the glossary as “literally the ‘work of God’ but refers specifically to the daily services for the divine offices of the church.”

An interesting item of men’s’ apparel in the 14^th century was a pair of “poulaines”, mentioned in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.  These were fashionable “14th century shoes for men with excessively long, pointed toes that sometimes had to have the long toes tied round the calf to enable the wearer to walk.”

Often, I write of Lady Apollonia going to her “Prie-dieu” to pray.  This is a “piece of furniture in her private chamber designed for kneeling upon during personal prayer.”

Lady Apollonia’s second husband, Edward, is called “Squire” Edward.  “Squire”, refers to “a country gentleman, especially the chief landed proprietor in a district, very wealthy but not a member of the nobility.”

“Steward” Giles Digby plays a major role in Lady Apollonia’s affinity.  The steward of her affinity is defined as “one who serves as “manager of financial and business affairs…”

I sometimes refer to a “villein” which some readers confuse with villain.  The former refers to “a member of the class of partially free persons in a feudal system who served their lord but had some rights and privileges.”

I hope this sample of words from the glossary of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof has been of interest to you.  These words are a few illustrations of medieval terminology differing from modern English.

Effigy of the Cloven Hoof is a fictional story set in the time of Geoffrey Chaucer who was the first important writer who wrote in Middle English, the language commonly spoken in England in the 14^th century.  If you have studied Chaucer, you may have encountered a sample of that language and how it differs from modern English.  My challenge, as an author, is to give you a sense of English as it was spoken in those times without writing in Middle English which I and most of my readers are uncomfortable trying to read.

To help my readers have a sense of time and place, I have employed several devices.  The text seeks to avoid words which have entered the English language in recent centuries.  For example, I thought the word “prithee” would be of my period but then discovered that this abbreviation of “I pray thee” did not originate until the 16^th century.  Our use of apostrophes in contractions was not widespread 600 years ago.  Therefore, Lady Apollonia does not use contractions, nor do those in her affinity who have learned to be well spoken.

Another device is my use of English spellings whenever possible.  Many of my readers are American, and my hope is that by using English-only spellings I will draw American readers more easily get into my stories set in 14^th century West Country of England.  This is obvious with words such as centre/center where the English spell it one way and Americans another.  I prefer to use patronise over patronize even though both spellings are permitted in contemporary England because Americans would never use the patronise spelling.  I try to encourage my readers to lose themselves in Lady Apollonia’s world of over 600 years ago as they read my stories.

Social class was important in medieval England, and there were differences in how the classes spoke, as is true in our world today.  Peasants did not speak like nobles any more than a person with a Cockney accent in 2020 speaks like Queen Elizabeth II.  Therefore, I have chosen to create a mild kind of dialect for the common folk in my stories to distinguish them from Lady Apollonia’s type of speech.  Hopefully, it is mild enough for easy reading.  Contractions do appear in this dialect, a contrast with the speech of the nobility.

Next, let me describe some of the early writers of Middle English.  Three of them were contemporaries of my heroine in Effigy of the Cloven Hoof:  Geoffrey Chaucer, Mother Julian of Norwich, and the reformer John Wycliffe.  Chaucer, especially, has been very helpful to me, particularly because of his characters in The Canterbury Tales.  Chaucer is shown above in a 19^th century drawing.  Unlike most medieval writers, he wrote about English people who came from all walks of life.  Members of the nobility are included as well as many church figures and other interesting folk, such as the Wife of Bath.  Chaucer’s characterizations provided me contemporary insights into a variety of medieval people but also inspiration for some of the characters in my stories.  One of these, Brandan Landow, appears at the very end of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof as a pardoner.  He is based on The Pardoner in Canterbury Tales.  In all the subsequent books through the seventh, Usurper’s Curse, my pardoner has reappeared and proven to be a character of interest.

Chaucer may be known as the best-known author to write in Middle English, but Mother Julian of Norwich was the first woman to become known as a writer in that language.  Her Revelations of Divine Love was given to my heroine to read at a difficult time in her young life.  Lady Apollonia found Mother Julian’s writings to be a comfort and inspiration as she struggled to understand her faith following the death of her first husband.

The third writer in Middle English referred to in my stories is John Wycliffe, best known as the Oxford scholar who was first to translate the Bible into English.  He is shown in the picture on the left.  What is not well known is that in the very years when he was translating the New Testament, Wycliffe was the Prebend of Aust, meaning that the parish church in Aust provided him with some of his income.  Such a connection of the real-life Wycliffe with the Lady Apollonia’s home village of Aust inspired me to work him into my story.

The village of Aust on the River Severn Estuary is the venue around which Effigy of the Cloven Hoof is set.  I have always been fascinated with this village because Aust is the surname of my father’s family which emigrated from England in 1893.

The village has been inhabited since at least Roman times because of its location at the narrowest point on the Severn Estuary which separates England from southern Wales.  The one-mile distance made it a desirable place for ferry crossings which began in Roman times and continued until the 20^th century when the first of two motorway bridges was built near Aust in 1966 for the M4 traffic from London and southern England going into Wales.  That bridge is pictured above.  Its construction ended the ferry service of almost two millennia, but I have worked the medieval ferry into my story which is set in the year 1400.

A second motorway bridge was later built just south of Aust, and these two bridges seemed to lead to the lack of purpose for the village.  Amenities such as the post office which existed on my first visit in 1986 was shut down early in the 1990’s.  The medieval parish church had been declared redundant and closed to all visitors in those days.  Only one single pub was open in Aust, The Boar’s Head, and it continued to be prospering, perhaps in part because Aust was located midway between Bristol and Cardiff with easy access to and from the M4 motorway.  Businessmen from these cities liked to meet there for lunch.

In recent years, I have felt better times were growing in Aust, perhaps as a suburb of Bristol.  There is more activity in the village, homes are being improved and built.  Aust looks more prosperous, and the parish church, which had never been given a name, has been reopened as a chapelry of the Church of England.  For the first time in its history, the church has a name, the Chapelry of St. John, and has services as part of the rota of the multi-point parish of the nearby villages.

I have used Aust’s location on the Severn as an important setting in the opening of my first book.  The Severn Estuary flowing past the village has enormous tides, averaging 50 feet between low and high tides.  This is almost as large as the 56 feet difference between low and high tides found in the Bay of Fundy in North America.  The movement of water rushing up or down the River Severn as the tides change is considerable and required great skill of the ferrymen who manned the Aust Ferry.

The shape of the Bristol Channel (or Severn Channel as it is sometimes called by the locals) and the Severn Estuary, as shown in the map on the left means that an incoming tide is constantly funneled down to a narrower width as it moves up the Severn.  In fact, it can become a tidal wave called the Severn Bore. A fictional description of one of them is a real natural disaster which I use in my story. My husband and I watched one of the largest of the 20^th century in 1993, and I can attest that it is impressive.

One of these tidal bores happens during a major storm in the opening chapters of Effigy of the Cloven Hoof, causing the natural disaster which kills many innocent people and adds to the chaos which introduces the story.

It is over a year since I have posted on this blog, but I now have some things which I want to post in 2020.  Specifically, I want to talk about topics, many of them medieval, as they appear in the seven novels which currently comprise the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  All my books are set in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries in the West Country of England.  In my next post, I will begin with topics that appear in the first book, Effigy of the Cloven Hoof.

For now, let me tell you what I have been doing in 2019 since the completion of my goal of a seven-book series with the publication of Usurper’s Curse at the end of 2018.  Part of this past year was spent in rereading all my novels because even I have trouble remembering the details in which novel a scene or event or a character was introduced or developed.  Rereading is always helpful simply by refreshing Lady Apollonia’s world in my mind.

Two of my seven books are set in West Country cities or towns where Lady Apollonia’ s sons are located.  Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure is set in Glastonbury, Somerset, where Apollonia’s second-oldest son, Chad, lived in 1397.  King Richard’s Sword takes place in Worcester, home of the Lady’s first-born son, Hugh, in 1399-1400.  Lady Apollonia’s youngest son, David, became a monk in Tintern Abbey and the second-youngest, Alban, died of the Plague in 1392.

The middle of her five sons, Father Thomas, was a priest in Axbridge, Somerset, in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries.  He appears in several of the books.  In October 2018, I first thought of building a story about him while I was briefly visiting Axbridge.  This idea was reinforced by a second visit to Axbridge on a family trip to England in June 2019.  The second trip was in a warmer month, and we found that a National Trust property, King John’s Hunting Lodge in the heart of the town which was closed the previous October, was open in June.  This building on the main square, shown above, featured a museum about the history of Axbridge, including the medieval period.

The staff there also enabled me to contact a local historian, John Page, who has been helpful to me in getting a better picture of how Axbridge looked at the time of my books.  Beyond that, he has been willing to answer any questions I have had about the medieval period in Axbridge.

This has inspired me to start a new novel which would place Lady Apollonia in Axbridge to assist Father Thomas in his struggle against serious accusations that are unfairly brought against him.  My working title for this new book is Vengeful Devotion.  Progress has been slow as I develop new characters, including an alchemist.  I hope that these new characters, as well as many old favorites who reappear, will reveal the mystery story to me.  It has seemed to me that my characters have revealed their stories to me in the first seven books, so I hope they will again reveal an interesting story as well as a good mystery.

In the months ahead, I hope to write about some interesting topics that are discussed in my novels.  Each book speaks to many aspects of medieval life in England which I find interesting.  My hope is that you will also find it so.

Usurper’s Curse, the seventh book in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries is now available from a variety of retailers.  The book is set in the village of Aust early in the fifteenth century during the reign of the usurper King Henry IV of England.  Paperback versions are available from Amazon, from Barnes and Noble, and on sale from Lulu Press.   You can scroll down the links on the right or use the following links:

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Usurpers-Curse-Ellen-Foster/dp/0359063284/

Barnes and Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/usurpers-curse-ellen-foster/1129598033?ean=9780359063284

Lulu Press
http://www.lulu.com/shop/ellen-foster/usurpers-curse/paperback/product-23804243.html