Blowing Bubbles

Detail from the Isabella Breviary, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), late 1480s and before 1497, British Library, Additional 18851, f. 470v


Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Children's Games (detail) 1560


Hendrick Goltzius Quis Evadet? 1594


Karel van Sichem: Homo Bulla, around 1617


Attributed to Jaques de Gheyn II (Antwerp 1565-1629) A vanitas allegory: Homo Bulla Est, a boy blowing bubbles while another watches and a young woman holds a skull by candlelight


Bartolomeus van der Helst Homo Bulla: A Boy Blowing Bubbles, c.1665

Here are more.

Making soap bubbles goes back at least as far as the 14th century: it was one of Froissart's boyhood amusemants

The King Who Doesn't Lie

The Roi que ne ment was popular game of the 13th and 14th century. It was played by adults, particularly those of an age to seek courtship, but also, according to Froissart, by children under twelve.

A ruler for the game was chosen, who might be male or female, a king or queen of the game. Their court, when the record was clear, was always a mixture of male and female.

In most accounts the ruler asked everyone present a question, and was then required to answer their questions in return. One account had the ruler ask questions without being questioned in return, and another has the reverse. The questions were frequently courtly but sometimes bluntly sexual. A response might provoke a follow up question ("Good madam, be what reson?") or debate.

For late 15th c. demandes d'amour in the Winchester Anthology, see pp. 95 r to 107 v.

Courtly literature: culture and context ; selected papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society contains an interesting article on the game by Richard Firth Green, who makes a convincing argument that the demandes d'amour that survive in several manuscripts were play aids for the game.

International Courtly Literature Society, Keith Busby, and Erik Kooper. 1990. Courtly literature: culture and context ; selected papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, the Netherlands, 9-16 August, 1986. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.

Games Young Froissart Played

Froissart's childhood amusements in his L'espinette Amoureuse included making mud pies, round loves, cakes and tartlets in a little oven made from four tiles, riding a stick horse named Griselle, Hot Cockles, Prisoner's Base, The King Who Doesn't Lie, whipping a top and making soap bubbles with a little pipe.

Also hide and seek, blind-man's bluff, and pitching pennies (using lead pennies or stones)

Plus a lot of games I can't identify.

Christine de Pizan and the Archers of England

There's a passage in Charity Cannon Willard's translation of Christine de Pizan's The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry that's been bothering me since I first read it. In part 1, chapter 10, p.3, Willard translates the passage with: "In this art young Englishmen are still instructed from early youth, and for this reason they commonly surpass other archers. They can hit a barge aimed at from a distance of six hundred feet." Which seems a strange target for archery practice.

Through the wonder of Gallica, I went back to the original French, where they shot at buttes, which has the same meaning as the butts used as archery targets in English.

That was like scratching an itch.

There are some lesser differences as well. I read it as:

In this art young Englishmen are still instructed from early youth, and for this reason they continually surpass other archers. They shoot at the butts from a distance of six hundred feet.

Courts of Chivalry and Military Careers

Here is an illuminating study of men deposed in the court of chivalry who were also recorded as serving in the campaigns of 1387-1388 in The Soldier in later Medieval England database.

Since they reported their age and how long they had been armed when deposed, it is possible to get a sense of both the ages of men who were still active soldiers, and when they started their service in arms. This can be compared to John Hardyng's advice that lords' sons should go to war at sixteen.

Although several of the deponents were armed at even younger ages, the median age of first service reported was twenty. It's important to remember that campaigns happened infrequently: a young man might have to wait several years after has sixteenth birthday for even a theoretical opportunity to go to war, and when it occurred he might be serving in a household that didn't go on that campaign.

Here is a record of the Scrope-Grosvenor depositions, with additional biographical information for the witnesses. An interesting picture of the careers of men-at-arms!

Training Lords' Sons (1457)

John Hardyng, Chronicle, 1457

And as lordes sonnes bene sette, at four yere age,
To scole to lerne the doctryne of letture,
And after at sex to have thaym in language,
And sitte at mete semely in alle nurture;
At ten and twelve to revelle in thair cure,
To daunse and synge, and speke of gentelnesse;
At fourtene yere they shalle to felde I sure,
At hunte the dere, and catch an hardynesse.

For dere to hunte and slea, and se them blede,
Ane hardyment gyffith to his corage,
And also in his wytte he takyth hede
Ymagynynge to take thaym at avauntage.
At sextene yere to werray and to wage,
To juste and ryde, and castels to assayle,
To scarmyse als, and make sykyr courage,
And sette his wache for perile nocturnayle;

And every day his armure to assay
In fete of armes with some of his meyne,
His might to preve, and what that he do may
Iff that he were in suche a jupertee
Of werre by falle, that by necessite
He might algates with wapyns hym defende:
Thus should he lerne in his priorite
His wapyns alle in armes to dispende.

Petit Jehan de Saintré

Steve Muhlberger posts Phil Paine's review of Petit Jehan de Saintré. I think Paine has misread the story on at least two points. Little Jehan doesn't go off to do deeds of arms when he is sixteen: his lady waits until he is twenty, and fully formed, before she encourages him to distinguish himself on the field. And when Jehan goes to fight the Saracens in Prussia, the geography and anthropology are not "somewhat vague". The author clearly had a fairly informed and detailed sense of where large Islamic armies might be raised, and where Prussia was. He knew he needed to set the fictional Christian victory somewhere on the borders of Christendom. He might have set it in, for example, Bulgaria, where clashes between the Christian and Islamic worlds were particularly plausible. Unfortunately, this theater was the site of a particularly notable Christian defeat at Nicopolis in 1396. Prussia was a setting where crusades happened but that wouldn't remind readers of that great defeat.

Of course, the politics and logistics of delivering enormous crusader and saracen armies to Prussia in the mid 14th century were challenging, which explains why neither actually happened.

Here is a somewhat frustrating 1862 English translation of the work. The translator has a tendency to omit many of the sections I'm most interested in. "The account of this combat is omitted." Thank you very much.

Updated: a recent translation, Jean de Saintre: A Late Medieval Education in Love and Chivalry, translates the work into lively and colloquial modern English, unlike the deliberately archaic style of the previous two English translations, and it translates content they omit.  The notes discuss how the novel mixes actual historical figures into the fictional romance.

Here is the the story in the original French.

The work is an early historical novel, set in the reign of John II of France about a century before it was written. The hero becomes a close friend of the historical Jean Boucicaut the elder. At thirteen little Jehan catches the eye of a noble young widow, who spends the next seven years training him into a suitable courtly paramour. She teaches him edifying maxims from Latin authors with a helpful translation, and gives him a reading list. She advises him how to spend largely but wisely on good clothes and horses, and on appropriate presents to gain the good will of others at court, and provides him with the funds to do it. At twenty she sends him off to win renown with deeds of arms, and advises him on the ceremonies and choice of opponents.

His martial career is described in great and generally plausible detail, although the customs are those of the 15th century rather than the 14th.

Eventually his lady transfers her affections to a worldly young abbot, large and muscular, who humiliates Jehan in a wrestling match. We learn that Jehan, although a successful warrior, has not been taught to wrestle, unlike wealthy monks like the abbot who "are adepts at the art, as at tennis, hurl-bat, pitch-bar, and every pastime of the sort. They are their only recreations when among themselves..."

Jehan later has his revenge on the abbot and his former lover with matter of fact cruelty that reminds me of Tirant lo Blanc. Like Tirant, Petit Jehan de Saintré combines chivalric and courtly ideals with frank sexuality and practical detail.

Index of Medieval Youth and Education

Froissart's Youth
Russell's Book of Nurture
The Babees' Book
Training Lords' Sons
Little John de Saintre
English in the Grammar Schools 1352-1385
Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe
Accounts of Medieval Literacy and Education
Blowing Bubbles