Cadfael: Medieval Murders

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Cadfael, Derek Jacobi, Legal Stuff, Medieval England, Medieval Europe, Medieval Wales, Monks and Nuns, Religious Stuff, Shrewsbury Abbery, TV Shows

I recently discovered that Amazon Prime has the 1990s tv series Cadfael, which is based on the Cadfael Chronicles of Ellis Peters, the pen name of English author Edith Pargeter, who produced a total of 20 well-received murder mysteries from the 1970s to the 1990s featuring a 12^th century English monk, Brother Cadfael (Derek Jacobi in the show), as her detective. None of the episodes really gives me enough for a blog post, so I figured I would just review the show as a whole.

Pargeter was a self-trained scholar with somewhat idiosyncratic interests. She was deeply interested in the history of Shropshire (where she was born and lived much of her life) and Wales (she had Welsh ancestry), and generally did an excellent job of researching the medieval background of her stories. She also worked for a period as a pharmacist’s assistant, which introduced her to traditional herbal remedies, which comes through in Cadfael, who has a deep knowledge of botany and plant-based medicine. She also taught herself Czech and translated Czech poetry into English.

As a result of this, the Cadfael Chronicles are generally quite well-researched and Pargeter was at pains to make them as historically accurate as possible. Although Cadfael is fictional, his life story (left Wales to participate in the First Crusade, lived in the Holy Land for several years where he learned herbalism, and then spent years as a sailor before feeling the call to become a monk in England) is basically possible from an historical standpoint, if perhaps a bit unlikely. (Incidentally, the Cadfael Chronicles are often credited with popularizing the genre of the historical murder mystery, although the first such work seems to be Agatha Christie’s Death Comes As the End, which is set in Middle Kingdom Egypt.)

In general, the episodes stick reasonably close to the plot of the novels, although in some cases the ending is tweaked for cinematic purposes or the killer is changed. The big exception is the last episode, The Pilgrim of Hate, which bares only a superficial resemblance to the novel.

The production quality of series, however, varies from season to season. The first season generally had decent costuming but sets that really feel like studio sets. The second season has better sets but much poorer costumes (in The Virgin in the Ice, Ermina is dressed in an atrocious velour dress with a floral print bib that looks like it was borrowed from a late Victorian spinster). The fourth season generally had much better sets, with the abbey scenes feeling like they might have been filmed in an actual monastery. But the layout of Brother Cadfael’s pharmacy keeps changing (its two doors keep moving around and the stove magically moves from one end of the building to the other. At one point, a character flees from the pharmacy by jumping up on a counter and kicking out a window despite the fact that there should be an unlocked door less than five feet to his right.

You can’t get a very clear look at it, but that dress is really atrocious

 

The Civil War

A major feature of the series is the Civil War between Stephen and Matilda. In 1135 King Henry I of England died leaving only a single legitimate child, his daughter Matilda (although he fathered a staggering 24 illegitimate ones). Although Henry had worked for more than a decade to ensure that his barons would accept Matilda as queen regnant, as soon as he died, his nephew Stephen usurped the English throne, triggering a civil war that would last in one form or another for two decades, ending only when Stephen agreed to disinherit his son in favor of Matilda’s son Henry Plantagenet, who became Henry II.

Sean Pertwee, season 1’s Hugh Beringar, with Jacobi’s Cadfael

Claims that the civil war triggered two decades of anarchy are wildly exaggerated. Henry II had a vested interest in playing up the lawlessness of Stephen’s reign because it gave him an excuse to extend royal power in new ways, and most of the sources that describe the ‘anarchy’ date from his reign. But the Civil War created a situation where political loyalties were divided, and all royal officials and grants of privilege could be challenged by supporters of the other side. Some political figures, including the English bishops and the government of London, switched sides on multiple occasions.

Pargeter’s depiction of the violence and instability is broadly in keeping with mid-20^th century historical understanding of the Civil War and the ‘anarchy’, and she used the complexities of the Civil War effectively, with her novels all set in the period of greatest instability, from 1138 to 1145. Shrewsbury was always under Stephen’s authority, and Hugh Berengar, who as under-sheriff and later sheriff of Shropshire represents his authority, is always loyal to Stephen, But the possibility of political intrigue and side-switching lurks under the surface at Shrewsbury and features in a couple of the stories (St Peter’s Fair, The Raven in the Foregate), and the civil war comes to Shrewsbury in One Corpse Too Many, which opens during the Siege of Shrewsbury in 1138. Stephen really did order the hanging of the garrison of the castle after capturing it, and Pargeter skillfully inserts a murder mystery into the story when someone disposes of a murder victim among the 94 executed men.

So the show gets a solid A rating in terms of its fidelity to the political background, although in season 1, Shrewsbury has only a wood wall around it (note the picture above), when it probably would have had a stone wall.

 

Shrewsbury Abbey

Another facet of the show that is basically accurate is the depiction of the monastery at the heart of the story. It was a real place and the two abbots who govern it, Abbot Heribert (Peter Copley) and Abbot Radulphus (Terrence Hardiman), were real historical people, although Pargeter invented their personalities. The rather sour Prior Robert (Michael Culver), who is one of the thorns in Cadfael’s side throughout the series, eventually succeeded Radulphus as abbot in 1148.

The late medieval nave is the only part of Shrewsbury Abbey to survive the 16th Dissolution of the Monasteries

 

Virtually every episode shows the monks singing in the choir during various canonical hours (the daily cycle of the liturgy), and in some episodes there are visitors attending the services, which is plausible. But characters come and go during the service, particularly Cadfael and Brother Oswin (Mark Charnock) and never seem to be reprimanded for it. Skipping the liturgy was a big no-no, since it was central to the Benedictine conception of monasticism as ora et labora, “prayer and labor”.

The Devil’s Novice shows the monks sleeping collectively in a dormitory, which is very much in line with what the Benedictine Rule requires, and the novice’s nightmares understandably disrupt all the other brothers. When Brother Jerome discovers that the novice has kept a small memento of his secular life in violation of the Rule’s prohibition on owning private property, Jerome rightly confiscates it and, a bit maliciously, burns it.

Despite that, the cinematic Shrewsbury Abbey stands out as being rather lax in its observance of the Rule of St Benedict, because Cadfael comes and goes almost at will, as does Oswin, and female visitors to the abbey wander in and out and interact with various monks, particularly Cadfael, without any chaperoning. The 12^th century saw a growing sense of the sexual threat women posed to monks, so such free movement would have been highly irregular. Although Prior Robert is depicted in a negative light, his objections to Cadfael’s running around are in fact probably close to how would the abbots and prior would have responded to Cadfael’s inability to keep his vow of stability (staying in one place and not leaving the abbey). A common monastic saying in the period was “a monk out of his abbey is like a fish out of water”. Had Cadfael been a real person, he would certainly have been much more cautious about being alone with women.

In one episode, there’s a very nice scene where the monks are barbering each other. That’s exactly the way it was done. The monks would sit down in a line and half of them would barber the other and then they would switch places.

The Edith Pargeter window at Shrewsbury Abbey Church

 

St Winifred

The first novel, A Morbid Taste for Bones (which is the seventh episode of the series) deals with the translation of St Winifred’s body from Gwytherin in North Wales. This is a solidly historical event, and Prior Robert wrote an account of the translation of the saint’s body to Shrewsbury Abbey. St Winifred became an important English saint (despite actually being Welsh) as a result of Shrewsbury Abbey’s efforts to promote her cult.

The seal of the fraternity of Shrewsbury Abbey, depicting the beheading of St Winifred

The episode somewhat distorts the facts. Winifred was already revered at Gwytherin and therefore would have had a shrine that included her body in it, whereas in the show, she is buried in an unmarked grave and the monks cannot dig her up until the locals agree to show her where the grave is. (As a side note, A Morbid Taste for Bones is an excellent murder mystery, frequently ranked among the best ever written. If you’re a fan of murder mysteries, you should definitely read it.)

The show in general does a good job of showing the historical importance of the Cult of the Saints (the collection of religious practices around religious figures like St Winifred). In Morbid Taste, the show nicely depicts two competing claims to Winifred’s remains; the villages of Gwytherin view her as ‘their saint’ and resent the idea that the English monks want to take her away, while the monks claim that because Brother Columbanus had a vision in which she appeared to him, Winifred has demonstrated that she wants to be moved to Shrewsbury. The unctuous Brother Jerome (Julian Firth) is depicted as manipulating Columbanus into thinking that Winifred is appearing to him. Jerome’s motives are not stated very clearly, but medieval monks craved the prestige of having a saint buried at their house. It attracted pilgrims and donations, both of which were desirable.

St Winifred’s cult is featured in two other episodes, both of which also capture facets of medieval religious life. In The Pilgrim of Hate, pilgrims have come to Shrewsbury for ‘Cripple Day’, which appears to be an annual festival in which St Winifred sometimes heals cripples. While this is invented, so far as I can tell, it’s generally plausible. Many shrines had particular dates when pilgrimages were performed, and some saints ‘specialized’ in curing specific ailments. Winifred’s cult doesn’t seem to have had a specialty, although the saint was famous for causing healing springs to appear. But the show captures something of the way in which pilgrims would throng to a shrine and the monks would organize a line of pilgrims to touch the shrine while hoping for a cure.

Part of the Prologue to Prior Robert’s Life of St Winifred

A particular theme of that episode is fraudulent miracles. One pilgrim fakes being crippled and then is miraculously ‘cured’; he uses the ‘miracle’ in an attempt to bilk other pilgrims into giving him money. Another character is peddling what are pretty clearly fabricated relics for money. Both of these frauds were real phenomena, although they were probably less common than popular imagination would have it. (In general, though, the storyline of Pilgrim is the weakest in the show because it departs quite far from the novel and relies on cliched ideas about religious fanaticism that don’t make much sense.)

In The Holy Thief, the locals flock to the abbey to pray for protection from flooding, and are again shown lining up to access the box in which Winifred’s bones are kept, and paying for the privilege. More importantly, someone steals the reliquary and a three-sided dispute breaks out about who truly owns the body of St. Winifred: the monks of Shrewsbury Abbey, the monks of Ramsey Abbey who claim that one of their brothers has had a vision of Winifred beckoning to him the way she beckoned to Columbanus in Morbid Taste, or the nobleman who owns the land where the wagon carrying the reliquary broke down (who claims that Winifred indicated her preference for him by causing the wagon to break down on his land).

The murder happens when the monks of Ramsey, feeling stymied, resort to outright theft. Such things definitely happened. Monks might be convinced that a saint genuinely desired the relocation of their relics and thus felt that such furta sacra (“holy theft”) was justified, sometimes even claiming miracles were happening to assist the crime. (The episode changes the murderer, however.)

The dispute over the reliquary is resolved using bibliomancy. The claimants take turns opening a copy of the Gospels to random passages and using the resulting verses as a statement of who ought to own it. While bibliomancy was used during the Middle Ages, the Church generally condemned it, so it’s unlikely that the abbot would have resorted to it (although, given that the abbots in this series are generally quite lax about the Benedictine Rule, it’s not unreasonable to suppose they were also lax about this sort of practice.

A Few Other Details

In some places, however, the show gets things wrong. Nearly every episode has someone use the term ‘murder’ in the modern sense of an unlawful killing. But in this period, murdrum has a much more specific set of meanings. The Danes introduced the concept of murdrum, which was a killing in secret, legally distinct from an openly-known killing and much more serious. Since the whole series is built around secret killings, that might seen reasonable. But in English law between the 1060s and the 1270s, murdrum was not a crime committed by an individual but more of a fine imposed on a community.

In the absence of a police force in the modern sense, English law in this period relied on collective responsibility. All adult men were expected to be members of a tithing, a group of roughly ten men, all of whom were responsible for the legal offenses of any of their members. So if one member of the tithing committed a crime and failed to show up in court for it, all the members of his tithing would be fined for the offense. This in theory helped ensure that criminals would be made to show up to court. To discourage the killing of the new Norman elites that ruled England, if any unknown man were killed in a community, the victim was assumed to be a Norman and a murdrum fine would be imposed on the whole community. It might also be imposed on someone who killed in self-defense. In some of the episodes, the scenario might reasonably involve murdrum, but the characters almost never mean it the way the word was being used at the time.

Another problem with the series is that Cadfael basically invents forensic pathology about 700 years too early. In some cases, his observations can be passed off as simply the work of a very observant man. In Morbid Taste, it’s not unreasonable that he can deduce that the dead man was stabbed in the back with a knife and then after he was lying on the ground dead he was stabbed in the belly with an arrow, because the downward angle of the arrow would be impossible if the man had been standing. But in One Corpse he is able to figure out that the victim was strangled with a waxed cord. In Pilgrim, he boils a corpse down so he can examine the bones, deduces that the man was knocked out from a blow to the head, and then reassembles the body osteologically. Given that dissection of corpses was quite rare, it’s highly unlikely that Cadfael could have figured out the order in which the vertibre should go. (This doesn’t occur in the novel; Pargeter would almost certainly not have invented such an implausible detail.)

The practice of boiling corpses down, as done in Pilgrim, was historical. It was a way for nobles who died abroad, to be transported home for burial without the problem of rotting on the way. And the show does correctly term it the Mos Teutonicus, the ‘German custom’. But it wasn’t invented until a few years after the end of the series; as the name suggests it was a German practice originally, so Cadfael doesn’t have any plausible way to know about it. Prior Robert correctly objects that this was a practice reserved for nobles who were being transported for burial, not for purposes of figuring out how someone was killed.

Brother Jerome (Julian Firth) and Prior Robert (Michel Culver) outside the abbey church

Another small problem is the idea of inns, which feature somewhat in St Peter’s Fair. In that episode, inns are treated as taverns and presented as common enough that a character plans to just buy one. That character is depicted as performing in inns, and Shrewsbury is shown as having at least two. In reality, inns were distinct from taverns. A tavern, or public house, was a private residence where the housewife would sell home-brewed ale or later beer; it was essentially an outgrowth of domestic ale production. Taverns and ale-houses certainly existed in this period.

But inns were something different. An inn was more like a hotel, a place not primarily for drinking, but for lodging (although they certainly did act like taverns). They only really emerged in the 14^th century as the economy of medieval Europe was becoming more sophisticated and long-range trade was becoming a regular rather than a seasonal activity as it was in the 12^th century. Inns provided shelter as people traveled between towns, and as such they were primarily a rural rather than an urban phenomenon. So it’s highly unlikely that a smaller town like Shrewsbury would have had inns in it in Cadfael’s day, both because it was a town and because inns weren’t really a thing then. 12^th century travelers would have had to make do with a combination of staying at monasteries (which had a duty to provide hospitality to travelers), persuading people to take them in for the night, and just camping on the road.

In The Raven in the Foregate, the Norman priest Father Ailnoth despises his Anglo-Saxon parishioners, which is odd because his name is Anglo-Saxon, strongly suggesting that he was himself not Norman but Anglo-Saxon. In the novel, he’s a dick, but not over ethnic issues, and Pargeter probably intended him to be Anglo-Saxon rather than Norman.

One final issue. Cadfael’s name ought, according to Welsh pronunciation, to be pronounced ‘KAD-vel’, with the F being sounded like a V. But Pargeter never explained that in her novels, something she regretted, and as a result throughout the series his name is pronounced ‘KAD-file’. We might write it off as English people not being able to get the Welsh right, except that the Welsh characters get it wrong too. (In general, the series is pretty loose about Welsh accents. Some of the Welsh characters have them but others don’t.)

Want to Know More? 

Cadfael is available on Amazon. If you like murder mysteries, you really should read A Morbid Taste for Bones or some of the other books in the series.

If you’re interested in the phenomenon of relic-stealing, the basic work on the subject is Patrick Geary’s Furta Sacra.

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I, Claudius: Hey, Kids! Let’s Restore the Republic!

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Claudius, Derek Jacobi, I, Octavian/Augustus, Robert Graves, Roman Empire, Roman Republic, The Julio-Claudians

As I mentioned last time, the theme of I, Claudius is the tension between monarchy and republic. The show beautifully contrasts the immorality of the Principate with the supposed moral virtue of the Republic. But the whole theme of the series is fundamentally improbable.

In the Show

 The first third of the series, the theme is expressed through the question of what will happen when Augustus dies. As Drusus (Ian Ogilvy) hopes, will Augustus (Brian Blessed) retire and allow the Republic to resume? As Livia (Sian Phillips) intends, will Tiberius (George Baker) succeed him? A few episodes later, Cassius Chaerea (Sam Dastor) and two colleagues plot to assassinate Caligula (John Hurt) and restore the Republic. But once they commit the killing, the Praetorian Guard seizes on Claudius (Derek Jacobi) to make him emperor, because without Claudius, they will lose their easy post and have to go back to normal legionary duty. The Senate starts to debate restoring the Republic, but once it’s clear that the Praetorians support Claudius the Senate has no choice except to yield.

Ian Ogilvy as Drusus

In the second-last episode, Claudius’ wife Messalina (Sheila White) bigamously marries her lover Gaius Silius, who wants to use the marriage to overthrow Claudius and restore the Republic.

In the last several episodes, when Claudius is ruling as emperor, he formulates a plan to overthrow the Principate. He knows that the Sibyl has prophesied that Nero (Christopher Biggins) will succeed him, so he clears the way for it by marrying his niece Agrippina and adopting Nero. He knows that Nero and Agrippina are immoral and unfit to rule, but that’s his point. He wants Nero to be a tyrant, because that will make people eager to overthrow him. He tries to arrange for his son, Britannicus (Graham Seed), to be smuggled out to northern Britain so that when people turn against Nero, Britannicus can return, overthrow him and restore the Republic. But Britannicus refuses to go along with the plan because he wants to oppose Nero openly. After Claudius dies, the Sibyl appears to him and among other things tells him that Nero will execute Britannicus and that there will be many more emperors after Nero. The Republic is dead.

Throughout the show, as I noted, the Republic symbolizes moral virtue. All of the morally upright characters want the Republic back: Drusus, Postumus, Germanicus, Claudius, as well as a variety of secondary characters like Chaerea, all of whom wind up dead prematurely. Exactly what the Republic is or how it works is never clearly explained, but the show intends the audience to sympathize with it and to view the Principate as inherently evil and corrupt.

Christopher Biggin’s Nero is a wild cliché of Bad Emperor tropes

However, nearly all of that is made up. There is no evidence that Drusus, Postumus, Germanicus, Gaius Silius, Chaerea, or even Claudius were particularly proponents of a return to the Republic. (See Correction) The only moment during the reign of the Julio-Claudian dynasty when there is any evidence for interest in restoring the Republic (so far as I know—classicists, please correct me if I’m wrong) came when Gaius Caligula was assassinated. Suetonius hints at the possibility when he says that right after Chaerea murdered Caligula, “the consuls with the senate and the city cohorts had taken possession of the Forum and the Capitol, resolved on maintaining the public liberty” (Suetonius, Life of Claudius 10), which seems to be a reference to restoring the Republic. Cassius Dio makes a more direct claim. “After the murder of Gaius the consuls despatched guards to every part of the city and convened the senate on the Capitol, where many and diverse opinions were expressed; for some favoured a democracy, some a monarchy, and some were for choosing one man, and some another.” (Cassius Dio, Roman History, LX 1)

There are two notable points here. First, there is no evidence that Chaerea assassinated Caligula in a bid to restore the Republic. The sources all emphasize that his complaint was more personal. Suetonius tells us that he used to taunt Chaerea for being effeminate; he used to give Chaerea insulting watchwords like ‘Venus’ and ‘Priapus’ and make obscene gestures at the man. So Chaerea wanted to avenge slights against himself.

Second, if Cassius Dio is correct that there was a substantial debate in the Senate, it probably wasn’t because there was a burning desire for the Republic. Rather the issue was who would follow Caligula, because in 41 AD the Julio-Claudian dynasty was close to extinct. Augustus’ descendents through his daughter Julia were all dead except his great-granddaughter Agrippina and her four-year old son Nero. Tiberius’ son and grandson were dead as well, although a grand-daughter Julia Livia still survived. Tiberius’ brother Drusus’ living descendants were the aforementioned Agrippina and Nero, his son Claudius, and his daughter Julia Livilla. Nero was obviously too young to serve as emperor, and Claudius had little governing experience, was physically deformed (a clubfoot), and was widely reputed to be a moron. The debate must have turned on what to do if Claudius was unacceptable. Either the Senate could re-establish a Republic or it would have to choose a new ruling dynasty, which meant persuading most of the senators to accept someone other than themselves as the new emperor. In other words, it wasn’t so much yearning for the Republic as a lack of strong alternative candidates for the imperial office that made a restored Republic seem like a reasonable option. Then the Praetorian Guard solved the problem by proclaiming Claudius as emperor.

Sam Dastor as Chaerea

Why Restoring the Republic Wasn’t an Option

The series opens in 24 BC, 7 years after the Battle of Actium, at which Augustus had defeated Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra and secured his stranglehold on Roman government. Depending on exactly when one wants to mark the start of the Principate, it began either in 31 BC or in 27 BC with the so-called First Settlement, when the Senate and people of Rome officially granted Augustus wide ruling powers. That means that the Republic has been gone for between 4 and 7 years at the start of the series. Claudius wasn’t born until 10 BC, about two decades after the end of the Republic. Augustus functionally became sole ruler in 31 BC and ruled until his death 14 AD. Of his successors, only Tiberius, who was born in 42 BC, was born during the Republic. His brother Drusus, born in 38 BC, is the only one of the series’ Republican characters who was born during the Republic. With the exception of Drusus, the Republican characters are all yearning for a Republic they have no personal experience of, and even Drusus can’t have remembered it well, since he was only 11 years old in 27 BC.

Graves and series screenwriter Jack Pulman suggest that the Republic was a healthy, dynamic institution until 31 BC and that Augustus must somehow have toppled it almost single-handedly. But that’s a long way from the truth. The Republic had been a moribund shell of its old system for some time when Antonius and Augustus led the final Republican civil war. In 43 BC, the Senate had formally voted to turn over the reins of government to the Second Triumvirate (Augustus, Antonius, and a colleague Lepidus), thus largely abrogating the normal rules of political power. The Second Triumvirate was preceded by Julius Casesar’s domination, which was barely challenged after 49 BC, and before that was the First Triumvirate, in which Caesar, Pompey Magnus, and Marcus Crassus manipulated the political system and elections behind the scenes starting around 60 BC. Elections were held normally through most of that period, but were either manipulated to produce dishonest results or else the elected officials were not given real political power. So if by Republic you mean something more than just a sham Republic with meaningless elections, then even Augustus, who was born in 63 BC, had no memory of the Republic.

One of the reasons the Republic collapsed was that it was a political system designed to run a city government (Rome’s) that had been stretched to run a Mediterranean empire without ever being overhauled properly to perform those functions. The system simply couldn’t contain the political pressures and ambitions that this new massive state unleashed, and the result was decades of civil war, electoral manipulation, and blatant violations of the Roman constitution; those were problems that were already evident in the 130s BC. The constant civil wars had brought the Roman populace to the brink of disaster, and by 31 BC, people were desperate for peace and stability. The civil wars also resulted in a gradual consolidation of political influence and wealth in increasingly fewer hands, so that by 31 BC, there really wasn’t anyone with the wealth or influence left to challenge Augustus. So if the Julio-Claudians suddenly disappeared, as they seemed to be on the brink of doing when Caligula was murdered, the Roman state might well have fallen into the resulting void.

No one wanted that. The Principate was very good for Rome economically, as peace and stability usually are. Later generations of historians painted the Julio-Claudians as degenerate monsters, but contemporaries don’t seem to have felt that way. One of the few contemporary chroniclers, Velleius Paterculus, knew Tiberius personally and has nothing but good things to say about him, although his praise is usually dismissed as obsequious flattery. Graves used Velleius’ History for facts, but borrowed none of the man’s pro-Tiberian rhetoric because it was at odds with the story he wanted to tell.

Velleius Paterculus

So while the political theme of I, Claudius is very appealing to modern Western audiences who are highly sympathetic to representative government and who may worry about authoritarian rulers who shall remain nameless but whose initials are Donald Trump, the reality is that few Romans wanted a Republic anymore, none of them had any personal memory of a healthy Republic, and there was probably no way to actually recreate a republic anyway.

This post, and the others on I, Claudius was made possible by a very generious donation from a regular reader. Thanks, Lyn! If there’s a movie or TV show you want me to review, please make a donation to my Paypal account and let me know what you’d like me to review. I have another request coming up after I finish I, Claudius, so please be patient.

 

Correction: After writing this post, I ran across a reference that Suetonius makes to a letter in which Drusus discussed the possibility of restoring the Republic with Tiberius. Although Suetonius goes into no detail about the letter, there is at least some factual basis for the idea that Drusus might have disliked the idea of Principate.

 

Want to Know More?

I, Claudius is available on Amazon, as is the combined I, Claudius pair of novels by Graves. They’re both highly recommended.

Cassius Dio’s fragmentary Roman History is available on Kindle quite cheaply. Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars is another vital source for the Julio-Claudians. Both men are quite hostile to the Julio-Claudians and strongly influenced Graves’ narrative. If you want to see what someone who liked the early Caesars had to say, read Velleius Paterculus’ Roman History.

Purchasing any of these is a small way to support my blog. Thanks!

I, Claudius: Republic vs Monarchy

Tags

Ancient Rome, BBC, Brian Blessed, Derek Jacobi, I, Claudius, Livia, Octavian/Augustus, Sian Phillips, The Principate

One of the major themes in I, Claudius is the tension between the concept of the Roman Republic and the reality of the new Roman monarchy. It comes up in every episode in some form or another. But there are major problems with the way the series handles the issue.

The End of the Republic

Before we can see what’s wrong with the series’ approach to the issue, we need to look at what was actually happening in Roman history. The last century of the Roman Republic witnessed the state in the process of slow collapse. The causes of the collapse of the Republic are extremely complex. Starting in 133 BC, there were repeated violations of the Republic’s constitution; a man was only supposed to hold office for one year and was not allowed to stand for office while holding one, but increasingly men were illegally re-elected to offices they currently held. Soldiers gave their loyalty to their generals rather than to the Roman state, and that enabled ambitious generals to wage civil war in pursuit of political aims; civil wars happened nearly every decade, and sometimes more than once in a decade. Political factions tore Rome apart in pursuit of mutually opposing goals. Perhaps the ultimate cause was that the Republic was really only meant to govern one city, but had been increasingly stretched to govern the whole Mediterranean basin, and eventually the system simply couldn’t endure the political pressures on it; imagine the mayor and city council of Chicago serving as the government for the entire United States.

Julius Caesar

In 44 BC, Julius Caesar appeared to emerged as victor in the brutal Hunger Games of the Late Republic. But Caesar was a man of such blatant ambition that once he was truly ascendant, he was unable to conceal what looked to contemporaries a desire to become a king. The Republic was established to prevent the emergence of a new king, and while the Republic as a system was so moribund as to be non-functional, there was still a deep antipathy of the concept of a king; eastern peoples had kings, but Rome had elected consuls. Eventually Caesar’s close friends came to the conclusion that his ambition was a threat to theirs; the result was his infamous murder at the hands of several close friends.

His heir was his adoptive great-nephew Octavian, who fought several more civil wars before his final triumph over Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BC. That victory left Octavian the unchallenged ruler of the Roman state. There was simply no one who could practically challenge him. But that had been Caesar’s situation as well, and when Caesar accordingly acted like a king, it got him murdered. So Octavian was left with a conundrum. He was unquestionably the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, but he could not admit to being the sole ruler without running the very real risk that he would be assassinated. So he had to find another way to rule.

Octavian (or as the Senate renamed him, Augustus) adopted the approach of claiming that he had ‘restored the Republic.’ Instead of inventing new titles and offices like Caesar’s perpetual dictatorship, he preferred to employ traditional Republican ones. He was named princeps (loosely, translated as ‘first citizen’, a traditional honor given to the longest-serving senator) and imperator (roughly, ‘one with the power to command’), another traditional title; from these two words we get the terms ‘prince’ and ‘emperor’, but crucially these words did not carry any suggestion of royalty, the way they do for us today. Rather than disrespecting the Senate, as Caesar had done, Augustus consisted treated the Senate with a great deal of respect, frequently asking for their advice. After several years of monopolizing the consulship, he realized that this was thwarting the ambitions of prominent men, so he stopped having himself elected consul so that others could enjoy the honor. Although he had been granted wide legal powers, he generally preferred to operate through traditional Republican officials, to maintain the illusion that the Republic was running as it always had.

Augustus

In reality, however, Augustus ran the Roman state as he willed. The senators understood that they were no longer truly in charge and evidently appreciated being allowed to remain as prominent figures without much true power. After decades of civil war, they must have been desperate for a man who could truly guarantee peace and stability. Augustus eviscerated the inner workings of the Republic but kept its exterior for show; having gutted the Republic, he was walking around wearing its skin and claiming that the Republic had been restored to health with his help. He created a system modern historians call the Principate, a system in which the man in charge pretended he was nothing more than the ‘first citizen’ of Rome.

Such, at least, is the traditional picture of Augustus. That’s the version I learned as an undergraduate and it’s the version I teach to my students. But in the past generation, some historians have argued that perhaps the truth is more complicated. They point to the fact that much of our information about Augustus and his immediate successors is drawn from 2^nd century AD historians such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, all of whom were writing with the knowledge of what the Principate looked like a century after its establishment. These historians argue that perhaps Augustus was serious about reviving the Republic but that the system was too moribund to be salvageable as anything more than a fiction. They note the very considerable continuities between the Republic and the Principate, such as its legal system and the major officials.

I’m not enough of a Classicist to go into much detail about this revisionist approach to the early Principate, so I’ll just leave it as a note that there is some debate among modern historians about exactly what Augustus thought he was doing. Whether Augustus was serious about reviving the Republic or if he was just cynically disguising his intentions, one thing is clear, he was not ruling openly as a monarch. He consistently avoided most of the trapping of monarchy in his day, such as a crown or a throne. Unlike kings, he did not dress in purple clothing; he preferred to dress simply, And he consistently refused to let the Romans worship him as a living god, because that was an honor demanded by Hellenistic kings in the eastern Mediterranean. He adopted a variety of dodges, such as allowing the dedication of temples to ‘Rome and Augustus’, but open worship as a living god was too strongly associated with kings for Augustus to be comfortable with it, even though he allowed the Senate to deify his dead adoptive father.

The Principate in I, Claudius

In I, Claudius, however, Augustus (Brian Blessed) and the members of his household talk plainly about the Republic being dead and discuss the Principate as a monarchy. In the first episode, Tiberius (George Baker) directly asks Drusus “do you think the monarchy will survive Augustus?” His brother Drusus (Ian Ogilvy) replies that Rome will be a Republic again. There is a great deal of discussion about the line of succession, with everyone assuming that it will follow biological order, the way it might in a monarchy. Drusus and Livia explicitly discuss Augustus as a monarch.

Blessed as Augustus

In the same episode, Julia wonders why her father puts up with the Senate at all, and Livia (Sian Phillips) replies that Augustus ‘observes the forms’ and that the Romans like to think they govern themselves. She’s exactly right about this, but it’s virtually the only hint the series gives about the historical Augustus’ strategy for governing. Julia’s response is that the younger generation don’t care about such things.

After Marcellus dies, a mob forms outside Augustus’ house. Livia confronts it, shouting “What do you want? The Republic? The Republic is all humbug!…You’re all crying for the moon!” Such a blatant statement that the Republic was dead was exactly the sort of thing that Augustus would not have permitted, and the historical Livia certainly understood that.

The Senate is treated as being a bunch of largely useless fools and in one scene Augustus’ wife Livia summons a senior senator and simply gives him orders. Since Livia had no official role in Roman government, the idea that she would boldly gives orders to key senators is rather improbable. Livia certainly was a powerful woman, and she took some of the work of governing off Augustus’ shoulders, but not in such a blunt and obvious way. That sort of disrespectful treatment of senators was exactly the sort of thing that Augustus knew he needed to avoid.

Phillips as Livia

Repeatedly, the good characters in I, Claudius talk about bringing back the Republic. Drusus is openly in favor of a Republic and encourages Augustus to retire. Postumus (John Castle) and Germanicus (David Robb) are both portrayed as favoring a return to the Republic, and Claudius (Derek Jacobi) consistently expresses Republican sentiments, including grooming his son Britannicus to lead an overthrown of Nero and restore the Republic. There’s absolutely no evidence that any of these men felt this way; it’s entirely the invention of Graves and the show’s screenwriters.

Much of the plot of the first third of the show revolves around the question of Augustus’ successor, and, as I noted, the series approaches this question as if it’s obvious that Augustus’ office will pass by simple hereditary succession following something like primogeniture. In the first episode, the order of succession is Marcellus (Augustus’ nephew and adopted son), followed by his sons Gaius and Lucius, and then Tiberius, the son of his wife. But actual Roman law was rather more complicated than that. Roman law made a man’s heirs his sons and daughters in equal shares, as well as his son’s children, but not his daughter’s children. But the law made no distinction between biological sons and adopted ones. So in fact, Tiberius was not in the line of inheritance at all, because he was not adopted by Augustus until 4 AD, after Marcellus, Gaius, and Lucius were all dead, whereas Julia would have been in the line of succession, had there been such a thing.

Jacobi as Young Claudius

I say ‘had there been such a thing’ because all of this assumes that the Principate was a form of property that would pass to Augustus’ heirs the way kingship would pass to a son. However, Augustus’ approach to governing involved denying that he held any special office. His governing powers were not rooted in a specific office but were rather cobbled together in an ad hoc fashion to meet his needs. There was no way to pass these powers on to an heir. This was, in fact, the biggest flaw in Augustus’ system. How could he pass on an office he couldn’t admit to holding? Over the course of his reign, Augustus’ solution to this was to build up a chosen man in prominence through office-holding and military service; then he adopted the man so that the man would inherit his wealth and his family name. So his strategy was to promote the man without explicitly designating him as a political successor. The problem that he encountered is that his chosen successors kept dying: Marcellus, Agrippa, Lucius, and Gaius. As we’ll discuss in a later post, Graves’ approach to this is that Livia was systematically murdering all of Augustus’ possible heirs until he finally settled on Tiberius, and then murdering anyone who might be an obstacle to that succession.

So the series’ approach to Augustus’ rule is mostly wrong. Perhaps his family might have privately spoken about Augustus as if he were a king, but they would certainly have known that he wasn’t a king and that his rule was based on a constitutional fiction that would collapse if it was openly discussed. Augustus’ system is hard to explain, and it’s understandable that the series decided to simplify it for the viewers, but they simplified it in a way that misrepresents how the system worked.

Want to Know More? 

I, Claudius is available on Amazon, as is the combined I, Claudius pair of novels by Graves.

There are many excellent biographies of Augustus. One good one is Adrian Goldsworthy’s Augustus.

Buying items through these links is one way to support this blog, since I get a small percentage of the sale. Another option to support me is to donate through Paypal. This series of posts was commissioned by someone who made a generous donation and asked me to review I, Claudius. So if there’s a film or tv show you’d liked to get my thoughts on, please donate and let me know what you’d like me to review.

I, Claudius: First Comments

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BBC, Claudius, Derek Jacobi, I, Claudius, Movies I Love, Robert Graves, The Julio-Claudians

As I was growing up in the 1970s, my parents were devotees of Masterpiece Theater, which ran a seemingly endless series of BBC costume dramas. We only had one tv set (apart from a crappy little black and white set that lived in the kitchen), so I watched what they watched: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, Upstairs Downstairs, and I, Claudius. I think those shows played a big role in teaching me to love history. By the time I Claudius rolled around, I was old enough to have some real understanding of what was going on. It was my first introduction to Roman history, and I confess that whenever I think of Augustus, Livia, Caligula, and Claudius, I still tend to picture Brian Blessed, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, and Derek Jacobi. I watched the show again when I was in college and had studied some Roman history, so I appreciated it more. And over the years, I’ve thought about watching it again, now that I’ve had a chance to dig further into Roman history.

So I was incredibly excited when a reader of this blog made a very generous donation to my Paypal account and asked me to review I, Claudius. Last night as I sat down to watch the first episode, I felt a thrill of childhood nostalgia as the brash, jarring opening music played and a serpent slithered across a portrait of the Emperor Claudius. So my next couple of posts will be about this classic look at Rome’s first emperors.

The show has a lot to recommend it. The cast is excellent and one of the joys of the series is spotting actors you know for elsewhere, like Patrick Stewart, John Rhys-Davies, Simon McCorkindale, Bernard Hill (Theoden in the the Lord of the Rings movies), Kevin McNally (from the Pirates of the Caribbean series), Patricia Quinn (of Rocky Horror fame), John Castle (from my favorite movie ever), Patsy Byrne (Nursie in the second season of Blackadder), and someone from damn near every episode of Doctor Who ever made. The script is rich and complex, the characters fully-realized, and the story combines the emotional complexity of a family drama with the high melodrama of political intrigue. This show has everything: scheming, adultery, false accusations of rape, murder, poisonings, insanity, betrayal, incest… It’s everything American soap operas hope to be, but done much better and solidly based in historical fact.

The series is based on Robert Graves’ novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, published n 1934 and 35. Graves was a celebrated poet, novelist, and non-fiction author; his White Goddess exercised a profound influence on the nascent neo-pagan revival, his collect of Greek myths still sells well, and his translation of the Latin classic The Golden Ass remains one of the best. The two I, Claudius novels, however, represent his greatest work; they still rank high on the list of the best English-language novels ever.

Robert Graves

The novels purport to be the autobiography of the Emperor Claudius (41-54AD). According to the conceit, after Claudius became emperor he decided to write his autobiography to reveal all the sordid truths about his extended family and predecessors, the Julio-Claudian dynasty. But a sibyl prophesied to him that the book would not be read for 1900 years. The scenario is less preposterous than it sounds, since Claudius was actually an historian and is known to have written an autobiography, although none of his writings have survived.

Graves’ books and the tv series are heavily based on three major narrative sources for the first century, the Annals and Histories of Tacitus, the 12 Caesars of Suetonius, and the Roman History of Cassius Dio. While there are other sources for the Julio-Claudian dynasty, these three sources give the most sustained narratives for the period. Graves’ novels draw heavily from the stories these three authors tell, but he fills in a lot of blank spots with his own invention to create a fiction that draws heavily from historical sources.

One of Graves’ concerns with these novels was to liberate historical novels with the self-conscious archaizing that was so common in 19th century historical novels. His characters don’t use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and other such old-fashioned language meant to convey a sense of the seriousness and importance of the past. Instead, his characters speak in common 20th-century English, employing contemporary idioms, to communicate a sense that the past felt like the present to those who lived it. So, for example, early in the series, Augustus comments that he wants some information ‘chapter and verse’. That’s a reference to the division of the Bible into verses, which was done in the 13th century by Archbishop Stephen Langton, so there’s no way Augustus could have used such a phrase. But the anachronism works because it makes Augustus seem like a contemporary of the reader, which was Graves’ whole point.

However, Graves used his sources very uncritically. His goal was to create a satisfying fictional story, not a truly accurate historical piece of work. The major problem with the three Roman authors is that all three were writing in the 2^nd century AD, long after the establishment of the imperial office, and none of them were fans of the Julio-Claudian emperors. Tacitus provides the most coherent narrative but consistently speculates in negative ways about his subjects. Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and therefore probably had the best source of information, but was deeply hostile to the emperors, was happy to rely on sources like drinking songs and obscene graffiti, and generally twisted his material to present his subjects in the worst possible light. Dio’s narrative is much more removed from the events, since he was writing at the end of the 2^nd century AD, and large portions of it have not survived; he also made a lot of factual mistakes.

The result is a rather lurid story about these men and women, but one that is probably not really true in its essence, despite being rooted in historical sources. While Graves was interested in history, he was far more interested in getting to what he considered the higher poetic truths behind the facts. In the next several posts, we’ll look at some of the problems with I, Claudius’ version of events.

Gladiator: Hey, Gang! Let’s Revive the Republic!

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Ancient Rome, Commodus, Derek Jacobi, Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius, Richard Harris, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe

Early on in Gladiator (2000, dir. Ridley Scott), Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) tells Maximus (Russell Crowe) that he wants to “return Rome to the people” and re-establish the Roman Republic. He feels that Maximus has the moral qualities that will enable him to accomplish this feat, while Commodus lacks those virtues, and thus Marcus makes the choice to declare Maximus his successor, although Commodus murders him before he can announce the decision. Thus the film’s plot is driven by Marcus’ idea of restoring the Republic.

Nor is Marcus alone in this goal. Senator Gracchus (Derek Jacobi) and Senator Gaius (John Shrapnel) both want to see Rome returned to a Republic as well. They plot with Maximus and with Commodus’ sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) to foment a rebellion that will overthrow Commodus and put Maximus in control, so that he can empower the Senate to rule Rome again. So while the memorable part of the film is the conflict between Commodus and Maximus, the actual plot of the film is an attempt to end the entire system of the Principate (as modern scholars term the rule of the emperors in this period) and re-establish the system of the Republic.

So Is the Film’s Plot Plausible?

In a word, no. The Roman Republic, which was founded around the year 510 BC (at least according to Roman tradition), entered its decline in the late 2^nd century BC. This period, termed the Late Republic, is generally taken to have begun with the disputed election of 133 BC, during which the supporters of the populist tribune Tiberius Gracchus (note his cognomen) forced through his illegal re-election so that he could enact a law aimed at helping the poor. The Senate, lead by the pontifex maximus (high priest), rioted and massacred Tiberius and around 300 of his supporters in the street.

This combination of political violence and disregard for the electoral processes became one of the chief characteristics of the Late Republic, as politics increasingly became a matter of force. By the time Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, the Roman political system was in a state of near-total collapse, and it fell to Caesar’s adopted son Octavian (more commonly known as Augustus) to create a new system on the ruins of the old one, as I discussed in a previous post.

Augustus, Rome’s first emperor

In Augustus’ day, there were still many people who longed for a revival of the traditional Republican system, and for that reason, Augustus had to be careful to cover his absolute rule with a fig-leaf of Republicanism. In 41 AD, when a conspiracy by Cassius Chaera led to the assassination of Gaius Caligula, there were calls for the re-establishment of the Republic. But this doesn’t seem to have been the main motive for the assassination; rather, Chaerea seems to have been primarily motivated by Caligula’s constant ridicule of him. The Senate briefly supported the cause of a revived Republic, but their support evaporated when the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula’s uncle Claudius the new emperor.

Perhaps, had events played out differently, it might have been possible to revive the Republic in 41 AD, but it’s doubtful. By 41 AD, there was no one alive who had any experience with the genuine Republican system; a few ancient men and women might have remembered the Republic’s final collapse under Caesar and Octavian, but even that is unlikely.

Furthermore, the collapse of the Republic was due in considerable measure to forces unleashed by the expansion of the Roman state outside the Italian peninsula. The Republic was essentially a system set up to run a single city; the Senate was in many ways like a large city council. The entire slate of elected officials only numbered in the low dozens, and there was no bureaucracy to assist these elected officials. As the Roman state conquered new territory, instead of revising the system to keep up with new demands of running a large state (for example by adding more levels of elected officials), the conservative Romans just kept jury-rigging this city government. For example, they decided that conquered provinces would be administered by former consuls appointed by the Senate. So in other words, imagine the city council of Chicago trying to run the entire United States government, and constantly appointing former mayors to help do so. It’s not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

The whole system became riddled with political corruption, profiteering, overweening political ambition, and civil war. Eventually, by the time Julius Caesar came along, the whole system was simply stretched past its breaking point, and Caesar was the guy who finally snapped it. By the end of Augustus’ reign, Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean basic and a good deal more beyond that. There was simply no way that Rome could go back to a system that had collapsed in some part because it was no long adequate to manage its needs. So the idea that the Republic could be restored in 41 AD was little more than a transient fantasy.

If the Republic was moldering in its grave by 41 AD, the corpse had long since been reduced to nothing by 180 AD. While Marcus Aurelius could have been an idealistic dreamer who fantasized about restoring the Republic (although there’s little evidence of that), there is no way it could possibly have accomplished, any more than Barack Obama could plausibly expect the United States to revert to the Articles of Confederation.

So the idea that a serious conspiracy could be hatched to accomplish this pipe dream is pretty silly. It becomes slightly more plausible if we assume that Gracchus or Gaius is hoping to make himself emperor by using Maximus to depose Commodus and then get rid of Maximus, but there’s no evidence that that’s what they’re up to.

Additionally, the film makes the assumption that the Roman Republic was somehow ruled by the ‘people’ in the sense of modern American democracy. It’s true that the Roman officials were elected, so there is a faint resemblance to modern democracy, but the Roman system had almost nothing in common with the American system beyond having elected officials. The Roman electoral system was designed to heavily privilege the Roman aristocracy; they voted first, they controlled the votes of a large number of people below them, and voting stopped the moment the winner was clear, so that many poor people never voted at all. Rather than being a Republic in the modern sense, modern scholars tend to see the Roman Republic as a type of oligarchy, in which the same two dozen or so aristocratic families were perpetually in control through the election of different family members. And the Senate, which in this film is supposedly the representatives of the Roman people, was the least democratic element of the system, since it was comprised of all former office-holders, who served more or less as lifetime senators after having held almost any elected office.

Again, I suppose we could make more sense of the plot by saying that after 200 years, no one understood that the Republic was actually an oligarchy, and instead that they somehow actually want modern democracy, but that’s pretty dubious.

The biggest problem with the film’s plot is that it can’t make up its mind who actually represents ‘the people’. Gracchus and Gaius are disgusted by Commodus’ gladiatorial spectacles, precisely because they see how easily Commodus will sway the Roman people to support him. As Gracchus says, “He will bring them death, and they will love him for it.” But somehow, at the same time, Gracchus is convinced that the Senate is the body that represents the people. He claims that “The senate is the people, sire. Chosen from among the people to speak for the people.” His claim is totally false; at no point was the Senate the voice of the people. Even at the height of the Republic, it was the tribunes who represented the lower classes, not the Senate (which is part of the reason the Senate was afraid of Tiberius Gracchus). Again, this will make a little more sense if we assume that Gracchus is either deluded or simply looking to justify his jealousy of Commodus’ power.

Derek Jacobi as Senator Gracchus

So the whole plot of the film is problematic. It claims to be a plot by various people to overthrow the emperor and restore the Republic, but this is so unrealistic as to be implausible. The only way we can really make this story make sense is to assume that Gracchus’ true aim is to make himself emperor. If that’s the case, Maximus is simply a puppet in a failed political coup. That means that this film isn’t actually based on how Commodus died (since he died in 192, not 180); it’s really the story of Senator Quadratus’ failed attempt to assassinate Commodus in 182, with Maximus playing the role of Quintianus. Ridley Scott got the names wrong, and he shows the conspiracy succeeding when it actually failed, but this still makes more sense then the film’s putative plot.

Gladiator: A Brief Comment about Names

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Commodus, Derek Jacobi, Gladiator, John Shrapnel, Maximus, Oliver Reed, Ridley Scott, Roman Names, Russell Crowe

One of the small things that sort of bugs me about Gladiator (2000, dir. Ridley Scott) is that is screws up Roman rules about naming. Roman society recognized that any upper class man belonged to a familia (a unit formed by the marriage of a man and woman, loosely comparable to the modern nuclear family) and to a gens, or clan, a wider descent group vaguely similar to the idea of Scottish and Irish clans today. By traditional Roman naming convention, a man had three names, his praenomen (his personal or ‘first’ name), his nomen (which signals which gens he belongs to), and his cognomen (the name of his familia, roughly comparable to a Western last name). So Gaius Julius Caesar is Gaius of the Caesarian familia within the Julian gens. The correct order is praenomen, nomen, cognomen.

The praenomen is a private individual name used by the members of a man’s familia, and his close personal friends. Using it is a sign of familiarity or that the speaker is socially above the person being spoken to. So only his close family and friends will call him Gaius. For anyone else to do so is rude. Everyone else will call him Julius, which is how they would also address any of his male relatives.

But Russell Crowe’s character is named Maximus Decimus Meridius, which is wildly incorrect, because it’s cognomen, praenomen, nomen. It ought to be Decimus Meridius Maximus. Everyone calls him Maximus, when they should probably call him Meridius, but there are enough examples of Romans known by their cognomens that we can probably overlook that. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus could reasonably address him as Decimus, since they are clearly his social superior; calling him Maximus would be a substantial courtesy, because it implies that he is their equal.

But that’s not the end of the problem. The two main senators are Senator Gaius and Senator Gracchus, and are addressed as such. Gaius is a praenomen, while Gracchus is a cognomen. So we’ve got Senator Fred and Senator Smith here, which doesn’t make sense unless Senator Gaius is considered a complete joke who doesn’t deserve the courtesy of being called by his nomen or cognomen, and it’s unlikely that any man was elevated to the Senate unless he commanded general respect.

Also, the lanista who buys Maximus, Antonius Proximo (Oliver Reed) has an Italian name; it ought to be Antonius Proximus.

In general, one of the things I’ve learned from watching historical films is that screenwriters just make up names based on rules known only to them. This is one of the very frustrating things for historians; it would take half an hour with a scholarly book or a phone call to a historian to figure out historically accurate names for characters, and instead, they just make shit up. I entirely get that the screenwriters of Gladiator wanted to stage Commodus’ death in the arena instead of his palace; it’s more dramatic in a film called Gladiator to have the bad guy die in the arena. But the names of supporting characters aren’t going to make much difference to the audience, so why not take the trouble to make them at least plausible?

Correction: My colleague Sarah Bond, who specializes in Roman history, pointed out a small overstatement that I made in the above post. Not all Roman men had three names. The trinomina (the triple name) was generally the mark of a Roman citizen, so that lower-class Roman men did not always have three names. Additionally, she tells me that while Hollywood movies often garble Roman names, sometimes Romans in the provinces of the Empire did as well, at least based on funeral inscriptions. So there is perhaps some precedent for a garbled name like Maximus Decimus Meridius, though probably not for man of his apparently very high standing. Thanks, Sarah!

Want to Know More?

Gladiatoris available at Amazon.

Ironclad: The Woman as the Prize

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Derek Jacobi, Ironclad, James Purefoy, Kate Mara, Medieval England, Medieval Europe, Woman as Prize

In my last post, I discussed Ironclad (2011, dir. Jonathan English), a film about the siege of Rochester in 1215. There’s a lot to like about the film, despite some of its historical errors, but there’s one part about it that I find troubling, namely its treatment of its main female character.

In the past few weeks, as people have reacted to the Isla Vista killings, many people have argued that the killer’s attitudes were in part the product of a culture that treats women as objects designed to serve men’s needs. It’s been pointed out that many films, especially action films, tend to re-enforce this idea. So, to help further this important discussion that’s taking place, I want to look at the way Ironclad treats its main female character, because I think it’s a good example of this extremely common, but also extremely problematic, tendency in films.

Ironclad is very much a man’s movie. It’s set solidly within the action movie genre, since the entire plot is about the siege of Rochester Castle. The extreme male-on-male violence falls into this genre as well. The cast also reflects this; it has 17 named characters, of whom only 3 are women (and one of them has such a small part I’m not even sure who she is; I think she might be an elderly lady-in-waiting). The film draws heavily off of Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai, and so its action is almost entirely concerned with the actions and choices of men, particularly its protagonist Thomas Marshall (James Purefoy). It fails the Bechdel test miserably (unless you count one line in which a lady in waiting tells Isabel to get back from a fight that’s broken out). The film is so deeply male-centric, the female characters could have been omitted entirely without affecting the plot in any way. So why are they even there?

Of the two female characters worth discussing, one of them, Agnes (Bree Condon) is a serving women at castallan Reginald de Cornhill’s household. She primarily functions as a sexual partner for one of the male soldiers who comes to the castle with Marshall. When John’s forces penetrate the bailey, she takes up a weapon and fights against them, but is killed. Her character gets little screen-time and virtually no character development, but at least she made more of an impression than the third female character.

The only important female in the film is Lady Isabel (Kate Mara), who is the wife of Cornhill (Derek Jacobi). She is a young woman married to a much older man who has no interest in her sexually. When Thomas arrives, she is drawn to him because he is such a strong contrast with her husband; Thomas is young, handsome, virile, and a strong leader and decision-maker, while Cornhill is old, hesitant, possibly impotent, and generally a weak leader. While Thomas is determined to hold the castle at all costs, Cornhill waivers repeatedly and has to be prevented from surrendering. Over the course of the siege Thomas and Isabel gradually grow closer, and eventually under her advances, he breaks his oath of celibacy and they have sex. At the end of the film, she is one of three survivors of the siege, along with Thomas and Guy, a young squire. She is last seen carried by Thomas on horseback as he rides away from the castle.

Kate Mara, wearing one of those classic 13th-century off-the-shoulder dresses

So her trajectory over the course of the film is to first be a forbidden fruit and then gradually to become Thomas’ woman. Her interest in Thomas is presented as entirely a function of Thomas’ superior masculinity in comparison to Cornhill. Thomas fights and suffers greatly over the course of the film, while Cornhill acts much like a fearful old woman. Whereas Thomas finds the internal strength to survive and fight to the end, Cornhill eventually loses his nerve and hangs himself. This is historically incorrect; he survived the siege and was taken prisoner by John after the surrender. As I’ve said before, it’s important to ask why a particular detail is ahistorical, and in this case the answer seems obvious; Cornhill has to die so that Isabel can pair off with Marshall at the end of the film.

Derek Jacobi being generally ineffectual

If this were as far as the film’s treatment of Isabel went, it would merely be a clichéd ending. But the film takes things a step further and makes it clear that Isabel’s function is to be a prize for Thomas. The contest in this film isn’t just between Thomas and Cornhill, after all. It’s between Thomas and King John and his villainous Viking captain Tiberius (really? A Viking named Tiberius? Sigh.) So Thomas doesn’t just ‘defeat’ Cornhill; he must defeat John and Tiberius as well, and in both cases, his prize is Cornhill’s wife.

At the start of the film, it’s clear that Thomas is a troubled man. He has some sort of secret that led him to become a Templar; this secret is never explained, but it’s clear that Thomas doesn’t really want to be a Templar any more. There is some talk early in the film of his taking a leave from the Templars (I’m not sure how that would work; is he released from his vow of chastity for a couple weeks?) Soon after his arrival at Rochester he abandons his vow of silence (which is a good thing, because a film whose central character can’t speak needs to have a much better script than this one). Then he breaks his vow of chastity by having sex with Isabel. Finally, after the siege is over, Archbishop Stephen Langton (Charles Dance) shows up and gives Thomas his freedom, allowing him to leave the Templars because he’s earned it. This is crucially important, because as a monk, Thomas cannot have a future with Isabel. So Thomas is rewarded for his successful defense of the castle with two interconnected rewards, his freedom from the Templars and his vows of silence and chastity, and Lady Isabel. In other words, he gets Lady Isabel almost explicitly because he ‘won’ the siege. She is almost literally his prize for coming in first in a masculinity contest.

At no point is she asked if she wants to be his; it’s simply assumed that since her husband is dead, she now belongs to Thomas. She is given no agency whatsoever, apart from making a sexual advance on him partway through the film. Whereas the slutty serving girl Agnes at least gets to choose to fight and die, Isabel is kept in the keep and is pushed from room to room to keep her safe.

Most tellingly, when the Vikings force their way into the keep for the final confrontation, Guy the squire is instructed that if the Vikings get past the last line of defense, Guy must kill Isabel, apparently so she won’t raped by the Vikings. This isn’t just a throw-away bit of dialog; Guy agonizes about this command and the film builds tension over whether he will have to carry it out. So in the film’s construction of the events, once Cornhill dies, Isabel simply becomes Thomas’ property, and if he can’t have her, she needs to be killed. In the film’s logic, Isabel must belong to the man who can defend her properly, regardless of whether this is what she wants or not, and if the film’s hero doesn’t get to live with her, her life is worthless.

Let me emphasize that. Isabel has no value of her own in this film. Her entire function is to validate Thomas’ struggle to hold onto the castle.

Thomas very subtlety implying that he has a huge schlong

The film presents this in traditional romantic terms, of course, which means that the film assumes that Isabel’s consent to be Thomas’ property is given the moment she offers herself to Thomas sexually. Having slept with Thomas, she is his, and makes no further choices. The film only gives her one motive for her choice, that she is obviously poorly suited to her husband.

The film never pauses to think that Thomas, by taking control of the castle, has essentially taken both her and her husband hostage to his determination to hold the castle. Nor does it consider that perhaps she offers herself to Thomas purely as a way to survive the siege because he’s obviously a safer bet than relying on her pathetic husband. Or perhaps she’s experiencing Stockholm Syndrome and fallen in love with her captor. Nor does it occur to the film that a poor, penniless knight is not necessarily the best choice of husband for a noble widow who has probably inherited all her late husband’s property. She is a good catch for Thomas, but what he offers her other than his virility is unexplained. But that’s because she’s not really a character in her own right; she’s a prize to be claimed by the victor of the struggle. His superior virility is enough to justify this wealthy prize.

Laid out in these terms, it’s easy to see how a film like Ironclad unintentionally contributes to the misogyny that is so powerfully present in modern American culture. Thomas, like the Isla Vista killer, is entitled to sex from the woman he wants, because her desires are entirely irrelevant. The narrative is male-centric, with Isabel functioning as nothing more than an object of desire. And if Thomas can’t have her, no one should. When films frequently fail to assign women any actual value beyond sex objects and prizes, it’s easy to see why a mentally ill man might come to the same conclusion, and then lash out at them when he fails to win them over. If he can’t have them, no one should.

Arthur Chu has done a good job of exploring exactly this dynamic in nerd culture, in his essay “Your Princess is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds”. Thomas Marshall gets lucky, because at the end of his adventure, his princess turns out to be in the same castle as he is.

Want to Know More?

Ironcladis available on Amazon.

Ironclad: Vikings, and Templars, and Magna Carta, Oh My!

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Derek Jacobi, Ironclad, James Purefoy, King John, Knights Templar, Magna Carta, Medieval England, Military Stuff, Monks and Nuns, Paul Giametti

Recently I decided that I needed to review a film on Tudor history. I turned on Netflix and went looking for one of the classics—Anne of the Thousand Days, A Man for All Seasons or perhaps one of Cate Blanchett’s movies about Elizabeth. I discovered two things. 1) Netflix has no films on Tudor history at all, just a bunch of not very good-looking documentaries. 2) Ironclad (2011, dir. Jonathan English). I’m not sure why Netflix suggested this film, because the only thing it has in common with any of the above films is that it’s set in England. But I faintly remembered hearing about it when it first came out, so I watched it.

It’s a small independent film; the financing was apparently such a big challenge that at one point they had to recast all the supporting roles, after Megan Fox dropped out. But despite the modest budget, it’s the largest independent film ever made in Wales. And, a little improbably, it’s based quite solidly in history, albeit with some important liberties.

The Siege of Rochester Castle

On June 15^th, 1215, King John reluctantly signed the Magna Carta, a charter of liberties in which he agreed to a variety of restrictions on his powers as king and lord of vassals. Most of the charter was limited to John’s relationship with his vassals and therefore applied only to nobles, but a few details applied to everyone in the country, most notably the establishment of what can be called the right of due process for all non-serfs and the abolition of double jeopardy in trials.

However, soon after John signed it, he repudiated it, and Pope Innocent III declared John released from his oath to support it. This triggered the First Barons’ War, in which the rebellious barons, supported by King Louis VIII of France, essentially attempted to depose John. The rebels were also supported by Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury.

In October, Langton sent the nobleman William d’Aubigny to occupy Rochester Castle. The castle had been in John’s hands, but the Magna Carta had required John to return it to Langton because it was the property of the archbishopric of Canterbury. John persuaded the castellan, Reginald de Cornhill, to open the gates and D’Aubigny occupied the castle with a small force, much to John’s great frustration. Rochester Castle controlled the southern road to London, which the rebels had taken control of. John could not risk bypassing Rochester, and so he laid siege to the castle for two months.

Rochester Castle. Note how close it is to Rochester Cathedral

John’s forces occupied the city of Rochester and destroyed the bridge linking the city to London, thus making it difficult for the rebels to relieve the siege. For two months, d’Aubigny’s small band of men, variously numbered between 85 and 150, struggled to keep hold off John. John’s forces broke through the outer wall of the castle, forcing the defenders to retreat to the keep. John’s forces sapped the keep, digging a tunnel under it and then burning the tunnel supports. This caused part of the keep to collapse, but the rebels held out in the part of the castle that remained. Some of the less-able-bodied defenders were forced to leave because of dwindling supplies, and some sources report that John cut off their hands and feet. Eventually, the remaining defenders surrendered; John imprisoned all of them, including d’Aubigny, except one archer whom John executed because the man had served him from childhood but then rebelled.

Sadly for John, the capture of Rochester did not improve his position significantly. He was able to force the rebels into a stalemate, but suffered a setback when his baggage train was lost crossing a tidal estuary. He contracted dysentery or something similar and died on October 18^th, 1216, about a year after starting the siege of Rochester.

King John was a complex figure. He was widely disliked by his nobles, and his various defeats sharply colored his posthumous reputation, especially in comparison with his more famous and accomplished father Henry II and brother Richard the Lion-hearted. He has been remembered by derisive nicknames such as ‘Lackland’ and ‘Softsword’, and most historical literature treats him poorly; he is, after all, the main villain in modern Robin Hood stories, and The Lion in Winter makes him seem like a pathetic joke.

King John

But in recent decades scholars have tended to paint a more balanced picture of John. They have pointed out that he was an extremely skilled solider; his forces never lost a battle at which he was present, but his great tragedy was that the two most critical battles of his reign were ones he was unable to be at. He was a talented administrator, who paid far more attention to his kingdom than his older brother did. His servants were deeply loyal to him, but he lacked the skills to manage the nobles and clergy who truly mattered politically. Like his father, he was possessed of both enormous energy and a ferocious temper, but at key moments he seems to have been paralyzed by inaction; one historian has suggested that he might have been bi-polar. All in all, I like John, far more than I like his brother Richard.

Ironclad

The plot of Ironclad focuses entirely on the siege of Rochester, and it follows the events of the siege fairly closely, albeit with some significant deviations. The main character is the entirely fictitious Thomas Marshall (James Purefoy), a Templar knight with some sort of dark secret that is never revealed. The film claims that the Templars were the main reason that John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which is completely untrue. John had good relationships with the Templars, and relied on the advice of Aymeric de St. Maur, the master of the Order in England at the time. Aymeric encouraged him to sign the Magna Carta, but that’s a far cry from claiming that the Templars forced him into it.

Like Arn the Knight Templar, this film seems to suggest that one joins the Templars like one joins the modern military. There are suggestions that Thomas might be allowed to “take a leave” from the Templars, and at the end, Archbishop Langton tells Thomas that he’s “earned his freedom.” But joining a monastic order was a permanent conversion; men did not leave the Order after a period of time. However, an archbishop would have had the authority to release someone from their monastic oaths, although it would have been highly unusual to do so. One of the reasons men joined monastic orders was that it was thought to significantly increase the chance of salvation, so leaving a monastic order would not have been seen as a good thing by most people at the time.

Also, the film claims that Templars had a “vow of silence”. Vows of silence were a real thing, but they’ve been badly misunderstood. In general, monks were expected to focus their thoughts on spiritual matters and to avoid frivolous conversations. Some orders employed a simple form of sign language so that monks could communicate simple ideas without speaking. But most orders allowed monks to talk, at least at certain moments. Monks met regularly in chapter meetings to discuss matters of importance. At meals, they heard texts read to them. Some monastic rules set aside time for the brothers to converse. And of course they sang the liturgy multiple times a day. But these are not formal vows of silence, which was a practice only employed by a minority of medieval monastic orders. The Templars most certainly did not maintain a vow of silence, since as soldiers, they needed to communicate orders on the battlefield. Clearly the screenwriter hasn’t thought this issue through.

Also, Thomas uses a Braveheart-style great sword. If it was too early for William Wallace, it’s way too early for an early 13th century Templar. Thanks, Mel Gibson. Now everybody apparently needs to use great swords.

Purefoy as Thomas Marshall, with his great sword

Early in the film, Thomas and William d’Aubigny (Brian Cox) are sent by Stephen Langton to hold Rochester Castle against John. They do a Seven Samurai number and recruit five more soldiers and then go to Rochester, where they convince Reginald de Cornhill (Derek Jacobi) to let them hold the castle, But Cornhill has only eleven men, so 18 soldiers and a few servants are left to hold off John’s forces. This is an absurdly small group to hold even a small castle; in an actual siege, a group that small would have been overwhelmed on the first day of battle.

Historically, John hired a mixed group of continental mercenaries during the Baron’s War, but in this film he hires a band of pagan Danish Vikings. This is the worst anachronism of the film. The Danes had been Christian for more than 200 years by the Baron’s War. The only purpose served by making John’s men pagan Vikings seems to be to make John look bad, for employing pagans when he’s allied to the pope. It’s an egregiously silly detail in a film that in many respects strives to be true to events.

King John (Paul Giametti) is actually quite well-handled. The script is written to make John seem like a complete asshole, but Giametti manages to capture John’s fierce temper in a way that humanizes him. When John’s forces break into the castle bailey and capture d’Aubigny, John gets a monologue that is written to make him seem petulant, but Giametti transforms it into an angry tirade fueled by John’s quite legitimate complaint that his rights as king are not being respected. It’s a speech that captures something of the actual attitude that medieval kings had about their position.

The best part of this film

The film is also rather naïve about the Magna Carta. It is referenced as being a document “for the people” in a rather vague and unspecified way, as if it were a proto-constitution instead of the peace treaty it actually was. The film frames the Baron’s War as being a conflict between a tyrannical John and a group of nobles who are somehow champions of the common man. John was definitely being unreasonable, but nothing that he did prior to 1215 would have been seen as illegal or tyrannical; rather his nobles felt that he was abusing his rights as their lord, using legal rights in ways they had not been intended.

Despite all these problems, the film does a remarkably good job of following the outlines of the siege. Rochester Castle is realistically depicted (although it’s located out in the countryside, instead of in a city and within an arrow’s flight of Rochester Cathedral). When I watched the film, I thought that the siege details were being a little improbable, but upon researching the actual siege, I saw that the film actually follows the basic sequence of events fairly closely, although it plays with the time-frame of events somewhat, extending the first part of the siege and then compressing the later parts somewhat. But all the major details of the siege in the film have at least some basis in the actual siege, other than Thomas’ romance with Cornhill’s wife, and the deaths of Cornhill and d’Aubigny, both of whom are known to have survived the siege.

An Orgy of Violence

If you decide to watch Ironclad, be warned; it’s extremely violent. I’ve seen my fair share of modern action films, and this film goes somewhat beyond them. The film dwells on graphic violence in ways that I found a little shocking. The camera watches a number of extreme injuries, including the top of a man’s head being chopped off and a man being cut from shoulder to waist. In one particularly graphic shot, a man’s arm is hacked off, with four strokes that gradually hack through the bone. The film also dwells on John’s order to cut off d’Aubigny’s hands and feet.

I’m of two minds about the film’s use of graphic violence. One part of me feels that the film was being true to its nature as a war film and showing what war really looks like. In most Hollywood films, the graphic violence is somewhat ludicrous; limbs are easily chopped off even though most medieval swords weren’t sharp enough to accomplish that feat easily. In this film, the dismemberments actually seem plausible (d’Aubigny’s hands and feet are braced against wooden blocks, for example). The violence is shown as being psychologically brutal to the defenders of the castle; at the end of the film, Thomas and the two other survivors all seem moderately traumatized by what they’ve been through.

However, the other part of me feels that the film is just indulging in the pornography of violence that has become so common in modern action films. Many Hollywood films have decided to take the Grand Guignol approach to storytelling, without paying much attention to the consequences of the violence. So if you watch the film, be prepared for some gore.

Overall, the film takes some liberties with the facts, but fewer liberties than I was expecting. It’s a bit like The Warlord in that it’s a small-scale film, focused on a single conflict within a much larger picture, and it has a similar ending, with the hero worn down by his struggles. While I have some problems with this film, I’d rather watch a dozen films like this than a Braveheart or 300. Now I just have to hunt down a copy of a film on Tudor history.

Update: I review the sequel here.

Want to Know More?

Ironcladis available on Amazon. The best book I know on King John is W.L. Warren’s King John (English Monarchs), but it’s getting on in years. For a more recent take, and one more closely connected to this film, try Stephen Church’s King John: And the Road to Magna Cartadoes a good job of examining the Baron’s War and how it led to Magna Carta.