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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Again, thanks. Some of that I knew, but much is new and interesting. One point though. While pre-modern people certainly slept on a different cycle than we do, they can't simply have gone to bed as soon as it got dark and gotten up when it was light, for the simple reason that humans only need about 8 hours of sleep and for most of the year there is more than 8 hours of darkness. Andrew E. Larsen On Oct 19, 2009, at 3:56 AM, Groenteboer <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and > culture > > Hi Andrew, > > You wrote: >> This raises an interesting question, and one I know nothing about. >> If > torches mounted on walls are ahistorical, what did they do instead? > Candles? Just carry their own light? > > The thing is this: what Hollywood (like) movies show us are many > corridors > where actors run or sneak through on their way to closed off rooms > and halls > in castles, preferably after dark. In reality there were not many > corridors > in castles: rooms and halls tended to run into eachother via doors > or at > least openings, and these were rarely closed off. Outer doors and > gates, > alright, but inner areas, no, not until very late during the Middle > Ages > when privacy became an issue. Besides people went to bed early > (except for > feastdays or -nights) and did not need much extra lighting. Dark > areas, as > is shown on the website Terri pointed us to, were lighted by either > oil > lamps or candles and, in Nederland at least, such areas (like cellars, > backrooms, long halls where not much daylight could penetrate) had > little > recesses built in the walls where a candle or oil lamp could be > placed. And > these could be taken from room to room, as they were movable. Outside > lighting while walking in the dark was provided by candles in > lanterns made > of metal, with horn, vellum or glass 'windows'. Of course a > rushlight (burns > very fast) can be used for lighting outside, when on your way to the > bog > f.i., if it's not raining or snowing. On all other occasions your > eyes are > able to adjust to the dark very easily, even our modern eyes. Our > world is > heavily over-lighted anyway. > > For festive occasions people used torches made of long rolls of > burnable > material like hemp, pitch, wax or linen drenched in oil, bound or > stuck > around wooden sticks. These burned only for a short while uness they > were > long and consisted of more than one roll, as can be seen in the > Tournament > Book of the Bon Roy René. > > Hollywood castle corridors had to be lighted or else the viewers > were not > able to see if any action took place there, so some ingenious > property man > or art director must have come up with the idea that lighting with > hanging > torches could provide the necessary brightness with an extra spot on > the > thing itself because even a torch did not provide enough > illumination to be > caught on camera in the pre-war era or fifties and sixties. Nowadays > digital > cameras are better that way. The practical result of hanging up a > real torch > is that this also burns out quickly and its dregs fall to the floor > (except > for the infamous paraffine garden torches all others drip and leave > very > dangerous burning bits on the floor beneath it) creating a sticky > situation. > To prevent having to replace the torches every half hour or so, most > sets > with torches provide gas through pipes at the back. Others use > ingenious > long burning devices thought up by pyrotechnics experts. > > BTW; you'll not find torch brackets in castles still standing now, > unless > maybe they've been done up by Viollet-le-Duc or his followers. > > Oh, and in normal medieval houses, if there were corridors (which > was rare > until the very end of the MA), there were no torchbrackes either. > > Henk > > ********************************************************************** > To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME > to: [log in to unmask] > To send a message to the list, address it to: > [log in to unmask] > To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion > to: [log in to unmask] > In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: > [log in to unmask] > For further information, visit our web site: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html