Materials from the AND archives
Post 5, by Maddie Bousfield (Archive Masters student at Aberystwyth University)
My name is Maddie, and I’m an Archives and Records Management master’s student at Aberystwyth University. From February to May I have been part of a small team of students archiving material from the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. In this blog, I would like to share with you some of the material in the archive and explore why it is valuable to the history of the AND.
Dictionary pages The best place to start is with dictionary pages. We received several boxes of draft pages of the AND, many of which were heavily annotated.
This is a draft page of Volume 2 of the AND 2nd edition, dated 11 November 2000. At this time the 2nd edition and the Online-Hub were being developed simultaneously.
Draft pages are very valuable to project archives. They preserve evidence of changes, additions and discarded material. They also give us insight into the working process behind a project, revealing how and why decisions were made. This AND draft page from 2000 was annotated in several pen colours, indicated multiple people reviewed this one page – and there are over 1000 pages in the second edition!
Index Cards
Before dictionary pages could be compiled, Anglo-Norman words had to be recorded from source material. We have plenty of evidence of this meticulous work in the form of index cards. For a more in depth look at these records, please see Kara’s blog in this series. For now, these photograph shows the amazing quantity of index cards we received in February.
Among these are index cards and correspondence sent to the AND project from Anglo-Norman specialist Alexander Bell between 1972-1984. Dr. Bell’s correspondence explains his ‘gleanings’ from Anglo-Norman source material and give a personal touch to the work that has gone into the project.
Grant applications
There are several draft funding applications in the AND archive, like this one to AHRB in 1998. This grant application was for the development of volume 3 (letters F-L) of the AND between 1999-2004.
Applications have twofold value to project archives. They preserve a record of administrative and financial decision-making and help us to understand changes to a project’s scope and goals.
Many of the draft applications in the AND archive are annotated. These annotations show us how the AND team defined and advocated for their work over time. For example, the 1998 AHRB application was revised to emphasise the project’s uniqueness and the scale of the 2nd edition. It also reveals that there was a growing need for new computer hardware and software, which hints at how changing technology in the 1990s was impacting the dictionary project.
[AND Note: this particular grant application was not successful, and work on F only started in 2003.]
Correspondence
Correspondence makes up the largest part of the material we received. Most correspondence is printed emails and relates to the AND 2nd edition volumes 1 and 2, and the Online-Hub. There is also plenty of handwritten and typewritten correspondence in English, French, German, and Italian.
The volume of correspondence in the AND archive means we can often pair correspondence with other records. Personal experiences do not often appear in official records, so the correspondence has allowed us to discover a social context we would not usually get from official records alone.
I hope this has been an interesting peek into the material produced by the AND project. Thank you to the AND team for entrusting us with their collection. This has been a great opportunity to gain practical archiving experience, and it has been fascinating to discover how the AND has developed from the 1940s to today.
Index Cards in the Archives of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary
Post 4, by Kara Joy McKenna (Archive Masters student at Aberystwyth University)
Figure 1- Example of Index Card box
The creation of a dictionary is no small undertaking. When we received the Anglo-Norman Dictionary files as part of our archival group project, we were originally quite overwhelmed by the amount of material that was present.
As we sorted through the material and identified the items which would come to form our archive, a number of materials was marked as unsuitable for inclusion within the archive and set aside to be returned to the Anglo-Norman Dictionary.
Among these was the collection of index cards and word lists, an example of one box is visible in Figure 1.These were compiled from various Anglo-Norman source texts, whose information had been used to construct the entries within the dictionary. The timeline of these items ranges from the original inception of the dictionary in the 1940s to the re-examination of the sources for the second edition of the dictionary.
Though these items have value as early drafts of the dictionary, the effort that would be required to place them within the historical context of the dictionary’s creation was beyond the scope of this archival project.
As the content of these index cards is represented in the final product of the dictionary present available both in the printed versions of the first Edition and the hybrid online and printed versions of the second edition, they were not included within the archive we finalised.
However, due to this recognised value, the team didn’t want them to go without mention within our overall project. This has led to the creation of this blog entry, which will outline how these index cards and word lists feature in the creation of the dictionary.
Figure 2- Index card example
As can be seen in Figure 2, this is an example of one of the many index cards that were present in the collection as it originally arrived to us. While some of the index cards were organised alphabetically, many were left loose in boxes with their related starting letter as their information had already been entered into the dictionary.
The typical structure of these index cards is the word itself, followed by information relating to the word with possibly an example of its use within the source text it was originally located within. Some other cards, such as this example, also contains alternate spellings, alternate forms and the words definition.
Figure 3- Index card with Envelope
As the history of this dictionary spans before the use of digital technology, we have example of how these index cards were collated by the various academics that contributed to the dictionary in Figure 3. Some cards are still within the original envelopes that were sent for review by the scholars who created them.
Figure 4- Index Card with little information
Figure 5- Index card with alternate spellings
Due to the number of people working on the dictionary through the years and the different edits made to the dictionary, the index cards have a varying amount of information on them as seen in Figures 4 and 5.
Figure 6- Word entry with annotations
The index cards were also not static records. Many were revised overtime by other academics working on the project, who included additional notes and edits as new information was collated from different sources such as in Figure 6.
Figure 7- Typewritten dictionary draft page
The length and detail of the entries that the index cards contributed to lengthened greatly as more source materials became available to those working on Anglo-Norman dictionary towards the end of the first edition. This can be seen in drafts such as Figure 7.
Figure 8- Second Edition Dictionary Draft page
The second edition had these entries lengthen further, especially in comparison to those within early stages of the first edition. However, the use of index cards as a way of storing the information from the source materials had greatly waned due to the advent of the personal computer.
In conclusion, the collation and organisation of these estimated over one million index cards is a visual representation of the high-level effort and care that went into the creation of the Anglo-Norman dictionary over several decades.
Challenges of Archiving: Maintaining Original Order
Post 3, by Stephanie Rhodes (Archive Masters student at Aberystwyth University)
One of the main principles followed for cataloguing an archival collection is original order. This is the theory that records should be kept as they were organised by their creator. The purpose of this is to maintain the original context of each item. Items kept together in the same file were probably put there for a reason. Maybe it followed a date order, or the content was similar, or it aided the owner’s workflow, for example, documents found on the top of a pile might have been used more frequently. For whatever reason, it’s good practice to keep thing how you found them. However, things aren’t always as simple as that.
For the Anglo-Norman Dictionary collection, we first had to understand its contents and order. By looking through the documents, which came to us as loose paper, files, folders and boxes, we discovered that the collection came from multiple creators (namely David Trotter, William Rothwell, and Andrew Rothwell), therefore the organisation was not consistent throughout the entire collection. This presented us with a challenge: how do we figure out what the original order is, and how do we maintain it?
We started by looking through the collection piece by piece, reading the contents to understand the context. In the end, we organised the collection into five series: AND1, AND2, OnlineHub, Publications, and Dictionary Samples. As the collection mainly contained correspondence, which are dated, we could easily organise the documents within files into chronological order. The name of the sender/receiver of the correspondence is also present on many of these documents, so figuring out the original owner of the files was also plausible, which provided more context for the catalogue. The rest of the pages in a file often could be linked to the correspondence, such as the result of a meeting or applications for grants, and can be used for figuring out where they should be placed within the file even if they didn’t contain a date.
Not all the files contained correspondence, although this did make up the majority. Particularly in the Online Hub series, there were folders relating to digitisations request and funding applications or grants. Handily these came together, so they stayed together! Initially, we were considering removing documents from the correspondence folders if they could fit in others. However, this could remove the context from the correspondence or the original use of the folder. Therefore, we decided to leave it as it was, protecting its original order.
We found many items which were out of our scope. For example, birthday cards, personal letters and personal reference requests. The archive was aiming for this collection to show the development of the dictionary, rather than to provide such personal information about the people who worked on it. This significantly cut down the amount of material we had, which made it easier to organise and find the original order.
Here is part of the collection from the AND2 series; multiple files from multiple people and contexts.
We went through each of these files, removing any material which was out of scope and making sure they were arranged in date order, repackaged them and turned it into this:
Fourteen files turned into seventeen archival folders and places into six neat archival boxes! (Some of the files had so much paper that they wouldn’t fit into just one folder, but they have all been clearly labelled to make sure they stay together). Original order maintained, and archival storage achieved.
The Process: How the Aberystwyth Student Team Went About Creating the AND Archive
Post 2, by Aine Hawthorne (Archive Masters student at Aberystwyth University)
Creating an archive out of loose papers, binders, and folders stored in old cardboard boxes may seem like a daunting challenge to undertake. When we—a small team of six Aberystwyth University students—received the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND) records, we knew that we would have to have a methodical approach towards creating a cohesive archive that represents the creation of the AND. Our goal was to create an archive that would accurately and succinctly show how the AND was created on an intellectual level, including some of the challenges that the team faced. Our intent is for the archive to be a useful resource for its users and researchers, and to allow them to find what they are looking for without becoming overwhelmed.
When the records arrived to us, they were in a variety of binders, folders, and boxes. Some had labels, but primarily the exact contents were a mystery to us. Our first step, therefore, was to take stock of what exactly we had by creating box lists on Excel. To make them, the team went through each box, binder, and folder, and taking note of what types of records were contained within (such as dictionary pages, notecards, invoices, and correspondence). The box lists helped us to identify key record themes and to gain an accurate view of what types of records were included in the collection, what they were with, and where they were.
Once the box lists were completed, the team was able to turn its attention toward appraisal. Through the appraisal process, we decided what records were to be kept in the collection and which were to be appraised out. Some items needed to be appraised out of the archive because they did not fit the scope of the archive’s purpose, while others legally needed to be safely disposed of. It was important that we adhered to the scope of the archive to ensure that we created one that was easy to use and not bogged down by records that would not be useful to a future researcher.
With the appraisal completed, it was time for the team to move on to deciding how the collection should be arranged. The collection is arranged in a hierarchical way with the fonds level at the top, series level beneath them, sub-series level under the series level, and in some cases, item-level records. We decided to make the series based primarily off of the different stages of the AND and kept to original order where it made sense. We decided not to make item-level arrangements for every record as we did not feel that would be a good use of time and resources considering the way in which the archive will be used.
After the records were sorted into their hierarchical arrangement, metadata and descriptions could be created for them. To make and record the metadata for the collection, we created a template in Excel which will be searchable and easy-to-use and export if necessary. We decided to use ISAD(G) to make our metadata and description so as to adhere to a well-known and tested standard.
The final process of this archive project was to package the records according to our arrangement. Another post on packaging will cover that process as well as how we decided on the packaging we chose. The process of creating this archive involved some trial and error as well as careful planning and scheduling. Working well together as a team, we were able to create an archive that we are proud of and feel confident fairly represents the creation of the AND and fulfils the needs of future researchers and users of the archive.
Overview of Archival Project for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary
Post 1, by Max Graziano (Archive Masters student at Aberystwyth University)
Beginning on the 28th of January 2026, we, a group of six Archive Masters students from Aberystwyth University, will be undertaking a large archival project for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. We will be responsible for a large portion of the current archival holdings of the Anglo-Norman and shall begin a process of modernizing the collection; through this project, we shall create the conditions for the collection to become focused on the intellectual creation of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary and, as a result, shine its historical value for all users of the AND.
(Photo of the project’s collection holdings from the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, Day 1)
Through generosity of and cooperation with Dr. Geert De Wilde, the current Chief Editor and Project Leader of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, we have been given the opportunity to gain experience in our archival practice as we have been given charge of the sorting, appraisal, and disposal of records and documents held within the Anglo-Norman Dictionary’s collection, which ranges from early drafts of the first and second editions of the dictionary to personal/professional correspondences amongst the team members of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary beginning from its inception through the early 2000s.
Over the course of this project, we will have to overcome challenges involving preservation of existing documents, sorting of said documents, and the determining of the most valuable pieces of information within the collection to best represent the goal of conveying the history of the creation of the dictionary in the most clear and constructive way possible. Additionally, we will be piecing together the history of the creation of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary as we explore in-depth the challenges and obstacles faced by the dictionary project team, such as funding, adversity/intellectual disagreement, revision and correction of substantial initial mistakes, and the need to make serious additions due to lapse in research and failure to initially utilize valuable sources, during its development.
(Photo of Archival Project Group with collection at the start of project)
The project will last 15 weeks in total and will conclude on the 8th of May 2026. Following the end date of the project, all accessioned documents, records, and archival material, with the exception of any deaccessioned/disposed-of materials, within the collection will be returned to Dr. Geert De Wilde and the Anglo-Norman Dictionary along with a concise catalogue for the organization and potential digitization of the collection at a later date. Throughout the duration of the project, we as the project team will be in constant and readily available communication with Dr. Geert De Wilde concerning every decision concerning the structure and integrity of the collection that we make. It is our hope and desire that our work with the Anglo-Norman Dictionary will help its archive become an even more valuable resource to all students, researchers, scholars, and those interested in the history of the Anglo-Norman language for decades to come.
Anglo-Norman tournaments and the thirteenth century
If there is one word that is emblematic of medieval Europe, it is certainly the verb turneier: ‘to joust, to participate in a tournament’. When we think of medieval jousting, we immediately think of the magnificent illuminations in the livre des tournois by René d’Anjou:
[image 1: René I of Anjou, Traité de la forme et devis comme on peut faire les tournois, Paris, BNF, Français 2696, 23v-24r]
[image 2: René I d’Anjou, Traité de la forme et devis comme on peut faire les tournois, Paris, BNF, Français 2692, 52v-53r]
However, in searching for occurrences of the verb throughout the 13th century (as part of the revision of T-, which the AND editors are working on at the moment), I found myself at a loss: almost no text from this period used turneier. At first, I thought I had made mistake: perhaps I had overlooked any attestations during my research? So, I went back to carefully look through the texts of the corpus dating from this period.
This time, I did not come back empty-handed, but with no more than these two results in my bag:
(s.xiii1/3; s.xiiim (MS)) Or comence a turneier, cheval ne deigna mes regarder Gui War 827
(‘Then he began to joust, without even look at his horse’)
(1260-70; s.xiv1 (MS)) ce sunt tuz ceus a blamer Ke ne cessent de turnayer, Kar turnemenz sunt defenduz Man pechez ANTS 4032
(‘all those who do not stop jousting are to blame, because tournaments are prohibited’)
The word is so rare in our sources that I wanted to find out why this might be. The occurrence found in Le Manuel dé Pechez gave me a clue: What if nobody wrote about tournaments simply because they did not take place and even were illegal?
[image 3: Artus of Brittany at the Vienne tournament. Artus de Bretagne, Carpentras, BM, ms. 0403]
Some research reveals that this was indeed the case! We can find several attempts by the Church to ban tournaments since the 12th century, particularly by refusing to give burial to combatants who had died in a joust and by threatening tournament participants with excommunication. The practice was considered dangerous and a disturbance to public order. Although several canons indicating the prohibition of jousting were promulgated during the 12th century, it is only from the 13th century that these prohibitions seem to have become effective, when various European political leaders supported the Church’s decisions, notably Louis IX in 1260 in France. In England, the practice became highly regulated from the end of the 12th century and tournaments were subject to the king’s authorisation.
[image 4: Tournament of the Knights of the Round Table. Tristan en prose, Dijon, BM, ms. 0527]
The bad reputation of tournaments and the risk that, in the event of their death, jousters would not be buried in a Christian manner undoubtedly contributed to the disappearance of the verb turneier in the written production of the 13th century in the Anglo-Norman area. The 14th century saw a revival of the practice of tournaments, but in a different form from the melee of the 12th century. The jousts became more courteous, a plaisance, and the combatants no longer fought to the death. And indeed, we see that the verb turneier suddenly reappears in our corpus.
[DD]
Barker, J. R. (2003). The tournament in England, 1100-1400. Boydell Press.
Murray, A. V., & Watts, K. (Eds.). (2020). The Medieval Tournament as Spectacle: Tourneys, Jousts and Pas D’armes, 1100-1600. Boydell & Brewer.
Martin, V. (2015). Le pouvoir royal face au phénomène des tournois (milieu xiiie siècle-milieu xive siècle). Cahiers Jean Moulin.
Pestilence de genz et morine de bestes: remarks on the Anglo- Norman vocabulary of plague and epidemics
In Europe’s collective unconscious at the beginning of the twenty-first century, mass epidemics were rather linked to bygone times, particularly the episodes of the Black Death that marked the end of the Middle Ages and caused millions of deaths. And yet here we are, all of us in spite of ourselves having become specialists in epidemiological vocabulary for more than a year now. Pandemic, epizootic, incidence rates, droplets… previously reserved for groups of researchers in infectious diseases, all these terms have now entered our daily vocabulary in order to put into words our new reality, witnesses of how the vocabulary evolves according to external circumstances. Given the scale of medieval epidemics caused by the disease commonly known as the plague, we may wonder whether these events have left any trace in Anglo-Norman vocabulary.
Image 1: Epidemic in Florence (Italy, 1348), Boccace, Decameron, France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Français 239, F.1, S.XV2.
Three words present themselves as most likely terms associated with the phenomenon: peste, pestilence and morine.
In a copy of John Garland’s Latin text Morale Scolarium, the word strage is translated in the margin into Anglo-Norman as peste. This attestation of the word at the very end of the thirteenth century predates the examples recorded in English and Continental French, where pest(e) appears only in the second half of the fifteenth century. However, this single gloss remains the only example of peste recorded, to date, in Anglo-Norman. This virtual absence of the word in the vernacular lexicon is all the more remarkable because the term pestis is frequently used in Latin sources (see article pestis in the DMLBS). Thus, peste is not the word most frequently used in the Anglo-Norman lexicon to refer to a deadly epidemic.
Image 2: Men who died of an epidemic, Missal of the Antipope Clement VII, France, Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale Ceccano, ms. 136, f. 331, s.xiv.
The first word most often used to express the idea of a deadly and highly contagious disease is pestilence. It derives from the Latin pestilencia meaning ‘plague, epidemic, contagious disease, contagion’, and is a semantic doublet of pestis.
The widespread use of pestilence in Anglo-Norman may well be one of the reasons for the absence of the word plague in the lexicon. Despite its Anglo-Norman look, the substantive plague seems to enter into the English vocabulary straight from the Latin plaga or from Continental French. Indeed we can find the corresponding form plage 3 in the DMF with the meaning a ‘divine punishment or a calamity’ (see also plage 2 in the MED). Anglo-Norman has the word plage from plaga, but only with the original sense of injury or a wound (see also the more common spelling plaie1).
Image 3: Epidemic in Rome (-365), Titus Livus, Historia Romana, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Français 260, f.187v , s.xv.
Pestilence is present in Anglo-Norman from the twelfth century, and appears mainly in a biblical context:
(1141; MS: s.xiii4/4) Pestilences vendrunt: En plusurs lius serrunt […] E grant mortalité Iert d’omes Sibile 711
(‘Epidemics will come and spread in different places […] Many men will die’)
(s.xii2; MS: s.xiiex) nostre Sires enveiad pestilence en Israel […] si en mururent del pueple Liv Reis1 108
(‘Our lord sent the plague to Israel […] several inhabitants died from it’)
Pestilence is here an epidemic that acts as a divine scourge or punishment of men. This meaning is also found at the end of the thirteenth century in the Letter of the Priest John, once again as a divine curse sent to punish the unrighteous.
It is only at the end of the fourteenth century that we can find the word pestilence used to designate an actual epidemic that occurred at the time of writing the documents:
(1351) […] come par cause de la pestilence mortiele qe nadgairs dura Rot Parl1 ii 349.151
(‘[…] because of the deadly plague that had taken place before’)
(1392-93 ) […] et .xvj. des tenauntz illoesques esteauntz par la darrein pestelens illoesques mors King’s Council Ireland 139
(‘and sixteen of the tenants died because of the recent plague’)
These two examples refer to episodes of the Black Death that affected all of Europe in the fourteenth century (and contributed to giving the Middle Ages its reputation of a ‘dark age’). In both cases, the word pestilence is accompanied by an adjective, either to clarify its quality (mortiele/‘deadly’) or to situate it in time (darrein/’recent’). These episodes were written after the facts in order to balance the damages caused by the plague and to be able to claim compensation or tax relief from the King. It is interesting to note the repetition of a request after certain waves of plague, that is forcing the laboratores to return to work without compensation of salary in spite of their numerous claims, as in the following example:
(1351) Come nadgairs, contre la malice des servauntz queux furent perceouse, et nient voillantz servire aprés la pestilence sanz trope outrajouses louers prendre, nostre seignur le roi eust ordeigné par assent des prelatz, nobles et autres de son conseil, qe tiels maners des servantz, sibien hommes comme femmes, fuissent tenuz de servir, resceivantz salaries et gages acustumes es lieus ou ils deveront servir […], et qe mesmes les servantz refusantz servir par autiele manere fusent puniz par emprisonement de lour corps Rot Parl1 ii 233
(‘Before, against the malice of the servants who were lazy, and who did not want to serve after the [first signs of the] plague without asking for outrageous wages, our lord the King had commanded, with the agreement of the clergy, nobles and other persons of his council, that that kind of servants, men and women alike, were obliged to serve and would receive their usual wages and salary as agreed upon in the places where they serve […], and that servants who refused to serve would be punished by imprisonment’)
Image 4: Plague allegory, Boccace, Decameron, France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Italien 63, F. 6, 1427
Not only was there no furlough (the word is a seventeenth-century borrowing from Dutch verlof) scheme but very little empathy in those days for the essential workers, as they could be imprisoned if they refused to work during the plague…
In Anglo-Norman, another word expresses the idea of a mass epidemic: morine. Used to indicate death after contracting an epidemic disease, the word then became synonymous with the cause of death, i.e. the plague:
(1216-25; MS: 1307-15) En le tenz cesti rey muz des doleruses aventures vindrunt en Engletere, sicom terremote, grant noyse de toneire, vent a desmesure, cretine de eawe, famine e murine des genz Reis Engl1 168.17
(‘During this king’s time, very dreadful disasters happened England, such as earthquakes, loud thunder storms, strong winds, floods, famine and epidemics’)
(s.xiii2/4; MS: c.1275) E lur bestes aprés perdirent, Ki par murine tot perirent S Eust anon 850
(‘and afterwards they lost their cattle, which died of the plague’)
Image 5: Burying Plague Victims of Tournai, Gilles Li Muisis, Chronicles, Belgium, Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 13076-77, f. 24v, s.xiv.
Like pestilence, morine designates a deadly disease affecting many people but has wider use in that it also refers to epizootic diseases, as shown in the second example. This sense seems to be the one most readily employed in official documents, where morine essentially designates episodes of mass mortality of cattle. Because of its etymology, morine focuses more on defining the result of the epidemic, that is the death of those who are contaminated (coming from the Latin verb mori, ’to die’), unlike pestilence which is the disease itself.
Image 6: The fifth plague of Egypt: cattle plague, Bible, France, Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale, ms. 108, f. 043, 1197.
Similarly, Anglo-Norman also uses the word mortalité to refer to an epidemic or its deadly results:
(c.1136-37; MS: s.xiii1/3) Idunc avient a nuit le jur Si fud mortalited majur gaimar1 1370
(‘Then the day became night and the epidemic was significant’)
(a.1399) Mesme celle ané fuist la secunde pestilence parmy Engleterre la quel fuist appellé la mortalité des enfauntz Anon Chr1 30
(‘That same year came the second plague in England, which was called the children’s plague’)
Image 7: Procession against the plague in Rome (590), Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Français 244, f. 92, 1480-1490.
Occasionally medieval writers employed metaphors of weaponry in order to talk about the plague:
(1214-16 ) En icel tens sorvindrent glaives Tant durs, tant mortaus, tant grejous, […] Qe nis en Rome la cité De le gent une infinité Mourirent de la pestilence S Greg 710
(‘At that time, epidemics so harsh, so deadly and so severe occurred […] that even within the city of Rome an infinite number of people died of the plague’)
We find in this text a figurative use of the word glaive (‘sword’), to the ‘Plague of Justinian’, an epidemic that affected Rome at the end of the 6th century, causing the death of Pope Pelagius II and precipitating the fall of the Roman empire of the West. Another text describing the same episode adds an interesting detail:
(c.1334; MS: s.xivm) En le temps cist Pelagie la pestilence de mal de flanc (Latin: pestis inquinaria) issint occist la gent de Rome, qe trop poi eschaperent triv1 200.22
(‘During the time of Pelagius, the epidemic of the pain in the sides killed so many of the people of Rome, that very few survived from it.’)
The disastrous consequences of epidemics being more readily defined in the texts than its symptoms, this text is one of the few to give us a brief description of a symptom accompanying the plague, the mal de flanc (‘pain in the sides’), allowing us, from a modern perspective, to identify the disease like the bubonic plague. It is only since 2012 (and thanks to archaeological excavations carried out in Bavaria) that it is known with greater certainty that the Justian plague was caused by Yercina Pestis, the bacteria responsible for the bubonic plague. Nicolas Trivet, the author of this Anglo-Norman Chronicle, preserved this remarkable detail in his text. If we take into account the fact that the manuscript was copied in the middle of the fourteenth century, the narrative of the evil that befell Rome centuries before the writing of this text must have had a familiar ring to a fourteenth-century audience struck by the Black Plague at the time.
Image 8: Bubonic plague, The Toggenburg Bible, Germany, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Berlin, MS 78 E1 Weltchronik, f. 80v., 1411.
After this journey through the vocabulary of the plague in the Anglo-Norman corpus, I just want to wash my hands and clean the keyboard of my computer with disinfectant wipes, because, as a document of the fourteenth century reminds us:
(1366-67) graunt peryl qe poet avener al comune poeple par cause de la maladye quel est contagiouse Deviance and Power 337
(‘a great danger that can happen to all people because of this disease which is contagious’)
Image 9: Banquet of the survivors of the plague, Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement du roi de Navarre, France, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Français 1587, f. 78, s.xv2/4.
Take care of yourselves and stay away from the vile pestilence de mal de pulmon (‘the nasty lung disease plague’) which is raging the kingdom!
– Delphine Demelas