Catherine, Called Birdy

The church and its clergy represent the “first estate” in the medieval hierarchy, so the institution and its members are the pinnacles of authority. Birdy’s little book of saints marks the days by celebrating the various martyrs and great contributors to the development of Christianity, and her daily recounting of these saints and their deeds indicates how central religion is to everyday life.

If one also remembers that, during this period, there were no clocks, no electricity, and no quick means of communication or travel, then it becomes clearer why the days are dominated by seasonal shifts and the religious holidays built around them. People work outdoors in the spring, summer, and fall; they hunker down inside during the winter, and they rise and sleep to the rhythms of the sun. The religious festivals that crop up on a monthly basis—twelfth night celebrating the end of Christmas in January, May Day and Easter promising there birth of spring, and Lammas Day giving thanks for the harvest—show how the calendar depends upon the cyclical nature of the seasons. The religious calendar of the time honors this cycle, and the two are intertwined literally and philosophically.

The process of syncretism—the blending of two different cultural systems—is partly to account for this melding of the seasons and the religious calendar. Christianity often overlapped with previous belief systems like paganism; thus, particular celebrations and festivals that marked planting and harvesting or the waxing and waning of the moon were adopted by Christianity—it was also a method by which to encourage converts. As readers can see throughout the book, superstition also resides comfortably alongside religious belief and what constitutes scientific thinking of the time. For example, the religious plays that Birdy recounts at various points in the book are a combination of actual religious instruction, general revelry, and bawdy mishaps—as when the performer dressed like an angel bumps his head and curses like the devil.

Still, the promise of religion is a potent motivating factor of the time. Life was precarious, as seen in the difficulty of Lady Aislinn’s pregnancy and birth, and often brief, as we seen in the story of the young man who dies after a drunken party. There are no antibiotics, and there is only rudimentary science and technology. People put their faith in the church and its teachings because it offered a sense of relief from the endless labor and uncertainty of the times. Hope, in the medieval period, is for an eternal afterlife of transcendence. Birdy finds hope in the dreary period of Lent because it promises the resurrection of Christ; Easter will always come after the sacrifices of Lent, just as Heaven will always come after the toil of earthly life.