Bishop Odo and the Club

[Scott Anderson]

I'm reading about Odo of Bayeux on Wikipedia and the article shows that the Bayeux Tapestry belabors the point that Odo was there, but didn't shed any blood himself. It shows him wielding a club, and suggests that some scholars have said that his ecclesiastical vows prevented him from using a sword. 

I wonder whether this influenced the rules about clerics and edged weapons?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odo_of_Bayeux

[delta]

That's pretty well established. Quotes from Gygax on the old ENWorld Q&A:

"Actually the cleric was based losely on Bishop Odo, brother of Duke William of Normandy, the fictitional Friar Tuck, and a religious proscription against the shedding of blood." [17th October, 2007]

"Remember that I modeled the cleric class on Bishop Odo and Friar Tuck.. .both able combatants " [18th October, 2007]

[Scott Anderson]

Thank you, that's very good. I also really enjoy your website. You're far too smart for me but I enjoy basking in your smartness.

[delta]

Thank you for the kind words! :-)

[peterlind]

This is a quote from "Armour & Weapons" (1909) by Charles Ffoulkes, at p. 106:

Of short-handled weapons the Club or Mace is to be found on the Bayeux Tapestry, and is generally quatrefoil or heart-shaped at the head. The mace was the weapon of militant ecclesiastics, who thus escaped the denunciation against ' those who fight with the sword'. It is generally supposed that the Gibet was of the same order. Wace, in the Roman de Rou (line 13459). writes :—

Et il le gibet seisi
Ki a sun destre bras pendi.

[krusader74]

Mar 5, 2018 0:21:56 GMT -6 peterlind said:

This is a quote from "Armour & Weapons" (1909) by Charles Ffoulkes, at p. 106:

Of short-handled weapons the Club or Mace is to be found on the Bayeux Tapestry, and is generally quatrefoil or heart-shaped at the head. The mace was the weapon of militant ecclesiastics, who thus escaped the denunciation against ' those who fight with the sword'. It is generally supposed that the Gibet was of the same order. Wace, in the Roman de Rou (line 13459). writes :—

Et il le gibet seisi
Ki a sun destre bras pendi.

Great post peterlind !!

Just to add some more context: Ffoulkes's book, Armour & Weapons (1909) is public domain, and interested parties can download it for free from several sites:

• Archive.org
• Project Gutenberg

Ffoulkes took the quote on p. 106 from a Franko-Norman poem by Wace written in 1160, a century after the events he recounts. There's a good, free, English translation in this 1860 book with an extra long title:

The Conquest of England from Wace's poem of the Roman de Rou now first translated into English rhyme by Sir Alexander Malet, Bart., B.A., Her Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Germanic Confederation. With the Franko-Norman text after Pluquet, and the notes of Auguste Le Prevost, Edgar Taylor, F.S.A., and others. Illustrated by photographs from the tapestry of Bayeux, executed by Herr Albert of Munich.

The quote itself

Et il le gibet ſeiſi
Ki à sun deſtre bras pendi.

is broken across page 178 (bottom) and 180 (top). The English translation of this part of the poem appears in between these two pages on page 179. I don't know Medieval Franko-Norman, but I'm guessing Malet's translation is poetic, not literal:

Then graſping his Mace, he the other laid low,
With ſkull batter'd in by the force of the Blow!

(The letter "ſ" is the long "s".)

As advertised in the book's title, it contains photos of the Bayeux Tapestry, including Bishop Odo and his Mace, but unfortunately it's an old book and the photos in Google's scanned copy are very poor quality reproductions, so you are better off getting them here from Wikipedia.



WRT the denunciation against 'those who fight with the sword', which Ffoulkes mentions, I'd say this references Matthew 26:52:

Then saith Jesus to him, Return thy sword to its place; for all who take the sword shall perish by the sword (Douay-Rheims Bible, 1582).

That quote, in turn, references Genesis 9:6 and Exodus 21:12. The Gospel verse condemns violence generally, and not specifically violence-by-sword any more than it applies only to Peter (whom Jesus orders to sheath his sword). But inevitably some Medieval "rules lawyer" came along and used the letter of the law without reference to the spirit in order to say: "The clergy can't use swords, but clubs must be OK, 'cause Jesus never excluded 'em." Or, as someone succinctly put it on tumblr,



As an aside, if the denunciation against 'those who fight with the sword' is (as I've suggested here) the end-result of real-life Medieval "rules lawyering," then there's a lesson in it for us modern gamers-- The Biblical rebuke of the "rules lawyer," in 2 Corinthians 3:6, is echoed by Gary Gygax in the AFTERWORD of the AD&D DMG, p. 230:

IT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, NOT THE LETTER OF THE RULES, WHICH IS IMPORTANT. NEVER HOLD TO THE LETTER WRITTEN, NOR ALLOW SOME BARRACKS
ROOM LAWYER TO FORCE QUOTATIONS FROM THE RULE BOOK UPON YOU, IF IT GOES AGAINST THE OBVIOUS INTENT OF THE GAME. AS YOU HEW THE LINE
WITH RESPECT TO CONFORMITY TO MAJOR SYSTEMS AND UNIFORMITY OF PLAY IN GENERAL, ALSO BE CERTAIN THE GAME IS MASTERED BY YOU AND NOT BY
YOUR PLAYERS. WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER.
BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE
PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE. MAY YOU FIND AS MUCH PLEASURE IN SO DOING AS THE REST OF US DO!

...Getting back on topic, on the same page (106) in Armour & Weapons, Ffoulkes talks about the 'holy water sprinkler':

A less ornamental weapon is the Holy-water Sprinkler. This is formed of a ball of iron studded with sharp projecting spikes, and fixed upon a long or short handle. The Morning Star is akin to the Military Flail, a weapon derived from the agricultural implement of that name. It is much the same as the Holy-water Sprinkler, except that the spiked ball is not socketed on the handle but hangs from a chain (Fig. 50). The names of these two weapons are often transposed, but we propose to adhere to the nomenclature used in the Tower Armouries as being more likely to be correct.

Wikipedia describes the 'holy water sprinkler' too:

Another weapon, the holy water sprinkler (from its resemblance to the aspergillum used in the Catholic Mass) was a morning star used by the English army in the sixteenth century and made in series by professional smiths. One such weapon can be found in the Royal Armouries and has an all-steel head with six flanges forming three spikes each, reminiscent of a mace but with a short thick spike of square cross section extending from the top. The wooden shaft is reinforced with four langets and the overall length of the weapon is 74.5 inches (189 cm).

The term holy water sprinkler is also used to describe a type of military flail, this being the name for the weapon in French (goupillon). It was (according to popular legend) the favored weapon of King John of Bohemia, who was blind, and used to simply lay about himself on all sides.

According to a few other sources, some of these weapons actually had a hollowed-out ball into which you inserted holy water prior to battle. Small holes on the surface allowed the holy water to sprinkle out gradually during combat, thus "baptizing" your opponent as you bashed their brains out, so that you could

Be ſure to ſave their wicked ſoulſ
even aſ you ſmash their ſkullſ.
© 2018 kruſader74