Old hours.

I've been enjoying Cadfael in the name of -ahem- research (I only do it when I'm eating, so no nagging me, okay?) as I understand a lot of work went into presenting an authentic medieval look.

However, one thing has come up that puzzles me a little simply because I've been wrangling with it: Telling the time. I've avoided using 'o'clock' in my wip as even up to 1760 watches were something only the rich had. And in 1170... well... forget it.

But they mention hours, and 'midnight'. I've been creating imaginative ways to desrcibe the time of day, mostly based on the height of the sun, time of year, shadows and use of terms like lauds, matins etc.

I'm rather thinly read on medieval historical fiction and was wondering if any fans here, could let me in on how authors they have read have dealt with it.

In honesty, I'm happy to carry on with my... innovation <cough> as it makes for some interesting descritpion here and there, but it would be nice to be able to say something like, 'A little after two in the afternoon' once in a while...

I was going to visit chambers to ask this question, but there may be others here and Her Hon. is very busy (plus the Circuit Judge's clerk is a right old meanie of a gatekeeper)

pH

Do you know... I've never seen someone openly tackle it and even as a reasonably keen amateur medievalist, I've never really come across what they did.

However, after googling, this looks interesting - Court Will Begin at Half-Way Terce - Keeping Time in High Medieval Europe - April Farrell

I haven't read much historical fiction where timekeeping came up a lot, but would it be possible for characters to have seen devices like sundials or water clocks, or even timekeeping candles? Those have been around for ages.

They could make sophisticated guesses based on their experience with these devices.

'She reckoned a sundial would say it was about two in the afternoon, give or take.'

Of course you could hardly use it with every character, or in every occasion, but it provides a nice alternative for when you need it.

Glad you're enjoying Cadfael!

I can't think how they've done it in other books I've read, but I'd suggest you carry on as you are doing, particularly for the 1170 section. Later on there would be clocks which would strike the hours -- they had one in Salisbury Cathedral from the early 1300s -- and they would sound over a wide area giving the time.

I've thought about it a good bit for my fantasy WiPs (I actually have the method of counting time called heretical in my Renaissance Italian work as some calculate the beginning of a new day from sunset, not from dawn) but I've rather fudged it. I use town bells to give the time, and in the latest I've got the hour bell ringing and someone thinking "Eight of the morning" and such like, which is undoubted not historically accurate but serves its purpose. I certainly wouldn't have someone speak of "Two in the afternoon" though, but rather "A couple of hours after midday", nor eg "It was eleven" but "It still lacked an hour to midday".

Most people aren't going to be thinking in terms of specific hours in the medieval period. There's no clocking on or off at a factory, and for most no exact time they had to be somewhere. They wouldn't make appointments in the same way, and the clock wouldn't rule their life, save for the church, of course. It was daylight that was important, so mostly they would think in terms of dawn, midday and sunset.


(And the door to chambers is always open. Might not be anyone in there for a while, but you can pin a note to the table!)

Thanks for the link, Pete. I'm a little wary of confounding readers with too-accurate terminology.

Ragandar said:

Of course you could hardly use it with every character, or in every occasion, but it provides a nice alternative for when you need it.

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This is the kind of thing I've been doing, but as you say, it's difficult to vary, and must be varied.

(Perhaps I should write horror-fantasy )

ETA: Just seen my cross-post with TJ. Thanks again, and yes I do enjoy Cadfael.

That's what I have been doing - no fractions of hours, and the only real time I need it is morning and evening when - for example - Alaina has to to hurry up digging before the sun goes down, or Gilbert arriving with enough time to look over the site before going back to the village he's lodging.

Glad to carry on as normal... just might need a bit more accuracy for Denouement o'clock

[Also didn't know yours was Renaissance! Very much looking forward to it now!]

pH

To wit, not crit here's an example of how I'm dealing with it ecclesiastically:

Gilbert woke late in the guest house. It was odd neither the cellarer nor prior had visited to rouse him. Yesterday’s excursion had exhausted him and he feared the onset of fever, which could explain his sleeping through the chanting of lauds and prime. As he thought this, the cantor began his lead and the mournful sound of the holy drifted in to the simple room comforting him.
It must be terce!

This probably won't help, but anyway....

I recall once hearing that the word, noon, derived from the ninth hour of the day, so I clicked on noon's Wiki entry, specifically the etymology:

The word noon is derived from Latin nona hora, the ninth hour of the day, and is related to the liturgical term none. The Roman and Western European medieval monastic day began at 6:00 a.m. (06:00) at the equinox by modern timekeeping, so the ninth hour started at what is now 3:00 p.m. (15:00) at the equinox. In English, the meaning of the word shifted to midday and the time gradually moved back to 12:00 local time (that is, not taking into account the modern invention of time zones). The change began in the 12th century and was fixed by the 14th century.

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This pointed me to two further entries, one on the the liturgical term none, and one on the Roman and Western European medieval monastic day, the latter of which mentioned that because each day had the same number of hours, but was bounded by sunrise and sunset (which change), hours varied in length (so perhaps Einstein was not the first to suggest time was somewhat variable... ).

Phyrebrat said:

However, one thing has come up that puzzles me a little simply because I've been wrangling with it: Telling the time.

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The day was split into 12 "hours", which basically means sunrise to sunset. So the length of the hour depended on the season.

However, here's the important thing to remember - for most everybody of the period, hours were irrelevant. The pace of life was completely different. Merchants arranged to meet on specific days (give or take a few), rather than specific hours. Dawn, noon, dusk, were about the only references for splitting up the day that ordinary people needed.

This is why it grates on me when any fiction based in ancient or mediaeval times uses the expressions "minutes" or "seconds" - neither is likely to have been used except by mathematicians - in the same way that, in modern times, ordinary people may refer to angles in terms of degrees, but never minutes or seconds.

It was namely monks who obsessed over telling the time, because they ended up following the idea that they must pray at specific times of the day. In fact, it was mediaeval monks who effectively invented the mechanical clock - for exactly this reason.

Clock towers in towns became a late mediaeval feature, though not necessarily common. I can imagine people in a hurry asking to meet "when the clock strikes three" - but it remained the case until industrialisation that hours just really weren't very relevant to the majority of people, and neither was telling the time.

The fast-pace of modern life is unique to our period.

From what I remember, Ken Follett's The Pillars Of The Earth uses a variety of terms to indicate the time of day and as you have already mentioned for the clergy/monks this was a regimental routine based upon matins etc. For the peasants, I think it was simply a case that they began work at first light and finished at dusk, perhaps with the odd cockerel thrown in for effect. In those days there were many dangers to contend with, wild animals, robbers etc. and people were generally more superstitious than today, add to this the lack of artificial light to extend working hours and it's not difficult to see how night and day would be viewed quite differently than it is today.

Phyrebrat said:

To wit, not crit here's an example of how I'm dealing with it ecclesiastically:

Gilbert woke late in the guest house. It was odd neither the cellarer nor prior had visited to rouse him. Yesterday’s excursion had exhausted him and he feared the onset of fever, which could explain his sleeping through the chanting of lauds and prime. As he thought this, the cantor began his lead and the mournful sound of the holy drifted in to the simple room comforting him.
It must be terce!

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Yep, that kind of thing is fine. (Though I'd question whether he'd hear the monks in the church from the guest house.)

Brian Turner said:

This is why it grates on me when any fiction based in ancient or mediaeval times uses the expressions "minutes" or "seconds" - neither is likely to have been used except by mathematicians - in the same way that, in modern times, ordinary people may refer to angles in terms of degrees, but never minutes or seconds.

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Sorry to double post but I've been thinking about this comment, not least as in editing my WiP I've just come across a line "[They] spent several minutes together translating [a deed]".

While I agree with everything else in the post (and indeed had already said much of it ) I'm not sure a complete ban on the word "minute" is justified, certainly for the middle and later medieval period. According to the OED, minute was "Used vaguely for "short time" from late 14c." so while I wouldn't have someone say "It happened at ten minutes past eight" (because they just wouldn't have measured the hour like that), a shopkeeper might well have said "I'll be with you in a minute" and in narrative something like "A few minutes' ride brought them to the gate" would work.

Of course, it's possible to avoid the use, eg my line might have read "[They] spent a little time together translating" or the shopkeeper could say "I'll be with you shortly" and the narrative could be "They had time to recite the Paternoster only twice before the ride brought them to the gate" but I think an occasional use to vary prose style and avoid repetition isn't a problem.

And if anyone is worried about using "seconds" for a very short period of time, that can easily be changed to "moments" which is mid-C14th.

Just when I think I have a grip on things...

Thanks for the further comments. I have not used divisions of time - not even hours. It's handy that there is a tension in themes with those who honour nature vs religion simply because I can use shadow and sun and all that juicy fruit.
And phrases like 'moments later' or 'in short measure' do just as well, too.

pH

The Judge said:

I'm not sure a complete ban on the word "minute" is justified, certainly for the middle and later medieval period.

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My main objection is where it's used as a specific measure of time - ie, "Their journey took 20 minutes." It's even worse when I see that used in Roman Historical Fiction!

Personally, I'm a fan of using "moments" instead of "minutes" as a general expression, not least because a character's use and a modern reader's understanding of it may be very different - ie, abstract, versus multiples of 60 seconds.

Character and context may suggest a meaningful use, ie by a scholar, the educated rich, or townsfolk with a public clock (even though it may only have an hour hand!).

I guess my suggestion is for writers to use expressions of time with care - but plenty of published authors get away with using them anachronistically.

Phyrebrat said:

And phrases like 'moments later' or 'in short measure' do just as well, too.

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And for really short periods of time, you can always use 'suddenly'....

The other way to look at it, particularly in non-historical fantasy, is that everything has been translated by the author for the modern reader anyway, so some common time references are probably fine (unless they kick you out of the story for not matching). If you get too pedantic about this you will work yourself into a corner.

For instance, you say: "[They] spent several minutes together translating [a deed]."

Well if this is set in a secondary world, we could start to argue at your choice of the word "translate" which is particularly close to its latin origin "trānslātus" meaning "to transfer." Did Rome/Latin exist in this secondary world? Presumably not... but does that make this word off limits? Another example is the word "adrenaline" which many of us mention when things get tense. Well that word's origin isn't until ~1900. If we are being technical, the word has no place in medieval-era stories.

There are better examples of this kind of thing if you look for them [EDIT: I just remembered I hit this the other day in my own story when I wanted to use the phrase "good Samaritan" but the Bible and Samaria don't exist in my world!], but in the end everything we say derives from something in our real world that may or may not make sense in secondary worlds, and for the most part it doesn't matter that this is the case. This particular world was transcribed by an author intended for a modern reader, and I think people expect this sort of thing.

I think there's a difference between on the one hand a word we know which although not coming into existence until much later effectively translates a word our medieval person would have known (eg "jab" meaning to poke with something sharp is C19th, but the action wouldn't be foreign to them), and on the other hand a word which would be wholly outside their experience and understanding because it deals with a concept or discovery they hadn't reached/made.

As Brian says they wouldn't have thought of minutes as such, though they undoubtedly did have a concept of time and an understanding that some things didn't last an hour, but only a fraction of an hour, whatever they called those units, therefore I'd be a tad more forgiving of "minutes" than Brian, even in a book about Romans. But I would never use the word "adrenaline" in a world equivalent to our Middle Ages, and I'd get very het up reading a novel which did use it, not simply because it is a modern word but because it necessarily implies a level of scientific and/or medical knowledge beyond that which they would have had.

To me, that's not being technical, it's living the novel you're writing, knowing what they -- both the individuals and society -- would and wouldn't know, and using words appropriate to that knowledge.

The Big Peat said:

Do you know... I've never seen someone openly tackle it and even as a reasonably keen amateur medievalist, I've never really come across what they did.

However, after googling, this looks interesting - Court Will Begin at Half-Way Terce - Keeping Time in High Medieval Europe - April Farrell

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This appears to be exactly what was used for the time-keeping system used in the Conrad Stargard books that I was going to recommend -- by Leo Frankowski.

VinceK said:

From what I remember, Ken Follett's The Pillars Of The Earth ...

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Yup, I know Pillars of the Earth, as Brian will back me up on it (he recommended it to me last year and I'm half way through).

The Judge said:

Yep, that kind of thing is fine. (Though I'd question whether he'd hear the monks in the church from the guest house.)

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Maybe I should relocate the site from Lowe Bassett to Tottenham.

zmunkz said:

The other way to look at it, particularly in non-historical fantasy...

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I am basing my story in a real world historical setting. It's not a fantasy story.

Thanks for the continued posts, everyone.

pH

I always understood it that the time keepers of the medieval era (along with the keepers of just about everything else) were the Church. They would have sundials or waterclocks and things of that nature then inform the town or parish the time with Church bells.

Commoners probably generally indicated time with Morning, Mid-Morning, and words like that.

But I am not an authority on any of this, it's all speculation.