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Description
In the stronghold of Chełmno, pain was a common part of life. It was little different from other places around the world in this regard: Chronic pain and disease were endemic throughout the world's population a thousand years ago. The people of Chełmno suffered from a wide range of maladies and disabilities, from the congenital to those acquired later in life. Over the course of the Middle Ages, hundreds of people were buried in this Polish cemetery. Studying the remains of those interred there can tell us a great deal about what disabilities the people there had - and how their community responded to their impairments.

In the year 1000 Chełmno was one of the most important strongholds of the Piast dynasty, a bellicose alliance of West Slavs who had come into power no more than half a century earlier. Although its leaders, the Dukes of Poland, had officially converted to Christianity in the mid-10th century, the new religion was slow to spread among the people. Chełmno was centred around a sacred hill called Góra Świętego Wawrzyńca, known in English as Mt. St. Lawrence. The runoff from this hill formed shallow ponds at its foot. Right around the same time that Duke Mieszko received baptism in order to marry his Christian bride Dobrava, a pagan altar was built in one of these ponds at Chełmno. Stones were piled into the middle of the pond, perhaps in imitation of holy artificial islands common throughout the pagan Slavic lands. The altar became the focal point of Chełmno's ritual activities. Offerings of animals and plants were sent up to the gods, burnt upon its stones. The skull of a young man from centuries earlier also sat atop the altar. He may have been considered a sacred ancestor, overseeing his descendants' spiritual lives.

One of the activities which took place at this pagan altar was healing. The people of Chełmno employed a variety of strategies to cope with their various infirmities. An elderly woman buried with a sickle may have been the primary healer of the community. Polish folk healers in later times used sickles to symbolically cut pain away from the body by waving them in front of the afflicted body part. Whether the pain was caused by a disease such as meningitis or a traumatic injury, sickles were an important strategy pagan healers used to manage it in their patients. While sickles could also be used for ordinary agricultural purposes, the fact that this women was the only one buried with a sickle in the entire cemetery - which was full of people who worked the land for a living - strongly suggests her sickle served some other, more esoteric purpose.

Along with the common knife, which could be used for bloodletting and surgery, the most popular medical tools at Culmen were herbal medicines. Plaintain soothed ulcers and burns or cooled a fever. Knotgrass treated diseases of the urinary tract. Water lilies calmed the mind and dulled pain and were also used to treat cardiovascular disease. Guelder rose was an antihemorrhagic agent crucial for treating menstrual ailments. One of the most versatile healing plants was the black elder. Helpful in treating conditions that affected the breathing, from tuberculosis to asthma, black elder was also used for toothache, fever, constipation, high blood pressure, malaria and polio. In addition to being used in medicines, the seeds of the black elder tree were also found burned on the altar at Culmen in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.

One woman who may have used black elder to treat her ailments was a woman who was buried in the early 11th century. She suffered from several conditions that would have caused her significant pain: Periosteal inflammation of the bones in her lower limbs, tooth loss, and degenerative changes in her cervical spine. Periostitis is one of the conditions that black elder was probably used to treat since it was believed to reduce inflammation. This particular woman also buried with a remarkable healing amulet: A burnt piece of belemnite found resting above her left pelvic bone. Belemnites are the fossilized remains of animals closely related to squids and cuttlefish who lived a hundred million years ago. Slavic peoples traditionally called them lightning stones, thunder bolts, and evil claws. They were commonly used as amulets against evil magic or disease and used in the treatment of many different illnesses. Healers rubbed them on the afflicted areas of the body and also ground them into powders, mixed them with milk and vodka, and served them to the patients as a drink.

The sacrificial altar at Chełmno remained in use into the beginning of the 11th century. Those decades were a turbulent time for religion in Poland. The spread of Christianity was inextricably paired with the expansion of the Piast state. Early resistance in the 990s and the first decade of the 11th century foreshadowed a much more violent confrontation between paganism and Christianity known as the "pagan reaction." A succession crisis after the death of Mieszko II in the 1030s opened the door for rebellions among the nobility and an invasion from Poland's pagan neighbours. A later chronicler writes that as part of this turmoil, churches were burned and priests were killed. When Kazimierz "the Restorer" came to power in 1040, he suppressed the rebellion with violent force and redoubled efforts to solidify Christianity's presence in Poland. It is presumably during his reign that efforts to Christianize the sacred site at Chełmno began. An ambitious building project was initiated to construct a stone basilica, a corner of which stood where the pagan altar had once been. It was never finished, perhaps because of ongoing issues with funding ecclesiastical infrastructure following the pagan reaction.

It is difficult to determine the faiths of the people buried at Chełmno during this turbulent period. Christian accessories such as crosses became fashionable trade items among the Poles long before any of them espoused that faith. Necklaces like the one in this illustration combined Christian crosses with pagan lunula amulets in the shapes of crescent moons. People who were buried with medicinal amulets like the woman with the belemnite on her hip may have been intended to take those healing powers with them into the pagan afterlife, but they may also have been buried with those items in the hopes that they would heal their body in time for the Christian Resurrection. Christianity's preference for interment over cremation also led to increased fears about vampires, meaning some people were buried with magical precautions that would stop them from rising from the dead. This makes it difficult to determine when the people at Chełmno fully converted to Christianity. We can know with near certainty, however, that in the year 1000, when the Polish duke was still negotiating with the Holy Roman Emperor for Poland to have an independent church, the new faith was far from the minds of most people in the Polish countryside.

In this illustration, the woman who was buried with the sickle performs a healing ritual for the woman buried with the belemnite. She holds the primordial fossil against the woman's neck, which ached from the spondylosis in her spine. Upon the altar, the hollow eye sockets of their once-youthful ancestor look on as they burn black elder seeds in offering to the gods. Her face creased in concentration, the healer carefully waves the sickle above the other woman's neck, perhaps murmuring prayers under her breath. From her belt hangs her trusty knife along with a pouch of healing herbs. The patient is perhaps one of the wealthier residents of Chełmno, a local noblewoman from a family that oversees the stronghold's role as a major trade hub between the Kievan Rus' and the Baltic Sea. Luxurious temple rings dangle from her headband as she bows her head in submission. Standing in the sacred pond before the altar, they offer up their hopes that the pain will be alleviated.

For Disability Pride Month I wanted to do a story that focused on how medieval people were capable of going to great lengths in order to relieve the physical burdens of the disabled members of their communities. Chronic pain was incredibly common among all the groups of people I've depicted in the Women of 1000 project. Being disabled myself, it's important to me to increase the depictions of disability in historical reconstruction art so that we can see ourselves in the past too. There is a growing field in archaeology known as the bioarchaeology of care, which looks at what evidence of healing can tell us about how people cared for the disabled in the past. I plan to do other illustrations in the future around this theme, but this seemed like a good place to start.

I'm not really happy with how the scan for this one came out, but that's how it goes sometimes. Thanks to my friend SachiiA for offering me advice about the poses in the early stage of the drawing. And thank you to Morgan for sharing the laughter with me when I finally found a photograph of the "mountain" in Chełmno. Definitely comparable to the Andes. (Hey... Poland is a flat place!) I love temple rings so it was fun to finally show some medieval Slavic clothing. Medieval reenactment is really popular in Poland, so it was helpful looking at photos of reenactors here and here .

And just to clear up any potential confusion: The site in this picture goes by a few different names. In medieval documents it's known as Culmen, which was the Latinization of the native Chełmno. Both terms could refer to the stronghold or to the entire region it occupied. Today Chełmno is a city a few kilometres from where the medieval stronghold was. The excavations of the stronghold actually happened in a village called Kałdus. I went with "Chełmno" here for the sake of simplicity, but you will find all three names used in the articles linked below. I wasn't able to access the original archaeological reports in Polish, so I did my best to reconstruct the site based on what was available in English-language publications.

Learn more on the website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/heale…

Others in the series include...

Gunnborga (Sweden)
The Parrot Keepers of Wind Mountain (New Mexico)
The Rice Keepers of Yamashiro (Japan)
The Riders of Holda (Germany)
The Initiate of Schroda (South Africa)
The Traveller of Moxos (Bolivia)
The Maize Farmer of the Illinois River Valley (Illinois)
Prana (Cambodia)
The Woman in the Window (Uzbekistan)

Siba' bint Isaac (Egypt)

Description
In the stronghold of Chełmno, pain was a common part of life. It was little different from other places around the world in this regard: Chronic pain and disease were endemic throughout the world's population a thousand years ago. The people of Chełmno suffered from a wide range of maladies and disabilities, from the congenital to those acquired later in life. Over the course of the Middle Ages, hundreds of people were buried in this Polish cemetery. Studying the remains of those interred there can tell us a great deal about what disabilities the people there had - and how their community responded to their impairments.

In the year 1000 Chełmno was one of the most important strongholds of the Piast dynasty, a bellicose alliance of West Slavs who had come into power no more than half a century earlier. Although its leaders, the Dukes of Poland, had officially converted to Christianity in the mid-10th century, the new religion was slow to spread among the people. Chełmno was centred around a sacred hill called Góra Świętego Wawrzyńca, known in English as Mt. St. Lawrence. The runoff from this hill formed shallow ponds at its foot. Right around the same time that Duke Mieszko received baptism in order to marry his Christian bride Dobrava, a pagan altar was built in one of these ponds at Chełmno. Stones were piled into the middle of the pond, perhaps in imitation of holy artificial islands common throughout the pagan Slavic lands. The altar became the focal point of Chełmno's ritual activities. Offerings of animals and plants were sent up to the gods, burnt upon its stones. The skull of a young man from centuries earlier also sat atop the altar. He may have been considered a sacred ancestor, overseeing his descendants' spiritual lives.

One of the activities which took place at this pagan altar was healing. The people of Chełmno employed a variety of strategies to cope with their various infirmities. An elderly woman buried with a sickle may have been the primary healer of the community. Polish folk healers in later times used sickles to symbolically cut pain away from the body by waving them in front of the afflicted body part. Whether the pain was caused by a disease such as meningitis or a traumatic injury, sickles were an important strategy pagan healers used to manage it in their patients. While sickles could also be used for ordinary agricultural purposes, the fact that this women was the only one buried with a sickle in the entire cemetery - which was full of people who worked the land for a living - strongly suggests her sickle served some other, more esoteric purpose.

Along with the common knife, which could be used for bloodletting and surgery, the most popular medical tools at Culmen were herbal medicines. Plaintain soothed ulcers and burns or cooled a fever. Knotgrass treated diseases of the urinary tract. Water lilies calmed the mind and dulled pain and were also used to treat cardiovascular disease. Guelder rose was an antihemorrhagic agent crucial for treating menstrual ailments. One of the most versatile healing plants was the black elder. Helpful in treating conditions that affected the breathing, from tuberculosis to asthma, black elder was also used for toothache, fever, constipation, high blood pressure, malaria and polio. In addition to being used in medicines, the seeds of the black elder tree were also found burned on the altar at Culmen in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.

One woman who may have used black elder to treat her ailments was a woman who was buried in the early 11th century. She suffered from several conditions that would have caused her significant pain: Periosteal inflammation of the bones in her lower limbs, tooth loss, and degenerative changes in her cervical spine. Periostitis is one of the conditions that black elder was probably used to treat since it was believed to reduce inflammation. This particular woman also buried with a remarkable healing amulet: A burnt piece of belemnite found resting above her left pelvic bone. Belemnites are the fossilized remains of animals closely related to squids and cuttlefish who lived a hundred million years ago. Slavic peoples traditionally called them lightning stones, thunder bolts, and evil claws. They were commonly used as amulets against evil magic or disease and used in the treatment of many different illnesses. Healers rubbed them on the afflicted areas of the body and also ground them into powders, mixed them with milk and vodka, and served them to the patients as a drink.

The sacrificial altar at Chełmno remained in use into the beginning of the 11th century. Those decades were a turbulent time for religion in Poland. The spread of Christianity was inextricably paired with the expansion of the Piast state. Early resistance in the 990s and the first decade of the 11th century foreshadowed a much more violent confrontation between paganism and Christianity known as the "pagan reaction." A succession crisis after the death of Mieszko II in the 1030s opened the door for rebellions among the nobility and an invasion from Poland's pagan neighbours. A later chronicler writes that as part of this turmoil, churches were burned and priests were killed. When Kazimierz "the Restorer" came to power in 1040, he suppressed the rebellion with violent force and redoubled efforts to solidify Christianity's presence in Poland. It is presumably during his reign that efforts to Christianize the sacred site at Chełmno began. An ambitious building project was initiated to construct a stone basilica, a corner of which stood where the pagan altar had once been. It was never finished, perhaps because of ongoing issues with funding ecclesiastical infrastructure following the pagan reaction.

It is difficult to determine the faiths of the people buried at Chełmno during this turbulent period. Christian accessories such as crosses became fashionable trade items among the Poles long before any of them espoused that faith. Necklaces like the one in this illustration combined Christian crosses with pagan lunula amulets in the shapes of crescent moons. People who were buried with medicinal amulets like the woman with the belemnite on her hip may have been intended to take those healing powers with them into the pagan afterlife, but they may also have been buried with those items in the hopes that they would heal their body in time for the Christian Resurrection. Christianity's preference for interment over cremation also led to increased fears about vampires, meaning some people were buried with magical precautions that would stop them from rising from the dead. This makes it difficult to determine when the people at Chełmno fully converted to Christianity. We can know with near certainty, however, that in the year 1000, when the Polish duke was still negotiating with the Holy Roman Emperor for Poland to have an independent church, the new faith was far from the minds of most people in the Polish countryside.

In this illustration, the woman who was buried with the sickle performs a healing ritual for the woman buried with the belemnite. She holds the primordial fossil against the woman's neck, which ached from the spondylosis in her spine. Upon the altar, the hollow eye sockets of their once-youthful ancestor look on as they burn black elder seeds in offering to the gods. Her face creased in concentration, the healer carefully waves the sickle above the other woman's neck, perhaps murmuring prayers under her breath. From her belt hangs her trusty knife along with a pouch of healing herbs. The patient is perhaps one of the wealthier residents of Chełmno, a local noblewoman from a family that oversees the stronghold's role as a major trade hub between the Kievan Rus' and the Baltic Sea. Luxurious temple rings dangle from her headband as she bows her head in submission. Standing in the sacred pond before the altar, they offer up their hopes that the pain will be alleviated.

For Disability Pride Month I wanted to do a story that focused on how medieval people were capable of going to great lengths in order to relieve the physical burdens of the disabled members of their communities. Chronic pain was incredibly common among all the groups of people I've depicted in the Women of 1000 project. Being disabled myself, it's important to me to increase the depictions of disability in historical reconstruction art so that we can see ourselves in the past too. There is a growing field in archaeology known as the bioarchaeology of care, which looks at what evidence of healing can tell us about how people cared for the disabled in the past. I plan to do other illustrations in the future around this theme, but this seemed like a good place to start.

I'm not really happy with how the scan for this one came out, but that's how it goes sometimes. Thanks to my friend SachiiA for offering me advice about the poses in the early stage of the drawing. And thank you to Morgan for sharing the laughter with me when I finally found a photograph of the "mountain" in Chełmno. Definitely comparable to the Andes. (Hey... Poland is a flat place!) I love temple rings so it was fun to finally show some medieval Slavic clothing. Medieval reenactment is really popular in Poland, so it was helpful looking at photos of reenactors here and here .

And just to clear up any potential confusion: The site in this picture goes by a few different names. In medieval documents it's known as Culmen, which was the Latinization of the native Chełmno. Both terms could refer to the stronghold or to the entire region it occupied. Today Chełmno is a city a few kilometres from where the medieval stronghold was. The excavations of the stronghold actually happened in a village called Kałdus. I went with "Chełmno" here for the sake of simplicity, but you will find all three names used in the articles linked below. I wasn't able to access the original archaeological reports in Polish, so I did my best to reconstruct the site based on what was available in English-language publications.

Learn more on the website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/heale…

Others in the series include...

Gunnborga (Sweden)
The Parrot Keepers of Wind Mountain (New Mexico)
The Rice Keepers of Yamashiro (Japan)
The Riders of Holda (Germany)
The Initiate of Schroda (South Africa)
The Traveller of Moxos (Bolivia)
The Maize Farmer of the Illinois River Valley (Illinois)
Prana (Cambodia)
The Woman in the Window (Uzbekistan)

Siba' bint Isaac (Egypt)