The Tapestry Shop, my 2010 release from Five Star, is based on the life of Adam de la Halle, a thirteenth century musician. Adam is best known for his secular plays, especially his Jeu de Robin et Marion, which figures heavily in my historical novel.
In most pastourelles, the knight is the narrator, wielding his aristocratic power over a lower-class shepherdess. After propositioning her, he may carry her away by force. In Adam’s pastourelle, the shepherdess (Marion) takes a more active part in the play, rebuffing the advances of a persistent knight and declaring her love for Robin.
For further reading on the medieval pastourelle and its construction, see Geri L. Smith’s The Medieval French Pastourelle Tradition: Poetic Motivations and Generic Transformations.

History of Gambling

My recently completed novel, The Glass Partridge, is set in Venice during the 1600s, and because the heroine loves to gamble, I researched the history of gambling. Here is some information I gathered during my search.
Archeologists have uncovered evidence of gambling in ancient times. Knucklebones of sheep were a primitive form of dice, but a pair of ivory dice, dating before 1500 B.C. was found in Egypt, proving that the dice of today are much like those used for centuries.

Betting on athletic games at the Roman coliseum drew rich and poor alike. Later, during the Middle Ages, gambling in all its forms took place in private homes and also in public.
Before the invention of the printing press, cards were a rich man’s game, as each card was stamped from a woodcut. Later, a deck of cards was readily accessible in every tavern in Europe. When the English came to the New World, they brought the culture of gambling with them, but the Puritan-led Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed possession of cards and dice (along with dancing and singing). Later, the rules were relaxed, as long as the game was an innocent one and no money exchanged hands.
In The Glass Partridge, the heroine goes to a ridotto, a salon for gambling and other pastimes. Ridotti became very popular in Europe, even serving as forums for the arts. Verdi celebrated the opening of his opera, Rigoletto, in the Ridotto San Moise.
In the 1800s, the Doge of Venice closed the ridotti, and they were reopened as state run casinos.
For further reading, there is a very good book by David Schwartz, titled Roll the Bones, which covers every aspect of the history of gambling in Europe and the United States.

The Black Prince of Wales

Edward, sometimes called the Black Prince, appears as a minor character in my latest release, Jeanne of Clairmonde. Edward was born in 1330, the eldest son of Edward III. At age three, he was given an earldom, and a duchy at age seven. When he turned thirteen, the title Prince of Wales was bestowed on the young man, who even then was beginning to show signs of being the brave leader he would become.
References to a Black Prince have appeared in primary sources, and it is generally believed that he was dubbed The Black Prince because he wore black armor.
When Edward was thirty-one, he married his cousin Joan, daughter of the Earl of Kent. Their marriage required a special dispensation because of their close kinship, but it is generally believed they married before actually receiving the dispensation from the pope.
After winning battles with the French, Edward kept court in Bordeaux and Angoulême. During the struggles between England and France in what later became called the Hundred Years’ War, he proved himself to be a courageous warrior. At times he was generous to prisoners, but over time he gained the reputation of being a ruthless victor, burning towns and amassing a fortune with his looting.
At age forty, his health began to decline. Edward died at age forty-six and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

The Burning of the Talmud in Paris, 1242

Thank you, Joyce, for inviting me to share a historical episode with the readers of your blog today.

When I discovered that the brilliant Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg was my ancestor, the first event in his life that moved me to consider writing The Fruit of Her Hands was when he witnessed the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242.

The Talmud, for those who may not know, is a multi-volume work, a record of Rabbinical discussion about the Torah, Jewish customs and laws, that spanned many generations.

How would a 24-year old scholar of Meir’s obvious intelligence approach such a tragedy? We know from the elegy he wrote ― in fine, medieval tradition ― that he was devastated. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t comprehend the cruelty visited upon his people.

And why was he forced to face it? To learn why the Jews of Paris lost every volume of the Talmud to the flames, it is important to understand that Jewish-Christian relations were undergoing a significant change during this century. Until the 1240s, Christians had frankly ambivalent feelings toward them. Jews had Christian neighbors. Rather than living in ghettos, they had to wear badges or hats so Christians could tell them apart.

But the idea of the Talmud never occurred to these Christians. They thought that Jews lived just as they had during the time of Christ, that their religion remained an artifact from Temple days. As long as long as the Torah, which had preceded Christ, was the only religious document, the Christians felt the Jews would eventually be won over to the “true” faith.

But in the 1200s, Christians began to discover the Jews had not frozen in time. Instead, they had continued to evolve their religion by constant study and debate, which centered around the Talmud. Some of their knowledge of the Talmud came from converts to Christianity, such as Nicholas Donin. Donin had upset his teachers by radical beliefs and the leader of the Paris yeshiva, Rabbi Yechiel, finally took the extreme step and excommunicated Donin.

Donin converted to Christianity, became a Franciscan friar and sought revenge. He egged Crusaders on to massacre Jews while on their way to fight in the Holy Land, precipitating pogroms in Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. But then Donin sought to harm the Jews in an even more fundamental way – through threats to their sacred texts. He convinced the Pope that the Talmud needed to be examined, that it contained terrible errors and slurs against Christ himself. The Pope wrote to the kings of Europe, instructing them to investigate. And the result, in Paris, was the seizure of every volume of the Talmud and a disputation ― a religious trial ― between the Rabbi Yechiel of Paris and Nicholas Donin.

While the Rabbi Yechiel did his best, his was an impossible task. Donin convinced the French court that the Talmud was a dangerous document that deserved destruction. And so, on a bright June day in 1242, Meir watched as every volume was consumed by flame.

Christian-Jewish relations continued to spin downhill from this point, degrading into a cycle of persecution that would culminate in the horrors of the Holocaust. But Meir would recover from his personal crisis of faith through the catharsis of the elegy he wrote. Meir of Rothenberg would become the foremost Talmudic scholar of his age and would live his life in a manner that still influences our Jewish roots.

To learn more about Meir, Nicholas Donin, and the burning of the Talmud – as well as other events in Meir’s life – I’d like to invite your readers to visit my Web site at http://www.michelle-cameron.com/ and to read The Fruit of Her Hands: the story of Shira of Ashkenaz, published by Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster).

Thanks again, Joyce, for letting me stop by your blog!

Winner from Coffee Time Announced

TaDumm... Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The winner's name, drawn by my sister this time, is Missy Roth. To the rest of you, thanks for the comments, and watch this website. I'll be giving more gift certificates later for contests and comments.
Missy, please email me privately. You can reach me from my Author page on my website. Just click the feather. Congratulations!

Win a $25 Gift Certificate

Hi Readers: On Friday, Sept. 18th,I'll be blogging all day on Coffee Time Romance and More, about various subjects:a low-cost travel secret, the importance of conferences, landing an agent, and a blog about my new release, Jeanne of Clairmonde, a medieval romance. From those who leave a comment, I'll be drawing a name, and the lucky winner will have a $25 gift certificate for a piece of designer jewelry by a glass artisan who makes one-of-a-kind jewelry designs. Here's a sample from her website. Don't forget, Friday the 18th on Coffee Time Romance. I'll be looking for you there.

Colorado Gold Conference

Hi Readers: I just returned from a great writers' conference in Denver. The weather was fantastic and I spent a glorious weekend networking with writers and learning more about the craft. There's always something new, and at times like this, with the rapid changes in the industry and in technology, it's more important than ever to keep abreast of what's going on in our book community. As if the awesome classes on marketing and a two-part pitch workshop by an agent (where she listened to pitches and made suggestions as to how they could be improved) weren't enough, I shared a table at the bar with agents and editors. Talk about an adrenaline rush! I admit it--I'm a conference junkie, and am already looking forward to the S.C. Writers Workshop in October at Myrtle Beach. Hope to see some of you there.