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The Strange Story of the Court Jester, Roland the Farter · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Beyond Infographics, the show that takes a stack
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: of sources and well extracts the crucial insights the knowledge
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you need to be genuinely well informed, often from the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: most surprising corners of history. And today we are starting
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: with probably the strangest land tenure in all of English history.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: We are talking about a man named Rolonge Lepetuur, or
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: roll in the farder.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: That's right now.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: On the surface, it just sounds like a joke, but
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: if you really think about the sheer historical absurdity of it,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a man held title to substantial land, served a king,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and his entire job was based on his ability to
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: perform a controlled act of flatulence. This is not a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: story about knights and castles. It's a dive into the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I guess, the deep psychological and philosophical records of the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Middle Ages.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: It truly is, and the core insight I think the
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: thing I want to share with you right from the
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: start is that when we look at the Middle Ages
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: through the lens of something as a basis of art,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: we realize that medieval people didn't see this as just
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: a biological event. This was a statement. It was a
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: profound social spiritual and economic statement. If you stop seeing
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: history it's just a collection of treasures and great narratives,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and you start to see it as a mid and age,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: a place where all the unwanted decritus of knowledge and
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: the body just accumulates. Well, that waste reveals so much
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: more about a society than its prized artifacts.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: A mid age I like that the very structure.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Of their society we find incorporated and even valued what
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: we would immediately just discard.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: That's a really powerful way to put it. Most history
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: gives us the cleaned up, abstract version that courtly love
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the beautiful cathedrals. Our mission here, however, is to challenge
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: those simple summaries. Yeah, the fundamental question we're grappling with
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: is what kind of society formalized flat into a feudal
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: obligation and what does this bizarre transaction actually reveal about
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: their entire worldview. So for those of you tuning in,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: get ready for a real aha moment about the Middle
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Ages that connects the royal court directly to the raw
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of visceral realities of the body. And if you enjoy
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: this unexpected journey, please take a moment right now to
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: rate beyond infographics five stars. Okay, let's unpack the man
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and the contract. Roland lapature. He was active in the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: twelfth century, traditionally serving King Henry the Second, though there
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: are some suggestions his service might have started earlier under Henry.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: The First, and that context is actually key because Henry
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: the First was famous for rewarding what they called nov.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Hominies literally new men, right.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly, individuals who did not come from the traditional estat
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Norman aristocracy. And this is a political strategy. You reward
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: these new men with land and a title, and you
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: create a loyal, newly wealthy class that has beholden directly
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: to you.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: To the and that balances the power of the old
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: powerful baronial families precisely.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And roland service, well, it wasn't military. It was what
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: was legally termed a jocular custom. The obligation was incredibly precise,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: it was ritualistic, and it was highly controlled. The legal
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: records confirmed that every year on Christmas Day, Roland had
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: to appear before the king and perform simul and cemel,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: which means at the same time and only once.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: At the same time and only once. And the act
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: itself had three specific parts unum saltem, unum, sufflam, and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: unim bombulum. So one jump, one whistle, and one fart.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The jump the saltum that implies some kind of acrobatics.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: The whistle suffhalem or seflatum suggests a really controlled articulated exhalation,
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  Speaker 1: not a standard maneuver.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: And then the third part the bombulum or petum, that's
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the percussive flatulence. This was so far from being accidental gas.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: This was controlled audible sound production. Roland's performance demanded extraordinary
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: bodily control and precision to perform three distinct, complex and
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: simultaneous acts on command.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, try doing that yourself exactly.
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  Speaker 2: This elevates it immediately beyond some kind of drunken jest.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: It's a clear demonstration of physical mastery.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And what's crucial here is the legal struction of his compensation.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just cash or a simple joke reward. Roland
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  Speaker 1: held a substantial SERGEANTY.
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  Speaker 2: Now, SERGEANTY was generally considered a base or feudal tenure
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: compared to say, night service, but that doesn't mean the
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: holdings are small.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So that's a critical distinction we need to emphasize here.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: What's the difference.
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  Speaker 2: Well, night service required the tenant to provide military assistance
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  Speaker 2: you know, a horse, armor, a certain number of armed
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: men to the king for forty days a year. Sergeanty,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: on the other hand, was defined by performing a specific,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: often very strange, personal service.
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  Speaker 1: And Roland's was a base sergeanty.
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  Speaker 2: Because because the service was considered undignified, but the compensation
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: was serious. Our record show Roland held between one hundred
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: and ten and one hundred and thirty nine acres spread
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: across three villages in Suffolk, Hemingston, Gosbeck and Ringshell Wow.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: And on top of that he also controlled an additional
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: manner in Norfolk.
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  Speaker 1: So how does that really compare to what a night
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: would get? Was it worth the same effort?
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Oh? In many cases yes, the Norfolk manor alone was
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: valued at one hundred shillings a year. Now, to put
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: that in perspective, one hundred s shellings could sustain a
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: large number of lower class families for an entire year,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: or pay for the upkeep of several servants.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So this land was productive, it was stable, and it
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: was inheritable.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The legal confirmation of this tenure, which we find
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: in the Liber Feodorm, the Book of fees. It demonstrates
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: that the medieval economy was perfectly capable of formalizing and
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: assigning substantial, consistent economic value to a well to a
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: base scatological performance. It was a property right treated with
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the same meticulous legal rigor as any other feudal obligation.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: So if you piece it all together, we have the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: king using a tenure defined by a ridiculous service to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: elevate a novis homo politically, which simultaneously under the traditional
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: noble class and creates a new economic reality. It's actually
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a very clever political move, just packaged as a comical
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: tradition it is.
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  Speaker 2: But my personal insight here is that it also speaks
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to the pre modern relationship between the monarch and the body.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: The aristocratic body was seen as public, sometimes raw, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: fundamentally performative. The king is the greatest body in the realm,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: could demand and reward performances that today we would shunt
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: immediately into the private sphere.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: But this era of public reckless dispense, as you called it,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: it had to end. What brought down Roland's tenure.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: The shift came under Henry the Third, who reigned later
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: in the thirteenth century. Now, Henry the Third was known
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: for his piety and is much greater concern for continental
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: courtly manners. He was moving away from the rougher, more
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: pragmatic style of his predecessors. So sometime between twelve forty
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: four and twelve seventy two, the assize Roles confirmed the change.
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  Speaker 2: The king caused the servant to be commuted to a
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: monetary rent twenty six shillings and eight pence per annum.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And why the commutation? What was the official reason?
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: The legal reason given was that the service was deemed
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: indecence indecent, indecent. And this isn't just a change in
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: administrative paperwork. It signals a profound shift in courtly sensibilities.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: The aristocracy was beginning to adopt a new refined code
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: of conduct, emphasizing hygiene manners and a separation of public
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: spectacle from private bodily functions.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: So the public performance of the King's own body and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the bodies he patronized was becoming idealized, sanitized, more restrained.
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  Speaker 1: Roland's performance, that public and ritualistic bombulum, it just became
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: an embarrassing anachronism. So the end of the fart tenures
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: signals the beginning of what the emergence of modern concepts
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of personal privacy and courtly taste. That's a massive historical pivot,
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  Speaker 1: codified in a single legal decision that redefines a property contract.
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  Speaker 2: It's the sound of the aristocracy pulling up its collective trousers.
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  Speaker 2: It truly is huh. And the legal action is fascinating
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  Speaker 2: because it doesn't eliminate the economic value, sanitizes the method
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: of payment. Roland's descendants still received income from the land,
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  Speaker 2: but the obligation was converted into a clean, abstract number.
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  Speaker 2: The base reality of the body was divorced from the
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: economic reality of the rent.
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  Speaker 1: Roland's story is extraordinary, but it's easy to just dismiss
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  Speaker 1: him as a total outlier, you know, a one off
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  Speaker 1: royal curiosity. But he wasn't working in a vacuum. He
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was part of this strange, recognized tradition, which begs the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: question where else did the professional farter thrive? Let's look
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: at the broader context of the flatchlist.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: That's a necessary perspective. The fact that controlled flatulence as
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: performance art appears in widely divergent cultures and eras it
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: suggests a universal human appreciation for this skill. It was
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: a recognized, if niche profession globally.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so give us some insight into his non European counterparts.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Well, let's look at early medieval Ireland. In eighth century texts,
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  Speaker 2: there's explicit mention of bruge noir bruge noir, which translates
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  Speaker 2: as fartres. They were listed as recognized compensated court entertainers.
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  Speaker 2: They weren't just hangars on. They were part of the
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  Speaker 2: official retinue alongside jesters, jugglers and musicians, and their compensation
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  Speaker 2: it was ritualistic, just like Roland's land tenure exactly. They
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: were compensated with the fat of the shoulder from hunted prey.
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  Speaker 2: This indicates that the skill of passing win wasn't merely tolerated.
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  Speaker 2: It was viewed as a legitimate performance art worthy of
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a specific symbolic economic reward. In early medieval Irish society.
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  Speaker 2: This suggests an established professional hierarchy that really valued specialized bodily.
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  Speaker 1: Skills, and this tradition stretched across continents, resurfacing in Japan's
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  Speaker 1: centuries later.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, during the Edo period from about sixteen hundred eighteen
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  Speaker 2: sixty eight, you have hapiiotolko or farting men who were
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  Speaker 2: popular entertainers, and this was serious popular entertainment. We have
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  Speaker 2: scrolls from the time that depict these performers sometimes engaging
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: in outright farting competitions, using their skill to satirize, to challenge,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: or just to amuse large crowds.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So the ubiquity of this profession from feudal England to
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: early modern Japan, it shows that bodily control in the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: service of humor just transcends cultural boundaries. It does, and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of course the tradition didn't die out in the Middle Ages.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: We can jump forward a few centuries to the height
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of the Parisian Bellipac and we find Joseph Poujol la
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Petomon performing at Le Molain Rouge in the eighteen nineties.
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  Speaker 2: Poujol is the ultimate professional flatulist because he elevated the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: act to something almost technical, even musical. He wasn't just
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: producing crude noise. He had spectacular control. He demonstrated its
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: ability to inhale air through his rectum and then exhale
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  Speaker 2: it with precision.
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  Speaker 1: And what did that level of control actually allow him
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to do on stage? I mean, what was his.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Act oh His repertoire was astonishing. He would perform musical numbers,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: sometimes using a small rubber tube or a flute to
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: play pieces like eu Claire de la lune all viarectal
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: exertion no way. He could imitate sound effects, thunder, cannon fire,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: even different musical instruments, and famously he could extinguish a
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: gas jet on the footlights from a distance. The sheer
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: physical commitment was legendary.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And the most important detail, perhaps given the context of
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Roland Lapatour's indecent service, was Poujol's insistence on being odorless.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: And that's where the modernity comes in. You see, the
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: medieval professional flagelist was valued for the full sensory experience
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: sound and smell included. Poujol, in the age of emerging
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: bourgeois hygiene, insisted on removing the odor. He attributed his
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: success to daily.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Enemous so he understood that nineteenth century courtly de chorum,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the very same sensibility that ended Roland's job, demanded an abstract,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: clean performance. The art remained, but the filth had to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: be meticulously removed. So Roland's bongulum, that crack, that percussive
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sound was highly theatrical, and it stood in direct contrast
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to say, rabbel Asian characters who tried and failed and
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: just soiled themselves. That contrast really emphasizes Roland's mastery. But
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: let's get in to the symbolic weight of the noise
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: itself well.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: The bombulum connects linguistically and conceptually to the bombard. The
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: bombard was the name given to the early forms of
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: the cannon, which was just beginning to emerge in Europe
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: around the fourteenth century, signaling this terrifying shift in warfare.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So if the bombard is an iron butt that farts
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: out cannon balls, as some historians suggest, then the sound
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: itself is a weapon. Noise shatters order and accepted totalities absolutely.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: The sound the percussive force it represents disruption. Furthermore, in Latin,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: the communicative power of flaglens is unambiguous. The verb apadere,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: meaning to insult, literally means to fart at someone. A
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: public release of wind, especially a controlled loud one like Rolands,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: carried the potential for aggressive communication, for disrespect or even
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: political challenge. It's a statement made with the basest part
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: of the body directed at authority.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Which makes me circle back. If it contains such aggressive potential,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: why did the king pay for it? Why was it
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: funny enough to be formalized? The answer must lie in
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the medieval theory of laughter itself.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Precisely we can't apply our modern understanding of humor here.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Medieval thinkers viewed laughter as fundamentally cathartic. They believe that
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: laughter originated in the diaphragm, which, in their physiological understanding,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: acted as the crucial division between the noble upper parts.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Of the body, the mind, spirit, heart.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: And the base lower parts like digestion and excretion.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: So laughter, then, was this virtuous middle ground inhabiting the borderland.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. Aristotle defined this ideal state as eutrapelia, the virtue
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: of ready wittedness or appropriate jocularity. It was positioned ethically
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: as the balance between the vice of excess, which was
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: buffoonery or bombulacio, and the vice of defect, which was borishness.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: For the court to be healthy both morally and physically,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: it required controlled, appropriate joking. Roland's controlled Act fit this
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: definition perfectly. It was structured, it was punctual, it was contained,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: and it provided that necessary virtuous.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Release and physically what was happening during this release it
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: was therapeutic.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: The popular belief tied to the theory of humors was
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: that hard, uncontrollable laughter was an involuntary, expulsive act. It
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: was believed that one pisses, shits, and sweats by virtue
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of laughing, effectively purging the body of surplus humors or tensions.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So Roland's annual performance was essentially a public therapy session.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: By intentionally triggering this explosive, uncontrollable physical release of laughter,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a form of regulated chaos, he was providing a necessary
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: catharsis for.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: The whole court, exactly restoring their chumoral balance and preventing
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the internal build up of tension.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: They were paying for therapeutic release, which justifies the substantial
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: economic value of his Sergeanty. The King wasn't just paying
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: for a gag, he was finding a public health measure.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: He was and this acceptance of the grotesque and the
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: expulsive it leads us directly into a deeper look at
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the philosophy of detritus. And if you were enjoying this
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: bizarre journey into medieval courtly life and philosophy, please do
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: rate beyond info graphics five stars.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: You've referred to the Middle Ages as the Midden Age,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a time of redundant knowledge, discarded concepts like the geocentric
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: universe and the four humors. That's a fascinating, almost subversive
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: way to frame and era often characterized by its grand
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: philosophical syntheses.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: It's an important lens to view these scatological practices through.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: My personal insight is that this conceptual waste loot paradoxically
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: elevated the value of what was considered worthless or rejected.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: If the grand abstract theories are failing, where do you
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: find fundamental.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Truth in the raw, undeniable realities of the body.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it's the idea that wisdom lies within what is rejected.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: The scrap material, excrement, and wind, while marking our ultimate
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: physical finitude, becomes sources of visceral.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Wisdom because they resist abstraction.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: They do. This is why the scatological proverb served as
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: such a powerful immediate moral guide. Unlike the high flown
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: abstract arguments of Scholasticism, these proverbs provided succinct, bodied lessons
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: in moderation and realism, sayings like he who doesn't shit
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: can't enjoy himself or the French equivalent. We often find
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: there's no need to fart higher than your asshole. These
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: are lessons about staying within your means, recognizing your limitations,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: and understanding that base physical need is a prerequisite for happiness.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Let's address the modern assumption about medieval hygiene. We hear
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: about this public performance and we immediately assume total filth
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and chaos. And while sanitary regulations might have been spotty,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: we have records of regular finds for dumping dung. Their
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: concept of privacy was radically different from ours.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: It was fluid, not absent. The monastic term for the
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: latrines was private, meaning the private space, but that rarely
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: meant solitude. It was the space mandated for necessary bodily function,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: sometimes used for solitary confinement, but often a communal or
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: semi public space. The aristocratic body particularly was defined by
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: what we call reckless distents, the ability to publicly excrete
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: or perform base acts without shame. This was a mark
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: of power and ownership over.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Space, and this reckless dispense contrasts so sharply with the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: emerging bourgeois sensibility of the later period.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the feudal body was open, it was fluid, it
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: was expulsive. It stood in opposition to the emerging closed,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: punctual body of capitalism. And this is a crucial concept.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: The bourgeois subject, intent on accumulation of wealth, of moral
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: standing of social capital, began to internalize a culture of
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: retention and control.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The body had to be punctual, controlled, discrete.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is the conceptual shift that later thinkers connected
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: to anal eroticism and miserliness, where the retention of wealth
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: of money is mirrored by the retention of bodily waste
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: of constipation. The body itself becomes a reflection of the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: emerging economic discipline.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So when Henry the third declares Roland's act in decens
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: it's not just a passing royal preference. It's the legal
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: recognition of the transition from an open, communal, expulsive, feudal
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: worldview to a closed, private, accumulating, proto capitalist one.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: That's precisely what that legal record marks. It's the moment
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: the aristocratic body starts to retreat behind the veil of decorum,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: creating the public private split that defines modernity.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Now, let's pivot back to the physical reality of the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: fart if site is the dominant sense of platonic epistemology,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: allowing us to theorize from a safe, critical distance. The
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: fart absolutely dismantles that it demands a terrifying immediate intimacy.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: This is the concept of extimacy intimate exteriority. Sight allows safety,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: allowing the philosopher to observe and judge from afar, but
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: smell smell mandates proximity and direct involvement. Smell is neurologically
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: unique among our senses because the sensory data bypasses the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: cerebral cortex, the area of conscious thought and processing, and
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: goes straight to the limbic globe, the core of our
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: instinctual emotional response.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: In memory, which means we react to a smell, especially
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a shocking fetid one, before we consciously even know what
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it is. It's an immediate visceral invasion exactly.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: The fart fundamentally breached WHI is the psychological and physical
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: boundary between the self and the other. The act of
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: inhaling another person's heavy, stinking fart means taking in its
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: gaseous but conceptually solid excremental matter. You internalize the other's waste.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: It completely undermines the notion of the punctual, isolated, clean subject.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It does the fart brings the self and the other
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: into extimacy, a painful, inescapable state where the boundaries is
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: dissolved and the body of the other momentarily becomes a
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: toxic part of you. The Old Middle English verb to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: smell could mean both to perceive an odor and to
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: emit one, which really emphasizes this ambiguity.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: To perceive the odor is to suffer the presence of
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the other.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: It is a passive suffering. You are acted upon by
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: their physical process, and this frightening intimacy, this absolute loss
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: of personal boundary, was humorously, perhaps even tragically, formalized in
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: the institution of marriage. This brings us to a fantastic
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: legal burlesque from the fifteenth century tell.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Us about the lawsuit Lie pet the Fart.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: The case involves a husband named Hubert who sues his
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: wife Janet explicitly because she farted audibly and stinkingly in
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: his presence. Hubert claims this action contaminates his home and
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: causes him such injury that his posterior still quivers from fright.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: So he's charging her with assault by air and gross lack.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Of hygiene pretty much. He demands the court restore his
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: personal integrity and the cleanliness of his living space. But
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the judge's ruling is a profound, albeit grotesque piece of
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: legal philosophy. The court ruled resoundingly against Hubert based on
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the judicial concept that husband and wife are one flesh
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: and substance.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Therefore, she couldn't injure him because he couldn't injure.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Himself, Precisely being one substance, the wife's bodily processes are,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: by extension, the husband's processes. The judge's implied conclusion was
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: that Hubert married her her poscarior as much as the
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: rest of her. Wow. His grievance about hygiene and integrity
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: is totally dismissed in favor of the profound ontological unity
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: created by the marriage bond. The judge essentially told him
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: to live with the com ssequences of his union, using
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the brutal and colorful old French proverb key marr the
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: bross mardybe h.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Who brewis shit drinks shit.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: It's a perfect scatological statement on accountability and unity. The
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: marriage bond creates a commonality of air, substance, and fate
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: that just obliterates the distinction between the clean and the dirty,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: the self and the other. Hubert's attempt to enforce a
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: modern clean boundary within his household fails completely because the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: medieval court recognized the fundamental, extimate reality of shared flesh.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Having explored the legal and physical realities of flatulence, let's
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: pivot to the truly abstract, the metaphysics of wind. The
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: concept of the fart was inextricably connected to numa, the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Greek word meaning wind, air, spirit, and heat, the essential
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: divine substance that permeated life and the cosmos.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, the medieval body was always seen as a microcosm
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: of the cosmos. It contained the four elements earth, air, fire, water,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: and Numa was the vital essence that gave rise to
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: sensation and movement. The air we breathed wasn't just oxygen,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: it was a complex admixture of these elements. This pneumatic
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: view of the body gave rise to incredible medical and
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: philosophical claims, often tracing the source of life and disease
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: back to internal wind.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: The ultimate origin of disease, according to the ancients, was flatulence.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, Hippocrates, in his treatise periphysin on breaths or on farting,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: argued that air is the cause of life in the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: healthy and the cause of disease in the sick. He
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: asserted that all maladies ultimately evolve from the air, linking
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: the body's interior wind the pisa directly to physis and
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: being the essential nature of the bursting forth of a
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: thing's nature.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: So this connects the biological act of Flascholens to the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: ultimate question of existence.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: It does, I mean, if the fart is the bursting
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: forth physis of the thing's nature, a raw, undeniable statement
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: of physical reality, then we can philosophically assert crepito ergosomi fart.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Therefore I am the existence is loud, messy and physical. Furthermore,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the theological implications that the soul itself, the spiritus, which
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: is also derived from wind or breath, was believed to
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: depart the body with the final exhalation at the moment
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: of death, linking this fundamental concept of wind directly to
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: the transition of being.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: From the profound to the seemingly absurd. This philosophical approach
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: meant that medieval thinkers could apply rigorous scholastic logic to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: utterly ridiculous scenarios, which brings us to Chaucer Summoner's tale.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It's a masterclass in applying logic to the grotesque.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It is the tail centers on a dilemma presented to
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: a greedy friar. A dying man has bequeathed a magnificent
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: fart to be divided equally among all thirteen friars in
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the convent. And this is the problem, how do you
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: divide a sound and a smell equally among thirteen men?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: And the narrator treats this impossible division as a serious
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: scholastic problem, a quadlebette, which was a theological or philosophical
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: question on which medieval scholars would debate rigorously, often in public,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to test their analytical skills.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: The entire section hinges on arsmetric, which is this magnificent
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: pun combining arithmetic, the need to count and divide with arsmetrics,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the source of the quantifiable phenomena, and the solution presented
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: by the Lord's servant Jenkin is highly technical and utterly farcical.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Jenkin proposes a wheel, a cartwheel, specifically, how does a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: cartwheel solve the problem of dividing a fart.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: The idea is that one friar must sit at the
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: hub of the cartwheel, and the other twelve fryars must
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: line up along the spokes radiating outwards from the center.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I think I see where this is going.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: When the head friar farts, the resultant sound and smell
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: will travel simultaneously and equally down each of the twelve spokes,
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: ensuring all thirteen fryars receive a perfectly divided share, thus
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: satisfying the conditions of the bequest. The tail just takes
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: immense pleasure in the commitment to applying rigorous geometry and
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: physics the path of the sound wave to a subject
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: that normally has no place in the academy.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: The intellectual playfulness is just astonishing. It demonstrates that medieval
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: logic was flexible enough to handle the sublime and the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: scatological at the same time. But the ultimate linguistic scandal,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: one that actually threatened the foundations of medieval theology, concerns universals.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: This is Roslyn's radical nominalist idea, which caused chaos in
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the eleventh century. The core debate was between realists who
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: believed that universal concepts like the species homo or the
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: idea of justice were real entities that existed independently of
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: the human mind and nominalists who argued the opposite.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And Rosslyn, as an extreme nominalist, argued that these lofty
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: universal concepts were nothing more than flattis vocus.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Literally the breath of the voice. He claimed universals were
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: mere auditory signs, empty sounds produced by the speaker, and
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: this was a profound, a seismic scandal. Anselm and other
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: realists reacted with extreme aggression, deliberately implying or stating that
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: flatus focus meant a voice fart.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Why was that implied insult so crucial to their rejection.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Because raw Ulin's argument reduced the lostiest philosophical and theological concepts,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: the universal ideas that structured God's creation and our knowledge
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: of it, to a physical, contingent and auditory process. He
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: suggested that philosophy and theology ultimately depended not on eternal
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: platonic forms, but on a grammatical wind that blasts out
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: of a mouth.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: A purely physical expulsion of air.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, so by calling it a voice fart, they weren't
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: just insulting Rosslyn, They were reducing his entire metaphysical system
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: to an indecent base bodily function, demonstrating that his idea
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: was empty, worthless, and physically repulsive.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate deflation of metaphysics, bringing the abstract right
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: down to the level of the diaphragm and the posterior.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And speaking of the repulsive, we have to look at
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the theological significance of the fart in relation to the devil.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: The devil is consistently associated with scatology and flagelence throughout
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: medieval Christian art and literature. Dante's Hell, particularly the malibulge
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: that evil pouches of the eighth Circle, was often described
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: as reminiscent of coiled disease ridden in tel essal sacks.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: It makes hell itself the shithole of the cosmos. Demons
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: are frequently depicted as farterers and belchers, acting as part
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: of a great cosmic digestive and expulsive system.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So if the devil in his domain are defined by
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: noise and stink, the fart becomes a tool for warding
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: him off.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the act of farting itself was apotropaic. It warded
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: off evil stage devils. In late medieval mystery plays were
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: notorious farterers using a loud, percussive exit to punctuate their
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: evil deeds. I love that, and there are stories, particularly
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: in the Irish tradition, of a demon appearing to a man,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: only to have the man fart or void his bowels
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: at the sight of the demon, causing the evil spirit
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: to flee in disgust. Laughter and farting are both considered
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: forms of exiflation, a forceful blowing out of bad spirits
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: or evil. This connects the base bodily act of rollo
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: the piture directly to the holy act of exorcism, proving
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: that the sacred in the profane often occupy the very
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: same physical space hashtag tash tec outro. So, if we
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: synthesize everything we've learned, Roland la Pature's annual performance for
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: King Harry the Second ceases to be merely a historical oddity.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: It stands as a complete ontological statement. It touches on
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: how feudal society define economic value, how it utilized laughter
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: as communal catharsis acknowledged the poorest intimate nature of the body,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: that extimacy and quantified the power of sound. It even
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: influenced the most abstract debates over the physical reality of language. Yeah,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Roland wasn't just performing, he was confirming the physical and
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: philosophical realities of the medieval world through his posterior.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And as we conclude this particular journey with Beyond infographics,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with one final provocative thought
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: that brings us back to the question of complete knowledge.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Think about the famous gargoyle at the Angel and Royal
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Hotel in Grantham. When you view it from the street level,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: it looks like a sculpted face, you know, maybe a
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: cherub or a grimacing figure. But to gain the full
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: knowledge of the piece, to truly understand its function, you
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: have to walk around, look up from beneath and realize
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that the faces only half the story. The underside is
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: sculpted as a butt and an enus, and that orifice
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: serves as the water spout, the butt recognition, the butt recognition.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly to gain this full butt recognition, one has to
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: move beyond the safe critical distance of the eye. You
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: have to step into that painful zone of exstimacy, craning
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: your neck and risking getting wet as the water or
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: filth or waste is expelled. Knowledge, particularly historical knowledge, is
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: rarely single, clean or safe.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: That's a great point.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: To truly understand the past, we have to move beyond
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the safe, idealized views of history and be willing to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: examine the source of the water spout, however filthy it
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: might be, to gain that complete knowledge. It is only
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: when you are willing to risk getting splashed that you
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: gain the full picture. I hope this has given you
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a completely fresh and insightful look at medieval life, and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: perhaps a new appreciation for the sounds you encounter in
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the world around you. Please do rate Beyond Infographics five
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: stars and join us next time for another examination of
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the surprising insights hidden in the footnotes of history.