After a long
personal hiatus, pithy history blog
Got Medieval recently returned (previously:
1,
2). It comes back with a new project, an
ongoing series of posts [
Intro,
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7] on the author’s dissertation topic, the role of Uther in the story of King Arthur as told in the less-than-accurate 12th century
Historia Regum Brittanae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. If you want more, the
saints feasts calendar commentaries may be completed now, but don’t worry, the
marginalia posts continue (e.g.
sketches of naked men in a nun’s devotional book).
posted by Schismatic
on Feb 1, 2012 -
14 comments
Bugs and Beasts Before the Law - "Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal – theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials." More on the theme of barnyard scapegoats from the BBC podcast documentary:
Animals on Trial.
posted by madamjujujive
on Jan 5, 2012 -
22 comments
NPR's food blog gets wordy:
for the origins of "pie," look to the humble magpie. Though the
etymology of pie doesn't present one clear path, the possibilities are fascinating. English surnames point to pie and pye as a baked good in the 1300s, with
a Peter Piebakere in 1320 and Adam le Piemakere in 1332. Chaucer referred to "pye"
as both a baked good and a magpie (Google books). Or perhaps the fillings were like a magpie's collection of bits and bobs, similar to haggis. You know,
like the French "agace," or magpie (Gb), and similar to
chewets, those baked goods, or
another name for jackdaws (Gb),
relative of the magpie.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 22, 2011 -
21 comments
In 1992, MicroProse published their first and only CRPG:
Darklands. Set in medieval Germany, the game gives a lot of immersion,
from its innovative lifepath system for
character generation, to its use of
period music, to the importance of knowing your
saints, to tatzelwurms, quite fearsome
dragons and
raubritters. The
game play is good, with lots of different ways of handling any conflict and a semi-realtime
combat system. The game is also fundamentally open-ended; while there is a main plot (
spoilers), it's possible to ignore that thread and keep playing for years.
[more inside]
posted by jiawen
on Oct 9, 2011 -
35 comments
The Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri is a 500 year old manuscript written on six foot square sheets of a silken, vellum-like fabric which is polished with smooth stones so that ink sits on the surface rather than being absorbed. It is considered "one of the finest, most
lavishly illuminated and calligraphically significant Qur’an manuscripts from the late
Mamluk period". Too fragile to be displayed, it is also missing two leaves that were discovered in Dublin's Chester Beatty Library in the 1970s. So a unified digitized edition is being prepared that will be freely available on the Internet for researchers. The process is being blogged
here.
posted by Joe Beese
on Jan 24, 2011 -
14 comments
Take oysters, parboile hem in her owne broth, make a lyour of crustes of brede & drawe it up wiþ the broth and vynegur mynce oynouns & do þerto with erbes. & cast the oysters þerinne. boile it. & do þerto powdour fort & salt. & messe it forth.
Three European
14th Century cookbooks:
[more inside]
posted by thirteenkiller
on Dec 27, 2010 -
46 comments
Ozark Medieval Fortress – Thirty masons, carpenters and stone carvers authentically dressed, will work all year round for twenty years, the time required to build a fortress in the Middle Ages.
posted by tellurian
on May 4, 2010 -
74 comments
The remains of a man from Africa who
lived and died in 13th-century England have been unearthed in Ipswich. Analysis of the skeleton shows that the individual originated in what is now Tunisia, but lived for at least a decade in England. This is not the only surprising recent information regarding African presence in pre-modern England. A paternally linked gene known from Mali, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau has been present in the
male lineage of a Yorkshire family for at least 250 years, and may reach back to the time of the Roman occupation.
[more inside]
posted by Countess Elena
on May 4, 2010 -
46 comments
According to legend, back in the bad old days of the 10th C,
Bishop Hatto (actually Archbishop of Mainz), decided to deal with excess mouths during a famine by burning said people alive. In retribution, he was eaten alive by a horde of angry mice, supposedly in the
Mausturm near Bingen. The story ended up in
Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (
print wiki) and has been widely celebrated in
poetry, much of it awful. It probably was an influence on Lovecraft's story "The Rats in the Walls."
[more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust
on Feb 27, 2010 -
9 comments
I have been working on and off for about 2 years building our "D&D ROOM" to hold most of our collection and give us a cool place to play...
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 24, 2010 -
61 comments
The Soldier in later Medieval England is a historical research project that seeks to 'challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453'. They've compiled impressive
databases of tens of thousands of service records. These are perhaps of interest only to specialists; but the general reader may enjoy the
profiles of individual military men: these run the gamut from regional non-entities like
John Fort esquire of Llanstephan ("in many ways a humdrum figure" though once accused of harbouring a hostile Spaniard!) to more familiar figures such as rebel Welsh prince
Owain Glyndŵr, who began his soldiering,
as did many compatriots, in the service of the English king. Between such extremes of high and low we find, for example,
Reginald Cobham, who made 6,500 florins ransoming a prisoner taken at
Poitiers and rests eternal in a splendid tomb; and various
men loyal and rebel who fought at the bloody
Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
posted by Abiezer
on Dec 5, 2009 -
15 comments
"God save me!" quoth the priest, with a loud voice, "is Tirante the White there? Give me him here, neighbour; for I make account I have found in him a treasure of delight, and a mine of entertainment. Here we have Don Kyrieleison of Montalvan, a valorous knight, and his brother Thomas of Montalvan, and the knight Fonseca, and the combat in which the valiant Tirante fought with the mastiff, and the smart conceits of the damsel Plazerdemivida, with the amours and artifices of the widow Reposada; and madam the empress in love with her squire Hypolito. Verily, gossip, in its way, it is the best book in the world..."
-
Don Quixote de la Mancha, Part I, Chapter 6 [more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Aug 26, 2009 -
11 comments
The Luttrell Psalter is the definitive example of Marginalia; the term used to describe drawings and flourishes in medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Explore pages similar to
this and
this up close.
Here is a medieval
blog which has more Marginalia, both
amusing and medievally
ribauld or
both.
For serious scholars
Marginalia
is the website of the Medieval Reading Group at the University of Cambridge which has a myriad of
online resources.
posted by adamvasco
on May 2, 2009 -
11 comments
In Parentheses is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from
Greek,
Old Norse,
Medieval Irish,
Japanese,
Incan,
Old French,
Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have
papers in medieval studies and
vaguely decadent and
orientalism series. Adding to that there's a
linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as
Icelandic,
Quechua,
Basque,
Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more.
[flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 10, 2008 -
18 comments
The University of South Carolina recently completed an
ambitious survey of all medieval texts in the state for an exhibit at the university library. All the works were scanned and archived electronically. However, not only can you
view the texts online, you can hear the university's chorus
sing (MP3) the musical manuscripts.
[more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf
on Mar 18, 2008 -
8 comments
Art Images for College Teaching is a
searchable,
browsable collection of 2,027, well, art images for college teaching, and appears to be mainly the personal collection of Art Historian
Allan Kohl (previously on MeFi), and thus represents his interests and specialities, not to mention the variable quality of his photographic skills. Rather strong in Ancient and Medieval, especially architecture, but tapers off as you become more distant from Europe or closer to the 20th century. Nice sets include the
Lion Hunt from Ashurbanipal, Iraq; the
exterior sculpture of Chartres; and
grave stele.
posted by Rumple
on Feb 1, 2008 -
4 comments
