“Diabolus in Musica” is an album by the metal band Slayer, but the group took the title from another place — an alleged accusation of the devil residing in music itself: not just any music, but a certain nefarious sound.This sound is known to music theorists as a “tritone” and it appears in a musical […]
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Europeans practiced cannibalism well into the 19th century, and one of the favored ways to consume their own kind happened with beheadings. Here you see close-ups of a 1649 painting by artist John Weesop called “An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of King Charles I”. Notice in the second image the rush of people collecting
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This is a picture of a Medieval garderobe, which back in the day could refer to a nook outside a castle wall which had a seat for defecating. Everyone needs to go, perhaps at least once a day, and those castle walls were high up. It actually sounds pretty hygienic — except for the fact
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Islamic demons, anyone? The famous Jinn (our word “genie” is derived from it) appeared in pre-Islamic mythology, but once the Arabian Peninsula had been taken over by the Muslim conquests of the seventh century, they were incorporated into this monotheistic religion. In early Islam, believers thought of the Jinn as mortal beings, albeit with superhuman
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Early this morning (as in, from 2:30-4:30 a.m.) my part of the world was treated to a near-total lunar eclipse. The shadow of the earth crept across the full moon’s surface, eventually turning it a reddish color (due to the refraction of light through the Earth’s shadow). As anyone who has seen a lunar eclipse
It’s my tradition each year to celebrate the season with historically themed Christmas carols — and so here you go: “Baldwin, it’s cold outside!” Set to the tune of “Baby it’s cold outside,” by Frank Loesser, this cover deals with the first super bad Viking raid in Western Europe. In 793, the pagan Norsemen attacked
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One of the eeriest Medieval practices was the ceremonial burial of the anchorite, or the “Servicium Recludendi” as one litany calls it. Imagine being in the head-space of an anchorite, in which you were so concerned about devoting your life to prayer and abjuration of this world that you willingly entombed yourself in a prayer
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This unusual garment is called a “Bishop’s Mantle,” because of its similarity to the robes worn by such clergymen, but if you look closely, you’ll see it’s made up of linked chains — and is actually armor. In fact, it probably was only dubbed a “Bishop’s Mantle” by 19th-century antiquarians, and we might think
Yesterday I wrote a post about a religious boundary line from Ancient Rome — one that was powerful enough to halt even state-sponsored violence within its borders. And today, here is another: this time, from the Medieval cathedral of Durham, England. This is the original “Sanctuary Knocker,” cast in bronze in 1155. As _The
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This is a Sheela-na-gig: a type of statue or carving found on European Christian buildings from the Central Middle Ages showing a naked woman overtly displaying her vulva. Whatever messages they were intended to make — fertility blessing, pagan remnant, or grotesque ridicule — contrasted with the high value of female virginity promoted by the
You are looking at an artist’s rendition of a device known as “the staff of al-Tusi” which sounds like a magical weapon straight out of Tolkien but in fact was a genius scientific tool made by one of the most important mathematicians in history. Sharaf al-Din al-Muzaffar al-Tusi (c. 1135-1213) lived in various cities
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In Medieval Europe, horses were highly valued animals, and great amounts of resources went into their care and training. Horses, like the one shown in this miniature painting (c. 1200-1210), would have mainly belonged to the aristocracy, who prized them not only for their labor, but their use in battle. Sources show that nobles
This post is three days past the memorial day of the person featured here, Saint Agatha of Sicily. She’s one of my favorite regulars in the history of Christian artwork — right along the arrows all over St Sebastian and St Lucy with her eyeballs or Catherine of Alexandria with her wheel or John with
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You are looking at one of the most puzzled over artistic products of Early Medieval Britain — it is one panel of a rectangular container known as the Franks Casket. Made in 7th-century Northumbria in northern England, it has a fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic/Celtic/Ancient Roman influences, and scholars still debate the exact meanings of the
One of my favorite periods in history is when the Germanic- and Celtic- speaking peoples were Christianizing yet kept up a lot of their indigenous religious world views and culture. The Ruthwell Cross, probably dating to the early 700s, is one of the most beautiful products of this era. Ruthwell is now in Scotland, but
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In recognition of St Valentine’s Day, I thought I had better write about demon sex in the Middle Ages. And Church theologians thought this actually happened, where demons could appear to a woman and have sex with her, making her pregnant. The character Merlin from Medieval Arthurian legend, was born from a woman and
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It’s _Beowulf_ day in my Early Medieval Europe class, which I absolutely never get sick of — the bloody wrestling match of Beowulf and Grendel, the heartbreaking moment when Beowulf puts on his armor for the last time knowing that the dragon will kill him, the poet’s anxiety about blood feuds wrecking societies while nonetheless
In the 6th century, a wandering monk from Ireland known as St Gall settled down at a monastery in Switzerland. The Medieval account of his life written about three hundred years later tells much of the saint’s holiness, which brought him the ability to do miracles (like – order a bear to put a log
The Ogham Alphabet Read More »
Is this the face of the Slavic pagan Goddess Mokosh? If so, it would be one of the only remaining images of the powerful fertility deity whose influence eroded with the arrival of Christianity among the Kievan or Kyivan Rus in the 10th century. Much about this period is unknown, but the Kievan/Kyivan Rus
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Let’s talk about apotheoses in domes in art, shall we? This term comes from Ancient Greek and means “to make into a God.” Some heroes of Classical myths ended up ascending into the heavens to be with the other Olympians, such as Hercules. In Ancient Rome, emperors beloved by the Senate could be given the
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