As a Medieval historian, one of the things I do is study saints of the Middle Ages — they were akin to our modern-day superheroes, and their special qualities give us a good lens for understanding the values of the distant past. The holy woman featured here today — Rita of Cascia, nee Margherita Ferri […]
Rita of Cascia, Patroness of Lost Causes Read More »
In the late 1500s in China’s Ming Dynasty, one of the world’s most epic sagas was published: _Journey to the West_. Attributed to Wu Cheng’en, it incorporated folk tales and myths with an historical account of a Chinese monk seeking Buddhist texts and wisdom. Along the way, the monk is aided by protectors, of whom
“Journey to the West” and “Dragon Ball Z” Read More »
Are you from the US and fancy a trip to Europe — but don’t quite have the funding? Just north of Philadelphia is a small district called Bryn Athyn, which has . . . A Medieval mansion and cathedral. Or, almost. Glencairn Museum falls into the category of “unique homes of the wealthiest business tycoons
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Today my daughter and I got to visit VAMPA, a paranormal museum in Doylestown PA! The very recently constructed museum was a sensory adventure. Starting with the garage-sale garden exterior, which sprawled with iron gazebos, plastic near-life sized dinosaurs (only some of which were broken), and lots of pseudo-Greek statuary, visitors wind their way to
VAMPA Museum, Doylestown, PA Read More »
Pine Grove Furnace is at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains near my home in south-central Pennsylvania, and is a beautiful wooded area that feels remote — as of this spring in 2024, it doesn’t even get cell phone reception — yet, it’s only a 20-minute drive from my suburban dwelling. In fact, there
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Medieval Europeans were well aware of the balanced network of living creatures that populated their existence, but the great thinkers of the Late Middle Ages (about 1050-1500) were less interested in writing about the web of life than they were about trying to demonstrate the way the natural world pointed to spiritual truths. The Medieval
Medieval Bestiaries Read More »
Slander against the Islamic prophet Muhammad was rife in the Medieval Christian world. The religion of Islam spread rapidly and successfully, and in the agrarian hinterlands of Western Europe, many people’s fear of Islam was matched by their ignorance of it. Many depictions of Muhammad from the 12th to the 18th centuries reflect this. Here,
Depictions of Muhammad in Medieval Europe Read More »
Medieval culture repeatedly drew connections between animals and moralistic qualities. The pig — an animal ubiquitously eaten by Christians throughout the Middle Ages — developed an unusually bad reputation. This detail from a 15th-century prayer book shows a woman stroking a pig. While the overall image looks benign — the larger painting is all about
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We need to talk about pig farming in the Early Middle Ages. Pigs weren’t usually the most important domesticated animal for folks living in Western Europe between 500-1000 CE, but they shaped the lives of almost everyone. In a Michael Pollan “who’s-dominating-whom,” sort of vibe, historian Jamie Kreiner’s research demonstrates that although Medieval folks of
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This elephant ivory plaque from the Cathedral of Salerno dating to 1084 shows an image of God creating the animals. Early Medieval ideas about the place of animals in nature were shaped by Christianity. On the one hand, following Augustine (d 430) et al., who drew from the Genesis story, intellectuals thought that the animal
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“At one glanceI love youWith a thousand heartsLet the zealots thinkLoving is sinfulNever mindLet me burn in the hellfireOf that sin”This is just one snippet of a poem from an unusual source: Mihrî Hatun of the Ottoman Empire (1460-1515). In a place and time where most written voices were of men, the _meclis_ were intellectual
Mihri Hatun the Early Modern Ottoman Woman Poet Read More »
Yesterday, Shippensburg’s special collections librarian James Sterner gave a presentation about the history of book printing in Early Modern Europe. The university recently recieved a collection of rare books, including a 1609 copy of an English translation of Josephus’s _History of the Wars_.James Sterner used this copy to discuss the process of printing at this
Early Modern Book Printing Presentation Read More »
This is as close an approximation to a long-dead historical figure as we are likely to get: this is “Amir Timur” aka Tamerlane, one of history’s most brutal killers, who conquered much of Central Asia, modern Iran and Afghanistan during his lifetime of 68 years (d 1405). The reconstruction was done by a well-known Soviet
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This is one of the coolest sources of Ancient Egyptian mythology, dealing with magical healing spells, the myth of the death and resurrection of the God Horus, and, most interesting from my perspective, the enormous power of the Goddess Isis. Dating from 380-342 BCE, the “Metternich Stela” has a hecking ton of hieroglyphs detailing magical
The Metternich Stela and Isis Read More »
“Born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth” is a common expression that means your family is rich. The origins of this saying go a long way back, and are connected to a tradition of giving silver spoons to infants getting baptized into the Christian faith. Wiktionary traces the first recorded statement to a 1721
Silver Baptismal Gift Tradition Read More »
This is a re-creation of the nomadic Seljuk Turkish dynasty’s tents, as they maybe looked in the late 11th century. The Seljuks are most well known for destroying the powerful armies of the Byzantines, inspiring their emperor to request military forces from Western Europe, and hence, kick-starting the Crusades. However, this is not the most
The Seljuk Turks and the “Plain of Testicles” Read More »
Oh, boo! Now I have to get walled off in a building surrounded by my own gold and given nothing to eat until I starve! — this might as well be the caption of the illumination here from the early 1400s, illustrating the death of the last ruler of the Abbasid Dynasty, often called the
The Death of the Last Abbasid Caliph, al-Musta Read More »
If you look for more than a second at the squiggles on this image, you will soon make out patterns of squares as well as some long lines joining them. These images made huge headlines in the fields of archaeology and history this month because of what they have revealed about an ancient civilization in
Ancient Civilization Discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon Read More »
One of the most fascinating monsters in human cultures is the ghoul — here, you see a particularly nasty one about to be done in by the hero Shah Namah in a 10th-century Persian manuscript. The legends of ghouls extend back in time to the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, but have persisted into modern times, much
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So if you’re into certain video games, Swedish metal bands, or the Young Adult fiction writer Rick Riordan, you may have heard the name “Naglfar.” Regardless, you can say you read about the most hideous ship in all of human history here. And that’s because Naglfar was a boat from Viking mythology made up entirely
Naglfar the Viking “Nail-Ship” Read More »
