She looks lovely, doesn’t she? Well, if not lovely, certainly fancy. But turn to the next slide, and you’ll get a very different view. This two-sided ivory pendant of an aristocratic woman was carved in the Netherlands around 1500, and perfectly represents a Late Medieval artistic motif called “momento mori,” or “remembrance of death.” In […]
Late Medieval Motif Momento Mori Carving Read More »
Medieval people from every social status played games, but wealthy ladies and gentlemen had the resources for specialer ones. The first image you see here is the earliest intact deck of playing cards, known as the “Flemish Hunting Deck.” Made up of fifty-two hand-painted cards, the deck was created about 1480, and used real gold
Medieval Table Games Read More »
This bra broke history: excavated out of a rubble heap from a medieval castle in Austria in 2008, it was one of four bras discovered there, all dating to the 15th century. This find brought up to four our total examples of extant medieval bras — before these fragments from Lengberg Castle, we had zero.
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Happy St. Lucy’s Day! Would you like to celebrate by meditating on gouged-out eyeballs? In a tradition stemming from the Middle Ages, saints who had been martyred were frequently shown in artwork with either the instrument of death (Lucy was also stabbed — see the knife?), or the body parts in their story recieving the
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The tradition of gift-giving in human history resonates deeply this time of year, and although we usually think of this custom as a joyful one celebrating bonds of affection, love, and friendship, anthropologists have studied it in other contexts. Shown here in this 15th-century engraving by Northern Renaissance artist Martin Schongauer is a legend famous
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Here is a rare painting of Frau Minne, the Goddess-Allegory of Love popular among German-speaking Europeans in the Middle Ages. Her actions radically contradict the ways we often think women were expected to behave: Minne is forceful and violent, and she is always victorious. Here in this 14th-century coffer she is about to pierce the
Frau Minnie – The Allegory of Love Read More »
One of the best things about your day today is not waking up to ergot poisoning. Unfortunately, this condition caused great suffering to many throughout history. In the Middle Ages, people called it “St Anthony’s Fire,” after a 4th-century saint who was said to have endured hallucinations and burning sensations — two of the many
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This illustration from the late 12th century shows a woman spinning, taking the wool from her distaff and winding it around the spindle. Not shown here is a baby in a cradle at her feet. Multi-tasking like this has been part and parcel for women throughout history: we have led busy lives. While much women’s
Constant Multitasking in Women’s Lives Read More »
Flu season is upon us, and I still need to get my flu shot. If the unfortunate happens and I do get sick, _The Distaff Gospels_ has some words of healing advice for me.Readers of yesterday’s post will recall that the _Distaff Gospels_ is a book of women’s lore from the 15th century, and has
“The Distaff Gospels” and Healing Advice for the Flu Read More »
Check out this early selfie: it’s a first-century CE Ancient Roman fresco showing a woman looking at herself in a mirror. The image is a rare subject in early art, largely attributable to the fact that mirrors were extremely expensive throughout most of human history. Often, they were made of polished stone, like obsidian, or
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I would like to introduce one of “my” Medieval research area queens: Urraca, ruler of much of Spain from 1109-1126. I like her for many reasons, but one of my favorite things about Urraca was her tenacity. She really steered an unlikely trajectory, and kept reasserting her own life’s ambitions despite the ways her plans
Medieval Queen Urraca of Spain Read More »
Thus horrific scene is a Medieval illustration of a group of people with leprosy being burned at the stake. Government authorities in southern France were consumed with mass hysteria in 1321, and rounded up scores of people with this disease — they were convinced that the lepers were planning on poisoning wells in order to
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Here you are looking at a diagram of the Medieval universe. Or, a giant mystical vulva — your choice.In the Middle Ages, it was common to depict the macro-cosmos as a sort of expanded version of the micro, much like the fresco painted in the late fourteenth century by Piero di Puccio (4th slide), which
The Medieval Universe and Mystical Vulvas Read More »
The Morgan Picture Bible, a.k.a. “The Crusader Bible” is one of the pinnacles of 13th-century French Gothic illumination. Regardless whether it was commissioned by the saint-king Louis IX of France, as many art historians have argued, the 283 gorgeously painted illustrations certainly characterize the zeal of the crusader movement in Europe. In it, artists have
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In the Central Middle Ages (c.1050-1350), the big-boss philosophers were the scholastics, and this guy here was one of the biggest. May I introduce to you the Franciscan friar and famed developer of epistemology (the philosophy of how we know things), William of Ockham. He lived from 1285 to 1347 and settled in many different
William of Ockham and “Ockham’s Razor” Read More »
Ossuaries, or containers where the bones of the dead are placed, are not unusual for many places in Europe, where burial ground space can be at a premium. But the archaeology site recently excavated at the Cathedral of Saint Bavo, in the Belgian city of Ghent, is one-of-a-kind. Nine walls have been uncovered that are
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Check out this monk, sneaking extra wine . . . Well, it’s five o’clock somewhere, right? This miniature was painted in the late 13th century and suggests that not all Medieval clergy lived up to their avowed profession that emphasized denial of worldly pleasures. Similar conclusions can be drawn by examining a genre of music
Monk Sneaking Worldly Pleasures Read More »
Sometimes in history, behaviors seem to repeat, but closer study shows they can be driven by wildly different impulses. Self-harming in our society today arises from a variety of causes, such as feeling unheard or feeling a sense of self-hatred. But in the Middle Ages, deliberately causing oneself physical pain had a very different origin.
Flagellants and Their Religious Devotion Read More »
Well dear readers, now that we’re all settled in for a while, we can hunker down and enjoy a strange Medieval love story that might better fit around Halloween. May I present to you the macabre tale of the life-and-afterlife relationship of Ines and Peter of Portugal.In 1339, Peter was a young Prince whose father
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Unfortunately, the history of rape has a long legacy, in Medieval Europe as well as other places. (tw) This illuminated manuscript illustrates the pillaging of a city and the mass violence against women that frequently overlapped such occasions. Then and now, to rape women meant to take control and show power.In the Late Middle Ages,
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