The Seraphim were terrifying Biblical monsters, even if contemporary Christianity imagines them as more benign angelic creatures. They appear in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) in several places, and although English translations of the Hebrew “Seraphim” (singular “Seraph”) often appear only in the vision of the prophet Isaiah, in fact they are mentioned elsewhere […]
Seraphim in the Bible Read More »
One of the more bizarre expressions of Christianity comes from the Early Medieval Carolingian world. It is a poem we call “The Heiland,” probably written in the courts of Louis the Pious or Louis the German in the 800s to an Old Saxon-speaking audience. The Heiland is an epic poem (much longer than _Beowulf_) telling
The Heiland, a Medieval Germanic Rendition of the Gospels Read More »
The Catholic Church had a tremendous influence in Medieval society. This did not mean that folks didn’t write about sex, however. These two figures from a 14th-century manuscript show a monk and a nun canoodling with each other. They weren’t supposed to be doing that, btw. The writings about sex undertaken by Constantinus Africanus (died
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My daughter Gabby and I got lucky enough to visit France this summer, and found this jewel of a Gothic cathedral — Saint-Etienne Cathedral of Bourges — to be stunning. Work started on it in the last years of the 12th century and mostly finished in 1230, making Saint-Etienne highly unusual in its architecture. The
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Notre-Dame in Thines, France, is a jewel of a Romanesque church that I will definitely incorporate in my Medieval class this coming fall. It sits high up the hillside of Thines. Cars can’t go into many of the town’s tiny streets, so we walked along a dirt trail for about a kilometer to see it.
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From 1309-1370, the central office of the papacy was not Rome, but the French city of Avignon. Petrarch bitingly referred to this situation as “the Babylonian captivity” of the papacy because he thought it was such a displacement. Although the Catholic Church was extremely powerful by this point of the Middle Ages, the King of
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Romanesque architecture (dating from about 1050 on) is my favorite style of them all. Romanesque buildings are rare, their interiors are shadowed and their stone heaviness is evocative and mysterious, and the sculptures are whimsical. The latter quality is clearly evident in a tiny church from the 13th century Ardeche village of Chambonas. This church,
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Miracle stories from the early Middle Ages include some accounts of saints who could successfully induce abortions. One such legend is from a seventh-century book of the life and miracles of the Irish St. Brigid of Kildare, who was said to have died around 525 CE. In the story, a woman had sex for pleasure
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What the heck. So this is an illustration of a pope (Innocent X, to be exact), who is having his testicles examined by a cardinal to make darn tootin’ certain that the newly-selected leader of Christendom is a man. Made in 1645, this print testifies to a long-lasting legend that all popes had to undergo
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The year was 1457, and the place the town of Sévigny in France. A five-year-old boy had been brutally killed, mauled to death, and the community sought justice. Turning to the legal system, a civil case was brought against the killer, and despite the horrific nature of the death of young Jehan Martin, court officials
This scene of a man-in-the-moon with thirteen stars might strike a vague familiarity with you. And perhaps if you were alive in the United States during the 1980s, it might evoke a sinister connotation. And if that’s the case, you were tangentially affected by the “Satanic Panic” of that decade. Dungeons and Dragons, various rock
This wizened figure looks like a saggy Santa Claus, but in fact was one of the most ambitious Popes in the history of the Catholic Church. And “ambitious” isn’t a good adjective for the religious leaders of Christendom. But this guy had an even more secular moniker: he was Julius II, the”warrior Pope”. He picked
This is one of the most fantastic pieces of pottery ever. Dating to about 1590, it depicts three women changing into geese, with the label “Winchester Geese” at the bottom of the platter. The shapes surrounding the geese might look like rounded diamonds, or alternatively, like vulvas. Give me a minute, and you’re probably going
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In the northern mountains of Spain in the region of Aragon lies the tiny Medieval village of Trasmoz. Once it held 10,000 people, but now there are fewer than 100: except for June, when a festival called “Feria de Brujeria” celebrates the fact that the town is known for its history of witches and being
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The face inside this cowl might look unsettling to us today — the light skin peers out from the dark clothes in a startling way, and those eyes hold a distant focus that might seem creepy. But in late 15th-century Italy, this man was an extremely popular religious leader that practically controlled Florence — the
Girolamo Savonarola Read More »
One evening in New York City in 1917, a woman in her early 30s was helping her mother make dinner when, as she leaned over her oven, she felt a sharp pain in her left breast and saw a three-dimensional crucifix emerging from her body, covered in blood. The woman was named Margaret Reilly, and
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The Chateau of Montségur might look Medieval, but it was actually built up on the destroyed ruins of the Medieval fortress where about 210 people belonging to the Christian Albigensian sect were burned as heretics in 1244. In the early 1200s, Pope Innocent III enacted an Inquisition — a legal investigation — to determine who
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Look carefully and you might find that one of these Commandments gives very different directions than the usual . . . . This is a photograph from the so-called “Wicked Bible” – published in 1631 in London – which exhorted readers to commit adultery in one of the most notorious typos in history. When King
“Wicked Bible” Excerpt Read More »
These are elements of the necklace that is making news headlines today: the “Harpole treasure” discovered back in April of 2022. On December 6, news was officially released about the burial dating from 630-670 CE that archaeologists from the Vistry Group unearthed in Northamptonshire. One of the most significant of its kind, it contained a
Cthulhu was orange in the Middle Ages, evidently. (Jk this is Hildegard of Bingen – a famous mystic – being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Totally different primordial mind-influencing force.)
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