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 »
This painting is breathtaking — especially when you consider that an artist painted the original in about 1535 — this is a copy from the first part of the 1600s. Entitled “Vädersolstavlan,” the Swedish name translates into “The Sun-Dog Painting” and may be the first artistic rendering of this celestial phenomenon. Sun-dogs happen in the
Sun-dogs, Astrology, and Apocalyptic Thought in the Italian Renaissance Read More »
There is a very long history of apocalyptic thinking in the history of Christianity, and one particularly strident episode came in the wake of the Protestant Reformation — specifically with regards to Martin Luther, who truly believed the End Times were imminent. Interpreted through Luther’s lens of European religious trends in the early 16th century,
Martin Luther and Apocalyptic Thought in the Italian Renaissance Read More »
Giants appear in many ancient mythologies, and the Bible is no different in this way. One specific origin story for Biblical giants comes from the book of Genesis, which explains how the nephilim came about (6:1-4): “When humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons
Giants and Nephalim in the Bible Read More »
Here’s the Devil from the movie _Spawn_ (1997), and he looks a lot like the demon Mavet (Canaanite Mot), who personified death in ancient Judaism. The role of demons in Jewish and Christian history changed during Biblical times. In the Ancient Mesopotamian world, the _daimons_ were originally not as evil as their eventual manifestations —
Demons in the Bible Read More »
Here is poet and painter William Blake’s “Angel of the Revelation”, illustrated between 1803-1805, and you might notice the giant, mostly naked (it was the Victoriano age) figure does not have wings. And this is because Biblical angels didn’t. (In the Abrahamic tradition, the winged Seraphim and Cherubim eventually were considered angels, but in the
Angels in the Bible Read More »
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
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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 »
You are looking at the cover of one of the very first science-fiction novels. Written by the astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1608 (but published posthumously), _Somnium_ (“the dream”) tells the story of a youth named Duracotcus who undertakes a journey to study with the astronomer Tycho Brahe. When Duracotus returns home, his mother explains to
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Finding a more arcane and mysterious text than the Voynich Manuscript would be difficult. Written in 1420, the script has thwarted the world’s best cryptogrographers – linguists have failed alongside computer A.I specialists to decode the 200-page book. Just yesterday a story broke that a British linguist has solved the code – he claims the
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The Medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” survived from a single manuscript which has three other poems, probably all by the same author. Scholars have long attempted to guess at who this writer might have been, but his written work certainly far surpassed the childlike illustrations in British Library Cotton Nero A x.
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Between 1582 to 1589, the British occultists John Dee and Edward Kelly claimed to have received multiple messages from angels. Writing these transmissions up, they formed the basis of the Enochian magical system, which was re-discovered and popularized over 300 years later by Alistair Crowley, a controversial (and free-love promoting) spiritualist. Pictured here is a
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 »
The Goddess Diana above a group of women all reading. From “The Book of the Queen,” by Christine de Pizan, one of the most famous women authors of the Middle Ages, about 1410. Source: Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4431
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Olifants were Medieval horns carved out of elephants’ tusks. Their artistry borrows from cultures across the Mediterranean east, and they were used for special ritual occasions. In literature, the rash hero Roland ends up causing his entire army’s slaughter because he refuses to call for help on his olifant. The horn pictured here is from
This is John Tenniel’s famous 1871 illustration of the poem “Jabberwocky,” the most famous nonsense poem in the English language. Linguists have long remarked upon the genius of the way Lewis Carroll’s poem explores questions about language and meaning. But Tenniel’s illustration better shows the new Victorian awareness of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution and
John Tenniel’s Illustration of the Poem “Jabberwocky” Read More »
“The Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came,” an 1859 painting by Thomas Mortan, illustrates a famous scene from an old Scottish fairy-tale, in which appears one of my favorite words: widdershins. “Widdershins” means to travel counter-clockwise, or in the northern hemisphere, in the path opposite the sun. It referred to a leftward-proceeding direction, and
“The Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came” Painting Read More »
This illustration from a French _Book of Hours_ dating c. 1475 depicts a bleeding Eucharist wafer that medieval people considered miraculous. It even has a name: “the Sacred Bleeding Host of Dijon.” Medieval people were spellbound by miraculous bleeding communion wafers such as this one, but there was an ugly underside to this devotion: it
French Book of Hours Illustration Read More »
The Arthrashastra, an Ancient Indian text written in Sanskrit. Dating from as early as the 2nd century BCE, it is the first diplomatic text in India’s history. It has advice on things like taxation, governance, and warfare, and tells the reader that good governance is necessary to prevent society from following the “law of the
Anglo-saxon manuscripts, like the 8th century Vespasian Psalter pictured here, frequently used the color yellow. It was reminiscent of gold, but much less expensive than gold leaf. And gold was a favorite of these Early Medieval people. Anglo-Saxon writers liked to talk about the beauty of the way gold flickered and glimmered in the firelight.
The Verspasian Psalter Read More »
