The Ancient Roman deity Janus appears as a two-headed God. With one face looking backwards in time and the other forward, he was appropriately worshipped at the start of the New Year. Janus was invoked for good luck in all new undertakings, and today many of us continue a long tradition when we set out […]
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I hope you’re not too hungry as you read this, because it’s time to talk about cannibalism. Dear readers, although we might recoil now at the thought of consuming human flesh, it turns out that this practice is extremely ancient: cases among Homo Neanderthalis, another early human species called Homo Antecessor, and Homo Sapiens have
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This is Michaelangelo’s portrait of the Biblical prophet Moses, designed for the tomb of the powerful and controlling patron of the great artist, Pope Julius II. Completed in 1545, Michelangelo’s sculpture immediately causes viewers pause: Moses has horns protruding from his head. The bestial qualities of a horned animal long resonated among European Christians as
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Two years ago, researchers published findings concerning DNA samples taken from the Early Medieval York Gospels. Manuscripts from this era are extremely rare: it was written around 990 and lavishly illustrated. By taking a simple eraser, scholars used a technique called “eZooMS,” which allowed them to sample DNA from the pages without damaging them. A
Medieval York Gospels and Science Read More »
Parents of kids besotted by the Disney channel might roll their eyes at how successfully the movies have mesmerized their children. But the practice of telling fanciful stories featuring youths who must navigate magic and non-human creatures is quite old. The genre owes its name, _Les Contes des Fees_, “Fairy Tales” to one Madame d’Aulnoy,
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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
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These shapely flowers come from one of the most peculiar texts from the late 19th-century Western world. _Geometrical Psychology, or the Science of Representation_, by Louisa S. Cook, smashes together mathematics, evolution/eugenics, Vedanta Hinduism, and Spiritualism. Shakespeare is also in there too, for good measure. Cook’s aim was as ambitious as physicists today who are
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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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Look closely, and you’ll see if you squint . . . Not the holy hand grenade, but the Holy Lance! You know — the artifact that in the Christian Gospel of John was used by a Roman soldier to pierce the side of Jesus after he had died on the cross? (John 19:34). A quick
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In the Middle Ages, the lens of Christianity permeated the world view to a degree unimaginable today. We can see this with the descriptions and illustrations of animals like the lion, whom many authors considered king of the beasts. And, since they thought that God/Christ ruled over the universe, lions were compared symbolically to the
“Lilith” is a sculpture I would pay money to take a pilgrimage to see. Created by artist Kiki Smith in 1994 out of bronze and glass, the statue of Lilith crouches, tense and fierce. Her eyes stare out with a contact that seems physical.The stories of the demon Lilith emerged over hundreds of years, but
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The imposing walls of the Masyaf castle in Syria speak to the formidable command of its Medieval occupants. This was one of the fortresses run by the Nizari Ismaili sect of Muslims — better known as the Assassins.Run by a charismatic leader sometimes called “The Old Man of the Mountain” (also Hasan-e Sabbah), the Assassins
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Sometimes, history is so weird I don’t even know where to begin. Strap in, people, because today’s post is about ideas Medieval people had about menstruation.The two illuminated manuscript illustrations both show graphic depictions of the wounds of Christ. And if you’re thinking that those pictures don’t immediately conjure up the side of Jesus, lanced
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A Roman (1st or 2nd c CE) and 12th-century examples of foliage faces that became known as “the Green Man.” For centuries, these carvings existed, adorning buildings, as a man’s face surrounded by leaves, or spewing greenery, or having hair that morphed into plants. But it wasn’t until folklorist Lady Raglan wrote an article that
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Readers of this post might remember a recent article illustrating the way menstrual blood and images of vaginas paralleled the wound in Christ’s side in Medieval culture. (I promise I am not making this up.) A few posts later, I showed that before Europe’s scientific revolution, anatomists thought that breast milk was menstrual blood that
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No, you are not looking at a university student’s blue book . . . But you are seeing a very famous logical proof. This is an image of an early copy of the Medieval philosopher Anselm of Canterbury’s (1033-1109) _Proslogion_, and it used logic to try to prove something unimaginably perfect: the existence of God.His
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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.
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Thinking ahead to Halloween 2020, I offer you you, dear reader, a suggestion, and one which is unlikely to be duplicated by your neighbors. Folks in Western Europe in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern periods would have been much likelier to identify this creature, because it was a type of monster that many believed
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This is an image of a lesser-known hero of the Early Modern period, the Dutch physician Johann Weyer (1515-1588). In an age of witch-hunts, when many women accused of consorting with the devil were tortured into confessing imaginary crimes, tried in law courts, and executed by burning, Weyer outspokenly wrote that such practices were inhumane,
Johann Weyer and Inhumane Treatment During Witch-Hunts Read More »
In 1353, the Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio completed one of the most important works of fiction in history, _The Decameron_. The book tells the story of ten young aristocrats – seven women and three men – who spend ten days together, passing the time by taking turns telling different stories. The occasion for their gathering
“The Decameron” and Escaping the Bubonic Plague Read More »
