This is kind of embarassing, but it seems there was a problem at the shipping facility I use to send out my weekly marginalia posts. The shift manager swears he put them on the truck, but yesterday we found them sitting under a conveyor belt all pretty as you please. Needless to say, that manager has been let go, and policies are being implemented to ensure that such delays do not reoccur. So, with my deepest apologies, please find enclosed the overdue marginalia posts for this year:

January 17th — In Soviet Russia, Horn Blows You
January 24th — You’re so Vain, You’ll Probably Think This Pig is About You as Well
January 31st — Gravity (in the Margins) is a Harsh Mistress

How is it that I’ve written so often about gravity on the margins of gothic manuscript pages, and yet I’ve never referenced my favorite Tick quote in the title of a post until now?

This week’s marginalia comes from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the Psalter of Margaret the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainault ((Daughter of the lady that Orlando bloom flirts with in that movie.)), and you need to see the full-page context to get the joke:

[continue reading…]

How can I ever hope to top the vain pig wearing a fashionable hat of weeks past? Perhaps with a pretty princess pig from British Library MS Harley 4379. Not impressed yet? What if I told you the pretty princess pig was playing a harp while stilt-walking?

If this blog were a late eighties movie, “Top That” would’ve been playing in the background of this post the whole time.” And this sentence would be the part where I cross my arms and cock my head to the side and am all “I didn’t think so, sucka.” Because you can’t top that.

The schedule for this year’s Grand Medieval Hootenanny is out.  I get the feeling my talk will, once more, be poorly attended.

“Of Weasels, Werewolves, and Women”?  There’s no competing with that.

Also, please, conference organizers, I beg you. Stop using the phrase “Twenty-First Century Medievalisms”.  We’re only ten years into the century.  It just seems a touch presumptuous.

A little Monday morning wisdom from the margins of British Library MS Royal 14 E III:

Some days, you blow the horn.

Some days, you get blown. ((By a rooster.  And you’re naked.  And did I mention there’s a rabbit in your horn?  †
† The longer I type, the less proverby it becomes.  Best to quit while I’m way behind.))

—

Oh, and since this image comes courtesy of the British Library, it seems like a good idea to mention that the Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Department now has their own blog. ((Unless, for some reason, you think they wouldn’t want to be associated with a a blog that regularly intermittently posts images of medieval dangly bits. ††
††And if you do think that, I might remind you that they are the ones who digitized said danglies. I just re-post them and snigger.))

I never thought I’d see the day that “blood libel” was trending at Twitter, but here we are. And even though the Wikipedia page for “blood libel” is currently embroiled in a mini edit war over whether to include this most recent popular reference to it under the “Contemporary” trivia section and a simultaneous rush to edit in as many instances of non-Jewish blood libel as possible ((I count 103 edits over the last six hours.)) , guides to the history of blood libel are popping up all over the web even as I type, so I’m sure you all have adequate tools for determining just how outraged you ought to be over the whole thing without my input. This is all for the best, really, since for the most part I try to keep this blog ambivalently apolitical. ((Though I can note that it is probably advisable to avoid the casual usage of inflammatory language when one is making a speech responding to accusations that one uses inflammatory language too casually.))

My only worry is that in all this hubbub, the indexical value of “blood libel” is being overlooked.  The reason why we need a special phrase like “blood libel” to denote lies told about what Jews do with the blood of baby Christians is the sheer number of libels which Jews have had to contend over the years. [continue reading…]

For the second day in a row, I find a two-inch blanket of ice prevents me from getting the car out of the driveway, ((Fun fact: Atlanta is the 33rd largest city in America and spread out over one of the largest metro areas, but† has only 11 snow plows.
† Not that I think they should buy more to cope with the once-a-decade significant snowfall we get, just trying to head off the “oh, poor Southerners can’t deal with a little snow” that’s sure to come my way.)) and it looks like it’ll be that way for at least another few days yet, so I figure with all this enforced downtime I really ought to get on with my weekly marginal image post.

This week’s image is found in an early sixteenth-century Flemish Book of Hours ((British Library MS Egerton 1147)), and it pretty well encapsulates the main reason we waited until after we’d moved to the South to get a dog:

[continue reading…]

Your first dose of marginal goodness in this new year is found From the always inscrutable Smithfield Decretals (British Library MS Royal 10 IV) ((Home to such treasures as the justice-lovin’ hares, the sneak-attack bears, and a dozen other oddities that I’ll dole out over the coming year.)) :

Why must you war, centaur-men? Do you not see how alike you are? Yes, one of you chooses to fight with a fish, the other some sort of bent cauldron thing. Yes, one of you has a man’s face for an ass–actually, the less we focus on the ass the better.

Where was I? Oh yes. Think of how much you have in common! Apart from the whole two-legged front-heavy body plans you’ve got going on there. You both like red, don’t you? And robes that drape in the front and kind of look like forelegs but aren’t. That’s got to count for something!

(In other words, I have absolutely no clue what’s supposed to be going on here, but a man wielding a fish is neat enough to justify the post on its own. Feel free to try to make sense of it yourselves.)

Happy New Year, my loyal readers. If you’re sitting home with nothing to do today or perhaps huddled before the computer nursing a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in penance for last night’s frivolity, you might take the opportunity to look back on the top 5 most popular Got Medieval Posts of 2010. And they were:

#5 – Completely Serious: Let’s Drop the GRE – I was actually a bit surprised to see this sitting so high in the site-meter rankings. But it makes sense, as it’s by far the most be-spammed post, and the reason I had to start moderating comments back at Blogspot. So there’s that.

#4- Medieval Copy Protection – Yes, yes, I know–believe me, I know!–the title’s a bit misleading, but folks still seemed generally interested to learn that medieval books came booby-trapped with horrible curses that could imperil your immortal soul. If you prefer, you can read it over at Gizmodo, too.

#3 – What’s All this About Super-Sized Last Suppers? – This little bit of absurd “study” debunking was popular enough that the author of said debunked “study” even showed up to comment. Beats me as to why.

#2 – Why are Books so Big? – The hidden connection between book sizes and livestock continues to get bounced around the Internet. (My favorite recent re-headline: Baa, Baa, Booksheep). Since I didn’t before, I probably ought to thank Bob Babcock, my Latin Paleography instructor and the former medieval manuscripts curator at the Beinecke for turning me on to this factoid.

#1- Professor Newt’s Distorted History Lesson – Really, it was no contest for the most popular post of the year. This Cordoba mosque thing was the most popular post on the site ever, thanks to nudges from Andrew Sullivan and the Huffington Post. And four months later I’m still getting hate mail, though thankfully it seems to have dropped off sharply over the last few weeks.

Funny, three of the top four posts all came from August. A helluva month, I guess, and I know content’s been a bit spotty since then, but bear with me just a touch longer. Oh, the plans I have for 2011!