By Giulio Menna Giulio is an intern on the ‘Turning Over a New Leaf’ project, and a recent graduate of the Book and Digital Media Studies MA program at the University of Leiden. It has been a year now since I first fell in love with medieval manuscripts after attending Erik Kwakkel and Jenny Weston’s manuscript course at Leiden […]
“Give me a drink!”: Scribal Colophons in Medieval Manuscripts
I’m taking a non-SCA class. One assignment was to write a haiku. I thought “great – Haiku are probably period”. Well I had a few things to learn. You may already know they’re a three-line poem with lines having five, seven, and five syllables each, in that order. Now haiku didn’t begin that way. They…
In this holiday season, I am trying to bring my books to people’s attention, hoping for interest that leads to being read.I wrote the novel, I Have Seen Marvels, a Journey to Paraguay 1630, because, on a journey to northern Argentina in 1994, I saw that region for the first time and learned a bit……
I’ve been saying for a while that the Burgundians used propaganda and public relations much more effectively than their opponents. In this episode I’ll explore how they did that and what it meant. For more on Burgundian Propaganda check out the work of Dr. Emily J. Hutchison. Time Period Covered: 1401-1419 Left: This badge from the…
In the Trotula, one of the recipes given was for a “cerotum” that could be applied to the face1. The base of this was a mixture of oil and wax that would harden into a balm-like consistency. Without its colorant or herbal ingredients, this cerotum would be very similar to a modern-day lip balm. This…
Scholars, translators, transcribers and writers have always needed to have multiple books and other resources within easy reach. Illustrated manuscripts give us a good look at how medieval scribes stored and arranged their often large and hefty books. In the image above, Saint Jerome, identified by the halo, red galero and the lion with a…
Black people have been part of British society at least since the Tudor era. I could as easily say, “since the Roman era,” but we’re trying to keep this short so let’s skip over that. Who’s the we in that last paragraph? That’d be me. I’m trying to make you feel included. Don’t you just…
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