An overhauled version of my " #Premonstratensian Order in the Middle Ages" bibliography is now live! It's easier to search (by tag, source type, date and language) and much, much faster. Please let me know if you find it useful, or if you find any glitches.
Huge thanks to my Geneseo colleague David Warden for his tech wizardry!
https://www.geneseo.edu/researchweb/kerkoapp/seale-premontre/bibliography/
Today I'm revisiting my notes on the #Premonstratensian abbey of St-Yved de Braine, and marvelling again at how much of its beautiful #medieval stained glass survives, scattered throughout different collections. The abbey church was partly demolished post-Revolution and exists now in this truncated form.
"Archaeologists in the square outside the Archbasilica of St John Lateran in the city centre unearthed a complex architectural structure including walls believed to have protected the Patriarchio, a monumental basilica envisaged by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century."
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2024/0717/1460449-rome-papal-excavation/
It seems a little bit on the nose that shortly before one of the most consequential French elections in years, a priest discovers that someone has stolen a mythical #medieval sword from where it's embedded in a cliff—but then again, the 2020s aren't known for their subtlety.
(N.B.: This is as much Roland's sword as my butter knife is Excalibur.)
This Middle Dutch manuscript (ca. 1400) shows how parchment warps and shrinks when exposed to intense heat—in this case, during a WWII bombing raid. No longer readable as a book, it's still a powerful historical source.
Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, 8° Ms. theol. 15.
https://orka.bibliothek.uni-kassel.de/viewer/image/1547548347159/
Phew, I think I have all the slides sorted for @hgwacha's and my paper for Leeds #IMC2024! We won't be there in person but we will be contributing virtually to #s1347 and #s1447: all cartularies, all the time.
"The shrine contained a heavily fragmented ivory "box" (pyx) richly decorated with Christian motifs—a reliquary that is normally taken away as the "holiest" part when a church is abandoned. [...This one] was left behind. It is the first such pyx to be found in an archaeological context in Austria."
"[W]e have provided an accurate and valuable approximation of the original sounds of the bells, offering a auditory connection to the past, allowing visitors to experience a small part of #medieval Ireland as it was heard centuries ago."
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0617/1454723-medieval-handbells-soundscape/
I've been meaning to read L.P. Hartley's "The Go-Between" for a while, intrigued by its well-known opening line ("The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there"). I knew going in it was set in England, ca. 1900. I didn't know that the thing they did so differently was... porridge?
What a senseless act, and an irreparable loss to Dublin's #medieval heritage.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0611/1454267-st-michans-church/
Next month, Netflix is releasing an eight-part adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron. Much as it pains me to say about something starring Saoirse-Monica Jackson, I can't say I'm super enthused about it. Given the trailer's tone & the blurb ("In 1348, as the Black Death ravages Florence, a number of nobles and their servants retreat to the countryside Villa Santa. As they try to wait out the plague in the hills of Tuscany with wine and sex, the group eventually must fight for their survival"), I'm not optimistic that it's going to be much more than 8 episodes of jokes about how everyone in the Middle Ages was stupid, amirite.
This #medieval manuscript of al-Istakhri's "Book of Roads and Kingdoms" (Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik) shows the Mediterranean and western Asia in such a diagrammatic manner that it's hard for me to connect the maps to their real-world places—but I find those blue seas and lakes so enticing regardless!
Now Leiden University Libraries, MS Or. 3101
I've long been fascinated by the "medieval" subgenre of American McMansions. This house is awful, and yet not even one of the worst examples I've seen—no suits of armour, for instance. I'd read the hell out of a study of medievalism and contemporary U.S. domestic architecture. What motivates this?
https://mcmansionhell.com/post/752045460037959680/texas-gothic-revival
Is it me, or do #medieval liturgical sandals look like they'd be very comfy to loaf around in?
Rarely worn today, before Vatican II such shoes were traditionally worn by prelates when celebrating Mass. Their colour and decoration depended on the prelate's rank and the time of the liturgical year.
The frontispieces for this 2-volume, late 15th-century edition of Aristotle's works are so captivating. It's a printed book but the textblock is framed in a hand-painted trompe l'oeil setting of conversing philosophers and landscapes full of frolicking satyrs and putti.
Now Morgan Library, PML 21194-95
As someone whose research focuses a lot on the Premonstratensian Order, I was amused while reading a history book that's not about them at all to find them named as the gold standard in difficult-to-pronounce medieval names. (Is it a sign that I'm in too deep that I don't think it's *that* tough?)
This Book of Hours was made ca. 1460 in northeastern France for a woman called Colette, who is shown on one page kneeling before Virgin and Child. Inscription evidence indicates that in the 15th/16th centuries, ownership of the prayerbook passed between the women of one family.
Now Walters Art Museum, W.269.76R.
