Episode 62: Tapestries Not by Carole King

Summary

The other day, I asked a friend, “Hey, what do normal people put on their walls?” The answer…is tapestries. Cold, stony castle? Tapestries. Small, plain cathedral? Tapestries. A house of some sort? Probably also tapestries. In this episode, Em and Dr. Jesse talk over how tapestries are made, famous tapestries from around the world, and the use of color in Medieval society. Join us!

Notes

1/ For more on textiles, see episode 33 (on women artisans) and episode 54 note 15 (on the Bayeux Tapestry).

2/ Rather than getting caught up on horizontal vs vertical terminology, just keep in mind that the warp is what goes on the loom and the weft is the part you weave with.

3/ Tang Dynasty (618–907CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty

Zhu Kerou (fl.12th century). See her famous “Butterfly and Camellia” silk tapestry here: https://thenewhistoria.org/schema/zhu-kerou/

4/ Uyghurs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs

5/ The medieval Andes! Huari tapestry images from a museum exhibition.
Huari / Wari: fl. 500/600–1000 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wari_culture

6/ Greek painting of sculptures is called polychromy.
https://youtu.be/86PD8o6xe_4
The MET in NYC has recently decided to get on board with this and now has an exhibit about polychromy (which they’re touting like it’s a new discovery 🙄).

7/ Check out the Bayeux Tapestry close up! https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry

8/ The Barnes Museum in Philadelphia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Foundation (discusses the legal challenges and controversy of the museum’s move)

9/ The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Musée de Cluny (see episode 29, note 24 and episode 30, note 21).

10/ The hunting of the unicorn tapestries at The Cloisters in NYC.

11/ Raphael (1483–1520): not just a ninja turtle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael

12/ Pieter van Aelst (c.1495–c.1560). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_van_Aelst_III

13/ Mathilda episodes: episode 58 (Long Live the Queen)

14/ Episodes on England before 1066: episodes 53 (England Before the Norman Invasion) and 54 (More England, More Normans).

15/ The Bayeux Tapestry links:
https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry

16/ Beowulf episode here: episode 56

17/ Em’s newsletter.

Episode 61: Snowpeople

Summary

It’s wintertime in the Northern hemisphere! Snow is, of course, eternal, but did you ever wonder how far back the tradition of making snowpeople goes? Jesse did. Join us as we trace the history of snowpeople in Europe/the UK as far back as we can.

Notes

1/ Marginal illustration in a Book of Hours from c1380 (Ms KA36, fol. 78 verso, Brussels) now in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Actual picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Koninklijke_Bibliotheek_Book_of_Hours_snowman_illustration.jpg

2/ For more on the Judenhut or Judenhutte see episode 45, note 10, episode 10, notes 31 and 39; episode 25, note 14; and episode 41, note 7. Also see Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography, Metropolitan, 2014. Link.

3/ Mary Dillwyn is incredibly important to early photography. Here is her awesome c1853 snowman photo. Also here (museum collection).

4/ Tournai 1422–23 snow figures! See the articles in note 5 for more.

5/ Arras 1434–35: the Danse Macabre Snowmen

See Sophie Oosterwijk‘s ‘The snows of yesteryear’: the medieval Danse Macabre snowmen of Arras (Atrecht) (First published in French as ‘Les bonhommes de neige d’Arras (Atrecht)’, Bulletin de liaison de l’association Danses macabres d’Europe, 46 (2013), 4–6, 2013.)

6/ The Miracle of 1511! Wikipedia article here. Atlas Obscura article here.

See Herman Pleij, “Urban Elites in Search of a Culture: The Brussels Snow Festival of 1511” in Vol. 21, No. 3, New Historicisms, New Histories, and Others (Spring, 1990), pp. 629–647.

7/ Brussels poet Jan Smeken wrote a ballad about the snowmen. See the articles in note 6 for more!

8/ Fun fact: one time I (Em) walked through the red light district in Brussels with my mother.

9/ Manneken Pis. A very famous statue!

Jeanneke Pis. A less famous statue.

10/ “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” is from “Ballade des dames du temps jadis” by François Villon (c.1431–after 1463)

“Ou sont les Neigedens d’antan?” is also a joke from <i>Catch-22</i>, which has a character named “Snowden.”

11/ Switzerland’s exploding snowman

Episode 60: The Green Knight

Synopsis

Once upon a time there was a guy named Gawain, and someone made a movie about him! And he got to be played by Dev Patel, which is pretty great when you get down to it. And then we covered it! In which Em reveals that she watches way too much historical costuming YouTube, Jesse gives a coherent literary critique, and then we talk about cinematography and death. Oh, there’s a bunch about the actual Arthurian legends, too. And if you listen to the end, you can hear a short clip of Em singing. (Is that an inducement? Hmm.)

Notes

1/ To be fair, a lot of the podcasts I’ve listened to are about horror movies, so I’m never going to actually watch them. Shout out to Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9.

2/ The Green Knight a 2021 film written (adapted?) and directed by David Lowery based on the late-14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The film stars Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, and more. It was released theatrically by A24.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Knight_(film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9243804/

3/ Geoffrey of Monmouth (flourishes in the first half of the 12th century) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_of_Monmouth

A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth edited by Joshua Byron Smith and Georgia Henley https://brill.com/display/title/39588 (Published by Brill, so get it via ILL from your local library.)

4/ Prophecies of Merlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetiae_Merlini

5/ The “later work” Em mentions is the Prose Merlin.

The Middle English Prose Merlin was written in the mid-15th-century, just before Malory wrote his super famous version, making the Prose Merlin the earliest (extant) prose Arthur story. It’s largely based on French sources, including the Old French Vulgate Cycle (which is written in prose) and Robert de Boron’s Old French poem Merlin (of which only fragments remain). https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/conlee-prose-merlin-introduction

Robert de Boron flourished in the large-12th century and early 13th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_de_Boron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(Robert_de_Boron_poem)

The Old French prose source is from the early 13th century and is known as the Vulgate Cycle (or the “The Pseudo-Map Cycle” and the “Lancelot-Grail Cycle”). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot-Grail

6/ The Lady of the Lake is a fascinating character. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_the_Lake

7/ Marie de France (flourished 1160 to 1215). See episode 19 note 13 and episode 29 note 26.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_de_France

8/ Chrétien de Troyes (flourished second half of 12th century)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrétien_de_Troyes

9/ Thomas Malory (c1400–c1470) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malory
Le Morte d’Arthur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Morte_d%27Arthur was completed c1470 and **published** by William Caxton in 1485! Caxton’s published version was the earliest extant version of Malory’s work until 1934, when a manuscript was discovered at Winchester College. That manuscript is now in the British Library and is the earliest (and only) manuscript of Malory’s work. It’s known as BL Add MS 59678 or the WInchester Manuscript. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-malorys-le-morte-darthur

10/ It sounds like we’re making this stuff about Cotton up, but it is true.
We also talked about Cotton in episode 39 note 8 and episode 56 note 2. Here is more info on the Cotton collection: https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/cotton-manuscripts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_library

11/ Gawain characters: This got confusing! Jesse talks about Morgause (Queen of Orkney), and then switches to Morgan (and then back to Morgause). Basically, both women have always been ambiguous, but Morgause is maybe seen worse in the modern era than she was in the Middle Ages!
* Morgan le Fay: sister of Morgause and others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_le_Fay
* Gawain: our hero(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawain
* Mordred: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordred
* Morgause: Queen of Orkney (wife of King Lot), mother of Gawain and Mordred https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgause

Here’s the poem in translation! https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/weston-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight

Here’s the original: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/Gawain?rgn=main;view=fulltext (divided into Passus I, II, III, IV)

12/ Christian virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance (the cardinal virtues), and faith, hope, and charity (theological virtues).

13/ In retrospect, I think some of these characters have names in the credits, although not mostly mentioned in the movie.

14/ St. Winifred 7th century Welsh martyr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Winifred

15/ Em’s newsletter can be found by clicking here. The song in the background is George Harrison’s “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” His version is better, go here and listen to it.

Episode 59: The Real MedEELval Times

Synopsis

Famous eels:
1/ “Those are the shrieking eels. You don’t believe me? Just wait. They always grow louder when they’re about to feed on human flesh.” (Name that movie.)
2/ Mark Oliver Everett
3/ Medieval eel rents!

The medieval church, famously, had a lot of restrictions on what people could eat and when—during Lent, on Fridays, and other fast days as well. Join Em and Jesse as they discuss some of the ways people got around these laws, including…eels! Medieval people LOVED eels. You could pay your rent in them. You could eat them. You could…well, that might be a list of all the things you could do with eels, but they were certainly beloved. So let’s talk about this little-known but apparently delicious delicacy.

Notes

1/ For reference, the referenced 3-year-old is now 5. We are a little behind.

2/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-land.html

Side note: I don’t think anyone knows how eels have sex.

3/ https://www.facebook.com/sheddaquarium

4/ Moray eels: actually 200 species in 15 genera. The one I describe is the green eel, which grows up to 8.2 feet in length.

5/ Episodes that involve heretics: 8 (hell and damnation), 9 (heretics and saints), 48 (Meet the Cathars), 49 (Where’s Waldensians?). Arguably also 47 (Gnosticism).

6/ https://twitter.com/greenleejw

He got written up in Time, too: https://time.com/5886487/eels-history-conservation/

Link to Eel Rent Website (with map): https://historiacartarum.org/eel-rents-project/english-eel-rents-10th-17th-centuries/
Map alone: https://cornell.carto.com/u/jwgreenlee/builder/31e4bb99-f02b-431a-a4e2-aa83a043e53a/embed

7/ The smell of dried squid, and—especially—the smell of nuoc mam being made are things I will never forget.

To be fair, they weren’t selling squid by the stick—they just had them attached to sticks to bike them around.

8/ Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys. I heard this on QI and therefore it is true, forever and ever amen.

9/ Surprise! Our episode on Mathildas came out two weeks ago—episode 58! And yet we apparently taped this two years ago. What planning!

10/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose I guess it’s a thing.

11/ Eel ships 2019: https://www.hermitagemoorings.com/2020/02/20/eel-barge-korneliske-ykes-ii-visit-2019/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV-_rLOvLI8

The only good reason to have water inside your ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvwTv1t_Mss

12/ “They are Brexiting right now.” Jesse, how many PMs have they been through since we recorded this? At least three, not including May. [And a head of lettuce! I think I said this when Boris Johnson was having so much trouble “finishing” Brexit.–JN]

13/ Here is the Surprised Eel Historian’s Twitter thread on the maps: https://twitter.com/greenleejw/status/1421144699897790471

The mapmakers:
Pieter van den Keere (1571–c. 1646) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_van_den_Keere
John Norden (c.1547–1625) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Norden
Norden’s map of London (1593): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Norden#/media/File:London_-_John_Norden’s_map_of_1593.jpg
The Visscher Panorama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visscher_panorama created by Claes Visscher (1586–1652) c1600 and first published in 1618 in Amsterdam.

Pieter van den Keere engraved John Norden’s map of London (1593). Visscher was Dutch, and it’s possible he never visited London. His map might be based on others, including Norden’s, since Norden’s engraver (van den Keere) was Visscher’s publisher’s brother-in-law. Repeat: Pieter van den Keere was Visscher’s publisher’s brother-in-law. Interestingly the publisher had been to London (it could potentially be his work?). The publisher is Jodocus Hondius (1563–1612).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodocus_Hondius

14/ Turnips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la-L4hFWVxU
And yet more turnips (poor video quality, sorry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD2iYSKHHzo

Episode 58: Long Live the Queen

Summary

A lot of stuff about Richards II and III for a podcast that’s supposed to be about queens. Also Mathildas, Boudica, and why Black Panther is more historically accurate than Wonder Woman.

Notes

1/ Richard III’s body was eventually found under a car park. I swear we talked about this at some point.

“Was ever woman in this humor woo’d?” Richard III, act I, scene 2

Okay, in reality my husband usually plays one of the murderers, but explaining the other characters is a lot of work so I changed the story. Don’t tell him, he doesn’t listen to the podcast so he’ll never know.

2/ Stichomythia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichomythia

3/ Richard II has the speech that goes,

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke’s,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings…

If you love language, go read it. [Love, love, love.–JN]

4/ We’ve talked about The King’s Horseman before… (See episode 20, note 9.)

The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard is about poet/classicist AE Housman and Latin translations. Super funny and brilliant, as one would expect from Stoppard.

5/ I think we quoted the Tony Kushner speech when we last discussed the Bayeux Tapestry. However I don’t know if that episode is live yet? These ones jumped the queue. (For more on the Bayeux Tapestry, see episode 54 note 15.)

He says there’s a Prior Walter stitched into the Bayeux tapestry.
………………………………
The Bayeux tapestry. Embroidered by La Reine Mathilde.
………………………………
Mathilde stitched while William the Conqueror was off to war. She was capable of . . . more than loyalty. Devotion.
She waited for him, she stitched for years. And if he had come back broken and defeated from war, she would have loved him even more. And if he had returned mutilated, ugly, full of infection and horror, she would still have loved him; fed by pity, by a sharing of pain, she would love him even more, and even more, and she would never, never have prayed to God, please let him die if he can’t return to me whole and healthy and able to live a normal life . . . If he had died, she would have buried her heart with him.

–Louis in Angels in America Pt 1: Millennium Approaches Act 2, scene 3

6/ English rulers before William I: See episodes 53 (England Before the Norman Invasion) and 54 (More England, More Normans).

7/ Henry V has a lot of speeches about France.

Example:

Now are we well resolved; and, by God’s help,
And yours, the noble sinews of our power,
France being ours, we’ll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces: or there we’ll sit,
Ruling in large and ample empery
O’er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,
Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,
Tombless, with no remembrance over them:
Either our history shall with full mouth
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipp’d with a waxen epitaph.

8/ Henry/Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Henry/Heinrich literally means “ruler of the house,” so there are a lot of kings with that name. There was also a Henry/Henri V of France, but he only ruled for about five days when he was ten, and then spent the rest of his life trying to get back on the throne. This was during that awkward period in France that lasted from about 1815 to 1870ish when there were a couple of revolutions, different constitutions, Napoleons on and off the throne, kings coming and going…

9/ All of this is very confusing, but Stephen’s wife Matilda was also a descendent of the house of Wessex, so even if his line had remained on the throne the English monarchy would still have been descendents of the house of Wessex.

10/ St Pancras Old Church https://stpancrasoldchurch.posp.co.uk/ Nowadays they call themselves Anglo–Catholic. The church building is one of the oldest in London (maybe in England?), and there are not entirely implausible claims that there was worship on the site going back to the 300s. The churchyard is also mentioned in Dickens (in The Tale of Two Cities) as a place to go body snatching (or “fishing”). More recently, in 1968, the Beatles were photographed there.

The Hardy Tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy#/media/File:2780theHardyTreeOldStPancrasChurchyard.jpg

11/ Boudica / Boadicea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

12/ Tacitus (c. 56–120CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus
On Boudica: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/warwickclassicsnetwork/romancoventry/resources/boudica/sources/tacitus/

13/ Cassius Dio (c.155–c.235) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Dio
On Boudica: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/warwickclassicsnetwork/romancoventry/resources/boudica/sources/cassiusdio/

14/ Torc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torc

15/ Jesse: I should clarify that the problem with the movie’s ahistorical nature is the fact that the Dahomey were major participants in the slave trade. (There were several African nations who were major participants in the slave trade–i.e., they were enslavers who captured and sold people from other tribes to European slavers.) The arguments about The Woman King focus on the fact that the movie glorifies the Dahomey women warriors without acknowledging their complicity in the slave trade. Although Western movies unfortunately gloss over such complexities all the time, the criticism argues that a movie created by an African American team (led and fronted by an amazing African American woman, Viola Davis) has a greater responsibility not to ignore the complexities of history. I hadn’t seen the movie or read the criticism yet when we discussed it on the podcast!

Episode 57: Dancing Queens (pt 1)

Synopsis

As a memorial to Elizabeth II, Em and Jesse discuss famous queens throughout history and mostly in the UK, including drag queens, the borough of Queens, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, Elizabeth I,  Mary II, Anne, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. Also Sophie of Hanover, Wills and Kate, Prince Harry and Meghan, and I think Charlie III a little bit.

Annotations

1/ In retrospect, I don’t know why I referred to royal family-type queens as “regular queens.” There’s way more drag queens in the world. They’re the norm, royal family-type queens are the exception.

Also just to be clear, I love drag but I hate false eyelashes. They look like you are wearing spiders on your face. I still cannot believe they are popular.

Famous residents of Queens: Peter Parker.

2/ Safe to say that Jesse is bearish on the whole commonwealth thing. [Lol! But yes.–Jesse]

3/ Since you might have gathered we were a little baffled by the different types of Crown properties, here is an excellent video explaining the different categories.

4/ Barbados transitioned to a republic in November of 2021. [Yay!–Jesse]

5/ Elizabeth II with James Bond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AS-dCdYZbo

And a fairly adorable interview with Daniel Craig where he talks about meeting her and the corgis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGs9GlVZ-s4 [Jesse is definitely very bullish on Daniel Craig.]

6/ Actual speech of Elizabeth I:

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

See the original document here.

[STANDING APPLAUSE FOR QE1!!!!]

7/ Boudicca (Boadicea) and Margaret will be in the next episode.

8/ If you’re curious about the entire post-1066 royal family, check out this video. (Although CGP Grey makes some assertions that Jesse refutes in this episode and the next.)

9/ About carrots.

10/ co-captains gif here.

11/ Anne had seventeen pregnancies and five live births; none of her children lived to adulthood.

12/ Sophie of Hanover was super cool. George II’s wife, Caroline of Ansbach, was also pretty neat.

Also, if you want to break your brain a little, Queen Anne, Sophie of Hanover, and Louis XIV (the sun king) all died in 1714/1715. Holy cow, what regime change.

13/ I have mentioned the Baroque Cycle before. It’s worth reading if you have a spare year. Delightful epic.

14/ “Even the royal house of Hanover had the wheel, sir.” [Help! The movie, that is. Incredibly colonialist, but in other moments also weird and fun. –Jesse] [As a former Asian scholar I feel weirdly ashamed of this, but I have probably the entirety of it memorized. I definitely have Yellow Submarine memorized.]

15/ It was 1837.

George III had nine sons and six daughters, of whom thirteen lived to adulthood.

16/ Movies about Queen Victoria’s beaux: Mrs. Brown, Victoria and Abdul (probably not a romantic relationship but eh, Dame Judy’s still got it).

17/ Will and Kate and the Bad Photo Op.

Prince Harry as a Nazi. I’m not sure what is more offensive—the uniform, or the fact that someone decided to hold a colonials and natives party?

Protests in Jamacia.

18/ The guy who fought at Waterloo was the Duke of Wellington.

Also, I was wrong—it wasn’t the Duke of Wellington. It was John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough. The second duke of Marlborough was his daughter, Henrietta. This is interesting because it happened a FULL FREAKING CENTURY earlier than Wellington’s victory at Waterloo. To be a duchess in one’s own right in this sense is to be a duchess suo jure. There are a few and a list (probably partial) can be found here.

19/ Historical romance is the best genre, despite the focus on dukes. But I’m more into the late 19th to mid-20th century historicals these days.

Episode 56: THE BEOWULFENING

Synopsis

Bro! You knew it was coming! Grab your replica Sutton Hoo helmet and get ready, it’s Beowulf o’clock.

Annotations

1/ Spoiler alert: it wasn’t published as episode 50. [But that’s ok! 🙂 –Jesse]

2/ We talked about Cotton in episode 39 note 8. Here is more info on the Cotton collection: https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/cotton-manuscripts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_library

3/ Dream of the Rood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Rood
https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/dream-of-the-rood/

4/ A fun comic about the Beowulf scribes! https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/scribe-a

5/ Blessed are the cheesemakers.

6/ Valhalla—a big shout out here to Thor Love and Thunder!

7/ The Wanderer: https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-wanderer/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wanderer_(Old_English_poem)

8/ A bee-wolf is a bear! 🙂 Here is some more info on Beowulf and the manuscript: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beowulf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

9/ The Wife’s Lament: https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-wifes-lament/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wife%27s_Lament

10/ The Seafarer: https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-seafarer/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seafarer_(poem)

11/ Exeter Book: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/exeter-book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Book

12/ Our preferred translation of Beowulf is by Maria Dahvana Headley
https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Translation-Maria-Dahvana-Headley/dp/0374110034

13/ “Whale-road.” Okay, so in Old English they do these things called kennings, which I guess we would call metaphors? E.g. calling the ocean a “whale road.” I love them.

Another good German compound is backpfeifengesicht (a face in need of punching).

Jesse: If I may give another shout out to Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, they have some great dialogue that uses kennings and other fun Old Norse/Old Germanic linguistic ornaments.

14/ The impenetrable skin of Grendel’s mom is similar to the modern superhero She Hulk—shout out to Jennifer Walters (who is also an awesome lawyer–court is theoretically better than a blood feud)!

15: Exeter Riddles! https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/exeter-book-riddles/
Solutions: https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/exeter-book-riddles-solutions/ (Most of these are provisional solutions—the book doesn’t give solutions)

About the riddles: https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/the-exeter-book-riddles-in-context
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Book_Riddles

16/ I don’t remember where the assertion that there are over 600 translations of Beowulf came from. It seems true, though.–Em

Episode 55: In the Summertime, When the Weather is Medieval

Summary

Summertime, and the living is Medieval. But really, what was summer like in the Middle Ages? We talk about the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the (not at all Medieval) Little Ice Age, the volcano on Santorini, Medieval vacation tendencies, the Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry, and the Olympics.  Also, Firesign Theatre references! Brief content warning: if you have really bad climate change anxiety, parts of this discussion might bother you.

Annotations

1/ Person 1: We’re going to Greece!
Person 2: And swim the English Channel?
Person 1: No, to Ancient Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sang and stroked the wine-dark sea in the temple by the water wah dee doo dah.

It’s from “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger,” which is an old Firesign theatre routine. Please listen to it so I won’t be the only one who has ever heard this. (Also, at least one comment under that video quotes this line, so maybe it’s very memorable?)

2/ The Medieval Climate Anomaly or the Medieval Warm Period. This was followed by the Little Ice Age we discuss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

The year without a summer (1816): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Santorini (Thera!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini Jesse learned a lot about volcanoes this summer!

The Pixar video is Lava. If you don’t have Disney+, you can still listen to the song (with stills from the video) here: https://youtu.be/uh4dTLJ9q9o

3/ Worst Year Ever: Radiolab nominated 536 CE.

4/ The Whakaari eruption was in 2019. I was close.

5/ I believe “the season” has shifted slightly since the Regency Era. It used to start in November and run approximately until June. Today, it starts in March and runs through to August. (I’m not totally sure on this—attempts to figure it out in order to nitpick a scene in a novel set in the Regency produced many contradictory answers—for example, new debutants were presented at court at a ball commemorating Queen Mary’s birthday, which was held in late April; this would be very late in the year if you were starting your season in November.

Jesse: The modern season must be due to air conditioning (and—prior to 2020—the lack of plague)—people don’t have to go off to their country estates in the summer.

6/ This is the bit everyone has to memorize:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

If you haven’t already memorized it, get cracking. It’s time.

April is the cruelest month.

If you need me, I’ll be at Señor Tadpole’s having a margarita made in my mouth.” Yes kids, it’s from Arrested Development.

7/ Never get involved in a land war in Asia! Said by many people, but most famously by Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride: https://youtu.be/9mTlnrXFAXE

8/ Some hydrocarbons gel below 40 degrees F. But modern diesel engines have methods for starting in the cold.

9/ The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by the Limbourg Brothers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_Duc_de_Berry (Check out and click on all the images in the gallery in the middle of the page.)

A harrow! Check out the October illustration from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by the Limbourg Brothers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_Duc_de_Berry#/media/File:Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_octobre.jpg

10/ Strigil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil

11/ Trotula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotula

Camphor has a lot of uses, including decongestant and topical analgesic. It’s also mildly toxic. The chemical used in sunscreen is a camphor derivative called enzacamene. It may have some endocrine-disrupting properties.

12/ Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore. Oh man, Walt.
Medieval swimming! August in the Très Riches Heures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_Duc_de_Berry#/media/File:Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_aout.jpg

13/ Hawks! On a plane: https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-prince-80-hawks-on-plane-photo-2017-1?amp

If you have HBO, check out Real Sports from April 2022: https://www.hbo.com/real-sports-with-bryant-gumbel/season-28/4-real-sports-with-bryant-gumbel-april-2022

14/ The fire in Wisconsin in 1871 that coincided with the great Chicago fire was the Peshtigo Fire. It killed about 1,200 people and caused about $169 million in damages. [Wow! This would have been major news if Chicago hadn’t had a fire.–Jesse]

The subway fire I’m discussing is the King’s Cross Fire in London in 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire The effect discovered was named the trench effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_effect

15/ Forest fires in Spain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112700003236

16/ Fire in England summer 2022: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11034901/Soot-covered-villagers-cowered-medieval-church-amid-Wennington-wildfire-hottest-day-UK.html

17/ Ironically, as I edit this, the high today was 73 degrees, and the US Congress just passed a major piece of climate legislation. So it’s not all bad. [Yay!–Jesse] (That said, it’s still humid AF here, even at 73. Yech.)

Episode: 54: More England, More Normans

Synopsis

Part two of the run up to the arrival of Queen Matilda and that other guy…what was his name…William the Conqueror. Yeah. Him. Includes Danelaw, Danegeld, surprising connections to Hamlet, an explanation of whether Aethelred the Unready was really unready, and of course a discussion of Eric the Viking!

Annotations

1/ We have obviously linked to this clip before, but whatever. It brings much joy: What have the Romans ever done for us?

2/ Graham Chapman is Arthur, King of the Britons! https://youtu.be/ITJFfUptaGo Also here (with the political discussion!): https://youtu.be/KN9c2TAWMlg

3/ Patrick Stewart as Claudius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCrq7UhVUK0 (this is not the scene Em describes, but it’s good.)

4/ It was illegal to marry your brother’s widow in England until quite recently. This was ecclesiastical law, then codified in civil law when the British decided they needed a civil marriage system in 1835 (see the Marriage Act of 1835). It became legal in 1907 with the passage of the Marriage to a Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, and in 1921 the Deceased Brother’s Widow’s Marriage Act. Notwithstanding, it happened. People either got married abroad or no one challenged the marriage (they were considered “voidable” rather than “void”). Among others, Jane Austen’s brother married his dead wife’s sister.

THE MORE YOU KNOW.

Hamlet: “He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,/Popped in between th’ election and my hopes” (V.ii). Interestingly, in I.ii, Claudius says that the nobles also agreed that he should marry his sister-in-law This is the part I quote:

“Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole)
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.”

5/ The pope didn’t want to piss off Aragon: not the guy from Lord of the Rings. There was a country called Aragon. [Now it’s part of Spain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragon ]

6/ Danelaw! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

7/ Battle of Edington (878 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edington
Offa (king of Mercia, d.796 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offa_of_Mercia
Alfred the Great (starts as king of Wessex; c.848/849–899 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great

Alfred’s main kids are Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (c. 870–918 CE) and Edward the Elder (c. 874–924 CE)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æthelflæd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Elder

Eric the Viking (actually Eric Bloodaxe, died 954 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bloodaxe

(There’s a line in Angels in America where the Rabbi reads a list of grandchildren of a Jewish woman who died: “…beloved grandmother of Max, Mark, Louis, Lisa, Maria…uh…Leslie, Angela, Doris, Luke and Eric. (Looks more closely at paper) Eric? This is a Jewish name? (Shrugs) Eric.” It’s page 16. Anyway.)

Aethelred the Unready (c966–1016 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æthelred_the_Unready

8/ Battle of Maldon, 991 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maldon

9/ Danegeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danegeld

10/ Sweyn/Sven Forkbeard (963–1014 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweyn_Forkbeard
Son of HARALD BLUETOOTH (d. c. 985/86 CE). Who is THAT GUY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth

11/ Cnut the Great!! (d. 1035)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut

12/ Edward the Confessor (c.1003–1066) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Confessor

Before you @ us about St Edmund being another king of England who was canonized–-St Edmund (d869 CE) was King of East Anglia, not England. 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_the_Martyr

Edward the Martyr might count (962–978 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Martyr

13/ Harold Godwinson (c.1022–1066 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Godwinson

William the Conqueror/Bastard (c.1028–1087 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror

14/ “Thou never shalt hear herald any more.” It’s from Henry V (IV.iii).

15/ Check out the Bayeux Tapestry close up! https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry

16/ Beowulf! Trans. Maria Headley https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Translation-Maria-Dahvana-Headley/dp/0374110034

For a performance, check out Beowulf: The Epic in Performance–Benjamin Bagby, voice and medieval harp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WcIK_8f7oQ

Episode #53: England Before the Norman Invasion

Synopsis

As good students of history, you already know that all-important date in British history: 1066, aka the Norman Invasion. But what happened in England before then? From the Romans through to Alfred the Great, join Em and Jesse as they talk about a whole bunch of kings, kingdoms, Vikings, and Monty Python.

Annotations

1/ 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings, and 2 Genuine Dates is indeed a real book. It was written by WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman, illustrated by John Reynolds, and first appeared in Punch magazine. As someone who has come across a lot of old Punch comics in my time doing research, I will say they’re a bit…conservative (or at least they were from 1841–at least 1900 or so). But the book is funny.

2/ Arthur, King of the Britons from Monty Python scene at 0:48 https://youtu.be/ITJFfUptaGo (also includes the coconuts and swallows!)

3/ Constantine (c272–22 May 337) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great

4/ Boudicca (Queen of the Iceni, led a revolt against the Romans in 60/61 CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

5/ Romans leave early in the 400s CE and the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes arrive.

6/ The episode in which we discussed the Cornish World Play was…episode 1?

7/ The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, becomes Archbishop in 597 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Canterbury

8/ The Venerable Bede (c.672/3–735) was mentioned in episode 4, note 20. “Venerable” is like an official title given to him by god, not just a description. Notice they didn’t decide to call him the Veritas Bede. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede

(Sorry, that was uncalled for.)

9/ Cuthbert (c.634–687) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert

10/ The Lindisfarne Gospels! https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/lindisfarne-gospels
View the actual scanned manuscript here. [Check it out!! The “carpet” pages are famously gorgeous!! The carpet pages are called carpet pages because of their resemblance to Eastern carpets (from the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and possibly textiles from even further east thanks to the Silk Road). –Jesse]

11/ Essex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex
Sussex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussex
Mercia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia

12/ Offa (king 757–his death in 796CE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offa_of_Mercia

13/ The Carolingians. Inventors of the script known as Carolingian Miniscule. (This may or may not be true.) [Well, the script was probably invented near Paris and perfected by Alcuin of York and widely used in the so-called Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th–9th centuries CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule –Jesse]

For more on the Carolingian Empire see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_Empire

14/ Sutton Hoo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo buried in the 6th/7th centuries, discovered in 1938.

15/ Beowulf! 8th century, maybe later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

This podcast endorses the Maria Headley translation. Go read it. For real. Go now. https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Translation-Maria-Dahvana-Headley/dp/0374110034

16/ Raedwald of East Anglia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A6dwald_of_East_Anglia

East Anglia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Anglia

17/ The Sutton Hoo helmet is on the Stephen Mitchell translation, e.g.
Here is the Sutton Hoo helmet info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo_helmet
Original helmet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo_helmet#/media/File:Sutton_Hoo_helmet_2016.png
Replica helmet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rædwald_of_East_Anglia#/media/File:Sutton_Hoo_helmet_(replica).jpg

18/ Netflix’s The Dig: https://www.netflix.com/title/81167887 Basil Brown did begin the dig for Edith Pretty, but they didn’t have some kind of romance as implied in the trailer. [Yeah, but Ralph Fiennes plays him in the film, so… 🙂 –Jesse]

19/ The Danelaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw

20/ Wessex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessex

21/ Alfred the Great (848/849–899) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great

Jesse: Quite enjoyably, the video game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla [SPOILER SPOILER] centers on Norse Vikings who conquer portions of England. While the history most commonly taught in England (and the US/Canada/Australia/etc.) views the Vikings as interlopers and Alfred the Great as a hero who united England, in AC Valhalla Alfred is the main villain. Good times.

22/ The Glorious Revolution was when the British got sick of Charles II, chucked him out, and invited William and Mary of Orange to “invade,” whereupon they became William III and Mary II. Also this triggered a lot of political unrest in Scotland (see also Outlander and The Baroque Cycle for different takes on this). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution

23/ Technically, because the British Empire still contains 14 overseas territories, the sun still does not set on it. [I think this will change in the next few years. –Jesse]

24/ Canadians protesting the deaths of Indigenous children toppled statues of Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/queen-victoria-statue-toppled-in-canada-amid-anger-at-deaths-of-indigenous-children

The Queen Victoria statue cannot be restored but the Queen Elizabeth statue can be and will be (and put back on display). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/queen-victoria-statue-not-repairable-manitoba-legislature-1.6498031

Em: Ideally they would replace them with statues of Freddie Mercury.

Jesse: The Pope is about to apologize to Canada for the residential schools that forcibly erased Indigenous culture and identity through violent assimilation, abuse, and the burial in unmarked graves of thousands of children who died due to the horrific conditions. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/24/world/canada/pope-francis-apology-canada-indigenous.html

A really long time ago I (Em) made my now-husband sit through a Canadian art house film about Winnipeg. It was like our third date. And that is why I laughed about the city.

Episode 52: Heut’ kommt die Jesse zu Oberammergau

Synopsis

What do you get when you combine Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and the Passion of Christ? I don’t know, but it’s been going on for 390 years at this point. In this episode, Em and Jesse discuss what Jesse did on her summer vacation (or part of it): a trip to see the passion play in Oberammergau. With digressions on the 1972 Olympics, the film Munich, Nazis, and Bernd das Brot.

The official website and some fun articles about the play:
Oberammergau’s official history with the history of the play: https://www.passionsspiele-oberammergau.de/en/play/history

At the bottom of this page, you can click through a lot of the tableaux (hover over the left or right side of the pictures): https://www.passionsspiele-oberammergau.de/en/play/play

A good article about the play: https://religionnews.com/2022/05/09/oberammergau-passion-play-enters-a-new-era/

Notes

1/ The 1972 Olympics

Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner. (trailer). You can see some of the stuff Jesse discusses—people watching the stuff on the TV. They also show them discussing the telephone bomb.

Tony Kushner is a playwright most famous for Angels in America.

2/ For more on the PLAGUE, see ep. 2.

For more on passion plays, see episode 1 (note 23), episode 25 (note 19), episode 17 (note 6). Probably a bunch of other episodes, too.

For more on Passover and Easter, see episodes 3 and 4.

3/ Quick, somebody write a gothic novel where no one died at all since they made the vow, and now 400 years later they still have the same cast…

4/ Orlando Theme Park (deceased), the Holy Land Experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Experience

5/ In one of the great moments of This American Life, Ira Glass took a U of Chicago Medievalist to Medieval Times (a restaurant—it’s in Schaumburg, not Rosemont, don’t @ me): https://www.thisamericanlife.org/38/simulated-worlds/act-three-7

6/ The story of Papa Hemingway liberating Shakespeare & Co. can be found in the book Shakespeare and Company, by Sylvia Beach.

7/ I can’t find the scene of Aziraphale and Crowley discussing the crucifixion on YouTube, but it’s the opening of episode 3. It’s still on Amazon. Do yourself a favor and check it out if you haven’t seen it.

The full Douglas Adams quote, from the very beginning of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

David F*cking Bowie, guys. Did I say before that Barthes would have a lot to say about that haircut they’ve stuck on Mr. Bowie? Oh my god. That haircut. (Okay, we did this rant in episode 3, note 18.)

8/ Who betrayed the Franks?

9/ Menorah is a generic term for a candelabra that holds seven to nine candles. The menorah specifically for Hanukkah is a Hanukkiah.

10/ Okay, so the story of “Al Capone”: in about 2003, Jesse and Em went on a trip to Italy. Jesse speaks Italian, Em speaks…French. So as they took trains around the country, they’d meet people, and Em would listen to Jesse have conversations with them, but they’d try to speak in English once they realized Em couldn’t really participate. Which meant a lot of this:

Italian couple: Where are you from?
Jesse: Chicago.
Italians: Oh.. Al Capone!

Or occasionally, when Jesse mentioned she was born in Detroit:
Italian couple: Oh! Eminem!

I think the fact that they knew about Eminem is why I didn’t connect it to being specifically about Al being Italian-American until just now.

11/ Apologies to all German speakers for my pronunciation of your language.

One version of the song.

The accent here is very different from some of the other versions, which is interesting. Since the channel is “Naturpark Ammergauer Alpen,” I assume this is the accent of the region.

Actual lyrics:
Heut’ kommt der Hans zu mir,
freut sich die Lies.
Ob er aber über Oberammergau,
oder aber über Unterammergau,
oder aber überhaupt nicht kommt,
das is net g’wiss.

Here is an introduction to Bernd das Brot. Willkommen auf der KiKa Lounge. [Apparently he’s a loaf of pullman bread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_das_Brot –Jesse]

Episode 51: The Relic (not the 1997 Creature Feature set in the Field Museum in Chicago)

Summary

Ever see an Indiana Jones movie?

For more on relic theft, see Patrick J. Geary’s Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages.

Annotations and Corrections

1/ The episode where we talked about St. Nicholas was episode 23 (a Christmas episode). The oil is kind of said to be myrrh, but it’s not… but it is a weird thing.

For more on this phenomenon (not reserved for St Nicholas—there are other saints who are myroblytes), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myroblyte_saint

2/ Great fictional versions of the Grail lore: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I will add the short story “Chivalry” by Neil Gaiman.

3/ The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I recommend the Diana Burgin and Katerine Tiernan O’Connor translation (1996), but apparently there have been some more recent ones that are also good.

4/ There are a lot of places with magical springs; I think I was thinking of Lourdes. You can apparently buy Lourdes water online for $6.99 and have it shipped directly to your house.

5/ We talked about the eucharist in episode…a lot of them. [The search engine on the website will find them all!–Jesse]

6/ It’s good to be the king. [Thank you Mel Brooks!–Jesse]

7/ From Maria Headley’s translation of Beowulf (since I have become her acolyte), lines 26–51 (with a few omitted here because typing them is tedious):

Scyld was iron until the end. When he died,
his warriors executed his final orders.
They swaddled their king of rings and did just
as the Dane had demanded, back when mind
and meter could merge in his mouth.
They bore him to the harbor, and into the bosom
of a ship, that father they’d followed, that man
they’d adored.
[…]
They laid him by the mast, packed tight in his treasure-trove,
bright swords, war-weeds, his lap holding a hoard
of flood-tithes, each fare-coin placed by a loyal man.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
His shroud shone, ringed in runes, sun-stitched.
I’ve never heard of any ship so heavy, nor corpse
so rich.
[…]
No man knows,
not me, not you, who hauled Scyld’s hoard to shore,
but the poor are plentiful, and somebody got lucky.

8/ Some of the Greek heroes mentioned:

Herakles, aka Hercules: you know him, there was a Disney movie about him.

Asclepius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepius You know that medical symbol that looks like a caduceus but only has one snake? That’s the rod of Asclepius. That’s this guy. Son of Apollo + someone. [His mom’s identity–or even if he has a mom–is dependent on the myth.–Jesse]

Orestes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, brother of Electra. Eventually kills his mother and her boyfriend, Aegisthus. [And gets chased by the Furies!–Jesse]

Pelops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelops king of Pisa (in myth); his father was Tantalus, who you might also remember from Greek myth.

9/ Oedipus at Colonus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_at_Colonus

10/ The Oedipus Rex song, by Tom Lehrer.

11/ In what is arguably the best scene in any bible ever, Elisha summons the bears in 2 Kings 2:23–24. The story of a guy who touched him rising from the grave is 2 Kings 13:20–21.

12/ The big black cube is the kaaba, which means “cube.” It’s a building. You can go inside it, although it’s kept closed during hajj. (I mean, maybe you can if you’re Muslim. They don’t allow non-Muslims in Mecca.)

The connection with Abraham is that he and Ishmael repaired it. [Isaac is the favored son of Judaism and Christianity, and Ishmael is the favored son in Islam.–Jesse ]

Topkapi Palace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topkap%C4%B1_Palace (Scroll down to the Privy Chamber for the sacred relics.)

Abraham’s pot: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abrahams-pot-is-displayed-at-topkapi-palace-on-july-03-2018-news-photo/991960532

Joseph’s Turban: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/josephs-turban-amongst-sacred-trusts-is-displayed-at-news-photo/991960876

Muhammad’s swords and bow: https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/prophet-muhammads-swords-and-bow-are-displayed-in-their-news-photo/991960842

13/ Muhammed lived 570–632. Solidly early medieval.

14/ The Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, is a wall in Jerusalem that was once a retaining wall for the Second Jewish Temple. We’ve sort of alluded to before (in…discussions of Jesus, actually) that Jews used to have a big temple where all the ritual stuff went down, and after the Romans expelled all the Jews from that general area (the diaspora) and destroyed the temple (70 CE, not 76 like Em suggests), Judaism evolved into the rabbinical religion we know today. But Jews like to go back there and…cry, I guess. Also, the wall is known in Arabic as al-Buraq, after the legend that this is where Muhammed tied his winged steed before he ascended to heaven.

Interesting how Judaism and Islam are incredibly tied together in these two stories. [In SO MANY STORIES. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three siblings who have trouble getting along and really wonder which one dad loves more.–Jesse]

15/ We talked about Angkor Wat in episode 14. We talked about Perugia in episode 1!

16/ Śarīra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Aar%C4%ABra The term “sarira” is a generic one for Buddhist relics, but you can see photos of the pearl-like objects Jesse mentions on this page.

17/ The monk was named Thich Quang Duc, and he self-immolated on June 11, 1963, at what is now the corner of Nguyen Dinh Chieu St. and Cach Mang Thang Tam St. (Be warned that if you go to that wikipedia page, there is a picture of the self-immolation, and you might find it disturbing. I mean, it’s also on the Rage Against the Machine album, I guess. You should also find it disturbing that the US was propping up a regime so bad that someone did this as a form of protest. OKAY.)

That page also has a photo of a memorial for TQD, but it is very different from what was there when I was living in VN in 2006–2007ish, when there was really quite a small stupa that you could easily go past without noticing it.

18/ We’ve talked about St. Catherine of Siena in episode 6, note 37.

I don’t know anything about those particular bodies, but I think that “incorrupt,” for saints, doesn’t always mean “incorrupt.” Check out this video Caitlin Doughty of Ask a Mortician made on the topic. (They’re talking about the modern guidelines, which date from 1734! I ALSO don’t know if old bodies got reassessed when the new guidelines were issued!

19/ We discussed Jesus’ foreskin in episode 6, if I recall correctly. It’s not in the notes, but I think it’s in the episode. Is this the weirdest note I’ve written to date? Hmm.

20/ The Veronica (vera icon) is parodied by Forrest Gump: https://youtu.be/tOHr85z9k64

[I can’t believe Jesse said that “Veronica” is derived from “Bernice” and just strolled on past that. They both mean “bringer of victory,” but I’m not sure what the other connection is.–Em]

21/ I guess I should note that Dr. Katie, friend of the pod (well, friend of Jesse’s anyway) was/is not just a pathologist but a medical examiner. The difference is that a pathologist can look at the mole your doctor just lopped off and tell you if you have cancer, and a medical examiner can tell you if you were murdered. If you meet anyone who is a medical examiner, be sure to invite them to parties—they have excellent stories.

Episode 50: The Heretical Hussites (feat. Martin Luther)

Synopsis

The last of the major proto-protestant heresies we’re going to examine is the Hussites, who were led by Jan Hus. And then we’re going to quick talk about the man, the myth, the machine, Martin Luther.

The first rule of Medieval Studies is “Don’t talk about Luther.” [Also the second and third rules.–Jesse] But we’re doing it today. 

Annotations and Corrections

1/ Monastic orders and asceticism: see episode 5 on Hermits and Anchoresses and episode 49 notes 9, 10, and 11.

2/ I believe we’ve mentioned this before, but Catholic priests weren’t always expected to be celibate.

3/ Okay, it looks like “Henry VIII founded his own church so he could get divorced” is not one hundred percent of the story and there was some complicated stuff going on. But that was well into the not-Middle-Ages-anymore time, so you’ll have to find one of the other four million books on this.

4/ For more on Falstaff, Oldcastle, and Fastolf, see episode 49 note 20.

The Avignon Papacy: 1309–1376. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy

Generally speaking Bohemia didn’t have a sea coast, which is how you know that A Winter’s Tale is a fairy tale (although Shakespeare’s source is also the source for the sea coast).

5/ Richard II (1367–1400). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_of_England As Jesse says, his second wife, Isabella of Valois, was six when they married and nine when he died. Eventually she married her cousin Charles, Duke of Orleans, and then died in childbirth at age 19.

Richard II is a really beautiful play and you should read it. [Yes!!-–Jesse]

6/ The Hussites! Jan Hus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus

7/ The second Vatican council (aka Vatican II) was 1962–1965.

They still do masses in Latin in Rome. (I think Dr. Jesse and I attended one once.) [Yes!! So cool!!–Jesse]

A scene from Our Flag Means Death. Stede: Do you think they understand ecclesiastical Latin? Ed: (puzzled, skeptical look)

[Our Flag Means Death is THE BEST. Let’s have some ecclesiastical Latin in season 2!–Jesse]

Greek is the worst.

Parks and Rec gif. That one guy shouting "the wooooorst" at Adam Scott.

Sorry, Greek. Sorry, Dr. Jesse who is actually in Greece as I edit this. [I mean, Greek did give us theatre and history and philosophy, just for starters. 🙂 Interestingly, some schools are rethinking that second semester Greek class precisely because not everyone wants to be a linguist. Some people want to be historians or philosophers but also want to be able to read that stuff in the original Greek.–Jesse]

About Classical Sanskrit: Just don’t.

(Good on me to choose an example word, “woman”, that is NOT Greek at its root…)

8/ When we say “why learn Latin when you can read it in translation,” just know that despite agreeing, I am crying quietly inside—a lot of my MA work was about how things get translated (or not) between languages and cultures.–-Em [Yes, translators should be credited as equal to authors!!–Jesse]

9/ If we actually discussed the frequency of communion before, will put link here. [I’m sure we’ve discussed it, but we don’t seem to have made a note.–Jesse]

10/ If a pope and an antipope collide, they annihilate each other. True facts.

11/ Jean Gerson came up in our episode on Joan d’Arc (ep. 6 notes 25, 27, and 33; ep. 8 note 9; ep. 9 note 23). Probably some others.

Council of Constance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Constance

12/ The man, the myth, the MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

13/ John Wycliffe was mentioned recently—see episode 47.

14/ Jesus’ quotation about the camel needle: “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) [I clearly missed the, uh, abbreviation to “rich man passing through the eye of a camel.” Otherwise there would have been many, many lolz.–Jesse]

15/ The question of cannibalism was in episode 3, note 24.

16/ This is from the first section of Ulysses, lines 636–650:

— After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your
own master, it seems to me.
— I am the servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an
Italian.
— Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
— And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
— Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
— The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and
the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
— I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like
that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly.
It seems history is to blame.

The character of Haines is a British student studying Irish folklore, and I want to say his line about “It seems history is to blame” is just so amazingly apropo and also insufficient and just, like, it says everything about colonialism. Thank you once again for a tiny piece of perfection, Mr. Joyce.

17/ Henry VIII founds the Church of England in 1534.

18/ The Council of Trent (1545–1563) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent

19/ The Counter-Reformation: 1517–1648 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Reformation

20/ Other reasons why WWI started (per Blackadder). [The best!–Jesse]

21/ Of all the various revolutions that got countries out of the USSR, the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) had one called the Velvet Revolution, which is honestly a pretty awesome name.

22/ I couldn’t find the part where John Oliver says he hates Europe, but here’s an 18-min compilation of him making fun of different countries.

23/ CORRECTION: It was the house of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha that became the house of Windsor, not Hanover. We regret this error.

The short version of what happened with George being German is: Queen Anne died in 1714 without having produced any heirs, and so the British went to what was then the Holy Roman Empire and is now Germany (Hanover, specifically) and grabbed George Louis, son of Ernest Augustus and Sophia of Hanover (the Winter King and Queen of Bohemia). Sophia was an amazingly interesting person who happened to be a close personal friend of GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ, but more importantly she was also the granddaughter of James VI/I. James was 1/ the reason Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, 2/ possibly gay (we don’t really know but he did have some super intense relationships with men who did things like stay the night in his rooms and also he made them dukes later on), and 3/ his son Charles I was later beheaded by Oliver Cromwell (which is both a major plot point in some novel by Dumas my father talked about a lot) and his descendant James II later abdicated, which is the set up for the extremely boring political bickering that goes on in Outlander. Essentially–going back to why we always say James I of England / James VI of Scotland–it’s because he was the king of both SEPARATELY, and this was really important to the Scots who were still in many ways a separate group rather than being “those quirky British people with angry eyebrows” as we now all typify them, so when James II quit and left and the English parliament gave the throne of Scotland to William III and Mary II, the Scots got super angry about it.

If you made it through that, I’m sorry.

[Also Edward VIII was a Nazi (sympathizer), so we’re glad he abdicated.–Jesse]

24/ Let me be clear, Peter Singer has a lot of really unpleasant views on euthanasia.

25/ We’re posting this way closer to the anniversary of Marguerite Porete getting burned at the stake than I thought we would. [Yay!!! Let the commemorations commence!!–Jesse]

Episode 49: Where’s Waldensians?

Synopsis

Let’s talk about the Waldensians, the Lollards, and some revolting peasants.

Wait. Oh well–Anyway, we talk a lot about how the Pope gave all the Franciscans’ stuff back to them and forced them to own stuff, some Shakespeare, and a lot of heresies.

Notes

1/ RI Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007 (2nd ed). https://www.amazon.com/Formation-Persecuting-Society-Authority-Deviance/dp/1405129646

2/ Waldensians: not related to either Walden pond or Where’s Waldo. [Unfortunately! Where’s the Waldensian would be a very different book. 🙂 –Jesse]

3/ Michelangelo got paid 3,000 ducats in 1512, which is apparently about $78,000 in today’s money.

4/ The Shoes of the Fisherman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shoes_of_the_Fisherman In the film he sells the Church’s stuff to help avert nuclear war. [Good film!–Jesse]

5/ For more on St Francis, see previous episodes: most of them.

6/ Vernacular translations of scripture: please recall the scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame wherein the archdeacon, looking at a printed book and at the cathedral, notes, “Ceci tuera cela” (this will kill that).

7/ According to Wikipedia, in 1975 the Waldensian church (then known as the Waldensian Evangelical Church) merged with the Methodists to form the Union of Methodist and Waldensian Churches. Unclear how many Waldensians remain, but there seem to be biggish groups in Italy, Germany, the US, and Uruguay.

8/ Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_of_Fiore

9/ Pope John XXII issued the papal bull “Cum inter nonnullos” in 1323. The bull states that the doctrine of the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles is heretical(!). So, instead of “You can’t own nothing” you actually do have to own things. https://www.franciscan-archive.org/bullarium/qinn-e.html

10/ Pope Nicholas III issues the papal bull “Exiit qui seminat” in 1279, confirming the Rule of the Franciscans. This would seem to allow apostolic poverty, but as we see from John XXII’s bull above, the debate wasn’t over. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/nichol03/exiit-e.htm

11/ The Vatican returning all the Franciscans’ stuff sounds weirdly like they’re breaking up. (It does! Weirdly, all their stuff was returned in order NOT to break up.–Jesse]

12/ For more on transubstantiation see episode 3 note 8, and for more on the festival of Corpus Christi, see all of episode 6 (and also notes 4 and 14).

13/ John Wycliffe (c. 1330–1384): leader of the Lollards or Wycliffites. We mentioned Wycliff in episode 7 note 24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wycliffe

14/ John of Gaunt shows up in Richard II.

15/ The book was The Saragossa Manuscript by Jan Potocki.

16/ The Peasants’ Revolt (1381).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iAcQVIokg

17/ John Ball (c1338–1381) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest) We mentioned him in episode 36 note 6.

18/ Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum, 70 (1995), 822–6.

Thomas Arundel (1353–1414) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Arundel

19/ Margery Kemp was in episode 6 note 29, episode 7 note 23, episode 8 note 4, episode 9 note 3, and episode 36 note 17. (Wow, we talked about her a lot.)

20/ Sir John Oldcastle was a real knight and some small part of the inspiration for Falstaff. Originally, Shakespeare seems to have called the character Sir John Oldcastle, as seen in 1 Henry IV I.ii.38 where Hal calls Falstaff “my old lad of the castle.” Apparently someone (a descendent of Oldcastle? Someone warning Shakespeare about critiquing martyrs?) complained/suggested, and Shakespeare changed the name. Falstaff appears in 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Henry V (offstage). Interestingly, Sir John Fastolf was also a real person.

Oldcastle Revolt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldcastle_Revolt

21/ Wycliffe Jean: if you were born significantly after 1983, click here and listen.

Episode #48: Meet the Cathars

Synopsis

So, say you like what Christianity has to offer generally. That Jesus kid seems like he has a good head on his shoulders. But theologically, you have a problem. Maybe you’re a Gnostic and think they’re wrong about the spiritual vs physical world. Maybe you think more women should be allowed to participate in services. Maybe you think that whole trinity thing is a little weird. Maybe you just want to make the Church really angry and get killed in a crusade. But it’s still before Martin Luther, so what do you do? Welcome, traveler, to the world of proto-Protestant heresies. From the Ante-Nicene period during which things were still getting figured out to the Cathars, join us for a conversation about proto-Protestants and their heresies, with bountiful references to Life of Brian.

Annotations

1/ See episode 47 for more on Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Also, by dualism, we mean specifically the (initially) Gnostic belief that there’s a spiritual world that is the “real” world, and also a physical world that is kind of a mistake. There are other kinds of dualism. [Hi Descartes!!–Jesse]

2/ Em references Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson: take a drink.

3/ Liminal: being between two different states, often because of a societal ritual.

Communitas: the community found during a state-change ritual. [Thank you Victor Turner!–Jesse]

4/ Bart Ehrman texts:
Lost Christianities
Lost Scriptures
Forgery and Misforgery
Misquoting Jesus

5/ Ante-Nicene period (Christianity before 325 CE): the time before the Council of Nicea. People were figuring things out.

Actual filmic representation: “Blessed are they who convert their neighbors thusly, for they shall inhibit their girth. And to them only shall be given…”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deDlab6vFgg

The Judean People’s Front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA

6/ Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the temple: Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–48 AND last but definitely not least, the more dramatic retelling with whips and table-flipping, John 2:13–16.

Also, Jesus yelling at the Pharisees: Luke 11:37–54, Matthew 23:1–39. Also Godspell “Alas for you”: https://youtu.be/oeBy1Ee8LCg

7/ Destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple

For more on Yom Kippur recapitulating the Temple ceremonies, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur#Temple_service

8/ Sacraments, for those curious: baptism, communion, confirmation, penance, marriage, last rights, and taking holy orders. I suppose most Catholics can only ever do six out of seven. But if you want to read about a guy who gets to do all seven, read Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood. Also, read it because it’s amazing.

9/ As you might surmise, Christian churches that reject the position that the Christian god is a trinity are called…nontrinitarian. Some of the groups you may have heard of that hold this belief include Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and members of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship (a sub-group of Unitarian Universalists, who are not themselves Christian but instead the religious equivalent of a hug and a cup of tea while listening to NPR). For more, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism

10/ The Council of Nicea, 325 CE, in Turkey: remember this, it’s one of those big ones that comes up a lot.

11/ Ignatius of Antioch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Antioch

Lotta stuff happened in Antioch. Well, maybe that’s like saying a lot of stuff happens in New York or London.

12/ Nag Hammadi Library. See also episode 47 (note 6).

13/ For those wondering, the seven Unitarian principles are: the inherent worth of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within their congregations and society; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Em: I love Unitarianism as a religion. It just… doesn’t have quite as easy a time explaining itself as, e.g., “There is no G-d but G-d and Muhammed is his messenger,” which I have to admit is extremely pithy.

14/ Council of Ephasus, 431 CE. Exit the Assyrian Church.

Council of Calcedon, 451 CE. Exit the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

Miaphysitism: Jesus has one nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism

Great schism: 1054 CE.

More on schisms! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism#Christianity
Nice branch graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism#/media/File:Christianity_Branches.svg

15/ For more on icons, see episode 10 on Icons and Iconography!

16/ Did we talk about priests getting married at some point? I swear we did but I don’t remember which episode. (I think it’s come up on the side, but never as a focus.–Jesse)

17/ RI Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society

18/ Interestingly, though the ritual may work regardless of the vehicle, since we recorded this the Vatican announced that the ritual does not work if the priest makes a mistake with the wording: they ruled that all the baptisms performed over 16 years by an Arizona priest who said “we” instead of “I” were invalid. [Yes, the ritual works regardless of the ritual, but only if the ritual is exactly right! Hmmmm.—Jesse]

19/ Specifically I think the Bishop of Winchester (London) owned a brothel there (in an area called the Liberty of the Clink). See also episode 24, note 10 (and associated part of the episode). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_of_the_Clink

20/ Malcolm Lambert, Medieval heresy

Bogomilism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomilism

Bogomil (the priest): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomil_(priest)

The Cathars! See also episode 30. (Alan of Lille: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Lille)

Se Malcolm Barber, The Cathars

21/ Katherine Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen

22/ Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). (Eberwin of Steinfeld writes Bernard about the burning of Cathars in Cologne in 1143.)

23/ The transmigration of souls: met-him-pike-hoses (a major theme in Ulysses). Sorry, metempsychosis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metempsychosis). AKA a form of reincarnation–the movement of souls to a new body after death. For complicated reasons (not worth belaboring in a footnote), this is different from the Buddhist idea of reincarnation. The term and idea in this case both arose in Ancient Greece.

24/ Raymond VI of Toulouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_VI,_Count_of_Toulouse

25/ The Dominicans–see episode 30.

26/ The Third Lateran Council (1179)

27/ Abbot of Citeaux (the primary Cistercian monastery) Arnaud Amalric: “Kill them all, and God will know His own.” (1209, but written about in 1224 by the Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach.)

28/ From this point on (about 1:15:xx), Jesse’s audio gets a little wonky. I did my best, guys. Sorry.

Episode 46: The Well-Tempered Podcast

Synopsis

After an unexpected late-season hiatus, we’re back with an episode on musical forms! We’ve got the earliest hymns, the maddest madrigals, tuning and temperament, at least three different types of chant, and a song so recursive it will summon Douglas Hofstadter if you play it into a mirror in a dark room.

Annotations

1/ If you don’t remember everything we talked about, refer to episodes 40 and 43.

2/ Hurrian Hymn (see episode 43 note 19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs
https://youtu.be/Tx6v0t5I5SM (performed by Michael Levy)

3/ The Delphic Oracle, aka the Pythia.

4/ Hymns to Apollo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_Hymns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws7xUHt_W4o (performed by Michael Levy)

Hermes was mentioned in episode 40, note 4.

5/ They’re both lyres, but they’re tuned differently.

6/ Pythagorean tuning  was not the only ancient Greek tuning! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_system_of_ancient_Greece

7/ Plainsong 
Monophony
Neume

8/ Gregorian chant.

We talked about Pope Gregory in episode 2.

Ambrose Bierce: author of The Devil’s Dictionary.

Saint Ambrose of Milan
Ambrosian chant

9/ The last castrato was Alessandro Moreschi, and he died in 1922.

10/ Gallican chant excerpt performed by Sequentia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S08SIkWldSU
From Paris, BNF, ms. lat. 776, 11th century https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84546727/f301.item

11/ For more on the Ordo/Hildegard, see episode 6, notes 17 and 23.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1sJ91rS0o0 At 3:38 you can see “Felix Anima” in red letters at the top left of the second page. This means that Anima–the everyperson character of the play, the Soul–is supposed to sing “happily.” Stage directions!

For Jesse’s rant, see episode 15, I think.

12/ Adam de la Halle: see episode 31 note 13.

13/ Polyphony

Early three-voice motet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro2JTnfmjzA
Same YouTube clip for all:
1. O Maria, maris stella (single-texted three-voice motet) (0:00)
2. O Maria virgo, O Maria, maris stella (double motet) (1:01)
3. Quand je parti (two-voice motet) (2:15)
4. En nom Dieu – Quand voi – Eius in oriente (double motet) (3:45)
5. Trop sovent – Brunete – In seculum (double motet) (4:52) The Hilliard Ensemble

14/ Music of the Middle Ages: An Anthology for Performance and Study, by David Wilson. https://www.amazon.com/Music-Middle-Ages-Anthology-Performance/dp/9382661026

15/ Formes fixes
ballade, rondeau, and virelai.

16/ Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300–1377)

17/ Machaut’s Rondeau “My End Is My Beginning” (“Mon fin est mon commencement”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcfPr4IN2MM (performed by Performed by: Charles Daniels, Angus Smith, & Don Greig and transcribed and animated by Jordan Alexander Key)

So meta that Douglas Hofstater something something.

18/ Machaut – Virelai: “Douce dame jolie” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kM5qJi2v3c
From Cantata Profana’s show “Ancient Groove Music” live at the HERE Arts Center, NYC June 2017.

19/ Machaut – Ballade “Dame, ne regardes pas” (from BNF ff 1584)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyGhW9JKOz8
Performed by LIBER: Ensemble for Early Music (formerly Liber unUsualis)

20/ Trecento Madrigal
Francesco Landini, “Musica Son Già Furon Ciascun Vuol” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNcfZSBF9ow
Performance by: Gothic Voices on “A Laurel for Landini” and transcription by Jordan Alexander Key

21/ Madrigal by Jacopo da Bologna “Fenice fu”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EikqtlB_w

22/ Claudio Monteverde (1567–1643)
Monteverdi – Madrigals, Book 8 “Hor che’l ciel e la terra” (Les Cris de Paris, Geoffroy Jourdain)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3F_q2PWXo

23/ John Dowland (1563–1626)
“Fine Knack for Ladies” (performed by the King’s Singers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEXw7tk4F28

And the Sting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_from_the_Labyrinth

24/ Hildegard von Blingen is a bardcore musician. Example. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ_jwWjf8u5mdtac71Be8QA

Bardcore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardcore

Episode 45: Fool Me Twice

Summary

More on the Feast of Fools and the Kalends, with some digressions about Roman Emperor Claudius and labyrinths.

Annotations

For most of the Feast of Fools and Herod info from this episode, see Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495

1/ The Kalends (or calends, hence calendar :)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calends

2/ Episode 18, note 1 on syncretism.

3/ For medieval mummers or ‘guisers’ (possibly depicting a Kalends celebration) see Bodleian manuscript 264, p. 21v: click here. The actual text is from The Romance of Alexander and dates from around 1340.

4/ Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England https://www.amazon.com/Masking-Medieval-England-Studies-Performance-dp-1138257850/dp/1138257850/

5/ Episode 18, note 10 includes the Bodleian MS linked above in note 3. It’s a great image, and we’ve talked about it a lot!

6/ Do we need to note that slates are like tiny blackboards? And that blackboards are things teachers traditionally present their lessons on using chalk?

7/ I’m (Em) definitely taking a mulligan this year and starting my new year at Tết (this year it’s Feb 1st).

8/ Sandy Koufax, famous Jewish baseball player. For more on Jewish baseball players, see https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/Jewish_baseball_players.shtml (Also, this is a reference to this scene from the greatest film ever made, The Big Lebowski. Warning, contains swearing.)

9/ Twelfth Night (the holiday not the play!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday)

Epiphany (when the magi–aka the three wise men–visit Jesus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday)

King Cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake

10/ For more on the Jewish hat (judenhut) and its connection to the magi (and possibly witches and wizards), see episode 10, notes 31 and 39; episode 25, note 14; and episode 41, note 7. This info and theory is from Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography, Metropolitan, 2014. Link.

11/ Slaughter (or Massacre) of the Innocents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents

About Robert Graves’s amazing novel I, Claudius. It’s historical fiction covering the time period from Julius Cesar’s assassination to Claudius’s assention to the throne (about 44 BCE to 41 CE). There’s apparently also a substantial biography of Herod in the sequel, Claudius the God.

12/ Hamlet III.ii https://myshakespeare.com/hamlet/act-3-scene-2-popup-note-index-item-termagant-and-herod

Hamlet:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as
many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you acquire and beget a temperance that may give
it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a
robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I could have such a
fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods
Herod. Pray you avoid it.

13/ Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495

14/ Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Princes_in_Amber It is a  men-with-swords-and-magic fantasy novel with a somewhat noirish twist? You should definitely not expect any female characters. But it’s fun.

If you are interested in what the heck Em was talking about when she tried to explain the labyrinth dance, here is the place to look, although they suggest the ball is actually made of leather, not wool. Labyrinths were a big feature in medieval cathedrals.

15/ For more on Palmesel donkeys (used to recreate Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem on what becomes Palm Sunday), see episode 3, note 10.

16/ For more on Balaam and his donkey, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaam

For the actual story, see Numbers 22:21–39 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022%3A21-39&version=NIV

Episode 44: Upside Down and Inside Out

Summary

Christmas, a season for overeating, arguing with your parents about politics, and…wearing masks? Join Em and Jesse as they talk about topsy turvy Medieval holidays like the Feast of Fools! Also we talk a little about the Purge film/TV franchise, Rabelais, and Foucault. Sorry to the two people who follow us who are not excited about poststructuralism.

Annotations

1/ It was actually episode 42.

For liminality, see episode 18 note 8 (and episode 19 note 7, which sends you to episode 18 note 8).

2/ The tradition of throwing candy originates in a tradition called an “aufruf” (pronounced “oof roof”)–right before a groom (or in non-Orthodox temples, a couple) got married, they would get called up to read from the Torah–this is typically done at the Shabbat before the wedding. Afterward people in the congregation throw candy at him/them. I don’t know exactly how we started doing this for bnai mitzvot in our temple, except that it happened at some point in the two and a half years between my bat mitzvah and my brother’s bar mitzvah.

3/ The Purge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purge (it’s actually five films, a two-season TV series, and a plan for more films.)

4/ Mikhail Bakhtin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin
See Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World for his theories of the carnivalesque and grotesque. https://www.amazon.com/Rabelais-His-World-Mikhail-Bakhtin/dp/0253203414/

5/ François Rabelais (born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553): episode 39 (on libraries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Rabelais

6/ For more on Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge, see literally everything he ever wrote, and especially Discipline and Punish and the book Power / Knowledge (which was not *by* Foucault but collects a lot of stuff he said).

7/ Photo of trussed up skeletons from Halloween

Inflatable spiders and trussed up skeletons.

8/ The Three Living and the Three Dead: see episode 2(!), the image at the top of the notes and note 35.

I am too depressed to footnote Jesse’s predictions about the VA elections. (Jesse: Glenn Youngkin-R won.)

9/ Foucault’s power structure idea is laid out pretty plainly around page 90 of A History of Human Sexuality, vol. 1.

10/ Actually, it was episode 10, on icons and iconography. See note 4. They’ve been dismantling the pedestal of the Lee statue, and they found a time capsule that they just opened. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/22/us/virginia-lee-time-capsule-open-trnd/index.html
Here’s the statue coming down: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1035004639/virginia-ready-to-remove-massive-robert-e-lee-statue-following-a-year-of-lawsuit

11/ Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495

12/ We talked about Jean Gerson (and usually Joan of Arc) in episode 6 notes 25, 27, and 33 and also episode 8 note 9 and episode 9 note 23.

13/ Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England https://www.amazon.com/Masking-Medieval-England-Studies-Performance-dp-1138257850/dp/1138257850/

14/ For more on St Francis and Christmas, see episode 23 note 7.

15/ A headdress/mask/helmet from Yorkshire, British Isles c8000 BCE housed in the British Museum. Made of antler (the skull and antlers of a red deer stag): https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1953-0208-1

16/ Buffy, season 2 episode 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer)

17/ We ARE in the late-post-Middle Ages!

Episode 43: Our Bagpipes Go to Eleven

Summary

More on music! (Shoutout to episode 40/music part 1, which came out a while ago now.) We talk about dulcimers and gitterns, viols and tabors, Jew’s harps and gamelans, and Jesse’s favorite–the bagpipe. Also tuning, temperament, aaaand a little Monty Python.

Annotations

1/ The Early Instrument Database at Case Western Reserve University, Ross Duffin.

2/ Dulcimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcimer

AKA “A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw”: I think the lyre just feels more like a post-Raphielite instrument.

Ditzy Dulcimer.

Dulcimer, lyre, and lute, the Ferrara Ensemble directed by Crawford Young playing an excerpt from “Fortuna Desperata.” (See website for full citation.)

3/ Gittern

Gittern with harp, Ferrara Ensemble playing an excerpt from “Chanconeta Tedescha” (see website for full citation).

Workshop medieval gittern https://youtu.be/eA4CtdXnWWs

4/ Viola de gamba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viol

A quick google suggests that $10k might be on the cheap side for a contrabassoon. Possibly because most of the ones that are made are professional quality.

5/ Jew’s Harp / Jaw Harp / Mouth Harp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew%27s_harp

Doctor Who Theme Song. Fun fact: Although it sounds like a theremin, the Doctor Who theme song was actually produced by recording a single plucked string and then cutting the tape up, putting it back together in weird ways, playing it faster or slower, etc.–a technique known as musique concrète. Considering that it was done in 1963, this was considered pretty innovative. (Also, belated happy Doctor Who day to everyone–it’s November 23, right around the time I am editing this.)

6/ Tabor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabor_(instrument)

Brave Sir Robin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8 (sorry about the lack of pixels, apparently every Monty Python clip was uploaded to the internet around 2006). (Contains a timbril.)

7/ Gamelan

Em makes reference to the unification of Indonesia. The short version of the story here is that much like China, India, and French Indochina, Indonesia was once a bunch of independent kingdoms/sultanates/what-have-yous. Like India and French Indochina, it was forced to think of itself as one place rather than a large island archipelago (actually, the largest, with over 17,000 islands!) by colonial interests, in this case the Dutch and the Dutch East India Company (see also episode 11, note 30 for passing mention of them). Some of these, uh, sedimented countries stayed together after the colonials pulled out (e.g., Indonesia), some fell apart (e.g., French Indochina), and some stayed mostly together but with a few notable pieces leaving the main (e.g., India).

8/ Xylophone

The xylophone is also mentioned in nearly every alphabet book for children because English has so few words that start with X (or at least such words that have been deemed appropriate for children).

Technically, I (Em) played the broken vibraphone in the marching band–when a vibraphone is broken or unplugged, it turns into a xylophone, I think.

Balafon

9/ The organ! This is Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565: https://youtu.be/Nnuq9PXbywA

Link to Nancy Kito: https://twitter.com/EnsLeonarda/status/1241870110874308608?s=20

Video of someone hitting “transpose” at the wrong moment: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/messiah-organ-fail/

10/ Jesse’s favorite: The Medieval Bagpipe

Hurryken Productions

More bagpipes!

Here are some images of medieval bagpipes (and sound from a modern recreation) from the Case Western site: https://caslabs.case.edu/medren/medieval-instruments/bagpipe-medieval/

[Bagpipes are double reed instruments, like the bassoon and the oboe (also the heckelphone and the sarrusophone). Of these, obviously the bassoon is the best. As a former bassoonist, I wish I could say this was the first time that I’ve had a conversation where I cast scorn and/or aspersions on the bagpipe, but it is not.–Em]

11/ Horns

Carnyx: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnyx
Carnyx, performed by Abraham Cupeiro.

Cow horn

The SNL skit! Jesse teaches this in class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrpQVSVa2QI

12/ Oud and lute song from the Cantigas de Santa Maria (written in medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile (1221–84) and often attributed to him). Here are images from a manuscript of the Cantigas (and scroll down to hear the duet from the episode): https://thedutchluthier.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/cantigas-de-santa-maria/

Oud and lute, performed by Sequentia.

For more on Alfonso X, who wrote a song about a ferret he owned as a pet and really loved, see episode 29, note 22.

13/ Sequentia is an awesome group and has done a lot of work on Hildegard’s music: https://www.sequentia.org/projects/hildegard.html

We’ve discussed Hildegard in episodes 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 26, 29, 30, and 32. She’s important. (Wow, I need to index her better.–Em)

14/ Medieval Dances (performed by Ensemble Chominciamento di Gioia http://www.futurestyle.org/classic/archives-classic/c/chominciamento-di-gioia.htm )

15/ Tuning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_tuning

16/ Temperament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament

17/ Quarter tone scale from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_tone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_tone_system

18/ Ross Duffin How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)
https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201

19/ Hurrian Hymn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs
https://youtu.be/Tx6v0t5I5SM (performed by Michael Levy)

20/ Bach Prelude in three temperaments: https://youtu.be/kRui9apjWAY (performed by John Moraitis on the spinet)

Spinet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinet

Episode 42: Candy Is Dandy

Summary

Do you want some candy, little girl? Of course you do, it’s delicious. But what was candy a thousand years ago? Turns out at least some of it was kind of similar to what we get today.

Annotations

Some book recommendations:

Steven Epstein, An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000–1500.

Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.

If you are downloading this podcast on 11/16/21, you can get a free copy of a journal with two of Em’s weird speculative fiction poem-things here. For the week following 11/16, it will be on sale for under $4 CDN (so like $3 freedom bucks) for a week. Please consider downloading (and if you do, leave a review)!

1/ John Mirk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mirk
Mirk’s Festial or Liber Festivalis (The quote about getting souls out of purgatory is in the middle of page 270):
https://archive.org/details/mirksfestialcoll01mirkuoft/page/270/mode/2up

17:30 I (Em) actually didn’t know there was a tie between how many people say kaddish for you and how fast you get into heaven–there is another tradition that you don’t say kaddish for someone after a year except on the anniversary of their death, because to do so suggests that you think they’re in hell. Meaning that if you sin so much that you go to hell and one year’s worth of kaddish doesn’t get you out, it’s going to take a while, I guess.

2/ 21:xx: French toast, or pain perdu. Looking this up isn’t too easy, but a number of websites claim that bread in “pain perdu” is lost because they are using stale bread (bread that is lost, i.e. dead) and bringing it back to life. The name in English is occasionally suggested to have come from a guy named Joseph French (so similar to German chocolate cake).

3/ Apicius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius

The recipe is: “Aliter dulcia: siligineos rasos frangis, et buccellas maiores facies. in lacte infundis, frigis, ex [in] oleo, mel superfundis et inferes.” For the recipe, scroll down to the number 302 (the number is in parenthesis in the left margin): https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16439/pg16439-images.html#bk7

4/ “Sweetbread is something else.” For those who didn’t watch Silence of the Lambs as children, sweetbreads are the thymus and pancreas.

The pudding is from British Library manuscript Harley 279 (c1430). Here is a blog that includes a transcription: https://coquinaria.nl/en/strawberye/

5/ The Middle Ages also used almond milk. And yet not mentioned in Dante’s Inferno. . . [Yes, more on this will be upcoming in a future episode!–Jesse]

6/ In VN, this drink is called nuoc mia and it is much better than Gatorade when you’re out and about on a hot day.

7/ Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant”:  https://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/

8/ Robbie McCauley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_McCauley and a brief excerpt of Sugar https://vimeo.com/131050638

9/ Ama Ata Aidoo (b1942) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_Ata_Aidoo

Aidoo’s play Anowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anowa

10/ This recipe is from British Library MS Harley 2378. Here is the recipe “To Clarifie Sugar”: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2378_f155r
Here is the recipe I read, “To Make Penydes” (begins at the bottom of folio 157v): http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2378_f157v

11/ Here is an article about child labor and the chocolate industry.
The decision (see here, from June 2021)is a little different than Em represented it–basically, six adult survivors of child trafficking/slave labor were denied the opportunity to sue Nestle USA and Cargill under a law called the Alien Torte Statute based on the fact that they didn’t establish that the companies made major operational decisions in the US. In the words of the great philosopher Dan Le Sac, “Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.”

12/ Here is a fun article on the history of licorice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7125727/

The OED’s etymology for licorice helpfully tells us that the “Greek γλυκύρριζα (latinized glycyrrhiza by Pliny), < γλυκύς sweet + ῥίζα root.”

13/ Ann Reardon using marshmallow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkjUBcjlaz4

Episode 41: I’ll Get You, My Pretty

Summary

It’s spooky season! Witches have been around–and feared–since the Middle Ages. We discuss their history, unexpected ties to Judaism, and their little (or large and wolfy) dogs, too.

Annotations

1/ See also: Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett. Book 1 of the collected Sandman (I think they get summoned in issue 2) by Neil Gaiman.

2/ Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett.

For more on the inquisition, et al, see episode 9, starting at note 18.

3/ The witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28.

4/ Morgan Le Fay. We talk more about Merlin, Morgause, et al in a future episode.

5/ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, now a major motion picture (and future episode, stay tuned).

6/ In Terry Pratchett, the witches’ roles are typically given as “the maiden, the mother, and the other one.”

7/ For more on the Jewish hat (Judenhutte), see episode 10, note 39.

For more on the robes, see episode 25, note 19 on the Lucerne Passion Play and its director, Renward Cysat.

8/ Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography.

9/ Episode 29 is our episode on dogs, and episode 30 is our episode on cats.

10/ For more on the iconography of Jewish women, see Sara Lipton, “Where Are the Gothic Jewish Women? On the Non-Iconography of the Jewess in the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” Jewish History, vol. 22, no. 1/2, The Elka Klein Memorial Volume (2008), pp. 139–177.

Also see episode 25, note 15.

11/34:40: C.f. Henry IV, pt. 1:

Falstaff: Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a
thief.
Prince: No, thou shalt.
Falstaff: Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I’ll be a brave
judge.
Prince: Thou judgest false already. I mean thou shalt
have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a
rare hangman.
Falstaff: Well, Hal, well, and in some sort it jumps
with my humor as well as waiting in the court, I
can tell you.
Prince: For obtaining of suits?
Falstaff: Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman
hath no lean wardrobe.

12/ Witches of Subeshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies

13/ For more on a lot of the following information, see Davidson and Canino “Wolves, Witches, and Werewolves: Lycanthropy and Witchcraft from 1423 to 1700,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2.4 (8) (1990), pp. 47–73.

Also Charles Zika, The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe.

Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500.

14/ 42:30: James I–Lore did a good podcast on this–see episode 138 (Foresight).

Dr Who episode “The Witchfinders.”

15/ The early modern sources I’ve mentioned include:
Flagellum Maleficorum by Petrus Mamoris (roughly 1462).
De Lamiis et Phitonicis mulieribus by Ulrich Molitor (published in 1489).
The vastly more famous Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer (1486).

16/ The 1460 sermon preached by Pierre le Broussart is discussed in Zika 61–63. The images are also in Zika.

17/ 1:09:xx Witches in films seemed to be a major thing in the 80s and early 90s, coinciding with the working 80s boss bitch and the mommy wars…

Episode 40: To Be Played at Maximum Volume

Summary

You may have heard someone say that music is in their bones, but is it really? Answer: Yes! (If you are a Neanderthal, anyway.) In fact, the earliest instrument we have found, dating from 50-60,000 years ago, is a flute made from the bone of a cave bear. In this episode, we’ll discuss instruments from the last ice age through to the 12th century CE, including the lute, the lyre, the dutar, the sitar, and the hurdy-gurdy!

Annotations

(Note: the title is a reference to something written on the sleeve of David Bowie’s seminal album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Don’t actually play this at maximum volume.)

1/ For what it’s worth, here is a video of a cat playing a theremin. And what the heck, here is a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the theremin. [WUT. –Jesse]

2/ Bone Flute full recording. Check it out–the video includes a demonstration of how the bone in question was restored.

3/ The Double Flute (Aulos) full recording. The guy playing the flutes (Barnaby Brown) gives an interesting history of the instrument in the full version.

“You know those guitars that are, like, double guitars?”

Aulos! Here’s the Wikipedia page with some nice pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulos and here’s an image of a tiny statue/figurine at Delphi (with straps arounds his cheeks for support): https://www.worldhistory.org/uploads/images/1021.jpg?v=1615882502
https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1021/bronze-aulos-player-figurine/

4/ Here’s the Homeric Hymn to Hermes that describes him inventing the lyre. It’s in the second and third paragraphs–it’s the first thing he does after being born.

Lyre of Ur, built and played by Luc Vanlaere. Check it out, the lyre is quite a beautiful object. The harpist is a Belgian, living in Bruges, who has his own “free entry” theater in which he gives free (donation-supported) shows three times a day, five days a week. Here he is written up on VisitBruges.be (he doesn’t seem to have a website).

If you are interested in modern Western composers who use halftones (formally: semitones), check out Igor Stravinsky or Arnold Schoenberg. Also, this wikipedia page has an explanation of temperament and Pythagorian tuning, among other things, and might be helpful if we have confused you.

5/ Sirens were like angry bird-women. They sang to Odysseus.

See also episode 29, note 14 for images of sirens as funeral monuments, holding tortoise shell lyres. Here are the images again:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_Siren_at_the_National_Archaeological_Museum_of_Athens_on_7_May_2018.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_Siren._4th_cent._B.C.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Siren.jpg
(The Siren in the final image also holds a “plectrum,” used to pluck the lyre.)

6/ Michael Levy plays the lyre. He is playing an original composition called “Mount Olympus.” You can check out his full album of lyre music here.

Michael Levy plays the first written melody.

“Der Holle Rache” is the Queen of the Night’s famous aria. Here’s an excellent version.

7/ The ektara, played by Mrighanavi.

More on the ektara.

8/ Dutar, performed by Alimjan. This is a traditional Uyghur song.

“The left side of China.” Also known as the West side. I don’t know, guys, I’m going to blame this one on being left handed? Maybe? Weirdly (or not weirdly, I dunno), in the video above, Alimjan is sitting next to a table full of Uyghur food, including the delicious bread that I remember from the last time I visited Beijing over a decade ago.

I would love to put a link to a Uyghur-supporting charity, but I can’t find any that seem well rated. Amnesty International might be a good choice.

“Krazy kiya re” played on the zitar (guitar/sitar) by Niladri Kumar. You should definitely go look at this video–the instrument itself is just incredible. And right around the 2:14 mark, dude turns into the Indian Slash.

9/ Shamisen, played by Sumie Kaneko.

See episode 16, note 7 for more shamisen discussion and videos.

10/ Oud, played by Osama Badawe.

The Ood are a race of weird aliens in Doctor Who. Unrelated. [Yay. –Jesse]

11/ Lute, played by Paul O’Dette.

For more on Alfonso’s Cantigas (and his ferret), see episode 29, note 22.

For the image discussed, see:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cantiga_120_baldosa.jpg

Here’s a large black and white version of the image: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cantigas/images/12.gif

12/ Hurdy gurdy, played by Matthais Loibner.

13/ Epigonian, played by Lina Palera.

14/ Psaltery, played by Tessey Ueno.

15/ Bowed psaltery, played by James Jones.

Episode 38: Take a Look, It’s in a Book (or a scroll, or a tablet, or…)

Summary

“When I was in library school, we never discussed outright conquest as a method of collection development.” In which we discuss books (and other recordkeeping methods), the growth of reading in conjunction with the consolidation of manuscripts, and also Em is a nerd about classification systems.

Sources

Paul Saenger “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367–414.

Paul Saenger Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford University Press link.

Lambros Malafouris How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. MIT Press link.

Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World. Amazon link.

Annotations

1/ The “map of a cat” story was in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. He has come up before on this podcast too–see episode 2, note 24.

2/ Melvil Dui’s issues could probably fill a three-volume series. Book 1: the problems with the Dewey Decimal System. Book 2: Spelling. Book 3: Sexism. Yanno.

Besides Dewey, other common classification systems are Library of Congress Classification (my favorite, despite its faults), Universal Decimal Classification, and Colon Classification (used a lot in India). I believe there may have once been a system called Cutter Classification, which is now only, or largely, extant in “Cutter numbers,” which are the numbers that get put after your classification number to shift it over on the shelf and make it unique while still keeping it in the category you need. Chinese and Russian libraries have their own systems. –Em

Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things begins with this famous passage:

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought–our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography–breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the very thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

3/ “More than twelve.” LOL there’s about 28, or 30 if you count the Wisconsin Historical Society archives and UW’s archives and records management. [Wow, awesome!–JN]

4/ Virtual unfolding! Here is the scientific article by J. Dambrogio et al explaining the process: “Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography.” and here is an article with a simpler explanation of the scientific paper above: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972607811/reading-a-letter-thats-been-sealed-for-more-than-300-years-without-opening-it — this was recently published when we recorded this episode.

And here is an article about scanning fragile papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum, where a private library of 2,000 scrolls was buried by Mt Vesuvius. (Pompeii wasn’t the only town buried!) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358/

In episode 32, note 6 we discussed the use of modern technology to read palimpsests. Here’s a fun article on students doing this for a project: https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-students-discover-hidden-15th-century-text-medieval-manuscripts

5/ For general info on Nippur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippur

6/ Ebla tablets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla_tablets

7/ Hattusa (see the section on the royal archives): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa

Em: Nowadays, a colophon refers to a page at the end of a work that gives information on the typeface the work is printed in.

8/ Tiglath-Pileser I (reigned c.1115 to 1077 B.C.E.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiglath-Pileser_I

9/ Ashurbanipal (reigned c. 668 BCE–631 BCE); his library: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Ashurbanipal

10/42:xx The Enuma Elis, we have mentioned before, is the Babylonian creation epic on which the Torah’s creation story may have been partially based. See episode 4, note 3 for more!

11/ Provenance is very important to scholars (and it theoretically ensures that nothing was stolen). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provenance

12/ 53ish: My (Em’s) librarian mind is a little blown by the curses. All the libraries I’ve ever worked in used something called tattle tape. Curses seem much better.

Jesse: It might be time for them to start trying some curses! These are mostly in Casson, pages 10–13.

13/ All hail banned books week! List of banned books: https://bannedbooksweek.org/banned-books-week-2021-books-unite-us/

And Tango Makes Three has frequently been banned: https://bannedbooksweek.org/banned-spotlight-and-tango-makes-three/
Here is its Amazon site: https://www.amazon.com/Tango-Makes-Three-Classic-Board/dp/1481446959

14/ I do want to give a shout out to Handel’s Alexander’s Feast, although I’m not sure that this is what Alexander had in mind.
Here’s the Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/3Q7efFg6OJ5ePGnLlTAvgg?si=aUw7XuLcTcSzU0ICCLvErg&dl_branch=1

Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander%27s_Feast_(Handel)

Episode 37: Child’s Play

Summary

1560s painting depicting children playing.
The 1560 painting “Children’s Games,” painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Question: What did kids do before Gameboy?
Answer: Everything.

Annotations

Important works:

Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children.

Barbara Hanawalt’s The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Children’s Games.

1/ Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman, is the book about how the French raise children. Achtung Baby, by Sara Zaske, is a similar book about Germany. There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather tackles the subject from a Scandinavian point of view, and The Danish Way of Parenting will help you bring up tiny happy vikings. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, is about how Asian (Asian American?) mothers push their offspring to academic success. There’s basically an endless number of these books purporting to tell parents the same secrets: how to get your kids to eat vegetables, do their homework, and occasionally let you talk to your spouse without interrupting so you don’t entirely lose your mind and sense of self. In my professional opinion, some of it works, some of it doesn’t, and whether you lose your sense of self is entirely up to you.

Jesse: The “weird” (and horrible) part is how integral colonialist and imperialist perspectives are to a lot of the views of childrearing that we are discussing at the beginning of this episode. A breathtaking sense of entitlement is required for anyone to hold the incredibly patronizing view that someone (probably a white, western woman) is “discovering” child rearing techniques used by non-western cultures (or even western cultures of which the aforementioned woman is not a part!). It doesn’t matter how many times the woman acknowledges her privilege, the whole concept is still colonialist nonsense.

Em: I looked up the chapter I’m referring to, and the writer’s claim is a bit more circumscribed–she merely suggests that births in small-group hunter-gatherer societies (which, as she describes them, are basically egalitarian utopias) are painless, relaxed, guided only by the wise elder women of the tribe, and also lead to babies that develop better moral sense than the poor babies whose mothers have things like epidurals and C-sections available. Relatedly, please, if you are ever looking at someone with a PhD and feeling intimidated, remember that there are a ton of PhD-having people who are basically idiots.

2/ Jesse: I just went to see Free Guy (with Ryan Renolds and Taika Waititi), and there is a nice discussion about the importance and fun of swings.

3/ Pet rock.

4/ A roulette wheel actually has 37, 38, or 39 spaces, depending on if you are playing the single/double/triple zero version. Please credit this podcast when you win $2 off a guy in a pub.

5/ In Terry Pratchett’s Snuff, young Sam (Commander Sam Vimes’s son) very happily collects animal poo.

6/ Hula hoops are most closely related to an Australian exercise hoop made from bamboo brought back to the US in the 1950s, but hoops have been used for various reasons throughout history, the hoop dance being only one example. Check out the Tiktok of hoop dancer James Jones for a sample.

The toy/toys mentioned in Gilgamesh is/are actually called “pukku” and “mikku.” They appear in tablet XII, which contains a story of Enkidu glimpsing the underworld, as a sort of preview of his death at the end of the poem. Nobody is entirely sure what they are (at least, per The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts, vol. 2, A. R. George, Oxford University Press, 2003, see p. 898). Based on context, a mikku is something made from a long stick, and a pukku is made from a tree trunk. So hoop and stick is a possible translation, or drum/drumstick, or any number of other things. Other poems describe people fighting battles as “clash[ing] together like pukku and mekku” or send[ing] heads rolling like heavy pukkus.” This issue comes up more than you’d think in literature, where we often have no idea what certain things that were very familiar to the authors were, just because the world has changed so much. Bill Bryson mentions a 19th century shaker that sat on Victorian tables alongside salt and pepper–no one knows what it contained.

7/ Cripple Mr Onion is actually a card game similar in some respects to poker and blackjack (summary with rules here).

8/ The Last Dance includes a famous scene of Michael Jordan playing “quarters” (the game where you toss a quarter close to–but not touching–a wall, and the closest player wins).

9/ Em: When I say “we” were prevented from playing with matches, I mean me and my siblings–Jesse, as far as we know, was a perfect child who did not try such a thing. Or didn’t get caught.

10/ The Seventh Seal contains the most famous depiction of a medieval dance line.

11/ The Manneken Pis. Brussels is super proud of this statue for some reason. [Jesse: I mean, it’s pretty cool!]

Jeanneke Pis: gender equality for the win!

12/ Relevant to our discussion of knucklebones, Jesse randomly found these dice made of actual human bones. Super weird and creepy, with possible consent issues! Not available in several states! (Em forgot to add this in while actually editing the episode, so we’ll just leave it here as a final note.)

Episode 36: Sweet Child of Mine

Summary

So you lived through birth…now what? Despite the popular image of the Middle Ages putting children to work the instant they were capable of holding a tool, Medieval childhood was actually pretty similar to modern childhood. No iPads, but people bought cute clothes for their kids, lots of different types of toys, sent them to school where they learned Latin (and riddles). Join Em and Jesse to learn about childhood!

Notes

Important sources for this episode:

Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Children-Nicholas-Orme/dp/0300097549

Christopher Cannon’s From Literacy to Literature: England, 1300-1400 https://www.amazon.com/Literacy-Literature-England-1300-1400/dp/0198779437

1/ Kid President isn’t a kid anymore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_Novak

2/ Marie Antoinette and Her Children (1787) , by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/656654) Vigee Le Brun painted a number of portraits of Marie Antoinette, and achieved full membership in the Academy. (Although she wasn’t the first woman to be awarded this honor–there were a number who gained Academy membership before the French revolution.)

For more on Le Brun, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élisabeth_Vigée_Le_Brun and Evangelia Karvouni (2014), “Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun: A Historical Survey of a Woman Artist in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 15(2), 268–285, available at https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1765&context=jiws

3/ True facts, the day that I (Em) was editing this, I calmed a baby by singing “Mack the Knife.” You probably don’t want me to sing to your children. [Jesse: That sounds awesome!]

4/ Coventry Carol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIvH5GdY4JE&ab_channel=drwestbury

5/ Henry Percy, called “Hotspur” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Percy_(Hotspur)) is a major character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, pt. 1 (and also a real person who predated Shakespeare considerably).

6/ John Ball (c.1338–1381) was a priest who played a very important role in the Peasants’ Revolt (1381).

7/ Also, “sparrows” and “arrows” are an obvious English pairing if you want to rhyme.

8/ We have recorded a series of episodes on England Before 1066 in which the Exeter Riddles feature prominently, so look for those episodes in the future! For more on Exeter Riddles in the meantime, see the riddles and the answers and a nice essay (from the British Library) on the riddles: https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/the-exeter-book-riddles-in-context

9/ I (Jesse) had a lot of fun running through some cute Duolingo Latin exercises. It’s definitely Classical pronunciation (“c” always pronounced as “k,” “g” as in “go,” and “v” as “w”).

10/ Sorry to all German speakers. Also, side note, since we recorded this I discovered that John Linnell, one of the They Might Be Giant guys, has put out an album in Latin. It’s called Roman Songs, and you can find many on YouTube. Or click here to listen to “Hanc Quoque Est Res” (that this is also the case). (Side note, I [Em] have studied a lot of languages, including French, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hebrew, German/Yiddish…and Ancient Greek is one of the most difficult. Also Russian.)

11/ Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was famously very good at Latin and Greek and very proud of this (hence his small dig at Shakespeare in a poem he wrote to honor Shakespeare!).

12/ Shakespeare’s father was a glove maker who used a fine white leather. See “whittawer.”

13/ N.B. Per the joke about crazy uncles: all my uncles are either not crazy or not on Facebook, which is pretty much the same thing. [Jesse: Yes, same!]

14/ See our episode 34 on Universities!

15/ Aristotle’s Politics Book 8. Here’s the Perseus project link to the translation (Politics 8.1340b).

16/ For the Roger Edgeworth complaint (preaching around 1539-40 in Bristol, England after the dissolution of the monasteries) see Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children, p. 172.

17/ The scene we’re discussing from Margery Kempe’s Book (also The Book of Margery Kempe comes at the end of section 30, immediately before section 31. In the annotated edition edited by Barry Windeatt, see pp. 177–78. Here’s a Google Books link to the page: https://books.google.com/books?id=LypF-lv_ZXgC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=margery+kempe+baby+jesus+doll&source=bl&ots=GNoXQ97D8t&sig=Ltw40747l9-i7FvJcx2zc09MVeU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvrfGCzbHfAhVCc98KHaEXA-EQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=margery%20kempe%20baby%20jesus%20doll&f=false
And here’s an Amazon link.