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 47: There’s GNO Business Like Show Business

Synopsis

Manichaeism: The number one major world religion you’ve never heard of. In order to understand it and its prophet, Mani, we need to understand Gnosticism, a complex and subtle philosophy regarded as a heresy by the Christians. The short version is, “[i]n the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move” (Douglas Adams). For the long version, you better listen to this episode.

References

(We get no kickbacks from links–they’re for information only.)

Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Christianities-Battles-Scripture-Faiths/dp/0195182499/

Iain Gardner, The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani. https://www.amazon.com/Founder-Manichaeism-Rethinking-Life-Mani/dp/1108499074

Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, Vol. 1). https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Mysticism-Origins-Presence-Christian/dp/0824514041

Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History. https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Christianity-History-Kevin-Madigan/dp/0300216777/

Annotations

1/ See episode 7 note 10 and episode 26 note 9 for more on Hedwig.

2/ Lil Nas X includes a short excerpt from Symposium in Greek at the beginning of the video for MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name) (see around 1:11 in). If you’re wondering–yes, Em absolutely did text Jesse to ask what it said when she watched the video for the first time.

Here’s a nice breakdown of the references in the video (including a shout out to Hedwig): https://time.com/5951024/lil-nas-x-montero-video-symbolism-explained/

3/ Plato and Aristotle were both very influential during this time period, but I believe Aristotle was more influential in the Muslim world, while Plato was more influential in the Christian one. The podcast The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps has touched on this a bit.

If you’re really interested in the forms and Plato’s various other ideas, a good place to start is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on him here.

4/ This is The School of Athens by Raphael:

The School of Athens is a painting by Raphael depicting nearly every popular Greek philosopher hanging out and arguing.

This is not a pipe:

A painting of a pipe with the French text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" written underneath.

(The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte)

5/ Gnosis means knowledge. This is relatively unrelated to what Gnostics believe, which is…a lot of stuff. Primarily, because of evil, the material world exists, and thus the material world was created as an error. The “real” real world is the spiritual world.

6/ Nag Hammadi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

7/ For more on mysticism and asceticism, check out episodes 5 and 6.

8/ The Bible Code. Not a novel, just one of the dumber ideas of our time. The author, among other things, suggests that the code he finds in the Torah was put there by extraterrestrials (who also created DNA), and that there is a steel obelisk buried near the Dead Sea that might have more info.

I love a good obelisk, but I will believe this when I see it.

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

10/ Origen of Alexandria (c.184–c. 253): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

11/ Augustine of Hippo (354–430): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo

12/ Mani (c.216–274/277): founder of Manicheanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet)

Iain Gardner, The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani https://www.amazon.com/Founder-Manichaeism-Rethinking-Life-Mani/dp/1108499074 (The long quote is from page 2.)

13/ The Passion of the Christ: a film by Mel Gibson. As distinct from The Last Temptation of Christ, which featured David Bowie as Pilate and was therefore by default a superior film. (J/k: I, Em, who wrote this, have never seen either in their entirety.)

14/ The mother of Constantine was, of course, St. Helen of Constantinople (now Istanbul), aka the Empress Helena.

Obligatory upon the mention of Constantinople (now Istanbul): https://youtu.be/xo0X77OBJUg

15/ “We’ve recently learned the value of charismatic leaders.” Months later, I have absolutely no idea what this was about. It’s clearly a little dig about something, but what?

16/ In case you missed it earlier, Manichaeism’s Wikipedia page is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

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 39: Où est la bibliothèque?

Summary

What was the one weird habit of the Ptolemys that librarians hated? What trick did early indexers use for organizing collections? And what major library lost some really important documents–and tried to keep it a secret? From Alexandria to the Medieval monastery, let’s talk about the evolution of libraries over the course of a thousand years.

(Title source.)

Annotations

Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, https://www.amazon.com/Libraries-Ancient-World-Lionel-Casson/dp/0300097212

Special Issue: The Medieval Library, French Studies 70.2 (April 2016).

1/ How was papyrus made? We only sort of know: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/papyrus-collection/how-ancient-papyrus-was-made
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/papy/hd_papy.htm
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/23/67/

2/ Indeed, Plato discusses wax tablets in the context of memory in Theaetetus.

3/ Library of Alexandria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

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

5/ Em is talking about the Hinman Collator!

6/ Callimachus of Cyrene and his Pinakes (lists or tables): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callimachus

7/ [36:xx] Just to be clear, people who read Chinese/Thai/other unspaced languages as their native languages don’t read aloud to know where the breaks between words are–that’s a technique for us second language learners. I can’t make any specific statements about the evolution of silent reading in those cultures. –Em

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, https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=683

8/ British Library. Here are the British Library manuscript collections, and here are the specifics about the Cotton collection.

9/ [46:xx] “Caesar was assassinated about two weeks ago.” Apparently we recorded this just after the Ides of March (the 15th). Wow.

10/ [49:xx] Just to be clear, a codex is what we think of as a book. It’s typical to only really hear the word “codex” when talking about Mayan Codices (like the Dresden Codex–obviously the place has nothing to do with the Mayans and everything to do with where the book is held). But a codex just means a book.

Codex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex (mentions Martial’s praise of the codex)

11/ [52:xx] To be fair, Jews still write the Torah and Megillot on scrolls, but we also have the Talmud, which is written as a codex bound up together with its commentaries (actually, surrounded by them). So Jews didn’t totally miss the boat when it comes to the new technology.

12/ This commentary from English doctor Martin Lister is described in John O’Brien, “Epilogue: Medieval Libraries in the Sixteenth Century: A Dream of Order and Knowledge,” French Studies 70.2 (April 2016): 228–238; 228.

13/ Cambridge University Library lost two of Darwin’s notebooks in November 2000: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55044129 #embarrassing

14/ “Medieval libraries are studied as collections of books, but much less frequently as collections of ideas” (159). In Luke Sunderland, “Introduction: medieval libraries, history of the book, and literature,” French Studies 70.2 (April 2016): 159–170.

15/ [1:13:xx] Spoiler alert for Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, published in 1983.

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.

Episode 35: The Extremely Risky Behavior Literally All of Your Ancestors Engaged In

Summary

Join Em and Dr. Jesse as we play a little game we like to call, “How Early in History Could Em Have Had Children and Survive?” The answer may surprise you! We also cover Mary’s girdle, (some of) the life and times of Dr. James Barry and Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, childbirth-related saints, the masculinization of obstetrics, and debunk a few myths about parental love in a time of high infant mortality.

Annotations and Corrections

1/ One exhibit from the National Library of Medicine mentions a c-section in 1500 CE where the mother lived and went on to have five more children, and the baby lived to be 77 years old. In this case, the husband (who was a sow gelder) operated on his wife. However in other situations, the woman might live, but only for a month afterward, which I would call, mm, a qualified success at best.

Jesse: Wow, I was off to a rocky start! They all died? Anyhow, James Barry (1789–1865) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon)

For more on a trans individual potentially identifying as (or being identified as) intersex, see episode 26 note 14 on Eleno / Elena de Céspedes. See also Israel Burshatin, “Written on the body: slave or Hermaphrodite in sixteenth-century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999): 420–456.

Episode 26 note 14 also mentions Brother Marinos (mentioned later in this podcast) and Herculine Barbin, who was intersex (female identified) and a lesbian.

2/ We talked about Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) at some length in episode 2, I think! He’s not in the notes, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

3/ For more on stones and lapidaries, see episode 26 (Valentine’s Day!) note 2.

4/ Saint Cyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyricus_and_Julitta

5/ Saint Margaret of Antioch! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_the_Virgin

Here are some great images:
https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/07/enter-the-dragon-happy-st-margarets-day.html
https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2015/06/04/the-pearl-in-the-dragons-belly/

6/ The Golden Legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Legend

7/ Cihuateteo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cihuateteo

8/ For more, see Monica Green’s Making Women’s Medicine Masculine (Amazon link).

9/ What Florence Nightingale actually wrote: “I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (Barry) was a woman . . . I should say that (Barry) was the most hardened creature I ever met.” (source)

10/ For the record, Henry VII and his wife (Elizabeth) had seven children.

11/ Here is the act we’re discussing (it’s working it’s way through congress): https://blackmaternalhealthcaucus-underwood.house.gov/Momnibus

12/ A clip from Conan’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend (they reference the guy who did her father’s birth certificate around 1:30–2:00 in, but don’t tell the whole story in this section; I believe this is the full episode this is excerpted from, and the whole story would be in there–plus he interviews Dave Grohl!) Also, in a statement on April 24, 2021 (Armenian Remembrance Day), Joe Biden referred to the Armenian genocide as a genocide! So that’s cool.

13/ Philippe Ariès was wrong, but here’s his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Ariès

Em: I wish I could provide a link to the article I reference, but honestly I have no idea what it might have been. Chalk that one up to sleep deprivation stealing my memory.

14/ Nicholas Orme’s Medieval Children (Amazon link).

15/ Genesis 21:16 (Also in 21:8 Isaac is weaned!)

Episode #34: Gaudeamus Itigur–Universities and Academics

Synopsis

We’ve just spent the month of June watching innumerable students progress across the stage in their long gowns. Where does the tradition of wearing black robes, mortarboards, and stoles/hoods as academic regalia come from? Hint: it’s the Middle Ages! Join Em and Jesse as we discuss the origins of universities (and some of the oldest ones) and learn about some of the earliest women scholars and professors.

Annotations and Comments

1/ You can find out more about rules for academic dress at Oxford here and for Cambridge here–both still have several styles of academic gown that are worn for exams, ceremonies, concerts and presentations, festivals, and the like. You’ll note that the Cambridge version is so complex it requires a flow chart to help students determine which gown is most appropriate.

Academic hoods!

Also, you’ll notice that Hogwarts requires students to wear robes. Yes, this is because they’re wizards (although that style of dress is also based on medieval clothing), but it’s also because of English schools (the real ones, for Muggles).

2/ Spoiler alert: the whole Dr. Jill Biden thing pretty much died about two days later.

3/ “Why are (male) surgeons still addressed as Mr?” tl;dr: it’s because surgeons and physicians trained separately and only physicians were allowed to use “doctor.” This was a time when physicians were educated gentlemen and surgeons were people who cut off your arm if you needed it cut off.

4/ Plato’s Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy

Aristotle’s Lyceum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum_(Classical) vs modern usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum

5/ As seen in the movies, the teachers at Hogwarts sit at the High Table. For more on the High Table tradition in academia in England, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_table

6/ Scholasticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism

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

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

The Phantom Tollbooth (GREAT BOOK!) https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Tollbooth-Norton-Juster/dp/0394820371

The Jane Austen novels that treat on university educations and the clergy most directly are Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.

7/ Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society, edited by William Courtenay and Jürgen Miethke, with the assistance of David Priest (Leiden: Brill, 2000). https://www.amazon.com/Universities-Schooling-Medieval-Society-Studies/dp/9004113517

8/ Joan of Arc was in episode 9.

9/ Relevant: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense

10/ True story about the two of us going to Italy in 2003(ish). I (Em) also threw up in a Cracker Barrel on this trip and have never been back to one. Uh. And then when we finally got to Italy, I think I lived on basically cappuccino and gelato. Somewhere I have a very small print of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, which was the painting that sticks out most in my mind of those we saw on the trip. Maybe that says a lot, because we also saw the Last Supper.

11/ Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius
De humani corporis fabrica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_humani_corporis_fabrica

12/ Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Cornaro_Piscopia

13/ Alessandro Macchiavelli (1693–1766) https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-feminism-bologna-findlen-082415.html

For more on all of the women mentioned here (and the forging) see Paula Findlen, “Inventing the Middle Ages: An Early Modern Forger Hiding in Plain Sight,” in For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton Vol. 1. edited by Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 871–896.

Laura Bassi (1711–1778): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bassi Actually, we say she lectured on “the liberal arts,” but specifically she was a physicist and mathematician! Specifically, she was super into Newtonian physics! And she married a (medical) doctor/fellow lecturer and had somewhere between eight and twelve children, five of whom lived to adulthood. She was the original working mom, is what I’m saying. #Goals

14/ Trotula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotula
For more, see The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, edited and translated by Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13496.html

Episode 33: Ooh, Crafty Lady

Summary

Part two of women as artisans. Join Em and Jesse as they discuss more about the work women did in the Middle Ages, including quite a lot about guilds and textiles, including spinning, embroidery, quilting, and silkworking. Find out which guilds accepted women, how were they treated, to what extent were they involved in local politics, and also some interesting notes about how Norwegian dried cod became popular among West African immigrants to the US.

Annotations

Recommended text for this episode:

Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett, “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale,” Signs 14.2 (Winter 1989): 474–501.

Also recommended:

Marian K. Dale, “The London Silkwomen of the Fifteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 1st ser., 4 (1933) 324–335.

Kay Lacey, “The Production of ‘Narrow Ware’ by Silkwomen in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century England,” Textile History 18.2 (1987): 187–204.

For the London Guild ordinances discussed in this episode, see Frances Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1: 229–30, 292, 312–14, 320.

1/ We have probably linked to this before, but check out this video for more on the Lord Mayor of London and how to get the job. Of interest, although the city of London has been around since Roman times, the office of mayor has only existed since 1189 (it converted to lord mayor in 1354). Although now lord mayors do not serve multiple consecutive terms, the first-ever mayor of London, Sir Henry FitzAlan (aka Sir Henry fitz Ailwin de Londonstane), served 24 consecutive terms.

2/ For the female Viking warrior, see episode 20, note 11. Also https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-reaffirm-famed-ancient-viking-warrior-was-biologically-female-180971541/

Boudica (Iceni–i.e. British Celtic–queen in the first century CE who fought the Roman forces in Britain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

In her introduction to her new translation of Beowulf, Maria Dahvana Headley discusses women as warriors and the ways in which the assumptions of (male) scholars have hidden them.

3/ For more on silkworking and women in guilds in England, see Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett. “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale,” Signs 14.2 (Winter 1989): 474–501.

For the London Guild ordinances discussed, see Frances Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 1: 229–30, 292, 312–14, 320.

See also all articles referenced above!

4/ For more on the way women’s work is devalued (and on the fact that the entrance of women into a field can devalue it): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html

5/ The women/men ratio comes from Kowaleski and Bennett (see above) and Maryanne Kowaleski, “The History of Urban Families in Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval History 14.1 (1988): 47–63, esp. 54–56.

6/ The information on women’s guilds in Europe comes largely from Kowaleski and Bennett (see above).

7/ The information on Ireland (and the value of a needle) is from Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, “Mere Embroiderers? Women and Art in Early Medieval Ireland,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 93–128, esp. 93.

8/ The information on the stole in Girona, Spain is from Pierre Alain Mariaux, “Women in the Making: Early Medieval Signatures and Artists’ Portraits (9th–12th c)” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 393–427, esp. 419.

9/ Gee’s Bend Quilts: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers
https://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-public-television-documentaries-quiltmakers-of-gees-bend/

10/ Alisa LaGamma, “The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design without End,” African Arts 42.1 (Spring 2009): 88–99, esp. 90–91. The artist I mention is El Anatsui (b.1944, Ghanian): https://art21.org/artist/el-anatsui/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2NyFBhDoARIsAMtHtZ77XuccoWzMzx-3uQgYcZUDdgfPm-qg6ilxCPvdWKtZ0Aczehc3Mn4aAsiZEALw_wcB

You can check out Bisa Butler’s quilts on her Instagram here and at the Art Institute here.

Kente cloth is specifically from Ghana; you can see a cool map of different fabrics of Africa here.

11/ For more on Yinka Shonibare, see episode 11, note 21 and episode 14, note 21. Also Google him! http://yinkashonibare.com/

For more on Dutch Wax Fabric (and Shonibare): https://hyperallergic.com/335472/how-dutch-wax-fabrics-became-a-mainstay-of-african-fashion/

12/ Minnesota, dried fish (pre-lutefisk), and Nigerian immigrants: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-to-find-lutefisk

For those not familiar, lutefisk is fish preserved with lye.

Concerning cod.

13/ Women working in wood and stone! See Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, “Mere Embroiderers? Women and Art in Early Medieval Ireland,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 93–128, esp. 99.

Also see: Nancy L. Wicker, “Nimble-Fingered Maidens in Scandinavia: Women as Artists and Patrons,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, ed. Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 865–902, esp. 867.

14/ 9,000-year-old linen woven with hemp from Çatalhöyük: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/centuries-old-fabric-found-in-catalhoyuk-61883

Medieval Viking and Early Modern Scandinavian cloth made with hemp: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep02686

The Shakespeare quote is from Twelfth Night I.iii

Episode 32: You Better Work, Beeyatch

Summary

Em and Jesse reminisce about libraries they have known, discuss scriptoria and book-making before the printing press, and talk about women who worked in various Medieval professional guilds, how they got there, and what they did with their money.

Annotations and Corrections

Recommended text for this episode: Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture. Edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

1/ Things that are artisanal: bread, cheese, beer, anything made in Brooklyn. . . .

2/ Christmas Book Flood!! Or the Jolabokaflod.
https://jolabokaflod.org/about/founding-story/
https://www.countryliving.com/life/a46204/jolabokaflod-iceland-christmas-reading-tradition/

3/ The relationship between Finnish and Hungarian is actually pretty complicated. The Finno-Uralic language family has nine language groupings in it; the major languages are, in order of number of speakers, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and then a bunch of minority languages that are spoken by very small groups (tribes, I guess), like Mari, Udmurt, Mordvin, and so on. These languages have some structural, lexicographical, and phonetic similarities, but how they’re actually related is still a subject of debate, as is the question of how they might be related to other Indo-European (or non-Indo-European languages). There are also linguists who claim that these are all just a bunch of weird languages that got stuck together and they’re not actually related, as well as weird theories that propose Finnish is related to Basque (probably the most famous isolate) or Hungarian is related to Etruscan.

4/ The movie was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Good movie, but, uh, wow. Some uncomfortable stuff in there, made more awkward because I was watching it in a kind of art house movie theatre with mostly a bunch of Boomers. . . .

5/ DIY Quarto https://www.folger.edu/publishing-shakespeare/diy-quarto

6/ This site has some examples of different handwriting styles.

Palaeography is the study of historic writing, handwriting systems, etc. We’re discussing medieval Palaeography!

For more on cats, scribes, and their fights, see episode 30 (especially notes 12 and 13), and also this blog: https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/paws-pee-and-mice-cats-among-medieval-manuscripts/

A palimpsest is text that’s hidden (invisible to the naked eye) under another text that’s been written over it. Modern technology (ultraviolet light/photography) has made palimpsests visible again without damaging the surface text.

7/ Luttrell Psalter (BL MS 42130): Here’s a link to f157r (that’s the front–recto–of page/leaf 157). Click forward to see amazing and delightful scenes from the Luttrell village, or backwards to see animals and Biblical scenes, and fantastic illuminations.
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f157r

Here is the link to f. 202v (that’s the back of page/leaf 202): “A knight with the Luttrell arms, mounted, armed, and attended by two women identified by their heraldic surcoats as Agnes Sutton (d. 1340) and Beatrice Le Scrope (the wife and the daughter-in-law of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell)” according to the British Library description. The knight is presumably Sir Geoffrey himself (with his wife and daughter-in-law, yay).
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f202v

See episode 8 note 24 for all the great info on the Master of Catherine of Cleves (active ca. 1435–60). Here’s the Morgan Library’s website on The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: https://www.themorgan.org/collection/Hours-of-Catherine-of-Cleves

Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry: This was created by the Limbourg Brothers.

The Lindisfarne Gospels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne_Gospels (Created by Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne.)

8/ Extensive reading: reading a lot of books. Intensive reading: reading one book really closely (many people read their bible this way, whatever their religion is).

9/Hildegard’s Ordo Virtutum was discussed in episode 6 (see notes 17 and 23).

10/ For more on women as illuminators, see Christine Havice, “Women and the Production of Art in the Middle Ages,” in Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts. Edited by Natalie Harris Bluestone. Associated University Presses, 1995. Pages 67–94.

Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

For more on the nuns of St Katharine’s in Nuremberg, see Jane Carroll, “Subversive Obedience: Images of Spiritual Reform by and for Fifteenth-Century Nuns,” in Reassessing the Roles, ed. Martin pp. 705–737. (Full cite of Martin’s above.)

For more on Donella, see Loretta Vandi, “‘The Woman with the Flower.’ Social and Artistic Identity in Medieval Italy,” in Gesta 39.1 (2000): 73–77.

For more on Guda see Pierre Alain Mariaux, “Women in the making: Early Medieval Signatures and Artists’ Portraits (9th–12th c.),” in Reassessing the Roles, ed. Martin, pp. 393–427, esp. 413–415. (Full cite of Martin’s text above.)

11/ Not sure what I referring to here, so instead here’s a link to a really important article from 1971 on feminist art history, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” by Linda Nochlin:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-4201/

12/ Antonia Pulci (1452/54–1501) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonia_Tanini_Pulci

Plautilla Nelli’s Last Supper: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/plautilla-nelli-last-supper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautilla_Nelli
http://advancingwomenartists.org/artists/plautilla-nelli

13/ Meredith Parsons Lillich, “Gothic Glaziers: Monks, Jews, Taxpayers, Bretons, Women,” in Journal of Glass Studies 27 (1985): 72–92.

Christine Hediger, “Female Donors of Medieval Stained-Glass Windows,” in Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass Materials, Methods, and Expressions edited by Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz (Leiden: Brill, 2019): 239–250 (esp. 241, for servant story and prostitutes story, and 247 for the “restored” male heads story).

14/ Vigil Raber (1490–1552) ran his studio with his wife, who continued to run the studio after his death. See M.A. Katrizky, “What Did Vigil Raber’s Stage Really Look Like?,” in Vigil Raber: Zur 450 Wiederkehr seines Todesjahres eds. Michael Gebhardt and Max Siller (Innsbruck: Universitaetsverlag Wagner, 2004): 85–116 (p. 85).

See episode 6 note 33 too.

15/ For those curious, this site has a breakdown of percentage male/female in different careers worldwide (excluding China and India for which data were not available), using data from the International Labour Organization. An example of a career with a 12% male participation rate is personal care worker (i.e., health care assistant–I think in the US we would call this an LPN type of position). A career with 10% female participation is commissioned armed forces officer. A similar table from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the figures for the US in 2020. One career here that has 11.8% women in it is electrical and electronics engineers. A career that is largely female is preschool and kindergarten teachers–only 1.2% male. Interestingly, a solid 25% of private detectives are female, and there are 800,000 of them in the country.

16/ Actual city of London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

17/ When I say it was less likely that women would paint people as opposed to still lifes, I meant during the Renaissance. Obviously women take nude drawing classes all the time now without much comment. (I have, anyway.)–Em

Episode 31: May Day, May Day!

Summary

From Groundhog Day to Hocktide to May Day to Midsummer to Mother’s Day, there are a ton of spring holidays! Join Em and Jesse as we discuss St. George and Medieval dragons, Saint Walpurga and Walpurgisnacht, Pagan syncretism, and a whole lot more. With some digressions about brunch.

Annotations and Corrections

1/ Groundhog Day  is really about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw63_YyNsF4

We are posting this on Friday, 4/23. There was snow in Wisconsin (and around the country) earlier this week. Yay, spring.

2/ Hocktide! Check out Katherine L. French, “‘To Free Them from Binding’: Women in the Late Medieval English Parish,” in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter, 1997); pp. 387–412.

Also see David N. Klausner (ed.), Record of Early English Drama (REED): Herefordshire and Worcestershire (Toronto, I990), 349–350, 553–554.

3/ St George! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George

Philip Butterworth, “Late Medieval Performing Dragons” in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 43: Early English Drama (2013), pp. 318–342.

dePaola, Tomie. The Knight and the Dragon. Puffin Books, 1998. Amazon link. Sadly, Tomie dePaola died at the age of 85 approximately one year ago (March 30, 2020).

4/ Here is the Dragon Chariot in the Luttrell Psalter (BL MS 42130 f184r): http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f184r

Here is the print made “after” (he didn’t make the engraving himself) Bruegel the elder’s c1559 De beurs op St. George dagen [aka The Fair of St George’s Day] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Fair_of_Saint_George%27s_Day_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg [Click on the image to zoom in just a little above left of center for the Dragon Wagon!]

5/ John Babington’s Pyrotechnia (1635) (discussed in Butterworth’s essay) https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/345291
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Babington_(mathematician)

6/ Norwich’s dragon, Snap! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edyVLlzAMxs

7/ May Day! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

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

8/ Floralia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floralia

Pliny the Elder’s text in Latin (Natural History, book 18, section 286–scroll down!): http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/18*.html

Here is the translation from Perseus Project, where it’s Book 18.69 (middle of the fourth paragraph): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+18.69&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137

9/ Saint Walpurga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Walpurga

Walpurgisnacht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night

10/ Robert Grosseteste (c1168–1253) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste

Grosseteste’s complaints about Maying can be found in E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (London, 1903), 1: 91.

Bruce Moore discusses Maying and Chaucer in “‘Allone, Withouten Any Compaignye:’ The Mayings in Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale,'” in The Chaucer Review, Spring, 1991, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring, 1991), pp. 285–301.

11/ Maypole! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole

Susan Crane Performance of the Self https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13751.html

12/ Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Lysander in I.i and Theseus in IV.i

See also the Valentine’s Day episode (episode 26)!

13/ Adam de la Halle (1240–1287) wrote a brilliant Robin and Marion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeu_de_Robin_et_Marion

Spotify links to the music of Adam de la Halle’s Robin and Marion:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1kBSiEHtnA2rwbhcds4npW?si=2aRu65MwQiGP7BiHiSbtdw
https://open.spotify.com/album/7dmIdo5biRHkicdEusfaTW?si=f14m4JGBSrGtDGRBruvdVA

For posterity, “Honey I Love You” is played like this:
Person A sits on Person B’s lap. (Can you tell this is a pre-COVID game?) Person A leans face close to Person B and says, “Honey, if you love me, would you please, please smile?” in as beguiling a manner as possible. Person B’s job is to reply, “Honey, I love you, but I just can’t smile” without breaking. If Person B starts to smile or laugh, they have to become the sitter and Person A is allowed to rejoin the crowd.

Bryn Mawr’s May Day Celebration: https://www.brynmawr.edu/activities/traditions (scroll down just a hair)

14/ For more on alcohol, see Episode 27!

Amusingly, and possibly related to Em’s rant about Mother’s Day, this was the first episode we recorded after Em had a baby.

King Bhumibol, also known as Rama IX, ascended the throne in 1946 and was coronated in 1950, just about three years before Elizabeth II did the same on the other side of the world. Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee was celebrated in 2012. Long the longest-reigning female monarch and longest-reigning British monarch, she became the longest-reigning monarch in 2016 when Bhumibol died at the age of 88. Her platinum jubilee is planned for 2022 and I (Em) can only assume she’ll make it. I assume that she’s going to be the queen for the rest of time, honestly.

Episode 30: Felis Catus Is Your Taxonomic Nomenclature

Summary

Cats are tiny lions that live in your home. But how long have they lived with humans? Have they always had the position of respect they enjoy now? Also, what’s up with racoons? Em and Jesse discuss cats in the Middle Ages (and also other animals kept as pets, including squirrels, monkeys, and birds). We explore various poetic odes to cats written through the ages (real and apocryphal), examples of cats getting into trouble in scriptoria, and also a few digressions on James Joyce.

Annotations

0/ Title ref.

1/ Ghostbusters (Dr. Venkman): “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together–mass hysteria!” https://youtu.be/SA1SxZoFmOU

2/ Cat domestication! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domesticated-cats-dna-genetics-pets-science

3/ CBS Sunday Morning “Are we making racoons smarter?” https://youtu.be/CnZ-8cVxhNA

Racoon GEICO commercial (there are many, here is one): https://youtu.be/gUpMoNMlCts

Interesting fact: in cities, where there is abundant food for animals like racoons and opossums, the animals start breeding year-round, rather than seasonally.

4/ Caitlin Doughty’s Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death https://www.amazon.com/Will-Cat-Eat-Eyeballs-Questions/dp/039365270X

Interview with Doughty: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/09/10/mortician-death-caitlin-doughty-book

Webcomic Strange Planet: “Who’s a moral creature?” (i.e., dogs!) https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1233112182126235649?s=20

Strange Planet‘s vibrating creature (i.e., cat): https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1107432804822994944?s=20

Strange Planet illuminates the way we stereotypically view dogs (companions, loyal, “good” in a truly moral sense) vs the way we stereotypically view cats (aloof, solitary, untamed, amoral).

5/ Anchoresses: episode 5, especially note 3.

6/ Irina Metzler, “Heretical Cats: Animal Symbolism in Religious Discourse,” in Medium Aevum Quotidianum, vol. 59 (2009): 16–32. These stories of the cat as symbolic of the devil are from pp. 18–19.

Here is a 14th century image of the poor widow surrounded by angels and the rich man surrounded by cats (representing the evils of his life, panderers and flatterers, etc). The image is in Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 312, f. 334v. The illuminator is Pierre Remiet, and the text is Vincent de Beauvais, Miroir Historial [Speculum historiale], vol. 1, 2, 4, traduction en français par Jean de Vignay. Miroir historial, vol. 1, Livres I–VIII.

See also Michael Camille, Master of Death, which is about the illuminator Remiet. This image appears in Camille on p. 157.

7/ For more on Hildegard and dogs, check out episode 29 note 27.

8/ Alain of Lille (c.1128–c.1202/3): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Lille

Cathars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism See also Metzler, p. 24.

9/ Dominicans! A dog statue in Marburg, Germany stands on a building that pre-Reformation was a Domincan monastery. This good pup is illustrating that the Dominicans are “domini canes” or “hounds of the Lord.”

The fresco “The Church Militant and Church Triumphant” in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (1365) by Andrea di Bonaiuto.

Here’s a close up: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Andrea_di_Bonaiuto._Santa_Maria_Novella_1366-7_fresco_0011.jpg

Andrea di Bonaiuto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_di_Bonaiuto_da_Firenze

10/ For awesome dog figurines, see episode 29 note 9.

For medieval cats licking themselves, there are many internet threads such as https://www.sadanduseless.com/funny-medieval-art/ (we are linking this for the images, not the text on the blog post!).

11/ Pietro Lorenzetti’s Last Supper in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi (lower church): https://www.wga.hu/html_m/l/lorenzet/pietro/1/1vault/2lastsu.html (click on the image for a close up!)

Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280–1348) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Lorenzetti

12/ Cats paw prints on a manuscript! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/130326-animals-medieval-manuscript-books-cats-history

https://www.openculture.com/2014/01/medieval-cats-behaving-badly.html

13/ Medieval cat pee on a manuscript!
https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/paws-pee-and-mice-cats-among-medieval-manuscripts/ (scroll down past the paw prints image)

14/ The Librarians (TV series!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Librarians_(2014_TV_series)

15/ Students from the Rochester Institute of Technology created an imaging system: https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-students-discover-hidden-15th-century-text-medieval-manuscripts

Since this episode was recorded, a paper came out in Nature about using computers to virtually unfold complexly folded letters from pre-1830 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21326-w).

16/ Christopher Smart (1722–1771) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Smart
Long poem Jubilate Agno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilate_Agno

The section of Jubilate Agno known as “(For I will consider) My Cat Jeoffry:” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno
https://www.amazon.com/Will-Consider-My-Cat-Jeoffry/dp/B001H8CLTC

17/ “Pangur Bán” (9th century Irish poem)
Seamus Heaney translation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48267/pangur-ban

The poem is contained in the Reichenau Primer.

18/ Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” lines 348–356: https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm

19/ Barbara Newman’s Chaucer parody about cats: B. Newman, ‘The “Cattes Tale”: A Chaucer Apocryphon,’ The Chaucer Review 26:4 (1992), pp. 411–23.

A Catte ther was, fulfilld of furrinesse,
And that a worthy beeste, as I may gesse
For of his herys al golden was the hewe,
And he so wys was, unnethes wolde he mewe,
But lay abedde and slepte with open ye,
Til that his frend Magnificat gan crye
Wel koude he cheere of vertu countrefete:
Nas nowher cat so swift to stele his mete.
Of milk and eek of mys he was ful fayn
But briddes loved he best, to telle yow pleyn.
Ful fetisly his tayl he gan upcaste
As any pekok proude; and atte laste.
I herde that sely beeste purr, parfay,
In verray parfit pleyn felinitee.
[Newman 411-412.]

The above article is helpfully prefaced with this note: “Chaucer was a serious poet, but he was also a comic poet, and he was rarely ‘solemn.’ Scholarship is perforce always serious, and almost always solemn as well. Here for once it is not.
Lest anyone believe everything said below, the reader is warned. The Editors” [411].

Julian of Norwich icon: https://www.trinitystores.com/artwork/julian-norwich (For more see episode 5, note 3).

20/ Petrarch (1304–1374) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch

Juliana Schiesari, “Portrait of the Poet as a Dog: Petrarch’s Epistola Metrica III, 5,” in Italica Vol. 84, No. 2/3 (Summer–Autumn, 2007), pp. 162–172.

“(Not?) Petrarch’s Cat:” https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/12/not-petrarchs-cat.html

Petrarch can also be found in episode 2 (note 20) and (in the notes only) in episode 26, note 7.

21/ The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries  (see episode 29, note 24)

These tapestries include monkeys as pets–for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn#/media/File:The_Lady_and_the_unicorn_Touch.jpg (mid left)

Scroll down for a close up in this article about the extent to which Algerian Jews participated in the monkey trade: http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222018000100018

22/ Blackadder III Episode 1 “Dish and Dishonesty”
http://allblackadderscripts.blogspot.com/2012/12/blackadder-iii-episode-1-dish-and.html

(Edmund comes in with his ‘Lords’ robe)

E: Voila, Mrs. Miggins. My robes of State. My thousand pounds well spent,
I think.

M: Oooohhh, very nice! Oooohhhhhh, it’s real cat, isn’t it?

E: This is not cat, Mrs. Miggins. This is finest, leather-trimmed ermine
with gold medallion accessories.

M: Oh go on, Mr. Blackadder — it’s cat. Oooh, look, they’ve left the little
collars on!

E: (reads a collar) ‘Mr. Frisky. If found, please return to Emma Hamilton,
Marine Parade, Portsmouth’? oh God! Ah, well, who cares about a dead cat now that I’m a fat cat.

M: Oooh, you’re full of yourself today, Mr. B!

E: …which is more than can be said for Mr. Frisky.

23/ James Joyce, The Cat and the Devil

The book is actually a letter from Joyce to his grandson, not his nephew. I regret this error. Also, despite Amazon claiming copies of this are going for $300+, I routinely find copies on AbeBooks for under $25. So if you want a copy, look around. The version illustrated by Blachon is the best. I don’t know if Ellmann had anything to say about Joyce and cats, but in addition to The Cat and the Devil, Leopold Bloom (the main character of Ulysses) has a cat, so I assume Joyce liked them.

Episode 29: D’You Like Dags?

Synopsis

Dogs have long been reputed to be man’s best friend. But how long is “long”? The answer is close to 10,000 years (at least). Join Em and Jesse as they look back at the intertwined history of humanity and canine-ity, from Odysseus’s dog Argos to Hachiko, who waited ten years for his owner to come home from work. With some interesting discussions of famous medieval animals, including Alfonso the Wise’s pet weasel and Chanticleer the rooster.

A lady with dogs from the Alphonso Psalter
A lady with dogs from the Alphonso Psalter, c. 1284-1316 (Add MS 24686, British Library).

Annotations and Corrections

1/ 1:33 I sound confused about llamas . . . I think I am poorly remembering an argument from Guns, Germs, and Steel. [Some interesting context for Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/03/guns-germs-and-steel-reconsidered –Jesse]

2/ 2:08 Talking smack about André [Awwwwwwww.-Jesse]

Andre in my old office
He can be kind of a jerk, but he’s also very nice when he wants to be.

 

3/ Our alcohol episode was episode 27.

4/ 7:08 Here is the Wikipedia article about the famous silver fox domestication experiment:

5/ If you’re interested in hunting, check out the famous medieval hunting manuscript Le Livre de chasse written by Gaston Phoebus (Gaston III, Count of Foix) between 1387 and 1389. This text was translated and adapted into English as The Master of Game by Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York between 1406 and 1413.

6/ 10:11 Turnspit dogs! In England, they’re mentioned at least as early as John Caius’s 1570 De canibus Britannicis (On English Dogs)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog

7/ There are many references to cats and dogs in the Talmud! Here is the one Em is discussing, and in true Jewish scholarly fashion, there are two possible sayings: 1) don’t go barefoot in a house with a cat because you’ll puncture your foot with the small bones of the snakes it has killed, and 2) don’t go go into a house without a cat in the dark because there might be snakes that will get you.

“Rav Pappa said: With regard to a house in which there is a cat, a person should not enter there barefoot. What is the reason? Because the cat might kill a snake and eat it, and the snake has small bones, and if a small bone gets into one’s foot it cannot be removed, and he will be in danger. Some say that Rav Pappa said: With regard to a house in which there is no cat, a person should not enter there in the dark. What is the reason? Since there is no cat to hunt snakes, perhaps a snake will wrap itself around him without him knowing and he will be in danger.” (Pesachim 112b:10)

Here is a general romp through Talmudic references to cats: https://www.sefaria.org/topics/cats?tab=sources

8/ 12:03 Anchoresses could have cats: see episode 5 (especially note 3).

Domestication of dogs! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-really-became-dogs-180970014/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03053-2

9/ 14:58 Pompeii “Beware the Dog” mosaic!

Roman doggo statue (copy of a lost Greek statue): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molossus_(dog)#/media/File:Molossian_Hound,_British_Museum.jpg
Another Roman doggo: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/255121

Greek or Roman girl with puppy: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248754

Greek doggo guarding owner’s tomb (in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens–Jesse can personally attest to this good doggo’s awesomeness). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Funerary_statue_of_a_dog_at_the_National_Archaeological_Museum_of_Athens_on_7_May_2018.jpg

Good Chinese doggos: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42361
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pottery_dogs,_Han_Dynasty.JPG

Pre-Columbian American doggos:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318964
https://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/dog_effigy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pot-bellied_Dog_Figure,_Mexico,_State_of_Colima,_200_BC_-_500_AD,_ceramic,_Pre-Columbian_collection,_Worcester_Art_Museum_-_IMG_7646.JPG

Neo-Assyrian doggos: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0903-1509

Some of the oldest depictions of dogs, from Iran: https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_2007_num_33_1_5213

Possibly even older depictions of dogs from Saudi Arabia: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/8000-year-old-rock-carvings-may-be-earliest-depiction-domesticated-dogs-180967266/

More dogs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_dogs

10/ 17:28 Historic dogs vs modern–you’ll notice that lots of the breeds in note 9 are referenced as “extinct” while still looking very recognizable! You can see a bunch of comparison photos from the early 20th century here.

11/ 19:08 Sorry about the eye thing!

HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel did a great story on dog breed (“Unnatural Selection”) in season 20 episode 4 (April 2014), but it doesn’t seem to be available for viewing anywhere. So, trigger warning on this article about the problem: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evolution-petface-180967987/
And a more hopeful article https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/although-purebred-dogs-can-be-best-in-show-are-they-worst-in-health/

12/ 19:52 Shout out to Thong Daeng, the most famous basenji of all time, possibly.

13/ Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Assyriologist who sometimes posts about good Mesopotamian doggos on twitter.
https://twitter.com/moudhy/status/1205801397528211462?s=12
https://twitter.com/Moudhy/status/1205814176293236737

14/ If you’re interested in sirens as funeral monuments, here are some pictures!
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

15/ The train station dog was an Akita named Hachiko. Don’t read that story unless you feel like crying.

16/ Book of Tobit: The dog is not integral to the story but loyally accompanies Tobit’s son Tobias on his travels (notice the brief mentions in the Wikipedia summary). The dog was interpreted as a symbol of loyalty and was a favorite feature of medieval portrayals of The Book of Tobit.
Doggo sleeping on the bed when Tobias gets married (stained glass, 1520): https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O64856/tobias-and-sara-on-their-panel-unknown/
Doggo just chilling (1415) http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/194/112314
And from 1332: https://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_mmw_10b21%3A088r_min
https://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_mmw_10b21%3A089v_min

17/ Le Menagier de Paris (1393) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ménagier_de_Paris
Here is the translation Goodman of Paris. Scroll down to pp. 107–108 for the stories in the podcast.

18/ Dogs protecting lost children: example 1, example 2. There are many more.

19/ St. Guinefort: I swear we discussed him, but I can’t find him in the previous episodes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelert

20/ The blessing of animals is held on or near St. Francis’s feast day (Oct 4th).

For more on St. Francis of Assisi, see episode 4 notes 14–17 and episode 23 note 7.

21/ The race in Siena is called the PALIO. The “pallagio” is, I assume, an off-brand Vegas hotel. It’s the only race in the world, as far as I know, where a horse that has lost its rider can still win if it finishes first.

22/ Alfonso the Wise’s Cantigas de Santa Maria.
Here is the song in question: http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=poemdata_view&rec=354

23/ Riki-tikki-tavi.

24/ The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Musée de Cluny.

Maltese dogs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_dog

25/ Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: the Prioress’s introduction in the General Prologue begins at line 118, and the discussion of her love of animals is lines 142–150.
https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0

Jesse: My claim here might not be true! Obviously far, far more money overall goes to charities that help humans. The discussion here is about a very specific, focused scenario (which still might not be true–the study might have skewed its data to make a point about discrimination). However, there is still a huge debate on whether it’s “immoral” to give to an animal charity “instead of” a human charity. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, feel free to Google!

Em: One thing that I believe is true is that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals predates the establishment of similar charities for the prevention of cruelty to children. (RSPCA was established in 1824, the ASPCA was established in 1866, and the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the first child protective agency in the world, was founded in 1874.

26/ For more on Marie de France (flourished 1160–1215), see episode 19 note 13.
Here is Marie’s fable “The Cock and the Fox.”

Here is Chaucer’s adaptation of Marie’s fable, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, starring the rooster Chanticleer.

27/ For more on Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) see episode 6 beginning around 34:00 and notes 17 and 23. This text is from Book 7 (“Animals”) of the Physica. Dogs are section 20 of this chapter in Priscilla Throop’s translation.

28/ A shout out to Walker-Meikle’s book Medieval Pets.

Also, see Mythbusters episode “Hair of the Dog” (season 8, episode 12) on how hard it is to trick tracking dogs.

This episode is dedicated to Edgar, Maya, and Wrigley! Shout out to Snatch for the title.

Edgar and Maya
Edgar and Maya in the back seat of a car.
Wrigley in a sweater
Wrigley!

Episode 28: Food

Summary

Hungry? Grab a snack and join Em and Jesse for a discussion of food in the Middle Ages–what did a well-equipped kitchen contain? What kind of dishes were cooked, with what ingredients? And who did the cooking and baking? With some digressions on international variations of hand pies and sandwiches, Wisconsin fish fries, and some modern recreations of Medieval recipes.

Annotations and Corrections

1/ [0:56] For more on the eucharist, check out episode 3 (on Passover and Easter) and episode 6 (especially the long section on the feast of Corpus Christi).

Caroline Bynum’s Holy Feast, Holy Fast. Amazon link.

2/ [5:45] We recorded this on a different day than usual, and for some reason three or four trains went by Dr. Jesse’s house in less than an hour and a half. [I love trains! We’ve got both freight and Amtrak. Invest in train travel!–JN]

3/ [8:30] Actually, my research suggests that the German immigrants who came to Wisconsin were Catholics, so that is where the fish fry tradition came from.–Em

4/ [9:45] Dr. Jesse alludes to the fact that in the laws of Kashrut, fish is considered pareve, meaning it can be eaten with both meat dishes or dairy dishes. (This means specifically fish–not seafood like shrimp or clams.)

5/ [11:00] The Seal of New York City: BEWARE stereotypical/racist Native American imagery! We are linking to the image for the beavers. And the Wikipedia article is here. As of July 2020, Bill de Blasio was in favor of a commission to rethink the seal.

6/ [15:00] The Chester Harrowing is discussed in episode 8 note 26 and episode 27 note 18 [1:02:03].

7/ [16:40] Hrotsvit has come up several times, but the best place to look for more on her is in her own episode, which was number 22.

8/ Chaucer’s Cook: Here’s the description of the Cook in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales (lines 379–387). You can also link to the Cook’s Tale from here (sidebar on the left).

9/ [24:20] An Aga is basically a cast iron box that gets hot slowly and then stays hot for a long time. They seem to use a lot of fuel, and (consequently?) they are very posh in Britain.

Here’s a nice blog on hearths and ovens.

10/ [24:30] Maggie Walker came up in episode 10 (note 2), Icons and Iconography. I don’t know who’s blog this is, but if you scroll down you’ll see a picture of the kitchen with the stove (and the kitchen table with an awesome yellow checkered tablecloth).

11/ [30:10] For the frequency (or lack thereof) of communion, see Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi esp. pp. 147–148. Amazon link.

12/ [31:20] Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381, by Steven Justice. Amazon link.

13/ [32:30] For a lot of the specific information in this episode from utensils to foodstuffs, I recommend Melitta Weiss Adamson’s Food in Medieval Times. For the possibility of roasting a whole ox on a spit, see Adamson, bottom of page 60.

14/ [34:51] Spoons: we don’t talk about it a lot, but I think it’s interesting to mention that spoons and knives existed for quite a while before the idea of having your own personal flatware for eating with at a meal became a thing.–Em

15/ [35:40] Making cheese is pretty easy–bring a gallon of, for example, goat’s milk to a simmer, add some salt and lemon juice, strain out the curds and squeeze out the liquid. Boom, you have chevre. (If you do this with cow’s milk and don’t squeeze out too much liquid, you have ricotta.) However, making really good cheese is much more complicated and can involve different types of rennet, starters, kneading, aging, etc. [Cheese is one of humanity’s greatest discoveries!–JN]

16/ [36:45] Weird Al’s Amish Paradise. (Also note the call out to Buster Keaton with the wall falling over Weird Al. We discussed Buster Keaton in episode 22 note 2–including the falling house façade–and in episode 21, note 3.)

17/ [38:00] Soap tho? [The Middle Ages had soap! It was made using tallow and lots of lye, generally speaking.–JN]

18/ [41:00] Somehow, suggesting that a pastie and a taco are essentially the same thing is like suggesting that a Pop Tart is a kind of ravioli–technically correct, but likely to start a fight. [Food fight!!–JN]

19/ [42:15] Banh mi: apparently, “banh” as a corruption of “pain” or “banh mi” as a version of “pain de mie” is a folk etymology, and the use of “banh” to mean a type of rice cake (like banh Tet) dates to the 13th century. It is written in Nom (Vietnamese Chinese characters) with 餅, pronounced “bing” in Mandarin! “Mi” means “wheat.” “Pho mai” DOES actually come from “fromage,” and inevitably meant Vache Qui Rie (Laughing Cow) brand cheese. The term “banh mi” is used to mean a sandwich, I believe, in the US and other places that aren’t VN. This is an example of synecdoche. In VN you’d say the filling, like “banh mi pho mai” (cheese sandwich). Are they like a taco? This assertion makes me uncomfortable. [I mean no, except in as much as a taco is like a sandwich… 🙂 –JN]

20/ [46:00] Le Viandier. Some fun translations of these recipes can be found here.

21/ [55:00] Liber de Coquina.

22/ The Forme of Cury. For the recipes, see here, and also here.

23/ Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook: Part 1, part 2, part 3. Part two begins with a reading of the recipe for stuffed goose Dr. Jesse recited.

24/ [1:00:40] Again, a shout out to Melitta Weiss Adamson’s Food in Medieval Times. Amazon link. This quote is from pages 63–64.

25/ [1:05:15] Pater Noster = Our Father = Lord’s Prayer. A “Miserere” is Psalm 51 (or 50 in the Vulgate): “Have mercy upon me, O God” (miserere = mercy).

26/ [1:08:25] Meryl Streep savages an onion. [Love this moment!–JN]

27/ [1:11:05] “We haven’t started cooking chicken with sound waves or anything.” Technically we have started cooking chicken with microwaves though, which is a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation. Although, thermal radiation (heat) is also a type of electromagnetic radiation, so… I’m actually torn on whether this counts as an improvement in existing technology or something fundamentally different.

28/ Other cooking shows:
The always awesome Sohla El-Wayly has just started a historic food cooking project with the history channel.

I think the Alton Brown episode of relevance here is season 14, episode 16: A Bird in the Pie Is Worth Two in the Bush. Sadly not freely available, but you can probably stream it on YouTube or something.

This guy does historical baking.

Ann Reardon also cooks historical dishes…here, she’s also cooking from The Forme of Cury.

29/ [1:14:15] St. Apollonia was mentioned in episode 10, note 37.

Medieval Fur Preservation

We mention at the end of every podcast that we’ll take your questions. But we have been regrettably slow in answering the ones we haven’t incorporated into the actual episodes. There have been a lot of reasons for this–plague inertia, Dr. Jesse’s class schedule/general academicness, Em having some health issues (and, uh, a baby). But now, for 2021, we’re cleaning up our act, and we’re going to post the questions we answer here! So keep on sending them in!

From A.:

How did people preserve furs in medieval times? Would any peasant do it, or did it require special tradesperson materials?

As with many things in the Middle Ages, some techniques to preserve furs were open to anyone and others required specialized craftspeople. Sumptuary laws also governed the furs that people of different classes and professions could wear. Moreover, if peasants killed (or poached) rabbits or squirrels, etc., for fur, the quality of the end product was likely to be lower than that of imported fur (unless you were a skilled peasant who lived in an area with highly prized animals).

Fur and leather production were related crafts. There were a number of specialty tanners (depending on the type/quality of leather being created) as well as taw(y)ers or whittawers who tawed skin (rather than tanning it) by using alum and salts (for example) to create a white leather. Grömer, Russ-Popa, and Saliari discuss this process at length on page 72.

Grömer, Russ-Popa, and Saliari on fur: “When manufacturing furs, special attention is given to ensure that the hair retains its firm hold on the skin. The pre-tanning operations are similar to those of leather manufacturing. Traditionally, skins can be processed without tanning. They only receive preservative treatments that soften the skin and protect them from bacterial attack. For fur, tanning, tawing or treatment with oils is also possible (Thomson 2006: 73); treatment with smoke [one of the most original processing methods, which is still practiced today (Trommer 2008: 15)] is also an option” (73). Smoke preservation would be possible for most people, but the chemicals and knowledge needed for tanning or tawing were generally reserved for craftspeople.

Here is a portion of Grömer, Russ-Popa, and Saliari’s discussion of tawing: “Another method to produce leather is to treat the hides with alum. Here, a paste of alum is kneaded into the pelt. Besides alum, the paste can obtain other ingredients such as salt, egg yolks, butter or flour (Thomson 2006: 72). This process is repeated until the leather is tawed. The advantages of tawing versus vegetable tanning are: faster production, softer leather and lighter weight. These help explain why it was favoured amongst the craft conditions in Antiquity and the Medieval Period. The produced leather is white and therefore readily dyed (Trommer 2008: 26). The disadvantage of this method is the washability of the alum. If the alum is removed by water, the leather again behaves like a raw skin and, for example, is prone to putrefaction. Due to the washability of alum, this method is considered to be a semi-tanning method. The origin of this method is assumed to be Asia Minor, with some evidence also from ancient Egypt. The Romans and Arabs therefore contributed significantly to its spread (Trommer 2008: 24)” (72).

Karina Grömer, Gabriela Russ-Popa and Konstantina Saliari, “Products of animal skin from Antiquity to the Medieval Period” in Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien. Serie A für Mineralogie und Petrographie, Geologie und Paläontologie, Anthropologie und Prähistorie, 119. Bd. (15 Feb. 2017): 69–93. [Available on JSTOR.]

The sources they cite in the paragraph I’ve quoted above are:
Thomson, R. (2006): Testing leathers and related materials. − In: Kite, M. & Thomson, R. (Hrsg.): Conservation of leather and related materials – pp. 58–65, Oxford (Taylor and Francis Ltd).

Trommer, B. (2008): Archäologisches Leder. Herkunft, Gerbstoffe, Technologien, Alterungs- und Abbauverhalten. – 244 pp., Saarbrücken (Verlag Dr. Müller).