Episode 91: The Field Where I Grow My Ducks

Summary

Em and Jesse are back with more medieval meme review. Join us as we discuss martyrdom, marginalia, The Seventh Seal, and the Bayeux Tapestry.

Notes

1/ martyrdom of Isaiah:People today: People are so violent and depraved these days, things were better in the old days. Medieval people: lmao let's just saw this guy in half. A marginalia drawing of a guy in red robes being sawed in half by two other men.

Martyrdom sword through throat:Being stabbed or chopped in the dark ages. A minor inconvenience or downright enjoyable? There are four images, one is a painting of a woman with a sword through her throat, the other three are marginalia of people being stabbed with swords or an ax.

2/ St. Sebastian. Artists love him!

Just to be clear, “It’s difficult to assert that there were any gay men before Walt Whitman” is a joke about how historians tend to act. Generally, if you look at the comments on Wikipedia, it can be difficult to assert that people are gay after Whitman too—there was one actor who lived with his partner very openly for thirty years, and on the talk page people were still debating if he should be categorized as gay. This about someone who died in 1993.

The Last Judgement: https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/giudizio-universale.html

Rubens’s St. Sebastian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Sebastian_(Rubens)

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

A shot of Death from The Seventh Seal. The caption says, "I am Death. I have long walked by your side. Are you ready?"Death was played by a guy named Bengt Ekerot. No one seems to know how tall he was, but Max Von Sydow was apparently about 6’4″.

4/ “Give a shoutout to Sandman…” We recorded this in 2022, long before the allegations against Neil Gaiman became public. 🙁 We condemn his behavior in the strongest possible terms. [Terrible people can make amazing art that contradicts their own actions in their personal lives. It’s really unsatisfying, but an important (and unfortunate) fact about human nature.–Jesse]

5/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Pictor

6/ I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a cat churning butter. A marginalia drawing of a cat standing on its back legs, apparently churning butter at a butter churn.David Jenkins was the creator of Our Flag Means Death.

Meredith Brooks, “Bitch.” https://genius.com/Meredith-brooks-bitch-lyrics

7/ The Rothschild Canticles: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002755 [scroll down to page 148r]. The book takes its name from Edmond de Rothschild, rather than whoever commissioned it. E. de R. (aka Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild, 1845–1935) was indeed a member of the powerful banking family and subject of many anti-Semitic conspiracy theories you are thinking of. Where it came from before that is unclear, at least according to the provenance information provided by Yale.

Citation: MS 404, folio 148 recto.

John Boswell was a Yale scholar who wrote a book called Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe where he argued that the early Church had a ritual called “adelphopoiesis” (brother-making) that was essentially a marriage ceremony for same-sex couples. (This being the thing back before the Church felt like it cared much about who married whom, which is a rather newer thing than they would like to admit.) The rite still happens today—here (https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243606135/a-look-at-the-ancient-practice-that-turned-friends-into-family) is an NPR article about two women who underwent the ritual in 1985. (And history will say they were roommates.) (Except in this case it seems as though they were. Sorry.) (The point being that the rite is perceived somewhat differently today. Or at least by NPR.)

Boswell died in 1994, about a decade after Foucault.

8/ In the style of the Bayeux Tapestry, a man pointing. The words read: Behold! The field in which I grow my fucks Lay theine eyes upon it and thou shall seee that it is barren.

Episode 66: Medievally Bootylicious (obscenity part 2)

Synopsis

Are butts the most medieval of body parts? From the Wild Man to Chaucer to good old Michelangelo, let’s pontificate about the posterior.

Do you need more of a pitch than that?

Notes

0/ Preorder Em’s book: a little obscene, only a few butts.

1/ Warning for…talking about butts, I guess.

2/ The Wild Man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_man

3/ York Minster Cathedral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Minster

The monkey burial: Window n25 (bottom of left window–the bier is covered in green cloth and there is a monkey who has grabbed hold and is hanging off of it). Here is a close up of the detail.

The legend of the mocker(s) who attempt to stop the Virgin’s funeral procession was well known in medieval Europe, although the name Fergus seems to be specific to York. See the notes at the bottom of the linked page for the lost York Play.

Here is a depiction in medieval art with a summary of the legend: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RYV

Here is the an article by Stephen J. Shoemaker ” ‘Let Us Go and Burn Her Body’: The Image of the Jews in the Early Dormition Traditions” in Church History 68.4 (Dec. 1999), 775–823. Shoemaker also wrote a book The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption

4/ Gargoyles and grotesques: Michael Camille Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art.

5/ Michael Camille “Dr Witkowski’s Anus: French Doctors, German Homosexuals and the Obscene in Medieval Church Art,” in Medieval Obscenities (ed Nicola F. McDonald), 17–38. (We discuss a number of images from this essay, including 2.2.)

6/ Borges Cathedral: http://en.posztukiwania.pl/2017/09/26/details-from-behind/

7/ Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel pettiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNeHaAmjkIQ

8/ Barbara Newman quote: “[F]or us, the secular is the normative, unmarked default category, while the sacred is the marked, asymmetrical Other. In the Middle Ages it was the reverse” (viii). Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013).

9/ Marginalia butt faces (just as examples!)

10/ Episode 23, note 9

11/ Henry Medwall, c.1461–1501?

A play: Fulgens and Lucrece B: “Nay, we shall nede no horse ne Mule/ but let us just [joust] at fart pryke in cule”(p. 328, lns. 1164–65). (Presumably they are trussed up around poles and brooms that serve as the spear.) I’ve cited page and line from Medieval Drama: An Anthology edited by Greg Walker.

Peter Meredith, ” ‘Fart Pryke in Cule’ and Cock-Fighting” Middle English Theater, vol. 6 (1984), 30–39.

12/ Dante, canto 21 (line 139)

Butt trumpet illustrations

13/ Roman de la Rose (Wikipedia)

See our previous episode, note 11, for more on female illuminator Jeanne de Montbaston who illuminated a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (and for links to examples of her “obscene” work on this manuscript, BNF25526).

Alastair Minnis “From Coilles to Bel Chose: Discourses of Obscenity in Jean de Meun and Chaucer,” Medieval Obscenities (ed. Nicola F. McDonald), 156–178.

14/ The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

15/ Miller’s Prologue and Tale

Episode 61: Snowpeople

Summary

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

5/ Arras 1434–35: the Danse Macabre Snowmen

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

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

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

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

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

9/ Manneken Pis. A very famous statue!

Jeanneke Pis. A less famous statue.

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

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

11/ Switzerland’s exploding snowman